Episode 1629 - Modi Rosenfeld

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Lock the gates!

All right, let's do this.

How are you?

What the fuckers?

What the fuck, buddies?

What the fuck, Nicks?

What's happening?

I'm Mark Merrin.

This is my podcast.

Welcome to it.

How's everybody going?

How's everybody going?

How's everybody doing?

How you going?

That's what my Australian manager says.

How you going?

I don't know what that is.

How are you going?

I don't know.

I guess I'm going the way most of us go.

At some point, heart attack, cancer.

But I think that's reading into it.

Maybe it's just relative to the day.

How's your day going?

It's okay.

Updates?

Well, you know, I got back on

Sunday.

I don't know if I told you, but my cat Charlie has got this condition that apparently is stress-induced colitis.

So I came home to, yeah, a lot of

diarrhea, mystery places, just all over.

He did a pretty good job on the whole house.

If I asked someone to, hey, could you shit small puddles of diarrhea, like random places, but throughout the house, like throughout the house to where I'm surprised by it days later, I'd appreciate that.

Now,

I've talked about this before, and I'm going to go ahead and start Charlie on the Prozac for cats, but I did not do it yet.

And I talked about before that I have a resistance because I project my own sense of self onto the cat.

And I think, well, I don't want Charlie to be a lesser version of Charlie.

I don't want Charlie to have his edges tapered.

I don't want Charlie to not be full throttle Charlie.

But now that I'm trying some medication, I think that perhaps together, you know, we can go on this journey together.

But I will start that on Monday where I can make sure I get it done every day and

manage it.

As for me and my medication journey that started, what is it, it's been about a week.

I'd like to think it's working.

I don't know.

Do you feel a little queasy, maybe a little dizzy?

Maybe it's taken the edge off some of my catastrophic thinking and compulsive panic.

Don't know.

Don't know.

I don't know.

And then I watched this documentary about

Andy Kaufman.

I'm thinking like, dude, just do the TM.

Just, you know, Lynn did it.

Just do the TM and nail this thing.

I went through that today.

Like, I'm going to get off this medicine.

This is stupid.

Why am I altering?

my God-given, natural-given, evolved, whatever, genetically given, however you want to look at it.

Why don't I just live with that and learn how to transcend to TM it?

To TM it, damn it.

And then I realized, like, I don't know.

Let's just, let's just see how this goes.

Let's just, let's just do this.

Let's just do this medicine.

I hope it doesn't make me queasy the whole time.

Hey, look, you guys, look.

Today, I'm talking to a guy named Modi.

Rosenfeld.

Goes by the name Modi.

Now, I've known Modi, I don't know, I I feel like maybe 30 years, 30 years.

I knew him like I known him since he started doing comedy in New York at the cellar.

I believe I did.

I did know him then.

He was always very

intense, a bit loud, a lot of energy,

very Jewish, Israeli Jew, Jewish, but also very American Jew, Jewish.

And to be honest with you, according to him, and maybe he's right, we haven't spoken in 20 years.

and he was making the rounds and we were asked if we wanted to have him on i'm like of course of course i'll have modi on what's that guy been doing but it also made me think this conversation

about my own jewishness

jewness jewishness yes that's that's where i come from i've tried on a lot of different uh hats a lot of yarmakus, a lot of larger hats.

Not really a hat guy, turns out.

Jew or otherwise.

Tomorrow I'm in Skokie, Illinois at the North Shore Center for the Performing Arts.

And Saturday, speaking of Jews, then Saturday I'll be in Joliet, Illinois at the Rialto Square Theater, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

I'm coming to GLC Live at 20 Monroe on Friday, April 11th, and then Traverse City, Michigan at the City Opera House on Saturday, April 12th.

Also, new dates at Dynasty Typewriter in Los Angeles, Monday, April 14th, Saturday, April 26th, and Tuesday, April 29th.

Those are are all at 7.30 p.m.

running the hour.

Then I'm coming at Toronto, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Brooklyn, New York.

Finally, for my HBO special taping at the Bam Harvey Theater on May 10th,

I think there's a few tickets left.

They might be singles.

Go check.

And also, I mentioned on Monday that the documentary about the illustrator Drew Friedman is screening this Saturday here in Los Angeles.

Drew Friedman, Vermeer of the Borsch Belt, will be showing at the Arrow Theater with a panel discussion afterward featuring Dana Gould, Cliff Nesteroff, Leonard Moulton, Meryl Marco, Stephen Weber, and screenwriter Scott Alexander.

You can get tickets at the Arrow Theater or go to AmericanCinematech.com.

So I was at Largo last night

trying to get this hour down to size.

I'm out there doing an hour 30, hour 40.

Now I got to trim the fat, but none of it's really fat.

This is the challenging part about moving towards a special because they want an hour.

And I don't really understand that.

I guess the idea is that they've decided that human beings in the current culture we live in are incapable of

watching anything for more than

an hour at best.

Which I think is crazy, but maybe what do I know?

I mean, I can watch something for more than an hour, especially if it's compelling.

And that's assuming that what I'm doing is funny and compelling.

But it all works works together for me for an hour and a half.

And I know it's a long show, but last night I got on stage.

Mulaney came by.

Mulaney opened for me.

That's always interesting when

the guy who's one of the biggest stars in comedy brings you up.

Just me and him, he wanted to run some stuff for tonight during last night's

talk shows.

It's always good to see Mulaney.

It was funny.

Nice chat.

But then I got up there and I made an outline of the stuff I think would comprise the hour out of my hour and a half.

And I went at such a breakneck speed, I sweat.

I broke a sweat about 40 minutes into this.

And I've got a couple of pieces.

This opening bit, well, it's probably the second bit, is just a story.

And I was going at such a pace, the laughs were great.

It was pounding away.

And I thought, you know, I had done probably what would have in a theater show been

probably about an hour 15, you know, hour 20, and I got it done in under an hour.

And because it was so intense, I started to think, well, maybe I should be working at this pace.

It probably had something to do with the fact that I just watched Mulaney, and he works at a pretty good clip.

And he brought me up, and I think he left some of his zone up there.

And I think I stepped into it and I pounded away.

But it was pretty satisfying.

But I don't really want to break a sweat on my special.

I do feel like I have my own pace, but I hadn't driven that hard in a long time and it was pretty good.

It felt like I was, you know, I was putting on a fucking rock show.

And, well, we'll see.

We'll see.

I don't know.

We recorded it.

They wanted to have a look at it.

So

we did that.

Yeah, so I think the hour is in pretty good shape.

I'm not second-guessing any of the material in terms of,

you know, whether it's funny or not.

I think when it comes down to me planning these hours, there are certain bits where I'm like, is that necessary?

Is it necessary?

You know, I want all the bits to be my sort of signature bits.

I don't really want to talk about too many topics that other people are talking about, but that seems impossible.

But there are just some bits that push a certain envelope where I'm like, do I have to do that to them?

And then I just watched this documentary on Andy Kaufman.

And obviously, I'm nothing like him, and I would never compare myself to him.

But there is a point where that question, if you ask that question of yourself, do I have to do that to them?

If you're Andy Kaufman or whatever precedent he set in this world, which was a big one, it's yes, yes, you absolutely have to.

There's no question that that has to be done.

So I talked to this guy, Modi, today.

And as I said earlier, we do go back.

We were never pals or anything, but I've certainly known him for a very long time.

And I really haven't seen him in 20 years.

And we had a very,

it's kind of a unique and great discussion.

And it's pretty Jewy.

And, you know, he kind of brought me back.

to something that,

you know, we land on similar, not heroes, but in the zone of comedy that, you know, kind of started him going, thinking about comedy.

You know,

I was in that zone.

You know, I mean, my Jewish identity was, it's what it is now is me saying I'm Jewish.

I mean, I guess that some people know that I'm Jewish.

But there was a time when I was a kid.

I mean, all of my comedy heroes, most of them from very early on, I mean, I'm talking when I was

10 or 11 years old.

Yeah, there was something about the,

my grandparents, Grandma Goldie and Grandpa Jack.

My Grandpa Jack, New Jersey, used to love the Three Stooges.

I didn't love the Three Stooges.

My grandma liked stand-ups.

And I just remember there's this period of time where I couldn't have been more than 10 years old.

