 Jake Johansson joins us. He is no stranger to comedy fans. He's never been on the show before, but he's no stranger to my listeners. I've mentioned you a lot. Dennis Miller used to say to me every comic when they're starting out picks a guy who he uses as a yardstick, who he measures his career against. I made the mistake of measuring my career against you, Jake Johansson. This was a big mistake. We started together. We hung out in the open mics in San Francisco and I would measure my career against you. That was a mistake. Well, this sounds like it could be flattering to me, so I hate to interrupt you. Well, let me introduce you. I'll tell you why it was a mistake. Jake Johansson has appeared. Oh my god. Hang on. Let me steady. Let me get steady here. Jake Johansson has appeared on David Letterman 45 times. 46 days. I mean, I hate to interrupt you. It's all I've got. I need that. Let me give you. This is not an introduction. This is just to tell my audience what an idiot I am to compete with you. Countless specials on HBO and Comedy Central. His podcast is Jake this and he will be at Hilarides in Cleveland, Ohio, June 15th through the 18th. Go see Jake Johansson if for no other reason to punish me. This is what you say on your website. This is so brilliant. This is amazing. The difference between watching stand-up comedy on television and seeing it live is like the difference between watching a porno and actually having sex with a real person. You might enjoy them both, but one is a lot better. That is so brilliant. Well, thank you, David. I think that it's true and I'm surprised more people don't bring it up. But that tells you it's you and several other people who are visiting my website and I don't know. Thank you. That's nice of you. I think that it's apt. I think when you're watching stand-up on TV, what you're doing really is you're watching and someone else watch a comedy show. I mean, you're watching it, but you're kind of watching them watch it. That's why you need to be able to hear them laugh and they don't show the audience as much now as they used to. But when you're at a comedy show, there's a much more of an immediacy to it. And it is actually happening to you. Because it's dangerous. Well, it's dangerous or it's just intimate. You're involved in it. When you watch it on TV, it doesn't feel vicarious. It feels like it's really happening to you. But believe me, I have people who come to comedy shows and tell me about exactly what I'm talking about on my website and what we're talking about right now. It's just as different. You may not believe it if you're just hearing about it, but go see a great comedy show and whoever, somebody that you're really into. But when you're in the room with them, it's very much more immediate and intimate and intense. So my theory about you when we were starting out is that I was trying to make the people in front of me laugh. You were thinking of the bigger picture. Hmm. Well, I don't I that's funny because I always when I if anybody wants my anyone wants my advice, I would I would advise someone who's auditioning for something. If you're going on a showcase and there's going to be scouts from Letterman or The Tonight Show or whatever, HBO special in the audience, I would say do not think about those people at all. Just focus on making the audience in front of you laugh. So that's that's kind of what I'm always trying to think of. But you may be maybe you're talking about subject matter as opposed to to just approach. Yeah, well, I have two thoughts about that. I put you up there with Larry Miller in that you're pretty pure with your material. I don't want to embarrass you, but but you always had class. You never rolled around in the gutter on stage. You never worked filthy. I remember driving to L.A. with you and John Ross. I had a job at a radio station, and you had heard some of the stuff that I was doing was a lot of flatulence jokes and the two of you and I never forgot this. You lectured me the same way Larry Miller lectured me about building equity with an audience and that you can't be smart and then stupid because it's schizophrenic. You have to work to the audience as better angels. How did you know that so young and so early? Well, I don't remember being quite that philosophical that young, but I definitely felt as I yeah, it's hard for me to know now or remember now how I thought of it then so I can more talk just about how I feel now and I think now again, this is kind of in that category of who gives a shit about my advice, but I think that if you want to be a good comic, you need to really think about what is funny to you and what is the most efficient way of communicating that to the audience and the alternative path is people think that there's some kind of reverse engineering method that you can use where you figure out what the audience you figure out what you think the audience wants to hear and then you serve that up hot and that may work for a while if you have some angle and are able to figure out what the audience wants, but eventually they're not you and you're not going to know what to say. So what if you what if you figure out what's funny to you, but it's so inappropriate, you can't do it? Well, I don't think of you as inappropriate, David. In fact, if we're, I wasn't talking about me. Sorry. But what about our big thing? What if we're handing out compliments now? I mean, I feel like you've invented a thing that is almost impossible for anyone else to do because I don't even understand it sometimes when I'm watching you do it where you'll do a joke that's sort of through the looking glass, but then satirical and, you know, the audience and I'm laughing, the audience is laughing and I can't tell if they're laughing what I'm at what I'm laughing at. I don't know what your actual point of view is if this is a satire or if you really think that and there's something about it that's so kind of hilarious and disorienting that I think it's incredible. Well, that's high praise coming from you. All I wanted to do was be the worst human being on stage that I possibly I'm being serious. My goal is to be the worst human being without cursing, without resorting to vulgarity and without going into the gutter. That's, but I can't, you know, anyway, but thank you for that. Yeah, I mean, I figured I was so unlikable that I would just make myself so unlikable that some people would like me is back to you because I do have some questions and there is value to not being in the same room with you because it feels pure and I can ask these type of questions to you. Oh, boy, the sense that's I just it should we just let me I just want my imagination to have a chance to run wild with my my assumed respect. Am I going to be mad? Am I going to be violently aggressive? I don't know. We'll see. No, I'm just curious if there's some questions I have about growing up. It seems to me that you have impeccable taste in comedy. You hung out with Ellen and Tom Kent. You you hung out with the comics who weren't crass or vulgar. And this is how I rationalize this. I say you grew up in the Midwest and you have good wholesome values which you struggle with. But basically, you know, right from wrong. And your comedy comes from that. And you had disdain for vulgarity. Did that I think that's a fair statement about you. Well, I don't know. That may be how it seemed to you. I would say that it from my perspective