Felipe Esparza

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David, Felipe Esparza,

is a great stand-up comedian.

Our guest today on Fly Home.

Yeah,

good dude.

I actually

was quite entertained by him.

He had a great story.

And,

you know, that was one of the ones I have to say, I'm not tight with, but I think you had met him.

And I was introduced to him through you as far as his comedy.

And then when I looked him up, I thought, oh my God, this guy has been around doing great.

And it's just one of those blind spots when you're not in the same places as people, but.

He has a huge career.

Huge, huge following.

His story is so interesting because

he came to the border illegally years ago with his mom and his brother.

And I think his brother had to be dressed up as a girl or something.

But anyway, his stories of how he got to America

and how he started his career in America and how he's become so successful.

It's just a great, great ride.

And he's funny and charming as well.

I think you're going to really like him.

Yeah, I had a great time talking to him.

He's a good-looking dude.

If that matters to anyone, it does to me.

everyone very young for his age?

He has a great head of hair.

We couldn't get over it.

Yeah, cool hair and a good attitude.

And I had a lot of fun with him.

So hope you like it.

Here he is.

It's Felipe.

I just thought of a rich person's metric or people have a little extra money.

Either you go to a salon, you go to a barber shop to get haircut, or the haircutter person comes to you.

It's the first sign of having a couple extra bucks in your pocket.

Also, depending on

who you're working with, too.

Because

in Company Central, they'll have like a hairstylist.

But when you're working with like BET or Def Jab, there's like two barbers there from the hood.

There's a barbershop on the set.

You don't even know what's going on.

You sit down and go, and you hear the comedian go, give me a a Chicago fade.

I've heard that.

And I'm like, give me, I'm like, I have long hair.

Give me a cholo number five.

Yeah.

Bump, bump, bump, bum, bump.

Cholo.

And you don't get any kind of food product with that.

You just get hair done.

There's no sense of any sort of food with that.

A cholo.

My first story is stand-up.

My hair was really short, like a gang member.

It was really short.

And then, you know, I just get pulled over on the way home.

So I just started letting it grow.

I just let it grow.

And then

I haven't listed,

I haven't cut it yet.

What length is it past gang member?

Yeah, when does the length of the hair reduce being pulled over?

Oh man, you gotta be like

Bill Burr.

Yeah, officer, I'm some fucking speed in here, all right?

I'm going to the fucking comedy store, all right?

He's aggressive.

listen give me some pickles yeah

you know what drives me out of my mind meet-em-mates get a fucking car i don't need a golf cart give me a pocket ticket you meeter mate meetlehead anyway that's kind of bil barbara

i used to do that i used to do this east coast stand-up but so for our audience why don't we just quickly go yeah

who where you came from and who you are is extraordinary so we've never had a guest quite with your story.

So don't be shy, but yeah, don't be shy.

You grew up in Mexico and you made your way to America and you know, you're incredibly successful.

You play giant places, have a huge amount of fans.

So that's just kind of an American dream, would you call it or a Mexican dream?

Or what is it?

How are you processing it?

I got here when I was like four years old or five.

My brothers and I, with my, with my mom, we came here illegally.

my father was already here living in america and so were all my my dad's relatives they were working for warner brothers um it's funny they were they all had jobs putting the record inside of the

the cardboard they were at the press the record pressing company oh fascinating

That's a good thing.

Someone has to do it.

Dude, it's not bad.

I'm telling you, Felipe, I used to work when I moved to LA.

I tried stand-up.

Of course, I wasn't doing that well because I'm in Glendale, putting the A-team

dolls in boxes in a warehouse to send to anyone who ordered one.

But it was kind of boring.

But every day, I'm like, did they want the bot?

They want the A-team actual figure.

They also want the headband.

Nope, they didn't order that.

So I'd have to figure out from the order what they wanted.

tape it up physically.

So I'm with you, dude.

Geez,

I'm just going to say it.

I pity the fool.

He pity me for sure.

Mr.

T.

I used to work at at the back of

North Broadway, where the Broadway warehouse used to be.

And I used to separate all the clothes hangers, the plastic ones.

Oh, yeah.

You got to keep them separated.

So I was in a room full of hangers, bro.

Like the whole room with hangers.

And my friend and I would just get high during lunch and start grabbing.

hangers all day.

Okay.

Those type of jobs are just mind-numbing.

You have to do something.

We used to take decks at him to wake up.

It was like so stupid, but anything.

Did you ever grab your friend by the scruffies of his neck and say, we got to get out of here, man?

I can't hang here no more.

I don't know.

Can I?

I can't do it.

I can't hang.

So you, when you came across the border, okay, illegally, I'm not going to judge, you know, came across illegally.

How hard was that?

And how old were you?

Were you scared?

You had your little brother with you right was it scary we were kids i don't remember uh being scared i remember being caught

because we made it through the border like the instant right there around san isidro the border we

made it through there

but

there was another uh checkpoint like i guess they were they were medic men or something or but there was like the the sheriff the san clemente Sheriff Department, or somebody had a, there was an extra checkpoint that

that city made.

So they were randomly stopping cars that were on the five south, on the five north.

Right, right.

I guess.

So they stopped us, and our driver was

a Mexican travel agent, you know, a wild coyote, a coyote.

He was a coyote.

My favorite,

yeah, man, it was a Mexican

travel agent.

So he was American.

They let him go.

And my mom and my brothers and I, we got arrested.

