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 (04:23), saying no to Hollywood trying to make her conform to their standards, blazing her own trail, telling Zach Galifianakis to try comedy (32:50), and much more!
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Lady Boro. I'm that heaven Hellos, no need distress.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
She's taking care of it.
Speaker 3 (00:20):
She's a late.
Speaker 4 (00:27):
Hello and welcome to another episode of Lady at the
Road podcast. My name is Arta Marine. You might know
me from Satiable or Chelsea Lately or Shameless. I'm here
with my co host, Ms.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
Julie Ann Robinson.
Speaker 4 (00:41):
Yes, but if people know you from Julia.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
They best know me for directing the pilot of Bridgiton.
Speaker 4 (00:50):
It never gets sold for me, I'm into it. Well,
here's a gain we're having today. Are you so excited
for our guests today.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
Matty, I'm really really excited.
Speaker 4 (01:00):
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 and the Bellhouse. She's such a good
joke writer, she's such a great performer, and she's also
like a top dog trainer in Los Angeles. One of
(01:21):
my very favorite people, Miss Lisa Delarios. Hello, Lisa, Hi,
Ladies of the Road.
Speaker 5 (01:29):
It's so good to be there.
Speaker 4 (01:31):
Julia's going to catch our listeners up on how we
came to this podcast right now.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
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 Galifanakis was on David Lettterman's
show My Next Guest Needs No Introduction and Anna, what
did you say?
Speaker 4 (01:52):
Anna called me and you had a question, Anna, what
did you What did you call? And ask me?
Speaker 2 (01:56):
Well, I had heard it. He says your name basically
Calphadax 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 Delarious and I
was like, Lisa, Lisa, Like to my you know, almost myself,
like that's Lisa, you know, talking to my partner, like Lisa,
And he was like.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
What what what?
Speaker 2 (02:16):
And I'm like, Lisa, it's Lise, talk about Lisa. So
you know, I texted Arden immediately.
Speaker 3 (02:21):
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 where it all began.
Speaker 4 (02:42):
What Jilliana 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 Delarios. Is that how you actually pronounced your
last name?
Speaker 1 (02:56):
Well, I go back and forth. Sometimes I say Delarria,
sometimes I say Delarios. But my family's from Texas, so
they all just say Delarios Delarios, but it's a Spanish word,
so it really should be Delarios. But I think Zach
says Delarios.
Speaker 4 (03:15):
Well, I was curious just and Juliana 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 that here they are. It's he and David Letterman.
They're 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
(03:35):
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,
you didn't really grew 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
(03:58):
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,
like how you got from a person that couldn't watch
TV to 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.
Speaker 5 (04:20):
Let's see if I know the answer. I.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
You know what's interesting is I remember I mean I
lived in East Texas from age eight 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
(04:49):
party and they went 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 stayed a comedian. Wow,
which is so weird to me. I don't know why
said that. I don't know where I got that idea.
(05:09):
And then I remember there was another point when I
was a kid and I told my parents I wanted
to be a ventriloquist, and they bought me a teach
yourself ventriloquism kit for Christmas?
Speaker 4 (05:22):
Did you have a dummy?
Speaker 5 (05:24):
It was?
Speaker 1 (05:25):
It was so it was such a cheap kit, like
it wasn't even a real dummy.
Speaker 5 (05:28):
It was a cardboard like doll with like.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
Those pushpins like so you could like move a string
and its mouth would open. But I did learn which
consonants or which letters you replace the consonants with, because
the continents are where you have to close your lips.
So like like boy for example, used uh.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
Doi.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
Oh, yeah, I used D instead of B.
Speaker 5 (05:56):
So oh I wanted a nice loi boy.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
So I'm not living my lips right now?
Speaker 5 (06:06):
Well I did? I am a little I'm out of
practice practice.
Speaker 4 (06:09):
How did I never know this?
Speaker 3 (06:12):
Can I ask a question? I'm just really curious. The
living off the grid thing. Was that a religious thing?
Speaker 1 (06:19):
Was that?
Speaker 3 (06:20):
Where did that come from? What was the decision behind that?
Because and was it idyllic? Because it kind of sounds cool,
you know.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
I think my parents were young, and they were they
had been hippies, like they went to Woodstock together. My
dad had studied Eastern religion before he met my mom,
and then they had.
Speaker 5 (06:42):
This weird conversion.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
I mean they were in Texas after all, and they
went to one of those megachurches, 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 dad wanted the idyllic living off
the land kind of you know, hippie utopia, but my mom,
(07:09):
I think more there was also it was the Bible Belt,
and there were all of these fundamentalist communities out there,
and they wanted to be involved. And they put my
brother and I into a private school called Christian Heritage,
and our teachers were missionaries, and I remember my third
grade teacher said said to our class that the pope
(07:29):
was evil. So they and they bought this eighty acre
plot of land in.
Speaker 5 (07:37):
The woods to build a out.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
My dad built the house. He drilled a well. He
also was in the had been in the solar business
in the seventies.
Speaker 5 (07:49):
My dad could build solar panels. Solar panels. Wow, Gary, Gary,
my dad's like larger than life character. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
So, so they moved out there kind of to live
off the land, and you know, they thought it would
be good for 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.
Speaker 3 (08:22):
Why what was do you know what that Jenny was?
Speaker 1 (08:26):
You know, my parents aren't rednecks, like, they're actually smart seeking,
you know, curious people, and they 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
(08:47):
I went through Catechism like normal kids were born into
the Catholic Church, you know, and they go through this.
Are you Catholic?
Speaker 5 (08:56):
Julian?
Speaker 3 (08:57):
I am? How weird?
Speaker 5 (09:00):
Well would you say that? That's so?
Speaker 3 (09:01):
I don't know, I don't know, I'm not now, but
I grew up that way.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
So you you went through like the whatever what is
that called catechism God confirmation?
Speaker 5 (09:14):
Confirmation?
Speaker 4 (09:15):
In my my family was not religious, but I remember
in all the kids in my school growing up went
to they went to CCD, Catechism CD. We're going to CCD.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
I went to CCD, but that was I was joining
the church, whereas the other kids it was like that
was what they'd always been doing, you know. And yeah,
so that was a new leaf, and I think things
felt a little normal. And then I went to public school.
They took us out of Christian heritage and stuck us
(09:48):
in a public school.
Speaker 4 (09:50):
How old were you? How old were you?
Speaker 5 (09:52):
I guess I was nine.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
Then we are like in a school with rednecks, like
it was full on small town East Texas in the eighties.
Speaker 5 (10:04):
And that was kind of shocking, was it?
Speaker 3 (10:08):
What was it like? I mean, obviously your fish out
of water, right.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
I was definitely a weirdo, but I had a way
of kind of fitting in.
Speaker 3 (10:20):
And all is that when comedy comes in.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
Well, you know, there's definitely humor in my family.
Speaker 4 (10:29):
Gary's funny.