And I would look forward to Parade magazine, which used to come in the Sunday paper.

And the last page of Parade magazine was a thing called My Favorite Jokes.

And they'd have a picture of a comic, and then they'd have a bunch of his jokes there written out.

And a lot of them at that time, comedy was kind of a Jewish racket for a long time.

And a lot of that is gone.

I don't, it's

sad to me, but things change.

The tone of comedy changes.

The culture we live in changes.

But there was a period of time in the 70s, and certainly before that, where comedy, both in stand-up clubs and in movies, was

Jews.

The Jews created the rhythm of that.

You know, there was a lot of black comedy around as well, but it was kind of Jews and blacks and a couple of ethnic comics that were a bit over the top.

But the Jews created the rhythm.

And that was a rhythm I was brought up with.

You know, like it was, it's just, it's a pattern, it's a structure almost of modern joke writing.

And when I was young, and watching Buddy Hackett, you know, Don Rickles,

I enjoyed Woody Allen's movies.

There was Jackie Vernon, who I don't think was a Jew.

I loved watching the old roasts with all the old guys, Jack Benny, Milton Burle to a certain degree.

But Buddy Hackett

and

Don Rickles

when I was a kid, it doesn't get much funnier than that.

Rodney Dangerfield, Jewish guys.

And, well, now I think about it, there was quite a few who weren't Jewish.

You know, they were Italian.

You know, Dean Martin, not a comic.

But nonetheless, that generation of comedy performer, Richard Lewis was important.

But there was, when I was younger, you know, like 13, 14, you know, 15, aside from, you know, smoking cigarettes and wanting to be Keith Richards, there was this thread that kind of ran through me comedically that I think was fundamentally Jewish, that I could lock into, I worked at a deli when I was in college, Gordon's Deli in Pottingham Circle in Boston.

And these were Boston Jews.

And there was something so familiar about it.

Even my grandma Goldie's house, you know, my grandpa Jack used to have a poker game once a week.

You had Joe Suskin there.

You had Gerson Eisenberg.

You had

Shanny, Shannholtz, you know, these guys.

And it was a thing.

It was a type.

The sort of middle-class American Jewish thing was a thing, and it was encultured into me.

And my parents moved to New Mexico, and there was some of those, you know, transplants from the East Coast, but a certain amount of that Jewishness kind of got, you know, washed out of me, not out of any desire to pass.

It just wasn't culturally where I was living.

I mean, we were Jews, we were among Jews, but most of them were not New York Jews.

And then I went on a team tour, and that was all New York Jews.

It was always, I had cousins who lived in Long Island, but that Jewish thing

was always there.

And when I was in college, we did a show, a play.

It was Woody Allen's Don't Drink the Water, and I played the main guy.

I'm forgetting his name now, the old man.

And I locked in to this Jewish old man like he had been living in me.

Because it was how I was wired comedically from watching all these old guys that I just became this guy.

What are you kidding me?

Look at this guy.

What?

So easy.

Deli talk, you know, post-synagogue talk, poker table talk, sales talk.

Here he is, you know, whatever.

It was in me.

I know, I can't quite explain it because I didn't really grow up with it, but I grew up admiring it and wanting to be it.

I wanted to be an old George.

Like if my parents didn't move to New Mexico and, you know, have whatever that half cowboy experience was growing up and going to high school there, if they would have stayed in New Jersey, I would have been Jeff Ross.

Well, I doubt it, but I would have been in culture differently being surrounded by Jews my whole life.

I would have certainly been locked into it in a different way, in a sort of

unavoidable way, an unerasable way.

But when I went to college, you know, I got more into art and more into poetry and more into beatniks.

And, you know, and Alan Ginsburg, turns out, was my least favorite beatnik.

But, you know, he was the Jew.

But nonetheless, something else started to happen.

I no longer aspired to be like, what are you?

So it kind of shifted, but there was no attempt to not do it.

It just wasn't really who I was.

It was just sort of a personality I was trying on.

But I remember when I started comedy, I was very aware of the comics that I idolized and the comics that made me laugh

and the Jewishness of it.

I think when I did some sort of variety night

in college, I might have tried, I might have done a Woody Allen joke from a stand-up routine.

I mean, I wasn't a professional.

I didn't see it as stealing.

It was me trying to see if I could get a laugh.

But when I started doing comedy professionally or starting out in Los Angeles out here at the comedy store, I did not, I knew that it was an option to culturally identify character-wise as Jewish.

Like I had it in me.

I'd done it in a play

in college.

It was part of me.

It might have even been part of my Ashkenazi genetic makeup.

But I made a conscious choice to not do it because I didn't want to speak that language.

I didn't want to do this stereotype.

I didn't want to lean on stereotypes about Jews.

I didn't want to characterize myself like that.

Even when I talk about it now,

maybe not to Jewish people, but to some people, it's probably a surprise that I'm Jewish.

If I say I'm a Jew, sometimes I'll say it like,

well, I'm a Jew, you know,

but nonetheless, it was not.

part of the stereotype because I talked to Modi a bit about Jackie Mason, who I didn't, I didn't like him as a person.

I met him once.

He was nasty to me.

I didn't really love his comedy.

It was not my thing because I thought he was doing a stereotype.

And I didn't want to stereotype Jews, and I didn't want to play that stereotype.

So there was sort of a conscious decision on my part when I started doing comedy to not lean into the Jewish thing just because I thought it would box me in.

And I still don't, well, I talk about being Jewish, but I don't do the Jewish thing, though I love it, and though I could, and sometimes there are moments where it happens, and I'm happy it comes out, but it was not,

it was not,

it was a conscious choice.

I mean, I had the option.

I have the birthright to it, but I did not take it.

And I didn't grow up in New Jersey or New York, so it wouldn't have been honest.

Modi is very interesting because he's Israeli-born and he grew up

in Long Island.

So he has kind of this kind of dual

dynamic of Israeli and American Jewishness.

And this was kind of a great conversation.

You can go to Modilive.com to find out where he'll be.

Plus, you can check out his podcast and Here's Modi, as well as watch his YouTube special, Know Your Audience.

He became very big during COVID, and it's an interesting story.

And this is me talking to Modi.

Are you surprised by the whole operation?

I always in my mind

even I thought I heard you referencing people like oh yeah.

There's nobody here.

Nobody here.

It's amazing.

I know.

It just sit me so now I see the levels and I figured it out.

I got a new mixer here I just got.

I don't know much about how to record much anything else, but I can do this.

It's pretty good.

We're trying to figure out how to do it when we're on the road who

I have a podcast as well audio audio and video

and YouTube and it's everywhere and but we when we travel it's so hard to to do it so we're trying we bought all the equipment and trying to figure out fuck it's so much

we so you got to make a studio and a hotel room yeah but we you know we we we do it funny enough we do it at a place called what what the fuck studios yeah w2f studios where in New York?

In New York.

We just plop with a guest or without.

Yeah.

Do our thing.

Who?

Me, my husband,

and Perrielle Ashenbrown.

She's on Noam from She's on the Comedy Sellers podcast.

So she's our producer.

Okay.

So we put her, she ended up, we ended up being together on the podcast with the guests.

And we 100 and

is it called?

Jew talk?

And Here's Modi.

So Jew Talk.

Yeah.

Are we recording?

Yeah.

We're already talking.

Yeah.

No, my podcast is called And Here's Modi.

Because of

because,

you know,

I did so many private Jewish events.

Yeah.

And there's always raising money for something.

And there's always showing a movie of some kid missing an earlobe or some, God forbid, cancer that hit God, what part of the body.

And then, like, literally, they go, and here's Modi.

After the film.

After the film.

Like, right after the film.

film.

And here's Modi.

You've been in that situation.

Yeah, but I was in there for 20 years.

So, you know, you guys popped in and out of those situations.

I was in those situations.

You chose your life.

Correct.

And I'm very happy about it.

So tell me about the prayer you said when you came.

I haven't seen you in 20 years.

So when you see somebody that you haven't seen in 20 years, there's a prayer you say,

bless God.

Who brings back the dead.

Even though you weren't dead, but I haven't seen you in so long, it's like you were dead.

But

that's sort of a profound idea.

Because you don't know, you know, you would have hurt if I was dead, but in terms of the

in your life.

