July 29, 2024 • 52 mins
Carlos Mencia's career in comedy wasn't all laughs. He opens up to Oliver about pushing past the naysayers who advised him to call it quits as a young standup.
Find out how therapy impacted his material AND parental instincts.
Plus, how he navigates telling his truth on stage without triggering audiences.
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 (00:05):
Hi.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
I am Kate Hudson and my name is Oliver Hudson.
We wanted to do something that highlighted our.
Speaker 3 (00:11):
Relationship and what it's like to be siblings.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
We are a sibling railvalry, No, no sibling rival. You
don't do that with your mouth, Vely, that's good. So
I just finished a meditation, and I've been meditating on
(00:45):
and off, I don't know, since I was nineteen. Mainly off,
but when it's on, it's on. You know, I've had
experiences with meditation where I have been consistent and.
Speaker 3 (00:58):
You really are able.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
To draw into a pretty special place of clarity and
of nothingness.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
I felt it. But that's the reason.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
That's the reason why it's called a practice, because if
you don't fucking practice, you know, you can't get there.
I know how good it can be and how good
it can feel, so I'm trying to stay consistent with it.
Meditation kind of saved me, you know, when I was
having my anxiety twenties and in my thirties and forties.
(01:30):
You know, I basically have anxiety every decade, it fucking seems.
But you know, when you're able to sort of drop
into this space and let everything go. It definitely can
bring you out of a lot of situations, but it
needs to be, in my opinion, practiced on a daily basis,
(01:52):
because what I do in my whole life. If I
feel like I'm not looking good, always had a shape,
I'll work out hard for six weeks and.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
Be like, yeah, that's pretty good and quit.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
If I am feeling shitty or I'm feeling anxious and
I'm going through a spell, I'll meditate and get better.
I'm like, okay done. You know, I'm a quick fix
it guy. So I'm trying to maintain a consistency here,
and I'm trying transcendental meditation only because Howard Stern does it.
Because Howard Stern is like my idol. I just love
(02:25):
him so much and I know that he does TM,
so I want to try TM.
Speaker 3 (02:31):
And I just did it and now I'm here.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
So I'm not sure this podcast is going to be
any different or better. I'm not sure if I'm in
a better state of mind now or not. I don't
even know. But I know that just sitting quiet for
twenty minutes is probably a good thing no matter what.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
Anyway, we got a cool guest on today.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
I got a cool guest on Carlo Smincia been around
for a billion years. The guy is unstoppable. He's got
a new residency at Hair in Vegas. He's funny as shit,
He's been.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
Through it all.
Speaker 3 (03:05):
I'm excited to talk to him. Amazing upbringing.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
I think he said he has seventeen siblings, came from Honduras.
Very interested, very interested, as I am with every goddamn
guest that we bring in. Okay, I'm not going to
bring in someone who I'm not interested in talking to,
or we just need to fill space, you know what
I'm saying. Like I'm fucking here, I'm just doing my thing.
(03:30):
I'll talk to anyone, anyone our incredible producers bring our
well talked I don't even care who it is. I'll
just fucking go. But we're lucky enough to have Carlos
here right now.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
Bring him in. What's up, brother?
Speaker 2 (03:42):
How are you?
Speaker 1 (03:43):
You don't want? Man? I'm good, just exhausted, but good, good, exhausting,
good time because you're working. You know what, I don't
realize how much time I put into the work. Yeah,
I mean the work is like you know, I love
what I do. You don't work today? Life when you
do what you love. Blah blah blah.
Speaker 3 (04:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
But you know when my gardener comes up to me
and says, man, you need to slow down, You'll literally go, well,
here's the guy that I'll call him on a Sunday
and go, hey, I did a pop up show. Would
you like free tickets? And he's like, I can't, I'm
working today. This guy's the one telling me, yeah, you know,
(04:24):
I looked at your schedule. So yeah, I sometimes get
caught up in how fun it is to entertain and
to make other people happy and laugh, and you know,
in that laughter infuse those ideas you know of hey,
look at the world from a different perspective.
Speaker 3 (04:42):
Yeah, but does it? But does it? Tickets toll though?
Speaker 2 (04:44):
You know where eventually you're like, shit, man, I gotta
I gotta sit down for a second.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
Yes, it it Well, it doesn't because because during the day,
I you know, my job entail you know, an hour,
an hour and a half a night, depending on the show.
So let's just say it's two to three hours, maybe more,
maybe five at the most. The rest of the time,
I can do with what I want and as long
(05:11):
as I don't you know, party too hard or indulge
in that stuff after shows that make the day. The
next day, right, it's the next day. So you go
to sleep, you know, you go to sleep at one o'clock,
two o'clock in the morning. Eh, you're fine. You wake
up at ten or eleven, go to sleep at six
to eight o'clock in the morning. After a night, you're
(05:32):
waking up to literally do a show. And that's when
it gets bad because now you have no memories, no life,
no existence. You're just literally hanging out with people making
them laugh, then trying to maintain that up by doing
drugs keep you up, and then the next day it's
(05:52):
like boom all over again, and you're tired, exhausted, You
have no memories, you didn't go anywhere, you didn't do anything.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
Yeah, and and and then you're chasing. You're chasing the hangover,
you're chasing the night. You know, I've dealt with that too,
where it's like, oh man, this is bad. I have
to have a cocktail or I have to have something
to write the ship. And then it's just this consistent
chasing the tail type ship.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
Well, yeah, because at night, right, you want to you
want to maintain that, so you get a little drunk
and then somebody offers you whatever it is, Yeah, that
keeps you a little high. Yeah, then you got to
take something to go to sleep, right, Also, now you're
doing it down or to go down to sleep. Yeah,
and then all of a sudden you wake up and
you're like, I'm groggy. I gotta do a little something
and wake me up. And that cycle just continues and continues.
(06:38):
So as long as you don't get on that train.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
Yeah, is that something that you've dealt with in your career,
like early on where you know you you had to
sort of use substance to maintain your your sort of.
Speaker 3 (07:01):
You're not not ambition rise to keep up and keep going.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
Oh I gotcha. No, No, I was never I was
never that person. You know, when you grew up in
the projects the way I did. You see the positive
and the negative of the drug system, right, the abuse
on one side and all the lives that it ruins. But
(07:25):
you also see the guy that you know whose parents
were poor and broke, and all of a sudden, two
years later they moved out of the projects and they
had a nice house somewhere, you know, in a middle class,
uper middle class neighborhood. So you see that, but then
you also see that those guys never reached the age
(07:45):
of thirty without getting shot, killed, or in jail. So
you see the whole gamut of it. And I just
never I'm a math guy, so I never saw the
the reason for those kinds of things, and never saw
the reason to get drunk. I was never afraid to
talk to a girl. I never I was never the
guy that was like, oh I'm going on stage, Oh
(08:06):
my god, I'm feeling I'm feeling weird. Let me let
me take a shot here, or let me you know
what I mean? Do that. That was never, That was never,
never a part of my of my cycle, book life.
My cycle was always be in the moment, be in
the now, see what the world is giving to you.
Change the world, make the world a better place. Doesn't
(08:26):
matter why you're here, Make the world a better place,
and that will be your reasoning. Like all this kind
of stuff, you know, reading those kinds of books, they
had cart totalis of the world, you know what I mean,
the Singers of the World, does you know? Trying to
find that. So that wasn't the thing that got me.
The thing that got me and still gets me is
since I don't do all that stuff eating in the
(08:49):
middle of the night after shows because I can't eat
thefore shows. So if I have a two to three
show night, three show night, right, the show starts at six,
I mean, I can't eat anything after four thirty. And
if I do, it's a really light salad or something
like that can between shows too heavy. So all of
a sudden, it's two o'clock in the morning and I
haven't eaten since five, and I'm fucking hungry, bro like hungry,
(09:17):
and you know, a mixed salad or it's whatever that
that does not sound appetizing when you're a little drunk
at that hour and night. That's when I'm like fighting it,
you know what I mean. The last the last time
we did that, and it was kind of an intervention
moment for me, Me and my friend, just two of us.
(09:38):
We're at the drive through of a water Burger. We
ordered and the lady goes, that's gonna be seventy eight dollars,
and I said, bro, we gotta stop, dude, this is
two people, this is two people. It was just so
much food, man, So I just and I said to myself,
(09:58):
we got we got a fa this out, So I'm
trying to find a balance with that.
Speaker 3 (10:04):
No, no, I get that, But.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
These are the problems that it's hard to talk about
with regular people that have regular jobs, who really work hard.
And you know, I'm this is why sometimes I just
hold my tongue because in my head I can hear
my gardener going, oh, it must be hard. It must
be hard for you to have to eat in the
middle of that night. Yeah, so you have seventy eight
(10:28):
dollars to just throw away on food at four o'clock
in the morning. I could hear that boy is telling me, like,
shuit your pie hole.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
I totally get that. But and I've talked about this
on our podcast. You know, my sister's not here. We
talk about it all the time. You know where sometimes
if you are a privileged, fortunate person you know, or
who has made it in one way or another, we
are afraid to talk about our feelings and our struggles
and our issues and our problems because of exactly what
you're talking about. The fear of sort of judgment, you know, saying, oh,
(11:01):
you think you have it bad, but right, it's all relative.
We all have our issues, you know what I mean.
No one knows about my ship. No one knows that
my dad left when I was arrived. I mean a
lot of people do now. But I have my own
fucking shit. And if I can't express myself, you know,
publicly or if on a podcast and I'm not being authentic,
then that's then I'm not having fun honestly doing what
(11:23):
I'm doing with this anyway.
Speaker 3 (11:25):
So I just say it, you know, and it's it
is what it is.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
We all have our issues, no matter what you know,
social class that we come from.
Speaker 3 (11:33):
Yeah, you can feel, you know, you're.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
A privileged person to be where we are, But that
doesn't mean we can't have our own our ship.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
Oh no, the fact that we feel that is awesome.
The problem is that unless you go deeper, right, unless
you go to a real deep place like you just
did about your dad or moments like that, the problem
is we don't get empathy exactly, or we don't get empathy,
or we get hatred. Right, you get one or the other.
(12:01):
You get like really who cares? Or fuck you? Let
me tell you right, Yeah, So that's our fears. So
that's why for me personally, what's been a godsend is therapy.
And you know, I've been doing it since two thousand
and eight, you know, And it was funny because it
(12:24):
was just not but a month ago, you know, I
was talking to my therapist about a similar situation like this,
and I was like, man, sometimes I feel like I
don't have anybody to reveal those truths to because it
is important to tell those truths. And thank god that
you have this avenue, and you know, I have that avenue.
