May 5, 2022 • 44 mins
Arden and Julie Anne talk to one of Arden's oldest friend's and former comedy partner, Lisa DeLarios. She's a comedian, a star of Storage Wars, and a dog trainer! They talk to Lisa about growing up with no access to pop culture in a very religious family, saying no to Hollywood trying to make her conform to their standards, blazing her own trail, telling Zach Galifianakis to try comedy, and much more!
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
M m D. I'm in heaven. Hello, that's no need distress.
She's she's a lady. Hello and welcome to another episode
(00:30):
of Lady at the Road podcast. My name is Arta Marine.
You might know me from Insatiable or Chelsea Lately or Shameless.
I'm here with my co host, Ms. Julie Anne Robinson. Yes,
what do people know you from? Julia? They best know
me for um directing the Pilot of Britain. It never
(00:51):
gets sold from me, I'm into it. Well, here's a
game we're having today. Are you so excited for our
guests today? Man, I'm really really excited. She's a brilliant,
brilliant stand up comedian. She was my co host of
the show that I did for many years in Brooklyn
called The Party Machine that we did at Union Hall
in the Bellhouse. She's such a good joke writer, she's
(01:14):
such a great performer, and she's also like a top
dog trainer in Los Angeles. One of my very favorite people,
Miss Lisa Delarios. Hello, Lisa. Hi, Ladies of the Road.
So good to be here. Julia is going to catch
our listeners up on how we came to this podcast
(01:34):
right now. Well, last week we were talking about your
life as a stand up, and then I was really
interested when Anna was talking about Zach Galifernakis was on
David Letterman show My Next Guest Needs No Introduction, and Anna,
what did you say? Anna called me and you had
a question, Anna, what did you What did you call?
(01:55):
And ask me, Well, I had heard it. He says
your name basically Calfadax says your name in a way
where I was watching it, you know, kind of zoned
out on my phone, and then I heard him say
Lisa delirious, and I was like, Lisa, Lisa, like to
my almost to myself, like that's Lisa, you know, talking
to my partner, like Lisa, And he was like what
what what? And I'm like, Lisa, it's least talking about Lisa.
(02:18):
So you know, I texted Arden immediately. He says, Lisa,
Lisa told me about being stand up. You should try it.
You should really really try it. You should really try it.
So you you obviously were singularly instrumental in his career,
which obviously you know, we all know all about that.
So I was just fascinated and I wanted to know
(02:40):
where all began. When Juliana and I were talking before
the show about this, Like, so, so he was talking
about how he moved to New York and that he
met this woman named Lisa and delirios. Is that how
you actually pronounced your last name? Well, I go back
and forth. Sometimes I say Delaria, sometimes I say Delarius.
(03:01):
But my family is from Texas, so they all just
say delarios, delarios. But it's a Spanish word, so it
really should be delarios. But I think Zack says delarious. Well,
I was curious just and Julianne and I were discussing this.
I know that really struck Julianne that like this. So
you know, he and I was watching it last night
(03:22):
that here here they are. It's he and David Letterman
there and there's like hundreds, hundreds and hundreds of people
in the audience. He's talking about moving from North Carolina
to New York City and he meets you, and that's
I also met both of you at that time. And
it just occurred to me the more that I've gotten
to know you, and as the audience just learned, I now,
you know, the more I've gotten to know you, that
I know you didn't grow up with pop culture. Really,
(03:44):
you didn't really grow up with much TV. You didn't
grow up listening to you know, radio? And how did
you become aware of stand up? How did you decide
you wanted to be a stand up? Like? What was
like the big dream? How old were you? And did
you move to New York to become a stand up?
Those are like I never actually asked you your genesis question,
(04:05):
like how you got from a person that couldn't watch
TV too? Zach is saying he met you and you're
telling him to become a stand up? How did that?
How did you move from small town Texas to New
York with the dream of being a stand up having
grown up in a evangelical house. Let's see if I
know the answer. I. You know what's interesting is I
(04:26):
remember I mean I lived in East Texas from age
eight um until I graduated high school. I lived in
the woods on eighty acres. We didn't even have running
water or electricity for a period of time because we
were so far off the grid. And I remember going
to one of my classmates birthday party and they went
(04:50):
around and asked all, like, I think we were like
seven or eight. Well, I guess we were eight because
I was definitely in East Texas at the time, and
they asked what did we want to be when we
grew up? And I said a comedian. Wow, which is
so weird to me. I don't know why I said that.
I don't know where I got that idea. And then
I remember there was another point when I was a
(05:12):
kid and I told my parents I wanted to be
a ventriloquist, and they bought me a teach yourself ventriloquism
kit for Christmas. Did you have a dummy? It was?
It was so it was such a cheap kit, Like
it wasn't even a real dummy. It was a cardboard
like doll with like um those pushpins like so you
(05:34):
could like move a string in its mouth would open.
But I did learn which consonants or which letters you
replace the consonants with, because the consonants are where you
have to close your lips, so like like boy for example,
used uh doy oh yeah, use d instead of be
(05:56):
so oh. I wanted a nice Loyd boy. So I'm
not I'm not doing my lips right now. Well, idea,
I am a little I'm out of practice. How did
I never know this? Can I ask a question? I'm
just really curious. But the living off the grid thing
(06:17):
was that a religious thing? Was where did that come from? What,
what was the decision behind that? Because and was it idalic?
Because it kind of sounds cool, you know. I think
my parents were young, and they were they had been hippies,
like they went to Woodstock together. Um my dad had
(06:37):
studied Eastern religion before he met my mom, and then
they had this weird conversion. I mean they were in
Texas after all, and they went to one of those
mega churches and so they wanted to move out of
the city because we were living in Dallas, so they
wanted to move to the country. And I think my
(06:59):
dad had wanted the idyllic, living off the land kind
of you know, hippie utopia, but my mom, I think
more there was also it was the Bible Belt, and
there were all of these fundamentalists communities out there, and
they wanted to be involved. And they put my brother
and I into a private school called Christian Heritage, and
(07:23):
our teachers were visionaries and um I remember my third
grade teacher said said to our class that the pope
was evil. So they and they bought this eighty acre
plot of land in uh In the woods to build
a hout. My dad built the house, he drilled a well. Um.
(07:44):
He also was in the had been in the solar
business in the seventies. My dad could build soldier panels,
solar panels, Gary, Gary, and my dad's like larger than
life character and um. Yeah. So oh, they moved out
there kind of to live off the land and and
and you know, they thought it would be good for
(08:06):
their kids. But then also, you know, there were all
these religious communities they wanted to get involved in, so
and then somehow they found their way out of that
into Catholicism. Why what was do you know what that
journey was? You know, my parents aren't rednecks, like they're
(08:29):
actually smart seeking, you know, curious people, and they were
both I think, spiritually seeking for different reasons. And I
think I honestly don't know how they ended up on
Catholicism specifically. But I went through Catechism like normal kids
(08:51):
were born into the Catholic Church, you know, and they
go through this. Are you Catholic? Julian? I am? How weird?
Well would you say? That's so? I don't know, I'm
not now, but I grew up that way, so you
you went through like the whatever what is that called
catechism God confirmation? Confirmation in my my family was not religious,
(09:18):
but I remember in all the kids in my school
growing up went to they went to cc D catechisms CCD.
We go to c c D. I went to c
c D. But that was I was joining the church,
whereas the other kids that was like that was what
they had always been doing, you know, And um, yeah,
so that was a new leaf, and I think things
(09:42):
felt a little normal. And then I went to public school.
They took us out of Christian heritage and stuck us
in a public school. How old were you? How old
were you? I guess I was nine. Then we are
like in a school dreadknecks like it was full in
small town East Texas in the eighties, and that was
(10:07):
kind of shocking. What was it? What was it like?
I mean, obviously your fish out of water, right, I
was definitely a weirdo. But I had a way of
kind of fitting in, and that my comedy comes in. Well,
you know, there's definitely humor in my family. Gary's funny,
(10:31):
My dad's funny. It doesn't really try to be funny,
but he's My grandparents are funny? Is your brother funny?
