3188: We NEED to Talk

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
To the Black Guy Who Tips podcast. I listen because
Rod and Karen are hot.

Speaker 2 (00:07):
Hey, welcome to another episode of the Blackoutis podcast. I'm
your host, Rod joined is always on my cost and
we're live on a Tuesday, ready to do some podcasting
rush hour podcasting for y'all driving home from work somehow
watching this video but also hopefully paying attention to the road.

(00:28):
Maybe at stop plays, Maybe you just have the phone
turned down with the volumes up.

Speaker 3 (00:33):
I don't know. There's a lot going on out there
in the world.

Speaker 2 (00:36):
I don't know who am I to judge. Just be
careful at any rate. If you're listening to this later,
you already know.

Speaker 3 (00:42):
We have a guest. Today's guest is.

Speaker 2 (00:45):
A podcaster, stand up comedian friend who's new stand up
special Rennie or Reenie is if you want to pronounce
it the correct way, drops on YouTube tomorrow, eleven nineteen
at eight pm Eastern Standard time. It's the homie Money

(01:06):
Mike Caplan is what they call them when no one
that he doesn't know about what's going on.

Speaker 3 (01:11):
Mike.

Speaker 4 (01:13):
Yeah, Finally, this is the first time that I felt
the most seen. Uh, nobody has ever called me by
my true name, Money. Mike Kaplan here. Thank you so much.
Always a pleasure to be here. Love the love and
the chat. I like when Rod, when you said I
hope if you're driving home, you're not watching, somebody wrote,

(01:33):
I'm not watching, but they are texting, right, So.

Speaker 5 (01:38):
Don't worry using like a series or like a speaking
thing with a you know type of thing.

Speaker 3 (01:45):
All right, I'll be careful out there on the road, Okay.

Speaker 2 (01:48):
I don't want to be the reason anybody's going, uh,
you know, going home to the hospital or going to
the hospital or something on our behalf.

Speaker 4 (01:55):
Mike has tricks, Thank you for asking. Tricks are good
or tricks is good, It depends. I'm I'm excited to
be here. I love talking to y'all. I know that
frequently it happens when I have something big to share about,
but I'm always Here's the thing I know. Our history

(02:17):
is such that you know, I came on your podcast
probably for the first time, like could be like ten
years ago, and then what in like twenty seventeen or so,
I was like, hey, can I come back? And then
just for whatever reason, it slipped through the cracks and
we didn't talk for years, and then in twenty twenty,
I was like, hey, can I come back? And you
were like, I thought you were mad at me for

(02:38):
three years and like now since then, I you know,
I'm always happy to come back. I mean, in fact,
I'm not worried about this, but I would be more concerned,
like truly, like whatever, I feel like. Different people have
different communication libidos, you know, like and I have a
high one. I am in touch with a lot of

(02:59):
people who I can hear about a lot of good friends.
And what is a good friend. Sometimes it's a friend
you've known for a long time. Sometimes it's a friend
that you speak too frequently. Sometimes it's just somebody that
you feel a kinship with, regardless of how long you've
known them or how frequently you speak to them, right,
and so regardless of how frequently we speak and how

(03:19):
long we've known each other, which is now going on
quite a long time, I am always happy to be here.
And I put that forth like truly as often as
you would have me, Like you know, I'm not gonna
ask to become a member of your marriage, but I
would be here, you know, on a on a weekly basis,
on a monthly basis, on a yearly base, on any basis.

(03:42):
So I'm happy that I'm here right now. That's one
of the ways that tricks are.

Speaker 3 (03:48):
I think it's.

Speaker 2 (03:48):
Interesting that one you are what I like to call
a communication ethical slut.

Speaker 3 (03:54):
Right you you're you're out in the streets.

Speaker 1 (03:58):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (03:58):
If you guys have ever I met Mike Kaplan and
got on his email list, you're getting something from him
at least once a month, Yes, sometimes on special occasions
as well, And it's always inviting you to respond if
you would like to. But if you just want to
wait till the next month and get another one of these,
you're welcome.

Speaker 5 (04:19):
To do that.

Speaker 2 (04:20):
And then all the time I see things that specifically
make me think of Mike. I'm sure a lot of
people do, but but it's like, oh, yeah, I text
Mike this funny bumper sticker or this this, you know,
I forget what The last thing was that there was
like a sign on a on a building that was

(04:40):
like a repair building, but the sign was broken. I
was like this, Mike would get the irony and the
humor in this, so.

Speaker 6 (04:47):
I would completely understand that optometrist looks just like you.
So that every time I go get my eyes checked,
I always think of you.

Speaker 5 (04:57):
I'm not even gonna lie.

Speaker 4 (04:58):
And if sweet, can I say, real quick yes, I
would love to have I don't know if you have
a photo. It's not urgent, but at some point we
should have a photo. Put up a photo of your
eye doctor and of me, and then go camera one,
camera two, camera one.

Speaker 2 (05:13):
I really should I really, you know what, next time
I see him, I'm gonna do it.

Speaker 3 (05:17):
I'm gonna ask him can I take a picture of him?
Because uh, he not.

Speaker 2 (05:20):
Just reminds me of you in the way he looks,
but he's also extremely thorough and explaining stuff. Yes, and
he still gets excited about explaining the same stuff, which
is a very Mike Kaplan esque like feature to be
able to give it the same energy the one million
time that you're doing it.

Speaker 3 (05:37):
He's like, oh, and you know, you might need buyvocals
because our eyes do get a little bit of it.

Speaker 2 (05:42):
And I'm like, he told me the same thing last year.
But I'm just as I'm just as intrigued.

Speaker 4 (05:48):
And if you want to, you can buy focals. You
can get him for free. If you have get free focals.
You know, however much however you want to get your vocals.
You're gonna need some vocals though, yes, one focal if.

Speaker 5 (05:59):
Not by that's exactly.

Speaker 6 (06:05):
And like if you ask him a question like about
the eye, he goes into like all these details like.

Speaker 5 (06:10):
To the t and he'll tell you like, you know,
we got.

Speaker 6 (06:13):
This new test where we don't have to have drops
in your eyes, but you have to pay a little
bit extra, you know, type of stuff like that. And
for me, every time I go because I get my
eyes check yearie and he's surprised every time I come back,
like there's nothing wrong with your eyes, but you keep
coming based and most people see me once.

Speaker 5 (06:30):
They start having vision problems.

Speaker 6 (06:31):
I'm like, no, I want to catch you in advance,
like my glasses are more so I can see tiny print,
like I'm not blind type you know, mean type of thing.

Speaker 5 (06:39):
And so it's hilarious because he always asks me, do
you want to get contacts?

Speaker 6 (06:44):
And I'm like, no, I don't like poking in my
eyes like I want them people I don't when I
do eye drops, I'm like this and I miss consistently
miss my eye, so I know I can't do contacts.

Speaker 5 (06:55):
He asks me every year the same question.

Speaker 2 (06:59):
Real contact, trying to avoid is your finger touching your eyeball?

Speaker 4 (07:02):
Yes?

Speaker 3 (07:03):
Yeah, I love, I love that.

Speaker 4 (07:05):
I love. I mean, I've been highed glasses since I
was nine, So I go to I also go to
the eye doctor once a year. It is good to
go to the eye doctor once a year for the
very reason that you're talking about.

Speaker 1 (07:16):
You.

Speaker 4 (07:16):
It's important to prevent problems before they start to learn
when a problem starts. So I like that you're able
to see your You're basically seeing the glass as half
full or fully full. Right now, You're you're fully full
of being able to see the glass. How do your
eyesight is? You're an optimist taumetrist.

Speaker 6 (07:36):
You know.

Speaker 3 (07:38):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (07:38):
And when she first got it done, I was the
person that had to tell we have eye insurance, why
aren't you using it?

Speaker 5 (07:44):
Yes?

Speaker 3 (07:45):
Because she's like, because I don't know.

Speaker 2 (07:46):
I don't need glasses. It's like, I'm like, they do
more than that. They go and they do like macular
vision tests. They check for cancer and retina and things
that like degenerative diseases that may be coming that you
can start doing something about. And she goes, and then

(08:07):
she starts telling the stories.

Speaker 3 (08:08):
If you know, it was all her idea now I
was not.

Speaker 5 (08:12):
Of course I'm taking credit now.

Speaker 2 (08:15):
Being a kid, right, the years of the years of
me advocating doesn't mean anything. But you can say that
she now has twenty twenty hindsight on her on what
she should have been doing the whole time.

Speaker 1 (08:30):
Yes, I do, delightful. What's yours is yours, what's y'all's
is y'all. Your idea is her idea.

Speaker 4 (08:38):
Eventually it was your idea, but then ideas can spread,
you know, Yeah, that's a positive idea.

Speaker 2 (08:44):
She's the best kind of evangelistic person because she does
something one time, it could be it can be today
she started a new thing, she can already proselytize about it,
which I don't have that in me, Like, I mean,
I need to build up a resume of change before
I'm like, you know, what y'all need to do is

(09:05):
go to the gym.

Speaker 3 (09:06):
It's like, how long have you been going to the gym?
Five minutes ago?

Speaker 2 (09:09):
But that we're not asking that, but what we all
should be on it, don't we agree? And speaking of Mike,
you said ten years, it's been twelve years. Wow, you
were first on our show June ninth, twenty thirteen, wow.
Oh no, I'm sorry. June fifth, twenty thirteen. It was

(09:29):
episode four eighty five.

Speaker 5 (09:31):
Oh eighty five. We was three digits.

Speaker 2 (09:34):
This episode needs No Title was the title of this episode.

Speaker 4 (09:38):
Ah, I must have told you about the book I
read called this book needs No Title or else. H
that was an idea that somebody else had that I
made my idea.

