Duncan Trussell Family Hour - 317: Tony Hinchcliffe

Episode Date: December 15, 2018

Tony Hinchcliffe, comedian, podcaster, golden pony, host of [Kill Tony](http://www.deathsquad.tv/category/kill-tony/), and star of Les Miserables 2005-2008, joins the DTFH! This episode is brought to you by [Charlotte's Web CBD Oil](https://www.cwhemp.com/) (use offer code DUNCAN for 10% off your order).

Ghost Towns, Dirty Angel, out now. You can get Dirty Angel anywhere you get your music. Ghost Towns, Dirty Angel, out now. New album and tour date coming this summer. Greetings to you, Mr. Theodore Kaczynski. My name is Dr. Henry Murray. You can call me Doc. Thank you for participating in Experiment 7189

on behalf of the federal government. I commend you for your service. Are you feeling strange? It's because you've been injected with 5,000 micrograms of Sandoz LSD. You are hallucinating this life that it is around you. You appear to think that you're in the future listening to a podcast show.

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you'll be back to hover 1969. Hello, friends. It's me, your host, Duncan Trussell. You're listening to the Duncan Trussell Family Hour. This is your first time listening. This podcast is dedicated to the beauty of Broadway and musicals in general. Today, we have the star of Les Miserables himself with us today.

Tony Hanchcliffe, known as the Golden Pony Jean Valjean from 1995 to 2005. He was up there on stage singing about what it's like, redemption, what it's like to be purified by the wisdom of compassion. And he's got a lot to say about how they used to use frog venom in those days. I want to feel the wisdom of the frog. I want to feel the wisdom of the frog.

I want to feel the wisdom of the frog. Wisdom of the frog. I want to feel the wisdom of the frog. I want to feel the wisdom of the frog. I want to feel the wisdom of the frog. Wisdom of the frog. Puking out frog. Puking out frog.

Puking out frog. Puking out frog. Puking out frog. Please don't call it puking. The frog evolved for me. A million years of evolution. Just to set me free. Frog purge.

Frog. Frog. Frog. Frog. Frog. Frog. Frog. Frog.

Frog. Frog. The venom runs. That was Frog Purge by Shaman DJ Vinnie. Shaman DJ Vinnie Torino who just returned to Echo Park from Peru and good news folks for the next three weeks. He's going to be administering frog venom at the standard downtown.

Use offer code FAMILYHOUR to get 10% off your suggested donation of $400 per purge. Shaman DJ Vinnie Torino cannot guarantee that you will be purified by your cleanse. In fact, we unfortunately cannot guarantee that you will make it out of the purge alive. Any kind of biological damage that might happen to you because of the frog venom.

Of course, these comments have not been approved by the DMT. We have got a wonderful podcast for you today. The Golden Pony himself comedian Tony Hengcliffe is with us. We're going to jump right into that. But first, some quick business. This episode of the DTFH is brought to you by

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I have finally connected the dots and can now stream and figured out a way that we could stream or video conference or whatever you want to call it to Patreon. So that is going to get added into the $5 tier, which is a way for all of us to hang out in video space at least once a month. I am there.

It's all working. I've been experimenting with Adobe Character Animator and streaming to YouTube. It's working, oh sweet Patreon friends. So something I've wanted to do now for some time, I'm going to be able to do because I have this sweet new Mac, which is like having an alien artifact. Maybe you're not aware of this, but the earth is

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Stop Drinking Crow's Milk today. And now without further ado, everybody, please welcome to the Duncan Trustle Family Hour podcast. My friend, the wonderful comedian Tony Henchcliffe. Friends, if you happen to be in Dublin, Ireland on February 14th or London on

February 16th, you can see Tony's awesome podcast, Kill Tony, live. He's also going to be in Dallas on New Year's Eve and all those dates you can find by going to TonyHenchcliffe.com. All the links you need to find Tony will be at DuncanTrustle.com. Now without further ado, please welcome to

the DTFH Tony Henchcliffe. Welcome. Welcome on you. That you are with us. Shake hands. No need to be blue. Welcome to you. It's the Duncan Trustle Family Hour.

It's the Duncan Trustle Family Hour. I, as I've been thinking about this podcast and what we're going to talk about or what we could start off talking about, this memory keeps popping into my head, which is you at the comedy store, I don't know what year it's in because the years are a blur to me, but you just started off becoming a comedian.

And you came out to me and you were like very complimentary to me and it was really cool. And I thought, wow, that's awesome, man. That's cool. Really nice to hear a young comedian likes me because I'm desperate for affirmation because I'm a hungry soul. But to watch what's happened to you

since then, and I don't know how many years it's been. To watch this like crazy growth trajectory has been kind of awesome, man. Yeah. I mean, I went to the comedy store to start Stand Up eleven and a half years ago. That's how long ago it was. And I had this picture in my head of it being

an amazing comedy club. Must be packed every night. Must be all these monsters walking around of all ages and everything. And I got there and it was pretty shockingly, in a weird way, disappointing. I mean, I was still mesmerized by the building and its incredible energy and everything.

But comedian-wise, maybe it was just the first few weeks I was there. I just wasn't really seeing it. I had a lot of older people and this and that. What year was that? 2007. 2007. And where did you come from?

From Ohio. Ohio? Yeah, from Youngstown, Ohio. Were you doing Stand Up in Ohio? No, I specifically went to the comedy store to start, which is a big part of the whole thing. Because it's like, I had this image in my head. If I go there and start there,

people will get to watch me grow. And it'll be more of like a, instead of a big fish and a small pond type of thing, I'd rather be the small fish in a big pond and work my way up. I just knew that if I could get a job there, something like that, that everything would be okay. Okay, well, I want to go back to the beginning

when I was saying, and you said that was nice. What I wanted to say, and I stopped myself for some dumb reason, was just because in general, man, I don't mean this as like a, I had even seen you do Stand Up. But in general, anyone who's starting off in stand-up comedy, the odds of it going anywhere are pretty slim, man.

It's a very difficult profession to get into. The canvases are limited because the canvases are the stages. And to get on the stages requires not just being funny, but like also some political maneuvering usually or some good luck or a combination of all of those things. All of it. Right. So I remember, and I, you know,

I had been the talent coordinator there. I don't know if I still was at the time, but I can remember having experienced many new people there and thinking, cool, but usually they go away. It's like you meet them and it's cool. It's awesome. And there's some, maybe some tragedy or maybe there's like a realization.

I don't know. And so I remember having that moment. That's a cool guy. But I don't know if I'll ever, how much longer I'll see him. That's the cool thing. Cause like Harris Pete was, do you remember Harris Pete? I've heard so much about the legend, but I never got to meet him.

So Harris Pete was a door guy at the comedy store and he was a door guy at the comedy store through the ups and downs of the store. And he'd seen it all. And he would say these things that were usually like, I mean, I don't know. My comprehension of reality back then was pretty, pretty slanted and blurry in general.

So I was like projecting my own like insecurities on a lot of stuff. So sometimes people would seem bitter and maybe they weren't, or maybe they'd just be telling the truth. And I would think, God, that's bitter. But I remember Harris Pete had this like wonderful bitter undertone to his conversations.

And now when I look back, it was really cool. But he said this thing. He's like, sometimes they drive up here in Hyundai's. And then suddenly they're in a Porsche, right? It was one of the only optimistic things he'd ever heard him say, really. Yeah. Except for once he pointed to the IV on the wall

of the comedy store. And he said, I was here when that started growing. Wow. That was pretty cool. So for me, it's interesting to see you pull up into my driveway in this like really fucking crazy, doctor slash like, I don't know, roboticist's car. Yeah.

And know that you started at the comedy store as your ground floor. Yeah. I didn't really get to finish my thing with, which was like, you know, when I was there, it was sort of lineup wise and standup wise. I'm like, man, this is, this might be easier than I thought because these guys seem like sort of like old and beat up,

right? There just wasn't a lot of great comedians there. And I hadn't seen them yet. I hadn't seen Sebastian yet. It was just the first few weeks. But it meant the world to me to be there. And then all of a sudden I saw you for the first time. And the whole reason why I was so obsessed with the comedy

store was because as a kid, I was obsessed with Jim Carrey. And then when he did Man on the Moon and was Andy Kaufman, I became completely obsessed with the dark arts and like Andy Kaufman. And I went to the library and I read books about Andy, like a little kid in the never ending story. Like I would just read them at the library, Indian style. Yeah.

Just obsessed with everything. And I kept the comedy store kept coming up. And of course it's in the movie, like the last scene of that movie, like, you know, whatever supposedly fakes his death. And Tony Clifton comes out like, who is it? Andy, whatever. So it just always had this mystique to me. And then when I saw you for the first time,

that's when I really realized like, oh my God, this place is the coolest. You were like, oh my God, I could do better than that. No, no. It was literally like you were the bridge to me if that makes sense at all. Like you resembled this, this risk taking type of out of the box, cool stuff that I hadn't seen up until that point.

And it was like the spark in which really like confirmed everything that my gut sort of told me about the place. Like this is the place for you to get right. It lets you do that. And you were really the only person that I saw taking those chances and successfully taking those chances. Sometimes not so successfully, but the beauty of the place is that to this day, it allows for that.

I don't know, experimentation. It allows for, it's a wonderful laboratory. Yeah. I mean, I think it's the God that Adam's running it like a laboratory still because it is, it's a laboratory where once you've got to be funny, but once you get in there, you're definitely allowed to have some beakers explode in your fucking face.

And in fact, it's not necessarily encouraged. I mean, it's encouraged in the sense that we think it's hilarious to watch a beaker explode in someone's face. It's funny to watch, watch an attempt at a thing, you know, crash down, but that is like one to me, that was like one of Nancy's great gifts to the world of stand up comedy. Is she allowed a place where there was a simultaneous deep respect for an art form mixed in with an understanding that

you got to fucking fail and you got to take risks and you got to like do things that are not going to work to get to the place where things are going to work. Right. So I want to talk to you about that. I'm interested in your work ethic because you have a really strong work ethic. And I think it's curious in the sense that many, there are

comics that have like really strong work ethics, but not all of them. There's various types of comedians. Yeah. And some of them like George Carlin supposedly had like his next hour already written when he was doing his hour. Like he had file cabinets full, he would work eight hour days writing jokes.

Yeah. And you're one of those comics. It seems like, is that true? It's interesting. I'm one of the, I believe in doing a lot of spots. I believe in going up a lot at night. I don't necessarily sit down with a pen to paper to write my own stand up jokes.

I'll do that for like, you know, side jobs or corporate gigs or, you know, somebody offers me some crazy amount of money to write a roast for their birthday or something like that. Like I'll get those offers in and things like that. And in that case, I can grind those out almost immediately. Like it's like nothing. I just look at the statistics on the person or their jobs or whatever and just start going.