Physically, I haven't seen you.

No, I get it.

I recently saw someone unchambering an entire machine gun into your body.

Yeah.

In a movie.

Yeah.

I just saw you being killed in a movie recently.

Yeah.

So even more.

And I've obviously seen all your stuff and specials and here and there, but I haven't physically seen you.

I haven't run into you at the comedy cellar.

Well, I don't go in there anymore, really.

Yeah, but I do.

But like, so that's judging it.

Right.

I'm just like, so I haven't seen you at Montreal Comedy Festivals or anything like that.

So we just have not run into each other.

It's so crazy because I feel like I must have, you know, I must have seen you.

I was there when you started.

I must have been there when you started.

Yeah.

Because I do remember like all of a sudden there was this frenetic, loud Jewish guy

jumping around everywhere and just like getting on stage and like you know just just going at it i didn't know what i didn't know what to make of you i was yeah i didn't know if you were gay or straight or or if you were you know where you came from where you landed if i didn't know anything but you were a force

right yes

i i began you look good thank you thank you i um i began doing comedy in 1993 i was passed at the comedy seller in 94.

So think of where you were.

You were doing,

at the time, you were like, oh my God, Mark Maron's stopping in.

So you were at the comic strip.

95.

You know, it's weird.

Maybe the comic strip a bit, right?

Yeah.

But like, I don't think she let me work at the cellar until after I did that HBO half hour in 95.

I wasn't, I was around.

I was certainly in New York and doing alternative, and I had a presence there.

But yeah, I wasn't a big shot, that's for sure.

But yeah, maybe at the comic strip first.

Anyone could get in the comic strip.

Well, I was in investment banking.

I was in investment banking.

But wait, wait, but you were born where?

I was born in Israel.

In Israel.

Yeah, we came to America and I was seven.

And so your parents are Israeli.

So am I.

I was born in Israel.

Right.

Yeah.

But you were seven when you got here, but your parents left Israel.

That seems like the wrong direction generally

for Jews.

Many Jews left Israel and came to America.

Israelis did that.

Yeah.

And the ones that did well stayed.

The ones that didn't said, how can you live in America?

And went back.

My father did well, so we stayed.

What did he do?

He was in gas stations and, you know, that kind of stuff.

And where did you grow up?

The five towns in Long Island.

So, well, one of them, I guess what, which one, Gradeneck, became full like Persian Jews.

Persian Jews, right?

Yeah, that's a whole world I don't know anything about, but they're the new Japs.

They're the new Japs.

Yeah.

Yeah, I was just at a big event for them.

I just did a huge event for them.

Like when I was growing up, you know, my mother's cousins, you know, the Hewlett and

they were the Japs.

But now, like, you know, they're all old and it's not even, but Persian Jews seem to be the reinvention of the Jewish-American prince and princess.

They really are here and in Great Neck, yes, they are.

And were they always a presence?

Because I don't remember Persian Jews when I was growing up.

I didn't until my best friend married one, and then I was fully in their world.

How different is it?

Is it more like a

very insular?

They're very, they, they're, they,

they're close-knit.

Lots of cousins, lots of engagement parties, lots of, and they're all in real estate on top of whatever they do.

But so it's not like, did you grow up Orthodox?

No, we grew up,

we grew up traditional.

Yeah.

I was more religious than anybody in the family.

I used to go to synagogue every Saturday, yeah.

And then I went to yeshiva on my own after.

Really?

Were they like, what's wrong with this kid?

No, they loved it.

I used to love the cantorial singing.

I used to go to synagogue to listen to the cantor.

And if you think about it, drag, he's in the grobe and the whole thing.

It's wonderful.

Were you going to Orthodox temples?

Yeah, yeah, Orthodox.

And it was a conservative synagogue too.

Yeah, yeah.

Great cantor.

You were like 11?

I was, yeah, before Barmitsu and after, yeah.

I loved synagogue.

You were obsessed.

Obsessed with cantorial singing.

So you went to yeshiva?

I went to yeshiva.

When we first got here, my parents put me in yeshiva.

Then I realized like the community that we live in is 99% Jewish.

Yes.

So they put me in Hewlett High School.

And they're like, well, I'm not spending all that money on

Jesus with all the Jews.

He's surrounded with Jews anyway.

Yeah.

And then we went to the day school.

But then after college,

during college, I went to BU.

Yeah.

I know.

Liberal arts?

Liberal arts.

CLA.

And then

there was a yeshiva on campus that I don't think you know about at the Babat yeshiva.

And

I used to go and study there a lot.

Let me ask you something about this.

Yeah.

You know, because

like I do a bit sometimes about

being Jewish, about being culturally Jewish.

You know, I'm a Jew.

And people ask, well, are you religious?

I'm like, no, I'm a Jew.

15 million Jews in the world.

There's 15 million ways to be Jewish.

Right.

And then

they go,

do you believe in God?

And I'm like, well, we don't really have to.

We were chosen by God.

So I don't have to, you know, I don't think that.

Are you religious?

No.

But I can't remember the tag, but it said, you know, we were chosen by God.

We don't have to be religious.

And I think that's really what upsets you people.

We were chosen.

Right.

But

I think about it,

about the Jews' relationship with God and what that means and the complexities of that.

Because when you brought up Jewish, conservative American Jew, no ability to really translate or read

Hebrew or to understand it as it's being spoken.

And I don't really remembering, like, I always think like, you know, you have to be taught how to use God.

Yes.

And I don't remember that ever happening.

You know, it was, you know, there's a lot of talk about God, but like, how do you have God in your life?

Well,

if

my, you know, I believe, first of all, let's go back, you said the chosen people.

Yeah.

So

we were chosen.

Yeah.

You know, but we weren't chosen to be the strongest nation in the world and the most ruling nation

and the most powerful nation.

We were chosen to be the nation that disseminates

comedy.

Literally in the Torah, it doesn't say,

when you see hospitals and universities and schools and Jewish names, all of that, that's what we were chosen to do

to relieve pressure, to relieve, to bring healing and that kind of energy, which is where comedy is.

It really

relieves sadness.

Sure.

Yeah, that's what it says in the Talmud.

And then, so then going back to God, to make it simple for me, I'll tell you for me, the biggest line in the Torah is,

Hero Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one, right?

So it says the Lord is one.

Not that there is one God up above judging everybody, it's its oneness.

Me, you, sitting here, the microphone working, that's God.

God is right here.

This is God.

So if you connect to it,

Bam, you got it.

You're in it.

You're in it.

You got it.

Right.

So it's a given.

It's a given that it's oneness.

Yes.

But it's got to be with everybody.

Yeah.

So the neighbor you hate, that's also God.

You got to figure that out.

Yeah.

And also, like, it just seems like, you know, from what I gleaned over time that the engagement with Jews, you know, biblically in the Talmud and everything else, is an active relationship.

In terms of God and interpreting God,

that there's a conversation that goes on and on and on.

Of course.

Every day, again, what is oneness?

What's happening in Israel?

What's happening?

What's happening in your neighborhood?

What's happening in protests and all of that?

It's a constant struggle to connect to that oneness.

Do you think that's what the struggle is?

Yeah.

That's how you see it, but do you think that's how it's seen by others?

No.

Which is the problem.

Which is the problem.

Yeah.

So when you're growing up, like, you know, you felt that, when did that oneness part hit you?

The oneness,

that lesson of seeing it to get.

A lot of

I always, I don't know, I never really

understood everything.

COVID kind of brought it all together.

Oh, really?

So recent.

COVID kind of really put it all together.

So when you're going to yeshiva, you just like the songs, you like the music, you like that everybody's in the room, they're singing.

And they're all men.

The old gay

women are upstairs.

It makes it easy.

When you realize you were gay, I mean, was that something that was explored when you were young in yeshiva?

Do you find other men other boys?

No, I didn't like, I was,

I'm really bi.

Yeah.

So I'm really, you know, and but I focused more.

So in yeshiva, I was like, I'm just being in yeshiva, I'm not straight or gay.

I was literally just like, I'm into the studying and I want to learn.

I want to, I'm a Jew, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I identified as a Jew.

Yeah.

And I learned as much as I could.

But not ultra-Orthodox, just Orthodox.

Yeah, just like...

No paeus.

No.

