#2302 - Ron White

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What's going on, Ron Wayne? I'm feeling good, finally, after my little bout with fucking COVID. They gotcha, they gotcha with the new COVID.
They got me with the new COVID, man. I thought the new COVID was total bullshit, I thought it was like a baby cold.
I had

I had bout with fucking covid they gotcha they gotcha with the new covid they got me with the new code i thought the new covid was total bullshit i thought it was like a baby cold i had uh you know my my girlfriend raised two kids and she said she's never seen anybody puke as much as i did for two days wow and uh and it was it was brutal it was just bile and i don't even know if I've ever been that sick.

I only lasted that part of it a couple of days.

That's interesting.

I wonder if you got multiple things at the same time.

Do people usually puke a lot if they get COVID?

Jamie, do you know?

I don't remember that being a symptom.

I don't remember having that either.

You might have had a couple things at the same time.

Because there was a bad flu going around, well i went to uh you know i went to vegas and uh early and i had to kind of i just thought i had a cold when i went and uh my doctor here gave me a shot of steroids and i felt way fucking better i mean i felt better everywhere i was more flexible i was like fuck i want. What kind of steroid was it? I don't know.
But whatever it was, man, I could touch the floor without bending my knees, without stretching at all. Like a cortisone shot? I don't know.
She said steroid. She gave it to me.
I don't ask a lot of questions. So you just felt loose? I felt loose and good.
I played really good golf. And then I got there, and it started catching up with me.
I had my girlfriend. I'm staying in the mansion down at MGM Grand, which is pretty sweet.
And I had that show just on Saturday. We got there on Wednesday.
And I'm like, fuck it. I'm not going to make it.
I felt it all started to deteriorate. So I called this doctor.
It was so bad. You didn't think you were going to make it on saturday i didn't i didn't i i thought i would need a another shot of steroids that's so i called a doctor i had the hotel call a doctor and i thought i was getting the doctor that was you know whatever it takes to get through the show right and uh you know but that's not the doctor i got i the doctor i got was we needed let's test you for for COVID.
I'm like, no, no, I don't have COVID. He said, I won't charge you if it's negative, which didn't make any sense to me.
And I said, well, OK. And then it came up positive for COVID.
And he said, see there the T and the X and the thing. And I said, yeah, I see it.
Let's do it again. Because I don't think I have COVID.

So we did it again.

Came up positive again.

Not only would he not give me the COVID shot, he told me to quit taking the antibiotics I was already on.

And he did nothing except for called the CDC to tell them I had COVID.

And they both said, you cannot do the show. I'm like, wait a wait a minute you're the wrong doctor i don't want to fucking retire today shit i want to here's the your drummer's a junkie he's out of heroin get him some fucking something to get him through this guy so they were telling you you can't do this show because you had a specific kind of a cold a covid cold so if you had the flu would he have stopped you from doing the show? I'd say absolutely not.

That's so weird because right now like the deaths from covid now are so low like the idea that this is still a pandemic and they still have to treat it differently than they do a cold they do and well well you know i i was faced with do i cancel a show well that's not the same as st louis when they just moved the date the people from st louis come back out this is las vegas right a lot of those people come specifically to see me because i don't do all those shows that i used to do so it's kind of if you want to come see it, that's a good place. And so it's a problem.

You know, it's a refund.

You've got to refund them all because those people are going to be there.

Most importantly, your fans are bummed out.

Yeah.

I've disappointed them.

Everybody's here.

Fuck, let's do the show.

So I just sit there.

I didn't know what to do.

So I'm like, well, I'm just going to call MGM Grand and tell them what the fuck's going on.

Let it be their call, you know. And they're like so uh how do you feel i'm like i feel like i can make it through the show and they're like well i say let's just go ahead and do it you're you know it's a big room you're not within six feet of anybody it's 2025 it's 2025 if you told me you had you did tell me you had COVID and I gave you a big hug on Monday.

I saw you on Monday.

Yeah.

When we did Kill Tony.

Right.

And I was fine.

You were a super spreader on Kill Tony.

You son of a bitch.

Big time.

I'm an asshole.

The biggest asshole ever.

It would be so horrible.

Nobody got sick.

I know.

Nobody did.

Nobody got sick.

And it wasn't until the next day that I got sick.

That's when the vomiting started. It wasn't in Vegas.
It was day two. It was Tuesday after Kill Tony.
That's when I got sick. And it was fucking awful.
I mean, for two days, just awful. Did you get another steroid shot? No, nobody would give me one.
So I don't know, man.

I just got the wrong guy.

You got to go to Gold's gym.

Yeah, right.

Find the biggest guy in the room and say, who's your doctor?

Dude, you got something, don't you?

You know you got something, bro.

Come on, man.

Aren't you a Ron White fan?

Give me some fucking steroids.

Just to get me around the corner.

Yeah.

So I'm back.

I feel fine today. Well, that's good.
Good to see you back. Which is really good news.
You coming to the club tonight? You know, they asked me to, I don't know who's got the set tonight. I don't know who's got the show.
We do. Fuck it.
Let's go. Okay, let's go.
I'll go. Let's go, Ron White.
Plus, bottom of the barrels tonight, too. The Kill Tony was on Netflix last night.
isn't that amazing i'm so happy i'm so happy for tony and red band and for everybody on the show i'm just so happy that that show is now on netflix it's sweet you know i always believed in it and you know that and i always saw something in tony i know i was never sure what exactly it was. But I saw something, you know, that this kid works hard.
You know, he's got a dream that he's fucking making it work. And he's making it work with hard work.
He works hard. He works really hard at that show, man.
Really does. I mean, I call him in the middle of the day sometimes.
And he's just laying out, like, how he's going to do the show. What he's got.
He's like, he's planning it. He's wandering around his apartment writing notes down just planning it out in his head.
He's legit. This is the thing about success.
It's a product of hard work. And in that example, I fucking know it's a product of hard work.
Those guys did that show every goddamn Monday for 10 plus years. Starting with six people in the crowd.
I was one of them. This episode is brought to you by Visible.
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I was there when they were doing the belly room show. But I always encouraged it.
I encourage people to do shows when no one's watching. Because I think that the only way something builds is you've got to get it started.
You can't think you're going to launch a podcast and it's going to have a million downloads. It's not that way.
And you don't want it that way anyway. You want to get good at it.
You want to learn how to do it. You to iron out the kinks i agree i agree and they did it they fucking did it they did it now it's one of the best shows in the world it's the funniest fucking show on television for sure you know as as far as just a fucking entertaining thing to goddamn do i mean just to come down you know my my last girlfriend was so addicted to the show she would come almost almost every Monday.
And it's hard for me to go down there on Kill Tony night because they got the green rooms hocked out to 19,000 people. And there's no place for me to go.
Right. And so, you know, but she was addicted to it.
I mean, just it's something fun to do, you know. It's a fun thing to do, man.
Because you're going to get some great comics. you're getting.
And it doesn't matter if the comic eats it on stage just it's something fun to do you know it's a fun thing to do because you're going to get some great comics you're getting it doesn't matter if if the comic eats it on stage because it's still funny you know that's not the point uh the point is that everybody has access you know in some way and uh and and there's no shortcut to get there because i tried to shortcut it because i thought i could because i was ron white and i my banker yeah, I've been doing stand-up and I'd love to get on. No problem.
I'll tell him. I'll fix this for you.
And he was like, yeah, no, you can't. It's a bucket pull.
That's the only way he can do it is to get his name in there. It's a legit bucket pull.
It really is. And sometimes one of our guys gets in like a son's been on a couple of times now, you know, and sometimes not.

You put your name in the bucket. You'll see.
There's hundreds of names in that bucket. It's a great idea.
It's a great idea. It really is.
And it's inclusive to anybody. I mean, it's amazing to me who he had the vision to put anybody, anybody, no matter what kind of physical shame.
You can't even say a word. Right.
And handicapped on top of that. All I have to do is just give it a go.
Give it a go. Give it a go.
Try to be funny. Do your best.
Just do your best. And there's a lot of people doing their best.
I'm thrilled. I'm thrilled for the success of it it's incredible yeah it really is it's fun too it's like it makes everything more fun when there's a fun thing like that out there in the world more of us have fun we have more fun at the clubs we have more fun talking about comedy yeah and you know it made me really proud too to I mean just to walk out on stage and it's you know it's you and shane and and segura and and tony and these are my friends you know these are my buddies this is my tribe right here and uh and we're doing something really special and it's a fucking hoot you know it is a fucking hoot it's a fucking hoot yeah and it's uh that club's the best place for it i had a nightmare the other night oh no yeah and it was uh about the club oh no and uh that i was the headliner that night and i got down there and there were like nine 11 year old girls and that's all the tickets we could sell and i was like did you tell them i was coming we put it in the thing.
And nobody showed up, Ron, except for these chicks. If I was your psychiatrist, I'd sit down and go, Ron, what do you think this means to you? What inside of your subconscious makes you think that only 11-year-old girls would come to see you do comedies? That's because for 38 years I've been waiting for the end, you know, and it finally happened that night in the middle of that dream.
See, I knew it would happen. You think like that, and it drives me crazy.
I don't understand how you can think like that. I just always have because, you know, it never works as good as it works for me.
You know, I mean, it's worked okay for you, but, I but i mean you know these kind of careers don't last forever until unless they do and there's not very many of them that do you know last fucking four decades it's a different world now ron i think they do last now i guess i think the thing that was going on before was everybody thought you did comedy to get to something.

You did comedy to get to the movies.

You did comedy to get to TV.

And if you didn't, then you were a failure.

And you thought of yourself as a failure and other people thought of you as a failure too.

And that would diminish your confidence.

That would diminish your draw.

And only a few people survived that and escaped.

And a lot of great comics, like Richard Jenney, for instance, he got caught up in that and felt like he was a failure and a loser and wound up fucking killing himself. Meanwhile, he was one of the greatest comics that's ever lived.
That ever lived. He just missed the boat.
He missed the internet boat. He would have been fucking- Yeah, but I missed it too.
You didn't, though. But you didn't.
You didn't miss it. You didn't.
You caught us. You caught the whole wave, brother.
You came to the company store at the right time. I did catch a great wave.
And it's great for all of us. We all know each other.
It's great for all of us. There's no more, you know, waves, like, in terms of, like, your career's going to die off.
Your career's dependent entirely on your work, and your work's never been better. No, I don't think it has.
It's never been better. You're on fire right now.
You were killing it the other night. We were in the green room, and we were watching for the balcony, fucking howling.
It's great. It's great.
There's no reason it shouldn't be great. Like, you've been doing it forever.
You love doing it. You're passionate about it.
You work hard. You're always always writing of course it's great and it's and it's fun you know it's the best it's there i don't think there's any environment that's more conducive to getting chops that i mean that really is a gym yeah to me and uh and everybody there's just getting And it's that fucking stage time.

There's no fucking substitute for stage time.

No substitute.

Stage time and a good tribe.

Yeah.

You got to have that.

Because everybody's killing it.

Like when I see Hasan up there killing it, I'm like, ooh, let's go.

I get excited.

Everybody's coming. It's come a long way.

A long way.

And you see these guys like Ari Maddy, these young guys coming up. You see all these people.
And Cam Patterson on Kill Tony Monday Night was on fire. On fire.
You see the growth. You see these guys emerging.
And you're like, this is incredible. We're so lucky.
We have the luckiest job and the luckiest place in the world. I think so, man.
And if I was a young comic now, I would go to Austin, Texas. 100%.
And fine, because there's just all that stage time. And you don't actually automatically get to go to the mothership, but that can be your goal.
You can get in there, man. You can get in there if you're good.
You can get in there if you're good. There's a lot of guys that get in there.
All you have to do, a lot of women get in there, a lot of non-binary people. All you have to do is just be good.
There's showcases all the time. Adam's picking people all the time.
People see you if you're funny. Your shit's on the internet.
It's like the path has never been clearer now for a young comic. I mean, when I was young, starting out, it's like, how do you do this? How do you get on stage? How do you get a manager? How do you get paid? How do you do it? Right.'s like it's kind of laid out it is and and there are people also hanging around like me that that have been through all this stuff before you know the the growth spot to know how to get better you know because i was like you there was no direction there was nobody giving advice there was you know you just looked at it and went, okay, I'll try this.
Yeah, let's see.

Well, you know, you just looked at it and went, okay, I'll try this. Yeah, let's see.
Well, you made it late in life, too. You know, that's probably why you have this thing in your head.
Because, like, when did Blue Collar was, like, how old were you when that tour kicked off? 45, I think. Yeah, see, that's why.
That's the thing. You know who else had that same sort of feel? Phil Hartman.
Phil Hartman didn't get on Saturday Night Live. I think he was 36.
That was his first break. 36? Yeah, I'm pretty sure.
Now, did he do stand-up also? He was going to. He would do some stand-up to warm up the crowd sometimes.
Oh, okay. And he would fuck around.
And he and I talked about it. And I said, anytime you want to do it, I go, I'll take you to the store.
I go, you can get on stage. I go, you don't need a lot of time.
You just, like, put together five minutes. I'll help you.
I know you could do it. And he had some really funny impressions.
He had a really funny Bill Clinton impression. Right.
He was a funny fucking dude and a hard worker.

