The Doug Stanhope Podcast - Ep. #162: Tom Konopka Marathon Vegas podcast
Episode Date: September 12, 2016Doug finally gets together with one of his early comedic influences and Vegas Telemarketing legend Tom Konopka. Andy Andrist and Ggreg Chaille seem only to get in the way.Doug's new special is out on ...Seeso.com Sept 15, 2016. Click here to sign up now and use offer code "stanhope" to get your first 2 months free!Recorded Aug 28, 2016 at The Plaza in Las Vegas, NV with Doug Stanhope (@DougStanhope), Tom Konopka, Andy Andrist (@AndyAndrist), and Ggreg Chaille (@GregChaille). Produced and Edited by Ggreg Chaille.LINKS: Sorta Dixie Jazz Band - https://www.amazon.com/Collector-Sorta-Like-Coast-Vegas/dp/B001NGB2R0  Tony Spirolto - http://www.biography.com/people/tony-spilotro-485958  The El Morocco Hotel - http://www.lvstriphistory.com/ie/morocco.htm  Support the Innocence Project - http://www.innocenceproject.org/  Closing Song, "Big Butter And Egg Man", performed by Louis Armstrong With Velma Middleton.  Doug's DVD/CDs are all available at DougStanhope.com   Order Doug's audio book, "Digging Up Mother", HERE.Support the show: http://www.Patreon.com/stanhopepodcast
Transcript
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It's the Doug Stanhope poolside, Las Vegas poolside podcast.
The Plaza Experience.
At the Plaza.
Always an experience at the Plaza.
We rented the, I thought, the high dollar suite.
The poolside patio suite, where they did actually redo their pool.
Last time we were here, it looked like fucking Baghdad.
The whole pool area was just scrapped. They got a basketball
hoop with no net. It was like an inner
city. We loved it.
No one was here.
We did actually go out.
They had a bartender
and they had the misters, but then everything
else was just Beirut.
Pretty much just us. Perfect.
It's not a fair analogy
because Baghdad, before Saddam Hussein,
had a great pool.
After? The one?
During. During.
He had a great pool.
The great
cold November rain of Saddam Hussein.
I am here with Greg Chaley.
Bingo and Tracy are in the
beds. The two beds
in this suite that's not a suite it's a fucking room
with a patio to the pool uh which is nice enough i guess but uh for the same money we could have
gotten a two-bedroom suite with a fucking living room that's what i thought we were not on the pool
that's what fucking i got put andy and mamu in and i thought we had the same setup. No, we just have pool access.
But to be fair, nobody knew I was arriving.
Yeah, thanks for that.
But we have three tables and craps and a bar out here.
Yeah, and there's a food truck that's closed on a Friday afternoon in the summer by the pool.
And a jacuzzi with very strange things flying. This Friday in Vegas feels a lot like a Wednesday every place else.
Am I wrong?
You are.
All right, let's let's cut to the chase.
We have a very special guest, someone I've wanted to fucking I've tried to Google track down for since Google existed.
I've been trying to find from the book my old comedy partner, Tom Konopka.
Hey, thank you, guys.
Love you, Doug.
Hey, folks.
We talked on the phone for the first time last night on the way in.
We stayed in Boulder City and we talked for probably half an hour of just I was just crying.
I was crying, too. I just crying. I was crying too.
I was crying.
I was crying happy tears.
And fuck, I can't believe the fucking journey that you have made.
I don't know.
The people don't fully understand where you came from out of the phone rooms.
And you so many times have talked about, you think I'm funny.
I've never been funnier than I was on the phones.
And you're killer funny.
I say the same thing.
No one thinks you're funny. I will never be as funny as a comic as I was as a telemarketer,
as we were.
They had to see that.
They had to be there, and they had to see it.
The context, it was just so fucking funny.
Christ almighty.
Dougie Stanhope, the original Ricky fucking Roma.
No doubt about it.
No, it's true.
And he had the mullet.
He was rocking that mullet.
But nobody knows.
It wasn't the, you always were self-deprecating.
It wasn't like a Joe Dirt dumbass fucking mullet.
It was like a heavy metal.
You were rocking that mullet.
It was, and then you had the.
Confident mullet.
I told Tom, it was a confident mullet.
I think I was 20, 19 or 20 when I first started there.
At American Distributing? Yeah. The famous, even hearing that. 20 19 or 20 when i first started there and american distributing yeah yeah famous even
hearing that i wasn't the first time because i worked there twice and you were there both times
and the first time i i wasn't drinking age so i was 19 yeah no i was 19 when i got that ham when
fergie gave me that fucking fergie ham yeah and Jeff Brown were living at the Fun City Motel.
Oh, my God.
Just hand-to-mouth, scraping by.
The greatest place.
39-cent spaghetti with a 20-cent can of tomato sauce, the little one, and ramen noodles.
Oh, living large.
But wait, hold on a second.
19, why would anyone come to Vegas at 19?
Money, women, danger.
There it is.
We love gambling.
Hey, Tracy, will you grab my smokes out there on the patio?
Anybody have a towel? I'm melting.
Right over there.
Ice?
I mean, ice.
We have ice. I'm at AC.
So what do you consider the danger of Vegas?
Well, at 19.
Are you serious? Well, everything to me. It wasn't to them. They were in danger of Vegas? Well, at 19. Are you serious?
Yeah.
Well, everything to me.
No, it wasn't to them.
They were in danger because Stanhope wasn't down.
Well, it was 86, so that was still kind of around the casino days.
Oh, yeah.
I mean, the movie Casino.
I forget his name.
Right a little bit later than that.
What was his name?
Are you talking about Arnold Ralston?
Yeah.
That's him.
I mean, that was real.
When I got here, I got here in 1981.
I was a dice dealer in Atlantic City.
I was a casino gaming instructor in New York City, very briefly.
And I got out here in 81.
In 82, October, I think, 23rd or 28th, I lived a block away from Marie Callender's and Tony
Roma's, where the car got blasted.
Oh, yeah.
And we literally went, the friend I was living with, I came out here with, we went out there
and literally that whole car was still smoking.
It was still intact, and it was just incredible.
And they said, he had a television show.
Like, even back then at the Stardust, Jim Brown and a couple people,
there was some sports bullshit show.
I thought I remembered seeing that show on the air,
but then when I fact-checked it, it couldn't have happened.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
No, it was so great.
And you were talking in the book about all the fun books and all that.
People didn't realize, especially downtown in Fremont.
I mean, it's so alive now in all of its decadence.
Fun book.
What's a fun book?
Well, the fun book, basically, if you went down to any of the little motels,
Jackie Gaughan, the guy that owned the El Cortez,
is basically an Irish mobster who just died recently
that was so loved by the locals.
He was basically the Don of downtown.
And then Steve Wynn came in, and of course,
he renovated the Golden Nugget.
Atlantic City made so much money off of the Golden Nugget
that the mob took the money from there, gave it to Steve Wynn,
and said, now renovate the one in Vegas.
And then he did that, and all of a sudden,
he went from this shitty job that no dealer would even want to have I'll renovate the one in Vegas. And then he did that, and all of a sudden,
he went from this shitty job that no dealer would even want to have to the most sought-after job downtown,
because now, huge showroom, and he's bringing Sinatra,
and Sammy Davis, and Paul Anka, whoever was popular at that time downtown.
There was nothing downtown.
It was just games.
But everything was so cheap.
Back to the books.
You would rip out these fun books.
You'd pick them up at the motel and you'd get free breakfast.
It's the same way you get brochures for the fucking Hoover Dam.
But the difference was this.
But the difference was this.
This fucking muggy as shit.
Is it loud?
It's loud.
It picks up.
We're tough.
Come on.
You're from Arizona.
I'm in Vegas for 100 years.
We're fine.
But what it was, I think the real key of it was is that the difference now is now it's
the hustle of, yeah, you spend basically 40 to 120.
It's bullshit points.
You don't get anything.
There, you would rip it out, and you had a complete breakfast for free.
Eggs, toast.
It kept people alive.
There were many people that came into this town.
You know the old story.
They came out in the bus, and they never left. I mean, literally. And so this kept people alive. There were many people that came into this town. You know the old story. They came out in the bus and they never left.
I mean literally.
And so this kept them alive.
And so you go up and I walk into a motel.
Doug, I'm sure, did the same thing.
Hi, what are the rates?
Okay, that's good.
Is there television?
And as you're stuffing five in this pocket, ten in that pocket, and you go out and you're like, fuck.
I got free shrimp cocktail.
Everything.
Fucking gold spike.
And they moved you around. It was good marketing. You would get one for the gold spike. You'd get something for the silver slate. out and you're like fuck i mean free shrimp cocktail everything fucking gold drink and they
moved you around it was good marketing you would get one for the gold spike you get something for
the silver slate and we used to do walks this the old sahara hotel you can go from circus circus
where they were giving out free bloody marys and it actually had alcohol in it believe it or not
then you go next to this lots of fun and they would give you the that's what i was looking for
slots lots of fun yeah the slots of fun.
Yeah, with that fake... Yeah, yeah.
The shrimp were basically
sea monkeys. They were the sea monkeys.
Those are the original inspiration for the sea monkeys.
You got a jeweler's loop with
your shrimp cocktail.
Those were the Zika virus
sea monkeys. They were.
The Z monkeys. It all started somewhere.
And they were already in a cup underneath.
You have a little tiny fork, and they're already...
It was cocktail sauce with shrimp in it.
Yeah.
Pre-fork.
Yeah, it was horrible.
Pre-fork.
But again, if you were hungry and starving, and so many people were just busted out, and
then you went next door to the Westwood Hall, and then they had what we would eventually call the Johnny Holmes dogs.
These were those 13-inch big fucking hot dogs.
Do you remember, though?
They were ridiculous.
They were like for a dollar.
Yes.
And the whole place had nothing.
There was no reason to go into this place except for these monstrous hot dogs.
They were like your arm.
And people came from all over the world just to eat these things.
And then on the way out, they would give you free popcorn.
And all the homeless people would sit out front here's the reference like a
bunch of pigeons and they're there and they would just give you all these things just non-stop it
was popcorn you went across the street there was enough endless shit that you could do it was the
best place to be 19 and broke it was fantastic with a fake id as long as you had a thought it
was greatest the hot dogs and the shrimp were always in the back of the casino.
So they just needed one Rube to come through with all the other
homeless people.
The pigeons that were going to
wander.
Here's what I'm getting out of this.
Where's your free popcorn?
I live in Oregon.
If I lived in Vegas,
I could eat for free.
Especially then. Especially then.
Back then.
Back then.
Now you can't.
They used to have cigarettes.
When you'd sit down at a table, they would have a cup of just free cigarettes.
Really?
Lucy's.
No, this was the greatest.
When you went downtown, every single blackjack, I don't smoke anybody.
I did that.
Every single table, there was a Lucite container right next to the shoe where they were dealing out of, the six-deck shoe. And you walk up and you didn't even have
that to play. He goes, hi, how you doing? Good, great. I didn't think you should have.
You just grab one?
You just grab them and walk. And then you walk up to the dice table. And this was the common
lingo. I was a dice dealer specifically. And you'd say, let me have a stack and a pack. And
back then, a stack meant 20, 25-cent checks, chips. So you get for five bucks, they would give you a generic pack of cigarettes,
and you would drink for five hours.
There was nobody asking cocktails.
It was just constant, constant.
It was just so fucking great.
Oh, no.
Corporate was way worse than the mob ever was as far as destroying Vegas.
The mob had a heart.
The mob had a heart.
Now, you worked with mobsters.
How old were you when you first moved here?
When I got here, I was, what, 23 years old.
What year was that?
81.
81.
I'm 58.
Motherfucker.
You're 58.
Jesus, you're holding up good.
Yeah, I know.
For Vegas, good.
Yeah, for Brooklyn.
Look at him.
For Vegas, he's a baby.
Ah, you guys. Still get a full head of hair.
That's the first thing I said to him on the phone is when I was rocking that mullet.
Yeah.
Oh, I interrupted that.
I was so pissed.
It was so funny.
I didn't realize you were leaving him.
I still have it on the phone.
Yeah.
I said, you came up to me.
Tom came up to me and he says, you know, you're going to be bald.
I went, no.
And you're 19. Yeah. And I have this fucking long flowing fucking mullet and he goes no look at your hairline up
here no one has that hairline at your age that doesn't go bald now i'm gonna correct that i'm
gonna it's it was like stephen king where the sinner it actually kind of ended up there yeah
but let me let me by the way he was right
let me give you a fine point
cursed me
that followed because you came into my office
and I remember this
you specifically you pulled back your hair
I didn't say anything about you
you pulled back your hair and said look
I'm losing my fucking hair
and that's when I immediately cut in
I just rolled with it
you busted balls.
Of course, I love them already. So I'm like, oh yeah,
you're going to be bald, motherfucker. Don't worry, Tom.
Thinner. And I'm
so angry we didn't get him into the book,
but maybe we can cut some of this into
a future audio book.
I'm sure Bruce from Audible... Tom, we've been talking
and his memory is way better
than mine. I can't believe that you
actually remember me. Everybody's memory is better than Doug's.
Yeah, it's the old bit.
Mine at this point is Alzheimer's and yours is Anheuser's, right?
The old ba-dum-bum, right?
But, yeah, it was a different town.
It was a great town.
When I got out here, yeah, the mobs still ran this town openly,
and they were fucking fantastic.
You know, you can come in, anybody.
Hey, how you doing?
Because it was $0.25 minimum. I mean, literally that. openly and they were fucking fantastic you know you can come in anybody hey how you doing even if
you because it was 25 cent minimum i mean literally that and you can come in and bet five or ten bucks
and they treat you like a king yeah hi mrs b would you mr c would you like to go get something to eat
they take care of you and now you lose a hundred grand and they look at you if you want a cup of
coffee like your action doesn't warrant it we alreadyized crime gets the same kind of a bad name
that ISIS gets.
A lot of times I would like to join ISIS.
I think there's a lot of parts of ISIS that I agree with.
That's a good point.
But then the people criticize you.
ISIS is terrible or whatever.
But they have the free shrimp.
It's free shrimp on Sunday.
I like that.
Oh, Christ.
But it was amazing.
It was an amazing town.
And you could walk.
You could walk up and down from basically Sahara Hotel through these casinos.
Back then it was conducive.
You wanted to walk.
Now with all these overpasses, it's safer, of course.
It's the amount of people.
Wait.
Hold on a second.
When you say Vegas and walking around, I'm thinking of down south of here, the Strip.
Are you talking about up here where we're at in the plaza?
Two completely different things.
Downtown where we're at right now with the plaza, which is a great place, this is where all Vegas started.
This is where it all started.
The oldest hotel in Nevada is the Golden Gate.
That's the oldest thing.
Across the street. in Nevada is the Golden Gate. That's the oldest thing. It's the very first telephone that was installed in the entire fucking state in like 1206.
I don't know when the fuck they built it.
But the strip, the strip when I got there, like all the heyday with the Rat Pack and
all that, the Summit, you know, Ocean's Eleven, that was in the 1960s.
But when I got here, basically the mob was pretty strongly ran out.
Like I got to see and bump into guys like, you know, Tony Spolatro.
I mean, we'd go places where we didn't even know who he was.
They just looked.
I knew that guy was mobbed up.
And they said, this is this guy.
And like a year later, the guy's in a cornfield.
I'm like, hey, it was nice.
He bought me drinks.
He was cool.
I mean, but you would bump into people by happenstance.
He became a farmer?
Yeah, literally.
Yeah, manure.
Yeah, beautiful, beautiful corn.
We've eaten him in a buffet.
Yeah.
Well, yeah.
I mean, literally, you can go on endlessly about stuff like that.
It's a great time of year to plant a narc.
Yeah, no, exactly.
Yeah, exactly.
So you dealt until, Well, I basically.
How did you make the jump from mob casinos into fraud telemarketing?
Yeah, well, that was the interesting thing.
I had no, it's a very good question.
I burnt no bridges.
It was great. But basically when the mob was basically run out of town, a lot of the key employees and bosses left.
And it simply was no longer fun to work at this job.
It just wasn't.
And I worked at the final job I had was at the El Rancho, this little casino.
I remember the El Rancho.
Yeah, it was this little place right next to Wet and Wild.
Remember they had that big water bar?
Oh, yeah, on the strip.
Yeah, between the Rive and Sahara.
Exactly.
And it was one of the last jobs where you could go table for table,
which was great because that meant whether you were a dice dealer
or you were a 21 dealer, whatever you made, you kept that.
I broke in.
I started in Atlantic City.
You were like a substitute teacher.
Yeah, exactly.
I could do history.
Jim got it.
That made money.
But this was the funny thing.
Atlantic City, when it opened up, I got to work at a place called Harrah's.
It was in Brigantine.
It was a marina casino.
It was about the fifth casino to open.
And I literally watched it.
You say Harrah's as though it's an unknown.
It's a little place called Caesar's Palace.
No, I mean, but it wasn't.
A company called Toyota?
A little Burger King.
A little Burger King.
But you said, is this on Atlantic City?
Yeah, this was in Atlantic City.
So you're not here yet.
You're just working over on that end.
No.
This is the weird thing.
I mean, I had done a lot of stuff when I left high school.
I grew up in, by the way, I grew up in Essex County.
I grew up in West Orange.
Famous for only two things.
Thomas Edison and Rascals Comedy Club.
Which is funny.
And the sad thing is, where I lived, it was a beautiful,
and this came from a working class family.
I was into magic and martial arts. And I basically, you know, I'm a car shop.
This is something that I've done my whole life.
And so that was something that I was always interested in.
I had a dexterity.
I went to college briefly.
I left high school.
I was in the merchant Marines.
I was a deckhand going up and down the Mississippi River.
I mean, I saw so many wonderful things.
But where I grew up in northern New Jersey, I was just 15 miles out of Manhattan.
So every weekend when I was growing up, I was in the village.
I was in Central Park.
And you didn't have to have any money.
And I was a young, crazy kid.
And I just wanted to see everything.
You know, all the entertainment on the streets, the hookers, Times Square.
It was just fucking, that was my backdrop.
And so now when I came to Atlantic City, the long story short, I saw a commercial on television.
Are we going long? Everything's alright?
No, you're fine. I'm trying to find my reading glasses.
Take those.
So you're on the East Coast.
Dr. Upside? There, there.
Much better. I'm over here.
Is that why he was cross-eyed?
My eyes are just wacky.
Shaley writes me notes rather than
just ask a question.
He interrupts the podcast by writing it down.
No, no.
I listen to the podcast.
He wasn't supposed to be interrupting.
It was supposed to be.
He has a question about $100 craps.
No, I don't.
That's not the question.
Greg, that comes in pre-production.
Now that we've done this, I was going to say, we were talking about craps last night.
We'll get back to what you were saying.
But now that we've made this a production, how awesome
would that be? That's called forced
teaming. We made this a production.
I said creep. I brought you
a towel. Wouldn't it be
great to go out there and actually play craps
with a guy who knows how to play craps?
Because we were talking about it last night
and there's a craps table like
50 yards from us. Don't worry. Don't do it.
There it is. Don't do it. There it is.
Don't do it.
Really?
How's that?
I have a system though.
Oh, you got a system.
Everybody's got a system
and a fucking hole in their fucking pockets.
If he has a system then.
He's got a system.
I lose my money mathematically.
It's systematic.
Every guy in this town,
I've seen every fucking guy,
I've read every book about it.
I actually taught the games.
I was a professional gaming instructor in New York City.
I went to Manhattan. It was called the New York School of Gambling. I can't even believe me talking about this after all these years, the first time in all these years.