But then I went to a very Hasidic yeshiva that I loved.

I tell you why, what I really loved.

It was the singing and the Yiddish.

Yeah.

So

we learnt a lot of the text in Yiddish, which I was just obsessed with.

You still speak?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I love.

It's the best.

And comedy?

Yeah.

It's on another level.

Well, it's interesting because when I grew up, you know, like my grandparents were not, they spoke Yiddish when they didn't want us to know what they were saying.

Right.

It was in them, but it wasn't the language of the house or anything.

But I think that for most of my childhood, the comics that I looked up with, I really think the drive shaft of comedy was a Yiddish rhythm.

Yep.

And it doesn't exist much anymore.

Well, you haven't seen my act.

No, I know you're there.

But it was interesting because, like, Kathy Ladman reached out to me and, you know, she's, you know,

at my age, in her 60s, and, you know, she's doing comedy still.

And I watched her stuff again, and it's that rhythm, it's that New York Jewish rhythm with good jokes.

And I'm like, I don't, you don't hear it anymore.

Like, there are guys

that undeniably, you know, like, you know, Rickles, Dangerfield, Jackie Mason.

Yeah, who I never liked.

Too Jewish.

Too Jewish.

It was too Jewish.

It's funny.

It's part of his act.

He annoyed me because when I started doing comedy, it wasn't that I didn't want to be Jewish, but I didn't want to talk about it in a way that was stereotypical.

Like, you know, with Jackie Mason, everything's like, you know, Jews just want to sit down.

They want to do this.

We want to eat something.

You know, everything is with the Jew does this, the Jew does that.

I'm like, we can't all be that.

You know, that's been done.

And it doesn't apply to me.

So I can't talk about it until I know how to talk about it, you know, for myself.

And I figured out a way, but it wasn't through a Jewish identity.

It was through, you know, being Jewish.

Like, I'm Jewish, and this is how I see it.

Not like we all Jews do this, all Jews do that.

It bothered me.

Right.

Listen, Jackie Mason was the voice of Jews when he had that show on Broadway.

Yes.

So he was three years a sold-out show on Broadway, which is wow.

Yeah.

Because there was no, there's no Facebook and no Instagram.

So yeah, everything was Jews.

We used to go see him once a month.

You did.

And back then, yeah.

And

when we didn't see him, we had him on tape in the car.

The whole family.

The whole family.

We knew that I could do his

entire Broadway show.

The show.

We just, it was such an amazing

just to see it.

And now,

you know, the New York Times wrote that I'm the new Jackie Mason, which I'm Modi.

I'm not Jackie Mason.

But it's a voice now where I'm on stage, and no longer is the voice of Jews like, hello, I'm trying to get a deal.

I'm trying to get a duh.

It's now it's proud, good-looking guy.

He's married to a man who's not Jewish.

He's Israeli.

He knows his Torah.

He knows his this, he knows his that.

And he's, um,

and

that's the new voice of Jews.

And, you know, I'm performing in all over Europe.

I'm performing in Berlin, Munich.

Do you ever perform in Hebrew?

No, although I do very well in Israel.

I just did the Brafen Center 3000s.

But in Europe, they come out to see me, and when you meet the fans off away from the show, like when you come up to me, it's like, it's like, for us in Berlin, to see somebody standing on stage screaming that they're Jewish and they're proud and they're laughing and how great we're doing and all that, you just don't see that.

He says that, you know, I met this kid on the street.

He was a blonde, beautiful boy, and his girlfriend was

beautiful Ethiopian Jew that he met in Israel.

And they're a couple.

But the Jews are still quiet.

They don't put mizzuzahs up.

They keep it very low-key.

And to all of a sudden see somebody on stage screaming that they're Jewish and proud of it and all that.

I'm finding that with just liberals now

in my audience.

Now, but what about in the sense of

where, I mean, you know, we don't need to go into this too much because it doesn't need to, you know, I had a discussion with Moamer recently

in his experience in America, but also as a familial experience, you know, having family in Palestine.

Now, what the Jewish identity currently, now, how is it, how do you handle,

well, I mean, it's not your responsibility, but there is two ways of thinking about Israel as Jews.

Yes.

And I imagine as Israelis, too.

Okay.

Right?

Yes.

Yes.

Being Jewish and being Israeli, and then just because you're Jewish, everybody thinks you're representing Israel.

That's right, right.

Like when they're yelling at the kids on the college campus, free Palestine, this kid's a college, he has nothing to do with freeing Palestine.

When people write, you know, on my

comments, they write,

it's not an app that I can just go and free Palestine.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

What do you want?

We were in Israel.

I had a tour in Israel right before October 7th.

Yeah.

And we were in Israel when it happened.

And then we had that day a flight to Paris to do.

four shows in Paris starting the month.

So the war began on Saturday.

Yeah.

And on Monday, I had a show in Paris.

Yeah.

Four sold-out shows.

I'm like, what are we going to do?

Do we cancel?

We didn't cancel.

And I started to sing at the end of the show, Hatikva.

We sing the Israeli National Anthem.

Because I just do a full hour, 10, 15 minutes of comedy.

And then you got to just remember where our hearts, our souls, our thoughts are

with all of Israel, everybody there.

And it's just, that's devastating.

But as somebody, like, I was trying to do bits about it, right?

You know, and I waited a long time, you know, because

when you're a Jew of any kind,

and we talked about the spectrum of Jewishness, that you're expected to have comment.

You know, where do you stand?

And there's no gray area, you know, for most, you know, for most Jews.

You know, either

you make a position that you think what is going on there is wrong, but you understand the state of Israel, or you take a position that it doesn't matter what the state of Israel does and it has to survive, right?

So those are your options.

You know, and it took me a long time to figure out an angle that was resonant, you know, because I think that as middle-class Jews, me,

having the discussion we had about God, is like, I don't remember being taught about God in a specific way that would make me understand God, but you were certainly taught that Israel was more important than anything.

That's what you're right.

You know what I mean?

That there has to be this place.

Right.

And we had the little boxes to make the donations for the J and L.

Sure, you have trees.

You you can be buying trees.

Right, right, right, right.

But it is a complicated issue just

to

either have your thoughts about what's going on

to yourself, but if you're a public person and you speak, then you're going to be used by either side,

one way or the other.

And it's tricky.

So I put a lot of intention.

And I'm avoiding it.

Right now I'm avoiding it.

So

in the first few

months,

I just did my act as if that was the act.

Then I dropped that special, know your audience.

And then I began to slowly talk about the war.

And then just talking about how the whole world's really looking for a messianic energy.

And that's what the goal is.

And I talk about Muslim men.

Yeah.

Because two Muslim men saved my father's life.

Yeah.

At NYU Hospital, two doctors, both of them Syrian

Muslim men saved his life.

Straight up.

What happened to him?

He had clots in his heart and he put stents and balloons and all that stuff.

And they were both, and you know,

that's like the goal of life.

Just what happened there, that messianic energy, that literally, that's Mashiach energy.

Yeah.

The two Arab men saved my father's life, you know?

Yeah.

And it's just so, it was so amazing to just when that happened.

And especially because I never really spent time with my father.

I mean, we never really talked, talked until he got sick.

Yeah.

And we got him to the hospital.

Why didn't you talk?

Was he busy?

It wasn't that we have, we love each other.

We just never spent time speaking.

Yeah.

And like, you know, it was just, we wasn't like a.

You got a lot of siblings?

I had two older sisters.

Yeah.

They're always questioning why they never spoke.

I go, he was busy.

Yeah.

He was working.

Was it a wife, three kids, mortgage boy, you know, sent us to school, you know.

He wasn't a conversationalist, you know.

So, but here we were, hours and hours together in the hospital.

He told me this amazing story because he never told me about him, because he was in three wars in Israel: Mkppur War, the Sinai War, the 67 War.

And he was telling me the story that he was in charge.

He wasn't in charge, he was a sergeant

in this brigade that had

three or four

trucks that were half trucks, half tanks.

And they were armored trucks.

Yeah.

So it was a new thing.

He was the driver.

He was driving the front one, and the captain was next to him.

And they got in the middle of the Six-Day War, and they got on the desert, and they faced the enemy.

And they also had like four cars of whatever they had.

And then my father, so I go, so what did you do?

