Blocks w/ Neal Brennan - Ralph Barbosa

Episode Date: November 2, 2023

Ralph Barbosa ('Cowabunga' on Netflix) joins The Blocks Podcast to talk about the things that make him feel lonely, isolated, and like something's wrong - and how he is persevering despite these blocks. ---------------------------------------------------------- 00:00 Intro 9:20 Junk Food Addict 12:39 Procrastination 17:39 Raising his son 19:40 Barber 31:12 Relationships 45:05 Drug Dealer Family 50:56 Escape 56:00 Guilt About Not Being Present 1:00:58 Judgement 1:17:35 Upside 1:22:06 Emotional Goals ---------------------------------------------------------- https://nealbrennan.com  Watch Neal Brennan: Blocks on Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/title/81036234 Theme music by Electric Guest (unreleased). Edited by Will Hagle ---------------------------------------------------------- Sponsors: GameTime App Code: BLOCKS for $20 off your first purchase ShipStation.com/BLOCKS for a FREE 60-day trial Babbel.com/BLOCKS for 55% OFF your subscription Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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To get started, just open the app it's as easy as that see the pc optimum app for details people of los angeles hi it's me neil brennan i'm doing a show at the fonda theater november 11th two shows as a matter of fact i said one i said a but i'm you know the truth is i'm doing two of them get tickets now n. N-E-A-L-B-R-E-N-N-A-N.com. NeilBrennan.com. November 11th. It's a Saturday. I believe the shows are at 6.30 and 9.

And I have to do shows at 6.30 because as Ali Wong said, all of my fans are depressed and they have to get to sleep early. NeilBrennan.com. Hello. It's me, Neil Brennannan you've seen the thumbnail you'd see you clicked on this this is the blocks podcast where we uh people come to me with their problems we talk about them and everybody feels better and we heal the planet earth my guest today

is uh this kid's making it this kid's making it this kid's making it in the way like Hannibal made it and Aziz made it where you hear a lot of heat on him and then you see a clip and you're like I like this kid I've always believed in aliens I've never liked them they crash land and destroy our land

destroying our property they're making me Republican and then he and he's got a Netflix that'll probably be out by the time this airs maybe not the what's the name of the special cowabunga ralph barbosa ladies and gentlemen cowabunga texas texas i like your intro by the way it starts off very like mafia but then it gets very therapist yeah man it's like they come to me with their problems like and then we talk about it we feel better we feel better that's that's how i that's what the godfather is about to me is that there's a there's a uh conflict resolution yeah there's

like male a strong male force and they come to him with problems at a wedding coming to my house on the day my daughter's to be married and you ask me to do it i like it. Yeah, thanks, man. Thanks, Ralph. Now, you're from Texas. You're 26. You started, you said, when you were 19. Yeah, I was like 19. First mic I did. Maybe 18.

I'm pretty sure I was 19. I was like 19. But it was like a one and done. I retired for like a year. Yeah, I've been there. I've retired a couple times. Yeah, yeah. i got yelled at i was like at the end of the list of the open mic you know as it goes what city dallas dallas

hyenas or something hyenas actually the first mic nice been there i signed up at 5 p.m on a wednesday afternoon uh by the time i went up it was uh 1 a.m. Thursday. Yeah, it was a day later. Yeah, next day. First thing in the morning. Got up, did my stand-up. But there was, like, maybe two comics after me. Yeah. And they were the only ones in the room with me. They were pretty drunk.

So as soon as I got up there. Well, I was up there for, like, a minute. And one of them was just like, get the fuck out of here already. So I was like, all right, that's my time. And I was just like, yeah, it's not for me. How hot is the crowd at 1 a.m on a wednesday hyenas is also not like in a hot neighborhood so yeah i was we were the crowd man yeah the list was the crowd yeah fantastic final three where you can see you can specifically thank people for their laughter like thank you josh yeah and thank you lisa yeah exactly and you you started doing well way later i was like 20 maybe the first time i got like actual laughs yeah this is maybe like

my fourth fifth open mic uh-huh i like one laugh at the beginning just because um it was at backdoor comedy which was inside of a hilton double tree hotel sure and a lot of uh uppity folk uh-huh and is that what's that code for white not rich okay but there were some white people okay thank you we're everywhere there's a i think the first two rows were just pretty much like older white couples. But the guy in the very front, this older guy, just made me really nervous the way he was staring at me. So the first thing that came to my mind was like, he looks like he called the cops on me. So I just said that. And it's like first pop.

And that was like the first lesson in comedy. Like, oh, like honesty and confidence. Yeah. And shitting on people in the front row oh yeah that's huge huge if you ever are on stage turn on the audience as quickly as you can turn no turn on the whole and it's turned on one particular person that you can all rally behind yeah yeah that's the key but yeah that was the first laugh after that i just, you know, figure out how to write an actual joke. You look very, I saw the first comment on one of your clips was like, this is like the middle school guy that everybody was friends with who was like nice and your mom liked him.

Like he had a very. Yeah, I had a few friends. Yeah, yeah. No, no, what are you saying? No, but you have like a good face. You got a good face. get a good fit you get a friendly face i've heard that yeah yeah it's important yeah it could have gone this way where it's a little it's a little little sharp elbows you got nice glasses thank you

thank you so much um all right so you're kind of you might be too young to even know what your problems are you're you know what your problems are. You know what I mean? You're in your 20s. You're starting to suspect probably that you got some issues. How did you grow up? Did you grow up like big family, small family? I think I have a lot of family, a lot of relatives, but we're not exactly super close.

Yeah, there you go. Maybe a little chunk of us are pretty close. Sure. But I was raised by my grandma. Okay. My uncle, her oldest oldest son was always around uh my mom was uh popping in and out she was there for the most part my dad too i just you know maybe a couple times a month go see him or once every couple months just depends a couple times a year yeah my life was never really that stable which uh i got used to now when things are kind of stable

it kind of fucks with my head do you have those on your body i want to all right so what is so your parents young where were they my parents had me like at 16 17 or something like that okay great um and they moved in it's funny because you look 16 17 it'd be funny that's how like my parents had me when they were older. That'd be cool. That'd be cool if you got to just stay at the age your parents had you at. Yeah. It'd be a cool system.

Yeah. All right. You were their first kid? Yeah, I was their first kid. Did they have any more? Yeah. With each other? No.

Okay. Different people. My mom has my little sister who is going to be 13 this year. Okay. She had her with another guy. And then my dad has a daughter in Mexico that he had with the whole other lady. And then he has my other teenage sister and brother. And then he just had a baby girl with my stepmom.

So he has three kids with my stepmom i gotta say all right so i'm one of ten same parents nice parents so much yep it wasn't good but they fucking stuck it out um did you ever long for i feel it's so rare now like uh uh intact fucking christmas card. A whole unit. Yeah. So I'm wondering, did you truly long for it, or was it, did you know? I would assume, or I shouldn't assume, did you know a lot of people with like intact families,

or was it more like split? I knew a few people with like the intact family, but I never hung out with those guys because I was in too many. Fucking squares, man. They had too many rules at their house. That's what happens when you got two parents yeah you have fucking double the rules there's all this structure yeah uh yuck i don't like that yeah whereas you were fucking playing your mom against your dad and your grandma and yeah i just ate you know in my bedroom and watched tv yeah there's no bedtime i was raised by an old lady like she was done

she's done raising kids i was right my parents were all when i had me so like i and i was the 10th so it was i was pretty much on the other one yeah like you'll figure it out yeah um so you you didn't you weren't eating a ton of vegetables i'm betting nah i think i was only because my grandma was home cooking was pretty good okay great so, but I was also eating tons of junk. I was also like. Did you like openly, would you bring junk home? Because I couldn't bring. No, I could bring junk.

We couldn't have any, we couldn't have gum in the house. Holy crap. Yeah. That's wild. Yeah, man. My parents were born in 1930 and 1933. So like. Why was gum bad?

Was it like the devil in your house? 1930 and 1933. So like. Why was gum bad? Was it like the devil in your house? It was just, I think it was like a method of control. Meaning like if it's like today it's gum. It's like a gateway drug. Today's gum.

