Blocks w/ Neal Brennan - Sal Vulcano pt. 1

Episode Date: April 13, 2023

Neal Brennan interviews Sal Vulcano (Impractical Jokers) about the things that make him feel lonely, isolated, and like something's wrong - and how he is persevering despite these blocks. ---------------------------------------------------------- Sal's blocks: 00:00 Intro + 9/11 11:02 OCD 17:00 Traffic 20:39 Sweat 24:35 Common Cold 28:36 Strong Winds 32:02 Bugs 38:01 Cats 40:15 Filth 42:50 ADHD 52:03 Crying ---------------------------------------------------------- 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 ---------------------------------------------------------- SPONSORS: https://bluechew.com/neal for your first month free Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey everybody, I'm Neil Brennan. I have a Netflix special called Blocks where I talk about things that I think are wrong with me and things that make me feel lonely. You've probably seen it. You've probably heard me talk about it on here. And then Jimmy Carr had the idea. Have your friends come on and talk about their blocks. Today's guest is a guy I barely know, but admire a great deal comedy spirit wise, i've never seen your stand-up okay like i'm sorry to say that no no it's great you should see it one day it's i would where can i see it oh all over what town are you gonna be in no i'm actually filming a special in october that's what i'm saying i'm filming a special october sal vilcano everybody sal vilcano's here everybody we don't have an applause thing but that would be cool yeah it would be cool in time do you know i went to go see your um three mics like that touches me more than most things when people come to the show yeah and i loved it loved it. Thank you. Well, you messaged me, or you got the message.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You messaged me. I meant to come to your last one. I was actually going to come with Burn, but something came up and I couldn't make it. Yes. Yeah. But I think he told me that too. My point being is that long time admirers.

Yes. Thank you. You're welcome. All right. Well, based on the list he's given me. I'm crazy. This guy's come to the right place. He's on the right podcast.

Well, what's your short biography before i start like give me the first what's your wikipedia page say like where'd you grow up parents family sure sure born and raised in staten island new york yep gets a bad rap parents divorced when i was four i have three sisters went to catholic school my whole life catholic college even scholarship to college really lost it midway for what academics and how'd you lose it i was supposed to keep a cumulative 3.0 average and after that cum yeah after my second school st john's after my second man catholic college i don't think i could have done it wasn't because of catholicism no i got i don't i'm not even i'm not even religious.

Right. Yeah. But just going, did it feel, I guess you never went to another one. Or maybe you did go to another one. No, it didn't feel like a Catholic college. It was a Catholic college. Yeah. Whereas grammar school and high school did.

Okay. Yeah. After my second year, my CUME fell to a 2.98. So two hundredths of a point. And they took the scholarship and i went in there and i said listen i said can you can i have a grace period can i have a makeup test can i have anything i promise i'll get it back up but i can't go here anymore if i lose the scholarship yeah and i'll never forget the woman and i guess it was like the bursar wherever it was she was so flippant she didn't care at all didn't even like she was looking past like dmv yeah exactly like that or airline yes and i'm like rental car plate now i i love the juice i'm getting yes yes the approval i love

i will say not as much okay and not in these days the dmv i haven't been to in a really long time but but air airport airport is the one all the way all the way so she couldn't be bothered i had And these days, the DMV, I haven't been to in a really long time. But airport? Airport is the one. All the way. All the way. So she couldn't be bothered. I had like, I'm genuinely trying to speak to this woman. She said, oh, if you'd like a transfer form, I can get that for you.

Literally. Did she look at you when she said it? I don't know. Or she was like, I remember she was like, I was like, I have to leave here. Is there any way? And she's like, no, no no no and then she's like do you need paperwork to transfer and i was just like anyway i finished college i i finished there i worked and paid it what what took you under what was the quantitative analysis is that financial qa as they called it yeah i was majoring in finance i don't truly i went to they said pick a major i was 17 right i said what how do you like what can make me money finance is like probably

the definition yeah that's how i chose it that's just no better or worse than anybody else like yeah it's it's all dumb it's absurd yeah i majored in film which i i i was okay so you write you i was right but like i dropped out after a year okay because i knew i was like this i'm gonna have to just write hands on yeah i just gonna have to write something okay and then you did you work in finance ever so i i got out of school i i went on one job interview i took the job at prudential securities and i i worked downtown at one new york plaza it's the first building off of the ferry were you in 9-11 with steve ranzisi i was there not with steve i thought i was with steve for a while no no no i love steve um no no i i uh i was actually my ferry boat was docking when the second one hit so i was listening

to how it's stern they started talking about the first one and so people started walking to the front of the boat and so i went and i saw it and i thought it was like a cessna or something like that and there's a terrible tragedy i bet you a few people died yeah maybe more i wasn't registering and then as i'm watching it and literally the i don't know if you ever taken the ferry but like the the uh whatever this is called like the bridge to connect to the boat was coming down it was like 908 or something like that and we i we heard it was like we turned saw it and watched it and then everybody was just completely frozen no one knew what to do people were screaming crying falling on the floor it was like if you don't know anyway thanks for tuning in everybody 700 yards away yeah yeah i felt we

felt heat and then the drawbridge that was coming down went back up and my boat went back to staten island and we were the only boat the grandpa simpson the grandpa simpson mean but with the with the fucking the oh the, oh, okay. And then I went, we were the last one to get back. Everyone else was committed. They stopped service and everybody else, the bridges closed and the ferry closed and everyone else that was there was either stuck or had to walk over the bridge and got all fucked up with the soot and all that stuff.