Speaker 5 (10:31):
My dad's funny.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
He doesn't really try to be funny, but he's My
grandparents are funny.
Speaker 4 (10:36):
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?
Speaker 1 (10:46):
I will say that there was, you know, with my parentals,
there was some heaviness in my household growing up. Like
my parents you know, didn't have a great marriage, so
there was like kind of a setness that was ever present.
And I do feel like I, you know, my defense
(11:10):
mechanism was to be funny and silly and keep everything light.
And I remember, like in junior high, I had a
quote that I would say to my family, is nobody
takes me humorously around here.
Speaker 3 (11:24):
I had I found a clip of you online talking
about your mom and saying when she first heard so
you do stand up, she said to you afterwards, well
you look pretty.
Speaker 5 (11:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
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 few years, and
the comedy scene in Austin was amazing, and so much
(12:03):
so that like industry people would come to Austin to
find talent, and that's where I got kind of seen,
you know. They they were doing an audition for Live
a Gotham, which was a live stand up show that
was on Comedy Central for a few years. And I
did an audition there and I got the gig and yeah,
(12:27):
like I remember, you know, we taped it and then
it aired a couple 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 where
my 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
(12:51):
into Christianity. And so yeah, she saw me perform. And
I am a clean comic.
Speaker 4 (12:59):
Like I'm really clean, goofy.
Speaker 1 (13:03):
Observational talk about animals, and 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 wow, and uh yeah, it was like
oh uh, so she's never seen me perform again. I've
never let her. She never asked. It was like just
an understood thing.
Speaker 3 (13:41):
It was it. I mean, did you expect to put No.
Speaker 5 (13:44):
I didn't. I wasn't.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
I didn't expect it to be that wame 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.
Speaker 3 (14:01):
And there's like an emphasis on't being feminine in that statement.
Do you think that that was.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
It's like that couldn't be the more, there's nothing she
couldn't have said a worse thing. Actually, it was like
I would have rather said, well you look ugly.
Speaker 3 (14:17):
Yeah, because I was talking to Arden and she was
saying that you have been reapped by every major manager
in the biz. But when they as soon as I
was just interested in wondering if there's a line between
(14:37):
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?
Speaker 1 (14:51):
Well, I did have two managers that now are pretty
I mean one of them was pretty big manager then
and now one of them is a pretig manager and
only one of them made a remark like that's me.
Speaker 5 (15:07):
Yeah, I definitely felt like.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
I remember thinking, it's not so much that I'm offended
because he told me I needed.
Speaker 5 (15:14):
To not be afraid of my body. That was the quote.
He saw me.
Speaker 4 (15:17):
It's so gross he saw me.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
I mean it, 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.
Speaker 5 (15:29):
I like dress.
Speaker 4 (15:30):
It's also at the height of like I knew you then,
And it was also at the height of when Jinning
Groflow had just proven that you can be kind of
quirky and still beautiful, and they tried to put her
in a box. You know 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
(15:52):
so much commenting on your looks.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
I remember thinking, as a female comedian, you have to
either be sexy or asexual, like there's no in between,
and I never felt like I fit inside of one
of those. I was like and I I liked feeling
like I was not either of those, you know, I
(16:14):
just was wanted to be funny, 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.
Speaker 4 (16:28):
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 not like funny looking or whatever, where you're
not an underdog, where you're not an underdog, some of
the audience already resents you because 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
(16:51):
it's for me. I always felt like I had to
kind of neuter it down so I wasn't threatening, but
still be cute enough that they would listen.
Speaker 5 (17:00):
Absolutely. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
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,
my one of my first jokes was about Kenny g Like.
Speaker 4 (17:19):
It was, you know, I knew you then. You were
great though 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.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
And it's so funny. I've been watching clips online. I mean,
you're just so funny.
Speaker 5 (17:36):
You're funny you Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
Wow, that is very nice and arting. You've always been
so supportive, and I if only I had believed in
myself as much as you know, my good friends, I'm.
Speaker 4 (17:48):
Going to ask you two questions. What was your big
dream when you moved? Like when you moved, like, what
would your ideal outcome have been moving to New York.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
You know, it's funny. I've thought about this a lot
because that was a really major time in my life.
So I was twenty one. I had no direction in
my life, and I forgot to mention that, you know,
I'd had those like little weird moments as a child
wanting to be a comedian ventriloquist. But then that went away.
(18:20):
And I graduated from high school in Robert E. Lee
High School in Tyler, Texas, That's right. And then I
moved to Dallas. You know, it was the closest big city,
and I started going to community college and I was
totally directionless. And then I had my first love, Like
I met an amazing guy. I was nineteen and we
(18:43):
fell in love in Dallas and we moved in together,
and he was this prodigy musician. He was like kind
of semi celebrity in Dallas when he was like fourteen,
and he was always you know, he thought I was hilarious,
(19:04):
and I remember he gave me a gift of There
was a stand up comedy book in the nineties called
Judy Carter.
Speaker 4 (19:12):
I had that.
Speaker 5 (19:13):
I had that It's.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
So cliche, and you know, it's like, what's your ethnicity
and write jokes about your ethnicity. But I do think
that he encouraged me, and we were living together. And
then when I was nineteen and he went on tour
(19:35):
for a few months. It was summer and I didn't
know what to do with myself, and I 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 in two stand
up comedy classes at the New School for Social Research.
(19:57):
One of them was instructed by this guy named Scot
who's still a New York stand up and one of
them was this wild old improviser named Marty Friedberg whose
zipper was always down, and he actually he used to
do comedy with Andy Kaufman and I saw him on
(20:19):
some of the old Andy Kaufman show tapes. 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 I didn't have theater background
in school like I had not. I had never been
(20:39):
a performer. I was terrified to be in front of people.
But I knew that I 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 didn't
(20:59):
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, and I want to not be afraid.
Speaker 4 (21:11):
And piggybacking off of what you said earlier, of like
you wish you had the belief in yourself. It's funny
like I I think certainly, when I was on med
TV every summer, I would still go take classes at
the ground Lengths because I felt like it was a
Fluke that I'd been hired and I just now knowing
you and being like one of your number one fans
(21:32):
now for twenty years. Would it be correct to say
that you feel like there's that you still need, Like
I know that sometimes you torture yourself with like I
just need I just need to do three more months
of mics. I just need to do three more things.
I just need like this joke. Just you know that?
Speaker 1 (21:50):
Is that?
Speaker 4 (21:50):
Is that an accurate assessment?
Speaker 5 (21:52):
Yeah, it's always been a struggle for me.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
I've never I mean I can honestly say that I've
never really enjoyed doing stand.
Speaker 5 (22:01):
Up and I did it for you know, over twenty years. Yeah,
I just.
Speaker 1 (22:10):
It was always terrifying, and I never believed no matter
if I had a manager or you know, some comic
I respected told me I was funny. I just never
believed it.
Speaker 3 (22:23):
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.
Speaker 4 (22:30):
I've never enjoyed stand up.
Speaker 5 (22:31):
Never.