And my mom was released to go back to Mexico.

And then we were released like three hours later.

And we crossed the border and we stood there another month figuring out Plan B.

Then we borrowed our cousins.

passports

and it was two boys and one girl on a passport and my mom looked at my brother, my little brother, and said, well, I guess you're going to have to be Patty.

So start scrolling your ass.

What did you do to make him look like his passport photo?

I mean, oh, man, he had to wear a dress for a whole week just to get a character.

Getting character.

Getting character.

Yeah, man.

He went all into it, man.

And when we got to a border, they had like makeup on him and a little dress.

and they asked him what's your name he go my name is patient and he's gay now but you know what he took one for the team yeah that's all that matters that was nice

okay when or we'll get that's a whole other podcast he's gay now starting

uh nothing wrong with any of that but so was he's a he's a hard child by the way Did you, I mean, you're looking at your mom as the adult and she's like sinking.

Are you reading her feelings at that moment?

You know,

like, oh, shit, we're getting caught.

But then really

determine a month later, you go back and then you do this thing and now you're in America.

Yeah.

And

yeah, when do you figure out like you've got this gift of gab for laughter?

Took a while.

We didn't know like, like, we didn't know everything we did

back then was bad.

Nobody like sat us down and said, hey, everything was bad.

Don't do it again.

And we didn't know we were illegal man i remember calling kids illegal and i was illegal

i remember telling kids go back to go back to uh el salvador or go back to wherever you came from and i should be going with them

listen when you get when you come out of school don't talk to strangers don't talk to anybody just run home she's no matter what you're doing in life just run back home and after run back home.

Scary.

Wow.

How long did that go on?

That kind of fear?

When did it turn for you?

I mean,

I don't know.

I guess when

we were in America for a while and

we went back to Mexico to take care of some paperwork and then we crossed the border and we went to

We went back,

we crossed the border and we went to the section for

illegal immigrants, but not the deported ones, I guess.

And we had Mexican ID

and we filed for green cards right there.

How scary.

So you went and it was almost like admitting it.

So you're like, here we're going illegal.

It's hard to get back the second time.

So we had a bunch of,

I don't know what we did to, I know that we had to leave.

We had to,

we self-deported, I guess.

what we did first we went back to mexico on our on our own when we went when we went back and then um i guess like a week later we all came in legally how scary though to go back and go i we know once we go back it could that could be it yeah i forgot that part i never i never mentioned that part about the our voyage that we actually

self uh deported ourselves.

Yeah.

And then we decided to come back in the legal way.

And what growing up in Mexico to that age, and then what was your vibe of America?

And I kind of want to know:

did you go to Disneyland?

I mean, what did you, what was it like?

Was it man?

First of all, when we got here,

the coolest thing was that the bathroom was inside the house because our bathroom was an outhouse.

And you were that was in

the inside bathroom, blew your mind.

Okay.

yeah man and uh we could flush the toilet

do you ever miss an outhouse

we could flush toilet paper inside the toilet we couldn't do that at um well and some houses in mexico they will they'll tell you hey don't don't flush anything in the toilet

literally anything not even poop nothing anything bro put it in no pocket

did you have yeah that's funny because yeah

did you when did you kind of um

sort of feel american or you know what was that

when we were in kindergarten

um we went to we went to um we went to elementary school kindergarten and

all the kids were speaking english and i was the only one who didn't speak english well but like i caught on fast i started watching american shows that's all we watched And we didn't know how to pronounce a lot of words with like,

they had like um a K in the middle

for some reason.

Like, we didn't know how to say Bionic

or

binoculars or any word with a C in the middle like that.

Yeah, it was hard for us to pronounce because we were, my brother would call Bionic woman Balayan Woman.

So, what were you, what were you watching?

I'm sorry, but what shows

we will watch, um,

we will watch um all the shows that were on CBS for some reason, man.

That channel would come in looking good

with no antenna.

Crispy.

So we have no antenna, so whatever channels look good, you stay

on channel nine, Telemundo, of course.

Telemundo, you could break your television, unplug it, and telemundo will still come on.

What about what do you people say they learn from watching TV?

I've been overseas.

I don't learn anything from watching a foreign language, but it must be easy, I guess, to pick up phrases.

Or how do you do that?

Yeah, we watch a lot of movies.

My dad, he likes watching movies, so we will go to a driver's a lot.

And

he likes Clean Eastwood and Stephen Queen and Charles Bronson.

Yeah.

Charles Bronson, but that was where the beanie just like him, even though he was not a vigilante.

And he always looked at the gold.

Charles Bronson.

I saw it.

Yeah.

Yep.

Charles Bronson used to be a big impression to do in the clubs.

70 brought set.

I can't.

I never.

There were some good ones.

You couldn't do it of all people.

Well, I didn't get excited about it.

I just, I took, by the way, I took basically Spanish for like eight years.

And all I know is Donde Estada Biblioteca,

Como Está, y Tu, Mibien, Gracias.

That's a lot.

Mucho Torbajo.

That's much.

Because we work with a lot of people from south of the border

they were they we have skilled gardeners all kinds of people uh so yeah but i wouldn't take their their spanish for granted because my dad uh he dropped out of he dropped out of school in the sixth grade

so his spanish is pretty much

basically as good as any american speaking spanish is it spanglish is that a real thing where it's like i don't know man

in and uh where i grew up they call it Chicanics.

