The Bill Bert Podcast - The Bill Bert Podcast | Episode 53 w. D.C. Benny

Episode Date: March 31, 2021

Hey, what's going on? It's time for another wonderful episode of the Bill Burt Podcast. What's going on? We have an amazing, amazing guest, one of my favorite, favorite, favorite, favorite people in this business. We've been working together for almost 25 25 years it has been 95 96 uh the unbelievably hilarious talented never aging just keeps getting better looking dc benny everybody aging and i'll tell you what you posted a picture on instagram the other day dc where you were absolutely gorgeous. Man, I've been putting those throwback pictures up there. And then, you know, we got kind of a, you know, my wife monitors the feedback and there was some kind of weird stalky thing that happened.

So we take it down for a minute so we can get out you know that's that's when you know you're good looking you get a stalker especially as a guy to get a stalker male or female i mean that that's it's an impressive difficult thing to pull off bro it was like just 30 years ago this picture was 30 years it's like a little you know 50s looking herb ritzy picture from way back in the day. You know, now I got the I got crooked teeth. I got the gray hair. I mean, a little bit of a gut, you know. Well, you stop posting your old doo-wop band pictures.

You were harmonizing around the burning trash can out in Brooklyn. Me and Tom Shalhoub with the barbershop quartet, you know? Tom Shalhoub. Holy shit. I got to look that thing up now. What if... Wait, who were the best looking guys in comedy when we were working? Well, let's at least intro DC to our listeners here. DC Benny,

an amazing, amazing, amazing stand-up comedian that I first started seeing back when the Boston Comedy Club was the Boston. Before they had the nice marquee, they had that old sun-baked red awning that turned pink. And then you couldn't just walk in. Remember you had to walk in front of the stage and then go up into the back area? Because remember how that was like walled off before they finally opened it up? A little Muppet balcony thing in the back. back yeah where all these comics would sit up there and dc was one

of the first guys that i saw that could do any room could do the white rooms could do the black rooms whatever surf reality the gay clubs he just went up and fucking slayed every time early in the show late in the show early show late show just absolutely destroyed i was kind of sitting there like i don't want to go on after that guy so well you know but i think that's a that's a at that time in comedy i think uh bert and i were talking a little bit about this you kind of had to be like that at that club and you got to be like that burt got to be like that where you just you you know you could flow with any audience you because that club was there was a fucking war zone or you get you weren't gonna survive you had to figure out i say this all the time dude i used to i used to walk

i remember walking by the boston comedy club early in my new york days and just looking at it during the day and i got a sick to my stomach feeling like that's how much that thing was living in my head of like like fuck man like what's the crowd gonna be like tonight oh yeah and there'd be a little bit of a suburban vibe because even like the white people in the crowd felt like they needed to have a little bit more of a fucking attitude or something and it was that's been people like selling drugs right out front all the spillover from washington square park and shit um that was a terrifying place to go on and steinberg and matt frost when you first came down there to audition

they used to try to bury you oh yeah so they would let the show get three quarters of the way in and then they put you on after like red johnny the round guy or uh or chapelle or maybe not chapelle he always seemed to close it out or tell or one of these guys it was just like their whole thing was like we're gonna see if you're tough enough to play this club when i first came to the the first time i had that sinking feeling when i first saw that room neil brennan was the doorman okay and it would and and the way you would audition was you go on like he he had like an open mic or something and he goes all right you can go on last but you got to pay me i have to pay him like 15 bucks to go on for him and one other person he

automatically didn't like me so it's like one other person i had to give him 15 i'm like this is horrible man i just moved to new y. I'm like, does this rubbish work? You know, it was crazy. It was such a rip-off. That's hilarious. The hierarchies of power in that room of, like, who booked it and then. Louis Schaefer. Oh, yeah.

And then the whole thing, the triangle of psychosis, it was the Barry Katz trickle-down economics of psychosis. Oh, my God. This is a Barry Katz New York Entertainment VHS tape. I still have one of those. You got one of those, too? I got one of those.

Oh, my God. I just so... Hey, buddy, I got you a college kick, man. Listen, the check's going to be made out to me. If they give it to you don't open the envelope all right you're getting three dollars you're getting a dollar a mile you're on fire man you're on fire you're the next guy that's gonna pop what was your name again so is that the tape he would send to colleges dc yeah this is on that list who's on that list

oh let me go down and i have another one with a whole it's got jay moore dane cook jeff ross reggie mcfadden bobby kelly james steffens the third maceo jim gaffigan pete correale patrice nick schwartzen phil tagg keith robinson eddie brill jordan rubin judah Friedlander, Drew Frazier, Brian Scolaro, Paula Bell, Jim Norton, Gary Goldman, Mike DiNicola, Orange Barker. Dino. Yeah.

Mike DiNicola. Just a sticker, man. Just having this thing around is like a great little piece of history, man. You know what's funny is I don't think he repped half of those guys. He definitely did not. He didn't rep patrice i know that yeah i can get you anybody in new york just you know i'll just book them and if they can't make it i'll send someone who looks like him oh yeah man i remember uh yeah steinberg I remember meeting him. And I said, I was like, hey, Jason. And I remember he was standing to the side. And I tapped him on the shoulder.

And he went like, he did like this real dramatic like, hey, man, I'm in like the scene. Are you tapping me on the shoulder? They all had that vibe. I remember Frosty. I always tease Frosty about this when i was first coming down there he fucking he didn't like me he didn't think i was funny i remember him standing out in front of the boston and he saw me coming and he goes like that he sees me coming he just kind of goes hey man what's going on just like uh can you at least hide it? I know I suck. Just give me the reps.