So that's always there. But as far as my stand up, my work ethic really lies in continuously going on the road, continuously doing as long of a set as possible as I feel like the audience can truly withstand. And I've been doing that a lot. So like, for example, last week, I did six one hour sets in Chicago. The week before that, I did six one hour sets in Toronto.

And the week before that was a normal week of like four or five one hour sets in some other city. Like, you know, it was like Fort Wayne, Cincinnati, Cleveland to where I'm doing a different city each night for a long set. So what's happening right now is, and by the way, I would love to get back to that type of right now. I would love to get back to writing like a crazy person for myself all day. But since I haven't made a second one hour special yet,

I'm continuously chiseling and reediting this long hour that I do have, which blessing and a curse, you know, nobody's knocking down the doors for a sort of not famous at all straight white male that does, you know, the covers, I guess one could say edgy topics, right? But the good thing with that is that this hour just keeps getting tighter and tighter and tighter and tighter and tighter and tighter because it's been three years since I taped a special. So since I'm doing this hour each night, you know, I'm applying that

crazy writer's work ethic to still taking the chances in the hour that works. So I'll tweak a little thing here and then tweak it the next day and see exactly how it all comes together at once. So what's crazy is that, you know, a lot of famous comedians make a special as soon as they can, but me not really having a chance to make a special right now is sort of helping me. But, you know, once that happens again, I'll reapply. I can't wait to get to that daytime wake up, go to the desert for a week,

you know, and really write like start again. Did you, to me, it's like, it's bizarre. Like I have never been a confident person. And like when I came out, like the way I did everything was completely fumbling and bumbling and imagine just we it's weird. But you like you were like, I'm going to come. I'm going to drive from Ohio. Did you drive?

I flew with just a backpack and like 40 bucks. What the fuck? Yeah, I had a brother that lived out here and he offered me his couch to sleep on for for a couple months. So I came out and wrote and wrote and wrote for my first three minutes. So that the comedy story in the awesome 70s movies that starts with a fucking banjo or someone like this. You don't have any sentimental music.

You're on an airplane. Yeah, you're flying to fucking LA. Yeah. And somehow in your head, you have created enough confidence to imagine that you're going to be able to make this shit work. I mean, you have to realize that the first time I showed up to the comedy store and saw normal employees wearing that comedy store t-shirt, I looked at them like they were the New York Yankees.

Like I look, I thought, you know, I thought Jimmy Pid was a God to me. He was a God. You know, he's some normal guy, right? Yeah. But I'm like, how do you get a job at the comedy store? And I feel like it helped me tremendously by putting this place and that system on such a pedestal. It means more to you.

You take it more seriously and you treat the sets more seriously. I think it applies for anything. That's cool. Yeah. Anything that you believe in, believe in it a billion percent because you're going to get that out of it. I still get it out of it every night. I was talking about it last night.

I was just rambling to the bartender in the back bar. I was just talking with him, not getting drunk or anything, but I was literally like, you know, how special this place is. Like I, and you can build an entire backbone of anything off of a place like that or just loving something like that. And, and, and, but yeah, to answer your question. Yeah, I've always, my secret weapon has always been a boatload of confidence. It's probably something a creative, a defense mechanism that I created early on in life,

being raised in a tough, you know, really, really, really, really dangerous neighborhood where I was like one of the only white kids on the block. And if I didn't portray myself as strong and make fun of people, then I would have just gotten beat up and robbed and jumped and things like that. It was a really, really crazy place to grow up in. What did your parents do? Well, they were, my dad at the time ran an Italian restaurant and really what they ended up doing for money was they were part of organized crime back then.

Are you allowed to talk about that without getting in trouble? I think I can now, you know, it's one of those things. Is it going to roll the fucking dice? Mom, my mom's not into it anymore, but she was really like a queen pin, I guess you could say for a while. She ran all the numbers and everything like that. Now she's just a, you know, a 62, 72, 60, like 72 year old, yeah, 72 year old lady that's been out of the business for like at least a decade or decade and a half.

But when did you first realize your parents were involved in organized crime? Very early on actually because my Italian dad was married to another woman to his wife. He was married to his wife and my mom... Wait, your Italian dad had a wife? Yeah, had a wife and my mom had a husband and they cheated on each other significant others for 11 years behind their wives and husbands backs before my mom even got pregnant with me. So, okay, okay, so your mom and your dad, they were in an affair for 11 years. Yeah.

And were they already involved in organized crime at this time? No, the organized crime thing, well, my dad was, but the organized crime thing with my mom was... Wait, I'm sorry, this is a dumb question, but when does, what would be considered, when does crime become organized? Like what's that, is that like a file cabinet for a certain type of crime? It's really what they consider, basically it's like, as weird as it sounds, it's basically like white people crime. They call it organized crime if it's like Italians and then it's disorganized crime if it's black people. That's fucking racist.

I know, yeah, I know, they're just basically saying they're disorganized. That is so ridiculous. Yeah, yeah. That's exactly what a white person would do is like, not to, I mean, I don't mean a white person, I'm white, I'm not wanting to do white, I feel bad for even saying that, but like, maybe you're bringing something out of me. It does seem like, it feels like something like, I could see myself feeling, well, let's organize this crime. Right. You know, you guys, why don't we apply these principles I learned from Tony Robbins to this crime?

I think they decided, you know, because it was like drive-bys and random robberies, they were two sort of different crimes and they're both gangs, right? The Bloods and Crips are gangs and the Italian Mafia is technically a gang. So I just think that's sort of how they labeled it, organized crime. It is a weird label now that you make, yeah, it is. It's racist. They got to change it. Someone's got to change it.

You need to add that to the list of fucking things you can't say anymore or like make all crime fucking organized. It's an absolute racist statement. I never realized that, but it's completely racist. When white people do crime, it's organized. Well, no, that's not true. There's like, complexed people who are considered like organized crime bosses that dude in fucking Paris, who like a helicopter flew him out of prison. Anyway, I never knew this about you.

And I never would have guessed that that is your background. I know comedians generally have like fucked up upbringings, but to imagine that somehow you were in the midst of infidelity and... So it gets crazier real quick. It's not that long of a story. So they cheated on each other for 11 years. My mom gets pregnant with me, her husband, who they had already basically, and you know, this is old school youngsters, you know what I mean?

Like it's like old Italian people to where you don't really get a divorce unless you absolutely have to. So my mom got a divorce from Hinge Cliff, who's the father of my four older brothers and sisters, but they weren't basically hooking up anymore. And my dad and his wife weren't really hooking up anymore, but you just don't get divorces back then. Because they're Italian and Catholic or whatever, even though they're all crazy. So my mom told me that the guy that came to visit me a lot that was my dad, which really was my dad, was Joey Smith,

and don't talk about him with your classmates or this and that. Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. You were the product of infidelity. Big time. I missed that. I thought maybe that they had gotten married in high. No. So you were born into a family where your dad wasn't your dad? Correct, yes.

But you thought he was? Well, no. The guy that, there was no Hinge Cliff anymore. So I didn't really think that that guy was my dad. I knew that we called him Daddy Guy. That's the funny thing, is that was the name that I would call him as a kid. Daddy Guy, because all my brothers and sisters called him dad. So I always just called him Daddy Guy, like this guy that's like this dad to people.

But my dad, I knew was my dad, but they lied to me about what his name was. They gave me a fake last name on him. They told me that he travels for work. And then when I was like, I think like eight or nine, maybe 10, I was on the school bus one day and I realized that a car that looked like my dad's was across the street from my buddy, Jeff Lewis's house, who we'd pick up. And I would notice this, you know, this white, you know, GMC Jimmy or whatever it was. And then the next time my dad came to visit, I remembered the license plate.

And then the next day going to school, I looked at the GMC Jimmy and I matched the license plate that I memorized the day before to that license plate. And it was the same license plate. So that day after school, I go to my mom and I go, Hey, I noticed that dad's car, you know, is across the street from, you know, Jeff Lewis's house on blank and blank street. What's up with that? And she's like, let's get your sister in here, close the door behind you.

There's a lot of stuff I have to tell you. And she broke down the entire thing to me explaining to me that, you know, your dad's married to another woman, blah, blah, blah, blah, you know, this and that. He, you know, he's in, he's part of a crazy business. So don't tell your friends who your actual dad is. This is his real name. You know, it's crazy. I was bawling my eyes out at the time because I felt like I'd been lied to.

You had been. And my dad lived around the corner from me and all that. And sorry, dude, bad interviewer question. How old are you again? I think nine, 10, 11, nine, nine, probably nine or 10. I have a way to do this. So like, I figured this out. So kids who've had trauma, the thing you just did right there, nine, 10 or 11, people have had trauma.

They actually intentionally blur out the year that it happened because it's so incredibly painful that your brain, one of the many ways your brain nerfs the trauma is by blurring the temporal continuum. Yeah. So the way I figured out how to do it personally is what movies, do you remember what, if you can attach around that time period, a movie or a TV show, you can Google that movie or TV show and produce the exact age that you're at when that happened. We don't have to do that now, but it's really, I've found it to be quite useful in my own reconstruction of my identity. But it's a great tool.

Anybody out there listening, it's wonderful if you blurt out some rough years. So, okay, you're between how, say it again, you're like, Nine or 10. Nine or 10. Maybe 11, 11 at the oldest. And so that means that for the first nine years of your life, you were in the midst of a, what, for lack of a better word, could be called a conspiracy. Yep. Against you.

Yep. Yeah. Yeah. And, and, you know, the few friends that I did share, you know, who my dad was with, because he was a pretty semi, we'll say famous guy in the city of Youngstown. What does that mean? What do you mean? Yeah, he was like the Italian festival man of the year, like he ran a very well known restaurant in Youngstown, which is all you need to know to be semi famous in that town. Sure.

And it was interesting because like I told a couple of my closest friends, like, hey, my dad is, you know, so-and-so. And they were like, you know, they were, you know, they were like, okay. And then they would come to me a couple of days later, they'd be like, you know, my parent, I mentioned to my parents about what you told me about your dad. And they said, there's no way that's possible that that can't be your dad, because, you know, it's not your dad. He only has two kids. They're older brother and a sister. You know, so it's like, even then it just kept going on because nobody knew about me. I was just a super, super duper secret.

So like, definitely this wall of confidence that I brought out to LA with me is definitely a product of all of this, you know, overcompensating for trying to prove perhaps that I'm something special, that I have a purpose, that I'm a special human being dad, love me dad, right? Yeah. Wow. Yeah, super crazy. Oh, man. Yeah. So the confidence is really probably just a bunch of pain and, you know, insanity all wound up to seem like I have everything together.