Speaker 2 (09:48):
Yeah, and look, I'll tell you this when you come on.
These titles are clever.

Speaker 3 (09:53):
I'm not not.

Speaker 2 (09:54):
Too nin on horn, but I feel like we vibe
off of each other and we get some fun titles.

Speaker 3 (09:59):
Six forty on the bus getting robbed.

Speaker 2 (10:01):
I don't know that made me want to listen to it.

Speaker 5 (10:04):
Somebody get robbed.

Speaker 4 (10:07):
I think you're one hundred percent right. I feel like,
have I ever told you this? I feel like maybe
I have. We've talked a lot over the years. But
I had this this safe you know, when I was
a kid, like a safe with a combination, but it
was a kid safe, so it only had a one
digit combination, so even if you didn't know the number,
you could just hold down the release button and then
spin the dial and when it gets to the number,

(10:28):
it would open up. And I think about that metaphorically,
like you know, you move through life. Some people are
open hearted, open minded, you know, loving and just like
you know, just curious and inquisitive. And I feel like
y'all have that, and I feel like it's like holding
down the open button on your heart, you know, so
when you and when you spin the dial by going

(10:50):
through the world and meeting other people, you're like, oh,
when you meet another person who's holding down that open
dial on their heart, You're like, wow, this opens us
both up. So like there's people I have friends who,
like I used to call when calling was a thing
that was allowed, and you know, you call a friend
and I would leave a voice message, and some friends
I would just leave like three minute voice messages because
I'm imagining them listening, and it takes me on like

(11:11):
a journey across this playground, this amusement park of it.

Speaker 6 (11:14):
I appreciate that I love voicemails. I want them people
that actually do listen to voicemails.

Speaker 3 (11:19):
I know people don't leave voice messages voice messages.

Speaker 6 (11:22):
It's like, so if you leave me a voice message,
even the robots and all that stuff, I actually will
will actually listen to it and determine you know, I'm
very fluid with mine, Like I have group chats where
we flip back and forth like based on like what's happening,
especially if something is like intense and I don't mean
intense like arguing, but just you need to deliver this

(11:43):
with more intensity than a text cann't do.

Speaker 3 (11:44):
And you're like or you know, and I kind of
like that. It goes in and out.

Speaker 2 (11:49):
And now with the voice messages, you can kind of
like save them for later. They do the like transcript
of them, like the transcript. Yeah yeah, so like you
you know, but I when I get the voice note,
I know, like, oh you meant this shit, you know.

Speaker 4 (12:05):
Yeah, I I've started recently when I get a voice
a voicemail or a voice message from like a particular
loved one, like my mother for example, uh she if
it's like a really like you know, like iconic like
version of like a call from my mom, you know,
like my mom is in her seventies now, and you know,
I'm sure she's gonna live forever, but just in case,

(12:26):
you know, at some point, you know, I'm like thinking
ahead to be like when will I want to like
I had her on my podcast, Like, but I like
to have these recordings like that I can go back
and listen to and so I'll just like send it
to my email and then I'm like, okay, great.

Speaker 1 (12:40):
So it's it's a great tool.

Speaker 4 (12:42):
It's a great you know, use of technology that we
can have at our disposal. But my point is just
that you you know, talking with y'all, it's like it's familial.
You know. I feel like, you know, like long lost cousins,
like close cousins, not just like Gary Goleman used to
have a joke where he would say, a cousin is
basically a coincidence, like oars cool. But there's a way

(13:04):
in which you know, the like the bear, the way
they say like cousin, it's like brother, like like sibling.

Speaker 1 (13:09):
You know, it's like close connection and becausin.

Speaker 2 (13:12):
And honestly, honestly, it's like for I can't speak for
every race, but definitely for black people, cousin means something
closer to.

Speaker 3 (13:22):
Like brother or sister.

Speaker 2 (13:23):
It does like if you like even to the point
where like if you have a good friend when you're
a kid, you just call on your play cousin, Yes
you do, Like you don't you don't just be like
that's my friend from up the block. You're like, oh,
that's my play cousin. I don't know why that's a
thing down. Maybe it's a Southern thing or whatever, but
so like, yeah, I do take what you mean as
like when you say that, cousin, cause, like I said,

(13:44):
I think of you fondly. And the weird hang up
of of that thing was I dropped the ball and
I got in my own head about not replying to
Mike fast enough. And by the time I went to
reply back because I kept being like, oh, reply to him,
he said it's specials not coming out for hover long
or whatever, like I will plug it in it And

(14:06):
then I looked up him passed the day and I
was like, oh God, I fucked up so bad this
and I created a mic that doesn't exist now. The
mic Monster Mic is what I call this mic, and
he's not real, but in my mind, monster Mic was
like he was going on long, pontificating soliloquies about how
I did him dirty, and then each time I would

(14:28):
be like, well, maybe I should reach out now, and
it's like, no, Nah.

Speaker 3 (14:32):
Fuck that up that you'll never fix it.

Speaker 2 (14:34):
And the second we even communicated about it, it was.
It was a very informative lesson. It was a very
formative lesson too, because it was like, oh, this was
all in my head. That was anxiety talking, which you
know I went to therapy to deal with. And also
it was kind of like, oh, you can create any

(14:55):
image of a person when you don't have it's Strodinger's friend.
I I created a bad version. I could have created
a great version of Mike, who's like, who gives a
fuck about that?

Speaker 4 (15:05):
Man?

Speaker 3 (15:05):
Let's just like, hang, got it in. We don't got
to do anything.

Speaker 2 (15:08):
And so since then, uh, I've always extended that, Hey,
you can come on anytime. You typically only pick when
you got to promote something. But that's fine too. But
I love it. I love it.

Speaker 1 (15:21):
I'm gonna do it.

Speaker 4 (15:22):
Yeah, I appreciate that. And I honest to say these
two things. One, you were worried that you didn't get
back to me fast enough, And let me just say,
almost no one can get back to me fast enough.

Speaker 1 (15:33):
I move is so fast.

Speaker 4 (15:36):
But and I one other thing, it's like, clearly, yeah,
you here's me. This is me like you I think
you know, we come from we each have our own,
you know, issues, like some people might tend towards more
depression than anxiety.

Speaker 1 (15:50):
Some more anxiety than depression.

Speaker 4 (15:51):
Some people, you know, willow in the past, some people
worry about the future. And we all do some version
of this, like you know, at at various times.

Speaker 1 (15:58):
Right, But I.

Speaker 4 (15:59):
Remember a thing that I say sometimes in comedy, like
you know, sometimes like a person gets up to leave
the room, like while I'm on stage, and like I'll
be like, Okay, they're going to the bathroom, right, And
that's just my general like that's I'll just assume they're
going to the bathroom, like even if they're like, hey,
I want to let you know that I'm leaving because
I don't like the show. I don't like the comedy,

(16:21):
and that's why I'm leaving. I don't have to go
to the bathroom to adjust it. I guess I know
that you might think that you might convince yourself of that,
but I'm leaving because you are bad and I don't
like it.

Speaker 1 (16:31):
And then they leave and I'll be like they really
had the shit, you know.

Speaker 4 (16:33):
What I mean, You can't you can't get me like
you do, Like I'll listen when you tell me, but
like if I have no information, if I have any
capacity of reading it generously because also I might not
always be right, but you'll it'll be a self fulfilling
prophecy more often than not, Like believe you can or

(16:54):
believe you can't. In your way, you'll be right free.
If you believe that you can't enough, then that'll become true.
If you believe you can enough, then that'll become true
at least more often than if you believe it the
other way. So why not create the positive monster, right money,
mic not the monster.

Speaker 1 (17:09):
Micah, Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 (17:10):
That's and I think also that was a gift to myself,
the idea of the positive vacuum, you know, the thing
of like I don't know this information could be great information,
Like you know, like why why am I assuming that
it's it's hard. It's like not that I like this.

(17:31):
I hate when people do this, but it's like if
someone goes, man, we really need to talk. I could
fill that void with like this is gonna be terrible,
or I could fill that void with this is gonna
be great. And it is interesting that in my lifetime
that has not always been bad. Like the anxiety and
the dread is bad on my side, but many times
we need to talk, or we need to have a meeting.

Speaker 3 (17:53):
Has been you're getting.

Speaker 2 (17:54):
A raise, or uh, it's time for performance reviews, you've
been doing great, or or just some innoc your was
thaying like, hey, we need to talk. So and so
was going on leave and we need you to cover
a shift or so and now, in my mind, however
long it took till we got that conversation, was like,
oh my god, I'm gonna get murdered. I'm gonna walk
in there. It's gonna be like good fellas, They're gonna

(18:15):
shoot me in the back of the head and that's
gonna be the end of my life.

Speaker 5 (18:19):
And put you down for good.

Speaker 4 (18:20):
Yeah, yeah, we should. I mean if we can try
to not. Here's the thing is, because I think we
need to talk has been normalized by society as we
need to talk about a bad thing, we need to
break up, things aren't working whatever this, So we need
to maybe help swing the pendulum back in the other
way to make the because like I love talking. I
talk for a living. Y'all talk for a living. We're talking.

(18:42):
We need to talk, yes, talk, we need to talk
because that's how humans, a communal creature, commune with one another,
because if we don't talk, then we don't know what's
going on with you. We need to talk because i'd
love to know what you want for your birthday.

Speaker 1 (18:55):
You know what, right, I don't know. I can't read
your mind. We need to talk.

Speaker 3 (19:01):
That's true. It's a gift man.

Speaker 2 (19:03):
So you have recently recorded a special that is coming
out tomorrow. If you're listening to this live, it is
named Reenie. I just happened to notice this is Harry.
Is a coincidence your girlfriend's named Reenie?