You want to talk about a hard worker?

That dude used to make me...

Everybody felt like they weren't a professional when they were around that guy.

Because he would have, like, tabs and shit, a notebook, where all his scenes were.

Everything was organized.

Yeah, I already feel unprofessional.

While he was doing that, he was also trying to take his pilot's license.

In between scenes, he'd be reading airplane books fucking tragedy man. What a fucking dread.
Oh, bro. You don't know the half of it I tried to get him to divorce her a long time ago.
I Told him like right when he was struggling. I said man, just give her half just get out.
You'll make more money And he was like why it's not half it's a scam The lawyers get a third. Yeah, it's a third you get a third of your fucking money.
Okay. Okay.
Okay. Just give her the money Just give the money money is fun coupons, right? If you're having money and you're not having fun Then what do you gotta cut something off? You know, you got to figure out what where's the cancer.
Hack it off. Hack off that melanoma and let's get this party rolling.
You shouldn't be involved with someone that you hate. That's crazy.
You come home to someone who hates you. That's crazy.
That is insane. That's crazy.
And I've been in bad relationships before that I cut off. Of course.

And then all of a sudden you can breathe again. You're a different person when you're in a bad relationship.
You're bad, too. You're not your best.
Just like a bad friendship. You're not the best friend if your friend is a cocksucker.
You're good friends with good friends. We all inspire each other.
And if you got a one-way street or if you are one of those unfortunate people

that hooked up with a hot lunatic,

because that's the problem.

You got a hot lunatic.

Right.

And they're sexy and they're fun for short bursts

of a few hours at a time.

And then you're like, oh my God,

this person is in my life.

And if you move in with them, oh Christ. I know.
And if you have kids with them, oh Christ. And if you're married, oh, my God, this person is in my life.
And if you move in with them, oh, Christ. I know.
And if you have kids with them, oh, Christ. And if you're married to them, oh, Christ, you married a hot lunatic.
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See app for details. You know, you're Johnny Depp and you're on TV.
Yeah. And you're in the court.
With the whole thing falling to fucking pieces. The whole thing falling to pieces in front of the whole world.
Because you married a hot lunatic. And that's the thing about symmetry and beauty and women who are sexy.
They just can trick you. And men are so easily tricked.
They're so vulnerable. Oh, I'm the worst.
It's so easy to lead me down a road. I'll just sniff my way.
Oh, this is blessed. I'm in love.
We're going to elope. Fuck it.
I don't care about my my money Yes, she used to like insult him at parties and shit Phil Hartman's wife It was really rough. I remember we took him We all went to this party once like some industry type party and she was insulting him and I was like Oh, I just had to bite my tongue Which I good at, you know? No.
And I was like, and then, you know, he and I were in his green, his little dressing room. And I was telling him, man, like, there's another way.
You don't have to do it. You're a great guy.
Like, you're a great guy. You're a lot of fun.
You'd be a better person if you were with someone better. Like, you'd feel better about yourself.
Like, you can't be feeling good about yourself. Fuck no fuck no fuck no you gotta you know but he had kids too which complicates the fuck out of everything he had kids with her yeah oh fuck yeah yeah what a horrible fucking story did i ever tell you the story about like the worst i ever bombed on stage right after that like easily the worst i've ever bombed on stage did I ever tell you the story I've never seen you bomb on stage I was at the gas station and uh I was getting gas it was two weeks after he was murdered and it was the first time I was going to go on stage again because I was everyone was wrecked I didn't even know like how long it would take before I felt like i could do comedy again so i'm at the

gas station getting gas and uh just randomly run into a buddy of mine who's a cop and uh i go hey what's up what's going on man he's like how you how you doing you you doing okay i'm like man we're all fucked up you know and he goes did i tell you that i was there i go He goes, dude. What? He goes, I was there when the kids ran from the mom.

I go, what do you mean?

He's like, after she killed herself,

she barricaded herself in the bathroom,

excuse me, after she killed Phil Hartman,

she barricaded herself in the bathroom

and she had the kids in there with her, with a gun.

And a lot of times when moms kill themselves,

they'll kill their kids too.

And the cops saw that.

And so they kicked open the door.

And when they kicked open the door,

the kids ran from the mom.

The kids ran out of the bathroom

and then the mom blew her brains out.

Fuck, I forgot about that part of it. mean i forgot that she killed herself i'm seeing my friend at the gas station right before i go on stage i'm going on stage in about 45 minutes jesus yeah half hour drive to the comedy store 15 minutes before i'm gonna go on stage and this this is my face i just like, there's nothing funny in the world.
There's nothing funny in the world. And then after I recovered, you know, I took like another week off and then I came back and I was like, he would just, he would just want me to keep going.
I had a dream about him once. I was like the most realistic dream I've ever had about anybody in my life ever in my life he was sitting a lawn chair and i ran into him and i was like what do you how are you doing what are you doing and he's like oh i'm fine he goes uh we made up he goes it was a lot he goes uh obviously we had a lot out, and he laughed about it.
And I said, well, that's great, man. And then he pushed the chair back, and he was gone.
And then I woke up. Like, he was gone.
It was one of the most – I've had two very realistic dreams in my life that seemed so realistic they didn't even make sense. That was one of them.
Where it was like, I felt like he was there. I didn't feel like he wanted me to let it go.
It was so weird. I felt like, you know, he wanted...
It's like that's how he was whenever they would fight.

Because, like, I'm not, I don't like fights, which sounds crazy because I commentate on fights,

but I don't like, I don't like conflict.

I wish it didn't exist.

The reason why I got good at fighting, like, martial arts is because I was scared of conflict.

I don't like it.

I understand it, but I don't think it's necessary.

And I don't like it. I understand it, but I don't think it's necessary.
And I don't think fighting in a relationship, I think that's the worst. The people that get in these relationships, they scream and yell at each other and call each other horrible names.
But with a lot of people, it becomes this cycle of getting mad at each other and then making up. And then making up sex is very addictive to a lot of people.
It's a different kind of thing. And you get on this weird rollercoaster ride of I hate you, I love you, I hate you, I love you.
And he was on that rollercoaster ride. And he was letting me know.
It just went too far. It went crazy.
I lived in Mexico for a while with a woman who eventually took her own life. And I mean, I was already out of the picture for a couple of years when that happened.
But when I was in Mexico with her, I knew that I was trapped. Number one, I moved down there to start a fucking pottery company because I was frustrated with stand-up comedy.
The Funny Bone chain had just cut my pay by a third because they realized that I just worked for them. Oh, boy.
And I couldn't patch this schedule together without them. Oh, what a bunch of assholes.
And I told the uh ran the funny bone gerald kubach to go eat a steaming bowl of fuck and uh i don't even know what that would look like i don't know but it cost me a lot of work to say it but it was still fun to say and wow but i moved with her down to mexico, and I knew that she was crazy.

And the way it came up was she had called a friend of mine and told her that sometimes she stands over my bed with a knife and just stares at me.

And my son was there also part of the time.

And I'm like, well, that's over.

I got to get out of this. but but the the big thing was i was depressed because of my situation because i didn't see a way out of it yeah you know i didn't see a way out i just couldn't see i just couldn't see a path and uh and it got to where when i was around people i couldn't talk and uh And, you know, I had no tribe, you know, at all.

I was cut off from all my friends.

And it's just something I did to myself with that move down to Mexico, which I was there for three years.

Wow.

And it was just the worst time of my life.

And I really didn't think I'd ever come out of it.

I mean, I never thought I could even get back to a place where I could sit down and have a conversation with somebody that's how depressed I was and um and when I it was funny because I moved into Mexico I had the biggest truck that Ryder makes pulling the biggest trailer they make my van pulling the biggest trailer they make all headed down south all. All your shit.
To everything moved to Mexico. Why Mexico? Because my girlfriend at the time did this mosaic tile application to existing pottery.
And she would sell it at art shows or craft shows, you know, whatever. And it would sell really fast, but it took her six months to make any of it.

So I thought, why wouldn't you just go down to Mexico and train a bunch of women how to make it and let her orchestrate it? And I fucking did it. I was part of that sucking sound that Ross Perot was talking about going to Mexico.
Three years later, I had the exact same equipment headed north out of Mexico with the exact truck, trailer, everything. That was a bad idea.
Three years. Wow.
She must have been hot. Oh, she was so hot.
Oh, she was so hot. And I'd never been with a hot woman before.
I had never been with, I mean, it was my girl, you know. Yeah.
And she was just so, she was so beautiful. I'm like, I'm going to, I'll be with her even though I hate her, just so I can look at her.
I'll just stare at her and that'll be enough. That's all I'll need.
Turns out I needed a little more than that. So, but.
You can only tolerate so much and then and i ended up marrying this other girl that was horrible i mean i mean i i know she's probably listening to this right now so i don't mean horrible but horrible and uh but she always searched the internet for things about me so she could say hey this person said thanks for signing my girlfriend's tickets. What, are you out there signing girlfriend's tickets?

Yeah, I'll sign anybody's ticket.

You know, just always looking.

Every time she'd turn on her computer, it'd make me

sick to my stomach because I didn't know what she was going to come

up with. You know, I'm no angel anyway.

And, uh,

but so that girl's

sister, when she killed herself, sent me

a post that my ex-wife found. She printed it saying that she had killed herself.
She brought it in and handed it to me. And all I did was sit down on the couch and she goes, oh, now you loved her.
I'm like, just give me a minute, okay? This is her sister doing this to her? No, this is my wife. Oh, she got the note from her.
I'm like, just give me a minute, okay? Just give me a minute.

This is her sister doing this?

No, this is my wife.

Oh, the wife.

She got the note from her, she got the letter from her sister and handed it to me, and she

saw it affected me, and she's like, oh, now you loved her.

Jesus Christ.

What are you supposed to do?

Yeah.

A lady that you used to live with killed herself.

Yeah.

What the fuck?

Yeah, just give me a minute. Give me a minute.
Yeah, give me a minute. Jesus, it's a human being that you know that killed themselves.
How many people do you think you know that have killed themselves? Oh, man. Let's see.
Not very many that I really knew. My best friend, one of my best friends from childhood, killed himself, but we thought he died at the massacre in Waco because he was a big Koresh guy.
Oh, boy, you missed the massacre? Yeah, he missed the massacre, but we thought maybe he's there when it was all going down, but he wasn't. And eventually, it was an odd thing anyway.
He was a dear friend from childhood. His dad was the music director at my church, and he and I used to buff the floors of the church with those big bluffs.
That was our job on one day a week that we'd go down there and we'd actually sing neil young songs to the top of our lungs because we we just sing the fuck out of neil young sucks that's the only tape i had you know i know you and him had a little problem but i don't have no problem i know you were so sweet about that i love that guy I love his music he just had he didn't get it no he didn't that's all it is that was a that was a dumb thing well he just missed he didn't understand what was happening and nobody did I don't blame him nobody did I'd talk to him in a heartbeat even though he pulled his music and tried to get me removed from Spotify. Right.

I still don't care. I love that guy.
And I loved his music. Even after he did it, I still listened to his music.
He just got, he missed, he didn't know what was happening. He got tricked.
A lot of people got tricked. You know? A lot of people thought that this was the only way out.
We had to listen to these evil lying fucks that were telling us that everybody had to take this vaccine there's no other medicine available and if you didn't everybody was going to die and you know he got caught up in it they got us all though they got the whole country you can't be mad at the whole country right that's crazy right i don't want to be mad at anybody anymore ron white i don't either as i get older i'm less and less inclined there's people i don't wish to talk to right like i don't need that in my life i don't need whatever you bring in my life but i don't wish you bad yeah i have really really healthy boundaries when it comes to people that don't make me feel good you know just won't hang around. Yeah, I don't want to be around and confront them.
Like, who cares? Good luck to you. I'll give you a hug.
I got some other shit going on. Yeah, I have friends.
But you know what? I'll tell you what makes you a good friend. When you get successful, and I'll just talk about successful like I am, it's hard to find anybody that will disagree with you, you know, because there's something to gain.
And that's true with you, too. I mean, you hold a lot of power, and you have something a lot of people fucking want.
And I know that because I have a box of, and I should have brought them and given them to you anyway. I'll bring them to the club tonight.
But it's just a guy I met that owns a sunglass company, and he makes sunglasses for hunting. Wait a minute.
Who wears sunglasses when they hunt? I don't know. Nobody? You can't wear them when well i guess maybe some people probably do i bet rifle hunters do yeah they he said that one of them were specifically for bow hunting that makes you see the target better or something oh interesting okay so he's got an invention um i you know i don't know i don't hunt so i don't really know anything about hunting and glasses.
Okay. So he's got an invention.
You know, I don't know.

