 The lawyer for InfoWars host Alex Jones said yesterday in court that Alex Jones is nothing more than a performance artist. In fact, the actual name of Alex Jones' performance art is the Never Seen of Agina Monologues. It's 3 a.m. Tuesday, April 18, 2017. I'm David Feldman. We have a lot of show, so let's get right to it. Welcome to the broadcast. I'm David Feldman, DavidFeldmanshow.com. On today's program, one of the bravest voices of my generation, Jeanine Garofalo. This is the David Feldman Radio Network. Good work. Coming up on our show, Jeanine Garofalo, along with my old comedy buddy, Larry Bubbles Brown. Larry and I started together in San Francisco. And as always, Larry Bubbles Brown has wonderful things to say about his city by the bay. Not really. I think Larry Brown might be the only person willing to admit he despises San Francisco, the city he lives in. Also, Emile Guillermo is winner of the American Book Award for his collection of essays on the Asian American experience he joins us later to talk about his coverage of Philippine President Duterte and his reign of terror. Also, we talked to a disgruntled listener who wrote me, who hit the contact button over at DavidFeldmanshow.com and wrote a very eloquent letter complaining about the show and how much he hates me. He was so biting, so pissed off, so disappointed with the show. I had no choice but to offer him some airtime. He comes on at the end of the show to give me hell. Please share this episode with all your friends. Copy and paste the link to this episode. Spread the laughs. Spread the knowledge. Spread the love. Coming up, Janine Garofalo. Hey, Janine. I'm Cap Bemelman. I'm the segment producer for the David Feldman show. Great. So, we're really... Hey, first of all, congratulations on being invited to be on David's show. Honestly, the thrill of the invitation is enough for me. Even if we didn't do the show, I'm just thrilled to be asked. So, I had a fight really hard to get you on the show because... Everyone else was against it. Yeah, I already got... Somebody else told me that, too. And I also was bumped twice already because a better guest had... But I'm in your corner. Despite what others say, I know that's what I was told also that even when others say negative things, you always fight. Cap Bemelman, I will go down with... Swinging. Swinging for the people I believe in. And I just want to say this in a clumsy way. This is going to be kind of inelegant. I'm not going to be working for David Feldman forever. And I just want you to remember that I fought for you to get on the show. Oh, I'm sorry. They're going to go. I might not be able to get on then if you... Where are you going? Did you get on the show? I'm just saying, people move on. It's a very fluid industry. And I just hope you remember that Cap Bemelman fought for you. Yes. B as in Bemelman, E as in Emelman. It's Jonathan Katz. Sorry, that's a Jonathan Katz joke. Don't do that bit on... I won't. That's Jonathan Katz's bit with the last name Pottinger. He says, B as in Pottinger, O as in Pottinger. So, a couple of things that David likes is he likes to be praised as a comic and a comedy writer. So, could you remember to do that? Yes, of course. And you don't listen to the show, do you? But if you could just occasionally reference the show, an episode, just to make it look like you do listen to it, the audience won't know. Right. That you're making it up. Okay. Just say, you know, remember you had... That guest, that one funny guest on. Yeah. Who was not as funny as you dated, you know, if I was talking to David. But I just feel like it's probably best if I don't reference something just in case, because he is probably sharp enough to know when somebody's doing that. But either way... No, he's not. Okay. He's very susceptible to praise. So, if you just praise him a lot... Okay. He just wants to make sure your fake laugh, because David likes to tell jokes. Okay. And he just wants to make sure your fake laugh sounds as real as possible. Well, I thought what... In these cases, instances is... Excuse me. Is when people at Roast's, the old ones and even the new ones that are televised, when clearly things aren't that funny, but they want to make it seem like they're laughing, they bury their face in their hands. Yeah, but this is... The older shake. Yeah, but see, this is an audio medium. No, no, no. But it's just important that David see that I'm laughing, right? And then he'll comment on it. Well, he would kind of like... What I usually do is I audition three types of fake laughs, and then I know what he likes. Okay. So, let's see. Can you give me kind of like a giggle? Let me hear a giggle, a fake giggle. Can you go a little like an octave higher on that? That's good. Good. Okay. And like a shocked laugh. Oh my God. I can't believe you said that. Great. I can't believe David Feldman said that. But I'll be talking to him. Yeah, but we like to just want to remind people that's the David Feldman. Okay. Well, what if I do it this way? Oh, David Feldman. I can't believe you just said that. That's pretty good. Can you do... Again, it's not me. We're trying to brand the show. Could you say, oh, David Feldman, Tuesdays and Fridays at 3 a.m., if you could just... In the... In the last... In that... In that context... In that last... Oh my God. David Feldman. I can't believe you just said that. Tuesdays and Fridays at 8 o'clock. It was... It's 3 a.m. 3 o'clock. But depending on... But it would be 5 o'clock in London. Oh, say Eastern Standard Time. Eastern Standard Time. Yeah. Not granted at your mean time. Yeah. You know, David... It's not... It's not international? Yeah. Okay. So, again, let's just stay focused here, if you don't mind. I was being sincere. Oh, okay. The show launches at 3 a.m. Mondays and Tuesdays. Eastern Standard Time. 3 a.m. 3 a.m. Yeah. So, okay. So, David says something funny. You're laughing, and then you want to say, oh, David, you're so funny. Tuesdays and Fridays, 3 a.m. Okay. David Feldman. I can't believe the things you say, consistently so funny. Tuesdays and Fridays at 3 a.m. I hope you can remember what you just did. Yeah, I can. Can you? Yes. Okay. And finally, he's going to say something that is probably provocative, and he's not going to expect you to laugh. And I just need you to say something like, wise, or... What do you think about that? Right. Okay. Okay. Oh, that's a great... That's a great... I've never thought of it from that perspective. That's... I'm going to have to think about that more when I go home, and that's a sign of a great show Tuesdays and Thursdays, Fridays at 3 a.m. We'll write that down for you. One final note that I'm going to bring David in, and don't be nervous. Okay. Yeah. You know, he's... Once you're booked, he wants you on the show. The things he said before to me. About not want. I'm in your corner. Yes. Cat Bemelman will always be in your corner. Yes. Especially when he's no longer working here, and he hopes you'll remember that because you're going to have... Cat Hopes, I wore? Oh, David as well. No, Cat Bemelman. Hopes. The person you're speaking to right now. No, I know that, but it's the pronouns you used, Cat Bemelman. Yeah. When discussing what you were just saying that threw me. Oh. You said Cat Bemelman hopes in the third person. Cat Bemelman speaks of himself in the third person often. Cat. Oh, it's a man. Your voice... Cat. Oh, it's Cat. Cat. Cat Bemelman. Cat. No wonder I confused your gender, and I'm even sitting right across from you. Why? Cat. Cat as in Andy Cap. Yes. P as in Pap. Yes. P as in Pap, yes. I do have an androgynous look. Most of the employees here at the day... But sexuality is fluid as well. You said comedy is fluid, and that's absolutely... Yes. So is sexuality. Yes. And so is... Aesthetics. And so Cat Bemelman is hoping that Jeanine will remember that he was in her corner when David was a little... Wasn't sure if he... Was agnostic at best. Yes, at best. So it's all about loyalty in this business. And obedience. And obedience, yeah. Anyway, David is very concerned about one thing. If he says something... When he says something funny, he would appreciate it if you don't say, is that yours, or did you just come up with that? Right. Or I remember something similar. Yeah. But I also signed on the way in at the door of the Confidentiality Clause, which I guess covers sort of the type of thing you're talking about. Not mentioning plagiarism or theft. Right. Or the hair trends. Or the hair trends. Or the hair trends. Don't mention the plugs. Yeah. And make eye contact with David. Don't let your eyes wander up towards the hairline because it makes him self-conscious. Well, what I tend to do is when I'm talking to people, when I'm uncomfortable, is I stare at their ear. Okay. But stare at his left ear. I'm doing it now. Oh, is that... That's stage right. His left ear, because the right ear has the hearing aid in it, and nobody's supposed to know. But they've made such strides that they can be so easily hidden now. He doesn't like to spend any money. Because I know that last time he had an ear horn. Yes. And he would do this a lot. Eh? Yeah. Which seemed a bit old-fashioned, yes, but it was very obvious to use the ear horn. He doesn't like to spend any money. Eh? Girlie? Mm-hmm. What's that? That kind of thing. So I was hoping he'd get maybe a cochlear implant or something like that. Yeah. Well, he's best friends with Rush Limbaugh, and he's trying to get Rush to give him the old coat. I feel so sorry for Rush Limbaugh's chair. I've always felt that seat that he sits in for hours doing that show. I feel so sorry for that chair. Yeah. So before I bring in David, is there anything you would like him to plug? And don't add that word. Anything you'd like him to transplant? No. Any gigs coming up that he should mention? Well, I'll be at the Portland Bridgetown 10th Anniversary Comedy Festival. Oh, don't bring that up, David. It was rejected. Okay. I'll be doing a play at the American Airlines Theater called Marvin's Room. Oh, don't bring that up. He's shooting. He doesn't get along with the theater. And Diane Keaton. Or the airline industry. Diane Keaton. And she was in that. Yeah. Ooh. Yeah. And American Airlines. Yeah. Can it be the United Airlines thing? Because then he can lead into a joke. Well, we don't have to talk about it all. Well, we can do Marvin's Room if he can say. He can say round about theater company. And then he'll say, well, say United Airlines instead of American, because that will lead him into his bit about the guy being dragged out. What about Ryanair? Ryanair. That's from Ireland. Okay. Oh, and then he can lead into an Erlingus-Cunnilingus pun. Right. Okay. Which I haven't heard anyone else do before. Really? By the way. Well, David was the first to do a Cunnilingus-Erlingus joke. Gosh, I thought it was Laura Kytlinger. Well, she steals from there. Back at Emerson University. Yeah. Don't bring up Emerson either, because David... Was rejected. Didn't get in. Well, he wanted to speak at one of the graduations. And they said, no thanks. They didn't even look at his tape. They had Dennis Leary do it. They had Dennis Leary do it. And David... He doesn't... By the way, David would be in sense that I'm bringing this up. But what he did is he decided he should do graduation speeches. That's a good... What's a lucrative thing? So he did an audition graduation speech at his kid's kindergarten. And it was... He knocked it out of the park. What was the theme? The theme was, you're on your own. Stop asking for things. Bootstraps. Time. And it was great, especially... And it's timeless in terms of age, because the six-year-olds... They were about to turn six. They got it. 18-year-olds, 22-year-olds, they would love this. From six to 60. From six to 60, except 52 for some reason. Well, that's a tough age. Yeah. The terrible 52s. The terrible 52s. I should know. That was last year for me. And I just... I'm just getting over it now. By the way, David is pushing 50. And so he started when he talks about the early days of stand-up, transpose the 80s to the 90s, please. Right. Just shifted a decade. Yes. But if he brings up certain references that are clearly 80s... His audience is stupid. So if you say Reagan was president in 1995, they'll go along with it. They're idiots. And Richard Belzer's impression of Ronald Reagan is also from the 90s then. Absolutely. Okay. All right. I think we're all set. I'll bring David in. Do you need anything? No, I'm fine. I brought some water from home. Okay. Hey, Janine. How are you? I'm good. How are you, David? Good. Thank you so much for doing this. That was such a fast... I didn't even see you come in. That was such a fast... Oh, yeah. Thanks, Cap. That's... Thank you, Cap. And I'm sorry. I thought it was Cat. Oh, no, no, no. It's Cap. Hi, Janine. I'm so glad you're here. Thank you. One of the reasons I'm here is to skip the next 20 minutes because I'm going to fawn all over you. Seriously. Be careful. I would just skip ahead to 20 minutes because... Is it really 20 minutes of fawning? I'm going to fawn for 20 minutes. That's a lot. I don't think you could... That's very kind of you, but I don't think there is 20 minutes worth of fawning. Yes, there is. Unless we do a loop. Or is it a gif, a vine, what is it, the kids? We have a lot of questions for you. Yeah, yeah. We have a yellow legal pad and I see the pen. And this is what we're not going to discuss because you were on the show last time. Right. We talked about... Actually, we talked a great deal last time at length about so many things. I am not going to talk about why I worship you and how you got the Iraq war right and I got it wrong. I'm not going to talk about that. I'm not going to talk about you being the mother of the alt comedy scene. That just isn't true. It is. It isn't true. I'm not going to talk about Abbey Hoffman. Right. Well, I'm sure he would prefer that you did Abbey Hoffman being a guy, the late Abbey Hoffman, who would love if we discussed him, but that's okay. But I may ask you about Abbey Hoffman. Okay. All right. Because I've been thinking a lot about Abbey. So will you forgive me if I ask you about Abbey Hoffman? Of course I will forgive you. It doesn't bother you. It doesn't bother me for you to ask about Abbey Hoffman. When you said me instead of you, or you instead of me... It was an accident. It means this is something that Terry Gross can't even do. We are at one. Right. Me is you. You is me. It's the eye contact. Yeah. We're there. This is going to be the greatest interview. We're on the same page. Yes. Literally. Yes. Who was Abbey Hoffman? Abbey Hoffman was a activist in one of the famous Chicago 8, I believe, the Chicago 8 trial that Jerry Lefkort, I believe, defended them. They were on charges of inciting, I guess, riot, or what's the exact word, at the Chicago Convention, 1968. But among other things, he was a guy who also had a group called the Mary Pranksters who would do kind of situationist happenings to get people's awareness up about politics and culture. He lived above the gem spa, mere steps from this apartment, where we are now. I didn't know that. Yes. He lived there with Anita for many years and they had a lot of sessions about their legal defense in that apartment above the gem spa on St. Mark's, corner of St. Mark's in second. He went underground for many years to evade the law and he was set up many times and had drugs planted on him to arrest him. One of the final times, he just went underground and then couldn't help himself and resurfaced again as an environmental activist in upstate New York many years under a different name and claiming to have had plastic surgery, but he didn't. He basically looked the same. He never stopped fighting for social justice, if you will. He also, with his wife, Anita, who died in the 90s and he has a son, America Hoffman, who looks exactly, exactly like him. I met America when we were shooting the Abby Hoffman film called Steal This Movie in Canada and it was absolutely uncanny. Most children are carbon. He also, at the time I met America, was probably 1920, 21 years old and dressed in kind of a cool vintage way with the same exact hair, the same voice. It was like looking at Abby Hoffman. It was a thrill to be involved in that project and Glenn Greenwald, who directed it, has gone on to do a great many documentaries and great new films. Glenn is a solid citizen activist, writer and a great guy. So I've been watching Don Rickles and Abby Hoffman on YouTube. I want to ask you about Don Rickles. The late Don Rickles. Yes, but I want to go back to Abby Hoffman. I get very sad watching him. It didn't, I guess he committed suicide because he suffered from manic depression, right? That's not one of those things where the family differs with Abby Hoffman. Whenever there's a suicide involved, that's a very emotional thing for people. Apparently there are some, his second wife being one of the, who will not sign off on that. It probably is true. It's just one of those things where I guess it's emotionally difficult for people to think that that would happen. But I would tend to think, yes. The world changed on Abby. I've been watching some of his last interviews. He was my hero growing up because I was entering puberty and he combined everything that I loved, which is humor, politics and being sexy. He was a very attractive guy and had a kind of carnal sexuality. I would say the accent and voice could throw you a little in the romance department. And academia. He was very, very bright. Very bright. He went to Tufts. He had a master's in psychology. And also dressed really cool. I have to say some of the Mary Prankster, and I mean no offense to anyone by this, some of the Mary Prankster stuff is not my thing humor-wise. But I take their point. Sometimes it's a bit broad for my taste. And also he was a guy who annoyed a lot of people and I guess famously was head over the head by a guitar at Woodstock when he wouldn't get off the stage talking and stuff like that. Pete Townsend, right? Pete Townsend, I think. He, I guess, could be real irritating to some people, but a vital, vital presence and a historical figure who more people should know about him if they don't. You played Anita. Anita Hoffman. Yes. When you write your biography. Which probably isn't going to happen. I'm not a strong writer and I don't have discipline and I don't know if it's that interesting, but thank you. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. And you're welcome. Abby Hoffman. I'm sorry? Vincent D'Onofrio played Abby Hoffman. And Gene Triplehorn played Johanna. Michael Sarah's first movie, he played our son America as a little, little boy. And oh my God, I can't believe his name, just. By the way, when you can't remember a name, it makes me very happy. But it's so crazy because I see him all the time and we are friends. But that's okay, you're making me happy. Oh my gosh. Just keep forgetting it. He's in so many movies too. It's killing me. Thank you. Thank you. Oh my gosh. Thank you. It makes me scared. This is happening to me more and more as I get older. He's in Goodfellas. He's in The Departed. He's got the black hair and kind of like a lazy way of talking. He played Jerry Rubin in Abby Hoffman. Oh, it's killing me. I've done his podcast like four times. Kevin Pollock. No, no, no. Kevin Pollock was at Kevin Corrigan. Kevin Corrigan. Yes, Kevin Corrigan was in it. That's an easy name to forget. Kevin Pollock. I'm starving. I'm starving. Thank you so much for that. And Kevin Pollock was in it. Yes. Right. Oh my God. And Donalogue. Oh. Yes, great actor. Yes. I'm searching Anita Hoffman. What are you learning that we're not learning about the yippies? What did you come away from that? You must have come away with some emotional insight that we never learned. And Tom Hayden. And I got, I got access to not only books and transcripts of conversations they had, but tapes, cassette tapes of conversations they had. I already was interested in that time period and I was already familiar with and interested in those people. I didn't know as much as I would come to learn. But and then also there were some things that, that became apparent, but it wasn't news to me that even sex, sexism still remained as the hierarchies are being changed, the women are still playing roles. But then again, these, these were young people who grew up mostly in the 40s and 50s. So it would be a big shift, you know, for them to be completely forward thinking. The women still mostly served in secretarial capacities, making coffee, and we're still trying to be attractive even in their kind of no makeup. We're all in this together kind of thing. There was mascara being passed around that kind of thing. And Abby irritate, there was a divide between the more intellectual Tom Hayden types and the SDS and the Port Huron statement types and Abby and some of the more drug influenced arm of that party, all of them very bright, all of them wanted the same thing. There was a divided how we were going to go about it. I think Tom Hayden and some of the others were a little bit embarrassed by Abby's hijinks sometimes and we're not as thrilled with some of the drug taking and drinking. But that's human nature. You know, that's just the, and there's always in any progressive movement, a million divides because of the critical thinking going on and the questioning was with conservatism as a rule and you've heard this phrase a million times, Democrats fall in love, Republicans fall in line. But in right wing circles, it's just obedience is prized above all else. And in liberal progressive democratic circles, thinking is priced more than that. I'm going to get back to it. Put a pin in that. I'm going to put a pin in that. There's not really much more I can say. But I wanted to ask you about Tom Hayden because we lost him last year. Yeah. And his son Troy, who's a great actor, he played Tom. Troy Hayden played Tom Hayden. Did he have, is that Jane Fonda's kid? Yes, with him. And he looks just like, you know, he's actually a handsome reverse of Tom Hayden. But Tom Hayden would come to the set and speak to us and teach us things. Strikingly beautiful man, Tom Hayden. In a way, because I interviewed him. I brought my son to interview Tom Hayden for the radio show. And you walk in there and he's got, he had this charisma and a nose. It was like Tip O'Neill's nose. It was. It was. And his son doesn't have that, but he has all the handsomeness without that. But I thought that nose of Tom Hayden's, I could see being Jane Fonda and falling in love with that nose. Well, it's very, it can be very virile. The nose, the proboscis, if you will, on a male, it doesn't work so well for the ladies. Right. That's, you know, although I would say in Barbara Streisand, it's quite beautiful. But I have, I remember reading once that historically in ancient Greece and Rome in Abyssinia, a large nose was a sign of virility in a man, that it was to be prized. Which is a great thing if you're the, the large nose person who came up with that. That is actually a great way to spin it. But I think it's true in men. I do find it attractive in a lot of men. He wasn't very... You can't take your eyes off of it. It is, it is a point of focus. I don't know that he would feel as great about it, but he certainly was comfortable in his own skin. That's a thing, you know, there's something about a person who not only has a lot of integrity, but is very, very comfortable in the skin. It's unusual when you meet a person who is seemingly anyway, 100% comfortable. And I met once when I had a radio show, Rob Halford of Iron Maiden, the band Iron Maiden. Right? Rob Halford, that's his name. I still don't know who he is, but go ahead. And I hope I'm right about that Iron Maiden. Hey, young kids out there, actually they're too young, but I'm sure there's people screaming in your audience going, of course it is or no, it isn't. But anyway, he's the openly gay, his look actually almost defined along with Freddie Mercury, the look of Rob Halford, metal gay, the studded like bears, you know what I mean? But he in the late 60s and 70s and 80s was not out. He's out now and he's an activist. I have never met a more comfortable in their own skin gentleman than Rob Halford in my life. He has the most attractive characteristics in a human being I've ever seen that ease of self because he must have gone through quite a bit of hiding who he was. Not only in the genre of music he was in, but the years he was born and raised into and in small town England where he's from. And Tom Hayden was comfortable. And Tom Hayden, to me anyway, that's what I, not only was I a fan of his anyway, but when he would come and speak to us on the set. I noted it back then because it's an unusual trait in people, even adults. But especially myself at the time I was probably 34, I can't really remember, maybe older, but still quite uncomfortable in my own skin, a heavy drinker still at that time. And a body odor that