Duncan Trussell Family Hour - 441: Chris Gethard

Episode Date: May 29, 2021

Chris Gethard, brilliant comedian and author, joins the DTFH! Check out Chris' new comedy special, Half My Life, premiering on Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, Spectrum, YouTube, Dish, Vimeo and more starting June 1st! You can also hear more of Chris on his podcasts: New Jersey is the World and Beautiful/Anonymous. Original music by Aaron Michael Goldberg. This episode is brought to you by: BLUECHEW - Use offer code: DUNCAN at checkout and get your first shipment FREE with just $5 shipping. Purple - Visit Purple.com/Duncan10 and use promo code DUNCAN10 for $200 Off any mattress order of $1500 or more! MeUndies - Visit MeUndies.com/Duncan for 15% Off your first order + FREE Shipping!

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Boner pill commercial, but we're back. Hello. How are you doing out there, oh, perfect being? I know what you're thinking, I'm not perfect. I'm fucked up in some way, probably. Maybe you got some nice secret guilt eating you alive. Specters of the past, wrathful spirits chewing on your amygdala every day, like it

was some delicious fairground hot dog. If this isn't possession, I don't know what is. I don't mean literal possession, though. It wouldn't surprise me if there was some kind of hyper technological futuristic scaning mechanism that could show what dark spirits had attached themselves to your aura. I'm going to have a few.

When I was a kid, I tried to jerk off with a Ouija board. It's a long story, maybe for a different podcast. Why wouldn't I have spirits? Why wouldn't any of us have spirits if you've never gotten stoned and gone to a graveyard? I actually was friends with somebody who ran a graveyard. And one of the big problems of running a cemetery just underneath the screams of the peacocks

is you will have to goffs humping on all your graves at night. You've got to send somebody through there every 30 minutes just to shake the goffs off the graves because they're all on the graves, sucking dicks and fucking and getting cum splattered all over the tombs. You've got to send someone into the morning with Windex and paper towels to wipe all the gothges off your graves.

But at some point, you probably got a spirit in you. You probably got some kind of demon in you. Just some creature, some weird psychic entity that likes to float around in your aura. I'm not talking about those things, though. Whenever I consider my demons, I imagine they're probably pretty cool not to pat myself on my astro back or anything like that.

But what are we going to do? Like kick out the demons? Is a tree going to kick out the birds living in it? Do you want your grass to kick out the worms? No. They can hang out in whatever weird psychic biosphere that you've produced by existing itself. I don't think the demons are the problem.

If you're one of those people who's really hard on themselves all the time, I would imagine that your demons are probably feeling bad for you. And I'm like, geez, you're wonderful. I love living inside of your chakras. It's wonderful in here. It's great.

I love eating your fear. Anyway, the point is, if you want to have some fun, if you really want to do something revolutionary, if you really want to stand in the face of the void and do something that is completely counter to most everything we've been indoctrinated by in the West, just allow yourself a minute, just a minute of imagining that you are perfect.

You know how I know you're perfect? Because I got kids now. And my kids are perfect. I love them. They're perfect. They're beautiful, perfect things. And you are one of them once. Yeah, you mutated.

You got old. Your hair is falling out, whatever. You're greasy now. But you are perfect in there. There's a perfect little beautiful, adorable thing that is perfect. That's what you actually are. That's what happens when you die.

That's where you go. That's where you already are. You're just like a beautiful, perfect, three-dimensional, temporal entity sticking its way out of the Garden of Eternity. And something about that creates a phase where you start thinking, I suck. I'm fucking horrible.

What are you talking about? Anyway, a minute. That's all you got to do. A minute. It's a game of make-believe. Just pretend with me for a minute that you're perfect. Just see what happens when the alarm systems that have been woven into your consciousness start going off.

Oh, God, we're doing some kind of weird spiritual thing. No, we're not perfect. What are you talking about? I've got sagging nips and my balls stink. I've got weird ears. My hair is the wrong color. If you see my bank account, do you realize my tax burden? All those alarms.

Just forget about them for a second and experience the divine reality that you are perfect, that none of that stuff can affect you at all. Just a minute. OK, we're back. You can start fucking hating yourself again. That wasn't even a minute.

But I just love doing that from time to time, just because it's wild how many crazy things I have inside of me that will instantaneously reject that experiment. Try it. Do it every once in a while. Fuck your cool friends who roll their eyes. Just do it every once in a while and see what happens. You might get a tiny little mini vision of paradise

and then get this strange, swooning sense of like, wait a minute, I almost remembered something. I don't know what that thing is that you almost remembered because I've forgotten it too. But that experiment is well worth doing these days as we enter in to the summer of fucking. By the way, I want to invite all of you to join my Patreon. It's patreon.com forward slash DTFH.

I am sad to say that I read. I'm sure you probably read about this. This is actually. Well, I have nothing to do with it, so it doesn't matter. But yeah, I guess like a few people have been getting attacked by like mid-sized animals now, not just little ones anymore. And my attorneys, again, they just want me to say,

obviously, that I have no way. I have no control over this. And there is no connection between people who subscribe to my Patreon and people who haven't been attacked by animals, formerly small animals, like chipmunks and squirrels. Now I'm hearing about like mid-sized animals. It's not it's no longer like these like annoying bites.

Maybe you got to get a rabies shot now. I guess like some people were attacked by hyenas and a monitor lizard apparently snapped off a few fingers from somebody. Look, I have nothing to do with it. It's not a threat. Obviously, it'd be crazy if I was saying, which I'm not, that like we do have a device here that like essentially sends out pulses that make animals aggressive to people

who aren't on my Patreon, that'd be nuts. But if I did have a thing like that and I suddenly realized that it was kind of like beginning to control bigger animals that could potentially like maim someone or even worse. And then I realized that I can't unplug it because it doesn't have a plug. It's just this glowing stone somebody gave me

when I was on a hike. That would be bad, actually. I'd probably be freaking out a lot about that because I really initially didn't want anyone to get more than like a little nip, like a cute little it's cute, like a chipmunk. And not that they told me this, but if they did tell, they did tell me like in whatever this is,

I'm not saying they actually said it, but it could be that they may have said, look, don't worry, yeah, it'll only do little animals. And then they went back into the woods and gave me this stone. I don't know how to turn it off is what I'm saying. It doesn't exist, but if it did exist, I don't know how to turn it off. And it seems to be affecting bigger animals now.

