 In light of the horrible shooting that took place on Wednesday, I know I speak for all Americans when I say my thoughts and prayers are with the assault weapons ban. It's 3 a.m. Friday, June 16th, 2017. I'm David Feldman. We have a lot of show, so let's get right to it. This is the David Feldman Radio Network. On today's program, the smartest man in the world, Greg Proups. James Curtis, the author of the new book, Last Man Standing, Mort Saul and the Birth of Modern Comedy. Journalist Emile Guilhermeau and comedians, Annie Liederman and Scott Rogowski. We have a lot of show, so let's get right to it. The David Feldman radio program is made possible by listeners like you. You sad pathetic humps. Welcome to the broadcast. I'm David Feldman. DavidFeldmanshow.com. Please friend me on Facebook. Follow me on Twitter. Watching the news after the shooting of those congressmen, I have never seen so many journalists and politicians talk for so long about absolutely nothing. First, they call it a senseless tragedy. A senseless tragedy? Really? You allow anybody in America to walk into a gun show and purchase a semi-automatic weapon. People on the no-fly list can buy a gun. They can't get on a plane, but they can buy a gun. More and more Americans are allowed to carry concealed weapons. So some lunatic firing at members of Congress, yeah, it's a tragedy, but it's not senseless. That kind of makes sense. But of course now is not the time to point fingers. Finger control. Not gun control. That's what this country needs. Finger control. I don't know how any TV news anchor could spew such dribble, such pandering claptrap and ignore the elephant in the room, and that being the party whose symbol is the elephant is bought and paid for by the National Rifle Association, who has convinced these Republicans not to renew the assault weapons ban, which is why this shooting took place and why it's not a senseless tragedy. Yes, it's a tragedy, but it's not senseless. Did you hear the video of the shooting? It sounded like a war zone. Listen to it. It's like 60, 70 rounds going off. But you go ahead and try to convince me that a semi-automatic weapon has any other purpose than murdering lots and lots of people. But of course now is not the time to politicize a national tragedy. Please don't. Don't. Don't politicize this shooting to push your partisan agenda of trying to prevent children from getting killed by assault weapons. How dare you? How dare you try to save the lives of children by politicizing this shooting now is not the time to discuss gun control. Bill Crystal, this turd, was on MSNBC saying it would be tasteless right now to politicize the shooting. Bill Crystal, he's the guy who killed Hillary care, Hillary care in 1994. He wrote a memo. He literally wrote to Bob Dole, who was the Senate majority leader, and he told him to kill Hillary care because he said Americans would fall in love with Hillary care and that would doom the GOP forever. This is Bill Crystal, who drew up the plans for the invasion of Iraq that left 3 million dead Iraqis, 4 million Iraqis displaced. Bill Crystal, who shows his doughy face on MSNBC Wednesday, has been wrong about everything who was given a column in the New York Times where they had to fire him because they couldn't fact check his lies. Google that. Bill Crystal said on Wednesday it would be tasteless to talk about anything other than the brave Capitol police who protected our congressmen. Will the two-year-old who gets shot and killed tomorrow, and that's going to happen here in America, will that two-year-old, is she going to have the Capitol police to protect her? What's Bill Crystal's solution? What's the GOP solution for the two-year-old who's going to get shot tomorrow? Give her a gun so she can shoot back. That's the GOP solution. More guns. That's the solution. You know, it makes sense that the same politicians who believe the answer to gun violence is more guns are also ignorant and stupid enough and mathematically challenged enough to believe that you lower the deficit by lowering taxes. Ignorances, immoral ignoramuses have hijacked the Republican Party and they are allowed on our TV news to sound reasonable. More guns. That's the solution now. Watching these pudgy, white, stunted Republicans and their little league outfits, thinking that all they need is to carry sidearms to protect themselves. Did you watch them play the game? Like any of them have the aim to take out a mass shooter? And of course, more importantly, not only do we need more guns, we need to dial back the rhetoric. That was the official state-sponsored propaganda coming from both sides of the aisle this week. The shooting was not caused by guns, it was caused by the partisan tone in Washington. We don't need gun control, we need word control. The media's solution, our politician's solution to gun violence, more civility. So you two-year-olds who are about to be shot tomorrow, you need to choose the three words you can say more wisely. That's why you're going to get shot. Your two-year-old kid who's going to be killed by an automatic weapon tomorrow, it's because she isn't civil. We need to watch what we say. That's what we have to do. That's the solution to these mass shootings because crazy people hear what we say and then they go get a gun because guns, they're like weeds. You can just bend down and pick one up. Guns, they're everywhere. And so we have to watch what we say, otherwise somebody's just going to pick up a gun and shoot up a ball field. So that's what's happened in America. Unlike every other civilized country, Americans can no longer have a spirited debate because gun manufacturers have to keep making record profits. In America, the Second Amendment trumps the first. Then as the day goes on, all the news networks and the politicians are talking about, how do we keep Congress safe? Hmm, how can we keep Congress safe? If only Congress had the power to, I don't know, pass some kind of legislation that would ban lunatics and potential terrorists from owning semi-automatic assault weapons. I mean, if only Congress had been given that power instead of a National Rifle Association, then Congress would be able to keep itself safe. They're ringing their hands. What can Congress do to prevent themselves getting shot? But, you know, I can't tell you how relieved I am as an American. I know I speak for all American voters when I say how relieved I am, but at least Congress is discussing ways to keep Congress safe from assault rifles. I mean, let's all pray. Let's all unite and come together and hope that Congress can somehow summon the votes to pass a bill that will at least increase security for these brave Congress members who stand up for the National Rifle Association and the gun manufacturers. I just hope they can figure it out. I just hope Congress can figure out a way to keep itself safe from gun violence. The narrative has been framed. It's a senseless tragedy. And bringing up gun control is tasteless and insensitive. And nobody should politicize a mass shooting, as though politics is worse than guns, as though mentioning the several toddlers who will be killed today in America, as though bringing that up is tasteless. So watch what you say. Watch what you say, America. Today, four, five, six, maybe 10 toddlers will be shot to death because Republican congressmen care more about taking money from the gun manufacturers than they do the lives of small children. Today, because Republicans refuse to stand up to the National Rifle Association, today, five, 10, maybe 15 toddlers in America will be shot to death. I'm starting to think the GOP would be OK with abortions so long as they're performed with an Uzi. Coming up, Greg Proups. Proups is the smartest man in the world. His podcast is called the smartest man in the world, Proupcast. Go download it on iTunes right now. Go listen to Monday's episode. Entitled The Last Clinic in Mississippi. Go listen to it right now and then come back to my podcast because today, this is going to be the Proupcast after show. So go away. Come back in 90 minutes when you listen to the smartest man on the world's episode entitled The Last Clinic in Mississippi. Hi, welcome back. Let me put my pants back on and take the belt off around my neck. Greg, are you still there? David, I am. Oh, good. Thank you. That was 90 minutes well spent for me. I don't know where you were. And by the way, this won't be on KPFK. This part won't be on KPFK. I promise you, this is the podcast version. Greg Proups is I forgive you and Jake Johansson. I had Jake Johansson on about a month ago. I hadn't had him on the podcast. I said, I forgive you for your 900 lettermins. I know you did that to hurt me and and I forgive you, Greg Proups, for I don't know. I just listened to that Last Clinic in Mississippi podcast. It is breathtaking journalism. It is journalism. You are restrained. You are generous. You let these people, if you want to call them, that talk, you begin to like these people who are standing outside abortion clinics, lecturing women who are trying to get their abortion. You're sympathetic to the people you're talking to. A little of feet, but, but, you know, not too much, not too much. It is a breathtaking piece of journalism. Congratulations. It really is. Lady Parts Justice League, Vaginal Mystery Tour is hosted by Liz Winstead. And you went down to Mississippi with Liz Winstead to perform as well as console comfort women who are trying to get abortions. There's one abortion clinic in all of Mississippi. You performed for liberals in Mississippi and then helped out, escorted a lot of women as they had to get through the phalanx of right wing, white, male Christians who are telling them they're going to burn in hell. Why did you do this? Oh, well, gee whiz, David. We did it because times are scandalous now and the full frontal attack on women's rights is reproductive rights is insane. As you know, there's a zillion anti-choice governors out there and the state legislatures and they enact these crappy what they call trap laws, which mean like waiting periods, stuff like that. And Mississippi is really the front lines of it because, you know, it's real. It's the last working clinic in the entire state. I don't know how many people Mississippi has a couple million, I assume. And almost three million people and they they can only count it. They can only count to two. Right. And they have to pick up their shoes if they count it. People are so beautiful. Sorry, like I always say, people are so polite and collegial, deferential and old school if you're white. And I'm white, so they're really nice to me. We went down for that reason. One, two, Jennifer and I decided after Orange 45 got elected that the time for being privileged white people that don't do anything with our lives is over. And so we have to figure out for other people. And three, Liz Winstead asked me to do this and she asked a bunch of different comics and we were down there with Joel Johnson, Ian Harvey, Helen Hong and Liz and her crew from Lady Parts Justice. And Liz is the real deal, as you know. She goes around the country on this tour, which is still going, by the way. It goes into July and they go to all the, you know, the front lines, all the states where there's really no women's health and they go to the clinics, help out. They do clinic escort. They also do things like, for instance, at the pink house in Jackson, they garden and redid the whole garden for them, which is, you know, kind of the stuff that they need done. And as Liz says, really they just want contact. They want people to know, the clinics need to know that people are out there and care about them. You know, Liz said to me, we were there for like two days and she was like, see what, after two days, how much it means to them, just that we showed up. These are independent clinics, by the way, David. I support Planned Parenthood. I'm sure all right thinking people do, except for Mike Pence, but Mike Pence is busy going to Hamilton and calling his wife mother. So you make a call on that one. We're from San Francisco, you know the deal. And that haircut, wow. But Planned Parenthood is well funded. And as much as I support them, and I have them in every podcast I do, I try to have a Planned Parenthood table. Liz has made me quite aware that there's all these independent clinics in places like Arkansas and Louisville and. The mom and pop clinics. Well, they are, this one's owned by a woman. She bought it. She's a six-year-old woman and she's kind of a hero. And she bought this clinic and keeps it operating. And it's so that women in Jackson, Mississippi, and when I say women, I mean poor black women, that's who goes there. So the achy Christian guys are yelling at them. And by the way, you didn't hear it on the show because they stopped. But the first guy I talked to, the guy who tells me that I'm going to hell because I'm on who's line and I'm a sinner and I need to repent, which is right, by the way, David, if anyone who had sold their soul to be on who's line is going to smoke a turd in purgatory, there's no question about it. He is on a bullhorn screaming at them. And so Shannon Brewer, the head of the clinic said, it was really nice one day that they put the bullhorn down because you can hear them all day long. It's like a sci-fi movie. The guys out there screaming in a bullhorn because they're publicity hogs and there's a really excellent documentary called Jackson, which is on Showtime about this very clinic. And you can tell with a lot of the same characters and they're in it. The guy says to me, you've listened to the interview. Did you see the movie? Did you see me in it? Wow. It's like, really? That's your big anti-choice stances. Did I see you in a movie? They hector these women and because Mississippi's laws are so awful and Governor Bryant of Mississippi is such an awful anti-choice misogynist, he wants to eliminate abortion in their state. And so there's no rules like these protesters, they don't have to stand across the street, they don't have to do anything. They can get right in the women's faces and scream at them, which they did. And Jennifer fronted a couple of dudes down pretty hard and they ran away from her because they could tell one, she was intimidating and two, she wasn't from Mississippi, you know? And really there wasn't that much at stake for her to put them down. And so it was a pretty wild weekend. I think what Liz is doing in the Lady Parts Justice League is astounding because they're really going to every single state that's in trouble and Michigan evidently is as bad as any red state with the anti-choice laws and the restrictions that they wanna lay on women. And as you know, being the Talmudic scholar that you are, abortion is mentioned in the Jewish Bible. And so it is, and you know how I knew this? We went to a rally at the Jewish Women's Center earlier in the year here, a Save Roe v. Way rally and a rabbi got up, a lady rabbi got up and said, by the way, if you wanna know how Jews feel about this, it's already mentioned in the Torah, so we're covered. By the way, there's an article in the New York Times that the largest percentage of clergy who are Democrats are reform rabbis, something like 80% of all reform rabbis, maybe 85 are Democrats, even conservatives. And then it's Unitarians and, what is aim? Unitarians. Yeah, what is aim? What religion is aim? I don't know. They're very Democrat. But let's get back. I'm very excited to hear about Unitarians, so. Let's get back to Mississippi. They're the other white meat. Let's get back to Mississippi. The women have won abortion clinic in all of Mississippi. You're saying not Planned Parenthood. It is an independently owned clinic. Have there been any shootings in Mississippi? Have they tried to shoot? I know you interviewed Dr. Crawford, but he has MS. Any vandalism? Anybody trying to? Oh yeah, they vandalized the clinic. If you watch the movie Jackson on Showtime, they get real freaky and they vandalized the clinic. They haven't shot anyone, which is nice, and they haven't threatened anyone. Yeah, who are they taking to court? Remember, she sprayed them with water. Oh right, they act very snowflake. Can you tell Jennifer, I listened to the podcast, and I just want to give her a message. Tell her I'm talking to Greg, not you. I don't like, she's getting too excited. You're both being right now. And then. Oh my. There's a moment in your episode, The Last Clinic in Mississippi. I guess it's Jennifer trying to talk. The guy is reasonable with you. And then Jennifer pipes in, she isn't raising her voice. She just says something to him. He hears it as though it's 50,000 watts of, can't you get it up for me? You know, he just, he heard something else and was very condescending and told her, something to the effect you're being hysterical, something like that, very condescending. Yeah, he said you're being rude and you're angry or some nonsense, you know. I'm not trying to be cute here because you know my past. You know all about me and I can't, and there's no greater misogynist than I. I lived, I proposed to my wife and I had her for 30 years. I dropped to one knee and I said, I hate you slightly less than I hate every other woman on the planet. Will you marry me? You old romantic here. And I had her for 30 years and I was in a bubble. I'm in a bubble, you know. I had a pretty bourgeois, Asian Harriet kind of lifestyle. I'd sneak out at two in the morning, you know, hand out bibles to runaways and do horrible things to them and crawl back into bed with my wife. You know, I'm all about income inequality. And one of my daughters who should be traveling with Liz Winstead explained to me, you don't get it. I said, you got it. I don't get it. And she said, you cannot address income inequality until you address a woman's right to choose because if a woman can't get an abortion, she can't make money. She can't manage her life. Yeah, David. Yeah. It's really that simple. It's, yeah. So that's the ground level. I think you're right and I'm glad that you've listened to your daughter. Your daughter, of course, is a fan of my show. Two times ago in New York, she came with your ex-wife to my show. So I know that she's a bigger fan of me than she is of you. Everybody's a bigger fan. I'm a bigger fan of you than I am of me. But she's right about that. You know, this is where I draw the line with so-called progressives who say things like, a woman's right to choose is on the table as a bargaining point. No, if you're gonna be a progressive, you better be for women and people of color immediately. That's at the front of the ticket. This whole, you know, income and equality is all, is extraordinarily important. But people's bodily autonomy is certainly more important. And by bodily autonomy, I mean, the right of black people to live without the police shooting them and the right of women to be able to control whether they give birth or not. People who are anti-choice are also anti-birth control, which seems insane. But then you realize logic isn't something they're really using as a lever to open this world up to them. You listened to the show and I gave a couple of the Christian guys, the Andes, a good long time to explain their position. And they don't, they can't, because it's all over the yard. And you know, the women who were escorts there are all volunteers and they didn't have any escorts before about six or seven years ago. Shannon, the director, told us that the Andes were just out there screaming at people and these women had to park and like basically run through a gauntlet of crazy people yelling at them. By the way, all white. Yeah, I wanted to mention that. Can you tell her to lower her voice? David, you said lower your voice. David, my wife's hysterical now because she's giving her opinion while men are talking. And I just won't have it. There are high-pipping voices go right through you. Don't you feel emasculated when women talk and you're trying to make a point? I find this might help with your girl. Say, I got this and then wink at her. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I got this. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Wow. What do people need? I want to go through the characters in your podcast and ask what they need and start with the woman who needs an abortion in Mississippi. You're saying they're primarily African American in Mississippi? Why is that? They're good at this clinic. Why is that? They don't have access to good healthcare. They don't have their own private doctors. Their insurance is not what it might be. My guess is they're, for lack of a better term, low-end wage people who probably aren't making anything more than the minimum wage. They also live in a pressure-packed world where people around them are also laying pressure on them because many of them are Christian that they're doing the wrong thing and that they're being terrible people by managing their lives this way. Almost all the women who come in there are already mothers. Right. You really are the smartest man in the world. You really are. And so if you're white and you're middle-class, your daughter gets knocked up or your wife gets, I hate to say knocked up, but if you are a working white woman or African-American woman, what do you do when you want to get rid of the fetus? Well, if you're a working African-American woman in Mississippi, you go in for a checkup. I mean, you go in for consultation at this clinic and then they make you wait 24 hours. I would assume that abortions are being performed elsewhere in Mississippi. They are, but illegally. Really? Well, yeah. I mean, the thing that I don't have any truck with is this whole criminalizing of women thing. We're like, because if you go on these guys' Facebook pages and you can go on the guys that I interviewed Facebook pages, they say things like black women are evil because they're the biggest genocidal force of all time and stuff like that. They really feel like these black women are killing babies and that's what's wrong with the world. I automatically assumed listening to your episode that if you can afford it, you can get an abortion elsewhere in Mississippi, but you're saying that's the only legally sanctioned abortion clinic in all of Mississippi? It is. The very last clinic in Mississippi, it is not run by Planned Parenthood, it is owned by a woman, independently owned and operated. And that's the situation there, man. And you know what, David? I've had a lot of reaction from this show, very positive, you included. Wow. And what's funny is, all the women who react or who have reacted and have written me or mentioned it, almost always tell me their story about how they had to have an abortion or how they were hassled sexually or something awful that happened to them. And all of the men who've commented on this really hadn't the slightest idea that any of this was going on. Yeah. If you know what I mean. For men it's news, for women they're all like, mm, this happened to me and I had to deal with it. Yeah. There's the men's room and the women's room. And that door is shut and we don't look inside there and we don't talk about it. So all women in Mississippi who are pregnant and want to get an abortion have two choices. They can either go to another state or they can go to this one clinic in Mississippi. And they need their privacy. Roe versus Wade, they said it was the right to privacy. That's how the Supreme Court justified giving a woman a right to choose. They're losing their privacy. When they walk to that clinic, it's a walk of shame. Oh, absolutely. That walk of shame. Is that truly humiliating for them? How damaging is that? It's terrible and that's the part that's really, really heartbreaking. They've already made the decision when they go in the first time to consult obviously. Then they're forced to wait 24 hours so they have to run the gauntlet of these yelling, screaming. What do you mean they're forced to wait 24 hours? There is a 24 hour waiting period. You're not allowed to go in and just get one on that day. Because the state of Mississippi requires that you suffer another day with your decision and with your trauma. Are these women thrilled about getting an abortion? Did they go, hey. Not at all. Part of the reason I didn't interview any of the women that were getting abortions is the mood inside the clinic is not exactly one of levity and light. Everyone is in a very grim and determined mood. And I didn't really feel like busting in on anyone and going, hey, tell me why you're doing this. Because they've had to answer to their family, their church, these guys outside. They really have gone through enough without another man intervening and sticking their metaphorical wand in their world. And so, yeah, that's the heartbreaking part, David. To see poor African American women who are making a very important decision, which by the way is fully their decision. As Liz said, there are no good abortions or bad abortions, they're simply the one you need. And then to have these white guys screaming at them and having pictures of bloody dead babies and all the things that don't happen, as you know, it's an extraordinarily safe procedure. Safer than, for instance, getting your gallbladder out or there's lots of other things. Childbirth is more dangerous. And so the whole idea that abortion is some sort of horrible, dangerous thing. When it becomes dangerous is when it's illegal and women abort themselves, then don't wear into trouble. You were asking me a question before about what a middle class and rich people do. I'm assuming that in Mississippi, because it's the South, and it's like being in your family, everything's a lie, that rich people in Mississippi are able to get avail of themselves, their own doctors. You know what I mean? Concierge service. Rich people have always had access to abortions. It's everyone else that doesn't. And which is part of the racism of the anti-choice argument. So tell me about the clinic. How many doctors are in there? How many nurses? You say they need somebody to come down there and garden for them, which I find interesting. What does the clinic need? What are the people, they need a laugh, I would assume. That's why Liz and the Lady Parts Justice League, Vaginal Mystery Tour travels around. Do the people from the clinic come to the show? Do they need a laugh? They did. Everyone from the clinic came to the show. There's two doctors on the days that they're performing the procedures. There's seven full-time employees. And all of the escorts are volunteers. Explain to me what an escort is. An escort is a person who's trained to, the parking lot there is smallish. So people are forced to park several blocks away on the street in Jackson, Mississippi. And it's a very cute neighborhood called Fondren, which means it's emerging, meaning it has boutique artisanal restaurants and things like that. You would recognize it, it's like Brooklyn or San Francisco. And that happens to be where the clinic is. So the women have to park several blocks away. The escorts go to their cars and walk them through the gauntlet of screaming guys and try to keep the guys away from them a little bit. And people are screaming at you, there's all our alternatives, you don't have to do this, you're being evil, you're going to hell, that kind of not. You can hear them in the background in that one segment when I'm talking to the activist Dr. Crawford, who's got MS and is also a disabled person's activist as well as a feminist. You can hear them screaming and that's the jazz they're screaming the whole time. So it's quite horrible. So that's what the escorts do. They get the women into the clinic and then they get the women out of the clinic by physically accompanying them, sometimes two and three around one woman because there's so much screaming and yelling and intimidation. Is it safe to assume and tell Jennifer, I can tell she wants to say something and to knock it up? I know. Just, I got it. Men are talking now darling. Is it safe to assume that there's not a single woman who skips to an abortion clinic? Yeah, I would think, yeah. I don't think that it's