He tries to be? Was your family shocked that as
you started to express that you wanted to be a
stand up? I will say that there was, you know,
with with my parentals, there was some heaviness in my
(10:53):
household growing up. Like my parents you know, didn't have
a great marriage, so there was like kind of a
set madness that was ever present. And I I do
feel like I um, you know, my defense mechanism was
to be funny and silly and keep everything light. And
(11:14):
I remember, like in junior high, I had a quote
that I would say to my family, is nobody takes
me humorously around here? I had I had UM. I
found a clip of you online talking about your mom
and saying when you When she first heard so you
(11:34):
do stand up, she said to you afterwards, what you
look pretty? Yeah. That was my only televised stand up,
which was in two thousand and seven, and I did
Live a Gotham on Comedy Central, which was a big
deal for me. I was actually interestingly, I had left
New York and I had moved to Austin for a
(11:56):
few years, and the comedy scene in Austin was amazing
and so much so that like industry people would come
to Austin to find talent. And that's where I got
kind of scene, you know. Um, they they were doing
an audition for Live at Gotham, which was a life
(12:17):
stand up show that was on Comedy Central for a
few years, and and I did an audition there and
and I got the gig and yeah, like I remember,
you know, we taped it and then it aired a
couple of months later, and I wasn't with my mom,
but I spoke to her. I told her it was
going to air, and my mom so my where my
(12:40):
parents kind of went religiously, like they split up. My
dad has kind of gone back to his Eastern Buddhism roots,
but my mother has continued to go deeper into Christianity.
And so yeah, she saw me perform. And I am
a clean comic, like I'm is really clean, goofy, observational
(13:04):
talk about animals and um, but my mom managed to
find something offensive. So yeah, I said, hey, Mom, did
you see you know, did you see the taping or whatever?
And she she was like, yeah, I saw it. And
I said, well what did you think? Which I you know,
(13:25):
I didn't even want to ask, and She's like, well
you look pretty well, and uh yeah. It was like,
uh uh so she's never seen me perform again, I've
never let her. She never asked. It was like just
an understood thing. Mm hmm, it was it. I mean,
did you expect support? No, I didn't. I wasn't. I
(13:46):
didn't expect it to be that way her response. But yeah,
I didn't expect I didn't. I think I was nervous
to ask her. But you know, it's like you never
quite give up trying to get get what you need.
And there's like an emphasis aren't being feminine in that statement?
(14:06):
Do you think that that was? It's like that couldn't
be the more, there's nothing there can She could have
said a worse thing. Actually, it was like I would
have rather said, well you looked ugly. Yeah. I was
talking to Odden and she was saying that you have
been rapped by every major manager in the biz. But
(14:31):
when they as soon as I was just interested in
wondering if there's a line between your mom's comment and
then those guys, because every time they told you to,
you know, look pretty, sex it up where the heels
you fired them? Is that accurate? It's an accurate statement. Well,
(14:52):
I did have to managers that now are pretty I
mean one of them was pretty big manager then um,
and now one of them is a prettying manager. And
only one of them made a remark like that's me. Yeah,
I definitely felt like I remember thinking, it's not so
(15:12):
much that I'm offended because he told me I needed
to not be afraid of my body. That was the quote.
He saw me. It's so gross, he saw me. It
was guys. It was the nineties. I was wearing oversized jeans.
You know, it was the nineties. Nobody was looking sexy
in the nineties. I was like, I wear vintage clothes.
I like dressed. There's also at the height of like
(15:33):
I knew you then, And it was also at the
height of when Jinning grow Flow had just proven that
you can be kind of quirky and still beautiful and
and they tried to put her in a box. You
know that that that there's so much like commenting on
your looks. You know when when the guys just get
to go be funny, and there was so much commenting
on your looks. I remember thinking, as a female comedian,
(15:57):
you have to either be sexy or a sexual. Like
there's no in between, and I never felt like I
fit insiether one of those I was like, and I
I liked feeling like I was not either of those,
you know. I just was wanted to be funny and
(16:18):
and you kind of when you step on stage as
a semi attractive female, you're up against you're kind of
up against that a little bit. I mean you and
I've talked about this a lot, where if you're not
being like super sexy with it and you're but and
you're not like funny looking or whatever, where you're not
an underdog, where you're not an underdog, some of the
(16:40):
audience already resents you because they're they're used to it.
Or maybe it's changing more now, but historically, as we
were coming up, we weren't guys, you know, and so
it's for me. I always feel like I had to
kind of neuter it down so I wasn't threatening, but
still be cute enough that they would listen. I absolutely, yeah,
(17:02):
um yeah. And I think that the other manager who
he saw me, I was twenty one. I was so young,
and I was like, you know, I don't know. I mean,
one of my first jokes was about Kenny g like,
you know, I knew you then. You were great, though
(17:23):
you were always great, You've always been you. I've always
been such a fan. I mean I didn't even know
you very well then, and I had so much respect
for your writing. And it's so funny. I've been watching
clips online. I mean, you're just so funny you Wow,
that is very nice and and are You've always been
so supportive and I if only I had believed in
(17:45):
myself as much as you know, my good friends, I'm
gonna ask you two questions. What was your big dream
when you move? Like when you moved, like, what would
your ideal outcome have been moving to New York? You know,
it's funny. I've thought about this a lot because that
was a really major time in my life. So I
(18:07):
was twenty one. I had no direction in my life,
and I forgot to mention that. You know, I've had
those like little weird moments as a child lying to
be a comedian ventrol quist. But then that went away
and I graduated from high school and Roberty Lee High
School in Tyler, Texas, That's right, um, And then I
(18:28):
moved to Dallas. You know, it was the closest big
city and I started going to community college and I
was totally direction list. And then I had my first love.
Like I met an amazing guy. I was nineteen and
we fell in love in Dallas and we moved in together,
and he was this prodigy musician. He was like kind
(18:53):
of semi celebrity in Dallas when he was like fourteen,
and he was always you know, he thought I was hilarious,
and I remember he gave me a gift of There
was a stand up comedy book in the nineties called
Judy Carter I had that. I had that it's so cliche,
(19:16):
and you know, it's like, what's your ethnicity and write
jokes about your ethnicity. Um, But I do think that
he encouraged me, and we were living together, and then
when I was nineteen and he went on tour for
a few months. It was summer and I didn't know
(19:39):
what to do with myself, and I had had a
friend from high school who had moved to New York City,
and so I decided to go and stay with her
for the time that he was on tour. I would
stay with my friend and I enrolled into stand up
comedy classes at the New School for Social Research. One
of them was instructed by this guy named Scott Aikman
(20:00):
who's still in New York stand up UM. And one
of them was this wild old improviser named Marty Friedberg
whose zipper was always down um and he actually he
used to do comedy with Andy Kaufman and I saw
him on some of the old Andy Kaufman show tapes.
(20:23):
So that was my first time ever going on stage.
So I was in New York for the summer and
I took these comedy classes. I didn't go. I didn't
have theater background in school like I had not. I
was had never been a performer. I was terrified to
be in front of people. But I knew that I
(20:45):
had this itch and it had something to do with humor,
and so I, you know, I did that not with
some clear goal like I'm going to be an actress,
I'm gonna be I. I didn't envision anything, But I
think my main motivation was, you know, I want to
find my thing. I want to know what my thing is,
(21:08):
and I want to not be afraid. In piggybacking off
of what you said earlier of like you wish you
had the belief in yourself. It's funny, like I, Um,
I think certainly, when I was on Mad TV every summer,
I would still go take classes at the ground length
because I felt like it was a fluke that I
had been hired and I just now knowing you and
(21:30):
being like one of your number one fans now for
twenty years. Would it be correct to say that you
feel like there's that you still need, like something I
know that you sometimes you torture yourself with like I
just need I just need to do three more months
of Mike's I just need to do three more things.