But he said, you know, well, thank god you have
(12:44):
me because you can tell me everything and anything, and
at least that, you know, feels a certain void. And
I was like, yeah, I thank god I have him,
and you know, he's become, you know, a friend of sorts,
you know, and I know that he's a therapist and
there's a transactional thing that occurs there where I pay him,
(13:06):
But you know what, I pay people to see me perform,
and you know, I would do it for free, as
I've done it for free before. So that doesn't change
that dynamic. But you're right, it's needed.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
Did you find a therapy When you got into therapy,
do you feel like that changed your comedy? You know,
because you are now dealing with a deeper part of
yourself and you know, pain is funny, There's no doubt
about it.
Speaker 3 (13:39):
I'm very self.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
I'm so self deprecating, which is probably detrimental to my
success because I fucking put myself down all the time
in the vein of humor, you know what I mean, right?
Speaker 1 (13:53):
A little too much?
Speaker 2 (13:54):
Yeah, well, there definitely is. It's a way to sort
of deal with insecurities, There's no doubt. But do you
feel like once you got into therapy and really were
in do it, it changed your perspective in the way
you performed your jokes hugely so.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
And one of the biggest reasons that that happened was,
you know, I had seen and been interested in, you know,
psychology for a very long time in philosophy, so I
remember that when I would ever see TV shows or
movies that had you know, therapist in it, it was
(14:30):
always like, let's get to the root of the problem,
let's figure out why you feel this way. And I
thought that that was so important and it might be
to others, but I remember something occurred really early on
in our therapy sessions where I said, maybe we need
to find out why I behaved this way or why
(14:51):
I'm doing this specific behavior, and my therapist said, we
could do that if you want, or we could just
work on changing it. It's up to you. We can
go and try to figure out why this happens, or
you can just say I don't want to be that
way anymore and begin to change. It's up to you.
And I said, oh shit. I thought we had to
like find out, like I had to go to a
(15:13):
moment of like, oh my god. It was when my
mother wasting my brother and I was in the closest's
scared and that's why I hate women's shoes, because I
was in the closet with the shoes now. And it
changed me so much because it made me realize that,
and it changed my comedy because my comedy up until
that point, my setups were a little more contrived because
(15:37):
sometimes you know, I was going to say stuff that
people were going to be affected by. So I tried
really hard to kind of get to the root of
a problem, so to speak. And what it made me
change was like, now, these are jokes, and if you
don't understand that, that's on you, not on me. I
don't have to change. I don't have to give you
a diet tribe of my life and your life. In
order for us to do a joke about how my
mom beats when I was a kid, We're just going
(15:59):
to do the joke to it quicker. So yeah, it changed.
It changed me vastly. It also made me a bit
more sensitive to other people's pains, the fact that I'm
going to say things on stage that are going to
trigger negative feelings. Not on purpose, but I talk about
(16:23):
how I was sexually used as a kid on stage. Right,
no matter how funny that joke is, no matter how
good I perform it, no matter what my perspective is,
there's gonna be somebody that is lacking their ass off
and is immediately going to be taken like a movie
where your pan on their face, it freezes and then
(16:44):
there's a time work and then all of a sudden
they're in their trauma. Right, I know that I'm going
to do that. So now that I'm aware of that,
you know, I try to say little things, you know,
puts in there, says like, hey, this is how I
deal with this trauma. This is what I do, This
(17:06):
is what everybody does, but this is how I deal
with it. Or I'll say, hey, my friend said, how
do you do this or a woman said to me,
you know, and infuse their feelings or what I think
they might be feeling into it that dat has changed before.
My idea was, hey, dude, it's a fucking joke. Seriously,
(17:27):
like if you can't understand that, why are you mad
at me? Right? And I do feel that way to.
Speaker 3 (17:32):
A point, like you know who I am.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
You've come to see me, you know my frit So
don't be offended by what I say.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
Right, But there's still you know, there's still somebody out
there that's like, hey, a priest diddled me, and I
feel I never I haven't resolved those resolutions yet. So
my whole thing is to do the joke and have
them feeling like, Okay, that was funny and maybe I
can talk to him about this or maybe I can
(17:59):
deal with it the way he out with it or
whatever that is. But as long as they don't stay
in there because of me, I'm okay. I'm okay with that.
But that but you know, having empathy, seeing other people's
you know, affect on me, seeing my effect on other people,
all that kind of stuff. Therapy.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
That's interesting because you're taking on the burden of potentially
thousands of people because in your set you have you
don't know who you're offending, So it's kind of a
hard one. Maybe with something specific like sexual abuse that
you went through, you know that there's probably a few
people in there who have dealt with that. But within
your set all the other sort of jokes you might
(18:39):
be telling that, I mean, it's hard. I mean, it's
not on you to take on everyone you know and
have to amend for them, to make sure that they
feel okay.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
You're right, But the only thing about therapy for me
is that you know, it has taught me that, you know,
I do my part so that I can be okay
with me, right, I do my part so that I
can live with myself. But you're right, it is not
my responsibility, you know, to take on the burden of
everybody's pain, everybody's past, everybody's tortures. You know, I'm not
(19:14):
triggering anybody. I am telling my truth, my side of
the story, so to speak, comedically on stage, and I
do my best to be protective, so to speak. But
at a certain point, it is it is a comedy
show and it's not a podcast like this where I'm
(19:35):
not bound by having to be funny and having to
tell a joke and having to entertain where I can
be open about something like this. So yeah, that's a
different venue. And you know, I do my best, but
I don't take on that responsibility. Everybody's responsibility for happiness
is on them. Y is on each and every one
of us. And that's it. And that's hard for us
(19:55):
to believe when you create a cancel culture where when
a person that disagrees with you is shut up, when
a person that doesn't feel the way you do is
shut up, and you basically try to create a world
for these people that is perfectly sane and perfectly benign.
You're ignoring the feelings of the other people as well.
(20:16):
What about those other people that you've changed? And and
so for me, we've been giving you know, you hurt
my feelings is one of them. I can't hurt your feelings.
I don't have the power to hurt your feelings, right,
I only have the power to say something. And you
allowed your feelings to be hurt, right, right, You allowed
that to happen. That wasn't me. I didn't do anything.
(20:39):
I wasn't a part of your life. When whatever trauma
occurred that wasn't. I I was not there, and I
think that a lot of us have been advocating that
in today's world. And you know, the advent of anxiety.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
Depends on swings, you know, so far, You're right, You're right.
I mean it eventually sort of finds some into the middle.
I mean, I think that's shifting. I think a lot
of comedians now are moving back to where it's like,
all right, well we can say what we wanted to
say now again.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
You know. Well, I don't get me wrong. I think
that what occurred was needed.
Speaker 3 (21:14):
That's what I said. Like, There's a lot of great
things that came from it.
Speaker 1 (21:17):
It was needed, and it was needed in comedy specifically
because we got lazy, right, I got it. We started
being edgy for Edgy's sake. Yeah, Right, Today the jokes
are literally how edgy, how sexy? Or you know, blatantly?
(21:38):
You know, can can I be in saying this one thing? Right?
You watch the most recent rous of Brady, Most of
those comedians didn't even know didn't even know the guy, right, right,
They like literally met the guy probably that day or
a little before whatever, and they're saying all this crazy
shit about him and whatever. And about all these people.
(21:59):
It got to a point where it was just Edgy
for Edgy's sake, and I believe that there was a
reckoning that had to go because just because you call
yourself a comedian and you're up on a stage, you
still have to make what you say resemble a joke
(22:20):
or else you're making statements. And once we make statements,
we can get into the trouble of this. That's the
first thing that needed reckoning. The second one was we
started apologizing when guys and girls in stand ups started
to say I'm sorry. What that did was it made
(22:41):
the joke real. Now, it made the joke an actual statement.
I've never apologized for a joke, never will. I'm sorry
if it defense people, and you know that because we
talked about this just a few minutes ago. Totally do
not want to hurt anybody's feelings. But I know how
(23:02):
to create this stuff and do it so that it
does resemble a joke. And I'm not going to apologize
for telling the joke because now you're saying that my
intent needs an apology, and my intent does not need
an apology. My intent was to entertain you and make
you laugh. So we didn't need this reckoning. My fear
(23:22):
is what you just talked about, the pendulum. I think
that what's going to happen is we're going to get
an influx within the next you know, a few months
or years of comedians just going real fucked up heed
gie like imagine, and they're they're already existing comedians that
(23:43):
wish to behave you know, like, uh, let me draw
an analogy, like a Trump comedian that wants to go
up there and not give a shit. And all you
need is about two percent of America that love you, Yeah,
and you will be a millionaire. Literally one percent will
give you three of three three and a half million followers.
(24:05):
So one percent, we'll have you selling out comedy clubs
and making about eight hundred thousan million dollars a year.
Just one percent. You dropped the two. Now we're getting exponential.
So yeah, you know that's comedian can't exist today, broke.
Speaker 2 (24:39):
So wait, you have you have seventeen siblings? Uh?
Speaker 1 (24:43):
Yeah? Have you living sisters and six brothers?
Speaker 2 (24:45):
Fucking crazy? So you grew up did everyone grow up
in on doors?
Speaker 1 (24:49):
Most of about eight no, six of them wait let
me see, yeah, six of them mostly in Honduras. I
was the last one born there.
Speaker 3 (24:58):
You were, and then how long were you there before
you to the station.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
I came here when I was like seven months old,
but I loved for periods of time, So I came
here when I was a kid. But then when I
was eight, I went to school there. Then when I
was ten, I went to school there. Then when I
was twelve, I went to school there. So I kind
of kept yeah, coming in and out. I lived in
Mexico for a while, in und Earth for a while.
But what that taught me was and it made me.
(25:22):
It made me a much better entertainer, specifically a comedian
because and I think one of the big things missing
today in America from a sociological standpoint is having a
decent sized family. When you have you know, two, three, four,
you know three to four siblings are more. You begin
(25:44):
to realize that you don't like your siblings sometimes but
you love them, and there's a big difference, huge difference.
You also have to deal with people that don't like
what you like. Sometimes you have to eat whatever everybody
else is eating. You know what I mean? When you
have one kid, you know, I have two kids, and
(26:05):
I get into that were like, Dad, I don't like this,
and it's like what am I supposed to do? My
mom would have been like eat it or whatever. You know,
But we were poor and we didn't have a lot
of food.
Speaker 3 (26:16):
You were in East La, right, you grew up in
East So I grew.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
Up in the projects, in the projects in East La.
So you know when my mom made food, that was
the food. That was it. We didn't have a pantry.
The fuck is a pantry?
Speaker 2 (26:29):
How did how did your parents support eighteen kids or whatever?
Speaker 3 (26:33):
Like, how do you feed eighteen kids? How does that work?
Speaker 1 (26:36):
First of all, it's not the way. The number is
not the way you think. So at any given point,
there's maybe six siblings in the house. Right, the weather
was are gone and it wasn't having come yet, right,
so there's about six everybody over sixteen, it's contributing to
the family in some way, shape or form, right, a
job of some sort, a weekend gig of some kind,
(26:58):
cutting grass, you know, doing work for others. Like.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
So it was never it was never that money going
out a lot that money goes into a pot essentially.
