Duncan Trussell Family Hour - Luis J. Gomez
Episode Date: November 21, 2017Duncan rants about his recent breakup and is joined by the great Louis J. Gomez (Legion Of Skanks, Real Ass podcast) who talks about his brutal childhood, forbidden words, and the New York Comedy Scen...e
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Greetings to you, my sweet, liquefying children of the Earth.
It is I, Detrus, and you're listening
to the Duncan Tressel Family Hour podcast,
a radiant, obsidian pyramid rising above the sonic waters
of the podcasting universe, blasting out great waves
of telepathic metaphysical sonic astral energy
into the deepest part of your third eye,
causing your brain to explode with love jizz
all over the chest, face, feet, knees,
and legs of the present moment.
I welcome you into these great halls of glory
and say hello to you.
All right, here it goes, pals, the big announcement.
I've been recording this intro since 9 a.m.
It is now 9.21 p.m.
This is it.
I'm uploading this no matter what,
but I've been trying to think of some perfect way to say it.
I wish that I had the power to summon an angel
to fly into my stomach and put its mouth
through my throat and into my mouth
so that I could talk about this
in a perfect angelic, beautiful, poetic,
sweet, glorious, life-affirming way.
But I don't.
There isn't an angel in my body.
There's just a half a burrito and a kale salad in there.
So I'm gonna just use that to talk about,
I just went through a breakup.
A four-year relationship just ended
and relationships don't end all at once
when a relationship ends, it's a form of death
and it dies like most things die,
kind of slowly in phases.
But it ended recently,
like officially it was over in New York
as I'm packing up my stuff.
We did the final matter exchange.
If you've ever been in a long-term relationship
or a short-term relationship,
you probably know about the matter exchange.
It is an unrecognized ritual
in the end of a relationship
where you give the final little bit of stuff
that's congealed in your apartment to them
and they give the final little stuff
of yours that they have.
And there's this weird exchange
where you're like, okay, here's your boots
and your camera.
And they're like, all right, here's your sweatshirt
and the shirt I got you.
And then that's it, the door shuts and it's over.
It's done.
Now, at that point,
you've got a really interesting situation on your hands
because something you've gotten very used to for four years
just ended, right?
And so you're gonna go through some crazy feelings
and you might send some weird texts
and some weird texts might be sent to you
and there might be some weird moments,
but ultimately, if you really think about it,
you're doing great.
And I think this is what gets left out.
And I think there's a cultural sort of,
I don't know.
There's like a cultural like gravity
towards overdoing the grief when something ends.
I'm not saying there shouldn't be grief.
I'm not saying that on the way to the airport,
I didn't spring a leak listening
to Rocky Vodalotto's White Daisy Passing,
which is one of the great breakup songs of all time.
I'm not saying that there hasn't been like a soul
and sadness, moments of anger, moments of regret,
but ultimately, I feel pretty good.
And it was the right thing.
And I think it's the right thing for her
and based on what I've heard from her, she's doing good.
That's good, ultimately.
And I think there's like a weird cultural gravity
when shit ends to like overdo it
to start listening to Elliot Smith
to like get into like the hate side of things,
get into the grief side,
get way more into the grief side
than you need to get.
When a relationship ends, it's a death.
And we, in this part of the planet,
the way we deal with death is fucking weird.
Like, we gotta put it in a,
you gotta hide it away, sweep it under the rug.
Don't talk about it, put it in the hospice.
You gotta be careful if someone's dying,
oh God, or someone around them is dying.
Oh Jesus, you gotta treat them so carefully
when it's the most natural thing.
It's exactly how things should be.
Things liquefy, things transform, things shift.
It's meant to be that way.
And in the past, oh my God, I've gotten so overwrought.
You know, like getting into the idea maybe
that getting into the fantasy
that they're miserable without you, right?
I mean, there's like Elliot Smith songs dedicated to that.
Elliot Smith, you know, he's got like
at least 70 breakup songs.
All of them daggers slung at some poor,
emaciated hipster girl who like just was like,
look man, you're like, I can't, I just, I'm getting,
I can't, I've been on the,
I've been on the receiving end of your flaccid heroin cock
for too long, I gotta go.
And he like writes these like just beautiful songs of anger.
Like here's a good one, somebody that I used to know.
I had tender feelings that you made hard,
but it's your heart, not mine that's scarred.
So when I go home, I'll be happy to go.
You're just somebody that I used to know.
You don't need my help anymore.
It's all now to you, there ain't no before.
Now that you're big enough to run your own show,
you're just somebody that I used to know.
I watched you deal in a dying day
and throw a living past away
so you can be sure that you're in control.
You're just somebody that I used to know.
I know you don't think you did me wrong
and I can't stay this mad for long,
keeping a hold of what you just let go.
You're just somebody that I used to know.
Like I've listened to that song,
chewing Vicodin like ice cubes,
fantasizing that whoever just broke up with me,
whoever I broke up with is miserable somewhere.
When the truth is,
they're having the greatest week that they've had in years.
They don't have to deal with your soul in Edgar Allen Poe,
quote, the Raven nevermore, ass, they're free.
They're hanging out with some cool guy
who they have no history with, getting to know them,
realizing like, oh my God, I could have a whole other life
other than the one I was just in.
Meanwhile, you're like some dark warlock
clutching a skull in the bottom of a tower, casting curses.
And I think that's not the way to do it.
I'm not saying don't experience your grief,
don't experience your sadness,
but just make sure you're actually sad.
Make sure you're actually experiencing grief
because it may be that you're secretly happy
and you think that you shouldn't be.
That can happen.
You might be reacting to the way people around you are acting
because when you go through a breakup,
you might actually be getting off on people being like,
oh my God, are you okay?
Or you might be sort of being reactive
to the way people around you are acting
because a few people have like said in different ways
to me like, man, I hope you're doing all right.
I really do.
And they look at me like I just fell on a mortar.
They look at me like I'm laying in some muddy World War II
swamp with my guts in my hands,
drinking whiskey out of a flask
while I'm just shitting blood out of my half decapitated ass.
And it's just not, that's not what's happening.
It's really made me realize we've gotta be like,
the next time I get around somebody
who's going through some kind of loss,
I am not gonna wince.
Because you just don't know what's happening with somebody.
You just don't know.
It could be that things are great.
This is what I think.
I think we should spend double on the divorce party
that we spend on the marriage.
When people get married,
whatever you spend on the marriage,
when you get divorced,
there should be a huge party that you spend double
what you spend on the marriage.
There should be fireworks.
There should be ships launching butterflies into the sky.
There should be sprays of rare perfume.
Everyone should be dancing.
Because this is a new life that's opening up for you.
You did it.
You went through the dance with someone.
You spent some time good and bad with someone.
It didn't work out necessarily.
But God damn it,
it doesn't mean that you have to spend the next year
in recovery.
It doesn't mean that you have to spend like month after month,
morning and sad and wearing fucking black.
I just, I think that's sick.
I think that's a lack of understanding
in the way the universe actually works
was let's face it, sweet friends,
we're being liquefied by time.
The house that you're in, the apartment that you're in,
the clothes that you're wearing,
the car that you're driving,
and they're gonna be around lots longer
than your meaty little sweet smell
and little body's gonna be.
Your clothes are gonna end up in a thrift store
or the dump.
Your house is gonna be inhabited by many other families.
You're essentially a sentient vapor floating through time.
Everything else around you is gonna last,
but you know, you're drifting into the infinity.
You're just spreading out.
You're vaporizing.
And that's beautiful.
And so when like things really shift
in a person's life or in your life,
I think it's cause for celebration.
So the next time you find yourself
at the end of a relationship, let yourself grieve,
I'm not saying to block out the feelings of sadness,
go through the sadness, go through the melodrama,
do the weird texts, have the moments of anger,
have the moments of like confrontation,
have the moments of what say whatever you need to say,
but make sure you don't stretch that out
longer than it needs to be stretched out
to satisfy the expectation of people around you.
Like a child who's fallen and like,
notices an adult looking at them in horror
and starts screaming, cause that can happen too.
We need to do butterfly releases
when people end a relationship.
There needs to be tap dancing and champagne and back rubs,
static orgies, MDMA injections,
big blasts of ketamine and float tank sessions,
not Elliot Smith and Vicodin,
because sometimes, all the time, things end.
It's beautiful.
That being said, I gotta find a fucking place
in Los Angeles, so if anybody knows of a place in LA,
I'm looking for a place
in the Atwater Village Silver Lake area
at around 3K, 4K, max.
For that amount, I expect to get some kind of mansion
with at least six acres,
some kind of subterranean limestone cave
with ancient casks of fine wine.
I'm looking for a place with an indoor pool and a solarium.
Also, and this isn't a deal breaker,
but I would prefer for the place
to have some kind of family graveyard
from the previous family
that I can take future lovers on walks
through on moonlit nights.
Some kind of like secret doorway in the house
that leads to a section of the limestone cave
that leads to a labyrinth with a codex and a golden box
that contains within it my future life
that I have to get decoded by some kind of archeologist
that slowly drives me mad, but I recover from it.
And from the recovery, I have more wisdom and joy
than I've ever had before.
Okay, babies, we're gonna jump right into this episode
with Luis Gomez, Luis J. Gomez,
premier comedian, premiere prime New York comedian,
a true sweetie, a really funny dude,
but first, some quick bees naths.
