The HoneyDew with Ryan Sickler - Sam Tallent - HoneyTallent

Episode Date: August 7, 2023

My HoneyDew this week is comedian, Sam Tallent! (Chubby Behemoth, Running the Light) Sam Highlights the Lowlights of his dads drinking and his mother’s stroke. SUBSCRIBE TO MY YOUTUBE and watch full episodes of The Dew every toozdee! https://youtube.com/@rsickler SUBSCRIBE TO MY PATREON, The HoneyDew with Y’all, where I Highlight the Lowlights with Y’all! You now get audio and video of The HoneyDew a day early, ad-free at no additional cost! It’s only $5/month! Sign up for a year and get a month free! https://www.patreon.com/TheHoneyDew What’s your story?? Submit at [e-mail] CATCH ME ON TOUR https://www.ryansickler.com/tour August 11th: Los Angeles, CA August 18th & 19th: Tampa, FL September 1st & 2nd: Springfield, MO September 15th & 16th: Tulsa, OK September 29th & 30th: Pheonix, AZ October 27th & 28th: Salt Lake City, UT November 10th & 11th: Batavia, IL December 8th & 9th: San Francisco, CA SUBSCRIBE to The HoneyDew Clips Channel http://bit.ly/ryansicklerclips SUBSCRIBE TO THE CRABFEAST PODCAST https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-crabfeast-with-ryan-sickler-and-jay-larson/id1452403187 SPONSORS: Betterhelp -The HoneyDew is sponsored by BetterHelp, get 10% off your first month at https://www.Betterhelp.com/HONEYDEW

The Honeydew with Ryan Sickler. Welcome back to The Honeydew, y'all. We're over here doing it in the brand new Nightpan Studios. I am Ryan Sickler, ryansickler.com, Ryan Sickler on all your social media. Let me just say this first. Yes, we're in a new studio. We're just getting going here. We'll perfect it as we go.

You know, it's not where I want it to be yet. There's a few little tweaks we're going to make. But listen, perfection is just another form of procrastination. We're not stopping down over here. We're rolling. All right. So support us. Subscribe to that YouTube.

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It's five bucks a month. There's no other levels or anything like that. And it's the honeydew with y'all. And y'all have the wildest stories I've ever heard in my life. Every week week it is something I give it, give it a try for five bucks. You don't just get one episode. You're getting the entire back library or you're getting the honey do a day early. You're getting it ad free. You're getting it at no additional cost. It's worth every penny. I promise you it's worth that cup of coffee.

All right. And if you're looking for a new podcast to listen to, go listen to my old podcast, The Crab Feast. I'm going to tell you right now, it is such an active show still. That library is going to do over a million downloads this year. That's how many people are still listening. There's a community online for it. It's got all the people, you know, and love in podcasting telling completely different stories. So go check that out. It's a great podcast. My tour dates. Look, we're going all the way through 2024. We just added a bunch for this year.

There's still more coming. So here's what we got. August 11th. That is here in Los Angeles. I'll be at Flappers Burbank. Get your tickets now. It's one show. August 11th, August 18th and 19th. I'll be down in Tampa, Florida. Steve Simone will be working with me. Can't wait to come down there and see y'all Tampa, September 1st and 2nd, Springfield, Missouri, September 15th and 16th is Tulsa, Oklahoma. That was the one that had to be rescheduled. There it is.

I promise y'all is coming. September 29th and 30th, Phoenix, Arizona october 27th and the 28th salt lake city utah all right now that's the biz you guys know what we're doing over here we're highlighting the low lights i always say these are the stories behind the storytellers i'm very excited to have this guest on here first guest in the new studio ladies and gentlemen please welcome sam talent welcome to the honeydew sam what an honor what a lovely thank you so much it's just so good to be here and i want to apologize because we got these lights set up and then your crew had to spend about an hour and a half putting powder on my forehead so that we wouldn't burn out the new cameras it's my fault yeah you have this like very highly

skilled bunch of people in here and it's just like well what if sam was underneath some kind of sheet yeah we'll get the lights down what if he had a bigger hat yeah so i apologize for my head being well listen big and wet don't you came straight from the airport with luggage yeah and got in here and is it as a commercial yeah yeah and then you got uh seated right here to kick off the maiden voyage in a new studio. What an honor to be part of this institution. Well, thank you. This storied show. I was a big Crab Feast guy. Were you really?

Oh, yeah, of course. Young comic listening to people be very vulnerable and be like, oh, I'm also bad. Yeah, they're good stories. Yeah, they're great. Listen to Sam Talent. Knows what he's talking about. Go subscribe. He's a very active community.

Before we get into whatever we're going to talk about today please plug promote everything you'd like i have a podcast called chubby behemoth with my friend nathan lunn that you can listen to wherever you get podcasts um you can see me live when this comes out i'll be in australia hopefully those are sold out already so i don't uh have to never return to australia and then i'll be in uh i'll be in tampa i'll be at laugh boston i'll be in kansas city samtalent.com i'm on the road every weekend and i wrote a novel called running the light that you can buy as well but if you're a comedy fan you're tired of hearing about that i've been promoting it non-stop for two and a half years all right yeah so um we just met today we did yeah um our good friend kazzy's been trying to connect us for a while what's up hey kazzy thank you so much yes thank you so much and um i want to get to know you first of all

because i ask everyone to give me a little bit of what we're going to talk about so i do know we're going to talk a little bit about your mom but tell me about yourself where are you from originally where'd you grow up all that i'm from eastern colorado i'm from elbert county colorado a town of less than a thousand called elizabeth where i played sports year round and was very actively engaged in a student council the thespian society i did everything there your mom and dad together they were together the whole time yeah yeah and do you have siblings i have a sibling yeah sophie sophie your sister she's a real freak oh yeah what do you what do you mean by that i don't mean like in a cool sexy way i mean maybe that's none of my business i don't want to know if that's the case i was like

what are her boyfriends yeah yeah her husband won't shut up she's very flexible i guess i don't know uh no she's fun man she's just like tough we just had my wife's graduation ceremony for her she's done with residency and we had that this weekend. And right around 1 a.m., everyone's like, well, it's time to hit the old hay. And my sister's like, we have to do shots out of each other's mouths. Like we cannot stop partying right now just because you guys are blackout drunk and everyone wants to leave. So she's very good about keeping the momentum going. All right.