I know I can get better at this. But it was just like, he was seeing like, you know what's funny? As hard as the club was, it was so fucking exciting to be down there. And you could just feel it. You felt all of these guys were going to pop. I think Jay and Brewer had just got on um snl chapelle uh just got the nutty professor with eddie murphy yeah i mean you you felt like i mean i was coming from the suburbs of boston doing all of that and then it was just like it was crazy it was like it was like right there but a million

miles away yeah that's a good analogy yeah guys you saw these guys go from just you know doing sets to just blowing up and and it was tangible it felt it felt like achievable in a way it felt not achievable but it because you could see it actually happening and then there'd be showcases there we you know burt and i talk about this you know they have like these fucking four hour showcases of like everybody in new york and then barry would pack the middle with his guys and then it'd be like everybody else but it was a real i do miss that i do miss that kind of gritty time in comedy you know that like they cleaned it up too much dude they cleaned it like new york is just so fucking glossy now it's like it got a giant botox you know that botox shiny face like that's kind of like

i i don't want to like bum everybody out because i always say this about new york um so i mean it's not like it's all bad there's some great comics that have come up and stuff but like you know this whole thing where the crowd took over and they're going to tell comedians what's funny it's just so fucking like i don't know that's be like if i i always said it'd be like if i was watching a a musician and i was telling him what chords he should be playing as someone who's fucking tone deaf and can't play guitar you know what i mean it's it's it's a really uh it's a really weird time. And I just wish comics would just, just continue.

Just keep saying what the fuck you're going to say. And they'll, they'll quit. I think, I think comics, I just think we've been out of clubs for so long that, that we're, I think we're mashing up what the internet is.

Well, what real life is. I'm not, I did. I did the clubs in 2019 in New York city. It was the worst fucking experience I've had in New York. It was fucking horrific. I saw you.

I remember man. Dude, it was fucking. Dude. Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh,

Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh,

Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh,

Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh, You can't believe it's New York. You know,

it was fucking. Yeah, it was. And then a couple of those clubs have become famous. Yeah. Like the club is famous. Yeah. So then it's like you're doing stand up at like SeaWorld.

Like, oh, you got all these touristy people. Where before it was people like who wandered in off the street and they had to know somebody to come down to this fucking hole in the wall. Yeah. hole in the wall yeah i remember like page six was going down to like the cellar just waiting for somebody to say something so they could sell newspapers because nobody's buying a fucking newspaper anymore you know right before the it was like right before all this shit hit the fan with the pandemic and everything i was still i did this little room in brooklyn i'm like it's brooklyn i'm gonna go drop by it was a hot little room and they had kind of changed uh whoever was booking it whatever the situation but this thing was always packed

i'd been doing it for years and before i went on stage the booker came up and they're like listen don't do any jokes about uh that are misogynistic, no rape jokes, and definitely no jokes about with accents from a country that you didn't actually come from. I'm like, what the fuck? At that point you'd be like, hey, thank you for writing me my set list. Right?

No, but I'm like, do you hear, I mean, all right, first i don't i'm not a rape joke guy or whatever but i do characters you're gonna tell me you know i actually have to be from pakistan now just to do a character or it was it was crazy man i know that's like they want that's what they want acting to be they want acting to not be acting unless you're the person yeah that actually lived that life then you shouldn't be playing that role it's just like dude that's the magic of acting yeah like you come from a completely different part I mean I understand the opportunity thing

I get that but that whole thing of just like you're not playing this and like I don't know I don't even want to that only goes one way too that doesn't go the opposite way like i'm just to be fair anyone from an from like that i guess that that un i don't know the right way to say it but the the press group can play whatever role they want but you like like hillary swank can't be fair to. I don't see any Puerto Ricans playing Abraham Lincoln. If that's what you're suggesting, go watch, go watch fucking go.

Oh my God. I can't believe Wesley Snipes got the role of George Washington. That should go to a white guy. What's the, what's the big fucking Broadway hit where all Puerto Ricans play white guys? Hamilton. Who gives a shit? Hamilton.

There's no white guys. Yeah, but here's the thing, Bert. Who gives a shit? I don't. Yeah, I don't give a shit either. I love when What's-His-Face and Son of Sam was playing an Italianian guy oh yeah oh my god he's one of my favorite actors ever i don't give a fuck what he plays i just want to

see what he's gonna do with it yeah wait but i i get it the other way b it's it gets sort of blurred it got like out of control it's just like you're not giving us any opportunities you need to give us opportunities i get that and then the overcorrection comes where it's like hey you're not really missing an arm there should be a one-armed actor playing that one-armed guy it's just like because now you're ignoring the business it's just like buddy millions of dollars are at stake here and they need to get it back if you can find me a bankable one-armed actor to play this fucking role that's gonna have a 30 million opening weekend, that's how the suits are thinking. It's not like, it's not necessarily a, you know, fuck these one-armed actors things.

Oh, Jesus. I don't like how I started that thing and then DC slowly slipped into the shadows in case that went viral. I'm buying your cacti i'm trying to do a desert here you know i feel i always feel uh tricked when i when it's when like you see like uh a movie about martin luther king and then realize the guy that played martin luther king has a a British accent and I'm like oh fuck that was like the wire half those guys like McNulty who's like they're trying to talk in this Baltimore accent so good well you know you know but listen let the let the English guys play us it's fine they do a great job they do a great job you know I love when you see the interview and they have a completely different accent. Yeah.

That makes me like, wow, this person's really good at it. Yeah. Dude, how about Louis Schaefer? Louis Schaefer changed the village. Oh. He was the first guy. He brought barking back. Came down there.

Yeah. Black people, black people, Louis Schaefer. Black people love Louis Schaefer. He would yell that across the street. They'd be like, who the fuck is this guy? Beautiful black ladies. We have a comedy show. Louis Schaefer, not gay, not gay.

And then we would have them laughing all the way into the club. Ooh, big burly men, big burly men, Louis Schaefer. He was amazing. Going down the street in his penny loafers with his sport coat. And he became like a character in the village. Yeah. Like the clipboard. He had the clipboard.

