Dennis Miller pt 2

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So Dana, we're excited to have our first repeat guest on Flying the Wall, Dennis Miller, who we both love, grew up with. And you knew him before I did, and you guys are great friends.
And we're all- We go back to the beginning. I remember playing at a comedy club with Dennis Miller in 1981, the Comedy Magic Club.
When I first got to know him, he says, I got no gigs, Carvey. Got no gigs.
No gigs. By the way, he's probably the second most person you do on the show.
Who's number one? Is it Trump or Biden or what? I would say know but uh dennis is a close second and uh it's fun to try to process the way his mind thinks when you think of a thing it'd be like carvey and spundley doing the classic intro a little long on the keep cop you know what i mean so but his mind well anyway you'll enjoy this because a couple years have gone by so there's just a lot of stuff to talk about and his mind is uh razor sharp and really fun to listen to sharp we cover a lot of bases and we mostly just crack up yeah we mostly just so you're just uh you'll just watch me and dana basically just listen to dennis crack up and i will say the one and only i I mean, his, he has a singular voice in standup, which is amazing. The one and only Dennis Miller.
Hey, Davey, what's that? Enter the dragon skateboard. What are you fucking 60? You're 60 years old now? Dennis, I'm a skater at heart.
Let me get a hat on. I look like a man.
No way. We're not even showing this part, boss.
Oh, we are? No. You look good, though.
What do you mean? My hair looks all fucked up. It's up to you.
But yeah, this is just audio. So, Spudley, I'll start you off by putting you on comfortable home ground.

As the great Jim Kelly said, ghettos are the same all over the world.

And he flipped an ollie.

Okay.

Jim Kelly, the quarterback.

I'm sorry.

Who is that?

There was a guy in Enter the Dragon.

And at the beginning, he's riding a junk. And he looks around around and he goes, kiddos are the same all over the world.
That's fantastic. And then an Ollie is a skateboard trick, Dana.
Wake up. I know.
I am waking up. Are you kidding? All right, boys.
Let's rock this. Who played the bad guy? What actor played the bad guy in Enter the Dragon? I don't know.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. No, that was him.
No, it was John somebody. He had kind of a comb over a good actor anyway.
I remember Joseph Weissman played Dr. No, and he was in Detective Story with Kirk Douglas, and I think they patterned Hong after him.
Anyway, let's go on with the air. No, this is what we're doing.
This is great. This is the beef of, yeah.
I'm grading this as A-plus podcasting so far. I auditioned for Dr.
Yes, and my whole part got cut out. Spade, your hair looks good, man.
What are you doing? My hair looks good today. Why are we on fucking camera? Jesus.
I know. He's got volume.
He's got lift. He's got something going on.
You too? Jesus. I'm sitting over.
I look like... Okay.
Here it goes. Look at my hair.
Everybody else looks good. I was the first one in on plugs, and they're not working for me.
We're going to... We'll do a whole thing.
You know, we just had Joel McHale on. Yeah.
And his hair looks great. And he fully admits he's got more plugs than the last two minutes of car show.
Yeah. Jesus.
It's your joke. That's a dentist joke.
A classic. How many times do I do dentist jokes? Are we on the air, by the way? Yeah, yeah.
Okay. Yeah.
So I was on the Tonight Show one night after I got my plugs. I was talking to Jay and we had a fallow moment, as it were, because they had nothing to plug.
So ironically, I said, hey, Jay, I just got hair plugs. He's nice and hair looks great.
And I said, no, I'm telling you, I got hair plugs and I'm healed up now. And I want to show them off.
So I went up to the camera, the number one camera, you know, put my head down. I said, I've got around 5,200 plugs here and came back and Jay said, you're not kidding.
I said, no, no. And the next day I got calls from some of the most famous craniums in the world asking me where, you know, I won't betray their trust, even though some of them have passed on now, but saying, where did you get your plugs? And I, they said, do they have a back door? I said, yeah, but why use the back door? Just go get hair plugs if you need hair plugs.
And the guy, my doctor eventually called me when I needed some more. And he said, you're comped.
Don't pull coin in my town. I've gotten so many, you know, recommendation heads off you.
You reorientated the skulls of several hundred men in Southern California. And that is if you have your legacy is one the all-time great comedians, but this legacy we've heard about today, helping people with their appearance, their self-esteem.
I'm calling myself happy and I'm glad this was air. Well, like anything like plastic surgery or something, you notice the bad ones, but there's so many people that have different things they've done that you just would never know.
And I just go, that guy looks pretty good. Yeah.
Ellen Burstyn always looked great. I consider myself now in retirement, I consider myself a, not a life coach, but rather a life assistant coach where I don't have anything.
I don't speak to the press on a daily basis. I have nothing to do with the overall organization, but I consider myself the strength coach.
I hired a life assistant coach a little cheaper. I just stole your joke, switched it, and it's in my act now.
Remember, we used to call that bit surfing where somebody jumped on a bit. I had that song on my show where you go two tags on every bit yeah oh they're waxing up a premise and taking mom down to the beach bit surfing yeah yeah yeah that happens if comedians are together i think the uh the rule is the unwritten rule like if you start a bit just you're talking and people kind

of tag it just in conversation i think if you tag someone if i tag someone they're talking and they say oh i might use that i say go ahead it's you started the premise i'll throw you whatever i can shovel on this fire and take it right yeah jimmy valily it was like the red a dare that he would airdrop in on any main premise and start tagging it like floyd may

when they're working this It was like the Red Adair. He would airdrop in on any main premise and start tagging it like Floyd Mayweather working the speed back.
Did Red Adair help cap the oil rigs that were on fire in like Iran or something? Well, he would do that thing that Duke Wayne did in the Hellfire or Hellfighters movie, where if you knock the feed of the air out for just a millisecond, the whole thing stops.

So you have to get up close, dynamite it, stand behind something and have the dynamite suck the air out for a second.

And then that puts the fire out in an oddly ironic way.

And you have to remember the dynamite was invented by Alfred Nobel, the Nobel Peace Prize, because his original invention had croaked so many people that he karmically worried whether he would ever get into heaven. So he made a modicum of a donation in perpetuity to have a peace prize.
The only reason he did it is because he invented dynamo wow that i i i'm speechless i did not know well cliber you remember when we were on the road used to san jose and you'd go to the winchester mystery house certainly oh yeah right it was this house that had it was like an escher print that had stairwells and chutes and ladders. And the reason the woman, she was of the Winchester, she married a Winchester.
So many people had been killed with a gun. She was afraid that the spirits were going to come back and get her.
So she built a house that was one big baffle chamber so the ghosts would run into dead ends. Because, you know, that's how you figure out how to stay alive after you're dead, is that can't figure a fucking hallway out so anyway but do you remember the catchphrase of the local tv which was in the san francisco bay area about the winchester mystery house it was always winchester mystery house has sounded 10 miles south of sanos a open and then she would say keep building keep building and that would crush would crush.
Did you have local Pittsburgh bits that would only work in Pittsburgh? Well, to some degree, but I remember most from New York because that cat out on the island was always pushing, Carbell was always pushing cookie puss and you had crazy Eddie selling the stereo equipment. So that's when I was first indoctrinated into local catchphrases.