But at the same time, I also believe my confidence. It's not like BS confidence. Like I said, when I got that job at the comedy store, like I knew somehow some way I would have a career, you know, I really did believe that. That right there, that little thing right there, I'm interested in that because I had that too. It was just different than yours. And I, when I think about it, I go back and forth between, is that dilute? Was that just like, was that delusion or was it real? And, and I, but there always was this weird sense of knowing, like the way I ended up at the comedy store was just pure, chaotic, good fortune, which was that I had had a,

so I came out to LA and went to Venice Beach because I'd seen the fucking Doors movie and I was like enamored with Jim Morrison. Really? Just think of how embarrassing that. So I wasn't, I was, I was, you know, I was telling myself a bunch of different reasons for doing it. You know, many people try to come up with a, like sometimes you make up a reason in retrospect even, you know, but like now I kind of understand more what I was doing. But yeah, like, you know, like I had this idea of Venice Beach based on like maybe what it was like in the 60s or some shit. So I get out there and like I ended up literally like one of the first streets I drove down. I just parked my car for some reason and there was this like dude watering his lawn and I'm, and I don't know how he started talking, but I'm like, yeah, I'm looking for a place.

He's like, oh, my son's renting a place. But really what he meant was he'd been letting his son live in this back house and he was going to kick his son out and let me live there for really cheap. But his son was like a hardcore crack cocaine addict. And his friends were all cocaine addicts. And so then he, when I ended up at the place, he hadn't even moved out yet. Like he still had a sleeping bag on the floor of the apartment I was moving into. But I was like completely starry eyed with that. I was like, I don't care.

I'm like, whatever. I think he actually slept in that same house with me for a couple of days. Yeah. Anyway, he took me on this cocaine tour of Hollywood. I wasn't doing cocaine. I've never liked cocaine. Um, but he was he gave me a cocaine tour of Hollywood and I, and like, you know, I remember he drove by the house of blues. It was like the house of blues.

He's like, that's where the, how did he put it? He said the cheesiest thing about it's something like that's where the big dogs go. That house of blues. And then it was so weird. He had built up this reverential attitude towards all of West Hollywood. It's like really sweet, but cocaine fueled, you know, and like he showed me the comedy store. I had no idea about the comedy store. I didn't know its history.

I didn't know about Mitzi. I didn't know anything about it dude. It was just a big black building on the sunset strip that seemed interesting. And I walked, I needed a job. I had inherited like 10 K from my grandma and I blew that on like just so fast. And then I needed a job. So I walked by the comedy store and touched the building and it's the damnedest thing. If I didn't feel the building, it sounds so absolutely, absolutely woo wooey.

But the building was like coming here. Yeah. You're talking to one guy that can absolutely believe you and relate to you on that. You felt that? I mean, I didn't physically touch the building. But again, I mean, I, I'm still enamored by it. It's been, I mean, that's the first place I ever went up and performed at or signed up for or went into first comedy club. I ever went into first live show I ever saw was the open mic that I was on in 13 comics.

You know what I mean? And I still to this day, I'll be looking around like, man, is that chandelier always been there? It's like it never ceases to amaze me. It's totally different than everywhere else I've ever been. And I've been lucky enough to get to perform in some crazy theaters around the country. Famous place is sure with Rogan with Jeff Ross early on in my career a few times on my own. I mean, Jeff and I have done or Joe and I have been doing arenas recently, which is a new thing. And you see like pictures of the Eagles or whatever and Pink Floyd and Eric Clapton and it has nothing to me on the comedy store.

Like all the people and all the things and all the tickets and all the old pictures and all these venues has nothing compared to the comedy store. There's something about its diabolical black and red nature and subtlety that just it's it's it's definitely there's something special there. There's some weird electric electrical grid underneath it or something. What do you think it is? I don't know, man, there might be some old like, I don't know, like some old religious things, some old furnace, some old something weird. There's something going on there. There's like the so like I've been to a few places that make me feel like the comedy store that feels like the comedy store. And this sounds absolutely insane.

Right. But so there's a place in India called there's a city called Varanasi. You ever heard of the city? So this is one of the I think it might be the oldest city on earth. It's one of the oldest cities on earth. And it's where they do all the cremations. So the buildings are like actually many of the buildings have been darkened by the smoke from burning bodies over a very, very, very, very long time. And so you go there and it smells like a barbecue.

But that ain't hamburgers they're cooking there. They're cremating bodies because it's a very sacred place and they're and they put the ashes right into the Ganges River and there's like it's like going to another dimension. Right. So Varanasi feels like I don't know. This is a really dumb math I'm going to do here, but just go with it. I guess it feels like a thousand comedy stores, you know, like so like imagine the comedy store times a thousand. That's what it feels like. It's got this like sense of heaviness.

It's got this sense of a magical quality. It's got a sense of danger. It's got a sense of darkness in there, but there's also somehow within the darkness. What's really cool about Varanasi is that the darkness is actually just a reflection of your darkness because what's happening there is one of the most natural things that could ever happen, which is that bodies are being transformed by fire and to ash. And this is what happens to everybody. So you come to Varanasi with your fear of death or your your anxiety related to your own inevitable extinction. And it can seem like a terrifying city, but it's just you that you're seeing.

Similarly, I think the comedy store, many people have gone crazy there and I've watched it happen. They've lost their fucking mind there. I've seen it happen. There's a book about it. People get in there and they go batshit and they go batshit in the weirdest way. And also strange people are drawn to there who aren't even comedians. Strange people. Dude, I mean, I used to see it all the time and we used to really hang out late there.

There was like a summer, I will say 10 years ago where the inmates really ran the asylum. Sure. And we would just play. That's where we think there is one summer there. But where we were crazy. We were going every night until five, six, seven a.m. We would lock the doors and just play. We would do the BKO, the lip-syncing Don Barris rock and roll band,

where we would just really it was just crazy Jedi level improv improv courses playing with Don late at night. But anyway, sometimes we don't put any way that because I think that's an important quality. The comedy store people don't even know. Yeah, I don't even know if it's cool to talk about it. But like, so it's kind of like, you know, this is like in my like very high moments. I love to think about secret societies. It's a blast to think about and to contemplate. Could there be?

Is that real? Would that be real? Right? Yeah. But as far as I've ever gotten with it is. Okay. Like the university system is interesting in that you have to apply to get into a university. You get into a university.

If you have some certain credentials, perhaps you have some connections and then in the university, you're given knowledge and the knowledge that you're given is not you're paying for it. But it's not just enough that you have the money. It's that you have been invited in. You've been accepted in. You've passed some series of tests and you've been taken into this special place. Some places it's like it's whatever, you know, bullshit. This bullshit college or that bullshit college.

But to this day, we have like the Ivy League colleges that are so very expensive and really hard to get into. People compete all over the planet to get into these fucking places and you get into those places and you're exposed to high level information that is being downloaded to you through the mouths of brilliant humans. Because if it's fucking hard to get accepted into a university, how hard is it to get to become a professor at one of these places? Right? Yeah. At universities, there are people that no one will ever know. They're professors, except for people who go to that university.

There are people there who are who are experts at the most obscure data sets. And they are not just experts, but they have a method of transmitting that information called teaching, which, you know, changes people's minds permanently. And then those people go out into the world and become presidents or become politicians or start businesses. And so these invisible people end up sending these crazy waves through society and no one ever knows who they are. So, you know, in my very high moments, I think, geez, I wonder if there's something even higher than a university. You know what I mean? Some even more sanctified place.

But to me, the comedy store replicates that dynamic in a certain way, which is they're comedians at the comedy store who are beloved and who are known in comedian circles, but maybe they aren't at the level of like Rogan or Chappelle, right? But they are wizards and they are like shamanic beings of like really incredible potency, magical fucking people who you're just lucky to like hang out with for a second. And also you need to be like, you have to be kind of like, I don't know what the word for it is, but if you like, you have to watch out, you know, because they're tricksters. And like, if you're not prepared to be tricked and enjoy being tricked,

then they could really like, they could potentially, you know, drive you nuts, right? And I could think of like at least three people like that at the comedy store, you know, who are like that. And so that so anyway, when you're talking about the improv shit that you're doing late at night there, that's real. That's like a real, almost like a ritualistic, you know, ceremonial like. You're so right. I've never even thought of it this way that you're saying it before, but you're 100% right. And it was more than any other time I've never felt like I had a master, if that makes sense. That's even becoming clear to me or a professor, I guess you could say, depending on how kung fu you want to be about it.

But really, I learned comedy in those hours. It wasn't really during the day writing. I mean, sure, that helped. It takes everything right a perfect storm, but really figuring out what Don was doing in the middle of the night and how to keep those people's attentions and the lines that he would walk and how he would do it and how he would do it with a smile and how he would let us all play and contribute and yell from the back of the room and be part of something. It really was a very, very special, very different. That's right.

And in real, it's real that and I think for a lot of people, they don't want something real. Some people don't want real. They want synthetic, artificial, domesticated, calm down, soothed, whatever it may be. To get around something real can really fuck a person up if they're deeply solidified in their identity or that they've been tricking themselves a bunch. It can be rough, man. So what's cool is in other cultures, comedians happen. Did you know that? There are a bunch of demonic versions of comedians in various indigenous cultures.

The Trickster appears in all kinds of mythologies. Loki, for example, and Norse mythology. It goes on and on and on. I mean, you could almost argue Judas because you've got this being that is perpetually looked at as the great betrayer. When someone betrays you, you call them a fucking Judas. And yet Judas is the reason we've got Christianity. If not for the betrayal, the crucifixion wouldn't have happened. You have this weird link in the chain and the link in the chain happens to be someone who was distorting reality by lying.

And that created Christianity. So you have all kinds of versions of this figure that emerges mythologically that is always interesting and it's a double-edged sword. Whereas like with many figures in mythology, you will see this kind of purity, right? This kind of like they're just good, right? But whenever the trickster figure emerges, the mischief they cause creates chaos. But the chaos is somehow progenitive and from the chaos healing happens or there's like good things come from the chaos. But the trickster figure never gave a shit about that. It was just an accident.

The trickster figure was just making tricks because that's what the trickster figure liked to do. It was just fun. Fun, that sort of reality distortion in these myths. So when you run into somebody like Don Barris, right? And you realize like if you don't, it would be easy to like maybe not even see him. If you were like somebody who didn't know about the comedy store or maybe you would see him or maybe who knows. But when you run into somebody like that or like Holtzman. You realize like, holy shit, man, this isn't just a comedian.

