Episode 1681 - Jimmy Pardo

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 Maron.

This is my podcast.

Welcome to it in the home stretch here.

How's everybody doing?

You okay?

Today on the show, Jimmy Pardo is here.

Now, look, Jimmy has been podcasting since 2006.

And

he was one of the guys at the beginning when we started WTF that I knew was out there.

I knew him.

I knew his comedy.

I'd known him a long time.

And, you know, he was doing Never Not Funny, which was a show that had a lot of influence on us in terms of, you know, how to do a podcast, how to

perhaps monetize it or what the options were at the time.

But he was there with

a small group of us that were part of the podcasting community.

He was on WTF back on episode 102,

as well as a couple of live episodes.

But it made sense to have him back on here in the home stretch because he was one of the guys,

one of the gang of the original podcasters.

And again, I always have to qualify that by saying there were other podcasters.

There were podcasters years before us.

I'm talking about the community I came up with.

It's It's weird when so much time goes by

that

all of a sudden the people you came up with,

that's a long time ago.

I mean, I was at the comedy store the other night, night before last,

and David Tell came by.

And I've known David Tell.

We started roughly at the same time in New York.

I've known him.

going back to, what, 89?

Is that possible?

35, 36 years.

I've known David Tell.

I spent a lot of time with David Tell.

We were both, you know,

hammering away at the same dream, me and him, and Ross, and Silverman, and CK, and Todd Berry,

others, many others.

But I don't see Dave that much anymore.

And I saw him last night.

You know, we see each other in passing, and he's not a huge talker.

But it really becomes kind of moving

as you get older in this life, as people have passed, as people have fallen away,

as

people have had their own troubles in their own lives.

And

seeing Dave,

it was great.

It's always great to see Dave.

I never know if he's going to

talk to me for very long,

but that's been the way it's been for our whole life.

But we were out back and We're out in front of the club and there's a few people gathered around chit-chatting.

He says, come on, take a walk.

And we had a little catch-up.

And it was,

it's very sweet.

It's very sweet to get to a certain age with your life committed to one thing

and

realize there are people

who knew you at the beginning, who were there with you at the beginning, even if you've lived totally different lives.

You don't see each other very often.

Just that moment of like, hey, still alive, huh?

Still at it.

Here we are.

Look at us.

How's your mom?

How's your health?

What have you been doing?

Yeah, I saw that thing you did.

That was great.

It just,

it becomes deeper and more touching as time goes on.

It's not competitive.

It's not,

you know, in any way detached aside from the time spent apart.

But it really becomes sort of like we are still here, brother.

And we're still doing the thing.

And you're holding up well.

I'm holding up well.

I'm glad you're okay.

The final batch of WTF Cap Mugs goes on sale tomorrow.

These are the mugs I give to my guests and they're handmade pieces of art by Brian Jones.

You can get one tomorrow starting at noon Eastern.

Go to WTFmugs.co.

Also, the documentary Are We Good opens next week, October 3rd, in New York and Los Angeles.

I'll be at some of the screenings here in LA as well as the Vancouver Film Festival.

There are special screenings around the country on October 5th and October 8th.

Go to AreweGoodMarin.com to see where it's playing and get tickets.

The Kickstarter for the graphic novel WTF is a podcast is still going on, and we're still pushing to get everyone who orders a book, a special box brown-designed WTF trading card.

And if we can get over $250,000, everyone gets a frame set of our four trading cards: me, Boomer, Monkey, and LaFonda, the original crew.

Go to z2comics.com/slash WTF.

And if I could at this moment, I'm not going to make this screening, but

I just want to draw attention to the fact that the movie Springsteen, Deliver Me from Nowhere, is showing at the New York Film Festival this weekend.

And if you didn't get a chance to hear it over the summer,

you can check out the episode I did with Jeremy Allen White, who plays Bruce in the movie.

So the Bruce movie.

How did you feel about it?

It was very hard.

Well, yeah, especially because he's sitting there the whole whole time but in terms of playing Bruce and doing your own singing I from what I remember on set that there were times where Bruce couldn't tell the difference yeah yeah I mean you know I had not had a lot of experience or any experience singing playing guitar any of it and so that was

daunting to say the least in the beginning and I didn't have I mean I had a lot of time but I didn't have as much time as I would have liked you never do you know yeah but I had about six months to kind of What's fortunate with those songs, the guitar playing is not like.

Exactly.

It's not a lot of.

Yeah, the chords are pretty simple.

There's not many of them, and a lot of the songs are in the same.

But the singing was a, you know, a gamble.

And,

but.

So what did you do?

Just kind of like figure out at first just to mimic it?

Like, do you listen to it?

Yeah.

And then kind of record yourself?

Yeah.

I mean, I worked with this guy, Eric Vitro, who's kind of like the guy.

You know, he helped Austin with the Elvis movie.

He helped timothy chalamet with the dylan movie um he's kind of the go-to you know and he works with a lot of amazing like vocalists and retail real singers and performers um but uh i got together with him and then i really have to give eric credit because he was there to kind of or i thought he was there to be like you know this is how you sing a song this is how you make it sound good yeah but he would catch me Not feeling connected to it and doing what as an actor, I should have just been doing naturally yeah which is like what are you talking about yeah right what's going on right right have you written this down a whole bunch yeah just think think about is this the work of who's bruce playing or or you know which moment in bruce's life is this you know all this yeah yeah this should have been simple but i was so worked up with how does this sound being self-conscious and sounding like bruce yeah yeah yeah um so that was like a break a breakthrough and then you know we pre-recorded and and so that gave me the ability to like a lot of vocalists, you know, you sing the song for an afternoon,

and they go ahead and they put together your greatest

me and Ryan.

That's episode 1672 with Jeremy Allen White, and the movie opens nationwide on October 24th.

So many.

We've done all the talks.

We've done all the talking.

Oh, my God.

So I know the big news outside of horrible news about another shooting and outside of the

farce of our president speaking at the UN, the big news is that Jimmy Kimmel returned to work.

And this was no small feat, to be honest with you.

I mean, look, I spoke out early and then many people spoke out when I did, and then actors came together and then comedians came together over time.

Even the comics that

do not identify with with the politics that

Jimmy Kimmel is or with the side of politics that Jimmy Kimmel has been linked to and represents, they eventually came out in fairly full-throated ways.

But everyone kind of got on the same page and

an amazing thing happened.

That, and of course, the...

The boycott was, I think, in a large part, an amazing thing.

And he returned to the airwaves and made a tremendous monologue out of what happened and what he feels is right and wrong and his

wrong phrasing or misunderstanding or being misunderstood.

I just thought, all in all, it was an incredible showing for a guy with humility,

with a big heart,

and with

a sort of

very precise and righteous attack on the threat to free speech by an authoritarian administration.

And

I thought it was tremendous.

But I do think we have to take note that this was a five-alarm fire.

This was no little thing.

This was nothing that could be dismissed.

And

all roads lead back to FCC chair Brendan Carr, who outwardly and very deliberately made an ominous threat.

He couched it in language where he wouldn't be legally liable, but it was strong-arming, plain and simple, by the administration.

And then Trump, a day after Jimmy gets his job back, confirms that this was an autocrat's desire of his authoritarian government to silence a voice that he didn't like, didn't agree with, took personally.

I mean, the difference between Trump being annoyed by people who make fun of him and the structure of the policies that the new authoritarian administration has coincide a bit.

I think Trump, thankfully, because of his big mouth and his inability to take a joke and his incredibly thin skin and frail ego, because he takes everything personally and does not know how to shut up,

you know, really kind of fucks it up for the authoritarian system that he is the front man for.

I don't know how conscious that is as long as it serves his petty needs,

but it does make it plainly obvious what the intentions are and what they were and how they're not going to stop.

But I'm not necessarily hopeful, but I am encouraged by the outpouring of not just support for Jimmy, but action taken

and voices heard that this is not America.

This is not how America was supposed to be, how America is.

On another note, I'm waffling back and forth between rehousing my cat Charlie because it's just too violent here.

I don't know how, I don't, I really don't know how people have kids.

Yeah, yesterday I was like, I'm so sad.

I have to get rid of them, but it's probably going to be better for everybody.

And today I bought a fucking cat tree for my bedroom, which is where he'll probably end up living almost exclusively.

That's my life.

Rotating and going back and forth between

rehousing a cat that I adore, but that in

times of rational thinking, I think maybe everybody'd be better off if he had a single cat home and he could be the king of the

place.

That's my life.

That's how I spend my time.

I go through all the emotions and I waffle back and forth between making big decisions.

It's just that I'm tethered to this cat and that I can't travel comfortably.

I can't spend a day away from my house without wondering, is that little fuck okay?

And some people be like, yeah, well, that's cute.

Is it?

I'm getting old.

You know, I should be able to have the freedom to do what I want to do.

And if I can't do it, it shouldn't be because I wonder if that crazy fucking cat

will be okay.

You know what I mean?

So listen, something people keep saying to me about the podcast ending is that I should take a vacation.

Look, I used to take vacations.

I used to love to go to Kauai.

I enjoyed Kauai.

I would go there, you know, once a year, usually.

I haven't been on a vacation.

I can't remember the last vacation I've been on.

I was just talking to somebody about traveling to Tuscany and Umbria.

I do need to take one.

But if you're planning to take a vacation, there's always the question of what to do with your empty house while you're away.