Speaker 1 (27:08):
So my first paycheck, I'll never forget it. Man, it
was ninety eight dollars and thirty eight cents, and I
came home so happy. I was fifteen years old, and
I showed my dad and he told me to sign it,
kept it and gave me twenty bucks and he said,
the family says thank you. And I was like, what
(27:28):
the fuck has happened? I had ninety bucks and I
got twenty dollars? Like how did this occur? But being
around those people, what it made me realize is like
I can hang around anybody, you know what I mean,
I can I can tolerate anybody. I can find the
connection with anybody. It doesn't matter what you are. You know,
(27:53):
you name the type of person, and I can tell
you how many exists in my family and my family
were honest, real and I found that out. I mean
I knew that, but here's a really great story to
show you, like who my family are and my belief
in the acceptance of truth. Right, That's another thing that
you realize when you're a kid, because we have really
(28:17):
smart people in our family and not so smart people
in our family. And I remember when my father at
one point was kind of telling us what he expected
of us, and the difference between me and one of
my brothers was, if I get a B, I'm gonna
(28:37):
get my ass beat, and if he doesn't get a fail,
he's gonna get rewarded. And I remember going, wait, what
the fuck? Just hold on, hold on. If I get
a B, I'm gonna get my ass beat. But as
long as he doesn't fail and he gets all ds,
you get it. And my father, my father like in
(28:58):
front of everybody, just looking mean, it's shit. Yeah, because
for him it's hard to not fail.
Speaker 3 (29:06):
Mm hm.
Speaker 1 (29:06):
For you, it's easy to get a's. So if you
don't get all a's, I know you're fucking around or
doing something stupid.
Speaker 3 (29:15):
That's smart.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
That's fucking smart parenting dude, like your today, Yeah, but
your parented the individual child.
Speaker 3 (29:24):
I have three kids. I do it the same.
Speaker 2 (29:27):
My middle kid just naturally is good at school. My
older one is he struggles a little bit. So I
have more expectations for my middle one than I do
from my older one. But it's all about effort. It's
for me, it's effort. Grades don't mean anything.
Speaker 3 (29:43):
Then the letter.
Speaker 2 (29:44):
If I see that you're working your ass off and
you study for fucking three days on this math test,
and I know you did and you get it. D
I'm like, all right, you're good.
Speaker 3 (29:52):
You're good. Maybe you're just not good at math.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
But if you apply that effort into your life and
have that work ethic and you carry that shit onto
when you're in your twenties and you're applying that to
what you love to do, you're going to be successful.
Speaker 1 (30:04):
You know. But that's because and I do jokes about this.
I go look people that have I kind of it's
somewhere between three and four, but I say four. Four
kids are more end up being really great parents because
you love your kids but not too much. You protect
them but not too much. Nothing is overkilled, right. Once
you have four kids, you don't have the time to hover.
(30:25):
You don't have the time to stay there and watch
I do this thing. It's pretty, it's really cool. It
just takes a lot of time. So I don't do
it all the time. But I say raise your aunt
if you have two kids, and people raise your hands,
and then I ask them which one of your two
kids is the smartest kid, And normally they tend to
(30:45):
say it's not that one is smarter than the other,
they're just different. And then I'll say raise your round
if you have four kids or more, and whoever has
the most kids raises your hands. I ask them, are
you easily offended? Are you like shy in any way?
And they're like no. I say, all right, come to
the come to the stage, and I won't put them
on the stage normally. I'll put them like right before
(31:07):
the stage, turn them around so that everybody could see
their face. And then I go, this is the difference
your parents that have one or two kids, who idealize
their children and look at them differently, and people that
have more than four kids. And I say, look forward,
don't look at me. And I tell everybody, look at
(31:28):
this person's face. And I tell them, don't answer the question,
don't answer the questions, don't open your mouth, just exist
in time. And I say, of your whatever many kids,
which one of them is the fucking idiot? And at
that moment, everybody just dies laughing because you could see
(31:49):
the person every time, just go like you could see it, dude,
You could see it in their places. And the bout.
I would say, about ninety percent of the time, I'll
say what's the name, and they'll say the name. About
ten percent of the time they're like I can't.
Speaker 3 (32:05):
I can't can't do it.
Speaker 1 (32:06):
I can't say the name out of loud. I know
you're recording this, and I can't do it. But about
ninety percent of the time, Bro, they say it. And
here's the thing that our children are suffering from the
anxiety that they have. In my opinion, a lot of
them is because of expectations that should not be placed
(32:29):
upon them. You know, my dumb brother is one of
the happiest people I know in real life, but he
also knows his limitations. He also doesn't try to go
overboard with it. He doesn't expect things from himself that
he should not expect from himself, and therefore his anxiety
(32:51):
levels are pretty normal. You know, I have a friend
that's been working at McDonald since we were sixteen. Bro,
sixteen and I was born in nineteen sixty seven. I'm
fifty six. It's gonna be fifty seven. We're the same age.
Never accepted a position where he had to actually be
the manager and run the whole place. Ever, and he's
(33:13):
happiest dude, makes good money, not the richest guy in
the world. You know, has a little, humble, little place,
but he knows his limitations and he's happy, and I
think that that right there is missing, you know, because
we live in this world where it's like anybody can
be anything. Bullshit. That is bullshit. It's not true. No,
(33:35):
not anybody can be a great actor, not anybody can
be a great director, not anybody can be a great podcaster.
This bullshit. Some of us have gifts that if we
nurture whatever those gifts are, we could be great at that.
But this whole thing is being placed on these kids,
in my opinion, and that's where their anxiety is coming from.
And I mean, can you imagine I was like, we
(33:56):
had anxiety already, we had some of that, but could
you imagine if it was like could you imagine the
anxiety you would be placing upon that kid right now,
the one that you know, yeah, has a little hard
over the time. Could you imagine if you treated both
the same, or you pretended that there was nothing wrong
with him, or that he didn't have any issues with math,
(34:17):
and you were just a dad going, well, everybody else
gets it, the fuck is your problem? Could you imagine
the ship that that kid would be born into it.
I think that on a very subliminal level, we've done
that to our kids, and we did. We've done a disservice. Bro.
Speaker 2 (34:32):
We got to come back so much so I can't.
I couldn't agree with you more. And that's why I
do not raise my kids like that at all. You
know what I mean, Like it is not about.
Speaker 3 (34:43):
There is no pressure now, you know.
Speaker 2 (34:44):
With my oldest right, so he's a junior and he
wants to go to college, and you know, he wants
to go to n YU and he wants to go
to get into Tish and all that stuff. And I said, hey,
why is nam as Wilder? I said, Wilder, Look.
Speaker 3 (34:58):
I'm I'm down with your great aides right now.
Speaker 2 (35:00):
I as long as you're happy, you've got your amazing boyfriend,
You're an incredible human being, You're empathetic, you've got it all.
I love your grades. But if you want to go
to NYU, then I'm gonna push you a little bit
because you're gonna have to do a little bit better
than that. Now, if you're like no, I'm cool, you
know what I mean. I'm I'm good with wherever I
(35:20):
end up. Then hey, I'm going to lay it off you.
But I'm as your dad, I'm going to try to
push you to a little bit of a place, you know,
so you can achieve what you might want to achieve,
you know. But in no way am I do I
harp on my kids about your grades or anything like that.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
You know, And is it hard? Is it hard for you?
Because it's not that hard for me. I thought it
would be harder to allow your kids to fall and
falter in life, knowing it's not that hard for me
because my dad did that to me and it taught
me the lessons. Yes, and I see the other side
(35:57):
of it, Yeah, but one of them is kind of
One of them is getting me. One of them is
because I told my kid when he was you know,
my oldest, he's seventeen, he's going into his last year
of high school, and you know, been harping onto him like,
hey man, if you want to get into those elite colleges, bro,
you're going to have to get like one d is
(36:21):
going to make a difference. Yeah, And you know, he
didn't find himself until you know, he was he was
a junior and he discovered robotics and anyway, he discovered that,
and I saw that sparkle in his eye, and as
a dad, I was like, oh God, you have it
in you. You are. I saw myself and him that
(36:44):
little part that went ooh, I want to build the
best robot. Oh Dad, I messed up, but I know
how to fix it in all this greatness. But now
he's like, I want to go to this school in
that school, and I'm like can you And he's like
I want to go to yeah, yeah, And now I'm like, fuck,
should I have made him? Like? I mean, I know
I pushed them, but I also let him make this
(37:06):
mistake so that he could learn what he's learning right now?
Is it worth it? Like? Should I have? And it's
it's it's it's fucking with me, bro, I know it.
Speaker 3 (37:19):
I know, well, it is what it is.
Speaker 1 (37:21):
You know.
Speaker 3 (37:22):
Here's the other thing too.
Speaker 2 (37:23):
In my opinion, you don't have to go to the
greatest college to be an incredible robotics.
Speaker 3 (37:27):
You don't have to do that nowadays, you know.
Speaker 2 (37:29):
I mean, so as long as he is in the
place that he wants to be and and and that's it,
he can study and work and do everything that he
needs to do and his talent will take him through,
you know. I mean, that's the way it goes. My
kids all want to be in the entertainment industry. Their
grandparents do, do uncles do what they.
Speaker 3 (37:47):
All want to do it, you know.
Speaker 2 (37:48):
So I'm like, we'll go have fun in college, Go
have the college experience. If you know what you're gonna do,
you're gonna work hard at that. You're gonna come back
to LA, You're gonna get an agent, You're gonna do
whatever the hell it is. You're gonna do your footage
in the door. Nepotism is a fucking live and real.
Speaker 3 (38:04):
It's the way it is.
Speaker 2 (38:05):
And you're gonna have to work your ass off, but
you're gonna, you know.
Speaker 1 (38:08):
You know what you're going do. Anybody that that looks
down upon nepotism or says that it's wrong or whatever
it is, let's be honest. Yeah, those people don't have
anybody in their family that is in a place of
success that can help them achieve a goal a little
easier than normal. That's just life. I mean, it just is,
(38:30):
you know what I mean. The problem.
Speaker 3 (38:31):
The problem is the problem though.
Speaker 2 (38:32):
Nepotism argument is when you hear the word, your mind
automatically goes to entertainment, rich people, actors. But that's bullshit.
Nepotism is on everyone full spectrum. It's from accountants to steal.
Speaker 3 (38:47):
Workers, to every job in the world.
Speaker 2 (38:49):
There's nepotism, you know what I mean, it's just hard.
Speaker 1 (38:53):
When my nepotism was a place called California Protein Products.
They took the guts and the beaks and all the
food that all the stuff that couldn't be created into
food from Zachie Farms, all the chickens that they killed.
And so, uh, three of my cousins, three of my uncles,
(39:16):
two of my brothers all worked at this one place. Right,
if I wanted a life working there, I had an end.
