Blocks w/ Neal Brennan - Roy Wood Jr.

Episode Date: March 23, 2023

Neal Brennan interviews Roy Wood Jr. (The Daily Show) about the things that make him feel lonely, isolated, and like something's wrong - and how he is persevering despite these blocks. Roy's blocks: 6:12 Makes Self Small  9:24 Passivity 18:59 Fatherhood 20:57 Leadership 30:41 Fatherhood as it pertains to his perception of his father 50:59 Work 54:34 Doesn’t Celebrate 1:00:03 Half Ayahuasca 1:08:30 Three Standup Specials Left https://nealbrennan.com for tickets to Neal's tour Brand New Neal Watch Neal Brennan: Blocks on Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/title/81036234 Theme music by Electric Guest (unreleased). Edited by Will Hagle YouTube Subscribe: https://bit.ly/2Lf6yvE Audio Subscribe: https://link.chtbl.com/blocks?sid=yt Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi, I'm Neil Brennan, and I have a Netflix special called Blocks, now streaming. In the special, I talk about the things that make me feel like something's wrong with me, makes me feel crazy. So now I have a podcast that you're listening to where I do the same thing, but I make my friends come on, and they tell me about their blocks. And my guest today is a longtime friend. I'm actually almost embarrassed by how we met. I'll explain.

Roy Wood, everybody. He's the, he's the, your newest intro is you're the host of the Correspondence Center this year. So congrats on that. Yeah. Our origin story is I like, didn't I Facebook? No, I saw it. Did I Facebook message you? It was AOL.

I AOL. He wasn't like messenger. No, it saw it. Did I Facebook? It was AOL. I AOL. It wasn't like Messenger. No, it's email. It's email. After Def Comedy Jam. You had a great joke. You had a joke about Martin Luther King, right? Yeah.

I don't remember the joke, but there was an MLK joke. There was a sauce joke. It was about MLK. It's like, you can't be a leader. You can't be a political leader and a little racist. And it was like, I hope we get to the mountaintop not you mexicans or something oh yeah right yeah black people can't hate other minorities we have to like oh yeah yeah and it but it struck a chord and you're like that kid's got something in him in my racist heart um no i love a good racial joke so i i feel like i

messaged you and a manager no it was just me it was just me you found my aol email at the time to be fair this is 06 for context yeah i wasn't doing stand-up really i was i i was semi i did it for a couple years a little bit and then i retired it was just casual wasn't like it was just hey man great set that was funny and i was like very appreciative which to this day is the reason why i'll message comics that i don't fucking know i hey that was a good late night feel the same way and i told this story to somebody the other day when people talk about lauren michaels as like lauren michaels lauren told me a story of a he wrote a joke for woody allen when woody allen was a comic and lauren and his partner wrote a joke that ended up that woody did and they were playing pool with woody and woody was like that's

a good joke and lauren goes we ate out on that for six months like woody allen liked our joke like that's you can get high that's like a form of when someone you respect like says hey yes i try i still try to do it that's what it was if i see a comic that i like in the club i'll just say hello but like you know i don't have any career opportunities for you but i just want to let you know hey yes i observe your craft and i think it's good yes goodbye now keep doing it and it's not like i replied back neil brennan saved me or anything you said when are you going to start mentoring me no i would have never you know it's fucked up man I'll help other comics, but then if they make a formal request like that, it makes me nervous. Because somehow I'm responsible. Yeah.

If it doesn't go right. You all know my mentor. Yeah, it's like, no, I don't. When he's getting hauled off to jail, call my mentor, Roy Wood Jr. I think this is a mentorless job. I was thinking recently recently the idea that any comedian ever has said a thing that i told him to say it's so crazy meaning you're basically going like they have to trust you so much or just you know what i mean like your judgment like i think

this will work do you remember the first comic you pitched a joke to well the funny thing with me is i pitched a joke to marin that was a mistake like 92 93 i pitched a joke to i remember i pitched a joke to royale walkins 92 93 didn't work peak def jam yeah 91 92 every black comic was trying yeah royale popped off that shit uh didn't work and then i get i pitched a couple to dave and those worked that he didn't want it to work they just were like i just this is when you're at the door yeah yeah yeah anyhow so so getting someone it's just like a miracle that you know you have someone has to be funny although you know if you just see if you're just looking at blind pitches and you go that's a good joke like you just but if the person doesn't

look trustworthy it's a weird thing it's like do you would you want the person to be good looking or not if you read a good joke and someone's like i wrote that joke hi roy nice to meet you you'd be like i don't trust a good looking person wants to do like what do you want i don't trust i would just lose faith in the joke, like, pretty much. I used to go through that phase in college. Like, gorgeous women, it was always Jesus. It's like, what church are you about to invite me to? If a good-looking girl.

If a good-looking woman approached me, it was always Jesus. Yeah. There was, like, a good two, three-year stretch where it's just, and to this day. I have a similar but different thing if a woman is like a little too good looking for me if she like slides in my dms 95 percent of the time canadian i don't know what it is i don't know what it is but can i'm like a canadian seven you need to move bro i mean it's roy that cold ain't no it's nothing worth that she gonna keep you warm but then that canadian titties i thought you were getting ready to say

canadian titties and i was here for it sweetie the first block which sidebar let me just say terrible concept for a podcast thank you very much just uh bring your friends on and just force them i know i'm milking my friends for their troubles not milking but you're helping strangers through us having this conversation i understand that but it's also like had i gone to therapy i couldn't fucking i wouldn't even know what the fuck my blocks were that's hopefully people are aspiring to come on the podcast and they go to therapy this makes people go to therapy because they go it's someday i'll be in the big leagues um all right this is a good one this is a good one and someone one i didn't know

and i relate to it you make yourself small and you need to learn how to be selfish tell me more yeah it's kind of a block and a half yeah exactly well take you break them up you make yourself small i think that i make the mistake of not owning who i am like in that sense like and it's not even arrogant as much as it is just i remember and i had the realization of it i was late for a flight let's just say it's 10 minutes till the doors close and i'm on the wrong side of security. A guy on the same flight, and I can hear him as he's approaching. Excuse me, my flight leaves. Yeah.