And you know, I, well, you must have, it must have been like you're pulling away and smoke is coming yeah like a movie yes that's insane no i don't know anyone no so the smoke yes the heat and the smoke well i guess it didn't fall no right but i that i was back on the other side with my dad watching it at right at the shoreline he came to my house immediately he picked me up we didn't know what to do or where to go and so we just wanted to be to know it is a tough thing to know what like what do we do we get drinks what do we right right here so we didn't know if we were going to go uh go for lunch or no it was just uh and even when they fell we couldn't process it yeah you're like you had i had no idea what was my mind didn't go to it's like it's still the i saw i happen to be in paris meeting with people from al-qaeda no i was having a Paris and i remember seeing it on tell it's the now that you don't mention it it's the

weirdest thing i've ever seen do you know what i I mean? Like, what the fuck is it? It was impossible. The thought that I had in that moment wasn't like, oh, my God. It was a bit of, oh, my God, these iconic. I can't believe there's no one. But it was we thought that, like, for some reason, maybe, like, it was cleared out and nobody was in the area. Like, yeah, no, it's weird it was so jumbled like well maybe this is intentional the first one hit they evacuated so we're like all

right so everything's out and we're like oh my god they're falling but we didn't realize that yeah you got well they must have they must have cleared it out before they fell you know i mean like you just your brain doesn't organize shit yeah like well there's no way they wouldn't two thousand people i'll tell you what didn't happen two thousand people didn't just die but meanwhile they absolutely did right it goes to three plus thousand right two thousand oh well all right it's still a lot i don't want to add a thousand no it's still i think we were right on the car right over here i was like i know we're gonna lead off you gotta start it's not a podcast um all right and then when did you so how long do you work in

how long were you like four years okay i was doing comedy while i worked there okay and then after four years they they were laying off people a lot and so i volunteered because they gave a severance i didn't want to be there i want to to save someone else's job. So I left and I started to bartend so that I could work on comedy and I'd have a flexible schedule. And I ended up, and I had my backup was that I would open a bar, which I did as well. So I was a bartender for about nine, 10 years, all while doing comedy, saving money, learning that business. And then in 2011 or 10, 2010 or 11, I bought, I went in, I left the bar I was at and I went with two partners and I bought a bar.

And dude, like three months later, I got the television show. Yeah. And I just sank my savings. Impractical Jokers, just FYI. Impractical Jokers, I sank my savings into the bar. And that was my, I was a full-time job with a full-time job that i had to go full at both of them for the first two seasons of joke joke was two full seasons i worked in the bar every day i'm sorry i worked i filmed every day and i mean

you were worse at the show working the bar every night oh my god the guys asked you to you guys step it up yeah there was no there was there was most nights i was on you were like an nba player in the 50s where you had to work at a car dealership pretty much dude i there was most of the days i had was on four hours couldn't not do it you couldn't just say what work in the bar couldn't leave the bar yeah you couldn't like figure out somebody your own business you got to be there hands-on or that thing but it was you and two other people yeah but i was the like i was the most you're the real alcohol diligent one and i was the one that had eight years of experience nine years of experience

they didn't got it so it was it was necessary for me to be there and i just took a deep breath and said let's do it i'm gonna go hard on both. After two years, I almost had a freaking nervous breakdown. Of course. It's bad enough to do a TV show. It's bad enough. Dude, four hours sleep. I would be filming at like 8, 9 a.m. I'd finish at like 4, 5 o'clock.

I'd get to the bar about 7 o'clock. I'd be there until about 4 a.m. Yeah. And that was three nights a week, at least, sometimes four, for two years that i was there is the bar no good bar i left in the third season i said i'm taking a leap of faith and i like relinquished and i left it and is it still no it failed about a year later fantastic yeah well yeah yeah i mean did you get your money out of it no i didn't no i need specific dollar i'm kidding yeah um okay that's fascinating i can't believe you did that that's insane i can't either now that i think

about um that and 9-11 are the two weirdest things i can't believe i did both of them um let's get into some blocks ready yes sir ocd sir. OCD. Yeah. Talk to me. I don't know if you've seen me fidgeting this entire time. You haven't been mad. He warned me before we started that he was going to be fidgeting the whole time. I'm just always fixing everything. But I don't have OCD like I got to tap nine times. It's just different.

My biggest one is, and this has been since I'm young, and I'm trying to get hypnotized for it, but I pointy objects, I can't have them facing me. And that goes from like, if we were sitting at dinner and like you're across from me and your fork and it's slanted up to me, or you're had a drink of water with a straw and that straw was facing toward me. Or like when I went on my first interview for Prudential and I took the job,

I sat down and the guy had the thing with two fountain pens like a name plate and they were both pointing at me and he had a stack up and the whole it was like an hour interview i was curling my feet into balls and just trying not to like freak out because you get i get this tight tension i don't know if it's about control or whatever but uh my sister hit me in the you see i have a scar here i think right here in this eye yeah scar right there my sister hit me in the face with a malibu ken when i was in like fourth grade i i trace it back to that maybe i fell hit my head yeah thing so maybe that's what part of malibu and his hand i still see a pointy and it was the malibu ken with synthetic hair and like floral board shorts i'll never forget

that fucker unforgivable straight because he doesn't bend his arm doesn't bend well he's from malibu yeah um and you think that's when i don't know i that was the most dramatic thing makes sense because like no but like can you go and from that day forward i needed no but when i am having a particularly hypersensitive day everything bothers me like if you're hypersensitive emotionally no like i can't or you're hypersensitive to ocd yeah yeah like everything would be bothering me like i used to live in a studio apartment, right? Little basement studio apartment. And I remember nights where I would go to bed.

I slept on a couch for nine years in this basement apartment because I thought I got this apartment. I left my house after fighting with my parents. I was like in my young 20s. I got this apartment. Working at Prudential. Yeah.

