1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless

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Speaker 1 This episode of the Jordan Harbinger Show has some explicit language, so if you're offended by that, well, skip to the next one. And mom, it wasn't me, it was the guest.

Speaker 1 Coming up next on the Jordan Harbinger Show.

Speaker 2 And I'm acting like an idiot, just just like drunk out of my mind. Fucked up drunk, but in a really good, happy way.
Like, we got to do something with Drew.

Speaker 2 And somebody had the idea, let's put Drew in a wheelchair and wheel him out of here.

Speaker 2 So they got the Disney guy to get a wheelchair, put me in the wheelchair, and they're going to wheel me out of there, which they do. And I'm in the chair just like fireworks going off.

Speaker 1 Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger.

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Speaker 1 Today on the show, the one and only Drew Carey, comedy legend, host of The Price is Right.

Speaker 1 This episode is really full of funny stories from a long career in Hollywood and comedy, plenty of laughter, and of course, inside baseball on one of the most popular game shows of all time.

Speaker 1 I wondered and of course asked him if anybody had ever cheated on The Price is Right or tried to, some hard times in his career, and his love for raves and partying, which I did not see coming at all.

Speaker 1 Of course, I wanted to hear about the downsides, how he handled rejection, setbacks, and a whole lot more. I feel compelled to say, Drew Carey, come on down.

Speaker 1 You look good for

Speaker 2 66. Wow.
I'll be 67 in May.

Speaker 1 Congratulations

Speaker 1 for living this long. I guess less and less like Dilbert every year.

Speaker 2 I think so.

Speaker 1 You went to Kent State, yeah?

Speaker 2 I enrolled in Kent State.

Speaker 2 I filled out the paperwork.

Speaker 1 I bet they love you now, though. Like, oh, that Drew Carey, he's got ours, kind of.

Speaker 2 One year they honored me and put me in the homecoming parade, and I think I got an honorary degree and met the president of the. This is the only degree I have from Kent State now.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 They really treated me right once I got famous and had money.

Speaker 1 They get the business angle of things. They're selling shirts with Drew Carey, went to Kent State on the front in the gift shop.
They should.

Speaker 2 Leave money on the table. Damn it.

Speaker 1 You kept that Marine Corps haircut for a long time in your career, or the pseudo-Marine career.

Speaker 2 Well, I was in the reserves when I started doing stand-up. I was just at the end of my sixth year, about to finish up my sixth year in the Marines, when I was like, okay.

Speaker 2 And then when I decided to do my first amateur night, that's just how I had my hair. That was once a month.
The drill was once a month. Like, what are you going to do? You can't grow your hair out.

Speaker 2 So that was just my haircut. And then the glasses, the Marine Corps, I don't know what they do in the Army.
In the Marine Corps, they call them BCGs, birth control glasses.

Speaker 2 That's what the drill instructor called it. That's what every other Marine calls it.
I don't know why they officially just don't call them that. But even like when you're like getting ready,

Speaker 2 don't forget your BCGs.

Speaker 2 I got to go get new BCGs. Nobody would just say glasses.
Oh, God, that's really funny.

Speaker 1 Yeah. It became a part of your brand, right?

Speaker 2 Well, that's how I look.

Speaker 2 And the thing is, back then I was broke, stone broke, paycheck to paycheck, shift to shift when I was waiting tables, had cash on Friday, the last the next week when I got cash tips.

Speaker 2 And that's how I was living, literally counting my pennies.

Speaker 2 I had a journal where I would keep track of everything, like one of those little accounting journals you buy at the CVS or Walgreens back then. And I'd keep track of every expense, pack of gum.

Speaker 2 I knew down to the penny and the change in my pocket

Speaker 2 how much I had. Wow.
That's how broke I was.

Speaker 1 You don't do that now, I assume.

Speaker 2 No. Okay.
I have a general idea, but that's what I did back then. And like, I remember with my brother, back then it was like the oil embargo.

Speaker 2 Suddenly we were learning about drafting behind trucks on the freeway, get an extra couple miles a gallon. Wow.

Speaker 2 And oh, let's get behind this truck and then we'll draft and we'll drive into Columbus or something. We'll get an extra two miles a gallon.
That's crazy.

Speaker 1 I didn't realize it was that significant. Yeah.
A little, but not that.

Speaker 2 My brother's an engineer and we were like obsessive about keeping track of our miles per gallon and made like a game of it. I wouldn't fill it up.

Speaker 1 I didn't have that much. You couldn't afford to fill up the game.
Yeah. I wonder what the price equivalent is.

Speaker 2 $2 worth. I need a gallon of gas to last me this next couple of days and I'm getting 30 miles per gallon.
I need to get 30 miles today. So let me just get my dollars worth or two gallons.

Speaker 2 And I would hand the guy two $1 bills. That's just how I lived.
I need enough to get me through to the next time I can afford to put five bucks in. I really felt like a big shot if I could fill it up.

Speaker 2 Yeah. It was two bucks worth, five bucks worth.
You mentioned that you used to eat macaroni and cheese, but you just put water in it. That's all I could afford.
That's crazy.

Speaker 2 I lived in Vegas for a time and I was just, again, stone broke, count and change in my pocket. And I would have enough change and spare cash to get a box of craft macaroni and cheese.

Speaker 2 And then I would buy like the quarter stick of butter, but I couldn't afford the little pint of milk. Or I could afford the pint of milk.
You got to choose one. Got to pick one.

Speaker 1 I think the butter does it better than the milk.

Speaker 2 And then I would use water instead of milk.

Speaker 1 When you made it, did you get those shells with the Velveeta that you could squeeze out of the foil bag?

Speaker 2 Craft milk. It's the story of the punchline is once I got on the Drew Carey show and made money, I would buy Kraft Macaroni and Cheese Deluxe.
Liquid cheese you squeeze out of the foil. Nice.

Speaker 2 No mixing. And I'm rich, bitch.
Who knows what chemicals are in there? Didn't even care. Doesn't matter.
I was raised on that stuff, too.

Speaker 1 Oh, you want to eat when you come home? Squeeze the Velveeta Velveeta bag into the thing with the pot on and pray.

Speaker 2 George makes jokes all the time about when you have frozen dinners or stuff as one of the grocery items. He'll go, just like mom used to throw in the microwave, just like the canned mom used to open.

Speaker 2 That's funny.

Speaker 1 Do people recognize you, by the way, without your glasses on? You've had glasses your whole life.

Speaker 2 I've been wearing glasses since I was eight. They do and they don't.
It depends on the context. And in LA, nobody cares.
And if they do, they don't show it. Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's not cool to show it in LA.

Speaker 2 No, like there's this diner I go to all the time, Swingers, and tons of celebrities going there regularly and coming and out to actors on the servers all know that they're regulars.

Speaker 2 And when you see them in there, there's no line to get their autograph. But when I was on the Drew Carey show and like really banged out my first fame, I couldn't go anywhere.
Everybody recognized me.

Speaker 2 In Cleveland. Yeah, or outside of L.A.
Remember I went on a driving trip, pulled into Holiday Inn or whatever roadside thing where I could just pull in and park.

Speaker 2 I wanted to be able to park my car outside my door. I was those places.
And they'd be like, what are you doing here? My joke was the celebrity hotel was closed. What are you doing at 7-Eleven?

Speaker 2 People would recognize me, oh my God, what are you doing at 7-Eleven? Yeah. I need gum.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Like, I don't have, I didn't bring my assistant on my road trip across the United States to go out of the car and get the gum for me. Yeah.

Speaker 1 That's funny. The celebrity 7-Eleven had a huge line, so I decided to hop over to this one.

Speaker 2 That's my standard joke. The celebrity blank was closed.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 You lost a bunch of weight. I don't know how recent that is.

Speaker 2 I've lost about a thousand pounds

Speaker 2 over and over again. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I know the feeling. Was there any sort of triggering event?

Speaker 2 The first time in my bow tie phase when I first dropped all that weight was because my son, Connor, he's 19 now. He'll be 20 in April.

Speaker 2 I just realized that I wasn't going to live to see him graduate high school. Yeah.
Like we would play in the backyard when he was five and run around like, daddy's tired.

Speaker 2 I couldn't chase him around the yard. I couldn't play tag with him.
I was just exhausted. Like my feet hurt.
I would leave prices right. My feet would hurt.
And I was looking for orthopedics.

Speaker 1 You must have been

Speaker 2 50.

Speaker 1 Yeah, not old enough to be like, ah, my, everything hurts.

Speaker 2 You know, my back hurt, my knees, I always needed a nap because I ate so much junk and sugar all day. Like my diet was awful.
And when you're soaking in something, you just think it's normal.

Speaker 2 Like we all have our own normal now where you realize, oh, it might be normal, but it's not good. Like just because it's normal on the bell curve doesn't mean that's ideal.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I'm the average weight of an American male at my age.

Speaker 2 Okay, well, then you're fucked. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Exactly. Good luck.
Yes.

Speaker 1 Yeah. On Larry King, R.I.P.
Typical Larry. He's like, how did you get to be so overweight? Just flat out.

Speaker 2 Gradually, then suddenly. Yes, exactly.

Speaker 1 But you described your diet. And I was like, wait, is this real? It's like, do you remember that at all?

Speaker 2 Yeah. So this is how I thought.
I would go to whatever diner. It was Bob's Big Boy back then.
I was working at Warner Brothers.

Speaker 2 I'd go to Bob's Big Boy and I would have steak and eggs and toast and like three, four cups of coffee with sugar, two things of sugar. Oh, wow.
In my head, I thought, well, I'll use brown sugar.

Speaker 1 Yeah. It's brown.
It's healthier.

Speaker 2 A little healthier. Sure.

Speaker 2 And I won't have pancakes this morning because I'm trying to be good. But if I was just like, ah, yeah, sure, pancakes.
Little side of pancakes on there because. It's a regular day.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 I'm not trying to be healthy. Saturday.
Yeah, yeah. And

Speaker 2 devour all the hash browns. And then I'd get to work, have a Pepsi, look over the script.
There'd be snacks at the craft table, maybe a little bit of bagel or something.

Speaker 2 And, oh, a cookie, have a cookie.

Speaker 2 And then lunch, same kind of thing,

Speaker 2 burger, fries. At night, I would leave and I would go to Swingers and get pasta with heavy cream.
Alfredo chicken with chicken in it, and then extra cheese on top and then a cupcake.

Speaker 2 But then if I was being good, I would not have a cupcake or I'd be like, nah, I'm kind of down. Let me have two cupcakes.
Or and then I would drink iced tea with that with extra lemon.

Speaker 2 So I'd put two slices of lemon in the iced tea and then another, it would be like five, six wedges of lemon and iced tea. And I'd already had three Pepsis at work all day and crashed after every show.

Speaker 2 And then feet would be hurting. And then I'd get home, crack open another Pepsi.
Oh, at night? Oh man. Oh yeah.
Doritos,

Speaker 2 ranch dip. Ooh, it sounds good.
Something Twizzler, something like that, watch TV, have a beer, have a couple beers, and then go to bed. And I wouldn't be able to sleep.

Speaker 2 So I was taking Ambien and I would take one.

Speaker 1 My friend Roseanne said they make you racist.

Speaker 2 I think ambient is like the work of the devil, honestly.

Speaker 1 You hear about people driving and they're like not remembering how they got somewhere and they were asleep.

Speaker 2 And I would end up having to take, I don't know if I had to, but I think I did, taking two ambience just to sleep. And then I'd get up exhausted, couldn't wait to get a coffee in me.

Speaker 2 And that's how I lived.