Speaker 3 (19:20):
I don't know if you knew this.

Speaker 1 (19:21):
Yes, hold on a second, Yes, that's correct.

Speaker 2 (19:27):
Does the title have something to do with that?

Speaker 4 (19:30):
That's a great question. What if the answer was no,
it's really a weird coincidence.

Speaker 1 (19:35):
I just assign the titles and like what Reenie? We got?

Speaker 5 (19:38):
We got a Rene.

Speaker 1 (19:41):
Riot is Reenie? Yes?

Speaker 4 (19:43):
So the title actually shifted many times over the years.
There was two different titles in advance, one because the show,
one because the show shifted, and we came up with
a we thought a better title for what the show
was representing. And then I learned that the title we
chose the second title, but is not the title which
is RENI was called before We Get Started. The first

(20:03):
title was Imperfect, but with a capital piece, so it
also looks like I'm Perfect because the original show was
less about Reenie and my relationship with Renie and more
about my own like growth and be going, you know,
ideally from Imperfect I'm Perfect or you know, sort of
the bouncing back between those two. And then we were like, okay,
this show is about We started working on it together, collaborating,

(20:24):
you know, creatively, and so we both you know, co
wrote the show, and so it's about our relationship and
how we've been together almost ten years now and we
are not married, and a lot of times when people
hear that, they're like, well, when are you gonna get started?
You know, like obviously, like you're wasting time, as though
if we live together unmarried for one hundred years, they'd be.

Speaker 1 (20:44):
Like, and then we die.

Speaker 4 (20:44):
We're gonna We're not gonna die. We're gonna say thousands
of years whatever it is. But at a certain point,
if we never got married and then you know, the
the universe ends, then whoever's there in the next universe
is like, man, pretty a shame they never began their relationship,
you know, they never got that paper work, which is
now gone in the extinguished Sons of all Time. But
the point is that people are like, oh, as if

(21:07):
all of our relationship has happened before we got started.
But then a friend of mine, Ryan Reese, had been
working on a documentary also called Before We Get Started,
because he works as a warm up comedian, so that's
a perfect name for a documentary about warm up comedy,
Before we Get Started? And I'd had him on my
podcast and we talked about it, and I'd forgotten that
that was the title of his documentary years earlier, and

(21:30):
I was like, oh, hey, man. When I found out,
I was like, looks like we got the same title.
And he's like, but I told you about that five
years ago, and I was like right, and I listened
back to my podcast episode. I'm like, there, I am
saying that that's the name of this thing. Absolutely, you
got me. So then we got started. After that, well,
then what's the best name for this show? What is
this show about? If not Before we Get Started? And

(21:53):
you know, my name's already, like, it's Mike Kaplan, it's
a Mike Kaplan comedy special. I'm there, but it is,
you know, equal parts created by and about Reenie, So
we're like Reenie. No, there's no comedy specials out there
already named Reenie?

Speaker 1 (22:07):
Are there?

Speaker 4 (22:08):
And we didn't do an extensive look, and I hope
there aren't, but I think I think this is the
number one comedy special named Greenie. And it is named
because that is Reenie's name, and you asked me in
a funny way that led to this conversation, thank you.

Speaker 2 (22:20):
What if Chris Rock comes out with a special like
Tonight and it's like Reenie for no reason, He's just like.

Speaker 4 (22:26):
Oh no, I mean he had Tambourine.

Speaker 3 (22:31):
He's like Tamberini.

Speaker 1 (22:32):
No, Reenie, Tambourini.

Speaker 2 (22:36):
I feel like you haven't seen you in person and
talk to you and all this stuff. I feel like
your stand up specials would have twenty backup titles like
already even so is coming up with the title difficult?
Is it a thing you get locked into early and
then go okay, I'll construct a special around this idea

(22:57):
or is it fluid? Because it sounds like you went
from an emper fake I'm perfect to before we get
started to now, RENI like, how fluid are your titles
to your to your stand up specials?

Speaker 1 (23:09):
Yeah, that's a great question.

Speaker 4 (23:11):
I would say it has it evolved over the years,
like because you know, earlier on.

Speaker 1 (23:16):
My albums were not necessarily themed.

Speaker 4 (23:19):
So like the first one, Vegan mind meld isn't all
about being vegan, isn't all about mind melding. There's like
one joke in it that mentions that line. I'm like,
that's a funny line, and I think kind of says
something about who I am and the kind of comedy
that I do, Like it isn't like what the show
is about, but you know, it says something. And then

(23:40):
Meet Robot was my second title that I came up
with for my next album that that was named because
I have this this digital recorder that I record my
ideas into, which I call Robot. And then so whenever
I say something funny, a friend might be like, hey,
you should record that in Robot.

Speaker 1 (23:54):
And one day Robot wasn't working, like.

Speaker 4 (23:56):
I'd run out of batteries, and they were like, but
you just said something funny, how are you gonna record it?

Speaker 1 (24:00):
And I guess you're gonna have to hold onto it.

Speaker 4 (24:02):
In Meat Robot, behind that the old Brain and we're
all kind of meat robots in a Way, and then
the next one was Small, Dork and Handsome, which just
again name has nothing to do with the actual content
of the hour, when it does have something to do
with the content of me. And the first album that
I that I did feel like the title represented the

(24:24):
material well was No Kidding because it was an album
about not wanting children, and then after that it was
going It was Aka, which was originally going to be
titled All Killing a Side, but it came out at
the beginning of the pandemic, and because of that, we
probably talked about it. We're like, maybe, you know, in
two months into the pandemic, not putting out an album
like that front and center, even though it's all Killing

(24:46):
a Side and the hours about not murdering and not
death and you know, about love and kindness. But like
people sometimes just don't read the article. They just look
at the headline. They're like killing no thank you, And
so we're like, okay, AKA. So I feel like there
is lineage of you know, there's a history of coming
up with you know, having to sort of that one. Actually,
the term the title all Killing Aside I didn't even

(25:08):
come up with. It was I brought the show to
Edinburgh and my my manager Dave Wrath is a really funny,
smart guy, and he was the one. Yeah, I mean
if there's no W so it's an ironic name.

Speaker 1 (25:25):
Yeah, he's good.

Speaker 4 (25:26):
But I'll say a related topic is I love when
I've put out you know, probably close to close to ten.
I think of at least nine albums, you know and
specials total, like nine hours of comedy that I've created
and then recorded, and then I have to come up
with or get to come up with track listings. I
love coming up with track listens because that's like I mean,

(25:47):
the title of the whole project is like a bigger
not like pressure, but a bigger there the stakes are higher,
like this is what everyone's going to see, like can
it represent the entire thing? But for each album, like
in the beginning, I was just like, oh, this one's
about I don't know, Brad Pitton divorce. This one's about
tigers and open relationships, this one's about you know, beaches

(26:08):
and balls, you know, And so it's like fun to
like you get to make an extra joke with each
track that you name if you want to, or it's
just fun to like be like it's about this, this
and that you know, uh that I think one was
about like Batman and vampire storys, like it's about Batman
and non Batman, you know, different kinds of I.

Speaker 2 (26:26):
Love the I love the granular like title stuff, and
also like I think that's kind of what separates, not separates,
that's not fair, but I think the when you're really nerdy,
when you're really in your groove. Like I love Kendrick Lamar.
He's my probably my favorite rapper right now. And one

(26:46):
of the things I love about him is that every
album is kind of a puzzle.

Speaker 5 (26:50):
It is and it requires multiple listening.

Speaker 2 (26:53):
Yeah, and like a puzzle in the way where like
you can't really go too deep, you know, like like
like even the most weirdest thought that you're having is
like he may have meant that you should probably like
go double check that work. I just saw recently his
last album, the double album not gn X but before

(27:14):
this Mister Morale and The Big Step Religious I think
one of the most important albums of our time.

Speaker 3 (27:19):
But it's a double album and each album has.

Speaker 2 (27:23):
Like the same number of tracks, and if you like
take the tracks and line them up next to each
other and then reverse the order. The last song is
named Mirror, and it's a mirror of the first track.
Like it's one side is like how the world is,
and then the other side is how he is as

(27:44):
a person because every his belief and the therapist that
he has on the philosopher therapist he has on different
interluds is the world is a mirror of us, and
we're a mirror of the world. And I'm like, this is.

Speaker 3 (27:58):
The kind of shit I'm talking, bro, make me work.

Speaker 2 (28:02):
Like, Like, I know some people just want to, like,
you know, like listen to the album and that's it,
but like I kind of enjoy that part of my
brain tickling.

Speaker 3 (28:09):
That's how I've listened to music.

Speaker 6 (28:11):
Like whenever I get into like an album that I
really like, I am the person and I've done this
with a lot of artists. I will sit and I
will listen to the album from like beginning to end.
Then for me, I sometimes I will listen to that
same album just just me for mus on end And

(28:33):
a lot of times I feel like for me personally,
depending on an artist, I get a bit each time
I get a better Kendrick, I have to do this
with you get a better understanding. Things start to kind
of link together, you start having more more ebbs and flows.

Speaker 2 (28:49):
I know, I like when I like something and I
know I won't understand it the first time.

Speaker 3 (28:54):
I like that, you know.

Speaker 2 (28:55):
I know some people that's a huge turn off, and
that's like literally what makes something suck to them?

Speaker 3 (29:00):
Yes, and I hear you, I hear you.

Speaker 2 (29:03):
You know you're allowed to have the experience, but I
sometimes it's like you can't.

Speaker 3 (29:09):
I can't even really relate.

Speaker 2 (29:10):
Because I'm like, no, That's when I knew I was
gonna like be listening this forever.

