BONUS - The Bitter Buddha feat. Eddie Pepitone

Hello, everybody.

It's Will here, and I'm coming at you with a bonus Chapo interview and episode for this week.

And I'm very pleased to say that we have on today's show, we have a comedian whose work I have enjoyed for many years now.

It is my pleasure to welcome to the show the Bidder Buddha himself, Eddie Pepetone.

Eddie, how's it going?

Hey, thank you.

This is an honor to be on this podcast.

I was listening to you guys yesterday talking about gaza and

it's amazing uh because i deal with comics who are so politically inept you know so

politically unaware on the whole you know like When I go up in front of audiences, I look at their dead eyes and I go,

do I bring up a genocide here on a Saturday night in the chuckle hut

i mean it is miami

uh well eddie i mean you talk about like how sort of politically inept or incurious most comedians are but like at the same time comedians have become like the de facto walter cronkite or mike wallace of this current moment right like yeah like comedians are now becoming the go-to interview for uh hitler you know like we're happy to have, we're happy to have Hitler's joke.

Yo, uh, Hitler, well, what's your what's your favorite thing to have for lunch?

You know,

right, right.

And it's sort of like uh, Jon Stewart is our uh Edwin Armor,

uh, where Stewart should end his uh daily shows with good night and good luck, you know.

But yeah, I think what you're talking about is the big guys

like

Stewart,

Colbert, uh, Chappelle.

But, you know, I'm in the grind.

You know, I'm like with a lot of different comedians at different levels.

And I'm just amazed how it is so difficult for them to talk about anything other than

Batman and Pussy.

Spider-Man and cock, whatever.

I'm seriously like, how are Batman and Pussy?

How do we weave those two topics together?

Just bring in Catwoman?

What's going on here, Eddie?

Yeah, how do we weave those?

Well, there's a lot of

hidden meaning in Batman.

And I think

you can just extrapolate from there.

But

what it is, and I mean, yesterday I did go see the Fantastic Four in 3D and IMAX.

Can we get a quick review here?

Fantastic for the new Fantastic Forum movie.

Thumbs up, thumbs down.

I give it a thumbs up, but it's hard to

fuck up something in 3D and IMAX.

I mean, you could watch, you know, Pay It Forward and have a good time in 3D and IMAX.

You know what I mean?

I mean,

have you ever seen Pay It Forward?

Oh, yeah, I had a good time watching Pay It Forward just on my television.

By the way, failure to launch, very underrated movie.

McConaughey really hit his stride there.

Failure to launch, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days.

They're all good.

Yes.

Well, Eddie, you bring up McConaughey in your new special, The Collapse.

You have a thing about how annoying it is to see

actors of his status and caliber on commercials non-stop now.

It's just like,

does he need the money?

Yeah, let me tell you that.

I feel like, and I really shouldn't like, like say, you know, I feel like I'm the only one talking about that.

You know, who I've really gone after on social media is Martin fucking short and Steve Morton,

who I used to love.

I mean, both of them were kind of big in when I was, you know, coming of age as a comic, like

Martin Short's Ed Grimley.

Do you remember Ed Grimley?

Oh, Ed Grimley.

I mean, Martin Short's Jiminy Glick is one of my favorite characters of all time.

Jiminy Glick is one of my favorite shows of all time.

And I'm like, I love Martin Short, but you're right.

When I see him and Steve Martin, then they're like...

Wells Fargo?

Can you put this on your Annex or whatever?

Yeah, was it Wells Fargo?

No, we're doing now.

They are doing a campaign, a hell of a campaign for Wells Fargo, which is unbelievable.

It's like, let's take one of the most corrupt, abusive corporations, and let's be that funny little face of them you know you know they the commercials are so unfunny by the way they're so unfunny and you know they're shilling for this company that's been you know i mean publicly i mean they've been sued they've been sanctioned and they're just the worst you know i mean what's next for them blackrock

well it's weird because I remember like, you know, when I was growing up, the thing was, if you were like an A-list celebrity and you needed some extra money from doing a television advertisement, you would have to fly to Japan to cut that app.

And it would only air in like the Pacific Rim countries.

But now it just seems like, like,

is it like sort of streaming and the internet that has just sort of flattened all celebrity into just like, if you're on a screen now, you're a celebrity?

Because it used to be like you would want to, you would want to sort of protect the mystique of being a famous person by not be not doing you know ads for geico on american television yeah no what i think has happened is that uh what's happened all over is the greed has just gotten to the point of acceptability and and it's you know incremental i mean my favorite artist of all time is bob dylan and even bob dylan did ibm i don't know if you remember that he did

a commercial for, I think it was, if you remember this crap, Watson,

their computer, their supercomputer.

He did some Victoria Secret ads.

Even Bob Dylan has done a couple of ads, which I kind of write off.

I'm like, well, Dylan is his own thing, and he's probably fucking with people.

But the celebrities who just on a record, I can't believe Samuel Jackson, who is the highest box office grossing actor in the history like his movies have grossed more than anything and of any movies combined and he is constantly shilling for capital one you know what's in your wallet you know

and i come at these guys and nobody really

People don't really respond to it that much because they're like, well, you know, I get things like,

I thought it was terrible.

I'm also a bit of an asshole, but I thought it was terrible when one of my favorite actors, John Trotoro, was shilling for Heineken.

And I remember I posted something about that.

It was a Super Bowl commercial and people were like, who are you?

Is fucking accountant?

Let him do his thing.

You know what I mean?

Like, people come at me like that.

I mean, I love John Trotoro too.

And, you know, like, I'm not trying to pocket watch another man.

But

it does sting a little bit when you see someone who's artistic work you respect so much and who's been very successful being in an ad for a bank.

But like, Eddie, like, do you think like this is, this represents sort of a shift in our economy and our culture overall?