Of course, there's the option to host your place on Airbnb to make some extra cash.

And now it's easier than ever with Airbnb's co-host network.

You get a high-quality local host to take care of your home and your guests.

They manage all the hosting details, send messages and updates, and are available to be on hand when your guests are there, just to help out with anything that might come up.

So your co-host handles the details and you still make some cash while you're enjoying your vacation.

Find a co-host at airbnb.com slash host.

So look,

Jimmy Pardo is here.

And this is another thing about going back with somebody.

Look, I've known Jimmy

a long time.

I knew him as a comic.

I probably knew him a bit before the podcast.

But you have to realize that at the time we started WTF, there was only a few podcasts out there that I knew of that were driven by comics, by guys I knew.

Jimmy Pardo, Jimmy Dore, Todd Glass, Doug Benson, Kevin Smith was around.

Corolla was basically doing a radio show.

And I know you guys have heard a lot of this stuff already, but Jimmy and I go way back.

And his partner, Matt Belknap, you know, they were putting together

a network or a platform.

And I think the point I'm trying to make is that I want people to realize that now that podcasting is a pervasive and popular medium, that at the beginning there was a core group of us that were trying to

make podcasting work.

We didn't know what the future held.

You know, Jimmy at that time was doing, and I think he still does.

We talk about it.

You know, you got a, he had a paywall set up and there was conversations with Brendan and I about a paywall.

And we were all just trying to figure it out.

But there was a community: Jesse Thorne, Chris Hardwick,

later Rogan,

a few months later, after me.

But there was a community of us that were, you know, really had each other's backs, were doing each other's shows, were operating as

like-minded creatives that were

doing

a similar thing with a common medium.

And we were all kind of in touch for years

in terms of

moving the medium forward, having a bit of group think about what should happen with the medium, certainly with the patent troll

crisis.

But we were always sort of in conversation one way or the other, either on each other's shows or off the mics.

And it was kind of an amazing time considering where the medium has come and where we're all at now.

And I just thought it would be fitting to honor Jimmy's part in it, to honor Jimmy's part in sort of getting us going or at least showing us a template or a model of how this thing could work.

And he's still at it.

He's still funny.

He's still one of the great podcasters.

And he's here

with us today.

You can listen to his podcast, Never Not Funny, wherever you get podcasts.

And go to jimmypardo.com for his upcoming tour dates.

Very funny comedian.

And this is me and Jimmy having a chat here in the final days of WTF.

Funny, I had

Tracy Letz in here yesterday, the actor.

He's an actor and a playwright.

You'd know who he is.

Can I look up his photograph so I can enjoy your story?

Sure.

It wasn't really a story, but he had problems with his cock yesterday

on the air.

He's readjusting his cock a lot.

I don't know if it had something to do with me but it could be

tracy let's

l-e-t-t-sha that guy's good actor great

he was in uh

that uh that lakers uh yeah miniseries yeah he's in a lot of things he's really good now yeah yeah i'm gonna turn my phone off for this okay well that's respectful

well i don't think people turn it off on my show i don't uh you don't mind the ringing any interruptions welcome oh because you can just go with it yeah yeah why not you know we're we're we're all fighting for content After 20 years?

20 years, Jim.

19.

19.

We're coming up on 20.

What am I coming up on?

Less than that?

Well, I mean, you don't have to be...

What's with the tone?

No, no, there's no tone.

I don't know.

Is there a right?

Wait, left is always the cord, right?

They're headphones.

You put them on your head.

These?

You mentioned the cock earlier, so I assumed that it had something to do with...

No, those are too high.

That's too high for me.

We can adjust it.

I see.

There we go.

Do you have a custom set at your studio that is only yours?

I use the inside ear,

like the monitor type.

Really?

When did you make the jump?

10 years ago.

Really?

I don't...

You know what it started?

Because when I worked at Conan and I would do the podcast and then have to go to Conan, I didn't like having headphone hair.

So I started using the inner ears

for that.

Wait,

I'm trying to remember.

phase of Conan were you involved with?

From day one of the tonight show all through.

Yeah.

Are we are we recording?

Yeah, you know how this works.

I don't know.

Well, usually you do some sort of

later.

Yeah, but

what do you want to ease into it?

I want you to make me feel comfortable.

Well, that's not all, that's not what this is about.

Yeah, I know.

Well, if you remember.

I think you're pretty comfortable.

You were comfortable from when you walked up to the house.

Yeah, 100%.

Yeah.

Here's the thing.

Yeah.

Should I talk?

Go over.

Yeah.

I did your show.

This is a true story.

I did the live Mark Maron at the UCB the day, the final day of the tonight show with Conan O'Brien.

I left the studio, raced over to the UCB.

For a live WTF.

To do a live WTF, and then went back to the rap party afterwards.

Uh-huh.

Well, thank you for doing that.

Well, you know what?

I did not know we were going to be losing our job at the tonight show.

I did have Mark Marin WTF live at the UCB on my calendar.

Oh, so you didn't, it wasn't like we're not coming back.

It's just the end of the season.

No, we got fired.

Okay.

Don't you remember that?

We all got fired because Jay Leno wanted his job back.

No, I get it, but I didn't realize you got fired, then you came to my house or to UCB.

Yeah, it was the final show, and then I raced over.

I did a little thing with you, and I don't know who else was on the panel.

Did you let on that you were sad and shattered?

You did a whole thing about you couldn't believe that I would leave the rap party to come and do your show.

Oh.

And you can't believe that on a day that we all lost our job that I would still show up.

Did I thank you?

It sounds like you got a lot of good memories about this day.

Well, it's not going to have the same impact on me as it is on you.

It was.

I've done 1,600 of these things, and that was like Pearl Harbor for you that day.

I'm going to tell you something to your point.

Somebody will say to me,

hey, on the show, you said blah, blah, blah, a lot.

I go, I don't remember anything that happened on the show.

I've been doing this thing 19 years.

They go, it happened Monday.

Yeah.

Like, okay.

Well, again, I've done a lot of shows.

I don't, yeah, I'm the same way.

Because I, you know, once I talk, it's out.

You're in it.

And then my producer takes the rest.

So if you're just asking me to remember a conversation conversation from 20, you know, 15 years ago, it's not going to happen.

Me neither.

So let's let's talk about the evolution.

I do have to give you a lot of credit because when we started this,

which we're now kind of wrapping up, you were already dug in.

and doing it and an inspiration and you kind of had a you set a precedent and you helped us in in kind of figuring out how we were going to approach ours.

You're really the one of the OGs of this wave of podcasting.

I am doing my best not to get emotional because that's very kind of you to say.

Thank you.

It's true.

And I will say this publicly, and I do say it publicly on my show.

There are some folks that forget that I was in early on podcasting.

And you never do.

You give me credit everywhere you go and it means the world to me.

And people, you know, you know, just like we have fans that are out in the world and they all like to report back.

Sure.

Hey, Marin was just on Smartlist.

He mentioned you.

Hey, Marin was here.

Marin was here.

And then so-and-so was just on this show.

They gave credit to Chris Hardwick.

They gave credit to so-and-so.

And like, nope.

Nope.

So you always do.

And in fairness, Chris Hardwick always gives me credit, as does Scott Auckerman.

There are some others that don't.

And they're wrong, and that's okay.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, where are those guys?

Where's Hardwick?

Are you in touch?

No.

No, I don't know.

I hope he's well.

I'm sure he's fine.

Does he host the wall still?

I don't know.

Maybe.

I think he might be up in wherever it is,

up north, swimming in the Hearst Castle.

Yeah, he's got a castle.

He splashes around while some night watches over him.

But let's talk, like, because, but when you talk about podcasting, sometimes people will go, you know, they'll say like, well, Adam Curry.

Well, I mean, I mean, yeah, but Marcoti did something too.

You know, it's what you do with the units.

But do you have any idea?

Like, I have no sense of, because even when people call me OG, I know that I was there,

after you, but at the time where the medium was starting to get a little bit of attention, but hardly any.

Barely.

Yeah.

Barely.

But a lot of people cite these other podcasts that were around before I think it was even that accessible.

You had to listen on the computer.

You did have to listen to your computer.

And there were,

if we're talking strictly comedy, Keith and the girl were doing something on the East Coast.

Well, yeah, I give them credit sometimes, but not before us.

Not as often as I should.

I give them credit because they were before us.

But Todd Glass, the brilliantly funny Todd Glass, in my opinion, said it best that, yes, there were other podcasts, but Jimmy Pardo was the first person with a name that you knew who was doing a podcast.

And I think that's a good way to say it.

And I'm very grateful that my producer and co-host of this day, Matt Belknap, came to me with the idea.

And,

you know, we didn't know what we were doing.

And to me, I was between television jobs and let's give this thing a go.

And it was a way, just like you, to express my point of view without a network telling me what to say or do.

Sure.

And,

you know, it was,

we had an audience right away.

And then people kind of then started thinking, well, what's a podcast?

And then other people started getting into podcasting, but still not knowing what it was.

Yeah.

And then it took off.

Well, how do you like, but are you still all audio?

No, no, we've been video for, we were, I think we were the first to do video.

Really?

We were one of the first to do video.

No question about that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And are you still a paywall situation?

Has that evolved?

We have a, you get a, there's a free show every week, and then there's shows behind a paywall every week week as well.

Because I remember at the beginning, that was sort of like

you were the guy that, that always had the paywall.