the most traumatic decision of every, I mean, we're not women so it's impossible for me to say with any accuracy but no, it's not a fun thing you do lightly but it is something that is necessary and it's also, by the way, something that's as natural as anything else. Women abort on their own, as you know. That's what staircases were invented for. Exactly, the idea that it's some sort of a natural act that women are performing to destroy babies is the most fallacious and horrible thing of all time. Men can't give birth and so they avail themselves of their opportunity to use firearms to kill everyone. And no one really curtailed that. It's very patriotic to have a firearm. The second amendment is the most important amendment as you know, no one ever talks about any of the other amendments. The first amendment gets discarded constantly like today with the reporters at the White House. But somehow, somehow David abortion is women committing murder whereas a school shooting is the inevitable result of freedom. You did comedy there. Did any of the women who had abortions did they come to the comedy shows? That I can't say for sure, but I will say this. Jennifer told me, I let her speak. You know, I lifted Sharia Law and I let her talk. And she told me that all the women there traded their stories about abortions. So I can't say with any accuracy whether women who had had one that week were at the comedy show but I can say that a lot of women who were at the show have had abortions and we're discussing them with one another. So if that's a way to answer your question, women who have had abortions were at the show. Whether women who had had one that day or not, I couldn't answer you. You know, a lot of my listeners are from Alabama and from Mississippi. Sure. Because they're so stupid, they think they're listening to Jeff Dunham. That's how stupid these people are. No, they're, but there are these... You know what, to them you're Ira Glass. They really can't tell the difference. One Jew, another Jew, they've got glasses on. Yeah, by the way, listening to your episode, I don't know if you're friendly with Ira Glass, but I got angry at Ira Glass for some reason. I thought this, not that it's a competition, but I'm filled with rage, bile and jealousy and everything has to be channeled through who's better than whom. And, you know, Jake Johansson did 3,500 lettermans and a day doesn't go by that I don't think about that. Sure. You know, Bernstein and Citizen Kane remembers that woman getting off the... Right, you'd be surprised if you could remember. Yeah. I don't think she saw me at all. I must not have seen her for more than 15 seconds. I don't think a day has gone by that I haven't thought about her. He also says, awesomely, any fool can make money if that's all he sets his mind to, you know. Wow. Hang on, let me just pause. Okay. And salute you, sir. That is amazing. Bernstein. Oh, my favorite character in the movie. Yeah. Charlie Kane never cared about anybody but Charlie Kane. Wow. Okay. So, I lost, you just really just blew me away. So, one of the things I like to do on this show is throw dirt in genius' face and see if they can come back, if they can remember their train of thought. I think I remember my train of thought but you really did throw me. There are liberals in red states. Very much so. Particularly in the cities, you know. A blue state liberal escorting a woman to her abortion. How safe is that? It's not as dangerous as everybody thinks it is. I mean, obviously there's, they're a little wild, the protesters. And there are firearms. No one was wearing them. That was protesting. The clinic guard, Mario, wears a sidearm and keeps it very low-key. Like, he doesn't get in people's face. He's a really low-key African-American gentleman. And we had a good long chat with him. He wouldn't really talk to me on the day on Mike. But after the show, when we drank together, he told me a lot. And let me put it this way. When we did the comedy show at Dooling Hall and Dooling Hall was a very cute little play in a very sharing-caring white people boutique restaurant mall, right? Like, as Dooling Hall was a school, they've turned it into a bunch of really cute restaurants that you would love, even though they serve shellfish, which is how you know it's an anti-Semitic state. And it would, you know, it would like bacon on it. At this hall on the night, the cat who was working the door was wearing a giant sidearm. And I mean like a 45. And I was outside smoking pot with one of the other kids, as I do, David. And a cop rolled up in a squad car and came running up and said to the guy who was running the place, someone smoking dope, and the guy, and it wasn't us, hilariously. They weren't after us. The cop went, I don't smell any out here. And it was like, we were a shitty cop because we were just smoking one. But they were freaking out, and I mean running around like chickens because someone had smoked pot on the other side of the building. And they were wearing sidearms. And so that's the kind of state of play. You know what I mean? Whereas marijuana is a huge issue. And all of a sudden, guns are gonna be drawn and people are gonna be arrested. Whereas here in California, of course, or New York, you're like, whatever. So their priorities are way different. The liberals need pot. I think they do. And the wearing of sidearms everywhere, I don't know about you, but I never feel comfortable when I see a gun. No. The guns make me uneasy. And I don't care if a white guy's wearing a gun with a beard. That doesn't make me feel like, oh, good justice will be served tonight. It makes me feel like the potential for violence is there. All you need to do is get on the highway, look around and say, how would you feel with these people all holding guns? Right? I mean, don't you sometimes wanna, you know, when you're driving or traveling somewhere and someone doesn't be idiotic, you're like, if I had a gun right now. Well, I'm saying you can't, you can barely trust a person with a car. Why would you trust a gun? Well, to go back to your point, because you wanted to stay focused, one thing I've said, oh, for a million years, first of all, my family's from the south on my mother's side, they're all from the sipping. Really? And as I've said, I didn't grow up in the city. I didn't go to school in the city. Well, no one goes to school in the city. The education standards in the city are gruelingly awful. I did nothing but make fun of them for the first 20 months. Because my family's from there and I know all about it and I don't care, you know, people at deep fried lard puffs and y'all weigh 450 pounds and you know, I said, you eat catfish. Any other state would feed a catfish to deaf, it's a compission or a rat. It's a terrible marauding, you know, carry an eater and you people cook them here and serve them with deep fried lard puffs and that's supposed to be food. You have better restraint than I do. Or did you restrain yourself? Oh, when I was at the clinic, well, I tried to have a sense of humor and a joie de vivre but I didn't exactly quip the whole time. Tried to keep to the matter at hand and also when you were there, you know, people take, you know how it isn't a trench, there's always humor. And because of the, I mean, I think at one point when I'm interviewing Liz, this one woman who murmurs to herself and walks up and down as a protester and then every once in a while screams buddy murder in one of these women's faces but most of the time she's a very staid white woman who just walks up and down and like da da da da da. And then she walked by Liz at one point and murmured something to Liz and Liz went, yeah, you're being real helpful. Interesting thing about your episode was you gave these people rope, the right wing Christians. You let them talk and that was just the art of the podcast. That is what podcasts are all about. You cannot hear this on radio. You can't even hear it on NPR with ira glass. You let this thing breathe and in their case it was through their mouths. You let them just, you let them speak and reveal themselves. What do they need? Attention? Is it wrestling for them? Is this their thing? Kind of like the Phelps, the Westboro Baptist Church. With them it's more about the exhibitionism than it is about Christ. What do these people on the front lines trying to stop these women from getting abortions? What do they need? What do they want? I think you're right, David. I think it's attention and validation. They're funded by groups. There's one called AHA. And what I don't know, Jennifer, if we can remember the, there's another one in Mississippi as well. We're very well funded. And they're kind of the, it's in cities, David. The people that were out there screaming and yelling and I talked to a couple of them and those of you here on the show are obviously not particularly highly educated sort of blue-collar white dudes with a real penchant for metaphor and fairy tales. The people who run these anti-choice clinics, which are there are many in Mississippi and the anti-choice agencies that fund these guys who are out there protesting are well-read white people. Like, it's easy to blame dopey Duck Dynasty rednecks for everything. But as you know, the reason why we have the president we have is rich white people. It wasn't poor white people that arranged this. And they run everything. And I think, get back to your question, they want attention and validation. When I was talking to them, you notice they really, really wanted to get their point across to me and I let them. And then of course, if you hit them with any sort of like, logic or anything like that, they kind of stumble a little bit because there's really not a lot of ground they're standing on. I really thought it was important to ask them how they had the money to stay out there all day. Many of them own businesses and the clinic escorts know them all by name and know what they do for a living. One was an elementary school teacher in Carthage. And I said, does his school know that he comes out here and yells at women? And the response from the Andrew was, yes, they probably do and they probably would support him in doing that. And the one cat, I can't remember his name, Kevin, I think it is, who said he had a landscaping business and that the, I believe he said to me, God had blessed his business, which I'm not certain how one determines that. God has certainly never come by the podcast to be out. He never leaves a donation. That's the thing about God, he's a stiff. Well, he's Jewish. Well, he's Jewish, he's like, hey, do it yourself, right? But the guy also lived in his car. You think you're special? That's my God, yeah. You think I should give you something? The guy lived in his car at one time. The guy said that he himself had experienced poverty, but God- Yes, and he needed help. He received help. He received help and God provides opportunities and if you're not willing to seize those opportunities, then you kind of deserve what happens to you. Yes, he did say that. I think it's very interesting that you would take welfare and then deny other people their own forms of welfare. I don't understand that other than it's a control issue for men to control women. You said, are you willing to adopt these children who aren't getting aborted? And he said, well, a friend of ours was a single mom, she got pregnant, she couldn't afford the baby and my wife and I signed all the papers and we were willing to adopt her child, but she decided to give the baby to somebody else because she knew us. She knew who we were. Right. Right. I started like- She didn't want to do it, let's give it to those. Yeah, and he goes, you know, she knew who we were, so she didn't want to give us her kid. I'm going, how did you not? But you were very restrained with these people. Did you find them sympathetic? They are sympathetic. If you were to ask Barack Obama or Ralph Nader, they would say you need to love them and understand them and give the people who are abusing these women at the abortion clinic, these abusers need jobs, education, teeth, a nutrition, which they're lacking. To wear a dress, someone to teach them how to dress so they don't look scary all the time. And marijuana, right? Oh, God, they use marijuana. The main thing is it's very difficult to move people off their dogma, David. I mean, you know, we got into that philosophical theological discussion and the guy asked, and he asked me if I believe in God. And I said, I thought there was an overarching force in the universe. And then he said, do I believe people come from monkeys? Now, if we're starting at that level, at the Scopes trial level, we're playing in here at the wind here, no, obviously people didn't come from monkeys. Monkeys are a separate strain of primate. If you can't grasp that fact, then we're really at square one here. And then when I said no, I thought that life started in Africa with Picantorpus and Australopithecus. He said, well, what were their names? No. And it's like, well, okay, three million years ago, it's very difficult to see where people were named Arthur. Because, you know, they didn't speak English. How do I get it? What do you do? Well, when he said what were their names, it was... I know. So how do you educate them, David? Like you said, they need education. They really do. But they're trapped in a church cycle of ignorance and reinforcing weird things that they want to feel. And so how do you... Sometimes people can, obviously. People change, you know. We change, you know. I've come to understand that I'm wrong about almost everything, you know. And it doesn't... Well, that... How do you teach someone who asks you what the first people's names were? When you... Where do you go from there? That moment. Because I'm very forgiving of religious people. I think it comforts them. I like the Bible. But that moment, I understood Bill Maher and Dawkins and all the people who are just insane about religion. When you said, I can't even pronounce it. Austro-Polygian. Yeah, Austro-Polygian. I can't even pronounce it. He's, I don't know that. You know, all I know is what's in the Bible. And you say, okay, now I understand why people hate organized religion and why the Bible. This guy... This is why you got to listen to this episode of The Proopcast. Because that moment in and of itself is such a great argument against religion because you don't have to be smart. You don't have to study evolution. You just have to read one book. And make that giant leap of faith and everything, and it's true. You were there for two days. They're inveterate racists. The way you described white men yelling at black women. They are racists, aren't they? Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Well, Joy L. Johnson was there. He was an African-American comic from New York. And she's tall. And she wore a Wonder Woman outfit to the clinic. She had a Wonder Woman t-shirt and a little cape. And she got into it with them. She was really forward with them and really fantastic. And her outspokenness, her sexuality, one of the guys actually got to messin' yelling at her the day before. And that was documented on camera. One of them took a picture of it. On the day, they were really intimidated by her because they're used to yelling at black women who are scared, and they weren't ready for a 5'11 black woman to yell back at them. And I believe she said to one of them, what was it? You need to work on your projection? You need to work on your public speaking. You need to work on your public speaking. Because he was like, the Lord will tell you, you know. So, by the way, the protesters, by and large, don't live in the city of Jackson, Mississippi. Jackson, Mississippi is over 70% black, probably 75% black. They live in Rankin County, which is next door, which is quite white, which is like Pearl, Brandon, Mississippi, Carthage, whatnot. And they drive in for this to harass black women. Having said that, I wanted to go back to some of these earlier. Every city and every state in the south is full of highly intellectual and engaged people. They're not the majority and the way that the Confederacy has broken down and tried to hold on to the past for so long has really prevented some of the states from moving forward. You've been to Georgia, and you've been to Atlanta, and you know that Atlanta is a great big hip city. And it has problems, and Georgia has problems, but Georgia has a giant economy. Mississippi, Louisiana, and Alabama are hurting. Their economy's hurt. They hurt themselves by staying so backwards. Their legislatures and their governors are crappy and white. The new mayor of Mississippi, of Jackson, Chakwai Lumumba, was elected while we were there. His father was also mayor, and he said he was going to make Mississippi the most radical progressive, Jackson the most radical progressive city that he could, which is really nice to hear. Whether that translates into women's rights, I don't know. One thing I wanted to say was I played Florida, North Carolina, Mississippi, Texas, what not. There are so many smart, engaged people in all these places. I really detest the red state, blue state thing, because it's only true in a political electoral sense, but the electoral college, as you know, and not to go into another show here, is a hangover of the slave state phenomenon. The reason why the electoral college was invented was to protect the owners of other individual people's rights as slave owners, because in those days you could count a slave as what was it, two-fifths or three-fifths of a person. So there's all that. And of course, as you know, the Declaration of Independence, South Carolina and Georgia really wouldn't sign off on it until their rights as slave owners were protected, which is why they left out the giant clause that Jefferson wrote about slavery. And all of the founding fathers had slaves. Well, excuse me for a second. Jefferson wrote a clause attacking slavery? Yeah, but we left out of the... I happen to have it right here, David. The rejected clause reads, the piratical warfare, the appropriate with infidel powers, determined to keep open a market where men should be bought and sold, he's prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislator to prohibit or restrain this exquerable commerce. According to Jefferson, the clause was rejected in complacence to South Carolina and Georgia who had never attempted to restrain the importation of slaves. You're saying Jefferson knew slavery was wrong? Very much so. So did Washington. And Washington always said, oh, I'm going to free them all when I die. And of course, it was Martha who did after George died. And Jefferson? I don't know that... I don't think he did. Upon passing, maybe, some of them were given with that phrase that they call manumission. It's hard to let your children leave the nest. Empty nest syndrome. It's tough. Yeah. I mean, let's see. What the first, how many presidents were slave owners? I'm reading a book called Black History at the White House by Clarence Lucene. And he writes, more than one in four U.S. presidents were involved in human trafficking and slavery. Of the 12 presidents who were slavers, half kept people in bondage at the White House. So when they talk about, you know, these truths to be held self-evident, and all this, and that's the hangover in the south. And I think that's what is so destructive. Having said that, I've never had so much fun. Mississippi has great places to eat. The dire crushing third world poverty is a little shocking when you drive to the other side of town and see tin shacks and houses put up on bricks and garbage everywhere. And then you go to the other side of town and there's gleaming new medical centers and banks. So there's that disparity as you were talking about, economic injustice being the race and, or was it Ken Burns, race and money or the story of America? I don't think I really grasped the problem of race and the problem women face historically in this country. I just turned a convenient blind eye to it. I think a lot of us did. And you know, like the very first question you asked me, why did I do this? That's the reason I know that I'm a white privileged guy. I've paid lip service to being involved in different causes. I've always been pro-choice ever since we've known each other. I went to places in San Francisco. We do pro-choice benefits. My act has always been pro-choice. Having said that, I've done enough massage material in my lifetime. Not as much as I have. No, well, honey. You're like John Carlos. You got your fist in the air. You're at the top of the stand on that one. And because of that, I'm always railing on it on my podcast that white guys need to get their shit together and use our privilege, because we do have it. We're allowed to say anything we want. I think I said on my show a couple of weeks ago, if I was a wild misogynist and racist, I wouldn't lose my podcast and I wouldn't lose my position as a comedian. I might even have a sitcom, or a movie star. There are plenty of our friends and colleagues who we know that are fellow white guy comedians who are wildly misogynist and racist and enjoy enormously successful and lucrative careers. It doesn't stop you at all, and that's the difference. Let's review last week. Reza Aslan was fired. Kathy Griffin was fired. Both from CNN. Bill Maher, who I respect and was very good to me, not fired. Interesting how that works. White male says horrible things about Islam, drops the N bomb, not fired. He shouldn't be fired. Reza Aslan calls Donald Trump a piece of excrement, fired, and Kathy Griffin holds the severed head of Donald Trump, fired from CNN, around the world in civilized Europe, Britain, France, Germany, the Netherlands. What is their experience with abortion? It's in England in the 90s when I lived there, I toured, and I used to do this giant bit about abortion and how much I disliked the Pope's opinion upon it and all this jazz. And my man, one of the tour producers I worked with used to say, it's really not an issue here, Greg. You really don't have to go on about it to us because we allow it. But in the last few years, the anti-choice crazies have really risen in England and started to make women feel really awful about it. It was always available in England. I assume in France and Holland, although I'm speaking with no authority here, that they are allowing it as well, the countries where it's real issues, Ireland. In Ireland, they have a gay prime minister, they have gay rights, they have gay marriage, and yet they treat women like chattel, like they always did. Didn't they just pass something? Didn't they just pass something? No, they imprisoned a woman the other day because they put her in the mental hospital because she thinks she wanted to have an abortion and they were like, oh, no, we have to pop you in the mental hospital. So they have a real issue with it there. Even Spain has it. And Spain is a hardcore Catholic country. And the Catholic Church is not, let's just put this, let's see how badly I can understate this. Women and children's rights are not paramount in the Catholic Church. That hasn't been an emphasis. Much like Penn States, Men's Athletic Program, was not a cauldron for understanding young men's sexual needs. Jerry, what are you doing down there in the basement with all the noise? Can I plug one thing? You were asking me what people need? Yes. For your listeners that are concerned, they can go to JacksonWomenHealth.com. That's the actual clinic. They can go to Lady PartsJusticeLeague.com and help support Liz's tour. And they can go to a site that's just a general pro-choice site called ProChoice.org. And that site has information about what's going on in every state. So if you want to go to any of those websites, you can either donate and or edumicate yourself. Right. Before you go, I'm going to plug some of your money-making enterprises, one of which is the smartest man in the world podcast, the Proopcast. If you haven't already, go subscribe to the smattest. I just got back from Boston. The smattest. Yeah. Go subscribe to the smartest man in the world, Proopcast. Greg Proups, you really are the smartest man in the world. Your conversations with the people standing outside an abortion clinic in Mississippi, so fascinating, you were not condescending. I think you should seriously consider doing a show where the smartest man in the world talks to the stupidest people in the world. I'm being serious. I think it's fascinating because you don't make them feel stupid. And this is what I wanted to end with. I was struck by how intelligent these right-wing, racist, misogynistic Christians were. Because they're curious and they want to know and they are searching. A lot of this is, you know, terror porn and they like discussing the mutilation of babe. It's like for them it's Saw 8, another horror film, but there is this intellectual curiosity. They are searching for something. Socrates talks about this in the Republic. You got to get the kids away from their parents. The state has to educate the children. These people you spoke with, you didn't hate them, these right-wingers, right? You saw hatred in their eyes, but given better circumstances, couldn't they be a dirty filthy Jew like me? No, there's always that aspirational hope that everyone can be like you. I think I almost felt bad like I was hanging them out to dry by letting them give their opinions because their opinions are unsupportable and that's what everyone's really reacted to. As well as, of course, the honesty of Shannon Brewer's magnificent staunchness as the director of this clinic and Liz Winstead's backbone and the escorts that we spoke with and that young girl jazz, how intelligent and informed she was. And then I didn't feel bad because they're funded and they're out there every week yelling at these women. So they, like you and I, have put themselves out in the public forum. You and I are susceptible to criticism by giving our opinions the way we do. You and I are susceptible to all those slings and arrows and so are they, baby. If you're going to go out there and yell at women, then I have every right to report on you and every right to expose that. I tried not to give my judgment and I tried not to get angry or, as you say, it was a bit of journalism. I said to Jennifer last night, the best way to report this is not to get screamy with them but to let them talk. They want to be heard. And then you're able to do what a lot of people aren't able to do which is try some analytical thinking about subjects. Try to put yourself to use empathy to get Greek again like Socrates. Empathy means pain, right? I didn't know that. Sympathy means pain and to sympathize with someone is to feel their pain. And that's all you can hope for. Now, I don't hate a lot of people. I mean I could tell you if we want to get off the phone I could tell you specifically. Obviously I'm burning with bitterness and pain all the time. And for anybody who thinks that toxic white male privilege doesn't exist, all you have to do is look at the current administration and the GOP support of that current administration. That's toxic male white privilege. Incompetence, collusion, impropriety, lying. You and I started together in San Francisco as comedians. We had what you described as toxic white male privilege. My toxic white male privilege was I didn't notice that there were no African-Americans getting into the clubs in San Francisco. I noticed that when I went to Oakland there were more African-Americans. I didn't notice how hard it was for even gay comics in San Francisco to play the mainstream clubs. I didn't notice how hard it was for women to not just go out on the road but to go 50 miles out of San Francisco just being in a car with you know who. And the dangers of just showing up to a club hoping to get home safely into your own bed. My toxic male white privilege was voting for Mondale, hating Reagan, being a feminist, gay rights, you know saying all the things but conveniently turning a blind eye to blacks, gays and women and Hispanics and Asians because more pie for me. That's what I'm guilty of. I think we