Creating momentum. Even if there is no momentum. Even if everyone's begging to end things. So, yeah, i love my dad love my mom i had a very nice upbringing all right very small town knew everybody yeah did you excel at sports in school or i did excel at sports yeah i was an all-state offensive lineman twice hell yeah yeah i was gonna play football in what position would you play i was a right tackle for a left-handed quarterback oh so you're the blind side tackle yeah although we never threw the ball we pretty much just played like uh it was like a wing t situation so i don't think it was ever the forward pass was not allowed in the league we played in from what i remember but yeah um i play

i wrestled you know i was gonna play college ball i hurt my knee so i couldn't do that that was where are we gonna play see you university of colorado yeah that was that would that was that was the first uh whiff of pain that i ever had but other than that i have nothing to complain about started doing stand-up when i was 18 moved to denver here we are on the honeydew yeah yeah and a story you wanted to talk to is about your mom's stroke we're going to talk about yeah yeah so i've been milking that for a while now how um tell me about it how old was your mom and how old were you when all this went down i lived in vegas my wife went to the first two years of med school in las vegas this was 2017 my mother uh was the matriarch of our family you know my dad

lovable doofus uh loved like mooning people at the post office that kind of thing it was like a fun guy a lot of like fireworks indoors kind of guy you know just a blast then my mom just like pensively drinking a greyhound being like these boys you know um so she she was she was very heavily uh for hillary clinton hillary rodham clinton um and when hillary rodham clinton lost the election in 2017 to donald trump my mom's brain exploded literally like they said trump's Trump's gonna win and then her head popped and she hit the floor and my dad was not there my dad was she she worked in Denver so wait was it literally at the time that's time a

day was the announcement from what you can tell my mom was texting my dad and my aunt Julie up until that being like this this is fuck this looks bad what's going on i can't believe this country um and then as soon as trump was elected her phone went silent and my dad was kind of like well this is weird maybe she's just you know mourning her own way um and then so he was at our house in elizabeth and my mom lived worked at the federal reserve in denver so it's like an hour away and she got herself an apartment down there so she didn't have to commute and then my dad was like well this is weird she's not responding so he ended up driving out there and uh got there probably around four or five in the morning because he couldn't get a hold of her

and she was on the ground you know in like full worm position um and they had to you know and like full worm position and they had to you know knock down the door of the fire department and yeah it really rendered her so what a quarter of a woman so was she really she was there that long alone yeah yeah and if your dad doesn't go she probably dies yeah so there's um i think how old was she she was born in 1953 and this was in 2017 so 64 maybe yeah yeah um and my dad he beat himself up because he was like i should have been there i should have gone there earlier but her brain i'm a very happy-go-lucky guy my dad's a dingus my sister has more of my mom and her, but she's able to have fun. But my mom was like always so stressed. She had so much just the weight of her world.

The world was on her shoulders, you know, making sure. My dad, you know, got sober when I was 13. He was a bit of a booze bag. So she kept the whole thing afloat. Well, let's hold on. Let's jump back there. What made your dad finally get sober when you were 13 i think my mom gave him an ultimatum we're uh my mom's from cleveland my dad's from rural

colorado so this level of like openness is never really part of our family vocabulary you know emotionally but i do remember that there was an incident where like my dad uh got fucking torn out the frame, thwacked on a nice, like he got sober and then he found a bottle of booze in my grandparents' basement. And he's like, this is real good whiskey. It'd be a shame for it to go to waste. Pulled the cork. I think my sister found him down there, like, you know, totally dunzo. And then he, I think, took her on a ride around uh the suburbs of parker colorado and my mom was like you just jeopardized your daughter's life to kind of prove a point that you weren't

too drunk to drive you know that classic move and i think she was like look it's this is for real so i remember my dad being a really fun drunk i was gonna ask yeah was he abusive in any way or angry so he it was so he was just making poor decisions while he's drinking he was privately blowing it yeah but to me he was the funnest guy ever he was the guy that all my friends wanted to come over he was my football coach as a kid he was the third base coach he always had a new bit you know i remember my dad was the king of the thumb gag yeah and i remember there was a kid named cameron rau god bless him who told me when we graduated high school he's like you know your dad he was the best man you gotta tell me how does he fucking pull his thumb

off and i was like yeah i swear to yeah yeah hand to god yeah and i was like dude cameron i've known you since kindergarten have you been been to Belt and Lane Disabled this whole time? I can do it for you right now. And he was like, ah, his world shattered around him, you know? So no, he was the greatest. He was a hoot and a holler. He was never hung over around me. I mean, he would pick us up from school with a tall boy. He would.

Yeah, but like that's what all the dudes that I knew that were older, like men, you know, my uncle. He was just part of the culture of growing up uh in the middle of nowhere so yeah yeah he he never blew it to my knowledge and sure there's all these like little small things you think about where it's like well why was he asleep you know uh at my sister's fifth grade or my fifth grade graduation like why was my dad still asleep you know it's like well he was hung over in three sheets um so yeah no i don't ever have i don't have any negative memories what it did suck because it made my mom look like the bad guy

yeah because you know like when your dad's like hey we're gonna you're gonna go to this pool hall that has like an arcade machine. Here's a sock full of quarters. Go crazy. I'm going to be down the street at the bar with my friends. When your mom calls and she's like, he left you alone at the pool hall? You're not like, yeah, how dare he? You're like, yeah, he's the best.

It's the coolest. Yeah, there's a guy here who's giving me all the chocolate milk I can drink. Like I'm having a blast. So when she shows you up crying and ruins your fun it uh it doesn't happened oh yeah yeah yeah that kind of stuff happened um it doesn't reflect negatively on your dad it makes your mom look like a giant wet blanket which was so unfair to her and when does that hit you at what age do you shift where you're like oh i see mom was just holding it together not being a pain in the ass i mean you get older and you get perspective and then you have you know lunch with your mom when you're 19 year old who's gonna go feature on the road for the first time and she has all these like very legitimate concerns about like you're driving to gillette

wyoming for a hundred dollars and you have to split gas with the guy and this guy's like a known like the headliner you know it's like this guy's like a known he's he's a he's a road headliner in the rocky mountain time region so he's got problems rocky mountain time oh the mountain time zone dude for stand-up those people are monsters if you don't leave denver and your whole thing is like i got the i got the indian casinos i got that run that's gonna put 1200 bucks in my pocket as a comic who's been doing it for 20 years and so i'd have these conversations with my mom where she had all these like legitimate concerns and then you just tell your dad and he's like oh hell yeah dude you're making it attaboy and then you're like oh mom's been right the whole time you know

about these like actual concerns um so yeah i can't say that my dad was ever a bad father uh what do you remember about him sobering up like did it this level of fun change did it really well it was like a whole like calamitous situation my dad worked at the bank my mom worked at the federal reserve they were both bank examiners when i was a kid and then my dad made some like one of his multiple shell organizations uh and he started some business and this dude named bill huff and i'll say his name because he fucked over our family heavy he my dad gave him some money to start this business and then the guy bailed like it just ran away to what we found out later to be mexico so my dad like finally had a little bit of money and he was like this is going to turn everything around he just

took all of it he never even did anything didn't do a damn thing so that rocked my dad sent him kind of into a bit of a spiral and then he came out of that sober and he's like i don't want to work at the bank anymore i want to be a teacher in that time, my mom went back to school to get her master's in landscape architecture, which is a giant waste of money. Okay. Yeah. I was about to say that's a, I mean, no offense. That's a thing. I didn't even know it was a thing. Yeah. Is that for companies like Disneyland and stuff like that? Are we talking about massive architecture for landscaping, like city buildings and things? I think my mom thought that she was going to recreate the luxembourg gardens in paris but in uh castle rock colorado because i remember i thought my mom my

mom had this like very highfalutin idea of like you know like people need parks you know like that's a big part of why europe is so good because all these like green spaces and people can go and be outside and just be like kind of enchanted and i would go to she went to the university of colorado denver uh to get her landscape architecture degree and i remember sitting at all the uh drafting tables there and i was just given all these markers and i would just you know ruin these like 12 markers like drawing you know x-men characters but my mom had all these giant drawings of top-down uh topography of what she thought that a good park would look like you know the trees here here's the pond all this stuff so i saw this stuff that she thought she was uh she was going to change the world she ended up doing like you know there's enough trees in the parking

lot at park meadows mall like she got a job with douglas county just going around and kind of auditing that they had enough of you know you know the boulevards had grass on them there was the parking lots had enough uh you know lawns that were big enough so yeah she was totally just dejected by what she thought was going to be this cool creative outlet as someone who my mom was an amazing artist she loved to read very funny and then She worked at the banks forever and then she was like no I hate this. I'm not being able to express myself and then She didn't get to do that at all after going to school

