#2359 - Mike Maxwell

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Hey, Mike Maxwell.

What's happening, Joe Rogan?

My man.

Good to see you.

It's good to be here.

For anybody who doesn't know, Mike Maxwell is an amazing artist and did not just that painting with Quentin Tarantino in front of it, which is pretty fucking cool, but also the JRE logo.

Yeah, minute logo.

That was like funny how many years ago was that like 15 fucking years ago yeah it has to be i think you were like on episode 10 maybe wow yeah that's crazy yeah and super fucking random too like i get the question all the time like how the fuck did you do that you know and for me like my whole like art experience has just been like make the work and whatever the fuck happens afterwards is just all bonus.

Well, if the work is great, that works.

You know, it's like,

you gotta have to be discovered.

Somebody has to find you.

But yeah, ultimately, it's about talent.

Yeah, and you know,

hard work, too.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yes, yeah.

I mean, because that talent really doesn't come, like, artists so often are like, people like, ah, I like, I wish I could draw, like, you're so lucky, like, God-given talent.

I'm like, bitch, I had to fucking, I work every day and have been grinding at this for 25, 26 years.

There's no God-given talent with art.

There's some

people have an openness or maybe an ability to see things differently than others.

But when it comes to the actual technique and developing that fine hand-eye coordination and the ability to draw

or paint exactly what you're looking for, God, that's work.

That's work.

Yeah, and nothing came easy.

I feel like there's some artists and some creative people who they have some like uh inert talent that's in there somewhere or it's like we have the right brain chemistry to like get started but like i'm still improving 20 25 26 years in i'm still recognizing improvements yeah i thought that that particular one that we just posted a picture of that was like one of your best ones that that is fucking amazing well i totally like i probably put more time and effort into that piece than anything i'd made previously look at that thing man that is so sick.

That is so sick.

And it's like, that is this show.

Yeah, right.

And what's funny, like, that piece was really like, all the components were just separate drawings that I had been like compiling.

Oh, wow.

And then it like eventually just kind of formed itself.

Like, sometimes I just let the work do.

do what it needs to do.

Sometimes it's almost like I feel disconnected from it.

Yeah.

And I had, like, there gets to a point after like all the like prep work where it's like the painting starts to paint itself.

Like it tells me what it wants.

Yeah.

It's very strange.

Like there'll be a moment where it's like I could feel something's not right.

And then like I can't consciously think of, okay, well, I need to do A, B, and C.

But it's kind of like I sit and wait and something tells me.

It's so crazy that you say it that way because so many people, including authors in particular, they talk about the exact same kind of process.

It's like something just comes to you.

Yeah.

I've done a little bit of writing and I've recognized that in writing too, where like I'm telling a story and then all of a sudden it's like the characters come to life.

Yeah.

And they start to dictate what's actually going to happen.

Yeah.

Like it writes itself eventually.

But you have to do all that beginning work,

like the prep work.

Like you have to get the idea going.

And then once you're a certain like path in,

like

it starts to communicate with you.

I always wondered why that's maybe that's why stephen king wrote his best work when he was coked up and drunk because he was out of his head yeah i think he could get away from his own head yeah i know that sounds ridiculous especially to sober people yeah don't you know what i mean like they don't want to admit that there's there's that's there's a net positive effect of some people with drugs and writing hunter s thompson is a giant example yeah he's one of my favorite authors and it's a giant example the guy was an inveterate drug user.

He was a fucking complete maniac.

He was always drunk.

And he wrote some shit that just, to this day, cuts to the core of our society.

Yeah.

Like, he was.

He's one of my all-time heroes.

Like, I started reading him when I was in high school.

I've read almost everything, I think.

I even liked the Hay Rube stuff.

Yeah.

Like, a lot of people are like, like, he was in his decline.

But I remember when that was coming at, like, pretty early internet, right?

Like, no social media, but those little articles would pop up.

And I still enjoyed it.

Like I love everything that he made.

Well, he at the end was gone.

He was really gone.

And McCumber, so David McCumber, who is his editor, who also co-wrote a book with my friend Tony Anagoni, that's one of the great pool books.

It's called Playing Off the Rail.

It's a really, for anybody who's a fan of Pool, the game, it's an amazing book about a guy whose name is Tony Anagoni, who is a world-class player who went on the road with a journalist and just gambled across the country and did it, did it like a real pool hustler would in the most dangerous, dingiest places, playing against

high-level guys for $10,000 sets and 24-hour joints in New York City.

It's an amazing book.

Well, McCumber was Hunter's editor, too, at one point in time.

And McCumber got him towards the end.

Like, there's video of, see if you can find video of Hunter Thompson and David McCumber having a conversation.

It must have been a fucking nightmare.

Nightmare.

Never, never got his stuff in on time.

He famously would destroy the fax machine

because he was supposed to fax his pages to Rolling Stone Masters.

I love that video when he's in the Rolling Stones office and

Jan Wenner is like, looks like the whole building's going to fucking burn down.

Just panic.

I mean, just try to imagine controlling a guy like that.

He can't control himself.

But

out of that, sometimes

something that no one else is capable of writing comes through.

Yeah.

And it was much less so at the end.

It got away from him at the end, which it's going to do though.

Cocaine and alcohol, you're not going to, it's unsustainable.

At that level for that long?

It's unsustainable.

Everybody I know that has done a lot of Coke, at the end, they're a mess.

It's neurological conditions.

All sorts of weird shit shit happens yeah you can't fry your brain you're frying and these guys were frying

well it's like it's the deficiency afterwards right so you've used up all the available dopamine that you have in your brain exactly and it's just like well fuck it i had a friend who was a crack addict who uh was also friends with my friend who ran a pool haul but also was involved in recovery and was involved in helping people with recovery he was so he was after the fact?

Well, he was helping people that were getting sober, and he wasn't trying to help my friend Johnny.

My friend Johnny didn't want to help.

He was like, fuck your help.

I'm smoking crack.

And he was explaining to me the whole dopamine thing, the dopamine and serotonin receptors just get cooked.

And then you're so depressed that you need it just to feel normal.

Yeah, you're always at the below baseline.

Right.

You know, I kind of feel like I fall into that little category a little bit to where it's like, I'm just below below baseline normal.

And like a couple, like, I don't get super excited for shit, but it'll be like something, something that I'm looking forward to will kind of just get me to baseline, like right around normal.

And I, I sometimes wonder, like, I used to do a lot of LSD when I was a teenager.

And I wonder if it would like define a lot.

I mean, we had, we had one summer that me and my boys, it was like every two days,

like, you know,

twice a week.

How old are you?

16.

Yeah.

But also at the, you know, at the same time, maybe that has

had some power in the sort of creative aspect too.

Right.

Right.

Even if it's just like looking at the world differently, which is just so common with psychedelics.

Right.

Right.

Just kind of gives you some perspective that's so far removed from our normal day-to-day reality.

Right.

Right.

So it's like,

I think for me, it's like, what more am I not seeing?

You know, like, like, what am I, what am I missing in my normal reality that maybe exists?

But

it could be total bullshit.

Like, I don't know.

It might not have done anything for my creativity.

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You know,

it seems to have a profound effect on a lot of people that have experiences and just they'll talk about like this one.

Like, didn't Steve Jobs talk about it?

One LSD experience and just kind of shifted the way he thought about things.

Oh, here it is

with those tiny shorts on.

Fucking great.

This is the document.

The craziness.

Walking around with a gun.

I can't even understand them.

Tywood thieves.

One of these things in the stomach was turned up personally.

What did I do?

I was behind the fence.

No, I had a fence.

I couldn't call

the cab.

We've got to

get seriously busy here.

Okay.

You keep it calling me every conceivable dinner name, you dirty sock.

You dirty, stupid bastard.

I've had to hold the fence.

You flamey asshole.

Yeah, well.

Well, we were

an hour away from

predicting.

Well,

not to mention the first edition.

I don't

forget his name.

Look at the computer.

I wonder what year this was.

This came out in 88, so probably like 87.

When did people first start having computers?

When did you have your first computer, Jamie?

You were younger.

Mine was later than that, though.

I had like Windows, I think, was our first one.

In what year?

Like 95?

No.

We had whatever Windows was before that.

3.8 or whatever it was.

Went one.

Is that what it was?

When Windows 95 came out, it was a big day.

It was a big day.

Oh, yeah.

I remember.

You could do stuff.

I got an Apple computer from Comp USA in 1994.

Yeah, I think I was right around like 97.

Big ass fucking thing, too.

But my friend Robbie knew what to buy.

My friend Robbie, either he worked in computers or his brother worked in computers.

So he took me to Comp USA.

I had no idea.

I'm like, what is this?

My mom,

she worked in a computer lab at the community college in San Diego.

And she was like one of the first to start using Apple products.

Like everything was PC

on the spot.

She knew like something was like getting ready to pop off.

And she was like, like she had the first iPhone, like early, uh, like those fucking apples that, you know, it looked like a TV from the 80s, yeah, just weighed 600 pounds, yeah, and actually, like, got into graphic design early, and that's kind of how I started doing some because I made art my whole life, but started doing some design, like learning how to actually use the fucking computer.

And now, like, I learned how programs were available back then.

Photoshop and illustrator were out, but it was like one and two.

Wow.

Yeah.

And she was in there and taught me how to do it.

And then, like, I still like do graphic design, but it's like, it's from, like, I still use the techniques from like 1999.

Wait, it kind of shows you that there's a lot of like untapped comedic talent in the tech industry because memes were one of the first forms of new comedy

that hit the internet.

And it had to be by someone who knew how to work the old school Photoshops.

Yeah.

So you had to have some technical understanding of the programs.

You had to view it.

It was probably people that were using them already.

You know, they were graphic artists and they were like, fuck this guy.

Let's make a funny meme.

Yeah, because I mean, before, before that, you had to do everything by hand.

It was a lot of like cut and paste and like

and like different techniques.

It was everything was by hand.

When did memes, like really funny memes, first start appearing?

I feel like it has to be like 2000, 99, 2000.

The internet meme.

Charlie Dawkins

Concept, 1972.

Right.

But internet.

That was that book that he had, right?

The Selfish Gene.

What was that?

Wasn't it in that?

That Dancing Baby was coming up.

Yeah,

I feel like that's the earliest.

The Dancing Baby was the first?

Yeah, from like a TV show.

Oh, yeah.

A terrible animated dancing baby.

What year was that?

Bro, that's just the nightmares.

If you're in the woods and you see a dancing baby, it looks like that.

The Uncanny Valley dancing baby

with those fuck that would be so scary imagine if you see you would have to punt it you would have to punt it bro you'd have to run you if you kick it it grabs a hold of you and bites you like a wolf yeah what if it runs like fucking 100 miles an hour well you're gonna find out at least you'll find out actually if you run it's worse because then you're tired and it's probably right there watching you

you you're just trying to catch your breath yeah and you see it's a standing behind a bush

no no no it stays just far enough from you that you think you have to run if it's really trying to scare you, it doesn't want to jump on you.

And once it gets really close for a long time,

for a long time.

So it wears everything out.

You want to wear it out.

Like, that's how you do it if you're chasing a person.

You don't just run up on them.

That just spoils all the fun.

Right.

Isn't that like the old school hunters too?

Just like chasing a pack of deer for oh, yeah.

That's why human beings can run so long.

But that's a different thing.

They're overheating them.

It's called persistence hunting.

Yeah.

That's why there's so many amazing marathon runners come from that part of the world.

Because these guys have a history of literally running animals to their death.

Right.

Fucking crazy.

Who had to figure that out too?

Who's like, well, I got five miles in me.

Yeah.

Let me just keep.

Shit, I need 10.

Let me just keep running until this deer stops running.

Like, how would you ever think that a deer, you would eventually catch it?

Yeah.

Especially if they're so fucking fast.

They're so fucking fast.

Like, how would you think that one day that antelope was going to get tired?

Like, how would you even have that in your head?

Yeah.

That it couldn't just take a break.

It's going to be 300 yards ahead of you like that.

I love those.

Just take a break, catch its breath.

They didn't even know that the issue is the animals don't have sweat glands.

So they overheat.

Shit.

Yeah.

So we have sweat glands.

And of course, they weren't biologists, so they also didn't know that either.

Well, that's why we're so weird.

We're such a weird animal.

And that our bodies really can kind of adapt to different climates and they self-cool and regulate.

Like some animals, if they're outside of their climate range, they're fucked.

Yeah.

Like they're in deep shit.

Yeah.

You know?

Like Marshall over here.

Where are you, buddy?

Other side.

Oh.

Oh, he's right here.

He's right beside me.

We have to, you know, if we're going to exercise in Texas, we have to do it in the morning.

Right.

Or we have to jump in the pool.

Because, you know, his body's adapted for cold.

He's got this crazy wool coat that he wears everywhere he goes.

It sucks.

But for us, man, we can, we sweat.

And they figured out, I guess, a long time ago that these animals, if you just keep running after them, eventually they just can't do it anymore.

And then they lay down.

And then you fucking stab them.

Yeah, that's so fucking wild.

But it made insane runners.

Yeah.

The only way you're going to feed your children is if you run after that deer, bro, you're going to become a fucking runner.

And now the evolutionary process is like you go to the Olympics.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, and they have you like this on the cover of Leadies.

It is, it really is interesting because like that's before I started doing jiu-jitsu, like that was what I was doing.

I was running.

Oh.

Like, and but it just got fucking boring.

Yeah.

It got boring.

And that's when I was like, okay, I got to find something else.

Yeah, that's what most people, the problem they have with the gym.

And jiu-jitsu is the opposite of boring.

Jiu-Jitsu is...

It's one of the most rewarding things in life because it's super hard to do.

It's really good for your head.

like jiu-jitsu people in general like you get dickheads in all walks of life and female dickheads too

but for lack of a better word but you you get the nicest people like for the most part you get people of character yeah because you have to have character to stick it out yeah to be doing jujits if you're if you've been doing jiu-jitsu eight years

I can 99% sure I can hang out with you.

Yeah.

You're a dude who's got his shit together.

It's almost like we're with like distant family members or something.

100%.

Yeah.

100%.

It's like you recognize you've been through this thing.

You know, I started doing jiu-jitsu in 96.

So 96, I was at Carlson Gracie's place.

I was

29?

29?

Yeah, see, I started at 30.

Yeah.

Like around the same time.

Yeah, around the same time.

And I started right after, it was kind of like a year or two after I first saw the UFC.

You know, it was right around that time.

Yeah.

And so I started at Carlson Gracie's place in

LA that was right down the street from the comedy store.

It's real close to the comedy store.

And that was when Vitor Belfort was, he had just fought John Hess in Hawaii.

Yeah.

And he was about to enter the UFC.

And that was that first crew in California.

From Brazil, too.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Marilla Bustamante.

You know, there was a whole ton of these guys that came from Brazil.

I think Mederos was there, too.

Mario Sperry was there.

I got to train with Mario Sperry, dude.

Yeah.

When I was a a white belt.

That's why.

And he didn't have no idea who the fuck I was because I wasn't anybody.

I wasn't famous at all.

And he was the fucking nicest guy in the world, man.

Mario Sperry explained to us how he got his triangle really good.

He would make his girlfriend sit in his guard and he would just triangle.

And she would complain and be like, stop, stop.

Just let me do this.

Poor friend.

Let me use your body to practice triangles.

I mean, because that's what it takes.

It's kind of hard to do it by yourself.

I have a dummy, but I don't use it.

I have one one of them.

I used to have a Gracie dummy back home in LA.

Yeah, every gym has one that just sits in the corner and nobody fucks.

You really want to do it with people.

Yeah.

It's just, you know, the difference between the rolling and the drilling.

It's like the people that get really good, they put the shitty work in.

Yeah.

You know, the long drilling sessions, that boring ass shit.

Yeah, you have to.

I have, because I teach now.

And like, what belt do you know?

I'm a black belt.

Oh, snap, son.

When I met you, what were you?

uh i was probably a purple belt me how did we meet

i don't even remember how we met because it was so long ago well it's like yeah like i get i get the the i can't even answer that question that's funny um

well i so my sister worked at the comedy store in la jolla as a waitress she's a she's a nurse now um

And you were doing a show at somewhere downtown at like the Balboa Theater.