Are you, you know, it was like trying to get in the limelight in the 80s. You know, with that clipboard. Are you going to make the list? You know, oh, Bill Burr, not on the, sorry, not on the clipboard tonight. I know. Then he kind of got drunk with power and he became oh sorry he became that guy at like studio 54 hey hang on a second i do have to take it real quick hey dad let me call you right back i'm finishing this podcast okay okay bye he never

says bye um i i see him on facebook, and he's pissing off everybody in England because he's like a COVID denier now. He's like, it's just the flu. It's just the flu. And he also has a – and he posts his diet. It's like he does shit to inflame. It's so funny. His diet is like this all butter and meat and like duck eggs for breakfast and lamb. Listen, we've all done a deep dive on the internet and ended up in a place we didn't need to be. People get so inflamed, man.

Dude, if you listen to my podcast from like 10 years ago dude i was so into conspiracy theory and shit i made like a federal reserve pumpkin i carved a fat like i was trying to call like that was my thing this is the scariest thing on people just like all right can i have a milky way i was an idiot not saying i was wrong about the bankers but it's just like i was wearing people out i was that guy who was just saying the sky is falling and i had no solutions whatsoever i spent more time with louis schaefer than any one comic ever should have spent with Louis Schaefer. Yes. I spent every day. I'd get to the club at like seven at the Boston comedy club, open it up,

seat, put the chairs down and then bark with him until midnight and then hang out with him at the bag. It until two in the morning. Yeah. And then me, Patrice and Voss went to Scotland with him for a month. Yeah.

Oh, I remember the first time I worked with you. Edinburgh. Yeah. I did Edinburgh with Patrice and boss and Lewis. I saw, I remember the, the,

the two times I've seen Lewis bomb. The hardest was the first night I worked at the Boston comedy club. I get there early. I don't know anything. I set the chairs up. I have all my CDs with me. So I go to the CD and I'm like, what music should we play? I go, oh, fuck that. You know what we'll do? It's a comedy

club. I'm going to put in Richard Pryor. So I put in Richard Pryor, hit play, and I start seating it. I'm seeing it. Well, it's like 25 people in there. Lewis isn't there yet. He he'll be there right at showtime, he says. So all of a sudden I come come in the crowd's laughing their fucking ass off there's no one on stage they're listening to rich prior show starts like coverage your prior everyone goes boo ladies and gentlemen please welcome to the stage i can't follow richard prior handsome man handsome black man uh this jacket armani ish holy shit man oh that guy was brutal man i i remember like the open micers were gone i had to

there was one girl that went on and she she got off and lewis came up to her. He's like, honey, never, you never do you're in the wrong. This is not for you. And she's crying. Like never, never. And I said, Lewis, man, Lewis, this is your first time up there, man. You know what? Now it's just, she's doesn't belong in this business. Go away. Leave, never come back to this place again. Never. And he's got the blazer and it's very official with the clipboard and the blazer. It's like you're getting a parking ticket or something. Or like you got pulled over by a state trooper or something.

Imagine if you're new and this guy comes up. I know. You know what's funny? They always have that person in a movie when they show somebody trying to make it in show business. They're just so right to your face mean. And I always laugh going, it's not that mean. It's passive aggressive. They're just like right to your face mean and i always laugh going it's not that mean it's passive aggressive they're just like okay all right dad great job we'll see you later and i that guy but every once in a while you would run into somebody yeah i had a guy i you

know i had a guy i did i auditioned for a half hour special on something and he was just fucking talking just to hear himself talk and he was trying to tell me and kerry louise that if we fuck if you don't if you don't if you haven't moved out to la by the time you're 27 or 28 you're not gonna make it you know and i was like 32 and she was like 31 and we're just looking at this fucking guy and we're just like oh wow yeah but you would run into those types of people and it was actually a good thing for you to run into them because you know you if you can't handle somebody like that you're not going to make it if you're if you're actually going to listen to that because i saw guys do that out here in LA. There was a club owner out here who was trying to get his clients onto sitcoms.

So he would just say, he'd just be like, Bert, you look like you build motorcycles. You go on stage and all you do is do jokes about building motorcycles. But I don't build motorcycles. Just you do that. You want stage time, you do is do jokes about building motorcycles but i don't build motors just you do that you want stage time you do that and most comics would be like you go fuck yourself i'll work another club but i saw guys actually do that yeah completely changed their act and then it didn't work and you know i don't know dude it was uh it was it was really early on in stand-up is like watching you ever see like when those baby turtles get hatched and you're they're all running to the beach trying to make

it to the ocean you're just rooting for them there's those seagulls just coming in and fucking picking them off it's so fucking unfair um that's kind of what those those early years were like who were they when they would go because you would get that development conversation of what's your development set what was your development angle dc oh man you see for me it never it never jibed you know and i'm sure you guys everybody's heard this a lot but they were like you know you we don't know what to do with you that was the first thing and then they would try and get me to agree to have people basically do what Bill was saying, like I'm the motorcycle guy or I'm the dating guy.

And I'm like, well, I'm not really the dating guy. You know what I'm talking about? You should have been auditioning for procedural shows. You would have killed it. From Law & Order to ER, you had a great look. But they were so looking at like Tim Allen and Drew Carey and Roseanne and Cosby. And it's just like comedian, sitcom, built around act. Exactly.

And my act was, you know, at that time I was doing pretty much straight characters. I didn't really do the stories as much. That came a little later. But it was straight characters, which really didn't have that much to do with how I looked or anything. So it wasn't just a slam dunk where they could put it together was just not, it was never really easy to, I'm not a great marketer anyway. Some guys have that thing, but it was never really easy to kind of be like,

this is my voice. It's kind of comprised of a lot of different voices. That was not a concept back then. And maybe more so now, I don't know. But I was kind of a tough sell on it. Yeah, but that was only because there was one sell. They were just trying to get you a sitcom. I remember one of the last ones, deals that I saw that went.

And then you just literally watched a guy blow up was kevin james i was at montreal i think it was 97. i was there but i was sort of invited but not really it was bad um i know i was there nobody else knew I was there. And I remember the buzz about Kevin James. And I remember the breakfast and seeing him sitting down with these agents and talking and stuff. And I always wondered, like, was I literally watching? I can still remember. This is back when it was at the Delta, I believe. So there was the bar that turned into sort of the breakfast thing in the morning. I remember seeing him sit down because I had opened for him at Governess in Long Island.