Tomorrow's heroin. Yeah. Like who knows where it's going. So, and yeah, we just couldn't eat sugar we couldn't it was my we we had tons of junk my friends my friends and i we were all really close like a little a little crew yep and there was tons of like corner stores and gas stations around us so we'd always walk and buy nothing but chips and sodas and we always had them and colored drinks yeah like a red drink like a fucking mountain it's definitely uh

an addiction now though it didn't lead to more i don't think i'm not like on heroin or nothing but but it led to more sugar it let now i'm like every night snacking what are you what are you hitting uh just different types of chips i love to get lays or like lemon lays or like the original lays and then i'll pour like val Valentina hot sauce on them. Jesus. It's like some soda. Fuck, it's Mexican in here right now. Yeah, it's so Mexican. Jesus.

Hot Cheetos, hot fries. Oh, fuck. Everything in California wants to ban, bro. Anything with red dye. Oh, fuck. Red tastes good. Red is a delicious color. It's a delicious color.

Yeah, like just red is a great, one of the hot, one of the great great flavors i can stick in the microwave hot pockets hot or cherry fuck hot pockets uh totinos pizza rolls we we had it all do you well you're you stay in hotels a lot what do you you bring like a you ever see that mountain uh i'm sorry the uh there's a weightlifting documentary called Generation Iron, one of the greatest docs ever. But they show them on, they have to travel a lot to flex on different people. And they're all just eating chicken and broccoli all day,

so they all have George Foreman grills in their hotel rooms. Nice. I got to start doing that. Yeah, no, I was going to say, I don't know what you could do, no, I was going to say, like, if you, I don't know what you could do, like some sort of hot something. I hate when we go to, like, really small towns and nothing's open because I really like to eat some sort of, like,

one step above microwavable food after a show. Like, once we go back to the hotel, I like to eat like a burger from here's a question do you use the microwave at 7-eleven have you used it i don't know why you have i've never i that feels like a level i don't want to say a level of dirt bag i don't want to get to it feels like a level of consumption that like that feels like a bridge too far i the only time i i've used it is for home-cooked meals though but when i was a teenager occasionally i would go work for my dad uh he had like this home remodel business he had like a bunch of different businesses but on lunch break uh if my grandpa on my dad's side would bring lunch for him and myself, then we'd

go to 7-Eleven to buy some drinks and then heat up the lunch. So it'd be like- Would they chase you out of there? Like the open mic? Like get the fuck out. Nah, they were fine with it. That's interesting. I guess if you buy something, like yeah, and help yourself to the microwave.

Yeah. Also, like because this is Dallas, Texas, which is like 80% Hispanic, which means 80% of the Dallas population is going into 7-Eleven to reheat lunches or at least buy cold beverages, you know? So they can't stop us all, man. It's like the wall, basically. Yeah. It's the border. It's fucking, what's that town? What's the border?

Whatever. If I, you know, want the fill in the right your own punchline it's uh like this i want to say ramos it's not ramos punchline yeah it's fucking it's it's a self-checkout we're in a punchline you're absolutely right all right so let's do some blocks all right but you see what i let you see is okay you go watch this netflix cowabunga cowabunga on netflix on netflix can you believe it procrastination yeah block number one these are blocks as in like things that block you from being productive in comedy right or blocks emotional

blocks emotional blocks yeah did you did you fill it out with that in mind no things that make you feel like something's wrong with you okay well yeah these are still yeah these are still good but i feel like there's a something you're not saying on here i just feel like the only thing that could be considered a block to me is anything that blocks me from like writing more stand-up yeah i mean you're not wrong yeah if you so the thing i would say on here is like gave you a lot stand-up yeah not just you but like anyone everyone i know it's like it's identity a living fame like it's a lot of shit so you kind of want to give it an offering yeah of like here i wrote some like something yeah so you're procrastinator definitely it's also your amygdala just form man 26 what was that make your amygdala yeah the front of your front your prefrontal your prefrontal cortex

really just came together oh like it just got done yeah yeah it just got done they just took the scaffolding down i read this thing one time that said like if you smoke weed while you're a teenager or a kid in general like your brain will never finish developing and you're like dope yeah i feel like my iq will never stop increasing like no it's never done growing yeah no it's really smart the way you approach it it's like super duper sharp um do you how do you how do you have a writing process or no no i guess i just kind of kick around ideas in my head i feel like i kick around a punch line more than i kick around like a premise i feel like i feel like funny stuff happens or like a funny thought occurs to my head yeah and then i just got to figure out how to like, right. Backward.

Back. Yeah. Yeah. So I feel like that's most of what's in my head throughout the day. Until. Your jokes are like small. The reason I said you remind me of Aziz and Hannibal is because they, those guys kind of took like the head,

Mitch Hedberg approach. Mitch was like just one line. But Hannibal and aziz was more about like small interactions which i feel like your jokes are a lot like that i definitely feel inspired by those comics a lot i mean they were kind of who were popping when i was like towards the end of high school and i started taking more of an interest in stand-up especially mitch headberg i didn't even find out who mitch was if i'm being 100 honest i didn't find out who mitch hedberg was until after i started stand-up yeah but i i do i do like those comics a lot i feel like they're really good at taking the funny small instances yeah of a day

and like creating a special with it or creating big chunks which helped me get back into mics because like i was telling you i started i went to a mic then i felt like oh this isn't for me i felt horribly and like six seven months later i went back and then like again that was a story and then i saw you bought you did shitty again yeah great but then i started seeing like uh uh it was like on netflix it was like uh hannibal takes like uh edin edinborough yeah or something like that yeah and there was a scene where he's like listening to his tapes and he was just talking about like yeah it's tough to listen to him but it makes you a better comic if you listen to your to your your uh voice like audio and and then like adjust or whatever and then that kind of like reminded me that and seeing like how his jokes were about everyday things like simple things even i was

like man so i was like you just got to keep working at it so i started going back to mics and just trying different jokes out and like just kept going after that it's also funny because watching you i don't i it's like i'm i'm good with what you're doing like i'm like a lot of guys i'm like well what what is this what are you getting at whereas with you i'm like yeah you don't got to get anything just kind of be like and then i went over here yeah this happened yeah and then that i also don't want to stick to one genre of jokes like yeah i feel like some of my jokes can be super silly talk about random things and some of them can touch on somewhat serious subjects. You know,

I try not to have like, just like stance or anything like that. This is just jokes to me, you know, but I also don't want to stick to like one genre, like one style. I feel like whatever's funny is funny. And whatever I can think of that I like that I think is funny,

then I'll use it. Well, yeah, you don't, it's just, just write whatever comes out. Yeah. Like that's, that's, that's the key'll use it well yeah you know it's just just right whatever comes out yeah like that's that's that's the key but you're you're it's cool in that like i'm i immediately accept you on your terms which is which is a great thing for you like people are me like yeah what do you want to talk about yeah um okay so so

what do you notice about yourself what do girls notice about you in relationships and you have a you have a kid yeah i have a son yeah yeah um and how old's the son four okay so and you still close with the mom you yeah we're cool great we knew each other since we're like teenagers so we're pretty cool great we had him when we're like i was 22 she was like 21 okay were you worried were you like oh yeah super scared i was like living the life before he was born where were you i was living at my grandma's i was alive i was sitting open mics and showcases every night uh-huh i was cutting hair out of my bedroom throughout the day. Great.

Making like two or three hundred bucks a week. I had a 2002 Nissan Sentra. It was sweet. Couldn't tell you shit. I ate like a king. Yep. Home cooked meals. Hot everything.

Jack in the box tacos. Whatever I wanted. It was at my fingertips. I definitely wanted stand up to be my job at the time, but knowing that I was going to have a son definitely made me kick it into next gear and make sure that stand-up worked out. I was like, man, if I'm not careful, then by the time he's really needing me to provide, as he gets older, I mean, you got to provide from the start right yeah but by the time i need to like be in a better neighborhood that he can you know so he can be in a better school and and by the

time i need to buy him some actual clothes and all this stuff like what are the most expensive years of a kid i'm assuming it's just college i don't know probably yeah i'm barely four years in bro i can't tell you i came to you for guidance man but i just I was like, I need stand-up to be my full-time by then. Because by the time I need to make the real money, which you need it from the start. But I don't know. I feel like by the time he's a certain age, if I hadn't really made it, I'm really fucking up. And I was like, I don't want to be a barber anymore by the time he's four or five. And I feel like I just in time made it into a full-time comic.