Probably.

Maybe.

Yeah.

and it was sold out.

And I just hit her up and was like, hey, do you think you can give me tickets?

Because she knew everybody from the store in La Jolla.

And Ari ended up getting a pair of tickets for me.

And so I went to the show, whatever.

Did you know Ari already?

My sister was friends with Ari.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, I didn't know anybody yet.

And

maybe two weeks later, she hits me up and is like, hey, can you do a poster for our marquee?

For for it was ari

um

tony hinchcliffe

and i did it was supposed to be duncan trussell

but

maybe it was duncan but regardless um

and from what i remember you must have seen that poster at some point that makes sense yeah that makes sense and then we did the

We did the Atlanta 420 show.

Oh, yeah.

So that was probably...

I feel like I met you before because I I popped in on one of those

Ice House Chronicles from back in the day.

Oh, those were fun.

Look at that one, man.

What a great one.

Yeah, that was the 420 show.

So that was 2012.

God damn, time flies.

Yeah.

And so that ended up becoming the graphic for the logo.

We had the microphone.

It's perfect.

Duncan with the little hit acid on his tongue.

It's the perfect logo.

I mean, you fucking nailed it.

Now it's everywhere.

That's got to be weird.

Yeah, it's fucking strange.

it's on this mug almost like disconnected from it

yeah like like of course it's grown it's like it's its own thing but every time i see it like i know like i drew that by hand like i i have the ink drawings

that's crazy yeah it's pretty fucking wild i you know i put stuff out into the world all the time i have thousands of paintings thousands of different fucking places but i mean more people see this image than

guaranteed all the other ones Well, more people see that image than anything else I've ever done.

Yeah.

That image is everywhere.

Yeah.

It's pretty wild.

What a fucking weird trip, right?

I mean, you, I went to the show on Tuesday and you were doing the like Q ⁇ A at the end and somebody had asked you about like what your goals are.

Yeah.

And you were like, I don't have any.

And I'm kind of in that same routine where like what I was saying, like, I do the work, zero expectations.

Like what happens will happen.

And I'm just along for the ride.

Well, that's, I think,

as long as you put the actual energy into the work, I think, at least for me and you, that's the way to do it.

I don't have, like, people, there's a lot of people out there with vision boards.

I was talking to this dude the other day.

He's got this vision board, and he's got all these goals he wants for his company and goals all he wants for his life, and this and that.

I'm like, I get it.

That probably works too.

That probably works too.

But for me,

I just only, I feel like I only want to think about the process I want to put all my energy into thinking about the process because that's the rewarding part for a creator right like me in the studio by myself painting I I get that clear mind right where it's like I I feel like I fucking meditate six hours a day you know just from work every day just from work because at some point in the painting process

like the paintbrush turns into a mantra almost to where like everything in my mind just like in jujitsu like everything shuts off because we're in a hyper-focused like mode of accomplishing a task.

Right, right.

Right.

And that's for me, painting, all the reward is that.

Yeah.

It's those moments, even when I fucking hate it.

Cause there's plenty of times where I'm like, this motherfucking painting.

Like I can't get it.

Like I know where I want it to go, but it's like, well, first you're going to have to take 35 fucking steps.

before you can get there.

Right, right.

And my, you know, like, I know that like the finishing of painting is a little bit like a drug.

I don't know if you ever experienced this.

Maybe like after getting off stage or something, but it's like there's a little like dopamine reward when it's done.

When it's complete and done.

You're like, oh, look at that.

Yeah, it's like catching your breath.

Yeah.

I used to feel like I don't know.

I used to feel like that with drawings.

Yeah.

But on a smaller scale, obviously.

I think it's the same thing with martial arts.

Because, you know, people always talk about martial arts as being a moving meditation.

Yeah.

You know, I think, I think, and if you thought about martial arts, like if you, if you're a white belt and you thought about all the time that it's going to take before you become a black belt, you're like, oh my God.

Yeah.

I can't do this.

But if you just think about the process, the process will get you there.

Yeah.

You just have to just only be thinking about this idea, this process of improvement, of dialing it in.

And people oftentimes refer to martial arts as a moving meditation.

Because to do it right, you're kind of out of your own way.

Yeah.

Did you do much striking?

I did a year of Muay Thai.

I got punched in the face a lot.

I actually, I found my brain not functioning quite the same way.

Oh,

I was getting hit.

Yeah.

And I even found myself

getting frustrated, which was stupid.

Like,

to be fair.

Yeah.

Well, like, in the process of Muay Thai.

Oh, okay.

Like, I had a coach, and this was forever ago, who was kind of a prick.

And just, he had eight morning students who knew fucking dick, and

we were terrible, you know?

Oh, and he wanted to be coaching pros, right?

That's what it seemed like.

Like, he very

distant and like, like, phoning it in.

And I recognized myself kind of getting frustrated with it.

But when I was in jujitsu class, if somebody caught me in something, I found myself laughing.

Interesting.

To where I was like, wow, that like I never got frustrated.

I never got like down on myself because I mean, my whole first year i don't think i tapped a single person my first year and i like i was in a tough gym you know it was the nogera gym

and so like the whole first year of them being open it was just like the mma guys were in there it was like pros training for you know a year or six months and then they opened it up to the public which is where i got in

um and it was just It was just ass whoopings every day.

I remember my first class, like it was yesterday.

Like I got, when we got to sparring, it was like, I got paid, like, I just looked at another white belt and was like, okay, let's try.

And neither of us knew what the fuck we were doing.

And the coach was like, hey, and like grabbed this purple belt, who's now, he owns Del Mar Jiu-Jitsu

in San Diego.

He came over, he has a purple belt, just this fucking like vanilla gorilla and hip-tossed me.

Oh, no.

And I was like, what the fuck was that?

Like, I had no idea what had happened.

I was on my back, you know, trying to catch my breath.

Like, holy shit, what was that?

And at that moment, like, I knew I, like, I thought I was tough.

Like, I thought I had a little bit of toughness in me.

And I was like, just a complete humbling experience, but also, like, encouraging.

Like, I feel like it was that singular hip toss like led me to be a black belt.

Interesting.

So because it was so overwhelming, you were like, I need to learn that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I was at kind of like a weird phase.

So that was probably like around

2008 when shit seemed to be, it was like a little moment of like everything was going to shit.

And like, I had this weird feeling.

Oh, this is like the financial crisis.

Yeah.

This was when the banks

money was weird.

And the mortgage collapse.

Yeah.

And I felt like if shit hits the fan, like maybe I should know how to do something.

Which is such a weird.

Yeah.

That's a crazy thought.

It's it's fairly abstract.

Like to me, it wasn't like I was like super concerned or really serious about it, but I had the thought of, if I need to defend myself or if I need, and that's why I was running too.

I was like, if I need to fucking chase down a deer

until it overheats.

Right.

And it ended up just being a little bit of a motivation.

And then I just found the joy in it.

I always said if I ever opened a jiu-jitsu gym, I would call it fun jiu-jitsu.

Nobody steal that.

Just because, I mean, I was talking to Zach, your security guard, at the comedy club.

And,

like, for me, I don't get into street fights.

I haven't been in a street fight since I was a teenager.

Yeah, me too.

You know, like, I've broken up fights more often than I've got into them.

And you know, one thing I do find that's really disconcerting, when fights break out, I don't get nervous.

That's how beautiful is that?

I've had that because I remember when fights would break out, your anxiety shoots up, your heart rate.

I get weird if like someone close to me is with me and I'm worried about their danger yeah but yeah but the fact that two people are fighting i'm so used to it it's weird i stopped a bar fight a couple years ago where a group of guys attacked this dude one of them got a hold of him and he he sunk in a guillotine the the guy got taken down right away a deep guillotine like all the way up over the shoulder you know like and was not letting him tap was not letting him out no no no no and i i saw it all sort of kind of unfolding and i ran up there and i just whispered in his ear If you do jiu-jitsu, you should probably let go right now.

That calm.

He like looked at me, let go, dude, was out cold.

I actually grabbed the guy who was out cold and picked his feet.

That's a great way to handle it, the way you talk to him.

Yeah, and he immediately looked at me like, okay, yeah, I hear what you're saying.

Also, like, this could be the difference between nothing happens to you, you're just defending yourself, and you're going to jail for a long time because this guy's dead.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Especially if the guy's out, you're still holding on to it.

Yeah.

Ooh.

Yeah.

And it was quick.

It was tight.

He might not have known he was out, but I mean, he was probably so jumped up with adrenaline.

Yeah, he's like he had his girlfriend with him.

Yeah.

Dude, street fights are stupid.

So dumb.

And if I see them, I just get the fuck away.

But what just weird that I'm,

I've seen so many people beat people up.

Yeah.

I have seen, like, firsthand, there's probably a tiny percentage of people on earth that have seen more fist fights in person than me.

Yeah, I can't imagine, especially at that close range.

At close range with world-class fighters.

Because when you're in at a UFC event, like those fights feel so much more intense and so much more like

visceral when you're there.

You got to come with me to the Apex.

The Apex is the place to see fights.

Yeah.

The Apex Center is the UFC's private little auditorium.

It's tiny.

It only seats like 100 people.

Is that where they were doing the fights during COVID?

Yeah.

Dude, I saw Francis Nganu versus Stipe Miocchik in a small cage with no audience.

That's wild.

It was wild.

Those sounds are sounds you don't hear.

Bro, it was wild.

Yeah.

It was so different because Francis's punches and kicks without all the cheering.

Yeah, to hear that sound.

It's a different thing, man, because

you're experiencing what that fighter is experiencing.

You're not getting the pain, but the thud, the force,

you feel it different.

Yeah.

You feel like through the arena, you feel that small little room, you feel it.

And I remember concussion in the air.

When he collapsed, when he hit him with the left hook and dropped him and then punched him when he was down, I was like, oh my God.

It was so different than seeing it in an arena.

It was so intimate.

It's like, I always say that it's like the difference between going to see an acoustic concert and going to see a concert in a gigantic arena.

Right.

You know, you go see someone in a club doing an acoustic set, like Gary Clark Jr.

did an acoustic set.

It's different.

Like, wow, this is intimate.

That's cool.

That's why I always liked the prelim fights for the few fights that I've gone to.

Right.

And it's interesting.

I noticed myself getting nervous for the fighter, especially that first fight, like first prelim.

Like, there's only like 10 people in the room.

Yeah.

It's weird.

Yeah.

That walkout moment is so peculiar.

Yes.

It's very peculiar.

And I don't know if everybody else feels it, but it's like I can almost feel their anxiety oh 100 as they're walking out and some guys you don't feel that at all you just feel this confidence this crazy confidence that's fascinating too that guys can get so good and work themselves into a headspace where they they like ilya toporia he walks in there like he's already won he celebrates the night before he has a celebration dinner with all his friends and family the night before the fight he walks out there like he has not a doubt in the world no doubt i wonder how much of that comes from everything that he's done so far?

Like just a supreme confidence.

Oh, it's definitely from that.

But I maybe it was there before.

I think he's touched by the universe.

I think there's certain people that have a talent, obviously hard work, obviously discipline, obviously intelligence, obviously great trainers.

All those things are, you can't get past the technique that he has, but there's an understanding of what to do and how to do it and when to do it, and an ability that's above and beyond.

And I see this all the time where it's like two people who seem like they would be equal in skills or even just in knowledge, right?

But one of them can completely outshine the other.

Well, you learn early on in martial arts that it's all hard work, but there's certain dudes that have physical attributes that are just freakish.

Yeah.

They're freakish.

Like the first thing that I ever, my first introduction to real like high-level martial arts was this guy named John Lee.

And John Lee was the national light heavyweight champion in Taekwondo at the time.

And he was training for the World Cup.

And I was leaving with my friend Jimmy.

We were coming home from a baseball game.

We were coming home from Fenway Park.

And we just passed by this Taekwondo school.

And

I was like, let's go.

We're waiting for the tea.

The tea takes forever.

It's a train.

It's always packed.

Everybody's leaving the baseball game at the same time.

It's going to be a mob scene.

Let it die down for a little bit.

Let's go check out this Taekwondo class.

And as we're walking up the stairs, I hear ka-chunk,

ka-chunk, like this crazy noise, like a thump and then a rattle of chains.

That's what I was hearing.

And it was this dude practicing a spinning back kick on the bag in his prime.

Big, long dude who had fucking ferocious power.

He was just bending this bag in half.

And I was 14 and I was like, holy shit.

I think I was 15.

It was like, it was the summer of my 15th birthday.

But I changed my life.

I was like, I need to learn how to do that.

Like, that's crazy.

Yeah.

But then after a while, I realized, like, not everybody can do that.

Like, there's guys that are like high-level guys that can't do it.

That guy could do.

That guy had some weird gift.

He had a weird power gift.

Yeah.

Even sometimes just biology, like how your body was shaped.

It's 100% biology.

when it comes to power.

Like if you have tiny hands and sloped shoulders and girl hips, good luck.

You're not going to,

there's no way you're going to generate John Lee type power.

Yeah.

And that's kind of like I can't punch to save my life, but I got these long, skinny ass arms.

Like, I'll darse the fuck out of you.

Oh, they're perfect for jiu-jitsu.

Long arms and thin arms are perfect for jiu-jitsu because it's all leverage, man.

I think one of the best things,

most inspirational things that can happen to you if you can handle it in jiu-jitsu is getting mauled by a smaller person.

Yeah.

A person like quite a bit, 30 pounds lighter than you, and just runs through you.

And you're like, wow.

You're like, okay, it's not about strength at all.

It's about skill, knowledge, technique.

Timing.

Timing.

Timing is fucking everything.

Timing is a lot, but you have to know what to do with the timing.

Yeah.

And you got to know what you're doing.

Yeah, you have to have technique.

But you have to have technique.

Your technique has to be sure.

Because there's some guys, like, some guys they'll wrap something up, but it's like nine out of ten.

Like, you're going to squeeze it, maybe get the tap.

But there's other guys they lock something and you're like, oh, there's no way out of this.

Yeah, this is death.

This is death yeah yeah this is 10 out of 10 yeah yeah like an Eddie Bravo triangle and get locked in Eddie Bravo's trying like I'm not getting out of this this is tap time that's I've been wondering so I play lockdown a lot and maybe getting too technical is probably boring but that's okay I have an extra muscle in my calf right it well it's the I have the same muscle in my left calf but my right one is twice the size just a little strand from making that little hook on the shin oh you're just from

playing lockdown.

Wow.

You know, you could exercise that.

You know, there's a thing called a tib bar.

Do you know what that is?

This would be really good for jiu-jitsu, especially for people who really love butterfly guard.

And it's just good for overall knee stability.

I learned about it through the knees over toes guy on Instagram.

Have you ever done any of his?

No, but I need to start looking into it.

Look into it.

Really good for knee health and strengthening the knees and a lot of amazing exercises.

But one of the things that he

has that he recommends is a tib bar.

And so, what it is, is it's like a thing that attaches to your shoe and you lift weights by lifting your foot upward, by lifting your toes towards your knee, which is an exercise you very rarely get.

But it's really good.

It's really good.

And for butterfly guard, that would be it, man, because you could get that motherfucker strong as shit with not just doing butterfly guard, but lifting, lifting for that.

You would, for sure.

I always thought like leg extensions too, that would help in a big way, right?

Yeah.

You know, for the same kind of muscles, the forcing, like the extending the leg.

Yeah, because that's a, it feels awkward at first to try to elevate from that position.

Yeah.

Right?

Like, especially if your knees are fucked.

I'm, I'm kind of, I'm 16 years in now, and I'm like, I'm avoiding the heavyweight rolls.

Right.

Like the super tough.

Like, I just have to like

protect myself.

And still, like, I never want to stop either.

So, like, I want to be able to get get in there and and fuck around as much as possible but yeah you got to pick who you roll with for sure that's important especially as you get older are you doing trt or anything like that no i wish why don't you do it

oh you son of a bitch what does that mean what does that mean what does that mean like packs puff

what does that mean i i i just haven't had a chance i suppose

while you're in town i'm gonna hook you up with waste well okay how many more days are you here i leave tonight oh shit yeah what time tonight?