in those early days in San Francisco, you know, I was from the Midwest. I had just lived for five years in Iowa where I was going to college. And I didn't understand. I think a lot of people who aren't into comedy still don't understand the way comics can tease each other and say really mean things. And that's they like it. You know, I remember having girlfriends back in the day. And even before I got married recently, well, 15 years ago, I got married. And they would say, how come your friends are so mean or how come you're so mean to them? And the thing is like, I'm not being mean to them. They like that. It's like dogs who are biting each other and rolling around on the floor. But I know that now at the time when I first moved to San Francisco, that kind of way of interacting with other people, it just seemed mean to me. And so the people who are good at it, you know, and I would put you in that category, I just didn't understand. I couldn't tell like, do these guys like me or do they really not like me? I mean, I was very insecure about that. And so I avoided those situations because I mean, the response is either to, I knew I wasn't the right answer to fight and to be mad. And I didn't think crying was going to be helpful. So I ended up, you know, maybe befriending some of the gentler. Right. Souls. Yes. That's absolutely correct. I gravitated towards the aggressive, hard drinking, mean spirited comedians. I mean, it's like a punch. The gut level laughs. Were you watching television at the time? Were you at the time in the 80s when we were starting out? When you were starting out, were you going home and watching television? Were you watching Letterman? Were you keeping an eye, for lack of a better word, on the marketplace? Were you looking at the marketplace? No, I've been watching Letterman when I was in college. He had a daytime show, so I was watching that. And I suppose we were all watching Letterman at night because it was like, ah, can you believe that this thing is on? And it only started, I think his nighttime show only started in the, like I started doing stand-up in 82. And I think his nighttime show came on in 84 or something like that. So I didn't watch. I didn't watch. I really didn't. I was so relieved that I was no longer watching television. And I really didn't start watching television until I started writing for it. So you were watching, did you go to watch, what was it, the Circle in the Square or the, what was that theater and not San Bruno? Yeah, I think that was in Berkeley or Oakland or someplace, but no, I didn't. Would you pay money to go see somebody like Howie Mandel or Billy Crystal? No, no, I never did that. I mean, when I was in high school, I went to see Steve Martin. That counts. But I never, no, I'd never, and this isn't any kind of point of pride or anything, but I never paid to go see a comedy show. I never paid for it. You went to see Steve Martin. How old were you? I would have been, I guess, I must have been 17. Was that the first live show you ever went to? Probably live stand-up show. I didn't really even understand when I started doing stand-up comedy, it was, I came to San Francisco to do that because I met another guy who was a Chicago supposedly and he had cut this article out of Newsweek or Time because his dream was to do comedy in San Francisco. He wanted to go where Robin Williams started at the Holy City Zoo, and so that's why I was going to do that. I don't know what I thought, but I didn't realize that you could make a living in just working comedy clubs. You don't have to be hugely famous to not have a day job, and in fact not only not have a day job, but to have, I've got a nice house near the beach and it's all from doing stand-up, but I didn't know that that was an option at the time. I thought I was going to San Francisco, I was going to do whatever stand-up comedy was and was going to go on stage and do something silly that would get me a TV show and then I would become rich and famous like Robin Williams. Right. Now I remember this. I remember being more successful than you early on. This is just what I tell myself. I remember taking the lousy gigs, playing Fremont and Hayward and Newark, not Jersey and California, and being told by Tom Sawyer, don't take these gigs. It's easy money, you'll regret it, you'll pick up bad habits, stay in the city, punch it out. My recollection was, and this isn't true, but this is how I remember it, coming back from Hayward in a zoot suit flashing wads of cash in front of your face going, look what I did. My recollection is early on I went for that cash and you didn't. I think more to me, I would remember it as you became more able to succeed in, I could go on at the other cafe, which was one of the nicer, quieter, more behaved audience rooms and have a good set, but you had developed an ability, a skill, I think, to succeed and to engage and get laughs from an audience under many more circumstances and difficult circumstances. You got to do those more roady East Bay rocket room gigs. Before I did, I ended up doing them. Sometimes I would do all right at them, but I used to console myself after I would say to other people, the worst thing that can happen to you at the sunshine saloon is that they want you back. And yet, how did you know that? I guess you're born with those kind of values because I would say they want me back. Well, right. No. No, but you're right. And you were right. And Tom Sawyer used to say this, there were two types of, as I remember San Francisco, there were three major clubs. There was the Holy City Zoo, the other cafe and COBS. And I'm going to say it. I don't want to use it. There was a zoo was the opposite of the other. And COBS was was a synthesis of both COBS reflected Tom Sawyer's views of comedy. And I think to this day, I think he had the best taste in comedy, but the Holy City Zoo was rough and tumble. It wasn't easy. You had to punch it out. You could lose the audience at any time. The other cafe was in the hate. It was very gentle, very snobby. The owners were snobs. They liked their, they liked you and Paula Poundstone and Rob Schneider and Alan. They were very protective of their audience. They didn't want to crass and vulgar. And then and then COBS combined those two. Tom took both types of comics, but they had to be great. You were an other cafe comic. I was a zoo comic. Is that fair? Well, yeah, that sounds, that sounds, yeah, I feel like that's a close shorthand. Tom, Tom became a supporter of mine before I won the comedy competition in 1986. And so in 85, I think, or maybe even as early as 84, he had said, look, one of the things I'm going to try and do is have a somebody who I'm really nurturing to move forward. And so that's going to be you right now. I'm going to give you one week of hosting the show per month. So you'll have a week's worth here at COBS every month. And so while I think sensibility wise, the other cafe thing is right, but COBS and Tom have always, I mean, he's responsible for a lot of that early success I had, development. And then I worked, he made an exclusive deal with me just a year after winning the comedy competition. So from roughly from 89 until whatever a few years ago when he sold it, I was exclusive in San Francisco at COBS and up there often twice and for many years, three times a year. When do you think you figured out who you were on stage? I think I had a little bit of