And this fucking white dude de-bowed his way through a three-turn queue line all the way to the front, past me, past the blue shirts, through security. all the way to the front past me past the blue shirts through security and i got to the gate literally like as the closing the door and pushing back maybe the worst feeling in the world yeah yeah like when you see the plane yeah and the point's still there it's clear the worst is when the door is still open but they won't let you on oh like sorry that yeah they've done that to me and you want to like punch them and fucking run but they're holding the print out yeah sorry nothing we can do the printer has spoken it was one of those moments like a realization like just all i had to do was just fucking be bold yeah could do it tell me what you say i don't know because i've never i've never made

that move before like i'm also the guy on the train who will immediately try to accommodate and move and oh here's some space for you or the elevator but the elevator is too crowded instead of just standing there going no well it's like the thing where there's like a pregnant lady standing and you're just like yeah i don't know yeah on the subway and you're just like this is just what happened yeah or this way the seats broke yo i will look at a motherfucker from three motherfuckers away and try to like telepathically sit here but that just looks crazy on the train and like the train is one of the places where asshole is the assumed default behavior yeah so i actually feel like i have a little bit of power i have a joke that didn't quite work about the train which is riding the subway new york it's hard to tell who is mentally

ill and who is an unsigned rapper it's a little too specific excuse me ladies and gentlemen on this train like the guy who's rapping to himself who has a beat in their head versus who has a voice in their head yeah but it's this idea of not always the default it's not for me to always fight for what i deserve well and that's to a detriment and then then that gets twisted into oh royce nice he's a nice yeah person people mistake your kindness for weakness and they're right yeah and then they fucking exploit it yeah they try to at least i'm more aware of it now but so is it it's passivity yeah yeah a thousand percent that but i don't know where that came from in my life i found that i sometimes assume women are fragile and i assume it because my mom's got 10 kids and was married to an asshole, right? And got through it.

And at the same time, she is fragile. And there is a thing of like caretaking involved that I'm sure there's some, what I know about you and you're still close with your mom. And I feel like you, there's a party that like wants to take care of it, right? Yeah. That's a huge part of a lot of my shit. But I'll also, well, you know what? I do think that part of it was school.

Yes. Transferring school. I was never in the same school district for more than two years until high school. When we moved to Birmingham in the third grade. And every two years, different side of town. So just trying to fit in. Was it ever a Catholic school or a public school? Two weeks.

I did Catholic school for two weeks. It's all a joke. And just, I was a behavioral nightmare. Were you really? What year? And I wasn't in fourth grade. And I wasn't even, shout out to Ephesus Academy in Birmingham. Sure, sure, sure.

You can claim me now on your website as an alum two weeks two weeks two weeks two weeks and y'all told me take my ass back to central park like but this idea of just wanting to fit in i wanted to make a lot of trouble i didn't get picked on a lot in school i could use jokes a little bit to fit in, but I was never one of the cool kids, but I wasn't like ostracized. So just let me just sit calm and maybe like being small in a room, maybe that I guess carried over into adulthood. Like, all right, perfect example.

This correspondent's dinner, right? There's going to be some big party after that shit where you're going to fucking see all of the big wigs. I'm going to walk in that party, and as best I can, I'm going to make a lap around the perimeter. I play the perimeter of a party. I'm not a center of the party person. Like, if your proximity from the action in a party

dictates your personality i'll go to the party but i'm on the edge i'm at the bar i'll sit at the bar because i know everybody eventually has to come to the bar and then i'll talk to you on an individual you know whatever whatever and you act like you're waiting for a drink ding ding that's funny that's my move well i get a drink and i just nurse it oh god i got it got it because it looks like you're waiting for somebody look like i just got my drink. Yeah. That type of shit.

So it's a way for me to be able to manage conversations without there being like a huge, this huge social pressure to be the life. Do you judge the life of the party? Do you think it's shallow? It's like, I didn't do standup for a long time. Cause I pretended that I thought I wasn't a ham.

Like I could never never i would never that's beneath what oh so look at them no and then i realized like oh yeah only time i don't fuck with life's other parties when they try to drag me to the center into the into the nucleus of whatever the social thing is that's happening, I enjoy playing the edge. Like if you took me to a family barbecue, I'm going to hang by the dude at the grill. Nobody hangs by the grill. That's my spot.

Right. But everybody's got to come to the grill. You just wait, man. You're just in the cut. You're literally in the cut. But that doesn't always behoove you in a career where you have to be loud, screaming, and and yelling and social media posting all the time so people would know about your shows and all that. Here's a clip of me doing the thing.

Y'all should have seen me last night. God bless my fucking social media managers because, hey, we think this clip from last night you should post this that's not funny i don't know that yeah yeah i'll post it and it'll do a thousand retweets yeah all right you were right yeah well why don't you just let them post it well because i want to control and curtail the things that i put out that reflect back on my image. And I don't want people to think I'm bragging too much, but it's like, no, I'm going to fucking,

I have to start owning it. You have to stop being small. So yeah, I am hosting the white house correspondence dinner. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I am going to fucking crush it.

