 I do a show with Ralph Nader. Ralphnaderradiohour.com. Noam Chomsky is our guest this week. Noam Chomsky is our guest on the Ralph Nader radio hour. You can download it on iTunes for free. This is the David Feldman Radio Network. Donald Trump heads overseas today and is planning an audience with the Pope. Let's hope that audience with the Pope works out the same exact way for Trump as it did last month for Bill O'Reilly. It's 3 a.m. Friday, May 19th, 2017. I'm David Feldman. We have a lot of show, so let's get right to it. On today's show, comedians Mark Normand and Fred Stoller. So why is Trump calling this a witch hunt? We're trying to toss Trump out of office, not Kellyanne Conway. Let's be honest, Trump is never getting impeached because the only Republican with the balls to stand up to Donald Trump is Senator Lindsey Graham, and unfortunately those balls are in Lindsey Graham's mouth. You don't get to be in the closet if you're a Republican. As I said earlier, Donald Trump is going to Saudi Arabia today, despite the death of his trusted advisor, former Fox News chief Roger Ailes. Then again, what better way to honor Roger Ailes than by visiting Saudi Arabia, which treats women almost as poorly as Fox News does. According to the coroner, former Fox News chief Roger Ailes died on Thursday, hanging himself in order to heighten my orgasm. So many women over at Fox News will remember Roger as one of those bosses who was always there with a helpful hand up their skirts. As per his wishes, Roger will be buried alongside Fox News's 30,000-foot Kilimanjaro mountain of shredded sexual harassment accusations. Welcome to the broadcast, I'm David Feldman. DavidFeldmanShow.com. Please friend me on Facebook, follow me on Twitter. On today's program, Comics, Mark Normand and Fred Stoller. Mark Normand's Comedy Central special Don't Be Yourself debuts this week. On today's show, he talks about suffering brain freeze on The Tonight Show. He was on The Tonight Show last week. He had a little brain freeze, and he talks about that. He also talks about his insatiable need to be loved, the stupidity of dancing, and why women are attracted to men who have a lot of sex. Fred Stoller's back. He has a new Kindle single, Five Minutes to Kill, How the HBO Young Comedians Special Changed the Lives of 1989's Funniest Comics, Warren Thomas, Drake Sather, Norm MacDonald, and Jan Karam. Where's, uh, wait, wait a second. Is that right? Isn't, wasn't Rob Schneider and David Spade in that? We, somebody, somebody who wrote this may have made a mistake. But I do know that it's called Five Minutes to Kill, How the HBO Young Comedians Special Changed the Lives of 1989's Funniest Comics, Warren Thomas, Drake Sather, Norm MacDonald, and Jan Karam. I think this title leaves out David Spade and Rob Schneider. We'll find out. Fred also talks about Sarah Silverman's Beauty. We talk about My Imaginary Kids. Fred talks about pitching Seinfeld episodes to Larry and Jerry. We also talk about Bruce Smirnoff. Also on the show, Rose Battle Champion Dave Cyrus, Vox's Dylan Matthews. Have you been to Vox, V-O-X? Vox's Dylan Matthews tells us how to get rid of Donald Trump. Alternates Alex Koch. He's an investigative journalist. He stops by to tell us what Rick Perry is doing to our planet. Rick Perry, of course, is head of the Department of Energy. Miami bureau chief Bruce Smirnoff stops by, talks about Fred Stoller and how giving Fred Stoller an Armani suit resulted in one of Seinfeld's greatest episodes. Plus, Mystery Science Theatres J. Elvis Weinstein tells us about Thoughts Spiral, his new podcast with Andy Kindler. You're listening to the David Feldman radio program. Use sad, pathetic hump. The Justice Department on Wednesday named former FBI director Robert Mueller as special counsel to investigate possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. Can a sitting president be prosecuted? Can a sitting president be thrown in prison? Or is impeachment our only hope for removing Trump? For more on this, we're going to be joined in Washington DC by Dylan Matthews who writes for Vox. But first, a few words about Vox. Vox was set up three years ago by Ezra Klein who left the Washington Post to basically do over at Vox what he was doing over at the Washington Post and that is to explain the news. Vox.com explains the news. The explainers at Vox are essential, great, clear, concise writing. Vox, I cannot recommend Vox enough. If you see something in the news, you don't understand it, go to Vox.com. Vox.com understands that most people see every news story as a soap opera that they're watching for the first time. And from what I have been able to see over at Vox is that Ezra Klein and his staff, they get that everyone, including the experts, everyone, we're all flying on instruments. We can't remember how we got there and that's why Vox is so great. It lets you feel okay for not knowing anything. Welcome to the show, Dylan Matthews. Great to be here and that's I think the best and most complimentary description of what we do that I've ever heard. So thank you for that. Well, I mean it and that's kind of been the mission statement of this show is I have children and I've always been trying to explain to them the news. I always wanted to sit with them and watch The New York Times, go over The New York Times and my father used to explain to me how to read The New York Times and how we got to where we're at because you really can't understand a news story unless you put it in context. And Ezra Klein I would assume is in his 30s and talked to people his age and younger and they're lost because there's a shorthand I'm getting angry. There's a shorthand. This makes me really angry. People use a shorthand not to inform but to exclude to make themselves sound smarter. It's why mass used to be delivered in Latin. Thank you for joining us. We're done. Thank you. That was quick but yeah no we try to make things accessible and yeah that I think a lot of that is people writing this inverted pyramid format and news stories that made a lot of sense for print newspapers since you needed something where you could cut off the end if you absolutely needed to for regional papers and like and it doesn't make as much sense online and so we're trying to play around with some new ways of presenting the news and trying to put it in more context. So I'm glad you're a fan. I'm a fan you know I go to the Intercept for great investigative reporting and I go to Vox to understand what I just read. Yeah the Intercept does really great work. Yeah there's a very exciting new media happening. I think Vox we have to talk about Robert Mueller but I think Vox changed the New York Times. I think Vox single handedly changed the New York Times. The New York Times is my my Bible as is the Washington Post but I've noticed that the New York Times since Vox got it that most of us don't get it and we need to be told what happened and how we got there. Okay we're gonna talk about that was me clapping my hands out of excitement. We're gonna talk to Dylan about whether or not a president can be prosecuted in a second but case in point since we set up the interview yesterday you wrote a piece for Vox entitled and I love this nine questions about Watergate you're too embarrassed to ask and that's such a great example of the public service Vox.com provides Vox.com provides not just for millennials who only heard about Watergate but for aging baby boomers like me who live through Watergate and can't remember a damn thing so the news is happening really fast is it faster than Watergate? It certainly seems that way and it certainly seems to be having really negative repercussions for Trump faster than Watergate. I think one of the remarkable things for someone like me who didn't live through it and is sort of reading about it as history is that in the midst of the beginnings of the scandal that after the actual Watergate break-in after people were arrested with ties to his campaign he won the biggest victory in modern American history in the 1972 presidential election that he seemed unscathed and it really wasn't until almost a year after after the initial break-in that things started to escalate the Senate set up a committee to investigate the matter a special prosecutor was appointed and it was kind of a slow burn and from there it took another year or so until sort of things got to a point where it was clear that that Nixon had tried to interfere with the FBI investigation which was sort of the smoking gun that that led a group of Republicans to go to the White House and say your presidency is over and it's really remarkable to me now that we have this this memo that James Comey wrote saying that the president asked him to scuttle an FBI investigation that it's a pretty close parallel to a very late development in Watergate that sort of sealed the deal in a lot of ways it doesn't seem to be going a lot faster right could Nixon have been prosecuted for obstruction of justice I know that he some of the articles of impeachment were about obstruction of justice but was archibald Cox who was a special prosecutor who was fired could they have pursued obstruction of justice that's what you wrote about right so the conclusion that Cox and Leigh Ann Jorsky who succeeded him after Nixon fired Cox came to was that the president can't be prosecuted outside the impeachment process while he's in office they were absolutely of the view and I think it is sort of uncontributable among legal scholars that the president can be prosecuted for crimes committed as president once he leaves office so there was a really real possibility after Nixon resigned that Jorsky or another prosecutor which filed charges against him now that he was sort of lost presidential immunity in their queue that was was rendered moot after Gerald Ford pardoned Nixon and effectively made it impossible to prosecute him for any Watergate related wrongdoing but that was the view of the social prosecutor was the view of the Justice Department the Justice Department looked into it again in the late 90s during the Clinton impeachment scandal when this sort of became a newly relevant question and came to the same conclusion that the president is immune from prosecution by normal federal prosecutors until he leaves the office but I do remember Clinton was deposed in the Paula Jones lawsuit which was a civil suit which how was that different than special prosecutor or special counsel so yeah so as you say that the difference comes down to a distinction between civil and criminal proceedings that I think the conclusion that the Supreme Court came to in Clinton v. Jones the ultimate case they held about whether or not the president was immune from civil suits was there's nothing in the Constitution including it and it wouldn't cause an undue burden to the functioning of the presidency that it had already been established in Watergate that you could make the president testify or give up documents and sort of do the same sort of thing as that and if the court ruled against him then the most that would happen is you'd have to pay some money and I think the argument by people who say that you can't do a criminal prosecution is the best just a whole other ball of wax that you you might be able to be president even as you're paying off a legal settlement to someone you can't be president from prison can't be president from prison yet that's that's the argument and I should say that this is not uncontroversial but right this is the prevailing view that the Justice Department has adopted it's the view of a lot of lawyers the Supreme Court hasn't ruled on this and there are a lot of professors who read the lot differently and think that it would be totally legitimate in practice it's hard that a lot of the crimes the president could conceivably commit and and the crimes that are being discussed in Trump's case are federal crimes and the entire federal law enforcement apparatus including the special prosecutor are serving at the pleasure of the president so if a normal federal prosecutor like the U.S. Attorney for D.C. say hadn't been diced Trump Trump could just fire them and that was all the issue for him get ready folks we're going to talk about the 1819 Supreme Court ruling McCulloch versus Maryland but as an explainer OJ so people understand the difference between a criminal prosecution and a civil prosecution talk to me as though Trump were OJ right which is unfair to OJ I suppose I just finished the the great new documentary about OJ last night so uh-huh so so in a criminal case there's a different standard of proof so let's say the Trump sort of you know as he's threatened to do sometimes goes to the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoots someone and sees what happens so the district attorney for Manhattan could indict him for murder and then as anyone you seem on order could tell you you have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he committed it if they're found guilty you're subject to present another criminal penalties that's a pretty high bar of proof it was one that that the jury and OJ in some case didn't think they met in a civil suit there is a lower burden of proof so the jury when the Goldman family sued OJ after the criminal trial for for unful death they just had to prove that the preponderance of evidence that for 51 percent of the evidence in the case indicated that he had done it and then if the jury came to that conclusion which it also doesn't have to come to unanimously the way a jury in a in a criminal trial in most states does then they can decide on on punitive damages and there's additional damages from there which would all be monetary so I think the reading of the law that the department subscribes to is that someone could sue Trump for wrongdoing and it could go to the federal courts and wouldn't necessarily be tossed out of court just because he's the president and did you say it's you did I did you just say that the reading of the law is from the justice department's office of legal counsel is that their interpretation of it is that what you just said right so they're they're the people who think that that the president is criminally immune the supreme court has actually ruled that he's not civilly immune so that's that's a sort of uncontroversial difference between criminal and civil criminal you're being prosecuted by a government agency a prosecutor's office if you're found guilty you can go to prison or charge to find civil you're being sued by another private actor typically so say the family of someone you killed in the case of oj the difference between criminal and civil that's important for readers and listeners to know it just is and it's just bandied about as though we're supposed to know that difference trump university before trump got obama's chair he was being sued for trump university was that a criminal suit or a civil suit that was a civil suit so he was not being prosecuted he was being sued by the the new york state attorney general's office he was being sued by the new york state attorney general's office so that is a estate government not prosecuting criminally but in a civil court going to a civil court right it was at schneiderman is that who it was schneiderman yeah the state attorney general can go into a civil court or you and i as civilians civil can go into a civil court and sue somebody for damages that's right so use the example of obama care a lot of republican states sued president obama and the federal government for implementing obama care because they considered it to impinge on the rights of the states simultaneously some their Catholic groups and hobby lobby sued on religious freedom grounds as individuals and they were the same kind of case because in each case it was an actor saying that this this law had violated their rights and that they needed a remedy but it was different kinds of actors bringing that claim you know why i love talking to you because i can enjoy my stupidity i mean there's a real difference between stupidity and ignorance and i think the latter is much more common and much more acceptable like i'm very ignoring about physics and most sports and i don't think that's that's a sign that there's like something wrong with my brain i think there's a complicated world out there and you can only know so many things about it right now you're not a lawyer right i'm not a lawyer right i just play one on the okay you present some scenarios over at vox on how to get rid of trump and by the way i'm partisan you're not vox is not partisan it's been accused of having a left wing slant only because it remembers history if we try yeah so you paint some scenarios you say that the federal prosecutors are going to have more difficulty than state prosecutors bringing a criminal case against donald trump why does the chain of command make it so difficult for federal prosecutors to go after trump federal prosecutors as a rule are part of the justice department and the justice department is an executive cabinet agency run by a presidential appointee whose members serve at the pleasure of the president and who runs the justice department who runs the justice department so it's currently run by just sessions who is the attorney general right who is a big trump loyalist sessions has recused himself from this particular case and so now robert rosenstein who's the deputy attorney general serves as acting attorney general on cases involving trump and russia who is robert moeller who appointed him and who does he answer to so robert moeller served for about 12 years as fbi director in the dirshadibush and obama administrations prior to that he was a career federal prosecutor with a pretty good reputation he was just appointed by rod rosenstein the deputy attorney general in his capacity is acting attorney general on matters concerning trump and russia and he is is going to be what's known as a special counsel so a special counsel is an independent person who is brought in by the attorney general of the justice department to investigate a case that for whatever reason the department doesn't feel like it can impartially investigate on itself okay he's a special counsel ultimately who is his boss ultimately his boss is rosenstein so and who is rosenstein's boss rosenstein's boss's sessions and sessions boss is trump can trump fire a special counsel he absolutely can and richard nixon did or was archival cox a special prosecutor so the terminology gets confused here so cox was appointed under the same statute that meler has been appointed under after watergate there was a different law that was in effect for a couple decades known as the independent counsel law that set up a system for appointing prosecutors who were not just accountable to the department of justice but were also accountable to a panel of judges so they could be more independent that was the system through which iran contra was investigated and it was the system that saw kind of star appointed as independent counsel to investigate bill clinton and people i think were so exhausted after the bill clinton saga that the law of authorizing that position was what lasts during watergate john mitchell attorney general or whomever they appointed a special counsel who was archival cox and he was investigating watergate he was a special counsel not a special prosecutor correct i think special counsel and special prosecutor you can use interchangeably in this case okay great after watergate to avoid was it the saturday night mass what was it called when they fired the saturday night massacre so and that was just so people know when nixon was upset with what cox was doing and ordered elliot richardson who was the attorney general to fire him richardson refused and resigned richardsons deputy refused and resigned and it came to the number three person in the justice department to actually carry out the order was that robert bork it was robert bork who was later appointed to the supreme court by ron reagan and lost senate confirmation probably because of that and other things okay so after watergate just to review after watergate congress passed a law that created something called the special prosecutor correct independent counsel an independent counsel and a kenneth star who tormented clinton was operating under this new special independent counsel law as i remember janet rino was the attorney general under clinton you say there was a three judge panel that had to what approve the appointment of a special prosecutor how did how did that law work and it no longer exists because it was like torque amada right but how did kenneth star work and it seems like he had a lot more freedom than say archibald cox or moeller is going to have right so under the law you can only remove independent counsel for cause that janet rino could fire the independent counsel but she couldn't do it for whatever reason she wanted to she she had to prove that they had they had misacted and and show show that and if the council had been terminated and they didn't think it was her cause they could sue her and overturn it additionally there was a three judge panel which in that case was was run by some republican appointees on their dc circuit that also oversaw star and actually replaced star's predecessor who they didn't think was aggressive enough and replaced him with star i think it was fit your hitch or something yeah something like that something like that okay can you give me seven more minutes absolutely okay great moller is over at the justice department he's a special counsel fbi head for almost a decade very respected it is conceivable that donald trump will fire him we're learning that jarrod kushner is whispering in trump's ear just to fire everybody and be an authoritarian estate prosecutor cyrus vance jr son of jimmy carter's i believe state department secretary of state and vivian vance's grandson from i love lucy did you know that i'm making that up i'm making that oh my god you're too young to get that referenced knock it off knock it off behave yourself don't make me uh okay so cyrus vance jr is not a federal prosecutor is that correct or is he a federal or is he a state prosecutor he's uh he's a county prosecutor so cyrus vance is the prosecutor for new york county which is the legal entity that encompasses manhattan so the way that prosecutors work in new york city is that each of the boroughs has their own prosecutor who's elected by people there so there's a brooklyn prosecutor there's a bronx prosecutor there's a statin island prosecutor there's a queen's prosecutor and cyrus vance is the manhattan prosecutor and it's it's probably the most powerful local prosecutor's office in the country just because of how many people live there and wall street and wall street and and because state crimes cover a lot of really serious offenses so murder cases in new york are all tried through the district attorney's offices great okay so get ready folks because we're about to discuss the 1819 supreme court ruling of mcculloch versus maryland all right so cyrus vance jr decides he's gonna prosecute donald trump for crimes charges can donald trump fire cyrus vance he cannot play his fans does not serve at the pleasure of donald trump he is not a federal employee he is an elected official for new york county and can be removed i i'm not an expert on the removal procedures for for municipal offices in new york but you look accountable ultimately to the voters of manhattan he he decides he's going to indict donald trump what could donald trump then claim and here's where we get to mcculloch versus maryland 1819 supreme court ruling so under that ruling which was by john marshall who is an early chief justice of the u.s supreme court who who laid down a lot of sort the foundational rulings for how the federal system of government works basically said that the federal law trumps state law and that the states can't pass laws that try to limit the behavior of the federal government and and so before any trial happens what would occur in a case like that is that trump could use his power as president to remove the case from state court to federal court he could argue to the court that under mcculloch in maryland is unconstitutional for a local prosecutor to charge him in such a manner and then the federal courts would have to consider that and come to rulings and it would almost certainly be appealed by both sides depending on who wins at the district court level and then the court of appeals level all the way after the supreme court which would be forced to put the first time ever say definitively whether you can prosecute a president and so it's highly unlikely because i'm thinking what would happen if they pulled this with obama what would happen if alabama tried this right we would we would be outrageous right and i think a lot of the reason why some law professors even some left-leaning law professors don't think this is acceptable is because of that that they think it opens the door to frivolous use of prosecutorial power to try to bring down presidents before you go nixon was an unindicted co-conspirator that's what he was named as during watergate because jeroski who replaced archibald cox realized he couldn't indict nixon great well thank you so much this has just been this is heaven for me because it really is you are very generous with your time and i thank you for your hard work and you know anyway dylan matthews writes for vox everybody should go to vox vox.com and i hope you come back i'd love to thank you for having me all right okay so let's say trump magically gets impeached we have cheering in the streets ding dong the witch is dead praise the constitution praise our system praise our founding fathers praise our mainstream media they did their job aren't we great nobody's above the law good for us the system works no the system works for the richest one percent while this clown show is going on in the justice department while this celebration of our rule of law dominates the news cycle underneath it all the plutocrats who installed donald trump are carrying on doing serious damage to our planet killing our planet displacing millions of third world people due to drought famine and flooding all in the name of profits all in the name of some kind of conservative christianity hijacked by a twisted book of revelations death cult whose disciples include betsy devoe or devos or she's our uneducated secretary of education put an idiot in charge and the profits come pouring in there's actually an idiot even bigger than donald trump rick perry he's the head of the department of energy alex kotch is an independent investigative journalist you can follow him on twitter at alex kotch or go to his website alex kotch dot com that's k-o-t-c-h and he had a magnificent piece in alternate yesterday he did some heavy lifting it's called rick perry's early days as energy secretary have been a bonanza for corporations and the coke brothers welcome alex kotch thanks a lot for having me well thank you for doing this you do heavy lifting it's a lot of fun to watch the soap opera that's going on inside the justice department and congress will he or will he not be impeached and it's important but underneath it all the people who install donald trump much like the people who install george w bush are getting exactly what they want right yeah i mean it's it's pretty astounding how much special interests have infiltrated the white house and the agencies especially those connected to trawls and david coke who are the billionaire industrialists who operate many businesses under the kind of banner of coke industries including fossil fuel oil and gas refining businesses i've definitely found some coke links in the department of energy as perry you know once perry was confirmed and and they're beginning to staff the agency right would you say that the energy department is an analog for the trump white house in that somebody wanted an idiot in the oval office somebody wanted an idiot in the department of energy yeah i mean you know look rick perry distinguished himself in 2012 during the republican presidential primary where he said famously had a debate a televised debate against his opponents that he wanted to eliminate three federal agencies and when he got to the third one he forgot the name of it and then and we found out later uh that it was actually the department of energy he wanted to eliminate i actually think based on just doing some reading that he didn't realize what the department does so you know when it when he was nominated by trump it was pretty surprising considering this is a guy he wanted to end the agency surprising on one hand and more kind of telling on the other big of trump's policy preferences it sounds like once perry kind of realized oh it's