And I remember SNL knocked off the most famous one, which was a thing of about what played the Beatle music on Broadway.

And it was called Beatlemania.

And then Jim Downey, I think, one dozen of Traceback, all roads lead to Downey comedically.

He wrote that great bit called Beatlemania mania.

It's not the Beatles, but the next best thing.

And then he changed it.

It's not Beatlemania, but it's the next best thing.

And it looked like a copy of a copy, you know,

at a Kinko's or something where the guys were even a little more

washed out and loosely connected to the actual beat of beatlemania guys so very funny what's your so let me try you spade first you're playing chicago what's your local reference up front for a laugh my local reference up front is about arizona and then i realized quickly it doesn't travel like that was the big wake-up call i'd never done S when I did SNL. I'd only been in New York once in my life.
So all, all my jokes weren't working and I didn't really have any clubs to go in. Once you're at SNL, you're locked in that dungeon.
So I didn't do much standup except for maybe on the college gigs and weekends now and then, but man, I would do literally,

I would say streets in Arizona.

I would say, hey, I was on a Camelback, you know, over with the hookers on Van Buren.

Yeah, there you go.

What's going on?

It's a surefire.

But that's in Arizona.

And then I get out there and I go, I'm not funny.

I just know my area.

It's just different, you know?

I had a go-to adaptation that's politically incorrect, but I'd take the name of the city,

extrapolate it to sound like an Indian name, you know, Fresno from the old Indian name Fresanaka, which means drop your shorts. We don't have much time.
Crushed beyond, beyond and beyond. I couldn't follow myself.
They love you. I just said, thank you and good night.
You couldn't follow your own joke?

Jimmy Stewart blowing himself next,

and then I'd just leave the stage.

I could not follow myself.

I remember one night,

Randy Quaid and I were coming out of,

we were coming out of the comedy store,

and we went past that train car up there

that sells burgers.

You remember that? Carnies. What was it called, Spudley? Carnies, I think.
Yeah. Carnies, yeah.
And we're walking past Carnies. And when you were talking about Jimmy Stewart, the original guy who did that, his name was Ron Jeremy.
And he was a porn star who autocollated himself. That's what he was known for.
He comes up and he's a big fan.

He's talking to Randy about the last detail.

Randy was so great in that.

And then he's telling me some of my jokes.

We're both like looking at him. Oh, thank you, sir.

That's nice.

And as soon as he takes two steps away from us, Randy and I simultaneously simultaneously look at each other and go that's the guy who blows himself he wasn't even out of your shop we couldn't wait to tell each other oh man i saw him at the rainbow all the time literally everyone from 1990 to 98 that's doing well is at the rainbow. Obviously me included.
I was like, why was I there? Oh, but I saw like, you know, Brett Michaels and those guys, they just, and they, you know, there's something about old people, not old people, but people that dress the way they were when they're, they're most famous. So like they'll have the same hat or the same look or the same hair, the same exact outfit.
So you go, Oh, that's that guy. You know what I mean? Was the rainbow, the joint, um, like below there was a private club called on the rocks.
Wasn't that? No, that's a Roxy. Yeah.
Very close though. That's all that same little run there.
Where they're going to mow it down soon and make a club monaco well they better not do the whiskey because that's where the lizard king made his name so you've got to leave the whiskey up it should be whiskey lizard king sorry who's the lizard king wait a second what are you doing you tease him jim morrison yeah sure oh jim morrison is the lizard because of the the because of the leather outfit? You know, I never got Jim's curriculum vitae to see exactly why he named himself that. But yeah, I think there was some story about him out on a highway and he ran into an Arapaho, crossed over and head-on into a telephone pole or something and died.
And he saw the guy's spirit came into him and he saw a lizard on their throat. Something like that.
Just another day. That was the plot of Wayne's World 2, I believe.
I thought he had a big dick. We had a guy playing Jim Morrison in the desert.
Okay, fun fact. Bill T.
Craigie was disproportionately wrinkled for his age. And that's where the phrase Craigie came from.
Because Craigie is a great... How's he aging? He's looking a bit Craigie.
Craigie. Craigie, you mean? Craigie's not a word.
Craigie's a word. He's saying it with an E.
It's with an A, right? I just made that up to get things going. Oh, okay.
Jesus them have them loosely based in reality for god's sake you know mr craigie i'm thinking craigie is in fact craigie that's the joke isn't it ironic i'm glad we're just on audio today because my hair, I'm looking at it.

And you guys both, Carvey, yours looks like a beautiful, like, showering, you know, like one of those geysers goes off and runs down the side of your head.

I have three products.

And he looks like David Jansen.

The lion.

Helen Mirren, if you blew it straight up. Look at to get his hair beautiful i know looks great spudley's hair today i did they combed it yesterday but uh i have to start something friday i still don't know if i'm wearing a wig or not what do you mean start something friday you're doing a film oh i don't like to talk about it what's going on busboys with busboys with theo vaughn it'll be in a theater near you busboys with theo vaughn introduced me to that cat and i find him so funny i i mean we had a fucking blast he is a smart guy and remember we sat down and uh we watched uh ufc one night and you were with him and, uh, he thought it was like a reincarnation of Phil's caveman lawyer thing.
You know, he looked a little rough, but then the more I listened to him during the night, I said, Jesus is hysterical, man. Yeah.
If you get into that frequency, he says the funniest shit. And I was in between.
So it was, the fight was right in front of us. So we just, if you get dennis right next to you just whispering jokes about every round and we were just all telling jokes to each other and uh it was the funnest night in the world yeah i sit next to dennis a lot there i haven't been in a while i uh are you gonna go well we'll talk off here I'd like to go in and see that's quality talk well dane is the dane is the best host isn't he he's a good he's a good guy and he always treats you like okay and uh you know you'll be sitting down front and uh you'll think god out of all the people in the world and i see miles teller there a lot too he's a good guy and one night i saw mel gibson and lady mary from downton avenue you remember that night oh i didn't see i saw mel i've seen him there yeah well she was she was doing a film with him so they were just fun fact dana white i am dana white's godfather he was named after me i've never revealed that before.
Dana Craggy. Love that guy.
Craggy. By the way, to pull it all in a circle.
Bill T. Craggy isn't Pat Craggy.
Dana gave me that. Steve Recessive Chin has a weak chin.
These are all in Farmer's Almanac. You know, it's funny.
It's like whenever whenever i'm with you guys i know it's going to be such stream of consciousness that it reminds me of those times you had to do pre-interviews when you were starting out and like the letterman pre-interview was more in depth than you trying to became a citizen of the country for god's sake i know they sit there with somebody go over jokes phonetically and that you know all of a sudden're in an office with some people. We all remember the people.
I don't want to denigrate them. But some of the people that you're pitching jokes to, you're thinking, my God, if I was writing to their level, I wouldn't be on the Letterman show.
You know, you'd have to say a joke and they'd look at you. Not that one.
Yeah. You do a 45 minute pre-interview.
This is what people at home don't know. you do a seven minute spot on you know let him or something so you're like pitching and the guy's like uh what's your obama thing and do the whole thing and sweating at the end he's like yeah what else maybe we'll push that to the end that's the worst there's time by the way did you have a tonight show Tonight Show doing stand-up? I don't even know that story.