are. And the hooker that I murdered in Detroit but that's... You know you panic. Larry Brown. I agree. And how are we not guilty of it? Whether it's a sin of omission or not is really not the point. The point is to become aware of someone in your life that you are a privileged white person and that you might use your privilege to help other people as opposed to just enriching yourself all the time. You're in Mississippi talking to that guy who lived in this car. How do you explain to him to check his white privilege? That's my final question. Oh golly. I don't know that you can. It's such a cultural thing there. You know they get to be heard and they also have that if the Lord's on your side kind of mentality going on. So I mean I tried to within the conversation point out to them that they might find other ways to help one man other than yelling at them and screaming that their sinners and they're going to die because of what they're doing that there might be a more productive way to interact with women and they didn't really want that. They didn't dig that as much as they might. So I think all you can do is keep reminding guys of that, David. Okay. No matter what level of society they're on because as I say it's not just these scary hillbillies with the camo hats the real danger in the world is of course you know the Rupert Murdoch's and the Koch brothers and the head of NBC allowing that maniac info wars guy to be on television and be interviewed as a legitimate human being when he's a raving lunatic. Oh I thought you were talking about Megan Kelly you're talking about the other guy Alice. Those are them. Yeah. I wouldn't allow Megan Kelly on TV. The woman said Santa Claus was white and they've given her nothing but millions of dollars and pushed her forward so you know whatever. And she causes body dysmorphia for young girls. She causes body dysmorphia for me. I want to have ankles like that. She looks fabulous in heels. Greg Proups is the smartest man in the world. Dana Gould has balls because he came to San Francisco with the name Dana because Dana Carvey, Elvis Costello, Declan McManus is that it? That's right. Changed his name to Elvis because he said yes. Look at me I encourage the scrutiny. Greg Proups calls himself the smartest man in the world. That's like you moving to San Francisco and calling. My name is Robin. Really? And not only are you the smartest man in the world you know how to train Jennifer. She really... She behaved. I don't know if you heard that one. You know all my dirty dark secrets. You know everything. You know if you were ever deposed I'd just say just let me write the check your honor. Whatever it is. So I'm at KPFK. I've been there for a couple of years. Very left-wing radio station in Los Angeles and you come in and the first thing you said to me was Mills College. And my heart... I went oh my god. Anyway Mills College was in all... At the time it was in the Bay Area. It was all women's school. I might have had a problem with Mills College. I was going through some things that were... It was bad. Greg Proups is the smartest man in the world. His podcast is called the smartest man in the world, Proupcast. Go download it on iTunes right now. Listen to Monday's episode until the last clinic in Mississippi. Then support his sponsors. Greg Proups donates his time and his money for important causes so you need to support Greg Proups comedy in every way imaginable and the return is you'll be smarter. You'll laugh and he's the best. You're the best. I love you. I do. I love you and it's an honor to have you on my show. Thank you brother. Thanks for having me on man. Can you stay on the line for one second? Yeah. If you're enjoying today's show do me a favor and subscribe to it on iTunes Stitcher. We have a YouTube channel. It's just audio but some people like to listen to this show on YouTube so subscribe to our YouTube channel and do me a favor and give us a good review on iTunes. You'd be amazed how much that helps. Giving us a good review on iTunes moves us up. That's the way their algorithm works so when you give us a good review on iTunes you're really helping out. James Curtis is the author of W.C. Fields, a biography which was awarded the Special Jury Prize by the Theater Library Association and named one of the notable books of the year by the New York Times. He's also the author of William Cameron Menzies, The Shape of Films to Come, Spencer Tracy, a biography, James Whale, a new world of gods and monsters and Between Flops and a claimed biography of writer-director Preston Sturgis. His new book is entitled Last Man Standing, Mort Saul and the Birth of Modern Comedy. Thank you for doing this, James. You're in Brea, California today? Yeah, that's a suburb of Disneyland. All of America's a suburb of Disneyland. That's how we ended up with Trump. Yes, that's true. Full disclosure, James, I'm obsessed with Mort Saul. I thought I knew everything about Mort until I read Last Man Standing, Mort Saul and The Birth of Modern Comedy. It came out last month. It's a masterpiece. Go buy this book. You will learn so much not just about Mort Saul but where modern stand-up came from. My first date was to go see Mort Saul. I was 16 years old and I took a young lady at the age of 16 to Danger Fields to see Mort Saul. Oh, New York. Yeah. I was obsessed and still am obsessed with Mort Saul. I can remember going to the library. When I started doing stand-up, I would go to the library in Berkeley. I moved to Berkeley to do stand-up and I would just go to the stacks and look up old newspaper articles about Mort. I'm going to pretend I don't know who Mort is for the benefit of a new generation of comedy fans. Before I start asking you questions, I want to thank you for the book. Thank you. Well, no, thank you. It's... Seriously. No, no, thank you, thank you. No, no, no, seriously. I'm obsessed with Mort. I wasn't sated but what you did is you have made me go back and listen to my Mort Saul albums. You know, I was thrown out of my house four years ago for this divorce and I took very few things with me. But I took my Mort Saul albums and they... I haven't even, you know, unpacked them. And I started listening to my Mort Saul albums and on YouTube you can find Mort Saul. He is a miracle of democracy and show business. Why did you pick Mort Saul? Well, let's see. I feel I've always had very good luck in terms of the quality of the subjects that I've been able to work on and Mort continues in that tradition. I've always been fascinated by Mort and I always thought that he merited a biography. It's a unique story, unique American story. I guess I should say. And so I considered it for years, kind of talked myself out of it on a couple of occasions because I had always done long, deceased subjects and I was a little intimidated by doing a living one but in this particular case it worked out well and I'm happy to have done it. I first discovered him in 1966 here in Los Angeles when he had a TV series on KTTV, the local Metro media outlet out here. He was kind of an early version. Seven nights a week, KTTV had what you could call controversial talk shows at 11 o'clock. They ran for 90 minutes. Tonight's the week you got Joe Pine, if you remember him. Louis Lomax, who was the black Joe Pine at that time. Regis Philbin did it for a while, Melvin Belli. And on Friday night they gave that slot eventually to Mort and he came in and started to do a 90 minute talk show each week. And I just found him fascinating from the very first. Mort's show was canceled due to bad ratings. Then what happened? Then what happened was they found... First of all, there was a tremendous groundswell of protest. There was a listenership that was absolutely rabid and they took up arms figuratively speaking and proceeded to inundate the station, the station management with correspondence mail as we knew it back then. Then miraculously they found another set of ratings that showed that Mort's numbers were actually better than they had thought. He was a hit. What happened was, after a short period of time at 90 minutes, Mort took on a little troop of comedy sketch artists. He was kind of a very early prehistoric version of Saturday Night Live. They would perform topical sketches on the week's news and people like Pat McCormick and Anne Elder who were part of that. Lily Tomlin's partner, Anne Elder. Mark London and Jack Riley. These guys were all poverty stricken at the time and probably worked for Nixon no money and they were so impoverished. Anne Elder told me that they had to write out their material on the backs of your shirt cardboards, the sorts of things when you had your shirts come back from the laundry that they were packaging. Cardboard, they'd save this cardboard and write out their scripts on it and they proceeded to, with Mort, I think establish a new standard for creativity and local television out here and it was the place to be for a while. It was really a remarkable show. In your book, Last Man Standing, which I saw on the birth of modern comedy, you interview Anne Elder. She went on to work with Lily Tomlin when countless Emmys, she said that Mort was very easy to work for, very encouraging of comedy writers. That's true and that's easy to believe too. I don't think she's just telling me that. I think that Mort was very accepting of other writers and talents in his sphere and I think it made for a better program. I mean, if he had been hostile to what they were doing, it wouldn't have worked. As it was, they were a big family and they were doing a lot of important stuff together and I think that came over the airwaves and I think that's what I responded to at such an early age. You said to me before we started the interview that Mort was a tough sell. He's been a tough sell since the early 60s. I want to talk about his history. I want young people to buy your book, learn about the origins of stand-up comedy. There is no modern stand-up comedy without Mort. I don't think there is. What year did Mort start doing stand-up comedy and where did he start? He started in December of 1953 at the Hungry Eye which was in North Beach in San Francisco. And who owned the Hungry Eye? Enrico Ben Ducci who was a restaurateur, very flamboyant character. Trademark was wearing a beret at old times which I think he did to the very end of his life and the Hungry Eye was in the basement of a flat iron building on Columbus which cuts right through the center of North Beach. The building is still there. It's now owned by Francis Ford Coppola. Beautiful building. I don't think it was quite in the state of repair back then it is today but in the basement of that particular building was the Hungry Eye and it was a little thrown together night spot. Mold wine is what they served at the bar. And this is a pattern that Mort encountered throughout his early career and it was strictly a music venue until Mort was brought in. Actually Mort was next to poverty himself at the time and he was brought in to cover a week when the featured singer was away during Christmas season and Mort just got up there and started to try to figure out how to put across what he had in his head about a new kind of commentary, a new kind of social satire. It wasn't a lot of politics early on but if you think about that period, the top comedians of the day on television, you had people like Jackie Gleason and Milton Berle of course. And if you saw somebody in a nightclub or a live theater of some sort, they were typically in a tuxedo or otherwise dressed to the nines and they were telling Borsch Belt material, mother-in-law jokes, my wife is so fat, that sort of stuff. And so Mort didn't traffic in that stuff. He didn't have the Catskills in Doctrination, if you will. And so he had a completely different line of reasoning a completely different way of presenting himself. And he said very early on, I got to thinking what kind of character would ruminate on this sort of material and he came up with a graduate student persona. Was he a graduate student? No, he wasn't. Did he go to college? He has a degree in civil engineering from USC and he started to do advanced studies and kind of walked away from it at some point. And when he was up in Berkeley, he was essentially there because his girlfriend had gone up there and he followed her. So he was kind of a vagrant around town at that point. They had all my coffee shops and the like. He was always kind of a nocturnal character and so he would hang out and debate people and kind of hone what he had to say in his own particular peculiar way and that's what was put forth at the Hungry Eye. December 22nd, 1953. The mythology about Mort is he came to the Hungry Eye fully formed on that night. He was living in Berkeley. Where did he get his comedy chops? I can't imagine that the first time he ever got in front of an audience was at the Hungry Eye. Well, there was a little bit ahead of that but it wasn't professional. He was kind of a roadie for Stan Kenton earlier on. Who was Stan Kenton? Stan Kenton was one of the great West Coast band leaders of the swing era and he had a kind of following all his own. Stan Kenton was very loud, very brassy. I'm talking in terms of his music. He was a very bombastic piano player and Mort appreciated the idea that he was all out. I mean, there was nothing modulated about Stan Kenton and his music and he really was the leader of the West Coast jazz movement in the 40s and late 30s and he had a number of people personnel with his band that went on to great solo careers including his vocalist Anita O'Day originally June Christie after that. So Stan Kenton was a tremendously influential guy and Mort just had a bad case of hero worship. So occasionally Stan Kenton, Stan Kenton could fill the palladium 6,000 people on a Saturday night and occasionally he would allow Mort if it was arrangeable to go up on stage when the band took their break and he tried to make more expression but this was not paid gig. Okay, so Mort, his analog for an open mic was before the Hungry Eye he was a roadie for Stan Kenton and then Stan let him get up on stage so he got his comedy chops working for swing and jazz audiences basis. Yeah, that's it. He and Lenny Bruce, both of the Lenny Bruce at the time was working strip clubs and was doing a fairly conventional act. Lenny Bruce was doing movie parodies and imitations, that sort of thing. So it was the example that I think Mort set that inspired Lenny Bruce to push the envelope in his own direction. What was Mort thinking as a roadie for Kenton and getting up? Did he have aspirations of being a nightclub comic? I'm not sure he was that. It was an idea that was fully formed in his mind at that time. He loved the music and he had a peculiar way of looking at things, a distinctive way of looking at things and he was very articulate. He could fascinate people with the way he spoke and what he had to say, how he put things and that's true to this day. And it's hard to say where that came from. At a certain point it just becomes a certain level of genius that he was able to put things the way that he did. He came out of no established pattern of any sort. There's nobody that really predates him. Before Mort's Hall, your stereotypical stand-up comedian was Henny Youngman, someone like that. Nobody dared delve deeply into the political minutia that Mort got into, primarily because it was the early 50s and it was considered dangerous. You didn't get up on stage and knock Senator Joseph McCarthy. Comics, you know, watch other comics. At first, for lack of a better word, they steal the cadences and the rhythms and the areas of their comedic heroes before they find their own style and voice. I know that Mort is the Steve Wozniak of modern stand-up. He's a god, but he did not spring fully formed. There had to be somebody besides jazz musicians who he was getting his rhythms from. Was there some kind of underground intellectual circuit that he pulled from? Were there any comedians? Not really. There are no comedians, really. The people that he tells me that he told me that he listened to on radio in the late 40s besides Stan Kenton were Henry Morgan, were Herb Schreiner, and he also remembered back to the days of Will Rogers when he was a kid. Who turned out to be an anti-Semite according to your book. Well, that's Mort's judgment. I don't think it's necessarily as simple as that, but I think that where Mort came from was a result of the reading he did, was a result of the people he hung out with, was a result of what he heard on radio, what he heard in the media. But there was no particular comedian who did exactly what he did. The irreverence, I can pretty much trace back to Henry Morgan, of course, the casual way of ruminating on subjects of significance, you could say came from Herb Schreiner, to some degree, who was a latter-day Will Rogers type. But I do think that a lot of the delivery was influenced by the music that he carried in his head, and was not a musician himself, but he had such a wonderful appreciation for it. And where the notes hit in a musician's ear, that's where the words hit for Mort. And I think that how Mort was able to ingratiate himself with the musicians, and in effect become accepted as one of them, made a tremendous amount of sense when it came to how he developed, how he formed, and also how he was able to essentially strike out and set up a network of clubs around the country that were strictly music venues until he came in. His style, if I go back and listen to his albums, he takes a theme like a jazz musician and then goes as far away as he possibly can from that theme until right before, on the precipice of losing the theme, and then he goes back to it. That's what a jazz combo does, and that's what he does in a live performance. He tells some kind of story about something and ventures as far away as he possibly can from what he was talking about, then brings it back. So he learned that I would assume being around great jazz musicians, did he play an instrument? No, no, he had no chops in that respect at all. He couldn't play, he couldn't sing, but he appreciated the stuff, and they appreciated him. His entrepreneurial spirit, you say in the book and you just said it that he was smart enough to know that he couldn't play mainstream clubs, maybe Mr. Kelly's in Chicago and eventually the Playboy Club for Hugh Hefner, but for the most part, he gravitated to specifically jazz rooms. That's true. That's smart business sense, right? He knew that he... Well, the hungry eye was essentially a folk venue when Mort went in there. All of these cases without exception were music exclusively policy rooms until Mort came in. That's true of Mr. Kelly's, that's true of the Blue Note, that's true of the hungry eye, it's true of Storyville in Boston, it's true of Basin Street East in New York City, it was true of the Crescendo in Los Angeles and the interlude above the Crescendo. All of these places without exception were strictly musical venues until he came in for the first time. And in each case, it was considered a risk for a part of proprietary to bring someone like him in. It was a category that was known at the time if you went into the record stores, spoken word, but Mort had this unique appeal to the audiences that sought out and appreciated the music and that's the connection that he forged, that's the connection he forged in setting up that informal network of clubs and once he had done that, that same network is available to Lenny Bruce and Shelley Berman and Mike Nichols and Elaine May and the other exponents of the so-called smart comedy movement, Mother's Brothers, Woody Allen, et cetera. The first label that he was recorded on, you say, was Verve? Verve, correct. He brought Shelley Berman in and some others. He brought Shelley Berman in, both from Winters End, and Shelley Berman ended up recording his first album, his first comedy album, which I'm trying to think that was recorded at the Hungry Eye, I can't remember now, called Inside Shelley Berman, was a tremendous hit. It sold in the tens of thousands and he underwrote by his sales a lot of musicians that Norman Grant's recorded at Verve that could not have been recorded otherwise. Some definite money-losers, but great albums on the left. Yeah, and Shelley Berman. So for a period, comedy was keeping jazz alive. That's true. That's interesting. Well, you know, one of the interesting things, because I interviewed Shelley Berman for the book and he started in Chicago and he, like Mort, did not work the Catskills. That was not his thing. He did not have that burden. He did not have that influence, which was great for him. But what I realized about Shelley Berman and what got emphasized to me was that Shelley Berman didn't come as a stand-up comic or as a comic that was going to get up in front of audiences and do routines as he did, finally, but rather he was a rather gifted Shakespearean actor. And when he was first there in Chicago, discovering Mort, he was with the Compass Group. It was a provisional comedy group and as were Mike Nichols and Elaine May. And so Shelley Berman's evolution to the point where he could get up in front of an audience by himself in part came because he saw the example of Mort Saul in Chicago at Mr. Kelly's. Mort, is it fair to say, was the first comic with a college degree? Could be. I don't know... I haven't surveyed everybody's CV to see if they all came forth without college. Did Henry Morgan go to college? I'm not sure. No, he didn't. I knew Henry Morgan. He was a big influence on me and I have a watch that Henry gave me, which I use to get backstage to meet Mort every couple of years. I have a watch that Henry Morgan gave me and Mort lets me in backstage. So he influenced Woody Allen, which I want to get to, but first, when I started doing comedy, the rap against Mort was he didn't like most stand-up comedians. And if you listen to his old albums and his current stuff, you can understand because while Mort invented stand-up comedy, he's really not doing stand-up comedy. He's doing these professorial jazz riffs that are more spoken word than they are stand-up. What I didn't know until I read your book was that he did support comics with Verve. He was the one who brought a lot of people along with him early on in his career. Yeah. Shelly Berman told me that he would never have gotten to where he was without Mort's example and Mort's encouragement. If you ask Woody Allen if he would have become a performer without Mort's example and influence, he said absolutely not. It's 100% true, he told me, that it was Mort's example that convinced him that he should do it for himself. Did you interview Woody Allen? Yes, I did. And if Woody Allen had never been a performer, I doubt that he would have ended up being the filmmaker that he is today. I know that Woody says Mort changed his life. Yeah, and he said there was nothing else like it when he had seen it for the first time. He thought, nothing else like it I've ever seen. And he said I've never seen anything quite like it since. Was Mort in the military? Yeah, yes he was. What brand? He tried to get in during World War II and he was in the Air Force. He tried to get in during World War II and he was too young, which didn't stop him. He got in a couple of times. In one case his mother retrieved him before he got too far. He had kind of a five o'clock shadow when he hit puberty and so he looked a little older than he actually was. I asked him one time where he was when he learned the Pearl Harbor had been hit. He said it was in the billion dollar theater on South Broadway in Los Angeles in the afternoon. And he remembered the band leader coming up on stage and telling the audience what had happened. And he remembered going out to the street afterwards. I said, what was your action? He said I went out and tried to enlist. I tried to enlist. And he was 14 years old at the time. But he did serve in the military. Did he serve overseas during Korea? Did he see any actions? No, no. This was just after the end of the war, 46 when he got in. He went up to Alaska, ultimately, where he got himself in a lot of trouble. He put out a very irreverent base newspaper called Poop from the Poop from the Group. And he antagonized the commanding officer at the point where he did something, some record number of days of KP as a result of that. So it was not a happy experience for him. But boy, he was gung-ho during the war. He held the great military movies of that period. He was a tremendously successful figure in ROTC. One award. He won an Americanism award one time from the American Legion during the war. This was at USC? No, this was before USC. This was when he was in high school. And here in Los Angeles, he went to Belmont with Los Angeles. So he had an ROTC company and eventually became the commanding officer. So he was steeped in all that. He liked the formality and the pageantry of it. What he didn't like was the corruption of authority as he saw it. So a year in the military kind of did it for him, I think. He needed a draft. Everybody should serve. Tell me about his love affair with America. He was born in Montreal, Jewish. He came to America. How much does he love this country? I think immensely. The interesting thing that came out of the talks that we had, we recorded 40 hours a piece of a year. And we'd get in all kinds of topics. But the thing that struck me when we got into his childhood in his early years was that when he was living in downtown Los Angeles, his father was a civil servant and didn't make much money. He was an only child. So they would take one bedroom apartment on the couch. As a result of that Moore tried to get out of the house as much as possible, so he'd go out and walk down to Main Street in Los Angeles. And there were a collection of small grind houses on Main Street that would be open all night in some cases. And they'd have three films, continuous showings, and he'd go in there and he'd sit for hours and hours and just absorb this stuff. And he came to Los Angeles in 1935 just after the production code started to be enforced. The Hays Code. And so as a result of that, there were there was a certain enforced view of America that was put forth by Hollywood to the world. And criminals were punished, you know, and people didn't have sex or marriage and all that stuff. But in a way it was kind of a very idealized view of what the American idea was. Put forth by people like Frank Capra and George Stevens and the like, and Leo McCary. And as a result of that, Mort grew up with that impressed upon him. He saw these films again and again at a very impressionable age and they stuck with him. Maybe the culmination of that was in 1939 when he saw Mr. Smith Goes to Washington for the first time and to this day it's still a film that can bring tears to his eyes. Right, and he wanted to remake it at one point. Yeah, at one point, yeah. He did. He calls himself a romantic. Which is true, very true. And it seems to me that America has treated him the same way every woman ever treated him. Yeah, that's probably true to some degree. I think that his wife, Gina, said at one point that Mort's stance toward America has always been as if it were a woman who had been unfaithful to him. Which I thought was very perceptive. But he still believes. Yeah, he still believes. He's incurable in that respect. One of the the last line in the book really is just kind of reaffirmation of the romanticism, the thing that really animates him. And I think that's missing in a lot of assessments of him, just how important that is. He was a true believer and it came through in his relationships with women. I don't think he was an easy guy to live with or get along with in particular, especially in his prime. I think that I think, however, that he attracted a fascinating and a really high quality type of woman and it's kind of like a who's who who was available at that time that he was seen with and took up with at various points. Everybody from Diane Cannon to Tippi Hedger into well, Yvonne Craig, of course. Phyllis Kirk. Phyllis Kirk. Just one after the other and and Gina Lee, who was historic in the sense that she was the