It was a school called the New York School of Gambling. And what I wanted to do, they were
talking about moving gambling upstate, like the Borscht Belt, you know, Grossinger's, you know,
up in that area, Brown forks hotel all that stuff
and uh but it never happened because the reality was the guys that owned the mob that owned the otb
they're like no we're not gonna split up this fucking revenue fuck you you're not coming stay
down in jersey and it took this many years to finally move all over the world but uh i went
and i took a six month course and you learned all the games. And at the
end of it, the guy that ran this was a mobster. His name was Bobby Ayoub, Robert E. Ayoub, and this
guy was a legendary instructor of gaming. He and a guy named Dino Cellini. There's a book written,
it's called Masters of Paradise. You can pick it up, I guess, Amazon or something, which is
unbelievable. These two guys came from Steuben guess, Amazon or something, which is unbelievable.
These two guys came from Steubenville, Ohio, and they were good friends with Dean Martin.
And they started out as dealers in Steubenville, Ohio. And they learned how to deal and they
learned how to run games. And they began running these social clubs, you know, and it was ubiquitous.
It was in every city all over the United states it was kind of kind of maybe legal
you know and uh but they learned how not to get hustled and they learned all this underhanded
stuff how not this is how guys have been hitting the tables what are they doing they're dealing
from the bottom they're false shuffling they're bringing in coolers they're working with
confederates they're signaling and these two guys they were going to make a movie martin scorsese
and robert de nero were going to make a movie. Martin Scorsese and Robert De Niro were going to make a movie about Dino Cellini.
You can look it up.
Google Dino Cellini.
I know De Niro's in all that weird shit.
In 2000.
He's trying to track down actual snuff films.
Do they exist?
Yeah, yeah.
Well, these two guys, Meyer Lansky, who was historic, familiar, Meyer Lansky.
For the listener, I just want you to know that when I said,
how did you get
from the casinos
into fraud telemarketing,
now we're back to Meyer Lansky.
I told you
it was going to be a long trip.
I'm sorry. I derailed it.
I won't pass the notes.
But now we're on a very interesting subject.
We'll go back to that.
Drifting the system.
You should write your own
players guide. is fucking fit we'll go back in the system yeah you should you should you should write your own one players uh you know the players guys i'm a as a seasoned professional 40 years this is how
you beat the system yeah yeah that that'll be your how do you beat the system you don't you just put
your money in your pocket and walk the fuck out yeah he's not gonna do that that's the bottom you
know we've been sitting here for 22 minutes i have to tell you this man is the most charming fucking very conversational but charming lovable guy i can see why you were crying laughing
reconnecting with him last night he's if you haven't read the stories i love the fucking
stories you're coming if you haven't read the book we were in i think i refer to him as good
cocaine stalls in a men's room. That's the kind of offices.
It was so accurate.
Yeah, with someone with their foot on the door.
It wasn't a cubicle.
It was like the high ceiling, but there's, what, 10 inches between he and I.
Office space.
And we just played off of each other.
I can see that.
What I'm saying is that comes through in 22 minutes.
I've been busy the whole time you guys have been out there chatting.
In 22 minutes, I'm saying I can understand everything,
like the anxiety of like, am I going to find this guy?
Where is he?
And everything has transpired since you wrote the book.
I swear there's a Tom Konopka that has a polka band.
That's the one I always find when I Googled him.
Thank you.
Yeah, he wanted you to sign it later.
I will.
All right.
Cheers, though, guys. This is fucking fantastic. Hey, gend you to sign it later. I will. All right. Cheers, though, guys.
This is fucking fantastic.
Hey, Jin Dan, Chin Chin.
No zdravia.
Last night when I was out at the pool with Chaley and Tracy,
having cocktails and talking to you,
and just fucking leaning over a trash can,
fucking weeping, crying.
This is going to be a disappointment to everybody who thought
Doug Stanhope was just born out of
generic comedy that he just like did open mics and then he but no there's a story yeah it was
an organic process go ahead no i i mean i look how did you get how did you make the jump let's
start well basically uh when i got to vegas the the long story short i was working in atlantic
city it was great. Jumping.
It was when Atlantic City was fucking incredibly busy.
We had 36 dice tables literally on everything.
36 dice tables.
People don't even realize that.
This was in 1979, 80 into 81.
And it's 36 dice tables.
The dice tables were twice the size of the Las Vegas dice tables.
I had never been to Las Vegas.
The sticks, I was a dice dealer.
I could deal all the games.
But when I worked, I purposely worked.
I can get back to Ayub in a second.
God bless Bobby.
But he said, because he saw me with the cards when I first entered the school.
I forget your whole magic thing.
Well, it's something that never stopped.
But I've kept it.
It's just as a hobby.
And your Zuba pants. Is that what they were called? We were trying to figure out the name. Well, it's something that never stopped, but I've kept it just as a hobby. And your Zuba pants.
Is that what they were called?
We were trying to figure out
the name.
Oh, yeah.
That's another form of magic.
Yeah, it was like a really...
Wide elastic.
But you know what?
You know what the funny thing was?
There's no way to ever justify
the sickness of wearing
that fucking crazy shit.
Comfortable.
You had a small bullet, too.
You had a bleach blonde
small bullet.
I mean, I had some strange... They're comfortable. He was martial arts, too. No, no, no, but that's what He had a small bullet, too. That's what he had. He had a bleach blonde small bullet.
I mean, I had some strange. They're comfortable.
He was martial arts, too.
No, no, no.
But that's what it was.
That was, yeah.
That is what it was.
In the gyms, that's what everybody's wearing.
And I was doing, you know, splits and kicking all that.
Oh, David Lee Ross shit.
My nuts would hit the floor if I did that.
No, David Lee Ross.
No, that wasn't with that spandex.
I wasn't wearing that.
That was, yeah, but that's a good reference.
Talking of the kick, not the fashion.
No, absolutely.
Thank you for clarifying. It's all in the nut placement. It fashion. Absolutely. Thank you for clarifying.
It's all in the nut placement.
It is. Absolutely. It's in the nuttage.
I feel like we're sitting at this podcast
with a guy who does the Ginsu knives
at the swap meet.
Every little aside, he will
make a comment about it.
I love it.
You're so fucking on, dude.
Is that the guy with the beard? No.
Or is that the ShamWow guy?
No.
Slap Chop.
How about Slap Chop?
Oh, Slap Chop.
That was the best.
Have you ever tried that?
That fucking thing?
It's the worst.
The fucking worst.
I swear to God, I picked it.
There was a swap made on Alta.
I put a carrot in that thing.
That might be the big award.
I put that fucking...
No, because that wouldn't win something.
That's fucking...
That's elite.
That's elite.
My favorite of the genre is Phil Swift, who's like this big, fat fucking guy, but he'll
take a boat.
He'll make a boat.
He'll fucking put a screen door.
Flex seal.
Yeah, flex seal.
He'll make a fucking boat out of a fucking screen door and some flex seal.
The real McGuire.
He's a fat fucking guy.
All right.
How does that happen?
We're off topic enough.
All right.
Less is more.
All right.
Less is more.
Save it for in.
I actually know a guy named Lessmore. It's an old joke, but it's really true. I knew a guy named Less enough. All right. Less is more. All right. Less is more. Save it for in. I actually know a guy named Lessmore.
It's an old joke, but it's really true.
I knew a guy named Lessmore.
True story.
Did you know?
We talked about Lessmore.
Let's see where I led you.
The tire.
Oh, shit.
All right.
Hold on.
Hold on.
Write this down.
Just write down Lessmore, because I remember telling you a joke from fucking, I had to
do an Idaho run when I was moving back from Idaho, and it was a tire shop greg you're brilliant you can bookmark all this shit all right we enter in
and out because i can't do anything all right let's just possible okay how what was your first
fraud telemarketing job and there was only one because it was flourishing there was only one uh
when uh basically in 87 i'm floundering because I'm remembering, where do I begin with it?
There was a guy, there was a guy that was working.
He said he had an uncle or something like that that worked at this place, American Distributing.
And I'm like, what is this?
He says, well, it's sales.
Well, what kind of sales?
He said, it's phone work.
I'm like, I don't know.
He says, but people are making good money.
It's close.
It's right off of the strip, this and that.
And I said, you know what? I'm going'm gonna give this a shot and just for the fuck
of it yeah and so just for the fuck of it i walked in i had never done it in the typical like a boiler
room thing but it was probably worse i mean the phone room was buzzing and i walked in and this
this old guy i don't know there was a guy john remember there
was an old guy john in the main room this old fucking guy with this porn stash it was just
horrible john jay is the one i remember yeah it was an old guy with a kind of skinny guy kind of
was that his name john jay john jay was he like running the front room? No, no. He worked in the front room.
There was the new guys, the hourly wage guys on one side.
And then we were-
Where you guys were, now you had the pseudo executive office.
But then Reloads was in a different building.
Yeah, that was a different part of the-
You had like a caste system?
Yeah.
We got a question.
Yeah, absolutely.
I was king of the middle.
Oh, you were king. But let me clarify one thing. Again, we could jump in and out of it. like a caste system yeah we got a question yeah absolutely i was king of the middle oh you know
you were king but let me clarify one thing again we could jump in and out of it yeah when i started
out i had i did no telemarketing had no interest in it but it was a place like you you know things
were getting slow the economy was 87 the economy sucked and even gaming which has always been
resilient even when things got really slow vegas still flourished somehow some way but i was just
burnt out.
A lot of the great bosses that I worked for, every one of them had stories.
I mean, every casino.
I worked in three casinos, two downtown and one up on the strip.
And every single one of those ones, this is no bullshit, had pit bosses and shift bosses.
And the dealers would all say, you see that guy?
It's Pete.
I'm not going to mention the guy's name because he's still alive and i would get killed he said that's pk he said yeah he's
from chicago he whacked 12 guys he all he wears are white patent leather shoes and if you send
the dice out on 12 you will be fired i'm like whoa whoa play this back what who's this fucking guy
what does that mean yeah what does that mean well exactly what it means well it means the guy's a
psycho fucking killer
who likes to wear white patent leather fetish weird fucking shoes.
I know someone like that.
Yeah.
Like send it out on 12.
Yeah, this is the thing.
Everybody, these guys were all fucking so superstitious.
But that's not patent leather.
That looks comfortable.
He has it.
This is fucking golf leather.
That's a driving loafer.
It's a white driving loafer.
Yeah, the driving loafer.
It's different.
It's a satchel. It's a purse. Send it out. It's a purse. Yeah, it's afer. It's a white driving loafer. Yeah, the driving loafer. It's different. It's a satchel.
It's a purse.
Send it out.
It's a Merce.
Yeah, it's a Merce.
It's European.
Hey, what is that?
Send it out on 12.
What does that mean?
Well, what it was is every one of the pit bosses,
they were superstitious.
In other words, they thought if you send the dice out on 12
as you're sending them out and the guy picks them up
and then the guy goes,
winner five, winner six, winner ten.
He's like, it's because of you.
You, you fuck.
You mean if you have...
It's a complete cycle.
How you hand the guy, how you push him the dice with the stick.
It could be anything.
It could be anything.
Some of them didn't like if you cut your hair this way.
They all had a superstition, but when you got hired,
they would let you know.
There was one guy, another guy that you would never make contact.
Don't make eye contact.
Don't look at the guy.
I said, wait a second.
I got to sign in.
What do you mean don't look at this fucking guy?
How do I sign in without looking?
Don't fucking look at this guy.
And so I walked in.
It was my first job.
Actually, where it was, it was called the Sundance, which became the Fitzgerald's, which
became the D, which is now a great casino downtown.
Derek Stevens, he's from Detroit.
He's the Don of downtown. He's doing everything right. He great casino downtown. Derek Stevens, he's from Detroit. He's the Don of downtown.
He's doing everything right.
He owns everything downtown.
All the girls dancing down on Fremont Street.
Again, this is old Vegas.
He could be off topic without us.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's easy.
Jump in wherever you want, guys.
No, keep going.
I fucking love this.
But this was the thing.
All the tits and ass and all the, you know, it was old Vegas.
There was a time when-
The real Vegas.
The real Vegas.
Yeah, yeah.
The real Vegas, the correct marketing.
You know, they were trying to make this like a children's, children friendly, you know,
for a while.
The Excalibur.
What year was that?
Remember?
That was actually after our marketing days.
Yeah, it was right around like the late 80s, early 90s kind of thing.
Disney-esque type family entertainment.
Yeah, and there's a place for that, too.
There's nothing wrong with that.
Nothing wrong with marketing.
Yes, there is.
But you can't lose it.
Yeah, it's Anaheim, California.
Everything wrong with it.
I mean, you can.
But I mean, ultimately, that is the truth.
There is a lot wrong.
No.
But so it didn't last long.
It's just like the place on the strip.
It was called the Silver City.
They went anti-smoking for six months and almost went out of business.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, you don't do that.
I mean, you know, you don't do that.
Yeah, there's Mormons now trying to get a prostitution pushed out of Pahrump.
Why would you move to Pahrump?
It's already a fucking trailer park.
Go anywhere else.
We don't want fireworks neither.
Yeah.
Oh, Christ.
There was a, when we were driving back from, we went to the die bar today just to check
in, and there was a parade of people that were like, I'm with Jesus and all this.
Oh, Christ.
And it was like, what?
Oops.
It was right down here, downtown.
Who's fucking paying attention to downtown?
Oh, no, these cycles.
I could talk all about these guys.
Yeah, it was ridiculous.
Jesus moved out of Nevada years ago.
You come down on Fremont Street
Let me tell you
Because I've been down watching these
Didn't you see the stand?
There used to be no
Exactly
Jesus checked out
There used to be no entertainers
There was no street entertainers
Or performers allowed
Buskers
Nothing
No buskers
You couldn't sell a freaking hot dog
When I came out here
I said Christ
A hot dog cart
I'd make a million dollars
Nothing
If there was even one penny
Going anywhere but into the hoppers Of the casino, they would fucking whack you.
I mean, it was literally.
Was the overhead thing here?
No.
The canopy was gone.
Okay, just before the canopy.
Yeah, it was way before the canopy.
I actually have snapshots of me back at the Mint and the Horseshoe and what it looked like.
It was a street, right?
Yeah, it was so beautiful.
Because you would drive down, and as the sun went down, all the lights would hit and the neon.
And the skies back then were even different.
There was more magenta.
The clouds, the sunsets were more beautiful.
I don't know why.
Global warming.
Yeah, whatever.
Exactly.
Does that reflect off the homeless better?
Yes.
Very good.
A rosier glow.
A rosier glow.
Exactly.
And it was just so fucking different.
It was so beautiful.
There are movies from the 70s and the early 80s
where they're on that street
and you're like where the fuck is that
because they're on that street that we walk down now
that has a canopy and a laser show
but you will see like a Clint Eastwood movie
or a Steve McQueen
and they're down that road
and you're like oh fuck what was that
Viva Las Vegas
well locals which I am
I guess I can call myself
after a thousand years here we love the uh the continuity of course the brakes are all fucked
up you'll see them driving and you're seeing the the horseshoe and then you'll see the plaza but
then you'll see the venetian and the paris and you're like where the fuck no this is all wrong
but i mean it's all part the hangover had endless shit like that but it was but it was funny i love
that let me just tell you just really quickly.
That doesn't hurt Vegas,
by the way.
No, no, no, no.
It's all good.
But see, now the shit
like the real world
when that was filmed
with Puck and all that shit,
the real world,
the palms,
that's when stuff
started changing.
Now we went from
the casinos.
It was never
when I got here
all that Sinatra shit.
I got to see Sinatra
at the Desert Inn
when he was 75.
It was his 75th birthday. Yeah, literally. i got to see sinatra at the desert inn when he was 75 it was
his 75th birthday yeah literally i got to see sammy davis jr in 1990 i think it was a little
bit after about a year before he died so i was like the young guy he's a half the rat pack yeah
actually actually joey schmowy but i mean the only one left was dean and the only reason i
didn't go see dean martin he was at the ballets for years with the Gold Diggers,
you know, these hot dancers and everything.
They were on television.
The only reason I didn't go see him,
and I could easily have,
is people told me that when his son died so sadly,
I forgot, was it he killed himself
or was it a car wreck or he killed himself?
I don't remember what it was.
He went into such a depression
that when he would come out and perform,
people said, Tom, don't go see him. Do you like Dean Martin? I go, when he would come out and perform people said tom don't go see do you like dmart i love dmart are you kidding me
don't go see him these are old timers old captains and mater d's guys are in their 70s
he's so depressed he says he'll come out with the piano accompaniment they say hey play one of those
songs ballet and he'd sing maybe two seconds three seconds of the song and he'd start crying i mean
he was so depressed, literally.
I think people are going to be saying this about me soon.
No, we are here to ensure that's not the case.
On a much smaller scale.
Not until after Sunday night's performance at the Dive.
Dude, you really saw Sammy Davis and Frank Sinatra?
Yeah.
I mean, it's not a big deal.
I was like, oh, that's a big deal.
I mean, I'm from Jersey. I'll give you a great big deal to chaley isn't fucking frank sinatra from jersey
oh that's the lead-in beautiful lead-in let me tell you this i grew up in jersey of course
north jersey specifically it's a different thing it's like if you grew up um yeah if you're from
upstate new york or if you're from the city a complete different fucking world and by the way
you're you're special, what was it?
The fucking?
Beer Hall?
No refunds?
No, the no, yeah.
Where you're talking about just about New York and how fucking horrible it is.
They pride themselves on it?
So true.
Yeah, and all this shit.
I mean, it's horrible.
But all that's true.
But I lived all that.
But there were parts of it that were fucking great.
It was a different perspective.
But when I got to see Sinatra, this goes right to Sinatra.
Prior to him,'s i came from
hoboken everything was sinatra hoboken hoboken so for years to get into the city from where i lived
in west orange i had to take a train to the path it was called the tubes the path train in hoboken
where they filmed on the waterfront all this shit raging bowl everything was all in that basic area
and you had to go there and then
transfer into the tunnels you had to go to subway but that was hoboken you went off the train you're
in hoboken but nobody stopped in hoboken there's nothing there it was shit but there was a famous
place i had always heard of called the clam broth house clam broth house it was this restaurant it's
still there and i was with i was teaching i was in martial arts. My friend Robert Gato.
Hi, Robert.
Love you, brother.
Good friend of mine from Jersey.
Nice Italian boy.
He was a martial arts instructor.
And we used to go into the city all the time when we'd check out all these dojos.
We'd go to Brooklyn.
We'd go to Chinatown and all this shit.
And it was just so fucking great as teenagers.
But I said, you know what?
We're in Hoboken.
Let's go see this clam broth bullshit. Maybe they've got a statue of sinatra or something this is the fucking
story so we're walking it's about maybe 4 30 in the afternoon and we finally it's less than a
block from the the hoboken path train and we go in it's just he and i and i walk in and there was a
bar and there was about eight little tables. Something straight out of fucking Goodfellas.
The bartender's there.
There's two old goombas at the bar.
And there was two guys sitting at a table in the back.
But it's all in the same room.
I could see as soon as we went in, the restaurant was not open.
But there was a bar.
So I'm like, yeah, fuck it.
By the way, you just described the dive bar.
I was there earlier today with Tracy.
There's eight tables, a stage, and a back bar. Go ahead.
He did miss the chicken wire part. Exactly.
The name of the bar that we're playing Sunday
is the dive bar. We're not referring to a
dive bar. No, no. The dive bar. This is the
dive bar. Great place. Oh, and I fucking
for the record, I did
direct message
John Taffer to invite him to the show
at the dive bar. Oh, that's great.
I know it's oversold, but for you, fire code, schmeier code.
Fire code, schmeier code.
You're in.
So you're at the Clam Broth in Hoboken, right?
So this is the shit.
We're in the Clam Broth house.
So I go in, and I'm looking.
I'm saying, well, do we get any food?
Nah, sorry, guys.
A little too early.
You want a drink?
And we're like, yeah, okay, we'll have a drink. And and back then this is when they actually had jukeboxes you know so again yeah the world is
exactly so i walk over the we sit down he had a drink and i go no music so i go over and i put
whatever money 50 cents in the very top it was three or four sinatra songs. The very first song I saw, Strangers in the Night. I put the money in,
click. And as soon as Sinatra started singing, all of the guys, the bartender, the two guys at
the bar, and then the two guys at that back table all yelled out, who the fuck put that on?