No, I don't think I did.

You came out as a guest after SNL. I don't think I remember.
Remember there was a cat who screened people for the Tonight Show, and he had like a six-and-a-half-foot-long Hobie cat that he would go out to Pasadena on the weekend and picture himself as a yachtsman, you know? And then you eventually see a picture of the boat that it's, you know, your grandson's in the bathtub with it. It's so small.
And that guy was omnipotent about who got on the show. I'm recovering from Hobie Cat.
I'm still recovering from just the... Do you remember that guy, David? McCauley.
Oh, yeah. McCauley, right, right.
It was so funny. You pitched to him and you think, oh, my God, you're kidding me.
But I never ended up doing stand up. I'm kind of.
Well, I don't know. I almost seemed like I was a different person back then.
When I think back on it, as I got older, I started to hedge more bets because I feel like when you're starting out, you just get in the room and you figure I've got to get into the center of this room. So I'll take some risks.
And then later, as you go along, you're in the center of the room to some degree. I'm not saying, you know, Tom Cruise is the center of the room, but you're at least in the room and you think I'm going to hedge a few bets here because I don't want to end up getting kicked out.
But at the beginning, you're fearless. I look back and I think I can't believe I had those cajones, but I did panel the first time.

And Johnny was like Henry Higgins, you know, showing you off at Ascot or something. He was so good at it.
It was an easy gig. Why can't a regular piece be more like a comedian? I'm trying to do the My Fair Lady thing.
Why can't Dennis be more? But, yeah, this is the first time I saw the power of our former manager, Brad Gray. Jim McCauley, me going there and my time was cut down or something.
So Brad's just sitting in his chair in the green room and he had that raspy kind of voice. And he just gestures with his finger to McCauley.
So McCauley comes over and has to bend down to brad and i heard brad go we're not happy we're not happy right now it was the most powerful move i'd ever seen no really completely leverably guy you could be having lunch with brad at the grill and all of a sudden it turned in him and the waiters like him and mo green or michael and mo green i don't want you to ever touch my brother and he was buying and caught i don't care you do not touch my you know it got really uh brad what bigger than you was steel yeah yeah spudley was he your guy too or was it girvey all the time always girvitz always girvey brad would just jump in on stuff but it was all you know but girvey's been straight through uh since day one and uh had different agents but yeah the uh girvets is always funny we make fun of him on the show all the time someone i know just got engaged in and it's a big one it's a big one it's It's the next step in a relationship. And that's why they have, you know, a thing called an engagement ring.
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BlueNile.com. Some people follow the rules, but where's the fun in that? I'm Soraya and this is Rule Breakers, the podcast where we celebrate the rebels, the misfits, and the ones who make their own way.
Every week, I sit down with the biggest rule breakers in sports, entertainment, and beyond to talk about the wildest moments, toughest lessons, and why breaking the rules might just be the key to success follow and listen to rule breakers with sarea and odyssey podcasts available now for free on the odyssey app and wherever you get your podcasts well you know the great brad story is uh geez i don't know if I should tell this. We could always edit.
We can always say we'll cut it. Were there in Bernie's office, Sandy, who Sandy Wernick ends up managing Adam to ultimate success.
I mean, who's had a career and Adam's Adam, you know, I mean, he's's so great at it but those two dovetailed perfectly and uh so it's sandy and brad and bernie and uh yeah bernie brilstein the avuncular head yeah and uh brad says uh he says to the receptionist we don't want to be interrupted this is important i don't know what it was about. And then around 10 minutes in the receptionist calls and says, Brad.
And he's, I said, I didn't want to be interrupted. He said, it's your father.
Now, Brad, at that point, you remember they were, he and his father were exchanged for a while. And, uh, you know, Brad looks at me as, uh, Jesus, I haven't talked to him in years anyway.
And, uh And Bertie says, well, he's either sick or he needs money. And Sandy says, let's hope he's sick.
Good line. Good line, Sandy Warnie.
Hollywood, so brutal. So cold.
But the good thing, Gervitz uh bernie they loved comedy that's why they have so many people that are comedians they have all the snl guys all the great ones all the way back to belushi akron and so they still have them and that's why it's fun to go in and talk to bernie when i was a newer comic and he go come in here and he goes tell me what's going on what's going on. And then he just wanted to fucking laugh.
So fun. He was funny.
He gave me confidence. Brad brought him to see me at a club.
And he goes, we're not going to give you the Saturday Night Live. You're bigger than Saturday Night Live.
My previous managers thought I was a hack. You're bigger than them.
He'd always start his compliments off with, how how's about. How's about you're a fucking genius.
How's about. He told me, how's about you play Rooster Teeth Feathers again? I go, what about starting live? Come on, you got to stay in the bullpen a little bit.
You were there that week that I was at Foo Bars with Destiny and Tree. What? Tree.
Great stand-up, right? Yeah, he was a good stand-up. Yeah.
Remember those? Tree. I didn't know that.
Destiny, and then there was the cat Earl. He put on some weight, and he went as Tree Trunk.
You remember that? What do you mean? He evolved into Tree Trunk? He put on weight, and then he named himself Tree Trunk. Is this another craggy joke? I need an assist.
I'm talking to the best joke writer probably ever. He needs clarity.
So what's happening on the pod, boys? I see as I looked at the thing today that it was called something else and is it no longer focused on SNL? Is just sort of a free-forming that's been a problem from the get-go that the confusion over that we started a second podcast that's just us talking about videos and goofing around on youtube on video that's called superfly totally separate from fly on the wall And a lot of people don't. A lot of moving parts there, boys.
We took a confusion course at the Learning Annex. This is what we came up with.
And the two podcasts harbored themselves. They diseased themselves.
They sort of canceled each other. Don't start a Dr.
Laura thing where you call it The Fly is Down, where you talk to depressed people because you're going to dilute the brand even further. You're going to.
Oh, no, it's it's. We're up for the best podcast or we're up for the best podcast award again.
Well, yeah, we are for best podcast on iHeart. Beautiful.
Not exactly the Nobel Peace Prize. Why don't you send, why don't you send Sashin Littlefeather from down the...
Is that who Brando sent? Is she still picking up awards for people? You might look her up somewhere. Maybe she can go in.
It would be good publicity if you guys said Sashin. I don't know if they have a literal award show.
I think it's an online poll of nine people. But we're over 200 podcasts, we just found out.
We've done over 200 between the two. Beautiful, boys.
McCartney, where are you at there? Are you up this way? Yep. Beautiful.
On a farm in the Central Valley. Well, you look like it agrees with you.
You look healthy as hell. But you've always had the best health regimen.
There's great hikes up that way. Are you going up in the mountains at all? Oh, yeah.
Keeping that VO2 max going. Send me another picture of your quads.
I remember Carvey. I think I went to the workout with him once when we were on Saturday Night Live and he set the Stairmaster

machine on the highest setting

and he was talking to me throughout.