That was your model.

Well, here's the thing.

And one could argue it was the greatest thing that we ever did.

And one could argue it was the worst thing we ever did.

We had been doing it for two years.

And to your point from earlier, podcasting was still kind of like you'd invite somebody, hey, do you want to do my podcast?

What are we doing?

They wouldn't know.

And then they'd come and they would have a great time.

But it still wasn't catching on.

It still was questionable.

You're on an iPod, you're on a computer, how are you listening to it?

Old people had no idea.

Oh, my dad still says,

what's going on with the cast?

Yeah, where do I get that?

How do you watch it?

And so he,

we then were like, well, you know what,

and also, is this thing even going anywhere?

Is podcasting a thing?

Sure.

So we made a decision back in 2008 to, let's go behind a paywall.

Let's decide to charge money for this.

And if that fails, then we'll just quit.

And then luckily enough, a big enough audience followed with the paywall.

Yeah.

But then we're behind the paywall.

Yeah.

And then in 2009, the comedy podcast boom exploded.

Yeah.

And Jimmy Pardo, who started it all, is behind a paywall and is not being included in any press or anything.

Locked in a prison of his own making.

It really was.

So one, again, one could argue it was the greatest thing because I was able to buy a house because of it.

Yeah.

But I also then was left behind as kind of the beta tape while you guys with VHS moved forward.

And, you know, you and Auckerman and,

you know, Hardwick again and others that were very popular at that time.

Who was it?

Let's think about it.

Like Rogan?

Well, he started.

Looking before he went nuts.

Right.

Jay Moore.

Jay.

Kevin Smith.

Right.

Doug Benson.

Oh, Doug was there.

Doug was there right after we were.

So Doug's kind of one of the OGs as well.

Yeah.

Because I'm trying to sort of remember, like, you know, when we all had to communicate with each other and do each other's shows.

It was very incestuous for a while.

I don't know if it was incestuous.

I feel like it was a community thing.

I like that positive spin on it.

Well, yeah, I mean,

we didn't really know how to get other guests, but we knew that the comedy community was big enough.

I always reflect on that because when I started, it was primarily comics who I needed to apologize to or sort things out with.

But I do remember, and I don't think people realize it, that you guys were there.

So you stayed with the paid wall.

We stayed with the paywall for, I think, four to five years.

And then Earwolf, who had been courting us, Earwolf, the network Earwolf.

Once Scott scott and jeff created that yes yeah and they they had been courting us for years and then we finally were like we we have to grow we are we're doing very well yeah again i bought a house yeah we're doing very well but we're also plateauing yeah we need to do something so let's take a risk and and go to a free episode a week plus the paywall and luckily that has worked out as well and that well that then mid-roll evolved so where you were able to get advertised yeah we had advertising for the free for the free show yeah and then uh yeah subscribers for the other.

But like, so let's go back to when, so you've got your thing going.

You're the, you know, you're one of the only guys.

You got an income, you got a payroll.

And you say 2009 comedy podcast blew up.

But still, nobody was making money.

Nobody was really making money.

Well, we luckily we were.

That's right.

So that's why you held your ground.

That's why we hold our ground.

Exactly.

So, but your feeling was, you know, fuck.

Well, my feeling was fuck.

My feeling was,

oh my God, I'm getting left behind.

I was like this leader of this, and I'm getting left behind.

And admittedly, I was, I mean, your show welcomes this kind of talk.

I got a little jealous.

I got a little bitter.

Welcomes this kind of talk.

That's all I talk about.

I mean, that's the truth.

You got bitter?

I did get a little bitter.

I got a little bitter that, like, here's all these, all these,

you know, online,

you know, they're doing the best podcast of the year.

Here's the hot comedy podcast.

Here's the ones that open up the door for you.

And no one knows you're out there.

And nobody knows we're out there, except you and Ackerman and others giving me credit to the people writing the article.

But the person writing the article doesn't then do the legwork of then, like, well, hey, three people have mentioned Jimmy Pardo.

But they can't talk to Jimmy Pardo.

Right.

And they never would.

So did this.

It didn't fit their narrative.

Did this strain your life?

Was there, did it cause trouble?

Were you running around the house going, fuck, out in the yard, you know, hitting things?

That seems extreme, but in my brain, I was doing all that.

I was.

I did.

And,

but again, at the same time, how do you bitch that it's not going well when it's going well well because there's something about us that uh you know because i think we're infantile that if we're if we're if we're not getting the validation i want the pat on the head that's the truth i want the fucking pat on the head this is your pat on the head jimmy thank you i and i mean this sincerely i i've said it before i am flattered that you always mention me as an inspiration and i'm honored that while you're wrapping up your show you took you uh i'm gonna get emotional that you contacted me to be one of your final guests.

It means the world to me.

And I want you to know that.

Oh, thank you.

I thought it was,

I wanted to do it.

Well, thank you.

And

I said to my son, Oliver, who's a, who's.

How old's that kid now?

He is a freshman in high school.

I'm sorry, freshman in college.

Isn't that crazy?

He's brilliantly funny.

Yeah.

Did you tell him to stay at a show business?

It's inevitable.

He's got it.

Okay.

And you know as a comedian.

Yeah.

I'm not just saying this as his dad.

I'm saying it as a comedian.

Yeah.

When you see a guy do stand up or do any comedy.

He's doing stand-up.

He's got to get out of this.

this he's got no business he he needs to be in the business but you know who i said that about who's that jeff ross i said that about you made some mistakes

you made some errors in your time uh but yes he's very talented but i said i i found i was just on the phone with him uh seconds ago we were talking about a movie but he said what are you doing i go i'm going over to do mark merritt's podcast and he goes who's that i go i go that guy from sticks uh-huh And then he said, the band.

I go, no, the golf television.

Wow.

He's very hurtful.

My son does not care for you or your comedy.

Very hurtful.

Very hurtful.

He said, is that the guy that had Obama on his podcast?

I said, yes.

The fact that he can know sticks the band and not know me.

Why would he know sticks to band?

His dad's a classic rock idiot.

Yeah.

Like what sticks songs?

What do you mean?

He knows them all.

Like Lady.

He knows them.

And what are some of the other sticks songs?

Grand Illusion's a big hit.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

You're fooling yourself.

Which one?

You're fooling yourself and you don't believe it.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

They've got...

What are we, the same age?

How old are you?

I'm younger than you by about 15 years.

Wow.

You just stopped aging?

Is that the same as Paywell?

You decided at some point.

He's working.

I might as well stay here and then get bitter about other people looking quick.

I haven't thought about Sticks in a while.

He is.

I saw him in concert, you know.

I've seen them probably 55 times.

Come on.

Yeah, they're one of my favorite bands.

Really?

Yeah.

You're a proggy guy?

I do.

Marilla is one of my favorite bands.

I remember saw him once, and the seats weren't good.

Marilla or Styx?

No, Styx.

Yeah.

I saw Styx, and it was far away, and it was on the Grand Illusion tour.

1977.

Right.

So I was still in high school.

Yep.

Yeah.

That makes sense.

Like maybe a freshman or sophomore.

So you are a little older than me.

I'm 61.

Happy birthday.

Next month.

Or this month.

I'm going to be 62 in 10 days.

Here comes the cake.

Oh, happy birthday.

How old are you?

I am 59.

Okay.

So, yeah, we're in the same zone.

Same ballpark.

So your kid, is he getting on stage?

Yeah,

he's done stand-up

at Flappers a bunch in Burbank.

Really?

And then he's done some gigs with me down in San Diego.

Really?

And

he opens for you?

He goes up and does 10 minutes.

Did he change his name?

I told him, go up and use your first and middle name so that they don't know you're the headliner's kid.

Yeah.

And then he's like, I don't care.

Yeah.

I'm like, okay, if you don't care about it.

Well, wait till he gets big because, you know, you can start dropping the word name Pardo around.

Shake this thing loose fast.

That's right.

Shake this thing.

You're not going to have a Nepo baby situation.

Don't have this albatross around your neck, son.

You don't want that.

Start fresh.

But he's what

do you give him notes?

I do give him notes.

Yeah.

And he listens?

Yeah.

He's a better joke writer than I am.

Oh.

You know, so, but I still, I know.

He's a better joke writer, but I've always been able to help people tighten the screws on jokes.

Yeah.

And so like he'll have the, he'll do it on stage.

And I'll go, hey, you know what, work?

Let's move this here.

Let's move this here.

And what do you think about this as a callback?

Yeah.

Oh, and then he tries it and it works or it doesn't.

Yeah, sure.

And it's pretty cool.

And it's okay if he's bombing in front of his dad.

Oh, no.

No, that's stress, man.

As his dad, I'm in the back of the room.

Like, if you see another guy bomb, a comic friend.

That's the other side of using your name.

It's like distant cousin.

Just a coincidence.

Carter's very comic show visits today.

But he's doing great.

And I

just started freshman year down at Chapman University.

You got another one, too, right?

No, no, just him.

Just him.

Yeah.

So we're empty nesters, Danielle and I.

Huh?

We're empty nesters.

How's that going?

Oh, sad and depressing.

Is it?

Oh, it's horrible.

Yeah.

Why?

Because you're getting to know her a little bit?

Well, she's getting to know me.

She doesn't care for me.

You know, when you only have

an only child and he is so aligned comedically with the two of us, and we go to the movie, we like the same movies.

