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Arsenio Hall is a comedian, producer, writer, and actor. He hosted “The Arsenio Hall Show” and has appeared in films including “Coming to America” and “Harlem Nights.” His new book, “Arsenio Hall: A Memoir,” is available now. www.simonandschuster.com/books/Arsenio/Arsenio-Hall/9781982191368 www.arseniohall.com
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Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.
The Joe Rogan experience.
Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day.
All right, slap some headphones on.
Let's rock and roll, sir.
Yes.
Our old friend would be so happy.
Not just that picture, but so much that you've done.
Do you believe that people who have gone on know what we're doing or see us?
I don't know.
You'd like to think that you're that important.
Oh, yeah.
I have a feeling they have more important stuff to do on the other side.
Yeah, I guess if you're in heaven, you're not thinking about the mothership.
Right.
Well, the mothership definitely is from her.
Yes.
Yes.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, that's an incredible tribute to her.
Well, the bar is named after her.
Yeah, I've heard all the comics.
I've heard Shane and Ian and all the guys talk about it after they came back.
And that's just an honor, man.
Plus, you know, I used to say to people, if you haven't taken something from
watching Richard Pryor, you're probably doing it wrong.
Right.
And Mitzi made the greatest comedy mecca ever.
And you got to copy what she did.
A hundred percent.
Yeah.
Wow.
And this is cool.
She taught me everything about how to run a club, how to do it right.
Basically, kind of let the comedians run it.
Let the inmates run the asylum.
Yeah.
You know.
Yeah.
We're perfect inmates for that.
And right now, the comedy store is greater than ever.
That's awesome.
Yeah, it's wonderful there because, you know, I even got Jay Leno to come back,
you know, because he remembered the old days and hadn't gone back.
And I'm like, dude, it's different.
They pay you for coming.
They split the door in a different way now.
And there are phones in bags.
I had to explain that concept.
Yeah.
We had to encourage them to do all that.
Yeah.
That was your era.
Yeah.
Well, once we left, we started doing that at the mothership for all the shows.
Then other comedy clubs started falling.
So it's the way to do it.
People are too fucking distracted.
Yeah.
And I think it frees us up in a way.
I'll say things and try things and not worry about seeing them on YouTube when
they're not ready or when I've made a mistake and gone too far and said
something.
Oh, 100%.
It's also, you have to be free to fuck around and experiment.
And if someone takes that fucking around and experiment, you don't know what's
coming out of your mouth.
Like right now, I don't know what's coming out of my mouth right before I say
it.
Right?
Yeah.
Right.
And people have to understand that.
This is not like when you're on stage and you're working out, like a lot of it
is freeballing.
You've got material that's like pre sort of established and you're, you know,
you've got the bones of it, but you're also fucking around in the moment.
And sometimes you fuck around the moment and it works.
And sometimes you fuck around the moment and it does nothing.
It goes, or it's terrible.
You said something awful.
You're like, whoops, sorry.
Yeah.
We make mistakes.
You're just fucking creating something.
And then standup is the only art form that you have to kind of create in front
of a crowd.
You can't really, you can get ideas and the concepts and the flesh of it alone,
but you have, it comes alive in front of the crowd.
You have to be able to fuck around.
Yeah.
I, um, me and Chappelle, and you've, you've done this kind of thing.
Me and Chappelle met Chris Rock in Cleveland because Chappelle lives in Ohio,
obviously.
He's done something very similar to what you've done, but we'll get into that
later.
Yeah.
He's done something really cool.
Incredible.
Basically took over a whole town.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And it's funny.
And especially at a really funny joke about it, about how, uh, when white
people move into a neighborhood, it's called gentrification.
And he goes, they don't have a word for what I'm doing to these motherfuckers.
Yeah.
It's crazy to be Dave Chappelle, the most important man in town.
Yeah.
But, uh, Chris Rock was doing Cleveland and, uh, we met him there.
And that was the first time I saw the bags.
People.
And, and I was apprehensive.
Um, as a matter of fact, I saw a celebrity in LA who didn't want to put his
phone in a bag.
And so they had that motherfuckers stay outside, you know?
Yeah.
There's too many snitches in this world.
Too many people just want to film everything for the gram.
Yeah.
Like, stop.
Yeah.
Sometimes we're saying the wrong thing.
Sometimes we're drunk.
Yeah.
For sure.
A lot.
Yeah.
Yeah.
A lot.
Dave loves to get lit and go on stage.
But it's also like, that's one of the ways he creates.
Like, I've seen him do entire shows where he's just completely fucking around
and he films everything.
So then afterwards, he goes over it and he's like, oh, there's a seed right
there.
I only plant that seed.
Yeah.
There's an idea there.
And then, you know, that's how you come up with stuff.
Yeah.
I never drink or smoke before going on stage, but I love to create at home.
And the next day, because sometimes you can write something down and it'll be
like a blazer button envelope.
And the next day you're like, I don't know what the fuck I thought was funny
about that last night when I was smoking.
But I like to smoke and create at home and then take it to the stage.
But when I'm on stage, I've had bad experiences trying to do it high and saying,
this will make me creative.
I'll be like Hendrix of comedy.
That's all wrong.
Your memory will go.
Yeah, your memory will go.
One time I was at the Laugh Factory and I came off and George Lopez said to me,
why you come off?
And I said, I told you I'd do 20.
And he says, you did five.
I was in Tonight Show mode or some shit.
Hey, I got to clear something out.
Speaking of, this has nothing to do with you, but I did a podcast last week
with Theo Vaughn.
And in it, there was like a video on the internet that was accusing me of lying
about something.
And what I said was that I was in the mountains of Utah when the Charlie Kirk
thing was going down.
What had actually happened was I was here doing a podcast with Charlie Sheen
when the Charlie Kirk thing went down.
We stopped and took a piss break, right?
And that's when we found out about it, right?
And then when I was in the mountains of Utah, that's when the Jimmy Kimmel
thing was happening.
When Jimmy Kimmel was getting in trouble and I was getting all these messages,
but I didn't have any service out there.
So I had to hook up the Starlink in order to find out what was happening.
When I did the podcast the other day, it seemed like I was saying that I was in
the mountains when Charlie Kirk got shot.
I probably was saying that I was exhausted when I did that show last week.
So I did a show on Tuesday night at the club and I have this thing that I do,
unfortunately, where I come home and it's the only time that I get alone time
is when everyone's asleep.
And I stayed up way too late.
I stayed up super late.
Then I had to take my kid to school in the morning and I was like, I'll just
power through.
The problem when I do that, when I get no sleep is my memory is dog shit.
Like I have a really good memory and a terrible memory.
It's really good a lot of the times.
And then sometimes, especially when I'm tired, it's fucking terrible.
It's like from doing thousands of podcasts, my memory is like a room that's
filled with boxes and files.
And I don't know where the fuck everything is.
See, as you were talking, the first thing, everything goes to sports for me.
Some of our greatest home run hitters, they strike out a lot.
Because they're swinging all the motherfucking time trying to get it to McCovey
Cove or something.
Of course.
And I think that's how we are.
Well, not we.
You, especially right now.
You're doing this constantly.
You're talking to lots of people saying lots of things.
And every now and then, there's going to be a swing and a miss.
Let me explain that.
The real problem was sleepy.
The real problem was not getting any sleep.
And I'm not going to do that anymore.
Because I keep doing it.
The thing is, I get home at night.
Have you had that problem before?
Yeah.
Like sleep deprivation and you get yourself into something.
I've had that problem before.
Usually, I can fix it with creatine.
So, creatine is a great supplement when you're tired.
It really, there's been studies that show that creatine supplementation,
especially like 10 to 20 grams, it actually alleviates all of the problems that
happen with sleep deprivation in terms of cognitive function.
But I've been, I just was doing some blood work.
So, when I knew that I was going to do my blood work, I didn't take any creatine
for a month because I want to, because I'd read something about creatine
possibly being bad for your kidneys.
So, I wanted to get a baseline, do it, and then do it again when I supplement.
Oh, yeah.
So, I had this like strategy.
But the point is like, I went, yeah, my brain was foggy.
And so, for the people that like heard that and like, what is wrong with you?
That's what I thought when I saw, like somebody put a video on the line, why is
he lying about this?
I'm like, oh, I forgot.
It wasn't a lie.
It's just, my brain sucks when I don't get sleep and I'm not going to do that
anymore.
Because it's like, when I get home at night, it's the only time I'm alone.
It's like my only alone time.
And even though I knew I had to get up in the morning and take my kid to school,
I was like, I don't fucking care.
I'm staying up.
The problem with that is like, when I have to do this the next day, I just don't
function as good.
I've done it.
I've done it before, but I feel it the next day.
Like, I can't recall things.
My words don't come out as smooth.
I don't have as much.
My vocabulary is limited.
It's like, there's too many problems with it.
So, I'm not going to do that anymore.
First of all, do guys with these arms do creatine?
I mean, would it help me?
Oh, it's great for everybody.
Yeah, creatine is not just a supplement for muscles.
Creatine is actually a really good cognitive function supplement.
It's actually a cognitive enhancing supplement.
Yeah, there's a lot of research on that.
And the other thing that hit me is I was listening to you talk recently, and
you talked about smoking herb and how it enhanced the weightlifting process.
Yeah.
What's that about?
You feel it in your tissues, man.
It's like you feel.
It's really good for coordination exercise.
Like, there's a lot of jiu-jitsu guys who smoke weed.
They smoke weed right before class.
Like, get ripped.
So, the Gracie's were high when I first started seeing them?
Not those guys.
Okay.
Those guys don't do it, but a lot of guys do.
I think one of the – I don't want to throw them under the bus, but one of the
brothers was really into smoking weed and doing jiu-jitsu.
And arguably the best one.
Definitely the best one.
But a lot of jiu-jitsu guys do it.
And a lot of guys like to do it before kickboxing.
You just feel your muscles more.
You feel, like, your coordination more.
You're more sensitive.
It's weird.
It's like instead of you being, like, abstract with your movements and, you
know, just kind of, like, doing it, it's like you feel all the tissues, all the
connections.
When you lift weights, you're like –
Like, you feel all the fibers of all your shit moving.
It's like – it just makes you more sensitive.
It's such a misunderstood substance.
Not for everybody.
I really believe some people should not get high.
I think for some people it throws them off and sends them down a dark road and
it's just not for them.
Causes them to procrastinate about their life and personal responsibilities.
There's a lot of that.
There's a lot of people that just wake and bake and just live in the cloud all
day and never get anything done.
And then there's a lot of people that also get, like, super paranoid and they
get anxiety and they freak out.
And then there's people that – there's a lot of connections to marijuana and
psychosis or schizophrenic states.
But the problem with that is were they already – like, did they already have
a propensity towards schizophrenia and marijuana pushed them over the edge?
Were they going to get it anyway?
Like, it's hard to say.
A lot of those guys on a diet, Coke, would have problems.
Yeah, right?
Right.
There's a lot of guys just fucking red lights freaking out.
There's people that just – life is too hard for them and they don't need
something else that fucks with it.
You know, if you already have mental health struggles, you probably shouldn't
do mushrooms.
If you're already fucked up, if there's already some things that you're, like,
struggling to hang on to everyday life, yeah, you probably shouldn't do acid.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
You should probably just try to, like, keep your shit together.
But that's not everybody.
It's like alcohol.
Like, alcohol's not for everybody.
But some people can have a glass of wine at dinner and just start laughing.
It's a nice social lubricant.
Some people, they have one drink and they're doing Coke and they're getting
hookers and they're fucking driving on the freeway.
They're shooting at cops.
They go crazy.
Like, some people just can't handle alcohol.
Doesn't mean it should be illegal.
Like, that's crazy.
And that's the same thing I feel with pot.
Pot is super beneficial to a lot of people.
And has been for millions of years.
For me, that's my, like, in the old days, you'd watch a television show and a
guy would have a martini when he comes home.
Yeah.
I even talk about that in the book.
When I come home, my girl has me a joint laid out on the counter, you know, and,
you know, nice little raw papers.
And that's my, that's daddy's cocktail.
Yeah.
It's a nice one, too, because it doesn't fuck with your body.
The problem with alcohol is, you know, it feels good while you're doing it.
But then the next day you're like, oh, your fucking head and your body's tired.
I hear swelling, you know, and different kinds of things.
And also, I'm from a home where my favorite person, my cousin, because I didn't
have brothers and sisters, biological brothers and sisters.
So when my cousin came to live with me, a male, he's a teenager, and he had a
drinking problem.
Like, I would go inside my toy box and find scotch.
Oh, he would hide it?
Yeah, he would hide it.
He's parked in the garage when there were already two cars in the garage, you
know, and I loved him and he was hilarious.
And he, in part, helped to make me who I am.
But a bad experience like that in your youth can make you a little bit leery
about liquor.
Oh, yeah.
I had a friend of mine when I was in high school, and his cousin sold coke, and
I watched this guy fall apart.
I watched him do cocaine constantly and fall apart.
His life just went down the toilet, and I never touched cocaine because of that.
I never did.
I've still never done coke.
And I think that's why, because I watched his life.
So you've never tried a line?
Never.
Never.
That's heavy, man.
Not once, yeah.
Because I had to try it to see what it smelled like, you know?
I mean.
I'm sure I'd like it.
My friend Jimmy said, don't do this.
You'd love it.
But he's probably right.
But you also have a certain kind of discipline where I think you could do a
line and say, okay, I get it.
But I love that you have the discipline to never try it.
I don't have that kind of strength.
I've got to see what it's like once.
Just, the thing is, like, I don't know anybody who's had, like, cocaine was
really good for me.
Like, doing cocaine was really good.
When I started doing cocaine, my life just really changed.
I really got clarity.
I started focusing.
I was nicer to people.
I don't ever hear that story.
Never.
Not once.
I did a little coke, and then I was president of Yale, and I ran for, you know.
I do hear people say that about speed, which is weird.
You hear people say that about amphetamines, like, especially Adderall.
Like, how, like, oh, my God, it makes me so productive.
I got so much done.
But it's generally, it's, like, journalists and people that have to write a lot.
Students.
Yeah.
I'm very curious about Adderall because I'm hearing so much, and I'm thinking,
like, when I was doing the book, right?
I'm like, would Adderall be good to focus me, to do for me what it does for
students that I hear talk about it?
Probably.
Probably.
But I don't.
It's a pill, right?
It scares me, though.
Because I know a lot of people with problems with it.
It's a real catchy one.
It gets you.
Yeah.
And then you start leaning on it.
So that's one of the downs is it's extremely addicting.
Very addictive.
But what's the other downside?
Well, I would imagine when you get off of it, you're exhausted.
Because I would imagine whenever there's, there's always some sort of a
biological, you know, there's, whenever, there's no free lunch, right?
Anything that speeds you up is going to bring you down.
Like, there's, get, if you're ramping your body up where you're focusing for
fucking 16 hours, just sitting in front of the typewriter.
Yeah.
And that's what, like, why journalists like it.
Yeah.
I would imagine the back end of it.
You've done it, Jamie.
Yeah.
Only twice.
Because it kept me up for two days.
See, that's what I'm talking about.
That's the main thing.
That's it.
It's an amphetamine.
So, yeah.
I went to try to go to bed and I was like, well, this isn't happening.
So, let's get up and see how, we're up all day.
All right.
Two days?
Yeah.
I just, I had to call off work.
It wasn't good.
And then you feel real dopey after it wears off, right?
Yeah.
I didn't feel like I succeeded on anything that day.
Man, that is a fucking problem for me is, like, the lack of sleep thing.
After this whole Charlie Kirk thing with this, what I was just talking about, I'm
really
going to concentrate a lot more on sleep.
You can't fuck with that because it's like, especially me, it's like, I need my
brain to
be functioning at its highest potential most of the time.
Like, that's what you're doing.
Especially when I'm in here.
I was talking to Theo Vaughn.
I didn't think it would be that big of a deal.
Theo's a comic.
We're just going to be silly.
The most recent one?
Yeah, the one I was just talking about.
It would probably be good to be loopy, you know?
Like, because, you know, the writers on news radio, they would stay up all
night on purpose
just to get loopy because that was how, because they didn't really do any drugs.
They just would use sleep deprivation to be silly.
Yeah.
It was hilarious.
Like, these guys would start writing at, like, two o'clock in the morning.
Like, they would stay up.
They would play video games and they would start writing a script at, like, two
o'clock in
the morning.
And then they would stumble in to, like, when we have a table read, they would
stumble
into the table read, like, just finishing the script.
They would lay it out to us.
They just got done printing it.
And these guys would be fucking just completely out of it.
Hair all fucked up, barefoot.
It was really funny the way they operated.
But it was, there was a method to their madness.
And that method was the more tired you get, the more exhausted you get, you get
into sleep
deprivation.
You get loopy and you get silly and you start thinking silly things.
Yeah.
And those guys, that's how they would use it.
They would use that weird state of mind, that loopiness to write.
Yeah.
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I need my sleep, man.
If I have sleep, I can do anything.
I feel like they could have got there with weed without all the loopiness.
You want to get there?
You can get there with weed and you don't have to stay up all night.
You get it right away.
Yeah, but weed ain't for everybody.
It's not for everybody.
It ain't for everybody.
But yeah, I love having my sleep.
As a matter of fact, that's the drug that's most important to me.
Having an Ambien nearby.
Do you like that?
Yeah, a quarter, just a little bite of Ambien.
A little bite.
Yeah, we'll hook you up.
I knew a dude who would take that shit every day.
He had to take it all the time.
And then he was taking two.
And he told me, like, dude, my house could be on fire.
And I would have no idea.
I'm like, that can't be good.
But he needed it.
It was the only way he could go to sleep.
But he was also taking Adderall.
So he was taking Adderall in the day.
And then he was taking Ambien at night.
I can't believe he's still alive.
Yeah, that's too much.
Yeah, the Adderall fucked his life up, too.
Woo.
Yeah.
It's not, you know, I don't think you should rely on anything for sleep.
For me, I just, I've never had a sleep problem, fortunately.
I could go to sleep on a bag of rocks.
I could just crash.
It drives my wife nuts.
Because, like, if we're on a plane, the moment the plane takes off, I'm out
cold.