And I'm looking and I'm still by the thing. So it's clear they know who the fuck. I go, that would be me.
I go, what's the problem?
They go, that's Sinatra.
I said, yeah.
I said, well, this is Hoboken and Sinatra.
And I said, what's the problem?
Don't you like Sinatra?
They said, that son of a bitch never came back to Hoboken.
He was born here, but he never came back.
Ain't that right, Tony?
And they're talking to him.
They were serious. They were fucking pissed.
They were frying.
But they still had it on the jukebox. But here we go.
So now I had to call him on that. I'm like, what the
fuck? What are you talking about? He said,
Johnny, didn't you go to school with Francis?
And they're like, yeah. They're talking like
this. I swear to God. And my friend Robert
and I, we were dying, but we couldn't laugh at that because you don't know. And probably a little
afraid. No, no, we were. I wasn't laughing out. I'm laughing inside. I'm like, I'm fucking lurch.
I'm the deadpan guy from the book. That's me. And I talk funny to begin with. And so I'm like,
well, what's the story? He's born here. I said, my mother loves Sinatra. I said, I'm from West
Orange and Newark. They said, yeah, well, he was born here, but he never loves sinatra i said i'm from west orange and newark they said yeah well he was born here but he never came back he said we called him we offered to have statues we were
going to have all these parades he never came back i'm looking i'm saying are you serious and
they go you're serious and i say well fuck it i said what am i gonna do i said well let me just
ask one thing i say why do you guys still have sinatra on the jukebox they said so we can fuck
with guys like you once a week.
And they were all laughing like you're laughing.
And they were serious.
And I said, oh, you fucking bastards.
They said, no, it is true.
He never came back.
But we love it because all these new kids and tourists come in.
They think they're going to play Sinatra.
And we're going to be happy.
And we jam it right in their ass.
He never fucking came back.
And that was the true story.
A silly story.
But I mean, that was it.
And then they told you to get into telemarketing.
Exactly. There is the segue.
Exactly. No, they had food.
They actually had a phone room in the back.
And the food was good.
Frank answered and goes, yeah.
Grab your visa, baby.
But I'll tell you who's coming back to his roots.
Mr. Doug Stanhope.
Oh, well, fuck. There it is.
There it is.
Back to your roots.
It is your roots.
Take a break.
Tom.
Yeah, let's break.
Yeah, let's take a break.
Forgive me, kids.
Tom talked too fucking much.
We'll hit some AC.
We'll have a cold beverage.
Tracy, if we take a few more minutes, Tracy will have coasters made for all of us.
She's making coasters for you as you speak.
Tracy and Bingo, you are the greatest hostess.
I have Negroes who are going to deliver drugs.
Is that racist? No.
No, we were not talking. The guy's looking. We were not talking
about you, sir. The guy with the security guards
looking at you. It's all right.
It's all right. We're good. Sorry.
We'll be right back. Bye-bye.
Hey, this hey uh this uh podcast brought to you by american distributing hey don't hang up i'm not a salesman yeah i'm just following up on one
oh christ Oh, Christ.
My new special, Doug Stanhope, No Place Like Home,
is premiering on CISO, September 15th. There you go.
Explain CISO, Brian.
Well, CISO is an over-the-top subscription streaming service
from NBCUniversal.
And where do they get it?
Where do they go?
You go online.
You go to CISO.com.
Spell S-E-E-S-O dot com. I-C-U-S-O. and where do they get it where do they go you go online you go to see so.com spell s w s o.com
i see you so yes i see so and then it's all about comedy they're all about comedy all comedy yeah
all the time they're enormous comedy benefit how late are they open they're open 24 hours doug
all week all week even the day of the lord yep three six five two four seven and i what this is gonna
be uh hundreds of dollars a month well you would think with the quality that cecil have it would
be at least a bajillion dollars but that's just one of their shows bajillion dollar properties
they are actually free if for two whole months which, could be as long as you need them,
to see your special
multiple times. Right.
So go to CISO and get
my special free, basically. Yeah.
All you need to do is sign up using the
password, and it's a crafty one,
Stanhope, and you'll
get two free months.
Right. So get that.
Big Jay Oakerson's on that.
Harmon Quest. Rooftop Comedy.. Big Jay Oakerson's on that. Harmon Quest, rooftop comedy.
There's a bunch of shit on there.
Just fuck you, you guys.
You listen to the podcast.
Go to CISO.
Get the fucking special for free.
And judge for yourself.
No place like home.
Get it on CISO.
Get CISO now.
All right.
Tastes great.
Less Andy.
Less Andy.
All right.
We got rid of Chaley.
Actually went to the pool blackjack table.
I'm sitting here on the poolside Doug Stanhope patio podcast at the plaza Las Vegas with Tom Kanopka the Great Plaza and you know what this is how we should have done this because we have 30 years almost catching up exactly and yeah just like everything gets us off topic yeah it's it's like yesterday it's hard to do anything linearly we were talking you know we're talking Vegas. I know where we're going. Absolutely.
The El Morocco.
You remember the name of the bar.
It was the only bar.
It was between the Riviera and the Sahara.
That's correct.
Next to the El Rancho. I don't remember which side, but they had no gaming there.
And this is where that secretary from the main room comes in,
because I think she was the bartender there.
There was someone that worked at american distributing in our fraud telemarketing venture yeah that also
worked there so i we'd go there and get cheap or free drinks from her but i remember this
and bingo if you can get awake for this this is is where it starts. Bingo. She's sleeping.
Yeah.
She's sleeping through an Adderall.
Rem sleep.
Fuck.
No one that knows how we fuck with bingo.
Me and Hector,
this kid,
Hector would go there and, uh,
they had a free jukebox.
I know that jukebox.
Yeah.
I swear to God.
I know that jukebox.
So,
and it was popular and annoying
even at the time oh yeah don't worry be happy so we would play it over and over and over because
this was like all old school vegas hunchback oh yeah the old paintings and shit on the wall the
boobs and the people were just they were annoyed the first time. Oh, yeah. But when you just kept, you'd plug it in and then someone would hit the reset button and you go, it's free.
I'm just going to keep going back.
Now they are worried and they're not happy.
No.
Exactly.
And we do that until you're going to get me fired.
Yeah.
And I'm pretty sure that was the hot waitress that you could see down, waitress, secretary.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
From mornings.
Yeah.
Tom Knopka and I, after work, we'd go to the Gold Coast for butter and eggs.
Oh, for butter.
Butter and eggs.
It was this band.
It was like a barber shop.
I can't believe that.
I was going to bring that up.
I didn't know if you remember it.
It was, what were they called?
The Sorted Dixie Jazz Band.
Yes, that's it.
There it is.
The Sorted Dixie Jazz Band. Yes, that's it. There it is. The Sorted Dixie Jazz Band.
The lead guy, I think his name was Jimmy Kennedy or Jimmy Flanagan.
Flanagan.
Jimmy Flanagan.
I don't know if he's still alive.
Sorted Dixie Jazz Band.
No, no, no.
But this was the shit.
I purposely went, well, they had great food at the Gold Coast.
And this is like 1 o'clock in the afternoon.
Yeah, but this was the thing.
I purposely brought you there for a reason. i go because i live really close i was up at trop renaissance villas
a nice real nice place not far from there but i go there and i would be reading or practicing cards
and it's just some place i gotta hang i didn't have to i bought one drink nice looking waitresses
and we just hang basically like a keno bar where there's like three people there exactly what the five
piece band exactly watching no but there was no but there would be there but like there was a
couple like on the weekend there would be maybe a dozen you know the old of the old red hat where
the red hat ladies you know those old fucking yakki you know those ladies what is what is what
is this fucking thing the red where the red hat ladies no it's a purple hat
oh
this is 1980
no they're actually called
specifically red
now there's other
there's other knockoffs
that were purple and puce
and fucking
who knows what the fuck else
it's just like
we're the pucies
yeah we're the fucies
but
so the fuck
the bottom line is
I brought you there
just to see how long
it would take for you
to come out of your skin
listening to this fucking
I'll be your butter neck no no no I'll be your butter neck is I brought you there just to see how long it would take for you to come out of your skin listening to this fucking...
I'll be your butter and egg man.
But this is not just the butter and egg man.
This is the thing, because that was the guy.
The guy that was playing sax was...
Before that, you leaned into me.
They're playing all this, do you know what it means to miss New Orleans?
All these old New Orleans-y type of shit that you would hear in the french quarter which i got to see years ago great place and they're playing
all this you know all that french quarter bullshit and then you looked at the band and i had never
looked at i had been watching them for about a year and you stopped and you looked at them and
you looked at me and you looked at them looked at me you said tom is that my imagination or is the drummer the only guy in that fucking band without a toupee i fucking died because i
looked and it was true every there was like seven guys on the stage the drummer was the youngest one
the guy with the trombone the guy with the sax the fucking guy with the bass and every one of
them they were worse than shatner's the original i mean it was like a big fucking squirrel on every head it was so fucking funny i do that with uh sports well i didn't we we have
ufc or whatever and i'll pause it and i'll rewind i go look at that lady in the third row doing
whatever like i'll be watching this but i'll find a weird fucking thing in the background and just
miss everything that's actually happening because i'm trying to find a weird thing.
Your eyes are so great.
I always had great eyes up close like an electron microscope, but at a distance, a little trouble.
But this was one thing.
So now after that, you're like, I just died laughing because now I can't look at them.
I was never able to continue.
Sorry, quickly.
To wrap up this story, to this day, we do that to Bingo.
Bingo.
Oh, shit.
Andy, you have a camera.
Go get a picture.
Bingo is sleeping with her phone upright in her hand.
I'm like, why is she not talking to me?
She's texting.
She fell asleep texting.
Will you get a picture of that?
Do you know why I didn't take a picture earlier?
Because I'm trying not to be that big of a dick, i will oh yeah do be a dick so we will play don't worry be happy that started at
the el morocco and we did it to her on a 3 000 mile road trip that is so far we just kept playing
it oh yeah and her groundhog day the way she stopped us from doing it i'm gonna make myself
throw up and she started actually making herself throw up in the car my car not a rental that i
didn't give a shit about thanks bingo like all right all right we'll stop we'll stop don't make
yourself puke that's so funny we still do it to her it's brilliant to this day love no it was when
you mentioned the el rancho earlier that That's unbelievable. That's unbelievable.
Let me tell you a great story about the El Rancho.
There was a bowling alley underneath the El Rancho.
And Rodney, I used to bump into Rodney all the time. There was a Dangerfields that he opened briefly in the El Rancho.
It went down because that place was like really basically what it was.
It was basically a warehouse of slots where money was
being laundered for the chicago mob basically the guy that ran his name was ed torres i'm naming
names he's dead it's a tell all podcast this is it baby and uh yeah he was the last of the real
mob owners and the guy was absolutely incredible his daughter uh was an olympic swimmer
and she was the one that came back in the olympics when she was like 40 uh what was her name dana
dana torres we're way off topic but the but the bottom line was is that we would go down and
there was on our breaks when we were dealing we take our breaks and go down to the bowling alley
and jerry lewis used to go in there all the time.
Old Jerry.
And he'd go in there.
I'm paying Andy 20 bucks to go out to the blackjack table
and turn it into 40, and then you can talk.
You can do it.
If you let me deal.
Oh, if they let me deal.
We'd turn that into a freaking million in a half hour.
Andy, his entire life is off topic.
So every time he touches the mic, we're already just trying to catch up.
So with Andy involved, this would be a nine-hour podcast.
Yeah, he's great.
I love him.
Back to Jerry Lewis.
We're back in the phone room.
Andy.
Yeah, that's it.
Oh, he's funny.
Is he coming back?
Is he all right?
He's climbing over the wall.
Just open the door, Andy.
Open the door.
Oh.
Okay.
So now, back to, so now Jerry Lewis used to come, and he would bowl.
And he would bowl with what looked like might have been his grandson or a niece or nephew,
about 12 years old.
And this, so help me, was unbelievable.
You know, Jerry had all these telethons, and Lenny Bruce used to laugh about him.
He'd say say give to
the disease that i brought about ain't dang like he was retarded like he felt guilty so that's why
he got into all this telethon shit because he used to make fun of me he was fucking retarded
that was the bit but he used to go there and bowl oh jesus yeah think of that today yeah that's like
ricky gervais all the shit he gets for having a
retarded character derrick i don't oh yeah i don't i've never seen it but i just see
like andy kindler and sarah i think so what about the doug flutie flipper baby oh yeah i know you
heard what i get to a point where you nerve of you like what if that guy hears it i i did a bit
about ricky williams and what a hero he was for just quitting
sure i'd rather get high i don't care if i failed a piss test and i just found out through twitter
that he he heard it and i really i i tweeted him like in 25 years of comedy i don't little makes
me happier than knowing that you heard that bit and he tweeted back saying for the 12 years i
went through that thinking nobody gets it i'm glad to know somebody got it 12 years ago isn't that
funny i was fucking great but then on the opposite side of the coin what if doug flutie heard my
exactly flipper baby yeah so yeah yeah everything's context so doug So I'm down there on a break, and Jerry Lewis gets done bowling.
And there was nobody in there.
There was a little bar where you can get little snacks and a soda,
and that's what we'd do on a break.
And as he's walking up, there was a long ramp going down.
And he's walking out by himself.
No one's talking.
I don't want to go up and talk to the guy.
And there was a lady, an older woman, maybe, I don't know, maybe in her 50s.
And she had a son, maybe 16 or 17, who you knew did not know who Jerry Lewis was.
But as they're walking down, she sees him.
And I'm within 20 feet.
And she just didn't stop, didn't ask him for his autograph.
She said, oh, excuse me, Mr.wis i just want to tell you i'm
the biggest fan and as she was about to say fan he literally took his arm shoved her to the side
and said get away from me with that voice get away from me and when he did that she turned around and
i'm telling you she let out a tirade She would have made either of us
Fucking blush
It was great
She said you motherfucker
She said I wasn't going to ask you for your autograph
I was just going to tell you I loved your movies
You ungrateful cocksucker
She was like
I couldn't exaggerate it
And Jerry didn't stop
He kept walking.
And as he was walking, she was getting louder and louder and louder.
He just turned the corner.
And as she came by, the guy that was the bartender there, he said, ma'am, don't take it personal.
He's like that to everybody.
He is an asshole.
Oh, by the way, Jerry, if you're listening to this podcast, you motherfucker, be nice to those fucking people. What Jerry Lewis said,
of course, Nutty Professor was brilliant, all this shit, brilliant. But for many years,
people don't know. This is old shit to people in Vegas. The reason they stopped the telethons
in Las Vegas, and a lot of them were held at the Sahara, is because there were hundreds and
hundreds of kids that were in wheelchairs that were out there with
signs he only treats us nice on camera he isn't they wouldn't use the language but you know but
he's you know mean to us you know he's like get away from me everything's you know you you don't
want to believe that but hey this is reality what does this have to do with the morocco and me
dealing i'm all over the place forgive me yeah. Yeah. At some point, we're in American distributing.
Yeah.
So now we're back to American distributing.
This is great.
It's all fractal.
Follow us, you termites.
So now, I think the first time I saw Doug, yeah, Fergie was given some type of rah-rah.
You came to a show.
I think it was at the Comedy Cellar on Sahara.
You're jumping ahead.
You're jumping a little bit ahead.
Well, I'm jumping ahead from Jerry Lewis telethon.
No, no.
But that's good.
No, but the first time I met, I just want to go right to that because I remember that
very well.
Joe Bihar, the whole thing.
Yeah.
Okay.
I remember that very well.
I was going to bring that up.
Oh, I remember.
Pandora was there.
She was actually there.
Oh, Jesus is right.
Oh, Jesus.
Fucking gross.
She was.
Yeah, she was.
She was something.
God bless. So I think this was the thing fergie was given this kind of rah-rah pitch and you know you guys are
doing good he's looking at everybody he's pointing to you you know dog you're doing good these guys
i was new i had walked in on this thing but there was one guy that was on the other side of the room
where you guys were in the pseudo executive suites.
And he was like, yeah, but when I do.
And he's like, well, no, no, no.
There's no yeah, buts.
I want you to listen to me.
You have to follow the pitch.
It works until you get some experience.
Listen to the people around you.
He's pointing.
He's saying, listen to Doug.
Listen to Pepper.
Listen.
And you could pick up something.
Maybe it'll help you get up.
Yeah, but.
And the guy kept yeah, butting. And at the end, he just cut him'll help you get up. Yeah, but. And the guy kept yeah butting.
And at the end, he just cut him off.
He's like, listen.
There's no yeah buts.
Follow the fucking picture.
You're out the door.
That's it.
Now Fergie was pissed.
Everybody, get on the fucking phones.
The guy's pissed.
And I looked at you.
We hadn't even spoken.
I looked at you.
And I looked over at the guy.
I go, what's wrong with that fucking guy?
And you just leaned in.
You said, that guy is wicked retarded.
The first time.
I can't do the accent.
You said, that guy is wicked retarded.
I just fucking laughed.
And I said to you, I go, I go to Boston?
And you said, no, Worcester, babe.
And I rolled with that.
Now listen to what I just said.
You said, Worcester.
You babed me.
You gave me a babe.
You did Worcester.
Worcester, babe. Yeah, you did the Worcester babe. And me you gave me a babe you did Worcester Worcester babe yeah you did you did the Worcester Bay and I wasn't really sure what you had said but you didn't know
that I rolled with it it sounded like Oyster Bay or Woodstock I didn't know what the fuck
neither of these were anywhere in there fucking Boston and so to clear it up and we will get to
the cellar I was thinking to myself well Worcester and I looked it up I saw that's like an hour from
Boston I saw you in your dictionary in your dictionary exactly which by the way you have
a head like an obelisk there's a background what does that mean there's a background i don't even
look it up look it up and then the fucking dictionary thumps over the fuck the big
fucking dictionary this was not that little this was that big fucking thing the foot wide
with the thumbnail things they It weighed like 15 pounds.
You know those big fuckers.
Yeah.
Just fit over the top of that thing.
Boom.
Look it up.
Thump.
Yeah, that was funny when you wrote that.
I couldn't believe you remember.
So that was the whole fucking thing.
I was glad that after our conversation last night, my stories were pretty accurate about those days.
Dead on.
The fucking stack of newspapers.
Dead fucking dude. Dead fucking on. Word for word. I can't fucking believe it. last night my stories were pretty accurate about those days fucking stacking newspapers dude dead
fucking on word for word i can't fucking believe it it's like you transcribed it and put it in the
cumran fucking caves and now i remember being in the middle of a pitch and then hey listen uh the
reason i'm calling you i'm not a salesman i'm doing and then i'd have a fart and i'd put the
phone in my ass and blast a fart and get right back
into the pitch as though that never happened.
No, that was the highest level.
That to me was the highest level of in anything.
It's like a Zen thing.
It is the ability.
Even Bruce Lee, many years ago, I was in martial arts my whole life.
Bruce was the major influence, of of my generation that's why i
love joey diaz and i love joe rogan but i love joey diaz when he was on joe rogan love you joey
and i love you joe rogan but joey's from north bergen and when i listen to him i'm like god he
reminds me of of home you know he was talking and they were watching return of the dragon and just
explaining how important bruce Lee was at that time.
Well, there's a cocksucker.
Yeah, yeah.
Fuck us.
I mean, Joe Rogan imitates him perfectly.
Yes.
That's so funny.
Oh, those two on the Alex Jones show.
The funniest thing I've ever seen.
Joe Rogan is laughing so fucking hard.
Oh, you want to go there?
And he's talking about Cuba and all this shit.
That's it.
Big dicks in your ass.
The whole fucking when he closes it up and he fucking went so that was it so so the whole thing with bruce
lee was just a fucking unbelievable but uh let's go over to the cellar it's more important you
talked to me and you said well look i think i'm gonna do some stand-up. Now, what had you done stand-up-wise prior to the Cellar Lounge,
they called it?
From what I remember, which is tenuous at best.