Speaker 2 That's, that's scary. And to me, that was like, oh, this is what everybody does.

Speaker 1 You're probably not too far off. I think a lot of people.

Speaker 2 And I'm at the gap buying clothes. I had such a stupid mindset.
Like I bought everything from the gap because in my head, this is only temporary.

Speaker 2 So why am I going to invest in expensive clothes when I'm going to lose this weight in a few months anyway? So I just buy gap clothes. I knew it fit me.
It was fine.

Speaker 2 I was just going to work and who cares? And if they were selling double X L's, that's normal.

Speaker 1 Because it's, hey, it's at the gap. It means I'm still a normal person size.

Speaker 2 I'm not over the limit.

Speaker 1 I don't have to go to the big and tall place.

Speaker 2 Right. That was in my head.
I remember going to urban outfitters once. I thought, let me style up a little bit.
And I went to urban outfitters and the biggest waste they sold was like 36.

Speaker 2 I was like, these motherfuckers was the only kids allowed to buy here. They don't sell the clothes to adults.
I was really like, okay, fine. You're not getting my money.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Drew Carey came in here, looked around, and then left. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Because you don't sell double XL shirts. Yeah.
Jeez. It was crazy how I thought.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 But the rationalization machine is powerful, man.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 I watched your Johnny Carson appearance from 1991 and it was pretty good. Stands up really well.

Speaker 1 It stands up really well. And they did things differently back then, I think.
You're kind of in this position where come on out and entertain us right away.

Speaker 1 You don't like walk in and be cool and like just chat. It's perform and don't blow it, or this is the last chance you'll ever have of making it big.
No press. Yeah.
No pressure.

Speaker 2 That's exactly what it was like.

Speaker 1 Were you nervous back then? Do you remember?

Speaker 2 Man. So I used to be an evangelical Christian.

Speaker 2 Oh, wow. But I remember feeling like I just got saved by Jesus.

Speaker 1 At the end.

Speaker 2 That's the only feeling I can relate it to. Like I was floating.

Speaker 2 I was in such a flow state. I think think your listeners are probably familiar with the flow state.
You've heard of it.

Speaker 2 And if you haven't, there's whole books on it, YouTube videos, if you're not into reading.

Speaker 2 But it happens to you when you game, you get a flow state if you're really into the game, or when you're driving with the radio on or off, you really get in a flow state.

Speaker 2 When you're anything where you have hyper concentration where you look up and you're like, oh my God, it's been an hour already. I thought I just sat down.
That's a flow state.

Speaker 2 And I was in such a state of flow, I might as well have floated out there and floated over. And it was like a dream state the whole time because I'd rehearsed that set.

Speaker 2 When I walked out, Jim Macaulay, R.I.P., he was the guy that booked the comics.

Speaker 2 And he was the guy that if you were in a comedy club and you knew Jim Macaulay was in the audience, you'd be like, oh my God, her up right away.

Speaker 2 Yeah, because he can make or break you by putting you on the tonight show or not. Wow.
Back then, it was like just very few gatekeepers. And if you got past those gatekeepers, you were in.

Speaker 2 And if you didn't.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Folding towels at Equinox.

Speaker 2 Yeah, there's no podcast to go on. There's no YouTube channel you can start.

Speaker 1 There's no third tier like this podcast.

Speaker 2 Now there's like many avenues. Back then there was just the one and then just the two when Letterman started.
Oh, yeah. Then after you got famous from those, then you could have an HBO special.

Speaker 2 Oh yeah. Or a Showtime special.
And that was it. Now you could make your own special, put it on YouTube, get a YouTube following, and then you're set.
Yeah. Nothing Nothing like that.

Speaker 2 You had to go through the gatekeepers, always a gatekeeper. So Jim Macaulay was the biggest gatekeeper in the country.

Speaker 2 And he said, hey, Drew, you're on next. Ready to go backstage? I had my notes, my set list that I hadn't barely glanced at.
And I was going to look over it one more time before I went on.

Speaker 2 And it was on the top page of my notebook. It wasn't a separate sheet.
I just had my notebook and I would fold over the top like a lined Oxford line notebook paper.

Speaker 2 And he walks me backstage and he goes, well, have a good time. And I go, am I next? And he goes, yeah.
And I go, well, I guess guess I don't need this. And I tossed it.
Wow.

Speaker 2 You didn't have a chance to look at it before I went out. And then next thing I know, it's Johnny introducing me, the curtains open and I float out on stage and I'm in a flow state.
It's going great.

Speaker 2 I'm like electric inside. I feel like I'm on another planet.
It's going so well where I'm not associated with reality. And then I get called over just like in my dream the night before.

Speaker 2 I had like a vision of exactly how it would go. I was working at a club in Chicago, Funnybone in Chicago at the time, and Schomburg.
And I got a call, like, hey, Macaulay called.

Speaker 2 He wants to do the tonight show. And the club owner is really excited because that's extra money on the weekend when I come back from that.

Speaker 2 And just to have a comic there that just got his first tonight show. And he was a good friend of mine anyway.
And I was like, what? Well, I need Friday night off.

Speaker 2 So Thursday night, I got the call Wednesday. And Thursday night, I told the audience, I'm doing the tonight show.
I did my set. And I go, that was my tonight show set.

Speaker 2 So let me just figure out the rest of this because you already heard my closer.

Speaker 2 Wow.

Speaker 2 And I flew out there. But the night before I was laying in bed and I could not sleep.
I kept imagining in real time. I was doing the set because the set's pre-approved.
So you have to do that set.

Speaker 2 So I'm doing the set in my head in real time, seeing the stage through my real eyes because I'd already been there.

Speaker 2 Another friend of mine suggested while I was in town, suggested I go to the tonight show and just be backstage. And when the show was over, just go out and look around so I'm not as nervous.

Speaker 2 was some of the best advice I ever got. So I knew what the stage looked like, so I could imagine the whole thing.

Speaker 2 And then Johnny calls me over at the end of my nightdream, all in real time, like it's really happening.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And he said, you're funny as hell.

Speaker 2 It was the first thing. It was word for word.
It wasn't like I was matching moments. Like it was 10 minutes, the whole sequence or eight minutes.
The whole sequence was time.

Speaker 2 I got up, walked around the hotel, went back to bed, couldn't get out, only slept on the plane on the way out from Chicago to LA. And it happened just like I envisioned.
It was a a supernatural

Speaker 2 to me. That's the genesis.
Genesis. That's why I'm famous.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 It makes you think, really, like, how many people have come just close and then were too nervous or like couldn't handle the pressure or self-sabotage?

Speaker 2 Tons of people. My friend Fred Stoller, really funny comic character actor.
If you saw his face, you'd go, I know just who he is. Really cool guy.
He's written a bunch of books.

Speaker 2 He wrote one book called, I think it's called Five Minutes to Kill. It's when he did HBO Young Comedians, or maybe it's 10 Minutes to Kill, when he was on the Young Comedian Show.

Speaker 2 And he listed everybody else who was on the HBO Young Comedian Show and who made it and who didn't and what happened to them, including him, like who got famous from that and who didn't.

Speaker 2 And they only had this five or 10 minutes to make it or break it. And that five or 10 minutes affected the whole rest of the trajectory of their life.

Speaker 2 They either were famous and owned a house or they went to catering because they couldn't get booked anymore. Fred Stoller has a really good career, writes books, lives in an apartment.

Speaker 2 And he's the guy in the movie, oh, that guy. Yeah, yeah.
But he wasn't famous like the other people were that got in there. And it was always like it's a thing that comics always talk about.

Speaker 2 I was with Messina Baker, this management firm, when I did my first tonight show. And after I did that, it was a Friday.
Like the next week, I was doing sets for CAA and UTA and agencies.

Speaker 2 William Morris sent like 20-some agents to see me do a set at the improv. Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Wednesday, Friday.
I did a set every night for agents. because everybody wanted to sign me.

Speaker 2 So freaking hot. It was insane.
Somebody just set me on fire and everybody was like, oh my God, look at that. Like I was lit up like a light bulb.
That's how I felt.

Speaker 2 And I'm sitting there with Jack, the other comic, who'd end up being a writer on the tonight show.

Speaker 2 And there was another comic I didn't know. And Jack and I were both with Messina Baker.

Speaker 2 So we knew each other from that, plus doing comedy, but we especially had a bond because we were with the same manager.

Speaker 2 And we're sitting at the improv and one of the tables and we're talking about this crazy thing that's happened to me. Like, what's it feel like to be flavor of the week?

Speaker 2 And I was like, take a look, bro.

Speaker 2 It was like that. I was like, oh my God, it's like, it's crazy.
And we were laughing about and having a drink. And

Speaker 2 the guy looks at, he's talking to Jack and he points at me like, how many tonight shows have you done? And Jack goes, I don't know, like 10, 12. Wow.
You've been on a tonight show like that.

Speaker 2 Maybe he was a regular. Yeah.
And he goes, how many times is this motherfucker? Then on the tonight show, he points at me and I go, just the one. And he goes, look at that.

Speaker 2 This motherfucker, he's in a friendly way. One tonight show.
You've been on 10, 15 times. And then he looks really earnestly at Jack.
And he goes, you know what the problem is, right? Jack goes, what?

Speaker 2 And he goes, it's your management.

Speaker 2 And me and Jack just started laughing because he didn't know we had the same manager. Oh, God.

Speaker 2 There's three comics having a serious business conversation. You know what your problem is, right? It's your management.
There's a great joke that comics used to do with each other. I'll do it to you.

Speaker 2 Like, hey, what what agent are you signed with?

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's UTA.

Speaker 2 Not for long. That's a standard comic move

Speaker 2 with new comics.

Speaker 1 You mentioned in your book that it's important to talk to the audience like they're drinking buddies. I think that's such an interesting way to look at.

Speaker 1 Because you're not out there like, I'm going to entertain everyone. You're just thinking, I'm going to tell some funny stories that happened to me.
Well, a little bit of a different mindset.

Speaker 2 When I first started, I would go to to every headliner. I would ask them advice.
Do you mind watching my act

Speaker 2 this week and giving me some advice?

Speaker 2 And if you're funny and they like you, they will. It was a comic friend of mine that was getting a ride to a comedy club in Ohio from another comic, the opener,

Speaker 2 EMC. My friend was the middle act.
And they were driving down to this club to open up for this headliner that was in town.

Speaker 2 And on the way down, the opener who was driving put a cassette tape in the car and pressed play.

Speaker 2 And he goes, hey, hey, I wonder if you mind listening to my act on the way down here and give me some foot information.

Speaker 1 I think you're trapped in the car. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And my friend, he told me the story. He said he ejected the tape and threw it out the window.
That's so nice. It had a joint.
And the guy was like, what the fuck?

Speaker 2 And he goes, bro, I'm not listening to your act all the way down. Just drive.
I'm going to smoke a joint. We're going to get to the cliff.
Wow. In the comedy world, if you're funny.

Speaker 2 And people know you're funny, even if you're an up-and-comer and they like you. They're like, oh, this is a funny guy.
This is a funny person.

Speaker 2 They they want to help you out sure they want to mentor you they want to see you succeed and they'll hang out with you and if you're not funny

Speaker 2 they're like oh i'm just going to go to my room or i'm just yeah good set talk to you later that's how it goes oh interesting you know if you're in you're out by if they want to hang out with you after and if you're struggling nobody wants to be around you if you're not funny and you're a comic nobody that's true it's just how it is you just know so these guys would give me advice thankfully they thought it was funny and one guy these a lot lot of Chicago comics came through Cleveland.