He did an hour on it.

I'm over there doing some girls push-ups

and he talked the whole hour.

He wasn't even gassed.

At the end, Sherpas were tapping

on next to him. You were in the best

fit

anaerobic guy I've ever seen.

Then you had the pump

blew out or something.

Thank you. next to him.
You were in the best fit anaerobic guy I've ever seen. And then you had the pump

that blew out or something.

That pump blew out in your heart?

That was later on.

It didn't blow out.

I had hypotasteremia.

I was like a sports car

with a fuel injection problem.

But the engine was great.

Engine was perfect.

Still a pink title dennis it's still not some things never change no i watched ford and ferrari and carl shelby originally wanted to power his car with your heart that's how strong dude i wanted to get the whole thing did you they did a whole thing i mean they go go in just for laughs get the whole scan and so i got a whole scan and i think i did good i think i sent it to dana because i didn't understand it all these years zero all these years when you've sort of floated on the periphery of social scenes and i know you like a nice social scene but you're always working the uh what did they call it on old paintings they called there be whales at the corner of the painting it would point outside every time i've ever been in a social setting or a banquette with you you're always floating around the outside and then you split because your neck hurts and i always wondered was that just a defense mechanism to get out of a scene or did your neck actually hurt uh it it's a it's neck hurts combined with some boredom but usually if if i'm but everything i feel like more the people are less boring but if you're at one of these i was at a netflix party the other night and you know you go around i see people it's fun and i see famous people you don't see for a while so we have a few laughs but when you're walking around now you've got a plate full of crab cakes and you're just, now it's the fourth time you're running into Miles Teller. You just go, I think I'm going to get out of here.
Because it turns into a head nod and then you ignore them on the fifth one. And then you just go, I think I've done my job here tonight.
But I last about an hour. I'm really down to about an hour now.
Even if it's a great party, I'm like, I don't know. I can't just fucking rot.
Well, I have to tell you one, Dana, that where Spade stayed longer. And this will talk about what a man of Spade is.
He's always sort of ethereal. He pisses on stuff.
But he's the guy who's sending the bread to buy the bulletproof vest for the cops in Phoenix and that. And my son is graduating and it's when Tommy Boy is out.

It's the biggest thing in the world.

And I asked Spade, just I thought if he came to this grad party they had.

Now, imagine this.

We pitched a grad party and we're going to show Tommy Boy on a screen at this party.

And it's all soft drinks and that.

It's not like we're at Pauly Shore's house up above. it's a just a really sweet party we're going to watch the film and we deliberately have the projector break or it won't function and then i saw the kids are all like bummed up but kind of you know they've they've all seen the film 10 times themselves and i go what are we going to do to fill time well one of the stars is there and spudley walked out from behind the screen it was the biggest hue and cry people went crazy these kids right and then spudley stayed for a couple hours he couldn't have been nicer he and he didn't turn into a sniff you know where it was all you youngsters you're gonna you know he was just cool spade but framed properly And they all felt like they met the real guy and they still talk.

You know, obviously my son's still once in a while.

I'll say, remember when spade came?

And I always think what a cool move, Davey.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Spudley fucking wrote it out.

That's a fun time though.

That's, that scenario is perfect because you're not overwhelmed.

It's not too much.

You know, some things are too much.

And are you still with that girl you look i'm sorry what i'm sorry what's going on alert alert dennis you're cutting out hey dennis was our guest i like the story he ended with about the uh tommy boy stuff Dive. This ain ain't no horses cock.
Sorry. I'm going right back to the last detail.
I want to do that for the last 40 minutes. Guess who was brought up for Busboys? Randy Quaid.
Is that crazy? Get him in there. We were brought up.
We were talking about casting. And we were talking.
I think it was for theo's dad and theo said what about randy quaid and we're like oh my god we could dust off randy quaid he's the nicest guy and you remember some of his work in midnight express and i mean he's a great actor really most people know him from vacation but he's done this all this other stuff but he can just ride on vacation forever because he was so good in that. I don't even know what Busboys is.
Tell me, what is Busboys? Just a movie me and Theo wrote, and it's about two losers that want to be waiters. They're Busboys that try to be waiters.
They can't work. And they think if they're waiters, it'll straighten out their lives.
Because my girlfriend ran off with a waiter so so we're like fuck dude waiters got it made dude that's if we just get that it all come together for us so i don't want to give it all away dennis no come on that's pretty good but your bus boys and then shenanigans yeah happen obviously happen dennis was there the first round of fucking joe dirt and then uh i remember we were doing it and remember we didn't have a ton of time so that's right i mean i had my mini sides on my legs in the radio station freddie wolf behind me playing the guy remember that tech guy and then uh the zoo crew guy and then dennis was the one course, we try to write jokes for Dennis. And then they're somewhat in the vicinity.
And then he just keeps adding laughs. And so it made it that every time we cut back to the radio station, it's funnier because Dennis is doing all this great.
Jane Fonda from Clute. That was not in the script, I guarantee you.
And then I had my sides, my legs said so many lines, it was too hard. I'd look down, then I'd say them, then I'd look down, but we got through it.
Spredley, out of all the things I've done, I can't tell you how many people still come up to me. And I always wondered why, why was that?

I know you did a two,

but it seemed like it would have been right for two even quicker than that.

Right.

It's such a, yeah.

That's it was.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We might do an animated version,

which would be easier because then I won't have to get,

look like the old Joe dirt.

So there was a sequel a few years ago, right?

Yeah.

Yeah. But I'm saying that one had to go to Crackle.
Some offense to Crackle. I was going to say no offense.
Sony bought Crackle. Yeah.
Sony bought Crackle and they go, we're going to make this Netflix, which wasn't a bad idea. So they said, the only way we'll let you do another Joe Dirt is if you go do it on Crackle.
Now, we didn't know there'd be commercials in it and not a paywall, but you'd have to sign up for Crackle.

So all these people that want to watch it have to fill out a form and make it harder. And they said, if we can get a million downloads out of this, we'll be successful.

And that'll help build our library and get the word out.