I remember what you did there that night,
and we went up the street with Tom Wallach and a couple other guys,
and we went up industrial.
Tom, he was a hairdresser.
Yeah, yeah.
We went up.
He's doing the Rat Pack with Sandy Hackett.
No shit.
That guy's still around?
Yeah, he was.
Oh, yeah.
He dyed his hair.
No, but everything was, he was doing all that you know woody allen good stuff you know and that was his that was his
uh killer thing was his woody allen but he's a funny guy no but i mean he was just starting out
then i he my first joke i sold i sold to him for 25 as an open mic or yeah and the joke was uh
the difference between a new york accent or New Jersey accent and a
Massachusetts accent.
We say ca.
They say ca.
Like in Jersey, they say your child is autistic.
You don't know if he's going to be the next Rembrandt or the next Rain Man.
That's funny.
I never heard that.
You can't buy that joke.
That's funny.
Oh, I sold a joke.
So I'm officially a joke writer. You are. You fucking are. You're right there. I'm a writer. I never heard that. Did I buy that joke? That's funny. Oh, I sold a joke, so I'm officially a joke writer.
No, you're officially, yeah, you fucking are.
You're right there.
I'm a writer.
You're a writer.
Top of the world, my day.
I probably had eight jokes to my name at that point, but I sold one.
What is the thing?
I'm jumping over to the cellar lounge.
So you say, hey, Tommy, I'm going to go on stage tonight.
I'm like, oh, cool, where are you going to go?
We went over to the solo lounge.
And this guy, Joe Behar, had some type of drama workshop thing going on.
Yeah.
And he looked like that melted guy in the office next to me.
No, no, yeah.
But he looked like, no, you're a bit when you came up.
This was the thing.
There were about three or four other comics that went up.
And you opened with.
Because the guy looked exactly.
You said, let's hear it for the guy from the, what do you say?
The guy that was on the box.
The game operation.
Yeah, the guy from the game operation.
I'm not wording it properly, but you did.
And he fucking killed.
Because he looked exactly like that guy.
And then I just remember, it's just a montage of shit.
When I look at YouTube and I look at your Carlos Murphy set.
I can't do it.
No, no, no, no, no.
We're going to play it at the dive.
Because I tried to watch it when Mike...
I remember you talking about that.
You said, I can't even look at it.
I watched two sentences.
I have that weird talking out of the side of my mouth.
I know.
But you were finding your pitch and your pacing and everything.
Again, but it's when you came out and you said,
whatever the opening line was, something,
but I'm going to imitate it. You said, this guy trying to mess with my act you said something
you're like yeah we're trying to mess with my act and you were doing like i was trying to not be
i was trying to not be dice and i was being dice it was dice yes but it was good i mean but they
don't know that and you were killing it was great yeah you were doing all that some affected accent
that wasn't even a massachusetts yeah no no it was it was a very interesting hybrid of i don't know what but it was now now i just yell
on stage no but no no no but i would love to do no i'd love to do my act like this yes but no i
had to go right into yelling no of course it's yelling but you were honest with me to an extent where you told me where I stunk.
For whatever reason, and I did.
Oh, I fucking stunk bad.
But whatever it was, I knew that whatever you told me, you were an honest barometer.
You were not a guy that's just going to say the right thing. No, because, I mean, because I'm, look, at the end, this is when I really saw really where your character was, you know, beyond us.
I mean, we would work six or seven hours a day side by side trying to put food on our fucking plates,
banging out this East Coast, West Coast fucking bullshit.
Stealing, no, liberating.
Liberating their money.
Hey, if someone else, if we didn't take their money, someone else would have found it.
Someone else was going to.
There it is.
The universal justification.
There it is.
It was wonderful.
But they were business people.
Here goes your justification.
They were business people.
It's all a write-off.
And if they did get one or two new customers, hey, it paid for that $800 order.
The best is when you were pitching.
Ah, we're all over the place.
Follow us, kids.
So this is it.
So now, let's say-
If you haven't read the book,
just get through the American Distributing Days.
Yeah, just go right into the Vegas.
They're both chapters.
And then, what was it?
Vegas Redux or whatever the fuck it was.
And whatever the max order was,
this is why I was so fucked.
This is why you were then
and have always been so fucking fearless.
It's an adjective that people know,
but I don't think they fully fucking grasp that.
Let's say they had an order where there was a max.
There's a box of pens or whatever for 400 bucks.
There was always that little board out front
with a bunch of names and people.
When you made a sale, you'd write it up.
You'd walk out into the...
The motivational... Basically the motivational lobby there you go this is a u-shaped office where all the offices face out
to the main lobby area and then you go out with your marker exactly yeah i said fucking shout and
you put your heart on yeah it is but this was the best i listened the first time i heard you
you were like you know i hate this but it was the passion with listened the first time i heard you you were like you know i hate this
degree but it was the passion with which you sold this shit because you're right i mean word for
word but you when you would hit a couple strides you had a certain timing you would do that little
well you have it now when you're delivering you always did you had that little light stammer that
i jumped well i you know a little you had a little bit of that. Like you're fighting for what's the word?
What's the right description?
How am I going to do it?
John, if you were going to get some type of cheap piece of jewelry
or some kind of cheap vacation package, I wouldn't have bothered you.
You would say bothered you?
Now you're such like a young, how could they not love this guy already?
But let me tell you, he said, you got one of the biggest gifts going out
of this industry.
And right then, I'm leaning up.
I'm like, oh, Christ, he's fucking ready to hit this guy.
And then inevitably, I would wait for the, you know what the guy's saying.
He's going, okay, how much?
And I would wait.
800, babe.
And you would babe these fucking people.
I don't remember the babe.
You would fucking, I'm not, I could be throwing it in to embellish. I'm not. weight 800 babe and you would babe these fucking people i don't remember you would you would
fucking i'm not i could be throwing it into embellish i'm not you would throw it not always
but you did do it you did it the first time i heard you you were like well i would play off of
you because i know you're listening oh i would oh i would be trying to make i'm even in telemarketing
i'm playing to the back of the room no exactly it was such fertile ground man
and then then i would listen because inevitably the guy then you would say grab your visa i'll
hold on and then silence and then you're waiting because as salespeople typically what you would
do you'd hear the guy gone this was the best thing to hear nah i shouldn't do it but i'm
gonna do this one last time how many times that was the greatest thing to hear. I shouldn't do it, but I'm going to do this one last time.
How many times?
That was the greatest thing to hear.
And now the guy, you can hear him.
He's going, let me see.
Where's my wallet?
And you can tell.
You can see him grabbing his wallet.
Okay, and as soon as you get Bob, you're making a great decision.
That's a master card.
It starts with a five.
Read the letters from left to right.
The chances of you getting legitimately lucky in this business are slim and none.
That's it.
So walk out of this on this ahead of the game
and don't ever buy into this again.
Okay.
Listen, normally I would have hung up immediately.
I believe you.
How much was that again?
That's $8.99 with your five lines of ad copy. Here's where I fucked up once.
I still remember this.
I sold the guy, and then you have to go over.
We're selling advertising specialties.
If you haven't read the book, fuck you.
Just read the book.
And then you have to go over
okay this is what it's going to read on your pens your fucking coffee cup and i said it was like
bob's upholstery yeah but i said okay so it's already have the visa i go okay so it's going
to read bob's upholstery upholstery i said upholstery did he stay with you yeah he's
eating he goes oh that's amazing i go oh no i did you just say upholstery i said upholstery did he stay with you yeah he's eating he goes oh that's amazing i go
oh no i did you just say upholstery and oh yeah yeah you went right back in there like it was
on him yeah yeah no no you're hearing things john okay now continue that was call waiting
now what's the debt oh exactly i'll tell you one of the one of the best fucking things that you did
i can remember the first time that that in the book you'll read about the care package that your mother,
Bonnie, oh, God.
Classical gas.
The classical gas.
So this package arrives, and it's in Doug's office.
And I'm like, oh, what's this?
Who gets these big packages?
I was waiting for some girl to jump out.
I didn't know what the fuck.
And we opened it up, and you're like yeah check this out
and i started pulling things out the first thing was the short pink tie and then there was these
pants these like neon green checkered fucking golf pants then there was a white patent leather
belt and i'm looking at this i'm like doug what the fuck is this you know he goes no go ahead
and you're pulling in putting them over your shoulders this is great and then this trick-or-treat jacket that had the sport coat i don't even know what the fuck
it was paisley it was fucking checkerboard it was all fucking verkakta and i said what are you going
to do with this he said well i'm gonna wear it on stage because at that time doug was wearing you
know like basically like chucks and uh jeans and basically sport you know he would wear like yeah
sport jerseys yeah whatever you know
and rocking the the metal mullet and it worked for him but i did wear some miami vice on stage
too that mikey greitz gave me yeah yeah that's correct i do remember like the linen suits with
with the nice yeah with the popping fucking uh shirts hey mikey we love you mikey greitz
sorry i couldn't use your uh full name in the book shout out to you mikey love you mikey greitz sorry i couldn't use your uh full name in the book
shout out to you mikey love you mikey he's a professional now he works for the city he doesn't
oh he's a great yeah oh that's even better oh we're gonna we're gonna hunt you down mike
we'll go out we're all gonna down into the ayahuasca and go down into south america
somewhere with the yaki warriors he went into all that that's great no no he went into city
planning like i had to keep his name out of the book like that shit could haunt him okay Yaki Warriors. He went into all that. That's great. No, no. He went into city planning.
I had to keep his name out of the book.
That shit could haunt him.
Okay.
Okay.
Well, let's say his name. And his dad is fucking Bogrites.
Is Rambo.
Yeah.
He probably doesn't respond to his dad's Facebook messages either.
His father's Rambo.
They based the movie Rambo.
His father was unbelievable.
And who was the fucking I'm all ears
Ross Perot
financed him
that's correct
I remember when I was making money
I actually sent money to him that's unbelievable
yeah it was a few weeks ago
I had to cut all that out of the book
by a group of lawyers
I figured you had to
but i knew
that was mikey when i saw the picture mikey you're the best and uh you know it's not personal it's
business so we go into it so now where is it i got the pink the short pink tie i got the fucking
neon fucking pants the golf pants the white fucking patent leather fucking i think it was
a belt or it might have been a plastic tie it was about she would send me all that no no but it was endless shit well you see my wardrobe after we're done with this
podcast i'm going to show you this shit no no no it but the oddest thing is so you're like you
started holding it up and what do you think i said no no put it on and you put it on you came back
just like we had gone to some fucking someplace on rodeo drive and you came out so proud and i
what do you think and i looked i go oddly it works
it works it's great and it really did it looked fucking appropriate on you i don't know i just
but you fucking worked do you remember and i laughed and that was it used to make the the uh
the fronters oh they had to wear it these were all absolutely these were the trainee suits yeah
they're like what the fuck you better close you're going to wear this for the next-
Because in the business, they would guarantee you something good for the day, like eight
bucks an hour for the first two weeks to figure out if you can sell.
And if you pass it that, it's commission only.
Exactly.
So people would come in, they can't sell shit.
They can barely read the pitch. Exactly. So we'd make them dress They can't sell shit. They can barely read the pitch.
Exactly.
So we'd make them dress up in all the shit Mother sent us.
Oh, it was fantastic.
And so now out comes this thing, the whoopee cushion.
And we have fun with that.
Who doesn't have fun with that, right?
And I think it was a couple magazines, a couple porno magazines.
I don't think it was Hustler at that time.
No, no.
It was a little bit more like truck stoppy kind of shit.
No, no, no.
I can remember it was the type of shit where it was old stuff no i've never seen these i've only heard of these
stuff like gallery and swank and plumpers actually you know what's funny and all that shit
is the kids that are listening to this they've only heard of porno magazines because they've
grown up on internet of course yeah you actually had to leave through these fucking pages yeah back then you pretended not to know about porno that's andy because it's
he's a fucking what so what did you win andy tell me you're up 50 grand he has the look of a
i want to say nothing all right there you go well you know what here's a chance to double down, Andy. I just lost 20, Doug.
Doug's peeling off bills.
All right, Andy, go back to the table.
Lose this for another hour.
Try again.
If I could win.
Just try, try again.
He just gave him 500 bucks.
Fuck you.
Give it to me.
I'm going out to the play.
Stop.
Which way?
He just farted.
You nasty fuck.
He's funny.
I like when you lie to people like he's jumping over the wall.
I know.
And you try to amp it up, but don't tell people I'm giving Andy 500 bucks.
No, I know.
Exactly.
Because I have six other friends coming in.
That was a joke.
That was a joke.
Every one of them, I know these fucking moochers.
I gave him 20.
You gave it to Andy.
You can give it to me.
Exactly.
Tommy was joking.
Oh, fuck.
Thank you for clarifying that.
I'm not smart that way.
So we go to the cellar lounge.
But this was the thing.
We were sitting and talking. And this was my first time. Because we go to the cellar lounge. But this was the thing. We were sitting and talking.
And this was my first time.
Because we had always talked together.
It was such a great time, as you write in the book, in the early to mid to late 80s and early 90s.
The whole comedy scene exploded.
The comedy fucking started.
The fucking doones.
Everything.
I got to see Dice.
We got to see Dice.
We got to see Sam.
I never saw Dice.
Oh, I saw Dice at Bally's twice.
I saw Sam like four times.
I tried to bum rush him.
We were out.
I don't know who it was.
I think this is a little after American Distributing.
Right, right.
I was already doing it.
Yeah, it was because I was already starting open mics.
And he had played somewhere.
And we're down getting our 49-cent breakfast at the –
it wasn't the Orleans, but it was a new orleans
themed place like flamingo on the strip but just just the marty graw fucking it's i can't remember
the name anyway they had 49 cent breakfast oh they had listen they had that they had that all
over town i'm not gonna get off on a tangent but they had a place like uh the foxy's firehouse
that was at sahara and not too far from the Fun City.
Every place had that little 49 cent.
That's where the Fun City Motel was.
That's correct.
Foxy's was on the corner.
That is right.
And then, yeah.
But we heard Dice is at a bar after a show somewhere.
Oh, really?
And I was going to give Dice a joke.
Oh, yeah.
I have to remember this.
When people email me and go, I thought of a joke you can use.
I had a joke he could use.
And we tried to get into the VIP area of one of those casinos he was in.
And he had six bodyguards.
Of course.
You can't go in there.
But no, I have a joke for Dice.
Get the fuck out of here.
He's got a joke for you.
Get the fuck out of here.
So then I hated him.
Oh, that was fucking killer.
So now you go to the Cellar Lounge, and it was all these people.
It's a great room.
It was a great place.
They had a nice pool table.
The people were cool.
But when you first went up, this was the thing, because I did not know.
We had discussed everybody that we loved.
You mentioned a bunch of people, but people at that time especially,
guys like Lenny Clark, the whole Boston scene, Dom Herrera, who we loved. You mentioned a bunch of people, but people at that time, especially guys like Lenny Clark,
the whole Boston scene,
Dom Herrera,
who we loved,
Schimmel,
who we loved,
you know,
Hedberg,
all these guys
that I had gotten to see
that I was fortunate enough
to go to see.
And, you know,
everything was flourishing.
Yeah, Hedberg wasn't around then.
No, no, it was early.
It was early.
Well, this was like post,
but the early, early stuff,
of course.
Yeah, Dom Herrera
was definitely around
with Joey Baggin Donuts.
He was on the Rodney specials.
It was the Rodney specials, exactly.
And that was where Shem...
This was the funny thing.
Every time I watched that Rodney...
I just re-watched it recently.
I go back to it every six months.
Everybody killed, but that Barry Sobel guy.
Oh, it's hard to watch with that...
Oh, oy vey.
That was tough.
Let's take a quick break because we're doing this chely list and barry just
walked in barry i'm just kidding i love well no i need a i need a drink and we'll be right back
we're not even going to talk during the break i'm just going to hit pause and i'm going to make a
drink and we'll be right back i'll drink to that we're on we're on We're back to Joe Bihar.
Yeah, hi-yo.
Yeah, I just thought to myself as I'm sitting down with you,
we left work, we went up there, and you're like,
yeah, I'm going to go up on stage, and I had not seen you.
But I was curious, you know,
what if you were going to go into some type of a stage persona?
I didn't expect you to.
Just something different.
You know, you were going to come out like, you know, Murray Langston or some, you know, the unknown comedy. Just something different. You were going to come out like Murray Langston or the unknown comic.
Just something completely different.
But the fact that you didn't, you were standing there with me,
and you were drinking whatever.
We had a bottle of beer.
Yeah, well, yeah, a lot.
Dave Attell's bit.
My favorite drink.
I was drinking my favorite drink a lot.
Oh, Attell's so fucking funny.
The best.
But no, when you went up, you just left the table and you just walked right up and you
didn't rush into anything and you just grabbed the mic.
He went, I don't know.
That was the first thing I heard you say.
I don't know.
And then you went into whatever you went into.
And I'm remembering just little bits of pieces like penis lips and sea monkeys.
And, you know,
what's your chances of being laid?
And then you were... Oh, I hope I remember that.
Sea monkeys.
Maybe that's in the bits.
I don't know.
The girl yelling and then you were doing the...
Fucking Andy.
You were doing the chair.
How many times?
Don't close the door, you.
Yeah.
I'm just explaining you to Tom Canopka.
I'm trying to do a read.
I'm doing a poker read.
Hey, listen.
I'm getting drunk,
but does he not look a lot like Gabe Lindstrom?
Oh, Christ.
A little bit, yeah.
I don't know you, Gabe.
That's got to be a handsome guy.
It's a condiment.
It's a condiment.
Thank you.
He was a NFL punter for a minute.
Yeah.
Yeah, so that was it.
So now you're on the stage.
But you did the bets.
It was funny.
But when we got off stage, you went backstage.
And everybody had a little critique about everybody.
Backstage means like the hallway.
Yeah, the little hallway.
Yeah, with some guy in the background.
But whatever the critique was from him, you handled that so well.
And of course you would.
He taught comedy
he had a comedy class
that I did not attend
but his opening set he came out
I didn't know what he had taught
I thought he taught just dramatic
I didn't know if it was comedy and dramatic
I didn't know what it was
but whatever he said you were critiqued
and whatever he said to you
you're like
yeah i can say that yeah that's right it was a little weak i could have punched it here a little
bit more and that was it you were always a student he would he would critique you yeah i mean you
in no way did you have an ego where you're like no but you didn't get you didn't do that you know
i listened to everybody listen to everything i I remember Jeff Ross. Not Jeff Ross.
Yeah, it was Jeff Roth.
Mm-hmm.
He was this old hackneyed guy.
I didn't know until later that he stole all his material.
Hackneyed.
Hackneyed, yes.
Hackneyed.
Wearing sweatpants and he goes,
you'll never make it in this business if you say cunt.
I had this whole bit about the C word is like a nuclear bomb of a it was terrible you said that last night when uh you said shaley write this down
uh doug benson what he used to call you with all the doug stand up it's funny yeah because i love
you on him too well did you hear that with high yeah that was funny. And I got high. It was funny to know you were going to do that.
But Doug said, remember this, Chaley?
And then I wrote it down.
And I don't know what that means.
Doug Benson used to say, we used to call you.
When I worked with him for a week at the Riviera.
And back then, that was 21 shows.
It's seven nights, three shows a night.
Was that the extreme?
No, no.
That was later on
way after right i came out and saw hedberg do that he was broke one by the time the end of the show
and because he got advanced gambling uh the you do 21 shows so i did 21 shows with doug benson
and uh my act was just wow it was triple born it was like i was born into road gigs in
like a red lion hotel lounge where you're just trying to i didn't have a voice i was just trying
to appeal to the people that are there so my act was just this pablum dog shit and so they called
me doug benson said they called me doug stand up behind my back
because it was just like boring basic you know uh a and e's evening at the improv friendly but you
but you said something about like you were telling jokes because of where you were in vegas coming
from that they were not accustomed to oh well i was, it was still... Like, I did a bit about my dog that I had for a minute, Parvo.