Nine.

Oh, yeah, we could do that.

We could make it happen.

We'll make it happen.

I'll make a call as soon as we get out of here, and I'll have you go over there

right before you take off.

Yeah, because shit has gone pretty south.

You should get blood.

At the very least, if you don't do anything, you should get blood work.

Get blood work, find out where your hormone levels are at.

Yeah.

How is your diet?

It's not bad.

Like, I eat pretty good.

I actually

cut out sugar this year.

Big impact.

Humongous.

Isn't it crazy?

Humongous.

You're poisoning yourself yeah yeah yeah

and it's just like like what i was saying like being that like slightly lower than baseline like sugar gives you that little dopamine like fix that is like ah okay i feel good now and so like i had a little soda habit which i mean there could be worse things but it's a lot worse but maybe not though you know like sugar is pretty bad for you well it's i lost i lost 15 pounds like like that like that isn't that crazy yeah it's so stupid it's so crazy how many people are just down in that stuff all day long.

All day long.

Yeah.

And just eating you from the inside.

Well, you can see it in their body.

You can see it in their body.

Oh, I'm sorry, buddy.

I'm sorry.

I put my foot on Marshall.

I forgot he was there.

I mean, you see it with kids.

Oh, it's terrible for kids.

It's so bad.

It's so bad for everything.

You know, but in moderation, it's okay.

But the problem is human beings are really bad with moderation of things that are literally designed to be addictive.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You know, it's so.

And I'm a creature of habit to where it's like I build a routine and then I stick to that fucking routine.

Yeah.

And if that includes, you know, sugary drinks.

Sugary drinks and a fucking ice cream at night, whatever, like, it's going to be there.

I know.

And especially if you're putting in the work, if you're working hard and you're working out, you're like, I deserve it.

I deserve to poison myself.

Yeah.

Be like, it's balance.

There's times like I'll come home from the comedy club and it's late and everyone's asleep and I'm like, fuck it, I'm eating cereal.

You know, I just.

mean you're an adult, you get to choose.

Every now and then and I always feel terrible after I do it.

I'm like, why did you do that?

Yeah, all those ideas that sound so great and you just build up a beautiful idea and then you get done and you're like, what the fuck?

The only time I feel good is if I come home and I'll cook a steak.

I do like that.

Like I'm going to actual take a whole hour to make myself a meal.

Even though it's 11.30 at night and I'm tired.

I'm going to take a whole hour and make myself a meal and have the discipline to not eat any garbage before that.

Because when you're tired, you make the worst dietary decisions.

There's a part of you when you're tired.

I forget what it's called.

I forget what the, this is actually like a thing that happens

where you are impulsively going to go towards things that are bad for you.

You're impulsively going to go towards potato chips and ice cream and candy and bullshit because you're fatigued.

And there's convenience, right?

Like it's not just that.

If there was a fucking home-cooked meal, like mashed potatoes, green beans,

a beautiful like half-chicken that was cooked

on a grill, or ice cream.

You might take the ice cream if no one was around.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

You know, you might, you might grab a Kit Kat bar.

You know, that's it.

For sure, if there was a bowl of chips, just an inviting bowl of like ruffles,

sitting there, like, I'm going to grab a couple of ruffles.

And that's that weird dopamine thing.

Our brain rewards us somehow.

And then it fucks with us later.

You know what the thing is?

The reward is not worth it.

It's not a good reward.

Yeah.

Like, it's not like an orgasm.

It's not like the completion of a project.

It's not like the accomplishment of some great goal.

The amount of whatever rush in your brain that you get from eating a shitty potato chip is not that much.

Yeah.

For what it does to you.

But if I eat a bag of ruffles, I feel like shit for five hours.

Yeah, for sure.

I started.

It came from a time place where I was really poor and I tried to figure out like, what's the least amount of food I could eat in a day and still survive, right?

Oh boy.

And what I started to do was like do little fastings during the day.

So like I'd wake up, get a coffee and not eat until like five.

But then I started realizing that I felt good doing that, you know, like like my body started feeling better.

And now I pretty much do it regularly.

Now, even though like I have money to get food, I would just just wait, just wait.

And I found myself actually getting

pleasure from the pain of starvation.

Like I started to, I started to like the feeling of being hungry.

Yeah,

at a certain point.

But how hungry are we talking about?

This is like 24 hours in or how many hours in?

No, it's like, so I would basically eat one meal at like 5.30.

Okay.

So no food all day except, you know, I'd have some coffee with a little bit of half and half in it, so some fat and drinking water, of course, or maybe like eat like a fucking banana or something.

And I like my body just felt great to where like before, you know, I was probably eating something shitty in the morning, feeling shitty

until noon, eat some other fucking shitty thing.

You know, as a young person, you just do whatever the fuck.

Well, your body will get adapted.

I mean, that's why that whole intermittent fasting thing is interesting, right?

Because

you're making your body digest food all day long.

Like, if you're eating all day long, your body, your digestion system never gets break.

Well, I started thinking, like, even like, you know, back to chasing the fucking deer, like our bodies used to have to go hunt

to get something to eat.

So this idea of like waiting, you know, eight hours, six hours before eating anything from waking up, like it all, it started to feel natural for me.

Well, it is natural as long as you're eating natural food.

Yeah.

That's the thing.

Yeah.

So if you're eating processed foods and a lot of bread and a lot of pasta and a lot of stuff that human beings have made, especially like our American bread,

your body's accustomed to a lot of sugar.

Your body's accustomed to those complex carbohydrates just pouring into your system all day long.

And you're using those as a fuel source.

If you're subsisting off of fat and protein and meat and like avocados and you're eating healthy food, food.

Your body is working off a lot of ketones.

Your body is, it's making its own glucose through gluconeogenesis from the meat and it's also running off of ketones from the fat.

It's a way more efficient way of doing it.

And when you do that, you don't get nearly as hungry.

You don't have that feeling, that awful feeling.

When I was eating a lot of carbs, and if I would go like four or five hours without eating, I would start getting fucking famished.

You don't get famished when you eat only meat.

It stops.

You get hungry, but it's totally manageable.

Yeah.

Just that alone, I love.

The not requiring food.

Like I can go, sometimes I'll, I won't eat breakfast.

Sometimes I'll work out.

I won't eat breakfast.

I'll come here.

I'll be here all day.

And the first meal I have is dinner.

Yeah.

And I'm fine.

Yeah.

I'm literally fine.

Like it's not bothering me.

And it's it's only because my body's adapted to not eat processed shit.

Yeah, because it's different if you feel like you're going to throw up or pass out because you haven't fucking eaten.

And that's people that eat a lot of fucking glucose.

People that are eating a lot of carbohydrates, a lot of bullshit.

Yeah.

Your body needs fuel.

You get low blood sugar and you start feeling like shit.

Yeah.

And like, you got to get something in you.

Well, I noticed as soon as I started doing that, like the stored fat, like in my little love handles or whatever, like immediately just it was like the body's like, okay, I got to use this shit now.

Yeah.

And burn it up.

Just complete body change.

And like, and mentally, I felt so much better.

Yeah.

People that fast, and I've never fasted for more than 24 hours, but people that fast for like three days, they all talk about how great they feel at the end.

You feel euphoric and incredible.

And like you have so much energy.

I'm like, that sounds nuts.

It sounds like you should be fucking dying.

Yeah, because I mean, I do get miserable sometimes of like,

like, I could just eat a fucking steak.

I hold it off.

I hold off the idea of fasting because, like, I make all these excuses for myself.

Like, oh, I've got to do my show.

I've got to, it's important.

I can't be out of it.

Yeah.

And that's for me.

I don't have any like stringent routine of like, I'm not allowed to fucking eat something.

It's just the routine that I've got into now to where it's like, I just sit down and work.

But that kind of probably helps a little bit too because of that mind state of like, I don't really, if when I'm in the mode of painting, like, I don't have to go to the bathroom.

I, I, I'm not hungry.

Do you drink coffee or anything anything while you're doing that?

Yeah, yeah, I drink espresso during the day.

Or like I get a quad espresso, and then it just kind of lasts

most of the day, you know, until like noon or whatever.

And that, I mean, that keeps me kind of on the level, I suppose, because there is some fat in there.

And like, the caffeine obviously helps.

Yeah, it's a little bit harder.

It's a little something.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Caffeine helps with the hunger.

But I think that what you're saying, the focus is probably the big thing, that you're just so locked into what you're doing that you're not even.

Yeah, it's like I'm not even in my body anymore.

like the body is separated from the mind in some way that thing that you were talking about earlier that is such a weird thing the where it feels like the whatever you're working on just sort of takes over this episode is brought to you by squarespace have you ever been shopping online and the website just gave you the ick let me tell you that wouldn't happen if they used squarespace Squarespace design intelligence empowers anyone to build beautiful, more personalized websites tailored to your unique needs.

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To me, it's something subconscious because, like, the way I look at jiu-jitsu or painting or any real art form as

creative problem solving.

So

for me, all of those things, like it tickles the same part of my brain to where

the, like, I'll ask myself questions.

Like, and it tends to be like, you have to ask yourself the right questions.

Like, I've had, like, I don't know how to use, how to fix a car to save my life, but I've had to fix some shit to where I'm like, hmm, what should I do here?

Or like,

you know, you'll just try something, but it's almost like a subconscious voice.

Like I was saying how the painting will kind of tell me how to how like where to go next to where I'm I don't know an answer but somehow I come up with it right just by kind of asking my brain you know what what should we do here and it's it's it's always like fascinated me that I'll it's like my brain comes up with solutions to these problems by you know running some computation of like, well, if we did this, this will happen.

If we did that, this will happen.

And I'll come up with ideas that are like I don't have that are aren't conscious ideas or thoughts right that seep in

from some depth in my brain that it's like I and it's not my control it's it's not like a like a brag right right right it's like some some way of thinking that I can get solutions to problems that I don't know the solution to right and you don't feel like those solutions are yours no yeah that's what that's yeah yeah it comes from somewhere else it may I'd like to think of it as like some part of my subconscious or some part of the brain that I'm not accessing in conscious reality that is coming up with answers.

But I'm amazed by it all the time.

Like, if you've ever had

a light that wasn't working in your house, right?

But if you like

flip the switch three times and then like turn the fucking heater on, somehow the light comes on.

You know what I mean?

Like you figure out these ways to

accomplish

a task or figuring out a solution to a problem.

And for me, I feel like with painting and jiu-jitsu or now anything, like I remember I pinched a nerve in my neck, like bad, to where it's like I couldn't even sit up.

And I was like, how the fuck am I going to get out of bed?

And just ended up like picking my leg up, hooking my arm behind my leg and doing like a jiu-jitsu thing to like sit myself up because I couldn't like actually set myself up.

And I was like, I've never done that before.

That's so fucking strange.

But like, like my brain just told me to do that.

Well, that makes sense, though.

You know how to use your body from jiu-jitsu, and this would be a shit up without using your abs.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But there's all kinds of, like, like fixing a fucking car.

Like,

I don't know what I'm doing, but this seems to be like my brain telling me, maybe try this.

You know, and

with all of these processes of, you know, martial arts and painting, just some creative problem-solving aspect of the brain that's almost separated from

and gets nurtured with use.

Yeah.

It builds.

Oh, yeah.

Like it gets strong.

Well, this is what Pressfield talks about when he talks about summoning the muse.

You know, when he wrote, did you ever read the book, The War of Art?

I haven't.

I've got a copy.

I'll give you a copy of it.

He gave me a box of them because I used to have a box of them on the desk in the old studio that I'd hand out to people.

But it's a short read, but it's an amazing read on this concept of the muse and that like treating this thing like you're a professional.

you're going to show up at this time and you're going to summon the muse and you're going to do it with sincerity and if you do that and you show up every day at a work yeah and it really does that's what i do that's exactly i mean i i live that like i get up get coffee i go to the studio and i'm there until it's time to leave then i go teach at night and then i i repeat the whole process yeah and it's joy like there isn't a lot of like i i probably have a bit of a short attention span to where like things can get fucking boring but obviously not painting No, I leave after a long day and I feel myself feeling guilty that I'm not still there.

Wow.

You see, that's why I have a problem when people use that term ADHD.

Because I think about myself as a boy, and I'm like, I know they would have fucking diagnosed me.

If I had the wrong parents,

I know they would have diagnosed me and they would have brought me to a doctor who would have put me on some fucking medication and it would have ruined whatever weird quality that I have that lets me focus on things intensely.

Yeah.

You know, they want to pretend that everybody has to be the same thing.

Like, everybody can't be the same thing.

We're all wired different.

I'm not wired normal.

I'm wired.

Like, if what you're saying is boring, I'm like, oh, God.

Yeah, how can you get out of here?

I know some people that are going to, well, so what are you going to do about that, Fred?

They can have the boringest fucking conversations all day.

I literally feel physical pain when I'm being bored.

But if I find something that's really interesting, like really interesting, I can lock on.

And when I lock on to that, I have no problem paying attention.

And that's a fucking superpower.

I think so.

And I think they're fucking kids up, man.

And I think there's a lot of lazy parents that don't want to deal with this extraordinary child that has this weird thing that you haven't harnessed.

And you're putting that kid on fucking speed.

They're putting him on Riddling and shit.

They were going to try to give me Riddling when I was a kid.

I wasn't a spazz kid.

I wasn't, it just, I was bored as fuck by what, like, whatever they were trying to do in school.

You're an artist, yeah.

But no one could recognize that.

It's almost like they want to pretend that that is not a real option for a human.

But why are there so many artists?

No, I know.

Like, what are you saying?

How is that possible that you want everybody to fit into this fucking square peg?

How is it possible that you're teaching and a kid comes along and he's bouncing off the wall, but that motherfucker could play video games like an assassin?

Like, okay.

Clearly, there's something going on with the video games that you're not providing him in the real world.

And his ability to excel at video games shows he's extraordinary.

It's just about focusing that.

Yeah.

If you take some little girl who just wants to talk to her friends and joke around in class and you fucking medicate her, she could have probably been an amazing artist.

Maybe she would have found a subject that she just lost, like some kind of a science subject.

She locks onto.

And now all of a sudden that thing doesn't exist anymore.

It's not like she's scattered all no, she's just bored.

Yeah, what you're doing is boring.

Your class is fucking boring.

You have uninspired teachers who are underpaid.

No one gives a fuck about them.

They're basically babysitters, and you're bored.

And because the teacher doesn't want to deal with you being bored, they tell the principal, the principal tells the doctor, the doctor recommends another doctor, and then little Billy is sitting there in this fucking doctor's office, and then they pop him full of Riddling.

I had Henry Rollins on the podcast once, and he's telling me they put him on Riddling when he was a little kid.

Yeah.

He said he was just fucking like,

like, all day long.

I'm like, God damn, man.

That's so nuts.

Yeah, I remember seeing those kids, too.

Yeah.

Just like fucking spun out.

Spun out.

And now they're all on Adderall, man.

Yeah, and that's fucking

bro.

There's a ton of young kids out there in the world that do not have a problem.

And they're on Adderall because it helps them concentrate.

It helps their scores for college.

Yeah.

100%.

I can't run T it.

There are kids out there in high school right now that are popping Adderall all the time so that they could do better on tests, so they could do better in college.

And then they're taking Xanax to come down off the fucking Adderall.

So terrible.

So fucking terrible.

It's fucking terrible.

And, you know, these pharmaceutical drug companies are just vampires.

Yeah.

This is what you need.

This is what you need, Mike.

Seeing the fucking commercials during your show.

Don't you want to be happy?

Don't you want to dance in a wheat field with your child?

Don't you want to go to the barbecue?

Look, everyone's at the barbecue.

They're happy.

Everybody's happy.

They're not happy.

Yeah.

Don't you want to go to the barbecue?

Yeah, that's finding the thing that is actually going to bring you joy.

Yeah.

My friend Asana Mod has a great bit about it.

I don't want to give it up, but it's a great bit if you ever see him with the mothership.

Did you see him?

I caught the very tail end of his set when I got there.

He's got a great bit about great guy.

He's great.