I don't hunt, so I don't really know anything about hunting in glasses. He just said he was going to send a box.
Would you give them to Joe? And I said, yeah, I'll give them to him. And I didn't.
I would think that glasses would get in the way because, you know, when you shoot with a bow, there's a thing called a peep sight. So you have your string.
and in your string is one of the things that's sewn into your string

is this little plastic circle. Sure.
Do you know what it is? Yeah. Okay, so you know it lines up with the scope, the housing of the bow? No, I don't know that.
So where the peep sight is when you draw back and you don't look through the string. You look through the circle that's on the string.
It's sewed into the string. And that and that circle you line it up exactly with your site housing and so where your pin is it's all about like staying calm and keeping that pin there and you want to keep it all like connected together so my eyes like right there like right next to this this this peep site if i had glasses it might get in the way you know i what I mean? Because the string is touching my nose, and the thing is right there.
And I'm just drawing back, and I'm looking at it like that, right through it. I'll give them to you, see what you think.
I don't know anybody who shoots, but I know some hunters that have glasses, so there must be a way to adjust. I don't know.
I don't know. That's what he told me, though.
Okay. I'll try it out.
All right.

I'm open to anything.

You never know.

And anything that makes you good at that, that's a fucking difficult thing to do.

You know?

Like, I meet a guy, and he's like, I'm a bow hunter.

I'm like, oh, okay.

Oh, anyway, what I'm saying is this.

Go ahead. What I'm saying is this.

That you're one of the only friends that I have that'll say, no, that's fucked up, right? You don't agree with me to make me feel better because you have something, I have something you need. Right.
You know, you'll go ahead and go, nah. Every now and then.
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Well, that green room's great for that.

Mm-hmm.

A lot of, because everybody knows that everybody loves everybody,

so everybody can just talk openly about anything, you know?

Like, and if you have, like, some dumb argument with someone,

someone will come in and go, eh, I think he's right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And you've got to go, oh, really? What? Okay. Let me think about it.
You need that in your life. You do.
You don't want to be a tyrant. No.
You know, and that's what happens to a lot of successful people is they get real insecure and so they become kind of a tyrant and they don't want to listen to anybody else. You know, you see that with people that are like on shows and they run the show it's the show's all about them you know they're the show and they're you know they're

the producer and executive producer and the cast all kisses their ass and they're at the top of the fucking casting call or whatever it is the call sheet yeah it's a bad place to be you don't want to be there don't't do it. Don't do it.

You just, you got to resist the urge.

So I went back to my ayahuasca place down in Costa Rica.

So I went four years ago, right?

And that's when I quit drinking.

Right.

Which you know I did, right? Yeah.

You know I quit drinking.

I quit too.

When?

A month ago.

I knew that you weren't drinking.

Yeah, I just stopped drinking.

I didn't know that it was a...

Yeah, I think I'm done.

Yeah.

For no reason other than it's not good for you.

Yeah.

No, I didn't have to.

I enjoyed it.

Right.

No, you were having a good time.

I was watching.

But the days after drinking were just too rough.

And I'm like, what kind of a moron who takes so good care of his body is poisoning himself a couple of days a week for fun?

You know, why am I doing that?

And then I'm like, well, will I have the same amount of fun if I don't poison myself? Turns out, yes. Exactly.
Right. Well, there's more than one way to skin a cat.
I mean, you haven't quit everything, right? Exactly. Yeah.
And I'm just skinning the cat a different way. Tell me about your cat.
Well, I'm going to play some Eco Rose. Did they play those while you went through the...
There we go. Jamie's got them already.

So what's that?

This is the songs that a lot of the shaman like to play while you're tripping balls.

Oh, okay. And if they play this song while you're under the influence, the hallucination will dance to the songs.

Oh, wow.

There's certain songs you're like, I don't get it. Like it like the grateful dead i've never been on acid at a dead concert but they say if you are you get it so like i'm missing that part right you know so to me it's like it's just this jam music which is fine but i'd rather listen to skinnerd You know what I mean? I saw Skinner Sunday night.

The original Skinner, the real Skinner,

before the plane crashed.

No, I'm just saying, these guys are putting a show together.

I'm sure.

Ricky Medlock playing Alan Collins' play.

They have two other guitar players, but it is a band.

I mean, they are nailing this shit. I had tears coming coming out my eyes during fucking free bird for a lot of reasons number one i saw him in 73 me and steve cook who was my best friend till the day he died and uh and ronnie van zandt was lighting joints and he was handing them out into the crowd well me and steve had worked our way up to the front He handed one of them to me, and everybody else was taking a hit.
I just stuck it in my pocket and went in the bathroom and smoked it because it was illegal then. And I was listening to Skinner.
Well, Sunday night, I'm at the Skinner show. There's cops where I was, and there was outhouses right next to it where you go through this fence.
And I told my girlfriend, I right back and i was over there i was in the outhouse smoking a joint listening to skinner and i'm like well i haven't changed much in 50 fucking years you know the exact same thing so some some songs people just nail it and it stays great forever yeah you never get tired of free bird but there's a guitar solo yeah and they just fucking hammered it home i mean it was great forever. Yeah.
You never get tired of Free Bird. But there's.
That guitar solo. Yeah.
And they just fucking hammered it home. I mean, it was so good.
Oh, nice. That it was just, I couldn't believe it.
You know, I brought them on stage at the Greek one time, maybe 20 years ago or 15 years ago. I don't know.
And it was fun because I got to say that when I was 16 years old, we were at the Scattered Show, and we had taken enough mushrooms to kill an average teenager, but we weren't average teenagers. Ladies and gentlemen, Leonard Scattered.
It was great fun. That's cool.
And so it kind of brought back all those memories, you know, and then watching them play it again. It's weird because especially when I come back from Arrhythmia, which is my plays out there, that I always come back emotional.
Right. And kind of full of love and forgiveness and those kinds of things.
That's kind of what I learned from those hallucinogens. Yeah.

Isn't it crazy that that's illegal?

Yeah, to feel good.

You got to go to another country to be a better person.

You got to go to another country.

You got to leave the land of the free.

Right.

Leave the land of freedom to go to another country that's much more lawless and take in the divine and come back a better person.

And it's crazy.

And I don't think it's for everybody.

You know, I'm not somebody out there just going, yeah, you got to do this.

Because I think you have to be open to some things.

You know, you have to be open to, hey, maybe I'm wrong about everything. You know you know maybe there is if you're not open to it you'll get hit hard well and that's why it's not for everybody because i you know i've seen people wig down there and uh and which is why i you know i know you can get ayahuasca locally and have they have you know people that are i don't know where they got their shaman title from but you can do it here yeah but i know that they're you know it's a licensed medical facility with doctors it's the only one in the world that's a licensed medical facility and uh it's and they're prepared when people wig you know they know what to do They know to hold you down.
Yeah, and they do, too. They'll fucking bind you up and wait until it's clear because they know that you're at a point in this that you're going through some heavy shit.
One of them was an NFL player last time I was there. Oh, no.
This guy was fucking huge. Oh, no.
Plays for Buffalo. And I was I was like God if you had to pick somebody to wig you would say please don't let it be that fucking dude did he wig? he wigged oh no he wigged big time oh no and started just screaming get the fuck away from me oh no you know you know, you got 70 people in this room that are tripping.
Oh, no. What a bummer.
And it was. But they've got big guys, too.
Oh, there you go. And so they just got him out of the room, got him calmed down.
And he didn't leave. You know, he just, he was going was going through some shit the first time i went there this girl from japan started kicking and screaming and they took her outside and they had to fucking subdue her but at the end of the day the person with the biggest smile on their face was her uh because she worked through some shit that I can't even talk about that I happen to know what it was but it ain't worth knowing and but she found pure fucking joy and peace in her life and you could see it in her face you know and I was wondering why when she was wigging out why is nobody flipping out but me because the people that worked there weren't flipping out at all because they've seen it.
Yeah. And there's nothing they haven't seen.
There's been 18,000 people through that facility, and so they've seen it all. Right.
But they just know how to handle it. Well, I wonder if you're just in some mansion in Beverly Hills or whatever, if there's somebody there that knows how to handle it.
Probably not. Probably not.
Probably not, especially if you don't know what you're going to get hit with. Yeah, and you need to be in a really safe place where people know how to guide you through it.
Yeah. You know, it's not something I think you want to grab a handful of and go sit in a fucking closet, you know, and try to figure it out for yourself so that's the real weirdness of any kind of a psychedelic journey is that you're probably gonna be going through some shit and someone could either manipulate you during that time or help you during that right and there are people that will manipulate you absolutely and and that's why You know, that's why i go to this place that's not that easy to go to just because it's so safe uh you know it's just it's set up perfectly for what they're trying to do and uh and it was it was this guy's dream to do that to make it accessible to regular people so back then when he opened, you had to go to a corrugated tin shack in Peru or wherever to get this stuff.
And he said, I want to make a place that's safe to go and people feel comfortable. And, you know, so isn't it kind of crazy that that's illegal? I mean, it's kind of the weirdest thing of all time that we haven't just as a society went, okay, why are all these people going to these places? OK, when they come back, do they have positive experiences? Does it help them? Yeah, a lot of them.
OK, why don't we do that here? It should be that simple. It should be that simple.
It should be so simple. Yeah, there was a guy there that was on a scholarship they had for basically wounded warriors that are going through heavy PTSD.
There's an organization that's sending guys to arrhythmia. And so I got to talk to him a lot while he was there, and he was a psychologist, and he was fucked up.
But I kind of got to watch his transformation a little bit, watch this guy coming around. And I'd seen that and I'd seen the transformation in myself where I could just not be so angry and not be and not hold all this hate, you know, that that I that that takes so much energy to fucking control.
and to have them really show me a way to let all that stuff go, you know,

and to be a happier person, you know. And it's hard to – I really don't understand ayahuasca, so it's really hard to explain it to somebody else, you know.
I don't think anybody really understands it. Yeah, right.
And I know there's some stuff that's stronger than that, but I don't know what it's called. Ibogaine, you mean? Is that what it is? Ibogaine is the one that people use for addiction.
There's a place called Beyond that's in Mexico that does that. Rick Perry was telling us about that.
A lot of former governor, Rick Perry, is a part of that. He really wants to bring Ibogaine to Texas and have treatment We can be gambling here.
I think they can get Ibogaine. I think especially with a Republican Like Rick Perry who's really concerned about the mental health of veterans because I think that's where it really shines Ibogaineaine in particular helps a lot of people.
It gives you like a review of your life apparently. I've never experienced it but the people that have have very positive things to say about it and it's incredibly good at helping people get over addictions.
It has a very high success rate. For one treatment I think it's in the 80 percent And then for if you do two treatments is it's in the mid 90s.
That's fucking amazing Yeah, people that never go back to the drugs never never go back to whatever it is gambling whatever you have whatever's wrong with you All you got to do is figure out what's wrong with you Yeah, you got to figure out why you're doing that Like what is this pathway that i keep going down that's sabotaging my whole life and why why can i not resist it why do i keep reaching for the bottle what is it why do i keep snorting coke what is it what is it well that was the question i had with myself because i drank like a fool for years you don't say it was funny because i were whenever i i was single again and i was in the

green room and i said maybe i'll start drinking again and everybody at one time went no no no no that's not i was i was just kidding i was just kidding well you quit like that though you did like you were gone.

I did.

But I went to

to Arrhythmia with intention.

I wanted to know why I was doing this to myself and why I could not see a way to quit. And it was so tied up in my persona, my stage presence, who I really was at the time.
And I'm like, why is this all tied to me? And why can't I shake it?