I just need like this joke. Just you know that?
Is that? Is that an accurate assessment? Yeah, it's always
(21:53):
been a struggle for me. I've never I mean I
can honestly say that I've never really enjoy did doing
stand up and I did it for you know, over
twenty years. Yeah, I just, um, it was always terrifying,
and I never believe the matter. If I had a
(22:16):
manager or you know, some comic I respected told me
I was funny, I just never believed it. Do you
think you could have? I don't know. That's really interesting.
I mean I have the same thing. I mean, I
feel the same way I've never enjoyed stand up. Never,
I've never enjoyed. I think it's so common, especially for women.
(22:36):
Do you think that if you were to look back
on that now, I mean, if you were to say,
but how could you get past that? What do you
think would have helped you understand? Because I mean, you
you're you're kind of an well, you're an icon to
all these people, you know, Zach Galifakas being one of them,
(22:58):
but yet you never believe that you good enough? So
what how? What do you think? What would you say
to your twenty five year old self, Like, if you
could go back in time and give her some advice,
is there something you would tell her? Uh? You know,
I think I one of my friends. You know, I've
(23:18):
never done UM twelve stuff, but I have a lot
of friends that have, and I always use their little UM.
I don't know if they're sayings or quotes, UM, but
I have actually used quite a few of them in
my life. UM. But I had a friend tell me
not that long ago, UM and I don't even remember
(23:41):
the exact quote, but it's basically like showing up as
your yourself that you are your imperfect self. Showing up
as your imperfect self like, it's that's totally great, and
I mean I guess like it's you know, it would
be easier for me to give in to a year
old that's not myself. Okay, they give advice to that pass.
(24:05):
How about ye old terrified art and that was your
stand up friend that always felt like you knew how
to write jokes and that I still don't feel like
I still you know, you still have to walk. I
still call you and run my set beforehand. I think,
you know, um preparing like you know, I used to
(24:26):
obsess like I should have better material, like I should
have better jokes, um, And so I would try to
write like new material before an important show and it's like, no,
just do what you have, like, prepare your set, know
what you're gonna do, and just commit to that and
(24:48):
then you have that, then you just be present and
that's I'm not working this well. But yeah, I think
letting go of trying to be perfect, because really, when
you are doing comedy, the moment when I've been doing
(25:10):
stand up and I've actually had fun on stage, which
are far few between, is when the fear just lifted, um,
and I was just having a conversation with the audience.
You know, I think there's yeah, I don't know. I
have to think more about that. What the advice would be.
(25:33):
That's that's that's great advice. Right there. We're gonna take
a quick break and we'll come back and we'll discuss
this advice. Great and we're back. Sorry, Sorry, sorry, I'm
just really interested by what you say, because, um, you know,
(25:54):
if I'm mentoring people who I think I think we
talked about this before on if I'm mentoring people and
they want to be a director, and this is true
for me. You get people and they say like young women,
and they say, well, I feel like I want to
be a director. Um, but first I'm going to be
(26:16):
like a really great focus puller. Then I'm going to
go and I'm going to work in the sound apartment
for a while. Um, and then I'm going to maybe
do some producing and then I'll be ready to direct.
Whereas that kind of thinking is much rarer for guys.
They go, right, I'm gonna just go and direct some stuff.
(26:37):
You know, as I was quite I don't know, when
I was listening to talk, I thought, wow, that sounds
really familiar. As you, I thought the same. I actually
thought of the story that you were telling, and I
was wondering, Lisa, so many of the guys that we
came up with have had huge success. And then even
more recently when we reconnected ten years ago and we're
(27:00):
doing open mics in an Australian youth hostel and soho
or people were the hand towels were people's actual bath towels.
A lot of the guys there have had tremendous like that,
And it's not necessarily the most talented, you know that,
Like I mean, I mean, look, that's a personal sort thing.
Everybody's In my opinion, some of the ones have been
(27:22):
the most talent. But like, do you think that if
you had been a guy like in the nineties and
doing it, that there would have been more freedom of
like I'm just gonna do it and see what happens
and I'm not gonna doubt it, And do you think
it would have been a different experience? Uh, you know,
it's hard to say, uh, because I just a pictured
me being a guy. But me, uh, I know, and
(27:44):
you know, and I know plenty of guys that are
insecure and self defeating, But I do think I would
say that there's it seems to be in comedy. I
women being way more, way harder on themselves, and they
(28:07):
there's like there might be a thing of just being
raised as a as a male that you have a
little more of a built in confidence or I don't know,
I don't know. I think that the guys I always
found that they helped each other out more I didn't.
I always felt like I saw them kind of being
(28:29):
more community minded toward each other, but that they didn't
necessarily include the women in that. You know, And and
when we started, there weren't that many women at doing
stand up comedy. Uh, there's way more now. When I
first showed up on the New York stand up scene
in or maybe it was, I did not get warm
(28:52):
vibes from a lot of the I mean they're, like
I said, there weren't that many female comics. And I
wish you and I had met then, but we kind
of missed each other the first few years. I knew you,
maybe you didn't know me, but we weren't. But we weren't.
We we didn't hang up, No, we do. We we
were doing stand up. I knew you from stand up
(29:13):
New York, but I guess we were. I was doating
your roommate. Well, I was going to Hamburger Harry's, which
was a Hamburger restaurant in Times Square. Yep, did you
Boston Comedy Club, New York Comedy Club. There was not
that many all shows either. It was all very clubby, clubby. Yep,
there was all clubby clubby. There weren't like cool coffee shop.
(29:36):
I remember your joke from back in the day. I
remember you at a joke about standing in front of
the television and your mom or your grandmother saying, get
out of the way the TV. Your grandma, get out
of the way TV. You're daddy, not a glassmaker. We
were doing stand up at the same time. I know
you're jokes. Well, I guess when I first show. I'm
talking about when I first showed out on the scene,
(29:57):
I had negative, um, I had a few really like
um like me girl experiences. Yeah yeah, I was like whoa, um,
you know, and I could see like I was young
and sweet and kind of funny, and they were like
(30:19):
who is she thinks she is? And I was also
so yeah. So I was going to go into how
I met Zack. You should do you want me to? Okay?
So I decided to move to New York. In nineteen four.
(30:40):
I was living with my boyfriend, Um, the musician, and
I had gone to New York and done my stand
up comedy classes, and I came back and I was like,
I've got it. I know what I'm gonna do, and
I'm going to move to New York and I'm gonna
do stand up. But it wasn't an easy thing to
do because I was in love and everything I knew
(31:01):
and everyone I knew was in Dallas. But I my
parents also got a divorce that year, and I think
that was a big motivator because I was like just
turned one, and I was like, I'm too young to
settle down. As much as I was crazy about my boyfriend,
I was like, I can't do this right now, Like
(31:23):
I gotta I don't want to end up like my mom.
And I was like, I gotta go do the scariest,
most difficult thing, which has moved to New York City
do stand up comedy. I did not have a clear
goal of what I wanted out of it. I just
knew that I had to do something drastic, and I
had had this experience with taking the classes and then
(31:45):
the culmination of the classes. We got to perform at
the Comic Strip on the Upper east Side and it
was like a dream. I definitely went over my time,
but I got laughs and it I was bit definitely
like I knew I had to do it more. And
(32:06):
so I moved to New York um and I was
their apartment hunting. It was right around Thanksgiving. I'm so old,
and I was at this bar on the Lower east
Side and my best friend at the time, Mary Armstrong,
who I had known since junior high, she moved to
New York with me, which was very great that I
(32:28):
didn't have to do it alone. So she and I
were in New York and we were looking for an
apartment and we're staying in a youth hostel and we
went to get a drink at this bar called max
Fish on the Lower east Side. It was all very
remember Max Fit. Yeah, it was a great bar. It
was on Ludlow Street. Was that was That's where to be,
That's where to be. But this was like it was
(32:48):
still a little kind of dangerous at that time. And
Zach Galfanakis, so we're hanging out this bar. I was
at the bar waiting trying to order a drink and
Zach was sitting like standing next to me trying to
get a drink, and he said to me, hey, will
you get that guy over there to buy you a
(33:08):
drink and then give it to me. And we just
started chatting. And it didn't feel like this is a
cute guy at the bar and we're flirting. It felt
like this is my friend. Like it just felt were
safe for our listeners. He was so cute back in
(33:30):
the day. Like if people know him, know I was
more of a character, like was adorable, adorable, really adorable
and dynamic and just so and you know, he was Southern.