And I wasn't sure if he remembered me. So, you know, I was real shy. So I didn't say anything. But I remember watching him and being like, wow, man, I heard he's getting a deal and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then like I think like a year later i was at the laugh factory or something like that it was just from the new hit show king of queens kevin james it was like one of those other it was yet another one of those moments it was like it was right there and it was a million miles away it's exciting though man it was a really

exciting uh i love to see it when it's like, you know, especially when it's someone who's been kicking around a while. You know, they've been kicking around a little bit, and then, boom, you know, you see all the agents just swarm. Yeah. Swarm up. You're like, you know. Remember that bit Kevin James used to do about how guys pick out cards and how women pick out cards?

Oh, baby. Dude, this fucking guy, it was unbelievable. It's like he doesn't talk for like three minutes in his murdering. Huh. I think he does. Does he do the guy first? I think he does the woman first and it was just he would just sit there and just do this whole thing where he would just pick out the card and read it he did all of this

stuff with his face and do that and then see something else and then he just kept going and going and going and the way he was doing it it was fucking it was unbelievable look i never forgot it and then in the end he had the guy come in and just just grab something looks at him he'd be like and he puts in his pocket and walked away dude it was just dude it was it was masterful and i remember that was you know when i was jumping around the stage sweating dropping f-bombs and i'm like i don't F-bombs now, but like I was just trying to survive and just watching him going up so relaxed. And just, he just had him in the palm of his hand.

And then like years later, I would watch him on King of Queens and you'd saw that stuff in his face and how, what a great actor he was. I remember your army bit about not wanting to join the army about not wanting to be getting yelled at all the time like you man oh me oh yeah yeah yeah that was a great fit man i did that on one of those uso things oh you were there remember that comedy central the it was we did some base in jersey and we were sitting there and you sat down in the chair in this big green room and looked up and you were like you looked at the ceiling is that a bat and there was just a bat just stuck to the ceiling

he wasn't hung upside down he was like curled up up on the ceiling he would sit up yeah what do we do with this thing all right let's just sit on this side of the room and hope that thing doesn't wake up it wakes up hey rain you're on fire hey Barry Barry told me to take the check just put it in my little foot claw here he's gonna fly back to new york and you're gonna get your 40 by wednesday oh dc i remember one time one of the few times i ever saw you get heated i was just telling you a story about what somebody did to me i i was doing a roger paul gig in like burlington vermont just you know get on the 87 and drive until they say last exit before canada and then make a right into vermont and i was playing this hotel and there was this guy i was

working with and he was one of these 80s guys who probably was headlining satellite rooms and had now bumped down and he was middling and he was supposed to do like 25 in the first show he did 37 it's like i was like whoa what the fuck man he goes oh sorry i didn't see the light right or he did like 30 or something like that and then the second show he did 37 so then i talked to him saturday night we did two more shows and all i remember was on the last show he did 50 minutes and i and i was so gullible i was like how does how does he keep missing the light can you like i didn't know what was going on and i told you that story and dude your eyes just lit up because you know i do with that fucking guy like that you know i do

oh you know you close you close and then you do fucking 50 in front of him be like how do you like that i just saw you i remember you were sitting in the booth when they used to have those booths at the comic strip uh i was like all right dc's got a little fire in them yeah uh yeah i could see that would be that would be one of the you know, Patrice used to do that to me in the city, you know. It sort of was one of the things to let up. Oh, he was the worst with that. And so I think, I wonder if that was around that time when that was already hot, you know, that like I was all about that like that may have just happened the week before with patrice doing 40 at the strip before i'm supposed to go on for my 15 you know what i mean patrice

could spot a hack walking into a club three blocks away but he couldn't see a light fucking 20 feet in the back of the room they gave me the light i didn't see it shut the fuck up you saw it and then he just laughed oh shit yeah yeah we we got into it about that but yeah i that that is definitely yeah man i mean shit there's there's we gotta have some decorum here with that you talk to the guy you talk to him twice he still he does it longer on the saturday dude i was so and then and then it fucks up your head because you're angry going on stage i had i had a guy one time go go long go long and then the guy and the girl in the front row had remember when you wore earpieces all the time like people just wore their phone in their ear non-stop uh hang on don't go anywhere fucking children and then he just goes

he just gets a mic and he goes you know what fuck you fuck and starts lighting him up he goes you're a cunt and then he just goes all right that's my time and he walks off and i'm like oh i gotta fucking follow that and he had already gone along and now they're heated and they just brought it in with me. I was like, God damn it. That happened to me in Cincinnati with some guy. He fucking went over and then he went over a second time

and I gave him shit about it because he was trying to, oh, dude, you do know it's a big red light because I'm sitting there going, another Burlington, Vermont guy, right? And so the next show, first show, Saturday night, he fucking pouts and does like eight minutes and leaves me with like fucking an hour and 20 minutes to do when I didn't have it. I still did the time.

And I got off stage. And I think he came up and said something to me. I go, dude, you're a fucking baby you're a fucking baby do your fucking time i go you think i never was a middle act i did my fucking time fucking jerk off you do eight minutes like you act oh i don't know you don't have a fucking why i do it i was so fucking mad at that guy he didn't talk to me for the rest of the fucking weekend acted likeed like a fucking baby. Just a fucking baby.

By the way, my daughter is sitting right here going, so this is what you do for a living. You just talk about guys. Come here, Georgia. Georgia, this is DC Benny and Bill Burr. Hi, Georgia. I'm bitching about an opener from 20 years ago. I still haven't let it go.

Where are you going? Don't become like me, be like your dad. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Be like DC. DC is hanging out with his dad right now. What did you need? What did you need? I'm just telling you that I was going on a holiday.

And people are going with you? Yeah. It's not you by yourself? You're bringing a dog? No. But it's you, okay, okay. Yeah, but I'm going with other people. Grab that taser if you want it. All're bringing a dog? No. But it's you. Okay. Yeah. Okay. But I'm going with other people. Grab that taser if you want it. All right.