And so... really was at the time.
And I'm like, why is this all tied to me? And why can't I shake it? And, and so with that, uh, I also went through hypnosis cause I had to get sober before I went to cause that's not what their deal is. They're not a treatment facility.
It could be a by-product of it, but they're like, yeah, we're not going to, we don't have to quit some other way. And once you've been sober for a month, you can come down here, which is exactly what I did.
I came up with a way to do that through hypnosis, which I thought was pretty effective. But I got sober once before in one of those rehabs in Malibu for 90 grand, which was, at the time, I was spiraling.
I was living in a five-star hotel in Beverly Hills. I was doing a bunch of blow.
I was screwing expensive hookers, which was exactly my life plan. I'm like, okay, here it is.
And it ended up feeling pretty hollow you know and i ended up going there and uh and i stayed sober for about maybe six months or something like that but it was white knuckle the whole fucking time of you know no fun but when i when i did it the way i did it when i checked into that facility, I got the night sweats so bad when I quit. They had two beds in the new people's things.
And I would soak the sheets in one of them and move to the other bed and soak the sheets in that one. I was detoxing big time.
Never happened this time. I never had a night sweat, never regretted it, never thought about it again, never tempted to drink again.
And, you know, and I own number one tequila still, and it's there at the green room every night. And I'm not even, it doesn't even bother me a bit.
That's interesting. and that's what the big fear a lot of people have is how will i still be around bars right and you know in in yeah is it a little awkward at first yes and do i hang out in bars all the time other than our club uh no i don't i mean i i'll go listen to music if there's something but just to go to a bar and hang out i just don't do it right and uh for whatever reason well it's not that much fun being around drunks when you're so no it's really not you gotta be in the vibe of the drunks yeah appreciate drunk talk yeah when you're sober and someone's drunk and they're telling you some fucking story about their boss being a douchebag it's like whoa right so and i also have a tendency a natural tendency to just kind of isolate anyway you know and so i i really that's one of the things i love about the club is it gets me out of the house it gets me to go down there where my friends are and do what i do for a living and what i do for fun, both.
I think a lot of people have that problem, that isolation problem, you know? Yeah. Yeah.
Because I think that people like you and I, I think a lot gets dumped on us, you know, because of all the friends that I know that I've known for a long while, I'm the only one that's been very successful, not out of my comic friends, but out of my regular friends. And it seems like I get just I have to take in a lot of stuff, and I never knew how to get rid of it.
So I would just get to the point where I was full and I couldn't take anymore. And that's when I would isolate myself.
Right. Too many people want something.
Too many people want something. That's why I gravitate towards you is because I know you don't want jack shit for me except for me to be your buddy and let us be brothers in comedy and whatever.
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And so, you know, so that's really good for me. Even today, you know, that's what gets me out of the house sometimes, you know.
Oh, me too. I mean, I love being home.
I love being home with my family, hanging out. But my comedy family, I love being around too.
And that's what I feel like. I feel like especially when comics are in town that I don't get to see that often.
Oh, it's cool as shit. Oh, we all hang out together.
It's beautiful. Who were those two actors that were at the the club the other day it was so much fun to have them in there the it was which night fuck i don't know we we get a lot of visitors when woody was there no uh oh well arnett and brad cooper yeah brad cooper and well it was fun to have him in the green room because you know we we've know, we're all around each other all the time.
So it was fun to have new people in there with stories we've never heard. Oh, I wasn't there for that one.
Yeah, it was cool as shit, you know, just to have him hanging out, you know, good guys, you know. Woody was there.
You weren't here when Woody was there? No. Oh, my God.
He was so much fun. He's so fun.
Did he do your show? No, yeah, he did my show But then this that was nights before that and he just wanted to come to the club He's been to the club a couple of times now Harrelson. Yeah Oh, I didn't know that.
Yeah, he's just been hanging out fuck. I always wanted to meet that Oh, he's so nice.
We just all hung out in the green room, and he was just like one of the boys.

It was so easy.

How fucking cool is that?

So cool.

He's so easy to talk to and talks to everybody the same way.

He's like so easy.

He's just a genuine dude.

He don't even have a phone.

You can't even get a hold of him.

Really?

Yeah, he don't have a phone. Doesn't do email.

Fuck you.

No shit.

He's got an assistant that handles everything. Yeah, which is probably a freeing thing you know just just be just stop just stop leave me alone right you know well i don't answer emails anyway it's also like let me know what i actually let me think about what i think about things instead of being inundated by all these other people's thoughts constantly all day long which is valuable it.
It's good to get other people's perspectives on things. I think it enriches you.
But at a certain point in time, become captive to it. And I think there's just too many people that are captive to other people's thoughts.
I think so, too. That's why I'm so close-minded.
And I really am. I'm truly close-minded.
And I think you're open-minded. I try to be.
And I struggle with that because just letting people pour information into my head, I just tend to avoid it. I am engaged in that I do follow things closely, and not the stock market, but everything else.
That's been a little bruiser. Don't follow the stock market right now.
It's so baffling. It's so crazy.
Like, what is going on? The whole world is mad at us. Trump's playing golf.
And in between swings, he's on the phone with presidents of countries. We're going to need more money.
Yeah. That's what somebody told me the other day.
Is he playingers is he playing chess he's playing golf he's playing golf like what does that mean everybody wants to think there's some like grand plan to it well they think the grand plan is look you you know we remember back when um the was it the 92 elections when ross Perot was in? So when Ross Perot laid out what happened, do you remember during that debate where Ross Perot laid out what happened with the tariffs? So that like they when we try to sell stuff over there, we get a high tariff. It's like a 35 percent tariff, but they don't get tariffs when it comes over here.
It's not same it's not like you know you guys there's a tax on everybody if you want to sell your goods to encourage people to buy american products if you want to sell your products in america we get a tax that tax goes to the grid or whatever the hell they're fixing with it right ross pro was laying it out like this is how all the jobs went to mexico because have you ever seen that jamie it's it's see if you can find it it's a great speech because ross when he talked about the giant sucking sound yes you actually mentioned that earlier that's what i was talking about yes that's it that's funny did you see that recently or something no i just remember it oh boy the giant he would have been a great president he voted for voted for him. He had big ears.
He didn't come across well on TV. He was an independent.
And nobody was voting for independent. By the way, they changed the whole way debates work after this because it used to be if you got 5% of the vote in the primary that you could be a part of the presidential debates.
And that's not the case anymore. Or it was 5% in a a poll I forget what the number was that you had to reach but it wasn't a high threshold and then you could be a part of the debate and they changed the shit out of that after this because Ross Pro tanked it they thought HW was gonna go for a second term right and meanwhile Ross Pro fucked it up because a lot of people that would have voted for Bush voted for Ross, and the people that were already going to vote for Clinton voted for Clinton, and Clinton won.

But play this, Jim.

$13, $14 an hour for factory workers.

And you can move your factory south of the border, pay $1 an hour for labor, hire a young 25—

that's assumed you've been in business for a long time.

You've got a mature workforce.

Pay $1 an hour for your labor.

Have no health care.

That's the most expensive single element, making a car.

Have no environmental controls, no pollution controls, and no retirement, and you don't care about anything but making money, there will be a giant sucking sound going on. There it is, right there.
If the people send me to Washington, the first thing I'll do is study that 2,000 page agreement and make sure it's a two-way street. One last point here.
I've called, I've decided I was dumb and didn't understand it, so I called the who's who of the folks who've been around it. And I said, why won't everybody go south? They said, we'll be disrupted.
I said, for how long? I finally got them up for 12 to 15 years. And I said, well, how does it stop being disrupted? And that is when their jobs come up from $1 an hour to $6 an hour and ours go down to $6 an hour Then it's leveled again.
But in the meantime you've wrecked the country with these kinds of deals. Jesus Christ What a fucking smart man.
He was right and that's exactly what happened American manufacturing collapsed Yeah, and they did it all for money and they did it all because they were greedy they were already rich Right, and if we could have just gotten those motherfuckers some ayahuasca jesus christ they'd have smoothed the fuck out man they would have said oh okay okay okay yeah let's be nice let's make america great again i don't understand the trade war with with canada because have you ever met a canadian that had 35 in his pocket no they're all broke they have 22 that's really and they'll buy you a beer you know i love canada i've always yeah they're broke they don't have any money up there how come they don't have any money because because it's socialism you know they just they i think it's a great place don't you love canada i love it well they have socialized medicine but it's not it's a capitalist society it is but socialized medicine it's expensive so they what how much what percentage did canadians pay in taxes so i don't know let's find that out what is uh what's the canadian tax rate i know it's higher than americans i know mine's a bitch and when you go over there you have to pay taxes too like if you do a gig yeah you have to pay taxes yeah you pay canadian taxes and you get paid in Canadian dollars. I'm not going up there much for shows.
Yeah. But, you know.
So here it is. Canada's top federal income tax rate is 33%, while the U.S.
is 37%. Right.
However, when combining federal, provincial, state taxes, Canadians often face higher marginal rates across various income levels. That's interesting that theirs is only 33%, ours is 37%.
I thought ours was lower than theirs. I thought ours was 40%.
Well, it is when you get to a certain tax bracket, correct? Isn't it? Ours changes when you get higher, right? Yeah, it does. 33% on the on the portion over $246,000.
What's ours in terms of the highest tax bracket? What's the highest US, is it 37? That's what it is? What's really crazy to me is when people say the rich should pay more taxes. Okay, fine.
But where do you think that's going? Where's that that going where is the money going is the money's going to the federal government do you think they're good at it do you think they're good at managing your money have you paid attention to all the shit elon's fucking uncovered 37 is when you make over 609 000 a year that's you motherfucker well that's that me last month. This is the thing.

It's like I'm happy to pay tax if I thought that they were doing a great job. But it's just you are being strong armed into giving money to people that do a really shitty job of protecting your money and investing it in the country.
it's a lot of is going to bureaucracy and bullshit

and a bunch of things that you don't have any say in if you could like opt out of it if you could

like imagine if you like pick what you you know if you had like a whole tax sheet would you like

your money to go to would you like your money to go to uh overthrowing governments no like what if

the federal government's budget was entirely based on the will of the people like you get to choose

I'm going to go to overthrowing governments? No. Like, what if the federal government's budget was entirely based on the will of the people? Like, you get to choose.
Like, how much of your money you want to put into drone strikes in Yemen? I say, I don't want zero of my money going to that. You know, how much money do you want to go to this or that or clean water? Okay, clean water sounds good.
You know, how much infrastructure? Fuck yeah, fix the streets. Well, I'm kind of, I agree with you, and I've just heard you say this, that, you know, everybody should have access to health care and education.
100%. The whole country.
The whole country. We should be a community.
Everybody, that would rise us all up. 100%.
Less losers. Yeah.
That's how you make America great. great less losers less people that are saddled down with a lifetime of debt because they broke their leg that's crazy yeah all my you know all my son's uh friends are all saddled with 90 000 worth of fucking student loan debt and uh subsidized and my son was lucky enough to that i had enough money to pay for his you know and uh and so he doesn't have that burden but god damn it nobody should have that burden for an education and it's just a for-profit institution that roped you into thinking that that was necessary that you have to be and by the way you can get as good an education right now online as is available anywhere on earth.

If you have the discipline.

If you have the discipline.

Right.

Yeah.

That's what's so wild.

That's what's so fascinating about this time is that it is basically obsolete.

And yet people are still paying $70,000 a year for it and more.

Like what does Harvard cost?

How much is Harvard?

What's Harvard's yearly tuition, Jamie?

What do you guess?

I was at least 50, 60.

Yeah, at least 50.

Imagine if you're a middle class guy and you got two kids and they do real good and they don't have scholarships and you got to pay for them.

I can't imagine.

I mean, I don't see how people do it.

I mean, I really don't.

They barely do it.

Oh, boy.

The total cost of attendance including fees, housing, and food reaching around $82,000.

Undergraduate tuition is $56,550 for a year.

That's a lot of money, man.

Oof.

That's one year.

Oof.

And if you drop out after one year, then you have nothing and you're down 80 grand.

But if you make it through those four years, now you're 200 grand in the hole that you owe. And then you have to get a job and then you get a job that pays 50.
And you're like, what? Yeah. Oh, my God.
How do we wash this? Right. I'll never pay this off.
And then you have to throw a couple of kids on top of that. You know something wild? There's people out there, their Social Security is getting docked because they owe student loans.
So they take money out of your Social Security to pay for your student loans. Because the student loans is the one thing you can never escape.
You can't bankrupt it. Which is so crazy.
It's cruel. It doesn't make any sense.
You're saddling an 18-year-old with the burden of a lifetime. Harvard were offered free tuition for families earning $200,000 or less a year.
Oh, that's great. To who? That's a new thing.
Offering it to who? You can't even get into Harvard. Right, but it's still good.
We'll be free for students and families earning $200,000 or less a year. College announced Monday.
Harvard has long sought to open our doors to the most talented students, no matter their financial circumstances. That's great.
Yeah, it is. That's great.
I just don't know if it's necessary. I think it's probably necessary for kids to go to school just to like a passage, a rite of passage, you know, like I think ceremonies and rites of passages are missing in our society.

And especially, I could speak for young men, they don't know when they're a man.

Like, am I a man yet?

There's some men that in their 30s, their dad's still yelling at them.

You know what I mean?

It's like, when am I a man?

When am I an equal?

We don't have a ceremony.

In other tribal societies and all throughout history people have had rituals rites of passage rituals where people feel like okay, we fucking made it, you know I give a black belt ceremony. You got your black belt.
All right, right. I made it, you know, I'm in but You know that so I think there's a benefit in that in society.
But then you've got to, like, unlearn all this shit your fucking crazy professors are telling you. Did you go to college? Yes.
I went to UMass Boston. Oh, wow.
That's a good school. Yeah.
Great. Easy to get into.
I only went because I didn't want people thinking I was a loser. That's the only reason why I went.
I just wasted my time there.

I went for three years, just wasting my time taking class so I could tell people I was going to college. Oh, I didn't waste any time.
I got kicked out of high school in the 10th grade. So, you know, my mind is an open book there.
A lot of the pages aren't filled in. And you know what? And I always kind of—I regret that a little bit, you know, that I didn't go to college, that I didn't— What do you regret about it? Well, just—you know, well, number one, I think I'd be smarter.
But I don't know what it is. And I've made it just fine with what I've had, you know.
And, you know, I've got attention deficit disorder and all these things. It really kept me from doing traditional schoolwork very well.
I'm not even sure that's real. Attention deficit disorder? Yeah, I don't think it's real.
You don't? No. Let me change your mind.
I think there's a lot of people that aren't interested in a lot of things. But when they say attention deficit disorder, why are those guys so good at video games?

Like, why are they so good at things that aren't school?