I could just go to sleep.
The bad thing about me is I can sleep best in places I shouldn't sleep.
Like church.
Or sit and talk to my woman's grandma.
Church will make you sleepy.
I don't know why.
Why does church make you so sleepy?
Or reading.
Yeah.
Reading will put you out.
There are some audible books that are worse than Ambien.
Right.
You know.
Yeah.
Something about physically reading puts me out.
Yeah.
Just sitting there, looking at the pages, I just start nodding off.
Yeah.
I, um, The Alchemist, I have been on page 12 for like a year and a half, you
know?
Sit down on a plane and just read The Alchemist at the top of the page and I'm
out.
Yeah.
It's fiction for me that puts me out.
Nonfiction doesn't really put me out.
Nonfiction is more, like, I guess it's more stimulating because it's real, you
know?
Because I'm reading about real things.
Something about reading fiction is what puts me to sleep.
Yeah.
For me, it's just reading.
Just, I can take out my license, you know, and look and say, oh, halfway
through my name.
Out.
This is cool, man.
Not having sleep is got, like, a person that's got, like, legitimate insomnia.
That's got to be the nuttiest fucking problem.
Like, that's that movie, The Mechanic?
No, The Machinist.
Did you ever see that movie, The Machinist?
No.
Is that an action movie?
Well, it's, that's the movie with, uh, what's, Christian Bale.
Christian Bale, where he lost an insane amount of weight.
Like, Christian Bale's a big guy.
I think he got to, like, 130-something pounds.
Yeah.
And the idea was that this guy was going completely insane because he couldn't
sleep.
And so he wasn't eating.
And so he was just, like, up all the time, like, out of it.
Yeah.
He, like, if you see what he looked like when he made that movie, it's, like,
that's what he looked like in the movie.
Oh, shit.
Yeah.
That looks like he's about to make a whole different movie.
Yeah.
Like, he was about to die.
And then he went from that.
And right afterwards, he did Batman.
So he got super jacked.
He went from that.
And by the way, the movie sucks.
So this guy, like, wrecked his health for a movie that wasn't even good.
And, I mean, I wonder how good it could even be when your main guy is dying.
Look at that image on the far right.
The one that you just, look at that.
Look at the difference between, that was, like, six months later.
That can't be healthy.
No.
Fucking terrible for you.
It has to be terrible.
Terrible.
Do you like to act?
No.
I don't hate it.
I don't like the process.
I don't like waiting around all day.
I don't like being on set.
I don't like dealing with...
Some actors are great.
Some actors are just like all kinds of people.
Yeah.
Cops.
There's a lot of cops that are awesome.
Because I know you had a point in your life when you could probably do anything
you want.
And I never see you pursuing any acting roles.
No.
I avoid them.
I've been offered some fun stuff.
And I was like, hmm, I'm not going to Bulgaria for three months.
Fuck that.
I'm just...
It's not my thing.
And if it was my thing, I'd be, like, feel very fortunate.
And I'd dive on it.
I'd be like, oh, my God.
So when you look at something you've done and you're watching a role in dailies
or at the premiere, you don't love what you see so much that you do more of it?
It doesn't bother me.
It's just not what I enjoy doing.
And, again, it's the process that's the problem.
It's the 16-hour days.
It's like...
And it's being around actors.
Because you're around people that need to think and need to talk in a very
specific way.
Because they're always worried they're going to be cast out of the kingdom.
You know what I mean?
And so it's like this very disingenuous way of communicating that a lot of
actors have.
And it's just...
And you always feel when you do something that this person's going to be your
friend for life.
I'll see you next month.
And you'll never see that fucker ever again.
It's such a disingenuous environment.
Do you enjoy it?
Do you enjoy acting?
I kind of like it.
But at 70, I prefer to just be at home.
You're 70.
Yeah.
You look so good.
Oh, thanks, dog.
That's kind of crazy that you're 70.
And no creatine.
Imagine how good you'd look if you're creating.
I'm going to get it.
70, man.
If you told me that you were 45, if I didn't know you, you told me you were 45,
I'd believe you.
That's nuts.
That's a blessing.
Isn't that crazy?
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I'm happy.
So that's unusual.
Yeah, right?
A lot of people, when they're 70, they're bitter and tired.
Yeah.
I talk a little bit in the book about Richard Pryor coming to my first condo.
I bought a condo so I could, I didn't have a car yet.
And eventually I got one.
But when I first came to LA, I wanted to be between the comedy store and the
improvs.
I could get to both.
Oh, right.
So I bought me a condo and I told Richard Pryor that I got a condo.
I don't know.
It's one of those, I think I heard you and Shane talking about it, how you see
your heroes now and then.
And sometimes you just say the wrong shit.
And I was expecting this to be the wrong shit, but it's all I could think of.
And I said, Richard, I just bought a condo.
And he said, oh, wow, I'd like to see it.
And I was like, oh, okay.
And him and Rashaun, his body man, came to see my condo.
And that was the coolest thing in the world.
But the one thing I remember, I remember I had no furniture and Rashaun had
told me, his guy had told me to get some Cavassier.
So I had some Cavassier, you know, and we sat on the floor and drank Cavassier
and listened to a boombox with jazz on it and talked.
And he looked around at one point and he said, this reminds me of when I was
happy.
Whoa.
And I don't even have to tell you what went through my head and what I thought
that meant.
And I didn't listen to him then.
That's the thing is people disperse knowledge to us from their experiences.
And sometimes we're too young and dumb to listen.
What did that mean to you at the time when he said, this reminds me of when I
was happy?
You know, I was so excited that Richard Parker came to see my condo.
I didn't process it.
But years later, I start realizing that he bought things and philosophies that
made his life more complex.
And he was happy.
This is what I think it means.
He was happy with the simple shit, you know.
And sometimes, I mean, it's nice to have, isn't it cool to have money but still
eat burgers if you want to?
I mean, because I remember walking through supermarkets and pretending I was
shopping and eating out of the child cart, that little top part, and then
leaving the supermarket.
So, it's nice to be able to buy anything we want, but at the same time, I get
that thing of the simplicity.
And, you know, no guard gate.
Nobody's knocking down your door trying to get to you.
Yeah, just a condo with no furniture.
And for a guy like that, for the greatest that I've ever known in our world, to
say I was happy when I had a little place with no furniture,
I didn't think about it enough then, but later I realized what he meant when I
was in a house that was too big with guest houses that would, you know, you
walk into a guest house and cobwebs get on your face, you know, because you ain't
been in there in a while and you realize, okay, this is what Richard was
talking about.
I'm doing a lot of shit for other people that I don't need.
Right.
And too much complexity.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Too much complications.
My business manager said something about my staff and it dawned on me, what the
fuck do I have a staff for?
You know, and I've simplified things a little bit in my life and I'm really
happy.
It's just, you know, me and my woman and a scaled down life.
That's better.
Yeah.
There's a lot of people that just want a lot of people around them because it
makes them feel important.
They have a big staff.
They have a lot of people working for them and a lot of things going on, a lot
of different projects.
Keep moving.
Keep moving.
But no peace.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Not good.
I always tell comedians, like, they're like, oh, I got to get an assistant.
I go, no, you don't.
Just do less shit.
Don't get an assistant.
You get an assistant, that person's going to want to kill you.
That person's going to feel entitled.
You're making all this money.
They're not.
You're famous.
They're not.
They see you for who you really are.
They're like, you ain't a fucking regular guy.
Why has he got all this?
Like, David Spade's assistant duct taped him and tased him.
Remember that?
Yeah.
Try to kill him.
That's heavy, man.
And I've heard that the people who work for us always hate us.
I've always avoided.
Somebody told me.
It's not always the case.
They said, you know your housekeeper hates you.
And I'm like, no, she's been with me 22 years.
He's like, that bitch hates you.
And I don't want to believe that.
It's not always the case.
But it is often the case that people that are around people that have so much,
they feel like, why don't I have this?
Like, I'm working for this person.
Why am I not doing?
But why am I not rich?
This person could just make me rich.
It's weird.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
Like, that's not what the job is.
The job is you're a gardener.
Garden doesn't make $5 million a year.
Like, this is, you're kind of being crazy.
And then you get people that take advantage of you where you get a bill and you're
like, why does it cost this much?
Like, this is kind of like, I have a friend who's very wealthy.
He's a businessman.
And he goes over every fucking little thing that people charge him.
And he's always looking for, they're fucking trying to overcharge me.
He signs his own checks.
Yeah.
But he gets crazy when he thinks people are overcharging him.
But I'm like, dude, you're almost 80 and you're worth a billion dollars.
Like, why are you looking at, like, how much the car wash guy charges you?
This is crazy.
Maybe that's why he has a billion.
Perhaps.
I mean, he's a businessman.
That's his thing.
But what drives him nuts is this idea that people are overcharging him because
he's wealthy.
They're taking advantage of him.
Joe, the craziest I ever went was I had a barber when I had hair, you know.
And, you know, a black barber is a skilled scientist, you know, because back
then I had it fried, dyed, and laid to the side with three Adidas stripes over
on the left.
And, you know, my shit was intricate that year.
And my business manager happened to be a business manager for two other
entertainers.
And he's also my friend.
And one day he says, you know that guy charges the three of you different
prices.
And I'm like, get the fuck.
So I found out that Johnny Gill was paying $100.
I was paying $350.
And that drives me crazy because basically, like you say, he was charging based
on who I am.
Right.
Yeah.
Like, you can afford it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I had a friend who had more money than me, and he was charging him a crazy
amount.
It was like the rental of a rose.
Crazy money.
Yeah.
Well, that's what comes with the territory.
People just think you're not going to notice.
They don't care, you know.
Yeah, I guess.
Yeah.
Do you think you're happier now than you were when the Arsenio Hall show was at
its peak?
Yeah, I think I'm happier now because with that peak comes a lot of pressure
and a lot of work.
And I'd be a liar to say I don't enjoy having the money without the other shit.
You know, I did a good job.
I had a good job of investing and making sure that when the lights went out, I
was good.
So I love my life right now, man.
More relaxed, less pressure.
Oh, and being the OG and pretty much your responsibility is just giving advice
to a comic in the hallway.
A lot of the young guys don't understand what you did because what your show
was like back in, I guess, when did it first come on the air?
What year?
Probably coming to America was like 86, 87.
I left New York and went and started the show.
So 87, 88, sometime around in there, I'm bad with years.
Yeah.
During that time and in the 90s, it changed the whole landscape of late night
television.
Like completely changed it because late night television was stiff.
You know, it was like, yeah, but fucking the desk.
The desk made no sense to me.
I talk about the desk and how I got rid of it.
But it made no sense.
But I was like, oh, finally, he got rid of the desk.
Are we being lectured?
Am I in the principal's office?
Like, what is the fucking desk for?
But when they first started doing that in the 1950s, if you went to work, you
had a desk.
You had to wear a tie.
You had a desk.
And they all smoked cigarettes while they were on the job.
You know, you can watch like the Johnny Carson show.
During commercials, Johnny would go under his desk, get a cigarette.
Yeah.
Well, they would often smoke on air.
They would do it all the time back then.
They all smoked cigarettes.
How about planes?
How about the fact that we could get on a plane to go to a gig and there was a
row behind us where smoking began.
Right.
And I'm in the no smoking row and the bitch behind me got a cigar.
Yeah.
And it was just flooding the entire cabin.
Yes.
You know, Dice used to have a joke about it.
You're in a fucking tube.
Where's the air going?
Yeah.
But it was a weird time.
But the whole idea was what I was getting to was like, late night television
was very stiff.
It was, you know, it was like, and then your show came around.
Paul Anka wrote that.
Did he?
Yeah.
Oh, wow.
Your show came around and then all of a sudden it was fun and loose.
And I remember when Clinton came on your show and played the saxophone.
Yeah.
And I mean, everybody was like, what is happening?
The fucking president of the, was he the president back then?
Was he running?
He was a governor.
Oh, that's right.
He was trying to get the young vote.
So he did me.
And then the next day they decided to do MTV because I think what my show did
that night was changed how you run for the highest office in the land.
And, and.
Look at that.
Look at that.
The joke I had just done was finally a Democrat blowing something other than
the election.
When you look, you remember jokes in the moment and dude.
So what's interesting is after this presidential candidates realized they had
to come to Rogan and Sunday morning to meet the press, you know, and I like
that, you know, they, they have to go everywhere now.
Well, they go where the people are paying attention, right?
But it's, it was different because if they did the tonight show with Johnny
Carson, it would be a, you know, a very competent interview, but it would be
stiff.
It was, it was like very, I mean, not even stiff's not the right word.
It was traditional.
It was like, this was different.
Like him playing the saxophone, running for president, playing the saxophone.
I was like, what is happening here?
And I tried to get, I told Jenna Bush this last week.
I'm on this book slinging tour and I told her, I said, I invited your grandpa
because back then there was a mentality that you do equal both sides, you know,
and I don't think it was a rule, but, but first of all, my dad was a Republican.
My mother was a Democrat.
So I was used to hearing both sides and learning both sides.
And I thought the best thing I could do for young people is show them both
sides.
And that would be fair of me as a host.
And we got a call from a man named Marlon Fitzwater who said, no fucking way we're
coming there, you know, and, and I wonder why.
Um, it's almost like what you talk about with the desk, um, society at a
certain point is stiff and it takes certain people to loosen it up and make a
change.
And, uh, I, I think it was just, they're not used to it.
It's like, why are they barking?
And what is, yeah, you know, things that make you go, Hmm.
Oh yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
There was a lot going on.
I had a couple of hooks going.
Oh, you had a great hook.
The things that make you go, Hmm.
Everybody used that all day long.
Like when, if something weird was going on in the office, people are things
that make you go, Hmm.
And it was so cool.
Then they wrote a song about it and I would turn on TV and I would see that CNC
music factory.
Yes, that's right.
Yeah.
And, um, um, I would turn on TV and like Nordstrom's would have a sale that
makes you go.
And I was like, that's very cool.
You know, and it came about sitting with the writers and, um, I had done it at
the comedy store.
And he says, you know, we could use that and just throw any joke in there, like
randos that we don't know where to put.
Right.
And so it really was a cheating technique for a comedy.
Yeah.
Perfect non sequitur.
Yeah.
Just a transition.
Every now and then, hey, why don't black women breastfeed chocolate milk?
And you have no place else to put that, that thought.
Right.
So it's a, a stream of things that make you go, Hmm.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, it was just, finally, there was a different kind of talk show.
It was like, finally, there was a talk show that was more fun.
Hey, the desk thing, um, my partner and executive producer, Marla Kell Brown,
we were sitting around one day and she said, after coming to America, I had
done the Joan Rivers thing.
I had filled in for her for 11 weeks and I think she, uh, her, her husband
committed suicide and she was going through all that period.
Right.
Conan's creating the Wilton North report in the room that I leave.
And I go to Paramount and she says, I'm asking you one thing.
She said, I watched you do stand up the other night at the comedy store and
there is a freedom that you have that I would like you to have on the talk show.
And I don't think we can have it with that desk between you and the guest.
So I want you to just try without the desk.
And, um, I tried it without the desk and never went back.
Yeah.
You changed it.
I mean, like, and then George Lopez did no desk when he did his show.
A few people have tried the no desk thing.
Yeah.
But for us, I think it's great.
And, and you know what?
I was able, like somebody like Rosie Perez, who would be nervous, I'd hold her
hand.
And you can't reach across the desk and hold somebody's hand.
Well, also the desk was always elevated.
Oh yeah.
You want to be high.
The desk was always above the guest.
We must be higher.
Which is weird.
Well, that's, that's a bizarre, I don't know if that's the ego of the entertainer
or whether that's some ass kissing prop, uh, set designer move.
Because we always wanted to be higher.
And I remember they put something under my seat.
To make your seat higher?
Yeah, so I'm sitting even with Kareem, you know, which is bullshit, you know?
Yeah, it's a weird thing.
It's like, why would the host be above movie stars and rock stars?
Yeah.
Why?
That doesn't make any sense at all.
Yeah, unless your host is David Bowie.
Yeah, right?
Right.
Unless he decides to do a talk show.
Even then, it doesn't make any sense.
It's like, if you want to have a conversation, the way you did it was the best
way to do it.
Just be sitting there.
Yeah.
Sitting with each other, you know?
And now...
He can lean in.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
You could touch the person.
You could poke the person.
Now, we have a different era where everyone can do talk.
I saw Mike Epps talking on his back from his bed the other day.
Holding his phone above him.
And that's when it hit me.
It's like, now we have a hard time finding a guest that doesn't have a show.
Anyone can have a show now.
Yeah.
And that's kind of cool.
It is kind of cool.
And you find, as long as you do it long enough and you put the right attention
to it and do
it honestly, you'll find your own lane.
You'll find your own way of doing things.
I have friends who have children who have shows.
Makeup tutorials and successful things going on in their bedroom.
One of the biggest shows on YouTube for a long time was a kid that was like,
unboxing toys.
Oh, that's cool.
And it was sort of.
But then they started monetizing it.
And I think, you know, as soon as your parents start making all that money off
of you opening
toy boxes, shit gets weird.
It's weird for kids to get famous, period.
But it was just like no one had thought that out.
Like that there would be a lot of people that were interested in you watching
toys.
Yeah.
There's a lot of shows that I watch on YouTube that it's just people cooking.
Oh, yeah.
I love watching people.
I watch a lady cook with big titties and just an apron.
You know, side boobage be coming out.
That's a trick.
She's tricking you.
I like watching people cook with no talking.
It's just ASMR.
You know, just they're like chopping up the food and you hear the sizzle in the
pan.
And like, I don't know why I like it.
I love watching people do things.
Isn't it amazing that you're younger than I am, but when I was growing up in
Cleveland, we had three channels.
Right.
I remember those days.
Yeah.
And the shit signed off at two.
Right.
Yeah.
And you fall asleep watching TV and that would wake you up.
Yeah.
Because it would be just crackling.
Like, oh, geez, I stayed up too late.
Yeah.
You'd have to shut it off after the American flag.
Because the American flag would wave on the TV.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
There would be a match fade from a soldier to the American flag.
Yeah.
And then it would just go static at two in the morning.