So anyway, my dad He ends up working at Walmart's overnights as he gets his shit together, unloading trucks and working in the bakery. So like fifth grade, fourth grade, my dad just wasn't around as much because he would be asleep during the day. And then at night, he'd wake up and go work this terrible job, just this soul crushing job so that he could, you know, continue to support and everything while he wound up getting his teaching license.

So, yeah, that was like and there was like this time in fifth grade i went to school like 40 of the days that you were supposed to go um and i remember because i would fake sick all the time because i didn't want to go to school is that whole fucking gifted and talented thing where it's like oh i wasn't being challenged so school sucks um and i started taking the sat prep when i was in like fourth fifth grade did you really yeah holy shit well it's just like in this very small town you know i had a very active mind i loved reading i was always writing stuff and they didn't know what to do with it so they're like well i guess we'll just teach him how to take the sats like if he's gonna you know hopefully go on to bigger and

better things we should just put him in standardized testing did you take him i took him i took him twice a year from like fifth grade all the way through what do you remember what you got in fifth grade no i don't i don't what was your highest ever so in the sats i don't know but so that was the most fucked part was i studied for the sats and then in colorado to go state schools, you took the ACTs. But the ACTs, I crushed. I think I got in language, I got like a 33 or a 34. Out of what? I think 36. And then I think I got like a 29 in math and science, but I was terrible at that stuff.

So anyway, it's a long way to say that I remember my dad picking me up from school one day and he just woke up having worked all night, you know, white knuckling his sobriety trying to get his shit together and he was like i don't know what's going on with you but this whole fake and sick thing is is over we got to figure this out and i just started crying and i was like i just never see you anymore man and whenever i you always pick me up and then he was quiet the whole ride home not even any music on my dad's a big music guy i remember him not having any music on and me just sitting next to him as he like gently sobbed and that was one of two times i saw my dad cry one being when his mom passed away how which was first

uh his that my my grandmother passed away after this after yeah yeah this is the first time you saw your dad ever cry yeah and it was that like man crying where it looks like you know you're trying to fight off an aneurysm so like you're just gonna like beat a heart attack you know yeah through perseverance so yeah i'll be fine yeah you know how to take the wheel my dad would do weird shit man i remember he would do these drills this is when he was drinking so like at the end of football practice uh we would pack up all the pads and everything and then he would uh be like all right so if we ever have to make a getaway you're gonna have to get in the moving car so then he would just like drive through the polo fields as i was running my little fat bodied self next to it like trying to get in a moving vehicle he's like

you got it grab the door grab the door now throw your body and head first don't put your feet in don't you can't keep up you got to put your body in and then me like diving in and when you look at it through the oh he was just wasted you're like oh that was insane thing to teach we used to hitchhike all the time when i was a kid what why well he would have all these like volkswagen like buses or like just like weird volkswagen uh never bugs but the you know the sedans and you get him for like 400 i think he would get them because he when he was working at the bank this was such a small town that when you couldn't pay off your your mortgage you would get paid in they would give pigs to the bank

or they would pay with like bales of hay so i think certain regulations yeah they gave an old car and they would break down all the time because i don't have any mechanical knowledge neither does my father so there was a lot of memories of like me and my sister i remember my sister being because when like when i when i was born my dad quit to stay home and raise me that was the thing so we took like three four years off until i was in kindergarten why dad and not mom he did mom have the better more secure job yeah my mom worked at the federal reserve so she had a good thing going and my dad was just working at kiowa state bank which was the biggest bank in the incredibly small agricultural town that I was from.

And so, yeah, it was just like my sister. I didn't wear shoes, to my knowledge, until I went to kindergarten. We were just shoeless all the time. And my dad used to just tie my sister's head off into a ponytail at the side, big whale spout, and then just a gigantic T-shirt with like a diaper underneath it. I just remember her standing on the side of the street in jelly sandals um and us with our thumbs out and some ladies stopped to pick us up some like you know church going woman and she's like what is what are

you doing and just gave my dad this tongue lashing my dad's kind of like you know we all got to help each other his big thing was we're not farmers we have to help each other. His big thing was we're not farmers. We have to help each other, you know, because that taciturn nature of farmers. And us like getting in and her driving us like, you know, five minutes and her just fucking reaming my dad. You remember that. Yeah, yeah. And I was just like, you know what? This lady sucks. My dad's cool.

I think we were literally going to sneak into the Pawnee Hills Clubhouse pool. I think that's why we were up there. So it's like he was trying to give us a good time. His car broke again. We've hitchhiked a million times. It's not a big deal. You know, he's from, my dad went to the same, he went to, in Elizabeth, the middle school that I went to was the school he went to K through 12.

So it's like, he's been here. He knows everyone. You're the outsider, lady. Dave Talon hitchhikes. I knew that when I was like seven years old. I was like, this is a way of life. That's for sure, bro dave talon hitchhikes i knew that when i was like seven years old i was like this is a way of life you're sure bro dave talon yeah so like it sounds like i'm kind of lambasting my father but no i loved like i have no negative memories i remember them fighting and i think that's why the whole comedian thing came in because like my dad and my mom would get in arguments and i'd be like doing bits as like

a seven-year-old you know like pants fall down bits like whoops going on you know just please stop fighting anything but this yeah so there was that stuff but no one ever hit me my dad would flick the back of your ear that's how he got your attention just one right to the back of the ear which is a very effective method it is yeah so yeah man i don't i don't i wish i if there was more trauma to mine from that but it would just be stolen valor you know stolen like it would just be hyperbolic for the sake of uh creating drama and i didn't have that my grandparents were there but you never you never once you had um the hindsight and obviously the knowledge and the wisdom you never looked back

on your dad in a negative way you just you never thought wow he was drunk doing this stuff it was just what was it for you no um my dad was always there my dad coached football and we dominated in football. He coached basketball. He coached baseball. He was beloved by all. He always had a joke. My dad and my grandfather, his father, there's this weird phenomenon with the talent men where you'll just be somewhere and automatically you'll talk to someone. This happens to me on planes all the time where after two minutes of conversation, they're