So please subscribe to my Patreon. It's patreon.com. You're going to get commercial free episodes of this podcast. You are not going to get a guarantee that you won't be attacked by these animals that are getting bigger. And I mean, how big could it even go is the thing? I should have, what if it, what if it starts affecting bears?

But it doesn't matter. That's all just silly, gobbly goop, gobbly goop, gobbly goop. If you go to patreon.com. You will be able to hang out with us two times a week. And by us, I mean your DTFH family. An assortment of some of the most brilliant, revolutionary spiritual geniuses that ever plotted upon the sweet land.

They're all waiting for you, your family, at patreon.com forward slash DTFH. All right, friends, with us here today is the brilliant Chris Gethard. Maybe you've seen his awesome show, the Chris Gethard show. Maybe you've read some of his great books. He's got a new comedy special coming out called Half My Life.

It's coming out on June 1st, on Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, Peacock, and many other streaming services. He also co-hosts his podcast, New Jersey is the World, and he is doing an upcoming standup tour along with a tour of his other podcast, which is fucking awesome, beautiful, anonymous. You gotta check it out.

He just has these sometimes very poignant conversations with anonymous people. He is a wonderful person, and it was really a joy to get to spend this hour or so chatting with him. So everybody, please welcome to the DTFH, Chris Gethard. Did you ever think you'd have a kid? I wondered for a very long time,

I was not necessarily a very stable person for a lot of my life, and I was really worried about passing on that mental instability. It's like still my great fear. But I remember, I forget who said it, I wish I remembered who said this to me, because I was once expressing this,

you know, once I started hitting my mid-30s, later 30s, start to think about it, talk about it with some friends, and a friend of mine was like, no, you don't understand, like if your kid ever suffers from the same stuff you do, you're never gonna judge him. Like he's never gonna be scared to talk to you. And I was like, oh, that's eye-opening, you know?

Like, which I think is true for any parent no matter what the deal is. It's like, if you've been through something hard and you're praying your kid doesn't go through it, of course, I hope that's the case, but it's gonna go a lot better for them than it went for you, because you've got that empathy now and you've got that open door now.

And that made me realize maybe this is something I wanna try, you know? You feel like you weren't able to talk to your folks about some of the stuff you grappled with? No, for sure. That's another thing that popped into my head that I was interested in asking you about as I realized we're so in tune on this,

like my relationship with my own parents has very much changed. Especially my dad. I understand my dad a lot more now. And I also am kind of, I have to resist feeling some jealousy about the way he treats my son compared to how I was raised. Like the grandparent role very different.

And it's hard not to go, where the hell were you, my whole childhood? This cuddly, soft man rolling around on the floor. My parents were incredible, but I mean like hard, you know, hardworking people. My mom's parents were immigrants. My dad was the hardest working person I've ever known. His whole thing is like you work hard and solve your shit.

And that's cool. And I get some elements of that that work well for me. And then other times where I always felt maybe very vulnerable opening up, you know, like, I remember I've broken a bone once in my life. And this tells you a lot, this tells you a lot. My brother and I were wrestling on our front lawn and he landed on me and his knee broke my left collarbone.

Oh, shit. So I was like screaming on the front lawn. And my mom came out and was like, what are you yelling about now? I said, I think I broke my shoulder. She goes, you did not. You're always being a baby. And it was Super Bowl Sunday.

We wound up going over to these other family we're friends with to their house. And me and my brother got in another fight and it was a few hours later. And my parents saw us fighting and went, Chris isn't swinging with his left. I think something really is wrong. Like, like that's how they knew.

Like everything was like tough it out, you know? And that wasn't just them that was growing up in the 80s and 90s. That was growing up in a blue collar neighborhood that was growing up in a family that wasn't too far removed from getting off the boat. Like all those facts, a lot of it is just you'd be tough. You handle it.

And I always laugh at that one of like, the only reason they believed I broke a bone was because in the next fight I was, I was be hobbled. See, oh yeah. Well, do you, for me, when I'm looking back on what these days would basically be called neglect? Like if your parents had been one of these like, you know, any variety of social media family,

there's a million of them. And that was something that we're filming, you know? And they were like, oh, he really did break his collar. Oh, shit, he's not swinging. Can't, that's an insta cancel. That's like, probably child protective services is going to get involved too. Back then?

Back then. No way. No way. No fucking way. When I think of like, you know, we go to the pool with my kid now and I'm like, you know, I don't take my eye off of him. Cause he's just learned, this is, I don't know,

if you've gone swimming a lot with your kid yet. Yeah, yeah. He loves the water. My, my child has just figured out how to jump into the pool, but he doesn't know how to swim. So it's like the worst part of the company. You gotta watch. But when I was a kid, his age, probably younger,

they just put the fucking floaties on you and pushed you out of the ocean. Not the ocean, I'm sorry, the pool. The ocean, my parents didn't do that, but you know what I mean? Like I remember I was floating in the pool and a kid pulled, like some kid just swam up to me, a little fucking pool bully and pulled out the thing

that holds the air in. Tried to kill you, tried to drown you. Watching like some kind of serial killer as I'm looking at the thing going out of air, trying to signal to my mom, she's not looking at me. The point is we are in different times. A lot of us are raising our kids differently. Is it bad?

You think it's bad? Should we, are we being too soft on our children? I don't think so. I think a lot about it because I take a lot of value in how I grew up, but I just moved back to New Jersey where I grew up. I was in New York City for 16 years and I've been reconnecting a lot

with a lot of people I grew up with and I always figured like, you know, like we're in entertainment. Our job is to exaggerate to a degree. Our job is to boil it down to the interesting parts and just hammer those, right? And so I'm always like, I'm probably remembering this wrong.