This is like some kind of like shamanic teacher figure. Big time. But he's not puffed up wandering around like, let me teach you about comedy or improv or anything. He's just doing himself. Yep. And as a natural result, people around him are either getting spun out or they're becoming like better comedians. It's just pretty awesome. Yeah.

But that summer that we were doing that every night, I would notice sometimes because we would hang out on the sidewalk or in the little driveway area or whatever. Crazy people gravitating towards the comedy store. They wouldn't go across the street to the House of Blues. Sometimes they would literally walk right underneath that front patio canopy and just sort of stare at a wall or look straight up or look straight down or lay down or things like that. It wasn't that they were using it for shelter. I really believe that that place was drawing, that it draws, you were saying strange people there and it really does even if they're not there for comedy or even if they're not there for whatever. There's something there. And you know, one of my theories while we're still on the subject is that there's something about that laughter, that energy that comes outward and swirls around those walls and the emptiness that happens during the day.

And the contrast between the two, the expectations of the comedians and the risks that they're taking and everything that's happening on that stage. And from the audience's perspective too, all that gah, gah, gah, gah, gah, gah, like that laughter. Where does it go? What is that? Like where does that, what's absorbing that? Really nothing. It's what? Walls and corners and shit.

Yeah. So I think that there's something to that too. Like people say the belly rooms haunted or the main rooms haunted or this and that, but maybe it is, but maybe that's also that. Maybe it's like, what is that weird trap of every night of the year plus the place never closes. It's not closed in December. It's not closed on Christmas. So it's almost the study really is what happens to a place, the only place that we know of that every night has people laughing throughout it. Right.

And they coincidentally think that it's haunted. You and I coincidentally think that there's a crazy energy that the building communicates with people in a weird way. I'm not the only one who thinks that. Right. That's what I'm saying. But you know, this is, it's just like the problem, you know, we're born in the West. And so because we're born in the West, we've got a lot of like really deep understanding about matter. People here really know a lot about atoms and science and like all the stuff that they've absorbed through like whatever their high school or college curriculum was mixed in with some like Carl Sagan or like whatever particular like celebrity

scientists they've been reading and they get really, really, really smart about matter. But a lot of people here, like they just don't, they don't get the maps or the models for another way of another way things happen in the world. Right. So in another part of the world, like other parts of the world, these things called temples appear. And so these things called temples appear and some of them have been there for a very long time. And within the temples, every single day, rituals are being done that are very specific and date back thousands and thousands of years. In fact, they date back some of them before recorded history in the sense that we don't even know where they came from. You can guess and anthropologists have a lot of theories about it.

But many of these things started off as like a spoken word that was told to someone else that was told to someone else was told. And then that like that became, you know, religion. And then that religion sort of manifests in the physical world in the form of temples and churches and within those things, the echo of some enlightened being gets sort of reverberates in time. So and so in the West, you end up with a temple, you know, we don't call it as a fucking comedy club. Yeah. But it happens to have a ritualistic sort of attributes to it. And it also has an initiatory system. You, if you want to like perform there, you have to go not just through like being approved.

But you out there's another there's many other little things that will happen to you there, you know, it has its own immune system and it will push people out. And it like, and it's a fascinating, amazing lightning rod. And you know, why did why do people come there who seem to have like mental illness or seem to have like a some some deep wound? They want to get healed. Yeah. There's something when you find out that people laugh there every night. Laugh. Like it's such a weird thing to think about people laugh there every night.

And it's the it's a it's a sound and a reaction that we make to being childishly surprised and happy. And it's a weird reaction. Oh, but I mean, when you listen to like that kind of laughter you're describing and what's funny is like comedians. Actually, if you wanted to and I never tried to do it, but I could prior I could like, you know, like the way they have bird books. I bet I could write a book of like the various types of laughter because as a comedian you learn all kinds of laughter. You know, the polite laughter, you know, laughter when they feel sorry for you, you know, laughter when someone wants to think you're funny but doesn't think you're funny. And then you know that precious sweet laughter that you're talking about there, that stroboscopic laughter that sounds like a waterfall or sounds like some kind of it's a very mystical sound. It's a very mystical sound and what's really funny about it, Tony, or any comedians who may be listening, just go listen to like Buddhist monks chanting when they're like doing their

And you will hear within that chanting something that will remind you in a very distant way of the kind of laughter that you hear coming out of the great, great night at a comedy club. Because what's happening is people think they're laughing and they are laughing, but they also are accidentally chanting in a temple and standing on stage as a priest that's distorting reality in specific ways that are inducing an involuntary reaction in them. And that's why the place has a sacred quality to it, if you ask me. Not to elevate comedians to the level of a fucking priest class. And also you're right, man, one of the three shows that I did on Saturday in Chicago at one point and like I was saying earlier, like at the point that I'm at right now, I'm working on this crazy hour. And now I really believe in it. Now it's become a piece of art to me. So I don't like it when I necessarily get thrown off track. You know, I used to love crowd work and I can still do it and sometimes I do do it, you know what I mean?

But I was in the middle, I remember it being in the middle of like a big bit that I didn't want to be off track on the other night, right? But I heard this laugh that really stood out to me amongst all the other laughs. It was like, like that. Yeah. And I literally go, I go, that laugh right there, that guy, I go, tell me the truth. Did you eat edibles and smoke pot before this show? And he goes, yeah, yeah, how'd you know? I go, I could tell by that laugh.

Yeah. That's like a different, that's a laugh that I feel like you only hear from someone that's really, really, really stoned. Like really high, like, oh, like it's like a movie like sound effect or like a cartoon. Yeah. But it turns out, I, you know, I was right. It's sort of off subject, but on subject, but it's like, it really stood out to me and I just needed to know from my own confirmation. Like, could anyone even laugh like that if they're not double stoned? I mean, I called it.

He really did. He ate edibles. Yeah. An hour or so before. And he smoked on the sidewalk right before coming into the show. Oh my Christ. Double stoned. And I just had to know.

I stopped everything. That's the worst. I hate being double stoned. Yeah. Well, I mean, the thing is like, there's a, there's a, there's a place, I think in any art where it goes from being an art to being something, something mystical. And, you know, in this current time period where we're at right now in the current culture, depending on where you're listening to this from. There are aspects of the, of human reality or data sets that we don't believe are real. And so we think, oh, that's bullshit.

It's just hippie bullshit or whatever. And so we ignore it. And if you hear about it, you think, whatever, man, that's not true. If it were true, they would have quantified it, proven it. It would be reproducible in a laboratory. It doesn't work with our understanding of the way reality works. So for example, we don't believe in telepathy here. We think that's a bunch of bullshit.

We think maybe we can read body language and maybe there's some subtle pheromones or something that gets released from people, which would allow you to intuit some aspect of their consciousness. But the idea that you could potentially actually read someone's thoughts or see through a person's body and see like trapped energy in there or whatever you want to call it is absolute bullshit, bunk, woo, nonsense, no fucking way. So I think many, many comedians have these experiences on stage that are mystical and they have epiphanous moments up there or transmissions or realizations. I think some comedians get on stage and they're not there anymore. Something comes through them in that moment and they know it, but because they don't have the, they don't want to fuck with that. They don't want to think about it maybe or they're worried if I think about that element of it too much, it'll fuck up the other part of it. I don't know.

But I think that like many artists have a moment when they're in the middle of creation of this thing or that where they experience something that doesn't really make sense based on how we understand the world to be. And that definitely happens with comedy for sure. Because in the same way like a university professor ends up sending out a signal that shifts people's consciousnesses and those people go into society and shift society. A great comedian can end up impacting the world just by demonstrating honesty. You know, just for a lot of people to be in the presence of honesty in the way that a comedian can channel it is, that'll change your life forever. You know, just to see that, just that is enough to like make a person, a wounded person walk out of a comedy club and be like, oh fuck. Wow, it's okay to be a human. Right.

It's okay to say blasphemous things. It's okay to shine a light into the dark bowers of society. You know, yeah, but it has to me and I remember I don't remember where I was. I think it's in the La Jolla comedy store. Maybe I saw it in Mitzi's office. And I remember like just at the time all these things I read and learned and a lot of the stuff she told me, man, I'm just now understanding it because I'm so goddamn slow sometimes, but I can remember I think it was a letter from her to a comedian. And it was something on the lines of like, I'm really going to butcher it. But the thing that she was writing to the comedian was, well, you know, what's behind the thing behind this is love.

That's what you say. You know, that's what it is. You want to know the secret? Love. The secret is love. The secret is that behind the joke, behind the genius, behind the fucking art, behind the well crafted thing, you're looking at somebody who is in love with doing comedy. They love it.

They can't stop doing it. That's it. That's it. Love. And so even though what they're saying might be one of your absolutely offensive jokes, Tony, you should be ashamed of yourself or some of the things you say. I really, I really believe what you just said. And it's crazy because I do this thing the past, I don't know, 10 months to a year. Where my opening line, no matter what, no matter who was on before me or pretty much anything, I have like almost like a line, like a pro wrestler or something like that.

I've sort of trademarked my own little thing so that when people see me a second time, they remember and blah, blah, blah. And I always say, nice to meet you guys. My name is Tony Henchcliff. And I'm one of the top young rising comedians in the world. And it started as me almost saying it to be almost an asshole, right? And to, for my own entertainment, but it started getting a massive laugh every time I would do it. Because it's audacious. Right.

It's ridiculous. Exactly. And it's not, and by the way, this is in front of strangers, you know what I mean? This isn't necessarily, you know, the Joe Rogan crowd or my crowd that knows me. It's not on the road. And by the way, when I do it on the road or on those shows, it's insanity. The, because they, and I always thought like, you know, once it worked better than I thought it would. So I did it the next night and the next night and the next night.

I always thought like, oh, they, I'm making them comfortable. They can relax in their seats because of my extreme confidence has been established right from the get. They're like, wow, this guy's got something good. If he's starting off like that, what is it? But it really makes me think about what you just said about love because it's, I'm showing them immediately that, right? At a thousand miles an hour, I'm showing them how much I love this by saying, you know. Well, you can't do it unless you actually have, if you get up there and say that with any kind of malice behind it, any kind of like bullshit narcissistic egoism or the majority of the, I mean, we all have a little bit of that in us.

But it's like the thing fueling whatever the fuck it is that you're saying up there is not love. If the thing that's fueling what you're saying up there is trickery, trying to fool them. Yeah. They can smell it. Yeah. They can smell it. And also, yeah, it just is like, you know, it's the difference between someone. It's a difference between, I guess you could say an inflated mattress and an uninflated mattress, right?