Speaker 4 (22:31):
I've never enjoyed stand up.
Speaker 5 (22:33):
I think it's so common, especially for women.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
Do you think that if you were to look back
on that now, I mean if you were to say, well,
how could you get past that? What do you think
would have helped you understand? Because I mean you're kind
of an well you're an icon to all these people,
you know, Zach Allafanakus being one of them, but yet
(22:58):
you never believed that you good enough? So what how?
What do you think?
Speaker 4 (23:04):
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?
Speaker 1 (23:12):
Uh? You know, I think one of my friends. You know,
I've never done twelve Step, but I have a lot
of friends that have, and I always use their little
I don't know if they're sayings or quotes, but I
have actually used quite a few of them in my life.
(23:35):
But I had a friend tell me not that long ago,
and I don't even remember the exact qute, but it's
basically like showing up as your yourself that you are
and your imperfect self showing up as your imperfect self,
Like it's that's totally great, And I mean I guess
(23:57):
like it's you know, it would be easier for me
to give in by to a twenty five year old
it's not myself.
Speaker 3 (24:03):
Okay, they give advice to that pisson.
Speaker 4 (24:05):
How about twenty five year old terrified art and that
was your stand up friend that I 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.
Speaker 1 (24:18):
I think, you know, preparing, like you know, I used
to obsess like I should have better material, like I
should have better jokes, 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
(24:42):
what you're gonna do, and just commit to that and
then you have that, then you just be present and
that's not worrying this well, but yeah, I think letting
go of trying to be perfect, because really, when you
(25:08):
are doing comedy, the moments when I've been doing stand
up and I've actually had fun on stage, which are
far view between.
Speaker 5 (25:17):
Is when the fear just.
Speaker 1 (25:21):
Lifted 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.
Speaker 3 (25:33):
That's great advice right there.
Speaker 4 (25:36):
We're gonna take a quick break and we'll come back
and we'll discuss this advice great, and we're back.
Speaker 3 (25:48):
Sorry, Sorry, sorry, I'm just really interested by what you say, because,
you know, 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, yes, and
this is true for me. You get people and they
say like young women, and they say, well, I feel
(26:12):
like I want to be a director, but first I'm
going to be 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, 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
(26:33):
for guys. They go, right, I'm going to just go
and direct some stuff. You know, it's quite I don't know.
When I was listening to you talk, I thought, wow,
that sounds really familiar.
Speaker 4 (26:45):
As 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 doing open mics
in an Australian youth hostel in Soho where people were
the hand towels were people's actual baths hous. A lot
(27:09):
of the guys there have had tremendous access like that,
and it's not necessarily the most talented, you know that,
Like I mean, I mean, look, that's a personal choice
thing everybody's. In my opinion, some of the ones have
been 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
(27:30):
of like, I'm just going to do it and see
what happens and I'm not going to doubt it. And
do you think it would have been a different experience.
Speaker 1 (27:37):
You know, it's hard to say, uh, because I just
a picture of me being a guy. But me, I know,
you know, and I know plenty of guys that are
insecure and self defeating.
Speaker 5 (27:50):
But I do think I would say that.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
There's it seems to be in comedy, I see women
being way more, way harder on themselves, and there's like
there might be a thing of just being raised as
a male that you have a little more of a
(28:16):
built in confidence or I don't know.
Speaker 5 (28:18):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (28:19):
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 more community minded
toward each other, but that they didn't necessarily include the
women in that. You know, and when we started, there
weren't that many women doing stand up comedy.
Speaker 5 (28:41):
There's way more now.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
When I first showed up on the New York stand
up scene in nineteen ninety four, yeah, or maybe it
was ninety five, I did not get warm vibes from
a lot of the I mean, 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.
Speaker 4 (29:04):
I knew you, maybe you didn't know me.
Speaker 1 (29:07):
But we weren't.
Speaker 5 (29:07):
But we weren't were We didn't.
Speaker 4 (29:09):
Hang up, No, we do. We were doing stand up.
I knew you from stand up New York, but I
guess we were. I was ditting your roommate.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
Well. In ninety five, I was going to Hamburger Harry's,
which was a Hamburger restaurant in Times Square.
Speaker 4 (29:24):
Yep, did you bought Boston Comedy Club? New York Comedy Club.
There was not that many all shows either. It was
all very clubby clubby.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
Yep, it was all klubby clubby. There weren't like cool
coffee shop comedy.
Speaker 4 (29:36):
I remember your joke from back in the day. I
remember you had a joke about standing in front of
the television and your mom or your grandmother saying get
out of the way to the TV. Your grandmother, get
out of the way TV. You're daddy, not a glass maker.
We were doing stand up at the same time. I
know your jokes.
Speaker 1 (29:52):
Well, I guess when I first showed I'm talking about
when I first showed.
Speaker 5 (29:55):
Up on the scene, I had negative I had.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
A few really like like me girl experiences.
Speaker 4 (30:06):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:10):
I was like whoa you know? And I could see
like I was young and sweet and kind of funny,
and they were like who is she thinks she is?
And I was also.
Speaker 5 (30:23):
So yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:25):
So I was going to go into how I met
Zach You should do you want me to?
Speaker 5 (30:30):
Yeah? Okay.
Speaker 1 (30:32):
So I decided to move to New York in nineteen
ninety four. I was living with my boyfriend, 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 got it. I know what I'm going
(30:52):
to do, and I'm going to move to New York
and I'm going to do stand up. But it wasn't
an easy thing to do because I was in love
and everything I knew and every one I knew was
in Dallas. But my parents also got a divorce that year,
and I think that was a big motivator because I
was like twenty just turned twenty one, and I was like,
(31:16):
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 I got it, I don't
want to end up like my mom. And I was like,
I gotta go do the scariest, most difficult thing, which
was moved to New York City do stand up comedy.
Speaker 5 (31:35):
I did not have a clear goal of what I
wanted out of it.
Speaker 1 (31:37):
I just knew that I had to do something drastic,
and I had had this experience with taking the classes
and then 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 I was bit
(32:01):
definitely like I knew I had to do it more.
And so moved to New York and I was there
apartment hunting. It was right around Thanksgiving nineteen ninety four.
I'm sold, and I was at this bar on the
Lower east Side and my best friend at the time,
(32:21):
Mary Armstrong, who I had known since junior high, she
moved to New York with me, which was very great
that I 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.
Speaker 5 (32:39):
It was all very you remember Max Fish.
Speaker 4 (32:41):
Yeah, it was a great bar.
Speaker 5 (32:43):
It was on Ludlow Street.
Speaker 4 (32:44):
That's where to be.
Speaker 1 (32:46):
That's where to be. But this was like it was
still a little kind of dangerous at that time. And
Zach Galfanakis, So we're hanging out this bar. I was
at the bar wait 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
(33:07):
you get that guy over there to buy you a
drink and then give it to me.
Speaker 5 (33:12):
And we just started chatting. And it didn't.