He goes, I took the wheel and I went left.

And before the captain had the chance to call the move, like, do we start firing now?

And then, and, and, and the people that were opposite them, the enemy, they did the same thing.

They went and they just, they both left each other.

That one moment, that one move of him moving the steering wheel and just going the other way.

He, he said, I saw them.

They were also reservists.

Yeah.

67 war, he had my two sisters.

I wasn't born yet.

Yeah.

But he just bought a business, he bought a house.

He bought, you know,

he needs to start firing at them and them firing at him.

Yeah, he needs to get out of this.

So he made a little, and I don't know if some kind of energy maybe that that moment, all those lives were saved at that moment, you know?

Yeah.

Maybe that's, and then now two Syrian men saved his life.

Yeah.

Mashiach energy.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Because like it becomes impossible, you know, even from the beginning, you know, and I tried to explore this on stage and even for myself, you know, I think the fear of even, you know, middle-class American Jews

to speak out

in the name of saving lives, Palestinian lives against genocide, I think their deeper fear

morally is that like, well, I don't want to, you know, I don't want to, you know, I want to make sure I get in.

If I have to go to Idaho.

No, to Israel.

To Israel.

I don't want to be on the list of shitty Jews.

List of shitty Jews.

You know, I don't want to get there.

And they're like, well, you made some public statements.

So, you know, and I think that

the fear of having a public discourse as a Jew, knowing that what's going on there is heinous, is tricky.

And I don't think people understand that.

It's so.

It's not tricky for Zionists.

Well, whoa, whoa, whoa.

So this broad way in a minute.

So what is these words Zionist and anti-Semitist and all it's just so crazy.

Yeah.

But it's in broad strokes.

It's everything's horrible.

These are brothers.

We're all the children children of Abraham.

We're like the sons of Abraham.

We're not like cousins.

We're brothers.

And you just put that into your head and work it.

And

we're so similar.

The prayers, the way they pray.

If you ever hear Sephardic Jews pray and you hear Arabs pray, you can't tell the difference.

The customs, the five times a day they do, but we came from the five times during Yom Kippur.

There's a whole thing that we're so similar.

And to just, instead of clicking on that, it clicks on everything else that's wrong Yeah, and then the politics get in front of And no one's good and no one's good and the real problem is it This is a crazy thing and you're gonna be in shock that I'm saying if the Knesset if Israel

began to unite Yeah, if the Israelis began to unite they would all go away.

Yeah.

If the Israeli if the Jews got along with each other,

all the problems in the world would go away.

I know

those of you, there's no visual here, but if you could see Mark's face right now, if you could see Mark's face.

Well, it's hard for me to talk about it because, you know, you grew up there.

This thing's been going on one way or the other for like hundreds of years, you know, over this piece of property.

Yeah.

I mean, I used to sit at that table in the back, you know, in the cellar.

The cellar with Manny.

Oh, my God.

Yeah.

You know, and, you know,

you can figure out where he would be.

But for you, you know, in America, now, was there a point where you thought maybe you'd be a rabbi?

No,

I would have been a cancer, but I got, God told me I'm a comedian very early, like in my career.

God did.

God did, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And then later on, I could have really clicked in.

But you didn't go right, you went to college, you learned finance.

I went to college.

I went to college.

I learned

psychology.

Okay.

And then, but in college, I was also at the yeshiva.

Right.

I don't know if you remember Buzzwell Street,

the South Campus.

Yeah, I lived on Park Drive.

I lived at Park Drive in Buzzwell.

So there was a big yeshiva behind there.

And I used to go there.

I was there more than I was in my classes.

I loved it.

But I was.

Was it part of the school?

No, it wasn't a part of BU.

It was its own yeshiva.

Okay.

It's like this big mansion that they turned into a yeshiva.

And it was.

I wonder why I don't remember it.

You would have no idea it was there.

Unless it was like you would probably went to Tehillo or the Chabad house.

Not really.

But whatever.

I know what that is, yeah.

Yeah, but I love that.

I really studied there.

And then.

Study Torah?

Yeah, Torah.

And again, a lot of the Red Beats.

It was a Lababa Yeshiva.

So Messianic.

I like that that's where your head goes when you hear the word Lababach.

But it was like the teaching of the Rebbe.

Yeah.

The Lababach Rebbe.

So we would learn his discourses in Yiddish, and that just brought me in.

I was just picking up Yiddish words, and it was so great.

And then, like, I didn't realize how much I grasped of Yiddish until someone gave me this

link to

these old Jewish comedians.

Like Myron Cohen?

That was in English.

I'm talking about Jigger and Schumacher.

These are two Yiddish comedians.

I listen to them.

I'm like, oh my God, the timing,

the cadence, the words mark it's in another level of comedy.

It's like the next, it's like a movie where it's like, it's another zone of comedy.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Oh.

It's like the origin story.

Yeah.

Wow, yeah, like that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And they worked off of each other, and it was brilliant.

What was one of the...

They had a joke about a guy driving.

This mench furten forten furtive.

He has to go to the bathroom, he's got to take a dump.

He looks and there's no sign here, there's no sign, and there's no gas station, there's no diner, there's no nothing.

All of a sudden he sees Washtsemir, a washroom.

He pulls in, runs inside, he does what he, daffodil wus Erdaf Machen.

He dug what he has to do.

And then he needs toilet paper.

There's no toilet paper.

So there's a sign that says, Shrey for toilet paper, yellow for toilet paper.

So shrey, daf toilet paper.

And the owner comes in and says, Svan Sigdola for toilet paper, $20 for a piece of toilet paper.

And he begins to go,

he's got no breira.

Hotensken brere.

So he has to take it.

And then afterwards, he goes outside, he sees the owner taking the $20 and putting it into his pocket.

He goes, this whole business is yours?

He goes, yeah.

And you get Svan Sigdola, you get $20 for a piece of toilet paper.

He goes, yeah, yeah.

He goes, are you looking for a partner?

The owner says, Agans to a whole day, icho pishers.

Mitamol kim to kaka.

All day long people come to pish.

One guy comes to take a dump, he wants to be a partner.

But the way they tell it is it's the most, you die.

You can't catch your breath.

It's so good.

But it's funny because

of the Israeli accent,

the adjustment to Yiddish, which is informed by the Israeli accent in a way, right, in the Hebrew, like, you know,

that's the organic basis of that rhythm.

You know, you take right to it.

You don't have to manufacture it.

Right.

Like for someone like me, if I'm like,

you know, like, you know, I know it, but it doesn't live in me.

But I think because the Israeli, it lives in you.

That too.

But you know, also, I want to tell you something.

I've been leaning into it, and it's in my new show now.

I'm on tour now doing Pause for Laughter.

Yeah.

Because it's literally like, and it's been so good.

I leaned into the fact that I am the last Catskill comedian.

You're literally with the last Catskill comedian.

How so?

How so?

Oh, because you were performing for the Jews up there, for the Orthodox.

No, no, no.

In 1995 or 2006, whatever it was,

the guy that booked the Catskills, there was the Catskill Mountains.

For your listeners who don't know what I'm talking about, it's a little bit north of New York.

What hotel?

There were like five left.

It was Kutcher's, Concord, the Raleigh.

Most of them are gone.

Kutcher's got now.

All of them were gone.

All of them are gone now.

Oh, they are.

But I caught the last, the tail end of those years.

But that was when it was primarily, it wasn't middle-class Jews.

It was the Orthodox Jews.

No, it was still the middle-class Jews that did well, but their parents still liked going up there.

They went with their parents.

It wasn't Orthodox.

I was kosher, but it wasn't Orthodox.

But I was picking up gigs there all the time.

Yeah.

To the point where I bought an apartment off the money I made in the Catskill Mountains.

I worked up there with

some of the best comedians in the world that no one ever heard of.

And you were how many years into doing comedy?

Two, three years into.

Yeah.

Like who was up there still?

Stewie Stone, Alan King.

Alan King.

He played a few of them.

Mowzy Lawrence.

Mowzy, yeah, yeah.

I mean,

I learnt my cadence from comedians that were the top of the top.

Of that time.

Of that type.

Of that type.

Of that type.

Because I was like, I never, out of all of them, I never loved Alan King.

When people ask me, who's your number one?

That's him.