first Asian centerfold in Playboy. Without prying into his personal life, the takeaway from your book is that she's the love of his life. I kind of think that was the case. I kind of think that was the case. I wouldn't presume to speak for him, but I think it's one of those situations where when it was great, it was really great and when it was bad, it was really bad and you had two very strong forceful individuals and they fought as much as they loved and I think that there was a point at which it just kind of blew apart for all kinds of reasons, but they were in a lot of ways an ideal pair given their temperaments and at the same time it was probably always destined to break apart, but they made a good team when they were together. He was attracted to really, really brilliant women. Phyllis Kirk was a brilliant, brilliant woman. That's true. Has it pronounced China? China. It's pronounced China, but it's pronounced China. Also a brilliant woman. He was trying to understand women before most men thought they were worth figuring out. I mean he was hanging out with Hugh Hefner who was not interested in, was not interested in their head. No. Not at all, but more genuinely was thrilled and turned on by a woman's mind. Treated them as intellectual equals and I think a little trouble that he got into with women was he treated them as intellectual equals and may have been misconstrued as a misogynist because he figured they could give as good as they take. That's a fair statement in the early 60's when you're trying to sort this stuff out early on. Yeah, I think so. I think so, sure. Yeah. Women found him sexy, right? Oh yeah, oh yeah, definitely. I've talked to him about that and he whistled, he radiated energy and testosterone and attitude and a little bit of danger. I think that was attractive also plus he was really powerful at that time in terms of his presence on stage, in terms of his fame, in terms of his influence and also the people he knew. I mean he knew everybody everybody and hung out with them and they appreciated him as much as he appreciated them. It was really quite a time. It was a great moment in the book that I remember vividly because it really spoke to me about the problems women faced up until recently. Phyllis Kirk had an eye, she was probably smarter than Mort. I think Mort would admit that. She met Jack Kennedy and she wanted to talk to Kennedy. I think it was in Palm Springs, it was some party in Los Angeles. Kennedy, Jack Kennedy automatically assumed she was making a move on him when in fact she was an intellectual who wanted to talk to Jack Kennedy but she was reduced to a woman. Yeah, he hung out with Warren Beatty Paul Newman. Marlon Brando Marlon Brando he almost became more than a character actor a leading man at one point. Right, wasn't he being groomed as an actor? Jerry Wald specifically the producer was a big fan of his and had plans for him. Jerry Wald died in 1962 and so he didn't have the chance to really put those plans into motion but I think had Jerry Wald live that Mort would have done more films as it was Mort Yvonne had an interesting thing to say about that which I think was true because Mort took on some stage work and that sort of thing and the problem was he was not geared he had a good memory but he was not geared to learning lines she said if you're going to do something and improvise it he'd be home free but having to learn and repeat lines the same way every night that was not something he could do. But he wanted to do and he said at one point which I think is absolutely true that he said a lot of people can act I'm the only one that can do what I do and that's true I mean that's kind of the trap of true genius is that you do something so unique and startling that you kind of get fall into that pit you can't move sideways you can't move up or down necessarily because you've got you're a captive of that particular gift of yours and I think that was very true in Mort's case nobody else could effectively do what he did but as a result of his not being able to say carve out a career for himself in television or movies that when the nightclub world as we knew it in the early 1960s went away Mort had nowhere to go even though he had already learned how to network with jazz clubs right oh yeah but jazz went into a decline about 1962-63 part of it was because of the way the tax code was being rewritten so that the people who frequented the clubs and say in Chicago Mr. Kelly's I mean they could not write off whole entertainment the way they could before and that was Kennedy himself that was pushing that particular agenda so by the time 62-63 rolled around a lot of the clubs had closed or had gone off their entertainment policies that was something I didn't realize when I started digging into this and you can find the news items of the time it was a time of extreme crisis but but back in the late 50s here in Los Angeles I use an example the sunset strip that two miles of unincorporated roadway that connects Los Angeles and Beverly Hills you had the clubs like the crescendo which was basically a jazz venue the macambo places like that and and any given night you could go see maybe Duke Ellington downstairs the crescendo with Mort upstairs the interlude you'd have some like Jerry Southern or Shorty Rogers who came from the Kenton Band across the street would be Sammy Davis Jr at the coconut grove would be Judy Garland Slate Brothers would have a very early version of Don Rickles you had the Mulan Rouge Louis Prima Keeley Smith all of this stuff was going on continuously at that time and and most of these places you could well use an example Mort fell ill with mononucleosis the day before he was to open at the crescendo and Gene Norman the impresario on 24 hours notice was able to get his replacement June Christie really great great vocalist and Mike Nichols and Elaine May and you could see that show for a $2 cover and a 2 drink minimum it's just astonishing the amount of live entertainment that was available I mean first rate top tier entertainment same was true in San Francisco same was true in New York City of course he started in 53 or at least he became known in 53 at the hungry eye how long did it take before he was known nationally well that took a little while Mort says and he said at the time it took him about 6-8 weeks to really kind of find his center there and click in with audiences at the hungry eye and he stayed there a good long while most of the year he was encouraged to go off to Chicago one point to do a two week gig at a club back there and again he was not immediately accepted by the audiences I mean they had to get their bearings with him they hadn't seen any like him before when he went on television for the first time it was the Steve Allen show in 1955 in New York and again he started off and there were a few minutes where he got no response from the audience he said then the dam broke and all of a sudden this wave of laughter came through but it took them a few minutes to figure out what was going on and that happened pretty quickly for him it did two years to go from the hungry eye to the Steve Allen show to the tonight show in two years that's pretty quick I think where he really broke out was when he opened the Los Angeles in 57 at the Interlude which was a small bar performance space that was up on top of the crescendo on Sunset Boulevard and seated about 85 people about the same size as the hungry eye was and he would alternate with the musical act Shorty Rogers initially and he would do these really bracing tight 30-35 minute sets and he'd do two or three a night on the weekends he'd do as many as five it was it was electric when you hear recording of what he did the Interlude for instance it was just electric what's the earliest recording we have of Mort? the unauthorized album that was recorded in 1955 in in Carmel actually in the Monterey Peninsula it was recorded by Fantasy Records Mort worked an evening at a place called the Sunset Auditorium and it was with Dave Brubeck with Paul Desmond and Mort went in and did the comedy act and they were looking out for him in such a way so that the Brubeck organization did their first set of I think five numbers then Mort came on and he did about 40 minutes of material and then Brubeck Desmond came back and did their final set and Fantasy Records in Berkeley was recording Brubeck's music for a potential album that night they had engineers and taped the back of the room and as it turned out they recorded Mort as well though Mort was unaware of it at the time and that album was eventually issued as Mort saw at Sunset but it was unauthorized so it came out after Mort's first official album for a verve which was called The Future Lies Ahead and Mort had to sue to get the album off the market because by that point he considered it dated it was 1958 and the material was three years old Were they paying him for that? No, they were just pulling a fast one if you will so if you can find a copy of Mort's Solid Sunset these days it's a real serious item Are there any recordings of him before The Hungry Eye? Not that I'm aware of not that I'm aware of There are two tapes in his collection that were recorded after that there's about 70 minutes of material from the interlude about a month after he opened the Los Angeles this spring of 1957 there's a tape that's marked by 1954 I think I gotta look back on my list now that hasn't been digitized yet that is pretty early as well the interlude tapes are really fantastic though they're really exciting and fun to listen to I made my kids listen to Mort when they were growing up because my kids hate me you know why my kids in order to go to Disneyland we had to go to the Nixon Library in Whittier first that was one of the big complaints that was like you have to earn Disney well then we just finally I lost all authority and we just went straight to Disneyland if you want to learn American History one of the ways I learned American History was filtering it through the prism of Mort's albums I wanted to know who these references were and now that I'm old enough in enough history to me it's timeless and just jaw-droppingly brilliant was the height of his career 1960 when he made the cover of Time Magazine if you were to ask him what was the absolute peak of your career in terms of fame and money and power and influence hanging out with the Kennedys 1960 the Zenith probably running up to the election in November sure and did he suffer once Kennedy got elected because he didn't have any friction in other words he was up against Eisenhower but now you have Kennedy which is you would assume Kennedy would be what Mort wanted people would come to him after the show when he was knocking Kennedy and they'd say well isn't this what you wanted and he would say you didn't have to do it for me no he when he started he had he was looking at two terms of Eisenhower and Nixon and so he cut his teeth on Nixon especially and he had a nice long run with those guys and he participated unofficially and the Kennedy campaign although he was really a Stevenson man and so the run up to the election was really a time of tremendous excitement not only in show business but in the country as a whole I mean I remember it because I was a kid back then the real excitement of having a man in the White House with a prospect of having a guy a White House who was not only as charismatic as Kennedy was boy was he charismatic but also someone who had actually been born in the 20th century Kennedy was the same age as my father and all those World War II vets at the time were in the early 40s and they had the world by the tail and it's I have to say that I can equate it in some ways to when the Obama's went into office because Kennedy and you had a great charismatic leader not only that but a really photogenic family good solid now we've learned that there were cracks in the facade with Kennedy but there was a lot of that same feeling I thought also there was a lot of dissension about Kennedy that especially in the south he was reviled but I think that in that time there were a lot of hopeful people in the world and they didn't want to hear about Kennedy getting knocked like that but Mort's attitude was really that he considered anyone who was in power to be a target looking back because he ended up writing jokes for Kennedy looking back he got a little close to Jack Kennedy does he see was that a mistake I think he fell under that particular you know what may have happened ultimately I think is that because he had fallen under Kennedy's spell in a way that when Kennedy did become president remember what a close election that was I think that he in a sense was determined to go all out against Kennedy just to show that he hadn't been compromised so I do think that that had something to do with it but Mort had a lot to work with Kennedy I mean Kennedy's brother was the attorney general I remember at that time Robert F. Kennedy Mort came up with a line little brother is watching for that there were a lot of things going on that Mort could grab on to the the Cold War was a big one for instance but I think that there was a period of time when people were sensitive to any kind of fund that got made of the Kennedy family and Mort that was his stock and trade it was tough for him for a while and then when I understand from your book Jack Kennedy was okay with Mort's barbs it was the Praetorian guard that was protecting him he was told that by some insiders and that's easy to believe I assume that the president wanted to be protected when really he perhaps did not want to be or he didn't consider Mort to be a serious danger though it was kind of a compliment to Mort that some people did did Mort saw going back to the early fifties did he curse did he talk blue he talked about women he talked about relationships how vulgar did Mort ever do and work blue on stage he won't to this day right so he was kind of the anti-Leni in terms of when he bruised and what when he bruised was up to but Mort was a straight arrow in comparison when you say he didn't drink he didn't drink at all or he would go out and have an occasion no not really he never had a taste for the stuff he was asked one time in a playboy interview if he ever drank and he said only with chicks which may have been the case but the wives for instance knew he was a safe guy for their husbands to go out with because Paul Newman was a heavy drinker and Mort was usually along with Newman because he would drink orange juice or something and Newman could get as blasted as he wanted to and he knew that Joanne Woodward knew that Newman was safe when he was in Mort's company Mort was the designated driver and it seems to me driving was Mort's vice cars were his indulgence in the early 50s when he was starting was it really the height of McCarthyism I don't have an almanac in front of me but it seems to me by 1954 McCarthy had already been exposed by Edward Murrow no, Murrow did it in early 54 like the spring of 54 I'll see it now initially but Mort started in December of 53 with McCarthy jokes and that was not considered cool at that time the only guy that poked fun at McCarthy in a very, very, very mild way was Bob Hope his quips came across as friendly in comparison but Mort was developing the philosophy of savagery with these targets he was not going to give any slack to any of these people and McCarthy was right through the top of the list and he and Banducci both told stories of how the plumbery I was a basement place, a cellar place and people would come along toward the end of the evening they shoved garbage cans down the staircase and holler communists that sort of thing and they'd have to fight their way out of the club at night because of that do you think he played against type? Mort was a college educated Jew and people automatically assumed this was when the Rosenbergs were getting electrocuted and you ask most of middle America they would think that all communists were Jewish didn't he play against type in that you go and listen to him in the early 50s while he was making jokes about McCarthy Nixon and Eisenhower it was brilliant it was funny it was mordant mordant not over the top mostly sly and patriotic right it wasn't was he ever arrested? no right? he was never arrested he didn't push the balance of decency the way Lenny Bruce did Lenny did things purposely to get himself arrested I think I think that was part of his persona and self image let's say he got arrested but Mort there were two sides to Mort the political side the thinker the other side was the guy who was living the playboy philosophy you don't see him with a martini his hand or a cigarette but he was driving the fastest of cars and he was dating the most famous and beautiful actresses and he certainly loved the music there was a lot there that coincided with what playboy was putting forth to its readership as being the kind of guy you wanted to aspire to be so I think that Mort's riffs on lifestyle fit right in in terms of what you saw as a disillusionment of the post-World War II set these guys that went to college like Mort did on the GI Bill and achieved a level of financial and personal security and we're wondering at that point what was left or what there was to it all that the point of it all would be to be able to buy a bitter brand of gin live in a bigger house that sort of thing and what did it all add up to that commentary at that time really kind of pointed to that it was you're getting into the area of the man with the gray flannel suit which was a big bestseller in the mid-50s the idea the questioning as to what America was putting forth as the ideal and was it intellectually vacuous were there things that one should be considering that we're not encouraged at that time I think that Mort was the guy that gave voice to that rebellious nature in people that questioning nature in people a revolutionary so much as he was he played at middle class aspirational when it came as you said to women, to toys, to things and then the disillusionment as you said that comes from pursuing empty things like beautiful women and fancy cars so that kind of played into the 50s and he was the quintessential playboy role model in a lot of ways and at the same time he was biting that particular hand as it was feeding him very coy with his politics until this day you cannot pigeonhole them go ahead, I was going to wrap it up and invite you back next week because I could talk about Mort Sol forever can we do this again? thank you, I can talk about Mort, I had him on my show in 2013 for the 50th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination there's so much to talk to him about other than the Kennedy assassination very quickly before you go this is just a personal question Mark Russell, how's he doing? very well as far as I know I had a nice chat with him he gave us a very nice comment for the book when he read it and he and his wife Ali live in Washington to this day and as far as I know everything's copacetic with him well, this has been a thrill, thank you you were very generous with your time again, thank you for the book James Curtis is the author of The Man Standing, Mort Sol and the Birth of Modern Comedy you're also the author of W.C. Fields of Biography which I'm going to go get on my Kindle after we hang up and a lot of other books Spencer Tracy of Biography, James Whale A New World of Gods and Monsters and Between Flops and Acclaimed Biography of Writer-Director Preston Sturges I know his son Preston Sturges, I met him through Jeff Garland very sweet Preston or Tom Sturges Preston, the son Preston, okay, yeah he used to live next door to my friend Jeff Garland well, James Curtis thank you so much I will call you next week and if you can slum it for another hour with me to talk about Mort, nothing would thrill me more so why would you do it and I appreciate your interest well the book is great and I'm obsessed with Mort Saul he influenced an entire century of comedians I thought I knew everything about him no book could sat my curiosity about Mort what you did do was I am now falling asleep at night listening to Mort Saul and you have reinvigorated my appreciation for the father of modern stand-up comedy so thank you for that James Curtis your book is Last Man Standing Mort Saul and the birth of modern comedy I hope to talk to you next week sir thank you David stay on the line for one second since taking office last year Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte has been waging a war on two fronts taking on drug dealers and ISIS for more on this we are joined by Emil Guillermo he's a columnist for the inquirer that's the largest Philippine daily out of Manila he joins us today from California welcome my old friend yes it's good to be here with you David after all these years well you were on I don't know about a month ago we go back to K-R-O-N where you were a reporter and you have covered the Philippines since the early 80s when Aquino was assassinated and covered his funeral in the Philippines and you are the first Asian-American to host a national news program slight correction first Asian-American male the first Asian-American would be Connie Chong when she hosted the CBS Evening News so it's true I am the male Connie Chong so people might recognize your voice from NPR they can read you once a week in Asian well at the Asian-American Legal Defense and Education Fund blog aldiff.org and also at the inquirer.net which is the website of the Philippine inquirer American troops have been assisting Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte in his battle against ISIS in the southern Philippines are they providing technical help are they on the ground fighting to what extent are our American soldiers helping Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte it's interesting because the the American troops have been part of a treaty that's been on since 1951 and they were in the southern part of the Philippines since before May 23 when everything kind of fell apart there and and what's funny is that President Duterte wasn't aware that the American presence was there now to answer your question the American troops are there only as advisors and that always raises red flags because you know advisors in the military history of the United States usually does not mean a good thing and it brings up images of quagmires all over the world and Vietnam of course and and so here we have advisors and they say that they're only using the American troops to train right to train Filipinos that there are no quote-unquote boots on the ground or at least they're not firing boots or they're not you know they're not active boots but they're training boots and they also will cop to the idea that there are some reconnaissance unmanned planes that are being used but they all say that it's all totally legal going back to once again that 1951 treaty mutual defense treaty that the United States and the Philippines still have that still exist even though they had a basis agreement that was wiped out in the in the 80s and so this is you know this is our status right now that the fighting continues into like it's fourth week there are about 200 or more reported dead they can't really get a good count because fighting has been intense 200 reported dead Philippine Marines not all Marines it's a combination of Philippine combatants plus the rebel forces plus some civilians that they're able to count so we're talking about the southern city Marawi that is a mostly Muslim city in the southern Philippines yes we're talking about when the southern part of the Philippines the Philippines is a 7200 island archipelago Manila is sort of in the center and to the south is Mindanao and Mindanao is that Muslim primarily Muslim country or it's not a country it's a great island and Marawi is within Mindanao and when Duterte declared Marshall I called it partial Marshall because he only extended it to just Mindanao Duterte of course is from Davao city which is in Mindanao and that's really the center of all the drug killings and the drug war that he's been waging it's centers around his aggressive actions when he was mayor of Davao city so all of it is now centered in that Mindanao region and the fear is that all it takes is one little flash point there are several there are different groups that are that he's confronting he's confronting the traditional Abusayef which is you know which beheaded German not too long ago and did not trigger off you know Marshall law but this has been slightly different because of foreign interest coming in the Malte rebels there in Marawi city and that group in conjunction with the Abusayef has in Duterte's mind made this a different situation although as I pointed out in my columns nothing really should have required Marshall law even partial Marshall it just seems that right now all of it seems to be coming into into focus for the ambitions of Rodrigo Duterte as a strongman authoritarian in Asia he took office a year ago he has 80% popularity his people love him had he left the southern portion of the Philippines alone if he just said to Marawi okay you're an island you're Islam you have Isis we're gonna stay out of this did he go in there to stir up a hornet's nest for his own valor is he protecting Catholics who live in Marawi well I think it was the Malte rebels were very aggressive there were reports of arson and bombings and so I think and Duterte was in Russia he was entertaining Putin while all this was happening and so he interrupted his meeting with Putin to come and declare martial law and it's unclear if he had all the information for example he didn't know to the extent that the US was involved he didn't know he cited in some of his opening comments that one of his one of the the Philippine police in Marawi or in that region had been beheaded and he had cited that as one of the most despicable things done by the the Malte rebels turns out the person wasn't beheaded and so it's unclear but the his background isn't the military right no his background was as the mayor of Davao city and he ruled for 20 years he had a long standing leadership there and the Philippines has this power vacuum and it's similar to what's going on and what went on in the United States where the traditional oligarchs were getting long in the tooth there was no one coming out with new ideas the country was restless and then here comes this guy who is a regional force a mayor and because he had this get tough Duterte Harry kind of image as a vigilante they he really wrote that to popularity you said on a previous show that Ferdinand Marcos had a go once the military lost faith in him we see that in a lot of autocratic regimes where you have a colorful figure fronting the military is Duterte a front for the military or is he a front for the police state I would assume coming from a city and being a mayor he has his own secret police yeah I think it's more a police state idea less military I think when we talked about Marcos it was you know we had people power right you had the people in on the streets and they were they're putting pressure on the military to take a stand and when you know when the moment happened and the army went into to where Marcos was there on what they call the eds or revolution the main boulevard where all the people were that night and during that people power revolution the surprise was the military went in and they were arresting Marcos they took Marcos away is there a military presence right now in the Philippines we'll get to the drug war in a second is there a military presence is there a general in the Philippines who is popular in the Marcos times there were I would say right now Duterte is the strong man he's the strong man he's the strong yeah he's he's the leader he's the leader now and people take his cues but something very startling happened this week this week is called this is the week that the Philippines celebrates independence June 12th is a day that the Philippines celebrates independence from Spain and independence from Spain was in 1898 it's 18 years ago and it's a funny thing because the Philippines