I probably wasn't as intense as I remember. Everyone I grew up with is like, yeah, it was dark, man. It was dark and weird and hard and so many of my friends were like, I've spent years unwrapping. Like, I was born in 1980 and people around that time remember like, we literally, there were like pictures

of kidnapped kids on milk gardens and we stared at them every time you had milk. You stared at a kidnapped child. Oh, fun. You know, and your parents would, your parents would just, you'd get home from school and they'd be like, go ride your bike and go somewhere. I don't want you in the house.

Come back by six for dinner. Also, there's probably, you know, and then everything you hear is rumors about Satanists and molesters, like everything was like dark and they had us so scared. So I don't want that for my kid. I don't think that that's soft for him to not have that. I also do take some value and I think,

especially for like a mild-mannered emotional guy, to actually have, to keep wanting to pursue a career where you never get health insurance. Being a comedian is not hard. Like, I'm not a coal miner, but it's uncertain. Yeah. For stress. I gotta be tough on some level.

And the way I keep thinking of it is I'm like, I don't want my son getting in fights. I gotten too many fights growing up. I want him to know how to fight. And the way I keep thinking of it is I'm like, I want him to know how to fight. So if he ever comes around a corner and sees some kid getting beat up by three nasty kids,

he can get on that guy's team. You know what I mean? I want him to be able to step up when he has to, but I just don't want him to have to all that often. Right. Yeah. I don't know how you feel. Sit.

That one's a lot to unwrap. It's a lot. Well, I always feel like I have to be careful because I had a PTSD, Vietnam dad. So if I, you know, so I have to watch out because I'm going to overcompensate in the other direction. And then then I'm not going to give him what he, what any toddler needs, which is like actual structure.

You don't get to be their friend. You've got to like tell them what's safe and what isn't. And just what you're saying, you know, get them ready for a world that is whether they're comics or not uncertain. By the way, that does make me think. Is there some like dad part of you that watches him or listens to the way his sense of humor or like thinks I would like him to be a comedian?

I mean, that it's like, there's, there's a part of me that's like anything but. Yeah. This like. Yeah. Especially, especially right now, where it feels like comedy's getting kind of like more clickish than it's been in the time I've been doing it.

And people actually seem kind of like angry at each other and you start to see like, oh, it's like so weird. It's always been a weird culture to be a part of it. And it's starting to feel like very much so now. But then there's also a part of me that goes, he makes me laugh for real. And he knows he's trying to make me laugh and he's doing it. Yeah.

And not even, there are times where it's, I'm not in the mood to laugh. Like I'm not sitting there trying to connect with him that way and he'll make me laugh. And I go, man, that's, how cool is it? How cool would it be to just have a funny kid and see him go for it and do it? Like it's part of me that thinks it would be real cool.

And then there's a part of me that's like, cause my wife's an artist too. So I'm also like, man, maybe, maybe he'll just like want to be a black sheep and rebel against us, which in our house means he'd have to go like get a stable salary job with a 401K. I know. And security.

That's the rebellion we're going to get. That's what we're going to get probably. I mean, if you just look at the way kids push back, like I, I didn't want to be a comedian. I just ended up being a comedian. I don't know. It was all just some trying to get away from my folks. And then, you know, just, I got lucky.

I got lucky, lucky. But I wanted to, this is kind of diverging from the kid talk. I think it's really interesting that you married the head music, head musician on your show. And I, and I, if my podcast is generally not like some kind of gross TMZ Inquisition or some shit like that, but I was just thinking, how did that go down? Like, how did the romance start?

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Well, the wild part is that she was in a band that I genuinely loved years before I ever met her. I was a legitimate fan. She's in this punk band called The Unlovable. She wrote all the songs, sang them, and they're great, like great songs. And had the album, bought it at the Virgin Megastore and really admired her and had seen her live a couple of times

and just thought she was so cool. And then back in the day, so my old talk show started at UCB. It was like a midnight show. And it was a really hot ticket. And it was a, I looked back and that show was dark and like violent and then like, but interesting. And like breaking the fourth wall

and part times where the audience was like, I don't know what's going on. And she was, the house band at that time was all these friends of hers from the punk world. And they used to sneak her into the show because it would be, it would be sold out pretty regularly. And I started realizing that's Halle Unlovable. She's here watching this show.

So she kind of knew my comedy. I knew her music and there's a funny story. One time I wound up naked on stage hosting the show due to some dumb bit gone wrong. Wow. And I was like, Wait, I'm sorry, accidentally naked? Like you didn't know you would be naked before the show?

We were doing this thing called the telethon of shame. We were raising money for the March of Dimes. The whole idea was we're going to have all these like fucked up things. And if the crowd kicks in enough money, it'll trigger those things. So like, it was wild, man. Like people would be shut cause I think I have this reputation

as this like emo guy and this nice guy. And I think there's a lot of truth to that. But also like, I've had some stretches that were dark. Like one of the things was like a guy ate a hot dog out of another guy's butthole. Like really dark. A guy drank his own pee. Like it was like the telethon of shame.

Like everything was shameful. I said 500 bucks. I'll host the rest of the show with no clothes on. Wait, I'm sorry, man. You know what you just said? You just said a guy ate a banana. A hot dog. A hot dog out of his own butthole.

Out of someone else's butthole. Okay. I'm sorry. Cause what happened is my brain was trying to process all this. And somewhere in there, I did a fake like, yeah. The way I said it was like, yeah, of course. Like that old stage act where the, can you and I, can you maybe like, how do you put the hot dog in the butt? So they had the hot dog

and when it hit the monetary value. What was the monetary value? I forget. It was high though. Cause that was one of the craziest ones. It was high. Over a thousand. Probably five or 600. Okay. This guy, the one guy pulled down his pants.

He laid down on a table face down. The other guy took out some witch hazel that he bought at the drug store and some cotton balls. And he sanitized his asshole. And then he placed that. He didn't put it up his butt like a dildo. He placed it in between the cheeks. Like the cheeks were a hot dog bun.

Cool. That's, that's, that's a, yeah. And then he ate it out of that. Like his butt, like his butt cheeks were a hot dog bun. And he, I don't think, I mean, witch hazel, huh? Like, is that going to really work? That seems like a kind of old wives tale. I have no idea why he didn't go with rubbing alcohol.