And then I remember when Fox came out and everybody's like, this channel is
crazy.
Yeah.
Foxes, they had the Simpsons and married with children.
It changed my life, man.
Those, Tracy Allman.
And then, of course, they discovered that they could get numbers with me and
Living Color.
And Fox was really important to us.
Fox was important to America.
I mean, it was a looser, wilder network.
It was like a network that was a little crazier.
They were doing things.
They were getting nuts.
And they had to.
They had to take some chances and roll the dice in a different way.
Right.
Yeah.
And then Cable came along.
It was like the slow descent into madness.
Yeah.
And then all of a sudden you have 150 channels.
And now you have like literally an infinite number of channels because of
streaming and YouTube.
It's like you can never run out of things to look at.
Which is crazy because I turn a lot and I'm like, yo, motherfucker, they got
two million stations and you channel chasing?
You can't find something?
But I'm a big YouTube guy because I don't like commercials.
I want what I want and I want it in small increments.
I actually, as a 70-year-old, fit more into this culture than I did the culture
I was born into.
I like things for three minutes.
It's fucked me up, too.
You know, I don't want long shit.
I want quick shit.
And I'm jumping around.
Well, when I'm watching TV, I'm generally trying to check out, you know, or I'm
trying to be educated.
So either I'm watching some like particle physicist talk about the way they
find new particles by using particle colliders and large hadron colliders and
the amount of energy required to duplicate the, you know, the conditions that
happen right after the Big Bang.
I watch a lot of that shit and then I just watch people play pool.
I watch people play pool and I watch, you know, people make furniture and
people cook.
I'm just trying to like unwind.
I'm just trying to like relax.
But that's so heavy.
I heard you and Kat talking about the pyramids.
And as a matter of fact, it was part of the reason I was afraid to come here.
Why?
Oh, I've heard you talk about the re-explosion of it's just when you hear that
kind of shit and you're like, I don't want to be his like pussy crazy, huh?
I don't want to be that guy.
So it's intimidating to watch intelligent people have an exchange and say, I
got to go there.
Is it?
Oh, yeah.
You don't want you don't want to be the first idiot in the room.
Oh, you definitely want to be the first idiot on this show.
And you're not an idiot anyway, but if there's been plenty of really fucking
dumb people on this show that were great.
But do you know somebody that is really intelligent and conversation with them
is intimidating?
Oh, sure.
So I was afraid of this room.
I mean, I know people like Bill Clinton.
The first time I sat and talked to Bill Clinton not on the air, or the second
time, I guess I should say, it was kind of daunting because he, no matter what
your politics is, he's a really smart guy.
Cat Williams is the same way.
That motherfucker read a lot more books than I read.
Well, Cat's brilliant.
I mean, you can't be that funny and not be very intelligent.
It's the reason Bill Cosby was so funny.
He was a bright man.
Uh-oh.
Uh-oh.
I saw something.
He just, that's a problematic subject.
Also, Bill Clinton.
I wish Bill Clinton didn't have so many problems because I would like to talk
to him.
I would love to have to sit down with him on a podcast.
You know, the problem is, like, how do you sit down and not talk about all the
chaos and all the nutty shit and the Epstein files and all the other shit?
Like, you kind of almost have to talk about it.
So it's too bad because I think he's a fascinating person.
And I think he's one of the greatest presidents of all time for sure.
And if you go back and look at what he accomplished during his administration,
they balanced the budget.
That was, like, one of the first times in the history of this fucking country
that we didn't have a gigantic debt.
Now our debt's, like, 39 trillion.
It's crazy.
Like, everybody's so bad at balancing the budget.
And you go back and listen to him talk when he was running for president.
He's, like, super sensible.
Like, everything he said made sense.
And didn't he move a little to the right?
Well, I mean, it wasn't to the right.
It was just sensible.
Like, what is to the right and what is to the left?
It doesn't mean anything anymore.
It's interesting that a lot of things are valuable that are not a part of your
party's philosophy.
I think we have to be willing to compromise and move a little bit.
And that goes for all politicians.
We have to be able to move a little bit to be logical and serve all of America.
For sure.
But I think the problem is parties all have to agree.
And then they form ideologies that you cannot stray from.
So, if you're one of those people that says, like, hey, maybe an open border is
a bad idea because terrorists can come through.
Like, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
No, there's no one's illegal on stolen land.
You know, you get, everybody gets crazy because there's a party line that you
have to stick with.
This is today.
Today, things are incredibly polarizing.
But if you go back and listen to some of the things that Clinton was saying
when he was running for president and when he was president, boy, these are
like almost right wing talking points in a lot of ways.
But it's not a little to the right, but it's not really right wing.
It's just sensible.
Like, what is right and what is left?
Left used to be, first of all, freedom of speech was of paramount importance.
It used to be that they were very open minded.
It used to be like the that education was of crucial importance and that
discourse was crucially important and that you have to look out for citizens in
sense of like having social safety net.
and having welfare programs and and food stamps and all those things are which
are really important for society because not everybody is in the same position
in life.
And if we're a community of people, which is what a country is supposed to be,
you're supposed to look out for everyone.
You know, that that's sensible.
That's what the left used to be.
And then it became trans women are women.
Men can get pregnant.
And by the way, when you deal with left and right, you have to almost attach a
year because we've seen parties.
We've seen parties change.
I'm always reminded that the Democratic Party was the party of the Klan, if you
go far enough back.
So I'm a republicrat.
I have to look at it all.
Well, wasn't Lincoln a Republican?
I believe Lincoln was a Republican.
I think the Republicans were the ones who were trying to abolish slavery.
There was a lot of there's a lot of weird things that shift back and forth and
that you you think of right wing and left wing in today's standards.
Like we were playing a clip of Hillary Clinton the other day when she was
running for president.
I think it was was it 2008 or 2012?
Eight.
When she was she was running for president.
She's like, if you're here illegal from another country, you should have to pay
a stiff penalty.
You should have to learn English.
And if you have any criminal history whatsoever, no questions asked.
You get out of the country.
And everyone was cheering like the lady's MAGA.
That sounds completely MAGA.
That's why I say when you deal with Democrat, Republican, you have to attach a
year.
Yes.
It's evolved and changed many times.
That's all you're just being manipulated and you've been manipulated by these
two teams and you have to pick a team.
You have to decide which team you want.
I hate that.
It's so stupid.
I'm politically homeless.
I've always been politically.
I've been politically homeless for a long fucking time.
It doesn't.
Neither one of them make any sense to me.
We need like a logical centrist government.
They're like just says there's a lot of things that we should do to make this
country a better place.
We can do these things and we don't have to attach them to left or right.
And anything that the left says that's logical to people on the right, they
immediately dismiss it because it's coming from the left.
And that happens the same where the left does it to people on the right.
It's dumb.
It's a team thing.
It's like the Dolphins versus the Raiders.
It's just you pick a fucking team and you lay that team sucks.
What a horrible game, by the way.
You pick a team and your team rules and the other team sucks.
And there's a lot of people out there that are not that they're not open minded
and they love a good rigid ideology that they can adhere to.
So now I don't have to think for myself.
I have a predetermined pattern of opinions that I could just adopt and I'll
just accept those.
And that's how I think and that's what I'm going to argue with.
When I was young, I used to, in some jokes, say my heart is Democratic, but my
wallet is Republican.
Yeah.
You know, but it's not even that simple anymore.
It's gotten much more complicated.
Yeah.
Much, much, much complicated.
It's like, you know, everyone should be anti-fraud, whether you're on the left
or on the right.
Unless you're committing fraud.
Right.
Then, you know, I'm pro me.
Yeah.
Well, I think a lot of people that, you know, are certainly benefiting from
fraud would like to dismiss it, whether it's the left or the right.
Yeah, there's like, we have a problem in this country where we have a two-party
system.
Two-party systems are inherently flawed because there's no fucking way that one
side is going to represent you entirely.
And it's much more likely if you have like five, 10, 15 different parties that
are all legitimate because we don't have another legitimate party.
If you vote for Libertarian, and I voted Libertarian before, you're basically
saying, fuck these people.
You know, fuck these people.
I'm voting.
You're jacking up the Dolphin Raider game.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I'm voting for rugby.
Yeah, exactly.
That's what you're basically saying.
You're like, I can't get behind either one of these motherfuckers, so I'm going
to vote for this guy who has no chance.
You know, and I've done that before.
I did that with Joe Jorgensen.
I did that with Gary Johnson.
I voted for both of them.
But why do you think we've not been able to come up with legitimate third,
fourth, and fifth parties?
Well, they got it locked down.
They've got it locked down.
With donations and money?
Yeah, it's money.
Money and politics.
When they allowed corporations to just essentially give as much as they feel
like it, like when corporations...
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Oh, yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
It's not good.
It's not good.
Money in politics is the real problem.
You know, it should, you know, the whole thing, it's a mess.
And then you find out how much money politicians make.
While TSA guys have nothing.
Yeah.
And politicians are still getting their motherfucking check.
Yes, exactly.
Well, I felt that way also about the lockdowns in California.
I was like, all these people that are saying that you should have no outdoor
dining,
your paycheck should be entirely dependent on the GDP of your city.
And if your city starts suffering, you should fucking suffer.
And I guarantee you want those businesses to open right the fuck back up
because it didn't
make any sense.
They were doing things for optics only.
And they were doing things because they like control.
People love control.
They love it.
And once you give them power over people, they're in the control business.
They like to keep that control.
And it just gets gross.
And they don't have any, there's no repercussions.
They don't get in trouble.
If all these, like California laws.
Somebody should be in trouble for the Epstein files.
Somebody.
At least one person, please.
Yes.
It's crazy that we're sitting around looking at that.
It's crazy.
And we know it and we say it, but ain't a motherfucking thing we can do about
it.
Right.
It's like right now, there's some talk about journalists getting in trouble for
leaking
information about the downed pilot and that they want to prosecute these
journalists.
At the same time, no one's being prosecuted for the Epstein files.
Yeah.
That's nuts.
That's a sick society.
As a kid, I did magic, right?
And there's a thing in magic, if I take a coin and put in this hand, there's a
thing called
misdirection.
That's what I just did to you.
You looked at that hand, I'm doing some shit right here.
That's the story of American politics.
Oh, yeah.
Whenever something weird's going on, look, when Monica Lewinsky, when Bill
Clinton got caught
with Monica Lewinsky, they're bombing some other countries.
I'm like, we've got to distract these people.
This is just too complicated.
Yeah.
Look, the Epstein files comes out.
We go to war with Iran.
It's a good way to get people to stop talking about certain things.
You give them a new problem to think about.
Hey, this morning, I wake up in a very nice hotel, thanks to you.
Breakfast was paid for.
The tip was done.
All that shit.
It was kind of cool.
And I was nervous.
And I'm thinking, I'm nervous to go see my guy and talk, which is insane.
But then, you know, sometimes you try to focus on why you're really nervous.
Why am I so nervous?
And I realized it wasn't just coming here.
I had watched about a half hour of news and it was making my stomach hurt.
Yeah.
Because I feel so sad on a lot of levels.
And anxiety.
Yes.
Yes.
And news just gives me anxiety.
But I got to, as a comic, I got to watch because I got to know everything.
I got to have that mental Rolodex loaded.
Yes.
For crowd work or whatever.
Well, you have to know what's going on in the world, unfortunately.
If I wasn't a comic, I would have no social media.
I would never consume the news.
I would just hide.
Yeah.
I would just, like, go to a peaceful place.
I'd probably have a place in the mountains somewhere and just fucking chill.
I would not want to have anything to do with any of this bullshit that's going
on in the world.
And I know a lot of people say, oh, you have to participate.
And it's not like, man, yeah, I guess.
But I don't think your participation is having the kind of effect that you'd
like it to have.
I think it's having an effect on the way you think and feel much more so, like,
a disproportionate effect on your mental health and your anxiety levels.
And all these different things that you cannot control by paying attention to
it.
You can't control what these fucking people are doing.
And it just drives you nuts.
It's frustrating because we realize, I mean, you and I are both millionaires.
You a lot more than me.
But at the same time, we realize we don't have enough money to really affect it.
I mean, you...
You can affect some things, I guess.
Yeah, not that I think about it.
But I don't want to.
I don't want to affect it.
If I can affect things in a positive way, I can.
Yeah, I mean, there's some things that I'd like to do.
We affect things by dispersing information of candidates and helping to inform
people.
But that kind of money that you have to have to have a dinner in Malibu and
later get some shit done that you want to get done because the president is
your guy now.
Yeah.
Or girl.
That's very complicated.
Yeah.
And that kind of complication comes with a lot of scrutiny, a lot of weirdness.
And also, like, you don't really know these people.
You support people, like, for running for president or governor or mayor or
whatever.
How much do you know them?
Are you really sure?
Is there no good option so you go with the least evil option?
Well, a lot of us do that.
And that's really painful to think that the lesser of two evils is a horrible
thing as a philosophy for a place we raise our children.
Right.
Yeah.
There's no one person that really comes along and be like, finally, like a
peaceful, God-loving person who's just looking out for everybody's best
interest who really only wants to do this because they think they can affect
change.
And then once they do try to affect change, they get fucking shot because
nobody really wants that because they're all making money.
When we were coming up, remember the Sam Kinison bit?
Which bit?
I think it was very similar to that.
People who have an idea, we kill them.
Oh, that was Bill Hicks.
Oh, it was Hicks?
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Hicks had a great bit about that.
Yeah.
And it's totally true.
I mean, anybody that really wants to rock the apple cart, like, that person's a
problem.
You know?
And all these people that are making, look at these sociopaths that are making
fucking billions of dollars just being cunts.
Like, they do not want you coming along and waking people up to that and saying,
hey, we should put a stop to all this.
We should, you know, we should stop these people from making, like, that's why
people cheered when that guy got shot.
The United Healthcare guy, he got shot.
Oh, yeah.
People were happy.
They were happy, like, finally.
At first, I thought it was, I thought, homie who shot him, I thought it was his
eyebrows, you know, because women were going crazy, you know?
He's a hot guy.
Yeah.
He's a good-looking guy, too.
He's a perfect guy to be like a martyr, like an assassin.
By the way, have you noticed throughout history good-looking people get treated
differently when it comes to the justice system?
They've done experimental trials where the hot guy gets off for murder easy
because 11 women were cool with it, you know?
Well, women are weird with killers.
You know, when guys are even serial killers, when they go to jail, women...
They get great letters.
Yeah, it's weird.
Proposals.
Weird.
Marry me.
Yeah, even, like, Richard Ramirez was getting all these proposals while he was
in jail.
But the ultimate game for a woman is to be married but not have to live with
that motherfucker, you know?
So that might be kind of cool, you know?
Kind of.
I don't know what it is.
I heard someone talk about that, saying that there's women that like men that
are capable of killing.
Ooh.
Because, back in the day, it was, if someone was, if you needed someone to
protect you, you didn't want someone that would hesitate if they were going to
kill someone.
You wanted someone who has experience killing people.
So it's almost like an attractive trait, that someone's willing to cross that
terrible line and just has no problem murdering people.
And if they like you, they won't murder you, but they'll murder other people,
like anybody that's a problem.
I knew a girl who went out with a couple friends of mine, and her M.O. was to
do something publicly that would make the man whip somebody's ass to defend her
honor or something.
And she, because that made her feel better.
That's a crazy bitch.
I've been around people like that before.
I always got rid of them real quick.
I've had a few ladies like that.
You're going to let him say that to me?
You know?
I'd be like, why'd you say that to him?
Don't get me involved in this stupid shit.
But it's hard, man.
I was in a club as a young man on Sunset.
Left the comedy store, went down the street to a place called Carlos and
Charlie's.
And back then, they had this garment called a tube top.
It was just an elastic piece about eight inches, depending on your breasts.
And I watched a dude take his finger and just pull the girl's tube top down.
Titties fell out.
And I'm watching her man.
He didn't know what to do, you know, because you don't want to fight these guys.
You almost want to just say, baby, just pull up your top.
Let's go home.
You know, but he had to fight.
Yeah.
And in that situation, I think you have to fight.
But you just definitely shouldn't be there in the first place.
That's the problem with going to clubs.
You're the wrong club.
The running into the potential psychopath is just too, like, that's where they
go, where
people act like cunts.
That's where they go.
When is the last time you went to a club?
I never go to clubs.
Yeah.
It's been a long time for me.
I mean, there is no club for 70-year-olds.
No, no, no.
That's called ARP.
Well, if you do go, it's sad.
Yeah, you don't want to be the oldest.
At the bar.
Yeah.
Hey, ladies.
Yeah.
What's fucking grandpa doing here?
But do kids dance now?
That's a good question.
My son has, like, I remember a time when you say, I'm doing the Cabbage Patch
now.
You know, it's like you knew what the latest dance was.
My son never dances.
I've taken him to New Year's Eve parties.
He never, during the slow record, says to a girl, you want to dance?
You know, you go out and slow dance.
What happened to that shit?
That's true, right?
Well, because clubs got associated with violence.
Like, clubs get associated with people getting drunk.
They're doing drugs and chaos and people getting shot.
You know?
Yeah.
There's just too much of that going on.
You hear about that at concerts, too.
But, yeah, you're right.
You don't, there's no new dances.
There's no things that, like, you have to learn.
You know?
But, you know, you know what's replaced it?
Maybe the entire family on TikTok.
Right.
TikTok has definitely got dances that you've got to learn.
Oh, really?
That's all it is.
Oh, really?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I mean, for people that are way younger than us.
Right.
That's where the dances are.
That's where the dances are.
Yeah.
They're not going to clubs.
They're just doing them.
The Korn song just got viral again because they're dancing to Freak on a Leash.
It's a 25-year-old song that has got a dance to it.
What's the dance?
Show me the dance.
Couldn't even begin to start it.
Get up here and do it.
I can show you the video.
You do it.
You've been practicing?
No.
I used to, uh...
Show me the video.
What's the Korn dance?
In my head, you're like, get up and do it.
But I'm not.
Do we have to not play the music?
Yeah, probably not.
Yeah, so this is the dance?
See, it's a new day.
You don't go to a club, you do it with your girl.
I think they made it back on Billboard because, you know, like the song is...