a penny drop moments when just just around before the comedy competition, I won that in 86. And so I would say in that 85 time, 84, I kind of had this, I don't know about figuring out who I was, but I stopped trying to be somebody else and just sort of went with whatever. I took the easy route and just was myself, I think that's the way it felt to me anyway. You did something. I remember my father told me about two comics. He told me about you and Dennis Miller. And he said, my father said, there's this guy, he's seen you on Letterman. He's telling stories. He's the only guy who's up there building a house and hanging his jokes inside, but he's got this house. How did you know how to do that? Even Dennis Miller, when I worked for Dennis Miller, he didn't build the house. First he gathered up all the furniture and artwork and said, let's build a house around this. Seems to me you built the house first and then decorated it. I feel like I'm always trying to, you know, that's a tricky thing. I feel like if I could describe what it is I'm doing in an articulate brief way, that would have been helpful to me in terms of getting a sitcom or really getting anything. And that's another skill though. I feel like I can do it, but I don't always know the best way to talk about it. But to me, I'm talking about things that I think are funny. And a lot of times that starts off being a story about something that happened to me or something that I saw read about, but that it's me telling, trying to communicate that to someone else. And there's a personal sort of awkwardness and searching for the right way to say it that goes along with the actual telling of the information that makes it funny. But I, you know, I'm not doing such a great job. No, I'm fascinated by this because I've wanted to ask you these questions for a long time. You had the courage not only to do what you wanted to do and what struck you as funny, you had the courage to stick to a process that every other comedian I know in our group didn't have the wherewithal to pull off. And that is not to lead with the laughs, not to lead with the jokes, to lead with the truth, to lead with what you wanted to say and get the laughs from the honesty. Yeah, you know, I did this. How did you know to do that? Well, it was instinct, I guess, right? It was more just trying to come from a place, you know, the only way that you can be sure that you're going to be 100% original is to try and be 100% yourself because there's not someone else like you. And that's when I was talking earlier about the way you do comedy, I feel like that's what you're doing also. So it's not really a calculation. And it's also not something that as much as, you know, for comedic purposes or emotional, your own personal emotional reason, you're not so different in that sense. You know, generally you and I are doing that same thing. It just, I maybe figured out or was objective about it sooner than you were and you were more, you got there and then realized what you were doing. Well, I failed so much that it was just, there was so much failure going on and desperation. And there still is Letterman. The first time you did Letterman was what year? 87. Five years in. Was it terrifying? I would assume five years in. Did you feel ready or did you feel it was too sudden? It was pretty scary. I mean, I, it's funny because you brought up Dennis Miller a couple of times and I really have to say thank you to him. I've said it a number of times and I know I've said it to him, but I really would like to just stop right now and say thank you to him on your show just because he and I worked together in Sacramento and he was obviously the headliner and I was the feature actor and that would have probably been in 85. And he was very supportive to me, said you got to come down to LA. Then I won the comedy competition in 86, but I had been down to LA before then and kind of been around. He helped me get in at the comedy magic club. He got Louis Anderson to sit next to Mitzi while I was on stage and say something nice about me at the comedy store. And then when I won the comedy competition and got management, and you know, they were saying you got to go to more Robert Morton had seen me for Letterman out in San Francisco, but you know, I didn't have management and he was like, I like you, but you're not ready. When I was in, I was talking to Dennis who would, by that time, he had gotten Saturday Night Live. He had, he let me stay in his house in LA when I came down here and took me around. Then he relocated to New York to do Saturday Night Live and was living in an apartment and on brand new on Saturday Night Live. He says, come out here, you got to, Morty's got to see you out here. You can, I slept on his floor in New York City while he was in the, in that, you know, boiler room of SNL at the beginning. He took time to support me there, let me stay in his place was encouraging of me. I mean, he was so helpful. And then later when he had his own talk show, he had me on a couple of times. He's just, I think now people have an opinion about him because he's got this conservative thing going on, but he was just so helpful and kind to me early on. It was great. So that's it. And that is his reputation in that if he thought you were funny, he would go to the mat for you. And he did. Yeah. So, so, so I went out to New York, I stayed at his place. Morty, Morty saw me, Robert Morton saw me again. My managers were also Letterman's manager. So that didn't hurt. But you know, there's nobody's getting on that show unless Morty and Dave, you know, there's no Dave's not doing anything or his system isn't set up to let anyone in who is not going to be pleasing to Dave after it happens. But so I passed all of that and I flew out to New York for my first appearance and, you know, you fly to New York, you run your set the night before in a comedy club and have a conversation about the jokes and how it's going to go. And it's okay tomorrow you come in. I got to assume you completely tanked it the night before in the comedy clubs. Well, you sort of always do. It was you'd go on a catcher rising star, which at the time they had a band would go on. So, so the comic would perform and it's mostly comics going up and doing 20 minutes sets. So the comic would perform. He'd say, thank you. The audience is clapping. The band would come on stage along with the host who would then do five minutes or 10 minutes and then introduce the next comic and the band would play while you walked on stage and then you had to stand on stage until the band got up and walked off stage and then you're just going to do five minutes and then say thank you and then the band's going to come back on. So there's a lot of freaking traffic and busyness going on and it's so it's really hard and you're showcasing your letterman set. So you're not coming out and going, hey, how's it going? Or what happened today in the news? You're coming out and doing your first joke and you're, you know, you're flipping the cards over and then you're saying thank you. So it was sort of set up to be a little bit of a dud the day before, but I had run that set so many times. That's why they have you run it so many times because being on national television is exciting. And back then it was even more exciting. There was, you know, not every, not many people had cable TV and there was way more people watching this. It was a big