Yeah.

If you, you really, and now I watch myself and I'm like, oh my God, I'm literally doing Alan King.

But you have so much more intensity.

You have quicker.

Yes.

You know,

he was long-winded.

Yeah.

So I...

Okay, so

I think

the last set I watched of myself, I thought I was a little long-winded.

I had him to move it a little quicker.

Yeah.

Well, that's interesting.

You know, because I saw him,

I thought he was pompous.

And I also felt that about Jackie Mason,

that there was this arrogance to it.

And I think, you know, Alan King, if I have it historically correct, he was the guy that made middle-class Jews, gave them a voice.

He was the guy that was doing that.

We're doing well.

We're doing well.

Right.

We're out on the island.

Right.

Right.

And that was different than the shtetl Jews or the Lower East Side Jews.

He was of the generation that was no longer in the Lower East Side.

Correct.

And then it became sort of a middle-class conversation.

Because

I listened to some old Pat Cooper records.

And he was the same for the Italians.

Right.

That, you know, we're not down there Lower East Side anymore.

Right.

You know, we got a big house and we can, you know, family comes over and it's different.

Our problems are different.

That's why I fell in love with him.

Because it's like, here it is, a Jew.

He's doing well.

He's in a tuxedo.

His special, he taped him Carnegie Hall yeah and it's big and it's over and it's and it's good it's good it's not like you know it's not take my wife please you know

and a young man it's like it's it was a step up

I loved it

yeah storyteller but the stories of the Jewish middle class yeah yeah but the other people can relate to but like yeah but Myron Cohen was still telling you know Hasidic jokes right right right and it was still you know stories that you know that have a biblical resonance a story about a rabbi or this or that.

It was different.

Yeah, I mean, because I saw Alan King in Vegas once when I went to, I must have been in high school, and we'd go meet my grandparents out there.

I went to a show.

It was one of the, it made me realize, it was before I was doing comedy, obviously, but I really saw a guy.

It was in one of the, it felt like a ballroom more than a showroom.

But I saw a guy go out there, and it looked like he had to do it.

That he was going to do a certain amount of time.

In 45 minutes, it was in and out.

And it didn't didn't seem like he really gave a shit.

It seemed like, you know, this is just, you know, I got to do this.

And it was disappointing.

And then like, you know,

he was a pretty good actor.

I don't know why he didn't click with me.

For me, it was like Rickles, Buddy Hackett.

You know, Buddy Hackett, I loved as a kid.

So when we came to America, my mom was, my parents were figuring out, what are we doing?

What's our jam?

Like, what are we going to do with the kids?

Yeah.

We tried Disney and we hated it.

Yeah.

Hated it.

Yeah.

Then my people told my parents, you know, this is in the 70s.

So the Cat Skills were still going on.

So we went for one weekend to the Cat Skills.

We left early.

My mom's like, we're not staying here.

This food is disgusting.

And they just, all they do is eat and sit in the lobby.

This is not for us.

But that Friday night, I saw buddy hacking.

Yeah.

And I was blown away.

I was like, oh my God, I can't believe this is happening.

And the entire room is just, he has them like at that, and you know, and I have that in my show.

Like, I have them.

I know where I'm gonna get them I massage

I'll massage a priest and rabbi joke into my act yeah and they'll just boom you hear the boom boom yeah you know when you're the beacon all of a sudden

yeah you feel it you know like wow yeah yeah it's it's it's

I love Alan King.

And I'll tell you what, if we're doing Alan King's stories,

one time he was in a hotel.

He was at Benevoli.

I was next door.

I finished my set, ran over there and sat with him.

There was a delay because of something happened.

I saw him finish a bottle of tangray.

Yeah, that's who he always used to have that.

Oh my god.

And it was a little left.

He pours into the cup and tells the guy on the stool, stage left, walks on, does an hour and 30 with a bottle of tang and destroyed.

I never saw like

just every joke, just waves of laughter.

These guys are guys that worked every night.

Yeah, I remember he did Conan one time when I was there, I think, and

Stu, not Stu,

Frank, Frank Smiley, that segment producer over there.

I went over to Alan's dressing room, and I don't know if he was there, but they had a bottle of tank right.

He needed it just to get it in, get it tanked up to get out there.

That's something you never had to do that.

I never.

I never.

Well, I mean, there were guys like Alan Zwybell and Richard Lewis that wrote for those guys.

That's how they started

in the 70s.

They were just selling those guys jokes.

Yeah.

They'd take them.

They would take them, yeah.

And they and they reused them.

and they did.

So what happened

with the money job before a comedy?

So I was doing comedy full-time and I was at the cellar, strips, gigs, synagogues, everything, and still stayed at Merrill Lynch for five years.

Yeah.

And then I had to leave in 99.

What were you doing there?

I was in international finance.

My husband said I was a personality hire.

The more I tell him stories about what was going on there.

You like Kevin Yorand?

Yeah, I was just, I was good with the clients.

Yeah.

I didn't know anything about finance.

I was just like,

I didn't, I didn't, I was just like, but I knew where the money was going to come from and if they had money somewhere else and I was good at that.

Yeah.

But I wasn't like, I wasn't a banking guy.

So I was doing both jobs.

I was at the comedy cell in the strip in a suit.

Do you remember me?

I used to go right from the bank to like a nine o'clock spot

in a suit.

Yeah.

In a suit.

And back then it was just over-the-top characters.

I would just imitate the secretaries.

It wasn't a Jewish voice yet.

So I was like within a year closing the show at the comic strip.

Estee put me on right away, a year in.

I was hosting there.

It was just over-the-top character.

Then the voice comes together.

It became a very Jewish voice.

When he started yelling?

I stopped.

I still kind of yelled.

Well, I don't know if I'm yelling.

I just, I'm loud.

Manic.

Manic.

You're a little manic, I remember.

Back then, yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

I was doing over-the-top characters.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And then one of the characters was close to you, and he stuck with that one?

I think so.

Is that how it works?

Is that how comedy works?

You're going in at these characters, and whatever you're doing to set them up,

then that becomes you.

Yeah.

I guess so.

I guess that's a great way to see it.

Wow.

But when do you start?

Because I mean, I remember you were around and people, you know,

do their lives and they make their money, you know, in ways that I don't know in terms of what they're doing out there on the road or whatever.

But it felt like for, you know, outside of doing the cat skills, I mean, you were still, you know, kind of trying to get, make a living, right?

Trying to scrap together an audience.

I was working.

You know, back then you couldn't collect your audience.

There wasn't, there weren't followers.

Right.

You just had to kill where you were and hope that the word got around.

So I was working with synagogues, charities.

So you would do that.

Early on, you saw that there was a market for that.

Early on, you know, so don't forget that they saw me in the cat skills in a tuxedo.

I always performed as a tuxedo.

And then they would see that and say, this would be nice for our synagogue.

This would be nice for our charity.

My wife is on the campus.

Relatively clean.

Very clean.

I never cursed on stage.

I never cursed.

And so that also helped.

And then you pick up, and then I picked up

comedy clubs as well.

I was still, you know, all over and I was making a living, bought an apartment.

You know, it was great.

And then things really, really clicked with me when COVID hit.

COVID was the best thing that ever happened to me.

So that's recently.

Yeah.

So before you were just kind of like making ends, meet, running around doing this or that, because I don't know that it didn't seem like the

logical path

where you do a Letterman,

you do a Fallon or whatever.

That was not in the cards for you.

No.

Why is that?

I never did any.

I sent them, here's my four minutes, here's my whatever.

I was never in that world.

I was

figure something else out.

I I was never in that world.

I was making more money than any of those guys in that world.

I was picking up,

you know,

I was doing these fundraisers, charities, huge events.

But I never had a Letterman.

I never had any of those credits.

Back then it was so important.

Coming to the stage now,

Letterman.

Yeah, so I used to always say, just say,

you may have seen him on Letterman.

You may not.

You may not.

They may not have seen me.

They may, but they may not have seen me on Letterman.

You weren't quite lying.

I wasn't, i wasn't comedy central never looked at me and never nah they never took anything with me and so why because you think you were too jewish maybe they thought i was too jewish maybe they weren't sure it was too loud maybe it was too loud for them you didn't get mad about that i didn't i was too busy making a living to be worried about that really it never bothered me yeah it yeah it irritated me it irritated me comedy is is is such a profession it's such an insane it's such a craft and a profession if you were in a hospital and you were hiring a doctor, who should be hiring doctors?