not totally about domestic energy it's also about nuclear and protecting the nuclear arsenal that the united states has i think he got more interested in it but um regardless yeah i i don't think he's the brightest bulb on the tree he went before his confirmation hearings and he issued a statement apologizing for wanting to eliminate the department of energy because as you just said i didn't know what it did here's a guy who was who wanted to be president even though he didn't know what the department of energy did he had no problem calling for its elimination then he goes before his confirmation hearings and basically says i'm an idiot i mean i'm even a bigger idiot than you can imagine and they confirmed him now i know you're an investigative journalist and you're a phd and you deal with credible sources not lunatics not angry people like me so you cannot talk the way i do but i can talk the way i do i don't want to paint you in a corner and put you in an uncomfortable position before we get to the meat of your story there is virtue in the republican party there is virtue to finding an idiot and putting him in charge and then somebody else is running running the show and that's kind of what you're implying in your story was rick perry wasn't he an all of the above energy guy before he became head of the department of energy yeah i i do think that's kind of his general philosophy i'd say he's an all-day above energy guy with kind of a preference towards fossil fuels you know as as governor of texas for 14 years he he accepted lots of campaign donations millions of dollars from the fossil fuel industry coal oil and gas he certainly has a lot of friends in that industry but he also oversaw an expansion of wind energy in texas a pretty pretty major one it was begun actually by george w bush but but perry didn't halted he he kept it going and they've uh they have a pretty nice wind energy portfolio down there as well as a renewable portfolio standard that that he assigned so you know he has done some things to advance clean energy but i would definitely say that in general he's yeah he certainly favors the uh fossil fuels and their kind of power and political influence when he got to the department of energy 90 days ago who has he been hiring has he been hiring people who are in favor of wind and solar no uh you know and it's hard to know from the lower level hires they're harder to they don't really announce them they're harder to find out but um some of the sort of more high profile hires are pretty troubling for anyone who who you know wants the earth to continue you know to be a safe place to live and to support life forms so i'll uh i'll first talk about travis fisher he is a he was an every you know maybe a researcher and columnist at a think tank called the institute for energy research i mean that's funded by you know wealthy conservatives including the coke brothers it's basically a sort of fossil fuel energy shop and so he wrote columns opposing renewable energy and defending fossil fuels when he was there now he's a staffer at the department of energy and actually rick perry tasked him with overseeing a study that perry just requested on whether clean energy programs are hindering coal and nuclear programs you know in other words it it appears to be an effort to undermine renewable programs by sort of claiming that they are costing the traditional fossil fuel industry industry excuse me for one second that's just a blatant patronage isn't it i mean the only way they're costing them is they're more desirable to the consumer how else would they be a cost to fossil fuels yeah and you know a lot of the number of democratic senators wrote a letter to perry i believe and it was it was talking about their how their disapproval of this i mean they're saying it doesn't take a scientist to to realize that the reason you know oil prices are low is because of all the natural gas production there's a glut of natural gas in this country uh which by the way you know just just the mining of it itself is a huge greenhouse gas contributor with the methane emissions which is often you know overseeing when people claim that gas is cleaner than oil but the point is you know these these are some kind of truth telling senators who were saying look i mean you're clearly trying to you know provide the wrong answer to an easy question because you want to favor the traditional fossil fuel industry are we finding out that there are more jobs right now in solar than there are in coal i believe so i don't know for a fact but i'm pretty sure i read that recently yeah it makes a lot of sense yeah you would think then that that would be the direction we would be moving since you want to protect the people with the most jobs and it seems to be in solar and wind not coal but coal tends to be white men in blackface with dirty hands and there's something rugged about that it it's more evocative of an america that we lost and that's why the republicans seem to want it plus the fossil fuel industry controls the republican party who is brian mccormick right he's the chief of staff so he has a lot of control over things over there in the department of energy he is a former vice president of political and external affairs at the edison electorate institute this is a trade group for for big utility companies it's it's very anti-solar energy for example and it gets contributions from one of the usual suspects on the right actually when he was there he was part of the institute's anti-solar campaign they've been trying to get rid of you know residential solar rooftop solar options for a while now because that threatens the the large energy corporations who maintain the grids and and supply energy through non-manual sources generally to consumers so they see that as a threat so the you know this trade group has been fighting that and at the state level in many states trying to pass laws that basically will put those programs out of business you know undue taxes and things on the residents so now that he's at he's the chief of staff he'll be you know kind of governing a lot of what's going on there he can help shape the energy solar policy when he's there i mean he's clearly someone with a you know with a record of opposing solar energy in favor of oil and gas and coal is it fair to say that he's probably more influential over energy than rick perry is i don't actually know the answer to that question but um you know i think it's just based on a lot of other administrations other agencies i mean chiefs of staff generally you know i think it depends on the on the who's leading it but chiefs of staff often you know they do deal with a lot of a lot of duties over there so i imagine you know i i certainly in my research i i i found an article that said that he will most likely help shape the solar policy do you think that they will have hobbled clean energy maybe about a third of what they do or a fraction of what they do but still somewhat substantial is kind of overseeing energy efficiency and renewable energy programs you know they give out grants they they put out standards and things like that they have an office it's called the office of efficiency and renewable energy now that the new head of that is going to be a guy named dan simons who is vice president of policy at the institute for energy research so uh as i described earlier they are very opposed to renewable energy in general so it's a very bad sign but at the other on the other hand it's kind of interesting but you know currently the foreign energy has been touting its its energy efficiency and renewable programs actually on social media as well as its own blog and and actually touting the the the increased renewable energy jobs that have been that have been appearing so it's kind of mixed messages you know at the on the one hand you've got kind of the social media strategy and this blogging strategy that hasn't really changed under Perry yet but now the guy is going to lead that agency as an opponent of renewables so i don't think the future looks terribly good yeah what is energy star energy star is is one program it puts out kind of certifications i guess for energy efficiency for businesses and for buildings things like that it's been very successful reportedly and it's something that the department energy is generally been pretty proud of and so they're actually still promoting it while trump wants to get rid of it entirely trumps put out a but there was a budget blueprint and now i think he's kind of they're leaking their their actual budget proposal so i mean trump the trump administration wants to cut enormous amounts from from that program the the energy star but also just a lot of other programs within the office of efficiency and renewables so we'll see if that gets through congress next through the end of this year because uh you know congress recently passed a budget that funds uh the agency and funds from the government until the end of 2017 which didn't have major cuts to to the department of energy but we could see some bigger ones going into next year we have prudent over at the epa who just as attorney general i believe in oklahoma would just copy and paste briefings from alec or the coal industry and devan energy yeah he did that with uh with devan and the devan energy request he he literally did that he copied and pasted from from their lobbyist from the lobbyist perry you say went overseas and refused to commit to president obama's big climate change agreement the paris agreement from 2015 what does that mean yeah so so what he did was he went over there in april for a g7 summit in italy and the other six g7 nations signed an agreement that just kind of reaffirmed their commitment to the uh yeah the 2015 paris international climate agreement but rick perry he didn't outright refuse but he but he said we're we're still we're still in the evaluation phase and so we don't know if if we'd like to continue to support this you know trump trump has said very openly that he wants the united states to leave the paris climate agreement and because of of our country's stature if we leave it it's basically as far as i understand it's it's going to be hauled if not basically over the you can't have an international climate agreement without the united states so you know that that's not looking good either for for climate i'm reading today about the Antarctic ice sheets peeling off cow is it called calving calving into the ocean the clock is ticking i don't i know this is an unfair question you're an investigative journalist but you can't get into these minds of rex tillerson former head of exxon who's now over at state don't they know what's going on how do they sleep at night i i ask myself this question all the time and i mean i don't i don't think i i know i don't think i have an answer to this but i i do i mean i think what you and i and many people who follow politics know quite well is that you know money and power really tends to be the driver of policy and it's not very it's not very often these days that you have policy that actually it's just purely good for the public and there's no political interest involved and there's no money involved unfortunately you know we have this system in america where you know we we have a lot of corporations and their executives who are heavily involved in in election and electoral politics they're they're able to give enormous sums of money towards campaigns or towards outside groups that spend in campaigns and they're able to lobby in millions and millions of dollars every year lobby these congresspeople many of whom they probably helped put in office so you've got there's not a ton of it of incentive for you know for for example for republicans in the house or the senate right now to go against sort of the preferences of fossil companies unless they appeal to you know unless they believe in climate science and they actually appeal to logic that you know we don't have a lot of time we're already maybe past the point of reversal for that polar cap to to fully disintegrate over the next you know decades or so when you watch the news and you read the paper where they're following the clown show in the justice department we all agree i'm i'm not asking for your opinion but most of us agree trump's got to go but even if they get rid of them this stuff is still going to be going on and it's and more of it's going to go on because trump is such a distraction right and that's yeah i mean exactly that i think this story might that you know what we put out today alternate might get kind of buried because there's every day at five p.m. at eastern time it seems like there is a huge bottom shell that drops and there might be another one at eight p.m. about you know the trump russia investigation so yeah i mean they can under the behind the scenes almost they're doing probably doing a lot of this work now you know who knows if trump gets actually gets impeached which you know i remain skeptical about this because of that the you know the rhetoric is one thing that actions are another thing for for people in congress but say he does get impeached i mean i don't know how many other top officials are going to have to leave technically probably not many although i do think a lot of a transition team including pants could be deeply involved in this and might be implicated in a big way so i'm waiting you know i'm waiting to hear about pants that he might be kind of the last person to fall from this but the point is you know there i don't know if you know scott pooh it's gonna i mean he'll probably still lead the epa perry probably won't won't have to leave the part of energy things like this so they're going to continue doing what they want to do and and unless people in congress find the good will to actually address this kind of catastrophe that's happening to our planet you know nothing's going to change until people you know dig out of office and a catastrophe to our planet a catastrophe to our drinking water to our farm workers the pesticides it is pretty incredible if you were a coke brother you're a kotch brother if you take the tea out of kotch and you were a coke brother what would you be thinking right now about the impeachment would you be scared that we're gonna lose our guy or would this be something that kind of pleases you well the thing is i mean first of all they're going to be powerful long beyond trump whether he's impeached or not and removed from office or not because they have a political network that rivals the entire republican party and as you can see from the healthcare negotiations i mean the freedom caucus which is generally you know the people that the coax favor the most was very powerful and got kind of got their way in it to some degree with their their horrible healthcare bill which is not going to pass the senate in my estimation but yeah i mean the the coax first of all mike pence is one of the coax favorite politicians i mean they put a lot of money into his his congressional and gubernatorial campaigns he is these is a hundred percent free market guy just like they want you know so they actually i think early in the kind of presidential field before everyone had announced they were running for the 2016 i think they were hoping that pence would be one of the presidential candidates but so when they got him in svp i think they they were very lucky and if he becomes president i think they'll be much happier than if trump is president i mean the coax haven't overtly supported trump although they did run ads their nonprofit groups ran ads against democratic senators and in swing states that were very critical of hillary clinton so i think that must have helped to some degree help trump's uh chances before you go i just want to bring it back to rick perry you write that he was a board member of the energy transfer partners who are they and here's a story that's being buried who are they yeah they're they're the co-owner of the dakota access pipeline which you know many water protectors and and uh native americans and allies protested against for months last year and successfully got it delayed but once trump got in office in january is one of the first things he did i believe was to give the green light to that pipeline which is going directly through native lands potential you know leaks could be catastrophic to to the people living in those areas and it's transporting really dirty the dirtiest tar sand oil you can find through the entire country down to i think we're firing on the gulf coast so the fact that rick terry was until recently a board member of that company might be perhaps the best signal we've got as to what its priorities are and that was the big story and it's now it's just going to happen right and nothing can be done about it i that i i think so i mean it so far i mean who knows what's going to happen if trump gets impeached but um i mean so far i think i think once the president okays it it's going to happen and energy transfer partners is a big company they have a lot of political influence kelsey warren as their ceo he's a big independent donor as well i mean he's a conservative donor but as by himself and not with this company he's very well known as giving millions of dollars to super PACs and things like that so uh yeah i i think it's probably going to happen and it's you know mark my words there will be some accident or you know some spill and it's going to be bad i'm getting it i'm getting a call here and our time is up the excel pipeline what's happening with that i mean trump also greenlit that one so um you know i think a lot of it's already built so i believe they're going to continue and finish it and um that'll also you know that does a similar thing to the go to access pipeline so it's going to be you know a couple pretty dangerous pipelines going through our entire country and we have as head of the state department rex tillerson who ran exxon and these kind of pipelines i didn't know this until obama was present you can't build a pipeline unless it's approved by the state department that is the purview of the state department to determine whether or not the keystone pipeline will will be good for the environment or not and good for international relations because they go through various countries is that why is that one of the reasons trump put rex tillerson or i call him rex spillerson as the head of state because he knew that rex tillerson would approve all these pipelines that's probably yeah i mean that i'm sure that factored into the decision i mean trump i trump had a lot of advising from that very conservative heritage foundation and and they they put out actually a blueprint budget proposal for for perry's agency and and basically i mean i read through the whole thing there wasn't a solar energy when the renewable energy was not mentioned once i mean it was completely fossil fuel energy specific so they wanted to zero out any funding for for renewables so the point is they they were heavily involved in in the transition team and picking nominees and and certainly rex tillerson in my estimation would would greenlight both of these very happily i mean he literally worked 40 years at exxon he was ceo for 11 of those years until becoming secretary of state so i think it's pretty obvious where his interests lie and they're headquartered in texas yeah yeah exxon mobile tech court in texas along with a couple other major oil companies kenoko philips and valero energy you know texas is known as really the oil state and definitely the natural gas state and so uh you know perry i would imagine has a good relationship with uh with tillerson i know that the rockefeller family divested themselves of exxon mobile stock for reasons we don't need to go into right now but it involves climate change i did believe that rex billerson and exxon getting honest they did have a a minor come to jesus moment about climate change didn't they acknowledge that it is man made i think probably recently i don't know i'm guessing i don't know for a fact but i'm guessing it was probably after inside climate news broke the major story that they had known about climate change since the 70s and covered it up so whether or not it was before after i don't know but you know clearly after that they have to say something publicly about it they can't they can't deny it too much longer but it doesn't mean they're really going to change their practice as much right so in conclusion while we're paying attention to the possible impeachment of donald trump the keystone pipeline is going through oh yeah the dakota access pipeline is going through they are denuding the energy department and the epa of all or most or a lot of our environmental protections are the state attorney generals pursuing their lawsuit against exxon mobile where is that that's an unfair question to ask you that's not why i call yeah i actually that was one of the things that prudent copied and pasted when he was attorney general of oklahoma he was yeah i mean well i what i do know is that if you're referring to the uh the suit again well one of the many suits against the epa that scott prudent many other attorney general were part of i remember recently reading that prudent would not he would not recuse himself from it he's staying in the lawsuit suing his own agency now it's pretty astounding well thank you for your time alex kotch that's kot ch writes for alternate he's an investigative journalist you can follow him over at twitter it's at alex kotch or go to alex kotch dot com thank you for your important work thank you for reminding us of what's really happening that there are more important things going on than the shiny object of trumps supposed impeachment thank you alex well thank you very much for having me that was great mark norman is a new york city based comedian who has made an appearance on nearly every late night show including conan four times oh yeah he's been seen on show times live at south by southwest inside amy schumer last comic standing comedy central's half hour at midnight he released an album with comedy central records titled still got it and last friday at midnight mark's first hour-long special premiered on comedy central it's called amy schumer presents mark norman don't be yourself along with comedian joe list he co-host the podcast tuesday's with stories which my producer alex loves more than this podcast which i really resent i'm on the subway blowing a guy i look up and there's you a big poster huh don't be yourself oh boy i choked on the sperm how does that feel seeing your face your body it's pretty wild uh i mean just as a guy who you know came up in new york with nothing and struggled for years and all that it's and seeing other people like louis and chris rocks and all these people in the subway i was always like i could never have that then eventually you start seeing your friends like michael chay had one and dan soter big j and then you're like wow that's cool they have one and when you have one it doesn't doesn't really register i stood next to one yesterday and people walked by and went you know that's me and nobody stopped that's new york baby that's why new yorkers are funny are you being recognized every now and then i get wrecked enough mostly for the podcast or if i'm just off like i did fallon on on thursday and i had people the next day going were you on fallon was that you wow so that's fun do you like that i like a quickie i was with a girl recently in columbus circle and we were on a date and this guy goes oh you're funny as hell i saw your special and i think that that was a great was he just kept walking but that's probably with the girl you know i'm getting that's a definite get laid move is it a get laid move oh yeah i mean i didn't you know i didn't ask this guy to say anything and he came to me and he kept moving it was perfect does she change once you get recognized you notice that or does he or do you change i change and she changed she goes oh my god does that happen a lot wow that was so cool do you know that guy who was that guy i'm like i don't know just a fan i guess and and the whole mood is different the mood is different do all women respond that way because i would think if i were a woman and i don't understand women sure but you do ah some you do you do understand women i would think all right i'm walking with this guy he's a big star i just discovered he's really famous or you know i mean big star and really famous yeah generous what's he doing with me and he can have any woman so he's gonna sleep with me and then treat me like crap and he's gonna be on to the next ah i think you went a little dark that should be the name of this podcast yeah we were doing we were doing so well yeah and then i go but but don't women why wouldn't a woman think i'm with mark norman yeah seems like a nice guy he's funny i'd like to settle down with him i think his sperm is good you know he could make good smart funny babies sure oh he's famous he can probably have any other woman in the world so he's gonna dump me he's just gonna use me as a sperm receptacle uh-huh do women think that way i think some do but i think in that moment with the fan i think they're going oh i made the right i made a good choice here are they turned on by power are you saying that that's they want something that what i think there's a million zillion dudes out there and if you can come out on top in any way it helps and i think with a fan walking by and going hey hey that was fun i think that gives them a boost of like all right i'm with the right guy for a second are you having fun do you like i'm trying it's hard i'm a mess you're part of the machinery right now yeah i know that's scary i'm in the cog i'm a cog in the in the system but is it exhausting is it scary it's scary it's scary that it's all gonna go away it's all catch 22 is all day long all you want to success all you want is respect and then when you get it you're stressed out and you want it to go away and then when it goes away you want it back and then it comes back again it's a ton of work and i hired a publicist unless you ran me ragged and uh you know the whole thing is coming down on top of you and then it all goes out in the world then people critique it and tell you what they think and they give you feedback and that's scary but sometimes great and sometimes painful so it's a non-stop emotional roller coaster and uh i'm i'm on the front seat of it right now but it's you it's your art yes in other words you're not on a sitcom you're not promoting a piece of crap you're promoting something that you deeply care about that's true that's true i don't want to you're not ashamed of this no i actually like it but i'm still scared of people's thoughts that whole thing like i don't care what other people think i desperately care what people think and i live by each comment yeah yeah i know how you feel yeah if i'm being and i read the bad ones too i'm not one of these guys who reads and goes fuck this guy i only read the bad ones well that's all you get now but uh i read the bad ones and i go he's got a point i was talking too fast or hey he's got a point i have a i i made a weird gesture there you know i don't i don't if it's some guys like look at this douche i'm like all right well that's that's not helping me what about the yeah the haters yeah we're they're just dead inside and need a reaction and but so are we yeah that's true but at least we're coming up with something creative he just called me a douche have you ever converted a hater i have ironically if you if you come at them with some decency they kind of pull back because i think they just want a reaction more than anything uh-huh you know so if you go hey i'm sorry you feel that way they go ah shit man i'm sorry i didn't know you were listening i'm the worst i'm gay i hate myself you're like all right no problem i hate myself too and now your friends so you did fallon yes you've done the tonight show before first time debut little nerve-wracking not necessarily because it's fallon not because it's the tonight show it's going into that building yes it's 30 rock it means it it's freighted right it's the top of the heap as far as late night goes and you know you got the suit on and i already feel weird about that it's in the middle of the days you've had enough time to get anxious and hate yourself you know uh and i was i slept two hours night before i just couldn't sleep i took 11 melatonin and i still couldn't sleep that's how wacky and and churning my brain was it was a real carnival up there and uh yeah if i just had to drink a cup of coffee which i never do and suck it up and go and i had my agent there my manager and my publicist and three friends and i told my agent and publicist and