It seems like a safer bet, but that was actually the most degrading part. I guess that's true, but you don't want to eat witch hazel either. I'm butting butt. Like it. Like sweaty, sweaty. Like you're nervous.

Cause if I had that happening to me, I'm going to be nervous. Like if someone's eating a hot dog on my butt on stage, it's going to be a sweaty. And there's like hot lights on it. It was, it was really disturbing. It was, and there were like a bunch of disturbing things that happened in that show.

But we raised, I always justify, cause we raised nine grand for the March of Dimes in like an hour and a half at an, you know, at like a little theater. So in the course of that show, where all this completely horrible stuff is happening, I'm naked. I turn around,

I see Halle sitting behind the drum set cause the band snuck her in and that's where she sat. And we made eye contact. And she says that I just looked at her and went, oh no, you're here. And then got back to all this and it's shown. That's the first time we spoke. So then their singer,

when we switched over to being a public access TV show, their singer left for Canada. So they needed a new singer. They brought her in. She wound up being on the show for like seven or eight years. And we were a public access TV show for 200 episodes. And that thing was a labor of love. And I think a lot of us felt like

there was something special happening. And it's wild cause like, I have another friend who was on the show. He proposed to his girlfriend on the show on public access TV. I was the reverend at his wedding. He was the reverend at mine. Another two cast members of the show are married.

They're about to have their third kid. We had our first kid. I have another friend. I can think of another guy who met his wife on the show. And a whole bunch of people. Actually, yeah, probably five or six married couples that met through the show. So, you know, it was a public access show.

So it wasn't some like civius thing of like, oh, you're dating the band leader, that scandal. It was more just like, we all really feel like we're onto something here. And I think when you get in like a collective environment like that, that really feels like everyone's on the same page. You're hanging out all the time outside of the show.

And it was much more organic than like scandalous. You know, I love what you said on Nikki Glaser's podcast that you had this realization, the whole like comedian pursuit of the sitcom thing was to feed your own ego. And it wasn't even something you wanted to do. You'd gotten vacuumed up into that classic LA trap where people just look at what has been successful

for other people, you try to replicate that. If you get on a show, you realize this is never what I wanted to do. And I just thought it was really beautiful, man, because you decided to just dive into public access and listen to what your own heart wanted you to do. I'm assuming, and look what it did. It brought a kid into the universe.

It's true. It's true. I look at the kid, I go, it's all worth it. Cause you know, I do have insecurity. I do wonder, you know, I had an agent who soured on me and kind of gave up on me. Cause every year I'm going, I don't want to go to pilot season.

I want to stay here and do a public access TV show. And they're going, what are you talking about? Like it's public access TV, but I just knew I was on to something. And sometimes I still wonder, would I be more, especially, I'm sure you feel the same way, especially having a kid now. I have a kid, a mortgage.

I go, some stability would be nice. Right. I am very proud of everything I've done and I've gotten to live a cool life. But this pandemic year is the first year in like 15 years that I didn't get health insurance through one of the guilds. And I just go, well, there's not going to be

another pandemic, I hope for, you know, the last one was a hundred years ago, but that was eye opening. It was eye opening to go, oh, I had one year where things went really wrong and now I got to scramble and try to get health insurance again. Like that's scary with a kid.

So sometimes I go, man, maybe I should have done the more traditional stuff. And then I step back and go, I think the stuff I did was like cooler and more me. And I've never, I've never managed to bust out in a big way. Even when we got to true TV, it was their lowest rated show I think ever.

Okay. But the people who did like it loved it. You know, the people who did find it loved it. You have the fever and all comics get it. And I remember when I, so I used to be the talent coordinator of the comedy store and I don't mean that in a bad way. I'm sorry if it sounds like that.

You got the plague, man. But you do. I remember when I first got the comedy store, young comic talent coordinator. And I remember talking to one of the Sklar brothers and sincerely saying to him, how does it feel to have made it? And he goes, what are you talking about?

You know, like we haven't made it. What is that? What do you even mean? And like, you know, my wife, I told her I was interviewing you and she was like, holy shit, how'd you get an interview with him? And so that's the funny thing is, I think what's weird about the job

is that you end up having all of these successes that other people look at and think, my God. It's like, you know, that's an apex comic. That's a comic who's had, you know, three seasons of the show and before that, like a public access show, which by the way, public access show is a fucking show. Attaching the whole access thing is so weird anyway,

but all I'm saying is, when will you feel, you know, when will you feel like, okay, I did it? Well, one of the greatest things that ever happened to me is years ago, I had caught some momentum. It was starting to move. It hadn't broken yet, but I was in a green room at the UCB in New York. And there were two guys off in a side room

and they didn't realize I had arrived and they were talking loud. I wasn't trying to eavesdrop. And one of them's going, man, I don't know if I'm gonna get fired. I'm not sure what to do next. If I back myself into a corner, the other guy's going, yeah, you know, I'm trying to figure out

should I move my family from LA because if they get here and then I get fired, I'm gonna have to move them back in the school year and this and that. And I'm listening to these two guys and one of them was on Saturday Night Live at the time and like years deep into a great run, the other guy was a correspondent on The Daily Show

at that moment. And I had to, I was so sad for their stress. I'm not saying I liked that they were stressed, but I sat there and went, I figured those are the jobs that put out the fire. And I had this moment where I went, no job is ever gonna make me feel better. A professional accomplishments, don't do it.