Speaker 1 (33:17):
Feel like this is a cute guy at the bar
we're flirting. It felt like this is my friend. Like
it just felt we was.
Speaker 4 (33:26):
A safe for our listeners. He was so cute back
in the day, Like if people know him, I was
more of a character. Like nineteen ninety five, Zach was adorable, adorable.
Speaker 1 (33:37):
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. And he wore overalls and rollerblades. He
(33:57):
was literally rollerblade and hang on to the back of
city bus. We're all while wearing overalls.
Speaker 4 (34:02):
I remember he was cleaning houses. And then he also
worked at one of that really the really thin frozen
yogurt things that was like between two storefronts, so it
was like just on the Upper West Side. That was
like it was basically like just the width of a machine,
like a frozen yogurt machine.
Speaker 5 (34:18):
Wow, I totally forgot about that.
Speaker 4 (34:20):
Yeah, it was like I'm like seventy third 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
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.
Speaker 1 (34:40):
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 eighty Miles, who was
also a very successful comedy person. He was a head
writer for the tonight show YEP. But he he and
Miles had gone to college together and were living on
(35:03):
the Lower East Side in this tenements apartment and across
the street from Max Fish.
Speaker 5 (35:09):
So the four of us all met up.
Speaker 4 (35:12):
I remember that apartment. Did it have a tub in
the kitchen?
Speaker 1 (35:15):
It did?
Speaker 4 (35:16):
Remember that I've been in that apartment.
Speaker 1 (35:20):
And if you the toilet, you like kind of could
barely fit your legs into the room with the toilet.
It was like it was a closet.
Speaker 4 (35:27):
I wanted to just catch up to present day and say, okay,
I do too, So you are now living in Los Angeles.
Are you still doing stand up?
Speaker 1 (35:36):
Well, pre pandemic, I was doing stand up, yes, I
had you know.
Speaker 5 (35:42):
It was actually still doing open mics.
Speaker 1 (35:45):
I had a manager who I really liked, a woman
here in LA. 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. So I
was doing it, but I was still I was going
(36:06):
to commercial auditions, but not really sure.
Speaker 5 (36:12):
What I wanted.
Speaker 4 (36:13):
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.
Speaker 3 (36:22):
Aden was telling me that you that you trained as
an occupational therapist along the way I did, and that
you worked for the ASPCA I did, and that you're
an animal trainer. You are right now an animal trainer?
Is that right?
Speaker 4 (36:42):
Well?
Speaker 1 (36:43):
When I moved back to LA three and a half
years ago, I needed to make money and I had
just come off of that job working doing outreach in
the South Bronx for the ASPCA, which was crazy job.
Speaker 5 (37:03):
And I have.
Speaker 1 (37:04):
A comedian friend who is now married to a woman
who owns a private training company here in LA and
I met her. She was great, got along, she hired
me and I trained. I mentored 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. Cut to now,
(37:52):
I after doing it for three years, I feel like
I'm actually kind of becoming pretty proficient and I love
training dogs, and it's I can make money doing it.
There's no shortage, especially during the pandemic.
Speaker 5 (38:10):
Everybody's got a new puppy, and.
Speaker 1 (38:14):
I actually want I'm really motivated now to kind of
make it more public 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 callers.
(38:38):
I mean, every other dog in LA is wearing a
pron collar and I just want. And 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.
Speaker 5 (38:54):
I mean some of them.
Speaker 1 (38:55):
He you know, he used some appropriate techniques, but any
of is you have to be dominant, you are the leader.
It's all just malarchy and it's it's damaging.
Speaker 4 (39:10):
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
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 know you've spoken to me that you'd love
(39:33):
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. Does that feel accurate?
Speaker 3 (39:45):
It does? Is it more so than stand up or
the same as more so?
Speaker 1 (39:50):
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, and I think I envisioned somehow that there
it's all going to come together in some way it's
(40:10):
all going to 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.
Speaker 4 (40:18):
I love that this is a happy ending.
Speaker 3 (40:20):
There's something outside Chopis that's crazy.
Speaker 1 (40:24):
I know, I know it's but you know what, honestly,
it took a pandemic for me to really open myself
up to that possibility.
Speaker 3 (40:34):
Mm hmm.
Speaker 4 (40:35):
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 new puppy.
Speaker 3 (40:47):
I do. Oh, I guess. I mean, just just to
kind of wrap this up a little bit, we Auden
and I were talking and we kind of see you,
and I don't know if you find this offensive or
whatether you think conse accurate. We see you as a rebel.
You're kind of a rebel.
Speaker 4 (41:04):
Yeah, you did it your own way.
Speaker 3 (41:06):
You did it, you did it, You've done it your way.
Speaker 4 (41:09):
You're Gary's girl.
Speaker 5 (41:12):
I take that. I actually take that as a huge compliment.
Speaker 4 (41:15):
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 that 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 think a lot of people might have folded
in and been like, oh, okay, this is what you
(41:35):
want me to be. Like, I think you protected yourself.
Speaker 1 (41:38):
Oh wow, that's interesting. I feel like, yeah, I think that. Yeah,
I have to think about that. I think I Yeah,
I beat up myself. You know, I beat myself up
a lot. I think that's what we all do, is
we're so hard on ourselves.
Speaker 3 (41:56):
Yeah, and I.
Speaker 1 (41:58):
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 right fit.
Speaker 4 (42:16):
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.
Speaker 1 (42:35):
I love you too, Arden, and you too, Julianne. I
online instagram just my personal instagram, which is mostly pictures
of my dog is Lisa Delarios.
Speaker 4 (42:50):
D E l A I D E l A R
I O S.
Speaker 5 (42:54):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (42:55):
And I have a sister Instagram which is my dog
training Instagram, which is Lisa Loves Dogs l u v Z,
which is embarrassing, but somebody already took l ov ees.
So yeah, that's kind of me trying to I'm trying
(43:16):
to be more dog trainery on social media.
Speaker 3 (43:19):
It's been great.
Speaker 4 (43:20):
Thank you so much, Thank you to us, thanks for
coming to play with us. And we'll be right back
by by by and we're back. And if 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,
(43:41):
tell your friends. The more we have people you know
put it actually really helps us. It makes iHeart go, oh,
this was a good decision to give these scales this podcast.
If not feeling just go go over to Apple Apple
Podcasts and give us a nice star over there. Julianne,
anything you want to promote before we head off.
Speaker 3 (44:00):
We have nothing to promote great, nothing at all.
Speaker 4 (44:03):
I'm at Arta Marine and Instagram, A R D E
N M y R A n or Lady Road Podcast. Everybody,
stay safe, wear a mask, have a good time, be
nice to one another, and we'll see you next week.
Speaker 3 (44:14):
Bye bye, bye bye
Lady Boro. I'm that heaven Hellos, no need distress.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
She's taking care of it.
Speaker 3 (00:20):
She's a late.