Maybe blessings of the eternal son of Lothlarian
and your attention fall upon today's sweet sponsors.
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You know, weirdly, I do keep track of my wallet
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Classic problems.
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My loves, thank you so much for listening
to this long opening intro.
I love you guys.
I wanted to share this crazy news that just happened to me.
Sorry if I'm rambling or weird,
I guess nothing has changed
because this is what I'm always like.
Today's guest is a really funny comedian
that I became friends with in New York.
He is a member of the notorious and esteemed Legion of Skanks.
He also has his own podcast called The Real Ass Podcast,
and he's somebody that I had a lot of great times with
during my brief stint in the Big Apple.
So everybody, please open your hearts,
expand your mind, envelop this glorious being,
this comedic entity, this thunderbolt of truth
so that he can feel the tendrils
of your astral body wrapping around him.
Everyone, please welcome to the DTFH,
Louis J. Gomez.
Yes.
Welcome, welcome on you,
that you are with us.
Shake hands, know we do you do.
Welcome to you.
It's the Duncan Trussell family.
It's the Duncan Trussell family.
It's the Duncan Trussell family.
Louis, man.
Welcome to the DTFH.
Thank you so much for being here, man.
Thanks for having me, buddy.
Dude, how was LA?
You were just out there, right?
Yeah, it was great.
I loved it.
I love LA.
I don't know why people hate LA.
Do you go out there a lot?
Yeah, I go out probably now, like four or five times a year.
I was going out like two or three times a year.
My buddy, Nate Borgazzi, who is my son's godfather,
really funny comic, he told me a few years ago.
He was like, dude, no matter what,
even if you don't have things going on,
just go out to LA, plan a trip.
You'll have meetings that are set up around it.
You want to be seen in both worlds.
You just want to be a guy that's working in both places.
So yeah, I just kind of made an excuse
to go out a few times a year.
You are a driven comedian.
It is so cool, man.
You're super funny.
You've got this amazing work ethic.
You're part of this.
What would you call the skanks?
Is it a collective?
Yeah, I mean, Legion of Skanks,
the podcast itself, it kind of has like,
it's gone into almost, I would say similar
to what the Death Squad thing is on the West Coast,
kind of like a group of comedians
that are sort of loosely associated with that as well
and that brand, and we've turned it
into the Comedy Festival Skankfest, which you did.
It's huge.
That thing, it was insane, man.
Like, so many people.
I've never seen a comedy festival
where people are giving out tattoos.
Yeah.
Well, I'll tell you, and you know this
is your podcast, I think when you do this
and people that connect with this type of content,
I think they fucking love it.
They love it a lot more than they just love Stand Up
or they love it a lot more
than they love their favorite TV show.
They're fucking living it with you.
People were getting Legion of Skanks logo tattooed
on their bodies, and they weren't thinking about it.
They were just doing it.
Yeah, it's also a cool logo.
If we had a shitty logo,
I think it would be a lot harder to sell.
But when the podcast comes and goes
and it will one day, you have that little symbol.
It's like, what was that?
That was a period in your life
where you listen to this thing every single week.
Podcasts, they get people through
some pretty fucked up times, I think.
This is what I hear the most,
that we get letters from people that are like,
dude, you know what?
I was going through some shit.
My wife left me, my fucking kid was taken away,
whatever it is.
You guys kept me laughing week in, week out.
For me, I think whether you, you know,
the podcast itself, who gives a shit,
but if it's a cool little symbol
that can kind of, you look down and it reminds you of that,
you know, I don't think there's any regret there.
I think when it's a fucking, I don't know man,
I guess maybe people feel the same way
about like a Yankees logo or something like that.
I always felt that way when I saw somebody
with like tattooing a sports team on their arm.
I'm like, dude, grow up.
I don't know dude, you're like, you're living like your,
but maybe they have that story too.
Maybe it's, it reminds me of them of their dad fucking
bringing them to, you know, the baseball game on Sundays.
And that's a big thing for them.
So it's not as, you know, it's not as simple as like,
I'll look at that douchebag.
He loves the Yankees that much.
He's got to have a fucking symbol on his arm.
But you guys, you guys like have like a hardcore
community around you.
I mean, the death squad has that too.
But I think that, I don't know,
it's such a specific cult that you've built up.
It's like, you have this, and I use cult as a positive.
Yeah.
It's a beautiful thing.
I take it as a positive.
Yeah, but how did, I want to talk about how this started.
I want to talk about the beginning of the skanks
and like how it kind of grew to suddenly being this
thriving group of people who have no problem
tattooing your logo into their flesh.
Is that weird you out, man?
That people are like, your logo is going to be
moldering in some coffin and-
No.
Yeah, yeah.
Does it weird you out that there's probably people
that are dead on their floor,
they're apart with heroin needles sticking out
of their arms with your tattoo on them?
No, you know, it doesn't weird me out.
I don't know, man.
I think when I got into comedy,
I got into it, or when I got into entertainment,
I was in a band when I was a teenager.
I've kind of, even before it was,
I think a part of our generation,
I think the generation below us,
like everyone wants to be a rock star,
everybody wants to be a professional athlete
or a musician or whatever, every kid now, you know?
And I still kind of wanted that.
And I grew up really poor and I grew up, you know, I think-
Where'd you grow up, New York?
I grew up like an hour outside of the city.
So I kind of always, I always kind of wanted
to be an entertainer.
I liked entertaining people.
I got up on stage pretty young.
I was a teenager when I started playing drums in a band.
So now when I have people tattooing
that my fucking logo on their arm, and I see that,
dude, I think it's the coolest thing in the world.
I think, maybe not every comic feels this way.
When people come up to me in public
and tell me they appreciate what I do,
I mean, it's the greatest feeling in the world.
If you ever see me and you know who I am
and you don't fucking say,
oh, hey, Louis J. Gomez, I'm a fan of your work,
go fuck yourself.
You are not doing, we are comics
and we are narcissists and we do it
for, we do it because we wanna feel great.
We wanna feel great in that moment,
but we also wanna feel great offstage, afterwards.
You're talking about like a high.
On stage in that moment, that 15 minutes
is that fucking high, right?
You're like, whoa, I'm through the roof, right?
But you still wanna be a little high at all times.
So you check Facebook or Twitter
or you still wanna get that high.
So look, bitch, if I'm at the airport
and you can fucking come up to me and be like,
dude, I think you were so funny on that thing you did,
I'm fucking back right there on stage in that moment again.
That's right.
You know what I'm saying?
That's like a fucking, that's incredible.
And most comics that I know,
even if they won't admit it, I feel like they feel that way.
Of course.
And talk, what do you think about those assholes
who when it happens, when someone comes up to them
and it's like, hey, what's up?
And they reject the person.
That's one of the most demented forms of behavior
on planet Earth, which is to act as though
you sort of accidentally got famous.
And now you're having to deal with this like,
atrocious problem of people coming to you
and telling you they love you.
Yeah, that's like the biggest problem in your life.
Oh, those are the fires of hell for you, I guess.
And that thing, the whole tortured, famous person
is to me, one of the most disgusting forms
of narcissism out there.
Narcissism, whatever, you end up being a narcissist
and you're a narcissist and accepting love is giving love.
But when you're rejecting love
and you've simultaneously put yourself in a position
where people are gonna come up and love you.
And you're reaping the benefits of all that love.
So you have a house and a car and all these amazing things
because these people love you
and are willing to spend money on you.
Maybe not even in a direct way, but you know,
people, the love you're talking about
is why the network is willing to give you millions of dollars
Okay, America is gonna sit around their TV sets
and they're gonna fucking have their eyes on you
and they're gonna fucking want you to win.
And we're gonna pay you for that.
That's what they're paying you for
is those people wanting you to fucking win.
That's why they're tuning in, they're rooting for you.
You're Superman, right?
So for you to reject that, I disagree with it,
but it's also your right.
You were human beings, I always loved that
Charles Barkley quote, I don't know the exact quote,
so I don't wanna misquote him,
he just says how I'm not, I never chose to be a role model.
People, athletes are kind of thrust,
I think especially brown athletes and women,
especially Ronda Rousey, I saw it happen with,
female mixed martial artists.
They're almost like, they end up having to be symbols
of their skin color or their sex, if they're gay,
it's like they have to be a leader for that community.
It's like, well, Ronda Rousey,
I think that was part of the pressure with her
where it's like, not only does she just have to win,
she's an Olympic athlete, she knows pressure,
but now she is, she has little girls around the world
going like, I'm looking up to you,
and every move you make, I'm looking,
that type of scrutiny and everybody,
anytime you have an opinion about anything,
about social issues or politics,
they fucking come at you, no matter what,
you're not gonna piss off 50% of the people in the world.
That type of thing I think ends up crushing a lot of people,
and I think that's what happened with her in particular.
Yeah, I know people who get pretty ripped up
by getting to a certain level of fame,
like you do get to some level of fame
where it becomes like you're in a dream,
you can't wake up from, like some weird dream
where you've attracted all these mirrors of yourself,
like suddenly you're everywhere you look,
there's all these reflections of you in front of you,
and that could be odd if you're not prepared for it, but.
You also watch people not really treat you,
there's not a real thing.
I've noticed it on a much, I'm not famous at all, at all,
but I've booked comedy shows, right?
I started out booking comedy shows,
and I watch people because you have something that they want,
they treat you differently, and you kind of get this sense.