assumed that when the Spanish-American war was over that they would be independent that the Philippines would be independent but then the Spanish went ahead and they gave the United States the Philippines because the United States was willing to pay money for the Philippines the Spanish-American war broke out Admiral Dewey defeated the Spanish Armada and we got Cuba and we got the Philippines and then we had a massacre half a million Filipinos just to close the deal yes well that happened but the Philippines the Filipino rebels led by Emilio Aguinaldo declared June 12th, 1898 declared independence and it's called the Tagalog or the Malolos Republic and that was the first the Philippines like to deal with that date and deal with that event because it was the first time democracy lived in Asia but America rejected that yes well America did and that's how we had either you call it the Philippine-American war or you call it the Philippine insurrection most of the time it's called the Philippine insurrection because the United States wants to show it as that it was these renegade Filipinos who were up to no good and that they had put it down so when did the Philippines get their complete independence from America well the complete independence happened gradually from say 1906 there was some self-governance but it wasn't until 1934 with the Tidings McDuffie Act that it was set up that the Philippines would be a sovereign the Americans or the Philippine Nationals who were Americans as under colonial rule they became aliens the Philippine Nationals became aliens and that it was all set up for the Philippines that ultimately would be be independent after World War II right so it wasn't until after World War II that they became completely independent from the United States talk to me about the drug war there about 3 million drug addicts he claims in the Philippines he says he wants to kill them all how bad is the drug problem in the Philippines it's bad I mean the drug is Shabu which is a form of crystal meth that circulates throughout Asia and it's sad because if you go into the cities you know how poor it is if you visit the Philippines you know that alright there's the nice part the business part the Makati and Manila and you go outside of it and you see lintus and shanties and people living in these squalid conditions and you see the effects of meth you see the people with the teeth and that gaunt look and it's because there's rampant poverty in the Philippines it's always been a problem in when you talk about an oligarchical situation where they talk about the 1% well there it's a sort of a hyper version of that in the Philippines and when you're talking about people who have problems with poverty and employment and you know sometimes drugs is seen as the answer and you know Duterte saw this growing and as the autocrat that he is saw that the way to deal with this was to crack down these so-called extrajudicial killings based on who you want, whose numbers you believe in I mean the government has its own numbers which are up into the thousands but the human rights people human rights organizations set the number at about 8000 so this is happening primarily around when you say extrajudicial killings those are paramilitary groups, are they bikers, are they Duterte loyalists, who are these some are well a lot of these are the Philippine police that the official numbers come from the Philippine police they're off duty cops in other words yeah and when it becomes and sometimes on duty and when it becomes sort of when everyone has the green light Duterte himself says hey I'm going to go shoot you if you're going to come and you're going to create this problem in my city I'm going to go after you you see people feeling free to take the law into their own hands and they're not just killing drug dealers once it's open season on drug dealers and it's extrajudicial you can kill somebody just because you owe them money it was a drug dealer suddenly yes the lines blur and killing just happens and in a place like the Philippines with the kind of economy it has life is cheap and so this is one of the problems they had a poll taken in the country and a majority of people said they were fearful for their lives that they could be shot accidentally and yet you'll have people say at the very same time they'll say you know Duterte really has done wonders to help stabilize the country and so we're not really scared as we once were so there's a lot of contradictions but this is the state of the Philippines now Is this the worst you've seen it as an adult? it's pretty bad under Marcos you know I'll say this about Duterte he has taken the it's not as bad as Marcos because he hasn't applied full martial law but what he's done is pretty bad I mean I think that the kind of Philippines that existed in the 70's and 80's under martial law that was pretty bad the way it's being painted in the press is chaos the impression I got from Marcos was it wasn't the police it was the military and it was fascism, cronyism, martial law but there was order this just seems like it's a Hobbesian nightmare all of that that you described still exists the oligarchy the military to some degree they all take their cues from Duterte I wouldn't call it chaos necessarily but I would say that well maybe chaos is the word but because not only the police you have you have the green light given to all vigilantes to go after the drug lords and sometimes accidents happen and that's the sad part they're saying that this is a drug war that's more steeped in violence than what's going on in Mexico you know I've heard that too and it's hard to believe I know some people have been down in Mexico and you know I guess it's like any situation where you're in the good parts of the city and you have no problems then you go into the more desolate areas and the strong man wins so I don't know how really it compares with Mexico but I will say this that the drugs were never I mean Shabu has been around for a long time in the Philippines I remember stories about Shabu in the 80s but just like drugs everywhere else there's a bigger market there's a bigger market for it and so we're going to see these stories and we're going to see more reporting about it you said before the show started do Terte probably a drug addict and he's sick I said that he did something extraordinary in that during this week where the Philippines celebrates independence they seriously June 12 because it establishes the Philippines as the oldest democracy in Asia and they like that title and so it's important that the leader of the country participates in the ceremonial effects of all the hoopla he didn't show up and people have started to speculate that maybe he's sick and they said that he is he's taking a little rest how old is he he's in his 70s and I I don't know precisely offhand but he's in his 70s he's older than Trump and his hair is as black as mine so that's just that Filipino magic I know that he's suffered from some back pain and that he is resorted to fentanyl and that during the back pain because he does his own stunts and he fell the wrong way you know I don't know exactly what happened but I know that he's been taking fentanyl to relieve some of that pain what is fentanyl fentanyl is opioid that people take to to combat pain and it was one of the things that Michael Jackson's doctor was meeting out that's not the drug that puts you into like a twilight is it I don't know exactly what it does I know that it can be addictive and that in reports the drug is being connected to deteriorate whether it's addictive or whether he's addicted it's unclear let's say he dies or gets removed things are not going to change because he's serving his oligarchs the oligarchs will put somebody else in here's the problem we're not going to see a populist uprising are we in fact he's probably a populist he's a populist but here's the problem the problem is the second coming of Ferdinand Marcos in the form of Marcos Jr aka Bong Bong Marcos Bong Bong ran for vice president and lost but the current vice president is considered as strong and so the chances are if something should happen to to deterrate heaven forbid I don't know it's like the devil you know is sometimes better than the devil you don't know but it might mean the prospects are great for someone like Bong Bong Marcos from Re-emerging and it's almost set up for that earlier this year Ferdinand Marcos' body was finally buried in the National Hero Cemetery in Manila and it was given a hero's burial after all these years where it had been lying sort of in this frozen state in his home base of La Logue which is north of Manila was he a hero during World War II not really, no he was the looter of the country he was the perpetrator of martial law and he was seen as not a hero but a villain of democracy and yet one of the things Deterty did as soon as he was elected is he began the rehabilitation of Ferdinand Marcos and so with the burial which caused a worldwide protest we have which did not but to no avail Marcos was buried it was almost like they buried him after there was a little bit of deception and when no one was expecting it so that no one could assemble to protest they put Marcos' body in the grave they called him a hero and that was that and so the speculation is that well Deterty was trying to get into the good graces with the Marcos's who still have a certain amount of power north of Manila and that maybe this would set up Bong Bong's emergence Bong Bong is about late 50s, early 60s and his sister crack pipe how old is she his sister is maybe slightly younger the baby brother Roach Clip is he from the Imelda Marcos Ferdinand Marcos Union or is that from a mistress the rumors were that Roach Clip Roach Clip yeah I don't know I don't know about Roach Clip I mean but Bong Bong is the one who would emerge and that would be I think that would be the giant step backwards although a lot of people it's funny the Marcos is even though for all the sins that Marcos perpetrated on the Philippines and all the money he looted and all the people that he had put to death there's still there's still some love for the Marcos it's is it just nostalgia but it also could be that people don't know I mean people don't know their own history thank God that doesn't happen here in America well I was about to say that it's sort of similar to how people can still like Trump or embrace Trump regardless of things that are happening or despite is there a lack of knowledge that goes on I don't know I mean one of the criticisms in the Philippine educational system is that after martial law the people's power governments of Aquino and subsequent governments did nothing to make sure that people understood the history of what happened to the Philippines and so we have generations of people who are a new generation of people who are just as willing to give Bong Bong Marcos a pass out of time this has been fantastic and I remembered to hit the record button okay so we can't slander Sally Field now that's now we'll have to do that next week Emile Guillermo is a journalist you can read him over at aldef.org the Asian American Legal Defense and Education find blog and also at the inquirer.net do some things here for the Asian American community and I write for the global Filipino community at the inquirer.net and David please don't fail to mention that I also do a one-man show well let's talk about Emile Amuck let's talk about your podcast first oh Emile Amuck's Takeout is a podcast that I do and it focuses on Asian Americans and Filipino Americans and I have an interesting podcast this week on South Asians not being considered Asian by Asians I mean you'd figure that white Americans and Latino Americans wouldn't consider some South Asians and by South Asians I mean Indians and Pakistanis they wouldn't consider them Asian because of whatever biased reasons they have but oddly enough some Asian Americans don't even consider South Asians as Asians or Asian Americans and I suggest it's partly due to a certain Islamophobia that exists within Asian Americans so I talk about that and also this week or next week rather the anniversary, the 35th anniversary of the death of Vincent Chin who was really the flash point in the 80s that sparked off a wave of activism his death in Detroit at the hands of Ronald Ebbins who suspected Chinese American of being a Japanese American Ebbins was a Detroit auto worker and used the baseball bat to to kill Vincent Chin. Well let's discuss that next week Emile Amuck, AMUK AMOK very quickly you're also going to be doing a one-man show in San Diego. What's it called and when is it and how can people buy tickets? It's the Amuck Monologues and it's the San Diego International Fringe Festival it's on from June 23rd through 29th I'll be there, I'll do five shows, you can go to my website at amok.com and get all the details but it'd be great to see David Feldman show listeners show up to San Diego right there at Horton Plaza 141 Horton Plaza in downtown San Diego I love Horton's Plaza You do? Late at night they have Women of the Evening I wrote a book called Horton Here's a Ho somebody kill me please somebody I'll talk to you next week I hope thanks oh okay little things in life it's the little things in life that make you happy and I came into the studio and Alex drilled a hole in the table you like that hole? I mean do you think that he personally drilled that hole? I think that maybe he got a new hole, I don't know or this has already been in there listen I'm an expert on holes wooden objects oh I bet you've gotten some splinters on that dick bet you have mom just anyway can a wooden doll divorce you too or is that just real women you know David Letterman used to have his mother on this is my mother hi mom I'm very disappointed with me with what you've done with your life no I'm glad you got rid of all those dumb horror wives they sucked they were never good enough for my bubola I should be holding kegel I always get it mixed up my mom you always so you were supposed to make kegel but I would squeeze my pussy over it yeah you're tight young fingers this is not going well you used to say to my kids my kegel do you want to taste some of Grammy's kegel yeah and they did and what did they think a little more savory than they were expecting I think now mom you're eating bacon I brought bacon to your Jew podcast what are you eating is that turkey bacon no it's regular bacon it's two sides of bacon because the store next to my house only gives me two pieces of bacon and a banana because I can't eat eggs and I can't eat a lot of things because it makes me diarrhea it gives you diarrhea but you know that son yes so should we talk about diarrhea I have a theory about diarrhea I think it's a New York phenomenon okay I think that you have 12 million people living on top of one another and there isn't enough purell there's like trickle down diarrhea do you think diarrhea has ever leaked through a ceiling because I know like pee and shit has but like actual diarrhea I'm talking about when like a toilet's not in they haven't like bolted the toilet in enough I feel like you're laughing too hard at this I was asking just a regular question I know it's just like when my well it's I could talk about all I want to do is talk about diarrhea I'll talk about half my sets about diarrhea and now I don't have diarrhea anymore and I like don't know who I am I'm like do I have to start poisoning my body again so I can have a fucking brand I don't want the people to get confused does she have diarrhea or not but I was doing daily diarrhea diaries for a while really your daily diet I did it for two days I have ADD things don't really last I don't have much while I did too they weren't even on consecutive days I just spit bacon on you Annie Lederman it's Letterman I don't expect the pronunciation because I know you're a Jew and Jews I don't know have problems with everything but I wanted to explain the pronunciation of my last name my dad's father pronounced it Letterman but we don't like him so my dad changes to Letterman and we just say Letterman now he was a dick bye so then that's how you legally don't have to change your last name if you want to disown a family member you just change the pronunciation your dad you get along with your dad he's my number one my favorite person I feel bad for my mom I bought a necklace that says mom on it just to try to make her feel better about it but she knows I want a dad necklace and I want it to be a little bit bigger and when you're hanging upside down from the Vietnamese spin-share it says wow so it's not really mom with my family on family vacation Letterman okay as in Dave Leederman it's like Dave Leederman but I would say no T is 1D I used to say when you were allowed to say tranny because then they could remember tranny, Annie, no T is 1D but then I did have a guy I said that to a male flight attendant once we call them come on I don't call you a comedian you just call him a comic I call you a comic male flight attendant why can't you say homosexual American listen I'll tell you it turns out he was straight because I got an email because my email is just my name oh fuck nobody email me please but so he emails me after I met him and I said that thing and he's like hey I looked up your email and I wanted to email you and I was just curious is that true so this was this older flight attendant I just thought that I really was like a trans girl and he was like I'm gonna be your papa I had to write him back and be like I was totally just kidding but thank you for reminding me how small my tits are that that was very painful and how broad my shoulders are I was obviously a swimmer but I did not swim into pissies as a man just as a woman just a nice college grad so a woman who's very attractive invited me over to watch television I know me in the apartment she wants to watch the Tony's with me she thinks you're gay I said are we gonna eat donuts and talk about it does that eat her out? are we gonna eat donuts as in your hole? it's so annoying when comics go blue I hate it anyway go ahead don't you think if a woman who's very attractive feels safe feels that I'm safe enough to come over and watch the Tony's with her she thinks I'm gay I don't want to get into specifics no but just is she younger relatively well everybody's relatively a lot younger than you because you might have gotten into the dad zone which is something men of your age I've never said that before and I'm 100% writing a joke about this but if you get in the dad zone where it's like a father figure you guys are always trying to fuck us when we're young and then so we don't know that you're trying to bang us we don't know that because you're a comedian and comedians can get laid different than other guys right? because you're funny you have a currency that's not the same as other men tell me about the dad zone I don't want to be in the dad that's creepy that's right but are there women who have daddy issues that they resolve with? yeah for sure I think they do obviously I mean don't you think let me ask you this do you think most women have unresolved daddy issues the same way because Freud refused to touch on this he just threw up his hands said I don't know what women want give me some cocaine because even Freud couldn't figure out women I know you don't speak for a woman but all men have mommy issues don't you think all women have unresolved daddy issues yeah we have daddy issues we have mommy issues I don't know I obviously can only speak for myself but for sure big issues with my dad but I also have weird shit with my mom I think parents are just hard but I'm really lucky I have the best but fathers we should move on mother a son my favorite wrestling move it's when you take your kids and you offer them google but you kegel on them mother smother and nobody says that's creepy nobody will ever say it's creepy that a mother smothers and controls her son there's nothing creepy about it's not healthy a mama's boy but this is just my prejudice I think a father who tries to smother his daughter is trying to fuck there's something a little creepy about that or it's more possession and treating your daughter as an object that you want to protect and keep a certain way but she's her own person okay this is important to me and I'm not trying to you agree that you meet me right dad zone immediately if I told you I'm a bit of a mama's boy my mother controls my life I talk to her three times a day I have to take her shopping I'm taking her to play poker tonight I take my mother to the movies it's this is how I see it it's creepy it's disgusting but you get it yeah we saw psycho we saw the movie we know you're dragging around a corpse dude why are people so cool with you dragging this corpse to fucking poker night hang on take a breath I'm being serious be serious yeah you don't think the mother is trying to bang the son though right I don't think the father is always trying to bang the daughter unless we're talking about the president but it's like I mean do you see her recoil do you see her recoil hang on I just laughed and here's what Siri said my laugh Siri takes my laugh at hey Siri hey Siri can you give me email address that's what my laugh sounds like but I liked his email address was good something picnic we have to no I put my email in he puts his email him instead of me all my inquiries go through that guy's email hey has anybody done a bit about Siri talking back to you while you're having sex somebody must have done that probably because I don't know how to turn Siri off and I laughed I'm asking for this Matt Giler guy what do you think Siri would think your sex sounded like I would call 911 is someone dead in there I sense no movement there's some light weeping and it's male unfortunately I order new sheets immediately so I'll move on we can talk about it I feel like you have something you want to say no no I want to know your opinion that if a man says blah blah blah blah blah my mother my mother my mother my mother I lived with my mother until I was 80 now I'm ready to date you're 80? yeah I'm a little older than that I was like 82 I had work done I love hurting men but it just feels so good you know I was born I have a twin brother and I was born after him what does breach mean? I came feet first but he was born first regular head first so I came feet first which means that I kicked him out of the womb which I thought was a joke and my mom was like no the doctor said you kicked him out so I was just born to emasculate men women to emasculate men but in emasculate it's my brother if I call him a woman so there you go tell me about Father's Day your dad has a ponytail well he grew out his mullet for family vacation he knows how to be fun he knows what's going to be good so he grew out a mullet for family vacation my mom cuts his hair so I just put in a ponytail and he just left it in for the whole day and it was really exciting first marriage? your parents have been married for 44 years I think that's amazing yeah my dad was working at Penn or he was going to Wharton or something and he was in his early 30s and my mom was going to Tufts in Boston and they both were friends with opposite sexes of a couple and the couple hated them as third wheels so they set them up and then so they met up and then they dated only for like 6 months long distance and then got married my mom was only 22 so they're 9 years apart and you're Quaker so they're from Pennsylvania well my dad's from upstate New York and my mom's from near the Connecticut border of New York but she just decided to raise this Quaker she worked at a Quaker school and liked it so we're two and Quakers, it comes from Quaking it's almost like a clitoral orgasm right? well I'm always masturbating in Quaker meetings so but don't you Quake, isn't there like a Quake? what does Quaking mean? so originally it was about that everyone sits in silence facing each other and it's supposed to be that God is speaking through you and you're moved to speak so you stand and speak but it was a little crazier back in the day back in like the I don't know when Ben Franklin was doing it yeah I mean probably definitely before him I don't really know the timeline of Quakerism I'm pretty chill on learning facts so I'm pretty like relaxed and laid back about any sort of learning or knowledge but Barbara Bush I'm doing a joke by the way I'm pushing everybody I'm about to make a joke we know because you get your Barbara Bush Barbara Bush is Quaker really? well she's on the Quaker Oats box do you remember when he told me it was a joke and then I still believed him I was like what? are you serious? she is but that was throwing me into telling me about there's programmed and unprogrammed Quakers so Quakerism believes that God's in the form of an inner light that's in everyone everything so that's why we're pacifists and everything's chill and we're try to be kind and whatever Richard Nixon was a Quaker yeah well I mean then there's unprogrammed Quakers so I don't know which one he was I'm assuming he was unprogrammed but um do you wear butters? no it's not Amish I think a lot of people think Amish I thought Quakers I thought Quakers aren't allowed to wear anything militaristic yeah I guess you're not supposed to wear but you can do whatever you want in Quakerism because Quakerism is all about openness and inner light and stuff so you can be gay Jewish you can be anything you want you can be a non-believer you can be anything so I could become a Quaker yeah you can go to Quaker meeting whenever you want have a good time is Jesus part of this? because that's the deal killer for me I mean it doesn't have to be I mean I never I remember like going to Quaker meeting every Sunday and there was one woman who ran the first day school who would make us color in like Jesus stuff but I don't know anything nobody ever taught me anything about the Bible or brought it up to me rather than her you understand that the Jesus thing is because you killed him we didn't kill him we hired the Romans you gave him a good run for his money though didn't you you didn't kill him technically the nails killed him but we didn't kill him my uncle Murray was there we could fold his legs do you have a Murray? tell him to cross his legs so we could use one nail don't waste that's a good Jew joke do you have an uncle Murray? do you have an uncle Murray? such a good Jew name I know Murray but Sam from Philly said Murray by the way the Jesus thing is just whatever it is I'm against it so in other words if you're for Allah I'm against it if you're for Jesus I'm against it alright Bill Maher let's hear that hard R go ahead no I was just making fun of your you just threw me I threw you? yeah that got me sorry I don't want to got you but yeah it's creepy for moms I mean it's creepy for both I guess I want to talk about Quakers and then so you were supposed to have shook you were shaking because God was peeking through you but nobody's shaking people are just talking about my brother told me that I like I was just hanging out with my twin brother because his daughter was turning 5 she's so cute shout out to Risi I hope you enjoyed all this other stuff I talked about I'll talk about squirting later pegging I can't wait to teach you about pegging girl I thought you already talked about squirting I'm squirting out of my butt I'm a butt squirter every time I come I just diarrhea out of my ass um I'm so glad you're here I'm glad I'm here too I'm excited to do your podcast this is great I just but so my brother said that when we were go to Quaker meeting I would stand up and say like really profound shit and I always thought I would talk about like Somalia like I would hear like something on the news and then I would just I don't know I liked to have do that but he said that I would stand up he said once I stood up and I went do you ever think and this is probably like third grade and I was like do you ever sit in bed at night and think about how it's so crazy that you're you and that there's all these other universes I don't know if I said universes there's all these other people