He was fresh to New York from North Carolina, and
he wanted to be an actor. That was what he
was there for. And he was really serious about it.
(33:51):
And he wore overalls and rollerblades. He would literally rollerblade
and hang onto the back sitey bus where all while
wearing overalls. I remember he was cleaning houses. And then
he also worked at one of the really really thin
frozen yogurt things that was like between two storefronts, so
it was like on the Upper West Side that was
(34:12):
like it was basically just the width of a machine,
like a frozen yogurt machine. Well, I totally forgot about that.
It was like on like seventy three and Columbus and
it was like the width of a frozen yogurt machine.
And he worked there, and then he was like a
house cleaner. He was like, he was like, you could
hire him like fifty bucks to clean your toilet. So
(34:34):
so you met him and you're like, this is not
a romantic thing, but this is my friend. I feel
like we're not flirting. This is my friend. And and
it just so happened that on the other end of
the bar that night that I met him, my friend
Mary was chit chatting with A. D. Miles, who was
also a very successful comedy person. Um. He was a
(34:54):
head writer for the Tonight Show. Um. But he he
and Miles had gone to college together. And we're living
on the Lower East Side in this tenement apartment and
across the street from Max Fish. So the four of
us all met up. I remember that apartment didn't have
a tub in the kitchen. Remember that I've been in
(35:17):
that apartment and if you the toilet, you like kind
of cold barely fit your legs into the room with
the toilet. It was like it was a closet. I
wanted to just catch up to present day and say
I do too. So you are now living in Los Angeles.
Are you still doing stand up? Well, pre pandemic, I
(35:39):
was doing stand up, Yes, I had you know it
was actually still doing open mics. UM. I had a
manager who I really liked, a woman here in l A. UM,
But I was and I was hosting a monthly show
with the old friends from the old days, Andrea Rosen,
who's so funny and lovely. Um. So I was doing it,
(36:04):
but I was still I was going to commercial auditions. UM.
Not really sure what I wanted. But you also have
been finding since I've known you, I've never met a
bigger animal lover and like as you. You know, and
you had a variety of different jobs. Suden was telling
me that you um that you trained as an occupational
(36:26):
therapist and that you worked for the a s p C.
A I did, and that you're an animal trainer. You
are right now an animal trainer, Is that right? Well?
When I moved back to l A three and a
(36:46):
half years ago, I needed to make money and I
had just come off of that job working U doing
outreach in the South Bronz for the s p c A,
which was crazy job. Uh. And I have a comedian
friend who is now married to a woman who owns
(37:09):
a private training company here in l A. And I
met her. She was great, we got along, she hired
me and I trained I mentors with a trainer, a
positive reinforcement trainer. And it was scary to start doing
(37:29):
something brand new in my forties, but I was like, whoa,
this is so cool. It's learning to communicate with dogs
and through positive reinforcement, and so yeah, I cut to now,
(37:52):
I after doing it for three years, I feel like
I'm actually kind of becoming pretty proficient at it. And
I love training dogs, and it's I can make money
doing it. There's no shortage, especially during the pandemic. Everybody's
got a new puppy, and I actually want I'm really
(38:16):
motivated now to kind of make it more public, uh,
that positive reinforcement is the way to go, because there
is still so much of the old school way of
training dogs using aversive tools and punitive ways, like you know,
leash jerks and prong collars. I mean, every other dog
(38:39):
in l A is wearing a prong collar, and I
just want be And the one of the reasons for
that is because Caesar Milan is the most famous dog
trainer and his his techniques are not science based and
they've been debunked. I mean some of them. He you know,
he used some appropriate techniques, but any of is I
(39:01):
you have to be dominant, you are the leader. Um,
it's all just a larkey and it's it's it's damaging.
But as a person who loves you and is rooting
for you, like and it's just your number one fan,
I have to say, just witnessing this year, fact that
you are taking ownership of something like that you're good
(39:22):
at it and you know you're good at it, and
like you're letting your like just the gift of that
of like owning like I'm good at this and I
think I am. I know you've spoken to me that
you you you'd love to have like a show or
something where you could like it seems like you found
something that is makes you feel good about yourself and
feels a little bit like a calling. If does that
(39:43):
feel accurate? It does? Is it more so than stand
up or the same as more so? But I do
feel like stand up is just part of who I
am so I don't think that I could have found
my way to training dogs, and because so much of
it is training people and working with people. And yeah,
(40:04):
and I think I envisioned somehow that they're all it's
all going to come together in some way, it's all
gonna feed into each other. And but yeah, I do
definitely feel like, for once in my life, I'm actually like, yeah,
I'm really good at this. I love that this is
a happy ending. There's something outside CHOBEI is crazy. No,
(40:25):
I know it's but you know what, honestly, it took
a pandemic. I need to really open myself up to
that possibility. Mm hmm. You seem the least questioning. You
seem the happiest and the least questioning, and like that
you know you're being of service and that you are
that what you do makes the difference. Julianne has a
(40:45):
new puppy. I do, I guess. I mean, just just
to kind of wrap this up a little bit, we
Adden and I were talking and we kind of see
you and I don't know if you find this offensive
or what do you think consecurate? We see you as
a rebel. You're kind of a rebel. Yeah, you did
it your own way. You did it, you did it,
(41:07):
You've done it your way. You're Gary's girl. I take that.
I actually take that as a huge compliment. I like
that you didn't let just like ambition or like you
just you're like, this is who I am and not
in a gross way, I'm not, but like it's just
like I think you you've stuck true to your sense
of self and we're uncompromising in a way that I
(41:31):
think a lot of people might have folded in and
been like, Okay, this is what you want me to be. Like,
I think you protected yourself. H wow, that's interesting. I
feel like, you know, I think that, Yeah, I have
to think about that. I think, yeah, I beat up myself.
You know, I beat myself up a lot. I think
(41:53):
that's what we all do, is we're so hard on ourselves.
And I think that's part of the beauty of getting older,
is like you really do just give up the fight
at a certain point, and you know, and I think
I just finally let go of trying to make myself
do things that didn't feel natural, didn't feel like the
(42:16):
right fit. And yeah, well thank you so much. It's
been I could talk to you for hours. It has
been I just love you so much. You've been such
a good friend to me and I'm so glad our
listeners can get to know you. Where can people find
out more about you, either your comedy or your dog
training services. I love you too, arden Um, and you too, Julianne.
(42:41):
I on my instagram, just my personal instagram, which is
mostly pictures of my dog is Lisa Dhilarios d E
l A I D E l A r I O
s yes. And I have a sister instagram which is
my dog training instagram, which is Lisa loves Dogs l
(43:06):
u v z, which is embarrassing, but somebody already took
l O v E s uh so yeah, that's kind
of me trying to I'm trying to be more dog
trainery on social media. It's been great. Thank you so much.
Thank you to us, thanks for coming to play with us.
And we'll be right back and we're back and if
(43:31):
you want to email us, you can email us at
Lady Road Podcast at gmail dot com. We love to
get your emails. We love Please like us on iTunes,
leave us reviews, tell your friends. The more we have
people you know put it actually really helps us. It
makes my heart go, oh, this was a good decision
to give these scales this podcast. If you're not feeling
just go go over to Apple Apple Podcast and give
(43:53):
us a nice star over there. Um, Julianne, anything you
want to promote before we head off, I have nothing
to promote great, nothing at all. I'm at Arta Marine
and Instagram A R D E N M y R
I N or Lady Rhode Podcast. Everybody stays safe. Were
a mask, have a good time, be nice to one another,
and we'll see you next week. Bye bye,
M m D. I'm in heaven. Hello, that's no need distress.