It was done. I could have done it right. That
was my nepotism, So I had it in my family.
This is that. It wasn't you know, to a badass
job where you know you can make millions of dollars.
(39:39):
That's not what my nepotism was. My nepotism was, you're
gonna make a decent living and you're gonna come home
smelling like shit every night. So if that's good, that's
for you. We got your back, Like that's what I had.
Speaker 2 (39:52):
Did you did you ever dip your toes into that world?
Speaker 1 (39:55):
Or no? Are you kidding? Me, dude, my dad nibbed
that shit in the ass. When I was eight years old,
they come and they tell me, Hey, your father's here
to pick you up from school. I walk outside. He's
a truck driver for this, so he hauled all the
shit basically back and forth. So I got in his
(40:17):
truck and he took me to where he picks up
all the fet goal matter and the guts and the whatever,
and he goes, so what do you think. I was like,
I think I never want to do this. Somebody like
that was it? Brother? Yea, he knew what he was doing.
He knew what he was doing. He took me there
to scare the shit out of me and to lead
(40:40):
me to go I will never do that, and I
will do whatever it takes to never have to do that.
Speaker 2 (40:46):
Yeah. So actually on that line growing up in the projects, like,
were you able to stay out of trouble? I mean,
was that something you was hard to avoid? Or how
did that work for you and your siblings too? You know,
there's so many they didn't.
Speaker 1 (41:00):
Speak enough English, so they were not really targets me personally.
If all of those gang bangers knew that I was,
I don't know how but they respected that I was
one of the kids in the neighborhood that everybody knew
(41:21):
was going to get out because of my mind. And
so I recall an incident one time, we're a really
young gang banger was, you know, kind of got in
my way on my way to school, and one of
the older guys pushed them aside and he said, hey, bro,
don't never mess with that kid right there, Bro, that
(41:42):
kid is going to make us look good. Someday he's
going to go to school and show people what we
can be. You are what we have to be. He
is what we can be. So don't ever fuck with him.
And nobody ever fuck with this kid. He is not
a gang banger and he never will be. And that's
what I got from those guys. That's what I received
(42:04):
from them. But here's guy who was very intelligent, who
probably had a great idea, Like I know a guy
that I was growing up who before they had taco trucks,
had the idea to do a taco truck and could
not get alone. And those ideas just sometimes die on
(42:26):
the grapevine because they don't have the help that they need,
or the person that they need, or the nepotism required
or the friend in the right place. And so the
respect that I got from those guys was that they
that guy was smart. And I think he saw a
little bit of him and me, and I think that
(42:47):
he kind of just went, I don't want you.
Speaker 2 (42:48):
To be me.
Speaker 1 (42:50):
I want you to be what I should have been. Yeah, and.
Speaker 3 (42:54):
Looked out for you that way.
Speaker 1 (42:55):
Yeah, yeah, you know what, I never saw it. I
don't know why right now it's hitting me really hard,
but wow, I've never really lived in that moment to
really see his pain in it. I just was grateful,
you know what I mean. But I now that i'm
kind of thinking about, Yeah, that the fact that I
was just a version of him that couldn't exist when
(43:19):
he was growing up.
Speaker 2 (43:20):
That's he wanted to give someone else an opportunity that
he didn't have because he saw himself and you you know, yeah,
that's cool. Do you ever connect with the neighborhood anymore?
Speaker 1 (43:42):
Or is that I do? But it's so hard, bro,
because you know, when I go back and you know,
I see that I see the old guy and I
knew and he's still alive, but his teeth are missing,
and yeah, you know, I see the drug abuse signs
and they asked me for money, you know what I mean,
or or they or they're embarrassed. Yeah, that's the worst, bro. Yeah,
(44:04):
the worst is when I go to the seventy eleven
because my brother, he doesn't live too far from where
we grew up, so we still go down to the
seven eleven that hovers between these two neighborhoods, East LA
on one side of Floral and Monterey Park on the
other side, which is a pretty affluent, decent neighborhood. Yeah,
and I still go there, and you know, every once
(44:24):
in a while, it's happened where I go there and
they see me and they try to hide and I
just pretend I didn't see them because they're embarrassed of
what they look like, or they're high, or they're drunk
or or whatever. And you know that's that's hard for
me too, bro, you know what I mean, What do
you do? Because I've helped, Dude, I've given millions of
dollars to family and friends of help. Right now, I
(44:46):
just send a bunch of money to a couple of
buddies of mine that are dealing with some stuff in
Houston because of the hurricane and so you know, I
give back. But yeah, it's hard, bro, It's it's that's
tough to see that.
Speaker 2 (45:00):
So real, real quick, because I know we're going along here,
but like real quick, just just getting into the comedy space.
It's the kid, you know, when did that happen? When
did you know you were funny? When did you know
that this could be a career for you?
Speaker 1 (45:13):
You know?
Speaker 3 (45:13):
Were you a young kid telling jokes? We were like,
were you the were you the guy?
Speaker 1 (45:18):
Or No? I was not that guy? What I was
the I was the young guy that always didn't I
didn't see the map in things right. My brain was
meant to write comedy, to write things of that nature.
So like, here's an example, when I would hear gang
(45:39):
bangers go I hate white people. White people still fuck
white people, I would in my head go, well, if
you hate white people, how come you only shoot Mexican
like that doesn't make sense to me. If you hate
white people, then stop shooting us and go shoot white
people like that. So that thought or thoughts like that
got always in my head. The problem was I was
(46:01):
around my mom a lot, and my mother she knew
me really well, and she would spot whatever look I
had in my face, and she would either smack me
in the back of the head or grab me by
the ear, or look at me in the eye and go,
you better not say what you're thinking. Not here, not now.
That was her thing, right, it's inappropriate here and now.
(46:23):
What happened was when I'm nineteen and I discovered comedy.
I discovered the place where my mother can't tell me
not here, not now. This is actually the place where
all those thoughts belong. And so every thought that I
had as a kid of moments like that became a joke,
(46:47):
became fodder. And I and because I had eleven sisters,
and eight of them were born in a row before me,
so there was a period of time when I was
growing up where there were or nine women in my
house and just me and my dad. Right, So I
tell this story about one time my dad got pissed
(47:10):
because we used to have to go downstairs in the
backyard and use the water hole sometimes to shower up
in the morning. Because you can imagine, everybody goes to
work in school at the same time. We have one
one bathroom, right that has a shower in it, and
nine women, so exactly, so my dad one time got
(47:35):
pissed and he's he said. He knocked on the door
and said, if you don't open the door, I swear
to God. And three of my sisters were like, whatever, dad.
So my dad went downstairs and he made me hold
his two hands while he squatted over the kitchen sink
and took a dump in the up. That's how we
(48:00):
dealt with those moments. And now I get too. Instead
of being the crazy fun uncle at the parties who
gets you know, drug can tells everybody these awesome stories
on carloson the community and they's going on stage and
tell these really great funny stories. So I was always
meant to do this, and of course there was resistance
(48:24):
when I first started from my family. A degree in
electrical engineering, so my family was pissed when I started
doing stand up so they had it, literally had an
intervention for me. I came home on a Sunday, all
these people are waiting. They're all there to tell me
how I'm ruining my life, how I'm stupid to quote
my mom. Get a job and then you couldn't tell
(48:44):
jokes at whatever job you have, But you don't have
to do this. And thank god, my dad he never came.
He didn't come to America for success or money. My
dad came to America to literally achieve the American dream,
which was to be the best that you can be
(49:08):
at anything, at whatever that is, and have the opportunity
to be whatever you want. So the thing was, during
this intervention, my dad started getting drunk. He started drinking
because it took too long. They were like forty people there.
So by the time I got to my dad, I
said to my dad, because I know this about him,
I go, Dad, like, remember when I was about ten
years old and you kissed me on the cheek under
the Christmas tree and you said, miho, I came to
(49:30):
this country so that you could be whatever you want.
I said, you're the most important voice in my life.
I don't give a shit about what they say, but
I care about what you think. What do you think
I should do? And my dad he goes, you know what,
and he wants to be a clown. Fuck it. Let
him juggle And that was.
Speaker 2 (49:51):
It.
Speaker 1 (49:52):
That was the stamp of my career. Cut to two
years later, I went International Star Search. We're at the
after party. I hear it clinglingling. Everybody turns around. My
Mom's on the stage, raises a glass and says, you know,
ever since, ever since he was a little boy, I
(50:14):
knew that he was gonna be somebody special. And I, dude,
I swear to god, I was about to yell bullshit
and my dad and I'm like, what are you doing?
You know, she's bullshit And my dad is like, I know,
but she's cappy and she's drinking. I'm getting laid to night.
Don't fuck it up for me. And I was like,
(50:38):
and that was you know, but she was about to well,
actually she did. She you know, she continued with it
and said that when I was born, there was a
star in the sky and she always knew what she always.
Speaker 2 (50:49):
Supports, created some sort of a story that makes her
look like I knew my son was gonna oh shit.
Speaker 1 (50:55):
She had an intervened. It was to her I'd be
working for Exon or something company like that right now.
Speaker 2 (51:02):
Amazing, Great dude, that's been really fun talking to you.
Give us the show at Harris. What are you doing?
Speaker 3 (51:10):
Is it the residency?
Speaker 1 (51:12):
Yeah? I got a residency at Harris. It's been going great, man.
Two weeks in and yeah, man, we're already getting repeat customers.
We're already getting like people are just saying the best thing.
I'm hearing that right now. It's the best comedy show
on the strip. And I've only been doing it, like
I said, two weeks so Harris on Sundays and every Sunday,
every Monday. I thought that would make a difference. By
(51:34):
the way that goddamn place is packed every day, Like
if you don't leave your room, can you just walk
around and don't look at clocks or anything? You never
know a weekend from from a Tuesday.
Speaker 2 (51:47):
Now that that's Vegas. They just they suck you into
that vortex and don't let you out.
Speaker 1 (51:51):
You know. Yeah, and and so my thing is just
trying to hang out with the right people. So right
now I know I'm hanging out with the right people
because after the show we want on stairs to the
lounge and smoke a cigar. Perfect, So I know exactly,
I know, you know we have. We've had to say
no to three or four invitations. You know that the
next day it's like, so what did you do last night?
(52:13):
Oh my god, bro, I can't get out of that
for the horrible Like I'm staying away from that ship, dude.
Speaker 2 (52:19):
Due I know that Vegas is hard too, a lot
of temptation there where you're just like, fuck, well, dude,
I'll come check you out if I'm in Vegas. I'm
in Colorado now for a little bit.
Speaker 3 (52:28):
I'll be back in.
Speaker 2 (52:29):
August, but uh, you know I want to come. All right, brother,
any brother, good talk man. I appreciate you doing that.
Speaker 1 (52:36):
Brother. Well, brother, all right, take care
Hi.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
I am Kate Hudson and my name is Oliver Hudson.