Speaker 2 I would go to Chicago to do sets all the time. I wasn't a Chicago comic, but I knew all the good ones.
I would stand there like this with my hand on the mic and just stand in front of it like this.

Speaker 2 And I didn't know where to look and I didn't know what to do. And I was, what do I do to get over this? And he goes, just pretend you're talking to friends in the living room.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Then you can look right in the eye or look right at their forehead, top of their head. Great trick.
Yeah, all these little tricks.

Speaker 2 Tell yourself you're in a living room joking around with friends and treat it like that. That was great advice.
So I started doing that.

Speaker 2 And now when I'm at the prices right, I feel so comfortable there and I know I'm in such a friendly place that as far as I'm concerned, I'm having a game night party and you're all invited.

Speaker 2 Nice to meet you. I'm Drew.
And I'm going to look you right in the eye when I'm talking to you, even though I'm on stage.

Speaker 2 And when I'm doing improv or stand, I'm going to look you right in the eye because you're friendly to me. I don't fear you.
I don't have to worry about your judgment. We're all pals.

Speaker 2 And that's how I treat it. It puts me in a really comfortable place.

Speaker 1 I noticed that you do have really good rapport with the people on the prices right, the contestants. And it seems very natural.

Speaker 1 Is it something you think about or had to think about consciously or is it just from comedy you kind of already had it in the bag?

Speaker 2 Both. So I had it in the bag from comedy.
People were asking me, I always get asked, what was it like to take over from Bob?

Speaker 1 Bob Barker, yeah.

Speaker 2 18 years later, I still get asked that question. But I realize now,

Speaker 2 you know, when you're a comic anywhere, they had somebody really good there the week before or two weeks before. Oh, last week Gary Shanley was here.
Boy, he really killed the place.

Speaker 2 And oh, you should have seen him. Or they'll be talking about something great the other comic did, or they'll have stories about it at the club, like famous moments, or you should have seen them.

Speaker 2 Like guys will tell stories after the show about this happened, that happened. Like Bill Hicks story you would hear about some club that he walked out one time.

Speaker 2 I was just telling a friend of mine the other day, Bill Hicks, he's dead now, but he was a legendary icon when I was doing club comedy. He was so looked up to and so funny.

Speaker 2 And he would talk about anything, like there was no limit to this guy. The edgiest of edgy comics.
Bill Burr situation. That's Bill Burr is walking in his shadow, honestly.

Speaker 2 Bill Burr would recognize Bill Hicks and go, yeah, that guy. Right up there with Lenny Bruce, as far as I'm concerned, as far as like freedom on stage to do whatever you want.
But funny.

Speaker 2 No offense to Lenny Bruce. When Lenny Bruce was going through his trials, like he would get up on stage and read his transcript for his trials and complain.
Like he wasn't telling jokes.

Speaker 2 He was just ranting. And it was interesting.

Speaker 2 But it wasn't like, here's my act. It's a ballsy move, though.
Yeah, but like he didn't give a fuck. Yeah, clearly.
Which was great.

Speaker 2 But when he was funny, like a groundbreaker, no doubt about it. But then he just was like angry man and no kidding.
They were trying to put him in jail and putting him on trial. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And I'd be pissed too if I got arrested after my act. Like what happened to him?

Speaker 2 And I was like afraid nobody would book me because you didn't want the police raiding the place because you're saying the word on stage. Oh, god, like crazy.

Speaker 2 So, Bill Hicks was like, he had the freedom and the rights that people like Lenny Bruce earned for him. And then he was able to just talk about anything.

Speaker 2 So, the story I heard, which is a true story, was the club owners were like, Hey, Bill, welcome to the club when they picked him up at the airport. Glad to have you here.

Speaker 2 And we know what your act is, but we're Christians, and we'd really appreciate it if you didn't say the word fuck. That's really our only rule,

Speaker 2 right?

Speaker 2 And he went, all right. And first of all, Christians made them an enemy because he came up with Sam Kinnison and the same club in Texas.

Speaker 2 And they were like part of these Texas outlaw comics that was Bill Hicks, Sam Kinnison, and a couple other guys, but those were the two main ones. So that was his attitude.
Fuck you.

Speaker 2 I'm going to get up here and do whatever I want. And I'm going to do a bump for come on stage and tell you what I did.
And everybody knows I'm on cocaine right now. Go fuck yourself.

Speaker 2 If you don't like what I'm saying, leave. And that was his attitude.
And he got up on stage and for as long as he could, talked about fucking a child. Oh, my God.

Speaker 2 Until everybody left. And he walked the whole audience.
Like one by one, people are like upset. They didn't want to hear it.
He just stood there and looked them in the eye.

Speaker 2 And then graphic as horrible as he could make it. And they all paid their checks and walked out until the very last couple got up and left.
And then he was like, great. There you go.

Speaker 2 I didn't say the word fuck. Oh, no, he did.
He never said the word fuck. You know, there, you want me to not wait to say the word fuck? This is what's going to happen.
Oh, man.

Speaker 2 You give me complete freedom or I'll tank my career.

Speaker 1 It's like a political statement almost. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 And he never got as famous here

Speaker 2 as in England. Like wildly popular in England.

Speaker 2 But here he was popular with comics and people in the known people over hip.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's like a comics comic. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah. There was no Bill Hicks sitcom because because people were like, what do we do with you? Yeah.

Speaker 1 The networks are probably like, yeah, just make sure he doesn't say, oh, wait a minute.

Speaker 2 No, not that guy. He would just be arguing all the time with the writers about how he can't talk about what he wants to talk about.
Yikes, yeah, no.

Speaker 2 How come I talk about drugs and how they should be legal? Yeah, now. Yeah.
He had a great bit about how great drugs were. You never hear that from people, do you? Jeez.
Drugs are great. Yeah.

Speaker 2 They make you feel good. Why can't you dick drugs? That was his attitude.

Speaker 1 You've said as comedians make more money, they get less funny, and you've got to guard against that. Why is that?

Speaker 2 I learned this from Steve Martin. I've never met Steve Martin, believe it or not.
One of my idols growing up.

Speaker 1 He might take your call at this point. I don't know.
You got to learn how to play the banjo.

Speaker 2 He's still Steve Martin, and I'm still Drew Carrey. You know, he's legend.
He's like Mount Rushmore. Okay.
Yeah, I don't know. He's like untouchable to me in my head.
That's God.

Speaker 1 You're going to meet him. He's going to be like, oh, I saw every episode of your show.

Speaker 2 Knowing what I know, he's not a Drew Carey show watcher.

Speaker 2 Too smart. Too above it.
But his first album that came out, I read every interview. And he said in an interview, that's 10 years of comedy there.
That's my best stuff from 10 years.

Speaker 2 And now my next album, it's like, what do I do now? I don't have 10 years. They want me to do another album in a year.
And I know if I do it, I'm going to get this extra money.

Speaker 2 And it's almost like you're putting out B material. If an author had one big novel that they've been burning inside and they write it, that was great.

Speaker 1 Now follow it up with another one.

Speaker 2 A band has their big hip breakout album, and the next album is, it was pretty good.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 But that happens to comics. You don't have five hours, four hours.
Nobody puts eight. Jerry Seinfeld said he did.

Speaker 2 I believe Jerry Seinfeld wrote eight hours a day, treated it like a job, but he might have been using eight hours a day.

Speaker 2 Like it could have been six hours and two hours of having coffee and fucking around until he got back in the mood, like how writers do. Yeah.

Speaker 1 That's what everybody does at work, I think.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I knew he took it seriously enough to go like, okay, this is my job and this part of my day.

Speaker 2 I'm telling you from being on the road comics didn't do most comics did not treat it that seriously and if they wrote they did it a couple times a week and go i think i'm going to write for an hour all right jerry sidefellows yeah

Speaker 2 so all of a sudden then you're famous and now you're got meetings to go to you got other projects to do when i was on the drew carry show i didn't have time to write any writing i did all the jokes went to the drew carry show i wasn't writing jokes for my act and i was famous famous enough as a stand-up then.

Speaker 2 If they wanted a stand-buck special, I could have done one. But if they wanted me to do a second one, what am I going to write it? What am I going to have time to go on stage?

Speaker 1 How do you guard against that? You said you have to guard against that. So I assume you came up with a way to guard against that.

Speaker 2 Yeah, plus another thing is you don't live a normal life anymore. When you're rich, your assistant's doing things for you.
You're getting dropped off at the VIP to go into the club.

Speaker 2 You're not dealing with the everyday frustrations that people deal with. Are you stuck in traffic like everybody else, in your shitty car, like everybody else?

Speaker 1 In LA, yes, but everywhere else, maybe not.

Speaker 2 Yeah. When you're a good stand-up comic, it's every man against the world.
You're speaking up to power. Why are these people doing it? Why is this technology doing this to us?

Speaker 2 Why are we living in this system that's so frustrating? This is hypocritical. This is stupid.
This is wrong. Ha ha.
And you make a joke of it. That's how every successful comic

Speaker 2 works.

Speaker 1 So when you're richer, you're just insulated from more.

Speaker 2 You're in that world now. What are you going to make fun of? You're the guy next door because you're you're rich too? It really hurts you.
So you have to be in a mindset of

Speaker 2 drive yourself, do your own fucking shopping if you can, try to be as normal thinking as you can, because the more you insulate yourself from the world, the less you have to joke.

Speaker 2 Like, what are you going to joke around? There was a guy named Martin Moll, a really famous guy from Cleveland Comic.

Speaker 2 And I used to watch him on the Tonight Show because it would be Martin Moll or Steve Martin when I would look at comics on the Tonight Show. Sometimes I got mixed up when I was first following them.

Speaker 2 Like, oh, Martin.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah, one of the Martins.

Speaker 2 Yeah, Martin Mullah had his albums. Really famous, really good, funny songwriter.
So he'd be on the Tonight Show with a couch and a guitar to do funny songs.

Speaker 2 He wasn't like a stand-up, but he'd pattern in between.

Speaker 2 On one of his albums, he has a song called Rich Person's Blues.

Speaker 2 And it was, I woke up this morning, bam, bam, bam, bounce, bounce. I saw both cars were gone.

Speaker 2 I felt so low down deep inside, I threw my drink upon the lawn.

Speaker 2 I remember I was like broke when I heard that. I was just a fan.
I was the funniest thing to me. I listened to it over and over on an album.
I was like, the rich man's blues.

Speaker 2 So what are you going to joke about? What frustrates you? My jet was late. Yeah.
And go fuck yourself.

Speaker 1 So the key is the more successful you get, live.

Speaker 2 Or live in that mindset.

Speaker 1 Live that mindset, eh? Be aware of it.

Speaker 2 It's tough. Recognize that you're in a private jet because you're famous and rich.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And Disney got you a private jet that time, which they did to me, or somebody's flying you somewhere because you have to get somewhere or make a joke about how rich you are like you got to do something to humanize yourself for everybody and now take your fat drunk ass to the gap and or disneyland we'll be right back this episode is sponsored in part by cachava someday as i get so deep into recording for you guys that i end up having to skip a meal or just forget to eat one i'll look up from the mic like wait it's 9 p.m how did that happen all in the name of another great episode or three so on those late nights when the house is quiet jen and the kids are asleep my reward reward for a long day of work is cachava.

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Speaker 2 All right.

Speaker 1 Now back to Drew Carey.

Speaker 1 You do see when really popular comedians lose touch and they lose the plot a little bit, and people really hate that, even more than an unfunny set. Oh, he went a little too far with the trans stuff.

Speaker 1 It's like the worst thing a comic can do is just appear out of touch. It's like career suicide in some ways.