manager i said in my group text saying don't ask me how i'm feeling don't ask me if i need anything right now don't ask me if i'm good or if i'm ready or if everything's cool that's gonna make it worse we're talking with steve harvey he's the second guy to say that what what did he do he did what any normal man would do get the f out of my dressing room well yeah right they fuck your head up it's way worse because they need to feel needed they don't really give a shit about how you're feeling or if you need anything they just want to justify the fact that their job is pretty easy and they want to feel needed and if they get if i go i need some water they give me the water they're like all right i'm here i'm i'm i'm help i'm helping right so i don't want to help but they want to be a part of it yes and they're looking at for you but they're also looking at for themselves yes which i get and they're not bad people but i'm just saying for my headspace and my where i need to be don't ask me this shit it'll only make it worse how old are you 32 33 33 you're doing the tonight show you're waiting in the wings 33 tonight show it's not make or break it's no it's make in other words if you do well that's great yeah if you don't do well yeah it's a bummer it's a bummer it's a disappoint but i'm not out of the business but you're not out of the business so it's not a bad place to be right you're standing in the wings they're about to introduce you you heart pounding yes bullet points yes you use bullet points why not if they're there if they're gonna let me do them i'll i'll use them that makes it a lot easier oh yeah and i had a brain freeze out there on my second wow and thank god those bolts were there baby it was a real brain queef i wasn't even a fart because in the old days they didn't let you use is that right yeah why not what is it hurting they felt i don't know mark malcoff maybe could answer this he does that Carson special uh or podcast i know that letterman felt that giving the comedians bullet points i don't know show business shouldn't be that easy for you you should be nervous yeah i guess but i mean i say why not i mean i agree with you yeah i kind of could be seen reading them maybe but it's one word i don't know you're in your out there i guess their feeling is your you should know it you should know it's like cheat sheet kind of thing but i the brain freeze that is absolutely terrifying oh my god you have to have a it's a real fire flight moment going hey you know your brain's going oh shit what's next what's next we're on the night show the cameras this is it you're blowing it ah and then the other head the other side goes fuck you motherfucker snap into it quit being a pussy no time for this bullshit it's like a drill sergeant and a new cadet you're like i can't go over that wall he's like you go over that wall faggot you know so and that happens in a matter of a millisecond right so it's right but it feels like three days yeah did you use the bullet points did you look at the cute i did for that joke only but after that i was i was smooth sailing but it was that beginning moment that's one of the first joke i got out clean the second i was like what's next oh fuck so when you want have you watched it no i can't i don't need to watch would you notice the stumble is there a good yeah if you put it on right now you're like there it is and i bet you could see it but the the public couldn't the masses they missed it you're walking out mm you tell your first joke yeah have the first joke go first joke went okay now what do you think okay the first joke went okay what are you thinking i remember thinking that was okay wasn't amazing you want you want to just blow the roof off immediately so you're so you're making the mistake as i've been told uh which is counting the laughs you're not supposed to do that yeah i hear that but i can't help it yeah how could you not you want to do well you want to you want to be in charge of how it's going so when did the brain freeze start after the first joke oh yeah so there you go wow you know your comedy because these are good questions so the brain fruit the brain freeze starts you tell the second joke i tell the first one i get a laugh then i get the freeze oh wow before the setup of the second joke okay that's messed up yeah it was bad that that and how much preparation did you do for the set i ran it every night for about a month and a half jesus yeah and it's multiple times a night yeah i mean i knew this was the big wig you know valent tonight show so i had to be crisp and i was tweaking it throughout yeah it's diamond cutting it is it really is it's very it's thrilling it's it's because it's precise and it's absolute control yes and you run it in a bar room you run in a club you're in a theater you run it in a you know a backyard whatever you know just run it every single weird place you can because oh it went differently here all right like like take that in it went differently there okay so you just keep melding it you know like a samurai sword as louis would say keep hitting it hitting it hitting it till it's a perfect you know smooth steel yeah all right and then so you you you freeze yeah was that from exhaustion from lack of sleep no it was nothing anxiety induced it was uh just it was all coming crashing down like i had the first joke i got up because all you have to do is go okay i'm here now tell a joke and then i'm like wait i'm here i'm on stage i'm in the tonight show i'm in 30 rock i'm on studio b ah that's when it all hit me and that's when i've had the freeze when i had to go hey get back into it buddy come on snap in there no human being in their right mind puts themselves through that i have a friend who did letterman when he was your age when it was late night yeah you know at 12 30 they bumped him the first time because he was freaking out they brought oh really and they brought him back and he did it and i was i remember standing in the wings waiting to do a show with my heart beating and being really nervous yeah thinking this is the ultimate invasion of my privacy i'm in tv guide i hate this really i'm i'm going i hate this people are going to see me and tv guide they're going to tune in they're going to be rooting against me yeah every and why am i doing this and i'm waiting to be introduced yeah and i had this epiphany i thought oh that's why my friend never got back on television he didn't want this he won't admit to himself he won't admit to himself that he doesn't want this but this is unnatural yeah this is not the right way so you better make a decision right now pal yeah do you want this right and i and i went out there and i did okay you know yeah i mean because it was kind of thing yeah i want this and this is what separates us from their other funnier guys yeah they just don't want to go they don't want to put themselves through this and that's totally fine yeah did you is this on youtube i'd like to see this the the set what was a conan shot it was a con i'd like is that on youtube uh maybe i'd have to go search it oh we gotta get that oh whoever's got that on vhs yes i was always having a nervous breakdown yeah before i went and but i put myself through it yeah i would insist on Dave Cyrus has walked in with his laundry i do people's laundry oh nice Cyrus hello hello it's not laundry it's just some things i need uh looks like a pillow of some kind um so Dave uh Dave Cyrus is going to be my wingman today because i think i'm going to have sex with you oh great i'm going to move over here why don't we take a quick break and when we come back we'll be joined by Dave Cyrus and Mark Norman Mark Norman is here Dave Cyrus is here and we're talking with Mark his new his new Netflix special Comedy Central well it's going to be on Netflix uh i don't think so i hope one day please please put it on there yeah but watch it on Comedy Central it's Amy Schumer presents Mark Norman don't be yourself opening for Amy Amy is so generous with other comedians oh she's a giver she really is yeah she's not threatened at all you've opened for Louie you've opened for all these guys do you blow them off the stage or do you blow them under the stage no no no i mean those people are there to see Amy or there to see Louie or whoever the hell i'm opening for so if we're if i'm i've done i've done some good shows in front of Amy when she was like a smaller comic at a comedy club but if it's at an arena where she does shows now it's they're there to see her so there's no way i could ever blow her up the stage are you holding back i'm not holding back but i'm definitely just i'm setting the table that's my job as an opener set the table and make it good for the for the headliner somebody told a denis miller said to me when i opened for him do you remember denis miller i'm a huge black and white i think is one of the best specials ever no one talks about it yeah yeah boy he still makes me laugh it breaks my heart the politics yeah it's a bummer but uh the sorry sorry you're in so much pain oh it's okay your body feels like my brain go along with your conversation i'm just gonna mark uh mark norman we're talking with mark norman and so denis had me open for him a couple of times that's very flattering and i said i'm not gonna blow you away i'm i'm setting the plate yeah setting the table for you blow me away that's what you're supposed to do give me everything you got i think it's not a competition it was yes it is give me everything you got whoa i said if i give you everything i got i will poison this crowd and he goes you think you're that funny i said no i just know they'll walk out but he said to me when he was starting out his goal was to blow the headliner off the stage and i thought well that's revealing about your character and your politics so you do hold back for somebody would you feel have you ever found yourself thinking wow i'm doing too well i better pull back here well again i'm only doing maybe 15 or 20 minutes so they're doing an hour so it's their show so even if i kill it with because i have short jokes and everything i could really murder but i don't think that 10 minutes or 15 minutes or 20 minutes is enough to where they go well we're good now we've seen our show because it's only a two-man show yeah so i don't think i mean i've i've blown some comics off the stage i don't want to say i haven't but do you feel good doing that or bad i feel i just feel like hey i'm doing my thing i don't see it as like i'm going to blow this guy out i just go hey i fucking killed that was a good set right you have fun ride the wave i think the marquita queensbury rule of opening for somebody is don't talk to the audience yes that's a rule you should i think i would say you can try to blow me off the stage just don't talk to the audience yeah do your material do your act i agree what if you're a host feature what if you're host what if you're the first person to walk up on that stage yeah well ideally i'm a two engagement i'm always the first i never do it you don't talk to the audience either wow that's interesting see that i think is one of my problems with the new york comedy scene is everybody's fast everybody's quick and everybody can talk to the audience but it gets the audience in the mood to be part of the show yeah and you're a joke writer i'm an old joe i don't want to talk to them right i could but i don't want to and you think because you don't talk to the audience so many people want you to open for them i think that might be part of it yeah but uh yeah i'm a joke guy i mean if anybody went out on louis show was like hey buddy where you from where'd you get that shirt homo he'd be like uh fuck this guy right you know so i don't do it why do you hate jew so much i love jews i'm exactly the option my website has a section called jews i want to be a jew i want to be are you mistaken is it just a list just a list are you with photos are you mistaken for a jew a lot yeah do you like being mistaken that's a huge compliment you guys are killing six percent of the country and you run everything i think a lot of the jew haters are shame people go oh man those guys are fucking killing it i don't know if we run everything well yeah i mean that's an exaggeration but uh you're doing pretty well i don't know if that's true well i think that i think the irish catholics i don't see a lot of homeless jews i'm a renter do you well that's what i'm saying a whole renter i think that's you know like in the comedy writing rooms they're not that many jews it's mostly irish catholics you think oh yeah i thought it was mostly jews i was at the writers guild awards were you there uh you go through the names i pay attention to the names it's not that so you got the lampoon guys but then get the list of jew of uh of new york slum lords yeah exactly it is it is it is like a comedian trying to make a list of funny jew names right slow-motion it's all like the completely non-americanized right right you were definitely born in another language yeah so let's talk about the theme of your podcast you're a storyteller or not yeah i like with jokes in a yarn yeah but you hang jokes which come first the jokes or the story uh well i guess when i was a kid it was story because you had to just say something this happened to me how crazy is this and then you pepper in jokes you go that got a laugh and now they're more they're listening better so maybe i'll just keep doing that stories first then jokes yeah jokes are harder i think do you come up with a story that you jot down on a cocktail napkin or is it always the jokes you jot down the jokes i jot down stories up here because i lived it the joke you have to actually craft and would the jokes stand on its own without the story yeah it was good enough yeah when you're doing falon when you got to get it down to five minutes what do you sacrifice more the story or the story it's all joke it's all joke all joke zero story my opening joke is it's quick it's uh yeah i drink too much i actually got fired from a job for being drunk at work my boss said hey it's it's clear you're a high-function alcoholic and i go jeez how do you know i was high you know and the only story part is that i got fired so that's the story so i'm taking the littlest amount i can do of the story to make it a joke and how much of these stories are absolutely true maybe on the podcast 100% 100% in the act maybe 60% do you feel you're cheating the audience if you change the story to make it funnier no i think i'm not helping them no i think i'm doing them a service it's like that domarero joke people go true story i don't give it true make it funny who cares how true it is yeah does the audience know it's not true or do they think it's true they probably think it's true but that's uh that's uh my choice to you get what i'm spitting out yeah you know yeah 100% honesty on the podcast what's the difference between a net i keep saying it i apologize it's fine i don't care it's comedy central yeah i apologize same you know but both are it's an hour it's an hour what is the difference between doing getting a an hour special for comedy central ready and your stand-up are you sacrificing story for the comedy central special yeah again i'm not a big story guy except for the podcast that's a lot of stories but the the hour is this joke joke joke i don't i don't want any air i don't want any fat just just punches and are you taping every set in preparation taping them all and changing the order and trying new tags and taking tags out that aren't working and then there's you know you do an hour there's always a couple jokes that don't get what you want so you're focusing a lot on those and then what's going to go first what's going to go last you know so and are you able to crack why a joke doesn't give you what you want usually i can crack it sometimes it'll take years sometimes you're in the shower scrubbing your asshole and you go that's it and then sometimes you never get it and then you know you kind of have to just let it go are there some jokes that only work in front of a specific audience yes because in a club maybe the men or the women are afraid to laugh because it reveals too much about their character sure so that if you do it on your special millions of people will laugh yes because they're alone exactly but they don't want to be revealed so it just sounds like something you tell yourself in your joke bombs sure but i mean if you focus group it over and over and over different places you can get a gauge on that like i have a joke about cheating and if it's a date night saturday night and i see a lot of couples the joke gets kind of like a because i think a lot of guys been caught cheating or a lot of girls assume the guys are cheating so that gets awkward but like singles night or somewhere else maybe a comedy club on a on a wednesday with a bunch of nerds in there kills right because the joke is good but i think it hits home a little bit so are your ears primed for this oh yeah i'm all ears ear to ear and so you know that a that a bit i would i would think bits about one night stands with women and stuff would reveal way too much about the men or the women in a club but home alone they're gonna love this stuff maybe yeah i'm fine with that i'll still do it what about how dark the room is i like a darker room why i just think people get self conscious with the lights on right and to go back to your old question uh some crowds getting in some crowd i have a whole chunk on anxiety and if i'm in the midwest they're kind of like who care what anxiety go to work you know but if i'm in new york or la they're like yeah i hear i feel your brother uh-huh so that was an interesting uh interesting takeaway you suffer from anxiety big time yeah join the club yes i figured that's why i love jews you guys get it we not only get it we give it now i have been told that anxiety is powerlessness it's a complete lack of power is that right that's what i was told makes sense a lot of fear a lot of fear not not having control my big anxiety is i'm all alone that i'm just going to be i'm going to die alone and then i realize everybody dies alone that's true i'd rather die alone i don't want to die in a group but yeah i think i don't have that i'm i like being alone so my anxiety is is just people disliking what's that anxiety being disliked disliked you care about what people think of you yeah yeah well yet you have no filter you'll say whatever you want and that's me just going i fuck you body i'm just doing this it's a little bit of a rebel against the wanting to people like me you want people to like you yeah my dad to love you my dad's very unlikable i hope he never hears this because he thinks he is but uh and i think i'm just always like i don't want to be that that's so how important is love to you this is one of the things i've discovered because i'm single married for before you were born i knew that i was doing comedy because i wanted to be loved interesting that i need love i need to be loved i will take it i'll take fake love i'll take real love i'll take the love of a cat a dog a wife a kid i'll take you know a cleaning lady who loves me because i give her work i mean anybody you know just and i remember checking into the four seasons hotel in chicago and i wasn't paying for this yeah i'll talk about mooching in a second help but uh but i remember calling my family up and saying this isn't love at the four seasons it's close enough this is just as you know i'll take paid love whatever yeah i don't know how many comics from your generation are desperately seeking to be loved i think i think it's in there i think more than you think you're the first young comic i've met who has admitted that he wants to be liked yeah sure i think they're all full of shit but do you do you talk about that with the other comics you're 30 i guess i don't know because you're the first one and and you did the show about two years ago and i didn't discuss this with you and i never got this from you is this a new thing that you're admitting to yourself because i never picked up maybe yeah from you that you want to be loved i'm trying to be more real i've been doing a lot of therapy and have a lot of breakthroughs and i'm just saying how i feel now but two years ago would you admit it to the audience that you wanted to be i would have skated around it but i knew i did right this is very interesting yes yes and i think the comics the great comics are angry oh yeah they want to be loved yes and they're like citizen kane they want to be loved on their terms yes that's exactly right i had an experience this weekend where i realized i had a flashback to why my wife uh is it my ex-wife because i want love on my terms and my time is my time and do not waste my time because if we're going to do this that cuts into that yep and i am prioritizing because i think comedians when we're on stage it teaches us if you're a good comedian you're a great comedian hey hey you're a good comedian well i'm okay but you know it's like you cut through the bs yeah that's the plan and in real life it's like cut it no no what are you wasting my time everything becomes the stage yes and you start doing things or talking to people and you go come on come on come pick up the pace pick up the pace right so it becomes impossible to go to parties yeah unless you go in let's go let's go let's go do you find that's happening i do i do uh you're right about the on my turn look at david tell he's killing he goes oh you guys are all idiots fuck you come on and then if he's not killing he's like where'd you go what happened you know we want it we want to still be assholes and still be loved right and we want to be in control it's like that harry shearer quote where he says the only reason you do comedy so you can control why people laugh at you because you walk in a room and everybody's going look at this guy you're like oh shit what happened but if you walk in a room and slip on purpose then you were in control of it you know right you know the you slip on a banana peel everybody laughs but if you go tell people about a banana peel you slipped on now you're in control of the laughs do you find with anxiety i find that my anxiety is cured by like editing like or writing do you find like when you're do you have anxiety when you're on stage i know you had that you know the anxiety doing felon but when you're on stage i mean if i about doing well i want to do well if i'm doing well i'm just cool as a cucumber you know you're like oh you know when you're just sharp and you know oh i know the next 13 moves i'm gonna make right that's a good feeling but and the audience is with you everything you say they're hanging on your reward that's great no anxiety that that i feel better there than i do you know at a cocktail party you know the cocktail party cocktail party or i mean i go to house parties a lot i guess i should say cocktail party is crazy yeah who am i you know howard hughes but um yeah so when you're up there killing i feel way better than i do at a restaurant with a bunch of people do you ever get a 100 kill where you walk off and you go 100 percent there i could not do any better i've had that but i always i've had that the audience could say that was 100 kill but i still know ah that line didn't go what i wanted or that that line so old and maybe that's a little hacky and i shouldn't have done that so there's always some critiquing with my own brain but i feel like an audience could say that was 100 if you ask a pitcher to relive the game they can tell you like no one ryan can tell you every pitch he threw wow yeah yeah i believe it can i walk you through a fallen shot and totally and you know 100 yeah you can tell me exactly how the joke went yep yep and what the response was yep what about your special probably yeah it's an hour long but i could do it what about a set at the cellar a 20 minute set at the cellar if it was that night yeah i remember it back to front but i do a lot of sets every night i'm doing four tonight you do so many sets nobody works harder than you on on the scene in new york nobody how many sets i think i asked you this last time you were on the show did you set the record for most sets in one night i i i'm sure i did in new york yeah how many sets did you do in one night i think i did that year i think david tell has it i think erinberg has it oh erinberg yeah what is he at 11 or something he did yeah he did it like for a documentary they specifically did the most anyone had done and that was like less than a year ago yeah how many sets did you do i just do like five a night or four night so i think i might have it over the year but he has it like the most in a night and you're doing quality rooms too yeah you know i'll do any room i'll do a bar i'll do a warehouse whatever that's the frustration living in la i remember coming to new york and i'm not making this up in three days in new york you can do a month's worth of oh yeah no doubt about it if you really focus and you're trying to hone a seven minute set you can get it done in three days yeah three days a year in new york is five years in cleveland uh so this is your first one hour special oh yeah are you already thinking about your next special oh of course i've already got about 20 minutes you got 20 your generation is different than mine it's a problem it's not good no it's good i think it's hurting kami a little no well i was gonna get well let me give you okay the upside of it and be let me pretend to be positive because it makes me look good all right deep down i'm seething no i i i think it's really interesting because we were thinking about the five minute sets you know get on the tonight show sure you know five you guys are like musicians i think it's so much i'm being serious so this is not fake i think it's like albums it's like albums right i never thought of it like that i like that yeah we're not making singles we're making albums yeah the audience is there for it right that's true it's all different now because an audience wants comedy they want content they want content they want comedy and they're willing to put in the time oh yeah i mean it's great you go on these message boards they're all talking about the special it just came out three days ago and they're they're dissecting it and they're what is that joking a reference to and they know everything they listen all the podcasts like i had a podcast where i talked about having sex with a celebrity and they figured out who the celebrity was i never gave a name never gave a what she looked like or whatever they figured it out because these people they get together and you tell did you tell them they were right oh they knew i knew i think because uh they put it together and then she called me and chewed me out did you chew her out no she was right no i'm talking about when you were having sex yes i wasn't less chewing but more licking but yeah uh wow that it's it's a different experience yeah there's a connection with the fans what percentage of your day is spent interacting with your fans probably too much because i i feel guilt see again the guilt i feel guilty and weird like who am i so they take the time to write to me i'm gonna take the time back and it's mostly email now it's mostly tweets and facebook and stuff okay that's effortless right yeah i just give a favorite and go thanks or whatever i write on the instagram hey i appreciate it something like that do some fans creep you out i get so much gay love like you wouldn't believe gay guy i wish women liked me as much as gay guys and i mean it's like i want to suck your balls i'll lick your asshole till it's dry you're fucking bad so you start to understand like oh i get why women are freaked out all the time by you well by any guy because we're we're we come at it hard like hey this guy's like i want you to blow load my face and sing me happy birthday i'm like all right shit how'd we get here really it's a service weird gay men give that they let straight men understand what they're doing to women yeah there you go that's true do gay men think you're gay i don't think so i mean i have a whole axe about trying to get laid and fucking puss and loving gash and chasing trim so maybe gay men look at you the way women look at gay men you're the safe yeah maybe maybe you're the guy who gay men want to go out with in case somebody doesn't want to dance exact amundo let's you know i want to go to a bar yeah but i want to hang out with somebody who's just going to sit with me instead of dancing all yes you dance do you take women to clubs to clubs and dance have you ever taken a woman to a club and dance no i've met women at clubs but i've never taken a woman to a club what is that sound that is your phone it's hollywood calling oh great uh