Because like when you were coming up as a comedian,

I feel like in Gen X, there's like this tension between being real and selling out.

Because I feel like back then there was still a viable path.

to success that didn't require selling out.

Whereas I feel now like kids who are, you know, Gen Z or whatever are coming up in a world where like selling out is the only viable alternative.

So So, like, they're, they don't even, it's there's there is no such thing as selling out, it's just like making money, having a life

selling, yeah.

Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, are you uh, are you a Bill Hicks fan?

Oh, of course, yeah,

he was like really super integral, him and Carlin.

And

boy, you really realize how far ahead of the curve George Carlin was.

Oh, yeah, I mean,

you know, he everybody's posting all these Carlin clips, Yeah.

You know, it's a big club and you're not in it.

And, but the thing is, like, I, my, my, our friend of the show, Jake Rhodes, who actually I'm having on tomorrow, he had a point the other day that, like, the club is getting smaller.

You know, like, that was a bit that maybe that, maybe that Carlin didn't anticipate.

Like, it's not so big a club anymore.

I always wonder what Hicks and Carlin, particularly those two,

what they

would be saying right now.

You know, now Hicks used to, he inspired me the way he would talk about artists doing commercials.

I don't know if you remember that, but

he'd be saying, you're sucking on the devil's cockpit.

You know, and he actually went out of his way to say,

I don't begrudge the small-time actor, the guy who doesn't have much, but these huge celebrities doing this shit.

You know, it's like, where is

anymore, you know?

Well, Eddie, I so like I watched the new special, which is great.

And what I what I've always loved about your comedy is like the energy that you bring to the stage is always like very much about like the expirgation of sort of anxiety, tension,

rage, self-loathing.

It's like Lancing a boil.

So I guess I want to ask you is, Eddie, what's annoying you today?

What's causing stress for you this week?

What's pissing you off?

What needs to be purged from you?

You know what really gets me lately is,

not lately, but I get obsessed with the climate breakdown.

I get obsessed particularly with heat.

And I am traveling to Atlanta tomorrow.

And I fucking cannot stand Atlanta and the South in the summer.

It's, yeah, it's oppressive.

Oppressive is the the word it's like i'm going in to do a place called the earl on august 1st and then i fly the next day to durham north carolina and i just start

getting anxious about oh shoot

i hope we're not stuck like stuff like this i hope we're not stuck on the

runway i remember when they when they kept me in a in a plane with because they don't have ac until you

take off.

Right.

And it's like, I remember one time, I think I was in like Denver and Denver was like 119 degrees.

I mean, the temperatures now are insane, you know, and the storms, I'm always like, okay, I have to rent a car, you know, when I get to the Northeast on this trip, going to Pottstown, Pennsylvania.

I take my message to the masses, you know.

I go to Pottstown, Pennsylvania.

I'm playing the Catskills.

I go to, and then I go to Washington, D.C.

Maybe I could stop off at the Heritage Foundation.

And

I like the daily demonstrations going on there.

Have you seen those?

No, no, I haven't seen that.

But it's pretty cool.

You're stopping off at the Heritage Foundation.

Make sure to wear your best SimTex vest.

Yes, yes.

But I love it because these guys are just standing, guys and gals is just standing out there with bullhorns going, Nazi,

like they walk out of the Heritage rather than you

pig, how do you sleep at night?

Um, but anyway,

yeah, not bad.

And but what I was uh saying is that I, I, I get panicked now about flooding and

tropical storm.

Like, I just think they're all supercharged, which they are.

And I, I just don't want to die in a weather event, you know, playing the chuckle hut

in

Durham or whatever.

You know what I mean?

Yeah, yeah.

Because like, I mean, there are ways to

die violently or die of an illness or, you know, pass peacefully in your sleep.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But there's something about weather killing you that just seems, I don't know, biblical in a way, or just sort of, I don't know, it's like defining killed you.

You know, I was supposed to play the Guadalupe River, but that got canceled.

You know, I was going to play the banks of the Guadalupe.

And, you know, I don't like the way I'm being booked like that.

I always tell my bookers, please try to keep me out of, you know, zones like New Orleans.

I'm actually doing New Orleans as part of the festival in November, but I think in November, it'll either be gone or

the hurricanes will be dormant.

Eddie, I see you got your Brooklyn Dodgers hat on.

And I want to talk a little bit about Brooklyn, you know, because you were born in Brooklyn, and I think you grew up in Staten Island, right?

Yes, unfortunately.

Yes, Staten Island, cultural wasteland, people communicated by hitting each other with bats.

It was, I'll never forget me and my dad, who, by the way, got me political.

My dad was a union leader for the UFT, United Federations of Teachers.

And

I don't know if you remember Albert Schenker, who was like a big

union leader for the teachers in New York City.

As a matter of fact, Woody Allen immortalized him by saying in Sleeper, the movie Sleeper, he said, it's unfortunate, but Albert Schenker has the nuclear bomb.

So

my dad gave me in Brooklyn when he was a union leader, the book, The Rich and the Super Rich by Ferdinand Lundberg.

I don't know if you've ever heard of that book, but it got me right away you know i needed it out left for my anger because i

you know i i was uh a kid who uh you know never got enough attention you know my mom was in and out of mental institutions which is you know primed me for life and my my dad was just kind of a rageaholic you know sicilian she was jewish you know it was just a cra it was like just everything was based on woe and anxiety.

And that's what I deliver to the crowd.

I want to dig in on that because a couple of weeks ago, we had Larry Charles on the show.

Larry Charles, also from Brooklyn.

I fucking love that guy.

And one of the things I asked him is like, what is it about working class New York City in general, but Brooklyn in particular, that like this milieu contributed so much to what we think of as American comedy?

You know, I mean, there's like, you know, like you said, Lenny Bruce, Woody Allen, Mel Brooks.