The mixture of Chicano and English.

Chiconics to Chiconics.

Chicanic.

Hey, man.

Like, hey, man, hire the radio.

Hire the radio.

Yeah.

Or they say, oh, it makes English and Spanish.

Oh, right now I have

grand headache.

You know what I mean?

Grande, yeah.

I know some.

Look at that.

Being bilingual and working in both languages, which we get to first one to do a special in both languages.

What can you tell us about English and Spanish?

I mean, is one more romantic?

Is one easier lands harder laughs for you when you do your set in Spanish?

Or is it just

something we have no experience with?

In one language, and they kill the other language.

The phrasing and the timing in English and Spanish is different, right?

I mean,

what happened with me was that a lot of the words that I was speaking in Spanish were chiconics.

You know, like words that a lot of Mexican-Americans in the Southwest have used as Spanish.

But when I went to Mexico, those words don't even exist in a Spanish language.

Like when I was saying,

I was saying, fix my breaks in English.

And in English, in Spanish, I would say, I would add an A-S,

a regulami brecas.

Brecas, it's not even a

Spanish word.

Oh, it's a fake word for breaks.

I don't know how to say breaks in Spanish, apparently.

I was just saying, like, because I know that white people they had an O

after every English word when they can't don't know what to say, like, your sono is not doing his homework.

Yeah, I did.

I did that in Italy.

Yeah, people do that.

We had AS in the beginning when we don't know English word, like Esprite,

you know, or

Excuse me.

So I had to go to Mexico and

I actually started off open micing in Spanish first.

And I started building up a set so I got to one hour when I was comfortable in Mexico.

Wait, so in Mexico, you're doing a Spanish set basically of things.

everyone can relate to there

and then you come over after you got that's an hour it's a lot.

Yeah, I

translated my jokes first of the

hour in English into like in their language they could understand.

Okay.

Except some words were play on words.

So I had to get rid of the whole joke.

Yeah, for sure.

And by the way, this is on Netflix right now.

It was done in 2020.

Bad decisions, English-Spanish versions.

Pretty translate this.

And it's called Mala Deciciones.

Mala decisions.

You know what's funny?

when i was in tijuana mexico a lot of the audience were uh people that were deported by by all the previous presidents there's people there that were deported by president obama there were people that deported from bush people deported from um

from what

i don't know

a lot of clinton gang members was that like a thing hey i'm a clinton man i'm a clinton that deported me yeah did you hang out with the people that were deported by your president yes and i even hung out with a bunch of um military marines that were deported during um the last administration like there's a whole neighborhood with nothing but um deportee

uh military people like people from that fought in korea people who fought in um

in uh the gulf war people who fought in afghanistan iraq but somehow they got deported and then get deported after they do that that's horrible well some of these guys have PTSD, so they never really fixed their papers.

And some of them

are not with it, but they're all, they were all,

they were not born in America, but they were promised citizenship.

Sure.

And some of them they didn't go file.

I know there's one guy that I spoke to, he's 74.

He got pulled over in Echo Park.

because there was a shooting in Echo Park and he was coming out of the grocery store with a gang of milk and the police,

they held, they pulled everybody to the side in that area, and they were checking everybody's IDs.

And he had a, he didn't even know.

He had a deport on site on his ID.

So he went straight to Mexico.

He didn't call the family.

Oh, man.

He was 74.

Yeah.

74?

And he thinks he's just, he's, he's done with all that.

And then they just departed.

Seemed like the dangers to there.

What's your advice for people in South border border now with trump in there stay away come in try to come legally i mean what do you oh man if you're gonna be here in america illegally first of all don't hang around with no gang members don't hang around with anybody with a bald head anybody with a low rider go to work and come straight home straight home tell your kids to don't hang around with bad people

Just do your job and just live like a normal citizen.

And,

you know, if if you ever, you're going to be driving no driver license, man, I will stop at every red light and look both ways.

Even the green lights.

So just be boring, be boring and be simple.

Be boring and they won't get deported.

They won't deport you.

Right.

I mean, ideally, the idea is to get really horrible troublemakers out.

Yeah.

But yeah, I could see getting caught in a crossfire of just again.

I became a U.S.

citizen in October.

Really?

Oh, good job.

Wow.

After all the specials and all the successes, still, they held you out, you know?

You know, those mornings where everything feels like it's moving 100 miles an hour?

Emails are flying in.

You're trying to hit your protein goals.

Somehow you're already running late?

Yes.

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one thing I was kind of interesting.

I don't know if you want to go in this direction, but at some point you were kind of seduced by gang life or went in a gang and went through all that.

So, what was that like?

Was it hilarious?

Oh, when I was a kid,

I hung out with a bunch of kids that were into break dancing at the time.

And they were, we were, we go to bet, we would go to Venice Beach and compete with other kids.

But I was never good at

break dancing, but I was good at shoplifting, you know.

Me too.

So I was like in charge of merch.

So I was in charge of stealing all the white gloves for people and I was selling them to them.

Did you used to carry the cardboard in my break dancing?

Yeah, man.

So after break dancing died out and then crack cocaine moved into our neighborhood,

all my friends got into the same gang except me.

And then they were all like 16 years old, 17, and I avoided them forever forever.

So I turned 19.

I was 20 years old.

I was too old to be in a gang, but they still jumped me in.

Oh,

you know,

it's funny because in this movie, Busboys, when we join to be a bus boy, we get jumped in.