We wanted to do something that highlighted our.
Speaker 3 (00:11):
Relationship and what it's like to be siblings.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
We are a sibling railvalry, No, no sibling rival. You
don't do that with your mouth, Vely, that's good. So
I just finished a meditation, and I've been meditating on
(00:45):
and off, I don't know, since I was nineteen. Mainly off,
but when it's on, it's on. You know, I've had
experiences with meditation where I have been consistent and.
Speaker 3 (00:58):
You really are able.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
To draw into a pretty special place of clarity and
of nothingness.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
I felt it. But that's the reason.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
That's the reason why it's called a practice, because if
you don't fucking practice, you know, you can't get there.
I know how good it can be and how good
it can feel, so I'm trying to stay consistent with it.
Meditation kind of saved me, you know, when I was
having my anxiety twenties and in my thirties and forties.
(01:30):
You know, I basically have anxiety every decade, it fucking seems.
But you know, when you're able to sort of drop
into this space and let everything go. It definitely can
bring you out of a lot of situations, but it
needs to be, in my opinion, practiced on a daily basis,
(01:52):
because what I do in my whole life. If I
feel like I'm not looking good, always had a shape,
I'll work out hard for six weeks and.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
Be like, yeah, that's pretty good and quit.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
If I am feeling shitty or I'm feeling anxious and
I'm going through a spell, I'll meditate and get better.
I'm like, okay done. You know, I'm a quick fix
it guy. So I'm trying to maintain a consistency here,
and I'm trying transcendental meditation only because Howard Stern does it.
Because Howard Stern is like my idol. I just love
(02:25):
him so much and I know that he does TM,
so I want to try TM.
Speaker 3 (02:31):
And I just did it and now I'm here.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
So I'm not sure this podcast is going to be
any different or better. I'm not sure if I'm in
a better state of mind now or not. I don't
even know. But I know that just sitting quiet for
twenty minutes is probably a good thing no matter what.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
Anyway, we got a cool guest on today.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
I got a cool guest on Carlo Smincia been around
for a billion years. The guy is unstoppable. He's got
a new residency at Hair in Vegas. He's funny as shit,
He's been.
Speaker 1 (03:03):
Through it all.
Speaker 3 (03:05):
I'm excited to talk to him. Amazing upbringing.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
I think he said he has seventeen siblings, came from Honduras.
Very interested, very interested, as I am with every goddamn
guest that we bring in. Okay, I'm not going to
bring in someone who I'm not interested in talking to,
or we just need to fill space, you know what
I'm saying. Like I'm fucking here, I'm just doing my thing.
(03:30):
I'll talk to anyone, anyone our incredible producers bring our
well talked I don't even care who it is. I'll
just fucking go. But we're lucky enough to have Carlos
here right now.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
Bring him in. What's up, brother?
Speaker 2 (03:42):
How are you?
Speaker 1 (03:43):
You don't want? Man? I'm good, just exhausted, but good, good, exhausting,
good time because you're working. You know what, I don't
realize how much time I put into the work. Yeah,
I mean the work is like you know, I love
what I do. You don't work today? Life when you
do what you love. Blah blah blah.
Speaker 3 (04:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
But you know when my gardener comes up to me
and says, man, you need to slow down, You'll literally go, well,
here's the guy that I'll call him on a Sunday
and go, hey, I did a pop up show. Would
you like free tickets? And he's like, I can't, I'm
working today. This guy's the one telling me, yeah, you know,
(04:24):
I looked at your schedule. So yeah, I sometimes get
caught up in how fun it is to entertain and
to make other people happy and laugh, and you know,
in that laughter infuse those ideas you know of hey,
look at the world from a different perspective.
Speaker 3 (04:42):
Yeah, but does it? But does it? Tickets toll though?
Speaker 2 (04:44):
You know where eventually you're like, shit, man, I gotta
I gotta sit down for a second.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
Yes, it it Well, it doesn't because because during the day,
I you know, my job entail you know, an hour,
an hour and a half a night, depending on the show.
So let's just say it's two to three hours, maybe more,
maybe five at the most. The rest of the time,
I can do with what I want and as long
(05:11):
as I don't you know, party too hard or indulge
in that stuff after shows that make the day. The
next day, right, it's the next day. So you go
to sleep, you know, you go to sleep at one o'clock,
two o'clock in the morning. Eh, you're fine. You wake
up at ten or eleven, go to sleep at six
to eight o'clock in the morning. After a night, you're
(05:32):
waking up to literally do a show. And that's when
it gets bad because now you have no memories, no life,
no existence. You're just literally hanging out with people making
them laugh, then trying to maintain that up by doing
drugs keep you up, and then the next day it's
(05:52):
like boom all over again, and you're tired, exhausted, You
have no memories, you didn't go anywhere, you didn't do anything.
Speaker 2 (05:59):
Yeah, and and and then you're chasing. You're chasing the hangover,
you're chasing the night. You know, I've dealt with that too,
where it's like, oh man, this is bad. I have
to have a cocktail or I have to have something
to write the ship. And then it's just this consistent
chasing the tail type ship.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
Well, yeah, because at night, right, you want to you
want to maintain that, so you get a little drunk
and then somebody offers you whatever it is, Yeah, that
keeps you a little high. Yeah, then you got to
take something to go to sleep, right, Also, now you're
doing it down or to go down to sleep. Yeah,
and then all of a sudden you wake up and
you're like, I'm groggy. I gotta do a little something
and wake me up. And that cycle just continues and continues.
(06:38):
So as long as you don't get on that train.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
Yeah, is that something that you've dealt with in your career,
like early on where you know you you had to
sort of use substance to maintain your your sort of.
Speaker 3 (07:01):
You're not not ambition rise to keep up and keep going.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
Oh I gotcha. No, No, I was never I was
never that person. You know, when you grew up in
the projects the way I did. You see the positive
and the negative of the drug system, right, the abuse
on one side and all the lives that it ruins. But
(07:25):
you also see the guy that you know whose parents
were poor and broke, and all of a sudden, two
years later they moved out of the projects and they
had a nice house somewhere, you know, in a middle class,
uper middle class neighborhood. So you see that, but then
you also see that those guys never reached the age
(07:45):
of thirty without getting shot, killed, or in jail. So
you see the whole gamut of it. And I just
never I'm a math guy, so I never saw the
the reason for those kinds of things, and never saw
the reason to get drunk. I was never afraid to
talk to a girl. I never I was never the
guy that was like, oh I'm going on stage, Oh
(08:06):
my god, I'm feeling I'm feeling weird. Let me let
me take a shot here, or let me you know
what I mean? Do that. That was never, That was never,
never a part of my of my cycle, book life.
My cycle was always be in the moment, be in
the now, see what the world is giving to you.
Change the world, make the world a better place. Doesn't
(08:26):
matter why you're here, Make the world a better place,
and that will be your reasoning. Like all this kind
of stuff, you know, reading those kinds of books, they
had cart totalis of the world, you know what I mean,
the Singers of the World, does you know? Trying to
find that. So that wasn't the thing that got me.
The thing that got me and still gets me is
since I don't do all that stuff eating in the
(08:49):
middle of the night after shows because I can't eat
thefore shows. So if I have a two to three
show night, three show night, right, the show starts at six,
I mean, I can't eat anything after four thirty. And
if I do, it's a really light salad or something
like that can between shows too heavy. So all of
a sudden, it's two o'clock in the morning and I
haven't eaten since five, and I'm fucking hungry, bro like hungry,
(09:17):
and you know, a mixed salad or it's whatever that
that does not sound appetizing when you're a little drunk
at that hour and night. That's when I'm like fighting it,
you know what I mean. The last the last time
we did that, and it was kind of an intervention
moment for me, Me and my friend, just two of us.
(09:38):
We're at the drive through of a water Burger. We
ordered and the lady goes, that's gonna be seventy eight dollars,
and I said, bro, we gotta stop, dude, this is
two people, this is two people. It was just so
much food, man, So I just and I said to myself,
(09:58):
we got we got a fa this out, So I'm
trying to find a balance with that.
Speaker 3 (10:04):
No, no, I get that, But.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
These are the problems that it's hard to talk about
with regular people that have regular jobs, who really work hard.
And you know, I'm this is why sometimes I just
hold my tongue because in my head I can hear
my gardener going, oh, it must be hard. It must
be hard for you to have to eat in the
middle of that night. Yeah, so you have seventy eight
(10:28):
dollars to just throw away on food at four o'clock
in the morning. I could hear that boy is telling me, like,
shuit your pie hole.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
I totally get that. But and I've talked about this
on our podcast. You know, my sister's not here. We
talk about it all the time. You know where sometimes
if you are a privileged, fortunate person you know, or
who has made it in one way or another, we
are afraid to talk about our feelings and our struggles
and our issues and our problems because of exactly what
you're talking about. The fear of sort of judgment, you know, saying, oh,
(11:01):
you think you have it bad, but right, it's all relative.
We all have our issues, you know what I mean.
No one knows about my ship. No one knows that
my dad left when I was arrived. I mean a
lot of people do now. But I have my own
fucking shit. And if I can't express myself, you know,
publicly or if on a podcast and I'm not being authentic,
then that's then I'm not having fun honestly doing what
(11:23):
I'm doing with this anyway.
Speaker 3 (11:25):
So I just say it, you know, and it's it
is what it is.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
We all have our issues, no matter what you know,
social class that we come from.
Speaker 3 (11:33):
Yeah, you can feel, you know, you're.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
A privileged person to be where we are, But that
doesn't mean we can't have our own our ship.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
Oh no, the fact that we feel that is awesome.
The problem is that unless you go deeper, right, unless
you go to a real deep place like you just
did about your dad or moments like that, the problem
is we don't get empathy exactly, or we don't get empathy,
or we get hatred. Right, you get one or the other.
(12:01):
You get like really who cares? Or fuck you? Let
me tell you right, Yeah, So that's our fears. So
that's why for me personally, what's been a godsend is therapy.
And you know, I've been doing it since two thousand
and eight, you know, And it was funny because it
(12:24):
was just not but a month ago, you know, I
was talking to my therapist about a similar situation like this,
and I was like, man, sometimes I feel like I
don't have anybody to reveal those truths to because it
is important to tell those truths. And thank god that
you have this avenue, and you know, I have that avenue.
But he said, you know, well, thank god you have
(12:44):
me because you can tell me everything and anything, and
at least that, you know, feels a certain void. And
I was like, yeah, I thank god I have him,
and you know, he's become, you know, a friend of sorts,
you know, and I know that he's a therapist and
there's a transactional thing that occurs there where I pay him,
(13:06):
But you know what, I pay people to see me perform,
and you know, I would do it for free, as
I've done it for free before. So that doesn't change
that dynamic. But you're right, it's needed.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
Did you find a therapy When you got into therapy,
do you feel like that changed your comedy? You know,
because you are now dealing with a deeper part of
yourself and you know, pain is funny, There's no doubt
about it.