Parvo.
It's in the book.
Having its period on the road,
and it was something about a bleeding puppy pussy
and fuck the puppy so it stops bleeding
because it's in heat or something
that was so not Vegas appropriate.
I love story.
It was still terrible fucking material.
I love story, Doug.
But it was, I had just, and Steve Schirup had already booked me there when I was doing
even more layman-ish material.
But now I come back from fucking Wyoming and Montana with all this fucking fucking.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
What are you doing talking about puppy fucking? He's got me by like the fucking. Yeah, Steve Schirup. Oh, yeah, he fucking fucking. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What are you doing talking about puppy fucking?
He got me by like the fucking Holstein Shroud.
Yeah, he was fucking.
He would fucking slap me.
He would literally hit me.
Yeah, right in the face.
You don't fucking do this puppy fucking bullshit in my fucking room,
you fucking fuck.
Oh, can we get him on the show?
No, no.
Wow, that would be fucking something else.
Oh.
Yeah.
Great stuff.
But then I remember also, after that night, the same night after we left that cellar lounge,
we went further up and it was on, at the time it was called Industrial Road.
It's now Dean Martin Drive, right?
All right.
I was saying Wayne Newton Drive yesterday.
I think they changed the name or whatever.
That's by Tommy Rockers, right?
Tommy Rockers. Hey, stop by Tommy Rockers. That's right. Tommy Rockers, a good friend. Tommy Rock they changed the name. That's by Tommy Rockers, right? Tommy Rockers. Hey, stop by
Tommy Rockers. Tommy Rockers, a good
friend. Tommy Rockers is the best.
Absolutely. The original. The original of Tommy
Rockers, everything he did was great. There's another Tommy
Rockers? No, the original was
on Decatur. That's correct.
And I remember doing this. All that industrial type of
setting. Fell in love with his ex.
That's how I met them. That's how
I know Chaley. Did you know pam uh her name
was jackie there's a different one there may be a lot of x's no there were i thought i was with
jackie trinka was his ex-girlfriend they were together for a while they had just broken up
i fell in love with her she was playing alaska california you fell no no. That was in Vegas. She was playing at Carlos Murphy's after a show.
I didn't know this.
We're so all over the map trying to catch up.
But you met Jackie Trinka when she came down to the States because she was living in Alaska.
Yeah.
And she learned her trade from Tommy Rocker being a duo.
And I fell in love with her.
And they were doing comedy up there and then she said
oh chilcoo charlie started doing comedy because i had just started doing it and i like get me a gig
so she got me up there and that's how i know those two and half the other people that you're
gonna meet this weekend in vegas that's how i met hedberg and that's how i met you that's fantastic
i need one more meal ticket and I could probably die.
Good.
Because all I got is one job.
Yeah. All right. Listen, this has gone
on too far, but we'll do another one
soon.
You're here soon.
Well, no. We have four days here.
When's your flight? You're leaving when? Tomorrow?
Yeah, I'm leaving. Actually, I got to...
He's leaving on a jet plane no here
before we go i gotta i have to know i have to know oh no god that horrible i left they were
already clamping down on fraud telemarketing yeah again back at that point right that was the second business
biggest business in nevada oh it's huge fraud telemarketing next to gaming oh it's huge you
know but the only thing that eclipsed that in the yellow pages back then when they had the yellow
pages were all these escort services when i came into town there were openly there were girls like
18 19 and 20 standing out in front
in gowns, literally gowns, two and three at a clip, every 20 or 30 yards in front of Caesar's
Palace and across the street. Hey, baby, you want to party? Hey, what's up, sugar? And but then,
no, but it's coming from Times Square with the Puerto Rican hookers that were just dying to
meet you. And then coming here, there were girls that had gowns young beautiful looking what is what is strange juxtaposition and then within one year after in
82 uh ralph lamb you know it's the famous now dennis quaid did the you know the series the tv
series sheriff ralph he rounded them all up we don't want you this is dirty so what happened
what took its place giuliani the place yeah he giuliani the place and what happened is now they're giving out these
fucking they still hand the escort bullshit yeah i think it's still out on the strip i don't even
grow up anymore i mean it was so horrible i mean this let's be real you know and now well it just
grew but telemarketing when i was getting out of it they were you are you had to have a license
yeah yeah fingerprinted.
All that bullshit.
I still have a friend of ours.
Fingerprinted?
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, literally.
I still have my telemarketing license
with my stupid fucking 14-year-old looking picture on it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But John Saccone is a guy I worked for at Midwest Enterprises.
That story with all the gunplay.
He's still in prison.
Wow.
For like 20-some years for defrauding fucking elderly people he went like into really hardcore fraud
shit we were gray area fraud he was hardcore fraud the thing the thing ultimately that made
that particular place brilliant was steve the guy that owned it. He was a brilliant businessman, and now he basically runs this fucking state.
Yeah, he's like a state rapper or something?
Yeah, no, he was a brilliant guy.
The fact was is that everybody we contacted were, in fact, business people.
It wasn't calling some old lady and trying to televangelize her for a grant.
These are business people that all this is not
just literally just there was a hustle involved oh there was all housework there's no question
it wasn't there's no question but the point i'm making is that it was business people that could
ultimately write this shit off of so whether they got a gift they didn't give a gift i'll tell you
one of the greatest one of the greatest fucking listen on. I just want to say that that is kind of the con artist code is you're taking advantage of someone who thinks they're taking advantage.
Thank you for explaining that.
That is the correct.
So getting a gift or not getting a gift.
It's completely irrelevant.
Was why you called them in the first place.
That was the sizzle.
But the reality.
I love you. Yeah. That was the sizzle. But the reality at the- Paul, I love you.
Yeah, that was the sizzle.
Exactly.
And we know the difference between the sizzle and the steak, of course.
But I wanted to see.
Now I ask you to go grab your visa.
I will hold on.
But this was the thing.
The best, the best, the very best was the back end.
If the people ultimately really bitched and pissed enough you just simply give them their money back
that's it's so simple and that's what other places did not do and that's why every one of them were
greedy and every one of those motherfuckers went out of business steve had the most successful
fucking business but this was the shit listen to this we at some point uh when the pitch this was
the greatest kevin coin who was the greatest manager who's the manager right name yeah he was this irish other kevin was no ferg coin yeah and he was no fergie but he was fergie's
underling and he was a great guy when fergie had to go and go on vacation for a little while
to clean a club in a cornfield you know white collar he was trying to avoid it at luke air
force base exactly playing golf exactly that was the hunter s thompson guy with the bow legs and White collar. He was trying to avoid. Prison at Luke Air Force Base. Exactly. Playing golf. Exactly.
That was the Hunter S. Thompson guy with the bow legs and the shorts and the fucking gray hair. The drunk uncle.
He did look like Hunter S. Thompson.
Here's the distant reference for the listener.
If you know what Brad Davis, the real guy from Midnight Express looks like, that was what Fergie looked like.
He had curly, graying hair.
But he had a body like Hunter S. Thompson had curly, graying hair. Exactly.
But he had a body like Hunter S. Thompson with the bow legs and the tennis shorts.
It was so funny.
What a quirky guy.
You know what his phone name was?
And he had that voice. He said, yeah, this is Jim Bishop.
Oh, shit.
Jim Bishop.
And you know what my telemarketing name was?
I had no imagination.
I took Jim Bishop.
I was Jim fucking.
I said, you like it? Does it work for you, Target? Yeah.. I took Jim Bishop. I was Jim fucking, I said, you like, does it work for you,
Target? Yeah.
You were Jim Bishop? Do you remember mine?
Wasn't it the Doug Reed?
Yes, because he would call me,
I was Doug Reed, and he would say
Doug Reed, man.
Yeah, the greed man.
Greed.
The greed man.
I actually worked in telemarketing for a little bit.
That's the only job I've ever been fired.
Evil fuck.
No, no, no.
He wasn't.
It was like...
I sold solar.
I sold solar heaters to people who didn't need them and they were not...
The people at the equator.
They were not getting a tax break.
They were not.
There was no justification.
Two of my friends, Lawrence Vibes Vorbeck and Jason Hoy.
Great names.
But yeah, that's not the names we use.
We use professional surfers.
We're in Southern California.
Tom Curran.
Tom Curran.
Shane Horan.
I mean, Sean Thompson.
Those are the names we use.
But I love the names.
He has a great story.
No.
And Duke Kahanamuko or whatever the fuck.
Duke Kahanamuko?
There you go.
Nothing.
That's my uncle.
We were getting to a story.
I don't even remember.
It was about the sizzle in the steak. The sizzle in the steak. Here to a story. I don't remember. It was about the sizzle and the steak.
The sizzle and the steak.
Here's the story.
Hold on.
You go get the credit card.
I'm going to hold on.
No, but this was the thing about Sisolak is that he actually had a warehouse.
Because, see, we had changed the pitch.
So now Kevin Coyne came out one day, but this was the classic of Stanhope.
He came out.
Now, Doug basically wrote the pitch that was being used prior to me being there.
That's in the book.
People don't know this.
It is in the book.
And you have to get the fucking book.
That's the given.
So now Kevin comes out, and they had rewritten something.
And he's like, okay, now, you guys, and he's reading this bullshit.
And it didn't even make any sense,
and he was so enthused.
Boston, Notre Dame fan.
Ridiculous, and it was just ridiculous,
and you just leaned into me, and he's like,
and you just said, oh, I get it.
Don't do those lies.
Do these lies.
That's what the difference was.
He was making this big thing.
You can't do this.
This was not good.
This is it.
This is the right way, and it was so watered down you're like oh yeah don't do these lies don't do those
lies do the i couldn't stop laughing it was just so fucking funny but you were yeah i brought that
work ethic into comedy where clearly i just you know what if whatever's amusing to me in the minute and us back then we're just
but this was the thing you want to talk about let's keep it as a as a connection to comedy
that's the only thing really that's relevant is the fact that you were so fucking ballsy you had
nothing to fucking lose that now half i knew some of your, but after reading the book myself, you just fucking went for a home run every fucking time
because you didn't have anything to lose.
What was your real nut that you had to worry about other than eating?
Not a whole lot.
You know what I mean?
Let me high-five you right now because you don't have kids either.
Gay high-five.
Gay high-five. Thank you. Yeah. Gay. Gay high five. Gay high five.
Thank you.
Yeah.
Still.
Have I been outed?
I still have nothing to lose.
No, but it isn't.
No, we don't have kids.
In your 20s.
I joke.
Not that there's anything wrong with that, Jerry.
But I'm just saying.
No, that was another thing I've heard many times.
No, this is, I've never, did I hear Bingo?
Who has anything to lose in their 20s?
I'm reading the book now that Doug passed to me about NoFX.
NoFX.
For eight years, they admittedly were horrible.
They had nothing to lose.
They were in their 20s, and they were fucking burning every bridge along a path of many bridges.
Yeah.
And it's the same thing.
When you're in your 20s, you guys...
It's just you took a different...
Doug, you took a different path.
And Tom, you took another one, but you took.
Hang on.
I didn't take a path.
I rolled downhill.
I just went.
That's a path.
Route of least resistance.
And I just, I fell into here 25 years later.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But learning every bit.
Learning all the way.
You were a student of comedy.
We would often talk to each other.
We would listen to the Jerky Boys, all the shit that was coming out at that time with
the Stahlrausenberg and all that shit.
He still has that voice.
Of course.
He did it so fucking, it's so killer.
But, you know, he would incorporate shit so quickly.
For the record, I'd never heard the Jerky Boys
until I met Captain Rowdy
who played me all those underground tapes.
And that was after.
So I never heard the Jerky Boys with you.
This is Rowdy in like
91.
And the tube bar
which the Simpsons stole.
I'm looking for alcoholic.
There's no alcoholic.
I have a question for alcoholic. There's no alcoholic. When they call you all your motherfucker,
your cocksucker. I have a question for Tom.
Right. Tom.
What is it like? I'll try to answer
this question. You knew Doug.
This is like a nine hour podcast.
It's good. I'm fucking rolling.
Forgive me. I don't want to be chatty about myself.
I'm tickled. I just lost $200
playing blackjack. But anyway. Oh, fuck.
I was hoping you wouldn't say that.
Fuck.
If I was Dylan, brother, let me get out there.
I'm a mechanic.
There's a guy that came up here just a little bit after you.
And when I said, no, we got a guy in there.
I'll teach him.
He's talking.
And he was interviewing someone.
He goes, oh, he knows.
I'm like, all right, so fucking give me a 21.
God damn it.
Give me a break here.
Yes.
My question is, what is it like now seeing Doug after all those years?
Because I knew Doug in 95, 96.
95, I came to Alaska.
Doug is exactly the same guy that I knew in 95.
So is Tom.
Same guy I knew in 87.
I'm not asking you.
I'm asking Tom.
That's a good question.
What is he like now compared to what he was in those days?
You're not prompting me for this.
I totally agree.
He is absolutely just a more wise, mature steno.
I mean, this is Doug.
Doug is one of those individuals that innately had so much
fucking talent and was so
self-deprecating. Good, let it be awkward.
Had so much fucking talent and was so
self-deprecating about it, but was genuine.
And that's what I loved.
I've met so many comics
and magicians and all this shit
that offstage, they were just a disaster.
Yours was interesting.
You were able to always say, well, at least it would make a good story.
And everything throughout the book is that.
Every fucking part of it.
It's like, man, look, the guy pissed on me.
I was in the fucking bushes, this Mexican.
But I figured nothing else.
At least it'll be a good story.
So it always rotated around that.
And then people don't remember when classical gas.
We need to go back.
Here it is.
I'm being anchored.
Does it have anything to do with your question? I I'm being anchored. I don't know.
Does it have anything to do with your question?
I told this story outside, but you weren't there.
So that gives me an opportunity to tell it again.
I remember, again, I'm not even drinking age, but I had enough clout.
Well, that certainly didn't stop you back then.
No, I know.
I had enough hubris, I should say.
Oh, big word, hubris. In your 20s? Yeah, hubris, I should say. Oh, big word, hubris.
In your 20s?
Yeah, hubris.
Yeah, well, I sold enough that I knew they couldn't fuck with me.
Fergie was just a pushover.
He was a drunk, and I made him money.
He means that in a good way, Fergie.
So I remember-
He's rattling in that fucking old page, Homer.
I don't think this is in the book,
but I remember walking walking and they had
the morning sales pitch sales meeting listen to this fergie's all hung over he was an alcoholic
just the greatest alcoholic the guy you love them too i want to be that good of an alcoholic
and uh i walked late into a meeting again and i remember odd because you
were sleeping in your car in a fucking bathrobe back then back then i remember i would come in
with bed head on purpose before it was the look that they turned it into the faux hawk years later
yeah yeah yeah i would yeah yeah yeah head on purpose with a mullet that's my hair now in a
fucking bathrobe and i remember coming in it
was a true story where i go and i have to walk through this big morning meeting in the fucking
atrium area of this fucking u-shaped sales office and i go i'm sorry i'm late but in an overzealous
attempt to fart i drew mud and had to go back and change my pajama pants to another pair of pajama pants to
the silence and he like he can't fuck with me and i remember another time where i walked in late in
the middle of the morning meeting and i have to walk through they all have to stop this whatever
10 12 sales people and fergie and the secretaries. And I just snapped.
And I went, listen,
this is not fair to these people.
They all showed up on time.
I walk in here
late in pajamas
and a bathrobe. I demand
to be reprimanded. You cannot
do this. Before you could yell at me
because he had to at least make some
pretense of yelling at me. The had to at least make some pretense
the pretense yelling at the illusion of concern so i just i one-upped him like i was i need you
dock my pay you do something but it's not fair to these people and i walk in my office and slam the
door it was so fucking funny i saw i saw every bit of that it was so funny The bottom line was Fergie drank but he wasn't stupid
You were a producer
And that was the bottom line
You made money
Coffee is for closers only
And you were a fucking closer
It was so funny
Tom Konopka can do Gary Glenn Ross by heart
Oh that's frightening
I'll pull it out one day
I just watched it for the first time
Doug was like you haven't fucking seen that?
One of the greatest ensemble fucking things.
If you look at the director, Scott, it's fantastic.
Because it was based on a play, David Mamet's play,
which was a killer play.
The part with Alec Baldwin was written in for the movie.
That wasn't on the Broadway.
And he had done a college thesis on the films of Al Pacino,
and he heard that Al Pacino was going to be in this movie.
He's like, oh, I'm there.
I'm there with that breathy voice.
I'm there.
And he said, fuck it.
He said, it ended up that it's the only scene that I'm in
that Al Pacino is not in.
Ricky Roma didn't have to be at that meeting
because he's a closer.
The rest of the losers
alec baldwin ed harris and fucking jack lemon what wait was doug the ricky roma oh he was
definitely hang on we're richard roma this is where we're going yes uh we're the king shits
of the middle room i forget there was the fronters. We were the no-sales. Yeah. It's like stand-up.
You had the open as a beginning. No, you're the feature actor.
Well, then there's the reload room, and that's a separate building.
That's the mystery room.
Ooh.
And those guys got the-
Now you're making mega-bang.
Who's the reload?
No, no, no.
Let's see.
Who's the reload?
Hang on.
Well, the reloads is that you were actually getting leads that had not been burned by
50 people already.
They were hearing the presentation.
This is Glenn Gary.
For the first time.
No, exactly.
It's what it was.
They're the leads, the lay downs.
But let me say this.
This was the thing.
You left, and thank God for the comedy that you did,
but if you had stayed for any reason,
if they had let you loose on that paper that we had,
you would have been a fucking trillionaire.
You would have outsold every motherfucker.
Hang on.
No, I wouldn't have.
It's a fact.
I would have gotten fired because I was a loose cannon.
Well, that's a given.
I understand that.
I understand.
Let me go because, yeah, the same reason I'm not on Letterman or fucking whatever, I would have been that guy that they book one time and go oh fuck
we just burned a billion leads because we let this fucking idiot uh exactly but you got in the
telemarketing parlance you got network you got into the reload room after i left and i want to
know about that well it was how did you get called up to the majors?
The reload is the top tier, right?
Yeah, that's the ones that they just give you.
Now you have a secretary.
The leads.
The fucking solid, new, fresh leads.
Now you get the Glengarry.
Yes.
Suckers, whales.
So what happens?
These are the new leads.
These are the Glengarry leads.
And to you, they're gold. And are the Glenn Gary leads. And to you,
they're gold. And you don't get them. Why?
Because to give these to you
is just throwing them away.
They're for closers.
That's a part of that fucking story.
If you haven't read my book or seen
Glenn Gary, Glenn Ross, you don't get to
shut off this podcast now,
because you don't belong.
Oh, yeah, that's it. Coffee. So, Sisolak, Glenn Gary, Glenn Ross. You don't get to shut off this podcast now because you don't belong.
Oh, yeah, that's it.
Coffee, that's it. Put the coffee down.
So Sisolak, the owner, or Dave Ferris, the quiet owner?
Yeah, two great guys, really.
Actually, they were brilliant.
Who gives you the tap on the shoulder?
You're going to be-
Tap up to the executive roster.
Yeah, I got the tap.
It was Dave, actually.
It was Dave Ferris and great guy.
Yeah, so
I was making money, this and that, and it was
just time. Somebody had to die. It was one of those
things. Someone did, I think, literally
fucking die. A lot of them died. That's it.
To enter into the upper echelon,
someone had to die? Yeah, because it was a finite amount
of office space, you know, and there was a nicer
part. Like five? Let me see.
One, two, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.
He's taking off his shoe.
I can't even remember.
He's at eight.
Do you remember any of the reloaders' names that I remember?
I remember every one of them.
Yeah, you're chasing them, right?
I'm not mentioning all the names.
They didn't mix with us.
No, no, no.
Of course not.
They had a separate entrance.
Come on.
Are you kidding me? No, no, no. Of course not. They had a separate entrance. Come on. Are you kidding me?
No, they literally did.
Yeah.
No, everything was much more high class for, again, for a lowbrow fucking place.