deal, a bigger deal than just, than it is now just because now there's people are watching stuff on their phones now. But so you'd go out and you'd do that the night before and it would go, it was okay. And then you go in and it's my first time and I'm cranked up and I'm excited and I can't believe I'm on this show hosted by this guy who, you know, he's older than us, but he was just older than us. So he's really the hero that you can relate to because he's just, you know, he's just ahead of you in the game. So I was very excited and I'm backstage and the guest before me is on and they come back and they said, okay, when he or she is finished, then it's going to be you. So get ready. And then when they went to commercial, Morty came back and he said, hey, Jake, we're sorry, but we've run out of, there's not enough time left for you to do your whole set. So we're just going to have the person who's out there now is going to talk for three minutes and then their band's going to play a song and that's going to be the, we'll have you back. You're bumped. But I was only bumped till the next night. So I didn't have to, I didn't have to go back and ramp up everything. I could, and it was good because of my breathe. I didn't couldn't calm down my breathing and I was kind of shaky. And so I realized the next day, look, just get up, don't drink any coffee, just drink water all day. Keep yourself calm and collected so that, you know, you don't need to worry about pumping yourself up for the show, you know, like, you're already pumped. Yeah. Yeah, you're going to be so jacked on adrenaline that you got to focus on the opposite, keeping yourself calm. And so it was actually good to get bumped. And so I came back the next night and, you know, they introduced you and you've run the set so many times, you walk out there and you just flip the cards over. You just do the jokes in the order that you do them. And all you have to do, you don't have to remember your whole say. You just have to remember the first thing you're going to say. And then it all comes out. And then at the end, you say, thank you and the band plays. And the next thing you know, you're backstage and it's over. Did they let you use bullet points back then? No, there wasn't any, there wasn't any bullet points or cue cards. I don't remember the first thing in terms of time, but I remember then almost every time after that, they would go, okay, so you're going to do at the beginning it was six minutes, but then it got down to four by the end, but they would say, okay, there's going to be a guy gives you the one minute to go and a 30 second to go. And it's like, I just, I was like, okay, they can do that. But I'm going to do it's not like I'm going to drop my last joke because it takes longer on TV. I got to do the script. I'm going to do my jokes and then you're going to have to, you're going to have to trust, figure it out. I can't, it always amazed me that they would go, they're going to do some countdown thing. It's like, look, you know what I'm going to say and I'm going to say all that stuff. Did you have a friend with you the first time you do the letterman? I must have. I, so many of the times I had a friend of mine that was, um, we met because our girlfriends were friends in San Francisco and then he moved out to, to New York before I did letterman. And I think he came to the first one of the 46. He was probably in attendance at the 35 of them. Wow. My friend Evan Elkin and, uh, so he, uh, I think he was probably at that first one, but I don't remember for sure. All right. So you're waiting to go on. You're terrified. I doubt you can remember this. Was there any moment during your first letterman shot where you thought, Hey, this is fun? Um, no, no, it was it. I, I had, I did it many times before I kind of realized like come out, stand there for a second and look around. So get in. It's going to seem like forever to you, but it's just going to seem like two seconds and completely natural to the audience, but let yourself absorb a little bit of what it's like to be out there. You know, that's the advice that I get people when the, if, if I know somebody's getting married, I always say, look, Hey, be sure and stop and just take a breath and look around and soak in the day. Shoot a little bit of, of a movie for yourself that you can play back later. Because otherwise it just seems like some dream that you had, you know, and enjoy the, the wedding night. Cause that's the last time you're getting late. See, this is why I never made it, Jake. So it's kind of jokes. How many times in were you finally relaxed around Dave? Because there is this dichotomy. You're trying to make the audience laugh, but you're more importantly, you're trying to make Dave laugh. It's almost like you can not make the audience laugh, but if you make Dave laugh, you're fine. Did you ever get, I'm going to assume this without getting too personal. This is what I assume. I'm going to assume that to the very last shot, you were never completely relaxed around Dave Letterman. I don't think anybody is. Well, I mean, people say, look, Hey, you've been on there 46 times. Dave must like you. And it's like, yeah, there's no question that Dave likes me likes my standup. I mean, he enjoyed having me on the show. I mean, and I realized years ago that he liked me because oftentimes they would call up and go, Hey, it's Sweep's Week. And so we want to have you on because Dave really likes you or Hey, it's Dave's birthday. We want to have you on because it's Dave's birthday. Wow. And then, and then you figure out that the, this is, this is how famous that David Letterman is. He doesn't, he not only doesn't pay to go see comedy shows, he sees comedy, he sees comedians by having them on his show. So he's a fan of comedy and he has comics on that he likes and he is there watching and, and I think hoping to enjoy your performance. And I, and I, and I, he said very many nice things to me afterwards. You know, Hey, great set or I've heard him laugh or re say a punchline afterwards to me that he liked and, but we were never hangout kind of guy. I never, I never went up to the office and smoked a cigar watch a basketball game or something. I feel like if I went out to a restaurant and I saw him at another table, I would, it would be all right, but awkward over to say hello, but I would keep it brief and make sure that he knew that I was going to keep it brief and just say, look, hi Dave, I haven't seen you. I really miss you. It's great to see you. I hope you're well, you know, right, right. That's one of the things I learned early on is that if people got to know me, the idea, if you're a civilian, you think, well, if he gets to know you, he's going to want you on more often. The minute I started doing stand up, I realized I have zero charm. My stand up has to speak for itself because if anybody gets to know me, they're not going to be, they're not going to want to hire me and have me around. And I think it's very wise. I think the mistake you could have made is to have been too comfortable around David Letterman, right? Well, I think, I think the people who he was friends with, who were comics that he was having on the show, he was already friends with them ahead of time and, and they, you know, John Witherspoon and George Miller, those guys Dave was friends with before they were going on the show, but he wasn't having them on the show