Like if I, you know, it's a big fucking difference, right? So I can tell when someone is inflating whatever it is they do with love. And I'm not, again, man, all this stuff, it can end up sounding really like either naive or sanctimonious or ridiculous or whatever. I'm not saying, oh, every comedian that gets on stage is a professor of love. Right. No, but I'm saying like, if you're looking at a comedian who's funny and they're doing a really funny joke that's making the crowd do that kind of mystical laughing laughter that borders on chanting. Yeah.

I'm not saying that comedian loves the audience. And I'm not saying the comedian necessarily loves themselves. And I'm saying the comedian in that moment loves anything in that moment. But I know for sure this, that comedian loves comedy. Yeah. Because then there's no fucking way you're going to refine a joke over time unless there's something in that practice that you love. 100%. Period.

And I, that's one of the weird things about me is I love comedy to like a crazy degree. I remember the first time I ever did a gig with Joe Rogan on the road. We barely knew each other at all. And I remember on the plane ride, he goes, so I don't really know anything about you. Like, you know, it's like six years ago. I remember specifically him going, well, what else are you, what, so what about you tone? Like, what, what are you into? I'm like, well, I really, I mean, I'm really just obsessed with comedy.

He's like, yeah, but like, what about like hobbies and like, you know, looking back at it now and realizing life and all these things. And but at the time that was it, at the time that was it, like it was my obsession. My obsession was with everything like the writing during the day and they're performing at night and figuring out improv and maybe this musically funny stuff and this and this and this and also just being a huge fan of the art form. My mind was so blown when I got to see you and, you know, and Rick Ingram, the first time I saw him and like, again, you two really like the bridges of this thing where I'm like, look at that. Look at these guys. They could only, they must be in their late 20s, early 30s. This is crazy. Yeah.

It was mind blowing. Well, it's mind blowing because like that, you know, I've always like, I got lucky man in my life. I've run into different types of artists and I've run into people who, who don't, who literally, I know. There's someone out there, man, who is, who is one of the smartest people I've ever met in my life and who is a intentionally, completely not interested in any kind of fame does not want to be known. Does it wants to live in the shadows, you know, and like, I think probably judges me for my, for the, my, the fact that I have, I put myself out there and that's fine. I don't care. But it's really cool to, to, to meet people who are doing a thing and the reason they're doing it, even though they, like anybody would, would want success and would want the, this or that to come from it. But there's some initial thing that is transcending material desire.

And so, you know, when you, that's what happens at the comedy stores, you meet people who have ambition, but who also don't give a, don't really that, that whether or not they were making money is there, it's not going to stop what they're doing. And that's a really, really powerful way to be a really powerful thing to witness, you know, I think they're like the, you know, oh wait, I thought of something while you're talking. How fucking terrifying is that when Rogan pounces on you and decided to start taking you around with him? Like how crazy is that moment when you're like, what the fuck? It was great. I mean, like I, it felt like a, it felt like some type of prank or like I was in on some like a, like reality show or something weird hidden cameras. Like that's what it felt like in the beginning because I, I was just sort of scooped up out of nowhere. I mean, Ari couldn't do a gig or something like that and none of you guys were available.

You D has something, you know, and Joe must, I guess Joe asked Ari, is there anybody, you know, coming up the ranks or anything like that? I got to get somebody and Ari put my name in there and boy, oh boy, if it didn't just, you know, lock it in. And so, but I didn't know Joe. I mean, that's a real conversation that we had on our first airplane trip together. It's like, what else are you into dude? Like what are your hobbies? I'm like, all right now, really nothing at all. Yeah, man.

It's just comedy. I do a lip syncing band with Don Barris from the hours of two AM to like four AM. But that's really, you know, it I write for this show. I write for the Comedy Central roast, but that's only a few weeks out of the year. So that's one of the funny things about Joe. Like, like now that he's become like this, like, I don't know what you would even call it. Maybe there's not a word for it now. Like, you know, the podcaster is certainly a great word for it, but that's not the right word for it.

Whatever the fuck it is, man. I don't know. But I think one of the crazy things about Joe that maybe people are only slightly aware of is this like aspect of him where he just like scoops up comics and then like begins this like weird kind of like mentorship within. Yeah, more than perhaps any comedian that I've ever even heard of, right? Maybe Rodney Dangerfield did it, right? With the old Dangerfield specials like way back. Like, hey, meet my friends, you know, whatever that was the HBO things. But I mean, I don't really think there's anybody that really does that.

In fact, on the contrary, not throwing anybody under a bus here, but I would say that a few of the top comedians don't take freak openers and don't want someone. Really hilarious in front of them. And not only does Joe tend to, I mean, I mean, you are Diaz or three of my favorite comedians. Period. Right. So and people know this, like people are aware that Joe takes freak freaks with him because he wants to get the show started with the bang. And not only that, he wants him to get better and he makes them better by inspiring them just from doing what he's doing. He doesn't fuck around, man.

Like that one of the cool things like I like, you know, right now I'm I'm lucky because like I'm studying like this type of Buddhism with a teacher who's like in a lineage of boot a really interesting lineage of Buddhism. And what I what's really cool about him is that he, you know, he he doesn't fuck around. Like, it's not like it's not like what you would want it to be. If you wanted to be lazy in the sense that it's like it's it's permissive in the sense that you're not going to get guilt tripped or whatever for like sort of being laxadaisical or something like that. But simultaneously like there's this real like sense of like I don't know how to put it. It's serious. Like there's a sense of seriousness to it, which is like, look, you like this is this is serious and and also not. And with what's more fucking serious than comedy while simultaneously not being serious at all.

Yeah. But Rogan, when he's decided to like start, I'm sorry if this is embarrassing, Joe, if he listens to this, I don't know. I don't mean embarrassing because we're all like many of us are like very, very deeply indebted to him for this. But when he his technique is not just do whatever you want, man. There there's like a real sense of like, this is serious. Like this is real like work on this. This means something right. Oh yeah.

And but then it's also mixed in with it's silly. Like he's you know, it's Joe, he's fucking crazy. Right. So it's like this weird mixture of a tactic or technique. But to me, it was just like, you know, I was like on a, I was on a stage and a weird dark temple telling like jokes that in retrospect, maybe they weren't that great. Maybe they were, I don't know. And one of the fucking lead warlocks at the temple is like, come, let me show you something. And then like, and then suddenly you find yourself in the preposterous situation of becoming an apprentice to a fucking magician.

And then the next thing you know, because of that apprenticeship in one way or another, you know, your life like altars, you know, in a really beautiful way. No doubt about it. There are many, many multiple ways working with Joe led me to, you know, really not just work, not just that stuff, but life, really, because that to look back and to think of him asking me what are my hobbies, what do I like to do to get away from comedy and I didn't even have an answer, I was so just one tract and one focus that I didn't have anything to even talk about on stage. I had no, I mean, it was ridiculous. I was doing nothing other than writing whatever I read in the newspaper. You know, I would write jokes about it, literally, like it was so silly. You know, so it's a full program. You know what I mean? You see a guy like that. That's an amazing father, an amazing husband, an amazing hunter. He kills his own food, brings it back, eats feeds, provides for his family with that unbelievable mentor to comedians and unbelievable comedian, host, podcaster, right. After we've seen that news radio, it's like you forget fear factor host, like it's like crazy. So it's, it just spreads throughout everything and then you find out about, you know, hobbies and cool things to do and things to get better at to make your life better. And then it's almost, it's almost like meditating so that you could take a break and your brain stronger when you get back to comedy, if that makes sense.

Well, it's like what I love is like there's patterns that appear in society, right? And some of the patterns become commercialized. So like, so we see the pattern of like student teacher relationships, and it gets commercialized through like universities, you know, so there's a commercialized version of this pattern that has existed way before there were universities, right, which is like, you know, like a teacher, for whatever reason decides, oh, I'm going to teach this person something, right, and they have some weird way of picking out the person and deciding you're the one I'm going to teach now. And, you know, you see in a bunch of different things like, well, to me, what's cool about Joe, man, I don't mean to keep tooting the fucking Joe Rogan horn, I don't sound like a goddamn slavish sycophant, but truly, I mean, it's like, if I'm like, there's no way I'm going to be able to like, look at like, much of like the a lot of a lot of what I've got, I owe to my teachers, you know, and that's just fine to say, I don't think there's anything embarrassing about that at all, like we should say that, you know, but what's really fucking funny is with Joe is that, you know, he has sort of demonstrated a system of teaching that is weirdly similar to the more traditional forms of teaching you get in Buddhism. And it's really, really fascinating to me to see those two things. So in the way that like, the comedy store doesn't know it's a temple. Yeah, but it is Rogan, maybe he doesn't completely understand that he's accidentally fallen into the place of being some kind of, you know, mystical teacher, which he is, and he'd probably cringe and like roll his eyes at me saying that I don't know. But like, I love that shit. And also simultaneously, he's just like a normal dude, right? In the same way like the person who's teaching me this shit, normal guy, you know, yet I love the fact that these patterns appear. And to me, what I love about it, especially is that it teaches me to open my eyes wider, because sometimes the thing that you're looking for is at standing right next to the thing you're actually looking for. You know what I mean? But because you've constructed in your mind a way this thing must look, you can't see it. It's invisible to you, which is fucking hilarious.

Yeah. Yeah. That's some wild stuff. You're absolutely right. It's pretty trippy, man. I mean, it's just an interpretation of it, whatever. It's not like real or not real. But I do know that like in any other goddamn thing, there's apprentices and you learn something and then, you know, that's the way it is. Yeah. And he gets, and I know for a fact that he gets inspired from the reverse, you know what I mean? He sees... Did he come into your room at night and punch the shit out of you like at 1 a.m.? No, no, he never did that. Did you did that to you? Oh, yeah, man. God damn it. What about the fucking improv thing? What? You're supposed to, yes and, god damn it.

I forgot about comedy. Me too. It's easy for me to forget. Yeah. No, yeah, he would. He would beat me up. No, it's too late. It's too late. Yeah, man. You know, I am really interested in something that I wanted to talk to you about, which is, and maybe it's shifting, I don't know. And I haven't been out in the clubs or in the road for a while now, man, but do the audiences seem different to you at all? Is there a sense of like, you know, some kind of like shift in like the moods of audiences or like a... I know like when I run into people on the street or talk to people, everybody seems like a little anxious right now.

They feel, they seem a little kind of like nervous or something. I've been doing a lot of shows lately and a lot of those shows are on the road, like I said, and yes, there is. And one thing that I've noticed is people that know what they're into, what they've signed up for are going to really have fun. And the people that don't know exactly what they're going to are, it's a riskier business. And what I mean by that is the people that, for example, know that they've come out to see me, that know me from my podcast or whatever, they know like, ooh, this is exciting. We're going to get to laugh about some crazy stuff tonight. Perhaps there's a, you know, a joke about mass shootings or something like that,

that has twists and things that we won't see coming, but good solid subject matter that we can't hear on a comedy channel right now. Right. But with that sometimes comes, you know, for example, you know, I did this, those Toronto shows were at a festival. And part of a festival is that deal specifically was they could just add shows whenever they wanted and they would just fill them up with people that already had passes that didn't necessarily know the show that they were going to. Right. And those shows, uh, groans, you know, like, like I would look out in the audience and sort of feel a little bit of hatred at times because I sometimes like to talk about things that push and pull people away that most people can't talk about.