telling you about uh the worst thing that's ever happened to you they're they're done i get i me too yeah and it's just something that is a phenomenon to us i remember my grandfather we'd be at the at the grocery store and he talked to someone about like for like 20 minutes about like their wife dying and i'd be like grandpa who was that and he'd be like i have no idea so my dad did that a lot he was always there for people i'm that guy i i still to this day i remember i was in the glendale mall god this was in the late 90s i was with my girlfriend at the time and we were in like gap or something and there was a

doorway to get in here the big stores and you can go out here too two ways to get in and we're near the one of the entrances or exits and i see this homeless guy walk into the other one and he just makes eye contact with me locks eyes and i said that guy's gonna come and talk to me she's like how do you know i go because this is what happens to me and he went right by everybody and came up and just started talking to me just out here the other day guy out comes over just starts telling me his whole life story yeah i get the the craziest one ever happened to me was on a flight to denver actually and um there were these two young boys that sat next to me and they were really young uh one might have been maybe five and the other one might have been like eight or nine they were brothers and their

mom had put them on a plane to go see their dad so they're sitting with me but they were you know being uh taken care of by the airline and uh the one just starts chatting me up he's the older brother he's in the middle the younger brother's on the aisle and he's already asleep and it's a late night flight and they're talking to me and he's going to meet his father um who is now a woman wow and who's married to a woman wow and this is his first trip to go meet the man he knew as his dad now as a woman and this kid's telling me all about it and i'm just looking at this kid and i'm just like i got nothing for you i don't have anything to you know put the earbuds in good luck kid all right it's rough out there

for everybody and i felt so because he was confused and he's like do you think they'll still like we'll still have a christmas i was like yeah you're gonna have a christmas if you're who cares if your dad's your mom the christmas is gonna be so much better there's a lot to prove there's a bunch on the line. You have two moms. Dads don't do the buying. No. You got two moms buying all your gifts now.

You're going to love it. Kid, you leveled up. You're going to love it. You just won the lottery. Your dad just did you a favor. Yeah. It's a dream, boy. All right.

And I was like, man, I'm thinking like this poor kid is tackling stuff that adults, most adults are never going to experience like i'm not a licensed therapist in any way and i'm just telling this kid like you know stay positive and enjoy christmas it might be your mom i don't know even how to say your dad may be your mom now but your mom still loves you you know i'm giving them all the pie and i'm just sitting there like what the fuck yeah yeah yeah i get it non-stop they just love to dump on me i mean but that is that's even more peculiar because it's a child that was so there must be some kind of pheromone it has to be on some kind of like you think it's that there's some level that we have interesting because i mean i'm not necessarily the most like open person like when i'm out it's like i have

things to do i really value my time at home. But if someone does want to just, I used to take greyhounds to gigs. I was a mega bus guy. So you get trapped on those things. Oh yeah. Those are full of people that want to tell you their sorrows and woes. Because hopefully when you get off at the next pit stop,

you'll buy them some Carl's Jr. If they just like, you know, show you the fucking bag of change that there's going to get them all the way to Tucson. You're like, all right, four breakfast burritos here's ten dollars yeah here you go yeah yeah here's a lucky strike yeah i don't even smoke here's a pack yeah dude that shit is bizarre and there's a lot of men that i've talked to that have that um but it was so just pronounced with my dad and my grandfather yeah also i'm sorry i'm talking so much please this is your episode that's sweet you would see it um you remember seeing that as a kid people come up

and talk to them as well not just them telling you about it no i remember it because i mean i spent so much time with my dad because he you know quit working for a while to raise me and then my grandfather was like i was always with grandpa over talent was the man and yeah i just remember being out with them and just being like bored that's why i remember i'm standing there with my hand on the grocery cart being like can we please move this along so i can go buy a new copy of jughead like i know something's coming at the end of this uh that i'm gonna get paid off so yeah that that's and that's just it's something in our blood i think okay so back to

your mom so your dad drives out to check on your mom because it's odd that obviously after all this communication her phone's now right or it's she's non-responsive and he finds her curled up on the floor i think the fire department oh the fire department yeah i think i think he called okay and then and what's this so it's all a blur dude i was in vegas right how old are you at the time i am this was 2017 so that was nine six years ago six years ago so 30 okay i'm 30 years old and i just had moved to vegas about 18 months prior so my wife we got married and then four days later we moved to las vegas and i went from like being in denver where it was non-stop fun with my friends living in an apartment building where like five of the units were occupied by my sister my four best friends

like non-stop good time stage time constantly kind of king shit of denver at that moment you know um to going to vegas where it's like comedy in vegas is abysmal it's the worst place in the world to do stand-up the people who go see comedy in vegas do not like creative comedy they want my wife's pussy stinks here's how bad it smells i swear to god they want they want a catchphrase i wrote this bit when i was there phrase you're right fuck my big old ass was the catchphrase bit that i had and i would do it there and like my friends you know i would go do it when i'd go on the road i was still on the road a lot and it was kind of like a post-modern thing like you know they love catchphrase comedy you do

a terrible setup and then fuck my big old ass so i thought it was kind of you know i don't want to get too highfalutin but definitely like a winking you know like you know anti-comedy thing but i would do that in vegas and people would be like by the third time you say it fuck my big old ass they love it they're like are you gonna sell t-shirts after the show i was about to say yeah and then i would go to like these kind of like alt you know bookstore shows on the road back when i couldn't move any tickets and those were great shows i was glad to have them i'm not besmirching them and i'd do it there and they'd be like that's awesome man yeah fuck those people that like that kind of thing so that might have been the best bit i ever wrote because it worked for everyone sagor and i used to talk about this all the time he used to and this is way before he blew up or anything and he was like ryan i really feel like if i create a

character yeah i'll i'll get there quicker than ever And we talked about this character he was talking about named Rodeo. And the catchphrase was, hey-ho, Rodeo. It's great. And I said, Tom, if you do that, I promise you, you're going to hate your life. Sure. But you're going to shoot right to the top with some bullshit. Oh, yeah, just the merchandise sales alone. You're going to be on a private jet even earlier. He just walked up to his stage going, hey-ho, Rodeo.

Standing ovation. And then they're all saying it. Yeah, 100%. Yeah. This then they're all saying it. Yeah. Like, yeah, 100%. Yeah. This podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. Whether you're dealing with decisions around career, relationships, or anything else, therapy helps you stay connected to what you really want while you navigate life. So you can move forward with confidence and excitement.

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I don't. You'd see Buffet Jackson go on stage, you know, and he would kill and you'd be like, well, I'm going to go up and do what I think is funny and then not do well. And you're like, what am I doing? Why am I here? I had a residency in Vegas. It was a big deal. I was on the strip two weeks at Planet Hollywood. And I was like, this is a big deal.