I mean, you mentioned Carlin before he's from morningside heights that's in manhattan but like it's like george carlin is from morningside heights he's from upper manhattan yeah what is it about well you're saying specifically brooklyn yeah um i think you know brooklyn is one step removed from manhattan and i think if you grew up in manhattan back then you were kind of part of the elitists you know, even if you didn't have a lot of money.

But Brooklyn, you know, know, I think Brooklyn being right outside Manhattan, first of all, New York in general is a cauldron,

a pressure cooker of anxiety,

sorrow,

you know, rage.

And Arthur Miller's from Brooklyn, too.

There's a great, have you ever been to the Brooklyn Walk of Fame in the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens?

It's pretty cool.

Yes, I have.

It's great.

Right?

It's pretty cool to see all the artists who have come from brooklyn but i think because new york is such a pressure cooker and

brooklyn i think you know brooklyn people kind of wanted to be like i i i always looked at manhattan as like a place to um aspire to you know because brooklyn was a borough but it was it was it was pretty you know, culturally great.

Whereas Staten Island, which formed me,

my dad thought it was the country.

He was like, we're moving to the country, Staten Island, you know, and that was a cultural wasteland when I was there.

It, it really kind of instilled in me again, just

rage and aspiring to be like a great comedian because everyone I saw around me was settling for just suburban shit.

And I went to Brooklyn Tech High School, so I was always in the city.

Oh, you went to Brooklyn Tech?

I did.

I did.

I was actually, I found that in the graduating class of Spike Lee, though I never ran into him.

Wow.

Two Brooklyn roads diverged or perhaps, you know, coming together again.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, Eddie, as soon as we're talking about New York City, I'd like to bring up two of New York City's most celebrated and favored sons.

I am, of course, referring to Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein, also from Brooklyn.

Is that right?

Yeah, yeah, he's from Brooklyn.

Wow.

Yeah, he grew up around Coney Island.

But Eddie, you know, just like as a perspective of, yeah, someone filled with the tension and rage that comes with, you know, being alive and aware in this country, but also someone who, you know, channels that into comedy.

I just got to ask, what are you making of the now second term of Donald, the second non-consecutive administration of Donald Trump?

And what do you make of him continuing to be sort of bedeviled or rather goreing a self-inflicted wound by continuing to talk about his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein or try to look anything other than guilty?

Yeah, yeah.

Well, I got to say that

I always get angry at the Democrats for

not,

you know, people that I know

just focus in on Trump as the devil which which he is but it was a long time coming you know it was a long time coming he is the product Trump is the the product of a system that incrementally got bought and bought that the Democrats oversaw and that none of my so-called liberal friends you know, want to talk about, you know, like

they just oversaw corporations completely buying senators congressmen uh you know everybody has been co-opted now by money which is what we were talking about before about this generation of people who just want to sell you know and so Trump is this product of years many years of just this complete sellout you know working class people being sold out, whether it started with Clinton from NAFTA,

you know, all of that leading up to Trump.

So I'm always, I'm always like, man,

don't you see the fucking problem is that we have to

have a revolution in this country?

I always say, I always say on stage, look, when are you people going to rise up?

Now, I, you know, you have to hit the streets.

You have to be angry.

You can't just, you know, wear pink pussycat hats.

You have to disrupt traffic.

You have to block the highways.

You have to block the machinery.

Now, I can't join you.

I'm in the middle of Ozark right now.

I'm late to the party on Ozark,

which is really, you know,

It really is true that so many people, you know, as we get more and more into this fascist authoritarianism, there's a lot of good shows to watch.

Have you seen Andor, Eddie?

I have not seen Andor.

It's a good show.

You should check it out.

But to your point about how Trump is sort of like the golem created by a capitalist society and by a liberal democratic party that is constitutionally unwilling or unable to confront the savage inequities created by market economies, right?

And

what I feel like is what we have now is a situation where like there is only the market, like the market has achieved total primacy and dominance over social and political life.

And like in a situation like that, figures like Donald Trump will rise to the top.

And like, you know, I mean, like, if you think about like the Epstein scandal overall, like, what is it really about?

It's about the buying and selling of human beings.

And like, and like, this is really where it, where this, where it, where it leads up to,

where this all ends up, up when it's just like when market forces are allowed to determine the conditions of human life when like there

when the state no longer has the capacity or the willingness to step in and just like and just say no like there there are values uh that for human life and thriving and dignity that are more important than the bottom line than the ability of insurance companies or whoever to like make as much money as possible exactly and that said

with Trump's second term, I was a little fucking taken aback that all of a sudden there were massed ICE agents on the streets and as aggressive as they were immediately, I was like, holy shit.

This is so fat.

You know, he hit the ground running with this shit.

And that took me a little bit like, oh my God, you know, that's, that's unbelievable.

But I mean, this stuff is coming to a head, right?

I mean, it's got to, it's got to with, with the genocide in Gaza, um, you know, globally, uh,

this kind of oppression going on.

I mean, what is going to happen with the climate breakdown?

There's going to be so many climate refugees.

I mean, how will this, you know, affect my sets at the improv or the comedy store?

I'm wondering.

You know, like, no, but seriously, like, that's my big thing is like, how do, how do I expose or put this stuff

to audiences in a way that

kind of awakens the dormant people, you know, or awakens them and and just is an in-your-face thing.

I mean, that's what I do it for.

It's cathartic to me, you know.

I realized that a lot of my rage is from my Sicilian dad, and I'm kind of channeling him.

And he kind of gave up.

He kind of gave up like when he was like 60.

He started watching fucking CNN and MSNBC and becoming one of those kind of shit libs, you know?

But you said like, but he was the one who sort of like politicized you that gave you, you know, like he was a union leader.