you're in i'm in yeah you got it have you ever gone dancing with a woman yeah i think so i i mean dance last time you went dancing with a woman i don't know i've met a girl at a dance club and she said you want to dance i said sure i won't turn down go to dance clubs no i went in uh amsterdam i was in amsterdam and i got on tinder to try to get laid and this girl said i'm at a dance club right now and i said i'm on my way and we had ended up having sex do you do comedy because you don't dance i mean to me it's like a waste of time to go dancing i hate dancing i'm like i'm already a stripper what do you need to go right what do i need to go dancing for yeah if i want to move my body i'll fuck you yeah exactly what is the moving your body to music and it's never good you feel stupid and it's a waste of time i women love to go dancing i'm like i'll watch you dance it's hot but i what am i gonna sit stand behind you and jiggle suppose somebody's videotaping i know i mean that's so humiliating i mean you go to weddings and you go to bar mitzvah i know in sweet 16 parties right and you and people you have people moving their bodies i guess it's kind of like comedy you're making an asshole out of yourself the whole point of dancing yeah to make an asshole out of yourself but i've already made an asshole well some people are great at it and they're not making that they're you're like wow i wish i could do that women love men who can dance which i think makes up for the whole 78 cents in the dollar thing and that goes back to to the you know 19th century 18 dancing there is there's a courtship that yeah it's a connection and it's safe yeah it's safe you get to touch their hands and it's fun and i guess women like it because it's testing your manners that if you're willing to hold a woman but not grope how does he right i guess well i think it's more of a let loose thing like look he's letting loose and he can be vulnerable and and move with the music i think it's more of that i'm testing your physical prowess i think there i think but i also think they're testing your civility because women want civility in a relationship if you go back 300 years it was very mannered that's dancing i'm gonna i'm going to put my arm around you but i'm only gonna touch you here and i'm gonna respect you now there's you know it there's no respect yeah but they can also read now we also we also allow them to read and own property so there is a trade-off true i'm still what's the longest mark norman has ever gone without sex uh oh my god i mean years high school and all that you play the long game with women how many i hate the long game i think it's you told me the long game was good that you that there were women who this was two years i mean i'll do the long game is in plan a seed then then come back every now and then but i'm not doing the whole like let's take you out again then we'll go out again then we'll talk on the phone then we'll go out again you know like that's silly to me do you think you could ever settle down i think i could i don't know it's it seems odd the whole thing seems uh off and unnatural doesn't it it never works you know if someone is together for 30 we applaud literally applaud them because wow you did it you get you get applauded for joining the military and for staying together that's insane you got shot at and you almost got shot at by your wife that's how hard it is we compare it with fighting in a war you don't think there's one soulmate out there for mark norman no i don't know is there a woman you're haunted by no no woman is there a woman i'm dying a meter i would say you've had sex you're 33 i would suspect you've had sex with more than four women yes okay today what's the most in one day for three in a day three in a day seriously yeah i remember the day vitamin e uh no just good old-fashioned desperation okay wait wait how many in one day three three with the three different women three different women but it's mapped out pretty clever yeah i gotta hear this all right i had sex with a girl after midnight one night we felt that doesn't count all right well this is technically 24 hours 24 hours yeah we fell sweet how many sets did you do that day i think i did three sets fucked a girl at you know one in the morning where we're at her apartment slow down slow down man this is the most important thing i need to hear all right okay so you did a set yes where'd you perform i'm sure it was a comedy seller or a club of you know did you meet the woman at the club i met the girl after the show i i had had plans with her how was it oh you met her after the show did she see you perform yes i brought her the last show i had she saw perform how'd you do i did well did you kill i had a yeah had a kill we had a few drinks went back to her place had sex she went to work at nine in the morning as civilians do i went home had a girl meet me at my house at about i don't know three or something three in the afternoon how did you hook up with her how did it was it through tinder no she was like uh it was uh like a i don't want to see a comedian but she's in the business so we'd always kind of like hey whenever you're we should meet okay had you ever had sex with this woman no the woman who you spent the night with had you had sex with her no okay so this is so the first one was new the second one was i knew her but i never had sex with her and you so you had sex with her i had sex with her about three in the afternoon you had sex at three in the afternoon at your apartment did you shower before i did yeah so you had cleaned off the other woman yes did you feel any guilt no no i mean these were all none of this was a relationship this was all good times do you think the second woman would be upset if she found out that you had sex 12 hours earlier probably especially since it was less than 12 hours uh-huh no i guess it was about 12 hours yeah so then uh did a show later that night had sex with a girl like you know 10 in the at 10 at night okay that's doable and so how did you meet the woman for the the third woman i knew it already and i already had sex with she worked for goldman sacks at a great apartment downtown mm-hmm unbelievable and did you say i've got the hat trick did we yeah i remember were you going were you going for the i was going for the hat trick because i hanging out with this girl was a nightmare but i just went for it with a hat trick did you lower your standards no i knew her i had sex with her a many a time but i was just going for the three you're going for the three so let's review the first one saw you perform yes i'm gonna say and you had a lot of drinks couple drinks yeah i'm gonna say you don't remember that no i remember it i have like two scotches okay who was the best let me let me try to predict what was the one you miss the one that you sometimes get a chubby thinking about i'm gonna say the afternoon you got it you're right i was gonna say i'm pretty sure it's the one he still has to see he still has to communicate with is going to be the best one yeah the afternoon was the best one hang on this is let's let's try to figure this out the afternoon was the best one is it because of her or because of the timing she was the hottest and it was just something hot about the middle of the day just coming over and i already had the other one and she didn't know about that so that was fun so i don't know there's a thrill to it was a thrill to that and i'd already i'd got a good night's sleep the third one's kind of the end of the night when i'd done a few shows and already got laid once so the third one's just kind of like let's do this for the story and the first one was like oh cool we're getting laid and the second one was like oh we're fucking a girl in the middle of the day right so it was the second one was the funnest and the third one because she works for goldman sacks you couldn't care less about her well she was just annoying and uh a horrible human being yeah she was she works for goldman sacks i guess so she was like a dumb blonde and she was a shoe in yeah did she want to be treated like crap because she works for goldman sacks did she know that she's scum she kind of did like that yeah she was the nice person she's a good person i don't know but she works for goldman sacks yeah is that make you bad yes why because goldman sacks doesn't provide a service they they transfer money from you to them they're their thieves as bernie sanders says to be fair she's a cleaning lady i don't think she's right responsible all right and let's see let me guess uh the first sexual encounter you had sex with her again no no no the second one you did yeah and the third one the goldman so let me predict the goldman sacks woman you walked out thinking never again but you had sex well done nailed it nailed it yeah are you are you it took like six months later but i went back you went back because she wanted in yeah and i was like yeah why not god you're my hero i wish i could be this i wish i could be you i wish i could be you so let me ask you a question you could do it you could do it do women want to be treated with respect i have this theory that i would be a much happier man if i didn't worship women that i think you're right yeah my knees buckle around women and i'm like they're slave i'm a you know just i and they're buckling too though well no but i'm like it's kind of the point where i'm like hang out with my mother and my sister that's how desperate what well the sex no i just female company but if you don't so do you think it's easier to get laid right after you got laid is there something is there a scent i think is there a confidence a confidence it's a lack of need it's a lack of desperation it's an ease about you really i think so women pick up on it oh yeah women have picked up they're so intuitive they're amazing creatures they do they smell another woman on maybe but that that i would never know i mean that's that's some olfactory bullshit yeah it's a compliment see what i don't understand about women is if i find out as a guy if we find out that there's a woman who can be passed around i don't want in but i've been told that if women sense a guy is a great lover they want they they don't mind that he's a as they say a coxman yeah i mean i think i mean you have a reputation yes mind if i tell you that no i'm fine with it okay so you have a reputation i'm aware and you're a swordsman sure say women are attracted to that i think they are subconsciously they'll shit on you all day and talk about this and that and say he's a scum he's a pig whatever but i think deep down i think wouldn't even like tiger woods a guy like that when he cheats i think you know on a small level in a woman's brain they're going well of course he's cheating good for him not good for him but i think there's a little bit like that's kind of hot he's a man he's going over what he wants and do they think well he's a great lover so he would know how to make me come i think that's part that's in the area or do they want something else maybe this is the they want the uh the what do you the pin you down kind of thing you know they want the competition they want the competition women are more attracted to someone who they know other women want so women want to be with someone who sleeps around simply because they want to show all those other women he had sex with i'm as good or better than you because he had sex with me i'm so glad a woman is not here to set us straight i know they would lie they would lie okay so they women want a guy who sleeps around and do they care about the orgasm do they care about being worship that comes later really i i don't think they're sitting there going orgasm orgasm i think they're worried they're that's in the bedroom thinking about the other women yeah it's a sense of competition and so they're like landing somebody i got this guy i got this that's what i'm saying they want they want to pin you down i got him i i saddled this horse that's pleasurable for them what's it's in there it's innate even if they don't come it's not worried about the coming not every woman needs to come yeah it's about the the the conquer they're conquering us yeah they're conquering every woman you've had sex with before yes i guess yeah i really think that you think that or do you know that well no one knows anything no one knows it but do you know it i think that as well and they will not admit it but they know it and then they have sex with you to be able to report back to their friends it's not for them it's for it's for their own selves not for the friends so their self-worth is i don't know about worth but it's competition it's a it's a ego boost all right we're we got a you'll come back yeah but there's a lot of women are listening right now going i hate these fucking guys all right boy this was fun this was fun we got somewhere good i feel like somewhere deep let me ask you one final question all righty who's your favorite comic oh probably groucho yeah big fan he's um probably the basis for my whole shtick he's the template and what should we watch let's say duck soups pretty good there's also on youtube there's a lot of compilations of like his best you bet your life moments and stuff like that so i would check that out well we just scratched the surface this was great this was great and i know i don't mean to embarrass you no but your fly is open you got a booger in your nose oh i know how busy you are and you have this new comedy central special uh-huh thank you that everybody on netflix that will be on netflix yeah because everything will be at some point hopefully it'll get on there amy schumer presents mark norman don't be yourself that's the one a great comedian and i hope you come back asap thank you sir i'd love to come back i love it here and and uh love you guys and thanks for having me and praise allah coming up fred stohler and dav siris please visit the david felben show website and hit the amazon button and then do all your amazon shopping via the david felben show website we get a small percentage of everything you purchase it does not cost you more just go to david felben show dot com we're lousy with amazon banners click on one it'll take you to amazon and then as you shop i don't know how they do it but we get a small percentage of everything you purchase during that shopping session it's a great way to support this even greater show also share this episode with your friends copy and paste the link to this episode share the laughs share the knowledge share the love basically as just a fan years of kenny kramer the real kramer no of seinfeld okay because i would have to leave as a fan of kenny kramer as a fan of the show seinfeld uh as a young man i remember telling my friends i have a theory about seinfeld i think kramer is based on a coke dealer because it's the only thing that explains his behavior and that it takes everything away i don't want to get sued again but that's dav siris talking we're in the air yeah oh i'm not going to finish that story uh harry that's dav siris i think your theory is um no i'm just kidding he's the greatest guy kenny kramer i'm just kidding i'm just i i i i'm here in new york let's be positive okay let me introduce while i'm positive that kenny kramer's a piece of shit because he sued you over nothing and made your life miserable anybody who makes fred stohler's life miserable is a piece of shit you don't sue fred stohler he's my friend well even if you're not the yeah it's all good it's all good let me introduce dav siris hi is an award-winning writer for s and l i am you are you've written for s and l and triumph in silk comic dog series on hulu you're a great comedian thank you you're undefeated in the roast battles correct yes i'm going to help you defeat pat dixon someday yes you're also a screenwriter you're working with kite can't talk let's not get into that i am a screenwriter but yes let's not get into the details just get until variety releases it my sign felled your author fred stohler returns hello old friend hello you have a new memoir about life death and stand-up in the 1980s and the 1990s hbo's annual young comedian special was the ultimate launching pad for emerging comics looking to break into the world of show business the young comedian special produced some of the most recognizable and bankable comedic stars of all time including sam canison bob saggett jerry seinfeld and jud apatow he was on a young comedian i know i don't know that may not be correct i mean he was on it but i don't think he was launched well no i but what about the ones who didn't exactly make it in five minutes to kill actor and comedian fred stohler the kindle best-selling author of 2012's my sign felled year tells the story of the young comedian special in 1989 he and five other talented then unknown comics took the stage with the hopes that their five-minute sets would propel them to fame and fortune some like david spade and rob schneider hit it big others didn't by turns hilarious and heart-wrenching five minutes to kill is the bitter sweet story of what happened to six of america's funniest people after their first big breaks welcome thank you stohler and i am one of those six funniest will disprove that theory today who was on the 1989 young comedian special it was um as that um copy said um rob schneider david spade myself warren thomas drake saither and jan karam wow and who hosted danis miller and it was interesting because he it was 1989 as we said and he was he was just he wasn't the um you know bill o'reilly kind of guy then he was still well you wrote on his uh hbo show where he wasn't conservative but i always found that weird he would say i want to get these fat cats in his rants i go you're a fat cat you know but he he did some material like he he was putting down um god i forgot the references from 89 um some of them but he said uh with abortion he goes my theory is um he was against abortion he goes no cock no vote you know so he was sort of saying he's against abortion but he was still being you know sort of progressive he had a falling out with warren during that do you remember i remember during the young comedian special i do remember um was it a similarity in material yeah and he said i have a bigger yes you remember that i remember denis telling me that tell me what he said i didn't i just remember that denis and warren were close friends and then they had a similar bit and denis asked warren not to do it and warren said you're so rich and successful why don't you give me the bit and he said i've got a big way to fall bigger way to fall i remember warren telling me that yes me too now this young comedian special is that in your book um no it's great stuff we won't talk about but it's a $1.99 like my son i'm just kidding those are the sales for it let's let's sell the book because as you know my seinfeld year was a bestseller because of me right i thought you again i think i said the lawsuit but um well that i had you on my show and it became a bestseller well because my listeners read they do they do oh good good good i have a feeling they're listening to the show they read because i'm so boring i have a feeling maybe the bigger readers are more readers than listeners i have a feeling more people read than less than i did already lang's podcast so my listeners read so go to amazon mm-hmm if you have a kindle order no no no no you people get confused i wish i could read i don't have a kindle but you download a free kindle app and you could read it on your computer your ipad your iphone your laptop your desktop a lot of people go i wish i could read it you can read it you just need the kindle app yes which is a kindle single yes is it an an i available on ibooks i don't know what ibooks is so but um if we do an audio i'm gonna have to do david spades if i always act out all the characters that'll be weird this is very exciting because this is your third kindle single second i had a book i had first my seinfeld year then i had the book maybe we'll have you back maybe we'll have you back what did that come out my seinfeld was 2012 the next year 2013 was um uh the the book the full length book and this is much later yes and how much is five minutes to kill so dollar 99 as i'm gonna come up with something no one ever came up with it's the same price as a latte no you get it that ever poor poor lattes are always like invest in taxes to say in funds all right see i was funny in 1989 but i it's the same price as saving a life in some third world country yes yes think of all the money you waste on save the children yes when you can be no this is god a dollar 99 well that's what these kindle singles are it's um they're mini books this is like 84 pages their thing is it's more than a magazine article not quite a book and um and they do really well people like them steven king all these people have kindle singles so it's hard to get in but i pitched the idea and the editor was a fan of these young comedian specials and i had to oh so you can't do a kindle single without their permission you you can but it won't be on their main page this is this this one is actually not not it's amazon publishing so they have their own publishing department where you know they do the cover and i had to do legal stuff everyone and you know source everything like rob schneider was on cribs and said this is the house that sandler built and i had a show i had to find the sources and i couldn't find that i found in russian they dubbed rob schneider in russian and had to translate it so i had to source everything and copy it so it's it's like a real publishing so anyone in the world can put a kindle single out but it's not curated through their main page of these are the best selling kindle singles these are the new ones i see so yeah so and you're indemnified if somebody sues yes yes i i who's gonna sue fred stoler who would be that nuts who would uh who would uh well that was on that was on this episode right as we don't have to pretend that's not oh we've talked about yeah okay kenny kramer on this episode eat for a yeah you know the weird thing is the people you think would get upset about what you wrote didn't and things you would never think like yeah you know my book i talked about a one night stand with kathy griffin and she loved it you know i think you know nothing you say in a book and hurt your career if it's an opinion like i say things about larry david what happened to the lawsuit with kenny kramer oh it went to the supreme court and then the you know i was just kidding uh they finally read it and said um uh well trump is trying to get free speech thrown out so maybe it'll bring this back you know to make it easier to sue for a while yes i think i'm gonna say to make it easier to sue fred stoler they're changing the laws that's that was his his platform but they so they did throw it out yes yeah he tried to appeal based on the fact his lawyer never saw seinfeld i'm not making that up that was in the appeal that he had the that he picked the wrong line yes his it was like like um his law he had bad representation did i ever tell you the moment that i knew or allegedly felt kenny kramer is completely full of shit it was the real the real kramer well kenny yeah not cause it was i saw an interview with him and they said well what do you do for a living he goes i live off the money i made doing comedy in the eighties and i was like oh you're into some shady stuff aren't you well that's no way that's true dave cyrus and shady stuff meaning that he has an umbrella i you know i'm sorry only that someone would allegedly misinterpret what i said to be heard so let's go into positive things let's go back to 1989 you're doing the young comedian special obviously we know who david spade is we know who rob schneider is we know who denis miller is tell us about warren thomas warren thomas was um from san francisco and uh you were in i interviewed david feldman and he he's one of your quotes which isn't in the book maybe for the dvd extras we'll put some stuff in that got left out but i asked you and you said something really profound i said was warren afraid of success and you said there's nothing wrong with being afraid of success i really like that that it's not a flaw and basically i think dana covey and robin williams and you could correct me if i'm wrong they created this kind of riffing style of free flow in san francisco pop references pop culture like almost like a steven pearl was a precursor he was a guy that only a few people could keep up with robin williams with riffing and it was this guy steven pearl sweet guy and warren thomas and greg proups and and and uh kramer not kenny kramer jeremy kramer did you interview jeremy kramer no i i i i didn't get a hold of him i i wish i could have i would have been good oh i tom kenny i i actually i i love tom but i emailed him he's so busy he's not just spongebob he's everything every second he's doing animation by the way fred stoller made history three years ago on the show he were the only person ever to say a bad thing about tom kenny no did you remember that no yes we were going to have tom on and and he said he would come on and i forgot to call him i love tom kenny spongebob yes but you did i reached out i reached out it was weird because a lot of people were treating me like i was doing an expose of the the catholic church and malice station like i'm not giving up spade or stoller's going in places she shouldn't be you know people people wouldn't talk to me about spade hey back off man or and other people going i heard you're poking around so some some people changed their mind about interviews it's too emotional warren thomas's best friends that was going to then he changes mind greg poops greg poops they don't want to talk about he did then he then he goes i i think this is too emotional and i respect that right you know he was his best friend so some people some people got mad where i won't say names where they said why did you say this you lied and i had to send her the um the tape we did of the interview to go i didn't say these things tell me about warren thomas he was um excuse me a black guy but he did he didn't pause there for one thing it was a black guy but but exactly but he there's the butt again and but he didn't he didn't really do the dave chappelle talking about the plight like he would do stuff like like the the the black guy voice i'm here sweeping oh the you know the lights went out you know someone told me in some san francisco club he goes now can't can you can't see me so he would do the you know come in sorry i'm late i'm on negro time you know he would do something but he really he he was like bill cosby yes he didn't make his black he didn't want to shine a light on the plight and yes he wasn't he just was he wanted to be funny and there he was on one side of the divide in the african-american community one side obviously says we're black we're like the orthodox jews right nobody's ever going to get over the fact that we're black so we're going to dress like orthodox jews and stay away from everybody else but warren was of the oj simpson bill cosby tradition but but but influenced by the bay like i said with them by that i mean going to prison right he did go to prison warren i didn't know that i'm at prison but he was locked up oh wow well yeah alclithon said they were both you know that joke being black on a sunny day they would just round them up he was in the black panthers a junior black panthers who was warren thomas his mother was a black panther and and they would have these meetings at warren's place so he was brought up with that sensibility he'd the berkeley kind of black guy you know the but he didn't go that thing like i said um actually i was going to say that like a frank linigai but frank linigai was also running back right didn't go to iowa state i don't maybe you know i wrote it but i got drafted oh yeah and it's saying like i john ross told stories that they would do you know mushrooms or whatever all night acid then he'd play in these pickup games and score 50 points his resilience his constitution was crazy and everything and um no i remember when i did uh in 88 um cobs comedy club in the bay warren with headline he'd do an hour then robin williams would come up do an hour then they would improv another hour i'm not making this up then when the crowd was leaving they had no idea who i was because they went up way in the beginning so yeah so he was like i said he very influenced by robin williams uh um warren and the problem with warren thomas was he would riff but he had no discipline like robin would make it look like it's spontaneous but he was very what so we're not calculated but he had tricks like a magician and made it look like yeah warren never could