smelled of hummus. And hummus meets pennies. Hummus meets a handful of pennies. I don't know what, acrid, but that's how my sweat smells. I remember. I don't just smell it. It's true. I remember you said that and I just. And it's true. It's a, it's a, it's got a kick to it and pennies. Judas Priest. Oh my God. I knew I was wrong. Not Iron Maiden. Judas Priest. I had a hunch I was wrong. And I am so sorry. But how would you, you don't listen to that stuff. No, I don't listen to it, but they were hugely famous. I mean, even somebody who does not listen to it knows Judas Priest and Iron Maiden. And I am so sorry to your listeners who were screaming, because that's one of those things like when you watch Wheel of Fortune or something, and you're like, if you're not understanding what that phrase is, it makes you angry. And I, I'm so sorry, Rob Halford, Judas Priest, comfortable in his own skin. There, done. Okay. The times beat up Abbie Hoffman, the times really ruined. I like to think. His life, his children's life and his wife, his ex-wife and his, his second wife's lives. He also had a hand in making a mess of his personal life too. But the country did not move in the direction it was supposed to go. It did though. Here's the thing. And I'm actually very glad you brought that up because this conversation comes up a lot post the last election. The country has always been far more forward, always, than we are led to believe. Not only by our leaders, but by mainstream media. The country has been quite progressive since the 1920s in certain ways. And then there's a swing back, you know, the pendulum swings, but there's always much more progress in the country than it exists from the babies, the squeaky wheels, the right wing, the moral minority, always Jerry Falwell people, always the minority. That's why they have to pretend they're the majority and they have to pretend they're silent. They are anything but. They are the squeaky wheels that get the grease. And they tend to be those that are shown on mainstream media in the news and pundits and things like that with some exceptions. And I also don't believe a Republican, I've said this many times and people think I'm being silly, I'm not, has won honestly and legally for the present, most especially since RFK was shot. I not only rolling back of the Voting Rights Act, but gerrymandering, redistricting, dirty tricks, all vote stealing, because the country is not with them. Agreed. For the most part. And they don't have policies of benefit to you. So, but what they do have in their favor is the constant human resource of ignorance, apathy, cruelty, fear, anxiety, low information. That will always work in their favor and that'll never go away. But they don't have the majority of people, A, because the majority of people are nicer than they are, B, they're too busy to be concerned with some of the non-issues that Republicans claim to be concerned about. So I feel, and I think Republicans know this, that's why they need dirty tricksters and ratfuckers, pardon me, but that's their Nixonian phrase. And the Liatwaters and the Roger Stones and the Karl Rhoves and all in sundry, they have to have those people. They have to, because they don't have the majority behind them. They don't have policies or issues that benefit anyone. And also it's just blood sport for them. That's just their nature. That's why they are who they are. They like the Haldeman-Erlichmans shit. They like the Iran-Contra shit. They like it, turns them on, you know, the Sean Hannity types. But they haven't won legally, I don't believe, for a long time. So to your point, what you were saying, the country didn't move. Now, of course, the country didn't move as far as Abbey Hoffman would have liked it too. Well, before we get to Abbey Hoffman, I, first of all, thank you. No, thank you. Thank you for doing the show and thank you for what you just said. And I have to process what you just said. Because you said something. Should I sit silently? Are we sitting silently for a minute? Yeah, let me just think. Hang on, I want to process what you just said. OK, so as I understand what you're saying, there's an. I don't want to embarrass you, but there's something in your nose. No, you know, you're probably right about that. I don't want to know allergies at all. No, no, that that was jaw droppingly brilliant. I just want to make sure I understand what you're saying. Yes, there's a a narrative that we're moving to the right. Right, which is true in in in mainstream politics on the surface. On the surface, yes, that's true. Ever since 79, when Falwell got involved to help George Bush senior, even to the chagrin of Barbara and George Bush senior, who can't stand that evangelical nonsense, they're more intellectual than that. But they realized that the country is not. Republicans have a hard road ahead of them. They are losing the people as progress happens, as more. As it becomes more OK for LGBTQ issues, for more immigration, for more, more brown people as whites become less and less the dominant force. And just as time rolls on, what are you going to do? So it was a decision made in in in Washington. We need to pull in these evangelicals. We don't have the people, quote, unquote, we don't have the bodies, the votes. So what do we got to make common cause with these evangelicals who traditionally have sat it out or got involved in the civil rights movement and did us in the ass. What what their thinking was in 79, let's pretend we care about reproductive rights. Let's pretend we're upset about homosexuals. Well, just to let Jerry Falwell do all the dirty work, you know, that kind of stuff. We'll send out mailers suggesting that somebody has an illegitimate black child. We'll say, you know, we'll do all these things. We have to do them because we don't have the people and we'll steal if we have to. We'll lie. That's what one has to do. Now, that is not a conspiracy theory stuff. That's not ten foil hat stuff. That's business. And that's been going on since Washington had his emissaries pay people in beer. You know, this has been going on since humans were human. Right. And there will be no change in this until human the actual fabric of humanity changes. But power but power always seeks to consolidate power. That's just the nature. OK, so again, I want to stay on this for a second. So the problem I have, you're right. The problem I have, the personal problem that I have right now is when Trump became president, I lost interest in Washington, D.C. I lost interest in the inner workings because it's so unoriginal. It's I've seen it before. They're not smart. You don't have to be smart. And that's why it bothers me when Carl Roevis used to be called a genius or when Paul Ryan is called the intellect of the party. One need no intelligence whatsoever to be a dirty trickster, to be a liar. Now, whether they are or aren't, that is immaterial. They may be intelligent academically. Their emotional intelligence is low. That's right. There's no debate about that. They have very low emotional intelligence and very little empathy and nothing but contempt. Now, Donald Trump, on the other hand, is a useful idiot. He himself never thought this was going to happen. He didn't win. Let's be clear about that in the same way George Bush did not win. So it bothers me when people say he won. He didn't. The late Antonin Scalia installed George W. Bush and also would touch screen voting anomalies. John Kerry should have won that didn't. So, again, the people are not with with these right wingers. They have to do it that way. He won Ohio and Bobby Kennedy, Jr. had the smoking gun and Kerry wasn't interested. And that's that's the thing about Democrats. They're not fighters in that way. And they also know that they don't have the handmaidens in the media on their side and they know it's going to get rougher and dirtier if they fight for justice. Does that make sense? You know, I mean, it's because it is a blood sport. Especially Bobby Kennedy, Jr. Right, right, who is but he still right. He's he's seen the worst of and also Democrats by their nature tend to ease off for the sake of the country. You know, they think they're doing the country a favor. And Republicans will fight to the death to the detriment of the country. The Republicans cater to their base to the detriment of the country. Democrats ignore their base to the detriment of the country. If that makes sense. But the Donald Trump didn't win. But be that as it may, he himself didn't want to win. That look on his face that night is the most somber and in repose. You've ever seen that man because he himself was faced with. Oh, shit. You know what I mean? It's it's happened. I didn't want this. I wanted everything with the buildup. And then I wanted bragging rights to say I could have won. It was rigged, right? This was not supposed to happen. The only person who won out of this in some small way is Malinia because she doesn't have to live with it. I'm not being silly. I'm saying she caught a break there because that also wasn't supposed to go on. That you you understand the contract between those kind of marriages. You get in and get out. You know, you you you use each other for a time. You know, he gets a very beautiful young wife. She lives in a certain way. Then you divorce. And even though you signed a prenup, you do take you do walk away with your son and some money and you know, money for the child. Now that was taken off the table. Also, when he started to run again, he's run before. But that was really half-assed. And when he won, now you've got to stay the first lady. But defying history. Well, I'm going to stay in New York because my son's in school here because as we know, he couldn't possibly go to a good school in Washington. But she's negotiate. How can I survive this? Because being married to him has got to be a terrible, terrible thing. She she really bet on the wrong horse and really screwed up. I don't have sympathy for that. But I do have sympathy for her living with him. But she doesn't have to know. She gets to stay in New York pretending it's about their boy who also benefits from not being raised by him. And how healthy is it for him to be alone in the White House this way? Well, nothing is healthy about this, you know what I mean? But he may he may have that type of thing that George W. Bush had of don't tell me. I don't want to know George W. Bush is the only president in history to have increased his muscle mass. Well, that's true while in office because he worked out a great. You know, I did did other things. Now, the look on his face on September 11th was, oh, shit, now I got to do stuff or pretend to. You know what I mean? That was that seven minutes. But still, Cheney and those guys did everything and he didn't want to know what he didn't know. Does you know what I mean? That's why he wouldn't read the briefings and stuff. And that's why Donald Trump doesn't he doesn't want to have to do stuff. Now, his ego is different from George W. Bush's, though. So he gets involved more and he tweets. There's a lot of things wrong with Donald Trump. There's a great deal of narcissism mixed with self loathing, fear mixed with ego, all the deadlies that that are not unusual for somebody who is a CEO or a or a Napoleon of sorts. But if only you could just get a summer camp, a lot of little Napoleons by summer camps. What? As a kid who grew up going to different summer camps, I noted that all this usually male person who runs this camp has a philosophy and an ethos and a way that we act and the t-shirts that we wear and rules. And they seem like little Napoleons, you know what I mean? And they want some for good and some for L, you know what I mean? They have some have a utopian vision, some are more dystopian. But I noted that growing up in the law. I'm sure a lot of people who went to summer camp for most of their childhood and into young adulthood will tell you the same thing. Yeah, they're a real stickler for that. You know what I mean? They have a credo and songs and and jingles that you espouse. Slow down for one second. So that's what Donald Trump should have done. Hang on for a minute. Yeah. I didn't go to summer camp. And one of the bones of contention in my family was they all the whole family would go to a performing arts camp. And I wouldn't family camp, family camp. I would. Are you crazy? But you're saying that these Napoleons create a situation where everybody's relaxed. Everybody's out in the woods. You're on vacation. Oh, I don't know about relaxed for some of them. But there is a vision for not all the time. I'm saying sometimes a lot of times. It's bohemian growth, especially bohemian growth, especially in the late 60s, 90s, 70s. When I started going to camp, there was a type of a seeker, a person who dropped out of mainstream society. That person and their spouse would buy a camp, right? It's different now, obviously. Things were different back then of the way people see things, you know, more crunchy granola camps. And there wasn't as a kid, there wasn't the fears that it is now. And of course, you didn't have the phones and the and the wealth of some kids kind of camp. And even if you did have the wealth, it wasn't as ostentation and materialistic. It was much more roughing and like bare bones. But there was a society of sorts at this camp. And a lot of times with camps, you go to the same one year after year. And then there's counselors in training and then some who go on to be counselors and then work at the camp in some capacity. These are people that are indoctrinated into a ways of this camp. It's a cult. And some if it's more utopian, it's not a bad cult. It's about recycling and eco friendliness and friendship and citizenship and all these. If it's a good camp and learning to live, do things that you would learn in Girl Scouts or Boy Scouts or something like that, survival tips, first aid things, just being out in nature. What it strikes me now when you think of camps is there's probably more security, the lack of security back when I was younger. You're putting kids in the woods, in cabins with no doors, you know what I mean? And rural, rural settings with teenagers in charge. Now, nothing bad happened. I don't recall, and me, I'm sure these things, bad things happened. But when we were shooting Wet Hot American Summer of the Film in 2000 at Camp Tawanda in East Tonesdale, Pennsylvania, which is a great camp. One night, just apropos of nothing, because we were up late, and this wasn't when camp was in session. A drifter made their way onto this rural campsite. And I remember that one of the, I think it might have been AD Miles or Ken Marina, one of the actors woke up Mitch, the owner of this camp, who immediately woke up and took care of it. But that's what I'm saying, for children, you know, anything can happen. It doesn't, for the most part, and there are so rural sometimes, it would be hard for a drifter to, and how this guy made it to this camp, although this one wasn't as rural as some, and it was the year 2000. Were you protected growing up? Did your parents protect you? Yes, very, very sheltered in certain ways. You had a conservative father. But I grew up in a lovely town in New Jersey, Madison, New Jersey, and again, these are a different time. My parents were very, very hands-on, put it that way. But also in the late 60s, early 70s, there was, okay, go play in the woods, because we lived near woods. You don't, that's it, that's your directive. You play in the woods until dinner time at six. That's how I grew up. And then in summer, you go out after dinner again and you go play until whatever your curfew is. And that's it, that's the role. And these are very good hands-on parents, you know. But it wasn't the way it is now. It's probably unusual to say go play in the woods to a kid now. Right, I grew up and it was go play in the woods and then there was a cow bell that my mother would ring. And we knew there was time to come in. We didn't have a cow bell, but the Lawlers did. But we had dinner at six, like clockwork. Dinner at six, you just home at six. From playing, and then you go play, and then as you probably did, you go to somebody's house, can so-and-so come out and play, you knock at the door and you stand on the porch and wait. And also there was more of like, a lot of parents take care to keep their eye on the kid. So bad things obviously happened because my generation grew up and said, don't play in the woods. Well, there's two things there. Bad things obviously happened and have since the dawn of time. That's again the nature of humanity. It wasn't discussed back in the old days. Also, it is in the media's interest to pretend things are worse than they are. We're actually much safer. Then we've ever been, there's surveillance everywhere and crime is down in lots of cities. Not all, not all certainly, but in lots of major cities in New York included. Suburbs are safer than they were in the 70s and 80s in a lot of ways. What is different is the degree of alarm, the degree of fear, the degree of peer pressure to be a helicopter parent. And also the worst case scenario being on your mind all the time and access to Dateline and local news and anything, which is just tragedy after tragedy after tragedy. Even though terrible things were happening to kids all along, it seems like in my times, and also I will say there is the added factor of more avenues toward perversion to be witnessed on your computer or television that can send for the most part young boys. The most part. So not always boys. So my father and mother, depression, which they suffered from and lived through World War II. The Dust Bowl, the Depression and World War II. Life is tough. Walk it off. I'll try to give you the, I'm not glorifying the way I was raised. Everybody's miserable, but the message was life is tough. Grow a pair. Don't make life difficult for anybody else. Make sure you're not making life difficult for anybody else, but life is difficult. Do you think that ethos is being instilled in my children specifically? It depends. It's a long class lines, as it always has been. I would say new immigrant communities coming in all the time, it is hard and they are as, have it as tough as anybody in the Tenement Museum. You know what I mean, in their own way. Do they have an advantage over other kids then? I would say in some ways, there's the advantage that is taken from the message within that you understand things are gonna be tough and they're hard and you work harder and you don't have access to as many things as easily. That's probably a good thing. Now, I don't like sweeping narratives. It doesn't matter who you are or where you're from. You can have good and bad both. You can have hard workers who have had every advantage and lazy people who haven't and vice versa. There's no hard and fast rules about that because there are some people in my peer group who grew up with everything who worked so hard and some people who don't. And then people I've met over the years who had nothing growing up and don't work as hard. So there's not that fast. Is there a universal unifying theory that you can say there's no nuance on? Is there something? Yes, the phrase my mom always used to say if you clean your bathroom every day, you never have to clean your bathroom. That's brilliant. Yes. And you can apply that to a million things. If you clean your bathroom every day, which I do, you never have to clean your bathroom, although one could say, well, you're cleaning it every day. But the thing is you just are, you don't have to do a big clean or panic if somebody comes over and your bathroom's not clean. And if you take stock every day as you go, like if you make a meal, clean it up right in the moment. Don't leave it. Don't put off what you can do. Move toward action. Now I am not good at moving toward action in many, many, many ways, but in tidiness in my apartment, I do live by the, if you clean your bathroom every day, you know, I have to clean your bathroom. Now in my parents case, both grew up poor in the Bronx. They overcompensated with us. And we were your garden variety, ungrateful, slothful kids. I regret that a great deal. And I have a million times apologized to my father and I paid him back for, he sent me to college. That was paramount in my parents' mind. My mom didn't go to college. My dad was the first to get past the eighth grade. They were also of a generation thought, if you go to college, you're all set. You know what I mean? Only longshoremen and what, you know, the people that aren't going anywhere don't go to college because it was paramount to them. And they didn't understand that it either does or doesn't help you out. And if you have ungrateful children who drink their way through college, doesn't mean anything, you know? But I did pay my dad back for sending my mom had passed away by then, but it was vital to them. They did everything. They both worked and gave us everything they shouldn't have. They should not have. I'm not criticizing them. They just, they wouldn't have expected that their kids would wind up. Now, luckily, my siblings have gone on to be wonderful parents. I will give them that. They have gone on to be, they vote wrong. They're Republican. And I wish that wasn't the case, but they are wonderful parents and they did get that from my parents. All right, so I wanna ask you about narratives and comedians. Sweeping and other narratives. Sweeping and narratives, yes. You mean in the political arena or just in life? Both, both in life. I hate talking about comedy. I do, it's just, I live it. I breathe it. And I'm finding that the more I walk away from talking about comedy, the more truths there are that drag me back to comedy. You know, Alex- Do you mean stand-up comedy specifically? Specifically, you know, Alex Brazil, who runs the studio. I've met him, yes. Wonderful apartment, has a back deck. And he's a powerful- And a Japanese toilet. Yes. And he's the producer of the show and he is fascinated by stand-up comedy. But, you know, you know me. There comes a point in a person's life when, yes, I, so, okay, stand-up comedy. We were in the car today and this is my theory now about us. I think we deal in absolute truths as stand-up comics. Don Rickles just died and I'm obsessed with Don Rickles. I think he, I mean, before he died, I was obsessed with Don Rickles. I think the more I watch him on YouTube, the more I'm beginning to realize this guy, like a hundred years from now, they're gonna watch this guy because it's inexplicably funny. It is, and also he was a very good actor. He was great in casino. He was inexplicably funny. Things that shouldn't have been as funny as they were and also wouldn't in somebody else's mouth be as funny. It's the way he did it. But then also, once you are validated as such, as a person who does this and it works, then people want you to do it. They want you to say these things to them and they look forward to it. You know what I mean? He just was the master of it. And he addressed, like you and I are talking and there is something here between us. There's something. I don't even wanna know what it is, but there's this elephant in the room. I am not interested in what the elephant in the room is and I don't wanna bring it up if I find out what it is. Don would find that what is the elephant in the room and I will kill it. Right. But also it was said with oddly no vitriol. Right. You know what I mean? It was said, he doesn't believe that about you. It's almost affection. It's almost a treat to have him call you out on something. So let me ask, cause I do have a question. Yes. Okay. Watching him, there is a truth when he's on with Carson or Letterman and he's totally in the moment and he just smells some truth that you shouldn't speak and he speaks it and the place explodes. Right. And I've been thinking about this and I think that comedians, stand-up comedians deal with a truth about themselves. When they're good. There's plenty of stand-up comedians that deal really with nothing. I agree with you when somebody who is doing it, or not even good, but going to be good. You know what I mean? If they are dealing with truths about themselves or about society. And how they're perceived. Yes, and how they're perceived. Then there's some that I still don't understand why they're doing, sometimes you see them as MCs or openers or even headliners who seem not connected to the material. And I don't believe a word they're saying. Okay, you're one of the great stand-ups. I'm not one of the great stand-ups. Yes, you are. I am not. But thank you for saying that, but I am not. As Barry Crimmons would say, take the compliment. I will take it. Take the fact. Take the fact. That's nice. Take the truth. I aspire to be better than I am. There are some nights where I am okay with what I've done. Take the truth. But I feel like in general, I am not a great comment. But thank you. And there is a, well, anyway, you've spawned a... I didn't. You did. There was a lot