She's she's a lady. Hello and welcome to another episode
(00:30):
of Lady at the Road podcast. My name is Arta Marine.
You might know me from Insatiable or Chelsea Lately or Shameless.
I'm here with my co host, Ms. Julie Anne Robinson. Yes,
what do people know you from? Julia? They best know
me for um directing the Pilot of Britain. It never
(00:51):
gets sold from me, I'm into it. Well, here's a
game we're having today. Are you so excited for our
guests today? Man, I'm really really excited. She's a brilliant,
brilliant stand up comedian. She was my co host of
the show that I did for many years in Brooklyn
called The Party Machine that we did at Union Hall
in the Bellhouse. She's such a good joke writer, she's
(01:14):
such a great performer, and she's also like a top
dog trainer in Los Angeles. One of my very favorite people,
Miss Lisa Delarios. Hello, Lisa. Hi, Ladies of the Road.
So good to be here. Julia is going to catch
our listeners up on how we came to this podcast
(01:34):
right now. Well, last week we were talking about your
life as a stand up, and then I was really
interested when Anna was talking about Zach Galifernakis was on
David Letterman show My Next Guest Needs No Introduction, and Anna,
what did you say? Anna called me and you had
a question, Anna, what did you What did you call?
(01:55):
And ask me, Well, I had heard it. He says
your name basically Calfadax says your name in a way
where I was watching it, you know, kind of zoned
out on my phone, and then I heard him say
Lisa delirious, and I was like, Lisa, Lisa, like to
my almost to myself, like that's Lisa, you know, talking
to my partner, like Lisa, And he was like what
what what? And I'm like, Lisa, it's least talking about Lisa.
(02:18):
So you know, I texted Arden immediately. He says, Lisa,
Lisa told me about being stand up. You should try it.
You should really really try it. You should really try it.
So you you obviously were singularly instrumental in his career,
which obviously you know, we all know all about that.
So I was just fascinated and I wanted to know
(02:40):
where all began. When Juliana and I were talking before
the show about this, Like, so, so he was talking
about how he moved to New York and that he
met this woman named Lisa and delirios. Is that how
you actually pronounced your last name? Well, I go back
and forth. Sometimes I say Delaria, sometimes I say Delarius.
(03:01):
But my family is from Texas, so they all just
say delarios, delarios. But it's a Spanish word, so it
really should be delarios. But I think Zack says delarious. Well,
I was curious just and Julianne and I were discussing this.
I know that really struck Julianne that like this. So
you know, he and I was watching it last night
(03:22):
that here here they are. It's he and David Letterman
there and there's like hundreds, hundreds and hundreds of people
in the audience. He's talking about moving from North Carolina
to New York City and he meets you, and that's
I also met both of you at that time. And
it just occurred to me the more that I've gotten
to know you, and as the audience just learned, I now,
you know, the more I've gotten to know you, that
I know you didn't grow up with pop culture. Really,
(03:44):
you didn't really grow up with much TV. You didn't
grow up listening to you know, radio? And how did
you become aware of stand up? How did you decide
you wanted to be a stand up? Like? What was
like the big dream? How old were you? And did
you move to New York to become a stand up?
Those are like I never actually asked you your genesis question,
(04:05):
like how you got from a person that couldn't watch
TV too? Zach is saying he met you and you're
telling him to become a stand up? How did that?
How did you move from small town Texas to New
York with the dream of being a stand up having
grown up in a evangelical house. Let's see if I
know the answer. I. You know what's interesting is I
(04:26):
remember I mean I lived in East Texas from age
eight um until I graduated high school. I lived in
the woods on eighty acres. We didn't even have running
water or electricity for a period of time because we
were so far off the grid. And I remember going
to one of my classmates birthday party and they went
(04:50):
around and asked all, like, I think we were like
seven or eight. Well, I guess we were eight because
I was definitely in East Texas at the time, and
they asked what did we want to be when we
grew up? And I said a comedian. Wow, which is
so weird to me. I don't know why I said that.
I don't know where I got that idea. And then
I remember there was another point when I was a
(05:12):
kid and I told my parents I wanted to be
a ventriloquist, and they bought me a teach yourself ventriloquism
kit for Christmas. Did you have a dummy? It was?
It was so it was such a cheap kit, Like
it wasn't even a real dummy. It was a cardboard
like doll with like um those pushpins like so you
(05:34):
could like move a string in its mouth would open.
But I did learn which consonants or which letters you
replace the consonants with, because the consonants are where you
have to close your lips, so like like boy for example,
used uh doy oh yeah, use d instead of be
(05:56):
so oh. I wanted a nice Loyd boy. So I'm
not I'm not doing my lips right now. Well, idea,
I am a little I'm out of practice. How did
I never know this? Can I ask a question? I'm
just really curious. But the living off the grid thing
(06:17):
was that a religious thing? Was where did that come from? What,
what was the decision behind that? Because and was it idalic?
Because it kind of sounds cool, you know. I think
my parents were young, and they were they had been hippies,
like they went to Woodstock together. Um my dad had
(06:37):
studied Eastern religion before he met my mom, and then
they had this weird conversion. I mean they were in
Texas after all, and they went to one of those
mega churches and so they wanted to move out of
the city because we were living in Dallas, so they
wanted to move to the country. And I think my
(06:59):
dad had wanted the idyllic, living off the land kind
of you know, hippie utopia, but my mom, I think
more there was also it was the Bible Belt, and
there were all of these fundamentalists communities out there, and
they wanted to be involved. And they put my brother
and I into a private school called Christian Heritage, and
(07:23):
our teachers were visionaries and um I remember my third
grade teacher said said to our class that the pope
was evil. So they and they bought this eighty acre
plot of land in uh In the woods to build
a hout. My dad built the house, he drilled a well. Um.
(07:44):
He also was in the had been in the solar
business in the seventies. My dad could build soldier panels,
solar panels, Gary, Gary, and my dad's like larger than
life character and um. Yeah. So oh, they moved out
there kind of to live off the land and and
and you know, they thought it would be good for
(08:06):
their kids. But then also, you know, there were all
these religious communities they wanted to get involved in, so
and then somehow they found their way out of that
into Catholicism. Why what was do you know what that
journey was? You know, my parents aren't rednecks, like they're
(08:29):
actually smart seeking, you know, curious people, and they were
both I think, spiritually seeking for different reasons. And I
think I honestly don't know how they ended up on
Catholicism specifically. But I went through Catechism like normal kids
(08:51):
were born into the Catholic Church, you know, and they
go through this. Are you Catholic? Julian? I am? How weird?
Well would you say? That's so? I don't know, I'm
not now, but I grew up that way, so you
you went through like the whatever what is that called
catechism God confirmation? Confirmation in my my family was not religious,
(09:18):
but I remember in all the kids in my school
growing up went to they went to cc D catechisms CCD.
We go to c c D. I went to c
c D. But that was I was joining the church,
whereas the other kids that was like that was what
they had always been doing, you know, And um, yeah,
so that was a new leaf, and I think things
(09:42):
felt a little normal. And then I went to public school.
They took us out of Christian heritage and stuck us
in a public school. How old were you? How old
were you? I guess I was nine. Then we are
like in a school dreadknecks like it was full in
small town East Texas in the eighties, and that was
(10:07):
kind of shocking. What was it? What was it like?
I mean, obviously your fish out of water, right, I
was definitely a weirdo. But I had a way of
kind of fitting in, and that my comedy comes in. Well,
you know, there's definitely humor in my family. Gary's funny,
(10:31):
My dad's funny. It doesn't really try to be funny,
but he's My grandparents are funny? Is your brother funny?