I don't know what I can say without really giving everything away. Right. But the point is. You do really offensive comedy. A lot of your jokes are like, as far away from like what you would call politically correct or anything that you could, like you do jokes on stage that if you were on a show or if you had some kind of like big show, it would get cancelled. You might get fired. Yes, exactly that.

And so, for example, like in Toronto, I had this, I ended up getting tagged in this thing and I click on it and it was a ridiculous write up, a review of one of my shows from some critic that, you know, it's hilarious, calls me a misogynist and, you know, an egomaniac and this and that because he doesn't realize why the thing I said earlier was funny, top young rising comedian in the world because it makes it funny or when I make fun of myself later and it's just a crazy thing to say at the top of a set anyway, right? But he doesn't, you know what I mean? So they're writing like egomaniac bragging from the top of a set even though I couldn't find anywhere on Google where it even says he's the top young rising comedian in the world. Look through five pages, couldn't find it. It goes on to his misogynistic rant about how, why there isn't a woman president and why women this and this about Amy Schumer.

You know what I mean? Like just giving stuff away, writing this scathing review that he thinks is, you know, gold because he thinks I'm going to complain about it and put it out there on social media and get his, you know, little blog hits. No, it's impossible to find. Okay. Yeah. But, you know, my point is, is that, you know, those people just can't wait. They just can't wait to hate something to find someone they think they're police officers and it's like, ooh, I got a case boss. Look at this.

Look at this report that I have, you know, it's, there's that out there is there's some people that are looking for the escape of the times, which are different, right? Some people looking to be the police officers for the times of what's happening. And it goes both ways, you know, that the break is more exciting for the people that paid for it, that really know it, that know that they want that escape for an hour and 20 minutes or whatever. And it's the hour 20. It's that much more of a, of a disgusting experience for someone that wants to, you know, go watch Nanette or something like that. You know, it's like those types of like non-comedy comedy thing or whatever the hell's happening. I don't even get it. I can't even stare directly at it when I hear about it.

Like, I don't want to hear about it. It's just a new, it's like one of the very, it's like, you know, comedy is a tree and the tree grows branches and some of the branches go to war with the other branches. And it's always been like that, you know, it's just a new branch growing on the tree. And it's like, you know, man, the thing of like, I guess like, I've watched it now go through so many different iterations and I've watched the inevitable simultaneous adulation for some new branch mixed in with the simultaneous, not just negation, because one of the very funny things about a comedian comedians in general is we're all hyperbolic. So if we dislike something, we, a better way to put it would be when I was a talent coordinator, comedians, they don't just cancel their set. Like if a comedian's calling to cancel the set, they don't say, you know, I just don't feel good right now. I'm feeling bad and I don't feel funny and I don't want to come in.

Or I just broke up with my girlfriend or I'm too fucking high and I'm paranoid right now. They don't say that they call them there. They were just like, like their, their parents were in like a plane crash. They lie and they lie in the dumbest, most obvious way. And they don't realize like when I was the talent coordinator, I was always hearing cancellations and they also have created because comedians kind of add this like innately narcissistic bend in their personality. So in their mind, canceling is like, oh shit, they just like shot a fucking hole in the wing of a plane. Right. You know what I mean?

Like the whole show is going to go up in flames without them. They don't realize that it's just like, okay. That everything bumps up. Yeah. I'll call someone else. Yeah. So they have to like make a big deal out of it. And then they're overtly apologetic because most of them have been, many of them have gone through various traumas as children.

A lot of them have been physically abused, sexually abused, psychologically abused. Generally there's some parental figure who had a either the effect of abandoning and neglecting them or like dominating them. So any type of authority to figure to them, they project that. So you end up with like these wonderful artists who have generally quite often deep, deep, deep trauma projecting that onto you just because they can't make it at 10 fucking 15. Right. And it's the sweetest, funniest shit ever. It was actually one of my favorite things. Comedians are hyperbolic.

They don't, many of them have no problem lying their fucking asses off. And especially when it comes to anything that could potentially keep them away from their, their beloved comedy. So they're going to lie as a survival tactic. Right. Right. So anytime a new branch of the comedy tree pops up, there is either the group of comedians that is pro that branch of the tree. And so for them, that branch of the tree is like, Oh my God, it's the flowering of the new spring. Right.

And then on the other side, it's like, it's the end. This is destroying comedy forever. But you'll never just see like, it's very rare to see like, Oh, it's just another form of comedy. Right. I don't understand it. Not necessarily what I would want to go see, but it seems like lots of people love it. You know what I mean? That's what that is.

Yeah. That's what it is. And but I, you know, so, yeah, that, you know, the, the, I think that it's not just like the emergence of this, what I've heard is Baptist liberals. Have you heard this term before? No. So it's like something is creeped in to political idealists. That seems to be more than just like, like, you know, basic political stuff. Like, you know, what are we going to do about the homeless and fucking LA man?

What's the plan there? What are we going to do about the fact that 1% of the population has all the money? What are we going to do about the fuck? The fact that there's clearly like inequality happening that is most certainly based on how complex it or not. You are like, what are we going to do about that shit? It's real. If you think it's not real, come on, it's fucking real.

It's real. Right. All these are true authentic problem yet somehow mixing in with this is this new moralistic condescending bend to it, which is like really sucks because what's ending up happening is like the fucking signal, which is very real, which is like, man, I think we are connected enough right now where we could really solve some major problems in society in a way that that doesn't have to like wreck somebody who's wealthy or likes take from them or whatever and simultaneously maybe like, you know, I bet we could figure out a way to do this shit

if we all work together. Right. Now what's happening is because of that weird moralistic bend to the message of fuck, we need to fix some of this stuff. You dick. Do you not see? Right. Tony Hinchcliff, it's time for you to fucking listen, man.

Yeah. It's time for you to listen. That thing. Right. Shit, man. I do want to listen. Yeah. And I do want to be refined in my blind spots that have inadvertently caused any kind of

violence or harm in the world. But man, if you're going to fucking clap in my face while correcting me, I'm not listening to you anymore. And that's what's happening is too many faces are being clapped in. Yeah. You know, and that's like, you know, distorting reality in a pretty dark way. If you ask me, but I don't know, you know, because I'm a, I have selfish tendencies. My main concern is I don't want the goddamn sweet audiences to be soiled by some something,

you know, or like, I don't, I always just thought it was like the, you know, the stage was a place to be funny or to bomb. And like, you're allowed to say whatever the fuck you want up there. Yeah. That's what I thought. That's how I was taught. That's what Mitzi was all about. Right.

And, and, but that didn't mean that like there wasn't some consequence. Yeah. If you saw you up there and didn't like you and found you to be too crass or disgusting or misogynistic or whatever, she would stop giving you spots. Yeah. And it would suck. Yeah. But there wasn't so much the potential for a beaker blowing up in your face to then

lead to like deep, deep, deep consequences for you reverberating out through time. You know? Yeah. I mean, I've no com, I'm sorry, I'm going on a long rant here. I've no comedians for a long fucking time, man. And I'll tell you, true, truly, some of them are really, really, really, really, really sad, hurt, angry, manipulative people. Some of them, and some of them go temporarily crazy because they get, you know, it's like,

you know, this, it reminds me of what would happen if like you like through a machine gun to a chimpanzee or something when they get success. It's like they're just traumatized kids. Yeah. And suddenly they like get all this fucking stuff. And so they go, that's what Mitzi said to me once is everybody goes crazy. Because like they lose their minds for a second. Yeah.

No, I mean, and in that state of consciousness, they make decisions that are like irrational or ridiculous or whatever. But man, I have yet to meet like an actual fucking evil comedian. You know, I've yet to meet somebody who's like on stage spewing hate, who's on stage, you know, like intentionally like doing some weird, whatever is being projected upon them, like some intentional like anything that's like really meant to like hurt some group or some gender or anything like that, mostly what you're looking at up there is a kid at a slumber party who's had a lot of fucking Kool-Aid and it's going to say the worst thing

you could think of in the moment because he wants to simultaneously offend and entertain friends or her friends. And that happens a lot, you know, but you know, anyway, so for me, you know, I'm always going to land on like team comedian, give him a fucking break. Like they're just trying shit out. Yeah. These people aren't throwing darts of like they're not up there reciting mind comp. Right.

You know what I mean? They're not up there with the intention of like traumatizing a cancer survivor. You know, they're not up there with the intention of like crushing someone who's gone through some traumatic event. They're just in love with a style of art that sometimes involves saying shit that doesn't necessarily make them seem like they're on the cutting edge of sophisticated articulation of reality. You know what I mean?

Yeah. That's all. It's like they're just trying some shit out. So to me, I don't know. I just worry over that because in the way that I was given the right to go on stage and do the most preposterous, ridiculous, horrific, sometimes things. And I regret shit I've set up there, man. I truly do when I look back.

I regret it, man. I've said shit on stage that like sucks with 0000 like thought about what, you know, I remember like, I'm sorry, I'm going on way too long. Forgive me, Tony. You're bringing it out. No, it's great. No, I love it. Dude, as someone who is literally a fucking cancer survivor, who has had radiation therapy

and also as somebody who like you and like many comedians went through what I don't like saying it, but like, but we went, we had some rough childhoods, you know? Yeah. Yeah. When I am in the audience and I see a comedian do a joke about cancer flippantly, who hasn't had cancer and it does a flipping cancer joke. I, you know, I watch my mom die of cancer. Yeah.

You know, I do not like to watch commercials about cancer. Right. I don't like talking about cancer. I don't like to be reminded of cancer. So when I see a fucking comedian do a well constructed, mathematically perfect and admit the audience hilarious cancer joke, it makes me feel bad, man. It reminds me of sitting in front of Dr. Primal Desai and hearing that I was going to get one of my balls chopped off.

Yeah. That being said. I would never in a million fucking years ever want a comedian to not say that joke on stage because they knew that I was a cancer survivor. Ever. Right. Ever. Right.