And I got this apartment and I didn't know how long I was staying there. And my dad, as a gesture, got me like a couch couch set like this and it took up a lot of the room and if i was going to put a mattress in i and i was like i'm not staying here long and the couch is brand new and it's comfortable yeah so i slept on it i'd live there for nine years so i would be on sleep on the couch and this is basically the size of the apartment and sometimes it'd be so hypersensitive that i'd have to get up and turn every single thing that was pointing at me it hasn't been that bad in a long time but to this

day see this this is my dream coffee table if i'm at home last night if i'm at home you're like a baby you're like a newborn baby a toddler that they're afraid you need rubberized you need soft round edges do you know that if you covered a point or if this was pointy right here what i do at home i put my phone on it like that literally melts away nothing i'm like i'm protected i don't think it's gonna it's not that i think this is going to do anything to me it's just that i don't like it and i can't not focus on it are there days where you just don't notice then you leave a room you're like oh that thing was fucking pointing to me the whole time yeah yeah

there's days i don't do it there's days i do it all day long and you don't know the difference between those two days meaning is it lack of sleep stress i think it has to do with like when i'm revved up with my adhd and stuff but look we didn't get to don't blow it okay we didn't get to that yet people don't know that you got adhd yeah well so they don't know a lot of things uh yeah so i just you know or sometimes i'll especially when that's happening light i'm sensitive to light as well yeah i watch when when i'm home half the time if i feel this way i watch television and sunglasses in the house because i need the like the screen just is too bright like my eyes are so sensitive not just impractical jokers i don't watch my show if you

didn't you i watch the fellowship with sunglasses i watch when my netflix special comes on i throw a pair of shades on do you really no oh i open up the bay window and make sure people can see me watch a little bluetooth speaker yeah well what and i keep going what have we here um is this me oh if you're at a place like a job interview yeah you just gotta eat it like on a plane if somebody or a subway if somebody opens like a newspaper and the edge is like hanging like right here i literally i actually begin to sweat and i get a tension headache my neck gets tense like i just have to and i nothing else in the ocd realm is like that that's i mean that's a front runner by a mile pointy shit yeah right other things like

i'm very particular i have things that like i don't like like and i keep a running list like traffic sweat the common cold strong wind bugs cats pointy objects fill things like that that sounded memorized it is because it's it's been my it's do it again traffic sweat the common cold pointy objects bugs cats no sorry traffic sweat, sorry. Traffic, sweat, the common cold. Uh, what did I just say? Traffic, sweat, the common cold,

pointy objects came later, but why am I forgetting my own list? Traffic, sweat, common cold, bugs, cats, pointy objects,

general filter. Did I leave anything out? No. Oh, then it was bugs. Yeah. That's the Sal's national, national cats,

pointy objects and filled. Yeah. All those things when you win an olympic medal you'll stand on the podium and they'll they'll play that yeah they all bother me terribly common cold on vacation would trump traffic for me but i might eliminate traffic before poverty be if i'm being honest what do you mean traffic like so can't take it. So what happens? I just, I can't sit here like this. This is insane. And there's nothing I can do about this.

And it's even worse at the inopportune time. Like if you're coming home from JFK at midnight and all of a sudden on the BQE, they're doing construction. And I thought I was going to be home in 45 minutes. And now it's 2 a.m. and I'm sitting listening to a jackhammer. Anybody for that one, right? Of course. I mean, I don't and i'm sitting listening to jackhammer anybody for that one right of course i mean i don't i'm not gonna i don't got a song about it yeah um but i'm no it's the night who knows yeah no one night traffic where you're like what the fuck is like night after 8 p.m there shouldn't if someone should better be have died yeah someone should die yeah i i uh i feel like i'm

losing life you know i'm losing time you think you're dead time is worth it i'm deader than you are actual corpse right i'm going through more right now what i'm then the accidents that cause uh bugs traffic bugs traffic sweat traffic sorry yeah traffic sweat okay common cold and what do you do what's the craziest thing you've ever done in a traffic jam i've hopped over the divider and went the other way is that all right that's not even on a divider like grass ravine no cement on a on like a on a road like a boulevard but i've also i also went over like uh like grass on a on like a on a road like a boulevard but i've also i also went over like uh like grass on a highway to the other side of the yeah that's what i like the jersey park like yeah that's exactly what i'm like that because there's a forest through the middle yeah i went through

that far well no i mean there's a path like where the cops go and yeah yeah yeah i i did it because i'd rather drive double the distance with no traffic and take the same amount of time to get there. I think, I kind of agree with you on that. Right. I mean, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. You feel like a real, to quote good fellows, you feel like a real schnook sitting in traffic. Schnook is in good. That's the last, uh,

that's like the last thing he says. I'm a schnook. Oh, when he's in witness protection. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for abbreviating it. This episode is sponsored by Blue Chew.

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bugs, traffic, sweat, common call. I'm sorry. Traffic, sweat, sweat,

terrible. Ruins at mornings. My day just as much as traffic. I don't mean like you sweating wet yeah it ruins your day yeah not if i'm like working out or something like that right that i get you want to sweat but at any other time and i've been a sweater my whole life what so you what do you do in new york in the summer i walk around with a with an attitude or i don't go out or i dip in and out of places or i just complain my guess is even when you set up stuff for the show you guys are not in ventilated rooms

no half the time we're in the most terror we're in you're always i mean i would think you're always sweating yeah you're not yeah i had to have a whole thing where i told them we can't do this it affects our performance it affects my mind it's also affecting your bar my bar yeah it's a miracle how long it's been on anyway but the fact that you owned a bar and you can't sweat yeah oh i would i would i would bartend some nights Yeah. I would bartend some nights, just me, with 250 people. I was like Tom Cruise in Cocktail.