We like this.

And so we would move together as this unit.

And then he leaves.

And it's only been a month.

The house is lonely.

It's empty.

I bet.

I feel like the last time we ever had a conversation was you needed a handyman.

Oh, you thought our buddy Ernie?

Ernie.

Yeah.

Ernie was in the wind the last time we talked.

In the wind?

Yeah, because we couldn't locate Ernie.

And so I'd like to say that Ernie's of the wind.

Did he do some, he did some work.

Ernie's done, he's done great work over the years for me.

Yeah.

And that was a long time ago.

I have not seen him.

He and I went to, coincidentally, went to see the Cars in concerts.

You and Ernie.

And nobody was more angry at how bad that show was than Ernie.

Oh, really?

Ernie's favorite band of all time was The Cars.

Yeah.

He had never seen them live.

Yeah.

Couldn't believe that they reunited so he could see them.

Well, how much was left?

Was it just Elliott Easton?

It was everybody but Benjamin Orr.

It was Elliot Eddie.

Oh, Kasich was still alive.

Yeah.

Okay.

And the show was absolutely atrocious.

It was really boring.

Was it outside?

It was at the palladium.

Okay.

And Ernie, the next day, was like, you know, back to work on my house.

Livid.

And he's like, that thing was, that was, that was a waste of my money.

I ruined my memories of that band.

And he wasn't wrong.

Wow.

That's something, to ruin your memories of a band.

Yeah, that's how bad they were.

Well, I've never really thought of that approach to my criticism of boomer rock in the sense that, like, I don't go see a lot of it because I think that that's a possibility.

Like, I see footage of ACDC right now, and I'm like, yeah, it's a hard pass on that.

I saw them on their Black Train tour, ACDC, and I think I saw them at their last great tour.

Yeah.

And I don't need to see them again because of that.

That'll actually alter your good feelings.

It will.

About the band.

Yes.

I don't want to leave there going,

yeah, too, they went on too long.

I'm in a fight with that right now with the band Chicago.

You know, that's my favorite band of all.

How many are left of them?

One.

Well, you can't, like, for me, it's sort of like

there would never be a time I could see Chicago where they would have been as good as they were with Terry Cash.

Well, they were great.

They were great in the 80s and 90s.

I'm not going to dismiss that ever.

Okay, all right.

Because of the horns.

I've seen them, this is no lie, 112 times.

I just saw them last Friday for the 112th time.

And it's the first time that I left going, I don't think I can keep doing this because I don't want to remember them this way.

Yeah.

They're great.

They're a bunch of session musicians doing those great songs, which I love.

Sure.

But the magic of me going there like I did in 1981 when I saw them for the first time and got chills.

Right.

And then I had chills for 30 years seeing them.

Yeah.

And to your point, I walked out going, those songs still bring me joy.

I'm glad I went.

But that might be it.

No chills.

No chills.

No chills.

No chills.

So you really go see a lot of music.

I love it.

I don't do that.

It's my hobby.

I went to, like, I saw the flaming lips.

For me, it's like, it's got to be, I got to be set up.

I got to have a good seat.

Right.

I got to leave

when they go off stage the first time.

Yeah.

I don't want to battle traffic.

And, you know, I'm good for having a good time for about 45 minutes.

Then you're out.

Well, then I'm sort of like, all right.

You got it.

Yeah, I got it.

You're a little hipper than me, though.

No, that's not true.

It's not hipness.

It's really just anxiety.

Well, that part of it is anxiety.

And I don't disagree with that anxiety.

As far as the bands, I see really nothing but bands that will stop in the next five years and that I will have no shows to go to.

Right.

With the exception of Dawes, who I adore.

You're like a Dawes guy.

Oh, wow.

I got to get into that.

They are the Taylor Goldsmith is maybe one of the greatest songwriters of all time.

Their amp guy helped me fix that amp down there.

Is that right?

Yeah, it had nothing to do with Dawes, but the guy who fixed my amp fixes theirs.

Well, yeah, that's something.

Something is that the only new band you like?

I'm not.

I try.

I do love Taylor Swift.

You can't deny that she's a great singer-songwriter.

Sure, sure.

So I enjoy her and Dawes.

And otherwise,

not in the loop.

I'm a classic rock guy.

I find that I, when I

sound.

Sure.

Yeah, I guess so.

Were you a Toto guy?

You know what?

Here's the thing.

I like them on record, but live, they're just okay to me.

So I don't need to see Toto live.

I've seen them a bunch in my life, but they were just here at the forum and I did not go because I've seen them.

It's so weird.

Super Tramp.

I like them the same as ELO, where, like, like,

you know what?

These 10 songs are great, but okay.

Right.

But

you give other like, you know, eight-song bands a pass if you like them.

Yeah.

I mean, 10 songs is a lot of songs.

It's a lot of songs.

Foreigner.

Forwarder, I joke with my son, that's his favorite band.

It is not.

Stop it.

But we've seen them a bunch.

Yeah.

I've dragged him to see Forrester a bunch.

I love them.

And what are you getting out of that?

Hot-blooded?

You get hot-blooded.

You get cold as ice.

Feels like the first time.

Oh, it feels like the first time, yeah.

Those are great songs, dude.

Head games?

Head games.

They're great.

I have no shame in liking classroom.

For years, I hit it.

I'm not laughing at you.

I know, you're not.

I feel like you are.

No, because when I was during that era in high school, so you graduated in what, 83?

84.

84.

I graduated in 81.

So you were in junior high, which is a better time for all this shit to be happening.

But when I was in high school, you know, Foreigner was huge.

Van Halen 1 happened.

Yeah.

You know,

there was still a lot of Bob Seeger around for some reason.

Bob's a good singer-songwriter.

Great.

No, I got no problem.

You were on the East Coast, right?

Nope, New Mexico.

Oh, I thought you were East Coast.

So sad.

Because Sammy Hagar is huge on the side.

I saw Sammy Hagar in concert.

You loved him.

I saw him do that first tour, Red, for the album Red.

That's a good song.

Yeah.

And then he does that Montrose song, The Bad Motor Scooter.

Dude, that sits on that block with the lap steel.

Uh-huh.

Remember?

Great song.

Sure.

And Rock Candy is a great song.

Yeah, look, I witnessed it all.

Yeah.

But I sometimes feel like it was, you know, I was attacked by it every day.

And that, you know,

I know all the songs.

I don't know that I bought the records, but certainly you couldn't avoid the songs.

Right.

So I feel like

it was almost like I was,

what do you call it?

What do you?

Inundated.

Inundated, but

assaulted?

Assaulted, but what's the one where

you convince someone they're crazy?

Brainwash?

No, no.

Because it does.

It happens in relationships.

Gaslight.

I believe I was gaslighted.

You were gaslit by Classic Rock?

A little bit.

You would think you were classic rock gaslit you.

Sure, a little bit.

I don't know how that's possible, but I hear what you're saying.

By the way, can we turn my headphones up just a tad?

Yeah, sure.

I'm having trouble hearing.

How's that?

Is that better?

Can I tell you something about old man?

Yeah.

Is that good?

Yeah, it's perfect.

Okay.

Two years ago, I'm sitting on the couch.

My wife and son and I were watching television.

And I get for years, because I've listened to rock music, I would get tinnitus every now and then with that little whistle, yeah, and it would whistle and go away.

Yeah, and so when people say they suffer from tinnitus, I'd be like, So who cares about that?

Yeah, everyone gets it, it comes and goes.

Sure, so I'm on the couch, and the whistle comes, and the whistle doesn't leave.

And then I say, Hey, did you guys just turn the sound of the TV off?

And they went, No.

I went deaf for about five minutes, really.

And then I, the next day, I was rushed, and they gave me an injection into my ear, and they saved my hearing.

Uh, so yes, my hearing is not as good as it was two years ago.

Well, what the fuck was it?

What do you mean they gave you an injection in your ear?

Four injections of steroids into my ear.

Oh, closed up on you.

No,

old man he, losing hearing.

I never had tinnitus, but I had some, like, there was a period there where my left ear sounded like a busted speaker.

Yes.

It would go,

you know, like it would, it would rattle.

And so what do they do to solve that?

There was nothing to do.

I went to the ear doctor and he's like, I don't see anything wrong with it.

And then eventually, you know, if you're lucky, almost, I would say 50% of the stuff that this happens, if you give it a little time, it'll go away.

Yeah, but I was so afraid that I'm like, where do you live with it?

I thought I was deaf.

So I think these earphones have a vacuum to them.

I think there's something about

a little bit.

Is that possible?

I don't know.

You know, I would talk to him about your ear and hear me out.

Okay.

The amp guy from Dawes.

This guy's all about the sound system.

But the old man thing, I had a little bout with it last night.

What happened, brother?

I was at Largo.

Joe Mandy

had me come down to Joe Mandy's show.

Yeah.

And I get there at eight, and they're like, you're closing.

And it's Joe and three other acts.

So I'm waiting around.

And a couple of old man things happened.

Uh-huh.

Is that I napped.

You napped while the other comics were on.

Yeah,

right backstage.

Like not even in the dressing room on that couch backstage at Largo.

So they could look over to the left and see the international podcaster Star of Sticks.

Yeah, yeah, napping.

Napping.

And I think James Austin Johnson, he apparently told Flanny that, you know, should we check on him?

Should we poke him?