I remember, I did comedy for a couple of years,
my first couple of years I did stand up,
I was terrible, and I was booking shows,
so nobody was really telling me I was terrible,
they were trying to get on my shows.
I had no real friends, I had no real friends.
Oh, I hear what you're saying.
Everyone was trying to, you know.
This is what, okay, right, so what you're talking about,
which is that you're not having
any authentic contact with people,
there's no one there to tell you,
hey man, you're being a dick right now.
You're just surrounded by this,
the worst kind of funhouse mirror
is instead of showing you in absurd ways,
which is what good friends will do,
they'll reflect you and make fun of you,
and through that you might see something there
seeing that you might need to work on,
or something like that,
but if you start getting around funhouse mirrors
that are reflecting you more beautiful
than you actually are,
not that you need to accept the beauty you're at,
not like imagine you're more beautiful than you are,
or like shining to you some version of yourself
that isn't real, but it's in the positive,
and you're gonna start.
Or if you're the person that's kind of
making, creating those reflections, that's okay.
I think if you're the person that's saying,
you know what, I'm looking at myself,
and I am, you know, I'm looking at myself
as being in a better place than I was.
Stay to mind, I think that's great,
but if you're just going based off
of the perception of other people around you,
you have to understand,
everyone has their own ulterior motives,
everyone's got something else going on,
so if you're letting other people kind of,
we watch it happen all the time in comedy,
everyone's like, oh, what's that guy getting,
what's that guy getting, what's that guy getting?
Dude, let me tell you something,
that guy that's getting everything, he's not,
he's depressed, he's pissed,
it's just what you're seeing on social media,
he's showing you the better version of himself,
so what happens is you kind of,
you're, I'm going like, I'm holding myself up
to that example, which isn't even real.
Yeah.
That guy's fucking.
It's fucking evil.
That guy's broke too, that guy is,
you know, worried about his next TV appearance as well.
This is what I want to talk to you about, man.
So this is what I think is really cool about the skanks,
because one of the things you were talking about
is like, yeah, you get on TV,
and then suddenly you like people,
you're out in the world and people see you,
and they are seeing an absurd version of you.
Most people on TV, Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel,
even as intimate as Kimmel wants to get.
Yeah.
The reality is the way we understand
any of these people that we see all the time
is in a suit, generally keeping to this very repetitive
persona, a very specific rhythm in the way they talk,
you know this sort of inflatable thing
that comes out in front of the cameras
and can't really talk about how they actually feel.
Of course.
But, and so that kind of, that's an old thing,
but you guys are the new thing that's happening,
which is here are three people who, more than likely,
if we fly you back in time to the 80s,
and people are trying to pick hosts for their show,
they're not gonna be like, oh yeah,
let's take these foul-mouthed, hilarious, raw humans
and put them in front of the camera,
because they're gonna think there's no way
I could sell fucking diapers with these guys as hosts.
But now that we're in this beautiful new era,
suddenly, what's happening is people like you
are getting, I don't know, fuck fame,
it's a stupid word anyway, but getting the success
that used to be reserved for people
who went through the network system,
which was a filtration system that you had to get through.
And even if you were like,
even if you somehow fit the symmetrical characteristics,
if you were aggressive, yet adjustable,
you know what I mean?
If you were like something that could be reined in
by the corporatocracy,
then there would be 19 others just like you.
And so it's still a one in 19 role of the dice, maybe.
So I love the way that groups like you
are coming to prominence,
because it's a way that is probably unlikely
just 15 years ago.
Yeah, I think it's also sort of cyclical.
I think that we're at the beginning
of the internet-like content industry.
It's like the Wild West right now.
You see it with podcasts and advertising.
I mean, the way it all works,
people don't even know like,
it's a fucking mess behind the scenes.
There's no real,
like we can't technically use a licensed song,
but they don't have any system to kind of go after people
for really doing it yet.
It's coming.
I'd say, yeah, you heard me.
We said get it the exact same second,
because it's coming.
And it will, and it's coming.
And we were just talking before the show happened
about certain things behind the scenes
where it's like they're figuring out,
no, okay, this is an industry.
This is not the fucking Wild West
and that there's gonna be restrictions put on the way.
Yeah, so I think right now it's kind of like,
it's very punk rock and it's very cool.
And we were also coming out of a time where,
TV has been king forever
and everyone's been trying to get TV
and comedians in particular have been kind of whittled down
to 10% of what is funny about them.
And it's just like, okay, well,
we have to have this very specific opinion.
We don't wanna piss anybody off.
We have to appeal to the left.
And I think that it's become,
at this point, comedy a couple of years ago
was almost like people were rolling their eyes.
Even on Comedy Central, it was the same way
that people were going, oh, there's no music on MTV
like 10 years ago.
But what does MTV stand for?
There's no music.
Comedy Central stopped being stand up altogether.
Like there was no stand up for a little while.
They tried to do it and it's like, nobody's watching it.
Like it's very, very strange.
It kind of still is like that.
But I do think there's this like new punk rock
thing that's happening.
And Owen Benjamin, you know,
he said this on Legion of Skanks last week,
like there's this new alternative to comedy today,
which is people are just saying what they want
and who are going like, well, no, no, no,
I'm gonna explore funny in a way
that I wanna find funny.
And the funniest people we all knew,
everyone listening right now,
remember, think back to the funniest kid
in middle school, elementary school.
He wasn't a kid who was sitting there with a notepad going,
let me construct what's funny about this.
This, let me think, let me really overthink what's hilarious.
It was the fucking kid who was from the gut funny.
Every kid who would stand up on the lunchroom table,
he was-
Was that you?
That was me, yeah.
You were that kid?
I was the funniest motherfucker.
I was funnier than I've ever been in my entire life
when I was a kid.
And then it became a business and you become like,
you know, whatever we could be talking, right?
And let's say I'm having a conversation with you
and podcasting changed it a little bit
because now we have microphones in front of us, right?
But if I'm talking to you at a bar or a diner, right?
And then one of us say something really funny,
and then I'm like, oh, shit, dude, I can use that on stage.
I will stop our conversation.
I will stop this amazing, incredible, beautiful moment
where we are enjoying each other's fucking time.
I'm looking at you in your eyes and we are fucking connecting.
I made you laugh, which is a fucking incredible thing
that only certain people in the world have that ability
to make their friends and family laugh.
This is incredible.
And I'll say, stop, hold the presses, fuck life.
I have to go write this down now in a notebook.
I believe that takes a,
and you're stopping exercising that funny muscle in life.
That's how you get really, really funny
is you're making your friends laugh in life.
You fucking make a girl laugh on a date, whatever it is.
And I think that we stop it.
And I do think podcasting is kind of helping it again though
because now we're talking so much
and trying to be funny so often for so many hours a week
that I think once again, it's just exercising the muscle.
So you started off living outside of New York,
poor family.
Oh yeah, like what do you mean by oh yeah, poor?
I don't think you realize how poor you are
until you grow up a little bit and you look back
and you're like, whoa, I was really poor.
Like my mom was on welfare, food stamps, section eight.
Mom was a former drug addict
who was in recovery throughout my childhood.
Didn't even know really that my mom was a drug addict.
And just apartments never owned anything,
never had a new car.
Like it was always some old beat up fucking car
from the 80s.
Your parents got divorced?
My dad was murdered when it was four.
He was stabbed to death.
So and yeah, he was in Paterson, New Jersey,
which is like- Sorry man.
No, it's okay dude.
It's literally 30 years ago, 35 years, 31 years ago.
So yeah, I mean, my mom's 20 when she has me,
18 when she has my sister.
Her husband or boyfriend is murdered.
Now she's left without these kids.
She already had a drug problem.
Did they ever catch the murderer?
Yeah, he went to jail.
I tried to get him on my podcast.
What?
I was gonna try to get him on my podcast.
He went to jail for like 20 years.
You tried to get your dad's killer on your podcast.
I did a whole thing.
I talked to a private investigator.
They were sending me specific things about the case
because not everything's out there.
So I went out and I did the research
and found out a lot of information about the guy
and he died.
He died a few years ago.
I was gonna try to get him on just,
and I wasn't kind of like,
ambush him and be like, you fucking murdered my dad.
He was a kid.
My dad beat him up.
He was like 16 and my dad beat him up
probably in front of his girlfriend or some shit, right?
And he came back and he fucking,
you know, he came back with a kitchen knife
and there's no justification,
but you, when you grow up in Patterson, New Jersey,
you know, that's fucking, dude,
you look on the lists of the most dangerous places,
dude, Patterson's been up there with like fucking Syria.
It's like crazy, dude.
It's not good, right?
It's bad.
And these little pockets of like Jersey
or like there's really bad neighborhoods in New Jersey
and like outside of Philly.
And yeah, my dad was also not a good dude, I don't think.
I think he was kind of a bad, you know, drug dealery type,
but also young, you know, but he was like 25 or 26
and this guy, you know,
they got into a fist fight outside of a strip club
and my dad got the better of him
and the guy came back later on that night
and fucking stabbed him.
Holy shit.
And that was that.
So it was like, hey, like literally came back
with his friend, you know, his friend, you know,
I guess they were with a girl,
the girl threw the knife underneath the car.
It was like, all the details are fucking,
they sent me like every like police report.
I went on Google Earth and I like looked at the corner.
That's eerie.