That's funny. So how long after he was born did you start? Did you put the clippers away? No, I didn't put them away until a year ago this month. We're in October. Yeah. 2023. So 2022 of October was when I was like.

So you were still cutting hair a year ago yeah that's very little i mean i lost like all my clients well yeah you weren't around yeah i was always like canceling appointments to go to like do five minutes in some town like three hours away or something you know like i was always putting stand-up first yeah as you should um now who's got the best hair to cut hmm that's a good question it really is isn't it yeah don't you want to have you always wondered that everybody it i think it varies person to person but let's you don't want it to stereotype some people uh you don't want it too straight real quick i don't think you want it too straight but you also don't want it like too curly Let's get into stereotypes real quick. I don't think you want it too straight, but you also don't want it too curly.

Right. You want some texture in it. You want their skin not to be too dark or too light. Why? For the contrast of the fade, you know? Okay. You want them to have good skin. You want them to have a good set of hair, but there is people who grow way more hair per square inch.

You know what I mean? Yeah. So it can be thick and you can have tons of it. Well, there's some months it comes out super fast. And you're like, all right. I don't know what I did to deserve this, but I'll take it. I think it's definitely like. It sounds like you're just subscribing yourself.

Yeah. I mean, a lot of the things. My hair sucks. My actual hair sucks for fades. My fades don't look good you gotta be an amazing barber to make me look good but i do think latinos get the best fades it looks good on them black people are on their way over here right oh yeah for sure you're about to get fucked up uh why you don't but i mean be fair, it's not even like my Latinos.

It's like, what are they called? Afro-Latinos. Like Puerto Ricans, Dominicans. Yep. Yep. So like in the middle. Yep. Yeah.

Not a Mexican. I'm Mexican. What's the, I don't even want to make it, I don't want to say too stringy. It's like, yeah, like too straight. Like sometimes. Why don't I would, I would have thought a barber would want straight hair i thought you're gonna say asian straight hair is the easiest to cut maybe yeah yeah but it's not gonna look the best when you take a job you're look is your first this is the first barber i've ever spoken to in this amount of depth um i

it makes me realize i should follow my dream i had to make you go to the barbershop you see those posters sure number and they got like a different yeah of course i had to make a poster i would choose i would make it like with puerto rican models okay okay yeah so port brazilians sure okay yeah um okay so just because they have the best. They got a good set of hair. It's nice and thick. Right. They got a good skin tone for the pictures, for the fade, you know?

Yeah. And, yeah, I don't know. Did you, I would have thought, as a barber, you'd want the easiest head and not the best. Like, what can I. Well, you said which one looks the best, didn't you? No, I said, well, I don what can i well you said which one looks the best didn't you no i said well i don't know what i said which one's there's no way to find out who's got the best hair to cut for the easiest cut for the easiest money then yeah i'll go like white people you guys aren't even picky thank you thank you so much we got you guys like sometimes doesn't even need to be faded you guys are like like, looks good. Okie dokie.

And we're fucking on our way. Get on our fucking, on our dirt bike and get out of there. Now white people and black people are on their way up here. Yeah. Bring them. We've got them. We'll hold it down. But if I want to pull in the most clientele, you got to do like a Puerto Rican slash Dominican poster.

Cause now you're getting everybody. You get Mexicans and black people who are like, okay, yeah, that looks enough. Like me. That's enough. Like my hair texture.

And they're all coming in. And white people are like, he's got some, some sort of African features, but nothing that. If I wanted to check more white people, I'd get the picture where like with the scissor cuts, that was my biggest problem with attracting white clientele was they didn't think I could use scissors.

But we ended up getting a lot of white clientele anyway, because at the barbershop where I worked at was in a neighborhood that was, what's the word, like getting gentrified, I guess. So you still had like hood clientele, but you also had like these very like wealthy business owners and people who were buying serious property in that area of Dallas. Guys with like bags across their chest. Yeah. You get like 50 year old white guy, like lawyers. Yeah. Also like the young, like works for a tech company. White guy just moved from San Francisco.

Wearing a fleece. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of that. Nice. I could ask barber questions all night. Did you have a shop you worked at? Yeah, it's called Oak Cliff Barbers in Dallas, Texas.

I actually grew up getting my haircuts there and then later on worked there. And then you fulfilled a lifelong dream of cutting there as well? Yeah. That place made me want to be a barber because the guy who would cut my hair, which is one of the owners, his name's Jose,

he was like a huge shit talker. He just like roast people as they walked in. He also dressed pretty nice. I remember he had clothes from Nordstrom one day, but then the other day he'd just be in Nike sweats. And just hearing this dude talk shit and roast people and wear whatever he wanted and make cash, I was like, yo, this is a great job. Fucking perfect. Any fights in the barbershop uh maybe a couple i i actually never witnessed one i witnessed one that was about to happen or a couple that were about to happen but i've never been there for for an actual fight but i've heard the stories just dudes like who knew each other didn't know yeah they knew each other okay it's too much shit talking at some point you know you gotta take your you gotta

take your satchel off and i mean you gotta take the bib off as well yeah the cape there you go i don't know what the official term was sorry i don't want to step on your toes guys you know i don't often leave the house i'm'm America's sexiest shut-in. But when I do, don't waste my time. I don't need a lot of guff or a lot of riff-raff. And is there any situation that lends to more guff or riff-raff than getting tickets? GameTime is the fast and easy way to buy tickets for all the sports, music, comedy, and theater events near you. With killer last-minute deals, all-in prices, views from receipt, and their best price guaranteed,

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Somebody sent me a clip from Fred again. He's working tonight, actually. Fred again. Again, he's EDM where I go. I'll hear the song and go, oh, I like him. I didn't know he was a him or a them or a they. And I'm not doing a gender joke. I'm doing like, I don't know who these EDM people are. They're not a band. Although Bonobo is a band. Although he's one guy named Simon. Olivia Rodrigo is going to do the forum soon. And that's not soon. That's next August.

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Babble. Babble, babble, babble. All right. So have you been in any real relationships with women yeah and how did it go um like it's bad it goes good for a while yeah that's that's what that's what happened yeah it goes good for like the first few months and you can't keep it up i can't keep it up you know that that's what none of us can we with the here's how relationships work women pretend to be sexual and men pretend to be thoughtful and we can both do it for like

three or four months and then our it goes to the what we're really like and then we start getting mad at each other yeah why is that just? Yeah. Because we both want a thing. I believe men just want like sex and a connection and women want, women want a connection and they'll take sex. Like, whereas we have to, like, it's a problem for us.

We don't get it. Um, so they, we both present in a certain way and then we come to them we're like i'll give you a connection and they go like i'll give you sex and then we and that's kind of what happens and we and it's also like new structures yeah i don't know i just after a few months i guess i don't want i don't long for a connection much anymore after a few months i'm like i don't know sometimes you just want to go back to being alone that's the pro that's maybe the issue with with uh

people like us is uh it's pretty pretty good pretty fun yeah a lot of fun we got good we got good we got a full cable package up here. We can entertain ourselves. Yeah. I was an only child for a long time. I've never lived with any of my siblings up until now. So I'm pretty good at just me and my TV. If I didn't have a TV, I'd lose it.

That's the connection. I mean, that's a great connection. I've lived with a girl, my son's mom. I mean, that's a great connection. I've lived with a girl, my son's mom. And I remember sharing the bed was the first, like, whoa. This is the end game where you got to find somebody to share a bed with. I had my own bed my whole life.

Now I have to share one? I feel like a demotion. Yeah, it sure does. Now I also have to share control of the remote. Yep. gotta wait for the bathroom it's like prison yeah the fuck are we doing also she doesn't wait when i'm until i'm done using the bathroom like this you you get less privacy you get less tv time and i know to a lot of women, this just sounds like immature. They're like, that's your big problem with TV. You're like, yeah, it was my best friend growing up. TV.