Speaker 3 (13:39):
I'm very self.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
I'm so self deprecating, which is probably detrimental to my
success because I fucking put myself down all the time
in the vein of humor, you know what I mean, right?
Speaker 1 (13:53):
A little too much?
Speaker 2 (13:54):
Yeah, well, there definitely is. It's a way to sort
of deal with insecurities, There's no doubt. But do you
feel like once you got into therapy and really were
in do it, it changed your perspective in the way
you performed your jokes hugely so.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
And one of the biggest reasons that that happened was,
you know, I had seen and been interested in, you know,
psychology for a very long time in philosophy, so I
remember that when I would ever see TV shows or
movies that had you know, therapist in it, it was
(14:30):
always like, let's get to the root of the problem,
let's figure out why you feel this way. And I
thought that that was so important and it might be
to others, but I remember something occurred really early on
in our therapy sessions where I said, maybe we need
to find out why I behaved this way or why
(14:51):
I'm doing this specific behavior, and my therapist said, we
could do that if you want, or we could just
work on changing it. It's up to you. We can
go and try to figure out why this happens, or
you can just say I don't want to be that
way anymore and begin to change. It's up to you.
And I said, oh shit. I thought we had to
like find out, like I had to go to a
(15:13):
moment of like, oh my god. It was when my
mother wasting my brother and I was in the closest's
scared and that's why I hate women's shoes, because I
was in the closet with the shoes now. And it
changed me so much because it made me realize that,
and it changed my comedy because my comedy up until
that point, my setups were a little more contrived because
(15:37):
sometimes you know, I was going to say stuff that
people were going to be affected by. So I tried
really hard to kind of get to the root of
a problem, so to speak. And what it made me
change was like, now, these are jokes, and if you
don't understand that, that's on you, not on me. I
don't have to change. I don't have to give you
a diet tribe of my life and your life. In
order for us to do a joke about how my
mom beats when I was a kid, We're just going
(15:59):
to do the joke to it quicker. So yeah, it changed.
It changed me vastly. It also made me a bit
more sensitive to other people's pains, the fact that I'm
going to say things on stage that are going to
trigger negative feelings. Not on purpose, but I talk about
(16:23):
how I was sexually used as a kid on stage. Right,
no matter how funny that joke is, no matter how
good I perform it, no matter what my perspective is,
there's gonna be somebody that is lacking their ass off
and is immediately going to be taken like a movie
where your pan on their face, it freezes and then
(16:44):
there's a time work and then all of a sudden
they're in their trauma. Right, I know that I'm going
to do that. So now that I'm aware of that,
you know, I try to say little things, you know,
puts in there, says like, hey, this is how I
deal with this trauma. This is what I do, This
(17:06):
is what everybody does, but this is how I deal
with it. Or I'll say, hey, my friend said, how
do you do this or a woman said to me,
you know, and infuse their feelings or what I think
they might be feeling into it that dat has changed before.
My idea was, hey, dude, it's a fucking joke. Seriously,
(17:27):
like if you can't understand that, why are you mad
at me? Right? And I do feel that way to.
Speaker 3 (17:32):
A point, like you know who I am.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
You've come to see me, you know my frit So
don't be offended by what I say.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
Right, But there's still you know, there's still somebody out
there that's like, hey, a priest diddled me, and I
feel I never I haven't resolved those resolutions yet. So
my whole thing is to do the joke and have
them feeling like, Okay, that was funny and maybe I
can talk to him about this or maybe I can
(17:59):
deal with it the way he out with it or
whatever that is. But as long as they don't stay
in there because of me, I'm okay. I'm okay with that.
But that but you know, having empathy, seeing other people's
you know, affect on me, seeing my effect on other people,
all that kind of stuff. Therapy.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
That's interesting because you're taking on the burden of potentially
thousands of people because in your set you have you
don't know who you're offending, So it's kind of a
hard one. Maybe with something specific like sexual abuse that
you went through, you know that there's probably a few
people in there who have dealt with that. But within
your set all the other sort of jokes you might
(18:39):
be telling that, I mean, it's hard. I mean, it's
not on you to take on everyone you know and
have to amend for them, to make sure that they
feel okay.
Speaker 1 (18:49):
You're right, But the only thing about therapy for me
is that you know, it has taught me that, you know,
I do my part so that I can be okay
with me, right, I do my part so that I
can live with myself. But you're right, it is not
my responsibility, you know, to take on the burden of
everybody's pain, everybody's past, everybody's tortures. You know, I'm not
(19:14):
triggering anybody. I am telling my truth, my side of
the story, so to speak, comedically on stage, and I
do my best to be protective, so to speak. But
at a certain point, it is it is a comedy
show and it's not a podcast like this where I'm
(19:35):
not bound by having to be funny and having to
tell a joke and having to entertain where I can
be open about something like this. So yeah, that's a
different venue. And you know, I do my best, but
I don't take on that responsibility. Everybody's responsibility for happiness
is on them. Y is on each and every one
of us. And that's it. And that's hard for us
(19:55):
to believe when you create a cancel culture where when
a person that disagrees with you is shut up, when
a person that doesn't feel the way you do is
shut up, and you basically try to create a world
for these people that is perfectly sane and perfectly benign.
You're ignoring the feelings of the other people as well.
(20:16):
What about those other people that you've changed? And and
so for me, we've been giving you know, you hurt
my feelings is one of them. I can't hurt your feelings.
I don't have the power to hurt your feelings, right,
I only have the power to say something. And you
allowed your feelings to be hurt, right, right, You allowed
that to happen. That wasn't me. I didn't do anything.
(20:39):
I wasn't a part of your life. When whatever trauma
occurred that wasn't. I I was not there, and I
think that a lot of us have been advocating that
in today's world. And you know, the advent of anxiety.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
Depends on swings, you know, so far, You're right, You're right.
I mean it eventually sort of finds some into the middle.
I mean, I think that's shifting. I think a lot
of comedians now are moving back to where it's like,
all right, well we can say what we wanted to
say now again.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
You know. Well, I don't get me wrong. I think
that what occurred was needed.
Speaker 3 (21:14):
That's what I said. Like, There's a lot of great
things that came from it.
Speaker 1 (21:17):
It was needed, and it was needed in comedy specifically
because we got lazy, right, I got it. We started
being edgy for Edgy's sake. Yeah, Right, Today the jokes
are literally how edgy, how sexy? Or you know, blatantly?
(21:38):
You know, can can I be in saying this one thing? Right?
You watch the most recent rous of Brady, Most of
those comedians didn't even know didn't even know the guy, right, right,
They like literally met the guy probably that day or
a little before whatever, and they're saying all this crazy
shit about him and whatever. And about all these people.
(21:59):
It got to a point where it was just Edgy
for Edgy's sake, and I believe that there was a
reckoning that had to go because just because you call
yourself a comedian and you're up on a stage, you
still have to make what you say resemble a joke
(22:20):
or else you're making statements. And once we make statements,
we can get into the trouble of this. That's the
first thing that needed reckoning. The second one was we
started apologizing when guys and girls in stand ups started
to say I'm sorry. What that did was it made
(22:41):
the joke real. Now, it made the joke an actual statement.
I've never apologized for a joke, never will. I'm sorry
if it defense people, and you know that because we
talked about this just a few minutes ago. Totally do
not want to hurt anybody's feelings. But I know how
(23:02):
to create this stuff and do it so that it
does resemble a joke. And I'm not going to apologize
for telling the joke because now you're saying that my
intent needs an apology, and my intent does not need
an apology. My intent was to entertain you and make
you laugh. So we didn't need this reckoning. My fear
(23:22):
is what you just talked about, the pendulum. I think
that what's going to happen is we're going to get
an influx within the next you know, a few months
or years of comedians just going real fucked up heed
gie like imagine, and they're they're already existing comedians that
(23:43):
wish to behave you know, like, uh, let me draw
an analogy, like a Trump comedian that wants to go
up there and not give a shit. And all you
need is about two percent of America that love you, Yeah,
and you will be a millionaire. Literally one percent will
give you three of three three and a half million followers.
(24:05):
So one percent, we'll have you selling out comedy clubs
and making about eight hundred thousan million dollars a year.
Just one percent. You dropped the two. Now we're getting exponential.
So yeah, you know that's comedian can't exist today, broke.
Speaker 2 (24:39):
So wait, you have you have seventeen siblings? Uh?
Speaker 1 (24:43):
Yeah? Have you living sisters and six brothers?
Speaker 2 (24:45):
Fucking crazy? So you grew up did everyone grow up
in on doors?
Speaker 1 (24:49):
Most of about eight no, six of them wait let
me see, yeah, six of them mostly in Honduras. I
was the last one born there.
Speaker 3 (24:58):
You were, and then how long were you there before
you to the station.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
I came here when I was like seven months old,
but I loved for periods of time, So I came
here when I was a kid. But then when I
was eight, I went to school there. Then when I
was ten, I went to school there. Then when I
was twelve, I went to school there. So I kind
of kept yeah, coming in and out. I lived in
Mexico for a while, in und Earth for a while.
But what that taught me was and it made me.
(25:22):
It made me a much better entertainer, specifically a comedian
because and I think one of the big things missing
today in America from a sociological standpoint is having a
decent sized family. When you have you know, two, three, four,
you know three to four siblings are more. You begin
(25:44):
to realize that you don't like your siblings sometimes but
you love them, and there's a big difference, huge difference.
You also have to deal with people that don't like
what you like. Sometimes you have to eat whatever everybody
else is eating. You know what I mean? When you
have one kid, you know, I have two kids, and
(26:05):
I get into that were like, Dad, I don't like this,
and it's like what am I supposed to do? My
mom would have been like eat it or whatever. You know,
But we were poor and we didn't have a lot
of food.
Speaker 3 (26:16):
You were in East La, right, you grew up in
East So I grew.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
Up in the projects, in the projects in East La.
So you know when my mom made food, that was
the food. That was it. We didn't have a pantry.
The fuck is a pantry?
Speaker 2 (26:29):
How did how did your parents support eighteen kids or whatever?
Speaker 3 (26:33):
Like, how do you feed eighteen kids? How does that work?
Speaker 1 (26:36):
First of all, it's not the way. The number is
not the way you think. So at any given point,
there's maybe six siblings in the house. Right, the weather
was are gone and it wasn't having come yet, right,
so there's about six everybody over sixteen, it's contributing to
the family in some way, shape or form, right, a
job of some sort, a weekend gig of some kind,
(26:58):
cutting grass, you know, doing work for others. Like.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
So it was never it was never that money going
out a lot that money goes into a pot essentially.