And then one time I quit for an hour and I had to get jumped in again.

I'm like, God, I quit for one hour.

And they're like, that's, you know, the rules.

Spadesu in a movie.

I thought about a, I had a joke about that when people were leaving California to live somewhere else.

I said, you're leaving California.

You should get jumped out first.

Yeah, see, Dana, we know what.

I don't know the lingo.

His movie with Theo Vaughn is you, you guys fleeing to Mexico or something, right?

No, we go, we get stuck at the border on the way to Mexico.

We try to go to Mexico, but we can't get across.

So we work at a little restaurant on the border America.

And

we want to be waiters.

So we get a job as busboys first to move up in three days, but it takes years because we're not any good.

But yeah, everyone there is Spanish.

I mean, most of the cast because we're right, we should have had Felipe in that movie, man.

Oh, we should have.

Actually, I didn't even know

he's too busy.

So, you could have turned it down, it would have been great.

So, wherever you want to go, but I mean, you're in gang stuff, you get to America.

I mean, I just like when did you do your first set in America?

Where was it?

Oh, it was um,

it was in 1993, probably

or 94 at the Natural Fudge

Theater.

And it's on Fountain Avenue in Silver Lake.

Natural Fudge Theater.

From that church that Tom Cruise goes to.

Oh, yeah, Scientology.

Scientology.

Yeah, that one.

I know it well.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That huge building, you mean?

That monstrosity, huge monstrosity.

Yeah, right across the street from that.

It's a theater.

It's called a Fountain Theater now, but it was called before it was called

Natural Fudge.

It was a vegan.

It was a vegan, vegetarian

coffee shop.

I have no idea that it was vegan until

after I left.

So

it was an open mic on Monday nights with punk rock music.

So they have a two comedians go up, and then when the comedians are performing, the punk band is behind them setting up their band.

Oh my God.

So then like two bands will perform punk music.

And then, while they're taking their shit down, three more comedians were performing

for the punk audience, which is probably not the best.

Yeah, a lot of punk.

Hollywood Runaways, a lot of kids.

I think it was 18 and over.

It seems like a route.

Jamie Kenny did there.

Jamie Kennedy, yeah.

Great comment.

I met Jamie Kenny did there.

Alonzo Bowden, Brian Holtzman.

Met a lot of people there.

Do you remember that first scene?

Do you remember what line killed?

Did you have a bit that worked or were you humiliated?

Or what was it like?

I had a line that killed, but it was.

Oh, I said that

it says Romeo and Juliet.

If it was shot in my neighborhood, and then I pretended that I pretended Romeo was like a crackhead.

Like I was shaking, you know, with my elbows.

I was acting like a crackhead, you know, and I was biting my fingers and I was looking at the floor like a crackhead does, taking rocks to kill the real part.

And then I would say,

and I would say, I would yell out, who's there, you fucking bitch.

Where's my fucking body?

That one sounds like it would get a big laugh in a rowdy club.

It's high energy.

Yeah, it got a laugh there from the people that were homeless.

And then the owner of the place, his name was Johnny Roberts.

He had a local access show at Tuesdays at 10 p.m.

on channel three

on

cable, some cable network.

It was just a free public access show.

And I didn't know what public access was.

I didn't have cable.

He was talking to me and going, kid, that was amazing.

I want you to be at my show.

We tape every

Wednesday morning.

It's a big comedy show.

I thought I'd made it, right?

I thought it was going to be like one of those.

Yeah.

You thought it was evening at the Apollo.

but it was local actors

and um

and i looked at the way other comedians were dressed and i and i went to a thrift store and i bought like a uh uh 80s a coat a jacket and i was trying to find a tie to wear like an 80s comic but i couldn't find anything and then the guy at the thrift store he said i don't have a tie but try this on and i didn't know what it was then i remember it was somebody told me it's called uh

i don't know uh Bobo or

Bobo tie.

Yeah.

Yeah,

it was like a metal thing.

I look like Fossy Bear if you were Native American.

It's a good look.

So, so, but that sounds like a big deal, though.

You're on a TV show, so it's not a big deal, but in your head, it's a compliment.

Like, hey, I did a set, they're asking me to come on this show.

We all, we all did that, that era.

I mean, you should have a you should have a show show called Loco Access.

Local Access, yeah.

It's not bad.

So I met these guys there, and then they told me to go to another place

that does comedy on Saturday nights called Waldo's Comedy Station.

And then that was right on Highland on Highland.

Back then it was called Hollywood Hotel.

So we did comedy there and then I finally made it to a comedy store.

How much longer?

Oh, to do audition for Mitzi.

How'd that go?

The original room?

Was it Mitzi back then?

Yeah, it was five years later.

It was like 90

or something.

Mitzi's still there in her booth.

This comedy store is huge.

What happened?

Not that many people are going to the comedy store back then.

Not like now, in our way.

Not like now.

Oh, dead.

It was a convenience.

They used to bring their dogs on stage.

I mean, you were back then, man, it was like,

if you wanted to be a comedian, like if you stuck around those days, you're probably doing well right now.

Because

I remember it was like so many people were getting bumped when I first started off, like really bumped.

Like

I remember there was a big showcase

and a bunch of comedians, they were supposed to be seen by Mid Sea Shore, and she didn't show up, so the showcase was canceled.

But there were a lot of people who actually made that trip from other parts of the country, yeah,

Los Angeles.