unless he thought they were funny. I mean, so I think, yeah, if he wanted to make friends or have me over or something, that would be fine, but I don't think that's what gets you back on the show. Right. I think, and I think that that's one of the hazards of being successful when you have something like that, that, you know, your peers want, you know, then you can, everybody can start wondering if, if you're hanging out with them because they want to get something or if you're hanging out with them because they like you, you know. Are more of your friends comedians or more of your friends? I hate to use the word civilians, but it's so pretentious, but. Well, I think that's a word that we comics use a lot, but it seems weird when you let other when you when you let them, you say it, you know. But do you gravitate because I found once the kids were born, I moved away from I said this to Larry Brown. Larry Brown and I talked every night bubbles. I could not fall asleep unless I talked to Larry Bubbles Brown, who continues to make me laugh really hard. But the minute I had a child, I realized Larry was not going to be the guy I could call it for in the morning to help me if something happened. So I gravitated towards normal people. Did you? How do you live your life? Do you like being around comedians or are you comfortable around people who do other things? I definitely like comedians, but it's they've got to be comedians that are geographically, you know, it's funny because I when you asked me to be on the show that I went and looked at some of your episodes to see why I should listen and see what what's going on on your show right now. And so I listened to Greg Fitzsimmons, who I am. He lives in the neighborhood and our kids are close to the same age. And so I hang out with Greg when he's around, but he's pretty busy and he's on the road. So we maybe we have dinner with them. You know, he and his wife and my wife and I have dinner once or twice a year and maybe I see him one or two other times. I would say my closest friend right now is a comic who's, you know, probably 16, 17 years younger than me, but he lives in the neighborhood and he's on my podcast quite often Nigel Lawrence. And that's, you know, we have a similar sense of humor and he's available to hang out with when I have my free time during the day. Once my wife goes to work and my daughter is at school, that's when I can hang out. I can't be going out for beers in the night, evening time. And I can't be driving across town to have an hour and a half lunch, drive an hour to go have lunch for an hour or to drive an hour back. I can't be doing that. So so the most of the people that then I live my life with besides Nigel or when when our mutual friend John Ross lives nearby, he had a wife that had been married, that we had been married the same amount of time and our daughters were born three months apart. So the fact that we were best friends then our families could be best friends because of that matchup. But that's what happens when you, when you get married, now you're spending time with your wife. And so when you want to have social time, unless, you know, you've got your night a week or every once in a while where you go out and be with your friends or your wife goes out and is with her friends. But if I'm on the road two weekends a month, then the two weekends I'm home, you know, my wife wants that to be us time. So we're going to hang out with other couples. And then once you have a kid, well, the ideal other couple is a couple that's got a kid that can play with your kid. So you know, this is the problem with my 50th birthday. My wife was like, I want to have a 50th birthday party. And I said, like, I don't want to have a 50th birthday party. She goes, why not? I want to have a 40th birthday party. I don't want to be 50. I said because it's because of the people who come to your 50th birthday party, you know, when you're single, you're hanging out with your friends and your friends on a scale of one to 10, not one to 10 objectively, one to 10 subjectively. Subjectively to you, your friends that you hang out with when you're single are eight, eight, nine or 10s. You're not hanging out with any sevens because you're the person who's casting this movie. It's for you. Right. Then you get married and you got to hang out with, oh, you're hanging out with your wife's friend who to her is a 10, but to you is a seven. And then she's married to some guy who's a fucking four. And then once you've got a kid involved, now you've got to have your wife and your kid and your kid's friend. So your 50th birthday party is a fucking yard full of fives. It's terrible. So yeah. Yeah. Do you see what I'm saying? You are normal, though. In that you're, and I, and so is John Ross, because we were, you know, we were best friends and hung out, but you guys did normal things. You went to baseball games, you hung out, you went to parties, you played bad. Dave, you're a normal guy. You got married before either of John and I. How normal is that? And you had a kid. You had two kids. Yeah, but you know, what I did was I kind of, I just retreated. I just became more of a hermit. I was already a hermit, and then once you have kids and a wife and responsibilities, it gives you more reasons not to hang out. Well, right. You don't have as much free time. I mean, that's the other truth about our relationship is, you know, you've got, you're not in charge of 100% of your time. You're doing things with the other person, which hopefully you also enjoy. But sometimes you're compromising or going to the thing that they want to do. But whatever you're doing, you don't have that time to go hang out with your buddies anymore. So you do compromise. You do. If somebody says, I want to go see this movie, even though it's a waste of your time, you'll go see it because the person who gave you a child wants to go see that movie. Yeah, except we don't go. I just, I'm sort of off going to movies now. Like I, we went to the first Guardians of the Galaxy and I'd like to go see the second one because that was the first movie where my wife, my daughter, and I all had a great experience at the theater. But I find oftentimes the movies are, you know, you're going because that's the night that you've got a babysitter and you can go and then you're picking the best thing that you can of the options that are available. And then it's like, God, what's the point? It's like, you just, you just blew by the time you paid for the movie and the dinner and the babysitter, you blew 100 bucks to go see something that I could have waited for this to come out on nothing ever and stayed at home. I think of you early on. I apologize for going back down to the 80s, but I just have some preconceived notions about you that one, one of those notions is that you instantly said, this is my life. This is my structure. This is how I'm going to live. Whereas somebody like me or John Ross is constantly saying, is this my life? Is this who I am? Is this my life? I think early on, you set up a schedule, a vision of what your life is, who you are, and you compromise, but you've kind of stuck to it over a long stretch of time. Yeah, I've been blessed and cursed by being able to get work in comedy clubs for all those many years and then, you know, corporate things and every once in a while, I get a pilot for a TV show or a little part in a movie and stuff. But most of