Speaker 4 (00:27):
Hello and welcome to another episode of Lady at the
Road podcast. My name is Arta Marine. You might know
me from Satiable or Chelsea Lately or Shameless. I'm here
with my co host, Ms.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
Julie Ann Robinson.
Speaker 4 (00:41):
Yes, but if people know you from Julia.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
They best know me for directing the pilot of Bridgiton.
Speaker 4 (00:50):
It never gets sold for me, I'm into it. Well,
here's a gain we're having today. Are you so excited
for our guests today.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
Matty, I'm really really excited.
Speaker 4 (01:00):
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 and the Bellhouse. She's such a good
joke writer, she's such a great performer, and she's also
like a top dog trainer in Los Angeles. One of
(01:21):
my very favorite people, Miss Lisa Delarios. Hello, Lisa, Hi,
Ladies of the Road.
Speaker 5 (01:29):
It's so good to be there.
Speaker 4 (01:31):
Julia's going to catch our listeners up on how we
came to this podcast right now.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
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 Galifanakis was on David Lettterman's
show My Next Guest Needs No Introduction and Anna, what
did you say?
Speaker 4 (01:52):
Anna called me and you had a question, Anna, what
did you What did you call? And ask me?
Speaker 2 (01:56):
Well, I had heard it. He says your name basically
Calphadax 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 Delarious and I
was like, Lisa, Lisa, Like to my you know, almost myself,
like that's Lisa, you know, talking to my partner, like Lisa,
And he was like.
Speaker 3 (02:15):
What what what?
Speaker 2 (02:16):
And I'm like, Lisa, it's Lise, talk about Lisa. So
you know, I texted Arden immediately.
Speaker 3 (02:21):
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 where it all began.
Speaker 4 (02:42):
What Jilliana 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 Delarios. Is that how you actually pronounced your
last name?
Speaker 1 (02:56):
Well, I go back and forth. Sometimes I say Delarria,
sometimes I say Delarios. But my family's from Texas, so
they all just say Delarios Delarios, but it's a Spanish word,
so it really should be Delarios. But I think Zach
says Delarios.
Speaker 4 (03:15):
Well, I was curious just and Juliana 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 that here they are. It's he and David Letterman.
They're 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
(03:35):
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,
you didn't really grew 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
(03:58):
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,
like how you got from a person that couldn't watch
TV to 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.
Speaker 5 (04:20):
Let's see if I know the answer. I.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
You know what's interesting is I remember I mean I
lived in East Texas from age eight 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
(04:49):
party and they went 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 stayed a comedian. Wow,
which is so weird to me. I don't know why
said that. I don't know where I got that idea.
(05:09):
And then I remember there was another point when I
was a kid and I told my parents I wanted
to be a ventriloquist, and they bought me a teach
yourself ventriloquism kit for Christmas?
Speaker 4 (05:22):
Did you have a dummy?
Speaker 5 (05:24):
It was?
Speaker 1 (05:25):
It was so it was such a cheap kit, like
it wasn't even a real dummy.
Speaker 5 (05:28):
It was a cardboard like doll with like.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
Those pushpins like so you could like move a string
and its mouth would open. But I did learn which
consonants or which letters you replace the consonants with, because
the continents are where you have to close your lips.
So like like boy for example, used uh.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
Doi.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
Oh, yeah, I used D instead of B.
Speaker 5 (05:56):
So oh I wanted a nice loi boy.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
So I'm not living my lips right now?
Speaker 5 (06:06):
Well I did? I am a little I'm out of
practice practice.
Speaker 4 (06:09):
How did I never know this?
Speaker 3 (06:12):
Can I ask a question? I'm just really curious. The
living off the grid thing. Was that a religious thing?
Speaker 1 (06:19):
Was that?
Speaker 3 (06:20):
Where did that come from? What was the decision behind that?
Because and was it idyllic? Because it kind of sounds cool,
you know.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
I think my parents were young, and they were they
had been hippies, like they went to Woodstock together. My
dad had studied Eastern religion before he met my mom,
and then they had.
Speaker 5 (06:42):
This weird conversion.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
I mean they were in Texas after all, and they
went to one of those megachurches, 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 dad wanted the idyllic living off
the land kind of you know, hippie utopia, but my mom,
(07:09):
I think more there was also it was the Bible Belt,
and there were all of these fundamentalist communities out there,
and they wanted to be involved. And they put my
brother and I into a private school called Christian Heritage,
and our teachers were missionaries, and I remember my third
grade teacher said said to our class that the pope
(07:29):
was evil. So they and they bought this eighty acre
plot of land in.
Speaker 5 (07:37):
The woods to build a out.
Speaker 1 (07:40):
My dad built the house. He drilled a well. He
also was in the had been in the solar business
in the seventies.
Speaker 5 (07:49):
My dad could build solar panels. Solar panels. Wow, Gary, Gary,
my dad's like larger than life character. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
So, so they moved out there kind of to live
off the land, and you know, they thought it would
be good for 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.
Speaker 3 (08:22):
Why what was do you know what that Jenny was?
Speaker 1 (08:26):
You know, my parents aren't rednecks, like, they're actually smart seeking,
you know, curious people, and they 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
(08:47):
I went through Catechism like normal kids were born into
the Catholic Church, you know, and they go through this.
Are you Catholic?
Speaker 5 (08:56):
Julian?
Speaker 3 (08:57):
I am? How weird?
Speaker 5 (09:00):
Well would you say that? That's so?
Speaker 3 (09:01):
I don't know, I don't know, I'm not now, but
I grew up that way.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
So you you went through like the whatever what is
that called catechism God confirmation?
Speaker 5 (09:14):
Confirmation?
Speaker 4 (09:15):
In my my family was not religious, but I remember
in all the kids in my school growing up went
to they went to CCD, Catechism CD. We're going to CCD.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
I went to CCD, but that was I was joining
the church, whereas the other kids it was like that
was what they'd always been doing, you know. And yeah,
so that was a new leaf, and I think things
felt a little normal. And then I went to public school.
They took us out of Christian heritage and stuck us
(09:48):
in a public school.
Speaker 4 (09:50):
How old were you? How old were you?
Speaker 5 (09:52):
I guess I was nine.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
Then we are like in a school with rednecks, like
it was full on small town East Texas in the eighties.
Speaker 5 (10:04):
And that was kind of shocking, was it?
Speaker 3 (10:08):
What was it like? I mean, obviously your fish out
of water, right.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
I was definitely a weirdo, but I had a way
of kind of fitting in.
Speaker 3 (10:20):
And all is that when comedy comes in.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
Well, you know, there's definitely humor in my family.
Speaker 4 (10:29):
Gary's funny.
Speaker 5 (10:31):
My dad's funny.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
He doesn't really try to be funny, but he's My
grandparents are funny.
Speaker 4 (10:36):
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?
Speaker 1 (10:46):
I will say that there was, you know, with my parentals,
there was some heaviness in my household growing up. Like
my parents you know, didn't have a great marriage, so
there was like kind of a setness that was ever present.