Man, I only took one bus, and nobody knew what I was doing.

But no, people from Jersey, they call their parents, and um,

and then, um, the dice man shows up and does five hours on the stage, didn't even get to go up.

Dice, dice, Andrew Dice Clay.

Oh my my god

oh and put the second around on the red

yay oh yeah

and then like five hours i was waiting i i didn't leave right at the top i'll go up

and then uh after four

he does four

hours who

Eddie Griffin.

Oh, Eddie Griffin.

It's a fucking marathon.

So it's a nine-hour show.

You've seen two comics.

Okay, who's next?

Yeah.

And then at at 1:45 in the morning, bro, I go up at 1.45 right before Robert William Abadaya.

Did you say I only have two and a half hours of material because I'm new?

Yeah,

three minutes.

Did you, dude?

I let's do a side note, Dana.

For the people listening, it's not crazy to think because I was from Arizona.

And if someone said, Mitzi will see you this Monday, I would fly out.

It's too important

to have someone in the business see you or Bud Friedman at the improv.

So that's a really, really big deal.

I understand why everyone came.

And if she casually didn't show up, what a heartbreaker.

And also we all got bumped up in San Francisco where I started.

You know, they'd say Robin's here, the great Robin Williams.

And I thought I was going to maybe have a 9:30 spot.

And then Robin would do three hours.

Oh, I can't believe it.

Oh, her.

Someone's on essay.

Oh, look,

oh, spaceship.

Look.

Oh, it's a frisbee.

But anyway, he was brilliant and he would levitate.

I call it levitate the room.

He would kill so hard that you're like, fuck, I got to work harder.

Did you see someone early in that time and went, damn, that guy or woman is at another level?

Did you have somebody who kind of blew you away and made you want to get better, right?

I saw, what's his name?

Dane Cook.

Dane Cook and Dane Cook World when he when he became kind of at his height.

He was doing um

Whatever it was.

Sufi.

What was it?

I don't know the bit, but I don't know the bit.

It looks funny.

I like it.

He's flipping you off.

I don't know how to do it, but he'll be like,

you know how people

they flip you off.

Oh, I see.

They go fuck you.

That's right.

Fuck that.

It should be a super fuck you cover.

Sufi.

Oh, yeah.

He think he told us about this, Dane, huh?

Yeah, I think that's that.

He did like that, that, right?

Yeah, yeah.

He did that.

And he would storm around the stage.

He was super physical, hyper-confident, really clear with his jokes.

And yeah, he's that highly skilled to follow that, you know?

Yeah.

And

I remember people would have it tattooed.

Women would have it tattooed

on the back of the butt, like a

tram stamp, the Sufi.

Oh, boy.

Oh, interesting.

Did you have women trying to hit on you?

Or what?

I know you're happily married now.

We don't want to go into it, but

some women love funny men.

Hell yeah, man.

I have people tattooed my name on their back.

I'm not even famous.

You had a young lady.

You look, yeah.

By the way, he looks young.

I thought you were like 28 or something.

I had a woman in Las Vegas.

She told me to autograph her arm and she was like 21.

And i was like 40.

and um i uh

i tattooed her i wrote my name floppy on her arm right

she had a little chubby arm you know it was getting my pen was getting sure it's hard to do yeah yeah so i wrote felipe on it

and then later on she sent me a photo of her in a thong with um

not showing her booze but showing her ass and then her arm and she had tattooed right there felipe she tattooed over your autograph yeah okay yeah

That's that's something people do.

I like that.

You want to bring her home to mom.

That's somebody, you know, hell yeah, man.

Especially with her next boyfriend.

So also,

so then you're at least 40.

So you're 45.

You look you look 27 now.

Yeah, you do look young.

No, I'm not 45.

I'm 55.

Get out of town.

I just told Dana, you look so young.

I don't know.

Black don't crack, beige don't age,

and white ain't right.

Also, I don't drink, so that helped too.

Yeah, that, yeah, the booze face, it can really age you, you know.

Um,

so, so now, I mean, just because we have limited time, you really, you're doing, you're doing the clubs.

I'm just curious, when's the first time it became your job?

Like, okay, I'm, I'm a stand-up, and that's how I earn money.

I don't need any side hustle.

How long?

Um,

well,

I had child support.

They were coming after me and they were garnishing my paychecks.

So I was making half.

So that kind of helped me decide to quit my regular job since I wasn't making no money anymore at my regular job.

So I just went straight to doing stand-up.

And then, like, in 96,

they were doing this big stand-up show in San Antonio, Texas.

Some guy named Jeff Valdez and the owner of the River Center Comedy Club,

Kylene

and Jeff

Borshaw, I don't know their names, but they produced a show for Showtime called the Latino Laugh Festival, hosted by David Fuentes and Paul Rodriguez.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Because they try to grab all the Latino comedians they can find.

And I was one of the younger ones that actually auditioned for the show and got it.

I met comedians there who didn't know were Latino, like Greg Giraldo and John Mendoza.

Was Giraldo?

I didn't know those guys.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I didn't know Grego.

I was very shocked to see John Mendoza because I always thought he was Irish, but I guess he's Puerto Rican and Irish.

And he was one of my favorite comics.

And Paul Rodriguez was the original Latino comic, at least at the improv.

You know, he was for the store.

It was.

The American Express card.

What did he bring?

A knife with him?