Speaker 2 You got to find a way to ground your. That's why I love being about the prices right because everybody there is normal.

Speaker 1 Yeah. It looks like you're having a fun time every day.

Speaker 2 So many average Americans in there. Like you want to know what America is like, go to a prices rag taping.
That's how Americans dress. That's what they look like.
This is what they believe.

Speaker 2 Just being a guy and loving sports. I would think that everybody loved football because everywhere I go, I could start a conversation about.
how the football team was doing.

Speaker 2 And I would watch ESPN and I'd watch it so I knew some stats because when I started a conversation, I didn't want to look like an idiot in front of my friends.

Speaker 2 And I would catch them and me repeating stats I heard on ESPN or talking points I heard on ESPN or sports radio.

Speaker 2 I really had to know that because I didn't want to look like a fool when I talked to my friends. I see.
You know what I mean?

Speaker 2 I go to the prices right audience and I'm like, boy, did everybody see that game? And blanks. Really?

Speaker 2 Middle of America, not watching football? Nobody gives a fuck. That's funny.
There's guys there that do.

Speaker 2 There'll be a few guys that'll raise their hand, but the average person, if you look at the ratings, the Rams or whoever, they get a percentage, percentage, just like everybody else of the ratings.

Speaker 1 I guess being from Detroit, it was like, oh, we're playing Green Bay. And it was like, you think everybody should.
I think everybody, I was the only kid who didn't really care about any of that stuff.

Speaker 1 I was an outcast for that reason.

Speaker 2 You weren't the only kid.

Speaker 2 So when I was doing stand-up, they would have you do radio shows on Friday morning because it was always a local rock and roll station or country station, depending on where you were, that would sponsor the club.

Speaker 1 Oh, I see. Yeah, so you're on K-Rock or whatever.

Speaker 2 Or you'd be in the Morning Zoo show somewhere with their version of the Morning Zoo. And they would go, oh, this guy's great.
He gets a eight share. What does that mean?

Speaker 2 So 8% of the people listening listen to him, which we like in this market, if you get a two-share, three share in LA, you're a god.

Speaker 2 But it's like in Indianapolis or someplace, if you get an eight share, like forget it. And then I would think to myself, man, I'm getting up at fucking six in the morning.
I worked last night.

Speaker 2 I got to do two shows tonight. So we're all getting up early.

Speaker 2 to do radio and then we're going to take a nap and fucking figure out go to applebees or whatever so we can get our shit together take another nap to the all because we can do this. It was every week.

Speaker 2 This guy's really big, gets an eight share into my head. I would think, oh, so you mean 92% of the people in the city aren't listening to this guy?

Speaker 2 And that's only the people they're measuring who are listening to the radio. That doesn't count people who are just driving in their car in silence or have a cassette tape in.

Speaker 1 Psychopaths driving your car without a music.

Speaker 2 Or aren't driving anywhere and just sleep in and don't listen to them. I'm supposed to be kowtowing in awe of this eight dude.
No,

Speaker 2 not going to do it.

Speaker 2 And on the Drew Carrey show, if they were like, oh, you know like 15 share watch the drew carry show so 85 of the people watching tv don't give a fuck about me what was your competing show at the time do you remember like what was on at the same time oh for a while it was west wing oh that was huge also yeah i remember talking to dietrick bader like hey man have you seen west wing i go no he goes oh it's so good you really need to watch it and i go it's the fuck it's our

Speaker 1 8 p.m

Speaker 1 I would be like, hey, any chance we can move to 7.30 before people tune into West Wing, for God's sake? You're killing me here. You're killing me.
Could buy my own jet. I wouldn't need Disney.

Speaker 2 But that was my attitude just from doing those radio shows. It was my strength, too, because I knew I just needed a sliver of the pie.
The Lamb of God doesn't need to be a household name. No.

Speaker 2 Like Kiss or Taylor Swift. And even Taylor Swift, I'll argue, artists like her have a sliver of the pie, and you hear a lot about them, but as much as you hear, it doesn't match.

Speaker 2 the record sales in the big market because people buy country music, classical music. They go to jazz clubs.
They go to no clubs. They know the song because it's played in the mall.

Speaker 2 They know the song because it's on the radio when they're maybe listening to the radio or people reference her when you're watching the game.

Speaker 2 But average person doesn't know every song on a Taylor Swift album. That's true.
And that's just how it is in show business.

Speaker 2 You can be famous, but everybody only has their own little sliver of the pie. And you have to service.
your audience. You have to service your sliver of the pie and really make sure they're happy.

Speaker 2 Seattle Sounders, we have a sliver of the pie in the soccer world. A small sliver of the pie, in Seattle, it seems like huge, but it's really a small sliver of the pie.

Speaker 2 And we go out of our way to service those people so we don't lose their business. And that's how every business works.
You don't have to appeal to everybody.

Speaker 2 The analogy I would make with people, they'll go, well, you know, this is the most popular thing. You've heard that argument.
Sure. It's good because it's popular.
I go, really?

Speaker 2 You think McDonald's has the best hamburger in the world? You think that's the best restaurant in the country? You think McDonald's is the best place to go eat? They're the most popular. Sure.

Speaker 2 That's not the best. They're good.
I enjoy McDonald's every once in a while.

Speaker 1 This podcast sponsored by McDonald's and the Gap.

Speaker 2 Sausage McMuffin with egg. I was making a joke to myself in the car, like all the things I would eat and consume.
And like pretty much if you advertise in the Super Bowl, I'm in.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 I drank Budweiser because they advertise in the Super Bowl. I bought this because they advertised in the Super Bowl.
Got to be the best one. They advertise on the Super Bowl.

Speaker 2 I get hooked in by marketing so easily by everybody that's funny you marketed me the right way and ad comes up when i'm scrolling the news also somebody came up was a place that was selling bed tents place called timu i got oh timu that's the one of those chinese like it's only three dollars yeah and then you click on it it's like everything they just knock off products sell you the crappiest but i clicked on it i was like oh man that's really cool don't buy anything from timu yeah i was this close to buying it just because i saw it while i was reading a news article and i'm like what the fuck i had to snap out of it yeah no that stuff's made by like child slave labor.

Speaker 1 I want my children who manufacture things to be compensated fairly.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Man, so the price is right, which is aired the 10,000th episode on my birthday.

Speaker 1 Thanks for doing that. I appreciate that.
It was just for you. Yeah, I know.
That was the pitch for bringing it up.

Speaker 1 When the Drew Carey show ended, did you have any sort of identity crisis at all? Because this is aimed after you, for God's sake.

Speaker 2 Huge. Yeah.
Oh, yeah. Tell me about that.
A rug pull, you know?

Speaker 1 Because you're losing a part of yourself when the thing you're going to do.

Speaker 2 I would feel so personally attacked if somebody wrote something bad about the Drew Carey show.

Speaker 1 Oh, that's not going to happen in the comments of this episode at all then.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Well, I don't care anymore.
No, okay, good. And I would just take it.
I took everything so personally because, first of all, my name's on it.

Speaker 2 And I knew that this was my only one chance to not ever have to work again.

Speaker 1 But it ran for nine, ten years, right? Nine years. Save your money.
You'll be fine.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Yeah.
But in your fourth year, fifth year. Nine years, you want a 10th year.
Well, yeah. Tenth year, you want an 11th year.
Like, you don't want it to end.

Speaker 2 Some things are so good, you don't want it it to end. Do you want the party to end when you're at a party and it's raging and you're in the midst of like the peak of it?

Speaker 1 When it's over, I just walked out of the bathroom. Yeah.
Keep this thing going. Rubbing your nose.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I don't think, but I know the feeling.

Speaker 1 And you and I are contractually prohibited from doing drugs.

Speaker 2 So when I go to drugs. When I go to EDC, I'm sad when the night's over.
Yeah. I'm like, ah, man.

Speaker 1 I love that you love EDC.

Speaker 1 Electronic Daisy Carnival.

Speaker 1 Electric Daisy Carnival. It's basically a rave.

Speaker 2 It's a rave. Exactly what it is.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 In the middle of the desert, on a racetrack in the middle of the the desert.

Speaker 2 Yeah, Las Vegas Motor Speedway every May 17th, 18th, 18th, and 20th, I think, this year.

Speaker 1 Do you have to be careful about things you do in public? You can't go to EDC and go, you know what? I'm going to do Molly with my friends. Let's say you don't do drugs.
All right, I'm going to drink.

Speaker 1 But then it's like, you can't just be like stumbling drunk because someone could video that and it's not a good look for Drew Carey.

Speaker 2 I have been.

Speaker 1 It's happened, I'm sure.

Speaker 2 I was at Disneyland when I was on the Drew Carey show. Every year we would take the writers and the cast to Disney World.
That was our thing.

Speaker 2 The guy that created the show, Chris Helford and I, would drive across country. We would rent a car.
He didn't fly and we would drive from L.A. to Orlando and we would meet the cast at the time.

Speaker 1 Drive from L.A.

Speaker 2 to Orlando? How long does that take? Like a week?

Speaker 2 Four days? A few days. You take turns driving, listen to rock and roll,

Speaker 2 talk about the show, what went wrong, what didn't, what we liked, what we didn't, what we want to do next year, what about this, brainstorm, shoot the shit. Eat at diners, joke around.

Speaker 2 Okay, we get a motel.

Speaker 2 This looks like good. Holiday and express.
Let's stay here. What are you doing here? Well, the celebrity holiday expresses closed.
We get to Orlando. And ABC is owned by Disney.
So ABC would

Speaker 2 get the rooms and make sure we pay for our guides.

Speaker 2 And we basically get a semi-free trip to Disney World for everybody and be all the writers and all the casts. We did it every year.

Speaker 2 So one year I wanted to have everybody drink the world at Epcot Center. I see.
Which is a thing to do. You can eat the world or drink the world.
And we were going to drink the world.

Speaker 2 So there's 10 countries in the Epcot Center. It starts out with Canada.
United States is in the middle, of course, and then Mexico is on the other side.

Speaker 2 So you start with Canada, work your way through Japan, China, England, Norway, all the other countries, Germany, Italy, and you end up in Mexico at the end of the night.

Speaker 2 And the idea was to get to Mexico right before 10 o'clock because that's when the fireworks went off. So we're like, yeah, we got to get an early start because 10 drinks.

Speaker 1 That's a lot of drinks.

Speaker 2 And you had to have a drink in each country. So we were supposed to start in Canada and everybody was late.
And I was like, where the fuck is everybody?

Speaker 2 And everybody didn't get there to like 132 or something like that. And I was like, okay, let's go now.
We got to make up some time. So we chugged a beer in Canada.
And you got to walk everywhere.

Speaker 2 So we walked to the next one, walked to the next one. And by the time I got the United States, I'm having a beer.
And then in Japan, I'd have a sake.

Speaker 2 China, I'd have something else. And Germany, I'd have another beer.

Speaker 2 Italy, I didn't have a glass of wine. It wasn't Carapa or something.
Yeah, it wasn't.

Speaker 2 I was mixing and just fucking stumbling and by the time I got to Mexico might have been quarter to 10 it was nighttime out I was like running around and like giggling and like tagging people and I had mouse ears on

Speaker 2 and people were worried about how I was acting and like we got to do something about true this is also before smartphones so it wasn't like yeah thank god but it wasn't before cameras or instant cameras that you would buy at disney world to take around all day Oh, wow.

Speaker 2 Or like throwaway cameras. Disposable cameras.
Cameras. Yeah.
Everybody had something. They didn't have a phone, but they had something.