He tries to be? Was your family shocked that as
you started to express that you wanted to be a
stand up? I will say that there was, you know,
with with my parentals, there was some heaviness in my
(10:53):
household growing up. Like my parents you know, didn't have
a great marriage, so there was like kind of a
set madness that was ever present. And I I do
feel like I um, you know, my defense mechanism was
to be funny and silly and keep everything light. And
(11:14):
I remember, like in junior high, I had a quote
that I would say to my family, is nobody takes
me humorously around here? I had I had UM. I
found a clip of you online talking about your mom
and saying when you When she first heard so you
(11:34):
do stand up, she said to you afterwards, what you
look pretty? Yeah. That was my only televised stand up,
which was in two thousand and seven, and I did
Live a Gotham on Comedy Central, which was a big
deal for me. I was actually interestingly, I had left
New York and I had moved to Austin for a
(11:56):
few years, and the comedy scene in Austin was amazing
and so much so that like industry people would come
to Austin to find talent. And that's where I got
kind of scene, you know. Um, they they were doing
an audition for Live at Gotham, which was a life
(12:17):
stand up show that was on Comedy Central for a
few years, and and I did an audition there and
and I got the gig and yeah, like I remember,
you know, we taped it and then it aired a
couple of months later, and I wasn't with my mom,
but I spoke to her. I told her it was
going to air, and my mom so my where my
(12:40):
parents kind of went religiously, like they split up. My
dad has kind of gone back to his Eastern Buddhism roots,
but my mother has continued to go deeper into Christianity.
And so yeah, she saw me perform. And I am
a clean comic, like I'm is really clean, goofy, observational
(13:04):
talk about animals and um, but my mom managed to
find something offensive. So yeah, I said, hey, Mom, did
you see you know, did you see the taping or whatever?
And she she was like, yeah, I saw it. And
I said, well what did you think? Which I you know,
(13:25):
I didn't even want to ask, and She's like, well
you look pretty well, and uh yeah. It was like,
uh uh so she's never seen me perform again, I've
never let her. She never asked. It was like just
an understood thing. Mm hmm, it was it. I mean,
did you expect support? No, I didn't. I wasn't. I
(13:46):
didn't expect it to be that way her response. But yeah,
I didn't expect I didn't. I think I was nervous
to ask her. But you know, it's like you never
quite give up trying to get get what you need.
And there's like an emphasis aren't being feminine in that statement?
(14:06):
Do you think that that was? It's like that couldn't
be the more, there's nothing there can She could have
said a worse thing. Actually, it was like I would
have rather said, well you looked ugly. Yeah. I was
talking to Odden and she was saying that you have
been rapped by every major manager in the biz. But
(14:31):
when they as soon as I was just interested in
wondering if there's a line between your mom's comment and
then those guys, because every time they told you to,
you know, look pretty, sex it up where the heels
you fired them? Is that accurate? It's an accurate statement. Well,
(14:52):
I did have to managers that now are pretty I
mean one of them was pretty big manager then um,
and now one of them is a prettying manager. And
only one of them made a remark like that's me. Yeah,
I definitely felt like I remember thinking, it's not so
(15:12):
much that I'm offended because he told me I needed
to not be afraid of my body. That was the quote.
He saw me. It's so gross, he saw me. It
was guys. It was the nineties. I was wearing oversized jeans.
You know, it was the nineties. Nobody was looking sexy
in the nineties. I was like, I wear vintage clothes.
I like dressed. There's also at the height of like
(15:33):
I knew you then, And it was also at the
height of when Jinning grow Flow had just proven that
you can be kind of quirky and still beautiful and
and they tried to put her in a box. You
know that that that there's so much like commenting on
your looks. You know when when the guys just get
to go be funny, and there was so much commenting
on your looks. I remember thinking, as a female comedian,
(15:57):
you have to either be sexy or a sexual. Like
there's no in between, and I never felt like I
fit insiether one of those I was like, and I
I liked feeling like I was not either of those,
you know. I just was wanted to be funny and
(16:18):
and you kind of when you step on stage as
a semi attractive female, you're up against you're kind of
up against that a little bit. I mean you and
I've talked about this a lot, where if you're not
being like super sexy with it and you're but and
you're not like funny looking or whatever, where you're not
an underdog, where you're not an underdog, some of the
(16:40):
audience already resents you because they're they're used to it.
Or maybe it's changing more now, but historically, as we
were coming up, we weren't guys, you know, and so
it's for me. I always feel like I had to
kind of neuter it down so I wasn't threatening, but
still be cute enough that they would listen. I absolutely, yeah,
(17:02):
um yeah. And I think that the other manager who
he saw me, I was twenty one. I was so young,
and I was like, you know, I don't know. I mean,
one of my first jokes was about Kenny g like,
you know, I knew you then. You were great, though
(17:23):
you were always great, You've always been you. I've always
been such a fan. I mean I didn't even know
you very well then, and I had so much respect
for your writing. And it's so funny. I've been watching
clips online. I mean, you're just so funny you Wow,
that is very nice and and are You've always been
so supportive and I if only I had believed in
(17:45):
myself as much as you know, my good friends, I'm
gonna ask you two questions. What was your big dream
when you move? Like when you moved, like, what would
your ideal outcome have been moving to New York? You know,
it's funny. I've thought about this a lot because that
was a really major time in my life. So I
(18:07):
was twenty one. I had no direction in my life,
and I forgot to mention that. You know, I've had
those like little weird moments as a child lying to
be a comedian ventrol quist. But then that went away
and I graduated from high school and Roberty Lee High
School in Tyler, Texas, That's right, um, And then I
(18:28):
moved to Dallas. You know, it was the closest big
city and I started going to community college and I
was totally direction list. And then I had my first love.
Like I met an amazing guy. I was nineteen and
we fell in love in Dallas and we moved in together,
and he was this prodigy musician. He was like kind
(18:53):
of semi celebrity in Dallas when he was like fourteen,
and he was always you know, he thought I was hilarious,
and I remember he gave me a gift of There
was a stand up comedy book in the nineties called
Judy Carter I had that. I had that it's so cliche,
(19:16):
and you know, it's like, what's your ethnicity and write
jokes about your ethnicity. Um, But I do think that
he encouraged me, and we were living together, and then
when I was nineteen and he went on tour for
a few months. It was summer and I didn't know
(19:39):
what to do with myself, and I had had a
friend from high school who had moved to New York City,
and so I decided to go and stay with her
for the time that he was on tour. I would
stay with my friend and I enrolled into stand up
comedy classes at the New School for Social Research. One
of them was instructed by this guy named Scott Aikman
(20:00):
who's still in New York stand up UM. And one
of them was this wild old improviser named Marty Friedberg
whose zipper was always down um and he actually he
used to do comedy with Andy Kaufman and I saw
him on some of the old Andy Kaufman show tapes.
(20:23):
So that was my first time ever going on stage.
So I was in New York for the summer and
I took these comedy classes. I didn't go. I didn't
have theater background in school like I had not. I
was had never been a performer. I was terrified to
be in front of people. But I knew that I
(20:45):
had this itch and it had something to do with humor,
and so I, you know, I did that not with
some clear goal like I'm going to be an actress,
I'm gonna be I. I didn't envision anything, But I
think my main motivation was, you know, I want to
find my thing. I want to know what my thing is,
(21:08):
and I want to not be afraid. In piggybacking off
of what you said earlier of like you wish you
had the belief in yourself. It's funny, like I, Um,
I think certainly, when I was on Mad TV every summer,
I would still go take classes at the ground length
because I felt like it was a fluke that I
had been hired and I just now knowing you and
(21:30):
being like one of your number one fans now for
twenty years. Would it be correct to say that you
feel like there's that you still need, like something I
know that you sometimes you torture yourself with like I
just need I just need to do three more months
of Mike's I just need to do three more things.
I just need like this joke. Just you know that?