That's, that was the eerieest thing of all.
Looking at the corner that he was stabbed on.
I can't imagine.
Yeah.
I can't imagine.
Yeah.
Wow.
So my mom, you know.
So you're poor mom, you're, she's 24 now.
She was, yeah, 24.
Yeah, she's 24.
You're four.
You said you had a sister?
Yeah, she's, she's at six at the time.
So she has a four and a six year old
and your dad just got murdered.
Yep.
And she's recovering from drugs.
Or is she using at the time?
She's recovering, but then she started using again.
What was she taking?
Harrowing.
Oh man.
Yeah.
Wow.
And your dad was probably selling heroin.
Yeah.
And your dad was probably shooting heroin.
Yeah.
Wow.
And I didn't know any of this until I was like,
a fucking 12 or 13.
And it was because my mom used to take methadone,
which is a drug they get for people in recovery.
And he used to come in a little orange bottle.
Sure.
And I didn't know it.
And my mom told me it was her back medication.
And I was just watching the news with her one night
and on a conveyor belt,
like the little bottles for my kitchen,
just fucking new miracle drug to help heroin addicts.
That's gonna take the place of methadone.
And it's like these little bottles.
I remember it was like, you know,
one of those big factories where it's like
all of the bottles like came spinning down.
Like they were all spinning on a track.
And it was like, I mean, that,
it's a very morbid like memory.
Those bottles spinning on that thing.
And me like looking over at my mom
and like having the realization like, holy fuck.
And it hurt.
Was she aware, did she know you'd figured her out
at that point?
Yeah.
I got mad.
I don't remember really, to be honest,
I don't really remember what her reaction was.
Maybe she denied it.
Maybe then she told me afterwards.
Yeah, I don't really remember.
You're 13.
Maybe anywhere between,
I was probably between 11 and 13,
sometime around that time.
Right.
And so now it's dawning on you
that your mom is struggling with this demon.
Yeah.
And it's continuing to struggle.
Or was it that time when she clean?
At that time she was clean.
She got, when, after my dad died,
she started using again.
And then me and my sister moved in with my aunt
and my grandma.
And then she started using, you know, she was using.
And then she got clean after like a year.
She came and like lived with us.
And then we moved back in with her.
How long were you apart from,
do you remember that period of living
with your grandmother?
I do.
I don't remember.
It didn't seem like, you know, look dude,
it's so hard to kind of like,
that time in your life is so weird, right?
Cause I have a four year old now.
It's such a fucked up time of life.
That time of life is like, you know,
it's your first memories.
It's the first shit you fucking remember.
And I remember when I, when I had my kid,
I was like dude, when my kid's four,
I gotta be making money.
I gotta be on TV.
I gotta be successful.
He's not gonna have a memory of his dad being a loser.
Right.
So.
And your, and his dad isn't.
You're a hard working human, man.
You really have your shit together.
It's amazing.
Like watching you, it seems like you're kind of like,
I mean, I don't want to insult anybody else in the skanks,
but it seems like you're kind of like,
the brains behind a lot of it.
You seem really like, you're so good at planning shit
and coming up with like, every time we're around,
like I'll say something just offhandedly
that I would like, never in a million years think of doing.
And suddenly you're like coming up with business plans for.
Yeah.
Yeah, I think that just came from,
when you do, when you grow up with that poor,
I mean, like I said, dude, like,
I remember watching my mom at like seven and being like,
I don't know, we shouldn't be on welfare.
You shouldn't be taking food stamps.
I just remember having this thought,
like being like, what are you doing?
Like what, like that's not right.
Like what, like what do we, now look,
now you go like, fuck him, do the amount of taxes they take.
Mother fuck, give my money back, dude.
Right. Do whatever you can do.
Go take advantage, mother fuckers.
But the reality is, you know, I think that that,
you know, it was the opposite thing.
My mom was very verbally and physically abusive.
My mom was very like, you know, to be honest,
very lazy for whatever reason,
whether it was justified or not, you know,
she didn't have that same type of drive or a thing.
And I just didn't want to be like my mom.
You know, I really didn't want to be like that.
I worked, I've worked every day since I was 11 years old.
I've always had a job.
I was buying my own school clothes
when I was 11 or 12 years old.
I just, I've had this industrious thing in me
and I was very embarrassed about being poor as well.
So I think that kind of just,
it was just this thing that was always built into me.
How's your relationship with your mom now?
She died.
She died when I was like 22.
Wow.
So you've had like-
You don't want to know how.
Yeah, I do.
Hair went over this.
She ended up using again after all, all said and done.
So it's weird hearing you talk about this
because most comedians have had really great childhoods
and a great life.
You know, it's funny though, it's like, you know,
it's hack to say, but we're some of our fucking past
and, you know, it is what it is.
You know, I mean, you, I dude,
I have literally the greatest kid in the world.
I wouldn't change anything, dude.
Would you bring your mom back?
Fuck her.
I don't, like, not even in a negative way, dude.
Not even, not, not, not one.
I wouldn't change a second before my son was born.
Nothing, dude.
Cause anything I could,
the fucking wind blows another way another day.
I turn left when I should have turned right.
Who knows where the fuck I could have been.
Right.
Even all that, dude, all these stupid things.
You know, I love the idea of like cast theory
and the butterfly effect and all that shit.
I get so like, I'm a stupid salesman, dude.
I, you know, I, I, I saw gym memberships
and I've always, I was break down to like the core level
of like all that shit.
Like that was the thing that always got me into like sales.
Was that like mentality behind it?
Right.
And I, dude, I've just always like felt that way, dude.
Like any little stupid thing that any fist fight
you got into when you were in the fourth grade, you know,
I remember I got to in the sixth year
to fight with Brian Schultz, right?
Yeah.
You know, I got suspended from school.
What was the fight about?
This black chick was trying to like fight me.
It was a chick, this fucking ghetto ass chick.
And I'm like, I'm not going to fight you.
You're a chick.
And then he pushed me into her.
So then I turned around and I just fucking decked him
because I had all this pent up like fucking anger.
Sure.
And when a chick hits you, it's like,
all you can do is cry.
It really brings back to when you're a kid,
like your mom hit, you can't hit your mom.
Yeah, right.
You know what I'm saying?
So when a chick hit you, you can't do anything.
You, you have this.
So he just had to touch me at that moment.
That was a bad idea.
Yes.
So I punched him in the face.
What a fucking asshole to do that, man.
Yeah, dick move.
What an asshole.
Cool guy though.
He ended up being a cool guy later.
Okay.
This is sixth grade.
We're kids.
Yeah.
So I hit him and got suspended for a couple of days, right?
Yeah.
That might have even been the fight that I got into
because I got into like three or four fights
in Farley Middle School
that got me sent to Havershaw Middle School.
It's a completely different school.
Any one of those fights, if they didn't happen,
I might not get,
I've gotten sent to Havershaw Middle School.
If I didn't go to Havershaw Middle School,
I wouldn't have met John Hickey,
who became my best friend,
who I ended up playing in a band with.
That defined who I was from eighth grade
till fucking my first year of college.
I was a musician.
I was in a band producing shows,
putting on huge metal shows with Sworn Enemy
and Coed and Cambry.
And it's like, dude, all of that.
Think about that, dude.
That fight with Paul Timanti.
If that didn't happen,
I don't know if any of that would have happened.
I wouldn't be sitting here right now.
I truly believe that.
If Paul Timanti didn't push me into that girl,
I wouldn't be sitting here right now, dude.
I fucking wholeheartedly within my soul.
Wow.
Okay, so thank you, Paul Timanti.
I wouldn't have my kid.
Isn't that amazing?
You go that fucking asshole,
but I go, no, dude, fucking A, dude.
That's the way it was supposed to happen.
That was God.
That was God in disguise.
That was God wearing the face of your friend.
You know, one of the things that I've been taught
is one way to look at things.
Not that this is true or not true.
Maintain agnosticism.
But one way to look at everything,
everything is just God wearing different masks,
like teaching you.
And so your outlook is so beautiful
because it's the opposite of victim mentality.
A victim, something like that happens to them.
And they think the exact same thing in reverse,
which is if he hadn't pushed me,
then I wouldn't have gone to this fucked up school.
You know, and then my life wouldn't have gone downhill.
But with someone like you, somehow,
and I wanna figure out how,
you've transformed a childhood
that a lot of people would use as an excuse
to be a complete motherfucker for their entire lives
into some kind of beautiful trampoline
that launched you into fatherhood
and also into like having a really great comedy career
and podcasting career.
That's really beautiful.
But when did it start?
Were you, was this just like some genetic thing inside you?
When do you remember in your childhood,
the moment you were like,
I'm not gonna let this destroy me?
I don't know if it was ever as clear as that, right?
It was like, I was very independent
from a very young age, I remember.
And I remember...
You had to be, you had to be independent, didn't you?
Yeah, I mean, yeah, I just,
I don't know that there was like a specific moment
that kind of, that I can kind of like nail down
that made me go like, oh, well,
I'm not gonna let this fucking,
there's moments like, I remember,
I remember like, I talked about this on other shows,
so I do apologize if, you know,
my fans are hearing me getting repetitive
about any of this stuff.
But, you know, I remember there was a moment
that I could pinpoint the moment
where I like became like industrious.
And I was like, oh, I like running my own thing.
Because I was always the kid
to have my own like, iced tea stand.