And I do feel like I, you know, my defense
(11:10):
mechanism was to be funny and silly and keep everything light.
And I remember, like in junior high, I had a
quote that I would say to my family, is nobody
takes me humorously around here.
Speaker 3 (11:24):
I had I found a clip of you online talking
about your mom and saying when she first heard so
you do stand up, she said to you afterwards, well
you look pretty.
Speaker 5 (11:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
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 few years, and
the comedy scene in Austin was amazing, and so much
(12:03):
so that like industry people would come to Austin to
find talent, and that's where I got kind of seen,
you know. They they were doing an audition for Live
a Gotham, which was a live stand up show that
was on Comedy Central for a few years. And I
did an audition there and I got the gig and yeah,
(12:27):
like I remember, you know, we taped it and then
it aired a couple 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 where
my 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
(12:51):
into Christianity. And so yeah, she saw me perform. And
I am a clean comic.
Speaker 4 (12:59):
Like I'm really clean, goofy.
Speaker 1 (13:03):
Observational talk about animals, and 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 wow, and uh yeah, it was like
oh uh, so she's never seen me perform again. I've
never let her. She never asked. It was like just
an understood thing.
Speaker 3 (13:41):
It was it. I mean, did you expect to put No.
Speaker 5 (13:44):
I didn't. I wasn't.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
I didn't expect it to be that wame 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.
Speaker 3 (14:01):
And there's like an emphasis on't being feminine in that statement.
Do you think that that was.
Speaker 1 (14:08):
It's like that couldn't be the more, there's nothing she
couldn't have said a worse thing. Actually, it was like
I would have rather said, well you look ugly.
Speaker 3 (14:17):
Yeah, because I was talking to Arden and she was
saying that you have been reapped by every major manager
in the biz. But when they as soon as I
was just interested in wondering if there's a line between
(14:37):
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?
Speaker 1 (14:51):
Well, I did have two managers that now are pretty
I mean one of them was pretty big manager then
and now one of them is a pretig manager and
only one of them made a remark like that's me.
Speaker 5 (15:07):
Yeah, I definitely felt like.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
I remember thinking, it's not so much that I'm offended
because he told me I needed.
Speaker 5 (15:14):
To not be afraid of my body. That was the quote.
He saw me.
Speaker 4 (15:17):
It's so gross he saw me.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
I mean it, 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.
Speaker 5 (15:29):
I like dress.
Speaker 4 (15:30):
It's also at the height of like I knew you then,
And it was also at the height of when Jinning
Groflow had just proven that you can be kind of
quirky and still beautiful, and they tried to put her
in a box. You know 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
(15:52):
so much commenting on your looks.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
I remember thinking, as a female comedian, you have to
either be sexy or asexual, like there's no in between,
and I never felt like I fit inside of one
of those. I was like and I I liked feeling
like I was not either of those, you know, I
(16:14):
just was wanted to be funny, 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.
Speaker 4 (16:28):
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 not like funny looking or whatever, where you're
not an underdog, where you're not an underdog, some of
the audience already resents you because 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
(16:51):
it's for me. I always felt like I had to
kind of neuter it down so I wasn't threatening, but
still be cute enough that they would listen.
Speaker 5 (17:00):
Absolutely. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
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,
my one of my first jokes was about Kenny g Like.
Speaker 4 (17:19):
It was, you know, I knew you then. You were
great though 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.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
And it's so funny. I've been watching clips online. I mean,
you're just so funny.
Speaker 5 (17:36):
You're funny you Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
Wow, that is very nice and arting. You've always been
so supportive, and I if only I had believed in
myself as much as you know, my good friends, I'm.
Speaker 4 (17:48):
Going to ask you two questions. What was your big
dream when you moved? Like when you moved, like, what
would your ideal outcome have been moving to New York.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
You know, it's funny. I've thought about this a lot
because that was a really major time in my life.
So I was twenty one. I had no direction in
my life, and I forgot to mention that, you know,
I'd had those like little weird moments as a child
wanting to be a comedian ventriloquist. But then that went away.
(18:20):
And I graduated from high school in Robert E. Lee
High School in Tyler, Texas, That's right. And then I
moved to Dallas. You know, it was the closest big city,
and I started going to community college and I was
totally directionless. And then I had my first love, Like
I met an amazing guy. I was nineteen and we
(18:43):
fell in love in Dallas and we moved in together,
and he was this prodigy musician. He was like kind
of semi celebrity in Dallas when he was like fourteen,
and he was always you know, he thought I was hilarious,
(19:04):
and I remember he gave me a gift of There
was a stand up comedy book in the nineties called
Judy Carter.
Speaker 4 (19:12):
I had that.
Speaker 5 (19:13):
I had that It's.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
So cliche, and you know, it's like, what's your ethnicity
and write jokes about your ethnicity. But I do think
that he encouraged me, and we were living together. And
then when I was nineteen and he went on tour
(19:35):
for a few months. It was summer and I didn't
know what to do with myself, and I 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 in two stand
up comedy classes at the New School for Social Research.
(19:57):
One of them was instructed by this guy named Scot
who's still a New York stand up and one of
them was this wild old improviser named Marty Friedberg whose
zipper was always down, and he actually he used to
do comedy with Andy Kaufman and I saw him on
(20:19):
some of the old Andy Kaufman show tapes. 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 I didn't have theater background
in school like I had not. I had never been
(20:39):
a performer. I was terrified to be in front of people.
But I knew that I 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 didn't
(20:59):
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, and I want to not be afraid.
Speaker 4 (21:11):
And piggybacking off of what you said earlier, of like
you wish you had the belief in yourself. It's funny
like I I think certainly, when I was on med
TV every summer, I would still go take classes at
the ground Lengths because I felt like it was a
Fluke that I'd been hired and I just now knowing
you and being like one of your number one fans
(21:32):
now for twenty years. Would it be correct to say
that you feel like there's that you still need, Like
I know that sometimes you torture yourself with like I
just need I just need to do three more months
of mics. I just need to do three more things.
I just need like this joke. Just you know that?
Speaker 1 (21:50):
Is that?
Speaker 4 (21:50):
Is that an accurate assessment?
Speaker 5 (21:52):
Yeah, it's always been a struggle for me.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
I've never I mean I can honestly say that I've
never really enjoyed doing stand.
Speaker 5 (22:01):
Up and I did it for you know, over twenty years. Yeah,
I just.
Speaker 1 (22:10):
It was always terrifying, and I never believed no matter
if I had a manager or you know, some comic
I respected told me I was funny. I just never
believed it.
Speaker 3 (22:23):
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.
Speaker 4 (22:30):
I've never enjoyed stand up.
Speaker 5 (22:31):
Never.
Speaker 4 (22:31):
I've never enjoyed stand up.
Speaker 5 (22:33):
I think it's so common, especially for women.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
Do you think that if you were to look back
on that now, I mean if you were to say, well,
how could you get past that? What do you think
would have helped you understand? Because I mean you're kind
of an well you're an icon to all these people,
you know, Zach Allafanakus being one of them, but yet
(22:58):
you never believed that you good enough? So what how?