Like I, there's some things about me that are broken and jobs aren't gonna fix them. So I gotta get that out of my head and I gotta find some other ways to fix them that are more about who I actually am as a human. Cause it's just very, it's very tied into capitalism and this idea. One of the things right now

that I've really had to take a deep breath on is like, what 2016 and 2017 for me, I had a TV show, I got a book deal, I had an HBO special, my podcast blew up. So all these things happened within like 18 months of each other. So I made more money than I ever made. And now right now I'm making about one sixth

of what I made in 2017. And then I take a step back, I go, this is a pretty healthy living I'm making today. If that two year stretch never happened, I'd be thrilled. But in America, we are trained from the jump to go, oh, if you make less this year than you made last year, you're doing something wrong. I don't buy that, I don't buy that,

but it's hard not to feel it, you know? You have to go, man, I'm making like 18% of what I made five years ago. And let's say, cause five years ago, your life went insane, your life went insane five years ago. So that's another thing to loop it back to having a kid is I've had all these really beautiful moments with him

cause I was a real workaholic too. And just go, go, go figure it out. And then I got this new house and I spent all the TV show money on the house, you know? And it's a pretty nice neighborhood. Now we're like the poorest people in the neighborhood cause I took, it's like I made the money and I can buy the house

and now I got to try to keep the house. And it's in a great school district and I play with my son in our yard. And like I mow the lawn and he gets out his toy lawnmower and he thinks he's helping me. And that's the type of thing where I go, you got to remember that this is why you fought so hard for so long.

Not so you could be famous, not so you could have more money than you had last year. The reason you fight hard is to watch your son push a fake lawnmower on the lawn. And that sounds cheesy, I know. No, it doesn't, not to me. I really think a lot of us would just be really well served to redefine the conversation about success and money

and how they relate to each other and how they relate to happiness because over and over again, I'm like, I stress so much, I step back and go, man, I had my TV show and that special and I wrote three books and I did this and that and that was all before I was 40. And then I'm gonna sit here and still feel bad,

fuck that, like that's because of money, that's because of ego. There's something wrong with a system that induces that much stress in a situation like, yeah. Your underwear looks like you're off the tomb, smells like funyons, looks like gloom, the pandemic's over and your underwear is too,

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Do you know that you listen to the right-wingers, you know, bugling about how communism wants to destroy the family? But when you think about what capitalism naturally does to a lot of families, which is it instills that thing you're talking about in one or both parents, they go out in the world, drop their kids off at some,

whatever they could afford and that they don't live near their parents and they don't get the lawn mower time. They don't get that at all. It's a special occasion if they find themselves having an extended meaningful time with their kids. And so that to me is, I hear you and I, I think we're feeling it.

I think collectively that realization is bubbling up in a lot of us, which is what the fuck is the point? Is the point to like just get infinite amounts of money when my experience with that sort of success has been cliche as it can get, which is like, what do you know? It didn't do anything.

I still feel as disturbed as I felt when I was living in a fucking roach motel with roaches crawling on my face. It was, oh, it didn't work. The thing like literally on walls of beach houses, money won't make you happy or that classic thing. When you really experience it, it's a little unnerving, but it's unnerving when you really,

when you understand that at any level, just as like, fuck, then why? And don't get me wrong, I feel lucky that I made money. I feel lucky that it allowed me to buy this house. Like I understand the bend. I don't want to sit here and be like, I'm talking in one breath about how I bought a nice house

and the next breath about how money is like and is like a thing that causes nothing, but insecurity and pain. Like I get that that's trying to have it both ways, but I do think that there's a lot of value in knowing when to say like, enough is enough. And I might be there and maybe, maybe I'm allowed to like enjoy plateauing it right here

and not having to kill, I don't want to work until I have a heart attack and drop dead, but I don't do it. I don't want to, I don't want, I love going on the road. I love it so much, but like, I don't need to go out 150 days a year and not see my kid for half the year, you know? Like I don't want to die in a fucking Lakita Inn

on the side of a highway in Fort Worth, Texas, you know? Like I don't want to do it. I don't want to do it. Like, so I'll make less money. I'll tour less. I'll go out tour 25% less. I'll make 25% less money from my touring schedule. And that's okay.

And that's okay. Floating into the void with all these other touring comics who happen to die on the same night as you, like, were waving at each other as you go into whatever the next thing is. I get it. I mean, yeah, I think that there had, I mean, I love touring too.

I, yeah, there's no way that I'm going to do anything like that ever again with Mike. I'm not going to do that. I mean, if I do do it, I'm going to figure out a way to bring them with me. But look, have you seen that new, this sounds like a complete bullshit non sequitur. Have you seen that new pink documentary?

I have not. My wife loves pink. My wife was just saying earlier today, no joke. We got to see pink live sometime. And I was like, what? Where is this coming from? I'm, you see, we were just on a beach vacation and somehow we ended up watching a music awards show

which talk about like, for me, I'm 47. For me, that was just like, okay, I'm definitely not cool anymore. Like, I don't know any, I just found out about the fucking weekend. My wife was telling me like, it's like, oh, I've heard this song, actually it's pretty good. Yeah, I think he's got a shot.

But yeah, so we're watching pink. And my wife was like, I love pink. She teared up a little bit. And I had to, you know, swallow down whatever my stupid anti my pink opinion or whatever. Cause like, am I going to judge someone who's doing like trapeze acts while seeing belting out music in key?

But so then we watched the documentary in the very beginning of it. And we stopped just cause like, in no offense to pinker, that is that way of being. But it just starts off just taking her kid to Paris. Her family's there. And she just said to her kid, maybe you'll get a music agent

or maybe you'll get a record deal. And it hurt me cause I was like, you want your kid to get a record deal? Like that's a kid. Like you don't want a record deal for the kid. I think she may be just joking a little bit or whatever. But you know what I'm saying? I think that is what you,

if you want to be the parent that continues the career, it's either separate from your kids or take them, take them on the road with you on your tours and stuff. And that seems kind of tough on a kid. Yeah, I'm trying to go out like, not more than three days in a row, maybe once or twice a month. And just go, just do the math, right?

Here's how much my mortgage and bills are. Here's how much I'm making from other things. Here's how much the road should do. And just make it all about the kid. You know, it's, I think it's funny to, I think about, like we were, you're saying about that with pink and how weird it feels to say the music contract.

Do we want our kids to be comedians? And I sit around and I go, I get like giddy thinking about all the options. Like, cause my wife is an artist too. And I'm one of the rare comedians I know where her career is actually so weird that I'm the more normal one. I've had the more normal career doing what I do.

And I did a, I earlier described a show where a man ate a hot dog out of another man's asshole on stage. Like, and I have had the more normal career. So I sit there, I go, maybe he'll be like the weirdest artist ever. Maybe he'll turn around and be like, I want to be a welder.