I love you. Georgia, don't do what your dad would do. Don't do what your dad would do ever. All right. Just be better. Be better. Love you. Fuck.

Fuck. All right. Squeaky doors, clogged sinks, finicky engines. When things break around the house, you take care of it. However, when there's something off in the bedroom, you just try not to think about it. Come on, man. What are you? Come on, man. What are you waiting for? Take care of it. Now go to get roman.com slash bill Burt. Now with Roman, you can get a free online evaluation and ongoing care for ED and all other forms of comfort and privacy, all from the comfort and privacy of your own home. A U.S. licensed healthcare professional will work with you to find the best treatment plan. If medication

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Have your dick standing up at the national anthem once again, like it did back in the eighties. Oh man. Look at all this time. It's passed from when we were all young and running around there. And now, you know, you guys got kids and it's it's crazy man crazy i'm in the part i'm the part not enjoying them because they're older and they're and they're challenging you and like you if you say anything like we got into a big heated discussion about cat calling the other

night and my daughters don't like losing a conversation and so they were like they said they said something to the fact we had cat called all the time in our neighborhood and i was like the fuck you do no one cat calls in our fucking neighborhood and they're like they do they do and i said who and and they said uh the gardeners and i said okay okay i get it and then i said i said so you're saying mexican guys they're like no dad dad it's not just Mexican guys. I go, well, you said gardeners. I've been around our neighborhood.

There's not a lot of white gardeners in our neighborhood. And then they're like construction workers. Unless they make a movie about gardeners. They'll have a bunch of white guys playing the Mexicans. And then they go, construction workers. And I go, it's not fucking construction workers either. I go, no, no. I go, that's fine.

They're Mexican also. I go, just say Mexicans. Just say Mexicans, and then not fucking construction workers either. Okay. I go, no, no. I go, that's fine. They're Mexican. Also, I go, just say Mexicans, just say Mexicans. And then I'm fine with that. But they go, no, dad, a lot of 50 year old white men cat call us. And I go, bull shit. Show me his fucking house. And I will knock on his door right fucking now. And they're like, dad, you'd be shocked.

A lot of grown men cat call us. And I was like, so then we had this conversation. Then she goes, hey, I'm going to go for a hike. I go, the fuck you are. You're getting catcalled left and right. And apparently it's just white dudes doing it on a hike and run. You just show me that pussy, baby. Like, so gardeners jumping out of the bushes.

Oh, I might. My daughters are legit. And it's, I get, you don't want racist kids i guess but like legit social justice like yeah they call you on everything and you're like i guess you don't you don't want racist kids i guess maybe they're fun to be around who knows the fucking but like they're social justice warriors like and if you say something like if i like you know batting an idea around is about a joke you can just see them go hey you're you shouldn't say that and you're like fuck off not everything's funny dad you're like no

those braces in your mouth you'd be shocked what i said to get those. I don't think I'll ever be trying out bits with my kids. I already try them out with my wife and she's just like... That's a hard one. Then I get upset and I'm like, why am I mad at her? I knew it was going to go this way.

You're going to say that? Good night, honey. Going gonna go off to work now but that's a good barometer though wives are very wives are a tough audience like i know if i can get my wife to laugh i know the thing definitely has a shot that's the truth no if i make my wife laugh i know it's funny but uh she could be an easier crowd yes dude your wife is first show friday night every day i've had dc's wife tell me to stop telling a joke i remember that distinctly i remember i i had a joke about fighting a black guy it was a true story and at the end of the joke he's going he's he's going like he's beat my ass and he stops and he goes i'll stop if you just say the n-word and it

was a bunch of black guys around and i was like excuse me he's like say it you know you want to say it say it motherfucker say it and i was like oh i will later but not now like now now would be a good bad time and your wife came up to me and she was like, it's really funny. I just the N word part, like don't like lose it. And I went really, she goes, yeah, yeah, I would just lose it. And I was like, for real? And she was like, yeah. And I ended up doing this, doing that joke on a comedy set.

But did you make that up? That didn't really happen. No, it really happened. Oh, it really happened. It really happened. What is wrong with Florida? Why did you go all white chick there? Oh my God.

It like really happened. Dude, Florida was fucked up. I like I is is was is was. I know you got Tom Brady and things are looking up down there, but let's come on. You think Florida is worse than Boston? Yeah. Oh, fuck. Yeah.

Way worse. Dude, Boston is just is the excuse. Like all they do, they act like racism is just in the South and in Boston. They ignore Chicago, Milwaukee. Dude, the fucking shit that I have heard in all of these dude ohio oh yeah pittsburgh dude in pittsburgh the at the improv the other side of the tracks was literally the other side of the tracks like you walked across train tracks it's like oh here's where all the black people are dude it is like and then florida gets a pass because people get to act like it's not the South because you have Disney World and Sea World. Oh, yeah. Oh, dude, that northern Florida, Miami, because everybody skips. Everybody blows by.

Like, it's weird about Florida. Florida is a flyover state and a destination state all at the same time. It's called Miami. And they fly over all of that shit. All the date raping up on Daytona Beach, they go past that. All the rednecks with the balls hanging off their trucks in Tampa and Gainesville,

they go by all of that and they go right into the cocaine and Botox in Miami. Tough call, man. Tough call with those two places. No, but my thing about Boston, I'm not defending Boston. It's just Boston, it's known. Yeah. It's known.

And oh my God, the amount of fucking white people that try to tell me how bad Boston is. And I just go, where are you from? And then I tell them my road story. Yeah. I mean, going to school in Tallahassee, there was, I mean, not even joking, there was FAMU and FSU and there was no intermingling. Like there was no, like, you know, mixers where, and I used to drive this thing called safe escort where I would take kids, take girls, I'd walk girls across campus and on weekends I'd drive them. And on weekends, I'd drive them.