He's a funny dude, too.

He's been my friend since he was a door guy at the comedy store.

So it's so interesting to see him from a very raw beginner.

Yeah.

You know, to where he is now.

I mean, you've gotten to see a lot of that, right?

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

All the guys.

Larry and Joey and yeah, Duncan, all those guys.

Yeah.

Pretty wild.

Oh, it's been a bit.

You've been seeing how the comedy scene has kind of started to flourish here here and kind of like build it.

Like that little 6th Street

way there is pretty wild.

Oh, dude, there's five full-time comedy clubs.

Yeah.

Right there.

I hung out with my buddy Roy yesterday, and I feel like I met like four or five comics just like standing around figuring out what we were going to do.

It's the hub, and it's also, this is the most important thing.

It's the hub for development of young people.

It gives young people a real pathway, a real possibility.

And we set it up that way on purpose.

Like, this is the idea.

It's like you cannot have a sustainable comedy community without new members.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I find a little envy in that.

Like, that's a little tougher in the visual arts world is because we're so fucking isolated.

We're not like hanging out at the same spots all the time.

And it's like, that's how things used to be.

Like, back in the day, like, the artists would all go to the same bar after they were done working for the day.

Right.

Like, have an artist neighborhood.

Yeah.

Like LA had a bunch of neighborhoods where a lot of artists live together.

Yeah.

I mean LA is a little bit different from

besides New York than the rest of the art world.

It's like if you're not in one of those two or three hubs, like you're, you're kind of isolated.

You're like outside of that realm.

And we don't have that opportunity.

I

really like enjoy that aspect of the comedy community to where it's like you see everybody meeting up.

Like they see each other every day, they hug, they talk over shit, they can like kind of workshop stuff with each other.

Like, having that ability is, is, or like that community and that aspect is so much

nice.

It's so nice.

And so, when you were there, it's like a perfect setup.

Like, Shane Gillis was there, Ron White was there.

Bro, I got to talk with Ron for a while.

He's the best.

Yeah.

He's the best.

He's such a fucking character.

Yeah.

So Tony was there.

It's so we have this beautiful community, but it's also like the young people.

The young people coming up.

They're good, man.

They're good, and they're hungry, and they're focused, and they realize that there's a real pathway.

So, because we set it up so we have two nights of open mic nights, which is really important.

Yeah, like you have to have chances for people to get on stage for the first time, and just chances to just develop.

You just got a few minutes, you go up there, you tell a couple of jokes, try it again next week, try it down the street, try it over here, try it over there.

And if you want to do it, if you really want to do it, there's a bunch of people that are also doing it here.

So, there's like a great community, and it's pretty fucking positive, man.

pretty, instead of being cutthroat and backstabby, everybody's real supportive.

Big difference from LA, right?

Big difference.

I noticed just the sort of like every interaction I had while I was here for just three days just felt so genuine.

Like, not like somebody's trying to get something from you.

They're regular folks out here.

Everybody just seemed

so laid back and chill.

And they're

focused.

Regular humans.

What we were dealing with in Los Angeles was some amazing people.

There's a lot of amazing people in L.A., but the overall vibe of the city was a vibe of you were trying to stand out from everybody else and get famous.

Yeah.

You could feel it.

You could feel it.

Yeah.

Because, I mean, growing up in San Diego, like, I spent a lot of time in L.A.

Like, I could sense the feeling of like...

Everybody, like, it felt like everybody was trying to do something.

Yes.

Like, every single person you saw on the street was up to something.

And then it it got real weird when reality TV came along because you didn't have to have any talent.

So it used to be you wanted to be an actor.

And people that didn't have any talent in acting, you couldn't convince them otherwise.

They thought they could do it.

Everybody thought they could act.

Because acting is essentially just talking.

It's just pretending to talk when you, you know, like you know.

So people do it so badly.

So bad, but they don't think they do.

Right.

So it's a

thing that you can't discern.

In a way, it's a little bit like comedy.

Like you see a guy like Ron White tell a story on stage and it's so effortless and hilarious that you think oh he's not even trying i can do that i i tell stories my stories are good too and you think you could go do it because you don't understand what's actually happening yeah it's just confusing you it's tricking you well that whole routine like the idea of like like writing a monologue seems so obscure to me like i feel like i can be funny in a scenario where it's like people are talking and you have something to bounce off of yeah but to get up there and do a monologue by yourself like that it

it feels so alien to me.

To you, because you're smart.

But to a dumb dude who sees that, he's like, I could do comedy.

And so there was all these people that were just looking at comedy and also looking at acting as a pathway to getting attention.

Yeah.

And then it really got fucked with social media.

So when I was leaving,

like a year or two before I left, I was already thinking about leaving.

I was like, I got to get out of here.

And then I remember I was at a steakhouse and these people were there and people were taking pictures of them.

I'm like, what is this?

And someone said, I don't even think it was a TikTok influencer.

I think it was a vine influencer.

They're like, this is a vine influencer.

I was like, what does that mean?

Like, what do they do?

And it's like, oh, they dance.

They dance around and like people are here to see.

I'm like, what are you talking about?

Like, this is nuts.

So it became another way that you could get famous.

You could just get famous by doing pranks or being obnoxious or, you know, taking your clothes off and yelling in traffic.

And so everybody was just trying to get famous when you get out of there

you come to a place like austin there's this relaxation because they're just people yeah all that's gone no one here is trying to get famous it's very rare that someone's trying to get famous and then if you can insert a comedy community there that

really

values the process and the results of the art.

That's what we're really all about.

We're really all about killing.

All that other stuff comes.

The reason why Shane Gillis is the number one comic in the world is because he works hard and he's really fucking funny.

And the process yields an amazing result.

And he's so sincere.

Super sincere.

But the point is, like, he doesn't give a fuck about fame.

Like, he's not trying to get famous.

Yeah.

I know him.

Yeah.

Like, it's just not something that happened.

We were joking, right?

Bro, fame sucks.

Like, we were just in the green room the other night talking about how much fame sucks in some ways.

I'm like, you can handle it.

You'll be fine.

You're going to handle it.

Yeah, it's such a different experience.

Like, as a painter, like, nobody really fucking knows what you look like.

Most of you have to be able to do that.

They do now, bitch.

Oops, I spilled coffee.

Shit.

Not much, luckily.

I was almost out.

But there's some sense of stress to that.

I mean, I've even experienced it a little bit with like hanging out with you a couple times of like people coming up and I'm like, fuck, this is so weird.

Like, why, like, why do people act like this?

Like, around a celebrity act.

They get weird.

Well, that's the thing also that people like about being famous.

They want people to be uncomfortable around them.

They want to be extraordinary without even trying.

You know,

it's a weird thing, man.

It's a weird thing that has existed with royalty.

You know, it's kind of the same thing.

It's like this desire that people have to be exceptional and stand above everyone else for almost no reason.

And the fame thing in Hollywood was the thing that was holding the art form of comedy back, too, because it was this velvet prison that existed that if you were a good boy or a good girl and you drew between the lines and you didn't say anything too crazy you could get a sitcom or you could get a tv show you could

have a snippet where people just like people who want to be actors take that comedy route yeah they do but also really good comics tone their shit down They don't say what they actually think is funny anymore.

Yeah.

They say what they think they can get away with and still get a TV show.

Well, that's something that I noticed at the the show:

like having everybody's phones in the Faraday bags or whatever those are, like,

allows people to be a little bit more honest and

direct, or like really say what they want to say.

And more importantly, it allows the audience to totally lock in.

Yeah.

Because for a lot of these people, it's the only two hours of their whole life where they're not going to be on their phone.

No, I know.

Other than sleeping.

You know,

when you're locked in and you're at a live show, it's so fun.

It's so good.

It's the correct move for everybody.

It's a correct move because, of course, everyone is working on new material and you don't want to get released before it's done because new material takes forever.

Yeah.

It's like, it'll take months for a bit to, and sometimes it sucks at first or it's offensive.

Like, something's wrong with that.

I got to figure out a way that people are not mad because that's not what I'm trying to say.

And you can figure it out, but it just takes a bunch of different iterations.

And if someone fucking videotapes it and puts it up, it's like they did with Louis C.K.

when he first came back.

It screws up the whole process.

It's like you're ruining that for literally millions of people because it's eventually going to get on Netflix and people are going to see it.

But it's going to take time.

It's not a simple process.

And we have to do it in front of people.

That's the interesting thing about that art form, too.

Like, you got to work shit out.

In front of humans.

Yeah, it's not.

I'm sure what like the writing process in your head feels so much different.

Yeah, there's a lot of processes.

There's the on-stage writing process, there's the writing process in your head, and there's the idea process, which is the trickiest one.

Because the most difficult thing with comedy, really, is coming up with a subject that's actually interesting to you.

Yeah.

Where you really find humor in it.

And if those are the ones when I can really find humor in something, that's the ones that I dig into the most because I'm enjoying the shit out of the whole process of uncovering all the ridiculousness.

But it has to be something something where I'm like, what?

That's how it is with painting too.

I'm entertaining myself first.

Sure.

And then hopefully that connects with people somewhere.

Yeah, I think it's all together.

I think tattooists are like that.

I think musicians are like that.

I think it's the Miyamoto Musashi quote.

Once you understand the way broadly, you see it in all things.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's beautiful.

It is beautiful because I think you probably see it in the other things that you do.

You see it in your art.

You see it in jiu-jitsu.

And there's people out there that they're seeing it in writing.

They're seeing it in sculpture.

There's a thing, whatever it is that allows you to get really good at the thing that you love.

That thing takes over while you're doing it, and you're almost not there anymore.

You're almost like a passenger.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And that's when you know you hit the good spot.

Like if

I'm a big Bukowski fan, and

on his gravestone, it says, don't try.

Like, that's the insignia, and then it's like a pair of boxing gloves.

Another guy, guy, famous drunk.

That's all of my favorite writers are self-destructive.

I don't know why, but they are.

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I found this the other day about Hemingway.

Hemingway always thought that the FBI was trying to get him.

Apparently, they actually were.

Really?

Yeah, they actually were.

He thought that he was.

Here, I'll send this to you, Jamie.

You saw it?

I saw it was like a meme going around the other day.

Oh, here it goes.

The FBI investigated Ernest Hemingway for decades with surveillance beginning in the 1940s due to concerns about his activities in Cuba and his associations with individuals suspected of communist ties.

While initially dismissed as paranoia, it was later revealed that Hemingway's fears were grounded in reality, and the FBI did monitor him, even tapping his phones and intercepting his mail.

The surveillance continued throughout his later years, including his time in the hospital, and may have contributed to his mental anguish and suicide.

Damn.

Yeah, you can't fucking...

What about booze?

You've got severe depression.

Severe depression.

42 to 74.

They studied him.

What did you learn?

That's wild.

That's that thing.

There's that, like, there's a meme or like somebody saying that, like, you have to beware of the artists because they associate with everybody.

You know, like, they're not just locked into like an upper class society.

Like, they're like, even like where I was staying, like, I made friends with like three or four homeless guys just out on the street that I just kept seeing around town from being around, you know, like, like, we associate with everybody.

There's no like hierarchy of

class.

Well, I think if you really want to be open, like really open, you have to encounter a lot of different kinds of humans.

Yeah.

You know, if you really, like, if you, especially if you're a comic, because you want to, or a writer, if you want to understand people, you have to interact with them.

Yeah, because, especially as a writer, like you only have your own experience.

Yeah.

If you just write your own experience, it's just going to come off as like every character is you.

Exactly.

Like, to put yourself in the head of somebody else is

like, you have to be open.

Yeah, you have to be.

And have like a certain form of of empathy.

Right.

To even understand how somebody else feels.

That's why there's the contradiction of the star comedian.

Like, that's where things get weird.

Like, the star comedian.

Because if you're a star and everybody's treating you, oh, Jerry Seinfeld, you're

take the pictures.

Like, you're walking the red carpet.

You got to be down with the people.

You got to be in the nitty-gritty.

Yeah, you got to find some trenches somewhere.

You better figure out the trenches because if you don't, and I think

if you think about like my favorite comedians, they were all self-destructive too.

Yeah.

All of them.

Richard Pryor, Hoover, lit himself on fire.

Like, that's about as self-destructive as he gets.

Yeah, he did.

Kinnison, cocaine, and alcohol, Hicks,

lots of drugs, and then cigarettes till he got pancreatic cancer.

They were all

at least some way fighting some fucking thing inside their head.

Yeah.

It makes me wonder, like, how much of it is, like, maybe that empathy is too much.

Maybe that maybe you feel too much, you know, and you gotta, you gotta kind of

there's also there's the there's just the stress of the job itself.

Yeah.

Like, especially when you find success.

Right.

Because you got to keep that.

You got to also still be putting out new stuff.

Yeah.

So you got a chance to see me.

I'm, this is all new stuff.

All right.

This is stuff that didn't, it wasn't on my Netflix special.

So it's all in development.

It's all like, and that process is, it's fun.

I love it.

Don't get me wrong.

But like before I go on stage, I'm amped up.

I'm pacing.

I'm moving around.

I'm listening to Nas.

I got some music playing.

I'm getting my dance on.

I'm having an espresso.

I'm fucking breathing.

I'm like, ah, I want to get ready.

That's kind of why I always feel a little awkward in the green rooms.

Like, I don't want to be too, like, I'd be like, hi.

Listen, you're cool in the green room.

You know how to handle green rooms.

There's some dudes that are a real problem.

Yeah.

Some dudes that start telling really terrible stories in the green room.

You're like, oh my God, this is so boring.

We've got to get a a movie.

But the green room is supposed to be just for comics.

You know, and sometimes people will bring in people that are not supposed to be in the green room.

I was actually telling a story about that yesterday when we were all at the American Comedy Co.

in San Diego when Doug was doing that.

Doug Benson was doing the ChronicCon documentary.

Do you remember that?

Not really.

It's a fucking long ass time ago.

But some guy came in who, I don't know, like a fucking investor or like somebody besides.

Oh, he was coked up, right?

I don't know.

He grabbed a Bud Light bottle as though it was a bong.

He was like, where's the weed?

And like, like he was going to smoke a bong load out of this Bud Light beer bottle, dropped the bottle.

broke it everywhere, like made a fucking scene.

Everyone's like, who the fuck is this guy?

Like, what is going on?

Like, just the way that people will act so fucking strange when they feel almost like they have to perform, but their performance is horrible.

Well, I don't think it's that.

I think they just, that guy was on drugs, I think.

And also, I think they get a documentary.

They get anxious, right?

Yeah.

People just get weird.

They don't know what to do.

Yeah.

We're fucking strange.

There's a lot of fucking people that are barely keeping it together out there, dude.

Sometimes I think that's me, but just

barely hanging on, you know?

No, you're fine.

Yeah.

You're fine.

But I think every artist feels like that.

Yeah.

Every artist feels like it's one thing that they could do one day that's going ruin their fucking life.

They're always like that close.

It's all just like this keeping it together thing that you have in your mind, you know, and you have to have

to have some process that you do that keeps you on the work and not on the self-destructive path.

Yeah.

Because if you're a person that like maybe has a drug issue and you're fighting that off and as long as you work all the time, like you're cool.

Like you're good.

But then if you wake up late that one day and you're like, if it's a fucking one hit, I'd be good for just one little fucking,

woo, just a little tip.

I could stop.

In the beginning, I was only doing it every now and then.

You know, I can just go back to just like moderation.

I think it's good.

You know, it really gives me a little pep up when I need it.

Maybe your doctor gives you a little Adderall.

You're like, the Adderall is good, but two pills is better.

Three pills is really, I get so productive.

I think I'd get my company off the ground.

If I could just really concentrate with these three pills.

Yeah.

And then you're fucked.

Then you're fucked.

So it's like, it's this balance that we all have.

And it's not just artists.

It's just people in life.

It's like dealing with insecurities.

Whatever the insecurity is, you could fucking mask it with, you know, some drug or alcohol or whatever.

Or you could lean into it and be like, okay, I feel this way.

I accept that.

What can I do?

I think the problem is the term insecurity.

Because like,

good lord, everything is insecure.

Like the secure things, a lot of secure things are really boring.