But I took a nap, but then when I was in and out of consciousness, I just heard these younger comics killing.

Yeah.

And I got nothing right now because I just did a special.

And now I'm closing.

And all that fucking insecurity came on me.

Well, yeah.

You remember when you were doing open mics and you'd get the last slot on an open mic and you've already watched most of the audience go?

Yes.

And then the host comes out and goes, You guys okay for one more guy?

We got one more guy.

Yeah.

I have one more guy.

I had that.

You had that energy, or you had that in your head picking up?

I had the head in my hair, in my head.

It's like, you guys, don't leave yet.

We got one more guy.

Yeah.

That energy.

You felt that they had already seen enough show, and now here's the guy from Glow.

That's

the stand-up comic who just did an HBO special.

Yeah, same guy.

So

I let two of them in.

I mean, I took two of your shots.

They're not.

You must know this.

And we talk about it on my award-winning podcast, Never Not Funny.

You're terrific.

You know that how many shows?

19 years.

You are on both Glow.

You are phenomenal on Glow.

You brought me to tears on Glow.

No, thanks.

That's the truth.

I'm not saying that because you're in front of me.

I said it on the program.

Thank you.

And then Sticks,

that's an unwatchable show.

But you're fantastic.

Oh, thank you.

A lot of people like it.

Yeah, they're not watching it properly.

By the way, are you a golf guy?

I am.

I had a golf lesson today.

Really?

Yeah.

I used to be on a a golf team in high school.

That's how good I was.

And I've lost my, I've lost it.

How much have you lost?

All of it?

All of it.

To where this guy is like, you're not doing bad for a guy who's starting.

I'm like, not starting.

I've been to play it for four years.

Where do you golf?

Whoever anybody invites me.

Really?

Yeah.

I'm not good anymore.

I, well, back to what I was saying.

What is your larger?

Well, I realized that, you know, all of my jokes, you know, if you look at your jokes, like, you know, I haven't checked in with you in a long time.

Yeah.

But over the course of my last few specials, you know, which I think got better and better, I think I'm the best, I did the best one I could do.

And, but like, I realized that like I'm talking about the same things.

So it's all from my point of view.

And I'm talking about, you know, the same themes.

And there comes to a point where it's like, dude, I think the well is dry.

You better start looking outside yourself.

You know, but like, I'm like you.

I mean, I'm not classic rock guy specifically, but I feel a little out of the loop.

You know, I can comment broadly on things, but most of the stuff that I do

comes from inside of me because I thought that was the only way I could do it where no one could take it and I wouldn't be competing with anybody.

Well, listen, I'm going to say this

as your friend.

We don't see each other often enough, but I would consider you a friend.

I say this as your friend and a fan of your comedy.

Get out of your head because you're doing great work.

But that's where it all comes from.

Of course.

Of course.

But you're worried about that you're repeating yourself, that you're doing the same themes and stuff.

No, you're doing great.

great work.

The specials are terrific.

Well, thank you.

I did not expect to come here and kiss your ass like this.

I didn't care for it.

Yeah.

It's uncomfortable for me, too.

What was the clip that was going around recently?

With Theo Vaughn, Hitler and Theo Vaughn?

Dude, in 45 seconds, just perfection.

Just perfection.

Thank you.

Well, that makes me feel better.

I guess I'll keep doing it.

No, you're supposed to be quitting.

Get out of my way.

This is your time, Jimmy.

It's not my time.

It's Jason Bateman's time.

Is it?

It's a good thing the movie stars are doing it.

But you know what's weird is that like the one benefit of algorithm-driven entertainment is none of us really know how anyone's doing.

I mean, you know, they may get a lot of attention.

They're filling the Hollywood Bowl.

I think they're doing okay.

But that's because they're celebrities.

They filled the Hollywood Bowl?

Well, yeah, they're coming up to the Hollywood Bowl.

I don't know if they filled it.

It hasn't happened yet.

There could be six people sitting there.

Who goes to those shows?

Could you imagine sitting at the very last row of the Hollywood Bowl with the best?

I can't imagine sitting for any podcast.

I mean, I used to do a live podcast, and I didn't know why they were there.

They're there.

They're excited because you're in their ears twice a week or once a week.

And they want to see it happen in real time.

Yeah.

Although, can we agree on this?

The live shows are never the same as what they enjoy that we do in the studio.

But I think, to speak to your point, they like seeing us.

I think so.

Yeah.

I mean, I shouldn't begrudge the audience.

But I used to think that, too.

It's like, who would go to comedy?

So how does your set go at Largo?

It probably went fine.

It was fine, but like, I...

And I realize this is part of the process for me is that when I dump the hour, which I do,

once it airs, once it's out there, everyone can see it, I start pretty much new.

And I think I forget what that feels like.

It's a very vulnerable, kind of frightening, draining feeling to just go up for 15 minutes and go, like, I got to do all new.

Can I ask you a question?

Why do you think you have to do all new?

Because, like, for instance, let's use your Theo von Hitler as an example.

If I'm coming to see, oh, good, Mark Maron's hair.

Maybe he'll do the Theo von Bit.

Maybe he'll do the Theo von bit.

And I would be excited to hear it.

So why do you think you've got to discard that material?

I mean, you and I have been doing this a long time.

Yeah.

And

I hear you.

I like to keep my show fresh.

And I do that by not writing any jokes and just doing just improvising my hour every night.

Crowd work?

It's all crowd work, but not in the Matt Rife shitty kind of way.

I'm doing it in the way that it's supposed to be done.

Which is how.

Cleverly.

You know, not I want to fuck your aunt.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

So

I don't know that kid.

He seems like a nice kid.

I don't know.

He's mad at me constantly because

I guess I poke at him.

Yeah, because he's got a chiseled jaw.

Get out of comedy.

Yeah, yeah.

That's like, I remember one time I was walking

years ago before I had any TV.

I was in New York.

It's probably the late 80s.

And, you know, I'm wandering around the East Village with CK, you know.

And he was, you know, he was hadn't,

I don't think he had done his first Letterman yet.

And he was all worked up about Jay Moore because Jay Moore came in from Jersey.

He was like 17 years old.

And he was a cute kid, you know, and he's real charming.

You know, Jay back in, I don't know if you knew him back then, but Louis was like, it's not for him.

It's not for the attractive guys.

It's not,

it's for us.

And part of me was like, what do you mean, us?

I'm going to be us.

I'm kind of a good-looking guy.

Yeah, I look all right.

Trying to get by like anybody else.

That's hysterical.

You know, I used to say that about back in the day, I used to, it used to infuriate me, was like Gary Goldman would get on stage and he would talk about how he had a tough time in high school.

Like, tough time, you're tall and gorgeous.

Yeah.

And then he's become one of the best end-up comics of all time, in my opinion.

Gary Goldman.

And watching that transition of going, oh, I misjudged him.

I did judge a book by its cover.

Sure.

By this tall, good-looking guy with a gorgeous head of hair.

Well, he can't possibly, it's not for him.

Go be your model.

Yeah.

And let me 5'4 nerd get the last.

Yeah, well, you were wrong about that guy.

Oh, my God.

Yeah.

So I'm wrong about a lot of people.

Yeah.

I think that's good.

I mean, like, I'm right about a lot, too.

In all honesty, I don't,

when I criticize, and I think we can talk about this with podcasting too,

you know, when I criticize other comics for there, it's not coming out of some personal

resentment

at this time.

It's coming out of, you know, what does it do to our field?

Dude, can I jump in right here?

Yeah.

That is how I feel.

So when you ask me about am I doing an hour of crowd work?

Yeah.

What does it do to our field?

Yeah.

I am currently furious

at everybody putting clips of, here's my crowd work from this set.

Here's my crowd work from this set.

Hey, I've got to work on my crowd work.

No, do what you do.

Yeah.

This is what I do.

This is what made me and Todd Berry special.

We would go out, and Todd Berry, by the way, who is one of the best joke writers of all time, but also is a great crowd work.

There's guys that are great at crowd work.

Rick Ingram.

I don't know Rick, but I'll take your word for it.

He's a comedy story guy.

Crowd work guy.

Old school.

It's what we do.

Well, I mean, I'm 59, aren't I?

No, no, I'm talking about Rick.

He's younger, but he does it in a way where it's kind of smart.

and

so the part of way.

I guess that's my point.

What is it doing to our craft?

And so I get for, in fact, I was just at the at the mic drop in Chandler, Arizona over the weekend on Sunday night.

And the management.

Braggart.

Come on.

Sunday.

6 p.m.

show.

I'm doing a matinee.

Don't know how much I'm bragging, but they were a great crowd, and I was grateful that they showed up.

But the management was very kind afterwards.

And to your point from earlier, we still need to hear this.

They were like, you know, so many guys are doing crowd work, not like what I just saw.

Right.

And it means the world to me that they that at least they can see the difference of, oh, this guy's doing it interestingly.

Yeah.

Everybody else is doing it because that seems to be the easy way to get laughs nowadays.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I just find it lazy and I don't find it funny.

And so I don't like what it's doing to our craft right now.

So when people go, oh, Pardo's a crowd work guy, not like those other people.

Yeah.

And also just chasing the likes, and the job of

getting clips up and everything else.

You know, look, I work improvisationally.

I don't do a lot of crowd work unless I feel embarrassed in a moment.

Is that true?

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, I know how to do it, but I'm usually, you know, it can get pretty spiteful pretty quickly.