he would be insanely funny offstage and you he couldn't he would never recreate it like guys like the late rich jenny you'd hang out with a comedian who'd like that's funny can i have what you did and he'd write it down or he said something funny warren wasn't that warren couldn't you know in the product like rickles rickles but rickles but he stills like a robin williams well you know this schtick he's going to do hey here's this guy in the front well rickles if you go back and watch rickles on carcin he truly was in the moment and saying things off the top of his head right no way because he's not telling jokes you're saying that warren was pure was pure he'd go on stage and he he would still riff like i um i wrote about in the single the book is that after his set like david spade went um he would kind of like he would just what did what did you do because we lost because he would kind of go what what else is what else should we talk about oh yeah yeah yeah and stumble and they had to edit it to make it because he goes yeah i like to just find my way so to him it was almost that cowardly but not yeah to be maybe just weren't we're on a pussy but and just have a five minute structured set that you rehearsed right i think he and even for an HBO special he was not riffing he had some signature bits like he did um the first uh black eye to fly first class maximum peanuts yes yes and he dick in the butter tray i haven't got and he so he had some signature bits but he and one of his signature what i found that from interviewing him is he would like to lose the crowd piss them off almost call someone a c word and then get them back and and he almost part of his act was he did a bit where he'd go where did war lose him and he would take the mic like a pointer and go well he did the dick in the butter tray and he would try to remember you know i mean he almost on perp like i did when i did stand up a lot of my jokes were bombing like i'm having fun this reminds me of the night i got stabbed in the head you know just weird and then i would try to do them when i was doing well oh that doesn't make sense so warren part of his thing was losing them on purpose almost does that oh absolutely that was a san francisco treat oh really yeah yeah yeah so warren was um he was on but not in an always riffing but and you said something interesting when i interviewed you that you were in the bay and you couldn't riff but you would like for sport to argue and you would almost take turns like saying i think bush is good mm-hmm yeah we would drive to gigs and fight as a joke well you know i love warren we loved um i don't want to give things away which i just did but i he got to a point where he loved to argue and contradict you where i did a real asshole-ish thing like one time in i said oh that's so sad with christopher reeve he goes what's the big deal people get paralyzed every day fuck he's a celebrity so then as an experiment i went the opposite way like the next day i go you know what what's the big deal with christopher reeve why they heralded him he goes well he's a spokesperson we need a we they need a person to raise money and we need to raise him up but you know you know i'm saying he liked as to so i would like an asshole like say the opposite of what he argued with me about on another day you know what i remember he did that just made me laugh so hard and john ross was best friends with yes i oh i john gave me such great inside such a great story teller one of the things that made me laugh the hardest was i went to pick up warren he was staying with his mom in right next door to berkeley it wasn't oakland it was can't remember the name of the town anyway san francisco yes thank you that's no no it's the town over conquered no i just say this guy's too muscular to be funny it's bothering me but let's talk sorry so you have a low threshold for muscular he and his brothers used to do this to his mother she'd be serving them breakfast and they'd go that's it bitch crack the egg over the skin that's it you love it you love me and they would and she would be laughing at some of the joe rogan school of comedy i am i'm just kidding just kidding all right warren thomas drake sather drake sather yes um this guy will love him you remember him yeah oh great great great jokes um this guy was like uh i'm interviewing rob schneider for this they were really good friends interview rob schneider i did yeah and he was really cool they were roommates in san francisco yes and um drake was like a heartthrob and they were they were into like fashion those guys like uh you know you know well he wrote zoolander and he was really uh drake sather into um those kind of gq magazines into metrosexual you know fashion really was a very good-looking guy oh stunning yes i interviewed um a woman who dated him and rob schneider and she you know bernadette lockett sweet lady oh i love i you dated her too no no i'd love bernadette yes so she said she was just describing his appeal i looked into his blue eyes i felt i was swimming in them how gorgeous he was but he was really into image and uh yeah he was like uh he was into andy warhol he was uh someone said uh this guy mark brazil who was i think it was very articulate and he was 70 show comedian yes he created that 70 show and um he said drake was almost like or maybe corruption i said i'm like andy warhol like he dyed his hair jet black and doing this kind of prasanna almost performance art where he his first wife was a stripper and they went on people's court and they did it together as performance art it was brilliant almost like with judge wopner and did they know did wopner know was no no it's genius so he was like almost a performance artist in his own way and he um when he said to rob schneider first time they met her he goes you want to meet my wife okay and they go to a strip club and she's dancing so he he no he was really into um man who's that filmmaker who that the eye gets slashed i don't know dolly yes he was into that he was into um uh he'd love lenny bruce right it wasn't dolly there was a slash in the eye no with it when they made it a hard-boiled egg no it's the yeah that's over the dolly i can't remember no no that's solvador that's solvador dolly's like first film where there's a woman they used a hard-boiled egg to make it look like they slashed yeah that's i swear to god that's over a dollar and he was the bow used to play it but that was but he loved he loved that he was with a stripper because lenny bruce's uh had a stripper wife or girlfriend so honey yeah yeah so so drake really was into that stuff and um just a he was so cool because he never spoke he was like for a while i would um his wife marnie um he met in australia beautiful do you remember marnie she was a waitress at the laugh factory and i'd hang out with them and he had this coolness so not neurotic you know one thing i put in the book like he sidles up to me you know and he goes you know before the taping is me and you we have it how tougher because we're tall we already won so short scrappy guys that make it that's why the resentment well what does it say say this again he said me and you we have it tougher because we're tall we already won he was sort of intuating that the just short little scrappy guys go far because they are overcompensating like i won the genetic lottery because i'm tall that's interesting which i didn't he was tall and gorgeous you know and all that funny story he this woman slept with uh or drake and then i don't want to disparage the dead but this guy passed away this comedian who uh he did jokes he looked like super mario or whatever and he goes why'd you sleep with drake and not me come on babe and he was pulling her and um the the joke which is not joke is how do you go hey it's like me talking to a woman you are brand pit why him and not me all right that's oh is this a san francisco comic yes bald yes heavy set yes criminal record yes i'm on i'm on i'm very close to steven you know i don't want to tell a lot of stories i don't want to say but all right just i don't want to say whatever you want i know i'm green he did a rant on facebook how everyone's fucking him over and me and nor mcdonnell did something to him i don't remember something we talked or maybe talked about him on this podcast and then i just was tar yeah so i i'm a lonely guy and and i go hey who wants to get a milkshake on facebook and he was the only one that bit now do you know that nor mcdonnell shared an office with drake that's in my kindle single and and dennis the their first writing job was the first dennis miller show which you seeing a young guy but to know your stuff yeah i was a fan of the des miller show yeah but i'm talking about tribune before hbo yeah like how john stewart had a show the network show yes i think it was fox but so norm got fired and it's like the seinfeld bit he kept coming to work norm got fired yes right away and then he just kept coming in with them says all right give him the job back norm would norm would just write one joke a day but it'd be a great joke he'd say i have to write these you know he shared an office with drake and norm called them the twins because they were about tall brilliant and quiet and dennis was obsessed with their office because the lights were always off he goes in the heart of darkness ah what's going on were you on that staff no that was drake's first writing job norms mark brazil who ended up nor they tell the story mark brazil um is you know did really well creating that 70 show and if you follow him on facebook he's very liberal and very passionate and his heart was broken norm always tells a story you know when they're starting to show he goes to uh dennis because we got to go go after this rush limbaugh guy and this goes i kind of like that cat and then mark's face drops and he sulks away you know i kind of like the things he says you know so uh yeah so who else was you know the oh kevin rooney i interviewed kevin rooney was on staff yes yes um yeah so what was your was your first writing job on dennis this year was on rozan with norm and one of my one of the reasons i got fired was because of drake's either why is that well i was getting shut down in the room and drake was working on larry sanders and larry sanders and ratford lot i i i had always seen him walking around so i would run into drake and he goes has it going because it was my first writing job i was from steen on with you yes he's in my book he steve i love you and uh i know you're no i still was a story with steve and he he was only concerned that's why he wasn't trying to throw me but i'll tell you later so drake gave me this advice he says how's it going today i said it's a nightmare i've got this guy running the room who just keeps shutting me down and i'm so much funnier than he is and drake said what you do is this is 20 some odd years go for a walk just leave the room and go for a walk and then come back and you'll be refreshed you'll clear your head so we went for a walk drake and i went for a walk it was a four hour walk four hours i came back well and my my days were numbered well with me um when i wrote on seinfeld that year um that one year i remember there was no table on seinfeld you know you just you were on your own everyone for themselves and then it got to a point where six weeks to go in this he said uh i'm not gonna do your episode uh it's larry taven pression there's no point in starting anything else up so he didn't say but you know just stay home so i'd come in every day just for lunch go for walks play pinball and run-throughs but he but but he said don't do anything so that was larry david it's a yeah okay drake say there and then he passed away are you giving away the endings but well i guess i guess itself there's more to it than that but yeah yeah in a way that let them read and find out what is that in the book no no i i it starts with the young community special then it ends i'm just kidding i i follow them all through every jan karam beautiful jan yeah i write about her i think she was a precursor to the hot chicks doing comedy i mean she i won't name names she knew right on saturday night live or a producer and said hey could i be on it because you're too beautiful you're too beautiful and then finally she said well what about tina fey and and that's so she a precursor to the sarah silverman amy schumer hot chicks or jan never owns her hotness she never you know talked about you know bodily functions with semen and you know i'm not saying that's all they do but you know i'm saying i gotta talk about sex no she was like girly but she was really beautiful and she still is so remember vanda michael's yes i just thought i'd bring her up yeah she was more like a vampy kind of well vanda vamp no she was yes she was a very sexy lady but yeah but women in the 80s were more like kind of like mini poll risers you know the you know punch punch you know um riser was punch punch we think well we all that 80s kind of new york roll up your sleeves and call riser yeah he's called a pound stone yeah i don't know go ahead no i think it's odd that like we think of it as such an advantage to be a beautiful woman in comedy but at the same time i think sarah silverman might have been one of the most attractive women who ever lived and she never got a movie and she was amazing she's got movies she never started a movie at the peak of her life recently hotness well i'll tell you about no i and this is what i think about sarah silverman very very very attractive but she's attractive where she makes you think one of us could be with her even though we never could you know i know she has an accessibility i don't believe she's like this like what's her name who's that woman um the black lady and whose line is it anyway um aisha tylett is gorgeous but it's not an accessibility like there's a wall of sarah what makes you think you could have sarah silver nothing in the world i know you know i'm talking about an accessibility you make her laugh you get the impression if you make her laugh enough she'll love you even though you know i mean just the word just just accessibility uh what's her name the whose line is it lady she doesn't there's a wall she's not to me you know what i'm saying there's a not a flirty with sarah silverman but like like amy schumer um yeah so jan was a precursor to beautiful women being comedians but she never really made it like those people did okay but this is exciting yes and and i interviewed you wow this is so long ago on mother's day and you only gave me a few minutes because you're in your car you're in jersey but uh this last year yeah i think it was mother's day that would be like a year ago yeah it took a while and what did i say did i give you any insight yeah um i like the thing about what's wrong with being afraid of success we talked about that earlier in the show well that's about all the insight you gave me i'm trying to you know pump you up but earlier i was talking to mark normand about fear of success waiting in the wings to go on and saying to yourself wow this is this is too much pressure i can't handle it and fear of success i think is a rational response to realizing the pressures that success is going to bring you well and interviewing for this uh book a lot of things i didn't realize i didn't realize the bay in the eighties was i thought only new york city's comedy boom the eighties was where there was more gigs and comedians where you could almost effortlessly make a living i didn't know in the bay they were like rock stars we were rock stars and like bob rubin and and some of them were in a comfort zone where they they were you know like almost race to the rafters and where it was hard because in the bay they were these rock stars then they had to come to los angeles to hollywood and figure out how to package that to show biz the package was special about you and it wasn't about being creative as it was in the bay it was more like and a lot of them couldn't do that like warren you know some of them could yes the the the tension in san francisco and that's over by the way there's no they don't encourage young comedians in san francisco really no it stopped but at the time in the eighties early nineties you were taught to be a star you had to fall in san francisco yeah you were you were encouraged to develop a follow kind of like now with social media like you had to be funny and then you have had a following like bob rubin yes and you had to nurture your following and you're right then you'd go to new york in la and you'd have your ass handed to you because nobody knew who you were and you weren't getting free laughs but some people like ellen she was from the bay yeah well originally from new orleans but she she made her name in the bay area and whoopie made her name in the bay area and dana carvey and jake and i'm thinking a lot of and then they moved to la and they had their first round of star making in san francisco was kind of like the minor well dana carvey was yeah so they knew how to do it right others came down and couldn't deploy or there was some that a great guy who i just met a few years ago jeff bolt who was on a young comedian special was he on your young no no no yeah very funny guy but he was on an earlier one and he was there he was making like 50 000 a year doing some advertising voiceovers and he had a kid and goes why do i have to go to sam uh to hollywood so there were people that never uh came to hollywood from the bay that was they didn't need to because at the time wall street had not bought up all the local radio and television stations and advertising agencies nobody realizes it i think they're beginning to realize that wall street has just sucked all the commerce into the tip of manhattan really oh yeah oh yeah so yeah there was one guy there was a time when i lived in san francisco and all the radio stations all the advertising agencies all the television stations were locally owned and the newspapers were locally owned so there was real competition there was real money plus in the bay they a lot of these guys were big stars on this radio show alex uh bennett he was like uh like a stern kind of guy so they were in such a cushy yeah their followings they'd go on alex bennett i was on the alex bennett show and yeah i mean if there was a i would be recognized wow it was weird so what was it like when you first came to hollywood from or did you go to new york after i went to hollywood mm-hmm but i went as a writer as a stand-up i had been doing stand-up for about 12 years and i got as good as i was going to get what year we're talking 94 i got you were getting tv spots around then right i was doing a lot of cable access shows there was all like mtv and a and e but i couldn't break through to like hbo i couldn't get on you did a one night stand though did you i don't know i did uh commie central presents i was gonna say i know i saw you on tv in the 90s yeah yeah i was on tv a lot in the 90s but it was all the low rent tv and i was told not to do it i was told to save myself for the tonight show and i said these are the only people who are putting me on tv i'm gonna do i decided i'm gonna do every tv show and get so comfortable on tv that if i ever was hard to turn down even at the improv right and the truth is i mean as someone who is watching stand up as a kid in that time i don't remember who i saw in the tonight show and who i saw an evening at the improv but you know something um i'm not sure if you want to tell your age but when i tell people about my book many people 30 or younger had no idea what these hbo young comedian specials were you're evening at the evening at the improv i sound like an old guy people don't know their history but you would think if you're a comedian you'd want to see people starting out on these evening at the improv so those old kind of you know if you could find them don't judge my age by my face okay judge it by the fact that i can't sit here without a heating pad and not be an intense pain because of all the nautilus how deep are we into the show i want to say something about being jewish how deep are we into this show okay and then we had mark normand on you know what's your last name stolar what's your last name cyrus okay what's my last name feldman who's got the the jewish last name you okay i gotta carry the weight for my entire religion we had mark normand right and you're talking about how he loves the jews he's not a jew he wishes he was a jew and you walk in dave cyrus walks in the jew uh-huh with the persian last name now i feel wrong i should the complaint i should the complain now i'm hot alex can i have some a c please yeah this is what i'm talking about yes i gotta act like the the Gentile i have to act like the guy from connecticut because my last name is feldman cyrus walks in in the middle of the show with ben gay breaking a ben gay yeah three pillows yeah heating pad heating pad i can't that was my great grandmother's i can't move my neck yes and and this little part of me is thinking not in front of the gentile then i run into fred stoller i really do have a cold hang on i run into fred stoller as we're saying about a mark normand the first thing out of your mouth is i can't shake your hand i got a cold being nice where can i get and i can't where can i get the chicken soup where can i get chicken soup don't get too close to me and then you walk into the studio it's so drafty in here and i know by the way i have a problem with your friend i won't mention the name but you start bringing up the friend and i'm thinking i don't get to act that way let me hang on for one second i don't get to act that way because my last name is feldman i would love to walk into the studio let me say complain but i can't no let me you guys have your gentile last names and you get to be jews very idea that you think you'd pass for a second with a gentile last name let me say my defense my act my persona was never like a kindler like oh the jews here on your territory uh i work with kindler and he he mocks me when i was on mark maren like oh the annoying nebis show you know like kindler and i really don't reference being jewish i didn't go oh yeah it was a skinny guy they hit me i'm jewish that's me kindler but no but you know i'm saying kindler is so but you guys walk into a room and ju it up no i'm neurotic in a different way like my mother when i talk about my mother yes they go she's a typical jewish neurotic one no she's some other pathology it's not that i i think i'm neurotic but it's not the jewish cliche i'm not saying kindler's cliche i can't think about the you know i'm saying i'm not the jewish like like jackie mason oh i'm not running for trump he doesn't like israel oh that's my impression of a jew his parents pearl and morris pearl and morris you deserve that is pretty jewish yeah you deserve an anglicized last name if your mother and father the jews hated i grew up in sheepshead bay in brooklyn me too really sheepshead bay on brag street uh brown street wow right by the bell parkway yeah and um they use i didn't know jews or a minority we had no education because we i see minorities everywhere and they never liked us because we weren't observant jews so don't play with freddy he eats comets and uh and and they would always be racist small minded but two days a year they dress up and i never like that hypocrisely like we're good jews and you guys are so we had a house fire and the house not burned to the ground but burnt your house fire we had a house fire when i was your house caught on fire yes electric fire did you have menorahs no an electric fire you always hear about christmas tree fires never had menorah fires so the rabbi says to us now maybe you should go to temple and start praying and my father goes no everyone else in the block should pray and thank god it wasn't them and uh so i always tell them morris i never liked this exclusivity like everywhere it is us against them the goyim the schvitzes the schvitzes so i don't go oh we're persecuted i'm the jew here the only time i ever ran into anti-semitism was in san antonio um at a comedy club they screamed out where'd you get your nose job jew and uh so no i'm not like when he's go oh we're persecuted i never i don't have that that's the that's the motto of san antonio yeah where'd you get your nose job jew but uh man i i talked about kindler on mark maren you know what i should do uh alex maybe i should we should call tom sharpling and result my feud with uh kindler i'm pitching tom sharpling ideas on your podcast who do you feud with lately because you do have feuds a lot of people think of you as a nebish but you you have a lot of rage inside of you well i people think they could bully me because you know i have this persona so i don't when people bully me i i push back what about when norm bullies you um i figured something about norm mcdonnell people think he's drunk he's lures you know what i think it is he will tell you things offstage but he's very diplomatic he'll be here yeah that guy's gray uh oh yeah um um so i think he's he's very smart where he doesn't he's not like me like a schmuck says things kindler goes yeah kindler is great he goes kindler like um yeah does that make sense so you travel with norm not anymore did you have a falling out no but um what was the name of your cat who passed away michael i because of you have come up with a theory about cats how old was michael left to be 18 wow and and and you loved michael um i'm i hate to i don't hate to say that's the sadly that's the best closest relationship i ever had with anything parents um except for alex i i'm doing shtick you know like i'm being so lame i'm making fun of killer it's like no no no no is there if i ask you about michael because i sure he's been he's been gone about two years or maybe more where did you find michael well when i wrote on uh sidefield uh there was the you know the radford lot so in the days when larry said don't bother doing anything but but i wanted to show up to get my last six checks i'd go for walks and do you remember there was that there was a place across i play pinball do you remember there was a like a little bar not a bar like a weird shack kind of thing and then i there was a place called rusties that had pat pet adoption so and i i never had cats growing up i never got them i thought they were like squirrels but then a cat showed up at my place and was rolling in his back i don't know i don't know cats could be great but then let me he showed up at your place he would just like maybe he was lost or a neighborhood cat he i'd open the door he'd come in roll on his back this is michael no it was another cat i go i don't know cats were amazing like this cat i said but then the cat stopped showing up maybe the uh was lost or um whatever maybe he was on to you yeah so so then i said i think i want to get a cat because when i wrote on seinfeld i saved the money to get off the road i hated the road and said i want to stay in town now and try to be a character actor so i said not so then i remember the place rusties and they had uh uh foster days and um so uh and everyone's sitting there with their cat and i i didn't know which one to pick you know you know and one woman actually i looked her up and her name she was a playboy she was an apocalypse now as one of the playboy playmates she was uh i forgot synthia wood syndy woods i wish i could email her and say thank you for the best 18 years of my life best pussy i ever got yes yes i did it i went for the pussy yes so um she goes this one is so exceptional i'm thinking of keeping him so i trusted her and uh he would leap into my arms to be held kissing me and now i'm an insane cat lover i'm staying with rena who has two cats was he named michael when you got him or did you name him michael well um if you read my kindle single um now i'm not saying that when i uh you're gonna mock but when i came to i went through a thing when i auditioned for the first uh 1980 no not he's not rodney kindles uh kindles rodney kindle rodney young comedian special i uh rodney because you're too low-key okay and i went through a funk and um i remember i went with this comedian a guy mike eagan you a great guy you probably never heard of him sounds familiar he was he just was a new york philly guy and and he had a like a 13-year-old son who was so in you know from a past marriage and dad are you gonna be on that cable but it was public access and and it hit me if you have a kid you don't come home i'm a piece of shit rodney doesn't want me i don't know how you are your kids you have to hold it in and and your kids excited for any little victory you have so then i had an imaginary son and his name is michael and he when i moved to la michael would be proud of me and this