Oh, that's hilarious.
It's got so many plays on it.
That's hilarious.
1998.
Yeah, it's old.
Wow, that's crazy.
It's like, I don't know.
And then, to contrast to, this is the club in Austin where everybody goes.
They're not necessarily doing those dances.
What club is this?
This is called the Concourse.
Oh, see, I can't go to a club with no shirt on.
And what do they do here?
Like DJs.
Oh, DJs.
So they just bounce around.
Bunch of lasers.
Yeah, this is like a Jazzy Jeff concert.
Yeah.
Jazzy Jeff!
Yeah, they just bounce around.
They're all in ecstasy.
Everybody stares at the DJ stage like they're performing music.
How weird.
Yeah, this is a sign of a sick culture.
Not that there's anything wrong with DJs.
A different culture.
But there's no the other thing.
There's no, like, people dancing.
You know?
Yeah.
In the old days.
Like, if you go back and you watch, like, nightclubs from, like, the 1960s and
70s.
What was everybody doing?
Like, the disco days, right?
Yeah.
That's a perfect example.
When Tramp was singing, burn this mother down.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
People were dancing.
Well, I remember when I was a kid, Saturday Night Fever, rather, came out.
And that's when everybody wanted to learn how to dance.
Because John Travolta, he could fucking dance.
And they would have dance-offs.
And black people were saying, we got to step up the game if this boy can do
that.
Right.
You know, so we had to get better.
Right.
And then you had Soul Train, right?
Where everybody was dancing on TV.
Yes.
Yeah.
Saturday morning was, that was life for me.
There's no shows where there's, like, a bunch of people performing music on TV
anymore.
Well, that's the, that's that gap between me and you as talkers.
One of the problems I had, and I talk in the book about this, I love music.
And I grew up wanting to do that show.
So when they start telling me, you know, you can get better numbers with Howie
Mandel just talking than you can with this.
Because I put Boys to Men and The Temptations together once.
I had to fly Boys to Men from Philly.
I had, you know, and, and they wanted it less black.
And now I got 14 brothers doing choreography, you know, and it's like, no, that's
not what we need.
They wanted it less black?
Well.
They would say shit like that to you?
Oh, yeah.
They, they wanted, um, this is the carrot.
They said, we know Johnny's going to leave one day.
You know, you always think it's going to be two years.
So you can inherit his audience if you do the right show.
But I, Joe, I used to do the talk show in my basement, man.
And we put on a Temptations record and my friend, Junior, would be my guest and
he would sing Get Ready on Soul Train.
They lip sync.
We knew the microphones wasn't plugged in.
Right.
And so he would sing and then I'd interview him.
I wanted to do that show.
But you were doing that when you were young?
Oh, yeah.
When did you, how old were you when you were doing that?
Uh, 11.
Really?
Yeah.
My mother would have rent parties.
And so she'd rent these card tables and chairs.
And the people, like in L.A., we call it town and country, right?
That you can rent stuff for your party.
So the next day they come and pick up the stuff in the truck.
But before they'd pick it up, I would do a talk show with that stuff.
And I dreamed of everything that I did eventually in my life.
Wow.
And it was the show I wanted to do.
So at a certain point when they say, does Prince need a purple piano?
You know, I said, yeah, he want a purple piano.
And the show I was doing was just too expensive.
And you and I talked once at the Ice House when I tried to do the reboot show.
Yeah.
And I was telling you how complicated it was.
They wanted my Twitter site.
They took your, I was telling people, they took over your fucking social media
and they wouldn't give it back.
Yeah, it was hard to get back.
That's crazy.
I remember you telling me that we were standing outside the outside area of the
Ice House.
And you're like, I can't get my fucking social media back.
I'm like, that's crazy.
They took your social media.
Yeah.
And they would use it to promote other shows.
Absolutely.
And the end of that reboot experience didn't go down exactly the way I wanted
to.
Like, I got picked up first.
And Jay Leno came out and read a letter from Les Moonves that I was picked up
for a second season.
And then we start talking about the second season.
And here's the great thing.
They wanted, you really got to stop doing the music.
As a matter of fact, how about No House Band?
And it's interesting.
What?
But economically speaking, Joe, when I look at it, they wanted me to do Joe Rogan
before.
There was a Joe Rogan.
They just want you to talk to people and stuff.
I'd watched Fallon with Will Smith one night, and Will Smith rode in on a horse.
And I'm like, that's expensive.
You know, they wanted me to do what we're doing right now because this is
cheaper to do.
I would love for us to have a hip-hop star here right now following me.
But this is economically sound.
It's a new day.
Right.
So that's all it was?
It was just a money thing?
They just...
Well, that was the reboot show.
The first show, you know, if they want me to be in the position to inherit
Johnny's audience,
because that's...
They wanted me and themselves to make more money, a lot of money, keep making
money.
And I was kind of kicking the bag because I had wanted to do this show since I
was a kid.
I couldn't imagine a show.
But meanwhile, the thing is, your show was so popular.
And by the way, they got numbers one night when Whitney didn't sing.
She just came on.
And that was the kiss of death in my morning meetings because they were like,
look, Whitney sang nothing.
And look at the numbers.
You know, so they were shooting for the Joe Rogan experience before there was
an experience.
Those fucking people concentrate on the numbers.
It's like you're missing the trees.
But you got to, Joe.
Sometimes I...
You know, it's really important for me to look back and say,
I love that show that I did, and I don't regret a moment of it, but I get a
corporate organization saying,
we can make more money and we can get more people in.
Yeah.
If I was a corporate...
I would be a terrible corporate executive, by the way.
Because you would leave with your heart.
Yeah.
I would say, just be you.
Just have fun.
And whatever ads we get, we get.
Whatever money we get, we get.
And that's good.
You get plenty.
It'll be fine.
You can't...
You got to let...
It has to...
I feel like every show has to be a unique expression of the person that's
hosting it and what they're trying to do.
Like, let that person be free.
Like, can you imagine if Quentin Tarantino had to sit down with a group of
people that were executives before he wrote a script?
You would never get any of these fucking chaotic, crazy movies.
They'd be like, no, no, no, no, no.
You can't bash a woman's head on a mantelpiece.
That's nuts.
Like, don't do that.
No, you can't...
You know, like in Jackie Brown.
No, you can't fucking shoot that girl in the parking lot.
That's nuts.
You can't do that.
You can't do any of these things.
You've got to let someone just be free.
And then it finds its audience.
Yeah.
I remember when Ice-T came on to explain Cop Killer and his way of explaining...
Tough sell, by the way.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And it was a metal band.
Yeah.
People don't realize that.
Like, Ice-T, people forgot Body Count was a metal band.
Yeah, you've got to search that, yo.
Right?
A lot of people don't even know that he did that.
You think of Ice-T, you think of 6 in the Morning.
You think of, you know, Hustler.
You think of all those classic songs, Colors.
You think of that.
You don't think of Body Count, which is like, Ice-T reinvented himself.
And he was like, I always love this kind of music.
You can't tell me what the fuck I do.
I like this kind of music, too.
Amazing career.
I know.
And now he plays a cop for like 25 years.
How about that for irony?
I knew him when he was a pimp.
And now he's a cop.
That's crazy.
Remember when he was in Pimp's Up, Hose Down?
Yeah.
Absolutely.
He was in that, too.
Yeah.
I mean, he was talking about the pimp game.
It's hilarious.
Yeah.
He came on.
By the way, they didn't want me to do that, you know, book him.
But I thought it was cool to expose America to some conversations they might
not hear normally.
Right.
And the more power I got, the more I tried to push that envelope and do those
things.
He compared it to Schwarzenegger.
He says, you don't think he's really the Terminator, right?
And he says, I'm not a cop killer.
But there's a message through this character.
Right.
And I'm paraphrasing.
But it was nice to hear people who I know.
I would talk to Tupac.
And I would say, say that on the air.
You got to talk about that on the air.
And that was, we didn't have Twitter.
We didn't have the blue bird.
I was kind of the black bird.
Right.
And I was able to have these, like Tupac called me once and he says, man, they
want me to take
an AIDS test before I do this movie.
And unless I'm really going to fuck Janet, I don't think I should have to take
an AIDS test.
And I'm like, please don't say any more.
Just come on the show.
And this fit into both categories.
Come on the show.
Don't do any music.
Just sit and talk.
And those nights would do really good.
Of course.
Of course.
Because people want to hear people really talk.
Especially in those weird settings where most of the time when people were
coming on talk
shows, they would just have this like very canned sort of like pre-programmed
thing that they
would talk about.
They would talk about their character in the movie.
We even have, people don't know, we have pre-interviews, which you don't have
in a show
like this.
But I get a card that morning.
It's like, okay, here's what Jackie Collins would like to talk about.
Right.
Right.
Or Nicole Kidman has requested that you don't mention Tom Cruise.
And I'm like, well, tell Nicole, the only reason that bitch is here is because
I think
Tom Cruise is going to walk out, you know?
And oh, it was, it was crazy.
That's crazy.
Back then.
Yeah.
Well, it was all PR people.
And it's, again, you're dealing with too many different people that are
peripheral people
where all their money is dependent on this one person performing.
So they just want to make sure they make the maximum amount of money possible.
Like don't make any ripples.
Don't cause any waves.
Don't cause any problems.
Just go out there and smile.
And we'll sell more records.
We'll sell more movies.
TV show will get better ratings.
Don't mess it up.
Yeah.
Guys like Prince used to be frustrated with the fact that if something's a hit,
can you give
us something like that again?
How many beats per second is that?
Can you give us that again or any big artist?
It's like, we want more of, of waterfalls.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, Prince, Prince was one of the most revolutionary artists ever.
And people that don't know the early stuff, they don't know how crazy it was
that this
guy was, that has a song called Head.
Yeah.
Just singing about getting head.
First time I saw him, he was opening for the Rolling Stones.
Wow.
And the audience didn't dig him because it was different back then.
And he was singing Soft and Wet.
Right.
Right.
Well, Prince was just, he was so unique, man.
And he predicted a lot of the things that we're dealing with now and going
through.
I remember the first time he talked about what became Napster and he talked
about owning
your own property and what was going to happen and slave on his jaw.
And we thought that was silly, but it meant something.
Well, he was dealing with these crazy contracts where these record companies,
these predatory
record companies would lock you into these contracts and they fucking owned you.
So his response to that was like, okay, I won't perform as Prince anymore.
Now I'm fucking this shit.
I'm this squiggly.
I'm a symbol.
With a slave insignia on my jaw.
What are you going to do now?
I'm a symbol.
I'm not even selling myself as Prince.
And he would just, I mean, how revolutionary is that?
This guy said, okay, I know the workaround.
I won't use my name anymore.
I'll just be a symbol.
He was a bad dude.
But he was such a bad motherfucker that people were like, I know who that is.
I don't care what that fucking symbol is.
That's Prince.
Let him sing.
Let him do things.
Did you ever meet him?
No.
I had one opportunity to fucking see him live and I blew it.
At the Great Western Forum?
No, it was at one of the hotels in Vegas, but it was a really late show.
And I had a show earlier that night and Prince was doing small shows back then.
It was like this small, intimate audience, but it was like after midnight, I
was like, I'm
fucking tired.
I'm going to go to sleep.
And this is like, I fucked up, man.
I fucked up.
It was like when his career was in a weird place because he wasn't doing like
big shows
anymore and he was doing this late night show and people were saying it was
really good.
But I was like, I'm tired.
I'm not going to see this.
And then years later when he was dead, I was like, God, did I fuck up?
I always thought Prince was going to be around.
Yeah.
And we lost Prince to fentanyl.
Yeah.
A lot of people don't even know that.
Alone in an elevator.
Goddamn.
Oh, I remember the Musicology album where he toured and he attached the album
to the
ticket so that when you bought a ticket, you were buying an album and it
instantly became
a million dollar seller with that philosophy.
He had genius that was way ahead of the pimps.
Yeah.
You know, I love it.
He just knew that he was being fucked and he knew that all they're selling is
his brilliance.
They don't have anything.
What is a record company selling?
They're only selling the art.
That's it.
They don't make it.
And they were getting a penny, a copy.
Yeah, exactly.
The record company was getting most of it.
And now it makes even less sense because nobody even buys albums anymore.
It's like, how the fuck are these record companies even surviving?
It's so crazy that they still figure out a way to latch their tentacles onto
these young artists.
And for young artists, they feel like they've made it when they're a part of a
record deal.
Like, I got a deal.
And I almost want to tell them like.
That ain't a deal.
You got to deal with the devil.
Like, if you just put your shit on YouTube or on SoundCloud or anywhere where
people hear it and they start sharing it, you'll be huge.
Yeah.
We're getting smarter and learning how to deal with the pimps that have us.
You know, I talk in the book about Prince also had a great sense of humor.
You would have loved him, you know, as a person beyond the musician.
And there was a time when I was hosting the MTV Awards and he had no ass in his
pants.
And, you know, so when he's coming past me down the hall, I realize, oh, shit.
Because this motherfucker ain't got no ass in his pants.
We'll be talking about this tomorrow.
So, obviously, when I get back to the show, my first monologue is about that
night.
Look at this.
Yes!
Yes!
1991.
Isn't that crazy?
That was nuts.
1991.
So, I do jokes about that in the monologue.
And, like, a week or two after the jokes, I get a box in the mail at Paramount
and it's from Prince.
And I open it.
I figure it's maybe a hoodie.
Right.
You know, I opened it and it's a beautiful black and white suit with all the
Prince symbols on it.
Made me look like I was the drummer for New Power Generation or something.
It was a cool suit and I'm looking at it and my assistant said, turn it around.
I turned it around.
There was no ass.
Did you wear it?
No leg.
Hell no.
Not even at the crib.
I never put it on.
It's like I could never bring myself to putting on that suit.
It had no back, Joe.
Oh, that's hilarious.
But that's his sense of humor.
That's hilarious.
That's so funny.
I took him to an after hours joint once.
I talk about that in the book.
Because he was very interested in what people listen to and what moves people
in clubs.
And I told him about an after hours joint down the way south of Wilshire that
was in a lady's house.
And you have pit bulls and a fence and they let you in.
They lock the chain back, bring you to the back.
And, you know, you put money on the counter and they put your liquor in a solo
cup.
You know, not a legal place.
And I told him about the place.
And he said, I want to go.
And I took him down the way to this spot.
He had an acrylic cane and a suit where the shoes match the suit.
Exact same material.
And he sat with me in this after hours joint and listened to the music.
And it was where the strippers were going.
What year was this?
Oh, God.
This was maybe two years after I left the talk show.
And so did he need the cane back then?
Was that when he was having hip problems?
I think so.
Now we understand that maybe he had a replacement, a hip replacement or
something.
I thought it was fashion, but it probably was a little necessary that year.
Well, he was all his dancing.
Oh, he used to jump off speakers, Joe.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
And land with heels.
Mm-hmm.
So.
That's what fucked him up.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
A lot of pictures with him as a cane over the time, though.
That's, well, he probably was struggling even back then because there's a lot
of guys that
blew their, their hips out.
Yeah.
It's a cool game.
He probably needed it.
Because he was an athlete per se, you know.
Oh, for sure.
I mean, his dancing was insane.
And he was a good basketball player.
Well.
Hey, I have one of those.
He, the hat with the police hat with the chain.
He sent me that one day.
Wow.
So I'm sure there are a few of them, but just to have one of those from him.
And he sent me what looks like a Smith & Wesson 38 long, but it was fixed up.
So the microphone was where the barrel is.
So he could hold the gun and sing into it like that.
Oh, wow.
I have that.
Oh, wow.
It's very cool.
Very cool.
I became good friends with Charlie Murphy.
And Charlie had, oh, look at that.
Yes.
Wow.
Wow.
I have one of those.
I don't know how many there were, but I have one from that.
That's crazy.
Wow.
But Charlie Murphy?
Well, Charlie had all those great stories about Prince that he did on Chappelle's
show.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, I mean, that was like that whole segment of like how good Prince was
as a basketball.
And that people didn't believe it because, you know, he's so short.
But meanwhile, he could fucking play like a motherfucker.
He had, he had a crossover move that was crazy and he could roller skate.
And I mean, amazing with a lollipop backwards and shit on one foot, you know?
So he was, he was an athlete.
Yeah.
And really, I mean, you can't dance like that and not have incredible body
control.
Yeah.
But the problem is when you're doing show after show after show after show
after show
for years, you're tearing your fucking joints apart.
And that's probably what blew his hips out.
That's one thing about us with the exception of the shit you used to do on a
stool, that
balancing act.
Oh, the Kardashian joke?
Yeah.
Our joke, our life of jokes isn't very, we can, you know, all we got to do is
take care
from the neck up, take care of your mind, our body.
No comedian has a bad hip.
Well, you generally don't get it from performing on stage, that's for sure.
But when you're dancing and jumping around and doing all that shit, like Ted Nugent
blew
his knees out jumping off of speakers.
Like a lot of people did that.
You know, they just, they went crazy.
They were just putting on a show and you don't realize you're doing it.
Maynard from Tool, he blew his hip out stomping on the ground all the time.
Wow.
Just stomping while he was singing.
He had to get a hip replacement.
Yeah.
I like being a stand-up.
Well, it's definitely easier on the body.
That's true.
You know?
You still get up on stage ever?
Oh, yeah.
All the time.
I'm going up tonight.
In your own club?
Yeah.
What nights do you go up?
Usually Tuesday and Wednesday I do it, but I do it, you know, off nights too,
different
nights.
But Tuesday and Wednesday, almost every week, I do a show there.
I promised my woman I wouldn't go to the mothership.
Why?
When I told her, she's like, when you go, I want to go.
It's a big deal if you're a comic, you know?
I mean, it's a huge deal.
But I want to come one night, fly in, and just let me have 10.
Dude, you can go up anytime.
You can go up tonight if you want.
I got a show tonight.
Yeah, I got to fly home and do it.
I'm still slinging this book, man.
I hear you, brother.
Well, anytime.
Anytime you want to come by and do a set, you're more than welcome.
I love it down here.
Come and hang out.
Everybody's been so friendly.
The green room's an amazing hang, too.