I mean, there's secure things that are awesome, you know?

Yeah.

But there's a lot of that that's,

that's not what it is.

It's uncertainty.

Uncertainty is what freaks you out.

The options that are possible, the things that, the possible results, the variables, all the different things.

Yeah, and that's going to handcuff.

Plenty of people.

But you got to learn how to handle that.

You know, I used to, when I was teaching, when I was teaching martial arts, I taught a lot of kids, and I had a lot of kids compete in tournaments.

I really loved doing that.

I really loved it when they really got into it, and they got better, and I could see them improving and then winning tournaments.

It was amazing.

But I remember

some kids would really struggle with competition, and I would tell them, that's because you're smart.

And I go, you see these people that are not worried about this?

They don't know what can happen to them.

They're delusional.

They think they're going to be okay no matter what.

But you're smart.

You know that this is dangerous.

That's good.

You just have, you got to use that.

You got to just hang on to it, use it, and then get in there and you'll be fine.

Once the fight starts, you're not going to be scared anymore, which is weird.

When the fight starts, then

it's just happening.

It's just happening, and it's all automatic.

And it's all your, you know, you have...

instincts and you have an understanding of the game, but you also have just

dialed in technique.

That's all it is.

It's all about the execution of all the things you've practiced, and it all just happens.

But the lead up is so bad.

The anxiety before, when you're sitting in a locker room waiting for your time, you're like, fuck.

And I would just tell them, I would go, just you got to understand this sucks, but this is just something.

If you just can accept that this is here, accept that it's here, and recognize that this is a gift.

And this is here because you're smart.

And the reason why you're worried about all these possibilities is because you're intelligent enough to recognize that that's the thing.

Yeah, you're looking for the outcomes and then figuring out ways.

That's kind of what I was talking about before, like predicting outcomes and figuring out solutions to problems that have yet to occur.

Yeah.

Like when you're thinking that far ahead, like that's, it's a different chess game.

Yeah.

And you, and the dull-minded nitwits out there that don't have any fear, there's a reason.

They don't have any fear because they don't have the capacity to comprehend all the possibilities.

Yeah.

So if some guy is like doesn't know how how to fight at all, you've seen this a hundred times on videos online, and he gets in someone's face and that guy's like, bang, just cracks him.

That dull-minded shithead, he is not the fearful one.

He's not the intelligent one.

The intelligent people are fearful.

You should be fearful.

It's good.

It helps you, especially if you're about to do something difficult.

And you should do difficult shit because it teaches you about yourself.

And if you don't learn about yourself, you're always going to wonder.

And that's the problem with a lot of men in the world.

A lot of chess puffy, a lot of fucking really arrogant, aggressive people.

It's because they don't know themselves.

So they're trying to impose a version of themselves on other people to be respected.

Yeah.

You know, you find this in these fucking

business CEOs and execs who are really aggressive and they weigh 80 pounds.

Like, this is what this is.

It's like they're finding a way to try to figure out who the fuck they are they don't even know themselves and that's one of the things i like i i know myself like spent so much time with myself in like a clear sort of frame of thought knowing my limitations knowing what i've accomplished when i was even more limited like if anything that's i think this whole process is that's the difference

between an artist and like say someone who wants to be famous or somebody who wants to be worshipped someone who wants to be the head of a company or the president of of the United States or somebody who wants to be beyond reproach.

Nobody who wants to be president should ever be president.

100%.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It should be, but then again,

you know, if you got like some benefit, some truly benevolent dictator that we're all waiting for.

We're all waiting for like the benevolent leader who's just going to take control of it, but do it for the people.

You know, Marcus Aurelius,

someone who just really, really does have the people's best wishes in mind.

Human greed is too fucking strong.

It's too strong.

And anybody that's willing to go through that process, that brutal process,

you know, like all the stuff that's in the news today, I mean, there's still, there's possible legal ramifications of things that happened in the 2016 election that we're hearing about today.

Yeah.

It's like these people are gross.

Like,

the whole thing.

It's the opposite of the Austin comedy community.

So, like, if we had to choose a president of the Austin comedy community, it wouldn't be that hard.

Like, whoever wins is great.

You know, if Shane wins, great.

If Duncan wins, great.

Who are you going to elect?

Who cares?

Everyone's cool.

But the presidential world is like, no, no, no, no, no, no.

You have the backings of enormous,

enormous military-industrial complex corporations, enormous amounts of money, Pentagon budgets beyond comprehension.

It's going to be a trillion dollars this year.

What does that even fucking mean?

What does this mean?

So like the

ability to be at the helm of that, like there's going to be no cooperation with the left and the right.

And you're seeing what happens when one group gets into power.

What's the first thing they do?

Like what did they do when they got into power?

They immediately went after Trump.

They hit him with a ton of different fucking legal charges.

Most of them didn't make any sense.

The fuck the all the crazy shit about overestimating his property in Mar-a-Lago, like that is the way they were using the law is like, oh my God, you people are gross.

Yeah, on both sides, on both fucking sides.

That's the whole system is so fucking corrupted.

And it's so obvious.

Like we're at a stage where like we have enough information to see

like that how much greed and money just corrupts the system.

But we I don't think we really got to see it until Trump ran.

I think you got to see it unveiled in a way when Trump ran that you never got to see before.

Because also you got the rise of independent journalism that happens at the same time.

So you have people that report just on the facts, not like the CNN fucking lien or the Fox News lien, but just like just reports on exactly what's happening and how it happened.

That just didn't exist before.

So you get an understanding.

If you're paying attention and you follow those people, and and a lot more people are than ever before, you get a way different understanding of how gross this game is.

And because the guy was so polarizing, and because he was such an easy guy to turn into a Nazi, like

you pointed to him, you're like, this is that, this is our fuck him.

Look at the way he talks.

He's going to ruin the world.

It's a threat to democracy.

We could do anything we can to stop him.

So what do they do?

They stop all the primaries.

They don't have real primaries anymore.

They haven't had a real primary since 2012.

They rig them.

They rig it with Bernie Sanders.

They rig it with RFK Jr.

You know, they're just, the whole business is gross.

It's gross.

I wish us as humans were all like together enough to just self-govern.

You would need people to enter into politics at the highest level that didn't need the money and really were good people that really wanted to just change the tone of how everything is governed.

And that's going to be so hard to do because the money is so nuts.

And then,

do you see the Nancy Pelosi thing?

The new one?

She was being interviewed, and then was like, I didn't want to talk about that.

Anna Cooper, you put that on.

Anise Cooper, he sneaks it in.

She's like, I came in here to talk about the anniversary of Medicaid.

Like, she cares about Medicaid.

She's worth an estimated $400 million now.

How?

What's the salary?

$70,000 a year?

$170,000 a year, something like that?

$200,000 a year, maybe.

But watching the panic in her face, realizing that Trump is now president and they're talking about literally going after her for insider trading and the undeniable evidence that they have had better results on the stock market than literally anyone ever.

And they have access to information about laws are going to be passed.

If that's not insider trading, what the fuck is?

And that's what I mean.

The greed, the level of greed is so strong that you she you got that video

she might even have good intentions getting into office shut the fuck up bitch shut the fuck up or anybody anybody shut your mouth i feel like it's a system that demons that corrupts yes the minute you get in i think so i think if you want to succeed like what happens maybe you have these idealistic

perspectives on how politics works or what you can do and your contribution and then you get in and you're like oh jesus yeah it doesn't work that way you have to survive you know Like, I've had candid conversations with Tulsa Gabbard about what it was like.

And she's a person, she was like, tries to be friends with everybody, tries to reach across the aisle.

She's got that whole aloha spirit.

And she was like, it's crazy.

Just the amount of backstabbing that's going on.

Like when she got into office,

first of all, you realize you're not really in control of everything because there's another person who's in control of each individual department.

And they'll stop whatever you're trying to do every step of the way.

They get in the way of everything.

And what are you going to do?

You're going to replace everybody?

And how are you going to find qualified people to take those jobs?

This guy's been at that fucking, he's been the czar of this commission for 25 years.

So he knows like all the ties and all the financial agreements.

Here, let's watch this because it's so funny.

Let me just read what he said.

I'm sorry that we had some sort of technical issue.

Nancy Pelosi became rich.

You might have to read that.

We're here to talk about the 60th anniversary of Medicaid.

That's what I agreed to come to talk about.

And what that means in the election.

I wanted to give you a chance just to respond.

He accused you of insider trading.

What's your response to that?

That's ridiculous.

In fact, I very much support the stop the trading of members of Congress.

Not that I think anybody's doing anything wrong.

If they are, they are prosecuted and they go to jail.

But because of the confidence it instills in the American people, don't worry about this.

But I have no concern about the obvious investments that have been made over time.

I'm not into it.

My husband is, but it isn't anything to do with anything insider.

But the president has his own exposure, so he's always projecting.

He's always projecting.

And let's not give him any more time on that, please.

We're going forward here, and I'm very proud of my family.

And while he might make fun of us, while somebody inspired by him breaks into our home and hits my husband in a deadly fashion, hits my husband over the head, and he thinks that's a riot, I'd rather not go into some of my other complaints about him right now.

Rather to talk about the 60th anniversary of Medicine.

Okay, okay, okay.

First of all, what crazy projection.

She immediately turned herself into a victim.

She immediately

went from,

Jake Tab was like, what's your response?

Oh, this is ridiculous.

Nothing was insider.

We have $400 million, whatever, whatever.

What's really important is Trump inspired a man who broke.

First of all, how do you know?

That guy was a literal crazy person that broke into that house.

Yeah, that was a weird fucking thing.

He was schizophrenic.

He had a hammer.

He smashed the back window.

He broke into the house.

Paul thought that he could talk the guy down.

It looked like Paul had a drink in his hand, so he's probably a little lit.

Yeah.

Probably a little more calm than he should have been.

And then the cops are at the door and the dude hits him in the head with a hammer.

That guy was a crazy person.

You're blaming Donald Trump for that.

No.

That's so nuts that you have gone from you made an insane amount of money.

A lot of people say you're insider trading.

What's your response to that?

My husband got hit in the head with a hair.

Their whole black belt said deflection.

It's funny.

You know, it's because it's all because the president has a lot of exposure.

Because it's funny.

Trump does the same shit with her.

If he's on the hot seat,

Nancy Pelosi.

Yeah.

You know, they all have that natural deflection.

Yeah, man.

It's like...

And it's like we all fucking accept it somehow.

Like, we might make fun of it or like be like because my bullshit meter goes off all the fucking time like you're fucking lying to me right now like you can see it this episode is brought to you by rocket money financial freedom when you get down to it is not worrying about money but with prices these days that's easier said than done however when you take control of your finances when you know what's coming in and what's going out when you properly manage and stay on top of your budget that's when you can really start working towards your goals rocket money is a personal finance app that helps find and cancel your unwanted subscriptions, monitors your spending, and helps lower your bills so that you can grow your savings.

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There's a reason why that whole ability to trade stocks is still in position.

And it's because they want it there.

They make a shit ton of money.

And they have all the insider information.

They have to figure out at what point in time is this too dangerous and who's willing to like make this a law?

Who's willing to change this?

And

what politicians are going to sign on board for that?

Because they're actually voting against their own self-interests.

Yeah.

Right.

If they all decide,

it's like they're playing chicken.

As long as they don't do it,

as long as they don't do it, then they can still make a ton of money.

But if you look at the numbers, like if you look at

who's making money on the stock market, it is not all Nancy Pelosi.

It is red, blue, red, blue, red, blue.

It's pretty much down the middle.

Yeah, I mean, as long as you could skirt the legalities, why would you not take information that you have gained and try to

utilize it to your improvement.

And you're hanging out with Harry, the senator from fucking South Dakota or whatever, and Harry's got a yacht.

Like, how did you get a yacht, Harry?

Like, you know, Bobby's got his own private jet.

How'd you get your own jet, Bob?

You're a congressman.

Like, what are you doing?

And those people that are able to generate that kind of wealth, and I think she's like the poster girl for it, unfortunately.

But it's not her.

Like, who's made the most?

I was looking up.

Yeah, let's find that out.

There's an article here.

I don't know if this is officially the most, but there's people that have made more than her.

Yeah, I'm sure they have.

Where does it say, though?

More than 20 memory here.

Okay.

More than 20 members made almost double the S ⁇ P 500 average gain, which is crazy.

Yeah.

You tell me it's like 0.5% more, but percentage more.

Okay.

David Rauser, Republican North Carolina.

Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Democrat Florida.

Ron Wyden, Democrat, Oregon.

Roger Williams, Republican, Texas.

See, that's the point.

It's like, it's not blue.

It's not red.

It's just corruption across the board.

They're all doing it.

If you're making more than 50%, that's bananas.

That's bananas.

Yeah.

Like, what is their, hold on, scroll back down, scroll down.

Okay, look at this.

The Pelosi one, an almost cult-like following for her financial disclosures, saw the value of her household's portfolio rise by 71% in recent years.

Like that kind of trading is super unusual.

Yeah.

To make more than double the average gain of 24.9.

So make more than 50%.

That's crazy.

Nobody does that.

No, and how would you, how do you, how do you explain that?

And how do you explain those decisions?

Yeah.

When you look at the decisions, like she dumps stock, and then three months later, some big bill comes down the line that fucks that company.

She buys stock and then three months later, some big bill that comes down that, you know, they're funding for this new project.

It's crazy.

More than a dozen U.S.

officials sold stocks before Trump's tariff sent the market plunging.

Of course they did.

Well, how about when Trump tweets out to buy?

Remember that?

That was part of this, yeah.

Oh, that's crazy.

Yeah.

It's fucking.

Like, hey, don't do that.

And it's crazy that he's in his own money, too.

How about that?

And yet still, like, poor people are sitting here arguing about who's the better person.

Like, it's fucking wild.

Like, they're they're all corrupt and they're all fucking us.

Some less than others.

Some are allowing us to talk.

You know,

and that's, I think, that's

when you see like the South Park episode with Trump, like, I know we're not, we're not in a fascist state yet.

You know what I mean?

It's like, we're still okay.

Exactly.

We're still okay.

As long as South Park exists, we're okay.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, look, look, it's all weird, man, because this system is completely fucked.

It's completely fucked.

And we don't want it to be, and they want it to stay the way it is.

And so there's this weird thing where they have to get elected.

So to get elected, they have to say the things that we want them to say.

And so then we believe it every year, like fucking Charlie Brown going to kick that football.

Lucy pulls it away.

Cut.

Yeah.

But

the weirdest thing to me is that we're in this complete shifting of the polls where the Republicans now are in favor of free speech.

The Republicans want to end the wars.

They want to stop contributing to foreign countries.

They want comedy to be comedy again.

They don't want restrictions on people's behavior and thinking.

And the Democrats have developed this sort of like cult-like idea of what everyone should accept and what's normal and what's not normal and

what needs to be

elevated in our population and what needs to be ignored.

And it's just like, God damn, you guys are, you're ruining it for everybody that thinks in a left way.

Like anybody who's reasonable, like a reasonable left-thinking person, which is most artists, by the way.

Yeah, of course.

And then you get to this point where you're like, no, I can't go along with you on all these things.

Yeah.

You guys are, you're, you're just a bunch of fucking assholes who are using these subjects as a way where you can behave incredibly shitty, incredibly uncharitable, like vicious, mean, ostracizing people from society.

I I don't want any part of you.

I don't want any part of the way you guys think and behave.

And to pretend that you're doing it for good, you're doing it for, you're gluing yourself to the wall for climate change.

The fuck you are.

You're just a nut.

You're just a crazy entitled nut and you're fucking up society.

This is not the way that people should be behaving.

And I can't believe it makes people go to the other.

And the Republicans are smarter about it.

now in this day and age because they're like hey we'll take in hey it's fine come Come over to us.

You could say whatever you want.

Comedy's back.

It's a big ebb and flow to me.

It's like some weird natural balance of like things shift a little bit to the left.

Things shift a little bit to the right.

But we got to hold the center.

If we motherfuckers could just figure out, like, we're so, we have so much in common, people just generally who would be considered more left or more right.

And it's just a few things that really are the basis of our

contention.