is very what he was like was he a real imagination i wasn't that psychotic where i'd give him cereal you know and wipe his face and put him on the toilet well you don't do that with 13 year olds but uh i i i came up with the inner child concept before they did it i were you really i wasn't that pathological where but you did have an imaginary yes name michael and then my cat was called but i wanted were you doing it as a joke or did you actually talk to an imaginary no i again it wasn't that psychotic where i would talk to him in the street but i remember you know just when i did the tonight show i remember thinking my son's proud of me i i had to do this so i didn't beat myself like my mother would come home it's almost over you know my mother never understood about being strong for your children i'm gonna die who's gonna go first me and marris marris make sure you like it it's your last car what if marris goes i don't know how to do things so i i didn't know that your mother and father were named pearl and morris you're gonna move to sweden and marry the first blonde i really wish now that triumph's dad was named morris and not sydney because that's so much more so i'm you know now you know what i did with my kids this is true did you come home i'm a piece of shit my jokes didn't get worked you used tonight today or no i always come home and say fred stuller's a piece of shit no i this is true i had an imaginary son and an imaginary daughter because my daughter you didn't like it was terrible you know my daughter had an imaginary friend get out of here you're not mocking me no i swear to god this is true my daughter had an imaginary friend and i thought it was really cute so i and my daughter was like three at the time i said well i have an imaginary daughter her name is donna and so donna would come in and we would and then donna became perfect so then oh i had to live up to it so i'd go donna doesn't have a temper tantrum and i did it as such a joke that my daughter by the time she was seven was getting it comparing me to donna yeah she would get a knife and stab yeah donna and then my son had you know imaginary friend so i he i had an imaginary son named don so there was don and donna you know i remember about your son hang up one second hang up one second so as the years went on and my kids became more depraved i think i say more depressed more depressed i they would be in the back seat talking about don and donna it got to the point where they invented a storyline with their friends where don had impregnated donna oh my god i had to go i go where's donna now they're like 16 and 18 oh donna went away dad we maybe it's good i never had real kids they and their friends had this whole scenario where don just the idea the daughter and you taught your kids to believe that their imaginary friend in a miscarriage fantastic it was pretty funny what were you gonna say what about my son what i remember is um i used to bump into you a lot at the farmer's market but also walking to the pan pacific park and i think you were uh he was playing little league yours coach yeah and you went you went his freddy you go fart for him and he did like did you teach him to do that he was always loaded and he would just tell him to do it yeah he had this gift gift then he discovered girls he hung out with comedy writers and comedians and he would come up to the wherever it doesn't seem like a david feldman sensibility would come in from the time he was like six months old he would crawl into a writing room find the candy and then when he was by the time he was three he could go look everybody i can fart and it would make a fit with both hands you know and he'd fart and everybody is doing stand-up now and headlining and you open for him with that well his name as a stand-up was frankie lane really i made up this imaginary see i feel not so crazy he's saying this i used to tell everybody that he was frankie lane america's youngest political satyrist this one he was eight years old so i used to crack chef garland i think what's going on i can't play with you jeff i'm taking frankie lane out to the improv he's auditioning for the tonight show the thing is you made this out of loneliness he had kids to take care yes i know these things up or just to to not beat myself up so much to be strong and have someone be proud of me and all that stuff i'm sorry his name was ralphie lane i apologize ralphie lane thank you not frankie lane frankie lane was a singer they're on the 101 near monterey as we would head up to san francisco to visit grandma and grandpa there'd be a road called ralphie lane on the 101 heading north and i always thought that's a great name for a stand-up and then i would turn to my son and say he was like six at the time you're ralphie lane america's youngest political satyrist wow that's great it became this running fiction i mean it's too bad you didn't go all the way and do it a lot of dads did which was just feed their nine-year-olds all their failed stand-up bits because it works when a child does it i mean you've seen that that's how that's how i did not know i did not know you did a thing called fell though the clown someone just told me yeah well you did your same act as dressed as a clown did you know this yes we've talked about that it's his email right that's right i didn't put it together that you i didn't think oh he literally was a clown so yeah i wore a clown suit for a while no but like for it works for your act though because your act is just so depressing yeah and dark that having just like a failed clown do it the hardest the funny hardest i ever made warren thomas laugh we were working a club and i was in a clown suit drinking drunk and fighting with my then girlfriend soon to be my ex-wife soon to be my ex-wife and we're going and i'm in a clown suit and then i turned to warren holding a shot of jack daniels i can't control this woman and he just started cracking up because i'm this unshaven clown ozo right wig red nose holding a shot of jack daniels totally unaware that i'm in the clown suit complaining about my girlfriend he just anyway he did so many stories of warren and he's well one of the things he he was always on but he was generous meaning he made you funny or he he you know he wasn't like a guy with a wall up just doing shtick he really brought you along and went with your bits warren could do two i'll shut up but there are two things that i remember one was dana carvey and one was warren thomas this is how funny these two guys are i remember watching on saturday night live carcenio yeah yes sure dana carvey as carcenio yeah it was and i started laughing so hard in a way that i had never laughed before and i remember thinking oh this must be what it feels like to be a woman being entered i i swear to god that was i had this reaction when i was going oh my god this must be like he was that the comedy was so invasive oh once someone i interviewed for this said warren was like almost a killer yes like he was an assassin yes like he'd see you're laughing and then he'd go more and more like right up to your face he wanted you to like almost like kill you warren warren that i was gonna say about warren that was dana on tv dana you know dana could do it to strangers on tv yes you know dana says like maybe it's true that dana was the best ever to do saturday night live that may have he may be that's a great point and so what warren would do is he would riff in your face yes and you would drop to your knees yes he would stand over you yep keep going riffing and you'd be curled up yes laughing and like an assassin like an assassin you know you know robin you know robin wouldn't do that pro groups proops wouldn't do that but warren would stand over you and you'd just go down you would you would walk into a room and there'd be somebody down laughing yes he would take you down but again the sad part is he couldn't translate that to you know that's why i brought up dana first because dana can yes he couldn't translate that to where america could see that and you know all that stuff but um no i i was good to i i guess it's what it's like being a good host i got out of my head talking to people made friends made some not friends one guy won't say his name was like my kenny banya episode you know the seinfeld one of course that happened to me real guy bruce smirnoff gave me the money suit and demanded a meal for it and that was based on hang on for one second bruce smirnoff is our miami bureau chief now oh so in real life tell us about bruce smirnoff he gave you what happened your story he gave you what happened was there used to be a place the beveley connection and a starbucks and sure and one time i saw him he goes what's my suit of you i don't know i didn't ever have a suit he goes i have muscle i've been working out he goes i got a new armani suit doesn't fit me i'll give it to you an all right and a money suit he would say it was a thousand dollars i don't want to get into another lawsuit but i found that for someone it was on the closeout rack for 200 you know he goes you take me for a meal you know the story really happens we went to jerry's deli and jerry's deli hang on for one second if you listen to last week's show yes bruce smirnoff is on he references the episode yes and we talk about jerry's deli yes go ahead so he you know he says i'm just gonna have the soup save the meal he got soup and a soda can't like 20 bucks so then he'd call me up he go i'm at jerry's want to meet me so he'd have the soup and soda skip saving the meal and uh i i pitched it to larry he's crazy he goes uh because jerry's more sort of he would say the first time soup doesn't count so so what happened was then um you know i wrote the episode off it and uh then i got you know it was an ass back to seinfeld and then bruce goes i want to reel me a lot just jerry's because you know you made money you wrote an episode and everything did you already pay for two soups at jerry's at this point he said he wouldn't let you pay for him no no i paid for them but his his contention was uh you know you made more money because you wrote an episode you made money i gave you also gloves he goes i don't want he goes jerry's you gave me but because finally we had a jerry's meal but he goes uh i want like a real meal like and i'm such a nabish i go let me just get this over with i know just get it or whatever i i you know i i can't say no so i had just got fired from seinfeld and he's sitting there like it you know it was on uh i can't think of an example the late brad gray um you know like on paramount where i didn't i never went to a restaurant like this everything's a la carte and he's he's wiping his hand i got a coffee i'll get soup and uh and he's and i'm sitting out of my head down i hardly had anything that he's getting a dessert and you know so he went to town so in in in doing this research for this uh kindle single thing one comic um i don't know if he'd have the sense of humor as bruce would have at it but he you know he was in the scene so we met at um place in malibu called nobo uh it's expensive uh oh yeah what's it called nobu so he goes i'll take it easy that's sushi sushi he said i'll take it easy i'll just have appetizers it came to $70 so then he goes i just thought of other information so we meet it and for waffles you know so then i pay you know again so then who are you having this i i i'll tell you off maybe because you're doing this as research for seinfeld no no no no no this for his book this was for the recent book when i was i see i was okay i i i i didn't mind i paid for every one for the you know i'd pick up their meal because they're giving me information and um three of them were very menci they go freddy and freddy i'm not letting you because they're multimillionaires rick mesina mark brazil and dav rath they go they you know dav rath is a multimillion well he he manages so many people pete holmes and uh i can't think of the list but i don't know he's he does well yes yes yes very he took care of warren yes yes yes he was very he when warren got sick he was instrumental and yes maintained warren's health very generous and with me so this other guy texted someone that led to an interview for my book he goes you know i i want a real meal at nobo's not just the appetizers i go you're just like any bag yet this way he goes i go you're just like anybody he goes you benefited i should benefit wow so then i i kind of been estranged from him because other annoying things so i i do you keep up with bruce murnoff no because he's in he's in florida and i see as a trump supporter is he a trump maybe he's not i don't know you got to cut him out of your life yeah because i would see i would see on facebook he's so funny he is very funny right isn't he one of the funniest people yeah isn't he the great i mean he's he he yes he is he did at one man show and he just is cadence like uh i got a nose job you know why pussy you know you know just like i like he just even though it's that old school cadence it's uh i'm not going to go there you know yeah we all know that comic and i could see how they could be a trump supporter that comic who nickle in dimes everything and not even like money wise that like pat nozwell tells a great story in his book about how he was featuring for some comic and the comic had like a fit because the clock radio in the features room had more features than the clock radio in the headliners room and he switched them and then left him like a page written out in hand about how the reason why he needed to do this well when i work with tom kenney who you know he's making up that we had a fight but when on an animation show he did no you came on the show about three years ago and you were pissed off at tom kenney because oh he would always say i'm a working man i'm like what he got three and it come an hour late every session and charm everyone i i envy him because he's charming no he's a great guy i was just he's of course he's a great guy but nobody in the history of the world ever said a bad word about tom kenney i just except for you so so he'd always say you can't be a right wing and funny and i disagree with tom kenney but i disagree because this is why i disagree even though i'm not right wing is comedy's based on fear and i was once watching boxing which i'm not into with these very successful comedy writers and one of them it was it was so sick and he goes the black guys they they have everything they have the big dicks and they get the women and they beat us up and it's so a lot of people it's fear-based and and like though you know i mean so a lot of comedians are fear-based and fear is they're going to take us things are going to you know what i mean so that's why i think you live the right wing as i have a smart like you i think of the word um tenants is um fear and it's like oh you know i mean does that make sense what i'm saying yeah i agree with you let's say let's say hate i think that hate is what makes comedy so funny and who's more hateful than a trump so or they're fear-based you know like trump is funny i disagree no but it's pretty fun but well you know i'm saying that they're they're fear of uh they're gonna get us you know uh they're gonna take our stuff they're gonna beat us up uh you know i'm like gilbert would do bits like oh a jew and a black guy in an elevator and then black guy gets off you know i mean i'm scared it's a jew you never hear that so it's funny but it's more like based on that kind of fear of the taking our money beating us up you know he started with gilbert what was he like when he started out ah probably the least likely guy you think would be married with two kids but um and the most beautiful wife and the most beautiful kids did you know him before he started doing the voice yeah he oh he didn't have that voice originally no no he was he would annihilate a room where i i i couldn't go up i go i'm just doing stupid jokes he would do he yeah he did i i ala stuff the most you know he was on the gene dominion set in life because he would just do it was almost i almost think maybe sc t re ripped it off because like humphrey bogard is woody allen and this sc tv did that stuff and gilbert would do jerry seinfeld talking to david bruh or gavin mcleod talking to uh um tony who's that guy um jamie lee curtis uh tony curtis how you doing gavin how you doing tony or woody allen his taxi driver so he did brilliant annihilated you know i mean brilliant you know i i'm not too uh good with the sores were brilliant a lot but then he became that guy enacting and screaming you know i when i did stand up um i was pathologically shy and my persona because who i was my head would be down and i'd make nooses with the mic stand because i couldn't look at them that became my character for a while was it real or put on it was real i i was pathologically trying to go ahead go ahead so gilbert i think can't look at the audience so really sorry and closing his eyes and waving his arms you know so i think it came out of uh i will tell you as long as we're talking about bodily functions mm-hmm okay alex brazil no relation to mark brazil mm-hmm took me to see gilbert carolines about a year ago uh and i didn't know how funny gilbert was going to be live that's i had the same thing like i as a kid i knew him as the guy from problem child i knew him as this character actor you see all the time and you see standing like oh my god you thought he was just going to do like a you know just a cheap character version he's a fucking genius i he would depress me actually not that it was envious but i i go what am i doing like it was just it was yes and hang on for one second so i i just want to share this because it's irrelevant and self-indulgent at one point i started to laugh so hard remember i said dana yeah this is what feels like to be entered every orifice opened up i i i thought oh my god i almost shit myself thank god i'm regular and i take care of myself and i'm a vegetarian because i would have just emptied everything into my pants yeah i had i never understood what it what they meant by oh i laughed so hard i shit myself until i saw gilbert godford yeah i was like that as a kid with jenny rich jenny yeah i you know it's a 12 13 he was a genius you know something was 10 years rich jenny was 10 years amazing but there's this fashion that thought he was hacky you know i don't get that i don't either i'll tell you what that close your computer i was just seeing what time it is um the faction with jenny they were the purists who didn't like robin in that jenny knew how to take a premise that was kind of in the ether and then get every piece of meat off the bone on a premise that is believable the way he would keep going that appeared to be kind of generic but that was his genius he was he was accessible not hacky no he was i used to open for rich i was very close to him and i once slept over i was locked out of my house in brooklyn i lived there and uh yeah in canarsia somewhere he was he was a kind kind man so brilliant so funny and very anal he was just i would write with him and he didn't do a volume business he would fixate and just keep fixing but i said he was the opp polar opposite of warren thomas so warren would be riffing and and you think right now you just said do that on stage what did i say rich would do things like uh if you're not using i don't mean stealing but like right can i do something with that i could put that he was a shark when i guess a shark yes he was a he was an amazing writer and to the point where like you would catch him if you really knew his act you would catch him slipping written things into like interviews which a lot of people did but like he would you could just see like this that's where he was comfortable he was comfortable saying things that he knew he was ready for bruce smirnoff has the greatest story about his wake that i have to ask him to tell next week okay tell bruce you know thank you does he know he knows about the suit as he asked for another meal what does he know about what smirnoff knows about the seinfeld episode i brought him into audition for kenny banya i thought give him a shot who and he came in and the problem sometimes is that um you i we were we larry david wasn't looking for bruce smirnoff the guy who i got it was great steve heightner he goes i didn't get to be me someone else was better being me than me an irish guy with muscles but how could larry not love bruce smirnoff because i think he was trying too hard to bruce up his bruseness when we weren't look we get gonna keep seeing we when they weren't looking for seinfeld bruce is one of the funniest people in the world but as you know some of the funniest people don't translate to acting what about his one-man show great the funniest right i had yeah yeah yeah the thing with the nazis and uh he had a following nazi did you have a falling out with bruce no why are you saying that i just want to make sure i'm going with your your thing about how funny his one man show was no i i again i think when steve heightner auditioned for banya he wasn't going i studied bruce smirnoff he brought this annoying you know you know the kenny banya character was pretty good what steve heightner did brought him back a lot yeah yeah so they weren't looking for bruce smirnoff is what i'm saying even though was based on him larry loved what steve heightner brought to it he was it was a very like consummate seinfeld character the way he did banya right you know there's that seinfeld that was one of the shows that just had such a recognizable tone that he really did hit that i could see how you know right bruce smirnoff was like it's like a vandy kenner who's funny even though i'm what i'm saying i'm just being stupid but kenner's funny but you know that that is not as a definitive seinfeld you know i'm saying yeah persona so you're back in new york for how long till friday when'd you get here uh crazy late saturday night the plane was delayed four hours and um i got here saturday and uh did you see pearl no she's in florida good for her we're in florida coconut creek do you know what that is i don't know why i know coconut creek oh it's there for lauderdale there's definitely a wrestler who as a child was introduced as being from coconut creek florida that's the only reason i if you're lucky we get to go to two jays it's a jewish deli place you go down and visitor i do let's just say uh not as much as you would think i would but uh from all this stuff but i'm do i i i i had to do this trip actually i got a new cat so when i talk what's his name i you know i got a cat that was already named so i'm keeping it as luna she's funny i like luna i at first i unfairly compared it to mitchell not the imaginary son but the mitchell the cat and now i fallen in love and i'm very fortunate because i got a great cat sitter who's staying at my place do you think it's healthy for humans to give human names to cats i don't i think you give a cat like a name like bingo i actually agree with that because i named my cat angela because i was mad that my friend named his dog stacey and i thought that would somehow get back at him oh and i'm an idiot because it was he's like oh that's cute angela and i'm like well that was a complete waste of time the ultimate revenge my ex-wife is the kindest person in the world she's the animal lover you have a lot of animals yeah except to me she's the kind person her one vice was we would name an animal and she would give it a horrible nickname that was abusive if we had a cat that was named ginger and the cat was fat and we would call it fatty we had a dog named ugly stinky she was kind to all animals is kind to all animals except for that way well i dated this woman who would say she had six cats and she goes i know swatis f at you don't have to spell fat the cat doesn't know and even if it did you know i mean if i could spell oh man relaxing isn't it yes david um we're going to wrap it up yes yes time to go well this guy i you're real cool at first i was nervous oh thank you know but i and i i'm not just saying this but i didn't know you did the triumph writing some of the best writing yes it is some of the uh yeah and i i i didn't felt i know i used to see triumph on obviously conan did he do always that laughing like like he's cracking up before he even does a triumph like it's not a put on that's because a lot of times he hasn't read it until he's about to say it really though that's not a put on oh i don't know his part of his persona not at all i've seen it because i love it i real quick just say one of the happiest moments of my life and this is right after getting fired from snl so i'm in a very vulnerable state and i'm it's my first day on set with triumph where i actually see the dog and i'm gonna guess you felt so good that you crack robert smigel up well it's not well yes but the joke it's the way that like i'm watching him like a hawk and he's about he's starting to do the shtick and i see him reading through the paper and he just stops and starts laughing to himself and then collects himself and and then i and i hear it's the first time i'm here in one of my jokes but isn't that his mouth a brilliant happy accident that that it looks like it's something he's deliberately doing for the you know i'm saying like look at the weight scale it's because there's so many writers that he doesn't he may have read it once and forgot about it and then he's reading for the first time and it was my it was a joke we didn't even use it was in the whole uh journalist see now uh now it's a negative for me because i thought it's a brilliant uh tech he came up with can try no he's just unprofessional uh that's um that's great what you guys have done i miss black wolf oh what a great guy what a what an interesting man what wait we may miss him easy we haven't done a show in a while i miss you black you worried me absolutely what happened well all right thank you so much thank you oh what's the name i i ripped up my i ripped up your intro let me plug your this was a lot of fun it's great thank you so much it's like it's like being back in LA yeah but without Steven Allen green i'm gonna see george calphi tomorrow i used to bump into him when i tell him i said hello and billard kowsky i don't know if you know that what's calphi doing you know he's so happy we'll talk afterwards he's so happy to be out of the madness yeah he was a sweet man is he still is hey my sign filled your author fred stoller has a new book it's a kindle single it's all about his young comedian special and his special friends so pick it up on kindle it's called five minutes pick it up on amazon pick it up on amazon pick it up five minutes to kill it's a dollar ninety nine i mean you could blow that kind of money on uber a kid in an imaginary son you know or in the you know so spend the money on thank you so much thank you dave syris how do people follow you on twitter oh you got a dave syris that's like virus sir us and uh or just you know you tube brick stone if you want to just see a bunch of the crap i've done i'll never talked about that that's not a big deal we should talk about that someday thank you guys very fun coming up committee and bruce smirnoff for only five dollars a month you can gain access to all our premium content plus you'll be supporting this important show please go to david feldman show dot com hit the go premium button and sign up we accept all major credit cards if you already are a subscriber and you forgot the password please hit the contact button and tell me you forgot the password and i will send it to you also hit the contact button and let me know what you're thinking i answer all my emails you're listening to the david feldman radio program you said pathetic hump time now for our miami bureau chief let's go to miami where bruce smirnoff is standing by hi david earlier in the show we had fred stohler on the program i love fred and he said you gave him a seinfeld episode of course i want to hear your version of that story well before i tell the story i think fred is one of the few people i gave financial excuse me advice to and i think he followed it i think he's you know because he makes a nice living he's in like a million things and i said put it away put you know a segment of your money away and i think he really got into that so fortunately for him i think he's going to retire very uh famous and very wealthy so that's a good story good now the bad one so in i think i started lifting weights in uh i was really skinny and i think around 89 i started doing heavy duty weightlifting and i i outgrew my suits did he talk anything about it did he say yes yes okay so i had these two nice armani suits that i bought and um and i and i had to give him away because i was now like a 42 