Dude, summer would hit, iced tea lemonade stand,
I'd offer both options, three sizes.
I mean, dude, I was that kid, dude.
How old were you?
You know, as young as six, I don't know, like five.
I don't remember ever a time
not making, going out and trying to make money.
Did your mom teach you this?
Where did it come from?
No, no, my mom wasn't industrious at all.
My mom was smoking cigarettes,
falling asleep on a methadone in her bed.
You know what I'm saying?
Like, I didn't want to be that.
It was a weird thing.
It's just hard for me to imagine a six-year-old.
Usually it's like you pick it up from somewhere, right?
Would you see it on TV or something?
Like, where did it occur to you?
I've got to figure out a way to start taking care of myself
because I don't have a mom and I don't have a dad.
And I got to figure this shit out.
My mom-
I just didn't have things.
And I envied the kids in my neighborhood who had things.
And I grew up in a very white trash type neighborhood
that was like lower middle class to really poor.
Like block to block.
It was like, it could be like fucking welfare
to like the best case scenario,
like lower middle class,
where they'd own like a split level house, right?
And, but you know,
even those people were a little bit trashy.
Like the people that owned the house,
they weren't like, you know,
but in my mind, anybody who owned a house
was like fucking rich.
When I, at that age, at six or seven,
if you owned a home, you were like,
holy fuck, like, wow, do you own a home?
I would, I could never imagine-
I'm still like that.
Yeah.
How somebody could get enough money
and get all their shit together
to like a half a million dollars.
Are you crazy?
It's astounding.
That's crazy.
That was always very like crazy to me.
So I think that I, I don't know, man,
I just, I remember the, really it was,
it was those moments,
it was really early moments where I'm watching my mom
just kind of be a loser and just kind of going like,
I don't want to fucking be that.
I don't want to, I don't want to like,
just the embarrassment of walking with you.
I don't know if you were poor,
but your mom pulls out food stamps
and you literally leave while she's paying
because you don't want your friends from middle school
or elementary school to see your mom
paying with food stamps.
You know, that's, that was kind of a motivating factor for me.
Yeah, I wasn't that poor.
I, we definitely, our, our family was like,
for the first few years, we certainly weren't doing,
I mean, like, you know, you're,
I wasn't food stamps poor.
I think we were probably lower class for the first,
10 years of my life or something,
probably, but I can remember saying to my mom,
and this is when I knew we were poor.
I said, mom, are we rich?
And she looks at me and she goes,
well, we're rich in spirit, donkey.
I'm like, we're fucking broke.
What does that mean?
It means you're broke.
It means you're fucking broke.
She says she's rich in spirits.
She was drunk, okay.
She was hammered.
She said, get out of my room, baby.
Mom, you're getting happy.
Yeah, man.
But, but, but the kind of poor you're talking about.
Yeah.
That's like the real deal.
That's the real deal, man.
And that's what I, I would certainly get.
It was like iced tea lemonade stand.
It was like, you know,
winter would roll around.
I was shoveling people's driveways.
I would rake up leaves.
I would, I would do whatever it was.
Cause I didn't have like, you know,
I didn't have somebody to like buy me things.
Like now that I look at my kid,
he's got so many fucking toys.
I mean, I remember just having a few,
like kind of like tattered toys.
My transformers that I had, you know,
that, that one double headed gray transformer
where the legs were the double,
it turned into a draught, double headed dragon.
Right.
And it was the dude, the, the, the,
the face of the dragons flipped up
and those were his legs.
Yeah.
So I remember this dragon so fucking well.
Wait, you mean Volt?
That's not Voltron.
It was transformer.
Okay.
Definitely a transformer.
It was a dragon transformer.
They had to spin off fucking whatever.
It's right.
And I used to make that guy,
fuck my sister's Barbie all the time.
Like, if you know the Barbie's legs don't split,
so you have to do the, the double legs up,
which is a good move now.
Now that I'm an adult, like it didn't seem realistic.
As a kid, I was like, who would fuck that the way.
But you're like, that's a pretty decent move.
Like knees together, legs up on one shoulder.
So, but I remember, dude,
I had that fucking transformer for like three years.
That was my main toy.
Dude, I had like four or five of those big rubber,
you know, WWF, you know, wrestlers.
Sure.
And those, I, dude, those were my fucking toys for years.
And that didn't seem like crazy.
I love those toys, you know?
But now that I look back, I was like, no,
my kid gets new toys all the time.
He gets new books all the time, new clothes.
My mom didn't read to me.
I don't ever remember ever being read to
once in my entire fucking life.
Not a single time do I remember a person sitting me down,
putting me to bed and reading me a story.
My kid, I mean, my kid, every night,
my kid could fucking, my kid, you should hear me.
I have the worst voice.
I sing my kid to bed every single night.
I put him to bed every single night.
What do you sing to him?
I sing him unanswered prayers by Garth Brooks.
How does that go?
Oh boy.
Let's just hear it.
Just the other night at my hometown football game,
my wife and I ran into my old high school flame.
And as I introduced them, the past came back to me
and I couldn't help but think of the way things used to be.
Oh, does he sing it with you?
Yeah.
Oh, that's the sweetest thing I've ever heard.
I bought him green eggs and ham yesterday.
I came in the mail.
I mean, the first time you read green eggs and ham,
I mean, it's fucking, dude, this kid lost his shit.
He's not a big, he's never really read Dr. Seuss.
Oh shit.
He's about to go into a whole other world.
So he has no immune system for Dr. Seuss.
Oh no, dude.
And look, he already hates Jews.
So we're halfway there.
Dr. Seuss is an anti-Semite.
I think he was, right?
I think that was like part of the thing.
We was at Walt Disney.
I think they were all anti-Semites.
All of our heroes, we're losing all our heroes.
Dr. Seuss, Harvey Weinstein, we're losing all our heroes.
Harvey Weinstein hates Jews.
Is that what he did?
I haven't been watching the news lately.
No, you haven't been watching the thing
with Harvey Weinstein.
No, I have, I have, obviously.
Man, this is, so you're industrious from a young age.
Oh, but that's right.
I was gonna make this point.
I remember, it was like a moment,
like my neighbor died.
A guy that I, that lived in my neighborhood, died.
And his family was moving all of the stuff out to like
the curb to be picked up by like trash collection, right?
And me and this other kid in the neighborhood
just took everything, everything that was being collected
and put it, and we just moved it over to my yard.
I was seven.
My mom was at work and we moved it over to my yard
and we did a yard sale at my yard.
And we made like a hundred bucks in a day.
Wow.
And when you're like seven or eight years old
with a hundred bucks to it, I mean,
I mean, it was literally just used by candy and shit.
What was your mom saying about this?
My mom was very impressed when she came home.
You know, she was.
My mom at that time was, she wasn't like a shitty mom.
Like she tried, she literally tried.
Like she was the leader of my Boy Scout troop.
She like took me to like little league, you know,
karate classes.
Like my mom did all the suburban mom bullshit.
You know, she's had fucking demons.
They got the best of her.
She was struggling with one of the most disastrous
addictions that can happen to you.
Fucking a Puerto Rican.
They warned her.
It was not going to end well.
Did you, did you think you were going to be a comedian?
No, no.
I didn't even know like what comedy really was.
You didn't, when you're, when you're, you know,
a little kid, you don't,
stand-up comedy is a very weird thing.
Even step one, you know, what?
Like what the fuck do I do?
What do you do?
You know, you know.
You remember the first comedy you heard?
I remember the first comedy I heard,
but like how would I do that?
What was it?
Like when you're a kid, the earliest comedy
I could remember like really enjoying and laughing at,
you know, was Eddie Murphy Delirious.
Right.
That was like the first like comedy special.
And there was no filter in my home in terms of like content.
You know, I watched pretty fucked up movies, anything.
I remember Clockwork Orange I watched
when I was like six or seven.
That rape scene, that gang rape scene,
where like they're in front of the dude in a wheelchair,
they're raping this old dude.
So I mean, as a seven year old watching that
with your mom going like, cool,
I understand what gang rape in front of a man
in front of a husband is now.
What was your mom doing?
Booting up probably.
I don't know, Duncan.
She wasn't paying attention.
I know that much.
Your mom's shooting heroin.
No, she wasn't.
Like I said, it wasn't that like, I didn't know.
She wasn't doing drugs at that time.
But she, she fucked up like, no,
she shouldn't let me watch those types of movies.
You know, watching the exorcist when I'm like five or six.
My kid gets scared of fucking, you know,
if the incredible Hulk smashes too hard in the Avengers,
you know what I'm saying?
Like.
But do you think this is, I mean,
when I, I don't know what I was watching
when I was five or six, that is too young.
Yeah.
But I want, I always wonder about like the impact
that that has on kids.
And I wonder like, how, how bad,
how disastrous is it really for a kid
to see some of that shit?
Cause it's like, if you introduce it to them
in the right way, maybe, I don't know.
I remember being terrified.
Actually, now I think about it,
I remember being that age and someone could just tell me
a ghost story and I would go into like a fear paralysis.
Yeah.
Where I couldn't, where I was just frozen
and in absolute terror.
So yeah, I get it, man.
I mean, this is the thing that I hear a bunch,
which is people who have warped childhoods,
non-standard, abusive, rough childhoods.
It seems like they make really,
they either make really great parents
or they make the worst parents on earth.