And on weekends, every fucking weekend, same 11 girls would call me to take them to a FAMU party. And you could never, like once someone was in your car, you had to take them wherever they would go. And man, one girl, Vanilla. I remember this girl so well, she introduced me to Wu-Tang Clan. And yep, Vanilla, I think she lived in Devaney Hall. And they go, you got to- Or just dropping names and locations. Yep. Vanilla, I think she lived in Devaney Hall. Purchase,

dropping names and locations. People have new identities now. They have lives. I would love for Vanilla to fucking hit me up. That girl was awesome. I would love to reach out to people. As a married man, you don't need a woman named Vanilla hitting you up.

Bird, who are you talking to a friend from the past vanilla oh this shit i learned we're thinking of coming out to l burt you hang up on that stripper immediately i remember being in the car driving her and a bunch of her friends to a party at fam you and and they were talking about the way I smelled and I was like what are you what are you talking about and they're like you smell like a wet dog and I was like what and they're like all white people and they just started sniffing me and I was laughing so fucking hard at the idea that they thought I smelled like a wet dog. And then they got out.

Yeah. And then I'm in the car going, I can't smell it. You know when people smell, but they can't smell themselves? And I'm like, fuck, the whole ride of this car just still smells like a wet dog. You got to lick your own balls and impress them. You got the wet dog smell. Look how flexible I am. Roof, roof.

Where did you go to high school in D.C., D.C.? I got kicked out of a couple schools. I ended up going to school, graduating in Maryland. What do you call it?hesda chevy chase high school maryland uh what did you get kicked out of school for i just wasn't i you know i got in trouble so much uh that i remember the principal came up to me he's like look you're after school every day just fucking around. I just didn't really,

I couldn't handle being in classrooms and you know, I can't even, it was just, was a bad thing. No, I get it. I'm picturing you jumping out of your own skin. Like I gotta get the fuck out of here. That's all I could think was getting the fuck out. I couldn't, it was terrible. It was a terrible mix for me.

So he goes, you're after school every day. And I was failing, um, uh, uh, science. And, uh, I could not figure out how to, you know, uh, I actually was trying to cheat off of this kid and I got busted by the teacher of the class. So the principal comes up to me. He's like, look, you have school every day. You might as well make a little money at it. Why don't you be the janitor's assistant? Just help out the janitor after school. So you got a little job. So I was the, I was the assistant janitor every day. And it was a Jamaican janitor named Paul, right? And Paul was kind of became like my Mr. Miyagi, right? And he, and, and I day I was telling him, I was like, Paul, man, you know, I'm failing this science class.

There's no way I'm going to pass. I'm going to have to go at least summer school or I may get held back. There's no way, no matter how I study, I'm going to pass this thing. And I got busted cheating, but cheating's the only way. So he goes, what happens when you cheat? Oh, you get busted cheating. And I was like, well, he goes, what did the

teacher do? There was a gay teacher. So he said, what the body boy him do? What the body boy do? I'm like, he goes up, he gives the exam out, and then he cleans the board. He goes, him clean the blackboard. What property the blackboard have when you put what upon it? I'm like property does it have it gets wet and he goes no man think man it gets shiny it gets shiny i was like shiny shiny he goes what happened when you look upon something shiny and i said uh you see a reflection because you see the reflection he sees the reflection of you cheating with the dude and he, what you do just there? And I said, I don't know.

He goes, science. That manager helped me pass that class before I got kicked out. But you know, bounced around. Science. So did you start, what, how old when you started out?

You started out with like Tony and Chappelle and all of those guys? Tony had started, Tony had a room. Tony Woods, everybody. Yeah, Tony Woods had a room. There was a place called the Comedy Connection in Greenbelt, Maryland. And Tony would host there.

There was a guy named Chris Thomas who would host there. And I did a talent show at University of Maryland. I had seen this dude, Rondell Sheridan, the week before doing stand-up. And I'm like, I got to try this. So I did a talent show at University of Maryland, I don't know, 80-something, I don't know, 87, something like that. And I got some laughs and there was this comedy club, but it was a black comedy club. It was the Comedy Connection. And Tony put me on and I would do this McDonald's drive-thru thing, man.

Like I brought a little hairnet and I would play like all the characters, like a Japanese guy going through a McDonald's drive-thru in the ghetto and then put the hairnet on and the fucking glasses. That must have murdered. It was great. It was great, man. through a McDonald's drive-thru in the ghetto and then put the hairnet on and the fucking glasses. That must have murdered. It was great. It was great, man. And I had all kinds of props.

You know, I was like an ethnic carrot top. You know? I just posted an old video. It was like my first TV appearance, which was the Apollo. And the other ones have been out there, but this one, I lost it. I couldn't find it anywhere. And I finally found it.

The quality's horrible. But dude, I have a fucking mullet. I got props. I'm doing shabarank, singing country music. I've got like, I got a jacket full of props in this thing. And I'm looking back at it. It's like, it's embarrassing to watch it. But it was, you know, I'm doing a Kung Fu movie, Mal.

You know, you're about to see me go to my teacher. All that shit. So I just found that stuff. It's funny to look back at the old stuff. But it was like the concentrate back then. I would just do the characters and the concentrate and go on the next thing. There was no like, oh, we kind of get this guy's voice. It was just like bit, bit, bit, bit, bit, bit, you know? And I think that was from being in the black rooms

where you really gotta, especially if you're white, you gotta bring that shit, man. You cannot, as Dean Edwards say, there's no time for exposition. You know, you got to fucking bring the concentrate. I thought white guys had it easier after the first joke. It was just getting that first laugh. And then after it was just like, then you became like the mascot. I think, but also sustaining a period of time because you could be a mascot for a little

while and then it would kind of peter off no not not like a really really deep into the hood crowd like those crowds had the i had like an eight second attention span if you just were not just captivating the second you dipped from 100 to 98 you'd see people just start looking around there was no crowd that was easy to lose yeah crowds like that and if you heard oh man i remember do you remember uh uh roz g right i was just doing all right i heard she uh had some medical stuff but it kind of came back around. I think she's all right. Dude, I remember doing a fucking room with her. Oh, what's his face's room? To do with the cat eyes.