Other doctors, yeah, right?

Yeah, your comedy, it should be by other comedians that, like, they're like, it's it's a crazy thing that the people who judge who who he was a comedian, but it's just there, they, but then they be they're acting on behest of the show's interests, so they get to make the decision, like, we don't fit in with this, yeah, but again, it never bothered me.

I'm like, I'm, I'm, thank God, I'm working.

I always have my schedule is always full, I always had gigs lined up, this synagogue's coming up, that the stress factory, the funny bone somewhere got a hold of me and said, come here, we want to do something.

And it was just something for Jews.

Sometimes Jews.

But then you came back, you know, for the non-Jews.

Right.

And then I was on, I had, I had a stint where I toured with

Elon?

No, with

Stuttering John from the Howard Stern Show.

Yeah.

For two years.

What?

It was so much fun.

I didn't realize how much fun we were having back then.

How did that happen?

So you're getting all the Stern audience?

We got the Stern.

It was the most insane thing.

So I did all the comedy clubs all over the country.

Yeah.

In the best way you could ever do them.

Stuttering John was on the Howard Stern show.

He decided he's a comedian.

Sean.

Now he's a comedian.

And now he was booking shows

with me, Nick DiPaolo, Jim Florentine, Jim Norton.

And in the beginning, before they all blew up.

So he would take a comedy club and he'd like, hey, I'm hosting and come.

And so the Stern show, if Howard Stern turned to him on Friday and said, hey, John, where are you and the boys going to be this week?

Me, Modi, Nick DePaul, and this is going to be at the Comedy Connection in Boston.

We end up adding two shows.

Really?

Just from that.

Boom.

When was this?

This is like

right after 9-11, so 2002.

Yeah, to 2003.

We did all the clubs all over America.

It was so much fun.

And Howard would plug them.

If he did.

You couldn't ask for the plug.

Right.

But if he turned to John and said, where are you guys going to be?

And then we did a big show for Howard in Atlantic City.

I don't know if you remember John had a boxing thing.

I wasn't a stern follower.

I didn't know what was going on in the show.

But he just liked you.

So

what it was was this.

You understand your Jim.

Nick DiPaulo.

Yeah.

Okay.

You have Jim Florentine.

These are all guys, guys.

Yeah.

But they came there with a girl.

Yeah.

So he put me on at the end.

I was talking about my aerobics class even though i wasn't gay but i was like the aerobics class and then this and the denim doesn't match that and i didn't realize how gay i was but it's we did

i never hit it from the comedians comedians all knew i used to come with boyfriends to the table i was always yeah yeah yeah but but that was a fun stint it was a fun and then back to working and you know do you are are do you talk about it now being out oh yeah yeah oh yeah Oh, yeah.

Oh, amazing stuff.

Yeah.

Amazing.

It was never really a part of me.

You know, I was more Jewish than I was gay.

Now I have a husband who took over my career and changed my life

during COVID?

During COVID.

Well, explain this COVID

epiphany, this catharsis.

COVID hits.

Yeah.

COVID hits.

And we're...

stuck at home.

Yeah.

You have a podcast, so you're already in COVID.

Yeah.

You know, so

I have 7,000 followers on Instagram.

Now I'm home.

I'm like, oh, a year off.

I have a year off.

I'm ready to not work.

People are calling for Zoom shows.

I was the king.

No one could do a Zoom show better.

Mark,

I never saw God bless me more than when it came to.

I said, I'm not doing a Zoom show.

You crave me to yell my jokes into a computer.

Luckily, I saw,

God showed me

Martin Scorsese interviewing Fran,

Leverwitz, the writer, yeah.

And I watched it.

Yeah.

And I saw that he was her laugh track.

Right.

He was the entire audience of her laugh track.

So I began to do the Zoom shows.

Congregation, Beth anywhere in the world.

Okay.

Beth anywhere you want.

Hires me for their event.

So now I said, okay, it's going to be me on the Zoom

and three other people.

Everybody else is hidden.

And you guys,

I would train them.

You are my laugh track.

When I see something funny, you have to laugh like you have a problem.

The other comics?

No, the other three, like the board president, the rabbi, and

Sheldon, some guy on the other side.

And the idea is that, but there's still 100, something people watching.

Thousands.

That's how I built my entire...

I did two events in London for a London organization.

Now I sell out the Palladium.

I built my entire London audience out there.

Zoom was the best thing.

Those horrible shows on Zoom built me.

I went like 30,000 followers, 40,000.

And my husband took over the whole thing.

The social media.

You need this, you need

an agent, you need a promotion.

And we began to, he just took over and just like, imagine having a millennial in your life.

It's just the most amazing thing that could ever happen to anybody our age.

He's 32.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And like a genius and whatever he does.

So so so you just kept doing Zoom shows?

I was doing a Zoom shows.

And that could be anywhere in the world.

Anywhere, Australia.

We just sold out like a whole tour in Australia.

Because of those Zoom shows, they built that, and then the audience kept following me and now we're feeding the machine up.

Yeah, yeah, right.

And I had these two characters I did, this Israeli character, near, not far, near, it's near, not far, and people loved, they couldn't get enough.

And I did this Hasidic character.

I got up in Hasidic drag, and I would just do this Hasidic guy.

And people loved both of those characters.

It went viral on WhatsApp groups that are all over the Jewish world.

And Leo's like, okay, well, when COVID ends, we need to figure out what you're going to do.

And he began to, he found a promoting company.

He found the

oh my god.

And we finally got to UTA with Michael Grinspan, who is like beyond.

a blessing from God.

Booking agent.

Yeah, he's our booking agent.

And like, we're, I couldn't be happier.

That's crazy.

So now, like, now when you do this, is it still primarily Jews?

It is.

And then, and then I went with, like,

be true to your audience, and the rest will follow.

Right.

So now, yes, it began.

The first round of touring was Jews.

And then the Jews brought their non-Jewish friends.

Yeah.

Like, you got to see this.

Come, let me show you Jewish comedy.

Come, come, come, come, come.

This is going to be fun.

You're going to love it.

And then, and then the gay thing, like, the gay clips went out.

So now we have Goyem, Gays, and Thays.

That's the new audience besides the Jews.

And then anybody who caught me that wasn't Jewish would tell all their Jewish friends, have you seen this comedian?

You've got to come see this.

And they would bring them.

And it's just like, and that's, so now when I go, who here is not Jewish, half the room sometimes,

it's so great.

It's my favorite thing.

But it's funny because you are the Jew.

Yes, I am.

And it's not, it's unique.

Yeah.

Right?

I mean, do you,

do you have peers like Israeli comedians?

Or do you know people that represent like you do?

No, I don't.

I don't.

I don't.

Israeli comedians are Israeli comedians.

Right.

I perform in Israel.

I have them as opening acts and all that.

But it's my experience.

So

my Israeli audience

used to be mostly

Americans and England people and they moved to Israel, ex-PACs, you call them.

And then now Israelis found me.

So now I just did the Brafmin Center in Tel Aviv, which is 3,000 people.

It was half Israelis and half that just moved there.

But all live in Israel.

And I was able to relate to both of them because I'm from America.

I'm from Israel.

I'm from this area.

And I speak to all that.

And I speak to all that.

And I was able to drop all the

Hebrew and all of that.

And it was amazing.

It was amazing.

So when you do, like in England, so you get the full spectrum, you got Orthodox there, you got everything.

Has

18 to 88.

Yeah.

18 to 88 is the age range.

And you see yarmulas, you see black hats, and then you see

gay couples.

Yeah.

That, you know, that one's not Jewish and one is Jewish and all of that you see in the whole room.

Yeah.

It's amazing.

Huh.

Yeah.

So now you're a big star.

I'm a big star.

I'm a huge.

My husband made me a big star.

Yeah.

We added something to when we got married.

We said

we live by three rules.

Hydrate, moisturize, and be nice.

We added one more.

Monetize.

He monetized me.

So now you're going to do the wheel turn here.

Sold out.

Sold out.

Thank God.

He loves to sell out.