Like, I'm moving to town. I got a residency. Everything's going to be OK. I'll be able to be in town for my wife while she's in the first two years. I was four years, supposed to be four years of med school which is a very harrowing time for her and i was just i bought i died constantly and not in like the kind of like you can save it or you're having fun like literally you're supposed to do 20 i had a guy one time raise his hand like three minutes into my set and he's like excuse me and i was like yes sir and he's like

no more of you and i was like what do you mean and he's like you're ruining my wife's birthday i was like it can't be that bad spotlight onto his wife weeping into her hands in the front row yes weeping only a few minutes in shoulders bouncing makeup i have no idea i don't know what they thought they were going to see at the, you know, comics cabaret at Planet Hollywood. We ended up being a Latvian guy. So I try to save it, you know, after four more minutes. But everyone else is having fun, right? Bone-chilling silence.

Earth-shattering silence. I'm supposed to do 20. I do 12. And I'm bringing on, you know, a cabaret act. She has to come back out. She has to come out and do her thing. But it's a Vegas show. So she knows she has exactly to this moment, to the second when she's coming on stage. So now

it's just eight minutes of me being like, Tanner, the tattooed lady, everyone, she'll be right out. Let's be a little bit louder. It was so bad. And I get off stage and I just called my wife and I was like, I think I need to go back to college. I don't think I can do this anymore here. Um, that's when I started hitting the road even harder just so I could prove that I wasn't terrible at comedy. So we're there and election night, 2017. And, uh, I'm going to Denver the next day. I'm going to fly to Denver to do comedy central's roast battle in Denver. Uh, it was my first big TV credit. Uh, and they're filming it at Comedy Works, my home club. So I wake up in the morning. I have an early flight anyway. And my dad, a bunch of text messages call me when you wake up. I think he's being weird about picking me up from the airport.

And he's like, hey, man, your mom's in the hospital. She had a massive stroke. It's very touch and go. When you arrive, I just want to be honest with you hopefully she'll still be with us it was that bad it's that bad so my wife calls into school get her a plane ticket we go to denver fingers crossed uh you know i go straight to the hospital my whole family's there my mom non-responsive, can't talk. Massive, like huge, huge brain injury. And I hang out with her all day. And then that night I have to go to Comedy Works with a bunch of jokes I've never told before because it's a roast.

I haven't worked these bits out. And I just remember getting there and Justine Marino was a great lady from Denver. I've known her forever. She's been nothing but good to me. She's why I'm on Roast Battle because she was like, if you're doing Denver, you got to have Sam. So I just go up to her at the hotel and I'm like,

she's like, hey, Sam, how are you? And I'm like, well, Justine, I just want to let you know, my mom, huge stroke. I don't know if she's going to be alive moment to moment. Don't pull any punches, you know? And she's like, oh, oh to i need to do some stroke material you know of course she's a comic you know it's perfect what i needed to hear uh you know we do the show and then i go right back to the hospital so anyway all that said now i don't live in denver anymore and my wife is in med school and this is hard and

i need to be there for her but also I have my mom you know it's just a weird thing to have to figure out your priorities at that age like I love you I want to build a life with you I know you're doing something very brave and difficult but I gotta be here I gotta be with my mom so there was all this just like back and forth being in Denver going back home taking care of her so my wife the best woman saved my life in multiple ways uh she ended up transferring which you don't transfer in med school that's like an impossible it's not is that right it's very difficult to do she transferred to a school uh an osteopathic medicine school which was about a half hour from where my parents lived so we

moved back and now there's this in this we move back in may of the next year so there's about you know seven eight months where it's just this whole new dynamic because my mom took care of everyone my whole life she was the person you called if you had any difficulty you know you have to borrow money you hit a mom you know don't worry but dad's there but he's more of a mascot you know he's a mask that sounds shitty to say i know but like on the team that is my parents my mom's george steinbrenner you know what i mean she runs the operation yeah and dad he's there to raise morale you know if you're having a party yeah exactly yes my dad's the philly fanatic and my mom is trying to build a fucking franchise you know she wants to hang some she wants to hang some pennants from the rafters

you know and then there's so there's these weird uh you know my sister's like you got to be home more there's just a lot of pressures that are coming in from all over so my wife transferred and then it was just like okay my mom probably had 50 to 100 words after that you know effectively wheelchair bound she could walk with a cane and my mom who was the most independent woman who really valued her autonomy is now like kind of just beholden to the patience of her family. Not that we wouldn't give her everything, but I just remember my sister one time being like, "'Mom, say my name.'"

And my mom could say the name Julie, cause that was her sister's name. So she would just be like, "'Julie'," and my sister being like, "'Say my name, mom, Julie, Julie.'" And then my mom starts crying. My sister starts crying. So there was just a whole.

And were you just like, Julie, fucking settle down over here for a second. Well, yeah. You're wrong with her for a second. Right, yeah. Hey, throw her a fucking bone, feet. All right. Okay, she's using a spoon. Can we count some of these small victories?

From no words to 100. You're Julie for now. You're Julie. We're all Julie. All right. Everyone's Julie now. Everyone're Julie. We're all Julie. All right? Everyone's Julie now. It's a new world. There's one name.

It's Julie and it's Dave. All right? That's what we got. We got my dad's name. So she did have your dad. She remembers your dad's name. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Did she remember her name?

No, I mean, I don't think she. I think she could say Betsy. Did she remember yours? She knew. She could write our names. She just couldn't say it. She couldn't say them. Okay.

You know? And then to see my mom who had the most beautiful flowery cursive script handwriting now having to write in block letters. Just like she beat herself up so much over the course before until she passed like five years later. And it was just so difficult to see my mom just like get so pissed at herself. And then also she can no longer travel by herself you know and my dad who i just called the mascot the level of empathy and patience that he showed stepping up completely to be her caregiver and to be uh everything to her you know he learned how to cook he learned how to decorate he learned how to uh you know paint uh the pottery you know just like all this stuff that my mom

really liked he would do that for her so he my dad in this whole thing we all leveled up as far as like human beings but good god was i'm so proud of my father because again it's great doofus you know like honestly just like me incapable of very mundane things but here he is with my mom you know learning how to cook fucking quinoa you know learning how to my dad at this point 20 years sober learning how to mix a a greyhound exactly the way my mom liked it it was insane dude it was insane to see this guy who was just like a good time charlie end up being like a sanctified member of our family um and then just her like downfall we still traveled with her but it was we used to go and we go to new orleans every year as a family and my mom would just in the morning we'd be hung over she'd

wake up go about her day come home we'd get lunch and now you know having to you know not get wasted the night before because mom wants to go to the french market so it's like okay we're all gonna wake up at eight now the entire dynamic changed sure um well good i mean that you guys did that we did everything as everyone that's right you could have gone and been just like no right um so was she in a wheelchair the entire time i mean she could put her around the house, you know? And when it mattered, my mom, she would dress up, you know, put on her furs. She'd have that cane.