Yeah. Yes. I also like hate most of their TV shows. Yeah, that's a problem. The, the, we don't, men and women don't have a ton of shared interest. We don't. It's like we pretend, but. I can do like a few date nights you know and maybe that's just me

not being ready for marriage or whatever but i don't know if i will be ready for marriage just because like i'm not gonna be able to share a tv every night for the rest of my life yeah and then it's also would you be in a relationship would you be one of those dudes who like has his own wing of the house you know what i mean like you need that yeah you need that i feel like and it's only fair if a woman gets that too yeah i mean i a lot of women now are saying like i don't even want to live with a guy which is great like yeah you're it's a smart way to approach it because it's not doesn't mean i love you less you know it's like this isn't mean I love you less, you know. It's like this isn't going to help just constant other person in your face.

It's not going to make you like, oh, I fucking adore it. And maybe that comes from like my own issues, too. Like just like things never being stable at home. Yeah. Things were always changing. People were in and out the house. house but one like unit you know being like a perfect couple and living together from like this point until forever just seems like a crazy goal to me look if it weren't for children there'd be no i don't even think women would want to do it yeah i think it's just about safety it's about creating a stable environment for a kid now

on the other hand unstable environment exhibit exhibit a unstable environment only child hot chips fucking reheating at 7-Eleven. Nothing but his TV's his best friend. Pretty good. Cowabunga on Netflix. Okay. What do you, and do you, well, you're still young enough that I wouldn't worry about it.

Worry about what? I wouldn't worry about, I know where you're headed with all this relationship stuff. Because I'm way older than you and it's still like what is this really supposed to work it's it's just it's set up for raising a kid like that's what all of that's what marriage is for it's for like legal protections in case one of you bounces and you got to pay the other person for the kid it's like

i get it but seems sometimes it seems a little unnecessary how do you okay so you did find the kid it focused you yeah definitely so that's and you love the kid i'm assuming is it a boy or a girl it's a boy all right great yeah i love my son to death yeah yeah i make sure to be home at least three to four days like during the weekdays that. Yeah. Yeah, I make sure to be home at least three to four days. Like during the weekdays that I'm not on the road, make sure to be home and, you know, take him to school, pack his lunch, do stuff after school. He's in pre-K. Great. And so, like, definitely love being a father.

Oh, so you, did you always think you were going to love it? Yeah. Because, and this is information that I've kind of talked about here and there, but never in too much detail. But yeah, when my son was born, we weren't 100% sure that he was mine because my son's mom and I, we had actually just split up when she was pregnant. And we had tried to get back together. We were seeing each other for a little bit, but it didn't work out she went to date somebody else so we weren't exactly sure

who's gonna be the dad um but we handled it was the other dude like prepared to be the dad i don't know did you guys oh you didn't all right so it wasn't like a cooperative situation yeah it was like i mean she would talk to me about it. And I don't know. I don't think that guy knew about me. Like you guys weren't going to the OBGYN together. No. You weren't as like a throuple.

No, no, no. What white people call a throuple. Yeah. I don't know too much about how she was handling the situation. I don't think she was handling it too well. Okay. I didn't want to get too much in her business either i just told her like you should let that other guy know say his name okay and uh i was i was like she at one point made it seem to me like that other guy like like didn't want anything to do with it which i don't know if she was that was just her saying it was true or not but i was prepared to like be there either way at the thought of having a baby

i i wanted to take the chance to be a dad but i was but i was also like well let that guy know like be 100 honest with me and with him because if he wants to be a dad i'm not gonna try to step on somebody else's toes like i'm not gonna be like nah bro you step out i'll take care of your kid right yeah but no once my son was born we got like a dna and found out for sure he was mine and so i was like happy either way and once i found out that he was like biologically mine then i was just like ecstatic you know yeah and i definitely wanted to do whatever i had to do to make sure that like it would have been cool if you guys had like a gladiator doing the other dude but like for dad shit that would have been a if you guys had like a gladiator doing the other dude, but like for dad shit, that would have been kind of a dope.

I would have taken them out. I think that's what we go in and pitch at Netflix. This is a fucking broad question and probably racist. Do you think the expectations for the Latino community fathers is different? What are the expectations? the latino community fathers is different what are the expectations because as a as like the way i grew mine's generational meaning my dad was from the generation of like i roof over your head and food on the table i think that's that's the that's the list now the list for like the dude the guy in the fleet the white dude in the fleece is like, you got to be. No, I think, I think the expectation for the average Latino male is like, are you providing, like you said, a roof and food on the table and at least like being home?

I think I know a lot of people my age who are dads who are extraordinary dads yeah they go above and beyond to be like a great dad and family man yeah be connected with the family spend quality time and do all that but i think all that's really expected of you like you don't even have to really talk that is true well you go to work yeah come home yeah you know i mean sit there sit there have your lap open like who needs comes needs, comes in on a lap. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I think that's all that's, like, really expected of you as, like, a Latino there. Which, a lot of, I think my son's mom and a lot of people were not expecting me to pull through with that even. Which was fair enough. I was, like I said, I was living with my grandmas. I didn't even want to get, like, a real job. Yeah.

I wanted to be a dad on my own terms. By that time, my son's mom and I's relationship, I don't know if I said that correctly, our relationship had been going bad on and off for the past three years before my son was born. Once I knew he was my son, it kind of hit me that I'm a father now. I wanted to make decisions differently.

I wanted to make decisions that I wouldn't want my son to make one day if he were in my situation decisions that he would respect so i always treated his mom with respect we'd have our fights and maybe sometimes i'd let my temper get the best of me she she pushed my buttons a lot but for the are you a screamer no no no i just like a seether i don't know what seether means i might just say something that was kind of like hurtful okay but like not like in a like i never would like call her anything no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no always just reminder like i'm on your team we both want the same thing for our son i was like i don't want to fight with you like we just want to make sure he has a good life but i don't feel like like it was paying a lot of respect to myself to stay with her after a lot of the kind of just childish things we had put each other through so i just wanted to be a dad on my own terms i split up

with her uh she took it pretty hard like she wouldn't let me see my son at first or like i had i'd have to i'd have to go to her house which is i guess her way of getting me to like trying to learn me back in but i didn't want to do that i wanted to fight for like joint custody but i couldn't afford a lawyer so i just put myself on child support so they're like forced her to let me see my son what explain that yeah like i went to the attorney general's office and like signed the paperwork to like put myself on child support so that by like i went to the attorney general's office and like signed the paperwork to like put myself on child support so that by law she had to let me see my son great as long as i like paid the money which i had no problem giving her money like she's never been selfish or mature

with money she's never been the type that if i gave her like 500 bucks and told her spend it on our son then she she would she wouldn't use a dime for herself you know yeah so i know i never had a problem giving her money and after a few months once my son was like because we split up when he was maybe like five months once my son was getting closer to a year um i think she had gotten over the breakup we have had our worst fights behind us and we started working out like our whole other schedule on our own like like outside of what the child support. We didn't even like go to court. We went to our first court date and we worked out like a schedule and like a whole agreement before even seeing the judge.

So we just like signed that. You told him, this is what we're doing. Yeah. Hit the gavel. All right. Yeah. Somebody said like, there's like a guy who works with the court. Hit the gavel.

All right. Yeah. Somebody said like, there's like a guy who works with a core. I forgot what they call him, but there's a bunch of just bad relationships sitting out in the hallway. Yeah. That's funny. And so I guess to get the day moving faster.

It's like a museum of shitty relationships. Yeah. I guess to get the day moving faster, a guy will come out and just talk to each couple. Like you guys work anything out or you need to judge? And so we were like, this is getting fucking, what are we looking for?

30 minutes. So we're like, now now we got it we got a deal already and they're like yeah i was like all right and he just like typed it out for us like edited because there's like a there's like the basic child support agreement that like the state gives you yeah so they just go in there edit it with like a pin and they make copies of it you sign it it's like all right well you don't got to be here then and yeah we haven't seen court ever since and i get my son half the week she gets basically whatever days i'm in town my son's with me and the minute i gotta go out of town and so you're like raising him there are times where it's just you and your son in your house that's that's fucking adorable honestly well i love it yeah no it's like really

goddamn cute thank you you just got a lot of female fans don't fuck this up more kids coming nah um that's great though that you may did you surprise yourself with the amount of like the way you approached it meaning had you done anything like that in your life like had you made ethical stands in your life in the in the past maybe it's just small ones like uh i've talked about this on other podcasts too a lot of my family yo man don't come in here with this other podcast i don't that that is that same. Not at this time. To piece my life together, you gotta, you gotta put like 17 podcasts together. Yeah, yeah, that's right. But a lot of people in my family were involved with like selling drugs or just like crime

stuff in general. Yeah. And I think I was like the black sheep for never like getting involved. That's funny, yeah. I had temptations. I remember I like sold the weed for like two weeks and I had no idea. I knew that many people that would actually want to buy weed from him. I think in like a couple of weeks I made like way more money than I thought I would make.