the time, I've just been working on stage doing my show and I kind of focusing every August and September on filling the calendar up for the next year. And I've been able to do that for all this time. And so I hadn't really thought about it. A little bit of it was always kind of a nail biter at that time of year. What does that even mean August? I don't even know what that means, August and September. For the longest time, comedy clubs would be filling, they would book their next year's calendar in August and September. In other words, by December of 2017, January through December of 2018, they would have mostly already on the books. For the longest time that was the case. And so that's how I was just geared was filling up my calendar as much as possible and then the spaces that were still open, calling my manager, agent and saying, look, I've still got these availabilities that I'd like to fill in my calendar and hustling and then going to do the gigs. And then now social media and podcasts and all that other stuff. You've got so much more responsibility of promoting your own shows that yeah, I kind of settled into that rhythm. I don't know that it was as conscious of embracing of it as you're kind of portraying it. That has to be, I didn't even know this about being that successful as a standup where you actually see the year ahead of you. That's a great way to live. If you can pull that off. Well, it was great. And I would say only now am I now having to try and figure out how to do like I've got the Cleveland date that you mentioned the week after that, I'm going to do Pittsburgh. And then then I've got this kind of fun theater show that I'm doing in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. But then I'm combining that with a show in Manchester by the sea and another one of my friends got this barn at his bed and breakfast in New Hampshire. So I'm going to do a show up there. And so I'm trying to do these other shows to still be able to engage with the crowd and write material and keep it real. But now it's a little bit more of putting it together on the fly that way than it used to be. And there's an excitement to that. I feel like we're kind of coming to a point where there's so many great comics and there's so many great comedy clubs that but there's I still feel like there's there's there's new ways to go out and do shows to call there's a lot of comics now that are just doing shows and music clubs. You know, they're doing they're doing a tour where they're just in St. Louis for one night doing a show. And then the next night they're going to be somewhere else. You know, Stan Hope, that's how he's doing his tours now. Stan Hope at one point would come to your house if you could guarantee an audience. Well, I didn't know that, but I've talked to some music musician friends of mine and they were talking about house concerts and doing that. And I would I would consider you know, there's the creep factor that you got to try and watch out for now. And I heard you talking to Greg Fitzsimmons about the whole like we're from this time before where you wouldn't put anything out there unless it was your polished best version of yourself. And now now you put a camera in the back of a comedy club and you tape yourself doing a bit, you throw that up on YouTube. And the next thing you know, you're famous Angela Johnson. She's famous from that nail salon bit that she does somebody she didn't even record it. I talked to her somebody else recorded and put it up and it just blew her up. So it's hard to know what to do to promote your show or where the best shows are. And you know, it's funny. It's funny to me to still have people I'll go and do something on Facebook and Facebook live and people are nice. They're like, oh, that's great. When are you coming to Philadelphia? Well, can't you got a Jake, you got to come back to to Indianapolis or something. And it's like, hey, why haven't I been to those places? It's I'm not a whore, but it's if as soon as the money make a phone call, and you tell me you got a place and you can pay me, you know, or you could sell the tickets. If it's a house party, I suppose I might be open to that. Who were you measuring yourself against when you were starting out? Or did you not measure yourself against somebody else? Was it John Ross? I don't know about that. I feel like I had a really when I won the comedy competition. And then also you've already mentioned that three times, Jake. Yeah, I got on it. You did say that you wanted to talk about that. So I just want to make sure that I have actually, I was teasing. I have a question about the comedy competition. So go ahead. So I did that happened in 86 late 86. And then I also picked up my managers at that time, because at the same time as that competition was going on, they were casting the HBO 10th anniversary Young Comedian special. So I got on that. And then two years later, I was on Letterman. So that was a big I kind of went from hustling and trying to get to fill up my calendar as a as a middle act in comedy clubs. I got to be looked like a headline and I was working all over the place and I was in LA and I was trying to do a sitcom. So that was a really fast kind of success. And I don't know that I compared myself to anyone. And I don't know really I remember that my agents and managers to me, you know, that's so funny. You're like 27 years old. And they're going, What do you want to do with your career? And I was like, I don't know. I don't know. What can I do? What are my choices? You know, and thinking, Well, yeah, it would be cool. They at that time it was that you got to get your own sitcom. It was before Jerry had his show. But you know, it was Roseanne was doing it. You know, that it was going on. And I was thinking, I don't want to be a sitcom. What I thought I wanted to do then was I want to be Tom Hanks. I want to, you know, he wasn't the famous dramatic movie star, but he was doing comedies and he was doing other sort of kind of serious movies and it looked like really fun. And it's like, Hey, if I get to pick, if it's like, what do I want to do? I want to do, I want to be that guy. I want to be Tom Hanks. Who doesn't want to be Tom Hanks? At that time, being Denzel Washington was not one of your options. But you know, now who doesn't want to be Denzel Washington? You know, of course you want to be Jamie Foxx. Look at what Jamie Foxx has gotten to do. But you know, you can't measure your career by somebody like that. You can just say that's an example of somebody who, man, they got to do a lot of cool shit. Did you, well, I know you've been generous with your time. Just give me five more minutes. Okay. Yeah, sure. Okay. This is what I remember. You had Buddy Mora, who was Robin's manager. And I thought there was somebody who could just open the door and tell me the truth. Just this is, here are the keys to the kingdom. This is what you need to know. That never happened for me. Is it fair to say that nobody can help you, that you have to figure it out all by yourself? Yeah, I think that that's true. I mean, you had Rollins and Jaffee. You had Woody Allen's managers. You had the greatest managers who nurtured the greatest talent. Did you think once you were accepted into that fold? Well, I left them because I was kind of mystified. I didn't really understand what they were doing. And whenever I would try and ask, like, Hey, what are you doing? And