It was the 80s.
It was all pseudo executive.
But this was the thing.
This was the funniest thing.
Even on that side of the plate, part of the strip mall, everything was all this wooden
paneling shit.
You remember when people had wooden paneling?
Halfway up.
It was so fucking horrible.
Wainscoting? It was.ing? It was so fucking horrible. Wainscoting?
Exactly. It was so horribly done.
Even on this side, I couldn't help
but notice as you go in,
when things are done properly, they should be aligned.
There should be a correct alignment.
It's a tipping point.
You immediately enter the room and go,
something's not right. I can't put my
finger on it.
It's the wooden paneling.
But this was the thing.
It looked like somebody had taken three hits of acid
and they gave him a pail of fucking nails
and a ball peen hammer and just said, fucking go.
Everything was misaligned.
But it took me a few months, you know,
while just pitching to look around.
Everything was strange in that fucking place.
But yeah, Armand, I'll mention names, not the last names,
because they're all married in this time.
Armand, Eric, Adrian, Joe, Irvin Edmondson.
Irvin Edmondson, the big brother.
Looked like Bubba Smith.
That used to sit right across from us?
Yes, let me give you, now let me bring it back to Irvin.
Let me tell you one of the biggest fans.
I'll tell you, you never knew this.
This brother, he died years ago.
He was so great.
This guy looked just like Bubba Smith out of Police Academy,
if you remember.
Guy's 6'5", 350 pounds of muscle.
This guy, I forget what big city.
I don't think it was New York or we would have talked about that. But this guy i forget what big city i don't think it was new york or i would have we would have talked about that but this guy had done everything he had ran he ran he was a manager
of big motown bands he was worked at the golden nugget for years he was working i shouldn't have
mentioned nugget but hey there it is it's the nugget what am i gonna do get whacked fuck it
it's you can only die once and uh if you get
whacked by the golden nugget now yeah that's some comic i used to work with said no no respectable
mobsters ever been assassinated at an olive garden yeah exactly so this was the thing so this guy
irvin he ran you know he was a pimp he ran did everything. But this guy, when he was in the office next to you,
at least once a week I'd come in.
And to see him literally bent over on his desk.
This is 5 o'clock in the morning.
And Doug had already been blasting somebody,
part of your callback system prior to the shift beginning.
Don't you listen.
Don't you ever fucking hang up on me.
Alma, don't hang up. Alma, don't you listen don't you ever fucking hang up on me i'll alma don't hang up don't hang up that was the fucking that i would use like a opera singer clears her throat exactly a warm-up exercise exactly i would call this crazy woman that they
i had pinned on my office wall alma from somewhere in north dakota and she'd just ramble like that
you would call her every dayble like the truck driver from
Pee Wee Herman.
She'd ramble like that.
Large Mars.
Thank you, Tracy.
That's right, Tracy.
That was your warm-up every time?
Oh my God, hold on to him.
Who is this?
Andy, you're the boss.
Someone put Andy to bed.
I would use no So I would
A sudden gust of gravity
I would use her
And I would just fuck with her
And she'd fuck with me
And it was
My warm up exercise
As I read the
Las Vegas Review Journal
You read the paper
Every day
That was the thing
Every day
And I threw those papers over
I know
I know
They're on my fucking head
Thanks pal
If you haven't read the book
Tom Knopka and I
Would fuck with each other i think
we already covered this all right yeah that's bad but this was the thing about urban this is this is
about love this is the one thing about doug you know i i was fortunate that i got to see so many
great fucking comics throughout the years and so loosely people throw comparisons lenny bruce
bill hicks all geniuses all brilliant guys for their time.
But the one thing that always stuck out about Doug, and he's uncomfortable hearing this,
is that you made yourself, you said one thing, I think when you were on Joe Rogan's podcast,
you said, but you never really got to know these guys. You didn't know about them.
Because of the internet, because of YouTube, because of youtube because of everything now podcast
you can really get to know these performers and really know them and people show up when
atel and uh when you were in the green room and provenza is saying that you carved out it's a
niche audience people come to see you because they love you that's a big fucking difference
it's not just haha there's a lot of funny people. You've even saw yourself. It's not because I'm on TV.
Yeah, exactly.
And you say there's a lot of funny guys out there,
but I'm just saying Irvin Edmondson was a perfect example.
One time you said you fucking,
somebody hung up on you and you called them back.
This was not recommended procedure.
It was not standard operating procedure.
That's not protocol.
This was not protocol.
However, you said you fucking sweat hug hog you fucking hang up on me i'll reach through that fucking phone and rip your fuck i'll split your spine like a
fucking toothpick i'll take your fucking eye out with the grapefruit spoon you fucking sweat hog
that's i know that sweat hog that was right right this is like 100 years later i remember like
yesterday when you said that we were in the knows what a grapefruit spoon is anymore.
Or a sweat hog.
Or a fucking sweater.
When I,
we,
Irvin and I were in the office next to you.
He was crying.
He looked,
he was laughing so fucking hard.
And he goes,
Tommy,
he goes,
that fucking Dougie's so funny.
That motherfucker will be famous,
man.
We didn't say it.
I said,
he said, that is the and
he's saying he's laughing crying like scatman crothers another old reference with the big smile
he said that motherfucker is so fucking crazy he's funny he fucking every day i can't pitch
i gotta change my office he's crying laughing i but i'd walk by him and i'd see him crying
it was always some shit that you had but we are all crying fucking pepper roach forgive me yeah pepper was just the fight he was there
when i uh victoria who pepper is on the audio book pepper roach is we're gonna try to wedge
this into a new version of the audio book if we can the great pepper explain pepper roach really quick pepper roach uh his brother is freddie roach who's a famous boxer great roach brother uh trainer he had his
own show and did that fucking he worked another room across town right right right uh but pepper
his younger brother and then joey roach i never met joey died yeah all three of them were all
in town walking big time pepper is still when i did the man show, the fucking douchebag producer that we all
fucking just shit on.
He's like, oh, I do boxing training.
Of course you do.
Who does?
The fucking main guy that we would always fuck with.
I don't know.
I can't remember his name.
Not compared to.
Kaiser.
Kaiser Wilhelm.
After Simon Eden, I'm a right in emerald in the house we called him the
kaiser kaiser that's not his name but then we called him the kaiser i'll roll with that anyway
he was like oh you know i trained with freddie and pepper i'm like yeah he's in hollywood
training fucking boxers with freddie let me tell you yeah after you get out of prison yeah yeah yeah but pepper was we
covered pepper yet i i remember i think i was actually working at midwest after i left american
and we all went to some bar uh east flamingo money plays where they could they could cash
checks laughing so i'll go cash our checks there.
It's a big thing in Vegas.
Can they cash your check on Friday?
You're right.
So, yeah, we went there.
And you would have to run to get them cashed.
Pepper was this runny little guy.
Do you remember the movie The Wanderers?
Oh, I can't.
Oh, wow.
Not The Warriors.
The Wanderers.
Big distinction.
Yeah, I knew.
Right.
And they had this.
I remember that. It was like The Wanderers. Big distinction. Can you dig? Right. And they had this. I remember that.
It was like the Wanderers.
It was a gang movie, and they had a gang called the Ducky Boys.
Wow.
And they're those fucking weird, runny Irish guys.
What a fucking reference.
And they were the scariest of all the gangs.
Yes.
Pepper Roach was a Ducky Boy.
Without a doubt.
He was this blanched, gray, corpse gray corpse colored kid he was probably only 30 maybe
yeah maybe maybe 30 i was 19 so everyone no no no right right uh and uh he's the guy with the
cock that hung below his knee and he was a violent happy violent guy violent guy. Almost like Chad Shank, but different.
Confident, violent?
He would laugh.
Well, we go to cash our checks at this bar,
and then some guy looks at him wrong, and he starts a fight.
His big line, remember, his line was,
the only thing I love more than kicking ass is sucking dick.
If you want to be for a blowjob, meet me out back.
We love you, Pepper.
Some guy looks at Pepper wrong at this bar.
Oh, that's dangerous.
Pepper jumps on him and bites a chunk out of his face.
I heard about that.
Yeah, I heard about that. And then we had to leave
quickly. As you would.
He's with me. I run out with him.
The general protocol. As he's chewing.
As he's chewing, yeah. A cheek.
Anybody got any salt and pepper?
As I'm running first,
he's right behind me trying to get the
fuck out and he's laughing.
He goes, look, look, I got his skin
between my teeth. He's fuck out and he's laughing. He goes, look, look, I got his skin between my teeth.
He's picking the guy's skin laughing.
He's picking the area of his teeth.
And then he goes to prison for a lot of years.
The Roach.
On that charge?
What people got to remember is that these Roach brothers
were fucking devastating, successful boxers.
Ray Donovan.
They were all boxers.
Ray Donovan?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's based on that.
That's correct.
There's no fucking question.
It is actually based on it, or you suspect?
I suspect.
Fairly strong.
Everyone suspects.
If you look it up online, you don't know.
That's the Roach brothers.
It's a huge homage.
It's very deafening.
They're fucking Boston boxers, badass, fucked up.
And one of them has Parkinson's.
Freddie has Parkinson's.
Oh, fuck, you're right.
It's so fucking. Yeah, yeah, you're right. It's so fucking...
Yeah, yeah.
Derivative, very derivative.
This podcast has gone on too long.
What we're going to do is we're going to go get some dinner.
We're going to go to Oscars.
We'll have a steak.
Craps is open for 30 minutes.
I want to put some money down with my friend here, Tom Kanaka.
Either way, we'll boil this down.
Pass line with double odds.
Because this is the most run run on podcast of two guys
that were best of friends 30 years ago and we're trying to catch up on everything and we'll boil
it down to some bullet points and have a shorter podcast bullet points yes bullet points bullet
points i think it's worth we're doing it live yes tom kanopka love Love you, brother. Love you, Dougie.
Love you, guys.
Listen, I literally could do a nine-hour podcast with just you and I.
It's frightening.
We'll do it.
I'm off Monday.
Maybe we'll do this Monday.
This is the deal.
Tracy and I went to play blackjack because I don't play blackjack.
I can't count.
You look like a counter, though.
No, I'm not a counter.
So I put money down, and we sit there.
It's like, he'm not a counter. So I put money down, and we sit there. It's like, nah, he's no fucking counter.
And then Andy comes out, and he's holding $20.
I kept paying him like a kid.
Go to the movies.
I'm trying to fuck your mother.
He loses the money, and then he goes back up, and I go, well, I'm just trying to, like, we're doing all right.
And then he comes back out with two more tens. I'm like, oh, Doug must be out of 20s.
And he sits down.
I think the fucking dealers got more than I ever.
We just kept tipping them because they were dealing with us.
Good man.
You poked the dealers.
Of course.
This is a great man.
And at the same time, these motherfuckers must be having a great fucking podcast because
they keep paying Andy to fuck out of the room.
And we're out of the room,
which I love it.
You guys,
this is part one.
Hey, if you guys got any more money
stacked up,
I'll get the fuck out of here
for your future podcast.
I'll get the fuck out of here.
I'll get a hooker.
I'll get some cocaine.
I'll get a fucking Jimmy Boy.
Oh yeah, he was already asking the dealer for it.
It's enough.
Let's hit the bar.
Woo-hoo. Thank you. Yeah, it's a, Hey, it's a Doug Stanhope and Tom Konopka.
Now we're going to talk about the, uh, the junkie ranch that I lived at.
The spawn ranch is what you called it in the book.
Yeah.
How apropos, holy Christ.
On East Charleston.
I tried to find that place.
What intersected?
It was way the fuck out at that time.
I had no idea, but at the time, there was nothing out there.
There was literally nothing.
So maybe, I don't know, 20 years later, 5, 10 years ago, I went to try to find.
Oh, did you?
Is it all filled?
I'm sure it's all filled then.
It's filled way past that. It's all filled it's built way past
miles and miles of fucking housing and shit right it used to be just desert yeah the funny thing was
when i first got here when we went up by wayne newton's casa de shenandoah it's a beautiful
complex that way newton owned a fucking trillion dollar value on that property but there was
nothing there was nothing for as
far as the eye can see and as henderson and all that area filled out over the last 20 years you
just unless you're looking at it from an aerial view looking down it's hard when you live here
to see how much this town just constantly filled out towards red rock towards sunrise towards this
towards that it It was incredible.
Like when I first got here, everybody said, it's 4,000 people per month are moving in.
And I'm like, well, how many are moving out?
I never got the correct answer to that.
And then one time, just like maybe 10 or 15 years ago, I just happened to drive by, and
there's a 7-Eleven directly, it's like there was a 7-Eleven next to the Giza pyramids.
If you look at the aerial shot, I always thought that the pyramids would be
so distant from everything there's shit all around
there's like a Starbucks right next to the Sphinx
I'm like what the fuck I mean
this is it the you know this is globalization
gentrification whatever
20 cent word
that many people moving to a place
that has no water
yeah exactly we're back to kinnison
yeah you live in a desert send them you hauls that's it send them luggage you
you live in a desert god i remember when that fucking phase first tape came out god almighty
we were laughing our fucking asses off yeah dice and kinnison both came out around the same time
it was so strong and i
remember seeing dice when he was at bally's and sam when he was at the dunes and they were both
killing it but this is because you are a reloader and you had that listen to you you've never got
my call up to the majors yeah oh yeah you're you're fucking you took the wrong path the funny
thing was is that when sam came out he was like he said
yeah i don't do impressions he said but he says yeah he said i want to here's an old reference
i really want to thank you guys for coming out and not going across the street to see my retarded
cousin eric von zipper that was his thing that was the reference to the black leather jacket
and the fucking character the buddy he also had a beef with uh one of them
dice or kinnison had a beef with uh uh uh god damn it windy city heat bobcat golf golf white
i don't know was it i'm not sure it had to be dice this fucking playing a retard fucking shit and i
there was a famous beef on Stern.
I forgot.
Yeah, I forgot.
But I remember seeing a great special on the Boston Comics.
Note the emphasis on Boston Comics.
But Lenny Clark was talking about the Ding Ho.
Remember Ding Ho?
That little Chinese restaurant where everybody started.
Yeah, I mean, I'd only partied up at BU with a couple of friends a thousand years ago.
But on this, he's talking about how Stephen Wright was the very, they were killing in Boston.
It was right at the beginning of everything.
And people were coming from all over the country, actually all over the world, to see these hot fucking comics.
Lenny Clark and all these people, Stephen Wright.
And then Stephen Wright, I'm rehashing this.
The listening audience probably knows some of this.
But Stephen Wright was the first one to be called out.
And he went on to Carson.
And Carson, he killed.
And Johnny invited him over to the couch.
And Lenny and all those guys said, we were there.
We were like, yeah.
It was a comedy documentary when stand-up stood out.
I think that's what I'm getting that from.
That's what I found out. I didn't know didn't know that exactly you got such great fucking how do you have this fucking
memory after all my memory's shit that's not fucking shit it's a selective shit yeah well
i'm a comic so i know the name of that yeah you could drift but i remember him saying that but
the only reason i'm bringing this up because you mentioned golfway and he said yeah so now he goes
stephen wright went on he fucking killed he comes on he says thank you he leaves he says thank you i mean
what a genius comic and he is and he's like now we're waiting you know hey now the when's our
turn yeah when's our turn and it didn't fucking happen he got invited back so many times but
eventually it did but who jumped in front he said the bob Bobcat Goldthwait had moved up to Boston and suddenly lived there briefly
just to kind of get a little piece of the fire.
And they called him in.
Now Lenny's like, well, fuck this.
He's not even from here.
Fucking Lenny Clark.
It was from that documentary.
Absolutely.
Lenny Clark is one of the funniest people I've ever been around.
Brilliant.
We did a tour in Canada.
I love Lenny Clark.
And just walking into into we went to
ruth's chris steakhouse and oscar's here and he just blows up the place to from the fucking
maitre d to the waiter and like the whole fucking room is he's one of the greatest that ever lived
lenny's delivery and everything he is the funniest uncle. There's that. That is a fact. Is that what it is?
He is the funniest uncle.
He's the funniest fucking uncle.
He's the most genuine, warming.
No, he's the real deal.
Bellicose.
Yes.
That is a big word.
Oh, there's a fucking word.
Bellicose.
Very good, Stan Hope.
You taught me.
Head like an obelisk.
That was so.
Look it up.
Let me give you the, this you don't know until right now.
The obelisk reference, the only reason that even came to my fucking mind.
It doesn't even make sense.
No, it didn't make sense.
You don't have a headlight.
If anything, I got a fucking headlight and a nose like an obelisk.
But the night before, I watched The Three Stooges.
This is true.
And Moe said, I'm not sure if it was to Larry or to Curly.
He just said something like, ah, get out of here, you obelisk head.
And I'm like, obelisk head?
What the fuck?
That doesn't even make sense.
You know, an obelisk is like the monument.
So it's just for some stupid reason it kicked in
and you're just walking in the morning.
Doug, you got a head like a fucking obelisk.
You go, I don't even know what the fuck that means.
Thump over the wall.
That's it.
Look it up.
Well, here's a testament to you the fact
that you had this thick 10 000 page dictionary in a fraud telemarketing telemarketing office i'm
crazy i had the fucking newspapers i was reading no but it seemed to work you know what i mean
i needed to increase my vocabulary but i just enjoyed it through there yeah it was it yeah
look it up yeah that was it. Look it up.
Yeah, it was it.
Boom.
But that was a heavy fucker.
I tried to actually, the first time I sent it over, tried to hit you in the head.
I think I went behind you a little bit.
But your accuracy when it was fucking that whole, that was like a week's worth of newspapers
when you sent those over the top.
Oh, no, it was more than that.
I never cleaned my office.
I didn't want to bring that up, but that is a fact. Telemarketing could be on hoarders. They wouldn't start had to my office my i didn't want to bring that up but telemarketing that is
a fact could be on hoarders they would start it with my office your office was it it was it was a
fucking it was it was a cornucopia of fucking horrors man were you there when my brother and
jeff brown worked there no but i did get to go see jeff And I told you one time, he had done a set up at the Sahara.
And I came back.
I said, hey, I saw Jeff Brown.
I didn't even know what Jeff's relationship with you.
I said, I just saw Jeff up at the Sahara.
He was in one of the lounges.
He was doing, there was some comedy there.
Jeff Brown or my brother?
I think it was Jeff Brown.
Did stand up?
Yeah, I think it was Jeff Brown. Wow, that would be weird. Well, then maybe it was jeff brown did stand up yeah i think it was jeff brown wow that would be
weird well then maybe it was your brother this was a hundred years ago douglas i have memories
that you go was that a weird dream that i woke up that was vivid i think my brother actually
tried to do stand-up it could have been i don't could have been i don't know this is trying
to do telemarketing they all failed miserably no i don't know and if i was i didn't know that it was
nah i would have not you would have you would have told me this is your brother no i i don't i don't
remember that but uh yeah but let's go over so now we're driving down how's this for a quick
segue so now we're driving it doesn't matter this will probably never air but in it's beautiful in case it turns into a chunk of gold exactly we'll edit it in post
post-production so uh i remember driving down it was i think otis was with us at that time
yeah would have been with us at that time it was a dog i don't know who yeah no no
otis was the only dog this was the only dog
so generally speaking only dog i'll ever recognize exactly since my ichabod isn't listening exactly
and uh so after work you say hey i got this place i'm gonna stay at this room you gotta see it i'm
like okay i think it was we were actually we were in your car and we drive down like we were saying earlier to that fucking remote fucking it was strange it was just a fucking you
described it like one of those things from the the test site you know where they would do the
it was just a square a recu rectangular box flat roof trailer in the back and then a junkyard
behind it and there was a horse and there was a stable remember yeah no no it definitely was there was a fucking horse right there you stayed there right this was
not a bullshit that was way it was way in the back of course and someone else must have owned
someone else must have owned it exactly didn't take care of so this was the shit so now we drive
down there and you're like i gotta show you this place and i'm thinking oh this is wonderful
so now we get there before we go in somehow some way you found a frisbee and now we're playing frisbee we're throwing the frisbee
back and forth and you got a bud a beer in your hand and a cigarette and you're still able to
somehow navigate that some things have never changed this is a good thing and uh i suck at
frisbee my eyes are fucked so i'm like trying yeah, I haven't done this since I was three,
but I'll give it a shot.