Is that? Is that an accurate assessment? Yeah, it's always
(21:53):
been a struggle for me. I've never I mean I
can honestly say that I've never really enjoy did doing
stand up and I did it for you know, over
twenty years. Yeah, I just, um, it was always terrifying,
and I never believe the matter. If I had a
(22:16):
manager or you know, some comic I respected told me
I was funny, I just never believed it. Do you
think you could have? I don't know. That's really interesting.
I mean I have the same thing. I mean, I
feel the same way I've never enjoyed stand up. Never,
I've never enjoyed. I think it's so common, especially for women.
(22:36):
Do you think that if you were to look back
on that now, I mean, if you were to say,
but how could you get past that? What do you
think would have helped you understand? Because I mean, you
you're you're kind of an well, you're an icon to
all these people, you know, Zach Galifakas being one of them,
(22:58):
but yet you never believe that you good enough? So
what how? What do you think? What would you say
to your twenty five year old self, Like, if you
could go back in time and give her some advice,
is there something you would tell her? Uh? You know,
I think I one of my friends. You know, I've
(23:18):
never done UM twelve stuff, but I have a lot
of friends that have, and I always use their little UM.
I don't know if they're sayings or quotes, UM, but
I have actually used quite a few of them in
my life. UM. But I had a friend tell me
not that long ago, UM and I don't even remember
(23:41):
the exact quote, but it's basically like showing up as
your yourself that you are your imperfect self. Showing up
as your imperfect self like, it's that's totally great, and
I mean I guess like it's you know, it would
be easier for me to give in to a year
old that's not myself. Okay, they give advice to that pass.
(24:05):
How about ye old terrified art and that was your
stand up friend that always felt like you knew how
to write jokes and that I still don't feel like
I still you know, you still have to walk. I
still call you and run my set beforehand. I think,
you know, um preparing like you know, I used to
(24:26):
obsess like I should have better material, like I should
have better jokes, um, And so I would try to
write like new material before an important show and it's like, no,
just do what you have, like, prepare your set, know
what you're gonna do, and just commit to that and
(24:48):
then you have that, then you just be present and
that's I'm not working this well. But yeah, I think
letting go of trying to be perfect, because really, when
you are doing comedy, the moment when I've been doing
(25:10):
stand up and I've actually had fun on stage, which
are far few between, is when the fear just lifted, um,
and I was just having a conversation with the audience.
You know, I think there's yeah, I don't know. I
have to think more about that. What the advice would be.
(25:33):
That's that's that's great advice. Right there. We're gonna take
a quick break and we'll come back and we'll discuss
this advice. Great and we're back. Sorry, Sorry, sorry, I'm
just really interested by what you say, because, um, you know,
(25:54):
if I'm mentoring people who I think I think we
talked about this before on if I'm mentoring people and
they want to be a director, and this is true
for me. You get people and they say like young women,
and they say, well, I feel like I want to
be a director. Um, but first I'm going to be
(26:16):
like a really great focus puller. Then I'm going to
go and I'm going to work in the sound apartment
for a while. Um, and then I'm going to maybe
do some producing and then I'll be ready to direct.
Whereas that kind of thinking is much rarer for guys.
They go, right, I'm gonna just go and direct some stuff.
(26:37):
You know, as I was quite I don't know, when
I was listening to talk, I thought, wow, that sounds
really familiar. As you, I thought the same. I actually
thought of the story that you were telling, and I
was wondering, Lisa, so many of the guys that we
came up with have had huge success. And then even
more recently when we reconnected ten years ago and we're
(27:00):
doing open mics in an Australian youth hostel and soho
or people were the hand towels were people's actual bath towels.
A lot of the guys there have had tremendous like that,
And it's not necessarily the most talented, you know that,
Like I mean, I mean, look, that's a personal sort thing.
Everybody's In my opinion, some of the ones have been
(27:22):
the most talent. But like, do you think that if
you had been a guy like in the nineties and
doing it, that there would have been more freedom of
like I'm just gonna do it and see what happens
and I'm not gonna doubt it, And do you think
it would have been a different experience? Uh, you know,
it's hard to say, uh, because I just a pictured
me being a guy. But me, uh, I know, and
(27:44):
you know, and I know plenty of guys that are
insecure and self defeating, But I do think I would
say that there's it seems to be in comedy. I
women being way more, way harder on themselves, and they
(28:07):
there's like there might be a thing of just being
raised as a as a male that you have a
little more of a built in confidence or I don't know,
I don't know. I think that the guys I always
found that they helped each other out more I didn't.
I always felt like I saw them kind of being
(28:29):
more community minded toward each other, but that they didn't
necessarily include the women in that. You know, And and
when we started, there weren't that many women at doing
stand up comedy. Uh, there's way more now. When I
first showed up on the New York stand up scene
in or maybe it was, I did not get warm
(28:52):
vibes from a lot of the I mean they're, like
I said, there weren't that many female comics. And I
wish you and I had met then, but we kind
of missed each other the first few years. I knew you,
maybe you didn't know me, but we weren't. But we weren't.
We we didn't hang up, No, we do. We we
were doing stand up. I knew you from stand up
(29:13):
New York, but I guess we were. I was doating
your roommate. Well, I was going to Hamburger Harry's, which
was a Hamburger restaurant in Times Square. Yep, did you
Boston Comedy Club, New York Comedy Club. There was not
that many all shows either. It was all very clubby, clubby. Yep,
there was all clubby clubby. There weren't like cool coffee shop.
(29:36):
I remember your joke from back in the day. I
remember you at a joke about standing in front of
the television and your mom or your grandmother saying, get
out of the way the TV. Your grandma, get out
of the way TV. You're daddy, not a glassmaker. We
were doing stand up at the same time. I know
you're jokes. Well, I guess when I first show. I'm
talking about when I first showed out on the scene,
(29:57):
I had negative, um, I had a few really like
um like me girl experiences. Yeah yeah, I was like whoa, um,
you know, and I could see like I was young
and sweet and kind of funny, and they were like
(30:19):
who is she thinks she is? And I was also
so yeah. So I was going to go into how
I met Zack. You should do you want me to? Okay?
So I decided to move to New York. In nineteen four.
(30:40):
I was living with my boyfriend, Um, the musician, and
I had gone to New York and done my stand
up comedy classes, and I came back and I was like,
I've got it. I know what I'm gonna do, and
I'm going to move to New York and I'm gonna
do stand up. But it wasn't an easy thing to
do because I was in love and everything I knew
(31:01):
and everyone I knew was in Dallas. But I my
parents also got a divorce that year, and I think
that was a big motivator because I was like just
turned one, and I was like, I'm too young to
settle down. As much as I was crazy about my boyfriend,
I was like, I can't do this right now, Like
(31:23):
I gotta I don't want to end up like my mom.
And I was like, I gotta go do the scariest,
most difficult thing, which has moved to New York City
do stand up comedy. I did not have a clear
goal of what I wanted out of it. I just
knew that I had to do something drastic, and I
had had this experience with taking the classes and then
(31:45):
the culmination of the classes. We got to perform at
the Comic Strip on the Upper east Side and it
was like a dream. I definitely went over my time,
but I got laughs and it I was bit definitely
like I knew I had to do it more. And
(32:06):
so I moved to New York um and I was
their apartment hunting. It was right around Thanksgiving. I'm so old,
and I was at this bar on the Lower east
Side and my best friend at the time, Mary Armstrong,
who I had known since junior high, she moved to
New York with me, which was very great that I
(32:28):
didn't have to do it alone. So she and I
were in New York and we were looking for an
apartment and we're staying in a youth hostel and we
went to get a drink at this bar called max
Fish on the Lower east Side. It was all very
remember Max Fit. Yeah, it was a great bar. It
was on Ludlow Street. Was that was That's where to be,
That's where to be. But this was like it was
(32:48):
still a little kind of dangerous at that time. And
Zach Galfanakis, so we're hanging out this bar. I was
at the bar waiting trying to order a drink and
Zach was sitting like standing next to me trying to
get a drink, and he said to me, hey, will
you get that guy over there to buy you a
(33:08):
drink and then give it to me. And we just
started chatting. And it didn't feel like this is a
cute guy at the bar and we're flirting. It felt
like this is my friend. Like it just felt were
safe for our listeners. He was so cute back in
(33:30):
the day. Like if people know him, know I was
more of a character, like was adorable, adorable, really adorable
and dynamic and just so and you know, he was Southern.