what's the next thing? They were always very much about kind of, Hey, trust us, we're on it. Don't worry about it. Then when I left, they were kind of like, what do you mean you're leaving? And I felt like, look, I don't understand what it is. I went on Letterman one time. They were his managers. I remember this. I'll tell you what he said. Letterman said to me, Buddy Mora, what does he do? On the air. He said that. Yeah. So I didn't really know what they were doing for me. And I left really, I think possibly before they were able to do the most that they could for me. But they were very old school management. They were like, we're in charge of that. You just go out there and be with the funny. They were great. And I've since I've talked to Buddy and I went to his retirement party. I have nothing but respect and gratitude to him. And sometimes, you know, when you look back on your life, I wonder, look, if I hadn't left them, would things have been a little bit different? I don't know. But I think I needed to, for me personally, I needed to leave because I needed to find out what do they do? What could someone else do? What do I want to do? And, you know, I've always made choices in my career based on what I thought was the coolest thing to do. You know, like I, and right or wrong, I've said to my manager, like, hey, maybe I should have, when they came to me to offer me this hosting this thing, or I had a chance to, to do that, whatever game show or talk show thing. And I said, I wasn't interested in that I was going to do this. Maybe I should have taken that job. And I should, even though I didn't think it was going to be good or rewarding or creatively satisfying, maybe I should have just done it and then gotten more famous so I could, so I could be more successful now. And she said, well, you, you could have tried to do that. But she said, I know you, you would have taken that job. And then you wouldn't, you would have been so miserable. I, you know, I would have told somebody to go fuck themselves or something. Right. You know, I know that doesn't seem like the guy that I am, but I feel like guy, I operated from, from a position of feeling like, look, I wanted to do what I wanted to do. And whether it was right or wrong, that's what I did. And I have the, had the career that I have had. And it's been, it's been great. I mean, it's, it's very flattering, David, to hear you, hear you say that, that, you know, you made a mistake comparing yourself to me. When I look back on my career, and when I think about what, you know, that moment when it's like, what do you want to do with me saying like, I want to be Tom Hanks, you know, the, the reality of where I am and where he is, is, is pretty radically different. So in that sense, you know, I'm a massive failure, but in another sense of like, look, I've had a really good time and I've had the respects of my peers. And I still enjoy, I still love what I'm doing. I still love hearing my name and walking on stage and making people laugh. And, you know, I may not be a genius at social media in terms of I don't have a hundred thousand followers, but I find it very satisfying to go on, do a little something on Facebook or Twitter and have people give me a little shout out compliment. Hello. You know, and, and, and I've, you know, you included the people that you get to hang out with as a standup comic are just some of the most fun people. I mean, if you're looking, if you want to get into standup because you want to be famous and you want to be a star and you want to be rich, you know, good luck. But if you want to get into standup because you want to have some great conversations and laugh and always have a phone full of numbers of people that you can call and, and enjoy a conversation, then standup is for you. Right. Like me last night at one in the morning, I was talking to Greg Fitzsimmons. I got into a little trouble and we were, I mean, I was, you know, I don't want to talk about it, but I was in a little trouble for something I did. And he kept saying, you got a great story out of this. This is so funny. This is so funny. You were in a little trouble, Dave. Huh? You were in a little trouble. Little trouble. Yeah. But it's a funny story that I can't share before you go. The thing that we were talking about before this. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He gets me into trouble. Yeah. Okay. Well, I don't know. I have no idea what you're talking about. Okay. I know, I know you're good at heart, but you know, you're you, you're yourself. I, if the joke is sitting there and it's bad taste, I have to go for it. I just can't help myself. So you said you only wanted to do things that were cool. And when he meant was fun, things that interest you. Yeah. I feel like, you know, I wouldn't say that I've 100% been true to that, but I've, I've made, I've made choices that to me were about what I was most interested in doing. And we're not always, or that's been the criteria for making the choice. And I've, and I've, I think it's cost me money and it may have cost me a little bit of fame to have done that. But, but it's, but I'm not miserable and I'm not broke. Right. And you never found yourself in a situation where you were doing it solely for the paycheck. Oh, there are those, there are those moments. There's always, no matter how you do your life, those gigs where, you know, I was, I, the thing when I, when if you're doing a show and it's going, uh, not so great, you just pat yourself with your right hand over your heart because that's where the check is. But you never found yourself trapped in a job. No, it wasn't relentless. It was always like, oh, I didn't see this coming, but ha ha ha, it's, this happened again. You know, I, I, I did a show in Peoria. There's a funny club in Peoria called the jukebox that's owned by a real character, this guy, Dan, and it's such a throwback and you know, I don't know if you know that our friend John Means, Dr. Gonzo, who's near there. So I hadn't seen him for years and he came up and he has his own restaurant in his town. So he came up to the late show on a Saturday night and I haven't seen it. This is only maybe five, six years ago. And, uh, but I haven't seen him in 15, 20 years and he shows up so good to see him. We're laughing and he stays for the show and it's literally 30 people and 20 of them are two separate bachelorette parties that are sort of in a competition with each other to see who can be the most drunk and disruptive. And it was funny to me to be in that situation at this point in my career in front of John Means. It was just such a throwback to those early days. So, so from the outside of, you know, if my wife or any friends were at the show, they would think, oh my God, this is terrible and Jake must feel desperate and suicidal after this night. But to me, it was just such a funny, fun story and moment to share afterwards. You know, when you say thank you and the bachelorettes, they've had a great time. They've had a great time. I've probably been on for an hour and I've done maybe 13 minutes of material because most of it's been like, what about you and then what's going to happen when you get married and you're drunk? You know, it's just been talking to them. And after the show sitting down with Gonzo and having a beer and laughing about it, it was it was a great night. Dr. Gonzo, what I have to have him on the show. I remember