That's what I hear, but I've heard both sides of that.
I've heard, don't be in that motherfucker if you're not supposed to.
Well, the problem is you don't want anybody coming in and fucking up the
conversation, you know?
So, you know, you got to be kind of vetted.
But it's only, like, during shows when you're not on, you know?
If, like, if it's a show and you're on the show, everyone's allowed to be in
the green room.
It's just, like, we don't allow people to just come in out of nowhere.
It's, like, you're from out of town.
You want to come in and hang out in the green room.
Then there's too many people in the green room.
And then people have to prepare.
They're going over their notes.
The green room is supposed to be a hang with the comics on the show that are
getting ready to go on stage.
And the problem is that's the cool spot.
That's where Shane Gillis is and Ron White is and Tony Hinchcliffe is.
Everybody wants to come in.
And, you know, it gets to be a little bit of a problem.
So you can't go in the green room if you're not on the show, unless we know who
you are.
And, you know, you're in town.
You want to come hang.
But it's like, you know, it's like you're having a party.
You can't let everybody in.
The problem is everybody wants to be there.
I mean, look at the level I'm at and how long I've been doing it.
And I know about the green room and want to get in there.
You can get in any time.
Hey, when you were living in Hollywood still, did your kids ever want to act?
No, no, they're not interested in that.
And never wanted to do stand-up?
No, they wouldn't.
First of all, rich kids are not going to be good stand-ups.
You're not going to be able to deal with the torture of bombing.
You know, you're not going to...
And they don't have to.
And they don't have pain.
You know, their pain is so minor in comparison to the pain of poverty, the pain
of struggle, the pain of, you know, not getting enough attention when you're
young and, you know, moving around a lot.
All the different shit that most comics go through.
I've never met a good comic who had a great childhood.
As you're talking, I'm thinking, I'm like, do we know any comics who are good,
who are from wealth?
None.
I don't know any.
I'm sure they can exist.
I'm sure it's possible.
But it takes a very exceptional person to want to be a great comic that's grew
up wealthy.
It's just not a thing that they seek to do.
So much comedy comes from our pain.
I think the only exception to that would be the Wayans brothers.
Because the sons of the Wayans brothers all went on to be great comics.
They all went on to have big careers in movies and films and television.
But I think that's, it's like a family thing over there.
Like, I remember Damon telling me that he set up a stage in his house.
That's absolutely true.
Well, I mean, they love stand-up so much, they would fucking do stand-up for
each other.
Just fuck around.
I used to see, first of all, I think to this day, Damon is one of the most
underappreciated great comics of all time.
And he's back out there.
Now, I noticed in my room, Damon is at the Improv.
Well, he's always been out there.
No, no, no, he never quit.
He was always doing stand-up, but he's low-key about it.
He makes his money off of television.
You know?
And even like, he wanted to do, we talked years ago about him coming on my
podcast.
And he was like, I'd like to, but I'll say some crazy shit and then I'll get in
trouble.
Because he was in what I call the Velvet Prison.
The TV Velvet Prison.
You're doing TV shows, you're playing a dad on a TV show.
You know?
You can't come on a podcast, talk about getting your dick sucked.
It's just...
Yeah.
Howie Mandel goes through that.
I work with him a lot.
And Howie is on America's Got Talent.
Exactly.
This real commercial television vehicle.
But nobody is more real and edgy than Howie Mandel.
When he's on stage and in the green room, hanging out.
Like, he's done sets at the Mothership.
He's come and hung out with us.
Yeah.
He did my podcast and he came to the club.
He's like, fuck, I want to be like that.
I want to do what you guys are doing.
Yeah.
I'm like, you can.
You can do it.
But he's worried that he would lose that Velvet Prison.
Hey, when we're working and they have the phones in bags, that's when he's
amazing to watch.
Yes.
Because he'll drop the C-bomb in a minute.
He was saying it.
He was saying it on stage.
I'm just so happy I can say cunt.
Yeah.
I just want to say it.
But he was funny.
It was like he was having a good time.
He was loose.
And you could tell.
Because Howie was a great comic.
Like, Howie had some hilarious fucking specials.
I hated following him at the Westwood Comedy Store.
Mitzi used to send us there to get better.
Me, him, and Pauly.
That's the one thing I loved about her.
You know how we have nepo babies?
She didn't have no nepo babies.
She was like, Pauly, you're not ready.
Yeah.
Oh, she would make it work.
And sent his ass to Westwood.
Oh, she made Pauly work.
Yeah.
I mean, Pauly's a rare dude in that regard.
Like, he became a really funny comedian while he was, you know, living with a
woman who's the
great, in terms of, like, people in comedy that are, like, some of the most
critical, important
people, she's the most important person in the history of comedy that's not a
comic.
Absolutely.
There is no argument.
No argument.
There's no one even close to her.
And her son, you know, I mean, went on to have huge success in films and movies.
I took Mitzi.
Remember when we had the Universal Amphitheater?
Mm-hmm.
I got tickets and took Mitzi to see Pauly open for Sam Kennison.
Wow.
And it just blew her away because she had never seen him in that large
environment.
And it was really cool to watch her watch her son.
Well, she let him grow the right way.
You know, she didn't give him a silver spoon.
By the way, Mitzi Shore started the comedy store and she's the mother of Pauly
Shore.
Because I say Mitzi to you like it's a cousin.
Right.
Well, we talk about her so much.
I think a lot of people listening know.
But she's the most important person in comedy that wasn't a comic.
And more important than most comedians.
Like she would tell you how to do it right.
And if she liked you, man, it was like...
She'd tell you how to do it in her opinion.
I've seen her tell some people some crazy shit.
Oh, yeah.
She was not right a lot of times.
Yeah, yeah.
She had some wild ideas that weren't good.
She had a girl put on a green wig one time.
And I'm like, I'm not sure.
You know, but she was trying to find some kind of hook for this girl.
And I'm like, if you don't want to have to wear the green wig, go home and
figure out a hook.
Yeah, she made Joey Diaz call himself Fat Baby.
Ouch.
When you would look at the lineup, like I bet you could find it online if you
looked.
There's lineups from the comedy store.
It'd be a bunch of comedians, Bill Burr, blah, blah, blah.
And then you'd see Fat Baby.
And that was Joey Diaz.
She would call him Fat Baby.
She wouldn't even let him use his fucking name in the lineup.
It would be Fat Baby.
I remember having a conversation with her and Paul.
And Paul was exacerbating the problem.
Because she was like...
Rodriguez?
Paul Mooney.
Oh, Mooney.
Oh, man.
And we got so many Pauls in our life.
God, I love that dude.
So we're sitting, talking, and Mitzi's about to start the belly room.
Because she thinks women need a place to perform.
And to get better...
That was what the belly room originally was.
A little college up there for ladies.
And she was trying to think of a name for it.
And she says, I'm also thinking about having one night of just black comics.
You know, because there was only George Wallace, Dave Tyree, and Mooney at one
time when I arrived.
What year was that?
I came in 1980.
New Year's Eve.
Wow.
I drove out from Chicago.
Because I'm from Cleveland.
And there were no comedy clubs in Cleveland back then.
So I had to go to New York, LA, or Chicago.
And my mother was living in Chicago at that time.
So I went there.
Because rent was free for a while.
And that was a lot of fun.
But Mitzi, for the black night, she said, Paul, what do you think I should call
in?
And she says, I was thinking cotton comedy.
And I'm not, no, Mitzi, no, no, you can't.
And I was trying to explain why.
And Paul was like, oh, that's wonderful.
Let's get it.
That's exactly what she called it.
Oh, homie.
Oh, homie.
Cotton comedy.
He was cool.
Oh, man, Paul, that guy would write.
Man, there'd be something that would happen in the news like the day before.
And Mooney would go on stage and have like 15 minutes on it and just crush.
And he did something that I know I hated.
He requested the last spot.
Oh, he loved that.
Wanted to go on late.
Wanted to stay on as long as he wanted.
And would fuck with you if you tried to get up.
Oh, you don't like a smart nigga.
But don't leave too early.
My friend's at your house robbing that.
He would have so many things like that.
So many hooks.
And he was just so good at working those small crowds.
He just liked the freedom of just being able to fuck around.
With a bottle of champagne with a straw.
A little tiny bottle of champagne.
Yeah, the little split.
And he would sip on it during punchlines.
Oh, nigga, please.
And then take a sip.
We all used to sit in the back and watch him.
It's like if you thought you were good at comedy, you'd watch Mooney.
You'd go, God, I got so much to learn.
Yeah.
I got so much to learn.
All the great comics that we know now at one time would sit in the back of the
OR and come late to watch Paul.
Absolutely.
I used to, on a landline, I used to call Kenan and say, yo, I'll meet you there.
We were going to see Mooney at 1.15.
I would always love to see Mooney when something fucked up happened in the news.
Like if there's something fucked up happened in the news, I'm like, when's Paul
going up?
Yeah.
You know, it's just like you had to go see him because he always had a take.
And, you know, that take was always like, oh, shit.
You know, it was like he would get you.
He would like find an angle where you'd be like, oh, my God.
Oh, my God.
He was so clever.
The coolest conversations at the comedy show.
When Richard would come up every night and Richard would go from five minutes
to an hour and then it would become a great special that you go to at the
theater to see.
But I would watch Paul Mooney before we had cell phones.
After it was over, Richard would go and have a cigarette in the main room, like
on a Monday or Sunday.
I think it would be closed.
And that's where he would call it holding court.
He would go in there first and just want to dry off for a minute, smoke a
cigarette.
And Paul would come in with a napkin with stuff written on it.
And he would just, you know, oh, and how about this?
And he would give him tags.
And Richard on the back of an album, that joke, you go to prison, you get
justice.
Just us, nigga.
And he gave that to Richard and it was on a prior album.
But, oh, those, Joe, that was a time Richard would work out every night.
He'd work the original room, go in the main room and entertain his guest.
And it would be like Burt Reynolds, Moses, Charlton Heston, Bernie Casey.
But you would see like, oh, Burt Reynolds would have Sally Field with him.
It was amazing.
They would all come and bow to the king, dog.
Yeah.
Well, he was so different.
Yeah.
I always say that the godfather of comedy who started everything was Lenny
Bruce.
But then Richard figured out a way to take that and make it way funnier.
He figured out how to take that kind of honesty and social commentary and
figure out how to like talk about life.
Because people don't know that before Lenny Bruce came around, it was just
jokes.
It was just like two Jews walking to a bar.
They buy it.
Yeah.
It was jokes.
It was like epic jokes.
It was Dangerfield's rhythm.
Yeah.
But, you know, Dangerfield, he was a special guy, too.
He was a beast, man.
And he took like 10 years off and never stopped writing and was selling
aluminum siding.
Yeah.
And then came back and made it in his 40s.
Yeah.
Wow.
Look at this.
That's the main room.
That's the main room.
That's crazy.
Burt Reynolds, Sally Fields.
Now, you see that picture.
One night, I'm in that room, and Stevie Wonder is over on the piano.
Remember how the piano used to be in the main room on the far left of the stage?
Yes.
Stevie's playing, and there are a few people snorting coke.
I think, to this day, Stevie still thinks a few of those people have allergies
because, you know,
Because they're all sniffing.
Yeah, he's just sitting playing, and people are like, wow, wow.
Look at that.
Burt Reynolds on stage.
Robin Williams.
I saw Burt Reynolds give the parking attendant $100, and I thought I was on
another planet.
I'm like, get the fuck out of here.
I should be parking cars.
Fuck, stand up.
Yeah, that was, that's, and for people who are looking at this picture, that's
Richard holding court after his set.
Wow.
What an amazing photo.
Well, Jamie, we should get some of these photos, and, yeah, get some of these
photos, and let's print them up and put them in the green room at the mothership.
I saw a picture.
That's it back.
He's got the Ciro signs in the back.
Oh, yeah.
Still, still, yeah.
Wow.
That tells you a lot about the history.
Search.
Search Ciro.
That sign used to be, Mitzi had this warehouse room, like, was just, not a
warehouse, but, you know, it was a storage room where she had all the old Ciro
stuff.
And I remember seeing that sign there, and they eventually hung it up in the
back bar area, and you'd just look like, wow, this was, this was a mob club in,
like, the fucking 50s.
Yeah.
That's crazy.
I saw a picture you have in the entry of Richard Pryor's mug shot.
Yeah.
I had never seen that.
What did he do?
I don't remember.
Yeah.
I don't remember, but he was very young.
That mug shot was, I think he was, like, 18.
Yeah.
I don't remember what it was.
I have mug shots from everybody who got arrested.
Yeah, I saw Larry King.
Larry King was, like, bad checks.
He was writing bad checks.
He had a gambling problem.
Oh.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Willie Nelson's up there.
Yeah.
I got everybody up there.
There is a book that I have in my garage, and it's the first edition to tell
you.
How much of this kind of stuff existed, but it's all celebrities and their mug
shots.
So it's a coffee table book of just the mug shots.
Oh, I should probably get that book.
I bet there's a few in there that I don't have.
And I bet there is a second one that they could do.
Yeah.
Because the book's only, like, a half inch thick.
We got a lot of good ones out there, but, you know, so many people got arrested.
You know, we got David Bowie out there.
Of course, Morrison.
You know, it's like Hendrix, got to have that mug shot.
That's a classic.
Yeah.
There was a lot of mug shots.
Have you ever taken a mug shot?
No, I've never been arrested.
Yeah, I've never been arrested.
I'm a good boy, believe it or not.
Yeah.
You know, I mean, we've done things, but not enough to have to take those
pictures.
Yeah, luckily.
But also, we live in a different time, you know, in the 1960s and 70s when
those guys are getting arrested.
They're getting arrested for, like, having a joint or something like that.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Richard, or excuse me, Jimmy, I think he got arrested in Toronto for having
heroin on him.
I think that's what he got arrested for.
I got pulled over and had a joint in my ashtray in 1989, and I was scared to
death, and the cop was real nice to me, but he did the corniest thing.
He says, get out of the car, and he made me rip up the joint and drop it in the
sewer at the curb there.
And he says, now get your life together.
Like, bitch, this is helping me get my life together.
Absolutely.
It makes me funnier.
That's funny.
That's hilarious.
The good old days, man.
I remember you talking about Rodney earlier, Rodney Dangerfield.
You know how we love comedy.
We'll never stop doing it.
We'll do it until the wheels fall off.
And I remember him on stage at the Laugh Factory near the end of his life.
I saw him there.
And his wife was in the balcony giving him lines.
Through a wireless earwig.
And if you went up top, you would hear her say, I don't get no respect.
I don't get no respect.
You know, and first of all, two things.
First of all, it warmed my heart that the woman who loves you is going to help
you do what you love.
So that made me feel so good.
And it was like, I want a woman with that kind of heart because I know I'm
going to want to do it when I'm older.
She gave us his notes from one of his Tonight Show appearances.
And they're framed on the wall in the green room.
It's his handwritten notes in bold.
He would like write it in bold where the punch lines were.
It's like sitting there right above the couch.
That's cool, man.
Yeah, it was one of the first things.
Whitney Cummings hooked it up.
She got it for us from her.
She wanted us to have it.
Whitney Cummings, eh?
I saw Rodney live when I was a security guard.
I was a security guard at Great Woods.
Great Woods Center for the Performing Arts, which was in Mansfield,
Massachusetts.
When I lived in Boston, me and a bunch of the black belts from this Taekwondo
team that I was on got jobs as security guards.
And I was 19 and I was backstage and Rodney was walking around with a bathrobe
on with nothing underneath it.
That was when he was going on stage with a bathrobe.
He got to such a fuck it point in his life where he would literally go on stage
with nothing but a bathrobe.
He would walk out there with a bathrobe and slippers and just fucking murder.
I remember being in the hospital and I wasn't even thinking about doing stand-up
back then.
Back then, I was just fighting and I was a fan of comedy.
I always loved comedy.
Your fighting friends talked you into doing stand-up, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, one of the guys that I trained with, my friend Steve.
But when I went there, I remember like, you want to talk about not giving a
fuck?
Like, this guy really didn't give a fuck.
Like, he had gotten to a point where he had so much success and so much money.
And this was after Back to School and all those big movies.
And he was still just going out there doing stand-up.
He was smoking weed back there.
And he just would go on stage with a bathrobe on.
And I remember thinking, that is the wildest shit I've ever seen in my life.
I remember as a young man, because I was always, you know, you're fucking 19.
You're scared of everything.
You're worried about the future.
You don't know what, you know, you have no security in your life at all.
And here's this guy with, you know, millions of dollars, massive amounts of
fame.
And he had got to that, I don't give a fuck stage.
But he really did.
He wasn't faking it.
Nobody told him he has to go on stage in a bathrobe.
I was like, I'll tell you what I want to do.
I want to go on stage with a bathrobe.
He just went on stage with a fucking bathrobe.
See if you can find some photos of him on stage with a bathrobe on.
I know he did it for years.
I got in trouble because Eazy-E came on my show in his bathrobe.
And he was like, you gave it to me.
You know, because we would give out bathrobes.
And so he said, well, fuck it.
I'll wear it out there.
And he wore it out and had a, he was picking his teeth with a knife.
And Paramount was like, oh man, this is not what we asked him for.
This is really not what we asked him for.
He'll never replace Johnny.
Oh, fuck off.
But I knew, you know, I knew.
Those people were ridiculous.
Hey, I was where I was because I snuck in through syndication, did a first run
syndication.
I know network wasn't for me.
And when Letterman got CBS, I knew I was really in trouble.
So I had to figure out an exit plan.
But the bottom line is for six years, I did it the way I wanted to do it.
Man, I wouldn't change a thing, man.
To do it for 26 years, I wouldn't trade those six.
The thing about it is, man, everybody wanted to be Johnny back then.
It was so crazy.
Even Letterman.
I joked at the Emmys.
I said, I had a dream.
I wanted to be an old white man with a desk.
You know, and that was my, to the point, Joe, that when I made it, I hired
Johnny's architect
that built his house to build me a house.
I was deep into the shit like that.
Well, he was the guy.
People don't realize, like, that was the carrot.
That was the thing that they got.
I mean, Jay Leno and, like, that famous scene in that movie that talked about
it, where Jay
Leno would hide in the closet and listen to them talk about it.