And butt sweating. I would sweat my ass off, yeah. But if I'm sweating, like if I'm in a suit or I'm on camera or on stage, I'll tell you right now, I literally chose not to. I just moved my date of my special from august to october strictly based on sweat they were like no no no it doesn't matter we'll we'll ship in air conditions we'll get it cool i was like it has to be like like like it has to be like letterman studio yeah cool like cold like that and so i i pushed it to october strictly based on sweat because i was like if i put that in if i film a special and I'm sweating in it, I'll

never, I'll hate it. Okay. I'm still going to sweat. Right. That's what I'm saying. I know, but not as much. Your back's going to sweat. You know what I mean?

Or whatever. My back, visual. If it comes across visual, I don't like that either. And that sets off my OCD. comes across visual i don't like that either and that that sets off my ocd because then i'm like constantly like trying to wipe the sweat away or make myself less sweaty you know what i mean like all these things do you think i might be a control thing i don't know sweat makes people lose confidence in you or something like what about no it's just disgusting it's just gross i don't want to be sopping wet with sweat.

It fucks up my whole shit. Like even my hair gets completely fucked up. I can't have, if I sweat, my hair just blows up. And if I'm not wearing a hat, I'm doomed. I wear a hat the last 10 years, nearly exclusively for two reasons. One, so I could hide from people when I walk like, you know? And two, because if I don't have it on and I'm sweating,

my hair is just, it's just just insane how about this for irony the hat makes me sweat uh have you gotten the flap ones which ones you get a hat with flaps not the air conditioner i mean you could do the one with the fan the pith helmet they got fans and a hat i didn't know that what flaps you're not using you're not talking about safari flaps are you like do-rag kind of no but not do they're not do do-rags like stringy you're talking about like i think you should leave hats yeah i have hats that because if i ever have to shoot something outside, I get fried up immediately. So I got hats. I got three different, you come to LA, I got three different safaris with like, almost

looks like mosquito netting. But you could put that on when you're directing. It's allowed. But I can't wear that safari hat when I go grocery shopping. You'd be surprised. I would. All right. Hold on.

We're not even near done with just OCD. Traffic. Sweat. Sweat. Common cold. Common cold. There are times where I think that I would put common cold in the one position. That's why I make the caveat that a common cold on vacation, which I've endured, be traffic is it just you having one or anyone having one well it's me but i have very

weak immune system and a weak constitution so i throw up easily but i but i have a weak immune system so it annoys me because even my my lady she doesn't believe me after like all this time but like i know when i'm getting sick i know immediately when it's happening i call it all the time like baby was calling the shot i go someone sneezes near me five minutes later i go i'm gonna be sick later i swear to god i have 100 accuracy and she tells me no and then the next morning i wake up i go guess what i'm sick when are you gonna stop believing me you know i've met your opposite is a guy named joe opio writes for the daily show okay from i want to say kenya or nigeria he's never he doesn't

believe in colds and has never gotten one he's 35 mind over matter i don't that's an impossibility joe opio is i want to make a documentary about him but he won't let me he's the most interesting person i've ever met in my life he like the joseki's guy he's more interesting because he's fucking weird he's a comedy writer he ran a day he had his own daily show in, I don't think it's Nigeria, but it might be Nigeria. Never gotten a cold. He wakes up. He loves, he loves sleeping,

but he wakes up in the middle of the night to just appreciate how great it is to be able to go back to sleep. And then he goes back to sleep. I get that, but I can't do that because if I wake up, I might have a little bit of trouble falling back and that would be doomed stay yeah six pillows to sleep i told you that no yeah i mean i don't even we haven't that's later yeah um don't yeah um you're stepping on your own punch

i am so yeah he's never gotten a cold doesn't believe in it and also loves cruise ships and goes on cruise ships when he hasn't gotten a cold never gotten a cold goes on cruise ships. He hasn't gotten a cold. Never gotten a cold. Goes on cruise ships. Looks so much like the I'm the captain now guy from Captain Phillips that he's a frequent Carnival Cruise guy. The highest level of Carnival Cruise taker. So he gets to eat dinner with the captain. And then they bring the table to the deck and

they he does i'm the captain no he it's his name is joseph he's he's a also the how he got this job at the daily show he was at the cellar i met him trevor came this before trevor trevor been announced but didn't have the show tre comes I assume they know each other Trevor and Joe um because he had like a day I just assume they knew each other so then me and where else he's like sitting at a table with me and Trevor and so then me and Trevor going to somewhere else I'm like Joe let's go he comes he writes on the show for six years trevor tells me a year ago i didn't know him i thought you knew him he like stowed away in our friendship and got a job because trevor thought he was my friend and i thought he was true he submitted great jokes oh that's the night you met him yes that's wild that's wild it's hilarious and apparently

the night before he was at the cell or maybe the night i saw him what a story and he gave louis a uh a tag he just thought oh yeah you just give louis got off he goes you know what you should say in a fucking he's like 120 pounds he's i'm gonna flash a picture of him he's the funniest fucking guy i've ever met in my life oh anyhow anyhow never gotten a cold doesn't believe him um okay colds what's left traffic sweat the common cold oh that's what it was that i missed strong winds traffic sweat the common cold strong winds bugs cats pointy objects and and filth and i'm always strong winds yeah is this in the order in which you've had them or when you come with a new one you go i should put this on these have been the core for a very long time and they've been in that order for a long time got it

strong winds you ever get those strong gusts of winds i don't i i went to the i was by the river today and it's windy and i don't like water a lot and it's not a great temperature for me like around 50 i didn't like it right yeah i don't mean like strong winds like you know natural disasters i mean that's terrible but i just mean like it's just annoying and it's like it's almost like your big brother being like why are you hitting yourself while you're hitting yourself totally it's like you know it blows your shit off it's fucking up your hair it's fucking up your shit and it just every in a strong one everyone is a freshman yes that's great everyone everyone is a freshman you have a way with with words thank you my friend