I am going to guest host a daily show and fucking knock that, knock that out the park. So you have to start thinking like that and since i've started shifting those thoughts in the last like two years that year and a half that's where shit has started to fucking turn the corner well what i'm saying is do you think it's a personality thing where you're like there's something like personality thing where you're like there's something like i feel about you judge the people that do it you judge the hams you judge the you judge uh guys that are good at it because there are guys that are

like really good promoters and kevin hart's really good promoter and really funny i don't i don't judge it but i definitely envy that i don't have that skill set sometimes but don't you think it's characterological don't you think it's in your personality to be like ah like i bet third grade roy was still on the same shit absolutely absolutely like i just wouldn't i'd always decided to accept making myself small because i felt like being big would be an inconvenience to someone. To someone. Yeah, and I don't want to be an inconvenience. I don't want to draw any attention away from what y'all, you know, y'all go ahead and have a good time.

It's always putting myself second, third, or sometimes fourth in a situation, you know, like that's, you know, that's not good. Do you think it's, you were always like, do you think it's learned? Do you think it's you were always like do you think it's learned do you think it was like just in you because i kind of feel like where i am in terms of my orientation of humanity is like were these spirits and we get dipped in this human and we have some spirit characteristics and then we have these human ones like just like oh you're neil brennan and you're like your parents are this and then and it's like so you wonder like some of this shit because you go i don't know where i got that from i can tell you how early it happened but to say that this was the this was the inciting incident

that created that yeah oh yeah i don't think it's ever in or as clear an origin story yeah i don't have that but i can yeah i was totally making myself small here and there. I swapped shifts with people at work and high school. Did anyone ever make you feel like an imposter? If there was an origin story, would it ever be like someone shamed you for trying to stand up for yourself? Stink. Comedy club bookers. And that's really where it fucked me for a long time.

It's because if you don't stand up for yourself in this business, motherfuckers will roll over you. And they did for a long time with me. And so if you already feel like you don't belong or you're just happy to be here, you're going to behave like you're just happy to be here instead of behaving like you belong yeah and presentation dictates perception so now the people around me are treating me like well i don't know is that my fucking phone i don't know anything like to be here so you know worn sunglasses i just we just did some shit the other

night for byron allen it was it was me keenan thompson tommison, said Gary Owen, Tiffany Haddish, like enough people that are higher than me on the comedy totem pole, but we've all gone to school together. Like I'm familiar with you. So for me, something like that, how I played that now versus how I would have played that five years ago, like now, oh, no, I'm going to stand next to Seth the Entertainer and go, what's up, man? How you been?

How's it like? Et cetera, et cetera. Versus, hey, I see y'all over there, but I'm going to be over here in my corner. Not as good as y'all. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yes.

That type of shit, which I still have a lot of that in me, but it's about acting against that impulse so that you can drive yourself to grow psychologically because you can't, you know, you can be shy, you can be quiet, but you cannot be a pushover. And so I think making yourself small, you're putting two strikes against yourself. I don't like faking it till you make it as a general practice but i don't think this is that i think this is like so you've done some

shit at this point in terms of like the order of those people there's two different orders there's like the funniest then there's the most popular then there there's the richest. But you're on all those lists. Yeah. For that room on that night, I deserve to be here. I've done enough. So I can stand here next to you, motherfuckers, and we can talk. We may not have done as many shows together. We may not have as long of a comedy backstory together.

But you know me, and you know what. So I'm going to stand. I will be in the center of the room. I don't think you were right to take cedric's drink from his hand well i shouldn't you shouldn't let me take it i snatched that shit like jail my fucking give me your drink i think that was wrong what made you uh like go that's enough fatherhood has a lot to do with it go here we go fatherhood like restructures your dna a little bit in terms of what examples am i setting for him right like once shit started hurting my money which then in turn hurts my ability to provide i'm not fucking playing with you no more yeah so whatever the fuck i feel whatever hesitancies i have about saying or not saying some shit that shit's out the

window there was a staffing change i needed to make on the podcast and i just had i've never fired anyone or made a change or anything like oh i think i remember you talking about this and it's funny like uh how how did you find it because it was fucking with my money right but by the way you're talking like a character on power tonight like you fucking so that's what so then so that's then my son was born and i'm not fucking with you once my son is here like adam ferrara swarmy lawyer um so uh i haven't watched yellowstone is this what it's like um it's this with southern accent there's certain things that you have to come to grips with and you have to face them immediately and you would say the biggest catalyst, your son. Absolutely.

I also like for the people at home that you refer to your son as the boy. As often as you, as often as you talk, I was saying to the boy. Yeah. The boy, the boy. Some people don't like it. I said it one time to a woman I was talking to one time. I love it. It's so goddamn funny. She did not like it.

She, your son has a name and I just don't understand why you're disrespecting him like but you know me you know the intent like words are just sounds with your throat like it you know yeah which brings me to another block yes leadership great not on here and i like it yeah i'm not a good leader and that's something that i'm working on now leadership is hard man the only male leadership that we see are sports coaches which is a lot of yelling it's very militaristic and military all yelling it is fully yeah which is also very militaristic um ironically enough and parenting and if you've if you've gotten you know if your dad's around if he's a good leader of the family if you see that resolve conflict well that's so if you haven't seen any of that stuff it's really

hard now my pops was for sure like i can call it now he was for sure anxious avoiding so he didn't like him and my mom didn't argue often he just would not do yeah or we'd talk his shit and dip like you know good dad bad husband i guess is probably the best way that i've always explained him and this is the shit no one can prepare you for train you for like that i don't have a fucking mentor on leadership, but I also don't have the best examples either. Well, yeah, that's the thing. At a certain point, you have to be your own example.

Even now, when people ask about The Daily Show, and they're like, oh, do you want to host The Daily Show? And they talk about this shit solely from a place of do you want the chair and to be funny and political satire it's like that's the tip of the iceberg that's easy yeah do you want to lead 95 people yeah four days a week into battle. And you're the general. And then you have to also establish that you're the general. In the building where you've been since you was an intern, like this idea of, are you ready to crack jokes and take down the establishment?