Well, the real problem is the team aspect of it.

That's the, it's fucking retarded.

Yeah, it's really retarded.

Yeah, you can say it.

I heard it.

Why are you?

You're joking.

Thank God you're joking.

Some people panic.

Please edit that out.

No.

No, retards back.

It's just, you know, I think it's going to take time, but I think we're going to eventually get to a place where we work it out.

And my best hopes of AI is my best hopes because it could just ruin the whole world and take over everything and we could become slaves.

My best hopes are it gets to a point of efficiency and intelligence where corruption like that is impossible and

it figures out a way to organize government spending in a way that actually helps us.

Because that's what we want.

The left and the right both want like our tax dollars to be used to benefit

everyone.

Yes.

Unless you're running a business and you can get an advantage and that's where it gets gross because those people can

be so much.

And I think AI is probably going to recognize that.

It's going to say, listen, you want to really fix this?

You have to stop this competitive advantage.

Well, it's our ape genes, right?

We're just fucking more advanced apes.

That's it.

And we still have

a tribal mentality that's encoded in our fucking DNA.

And we have to elevate above that.

And that just takes like avoiding greed.

And it's also, it's like what you do when you paint is

you focus on creating this thing.

Like, this is what you're focused on.

What they're focused on is numbers in a bank account.

And they're focused on getting those numbers in there.

And they're fucking obsessed with getting those numbers in.

So all those other steps that they do, like you're trying to figure out your painting, you're trying to like brush techniques and different things.

And you're trying on different angles, maybe shadowing it differently.

What they're doing is trying to figure out how to push this and push that and get this politician to make this legal.

And that way they can make more money and then Nancy Pelosi's like we're gonna pass it Paul

put in the put in the wager because it's basically wagering right you know put in the buy the stocks it's gonna roll but if you have all the cards marked yeah it is and it's um it's fucking

it's a real unfortunate thing and how do you avoid that because you really you want corporations you want them to make apple fucking laptops and shit you want a samsung tv you want these things right so how do you how do you motivate,

how do you get people that are motivated to make the best products in the world and every year make them better and not have them think only about making money to the point where they're willing to bribe politicians so that they can pollute a river in India.

Yeah.

And that's what's so different about artists.

It's like,

I would make paintings.

My whole life.

Nobody bought them.

Nobody gave a shit about them.

I would still make them and would give them away or put them in a fucking closet somewhere like we for me i saw like art as a way that maybe i could get out of like the area that i was in like i could grow a little bit but at the at the same time like doing the work was what was important and what came with that was secondary it was all just added bonus right right so like if i worked if i was selling fucking wheels or car tires like i would only be thinking about the how much money can i make right that's the problem especially if it's not if you're not like a wheel and car tire enthusiast it's one thing you know if you love it yeah like I know dudes who work on cars and they they fucking love it especially builders yeah like my friend Steve strope who's been on the podcast before who made my Nova

that guy loves working on cars he loves it I mean that is his art but he makes custom-made cars and it's like to him it's just like making a song it's just like making a painting yeah But when you're only thinking about money, man, those are the people that are the hardest to hang out with.

Like, you ever hang out with financial people?

Like, you ever get stuck at a party in New York with a coked-up financial guy?

Have you seen this fucking Derek Moneyberg fella?

Oh, is he the Jiu-Jitsu guy?

Yeah, got his black belt in three and a half years.

Right.

But he is, is he legit?

Because he's with legit people.

So I can't imagine.

Jake Shields is a savage.

Like, all the respects.

And Jake says he's legit?

I think Jake gave him his black belt.

Well then he's legit.

There's no way.

I know Jake.

There's no way.

Jake is his jiu-jitsu is top of the food chain.

Yeah.

And I know Gordon is trained with him.

I know all these other people train with him.

Down here was over there with him.

I haven't heard anybody say anything negative.

So here's the thing.

Someone who is like super rich, which apparently this guy is, who trains with the best trainers in the world and actually puts the time in every day.

It's super easy to dismiss someone because they're rich.

Super easy.

Yeah.

Zuckerberg is a primary example of that, right?

I know for a fact, Zuckerberg trains really fucking hard.

And he goes with real guys.

And he brings in people like Dave Camarillo, trains with him.

He's trained with a ton of people.

So he takes it very seriously.

He has access to incredible trainers and he's an obsessive.

He's a very competitive, obsessive person.

So you could say, oh, he's got $200 billion.

He can't kick my ass.

That dude will fuck you up.

That nerdy dude will fuck you up.

And it's because he's actually put in the time.

Now, he doesn't have the time that this Derek Moneyberg guy has.

If this guy's got, if he's putting in like hours and hours every single day, which is what I heard, that he was like literally training multiple hours a day, every fucking day at Jiu-Jitsu, you can get to black belt level.

I don't know if he is, you know, but I know that if those guys say he is, I believe them.

I told somebody, I was like, let me just see him do an arm bar from closed guard.

Let me just see how sloppy that is, and then I'll know for sure.

Or not sloppy at all.

Yeah, exactly.

Right.

Why doesn't he just show some drilling?

That's all it would take.

You don't even have to show me you rolling.

Let me see some tight drills.

Yeah, that's all it would take.

Yeah, let me see you go through.

But, you know, he doesn't have to.

But then again, you kind of do have to if you project the fact that you're doing that.

Yeah, if you take some sort of like braggadocious sort of

like...

Three years, seven months, got my black belt.

Right, you should probably show something.

Like, hey, hey, let me show you guys.

Yeah.

You know?

Because otherwise.

I mean, because when I started, I was doing fucking two a day, two morning class, night class.

And,

you know, none of that came fucking fast for me.

But you might not have been the most naturally athletic guy.

True.

Yeah.

True.

But night classes and day classes are great, but one-on-one is the ultimate.

If you're a guy like him and you can get John Donaher to coach you, you can get Gordon Ryan to coach you, you can get all those Jake Shields.

I've seen photos and videos of him from training sessions with the best guys in the world.

So if you can get, and you're hiring them.

Yeah.

It could be a cheat code.

It's 100% a cheat code.

It's 100%.

If you do it.

If you actually do the work, it's 100% a cheat code.

But

that's the thing.

Like, you have to actually be training really hard.

It's not as simple as you know those guys, you talk to those guys, they give you the fucking secret handshake, and now you're good at jiu-jitsu.

The only way to get good at jiu-jitsu is hard work.

That's it.

Yeah.

And I could never see somebody like Jake Shields like fucking giving out a belt that wasn't deserved.

No, no, no, no.

It's like when you hear Guy Ritchie is a black belt, you go, really?

And then you hear he's a Henzo Gracie black belt.

You go, oh.

Oh, yeah.

Okay.

He's legit.

Yeah.

He's legit.

Yeah.

But there's not a lot of fake jiu-jitsu black belts out there, man.

I feel like we used to see more of them back in the day.

Oh, yeah.

There'd be like those funny videos of like somebody just.

Oh, Eddie caught a couple of those.

Yeah.

There's a bunch of those videos where a guy shows up at a school and he's got a black belt on and then he rolls at people and he gets tortured.

Yeah.

That was like before YouTube existed or any social media existed.

You can kind of get away with it.

Yeah.

Well, I think people,

they're crazy.

There's certain people that are just completely schizophrenic and they just

get it in their head and they just

are not even trying to like con people.

It's just they really truly believe.

in what their their mind is telling them.

Well, that might be possible, but I think there's also a bunch of people that their whole life is a con.

It's like a series of lies from the beginning to the end.

It's just they never live in the truth.

And so for them to put on a black belt is just the latest of is I was reading about this guy that like said he was a doctor and like did surgery on people for years.

Yeah.

It's people that are nuts, man.

There's

one out of three pilots in I think it's Pakistan doesn't have a license.

That's fucking wild.

They have fake licenses.

See if if that's true.

I know I saved the article, but I don't feel like going into my phone and getting it.

But it was like, Jesus Christ.

Like, imagine you're on a plane and the guy doesn't really know how to fly.

Yeah, it's fucking horrifying.

How does he figure out how to land that fucking thing?

I mean, does he know how to pull out the amount of intelligence to pull that off?

Like, you probably could have got your fucking pilot's license.

Well, be able to con a few successful flights, you would think that the guy would just go ahead and get the license.

You're already doing the thing.

That's like I see artists in art school.

I'm like, you're already making art.

You know how.

This is a story from five years ago, so I don't know if it's changed.

Almost one in three pilots in Pakistan have fake licenses.

They didn't take the test or something.

Oh my god.

262 pilots in the country did not take the exam themselves and had paid someone else to sit in on their behalf.

They don't have flying experience, he said.

Pakistan has 860 active pilots serving in its domestic airlines, including the country's Pakistan International Airlines flagship, as well as a number of foreign carriers.

Oh, my God.

How many crashes are they having?

I mean, if they're keeping them in the air?

Right.

Ambitious dudes.

Yeah, fuck.

Sometimes you don't need a diploma.

I found that out because of a crash.

A whoopsies.

Oh, shit.

All right.

Whoopsies.

Yeah.

Jesus Christ.

Oh, my God.

That's so crazy.

People are so nuts, man.

If you let them be nuts, they will be nuts.

Yeah.

I think.

You gotta have...

Like, people don't want any regulations.

They want anarchy.

Like, shut your mouth.

Shut up.

I have this idea of like an altruistic anarchism where it's like everybody just treats everybody kindly and the way that you would want to be treated.

That would be great.

Yeah, but it's so, it's, we're,

our fucking ape mind is.

There's too many of us that are fucking nuts.

Yeah.

And greedy and like just out for self.

And I I get it.

Like

it makes sense.

Like there's a lot of self-preservation that comes with that.

But if we could all just kind of pull

our shit together.

Self-preservation makes sense when you're surrounded by a bunch of people that are also selfish.

Right.

That's part of the problem.

It's like if you get lucky and you find a good crew early on in your life of people who are down with you, they're your friends and they love you no matter what, life is way easier.

It's way easier.

And there's people out there that, man, they don't fucking have that they don't they have a bunch of people around them that suck just in a form of competition at all times i mean i'm a lucky person i'm a very lucky person but i think the biggest luck that i have is the people that i've met and my friends yeah because it makes your life so much better well i mean it shows like how much you you support your friends too like like the idea that if we can all get lifted up together versus i'm gonna step on your shoulders and work my way to the fucking top.

Right, but not only that, but it also shows that this my way works.

It doesn't hurt you to make other people successful or to help other people get more successful or

just to tell people they're awesome and give them their, as the kids call their flowers.

I struggle with that one.

The young hip-hop kids like to say that.

Give them their flowers.

But, you know, it used to be giving their props.

But it's like

that, if you really love that person, that's good for everybody.

That's good for you, too.

Like, the people that want to step on that person to elevate themselves, like, you're just ruining your own life.

You're missing the big picture.

And it's not necessary.

It's not necessary.

Even in a competitive environment, even in something you're competing, like your friends, these people that you're competing with, they help you.

They really do.

It's almost a necessity.

I think it's a necessity with comedy for sure.

I always say this, that no great comedy exists in a vacuum.

I mean, there's people that have talent that are in the middle of nowhere and some real small local scene, and they could become a great comic one day, but they're not going to on their own.

Yeah.

They have to be around great comics.

They can't just see them on YouTube.

They've got to see like David Tell live.

You know, you've got to see something like that where you're like, whoa.

You know, you got to see Colin Quinn live.

You got to see these people that are masters and see the thing that they do and get inspired by it.

Yeah.

And to start to learn it, like understand the process.

Like that's the same thing for me.

Like I, I thought I was going to be like, uh, like do the Sunday comics in the newspaper like as a kid.

Like I didn't know, I didn't know what people did to make money making art.

Were you into comic books at all?

Not really, but I, like, I was.

more leaning towards that kind of aspect of like this is how you can survive like actually pay your bills and make art

but you just wanted to make art just wanted to make art right and it took I became an assistant for

a really well-known artist who

you know ran a design firm did fine art did like ran the like was just like like at the top of his game and I didn't go to art school but I saw what he was doing and a couple other artists like in the same same area was like okay you're you're making paintings you're you're working with these companies to do some design, that design money is going back into your art practice.

Like, it was just being able to see how something exists and then knowing like, okay, I could do that.

Right.

We're already doing the same process, but here is the sort of market of it.

Here's how you survive.

And here's how you continue to grow and thrive.

It's how you become a professional.

It's how you become a professional.

But I mean, for if you're, you know, in fucking Wyoming somewhere, you might not have these people that you see.

You're so disconnected from a community, you might not know.

And then you're like, well, I got to give this art thing up and, you know,

get a job because I got to pay bills because you just don't actually have the awareness that.

there is a pathway.

And this is the failure of the school system because it never teaches kids that are artists or people that have alternative ways of existing in society that there's ways to make a career.

I got kicked out of the only art class I ever took.

This motherfucker, we had to draw a shoe or something.

And I turned mine into like a robot because I didn't like how the shoe was turning out.

And he said, you have to draw a shoe or I'm failing you.

I'm going to kick you out of the class.

You have to draw a shoe.

And I'm just like, kicked me out there.

And I knew, like at that, you know, at 15, 16, that like art is what I decided is.

Nobody else can say what the fucking rules are.

Like, this is for me to do.

And now

I forget his fucking I wish I knew I remembered his name and tell him to fuck off right there's a lot of those guys that turn people off I had a high school art teacher turn me off to art too he was just a dick and then I found out that the most talented guy in the class is kid John DeVore who I still contact every now and then we talk on email he was the most talented guy he gave that guy an F

and I go no so it's like I hadn't communicated with John since I left art class but we did a bunch of stuff together we did a bunch of drawings together yeah and when do

you found it, no, not really.

No.

I do sometimes with my daughter.

One of my daughters is really talented.

I draw sometimes with her, but for the most part, no.

It's interesting.

I did a little drawing on vacation.

We were drawing stuff together.

It was fun.

But,

you know, I just don't have the time to get obsessed with it right now.

I'm obsessed with too many things, and I have to manage my I'm still waiting for you to start golfing.

No, no, no, no, no.

Putting is pool.

No, no, no.

Putting is pool on an undulated

warped table.

Oh, I understand.

You'd be great at it.

Listen, I know everybody that I know that I love who's into it is obsessed.

And that's part of the problem.

Yeah.

It's like, I know what's coming.

And I know it's like a fucking multiple-hour thing.

You got to dress like an asshole, wear stupid shoes.

You have to dress like an asshole.

That's for sure.

And then I see all these fucking fights where people are fighting on the golf courses.

Do you see that drunken guy that got

with a hockey enforcer?

Yeah, through the

fucking mic.

First of all, the size of that guy, the fact that you're squaring up and you're just bluffing and you're squaring up with this fucking...

That's one of those spots where people think they're way fucking tougher because they got a bag full of clubs than they actually are.

People get out of fucking control on it.

Well, it's just dudes.

It's so dumb.

And it's drinking, too.

The guy was clearly hammered.

And I think he made a video afterwards apologizing.

Yeah, good.

Because he was just drunk.

He's just drunk and he got stupid, but he got stupid.

That's what I always tell people.

Like, don't get in fights.

One day, you're gonna get in a fight with a guy who knows what he's doing, and you're gonna get fucked up.

Imagine that fucking fear.

Like, when he got grabbed by that fucking hockey player, he got his jacket, he's just fucking hair with his right hands.

What a nightmare!

But, like, I hope he was like, Wow, I really made a poor choice.

No, at that time, he was just drunk as fuck, and probably thinking, I'm gonna get him back.

Yeah, I'm gonna get him back because I know what that fear feels like when somebody really fucking like, you know, in a gym scenario,

somebody really grabs you, and you're like, Oh, fuck,

there's nothing i could do right now like i tapped to big nog's side control he squeezed me so fucking hard it felt like my ribs were gonna come out of my mouth oh god and i i you know i was like a blue belt maybe still a white belt and i tapped to side control that's crazy and i started think well what if he was fucking punching me too you know also he's way bigger than you no he was fucking massive yeah he's way bigger than you the the the The amount of pressure, if you're a really big person, you put down on a small person, it's really kind of unbearable.