living all these other lives and there them and thinking about how it's their life and like my teachers could not be my teachers but they are do you ever think about that and that's something I still think about all the time but it was funny my brother brought it up to me because it was like a question I was about to pose while we were smoking weed around a fire it was so fun it was like a fire pit my brother like it was just like so fun mm-hmm I probably shouldn't say that you're younger than your brother I'm six minutes younger than him but we're born at midnight so we have two different birthdays wow yeah I came kick I kicked him out on one day and then I was born the next and being younger and being serious are you more of the rebel than he is usually the older sibling is more of the control freak and speaks for the parents well I have an older brother too so my older brother is three years older than there's Max and then me but I yeah I was the for sure the juvenile delinquent and stuff like that but I was also the only girl I also I think being the only girl faced some things in life that men have not men and boys don't have to deal with for you just being I don't know like molested assaulted treated inappropriately by adults all the time I just happened in the last five minutes and I was just from this grandpa no but just like you know fucked up shit and did fucked up shit happen to you yeah did you talk about that in your act I don't I mean sometimes I actually like want to start talking about it because I realized if you say diddle people are like chill with it what if you say you were diddled or someone was diddled yeah then they're okay with it diddle is the word I think that so many people were fucked when they were kids or whatever you know what I mean like I don't think my my experience of course is just my own and it's not as extreme as a lot of other other experiences and I'm not like and I'm also like a full person and I feel really good about who I am now definitely after the election was a little rough but so let's talk about by the way I don't do the kind of show where I try to make people open up I mean obviously because you got all those fucking one liners you're trying to throw in can get in the way of those I realize that we're all vehicles for your one liners yes Katie Perry is going through a transformation mm-hmm did you read about this that she was at the Javits Center the day Hillary was supposed to be president okay and she lost and she's had this spiritual realignment where she is you're going oh god that I'm talking about well she is pretty talented and she's well but and she's her songs are good her songs are good they're catchy yeah I like her songs and she comes from a deeply religious Christian background that she's playing with in other words she's rebelling I think they're Pentecostal or something it's always so crazy when you hear those stories right and I knew that she came from a deeply religious background I don't know the difference between Pentecostal and Evangelical and Charism I don't even know about my own religion but she was campaigning for Hillary and I remember thinking knowing her background this is solely about a woman being president that given her background she has to have conservative leanings this is solely about getting a woman elected president is that important in other words can you disagree with Hillary on everything can you be a pro-life laissez-faire economy laffer curve whatever whatever whatever but because Hillary is a woman I'm going to vote for her I mean no I guess not because she's not elected and women voted again I mean I don't know how a woman could vote for someone like Trump who's like a fucking sexual assaulter and doesn't I mean it's unbelievable it's unbelievable it's absolutely unbelievable I don't want to talk about Trump of course I don't either but I don't think I mean I don't know I'm not any of those things and I was for Hillary and I I don't know but I mean it's weird to like have a stance and stuff it's scary there's so many fucking scumbags on the internet and shit it's like you know but yeah no I think what was it voting with your pussy or whatever everyone was upset about I'm like yeah we can vote for people whoever we want whenever we want for whatever reason we want it doesn't matter it's no one's business that's crazy and weird and judgemental and it's just vote for whoever the fuck you want right we don't ask men why they're voting for somebody yeah it's ridiculous you've been voting for men I mean I don't know she's better than fucking Trump I mean it's crazy what are we talking about can we just talk about queefing on kids what are we talking about is father's day is coming up it's hard for me to shop for my dad because he's dead and his neck I like to buy him neck ties but his neck size is always changing because he's dead so was he not cremated no I keep just like your yeah psycho yeah I keep dad in the room with me now your father really wasn't cremated your father's dead for real yes okay and he wasn't cremated no he was buried in a Jewish cemetery we keep him in in my basement I want to know the truth the truth yeah are you do you have like a plot you're gonna go next to him or something I don't know how these Jewish I don't tell the truth on this show okay I don't so I can't you may even be alive for all I know oh shit everything is so your dad what's your earliest it's weird that you brought up the topic that you really need to talk I made a joke about having a father and now we're like how hard it is to shop for my father because he's dead that was a joke but I know I was just curious about my father I just had some questions I'm sorry I care are you not used to women asking you questions about yourself they're not interested and that's a good out of that dad zone did it's a control thing too for you yeah I control the situation by what by asking questions then why do you think I asked you a question well because you're pushing back but I like to have you back on your feet but do you think that maybe I'm trying to control the situation too I'm having an alpha I went on a random date with this guy recently and um I went on a random date with this guy recently I was just at a commercial audition we were just both waiting and he just asked me if I wanted to go see a movie and I told him I only had right now and so we just impromptu went to this movie and what was the movie Wonder Woman he asked me if I want to go see Wonder Woman it's like I should have said no immediately like nice try I don't pander motherfucker and he didn't say do you want to go to a movie he said that movie but so we went into the movie watched the movie he was like where we he bought the tickets we walk in he can't find the like theater he's not looking at the numbers that are written from our faces so I just as we're going to escalator I just go thanks for the tickets I'll alpha it from here I got it we won't be seeing each other again but um you know what why men get confused and they can't when they can't find the theater what why do you think he's lost and confused he's an idiot he's stupid okay let's let's think about this for a second he asked you to a movie right and he can't find he can't think straight why do you think that's going on he thinks he's gonna fuck how about he's just intoxicated by you I'm being serious I mean here's the here's the situation it was like a fun world I live my life very like lean any like I anytime there's like an opportunity for fun or an interesting story possibly could come out of something I always do it so I can see where in his head this was like a crazy whirlwind thing to have happened to me it was like not average but it wasn't unheard of for me to do something like that and that but I didn't but it's interesting it it's just like you know when you go on internet dates and you know all this information about people from their internet profile but you don't know if there's like any attraction at all I had a slight attraction with him in person but I didn't know any of the other information and it sucked when I got to know him I was like no he did things like I had to send an email was like 4 30 p.m. while we're watching this movie and I realized that I hadn't sent an email that I had to send a working you what you sent an email I had to I had to did the my company would have been closed by the time I was done it's like I have to fucking work so I sent it out and he told me and also I'll fucking text I'll fucking do whatever I want during movie I talk during movies I'm fun I make jokes that's how I live I'm not like I don't do it loud enough to be like rude but if you want to like it's just who I am it's just like I don't don't fucking go to the movies with me if you're like that I don't ever I would never tell someone not to do something I would never like silence someone so when people do it to me so I'm like sending this email and he made this big deal about me doing it and and I just was like fuck you and then like moments later in the in the movie Wonder Woman's about to be awesome and then the fucking dude makes her wait in the bushes and I was like you just did that exact same thing to me he's like sorry it was just like things like that where I was like and then he kept going like are you he goes are you one of the he said are you one of those crazy girls and I was like are you one of the dudes I'm crazy because I have no interest in that like get away from me I'm fun did you not just have so much fun where you was your day not better because of me because you're you didn't really add that much to mine and then just saying things seriously I'm like my day was gonna be fun no matter I fun at the DMV dude but so it was just like and then what else did he say that was annoying are you always on and I was like yeah I'm always funny dude I will always tell jokes I will always be laughing and having fun right so and then he like thought I was gonna text him again I don't know was he good looking he was fine was he good looking before he opened his mouth and you got to know him is that in other words had he he was fine like he was fine like there's no I think it's just so different like I don't think that for me at least I can't speak for all women but I just don't think that we look at guys the same way that guys look at us so it's not attractiveness is like a confidence or like a bunch of different things our producer disagrees you you I just think that I know I do think it's more like it's not it's not about like a physical like obviously he's like a commercial actor so he he was fine you know he's a commercial actor yeah he was just we were just waiting for an audition together and I just there were just things he did that I didn't like and it's not like he's not a nice guy or whatever but I was like I already know immediately that this isn't gonna so ideally without violating your privacy what would be your perfect man if you couldn't if you could just hard because I'm trying to break like patterns because you know in the past honestly my type because I brought I was a juvenile delinquent the guys that I was brought up in Philly so the guys that I like cooked up with growing up were like gang members like the guy I lost my virginity to was like was in prison for years like he's got neck tattoo like that's my type so I am trying to not like die in a domestic dispute well I just okay can I do you mind if I I'm not I'm not trying to make you cry or reveal anything about I want to keep this light okay it's not the guy I mean he didn't go to prison because he fucked me I feel like I have to clarify that okay do you think women are attracted to bad guys because it's power when I was in elementary school and high school I used to act bad like one of like there were bad guys so I would like gravitate to them because I thought women would be turned on by that I noticed that the really beautiful women the girls in high school and the beautiful sexy young girls were attracted the ones you're sexually attracted to that's what you want to say the young teenagers are sexually currently sexually attracted no don't don't make my ankle bracelet go off live to tape eh we'll see about that we'll see about that that girls are attracted I'm saying girls not women girls young girls are attracted to bad boys because that is what rebelling against their father or are they attracted to the power that bad boy exudes is that maybe I don't fucking know dude I don't know I'm trying to figure it out I don't really know and I just was a bad kid so I was surrounded by bad kids when you're on a date and again you don't have to answer this question I feel like never been I like randomly have been on that I've been on like two dates in my life I've never wanted a boyfriend I've never wanted to be with anyone it's always an accident I feel like all my ex-boyfriends owe me apologies so it's hard for me I'm not normal like I'm not like nobody's normal but I can't really speak for one I don't know like I guess it's more fun it's interesting you're like your emotions are being held suspensively in the air and you don't know whether they're gonna I don't know yeah it's like to be continued is this person gonna call you or treat you well so it's drama maybe I don't know but I don't I'm I think now when I hook up with I usually like hook up with what does hook up mean fuck people but when I usually you know but I don't like I'm not really like a one man one night stand per like when I drank I would just who knows what happened because I was blacked out but when I mean God only knows and my co-workers a lot of dishwashers but yikes no offense to you I'm not being an elitist but just like also come on but come on so I I tend to like you know like I'll hook up with someone I'll have one person I'm sleeping with like usually when if I live in New York I'll have someone I'm sleeping with in LA so I can see them every few months or every month or whatever and like send them pictures and text them but now I am like I have no I have no one right now send them pictures and text them you don't have anybody right now no for the first time like in forever feels good you're not involved with anybody right now I'm completely uninvolved and I'm just trying to not fuck it up because every time I like do you find when men treat you too kindly that you're turned off by that when men not now I'm in my 30s fuck that I want to be treated nice I've noticed that when I'm kind of are you being your mom now no I'm just nothing I'm just what what else tell me more do you find when you go out with a man and he's routine you're more attracted to him no that's 20s shit that's negging that's the whole fucking book the game where it's like wait let's actually talk about the game because that leads to the bad boy thing I'm not a negger but you know about it we know it's negga do we keep that in that one's fine it's negging is like the whole process of like where you're supposed to insult a girl's shoes or tell her something wrong with her so a guy who and then so she'll be thinking about it I just wanted before I get fired from my own podcast so when I said I'm not a negger that means I don't neg you're making it so much worse I feel like I just don't want to edit this I mean live to tape baby okay go ahead you don't have to edit it you pay a smaller Jew a younger Jew for you to edit it are you Jew everybody you're Jewish I mean my last name is everybody's Jewish it can all be traced back to Abraham I gotta say I'm really proud of you guys you have really come a far away we have we have unbelievable to bounce back from all that horrible stuff and still take over Hollywood it's like been really incredible thank you well it's been an honor to work you tell that to Chuck Woolery I don't know that is well okay I'm young I'm only 14 don't make my ankle bracelet everyone it just buzzes when you get a boner you can leave it just buzzes let's talk about the game the game oh the game yeah so it's like the negging the whole process I think when you're younger and you're insecure and you have no clue who you are as a woman you're like raised to please men so it's like just in society and stuff like it's not even on purpose my mom is like pretty much a dude like she always had short hair she was the the coach of our baseball team like she's baseball or softball no I played on the boys baseball team so did my daughter yeah scary they have a daughter I can talk about that later they went to the world series in the little league oh cool and Williamsport Pennsylvania the little league world series no no no not that in the local you know local Los Angeles yikes oh shocker you're from Los Angeles my daughter and her best friend were 13 gorgeous the guys did not want them on the little league team right because it's guys but they didn't want to use their boners instead of the bat right title seven is that what it's something there's some title that the women have to play they were the only two girls in little league the boys had to accept it and I it was a screenplay now how how are we talking her friend I don't want you to be an incestate tell me about this 13 year old girl tell me in small and detail slowly no I just noticed that guy I was funny to watch guys around them and because they didn't it's like they didn't want to have to what see them as do you think they didn't think they're going to play well or they didn't think that they were going to be they do what every heterosexual male does around a woman that they think is pretty they up their game right so they want they went I watched this team that was just a bunch of raga muffins the minute my daughter and her friend joined the team they started playing so well they started playing that's so funny yeah it's so annoying that pussy is the motivation for all men because we have like our we're put the pussy and but we also have like our whole lives and feelings and the things that we like in our brains and our ideas maybe it's not pussy maybe it's another mom I've also found the guys that they want that a lot of them want to be how about just being appreciated and loved by the opposite sex with no judgment where what the fuck are you talking about what nonsense are you talking about do you know who Anne Margaret is she got her head chopped off that would be Anne Bole I told you I'm not much of a I'm like I'm pretty chill okay but my high school had pillows and set of chairs and they didn't make us read books we had movie class this is real really yeah movie class what high school did you go to it was called the Krefeld school and it was a juvenile delinquent school but also Jacob crew crew who what is the name after Jacob crew I don't know okay after Anne Margaret 75 years old absolutely gorgeous she was in bye bye birdie okay yeah she's still gorgeous and her husband Roger Smith just passed away and Anne Margaret he had some debilitating muscular degeneration and she nursed him that's my type were you asking earlier that's my type did you ask that's the answer you know what you're making me you're making me you're making me laugh I get dizzy okay so and I'm thinking there's the most Anne Margaret is you know certain age baby boomer fantasy now Anne Margaret is your fantasy right and I think okay but I'm also looking for somebody to nurture me and mother me and here Roger Smith has this muscular degeneration and she nursed him do you think men I don't know the answer would I want Anne Margaret whose apps you know she's the you don't want her to be wiping your ass or do I well they've been together their whole lives yeah yeah I mean I think that there's probably guilt involved I know that my dad is is nine years older than my mom ten years older than my mom and I know that it's getting like different you know he's in his mid-seventies and I know that he feels I think it's like upsetting for him that the future is possibly my mom having to take care of him that way but I think that they love each other and that's like a part of what their thing was I just think it's life is fucked up that you been thinking about it a lot that you your family like all the people that you love everything staggered right so it's like all these people that you love these parents will for me at least I have you know I love my family so much it's like my parents are so amazing and then they're like halfway through their lives or whatever by the time I'm born and then you know you love your pets and they just last for like the most like 15 years and then you like you invest in these relationships and they either don't work out which is also a death where you're like alright I put like so much especially the ones that you think that are multiple years and stuff for like wow I really like put a lot into this and these are one of the only relationships where you can just completely cut them out that always feels weird and then and then on top of that it's like you can meet someone fall in love like do the thing that everyone wants have the kids do the thing that is the quintessential apparently the thing people want which is not what I want but like that perfect thing and then that person dies and then you're single and alone or you have to watch them die or in the notebook you both die at the exact same time the notebooks yeah Nicholas Sparks he's very he's he's more I would say like he's almost a reporter because his books are so realistic but in the notebook a couple dies together at the exact same time from what old age that has happened at the exact same time holding hands oh yeah well a lot of people is this Defender Nicholas Sparks movie no I'm just thinking 9-11 a lot of people died at the same exact time wow just pointing that out we're cutting that out we're not cutting that out we're not cutting it out now we can't cut anything I was trying to shoehorn a joke listen 9-11 you know here's the joke ask me the joke that I sometimes do is you know we all die alone unless you're Muhammad Otto that's true that's good so I was trying to yeah it's like we probably won't die alone at this point with what's happening but what was I going to say speaking of 9-11 so I worked at a restaurant right down the street at Life Cafe on 10th and B and I worked there for years I first moved to New York started working there I worked there for like maybe three years and then I went out of town and the business went out of business they shut the restaurant down they've been around for years and so I went on the internet to see why they shut down and she said we chose this auspicious day September 11th, 2011 to shut down the restaurant because it seemed fitting oh isn't that incredible like the fucking Twin Towers had gone out of business mm-hmm it was pretty cute to attach something as trivial as your never forget the chicken club sandwich so funny so unbelievable okay so you go to movies I don't usually but you talk during movies you text yeah I'll talk like if I have I have ADD so it's like if things need to get done they got to get done when I think of them or they're not going to get done I had to text my I had to email my agent something that was super important I would have lost $1,500 it's like I'm sorry okay so sorry everybody that isn't noticing this except this fucking weird guy that's already starting to do weird little controlling things within two hours of me knowing you do you think in relationships we all try to control one another well I am I've done like a lot of hallucinogens recently and everything all the stuff the medicines tell me is that I'm very controlling and I need to try to give up some of my control what kind of hallucinogens they're now discovering that the brain has multi universes inside of it yeah no shit I didn't know we're all vibrations and fizz everything's all good I can't believe I got mad at you about the editing thing and look at us now fizz so you have all these universes inside your brain maybe you're only supposed to use 5% of your brain when you're on a hallucinogen how much of your brain are you using all of it I don't know I just like to take them and then try to like figure out what I need my life what I need to work on so like mushrooms I don't know what I don't know what that scares me I mean I've done DMT I died I had an experience of dying on DMT and you have to smoke it out of a crack pipe what's DMT DMT is it's like a white powder and you have to put it into a crack pipe what if I just smoked crack what if it was just crack and you have to smoke it out of this like crack pipe ball thing and it it either makes your brain excrete or just is the same chemical that comes out of your brain when you're born and when you die that gives you like the tunnel vision that people always report back when they so you see like a light at the end of the tunnel no I mean some people do I had there was like a light experience for me but people close their eyes they get visited by aliens people tell them shit they live in whole different universes it feels like they're there for days sometimes and it's only like five minutes for me mine felt like 30 seconds and my eyes were open and I was sitting with my friend and her husband and I just told this on a podcast in the same room but um and I just had this experience where there was like this bright light behind my friends artwork is like after they've done a bunch of ayahuasca and a bunch of DMT and stuff so their artwork is all like psychedelic and I didn't get it until this moment but so there was this painting behind him and it was like glowing behind my friend's husband and they had all the minute I took it everything got um sharp and like pixelated looking kind of and everything's this like snake pattern that you see that the Peruvians will actually like sew into fabric and stuff and give to people and it's like a whole there's like a snake theme but it's just sort of like shows you that everything is connected in the whole universe so everything is like in its place exactly where it's supposed to be and then so I see this light and the other room is getting is getting darker and then it's just this light behind them it's getting smaller and then everything in the room is getting sucked up into the light and my friend I watched my best friend get sucked up like one eyeball at a time like it looked like the waiting room at um in um needle juice like one eye like completely stretched out and then her other eye and the rest of her body went and then her husband and then I laid back and I looked at the light I could feel like my grandmother like I just like knew it was like death or whatever and then I felt my body kind of go I didn't feel my body anymore and then I was trying to breathe and then I didn't have to breathe anymore I just breathing just stopped needing to happen and it felt fucking amazing and it felt like I was everything and nothing and it kind of reaffirmed some things I had felt not on drugs kind of had some epiphanies and stuff on my own and um yeah I just woke up feeling like really excited for my dad because I've always been really worried about him and his age and his health and I just got excited for him because I know it's going to be good so father's day while you were experiencing that were you aware of it or were you totally immersed in it I was aware that I was going through it like you still are yourself you don't like lose your mind in any way like I was me in this journey just like watching like I mean I probably could have talked but I didn't want to talk but I did start like making jokes them and like you okay so because I've never done this because somebody very close to me had a bad experience with DMT no just with hallucinogens there's a bunch of different kinds too and I just you know I'm not going to open up those doors I like to remain tethered to the earth but you'd like them I don't know maybe your brain would be too it's like I think for people with control it's actually good but it is hard you know it's a hard thing to choose because you don't yet you don't know where you're going to go and I would be afraid to lose my ego to lose who I am that's real you're strong enough to hold on to who you are