Okay.

And I'll, you know, I'll talk to the people and sometimes, but usually it's when, you know, an audience member has gotten the best of me or I fuck something up.

Like last night I was on stage at Largo and I wasn't paying attention because I was like locked into the bit and I was moving around and the stool, I knocked into the stool and it fell over.

And somehow or another, the mic cord had gotten tangled in one of the rungs on the stool and I couldn't figure out why.

How does it get in there?

And then I picked up the stool and I was like, how did this happen?

Then I said, I'm closing with magic.

Right, but very happy about that.

Of course you were.

Are you kidding me?

If that were me, I would figure out a way to be like, how do I wrap the cord around the stool every night?

Yeah, yeah.

That's my new closer.

That's the big closer.

How do I, while they're not, while I'm over here talking, how do I wrap it around the leg?

What happened to all the the guys, man?

What do you mean?

Are you starting to feel like, you know, there are guys in our generation where it's like, I don't know what happened to that guy?

I mean, we're talking about Jimmy Dore, but he's still at it.

Do you mean that they've gone nuts?

Well, no, there's that, but just sort of disappeared.

Do you know anybody?

You know,

you and I talked about this a little bit before we got on the air.

Yeah.

I'm so locked into Never Not Funny and booking that show and doing that show that I and I don't do a lot of stand-up around town.

Yeah.

So I don't know the young people.

Sure.

And I also don't have a chance to run into households.

I think that's a lot of young people.

Thousands of young people.

But weren't we, weren't we one of the thousands when we were young?

Yeah, I told you, I just, I felt old because of these young guns.

I do too.

When I go on a show like that, and it's like, I feel like, what have I, I have nothing to offer.

But then I realize, like you probably realized, but I'm also really fucking good at this.

Yeah.

And so I'm going to bring them.

I'm going to do something they didn't.

Yes, they just saw four great comedians, but now they're going to see me.

That's nice.

And then I get in my car and go, that was a disappointment.

I think I let them down.

Yeah, yeah.

I drive home and Danielle's like, how'd it go?

I don't know.

Sometimes I just can't, and I think I must do it to myself on purpose.

Sometimes I just cannot detach from the bad set.

Like, you know, it won't last a long time.

When's the last time you had a bad set?

A bad one?

Yeah, let's talk about it.

A tanker.

A tanker.

It's got to be 20 years.

No, no, I had one.

There's only one that I really remember.

But how recent?

It was probably three or four years ago.

I was in New York and I hadn't been in New York in a long time.

And I did a spot at the comedy cellar but the not that not the the old room but around the corner and I didn't have my New York dukes up and I went on after soder and it was just real flat it wasn't silence but it was flat enough for me to feel that sweat on the back of my neck yeah because like I'm you know I have the

the the kind of physical ability to pretend like I'm not bombing, but the inside doesn't lie.

Yeah.

Oh, I know.

Felt that sweat.

So that's a bad feeling.

That is a a horrible feeling.

Yeah.

And last night I was sort of like setting myself up to fail, but I couldn't do it.

I don't see you failing.

Oh, I appreciate it.

I see them getting excited to see you.

And even your story about being at the seller confuses me.

Yeah.

Well, it was.

I think you're a guy.

I don't know why I'm doing this today.

All this boosting your ego business.

I'm a little fragile.

This was just last night.

Well, you seem to me like a guy who

is a fail-safe.

Yeah.

Like, oh, we got, you know, Marin's coming up.

No matter what.

Even if the guy kills, oh, good, Marin's next.

He's going to kill too.

Or if the guy before you goes, oh, yeah, he struggled.

Well, good, here's Marin.

Bring it back.

Well, right now, I'll tell you, there's some Marin within me that's saying, don't listen to this guy.

Oh.

You've got to fucking work harder.

You stink.

Well, that guy's not wrong either.

Yeah.

I'm kidding.

So let's talk about

what's happened with podcasting.

Like, how many...

Well, okay, so if we can identify comics that have disappeared, how many sort of dead, abandoned podcasts are there out there?

There are a gazillion of those.

But there's also tens of thousands of podcasts happening.

But think about when you and I first exploded and then every comic, it was almost like when Dane Cook, remember when Dane Cook did MySpace?

MySpace, yeah.

And every comic went, well, I got to go to MySpace.

Sure.

That's the secret to being successful.

And then you had to figure out how to get followers on MySpace.

And then you had to call a certain guy to like, you know, can you give me those?

Can you,

remember?

I do.

You know who I'm talking about?

About getting followers for you?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Did I do that for a while?

I did it for one month and I felt so badly.

Because they were all like, you know, these weird, most of them were from Thailand, I think.

And who don't know what it was?

Oh, good.

You've got all those, but you know, in your brain, you know it's phony.

No, I knew it was phony, but I knew that other people were doing it and I didn't know how it really worked.

And now you have, you know, bots and everything.

And I didn't know what it meant, but you just want that number to be a little, they weren't going to help you fan-wise.

No, no, but you wanted that number in case somebody from the quote-unquote industry would go.

Oh, was you Mark Mirror?

I don't know.

He's only got this many followers.

And MySpace didn't even work like that.

It was just an ego thing.

Yes.

Like, how do you even, I didn't even really commit to MySpace, but there was a time there where we had to do it.

Oh, yeah.

And it wasn't easy to get shit up there.

But, you know, Dane kind of fucked us all up.

He was the guy that, you know, that started this cancer of interacting with technology in a compulsive way to where like, I don't do it anymore.

Like, I have somebody.

post my clips, but these younger comics, you know, God bless them, I guess.

But the game is so different that they spend all their time, you know, editing clips

and trying to get that up there

for these one-minute long things.

But again,

they're working a different landscape than you and I did when we started.

We used to have to send VHS tapes out to get bookings.

They now can go, here's my one-minute clip of, you know, that has one million views.

Please book me.

And then they have 12 minutes and they suck.

Kravitz, you know Steve Kravitz?

I know that, yeah, yeah, yeah.

He's an older comic guy now, a little older than me.

But I remember just a couple of years ago, he came out of the fog at the comedy store.

I'm like, what's going on, Kravitz?

How's it going?

This is like, I would say maybe four or five years ago.

He goes, I don't know what's going on.

I don't even know where to send my tape.

I'm like, back to 1992.

Set it, boy.

Yeah, send it back there.

See if they can figure it out how to plug in the machine.

But your point of podcasting is

what I was going to say about MySpace and comparing it to that was here's Pardo and Auckerman and Marin and Paul of Tompkins having it at the time and other folks.

And then people are like, oh, I got to get a podcast.

That's the next step.

And then it's like, and then it didn't happen.

So to your point, then there's all these abandoned podcasts because they didn't explode like we did.

Well, they're because, well, there was no way to make money.

Or to get an audience if nobody knows who you are.

Yeah.

Just because you have one doesn't mean people are going to listen to it.

I know.

And that still happens.

Yeah.

People ask me now.

It's like I'm going to start a podcast, but I don't do, I don't even do video.

So like I'm

analog.

But

they said, do you have any pointers?

I'm like, don't, don't expect much.

Yeah.

I mean,

my advice is always have it, have a niche topic.

Yeah.

You know, because we've covered the white guys sitting around riffing.

Have a niche topic.

That's what people want now.

I guess so.

Because there's already enough of us riffing.

Yeah, just like yammering white guys.

Yeah.

And I'm one of them.

Yeah.

And I'm very grateful that people care.

So

have you held your audience?

Yeah.

We lost a lot in 2016.

We lost a lot in 2016 when I decided to stop worrying about offending people politically.

Yeah.

And I just went, I don't, this count, this is, this guy's an asshole.

We're fucked with this guy in charge.

How you Morons did not vote for Hillary is beyond me.

And

you think that you're being clever, but let's blow it all up.

No.

Yeah.

And I just, and then people were like, you're losing half your audience.

See you later.

Really?

I don't care.

Yeah.

You know, take the others with you.

Yeah.

Go.

And you still feel good about that now?

I do.

Yeah.

I feel good about it.

And we still get, I still get hate letters every now and then because of it.

Like, hey, hey, you know what?

You're pissing people off with what you said about this or or what you said.

Good.

Someone's got, we're doing a lot of talking.

We have to talk about something sometimes.

And I'm also talking about my life.

You've come to the Jimmy Pardo show, and I'm talking about my life, and this is what my life is right now.

Yeah.

And I'm supposed to ignore it and just be a frightened and angry.

100%.

Aren't you?

How can we not be frightened and angry right now?

We're living in weird times.

And yes, you come to a podcast like My Stupid Show, which does have a lot of silliness, a lot of classic rock, a lot of 80s references, and we, we have fun, yeah.

But at the same time, if something happens in the news, I'm not going to ignore it.

Sure.

And then, hey, I come to your show to get away from it.

Yeah.

Well, then don't.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I'm going to find another show to get away from.

I'm not a vacation.

Right.

Yeah.

So we did lose a lot in 2016.

I mean, and a lot.

Wow.

But

I don't feel badly about it.

Yeah.

And

look, as a guy who's, you know,

stopping his podcast,

I mean, like

now,

like, how do you,

how do you feel about, you know, do you ever feel like, I think it's

worn out?

You know what?

Obviously, there's days where I think like, what are we doing?

But then an hour later, I'll go, you know what?

I go there.