Like,

what do you think was like the the process that led to is it just aging is it is it just sort of you can only sort of stomach so many defeats before you just figure hey why not just you know uh can't beat him join him yeah

yeah i think for me you know they say aging kind of mellows you it is not true with me i know i just watched the special

Yeah, I mean, it is just not true with me, even though I'm one of these guys.

I don't know if I've talked about this in the special or not, but I'm one of these guys who drives around L.A.

listening to the power of now.

What's the power of now?

Wait, wait, wait, what's that?

You've never heard it.

No, no.

Oh, wow.

We're on different spiritual planes.

It's Eckhart Toll.

Have you heard of Eckhart Toll?

And it's all about this

coming into

the now,

you know, Buddhism.

It's basically Buddhism, Zen Buddhism,

which I try to use to like get some kind of grounding.

It's all about breathing, you know, meditation.

It's all about breathing, rooting yourself, because, you know,

if you keep following all this, all the stuff that's going on, right?

And you, you.

you just start thinking, thinking, thinking, and it's just a rabbit hole and kind of breathing and feeling your body and yoga, stuff like that is a way to kind of come down but for me it's a way to recharge so i can go back

out there to

quote unquote wake wake people up or to like rage

against the fucking oligarchy you know um but with my dad i feel like I feel like he just had some setbacks in his personal life.

You know, he wanted me to be a dentist.

He gave gave me a novocaine needle when i was 10 like as a birthday present uh a molar shaped desk all this he wanted me to be like a medic like he wanted me to have a great job and i i remember i think i broke him when i when i told him i was dropping out of fordham university and i'm saying i'm gonna study acting in manhood

And he just, he just looked at me like, leave, just leave the room.

He wasn't, but I want him back.

I don't know if you ever saw the documentary about me called A Bitter Buddha, but I want him back with later in his life

with my stand-up.

He came to a big show at the Gotham Comedy Club and I killed.

And when I got off stage, he was like, and we caught this on film.

He was like,

you had them eating out of your hand.

That's great.

That's awesome.

Yeah.

It's a victory achieved finally.

In your career as a comedian, like I touched on this at the beginning in terms of like politics and comedy, because like sometimes it's like oil and water.

Do you think that the expectations that audiences have of comedians now have changed?

Do you find that they want political instruction from comedians or are they rejecting that?

This is what I think.

I think you have to be skillful in presenting it to audiences and funny.

And

my buddy Patton Oswald, who, who executive produced this,

he said to me, one thing I never forget is that my first job is to be funny.

And I agree with that.

You know, if you're going to be a comedian, you kind of, you remember Lenny Bruce at the end of his life, he was just reading transcripts.

Right?

He was reading fucking transcripts from court proceedings.

It'd be funny if I just went up there reading like eviction notices that I'd been getting.

You know, folks, before, hello, Durham, North Carolina, good to see you.

But I just got this eviction notice and just listen to this wording.

You know what I mean?

But I, you know, I have a couple of bits that I'm very proud of, like, as far as like being.

political and funny at the same time.

I do this bit.

I don't know if you've seen it where I go,

I'm very left-wing.

I'm way to the left of Bernie Sanders.

I'm super left-wing, but I also have a guilty pleasure.

I like game shows.

And I would like to see my politics bleed into game shows.

For instance, I would like to see some woman from Oklahoma on the price's right, have to guess the price of the Iraq war instead of a toaster.

And the curtain comes up and it's just carnage, you know, real life industrial warfare.

And she's jumping up and down, going, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know.

And the audience is like, 8 billion a day,

8 billion.

And she's like, Does that include Afghanistan?

All right, with Afghanistan.

I wrote it a while ago, so it was all those wars that were going on back then.

Does that include Afghanistan?

With Afghanistan, 50 billion.

What about the other proxy wars?

Ukraine, Syria, Libya,

Gaza.

Okay,

all the wars, let's call it two trillion a day.

I don't know, I don't, did we ever shut down Guantanamo?

You know, stuff like that.

I say, it turns out the woman from Oklahoma, very well read.

Like, I mean, it's, you know, like, beginning with like Lenny Bruce, Carlin, Hicks, people we've talked about, like, it's been assumed for a long time that comedians and political comedians have been like the province of the left, or I guess more broadly, like, like a liberal point of view.

but like that that's that's changed that's changed a lot over the last like 10 20 years in that like i think there are a lot of comedians now that are political comedians but they're but they're from the right or they're from aren't they disgusting though yeah you ever see a right winger try to be funny a right wing comedian like this guy gut gutfield is it oh yeah good gutfeld yeah i don't was he ever was he ever a comedian i guess he tried to be a comedian but like i think he was i i i i either knew him or his brother, they were actors.

I don't know, but well, I feel like a lot of these right-wing entertainers are failed actors and comedians.

Like, they had they have like they gave it one year of trying to like make it big, didn't work for a few years, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But, like, but now they have this sort of like an audience that's like a habit trail that will just like, you know, like hamsters that will just like go to that water bottle and

like, you know, because they feel underserved.

And like, it's, it's, it's sort of like it's, it's, it's less of a free market.

I feel it's like there's a lot of

sort of juiced incentives for a right-wing audience because, like, if you just say the words they want to hear, you just like, oh, absolutely.

I just hate, I just don't like, those guys have no fucking

awareness of class, you know, class struggle.

They, they have zero,

you know, awareness of class struggle.

And what they kind of focus on is the woke stuff.

You know, these comics are telling us what to do.

Meanwhile, people's health care is getting taken away from them you know there's no due process for people people are getting disappeared and they're like talking about we can't say the word retarded you know what i mean like that's their big fucking thing it's funny you said that like it's they don't have a class consciousness but i think a lot of the the woke culture war stuff is a right-wing attempt to kind of like engage in class warfare because like they would say that like what wokeness or woke ideology or sort of like pronouns not being able to say retard, that these are the province of an American upper class that is liberal, that is being censorious and sort of like, you know, like using their power to oppress in some way, like the authentic working class voices who, you know, like want to be racist and say retarded and, you know, be, you know, tell, you know, just

be rude and crude and fun.