Part of the videos always talk and sentence it with a big word, so they're going to be like,

Cussing Quintley.

Consequently, like I said, you do it over their head.

You can, I know the first one I heard say stuff like that.

You can laugh now, but my cousin Julio is stealing your hubcaps.

Yeah, that brought down the house at the improv in 1985.

Yeah, man.

I remember the first time I saw him with a glimpse of television before I wanted to be a comedian.

My dad was like,

he would change the channels from CBS, Deuce of Hazard,

all the way back to the UHF channel 34.

But

he could go left, just go left and boom, he's there, right?

He's there.

Boom.

He'll be at Channel 34.

Yeah.

He'd like to mess with us.

and he'll turn the knob on to see all the channels so he could see um all the all everything we're missing

so so what what what you look like um leonardo de caprio in that movie pointing at this

mexican on tv

and uh rodriguez he was doing uh his set um on that show aka pablo he said uh the bit was um

He goes, I remember when my family came over from Mexico, it was 17 of us in an inner tube.

And we were singing, Ain't No Stopping Now.

We're on the move.

Yeah, he always killed.

So, so last comedy standing, you make your way, you're going through the clubs, you're doing well, and then something happens.

It's a big move, big moment, right?

Winning.

Oh, yeah, man.

When I won last comedy standing, it was $250,000.

And my son's mom fought for child support the next day.

Oh, they wanted a little slice.

slice wet.

Last baby mama standing.

Dude, she's like, we won.

Yeah, man.

Daddy's funny.

We're going to get a swimming pool.

Finally, he's responsible.

Yeah, that's a big one to win that.

And then Last Comic Standing.

Is that the one?

I think Todd Glassy, you don't remember this, but

shout out to Peter Ingalls, the producer of the Last Comic Standing and Save by the Bell.

He passed away, I think, a week ago.

Oh, okay.

Well, get that shout out to him somehow.

And

also, so you get that.

Now, what do you, are you immediately a headliner or were you already a headliner?

Yes.

As soon as I win Let's Comment Standing, we go on an 80-city tour all over America.

Oh, wow.

Yeah, so that's tough.

We're hitting

Inglewood, Pennsylvania, bro.

Places I only hear the songs.

Yeah.

Traffic reports.

So you, wait, yeah, how do you do it?

Do you go with some other

runners up and you're like the headliner?

Yeah,

all the other people that were on the show, I think it was Mike DiStefano, Roy Woods Jr., Mike Kaplan, and

the other guy who was second place, Tommy Jonagan.

We all went on tour.

We all were doing 20 minutes on stage.

for 80 cities on a tour bus.

Was it a bus?

Okay, a bus.

Wow, those guys are good, too.

Does anyone start getting too good on the trip?

Like, or do they rotate you?

Are you always

everybody?

It was the order how we won.

So the last

that's tough.

Literally, the last comic standing.

Yep.

Did anyone kill before you?

And as you're crossing onto the mic to close the show, they just kind of say to you, Follow that, motherfucker.

Did that ever happen?

Yes.

You know what?

What was saving me from that was there was an intermission.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, so back to the final,

he was murdering.

He passed away also.

God bless you.

He had HIV and

on the show, he had HIV also.

And he was an ex-heroin addict.

So he was all messed up.

But he ended it up.

I thought he was my biggest competition because he was likable on stage.

And his type of comedy.

is very popular now.

So he was doing a lot of dark comedy back then.

That's kind of it's like acceptable now and um he was likable and i really thought he was gonna win but this guy was murdering bro like he will when we did san francisco we did the film war i remember him saying i knew there was a lot of gays in san francisco but god damn i tripped over a dick on the way in here you know

and everybody went crazy ah yeah he would say stuff like uh

he will say stuff like um

stuff like uh oh man i got into a fight with guatemal guy and um he said you i'm not guarding

because

i'm puerto rican listen motherfucker i'm not i'm not anthropologist i don't know what the he's saying

when you go on these tours so you get 250 to win and do you get a set fee every night as part of your deal to tour or is it partiary or 250 because you guys should make some money we had um it was 250 000 for the winning the show

plus um

whatever they were giving us to headline was

$3,000 for me.

Some show $3,000 for one show.

$3,000?

So you're playing pretty big.

You're playing theaters, $2,000.

Places that are normal comic headlining by himself will probably make $52,000, maybe.

Oh, shit.

Yeah, because only if it were 3,000 theaters, 4,000 theater, they're all sold out.

And you're only getting three, but so they're going to make some money too.

Yeah,

normally you'd make a lot of money.

That's another $240,000

on top of the $250,000 pre-tax.

You're looking just south of 500K.

Yeah, and also

I had a development deal with NBC that went nowhere.

Oh, but you get paid up front for that, right?

Yeah.

That's nice.

It's nicer if they find a show for you, but yeah.

That's for the people at home, they give you money up front to hold you for a year to maybe find a show for you, something like that.

Yeah,

I had a TV deal with a comedian named Dustin Ibarra with ABC.

And they made us money not to work.

It's funny.

I never thought that they'll pay you money not to work and pay you money for saying no.

Yes, they call it a holding deal.

They take you off the field.

All right, Dana, you know, I'm always dragging around and

I always got a five-hour energy on me.

Mm-hmm.

I know that.

Yeah, they're either in my sock, in the car, they're somewhere.

You keep them everywhere.

I give them a little slurp.

I don't really shoot the whole thing like some people do on an empty stomach.