I think we could categorize it into a bunch of different disorders and problems.

But I think a lot of that is a way to get you hooked on some sort of pharmaceutical drug that's going to fix whatever problem you have that doesn't allow you to sit in class and listen to some boring shit for fucking six hours right you got no problem writing jokes ron white you got no problem performing like it's not like there's not a thing that you can't excel at that you can you can pay attention when you're on stage i don't know i don't know about that i think stand-up comedy was the answer to every problem i had no you're just because that's what i was good at you're a comic you're you are a comic like that's who what you're supposed to do but let me give you an example that's my point is that there's a lot of different like functions in society there's a lot of different roles in society i think they probably tag add to people that don't have it but i know that i still have it so if let's say that i was going to put together a ceiling fan and hang it in my roof which i'm not uh i could no more do that than the man in the moon without an Adderall. If I take an Adderall, I'll read the directions, I'll put the whole thing together and hang it on, no problem.
Without it, I stare at it. I've tried.
You're bored. You need excitement.
You're a certain type of dude who needs a certain type of stimulation, which is why you like the high wire act of performing live. I don't think it's a disorder.
I think it's a superpower. Ah! I do.
Well, I like the sound of that. I do.
I think the inability to pay attention to shit that's not interesting is not a disorder. It's just you know what's interesting and what's not.

You know, to this, like, maybe I have it, too, because to this day, when I'm talking to someone, they're saying something really boring.

I want to run away.

Right.

You don't hear a word that's coming out of their mouth.

I don't hear a word, and I just can't.

It's like, it's...

I just want to get out.

I'm the same way.

I can't listen to it.

But that doesn't mean I have a disorder.

I don't think I have a disorder, because if I'm talking to you, I've got no problem at all. Well, let's get two ceiling fans out here.
Yeah. I'm sure I'm not that good at putting together a ceiling fan either.
I wouldn't enjoy it, but I could do it. You just follow the directions.
You could follow directions. It's not hard.
It's just you wouldn't enjoy it. But if it was something that you enjoyed doing doing like learning how to swing a golf club better yeah then you could pay attention i do pay attention to that that's all i'm saying i think there's roles in this world there's there's and different personalities fit perfectly into mathematics different personalities fit perfectly in philosophy different engineering different personalities it's like you just got to find out what vibes vibes with the way you think and we all think differently we all have different backgrounds we all have different biology you know you just got to find what is the thing that like syncs up with the way your mind works and the problem with traditional education is there it was designed by the rockefeller family like the school system in this country was designed to create better factory workers and soldiers and to get them real early.
That's why they want to start you at five because they figured out when you start people at 12 or 13, they already got their ideas of what the world is and how the world works. And I'm not fucking shooting somebody for you.
You know, so what they do is they get you when you're five.

And when you're five, they can kind of indoctrinate you, separate you from your parents most of the day while your parents are at work.

And so that's like most of your day you have other people other than your parents telling you how the world is, how the world works, what's happening in your life and what you should be doing.

And that's kind of crazy because a lot of those people suck I remember thinking that when I was a kid like thinking that how strange it is that people that I don't respect and I don't enjoy are the ones that are in control of communicating to me most of the day I remember very clearly thinking that when I was a little kid like 10 11 years old yeah you know I know that when I was a kid I, like 10, 11 years old. Yeah.
You know, I know that when, when I was a kid, I used to have this, uh, this history teacher who was also a PE coach. Now he had something as intriguing as history to teach me, but I could not listen to him talk.
So he couldn't even make American history interesting, but a good teacher could have done it yes a good teacher could have roped me in yeah to what was going on and the story of it and how it affects my life and the lives of my parents and my grandparents how it all went down you know you that's an interesting story but if you're a dull fucking assistant coach basketball and now you got a fucking one period of history and you have a monotone voice and I'm just out of it. I imagine what it would have been like to have access to wonderful educators.
Right. But if you were listening to like you ever listen to Dan Carlin's podcast.
No. He's got this podcast called Hardcore History.
It's incredible. Incredible.
It's amazing.

It's such a good podcast.

And this guy will lay out the events of World War I in a way that you will hang on every word and you'll park your car.

If you've got to go somewhere, you'll keep your car running because you just want to listen to where this is going.

Wow.

So if a guy like that was teaching you history?

That would have been great. I mean, I think I would would have been engaged you probably would have been a historian yeah making nothing yeah i mean but this he's dan carlin's doing well but that's um someone who loves what they do and that's the difference school is this weird indoctrination fucking ritual that we all have to go through.
And then we all have to feel real bad about ourselves because we don't want to be there and we're not doing good at it. I felt like a fucking complete loser in school.
I never felt like I was, that I was supposed to be there. I never felt like I was smart, you know, but I remember, like, finally when I realized that I was never, like, when I was going to school for three years, when I went to college for three years, when I finally was like, what am I doing? Like, I stopped doing this.
It's just wasting time. Because that's all I was doing.
It was just completely wasting time. It was like a huge weight lifted off my shoulders.
I could just go, eh, this is not for me. Well, the one thing is I didn't waste that time.
You know? Right. There you go.
There you go. I did.
But, you know, I think I'd have a better understanding of how the world works if I understood world history. Right.
You know, I mean, those kinds of things. I just wish I was, you know, I wish I had an education.
But what would I do with it? I have no idea. I'd still do stand up.
Yeah, well, hopefully. And I wouldn't be any fucking funny.
Jesus Christ. Imagine if you did.
Imagine if you did go down a different road. That would have sucked.
I know. I was, before I started doing stand up, i was a window salesman and uh and i was broke and i had nothing and i was unimpressive and uh my in-laws bought us a garage door opener so i had a garage door opener now you're gonna think this really fucking weird.
I used to wear that garage door opener on my belt so people would think I had a beeper. I just hang it, clip it right there on my belt.
People don't know about the beeper. Yeah, yeah.
A lot of people listening right now. I have no idea what that is ron and i have been through all the various stages of technological inter wizardry yeah but the intertwining of our in our lives the way you know the the first thing was the beeper like you would get a beeper like my friend johnny had one you could page people you could page him and he would call the number.
Yeah. Hey, what's up? And you'd stop at a phone booth.
Now that what a phone booth is. And you'd have to like put quarters in the phone booth and look at the beeper.
Yeah. Doot, doot, doot, doot, doot, doot, doot, doot, doot, doot.
Hey, what's up? Hey, what's going on? Where you at? And you'd have a conversation with someone. That's how you'd get a hold of them.
You'd have to page them. them right yeah joey diaz had a pager forever joey diaz had a pager deep into the like maybe the 2000s wow not kidding yeah definitely in the 90s he had a pager because i remember sometimes he would go awol and i'd be paging him like where are you like uh one time we were doing a gig in jersey we're doing rascals in east orange and he fucking never showed up and i finally got a hold the phone is like, I'm not going where are you? One time we were doing a gig in Jersey.
We're doing Rascals in East Orange, and he fucking never showed up. And I finally got a hold of him on the phone.
He's like, I'm not going to lie to you, dog. I never left Vegas.
I'm like, God damn it, Joey. I'll never forget that conversation.
I never left Vegas. I'm not going to lie to you, dog.
I never left Vegas. It was just having a good time.
But that's how you got a hold of him. You'd have to page him.
That was it. And then one day he got a phone.
And when he got a phone, you better not fucking text him. If you text him, he'll yell at you.
Like Brian Redband used to text him. He'd go, stop fucking texting me.
And then Joey eventually got an iPhone, and Brian got a text from him one day. I'm like, he's texting? He's like, he fucking texted me.
Now we'll text you. But he doesn't like to text.
How's he doing? He's good. He's coming down soon.
He's going to be here in a couple weeks. Good, good.
He's coming real soon, right? When is he here? Two weeks. Okay.
Yeah. He only wants to talk to you on the phone.
I go, why? Why don't you like talking to people? He goes, I'm insecure. I want to hear your voice.
I want to tell you I love you. Yeah.
I'm like, okay, I get it. I get it.
He's old school. Yeah.
He calls me every once in a while just to say hello. Just to say hi.
Yeah. Just to say hi.
Yeah. He's like the- Just checking on you.
He might be the number one dude that I just talked to mostly on the phone. Very few text messages between me and Joey.
Then I'll ask him, like, hey, is April 22nd good? Yeah, we're good. Okay.
See you then. So is he going to come down to do sets? He's coming down to do sets.
He's getting ready. He's going to do a special.
So he's doing a bunch of shows. He's got a residency.
I think he's doing it in Philly. Is he doing it in Philly? We'll find out when he gets here.
But he's doing a residency. He's done a few of these residencies where he's got a residency i think he's doing it in philly is he doing it philly we'll find out when he gets here but he's doing a residency he's done a few of these residencies where he shows up like every weekend he has shows places people love him he did uh he opened up for tom in madison square garden tom said when he went on stage they went fucking ape shit oh how cool is that they went ape shit because they didn't know he was coming, you know? And then also, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Joey Diaz.

He's like the Snuffleupagus.

He's a mystical creature.

Right, he is.

He is.

There's nothing like him.

Nothing like him.

He's a completely unique human being, you know?

It was fun to watch him just stomp the fuck out of the fucking room at the store, man. He just beat the shit out of those crowds.
Oh, beat the shit out of those crowds. Some of the sets that I've seen him have in the OR, I think it's the funniest thing I've ever seen in my life.
I've seen everybody. I've seen everyone.
Great, great, great comedians who I love to death, and I'll watch them every time they perform but I think Joey hit RPMs that nobody hit he hit these moments I saw him wind them up man just wind them up it's like when people say like who's the funniest guy ever I'm like come man I don't you know there's guys with Like Patrice had great insight. He was really hilarious, but he also had like great insight.
Joey Diaz, you ain't getting no insight out of Joey Diaz. No, no.
He's giving you, he's rock'em, sock'em robots. He's here to fuck you up.
He's here to fuck that crowd up. He used to have this bit about Terry Crews.

Like when Terry Crews accused some guy of grabbing his dick, you know, and he had this bit about Terry Crews in an underwear commercial.

Oh, my God.

It was so funny.

You'd be in the back of the room just barely breathe.

You couldn't breathe.

Everyone, like I was looking around.

People are falling out of their chairs. They couldn't handle it.
And he was on fire, just purple, fucking red in the face, screaming and yelling. Like, oh, my God.
Oh, my God. Oh, my God.
That was some of the first sets I saw you do at the store when you were doing that bit where you were standing on top of the stool. Oh, the Kim Kardashian bit? Yeah.
I just remember how just dicks slap those fucking crowds. I'm like, God damn it.
He's good at this. Fuck.
It's a fun job, bro. It is the funnest job.
We're so lucky. We're so lucky in so many ways.

It just doesn't make sense.

Yeah, when I think about a life without stand-up,

it makes me nervous to even think about it. Well, we almost did it, right?

Yeah.

I mean, when we all went through that with COVID,

I mean, you were basically saying you were done.

I thought it was done.

Yeah.

I didn't like it anymore.

And you were accepted then.

It was halfway through every set. I couldn't wait for it to be over wow and and now I go on stage and I have this whole new gratitude for these crowds you know that are still there waiting bigger than ever my shows sell out faster than they ever have that amazing uh and part of it is because there's less of them I guess but also it's because of my friends you know the word gets out you know you guys didn't let me die yeah yeah we knew I mean I tell everybody but it's true like you're one of the reasons why we decided to buy a club Because you grab because you grabbed me when you got off stage that first time you hadn't been on stage Only eight months and you grabbed me by the shoulders whatever the fuck we have to do.
We're gonna keep doing there Yeah, and we did I'll never forget that moment. I was like, okay, we're gonna do it.
You're gonna get that fucking club open like we're gonna do it I was already thinking about doing it very seriously because i realized like early on coming here i was like we need a place we can't just uh be working out of these rock and roll clubs they're not set up right no you know no there's a difference i don't even like to do i don't like to do sets other places i don't either that's really what's wrong with the with the mothership it'll spoil your fucking ass uh you know with great crowds and perfect acoustics and an amazing sound system and and uh you know just and then when you move over to another room which i rarely do do another set in town i did one the other a couple months ago and i was like this sucks this sucks. If you guys want to find me, I'll be down at the mothership.
Yeah, we did it, Ron. We actually did it.
It's interesting when you look back at those conversations we used to have. We were in the Vulcan, hanging out in the green room, talking about what the club's going to be like.
Yeah. It seemed like a pipe dream.

And I know a lot of people probably did think it was fake.

There was a lot of people in L.A. like Tony used to talk to them all the time.

Yeah, when's Joe opening that club?

The club's never going to open.

It's all bullshit.

You guys moved down there for no fucking reason.

Because the thing about you making a choice, that's a cigar.

Oh, it is. Yeah.

If the thing about you making a choice to go and, you know, start something up and the people that are left behind, they kind of want you to fail, especially the haters. Right.
They want you to. So Tony was like encountering that all the time.
These people that just for whatever reason, they don't want other people to. They don't want other people to escape the bomb that they're in.

It's like people from the neighborhood that don't want you to leave.