Because, you know, I could do press at NASCAR and I could go and talk to so we do it they give us a shitty budget we do it they actually they cut the budget during the shoot which was bad sign not great uh and then we do it i still like it i go out there and try to i didn't get paid a lot we go do it they get a million downloads within two days wow and within a week they got two million and then they got three million and then around three and a half i just stopped asking and then i because there was just they yeah that's why i don't understand with all the stuff they bailed on crackle and then it folded so they crackle still out there but they decided they don't want to put money in it to make it into Netflix. So I don't know what its purpose is anymore.
But we had a good jumpstart. Very obscure.
Well, Spade, that's why I'm saying with all the adherence to the intellectual property, everything needs some sort of past iteration before people will bet money on it. Joe Dirt, number one, was such a proof of concept.
I'm surprised somebody didn't, you know, to think that somebody says, well, let you do a Joe Dirt too, if you'll do it on crackle for God's things, why not just do it on citizen band radio? They should have come in and said, let's do a sequel and push chips in like Mike did with Wayne's World too. I bet you it would have went that high.
Yeah. I don't know.
That was was a tough part we couldn't get it going and so that was our thing was um to put it there on um the witness protection program but and it's shocking it did well over there and they got all these people signed up to fucking dog shit crackle but then they pulled the money to make it big uh like a netflix and so the head of crackle left and uh well let let's face facts. Once you do the mosey through show business, Spudley, you're still in the middle of it.
Dana and I, a little further down the line, you're surprised you get anything off the ground. Honestly, the great mystery to me, and I don't know, maybe Carve had something to do with it, but the biggest thing in America was Churchly.
I see some of the things they make movies of from Saturday Night Live. I'm telling you, Carvey, remember when Church Lady was at its peak? It was just, isn't that special? It was everywhere.
And that movie, theatrically, this is way before COVID, all that stuff. But I always thought that would come off.
What's the backstory on that? Or do you choose not? Well, SNL Studios, Lorne Michaels didn't get an official studio. SNL Studios started after I left somewhere.
And that's where they did Stuart Smalley movie. It's Pat movie.
I had an idea once that she's at a Bible retreat in Santa Barbara, and then she's driving her car in a rainstorm and it breaks down in Malibu. and she goes and knocks on the door and so it's a Malibu beach party full of celebrities and Sodom and Gomorrah.
I thought it was Yon Frankenstein. We're not wearing any pants are we? So it just goes around.
I'm the age the church lady is if anyone's listening we can do that for three and a half million and just give you some back i told you you should have did church biden on one of those snls you take where you just did a complete mashup of your biden and you're in the church i know that was your idea well excellent well isn't that special oh no more special than me if i can you would have figured it out. You would have figured it out.
No, he gets, he gets in as one of his things and he comes into the podium with a wig on and he thinks he's, uh, well, look, I mean, I don't know if this is rumor, but I hear that with what they're planning with Biden's retirement is to build a replica of the Oval Office in the house and bring him in there every day. And then once in a while, the fear is that Hunter might pretend to be a foreign person.
Who will we have next? We have the ambassador to Spain here. Yeah.
Hey, hola. Hola.
My name's Sebastian. I'm from from spain yeah what can i do for the country of spain i've always loved spain i we could use like a hundred billion dollars all right let's do it get them get get them a check hasta luego hasta vista whatever dad i mean me goodbye so that's probably like rupert pupkin de niro and king of comedy he's doing the talk mean, me.
Goodbye. So that's probably going to happen.
Like Rupert Pupkin, De Niro, and King of Comedy. He's doing the talk show down in the basement in front of the placards.
But I went to 10 Saturday Night Live parties and stayed there until 5 a.m. every night.
Can you believe this, Dennis? This motherfucker went to the show. They must have been all coming up to kiss the ring, right? I mean, geez, you have emeritus status there now.
Once you're around long enough, you do get a lot more positive feedback. I remember when you and I would go to those SNL parties after, and we were in such an unwind thing.