It's either, it either you run the opposite direction
or you, you're a little bit better than your parents.
And that's what my mom was.
My mom was like, my mom would tell me stories
as she was beating me up.
This is how fucked up this is.
And I'm very like, people hear me talk about this stuff
and they're like, dude, are you like,
but you know, it's, you know,
she would tell you stories.
Yeah, but you know, like we talk about this,
how we do it.
I mean, if I was sitting with a therapist,
we, I would just be talking about this the same way.
Trying to find funny in these stories, in my opinion,
is even a much more therapeutic way to look at,
you know, dark shit.
You're trying to find the positive.
You're trying to pull the positive out
of these dark fucked up things.
That is therapy fucking 10 point out.
Absolutely.
Fuck just talking about it and crying
with a fucking napkin.
No bitch.
I'm now trying to literally create a piece
of positive content out of my fucked up childhood or life.
So, you know, I don't think people should feel bad
when they hear these stories.
You know, this is kind of how, you know,
this is how I do it.
I shouldn't say every comic, you know, it's, it's,
you know, it is very therapeutic to kind of like
talk about this shit.
It's like growing flowers on a baby grave.
Yeah, exactly.
That's actually an interesting analogy.
Yeah.
So, yeah, go ahead.
So your mom would beat you while she's-
So, yeah, she would fucking like literally,
she'd be like, well, you don't know how bad I'd have it,
you know, and then she would tell me stories.
I remember from as early as I can remember,
my mom told me that her stepdad raped her
with an ax to her back.
And I'm like, I would never put that on my kid.
My kid would never have to deal with the levity of that.
In his childhood, he would, you know, as an adult,
he might, I might share that story with him later on.
Like as a fucking fully functional,
not even an 18 year old adult,
like a 25 year old, hey dude, I've graduated college.
Let me sit down and tell you about the,
let me tell you about the fucking,
about the world and some shit that I, you know,
maybe even, I don't even know.
I don't think so.
You wanna hear something crazy, man?
Yeah.
So, this is something I've been thinking about a lot.
And some people are explaining this to me.
So, the concept here is trauma, right?
And what you're talking about is trauma.
And trauma is this contagion
that travels through time from parents to kids.
So, and you hear about this, you know,
people who have been molested
sometimes will become molesters, right?
It's a contagion.
And the same with trauma.
People who have been abused will become abusers
or have a higher probability of becoming abusers.
So, you can follow this echo of suffering
probably thousands and thousands and thousands
and thousands of years back to somebody
maybe just having a bad fucking day.
Some guys having the best day.
Stepping dinosaur shit.
Stepping dinosaur shit.
Fuck!
Probably more like he saw like a bear carry his daughter off
and Peter in front of him.
And then he kind of went crazy and became an asshole.
Now, this is where it gets really.
By the way, for us, like today,
by today's standards, like as it relates,
that's like iTunes going down for a day.
Oh yeah.
It's like that.
It sucks.
You're having a bad fucking day.
It's a bad morning.
I saw my entire village was eaten by bears.
But the, so what's interesting is this.
There was an experiment that they did
where they took mice and they exposed them
to the smell of cherry blossoms
while they were electrocuting them.
And then the mice had little baby mice.
And then they would.
We just a little side note to ADD this up.
We really just don't give a fuck about mice.
Is there anybody advocating for what we do
to lab rats and mice?
Dude, there's an actual, you can look it up.
There's this very sweet statue.
I don't know where it is.
And it's dedicated to all the lab rats who've died for us.
Jesus.
And it's really sweet because so many of them have died.
But you know, like, we can do ADD, but this is actually,
you ever read Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy?
No, I didn't.
So this, I've talked about this before
because it's so fucking genius.
But Douglas Adams said that mice were the end
of the tentacles of interdimensional creatures
who are sticking them into this dimension
to study scientists, right?
Whoa.
That's funny.
But anyway, so they exposed the baby mice
to the smell of cherry blossoms
and they had a stress reaction to the cherry.
So this is called epigenetics.
And this is the idea that trauma gets,
it gets in some way or another
encoded into our fucking DNA.
And don't they say that like,
I just watched that one documentary about like dogs.
Isn't dogs that much more susceptible
to that type of like genetic, like passing things on?
I don't know.
Probably.
Cause they were, like dogs are like the most
genetically malleable mammals.
Like if you read a, you know, two short, short leg dogs,
they're going to create a short leg puppy.
That's just like they're,
and this why like you get aggressive dogs
that have aggressive genes.
And it's like, and you, you know, so I like, you know,
dude, I don't fucking trust big fucking scary pit bulls
or German shepherds.
Dude, who fucking knows?
Dude, three generations ago,
some asshole with a fucking black Yankees hat
kicked this dog in the head
and it just fucking tears my throat out.
Yeah. Well, this is the thing, man.
I mean, this is like, and I really love all of this stuff
coming out right now.
And I especially love it in the context
of what you're talking about,
which is that every single person has a chance
to stop this avalanche of shit
that's been pouring down from time
into our current part of the time space continuum.
Cause you look at a person
and you're seeing the very tip of a river of genetics
that stretches back to the time when we were proto hominids.
And this river of fucking genetics has been corrupted
by trauma, fucking World War II,
the industrial revolution, the fucking-
Limb Biscuit.
I hear so much, Limb fucking Biscuit, dude, it's destroyed.
Limb Biscuit is why we have Trump.
It's all part of it, dude.
It really is.
It's a collection of all of the trauma throughout history.
Limb Biscuit was one of the,
you know they have like little fucking,
just fucking things on the timeline.
That's one of them.
No, Limb Biscuit is like the ocean
and all the trauma is rivers that just poured into this band
forming a capsule of horror.
But this is, so when somebody has this fucking thing,
when somebody has the wherewithal or the good luck
or the good sense or just a sheer existential fucking
potency to be like, I'm not gonna fuck up my kid.
And the way I'm not gonna put my kid through that,
I'm not going to continue playing this game of hot potato
with a piece of Satan shit,
which is what's been going on for so long.
Then it's, what you do for the world
is so incredible because you're stopping like,
you're stopping something that is the potential
of destroying the planet.
You have no idea how much you're speaking my language
right now and I want to shine the light on myself.
I preach about this all the time
and I get very preachy about it.
And I think if there's one thing you're gonna preach about,
this is one of the things, dude.
I don't hit my kid I never have,
never even smacked him on the hand.
I practice my own version of peaceful parenting,
peaceful parenting by definition,
they get a little fucking crazy, I think, some of them.
But I don't hit, I don't speak to my son aggressively.
He's never been yelled at by me.
Like he's seen me get upset,
he's seen me get angry at other things,
but it's never been at him.
We don't use intimidation, we use a threat.
Even parents that don't hit or the ones they go,
well, we spent once in a while,
the looming threat is just always there, right?
And I think that that is a very big part
of what's wrong with people today
and where a lot of the violence is coming from in society.
I think people are, we're hitting babies.
You're hitting little babies, dude.
You're smacking little one year olds on the hand,
you're using aggression,
you're speaking to them aggressively
and it programs them to interact with people that way.
I watch my son, my son walks like me, he talks like me.
Dude, he is mimicking every movement,
everything around him and for people to deny that,
striking a child for an act in the way
that you want them to act,
before they're old enough to compute
what's right, wrong, whatever it is,
that that doesn't program them a certain way.
I think that they're ignoring a really big fact.
And I think that, and it's a lot of people,
I think it's something like 70% of people
admit to spanking their kids, 75%, as young as one.
Those are the people that are admitting it,
I think the numbers are even more than that.
I think it's a very, very small fraction to people
that don't spank or don't believe in it.
I get a lot of pushback online when I talk about it.
I get people that, you know,
I've never, the most controversial thing I say
on the internet is don't hit your kids.
I have people coming at me, like, dude,
I say on podcasts, I say the N word and the F word
and anywhere, we don't give a shit, dude.
We try to push the envelope as far as possible.
What's the N word?
Nigger?
What?
Nigger?
What?
Say it, Duncan, you can say it.
I'm not saying the N word.
You wouldn't say it?
No, fuck.
Just hold on for the context of just,
we're saying, say this, the word nigger is a word.
I can't say it.
Shut up, yes you can.
No way.
It is though.
I'm not racist.
You're not racist.
You are though.
No, I'm not.
Listen to what you just said.
The word nigger is a word.
You're a fucking Nazi.
Oh shit.
You're a racist.
That's the new N word.
Nazi, you make me sick.
How could you say such a fucking thing?
No, you know what, man?
Here's why I won't say it.
Have you ever ridden a subway in New York?
No, no, listen.
Here's why I won't say it.
Here's why I don't say it.
I won't say it.
Not that I give a fuck that anyone says it.
And anybody who says it, from the most vile,
festering racist, to the most fucking hilarious
Puerto Rican, awesome human I know,
like to me, it's a magical word.
And I think that it fucking,
okay, let me give you an example.
I'll give you an example.
I used to not think like this, man.
I'll give you an example.
So I, you know, I got my fucking ball chopped off.
I got testicular cancer.
And I'm fine now.
My mom died of cancer.
So when I see comedians doing jokes about fucking cancer
or when I hear like real gross,
flippant jokes about cancer,
it triggers in me memories that are like uncomfortable,
right?
I don't like it to think about it too much.
But that being said,
I would never in a hundred trillion billion years
be like, hey, man, you shouldn't talk about that
for a stage, man.