And now you threw it up on the fucking roof.
Now, you're not going to remember this until I tell you.
Oh, this is great.
Look at you.
You don't remember.
No.
Dude, this was the shit.
So now you throw it up on the roof.
And I'm like, Doug, I was having fun.
Why the fuck do you throw it?
I didn't do it on purpose, Tom.
Come on.
I said, what are we going to do?
Oh, I stank.
No, no, no. Everything physical. No, this was the beauty of it. Again, at least it on purpose, Tom. Come on. I said, what are we going to do? Oh, I stank him. No, no, no.
Everything physical.
No, this was the beauty of it.
Again, at least it's a good story.
I threw out a first pitch at a local baseball game.
Oh, no.
And it went as close to first base as it went to home plate.
And hit the dirt close to me and rolled towards it.
And you did the walk of shame off the plate?
Oh, no, I tried two more times.
The second time was just as bad. You re-upped? The third time i did it like a ladies basketball like i'm doing a layup
i'm not a foul shot yeah with the limp wrist yes i did a foul shot at home plate where they're like
three people the sympathy applause it was just my friends it was just mocked me of course i wish
they should have done that's why you yeah baba booey does exactly he fucks up
of there you go yeah shout out baba booey yeah no one that's great being unknown so you throw this
fucking frisbee up on the top of this roof and it's you know it's about 15 feet up i'm like what
the fuck you go i got the solution man i know where there's a ladder so you took me around the
side of the house and there's a long ladder.
And as I'm reaching, you said, hey.
There was also a motor, an alternator, a fucking donkey.
There was every God.
It was fucking green acres.
But you said, look.
And it was the fucking bullet hole that was visible from the outside.
And you're like, here.
You didn't even tell me what it was. Fresh doors.
Exactly.
That's funny.
And you said, here, look, you can put your finger in that.
I said, no, you put your finger in this fucking thing.
I said, what is this?
He said, that's-
It was a 22 shot, so I could have put my dick in there.
You could have, yeah.
I've heard-
Oh, dang.
Yeah, ba-dum-bum.
And so we pick up the ladder.
Now we go back around the outside.
I put the ladder against the house, and I go up.
And the Frisbee was just about maybe four
feet out of my reach and i'm leaning in and i grab something you're like tom do you see it i'm like
yeah i got this thing don't worry dog relax and i grabbed up this it was a little stick i grab and
i pull this frisbee towards me and you said did you find it i go yeah i got it but i found something
else and you go what is that i said it's a boomerang what it you find it i go yeah i got it but i found something else and
you go what is that i said it's a boomerang what it's a boomerang and i threw it down it was a
fucking dog's leg that was hacked off it was a fucking dog not the paw it was a thin with fur on
it a dog's legs that's very with the fucking bone you know jagged at the top it wasn't fresh it
might have been up there for a couple years.
And you saw the, you know, the pad of the base of the foot,
the little nail for the dog's paw.
It's like Goodfellas, the hoof, the hoof.
No, the paw, the hoof.
And so I just threw that down.
And you just, as soon as it hit your hand, you were like, what the fuck?
And I'm like, what do you mean what the fuck i said it's a it's
a boomerang pick it up and you actually went to pick it up again and again you know what the fuck
and you dropped it now i'm laughing i come down and i'm looking at it was a fucking it was
unbelievable it was a fucking dog's leg not the paw the thing was on the roof on the fucking roof
as i got the fucking i reached i i just grabbed something that seemed like it was this random stick.
And I'm pulling this fucking Frisbee toward me.
And as it got toward me, the thing had all like dirt and this fucking fur.
But I knew that this would be a great, it would be a visceral response.
How will Stan help react?
And it was classic.
The classic what the fuck it was
instant but this was this was this shit and you may or may not remember but this is all this is
fact so now i'm looking at it and i'm far from a forensic scientist as are both of us but we're
looking i'm like i wonder what kind of dog this was i'm like well judging by the length and the
width i said this well it seems to
me that this probably belonged to a dog that used to run very fast and you said yeah but not fast
enough i mean it was the typical but where's the rim shot i saw that coming and then this was the
sick part but i love animals this is not mean-hearted so said, I wonder how Otis will react. I said, we got to play fetch.
And we actually threw the fucking thing.
And he, like a trooper, didn't even react.
Grabbed it, came back.
I bet if he walked by that thing and we weren't there, he would have bit into it and dropped it like, what the fuck?
But because he knew it was us and he knew it was you, he was like, I'm not going to fucking flinch.
I'm going to grab this fucker.
Like, it's nothing.
Oh, he was great.
He was the fucking greatest.
That fucking dog was so smart.
But even psychologically, you think to yourself, would a dog recognize something of its species?
You know?
He's running and he's...
If Chaley were here and he's off doing something...
It's an interesting...
Your dog was the fucking greatest.
Did I just hear Stanhope?
No, I think somebody's getting laid
on the other side of this wall.
Bingo!
I swore I just heard Bingo yell Stanhope.
All right.
No.
Okay.
No, she was saying Ben.
Ben Dover or something.
Friends of ours in Alaska, Chaley's friends,
they had a dog
That had to have a leg amputated
This is around
I love the dog
Bum fights days
Oh I remember all that shit
Yeah bum fights was going on
And we thought
Crazy shit
This would be a great anchor
Is
The dog's leg was getting amputated anyway
Oh what did you do And it was Becker's idea What did you do To was getting amputated anyway. Oh, what did you do?
And it was Becker's idea to film the amputation.
Oh, no.
We say that it's a reality kind of discovery channel
back when it had discovery on it.
Right.
And film the amputation.
Then we cut to Matt Becker in a chef's hat,
breading and basting get the fuck out
of broiling the dog's leg and then feeding it to the dog oh my fucking god oh this is this is
before youtube hits we're like it was bum fights we're selling vhs exactly like what was it before
god girls gone wild it was around that right yeah yeah all It was around that. Right around. Yeah, yeah. All right.
Yeah, around that time.
That thing.
Go ahead. And then it got leaked to the wife of the owner of the dog.
Oh, no.
Fuck you.
Of course.
You depraved fuck.
No.
It's a dog.
It's a dog.
I'm kidding.
They're like, it's a dog.
No, no.
It's a dog eating meat.
I didn't remember that my dog chased it.
Perfect.
Just a...
Nobody did. If a dog eats its own leg yeah no no
it's not like we cut the dog's leg off on purpose yeah we didn't just like it's funny
right down the road hey see that dog let's go humor animal rights animal rights like god damn
right yeah that was just fucking great and then this was the shit and now i'm like doug i'm
fucking thirsty.
And I don't know if you had, I don't even think,
did you have power in that fucking place?
Yeah, the fridge worked.
The fridge did work.
So I think I asked something.
I was like, I'm thirsty.
I'm like, go in there.
Go get this.
I think there's a soda.
There's a beer in the refrigerator.
Oh, no, no.
This is the whole shit.
Now, you were only able to give so much detail because of.
If you remember the movie California with a K. Yes, i do remember california with the k yes i do those
the end scenes where you had all those blown out houses yeah there you go that's that's exactly
what that's the set so now you're like go ahead go ahead i'm gonna take care of otis and i'm like
where is it just go you'll find it so i had there was like a screen
door and then i opened the door and the door i could barely open i had to fucking yank it to
open this fucking thing total fucking darkness we're back to that fucking titty bar and uh so
now when as soon as i walked in you did you didn't follow me i walked in and i tripped over something
that immediately i assumed was the rest of the fucking dog. I didn't know. And I fell.
And I'm like, Doug, where's the refrigerator?
And you just said, crawl to the right.
And now I'm fucking on this fucking dirty fucking floor.
I didn't smell.
The shag carpet.
It was a fucking shag. Shag carpet had dreadlocks.
It was a fucking.
Exactly.
It was fucking unbelievable.
And it was in the darkness.
So the theater of the mind, I'm like, where the fuck?
How the fuck did I get here? And of course answer i'm with duck stanhope and uh so now i'm crawling literally
like a fireman in the dark smoke and i banged my fucking head against the metal of the fucking base
of that bed it was the empty you didn't mention this part, the empty mattress. But I realized, okay, it's an empty, naked mattress.
And I get up and I sit on it.
And I'm waiting because my eyes need time to acclimate.
I have like night blindness.
So it's like somebody snaps a photo.
It takes a while.
So now I'm sitting there waiting for this, about two minutes.
You find that I'm not there yet, Doug.
Just remember, it's to the right.
I'm like, okay, okay.
So now I sit down and I'm sitting
on this fucking mattress. And as my eyes come into focus, I thought that there was a little
brown, like a little blanket or something. I could barely see. The top third of that whole bed was
brown. It was blood that had fucking just, you know, it was just beyond coagulation. It was fucking old, fucking stale, fucking blood.
So the top half of that fucking mattress was all blood.
And I looked, I bowed down and I'm looking at it.
And then I saw the hole.
And then I saw a beam of light coming through.
And I'm like, oh, that's where it is.
Now you had now at this point now walked in.
You're like, oh, that's where the guy blew his fucking head off.
The junkie was like, I'm like, oh, thanks.
Luckily it was dry.
And I'm like, I'm getting sick, man.
I got to use the bathroom.
Oh, now your point is.
And I don't remember the blood.
I remember the hole.
I think I'd remember that.
Oh, no, no.
The blood was definitely blood on that fucking.
Regardless.
Oh, it was great. there was definitely blood on that fucking regardless if the junkie was trying to rent
that place he would have rented it with wet blood yeah he was that desperate for 65 bucks a week oh
as is it was it was brilliant i mean it was like i was on a set of the fucking texas jailsaw massacre
that guy that was the other tenant who was rarely there. See, I didn't know all that until I read the book.
He was, I can't remember the name.
There was a concert hall over by the showboat.
It was like a rock and roll club, but big enough they could get.
He booked Warren Zeev on and he booked Starry Starry Night.
That might be it.
Calamity Janes.
It was right across from the showboat.
Did you ever go to boxing at the boat with us?
No.
That was Jeff.
But I remember when that was there.
All right.
Calamity Jane's sounds right.
Oh, yeah. And Starry, Starry Night and Vincent.
Don McLean.
Don McNeil?
McLean.
McLean.
Don McLean.
McLean, yeah.
He was the promoter for that place.
No shit.
And he just sat there with this dejected look on his face wow american pie that's the only reason i remember the great
that because he came back that night and he was just he was always pissed off just he's living
in this fucking manson ranch alone with me and my dog and his own bedroom on the other side.
Right.
And he was pissed off because Dom McLean wouldn't do his two hits.
Fucking Vincent and American Pie.
Yeah, exactly.
I'm doing new material now.
No, you're not.
No one wants to hear the new material.
That's it.
I don't know why I'm here. The constant plague. Do your hits. I would love to find out who that guy was no one wants to hear the new material that's it i don't know why
i'm here the constant plague do your hits i don't want to do the new shit you gotta do the old shit
oh that was i know he booked zeev on and i was pissed because i loved warren zeev on this oh
fucking absolute back then brilliant no of course if you didn't have free tickets no no no no
absolutely but the thing was now i go into that fucking bathroom the bathroom was
fucking the door like when you go in the bathroom literally my shoulders it was one wall and the
second wall like there was how did you sit on that there was a fucking toilet my knees would
the dog the bathroom was so fucking small it's like a molestation some things you black out no
but it's good i'm happy that i can remind you of this wonderful fucking depraved,
sick fucking psycho house.
And so the door was like half pulled off the hinge, and I walked in,
and there was just that ceramic white like little old school fucking sink
and this little fucking no style fucking toilet.
But both of them had it looked like black tar like a black mold black fucking mold but i'm saying but it was like furry it was fucking horrible
it was there it was in the toilet and i was like i don't know if i'm gonna piss if i'm gonna vomit
i had to get the fuck out there were flies but there was some orifice is about to fire something's
gonna fucking fire exactly so now now i get out of there and then i sit down for just one more
second and we're talking and i did get the whatever the soda was thank you for that soda it was
actually good and uh so now i'm looking at now my eyes are in perfect focus this was very unique
in my opinion i'd never seen this every bit of that fucking place on the inside, you must remember this, was fucking newspapers.
Newspapers were like stapled or hammered onto the walls like wallpaper.
The whole place, 95% of it was newspaper.
You take a page, you hammer it.
A junkie owned it.
So he gets even an uncreative junkie.
It was unbelievable.
Yeah, but I mean, it was there, and partie it was unbelievable creative yeah i but i mean it was there and it
was part of it was up the wall and again it's like the guy had i don't know how many hits of
whatever he took and he's like hey i'm gonna fucking paper these walls and literally it was
newspaper and i looked at some of them when they were from the 1960s so i thought that maybe
somebody had this old when he moved in had an old collection of old-ass fucking newspapers for some reason.
And he just decided on some bender, hey, I'm just going to fucking paper the wall.
It was un-fucking-believable, that place.
Meth heads have so usurped junkies as far as creativity.
It's got to be.
Because they'll just sit there and glue a million G.I. Joe figures onto a thing.
I'm not druggy.
I've seen people like that.
That's the red flag for the meth-y.
I mean, I see the results down on Fremont Street every night.
Andy will tell you about his brother trying to fix a toaster for 15 hours and taking it apart.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's strange.
It breaks into an obsessive compulsive. That was the first time, probably the only time I saw death level DTs where he was just
Wow.
Just seizuring.
And I had to pour vodka into his mouth in that trailer in the back.
It was a DT thing.
Or was it?
Did that help you?
Was it alcohol or druggy or both?
It was heroin addict. Straight up junkie. It was big as heaven. He was a DT thing. Did that help you? Was it alcohol or druggy or both? Straight up junkie.
He was very open about it. I still don't know
shit about heroin. No, good.
But he was seizuring
and I'm gonna die.
I remember I worked in a... Wouldn't it be funny if he
walked in right now like...
Shaking and you need some vodka for your hair.
I was on intervention 10 years ago
and now he's got his... With that guy from fucking Taxi. What was. And now he's got with that guy from fucking taxi.
What was his name?
Billy Bob Thornton teeth.
He's all like,
I remember you used to have those.
Yeah.
God,
I need fucking some Billy Bob teeth right now.
Yeah.
That was fucking unbelievable.
But I can remember,
let's go back.
Here we are jumping all over the fucking place.
This is what we call stream of unconsciousness.
Less conscious.
Yeah. Less conscious. Yeah, less conscious.
Yeah, less more, more or less.
And the guy at that fucking Sordidixie Jazz Band.
There we are.
Hang on.
I don't know how many hours it's been.
Tastes great.
Less Schwab.
Less Schwab.
There you go.
Holy shit.
Stand up.
Your recall is fucking incredible.
I just spit that out.
That's unbelievable.
Les Schwab.
Les Schwab tires.
I had just come from Idaho, seen a million billboards.
Your sense of humor is very dry and abstract.
Well, it's a lot of you.
It's a lot of pepper.
Listen, man.
I had a lot of pull my dick out and a lot of Les Schwab.
Listen, you know you know tastes great
less schwab i remember telling you that because i do remember you i do where i said i didn't know
that i didn't i didn't really know that that's funny i'm a i'm a june bug yeah i'm less schwab
as you yeah no that was it that was all of my comedy is derivative of copying someone else on some level look when you
wrote that in the book that was uh so of all the compliments anybody could get that was to me the
highest because i knew that there was no reason for you that you weren't you know kissing up to
me for any fucking reason couldn't even find you couldn't even fucking find me so i mean that are
you on any social media no absolutely, absolutely not. Are you completely
off the grid? Yeah, I'm off the grid.
Do you have a cell phone? Yeah,
I have a cell phone.
Listen, we have people coming in.
Matt Becker still refuses
to get a cell phone. Well, there's a lot of
different. There's a whole back story. It's all
good.
We'll unwind this shit.
You know what?
Let's hit the off button. You know what? Let's hit the off button.
Let's have a drink, Douglas.
All right.
That's a chunk that J. Lee will fuck with.
That's right.
Digging Up Mother is on audible.com.
Audible.com for all your audio book needs.
If you spend any time whatsoever in traffic get audiobooks they will change the world for you and if you've listened to digging up
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much i suck worse than chad shank do that but make sure you include ataudible.com in the tweet
so Audible knows that you want more Chad Shank reading books
because I think he's launching a new career.
So when you give me shit and congratulate Chad Shank in a tweet,
make sure you add at audible.com.
I would appreciate that.
I've been reading all of the reviews on Audible.
A couple of people have been very nice to me, so thanks.
Maybe I'll read more books.
So, yeah, that's our commercial. Audible.com.
And they have other shit, too.
They probably have other books that they have out.
Or is it just my book?
It's just yours?
Just mine.
Flagship book.
Audible.com for all your audiobook needs.
I would assume...
Hold on, hold on, hold on.
Don't even start talking to him.
That's all right.
We're already recording.
That's you.
That's you.
Take this one.
See what you do?
What'd you do, Doug?
I had it perfect, but you fucked it up.
Greg Chaley.
Hey, this is the Greg Chaley is drunk and won't admit
it show poolside i'd say uh pool locked out because uh we bought a fucking patio suite at
the plaza it's not a suite the patio that goes to the pool magnetically locks at 6
before the sun goes down
so you can see the pool
there's people out there counting their fucking
tips
you can bang on the fucking glass
and go hey what about the pool
I asked what time the bar closes
they said 530
what time does the pool close? 6
what time does gambling close? 6
we walked out
there at 5 34 and i went out there because i was going to do a hundred dollars at craps and just
fuck around yeah and they said we're done right down 5 34 did they say that this is how we get
out of paying for the fucking room hold on they said when there's no one out here, we shut it down early.
They told me 6 o'clock is when gambling's done.
Okay.
But I walk out at 534, and they said, there's no one out here, so we're shutting down early.
And they bring all the chips out, everything's forward,
and it's like, don't fuck around.
Let me set up the fact that Tom Konopka from the Vegas Years book is here on the podcast.
So Tom knows Vegas inside and out.
We know fucking over hotel rooms inside and out.
That was the last podcast.
Well, it should have been a lot more. The books and fucking getting free meals and out. That was the last podcast. The books.
The books.
And fucking getting free meals.
The fun books and the free meals.
Now it's complaining.
That's how corporate...
We talked earlier, if it'll ever make
a podcast, I don't know.
But we talked about how the mob
was way more legitimate
and decent to the customers than corporations.
Way more customer service oriented than corporate America.
This is, in Vegas, this has been the rap since I got here in the early 80s.
It preceded it because in the late 70s, that's when the corporations began taking over.
It's an old story, but some people may not understand that the corporations,
when Howard Hughes bought all this shit, they're the story.
We're going to go back to Howard Hughes.
Let me finish my thought.
Now that corporations
have taken over, the
customer is always right
comes into play.
You couldn't call fucking Tony
Spolatro and go, well, I got
a patio, sweet, and they closed the patio
at 5.30.
You can do that to corporations, and they'll
fucking take it off. What will
comp your stay?
No, no, no.
For every new rule, there's a
loophole. That's correct. Let's get back to
Tom Konopka,
Old Vegas.
That's what
Greg Chaley had questions about, Tom Konopka, Old Vegas That's what That's what
Greg Chaley had questions about
Even though he swears he's not drunk
Old Vegas
We parked the car in valet today
And we don't have to actually move the car
For four days
So when we're on a two and a half week tour
Where I'm not drinking
This is when I do it
You see this, Greg?
You would have been
a great fucking dice dealer.
Really?
I look in your eyes.
Oh, without a question,
you're a multitasker.
See, I got skills!
Yeah, baby.
That's it.
Go with it, baby.
Tom Kanopka's recruiting me.