yes you have you have a way right for tv i don't like to talk about it gotcha yeah you automatically become it's humiliating it's gonna pants it would pants you if it's it also pushes your clothes up against you yeah uh you know you might drop something and then forget it if you don't want to i don't litter but i can't i don't litter and i'm chasing a goddamn receipt down three city blocks you know and you know what happens when you when you start running you're gonna sweat yes exactly right and you know it also it just fucks with you don't litter your hair you really will not stop if it's if it's like if it blows i'll do the best i very much can and i do not give up easily i'm not saying i never let something go but or if it's my own thing if it's your if it's a fucking hat or whatever it is yeah that i gotta go you know but but yeah i i

chase i will not litter i'm with you i this is people when i see people 10 years ago me and melanie are just on the street new york and he just spits gum out onto the sidewalk and i was like what the fuck or what the fuck just happened yeah that was more shocking to me than the fact that he ended up being a cocaine addict yeah yeah like i was like what the fuck what the fuck he's like i don't know and i was like what's gonna someone could step in like yeah what do you do it was like the whole it might be a catholic thing but he's catholic right he is so it breaks you know all those black marks all over the is gum gum yeah which i was shocking i knew that it i knew that he kind of had a point but the first person that steps on it is not it doesn't become a black mark

no it becomes a fucking a ruined night it does worse for me is cigarette butts i you never smoked i did i would have a place where i held it or i would literally put it out and go walk to the corner and put it in the garbage i think my diagnosis of you is you're just a good boy thanks so much you're just a good boy thanks man um i'm with you strong winds what's next uh traffic's got the common cold strong winds bugs cats pointing objects bugs yeah okay yeah but what what do you like roaches mosquitoes no bees no roaches no water bugs or those silver those thousand like things the worst top of the list there was one time there's no you don't mind them or no you don't like them no eradicate exterminate yeah yes exterminate

final solution yeah there was one time i was sleeping in my basement apartment and did you like living in a basement i didn't mind it okay part of me feels like it would be like a little cocoon it was yeah yeah so i'm laying down and i see one of those like thousand leg things like run across the floor so i freak out because it's bedtime and those things move man they move is that the one that can also fly somehow i didn't know that and if that's true then we have another problem on our hands but i do think they might be able to jump and i did hear that they might bite what are they called silverfish thousand leggers i don't know thousand leggers feels a little racist that's what that's what everyone called them when i grew up again i stand by my first count yeah water bugs no water bug is like a a giant fucking roach

i got a story about that too but so this this guy this bug i saw him i was like all right i gotta kill him you have to move with intent, and you have to move carefully because if he gets away, that's it. As soon as you take a swing, if you don't hit this bug, odds are you're not going to get him. And I swung, and I missed. And he ran, and I lost sight of him. And I started to look under my dresser, under the couch.

I couldn't see him. You got your headlamp on on i am not going back yeah my hat with a fan and flaps and i'm not going back to bed now because i'm not going to go to bed knowing he's out there walking around i'm not going to do that he could easily he's on the streets walk up the couch and walk on me yeah so what did i do i know you didn't go to sleep you're not gonna this one is i did not go to sleep i moved every single piece of furniture i had into the center of the room and i waited i sat there and waited with the vacuum and then he eventually came out of what are you wearing i was probably in pajamas you wear pajamas i do wear pajamas i do good boy i should know i wear pajama pants men when i was growing up i wore the full outfit man yeah yeah and i mean growing i mean like a while like into

my 20s like you know now i and i do have tops still but now i i'm you can't buy just the bottoms you can really yeah yeah yeah sure sure okay look i haven't been i've been out of the game a while even out of the pj um um so i got him and i went back to where was the vacuum he showed himself it wasn't quick it was probably like 45 minutes later and i saw him and i got him before he came out he was he was he he had an air of he had him. He was definitely trying to show me who was boss. He just came right out. Yeah, like, oh, my little Zoe said. Yeah.

Thank you for finally getting, for tuning in. I had to go back. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You were like, why? I dreamt up a scenario one time that came true the next morning. I was doing a show. I was in, where's the alamo san antonio i was in san antonio and my hotel was on that and my heart go ahead and right my hotel was on the

river i checked into this hotel it was like a it had like a new mexico feel but it was it was very musty and as soon as i checked in i was like it smelled like mildew like the dampness in those carpets and stuff even the lobby and i was like this is going to be an issue i've checked out of hotels for that reason i didn't check out uh i went to bed that night and i was so nervous that there was going to be a water bug in the room that i i have i sleep with a c-pad machine so i have air and have it any other way wouldn't it right and i wrapped myself like a burrito tight under my legs under my i tucked my entire body in like a like it was a sarcophagus is that the right word yeah and uh because i had the air i had the air coming in i sweat my balls off but i did it to protect myself from water

bugs i dreamt that night because it was on my mind i had a dream that all these bugs came down from the ceiling these roaches like hundreds and they all started to push into each other now that you mention it possibly yeah they all bunch up together and became one big like super roach and the roach was coming after me i woke up the next day got out of the thing nothing on it so i woke up the next day i never remember the thing nothing on it so i woke up the next day i never remember my dreams either and i but i remember that one got up i was like all right i made it you know whatever i go into the bathroom to get ready and shower and stuff and my toiletry bag is on the where the you know the sink is like right on there and i go to pick up my toiletry

bag there was like a glass there that they they clean the glasses and right behind the glass was a fucking water bug that big i yelped like like if you stepped on a like a chihuahua like i i the pitch was so high and i just got my stuff packed my bag and i just we just left i just didn't even shower i didn't even do anything but i either had the foresight did i make that did i will that or was i just clairvoyant i don't know but we'll never know that big scientists are gonna be it's like the tootsie pop for a long time yeah yeah i realized that i i sound like a proper lunatic even it's just fantastic even so far just up to this i've doomed myself yeah i couldn't be but i am like a laid-back guy that's a fun hang too i don't know but that's part of it yeah it's that's part of your role

i think i'm a fun hang yeah you are you're a fun guy to hang out with i'm here i'm i'm experiencing it yeah um i have references all right what's the last one cats but cats no go i had a friend who had a cat named sebastian uh a black cat that he was my neighbor and in his basement there was a half wall and the cat was just he was just no good it was the cat was always no good he was up to no good he was just not a good person a good not a good cat and he would attack all the time attack everyone all the time like viciously and every time i would walk in that house how how old were you? I was in high school. Okay.