I would rather just endure it and get triggered in the sense that I'm going to remember that sucked. I got my ball chopped off. I have one ball. When I get it cold, sometimes I wonder if I got fucking cancer. Right. But God damn it, man. The idea that my trauma should seep out into someone's art form and then make them not explore

whatever the fuck they wanted to in an arena that's supposed to be based on pure autonomy and freedom. Well, that I find that mortifying. Yeah. You know, so that's my take on it. You know, but that being said, when I get on stage now, I'm a little more sensitive. You know, I do think about it a little bit more, you know, before I before I say a thing, I just want to make sure if I'm going to say the thing, it's like funny or I've really

thought it through and it's not aggressive or based on some anger inside of me that's coming up. I don't know. Maybe that's weak. No, I agree with you 100%. I don't really have anything that that's like that to me. Like I don't have anything that's sort of a, I guess one thing I could relate it to is like, I guess, like being in love, like I love my wife so much and, you know, it's a fairly

newer relationship. We've known each other for like just over a year and, you know, it's one of those things to where like when I hear, you know, a hacky reference to someone being like, you know, married, someone saved me. Yeah. Like it's like, you know, it gives you a little like, you don't understand love. Right. Yeah, exactly.

And, you know, but it's, it's, yeah, you know, I mean, they should still do whatever they want. But it's like, if you're going, yeah, if you're going to take that path of like talking about something, you got to really, you know, make it, make it, make it like you said, like mathematical and brilliant and really take the time to have, you know, surprise us and don't let us see it coming. You know what I mean? And disguise that punchline.

And you know what I mean? Like everything's got to be, it's got to be beautiful. Or slam into the cruel, hard wall of bombing your fucking ass off because you said some bullshit. You didn't understand because you're a comedian and comedians are fools. And fools know, know how to do something really well and I'm an expert at it. I can read seven sentences of any given thing and act like I am an expert at that thing. And I can say shit that I haven't thought out at all in a way that makes it sound as

though I truly, truly believe it. And I believe it when I'm saying it. But in retrospect, I'll look back and be like, you didn't know what the fuck you were talking about. But I've always assumed, you know, well, I mean, people have got to know, I don't know. Certainly I don't know. You know, so like it's really funny to me, a reviewer sees a comedian and the comedian gets on stage and says an audacious, ridiculous, obnoxious and absolutely hilarious thing,

you know, to the audience, you know, it's like a funny, it's like pretty much if you were going to like try to win over an audience, that's gonna, that's like a risk. It's just a risk. Maybe they'll believe you, maybe they won't, but it's certainly like just ridiculous. You're a comedian. That's what you do. You say ridiculous shit. Yeah.

And so for then a reviewer to hear you say that, yeah, and then act as though you were like reporting some historic fact and then go look it up shows to me what maybe is one of the problems, which is like people are mistaking comedians for professors. Yeah. Yeah. It's crazy. They're, they're confusing comedians as a, as a, as anything other than just comedians. And I think that maybe because of podcasting, perhaps like it's like because professional

specialists on things have podcasts and comedians have podcasts. Maybe they think, you know, there's like these weird little crossovers here and there that make me go like, how could they possibly think that we are doing anything other than making a joke? We're fools, man. Yeah. And, and also here's like the other piece of it. Okay.

Here's the other fucking piece of it, which is that because we're fools to varying degrees, many of us would love for people to think we are fucking professors. It's like, if you, if you give a comedian, you know, this is a trickster figure. And if you give them your power, if you give the power over to them, it's for me, it's a blast, but it's also terrifying. You're giving a fucking monkey a machine gun. If you want to give them your power, that's a comedian. So if you want to give them the power of being suddenly this thing or that thing, or you

want to pretend, if you get around a, you know, certain comedians and you start projecting onto them some kind of like reverence, they're going to take that reverence and they like it and they are going to distort it. And then they're going to start bending it right in front of you and doing weird shit that you don't even know they're doing. They're going to just start like doing weird things just because that's what they do. They distort reality. You gave them some power by putting them on a pedestal and because you've put a fool

slash mystic thing on a pedestal, it's going to do what any fool slash mystic reality distorting thing should do on a pedestal that you put them on, which is start in varying degrees and varying ways and many different flavors, making fun of the fucking fact that you were crazy enough to put a goddamn comedian on a fucking pedestal. Are you out of your mind? This person didn't study it fucking Princeton and political science. This person has not like gone to seminary school. This person is not like spent 20 years in the Amazon rainforest studying the arts of

being a fucking shaman. This person is a fool. Literally. That's their job. And they're going to distort reality because that's what they do. They're just going to distort reality. But if you think behind that distortion, there's like a malevolent danger that could creep into society, then they're going to become that malevolent danger right in front of you

because that's what they do. If they sense that, oh, you think I'm malevolent? Ooh, maybe I'll try ad-harm facade. Let me be malevolent around you for a little while. Okay, now I'm diabolical, right? Now they're diabolical. I'm like, holy shit, I was right. Well, they're a fucking satanist or something.

My God, they're a diabolical satanist. It's like getting in front of a funhouse mirror and then becoming offended because the funhouse mirror is making you look fat. You fucking fat shaming mirror. What the fuck's wrong with you? It's a distortion field. You decided to get in front of it and now you're mad at it. You paid for it, you paid the entrance fee to get in front of it.

They pay to go to the funhouse and then they get mad at it, what the mirror makes them look like. Yes. Yeah. It's like, what the fuck? And then they go and they complain about it publicly. I paid to go to this funhouse and this is what the mirror did to me. Yeah, a review.

Funhouse, more like not funhouse, that's the headline. More like fucking like, more like Noxie house. Right, yeah, exactly. It's got to be extreme. Yeah. I went to this funhouse, it wasn't really a fun, all the mirrors in this funhouse were designed to amplify my body dysmorphia that comes from a horrific thing that happened to me when I was nine years old and I think the funhouses need to have more sensitivity

to the fact that people with body dysmorphia might be coming through and therefore they need to make sure that all their mirrors accurately reflect a human being and if they don't accurately reflect it, then there needs to be limits on how fat they make us look. And the in the in the rolly treadmill thing was too fast and I couldn't keep up. Yeah, that, yeah, and I got scared by a clown. Yeah. It's like clowns are meant to juggle. They're not meant to be scared.

It's like, this is like, this is unfortunately just a very ancient reality, which is there are always going to be in society smart asses of noxious people, people who not only don't care that they're going to offend you, but if they tried to stop themselves from doing this thing, they would want to put a gun in their mouth because that's just how they are. They can't stop it. They're always going to be like that for better or for worse. There's it's just going to be the way they are. And you know, I've always loved that about them.

And I've always, it's been such a joy to be around it. You've roasted me before and said, really, once you said, I can't remember what it was. You're making fun of some dumb jacket I was wearing. You're being serious. It was great. Oh, it was wonderful. It's a moment behind the comedy store. You just casually walked by and like perfectly insulted a jacket I was wearing, and it was

true. It was fucking embarrassing. You know, the jacket I was wearing was dumb. It deserved an insult, right? Yeah. But you did it in this loving, sweet, hilarious, yet simultaneous, like cutting way. Yeah. And I've always felt when a comedian does that to me, a real sense of like being flattered

that they think that I've been, you know, they're doing that to me. I've never felt like, man, they're really hurting me. There really is a thing that I think those people that get offended really don't think about is the fact that we gave them that opportunity in the first place. We gave them the ball to run with it, not for our own satisfaction, but for theirs. You know, Jeff Ross, the roastmaster general, right? He's on everything. They're doing historical roasts on Netflix, the roast battle on Comedy Central, the most

watched program of the year annually in all of comedy is the Comedy Central roast. People like watching people get made fun of. And his whole mentality is we only roast the ones we love. And it's the backbone to everything. Like the people that make fun of people that they hate, it doesn't make sense. It's a bad energy. You're not getting anything out of that. It's torturing you.

Perhaps more than it ever tortures them because they may never see it or find out about it or hear it or listen to it. They might not ever let it affect them, but you spent this time and the production and all of this to make fun of this thing and to work on it, work on it to put that energy towards it. And I guess my point is like people never really look at things that way. They don't ever look at it like how you just mentioned looking at it and it doesn't have to be a professional comedian and it doesn't have to be, you know, maybe it's your stepdad

who you think hates you. You know what I mean? Maybe it's him. He's trying to bond with you by saying, God, that phone, man, if that phone, if you got paid for being on that phone, you'd be rich. It's like, shut up stepdad, you know what I mean? Like old man, but instead it's like that's him trying to connect, trying to show love. And sure, it might seem like he's picking on you, but again, you know, I guess it goes

back to like that's love. Well, it's like, we got to, we just have to get a little better at listening for the signal, man, because like sometimes for sure someone, like I have been in the presence of truly abusive people who are actively trying to hurt me on purpose because they wanted to have some power over me. That's real and it's fucked up and it happens all the time and it's the worst thing to be in the presence of, especially if you're a kid, but at any time in your life, it's really, really bad.

Right? And you know it, you know it, man. You know when that's happening, but thank Christ most of the time when people are like doing this thing or that thing, that sound, that's sarcastic or whatever, maybe they're being lazy, maybe you don't want to deal with it. It's okay, but quite often behind that is somebody who wants you to like them. Oh God, yeah. They just want you to like them.

Oh, desperately. Yes, that's the big secret. So desperate. That's the big secret. And it's like, so for me, it's like, you know, I'm not saying give comedians a fucking break because if you start giving comedians a break, they're not going to be as funny because they're whole, they're whole, what they, they're learning how to be funny based on your rejection of what's authentically not funny and what's authentically funny.

But man, come on, let's like at least let them fucking blow themselves up in the laboratory that night. And maybe, maybe that doesn't have to follow them out of the fucking lap. Trust me, they feel bad. They're driving home and they are thinking about some of them are actually really thinking about like, you know what, maybe, maybe tonight's going to be the night where I just say goodbye to existence itself is bombing fucking hurts, right? Yeah.

And like, but, but man, I don't know. I just love comedians. You know, I love them all shapes, colors, sizes. I love them. Not all. I'm actually son of a fuck. Yeah. Yeah.

But in general, I just want them to like, you know, to me, there's something that, that I hope passes, which is that I hope that we get to a point where at least like where maybe comedians get a lesson and like, all right, maybe I don't need to necessarily get up there and start bugling some shit out there just because it's the very worst thing to say, right? Maybe like, you know, get to that point, but I do hope we get to the point where audiences become a little more forgiving of these fools who, you know, just they're fools. That's all.

Just maybe don't take them so seriously, you know? It's crazy because like you watch the first ever Saturday Night Live or you watch old Johnny Carson's and things like that. And there's a considerable amount more edge and risk taking back then a large, a very large amount. You watch, you know, Archie Bunker or whatever, and then you compare all the stuff that you're seeing to today and how cleansed and pure and soft everything is. And you realize maybe this is all going to come back around.