long where i used to be a 40 long and i it's very hard to find people our size so i knew fred was tall and skinny i mean he's not wasn't known to be one to dress up but but still i didn't want to give him to good will because they were too good to give away so i called him up i said look i got two suits want to get rid of them i'll give them to you it's that simple and he goes all right fine and i and and i give them to him and they're black suits and they're very nice and he goes what can i do to pay i go i don't want anything i just want to make sure they go to you know you rather than some homeless guy that's going to urinate in the month first 20 minutes and he puts it on so he says he goes how about i buy you a meal i said fine you can buy me a meal so that that that's the deal and i and and um i think like about five days later he calls me and remember i told you last show about watching larry hagman's liver get flown in to sign i because we were at jerry's telling well it was like we used to sit at the same place i used to always like to sit right in the front so he calls me goes on they were they were flying the liver and fresh for jerry's yeah it was in one of those you know lunch buckets where they pour the ice and they had the surgery at all the they had all the media trucks there so i don't believe it was the same time i think that larry hagman's liver was later but so this has got to be like 19 i don't know let's say 91 92 and fred calls me meet me at jerry's though it's 11 o'clock at night i go i know i hang out late so i show up there and he goes i want to buy you your dinner and i go that's very nice of you but i ate already it's 11 o'clock at night i'll tell you what i'll do i'm gonna have a bowl of soup but i don't want this to count as my meal i mean i wanted to give you this stuff for free but you insisted on doing something so you want to buy me a meal this is not a meal this is 11 o'clock at night this is not the hours that you buy somebody dinner so this is like you're throwing this in and that's it you know i mean i didn't care but of the laws the you know whatever the rules of buying somebody dinner this was way out of and it just i just said it it was like a matter of fact thing i think i had mushroom and barley could have mozzarella soup don't remember it was not a big deal and so about three years later he's riding on seinfeld and i get this call from mark schwarz i think his name was and i went to be you with him and he became like a giant casting director and he was the casting director for seinfeld and they want me to read for this part and they go this was created like kind about you which you're at your your adventure with fred stoller and i read the script and you know it's like word for word you know i'm going hey look at me i'm pumped you know because i was showing them how big my my biceps got and i couldn't fit into the suit and the whole and so i am very excited i went and i read and i read with them i read with mark schwarz and larry david it was pretty powerful and i was a little nervous but i mean all i had to do was be me and i was and they did not give me the part they gave it to steve heitner who became banyan on the show and he got like 13 reoccurring episodes so i'm very happy for him because steve steve is very funny heitner and he's been in a lot of movies and he's had he's had himself a great career and you really have to know how to act you know this being to stand up is one thing acting you know it does require something else so i don't have it i don't harbor any bad things i wish i had gotten the role it would have been phenomenal but that was just one of those things but yes that's true story so you actually auditioned to play me and they reject they gave my part to steve heitner because he was a better me than i was and that's yes if you want to look at it that way that's the horror but i try not to because i'm not addicted to any medication or pills and if i think too much about these things it could cause that so you just kind of laugh it off and we go on to the next horse what was the story with carol o'connor oh that's such a long one you want to i forget you know we didn't talk about that one did we boy you must be really excited the way you just eased me and that was like a tom mccann shoehorn and you just you just had that in a back you want that you want that 11 minute juicy story um i mean i could do that i could tell you some other time some other time that's okay so yeah what happened uh how's miami do you miss los angeles no i miss all my friends and uh i go i go back occasionally like i told you i work for don casino productions and an agency that books cruise ships and we're we're very popular and high agency it's very nice working for them because i get treated with a lot of respect uh from all the artists but we do a showcase at the ice house now we've done two years in a row so i get to come back and i gotta tell you left in 2001 and the traffic is even worse than it was in 2000 just when you thought it couldn't get any worse it's horrible even with the subway which i i was not there for i know it opened up from downtown i think to western avenue or vermont where does it go somewhere and then it goes up vermont up to hollywood blvd so i never i haven't seen that because i usually stay in pasadena when we do the thing at the ice house but yeah uh i don't miss la but i miss my friends you miss la you don't live there anymore do i don't live there anymore i find manhattan to be godless it's all so transactional it's hard to have real friends in manhattan but that's not true that's just a phase i'm going through yeah and you live on like the upper east side i lived in new york i went from la to new york for two years i think we talked about this when i went to brooklyn and the thing about all my friends were the comics you know at all the clubs and everything and no one i had this really cool place in the bay ridge brooklyn and i wanted to have like guys over for thanksgiving i couldn't get if i was giving away gold bouillon i couldn't get anybody to come to brooklyn i mean maybe now they go to like uh what is it that area that they built under the bridge you know the where the jews live what williamsburg and all the hipster areas but you couldn't get anybody to come to bay ridge i go please i'm getting a turkey i mean i got great pies and cakes i i can't go to brooklyn i can't i can't go to brooklyn i mean it's a subway ride you know but no so i understand that but yes manhattan i was too old i was um when i moved to new york you got to you got to be full of piss and vinegar to take the subways and schlep with the hot coat when it's cold out and then you get in the subway and you start to sweat all that stuff yeah yeah yeah okay where were we what were you were talking about miami and what's going on in miami nothing there's nothing going on here this is where people come to retire and and then they eventually die you know this is it i mean it's like this is the almost the end and the end there's nothing there's nothing prior to that there's good restaurants there's uh well i mean but again is it's half true because when you say miami i don't live in my i live in delray beach so i'm 38 miles from there when you talk about miami you're talking about south beach yes very exciting it's very spanish it's very cuban oriented you are almost in another country if you're young you like to dance you want to stay out late it's wild it's incredible they they uh i'm reading books now about what miami was like in the 70s miami beach in the 70s and it was a horror show and then when the mario letos were let out of um out of cuba castro emptied his mental institutions and his jails in 1980 uh because he was able to hoodwink jimmy carter into letting them out and they and you're talking about 100 000 or so hardcore mental patients and criminals going into like a 10 block area so it was really uh just a horror zone but then they've cleaned it up and it's become spectacular great great now let me tell let's go back to show business because i mean i don't want you to i don't want to divert anything i have good stories i just a carol o'connor thing i got to like wind myself up without that we'll do we'll do carol o'connor next time right but like i wanted to tell a story about because i imagine i'm getting some emails from people who listen to this on your podcast and they're very uh complimentary and i imagine a lot of them are artists so i wanted to talk about you know some weird things i've seen in my career being as i said a fly on the wall so i was friends with bud robinson who you remember bud he handled doc severance and a lot of famous um uh acts and bud and i were friends and bud freedman i know it's weird to tell a story with two buds but there's bud freedman who owned the improv and his his wife alex and we were all we're all very why don't we say bud freedman and then bud light okay bud freedman and bud light so bud light uh had a great apartment on alt alone in west hollywood and he used to entertain a very fancy place and a lot of famous people living in the building so whatever it was one night bud had us over for dinner and we're sitting at his dining room table this is 1981 and i'm gonna say it's about january of 81 i'm 25 years old so i'm a kid and i'm innocent i i don't know the cd side or the downside or the weird side i started to experience it but this is one of the things i experienced so the doorman comes and says regis wants to come up and we'll go oh regis is coming and they're gonna go who's regis regis philben i go wait me regis philben i remember that name uh it was on local news in la and then i think joey bishop had a show going up against carson and he was the psychic so i go oh i'd love to meet this guy and in walks this very handsome he's only about i did i tell you this story no the door opens up and in walks very handsome man and these people were all bud romson bud light bud freedman the everybody was like 50 years old i'm 25 and in comes regis and he was about 50 years old and he sits down at the table and they introduce me and you know we were talking for about two minutes and then all of a sudden he starts to cry regis and i mean crying to wear very you know sobbing and his body was shaking and he's saying my life is over it's all over i had an audition it didn't come through and and it's all over for me and i've never you know we all think these things but we and we all have sadness but i've never seen a grown-up cry like this and and it was it was it was very sad to see this and and i watched bud and bud freedman try to comfort him and alex too you know doing every hey read you know riding high in april shot down in may you never know why where life is gonna and he was just no this is it and it was just so so impactful to see this and i got to tell you for you show business people living about four months later where he thought this was the end of his world he got that morning show and need i tell you how famous he became and how you know popular he was and i i was there for like a very bad moment of his career but thank god it was just temporary and whenever people say my career is over i'm never going to get an opportunity again i always tell these these stories are very inspirational you know it's inspirational but but he's amazing he might be the greatest broadcaster whoever did it that's right right right and this could have been two hours of his life that were just you know i mean i'm i just happened to be in this man's worst two hours of and i and but but i had never met him before so this is how i meet him at the bottom and then and then look where he is now he you know he was supposed to be down here with don rickles just like a month ago but don you know it passed away but you know still still vibrant still performing still like one of the greatest uh tv personalities of all time yeah still looks great and he got rejected he was given another opportunity and he made it work because he wanted it i mean if you react that way if you're crying in front of friends about being rejected this guy obviously wanted it more than anybody else isn't that a key component of success wanting it that badly that you would break down and cry over losing an audition don't know no i mean the wanting it real badly is one thing i think i think almost everybody who's in the business wants it real badly but it's the execution i mean i always use jerry seinfeld as an example i mean i never hung out with him but the people that i know that hang out with him to talk about his work habits and that they were they were like you know they were incredible where you know no fooling around no kibitzing with people just go home do the writing uh woody allen the same thing these people just sit down and they don't do anything until they get the work done and a lot of people are bs's and i guess i have to say i was one of them where i wanted to be real popular and famous but i don't know if i actually applied myself i have to you know i have to say that then they're then they're people who don't apply themselves i mean rickles didn't apply himself he wasn't sitting working he just went on stage and did it correct correct yeah yeah well he probably had the balls you know where he could insult people like that where that was you know i you can't like i say i can sit and try to break these things down i always try to blame myself and and find out what where was where did i lack and i know i'm not a great writer i'm a good comic and stuff but i would sit down i would say i'm gonna sit for five hours and i'm gonna write jokes and you know within minutes my mind was wandering and i couldn't focus you're a real writer so do you have that problem when you sit can you sit for three four five hours yeah but i'm not writing stand-up stand-up is conversation all my great jokes for stand-up are through conversation then there's the mechanics of writing jokes but that's for other people in tv where it's stand-up has to be authentic you can't force authenticity right onto the page although i i don't know i i there's a process for stand-up well some of these some of these stand-ups they're not authentic they're at all but they're you know they're clever they're observational it's so amazing when you talk about stand-up it encompasses everything you know who who were some when i worked at the improv and i would see uh these people come in it was a guy michael collier remember him mm-hmm and that guy charlie i can't remember his name but he was on saturday night live charles tricer no no black guy he used to these were all right yeah and he died young but these these and then there was another guy these black guys who were street performers these these guys were not writers they were just they were they're trying to street perform to get money i think it's called but but what are they busking sir but but what are they both busking yeah and these guys would come to the improv because they would did something they were on some show something happened where they got they got a lot of attention and the whole industry would come to watch them and you know you knew that room was like full of like a quarter of heavy hitters people that could just okay anything and that's enough to scare anybody out of their shoes but these guys because they were so used to performing on on the streets and nothing nothing through them they would shine and they got everything so yeah so writing their writing ability i don't know what their writing ability was but certainly their fear factor was zero zero right charlie barnett charlie barnett charlie barnett yeah yeah yeah yeah rick of vealist do you remember that uh-huh yeah so so when i started in boston uh in 1975 rick of vealist was in new york but he would come up excuse me and hang out in boston and we would do these gong shows him teddy bergeron does that mean ring a bell i v vii the roman soldiers falling in right teddy's one of the greatest yeah very very sick right now i'll have an update hopefully soon but i stay in touch with him because i started with teddy this is 1975 when there was nobody doing comedy but rick of vealist would come up from new york and he was another one of these the first time i met rick it was on a subway in boston and i didn't know him and i just heard somebody he used to do red fox wolfman jack and he would just walk up and down the street cars and you know get money from people because he would just so spot on and very smiley so he didn't he didn't scare people at all and then he showed up on the comedy scene and and uh and he he lit up the room he was just great again no no writing ability but just an amazing presence and a great mimic well red fox and wolfman jack are the same voice yeah yeah yeah yeah he did have a very raspy word but he was just super i mean he would we would there was no place to perform in 1976 77 the the comedy connection didn't really start until late 70s maybe 78 i can't remember i think like 78 so we would just go to coffee houses and we would go to these things called gong shows they were very popular and they would be held at this restaurant chain around boston called ground round the ground round and what they would do is they'd have a house band and the house band would give you the symbol so you'd put the symbol to like three drunken people in the audience and they would be the they would be the judges and they would um and they would you know they had this drumstick where they would hit the gong if they didn't like you and it would be me teddy rick of vealus and then various people singing and all this stuff and and i used to get gonged i would say hi i'm bruce smirnoff bang gone you sometimes would have to you know take buses to get to these gong shows who take so long and i'd get gonged within just saying my name so i never went but teddy and rick of vealus were superstars he used to rotate of who would win one or the other would always win when are you going on your next cruise ship did i lose you are you there oh i'm sorry i turned my my speaker down did you you heard all that yes of course when when is your next cruise i don't go out till october okay good so we should do this once a week okay i'm getting very positive feedback wonderful your stories are great and it cheers me up good tell me off the air are we off the air no no no tell me one more story and then we'll wrap it up okay so i wanted to just show you the ups and downs of life because show business has obviously a lot a lot of downs that we don't see but we when we see the ups it's sensational but i i'm working in atlantic city nine i believe it's 1991 and i'm in this i'm in a review show called swing swing swing which is singers and dancers i come out in the middle and i do 10 minutes while the dancers are resting backstage that's a funny story that's what but that's another day but the reason i want to tell the story is at night i would leave my show and i'd go over to one of the hotels and there was a singer named sonny avarona and he was like a man in his uh mid fifties and he was like a crooner and a jazz guy like a very very very influenced by sinatra and i would go and watch his show and i introduced myself to him because i was in this review show for like six weeks so i would go there every night and i became friendly with him and he was a man who had like a motor automotive business in philadelphia transmission something like so he had a successful life as this man in the automotive business but this was his passion in life and he would say oh koo koo kray whatever and it was really cool and he had a following from philadelphia and these people would come and then sometimes he would ask me to get up and do five minutes so i would get up and tell jokes and i felt really cool because it was that you know it was a real uh it was a mafia crowd basically is what i'm trying to say it was like a real gangster it was really cool and so right near the end of my gig was in may and he goes hey kid come over here i said what he goes you're not going to believe this but i i didn't want to tell anybody until tonight and he and he goes um the new york times has been following me for a few weeks and they're writing a front page article about me going from the automotive business to now having my own room in atlantic city i went congratulate front page new york times sunday section of the cal you know whatever it's called the arts and leisure i said that's phanta and i congratulate him and then i left on that sunday and he died that night so the article came out the the next day and he died i mean he was dead before the article came out isn't that weird what what did he die of like a heart attack you can look it up sunny avarona a v a r o n a and you'll you'll read him his bio his his obituary i think you can still find the article but yeah i mean you talk about you're going to be on the front page of the arts and entertainment arts what is it called sunday style yeah whatever arts and entertainment of the new york times and you died the night before and it was just natural cause he just you know he was he you know whatever he must have smoked whatever it was and i just always remember that you know he got he got the break and he wasn't around to reap the benefits of it so there's your ironing yeah do you ever feel you get what you want uh i don't know what do you mean by that where you get to a place in your career that you probably wanted to die not to no no not that no but i'm talking about instead of regretting what could have been do you ever say actually this isn't so bad it was kismet i was i was supposed to yeah i mean i say that all the time but i don't believe it no i mean you know i mean i deal with where i'm at and believe me i live a great life it's enviable i understand that but to me it was you know like um avi was at this thing last night i guess melbroke's carl riner dick van dyke they were giving some some lecture in la and avi put a little bit of a clip of it up on on facebook today i mean i i know this sounds weird sitting in my underwear here in delray beach florida but i mean i i wanted to be one of those people i thought i you know i really thought i was cut in the cloth because you know you just all comics feel that way what did you think when you moved to los angeles what did you think was gonna happen well i i thought i was gonna get a a sitcom like everybody else that was 1978 when i moved i really have a great look i'm still funny i have a funny you know look um but i never put in the time and i don't know how to act did you play it out i mean did you play it out did you say all right i'm gonna get a sitcom and from the sitcom i didn't have to when i came out there i got all this stuff thrown at me immediately because of my look so you know mitzi i you know discovered me having coffee with the michael walters next to the comedy store and i hadn't even tried to get on at the comedy store she wanted me on stage and i an agent got with me immediately and sent me out for tv shows and then i got that archie bunker show thing i got all this stuff but it all it all imploded because i had no ability i mean i had the look but i wasn't developed so you had the look you that's interesting so you had the look you come out to la and they immediately start immediately because you're the new face it's a good face and uh but then how long had you been doing stand-up when you came to well technically since 1975 but in boston you had no place to go on and like i said sometimes i would i would go on stage and i would be booed off or gonged off within moments so you were a baby you moved to la as a baby 22 on my 22nd birthday yeah 20 you're 22 and 22 and i'm getting these parts and auditions and they're actually giving me the parts but then i don't know what i'm doing so i'm you know that that comes the archie bunker thing and i'm i'm i'm failing miserably and then once you fail then you get labeled so i'd say by 24 i was labeled whatever you know done not good can't act can't isn't funny blah blah blah good look but that's it so then i stayed in la and i was able to cobble together a real live act and then went on the road i did everything ass backwards and then when i got really good i almost had a second you know with that one man show that we talked about one of your episodes so i almost was able to turn it on its tail but i was not able to so uh yeah if you there was a definite detriment to going to los angeles before you're ready too much too soon way way too much too soon yep yep and then when you get pronounced done as you know you're done you know you're cooked is that is that really true or is it or is it psychological well it didn't stop me from trying to develop but it shut all the doors i couldn't you know i couldn't get agents i went to all these fancy uh acting classes and um you know i tried to i tried to turn everything around but again i i couldn't what was the happiest moment during that period i would say i guess it was when i was able to take all the failures of of my career in los angeles and then turn it into the one man show and then have a patch theater you know granted it was a 55 seat theater but every night you know every night i performed the show it was standing room only some nights i had to put people you know on the stage we had to put chairs on there and killing just killing and i'd have celebrities coming uh to the show and uh it would be so exciting to have people come up to me go you know i used to see you hang out at the improv i mean you seem like a nice guy but i never took you seriously i never watched you perform but you know now i think you're terrific and that was that was very nice one time i get this guy come up to me i had um you remember uh danny robinson that's bud's son danny robinson came to see my show he's with a pa and all these people came to see me this one particular night after the la times article and they come out after the end of the show and they're they're shaking my hand and going this was really good and all of a sudden this man about 60 years old he pushes them all aside a man who like had authority i didn't know who he was but he just bled authority from his pours and he pushed danny robinson away bernie young was there uh rosy o donnell's a guy and pushed him off to the side he goes i'm cy susman i'm with william maris are you represented by anybody cy susman did you know cy susman no i love the name though he had the name yeah i'm cy susman did you have a toupee please tell me how to toupee nobody had thinning hair he goes i'm cy susman i'm with william maris who represents the show and i just uh i kind of angled my way away from danny and away from bernie and i just went uh nobody he goes just jeff which is know about this show i went i i really don't know i've been calling his okay i know jeff i'm having i am calling tomorrow we are going to handle you across the board i want this show i want you as an actor and i want you as a stand-up and then if he had said i also want to go to the palm right now and have a 12 pound lobster i would have said absolutely let's get in the car so that was one of the highest highs because just the whole that whole moment and then i go home and of course i couldn't sleep but he told me to call jeff which is you know in the morning i waited i waited till like 10 30 so the the guy would have his morning coffee and i call william maris jeff which is please bruce smirnoff sorry jeff which is office i go hi uh it's bruce smirnoff size sussman told me to call jeff which size sussman and she goes one moment please and two seconds it goes by hey bruce it's jeff hi jeff i go listen i am totally uh clued in on your show i have it written down send someone from the office to come down and see it but i gotta tell you one thing size sussman is our projectionist i go absolutely he projects all the projects that come to william morris he goes no no you don't understand size sussman how do we project her i'm screwed i'm screwed i came i walked up on my sister's wall i said oh my god oh i oh that's oh that was a bad day oh it's not a bad day oh my god and he oh is that funny size sussman size sussman and the happiest moment while you were in the thick of it in your early 20s i'd have to say when the la times article uh came out you know because i knew it was coming out thursday calendar sunday calendar is the biggest size sussman uh thursday calendar is uh is also very big so i i waited until what is that called the bulldog is that the first the first it comes out about two thirty three o'clock in the morning this is back in 1990 uh right the bulldog dish and i guess reading that are i don't know there were a lot once that once things were going well with the show i had a lot of meetings at networks well but that's