of people doing that kind of thing. It's just that I happened to be standing in the right place at the right time and for some reason got focused. All right. I don't know why. But that's not my question. But thank you for the compliment. So as a great comedian, you deal with a truth about yourself. The audience told you things about yourself that were painful for you to admit to yourself, but you were desperately trying. I'm talking about myself. Yeah, yeah. There were real truths about me and how I was perceived and how I came across. And I went out every night and the audience told me who I was. Warts and all. And the choice was hide from this or keep doing it. And I kept doing it. When I'm dealing with other people who are not stand-up comics, this is what I'm discovering, especially now. They have several narratives going on in their head and they move and combine these narratives to perpetuate the untruth about themselves. A version of themselves? The version of themselves that they can live with and no matter what truth you throw at them, they will go into their head and get some narrative going and then throw it back at you to justify their untruth. I think there's people that do that in life all the time. Yeah. No matter what they're voting for. Would you say that because you're a stand-up comic, you can't do that and you know what the truth is about you? I don't know that's a complex question. There, I feel like about 10. We're pretty honest. You walk into a room, hang on for one second. You walk into a room. I know, I mean, we're not close, but we're close in a way. We did have, remember though? Yes. Remember when I sit? Don't bring that up. Oh, is it, are we being recorded? No. Did we start the show yet? No, no, and it was cold that night. Oh, you're saying it was utilitarian, the purpose of it. Yes. So the point I'm making is you walk into a room and you are, we know how Janine is doing and all the pressure lifts because I know what you need and who you are. Do you mean walking into this room like today? Yeah. When I came over or you're saying on stage? All the time, on stage, off stage. Janine enters a room, she walks on stage and we know how she's feeling and more importantly, what she needs. And I think you're dealing with the truth. I need validation. Yeah, but you're dealing with the truth about yourself. Yeah, I would say, what I was gonna say about, I started doing it when I was 19, I was a junior in college. I would say it took about 10 years in of doing it before I felt, oh, that's me, I mean, I'm being me. Now, having said that, then there are some, there is footage of me in the mid-90s when I did a half hour special, I was like, that's not me, I was so self-conscious. Even though if it wasn't being filmed, it would have been different. But when I've seen little bits and pieces of things that were filmed of me doing stand-up, I'm like, oh no, I'm so self-conscious that I am being a person that is not me. I'm being almost like, I'm too cool for school. You know what I mean? And sometimes not looking up and speaking in kind of a deadpan deeper voice than his mind and it shames me terribly. I hate it. What a squandered, what a waste. You know what I mean? And I hate that it's out there to whatever degree it's out there. What goes on with a young comic? I know that when I was starting out and doing television, I would see, it was very painful as a man to see what I look like or to think that. Oh, I hate that. To think, and then I'd be saying, why, okay, television supposedly doesn't lie. The camera does nothing but lie in certain sense, in certain sense, but now with the HD, I wish it would lie. And that's crazy, there's, I wish it was dishonest because nobody needs that much clarity. It looks horrible, I hate HD, but. So I would look at myself and I'd say, I'm a homunculus, why would any woman wanna be with me? I should be, I'm John Merrick, I should walk around with a potato sack over my head. That's how I feel too. And then the next day I said, let me look at that again. And I go, well, that's not bad, I mean, that's. Well, I don't look at it. Like I said, I can, with all this distance, if there is, everyone's doing late night on Comedy Central, they'll show old specials, like I'm talking about four o'clock in the morning. And if I have channels, sir, cause a lot of times I am awake and I enjoy sometimes late night watching, like QVC, infomercials, they make me laugh. Just almost a horrendous television I like to watch or on cozy TV or me TV Simon and Simon reruns or stuff like that, I just enjoy it. And sometimes I'll be channel surfing and Comedy Central will be showing clips of me or other comics in my peer group from 92, 93, 94. And I can, with this many years, look at it, cause that's a very young, but in my very fat person who is also uncomfortable being filmed. Be that as it may, I don't mind looking at a younger version of myself. I don't think it's attractive, but it's like, oh, look it, that's what your face used to look like cause it's different. Now I can't stand it and when I loop or do ADR, you know, when you go in and for whatever reason, the sound in a scene didn't work or something like that. And they put a big image of you on a screen and you have to do your dialogue and sync with it. I can do it with my eyes closed. I am a master of looping, so I can get in and get out. I cannot look at me. It ruins my day. It makes me very, very unhappy. When people show me a picture of me, cause when they take a picture, they have to turn it around and show, I try and look away from the phone. I hate confronting not only my physical appearance, but the aging process in general. And whose fault is that? I've always been like that. But whose fault is it? Because I'm like that. My own? Is it? It's a waste of time. It's another form of narcissism I guess. But is it control that the culture, I mean, it's a cliche to say this, but if you, and this leads to my next question, as I understand it, you don't have a cell phone or you have an old- I have a cell phone, yes. I don't have a smartphone. You don't have a smartphone. I don't have email. I don't use a computer. But that has nothing to do with me hating the way I look. Okay, this is the question I have. The cliche is Madison Avenue wants us to look at their ads. The underarm, the owner and salesman on Madison Avenue. To me, that's, if you ever do a sketch, that's what a cliche, like a Lenny Bruce hack. Hey, the underarm, the owner and salesman on Madison Avenue wants you to think. That seems like some, that's a classic line. It's a cliche that they want us to feel fat, too thin, too thin, whatever. Let's just business. They don't move product unless you feel this way about yourself. And my question to you, Janine Garofalo, Yes, David Feldman. If you had a smartphone and a good TV like Netflix, Oh, I don't have Netflix, but man, I was just, when I was doing this movie, Upstate, the house I was staying in had Netflix. Oh, I saw, not only am I an Anglophile, but a river, the Netflix series, starring Stellan Sarsgard and Nicola Walker, a great Australian series called Rake. Also, a British series called Marcella. I was, oh my gosh, Netflix is the best. So are we proving the hacky premise in that if you had Netflix and weren't subjecting yourself to commercials, if you had a smartphone and you had ad blocker, Madison Avenue would be. Oh no, that's got nothing to do with it. I don't want to look like some of the ad people. That doesn't move me, the thing. I also don't do things to my body and stuff that I guess one, you know, that we're supposed to do. I've never been that overly concerned. I don't buy labels. I don't care about what's in and out of fashion. None of that stuff. I'm not moved in that way. I have since childhood, disliked what I've seen in the mirror. It's garden variety, it's that simple or that complex. And yet, the boys have shown up today. No, no, no, that's different. The boys showed up today. A boy or two showed up today to listen to this interview. They never show up. But that, I can't explain that, but that has nothing to do with a physical appearance that may or may not have something to do with something I've done or who they think I am. And I am not even sure that's why they're here. That's just what you say. I'm not gonna sign off on that. But growing up and the great bulk of my life, there was no male interest to say you are. Now my parents would tell me I was a beautiful girl, but that doesn't count and actually it's worse because it seems, you know what I mean? Like you're a beautiful girl. Get your hair off your face. You know that everybody's parent would say that. And again, this is not poor me. I'm just trying to answer your question. And this is garden variety. Just garden variety nonsense. Not liking the way one looks. That's not unusual. As I got older, the only time there was interest from males was after I started getting some degree of success. Now I'm not saying that's inherently a bad thing, but it is what it is. And that's an unusual dynamic for my generation. For men, I'm talking about, I'm 58. So my generation, guys were threatened by successful women. Not all, but is that a fair, right. Some still aren't, some aren't. This would be a certain type of gentleman too. I mean, I had access to more male attention that I had. I, and to me, so some of my first real relationship started around when I was 27, when I started being on TV. But I emotionally, it was like a 13 or 14 year old. I didn't have the current, it was like new to me. I have a boyfriend, you know what I mean? And I was sort of aware of it at the time. Like I'm very much behind here in how the genders relate and sexual politics and all this kind of stuff. And that's where again, my drinking increased because I was not comfortable being a sexual person at all. It was unusual. And also my libido, I've discussed this before, it is very, very low. It always has been, it just is. That's just my nature. And so I never was particularly moved by sexuality or interested in that, but it was newish at 27 to me to have multiple suitors and have multiple sexual partners. It was enjoyable, but a lot of alcohol was involved in that. Now it wasn't all male, there still was a difference between the males that were attracted to me and the males that were attracted to the leading lady types, does that make sense? So I always was aware of that. There is a difference. And then there was also some, without getting into details, and it's just, I say this only out of interest, a number over the years of very known males who I slept with, but who would not have dated me out in the world, does that make sense? I was not to be photographed with as their girlfriend. They had different tastes in women in their private lives than they did in their public life. Their public girlfriends were what you would expect, exactly what you would expect. In private, some of these gentlemen loved, kind of like comedy women or punk rock women or artsy fartsy women. Did they save it? No, didn't have to, it was very clear. And I was complicit in this. And this is nothing I'm ashamed of or nothing that makes me sad. I'm just telling you, even when I had male attention, it was comedy guys, you know what I mean? The guys that liked comedy or who would have gone after Catherine O'Hara or Andrea Martin. And I tend to think, oh, that shows good taste. You know what I like? But they're still, and even those comedy, there still is a premium put on a certain look of female. And I didn't say that. Let me process this. There's nothing to process it. It's nothing shameful and nothing. No, there's a truth to it that I need to, I apologize, but so there are guys who, this is in the 90s. This doesn't happen anymore. No, I do think it happens. I think. No, no, no, I mean, I'm older now. What's weird is now that I'm older, very young, when there's male attention, it's interesting. It's very, very young guys who seem to be intrigued by older women and they're flirtatious in a strange way. But certainly not males, my own. Well, I think younger men are better than I think they've been raised properly. But when they get to be older, they're no longer going to want older women. That will stop. How do you know that? It's something that is, that's also, some movies have been made about it. Some are 42. In order to. There's always been a thing about the, or last picture show, Bob Downer, which is from Clarice Leachman, Timothy Bottoms, there's always been that. Do you know what I mean? But once the male is age commensurate with the older lady, that is no longer appealing than it's younger women. And that's not a criticism. I understand why people are attracted to younger people for very many reasons, not just physical, but emotional how they view on life and things that have happened to them. Why am I attracted to women my own age? Cause you're cut above, Dave. No, seriously. No, no, no, I don't know. My shrink says it's abnormal. It is abnormal. If you look at, if you hear, if stories are to be believed or dating sites are to be believed or your peer group is to be believed. My friend, and just one example, my friend, Mary Beth, who's been one of my closest friends since college, she is divorced. She's my age, 53. She will always encourage me to participate with her in these dating sites, just to see. I don't sign on, but I go travel with her through these things. When she puts her age for real, the amount of interest drops precipitously. She's an attractive person. When she says her age and when she doesn't photoshop the pictures and stuff. Oh my God. And it's men and men who are older than her and her age and very close to her age, they have their limits about, they'll even say in their profile, interested in any woman from 25 to 35. That's about the extent of it, 35. Now, like I said, it is natural to be attracted to younger people. More, they're lovely young people, just by the virtue of them being young. And it also brings one back to a time. You know what I mean? Like the remembrance, there's a nostalgia to it, a sentimentality. And it's also just sexier. That's not so unfortunate, but that is basically the reality. A 25-year-old is going to be a bit sexier and nicer to look at than a 55-year-old. It would be nice to bite into a woman named Madeline and have some remembrances of, but I have two things about this. Bob Saget, I'm not violating a trust because we all love Bob. There isn't anybody on the planet who doesn't love Bob Saget and there's a reason he and Don Rickles were best friends. And I was getting divorced and I said, he says, well, who are you dating? Who are you dating? Come out with me, come out with me, come out with me. I'm going, you know, you tend to attract a certain age group and they're my daughter's age group and I can't do that. And he says, what age group do you like? I said, well, you know, I kind of like women my age. She goes, you know, I can take you to the LA County morgue. Why are they dead in their fifties? They live longer than men. He says, well, we'll clean the marble slab, but I have a friend and... Well, I can see in the long term, I have a lot of, I think it makes much more sense to be age commensurate and if you're going to have a long-term relationship, if you're having a one night stand, okay, you know, I can see, but I don't have a great deal of respect for males or females who skew much, much younger. I think it speaks volumes about them and not in a positive way. My shrink said to me, I can't give his name, but I have a great shrink, 17 years. We're coming up on our anniversary, I hope I remember it. I think it's leather. He said to me, when I was still married, he would say, and I would never cheat, but he said to me when the writing was on the wall, he said, if you're gonna have an affair, and I didn't, but he said, if you're gonna have an affair, make sure it's with a very young woman. And I said, why? He said, a woman in your age bracket will make, it'll be the Rubicon, there'll be no turning back. You need a young woman to feel sorry for you, give you sex, break your heart, walk away. She's got the whole world in front of her. You do not wanna get involved with somebody while you're married with somebody. Right, well, it'll be a similar thing. It would be like, if you get involved with somebody aged commensurate while you're married to a person aged commensurate, it's gonna be quite similar. If you get involved with a very young person, it's a thrill, it will be exciting, and then you'll see why it probably wouldn't work out in the long term. I also, I have a libido, but I don't shrink, and I can't imagine committing adultery. I don't believe sex is so pure that you can't stop in the middle of sex and think, oh my God, I'm cheating on the mother of my children. I just don't believe that sex- Oh, I'm sure that happens all the time and people wash it away with drugs and alcohol, or just their own mind, they're able to put it aside. At least- I mean, your mind wanders when you're having sex. Right, well, after you have an orgasm, and pardon me if this is vulgar, there's that depression that can hit if you're doing something that is, maybe you shouldn't be doing, but you can hang in there until after that happens, but then it's doubly depressing. One must confront whatever it is one is struggling with. Meryl Marko was on the show about three weeks ago. She said to me that, for some reason, humans cannot have sex without it being complicated. I don't know if that's true. I think there's people who do it all the time. They have sex- For both parties. I think that there are some people, especially with the new dating apps and things that exist, there are some that are straight ahead just for one-night sense. And definitely in the LGBTQ community, if I'm understanding things correctly, there is, especially with the males, very much a premium put on, no strings, one, and what do you think the glory hole's about for Christ's sake? You know what I mean? Like talk about it. Oh, I'm sorry, I thought I covered that up. Yeah, what is that about? That glory hole keeps staring me in the face. Somebody better put their dick through it. It's just unrequited glory hole, but what could be more like no strings than that? Do you know what I mean? The public restrooms scenario, but there's plenty of men and women who are, that's what they want is a no strings attached and they mean it. I think there's a lot of great many people who are quite capable of it. Now if you are doing it and you're still confronted with that person, if they're still coming in and out of your life, that may complicate things. Or if you're a drama king or queen and you want some drama, you'll convince yourself there's some strings. But the problem is within fidelity, which is like 90% of marriages, 90% of people in marriages deal with infidelity. That's just, we live to the age of like 90, 100 now. It's difficult, monogamy is difficult for anyone, but for years and years and years and years and years. And also people are interacting with more and new and different people all the time. In the old days, maybe they weren't as much. And also I think infidelity can be fine. If it helps the marriage, then it's helpful. It has made some people realize, I don't want to lose this. I think it can work. I've never been married, so I don't know. But I have been with the same gentleman for 17 years and we had an open relationship in the beginning for many years and that's why I think we're still together. And I think also the reason we're monogamous now is we quit drinking together. You know what I mean? All bets were off. I quit drinking in 2001. He quit a few years after that, a couple years after that. But when we were both heavy drinkers, forget it. You know what I mean? Like there was no telling. I've talked about this on the show. I quit drinking in 88 and I was already borderline married and that's one of the reasons I quit drinking because I was on the road. And I thought, this is not gonna be good if I continue to drink. Now I'm pretty much single and I'm sober, single and sober. I don't know how anybody would do that. I mean, if I, I'm not into it. And even if Pete and I were to break up, it doesn't bother me to be alone. I have no fears of old age by myself. I don't believe I would go back into the world of trying to find someone because it's not, it doesn't move me that way. But if I did, I would have to start drinking again. I can't imagine. I'm so glad you said this to me. I can't imagine. You're the only person who's- I could never in a million years meet somebody not for drinks. For on a first day, I don't know this person and I'm meeting not for drinks. That's crazy. Thank God for room fee. It would make no sense to me. Or I'd have to get into pills, something. There would have to be some or smoke, pot again, whatever it is. There's no way I could go into this sober and no way I could be sexual for the first time at this age after all these years. Absolutely not. There's no way that drugs or alcohol would have to be involved. And is it because drugs and alcohol is a safety net? So the next day you can say- No, no, no. I don't care about the next day. I mean, if you're asking about me at my age now and dating, I have no guilt in it. There'd be nothing I would be guilty about if I was a single person. So there would be no need for the next day thing. So it's not a safety net for that day. I guess you could say it's a safety. Oh, it's insurance for that night that A, I can be more easy going. If this is not going well, I could tolerate a hell of a lot more anti-intellectual conversation because I'm kind of buzzed. And I could get undressed if I'm wasted. So to me, it's just insurance that it's gonna go smoothly. There's not gonna be a problem the next day unless I have a hangover. Then that's just basic, like, ouch, my head hurts. So I'm just thinking personally that for me, any woman who would have a one night stand with me would need alcohol to explain away what she agreed to. Why? It involves hats. Uh-huh, like the one you're wearing now? No, yes. Are you saying it involves role-playing? You were just being self-deprecating, which I'm not gonna allow you to do in that. So if we're being serious, because I would like to hear what you have to say about this, and I'm sorry to get tough with you, David. No, no, get tough, get tough. I'm sorry to get tough with you, David. But really, this cannot be born. There are a great many women would be involved with you. I know you know this deep down, and now I accept that we don't like the way we look, but you must know that you're an interesting conversationalist. Yeah, I have women, you know, I don't have the moves down. You don't need to. Well, I do. What are the moves, what are the moves? Because there's no alcohol involved. So this is the only problem I can see, is that there's no problem of alcohol. And I also don't like women. In general? Yes. That's the problem, and I like men. They're filthy. I like men. Well, now here, let's just get that out in the open then. It's 2017. Well, why can't, as Rex Harrison say, why can't a woman be more like a man? I don't know, as Gord Vidal would say, and I said it earlier, sexuality is fluid. Now, a lot of people mistake me for gay and Jewish. I've told you this before, to which I say thank you, because it makes me seem far more interesting and textural than an asexual atheist. I am neither a Jew nor gay. And then a lot of people, I think, over the years have thought I was gay because they find me to be kind of man-ish. You know what I mean? Not the most feminine person in the world. I don't see that, but go ahead. But that assumption has been made about me, and whether it has to do with the function of the stand-up comedy or my behavior, I don't know what it is, but it doesn't bother me. I often used to think life would be easier if I was gay. You know, it'd be much easier for me to be sexual with a female. But the reality is I'm not attracted to females. I'm not criticizing them. What do women find, I'm being serious. I'm not looking for a comedy bit. This is the God's honest truth. I wish I were gay, because I, because I like penises, I like kissing men, I like back rubs, I like talking to men. I don't like, I'm not sure. So if you're being serious. No, I'm just kidding. Oh, I took you at your word. There's nothing wrong. I was gonna say why didn't you? No, no, no, that was my defense mechanism. Oh, you sold it very well, and I thought you... Well, that's what I do, Janine. Right, but you were saying truth be told. Oh, well, that's, but you don't have it. You quantify it characteristically. I suck you in. No, the point I'm making is I do wish I were gay, because I find that women... I am surprised by how heterosexual I am, in all seriousness. I am amazed by, now that I'm pretty much divorced, how I gravitate to women. And that if people say to me, if a guy goes to me, you wanna go out tonight? I go, no. If a woman wants to have dinner or something, yes, absolutely, even