Speaker 4 (29:16):
You know.

Speaker 1 (29:16):
Yeah, you know what this reminds me of?

Speaker 4 (29:18):
Like Number one, the album that I put out in
twenty twenty, AKA also has like a fun like that's
basically that the album is an entire sort of conceptual palindrome,
Like it's inception themed. And if you look at the
track listings, every track has three h three words or
three concepts in it and they kind of mirror each other.

Speaker 1 (29:38):
So I don't know if Kendrick took my idea.

Speaker 4 (29:39):
Maybe, And is that the middle one is inception like
parallel thinking?

Speaker 3 (29:44):
Perhaps you know, he owes you a Grammy is what
I'm hearing. He owes you at least one of his
Grammys or Pulitzer.

Speaker 4 (29:50):
I'll think the Puli. The point is, I think some
of the I love what you're saying. I really appreciate that.
The it reminds me also of some of the greatest
art is stuff that like a child can experience and
appreciate in one way and then later the adult version
of yourself, Like the Muppets, Like a child can love
the Muppets because it's like talking, dancing, singing.

Speaker 1 (30:13):
Still it looks. Yeah, it's so great.

Speaker 4 (30:16):
Like I just watched you know, maybe we talked about
this because it came out like sometime in the past
couple of years, The Muppets, the Mayhem, just that I
don't know if you guys watch that Mayhem series, Like
it's so beautiful, like it just it's touching and like
I'm sure, like you know, it's there's things in it
that a child might not understand as well, but a
child can get it and it I mean be cause
they it's the sort of thing that a genius, like

(30:37):
somebody who's like an expert in something like often has
the capacity to explain super complicated topics. Yeah, like as
though to a five year old and then can make
it accessible and understandable in a more universal way. And
so I feel like that's what like, you know, genius
artists like especially do.

Speaker 2 (30:55):
I think there's a level of genius too though, like
you can take this at any level, yes, which is
like I think it's probably the hardest work to do,
like because you could make something super heady and like
this is just for the super smarts. Nobody else is
gonna get this, and that's okay, but there's a level

(31:17):
of ability to say, like this is for super smart people,
but also it can help make you super smart, like
you the further you dig, the more you get out
of this thing. And it I mean, like you said,
it's such a talent and it's such a rare talent
to be able to possess all those different lenses of
looking at your own art and go, well, if a

(31:38):
person's coming at it from this angle, they need I
would like them to experience this part of it. But
it's always super impressive. And yet movies things that when
you watch when you were young, you saw one way
and then you experience them when you're older, and it's
like a completely different way. That is also like another
like beautiful part of life, just like re recontextualizes something

(32:02):
and being like, oh wait, this whole thing was about divorce.

Speaker 5 (32:05):
The whole time or whatever, Like no idea.

Speaker 2 (32:08):
I just thought they were trying to find their way
home or whatever.

Speaker 1 (32:12):
You know.

Speaker 4 (32:13):
Yeah, It's like when I was a kid, I watched Ghostbusters,
but it wasn't until I was an adult that I
was like, they were women this whole time. This is
about gender, This is important to societal But I also
feel like as a comedian, like I started out, you know,
in my early twenties, and I had because there's like
you know with the Kendrick you know, idea of like

(32:33):
the world and yourself, like we're a part of the world,
but you know, we're a specific part of the world
that were like a lens that we filter you know,
our experience sensorily and mentally and physically, and the world
seems like it's outside of us.

Speaker 1 (32:47):
But really, you know, our.

Speaker 4 (32:49):
Consciousness is the the thing through which everything is happening. Right.
But I didn't know any of this when I was
starting out, and I was just like this is fun
Like these words sound weird, right, Yeah, I think are funny.
This is what I think is meaningful and you can
as a young comedian, especially as a less experienced comedian,
you know, you don't have the skills necessarily to translate
everything from inside to a way that people will understand outside.

Speaker 1 (33:11):
And so I'm just like blah blah, and.

Speaker 4 (33:13):
People are like, no, we don't understand blah blah, and
I'm like, but it's so good in here. Like I
remember when I was a kid, I was thinking, like,
maybe I'd like to write a book someday. But I
was like, but I feel like I would have to
tell everyone who was reading the book everything about my
life story so that they would have all of the
context for what I was talking about in the book.

(33:34):
And that sounds like a lot of work. And of course,
the work of being an artist, a comedian, a writer,
a creator of any kind is figuring out what is
important to tell. Like like Picasso drew an image of
a bull with like five lines and we're like, oh,
people like that's a bull, And he can do a
complete photo realistic one, and that's amazing too. But part
of his art was, you know, simplifying things to the

(33:55):
point of abstraction, of almost not being able to tell
what it is, but being able to tell and like
that's to say something in like, here's one quick other story.

Speaker 1 (34:04):
My friend Gus, a practicing Buddhist.

Speaker 4 (34:06):
Uh, he told me a story once that he had
a Buddhist mentor, like a Buddhist teacher come over to
his house and kind of as a as a fun thing,
he was like, Oh, I have this really thick book
of like Buddhist wisdom, and I'll leave this thick book
of teachings out on the coffee table, so maybe he'll
see it and he'll be like, wow, look at that
big book.

Speaker 1 (34:27):
You must be learning a lot about Buddhist. What a
good guy. Wow, you're a good Buddhist.

Speaker 4 (34:31):
And the mentor does see it and he picks it
up and he's like, wow, interesting this is for children
because in that paradigm he's like a child needs everything
explained bit by bit. But the books for you know,
the advanced students are like the thinnest because you've already
got the context. So like like Picasso, like the fewest lines.

(34:53):
If you if you get it, you get it, you.

Speaker 2 (34:55):
Know, you know, it's kind of like the big Dipper.
I imagine the first person to be like, that's a dipper.
And they were like What what.

Speaker 3 (35:04):
The fuck are you talking about?

Speaker 5 (35:07):
What?

Speaker 1 (35:07):
What are you dipping.

Speaker 3 (35:09):
Those five stars right there?

Speaker 5 (35:10):
Dude?

Speaker 2 (35:10):
That's that's the big different that's the little differ. You
gotta look over there. But they figured it out.

Speaker 6 (35:15):
They might with this special that you were doing when
we heard you. I listened to you on Keith and
the Girl, and you were talking about how Reenie helped you,
and you were saying how she would like critique like
like the things that you were doing on stage and
you know, and things like that.

Speaker 5 (35:35):
How did you kind of internalize that?

Speaker 6 (35:37):
Like, because and the reason why I'm asking is because
you know, you're actually the one on stage and they're
not like not trying like and it's come from two.

Speaker 5 (35:44):
Different perspectives, you know what I'm saying.

Speaker 6 (35:46):
So how did you internalize that and use that in
a positive way? Because enough for some people they would
consider that a critique or you know, not not trying
to not youre telling them what to do, or you know,
some people's pride will hop in. How dare you tell
me how to do my job that I've been doing
for you know, for this long?

Speaker 4 (36:03):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (36:03):
Were there things that you felt more like standing firm
on or or or was everything kind of like, hey,
whatever you say, it goes right.

Speaker 4 (36:12):
That's a great question. Thank you, very generous and thoughtful.
I will say that we, you know, we've come to
a way of doing things over it probably you know,
started this creative collaborative process maybe in like twenty eighteen,
the first time that we went to the Edinburgh Fringe
together and I was doing the show that would become AKA,
and she would, you know, kind of just take notes.

(36:33):
And she is absolutely she's not, you know, a harsh mistress.
You know, she's not like it's got to be like
it was always it was often a question, like a
curiosity of like she would notice this night you did
it this way, the next night you did it this way.

Speaker 1 (36:48):
What like what's the difference?

Speaker 4 (36:49):
Or like sometimes she'd be like, I think I like
it this way for this reason. I feel like this
is like one of the one of the choruses of
the song that I continue to sing while I talk
about this process on different posts. Guess is she has
said she is not a comedian. She doesn't want to
be a comedian because she likes jokes to make sense.
And that's the thing that isn't always the case. You know,

(37:10):
sometimes I'm just like, how about this nonsense?

Speaker 1 (37:12):
And it works?

Speaker 4 (37:13):
But then sometimes she'll ask the question of like, but
what if it also could be as funny, like the
same thing, like can it be the Muppets and Picasso?
Can it be you know, Kendrick Lamar and you know,
the thing that will entertain people of all ages? Can
it make sense and be as funny? And at first
I was like a little afraid, you know, I feel
like or is like concerned. I'm like, it works like this,

(37:35):
and I don't want to like tinker with it because
what if we take it apart and try to put
it back together different?

Speaker 1 (37:40):
And it's like what am I losing?

Speaker 4 (37:42):
It's like the people who worried about like but what
if female Ghostbusters will ruin my child? I'm like, you
can keep watching that movie, your attitude and aging, you know,
keep what we're not destroying all the old copies, And
so I would in the beginning, I was like, Okay,
I guess you know, because she is wise and kind
and she knows me and cares about me and knows

(38:04):
who I am both on and off stage, Like I
definitely don't take it as a criticism. We did have
a part of the process was initially this was a
very handy way of looking at things. Maybe we've talked
about this the if somebody comes to you for advice,
or somebody comes to you with a problem, and you
don't know if they want advice. Some people they just

(38:24):
want to unburden, and so the idea some people want
a cheerleader, some people want a coach.

Speaker 1 (38:29):
Some people might want a cheerleader.