Speaker 1 (27:08):
So my first paycheck, I'll never forget it. Man, it
was ninety eight dollars and thirty eight cents, and I
came home so happy. I was fifteen years old, and
I showed my dad and he told me to sign it,
kept it and gave me twenty bucks and he said,
the family says thank you. And I was like, what
(27:28):
the fuck has happened? I had ninety bucks and I
got twenty dollars? Like how did this occur? But being
around those people, what it made me realize is like
I can hang around anybody, you know what I mean,
I can I can tolerate anybody. I can find the
connection with anybody. It doesn't matter what you are. You know,
(27:53):
you name the type of person, and I can tell
you how many exists in my family and my family
were honest, real and I found that out. I mean
I knew that, but here's a really great story to
show you, like who my family are and my belief
in the acceptance of truth. Right, That's another thing that
you realize when you're a kid, because we have really
(28:17):
smart people in our family and not so smart people
in our family. And I remember when my father at
one point was kind of telling us what he expected
of us, and the difference between me and one of
my brothers was, if I get a B, I'm gonna
(28:37):
get my ass beat, and if he doesn't get a fail,
he's gonna get rewarded. And I remember going, wait, what
the fuck? Just hold on, hold on. If I get
a B, I'm gonna get my ass beat. But as
long as he doesn't fail and he gets all ds,
you get it. And my father, my father like in
(28:58):
front of everybody, just looking mean, it's shit. Yeah, because
for him it's hard to not fail.
Speaker 3 (29:06):
Mm hm.
Speaker 1 (29:06):
For you, it's easy to get a's. So if you
don't get all a's, I know you're fucking around or
doing something stupid.
Speaker 3 (29:15):
That's smart.
Speaker 2 (29:16):
That's fucking smart parenting dude, like your today, Yeah, but
your parented the individual child.
Speaker 3 (29:24):
I have three kids. I do it the same.
Speaker 2 (29:27):
My middle kid just naturally is good at school. My
older one is he struggles a little bit. So I
have more expectations for my middle one than I do
from my older one. But it's all about effort. It's
for me, it's effort. Grades don't mean anything.
Speaker 3 (29:43):
Then the letter.
Speaker 2 (29:44):
If I see that you're working your ass off and
you study for fucking three days on this math test,
and I know you did and you get it. D
I'm like, all right, you're good.
Speaker 3 (29:52):
You're good. Maybe you're just not good at math.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
But if you apply that effort into your life and
have that work ethic and you carry that shit onto
when you're in your twenties and you're applying that to
what you love to do, you're going to be successful.
Speaker 1 (30:04):
You know. But that's because and I do jokes about this.
I go look people that have I kind of it's
somewhere between three and four, but I say four. Four
kids are more end up being really great parents because
you love your kids but not too much. You protect
them but not too much. Nothing is overkilled, right. Once
you have four kids, you don't have the time to hover.
(30:25):
You don't have the time to stay there and watch
I do this thing. It's pretty, it's really cool. It
just takes a lot of time. So I don't do
it all the time. But I say raise your aunt
if you have two kids, and people raise your hands,
and then I ask them which one of your two
kids is the smartest kid, And normally they tend to
(30:45):
say it's not that one is smarter than the other,
they're just different. And then I'll say raise your round
if you have four kids or more, and whoever has
the most kids raises your hands. I ask them, are
you easily offended? Are you like shy in any way?
And they're like no. I say, all right, come to
the come to the stage, and I won't put them
on the stage normally. I'll put them like right before
(31:07):
the stage, turn them around so that everybody could see
their face. And then I go, this is the difference
your parents that have one or two kids, who idealize
their children and look at them differently, and people that
have more than four kids. And I say, look forward,
don't look at me. And I tell everybody, look at
(31:28):
this person's face. And I tell them, don't answer the question,
don't answer the questions, don't open your mouth, just exist
in time. And I say, of your whatever many kids,
which one of them is the fucking idiot? And at
that moment, everybody just dies laughing because you could see
(31:49):
the person every time, just go like you could see it, dude,
You could see it in their places. And the bout.
I would say, about ninety percent of the time, I'll
say what's the name, and they'll say the name. About
ten percent of the time they're like I can't.
Speaker 3 (32:05):
I can't can't do it.
Speaker 1 (32:06):
I can't say the name out of loud. I know
you're recording this, and I can't do it. But about
ninety percent of the time, Bro, they say it. And
here's the thing that our children are suffering from the
anxiety that they have. In my opinion, a lot of
them is because of expectations that should not be placed
(32:29):
upon them. You know, my dumb brother is one of
the happiest people I know in real life, but he
also knows his limitations. He also doesn't try to go
overboard with it. He doesn't expect things from himself that
he should not expect from himself, and therefore his anxiety
(32:51):
levels are pretty normal. You know, I have a friend
that's been working at McDonald since we were sixteen. Bro,
sixteen and I was born in nineteen sixty seven. I'm
fifty six. It's gonna be fifty seven. We're the same age.
Never accepted a position where he had to actually be
the manager and run the whole place. Ever, and he's
(33:13):
happiest dude, makes good money, not the richest guy in
the world. You know, has a little, humble, little place,
but he knows his limitations and he's happy, and I
think that that right there is missing, you know, because
we live in this world where it's like anybody can
be anything. Bullshit. That is bullshit. It's not true. No,
(33:35):
not anybody can be a great actor, not anybody can
be a great director, not anybody can be a great podcaster.
This bullshit. Some of us have gifts that if we
nurture whatever those gifts are, we could be great at that.
But this whole thing is being placed on these kids,
in my opinion, and that's where their anxiety is coming from.
And I mean, can you imagine I was like, we
(33:56):
had anxiety already, we had some of that, but could
you imagine if it was like could you imagine the
anxiety you would be placing upon that kid right now,
the one that you know, yeah, has a little hard
over the time. Could you imagine if you treated both
the same, or you pretended that there was nothing wrong
with him, or that he didn't have any issues with math,
(34:17):
and you were just a dad going, well, everybody else
gets it, the fuck is your problem? Could you imagine
the ship that that kid would be born into it.
I think that on a very subliminal level, we've done
that to our kids, and we did. We've done a disservice. Bro.
Speaker 2 (34:32):
We got to come back so much so I can't.
I couldn't agree with you more. And that's why I
do not raise my kids like that at all. You
know what I mean, Like it is not about.
Speaker 3 (34:43):
There is no pressure now, you know.
Speaker 2 (34:44):
With my oldest right, so he's a junior and he
wants to go to college, and you know, he wants
to go to n YU and he wants to go
to get into Tish and all that stuff. And I said, hey,
why is nam as Wilder? I said, Wilder, Look.
Speaker 3 (34:58):
I'm I'm down with your great aides right now.
Speaker 2 (35:00):
I as long as you're happy, you've got your amazing boyfriend,
You're an incredible human being, You're empathetic, you've got it all.
I love your grades. But if you want to go
to NYU, then I'm gonna push you a little bit
because you're gonna have to do a little bit better
than that. Now, if you're like no, I'm cool, you
know what I mean. I'm I'm good with wherever I
(35:20):
end up. Then hey, I'm going to lay it off you.
But I'm as your dad, I'm going to try to
push you to a little bit of a place, you know,
so you can achieve what you might want to achieve,
you know. But in no way am I do I
harp on my kids about your grades or anything like that.
Speaker 1 (35:36):
You know, And is it hard? Is it hard for you?
Because it's not that hard for me. I thought it
would be harder to allow your kids to fall and
falter in life, knowing it's not that hard for me
because my dad did that to me and it taught
me the lessons. Yes, and I see the other side
(35:57):
of it, Yeah, but one of them is kind of
One of them is getting me. One of them is
because I told my kid when he was you know,
my oldest, he's seventeen, he's going into his last year
of high school, and you know, been harping onto him like,
hey man, if you want to get into those elite colleges, bro,
you're going to have to get like one d is
(36:21):
going to make a difference. Yeah, And you know, he
didn't find himself until you know, he was he was
a junior and he discovered robotics and anyway, he discovered that,
and I saw that sparkle in his eye, and as
a dad, I was like, oh God, you have it
in you. You are. I saw myself and him that
(36:44):
little part that went ooh, I want to build the
best robot. Oh Dad, I messed up, but I know
how to fix it in all this greatness. But now
he's like, I want to go to this school in
that school, and I'm like can you And he's like
I want to go to yeah, yeah, And now I'm like, fuck,
should I have made him? Like? I mean, I know
I pushed them, but I also let him make this
(37:06):
mistake so that he could learn what he's learning right now?
Is it worth it? Like? Should I have? And it's
it's it's it's fucking with me, bro, I know it.
Speaker 3 (37:19):
I know, well, it is what it is.
Speaker 1 (37:21):
You know.
Speaker 3 (37:22):
Here's the other thing too.
Speaker 2 (37:23):
In my opinion, you don't have to go to the
greatest college to be an incredible robotics.
Speaker 3 (37:27):
You don't have to do that nowadays, you know.
Speaker 2 (37:29):
I mean, so as long as he is in the
place that he wants to be and and and that's it,
he can study and work and do everything that he
needs to do and his talent will take him through,
you know. I mean, that's the way it goes. My
kids all want to be in the entertainment industry. Their
grandparents do, do uncles do what they.
Speaker 3 (37:47):
All want to do it, you know.
Speaker 2 (37:48):
So I'm like, we'll go have fun in college, Go
have the college experience. If you know what you're gonna do,
you're gonna work hard at that. You're gonna come back
to LA, You're gonna get an agent, You're gonna do
whatever the hell it is. You're gonna do your footage
in the door. Nepotism is a fucking live and real.
Speaker 3 (38:04):
It's the way it is.
Speaker 2 (38:05):
And you're gonna have to work your ass off, but
you're gonna, you know.
Speaker 1 (38:08):
You know what you're going do. Anybody that that looks
down upon nepotism or says that it's wrong or whatever
it is, let's be honest. Yeah, those people don't have
anybody in their family that is in a place of
success that can help them achieve a goal a little
easier than normal. That's just life. I mean, it just is,
(38:30):
you know what I mean. The problem.
Speaker 3 (38:31):
The problem is the problem though.
Speaker 2 (38:32):
Nepotism argument is when you hear the word, your mind
automatically goes to entertainment, rich people, actors. But that's bullshit.
Nepotism is on everyone full spectrum. It's from accountants to steal.
Speaker 3 (38:47):
Workers, to every job in the world.
Speaker 2 (38:49):
There's nepotism, you know what I mean, it's just hard.
Speaker 1 (38:53):
When my nepotism was a place called California Protein Products.
They took the guts and the beaks and all the
food that all the stuff that couldn't be created into
food from Zachie Farms, all the chickens that they killed.
And so, uh, three of my cousins, three of my uncles,
(39:16):
two of my brothers all worked at this one place. Right,
if I wanted a life working there, I had an end.
It was done. I could have done it right. That
was my nepotism, So I had it in my family.
This is that. It wasn't you know, to a badass
job where you know you can make millions of dollars.