And neither one of us were serious partiers, but that's such a pressure cooker that you would probably throw five or six beers, and I'd have a couple of vodges on the rocks. And then we'd share a car to the Upper West Side because we lived across the street from each other.
And neither one of us are great drinkers. I mean, you could handle your beer better.
I have never left as hard in my life as when we would go up the West Side Highway and just howl from some of those parties that were way down. Well, we did so silly.
You and I flying together and sort of flaunting our neurosis in a funny way, but Dennis was the seat behind me and I'm in the seat ahead. We're just flying across the country.
Dennis over and over again would lean in and say, Carvey, if you see anything out of the ordinary, anything, I want to be the first to know. And if he said that one time, he said it like 40, 50, every single time.
We were so frightened flying. Carvey and I were, well, I actually grew to be a good flyer.
I had a good insight from Penn, Penn Gillette once at Penn and Teller, we were on a flight and it was getting bouncy. And, uh, he was reading the newspaper.
He didn't even look over at me. I was getting pissed off.
It's one of those things where you get pissed off and somebody is not afraid of flying when it's really bumpy and i look over and i go you're fucking kidding me this doesn't scare you he goes what i get this and he finally looks up and now he's cognizant that we're in really bad turbulence and he looked at me he's oh shut up but alexander the great would have given everything he ever done for two and a half minutes up here which in some weird way gave me clarity about the pragmatic nature of flying. But when Carvey and I were on the road together, we were both so flipped out that we'd get blasted.
You remember that night we were over the Rocky Mountains in that electrical store and we both called Bernie Broste and our manager at home and told him we were leaving the company. Because you're going to put us in this tin camp.
You're on fucking Malibu on our architectural digest, you son of a bitch. Yeah.
Dennis used to say, got a little light chop and a little dirty air. That's how they tone it down.
You're like, I'm bouncing off the ceiling. We got a little light chop.
Yeah. I just want to say two words about this chop, structural integrity.
They always go, you know, the wings of the plane can touch at the top. I'm like, I don't know if we need to get that far and test this out.
Carve, did you get better at it? I haven't flown with you in a while. Are you any better at it? I've gotten better at it.
Yeah, I think so. I think you just get worn down by it, but I still do get thirsty on an airplane, even with a little bit of packed in there, claustrophobia, you know, I'm just bouncing around.
It's third hour in and I'm kind of bored. And then it's like someone comes up very nicely and says, would you like something to drink? And I go, okay.
You're not trying to pretend with me you're still on commercial air, are you? Because I mean, come on, are you kidding me? Well, the gross in the net gets disturbed when you do a gig and you take a- It gets very disturbed. It gets altered.
Yeah. You know, they were cheaper.
Now it's- When it's a push, it's bad. Yeah.
You remember when, Spudley, that was one of the best days of my life. We had a gig in a place called Thackerville, Oklahoma or something.
Fuck yeah. Oklahoma.
And we wanted to get in and out. And Norm was with us.
The three of us were the headliners. And we rented a plane and we flew from van nuys or burbank i think to thackerville there was you know you didn't even have to land in uh dallas and do the drive north because there was a somewhere up near thackerville which was a nice gig i don't want to it's like a city thackerville that's the biggest casino you're right it's a and we we knocked the gig and then we split right after.
So between all of the stuff, we were there together for like 10 or 12 hours. I have never laughed so hard.
Norm was just killing me. That was my last Norm hangout.
I think because it was before COVID, one funny thing Dennis did is he goes, Hey, Spudud well i think we each had to do 30 and he's like uh you want to i think i might want to go first and run run back to the room and take care of some stuff and i'm like oh then okay then norm goes then i should go on after that and i go yeah go ahead you fucking assholes i have to follow these two great comedians oh fine, fine. Now, did you know, Spudley, that, did you know that Norm was, I did not know Norm was that I did not.
You know, he was pretty. No, and I was.
I never knew. Kind of mad about it because we kept setting up a dinner and then he kept going.
I go, so what? So it's six o'clock. So you're heading over and you're like, what? It's COVID.
I go, Norm, we've gone over this. It's nine months into COVID.
You drive to my house. We sit 10 feet apart at my table.
What? I go, we keep this, you agree to it and then you cancel. Was he actually hard of hearing or is that just a stall tactic? I didn't like it when he would text what? I go, Norm, you can't text what? You hear me on text.
Isn't it ironic that Norm's true genius. And I don't know, from the first time I met him, I told you that first joke, I heard there was a new kid in LA from Canada, Eddie Feldman.
My writer said, there's a guy here. He's great.
I saw him. His name's Norm McDonald.
And I said, McDonald and I said well where did you see me said I saw him at the improv and he did that great joke where he said uh I feel sorry for the homeless guy but I really feel sorry for the homeless guy's dog because you know the dog's thing and this is the longest fucking walk I've ever been on do we do we eventually go in somewhere because I could do this on my own and that joke. I said, that is so funny.
So I get on the horn with Norm and I say, hey, I know you're just here. And I'm just saying, if you want to stop the upwriting job, I've got this talk show.
And I said, I'd hire you right now, but just the protocols dictate you send in some sort of a batch of jokes or something. And Norm said, I don't do batches, but I'll send in one joke and you guys can make a determination.
He was already hired, but I was trying not to usurp the head writer and producers, you know, their office, and I didn't want to overstep. So I go, okay, send a joke.
And the joke is he reads the AP Wire story of Jeffrey Dahmer's trial, and it's so grotesque and detailed, you know, the actual transcript about disembowelment and eating pancreas. And he reads the whole thing.
And then he says, at the end, Dahmer defended himself by saying he started it. It's like the greatest joke ever.
So we hired him. And i always thought he was a genius from that point on but he always sort of was on the fringe and now it's so unfortunate it's like to me he's like van gogh you know when you hear about van gogh uh during his lifetime having to you know take handouts from teo and that norm was not takingouts, but I'm just saying every day I look now on the reels that I get, it's Norm.
Right. I'm reminded of another great joke.
Yeah. A hundred percent.
Because I get these Norm Macdonald pages and people send them to me and I'm like, I don't remember this joke. Like there's a couple that I never saw.
I don't know if you guys had this experience, but I was just, I had a long drive. And some reason I ended up talking with Norm and for an hour and a half, we talked about our career issues and he was just completely not one joke and just sort of talking about this sitcom didn't go and they didn't know what to do with me.
And it was very interesting to be around him. The only other time I heard him like that was when his attache assistant, best friend, Lori Jo had some heart issues and they were consulting with me.
She's fine for people who are listening, but, uh, and I could tell that Norm was really worried. And, um, so he had that other side, of course, but as far as obtuse one-liners, I would praise him as high as putting him on Dennis's footing.

I would put those two guys.

Sorry, come on.

No, I'm being totally real.

I mean, look, this is an example of the thing that I always quote about you.

And it just kills me.

I don't know why.

But you were up there.

You're opening for me or I'm opening for you. And you go, Jimmy cracked corn and I don't care.
What the kind of hell attitude is that? I mean, like who does that? Who would do a joke like that? I had to go out with this guy and I did, uh, what did the either black or white special? I think Schneider to open for one. And I opened for one.
And one. And you have to go up before Dennis's crowd, but they're nice.
And then Dennis does a killer hour. So great.
Each joke. And you double your cards out.
Yeah, great. You know, when I actually saw recently, sometime in the last year, I mean by recently, our young comedian specials, by the way.
That was quite a murderer's row of comedians when I look back on it. Freddie Stolman was good.
Jan was good. I think you're friends with Jan Karam, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
She was in it. Drake, that cat, Warren Thomas, who's no longer with us, but was a killer.
And you and Schneider. I mean, you look back, man.
We hit the ball that night. Oh, fuck yeah.
Dennis is hosting it. Brad Gervitz produced it.
And what a great one. That got me at least in the vicinity of SNL.
And then you helped on that one, too. I remember writing fucking update jokes for Dennis.
It's so hard. God dang.
It's so hard to write a bunch of jokes. It's just update jokes are a different world too.
People get there as comics and think you're going to write a sketch very easily. It's such a different muscle.
It's so hard to figure out that formula. You know, I see reels of the current guys who do it.
And i don't i'll be honest i don't want to show um and there's no grievance there i just it's not my not up at 11 30 on saturday but i do see these clips of them together and when they do that back and forth thing where they write jokes for each other they kill and it is so funny and i i don't remember seeing reels of them years ago so i don't know if they've grown into it or not but i think uh his name's yost and uh jay are very funny together colin and michael yeah they started doing that maybe just a couple three years ago i think but they've evolved that with this chemistry to become one of the all-time

duos up there. And when I was there, the last show, Michael wrote some jokes, cold jokes for Colin to read live on air.
And they were extremely inappropriate, racist. And there were a lot of stuff about his wife, Scarlett Johansson.
And they would cut to her in the hallway looking at it on a monitor and that crushed because colin lost it for real on on live tv laughing so hard barely getting through it that crush as hard as anything i'd seen in that studio in a long time well i always wanted to talk to somebody who's inside there carf because i've heard that too and sometimes these stories are almost apocryphal about things because you know, let's face facts. When you do out with Robin, everybody would say he's just making it up as he went along.
And he often made things up. But he also had a quarry worked off.
Nobody's going out there with absolutely nothing. So you hear these tales and you wonder, are they actually seeing each other's jokes, you believe, for the first time.
They are when they do that.

Yeah.

When they do that, they do.

But they don't do them in dress, that same joke?

Because they're not that great an actor.

I mean, they're really shocked by it.

I'm happy to hear that.

Well, you remember, the first time I heard that was Mulaney, who I think is a genius,

used to write jokes for that character that... Yeah.
It was a guy. Yeah, Hater.
With the hands over his mouth. Stefan or something.
And the single funniest joke I think I've ever heard on Weekend Update is Hater would always, the template was, this place has everything.