I think I eat a little bit, a couple sips, just like coffee.

Just keep, just keep something going every day.

I don't.

I'm actually,

I don't want that much.

energy at once.

It's five hours, so I kind of, you know, that's what most people do.

But I sip it overall.

There's a lot of different flavors.

Yeah, there's one called Confetti Craze that tastes like a good birthday cake, which they're all pretty good, but this tastes like a hot and buttery flavor here to let you be unapologetically extra and unstoppably energized.

Actually, big birthday energy, wherever you go.

The shots are reasonable.

You don't have to chug a full bottle or anything.

You just run around with that big birthday energy.

Yeah.

And

you can plan your confetti party at www.5houenergy.com or Amazon.

That's available now.

You know what I mean?

So

you can get on 5-Hour Energy.

That's the number five, our Energy.com or Amazon.

At least your big birthday party energy.

As much caffeine as 12 ounces of your fancy coffee, but zero sugar and zero sugar crash.

So yeah, and I'm not like a coffee guy.

So this is kind of better for me.

You're a five-hour energy confetti craze guy.

Five-hour energy confetti craze flavor is available online.

Head to www.5hourenergy.com or Amazon to order yours today.

My wife's in-laws came to visit, and they're in their 80s, and they're Irish.

And they didn't, they, we wanted to put them up somewhere.

And so we, we got an Airbnb and we went to it.

It was right in the little town, and it was spectacular.

It was just amazing.

And they loved it.

And so they had privacy in their time.

They could walk around the little town.

And we didn't have to put them up here and have someone say, Do you know, could I, where would I get a towel if I needed a towel?

You know, that kind of thing.

Where do you keep your shallele?

Could I get a washcloth, please?

But anyway, where do you keep your potatoes?

They were really,

this goes to Ireland, you know.

No, but they're, they're incredibly sweet and they had a great time.

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Now, by the way, a little birdie told me, a gentleman told me that you had a run-in with Eddie Murphy.

What was that?

What was that about?

Oh, man.

I was in a set of you people,

Jonah Hill movie.

Jonah Hill was recent.

Yeah.

At Eddie Murphy, we're like in a stripper scene in Hollywood, a bunch of strippers.

And man, one of those strippers, one of those strippers on the movie, an actual stripper, shouldn't have given somebody a laptop for two grand on a set when nobody was around.

Horny ass bitch.

Horny ass bitch.

That's a special name.

That's your next name.

Yeah, man.

So

Eddie Murphy walks in and he looks right at me.

He goes, man, you're a funny motherfucker, man.

And I'm like, oh, man, just shit at myself.

And I forgot.

I had one line in the movie and I forgot it when he told me that.

Oh, so he knew you that's great yeah and he is

yeah he's cool and then um the next day told me he'll come up to me hey man wasn't that rad the way eddie murphy told you were funny in front of everybody

and then yeah that was cool wasn't that rad and then andrew schultz he mentioned on his podcast that that was cool And the director of the movie came up to me and said that was cool.

And then the next day he comes back to do the same scene and he tells me hello only.

Not everybody, just telling me hello.

Whoa.

And then the next day, same thing.

Then I'm getting paranoid.

You know, I'm like, okay, man, you're trying to get everybody in this set to hate me now.

Yeah, I'm not liking you already because of the scene.

Hey, Eddie, could I get a You're a Funny Motherfucker just to start?

You don't have to do it, but if I could get a hey, you're a funny motherfucker.

No, you go.

Tell this guy he's okay, too.

He has like three people that look like him on the set.

I don't know, like,

you're going to be nice to me.

Really?

Because of the fear of being shot or something.

He's got look-alikes.

Yeah, he has like stand-ins and

when you read the lines to Eddie Murphy, like you're,

he's reading lines to you, but when it's your turn to get the camera, he leaves, and then you get a stop man.

Oh, you get the other guy.

Oh, really?

That's that's kind of a movie, a movie star move.

Catch y'all later.

He gets to do that.

So now we're at a point where this is pretty, you've done a lot since 2017 these four

four specials in seven years the current one on netflix right now raging raging fool

and by the way i just want to ask you something stylistically and when it started because i really like the way you move on stage like you're

you're telling jokes and you're moving forward

and then you're moving backward And then you're moving.

A lot of guys go side to side or just stick to the mic.

But there's this little kind of physical thing thing you do almost like a boxer you kind of back up yeah you come in you land it and then

you do this move back it's it's it's pretty cool to watch it's a little bit like you're dancing up there so when did that come in or was it just someone pointed it out to you or you just do it organically that i was nervous before

when i was when i when i was on last comment standing i had a i had a coat with a little tiny tie and i had a pocket and i used to always hold on to the pocket and move it like this you know the way Rodney, Daniel, go,

yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I get no respect.

I was an ugly baby, I tell you, when I was born, the doctor slapped my mother.

Hey,

we love him.

So, so, from nervousness, you did that.

And now that you're confident, you just sort of kept it as a as a signature in a way.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And also,

I tried to do it so much because I feel like if I know the joke is funny, I start moving fast like I'm, like a pitcher giving away his knuckleball.

Yeah.

Yeah, we all have our way.

David, it's funny when you got a bit in your act that you know it's going to kill or you think it is.

You give a big wind up, it doesn't work.

You go, what the fuck?

I think you stay quiet.

You slow down when, David, when your punchline is going to come.