Speaker 2 And I'm acting like an idiot, just like drunk out of my mind, fucked up drunk, but in a really good, happy way. Like, we got to do something with Drew.

Speaker 2 And somebody had the idea, let's put Drew in a wheelchair and wheel him out of here. Oh, my God.
So they got the guide, Disney guide, to get a wheelchair.

Speaker 2 the red vest guy got me a wheelchair plaid vest guy put me in the wheelchair and they're going to wheel me out of there, which they do. And I'm in the chair just like fireworks going off.

Speaker 2 A month later, whenever we're back and we're starting in the writer's room, was it Weekly World News or Weekly World? Some tabloid. Tabloid, double page, Drew Carey drunk at Disney World.
Oh, no.

Speaker 2 The picture that made everybody laugh so much is me in the chair with my mouse ears askew on my head. They weren't even straight.
I have a red solo cup in my hand. What's in there? Yeah.

Speaker 2 That's my face. I got beer spilled all over the front of my shirt.
This beer stain on the front of of my shirt. I'm in a wheelchair with a Disney guy behind me.

Speaker 1 Keeping the place classy.

Speaker 2 I pictured that framed in my house. Oh, you do?

Speaker 1 That's what you put on the t-shirts for the prices, right?

Speaker 2 Well, after I did the fish thing, when I went to the fish concert and sent out those tweets about how I would stick my dick in a blender, I also said, by the way, that I would give you all my money and give up pussy for the rest of my life.

Speaker 2 Nobody mentions that part. All they bring up is the dick in the blender part.
Like I offered like three big things. Yeah, I'll take the cash.

Speaker 2 You know, you can have all of it, but why are you concentrating on only that? Yeah. Because for a guy, that's like the worst thing.
Like you can have everything, just don't do that.

Speaker 1 It's a visceral feeling.

Speaker 2 But after that, I remember talking to an executive at CBS and that diddy thing just came out where he dragged her through the hallway. Like that video had just come out.

Speaker 2 She was like, you're just having fun. It's not like you're dragging anybody through a hallway and beating them.
I'm like, exactly. Like, who cares?

Speaker 2 If you're honest with everybody about how you live and if you're not hypocritical, you can pretty much live your life.

Speaker 2 In my book, I wrote about me going to strip clubs and all that stuff, fighting with the censor. It wasn't shocking because I'm open about it and I was open about it.

Speaker 2 I would go into a strip club as Drew Carey and go, hey, man, I'm VIPs here. Where's my table? And everybody knew, hey, Drew, hey.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you're not pretending to be like a religious influence or something like that. Never do such a thing.

Speaker 2 Remember the guy that was the president of the American Evangelical Association? He was a TV preacher and he got caught with iron gay hookers.

Speaker 2 And then he went to a Christian conversion thing for like two weeks and came back and he said, I'm healed. I'm not gay anymore.
And I gave this joke to Greg Proufs.

Speaker 2 He would do like a nightly thing at a club, like it was like a chat show, but it was live at a club in L.A. And I went every week.
It was so good.

Speaker 2 And I gave him that, I got a great joke, but I don't have to stand up. And so here's this joke for you because it was just in the news.
He goes, yeah. Greg Prouf's like killed it.
He goes, yeah.

Speaker 2 So this guy, I can't remember his name. got caught with gay hookers and he went to a Christian conversion thing for a week.
Now he's not gay anymore.

Speaker 2 And what they did was they took him out behind the barn and made him smoke a pack of dicks till his tummy hurt.

Speaker 2 Oh my God.

Speaker 2 People were like pounding the table. I was so proud of myself.
And I wouldn't have given it to anybody else because Greg Proofs can tell a joke like nobody. Oh, man.

Speaker 2 But yeah, you get caught doing that, then you're in trouble. Yeah.
But if I'm like, yeah, I go to EDC, what do you fucking think I do at EDC?

Speaker 1 Not drugs, because you're the host of the prices right.

Speaker 2 I was on another TV show telling a story, a drug story. It was the show called This Is Not Happening.
And that was my joke. Yeah.
I'm at ADC. My friend's doing mushrooms.

Speaker 2 I'm not because I'm the host of Prices Writer. I'd be an idiot to do mushrooms and then talk about it in public.

Speaker 1 So just him. He was.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Not me, though.

Speaker 1 That was the joke. It's funny because I have a morality clause in my contract and it's, it's like a whole page.
Everybody does. And my lawyer's like, we got to argue this.
You might want to read that.

Speaker 1 It might be in the fine print. And my lawyer's like, we got to argue this because this can be construed in so many different ways.

Speaker 1 And you're in this weird position where you have to be like, I would never do that. Except there are these things that I do do that I wouldn't necessarily say in public.

Speaker 1 And that's going to fall under this thing if somebody doesn't like you.

Speaker 2 I'm always never hurting anybody. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Just having fun. No, of course, but there's things where these things can be construed so loosely.

Speaker 1 But if I say, oh, yeah, you know, weed should be legal federally, because one time I mailed weed to my friend, I didn't realize it was a felony. And then it's, oh, you admitted to that on a podcast.

Speaker 1 And since we're trying to get rid of you because you did some other thing, we're going to use this as an excuse to get rid of you. Now, if you're crushing it, you got that eight share or whatever.

Speaker 2 Then they're like, he's joking. Howard Stern could talk about anything he wanted, admit to anything he wanted.
Nobody fucking touched him.

Speaker 1 No, it'll be like, oh, he's a comedian. It's just a joke, right, Howard? And he goes, no, I really did that.
And they're like,

Speaker 2 but that's why people listen to Howard Stern because he's truthful and he's honest and he's saying exactly what he did and he's not trying to bullshit his way through.

Speaker 2 And, you know, you're on the Howard Stern show. That's what he was like off mic.
Off mic, yeah. On mic.
You can't fake it. No.
You can't be, I'm meeting you.

Speaker 2 You can't be on the show and fake it for this long. Possible.
And your show would suck.

Speaker 1 It would be terrible. Yeah.

Speaker 2 That's why people listen. That's why people listen to podcasts because they're getting a real thing and have a real conversation with people.

Speaker 2 If I do a nighttime talk show, I talk to a segment producer and we talk about what we're going to talk about. What if we have a story? It's all pre-planned.

Speaker 1 That makes complete sense.

Speaker 2 The host has cards. So I heard you did this.
I got a great story. I was on Letterman.
And I did the pre-interview. There's always a pre-interview, which I hate because I can talk for 10 minutes.

Speaker 2 Like, what are you fucking doing to me? Maybe somebody else can't, but I can. It's insulting almost that they give me a pre-interview.

Speaker 1 I wonder if it's because they think, oh, we don't want you to be boring or talk about something somebody else already talked about.

Speaker 2 What's the point? That, plus, they want to know what's happening because it's a seven-minute segment. I see.
We got to hit bam. We don't need dead air.

Speaker 1 Can't afford it. So they're like, hey, this isn't going to be a whole show.
So that segment, if you just seven minutes segment,

Speaker 2 let's hit it. And then these are great stories.
This will be viral. Whatever they do.
They want, give me your most interesting stuff. I get that.
Thank God on that. Yeah, I get it.
it.

Speaker 2 So Letterman, it was going okay, the interview. And then towards the end, he set me up with a story.
He changed the wording in it. I didn't hear the keywords I was expecting.

Speaker 2 So I didn't tell the right story. Oh, no.
I just was like fumbling. It was interesting.

Speaker 1 He told a different story.

Speaker 2 It wasn't funny, but I was like, yeah, blah, blah, blah. And then I got it trailed off.
And then he goes, okay, well, we're going to go to commercial. And he goes to commercial.

Speaker 2 And it was in December around Christmas time. And he leans over to me.
He goes, hey, man, I'm really sorry about this crowd. There's just, this is such a nowhere crowd.
It's the holidays.

Speaker 2 This crowd's nowhere. They bring a cigar out.
He lits his smokes.

Speaker 1 He's crazy in studio. Yes.
Wild.

Speaker 2 Smoking a cigar during the commercials. And I go, I'm really sorry.
I just didn't hear the cue right. And he has different ways back then.

Speaker 2 And he looks straight out above the audience's head with a cigar. And he goes, fuck it.

Speaker 2 Just fuck it.

Speaker 2 Tell us what you really think.

Speaker 1 The good news is I'll be here next week. I don't know about you.

Speaker 2 Puffing a cigar, just not a care in the world.

Speaker 1 Thinking about his flight to the Bahamas in five hours.

Speaker 2 The next time that I was on Letterman, I was doing a show,

Speaker 2 and I forget the name of the actress. She was a child actor then.
She was in All the Pretty Horses, and then she's a famous adult, but I can't blank it on her name.

Speaker 2 But she's like 14, 13, something like that. I was the lead guest.
She was on, and Warner Brothers had given me a Porsche to renegotiate my contract.

Speaker 2 They just gave me a car. Taxes paid for and everything.
Here's your car. And that was one of their common negotiating tactics.

Speaker 2 Cause I remember driving on the lot one time and in front of Seth, there was like 10 Porsches lined up.

Speaker 1 And you're like, oh, there's the entire cast's cars. Yeah.
They must have just signed their deals. Yeah.

Speaker 2 That's what they did. Smart.
But all the talent wanted Porsches. That's a talent car.
You don't want a Mercedes or a Jaguar. That's an executive car.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 We had a whole discussion about what car to ask Warner Brother this one. It's funny.

Speaker 1 Podcast one, I'm open to this idea, by the way. Yeah.

Speaker 2 I just got this Porsche and I had three weeks to get to New York. I had all the time in the world.
So I I just, it was one of the best vacations I ever had. I want to get away from everybody.

Speaker 2 I don't want to talk to anybody. You probably value your alone time.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Time with my kids now, especially.

Speaker 2 Or even without the kids, you're like, can I have an hour just for me?

Speaker 1 That's my workout in the gym. Now, I don't want to take a phone call when I'm in there.

Speaker 2 It's church time. Don't fucking bother me.
Everybody has that, including me. So I was doing a driving trip all by myself and I left L.A.
I went to Tony and Palms. to get massages for a couple of days.

Speaker 2 Cut that short because I over massaged. I was like, I can't get three massages in a day.
I'm free. It's going goes out of my mind.
Then I drove up and I went to Vegas.

Speaker 2 I kept going north through Idaho, got to Montana, made a right. I just wasn't even looking at a map.
I just knew generally where I had to go. All my clothes weren't even a suitcase.

Speaker 2 They were in my trunk. I would grab a shirt, underwear, socks for the next day, and I'd grab my toiletry kit, my computer bag, go into my room.
That's what I had.

Speaker 2 I'd put the dirty clothes in a bag and I would mail dirty clothes home. Mail them home.
Oh, wow.

Speaker 2 And if I needed new clothes, I would stop at a gap outlet store or a gap and I would just buy new clothes and and just put on a t-shirt. And I was just driving three weeks.
Wow. Nobody bugging me.

Speaker 2 And when I got to Montana, I made a right, I just knew the road was going east. And it was one of these like two black top roads.
It wasn't the main freeway because I didn't want to go on those.

Speaker 2 And the speed limit then was you had to drive judiciously. I forget what the sign said.
No actual speed limit.

Speaker 2 So I was like, fuck, nobody's around. I'm in a Porsche.
You can go 100. And then top down.
Got it up to 110, 120 with the top down.

Speaker 2 Then I pulled over and I got, I'm getting dragged from the having the top down. Let me put the top up, see what this thing can do.
Got it up to 160. I don't know, three minutes.
That's scary. It was.

Speaker 2 Yeah. But there was literally not another car in sight this whole time.
I could have been dead.