Yeah, that is true.

Um,

that is definitely true, but I feel like they,

you know, particularly right-wing comedians, don't, you know, their thing is just to like build an audience.

I mean, again, it goes back to your point about people just want to sell.

So they like see this, you know, MAGA crowd,

Rogan crowd, whatever, as just this big market

to like be tapped.

And they, they, they tap it.

And that's why, you know, my following is a very niche following.

We like our,

we like our meats sliced very thin, you know, in my following, like just, you know, the thin prosciutto.

You know, well, you bring that up, but aren't you a vegan?

Yeah, I'm on and off, on and off, yes, but I'm getting back to it now.

It was tough because I had a, I had major surgery and I was told by my surgeon to eat intense protein.

You know, I told him I was vegan.

He said, to recover, I had an incision that went hip to hip.

Not to brag, I'm sure you'll get there eventually.

And so I went.

That is impressive.

Yeah, it was a great incision.

I didn't even need it.

It was elective.

I was like, you know what?

Let's do it.

But yeah, so, you know, because vegan for me is also besides, you know,

I bring it up because like vegan, like, like, that's a punchline for like right-wing comedians or right-wing politicians, like, being, being a vegan, you know, like the soy eaters or whatever.

But, like, you know, I say this as someone who's not even a vegetarian, like, I, I eat meat, but like, I am convinced that, like, in a hundred years from now, like, that's going to be thought of as like a fairly morally, I don't know, blind thing to have just, I don't know, not

just because it's part of the culture.

It's how you were raised that like you, you just kind of go along with it.

Like, so I have conflicting feelings, but like, oh yeah it's very it's not easy it's not easy to do i mean i used to go to uh

you know kansas city like looking for a cucumber sandwich or something you know what i mean it's like and everybody around you is eating prime rib or whatever and you're like holy shit

you know um

but what i want to say is that you know I really got into it for the animal activism, like, you know, getting into the

slaughterhouse videos.

You know what I mean?

Like,

you know, every night before I would go to sleep, I would watch a slaughterhouse video just to kind of put me out.

A lot of people,

a lot of people listen to rain.

I listen to the screaming.

No, but I mean, they're brutal

animals.

Yeah, like the idea that like having compassion for other living things.

I mean, like,

how did that become such a punchline?

Because I really feel that like,

the less, the less, the less compassion that you have for living things other than human beings, like the likelihood that you're going to have not have compassion for actual living human beings is that thing greatly increased.

Absolutely.

You know, I always say my feed on Instagram is I go from these, you know, I post these horrific

things about Gaza and then

I will do a palate cleanser, you know, on Instagram stories or whatever.

I'll do a palate cleanser of a, uh, a possum eating a potato.

You know what I mean?

And that's my feed.

I have curated my Instagram so it is all possums eating potatoes.

Cause, like, you know, I'm on fucking, I'm on fucking Twitter more or less professionally, and that is a 24-7 madness inducer.

It is

an insanity engine.

So I make sure that

my Instagram reels are just, yeah, like badgers sniffing around, seals making a lot of noises.

And then occasionally, like, I get a lot of interviews from like other, like, actors talking about how they kick drugs and alcohol.

I don't know why Instagram's recommending those videos to me, but.

Yeah,

I want to say this too.

And this bugs me no end as far as veganism is why don't.

scientists and why don't all these people who report on the climate breakdown mention methane.

They're always talking about fossil fuels, right?

That leads to greenhouse gas warming, global warming.

But methane that is produced on these factory farms are even worse than the fossil fuels, you know?

And it is trapping, you know, more heat.

And nobody,

I don't understand it that they don't talk about.

that.

And my idol, my idol politically, who I've been following reading all his books is Chris Hedges.

I just feel like this guy stands out there with all this integrity.

It's almost hilarious at this point.

Like it used to be him and Chomsky.

I love Chomsky too, but Chomsky has disappeared.

I think Chomsky is going to be on the Golden Bachelor this year.

I'm not sure.

That would be funny.

That would be fantastic.

I would love to see that.

I was thinking of doing a sketch like that.

You know, like he's meeting these women who are just you know you know talking about you know how hot he is and he's like saying i just want to talk to you about u.n resolution 5618

uh instead of kissing if you don't mind you know chomsky on the golden bachelor bread yeah i i on a date just reminding all the dates that you know if you read the business press like the financial times actually the capitalist class is quite honest about what they're doing that's where you get the truth yeah yeah.

And they'll be like, I don't care about the business press.

What I care is that you press your clothes, you know, and don't look as rumpled.

I mean, why are you such let go of the professor thing?

Oh, I'm 95 and not feeling well.

But what was I saying about hedges?

He turned vegan.

And I was like, ah, so Chris finally went vegan, which, you know, I mean, just as far as climate sustainability, it's a big thing.

You know, it's a very...

I mean, I did see recently that uh texas the state of texas has just passed a law that essentially pre-bans any form of lab-grown meat being sold in texas and like the lab-grown meat thing is so fascinating to me because it's just like well if there is like an alternative that creates like you know an equivalent of animal-based protein that is more or less the same thing that doesn't have the you know uh horrific side effects associated with, you know, like the mass slaughter of, you know, cattle, for instance, or the, or not even the slaughter of people, the raising and keeping of cattle and, like, in terms of water and methane and things like that.

And if you still enjoy eating meat, like, what's the, what's the problem?

I'll eat lab-grown meat.

I don't care.

Like, but it's just

a preemptive blocking of a possible alternative because

the concept that like you could eat a steak in which like an animal wasn't slaughtered for it is like offensive in some way.