I remember I had a special come out. Sorry. There's a special I did called Waiting for Death to Claim Us. And it's on Amazon for free. What a weird, what a just ghoulish time for a plug. Um, I mean,

check that special. Oh my God. You ever catch yourself like remembering where you are and you're like, Oh yeah. Hopefully I get some more eyes on this thing. God, God damn it um it's fuck so anyway we debuted the special uh we we put it out uh in a movie theater in

denver oh that's nice it was nice we did it in fort collins where i live now and in in denver colorado um and my mom came and she watched it. She walked in, you know, with her cane all the way from the front door. She didn't want, she didn't even want my dad to park in the handicapped spot. So I meet her out there in the parking lot and I walk her in, you know, and everyone, my friends who've been there since day one, you know, they come up and they try and talk to her and she just, good to see you, you know, like she didn't mean to say that. and talk to her and she just good to see you you know like she didn't say that is this the first time she's gonna see you do stand up oh my mom was there day one okay good my mom and my dad have so she wants this thing she's ready for this she's been there since day one this is your special dude

anyway well i'll tell you this in a second yes my mom was very proud of me um and she was there you know she saw me in casper wyoming she saw me in kearney nebraska like she would drive to these terrible shows and see me eat shit in front of people while they didn't turn off the corn huskers game right you know like she saw all the very bad things now the specials coming out and comedy dynamics is putting it out you know for whatever relationship i have with them it was a big deal to my mom so she comes in she watches it and at the end of the night everyone's like hey what are you doing and i'm just like sitting with my mom and it's like i have to sit with my mom this is what i'm gonna do right now and then when you guys all clear out of

here my mom's gonna take that long walk back to the car so i walk her out i put her in the car and then uh she died that night no yeah i wasn't expecting you to say that yeah my mom passed away that night of a massive like hard thing uh the night did you drop her off i took her to the car with my dad oh so you just walked her walked her to the car okay and then you know because we're gonna go out that night we're celebrating and she's gonna go home and who called you to tell you uh Uh, my dad was actually, yeah, my dad drives up. So this was actually, yeah, I'm in Fort Collins where my wife's in residency. And then, um, I, there's a knock at the door at 6.00 AM. And I assumed that my mom had just kind

of been like, Hey Dave, I love you you you got to get out of the fucking house because that would happen he would he she would stay with my aunt he would come stay with us just because he's they're on top of each other right non-stop because she needs him she needs someone to walk her to the bathroom she needs someone to make all of her meals you know just the reality of the situation and he shows up and uh i'm at the top of the stairs and my dad comes in he knows where the key is he comes in and he says hey buddy and i said what's up dude and he says well your mom died and you know okay and right away i turn in my mom's son i'm like okay i need to pack a bag we need to go tell sophie we have to go tell aunt julie these are the things we have

to check off the list not your mom died you know it's more like okay and you know what my mom god bless her we would sit because my sister couldn't deal with her emotional load her being honest about her calamity so um i remember my mom sitting with me once on a patio somewhere and she was like you know me better me me and i was like mom it wouldn't be better if you were dead i'm glad you're alive i know shit sucks for you and i could talk to her this way because we were like that so can i ask you real quick i'll interrupt but she does understand you when you talk to her she just can't communicate back is she comprehending the way you're speaking to her like just can't communicate back is she comprehending the way you're speaking to her like i can't remember the clinical term i think it's synthesisia where she

can take she can hear you physically the ears work but as far as processing it every time it doesn't work every time not every time no okay so there would be things where you kind of had to explain things more to her dumb it down a little bit but yeah i'd say that as far as like engaged in a conversation she's 75 there you know he's had to slow it down she started counting airplanes man that was the weirdest fucking thing just watching her go by and she would when i'd come out and i'd see her the first thing she would tell me would be like seven planes today it's like okay and i guess when your life becomes very small after being very big that's something that you can keep track of you know what i mean

that's interesting seven airplanes today so my dad tells me my mom's dead and then my wife wakes up she starts crying immediately they were incredibly close because she altered her life path to make sure that we were there for my mom um and my dad's standing over the sink with me he's drinking water you know it's a two-hour drive from where he was and he says yeah she's we made it we made it 47 years and then she broke her promise. And I said, Dad, what do you mean? He said, we made it 47 years. We're supposed to make it 50. And then double suicide. So my dad, the third sentence, after your mom died, we have to go tell your sister, double suicide. And I could see it in his face that he thought it up on the drive up.

He was like, this is going to be good. This is going to gonna be good this is gonna be big my clothes are right yes yes yes i just remember i mean before i cried at all i'm laughing with my dad over the sink um and then we have to go tell everyone my sister totally loses it you know because because people experience things differently. It's totally fine. And then that night we go to my Aunt Julie's and we stay there as a family. We end up being together for like a month between my Aunt Julie and my house in Fort Collins. And I remember being up really late

and my wife being like, because we, you know, everyone just started drinking. That's my Uncle Tom, my Aunt, you know, my Uncle Tom's known my mom longer than my dad. We've all been kind of expecting this to happen. You know what I mean? Like, her faculties are declining. Her test, she's not drinking water.

My mom would not drink water. So she would just have, like, kidney stones, you know, just like all the time. Her urine is the color of this table. And my wife's a doctor at this point. So she, like, kind of knows what's going on you know it's just like okay if your mom's only drinking mojitos she would bring in her own mojitos to a bar you know really yeah yeah because i mean what's she have now not that she became like this like awful drunk but she just like she was medicating herself you know and hey i get it no one's mad at you mom you know so anyway it was it was it was falling

off you know um and uh so i'm there that night and like i don't write jokes well um i like to improvise i even have an idea you hammer it out on stage you know after four weekends you got five to ten minutes that's how but anyway i was just, my wife wakes up and she's like, what are you doing? And I was like, I'm just writing some stuff about my mom. Um, and that those jokes, I ended up just trying, I don't know, getting this stuff out. That ended up being like this 20 minute set that I would do in front of Tim Dillon when I was opening for him, uh, in these big theaters. And it was just such a relief. But I remember the big thing being like that weekend was the high plains comedy festival the comedy festival in denver and i remember them being like hey man we love you if

you can't do it we get it don't worry i was like i think i'm gonna do stand up you know it's like this is my favorite weekend of the year i remember going on stage right before amy miller god bless her love amy miller love amy miller longtime friend of me and my family and uh this is the first time i haven't told anyone i didn't i didn't want to be the guy at the barbecue for the festival being like hey you know my mom died no so i go on stage and uh some some very close people know david bory knew nathan lunn knew because bory's family do you know david bory he's the voice of comedy central now okay and we went from we met we met he went to my high school freshman year and we became best friends he was like a second son

to my parents and then he ended up doing stand-up independently in san francisco he has a great career um and i remember we went to my sister and then he lives in denver now we drove to her to him and we all show up and we're like hey david we gotta tell you my mom died and he's sitting it's very early he's sitting at his desk and he starts crying when he looks up and he says i really wish i wasn't wearing this shirt and we're like what and we look at it and it's two huge white asses pointed at the white house and it says uh twerk 2024 another big laugh you know but i remember uh i do this set that arguably the best i've ever been at stand up in front of everyone and it's it's very heartfelt and sweet and fresh and then i remember all my friends are washing the side of the stage and i was like and you know uh this is pretty

heavy but if my mom could see it right now i know she would say at least he's not doing crowd work and that's when my friends all started crying because they know she would say, at least he's not doing crowd work. And that's when my friends all started crying because they know she would come and see me at Comedy Works, you know, featuring headlining. And she'd be like, can't you just write a joke? Like, what are you doing? You know, that guy had a cool hat on. You're going to talk to him for 10 minutes about his hat. Write a joke saying this isn't sustainable.