Feel kind of like scared at the amount of money that came back fast. My cousin was the one that like hooking me up with a lot of it. One of his buddies was. And I told him like man i'd rather just not do it i was like i know it's like a huge pussy move to just be like all right never mind i don't want to do this no more but i was like if i stay used to this i'm never gonna learn any real skills in the world and at around that time um a lot of our relatives uh were getting locked up and i was just like man i don't want to get caught and then just put our family through more like hardship yeah i was like

i'd rather just find something else um which i think my family they didn't like a lot of my family didn't know like my mom my grandma uncles they didn't know i did that and then decided that um but i think have they heard about it since uh maybe now yeah yeah because they're just like yeah whatever but for a long time i think they might have rather i had done that i mean now i'm sure they wouldn't wouldn't want me to do that but for a long time i was the bum of the family until a year ago. That's so funny. So it was like, I don't know. They were always just like, get it together, man.

Get your life together. And I was always in my head like, hey, man, I made right choices, all right? And they're like, no, you didn't. Because you can't be like, I'm not going to do this life of crime, but also not do a productive life either. You what i mean yeah i was like way too neutral like have you considered crime yeah it was like if you're not gonna do crime well then get like a job yeah and i was like doing neither i'm somewhere in between yeah uh you were transitioning it was a tough transition um okay so you have did you grow up with like religious at all i mean my

family's like catholic we went to church every blue moon but yeah we weren't too religious blue moon's not an actual religious i don't know what they told you um and did and but did such it seeps in yeah i mean we like we do this yep you got a mary in the house you got a jesus in that but we had both of those yeah yeah so right there you got like that heat coming down on you to do the right shit yeah i got i got that catholic guilt yeah no that's that's the best kind i got yeah every time things are going good for me i'm like i'm going to hell yeah it's pride cometh before the fall you know all those all those fucking catholic sayings all right uh well no this is what you have your one of your blocks is when personal life is too good yeah um what is that what does that feel like you what happens when things are going good you're waiting for the bottom to drop out not necessarily i think when i'm frustrated, depressed, or angry, whatever negative thoughts are consuming my mind, it's easy to turn those into jokes or to ignore them by just thinking of funny stuff.

And I feel like some of the best material comes from when I'm feeling, I guess like the angriest or the saddest and when things are going better in my personal life and i'm not angry depressed or sad and and i am being like maybe more social because i don't think i'm that social of a person but you know when things when i'm just content with my personal life, man, my jokes just start to suck. Yeah. I don't think I've slacked too much on writing jokes. But the end of, no, I'd say April, May, and June of this last year, I was really having fun with new friends I had made. I was spending more time with family which I like don't know they got some sneakers at one point yeah they gave you some sneakers yeah I was

like doing all this cobs in San Francisco yeah and a lot of the jokes that I was doing at that time now I look back on them I'm like man those jokes suck compared to some of the other jokes that I really like that I have more fun doing or that i think are funny yeah and yeah i don't know it's it's like i don't want to be like too heavy in my personal life because then it makes my comedy life not as enjoyable right well you'll probably i mean where i ended up was like uh you it's just a reflex i can be happy and still notice some dumb shit okay yeah i mean and then and then like work like go start from that point of like that's a contradiction or whatever the whatever the joke is gonna be so it's not like that's stupid but i'm too happy to talk about it it's like it's stupid and like all right well i i still i'm like i still i feel like we have so

many parts of ourselves and they'll just kind of pop up gotcha like and be you know but and then sometimes you just write whack shit for a little bit yeah yeah yeah i can't they can't all be tens you know i mean ladies um and uh so yeah you'll fit i feel like you'll figure that out honestly I just love having something to escape from I feel like I have the most fun when I'm I guess it goes back to like the procrastination thing it's like when they're when there's something to like really escape from then I then I feel like that's when I have the most fun or can be the most productive. That makes sense.

So if I have like negative shit going on, not that I want to bring negative shit on and God forbid, you know? Yeah. But when there's negative shit going on, then it's easy to like, it's like sweep it under the rug or something, but sweeping,

sweeping it under the rug is, is my, I guess where I have the most fun writing jokes. It's like if I have the kitchen on fire while I have guests over. Or like, I got to entertain these guests. And I feel like that's, maybe that's why I have the most fun writing jokes when things are going bad. It feels like a do or die moment. Yeah, that's interesting.

Yeah, that is like when your life's it is like a escape hatch yeah and like i said it life will get fucked i mean it's just built for fuck it's it's it's too many things can go wrong they're gonna go wrong somebody sent me like a movie script i've never acted or anything yeah but they're like man we'd love to have you for like a small role which i thought that was kind of cool i guess i don't know if i want to act or not but they wanted me, man, we'd love to have you for a small role, which I thought that was kind of cool, I guess. I don't know if I want to act or not. But they wanted me to read the script so I can read it with them, like a table read.

And the table read is tomorrow, the day after tomorrow. And I told them that I'd have it read by now, and last night I had the chance to read it. But I was like like you know what let me watch like every pre-season nba game that has been going on in the last week yeah i just stayed up till like three in the morning you owed it to yourself no dude reading scripts is like just wait for the reader read your parts yeah read the parts you're in and then, but you don't have to memorize. Everybody's literally reading it.

Yeah. So it's not. Yeah, you'll be all right. That basketball game, all those basketball games would not be as enjoyable if I didn't have something to do. Oh, that's funny. That you almost like, you'd rather cheat on a woman than you know what i mean the sex way more enjoyable yeah that's what your entire existence is like is that you're like yeah what you don't i'm not even supposed to be here right now no that is nba i'm not supposed to be looking at you

i don't know why but things are just way more enjoyable like that that's so funny dude yeah you're absolutely right that you like you're like a philanderer you're like a serial philanderer yeah that's the word for it is the guy who fucks around a lot i should name that the next special i have a good idea for a cover by the way for art is the is the haircut and it's nine use nine me with different haircuts all right for the for your tour do it like 12 12 do 12 uh all on the point yeah yeah like the barbershop poster board yeah i've had that idea for literally 25 years uh never knew what to do i'm giving i give i give that to you oh yeah um that's an honor it is sir uh godfather you know what i wish could be done for me this holiday season i wish someone would just like Hell yeah. That's an honor. Sir. Godfather.

You know what I wish could be done for me this holiday season? I wish someone would just like decorate my house in a Christmassy way because it's nice. I just don't feel like doing it. You know, the holidays are the busiest time of the year. So don't get stuck worrying about shipping orders. Let ShipStation do the heavy lifting so you and your team can put your time, money, and energy into more important things. heavy lifting so you and your team can put your time, money, and energy into more important things. Plus, when it comes to those inevitable holiday returns, ShipStation automates, recommends exchanges, and gathers customer feedback. So even if they bought the wrong size or color, they'll still have a great experience. I haven't started using it yet,

but I've downloaded it and I've looked around the app. I just got a bunch of Blocks albums on vinyl that I'm going to need to get rid of. I think you know what I'm going to use. Xbox albums on vinyl that I'm going to need to get rid of. I think you know what I'm going to use. I, of course, have the Neil Brennan shirt from a few years ago, button shirt with pockets, which you'll look, I'll start selling them soon. It's a good app. It's a good website. It easily automates shipping tasks and manages orders and returns in one simple dashboard. You can quickly and easily update crucial order information and reduce errors. Effortless integration anywhere you'd sell online, including Amazon, Etsy, eBay, Shopify, and more.

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just good. You're going to do it. Do it. I don't look. Look, you know me. I'm not passive aggressive. I'm not bossy, but do it. Ship station. Oh, all right. This is a good one. But guilt of not being present with any friends or family. Yeah. What's the difference between you stoned and not stoned?