But even somebody who's like my same weight or whatever, like that when you really like, I'm fucking wrapped up.

And like, if this person wanted to, they could end me right now.

Oh, yeah, that was always the most eye-opening to me when I would roll with guys who are 30, 40 pounds lighter than me, and they just fuck me up.

And immediately I was like, I never want to act tough in public again.

Ever.

Like that fear of like, if somebody, I, I got in, there was a guy who was, I was in a, like, a time period where I was partying a lot.

This guy was just being a dick to a bunch of people said something shitty to my friend and i'm trying to walk away and it just like my my brain was just like say something and i was just like why are you being a fucking dick like you know and he puffed up and started coming at me and like he like swiped something out of my hand and immediately my instincts kicked into jiu-jitsu i grabbed he had like a like a like a flannel on i grabbed his collar like a lapel and i grabbed his wrist and just getting like immediately i was just gonna throw him and then like the other voice in my head is like the guy had a dog actually who wasn't on leash and i was like if i throw this guy on his head right now and his dog runs in the street i'm gonna feel a little guilty but i sensed in him that you know like when a grappler like grabs your wrist like you feel it it feels different than somebody else it's someone who knows what they're doing yeah like immediately grabbed both and like put the squeeze on him that I could read in his eyes like, oh, that wasn't normal.

And then i was like no no no like let go and then he like walked away talking shit and i that's good yeah yeah yeah yeah perfect and you know that that's really rare for me but it was like he had said something shitty to somebody but to have somebody grab you like that and the fear that can come with that yeah i would never want to experience that in real life no like

Fucking horrifying.

Well, street fights are stupid.

They're terrible.

And the people that know how to fight don't do them.

They don't want anything to do with it.

You should just go to a gym.

You should go to a gym.

If you have this desire, did you see this video recently?

I saw it yesterday.

You guys are making me think of it.

What happened?

This guy on top, they're saying the guy on the bottom is a white belt.

He gets choked out without the use of arms.

It's all legs here.

Gets put in the arm.

Oh, this is so rude.

Why is he doing this to a white belt?

That's well, I mean, they're training, I guess.

I know, but

that's where I

would go to you guys being experts.

Yeah.

Oh, Eddie can do that.

Very rude.

No, well, it's kind of rude.

It's also that guy is just training.

He's just using that guy as a practice dummy.

He goes sharpening up the triangles.

It's kind of rude.

But I mean, what do you want to happen if you roll with a white belt?

Do you want him to win?

You want to let him win?

No.

Like, what do you do?

You tap them.

You tell them what to do along the way.

Like, you got to protect this arm.

This arm's in a bad spot.

Don't reach back like that because then you open yourself up for the arm triangle.

You got to tell them, T-Rex, keep your arms in tight.

that's how i coach yeah when i'm training with somebody like i'm talking them through it and i'll even i'll do the thing where i tell them what i'm gonna do before i do it yeah so that they can start to work out their defenses right and like get an idea oh that's good because as a black belt like you can beat everybody up like that kind of loses some of its shine after a while.

I think that guy was using that dude as just a training dummy.

He was like, yeah, I could just work my triangle.

Yeah, just working on his legs.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Because if you can cinch up a triangle, even on a white belt with no legs, at least you're getting reps in.

No, yeah.

And it probably makes it like somewhat more difficult.

It's better than that dummy I have collecting dust in my gym.

Yeah, exactly.

Dummy that I was off my back at all.

Just like slight resistance.

You know what I do use, though?

I'd use that Bubba dummy.

You know that thing?

The punching dummy.

It's like the rubber.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, with the big water.

There's something good for that.

Just target practice.

It's good.

You can't kick it too hard because it falls over.

But if you can kick the face, you could slap the face.

Yeah, and there's something about those that just you want to kind of give them a little bit of the business.

Yeah.

Fuck you, Bob.

We have one sitting right next to our boxing ring in the gym, and I always post up.

It's really good for practicing certain kicks.

It's really good for question mark kicks because there's a shoulder element.

And with a question mark kick, you're really trying to go over the shoulder.

Yeah, like the Glabe Fatosa, the Fitosa one.

Glabe Fatosa.

Fitosa had the absolute best question mark kick of all time.

And his question mark kick would come down on you.

It would go over the shoulders and just chop down.

Yeah.

And like the that bob dummy is great for practicing that.

It's like the best thing for practicing because a bag is so straight, you know, the bag kicking down like that.

It's like it's you don't have a real target like you do with that bob dummy because you're really trying to get the neck.

You're really trying to go over the top and get that neck.

Just like, heck.

Yeah.

Such a strange looking kick, too.

Oh, yeah.

It works though, man.

Yeah.

That fucker works.

That works a lot.

Because like you're worried about that front kick to the guts.

So you'll do this, you know, or you'll think a low kick is coming.

And then it comes over the top.

And by the time it's, you don't react.

You can't react in time.

Yeah.

Like, you're already planning to get kicked in the leg.

And by the time you figure it out, it's in your fucking ear.

Exactly.

And the guys that are good with it, like, Luke Rockhold has a nasty one.

There's guys that are good with it, like, oof,

oof.

It's just so sneaky.

Over the top.

That's another thing.

Imagine just running into some tie guy who you think you could throw around.

He just fucking blast you with a fucking knee.

Not only that, the trips, they're so good at tying up and the clinching and dumping people.

Have you ever trained with like a guy who's really good at tripping you?

Yeah.

As soon as you tie up, whoops, your leg is up, and you're like, motherfucker are you?

That's why I always want to throw like flying like ankle locks.

Yeah.

Well, that's the difference between like Muay Thai and Jiu-Jitsu.

Because in Jiu-Jitsu, okay, you threw me to the ground.

Now we're just started.

Yeah.

Now I have a hold of your leg.

Then the referee's not going to stand us up.

I'm going to break your knee.

Yeah.

Like, you dumbass.

You threw me down with an inside control.

I have an inside hook.

It's like a fucking superpower too, man.

Yeah.

I'm so glad I found it.

Like I owe a lot to you, I think,

like the way you spoke of it like back then to like even just to get into the gym because that's the fucking hardest part.

Like

crossing that door path and getting on the mat.

Like there's so many days you're going to be like, I don't want to do that.

Like I don't feel like it.

But as soon as you get there, it's like so worthwhile and so valuable.

Yeah, you just got to force yourself to do it.

And that's something I really owe to Eddie.

Eddie is crazy, you know, like creative and abstract as he is.

He's super disciplined when it comes to his training.

He was always like super, super disciplined.

Well, you can see it.

Like, my game is

very similar to like

to Eddie's and like Lucas Lech,

like that just.

wherever you can get a hold of the leg.

Like, I pull, I like to pull with the quarter guard.

You know what I mean?

Like, I like to play from there.

And, like,

I'm curious.

I want to know how many people have the lockdown muscle in their fucking calf.

I've got a lot of people.

No, there has to be.

Yeah.

But I've never seen one.

And it's so.

Get that tib bar, dog.

Get that thing.

Get that thing.

It's trying to get the ball.

So if you put like a little plate on it and

you lift with your foot, it's legit, man.

You could do tib bar raises where you just stand on your heels and lean against the wall and just lift your foot up over and over and over again.

That does it too.

But the tib bar thing, you could do it with weight.

That's it right there.

Look at that sucker.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, I have that.

I use that fucker every day.

I have both of them.

I have a lot of stuff.

I've been wanting my butterfly guard to get better, too.

Yeah, man.

This will have a big impact on it.

And you could also use it to do a leg extension.

So you could do a leg extension and then you could lift the foot at the top if you wanted to.

So you could actually emulate

funny.

You could actually do it from your back now that I'm thinking about it.

You could put one of those in on each leg and you could lie down on your back and you could specifically

work butterfly guard.

There's so many cool ways to work out now.

I know.

There's so many amazing people that have figured out ways to protect your knees and protect your back and

help your shoulder stability.

And just they give it away.

They give it away online.

We have such an amazing resource available now for training.

Think about if you're a young guy, there's these guys that are coming up that have only been doing jiu-jitsu for a short time, like Joseph Chen, like only been doing jiu-jitsu for a short amount of time, you know, like less than seven years, I think, and dominating.

All of a sudden, well, why?

Because he's obsessed.

And because he has all this information online.

Yeah.

You can watch so many instructionals.

There's so many videos of guys pulling things off.

You can rewind it, watch it again, rewind it, watch it again.

Get together with your friend.

Okay, put your, no, put your hand on the left knee.

Okay.

And then when I push, you pull, and then watch that.

Yeah.

Like, oh, shit, that works and that takes so long if you're just doing it like in an organic like training way yeah for sure but the the beauty like i like i came up with what a technique that i haven't seen or haven't done before that like it can everything continues to evolve even as much as we've all trained the same shit for so long like there's still new avenues to explore there's still room to be creative always like that's one of the cool things that eddie will do someone someone pulls something off and they have a thing.

Eddie will go, show me that.

Show me that.

Everybody, check this out.

And they'll have the whole class gather around.

And then, like, tell me what you're doing.

Talk me through the thing.

All I like to do is I like to get mission control and then I shovel this arm through and then I grip it like this and they're like, okay, try that.

And everybody tries it.

And then Eddie will go, do it on me.

You're like, huh.

Yeah.

All right, let me try to do it on you.

Huh.

Like, do it on.

Somebody try to get out of this.

And then they'll try to like workshop it.

Like, would it be better with this?

Would it be better with that?

Like, how did you get to this spot?

Like, why did, did you, do you have a pathway that you take to get to this?

Do you get to the spot all the time?

Huh.

And that's so similar to your comedian sort of community, too.

Like, oh, you have that option.

Well, I think that's why I brought that to the comedy community because that was always the way it was in gyms.

Yeah.

Like, in jiu-jitsu and in kickboxing and taekwondo and Muay Thai.

Like, people teach you how to do stuff.

And it's so good for us as a culture, too.

Like, to interact with people who you may never interact with in your day-to-day life life ever.

Yeah.

Like to have that sort of community aspect, like I feel like that draws a lot of people in outside of all the other benefits.

Yes, there's a lot of community to it.

And it's and it's such a like vast array of different types of people from every culture, from every sort of class level.

Yeah.

And we all find a common equality, of course, with a hierarchy of experience, but we're all in the same boat together.

Well, that's the same with yoga, it's the same with a lot of things.

Yeah, you know, it's just like you find a group of people that have also found this very productive, very beneficial thing.

Where are you going, Marshi?

Hi, puppy.

Marshall just woke up.

I saw your new puppy.

Oh, he's adorable.

Jesus Christ.

He's Marshall's new buddy.

They're really fun together.

Is it a Cocker Spaniel?

No, it's a King Charles Spaniel.

Okay.

Marshy, come here, buddy.

Marshie.

Show everybody.

Come say hi to everybody.

Come here.

Come here.

Come on.

Such a cutie.

He's tired.

Long day.

You guys go running?

Not today.

Today, he just came here to hang out.

He's the best.

Golden Retrievers are the absolute best dogs.

They're just all love.

They just want to cuddle with you and hang out with you.

They want to play, but the whole thing is just like, be with you.

Yeah.

And he's sweet to everybody.

I wish they lived like 150 years.

No, they live, if you're lucky.

Well, he's on a really good diet.

We're putting him on a farmer's dog now,

changing his food.

He was on the Maeve stuff, which is great, but he's on a raw food diet.

Yeah, that's what I'm going to ask you to do the raw.

Made a giant difference.

Giant difference in the way he looks, the way his coat is.

Giant differences in his energy levels.

Yeah.

You know,

well, it's also, it's like, they're just like people, man.

If you have a person and you feed them nothing but processed food, they're going to be sick.

Yeah.

If you're eating cereal every day.

Yeah, I mean, that stuff just sits on the counter forever it sits on a shelf you go to the pet food store those bags are just sitting there like any real food shouldn't be just sitting there like that it's gonna rot yeah so that means that food has nothing live in it yeah you know

you got you got to give them the fucking raw mm-hmm the raw well like i said

cut it with the with the dry food a little bit too yeah you don't need to this the the way they have these like with farmer's dog and with uh the stuff that he's been eating maeve it comes with it's like frozen like green beans and blueberries and potatoes and meat it's food yeah it's food yeah and it just changes everything man they don't fart as much like it's it's so much better for them they have way more energy it's like they're her whole his whole body composition changed yeah i love it when people like actually fucking care like the yeah their pet isn't just a like a fucking decoration no dogs are the best yeah they're your love your life will be more loving if you have dogs they're just always around.

They're always cool.

They're so consistent.

And they have simple needs.

They just want to be

unconditionally loving all the time.

Unless you get a working dog.

And there's a lot of dummies out there that go and get a Belgian Malamois and not understand, like, okay.

Yeah.

They're great dogs.

But

you have a responsibility now.

Yeah.

Because you don't have a regular dog.

You have a super athlete.

You're living with like a canine race car.

Yeah.

That's really what that is.

Like you, you can't just leave that in the yard.

You see those people that train those dogs.

Like

doing the little walk in between their legs as they're walking down.

Yeah.

My friend Anthony just got one.

Have a couple of people.

He just got one.

He's sending me videos of the puppy.

I'm like, oh my God, this thing is like broken.

When they jump like 25 feet in the air off the wall.

They fly.

They run.

They run right up walls.

Yeah.

There's a vague.

Imagine one of those fuckers chasing you.

Yeah, it's hell.

They're meat missiles.

I'll send this to you.

I'll send it to Jamie because I sent it to Brian Cowan because me and Brian Cowan are both retarded and we talk about dogs all day long.

We talk about like, what's the coolest animal?

But this video shows the difference between how a shepherd, a German shepherd, which is also a great dog, approaches something to the difference a Belgian Malamois does.

Yeah.

Have you seen it?

Yeah, it's jumping across the chairs and shit.

Here, I sent it to you.

It's nuts.

Like the shepherd runs around.

He's like, I'm going to find a way to get to that guy.

I'm going to go around this way.

The Malamois runs over the chair.

Watch this.

See, here's the shepherd.

So the shepherd, he's going around.

He's got to find the guy.

And he gets to him.

He bites him.

Watch the Malamois.

Now he lets the look at the fucking Malamois over the top, over every chair.

It's like just so driven.

They're so driven and so athletic, man.

And it's not that a German shepherd's not athletic.

Yeah, right.

But like in comparison, look at what this fucker does, man.

Yeah.

He just runs over these chairs.

He gets there in one second.

Insane.

They're so athletic.

So like a dog like that is not like Marshall.

Like Marshall is cool, just hanging here.

You got a Belgian Malamois.

That motherfucker needs tasks.

He's just like, it's basically like me.

Yeah.

Like you got to work him out.

He's got to do things.

You can't just have him sitting in the house.

He'll go fucking crazy.

Yeah, otherwise he's going to be smoking crack back in the alleyway.

He is ADHD in dog form.

That's what a Belgian Malmois is.

Like

you can't put him on Ritalin.

You got to exorcise that little guy.

Yeah, you got to work that shit out.

Yeah, man.

He needs.

And it's like, if you have the time to do that, they're incredible dogs.

But it's like, you got to know what you're getting.

You know, if you want a dog that just chills, get yourself a golden retriever.

You want a family dog, get yourself a golden or a lab.

They're the best.

They just chill.

I had a Boston Terrier for a long time.

Oh, they're sweet dogs.

I haven't been able to get another dog since he died.

Like, it was too draining, too emotionally draining.

It's hard, man.

Yeah, it was like a family member.

It's hard, man.

It's hard.

I still get sad thinking about my dogs that have died.

But, you know,

there's loss and there's life, and you just got to appreciate them while they're here.

And I always love new ones, too.

I love everybody's dogs.

I love Carl.

Carl's here today.

He seems like a little calmer with Marshall today.

Growing, boy.

He's growing.

He's getting his shit together.

Yeah, he's just a puppy, right?

He's also listening when you tell him to stop.

No.

He's listening.

He's listening.

Bulldogs are a special breed.

Yeah.

Especially the English ones.

Like, they're just stubborn little pricks.

Yeah.

Like, they're going to do what they want.

I was watching a lady try to walk her two young English bulldogs this morning.

They were walking her.

And they'll put that little...