I never, I never don't, I never feel like, oh, I got to go do it.

I got to go to work.

Yeah.

I hate to drive.

I have to drive an hour to my studio and it's infuriating.

No, you don't.

I do.

Why'd you let that happen?

Where the fuck is your studio?

It's in Sherman Oaks.

And we...

Where are you?

I'm down in Baldwin Hills, near Culver City.

Wow.

And so

we opened, we did our studio there because, again, at the time I was working for Conan.

Yeah.

And so I would, and that was in the valley.

Yeah.

So I would go do the podcast and then go to Conan.

It was like, oh, this is very convenient.

And also, the other cast members all live down in that area.

My co-host and my video guy and our intern of 14 years.

You're paying them, though.

Is it a living wage?

No, we do pay him.

Yes, of course.

So that's why.

That's why the studio is there.

But I don't like the drive, but I'd never say, oh, I got to go to work.

I look forward to going because it's

this.

Yeah, and you lock in.

And you have to go in.

You get into the manic zone.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I haven't joined the guest list shows more often.

How have you been doing with guests?

We're fine.

Yeah.

I mean, we don't book famous people as much as we used to because, you know, everyone's got a podcast.

You know, you can't compete with Conan O'Brien to Smartlist.

They're going to get the famous people.

Yeah.

And, but I don't, I want, I just want funny people.

Yeah.

I want interesting people.

Yeah.

And then if we can't get that, we'll do a show with just the cast and people seem to enjoy those too.

Sure.

And a lot of people like don't like Todd Glass, Paul F.

Tompkins, you know, Scott Ark, you know, the people that have been doing the show literally since it was at my dining room table.

How's Ackerman?

You know, Scott Scott.

He's great.

I enjoy.

I love him to death when he shows up.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, the dining room table.

I remember in my old garage, I had this table and just my MacBook and one of these mics, you know, in a

on a stump, a little stand.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Just sitting there.

And it wasn't even put together.

It was just a real garage, just garbage.

Yeah.

Just stuff that didn't fit in the house.

And that's what you brought the president into.

No, by that time, it was a thing.

It was a place.

I had the mic booms.

You set it up.

And there was, you know, everything was, you know, it was a very unique garage.

Right.

You were in that garage.

I was in that garage.

But like, why, why are you not exhausted by it all?

And I am.

I don't have sitcoms like you.

Oh, right.

That might play into it.

Yeah.

You know,

I still, A, I still enjoy doing it.

Yeah.

And it's my outlet to be funny.

It's my outlet to be creative.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I feel that too.

So it's that.

Yeah.

I just, I feel like, you know, there's when I do these interviews and I talk about, you know, what podcasts has become, it's so weird to me that

And I didn't get into it specifically for money.

I didn't believe that there was money to be made.

I needed to keep working

and doing something creative.

And then, like you said, there was a period there where it got popular, but it still was not any guarantee of making a living, but it was on the radar.

But it took like a decade before people were like, I know what a podcast is.

Do you remember when you and me and Aisha Tyler were on the cover of Billboard Magazine?

Yeah.

And the podcast boom, and people still didn't know what a podcast was.

But we were on the cover of Billboard Magazine.

Yeah, they were pushing it.

Right.

But it still didn't quite take.

Yeah.

And then, like, I don't know how involved you were with that patent troll.

Yeah, we were part of that.

Yeah.

Why no?

Cause I was at Belknap because he had started, he was starting a thing.

What was it?

It had a number in it, the platform.

Oh, my God.

Art 19.

Yeah, Art19.

Yeah.

And like, in, like, I don't, I wish somebody, to me, that, that, that movie about the patent troll thing is equally as exciting as Apollo 13.

That

if we could just get people to play that core group of podcasters that were, you know, written this letter, that we were using a patent in our technology that none of us had any knowledge of.

Right.

And it was a shakedown.

We need you to cough up some money or we're going to shut you down.

That it was like, it was crazy.

But there was there.

Thank God the guy was just a patent troll and was looking for a quick payout because, and thank God for the IFF, they took on the case pro bono and were able to sort of kill the troll.

But if he decided he wanted to go a more legit route and have his, and license the technology, everybody would be paying up.

Yeah.

Everyone who fucking did anything on these mics.

Well, luckily, I mean, his mistake was he didn't wait 10 more years.

Could you imagine if he would have sat on that thing and then done it?

But like we were in a panic about it.

Yes.

And you know, Belknap, I was like, when he was starting that new thing, I was like, can you guarantee us protection?

And, you know, he was in the sights too.

But I don't think that people really know that story.

And that

was what made me feel like we were talking talking about earlier, that at the beginning of the comedy podcast, more so than Incestuous, and the fact that we were doing each other's shows, it really felt like a community.

100%.

I agree with that.

And, you know, we were all certainly in that.

We were all in that together.

Totally.

And we had to be.

We had to have each other's backs.

That's right.

And it was like kind of an amazing time.

Yeah.

You know, because I remember like when that patent troll thing came down, we all ended up over at Corolla's compound to have a sit-down.

Yeah.

Like the five families.

You know, it was like me and Jay and

someone from Nerdist and Corolla, Kevin Smith's people were there.

Like, what are we going to do about this?

And we had to hire,

we thought about hiring a guy because the lawsuit would have cost a fortune to defend it, to break the patent.

And I think Corolla just paid up.

And

the thing that was so shallow about it is this patent troll who had decided that this

technological patent that he owned applied to

podcasts, just saw a list of the top five podcasts at that time and assumed they're making millions of dollars.

None of us were making any fucking money except for Corolla.

Yeah.

And I don't know what the other ones did, but to me, it was a heroic kind of coming together of the community.

And I don't know at what point, because I remember there were times where, you know, we'd be like, oh, fuck, you know, Nerdis got that guest first and there was a competition there.

Like it was really

an exciting time.

And we were at the cusp of new media.

And now, like, who gives a fuck?

Well, that is certainly out there.

What do you mean?

Who gives a fuck?

No, I know.

I'm just saying because everyone has one.

That there's no, there was, once it becomes a business, once

it becomes networks, once people are selling their networks, you know, once it goes, you know, video, that, you know, it's sort of just part of show business now.

But at that time, it was the fucking Wild West.

I was doing advertising for sex toys

and coffee and Audible.

And that was all you could get.

And you were grateful to get it.

Sure.

And the occasional, like, you know, old school terrestrial ads, like, you know, Sherry's Berries and 1-800 Flowers, you know, and now it's Squarespace and Simply Say, fine.

But it did feel like, I remember there was a time where I'm like, I don't want to do ads because that would ruin the integrity of the show.

Okay.

And then how long did that last?

Well, we did need to make money.

But

what we chose to do in relation to you, because the conversation was, you know, if you do create a paywall, like you said, you're cutting off new audience, is that we created a pay site for the live shows.

That's why we did live shows is people would buy those, and then we had a donation sort of

thing going where, you know, you'd give different tiers of donations for a monthly thing, you know, five bucks, ten bucks.

If someone gave a big chunk of money, they'd get t-shirts and whatever.

And my whole house was filled with boxes of t-shirts.

Right.

But that's how we made our nut at the beginning, enough to get by.

And then, like, look at us now, just fucking corporate whores, a lot of us.

Well, obviously, you're not a part of a network.

No, it never was.

Nor am I.

We were with Airwolf for five years.

And otherwise, we were never part of a network.

Yeah.

And we didn't want to be.

And again, for good or bad, one could argue for the bad, you know, that

maybe we should have been part of something.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And gotten that corporate push.

But

I don't think podcasting is ever supposed to be a corporate thing.

And so once you're starting to get notes and stuff, like you're doing a TV show for NBC, that's not podcasting to me.

Yeah, or else you're dropping in pre-record ads.

Man, I think we do do that.

You do?

I think we do the yeah, I think there's pre-record sometimes.

Yeah, I never do that.

We do the host read, and then, yeah, there's yeah, there's, yeah, there's pre-recorded.

And we're pretty picky about our ads.

We're not complete corporate stooges.

You know, we definitely, and I don't think that's the right word.

You know, you got to do advertising to make your money.

Yeah, but you know what?

We're pretty picky about it.

We only do live reads.

We're picky in the sense that we won't do anything that we won't actually use.

Yeah.

You know, I don't want to be selling something where it's clear, like, you you know,

I don't drink, so it'd be very disingenuous for me to talk about

Budweiser.

So we don't do it.

I remember there was a point there where Mangrate, you remember Mangrate?

Sure.

Cook your steak on the ground on your engine.

They kept pushing at us, you know, because Corolla was selling a lot of man grates and they kept pushing at us.

You got to do it.

And we're like, it's not our audience.

And they're like, you got to do it.

And we did it and they sold nothing.

Yeah, because it's not your audience.

That's right.

And they were like, we made a mistake.

And we just said, don't worry about it.

Yeah, fuck off.

Yeah.

I don't think I ever sold squatty potties.

You?

Did we do the squatty potty?

Is that the little thing where you put your feet up on?

Yeah, yeah.

No, no.

We never got the squatty potty.

I was kind of upset that we didn't get squatty potty.

I want a squatty potty.

Yeah, I mean, I got a squatty potty, but I think I paid for it like everyone else.

Out of pocket.

Yeah, out of pocket for the squatty potty.

I did get a free one from what was the tushy.

Uh-huh.

Remember Tushi,

the adapter for the bidet that you put in.