Speaker 1 Could have hit a pebble and flown 30 feet in the air.

Speaker 2 Yeah. It would have been an hour for somebody to found.
It was one of those roads in a noir movie where they'd leave the body. And I was just like, bam.
And then I slowed down.

Speaker 2 I was like, wow, that was, I was like shaking. I was like, wow, that was really cool.
I ended up driving to New York City. When I got to Letterman, I told that story.

Speaker 2 I was in Montana and I got to go 160 because they don't have a speed limit. And he had owned like four Porsches.
And he's like, really? Huh? That's pretty funny.

Speaker 2 And everybody was laughing because I knew Letterman had a Porsche and we were laughing about guys talking about speeding and getting away with it.

Speaker 2 And then the actress came on and talked about filming all the pretty horses in Montana, how beautiful it was and how gorgeous Montana was. And I remember backstage.

Speaker 2 Letterman saw me backstage at the theater. He goes, hey, great job tonight.
I go, yeah, thanks for having me, man. And he goes, Montana, huh? And I go, Yeah, it was great.
No speed in the middle.

Speaker 2 All right, take care. I leave the next day.
I start driving down to Orlando because I'm going to meet all the cast. Sure.
And I'm Monday. I forget what little town I'm in, but I stop for breakfast.

Speaker 2 I buy a USA Today.

Speaker 2 I open it up. It's a little article that David Letterman over the weekend had gotten a ticket in Butte, Montana for going 40 and a 25.

Speaker 2 Fucking guy flew to Montana.

Speaker 1 Oh my God.

Speaker 2 Probably in a private jet. Yeah.
Shipped his Porsche over. Or readed some kind of car because he was going to go in the freeway and just gun it.
Yeah. And he got a 14-25 and beat Montana.

Speaker 2 Yeah, and he's that Drew Carey. Never booked that guy again.

Speaker 1 If you booked that guy again, send him the bill for this ticket.

Speaker 2 And the next time I was on his show, I was telling that story. Okay.

Speaker 1 I've heard this before somewhere. That's so funny.
Drew and I are going to take a quick break from laughing at our own jokes. We'll be right back.
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Speaker 6 Thank you for listening to the Murdoch Murders Podcast, the show that started it all. 93 episodes will take you on a journey of twists and turns, ups and downs, tears and belly laughs.

Speaker 6 We continue this mission with our newest evolution, True Sunlight. Luna Shark's True Sunlight podcast is the antithesis of true crime.
True Sunlight values accuracy over access journalism.

Speaker 6 True Sunlight is shed with empathy, not exploitation. True Sunlight is the intersection of journalism, true crime, and systemic corruption.

Speaker 6 We continue to shed light on Stephen Smith's case and Alex Murdoch's co-conspirators, but also we like to take deep dives into other cases around the country.

Speaker 6 True Sunlight empowers listeners to understand their legal and judicial systems with our unique brand of pesky journalism.

Speaker 6 Listen to True Sunlight wherever you get your podcast or visit truesunlight.com to learn more.

Speaker 1 This episode is sponsored in

Speaker 1 Well, you can start that journey by diving into the Cup of Justice podcast. It can be tough to grasp the complexities of our justice system.

Speaker 1 I'm a lawyer, non-practicing now, and it's complex even for me, but it can be a lot easier when you've got the right guides.

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Speaker 1 It'll be your gateway to gaining the knowledge and tools you need to navigate or even challenge public authorities. Check out Cup of Justice, wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 1 If you like this episode of the show, I invite you to do what other smart and considerate listeners do, which is take a moment and support our amazing sponsors, those who make the show possible.

Speaker 1 All of the deals, discount codes, and ways to support the show are searchable and clickable on the website at jordanharbinger.com slash deals.

Speaker 1 If you can't remember the name of a sponsor, you can't find the code, you're not sure sure if it even exists, email us. I'm Jordan at jordanharbinger.com.

Speaker 1 We are happy to surface codes for you because it is that important that you support those who support the show. Now for the rest of my conversation with Drew Carey.

Speaker 1 Why jump into hosting the prices right after a successful TV run on the Drew Carey show?

Speaker 1 Howie Mandel was on the show a zillion years ago, and he said when he was looking at deal or no deal, he told his wife, he goes, is this going to be good for my career? And she said, what career?

Speaker 1 So he was like, well, I guess that answers that question.

Speaker 2 Wife will always tell you, right?

Speaker 1 It's been a long time since Bobby's world, Howie. You might want to get a paycheck.

Speaker 2 You got to keep people like that around you. That'll just tell you the truth all the time in Hollywood.
If you don't have those kind of people around you, I pity you, honestly.

Speaker 2 If you don't have a ball buster next to you, that'll tell you. My comic friends keep me humble.
Don't tell a comic your weakness. So that's all you hear about the rest of your life.

Speaker 2 I wanted to get into the soccer business and I wanted money to buy into a soccer team or purchase my own team. Like, I didn't know how it was going to go, but I needed some soccer money.

Speaker 2 And I did it because of the money.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but it's fun, though.

Speaker 2 Because it wouldn't be full-time.

Speaker 1 It's not full-time?

Speaker 2 Well, I work like 25 hours a week.

Speaker 1 I guess I just assumed it took the whole day to tape each one of those.

Speaker 2 It does, but it's three days a week, four days a week. Oh, okay.
You know what I mean? Yeah. And then I get a week off every month.

Speaker 2 I get 10 days off, 11 days off every month because it's three weeks on, one week off. Oh, okay.
It's a great schedule. I remember when they went from two shows to three.

Speaker 2 And I was working eight hours instead of six. And I'm thinking to myself, like, fuck, I've been here all day.
And then I go like, oh, no, it was eight hours.

Speaker 1 Normal people do this five days a week.

Speaker 2 I remember thinking to myself, like, just shut the fuck up. Just shut up.
Nobody's going to be pitting you. So you're working eight hours.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Working on TV. Let me walk backstage and get a steak cooked just the way I like it and a peanut butter cookie that they bought just for me because they know I like these.
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 It's like being a celebrity is I tell people all the time it's like being an infant. It's like being a toddler.
They bring you water. You okay? I see you look a little sad.
No, I'm fine.

Speaker 1 It's a little hot in here.

Speaker 2 Make everyone else uncomfortable because he's they lay my clothes out for me like grandimals before I go on stage. I don't have to think about a thing.

Speaker 1 Someone comes and does your hair when it's at a lot of places.

Speaker 2 I just show up. All I have to do is show up in a good mood.
Or by the time the door opens, be in a good mood.

Speaker 1 Be in a good mood, yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that's my only job.

Speaker 1 This show has lasted 50 years. It's 10,000 episodes, which is what, 5,000 hours of middle-aged women screaming? And even the crew seems to be having a good time.

Speaker 2 Is that real? That's the funny thing you can have at work. Yeah, I suppose.
There's worse places to work, man.

Speaker 2 Probably you heard yourself horror stories about working on one set or another set where it's tense and nobody likes each other and they're like another 16 hour day with this motherfucker and talk shows where you're not like the i won't mention the name don't look her in the eyes stuff like the psycho on you yeah that prices right's super chill super cool i mean everybody's hustling they work really hard everybody hustles everybody does their job it's a hard work like all the grips and stuff they're really working but There's worse places to work.

Speaker 2 Like as far as showbiz, we all have it pretty good at the prices rate.

Speaker 1 People are so excited to be there, too. That's got to be fun.
They'll run up, they hug you. I saw you get taken to the ground, actually, at least once by one gal in a clip.
Doesn't bother me. And

Speaker 1 is it true someone kicked you in the nuts? I assume that was an accident. Yeah.

Speaker 2 She jumped up on me, and when her leg was coming up, she kicked me in the nuts. Nice.

Speaker 2 So do they run that?

Speaker 1 Or is it like, okay, give him five minutes, let's retake him?

Speaker 2 I doubt it. I don't watch it.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that makes sense. I don't see why you would necessarily.

Speaker 2 And I don't like watching myself. I never watched the Drew Carrey show.
I just don't like watching myself on TV.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I can relate. I only listen to this occasionally to make sure that everything sounds right.

Speaker 1 But I also rely on my team and I go, hey, how did this bit come across or how did this little segment come across?

Speaker 1 And if my producers don't say anything, I'm not going to download the show and listen to it myself.

Speaker 2 I was already there.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I was there. It's not cringy or anything.
It's just, I was there.

Speaker 2 I've heard it already, right? That's how I am.

Speaker 1 Unless the final production got screwed up, which that's not going to be on me 100%.

Speaker 1 There's nothing for me to say other than what am I going to do? Chastise my producer for not cutting something? I'm not going to tell them how to do their job.

Speaker 1 So is there anything that annoys you on the prices right besides getting kicked in the nuts by

Speaker 1 contestant? No. I always wonder sometimes you look off camera, and I guess you don't know if you're looking off camera.

Speaker 2 I'm looking at Chris, the game guy.

Speaker 1 The announcement or whatever.

Speaker 2 He's the game producer. I see.
I'm usually looking at him. If you see me looking off camera, I'm looking at Chris.
I see. Chris Donnan.
His official title is game producer.

Speaker 2 So he's the guy that picks the grocery items. I see.
Okay. And puts in the fake numbers on all the games.
And it's you against Chris when you're on the prices right.

Speaker 2 And he knows where to put the X on Secret X, where to hide the $25,000 card on Punch a Bunch, all that stuff.

Speaker 2 When we're doing the dice game, where all the numbers for the car, one through six, it's like on these dice, no zeros, no number higher than a six.

Speaker 2 And they roll the dice, and if they get the right number of things, if they don't, they have to tell me whether the actual number is higher or lower. So if they roll a two, they'll go higher.

Speaker 2 If they roll a five, they'll go lower. but then they'll reveal the thing.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 they've rolled a five, but the actual number is a six. They've rolled a two, or the actual number is a one.

Speaker 2 And the first thing I do is I look at Chris. I go like, really? There's a six and a one dice game.
He looks at me, goes like, yikes. Hey, man, can't give it all away.
I can't give it all away.

Speaker 2 Whatever look on his face is, what's a game? Win some, lose some, whatever's look on his face. Or I'll say something to the audience about odds or something.
And he'll go, that's not really

Speaker 2 how we do it. Like, we can change it anytime we want.
We have a game called Flip-Flop that we play all the time. We have a lot of either-or games that are quick games that we need for time.

Speaker 2 Not all games are a long game. Flip-flop's one or the other, but it's presented as three choices.
We show you the wrong price, and you can flip the first two numbers. So in $7,800, it's $8,700.

Speaker 2 Or you can flop the last two numbers, so instead of 34, it's 43. Or you can flip and flop.
Do both numbers. But one out of 100 is a flip-flop.

Speaker 2 you go a whole season without a flip-flop it's really only flip or flop if you watch the show and play the game like a super fan would never flip and flop i see okay but we're well within our rights to make it a flip and flop sure because that's how we present it if we did it in their head people would be right to go like fuck why did i come on the unlucky day or the one day and our argument would be like we have to do it's just like tsa are you in tsa pre yeah of course yeah once in a while you don't get it right and they're or they're like you've been randomly selected i'm like this seems to happen almost every other time I fly.

Speaker 1 What is it about me that looks scary? So they have to do that.

Speaker 2 Sure. So the terrorists, whoever don't think that you're just getting away with it, there's always a chance.
Sure.

Speaker 2 So they have to know there's always a chance that it'll be a flip-flop to make it even more exciting or playable, but practically never is, to be honest.

Speaker 1 Don't ever flip-flop. That's the moral of the story.
How heavy is that wheel that you spin? It looks like it's got a way.