That's easy. Can I lead 90 people? Like even watching Trevor, that's easy yeah can i lead 90 people yeah like even watching trevor that's probably the best example of leadership that i've gotten then it's one of the best one i've gotten and i was barely there and i barely saw him but like he's a very very he is truly like equanimity like he truly is like knows how to it petrifies me because because to be a leader and this is where fatherhood has helped to play a role a little bit is that if i'm and it's not just this isn't just hosting the daily show this is any show that i go and produce and i become an executive producer or i go to some other network and i'm gonna go do my own thing.

You're still in charge of 95 motherfuckers. And you've got to figure out a tactful way to get them to want to try something that they may not necessarily see or understand or even agree with and give their all to it and not be resentful in their effort in the moment. And that is a way of talking to people that more often than not there is no class to take there is no prep course you just have to pray to fucking god that you had good examples along the way yeah and you do what they did and that's that's the best that i can hope for because like i've used this analogy before with leadership but like with my son

i'm his first general for the most part i don't yell i'd say 95 percent of the time and even then i'm not screaming it's just hey dude hey stop making me ask you a thing that you have to use judiciously in that like you want it to work although yelling does always work yeah no children after a while though it doesn't like like would because even with weapons with me i got whipped as a kid but somewhere around fifth grade my mom stopped because she just knew i didn't give a like you're gonna do your thing yeah you're gonna gonna go on with me motherfucker yeah so she had to figure out new cycle a lot and she did she evolved so it's the same thing with me where all right mom to electrocuting it right like bo jackson's mom who like pointed a gun at him one time. Really? Yeah, there's some story about that.

But like with my son, I've told this analogy before, but like when I'm working with him and we're building Legos together, there's like two ways to do Legos where you can follow the instructions, right? We do the instruction. And then there's times where we're freestyling Legos and we're just both building shit. And he'll try to tell me what to do with my pieces. And I'm trying to tell him what to do with it.

And it's not fucking working. But if we both agree before we start building, all right, hey, what the fuck are we building? Building an airplane? All right, cool. Check it out. You do the fuel sludge. You do the front. I'll do the tail. We'll do the wings together. Deal? Deal. Cool. And whatever we put

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as it pertains to your perception of your father. Go. You're only asking that because you know I'm going to unpack that shit in the next couple of years. That's like the... Well, because I was telling... I was telling somebody before you got here like the story your dad's story is so crazy and great it's like more cinematic

than cinema like screenwriters are like what the fuck straight straight villain turned hero yeah but okay so villain tell the story about your dad the finding your root story yeah the car yes okay so what so the backstory well let's set it up like you're a little how would you categorize your father's still alive no no my father passed in 95 i was 16 okay so it never got to be especially good was it ever especially bad your relationship with your dad it was never bad it was distant okay it was distant to a degree okay and he was a bit of a philandering he got it he was rolling i am the ninth i'm my mother's only child i'm the ninth of 11 children on your father's side.

Correct. Yeah. By, I think, four women. I think is the count. But my father, like, almost don't even like leading with that because on the job side of the game, a stellar fucking journalist

that covered everything from the Soweto riots in South Africa. He was in Rhodesia covering the Civil War. He chose to be embedded in Vietnam. He was not sent there. He was like, where the black people at? They getting racism? All right, send me.

Yeah, he was. Do that shit. Didn't he kind of march with? Not kind of. Every civil rights shit you can name, my fucker was there with a tape recorder. He was doing it or covering it. Yeah.

Well, that's the thing. He did a radio show with ernie banks in the 60s in chicago like they co-hosted yeah like the way aaron rogers does his monday morning whatever the fuck yeah my pops just talking racism ernie banks is uh i believe uh called mr cub and also yeah he's anti-vax and he's done ayahuasca last year right we don't know are we doing Aaron Rodgers is that an Aaron Rodgers show um okay so yeah I'm not here to like no no I understand I I never got in the sense that you didn't I your dad's a a people are contained multitude but it's an important part of the story in terms of so so my father walked with a limp so my dad oh sidebar so i have two younger half brothers from a woman that my father was with after he was with my mom okay and so that's who he ended up kind of being with until he died and i do findingots, and they start breaking down. Show on PBS, Dr. Henry Louis Gates, where you go, people, they trace your family.

They trace your shit. Was it birth certificates, wedding, marriage licenses, house deeds, census data? They can literally just, it's just all paperwork. It's just how patient are you to go through all the microfilms at various libraries? So I go and do this show, and they made some calls. And so my father always walked with a limp. And I had this feeling like when I had my son, where you kind of, when I had my son at least,

you go through this whole, I'm going to do this with him, I'm going to do that. Man, I can't wait to just have this life with this person. And is it a reaction to your dad? No, in that moment, I'm just thinking about what I want to do with him. Right, right. But is that the stuff that's like, unlike my... No, no.

It was just fucking love, bro. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then I'm thinking, okay, well, how am I going to teach that? Well, who taught me that? i'm gonna do damn he damn that shit he didn't teach me that either who the fuck well what the fuck did he teach me and like this idea and then the resentment years later my pops driving on 16 i'm 37 years old in the hospital holding my firstborn. And now I'm mad. That's funny. Now I'm mad.