I think when I'm not stoned, I think i already have like a naturally stoned mindset and then when i am stoned it's just like way too dumb it's like past pat yeah i think where i'm at is like where most people are when they're just like the little stones you know and people will be like this guy's so baked i'm not this is just my face. You have anxiety? Yeah, I think so, yeah. I get them in bursts, for sure. I get anxious bursts.

Yeah, like days or an hour? Nah, probably a day or two. Got it. And then when it's finally gone, it just feels like I stopped shaking or vibrating. Anxiety, dude, I have depression, and I don't even have that anymore, but anxiety was so much worse to me than depression yeah because it's like you're just getting a fucking small like you're getting tased a little bit all the time and anxiety i get

like rushes of thoughts sometimes don't even make sense like it's just thinking and thinking and thinking about stuff like like if i'm on my last 24 hours of life and i have a to-do list to get done what kind of stuff it's the stuff that doesn't even like matter like just random thoughts like i wonder why this person didn't do this i wonder why this is going on i wonder what's going to happen with that i wonder and it's just like man it does is there a last 24 hours urgency to it or is it just random it's just like fast thoughts like and then and then i'm trying to like prioritize the thoughts i'm trying to think about what do i have to do by tomorrow or today and what can i do to fuck around on that you cheat on your own behavior yeah like you you've got you cheat on people's

expectations maybe yeah people have it and you're like yeah but you know there's a maybe that's what i like antonio you know i want to see how victor's for real oh man i don't know maybe that's why sometimes i just like i said i'm not present with my friends or family. I think when I finally like go home, like on a Monday, I, I feel like that's my weekend. Yeah. And I don't want to be around people who are asking me like,

it sounds mean, but I don't want to be around people where they're asking me about my business. You know, I feel like it's enough pressure. Like, like if people knew that I was coming, I didn't tell anybody I was coming to do your podcast yeah because i feel like if people start to know

that i'm gonna go talk with neil brandon they're gonna start asking questions about you that i haven't i don't know they're gonna be like yo does he hang out with like chappelle does he do this yeah yeah yeah i don't know yo is he sad all the time yeah like or is it just sometimes like who booked you on that who hooked you up with yeah like stuff like that like and it'll be like like friends or family that could ask stuff like that but i don't i don't really like to be as they just dm me yeah just dm me i'm pretty open about that or that or they ask questions about stand-up or whatever and then you know like manager agent well they gotta ask you questions to know which direction like take you in or whatever i feel like all these questions do you travel by yourself

no i usually take uh two of my comedian buddies with me okay but these are questions that sometimes are like meaningless questions or sometimes questions that i even have to ask myself like career direction type questions like are you gonna do this like career direction type questions are you gonna do this you can do that what are you gonna say on that and i'm just like i don't know and like i don't want more of the questions i'm already asking myself i don't want to hear them from outside voices too because it just like builds the pressure so like once i go home i just want to be alone like i don't i don't want to be around anybody i also don't want to be around anybody. I also don't want to be around people who are asking, like, the same. Like, a lot of my dad's friends.

I live at my dad's now. A lot of my dad's friends. You know what I mean? They're supporters. Could be fans, too. But they're asking a lot of, like, they're like, are you going to do Joe Rogan? I'm like, bro, do you think I know Joe Rogan? Like, I know that they're just trying to be nice but

you know you hear that question it is a funny thing where it's like they're trying to make small talk but you've heard that and they're genuinely interested yeah and it is interesting it is but like man at the same time but it does i i think i know where you're coming from because i don't like dude i i always tell people like i don't like even telling people where i got my sandwich from do you know what i mean yeah people go where'd you get the sandwich and then you gotta go uh medicino farms are like should have gone to that other place you're like dude now i gotta worry about your judgment yeah so i got the wrong sandwich okay now you kind of ruined the sandwich

10 i hate worrying about judgment yeah so i try to avoid as many people as i can and then even when they're not bringing stuff up well sometimes i try to avoid people just because like i don't want to bring them down because if i am around people chances are i'm still not present chances are i'm still thinking about like a joke well all right let me ask you this stuff how you define presence are you present now yes okay why now when you invited me out to your podcast but i'm saying like and we're talking comedy yeah no i got like yeah i think it's just a matter of like i'm more interested in certain shit than i am in other shit and i'm more interested in talking to certain people about it than other

people i well that's this thing like why are you so absent like i get accused of it by friends girlfriends whatever and it's like because i gotta fucking my mind wanders generally wanders to the same shit over and over and over and over but i'm saying i hear you where it's like i don't want to this is stressing me out this like your expectations of like then you feel bad that you don't know rogan yeah like you feel like am i failing yeah i'm not succeeding in the way that this guy needs me to succeed and and even when they're not talking shop even when they're not like i could be at a get together with family or something i just feel bad because sometimes they'll talk about something that'll grab my attention and

yeah we'll talk but other times everybody will be talking and i'll just be like staring into the space uh-huh you know like and i can't help it but i do that too much of that can be bad but too much of only outside talk with other people can be bad too you know yeah but it is the pressure it is the judgment even if they're not judging you you kind of feel like they are. Yeah. Like there's one answer they'd way rather have you have. I'm doing Rogan on Tuesday.

Like that's what they want. I feel like also the pressure of when I'm not giving people the answer they want, I'm like picking away at fans or supporters. So that's a reason I avoided podcasts for a long time, too, is over the last year. You know, I've gotten people that come shows and follow me on Instagram. And then I feel like once they hear me on podcast and maybe they're expecting me to be something and then they find out this they're just gonna be like ah never mind but i mean i can't like hold that mystery forever either you know what i mean i'd rather people know exactly who i am i don't think i think people like knowing more than less even if it's like they'll like you like that thing about like

just being at home with your son you got that's enough whatever else you say you could you could talk about those murders the murders abortions that you've been having all your shit that you just think that i stay home with my son makes it no it's like it's so goddamn that'll be like people's logo for you when they think of you like just you at home do you when you're with your son do you try to is there like a level of focus that you try to bring or like a concerted effort of yeah like no phone no like i try to sometimes i can't help it sometimes like an email or a message about something that I really got to get to, or even like a zoom call or something.

Then like, I, you know, sometimes you got to do it, but I try my best to be like present with my son. Um, he, you know, he's four now. He's really getting into like, um, like video gamey stuff. Like he loves roadblocks. He loves super Mario. I got him a Nintendo switch. I like what I'm hearing. stuff like he loves roblox he loves super mario i got him a nintendo switch i'm hearing yeah like what i'm hearing for you i i yeah um he likes basketball so i try to get him to like well let's play the switch together or like all right well let's we got we got a little basketball hoop in our living room like let's do that you know

sometimes he doesn't want to do any of that sometimes he just wants to like zone out and watch tv which i respect too that was me that was me my whole childhood you know see you now yeah but there are times where he wants my attention specifically to play toys or to do those things and i'm distracted by my phone and he has to tell me like no phones like no phones and i'm like fair enough you know i gotta like yeah because if he's telling me that means i've done i'm going way overboard okay so he'll he'll give you like a grace period yeah like eight to ten minutes and then it's like yeah he's like come on dog i'm only gonna be four once yeah he's like no phones no phones i'm like you're right son you're right i do feel bad too there's

there's other times where like i don't even have my phone and i do that mind zone out thing i'm just worried about this or that or i'm thinking about this or that you know and i'm like after a while i'm like oh man he hasn't bugged me in a while like how long have i zoned out for like and i feel bad i feel like is he getting used to that like fuck it's kind of scary too well what do you i don't i don't know enough about parenting they always say it's like 90 of it's just showing up just being there i think there's something to like a human body being near you yeah i mean there's there's no like there's there's no like rule book on like a dad does this so that doesn't do that you know there's like general rules of thumb i guess but i think for the most part for me it's like be there and do your best to be like a good example and a good person to your kid like so that they could be a

good person later on you don't want to raise some asshole you know yeah so like i don't know i try to show affection i try to show love i try to like discipline them and everything but when i have to miss out on time with him or when i am there and I'm like absent minded, like I might as well just be a dead body around. Then I feel like I'm letting him down. Do you think he notices? Do you can you feel like maybe I think I think he like. Yeah, I think he notices. I think maybe he doesn't really understand what he's feeling or you know what.