that was the review of your show it was an article about my show i'm talking about no i'm talking about the thick of the 22 year old bruce murnoff coming to la well that's the archie bonker story you know i mean i'm asking for the happiest moment well the happiest moment is when i got the part you know i mean highs are always accompanied by lows in many in my career so that's we'll talk about that next week okay can you imagine being a child actor you were 22 23 when things go really wrong in hollywood and they always do and you look into the abyss and you have to summon up the courage to go on right i mean it if you come to hollywood anybody who comes to hollywood does not leave unscathed because you're chasing something you need something you want but it just isn't right for the most part right yeah yeah yeah i mean but the only thing i can say is that i listened to i guess throughout my life i listened to people like you and i discussing so when you listen rationally to people talk like this you know there has to be lows before there's highs and then when there's highs there has to be lows it's just a cycle of life and some of the acting classes i was in they always warn you i mean this is this is i think what did get me through the carol o'connor thing was that they always said stuff happens and you can't you can't uh let it get to you so uh that's how i was able to write the one man show is that i just absorbed all these horrible stories it happened to me i just figured that they happened to everybody so i would tell them on the road you know 1987 i would tell them to a comic in the middle of phoenix arizona in a dunk and donuts and they would go no this never happened to me none of these things that you're talking about and then i realized maybe i had something special but yeah i just assumed that everybody went through that childhood stars a lot of them when they hit a certain look at look at spanky and all the little rascals the kids that we grew up watching as little you know we just thought they were eternal stars but when these people hit 1314 they were done they're done luckily the the only good thing about being a child actor is is your body changes and you're unrecognizable so your fame disappears and you can get on with your life supposedly if you can accept except for jackie cooper he was he survived at all right i guess a few more but he he was able to uh he as his body changed he was fine right right how about being 40 and famous everybody knows who you are and you're doing something that sucks and everybody's seeing it and you know it sucks and you know that you walk into a room and everybody knows that you're on something on some show that sucks that it's about to be canceled yeah that's got to be really hard i can't put myself in that position so i'll have to go along with you on that don't you think that's very isolating don't you think it makes you very hard on the inside i guess when you're getting out of your Mercedes you know and going into the palm maybe you know maybe uh you're twitching but you're still getting out of your Mercedes and going into the palm you know i mean i i don't know i mean how many good things on t first of all it's subjective anyway but how many things that uh you're very critical i'm very critical how many shows do you watch on tv i watch none i watch fargo you know that's it i think i fargo in the narcos those are the only two things i watch on tv i think it's better now i think it's better now it's phenomenal now it's fantastic it's unbelievable i'm talking about mental health for famous people i think that if you're an actor and you're on a show that sucks and nobody's watching it it's less of a humiliation because if nobody's watching it nobody knows about it because they give me an example give me a show that you you thought sucked i would say if you were i don't want to name names i'm not ilia kazan the point i'm making is in the 70s and the 80s up until about 2005 you could be famous and you'd get on a big network show and you would fail publicly now even tim allen his show just got canceled last man standing on abc did you know it was on no no i didn't know it was i didn't know it was on until i heard it was canceled i think that's a healthier way for actors to become famous because you know there was a time when we knew who the stars were now you're less likely to be humiliated from your failure i don't know if i could handle i don't think i'm capable i don't think i have the constitution to suddenly become famous have it taken away from me which always happens and then have to fight for it back and then have it taken away from me and fight for it back these movie stars that's it's schizoid it's manic depression one year you're you have a hit movie the next year it's a flop and you i don't know how they do it well they if they're if they're smart you take your money and you don't pee it away and you invest it and there's other things in life i mean there's there's people you watch a movie that you really like and you go wonder whatever happened to that actor and of course we google it and you see the guy you know you watch you can look at his whole resume and then you see he fell out around whatever 1999 but then you see bottom winery or he you know guys racing cars and these people have great life they have good investments and they live a good life randolph scott what he had a good life yeah afterwards yeah don't put your kids into show business never absolutely it's so bad so i see it down here you see it on facebook people dress their kids up and they they encourage them to do and i just go boy what what are they what are they doing they have no idea what the what they're getting their kid involved with especially if the kid gets any kind of modicum of success then you've really you've really uh uh set off the kid a woman and her husband called me yeah about two years ago and they had at the time a 12 year old son who was acting and funny and saying they wanted me to help and i knew i wasn't gonna do it but i took the call and i listened for 20 minutes and we really think he's gonna make it and we want to move now because he's 12 and he's still cute and i listened and i said i'm not interested but i'll give you some advice i'll give you some really good advice and think oh yeah yeah what is it i said get a job yep you get the job let him be a kid but but he's so temper but go get a job you know it's their pimps is what they are their pimps yeah yeah i mean well they're living their they're living vicariously through the child and um they i don't think they they understand what what can happen period their their their pimps bruce mernoff is our miami bureau chief we'll check in with you next week thank you very much david j Elvis Weinstein Weinstein or Weinstein Weinstein Weinstein but i answered it both frankly you're not one of those people who say yeah who correct i'm not a corrector now nobody wins nobody really wins that situation albert einstein i guess i i guess albert einstein sounds better than albert einstein i did in fact when i changed my when i added the Elvis when i joined the writer's guild i considered j einstein Weinstein as as a pronunciation guide well there's a josh Weinstein i don't know what she is but i've actually had lunch with him and i've met him a few times from the simpsons yes he's the reason i'm j albert he beat me by like months into the guild really okay yeah i worked with his brother oh really uh Jacob Jacob Weinstein or steen he he's a corrector yeah it's just yeah it's not cool it's not cool i gotta say he really is and it's it's like caroline ray is another person yeah who corrects you i guess i guess melbrook solved that with young frankenstein frankenstein that whole thing you know well once you see that i thought you have to stop correcting so j Elvis Weinstein i got it right right he nailed it how'd you pick Elvis um it was i well i picked an e because it made my initial spell jew oh i didn't know that yeah uh and it was Elvis Costello which i was pretty infatuated with at like 22 which is what i did so okay you're a minnesota jew i am a minnesota jew you're an al franken thomas freedman from the new york times uh yeah same summer same this park yeah they're a special type of jew and the cone brothers too that's right that's right they're a special type of jew all of whom are great except my rabbi i had a rabbi from that area who turned out to be okay anyway jail this was what i had some rabbis from that area i i didn't approve them fully myself and that's the great thing about being jewish you don't get molested by your rabbi because you're allowed to tell a rabbi to go f himself that's right there's no it's built in it's not easy to be a jew it isn't but built into the system is the guy who has a direct contact to god is full of crap and and you're taught that at an early age he's just a teacher and don't right don't be infatuated with him and you have every right to argue with him anyway we're difficult people perhaps even an obligation uh my god yes well i don't want to do the talk about being jewish because i bet you've covered that on the show we yeah and it's interesting i for years i never talked about it my father always said your last name is feldman you don't need to talk about being jewish the audience doesn't care and the jews don't want to be identified with you so just and so my stand-up act i don't talk about being jewish but on the podcast it's the you know it's just it comes up it's a flow it's part of being it's part of the flow of being a jew yes you talk about being a jew at times well let me introduce you j Elvis Weinstein is the director of i want i want to kill i need you to kill i need you to kill i need you to kill it's more emphatic yes i need you to kill it's a documentary about comedy in asia yes and which will be coming out via the company comedy dynamics very soon that's exciting it is yes i need you to kill he was a writer producer on freaks and geeks he appears on my good friend mark Thompson's podcast the edge that's right you also appeared on mystery science theater you dropped out of college to go work on mystery science theater i did i was one of the original guys on that the original gumball machine guy with frank conif and here's how i learned that you broke your mother's heart that you dropped out of the university to minnesota to go work on mystery science theater here's how i found out there's a new podcast that everybody will love it's a part of the show briz family it's produced by show briz studios thought spiral it is hosted by j elvis weinstein andy kindler and andy kindler more importantly i was gonna say and andy kindler but i figured i'd go andy kindler if he was like a 60s talk show uh sidekick that's how they'd introduce it it's great it's a great thank you thought spiral i listened to both test episodes there are two test episodes available on itunes thought spiral by the way the running gag is going to be they're all test episodes but that's the title of every show i compare it i don't smoke dope but to me it's like being high and listening to two friends talk where i'm so stoned i can't move my lips i'm just gonna listen to my two buddies make nonsense that's pretty good i guess that's pretty good for the first two episodes you know i'd like i'd like it to get a little more formed but not much because it's andy it's andy kindler who i call a bumblebee i think that's pretty that's a pretty good image because a bumblebee they can't explain how a bumblebee flies they actually asked exactly and i don't understand how andy kindler is is i mean i love him no i've actually described him his uh his show his act as greater than the sum of its parts the andy should not fly not only does he do references that only i get sure well at least that's the trick he's like mary tyler more you know every guy thought they were the only one who thought mary tyler more was sexy well that's that was the trick to mystery science theater too is everyone thought that that reference how only us me and that robot puppet know that reference right and mary tyler more took place in in minneapolis also yes full circle there you go but andy takes it a further step by biting every hand that can feed him like wrinkles and if he's feeding himself he'll bite his own hand how did you meet andy kindler you know we honestly we can't remember but we have so many common friends it's you know it's 20 plus years ago now that that had happened mm-hmm so i think it was probably at maybe chris bliss's house or just one of our common friends houses i think and is andy a social animal andy is not i don't his nature isn't to be a social animal he's i think he's a hermit who when he forced into a social situation becomes a social animal and how do you force him into a social situation um you schedule a set for him it's kind of like me yeah i think it's like most comics i don't i don't think most comics are social animals for the most part why is that um well because i think we always feel like the other person isn't going to be interesting enough for us oh was that too honest uh i oh well because it's either i'm not going to be interesting enough for them or they won't be interesting enough for me but that's kind of interesting that you would lead off with that i i'm always like reluctant to go to parties yeah well i have i have big social anxiety myself me too and cocktail parties are are the absolute worst situation for me because it's all small talk and you never get to a real conversation and something about that like makes my nervous system go into overdrive are there any parties where you're relaxed if it's a part if it's a small part like dinner parties are great if it's a table full of people i basically know already then i'm very happy you know but if it's if it's a room full of strangers i would much rather be in front of them with a mic than among them with a drink do you mind if i repeat a story that you haven't heard but my listeners have sure okay before Passover especially if it goes that direction instead of the other one okay before Passover i was hanging out with Gilbert Godfrey right uh and he was and by the way this story goes nowhere it's just insight into who i am so Gilbert and i are sitting there with his amazing wife they were talking about trying to get john davidson on the show do you remember john davidson the singer good-looking guy son of a preacher man actually was the son of a preacher man and Gilbert i remember mostly from god that's incredible and from his daytime talk show right very pure and innocent yes so Gilbert was saying he was having trouble booking john davidson for Gilbert's amazing podcast i said why don't you call him up and say i'll only ask you about the beverly hills supper club you're too young to laugh at that of course i'm i'm sorry and let me assure you let me assure you that what i said was absolutely horrid it was horrible terrible disgusting evil and Gilbert loses it he loses it and he's like i and you know for me to you know have Gilbert losing it over something i said there you go and his beautiful wife didn't get it because she's innocent and beautiful and young and we explained it to her and then of course she loses it and Gilbert loses it and Gilbert goes off to a satyr i don't want to he has a magical show business satyr okay so i have to go to my satyr and i'm driving with my sister and some other people i said i have to go to a satyr now and behave and i can't talk about the beverly hills supper club fire with anybody and Gilbert gets to sit with 20 people and do beverly hills supper club references and i just have to smile and answer questions and that's what happened i had to go for you know the jewish inquisition right what are you doing a giant letdown how's your marriage why'd you get a divorce that kind of thing so are we only comfortable around Gilbert godfreed i think it's other comics i think no specifically Gilbert godfreed though well you know i don't if i hear that Gilbert's now comfortable with himself which is a whole different dynamic i remember meeting Gilbert godfreed i just started hanging out with Gilbert seriously and i would just gravitate to him whenever there was a party like fugl saying we have a party or something at the fryer's club he didn't really know me and i would just glom on to him i think that's smart yeah smart moves so social anxiety yeah i heard a rumor that you live next door to andy not next door but with like a few blocks and he comes by in the middle of the afternoon to borrow a cup of obscure references right absolutely so do you hang with him well as much as he'll hang you know it's uh it's not it's it's now i hang with him once a week which is part of my devious plot but since he moved in like a couple years ago and we only saw each other slightly more than when he lived across town but i also started going we really need to do something together we live too close to not yeah his temper this is one of the things people don't realize the police are always coming out to his house right absolutely for he's reporting himself domestic self-abuse and he's always fighting with the neighbors the tree is too big the figs are falling into my backyard it's clogging my gutters right isn't he yeah i think he would probably blame his gutters first and then and then probably rebel against that you know so where do you see thought spiral going do you see live shows do you see getting more political what we're kind of veering away from the political right now just because it's we're a it's too much choir preaching and there's just there's better people doing that right now who who established a format to their show and things like that and is very political and he's very political and so am i but if it's it's just wait it's an off ramp from fun a lot of the time so for now where it's it's more just uh i can't it's you know how like when you've you've had him as a guest many times i'm sure and i know you had him recently so and the trick when you're having as a guest which i've done on my other show too is you let him go so the trick on this show for me is to run alongside him and not let him go you know and try you know and try to keep up and try to you know go oh we got a there's a cliff coming up let's go right um but otherwise you know it's pure andy uh huh and what have you discovered about doing your own podcast that you didn't know before for example how hard was the license to get the test was was pretty tough right the podcasting license it was really yeah it was hard it was hard but i studied i studied and studied see i'm i'm in yes and i'm always yes and it's yes andy is what it's we should have called it yeah i would say jews are not good at improv because of the yes and exactly no if there were if it were no but we'd be okay no you're wrong you're wrong why don't you and andy try to do that as an episode the no but improv where you just deny every premise and what can we look forward to on thought spiral uh every monday we'll be coming out we've got a new one coming out monday test show number three and um and i think you know you can look forward to us uh just getting better you know i can't really promise anything other than you know we've got 60 plus years of showbiz under our belt in this show so we're gonna want to steer towards better i don't know if you need to be better i think well that's very nice i think it's authenticity truth and honesty and it's already there well thank you that's uh that's what i want mostly but uh you know i also want less of uh what would i what was i just saying you know that's not a great moment i think when people listen to podcasts they just want a human being they want an interesting human being who is just giving them the the truth i have a theory about certain types of podcasts and why i think your podcast is going to be great you want to know why i definitely do okay most people are isolated including me most people are desperately alone like me most people are starving for human contact intellectual stimulation and friends we're a very lonely people the americans we're very lonely when you listen to two close friends talking it's reminiscent of our childhood it's reminiscent of our older brother talking to his cool friend and you know i'll keep my mouth shut let me just come into your room i won't say anything all right and that's what a podcast is that's what your podcast is it's the two cool older brothers who are letting you in to the bedroom so you can just hear them talk about stuff and wow we will never get a nicer description than that thank you really yeah i love that and that's all a podcast has to be i kind of agree yeah it's a vibe i don't i'm being serious i don't have that so i have to work a lot harder i'm serious i i'm not cool and i'm not endearing you guys just have this cool banter your friends it's a great car it's a great car ride that's what people are looking for in a podcast it's also a medium in and of itself it it when i started i was thinking okay well this is an extension my radio show no it's different it's it is it's personal and it is what it is right it's a podcast don't try to make it anything other than what it is i'm not giving you advice by the way i'm just giving my like no i'll take it as advice but i i also will take it as affirmation that i kind of agree i don't i don't believe that a podcast is just a radio show with different distribution i think it's a different animal uh-huh and again i i'm not trying i there's i'm haunted by my appearance on mark maren i was i think his third guest yeah i was very condescending to him because i had been doing a podcast for maybe three months longer than he was so i was just giving him advice so and then of course i sound ridiculous because i'm eating his dust i remember when i was doing stand-up as a i started when i was a teenager and there was a go on the road with these guys who were just the most grizzled old veterans and you you go well how long have you been doing and they'd be like four years right right it at the beginning i'm still locked into that when i see will durst or bobby slayton right but when i was starting at they had been doing it maybe four years longer than i had they they were they were seniors and i was durst was one of my early grizzled veterans yeah and now we're peers it changes right i'll tell you the advice that i'm giving myself okay so i don't want to sound ridiculous because a man in my position cannot afford to sound ridiculous jack waltz godfather my advice to myself is what i told my son and my daughters at their bar and bart whatever their myths is right stay exactly the way you are right now you're perfect oh thank you don't change well there's it's kindler how much can change really i make mistakes on this show when i when i change when i forget what the show is or i get ahead of my skis as they say right just be yourself don't change i will take that advice to heart alex brazil who is your producer you're with show briz studios right sure we have this we have the saying back to zero we always go it's time to reset back to zero what got us here and that's so remember your first couple of episodes because you're gonna stray from that and it may be a mistake i'm not giving advice i don't want to sound patronizing yeah i honestly don't i can't see a straying too far from what it is because i can't ever see any infrastructure developing it's always going to be andy coming over at nine o'clock monday night and i'm sitting down and him leaving a little after ten that's heaven that's why i listened but the the thought of being you know i'm in new york i miss la and the thought of hearing you two talk it's it's you know i wish it were in smell of vision so i could get the pheromones the comedy pheromones that are are you married i am my life goes to bed when andy comes over by the way andy has almost as annoying a laugh as i do almost as annoying he has well he has he has his his his uh showy laugh and his silent laugh yeah he's got that staccato uh teletype laugh that i love that i kind of have and it's just saying i think that's funny i think that's funny i think that's funny i think that's funny hey yeah so in if you're in a relationship my advice is and this is this is i'll give you advice from a from a failed marriage yeah i was about i was when you said i'm gonna give you advice i was thinking the last time i saw you in person when you were in town for your your divorce proceedings the best way to maintain a relationship is remember what got you into that relationship working for greg canir is that how you met yeah she was uh i was a writer on his uh talk show and she was his assistant talk soup uh well i worked on talk soup but this was later on nbc i love talk soup oh his late night show after conan right yeah i was the head writer in the second year but i was a staff writer the first year yeah you know he's somebody you should never underestimate you underestimate greg canir at your own peril that guy i when he was in sabrina by the way he was great in the remake of sabrina and i remember thinking all right come on really greg canir is going to be an actor he's a great actor yeah but he grew into it i was working for him when he did sabrina and you know i knew all those moves that he used in that movie but he since grew into being a genuinely great actor and autofocus yeah how great a movie that's bob crane one right have have you seen that i did yeah do you remember autofocus yeah it was sort of like the banality of sexuality it's one of the great movie it is the one of the great hollywood movies what's the ben afleck movie about george reeves superman i don't know that a great double feature is yeah similar stories yeah kind of dark dark same darkness different eras i think i think he was so overlooked for autofocus if you want a great depressing movie rent autofocus it's the story of bob crane from hogan's heroes who was an innocent and became very successful got caught up in the world of early porn a video pioneer a video pioneer thought spiral every monday on itunes j elvis wine stein thank you so much for joining us thank you it was fun right now this now we're doing the post what we do on my show is a wrap-up after the interview where i'll tell you what you did right and what you did wrong okay good i'm kidding we don't i'm here i'm still in yes and oh okay okay stay on the line we're going to stop it stay on the line for a second okay that's our show mark norman's special don't be yourself is playing on comedy central fred stolars kindle single is called five minutes to kill how the hbo young comedian special changed the lives of 1989's funniest comics j elvis wine stein's documentary is i need you to kill fred's kindle single is called five minutes to kill j elvis wine stein's documentary is i need you to kill all right a lot of killing thought spiral is j elvis's new podcast he's doing with andy kindler download it today on itunes or stitcher please go to vox.com and read dylan mathews go to alternate to read alex kotch please visit the david felman show website and hit the amazon button and then do all your amazon shopping via the david felman show website we get a small percentage of everything you purchase it doesn't cost you more also share this episode with your friends copy and paste the link to this episode share the laughs share the knowledge share the love for only five dollars a month you can gain access to all our premium content plus you'll be supporting this important show please go to david felman show dot com hit the go premium button and sign up we accept all major credit cards if you already are a subscriber but you forgot the password please hit the contact button and tell me you forgot the password and i will send it to you also hit the contact button and let me know what you're thinking because i answer all my emails please share this episode copy and paste the link into an email share this episode with all the people who need a laugh or all the people who need the kind of information you just can't hear anywhere else share this episode on twitter facebook and reddit also subscribe to this show on itunes and stitcher while you're over there give us a good review we have a youtube channel go to youtube type in david felman comedy you can get an audio version of this show on youtube and don't forget to go to david felman show dot com and leave a comment or contact me from the show briz studios in downtown manhattan medicare for all oh i almost forgot i do a show with ralph nader ralph nader radio hour dot com gnome chomsky is our guest this week gnome chomsky is our guest on the ralph nader radio hour you can download it on itunes for free you're listening to the david felman radio program use sad pathetic hump