And then he did the quintessential New Yorker joke. And only people who lived in New York and co-ops or condominiums will know what this means.
He said, this place has everything. Doorman who high-five children of divorce.
and you remember the doorman in your building was always like, you know, like part of the family after a couple of years and everything in your building was known by everybody else. And if there was a, you know, disturbance in the force, the guy would go out of his way to make the youngins feel good.
It's been chill. You know that the, yeah, Melanie is an incredible joke writer an incredible joke writer.
You know, being on that show again, a lot of magic stuff happens at the dress show. I just anecdotally, it seemed to me the dress show just had more energy.
And just so the fact that Colin did not they don't do those jokes at the dress show they're just doing them live scary live show but there's something about like i would go do biden yeah i was and i come out of the dress show when i first started landing it people like clapping and wow way to go and then i would do the air show try to do equivalent and then you come out out of 8h and everyone's just like you know so there is something i i've just won i mean the show works the way it works it's 50 years should never change it but i wondered if carol burnett if they essentially shot the dress show and that allowed for a lot more spontaneity you know because it's the first time you're coming on take is good yeah yeah i think they did i think they did shoot both of them but uh i think they leaned heavily towards the one on air but yeah if you're gonna run a dress why not shoot it right i mean well they shoot it and the air sometimes goes higher but i i it just when it got cold out there the audience it's a tractor pull to get into that studio waiting and late and um you know you know one of my early ones was michael j fox impression and he came on the the child actors we were going to rob a bank together or something and uh that was i think a smile a bit super hilarious and so i was playing michael. Fox.
He was playing Danny Bonaduce. And when I was doing a speech right to him, he started cracking up in dress.
And it was a fucking monster. And then on air, he didn't laugh because he'd heard it.
And I'm like, where was this? Please, God. It just started.
Air the fucking dress version. There was a bit where someone was spraying water at Colin for the dress show and it was the first time and then it just had this magic to it.
And then the air show was fine, perfectly great, but there is something about the first time you can't top it. Half the crew knows it's coming, half the cast sees it once, so it's not 100% news.
But it's a thing that don't peek at't peak address. It's a thing.
Do not peak address. Carve was the, uh, was the schedule still the same? And what part did they ask you to participate in? Did you still have that Monday thing where everybody sat around Lauren's office? Because I, I came in just to do Biden contractually.
I was sort of, I was placed with Maya Rudolph and Gaffigan and, uh,. And so the first show, they asked Gaffigan and I to come into the read-through, which is now an 8H.
And it's like a giant. There's pianos.
Oh, you're kidding me. It's a huge room.
Yeah, did you know this, Dennis? I didn't know this. You've got place cards and tablecloths and snacks and there's a piano.
they they do symphony orchestra they bring in classical

music and so they have those massage chairs like at the airport where you sit and kneel on them

well we were doing a circle jerk in a broom closet on 17. It's harder to kill there a lot

of the writers kind of miss that up up on 17 the tightness of the room it's just

it dissipates a little bit. Picking over Huxley's leftovers.

Yeah.

You know,

most of the time,

just,

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you know, you know, you know, you something and it just hanging there. And, you know, Lauren would say, all right, moving on.
The B.O. is breaking records.
It was so nervous. It was sickening.
And then someone would get up or Lauren would crack the window a quarter inch and be freezing within two seconds. Everyone's like, it's like.
The worst is when they do show and tell, like you put on a little hat or you have a little instrument or something or a vest sweater and you're going to stand up and act it out. And then it's dead silence.
Moving on. I'm a Yankee doodle dandy.
Everyone's like, boo. Open on sad little sailor.
You know, when you look back You know, think about how lucky it was. I mean, geez, I, you know, I look back and I was never a cool kid.
And I think Spudley and you seem a little, I don't know of your youth as much, but I think we were all a little bit nerdly and all of a sudden you're in the crosshairs of it man and when i look back i just always think wow how lucky that was to be in that room with all its with all its uh you know sort of damocles hanging over your head and if you fucked up three weeks in a row you were probably gone but uh i look back and it was uh it was the juice wasn't it man you are the spice as they say in doom. You really got the spice in that room.
I feel for the, you know, the young cast and a lot of the people, you know, there's 18 or 20, I don't know how many cast members. And I was talking to one of them once and he goes, look, it's, it's hard to be relaxed out there.
Cause you know, if you go out there and you don't quite land it, then you're not going to be written for it. You're not going to be in the show for a few weeks.
So it's hard to get loose. When we came in, Dennis, we had such a small cast that everybody got their reps in.
Look, if I had not got on that show, I think I'm playing Yuck Yucks and Merced tonight. So that was my ticket.
know i was 31 when i got on there i'd had my 10 years in the clubs and i bombed every every pilot they put me in and the burton kirk film and it was a disaster damage good to your point the luck of getting on there and then of course you were like made out of a factory to be the update guy because you could land jokes. And you're such a reader.
I mean, it really matters to be able to read really well is a big advantage. See a card, you know, nail it.
Yeah, Larry King said to me one night, I had him on my HBO show, and he said,

God, you know how to read a prompter.

And, you know, some people would take that as a, you're a prompter chimp joke.

I looked at him and said, Larry, that's the nicest thing anybody could say about me.

That is nice.

It's hard to do.

But it was different.

Let me ask you a question.

This is technical for the people listening still.

Like, cue cards versus prompter. What would you prefer? Me too.
Because it kept you, listen, that can go awry. There is something you were talking about first show, second show.
I don't know. It's not too like we don't sit there and do Oppenheimer things on blackboards about how the show goes.
But half of this thing is the frisson of its fear,

like the surface tension when you overpour a glass, that tremble.

That's where the whole money shot is on that show.

And I always thought the cards,

sometimes they wouldn't come out at the same pace

and you felt less robotic about it.

It could go awry.