he did something for me that was life altering. I had just started doing stand up. I moved to San Francisco. I gave him a ride home and he said, come on into my apartment. And I said, okay. And he, you know, he was Dr. Gonzo. People lined up around the block to see John. It was he was the biggest thing in San Francisco. And I'm in Dr. Gonzo's apartment. And he took me into his office and he just walked me through the steps of getting booked. He said, this is a map. This is my phone book. You got to get a phone book. You got to get names and addresses. This is you got to get an eight by 10. You got to mail them out to club owner. I mean, he walked me through the entire process of getting yourself booked as a comedian. And I never forgot that. I thought, what a gender. I remember calling my parents and telling them about this Dr. Gonzo show. By the way, before you go, by the way, about age and time. You're a peer of mine. We started exactly. So I don't think of you as a senior, an elder statesman, right? Oh, yeah. Well, that is, yeah, go ahead. But if Larry and Milt Abel and John Ross, like John Ross started maybe a year before we did. Do you still view John as an elder statesman? I do. Even though he had a year under his belt, I still see him as an upperclassman. Larry, I did these shows with Larry Miller, who I think is just one of the greats, but he had an accident where he hurt himself, fell over and hit the back of his head. And he wasn't able to perform his show up to his standards, but he was still going out on tour and he needed someone else to go on and carry some of the time. So I did these shows with Larry that were just so much fun and it's such a pleasure to hang out with him backstage. And if you're listening to this and you have a chance to go see Larry Miller, I don't know how often he performs now, but please do yourself a favor and go. But I feel like Larry was one of those guys that I worked with in the early 80s when I was the opener and he was the headliner elder statesman at that time. But now when I'm hanging out with Larry, I think to he and I, it seems like we're contemporaries. And I feel like I was doing a show in God, Hartford, I think it was Hartford, Connecticut. And it was one of the funny bone improv things. And the feature act was this really funny guy. And you could really tell he was going places his name and he's been now he's been on Letterman a bunch of times Tommy Johnnigan, right? So I'm hanging out with Tommy and we're laughing and you know, the shows are going great mutual respect. I really like Tommy and I he's a contemporary. That's what it feels like to me. And that's what I think it felt like to him. It's like, hey, we're two funny guys hanging out. We share kind of a similar kind of appreciation for a certain kind of comedy. And so he's telling me all these stories about his crazy mom and all the crazy things that she does. And like, it's just so one point. And we've been hanging out for a couple of days. I go, Tommy, how old is your mom? She's a year younger than I am. So I still feel like all these, if you're walking on stage and talking into a microphone after somebody introduces you to comedy club, I consider you a contemporary. And that's sort of how I look at all of this stuff now. So, so John's a contemporary, but Tommy Johnnigan's a contemporary. And you know, the next person I meet a contemporary, you know, I don't know if you know, do you know who Ms. Pat is? No. Well, she's going places. You should, she's been on my podcast a couple of times, but now she's got a book coming out. And she's been on Harry Connick's talk show now, but she's great. And so she's one of my new people who's just, I've met her kind of at the, just at the cusp of her exploding on the scene. And that I feel like is one of the things about this job to me that I've, I've enjoyed spending all this time in comedy clubs and, and working on stage. That's how I've earned, you know, guy like Greg Fitzsimons, he's earned a lot of his money writing for shows and then also performing, but back and forth and doing the thing. But I've been mostly on stage and out there in the clubs in the world. There's been such a pleasure to be able to call these people contemporaries and to see them before they had the success and then after they had the success, you know, to work with Mitch Hedberg when he was my feature act and then go out and see him become this amazing, amazing hero of a lot of comedians. You know, it's been great. But, but I consider, I consider people more contemporaries than, than that kind of elder statesman or new kid on the block kind of a thing. Jake, this, you started, I was going through your files. I, for some reason, thought you start. I knew, I remember you telling me you were doing a podcast, you started in 2011. Right? Yes, that right. Yeah, that could be, that could be true. And in my mind, you're a baby when it comes to podcasting. But I've only been doing it like two years longer than you have. But for some reason, I'm thinking, well, I've been, I'm compared to Jake, I've been doing this much longer, but you've been at it for a long time. What is Jake this? What do you do? I'm Jake this, you know, it's, it's a lot of me talking to people who I know and I'm interested in. And I haven't really tried to focus on the guest angle. It's more just if you are a fan of mine or you enjoy listening to me talk and you'd like to listen to me talk to people who I'm interested in listening to, then you'll like it. But it's, it can be all over the place. You know, I had, uh, Kostaki Akonomopoulos was over the other day and he said, I was listening to try and prepare to the pod for the podcast. And I listened to this guy. There's Todd McComas, who's a comedian, but he's also, he was a undercover police officer in Indiana, Indiana. And he has these great stories. So there's an episode with him, there's an episode with Miss Pat talking about selling crack when she was a teenage kid and then became a single mother at 13 years of age. You know, but then there's me, there's a bunch of, there's silly ones of me talking to my friend Nigel who lives a few blocks away about nonsense. So it's kind of all over the place. I, again, I, if you like it, yeah, check out, check out Jake, this to our listeners in Cleveland, June 15th to the 18th, go see Jake at Hilarides and you're playing a bed and breakfast. Where that's, that's to me. That's the most exciting. I swear to you, when you describe that, I went, wow, the week after Cleveland, I'm going to be in, um, Pittsburgh at the Pittsburgh improv. And then I'm just now looking to the, the bed and breakfast is, I'm, hang on, because I'm just, I've got to open this document. While you're opening it, when you describe that, I thought a friend who owns a bed and breakfast and performing there, to me, would be so much fun to do, so relaxing and no pressure. And well, he used to manage, um, musicians and I met him down in New Orleans and it's called, uh, The Barn at the Farm Stand and it's in Tamworth, New Hampshire. Wow. And it, go to my website, check this.com. I think there's a link to the Eventbrite site. You know, I'm going to hang out with him and we're going to do the show and, uh, it's, I think there's only a hundred or so, maybe a hundred and twenty tickets, but it's going to be a fun night. That sounds fantastic. Thank you, buddy. All right, Dave. Thank you. My pleasure. Anytime.