Used to say the green eyes. Gerald Kelly. Jerry, although some other comedian that went by cat eyes. He was green eyes, right? Gerald Green Eyes Kelly, his early headshots, right? So he had this fucking room way out in Jersey.

So we went, yeah, we went out to do that one. And I remember he was late. So we were stretching. I remember Roz G being up there and she fucking always murdered. And she was not having a good set. And then that's when I was just going like first i was like oh i gotta follow rozji but then she was having a tough time and she gave the funniest outro ever to introduce me she she just did like a 40th joke that fell flat and then she just goes god damn i don't know who the fuck's coming up next but

he better be funny because you motherfuckers ain't laughing at shit oh yeah and then she brought me up and i literally i'm like hey how's it going and then like three people oh how's it going i was doing like the richard pryor fucking white guy voice and i was just like just losing altitude losing it was uh those ones were i it was bad enough to bomb in those rooms but when you had to make a journey out there oh yeah just that fucking 40 minute fucking ride over to the fucking path train oh yeah i remember those well i remember gerald showed up like two hours late and the crowd was all grumpy. And then he went up there and he started talking about how much money he made doing Comic View. Just got back from Atlanta, doing Comic View, made six Gs, which was total bullshit because they paid you.

Everybody got like comics went on strike. They paid like like five hundred bucks or something for those spots. All inclusive. You like lost money when you did it. And this dude shows up two hours late and then lies about how much money he made down in Atlanta. I thought they were going to kill him. Those rooms were crazy, man. I had long, long years of those rooms. And then I kind of, you know, the Boston for me was mainstream.

And then I, you know's it's so funny you know and then I kind of you know I haven't really been back you know to that so much to that that to once in a while I'll pop in it was a like uh oh god what's there was one in in Brooklyn it's a couple in Brooklyn I'll do once in a while or whatever. But, man, they really shaped you. And, you know, it was, if you could kill there, and if you could kill at the Boston, it really, I felt like nothing, I didn't really worry about anywhere else. Yeah, you were swinging with a weighted bat you had yeah you would have to do do the strip or like stand up new york or caroline's you're like

oh my god there's security people are following looking at the light going to prison in the front row tomorrow yeah there's not there's no metal detectors i mean this shit's fucking this is easy you had you had such an ability you had so many different muscles with stand-up like like when you I didn't realize it but I remember your ability to almost like flurry punch a crowd which I you know you learned in the black rooms I remember that so well on those Friday Saturday night spots where if if for whatever reason based on timing you were planted like either second or third there was no following you like no fuck like and i remember i remember just watching that the boston just gets so fucking the crowd would take a break for the next two comics. Oh, yeah. That was the thing. That's what I used to say to people who would bitch about fucking the New York comedy scene.

I would say to them, I'd be like, when was the last time you went up on stage and you killed so hard that the crowd just took a break for the next two fucking comics? Because we've all been that comic on stage where you feel them wishing the other guy was still there. Yeah, we all have. There's no doubt, you know, no doubt about that. Well, it was, listen, man, I, I, I'm grateful for those times. I'm grateful for those times. They're, they're great.

I don't know what, I don't know now. It's so weird now. I don't know what's happening. I'm still, I've been been kind of i think it was easier back when we did it these poor these fucking poor kids when they're coming up and everybody in the crowd is like fucking j edgar uh hoover right with the fucking camera trying to like and almost on purpose either because of an agenda or they just want to get clicks trying to like do what cnn and fox news do they're trying to create this this frenzy of i feel bad for uh that they they don't get to develop

because like how bad you know i was when i started out like it's not on youtube i always tell young comics i'm like listen I know you want to make a name for yourself but like I'm you're gonna hate your yeah if you're doing the work you're gonna hate your within six months forget about in six years you're not gonna want this up there just like but it's probably bad advice because I don't understand how the game works now. But I will tell you this, though. I've been doing a lot of spots down.

And this new young generation that's coming up, the one after the millennials, they're a lot more chill, I think. I think too much got put on millennials as far as pressure. They had to fucking care about all the mistakes that we made. And this seems to be a more fun laid back like i've been having maybe i changed i don't i don't think i did but like i just i find them to be really fun there's a nostalgia and i hate to even use that word but for what we kind of did back in the day it's almost like a vintage comedy brand or something where you could actually say shit that was funny and take my wife please yeah you know like it's like it's like that to them so so i feel like hopefully there's some hopefully some of the the the gloves can come off

with this shit a little bit and we can just do what we were doing but it it is a little it's concerned no but you can you know you can i don't know i always try not to talk about this to give it more steam but it's just kind of fun to talk about i don't know it always ends up in this place but yeah we do i think we are vintage if you look at all the white hair and all of our beards here, I think, yeah, we definitely... Say it in my good ear, Bill. Say it in my good ear. Oh, my God.

By the way, you're special. You're special on all things comedy. DC is fucking awesome. Thank you, bro. It really is. It's fun showing comics to my daughters and uh and and watching them laugh and then go wait you know this guy and i'm like yeah i know all of them like jesus christ you know this guy no but you also had great taste in like a a cinematic thing to you the way you shot like your

storyteller stuff they used to do in that that little bar downstairs off of houston street and uh so i knew when your special came out I knew it was gonna look great. A drift in predicament. Yeah, yeah, well I appreciate that guys you know that I appreciate that you guys got behind it for me you know and, and, you know, it's hard. It's hard to get your stuff out there, and to have a platform like what you guys have built. I can't say how grateful I am that, you know, you put it out there for me.