I want to get a union card and be a weld. And I'm like, I get giddy thinking about either option. You know, that's, you want to be an electrician or do you want to go be a circus clown? Like I'm, I'm so psyched to see what it turns into. How do you feel? I don't think I asked you about the kid in comedy question. Oh yeah, I, look, I can't,

any, anything he does, I think is funny or it seems like, oh shit, like just what you're saying, like you are definitely, he, he was at his grandmother's house and there was a monkey on the screen and he pointed to the monkey and said, that's daddy. That's daddy. Wow. You know, I heard about that.

That is really, really, really funny to me. That, and then when I asked him about it, I'm like, did you say that I was a monkey to Nana? And he goes, he looks at me and he goes, no, no. Like it was awesome. Just what you would do with a smile on his face. Yes, but you know, no, I don't, I mean, like, I feel, I feel like part of the parent, the parent I want to be

is just what, just what you're talking about, which is not hanging some role on them, but you know, listening to what they like and trying to tune into that as much as I can. Cause, you know, yeah, I don't, I think it's brutal if like, and really like pretty musty to like try to get your kid to do whatever you do. I mean, that's pretty, that's almost as unoriginal

as you can get parents. Like name, no offense if you did, but naming your child after yourself, you know, what is that? I did not. Yeah, I did not do that. Is this an echo of me? Am I sending just me's through down through time? I want you, one thing I love about your comedy

is that you have, you're definitely just doing your own thing. And that's not a diss on any other comments, but you, you, you have gone your own way and you've made it work for better or for worse. Yes. For best. I think for, from my perspective, for better because, and I know that's a secondary consideration

to your perspective, because you're you. I know, I think for better overall, yeah. Overall, yeah. Better, cause we have you, we have your art out there. And, and, and also it's like, you know, I think a lot of people need to see that you can make it happen with what you've got. You don't need to like fit into the stereotypical,

whatever the thing may be, you know, and that you can do a public access show that does get success and that you can listen to your own heart and end up in a nice house that you bought with money from your, from your art. I mean, that's fucking nuts, man. It's, it's, I, I take a deep breath and I, I understand how hard I worked

and I understand how lucky I am. And outside of any stress or stereotypical comedian anxiety, I go, I took this further than I thought I would. And that's a beautiful thing. But I got a, I, I want to know if you wrestled with, I think this was your third book, you published it in 2018. I want to know if you wrestled with writing a self help book.

Like if you felt this comedian death. I'm going to tell you something that I do not think has gone on record publicly yet, which is, so I did my HBO special about depression and a publishing company came to me and said, we want to write, we want to publish the book version of it. And I said, you know what? I've been kind of living in this,

I've been working on this show for a bunch of years. I did it off Broadway and then I did it at that Edinburgh festival and now the HBO special. I'm getting messages about all the time. I said, it's really flattering, but I don't, I don't want to live in the depression forever. I don't want to be the depression guy. And I don't want to commodify it any further.

Like I think I've said what I want to say about it. And, and it was hard. And then they turned around and said, well, we'll let you write about whatever you want for the same amount of money we offered. Wow. And it was, they were self-help imprint. And it was a constant struggle for me to figure out

how to balance it needing to be self-help because of who they were, while trying to turn it into something I like. And I don't think it landed 100%. But I'll tell you another thing. This is the part that nobody knows. And it's kind of dark, which is, it's the only career choice I've ever made

where the money was the priority. And I've made money off of other things and I'm happy about it. But like the TV show, we were on public access for years. And I had situations where like one network told me if you fire the rest of the cast and hire, like basically the short end of what they were saying was if you hire hotter people than your friends,

I was like, nope, I don't care how much you're offering me. So I'd, I'd stood my ground on some things like this. But I had a situation where there was a family member of mine who had a series of mounting and really severe medical bills. And it was an amount of money where I went, this will allow me to help solve a situation that has been very bad and is getting worse.

So I sit there and sometimes I go, man, cause the book didn't sell well. I think for a lot of people who are my fans up until then, that book maybe, maybe in their eyes was when I jumped the shark a little bit for some of the old school, like public access, punk rock vibe fans. Oh, did you get feedback that said that?

You got some punk rock fans say, what's going on with this book? Well, the title of it was lose well, which is a phrase that kind of said randomly one night on my TV show about like, our job is not to figure out how to be winners cause everybody, like we're a publicized TV show, we're clearly losers.

So let's just get good at that and lose well. And I saw some people going, man, like I have that phrase tattooed on my body and now it's the title of a self-help book, you know? And I'm like, screw it up. I should have named it something else cause I, I should have known what this was, but I knew myself and I'd always managed to step up.

But it was in the middle of a couple of years where there was so much happening professionally in front of the scenes. And then behind the scenes, this family situation that was hard, brutal, like I can just say brutal. I don't want to get into too many details, but it was brutal and it was brutal

based on what the situation itself was. And then you turn around and go, and it's also bleeding, bleeding, you drive financially. Yeah. So it's hard to regret taking the shot. And I really thought that I could have turned that book into something more,

but then it hit the publication date and I went, I think it's like 80% where I want it to be and now there's nothing I can do about it. And it stresses me out, stresses me out. And a lot of it is because of the self-help thing, you know, it was not necessarily have been something I would not have pitched a book, but they gave me an open deal.

I would not have pitched self-help and I really thought I could have found out a cool way to do it. And I don't think I solved the puzzle. Well, I had some regrets. May I was two of two things that part of my head. Number one, you can't be in charge of the consequences the consequences of someone else getting a fucking tattoo

of something you said. They got that. Well, you get like a registry of everyone who's got that tattooed in their arm and do a poll about whether you got the tattoo. Look, you have a Morrissey tattoo. I got to get that one covered soon, man. Hey, I mean, come on.

You know, what do you it's not Morrissey's fault. You know, he did the thing where you get a little older and like started saying shit where people like, what the fuck, you can't say that. Yeah, you have the same experience. Now, people see Morrissey on your arm and when they're like, oh, wow, so proud of what you're fucking proud. Well, you like Morrissey.