Speaker 2 It's heavier than people think it is. Yeah.

Speaker 2 I don't know if people were in better shape in 75 and late 70s when they first started it, because it started at 75 and it was a different wheel and then they they changed it to what it is now but yeah it's all plywood huh i've seen all the wheel spins since i've been there every single spin and so if somebody's like a

Speaker 2 older and not they don't seem as strong and if they can only get it exactly one time around and they're first i think oh they're gonna hit a dollar or five or 15.

Speaker 2 a good chance they're gonna hit a dollar if they can eke it out one spin around because that's all they can manage it's actually it's better to be not super strong big guy will get up there and just

Speaker 2 and give it a spin, which it spins like four times because I can count the rotations in my head while I'm watching it or three times. We're going to be here all day watching this spin.

Speaker 2 And then that's too random to me. And some people will try to finesse it.

Speaker 2 Like in my head, if I ever was a contestant, I would try to finesse it one around or one and a half, but I know how much it weighs.

Speaker 2 If you bowled with a rental ball, you wouldn't know how to throw it the first time. And that's what's happening to them.
They're throwing a rental ball.

Speaker 2 for the first time down a lane where they don't know that it's oiled or even the oil pattern is.

Speaker 2 They have no clue yeah that's our advantage so it really is random that way but if i give you that rental ball and let you play a couple games and then said okay now we're going to make it real you'd have a really big advantage over us interesting yeah so some guy's at home building one of those in his basement and trying to get the weight right that's how people have beat roulette wheels yeah there's famous stories on the internet you can find about a guy beating a roulette wheel and what they've done is they bought that brand of a roulette wheel and put it in their house 10 000 times and they figured out the pattern and they figured out the speed and they figured out the sounds and they know when they go they have a way better chance of winning than somebody else.

Speaker 2 There's a guy named Darren Brown. Oh yeah.
He's been on the show. Oh, it's a friend of mine actually.
That guy's a nice guy. Bananas, right? Yeah.

Speaker 2 So I saw his special where he bet 5,000 pounds on the roulette wheel and he was only one number off. But he trained himself.

Speaker 2 That whole special was about him training himself to listen to the sounds and learn all those things.

Speaker 2 So he was going to be able to go in and beat that one particular roulette wheel at that one particular place. And he was only off by one number.

Speaker 1 He's a very interesting and cool guy.

Speaker 2 A guy wakes up in the morning and hears a voice in his head. Wakes up in Ohio.
Quit your job, sell your house, take all your money, go to Las Vegas. He doesn't believe the voice.

Speaker 2 Takes a shower, goes to work, quit your job, sell your house, take all your money, go to Las Vegas. Finally, he hears it every five minutes.

Speaker 2 Quit your job, sell your house, take all your money, go to Levites. He believes the voice.
He gets home, sells his house for cash to the very first buyer, quits his job.

Speaker 2 takes all the cash, everything he owns in one bag, flies to Las Vegas, gets off the plane. The voice says, go to Caesar's Palace.
He listens to the voice. He goes to Caesar's Palace.

Speaker 2 The voice says, go to the third doulette table on the left. He goes to the third doulette table on the left.
Voice says, put it all on black 17. He puts it all on black 17.

Speaker 2 Guy spins the wheel, comes up red 16. The voice goes, fuck.

Speaker 2 When that happened to Darren Brown, that's the first joke I thought of. That's so

Speaker 2 my favorite jokes. He was off by one.
He built up that whole hour. He was off by one.

Speaker 1 Still impressive somehow.

Speaker 2 Still impressive. Man.

Speaker 1 How does the producer or whoever pick who goes on the show? I know you pick someone and say, come on down, but then it has to be, it's whoever shows up.

Speaker 2 Nobody sends in tapes or anything. We did during COVID, but not a normal show.
It's just whoever shows up. We've got to get lucky.

Speaker 1 Do they get interviewed in line? Like, oh, she's so animated and fun.

Speaker 2 Very briefly. Okay.
What's your name? Where are you from? What do you do? Oh, great. Nice talking to you.
Boom. On to the next one.
You get a few seconds, five seconds.

Speaker 2 We've got to interview like 200 some people. There'll be a person interviewing another person with a clipboard and they'll have a code.
They don't do it now.

Speaker 2 When it first started, his code, he'd be like, oh, that's really interesting. And if he said that, mark that contestant's number down.
Or if he said, nice talking to you or something else, don't.

Speaker 2 They come back to this room and they have 20 people, who knows how many, pictures of everybody, and that they print up right away on a printer.

Speaker 2 And they'll have their number and they'll just hold them up. This guy's really interesting.
He's a professor. and you see he's here on an anniversary with his wife.

Speaker 2 And this woman is just recovering from cancer. This girl's college and she's really energetic.
We could use her.

Speaker 2 And then they narrow him down who they want to bring up the first four, who's going to be last. They want somebody energetic to come up last.
They want a demo of who's watching the show.

Speaker 2 So it's not going to be all white people. It's not going to be all black people.
It's not going to be all old people. It's not going to be college kids.

Speaker 2 So if you're in the military and you're a vet and you're retired and there's three of you and you see another military vet retired just got picked, you're not getting picked. If you're a

Speaker 2 college kid and they got their college kid, if they got their old married lady, whatever the demographics of the show is, we want that to be on the show. That makes sense.

Speaker 2 We want it to be representative of who's watching, not necessarily of who's in the audience, not random, but who's watching.

Speaker 2 Because we want the experience of people watching themselves and rooting for themselves and empathizing with whoever's on the show because those people are the stars of the show. Right.
Not me.

Speaker 2 It's those people and the prizes. It's aspirational prize.
I would love to go on that trip. I need a new washer and dryer.
Even a bedroom set. Fuck, that looks great.
I would wish I had a new bed.

Speaker 2 Like things you don't even think of. If somebody offered you like, hey, you want to get rid of this old washer and dryer you've been using for three years and get a brand new one that does steam?

Speaker 2 Yes, I'll take it. I know maybe you can't use this game room, but it's look, it's a pool table, a dartboard, a video player.
You weren't thinking of it, but wouldn't it be cool? Yeah.

Speaker 2 It's something all aspirational. Or even if you didn't think it'd be, but that'd be fun to have.
And then the small items,

Speaker 2 grocery items, we had a butter churn on the show. That's not a pride.
That's a thing you have to price to win the bigger prize.

Speaker 2 We're not offering a butter churn. We're seeing if you know the price of a butter churn to win the better thing.
It's all gamed out. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And so that's how we do it.

Speaker 1 Are there any tips for people who want to get selected or is it just, hey, come in and be a delightful personality?

Speaker 2 So a common thing that happens is somebody will come up on stage and they'll have a shirt on that says pick my friend it's her birthday oh that's funny and i'll talk to them in between i'll go who's the friend with the birthday over there and what happens is when they're in line the friends of the birthday girl birthday guy will go oh my god you got to pick my friend it's his day we're bringing him here pick my friend and the friend is like oh come on don't make a big deal out of it yeah it's my birthday so we pick the energetic person who's all hyped up.

Speaker 2 Happens all the time.

Speaker 1 Pick him, it's his birthday. And that guy's, yeah, it's my birthday.
You want to turn it up to 11. Right.
Yeah, that makes sense.

Speaker 2 We pick nine people. If there's 15 people up to 11, somebody's going to get left out.
A lot of times you have to come back like five, six times or more and then finally get your turn.

Speaker 2 But it's a fun taping to come to anyway. And it's free.
Yeah, can't beat it.

Speaker 1 Bob Barker, the previous host, for those who don't know, used to have this awkwardly long microphone that was like thin. And you have a very similar, it's updated tech.

Speaker 2 Mine's wireless. They tried to go wireless with him once and it didn't work because it was brand new.

Speaker 2 It pooped out on him. Yeah.
And he didn't trust it after that, they told me.

Speaker 1 That's interesting. I always wondered because I was like, hey, it's 1995 and he's still using it.

Speaker 2 People that are watching this, instead of listening, you'd see our microphones are pretty big. And if you're not used to being on TV, you get this big microphone stuck in your face.
It's off-putting.

Speaker 2 But if I have this little tiny thing that I can just flip out and put it right here and you barely notice it and flip it back. But they're mic'd up themselves.

Speaker 1 They got a lavalier.

Speaker 2 Oh, they are sorry they were not.

Speaker 1 Okay, because you know, it's something about entertaining a crowd while you're holding a microphone in your hand is different than being mic'd up with booms on a stage.

Speaker 2 When I first got on stage, what do they think of my body? Do I look ugly today? How's my hair? Oh my God, I'm fat with these jeans.

Speaker 2 Everybody goes through that when they're the first time they're ever on a camera.

Speaker 2 And honestly, in acting classes and stuff, biggest thing an actor can learn is to say fuck it to all that. It's the fear of judgment that makes people a good actor or not a good actor.

Speaker 2 Jack Black has no fear of judgment. He doesn't care.

Speaker 2 He doesn't give a fuck. I saw him.
We did a charity thing. He walked out, he stripped down to his little tiny underwear and walked out all fat, bouncing around.
You see his whole packet.

Speaker 2 And he was just like dancing around and laughing. Yeah.
Didn't give a fuck.

Speaker 2 Didn't give a flying fuck. And everybody was like, wow, Jack Black doesn't give a fuck.
That's what you aspire to.

Speaker 2 If you can do that, when people are doing a scene where they're sobbing and crying and just a complete wreck, they have to not give a fuck about looking weak. They have to not give a fuck.

Speaker 2 Whatever scene that they have you in, you're playing a character and you you need to be as real as possible. You cannot think, oh, what if my wife sees me with this chick?

Speaker 2 What if my friends see me groveling to this guy in a scene because I want something for him? I'm going to look weak. Yeah, your character's weak.

Speaker 2 So when you're talking to this guy and he's a mob boss and you want something, fucking grovel, fucking cry like your life depends on it.

Speaker 2 You would never do that in real life, but you have to be able to do that. And some people can't let that go.
They're not as good an actor.

Speaker 2 And people that can not give a fuck for that moment and just go, you know, I'm just going to grovel like there's no camera around. You have to not be in that kind of mindset.

Speaker 2 If you can do that, you'll be the greatest actor in the world. That's the difference.
All that acting technique stuff is bullshit. Yeah, interesting.
Or that's just technique. That's just craft.

Speaker 2 But to be a really good actor, you have to not give a flying fuck.

Speaker 1 What has been the craziest fan encounter on the prices rate?

Speaker 2 Name a day. Oh, God.
There's always something.

Speaker 1 There was a woman who I think you'd said this in another show. She peed her pants.
Peed her pants. But she'd already been picked.

Speaker 2 So like, she's going to play Plinko. And she is wearing white pants and she got up on stage and she was like prancing and she's like, oh my God, I'm going to pee.

Speaker 2 I said, but first, hang on before you do that, you're going to play Plinko. And she went, oh, my God.
And she peed herself. And then she had to walk up those stairs.
Wow. A stain in her pants.

Speaker 2 She got it on the local news.

Speaker 1 So they ran it.

Speaker 2 We couldn't help but run it. She got on her local news

Speaker 2 and laughed about it.

Speaker 1 Yeah, good for her. Speaking of not getting it.
Like, what are you going to do?

Speaker 2 Yeah. Jeez.

Speaker 1 Has anyone ever tried to cheat on the prices right? Surely there's been some attempt at something.

Speaker 2 No.

Speaker 2 But the guy that had the perfect bid, we didn't know what the fuck was happening. They had just changed producers.
And the old producer had been at the show for 35 years.