That's fucked up.
But that being said,
I recognize the specific like weird fucking tone hits with me.
So I think similarly.
Of course.
The word nigger produces.
I think it produced, what it does
is it produces like a.
A visceral reaction.
Cause I, when I hear that word,
it's way different than when a black person hears that word.
Have you ever heard it?
I mean, you have.
I've heard it.
I mean, I've had it thrown at me by family members,
like Italian Irish family members that like,
like my grandma said, I remember young memory.
It's not his fault.
He's a nigger.
I remember it was crazy.
Cause I would get picked on in the neighborhood
by the white kids.
They would throw rocks at me and call me a nigger.
And I would come on crying and upset that, you know,
these, these kids were being so mean to me.
And it's Italian Irish household where they're like,
yeah, you know, hey, they call you a nigger,
but you don't act like a nigger then.
Okay.
Yeah.
Well, yeah, it's different.
Obviously.
So it's like,
have you ever hear it like, like in like a real,
like racist context?
Like,
I grew up in the South.
So you know, exactly.
We do these jokes.
People don't even get it.
Like we're so just trying to be funny
in everything we do.
Even if it doesn't hit,
I think sometimes when a racist quote unquote joke
doesn't hit, there's this like almost same awkward tone of
like, oh my God, that was racist.
Like, no, it's just didn't, it was a misfire.
When you hear a real racism,
when you're at a bar and you hear some other guy goes,
like, I check out the fucking nigger over there,
that makes me feel like disgusted.
Yeah.
That's like, you know, that,
but it's really, it's con,
the context is what's making me feel disgusted.
It's not the word at all.
The words themselves.
And, you know, it speaks to your point where you said,
like, you know, you feel slightly triggered
and uncomfortable if people do a cancer joke.
You almost kind of like, you know, brings you to a place.
It makes me feel bad.
But shouldn't comedy,
I understand that point of comedy is supposed to be,
you know, to make people laugh,
but shouldn't comedy take you on a little bit
of that journey?
No, comedy gets, yeah, absolutely.
And that's, and again, like I say,
like, I recognize to me, that's the beauty of the thing.
There is absolute.
Like Patrice, oh, yeah, like I didn't agree
with anything Patrice said,
but he was the most brilliant comic
and I thought he was better because of it.
Because he took you on a journey.
No rules, no, no rules behind it all.
But then the other side of it,
aside from like the journey of like just having to deal
with it, I do, let me tell you, getting offended,
it's a delight.
Like if I find myself authentically offended,
like, oh man, that's a great moment.
Like, wow, that's incredible.
How'd you manage to, that's fucking awesome.
Yeah, the offense is like, usually it's just like,
oh, the other side of comedy though,
is you reflect what you think is comedic
and what you want to say and what's really funny.
And I just know like, when it comes to like racial shit,
I don't know, it's just like not my ball
of fucking putty.
I don't get into it, I don't like,
I think when I like say it, I just,
I don't know, to me it's because it's not sparking,
something in me that's like, yeah,
that's pretty fucking hilarious.
I just don't, I just don't do it.
Yeah, I just grew up with such a,
because I'm a mixer, I'm half Puerto Rican,
half Italian-Irish, right?
I grew up with a Italian-Irish household,
my dad was murdered when I was four.
The Puerto Rican influence in my life
was basically gone after he was murdered, right?
I just grew up in this sort of hilarious world
where racism was a very, very big part of where I grew up,
how I grew up, what I kind of dealt with every single day.
I mean, I dealt with some real deal racism.
When I hear white people tell me
that I cannot use certain words
that have racial implications,
I'm like, motherfucker, are you crazy?
Have you ever been hit in the face with a rock
or something called the nigger?
Right.
Back the fuck up.
There you go.
Don't tell me what I can say.
Exactly.
So that experience, I do think it gives you
a little more of a right.
I have carte blanche because I am brown,
I think I'm the surface.
No pun intended, carte blanche.
You do have that, yeah.
But it's like, I think that people,
look, I was raised by white people.
I get this all the time.
People are like, well, you're not really Puerto Rican
because you were raised by Italian-Irish people.
You don't listen to hip-hop music.
You don't dress like you're a thug.
I grew up on metal music.
I grew up on poison and skid row.
That was the shit that I liked when I was eight or nine.
I had a sister who was a couple years older than me.
So I didn't have that the same journey
as the typical Puerto Rican kid growing up in the Bronx.
But I think that because of that,
I have a much different insight on racism and race
than even those kids in the Bronx.
Yeah, man, you do.
And it's like, people get really white, some white dudes
will get really adamant about their right
to say whatever they want to say,
to say the n-word as much as they want.
And it's like, go ahead, dude.
Say it all you fucking want.
Just say it until you're fucking blue in the face.
Wow, you're so fucking edgy.
Wow, congratulations.
But it's not funny and literally not fun.
You know what I mean?
It's not funny because I'm trying to apply ethics
to comedy.
It's not funny because what's coming out
just feels like a kind of,
have you ever heard the term edgelord?
Yes.
So that's what that is.
It's edgelording.
It's like, you're just trying to be this like fucking,
oh, sorry about that.
I like that, dude.
It's actually better.
You're just trying to be a fucking thing
that's like standing at the fucking, I'll fix that.
You're just trying to be a thing
that's like being rather obvious
in your choice of like language,
where it's like, what does it really fucking do?
And also PS, it's like, man, I mean, this is all,
I'm gonna be fucking really honest, man.
I didn't spend a lot of time thinking about this shit
until like some of my friends started explaining it to me.
And then I was kind of like,
is there explaining a little resistant
in the beginning where I'm like, what are you talking about?
And then the more I thought, they're like,
dude, Duncan, like just fucking think about it, man.
Think about your experience in life.
You know what I mean?
You don't know what it's like to actually, like you said,
get fucking hit in the face
while you're being called a nigger.
You don't know what that's fucking like.
You have no idea.
Anytime you've heard that word,
it's coming out of the mouth
of one of your fucking relatives in the south.
You know what I mean?
And it's like, and so you have no, there is no twinge.
But the thing that I say, and obviously you're not even,
you're not talking about taking the words off the table.
You're saying it's your personal choice
as a personal choice as an entertainer.
Like, you're like, you know what dude,
I don't need to go there because that's not,
and that's, I think that's admirable.
And I think that's obviously you're right.
I, you know, we kind of loop back around
to kind of the, you know, alternative comedy.
I do think that a lot of those words,
they're really difficult to get laughs with.
You can't go up and say faggot anymore
on stage and really get a laugh.
It's really hard.
I remember, I remember, I have a joke.
I have a joke that I use.
I talk about how, you know,
it was when I first had my kid, I wrote this.
I was like, I used to say that I wouldn't care
if my son was gay, but, you know,
I took my dog to the park recently
and he started humping his other male dog
and the dog's owner started fumbling.
He was like, ah, yo son, your dog's a faggot.
And I, you know, that was, and then I go into whatever, right?
Yeah, that's cool.
So, but the word faggot, I had to take out of that joke
because I would say faggot and the audience
would be laughing at, like they're laughing at the setups
and I'm hitting these little punches
and then I'd get to that word
and the audience would shut down and they go, whoa.
That's depressing.
You know, and then I go, all right, well, I have to change it
and I have to pivot.
It's my job to kill.
It's my job to get booked again at that club,
but it's also, I believe, you know, my job, you know,
and what we do with Legion of Skanks
and kind of the brand over at Gas Digital,
the podcast network that I run.
It's, I think it is our, at this point,
it's almost become like, you know,
part of our brand and part of our responsibility
to see how far we can push the line
with keeping it hilarious and palpable
for everybody in the room.
That's it.
Big J.
To Big J. Wilkerson, you know, say what you want about him.
Dude, he says every word under the sun
and he is one of the funniest motherfuckers on the planet.
Super funny.
He will, dude, I mean, I literally,
I watched him, we were at the Rose Battle
and he used the N-word judging and he fucking killed
and I was like, dude, I don't know many people
who can use the N-word, a white guy in a comedy club 2017
and fucking have the audience rolling.
Dude, that guy's fucking incredible.
And again, let me just emphasize this, man,
in case there's any question out there
and people are listening.
To me, comedy transcends ethics.
Comedy transcends morality.
Comedy transcends any kind of social construct
in the zeitgeist determining what is the right way to be
or the wrong way to be.
Comedy is the spirit of Loki, of chaos
and cannot be chained by the fucking ethical systems
of the people.
The moment comedians start letting themselves
get chained down by that fucking system of ethics,
then at that point, they are no longer fucking comedians.
At that point, they've become something a little different.
But again-
Setarist or what it was, setarist was the word.
I don't know what it fucking is.
But what I'm trying to get across is,
we should use all colors in our palette.
So what I'm saying is, if something popped into my head,
which was an authentic, hilarious use of that fucking word.
You would do it.
Fuck yeah, I'd do it.
Yeah, goddamn right.
But the point is, I haven't thought of anything funny
in years.
Yeah.
Well, just cross the board.
Yeah, dude, I'm out.
Well, you look at clean comics, like Napar Gatsy.
Like, people don't even realize that he is squeaky clean.
Like, has never cursed into a microphone.
Has never, like, that's like, on podcasts,
he was like, dude, I won't even curse.
Maybe he said bullshit or something on a podcast,
like, gotten hammered or something.