Every time I walked in the house, the cat was, when you open the door, the half wall of the basement was like, went up right up to the door. The cat was there always trying to fuck you up and always attacked me. I think that one was like, this is not an episode of impractical joke. This is not an episode. No, not at all. I think that's the one where I was like, this is the cat that started it all but ever since then i don't trust them when i lived in that basement apartment it was at the back of a driveway of a house of a house and sometimes

it'd be stray cats just sitting there and i would walk i had to go back to my door i had to pass the cat and i just stop and they're like they don't move you know should they just kind of look at you and and i'm like well i'm not gonna i just feel like as soon as i walk past this cat it's gonna fucking attack me and also the cats have claws and sharp claws which i don't like the points too so i just don't like that i just don't like if there was a cat in this room i'd be unsettled i have some good news it's bad you have cats no i don't have cat i cats don't do anything for me i dated a girl who had cats oh you know what's a pretty cool cats are those bald cat the mr bigglesworth ones because they're like dogs

or they're like just they're like cool i don't know i don't i wasn't uh i never yeah i knew a girl who had one and it was like they she's like oh it's like a dog and he really was he just like come sit friendly wasn't like friendly with an ulterior motive like cats are yeah like this personal space they were you know them here's what bugs me about cats i'd say that they're they're like private detectives who are afraid of everything whether they're like what's this oh what the fuck like yeah all day yeah that's their life they'll come back with a fucking bird in their mouth sometimes yeah it's like okay that's insane oh well that you can't even like how are you gonna digest and they can do it yeah is that the song we did the whole song bugs cats pointy objects which you

know and filth filters i mean come on what you're living in maybe the worst city for all of us i know you have a smell piss like you could feel the piss it's that dense yeah yeah that's that's that sucks that sucks in the subways i i really stopped taking the subways in the summer now too i stopped it you yeah you can't you can't but there's not traffic down there but that is the magic of it yeah that's the appeal but i'll tell you what we're stopped for no reason oh how about those ones where they remember during the blackout where people had to crawl through the they had to get off walk and then go up a ladder unreal talk about a personal nightmare for you yeah that'd be like a living hell the filth has to do with germs too

like i said like when someone sees because if i get a common cold no matter what i do i love that you always say common i guess a cold right yeah i've never yeah if i get a cold i'm hyper aware of getting because i have to tour so much you don't have to say lebron i know who you're talking about okay you say a cold well sometimes when i get a common what about that one when you say common you don't have to say i i i'm ready at all times i travel you know with emergency and echinacea and elderberry believe that it works i don't care if it's if it i'm i roll the dice with it right and i load up have you ever had they come ever come back seven have you ever knocked it out i did now i don't know if i could attribute it to the to those things or i just like was on the right side of life that day but most of the time i don't i take it and i it says take it at the first sign of a cult and i load up

i'm doing tea i'm doing liquids i'm doing the playbook yeah i still get progressively sicker and i keep with it and i don't come out of it. And usually my commons last six to eight weeks, like at least lingering. I'm telling you four weeks, 100% of the time, but sometimes my colds less more than four weeks. And it's, it's, it's another thing that like preempts my mind, no matter what I'm doing. Oh, I have this cold. And it's like, I obsess over the cold. I feel oh i have this cold and it's like i obsess over the cold i feel like a schnook i feel like a loser when i get a cold yeah like i should have done i shouldn't have let this happen yeah and i'm a like a baby when i get a cold a little bit oh

like i just like i just can't take it the sore throat or just not being able to breathe i'm just like yeah fussy fussy yep i'm with you that's the list by the way we're on the first block um adhd man i'm gonna have to take a look at myself yeah adhd when i actually go into therapy for that specifically the adhd med i have separate therapy about separate therapy about death and the other stuff is there an adhd there is therapist yeah what and what are you what it costs a lot of money i'm no one else what are you doing in there talking but like you know i've been seeing this guy i would say maybe like i want to say just under 10 sessions

maybe by the i gotta say i gotta stop what a nice read on talking talking talking talking that was a real nice read on talking it was really talking, talking. That was a real nice read on talking. Thank you. It was really evocative. Thank you. Like it was frustrated. It was desperate. It was layered.

It was really good. Thanks. I didn't even notice it. Yeah, no, it was great. It came from the heart. Yeah, sure did. Sometimes I can't pull that off if I have to act. Can you believe that?