Yeah, bring out the loaded dice.
I wish, man.
I want to get you on a crap table
just to fucking figure out what the fuck is going on.
Because I've done the 25 cent learn how to play craps at noon at some fucking shithole back in the day.
You know, I can.
The thing was I taught all these games.
When we came into town in the early 80s, all the casinos had 25 cent craps.
Yes.
25 cent everything.
Literally a quarter craps yes 25 cent everything literally a quarter craps there was even a casino
further down on fremont that you could bet 10 cents this is no bullshit and the table they
called it a tub it was one person they had a wooden uh divider it was called a tub because
it was half a dice table sure so it was one guy dealing and he had a stick and he would call six easy six seven
outline away this half a half a crap table that was only yeah that was in the middle or long ways
yeah just no right in the middle it was the full table but they had blocked it off now if they ever
got busy they would lift this divider and suddenly there's a dealer a dealer and a stick man and the
box man watching all this shit. But those days were incredible.
When you could walk in and they'd just give comps.
It's like when you half sell a show, but they know how to pull the curtains.
Pipe and drape to make it look more intimate.
Pipe and drape to make it feel, yeah.
Objects may be larger than you.
Exactly.
And it was incredible.
I mean, the food, everything was cheap.
At Binion's, at one time they did an interview.
It was in Playboy, and I read the top 10 busiest bars,
and this was in the early 80s,
in all of the United States, the top 10.
Number one was Gilly's, the original Gilly's before it burnt down.
Mickey Gilly in Texas.
Gilly's from Urban Cowboy.
That's correct.
All of that shit.
It was right there.
There you go.
That was number one.
Number two was Binion's Horseshoe.
It was a front bar and a back bar, and it was going 24 hours a day.
The drinks were 50 cents for a beer, 75 cents for a mixed drink.
This wasn't in the 40s.
It wasn't that fucking long ago.
And when you were a dealer downtown.
To our listeners, it is.
Don't you stop already.
Their parents weren't born in the 40s.
Lie to me.
Lie to me.
Exactly. And so that was
the thing and so when you worked you worked for money you got paid cash every night and you'd make
75 100 a buck 50 a day and each day we would go to this bar after work the drinks are on doug the
drinks are on greg the drinks are on tracy they're on bank exactly and for five bucks you've bought
so many uh do the math it was, how many people.
But Binion's was unique. Benny Binion came up
from Dallas. He was a Dallas mobster.
Brilliant guy.
Whoa, whoa, whoa. Dallas mob?
You ever heard of that?
He got LBJ elected and
Kennedy shot. Jack Ruby.
That's closer than you guys even know.
I read that. So there was a Dallas
mob? Yeah. I've heard.
Motherfucker. I've heard things.
I've never heard there was a mob, so I don't know
what you're talking about. Did you ever see the picture of
LBJ smiling when he takes that oath
of office? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Oh, there's great books written about him.
Don't even go down that fucking road.
But this was the thing. Tom Konopka,
a whole other podcast,
huge conspiracy theorist.
Oh, really?
Oh, Inman.
Don't get me started.
Oh, wait.
All right.
We'll talk to you off the air.
We're going to have you set.
We'll prep you off the air.
We'll prep you.
Okay.
I acquiesce.
I did not do it.
All right.
No, you did do it.
I got it. I got it. I got it. I got it. I got it. I got it. not do it. All right. No, you did do it. I got it.
I got it.
I got it.
I got it.
I got it.
No, no.
All right.
Bingo's got it.
Let him talk.
Bingo can write down LBJ Inman Knopka.
Figure out Knopka.
It starts with a K.
It's right there.
I got it, Bingo.
Go ahead.
Go ahead.
No, all is good.
The funny thing was, theion's was so incredible.
When he came up here, he made sure.
He came up with a trunk full of money and literally bought the casino that he's in and was in.
And that's where the World Series of Poker began.
But where he was incredibly notorious for, but this was a good thing, is he would book any bet.
You were allowed to bet any amount of money.
I remember that.
No casino in the world.
You could literally walk up and say,
I want $5 million on the pass line.
Do I have a bet?
And you'd look.
But the guy, if he knew you, he might say, you got a bet.
Boom, winner's seven.
Pay the front line.
But generally speaking, this was the genius of Benny Binion.
To the tourists, they didn't know this,
and they still kind of play with this concept of marketing.
But Benny Binion, anytime things went a little slow,
he would give people that he knew from all around the world $5 million.
Come and play this on my table.
Whether you win or lose, the Review Journal of Las Vegas
on the local periodicals are going to print this.
It'll be on the UP.
Guy comes from Switzerland, bets $5 million and wins.
It was Benny Binion's money.
It was his free market.
How was that different than a whale coming into town?
Well, hugely different.
Whales came into town independently with their money.
With their money.
This was Benny Binion giving them money to play.
So that's genius.
It's ridiculous.
It's genius marketing. Whether the guy won or lost. It's Brian Henn genius. It's ridiculous. It's genius marketing.
Whether the guy won or lost.
It's Brian Hennigan.
It's Brian Hennigan.
The uncut Scotsman?
Is this the man I hear you talk about?
That's what Hennigan said the other night.
It's like, it's dirty.
It's dirty and it's smart.
I love it.
That was Hennigan.
Hennigan loves everything we bitch about.
We're corporate Americans.
I love him.
He's funny.
We want clean hotel rooms.
Yeah, you don't need that.
I love his voice.
It's killer funny.
Yeah, I did the wrong voice.
No, all of them.
What do you need a clean hotel room for?
Bed bugs come with the price of the sheets.
Yeah.
The first time I came into Vegas. It's already included. Nothing. It doesn't cost extra the first time i came into vegas already included
nothing yeah it doesn't cost extra first time you came to vegas no i literally we got i came
out with a friend of mine gary we worked together he was a also an instructor at the new york school
of gambling we worked together at harris the guy was a certificate oh yeah i have certificates for
all this i want to make sure this is legal. Yeah, this is legal and above board. I'm going way off script again.
Yes.
Because you talked about all the dojos you worked in.
Can you just buy a black belt depending on the dojo?
Oh, don't get me started on that fucking road.
Black belt is an illusion.
It's like Fred Sanford.
You're a fifth degree black belt.
You're going to need all those belts that lower your ass under the gray.
It was that type of shit.
It means nothing.
What are you a black belt in?
You're a black belt in?
You're a black belt in what?
Have you ever fought anybody?
Well, no.
These katas.
It's like swimming on... Are you talking to Joe Rogan specifically?
No, Joe is a fucking martial art.
Joe is the real fucking deal.
That's why I love Joe Rogan.
He's fucking...
He was credentialed before he told the joke.
He's fucking big time.
No, Joe is the real fucking deal.
I love Joe.
It's not even because of the UFC. It it's his background i thought he learned how to fight
after the man show because he had no joe let me tell you i get him off track you got me off track
but while we're talking about you're taking the shaley spot that's why you're running the board
doing marvelous but joe is one of the best jumping spin around back kicks.
Really?
And slide up back kicks I have ever seen.
I've seen some of the best Taekwondo people from Korea.
He is fucking incredible.
How do you see this?
On YouTube.
It's out there.
It's out there.
I was going to ask what you do in your off time for the last 25 years.
I practice with cards and I get laid occasionally
and I fucking kick a bag
occasionally.
It's no mystery.
I'm a Zen man.
I want to see you do cards with Becker.
Oh, hold on.
Does he know that Becker
is an up-close magician?
No.
No, listen.
Do you do up-close magic?
Very, very little.
All right.
My thing is a very niche.
No, no, no.
My thing is a very niche thing.
What I do.
You say niche or niche?
Well, that's different.
Frederick Karts, exactly.
Was that nihilism?
Exactly.
I think therefore I am.
I forgot therefore I'm not. It's a narrow avenue with crabs.
It's niche. Yeah, crabs. It's nichey.
Yeah, exactly.
It's itchy and nichey.
Itchy and nichey?
No, I mean, that's just been a hobby of mine.
Is that Simpsons?
No, sorry.
That might have been.
No, but my thing is that I actually studied techniques that are used by people and were
used for many, many years by the casinos if they wanted to bust people out. Like
when a guy owned the casino. This is way prior. This was like in the 40s and 50s when people
owned casinos, especially private social clubs, they would call it. All over as ubiquitous,
all over the United States. They had guys. Dino Cellini was the greatest of these guys.
And they would just call. There were people in Vegas back in the 40s and 50s.
That's not the case in any casino now.
They got you with the odds.
They don't have to cheat you.
They've got you with the odds.
So I've been asked that for 30 years.
Do they cheat?
No, they don't cheat.
The odds.
You're accepting the odds.
When you win, you lose.
You know, the casino wins.
When you lose, they win again and the casinos
always fucking win but uh no i do a couple techniques that uh magicians will appreciate
and card sharps appreciate it's called second dealing uh you deal from the bottom of the deck
uh some people can deal from the center of the deck which is not a practical from the top yeah
and you can deal from the top but the deck, which is not a practical. And deal from the top. Yeah, and you can deal from the top.
But I actually did these things under real circumstances where there's a lot of people out there for years.
In casinos?
No, no, no, no, no, never, never, never.
This is always, this is all private stuff.
And it was stuff, yeah, this is private stuff.
And I never took money from an innocent person.
I don't want to project that, you know.
But yeah, if i'm ever
around a card guy i show them one of the techniques that i do and it's they find it interesting
because it's one of these things that requires about 20 years of practice to do it's a real
overnight success right uh what what is an overnight like magic is one of those things where
you get into it because you have
an interest but to actually be good at it takes you like 10 years of having no friends well it
depends no i know it's the geek factor you're not you're not going to homecoming no there's a lot
of you go with your mom no no no absolutely and things in this town have have exploded magically
over the last 30 years but uh but me, magic was just a hobby.
I mean, martial arts was always my
primary thing that I loved.
And I found peace
through that one way or the fucking other.
But I grew up in North Jersey.
You found really bad pants.
Yeah, exactly.
I wish I had pictures of those fuckers.
Amazon Prime.
Me and my mullet besideide you and your Zuba pants
What are they called
Zuba pants
I don't know
No they were like
The MC Hammer things
Where they all looked like
I think it's called Zumba
Or something
That might have been
It was a Z
And it wasn't Z
They were pajama pants
That bloused out
No exactly
And they were
Exactly
Balloonie pants
I remember two Z's
In the 80's
There was the Zumba pants
That the fucking prep cooks
Weared
Weared The prep cooks wear.
The prep cooks wore those.
And then there was Z Cavaricci's.
Cavaricci's. There they were.
The fucking Cavaricci's.
So Z Cavaricci's. And throwing those fucking, what was it, members only jacket
and you're fucking happening, pal.
Put me in Z Cavaricci's for a
comedy competition. Angel flights.
I found a pair of Z Cavaricci's. That's so funny.
My mom just passed away.
I was cleaning out
some of the shit and I found a
pair of Z Cavaricci's. They had the label
right on the fly.
Where you're always checking that your
fly isn't open. I put them in the
washing machine. They were in a fucking thing
from back when I played in the band in
89, 90. I put them in the fucking washing machine. I were in a fucking thing from back when I played in the band in 89, 90. I put them
in the fucking washing machine. I opened it up
and you
think I threw a ream of paper in there.
It was fucking
black.
The pair of pants had completely
disintegrated. It was funny.
Ashes. I found the label. The label was still
intact, like the black box. And black fuzz everywhere.
Oh, that's funny the pants
were completely blown apart unbelievable hilarious that is fucking funny z cavarici uh a bargain at
the time yeah it was but not a value christ i have it but not a value god almighty i remember
all those fucking old styles what's the one thing you remember when you first got to vegas
that like fucking blew your mind coming from very simple coming from
atlantic city yes and seeing how like old school how that went you came you came to vegas and what
was what blew your mind that's a great question uh we flew out my pal gary and i gary had worked
uh he was a magician and again he was also a gaming instructor in new york city brilliant
brilliant guy he just passed
away a couple years ago what a brilliant fucking cat but uh he i we were living uh i was living
with a gal friend in brigantine uh it was uh yeah well it was it was an island right next to atlantic
city harrah's was a marina casino and all the employees lived in brigantine and we had these
little shuttle
buses that would take us over this little bridge right to harrah's so it was great and we literally
had a house on the beach in atlantic city it was it was brigantine but it's basically atlantic city
just like you say boulder city is kind of vegas you know so it was so close and um we came out
here i just remember walking i was i was that I was in Atlantic City for about a year.
The action we saw literally in less than one year was more than any dealer saw in this town ever,
even if they were on 50 years nonstop every day.
It was that fucking busy.
There's no exaggeration.
That was the epicenter of gambling in North America.
That was it.
At that time, it did not ever rival Atlantic City at some levels,
but you could deal at that time.
The waitresses were all 18, 19, and 20.
The janitor just came in.
Hey, how you doing, Pauly?
But, yeah, it was unbelievable.
The juxtaposition of leaving these tables where I literally had to warm up my hands.
We could not see the dice table. You had to warm up my hands we could not
see you had to warm up your hands because i was coming in i was on like that i worked
onto the top just stretch before you got to the fucking table yeah literally because the action
yeah literally the action my hands i had to warm up my hands with the with the chips they're called
checks properly called checks and i had literally one james bond movies yeah there
you go you're hip to that shit and uh yeah that's the jargon but when you would go in you would go
into a table where there's literally 15 people on one side 15 people on the other side two or three
people deep we could not see the fucking layout you had to book every bet on the fly. Hey, let me have $5,000 on the six.
Hey, how do you play craps? Can I get a drink?
Give me $2.75 across. Give me a
high-low, high-low, and a high-low. It's like a fucking
Japanese fucking
market. It was a clusterfuck. Like everyone's
throwing cash and barking
orders. Yeah, go, go, sell, sell.
Motherfucker. It was like that, and you had to find
And you're the stick man?
If you're a dealer, stick man? What were you doing
during this? You do both.
The dealer, you're
a base dealer, where you're handling, bending
down the payoff, or you're on stick.
It's called the stick man or the whip.
And the whip there, I said, the tables
were double the size of Atlantic City.
Or, excuse me, of Vegas.
Yeah, exactly. And the whip itself,
the stick was about four or five feet longer. The table here feet they're small but they're not like from from from from a cushion
to cushion it's like eight feet maybe a little bit more than that a little more that's a little
you you're running a fucking table that's 20 feet long no i think longer than that but let me just
i'll give you one quick story from from harris only because you're asking
i'm just yakking here about all this old shit but it's great memories there was a guy that i worked
with that was from vegas his name i'm not going to mention his whole name because he's still in town
here donald trump exactly jeez how the fuck did you know listen i can say that's right i can say
it and uh yeah so i was working for don This was before actually the Trump thing came up.
I get it.
And this guy kept saying, ah, you guys suck.
And realized that we were dealers that had never been to Las Vegas.
We had never seen Vegas action, whatever that was or wasn't.
But he kept saying, you guys suck.
Now, we realized, look, I don't give a fuck what you ever dealt in at Vegas.
Vegas is this mirage of beauty that we never went to.
I had never been to it at that time.
And so we heard him talking shit.
And at some point, it's like put up or shut up.
And I said, you know this guy?
I was talking to the rest of my crew.
I said, you know this guy is always yakking.
Vegas this, Vegas that.
I said, fuck him.
I said, one day when he gets jammed up and we're busy as a fuck,
I'm just gonna
lean over to that guy and say take me out i gotta puke and make him fucking deal when it's a winner
six and you gotta pay the front line and now he's in the deep of it he's in the shit but i wouldn't
do that maliciously he just built up and no one wanted to stand up for this guy and i wanted to
call his fucking bluff so one day i did that it was so
fucking busy but it could have been any of like five nights out of the week and i waited and i
told the box man who was in on it because he hated this fucking guy also nobody liked this guy it was
yeah you can be doing this yeah yeah i mean you can be from wherever you're from but don't be an
asshole yeah you know what i mean we were busting our asses what we did physically will never be
seen again atlantic city is a ghost fucking town.
I haven't been back in a thousand years.
But at that time, buses were coming almost 24 hours a day.
Millions of dollars, literally.
You could walk up.
Let me just real quickly.
You want to know how you made money in Atlantic City at that time?
I desperately want to know.
Well, this is, yes.
What you would do is you would go up.
Because he has a time machine. Yeah, exactly. He's going to fucking dial back, baby. What you would do is you would go up. Because he has a time machine.
Yeah, exactly.
He's going to fucking dial back, baby.
I can do it.
Yes, I know.
You kind of see it in your eyes.
You would go up to any table where it was killer fucking heavy fucking action.
And you would know it because literally they would have $5,000 checks stacked, stacked
five feet long, one stack stack another stack going up the side
and then one in the middle
so it's like a trident
you know
so they had like a million dollars
three pronged
yeah three pronged
killer fucking action
all this shit
all this action
killer action
they're going nowhere
they don't care this role
their part
their part
it's all screw you money
it was all mob money
it was all laundered money
and so this was the bottom line. It was all laundered money.
And so this was the bottom line ultimately.
If you wanted to make money, you would be a lovely bingo or a lovely Tracy and you walk up to the table with maybe 20 bucks and you would wait to see where the dice were.
And if the guy that was betting the big money just got done betting and he stays there,
kind of shimmy up to be the next person to toss the dice on the other side of the table.
And it helps if you got something bursting out of your bra.
She's got something.
It doesn't hurt.
I'm looking.
I'm seeing all this good.
Hold on, Tom.
Tom, are you telling me right now we can make some cash?
No.
We can make some cash?
Yes.
God damn it.
National Women's Equality.
Yeah, this is National Women's Equality.
Bingo is about to hit you.
Tracy's got a knife in her hand.
All is well.
But this is what you do.
You would see that at the table?
No.
Let me tell you what.
What you would do is you would hope when you slide up to that table, you can come in with
$20 or 50 bucks.
The guy's got a million.
You just hope to throw a winner.
Yeah.
One.
One winner.
One.
Yeah. Winner seven. one yeah winner seven the guy would
look and he'd throw you a check yeah because you throw a winner and then you threaten to leave
especially if you threw like one or two passes another guy's like no no no no you're lucky stay
here and they would grab checks and throw that's how you take a shot this would happen and the
blue-haired girl and the orange-haired girl would be welcoming.
Major bank.
Big bank.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
They would clean up, brother.
You wouldn't have to be doing anything.
What the fuck are we doing?
Tipping fucking tables.
Yes.
All right.
That's the Drunk Chaley podcast.
And Tom Yackin on and on about all that bullshit.
Tom Konopka is going to be here all goddamn weekend.
I love it.
I hope he never leaves.
Oh, fuck.
All right.
Tom, I love you already, man.
I love you, my brother.
Floyd is here.
I love you guys. Let's take a break. He looks like Floyd. All right. Tom, I love you already, man. I love you, my brother. Floyd is here. I love you guys.
Let's take a break.
He looks like Floyd.
All right.
Play something weird there, Jamie.
Oh, I want a butter and egg man
From way out in the west In the West I get so tired
Of working all day
I want somebody
Who wants me to play
Pretty clothes
That never were mine
But if my dream comes true I want a butter and egg man.
Some big butter and egg man.
Look here, baby, look here.
Now, I'll be your great Big Butter and Eggman, honey.
Oh, goody, goody, goody.
But I'm different.
I'm from way down in the south.
That's just what I'm looking for.
You sure you're lying?
Nah.
I'll buy you all the jewelry that's worth the money
If you'll just put your arms around me and sort of call me honey
Now, I'll buy you a real sharp vial
Providing what you told me the other day, just don't change your mind.
Never have, never have.
Now I'm your great big bothering egg man.
I'm your great big bothering egg man.
Yes, sir, that's me, honey.
Oh, I want a butter and egg man from way out in the west.
I get so tired of working all day.
I want somebody who wants me to play.
Pretty clothes that never were mine.
But if my dream comes true, baby, sunshine.
I want a border and egg man.
Don't some bread and egg butter and egg man.
Don't some bread and egg butter and egg man.