Make your toilet into a bidet.

I don't know about tushy.

Yeah, it was tushy.com.

Make your toilet,

just put this thing in there, and then you've got a bidet.

Then they had their own squatty potty.

Squatty potty.

You had a knockoff.

You had a tushy, not a squatty putty.

I had that, but the problem was our toilet was already low to the ground.

Yeah.

So it was.

Your knees were up around your ears.

My knees were a little too high.

A little too high.

And I remember getting those, you know, the sample boxes of Sherry's berries and just wondering, like, are these good?

I mean, they look nice.

Who doesn't like berries?

I know.

You still do them?

Sherry's berries?

Listen, use promo code Pardo, get 20% off.

No, we do not do Cherry's Berries.

There are some over the years where it's like,

okay,

it's good, but is it as great as I'm saying?

I was grateful they stopped advertising.

Sure, sure.

Yeah.

1-800 flowers.

That worked out okay until you start getting complaints to the show about flowers that show up dead or whatever.

Is that true?

Yeah.

It's not my fault.

Yeah.

Go to the flowers, guys.

I'm also a fan of that when people complain about, hey, there's something going on with your...

Hey, we're trying to buy tickets for your show at the club.

Yeah.

I don't know.

I'm the idiot that shows up and talks.

Yeah.

That's literally that's where it starts in.

Every once in a while, if they hit me on a particularly vulnerable day, I'm like, I'll see what I can do.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

We've been trying to see you for three years.

Let me see what I can do.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But, you know, you got to be careful with that.

Has the bitterness gone away?

Towards you?

No,

no, towards the where podcasting has happened.

You know what?

Not a,

I'm going to circle back.

Not a like accepting, hey, dude, you're a classic rock guy.

Just be who you are.

Quit trying to like the newer bands.

They're not for you.

It's the same with letting go with the bitterness with podcasting of you have your audience.

You're doing great.

Could it be bigger?

Of course it could be bigger.

Am I a little jealous the Smartlist could do the Hollywood Bowl?

Of course.

But

I also am not competing with them.

I'm not in the same circles as Sean Hayes.

So I don't have that bitterness.

I just

I like to think that I'm interesting and funny, and I would like more people to hear it.

Yeah.

That's all.

I feel the exact same way.

Yeah.

But then it comes to why aren't more people?

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I guess that's why, and I mean this sincerely again, Mark, I guess that's why I get a little emotional when I'm so grateful when people like you do spread the Pardo word.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's like, you know what?

My peers and people that I respect and that I personally find funny that would sit down and watch are out there saying, you got to see Pardo.

Yeah.

That means a world to me.

And then

maybe five people will hear that and say, I'm going to check this guy out.

And then maybe those five will say, you know, that'll super shampoo commercial.

Yeah.

Isn't that funny, though, when you get these, an email that says, like, I just started listening.

I'm like, what?

Where are you being?

What, really?

We're getting that now as we're closing the show.

Oh, no.

Just got on board.

Because you realize that, too, in the big picture of the media landscape, that, you know, despite however long you've been doing it or even I've been doing it, most people don't know who we are.

It's just a fucking reality.

Most people don't know where you are.

And I guess that's always been the case.

You know, like if you were on a TV show when there were three networks, everybody in the fucking world knew who you were.

Everybody knew who Tim Allen was.

Yeah, yeah.

There wasn't a person in the world that did not know who Tim Allen was.

But now it's like you're kind of like, you know, you get your little bubble and you get your little audience and you kind of go through life like that.

But the bigger realization is like, I'm just not getting through to most people.

Yeah.

And there's nothing I can do about that.

But you also have billboards around town.

For the specials.

You're doing great.

No, I know.

There's also the, you and Owen Wilson are off on billboards.

You're doing all right.

So you're saying maybe be grateful, you fuck.

Am I using those words?

No, I'm just projecting.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, you nailed it, but I wouldn't have said it.

Look, I know I've done fine, but it's just so, it's just so weird because, you know, even the way you feel.

And I do get plenty of credit for for doing what I did, but, you know,

there is part of you that, and I don't know where it comes from, where it's sort of like, where's my big award?

Where's my statue?

Well, the first time they gave out a podcast award, it went to Conan O'Brien.

Okay, see, now, why did you just, you know, where does that come from that you said that?

Well, because it's by the time they finally started acknowledging podcasts, Conan was the number one podcast.

So, of course, he got the trophy.

And Conan's great.

Which trophy?

I don't know.

It was the Billboard Music Awards or whatever, right?

Wasn't that it?

I don't know if it was.

$1,000 was.

The American Music Awards.

Whatever it was, he got the podcast.

And there's no bitterness there.

Again, Conan O'Brien changed my life when he hired me to work for on his program.

So thank God he's

my God.

Well, I could probably find a little bitterness.

In you about it?

Sure.

I don't know that we need to poke around at it.

I'm finding that as I'm coming to a close with the podcast, that my desire to spout off is returning.

I will say about in regards to that,

and again, I don't know how this has turned into

a suck-ass session but uh your ability to spout out uh has uh kind of freed me in a way as well where it's like you know i'm 59

and this is who i am and i've got my audience yeah and

i'm gonna say it yeah go fuck yourself go right yeah and if nbc doesn't want to hire me they're not hiring me anyway what is nbc anymore do you ever go back to chicago sure you got family yeah my dad's there oh really yeah my dad's still my brother's there and my dad

how old's your dad?

82.

Wow.

Isn't it amazing?

I'm going to be 62 and my dad's still alive.

Has your dad got all his marbles?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Wow.

Still sharp.

He golfs three times a week.

Golfs.

And yeah, I mean, he's not.

I will say this.

When I call my dad on the telephone,

in my head, I'm picturing the 50-year-old man I used to call.

Sure.

And so when he says something where it's like, well, how do you not know that?

Right.

Because you used to know stuff like that.

And so that's, I'm kind of coming to terms with that a little bit.

But for the most part,

he's still pretty with it.

Well, that's great.

You can't find a podcast.

Sure.

But otherwise, he's still pretty with it.

My dad's wife.

My dad has dementia.

My dad's wife.

Oh, I'm sorry.

They play the podcast.

They listen to the podcast.

It's like his way of keeping up with me.

Really?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And he's back.

Is he in New Mexico or Mexico?

Yeah, he's still in New Mexico.

And, you know, but he's still, he knows me and everything.

But

she keeps it fresh.

Wow, that's actually

by playing the podcast for him.

So he gets to hear how you're angry at at him.

Chappelle.

Yeah, yeah.

Doesn't know who you're talking about, but he hears it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Now, a lot of people don't know this.

You're from New Mexico, that your father was the inspiration for Walter White on Breaking Bad.

Totally.

Okay.

Because, again, that hasn't been out there as much as it should be.

No, he's not that interesting.

But yeah, I'm from New Mexico.

Jersey roots.

Jersey roots.

All right.

All right.

Well, I think we did it, dude.

All right.

Don't you have your famous catchphrase?

We good?

We good?

Yeah.

Well, I thought we were good going in.

And despite the fact of, you know, thinking that this was a blowing smoke up my ass session, I had you here because I appreciate you

and what you've done and the inspiration.

And I do feel we are kindred spirits at the beginning of something

that got away from us.

Yeah, I agree with that.

I agree.

And yeah, I appreciate your friendship, your show, everything.

So thank you for having me.

Thanks for talking.

Jimmy Pardo, always fun.

Again,

his show, Never Not Funny, is available on all podcasting platforms.

Hang out for a minute, folks.

Hey, if you have a subscription to Supercast and the full WTF archives, you can go check out our two-part episode with Judd Apatow from 2010, episodes 103 and 104.

I was very lucky that part of my dysfunction as a person is a terror of bankruptcy,

financial bankruptcy, not emotional bankruptcy.

And

spiritual bankruptcy.

So as a young person, I thought

10 years ahead.

I had a show like this in high school where I interviewed comedians like Leno and Seinfeld and John Candy.

How did you manage to get hold of them?

I used to call all their publicists and say I was from a radio station in New York and all the publicists were too lazy to look look it up and figure out that it was a high school radio station.

But I was afraid that I was going to not be able to take care of myself in my life.

So in my head, I always thought, well, what do I need to do?

Okay, I'll interview these comedians and they'll tell me how to be a comedian.

They'll tell me how to write.

They'll tell me what it's like.

And to be 16 years old and sit down with Jerry Seinfeld and for half an hour he literally tells you how he writes a joke, how he first got on stage, how long it took him to get get good, it just changed everything for me because I thought, okay, it takes seven years to find your character.

When did this all start being funny as a kid?

Yeah, I guess so, although it was not like a real...

I wasn't a class clown per se.

I mean, I wrote some funny things for the newspaper and I was always trying to be funny around my friends.

And watching comedy was the thing I enjoyed more than anything else.

I was obsessed with...

I knew every comedian.

I knew all their routines, you know, and I loved it so much.

That's how I got into it.

I wanted to be around it, you know, and I never thought I'd be any good at it, but that turned out to be an advantage because it made me work harder than most other people work at it.

Sign up for a Supercast subscription by going to WTFPod.com and clicking on WTF Plus so you can hear those episodes with Judd.

And then Judd will be back on Monday with a special episode that was his idea, and it's a good one.

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

Here's some sludge from a P90.

Boomer lives, monkey and Lafonda, cat angels everywhere.