But I do think that like he notices and i and i think my son and i both notice it when i finally kind of snap out of like the absent-minded thing and then go play with him because it feels like holy shit when's the last time i made you laugh like yesterday like that sucks or like two Or like two days ago, like, you know what I mean? Yeah. You don't want to only be there because I'll be honest, the discipline part of being a dad snaps me out of anything more. If I'm absent minded or whatever, if I'm zoning out or if I'm focusing on these emails and I hear my son being a brat with like my brother or sister or trying to get away with eating too much candy or anything i snap out of it quick and then i go on and i'm like hey uh-uh like don't do this don't

do that or you know what let's get you in the shower let's do it like and if i see him doing something that's gonna lead to his poor health or to him just being like a shitty person one day i snap out of it so quick when i should snap out of it way more often i should snap out of it when he's bored or when he's watching too much tv like to like really engage with them but when i see him doing something that i feel like is going to domino effect and badly then i snap out of it really it is funny with parenting now with phones and tablets and shit is when they're it's like you it seems like some parents just throw that at their kid like just check the phone out but it's basically because like you want to check the phone out yeah it's

a weird i don't i there are certain things in parenting now that i'm curious to see how they turn out well that's one of them and the the availability of weed meaning if a lot of parents are kind of just stoned all day now is that gonna be ever since because like i haven't i don't think i'm not accusing that i'm just saying like i now that weeds leave in a lot of places i'm just kind of like it seems like parents maybe you're stoned all day and i wonder how that's gonna be that scares me a little bit i i i think my son is a big reason i stopped smoking i used i haven't smoked in like five or six months so i used to just smoke whenever i was by myself and if my son was with me then i wouldn't smoke but after a while i just stopped smoking altogether because there's just

a lot going on in general but yeah i am afraid of giving them too much of like tablet time or something yeah i love that stuff but you're great they're amazing yeah these fucking things are amazing but even i gotta make sure to like snatch it from them from time to time and he gets mad it makes it it the it makes parenting easier yeah it's they you just have a co-parent which is the tablet and you go i'll take it away from them. Even if we're in the car, sometimes he wants to use it in the car. We live like an hour outside of the city.

We're like out in the country. And sometimes we go into the city and he'll ask me if he can use a tablet on the way. And I'm just like, nah, he'll get mad. He's like, I don't be bored.

I'm like, it's all right. Like sometimes you gotta be bored for a minute. Sit with your thoughts, man. Like, and so you just be there just staring at the window. And I'm like, yeah.

And he, yeah. No, it's funny. Like, space it. Yeah. Get spacey like your daddy. Yeah. Because I don't want him to become too fidgety either. Because if he's constantly needing something to, like, distract him,

where does it end, you know? It ends where we're already at. Do you know what I mean? Like, it ends constant phones phone yeah just constant stimulation i want him to be okay with like yeah dead space i know it's weird i bet you wouldn't have thought that five years ago in terms of here's what i was gonna ask when you said the thing about what kind of noticing his behavior and like is this gonna lead to him being a bad person? Did you have feelings about what made a good or bad person before you were a parent?

And, or did you, once you saw the kid, you were like, okay. Yeah. I was curious about stuff like that. Like before,

before I started doing standup, uh, took an acting class in the few months that i was trying to learn to be an actor i know they're like well you gotta like study human nature you're becoming a character you're becoming a person with like a history and and and and a history that explains how that character became who they are in this movie or in this role right so i'm always trying to like ever since then i always was trying to like see people in their adulthood and then i try to kind of like ask them about their childhood and to see if

there's any patterns when i ask another adult like what their childhood like and you would do this just because the acting class or you would you were just because like at first i started because of the acting class but then i just started doing it because like well i'm just curious yeah so if i talk to like 10 different people and i notice that four of them have a similar trait well i try to find out if their childhood has any similar patterns you know yeah um but other things i feel like are just kind of like a given like if my son walks into a room and there's a lot of people there and he's he's acting a fool he's like jumping on the couch or being loud he's being obnoxious to the general public and i don't want him to continue that trait because not only will he do it in other people's homes but he'll do

it in school in the mall like he'll just be the person who maybe lacks self-awareness or lacks respect for the general public and i don't want that to happen or if he's was it did you have it did you before the acting class i'm assuming based on the sort of space outs and all that stuff i'm betting you have you're observant probably and you like notice that you know the kind of people you like and don't like yeah for the most part um and do you find that morality is a big part of that in terms of how you like that i like that person because what kind of person do you tend to like i tend to like humility i think that's that's something big for

me yeah and people and do you is that something you kind of keep track of in yourself i try to yeah fucking you could you're doing great man like you could really i try to i try to but also i admire people who are good at knowing when to like not be needy for attention and i feel like that was something i struggled with as a kid is like i always wanted the attention that's fine so you see that in your kid and you're like we gotta nip this in the mud not really it's just sometimes i don't know what are you embarrassed looking back looking back i'm like there's so many chances to make a joke or to be the funny dude in the room and i might have tried to take every single one even the ones that weren't even my chances and then i see people who don't take

those chances and are still so likable and i'm like why couldn't i just be more like that the other day you know what i mean yeah and i feel like now that i'm older maybe i i can tell myself to like just shut the fuck up yeah just be a fly on the wall yeah in this room maybe you know what i mean they're not all your rooms yeah and i i like that a lot in people but i also take that like maybe too far sometimes where i'm like let me shut up and not talk for yeah i just don't want to talk to nobody like and and if you do it too much well then you lose likeability you know what i mean but you know it's like they say like you can't care too much about people think you know i think's like they say, like, you can't care too much about what people think.

I think that goes to an extent, though. You got to care somewhat of what certain people think. You want to do well or not? Yeah. We have to care what the audience thinks. Yeah. It's not comedy. Audiences, for sure.

And it just depends which room you're in with which people, too. You got to, like, keep your sanity, but also but also you know just be mindful of people how do you stay humble if you if you if you're if you're do you feel tested by it sometimes sometimes when i'm around people and this might just be my own anxiety or paranoia but sometimes i feel like i'm around people that can see me going through a tough situation with like attention i'm getting or just whatever sometimes i don't handle like all the comments and on youtube and instagram so well and they kind of get to me or i can't handle what this person said about me whatever right like it kind of bugs me a bit and i feel like sometimes people

around me think well stop being a little bitch that was me i would handle it or that was me i would do this and on those people i want to stop being humble sometimes because a lot of that bugs me a lot when a lot of people think or if i was in your position i'm pretty sure i'd handle better yeah and it's like dude a lot of these people can't even get to my position like if you were in my position like get to my position first yeah you know what i mean yeah so those are the moments where i do want to like start listing off accomplishments like i did that you know yeah you saw my don't tell this is like man i can't i'm just like oh yeah if anything i gotta by the way then you watch the

nba and you're like this soft motherfucker yeah list. Then you watch the NBA and you're like, this soft motherfucker. Yeah. Like, that's just how life is? Yeah. That you're like, I would never, like, we're all, you know, prosecutor of everybody else and defense attorney for ourselves. That'll never end. That'll never end. This is the list of like, if I were you, this is what I would have done. Yeah.

That list will never end. And it could be people who never met you and it could be people who do know you and still love you. Yeah. And maybe they don't mean that much harm by it maybe you're taking it too much to heart but if you are giving me that instead of like flexing on you i might just brush it off and be like whatever bro like now you're on that list of people i gotta just like ignore brush off you know what i mean yeah i've waved a few in the past couple of weeks. I've waved off a couple like,

and I'm because I never am glad I did it. Yeah. I always say it's like getting, getting snap counted offsides or I'll go for a pump fake. If I'll put in basketball terms, like someone, and then I, and I jump and I foul them like fucking,

why did I go for their, like they just baited me a little bit if i go off on my own buddy and start listing off the reasons why like he's not on my level next week he's not gonna be like hey man thanks for putting me in my place you know what i mean exactly we're all cool still so all right so in a let's go on our final descent what are the so all these sort of downside stuff this stuff that's like you know you're absent or you're spacey or whatever what's the ups upside of it because i'm always the on the podcast i'm always kind of we're like looking on the down the upside of yeah yeah the upside of all this stuff say again that i'm always productive up there yeah so so it's almost

like having a another card up your sleeve yeah wow wow a lot of the people that i hang around with back home or friends or whatever sometimes they they uh they blame it on talent they're like oh man well you know you got this you booked this or you landed this gig because how talented you are. You're not good. And it's like, yeah, that too, but I've also been working out strategies in my head or plans. I'm trying to work out the next joke.