Speaker 4 (38:31):
At one point, if you're like, hey, I already sent
this in, can you just tell me that it's good, right,
if you're like a writing submission. But sometimes you're like,
I'm sending this in tomorrow, can you help me brutally,
honestly make it better? Because I want it to be
the best that it can, even if it would could
hurt my don't worry about hurting my feelings because I
want to make this art, this project the best that

(38:52):
I can. And so our process now is generally speaking,
after a show, the show finishes, it's night where you know, hooray,
it happened, however it went, we go it's cheerleader, cheerleader
at night, and then the next day, then there can
be coaching like coach in the morning, cheerleader after because
then like after the show, it's like, well, I can't

(39:14):
do anything about it now, But the next day, like
with the notes, with the ideas, with like oh what
if what if this idea, then like new possibilities can
bloom and spark and then we can collaborate and work together.

Speaker 1 (39:26):
And to your question of like I would say most of.

Speaker 4 (39:29):
The time, like I trust her, like not just you know, blindly,
but I'm like, she has good ideas, and when she
expresses them, I listen to them, and I'm like, even
if I don't know how it's gonna go, I'm like,
I'll try that. You know, as a comedian you can
try things night after night, show after show, and I'm like,
I'll try it, and then we'll listen back and every
once in a while there's something that we're like, in

(39:51):
order for this to make the most sense, it has
to be said in a way where like the funny
word happens earlier, or like that we might becomes kind
of a puzzle because like we can see like, yes,
this would be the most meaningful way to do it,
but somehow this way might be funnier. Or sometimes I
have just like even in this particular show, there are
things that I would say that like weren't weren't urgent

(40:14):
to include, but I just liked the way they sounded.
I'm like, I like saying this, and so for some
of them, like, well, I'm gonna do that even if
it doesn't make sense. If RENI didn't have a if
she's like okay, you know, you feel strongly go for it.
Or sometimes if she's like you, I feel strongly like
that's not my favorite way and it's our show, so
uh we you know, and so that and I'm like, yes, absolutely,

(40:35):
I feel like we both kind of have veto power
that we.

Speaker 1 (40:38):
Don't frequently use.

Speaker 4 (40:39):
But if something is really strong for one of us,
then we we both we each will honor the other
person's feelings in that way and be like, look, unless
I don't think we've ever had a situation where we
both felt equally strongly about the same thing, like, because
I think we would be able to both like, you know,

(40:59):
and I think if that was so, then I would
say we would err on the side of taking it
out or changing it, because you know, there's we have
so many wonderful, great, meaningful, hilarious ideas like one like
if one makes one of us not feel the best way,
then we don't need it.

Speaker 2 (41:17):
Yeah, I agree, man, I'm you know, I always like
that to coach in the streets, cheerleader in the sheets.

Speaker 1 (41:22):
You know. Yeah, we don't.

Speaker 3 (41:25):
We don't need to. We don't need to have it
one way at a time.

Speaker 4 (41:28):
And I think we have a title for this podcast.

Speaker 2 (41:33):
We're gonna have so many by the end, right we
always do. It's gonna be like when you come up
with a standout special title, it's gonna be thirty of these.
Probably I'll sit through in peruse at the end of
the thing and be like, what was the thing now
doing this special? How many times did you like work
on it?

Speaker 4 (41:53):
So this was probably more than except for like the
beginning of my stand up career, where I started like
say two thousand and two and recorded my first album
in two thousand and nine. So seven years working on
that first forty five minutes, that first hour, which wasn't
that I was doing that hour over and over. It
was shielding it and so but other than that, that's

(42:15):
like the longest I ever worked on one album because
you have to in the beginning this one just by happenstance,
because there was a pandemic in the middle, uh, and
the way that it went, I would say, we film,
we filmed or recorded, we taped AKA in twenty nineteen
and so there that is when, like I would say officially,

(42:36):
we officially started really like working more on the Renie Show,
like it existed in like some form, like some of
the jokes, some of the bits like I might have
had in my act, you know, in twenty seventeen, in
twenty eighteen, but then they started to come together and
the idea to have it be the show about our
relationship that formed in I would say twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen,

(43:00):
so and then we filmed it in twenty late twenty
twenty four.

Speaker 1 (43:03):
So like a year ago.

Speaker 4 (43:04):
So it was at least like five years total, whereas
most of my other albums and specials were like could
be two years three I'd say two to three years
is like the standard. But because of the pandemic, I
didn't perform it a lot during that time, and in fact,
it was a really interesting process after starting to perform again,
like I had to relearn it, like I truly like
the day the first time I think I went to

(43:25):
like DC to the Arlington Cinema Draft House in like June.

Speaker 1 (43:30):
Of twenty twenty one, maybe.

Speaker 4 (43:32):
And I was like, I got I want to do
this show, but I had to like listen back to
like multiple recordings of it and like take notes and
be like, I know it starts like this, I know
it ends like this, and I know these pieces are
in the middle, but I didn't, you know, it was
so fluid because it wasn't in my muscle memory anymore
because it had been like a year year and a
half since I had even done it. But other than that,

(43:55):
I would say, you know, then I certainly from twenty
twenty one, like that was the show that I was
touring the most.

Speaker 1 (44:03):
Though then I also started working on like.

Speaker 4 (44:04):
The next show and the next show, so I wasn't
only doing that show like I know I did in
Edinburgh twenty twenty three, I did the show like twenty
five times in a row, and like that was the
most like densely packed you know, versions of like doing
that show over and over and then like every other month.

(44:25):
Like by that point, I was like, I kind of
know it. It's still like tweaks here and there. But
if I was going to perform at a club like
you know, five shows over the course of a weekend.

Speaker 1 (44:35):
I wouldn't just do the Renie Show all five times.

Speaker 4 (44:39):
I would maybe do it like, you know, the early
show each night, but not the late show, and I
would like work on newer things or the other hour
in the other show. But definitely, you know, I would
say every month if on average, I'm doing you know,
two club weekends a month, which is maybe what it is,
maybe it's more, maybe it's less. And if I'm doing

(45:00):
let's say an average of four or five shows, let's
say it's two a month, five shows each, so ten
shows a month. So from twenty twenty one to twenty
twenty four, let's say that's you know, and let's say
it's ten months a year, it's just one hundred shows
probably you know, hundreds of times.

Speaker 3 (45:17):
Wow, oh my god.

Speaker 2 (45:18):
And then that's not even counting just the spots that
you do where you just like are coming around the
city and like ten minutes here, hop on a train,
ten minutes here, like, so you were doing all this
stuff at the same time. That's that's an insane amount
of memory to have to hold all that stuff. And
I'm assuming since you filmed it last year, you've probably

(45:40):
been doing a bunch of new stuff since last year, too.

Speaker 4 (45:43):
Right, Yeah, since I don't think that I have performed
the Reny Show since we filmed it last year, like
a joke or too, Like there's a little overlap of
like some newer jokes that I have that where I
also mention her where I feel like literally one one

(46:03):
or two lines that maybe we'll make it into another
show or maybe we'll you know, shed at a certain point.
But yeah, I mean, right now, I have like another
show that I could record tomorrow, you know, in some form,
and then I have another one where all the pieces
are there, and if somebody who's like you have a month,
you know to get it into shape to record it,

(46:24):
you know, I could I could do that. Like one
is about my relationship with masculinity. One is about my
grandmother who died five years ago. And then I have
a new idea that I just sort of had in
the past few months for the next one, which I'm
really excited about, which is just sort of about rules
and like society's rules and our personal rules, and like
the neurotypical rules and like the guidelines for like different situations,

(46:46):
you know, socially or professionally or you know, romantically, And
so that's just like when I go on stage now,
like yeah, I mean if I'm doing sets around New
York City, like ten minutes here, fifteen minutes here, like
all usually be working on some newer things. Like I'll
usually have you know, a syllabus, you know, or like
a notebook full of like the new jokes, like just

(47:09):
set lists that I want to work on that you know.
Sometimes I'll forget one or two, but I'll be like,
oh man, I really want to work on these three things,
and then sort of riff and expand, and the question
of like how do you remember everything is one that
comes up a lot, and I always like to ask
people because I was talking to a fellow comedian the
other day who's been doing it maybe like close to
ten years, and she's like, I've never gone on stage

(47:32):
without like, you know, either having like my some jokes
written on my hand or written like you know, a
napkin under my you know, just sort of as a
security blanket.

Speaker 1 (47:42):
And that's a lot of people do that.

Speaker 4 (47:43):
Like I've seen Bill maher specials where like from the
back you can see his jokes are like taped to
the stage and like that's at.

Speaker 1 (47:50):
The level of your record.

Speaker 4 (47:52):
And some people, you know, film with a teleprompter, you know,
like that's not to say Like when I did my
Comedy Central half hour, they offered we could have the
jokes bullet points or word for word in the teleprompter.
I think I opted to have the bullet points just
in case, you know, like, oh what, here's what I
just did, Here's what comes next. But the way that
whenever somebody's like, how do you remember an hour's worth

(48:14):
of jokes? I always ask this, like do you have
any songs memorized? Like you could sing Happy Birthday, you
could sing the alphabet song, you could s you probably
have some favorites, you could sing the Beatles, you could
sing outcast whatever you got. You know, you could sing
like and how many how long is a song could
be like four minutes, five minutes. You probably know twelve songs,

(48:35):
and you could sing twelve songs back to back, and
then you have memorized an hour's worth of content.

Speaker 1 (48:42):
And this is even even more so.

Speaker 4 (48:44):
These are songs that I have myself written, and you know,
over the course of time, you know, put to put
to memory by the vertu by virtue of just.

Speaker 1 (48:55):
Doing it over and over again.

Speaker 2 (48:57):
Like, well, if you're if you're a stand up fan
or a movie fan, how many of us have a
whole stand up hour or movie we know heart?

Speaker 3 (49:05):
You know by heart?

Speaker 4 (49:06):
I don't.