But that's as far as it's ever gone.
And he's got, you know, a few hours of material,
squeaky clean, super palpable.
And, you know, we've talked about it so much.
You know, my agent's like,
yeah, dude, I'd love to get you on some of these corporates.
How long can you go clean?
I'm like, six minutes?
I don't know, dude.
What are you, how long you need?
I can lie.
You know, and Nate, you'll go do an hour on these corporates
and he makes a lot of money doing it.
Yeah, bet.
Like a ton of fun.
He said to me, he was like, dude, he was like,
man, worst case scenario,
I'll just do these corporate gigs, you know?
And then he told me how much money he makes on them.
I was like, that's your worst case scenario?
I will suck a dick right now.
Literally, I would suck a dick for the amount of money
he makes on each corporate.
I really mean that.
I'm not even, and I'm not gay.
So excuse anyone, doesn't know.
That's a lot of money or not that much.
Or I'm really into sucking dick.
Yeah.
Turns out I just love sucking dick.
500 bucks.
It's like 500 bucks, yeah.
No, but he, his mind,
he doesn't think dirty.
He just, his mind doesn't go there.
His mind very much thinks of these things
and it's not a thing for him to try.
When I'm trying to do it like the late night tape,
it's a nightmare, dude.
Like my mind doesn't think that way.
And I'm editing my jokes and I'm pulling words out
and you're getting me an edited, you know, not for,
for people that don't know, a comedian,
you know, the reason that comedians do best
in their home club,
it's because they're most comfortable, dude.
When you're comfortable, you're from the gut.
You're in the moment.
You can say whatever you want.
You know you're not gonna get fired if you bomb
because the booker loves you,
that your friend at this point,
you've been working there for years.
That's where you get this amazing,
incredible fucking comedy out of somebody.
It's not in theater
in their first half hour comedy central special.
It's not late night where they're nervous as shit.
That is like.
Or where they've had to give a fucking sheet
of their jokes to a panel of censors
who go through every fucking line.
Word by word, gotta take that out, gotta take that out.
That is Lucifer.
That's like, can you fucking imagine all the great artists
having to go to a bureaucratic panel of people
reflecting the will of the state
before they could paint the thing
that had come into their minds?
It's crazy.
Can you fucking imagine what that would look like?
If they could showcase their art.
And then you would literally go,
imagine them going, all right, well you know what dude,
we're only using the eight colors in that Crayola box.
That's it.
Now look, is that a skill set?
Is that something incredible to be able to do?
Of course.
But it's not the nitty gritty balls,
what the fuck is funny about Duncan Truffle
or Louis Shagomas.
You know listen, I love that you wanna paint Mona Lisa.
And I think it's fantastic.
But does she have to be in dark,
like let's brighten up the thing a little bit.
Can we brighten it up?
She's, you could barely see her smile.
Make her fucking grin.
I wanna see her, I wanna see those teeth.
I wanna see this fucking teeth.
See Colgate is one of our sponsors
and we really need to show some teeth right now.
But see, but this is,
and I think it's a good way to wrap it around
because I know you gotta go.
This is something that I love about the skanks
and all of you guys
and what you represent when it comes to comedy
is that when you consider that up until this point,
the main way to reach the people through comedy
was either going on the road and then having albums
or getting on TV.
But then here's where it gets sinister
because the rules that people have been abiding by
up until recently with network television
have been rules that have been prescribed by the state.
Then what ends up happening is the state
gets in between the people and art,
in between the people.
So people have been seeing propaganda.
Now it might not seem like propaganda.
They're like, what do you mean?
Just cause like you can't say fuck
or pussy or shit or whatever.
No, no, no, no.
You can't get a late night set
if you are praising Trump in any way.
You're not getting on late night, period, you're not.
Now this is this effect for better,
this effect is always for the worse.
And so what ends up happening is people begin
to become attuned to a very specific type of media
that is media that has been warped by the state.
It's also comfortable, right?
So that people love routine.
So anything that deviates from that specific thing,
they go, I don't even like that.
And then in real, it's like a subconscious thing,
but they go, oh, that's uncomfortable.
They've been programmed.
Yeah.
They've been programmed.
That anti-programming, you-
It's conditioned.
You don't even realize that like,
it's not even the words, whatever it is.
It's how it's packed.
It's why every TV show is the same.
It's why every late night talk show starts the same,
ends the same.
It's because that routine,
if you deviate from that routine,
we don't need to start television shows
at the exact same time every single,
every single, in the same way.
Not every fucking reality show needs
to have the exact same structure,
but they know that the way the human mind works
is routine makes people very comfortable.
It makes people go like, oh shit,
I feel like I'm at home
and that's why everybody in their life,
they go through these cycles.
So you say, anybody who goes through a therapist,
you're gonna come to the conclusion
that you're doing these stupid cycles
and you break them all down and that's comfortable.
Even if it's bad habits,
even if it's stupid shit,
smoke and cigarettes every day, right?
It's just, it's this comfortable thing
that you're doing every single day
and when you don't have it,
I remember when I first stopped smoking cigarettes,
I was like, what am I gonna do with my hand?
I was like, ah, I need to,
it was so uncomfortable and just not have that.
It wasn't even the fucking smoke anymore.
It was just the routine.
So which is super fucking cool
about your podcast and what you guys are doing.
See, I'm not saying you guys are like saving planet earth
or anything that's so lofty,
but just the very act that I know.
You should know though, because here's what we did.
This is where we get fucking so silly.
This is that, we were in LA last week
and we did that show at the comedy store
and then we're just at dinner
and we're on cloud nine.
Jay had just done Conan
and everyone's feeling really good
and there's Puerto Rico shit was going on.
We tweeted at me, they were like,
ah, you guys haven't said anything about Puerto Rico.
So I was like, you know what?
The comedy store shows tomorrow night,
well, this in front of everybody,
Dave did not want to do this at all.
Jay barely wanted to do this,
but there's a bunch of people,
like agents, all these people.
I was like, we should donate the money
from the comedy store show tomorrow night to Puerto Rico.
And then Dave's like, all of it?
I'm like, yeah, all of it.
And everyone's like, yeah, yeah, I was like, yeah.
Then everyone's like, I guess we're gonna do that now.
So we made three grand that night.
On the Thursday night, we did a stand up show
in the main room, then a podcast in the belly room.
But then, check this out, you're gonna love this
because you fucking, you get into the,
just using the fucking business for good sometimes.
The podcast we recorded, I was like,
well, why don't we just put that up for pay-per-view
on Gas Digital?
There you go.
Right, because people won't buy podcasts,
but if you donate a few bucks,
we'll give you the podcast.
We're gonna put it out for free eventually one day.
So we've made another like six grand already.
We're probably gonna probably cut her off like 10 grand.
We're gonna donate 10 grand to Puerto Rico.
So yeah, you can say, and word jokes,
are saving the world Duncan.
And I can feel it.
And that's what's so fucking cool about it.
And this is why it's just such a beautiful thing to have.
And it's really fucking inspiring.
That's awesome, fucking $10,000.
That's amazing.
And here's the cool part of all of the thing
that I'm like, I take out of all of it,
fuck Puerto Rico, no offense.
But I think that's such an incredible lesson to learn.
Like, wait a minute, hold on, time out.
We don't have to raise money,
and we're not a huge podcast.
We have a following,
but you can do a fucking charity benefit
without having to get eight big comics together
and a big theater.
And you know, to raise $10,000,
it would take a fucking a whole night
and everybody's schedules and getting everything together.
You can just say, hey dude,
you know what, I'm gonna do a podcast.
You know, you sit down with fucking Ari Shafir.
Today we're gonna donate the money
to the Las Vegas family.
Victims, five bucks a pop, you buy it, you donate it.
I mean, we did it $2 for the audio,
$5 for the video and the audio,
and then for 20 bucks we give you a special thank you on air.
And we're just gonna keep it open for about a week.
I think we've done like six grand so far on the pod.
You are a filthy angel and I'm so glad you exist, man.
Filthy angel is a great way to fucking describe it.
Sounds like the name of a porn company.
But hey, thank you so much, Louis.
Thank you, brother.
This is awesome, man.
Where can people find you?
Go on MyScomedy.com for all the live dates.
When does this come out?
This will probably come out either this week or next week.
So if it comes out next week, December,
I'm sorry, October 22nd, I'll be in Detroit.
You guys can get tickets at GoMesComedy.com,
I'm with my buddy Justin Silver,
coming out to Chicago, coming out to Buffalo.
Lots of road stuff happening.
I got three podcasts, Legion of Skanks, Real Ass Podcasts,
and then Believe You Me,
which is with the UFC Middleweight Champion,
Michael Bisping.
Cool.
And you were all on GastigitalNetwork.com,
which is the podcast network
that I run with my business partner.
Beautiful, thank you, Mr. Gomez.
Duncan, you the man.
That's great.
Thanks for listening, everybody.
That was Louis J. Gomez.
I'll have all the links you need to find him
over in the comments section of this episode
at DuncanTruzzle.com.
Much thanks to those of you who have subscribed to us
at Patreon.
Remember, it's at Patreon.com forward slash DTFH.
And thank you all for continuing to listen to this podcast.
We've got a great episode coming up with the legendary
Alexi Wasser.
That'll be out this Friday, hopefully.
Until then, may God be with you.
Hare Krishna.
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