Well, because they're all invested in

cattle, you you know.

Yeah.

They don't watch the Instagram videos of

cows playing with balls.

You know, there's a lot of Instagram videos that show or videos just showing cows being super playful, which I never even knew.

You know, a lot of cows are playing

high-go-seek, hide-and-seek.

They're playing different board games.

I don't know if you know a lot of cattle are into shoots and letters.

Just stop me when I'm reaching for humor and it's not hitting

no

not yet you got a green light all the way eddie well um uh we've been talking about uh like uh comedy and wokeness so i i wanted to uh share share an article with you from uh the other week that i very much enjoyed and i just wanted to get your thoughts on it uh the headline this is from foxnews.com and the headline is billy joel tells bill maher he's over what woke people think of him are you are you are you a fan of the bill maher podcast are you a fan of Newton News and Real Time?

Oh my God.

You know,

I used to like Maher when he first came on the scene.

I thought, oh, this guy is kind of in your face.

And

boy, has he become a real, first of all, he's an arrogant prick.

He's just an arrogant guy.

The couple of times I met him, he's just like, he's kind of dismissive, like, who the fuck are you?

And, but his politics on Gaza is, yeah,

it's just like, that is, you know, what a fucking idiot.

Well, when we had Larry Charles on, we talked about it because Larry worked with him on religious people.

Oh, that's right.

Right.

Yeah, yeah.

And I love Larry.

No, I'm like, you know, obviously Larry has, you know, taken a stand against where some of his former collaborators have gone, particularly on the issue of Palestine.

But like, we're talking about

like his, his whole thing is like atheism.

Like, religion is stupid.

God doesn't exist, but he he did give Israel to the Jews who just like, what?

Like, yeah.

I don't know about

trace being around the country, uh, talking to different people, how God doesn't exist is helpful.

I get the, um,

you know, I get the fact that people can become religious zealots, but I was always, I have a bit about

What the hell does an existential, you know, atheist church have to offer?

Like, what is an atheist healer come on up and someone comes up and they put their hand on him and they just go what's your problem and they're like i can't walk and they just put their hand on the head of the atheist healer and goes it's gonna get worse

and and you are gonna be a burden to your family you're gonna die alone in the mark twain a hotel do you know that hotel it's in hollywood it's horrible It's horrible.

You're just going to have a hot plate

watching Neil Neil deGrasse Tyson talk about how there is no Santa Claus.

Yeah.

But I really don't like Maher on so many levels.

You know,

so many levels.

Well, I mean, like, you know, he's been at the forefront of, you know, like

the wokeness backlash.

And he doesn't, he doesn't like millennials because, you know, we're too woke.

And but now he now he's found somebody Sympatico and Billy Joel.

And I just want to read a little of this article.

It says, legendary musician Billy Joel told Bill Maher he doesn't care if the far left complains about his statements or music anymore.

During the latest episode of Mara's Club Random podcast released Monday, the two discussed the woke left's reaction to anything it disagrees with, with Joel admitting he is over being concerned about what that group thinks of him.

I mean, like, I didn't know Billy Joel was being targeted by, like, the left-meaning in this country or

libtards.

Like, are there social democrats going, have you listened to New York State of Mind or Brenda, Brenda and Eddie?

It's bullshit.

It's bullshit.

It's well, and they actually

get it to like what this article claims is it says,

At this point, I'm inured to it, Joel said in reply to Marr asking if he doesn't care if woke people criticize him any longer.

Marr brought up woke outrage while talking to Joel about his 1976 song, Angry Young Man.

In the song, Joel sings, I believe I've passed the age of consciousness and righteous rage.

I found that just surviving was a noble fight.

I once believed in causes too.

I had my pointless point of view, and life went on no matter who was right or wrong.

What was this outrage over this song?

Yeah, yeah.

Well, you know, I did have a problem.

I almost said that.

When I saw him at Madison Square Garden a couple of years ago, if I had known he wrote those lyrics in a song in 1976, I never would have gone.

Okay.

I didn't know I was supporting, I didn't know I was supporting fascism.

Yeah, that's funny.

I mean, I did have a problem with that song a little bit because I was like, what do you mean?

I can't, I can't protect, I can't be angry, like, because survival is difficult.

You know, I'll tell you why survival is difficult is because BlackRock is buying up all the real estate, Mr.

Joel.

No, but yeah, yeah, that to me is hilarious that Billy Joe feels besieged.

Like, I watched this interview, and the thing is, I I don't think Billy Joel does.

Yeah, yeah, I watched it.

I don't think Billy Joel does feel besieged by the woke sensoriousness.

I think he's just kind of like trying to have a conversation with Bill Maher and giving him nothing or giving him the bare minimum to

the end of the

end of it.

He says, With help from Joel, Maher recited the lyrics and commented, I feel like this is the message of the age, even though some people will hear that and say, look at these two assholes.

Boomers, Joel chimed in, mocking an insult often lobbed at older generations.

The host continued, noting how mad leftists get when people don't declare Trump's the worst.

Well, I mean, Eddie, you started the show.

You didn't say Trump's the worst.

You said

it's all our fault that he's fucking president again.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah,

I think on that podcast, what did I see?

I always love watching

who's really growing me is Bill Burr.

Bill Burr.

Bill Burr.

Well, not only is Bill just flat flat out hilarious,

but he, yeah, he just makes great points about different things.

And he would just call Maher out on his bullshit.

If you've seen that,

wasn't that great?

Yeah.

Hey, you're here, you know, doing his Boston.

Oh, you're like a little league coach here.