And it's a very I just wanted to do an old school special. There's no fucking leather pants and DJ. And you know what I mean? And I back up dancers is just a guy in a club with a mic telling some funny stories, you know, that are going to, you know that uh are gonna you know some people will get offended but hopefully most will laugh and and that was and it's in black and white we tried to get it like raging bull looking you know and with uh on a budget and that's what we did man and and i just i'm thankful you guys remembered me and you know as as i may have talked about with burke before you know we came up with everybody but a lot of times when guys kind of blow up they're

untouchable and unget they forget they don't you know oh yeah i know guys like that yeah it's like they're in a bubble and then as they pass through like hey man i guess we're friends where'd you go they just they just kind of as they keep ascending it's just the back end closes off hey i'll give you a call call my assistant wait what huh okay never mind but you know it's probably a result of of like so many people being oh hey man could you do this for me hey man could you do that for me could you do this for me? Hey man, could you do that for me? Could you do this for me? I mean, it's like that must happen a lot,

you know, and you get kind of you get a kind of armor from it, and then you build a bubble, and you're like, yeah, call my assistant, you know. But I've gotten a few of those call my assistants, like, wait a minute, we were just I'm not even asking, I just said hi. I'm talking to you right now. Can't you just give me your number the one in your pocket

dc i got i'll tell you you guys faces i can actually interact with you i appreciate it that you haven't put yourself in the bubble on the mountain somewhere you know i think that that's what we're doing wrong man we got to be a little more aloof i need an assistant wrong man we got to be a little more aloof i need an assistant oh man dc call my assistant we'll coordinate a time to do this podcast i gotta i gotta say this so that i know i just really i realize i'm describing the producer you know what i mean i don't have a 24 7 i gotta say this you know dc is is mainly responsible for the movement, the shift, in my opinion, in storytelling and comedy. Because at a time when we talk about doing these rooms and having all the different muscles and flutter punching

and making sure you can survive, DC opened a room. I will say I helped for the first three weeks, but DC opened a room with Ben Bailey. Ben Bailey, yeah. Where it was straight storytelling. And I remember I did the first three or four weeks there and, and I just helped promote it. I bring,

but I'll tell you, I, every story I told went on my first special and it was like, though, and it was a place that was unlike anywhere in the city where you could do stories, straight stories were beginning to end. And I saw some comics melt

down. I saw some big comics and you know who I'm talking about give up on their story and start telling jokes. The biggest comics in the world. Go right back to their act. And DC and I were sitting watching and he was like, he can't stay in the pocket.

He can't stay in the pocket. Silence. Silence scared a lot of in the pocket. But it was- Silence. Silence scared a lot of people from our generation because it was just about like killing and stuff like that. But I'll tell you, two of the best storytellers there were was DC and Ben Bailey. So when you guys started that thing, I was psyched.

I came down, but even then, I didn't feel like I could follow you guys. You guys, you were doing it every week. We crushed it, man. That was the thing is we tried to set it up so people would feel safe there. Comics would feel safe to do that because it's a weird muscle. And it was great. I remember Robert Kelly had some story about being in foster homes or something like that,

just some crazy and rubbing his arm to keep himself. And he somehow made it funny. That was the thing is like, it's like taking this often traumatic stuff and making it funny. You know, like I go back to my special, but my closing joke on it, you know, I was losing my mother from Alzheimer's. Seven years she had Alzheimer's. It was like this crazy, a lot of funny shit happened that got us through that. But it took me a real long time to get to a place where I could like find a

story in that and, and, and do it. And, and, and that room, I saw a lot of comics go to uncomfortable places. And I'm not talking like the moth kind of shit where it's like, you know, it was Saturday night on, you know, 1967, there was, you know, a young lesbian. It was like just finding some stuff that you couldn't really get at the level we were at on stage at like

the Boston or the Strip or whatever because you were surrounded by guys doing you know just yeah and you would actually get shit if you weren't going up there just killing like the fuck are you trying man it's this is Friday night don't don't try that, one of my favorite things Bobby Kelly ever said on stage, and there's a lot of stuff that I love, but he was at the cellar one night, and he was doing a set, and this woman was just making this face. And he goes, what's the problem, ma'am? What is your problem?

She goes, nothing. I just think you're a little crass. And he goes, oh, yeah? He goes, what were you doing when you were 14? Huh? Were you a freshman in high school? Did you go to some sort of sophomore semi-formal? Your parents took you, blah, blah, blah.

Is that what you did? She's like, yeah. He goes, yeah, well, I was in jail. So, yeah, I'm a little crass. And it was so fucking real. And I remember when he got off stage, I was going, Bob, that's what the fuck you need to talk about. You know, you got to fucking play. And he goes, dude, I got to showcase, dude.

I got to bring my guns. I got to go with the big guns, dude. I'm going to talk about that. Don't talk about it. Because he was mad. Because she was a cunt. Yeah. I think you're a little crass.

Talk about foreshadowing things to come yeah but that's a lot of i feel like i'm not going to take credit for that but i saw him do stuff there and i saw a lot of guys do stuff there vick henley you know rest in peace uh he had a story about george bush uh giving him a signed baseball and him being at this roast. It was this hilarious story, but he would never tell it on stage. And I was like, dude, you got to tell that thing on stage. You got to tell it. And eventually it became like his closer at corporates.

You know, he had this George Bush baseball story that was hilarious. George Bush is heckling him. He's going back and forth. And, and, but it was great. It was just, that's what I loved about that place. That time was, you know, not to be just talk about the past or whatever, but it was, you know, I got to see guys who are respected and, and love comedians who I love, come through there and talk about some shit I never heard before, you know?

And, and I think the little audience that was there appreciated that, like that people were coming there. And if you went around the corner to see them at the cellar or whatever, you're not going to hear this. You're, you know, and, and it, it really, you know, I bet we're just, this might be an outside chance here that we're just three old guys romanticizing when we're just, this might be an outside chance here that we're just three old guys romanticizing when we came up. I'm sure these kids have their rooms and it's not as bad.

These damn kids won't laugh at anything. It's because you're fucking 90 years old, you freckled cunt. All right. We got to wrap it up here. DC, it was such an honor to have you on here, dude. You've just had this quality to your work the entire time. You've never wavered you never sold out man and i was so proud to be a small part of promoting your unbelievable

special everybody the unbelievable legendary dc benny man guys thank you love you guys man take care all right all right brother hope to see you soon you got it. All right.