Speaker 2 (49:09):
Yeah, I can walk on any scene of Half Baked
and from that point on, I can give you the
whole every line of the every of the movie.

Speaker 3 (49:16):
And I think it's uh.

Speaker 2 (49:18):
When I used to wrap it was a similar thing
of like, I've done this so much at this point,
like I would be we'd all be surprised if I
didn't know, like we like I'd be on stage like
how the fuck did that even happen?

Speaker 3 (49:32):
That's never happened before. So I definitely understand. It's just uh.

Speaker 2 (49:37):
I think for me, having seen your a person haven't
watched your specials, you have a vibe that feels so extemporaneous,
like it feels like you're you're going to malamitt it
and it's going so fast, and like no one can
memorize anything that goes as fast. It's like it's like
the remember micro machines, Remember that's commercials with that guy

(49:59):
he talked off fast and I was like he he
didn't memorize that script. He just talks like that, like
I expect you to go to his house and he's like,
you know what's going on with report car? You only
got a d you know, like I just expect everybody
in his house to talk like that, because how to
fuck can anyone perform like that? And I feel like
that's mike kaplan to me is uh, it's interesting. I mean,

(50:20):
obviously we've heard so many comedians explain their process, but
is it just feels like you're going, uh like the
Rapper Twister or whatever. I'm like, yeah, you can't have
the same process, but now it's got to be similar
or to the same, because you know, it is the art.

Speaker 4 (50:38):
Yeah, I would say, like I mean when when I'm
doing like live shows that aren't being recorded, where I'm
you know, riffing and experimenting and you know, finding new things,
like for the best kind of audience, where like I
might have a plan, I might have some beats I
want to hit or some topics I'm interested in early,
like some joke ideas that are being fleshed out, but

(50:59):
I make a lot of the discoveries on stage, and
so the kind of thing like when you look at
a you know, you listen to a full special or
a full album, like that's gone through the process of
what Rene calls the blooming phase, where you know, it's
just like creating and creating and creating, and then eventually
the pruning phase, were like, what is the actual final
shape that this is going to come into? Like this

(51:21):
one but not that one here over there, and when
you see me live, you know, in between when you
see me not recording, like there's the blooming aspect of it,
which might not have like you know, I might not
complete every parenthesis. Sometimes I listen back to a set
and I'm like, oh, I started that idea and then
I went over here, and then I got distracted by
something else, and then like I discovered it was really cool.

(51:43):
But every once in a while at the end of
a show, somebody's like, what about the thing, And I'm like, oh, yeah,
thank you.

Speaker 2 (51:50):
But it also is like the skill to be in
the moment too, Like that's part of what as an
audience brings you into it is knowing like this isn't
the exact same thing that that he's going to do
in tend like in another hour at another club, he
someone dropped the glass and that he worked that into
this and that that can't be a thing he had,

(52:11):
like he unless he knows that person or some weird
shit like that.

Speaker 1 (52:15):
And you know, art can be made, yeah, in any
direction like this.

Speaker 4 (52:19):
I don't know if you guys remember have you watched
much of Bo Burnham's Wow Man? So like early I
think maybe this is from What you Know, which is
one of my favorites, like one of his you know,
more recent but not most recent specials. That's just so
beautiful and there's like a part in it that he
did on Conan. I think it's from that where like

(52:40):
he knocks a bottle of water over seemingly accidentally, and
then a track starts playing where it says like he
he meant to knock the water over. Oh you know
it was like art is a lie.

Speaker 1 (52:54):
The thing.

Speaker 4 (52:55):
It's so interesting that, like comedy and perception of comedy,
stand up specifically has gone through so many iterations and
incarnations where like, you know, years ago, people would you know,
audience members would be like wow, like so how many
how often do you hear a child or somebody say
when I was a kid, I thought they were just
making it up somebody just goes on stage and just
starts talking about their life and it's like a curated,

(53:17):
honed plans like type set that they've planned over years
and years and now now people are on you know,
doing crowd work videos online literally almost always. I mean
there's definitely some people who have like you know, pat jokes,
like ready to go if like a relationship thing comes up.
But I think the most beautiful experiences that happen with

(53:40):
crowd work, which aren't all happening on social media, but
when crowd work is good, when improvisation is really like
to see Rory Scovell on stage improvising, like he can
imprise an hour of comedy. Yeah, and there can be
like so many it could all be wonderful, but there's
certainly beautiful moments that if you're watching it, you might
be like he had to have come up with that before,
Like the exact opposite of how people used to think

(54:02):
of it. They be like they're just coming up with it,
Like no, this this guy is just coming up with
it and that's his art, that's.

Speaker 2 (54:09):
His We just we just watched keV on stage and
Tony Baker. Yes, they do a show where the whole
thing is they send a question there out to the audience,
you answer it on your phone, and then they bring
you up with your answers and stories and like they're
riffing the whole time. Like you tell it's such a

(54:30):
high wire act because you know, when you add regular
people to any to any professional artistry, you know that
ship could could easily go off the rails. But I
mean they masterfully handled that for probably forty five minutes
of the hour there and change their on stage with
just other people, And there's something about that level of

(54:51):
talent to where you're like, oh man, you guys are
so good.

Speaker 3 (54:56):
You like you You're.

Speaker 2 (54:58):
You're like a magician who's letting and that's no, Like no,
I have to make it up, like like I don't
have a choice.

Speaker 3 (55:05):
This can't be. I could not have come up with
this before this person got here, right.

Speaker 4 (55:09):
Oh yeah, I love that. I think that's the thing
that is interesting about this which reminds me of a
thing I'm listening to this book, Like this is going
to be a long walk, but I'm listening to this
audio book by a woman named Tosha Silver called Change
Me Prayers, and it's she was talking about in the book.
It's like, you know, a sort of spiritual self help comedy,

(55:30):
a lot of things. And she's like, I was at
a concert in like a the third row and there's
a guy next to me and talking to him before
and he's she learned that he paid only like seventy
five dollars for tickets that should have cost eight hundred dollars,
and she's like, how'd you do that?

Speaker 1 (55:44):
He's like, I came to the show. What I always do.

Speaker 4 (55:47):
I come to concerts early, like right before they're about
to start. I asked at the ticket window do you
have any great seats? Just a single great seat for
under one hundred dollars, and like, if they're not going
to sell it, because the show's about to start, like
sometimes it works, and he's like the secret is I
don't I don't have any investment in it. If they don't,
then I just go have a good time by myself.

(56:07):
Either I have a good time at the show and
it's awesome the best seat, or it's like I saw
a share in the third row this way, or I'm
happy with myself if it doesn't work out. So the
lesson is like you can be in some situations like
that happy either way. And so I think with those
guys on stage, when you're dealing with the potential chaos

(56:28):
with the the the wild card of an audience member,
you don't know what they're gonna say. But here's here's
the spectrum. Either they get it and they're gonna give
you what you want. Like if you ask them a question,
they'll answer honestly. They're not gonna try to be funny.
They're not gonna make it about themselves. They're gonna just
give you something that you can build off of, that
you can bounce off of, that you can you know,

(56:49):
add to. Or on the other end of things, they
try to be funny or they or they try to
make things difficult, or they are too drunk or whatever
it might be. And that's something that you can react
to in a different way, like either way, like they
wherever it is along the spector if somebody gives you
a boring answer, huh, what a boring answer?

Speaker 1 (57:10):
Last other audience member up here?

Speaker 4 (57:12):
Like that's the thing about magicians is like you don't
know what the plan is for a magician, and like
production has a plan for if the person does anything,
like you know they look for people that are going
to be hopefully like easily hypnotizable if you're a hypnotist, yeah,
but if it goes the other way, then you're just like,
all right, thank you very much. And now like you
didn't know, like was it in their left pocket, was

(57:34):
it in the right pocket? Like was it even got
a card? Trick? They might be thinking on the fly,
they're like, oh, this person is going to enjoy this trick.
And just when you do comedy long enough, or any
art form or any performance long enough, especially if if
I'm improvisation, is magic. It's creating something from seeming nothing
like the show. Some friends of mine do a show

(57:56):
called Your Love Our Musical, and the way it works
they interview a couple who's in love. At the beginning
of the show, they get who volunteers from the audience strangers.

Speaker 1 (58:04):
A couple comes up and.

Speaker 4 (58:05):
They tell their love story for about fifteen minutes, and
then they they're like, you know, same kind of thing, interacting,
asking funny questions, making it fun but also getting the
true story. And then for the next forty five minutes
half hour to forty five minutes to an hour, they
improvise a musical with a live band like music that's
never been created before and wow rhyming lyrics that and

(58:28):
it ends with like you know, the love story that
we just heard with you know in like in typical
like Broadway fashion and it's like this amazing. I can
do like some I can improvise a song if you
I can improvise a song if you want me to.
That's not what I'm gonna do that with the instrumentation

(58:49):
in the background.

Speaker 1 (58:50):
And like, you know, but when you work together.

Speaker 4 (58:52):
As a band, as musicians, as partners, like as those
two were doing, like on stage like they are, you know,
you trust each other, you know how each other work,
and like you can especially when there's two of you.
If there's two of you, then you only need to
come up with something half the time. And that's that's
how they do that trick if there's two of them.

Speaker 2 (59:12):
Oh, Mike, what else do you do for like, like
I know you do stand up, I know you read?

Speaker 3 (59:19):
Like what else do you do? Do you see movies?

Speaker 5 (59:21):
Do you like relaxation?

Speaker 4 (59:22):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (59:23):
Like do you ever turn your brain off? You go
to sport and events? Like what else do you do
you cluk?

Speaker 4 (59:28):
Yeah? Great question, I hear. I love when I get
the do you ever turn your brain off?

Speaker 1 (59:36):
Question?