Yeah, because it's hard. Because it's hot and everybody's, the pressure's on. I'm acting because I'm everybody's the pressure i'm acting because i'm usually in traffic when i'm at yeah exactly um yeah but i i gotta be honest i told him our last session i'd really like to make like i said to him i posed it to him i go can i just ask you because i have a thing too with like i never want to put anybody out i never want to make anyone feel bad not that i need anyone's approval or need anyone to like me no but i never want to i always want to go etiquette first i always want to be mindful all that stuff so i have a hard so

i had to have a hard time approaching people when it's a tough thing to talk about and i was talking to my my girlfriend and i was like i i gotta be honest this guy's so expensive and i'm not feeling you know he prescribed me medication okay so that happened and then we tried one and now we're switching to another okay but that's a hefty bill just to have someone prescribe you medication yeah and test it out for a month and then switch to another yeah so uh i was like that's not what i want from this i want to i want to psychologically pull take these things apart and fix it you know what i mean is he an adhd therapist is it just a specializes psychiatrist he specializes in adhd i mean i've never heard

of therapy for adhd i don't know if there's not but all i hear is they gave me medication yeah i mean i i was he was referred uh and uh that's his... Right. And are you doing an extra? Like, you're just talking. No, I did do EMDR. EMDR. Yeah. Which I believe you did too, right? Yes.

And did you get EMDR from Jamila as well? Yes. Yes. So Jamila turned me on to EMDR. Jamila Zamel, who was on a game show with you. Yes. It was on A Good Place. She's an actress. Yeah yeah she's a great friend

of both of us yes she told me about it and i went to that because i had some some trauma and that actually helped it i really really helped it and i couldn't believe it's nonsense that it works i couldn't believe it shouldn't Nothing's dumber than the idea for EMDR. It was so dumb. And it fucking worked. And I've been singing. I've been telling everyone to do it because I can't believe I actually saw results. It changed the way I felt, the way I responded to certain things. So that was great.

So I just told him the last time I said, do you see any progress in me when we talk? What timeline should I be on with progress? Do you see any yet? Should I be recognizing it? Is there anything I'm not recognizing? not recognizing and he's like well it's interesting you say that how do you feel and i said well i just feel like we meet kind of inconsistently and because of my schedule and his i said so every time i'm i get going and we're it ends and then we meet again sometimes three three weeks later, the momentum's gone. Yeah. And I just can't get any, I can't get any footing here.

And he goes, all right. He goes, I would agree. He goes, I think that we need to block out a specific time every week. And I was like, but my life doesn't work like that. Yeah. And so within reason, we booked this slot and immediately we booked it. And like the first two weeks after we booked it, something came up and I couldn't do it i mean maybe the next med will work yeah maybe what was the last one it was lateral when did you realize i think i have adhd what you just thought you were like

i i mean again you're 40 some i'm 46 yeah it was all just like he that's our personality no one mentioned that to me ever there was never like it i wasn't depressed you know i mean there was no mental it was the dark web like you know how you know the dark web exists but you like gotta get an onion i don't dot onion and like whatever the fuck that's what mental health was until seven years ago yeah this is like i would say in my 30s is when I started to realize, oh, this is affecting everything I do. Yeah.

And a dear friend of mine had it and severe and he gave me some books on it and told me like the medicine changes life and all that stuff. And he goes, you won't even realize that whatever you think is normal is not. And when you start to realize that, oh, that's not what everybody else does,

your mind will be blown. I procrastinate can't finish something if i start something i start something else in a way there's a superpower to it because i have eight jobs yeah and i keep my i keep such a large social circle and a bar and i just keep i i keep i keep real relationships with a lot of people yeah i have many jobs and so this it's never it's when i wake up i have a hundred emails a hundred texts my days are spent problem solving solving switching and i do it and it's funny because i i don't realize like sometimes like if i just am jumping from thing to thing because i am so busy and i'm trying to prioritize and manage or if it's like holy shit you can't keep one thing just because you're adhd and now you have this type of job and it's like uber insane because it's like it helps me but also

i i trail right off i'll walk into a room forget why i went in yeah i'll start a sentence and i will literally i'll go i have to my phone has my notes app has probably a hundred paid like notes on it and every one of those notes is lists and i have to literally live off of my lists or i cannot function so when i wake up i open my phone first thing i look at the list before i go to bed i prioritize my list for the following day i do high priority end of day this week asap and then that's i shift and change out all day long and it's so many things that if i don't write it down i'll never remember it and it's everything from make a list for neil you know on this to yeah it's just something like you know know, like my health insurance, it's every single thing to like, I'm working on projects and I, I just, uh, it, it, it got,

became scary because my thoughts was, became so fleeting at one point that a lot of times a day, I would begin to talk and forget why I started to forget what I wanted to tell somebody, or I had an idea or a joke or whatever and that's the worst and if i don't write the joke down immediately that joke is gone well yeah i got so many ever i mean i don't i'm better now but like no i won't forget it i'll forget it yeah especially at night sleeping yeah i'm like oh i'm like now i'm like this one's this unforgettable and i say this is the key word to remember it and i don't remember i go there's two key words and all i gotta do is remember the key words

and then don't even remember the key yeah it's fucking who we can yeah i already like it so adhd uh i did adderall like i did it i got a someone prescribed me 20 milligram time release about seven years ago i don't like taking prescription drugs and i told them that and they said take it on just the days that you really feel you need it i went home the day finally came i took it it was so stereotypical i was up for probably 40 hours straight sweating i'd never done cocaine gotta be cocaine that's gotta be it i i was sopping they're both in the same i think they're in the same family yeah it I was sopping wet. They're both in the same, I think they're in the same family.

Yeah, it's like. Sopping wet, deep clean my home. Got to. Woke up my girlfriend that night. I mean, silverfish beware. Yeah, exactly. I was in a new place, but God, yeah. There were no silverfish that night.