You know, like, I just love the way and Burr got like they were trying to, they were trying, the media was trying to go after burr about saying something about mangioni oh yeah i don't ever every time i see him interviewed now he he picks up luigi for killing that ceo and he's like we need a couple more of that we he says free luigi every time i see him on an interview so

yeah yeah

and they were talking about some people are like uh claiming that the this shooter in in manhattan was going oh yeah i was gonna pick it up like

accidentally shot that like one of the heads of like blackrocks like landlord division.

And, like, I'm not making this, I was like, I didn't make this joke, but some of several people have pointed it out that, like, you want to talk about New York City, that's how evil New York City is.

That you can more or less randomly do a mass shooting trying to kill someone else and accidentally kill the head of

BlackRock's real estate division.

Oh, my God, that's very funny.

If you do a random shooting to New York, you're definitely, especially on park camp.

Well, I was like, I was thinking about that.

This guy was trying to kill people in the nfl head office

yes yes and i you know i'm an nfl fan you know uh yeah me too as a matter you are too and who's your team who's your team buddy jets or giants it's the giants me too yeah oh yeah yeah yeah yeah and i always look at my my sports addiction um i'm i'm a big hockey new york rangers i'm a big new york giants and new york yankees my sports addiction has a big conflict with my, with my corporate criticism.

It's a big conflict because the NFL, for instance, has become a commercial for the military.

Oh, yeah.

And one bit I do is

I say to the audience, I hate when they announce, you know, it's become a commercial for the military.

And I hate when they fly these, you know, F-14 bombers overhead stadiums.

And the announce is always like, ladies and gentlemen, flying overhead or F-14 bombers from Fort Bragg.

And I go, I wish they would tell the truth.

Like, ladies and gentlemen, flying overhead or F-14 bombers from Fort Bragg, each one of these bombers could be 50 libraries in your community.

You could have free health care, free daycare.

You could have an infrastructure that's not falling apart.

But instead, all you have is a manifestation of imperialistic evil.

Enjoy the game, you fucking sheep.

Well, here's the thing, Eddie.

I don't like when politics

get put in sports, okay?

I think people need to leave their political and just leave their political opinions at the door, stand for the national anthem, and look at a nuclear bomber fly over the Super Bowl.

Yes, yes, absolutely, absolutely.

But it's so funny that I, you know, I ignore sometimes the politics.

You remember that whole thing with Kaepernick?

Oh, yeah, that's what I mean.

You know, taking in and whatnot.

Yeah.

And these, and these, you know, white owners were like, this is disgusting how the can this guy do this does billy joel know about this well i'm glad i'm glad to hear this from you

because uh i too sometimes have to confront and then immediately compartmentalize all of my uh publicly stated political beliefs and stances with rooting for the new york yankees which is i'm sorry not going to change same

same and people have always told as a matter of fact i've had a bunch of you know like like every team in professional sports it's like it's all all the

owners are the same people.

Yeah.

Yeah, right.

But they're always, I remember my friend years ago, he used to say, it's like rooting for U.S.

Steel.

What are you doing?

You know, when U.S.

Steel was a company that was big, like, how can you root for the Yankees?

And I'm like, have you seen their rotation?

Their pitching staff is fucking horrible.

Rooting for the Yankees is the worst.

I know.

We haven't won a World Series in like 15 fucking years.

The injustice of that sickens me.

It's too long.

It's a little worse than climate breakdown.

Like, why had I?

You know,

sorry, just to get to the end of the Bill Maher Billy Joel piece, it says,

and don't you care what they say about you?

The woke Maher asked.

At this point, no, the musician replied.

But like, what I like about that is like, if you're someone in Billy Joel's position, do you care what anyone says about you?

Like, you've won.

Like,

you're an

Like, you've won.

Like, it was.

Well, I think you nailed it.

I think you nailed it when you said he's trying to give Mar something.

Like, what are they going to talk about?

You know what I mean?

Like, who were Brendan and Eddie?

You know that song, right?

Yeah.

Brendan and Eddie were the

real people.

Like, I don't know.

Hey, you know, when Anthony moved out of his mother's house, what, like, you know, could you, what are they?

Have you ever moved out from somewhere?

Yeah, could you, could you tell us some some moving stories that inspired that song, Philly?

He's Mr.

New York, supposedly, Billy Joe, right?

Well, he's actually Mr.

Long Island, is really what he wants.

That's what he is, though.

But he did the longest residence

in Madison Square Garden.

I know, and like,

they gave him a banner in Madison Square Garden for like how many shows he's done at MSG.

And I'm thinking, like,

the New York State Troopers who patrol the Long Island Expressway should have a banner raised up in the precinct for how many times he's driven drunk.

Oh, shit.

Has he?

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Well,

he takes a helicopter into MSG now

to avoid

any problems operating a vehicle.

It's kind of like me.

When I used to drive to San Francisco, I was not drinking, but I would speed and I got nailed for speeding tickets.

I would drive from LA to San Francisco.

I think I got speeding tickets back-to-back trips.

and I was like, it's a 45-minute flight, Eddie.

Let's just do the flight

instead of the four and a half-hour drive through Causchwitz.

Oh, yeah.

You want to talk about fucking becoming a vegetarian, man.

When I, when the first time I drove past that Central Valley drive from LA to San Francisco, it felt like the fucking end of the world to me, man.

It was end of the world.

Grim.

Yeah.

End of the world.

That's why I think people love San Francisco so much.

When you're driving, you finally come to life

when you see the city of San Francisco.

It's like six hours that just looks like the fucking surface of Mars.

That industrial agriculture is just, oh, there's like,

sometimes you see like a person like working in one of these fields, but for the most part, it is denuded of all life.

It is really dramatic.

Denuded of all life.

It's just the worst.

Yeah.

Yeah.

This is getting to the end here.

It says, it's so difficult in this day and age, Mar replied.

Mark continued, I mean, is what I'm always trying to do on my show.

It is, look, this is one safe space for everyone, and I will take heed from either, both sides.