(39:39):
That's not what my nepotism was. My nepotism was, you're
gonna make a decent living and you're gonna come home
smelling like shit every night. So if that's good, that's
for you. We got your back, Like that's what I had.
Speaker 2 (39:52):
Did you did you ever dip your toes into that world?
Speaker 1 (39:55):
Or no? Are you kidding? Me, dude, my dad nibbed
that shit in the ass. When I was eight years old,
they come and they tell me, Hey, your father's here
to pick you up from school. I walk outside. He's
a truck driver for this, so he hauled all the
shit basically back and forth. So I got in his
(40:17):
truck and he took me to where he picks up
all the fet goal matter and the guts and the whatever,
and he goes, so what do you think. I was like,
I think I never want to do this. Somebody like
that was it? Brother? Yea, he knew what he was doing.
He knew what he was doing. He took me there
to scare the shit out of me and to lead
(40:40):
me to go I will never do that, and I
will do whatever it takes to never have to do that.
Speaker 2 (40:46):
Yeah. So actually on that line growing up in the projects, like,
were you able to stay out of trouble? I mean,
was that something you was hard to avoid? Or how
did that work for you and your siblings too? You know,
there's so many they didn't.
Speaker 1 (41:00):
Speak enough English, so they were not really targets me personally.
If all of those gang bangers knew that I was,
I don't know how but they respected that I was
one of the kids in the neighborhood that everybody knew
(41:21):
was going to get out because of my mind. And
so I recall an incident one time, we're a really
young gang banger was, you know, kind of got in
my way on my way to school, and one of
the older guys pushed them aside and he said, hey, bro,
don't never mess with that kid right there, Bro, that
(41:42):
kid is going to make us look good. Someday he's
going to go to school and show people what we
can be. You are what we have to be. He
is what we can be. So don't ever fuck with him.
And nobody ever fuck with this kid. He is not
a gang banger and he never will be. And that's
what I got from those guys. That's what I received
(42:04):
from them. But here's guy who was very intelligent, who
probably had a great idea, Like I know a guy
that I was growing up who before they had taco trucks,
had the idea to do a taco truck and could
not get alone. And those ideas just sometimes die on
(42:26):
the grapevine because they don't have the help that they need,
or the person that they need, or the nepotism required
or the friend in the right place. And so the
respect that I got from those guys was that they
that guy was smart. And I think he saw a
little bit of him and me, and I think that
(42:47):
he kind of just went, I don't want you.
Speaker 2 (42:48):
To be me.
Speaker 1 (42:50):
I want you to be what I should have been. Yeah, and.
Speaker 3 (42:54):
Looked out for you that way.
Speaker 1 (42:55):
Yeah, yeah, you know what, I never saw it. I
don't know why right now it's hitting me really hard,
but wow, I've never really lived in that moment to
really see his pain in it. I just was grateful,
you know what I mean. But I now that i'm
kind of thinking about, Yeah, that the fact that I
was just a version of him that couldn't exist when
(43:19):
he was growing up.
Speaker 2 (43:20):
That's he wanted to give someone else an opportunity that
he didn't have because he saw himself and you you know, yeah,
that's cool. Do you ever connect with the neighborhood anymore?
Speaker 1 (43:42):
Or is that I do? But it's so hard, bro,
because you know, when I go back and you know,
I see that I see the old guy and I
knew and he's still alive, but his teeth are missing,
and yeah, you know, I see the drug abuse signs
and they asked me for money, you know what I mean,
or or they or they're embarrassed. Yeah, that's the worst, bro. Yeah,
(44:04):
the worst is when I go to the seventy eleven
because my brother, he doesn't live too far from where
we grew up, so we still go down to the
seven eleven that hovers between these two neighborhoods, East LA
on one side of Floral and Monterey Park on the
other side, which is a pretty affluent, decent neighborhood. Yeah,
and I still go there, and you know, every once
(44:24):
in a while, it's happened where I go there and
they see me and they try to hide and I
just pretend I didn't see them because they're embarrassed of
what they look like, or they're high, or they're drunk
or or whatever. And you know that's that's hard for
me too, bro, you know what I mean, What do
you do? Because I've helped, Dude, I've given millions of
dollars to family and friends of help. Right now, I
(44:46):
just send a bunch of money to a couple of
buddies of mine that are dealing with some stuff in
Houston because of the hurricane and so you know, I
give back. But yeah, it's hard, bro, It's it's that's
tough to see that.
Speaker 2 (45:00):
So real, real quick, because I know we're going along here,
but like real quick, just just getting into the comedy space.
It's the kid, you know, when did that happen? When
did you know you were funny? When did you know
that this could be a career for you?
Speaker 1 (45:13):
You know?
Speaker 3 (45:13):
Were you a young kid telling jokes? We were like,
were you the were you the guy?
Speaker 1 (45:18):
Or No? I was not that guy? What I was
the I was the young guy that always didn't I
didn't see the map in things right. My brain was
meant to write comedy, to write things of that nature.
So like, here's an example, when I would hear gang
(45:39):
bangers go I hate white people. White people still fuck
white people, I would in my head go, well, if
you hate white people, how come you only shoot Mexican
like that doesn't make sense to me. If you hate
white people, then stop shooting us and go shoot white
people like that. So that thought or thoughts like that
got always in my head. The problem was I was
(46:01):
around my mom a lot, and my mother she knew
me really well, and she would spot whatever look I
had in my face, and she would either smack me
in the back of the head or grab me by
the ear, or look at me in the eye and go,
you better not say what you're thinking. Not here, not now.
That was her thing, right, it's inappropriate here and now.
(46:23):
What happened was when I'm nineteen and I discovered comedy.
I discovered the place where my mother can't tell me
not here, not now. This is actually the place where
all those thoughts belong. And so every thought that I
had as a kid of moments like that became a joke,
(46:47):
became fodder. And I and because I had eleven sisters,
and eight of them were born in a row before me,
so there was a period of time when I was
growing up where there were or nine women in my
house and just me and my dad. Right, So I
tell this story about one time my dad got pissed
(47:10):
because we used to have to go downstairs in the
backyard and use the water hole sometimes to shower up
in the morning. Because you can imagine, everybody goes to
work in school at the same time. We have one
one bathroom, right that has a shower in it, and
nine women, so exactly, so my dad one time got
(47:35):
pissed and he's he said. He knocked on the door
and said, if you don't open the door, I swear
to God. And three of my sisters were like, whatever, dad.
So my dad went downstairs and he made me hold
his two hands while he squatted over the kitchen sink
and took a dump in the up. That's how we
(48:00):
dealt with those moments. And now I get too. Instead
of being the crazy fun uncle at the parties who
gets you know, drug can tells everybody these awesome stories
on carloson the community and they's going on stage and
tell these really great funny stories. So I was always
meant to do this, and of course there was resistance
(48:24):
when I first started from my family. A degree in
electrical engineering, so my family was pissed when I started
doing stand up so they had it, literally had an
intervention for me. I came home on a Sunday, all
these people are waiting. They're all there to tell me
how I'm ruining my life, how I'm stupid to quote
my mom. Get a job and then you couldn't tell
(48:44):
jokes at whatever job you have, But you don't have
to do this. And thank god, my dad he never came.
He didn't come to America for success or money. My
dad came to America to literally achieve the American dream,
which was to be the best that you can be
(49:08):
at anything, at whatever that is, and have the opportunity
to be whatever you want. So the thing was, during
this intervention, my dad started getting drunk. He started drinking
because it took too long. They were like forty people there.
So by the time I got to my dad, I
said to my dad, because I know this about him,
I go, Dad, like, remember when I was about ten
years old and you kissed me on the cheek under
the Christmas tree and you said, miho, I came to
(49:30):
this country so that you could be whatever you want.
I said, you're the most important voice in my life.
I don't give a shit about what they say, but
I care about what you think. What do you think
I should do? And my dad he goes, you know what,
and he wants to be a clown. Fuck it. Let
him juggle And that was.
Speaker 2 (49:51):
It.
Speaker 1 (49:52):
That was the stamp of my career. Cut to two
years later, I went International Star Search. We're at the
after party. I hear it clinglingling. Everybody turns around. My
Mom's on the stage, raises a glass and says, you know,
ever since, ever since he was a little boy, I
(50:14):
knew that he was gonna be somebody special. And I, dude,
I swear to god, I was about to yell bullshit
and my dad and I'm like, what are you doing?
You know, she's bullshit And my dad is like, I know,
but she's cappy and she's drinking. I'm getting laid to night.
Don't fuck it up for me. And I was like,
(50:38):
and that was you know, but she was about to well,
actually she did. She you know, she continued with it
and said that when I was born, there was a
star in the sky and she always knew what she always.
Speaker 2 (50:49):
Supports, created some sort of a story that makes her
look like I knew my son was gonna oh shit.
Speaker 1 (50:55):
She had an intervened. It was to her I'd be
working for Exon or something company like that right now.
Speaker 2 (51:02):
Amazing, Great dude, that's been really fun talking to you.
Give us the show at Harris. What are you doing?
Speaker 3 (51:10):
Is it the residency?
Speaker 1 (51:12):
Yeah? I got a residency at Harris. It's been going great, man.
Two weeks in and yeah, man, we're already getting repeat customers.
We're already getting like people are just saying the best thing.
I'm hearing that right now. It's the best comedy show
on the strip. And I've only been doing it, like
I said, two weeks so Harris on Sundays and every Sunday,
every Monday. I thought that would make a difference. By
(51:34):
the way that goddamn place is packed every day, Like
if you don't leave your room, can you just walk
around and don't look at clocks or anything? You never
know a weekend from from a Tuesday.
Speaker 2 (51:47):
Now that that's Vegas. They just they suck you into
that vortex and don't let you out.
Speaker 1 (51:51):
You know. Yeah, and and so my thing is just
trying to hang out with the right people. So right
now I know I'm hanging out with the right people
because after the show we want on stairs to the
lounge and smoke a cigar. Perfect, So I know exactly,
I know, you know we have. We've had to say
no to three or four invitations. You know that the
next day it's like, so what did you do last night?
(52:13):
Oh my god, bro, I can't get out of that
for the horrible Like I'm staying away from that ship, dude.
Speaker 2 (52:19):
Due I know that Vegas is hard too, a lot
of temptation there where you're just like, fuck, well, dude,
I'll come check you out if I'm in Vegas. I'm
in Colorado now for a little bit.
Speaker 3 (52:28):
I'll be back in.
Speaker 2 (52:29):
August, but uh, you know I want to come. All right, brother,
any brother, good talk man. I appreciate you doing that.
Speaker 1 (52:36):
Brother. Well, brother, all right, take care
Hosts And Creators
Oliver Hudson
Kate Hudson
Popular Podcasts
United States of Kennedy
United States of Kennedy is a podcast about our cultural fascination with the Kennedy dynasty. Every week, hosts Lyra Smith and George Civeris go into one aspect of the Kennedy story.
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