And when you do leave, oh, look who's back.

For whatever reason, people really like when people fail.

It's a gross feeling.

It's a gross thing, but it's super, super common. Looking for a joint? Yeah.
Jesus Christ, Ron. Don't you know we're in Texas? You know, that's the first thing they've got to fix, is make this shit legal in the whole country.
It's so crazy. What's stopping them? Oh, I don't know.
I don't understand it. I mean, it's a political beach ball.

It's one of those things that just gets tossed around that I think is good for the establishment that runs the country.

It's good to keep it up in the air.

Like, I'll promise when I get in office, gays will be able to marry.

Yay.

Right.

And then they're talking about there's people that want to take that off the table. You know, it there's a bunch of those things like roe v wade that was a big one there's a bunch of these cultural beach balls that are very important issues to some people and uh they get exploited by politicians as a way to promise you this and promise you that but sure but it never nothing ever gets fixed nothing ever changes right now well it's changing a little you know I didn't think marijuana would ever be legal in Oklahoma I thought they'd be behind us you know but boy you go there now it's billboards on every fucking street corner come get your weed you know New Mexico just authorized psilocybin therapy really yep people depression.
I think depression and anxiety, is that what it's for? Is that what they're using it? Those terms which apply to basically everybody? Right, everybody. Everybody's had some depression and some anxiety.
There you go. Now you can get some mushrooms and figure your life out.
Maybe I'll give it a try. Yeah.
It's just the problem is federally, it's still not legal, which is, it's so dumb. It's so dumb.
You know, and I don't think it's going to change, unfortunately. I don't think, I think Trump is too busy with all these other issues.
I don't think he's interested in that. So co-sponsor said, here it goes, the bill would establish an advisory board, treatment, equity fund, and research fund, as well as remove psilocybin from the Controlled Substances Act to protect qualified and registered patients, clinicians, and producers, according to a news release jointly, a news release released jointly by the office of the Senate and the House Democrats.

So this is what the Democrats have over the Republicans.

Freedom to explore your consciousness.

Republicans, for whatever reason, they shy away from that.

It doesn't fit with their conservative mindset of what you should.

And it used to be it didn't fit. freedom of speech didn't fit with their their mindset and now the republicans are all about freedom of speech because they realize the consequences of it during the last election cycle you know uh when things get censored and when you have a town square that's curated by not just the big tech companies but but also by the federal government itself, things can get weird when you're trying to access the truth.
You want to know what is actually going on when certain stories have actually been suppressed for the news because the federal government deems them misinformation, even if they turn out to be true. That's not good.
And so for because of that, the right is supporting freedom of speech, which I think is fucking great. That's great.
That's what we all should be supporting, but we also should be Supporting the freedom to expand your consciousness and people have been doing it in certain ways for thousands and thousands of years And you don't know better if you haven't done it.

If you haven't done it yourself and you're passing judgment on people that have, you're not qualified. If you want to go, you know, do a psilocybin session, like a heavy, what Terrence McKenna would call a heroic dose, you want to do that and then talk shit? Okay.
But until then, because the thing is like, it would preclude you from doing the things that you're doing Know this okay if you are a fucking Rampant capitalist and all you give a fuck is about is your hedge fund and all you give a fuck about is the stock market and numbers and Buying this exclusive that and that exclusive this and getting tickets to this exclusive thing and all you're about is like status and numbers it will fuck that up it will fuck that whole thing sideways you won't be able to take any of that seriously anymore but that's good it's good for you you're not supposed to be taking that seriously if you've got half a billion dollars and you're still scrambling to try to make more money like pause you're 67 years old you're gonna die if you're lucky in 30 years if you're so lucky to hit 97 oh yeah 30 years happened so quick man oh we've been here for five ron i know we've been here you were here for You were here, you were patient zero. I always say you were patient zero in the Austin invasion because I remember calling you, it was 2018 when you moved here? 17, I think.
17. I remember calling you going, what are you doing down there? Like, we missed you at the store.
I fucking love it down here. Middle of the country.
If I want to fly, I can fly anywhere real quick people are nice food's great and i was like fuck can i live in texas i started thinking about it then but then when the pandemic hit and i knew you were here and then i had some friends in la that were also real sketched out by all of it they all wound up moving somewhere else a couple of them moved well two families i was real good friends with they moved to Dallas and Then another good family family friend moved to Vegas and then another one just decided to stay and we all came out here together you know groups friends and When we were looking around Austin, I was like fuck Ron white lips here. I could live here That was like one of the first things I thought I thought of Ron lives here at least

I have Ron yeah, I got a friend yeah

And I was like okay. I can't do stand-up right now anyway

But then as soon as I moved Tony's like fuck it. I'm moving

I was like you're moving to and then Segura's like I'm in I was like holy shit

And then Brian Simpson came out real early and I didn't really know Brian

Well at all Until Tom introduced me to him Tom was like Dude, you got to meet this guy. He's so funny.
He is too. He's so funny He was here early too and then a son and Derek both moved out here early I'm like, oh shit.
We got something going on and then Tim Dillon bought a house out here I was like, oh my goodness. What is happening? This is crazy And then Duncan was like man fucking North Carolina.
I don't know i'm like come to texas motherfucker and then all of a sudden dunk is out here like holy shit holy shit this is crazy i'm like all right we're up and running and by the time we decided to make that club fuck we had like 10 great guys live in here yeah 12 and more were coming and they're still coming yeah dylan tony there's so many different guys from the store that used to work at the store all the time yeah i roped uh tony in man i uh i'm like we need tony here i gave him my fucking condo and let him use one of my range rovers to go out to dallas i'm like yeah i live here for a week i don't know where i was but uh yeah you spend a week here you'll go yeah this is doable well we all were so excited because it felt like we were doing something different yeah you know it felt like we were doing something different i've always had this fuck it part of me i was like fuck it let's go i'm that's me i love doing that you do you're impetuous as fuck i like it from the time the time you told me you were going to move there, you had a house like two days later.

I'm like, God damn, this guy moves when he moves.

Yeah.

My kids helped a lot because they really wanted to move.

That sweet-ass place on the lake, that's good living over there.

It's also like when we came here, no one had masks on and everybody was acting normal. Yeah.
And so my kids were like, what's going on? Like, how come everyone's normal here? We should live here. You know? And then it just happened.
And then all of a sudden, the store's closed so I could get all the employees. And then I was like, look, I'll pay you now.
You don't have to work. Just hang out.
Yeah. let's we're gonna do something special that was more money than you were thinking it was but money is fun coupons yeah fun tickets that's right that's what it's supposed to be if you're not having fun and you have money you're doing something wrong because you should be trying to have fun and sometimes some things you have to pay for in order to have fun a lot of fun is free but there's a lot of fun where you go like oh we got to buy a building we have to hire an architect we have to pay a construction crew we have to you know we have to do a lot of things but that's the way to do it that's what you're supposed to do and that i was the person who was able to do it because the the universe had decided that this thing wanted to get made and we hit every green light and then i was like okay well clearly this is the thing i'm supposed to do it's you know i know it sounds crazy but let's go you know but i the whole thing was crazy like is in the middle of the biggest deal i'd ever done ever in my whole life Spotify this crazy thing I was like the show was already like the number what does that feel like it was nice sign that fucking deal bananas bananas but I was also like okay well what should you know you have to figure out what you're gonna do like you have to be you can't be at the whim of all these other people's ideas and expectations.
Like, what do you want to do? It's like, I want to get the fuck out of LA. So let's do it.
So I moved in the middle of everything. So there's this giant deal I have.
And all of a sudden they're like, where are you going? I'm going to Texas. They're like, don't go to Texas.
This is crazy. Like, are you sure you won't be able to get gas i'm like look i'm flying guests in three times a week anyway right i was already flying people in from new mexico and new york and new york's closer than you know it's a great spot really right it's not like a six hour flight that six hour flight across the whole country is a pain in the ass that you know the people were worn out by the time they got there so you know they had to like have a night to rest and relax and rehydrate and and then the next day maybe you know still they're probably not a hundred percent you know this is like three hours three hour flight ain't shit it's a three hour flight from everywhere yeah so it's easy it's a great spot yeah but it's also like I feel like sometimes the universe calls you in a way And tells you just like he gives you a feeling again.
I think I ideas are like a life form I really do. I think it's like an unexplored life form I think that's why the concept of the muse is so enticing to people Because there's something real to it like when you decide you're just going to sit there and write and you just have it doesn't always come like sometimes you get nothing but sometimes because you sat there you'll have some of the best lines you've ever written because i think they're like life forms that you have to call into your life and i think sometimes these life forms these ideas they just exist in the ether.
And by circumstance, they like kind of gel together and become more valid and more alive. And then they enter into your mind.
And if you're ready to receive these ideas, you have to act on them, especially if they're positive. I'm not saying, you know, go fucking go out the Capitol building because you write an idea I mean positive ideas not vengeful like if you have a good a Good soul if you're you're your goal in life is a positive thing These ideas will come to you and you're supposed to if you can you're supposed to act on them And I felt like how that what a unique opportunity I have to be able to do this I shouldn't be scared because it's daunting and it's expensive and it's like, what are you doing? You just do it.
Just do what you do. Just do it.
Here's one thing that I believe. I believe that things disguise themselves, and we call them coincidences, but there really are no coincidences.
And if you'll look for things that look like coincidences, you can follow that line and go somewhere with it. Yeah.
And I feel like that that's what happened whenever, you know, with the mass exodus and people started coming to comedy. To make this the best comedy scene in the world.
Yeah. You know, those things fell into place because that's what was supposed to happen.
And I think it all happened because of me. In that, I needed it the worst.
I needed this more than anybody else did. And I feel like I was able to cash in all my fucking karma or whatever and draw it all into me a little bit because I needed it.
And so, you know. Well, it makes sense.
Like, it's certainly a huge factor, right? Because if you didn't inspire me to even think about Austin, I wouldn't have. And I wouldn't have moved here if you weren't here, I don't think.
Maybe I would have. But it helped a lot that you were here.
I was like, this makes it so much easier that I know Ron's here. Because it was weird times then, man.
Even going to a going to a restaurant, you felt like you were a rebel. It felt weird.
It felt weird to not be scared. You wanted to hide the fact that you weren't scared, that you wanted to just go out.
It was a strange, strange, strange time that I think even now we look back on and we can't, like I watched a UFC fight the other, an older fight, and all the cornermen had masks on. I'm like, this is the craziest thing that we went through.
That's a big time stamp right there. You know, it's bizarre.
It was a fight that took place in an arena in Florida with no crowd. No crowd.
It was Justin Gaethje versus Tony Ferguson. It was one of the first fights we did back.
It was like... And you were there? Uh-huh.
Yeah. And I was watching the fight the other day.
And I was looking at the corner men. They all had masks on.
I was like, what a weird fucking time. What a weird...
I remember people would get upset if I didn't wear a mask backstage. I'm like, what doing what is this for like this is crazy these guys are beating the fuck out of each other and sweat on each other you know and all of us tested negative that's how we got through here like is someone gonna magically gonna get kovid while we're all wandering around together don't we all test negative so you had to get in this room they had to be able to test you everybody got tested those shows that you did with Chappelle exactly so we're all in this room take that fucking stupid mask off right even the shows we did with Chappelle outside the people were supposed to wear masks outside outside everyone's tested is this a mystery magical disease that we're encountering that is like demons hiding in the woods well it but it but it was too at one time wasn't it yeah you know i lost vic henley to that disease in new york city early on but vic was not a healthy guy well what the disease does exposed metabolic health problems i didn't i'll admit that i mean he was a raging alcoholic and he knew it

and i knew he was really considering uh making some changes in his life you know he was talking to me about and then boom you know gone so so in that sense yes it was but it wasn't in the sense where all these healthy people who have been tested are wearing no mask.

No, no, no. That's ridiculous.