I mean, I do feel like the left, who ironically I'm actually more aligned with, is more snippy about it and has a worse attitude about it, and it makes me viscerally not like them more sometimes.

Elsewhere, the two discussed how social media makes political outrage worse.

People say things all the time on social media they would never say if they had to say it to your face, Marr said.

It just always surprises me how people they express this hatred, Joel responded.

It's like you hate a musician because he wrote something.

It's like, I think

no one hates Billy Joel.

I know.

They hate Bill Maher.

They don't hate Billy Joel.

And I just

started a group.

But Eddie, I got to tell you, really, the highlight of this interview came

when it's not, it's not covered in the Fox News article, but on this Club Random episode, Bill Maher pitched Billy Joel on a song idea he had.

And he said, he said,

I wrote this song and he said, like, I've always wanted to do something with it.

But the song is about an age gap relationship and people being judged because of an inappropriate age gap.

And I wanted to do a song about that.

And, like, and Joel is, he's given him nothing.

He's just like, he's like, oh, okay.

I even had a good

premise.

I had a title.

It was called The World Makes Us Lie.

Okay, that's a good premise.

It is.

Because it was about someone in a relationship with someone who the world deemed age inappropriate.

I don't know where I got the idea.

But, and it could be more universal than that.

The world does make us lie about things aggrieved.

She's 20 and I'm 60.

The thing is, like, there have been a lot of songs along those lines, you know, like she was only 16.

Like, that was a song.

Oh, right.

Right.

Yeah.

I think that's hilarious that that Marl, that Marr is trying to justify his age gap relationships through Billy Joe and he didn't bite.

It'd be like, you know who Marr would never have on his show is Roger Waters, who is a hero of mine.

Oh, yeah.

He doesn't back down on Israel.

And he's taken a lot of shit for that.

Oh my God.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

But, you know, ahead of the curve, man.

I got to say, I've never liked Radiohead and I've never felt more vindicated from that.

I liked one of their songs, you know, I forget which one, but I would used to, I would cry to it in my car, which I do a lot with Van Morrison.

I find that in L.A., you have to, you know, you weep in your car in L.A.

You live in L.A.?

No,

I'm in Brooklyn.

You are?

Yeah, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

I grew up in Manhattan, but I live in Brooklyn now.

But I'm in L.A.

quite frequently.

I'm in Clinton Hill.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I love it.

Anyway,

being in L.A., it's a certain type of dystopia, you know.

In New York, people cry on the streets, but here in L.A., you have to cry in your car.

Yeah.

The car is like, it's your little bubble.

You're captain of the universe until you hit traffic.

Until you hit traffic.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I like doing a bit about how I'm very upbeat in the car when

there's no traffic.

And then as soon as I hit traffic, I'm like,

oh, I really fucked my life up, didn't i by not staying with medicine and dentistry

it's like no but like i i when i think about cars and like america is like the premier car culture of the world right we haven't like even if we wanted to build like 10 trillion dollars worth of high-speed rail tomorrow which we should The fact of the matter is, we spent like 100 years making the infrastructure of everything in this country just entirely dependent on cars.

So it's very hard for me to imagine a way out of that.

And I think like a lot of that is like, because America is such a big country, there's this vastness, this openness.

And like with a car, you have this like, at least in theoretically, you have this like ultimate freedom of transit and motion and sort of acceleration.

And like, yeah, like you're driving a nice day, you got the window open.

You really feel like this is what freedom feels like.

And then you hit traffic and you're like, I feel like a fucking rat.

Like, I feel like a fucking insect.

Like, totally.

You're, you're, you immediately like look around and say, I'm not different than any of these assholes who were stuck on the 405 South with me.

Why didn't I fly out of Burbank?

Why do I still go to LAX?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, no, but like, I think a lot of

the rage that comes from driving comes from the commute to work and from being in traffic.

And I think being in traffic forces like this very individualistic American mindset to confront the fact that your time and your life is in fact no more or less important than anyone else's.

And I think that causes people immense frustration and anger a lot of times.

Oh, absolutely.

Absolutely.

And, you know, the public transportation.

One thing I love about New York City, because I go back there a lot lately, is

jump on the subway, you know, it's like easy.

Well, it's like when you arrive at the destination, you can just get out.

You can just walk away.

Whereas with a car, you have this like, oh, here's three tons of steel I need to account for.

Yeah, but also the public transportation here in Los Angeles is terrible.

It's just terrible.

You know, the subways are,

they don't go many places, you know.

It's

super, super dangerous, you know, even more than New York, you know.

It's just the transportation system, like you said, it's all been based around highways and cars out here you know well well any i i think we gotta we gotta wrap it up here but like i said you have you have a new you have a new special out right now it's called the collapse i watch it it's extremely funny it's it's classic it's clack classic peppetone it's classic pepitone fun if you've for anyone out there who's already a fan of yours but if uh if people want to see the special if people want to uh get get your stuff where should they go yeah they could they could go to uh veeps

Veeps.com/slash Eddie Pepatone.

You could pay 12 bucks for it and you get it for seven days.

Or you could do a subscription to Veeps, which has all this stuff on it and have it unlimited.

And then I'm going to, after about a couple of months, I'm going to put it on YouTube.

So that's, yeah, the collapse, I call it.

And it, you know, this society's collapse mirrors my own collapse.

Yeah, I, I, you know, in preparing for the show, I did find an article from the Boston Globe years ago that said that, like, Eddie Pepatone's time has finally arrived, and it only took the total collapse of society.

Yes, yes,

yes, I get kidded about that with my friends.

Yeah,

but thank you so much, Will, for the interview.

Well, thank you, Eddie.

Like I said, I've been a fan for a long time, so really nice to have you on the show.

Great.

Take care, guys.

Cheers, everybody.

Bye-bye.