I'm trying to work out how can I get in front of this book or how can I try to get on The Tonight Show? What do we got to do here i'm working out small term goals in my head or i'm working out jokes like i'm staying productive in here yeah and it's steven king calls his like writing engine he calls it the boys in the basement the boys that's what he likes what he calls it yeah like like he's the boy no there's boys in the basement that just are doing it fucking weird what he calls it yeah like like he's the boy no there's boys in the basement that just are doing it fucking weird ass steven no i know but it's a fucking great it's

a great way to say where it's like you don't you don't always go out looking for a joke the fucking boys in the basement just go hey i like to think of i love thinking about that scene in the first iron man like that whole beginning part where he's stuck in the cave and they think he's building them a missile, but he's building the suit. Yeah, I love feeling like that's where I'm at. It's like I'm in this cave and whenever I accomplish something good or big, I get like a cool opportunity. I accomplish something good or big or I get like a cool opportunity. Or even when I just go on stage and do like a fresh new joke that nobody's heard. And even my buddies can be like, oh shit, that's a good one.

You know, like a lot of the time they think like, oh, he just thought of it. And they're like, is there like, no, no, this is bro. I've been cooking this for like fucking four weeks already. I just never said anything. I'm being like, whatever. Yeah. And I feel like that's me when he's like bust out in the big old suit and like flamethrower and shit yeah i was like yeah like this yeah that's the thing there is a downside there's a price of like we get accused

of being shitty friends or shitty boy from whatever but like it's kind of the it's kind of the what the machine does yeah and like so that's why i the, it's kind of the, what the machine does. Yeah. And like, so that's why I'm always saying to people, like, I, there are parts of me that I consider like negative or not great, but I know that there's some value to it. Yeah. In just a different part of my life. Yeah. I, I, I suck way more as a person if I was absent-minded and just not producing anything.

And cutting hair. Yeah. You were the worst until like a year ago. You would not be on this podcast. No barbers allowed. No barbers. And what's your, like, have you done any therapy or anything? Nah.

I'm on to now, now that I've kind of been stressing a lot. Yeah. I don't want to i don't want to be like a like sounding like a little bitch to my friends all the time yeah i feel like therapy seems like a healthy like you need somebody to talk to betterhelp.com promo code neil and eal oh yeah i got you 10 off the first month i'll check it out um yeah you should you you're a lot of stress your life is it like good therapy or is it like 10 off type therapy look i don't get into they'll assign you you gotta fill out a form i feel like i feel like if i'm getting coupon therapy it's not good go fuck yourself i would never um the uh

the you yeah you're gonna have a lot of you're going through a lot of change in your life and like it's not it's not uh it's a gift and it's exciting but it's also stressful like you've got to acknowledge that you can't just be like on some yeah all you can't be purely grateful i'm like i'm just happy you have to stand up yeah i don't want to bitch too much but i like i gotta enjoy some of it but i don't want to bitch too much either. It's like a balance, you know? But yeah, no, I wouldn't trade it. I'm not like, yo, this is too much to handle. No, I don't think you are. The big, I feel like the big, if you want the big successes in life,

you got to take on the big stresses, you know? Yep. What is your ultimate goal for yourself in life, like emotionally? Man, I think i do okay emotionally um i guess the big goal for me is to and i might this might not even be a real thing but i would like to be sometimes on a more normal emotional human level like i'd like to be able to like keep that relationship or like maybe be a better friend to people like a more uh what do you call it traditional person i feel like i feel like i see a lot of people who like are good at being people like good at being a person and i feel like i'm good at it for very small increments

which is maybe why i like to move around a lot a lot of time people blame me not being around on my job they're like oh well you know you can't always be around because it's work he travels a lot i i travel a lot because i'm like that you You know what I mean? Yeah. I really fell into this line of work because this is who I am. I don't like to be around people seven days a week, every week for the whole year. I'll go nuts. Yeah. When I worked several different types of jobs. I used to paint cars.

Every Mexican stereotype job I've had, it was like a dishwasher. Fantastic. Didn't want to say it. Thanks for taking that off my plate. I was working really hard to learn to be a painter. And I felt like I was moving up those ranks pretty quickly. I was working at a body shop. And the main painter guy was like never there.

I was having to do a lot of the work on my own which i was like kind of proud of but after a few weeks of working there um i was living with my son's mom she wasn't we weren't having a baby yet or anything but i was just like yo so do i just do this the rest of my life yeah do i just go home to to her and her family do i just put in 40 hours, maybe more or less every week until what? Like I'm 65 or something like, and I started doing the math. Like how many weeks is that? How many hours is that? And then what, what's, what's the exciting part?

Not that I want crazy stuff to happen, but like, what is the exciting part? The occasional birthday party or cookout? But you know, what's funny is you said that I i i've had that thought a week ago about this life like i'm sure brad pitt is like so am i just gonna be like one of the most famous people and do movies every once in a while like like fucking muhammad bin salman and in saudi arabia is like so am i just gonna be in charge of saudi arabia so that's what i'm saying maybe it's it's it's a made-up thing in in my head to like be okay with that stuff but i i would like to think that some people are better at being okay with that stuff and i would like to be okay with that stuff i feel like that's more of a traditional mindset

i feel like when i'm trying to really have a relationship with somebody or, or trying to like be more in like connected with family or friends, I could do it for a bit. And then I'm like, well, I got to take off. Like I've had, uh,

we've been on the road almost every weekend for a year now. And I've, I've had weekend scheduled that I'm like, yeah, I'm gonna need to take that one off, you know? And then that month Tuesday comes, you're like, we should maybe rebook something for this weekend. I've booked every single free weekend I've had.

Whether it be like some pop-up stuff back home or somewhere, I've booked every weekend I've had. I'm like, well, we got to stay moving. I just, I don't know. Yeah. It's a weird job. and i don't know yeah it's a weird job it's a weird personality sort of mold that we are just as comedians or whatever the fuck spacey motherfuckers this is weird it's kind of weird but i i hear what you're saying i've i've just gotten over again in the last last maybe six months,

that idea of I should be a different way. Yeah. Yeah. There is so much pressure to be traditional. It's just like most people are. You want to fit in. We're social animals. I think it's like a stability thing, I guess.

Yeah. It's my goal. My emotional goal is to just be more of a of a stable calm balance i'm better you want to be able to write the same bits and be more my friend one of my best friends his name's anthony he bought his next door neighbor's house with money he had saved up when he was like 20 he'd been working he was like 15 very cheap house not like super nice it was very beat down we knew that and uh every weekend, him and his,

for like a year and a half or something, him and his dad would work on the house or like days after work or something. Then he got, you know,

he moved in, started working his job, which I think he's looking for more. I'm not too sure. I'm not going to sit here and say like, he loves his job.

Yeah. He's looking for more with her. But he has, he has his, his fiance. They have a baby uh and he's such a chill dude he's emotionally mature and i'm like bro if i could reach that level of emotional maturity that you have i'm like that's like that's where i want to be like the guy just seems like chill-minded, and I don't think I'm there. I think when I'm with, like I've been dating somebody.

When I'm with my girlfriend and my son, it feels good. But if I'm being 100% honest, it doesn't feel good the whole day. There's some moments in the day where I'm like yeah or just like yeah yeah i gotta work on something i gotta do something like yeah why just yeah yeah it's all right it's it's i don't this isn't there's nothing abnormal about what you're saying just so you know like for real like if people listen and whatever like well in that case i have no goals i'm i'm good yeah you got a netflix coming out you got what you maybe do a couple yeah uh and then you'll just get into like so am i just gonna be a comedian um ralph barbosa everybody cowabunga cowabunga i don't know when this comes out but cowabunga out out on halloween on netflix

go maybe it's already out might be maybe it's not out yet it's one or the other follow me on instagram are we this is like people that can't say goodbye like all right we're gonna oh i can't say bye no i'm this feels like two people that are like all right i'm leaving and then you both go to the traffic light you're like okay all right peace good shit yeah everybody wants to have they want to have

it real my man all you have to do is open open up your hand my man