When we put a show out, he goes into a mode of like, you know, like when you're in college and you have an exam or a paper you have to hand in, until it's sold out, he feels like it's like, he has to do all that work.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

When it's finally sold out, okay, we're done with that.

I have to plug it.

We just say it's sold out.

And you just do all the plugging on the Instagram.

Instagram.

TikTok.

He runs, we have a whole social media thing.

I only look

at the Instagram account, and I answer.

What's the followers now?

How many?

365.

Yeah.

1,000.

It's really nice, and it's growing, growing steadily.

And all the TikToks and everything else he runs, I don't look at any of it.

And we caught company.

And by the way,

even though we haven't seen each other in 20 years, I want to just tell you,

congratulations on all of your success.

Oh, thank you.

And I hope you're enjoying it.

And I will tell you that

your podcast with Chris Hayes was insane.

Oh, good.

It blew me away.

Oh, good.

On a treadmill for an hour and 40 minutes, something.

It was so good.

I stayed for the guitar.

It was so good.

I was like, I'm not.

This is his real passion.

Is in that.

I got to listen to that.

You were unbelievable.

And listen, you're in thousands in

your podcast.

Yeah.

We began doing,

Leo said, we're doing a podcast.

Okay, we're doing a podcast.

We're doing a podcast.

And now we're 150 in.

We had our 100th anniversary one.

We did it at the 92nd Street Walkway.

And we're just like, you are unbelievable at this.

And that one was like, wow.

Oh, yeah.

I'll give you the book.

Yeah.

It was so good.

It was, you always like,

talk about like the the your audience brings you gifts

but you have to understand your connection to your audience is I do I do it's you know and I'm I've grown more gracious you know I've always was pretty gracious because they do have a relationship with you and you have to honor that right you know you they know like when you do a podcast they know things about your life yeah you know and they ask you questions about the thing that you talked about right and you don't know them but you know you I it makes me happy there's a familiarity to it all.

They're familiar with me.

It's what's going to get you into heaven.

I don't know if you know that.

Oh, thank God.

So in the Talmud, it talks about comedians.

Yes.

It literally speaks about comedians in the Talmud.

Okay.

And it talks about...

In the marketplace, in the marketplace, there was Elijah the prophet was there.

And so two people asked him, who here has a place in the world to come?

Yeah.

In heaven.

In other words,

you're done.

You did it.

You don't have to come back in another reincarnation.

And he goes, the two guys over there, they go and ask him, what do you do?

And he said, we are

men of laughter, of jokes.

Really?

They're comedians.

They're comedians.

They're comedians.

And then what do we do?

We make people who are sad happy.

And when there's a riff through comedy, we bring peace.

That's their job.

So

one night, on ketamine, at a rave, at a techno rave,

I'm like with my husband in my arms, just like shirtless, bopping back and forth.

And I'm just, this is what's going in my head.

There's two comedians.

I'm like,

why is there two comedians?

Why would there, if the Tama doesn't waste words and stuff,

it'd be what, if you want to say the comedians have a portion in the world to come, you say, the guy over there is a comic.

I'll go ask him what he does.

But it's two.

And I realized.

The comic can't be alone.

He needs, you got this podcast.

Those of you who don't know, I'm blown away.

Mark sat down, hit the buttons, and we began.

But you're sending it to somebody.

Yeah.

And they're going to figure it all out.

That's the other guy.

That's the other guy.

I could be working the back of synagogues the rest of my life, but my husband came into my life and now I'm performing for

arenas.

But it also could be the guy who you go, like, tell me, is this funny?

I'm not going to, you tell me if it's funny.

Like the second guy could be the guy that gives him the punchlines.

It is, it is.

Your friends who you run, who you run materials upon, but it could also be, let me tell you what else it is.

I really saw, again, during COVID, some guy

had a huge synagogue in

Scarsdale.

Yeah.

Big synagogue.

And there was a riff in the synagogue because it was like COVID's like coming to an end, but not coming to an end.

You can't imagine the young people were like in the synagogue with no masks and the older people were like still in those FEMA tents outside pretending being outside is okay.

And one guy said, what would it cost to bring Modi here to do a show?

He called.

He paid.

He cut a check, boom, for Modi to come and do a show.

And for that night, everybody came in.

They took the main ballroom where the Barmitz was happy and put their spread out chairs.

And it was the first time that the whole synagogue laughed together.

And there were no riffs.

And everybody was happy.

And that's Mashiach energy.

There was a moment of messianic energy in that room.

Oneness.

And that guy was the second guy in the two comedians over there.

He was, it doesn't say comedians, the anché bediche, men,

not men, people.

We are people of laughter.

So he created that laughter.

He brought me in.

That's like that insane energy.

Did the riff go away permanently?

It definitely helped.

Listen,

they came in, they all put their dumb masks for a second, they gave it a break.

And they laughed.

And it was amazing.

And

it was such an amazing evening.

And you know, and it reminded me of the time during 2016

when Trump got elected the first time.

There was a synagogue in Pennsylvania.

And there was a rift right down the middle.

People like brothers wouldn't talk to each other who were in the same synagogue.

And then the first thing that brought everybody back together was a comedy night.

Comedy night brought everybody back together.

It was to the point that they had two different services.

Can you imagine how crazy that is?

Yeah.

How ungodly that is?

Yeah.

Because just because they were in such a riff over Trump.

It's an insane situation.

Well, I'm glad that

we were each other's second person today.

Yeah.

Today, this is Anchor Bedike right here.

Two comics,

two men of laughter.

Yeah.

Making people who are sad happy and bringing peace.

Yeah.

Well, I'm glad to be part of it.

It's an honor to be Anshe Bedike with you today.

Nez.

Good to see you, man.

Good to see you.

There you go.

Again, very Jewish, very Jewy, I know.

Again, you can get his tour dates, listen to his podcast, and check out his special at Modilive.com, M-O-D-I.

Hang out for a minute, folks.

Hey, people, we've got more outtakes from recent episodes up on the Full Marin this week.

You'll hear stuff that didn't make it into the episodes with Mo Ammer, Carrie Kuhn, and this bit of manic research during the talk I had with Chris Fleming.

Wild Outfits.

Yeah, what was her name?

Oh, God, why am I forgetting her name?

The Bangs, the famous Bangs of his, you know, the one who kind of invented that haircut.

She was an actress.

Cleopatra?

No, it was.

Oh, man.

My.

Liz Taylor?

Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope.

We could Google her.

Famous Bangs.

Who invented Bangs?

Lulu Brooks.

Was it maybe Lulu Brooks?

No, there was another one, a Vixen.

A Vixen.

Lulu Brooks was a silent actress, and she did the Bob Bang thing.

Oh, yeah, yeah, sure, sure.

How am I going to Google this?

Lulu Brooks or.

No, no, I know Lulu Brooks.

It's not who I'm thinking of.

When you say Vixen, are you saying like you personally find her to be a Vixen or she actually?

Well, there's Louise Brooks, and she was definitely part of it.

Yep.

Oh, yeah, those are pretty straight.

That's like a ruler across the forehead.

But there was another one

uh

the most iconic bangs in history maybe that'll do it what about famous vixens of yesteryear famous vixens of yesteryear these were all too new

um i'm thinking otsko she's i mean that's kind of i don't think she's

um

bangs

uh

uh actress

with wait i'll look on my phone too bangs let's get the whole tree of this old days

Okay, okay.

The most iconic bangs throughout history.

This has got to be it, man.

Okay.

We got Jet Louise Brooks.

Yeah, I got that.

Okay.

Clara Bowen.

Betty Page.

Betty Page.

Betty Davis?

No, Betty Page.

Hold on.

Let me see if I'm right.

Well, she's not number Audrey Hepburn.

She's not in the top.

Betty Pay is number five.

Look, you got her.

That's it.

You got her.

That's it.

That's the haircut.

Betty Pay.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yes.

Yes, yes, yes.

You can get that episode as well as all the bonus episodes we do twice a week by signing up for the full Marin.

Just go to the link in the episode description or go to wtfpod.com and click on WTF Plus.

And a reminder before we go, this podcast is hosted by ACAST.

Here's some guitar.

You know,

the kind of guitar that I do.

You know, here we go.

Boomer lifts, monkey and the fonda, cat angels everywhere.