What do you think?
Speaker 4 (23:04):
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?
Speaker 1 (23:12):
Uh? You know, I think one of my friends. You know,
I've never done twelve Step, but I have a lot
of friends that have, and I always use their little
I don't know if they're sayings or quotes, but I
have actually used quite a few of them in my life.
(23:35):
But I had a friend tell me not that long ago,
and I don't even remember the exact qute, but it's
basically like showing up as your yourself that you are
and your imperfect self showing up as your imperfect self,
Like it's that's totally great, And I mean I guess
(23:57):
like it's you know, it would be easier for me
to give in by to a twenty five year old
it's not myself.
Speaker 3 (24:03):
Okay, they give advice to that pisson.
Speaker 4 (24:05):
How about twenty five year old terrified art and that
was your stand up friend that I 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.
Speaker 1 (24:18):
I think, you know, preparing, like you know, I used
to obsess like I should have better material, like I
should have better jokes, 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
(24:42):
what you're gonna do, and just commit to that and
then you have that, then you just be present and
that's not worrying this well, but yeah, I think letting
go of trying to be perfect, because really, when you
(25:08):
are doing comedy, the moments when I've been doing stand
up and I've actually had fun on stage, which are
far view between.
Speaker 5 (25:17):
Is when the fear just.
Speaker 1 (25:21):
Lifted 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.
Speaker 3 (25:33):
That's great advice right there.
Speaker 4 (25:36):
We're gonna take a quick break and we'll come back
and we'll discuss this advice great, and we're back.
Speaker 3 (25:48):
Sorry, Sorry, sorry, I'm just really interested by what you say, because,
you know, 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, yes, and
this is true for me. You get people and they
say like young women, and they say, well, I feel
(26:12):
like I want to be a director, but first I'm
going to be 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, 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
(26:33):
for guys. They go, right, I'm going to just go
and direct some stuff. You know, it's quite I don't know.
When I was listening to you talk, I thought, wow,
that sounds really familiar.
Speaker 4 (26:45):
As 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 doing open mics
in an Australian youth hostel in Soho where people were
the hand towels were people's actual baths hous. A lot
(27:09):
of the guys there have had tremendous access like that,
and it's not necessarily the most talented, you know that,
Like I mean, I mean, look, that's a personal choice
thing everybody's. In my opinion, some of the ones have
been 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
(27:30):
of like, I'm just going to do it and see
what happens and I'm not going to doubt it. And
do you think it would have been a different experience.
Speaker 1 (27:37):
You know, it's hard to say, uh, because I just
a picture of me being a guy. But me, I know,
you know, and I know plenty of guys that are
insecure and self defeating.
Speaker 5 (27:50):
But I do think I would say that.
Speaker 1 (27:55):
There's it seems to be in comedy, I see women
being way more, way harder on themselves, and there's like
there might be a thing of just being raised as
a male that you have a little more of a
(28:16):
built in confidence or I don't know.
Speaker 5 (28:18):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (28:19):
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 more community minded
toward each other, but that they didn't necessarily include the
women in that. You know, and when we started, there
weren't that many women doing stand up comedy.
Speaker 5 (28:41):
There's way more now.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
When I first showed up on the New York stand
up scene in nineteen ninety four, yeah, or maybe it
was ninety five, I did not get warm vibes from
a lot of the I mean, 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.
Speaker 4 (29:04):
I knew you, maybe you didn't know me.
Speaker 1 (29:07):
But we weren't.
Speaker 5 (29:07):
But we weren't were We didn't.
Speaker 4 (29:09):
Hang up, No, we do. We were doing stand up.
I knew you from stand up New York, but I
guess we were. I was ditting your roommate.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
Well. In ninety five, I was going to Hamburger Harry's,
which was a Hamburger restaurant in Times Square.
Speaker 4 (29:24):
Yep, did you bought Boston Comedy Club? New York Comedy Club.
There was not that many all shows either. It was
all very clubby clubby.
Speaker 1 (29:32):
Yep, it was all klubby clubby. There weren't like cool
coffee shop comedy.
Speaker 4 (29:36):
I remember your joke from back in the day. I
remember you had a joke about standing in front of
the television and your mom or your grandmother saying get
out of the way to the TV. Your grandmother, get
out of the way TV. You're daddy, not a glass maker.
We were doing stand up at the same time. I
know your jokes.
Speaker 1 (29:52):
Well, I guess when I first showed I'm talking about
when I first showed.
Speaker 5 (29:55):
Up on the scene, I had negative I had.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
A few really like like me girl experiences.
Speaker 4 (30:06):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:10):
I was like whoa you know? And I could see
like I was young and sweet and kind of funny,
and they were like who is she thinks she is?
And I was also.
Speaker 5 (30:23):
So yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:25):
So I was going to go into how I met
Zach You should do you want me to?
Speaker 5 (30:30):
Yeah? Okay.
Speaker 1 (30:32):
So I decided to move to New York in nineteen
ninety four. I was living with my boyfriend, 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 got it. I know what I'm going
(30:52):
to do, and I'm going to move to New York
and I'm going to do stand up. But it wasn't
an easy thing to do because I was in love
and everything I knew and every one I knew was
in Dallas. But my parents also got a divorce that year,
and I think that was a big motivator because I
was like twenty just turned twenty one, and I was like,
(31:16):
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 I got it, I don't
want to end up like my mom. And I was like,
I gotta go do the scariest, most difficult thing, which
was moved to New York City do stand up comedy.
Speaker 5 (31:35):
I did not have a clear goal of what I
wanted out of it.
Speaker 1 (31:37):
I just knew that I had to do something drastic,
and I had had this experience with taking the classes
and then 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 I was bit
(32:01):
definitely like I knew I had to do it more.
And so moved to New York and I was there
apartment hunting. It was right around Thanksgiving nineteen ninety four.
I'm sold, and I was at this bar on the
Lower east Side and my best friend at the time,
(32:21):
Mary Armstrong, who I had known since junior high, she
moved to New York with me, which was very great
that I 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.
Speaker 5 (32:39):
It was all very you remember Max Fish.
Speaker 4 (32:41):
Yeah, it was a great bar.
Speaker 5 (32:43):
It was on Ludlow Street.
Speaker 4 (32:44):
That's where to be.
Speaker 1 (32:46):
That's where to be. But this was like it was
still a little kind of dangerous at that time. And
Zach Galfanakis, So we're hanging out this bar. I was
at the bar wait 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
(33:07):
you get that guy over there to buy you a
drink and then give it to me.
Speaker 5 (33:12):
And we just started chatting. And it didn't.
Speaker 1 (33:17):
Feel like this is a cute guy at the bar
we're flirting. It felt like this is my friend. Like
it just felt we was.
Speaker 4 (33:26):
A safe for our listeners. He was so cute back
in the day, Like if people know him, I was
more of a character. Like nineteen ninety five, Zach was adorable, adorable.