Yeah. And I talked to my two younger half-brothers. And we had a conversation, bro. We had a long conversation just about what the dynamic was like. I know it was like when my dad was home. But what was it like when he was over at your house right and what they walked me through was like just a totally different fucking like my pops my parents worked different shifts so they were never really in the house at the

same time just in general which i guess worked out for the better but like i really only saw my dad on sundays i would see him in passing and he would pick me up from sports shit and drop me off and then he would head back to the radio station or to you know go out in the streets and go drink or whatever so like i didn't really have the same regular family interaction with him anytime i was out with him i knew he was respected and people respected me people treated me very kind like my dad did a lot of good shit in the city and like it was not it was nothing for us to swing by like my pops was the one that would pull up where the homeless people are warming and just hand out 20s like he was just he did good shit then i called my

little brothers and they're like oh yeah daddy checked our homework he would show up to practice and watch practice and i'm like what the fuck is going on over there squeezing your baby harder and harder i'm 37 and i'm fucking mad at a dude that's been dead almost yeah a while 25 years yeah what do you do with that like you know what i'm saying like right yeah what do you do with that so a couple years go by i go do finding your roots and so my father walks with this limp and anytime we talked about it it was always like oh yeah your daddy got hit by a car when he was a teenager and that's all they told us just and that's all he would say right oh yeah there was

like upkeep too right he'd have to get oh yeah because he he got hit his hip got shattered and a couple of places and this is peak puberty so we had to get a hip replacement every like five to seven years to keep up with his growth this is puberty in the 50s peak puberty oh yeah pops is tall six three so i don't know what he was when he got hit but he grew up to 60 there's only so much elevation you can put on a shoe we go hey man we gotta cut you open again get you you a new leg. So he gets hit by a car or whatever, and he lives his life with a limp. Handsome man, had the gift of gab. I guess if you have a limp, then you make up for it with charm or whatever. So I go on Finding Your Roots, and I come to find out the day my father got hit by the car,

he was walking his high school sweetheart home from school. And there was another, let's just say he's a sophomore or some shit. And there's a senior that starts spitting game at my dad's chick. And his game's tight, and he pulled her. He fucking pulled my pop's girlfriend in front of him. And she goes walking off with the new dude. I never even, like, really heard of this until you told me. Like, the 50s was just wild.

Like, you just say, bitch, come with me, baby. What you doing with that loser? What? You need to be. Yeah, like, you, yeah. Somebody could literally just pull like i've heard of that as like in some weird like like the um what was that the snoop what yeah you know the game your bitch yeah yeah it's a scene from the mac or something it's like they're doing another scene but it's still like cartoon shit

yeah this really happened yeah so so a dude come down off the porch pull my pop's girlfriend they go gallivanting down the sidewalk my dad i guess he's walking all behind dejected the couple the new couple they go through the they go through the crosswalk, and the girl drops her book. My father's ex-girlfriend drops, five minutes, drops her book. Maybe not even five minutes. Newly ex, half a block. 90 seconds, yeah. Half a block ex.

Drops her book in the crosswalk. My pops being a gentleman goes out to the crosswalk to get the book. Gets hit by a car. Now, with that information, how do you think that informed how he saw women and how he chose to treat women and relationships after that? Positively? Respectfully? positively respectfully so it i'm not gonna say it made it right but it gave me a different understanding of oh you just didn't trust nobody that's why you never really took marriage serious you just did it to keep women content yeah you didn't really give a fuck you just were just

gonna do what you wanted to fucking do yeah thinking that they were gonna do the same program some got in line some didn't right well no they he probably thought they were gonna be cheating on him and they didn't care and they were gonna leave him for anywhere he went correct they could just be plucked could you imagine have it like just think about how pure high school love is yeah and for that to just like have your thing you know and he's from that no therapy generation so he ain't talked to nobody about this shit and his pops died they used to firebomb therapist's office back then yeah throw molotov cocktails if you open it if you mind you he's 13 or 14 years old when this happens my father lost his father when he was four on top of that he

disappeared he was disappeared in georgia so my grandfather on my dad's side just straight up didn't come home one night and that's the story on him so you know that's some georgia lynching shit so you're dealing with that and then then also, according to Finding Your Roots, there was no new male head of household listed on the census paperwork at any period of his life after the Georgia incident. So the mom and your grandmother never remarried. Now, we don't know if there's some dude in the house here and there, but we know for sure she never remarried.

And in those days, you weren't just letting some motherfucker come lamp up at your house you had to put a fuck you'd marry early lamping yeah this is what they call them hobosexuals now like so what man was there to fucking help his self-esteem or to help him him do any of that shit. Yeah. I mean, there's about a million thoughts I have about this. In terms of, we all want to hold our parents to a standard, right? They're superheroes. How could you? Yeah. You didn't care.

All this. And I wish that every parent had as clear a motive or explanation or origin story for their behavior. And it's that thing you never know what someone else is carrying. And sometimes it's your dad. You know what i mean but this guy that this pillar never talked about it and keep in mind he's still at the point where i am like where he and i really started spending time together about a year before he died was when i got my learner's permit so i would drive him to all of the speaking engagements so i was sitting in the back of churches and you know elks lodge halls and all that shit and just watch him give speeches but never talked about that

shit never volunteered it and that's the thing that i really want to like kind of key in a little bit on on stage at some point it's like your parent and then then on top of that ptsd of the civil rights movement like that's also not forget he's also getting shot at in every war and getting cracked over the skull when he comes home and then also your leg got crushed because because you tried to be nice to a woman who yeah spurned you exactly you know the game you bitch chose me and yeah yeah it's that's like very it's like it's it's such a crazy you couldn't story you none of our parents none of our untherapied parents are truly prepared to unpack that shit with us the children because they haven't even done it for themselves yet i i try you can't even

i broached some stuff with my mom in the last year about her childhood her mom died when she was like two or three you think she's grieved you know what i mean like she hasn't done any any unpacking as we call it yeah they just they all they knew was how to pack they were expert packers and it's how what how presumptuous is it of me to think she might have the skills or interest to do that yeah i think you and i were talking about that a little bit when i was talking about my mom like i think this demand that someone unpack is unfair number one two if they if they're happy yeah leave it alone or yes it is a little disappointing i will if i can empathize with the younger generation it's a little disappointing

when you feel like you did this work it's's not easy work, but it is helpful. And you want them to kind of get to your emotional level. But it's, it's, it's literally, they already have a phrase for it. You're trying to teach an old dog, new tricks.