I would be afraid to just completely surrender to the universe well I got really worried I mean I was nervous about that with I wanted to go right when I was ending I was in a three year relationship when I was living in Los Angeles that ended in August I broke up with him and you know how when you want to break up and you don't but you I mean I loved him he was so sweet but I just knew it wasn't the right thing so I was dreading this breakup and not really being completely honest with myself and so I kept looking for these things I was like maybe I'll go do Iowa I wasn't doing hallucinations at this time I was like maybe I'll go do Iowa Oscar or something and I just wanted to do something that would give me the excuse to break up with him you know like I wanted to do come back from this thing and be like you know what the spirits told me like peace you know it was just me not having the balls to like hurt someone I loved and then so I was looking into these vipassana silent retreats that are 10 days long where you don't talk you don't talk for 10 days you don't write you don't look at people or fuck you and callback but so so like you go 10 days and it's like this weird I don't know I've talked to people about it a little bit but I was I didn't do that because I was like that's gonna fuck with me too much not to be able to 10 days for I mean I think it would completely reshape who I was could you go 10 days without your cell phone no I can't go 10 days without anything I mean funyons I've done that's the only thing I've ever done and it's very recent well I don't want to get into the digital digital details oh it's no it's bad I would like to do something like that because what's the longest you go without your phone I can't do it I can't bring it into the bathroom with me I put in a bag I put in a bag while I'm in the shower why you should never hold anybody's cell phone because it's so dirty bringing back to diarrhea yeah it's true there's a lot of diarrhea speckles on my phone for sure you know Diane's... look how greasy it is I know if we put luminol on our phones what would we find on it we'd find a lot of fucking dick prints dudes are just fucking mushroom stamping my phone all the time it's so annoying on the subway I'm like enough fine I'll give you a dollar but only because you got it on my niece's face in the background picture ha ha ha ha ha so relationships breaking up with a guy but so I was yeah and I was trying to like use hallucinogens to be like the excuse and then I just I went to Ireland and kind of had this out of body experience just being there and like seeing all these old I went to this church that's 1100 and I am not religious I mean Quakerism is like the least religious you can be I don't believe in God like that or anything but going there and seeing this church just the fact that it physically had been there in the 1100s was like mind blowing to me and I just realized like our insignificance and the fact that like everyone has done this before us you know that we're just so caught up in our own shit but that there have been all these people and that even though like that thing that I said in Quaker meeting where it's like I was chosen to be me and on me it's like you just have to believe that everyone else feels that way too and that and what about stand up when you're on stage are you satisfying your ego or are you connecting with the audience I said yeah full connection I get that I think you're right full connection and how long did it take you to learn that or did you know that before you started doing stand up I think it's just been I've really realized it recently I think honestly all these hallucinogens I did just made me have like a much more self-aware and when was the first time you did hallucinogens well high school but I was 14 we did them in the I did acid the first time I took acid yeah I was 14 I went to this alternative school and they had someone had hammered in a human-sized hole in the wall in the glass-blowing studio in the basement so we would get kicked out of we got kicked out of the basketball game came down into the glass-blowing studio in the basement crawled through the wall ate acid and watched the game through the grates in the floor that was the first time I took acid and no freaking no and I'll tell you something you could always tell who was on acid in my school because they would be looking at the screen savers that were just the stars remember the stars mm-hmm and yeah I didn't freak out and then I did acid again when I was 14 at my friend's house and her parents knew we were doing it and it was fine did you ever freak out on acid I didn't I I guess I did it again when I was 16 and I was visiting a friend in the Virgin Islands and I hadn't been drinking or doing anything so I was that had been pretty sober and so I had not a great trip because I was trying to control it I was trying to not be fucked up but we were on a their main export in St. Croix is Cruising Rum and they use molasses for it so they have all these giant molasses water towers so me and my like teenage friends were just hanging up on top of this fucking water tower this giant molasses looking water tower or molasses water tower looking molasses tower and we eat acid and I remember we had to climb down that fucking little ladder I mean it was just so scary and hard so that was the worst part probably can you stick around yeah for a little bit I just got to go pick my friend up okay yeah let me do your intro okay because we never finished it Annie Letterman as a stand-up comic who has appeared on MTV's Girl Code Chelsea Lately Comedy Central's at midnight and this is not happening welcome to the David Feldman show oh thank you so much it feels like I've been here for an hour already it feels like you didn't do the intro on time and this is being recorded later we'll be back with Scott Rogowski he'll join us if you're enjoying today's show please share it on facebook twitter stumble upon dig reddit copy and paste the link to this show and share it with all your friends via email spread the laughs spread the knowledge spread the love welcome back Scott Rogowski joins us we're talking with Annie Letterman thank you don't say it like my evil grandfather she's a stand-up comic who has appeared on MTV's Girl Code Chelsea Lately Comedy Central's at midnight and this is not happening and Scott Rogowski has appeared on none of those things and never will you have your own television show on some 18 on the phone on the phone right it's not telescope yeah I'm meerkatting actually what does that mean that's the other one that lost out the periscope you're killing it on Vine dude killing it that was my resolution this year to get into Vine 2017 what was your year you have a show it's on go 90 which is what is gonna fail any I think check your phone it might have just died right now $300 million project by Verizon and Hearst to create content hashtag content we need more of it are they paying you final check just went through so I could care less good boy and how can we watch the show what's the name of it it's called start talking okay you can go I think it's going 90 he's used to people saying the opposite to him a lot so yeah yeah it's time to start listening start watching I think it's it's just go 90 start talking I want to talk about control did you notice how he didn't laugh at my sick burn because he was trying to control the conversation right so control hollywood invents various ways to control us they have the academy awards which were set up to break unions you're I'm losing any but I'm starting to learn you know I don't like that Louis B. Mayer invented the Oscars I've been very clear that I don't want to learn sir I know I'm just saying that they invented competition has to talk to somebody about this though to divide and conquer artists and so they said if everybody's competing for an Oscar they won't unite and form a union so the hollywood reporter but that didn't work well it's working in a way because the unions are getting weaker they divide and conquer us they convince you in hollywood you're going to you don't need a union because you're going to be a star can you not say that can you just say the Jews yes of course mrs. Woolery how come you're so over me now that he's in the room because I'm a homosexual I can't believe it I've never seen you're really on your A game too it's like you're showing off to him like those baseball boys showed off to your daughters well it's it's I missed that conversation well it's well there's a dynamic here there are two I mean do you what do you think is the animal the room get what's the animal text when I walk what's the animal subtext going on now Scott Rigauske much younger than I am to Jui to a jujus you guys met a temple to Ju for shul Ju for shul he was your bar mitzvah coach he taught you the Torah a Rook could and I what do you think is the animal subtext going on here I mean with you and I'm not quite old enough to be Scott's father but I'm an older man Scott did you feel like that wasn't sure I didn't see yeah you could be 40 just leave it just be your age 47 well he's wearing a bar mitzvah that says 1993 so that means he was which I bought it a thrift store two days ago okay what do you think is the salvation army 50 cents that you got in the way of my sweet fucking deductive skill that was amazing okay what do you think is the animal subtext going on here I'm like a snake but like a cool one and you're like a mouse because obviously I could just eat you if I wanted but I could destroy you as a man and you are just like the dude in the park jerking off watching that happen I was kicked out of the gardening for jerking off watching it but you're like a mean mouse so you could win you could attack but it's like the balls like odds are in my favor hang on Scott for one second I have this thing about women where I've realized no no that I understand Scott he can beat me up he's younger than I am he's taller than I am if we had to start throwing punches I go to the gym I know exactly how many punches I could throw before I get exhausted I've timed it I can go seven minutes punching and then that's it I fall to the ground so unless I drop you within seven minutes you win this is like the gayest thing I've ever heard by the way this sounds so sexual I've never heard something more sexual David you're underestimating my propensity to cower which is just immediately start apologizing I tend to shrink now Annie so I look at you this is what my sister explained to me okay I understand the damage that Scott can do to me which is why you think men are creepy with their daughters go ahead I understand that Scott could physically hit me and my sister said to me weak knuckles Dave I couldn't do it what you don't understand David is women have weapons that are far more lethal than fists I mean you're such a divorce I mean you're so bitter and divorced it's so crazy I don't know I'm not like calculating like that I just know that I'm I know I'm a strong person I don't size people up what she's so right but do you really think about this like physical dynamic when you walk into rooms and assess the situation that's what he's a control freak so he goes in and he sees what he would have to do to be the man on top you know what I think I think what if we cut off all the dicks in this room how much would it weigh or all the boobs what would they weigh that's what I think when I walk into the rooms I don't have either so there you go I'm contributing nothing to this cut off part that was the original pitch for world's biggest loser how much do these dicks in its way I can't believe they didn't buy it for me go 90 okay so let's say do you mind if I ask you this question let's say you wanted to destroy me if we were like in a relationship I mean it's so crazy he's dad's owned from day one how can a woman destroy a man dad's own because they can right if you wanted because we when you realize that men when you when you're raised like firm I'm just can only tell myself so I'm raised in this world and I'm raised by a pretty masculine mom and a dad who is not around as much as when I'm younger as he is now you know what I mean he's working or whatever it and I have two brothers I'm raised like pretty much masculine male dominated area but I still know that like as a kid I'm learning to accommodate as a girl I'm learning to accommodate men still like I'm learning to like go through my life and like men I'm trying to impress men and I think it's from my mom too right so like my mom always wanted to be a boy I know I want to know because if you talk me if you talk me out of this I won't I won't remember this is good stuff okay so my mom raised me like pretty much as her third son so I joined the boys baseball team I did all the stuff to impress her because she always said she wanted to be a boy when she was little she would try to play baseball but the park and a hat and then you know the boys would be like get out of here girl scram I do think that was a scene from a league of her own I don't know it really happened but I felt pressure to join the boys baseball team to like impress her right she did then trade me but to another team she pulled strings to do this is real this is a real story she really traded she traded me and she was the president of the league so she changed the rules so she could do it and she kept my twin brother she said she thought it would be better for me I'm like okay but but anyway so I think no but I should I should by the way that's a power thing that I just did just to throw you off your head I do that to people I tell them to do something on stage but it's a power thing I always think it's helping them it's to remind you that you're weak and a comedian and you're needy I mean I felt great about it I was like writing a bit in my head I felt awesome but you can't alpha on alpha dude I'm trying I tried alpha dog you can't I'm just so fucking strong you can't take me down I was just saying you're a clown you should do that I'm an olive male I said Hebrew yeah that's the way I could say it yeah I just can't I don't know I just okay so my question but anyway so then you get to a point this is how I can destroy you this is how I know how to destroy men which is not what I ever tried to do and I would never do it calculated or whatever I just know my strength and I know what you guys are I don't see you as a powerful anymore I don't see you as much I see how strong women are now I see how much women do if you're just looking at nature women fucking do everything all of the work you guys just once you fucking complain about getting you complain about getting pickles at night you complain that your wife's being a bitch her vagina is being torn in from a vagina into a vajas hole it's unbelievable she will never bounce back she will never be able to fucking take a break you're here chatting about your daughter I don't fucking know shit about her I would have known everything about your daughter from the minute one because she would have fucking been with her calling her texting her taking care of her in some way dad being a mom is a full time job being a dad is part time as fuck so anyway now knowing that being older seeing that I think that the only good thing a man is truly a man is truly good for and what I crave in a man is protection physical protection I want to be protected I don't think I am I don't think men protect women anymore and I don't think that we necessarily need it as much anymore what about financial protection I am my own rich husband I don't give a fuck I would never want that's what's changed probably most I would never want but I can't have kids or have a family because of that I wouldn't I don't think I'd be able to do both because you're vulnerable no because I wouldn't be able to do both things I wouldn't be able to successfully do comedy the way that I want to do it other women have done it you can't I'm not saying that they I can lean into fun but I also don't the idea of being attached like I could be a dad I would be a great dad I would 100% be a dad if I could be a dad but I can't be a mom okay so anyway so anyway so that's how I can it's not a control thing with men it's I don't I'm not phased by you guys anymore were you ever yeah okay can I ask you something sure I'm just curious so you you've made the decision now that you don't want to have a family don't want to have kids I mean maybe I will I would not I'm not going to say I'm not going to say what I am or I'm not going to do but you know I'm 33 and it's not I don't know I just wouldn't imagine I couldn't imagine the next seven years every day dealing with the kids I just don't want so does that affect how you date now in terms of I don't even date on I fuck people for a couple months and that's like yes turn 18 and stopping and it's like I can only be playing this teacher role for so much longer yeah so cougar but never milk that's the bottom line yeah but I just feel like it's like you know there's like sacrifices or whatever I just don't think that that's I don't know I think that that is it's not about and the to look at I don't know I just don't I'm not calculated like that so when men are like how do women destroy men I just don't I've never tried to destroy anyone so white male privilege I talked to Greg proofs about this earlier on the show I have white male I'm 59 now I have white man I grew up with white don't brag David I grew up with white male privilege I didn't know I had white male privilege but you could easily be easily easily easily like you could half your age you could have been his dad but anyway I have white male privilege and it was just kind of like I wasn't aware that I had it if I had known that I had it I would have well I kind of know well it doesn't matter it's just acknowledging it now that's the privilege though it's the it's the blindness yes right that is the that is the white mother's will be able to walk around not think about your race your gender right and just go to the bathroom ever you want and not think twice it doesn't matter what you did like there's just no reason to worry about what you've done but but I'm also Jewish so I that's what I'm most conscious of my yes my juveness yeah so are we yeah can't stop thinking it's just in your face literally the nose protrudes that way the facial structure the comments on YouTube helps so much but then and I I know I sound like a whiny bitch and I'm doing this partly just to entertain my listeners right are becoming irrelevant it's not just my imagination why are you worried about being relevant or not and not just fucking living your goddamn life it's like that's the thing that's male like the male provision where it's like it's not it's not relevance it's like being on top it's not relevance like women because other people don't it's not about relative it's like about like existing Scott Scott how old are you 32 okay he didn't like the woman's response so he looked to the white man okay I'm kidding 32 you so do you feel women like when you're dating yeah everything she's saying about turning 18 yeah that's exactly about women not being your mother that this it's a it that what she just said what she said that's what she said what did I say what she said is that what do you translate for me the things that women used to think they want oh not being a mom I see we're saying oh well yeah this was trying to get I'm not I'm only speaking for myself this is not women I'm not talking about the lean in book I'm not talking about any of that I'm talking specifically about myself I'm not even talking about women in comedy because I have friends that are moms that do comedy fine for me I can I don't and I would say you're a bit of an outlier because most the woman I've dated you know I think not all of them have the goal of raising a family and they look to that and there's a dynamic when you're on the date it's going to be a good life partner to be a good dad but but but but that kind of I don't think they look for life partners I think everything I think women I think think these things are temporary but let's move on you don't know anything about women it's so hilarious you're like you know women I'm going to Jewish women here is here's a message I got they want to latch into you but I feel like no I honestly like yeah it here's what John my friend John Ross listen I don't like I broke up with my ex-boyfriend he wanted to have kids and get married and stuff so I was clear in the beginning I was like that's never gonna be my that's my path and I might change my mind honestly who knows like I really love my nieces so much that it's like it on the one hand I'm like oh wouldn't that be but then on the other hand I'm like I see what they go through and I'm like yeah and and and and in your career like you said I mean it's very hard to you said you have some comedians who are moms but I mean it's I can't imagine I just would want I would be on the road here's what John Ross wrote to me last night we were talking about maybe not I don't John Ross is a good friend of mine he may be on today's show I'm not sure but he said to me all women are not equal they're all different you have a problem and I can see it I listen to it on your podcast I'm gonna come on your show and give you shit about it you do it less than you used to mostly because women like Colleen Worthman and Mike of Fox give you so much shit but you generalize about all women look this is what John Ross said look Sarah Palin and Elizabeth Warren have nothing in common except they have two sick pants and tight pussies so I wrote that and hairy pussies okay so it's four in the morning we're both having trouble sleeping and this is what I text back all women are the same this is what I wrote they have holes that you stick your finger face and phallus into that's it it was four in the morning this is genuinely how you feel in your lizard brain in your heart of hearts David this is how you feel admitted now to the world and you don't feel that way about me and so you're trying to alpha me because you don't know you want to put me in a place that you're used to when they're more than just a hole it's scary you don't know what to do with me but I'm just like I'm here I'm having fun I like you it's fun to be here when the other hole can speak words that are smarter than yours that's when you get scared especially when I'm so uneducated it's the least educated hole which hole has more education well actually well okay obviously my asshole is diarrhea's math right speaks Mexican my ass speaks Mexican my diarrhea has gone through calculus calculus you can remember that this is I'm gonna sell that joke to Cedric the entertainer let me ask you about texting it's I can show you how to do it is your writing very large on your phone yes just a guess don't touch my you don't want to catch what I've got finger herpes are there texts that you have sent that if they like the one I sent of John Ross at four in the morning that's a career ender right no you're joking no I don't know that who's John Ross it's gonna have a good eye on TV Jeff Ross I know John Ross Bowie is that the same guy you know what John Ross had a vision to turn a little desert town into podcasts and when I heard that he was shot I didn't ask who gave the order JR I love when you tell people you're joking I have to otherwise they're not gonna know well we know they're not laughing I think you're funny though but sometimes I don't know I always think you're funny I think you're hilarious I think you're very funny that's why I do comedy because she didn't notice me we were on race wars and she didn't even look up you're rather grotesque okay is it sexist to say that she's am I allowed to say that you're an attractive woman or is that sexist and you're funny and smart and by the way attractive okay so I'm sorry John Ross I'm looking at your twitter and chief creative officer of subplot entertainment this is the same John Ross or is it the John Ross or the Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver I love the Bengals who the fuck are you what have you ever done he's got more twitter followers than I do believe me you can buy twitter followers you're my good friend John Ross I have a friend that's the most surprising part to me I've known John Ross longer than you've been alive but is this the same John Ross who cares you measure somebody by their twitter followers that's immoral you measure them by their or their vine loops both of you are on you because I want to read you I want to read you my text I'm checking John Ross out but I kind of want to post this but it's it's not as bad on me anyway listen as you were saying I was on race wars and she didn't notice me until I started getting funny and then she kept telling me how funny I was and the opposite is you notice her first because of her looks and then you realize then you stopped talking to me when I was unfunny no I didn't notice her because of her looks I noticed that she wasn't noticing me and I think I just sat down I don't think it was there's some white privilege there because did you think that's some white male privilege did you like give like a big deal to you it's like I just sat down and didn't notice you nobody looks at me I'm invisible do you think people think that sometimes no I'm just the invisible man that sounds delightful I will be there in one year so don't worry have you met Abbott and Costello Claude Reigns yeah but they meet the invisible man too see you can't tell what I'm joking either I like with a juiced air off the one liner juiced air off where you're like who's gonna break and do a fake laugh it's just so hard because you're just screaming that you have lawyers involved in your life everything about you is like lawyers are on speed dial and you obviously have the nose of the juiciest person I've ever met in my life that's very kind thank you Shylock Fagan does it help that my favorite flavor Oscar Robbins is pumpernickel yes it does my favorite is horseradish can you imagine eating a bite gefilte fish eating a bite of chocolate ice cream and then it's pumpernickel wait but just to say this honestly you could be roman but you also are wearing a barman's fish you're really claiming he's also he's wearing his lack of foreskin out of his pants too which is so annoying like put your circumcised away right that's the ultimate he carries his foreskin around in a locket does he really the men wanting their foreskin back is the greatest white privilege of all time I have the circumcision I might keep scrolling back it's like a chameleon my penis changes color if I'm making love to an African-American I mean too careful too careful about racist making love to an African-American the making love part when you're fucking a black chick yeah banging a black chick just say it when I am making love to an Asian my penis turns yellow and gets small when I'm making love to an African-American I like how I worry about it hang on I'm a bit now it's like a chameleon if I'm making love to an African-American chick it grows six inches see you don't know David that well this is a he trades in the the most offensive can I read you this text message this was a sexed a guy she this is why I like this game we're going to read text messages well no he said what's the text message and this is something I've wanted to post but I feel like it's too much because I have the little girl code followers where I'm like how many jokes can I make in a day set me up with them I mean they're like in college now they've aged out this is a guy that I hooked up with once on an airplane and then we stayed friends on an airplane mile high he fingered me so it was middle school high in the bathroom in the bathroom or in the seats in the seats did you send a picture of yourself to a lady can we can I control you cannot so you were on an airplane I told you I lean in anyway I met a guy we missed a plane I hate that I'm telling this I feel like I just told this story I've told this on 90 podcast he likes that I told this story I don't know why you were on a plane so I missed a plane and then