Silverfish still talk about the day. They still talk about the time that I took that. They were so glad I kicked it. But I even woke her up and I said, my heart is beating out of my chest. I'm just saying silverfish and his father watched from the outside as you

as you did it as I cleaned their homes away their little nooks and nests my heart was beating out of my chest I woke my girlfriend up in the middle of the night and I said I might have to go to the hospital I don't I shouldn't be having this type of reaction. So that's the first time,

the first time, the only time he did Adderall. Never took the pill again. And then up two months ago, I told him this and he said, well, maybe 20 was too high and it shouldn't have been time released. And so he started me off with five,

not time released. Didn't even, I did. I forgot I was taking it. Then he bumped me to 15. I still didn't feel it. Didn't even, I did. I forgot I was taking it. Then he bumped me to 15. I still didn't feel it. And he goes, that's so peculiar because 15 is the next is 20 and 20 kept you up for 40

hours and you didn't feel the 15. And I was like, no. And he's like, all right. I said, let's try something else. So we're trying.

He actually had to pick it up. I forgot. I had to pick it up. I didn't write it down. Crying. Yeah. I cry easily and often. Forever forever i sound like a lunatic i realize we need to get a trophy no don't say that how many episodes are you in crazier than bert trophy how many eps are you in 14 okay thank god yeah crazier than bert is burt crazy burt's well burt's again no boundaries great guess sure

normand i mean no this is this is this is i think what when you texted me crazier than norman when you texted me what it was i texted you back yeah do i how many do i list because i could you threatened that this might have to be a double episode and i think you're correct yeah listen i'm happy to do it okay um look we'll figure we'll find the ads um we'll find the better house yeah we will i i have that one memorized i could do the better help ad for you i'm not joking i'm getting there i uh i cried today i cried i cry every day i cried today i could do you stop yourself i don't mean like i sit there and weep no i know what you mean yeah but um in one aspect it's a personal cry because i'm always just

thinking about death and my family we didn't even get there it's episode second episode but in another way it's like i'm just very i don't want to be like i'm an empath but like i just things make me cry and it could be absurd like something stupid in a movie or whatever like that but today i read an article about uh the hunger in somalia and the deaths there and it was like they said uh just the most recently um i think it was like 60 000 deaths uh this past year or up to date and more than half of them were on children under five yeah and i just literally started crying as i read the article all the way through to the end i i talked about this to the therapist i'm like how do i process that how do i go on with my day

like i wake up i turn on the news in the morning i'm getting ready it's like oh three children died in a fire in a bronx apartment I don't know. Do you, okay. So let's say the Bronx fire, right? Yeah, yeah. What do you picture? I try not to go there. If I go there, like if I let myself go, I'll go all the way. Right, you can get sidelined into death.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I do. So you're just sad that three children died, or 30,000 Somali kids died. It's devastating. Yeah. It's so sad i put myself what what must their loved ones feel and what did they endure those children yeah i can't even think

about it now yeah i mean people like we're so consumed here and it is what it is we got to keep going but if you just check in anywhere else over there it's like this is just mass casualties everywhere all the time well it's also the amount of we're all so desensitized we go downstairs we walk a half a block someone's gonna be laying there i feel bad about that crying shitting them like something and we just go like that yeah you don't you're by the way i think you're supposed to like i think our our nervous system set up that like we just got like i can't work i can't worry about it i don't know what to yeah so there's a bit of that in us right yeah but there's also this thing is just like i just feel like shit to be to be flippant about it i agree i totally agree and then you get over

that you justify it yeah the way i'm just finding right now it's like well what am i gonna do we're gonna file and and life just moves on no matter what and i think about that with death too you could think of the most impactful death in your life and still right now you get up brush your teeth eat a sandwich you know go to the park we just. It just moves on no matter what. And when I go, no matter how many people in my family, my loved ones are impacted by it, at a certain point, they're going to get up, brush their teeth, and go see a movie. It's just weird to think about.

I go down the rabbit hole with death, personal death, and loved ones. But with stuff like reading something or seeing something i try to keep that at bay if i could yeah and i don't intentionally go down the rabbit hole of death with myself but that's part of the ocd and 88 like ocd and like sometimes i get fixated on it and i can't shake the thought even if i i have techniques that i just employ myself where i'm like i'll like start singing a song and then sing another song and another song. And then I'm three or four times removed from that thought. And then my ADHD, sometimes I can't remember what the thought was.

And so I actually ADHD myself out of the sadness. I'll take it. Yeah. As your therapist. Yeah. Yeah. Like how long is the song? Is it like the OCD song or it's like no

no it's not a specific song i'll think of it i'll even i should say i think of other thoughts right but then i'll purposely think of multiple thoughts in a row to get lost in it to not remember so i can't track it but with the songs i have a thing called looping uh That is the only other big time thing besides the points that really like affects me where I will get a song or rhythm or melody in my head. And sometimes, sometimes I can't shake that for months and I hear it when I wake up. I hear it when I am not focusing on anything else. I hear it when I'm trying to go to bed.

I hear it when I'm, and it's just like, and it could be any any old song and sometimes it's songs that have triggers for some reason but then sometimes it's just a fucking song and at a certain point like triggers like you like the song no no no triggers like it brings you back to a bed place okay those are the worst the ones that are just like oh i'm listening to crush on you by the jets like if that's looping in my head yeah like that's that was one of my latest loops and that's been looping right now for i'll say at least three months at least three months and sometimes it could be a few different songs and i and it'll just come i mean when i wake up when i wake up and open my

eyes i'm singing the song in my head i can relate because i sometimes i think when i wake up when i wake up and open my eyes i'm singing the song in my head i can relate because i sometimes i think when i wake up in the morning and like the tape starts playing of like negative thoughts or negative monologue or i'm like i this doesn't seem right not like i do anything about it but it's just like man i would does everyone think this yeah does ever i'll get a melody from time to time yeah but it won't loop for like as long as yours loop yeah or some are just like a week but like a whole fucking day and those those are even tougher because it's like it's it's almost like i'm torturing myself all right we have to just end that'll be it for this week part one of sal he

promised me we were gonna do it was gonna be a two-parter and it's gonna be wow i'm that fucked up yeah all you have to do