Oh, you didn't know that. You didn't know that. Now, what is I'm sorry. I didn't write it down. What's the phrase that you it takes strength to be gentle and kind? I think it's the other tattoo that I wow. That's my that's one of my favorite Morrissey lines anyway.

And, you know, I just feel like with that sort of thing, if we don't learn that people reincarnate in a single lifetime, then we're eventually going to have nothing that we enjoy. You know, like we're like we're but yeah, I don't know. I think it's beautiful. You wrote a self-help book and I hope that didn't stop you from writing anymore. No, no, it.

It it it scared me a little bit. Because, like I said, it was it was not a bull's eye. Yeah. And I've always been OK, keeping things small, if it means that I can feel like I nailed it, even if the world doesn't think I nailed it. Yeah. And that was a situation where they wanted to go big and they wanted it to be a certain thing. But like I said, creatively, I have some regrets.

But I think if anybody knew the back story of, oh, like, there was this fucked up situation and that money solved the situation. You go, ultimately, that is much more important than if I wrote a book that bombed, you know. And the other thing that I learned, too, is the editor of the book was so kind, such a nice guy, had my back hard, and I will be indebted to him forever and I'm a fan of his. But when you're a comedian or when you're doing

hosting the TV show with the live audience, you are used to collective feedback guiding you. When you're writing a book, it's your instincts. And then that one editor's reaction. Yeah. And one thing I realized is that all of his priorities working there were the self help. And the balance of comedy was not. It wasn't his concern.

So then they pushed and pulled at each other. Yeah. And and some people really enjoyed the book and say they've gotten a lot of it that makes me feel good. But I did feel weird about it. I have a lot of, as you can tell, this this answer tripped me up more than you expected it to. For sure. Yeah. Well, I mean, you know, I was I was talking to my friend and she's a very successful author.

And I was having I was I was trying to write and I'm like, do you ever feel like your idea for a book or is is totally wrong? Like the thing that you've committed to writing is just completely wrong. And she's like, I'm going on a book tour. And I feel like that about now. So I wonder if it's just a universal sense of like, I don't know. I mean, you've written two other books, and maybe you felt better about the other two.

And this just didn't hit the spot. But, you know, my my friend, he's got this whole podcast about like how if you want to like from any artist that is achieved any true renown has had to have a public stinker like you you can. And by the way, I'm not saying that was your book, but I'm but I think isn't that kind of past because I you know, I I didn't read the book. I just know it's all good.

Forgive me if that seemed like some weird back end thing. Oh, no, at all. I'm the one who laid out all my feelings that you have nothing to apologize for. It's a beautiful thing because that's the kind of book I would I would like I don't have the guts. You're so brave, man. I think like doing a thing like that takes guts where you're like, no, I'm not going to write the funny fucking thing.

You know what I mean? I'm not going to write the thing that is whatever the bubbly funny thing. I'm going to try to write this kind of book and it is going to upset people. And there are going to be comedians and old fans or whatever. Like what the fuck? What are you now? Is this who you are now? But you do it anyway. And yeah, maybe it didn't. Maybe it's not going to work.

But to me, who cares if you didn't? Thanks, man. Thanks. That's super nice. Makes me feel better. And you know what? As I've never realized this before. But when you said the other two books, do I feel differently about them? I do. But I also.

The one book was like through this company. It's the weird. It's the it's one of the great things that's ever happened in my life. When I was 19 years old, there's a magazine where I grew up in New Jersey. This underground magazine called Weird New Jersey. That's all about haunted shit in New Jersey. Yeah. And it was two guys who owned it and they hired me as their only employee.

And it just kept getting bigger. And it led to me co-writing the Weird US book with them. And I wrote the Weird New York book with them. And that was my first book. And that's a company that I like gotten the trenches and fought for. My second book. When I from the time I started writing it to when I was Polish, it was seven years. And most of those years were just getting rejected by everybody and me going.

No, I know it's good. Every situation I've ever been in that has gone. Well, is one that nobody believed in for a long time first. But when somebody comes and says, whatever you want it to be, here's a pile of money. Yeah, that's I got cast in a sitcom in 2010 before all the public access stuff. No, not good. Anything I've ever done where somebody goes, dude, we got you. Here's even when my show went to cable.

It was like, and now life's going to get easier. No, got harder. It's I don't react well to people opening doors to me. I am at my best when I feel like I have to like kick kick open a door that they've locked. Like that's for some reason. I don't know if it actually goes better than or if it just feels like it does. But I tend to stumble when people actually try to make it comfortable and smooth for me.

And I'm only realizing this right now that there's a consistent pattern there. Yeah, it's like you want you're one of those people who wants to run with a weighted vest for some reason. There's some maybe you have. So, you know, I at one point when in my meditation practice had this like realization that I am associating how much it hurts to sit still in an uncomfortable position, to not scratch itches to like be too rigid.

I was I realized I'm associating that with success meditating, which is like, what, how do you succeed at meditating anyway? That's so ridiculous. But then I realized, oh, yeah, your meditation is like a fractal for your whole life. And then I realized, fuck, if I'm not hurting, I think I'm failing. If there's not, you know, oh, what a crazy. What a terrible. What a terrible consideration.

But it's like a huge realization, huh? Yeah. Yeah. But, you know, so when things are easy, maybe it's because of the what, you know, I don't know, maybe it's because of our parents, maybe it's just because of the way that the route we took into comedy or whatever. But I know other comics like it, too, who get really scared when shit's easy. And they feel like something's they almost some of them fuck themselves up on purpose just to get back to the grind.

It's it's a really sad thing. You see it all the time. And I have a few friends I can think of where it's like you you convinced yourself that your talent was completely tied to pain. And man, as that said, because you're a talented person, no matter what. So I wish you could just find it in yourself to be happy. It's sad to see it's sad to have done it. It's sad to see it from the outside, too.

Just be like, oh, I wish maybe maybe for some people, it's true. But when you see it, when you see it, when you're sitting at a table with another comic and you both just did a show or something. And you see, oh, this person really think it's like Dumbo's feather. It's like you're hanging on to a thing you don't need. You know, yeah, sad. Yeah, it's hard, but I love that Dumbo's feather. Well, I mean, maybe there's nothing to hang on to at all.