Because he wanted that spot when Johnny retired.
But they wanted Letterman.
And it was like this battle between, like, it made no sense to me.
I'm like, Letterman has the Letterman show.
It's fucking huge.
It's amazing.
Why would you want to do anything else?
But everybody wanted that Tonight Show.
Absolutely.
They all wanted the Tonight Show.
And when I was a kid, I was a magician.
That's how I started.
And I read an article that said that Johnny did sleight of hand and was a
magician.
So, to me, that was God speaking to me.
It was like, you are a magician and you do a talk show in a basement.
One day.
Yeah, one day.
Isn't it crazy, though, that it had to be the Tonight Show for everybody?
It wasn't get your own talk show.
Joe, doing stand-up, getting that five minutes, having Jim McCauley come see
you.
I got on Dinah Shore.
No, no, Mike Douglas.
And I got on Merv Griffin.
Didn't do it for me.
I needed Jim McCauley say the Tonight Show is yours.
Yeah.
Isn't that crazy?
Did you do it?
You were too young.
I was too young.
And it's also, like, for me, I didn't understand it.
Like, I used to like watching when comics were on the Tonight Show, but it didn't...
Like, you remember the night Roseanne came on?
Yeah.
I'm a domestic goddess.
Yeah.
I was like, oh, shit, she's funny.
Oh, she was so funny.
She can write.
She was so funny.
Roseanne was, like, way ahead of her time.
She was so wild.
There was no one like her when she came out.
Yeah.
She's still wild.
She comes to the mothership all the time.
And as wild as she is, Joe, the night I called her and said, I need to
rearrange the show
tonight, her and Tom were coming.
And it was...
Tom Arnold?
Yes.
And it was the morning that I'd gotten a call from Irvin Magic Johnson that he
was HIV positive.
So I needed the whole show.
And this is how cool she was.
She says, give me another date, but I'm still coming because we love Irvin.
Oh, wow.
And they came and stood on the side that night when Irvin came and talked about
it.
Wow.
She's cool.
She's cool.
She's crazy as fuck.
Yeah.
She's cool.
Aren't we all?
And don't we have to be?
You have to be.
A little bit.
We got to be the different kid in the neighborhood.
Yeah.
If you want to be as good as she was, as people, they don't...
You got to go back and watch some of her specials.
She was killing in a way that no woman killed like that.
It was different.
It was like aggressive.
It was aggressive and angry.
It was...
Oh, she was so funny.
She didn't sell us any sexuality at all.
It was just great writing.
Just great writing and great performing and a lot of I don't give a fuck.
And it was just...
Ugh.
Do you find any photos of Rodney with a bathrobe on?
I mean, yes, but not on stage.
No?
There's only...
Yeah, I don't even know if they exist.
They don't exist.
That's crazy.
That was a pre-show right there.
You think he's not ready, but he's dressed to go on.
Right, and he's sitting there writing.
Look at the phone.
Look at the landline.
Isn't that crazy?
I showed my son one of those.
He couldn't believe that to drop dial a nine, it was...
And if you missed one of them and fucked it up, you had to start from scratch.
It was crazy.
Yeah.
Back in the day.
I remember when the iPhone first came out and it didn't have actual buttons
like a StarTac.
And I was freaking.
It's like, how will I know where the L is?
Yeah.
I can't feel it.
I remember I had a BlackBerry back then.
You couldn't convince me that I needed to get an iPhone.
I was like, this is ridiculous.
Yeah, yeah.
I'm not typing on that stupid thing.
I don't even know where the buttons are.
It's crazy.
You don't...
It makes a click sound?
That's stupid.
Before you know it, we were doing it.
We turned off the click and it says a lot about progress.
Don't be afraid of change.
Well, now I talk to it.
Now I hardly ever text.
I just say, text Arsenio.
Like, say, hey man, looking forward to seeing you tonight, blah, blah, blah.
And just send it.
Yeah.
I make most of my text messages, I just talk to my phone.
Yeah, pretty much.
Me and Siri, and you can't say the N-word to Siri.
The other night I was writing the joke.
She won't say it?
No, she won't fuck with the N-word.
I wonder if Google will.
She's like, I'm not getting canceled, you know, and let Alexa have the whole
business.
I'm not getting...
That's hilarious.
You know, I'm writing a joke, and I said the N-word.
Of course, I didn't say N-word.
I said, negative.
And Siri would not write it.
And then when I kept saying it, she started writing other things, you know,
that started
with an N, you know, but they weren't even words.
And I'm like, so they got Siri trained.
That's so weird.
She's not getting canceled.
It's weird that it took...
It wasn't even 10 years, and then everybody just got accustomed to having a
phone with them
all the time.
Like, there was...
Think about, like, the difference between, like, it was probably, like, what is
it, like,
97, 98, when everybody had those Motorola's, right?
It was around then, right?
Yeah.
It was around then, like 96, 97.
My friends laughed at me.
My first phone was in a Halliburton briefcase, and you opened the silver Halliburton
briefcase,
take the phone out, and the phone was maybe 10 inches, you know, and...
And I had an antenna that screwed on the outside of the briefcase, because you
had this big
possum tail.
Yeah.
I had one on the roof of my car.
Oh, yeah?
In 1989.
Yeah.
You...
Wow.
Back then, I couldn't imagine that kids would be watching movies on the phone.
Right.
Playing games, watching movies, and that would be most of their social life was
communicating
through that thing.
Yeah.
Remember, there was a time when dudes said to each other, yo, he got a strong
rap, man.
His pimp hand is crazy.
He can get a bitch in a second, you know, and blah, blah, blah.
He can talk.
And now, young men don't know what the fuck to say to a woman leaning against a
wall in
a club.
No, they have dating apps now.
Yeah, swipe left.
Yeah.
Crazy.
But what I was going to get at, like, how quickly the culture changed from, let's
just
say, 98, when most, a lot of people had a phone.
At least half the people had a phone on them.
2008, everybody had a phone.
Mm-hmm.
2018, you'd be crazy to not have a phone.
Yeah.
20 years.
Like that.
Okay.
Now, hold your thought.
Okay.
I remember a time when you and I were the only parents that didn't allow cell
phones
in the hands of our kids.
Because I remember my son said, Dad, you've got to let me have a phone, you
know?
And I'm like, I'm not doing it.
Until you were a certain age, I'd set it up.
And I said, does everyone in your class have a phone?
And he said, no, two of us don't.
And I realized you were the other parent that was saying, we're not fucking
with this.
I gave her a phone that has two numbers on it.
There was a weird little cell phone that you could get for kids where she could
dial, like,
my phone number or my wife's phone number.
It was like, that's it.
Those, like, it was like, I forget what it was called.
It was like the frog or something like that.
Some little cell phone that was just for kids.
A safe phone for kids.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But you didn't have to worry about the things that kids have to worry about now.
Like, I was watching this thing about Roblox.
You know, that game that kids like to play, that they're getting, like,
predators are on Roblox.
And they're trying to pick up kids, like, child predators.
So you have to worry about the games they play.
You have to worry about them getting DM'd by creeps.
You have to worry about so much more access than just a phone to call people.
There was a time when my kid used to play games with a headset on, and he would
play with people you don't know, just somebody in the world.
Mm-hmm.
They would gather.
Yeah.
And I remember feeling like, hmm, this can't be good.
You know, because these probably aren't all kids he's playing with.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, when I first started playing video games, you'd have to chat by pulling
down a window, and you'd have to type in the things that you wanted to say.
Yeah.
You couldn't talk to people.
Yeah.
And then when people started talking to people in video games, I'm like, oh,
this is crazy.
Yeah.
But then the problem is, whenever there's anything that kids are doing, you're
going to have some creeps that are targeting kids.
Mm-hmm.
And they find where the kids are hanging out, what the kids are doing, and then
they try to get those kids to meet them somewhere.
That's what's scary about cell phones and the internet and all that shit, is
that it's not just a phone.
It's a way that you can connect with people, and there's always creeps that are
trying to connect with kids.
Yeah.
I was lucky as a kid, because I talk about being a magician, and I worked at a
magic shop when I was 12, took cash because I couldn't actually have a job.
And I remember meeting older magicians.
I remember going to people's house to see a new guillotine trick.
And my mother worked two jobs.
I was a latchkey kid.
I never had any problems, and I never was warned about it.
You know, but I could have been a target, because...
Yeah, you got lucky.
Yeah, I really got lucky, because when I was writing a book, I'm looking and I'm
saying...
There was a guy I met who worked until he died for Penn & Teller.
And this dude, I met him at a magic show, and every year when he would come to
Cleveland, I would go sit with him.
And my mother never knew I had this 40-year-old friend, you know?
Weird, right?
Yeah, but he was cool, and I got lucky.
Yeah, that's the thing about latchkey kids.
I mean, the thing is, though, I was watching this YouTube video where they were
talking about kids of our age,
you know, our generation, latchkey kids, that grew up like that are so much
more resilient,
because no problems were solved for you.
You had to figure it out on your own.
You went out on your own.
You were outside with no cell phone communication, no way to call anybody.
Right.
When you were 10, 11, you're wandering around with your friends.
It's like, it was a different world.
You had to figure life out in a way that, like, helicopter parenting and
parents that are, like,
tracking their kids.
You know, like, a lot of parents, like, they're tracking their kids on their
phone.
They know where they are.
You said you were at Debbie's house.
You're not at Debbie's house.
Where are you right now?
Yeah.
Like, everyone is, like, looking out for their kids maybe a little too much.
It's like, you want your children to be safe, but you also want them to have,
like,
a little bit of freedom to figure out who the fuck they are.
Yeah, I, gosh, as a kid, when I would tell my mother I'm spending the night at
Kenny's house,
I was never at Kenny's house.
You know, my, my girl, when I was 14, had a mom who was a nurse that worked
the 11 to 7 shift.
So we kind of lived together like a couple.
You know, I would tell my mother I'm going one place.
I'd go to Robin's house.
I would stay at her house till morning when I went home to get ready for school.
You know, I was like a grown ass man with a woman and shit.
That's wild.
Until one day her parents, uh, had the grandparents come to town and surprise
her.
And so it's the mom's at work.
There's a knock at the door.
And she said, it's my grandmother.
We had little peep holes.
It's my grandmother.
My grandfather.
And I had to jump, uh, with my clothes off their balcony.
That was my action adventure teenage period.
Yeah, it's a different world.
I don't know if it's better or worse, but I think it definitely made you more
resilient.
And that was this argument that they were making in this YouTube video,
that that generation is the most emotionally resilient.
And that this generation coming up is like the least emotionally resilient.
That's why they're always looking for things that are, you know, problems.
They're always looking for things that bother them, things that cause them
anxiety.
They're always looking for things that, you know, they can't tolerate.
Where's my bike helmet?
You know, we used to have a car.
It was a station wagon and the back seat, you sit facing the opposite way.
No seat belts.
That had to be dangerous.
It's all dangerous.
Those cars were dangerous.
They could barely stop.
Yeah.
They had drum brakes.
Yeah.
You ever drive like an old, I have old cars, but I have what they call resto
mods,
where they take an old car, but they put like modern suspension, modern brakes,
modern steering.
It handles like a new car, but they have all the outside of an old car.
And you know, and then the dashboard of an old car and all that stuff.
That's what I like.
If you drive a real, like if you try to drive a 1968 Camaro, you're like, what
is this piece of
shit? Like they can't brake. You can't go around a corner. There's no traction.
What was your first car?
I had a 1973 Chevelle.
I had a Cutlass.
Ah, I had a Cutlass once.
Yeah, I had a 70, a 70 Cutlass. Those are great cars.
God, they knew how to make a beautiful car back then.
You like muscle cars.
Yeah, I love that.
Well, when I was in high school, like those were the, so I was in high school
in the 1980s.
I went to, I was a freshman in 1981.
I had four kids in the 1980s.
Wow, that's crazy.
I'm much older than you.
In those days, those cars were the cars that we all like looked at.
Like you couldn't believe when someone had it.
I remember I have a 1970 Chevelle that I got to this day.
I have it because when I was like 17, my friend picked me up in a 1970s Chevelle
with his buddy,
and it was perfect.
It was a perfect car.
I couldn't believe this guy had it.
Yeah.
I was like, how do you have this?
And when you say perfect to non-car people like me, what does that mean?
Oh, first of all, it was what you would call cherry, meaning there was no dents,
no scratches, perfect paint.
It was beautiful.
The sound it made when he pulled up, I couldn't believe, I think I was 16,
because I don't think I had a license yet.
And I remember getting in the backseat of the car going, how does this guy have
this car?
This is crazy.
It's a show.
You know what a 1970 Chevelle looks like?
Absolutely.
With the white stripes, black with the white stripes.
That was it.
I have that exact car right now.
I love it.
Whenever I get in, I think about when I was 16.
I think about all those years ago.
When Burt Reynolds drove up, those pictures we just looked at, when he drove up,
he had what was called a Trans Am.
Yes!
And it had a big eagle on it.
Yes!
Smoking the Bandit car.
I almost lost my mind.
Oh my God.
That was the Smoking the Bandit car.
That was the car that he had in those movies with Sally Fields.
Hundred dollar tip.
Have you ever been to Jay Leno's spot?
With the cars?
Yeah.
I did his show once.
I brought my Corvette on.
I have a 1965 Corvette and I brought it to his show.
It's a resto mod too.
And Jay drove it around.
He's the only person that's ever driven it other than me.
It's an honor.
But you go to his place.
It's like, he has warehouses, not a warehouse.
There's me and Jay.
And he never sells one.
He swears to me he's never sold a car.
So anything he's ever bought, he keeps.
And he recently told me...
Why did someone turn it gold?
I don't know.
I'll phrase a clip.
Oh.
Thumbnail.
Something on YouTube video.
No.
Go to the other one.
The other picture with the real picture.
I was just clicking around.
But go to the real picture so you can see what it looks like.
You know what he has now that's kind of cool?
He has two tanks.
Two army tanks.
That's us right there.
That's my car.
Look at that.
See, but that...
Look, you see that?
Modern suspension, modern wheels.
Those are exhaust pipes on the side.
Yeah, that car is so fun.
Do those things get hot?
Yeah.
Yeah, you'll fuck your leg up.
If you got shorts on and your leg touches it, you're in trouble.
The outside part won't because the outside is to protect you from the actual
exhaust pipes.
But underneath it is exhaust pipes.
But where Jay's leg is, if he backed up right there, if it was hot, he'd singe
the back of his calves.
Joe, he has tanks.
Yeah, he has everything.
He has steam engines.
The king of Jordan gave him a tank.
And this motherfucker was riding through Sherman Oaks with the tanks.
He drives everything he has, too.
That's the thing about Jay.
Yeah.
Like, it's kind of nuts.
It's a lot of rotation.
Well, he crashed one of his motorcycles just a few years ago.
Yeah.
And fucked himself up.
He does a bit about that.
He's fucked himself up without a motorcycle.
Oh, that was the one time he was climbing up a hill?
Yeah, we've done a lot of dates together.
We have the same agent, right?
And he called us one day and he says,
"How about you, Jay, and Craig Kilbourne?
And we call it Kings of Late Night."
And so we went out and did like five dates.
And it was a lot of fun.
And me and Jay enjoyed it.
So we added 20 more dates to it.
Oh, that would be great.
He was a great comic in the '70s.
Yeah, people don't know, when I was in college,
we would go in the TV lounge and watch Jay Leno.
To this day, I remember him saying I was a philosophy major.
And so I just got out of college and I opened up a little philosophy shop.
Just to explain what bullshit majors were actually being peddled to us.
Well, he was the edgy comic in the 1970s.
And when he would go on Letterman's show,
he was like the edgy guy that would sit on the couch.
Letterman would say, "What's your beef?"
Yeah.
And he would always be mad at something.
He was like, people don't realize that you'd see him as...
But again, that carrot, the carrot for him was the Tonight Show.
That was more important to him than anything.
And once he got that Tonight Show, everything else was like, took a back seat.
Did you do Letterman as a stand-up?
No, no.
That was my first.
That's a classic.
That was a great place for comedy.
Because Letterman, he really loved comics.
And he really loved solid stand-up.
I never liked doing stand-up on those talk shows.
Was it the five minutes?
Yeah, to me, I did a different kind of comedy.
My comedy needs some time.
I need to cook.
You know, I need time to open up ideas.
And I didn't like the censorship.
I didn't like TV comedy.
It's not my...
I was a nightclub comic.
That's all I ever wanted to be.
I wanted to be a nightclub comic.
I like doing comedy for drunk people.
Yeah, but when I first saw you, it all wasn't dirty.
Some of it was TV stuff.
Well, it wasn't necessarily dirty, but it was free.
It was like I was being free.
I was doing whatever I wanted to talk about.
I didn't like the idea of being constrained
by any sorts of standards and practices.
It was like, I'm not interested.
I've been not interested in that.
I worked on my Tonight Show set
to try to get on The Tonight Show with Johnny.
And the guy would come see me a lot.
He would change my jokes.
That I hate.
Ugh!
I hate when they say...
Yeah.
Try saying vacation instead of gift shop.
And I'm like, oh, let me just do my thing.
But after a year of him trying to get my set right,
he says, you're not a Johnny comic.
Oh, god.
You're not a Johnny guy.
What does that even mean?
But then I got on on a Monday night with Joan,
because I guess I was a Joan guy.
And then I got to sit with Johnny just as a guest
to promote Coming to America.
So finally, full circle from my basement.
That's amazing.
I watch a lot of his old clips, like with Don Rickles
and all these...
Oh, Don Rickles talking about Snooki, the brother in the band.
You know, and he would do a noise of a blow gun.
It's like, "Snooki, you liking this stuff?"
Oh, you know, and you can't fuck with that now.
No.
There's so much...
It's funny how we've come forward into a new era,
but we've gone backwards in certain ways.
Yeah.
Yeah, you can't joke about certain things anymore.
Like, I'm scared to death right now,
because I'm going to say something that I shouldn't say,
and I'm going to be in TLC prison.
No one can do shit to you now.
They can't do shit to you now.
They can just be mad, I guess.
Yeah, let them be mad.