You'll actually get it with the French Bulldog when they put the brakes on.

And they're like, we normally walk this way, but right now

I'm going that way, bitch.

Exactly.

I'm the boss.

yeah especially male dogs with their balls they'll they'll test you he's never tested me once not once never never growled never growled

he's the best he he you know he barks at um snowmen

in my neighborhood in my neighborhood this guy had a one of them inflatable snowmen and i'm taking him for a walk and he sees a room He's like, what the fuck is that?

Is that a guy?

Like, the form of it, whatever it was, and it was one of the inflatable ones, so it's kind of like moving around.

And he's like, yo, what the fuck is that?

Is that a bear?

Yeah.

I would love to jump in a dog's brain when they have those moments.

Right.

Like a snowman freak out.

Yeah, probably looks like a fucking monster.

Bro, it's so funny because, you know, because I'm relaxed and he's barking.

I'm like, bro, trust me.

He's thanking you if that was a barrel.

He's looking back at you like,

are we going to fight this fucking thing?

Are you fucking seeing this?

That's a fucking guy.

Like, no, it's just, it's just an inflatable thing.

Yeah, he can.

But other than that, he never barks.

He'll bark if he wants to be let in.

That's it.

He goes to the door and it just let out a little bark.

Yeah.

Just let you know, hey.

Jamie and I were talking before.

Like, it's very interesting how you start to communicate with your dogs and you start to understand what they need.

And like, over enough time,

you have a silent communication, which is

very, very peculiar.

And he knows the difference between going for a hike and then coming to the studio.

He knows the difference.

Yeah.

Like, he like, you know, when he get if we go somewhere and he's going to go run, he's all amped up when he gets out of the car.

He gets here and he's like, hey, everybody's cool.

What's up?

How's everybody doing?

Air conditioning's on.

He's ready to lie on his back and get pet.

It's like,

he's the best.

Yeah, dogs are fucking amazing.

We almost don't deserve them.

Well, it's just such a weird thing that we've done.

It's so bizarre.

They used to be wolves and you can't train wolves.

There's a reason why wolves aren't in the circus.

Think about that.

Think about that.

You've got monkeys, bears, and tigers that you can train to do circus shows in front of everybody.

You can't train a wolf.

They won't listen.

But yet

he turned a wolf into a dog that

literally listens to everything I say.

That guy will say, sit down, buddy, relax.

And he'll just sit.

You know, I'll go, all right, you ready to go?

He's like, I'm ready.

And he just gets up and goes.

Like, it's like, how did that happen?

And the fact that they have that like fucking super gene that they could transform into so many different variations of the same thing.

Through selection.

Yeah, that's what's weird, like selective breeding, where you could turn a dog into Carl.

Like, if you have enough time, you can turn a mastiff into this tiny little thing.

You just need enough time and enough different select genes.

And find, like, this female is a little smaller.

Let's breed her with a smaller male.

And this one has a shorter snout.

Like, how are they even...

How?

What'd you do?

How'd you get a chihuahua?

From a wolf.

A wolf.

You know, they didn't even, they weren't even sure of that until, like, I don't know, fucking 20 years ago.

Really?

They didn't know.

They thought they came from wild dogs and shit.

It's when they started sequencing the genome.

They're like, what?

Yeah, it's exactly the same.

These are all wolves.

They kind of thought.

probably a lot of them came from wolves, like huskies and shit like that.

They're like, no, all of them.

That sort of symbiosis is really interesting too.

Like how plants, like we have that symbiosis with plants and like

certain plants who have followed our evolutionary line down the way or you know like we get connected to these I think sometimes we forget that we're still a natural part of the environment.

Well, how weird is it that plants literally put their seeds in the middle of delicious fruit so that we will

shit it out.

And that shit will act as a fertilizer and help it grow.

Yeah.

It's fucking wild.

What a crazy.

Not only that, but if you eat the seeds, they're bad for you.

But if you swallow it cyanide in it,

so it's like evolutionary design, evolutionarily designed for you to just pass it through your digestive tract whole.

Yeah.

Just swallow them.

Or even the fact that it's the certain color that reminds us of a flavor.

Right.

That like a certain color looks delicious.

Yeah.

And all it's doing is tricking us into eating it to shit it somewhere and allow itself to

report a certain color that looks looks poisonous.

Right.

So you're scared of it.

Yeah.

You know, I was watching this video the other day of a spider that makes a decoy spider and puts it in its face.

I saw that.

How?

It's building a sculpture.

Right.

Yeah.

And it looks like a fucking spider, which is really crazy.

So how does a spider even know what a spider looks like?

And how did it develop?

It doesn't have a mirror.

Right.

How did it develop this ability to make a sculpture out of its own webbing?

Like, look at this.

That's crazy, man.

Yeah.

I mean, that's really crazy.

It's making a decoy.

Yeah.

You're like those caterpillars that look like they have a snake out of their tail or whatever.

Yeah.

Or mantises.

You ever see mantis that make it look like their arms are giant teeth?

They put their their arms together like

they make it look like they have a giant mouth.

Yeah.

Such a fucking bizarre thing.

Like how?

That's the wild thing about evolution.

It's like, how?

What is the entire process that allows something to develop where when the moth opens its wings, it looks like eyeballs?

Yeah.

Like, what is that?

Yeah.

It's fucking just life is really good at reproducing itself.

How do you get a Venus fly trap where a plant tricks you into coming into the center of this trap and then slam

and then it eats flies?

Nuts.

The whole thing.

I mean, that's why you got to, like, find some joy in it.

Like, find a little, you know, entertainment in how fucking bizarre everything is.

We get so wrapped up in our day-to-day, in our just getting by, like, just having the moment to be like, wasn't that a part of a problem with working really hard too?

Like, you, you, you know, you don't see the forest for the trees.

Yeah.

And you can get caught up in whatever the fuck you're doing and like forget, like, God, the world is pretty amazing.

Yeah, the whole thing is so fucking bizarre.

Yeah.

And, you know, we try so hard to act like we fucking know it all too.

To just leave some room for some mystery.

It's

so important.

Well, people are weird, man, and there's no real good working manual of how to live life.

Yeah, there's no right way.

There's no right way.

Like,

any advice anybody tries to give you, They're only working on their own experience, especially when you're trying to pick a weird career.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Like an artist.

Yeah.

Like, good luck.

Or a comedian or an MMA fighter or anything.

Like, you want to do that?

It's like, who are you going to even ask?

You got to find what you love and literally just fucking go for it.

Like, and I, and I, I know there's a sort of

like, okay, you got kids.

You got a fucking mortgage.

I get it.

You know, like, I'm, I've hustled all kinds of different ways to make sure I I continue on the process, you know, on the path.

But, like, yeah, it's very different if you have people that you're taking care of and those responsibilities are paramount.

But then sometimes maybe that reward system that you would get from something else maybe comes from that.

100%.

100%.

But what we're saying is that, like, as you are listening to this, if you're going...

on your journey into life and you think you might be going in a safe direction that's going to make money versus the direction that you really want to go to?

Ask yourself how bad you really want it.

Like, what do you want to do with your life?

Do you want your life to be really fun?

Do you want your life to be really rewarding where you wake up and you're excited about what you do?

Or do you want every day to be a grind?

Do you want every day to be like you can't wait to get off so you can get a cocktail so you can fucking calm down?

Because you hated, you hate everybody in the office, and everybody treats everybody like shit.

And the boss is a dick, and you just get home, you just want to drink and watch Netflix.

Like

you got to decide.

You got to decide.

And you're going to have to take some drastic steps and you're probably going to have a lot of doubt, especially if you're doing something weird.

Like if you want to be an artist or you want to be a comedian, like

it's a long road, man.

That doubt fuels.

It can handcuff you and make you stop, but it can also push you.

to go further.

Well, that's where doing something else that's difficult so you know that you can do difficult things really really comes in handy.

And that's what I always preach about jiu-jitsu.

I think jiu-jitsu above all of them is the one that you can do the most and you get the most out of it.

And you can get hurt for sure.

And I've been hurt a bunch of times, don't get me wrong, but it's a different kind of hurt than sparring.

The hurt that you get from kickboxing and you know that you were talking about from Muay Thai, i it's different.

You can't do that every day.

You can't you can't spar every day.

You get hurt.

Yeah.

You get your brain gets beaten up.

Your fucking your nose gets fucked up where you can't breathe out of it anymore.

It's just, you don't want that kind of hurt.

It's too debilitating, and it could fuck with you for the rest of your life in terms of like just literally the way you think, which was always the scariest thing for me.

I remember when I was thinking about stopping fighting, it was like, because I was lying in bed at night with headaches

from sparring days.

And I was like, what am I doing to my brain?

Like, this is the only thing that I have that's going to help me decide how to get through life.

It's the only thing that I have.

Yeah.

And once you start meeting people that you know are compromised, meeting people that you know have brain damage, like,

yeah.

You're starting to see it, man.

Like, I think people who have been fighters their whole life, you know, starting to see a lot of that, like over the CTE or whatever the football players were dealing with and like how big of an effect.

I mean, head trauma is so,

so fucking damaging.

Yep.

Like, and the way that it could show itself in so many different ways.

Gambling addictions,

drug addictions, depression.

Even like manias, like

hallucinations.

You know, I feel like it almost transforms people into like

waking nightmares sometimes for some people.

Sure.

To where it's like that feeling of like, you know, like you see somebody.

but there's somebody else.

Exactly.

Right.

Like there's so many like aspects that

just end up destroying your normal day-to-day life.

Yeah, it fucks up their hormones.

It fucks up everything.

And, you know, yet it makes for this insanely attractive sport to watch.

Yeah, and they love it.

Right?

You just got to know when to get out.

Yeah.

You got to know when to get out.

And that's what's hard.

Yeah.

And really, the hardest thing is that they don't have anything else.

Because in order to be really good at something like fighting, you have to dedicate your entire life to it.

It has to be everything about your waking moment.

And when it's not and it's just a job, that's when it gets fucking dangerous because those guys get really fucked up a lot of the time.

Yeah, when you have to get the next fight to keep the fucking train rolling.

Yeah.

And then you have a family and you realize you don't have any savings.

Yeah.

And so then to quit, like, what are you going to do?

How are you going to generate, you know, if you're fighting and you're making $250,000, $300,000 a year fighting three or four times a year?

Like, how are you going to replace that with a regular job?

Yeah, you're not.

You don't have any skills.

Like all your skills are in how to fuck people up.

Yeah.

So what are you going to do?

Are you going to teach?

You could teach, maybe, especially if you're real technical.

Yeah, but that's not going to give you the same quality of life or like the, you know.

You could eventually.

I mean, there's some guys that make a lot of money off of teaching.

Sure.

But that's kind of rare, though.

I mean.

We have to be really good.

Yeah.

Yeah, you have to be really good.

There's like be franchising.

There's a lot of demand.

You know, like you could, if you're an Eddie Bravo, you can teach seminars and you have a bunch of affiliates in a bunch of schools.

But he's in the top

5%.

Exactly.

Exactly.

For most people, it's a grind.

I mean, I teach, I was telling Zach, like, to me, jiu-jitsu is like a parasite and it got in me.

And now it's trying to find other hosts.

Like, I literally am just trying to share, but it's like, it's, it's like jiu-jitsu is forcing me to share it, regurgitating it into some other host so that it can regurgitate itself into

somebody else.

But it's a beneficial parasite.

Don't you exactly think teaching helps your jiu-jitsu though?

though?

A million percent.

Like, I show all of my students all of my tricks so that when I try to use my tricks on them, it stops working.

Yeah.

And then I have to evolve the tricks or like create other little smoke screens and diversions to get to the spot that I need to get because they know.

And I, I like to, I'll show stuff that I don't normally do, but a majority of my curriculum is stuff that I do, that I know works, that I know all the ins and outs of.

I know every little detail of how you get to the spot, like what you do, what you do if they do A, B, or C.

And that's what I share.

And as I do that, like I

notice little techniques not working anymore.

Well, don't you think it's also as you explain the techniques to people, it tightens up your own understanding of the techniques and makes you better at it?

A thousand percent because you have to think of it.

And it like a lot of times our movements are muscle memory, right?

We don't really consciously think too much about it because we've done it a thousand times where it's like, I do this, then I do this, then I do that.

And you don't think about it.

But when you have to show somebody,

you have to think about all those things that you never think about, help explain it to somebody who doesn't know what the fuck you're talking about.

Yeah.

And get them to grasp it.

I've seen that time and time again in jiu-jitsu where a guy's pretty good and he starts teaching, like coaching like beginners one-on-one private lessons and stuff to make some extra money.

And next thing you know, he's a killer.

It's like, wow, that's, it's, I think that's a missing part of the key to development is teaching.

I think I'm honestly surprised when others don't want to do the same.

Like, I never, like, I never gatekeep techniques.

Like, I, if I see something that I think will work, like, I, I honestly think I'm a much better coach than I am a jujitsu practitioner.

Like, I'm horrible at competing.

Like,

just sometimes I just be like, okay, I'm just going to stay here until I kind of have a room to get out and I don't have to try too fucking hard but I can see the game much better in my students and right like we're at my gym steel MMA is a little bit of like a ragtag sort of like bad news bears kind of gym because there's so many high-level competitive gyms in San Diego yeah but we go to all the local tournaments and we get on the fucking on the podium.

That's cool.

Yeah, we that's very cool.

And we're not San Diego is a tough place for jiu-jitsu jiu-jitsu, dog.

Shit, yeah.

You got fucking Jocko's place down there, Barrett Yoshida's down there.

How many people?

Was Hoyer had a school down there?

Heuler's still in San Diego.

Still in San Diego?

He actually gave the guy who was the purple belt who threw me on my head that I was talking about earlier.

He got his black belt from Hoyler.

Atos is there.

Oh, yeah, that's right.

That's right.

What a hotbed of Jiu-Jitsu.

Yeah, it's like little fucking Brazil.

Isn't that funny?

Like, California, especially like during the UFC's growing period, became one of the biggest hotbeds of jiu-jitsu in the world.

Yeah, they all went there.

They all went there because they could surf.

Yeah, you could surf.

Yeah.

Like, probably like climate-wise, fairly similar.

Fairly similar.

And then a ton of population to draw from to get students.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Especially in that LA area where it's like people were already kind of like into Bruce Lee and Chuck Norris and shit.

Right.

And then, yeah.

You know, you see Hoyce just fucking freak everybody out.

Mm-hmm.

I mean, I watched all those early fights as a kid.

I had a friend's dad who, like,

would always fucking get the pay-per-view.

That's another thing about Austin.

We have so many jiu-jitsu gyms here now.

Yeah.

You know, Gordon has his place now.

B-Team has their place.

You have got Gracie Baja's here.

You've got Shanji Ribeiro's here.

Everybody's here.

There's like so many different gyms here.

There's multiple 10th planets here.

You know,

there's Gabe just opened up a 10th planet in Bassrop.

There's a 10th planet right down in this area.

There's a tenth planet.

There's like three or four tenth planets.

Yeah.

I think there's at least three.

And they're all packed, right?

Packed.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's beautiful.

It's like there's so many people that are interested in it because, you know, it really does work.

It really helps you.

It not just works like as a martial art to learn how to defend yourself.

It's a

vehicle for understanding yourself better.

It helps you in everything you do.

As long as you just do it smart and don't get hurt.

Exactly.

That's like me trying to get up when my neck was pinched.

Like, that was jiu-jitsu.

Yeah.

Like, I use it in so many aspects of my life.

Like, it's

such a beautiful, weird little sport.

Yes, sir.

Lifestyle.

Mike Maxwell, I'm glad you came in.

Joe Rogan, thank you so much.

Thanks for having me on, my brother.

Tell everybody where they can find you online.

MikeMaxwellart.com, and all the social medias are at Mike MaxwellArt.

My gallery in Santa Monica is BG Gallery.

And I got a gallery out in New Orleans, Mortal Machine.

You can find my stuff out there.

And is it all on Mike Maxwell Art?

You can find all that stuff.

Yeah, you can find all that stuff.

Beautiful.

All right, brother.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I appreciate you.

My man.

All right.

Bye, everybody.