if, you know, no sex, just talk, I just wanna be around women. And I'm surprised by that, and I'm surprised by how powerful the urge is, you know, the other stuff, the libido. Why are you surprised by this? Well, because it's powerful, you know, and it's something that when you're married for a long time, you tamp it down. Right, but also, I think you tamp it down in some ways, but also it gets lost in the day-to-day quotidian, day-to-day, as someone who's been in a 17-year relationship, that is not the prime mover for us anymore. We're closer than we were before, oddly, but neither of us are eager to have sex with each other. After 17 years, it's difficult, it's difficult to keep it interesting. And so our desire for one another in the sexual realm is almost nil, but we are best friends. We really are, we are very, very good friends and highly compatible living. So what is it? Let me ask you a question, I'm being serious. But I am sexually attracted occasionally to other men, and usually the ones that I've not met at all, I just see them and there's flashes of like a visceral thing. Okay, so I need to understand something, because all my reading tells me the following, that women... You're using sweeping narratives again. Yes, that women are not into one-night stands. That's just not true. All right, this is what I... They're not into one-night stands with somebody they actually like, they're fine with them if they're not interested in going forward. But also don't forget, there's always the push and pull. Whoever displays like first, the other will respond by pulling away. That's it, and doesn't matter what the gender is. If it tends to be in a lot of relationships, especially when you're younger, it's very rare when two people are on the same, same page the next day, despite the intensity of the night before a lack thereof. If, even if the guy was very, very interested in this girl, if the girl displays a strong interest or what is perceived as neediness or cleanness, the guy will tend to back off, the same for females. If the guy appears to be a little too like, what do you want to do now? Do you want to go to breakfast? The female will tend to pull off, even if they were going to be on the same page. I don't know why that is, but that just tends to be the way it is. Don't overplay your hand right away, wait and see. And then also, there's plenty of relationships that shouldn't last as long as they do, but there's a constant push-pull of somebody liking somebody more in it. And that keeps the other person interested. It's almost like a science project, because you want to be validated by that person who seems not to like you or who is ambivalent. It's not real, but it drives a lot of relationships. But women aren't interested in one-night stands until they are, just the same way. And men aren't interested in one-night stands unless they are. Okay, so hang on for one second. Before movies and meeting cute, and I hate them, I hate them, I hate them, I love them. Yeah, which is a fake life, but okay. But people brainwashes people. Right, so did this exist in the 19th century, where? Of course it did. But that's still meet cute. Well, I can't say when a fine lady was stepping out of a carriage, and then a fine gentleman would say, careful, the horses have been here. And he saves them from stepping in a pile of filth. Now is that meeting cute? I don't know. If he slips or throws his coat down, then remembers he left something important. That coat, then, by God, pray it is. But yes, of course it must have existed, right? People are people. It existed in a less hack way, probably, than we've seen. But don't forget, Hollywood has been hack since Hollywood has been Hollywood. From a lady being tied to train tracks, and Dudley do right straight through to where the boys are, or Bikini Beach, or whatever. There's always been hack relationships. But the push and pull, which is the second act. The second act. And stuff like that, or the thin man series, Myrna Loy and David Nimmin, that's classic. Okay, but I'm talking about the second act. He loves me, I don't like him, I love him. That predates movies. The second act in a relationship. Oh, it's got to. But don't forget that in the old days, people just got married, they had to. You know what I mean? Like that's just the way it is. There's very few options, and if you didn't, what's wrong with you? People are suspicious. So you just marry whoever's standing in the right place at the right time, and you have the kids, and then there's no more time to think about it. And there's a theory now that that is better than what we have now. Oh, that's a bunch of garbage. That's garbage. I don't know how many children and people suffered for years in terrible dead-end relationships until we were allowed to talk about it, and until the sexual revolution, until the pill, until a million other things. Everybody, depending on your age, can talk about how their grandmother suffered. Are you familiar with this new theory? No, I don't have to be, because I'm sure there's no end of new theories that yes, these are the rules. Somebody should choose your partner for you, and that's it, there's no option, there's no divorce. The theory is, and there is some validity to it. Anecdotally. No, because in many ways it helps me in my narrative. Right, that's okay, that's an anecdote, that's for you personally. This works for me. Yes, yes, and anything that works for you is fine with me, but it doesn't mean it's in the aggregate or the scientific method has been applied. Well, if it's true for me. Then it's true. Then it's true, I don't believe this is true, but one of the theories is that once people started marrying for love, it made them ill-equipped for marriage. I disagree with that. Because love falling in love with somebody doesn't teach you how to deal with life. Well here, no, I disagree with that. What can be problematic, especially in the 50s, 40s, 30s, getting married as a teenager for love less than a year after you met this first boyfriend that you may have gone all the way with and now you're dug in. Now that didn't teach you to learn how to live with somebody, learn to negotiate, and this goes for both partners, the man and the woman, or the woman and the man and the man, but in the 1950s, let's say, heterosexual, you have a lot of young women who lived in their father's house. They live in their husband's house. They are not equipped for anything really. They have not lived life as much as they should have, even if they were lucky enough to go to college. They were still probably pretty sheltered because if you were lucky enough to go to college back then, you had a pretty cloistered upbringing, unless you were city college or whatever. I'm talking about like Bass or whatever, whatever Mary McCarthy wrote about that group. But these are women even in the group, that's a very honest novel. Had no idea about birth control. These are Ivy League educated women who were forbidden from discussing sex, talking about it, thinking about it, and back in those days, you had to be married to get birth control, or if you went to get a diaphragm or any douching stuff, you had to put it in a brown paper sack in New York City, in the pharmacy, and people would look at you as scants, you know that type of thing. You saw Mad Men, the series Mad Men with Peggy and all that stuff. My own parents were teenagers. My mother got pregnant. That's that. Now they were a team and they loved each other. Now, what did they mean to be married as teenagers? No. No, probably not. My dad was still at school. They were wonderful people who made the best of it. There was no choice. In fact, my mother, and she spoke honestly about this, was going to have my brother and put him up for adoption. And then her mother said, we will adopt him. And then she said, no, because that was not something she wanted. So doesn't that speak to what I just said? No, it doesn't. What I'm saying is that you're... They married out of obligation, not love. They married out of obligation and love. They were boyfriend and girlfriend. Right, but they knew they had to keep it. Right, and it presented a great many problems that they never aired in front of us, but that were there about unfulfilled things. And then unfortunately, my mother died young. She died when she was 42. Now, what she had been through, but she did say, and I think we talked about this before, so I'll nutshell it, she comforted somewhat by the fact that she did not see harm come to any of her children. Because she said that she would have never survived if her children had died before her. And she took some comfort in that. Now, my mother and father committed to the team raising of children and making a life for those children. And they were very civil to one another, they're very respectful. My father had affairs the entire marriage. He was a very, I guess a much more sexual worse. My mother was raised in a very Catholic, very frightening way by the mother. She did not want to adopt my brother who wound up living with us, much to my father's chagrin. She was born in 1898 Northern Ireland, if that wants to tell you what her personality was like. Oldest of 13 children emigrated to New York, both parents and a few siblings died in short order of like diphtheria. And smallpox and stuff. And she never let anyone forget it. That was her whole life. Never letting anyone forget it. That and rewrapping her ulcered ankle and putting pennies and coffee jars and hiding food. But other than that, my mother was a product of that union of her parents. And also her parents had had children earlier than her and they passed away. My mother was the only surviving child which was a miracle that my grandmother was like 40 already when she had my mom. That's why if your listeners are saying there's no way somebody was born in 1898. My mother would be like 80 now. Okay, so you can extrapolate from there. She was ill-prepared, like many in her generation. For life, do you know what I mean? But she had worked as a secretary from the time she was a teenager, she always worked. She made the best of it. I'm sure she had other ideas for herself. My father certainly did other ideas for achieving things and doing things. But they are wonderful parents. Then there was my mother's friends who eventually when they would, I can remember when they would get their divorces at 38. This is new. There was still a stigma to it. I only had in my class two kids who had divorced parents. Think of that. And my mom wasn't comfortable with me spending the night at their house if you wanna believe that one. But it was still, that's still how it was viewed. In their world. The women, I would overhear my mom talking to Glenis and Frances from the Bronx so she grew up with after their divorces. And they would come and sit at the kitchen table and talk about this whole new world that they knew nothing of sexual, dating, everything. So that's what I'm talking about is they're not prepared. It has nothing to do with love or not love. They were not prepared for life going from high school dad's house to your husband's house and then trying to live. And then when the 1960s and 70s came, then what the fuck are they supposed to do? Do you know what I mean? That threw them for double triple whammy's. That was a very long-winded answer. I'm so sorry. No, it's fascinating. I wanted to ask you about women. Well, I can't speak for all of them. I can only speak for myself. Because one of the things I always say about you, from day one, you were forgiving of men. I don't understand what you mean. I think that you started in a very sexist, male-dominated club scene. Well, most jobs are, to some degree, sexist and male-dominated. I mean, that's certainly changed now. I mean, there's so many things. Pre-anida hell. Pre-anida hell. And you were forgiving. I'm not going to make a value judgment, but you were forgiving. You were very comfortable around the bad behavior. Well, there's nothing one can do about it. I don't like it. I don't condone it. I did realize early on what is the point of saying anything. Also, I did have the benefit as a child, led to believe I could do. There was no sexism that I could see very much. And also, people forget how very progressive the early 70s were, especially in certain pockets of the country. More so than the 60s, even. And I happened to go to an elementary school that was very kind of progressive hippie TV. Recycling and Sesame Street Electric Company. You know, just, you know what I mean? Like it just happened to be one of those great early 70s, like the ice storm type things. If you saw that movie by Ang Lee. And I benefited, as did all the females, I think, in that school. Greatly, from there was no higher visible to me, as I recall, visible hierarchy that way. And that last, the cracks started to show in that when I went to a different junior high in high school that wasn't, actually my high school was pretty forward thinking, but the jocks, the introduction of jocks into my life, which didn't exist in elementary school in junior high. That showed me the first, eugh, you know, difference of behavior and also adolescence, the way it feels like. Because I was talking to my sister. But I'm not forgiving of it. But I understand it exists. So I don't want anyone to think, when I say forgiving, like, oh, boys, we boys, I don't think that. It bothers me a great deal, the oppression that exists in many hierarchies, in many ways, in and outside of stand-up. In fact, I faced much more of it when I started doing television in some of the writer's rooms and stuff like that. Just this pervasive idea of that, the guys are gonna write better stuff. And the guy, you know what I mean? But that's just the way it is. And you just gotta, you know, say, you know, it is what it is. Listeners to this show are gonna be sick of my asking you this question. Sure. They're gonna be sick. Let's go ahead and ask it. Because I'm, and I talked to my sister about this. Would you say women who are my daughter's age, you met my daughter, which was a little baby? Yes, but so I only know her as a little baby. Yeah. They ain't taken it. They, and we're not gonna explain it to you. If you can't figure it out, it's your problem, not mine. I would say that, again, that's a more, depends, because there's plenty of women, young women in relationships that they're being abused in by their own high school junior high boyfriend who have witnessed bad behavior and repeat it and they put up with it or they've been inappropriately touched or whatever they haven't said anything. You're talking about my daughter's age. I'm talking about your daughter's age and young girls putting up with a lot of nonsense and afraid to say anything about it. That's probably never going to change, young boys too. So would you say that my daughter is right and it's difficult for me to admit this, my daughter has made it clear to me, I'm not gonna explain to you female politics. You figured out all on your own, get out of the way, it ain't happening anymore. I don't know what that means exactly what she's referring to with female politics because actually politics to me is politics. I'm talking about feminist politics. But to me, feminism means you believe in social justice for all. My daughter will walk into where I'm working. First thing out of her mouth and I'm proud to tell you this because you remember her as a little baby. I'm proud to tell you this but it's also difficult. She walks into an office where I'm working and says, how many women are here? How many of them are writers? And what I'm ashamed to tell you is I'll occasionally say, can I just talk to you about your life? No, how many women are working here? You rebut you so. But also she might also be really savvy saying, I don't wanna talk about this. I can read my father like a book. What I'm gonna do is establish moral signposts and he knows it's like mentioning the Holocaust. Oh, now we can't talk about Israel anymore. Thank you, she's playing me. It may be both. It shows you that she's very bright. But all kids with any degree of intelligence know how to read their parents by the time she's your daughter's age and she understands that she can claim the world high ground and she may very well believe it. She just wanna know. But she also knows that you have shown by your behavior. Oh, I'm not gonna talk about something that she may or may not wanna discuss with me. So she is bringing up a difficult song. I don't know for sure. No, I think you're right. I'm saying she sounds pretty bright to me. Well, you know what she did? She played me, I took her to see Lisa Lampinelli when she was like 12. And you know, Lisa is pretty, and she says the N word, but you know, my feeling is- It's like, you know that she does not have any racist stuff. It's almost, she is actually more open-minded than the average person to say these things. So my daughter's laughing hysterically at it and I'm laughing hysterically. 20 minutes into Lisa's act, you know, clockwork, she drops the N bomb, the place erupts. You cannot believe she's, but she just softened up the audience enough to get away with it. It's masterful. And walking out with this daughter of mine who's under the age of 13, she says to me, that was absolutely hysterical. However, she did cross the line a couple of times and that's an easy way to get people to, and I said, you're playing me. But that's, even if she's playing you, which I don't know if she is, she's saying very bright things for a person her age. Yeah, but she was like manipulated. What she was saying was that was so much fun, that's so cool that I got to see Lisa Lampinelli. Can you take me to go see somebody else? Oh, I didn't even get that. Oh yeah, she was saying, you know, can I go see Bobby Slayton with your- Oh my goodness, I didn't get that. I thought, I thought, wow, you're right. I was thinking she was saying something in terms of, I'm gonna anticipate what the conversation might be about this or I'm going to nip in the bud him wanting to talk to me about what I've heard. Oh, that's true, yeah. But you're quite right. But you know, she's proven that she can see that. Anybody, any 12 year old that's gonna come out with that phrase deserves to go see whatever comes they want to see with you. Right, so going back to this generation, it is good that somebody, like there's a comedian, not a comedian, I've since learned. Micah Fox, do you know Micah? I know, I'm not that familiar with the work I know. She reminds me of my daughter because it's like, if you don't understand it, it's your problem, not mine. And as uncomfortable as that makes me feel, they're right. Right? I think when it comes to- We need them and not the- When it comes to unreasonable political things or cultural things, I am in agreement with, if you don't understand, that's your problem. I believe that, I don't understand why it is allowed in this day and age for somebody to say, no, women cannot have reproductive justice. No, gays cannot do this or that or transgender can't. That is beyond the pale to me. And I feel like it is quite right to say, no, no, that's your problem. You don't get a seat at the table. You don't get to be on the news as if it's another side to a story or an argument. It's not legitimate. It's just as much as McCarthyism to me. And until somebody says, have you no sense of decency, it's gonna keep going where these people get to pretend that they have a say in this when it is not right. But what I don't like is when people say across the board, if you don't get it, that's your problem. When it's something that has nuance to it or there's complexity to it or that empathy needs to be a part of something, that bothers me when people just shut down all things. But I do agree with it in the case of bigotry and oppression and things like that. I do feel like this is not to be tolerated. I will not hear your fanciful tales of the Bible and homosexuality and God hating homosexuality, you know, that kind of thing. First of all, you're an adult and that you believe in a hypothetical entity. What you call God, that already throws me and your judgment, but be that you're actually claiming that the gay agenda, it's a choice that they are degenerates of some kind or what have you or that women are somehow inferior, this, that, the other or that immigrants are inherently evil, that kind of thing. When an adult says these things, everything about their judgment I have to call into question. And if they're lying just to get a rise out then their integrity is called into question. So I don't know what's worse. If you're lying about believing it and you're using it cynically or you actually believe it, they're both horrible options but there is no wiggle room there for me. I have no wish to build a bridge with the Trump people. I have no wish to agree to disagree. They've done a terrible thing. There is no, they're there for me. When people did the postmortem after the election, he didn't win. I can't stand when they give the Trump voter the benefit of the doubt that it has something to do with globalization or NAFTA, it doesn't. I have, I wanted to ask you a question about this. But we also have to be done. I know. Because I think your audience would be like, I can't listen to her anymore. Oh, no, no, no, no. I'm talking for a solid hour. Okay, I have two more areas and then. Okay, but you know how long I talk about these areas. I could listen to you forever. Oh, you old so-and-so. So what I wanted to do is I wanted to ask you about after the election, I thought of you because they blamed the election. They blamed Hillary. Right, of course. Let's kick a woman when she's down when she won by a wide margin. Right, they blamed Lena Dunham. That to me, again, you're not a serious person if you say it. When I hear those things, and I, one second, let me ask my question. Let me ask, I got you revved up. But that just drives me nuts. But like the Iraq war, I was wrong about the Iraq war, I have to say that after the election. That he didn't win, so if you thought he wasn't gonna win, you weren't wrong about that. And I admit I'm wrong for saying this on this show. I blamed Rob Reiner and Lena Dunham for turning off voters. That is insane. I know. You're gonna be, I can't let you finish. But let me ask my question. Ah, yes. And at one time, people would have blamed you instead of Lena Dunham. Oh, I don't know, I never achieved a level that Lena Dunham has achieved in consciousness. No, no, no, no. But anyway, that is of no importance. To blame Rob Reiner and Lena Dunham tells me you're not a serious person in that moment, in that moment. Cause if you don't factor in so many things, not only the theft of that election, the Russian hacking, the lies, the vitriol for Hillary Clinton that they couldn't even articulate to you if they wanted to. And the very fact that if you could be turned off by Reiner and Dunham, you were never gonna vote for Hillary anyway. So don't pretend there's some something to blame there. And if that's how weak your alliances are about something so important as an electoral vote, then again, you're not a serious person and you need to be punished, cause that's crazy. But if you felt like blaming Lena Dunham or Carl Reiner, you already were for some reason mad at them or don't like them, whether it be anti-Semitism, misogyny or you're just stupid. I don't know what it is, but that's your problem. But to say, and to not bring up the fact, A, Hillary won by millions of votes, B, the Republicans have been gerrymandering and redistricting and rolling back the Voting Rights Act for years. C, the type of people that voted for Trump are immobile. They aren't gonna, they've done them not with staying, nothing. And they had nothing to do with NAFTA, nothing to do with globalization, nothing to do with being left behind, nothing to do with, and don't give me this narrative about they voted Obama, bullshit. Don't give me the narrative about, did you see that statistic, that college educated women out here for, fuck you, that's not lying to me about this narrative you heard somebody else say. Just not true, not possible, for 85% of college educated women to vote for Trump. Never, never happened. And also, it's just, all those people that were Democrats and voted for Obama, twice voted for Trump, fuck you, don't lie to me with your anecdotes to support some theory that Nylon Magazine had. No, it's crap, it's crap. The type of voter that voted for Trump is a very specific individual and pervious to politics issues reason. There is no evidence to support that they were motivated by anything other than build the wall, lock her up, grab him by the pussy, the apprentice, they're gonna pay for it, Muslim ban, all the deadlies, all the basis, basis, basis things. And even if you were early in with Trump because something resonated with you, just the different way he spoke that sounded interesting to you, if you were a reasonable person and a