Speaker 1 (33:37):
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. And he wore overalls and rollerblades. He
(33:57):
was literally rollerblade and hang on to the back of
city bus. We're all while wearing overalls.
Speaker 4 (34:02):
I remember he was cleaning houses. And then he also
worked at one of that really the really thin frozen
yogurt things that was like between two storefronts, so it
was like just on the Upper West Side. That was
like it was basically like just the width of a machine,
like a frozen yogurt machine.
Speaker 5 (34:18):
Wow, I totally forgot about that.
Speaker 4 (34:20):
Yeah, it was like I'm like seventy third 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
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.
Speaker 1 (34:40):
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 eighty Miles, who was
also a very successful comedy person. He was a head
writer for the tonight show YEP. But he he and
Miles had gone to college together and were living on
(35:03):
the Lower East Side in this tenements apartment and across
the street from Max Fish.
Speaker 5 (35:09):
So the four of us all met up.
Speaker 4 (35:12):
I remember that apartment. Did it have a tub in
the kitchen?
Speaker 1 (35:15):
It did?
Speaker 4 (35:16):
Remember that I've been in that apartment.
Speaker 1 (35:20):
And if you the toilet, you like kind of could
barely fit your legs into the room with the toilet.
It was like it was a closet.
Speaker 4 (35:27):
I wanted to just catch up to present day and say, okay,
I do too, So you are now living in Los Angeles.
Are you still doing stand up?
Speaker 1 (35:36):
Well, pre pandemic, I was doing stand up, yes, I
had you know.
Speaker 5 (35:42):
It was actually still doing open mics.
Speaker 1 (35:45):
I had a manager who I really liked, a woman
here in LA. 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. So I
was doing it, but I was still I was going
(36:06):
to commercial auditions, but not really sure.
Speaker 5 (36:12):
What I wanted.
Speaker 4 (36:13):
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.
Speaker 3 (36:22):
Aden was telling me that you that you trained as
an occupational therapist along the way I did, and that
you worked for the ASPCA I did, and that you're
an animal trainer. You are right now an animal trainer?
Is that right?
Speaker 4 (36:42):
Well?
Speaker 1 (36:43):
When I moved back to LA three and a half
years ago, I needed to make money and I had
just come off of that job working doing outreach in
the South Bronx for the ASPCA, which was crazy job.
Speaker 5 (37:03):
And I have.
Speaker 1 (37:04):
A comedian friend who is now married to a woman
who owns a private training company here in LA and
I met her. She was great, got along, she hired
me and I trained. I mentored 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. Cut to now,
(37:52):
I after doing it for three years, I feel like
I'm actually kind of becoming pretty proficient and I love
training dogs, and it's I can make money doing it.
There's no shortage, especially during the pandemic.
Speaker 5 (38:10):
Everybody's got a new puppy, and.
Speaker 1 (38:14):
I actually want I'm really motivated now to kind of
make it more public 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 callers.
(38:38):
I mean, every other dog in LA is wearing a
pron collar and I just want. And 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.
Speaker 5 (38:54):
I mean some of them.
Speaker 1 (38:55):
He you know, he used some appropriate techniques, but any
of is you have to be dominant, you are the leader.
It's all just malarchy and it's it's damaging.
Speaker 4 (39:10):
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
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 know you've spoken to me that you'd love
(39:33):
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. Does that feel accurate?
Speaker 3 (39:45):
It does? Is it more so than stand up or
the same as more so?
Speaker 1 (39:50):
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, and I think I envisioned somehow that there
it's all going to come together in some way it's
(40:10):
all going to 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.
Speaker 4 (40:18):
I love that this is a happy ending.
Speaker 3 (40:20):
There's something outside Chopis that's crazy.
Speaker 1 (40:24):
I know, I know it's but you know what, honestly,
it took a pandemic for me to really open myself
up to that possibility.
Speaker 3 (40:34):
Mm hmm.
Speaker 4 (40:35):
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 new puppy.
Speaker 3 (40:47):
I do. Oh, I guess. I mean, just just to
kind of wrap this up a little bit, we Auden
and I were talking and we kind of see you,
and I don't know if you find this offensive or
whatether you think conse accurate. We see you as a rebel.
You're kind of a rebel.
Speaker 4 (41:04):
Yeah, you did it your own way.
Speaker 3 (41:06):
You did it, you did it, You've done it your way.
Speaker 4 (41:09):
You're Gary's girl.
Speaker 5 (41:12):
I take that. I actually take that as a huge compliment.
Speaker 4 (41:15):
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 that 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 think a lot of people might have folded
in and been like, oh, okay, this is what you
(41:35):
want me to be. Like, I think you protected yourself.
Speaker 1 (41:38):
Oh wow, that's interesting. I feel like, yeah, I think that. Yeah,
I have to think about that. I think I Yeah,
I beat up myself. You know, I beat myself up
a lot. I think that's what we all do, is
we're so hard on ourselves.
Speaker 3 (41:56):
Yeah, and I.
Speaker 1 (41:58):
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 right fit.
Speaker 4 (42:16):
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.
Speaker 1 (42:35):
I love you too, Arden, and you too, Julianne. I
online instagram just my personal instagram, which is mostly pictures
of my dog is Lisa Delarios.
Speaker 4 (42:50):
D E l A I D E l A R
I O S.
Speaker 5 (42:54):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (42:55):
And I have a sister Instagram which is my dog
training Instagram, which is Lisa Loves Dogs l u v Z,
which is embarrassing, but somebody already took l ov ees.
So yeah, that's kind of me trying to I'm trying
(43:16):
to be more dog trainery on social media.
Speaker 3 (43:19):
It's been great.
Speaker 4 (43:20):
Thank you so much, Thank you to us, thanks for
coming to play with us. And we'll be right back
by by by and we're back. And if 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,
(43:41):
tell your friends. The more we have people you know
put it actually really helps us. It makes iHeart go, oh,
this was a good decision to give these scales this podcast.
If not feeling just go go over to Apple Apple
Podcasts and give us a nice star over there. Julianne,
anything you want to promote before we head off.
Speaker 3 (44:00):
We have nothing to promote great, nothing at all.
Speaker 4 (44:03):
I'm at Arta Marine and Instagram, A R D E
N M y R A n or Lady Road Podcast. Everybody,
stay safe, wear a mask, have a good time, be
nice to one another, and we'll see you next week.
Speaker 3 (44:14):
Bye bye, bye bye
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist
It’s 1996 in rural North Carolina, and an oddball crew makes history when they pull off America’s third largest cash heist. But it’s all downhill from there. Join host Johnny Knoxville as he unspools a wild and woolly tale about a group of regular ‘ol folks who risked it all for a chance at a better life. CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist answers the question: what would you do with 17.3 million dollars? The answer includes diamond rings, mansions, velvet Elvis paintings, plus a run for the border, murder-for-hire-plots, and FBI busts.