How old do you think that is? 120 years old. It's foolish. Yeah. But just think about how many of their emotions have calcified at this point. Of course. Like it's almost like on some you know like geologically impossible yeah i mean my mom and i we talked a little bit just about some of those days and some of those times and it's been it's been productive but also don't want to be the person to every time i go home and she's just happy to see me because i'm home hey here's your grand

exactly i'm like oh i love my grandbaby talk to me about father i want to yeah drag her through that shit so i've been every every year i'll get one or two questions yeah and no yeah exactly i'm like all right that's that's good for this year yeah like that's all that'll no you know what that's i think today i think we did good today you like and it's a bit of a race against time yeah everybody's getting older but also what i've learned from my mother is like you know when they say happiness is a choice that is a motherfucking truthful thing yeah i my mom used to say that all the time. My mom is definitely masterful at that. And when I look back at our life, I can go, oh, damn, you really were intentional.

All of this other shit was going around, but you were like, no, I'm going to grad school, getting a law degree and a PhD. She just had a North Star and just phd and i'm gonna get like she just had a north star and just never let anything else around her shake her yeah i don't know man i just i just think that our parents are as much as we look up to them like they didn't know everything they were doing i don't know everything i'm doing like it's i'm raising a child that is smarter than me at the same mile marker that i don't know it is yet to be seen how new disciplinary techniques right there's no long-term studies you don't know if you did it right until

even like when people go like participation trophies they might work we don't know i mean as an example of one thing of like the one that gets all the but that might work it's like somebody was saying it's the the dr spock thing the thing about like letting your kids cry through the night yeah that was a new thing and it was totally accepted in the 70s i forget what yeah it was totally accepted and somebody was gonna like going i remember when you were getting like sleep trained by your parents and you would just cry and i didn't even i wasn't even i like i was like yeah i don't know but they probably thought it was good i don't know as you were talking like the responsibility of so it's a biological urge fucking is a biological urge and then

it's a thing you just do and then 10 months later you have a child. It would be like if you just fucked and then you had a fortune 500 company, that's how prepared it's like, I don't know anything about books, bookkeeping, running a business management, any of this shit. And then,

but we're, the expectation is you have to, and you have to be perfect. Tommy John again had a great joke on Letterman. He's talking about how it sucks because you can literally just accidentally make a person. Yeah. And you have a fool's. You can never accidentally make a shed.

Yeah, that's so funny. There's planning. There's supplies. You have to let it all out. Yeah. But a person, you can just go, oops. Person. Yeah.

And now I have more responsibilities than I can even fathom. And you were supposed to back then. And women had fewer. Just so many ands. But I wouldn't be where I am career-wise if not for my son. Like that. You knew me in LA, bro. LA as a city has a lack of urgency but i for sure have done more in the last seven years than i did the first

15 or whatever the fuck it adds up to make 24 years like that just it's it's unmatched it's unmatched i wouldn't necessarily recommend it to anyone i just said if i could go make a baby but oh why yeah that's exactly right like the you're not alone i mean it seems to be like an animating thing for people. Yeah. And it creates a level of focus and stakes to everything, which forces you to evolve. I'm thankful I'm evolving, but... Beyond professionally. Correct. But then you also have to start taking stock of yourself

and going, all right, well like like to even be here today all right well what the fuck do i need to what's wrong and i already had like three or four things like already sitting in the back of your phone like fuck i already got it yeah all right well this here's a question what are the positive ways you've evolved since you had the boy i think all of this the only thing I need to work on, only thing I need to tighten up on is my health. But that's just because diet and exercise is just such a fucking scheduling.

And it's easy to get caught up in just work. Because work is easy. Work is comforting. Work is familiar. Work is also literal. And you're good at it so that's the thing that i people always for it's like i'm i like working because i'm good at i'm like it's a thing i'm good it doesn't feel like work right i enjoy this it's a you're good at it it's a it's fun to like you want to see me do karate i'm good at karate and you even if you're not trying to impress somebody it's just cool to do a thing you're good at i would say though probably 95

percent of it is that and then there's five percent of people that are like okay but i need you to go do two push-ups today like right well that's the thing it's like concerned yes and you don't like exercise because you i'm betting you're not incredibly good at it it also requires regular rest which requires a schedule that is predictable which requires you taking certain pots off the stove right and that's something that i have to like reckon with and tighten up on and the net if we're just going on the aggregate of the last seven years, health is net positive, but it's also the thing that I work at the least. So it's like, oh, I get better with barely, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Oh, I walk to the train instead of taking the $12 Uber. Or, oh, I'm starting to have oatmeal and eggs again in the morning. Well, that's a fucking boost. Like, you know, little shit like that. So it's just a matter of being more conscious about it. But that's definitely something. You saw me in fucking L.A. 50 pounds ago. You were 50 pounds heavier?

Yeah, yeah, hell yeah. I don't even remember. 230 now. At my peak in L. LA, I was 285. 62, 285. I have the picture, so I can go back and look. I mean, now that you say it, I can picture it. You ever see a picture of yourself from years ago

and you just want to text the woman you were dating at the time? Thank you for everything. This is my bad. I didn't know I looked like that when i was out with you you really was trying i'm gonna send you a gift certificate good one um and what are the things you've done for your directly besides have a son um what have you done like made an effort got a result in terms of all this mental health shit uh taking brief moments to celebrate victories and things that i've accomplished you made a concerted effort to do that correct give me an example correspondence turns a perfect example i took myself to hillstone i had an 80 rib eye yourself? By myself. Didn't want to go with anyone.