thinker, you would have been out by month five. You know, whatever it is. And also when it was displayed that he has told more lies than any other candidate, that there he has had many opinions on such that he was exactly the opposite way when he ran the other time or when he was a private citizen that he wouldn't show you as taxes, that he has been shown time and time again to be a dishonest, mean-spirited, immature person who has not nearly the wealth he claims and also is hiding some of that wealth from you, has, as he degrades China, his products are made in China. As he, you know what I mean? So I can only assess that you voted for Trump for the most base of reasons having nothing to do with any issues. If you cared about NAFTA globalization, jobs you would have gone for Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren would be an idol to you and to some degree the progressive wing of the Democratic caucus. Since none of those things are true, you are a piece of shit if you voted for Trump and I'm including relatives and members of my own family who I have a great deal of difficulty dealing with now because it's not a joke what has happened. This is very serious. And those even that sat out or voted Jill Stein and I appreciate Jill Stein, but to deny Hillary Clinton who's given her life to public service who would have been a globally respected world leader and who was as prepared, if not more so than anybody who's ever been to take that seat. I don't think more of you, you're not cool that you voted Jill Stein just for shits and giggles or you voted Trump because you thought it was funny. Fuck you. You know what I mean? I get very upset about this clearly and it's probably terrible to make sure to close like this, but I can't stand it. I won't indulge discussion about it. Right, and we're gonna wrap it up. The reason I brought, I wanna go back to Lena Dunham and blaming Hollywood liberals because there was a time when you... Yeah, and it was stupid then and it's vitriol for no purpose, it's easy and it shows a lack of serious concern for political issues. To blame Hollywood. Yeah, and which Hollywood? The ones that show for Republican conventions? Those, that Hollywood, they got plenty of hacks on their side, plenty of athletes, plenty of country singers, plenty of faded action here. They do get the worst, sir, or the worst celebrities. They don't get any of the good ones, but there are plenty of quote unquote celebrities that have always been involved in Republican politics and is it that Hollywood that you wanna blame? But it's to say that any actor or singer is to quote unquote blame tells me that you're looking for any port in a storm to put your anger in and also it's an easy shot and it means you're not paying attention. And anybody like I said, who was changing their allegiance or sitting it out because somehow Reiner rubbed them the wrong way. They're lying to you. They were never gonna vote Hillary or they were never gonna vote the first place. Many, many of these people don't vote. The people that get real mad and a number of my siblings who claim they vote Republican, I can guarantee you they've never voted ever. They don't have to, the Republicans will vote for them. Exactly, but also my sisters always claim Republicanism, they've never voted. I know they haven't, they haven't. Okay, finally, and you've been very generous with your time and I- And I'm sorry I said fuck you with such vehemence. I actually don't like that kind of vulgarity but that's the level of anger that these narratives that keep getting swept about until people that should know better, believe them. You, again, I'm gonna ask you one final question. Sure. And this is it, I am like Ted Bundy. Attractive, the judge felt that if he was so articulate he could have been somebody that he sang in front of the parents of all the dead girls. That's my favorite clip of that Ted Bundy thing where the judge in front of the Ted women's parents. You know what, you seem like a nice guy, articulate. You could have had a great career in the law. The judge- He did, I didn't know that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's footage you can see and they show it sometimes on A and E of- Well that- Of the judge saying that, but also in the same token, Ted Bundy's fiance who is being interrogated by Ted Bundy who's defending himself and behind her neck is a picture of all the slain girls. And in the middle of the interrogation, Ted Bundy goes to his, not his fiance, his girlfriend, his living girlfriend. Will you marry me? And she goes, yes. Are you kidding me? Crying, crying tears of joy. On the stand? On the stand, on the stand. Isn't that charming? Wow. While he was cross-examining his own girlfriend who was lying about his whereabouts on certain days. He proposed to her? Right, on the stand. In court and she was thrilled. Boy, I thought of proposing to my wife on the Jumbo Tron was cute. This is while he's defending himself about 21 murders and the pictures of all the dead girls are on a court floor. She said yes? Not just yes, but yeah. Tears of beauty queen joy. Okay, this is, we're gonna wrap it up. I promise, I promise, I promise, I promise, we're gonna wrap it up, we're gonna wrap it up. But I'm Ted Bundy. Yes. I talk to a shrink and I say, how am I supposed to feel here? Because what does a normal human being feel when this happens to me? When a person is slain. No, no, I'm just saying in terms of just daily interaction. Somebody said this to me. Oh, you're saying in general. How, if I was, if you're Ted Bundy. No, no, no, I'm David Feldman. I'm talking about me. I thought you were. I'm giving you a compliment. I thought you were being Ted Bundy. But I am Ted Bundy. What I'm saying is. Oh, you're pretending hypothetically. No, I think that after decades of psychoanalysis being with a shrink who has said to me, this is what a normal person feels like. I've eventually been trained to have. To behave and seem like a normal person. He's opened up neural pathways that I go, oh, a normal person. When somebody calls you incompetent and dishonest, a normal person gets upset when they're told. So, oh, okay, so I should be upset with that person. So you're, are you going back to me saying you're not a serious person? Because you don't believe Dylene had done them? Thank you. No, let me ask my question. I thought you were gonna say you called me incompetent. No, no, no, no, no, I'm saying, this is a long-winded compliment. Okay. But I have learned how to feel and how to think. I've been with a shrink since I was 18. And I go, no, you can't be treated that way. You should be, you should stand up for yourself there. Or you should walk away here. Or you should be angry or whatever. And so I've learned how to have the right emotions and feelings because I wasn't allowed to have them as a kid. Right. When I was growing up, we did what Ralph Nader told us to do. Yeah, seatbelts, unsafe at any speed. But he'd feel, and as a young adult, Ralph Nader would fill out my ballot. He used to send out a ballot. Oh no, he's been, people don't know this about him. He's been fighting the good fight for so many years. He's been an advocate for us for so many years. And that's why I also won't tolerate criticism of him. Well, I do a radio show with him every week. That's you? Well, I wear a hat. And I used to get, I didn't have to pay attention to the ballot would come. I go, Ralph says this, this, this, this, this, this. And I am putting you in the same category as Ralph Nader. Oh no, no, no, no. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. He is so, so far above me. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. And then I have a question. Yeah. You got everything right on the test. Lots of people. Iraq. You got everything right. Yeah, but a lot of people were right about it. No, but you were right and you, and you were. And I remember you said to me, I was working for Bill Maher and I made the switch from Dennis Miller to Bill Maher around in 2003 because of the war. And you did Bill's show and we're talking. And I said, there's Ann Coulter. She looks, there's Ann Coulter. She looks like fun. And you said to me, stay the fuck away from her. And I did. I didn't know anything. Why did she look like fun to you? She just looked, yeah. She looks like up for anything blonde. Because I wasn't serious about the issues. Right, but were you as familiar with her style? No, I was, at that time I was married, I had kids. I was bourgeois. It was all a game. Right, right. She looks like fun. And you said, stay the fuck away from her. And I went, I better listen to Janine. So here's my question. My two issues, my core issues that I get up every day, Medicare for all, and bring back the draft. Well, that's always a wise thing for any society. The draft should absolutely. What is your core? Because I need to know what I should be paying attention to. So what? But you already know. No, no, no. Those are my core, but what are your core issues that have to be addressed? I would say electoral reform. Now more than ever. So stop blaming Lena Dunham. Something else. Electoral reforms, re-examine the way our elections are held and the amount of weight each state has disproportionate to their delegates, things like that, and should change it that the delegates and superdelegates don't have to go the way of whatever the, you know what I mean? They're not obligated to go with the candidate that it's been called for in that state. Does that make sense? Also media reform. And bring back the, Fairness Act. The Fairness Act, although having said that, it's not a side again of a story to be anti-gay, anti-immigrant, you know, Fox News is not a side to a story, it's not, you know, oh, you're not getting this information. Also, I would say the funding of public television and public radio, that it should stop being in jeopardy all the time that the Republicans can pull funding from public television, public broadcasting and from arts or programs from public schools that you can't touch it. You can't touch a Head Start program. You can't touch an after-school extracurricular programs, especially in public underserved schools. I guess that would be it. But you seem like you are also, you know what the core thing is, what your Medicare, social safety is what you're saying. Most specifically, Medicare for them. For everybody so that people aren't dying in the streets like they used to. And finally. And in summation. The rule in this show is that I will always promote St. Jude's if we do a Danny Thomas joke, but we did no Danny Thomas coffee table jokes. Make room for daddy's coffee table. What is your charity that you want people to give? Oh, actually, there's so, oh, I am, but this, some of the ones have lots of- You can go with St. Jude's, but you gotta tell a Danny Thomas. Well, there's, I'm a big fan of the ones that aren't as known. You know what I mean? Like, cause some have a lot of advocates like ALS or- Well, you're wearing ACLU t-shirt. Yes, but these are some of the big ones. So I feel like some of the smaller ones at the civic level, like Green Chimneys or Mighty Mutt or something that provides books, enough school books and certain public schools, those type of things I would say, I don't want to advocate for one thing, you should go local, smaller. I mean, they all need to stuff, but people tend to know about some of the bigger ones that I am also a member of and a supporter of, but I think that there's, it is wise for any of your listeners, look local at the civic level, what are some of these woefully underserved, especially where you have Republican governors and things like that who are cutting the grants and stuff like that. But I would say anything, I'm very partial to animal rights stuff and children, elderly, middle-aged people can go fuck themselves, myself included. And so any causes that affect middle-aged people, I feel like. Well, you are deeply loved, you are deeply respected and on behalf, and you're hysterically funny, and on behalf of all the people who are listening, thank you very much. Thank you, sir. Coming up, Larry Bubbles Brown. Please friend me on Facebook, follow me on Twitter, go to the David Feldman Show website, hit the contact button, I answer all my emails, do all your Amazon shopping via the David Feldman Show website, we get a small cut and make sure to copy and paste the link to this show and share it with your friends, share the knowledge, share the laughs, share the love. Coming up, Larry Bubbles Brown. Joining us from San Francisco, legendary comedian, Larry Bubbles Brown, hello, Mr. Brown. And as funny as sourdough, yes, from San Fran, you lived here for a while. Yes, I did, I did comedy there for 12 years, met my ex-wife, had children there, got everything I needed from that town, and then I moved out. You mined it like a 49er, flaked the gold and left. I said to San Francisco, you have nothing left to offer me, farewell. I wish I would have followed you, gotten out of the whizhole of the west. Oh my God. Bring an earthquake, have that guy from North Korea send us a little gift, just get it over with. Hate this place. Been taking over these tech people, the internet, which has given us free porn and in exchange we've gone over privacy and lost our newspapers, been a wonderful trade. There's two heroes in America right now, Edward Snowden and Julian Assange, that's it. Everyone else is stuck. And they don't even live in America. I know, but we should make them honorary Americans. All right. How long have you lived in San Francisco? 40 years. 40 years. I'm literally trapped here. I got this rent control apartment, so I can't leave. I've been asking for a buyout. Oh, we don't do that to everyone else does, not me. Now you're staying here. I'm like a fucking bird man of, I can't get out. I just stare at the window like the fog and the rain, the crappy climate. The global warming is minus four here and that'd be great. So you're telling people to think of San Francisco when they're making their travel plans. Yes, if they want to break up their families, come here. No, Larry. Bring your shorts, it's always pleasant. Larry, San Francisco is, it's, come on now. It's a beautiful city. The people are tolerant, they're liberal. They're very respective of other views. They want to talk to you. Oh my God. No, you were so smart to leave. How did you end up in San Francisco? Actually, my parents retired and moved out here. And I came out, I just wound up staying. And you started doing stand-up comedy in San Francisco. March 3rd, 81, yeah. March 3rd, 1981. You hold the record for largest amount of time between Letterman shots. Yes, 21 years. This is true, right? They wanted to make sure I was ready. I got even with them though, I did the same set. You did Letterman what year, the first time? 87, and then 2008. 87, and then 2008. And I remember driving you to the airport in 87. The first time, yes, yes. And what was I thinking? You said, this is great, I'll be next. You put a very positive spin on it, I like that. Most comics would get jealous and you gave me a ride. And said, I'll be next. And we were both gonna get rich and famous. I think by then I had given up, by then I just was locked into stand-up. You know what I do remember? And I've never had the opportunity to tell Rob Schneider this. When he did Letterman for the first time, or maybe I did tell him that, I did tell him that. Yes, I did tell him this. When he did Letterman for the first time, they asked him if anybody's funny in San Francisco and he recommended me. And I get this call from the Letterman show. And you gotta understand back then, doing Letterman was all that mattered. When you did Letterman, it was all a comic, wanted, needed, you could stop after that. The very hip show then. Right, but it was what we were all working for. And you could literally say, okay, I did Letterman, I'm done. Now I'm gonna retire and get a real job. But at least I got on Letterman. That's how big it was and the phone rang. And at first I thought it was a put-on. You know, hi, this is Barbara Stoltz from the David Letterman show. Rob Schneider says you're very, who is this? Who are you? And it freaked me out because I knew I wasn't ready for Letterman. And I never sent them a tape and I kind of changed my approach to stand up. I said, wait a second, you're jealous of all these people getting on Letterman, but you know you're not ready. How did you get Letterman? First time I got it from, they had an audition in May 10th, 85, I was working the punchline but they had the audition at Cobb's. I had to run over and I had a really good set and got it off that primarily. 85, that's early. That was, you had been doing it for four years. You know, the year before, I almost got, you remember, I almost got to the night show, which was, would have been, I think, a bigger thing at the time. But then I got, yeah, so the little people saw me here and then I went back to New York and bombed horribly, that kind of, so I had to kind of stall me for another year but I eventually got it. So Jim McCauley, who used to book the tonight show. Who held the keys to the kingdom. Back then it was, back then it was. Walked up to you and said what? Comedy Day of 84, you were with me. And he approached me and said, I thought you were pretty funny. I booked a tonight show, please call me if you ever get to LA, I think. Or I'd like to see you in LA. And I think I pretty much had a heart attack at that point. And then I, it didn't happen, but it was a fun few months there. I can tell you about the. But he kept calling you. I mean, there was some kind of romance going on, right? Romance. The old casting couch. No, I mean, he was interested in you. He liked me. He was grooming you. He was grooming you for the tonight show. Okay. I went down there. Do you want to hear this? I can be sure it gets so boring. So this is July. He saw me comedy day 84. And I went down for September. And then he saw me. I did a set of the improv and he said, you're not quite ready. Can you come over to my office tomorrow? And I said, no, I've got a midnight flight back to Frisco. So I went over and told Kevin Pollock, hey, that guy wanted to see me. He said, you idiot, cancel that flight and get up. I said, okay, I can come over tomorrow. Great. So come to my office at NBC at two o'clock. Next day, Jeremy Kramer drove me over and we couldn't find Burbank. That's why we were so nervous. We couldn't even read a map. He's got the 61 Falcon. I've got the map upside down. I can't see anything. Yeah. So you're going into- So we're finally, we're finally getting there. Huh? Go ahead. So we have a lot of young people listening. And by young, I mean under the age of 120. You always had good demographic. Let me put it this way, Letterman and Colbert at most, in the past few years, have get 3 million viewers. A Karsten at the time was getting 17 million. So if he did his show, it was like going viral. So I'm over here. So we go get to NBC. Macaulay takes me into his office and Kramer waits in the lobby, which was a huge mistake. So I'm in there for a couple hours. Why was that a mistake for Jeremy Kramer to wait in the lobby? What could go wrong? What happened? When we came out, Kramer said to Macaulay, you've met me a hundred times, but you never remember me. Well, you got to remind people who Jeremy Kramer is. Could he be the funniest man? Could he be the West Coast's Gilbert Gottfried? Gilbert Gottfried and Andy Kaufman, of course. So he was a, he took me under his wing when I started to stand up. He was my idol before he started. So he was, he was just like, no one I've, I've ever seen like him. I think he was just, every time you saw him with like 20 minutes of new material, just hilarious, bizarre character. When I was living in LA and doing this show, he would come on and you never, ever found him at a loss for words. Never, no, and always something, always something new. I went to the La Brea Tar Pits with him and once I went to the museum, they were starting to show this film in the back. He's in the back and all of a sudden you, millions of years ago, the earth had a thin candy shell. Now everyone's turning around. I want to get back to you doing the tonight show or being, you know, meeting with McCaulay, but this is what I remember the first time I had Jeremy on the radio show in LA. It's a very liberal radio station. And I said, joining us is the author of Wars a Racket, General Smedley Butler. General Smedley Butler. And he says, yes, what can I do for you? What was the racket? And he played him as this, like a fan of it. Fop. He played. Polarious. He's a genius. Okay, I'm sorry. So go ahead, so. The best. The best. The best. So where were we, McCaulay? So McCaulay calls you into the tonight show and now you're inside, you're in. I'm in NBC, it's huge. And it's everything you want. It's all there. Yeah, and it's everything I'd always do. I just wanted to do the like tonight show and quit. That's what I wanted to do. And I'm in his office and he's telling me, this is a Friday, he said, I'm going to London for the weekend. I'm like, oh my God, showbiz people, like they go to London for the weekend. And we're talking for two hours and he makes his set for me. He goes, practice this and call me next month and we'll look at it again. So then we came out and this is, this is, but this was a perfect day. So then Jeremy, I had to give the Holy City Zoo was reopening as a ha ha go-go that weekend. Remember that? Mm-hmm. And when Tom Sawyer bought it. Tell everybody what the Holy City Zoo was. That was a room, a little comedy club about the size of an apartment. And, but it was legendary. It was one of the main quarters of an apartment. Yeah, yeah, it's had 70 people, but it was, it was really weird woodwork and stuff. Cause it was, they got the furniture from a defunct zoo in a city called Holy City. Yeah, a petting zoo for kids. If they went to church, they were treated by going to the pet zoo. With a goat. Yes. Which they must have been slaughtered. And, yeah, the zoo, that was a great place. So the, but then Tom Sawyer bought it and changed the decor to call it a ha ha go-go. And Benny, I was, so Kramer takes me to the airport and the in Burbank. And I, I, I walked in. Oh, there's a plane leaving for San Francisco and Tim, he just noted in pre-9-O-L. He just walked on the plane. Get to San Francisco. I go up to the Holy City Zoo. Somebody comes running up to me. Oh, you were quoted in Penthouse Magazine about the 10 best things ever said about sex. So I ran down, I got a copy of that. And there was, I was quoted in this magazine with some pretty famous people. And then I, I went in and I did my set and the people were laughing so hard. It was like annoying, but it was just, this was like the perfect 24 hours. And then I went back a month later and bombed and that was the end of that story. You went back to L.A. and bombed. Yeah. And then Macaulay lost interest. There was still some kind of flirtation going on after that one. Flirtation. Would you say in, in life, not just show business, but in stand-up show business, life in general, when you're on a hot streak, you should run the tables. Just... You gotta run the table and I don't think I ever did. You gotta, I would take the winnings and leave. And you gotta roll, you gotta run with it. You gotta, when you're on a hot streak, ask for the moon. And when things are going bad, I have discovered hide. Just, right? I've been hiding for 35 years, yeah. But isn't that a general rule of thumb for survival? If you feel... Absolutely. Yeah. Your luck turns and no, when you're lucky. No, when was your biggest hot streak? Well, I always remember, I'm just, I'm doing this to make you laugh, okay? Ask me that question again. What was your biggest hot streak? Well, there have been so many laryngeos. Which, what decade? Now, I just remember hearing somebody compliment Tom Hanks. It might've been Paul Newman who complimented Tom Hanks for being able to catch luck. Like, know when you're being lucky and just grab it. Cause all this luck is floating in front of you, but you have to be wise enough to know that you're lucky and then you just grab it. A lot of us, I'm not talking about showbiz, I'm talking about life in general, don't know when the universe has thrown them fortune. Another human being, like, you know, there was a woman who I told you to marry and you didn't and looking back, you were probably right. But, at the time I was happily married and I thought everybody should be. But I had, you know, I had 25 good years, so, and don't mention her, don't mention the name, don't mention it, please do not mention it. No, but I think, I think you're absolutely right. I think the universe does present you opportunities and gifts and sometimes you don't see them or sometimes you don't take them. But you're right, you should, when you see it, grab it. When you see it, grab it. I think Donald Trump said that to Billy Bush. Grab them good. This portion