Maybe it's like a stock market. And right now, you know, there's a downturn in edge and self-deprecation and touchy subjects. But I truly believe, and again, you know, I see it on the road. It's like people really need that. They really do. That's their escape. Some people need that type of hard humor or, you know, I hate the word edgy, but it's like compelling humor in order for them to truly laugh and to get some joy.

And so those people that are offended easily shouldn't try to ruin it for the people that aren't. That's right, brother. It's like, let's say someone made a zoo, except it wasn't a zoo for animals. It was a zoo for lunatics, right? And like, I don't know, it's so unethical to even think about it. But if I go and pay money to go to a zoo for fucking lunatics and I realize that the people are actually not lunatics, they're pretending to be lunatics, I'm going to want my money

back. Right. And if I like him looking into a fucking lunatics, and again, I don't, I would never want this to happen. I'm sorry for the lunatics who are listening. I'm a lunatic too, so I'm allowed to fucking talk about it. But like, if one of the fucking lunatics starts throwing shit at the fucking wall or like writes fuck you and his own shit to me, I'm not going to like write a letter to the lunatics

and be like, man, one of your fucking lunatics was really acting a little over the top. You know, that's all. But I had one happen in Chicago. I got a call from my manager the other day and they have comment cards at Zany's in Chicago so that you could fill out the comment card, you know, whatever you want. And I got a call on Monday from my manager and he goes, you know, we cover a bunch of things for like five or 10 minutes or whatever. And he goes, just to let you know, we got a, we got a report out of a, out of Chicago,

you know, an audience member, none too pleased. And I go, you've got to be kidding me. You talking about one of the comment cards? He's like, that's exactly what I'm talking about. And I go, the lady, first show Saturday, second row with her mom. He goes, you said you were going to fuck her mother. And I go, I know, and I'm freaking out, by the way, I'm passionate. He goes, don't, don't, don't freak out at me now, Tony.

I go, no, no, I'm not freaking out at you. I'm freaking out about the time that we live in. I knew six shows, six shows, Jake, all of them packed. How did I know who, how do I know who, when the lights are on me and I'm not supposed to. Yeah, they're the ones right in the report. So how do I know which one? How did I tell you which one? Cause I know which one because in the thing that I was making fun of her about the thing

that started this and the reason why I told her I was going to fuck her elderly mother, who was sitting next to her and laughing. It was because she wasn't having any fun. I kept noticing from the very first minute all the way through and I didn't acknowledge it until maybe, I don't know, 25, 30 minutes into my set, I go, you're just miserable tonight. Huh? There's just something about me. You just don't like any of this.

Yeah. Cause I've covered some wholesome subjects. You didn't like that. I've covered some, you know, darker things. You definitely didn't like that. I haven't seen you smile this entire time. Meanwhile, this is your mom, I'm guessing, and the mom's, the mom gave me an indication. Meanwhile, this lady's just looking at me at the stone cold eyes of, you know what I

mean? Like just like someone that hates you and, uh, and you know, somehow it ends up getting all the way to me making fun of her for not having any fun, going to a comedy club and not enjoying yourself whatsoever. And I go, look at your mom, this elderly woman next to you is having so much fun. Right. Like she's having a blast. She's laughing at me making fun of you, her daughter right now in front of a bunch of

strangers and you could pretend like you're, like none of this is good, but the people all around you are laughing at you right now. All of these people, do you hear them roaring? I mean, at this point, it's just pure momentum. Right. Cause, and they don't even see her cause it's Zaini's, it's a long black box, right? So she's in the front. They don't even need to see her.

All they know is that I know that she doesn't seem to be enjoying herself. Right. And she took it to that level to where after all that and after all this, she wrote a thing. She wrote a thing. This comedian said that he was going to have sex with my mother. He badgered me publicly for not enjoying myself. Well, I have a right to not enjoy myself.

If I don't want to enjoy myself, like it's like after all that, after all of it and after her elderly mom, I'm talking elderly, I'm talking 80s, 70s, 80 late 70s, 80s. She was loving it. This old lady, like how can you not enjoy yourself if for no other reason, your 80 year old mother is sitting next to you laughing hysterically. If only for that, then how can you not be enjoying yourself? Man, it's hard to exist as a human being on this planet, man. It's all like, it's like being a human stuff for people and like, it's just, I think what

could have happened accidentally is that people kind of got an idea about what comedy clubs are like, which isn't traditionally what they were are, you know. And also, though, we came out of a place where we were taught a certain idea about what it is and within the place we came out of is produced like Sam Kenneson, you know, produced a specific type of like an ethic that I think if you're lazy, you can excuse really shitty, angry, authentically crappy comedy is some kind of like outlaw comedy when it's not. You're just being lazy and you're, and I've seen that happen at the comedy store where people say what I consider to be one of the most like depressing things to hear a comedian

say is when they go, come on, I know you're not laughing because you're afraid to laugh. It's like, that's never happened. I mean, never like in firing squad situations, if a laugh is going to come out of you, you're going to laugh, man. No one at a comedy club is like, whoa, I better not laugh. I don't want people to think I think this is funny. It's because your jokes suck. Yeah.

They don't even have time to think about that. Yeah. Yeah. So I get it, man. It's like there is like a real potential if you go to a comedy show that some motherfucker is going to get up there and edge Lord out and do something that's really violent or repulsive, but still it's like shit, man, I think that's just kind of the risk of going to these shows.

Like I would much rather risk sitting there and someone look at me and be like, oh, look you one fucking ball was I like ball chopped I was like, mom fucking died. Fuck it. Fuck your mom died. Fuck it. You got what? Fuck it. Try to do like all the things they could say.

The stupid lazy shit. Right. I would much rather risk that moment than domesticate comedy. So now when I go to comedy shows, like everybody's kind of like, you know, I don't, if I go to a zoo, man, I want to see a fucking lion. Yeah. Right. So like, you know, put in like, like to make their fangs go away or you know what I mean?

It's just so anyway, I don't know. We have to really be care. I think it's a good time for people to really think about the consequence of demanding a kind of ethical or I don't know what you would call it, demanding some form of like nuanced politically sensitive comedy from people who, in my experience, in my experience are out of their minds and in the best way possible and you've like really gone through a lot of shit. Yeah.

And to suddenly expect them to like, oh no, anyway, I don't want to keep, we're repeating the same thing over and over again. Same thing is, I'm really glad to see you succeed. Thank you. And it's a, it's a, it's a wonderful thing to watch. And I think you're probably at the very beginning of it. Your podcast, your live podcast. I remember like, only because, you know, I'm a recluse, I don't go out much these days.

And I remember like, you invited me to do your podcast and I was thinking about Tony from, in front of the comedy store. Yeah. The door guy. And I was thinking, all right, it's a belly room podcast, it'll be fun, you know, a nice little intimate belly room podcast. I had not done any research at all and followed you or anyone for that matter. And I got to the comedy store and I'm like, where is Tony's podcast?

I thought it was in the belly room. Oh, it's in the main room. And then I remember like, I'm there with, what was his name? What's his name? That's super. He's super famous. He's a wrestler. He's a.

David Arquette. Yeah. Fucking backstage with David Arquette. Yeah. Your show's sold out. Yeah. I'm now, I've gone from being like, oh, it'll be a nice, like casual belly room show to like shitting bricks realizing like I'm about to get in front of this like, like a sold

out fucking main room with David Arquette for your hyper successful podcast. And it was fun. Yeah. Thank you. Fucking great at it, man. It was such a, it's so cool for me. I know I'm like, I've know I've like always been, I've always been like a cheese ball with you because, you know, my religion is cheesy as this sounds as I'm calling myself

cheesy double cheese, you know, my religion really is comedy. I really believe in it. I believe in figuring out a way to make people laugh just to forget about their problems for a little bit. I think that's enough of a religion to get by, you know, I went through a Catholic school growing up and the teachers were always mean and very evil towards me. So my viewpoints on religion have always been really beat up and messed up from a young age.

So I have always looked at comedy as this thing. So to get to have that type of bonding experience with you, because I was aware of what was happening too. I'm like, wow, this is like Duncan and I are going to get to actually do something together. And like, you know, I mean, just, I really needed you there 11 years ago. I needed that little spark of inspiration. I needed someone to let me know that, like, it is still a cool place. There are cool people that hang around the comedy store.

It's not just angry old bitter door guys and comedians that are just doing the same 15 minutes over and over again. People in pajamas climbing into like cubby holes of the building, which happens sometimes. I don't know. That happened to me once and I'm sorry to disrupt this wonderful thing you're saying, but once I watched a man in pajamas because of me, because I told him there are ghosts in the basement, a man in pajamas like skittered into this hole that used to be able to open up by the original room.

That little hallway. Yeah. I remember that. And I had to like get him out of there because I like, like in like at the time the manager walked by and I had to shut the door on the guy in there because I didn't want the manager to know that I like lure accidentally Lord a dude in pajamas into the fucking basement. Anyway, keep going, man. I'm very sorry to cut you off.

No, no, that was pretty much it, you know, and it's one of those things to wear to get the to show you and thank you because you were you were a real, a real beacon of hope and everything from me. I mean, seriously, seriously, one of the true, true original things. I really needed that at that time in my life and you were there and you I give you a lot of the credit for my happiness and for this cool life and for everything that I've sort of done around me. Thank you so much, man.

And I really appreciate that. And I kind of need a little work right now. So if you need anyone to open well, you were supposed to say when I did that, it's like, actually, man, I'm sorry, it's already booked. You're going to have to ask Jeremiah if he wants to take a weekend off. Where can people find you? TonyHinchCliff.com. I got a lot of we're touring both the live podcast and my stand up doing crazy double

shows all throughout Texas. San Francisco tomorrow night. Still a few tickets left for the late show. We're doing two kill Tonys tomorrow night. Eight hundred people at Cobb's Comedy Club. Awesome. Yeah. And a lot of fun dates coming up everywhere.

Some traveling all around Boston, Providence, all of it, Swansea, everywhere, Connecticut, Baltimore, Austin, Houston, San Antonio, just name all the fucking four words, right? He's doing every state Dallas, New Year's Eve, Dallas, New Year's Eve. Catch him live. And thank you so much for spending some time with me. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Thank you. That was the great Tony Hinchcliff. Everybody go to TonyHinchcliff.com. You can find everything you need to connect with Montseol Hinchcliff. Much thanks to Charlotte's Web for sponsoring this episode of the DTFH. And if you like this podcast, why not subscribe? Give us a nice rating on iTunes.

And I'll see you soon. Hare Krishna. You can get Dirty Angel anywhere you get your music. Ghost Town, Sturdy Angel out now. New album and tour date coming this summer.