Especially the athletes and the fighters. Like what we would have to do is if one of the corner men got COVID, even if the fighter didn't have COVID, the fighter was pulled from the card.
So one of the corner men tested positive for COVID because the fighter had been around him, even if he's negative. We treated it different than we treated anything ever.
And especially for the fighters, it had like it was not going to have an effect on them unless they did. There's one guy did have an effect on.
He got COVID really, really bad. But it's because they kept training.
These guys kept training while they had COVID. A lot of these guys, they don't give a fuck.
They have the flu. Who cares? They're showing up at the gym.
It's part of being an animal. It's like you'll show up sick and you'll train through a...
But you shouldn't do that. You're just breaking your immune system down further, and especially if you're in camp.
So being in camp for a fighter is very different than regular working out. Being in camp for a fighter is you are basically redlining your body trying to get it to recover like trying to get it to keep pace so you can get to a superhuman level that's only achievable after like a 12-week camp and you could only hold on to it for a couple weeks they got it they know when you're peaking sometimes and they'll back a fighter off they'll go we're done today we're done we're done today you're peaking too early you're peaking too early you don't want to overdo it so you want to back off your training when you're feeling absolutely perfect and get yourself a little just slow down we're we're we're a little too soon like a really good trainer knows when you're peaking but you can't maintain it forever it's it's really only for that's why it's so crazy that a lot of these guys they'll accept a fight on like 10 days notice like that's nuts that's nuts like you need you need to be peaking you need to be like you're gonna fight in a fucking cage and i know you're doing this as a financial decision but that's why john jones is the smartest john jones never did that they changed opponents fuck you fights off john even guys like chael sunnan who eventually stomped in the first round like absolutely destroyed it was a it was not even remotely competitive it was an annihilation it would have been an annihilation 365 days a year for decades it wouldn't have mattered with how good John Jones is and as great as Chael Sonnen is John Jones was the bigger man Chael had fought at 185 pounds John was a big 205 and he was the most talented guy that ever fought in the sport and he's gonna win every time but when they change the opponent they try to make it Chael Sonnen he's like nope nope we.
Nope. We do things the right way.
I go through a full camp. That's it.
Fight's off. Everybody's like, ah, because they want you to play ball.
Get it. We need a new guy.
But look, to this day, everybody says he's the GOAT. Well, why is he the GOAT? Because he did everything the right way.
He knew, especially when he wasn't partying, he did everything the wrong way, too. I mean, he did a lot of partying and still beat the fuck out of everybody because he was that good because he was that talented one of the craziest things he ever said daniel cormier when they were having a rematch they were talking shit in the press conference and daniel cormier said something to john john goes i beat you when i was on coke is the craziest statement because he says it you're like oh shit and it's true it's true that's how good john was but if you try to change opponents john's like uh-uh try to call john jones in for a late notice fight on five days notice he'll tell you go fuck yourself like nope i'd rather hang out at home my dog like he's not doing it like you gotta so these guys when they're peaking they're vulnerable they get sick a lot especially when they're cutting weight because you're redlining your body and you could overdo it and guys overdo it all the time they over train they just break themselves down when they just they they haven't they've kept too much pace and not enough recovery and they're declining and declining and declining they show up at the gym they have no energy they're like fuck and if you get a guy to the fight that's over trained it's horrible it's horrible to watch i've seen it many times the guys just can't recover they're too tired they overdid it they were too tough for their own good so one of those guys got covid this guy hamza chmaev and this motherfucker is a psychopath he's a savage like one of the most savage guys that's ever fought in the sport and he just kept training just kept training this motherfucker trains like eight hours a day he trains like a wolverine he's an animal and he was training with covid and he kept getting real sick wound Wound up getting hospitalized, coughing up blood,

gets out, goes right back to it.

Same thing.

Hospitalized again.

He got hospitalized like twice

because he wouldn't stop training

because he's that psychotic.

But other than him,

regular athletes that get it,

they just take a few days off.

Right.

Daniel Cormier had COVID,

trained through it,

and won the title.

Won the heavyweight title. Training through COVID in his camp.
He was sick during camp and kept training. And everybody was like, let's just keep going.
I didn't get off the couch the whole time I had COVID. So just imagine those level of athletes and we're worried about it so much that everybody has to wear a mask like shut the fuck up Right, this is nuts.
So all that had to happen to where we were The reckless ones we were the ones that like I don't I'm not buying this I'm gonna live my life I'm going to Texas and there was a lot of people that were really mad at that like what are you doing? You're not scared. What are you doing? You're doing shows indoors.

You're killing people.

Blood is on your hands.

There was a frothy, a frothy mess of people that were just all caught up in this psyop.

They were just the, you know, and it was great.

Not good, really. But it was great in that it exposed these fragile thinkers, so many fragile minds.
They couldn't see the forest for the trees. They couldn't see it.
And when we all came out here and we said, we see it. Like, this is bullshit.
Yeah, yeah, it'll make you sick. Yeah, you'll have to be at home for a week.
Yeah, get vitamin drips. You'll be all right.
Like, yeah, this is bullshit. Yeah, yeah, it'll make you sick.
Yeah, you'll have to be at home for a week.

Yeah, get vitamin drips.

You'll be all right.

Like, yeah, this is what we're dealing with for real.

And a lot of people agreed.

And then it turns out we were right.

It turns out we were right.

At the end of the day, we were correct.

We were correct to want to live our lives.

We all went back to live our lives. Too soon.
Says who? Says who? The fucking government that's been lying to you about this disease the entire time? I'm trying to look back on it and realize that it happened. You know, that it really fucking happened.
That we were locked up, locked down. It's not good.
Because it's like when you find out your friends a bitch

And then you have to count on them again in the future you're like dude Don't fall apart on me right show up like don't get scared when you need I need help like you find out your friend Falls apart under pressure you're like oh great. Why are you crying Mike? What are we doing? Don't cry.
This is crazy Like now you can't count on Mike because Mike falls apart when chick gets hot and this is how it feel Feels like a good percentage of the country. You know, it was a joke from my last special But I really feel this way.
We lost a lot of people during COVID and most of them are still alive That I wrote that line thinking about specific friends. It's like, what did you think was going on? What did you think was going on? Yeah, it's a disease.
But since when have you changed your entire fucking life for years for a disease? This is nuts. Since when have you listened to the entire government tell you you can't have outdoor dining because of a disease you've already had? You've already gotten through it and they're still telling you this? We're a year and a half into this fucking thing? And so we were right.
And so many people, because we were right, so many people also came. And that's the beautiful thing.
It's like people speak with their actions. And the people that are willing to make a leap like that those are the ones you want there those are the ones like we got the best of the best we got the the most fuck you of the fuck you people because comedians are fuck you people they are something happens in society like hey man fuck you right you know or eat a steaming bowl of fuck eat a steaming bowl of fuck no matter what it is you know and uh the world needs that i need that i need that i need you here i need tony i

need i need people like that the same way that you did the way we all sort of collectively

manifested it together but without you we wouldn't be here yeah so you guys come on down to austin

texas and check out the mothership and see how much fun we're having if you don't believe it

Thank you. bested it together but without you we wouldn't be here yeah so you guys come on down to austin texas and check out the mothership and see how much fun we're having if you don't believe it if you think we're making this shit up because of you i also almost bought the cult house yeah right that would have been you know we would have made it happen i i people say yeah he did that would have been horrible it wouldn't have been horrible no it would have been amazing because it was a cool place and that you know i it was uh it would have been amazing yeah it would have amazing.
It would have been horrible. It wouldn't have been horrible.
No, it would have been amazing. Because it was a cool place.
And, you know, it was... It would have been amazing.
Yeah, it would have been amazing. It would have been amazing.
It's an amazing spot. And it's hilarious that a cult used to own.
I feel terrible for all the people that were roped into building it. And all the people that got butt fucked.
You were doing that piece that was so funny and you quit doing it. You didn't do that on your special.
No, I didn't. No, that was so that was so funny yeah it's a true story remember i gave you that line that it's okay to hypnotize people and butt fuck them because it's that falls under the category of i talked him into it yeah it's basically the same thing that's not illegal at all yeah i talked the guy into letting me fuck him in the ass it's kind of technically not illegal with a watch going back and forth in front of his face.

That's not illegal. That's not drugs.
The guy was a hypnotist and a gay

porn star. Like, what a combo.

And then when they found the gay porn,

you watch the documentary, right?

The documentary's incredible.

But Ron,

for the people at home,

Ron had performed at this,

so you had performed at that place. You're like, I fucking love that theater.
You should buy that place. And then it was for sale.
I was like, oh, we're in. Right.
And then Adam Egott is the one, he goes, have you seen that documentary that's on that cult? I'm like, oh no. Oh no, Ron White, what have you done? What have you done? I watched the documentary and I was like, oh boy.
I don't think I even realized at that time that that's what that building was. I don't think I knew that it was a cult building whenever I first took it.
Have you seen the videos of the guy dancing around inside the building? Oh, yeah. That was what he was built for.
I had seen that years ago. I mean, years and years ago.
So I knew about that anyway, but I didn't realize that that was the building. Or maybe I'd fuck out.
Those are the same people wearing masks in their cars. You know what I'm saying? It's like that's why you can start a cult.
If you just get everybody who wears a mask in their car, you could rope those motherfuckers into doing almost anything. And that's how cults get started.
Yeah. Yeah.
No, people are looking for leadership. Well, they're also looking for community.
And they're really dumb. Like think about the positive aspects of the mothership, right? Like we're all having a good time.
Well time but this is what everybody really wants but what if the only way you can get that is to believe baba kinesh over there who's like who changed his name and now he wears wooden beads and he sits in the lotus position and everybody's got to suck his dick like i just wanted to do yoga and hang out with everybody why i gotta suck this guy's dick this is they kept sucking his dick. And you know what? They're sucking his dick somewhere else now.
In Hawaii. In Hawaii.
Yeah. He's still getting his dick sucked.
Some guys are just really good at like. At getting their dick sucked.
It's like the thing where you need to be on acid to understand the Grateful Dead. It's like you need to be at the special frame of mind with a special nine-volt brain where you can get talked into a cult like that.
But it happens every day. Every day.
Every day. Every day all throughout the country.
I was talking to Mark Andreessen about this venture capitalist guy. He's a brilliant guy.
And he was telling me that there's a ton of active cults right now in California. Oh, yeah.
That that are functioning like you only hear about the ones that wind up getting in shootouts with the feds there's a bunch of them that actually function somehow or another they keep it together you know people leave they tell the horror stories and some people join right but like wild wild country is a great example that netflix documentary yeah The crazy thing is in the beginning it looked so fun. Yeah, it looked completely fucking doable.
So doable. You know, our leader's got really nice fucking cars.
Look. Yeah.
How could he be wrong? He can't be wrong. He's got 20 Rolls Royces.
There's so many of them. It's like whatever the way that we evolved in tribal society to listen to the chief we all have this like strange desire to either be the chief or listen to the chief sure you know either be the alpha or listen to the alpha and someone can pretend to be the chief they can be the chief with magical insight and you know what the most fucked up thing about that documentary is the thing that still fucks with my head is that that guy would do these things this thing to these people called the knowing where he would right and they would orgasm they would just have like they literally meet god to this day they all say that it was real that that thing actually did happen like the power of suggestion the fact that he kept it from them for so long.
And then the one day, or this is your coming of age ceremony, which is a one day you're going to get the knowing and he would put his hands on them and they would really experience something. And they said it was like they were, they were experiencing God.
Like they, it was the most bliss they had ever felt in their life and that they never felt it again. So the circumstances and the ritual activated this innate part of our consciousness that's always there, this ability to talk to God, the ability to communicate with God, which is probably what

every religion is trying to do. It's all like this whisper of the truth that's out there in the ether and everybody knows that it's out there.
There's something there. I just have to figure out how to...
And this guy, this crazy gay porn star, hypnotist, buttfucking all these dudes, still even this guy was able to touch these people and they were able to access that part of their brain and they were in they were in they were like oh we're in man i'm following this guy everywhere this guy really is like connected to god well you know i i think that that that let's start with that, just with prayer, is a physical thing, not a spiritual thing. And that's why it works for anybody.
You know, I believe it's a way to channel energy and it changes the way you feel, but it doesn't matter what you're praying to, that it's a physical transfer of energy. not not a spiritual thing i and and because anybody can do it and also hypnosis is so powerful when it's done correctly and i know that because i've experienced hypnosis done well and uh so boy if you had both of those things you know you could have power over anybody that's buy it.
Yeah, that's the problem. That was what they did during the Manson family, MKUltra, during those days.
This is part of the chaos book by Tom O'Neill. It's about the Manson family, excuse me, the Manson family murders.
And one of the things that they went into is the fact that this guy who worked for the CIA at the time was a part of MKUltra. His name was Jolly West.
And Jolly West is this figure all throughout the counterculture resistance movement that the federal government had sort of concocted. And part of what he was doing was teaching people how to manipulate people with LSD.
And he was teaching Charlie Manson in jail. This guy visited Manson in jail.
Then Manson would get out of jail and Manson would get in trouble, get arrested, and then get released. And the sheriffs all say, it's over my pay grade.
They were all told to let him go. And so he was implicated in murders and violent crimes and they always let him go.
They always had to let him go. And he was getting acid and he had sophisticated methods of manipulating minds.
It wasn't as simple as like, this is a charismatic dude and they all want to cut a baby out of fucking Sharon Tate's stomach. No, it was way crazier than that.
It was sophisticated mind control from MK ultra. And they wanted to see if they could get people to become homicidal maniacs and they were right they could they knew how to do it they used it and they got manson to do it and it threw water on this whole anti-war hippie movement all that peace love shit now hippies are murderers now hippies are char Charles Manson.
Now, you know, your kid wants to just, like, fucking paint flowers and show up at Grateful Dead shows. No, your kid's a murderer.
Your kid's a fucking—all the hippies are suspects now. It worked.
It was a fascinating thing they did. Like, the way they threw water on this movement that was happening like in 1970 there's just threw it down and put schedule one on everything if the Nixon administration hadn't done that in 1970 who knows what the world looks like today like who knows who knows if you can get Ibogaine and Ayahuasca in America, if psilocybin had stayed legal.
It was made illegal in 1970. All that stuff became schedule one in 1970.
Marijuana was always illegal. It was illegal from like the 1930s.
And that was because it was a textile and that was because it was a commodity. It had almost nothing to do with the drug itself.
They were trying to outlaw hemp. They were worried because they had come out with a new way to process hemp fiber.
It's called a decorticator. They invented this thing.
It was a big thing. Popular Science magazine, hemp, the new billion-dollar crop.
It was like they were saying, we're all going to use hemp now because now there's an effective way to process the fibers and they're superior to everything else make superior paper superior cloth superior everything right much much much much better plant and uh william randolph first was like fuck that so william randolph first starts publishing stories in his newspapers about how blacks and Mexicans are taking this new drug called marijuana. They invented the name.
It was a wild Mexican tobacco. That's what marijuana used to be.
It was slang for a wild Mexican tobacco. So they put that name on cannabis, something that people had had forever.
People have been smoking it forever.