of the program is brought to you by tic-tacs. So, yeah, so then you did Letterman what year? So you auditioned for Morty? I did audition for Morty. I did it in 80, 80s, well, he saw me in 85, I did it in 87. And I was the, I was the, I went back and got bumped. I think he gave me another ride to the airport then. I got, we were great, you get bumped, you get paid. And then I remember Barry Sand was a producer of Letterman then. And then between when I went back, he got fired. I think and Morty was actually, so I was actually the first show that Morty produced. I remember he was quite nervous, but I did okay and then he was really happy. Barry Sand was this great cautionary show business story because he was a line producer on SCTV. He was a perfectly harmless fella, perfectly harmless. He was a line producer on SCTV and David Letterman was just starting out and he was a big fan of SCTV. And he didn't know what a line producer meant. A line producer, somebody who just make sure the lights are there and people are getting paid, but is not a particularly creative individual. They watch the budget more than I do, right? They watch the budget and Letterman hired him. And then after a couple of years, it slowly dawned on him that this guy was a CPA, who's an accountant. I've got an accountant booking my show and telling me what's funny. So he fired him. Now this guy has SCTV behind him, Second City Television, which is probably the greatest comedy series. I mean, it's right better than SNL if you go back. Oh yeah, the early SCTVs were really, really great. And a lot of the young kids I know, hard to believe are unfamiliar with Monty Python and SCTV. Anyway, so this guy had Letterman and SCTV on his resume. He ran both shows and he came out to Hollywood and they gave him the Wilton North Report. Do you remember this? No Wilton, he's about to last in two weeks. And now he was finally gonna be the accountant he always wanted to be. Is that what happened? Yes, so somehow an accountant had these amazing credentials and they gave him Wilton North and it just flopped and you know, no fault of his own. No. Because people will tell you, they always want to tell you to do something that you're not good at. And sure business. If you're a good standup, they say, you know what you should do? You should be an actor. I'm an accountant. You know what? You should tell people you know what's funny. And that's what happened to them. I remember when I first went back there, I had to, I remember I did a run through of my set the night before and it didn't go great and I think Morty was starting to get antsy and the day of the show I had to go and bury Sam's office and do my set in front of him and Morty. In the office. Talk about awkward. And after I do my set. How do you do your set with no audience? It's two guys in an office and then Sam, I had a joke about a clown that blew his brains out. Popo. I just remember, you'd popo the clown. Nothing on my sleeve, nothing in my life. I gotta go, kids. And he blows his brains up. Yeah, remember that bit. And then Sam looks over at Morton and goes, I really don't like the thing about the clown blowing his brains out. Well, we can scratch that. So then I got bumped that night. But that's all I remember about it. That was the most awkward moment in my life being in that office with Maddie doing a set in front of two guys in an office. You know what is so maddening about doing this is you're in Valhalla. You're in the office where everything you need is there. Everything you've wanted in life is in this office. Everything is going to change your life. And make your dreams come true. And everybody's so clean and smiling and friendly. And there's the clackety-clack of the computers and the smell of coffee. And it's just an office. And it's just a nine to five thing. Hi, can I get you anything? We're so happy here. And it's just another business day here. And you're thinking, I'm just going to smile and let them convince everybody that I'm not the world's biggest creep. And it's maddening. Everybody's so nonchalant and casual in the place that you have to be. It's a great description. Yeah. It used to just, how is this, how are you so calm? Don't you know that this is the kingdom of heaven? Yeah. And you're not really allowed in the kingdom of heaven if you think it's the kingdom of heaven because you will go nuts, right? Yeah. How nervous were you the first time you did, Letterman? I could not fall. I remember I got there, I couldn't fall asleep. So I'd been up for about, the other time I got to the show to the tape and I'd been up for 36 hours. And I had dark rings under my eyes. And I was with your friends, Steve Trilling. And I don't think Steve Trilling and Henriette Mantel were there. And I kept trying to, I was doing, in the green room I'm doing my set in front of Trilling. I'm going two minutes because they changed stuff, right? I'm going two minutes into it and drawing a blank. And I'm on in like 15 minutes. And then the show ran, I think they ran it over late on purpose and I got bumped. So I might have had the first on air freeze had I gone on that day. The thing about having to memorize your act the first time you do one of these shows is the sporting event for the producers and the hosts, but not for the comedian. It's really unfair to ask somebody who's really funny to go on TV for the first time and have to remember. Because that's all you're thinking about is what do I say next? What do I say next? Yeah. The bullet points, I can remember. I don't give you a cue card. Well, they do now. I mean, certain people do. And the minute I got bullet points, it changed everything. Once I no longer had to worry about what I was going to say next, once I had to dump the mnemonic devices to remember the bit that follows that bit, I could focus on my timing. I could listen to the audience. But if you don't have bullet points, you're not in the moment. No, and it's just absolutely terrifying. I remember I was, you know, I'm going to go out there and draw a blank. I was so scared. Different generation. It was a time when we were growing up, when the feeling was, well, it's got to be hard for you. If you want to make it, why should we give you a crutch? You got on Letterman. You got on The Tonight Show. No bullet points. We don't give bullet points out. You go up there, you remember you're active. You can't remember you're active. You shouldn't be doing this. Life is tough. You shouldn't be here, yeah. And today's... Tough love, bro. Tough love. I would say the number of nervous breakdowns... I had Dana Gould on about a month ago. The number of nervous breakdowns we both had on these make or break moments were so devastating. And I look back and I partly think, well, everybody should experience what I went through. It was tough. Then you have kids and you say, why? Why would you put anybody through this? But what we suffered through, why should anybody have to suffer through it? But I don't know. Maybe you should. Maybe... I don't know. What do you think? Well, I'll tell you a story about the same weekend I auditioned for Letterman out here the first time. There was another comic who auditioned and he got the show and he got so freaked out he packed up his apartment the next day and moved and got out of the business. Later, you'll tell me who that is, but... I'll tell you who it is later, yes or no? Was he from San Francisco? Yeah. And he got Letterman. I don't know if you were in Sacramento that weekend. They did an audition at Cobbs on the Friday night and then they did one at Tommy Tees on Saturday and they saw him there. Very likable guy. They gave him the show, he got out of the business, packed up, literally moved, he said the next week. So he freaked out. He freaked out. He didn't go to New York. He thought they could track him down. It's really a funny story. And is he back in... He got out of the business and he's been out ever since. Never dipped his toe back in. Nope. Interesting. I can remember doing a show flying to New York to do a show and like a schmuck I flew in a day early and I had two days to kill in New York before I had to do the show. And I was young and I had a 24-hour panic attack because my name was in TV Guide and I made the mistake of visiting friends, not to brag, just, you know, hey, I'm in New York. And then realizing they were all going to watch me, I was on... And it felt like I was walking when I finally, you know, walked to the studio. I felt like I was walking to my execution. I kept thinking, this is what an execution feels like. It is very similar to an execution, yeah. Exactly. Total humiliation. I mean, this was back when these shows meant something. Yeah, this is back when people actually used to watch TV. I mean, TV means I think nothing now. Yeah. It was kind of a big deal then. It's meaning less and less. Yeah. It's kind of interesting with... It's probably better, but to go through that, I remember learning to be relaxed and then thinking right before being introduced in a high-pressure situation, getting a little stage fright. And I thought, I don't know who this comic is who gave up. I have a feeling I know who it is, but I remember thinking, waiting in the wings to go on during a high-pressure situation and being terrified, I thought, I get it. I get why people self-destruct. This is terrifying. I understand why people do certain things so they never have to put themselves in this situation again and they'll do things subconsciously to avoid being put in this specific spot because they never want to admit that they're afraid to do this, but they'll do things subconsciously to make sure this never happens again. Never happens again. Yeah. I just remember the last letterman I did, I just, when the music, you know, you're getting ready to go on, they're brushing your coat down, they're touching up the makeup and they're in a commercial. And you tape yourself down, right? Because you... But you're looking out at Letterman and the band's playing and you know you're going to be on like in 30 seconds and you just, you really feel like you're at your own execution. Yeah. And then what happens is, you were great, now get the F out of here. Yes, and then nothing happens and it's over. You were great. Come back, maybe we'll have to see five more minutes on tape, but really it would really be great right now if you didn't hang out and you just left and we only see you when we have to. That was the thing that just shocked me is you're just part of an assembly line. You're throwing, it's like being thrown out of a room by a hooker, okay, we're done. Yeah. So, the thing that then you realize is if God forbid somebody gives you a sitcom pilot, you have this, oh my God, then you realize now you're part of the assembly line. And then you're given a show and you're part of the assembly line and it's the number one show in America and it dawns on you, you're still part of this assembly line. This is going to come to an end. You know, it, everyone's going to be nice to you while it's on and then it's over and you're forgotten. It is a business not for everybody because it's more about stamina and strength than it is about being talented or funny, right? The funniest people you know, right? Yeah, the funniest ones never make it. Dana Carvey was telling me he was so nervous when he heard it. Dana Carvey is one of the funniest person in the world. Yeah, and even like when I go in these drives with him to gigs, it's like 10 times funnier than anything he does on TV and he goes, yeah, he said every comic, he said we're much funnier offstage, even at that level, which I found astounding, but he was telling me how nervous he was. He goes, God, why did I put myself through this? I was just nervous. I was throwing up. I couldn't take it. And he told me the first time he ever went to do standup. He'd been funny at SF stage. So you got to do an open mic. They went up to the Holy City Zoo and he walks in and some guys on stage just destroying the room, right? Killing. And he goes, I don't know if I can be that funny. It turns out the first person he saw on stage was Robin Wood. Yeah, just kicking the lights out the rooms on fire. He goes home to Jagged. I don't want to do that. When we were starting out, can you hear me? Yeah, yeah. Didn't we honestly believe that the only reason anybody came to the clubs was on the off chance that Robin would show up? Well, that may have been true, too. Yeah, didn't you and I would be like, we'd be on a show and we'd go, why would anybody come out to see us? No one knows who we are. No one. And we're not good. They must be waiting. They have to be waiting for Robin. Yeah, makes no sense. I thought Letterman's tribute to Robin was the most perfect spot on accurate representation of how every comedian felt whenever they saw Robin perform. Did you see what Letterman said? It's why bother doing your little bag of jokes when there's this guy who is taking it to a level never before seen before you're he's in the stratosphere. And then this is what Letterman said, then Robin got Mork and Mindy so we didn't see him so we could go back to the comedy store and pretend we were still funny. But then Robin took care of his friends and gave us big parts on Mork and Mindy so we would go on to the set and have to be reminded that there's this guy who's operating at a whole other level of comedy. It was one of those two hours of high energy and we're out there peeling off our little one liner. Do you hope you like me? I guess it was a valuable lesson for me to see somebody like Dana Carvey or Robin or, you know, Kramer or Pearl. There were a lot of, you know, Ruben, there were a lot of people who were just off the charts and you make this decision. You say, OK, I'm never going to be as good as this person is. There's no way I will ever be as funny. So now what? Now what? And you just. That's exactly when I started out. Stephen Pearl was supposed to be the next Robin Williams and I've been doing comedy for a short time and he was some Wednesday night. He's in there and just killing you remember how the lab. She was about. I worshipped. I worshipped Stephen Pearl. I thought he was talking directly to me and I swear to God I was drinking at the time and smoking a lot of dope. But I used to say I see lightning bolts from God. Yeah, I he's like doing God. God is speaking through him. So I was actually trying to put a positive spin on it. I just saw him that one night goes. I can never be that funny, but maybe I can still make a living doing this, but I just realized I can't be that funny. And. Well, you are a you're a naturally funny person. You're not like a student. You are. You're just innately funny. You don't realize it, but you are. That's why I've made so much money. Well, I'm not talking about money here, but you are an innately funny person. You see Mort Saul all the time. Tell me who Mort Saul is. Mort Saul is I've been doing comedy for since 1953. Uh, uh, pull would you call him a political sadist or just a sadist? I guess I would call him the father of modern standup comedy, right? I think Woody Allen calls him that too. He said Woody Allen said everything he got from comedy. He owes to Mort, which is pretty amazing quote. Mort is the there is no he's the ur text of comedy. Post World War Two comedy. It all changed because of more. He went up the first guy that didn't do jokes. He talked about real things and made it funny. But without being in no kind of a one line fashion. I had Alonzo Bowden on the show last week. He plays jazz clubs when he's not working comedy clubs. And I asked him about what's what's that's like. And he said, oh, it's fantastic. It's the best. And we were talking because comedy has its roots in jazz because Mort started in jazz clubs. Mort always brings that up about how jazz and comedy are very similar. But when we were starting out, it was rock. It used to drive me crazy when they would put on rock and roll to start a show, get the audience in the mood. And I always thought, what are you doing? You're killing all their reasoning ability. That's true. It's just like, get them to listen to the music. No, no, we want to juice them up. We want to get high energy. I don't know. Comedy. I'll give them high energy. When I go on stage, I'll jumpstart them. I don't need the who jumpstarting. Yeah, you can't follow highway to hell. And now here's a guy with no music behind him. The comedy is just like America's business has been run like comedy. No wonder we're in the dumper of it. The dumbest people in the world run comedy clubs. It is the easiest thing to do. And I am amazed by how people who call themselves comedy fans. They want to surround themselves with comedians and make people laugh how they cannot figure out the way a stage and a room should be set up. It confounds me. You're right. It's a stupid country. I mean, I'm not going to name names, but I remember a very successful comedy chain setting up a club when we were growing with the boom. I remember walking in and saying, you really think this is a good setup. You really think you set it up properly. You think a balcony all the way in the back that's got brass railings that completely separates the balcony from the people in the pit and the performer. You think that's a good setup. How could you be that stupid? It's incredible, though, from top to bottom, just bad decisions. So comedy in San Francisco, I was talking to somebody yesterday. Now, there is a phenomenon of two things. One is if you live in San Francisco and you're a comedian, you wrestle with this idea of moving down to Los Angeles. Some move down, some don't. The ones who stay up in San Francisco kind of delude themselves into thinking, you know, I really should bite the bullet and finally give them this. I know LA, you know, they're they're going to they want what I have. I'm just not ready to give it to them. And then there are the people who say, you know, I'm going to go down to LA and LA goes big deal. Oh, really, you were a local hero. Good. Get to the back of a line. Can I make money off you? And what happens to the guys who move to Los Angeles is they begin to resent San Francisco. Do you know this? No, it's a phenomenon that I've noticed. They they resent San Francisco because it's so beautiful. It's so calm and the people are so nice. And every time they come back to San Francisco, they resent the lifestyle. Because they're in LA and it's hell and everybody's happy in San Francisco. Well, is everybody happy in San Francisco, Larry? I don't think so. I wish I would have left here. But is San Francisco being kind to its comedy right now? Or what I'm hearing is that it's become a roadstop. I think it's been a roadstop for some time now. It's just it's got two main clubs that are owned by the same corporation. What's the corporation? Live Nation. Yeah. There was a time when San Francisco nurtured comedy. And I was talking to a young comic yesterday here in New York City. And he says he moved to San Francisco because of the reputation. He says there's no stage time in San Francisco for guys starting out. No, you have to to get out the punchline on Sunday night. You have to go down there for at least nine months. You have to do what? You have to go down there and wait. But you have to come there. You're not going to get on, but they make you come in and we have to watch for nine months to prove that you're there. So many people want to get on stage now. So then after nine months, I've come in down there. You get to go up and do a few minutes. So you have to hang out? Yeah, you have to hang out on a Sunday night. To you have to pay? No, but you do have to hang out, I guess. And what is the value to hanging out? I have no idea to prove that you're serious. I guess I just heard there's like so many people. There's no money in comedy anymore, but so many people want to get into it. I don't I don't get it. I think that might change now that Obama is no longer president. Well, the boom started when Reagan came in. Maybe you're right. Well, the boom started when Reagan came in and it died when Clinton came in. No, yeah, right. It died right after Iraq invaded Kuwait. Yeah, 91. It was and then it then I would notice there was another boom and the Obama there was an Obama boom. And I think it's because everybody had no work. The economy had crashed. People had nothing when Reagan came in. We were coming off a huge recession then. So there was no work available and people figured I might as well pursue my dream. And I don't care about money because there's no money to be had. And under Obama, you had a generation of millennials who were very forgiving of themselves and others. They were very non-judgmental. They would go up on stage. Usually in front of other comedians who would support each other. And it was a beautiful thing. Everybody got a trophy. We're all going to it was I ran with them in in New York City. I still do. I run with the young 20 something with the kids. I hang with the kids. You're a brilliant analyst. And I love them. They don't bomb. I've never heard a 20 year old, a 20 something say, man, I sucked. I went, well, OK, I know the generation. Everybody gets a trophy. God, that's brilliant. You're right. I have, you know, I say what I thought about being turned to comedy. But that's you're absolutely right. I never wanted to say this on the show because it makes me sound like I'm an old, bitter comic. I'm just very I love I've kids who are that age. And I have I love them. And I think they're better than we are. I think they're more involved. I think they're more accepting. They have less prejudice. They're more adventurous. They know more. They're they're better comedians because they're they're telling stories. They're making it personal. They don't have to get to the joke. They're much more inventive because when I was starting out, you had to have bits, you had to have comedy, you know, this is a different generation. They're OK with bombing. And maybe my definition of bombing is anti-Diluvian. Maybe, you know, I'm pre-Cambrian in my thinking. I'm just going to keep bringing up obscure words to make it to make it look like I'm actually intelligent. You sound very smart. And so you're going to see when do you see more? He turns 90. Turns 90, I think May 11th. Wow, I would go out. I would love to just come out. I would love to see you. I'd love to sit at his feet. OK, one of the things that listeners of the show know about Larry Brown is he has a photographic memory, especially when I don't have a photographic. Well, you pretty much do. I do. Yeah. For example, Flight 718. You've got to give me a date. I'm not good at flight numbers. Well, let me give you. TWA Flight 718. I need a date flight. TWA flight. Oh, you know what? I'm wrong. It's flight two for TWA and United Airlines Flight 718. This is midair. Yes. Was it 1960? I have to check the date. I don't know the date. Was it over in New York? We'll fix this in post. No, it was are you got this wrong? Oh, this is the ground. No, you're talking Grand Canyon. Yeah. Yeah. Tell me what that was. That was it was a midair collision over the Grand Canyon. I think it was a little before my time. That might have been 56. I think that's right. And the crash triggered the creation in 1958 of the Federal Aviation Agency. OK, let's see. I'm going to give you a hard one. You won't weigh back there for that one, bro. Yeah. United Flight 173. You got I got to have a date. I don't have the dates. God, 1989, maybe. That was the United DC 10 over Iowa. No, but I may I may have given you the wrong date. I'm giving you the wrong. I have to give you the dates. I'm all right. So I'm giving you. All right, let me look up. Error. Photographic memory. Well, no, you told me what you need. So let me look this up. Here we go. All right. All right, what years are you good? From 60 to early 90s. OK, February 4th, 1970. February 4th, 1970. That was that. And again, it's got to be. It's got to be local. Oh. Oh, United States. I don't do I don't do international. Oh, all right. All right. Like I said, folks, the man has a steel truck memory. I'm like Criswell. All right, June 7th, 1971. And no matter what you say, I'm going to go amazing. How does he do it? Most people are in their cars. They're not looking this up. So I have no idea what that one. June 7th. Oh, wait a second. June 7th, 1971. Alaskan Airlines. Flight 485. Price near Juneau. Allegheny Airlines. OK, I don't have that one. Right. Because last time we did this, you did well. It was incredible. Give me some more. Give me some more dates. All right. I know I can do it. It's like Kreskin when he couldn't bend the spoon. All right, let me look. All right, 1973, September 27th. I got nothing. Let me give you a hint. It was a Texas International Airlines Flight 655. It was a Convair 600 crashed into Blackfork Mountain. 