Didn't want to, I didn't. And you made them clear the dining room and you ate? No, but I am going to do that at Joe's Crab Shack

when I get money. Fantastic. When I get real money, I'm going to go to Joe's Crab Shack. Where's that? I'm going to rent that bitch. It's a southern seafood chain. It's like Red Lobster

with corny music playing all the time. The food's fucking amazing. Great. Atmosphere is terrible, so I want to shut that down. Sure. No music. What do you think that'll cost? Turn all the lights on food's fucking amazing great atmosphere is terrible so i want to shut that down sure no music what do you think that sounds like 11 grand more they're about i gotta buy them out so whatever they're whatever right but what do you think you only gotta buy them for an hour and a half yeah that's true

you could do this right now right i got news where You could do this right now, right? I got news for you. You could do this after the correspondence. You could do this June 1st. I don't think I'll ever be a person that truly celebrates anything. Not to the degree that other people do. Like, I think people get very, people get more excited for my shit sometimes than I do. Do you find it like pride cometh before the fall yeah because it goes back to the light at the end of the tunnel to me that's not salvation

it's the train coming to hit me right so you can send me all the congratulatory oh you got the white house chorus good for. And I'm sitting in the corner like, fuck. Fuck, I got to deliver. Yeah. And that's all I'm thinking about. Yes. And to the wrong person, they take that as rejection, and they take it personally.

Yeah. Which makes me not want to talk to you because you're not giving me space to do this on my terms. Well, you're like the sports guy when they you win the division and you go like i haven't won shit yet i got work to do and that's literally and that's how i totally relate to that and i probably but and that's but but the problem is that in certain relationships if you are with someone that wants to celebrate everything because they

celebrate everything for themselves they're going to take that as rejection like a party pooper even though it's supposed to be for you and the only alternative is to lie right pretend to be excited fake celebrate yeah and you go like this is bad i could be writing a joke right now for the correspondence hey let's go both celebrate at a stake what i'm thinking yeah thanks for the text but i need to get on this call with christiana and angelo and start putting pieces together yeah because they don't understand the immense amount of pressure i don't think anyone outside of entertainment truly understands what it takes to do this at a fiscally sustainable level year in and year out and provide without there being pressure like that that degree of pressure of providing i don't think they'll and especially in fucking new york

and it's nothing you can put into words. It's nothing you can say to someone, but they just don't understand how we operate with that fucking overhead. It's Ray Liotta in Goodfellas. Helicopter. I'm constantly looking for the fucking helicopter. It's up there, man. I can feel it, man.

Even if i'm wrong and even if every year i've done more well i did more because i was looking didn't looking my therapist said something fucked me up and i still ain't even like really processed it all the way and she said something in the ballpark i'm gonna butcher it but basically we have to be careful in leaning into the behaviors that helped us survive right and letting go of them when it's time to thrive right yeah well all right great help me figure out what did what yeah and but in the meantime rent's due motherfucker yeah yeah so roll the dice and be wrong at this altitude the fall is much further so you know i don't know i i think about that but that the fear keeps me honest it keeps

me focused it keeps a work ethic my pops had a fucking hell of a work ethic i think it's ultimately positive uh to have to to maybe not celebrate on the what we would call the on the nine yard line but you know what i will do i will the day after it well not the day after correspondingly but like the like two days after I will fly myself to Chicago and I will sit at Wrigley Field and I will watch a Cubs game

and I'll turn my fucking phone off and I'll just sit there like Thanos fucking after he snapped Are you gonna buy it out again? Like the steakhouse?

No I did a suite at Wrigley one time after I taped my second hour special. I'll never do that again. Did you pay for it? Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah. I'm not that famous. I'm not Bill Murray, motherfucker. They ain't just handing me no suite. How many people were in the suite? About 12, 13. It was fun, but I would do the suite alone. Like, that's my shit.

I want nice shit, but I want to be alone yeah but you want if you're going to be a brat be a fucking brat about yeah i'm not i'm not charlie sheen bow left field yeah when i get to that and therapy's helped you a lot yeah yeah just to to sort through shit like i think i'm i'm fortunate in that i've had a decent degree of self-awareness i just needed affirmation from somebody oh yeah here's what you're thinking here's what you're feeling so do this and try that instead like that's that's been a big help but you know i'm not on i've never been on meds or suicidal or anything like like i've never i've never been i've never been in the deep end of

the mental health pool yeah you know i've been around a lot of cats who have so it's giving me a little bit of a better eye and to myself some like even with like to bring it back to ayahuasca like even roy did ayahuasca at the place i did half he did a half it's a two-day ceremony roy did one i fucking dipped that shit was scary it was gone bro it wasn't scary it was just a lot to take in you said it was like a bunch of it was like too many people talking at a barbecue at a family barbecue yeah or some kind of family function yeah it was like being in a room because there were a lot of people there at the ceremony or whatever but then in your head it's just too many fucking people talking was it people that you hadn't that you like forgot you knew kind of thing yeah i think like aunties and uncles

yeah but it was just more visualizations of them just multiple visualizations of people and things and people you love and people you miss and stuff like that and then having the realization in the moment that oh i just i want love i want my son to know love i have to in order for my son to know love he has to see love so if i'm gonna if i'm gonna show him love i i need to fucking be in love i need to fuck oh shit i have to fucking be with somebody i gotta be in love okay well what were my examples of love and now we're right back to the day he was born well what was my father's example? How did my father show me love? And then I think back,

and I think back to all of the moments that he had with the other woman and not my mom. I'm like, oh, fuck. He was in love. For as much as... Like he wouldn't have stayed with her if he wasn't in love. Like what you know about him.