Speaker 2 And it was the first year without that guy. And there was a big, huge fan group online

Speaker 2 that were really upset. The only fan presence we have online is this big forum where everybody, they keep track of every show, every game, every price, every contestant.

Speaker 2 They have a database like you wouldn't believe of everything. Super fans.

Speaker 2 That was our website. This third party run group of super fans.

Speaker 2 And I remember the producer telling me, like, if those guys like you, then you're good because they're the super fans.

Speaker 2 So

Speaker 2 this guy gets a perfect bid.

Speaker 2 I don't know the prices ahead of time. Nobody does on stage.
Nobody has any way of knowing any single price who's on the stage or interchanging with the contestants.

Speaker 2 It's only Chris, the game producer, and the people in the booth. are the only ones that know the prices.
And I go backstage to find out who's going first and who won the showcase.

Speaker 2 And the producer goes, she's like in shock. Yeah.
She goes, he got a perfect bid. I go, what do you mean? It's right on the nose.

Speaker 1 $117.85. And he just said that.

Speaker 2 It was exactly to the dollar. And I was like, did that ever happen? And she went, no.

Speaker 2 We were like, what the fuck happened? Because this would never happen. And in my head, I was like, did somebody leak information? to fuck us because they're mad that the old producer is in here now?

Speaker 2 Did somebody fuck us because they're mad we got a new guy and things are changing? It's my second year, so I'm going to be the guy that ruined prices right?

Speaker 2 Am I going to be in the middle of a scandal? Like I was really scary. I was like, what the fuck? And everybody backstage was like, what the fuck?

Speaker 2 And there was like a good 15-minute stop down, which seems like forever, 20 minutes, something like that.

Speaker 2 They made a documentary about it that I didn't watch because I was there. Because you were there.
And we have cameras all over the fucking place running all the time.

Speaker 2 And just at rest, they're somewhere in the audience. And during the show, we're like filming the audience.
I thought the guy cheated. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And so when I read the thing, I was like, all right, you got an exact price. Good for you.
I wasn't going to give him the satisfaction in my head. I was like, fuck this guy.

Speaker 2 And I got all kinds of shit online. Oh, this guy got a perfect bid, and Drew Carrey wasn't even happy for him.
But I was like, I'm going to be happy for this cocksucker

Speaker 2 in my head. That's how I was like, fuck this guy.
I'll go through the motions, and that's all you're going to get. Then we had all kinds of meetings.

Speaker 2 And I remember being in one meeting, and one of the lawyers said, What if we don't allow the audience to allow prices anymore? And we're like, what? That's the whole show. Shut up.

Speaker 1 What exactly exactly do you do here anyway, buddy?

Speaker 2 A lawyer. Okay.
And then we found out that everybody was getting their prices from one guy in the audience who was like in the second, third row towards the middle. And he was from that website.

Speaker 2 He was from that forum group. And at the time,

Speaker 2 everything was, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. An attitude.
Like, this is traditional. This is what we do.
And everything was fine. Bob was there.
And all of a sudden, Bob wasn't there.

Speaker 2 Overducement there. Now it can't be traditional anymore.
It's all got to shake it up.

Speaker 2 There was a woman playing a game called One Away and I remember her looking on the audience and she got all her numbers from that guy. Got them all right the first time, which rarely happens.

Speaker 2 Once in 100, that happened. And the guy that got the perfect bid, I think he won his bid.
I don't know if he got a perfect bid and got the extra 500, but he might have.

Speaker 2 And then he was on door two, which is the farthest away, and the camera's in the middle. So he couldn't see the guy and he lost his game, but then he won on the wheel and got to the showcase.

Speaker 2 Then he's able to see the guy. and he gets his numbers from the guy we got it all on camera it was like a savant at the time we only changed like six prizes a week so if we had a couch that was 800

Speaker 2 we'd have that same couch on another show an 800 couch when we had a can of soup it was only campbell's cream of mushroom soup because bob was vegan and it was a vegan show and campbell's cream of mushroom doesn't have beef stock or chicken stock and it was a dollar 29 then it was a dollar 30 then it was a dollar 31 that was the soup you just just knew.

Speaker 2 If you watched the show enough, and if you were that big of a fan, you would just know what the prizes were. You would just know, like any gamer.
So this guy was there.

Speaker 2 They used to come to every show. Looking back, I shouldn't have been mad at it.
It was all fair game. All these people had every right to do what they did.
And I'm glad they did it.

Speaker 2 And I'm glad he won. But I didn't know that at the time.
And he was just like yelling out because he wanted people to win.

Speaker 2 And he knew all the prices because he'd watched the show and they never changed the prizes. And it was early enough in the season.

Speaker 2 The new guy was just learning the show before we changed everything over. We were changing things on the fly.
And that's how it happened.

Speaker 1 Interesting.

Speaker 2 Yeah, but that was one thing where I thought it was cheating, but it wasn't. It was just people finding a weakness in how we presented the show.

Speaker 2 We could have the same car in every act and you would never know the price.

Speaker 1 You said something interesting that's almost as a throwaway line in the book.

Speaker 1 You don't celebrate your birthday because you'd sit around and think that you could have or should have made different choices in your life.

Speaker 1 Now Now that you've made some money, you've had some success, this process happens a little bit less. This is something you wrote in the 90s.

Speaker 1 What advice do you have for people who also ruminate?

Speaker 1 Because it seems like the message is that it ain't over till the fat lady sings, essentially, and you don't know the impact of your choices potentially until long after you've made them.

Speaker 1 Because a lot of the things that you beat yourself up for in this book in the 90s are probably the reason that you're so successful right now.

Speaker 2 Yeah. You're always trying to heal your inner child some way.
Something's happened to you that you want to make up for, get over with.

Speaker 2 And there's tons of psychologists that base their whole career on that kind of thing.

Speaker 2 And your neurons get wired a certain way where you make the same choices just because that's the pattern in your head.

Speaker 2 And until somebody shows that to you, I thought it was normal to eat pasta every night and drink Pepsis all day.

Speaker 2 If you quit all this and only eat fat, go on a keto diet, you'll have a lot more energy. No,

Speaker 2 it makes sense. Got to have sugar.
Right. Sure.
Don't talk nonsense to me. Remember when Atkins first came out? Yeah.
What? Get the fuck fuck out of the carb. Yeah.
Get the fuck out of here.

Speaker 2 You're crazy. Like, it seemed insane.
Yeah. One of our rarest friends was smoking and she was went home and she was hacking, going down the stairs.
And her mom said, oh, honey, you want a menthol?

Speaker 2 People don't see beyond the horizon. So, yeah, every birthday, every

Speaker 2 New Year's, I look back. on the year or I look back on recently.
And I do that all the time anyway, like every weekend. Like, how was the week? Did I do what I wanted to do?

Speaker 2 Am I on the right track to what I want to do? Is it okay for me not to have a goal? Can I just exist this week and not have to worry about anything? I've hit everything.

Speaker 2 Why can't I just like chill and relax? Yeah. I do that all the time, just with different things.
I'm constantly self-searching. I'm constantly looking to grow.
I'm constantly looking to learn.

Speaker 2 What can I do that's fun, improve myself? What can I do that would keep me young, keep me in a young attitude? I go to EDC. I don't want to get old and set my ways.

Speaker 2 I want to know all the new songs, all the new fads.

Speaker 2 I want to know what Riz means. Yeah, skibbity.

Speaker 2 All that stuff. Yeah.
Oh, you're so Ohio. I want to know what that is.
Is that Riz?

Speaker 1 What does so Ohio mean? That doesn't sound like a compliment.

Speaker 2 It's not. It's like you're so meh.

Speaker 1 Ugh, mid.

Speaker 2 Yeah, just mid. You're so Ohio.
Midwest. Quit being so Ohio.
Yeah. Live a little.
So I'm constantly like looking to grow. And once you stop growing, that's the end of you.

Speaker 1 Yeah. I got to ask, who's your favorite DJ right now? If you're going to EDC and listen to all this stuff.

Speaker 2 Diplo, Cascade, Afrojack, all the usual stuff.

Speaker 1 It's a great selection.

Speaker 2 Yeah, because all the best guys are there. I remember seeing Cascade once on the main stage, and it was so good.

Speaker 2 I looked at my friend and I said, this sounds like when James Brown came on the Tammy show. Just changed everything.
It was great. Everybody's great.
But then Cascade had such a good set.

Speaker 2 People were just like up and everybody was dancing, not just a few people. Bottle service girls were dancing, like everybody.
And we're like, man, this guy's killing it.

Speaker 2 We were fist bumping each other and just like, what in the fuck is happening and once in a while a guy gets a dream set i went to the sphere in vegas and we saw a marshmallow at a club he had a great set when i was there i was like man this must feel good because i know what it's like to go on stage and have a magical set that was johnny carson 1991 or even in a club all week i've been doing the same act but then saturday second show for some reason it just hit better every laugh was better and if there's no better feeling like However many times you have sex with your wife, one day you'll have that night where like, woo, are we dating again?

Speaker 2 This is like, I can't believe we just had that. It happens.
And that's what happens when you're seeing a DJ set.

Speaker 2 Somebody will have their night at EDC where it's just because they want to bring their A game and it'll just be like, I stood behind Diplo once when he did a set. I'll never forget it.

Speaker 2 I thought I was watching Beethoven play piano or something because he was hitting the boards and working the boards so well. I was like, what the fuck is this?

Speaker 2 When you see Liberace play piano and like, how his fingers moving so fast? That's what it looked like to me.

Speaker 1 So that's a pretty cool perk. You go in and they're like, oh, Drew Carey's here.
Yeah, you want to go up, hang out on stage?

Speaker 1 Yeah, you're a national national treasure at this point on the price is right thanks for coming on and being so open and candid man oh it's really fun talking anytime you might be back let me yeah of course yeah i'd hope i see you at some of those shows edc or something like that it would be really fun to run into you in the wild coming up in may yeah man i'll be there thanks man thank you i appreciate it

Speaker 7 if you're looking for another episode of the jordan harbinger show to sink your teeth into here's a trailer for another episode that i think you might enjoy So what happened was we were doing not unlike we're doing now, where you're doing an interview and he says, thank you and we'll probably go to a commercial and thank you Howie and and I got up and I started walking to the door and I thought he was like wrapping it up and going to commercial and then I just said to somebody really quietly can you grab the door

Speaker 7 and he's going what are you afraid of the door and then he goes just open the door and I go can't open the door he goes just open the door and then what happened is I started getting a panic attack and I started breathing heavy and I just turned to him and thinking that he had already thrown the commercial because he was just talking to me, Howard, please, this is really serious.

Speaker 7 I go to therapy for this. I have something called obsessive-compulsive disorder.
I'm about to pass out. If you don't open the door for me now, you'll be calling 911 and taking me to the hospital.

Speaker 7 This whole thing was on the national radio. I thought, oh my God, that was probably the darkest space I've ever been.

Speaker 7 And I'm walking through the lobby toward the door out into the teeming streets of Manhattan. I might as well just continue walking and walk right into traffic.
And I stopped just outside the door.

Speaker 7 And, you know, millions of people people are on the street but i felt very alone and some guy came into my periphery and said to me are you howie mandel and i you know i just nodded affirmatively and he said just heard you on stern and my heart dropped him in my stomach and right before i could take off in the traffic he said two words which means something very different today but they changed my life and he went me too

Speaker 1 For more with Howie Mandel, including some pretty awkward moments of my own making, check out episode 210 here on the Jordan Harbinger Show.

Speaker 1 And that makes me feel great about it.

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