Anyway, I mean, isn't that this is, by the way, you got to go. I know you're on a press tour. It's five or two. I can hang out a little bit more. Thank you. When you have kids, your time starts moving real fast. And your comedy special have my life. I'm assuming you're addressing that reality. Yes. For your order.

And, um, yeah. And so, uh, are you getting that feeling of like, I'm already dead. Like this shit's going by so fast anyway. I don't mean like in a gloomy, gothy way. I mean, like it's a year in even though this last year felt like a long time. But you know what I mean? That sense of like, damn, the years are starting to go by like telephone poles and a car that's accelerating.

You know what I mean? And like I'm going to blink and it's this shit's over. You know, yes, feather or not flying or falling, succeeding or failing. It's I feel like, you know, it's just suddenly you're going to be like, hopefully looking up at your family, you know, and they love you, not like your family murdering you, which by the way, just on a hate line where these kids. You know what I mean?

But so, so yeah, can you, can we? They like Eater. But, um, yeah, I think I'm mad. They were mad. Uh, uh, but yeah, you know, how are you doing with that? Are you, are you, how are you doing with all this existential stuff? And, um, how did you work it into your new special? Well, the special, the bullet points of the special, I shot it.

I shot a tour, 10 venues, all kind of small venues, the types, the types of venues that I actually play on the road when I'm like building that hour and chipping away at it. I just really love those spaces. And sometimes my show gets like, I'll go on stage. Sometimes things get chaotic, you know, like I've always been that guy. And I, I managed to get a bunch of footage of that. Like there's a show in Baltimore where a girl got on stage and was

like demonstrating wrestling holds on me. And it was really painful. And like, I'm like, I can't get this stuff like that in a regular special. And, um, I was, I was able to put all this interstitial footage of like all the things we know of like getting to some town too early and you don't know anybody there. And you find some dumb way to kill time with your friend who opens for you and, you know, sitting in traffic and, you know, we hit this footage that

it actually, I feel like it's a very genuine moment. And I watched it. I go, man, that was me with my guard down. I'm like sitting in traffic, wondering if I'm going to make this show in Detroit on time. I just go, I think I still love this, but man, does my back hurt. And I'm like, that's exactly where my head was at when I filmed it. So, you know, having a kid at home, do I still want to go on all that stuff?

So I was able to also have a soundtrack for the special because we did it that way. I was psyched about that. It's a good soundtrack. So wait, what do you mean? You wrote me mean you recorded a sound check. Like people don't see that. Is that what you know? Sound track.

So because we had this, so it's like, here's some jokes. Here's some stories and then we're going to cut to another city. So let's do some travel stuff in between. And then I get these bands who I really like to throw some songs in that footage where I'm like, oh, most comedy specials don't get to have a sound track. That's cool, man. And some are very small local bands. Some are like much bigger bands in the punk world and like felt cool.

So I like it. I like it. It's different just like everything I do, but you might like it and you're right. So much of it is like life is moving at a different pace now. I don't want to miss it. Like every the perspectives change. I've been doing this for 20 years and I have a kid and I don't know. I don't know what to think, just like you and I have been talking about so much

today and the time thing, it's so weird because it's like not only does it move faster because you're watching this little human where I go three weeks ago, you weren't who you are now. Like this is weird to watch. But then also I have all these feelings of like, man. My life didn't even start until he was born. Like, I don't know if you feel the same thing. I'm like, yes, I do.

Oh, I was wait. I did a lot of stuff. I really liked. I lived a pretty cool like my obituary is going to be pretty cool. I didn't even know that that was the precursor and this is the main event. I had no idea. Right. And it's like, and also like my whole life, I thought it was like me

walking this hero's journey trying to prove everybody wrong. And now I'm like, there was nobody. There was nobody was nobody was particularly mad at me. Who was I trying to prove wrong? Like it was this ego thing. And like there was no hero's journey. I was just trying to get here. And that's again, why I like hanging out and mowing the lawn with him.

Because I go, oh, like I didn't even. That was all the preamble. And now life feels very real. It's it's it's strange. I wish I didn't wait so long. It's very strange. Well, you know, you don't see a lot of proved wrong. On tombstones.

You see a lot of father people. That's what gets on that thing. Um, you don't see a lot of you should see it. Like on my show where I raised a lot of money. Somebody ate a hot dog out of someone's ass. Yeah. But yeah, man, I don't mean to sound modeling. I'm really inspired by what you just said.

I should have wrapped it up there instead of tagging it. But it was some dumb tombstone thing. I have a tune. You said it. I actually, I really want my tombstone for it to say. Anyone who stands on my grave will be cursed forever. Anyone who stands on my grave will not leave this graveyard alive. Like to try to start an urban legend that goes back to working

at that magazine about ghosts. And I told my wife that and she goes, if you insist on doing that, my tombstone is going to be next to yours with an arrow pointing towards yours, and it's just going to say, I'm with stupid. And I was like, that's so good. That's so good. If you sell out my bit on your tombstone, it's so good. Chris, thank you so much for your time.

You are so funny. Thank you for giving me this time with you. Can you tell people where they can find you? Chris, com for all the info and then I'm on all the socials and especially you can find it on on Apple and Amazon and YouTube and Peacock. It's it's out at a bunch of places. And I have to say, I did not expect this one to cut so deep and be so thoughtful and it really was a joy.

And even just to connect with someone else. And with a kid the same age, who's also a comedian, as it has been rare for me. So it's super cool. And thanks for letting me talk to you. Thank you, Chris. All the links you need to find Chris's special and books and social media stuff is at duckatrustle.com.

Howdy, Krishna. Thank you. That was Chris Gethard, everybody. Don't forget to listen to a special half my life. That's going to be on all the streaming services. Look out for his tour. All the links you need to find him will be at duckatrustle.com. Big thank you to our sponsors. Me, undies, purple and blue, too.

Those offer codes are also going to be at duckatrustle.com. Do subscribe to the Patreon. Won't you? Patreon.com. Ford slash DTFH. Thank you so much for listening, everybody. I will see you soon. Until then, Hare Krishna. A good time starts with a great wardrobe.

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