And then I got off stage and I went and I just held my friends in the middle of a green room at a comedy festival and then amy miller goes up and he's she's like she just goes on stage she's like what the fuck what are we supposed to do yeah he's your he's your hero he's from here his mom's dead how many of you know how many of you knew sam's mom there's like 30 hands she's like oh my god, my God. I wish I was dead. So God bless her. She persevered. But yeah, man, it kind of teaches you. And then I couldn't smoke weed anymore. Why?

Because I started having panic attacks because I realized the frailty of life. Listen, as an avid smoker, anytime I'm at my lowest, I can't either. Yeah. It makes me focus so well, which is why I like using it, that even during the bad times, I start focusing on those and then future tripping on da-da-da-da-da-da. And I'm like, oh, my God, I can't smoke marijuana right now. I got to put this shit down. And, I mean, it defined me from 14 all the way through. 14? I was smoking weed early, man. I mean, I was doing LSD at 13.

I smoked crack accidentally when I was 13. These are all my favorites, the accidental drugs. Yeah. Well, it was just because I played drums. I was the only drummer in my very small town. So there was older boys and they had a band, a very bad like corn cover band effectively, but they needed a drummer. And they were like the cool bad kids, you know, Reed Berry and Jordan Berry.

And I remember being at a sleepover at their house one night. berry boys the berry boy them berry boys they're nothing but trouble it sounds like you see them berry boys in the graveyard you let them do whatever they're doing all right if reed berries in the cemetery you just keep on driving all right because it is not good but my dad was friends my dad was friends with their parents so he knew they were good kids they just like smoked cigarettes and you know grave robber or whatever grave rob yeah so um yeah they were passing around a pipe and i hit it because i'm not gonna be a baby here and i hit it and it ended up being crack cocaine. God bless them. Good guys.

They've turned it around. I love them. They're good men. They've turned it around. And I was a little fat kid and there was this kid there named Dan Setter. And he had beef with a kid named Mongo who was another big fat guy. But he was all on crack and he thought that mongo was sitting in the corner and he came over and he had half a pair of

scissors in his poncho he had a drug rug on and he pulled him out and he's like mongo we're settling this right now and i was like ah i'm a child dan it's me sam talent dan and having to talk him off that ledge he died in a car crash um he did not turn around. He did not. God bless him. Very funny. Very, you know, kind of like a, kind of, anyway, I don't need to talk about Dan Setter. But yeah, so the weed thing, I just realized kind of like, and I would have like, I would, panic attacks manifested as full scale, like heart attack symptoms. And I just remember like, and I learned how to do stand up stone to the bone. bone you know i got paid for some of the first biggest shows i ever did in colorado in like you know a trash bag full of weed like weed was the coolest i miss smoking weed but i

couldn't smoke anymore just because um i would start thinking about just like how my mom healthy woman good blood uh you know on the right medicine and her brain just popped randomly and i was like well fuck that's where this is all going for everyone um so yeah i miss it i can eat an edible here there nowadays but do you drink yeah but not like i used to on the road man it was it was bad i mean not like not like the shows were bad but it was like okay i'm in chattanooga and i have to take a great how it. Well, the road, you know, it'll kill you if you let it. It's so easy. There's beers and shit right in the mini fridge here.

There's anything you want to order. The food is all garbage. You know, like it's not. Sleep is bad. Sleep is terrible. You're in different time zones. You don't know what the fuck's going on sometimes. It's not a healthy lifestyle.

We try to take walks like we're trying to do something out there at least stretch your legs or do something hit the little gym at the hotel anything to to keep the machine in motion oh for sure i remember i was i had i did something at the ohio state university uh because i wrote this book about a fucking road dog comic who just you know every it was it was very well received running the light you can buy it sam talent.com there's an audio book if you're fucking stupid a bunch of comics read it you can hear burt kreischer try to read um but uh so does he do it he reads a chapter he read the first chapter yeah yeah and one of the place for the first chapter set is to come carry new mexico and him trying to figure that word out live was just a transcendent moment for

my audio team yeah um but anyway now it's like okay um there's a botanical garden so i did ohio state and then i shane gillis was in town and i was like hey man uh you're the funny bone what are you doing tomorrow i'll come down he's like come do a set i was like i'm gonna go to the botanical gardens because botanical gardens in columbus ohio are some of the best in the united states oh is that right yeah i didn't know that it's amazing yeah and i hit up shane i was like i'm going to the gardens and he was just like that's the gayest thing i've ever heard anyone i was like okay you want to just fucking be in your hotel room mired in your hangover that's fine i have to go do stuff you know because i've been on the road so i was in bands first and then i was in comedy and it's just like and i don't know if

you have this thing because you don't drink right yeah yeah so now i i listen yeah prior to all this health stuff i i'd have a beer here and there now i don't even do that yeah it's just cannabis and just shrooms that's great those are what the surgeons told me i'm allowed to have and they said no those will never hurt you yeah i said great i don't need anything pharma so i'm not into pills never thank god because i know i would be addicted like everyone else i'm not a big drinker i'm not into any of the hard drugs none of that stuff no it's just cannabis and i i don't even like the infused stuff yeah you know i just want plant and i mean flower and shrooms i think they're a nice joint on like a on a balcony

while the sun goes down or you know what i miss is smoking weed and going on a bike ride because that makes it just mystical yeah you know or a hike i love that yeah i mean sure yeah i'll work to each their own you know uh but um yeah the weed thing man it because i had to relearn how to do stand-up because i was just stoned from you know when i first stepped on stage at 18 all the way until then yeah my thing now is like when you go on the road uh you have all these friends and it's a funny the best part of being a comedian is everyone you know is the funniest person in that city so it's like okay you're in cincinnati then you're in louisville then you're in indianapolis thursday you show up your boys you get to see once a year

they want to go out and have a night with you and then that turns into the next day you're hung over and then you're on you know you're driving to fucking indianapolis and your friends are there and you got to have a couple just because you feel like shit. And then Saturday, the show suffers. So I definitely toned it down, you know, because now I've worked so hard. I don't want to fucking shit the bed now, you know, because I can finally move a couple units here and there. But yeah, boozing was, it was just, I would go out for like five weeks and come home with like $400. And I'd be like, this is good. It's not cheap either.

It's not cheap. But it's also like, I'm doing doing this i'm getting good at stand-up and this is i guess just part of the cost the self-flagellation that you have to do tell me about your dad now he's still alive right thriving dude so is he single did he ever you know date like do you talk to him about your mom at all and if so what do you talk about yeah i talk i mean my dad is around all the time now i see more of my dad now than i ever did as an adult because now it's like when me and my wife go on vacation like we went to ecuador for all of may so she could do immersive spanish medicine and i wanted to go down there and learn spanish better and work on my book and

we had this weird conversation where it's like should we invite dad she's like yeah why not so now he's just in rio bomba ecuador while we're there and we go hang out with them and stuff so he's around all the time and um yeah so my dad uh you know he's he's a handsome old man and i think that he's he goes to these grief groups. Anyway, I always joke about him just like, you know, cleaning up 13 stepping women whose, you know, husbands just went in the grave. He doesn't do that, you know. He lets the bodies cool for a little bit. No. So I don't think that I know that he's he's he's going on like, you know, day dates with a woman now.