Speaker 4 (59:37):
Because I almost invariably get that question, Like when I'm
on like a fun podcast like Wow Zip Zap zop,
We're zinging and zooming all around, does it ever stop?
I'm like, yeah, when I'm not on a podcast that
slows down a little bit, like all the time. But
you know, I would say most nights when I'm not performing,
like I don't have it.

Speaker 1 (59:56):
After this is the last thing I have scheduled for today.

Speaker 4 (59:59):
After this, like, Rene had some potential plans to go
meet some friends she knows from the sign language community.
She is a has been learning ASL for the past
year and and.

Speaker 1 (01:00:09):
She's you know it too.

Speaker 4 (01:00:11):
She is teaching like she has been taking classes on
a weekly basis since last September with like a brick
here and there. But and she goes to like i'd
say often multiple events a week while we're in town,
and so like is like fluent there deaf people have
said to her, have asked her if she is deaf,
because she is like it is a she has a
natural kinesthetic intelligence. And it was like she's like thinks

(01:00:34):
that she has previously she'd be like kind of I
don't even think in words like so that this is
actually a more natural kind of language, a more natural
communication style for her, like related to the body and
movement and dance and you know, and sort of visual
spatial storytelling and so that which is not necessarily my

(01:00:54):
initial you know, way to interact with the world and create,
like I have a physical body also. But you know,
if you ask me, Mike, are you a physical comedian?
I would say, am I made of matter? Energy?

Speaker 2 (01:01:05):
Like?

Speaker 4 (01:01:05):
I mean, am I Jim carry? No?

Speaker 1 (01:01:07):
Am I made of matter energy?

Speaker 4 (01:01:09):
No?

Speaker 1 (01:01:09):
I'm different, I'm ethereal, I'm not.

Speaker 3 (01:01:10):
Does physics Does physics affect my body?

Speaker 6 (01:01:13):
Yes?

Speaker 5 (01:01:14):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:01:15):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (01:01:15):
Do I gravitate towards you know, larger masses than myself? Sure,
if I have to. But the point is, yeah, I
think Renie might need to rest more than go out.
So if she stays in, we are going to will
watch a movie, will watch a show like we just
started watching Pluribys and it's incredible.

Speaker 1 (01:01:34):
I assume you're watching Dilligan.

Speaker 2 (01:01:36):
I mean, I'm going to be watching this so on
Apple TV, I've messed with Vince Gilligan Or did you
watch Frankistan?

Speaker 1 (01:01:44):
Not yet?

Speaker 4 (01:01:44):
No?

Speaker 3 (01:01:44):
Okay, all right, I love Frankistan.

Speaker 1 (01:01:47):
Yeah, I think she so Frankenstein.

Speaker 4 (01:01:49):
Reenie in twenty eighteen embarked upon a mission to read
all of the great works of literature, as you know,
you look at a top hundred literature of all time,
like starting with Moby Dick and a karnaa any Karnina.
That's a different one that that's so don't come out tomorrow.
But yeah, the classes quote unquote, she loves Frankenstein and

(01:02:12):
she thinks it's like beautiful and meaningful. And I'm also
planning to read it before we.

Speaker 3 (01:02:19):
Watchatch the movie.

Speaker 1 (01:02:21):
It's not necessarily you know an exactly.

Speaker 4 (01:02:23):
Well.

Speaker 3 (01:02:23):
I think it's interesting because.

Speaker 2 (01:02:27):
When I watched it, you know, when they got done
at the end, it's like written for a screen by
Gilmo d'a toro, And I was like, man, I never
thought about this, but like using the story we already
know is like such the cool shortcut, cause.

Speaker 3 (01:02:41):
Like it's like stuff you can leave. I was like, guys,
it's Frankenstein. You didn't come in here. You didn't know nothing,
Like you knew some of this shitt like we can
skip past.

Speaker 2 (01:02:51):
Yeah, he's just a little he's made of part like listen,
not we don't even get.

Speaker 3 (01:02:54):
Into the science and ship.

Speaker 1 (01:02:56):
We can leave one of the parts out.

Speaker 4 (01:02:58):
And the part that we can leave out is that
he's made a Yeah, no, we got a piece all together,
all the parts. But I mean my understanding is that,
you know, as a child, we just think of Frankenstein.
You know, before you know anything about Frankston, you're like, oh,
big green monster obviously, right.

Speaker 2 (01:03:12):
The fact that he's not the fact that he's not Frankenstein,
like the doctor Frankenstein, and he's Frankenstein's quote unquote monster.
And then it becomes like a treatise on like what
is a monster? Who's the real monster? You know, all
the cliche tropes, But tropes are good because they work,
Like that's why, that's why.

Speaker 1 (01:03:31):
We like Trump Monster.

Speaker 4 (01:03:33):
Yeah, the real monster is people who correct you as
to which one the real monster is. Yeah, look, Frankenstein,
the monster is actually the child in a way oftein,
the doctor whose last name is Frankenstein. So they probably
have the same last name. Oh please, doctor Frankenstein. That's
my father's monster.

Speaker 2 (01:03:49):
Anyway, he's a Frankenstein of our time too, because like
he's sexy Frankenstein. Okay, this guy's Yeah, he's like six
foot seven of of nothing but calm, gutters and and
uh and just you know, just just muscles and stuff.
And the only thing is he looks a little too good,

(01:04:11):
so that when like the one woman has compassion and
stars kind of like being nice to him, You're like,
she just want to fuck Frankenstan you know what I mean,
Like like I feel like, yeah, Emo took it a
little Yeah, he took it a little too far with
how handsome the Frankenstein was because I'm like, I actually
don't think this woman is being that compassionate. I just

(01:04:33):
think this man is very attractive as opposed to you know,
the one with the fish that where she fucked the fish.

Speaker 3 (01:04:41):
That one.

Speaker 2 (01:04:41):
I was like, that lady is special. She's different. She's
got empathy galore, because nobody looks at the fish man
is like I gotta get up in them gills, you know.

Speaker 4 (01:04:51):
Oh yeah, this this woman is like I just want
to frank around and find out.

Speaker 3 (01:04:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:04:57):
But yeah, so we will.

Speaker 4 (01:04:59):
We have some shows that we we are watching, Like
we watched The Studio together.

Speaker 3 (01:05:04):
Which I love the Studio.

Speaker 1 (01:05:07):
Yeah, so at night that is our our general you know,
stream something practice.

Speaker 2 (01:05:13):
Do you go to Do you go to theaters? Do
you go out to movie theaters? Are you mostly at stream?

Speaker 3 (01:05:18):
A couple?

Speaker 4 (01:05:19):
Most mostly at home. I will say before the pandemic,
I did have like a movie pass and or like
an AMC like and so there was a time when
I think, I like, for me to be healthy, it's
better for me to not have one of those memberships
because I get too obsessive. I'm like, look, I'm paying
for it, so I in order to get the most

(01:05:41):
out of it, the most movie for my dollar, I'm
like just packing my week with movies, and I'm like,
I got to live my life and do other things.

Speaker 2 (01:05:48):
That is the toughest part I'm part is one of
these movie clubs, the fan I think it's Fandango, But
Fandango's like the perfect kind of movie club because like
you pay ten dollars, but then they give you a
ten dollars like credit towards a movie every month. So
it's not like they're telling you like you need to
see all the movies.

Speaker 3 (01:06:07):
They're like, see a movie.

Speaker 2 (01:06:09):
You see a movie in thirty days. Yeah, broke even
it's worth everything's cool. Movies cost too much anyway, And
I'm like cool. So, like there's months in the year
where to me, the movies aren't hidden, they're they're not
leave the house hitting, No, they're.

Speaker 3 (01:06:24):
Like I wait to streaming.

Speaker 2 (01:06:25):
Yeah, like you get the October everything's scary or whatever.
You're like, I'm I'm okay with scary. But then like
there's a couple of times a year where you know,
there's like three or four movies in the summer I
want to see in a month or whatever, like and
that's but I never feel the pressure, like the movie
pass pressure was real because I was It's.

Speaker 3 (01:06:42):
Like a constant equation in my head of like.

Speaker 2 (01:06:44):
Must see enough movies to make movie pass, regret decision
to give me a card.

Speaker 4 (01:06:53):
And so when the pandemic struck, obviously watched everything online
and then the first movie we went back out to
and saw in a theater was everything everywhere all at once.
I was like, that was a great movie theater movie.
And then since then I've probably maybe gotten up close
to double digits, but heart like truly in the past

(01:07:13):
four years, have definitely not seen probably more than a
dozen movies in theaters, and most of them have been
because I've been a guest on a podcast that's going
to discuss Black Panther two, or the movie that I
just saw about a con man that was a real story,
The Mastermind I just saw and that was enjoyable. Or

(01:07:35):
I saw one of the latest Fast and Furious because
I went on this my friends have a movie podcast,
and I'm like, I love the Fast I love the
Fast and Furious movies. They know what they are and
I love what.

Speaker 2 (01:07:47):
I gotta say that damnly Fast and Furious is the
best because it went from like unintentionally terrible to actually
like at some point really like this is just a
good movie. Like I left, I remember leaving like Fast
five that had the rock in or whatever.

Speaker 3 (01:08:04):
I was like, no, I I just straight up and
enjoyed it that one. But there's not a there's not
a joke here.

Speaker 4 (01:08:11):
That's the one that brought me back. I watched the
first one and I was like, I get it. Yeah,
then I don't think I watched two through four. Yeah,
And then I saw the preview for Fast five, which
is the one where they there's a heist and they're
driving with a literal the whole vault that.

Speaker 1 (01:08:26):
Saying yes.

Speaker 3 (01:08:28):
Yes.