Divorcing my mom whatever you know that could be its own that's a separate thing but my father loved that woman who he's buried next to when i go back and like when i like if we're just talking just thinking about okay my job as a father is to prepare my son for the world, period, full stop. That is my only purpose on earth right now, is to prepare him for life without me. Love is one of those things he will have to figure out how to navigate. So I need to show him love.

All right. What examples of love have I seen so far? Okay. My aunt. I got an aunt and an uncle. They always sneak and fuck at family functions. Check. All right.

But that will save that. My dad. Oh, shit. He checked the homework. He went to the practices. He had the food. Oh, shit. That's love. It wasn't unpersonal. It shit, that's love.

It wasn't unpersonal. It's just who he loved. Yeah. And it's complicated. Of course it's complicated when you're on your 11th fucking child. Yes, there are hurdles to having wrinkle-free happiness. Yes, he had challenges.

Yes. So that realization but then you have to first love yourself and so then that's where the journey of okay well what do i want what makes me happy what do i want to do Because you can't meet nobody while you fucking... Like, how's somebody gonna make you happy you ain't happy with you? Right. So you gotta start with you first.

So you gotta rebuild. So you start with that shit. So it's a little bit of that. And then the other revelation I had was everything I've ever wanted to do, like I've felt indebted to my mom for all of the sacrifices that she's made. And it's nothing she's ever asked.

She's never held shit over my head. But I look and I go, oh, I just want my mom to not have to work so hard. I love my mom. Everything I've ever done was just so I. I love my mom. Hmm. Everything I've ever done was just so I wouldn't be a burden on her. That's why I was busting my ass

so that she wouldn't have to worry about me. It's a fucking great feeling for your mom. And I don't know if she would admit this, but I remember when I paid off my student loans. Finally, I don't know, when I made my last student loan payment there was a weird relief from her right you know she acknowledged it yeah she's like oh well i'm

glad you finally got like like i could tell she was smiling yeah even you know mom's worry so to always be able to put her in a position where she doesn't have to worry about me like that's a gift and like it's like oh everything was just about letting my mom know i'm okay is that why i work so hard and then i woke up the next morning like fuck this shit i'm going back to new york like you have those two revelations within a six hour span yeah i'm straight on night two bro yeah i don't need to ever do it again like i don't know how like the people who do the ayahuasca oh every weekend i've done it 20 times you might be in a different space yeah for me i'm good bro i got what i needed i will return to drinking old

fashions with extra orange well but i would also recommend you for being willing because you're not mentally unwell like you're like pretty from the outside in even like i think i know you pretty well i think you're like pretty even you're like doing you're all right yeah you know so the fact that you will go to therapy the fact that you will drink ayahuasca the fact that you will like tune into yourself is is admirable even realizing like squeezing your baby do you know what i mean like even like even at being a two you never held a baby how do you do it like this yeah you bring them up here it's like a log you heard that well i'm not gonna do this to illustrate a goddamn point i've held 10 babies um in my i'll have you know it's just a cool it's like a cool thing

that like culturally it's not it's like kind of you know like it's getting cooler but you you i give you this i salute you for trying but but the the bigger one is tuning into yourself more than like doing activities therapy ayahuasca whatever it's being actually tuning into yourself and actually like what do i want yeah it's a hard thing that it's the most obvious question in the world and it's like the one that people ask it as an afterthought yeah yeah once i get this sugar out my system this month i'm gonna be a fucking beast i get so much clarity when there's like no coffee in my bloodstream for like two three weeks and i'm like that's when i'm like oh i see the matrix code bitch yeah so yeah so much some a woman asked me that one time. What do I want?

And I couldn't answer. It's hard to know. It's like a weird lot of responsibility. But it's also weird where you get like, did you ever have this point in your career where you looked at everything you were chasing and you're just like, I don't even want any of it.

I always say it's just a velvet rope. And I'm like, I want back there what do you know what's back there I don't know but I know I'm not allowed to go in so I want in yeah and the other question I ask is like okay if I do that then what who will I be then I know that all I know for sure career-wise, like, host a show, you could do a sitcom, whatever. All I know for sure is that I have three stand-up specials left in me. I might still, like, go and do comedy or whatever, but I don't imagine I'll have anything else to say

after these next three specials, where it's just about me and fatherhood and my dad. It's still 10 years though. Yeah, it'll take a while. But even just the idea of... From 16 years old to now, every life lesson that I learned was from someone other than my father those stories alone is an hour yeah of just serious shit light shit what you name it

yeah that alone without even getting into my own shit just here's all the substitute teachers yeah that i had along the way you can explore that i can explore my dad i can explore you know my son and i and i think that'll be enough i don't like i don't like it's still fun to do for tv for daily show to just talk about issues in the world but for me compiling another hour of i didn't i've done it i've done it three times i i want to talk about something else then also i think to a degree if i do it right then those specials and stuff like that maybe i can serve us some breadcrumbs for the boy so he can put together his own shit when i'm gone right you know because my dad didn't give me that i don't have that like none of us in our generations have

that that's the real advantage we have in this generation is that you can leave your kids with something to hey here's some of the pieces you might be having trouble with putting together now that you're 50 or you know like whatever yeah it's hard to know when to leave it though because it's like do you leave it there's like tax things and 18 and 26 and yeah i've i've thought about that like i don't know like like you think about superman the old school christopher reeve superman he just would fly to the north pole and pop in a cassette tape from his dad. Hello, son. He would

get advice. He would drop some game. Drop some game and fly back to Metropolis. Take the crystal out. Those are the best ones. Roy Wood, you're a great dude and I'm glad we're friends.

I don't know if we got to all the boxes. I'm sorry. No, we did. Bloxuses? I mean, I really wanted to get to. We got to them. Because nobody knows what you texted me. That's fair.

Good time, man. Good time. You got damn right. All right, buddy. All right. All right. Bye.