And I remember that's nice. He goes to grief groups. Oh, yeah. He still misses your mom. It still bothers him. on like you know day dates with a woman now and i remember that's nice he goes to grief groups oh yeah he still misses your mom it still bothers him well i think he kills at these grief groups because he was at aa you know first so he knows how to talk in front of a crowd he's good in front of a crowd he's funny dude my dad this motherfucker at my mom's funeral i'm doing time i'm not doing time oh fuck i got the light yeah where's the lineup so i'm going i'm going last at the funeral you're closing i'm closing it down all right what the worst booking ever so i'm going last and my dad's like i was like dad you need to go last like what are you talking

about she's your wife of 40 plus years and he's like no just you close it down buddy you know you're gonna be do great my dad did 50 minutes 50 did 50 minutes and at no point was it like hey light this guy it was tears it was him taking long pauses when he needed to i was just like dude you you you're a kid and then all of a sudden you're an adult and you had a dad and now you've got kind of like uh you i i always admired my dad but now like i really have put him on this pedestal and i'm so proud of him um and now he's just around you know and uh yeah and real in ecuador i was like dad i'm not gonna be mad at you if you have a girlfriend i'll be mad at you if you don't tell me and he's like well i should probably tell you something

then and uh i don't want to say it's a girlfriend i want to put any pressure he's gonna listen to this i don't want to put any pressure on him i'm just i want him to be happy i don't want to be alone do whatever you want to do dad yeah we're all for it it's his life and also he was there it wasn't like my mom had her stroke and he was like i'm gonna be at the pool hall he was like there constantly so now dude in your you know going into your 70s please get it in pop all right do you um do you do anything in your stand upup or anything to honor or remember your mom? I had that 20 to 25 I did with Tim. And we did like four different or three different continents.

And I did it every night. And it was just so – so I did that. But then it kind of felt weird after I got done. It felt like I was kind of like – I don't want to be vulgar. Like humping my mom's memory for like you know like mining that for 25 minutes and when i'm headlining it's improvising it's silly it's not at all uh profound in any way i don't want anyone thinking or like ruminating when i'm on stage i want them to be throwing up or mad you know i don't i want them laughing or i want them to be like what's going on up there like harlan williams is a hero you know rory scoville when you watch those guys you don't leave there being like remember that

remember that thing he said about bananas and you're like i don't know why that was so funny but in the moment it was the best thing you've ever heard so yeah so i had i had 25 minutes and i was proud of it and then i just was like i gotta stop doing this it feels weird it didn't feel cathartic it didn't oh it did in the time but then after you know a year goes by a year and a half you're like i don't how i'm how i felt when i wrote this in my aunt's guest room uh is not true anymore right so now i'm having to like kind of like contrive these emotions on not that i was like weeping on stage but like the pauses were like i don't believe in this anymore you know i've not that I moved on.

I think about my mom all the time. Whenever I smell lilac, you know, whenever I hear the name David Sedaris, it's like all these things that she gave me as a mother. Whenever I travel, my mom, you know, we didn't have a lot of money because my dad was figuring it out. But she still took us on vacation twice a year to like Bar Harbor, Maine, you know, to Anna Maria Island, Florida, all these places i'd never heard of and that's when i was like well man um you know what's fucked dude uh for christmas the year before she passed away i got her and my dad tickets to paris nice yeah because she hadn't

been outside of the states besides like mexico or canada since her stroke and i was like you gotta go you guys gotta figure out how to do this because i you know you figure she's gonna be around forever you know and then uh i didn't get the refund on those tickets you know i couldn't couldn't get the money back they didn't let you get to extend a credit or something on the bereavement no yeah yeah you know what was weird that's some credits you could have used for the road bro you know what uh and also like when she passed i never ever considered like am i gonna get any money but i the only the worst when i went full reed berry in the graveyard when i was like hey dad who's gonna get all those united miles you can transfer those he's like i think i'll

hold on to him and i was like okay you definitely need those i couldn't upgrade all the time because my mom flew for the federal reserve all the time so those miles are just languishing right now you could be killing them out there. Oh, yeah. I'm just waiting for upgrades like an idiot. No, let me use these miles. Dude, thank you very much for coming on and talking about this for real. Yeah, I feel like I talked too much. I'm sorry.

No, this is your episode. This is what this is. Thanks, man. But before we end, something I always ask our guests when they're first time here is advice they give to their 16-year-old self. So after everything we've talked about, what do you think you would tell 16-year-old Sam Talent? Now, is this with, am I the 36-year-old man that sits before you? Yeah, with your wisdom and your hindsight, you can go back to your 16-year-old self and give yourself a heads up. What would you like to say? I would just say that you should in your 20s you're going to uh have

regional success in denver early uh if you do stand up uh and maybe don't spend every day waiting to go on stage for 10 minutes just sitting sitting in a cloudy pot filled room with women who either don't love you as much as you love them or deadbeats who can get eighths of weed for $20. You know, that's great fucking advice actually. Yeah, it really is because I do want him to make all those same mistakes. I want him to get his heart broken.

Like maybe just be more aware of the fact that like just because you love someone a lot doesn't mean that they're ever going to reciprocate that um and uh just get outside more man you know you gain some weight you go from a stud who uh a d1 prospect to uh you know you're stepping on the scale and in your wife's medical clinic and her going what you know yeah so just watch out for that you know if you're gonna drink maybe don't drink 15 beers maybe be a cocktail guy yeah it's great you know um and also travel more earlier go outside of the united states earlier because you really really think that you're like this cultured like you knowd man of the world.

But you were afraid to go to anywhere outside of the States because you didn't think that they would be nice to you. And also quit worrying about people being mad at you. That's a big thing. Yeah. There's so much in my life defined by like I don't want anyone to be mad at me. Yeah. Oh, okay. Okay.

Yeah. Good for you. Yeah. Thank you again. I really appreciate you being here. Dude, thank you, man. yeah um thank you again i really appreciate you dude thank you man for real yeah i really appreciate you having me please plug and promote everything one more time yeah when this comes out i'll be in australia so come to those shows and then um samtalent.com i'm in every city in america all the way through 2024 uh if you if you're listening to

this in eastern europe or scandinavia i'll be there in november um i'm obsessed with doing stand-up outside of the states right now it's so much fun um and uh follow at sam talent on instagram and check out sam talent.com with two l's to see my dates this is my podcast i went on rogue and i didn't plug my podcast plug it bro chubby behemoth it's funny listen to it that's all i gotta say there's nothing profound or insightful like this one but if you want to hear about my friend nathan lund uh being shut down at a burger king window for trying to order 10 whoppers at midnight that's the pod for you okay yeah so chubby behemoth listen to that all right

man thank you very much thank you dude. Come see me on tour. Get all your tickets at RyanSickler.com, and we'll talk to you all next week. Bye.