It was literally the origin of the term cannabis. So they put that name on cannabis, something that people had had forever.
People had been smoking it forever.

It was literally the origin of the term canvas.

Comes from cannabis?

Yes.

Oh, I didn't know that.

It's all hemp.

If you go like the Mona Lisa, those are all painted on hemp.

The first draft of the Declaration of Independence was written on hemp.

Hemp was a far superior paper.

It's really difficult to tear.

It's a crazy fiber.

Hey, can we put this on pause for a second?

Huh?

You got to piss?

Thank you. But hemp was a far superior paper.
It's really difficult to tear. It's a crazy fiber.
Hey, can we put this on pause for a second? Huh? You got to piss? Can we put it on pause for a second? Yeah. Okay.
So, ladies and gentlemen, Ron White had a moment there where the cold came back, the sickness came back. Yeah, that was a moment.
That was a moment.

I don't know what that was.

Well, I was over here blabbing about the illegalization of weed and how crazy it is.

And we were talking about ayahuasca and all those things.

And all of a sudden, you just got a little pale.

Yeah, I got a little pale and started sweating. I don't know what it is.

I just got a little sick.

I feel a little better now.

I had a nice yak.

How long has

this sickness been with you?

I felt fine all day.

I felt fine yesterday. I played golf.

I had, uh...

Has this happened before, though, or it just comes on

out of nowhere? No, this has been

the first time. So maybe it's like a...

Maybe it's another thing. Like a food poisoning

thing or something? Fuck, I don't know.

I don't know what it is.

Wow.

And you've had a couple IVs, right?

I had two last week, and I'll go home and get another one.

Yeah.

And I'm sure I'll be fine in just a little bit.

Damn.

I'm sure I'll be cool.

Damn.

And you played golf.

Yeah, played golf with my son.

Had a great time. It's a nice day to play golf too absolutely one of the things that we have out here in texas is real weather i love it when it rains and everything's so green and pretty and you need to go down to costa rica i do need to go down to costa rica that uh stay in your neighbor's place i do need it's the sweetest thing yeah that i've ever seen yeah my big pet peeve is when people say it's the best thing you've ever seen i'm like this is the best thing you've ever seen buddy i've seen some shit you know some shit exactly like what are you saying i've seen so many things but uh but that place down there, it's another driftwood, or kind of like driftwood, but it is fucking gorgeous.
I heard that driftwood place is amazing. The place out here? It's the best, man.
It's so pretty right now because they blow in a bunch of wildflowers all over it, and it's just fucking gorgeous. It's a great i almost wish i played golf it's a waste of time and money you don't have uh you you know i know you don't have time so i yeah i would love it i'm sure uh but so we should probably wrap this up because you're not feeling that that good right i feel a little better you're right yeah i'm keep rolling a little a little bit okay all right well it's a it's just uh when someone gets sick like that you don't know what to do like fuck yeah i don't know what to do but i i swear i feel better i feel i don't feel hot anymore i'm so weird so weird like what is that i guess i need to get something out of my stomach real quick, I think.
Crazy. Quickest way to do it.
It's just crazy that something's been like, you know, you have a little invader in your body. Yeah.
You're fighting off. That's what we're doing all the time, fighting off these invaders.
Yeah, I'm still coming to the club tonight. Okay.
I'm going to get a drip and come do a set. Of course.
This will be to be fun tonight. It's Cam Patterson's show tonight.
Oh, good. It's an exciting time.
It really is. And the world is so chaotic right now, which is great for comedy.
Whenever the world's fucked up, comedy's at its best. Gaza and Palestine and fucking Ukraine and tariffs.
It's great to come out and do some comedy. Yeah.
You know what? And I stay away from all of it. Good.
And of that subject matter, any politics or anything like that. And the reason is, you know, I know know my crowd i know what they want and and they want to laugh really hard and they want to and and i think that i've always taken a position as i'm just not going to bring that into it i'm going to let us do something and i love it when other people do that are really good at it and you know that it's fun to watch and it's entertaining as fuck but i just decided a long time ago that i'm just gonna i'm just gonna go out there and make them laugh as hard as i can make them laugh and let them have some time off from tragedy or whatever and and and i'm not that good at it anyway so you know it's i've never been a political commentator right so why be one now and then uh well the problem with politics is you're going to alienate 50% of the crowd.
Dead split. Yeah.
Dead split. And if you're one of those people that takes a stand on stage, you're like, okay, great.
Right. Now you're taking a stand.
Yeah. Okay, but just let's have fun.
It's silly. Unless what you have to say is so good that you can make someone laugh.
Oh, if you're good enough. Yeah.
If you're good enough. Right.
You know, I saw people try to take on 9-11 right after 9-11, but I only saw like one person that was really, if you're good enough to write about that, then write about it. But if you're not good enough to write about it, leave it the fuck alone.
Leave it the that's some black belt material yeah yeah you have to be skill level whatever yeah you know mitzi shore wouldn't let brian holtz been on stage for two weeks after 9-11 no i didn't know that she's like no way keep him off the stage the holtzman couldn't wait couldn't wait to say something fucking completely outrageous whatever that demon inside of him that comes out when he's on stage yeah i don't understand him you know i really don't i love him i love him to death but he's such an original character and the most yeah he's from a different time it's like he was brought here from another dimension he's like a different thing even the way he dresses it's like he's from the 50s right and he's like my age like he's he's not he was like that when i met him he was from a different era when i met him in 94 i was like oh you've known him that long yeah i'm like where is this fucking guy from like you're from a different time people fucking love him though man they fucking got a crowd now yeah he does that's the difference between the way he was treated at the store unfortunately he fell into this and through nobody's fault but it was like everybody waited till the end and holtzman would go up but like why have him on the end you know it's like well have him on when the crowd's hot right like don't put him on at one in the morning put Put him on at 10. Let's see when the crowd is popping.
Let him cook when the crowd's popping. And now he sells out.
People come to see him. And he headlines.
It's like people get excited. He's a maniac.
And he's got a crowd now. He's got a legitimate draw.
They get it. Yeah, they get it.
It's nice. It's fun.

That's also the difference between when a comedy club is run by a comic.

Because Holtzman

has always been a comic

for comics. We all would go to

see Holtzman at the end of the night when he was

doing these insane sets for 15 people

in the main room. But now

we're running the shows. Give him a fucking weekend.
Let's go. Give him a Thursday night.
Let's go. Let's have some fun.
Right. He does a lot of.
Especially the 10 p.m. shows.
He does a lot of Thursdays. Yeah.
Especially 10 p.m. shows.
That's the best time to see him. When it's late and you've had a couple of cocktails.
Right. You feel a little crazy about the world.
Yeah. Let that guy.
Let that guy loose. you understand it's a joke yeah you get jokes you get someone saying something he doesn't really mean right it's completely ridiculous to say yeah that's part of the fun yeah yeah and then he acts like he means it and you buy into it no it's a joke still but every now and then he'll show you behind the curtain yeah every now and then he'll give you a little peek and you're like okay yeah this is an He's a joke still.
But every now and then he'll show you behind the curtain. Yeah.
Every now and then he'll give you a little peek and you're like, okay, this is an act. He's having fun.
He is. He's having a good time.
And he loves Austin too. I see him walking around downtown almost every time I drive through the city.
Yeah, it was a big get getting him here. It was a big get because we wanted to bring a lot of the – there was some magic that was trapped in the town of the Comedy Store.
It was magic. And some of it wasn't being utilized correctly.
And Holtzman's the best example of that. But what a fun hang it was, you know.
What a fun hang. Yeah, it was great.
That was some of my favorite times in my life in that back bar. Yeah.
Just laughing. Just laughing.
We would be back there just laughing. That was a great thing the store did when they put together that bar Yeah, that it had Mitzi's actual bar from her house was the bar there.
I didn't know that yeah that bar We didn't used to be there like so the early days that was like a storage room And so at one point in time in the store was like really killing it They decided like we should turn this into a a bar. And I don't know what year was that.
I feel like that was like 2014-ish, which is right when I came back. And the store was killing it.
And we all were like, oh, yeah, we'll have our own bar. This is incredible.
And you had to go through the kitchen to get through it like a scene from Goodfellas right and you get back there and you could only be back there if you were cool like you you couldn't buy a ticket it was police yeah yeah you had to have a friend you had to know somebody to get back there but we would be hanging with some of the coolest people in the world it was my favorite place to drink oh it was it was so fun. There'd be musicians back there.
Smoke pot back there. And everybody was just chilling.
And the drinks were free. Yeah.
It was crazy. It was like, it was so fun.
The store was a magical place, man. A magical place.
And there's something about the fact that, you know, it had this insane history to it that you felt like, wow, I can't believe I'm even here. Right.
Standing on the stage, same last stage as Pryor. Kennison.
Kennison. Yeah.
And you just you're in the belly of the beast on sunset in Hollywood, like right in the middle of everything. Right.
The middle of everything where everybody. I remember when I was a in uh 1988 when i first started doing stand-up they would talk about the comedy store like it was mecca right you had to make your pilgrimage to the store and some guys would say they went there but they bombed oh i went back to try to do some meetings i did a set at the store i bombed i fucked that place like yeah my first uh trip out to la la you know i was trying to get on at the improv i couldn't get on and uh and i was like oh man i went to the comedy store and i told them my story it was monday night and they put me up first which wasn't a really good spot and i ate it and uh but they did put me on stage yeah well there it is right.
There were about 10 people in there or whatever, nobody. And it was a horrible experience.
But I always look back at it finally because they did it. They said, yeah, go get on stage.
First time I ever came out to the store, I was out in L.A. to do some pilot thing for MTV.
and I was staying at a hotel and I knew where the store i was out in i was out in la to do some pilot thing for mtv and uh i was staying at a hotel and i i knew where the store was i was like i gotta get there i just gotta see what it's like and they let me in because i was i said hey i'm a comedian from new york can i just come in and watch the show and they're like yeah sure they just let me right in and then i sat in the back of the room there's like 19 people in And they were all like, the comics that were on stage were terrible. They were all like Bodaks.
They're like people that, and then I realized years later that what had happened was a lot of these scenes, they go in these peaks and valleys. And I had caught it when it was at a valley.
And before it was at a peak, like the Kinnison years, it was a giant peak. When people would come to, it was the wild place.
Kinnison was there. They all come at midnight and watch him and celebrities would be all there.
And he had died in like 92, I think. And I got there in 94.
So there was this absence. Lull, right.
It was a real lull. There was a lot of leftovers, people that were in the 80s that didn't make it.
Right. But they were still around.
They're still doing stand-up and hoping that something was going to happen. But they had tired acts.
They were just tired. It hadn't happened for them.
They were out there doing pilot season. They didn't want to be at the store because if you're at the store, there's no agents.

There's no executive. No one comes to see

you at the store at that time. They would go

to the improv. They'd go to the laugh factory.

That's where the industry was. So if

you really wanted to have an actual career, you wouldn't

be doing sets at the store.

And you had to do sets in front of

Bud Friedman going, language!

Watch your language!

Fuck.

Yeah. There was a lot of that back then right the tv days everybody thought you had to be clean you know when i came back to the store it was in its heyday you know you were but you know running the podcast and you know the fucking place was back to the rafters and the comics were solid as fuck, you know.
We had a magical run. Yeah.

Yeah.

It was a magical run. And we're having one now.
Yeah. It's the same thing.
I mean, but it's our version of it, the new version of it. But it's the same thing.
It's just like it's a beautiful thing when, I mean, that term artist is very pretentious. So I'll just say comics.
Realize that we're all doing this thing together and there's not a lot of us. And it's fun to hang out together and enjoy each other's company and appreciate each other.
And appreciate the ride. We're all on this wild ride together.
That's right. And it is quite a ride.
It's a beautiful ride. Quite a ride.
Yeah, we're very lucky, Ron White. And I say it all the time, but it's true.

You're patient zero.

All right, man.

I'll take the title.

I'll take the title.

You're really patient zero because you just threw up.

Imagine if you have some fucking new COVID,

picked up some new COVID in Vegas.

It kills us all.

Yeah.

I love you to death, brother.

I love you too, man.

Thank you for being here.

All right, you got it.

Thanks for having me on.

Goodbye.