Just don't pay attention.
That's what I do.
I just don't pay attention.
Really?
Yeah.
I just don't read anything about me.
Just stay away.
That's the best way.
Are you a comic who, when you're on stage,
it can be 200 people laughing,
but that one person who's not laughing
annoys the fuck out of you.
No.
You can't even enjoy the others.
You don't even look at that person.
No, those people have their own problems.
Yeah.
And by the way, sometimes they're just not laughers,
because that person will sometimes come up to you and say,
"Love what you're doing.
Love the new stuff."
Some people just like to smile.
They don't want to laugh.
They just want to sit there and watch,
or they just want to take it in,
take in the performance.
It doesn't mean they don't like it.
And then some people just are upset by everything.
You can't control that.
Just control what I would.
The only thing that bothers me is if I'm off.
That's it.
If I'm off, if something's right,
if I stumble on a word,
if I fuck something up,
that's the only thing that bothers me.
And the audience is like,
you can't control that.
Why be upset at things you can't control?
Because who knows what their trip is?
Who knows what they're carrying around with them?
As a famous star now, do you ever bomb?
I have jokes that bomb, for sure.
New ones.
We trot out a new one.
Especially like we do this show called Bottom of the Barrel.
And Bottom of the Barrel at the mothership is,
there's like a whiskey barrel.
And you reach into the whiskey barrel and you pull out premises.
Just ideas.
And you just run with it.
That's tonight, actually.
And so you pull out a piece of paper and have a subject.
You know, ice cream, sundae, whatever.
Whatever the fuck it is.
That takes intestinal fortitude.
Oh, a lot of those fucking go nowhere.
But some of them don't.
Every now and then you get a great premise out of those.
And it's like a little premise factory.
But the audience knows it though.
So it's different than like when they go to see you and they paid money
and they're expecting a polished show and you have a new joke.
And the new joke is just not right.
It's not ready.
Something's missing.
You're not finding it.
And you're trying to work through it.
Yeah.
It's always going to happen.
And if it doesn't happen, you're not taking enough chances.
Yeah.
See, I'm not as chance driven as you are.
I'd be afraid to do that because my feelings get hurt too easy.
Yeah.
Well, it's part of the process.
Yeah, you're right.
You're right.
We should do the things we fear.
You definitely have to, if you want to write new shit, you're going to have to.
There's that moment where you're like, do I trot this new one out?
Fuck it.
Let's go.
And, you know, a lot of the new ones, the way they come out for me, at least
first,
it's just a frame.
It doesn't have sides.
It doesn't have windows.
It doesn't have doors.
It's just a frame.
And I have to figure out how to make a house out of that frame.
That's what I loved about going to the original room back in the day when we
were young, watching
Richard take out a pack of cigarettes, take a cigarette.
And Mitzi had those smoke things that popped, got smoke and everything.
And Richard would have two minutes.
And then he'd have five.
Mm-hmm.
It would just build.
Yeah.
And it was like when grandma used to make a quilt.
Yeah.
And it gets bigger and bigger.
Yeah.
And you've got an hour.
I used to love watching him develop it.
I heard that Richard would go in on a Monday and have a joke that bombed.
And then it would be murdering by Saturday.
Mm-hmm.
And then that's what he would do.
He would just go and figure it out on stage.
Damon used to do that a lot.
Damon used to go and sit on stage and just sit with a premise.
Yeah.
Just sit with it.
And he would trot it out for like 10 minutes and try to figure it out.
And then finally he'd find something and everybody would be dying.
He just find it.
We got away from that earlier.
But I totally got your point.
Damon is one of the great ones.
And I hope he continues to do stand-up and pop out to the clubs.
Because he's one of the great ones that a lot of people don't realize.
They don't realize how great he was when he did The Last Stand.
That one HBO special that he did way back in the day is a phenomenal special.
It's phenomenal.
He was so good.
But he wanted to be a movie star, you know?
Yeah.
And like Richard, he had an ability to also be vulnerable and tell the truth
about something
that most of us wouldn't tell.
Like he'd talk about having a club foot as a kid.
Yeah.
And he was special.
And I'm glad he's back out there.
Yeah.
Well, I think he never really started.
You know one of the other things that he did that is very unique?
Damon brings a camera to all of his shows and he films all of his shows and he
archives them.
Every set he ever does.
Really?
Yep.
And he goes over it.
That's work.
It's work.
Because one of the things that he does, like I said, is like he'll take a
premise and just try to find
try to find it on stage.
Try to figure out what about it works.
What about it pops?
Like, what is it?
And, you know, I guess like doing that with a camera and then you can go home,
sit and watch it on the
computer and just go, what is in this motherfucker?
There's something here.
I got to find it and just look at it from every angle.
Look at it over here.
Look at it over there.
Try to do it backwards.
Try to figure out what the fuck makes it work.
Yeah.
And he would just, he had no fear of silence.
See, that's, that's the sentence right there.
When it's quiet in the comedy club, I lose my mind.
Chris Rock does that too.
Chris Rock did a lot of that at the Comedy Store.
He would come in and just, he would have material that he was working on.
Like one time I remember I brought him up on stage and everyone's going crazy.
Chris Rock's here.
They're cheering, cheering, cheering.
And he goes, relax, relax.
It ain't going to be that funny.
Just let people know I'm working on some new shit.
This ain't going to be that funny.
But with confidence, like everybody already knew he's funny.
They already saw bigger and blacker.
They already saw his specials.
It wasn't, it was bring the pain.
Everybody already knew.
The one where he shot with three different outfits in three different places.
I hated that one.
You didn't like that one?
No.
Not that I didn't like the material.
I didn't like the idea of swapping outfits.
The problem with that is you realize he's saying the same thing in all these
different places.
Don't we all know?
It takes away from the, but it takes away from the magic of a performer.
I want to see you and I don't want anything to distract me from these.
I don't want to say, oh, he just performs this the same way everywhere.
I want you to just be saying it.
The magic, like the trick is you are in the moment with whatever you're talking
about.
If you're changing outfits and you all of a sudden you're in Johannesburg and
now you're in Cleveland,
like, ah, don't do that to me.
Why you got a leather jacket on in the beginning?
And in the punchline, you got a fucking silk shirt.
Don't do that.
See, I saw it as a guy creatively trying to find new horizons and do different
things.
Some horizons suck.
It's not that the jokes were great.
It's like he's a great comic.
It's not that.
It's like, I just didn't like the idea of changing outfits.
If I was friends with him back then, I would say, don't, I don't like it at all.
And I would explain.
The problem is you're taking people out of the premise and then there's a new
additional
thing that they have to think of.
Oh, this is a different set.
Oh, he's wearing different clothes.
It's a new thing to distract you from the most, the primary thing.
The primary thing is what are you talking about?
Like, what is this thing you're talking about?
Let me get inside your head while you explain this thing that's so hilarious.
But if you're doing that and changing outfits and changing stages, like,
I know you perform in different places.
I know you wear different clothes.
Don't show me right now.
In retrospect, I wonder how he looks at that special.
If he...
Yeah, I don't know.
I mean, he never did it again.
Yeah.
It's not like...
Well, you don't want to do it again.
Right.
I mean, he did it once.
He tried it.
Different people like to do different things and try them.
I just didn't like that for that reason.
I felt like it was an added element that took me away from the premise itself.
And by the way, something that's come out of this conversation in my head is,
"The guys who are the best seem to go deeper and work the hardest."
I mean, when you talk about archiving your practice sets...
Yeah.
All of them.
Damon has all of them.
And he told me this years ago, because I saw him at the improv.
He was in the lab.
We were in the big room and he was in the lab.
This was not that long ago.
When I say years ago, like 10, nine years ago, something like that.
And I go, "You record all of them?"
He's like, "Every set since like 1990-something."
He goes, "I record them all.
I got this camera.
I take them all and I archive them.
I put them on my computer."
I'm like, "Whoa."
It made me think, "Fuck, I'm lazy."
Yeah.
That's exactly what I'm thinking.
And I'm also thinking, what an amazing documentary.
If we could go through the history of Damon's personal archives,
that would be a great...
Oh, yeah.
I think there's a special there.
Probably.
Yeah, probably.
But I mean, I think that's just part of his creative process.
Mm-hmm.
And again, I just think people don't realize,
especially in the '90s, the early '90s,
what a monster he was on stage.
Yeah.
He was a monster.
He was one of the first guys that was like a really famous guy that I saw at
the store.
I came to the store in '94.
And he was one of the first guys that was like,
"Oh, shit, Damon Wayans is here."
Like, it was weird.
It was like weird when people would show up,
like you'd seen him in movies and shit,
and all of a sudden, they're there in real life.
You know, I was just coming from New York.
I didn't know anybody.
And I was like, "This is so strange.
I can't believe I'm around these people."
So you went from Boston to New York.
Boston to New York.
Catch a Rising Star.
Where'd you work out in New York in those days?
Well, I did the Boston Comedy Club,
you know, the little place that Barry Katz had.
I did The Cellar.
Jay Moore's manager, right?
Yes.
Barry Katz.
I did Catch a Rising Star, back when that was there.
I did, what was there?
Comic Strip?
Yeah, I did The Strip, yeah.
I did the clubs in town.
I did Dangerfields a lot.
But honestly, when I lived in New York,
I really liked doing the road more.
Because when I did the road, I could make money.
So I came up in Boston, and in Boston, you made a lot of your money not in the
clubs in town,
but you made a lot of your money in the bar shows outside of town in the
suburbs.
And the thing about that is you could headline, and so you could do 45 minutes
or an hour.
And that allowed me to grow and to really become a headliner.
Whereas I found a lot of the New York comics that I would go on the road with,
when I would work with them, even when I was a middle act and they were a headliner,
they had like these 10 and 15 minute sets that they'd stitched together to make
an hour.
Whereas the guys that I work with in Boston, like the big headliners in Boston,
they had a real hour.
Like that fucking, that was an hour of thunder.
You know, they had a beginning, a middle, and an end, and it was like tight.
It was tight.
And I felt like I could do sets in New York, but I don't think it's really
helping my career,
right?
There's no one there to see me.
I felt like I'm going to make money.
Like I could do a set in New York and I make 25 bucks,
or I could do a set in Connecticut and make $250.
I was like, I'll go to Connecticut.
Plus like the people are more fun.
They're more loose.
They're a bunch of fucking crazy drunks.
I love doing Long Island.
I love doing New Jersey.
I like doing the road more.
That's what I liked.
I think I'm a product of my childhood environment.
I discovered stand-up because I was a drummer, had a band.
I was a magician, had doves, boxes and shit.
And then my house burned down.
So I lost, yeah, I lost everything.
But I had gone to an Al Green concert and Al Green had a comic come out.
The house lights are on.
People are still making their way to their seats.
And this guy slowly gets them.
And then the lights go down.
And by the time he gets to 30 minutes, he's killing.
And all he had was a glass of juice, something on the stool.
And this is a kid who just lost his house and his cymbals and his tom-toms and
his doves and his boxes.
And I'm like, that's me.
Johnny was a stand-up.
So I'm still dreaming.
Wow.
And to this day, or even when I start making a lot of money, after seeing that
guy, I loved opening for people.
I went on the road with everybody from Lou Rawls to Patti LaBelle.
Still to this day, I'm comfortable doing 30 minutes because that's what I did.
But I had money.
Like, I would come to the comedy store and I would have a really nice car
because I'd spend most of
my time on the road with Patrice Russian and Johnny Guitar Watson.
Oh, wow.
That's a different world.
Opening for Musicians is a different kind of comedy because, like, they're not
there to see you.
And that's what I found to be the challenge.
It's like, I'm going to make you motherfuckers who don't know me and are mad.
Because a lot of people would look at you like, that ain't one of the temptations.
Right, right, right, right.
I got to get them.
And I liked that challenge.
It is a real challenge because there's a lot of people like, boo, bring on
Metallica.
Yeah, they don't want to see you.
They want to see the music act.
I opened for Blood, Sweat and Tears once.
Wow.
And they really did not want to see me.
You think the Johnny Guitar Watson audience didn't want to see me?
Them motherfuckers from Blood, Sweat and Tears not fucking with me.
Well, it's definitely running with weights on, though.
If you can make those people laugh, boy, you take those weights off and go to a
comedy club
where they're there to see you, it's like, oh.
Just there to see comedy made it easier.
Yeah, I just don't want to perform for people that aren't there to see comedy.
But there's a value in it, I think.
But that's when you're young and I had a nice condo because I had just come off
the road with Aretha.
Yeah, I did a few of those.
I opened up for Bon Jovi once.
I opened up for Bon Jovi for VH1.
They had a theater in the round show, like a performance in the round.
My job was to open up for Bon Jovi and then get the pretty girls
and move them to the front so that they could be on camera.
That's what they told me to do.
Yeah.
So I did some stand-up and then I had to get people, like, come up here, come
closer.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I remember those times being on the road and if there were six girls in the
green room and you're
opening for The Temptations, number six is yours.
The other five go first to The Tempts.
Yeah.
That's a different world, opening for musicians.
That's a hard world.
And I know a lot of people, like, made a living just traveling with bands and
that's all they did.
They would just open up for bands.
Yeah, I would open up for R&B acts.
And as a matter of fact, I got discovered by a jazz singer, Nancy Wilson.
And I used to love jazz audiences because that was the perfect type of music
for a comic.
Because they were mellow.
Jazz audience don't scream, get the fuck off.
Right, right, right.
They just, you know, they.
Alonzo Bowden, he does jazz tours still.
Like, he'll do, like, he'll do, like, a jazz cruise ship.
Yeah.
You know, like, and he'll do stand-up with the jazz audiences.
Hey, every year.
But he loves jazz.
I love jazz, too.
And I remember going to see the Playboy Jazz Festival and Bill Cosby was the
host at the Hollywood Bowl.
I host that every year now.
I still love jazz.
And that's the coolest two days of my summer.
What is it about jazz?
What do you love about it?
Oh, about the actual.
By the way, the coolest experience was sitting on the beach in Malibu with
Miles Davis.
After he came on the show once, he says, "Why don't you come over to the house,
hang out?"
And he was a painter.
And he was sitting with his trumpet.
It was a red trumpet.
I had never seen a red trumpet, like a crimson trumpet.
And it was sitting beside him.
And he wouldn't use an easel.
He had the canvas on a table.
And he'd roll a new piece out.
And he would paint.
He said, "You ever thought about painting?"
No, I'm not a good artist.
But being a jazz fan, that was the coolest moment ever.
And what do I like about it?
I almost equate my comedy to jazz.
Because I love to say I'm going in D, guys, and just play, you know, as a stand-up.
You know, I used to love to equate how I work to jazz.
But it takes a very specific type of person to be like a jazz fan that really
enjoys listening to jazz.
I'm also a musician.
And I know that some of the most respected musicians in my mind are jazz
musicians.
You know, the intricacy, spending time with, I talk about this in the book,
spending time with
Quincy Jones, who was from the world of jazz and a former trumpet player and
all that stuff.
Then he ends up, the year I meet him, he plays for me these tracks.
And I don't know what I'm about to listen to.
And he says, "You hear this?"
He takes it out.
He slides all the slides down.
He says, "Listen to this."
And he plays this thing, "Tink, tink, tink, tink, tink, tink."
I'm like, "What is that?"
He says, "You ever heard of Sheila E, man?"
And I said, "Yeah, the Escovito family."
And I know the family.
And he says, "She put different amounts of water in little pot bottles."
And that's her tinging on those bottles.
Then he starts bringing up the pots.
And you hear the bass and the drums.
And you realize you're listening to stuff from off the wall.
And it's just this incredible moment when I realized,
"Yo, he can bring Michael back in a crazy way."
I'm listening to, you know, "You got me working, working day and night."
You know, and he'd just take out everything and just have Michael's voice.
And I'd never been in a recording studio.
And he's at the board, 18 channel track studio.
And then he says, "You're from Ohio, right?"
And he'd seen me do stand up at the Roxy and invited me to his studio.
And he says, "You're from Ohio, right?"
And I said, "Yeah."
And so he says, "Let me play you this, man."
And you have to take big giant reels and put them on this machine.
And he put the reels on and the song starts.
And he says, "This is a scratch track."
And I'm like, "What's that?"
He says, "That's a demo."
And he says, "They want me to find a singer for this."
And he plays me James Ingram, "Find 100 Ways" and "James Ingram Just Once."
Brilliant, beautiful songs.
And I'm like, "What's wrong with that guy?"
He says, "Yeah, I'm thinking about it, man.
He's pretty good.
He's pretty good."
And it ends up being the James Ingram from Ohio.
And that was an incredible day.
But I tell that story to say, this great jazz musician had this talent that
other producers
didn't have because of his music genius.
And he was able to bring us the "Off The Wall" album and put Michael back in
the mix.
Yeah, layers and layers to the sound.
Yeah.
That's the thing.
When you hear a song, you don't realize how much shit is going on in the
background.
Sheila E. with pop bottles.
Yeah, crazy.
I loved that day.
That's a favorite time.
Because Michael had been missing.
And I had bought the "Moving Violation" album.
So I knew he needed Quincy.
Wow.
Yeah, there's some geniuses of music, man.
I had Rick Rubin on the podcast.
And he's explaining his creative process.
And just like, "That guy's out there."
Yeah, yeah.
I had to go his way when I started the talk show that I took over
for Joan Rivers.
When I first had the idea that I want to try to find my own friends of the show.
I want to find my show.
And I put on LL Cool J doing a song called "I'm Bad."
And that night, I found what I was going to do, win or lose.
Next, I booked "The Freaks Come Out At Night" Houdini.
Oh, I remember that.
And that was, so I found my home.
When you did the Joan Rivers thing, did you think that that was going to lead
to you doing your own show?
Absolutely.
You did.
I was like, I am, because Joan leaves, goes through all the stuff she's going
through.
And they give me this show for 11 weeks, and it starts to get numbers.
And I know that she left because of a lack of numbers.
And I'm like, oh, this shit is mine.
So when I come back from doing "Coming to America," I'm going to come back to
Fox and do this show.
And one day, I walk into the cafeteria, and I realized they had hired Conan O'Brien
to create a show.