11 passengers and the crew were killed. Does that help? Yeah, that doesn't. Don't recall that at all. OK, why not? What happened to you? You were a ma- This is our last one. Give me three more. I've got to get one right. OK, 1976, April 27th. That was it. Was that a Southern Airlines? Southern Airlines. Oh, no, it's not domestic. All right, hang on. It was American Airlines, but it wasn't. All right, hang on. This is great radio. This is tight. This is tight. All right, this is OK. 1977, December 17th. 1977, December 17th. December 17th. Nothing. Really? Yeah. United Airlines Flight 2860. Where'd it crash? Wasatch Range in Utah. That must have been a really small one. Oh, you only go for the big ones now. I got to have at least 100 dead. Oh, I didn't know that. You didn't tell me that. Was it? That sounds like that was probably a cargo plane. All right, sorry. We'll do it again next time you're on the show. Meanwhile, I better bone up. Never used to read the transcripts from the black boxes? I had a book called The Black Box that had all the many crashes, the final moments, yeah. Used to read those in the Alex Bennett show. The last word was always sound of impact. Yeah. You got it all, mother. Wasn't that one of them? You got it all, dad. You got it all, dad. That's what a pilot screamed. You got it all, dad. Remember we flew in Colorado with that continental airlines upside down to the left of us? November of 87, a plane that crashed on the runway the day before we took off crashed on a Sunday. And we left on a Monday. And this plane was still on the runway on it's turn over. Yeah. And we were there. Wasn't, then we run into Hunter Thompson. Hunter Thompson in the airport. Yeah. And we were so, I was talking to Johnny Steel, he said, you remember we were so freaked out we were thinking about taking a train back. Right. It was you, me, and Johnny Steel, and everybody was in the wrong slot on the show. Yeah, a horrible show. You were headlining and you shouldn't have been. I was middling and I shouldn't have been. And Johnny Steel was opening and he shouldn't have been. It should have been completely moved around. Yeah. I should have been opening, you should have been middling, and Johnny should have been headlining. Total debacle. It was a debacle. Then there was this, the human fly used to come over. Remember that guy? Yeah, yeah. He scaled skyscrapers with his bare hands and would come over, sit in the condo, and trash Jeff Valdez. Who owned the club? This guy, Jeff Valdez, owned the club. And this guy would come over. And when he wasn't climbing skyscrapers, he would crap on the owner of the comedy club, saying he can't get any bookings. And I would say that's because they can't fit a skyscraper in the club for you to climb. Otherwise you'd be headlined otherwise. Tell everybody why they should move to San Francisco before you go. Oh, the wonderful climate, the friendly, tolerant people. Well, they are tolerant. They're all liberal, Larry. Yes. And if you're not, they will beat the hell out of you. Isn't there room for conversation in San Francisco? Not really. You'll be hunted down. You know, there's an environmental movement down here to take out every tree in San Francisco to return it to its... Because San Francisco had no trees. These are all the trees are planted afterwards. Well, they want to remove the trees from San... They want to return it to its natural state, yeah. So that's the big movement that's going on. To remove, like, the eucalyptus trees? Yeah, every tree, actually, I think. This is all just sand dunes 150 years ago. Why would they want to do that? To return, they want it to its natural state. And it's like it's not windy enough now, you know? And how's that building that's tipping over? That is, you know, where the old bus station used to be downtown. Oh, of course. I met a lot of nice young men there. You welcome young comics coming in for the Midwest. Remember, I would always say, find the Nordic ones, Larry. Find the Nordic ones. The ones from Minnesota, give them a Bible. Yump in Yemeni. Yump in Yemeni. That must have... That bus station... The worst gig where I played a group of conservative Swedish people. Yump in Yemeni. Not another yoke about a blow job. Oh, my God, the bus station at San Francisco. That was... They built, they just finished that. They built a 65-story tower that the bus station's on. But apparently from building this, there's a luxury condo a block away, and that is... They're blaming that, because this building is actually starting to tip over. It's like a condo skyscraper. Yeah, I think Joe Montana, they're really expensive. Odd that Joe Montana would live in a building that has bad knees. You still got it. I got it. But the building is actually... I think it's leaning so much that it's really in danger. Of being... There's a doctor that, he put a golf ball on the floor and it just rolls the other end of the apartment. And people are still living there. Yeah, but I think there's going to be a huge loss there. Against the leaning tower of Pisa for copyright infringement? Well, I'm sure it'll be picked up by the... We'll pay for it. Well, so it's... Leaning tower of Montana. How do people... I mean, if there's an earthquake, what happens? Oh, it's going to go. The other thing is the $10 billion bay bridge, which was... They spent so much money on this. By the engineer's own words, they say that this thing cannot take an earthquake over 5.5. Well, that never happens in San Francisco. All the earthquakes in San Francisco are threes and twos, right? Yeah, they're very, very moderate. What is it in San Francisco? Nobody's judgmental. It's all about forgiveness. Come to San Francisco and wear a flower in your hair and you can do whatever you want. We're not going to judge you, but don't ask me for anything. Don't ask me for your time. I have my own lifestyle that I have to protect, but I won't judge you and don't ask for anything from me and I'll always see the best in other people because judging another person holds them accountable and holding somebody accountable means that I have to hold myself accountable. So build the bridge any way you want. You nailed it. Now the town is actually run by all the tech firms. The tech firms, what they've done, this is brilliant. They come across as very socially liberal, but they're the biggest carpet-bagging capitalists you've ever seen. They'll crush you, but they're for gay marriage, so everything they do must be good. San Francisco was always of two minds. There were the carpet-baggers and the carpet-munchers. You're putting you in it. No, there were of two minds in San Francisco. There were people like me who were just passing through, and then there was the old guard. Right, the getties, there was always like a landed aristocracy, a Brahmin, it reminded me of Boston. They were the Brahmins of San Francisco, and they viewed people like me, yeah, you're passing through, you're not going to be, we're going to outlast you. Yeah, they won't be, as long as you don't stay, I remember. And the tech people probably, like Zuckerberg lives in San Francisco, right? He built, well he's got several homes, but he built one in Noe Valley that I think he tore four houses down to put up his, and it's just kind of annoyed the neighborhood. Right, but he's just passing through. The way San Francisco works is the earthquake is never far from your mind, and one day everything will be wiped out again, and something new will start. But where the Brahmins will still be here, isn't that pretty much the thinking that happened there? Yeah, you've got such clarity in your thinking. Well, I love San Francisco, you know what happens to me when I go to San Francisco? I feel great for about 12 hours, and then it's like somebody took a melon ball to my brain, and I just can't think straight, it just completely, I get completely unplugged up there, because it's not real, it's just too beautiful. Very intolerant town. Intolerant of intolerance, Larry. Yes, and they wouldn't, remember they tried to, the 60s was not that long ago, I remember they, there was a, they kept Wilt Chamberlain from buying a house in San Francisco. Well why would Wilt Chamberlain, an African American, have to live in San Francisco when there's some perfectly good houses in Oakland? Why? I mean, wouldn't he rather live in Oakland with his... Easy access to the bridge. Yeah. Yeah. What was he thinking? But isn't that true about San Francisco? The liberal city is kind of racist. If you're black in the 60s and the 70s, you're expected to move to Oakland, right? Yeah, yeah, and I think it's even more so now there's black people pretty much left San Francisco, they've been driven out by the techies and... Do you remember Denny Johnston? Yeah. Now he said to me years ago that the gay people were the first ones to leave after the 1906 earthquake. Why was that? That sounds like a great setup. He told me, I remember he was at Tommy T's in San Leandro, this must have been 1988. And he said, do you know why the gay people were the first ones to leave San Francisco right after the earthquake? I have the answer. You know the answer? No. I can't tell you on the show. You don't remember? No. They already had their shit packed. That's a horrible joke. We'll fix it up in post. You don't remember? I was sitting next to you. No, I don't remember that at all. Oh my God. What's happening in your memory? I think that was the hardest I've ever seen you laugh. I do not remember that joke. Do you see Denny at all? No. I think he's still around. Sweetest man in the world. And so funny. He had, at the time, he had a great actor when I started out. So funny. So funny. All right, my friend, are you going to run today? I am going to run five miles if I don't have a heart attack. Where do you run in San Francisco or Berkeley? I'm in the, it's so hard to get up to the bridge now I run here. Well, the traffic is just horrible, right? There's 30, they estimate 30 to 40,000 Lyft and Uber drivers in the city every day. So you cannot get anywhere now. And is there any mass transit to get to the Bay Area, to get to Berkeley from San Francisco? I could walk three miles to a barred station, which is filthy. So you love San Francisco? Love it. I love the open air urinals. You know, Sam, public urination in San Francisco is almost as... It's a tradition, much like public defecation. What is the worst bomb I ever had that you witnessed? The 1985 comedy competition. Yeah. Where you were looking for an opening joke right before you went on. I think Stephen Perl said, all music sucks. And you opened with, doesn't all music suck? And you said people, you could just see these angry faces. Do you remember this? Yeah. I've blocked that out. I remember you telling Tom Sawyer, you and Milt Abel saying to Tom Sawyer, you've got to see this comedian, David Feldman, Tom Book College. Political. He is... Precious today's newspaper. He goes up on stage with a newspaper, and he is just talking about Reagan and holding the Republican Party's feet to the fire. And you tell me, Tom's coming out to see at the Holy City Zoo. Work smart. And what did I open with? Don't you hate it when something about the litter box? You want to confuse your cat? Put one of your own in the cat's litter box. And he got like, you're just like the road runner. Oh, I just... Me and Milt had recommended you. And then I remember Tom was looking at Milt and I like, like we just pranked him or something. I was one of those comics who people made fun of. Like for being so bad. Right? That's why I'm always... People used to make fun of me for being so unlikable and unfunny. That's why I always have a soft spot in my heart for the comics who are really bad on stage, because if you're that bad for so long, eventually you can become incredible. The guys who figured out early on, I think are either destined to be Dana or Robin or just mediocrities. Right. Rickles. Finally, Don Rickles. When did we go see Rickles? Who opened for him? I remember. April 17th, 1988, Jack Jones. You are correct, sir. True. Then we had... They gave us some potato. Yeah. Remember that? Yeah, it was like... We were trying to figure out what it was, because it had to be bad for you, because it tasted so good. Mm-hmm. You know... God, that's April 17th, so that's... That's, what, 29 years ago today? Is today the 17th? Well, we're... Yeah. Yeah, that's when we saw Rickles, April 17th, 1988. Really? Yeah. I have the postcard to prove it. Wow. You know what I remember about that? I was living with my soon-to-be wife, and that was like a normal thing that normal people do. I remember going with you up to see Rickles, paying to see... We rented a van from budget and drove up there. And I thought, this is what normal men do. They go see Rickles. I don't think I've ever done anything like that since. Like, you got to drag me... Like, I would go through the motions to take my kids to a baseball game, but to go out with the guys and do something like that, that was never my style. Well, here you have what you like, Rickles. Yeah, I can count on my hand the number of times I did guy things once I was borderline married. Once I was in love and had a woman, I disappeared, right? You disappeared. Yeah. All right. I remember we were watching... I remember watching Jack Jones's on. I could see Rickles and the wings. And I just remembered just, wow, that could be us in a couple of years. More delusional thinking. But I remember I said, God, even if that word had happened, it didn't seem like it was that special. It kind of depressed me. Well, Vegas... Where was Reno, right? No, it was Tahoe. Like Tahoe. There is something about those casinos in Vegas and Tahoe and Reno that are so intimate, the illusion disappears. Yeah, it didn't seem special. Yeah, there is something that it breaks down. Performers don't seem as special up in Lake Tahoe and Reno. Hey, Larry Brown, how do people get in touch with you? LarryBubblesBrown.com. And you can... Oh, if you want to plug something, I still haven't seen it. Oh, that's right. That's right. The documentary film, Three Still Standing, which I think there's some pictures. You're in it. Three Still Standing, there covers the big comedy boom of the 80s in San Francisco. It focuses on you, Johnny Steele. It focuses on Dirst, Johnny Steele and myself. And it's directed by Tim Didion and Robert Campos. Right. And it's fantastic. It's what happened to... Have you seen it? Yeah, it's what happened to the middle class. I heard it's good. I can't look at myself. I haven't seen it, so I don't know. It tells the story of America through the prism of stand-up comedy. There was a time in the 80s and 90s when comedians could be journeymen and earn a living without being too famous. And now, show business, like everything else in America, is... Yeah. You're either really famous and rich or an open-micer. And that's what San... Yeah. And San Francisco now has turned its back on the open-micers. And that's sinful. Are there any... I mean, if I were to come up to... If I was going to come to San Francisco and I just wanted to work out, try new material, where would I go? What would I do? The kids have their own little room, so I think you can find them. They're scattered all over. You're probably going to go up in front of 12 people, but I mean, they keep these rooms alive. I don't know what they're like. And you're performing in front of other comedians. Yeah. They remember the brain wash. It's still going. Yeah. When we were starting out, we were performing in front of actual comedy fans. People loved... Yeah. People were coming out to see comedy. They loved it. It was... And they were supportive. You know, they... They were very supportive, yeah. And they knew we were in pain, which we were. They felt sorry for us. Yeah. And they healed us. I'm not so sure... Well, anyway. How much of... Is it still pain? Do people still turn to comedy out of pain? I think so. People want to laugh and forget their pains. And the people who do it? Both, yeah. Seems like they're more rich, college-educated kids doing stand-up than when we started. Definitely. They're kind of annoying, but... But maybe they've got pain, I don't know. Yeah. A lot of pain. A lot of pain. We'll fix this in post. I love you, Larry. I'm sorry about the airline. No, it was... My airline disasters were a disaster. This is the David Feldman Radio Network. I'm in the red part of the blue state. Joining us from the red part of the blue state in the Central Valley of California is Emile Guillermo. He writes a weekly column called Emile Amuck. It appears now in the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund site blog. A collection of essays from Emile Amuck, won American Book Award. He has a podcast called Emile Amuck's Takeout. He was also one of the hosts of All Things Considered. And for many years, was a reporter for San Francisco's flagship NBC affiliate, KRON. Welcome, Emile Guillermo. Hey, David, it is an honor and a pleasure to be joining you. What is happening in the Philippines right now? I know you've been covering the Philippines since 1983. I remember you covering Aquino's Funeral for NBC. And you've kept a close eye on the Philippines over the years. What is happening? And how did this happen? You've got a Philippine oligarchy that is falling apart. And the same thing that has pushed Trump forward here in the United States, a kind of untapped feeling, you know, in the country. The same kind of thing happened in the Philippines, where you have a country that has no middle class. It's all like the oligarchs and the poor. I think a lot of people who would like to define a middle spoke out and said, we want someone different. We want someone new. And so all the regular oligarchs who would, you know, play musical chairs in the Philippine leadership, they were all rejected. Except one guy, the son of Ferdinand Marcos. Ferdinand Marcos, the dictator, was making a comeback. And he came in second in the vice presidency. He didn't run for president. But for the presidency, this guy Deterte, who was a mayor of Davao City, launched a campaign that was just, it just, I don't want to say captured the imagination, but he was the guy who was seen to be the person who would get things done. Who's going to clean up the streets from the crime? Who's going to clean up the drug issue? There's a crystal meth problem in the Philippines that is just wreaking havoc in society. There are people who are users and sellers. There are gangs and dealers just creating a problem all throughout society, from the prisons to the streets. There were killings. You could clean that up. So it was almost like people called him Deterte Harry because he had a kind of vigilante streak to him. And certainly he did that. He cleaned up Davao City and they thought he'd do it for the nation and that's how he got elected. That's what's happening. When was he elected president? Last year. I think it's going to be almost a year now. Since he became president, there's been this war on drugs. There's been this killing, which means you can be judge, jury and executioner all under the badge of the Philippine Constabulary. These patrols or forces that go out there and they pretty much have been given this carte blanche to gun down people and they've killed thousands, literally thousands of people that we know of. Right, to fight the war on drugs and the Philippines, which is they call it Shabu, which is the drug of choice and it's hard to see that happening because in the same way that you can go through America and see the crystal meth problem in both in rural and urban areas and you see what it's doing to people's dentistry and you see what their dental work and you see what it's doing to people's lives. And then the same thing that's happening to opioids in places on the East Coast along the Appalachian Trail and that kind of thing is happening in the Philippines. How much power does Duterte have? How much power is invested in the president of the Philippines? We think of Marcos but he was a dictator. Is this guy a dictator or is there a Senate that he has to answer to? Look, you have to understand that the Philippine government is a mirror image of the United States government. This is what the Philippines owes to being a colony of the United States. So after hundreds of years of being a colony of Spain after the Spanish-American War the Philippines became a colony of America and what they got for that after World War II was their independence and to have a government that was really the mirror image of the United States. So Duterte is the president but he does have a legislature to answer to but that legislature is not as strong as people would like to see and also you have the problem of who is in power in the Philippines? You have the oligarchs and then you have people who want to see other people in charge people like Manny Pacquiao the boxer who I think he used to be an image of respect but since his homophobic remarks he's lost a lot of supporters among Filipinos abroad. To get back to your question the power of Duterte is somewhat checked but at any point he can can push that martial law martial law button and become every bit the autocrat that Fernand Marcos was and that's been the fear and certainly by using these extrajudicial killings he's gone about as close as you can without pushing that button there's some pushback but not nearly enough from within the Philippine government through human rights organizations but not nearly enough. In the United States our narrative is that crony capitalism was for all intents and purposes invented in the Philippines that we didn't have crony capitalism in the United States until recently. That's what we like to tell ourselves that especially when George W. Bush was president people were saying we're turning into the Philippines it's crony capitalism, Halliburton Goldman Sachs. Is that true? I never heard the concept of crony capitalism until Marcos in the 80s which begat or cemented the oligarchy in the Philippines. So it is accurate as far as you're concerned to say before Marcos nobody ever talked about crony capitalism in the world, right? No one talked about crony capitalism until Marcos but the crony capitalists were always there in American politics from local politics to national politics I mean certainly we see it more now in the US with the Koch brothers and you mentioned Halliburton Was it that Marcos was just more upfront about it? There were journalists in the west and there were journalists who were covering Marcos what it was that he was up to what he was doing. Like I said I never really understood crony capitalism as a phrase until Marcos came into power with martial law in the 80s. When I covered it here as a western journalist covering the Philippines it was primarily because the Philippines strong it got its strong support from both Reagan and from Bush because of the Philippine immigrants who were here in the United States and had one foot here in the United States and one foot in the Philippines in fact when we were in San Francisco together and I was covering the Marcos government the exiles from the Philippines who got kicked out by Marcos lived in San Francisco and they were ready sources who could talk about what was going on there and when they went under they all went back to the Philippines to assume their roles as the Filipino oligarchs Karzonakino replaced Marcos after her husband was assassinated was she an oligarch? She came from a rich family they weren't paupers and I think one of the disappointments is that the kind of reforms we wanted to see did not happen as the basic way we had hoped after the people power revolution people power did bring some changes and you can go back to the Philippines now and you can see a renewed vitality in the economy but I think a lot of people are disappointed by the outcome of what happened from people power and certainly people are a little disappointed too in Aquino's son who was president so after years of this the generation of this you can see why some people in the non-existent middle who are trying to say there's got to be something better than just the rich and just the poor they were looking for something practical the economy was better but then there was with the drug problem there was something that was not addressed and that's how the terti came to power but is he an oligarch himself did he come into this with money he was a mayor the mayor of DeVal City for about 20 years and he brags about living in the same house and about being a regular guy he's a populist I take it he is more populist than oligarch but he's developed this power and the oligarchs are are kind of their guy didn't get in there was a regular a person who was descendant of past presidents had that lineage he was defeated there are other people who would be more I don't know maybe puppet is too strong but certainly they would represent that wing they were all rejected so I think the Philippines is trying to manage and so is people looking at Trump's first 100 days the terti in the Philippines has his first working on his first year and his poll numbers