Plus my card girl was Tom Laughlin's daughter,

Billy Jack's daughter, which I always dug that because I love Billy Jack so much. So whenever I was in trouble with the crowd, I think of saying, when I see what you've done to this little audience, I just go pivot, kick, berserk, like in the ice cream parlor.
But the fact that it could go wrong a little, I always dug that feeling because then when you conquered it and it didn't always go right, there were times, and boy, you were hangdog the next day if you blew, you screwed the pooch, as they say at NASA. But for the most part, you're not going to screw the pooch there, because you do it with some degree of alacrity.
And I used to like that, man, that feeling carving around there, when you'd come up up and do something at the desk and we would just be howling at how maxed out it was. And Spudley used to kill with the, you know, the guy.
Hollywood Minute. Yeah, it was.
Well, we know the power of home base and right to camera, because when I was I was doing Church Lady and David was out doing Hunter Biden, it was getting used to that idea of, don't look at the cards. There's the wide shot.
There's the money shot. Also kind of glance over at your guest, but don't go too profile.
It's just getting used to all that. But money, when I was doing Biden, normally it was just straight ahead.
It's much easier. It gives me chills thinking about it.
When you're on that show and you're in a good sketch and you do your lines and you kind of miss them, you lay down a broken bat single and you walk back off camera and everyone kind of darts their eyes. You're like, fuck, I have two lines to get it right.
I just kind of missed it. Or you fluff it and you're like, if I just had one more take, it would be better.
But you do that too many, like you said, in a row. It's so under-rehearsed.
And the director, Liz, who's a lovely person, I really got myself in her shoes of like, you're doing Hunter, I'm doing my thing. How long do you hold right after the laugh? Or do you cut after the line? And then, of course, bumbling a line is so painful.
Or not getting a laugh and realizing later the camera wasn't on you. The cutting, because she doesn't have that much time.
Or we had Davey Wilson. It's such a fly-by-down thing.
But when it works, it's magic. Put it that way.
For sure. Well, Carver, you had a nice return there, man.
You hit the ball really hard. Every day I'd go, I'm golfing a lot now.
And the guys at my golf course would always, oh, Carver, he killed it over the weekend. So nice to know you were still putting good wood on the ball, brother.
How did your chops feel? Did it come back to you right away or it never went? Well, I'd you know, I'd done some Biden just slowly, but surely I was gathering a Biden up, you know, because I noticed no one was really doing him, you know. And so when I went there and read through, I didn't I was just just coalescing in my head.
But Lauren was sitting next to me and no one had really kind of figured out Biden, how to make it funny or sense it or whatever. So I just had I had this thing of, and guess what? And by the way, just that.
And then I saw Lauren's shoulders go up like that. And he was happy.
So I knew I had a hook. And I think that I was discovering it with the audience live in real time.
But yeah, it came back to me for sure. It felt like I was home again doing rhythms and i'd had a warm-up with him on on on this podcast and i had some clips out with him up with the biden i was doing so i had a lot of good honing though because he got to make mistakes here boy when they're cutting back and forth between the shots here spade looks like he's in some uh swing you know private booth uh somewhere

in a vip booth and then you gotta you gotta uh trick that place out a little that room you're in you got that table over here it looks like uh the pixar opening credits with that lamp or something You're going to get some flowers in there or something.

Get some flowers in there or something get some flowers leave this over on the left it's like the honeymooners it's like crampton's place with the pixar light on top of it spudley what's your book over your shoulder what are you selling there what's that oh that was a john lennon book because i bought the glasses john lennon's glasses and that's the book and uh this this dana white gave me this your boy gave me that bruce lee skateboard dennis you can react whenever you're ready i thought well i just thought uh we would give him an edit point there in case we're wrapped up because I got to split soon. Oh, yeah, let's go.
Dennis, we love you. And you're one of the, I don't know if you should retire.
You're still better than 99 to 100% of the comics out. I'm liking being retired, man.
You know what? I just want to explore what it's like not doing it you know i did it so long that i thought i didn't even know what i'm like is a one that i started writing jokes and staying in that uh that guy's that maybe a 30 71 now and i just thought man you know why don't i analyze hopefully i get another 10 or 20 I'm going to just try to see what it's like being what am I what am I like without all the trappings of that well do you find did you find this because I feel like if I go before I ever did stand up then I start to do it just as a nobody in San Francisco just this little bit of tension or weight it would come would come and go, but it was just there. I should be writing more material.
I should be doing that in a club. And then SNL, I should do that.
And that movie bombed. I got to do this.
And so there's still like this sort of weightiness when you're connected to it and the excitement of that and making money and all that. But I just wonder when you psychologically take that away, does your relaxation quotient go way up well i've been reading and i saw seinfeld was reading this too

which is intriguing to me because uh i've been reading a lot of the stoics marcus aurelius and

seneca and yeah jerry talked a lot about yeah he he's into that and i'm just trying to see what's

on the other side of that apprehension about not doing it. I think there's something important there.
I don't want to sound too ethereal. Maybe I'll find out that I just missed doing it.
Maybe you'll see me back in a walker doing the jokes or something. But right now, I'm thinking, okay, I always diffuse that sort of anxiety or fear of the unknown by telling a joke or getting up on stage or smiling and glad handing.
And I thought, what's beyond that? So I'm just trying to sit in it for a moment. And I'm finding on the other side of it, I'm kind of enjoying that lack of apprehension.
Because let's face facts, I don't care how much you feel safe going out on stage, and you do get safer over the years i'd still get getting there

going cross country and getting there and going to the place and right before you go on and then it can go wrong at any moment i mean i you the moment you start thinking this can't go wrong it's like robin's old bit that he did in his first special about step inside the comedian's mind where you hear that submarine

claxon go off. Mayday, mayday.

Dive,

dive. Yeah.
So I don't miss that part of it, but when a joke pops into my head, I often think, well, listen, I'll call Carvey with Church Biden, but then that gets smacked back in your face like the chemist. I just want one quick quick question just how does stoicism relate to what you just said um just letting go or being in the moment or not making problems that don't exist is kind of part of it right well I'm trying to find out I used to control things with my showbiz career in a way because you can manage that you're

really managing an efficient organization to some degree when you're in the middle of it and then I realized that you're not managing anything and if you know I don't know when this airs but if the palisades doesn't remind you that yeah I was just trying to get my head around the fact that really you have to balance not controlling anything except your thought processes and still leading a happy, non-morbid life. You don't have to be forlorn about it.
I'm just trying to find that delicate set where the Venn diagram taps where you realize that you don't have any control over it. And in an odd way, that should free you up to not worry about it as much.
Good or bad. That makes a lot of sense.
All right, boys. Well, you know, I love you both.
And I love you with all my heart. It's been a blast hanging out with you.
And then we also recorded it and we'll get paid. So check in now and then and give us some new stuff if you got

jokes to burn well listen you got to get rid of i've been staring at bruce lee's nipple for an hour here now and he only has one in that photo and who else had one nipple and famous uh more, Carvey. I'll quiz you there.

Lonnie Anderson?

Paul Harvey. Which one?

Lonnie Anderson? Paul Harvey. Which one? No.
Scaramanga. The man with the golden gun.
Played by the great Christopher Lee. Oh, yeah, that guy.
Oh, no, he had a third nipple. He got Bruce Lee's other one.
I just remember there was some sort of ariola discrepancy with Scaramanga. Ariola discrepancy.
All right, Dennis. Love you, buddy.
Love you, buddy. This has been a presentation of Odyssey.
Please follow, subscribe, leave a like, a review, all this stuff, smash that button, whatever it is, wherever you get your podcasts. Fly on the Wall is executive produced by Dana Carvey and David Spade,

Jenna Weiss-Berman of Odyssey,

and Heather Santoro. The show's lead producer

is Greg Holtzman.