And I think the show was called "The Wilton North Report" or something like
that.
But I realized I wasn't in their future.
So Paramount, they were popping over to say hi, sending me flowers.
And when I finished "Coming to America," actually halfway through, they were
like,
"When you finish, you can do that talk show here in first-run syndication."
And they had to explain that to me.
And at the same time, I was being pitched by the King Brothers, who created
Oprah.
So I kind of understood that first-run syndication could work, except Oprah had
ABC Networks behind her, which is good.
I had some CBS affiliates.
And it all worked out.
Right now, with the exception of Byron Allen, I don't think anybody gets rich
in first-run syndication.
Well, he's a very unusual case, you know?
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, he's figured out a cheat code, like Byron Allen.
You know, I heard that...
When they cheat him, he sues them and wins.
I think Byron Allen's show "Comics Unleashed" is going to replace Colbert.
Absolutely.
That was just announced this week.
Yeah.
Late show will be replaced by Byron Allen's "Comics Unleashed."
That's crazy.
That's how...
Isn't that weird?
Like, late shows just don't work anymore.
They just don't have the same thing anymore.
Like that standard model show, where people, like, I don't think they do well
anymore.
And they're expensive, Joe.
Oh, I can imagine.
They were saying that Colbert show was costing them like $50 million a year to
keep it on the air.
That's...
I don't understand it.
Like, how?
How's it cost you so much money?
Oh, gosh.
Well...
But you know what I'm saying?
Like, you have ads...
When there were three channels, though, and only one had a talk show, everybody
was there.
Of course.
And it made sense.
Yeah.
It made dollars and cents.
Yeah.
There's also the problem in that, and when you compare it to things that are on
the internet,
is that you have to stop conversations every seven minutes for a commercial.
Mm-hmm.
That's an issue.
It's an issue with depth.
You don't get to go...
Like, you and I have been talking for two hours and 40 minutes.
Wow.
Yeah.
So, like, when you're doing this kind of thing, you just flow.
Everything flows.
You just have a conversation.
You just have a good time.
It's so different when you're stuck in this format where you only have an hour.
Everything is like, you got to cut to the commercial in five, four.
They're like, we'll be right back.
Like, we'll be right back.
Where are you going?
Stay here.
Like, no, you have to sell Tide.
You know?
It's like, that format is so limited.
It's so restrictive that people knowing that there's other things out there now,
where you could just go and watch it anytime you want.
You don't have to tune in at 11 p.m.
Yeah, we used to have must-see TV.
Yeah.
And we would all gather as a nation to watch the finale of Cheers.
Yep.
And now we don't do anything together.
Nope.
As a nation.
Except sports, except like Super Bowl.
There's only sports, live boxing events, UFC, that kind of shit, where it's
live.
That is the only thing that people all watch together.
Yeah.
That's it.
Did you watch Chris Rock live, Selective Outrage?
I didn't watch his live special.
I watched it after, but I didn't watch it when it was live.
So you knew it was available.
I was busy.
When we grew up, the shit wasn't available the second time.
But I did a live special on Netflix for that very reason, just because I
thought it was scary.
Just because my last one I did live.
And I only did it live because the first time they asked me, I said, no, fuck
that.
And then I was like, why are you being such a pussy?
And I remember driving home.
I had a conversation with my manager and I called her right back.
And I go, let me decide tomorrow.
Mm-hmm.
Like, I'm thinking about this.
Hold on.
Because I was driving home feeling like I was a pussy for not wanting to do it
live.
And now in retrospect, what did you get out of agreeing to do it live?
Fear.
You wanted to feel that.
Yeah.
I wanted to be nervous.
I was legitimately nervous.
I never get nervous for shows anymore.
I get excited.
When you have a, when you're killing a wild, I heard you talk about killing a
wild hog.
When you go hunting like that, it's the same kind of.
Yeah.
It's a very different kind of fear.
That's a primal thing.
That's very different.
That's a very different thing.
That's like, that's a life or death.
You're in, that's a weird, that's a weird primal connection
with nature where you're going to eat this thing.
You're sneaking up on this thing that has these survival instincts and sense of
smell and ears pop up.
And you have, you know, you don't want to fuck it up either.
You have one moment to take a shot.
That's even more intense, honestly.
Like elk hunting with a bow and arrow is even more intense than doing a live
comedy special.
If you could believe it.
Wow.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I believe it.
I like things that scare me.
I like things that are scary to do because I think it's good for you.
Except cocaine.
Yeah.
I don't want to ruin my life.
That's the problem.
I just, like I said, I don't hear any success stories from cocaine.
No.
You know, nobody's like, nobody's got like a meth story.
Yeah.
It's like, man, I started doing meth and I started seeing the world for what it
really is.
Start being more at peace.
I was living in the moment.
You don't hear any of that.
Nobody says right before I invented the hard drive, I did coke for three days.
Right.
No, no.
I'm not interested in anything that's going to ruin my life, but I'm interested
in things that
are going to help me grow and help me expand my capacity to do things that are
scary.
Would you do stand up live again?
A hundred percent.
Okay.
Yeah.
I'm thinking about doing my next one live again, too.
I liked it.
Did you, did you make any mistakes that?
No, I didn't make any mistakes, but I prepared more than I ever prepared before.
One of the things I did, I listened to my recordings every night and I wrote
out my act over and
over and over and over again.
I wrote it out.
I wrote it out both on paper, like hand to paper.
And I wrote it out with keys, like typing it on a laptop.
I did it over and over again.
I listened to recordings.
I watched recordings.
I had way more preparation than I had ever done before for any other show.
The night that you did it, did you change anything or do anything new?
No, no, but I was free.
I felt very loose.
Once, once the show started, I felt like a regular show.
I didn't, because I was prepared, but it's like, just like a fight.
Like if you go into a fight and you're like, oh, I should have done more road
work.
Oh, I should have sparred more.
Oh, I should have hit the pads more.
You're, you know, that's not a good place to be, to hope that you could pull it
off.
You have to be 100% prepared.
And that's the thing about doing a live show, as opposed to usually when I
would film a special,
I would have four shows.
So I'd film all four of them and I'd be like, ah, fine.
One of them is going to be great.
I'll just use that one.
Yeah.
But when it's just one and the whole world, like millions of people are
watching simultaneously,
it's very scary.
Makes you prepare.
Yeah.
It makes you prepare.
It makes you prepare.
And it also, it's like, it's fun to do something that scares the shit out of
you.
Like, let's go.
Where did you shoot it?
Let's go.
Um, San Antonio.
Okay.
Yeah.
That's cool.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I've only done one Netflix special.
I barely leave Texas these days.
Really?
I fucking love it here.
I love it.
I love it.
Yeah.
It was amazing when you made the move, man, because that's what I asked you
when we first
started talking.
It's like, were you thinking about this in LA, but way back, like 20 years ago?
I was thinking 20 years ago about getting out.
I moved to Colorado for a little while in 2009.
Um, but for legal weed?
No, no, no, no.
I just wanted to get out.
I just wanted to try.
I was, I, but I went too crazy.
I got a house in the mountains that was 8,500 feet above sea level.
It was like, it was too much.
But when I came back to LA, I always had this thing like, eventually I gotta
get out of here.
First of all, I always thought LA is 100% gonna have a massive earthquake one
day.
Yeah.
Like a massive earthquake where everything fucks up and falls apart.
You lived through the Northridge earthquake, right?
I didn't.
Oh.
I came to California right after it happened.
Okay.
And when I got there, like parts of like one of the freeways was collapsed on
the other one.
I was like, this is nuts.
The freeways fall down here.
This is crazy.
So I feel like I've always been thinking that there's gonna come a time where
that place just
breaks off and sinks into the ocean and it's just not well run.
Like the whole thing is like just waiting for one little catastrophe.
There's very little coordination, very little.
People don't, they don't, there's not like a sense of community in the greater
Los Angeles area,
like you get in a smaller place like Austin.
Yeah.
Austin like feels like a small town that has everything you want.
Whereas LA just feels like a poorly run, bureaucracy driven, chaotic, shill
game.
It's like just a shell game of bullshit and money and people just grifting and
fucking
the homeless situations nuts.
Like everything's nuts in LA.
It's just beyond fixing, I think.
Here in Austin, a lot of homeless?
Not nearly as many.
I mean, this is a very small problem.
You're always gonna have homeless people because you're always gonna have
mental illness.
You're always gonna have drug addiction.
You're always gonna have some people that have problems.
But in comparison, like Skid Row is 50 blocks.
50 blocks, 50 blocks of homeless people just outside, just camped out.
I left a Laker game recently and went through that area.
It's nuts.
Broke my heart, man.
It broke my heart in 2005.
Yeah.
I was filming Fear Factor downtown in like 2005.
Shout out to David Hurwitz.
You know Dave.
Shout out to Dave.
He was my intern.
I set him up for you.
I taught him so he could come and get worms for you.
That's crazy.
That's crazy.
Yeah.
Um, we were filming downtown and I went for a, I was driving home and I took a
wrong turn.
And all of a sudden I was in Skid Row.
I was like, this is crazy.
And this was back then.
And no one was talking about it back then.
I was like, there's so many homeless people.
It's like a zombie movie.
I remember I came to the set the next day.
I was like, you guys ever go, go this way and take a left.
It's fucking nuts.
There's so many homeless people.
Again, they, they figured out a way to keep them there.
They just pushed people there.
Like they started doing it decades ago where they would take all the problem
people out of
Los Angeles and Beverly Hills and they would just bring them to downtown and go,
you got to stay here.
And that's what created Skid Row.
When we were kids, I used to hear about mental institutions.
We don't have that anymore.
Oh, they shut them down during the Reagan administration.
That was one of the giant errors of society when they shut down all the mental
health institutions
and they just let all these people just exist in the street with schizophrenia
and just let them
do drugs.
And then in some places, give them drugs and give them needles and encourage
them to come
there and give them money so they could stay on the street.
Austin loves you, but you ever think about back in the day, not leaving
California and running for
governor.
Fuck that.
I don't want to be a politician.
Why would I want that job?
It's a terrible job.
You want to help?
The problem you see, you want to help.
Yeah.
You ain't helping nothing, man.
You're going to get killed.
If I, my help would be expose all the fraud and lock everybody up, then they
wind up killing me.
Then you'd lose the big money from the rich.
Eh, they're not going to give it to me anyway.
It's like, I'm not the guy.
I'm not, I wouldn't be good at it.
I wouldn't be good at the job.
I'd be a good advisor.
I'd tell people what the people want, but no one's going to listen.
I think politics, we're talking about with money being involved in it, it's
almost inexorably
unfixable.
It's almost impossible to untangle that fucking beehive of chaos.
There's just so much dirty money involved.
And if I'm a politician, I'm not going to stop taking this money.
I'm not going to be first.
If we all going to do it, I'm not going to be first.
Exactly.
Look at all these congressmen that make, you know, $170,000 a year and they're
worth 80 million.
How the fuck did that happen?
What did you do?
And how, how did you, how do you have time to invest?
Aren't you busy being a congressperson?
How the fuck do you have all that money?
You got all that money because you're a grifter.
They're all grifting and they're all just like doing it sneaky.
It's red and blue.
If you look at, we pulled up the numbers of people, whether it's a Democrat or
Republican,
how many of them are insider trading?
It's across the board.
Yeah.
They all have just unexplainable amounts of money.
Yeah.
It's a dirty fucking business.
It's not like one of the parties loves money more than the other.
No.
They're all, no.
See, I get in trouble for that because usually my humor is written around not
liking any of them.
Yeah.
And people want me to take a side.
Yeah, that's a problem.
I had a joke in my Netflix special about, you know, the Democrat versus the
Republican
that was running at that time.
And it was like, that's like asking me who my favorite Menendez brother is.
Motherfuckers did not.
That's a great joke.
Yeah, like, oh, I'm kind of like Lyle.
He made it in prison with a toupee.
He's special.
Weren't they trying to get them out recently?
Oh, yeah.
Bro, that documentary on them was nuts.
The docu drama series where they recreated it.
Yeah.
Oh, my God.
I love documentaries.
Well, that was a docu drama, like they recreated it.
Yeah, actors.
So you don't know how much of it is true.
But boy, did they come off like fucking complete psychos.
I remember for the O.J. Simpson scripted doc, they wanted me to come read for O.J.
What?
And I'm like, yo, man.
How the fuck are you going to be O.J.?
Yeah, you're going to have Judge Edo barking because I'm just too recognizable
as me.
Exactly.
That wouldn't work at all.
That's crazy.
I think they chose Cuba Gooding Jr.?
That's right.
That's right.
He actually did a great job in that.
But that story was nuts.
He was the first famous.
There it is.
Yes.
Wow.
And that's Kim's dad.
Wow.
That's Mr. Kardashian.
John Travolta's in there, too.
I forgot Travolta's in there.
Those are fucking so weird.
That's the dream team.
Famous people pretending to be.
Other famous people.
Yeah.
So odd.
I do a story in my book about O.J. coming to stage 29 at Paramount to whip my
ass one time.
He was angry.
Did you say a joke on the show or something?
Well, you know what I booked is when Naked Gun was out.
And I booked Leslie Nielsen.
And we got a call from O.J.'s people because he wanted to come on, obviously.
He was in that movie.
But the second one, it had legs.
So I booked Priscilla Presley, who was a great guest and a lot of history.
And after that, I get a call from the gate.
Is there O.J. Simpson here at the gate?
Who wants to talk to you?
Yeah.
And he didn't park.
He didn't want a space.
He parked outside the elephant door of stage 29 and wanted me to come out.
Uh-oh.
Yeah.
And by the way, this is at a time when we didn't know he cut a motherfucker's
head off.
Also, at a time, we didn't know about CTE.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Which is probably a lot of what O.J. was going through.
A lot of that violent behavior.
Yeah.
It was probably a lot of CTE.
Yeah, man.
I mean, when you think about it, those days in San Francisco when he couldn't
quite cut the way he used to, he was getting hit.
He was taking head-on shots.
Oh, yeah.
And NFL back then was nuts.
Yeah.
I feel bad for him and Junior Seau and some of those guys.
Junior Seau was trying to scream to us what was going on.
Right.
You know, he committed suicide, left a note, made sure he didn't damage his
brain with the bullet.
Right.
So they could check it out.
But O.J. stopped by and we had a talk.
So he was mad that you didn't have him on the show?
Yeah, he was a little mad.
But was it your call?
Oh, yeah.
I mean, but by the way, it was my call to just do things that would get numbers.
Right.
You know, well, the Leslie Nielsen one,
I liked him because I saw him someplace with a little thing in his hand to make
fart noises.
I saw that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So I knew that I would say to him, so you got a big hit here and he would do it,
squeeze the thing.
And yeah, I was just trying to find the funniest guest.
And O.J., you know, he told me, he said some shit about, you know, I thought
having a black host,
things would be different, you know.
And I'm like, don't you play the race car.
Yeah.
Settle down.
Yeah.
Not you, Juice.
But I ran into him in a club one night.
I was hanging out with a couple of members of New Edition.
And we're in this club and he comes over and he gets drunk with us.
And after we're pretty tanked, Nicole and this gorgeous girl named Faye Resnick.
I'll never forget her name.
She was beautiful.
And these two women come over and I realize, oh, so because O.J. is alone.
I realized he was going to places finding her.
And so she comes over and she says, Juice, you know, what are you doing?
You know, and he's just hanging out with these guys.
And he's, you know, when you're drunk, spit be flying.
I wasn't drunk enough that I didn't see the spit.
And so she said, well, I'm going to be over here with Faye and blah, blah, blah.
Say something before you leave.
And so we sit there and talk.
But he said something that night that blew me away.
We talked about her and he said, I still love her.
I've tried to give her up and I can't.
Wow.
And that's crazy.
Not too much later, she was dead.
That's what that's around the time, too, I remember missing the show.
Because one thing that's addictive about the talk show is anything in the news,
you get to handle it.
Right.
And I remember watching a basketball game and seeing the freeway chase with the
Bronco.
And I was like, I want a monologue tomorrow.
You know, I couldn't believe I didn't have a show that night.
That's the only time I've ever really missed it.
Because most of the time you just go to the store.
Right, right, right.
That's hilarious.
I wanted to talk to the nation that night.
Well, listen, brother, you had a gigantic impact on culture.
You really did.
Your show was amazing.
You know, you have been an incredible life.
And I'm really happy to hear that you're happy now.
And just enjoying life.
You know, and you look fucking fantastic for 70.
That's amazing.
Thank you, man.
I appreciate you inviting me.
This is one of those shows.
Next time you kind of come to the club.
Next time you're in town.
I've got to.
Just let me know.
The show is important, but I can't wait.
Come to the club.
I look at the mothership behind you, the neon mothership.
That was actually before the mothership was made.
Oh.
Yeah, this this was six years old.
This sign.
This is we got this sign.
My friend Brigham got me this when I first moved to Austin.
So what did the spaceship mean before there was a club to you?
I'm just a UFO fanatic.
Oh, okay.
I've always been obsessed.
Because that looked like some shit.
I went to a Parliament Funkadillic concert where they landed in some shit like
that.
And George Clinton came out and sang One Nation Under A Group.
Yeah.
I've just always been obsessed.
That's all it is.
But next time you're in town, you're coming.
Promise?
Absolutely.
All right.
I'll come.
I won't be in town.
I'll figure out a way to hit you and say, Siri, Joe, I'm coming.
Let's go.
And I'll be here.
And thanks for doing this, man, because your demographic reads.
And I know I sold some books today.
Yeah.
And tell everybody the name of your book.
Oh, we had a long-ass meeting about that.
Do we call it things that make you go hmm?
A life that makes you go hmm?
Do we call it ooh, ooh, ooh?
We didn't know what.
And then finally one day we named it Arsenio.
Perfect.
That's it.
That's perfect.
Yeah.
And there's a book on tape for those who don't like to read.
Oh, that's the book.
And you know what?
If you open it and you don't want to read it, there are really cool pictures
inside.
There you go.
All right.
The art department threw some AI on me.
I'm 35 in that picture.
You look 35 right now.
All right.
Appreciate you, brother.
Thank you, y'all.
Bye, everybody.