He was fresh to New York from North Carolina, and
he wanted to be an actor. That was what he
was there for. And he was really serious about it.
(33:51):
And he wore overalls and rollerblades. He would literally rollerblade
and hang onto the back sitey bus where all while
wearing overalls. I remember he was cleaning houses. And then
he also worked at one of the really really thin
frozen yogurt things that was like between two storefronts, so
it was like on the Upper West Side that was
(34:12):
like it was basically just the width of a machine,
like a frozen yogurt machine. Well, I totally forgot about that.
It was like on like seventy three and Columbus and
it was like the width of a frozen yogurt machine.
And he worked there, and then he was like a
house cleaner. He was like, he was like, you could
hire him like fifty bucks to clean your toilet. So
(34:34):
so you met him and you're like, this is not
a romantic thing, but this is my friend. I feel
like we're not flirting. This is my friend. And and
it just so happened that on the other end of
the bar that night that I met him, my friend
Mary was chit chatting with A. D. Miles, who was
also a very successful comedy person. Um. He was a
(34:54):
head writer for the Tonight Show. Um. But he he
and Miles had gone to college together. And we're living
on the Lower East Side in this tenement apartment and
across the street from Max Fish. So the four of
us all met up. I remember that apartment didn't have
a tub in the kitchen. Remember that I've been in
(35:17):
that apartment and if you the toilet, you like kind
of cold barely fit your legs into the room with
the toilet. It was like it was a closet. I
wanted to just catch up to present day and say
I do too. So you are now living in Los Angeles.
Are you still doing stand up? Well, pre pandemic, I
(35:39):
was doing stand up, Yes, I had you know it
was actually still doing open mics. UM. I had a
manager who I really liked, a woman here in l A. UM,
But I was and I was hosting a monthly show
with the old friends from the old days, Andrea Rosen,
who's so funny and lovely. Um. So I was doing it,
(36:04):
but I was still I was going to commercial auditions. UM.
Not really sure what I wanted. But you also have
been finding since I've known you, I've never met a
bigger animal lover and like as you. You know, and
you had a variety of different jobs. Suden was telling
me that you um that you trained as an occupational
(36:26):
therapist and that you worked for the a s p C.
A I did, and that you're an animal trainer. You
are right now an animal trainer, Is that right? Well?
When I moved back to l A three and a
(36:46):
half years ago, I needed to make money and I
had just come off of that job working U doing
outreach in the South Bronz for the s p c A,
which was crazy job. Uh. And I have a comedian
friend who is now married to a woman who owns
(37:09):
a private training company here in l A. And I
met her. She was great, we got along, she hired
me and I trained I mentors with a trainer, a
positive reinforcement trainer. And it was scary to start doing
(37:29):
something brand new in my forties, but I was like, whoa,
this is so cool. It's learning to communicate with dogs
and through positive reinforcement, and so yeah, I cut to now,
(37:52):
I after doing it for three years, I feel like
I'm actually kind of becoming pretty proficient at it. And
I love training dogs, and it's I can make money
doing it. There's no shortage, especially during the pandemic. Everybody's
got a new puppy, and I actually want I'm really
(38:16):
motivated now to kind of make it more public, uh,
that positive reinforcement is the way to go, because there
is still so much of the old school way of
training dogs using aversive tools and punitive ways, like you know,
leash jerks and prong collars. I mean, every other dog
(38:39):
in l A is wearing a prong collar, and I
just want be And the one of the reasons for
that is because Caesar Milan is the most famous dog
trainer and his his techniques are not science based and
they've been debunked. I mean some of them. He you know,
he used some appropriate techniques, but any of is I
(39:01):
you have to be dominant, you are the leader. Um,
it's all just a larkey and it's it's it's damaging.
But as a person who loves you and is rooting
for you, like and it's just your number one fan,
I have to say, just witnessing this year, fact that
you are taking ownership of something like that you're good
(39:22):
at it and you know you're good at it, and
like you're letting your like just the gift of that
of like owning like I'm good at this and I
think I am. I know you've spoken to me that
you you you'd love to have like a show or
something where you could like it seems like you found
something that is makes you feel good about yourself and
feels a little bit like a calling. If does that
(39:43):
feel accurate? It does? Is it more so than stand
up or the same as more so? But I do
feel like stand up is just part of who I
am so I don't think that I could have found
my way to training dogs, and because so much of
it is training people and working with people. And yeah,
(40:04):
and I think I envisioned somehow that they're all it's
all going to come together in some way, it's all
gonna feed into each other. And but yeah, I do
definitely feel like, for once in my life, I'm actually like, yeah,
I'm really good at this. I love that this is
a happy ending. There's something outside CHOBEI is crazy. No,
(40:25):
I know it's but you know what, honestly, it took
a pandemic. I need to really open myself up to
that possibility. Mm hmm. You seem the least questioning. You
seem the happiest and the least questioning, and like that
you know you're being of service and that you are
that what you do makes the difference. Julianne has a
(40:45):
new puppy. I do, I guess. I mean, just just
to kind of wrap this up a little bit, we
Adden and I were talking and we kind of see
you and I don't know if you find this offensive
or what do you think consecurate? We see you as
a rebel. You're kind of a rebel. Yeah, you did
it your own way. You did it, you did it,
(41:07):
You've done it your way. You're Gary's girl. I take that.
I actually take that as a huge compliment. I like
that you didn't let just like ambition or like you
just you're like, this is who I am and not
in a gross way, I'm not, but like it's just
like I think you you've stuck true to your sense
of self and we're uncompromising in a way that I
(41:31):
think a lot of people might have folded in and
been like, Okay, this is what you want me to be. Like,
I think you protected yourself. H wow, that's interesting. I
feel like, you know, I think that, Yeah, I have
to think about that. I think, yeah, I beat up myself.
You know, I beat myself up a lot. I think
(41:53):
that's what we all do, is we're so hard on ourselves.
And I think that's part of the beauty of getting older,
is like you really do just give up the fight
at a certain point, and you know, and I think
I just finally let go of trying to make myself
do things that didn't feel natural, didn't feel like the
(42:16):
right fit. And yeah, well thank you so much. It's
been I could talk to you for hours. It has
been I just love you so much. You've been such
a good friend to me and I'm so glad our
listeners can get to know you. Where can people find
out more about you, either your comedy or your dog
training services. I love you too, arden Um, and you too, Julianne.
(42:41):
I on my instagram, just my personal instagram, which is
mostly pictures of my dog is Lisa Dhilarios d E
l A I D E l A r I O
s yes. And I have a sister instagram which is
my dog training instagram, which is Lisa loves Dogs l
(43:06):
u v z, which is embarrassing, but somebody already took
l O v E s uh so yeah, that's kind
of me trying to I'm trying to be more dog
trainery on social media. It's been great. Thank you so much.
Thank you to us, thanks for coming to play with us.
And we'll be right back and we're back and if
(43:31):
you want to email us, you can email us at
Lady Road Podcast at gmail dot com. We love to
get your emails. We love Please like us on iTunes,
leave us reviews, tell your friends. The more we have
people you know put it actually really helps us. It
makes my heart go, oh, this was a good decision
to give these scales this podcast. If you're not feeling
just go go over to Apple Apple Podcast and give
(43:53):
us a nice star over there. Um, Julianne, anything you
want to promote before we head off, I have nothing
to promote great, nothing at all. I'm at Arta Marine
and Instagram A R D E N M y R
I N or Lady Rhode Podcast. Everybody stays safe. Were
a mask, have a good time, be nice to one another,
and we'll see you next week. Bye bye,
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