are strong and in fact just on Sunday his name came first in Time Magazine's poll of the top 100 now this is an online poll and so of course online polls you have to take it with a grain of salt there are people in the Philippines stuck in the ballot they've denied it in the Philippines but this is kind of a nice coup amid all the the crises that are happening in the world and he was up against some of the biggest names Trump included in this poll to have the terti finish number one in Time Magazine's poll is really kind of astonishing and I know there are people who are trying to tell some colleagues of mine who are writing columns I also write for the inquirer.net one of the it's not the largest paper in Manila they were advocating to not vote for the terti but he's got this this grip on the mindset in the Philippines and keep in mind when we say this grip on the mindset of the Philippines there's a tremendous Philippine diaspora of Filipinos throughout the world and just in the United States it might be as many as 10 million and they all send money to the Philippines billions of dollars when you look at who the terti play to he plays to the the commoner in the Philippines but he also has to play to this diaspora this population that's far-flung throughout the world and specifically in the United States I don't think he's as successful with that image here because here people see him as the brown trump the Asian trump I think it's changing as I talk to people all the time their minds are being changed in the Philippines people laughed at me for voting for the terti but here we are we're not in any big war there's some problems but there would have been problems under the oligarch I reluctantly say that the majority are happy with what the terti has done even though those of us who are in the west who are looking at what's going on in the Philippines can't believe that there are these things going on with the extrajudicial killing right how is the economy the Philippines is I don't want to say stronger than ever but it's much stronger than it was over the last say 15 20 years when the little dragons would look at the Philippines and the Philippines would be a laggard now the Philippines economy is actually doing fairly well pre-duterte? so he's been responsible for the economy picking up I don't know if he's responsible I think it was just the combination of Aquino the son, Benigno Aquino the son plus there's some spillover certainly to the first year of Duterte but you know one of the things that interests me as we see the saber rattling between the US and North Korea is you know you don't hear much about the Philippines I mean Pence is over there he's going to Indonesia he's talking about Japan he's in Korea now the Philippines was a very important ally to George W. Bush right to come up and to join his alliance it was the Philippines and so suddenly the Philippines had ally stature equal to Australia which is hard to imagine but you know Bush was looking was happy to accept support from wherever he could get it and now I think because of Duterte's image there's a little backing away and you'll recall in the last six months there was a kind of Duterte was saying heck with America heck with Obama he was using Arsha language called him a bastard didn't he call him a mother a mother of a whore to use the literal translation you know so that hurts a lot of people who are here in the United States and I don't want to say I give Duterte credit for this but in some ways there's an anti-colonial feeling that the Philippines have to develop ever since Marcos I often wondered okay well the Philippines pulls out its bases it's got to be it's got to stand on its own and Duterte is the embodiment really of that so if you have a stance of let the Philippines be the Philippines well he's allowing it to happen what is the role America has played in propping up the oligarchs I don't know exactly during the Vietnam War I think Marcos came to power in the 70s during the Vietnam War and that was a time when we were propping up dictators in Asia like Suharto in Indonesia because we needed refilling stations for Vietnam we needed bases right and certainly they had Clark Marcos actually came to power in the 60s and then you know later solidified his power but he had the bases right that was an important aspect of the United States influence there and it's very efficient for us to have an oligarch and a dictator keep in mind the the Philippines were able they were able to kick the bases out one of the things after people power when the next things was get the bases out and they did and it's terribly disappointing that there was this announcement of you know a Philippine military agreement subsequent to that so it's like we're you know the backward movement toward a an American militarized presence there is a disappointment to those who were looking for a strong nationalistic Philippines and then you know of course if you want that strong nationalistic Philippines does it have to come with deterrent and I guess part of the answer is it kind of does because the Philippines is trying to define exactly what what it stands for that's kind of a problem and I don't know what happens after deterrent after deterrent if he if something happens and he goes because he's in poor health he's in the 70s and the reports that he was on fentanyl to deal with some back pain and it actually put him out of commission for a few weeks a couple months ago what is fentanyl is that like is that kind of like the thing Michael Jackson took yeah yeah it's an opioid it's an artificial opioid that can be addictive he's fighting his own drug war yeah he's got his pain pain to deal with so I don't know what's going on with the the oligarchs are just waiting in the wings the populace are trying to trying to you know see what you know the underneath deterrent and it's a strong force I mean I talked to relatives of mine who came to America in the 80s and went back to the Philippines to retire and I was surprised to hear their reaction because it's kind of split I you know there are people who love them and there are people who hate them but the people who I find love deterrent are actually very surprising to me I would assume they would be elderly they have a pension they have some money and they want a quiet life right yeah you're right I mean compared to the Philippines alright look most Filipino and this all your listeners all they have to do is if they have a visa card and they have a complaint or any kind of service problem they got to call a call call center I would say more than half of the time you're going to get the Philippines and it bothers me when I call those call centers because sometimes that's the only time I talk directly to Filipinas and they're always respectful I can tell by the accent that they're Filipino and I always ask them are you being paid in dollars or pesos because it makes you feel guilty when I'm you know trying to get get my $25 late charge taken off they hear these guys getting pesos and not dollars and I want to donate it to them and you know sometimes because I know they're getting ripped off in this new digital way but I sometimes getting conversations with them about what what the life is like and they're happy although they know that something's wrong they know that they deserve more but you know they're happy in their call center getting getting the living in the peso world instead of the dollar world and mind you the exchange rate is something like 50 to 1 50 pesos to a dollar so you can imagine we're talking with Emile Guillermo he is a journalist an author and has a podcast called Emile a Mux Takeout you were on all things considered you worked in big media you were the first Asian-American to host a nationwide broadcast and for years you've been writing about life as an Asian-American it's like correction David because if Connie Chung is listening she will shoot me because she was the first Asian-American Asian-American male yeah yeah so I'm the male Connie Chung that I just want to clarify the experience for Asian-American men would you say it's a different experience than it is for Asian-American females oh definitely I mean I think the Asian-American male has been emasculated and is now just I mean we got a little uptick you know Bruce Lee Jackie Chan but now it's been tough it's been tough for the Asian-American male what do you attribute that emasculation to why did that happen I think a lot of it might be and I'm not the first one to say this but I think a lot of it is the residual of World War II the day that lives in infamy Emperor Hirohita you know all of that came in in the 40s and that has lingered and people haven't forgotten and yet you know one of my columns was on the and it's one of the things that people don't like to talk about because number one it was the largest surrender ever for the US and number two you know America was the loser there but the biggest loser were the Filipinos because the Filipinos who were fighting for citizenship they answered Roosevelt's call they were in that United States Armed Forces in the Far East and in the Bataan death march 10,000 Filipinos died and only about like six you know like a comparative handful died of American soldiers and that's probably another reason why it's not in the history books except now there's a move in California to get that that legacy to get that story in the history books and in the high school curriculum and it's a good thing because they need to understand that the Filipinos what they did during World War II you know as an act of loyalty as an act of bravery this was the heroic moment for the Filipinos for Filipinos in World War II it wasn't you know MacArthur coming back from his retreat you know I shall return landing in Leyte and then going on to win the war it was really the Bataan death march that was the heroism and so we just came up to the 75th anniversary of that one of the other things they don't teach in our schools is that the Spanish-American war lingered well into the 1900s we were always taught that Spain surrendered but there were some Filipino insurgents who continued to fight tell me about that I don't have the exact numbers but they were this is the thing that Mark Twain when he talked about colonization he railed out against what the what the US did in the and really some people call it the Philippine insurrection the Philippine US war Emiliano Aguinaldo declared himself president of the Philippines and he led the rebels again in the fight against the US something like a half a million were wiped out by American soldiers yeah well it wasn't just it was a combination of combat deaths plus famine plus disease it was but it was a far far more significant number than people ever understand now there there have been some movies in the last say five years John Sales did a movie because remember there's that idea about the Buffalo soldiers who went to fight there and these were the African American soldiers who fought in the Philippines after they fought the Indians the Native Americans and they needed to be they needed a new front they were sent to the Philippines you know there was a play by a Filipino playwright D. Baroga called Buffalo that has seen some limited runs in San Francisco and Hawaii San Jose but these are stories that are linked to what America and its imperial vision these are the the negatives that no one sees in the history books and maybe it's because like they say the history is written by the winners until you see Filipinos and Asian Americans write about it and so you see people in Asian American studies you know write about this stuff you're not going to get it you're not going to get it in the textbooks in high schools or in college we're at a time, Emile Guillermo is the winner of the American Book Award for a collection of essays about life as an Asian American and he also hosts a podcast called Emile Amux Takeout it's AMOK Emile Amux Takeout which you can download on Stitcher iTunes and Podbean I thank you for your time David it is so good to talk to you again and I hope I can come back and you know be a regular voice on your show I hope so too welcome back listeners to this program know that I invite you all to go to davidfeldmanshow.com there's a contact button and tell me what you think, are you enjoying the show are you hating it, any suggestions other than killing myself I greatly appreciate one listener wrote to me a very detailed examination of my show he's been a listener for quite a few years and he was hypercritical it turns out he lives in New York City so we invited him into the studio and we're not going to give you his name but he has some criticism of the show let's introduce what should I call you asshole that will work for now because you're not going to like very much when did you start listening to the show I started listening to the show back in 2014 okay and you liked the show at the time the show was wonderful you had these nice hour hour and 20 minute segments you got a real feel for who you were talking to it was palatable and frankly lately these mammoth shows are mammoth you're being heckled by our producer okay I want to do this I want to treat you're a listener and I want to treat this asshole with respect because without the listeners I'm lost well these shows are way too long you can't get it's who has the time who has the time to take in all of these guys that you have on or gals for four hours this is something who do you think you are do you think you're Tom Sharpling you think you do a best show thing you think you're even Marin he's got two guys on and that's a lot you put eight shows into one show who has the time uh but I'm desperate and it's joke joke four hours of jokes four hours of jokes who can listen to you who can listen to you who can listen to you you are you are somebody that one should take in small doses alright don't compliment me because the letter you wrote was very insulting to me it was hateful you felt let down you felt disappointed by me you thought I'm an egomaniac for thinking that people would want to spend ten hours a week with me and then the instagram the instagram just when you think okay I take in four hours of David Sharpling and then my instagram feed is do you even know how to use instagram half of the titles are not even on the screen really? yes really so you have to figure out what it says you just have to do the math because you just see four letters of each word who's guiding you do you have a social media do you have a producer what kind of operation is this where am I you wrote a very hateful email to the website and I respected you for that truth you really do resent the length of the shows and now once you come into the studio and you see the operation and have desperate I am for attention you're beginning to feel sorry for me no I'm not and you're being a lot more gentle than you were in your very eloquent letter that you wrote and I thought this guy is sharp we should have him on the show but you're being little too right now how about this time stamps I don't want to have to scroll through if you want to do like a DVR situation let me know when Gilbert comes on let me know when Damerara comes on I got to scroll through I got to listen to your jibber jabber for all these guys it's too much time stamps and where do I put the time stamps put them in the info oh so you say it 60 minutes in David shuts up exactly 65 minutes it should be that detailed to warn people when I'm talking like a minute 212 David has a shitty joke yes David stop shitty joke lets the other more important person talk this is why I asked you to come on I feel like we're just warming up yeah this is good okay my feeling is we could put the show on five days a week seven days a week we used to do the show five days a week my feeling now is do it Tuesday and Friday load it up and it's like a DVR the show arrives Friday at 3am there's three to five hours of content you're right I should do a time stamp time stamps a good idea but once again do you think you're like a hot show that people are going to want to just binge on you certain people you live in New York City you have a lot of choices indeed but there are people who live in you know rural backwater towns like London, Los Angeles that like you Chicago where there's nothing to do and that's how they're going to take their time in listening to you haven't I tried you've made an effort you made an effort I'm making an effort I'm trying to get better don't give up on me the easiest thing for you to do would be to leave me for Jimmy Pardo show does Jimmy Pardo bring you on the show and care about you as much as I do this is quite an honor to be here in the studio Jimmy Pardo every listener of my show comes on the show did you know that we are a full service podcast no you're probably right to tell the audience 60 minutes in then an hour in we have right okay that's interesting but let me ask you a question the last show Friday show Alonzo Bowden Damarara Kira Soltanovic three hours three headliners what's wrong with that well I fell asleep in your monologue so did I no you have some not while I was re-listening to it while I was recording it I fell asleep well then you are more talented than I thought I was sleep talking that's amazing I suffer from sleep talking then I think there's another issue with the podcast maybe that's why you've been sleeping through the whole time I think you got these heavy hitters on I think you got these good guys and I do think the idea of having them all back to back to back is a it's a bit of a binge it's a bit indulgent on whose part on whose part you and your esteemed producer but I mean you go to a restaurant and I'm giving you great meals so do I want a steak for my appetizer and then a steak for my second course and then a steak for my main course it's a lot of red meat my cholesterol right just but what do I do the kitchen is overflowing with this great meat and I don't want it to go bad I think that this show could be filled with other segments not just the big guys a different segment a shorter segment and you can make it a long show you can make it a two hour show but does it have to be does it have to be three huge interviews so long that's a lot of besides this right you download an episode how much space is that taking up on your cloud not a lot not a lot we shrink it we have a good compressor how do you know about compression what are you in the business are you a spy you're a spy for Pardo aren't you hey I watch a lot of Silicon Valley so I know about those compressors well that's a show you could binge on a little bit is this guy have a podcast is this one of those celebrities I don't know about who walked in is this Nickname it's Nickname are you Nickname no I'm that asshole right but you know who Nickname is he's on Twitter and he we think we think it's somebody you know somebody really high up the food chain in the San Francisco comedy scene that's going under the anonymous Nickname he just knows too much about me he's too smart and sharp there are a couple I have a couple of people I suspect it might be but I don't want to say but I think it's like a Pardo he's not from San Francisco where's Pardo from he's from Chicago okay can I say some nice things no that's not why I asked you to come in I was just gonna say the studio is really nice oh I have nothing to do with that and the wine is great thank you producer he gave you wine he did give me wine okay to get through this he said most of my listeners can hit the fast forward button right most of my listeners why would you want people to hit the fast forward button okay how old are you 29 okay have you ever heard of the New York Times indeed do you know how to read the New York Times do I know how to read the New York Times do you know where'd you go I'll tell you how I read the New York Times it's a classic way yeah what's that you read that right article first okay and who taught you the left article and who taught you that then you hit the center and then you could flip through the headlines in the other in the other sections and then you read the op-ed and who taught you that your father or me did I teach it because I on this show I've taught people how to read the New York Times I learned this in history class one of the very good New Jersey public school so did you ever you're gonna call author ox Salsberger the publisher of the New York Times and say it's too much you're giving me too much to read it's all the news that's fit to print let me ask you a question would you call the New York Times and say I can't handle it it's too much news that you're dropping on my doorstep every day the paper is too thick make it smaller your head is too thick this is the podcast of record the New York Times assumes that its readers are discerning enough to pick and choose what to read and how is the New York Times doing very well as a matter of fact that's what I thought yeah the New York Times is doing but what's but what are what are people doing on the new are they actually getting the paper or are they reading it online they're doing both they're mostly doing it now digitally right so you can essentially go back and forth to it with a podcast is that something you're going to necessarily necessarily want to go back and forth on what like I just don't understand the benefits of putting out three three interviews at once what are the benefits maybe you can tell me that okay a lot of people know how to hit a fast forward button you've mentioned that okay a lot of people this I'm glad we're having this conversation we got to wrap it up in about two hours okay we're going to do this going to be a short so is this going to be part of the the podcast is going to be the two hours on the back this is going to be like four a day show we're going to wrap it up but this is the feedback I'm getting from my listeners because all I care about is my listeners because they're getting me through life so all I want to do is find out how they listen why they listen what they enjoy that's why I invited you on because you wrote a heartfelt stinging commentary of the podcast and it told me that you listen but you were pissed off and I invited you on because I care about my listeners this is my response to you asshole and I don't care if you ever listen to this show again I really I don't need you I've got two other listeners is one of them your producer he doesn't even know he doesn't even know what the information we're gleaning from the listeners is they appreciate the long form because it has a DVR quality to it the show arrives Tuesday morning at 3 a.m. Friday morning at 3 a.m. they know they now have four hours maybe three maybe five to get through at their own pace until the next show so if they're bored they can hit the fast forward button but they should at least give it ten minutes the way I say with the New York Times read the first paragraph and then move on if you're not interested give the first ten minutes of my interview with somebody or my conversation with somebody ten minutes if you don't like it move on right but you're right you should time stamp time stamp it because the downside of the fast forward button is sometimes if you get out of your podcast app it just starts over again and now you have to hit that fast you've talked about the fast forward button a lot show me where it is after this but you if you hit the fast forward button now you have to go to the exact spot and you go a little too far that's not really true and then you hear something funny picks up where you left off but sometimes if it closes out if you force quit or whatever sometimes it doesn't that's what I'm saying so now you have to go through sometimes you get a little spoil alert something funny happens and you got to go back and you're like you know a lot of people are in their car a half hour day so to work half hour home half hour that's an hour a lot of people go for walks they do jobs that allows them to listen to the show while they're doing their job and they can benefit from the long stretches but I will take your your heartfelt criticism and we will continue to evolve and I hope one day you lose your tail and you evolve thanks for being so open thanks monkey that's our show thanks to Jeanine Garofalo Larry Bubbles Brown and Emile Guillermo please friend me on Facebook follow me on Twitter subscribe to this show on iTunes and Stitcher give us a good review on iTunes please go to DavidFeldmanShow.com and do all your Amazon shopping there we got a small cut there's a contact button if you hit it and you have a comment send me a note I answer all my emails I'm a little behind this week if you emailed me and I haven't gotten back to you there's a lot on my plate but I will get to all my emails please share this episode with your friends share the knowledge share the laughs share the love from the show Briz Studios in downtown Manhattan Medicare for all and for all a good night