I feel like when you, when the big punchline is going to come,

maybe with your perfect timing, you do your stand-up timing.

But I noticed that you start to get a little quiet and then there's like a big big explosion.

David will modulate that way, and he's never thirsty up there, as the people would say.

No, he's so funny.

Like, I remember watching your young comic show when you're doing the special,

you saw you two, and you had little bullshit seats right here, but you were way over there, and they were you didn't know what the fuck they were saying.

Oh, he was yelling, no war, and I was yelling, no war.

I didn't know what he meant.

And like, there's so many, like, oh man, not as the comic, like me, like, there's so many tags left.

There's more to the chunk you could have done.

Oh, yeah, I kept going.

He takes that shit out of me.

My favorite one is,

oh, man,

a woman

feels a sharp pain in her hand while she's doing dishes.

Six miles away, her daughter is giving somebody a handjob.

A hand job.

Oh, my God.

That was Time Life Books.

A woman doing the dishes feels

a cramp in her hand.

I feel like you may have been.

That's great.

That's a great memory.

That's a good memory.

I mean, you're kind of maybe influenced by Dave in the sense that you have a high ratio of laugh points and punchlines in your stories.

Like, boom, boom, boom.

Consistently, you know, and David does tell a story, but just subtly starts building all the, all the punchlines.

The masseus bit you're doing.

And you can have little tent poles in it before you get to like the big ending.

It keeps him around.

That's the hard part, though.

Like

one of my specials because I remember I saw a woman with a tattoo and she had a Ouija board tattoo,

like a Ouija board tattoo, and her back was really dark.

And I could just, I was like, oh man, imagine being well, who am I?

What's my name?

You gotta hold her back, like, all right, let me let's find out, baby, who the fuck you are?

Why does it have to be bitch who the fuck you are?

Hi, hi, ma'am.

Let's check this out.

but uh yeah that was so

good lord i don't know look at this i'm looking at everything well you did a lot it's nice to uh meet you finally uh and uh this meeting is great and uh thank you for coming on look at you got so much four specials is a lot i remember um you um when um when um when i i remember like um when i was bummed out about oh man then i headlining me oh you know when you get when you go to the 12 year mark when you see all your friends making it and you're not headlining oh yeah can i remember you said david that um you had to leave the tempe improv and go make it so dan muir could headline you

ah god the old because i'm from tempe it was even more embarrassing yeah yeah sometimes you just don't but sometimes you know you think you have longer material and it's not as good you know it's you think you've got an hour and other people like i don't think you do and so yeah or you have to be pretty you have to be a little harder on your material so you go i got a good

because you can do a great hour and the next time you can do your set and it's like 46 because you didn't get as many laughs you're like oh shit i don't think i have and the pit and the waitresses are putting down the checks oh and you're like oh i got one minute left

they're doing math during your closer

checks 20 give it to me i'll do the math checks go out right toward the end of your act and then you gotta you get like a built-in lull while they try to figure out who's paying for the potato skins.

That's a hard one.

You got to get past that when you're headlining.

You're like, shit, I got to stay alive during this.

Or the comedian before you, you bring an opener that's a killer.

Oh, yeah.

They give you an opener and a middle that kills.

I, when you do good as a middle, that was my problem.

Is I was doing good as a middle, going, I could headline.

And you get, and then I'm following a good middle, which is hard.

And also, you've got the checks to deal with.

And you're like, oh, shit, I don't think I'm ready for that.

You realize you picked up on more chick as a middle hanging over the bathroom than a headline.

Oh, that's true.

It's kind of hanging.

You stand by the door when everyone leaves.

Hey,

did you like the middle?

All right.

Well, thank you, Philippe.

Well, just for one minute, because he'll be listening to this.

We have a mutual friend.

So Larry Bubbles Brown,

who's the famous San Francisco comedian who I've known for years, really good friends.

Tours with Felipe offered him a lot of opening spots.

And he's someone with a, he sort of plays a sad sack character.

And after each line, you know,

I lost my identity or someone stole my identity.

Now they can't get laid.

So

let me give you your, what's your, how do you do it?

How do you do his man?

Mah.

Man.

There's another one.

I forgot how he says.

I don't know.

I can't remember his jokes right now.

There's another guy that that's friends with him.

He's from Minnesota.

And they have a kind of like still, he's more darker.

His name is Chuck Bartel.

And he's dark.

He opens up for Tom Papa sometimes.

Oh, Tom Papa.

Yeah, but this guy, Chuck Bartell, he has no social media.

Like you can't even find him.

But he has very dark humor.

He has a joke where he says that

What did they say?

Oh, I got kicked out of a Chinese restaurant for, oh,

I forgot my reading glasses.

And I went to a Chinese restaurant, and they kicked me out for squinting.

Chuckbartell.com.

Check him out.

Yeah, find him.

Myrrh!

Sony, are you?

I took me

to

open up in Hawaii at the Blue Note.

And the whole time we were there, he had a hernia.

Well, he still has the hernia.

He's afraid to get surgery, right?

But I'll be with a hooker anytime.

Merr.

I got a myrnia.

All right.

Thanks, Philip.

Thanks, Philip, Faye.

Thanks for having me.

This has been a presentation of Odyssey.

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Fly in the Wall is executive and produced by Dana Carvey and David Spade, Jenna Weiss-Berman of Odyssey, and Heather Santoro.

The show's lead producer is Greg Holtzman.