I was waiting on standby and some other guy got the last standby seat so they closed the doors and then this idiot with like a face piercing and like and sweatshorts came up with the quiz nose he's like that's my plane and they're like you have to get here on time and he's like yeah but it said it's leaving now and they're like yeah you have to come early to board and he's like what was the quiz nose and I fucked this guy I never fucked him but so I did not but so he he couldn't get on the plane he was complaining so I obviously was laughing at the fact that he got quiz nose instead of getting on the plane instead of making his plane so like quiz nose is so shitty so I talked to the next plane then he starts telling me about his divorce and he was like yelling for a divorce that was exciting and then he told me about being dishonorably discharged from the military I was like hello and then hello and he split his quiz nose with me he gave me the sun chips and so when we went on the plane he made sure we were sitting next to each other and then he like got up at one point he was just really high he looked like Channing Tatum but he was like you know ridiculous but so we hooked up on the plane what do you mean by that did you make out well he was like showing me his band he was showing you his what music videos no but I'm working on it I want to know about the fingering so then we started making out on the plane are you allowed to do that on the plane we were going at it there was a little Israeli kid in the fucking aisle seat you were making out and then I had the blanket and then he just fingered me for how long to completion no I didn't come but we made out a bunch but it was just a short flight hang on so he fingers you on the plane this is my kind of in flight movie and then we stay kind of in contact I started dating my boyfriend the next day so then I had this boyfriend for three years he was carrying a subway which was a step up but then I saw he was already picking me up from the airport jimmy johns so then I went to what are we talking about so the guy picks you up no my boyfriend didn't really pick me up but we had just started talking and stuff and then I started dating pretty soon after that so this guy and I were in contact on social media and then magic mic 2 came out and I was like this guy looked like Channing Tatum so then we started talking again there's a pick of him but he's really into I'm friends with him now he's really into no he's into when I asked him what his band was like he offered that he's into bondage which is so boring I just think I don't need that right now you'd strike me as someone who likes I mean I wear sunglasses in bed but that's different no I mean I like a little I don't want you can be rough but don't he has a bed that has clips on it I don't want that's gross don't order special things I mean or do I just wasn't into it I was recently out of a relationship and I was just trying to hook up and pretend I was in high school it's very 90s I have more of a high school fetish what's your high school fetish? I just want to like imagine I'm like at a party like I went to like a friends party that's at a different school like I'm like 15 right and so I go to a party at a different friends who goes to a different school so it's all new people and like I meet a guy and we're like fucking like on a couch in the basement and you get a 1400 on your PSATs and I get a 1400 on my PSATs acting that out how real does it become? you just put DMX on and it's just in my head I mean that's not they don't need to do anything but does it become real to you? when they come quick yeah no I mean I can kind of get into it I don't know there's like the type of guy though I hook up with is like the type of guy I hooked up with when I was 15 so what's this type of guy? it's like just like a door not a door but like a door guy like a door man no like I like guys who are like dirt bags I don't know where'd you grow up? but not anymore Philly and my last dirt bag was kind of nice you were last white? I just want to be I want to he showed up with a frank soda and a water ice no he did bring me he did give me funyons for Valentine's Day though and I was peanut cheese? yeah those are good actually alright so then so this guy the airplane fingering guy while I'm in the middle of telling him that I'm more into like a high school thing this is what he this is the sex that he sent me he goes try to think of me I'm gonna this is gonna be hard to read all on try to think of me tonight went to a high school reunion I mean high school prom okay he's editing already and then you're all innocent and then after the prom I take you to this hotel with its own dungeon I'm like motherfucker I already told you I didn't want this so all he's doing is putting the dungeon in high school I want to fuck high school style not like a weirdo anyway I know this motherfucker but it's its own dungeon and you're scared but you stay and you let me do whatever I want to you you don't want to like it but you can't stop yourself from coming over and over again especially with the clamps on your nipples like get away from me dude and the vibrator that is strapped in between your legs that I control with a remote as I do other things to the rest of your body so then beat I wake up and read it and I go this is how Jean Benet died actually about clamps on the nipples how do you I always forget which nipple is the negative and which one is the positive because in the back to jumpstart jumpstart yeah jumpstart yeah well see that's an example of a test a text that Annie gets meanwhile here's a recent gem from a lady in my life I would never fuck you especially with that small duck of yours asterisk dick you that's not real yeah it is is she joking no that she's that all I want to see kiss you wait all I wanted was to see slash kiss you but you want to be a dick okay thanks for standing me up you asshole I'm sorry it sucks it's just for the best why don't you stand her up though it's not a good situation that's why just tell her you're not in I totally ghosted that day guy though I have to write him back there's no there's no right the guy back from the audition and be like I have a joke though okay all right attention everybody David Feldman has a joke he usually does it after when we're now laughing here we go so he only fingered you on the plane huh yeah if you wanted more than fingering you should have flown and here's the punch line Erlingas and swing and a miss I think it's hard for him to get away with eating me out on the plane it's better than the airline food but he did have that vibrator strap to my leg and you flew spirit you had to pay 25 extra yeah I was spirit I had to pay 25 extra to buckle my seatbelt for the nipple clamps I mean nipple it's like what is he talking but here's the thing that's his thing he's my friend like I'm never going to fuck him now but like he's my friend we're cool we've known each other it's weird that we're still friends but it's like I feel like I've invested enough time in that I'll be friends with him but it's like I'm telling you that I'm not into that so like play it like I was like can we just regular fuck first I don't want to go you nipple you go nipple clamps in you start with vanilla I just realized something you're gonna tell me something that's wrong no I realized that your generation is the greatest generations revenge on baby boomers because we're just fucking or what because you guys were fucking we were a lot of time broke us kids I'm talking about the baby boomers really stuck it to their parents our parents went off and saved the world from Hitler and tojo and Kate Smith and they came back and they raised these kids the baby boomers who just were the complete opposite the hardest thing you had to deal with kujo not tojo he was scary though that foam that slobber drew foam and we talked about free love and pot and just to let everything go and then we had kids and I'm looking at you and the greatest generation the anniversary of d-day right now those men are laughing at the baby boomers because you to me the two of you are scarier than Omaha Beach I would rather storm Omaha Beach than try to the singles event it's so fun honestly man is born free and everywhere your generation needs to get on board we're free let's live fun but you know what you're going to raise your kids are going to be they're going to have to fight Hitler they're the generation that's going to work in millennials now so let's be ready you're the decadent flappers from the 20s who are spawning the next Hitler and your kids are going to have to go and be the greatest generation that's a value judge I gotta go pick my friend up she's getting her wisdom teeth out well will you come back I would love to come back will you start dating better guys I am I'm not even sending I have no person I'm even sending nudes to I'm sending all my nudes to my mom and my friends you send nudes I only send nudes that I would be thrilled if they were released by the way that I would be just ecstatic if someone leaked them you can't trust the cloud yeah but they're just good ones but anyway with that I'll be texting my mom hates when I send her pictures with my ass but I feel like she should be proud she gave it to me do you know my glasses are fogging up and I'm not even wearing them goodbye bye Annie Letterman as they stand up who has appeared on MTV's Girl Code Chelsea Lately Comedy Central's at midnight the news is not happening I was Cheryl and Grand Theft Auto 5 really no big deal guys so when you're jerking off your virgin dicks you're listening to me David will be jerking off to the story about you getting a finger on the plane that is happening I'm sorry I brought it up what can we do to you in Grand Theft Auto it's me and JB Smith have a radio station so you can just listen to us when you steal a car but can't we like do things no my face isn't on it you know I have nothing to do as on I see you next getting fondled on an Amtrak yeah um I only go to second base on Amtrak I'm sorry and I get butt-fucked in suburbs drop the mic I love you guys thank you wow you'll come back thank you I know but I mistook it for somebody else in LA that time remember you're in New York now you're in New York cool Sklar Brothers are in town you're not friends with them okay by the way that was the juiciest thing I've ever heard in my life to say you're going to see the Sklar Brothers they're sitting shiva come on you're the double the double bye alright you know what I realized about you Scott that I'm funny I just realized that today that was a good session I just had there with her I had some good lines there you were great I need some funny people to bounce off of but you know what you're an alpha dog you're an olive dog and sometimes when we're having writing sessions for your show you don't want people to be too funny that's not true at all not at all this isn't being recorded right? yes it is are we still recording? I think we are can we just talk? I do have to go to therapy soon how long have you been in therapy? can you believe this text message from these how long have you been in therapy? not too long actually I would say about two years on and off actually I was off for a while I went to one of those free ones or those really budget discount ones where the students teach you and they cut your hair and they cut your hair that's good Dave I love writing with you buddy that's not it you're writing that one down? I don't know when's the next show? how's Marty? he's alright you wrote that down you do a show with your father yeah it's called Running Late and here's the problem I'mma tell it to you you don't realize what a brilliant idea it is to do the show with your father you have no idea how funny it is and you underutilize him Marty is hysterical he is hysterical I want to do more with him but you have to understand that he is not a performer that's funny to an extent because when we try to engage him in bits and try to write for him he can't get it right and I know that's funny too but then some of the audience feels like I'm picking on him you're overthinking it you're overthinking it people want they want what's real they want what's real his being bad at a bit is real it's funny let me explain something to you the audience is 10 steps ahead of you the audience is much smarter than you'll ever be they know more about you and comedy than you can ever imagine trust me on this you do a show where your father is your sidekick the first time I saw that I thought this is genius it is the funniest thing in the world your show is great all I'm saying is give more to your father the audience understands that he's been given a bit that there were writers with this bit and now you're handing it to your father the audience knows you may not know that the audience knows but they know that you want your dad to nail it yeah and that's funny that you want him to do the bit properly when he f's it up the audience knows that the writers wrote a bit for Marty Scott was hoping the bit would go well Marty is f'ing it up that's funny ruining my career well sadly Marty is going to have less of a role in the show as I'm moving to L.A. stop saying that I'm already moved out of my apartment I'm living back at home you're living with your parents that's basically you know what that is such horseshit it's not a woman like me bringing a woman back to my mother's house at my age and saying well I'm temporarily staying with my mother because of this divorce I have to hide assets ma can we borrow your bed you moved in with your parents to right to spend a few moments with them before I leave forever you're going you're not going to L.A you're staying put you can't blanch are you putting him on a no fly list besides that I'm going you're not going to L.A. why would you go to L.A. because it's the golden west man land of milk and honey organic milk is anybody asking you to go to L.A. no see that's the problem I've been making my entire career here because David I told myself I'm not going to go to L.A. unless a job brings me out there unless somebody wants me out there that's been my mindset for the last seven years while all my friends have gone to L.A. and had great careers they were brought there no people are going out there just giving it a shot not all of them make it what do you think is going to happen in L.A. that won't happen here other than becoming less funny a weekly show which is going to be able to be watched because of the pool out there of guests there's an old expression from the Brady Bunch wherever you go there you are I'm not running away from myself I'm just trying to get closer to celebrities that's the bottom line I have a book why do you think it's so easy to get celebrities in L.A. because they live in L.A. to be celebrities they live there to be recognized so they're willing to come do shows why do you think they have so much time on their hands why is that because they get paid ungodly amounts of money for little amounts of work or maybe they're like plumbers you can look a celebrity up in the yellow pages in L.A. and maybe there are a lot of out of work celebrities who want to do somebody's podcast maybe there's not that much to do in L.A. there's no way this is being used no this is not interesting to anyone yes it is because it's conflict tweet me right now while you're listening at Scott Rogowski and let me know if you're getting anything out of this stay in New York stay in New York I appreciate the advice David but I gotta try it once I'm always gonna be in New Yorker but I gotta give it a shot so we were just around a beautiful woman now I was raised to believe that beautiful women will love you if you go to Hebrew school you learn the piano you have manners you read you don't chew with your mouth open you eat slowly my dad always says he sees me eating at home you're gonna be on a date you can't eat like this on a date if you do it at home you're gonna do it on a date this is my dad I love your dad I love your dad no of course not I'm not gonna do that I'm eating like this like an animal because I'm around you because I can eat like an animal it's the one place where I can have the freedom to do this I can wear a shirt with holes in it at the dinner table at home because I can't do that on a Friday night with a date my parents don't get that I'm a total slob in an animal at home and they're furious at me for it I can be myself do your parents nag you? constantly oh the dishes are the biggest I'm of the mind you eat something you can put the dish in the sink because that's what a sink is for and then when the sink fills up then you put it in the dishwasher what's this eat something put it in the dishwasher right away that's an extra step every time you gotta put it it's more efficient have you ever had an experience where you spent 12 hours you're living at home now this is true this is your sitcom you're living with your parents what's the longest you've gone without being nagged it's every day are you infantilized do they know that a man is living in the house I have to go to therapy right now to talk about this I'm gonna be late what time oh I get it this is my pre-therapy you run the minute I start asking questions you run away from me actually I'm pitching my therapist on this if she doesn't take it I'm gonna try go 90 I wanna do a group session with my family which I've never done before on stage but you're gonna film it everything has to be hashtag content we'll do it as a podcast I think that would be good content but I also wanna make a serious breakthrough here which is they have to stop infantilizing me and treating me like I'm 12 years old cause that's what it is so I can help you here move out of their house no how old are you 32 do they enjoy infantilizing you do you enjoy pronouncing it that way tell me how they infantilize you infantilize how do they do it it's the tone of voice that my father takes when he talks to me God bless him Marty is the nicest guy he's my dad he can't talk to me like you talk to me I would love for you to be my dad for a day just to have a conversation a real conversation he just goes what's going on your father is a lawyer he's the president of a temple he can't communicate though with me and with anybody that's most Jewish men don't have friends he has constituents boy most Jewish men don't have friends is that true no does your dad have a hobby baseball he plays baseball he throws with an 80 year old man on Tuesday he throws in the park he has a catch with an 80 year old man Steve Davis and they played an 80 year old baseball league I'm not even kidding this is my dad's love I would love to be playing baseball at his age okay so he plays baseball but does he have poker night he spends all his free time with your mother free time with my mother or he sometimes will get away for golf and then the rest of the time he's lying on the couch he's watching he lives with your mother and he reads you know what my dad's ever been in therapy answer my question he reads the paper reads the paper watches the NBC he wants his books, his television maybe little music and your mother and your mother his mother died when he was 24 I'm just putting this together now David when he was 24 and my mom has MS she has had MS for 40 years so she's incapacitated and it's gotten worse lately he is her primary caregiver caretaker she really would not survive without him and he loves that I think I don't want to say it's like a sexual thing like he gets off on it I think that he really prides himself in being responsible for this woman's life and he might have to relate to the fact that he lost his mother at 24 and I'm obsessed with your father and I'm obsessed with my father you are he doesn't see it he thinks I disrespect him I love him are you the only guy in the family you're the only son first child, only son I love the hell each other but I do disrespect him and my mom I do criticize them a lot because you need boundaries that's what you're trying to do did you ever read Iron John no in order for the son to break away from the mother and the father most of the time it's violent it's a violent break because men not physically violent but sometimes it gets physically violent you have not broken from your parents yet and you can't as long as they're expecting me to call them every day as they do they're not letting you go and you don't want to be let go of and it is a phenomenon of the east coast this happens and even if you go to LA you'll still be on the phone with them so you can go the world has gotten smaller so you're not going to get away from them what you need to do is you need to set up boundaries like Alex Brazel you know him right I'm a little familiar with him I overpower him I will text him all day going mommy look at my duty he can't stand it mommy look I know it drives him crazy every time I talk to Alex oh god Feldman not I have out texted Saget Saget and I will go six hours straight texting poo jokes and then he gets tired he says I can't keep going I can keep life too he has my OCD so sometimes I turn to Alex but Alex has learned to set up boundaries he'll when I say mommy look at my duty in a text he ignores it do you use the poop emoji con? the emoji? if I'm on top of my game yeah by the way I've invented some rebuses using emojis that are pretty genius where you combine emojis to is that what they called it? I the I arm an arm letter A home O saxophone UL I arm a home O sexual I send him that I get nothing in response from him you're spending your time wisely Robert Smigel loves them I send when I come up with an emoji combo your finest work if it's good it's called a rebus they're called rebuses yes it's a combination of emojis that spell out a sentence and I will spend a lot of time you say father by the way there's a whole emoji a whole and there's a cigarette it's Andy Letterman's headshot so I was the first one to combine cigarette butt with hole for the compound word but hole groundbreaking it was like the Smigel said I was like Ernie Kovacs of the emojis emoji Kovacs Sandy Kovacs I like it so are we stopping this because there are parents out there who are distant from their children right? is it just a Jewish thing as you say or what is it about them they don't have anything going on my mother and I think it has to do specifically in my case the fact that she does have MS and she really can't look if my parents are like we're going to be playing tennis at the club she can't do it she has Jewish MS and she's controlling her kids that is amazing Dave that is fucking amazing how much do you want for that one I'll buy you a sandwich oh no no I gotta hold on to that one are you kidding there's a big market out there for that that's jokes that's sad well I mean I say that she was offered singular sclerosis she went out she got a deal on multiple did you buy her MS magazine get her MS magazine that's good I got you a subscription MS magazine I got you a subscription mom for MS magazine and your father's you idiot is called MS magazine oh no okay my point is they don't have much going on and she physically can't do much so if she was to say I'm playing tennis whatever do your thing she doesn't have those outlets so she's focused on the health and welfare for children and my sister lives in Scotland and she's getting married to a non Jew must find Haggis joke keep thinking talk talk how do I turn this into a Haggis joke Scotland backpipes keep talking Haggis and she's in Scotland so we're going to be opposite polar ends of the world it's not a good situation for her Mel Gibson Paul Haggis is one of my favorite directors Paul Haggis Scientology Haggis Scotland keep going I'm listening Scotland Scotch let's combine MS with Scotland where are you going I'm going to therapy it's in midtown I'm going to go to midtown I'm going up to serious radio where's your shrink 40th and Madison I'm going to serious we've got to get some food too we're not done with our therapy session quickly wrap it up I'll wrap it up you want some advice your parents the happiest they ever were was when when you were a kid when I was flying out of her vagina yeah they're very comfortable having a child in the house not a man do you understand that you should be my therapist they need to hear this though they want a child they don't want a smelly man you're not the baby they didn't sign up for a stinky, sweaty sexually active 30-something man in the house they already have a man in your house it's your father they want a baby does this relate to the edible complex that's the other thing I read a book about narcissism and it talks about the disturbances as a child that relate to the edifice I can't see it with my family my mother is ugly can I say that but I'm not sexually attracted to my mother and I don't feel like I want to kill my father so I genuinely and maybe there's some repressed but I generally don't feel this way which is why the borders they're no borders in your family the same thing applies I think culturally I was very close to my father we were inseparable no because we were inseparable because you do want to kill him you just do why would you kill someone you love because that's the way we're hardwired and that's why you're miserable because you love your father too much to kill him you want to kill your father you hate your father all children hate their parents and love them they're so perfect except the fact that you hate your parents there's no crime in hating your parents which is why they had to make a commandment honor your mother and father it is biological you want to kill you know why the smell of feces I'm going to wrap it up in a second do you know why the smell of feces do you know why people are turned off by the smell of feces because it's rancid it carries disease other people's feces I like my own you're supposed to be turned off by the smell of feces because it's evolution your senses are trained to reject feces because it'll kill you it'll give you a polio that's there's nothing you can bad breath so human beings are hardwired evolutionarily speaking to hate their parents because you have to get away from them they carry disease you can't have sex with them because you'll get tasex you'll have kids who end up being Alabama people so you have to view your parents the same way you view shit this is amazing David you are hardwired to hate them and your problem is you love shit you have to view them as shit you have to keep your distance from them you have to put a door between you and your parents you're living with shit now it's okay now this is very important at the same time pay attention to me and then we'll wrap it up Alex thank you this is the conflict you're conflicted as all sons are half of you sees your parents as shit that carries polio and disease and you're biologically hardwired to want to get away from that shit at the same time you're being pulled towards this shit and you want to smear your face in it and eat it I'm losing Alex and that's the conflict that you have is part of you wants to push the shit away and then part of you wants to eat the shit and play with it and say mommy I made a duty and bother Alex couldn't find the gentler metaphor you're conflicted about shit you have a shit complex always think of your parents as shit it's necessary they're a necessary byproduct to keep on living I also put cocktail umbrellas in my feces is that a problem do you get to it every time? my advice to you is tap into your absolute abject hatred for your parents do not feel guilty for hating your parents the same way you shouldn't feel guilty for hating other people's shit or your own shit and then look at that shit and look at your parents and say you know what that shit is life they're going to take this podcast away from me happy flag day everybody that's our show greg proof's podcast is called the smartest man in the world downloaded on iTunes James Curtis's book Last Man Standing, Mort Saul and the Birth of Modern Comedy is available at fine bookstores near you or over at Amazon from the show Briz Studios in downtown Manhattan Medicare for All