Speaker 4 (01:08:29):
I was like the best trailer ever.

Speaker 3 (01:08:32):
I said, these motherfuckers right here.

Speaker 5 (01:08:34):
They know that I can't.

Speaker 2 (01:08:35):
They know they're making a movie that And I'm into
that absolutely.

Speaker 4 (01:08:40):
Jason Statham makes incredible movies The Crack, the Transport, Like, yeah,
they know what they're doing.

Speaker 2 (01:08:46):
Jason Statham at this point, Uh, I feel like his
scripts are just like not written. I think they come
up with the title and the title has a slight
hook to it, yes, And because the last one I
watched was a Workingman and all that was, but but
everything everything before The working Man was was like insert
job title here.

Speaker 3 (01:09:06):
It's like, oh, he's a bee ki yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:09:09):
Uh, And so I was like working Man felts like
the title I tell you the movie was when I
can't remember the title, Like you're like, what's that?

Speaker 3 (01:09:17):
Jason state the movie saw old he was he was
like he had a job. I don't remember.

Speaker 1 (01:09:23):
I don't remember that one where.

Speaker 5 (01:09:25):
He's like the working Man, he's working, you know what
I'm talking about.

Speaker 2 (01:09:28):
Like they barely had anything in The working Man that
was that like normally, like with The bee Keeper, there's
like twenty seven B related things. Yes, Like it's like
to the point where you'll like it's almost a comedy
because You're just like, why would he need to say
it's time to make the honey when he's gonna kill
twelve people. That's not that's not a thing that people
that killed twelve people say normally it's not.

Speaker 3 (01:09:50):
But when a working man, it's like they were so lazy.

Speaker 2 (01:09:53):
I was like, I don't know, he torches the guy,
but he's holding a hammer.

Speaker 3 (01:09:57):
Yeah, he's almer.

Speaker 1 (01:09:58):
That's what working guys, working man holds. God, name it something.

Speaker 4 (01:10:01):
You know what. That's a really great observation that so
many of his movies are just like one one word.

Speaker 3 (01:10:09):
The transporter. That's Mike.

Speaker 1 (01:10:11):
What does he do?

Speaker 3 (01:10:12):
He transports things?

Speaker 2 (01:10:14):
Okay, and in between transportation, does he murder thirty people?

Speaker 3 (01:10:17):
Yes, that's the hook of the movie.

Speaker 4 (01:10:19):
I mean, if they're getting in the way of him
doing his transportation, if they just got out of the way,
then he would just be an uber driver. But yes,
he would be.

Speaker 1 (01:10:27):
To answer, that's the next one.

Speaker 2 (01:10:29):
His agent, His agent is just his agent is just
sending him a list of job titles.

Speaker 3 (01:10:36):
They're not even that. He's just like, what do you
want to do next?

Speaker 6 (01:10:40):
Man?

Speaker 5 (01:10:40):
We got we got a ride share?

Speaker 4 (01:10:43):
Uh?

Speaker 3 (01:10:43):
You know what that's about. I don't need explain it.

Speaker 2 (01:10:46):
We have Grocery, the Grocery Bagger. I'm I'm, I'm really,
I'm into this one. I'm not gonna tell you what
to do, though.

Speaker 4 (01:10:52):
Mayson Statham in Task Rabbit one Tortoise doesn't have what
he's in for.

Speaker 5 (01:11:02):
The Uber Drava.

Speaker 6 (01:11:04):
I was thinking about the Uber Drava be like the
most deadliest food run ever.

Speaker 2 (01:11:08):
You know the other the other great thing about the
other great thing about Jason state the movies. At this point,
he's just playing Jason Stathum, so all the movies have
just stopped trying to explain his accent because the movie
is mostly happen in America, and it's like, I'm Mike Jones,
the detective for the Seattle Police Department.

Speaker 3 (01:11:28):
It's like, why do you have a British accent?

Speaker 5 (01:11:31):
With that accent?

Speaker 2 (01:11:32):
No one, I'm Jason Statham, and I promise that won't
come up right.

Speaker 5 (01:11:36):
No one cares.

Speaker 4 (01:11:37):
That's so funny, Jason Stathum Indoor Dasher, I do want
to answer your question, like we're having a lot of
fun here, which is the purpose of this podcast, but
I also like completing circuits and closing parentheses.

Speaker 3 (01:11:51):
Okay, there he is.

Speaker 1 (01:11:52):
What else I do?

Speaker 4 (01:11:54):
Yes, So let's say on a day like right now,
right now, I do podcasts professionally on podcasts, like helping
to promote the special.

Speaker 1 (01:12:02):
That's what I've been doing for like the past month.

Speaker 4 (01:12:04):
Went to La did eleven days there, eleven shows, eleven podcasts,
and a bunch of like hanging out with friends. But
on a day, let's say I have a week at home,
I'm not traveling to do I'll do shows at night.
But let's say I wake up, you know, with just
natural hopefully with no alarm. I'll read something peaceful while drinking,

(01:12:26):
you know, a leader of water to get started.

Speaker 1 (01:12:28):
I'll meditate.

Speaker 4 (01:12:30):
I'll do some writing, like stream of Consciences, not for
a purpose, just maybe gratitude journaling, keeping a journal of
like what went on yesterday. And then you know, other
than like going into my email, like you know, I
message friends. I talk on the phone with my mom
and Zach Sherwin who you know, most days, and then
some days I have other like every Wednesday, I sort

(01:12:50):
of have a steady call with my friend Gus who
sometimes we study Buddhism together. Sometimes we just catch up
while we're walking. But I I read. I'm really into
advice columns. I'm into uh, I'm into comic books. I'll
go the library is a half hour walk from my home,
so I'll often.

Speaker 3 (01:13:10):
What comic books you read?

Speaker 1 (01:13:12):
Oh, I read tons lately.

Speaker 4 (01:13:15):
I'm really into uh, Like I go by authors usually now,
Like Tom King is.

Speaker 3 (01:13:20):
Really yeah, he did that Batman run a couple of
years ago.

Speaker 4 (01:13:23):
It was his Batman rung is beautiful and so Batman.

Speaker 2 (01:13:27):
A Catwoman as like a relationship and that's like, oh man,
well they won't they they won't, but they will try,
but they there's.

Speaker 4 (01:13:36):
Like a version of it where you know you see
future them as well, and some of the stories that
he's telling, and like, I love I love Jason Aaron,
who is doing Oh, I'm reading the reading the Absolute
DC comics right now.

Speaker 2 (01:13:47):
I just started Absolute Batman like two days ago because
everyone kept telling me about it, and at first the
art was turning me off because I was like, when
the fucking Hall of Fame calls and they look back
on the Absolute Error, They're gonna really question the steroids
because oh my god, I read it, but I look
like some of these characters are definitely on pds. But

(01:14:09):
I guess we're all just gonna pretend this is Mark
McGuire Sammy Sosa and act like this is real.

Speaker 3 (01:14:15):
But okay, I'm in and I'm reading it now.

Speaker 4 (01:14:18):
Oh yes, Like I mean there's it's obviously like if
some Batman is like they try to make it realistic. Yeah,
but this this is fast and furious. Oh yeah. Literally
one I think one episode ends. One issue ends with like, okay,
so he just rode a motorcycle out a building or
off a cliff a thousand feet up, And the next

(01:14:39):
issue they're like, eh, he figured it out.

Speaker 2 (01:14:41):
Yeah that like they they introduced Alfred in the first
like like they introduced the story through Alfred who's returning
to town and he's some type of like almost like
a mercenary or something.

Speaker 3 (01:14:52):
But like Alfred like gets t from a store. Like
it really does feel like fast and furious wrotter. Like
I'm not joking.

Speaker 2 (01:14:58):
Like he gets to te he's like the only thing
I love about this town is the tea. And then
like someone steals his bike or some shit and he's.

Speaker 3 (01:15:06):
Like, I fucking hate this city. And I was like,
what is.

Speaker 4 (01:15:10):
This h Starring Jason Statham as.

Speaker 3 (01:15:13):
Al Oh my god, yes, that would the badly would
be called the Butler. Yes, I c w, I'm here foolid.

Speaker 4 (01:15:26):
So that one, the Batman one is the one that
I read third, because I was even more interested in
Jason Aarron's absolute Superman is really awesome, like basically, you know,
for those that don't know this, it's like a new dimension,
a new universe, like where you've started the stories over
in one of them, like not to reveal too much,
but Batman both his parents don't die and he's not rich,

(01:15:48):
and then okay, what else happens? And then Superman he
doesn't come to Earth as a baby, he comes as
a teenager, and then different things happen. Wonder Woman instead
of being raised wonder Woman might be my favorite of him.
I love the Superman, I love the wonder Woman. I
really like the Batman. But the wonder Woman one, instead
of being raised on an island with all the other Amazons,
she's raised only by Circe in the underworld, in like

(01:16:09):
the realm, in the Hellish realm, and so she becomes
a very like she still has her heart, her spirit,
she's still a hero, but she's like tougher and different,
and there's one. I'll tell you one really funny moment
in it. I think it's just beautiful art and incredible writing.
She's talking to Steve Trevor, you know, the guy who
in the original story is like, you know, her love
interest and he washes up on the shores of the

(01:16:30):
Amazon Island. And in this one when he meets her,
like they're like looking eye to eye and he says, Wow,
you're tall, and she's like, I'm the same height as you.
And he's like, oh, yes, but where I come from,
in my world, I'm very tall, and women where I'm
from are not as tall. There's like no women who

(01:16:52):
are as tall as I am, as tall as you are.
And then she says something like is that important, And
he's like.

Speaker 1 (01:16:59):
I guess it's not, Like.

Speaker 4 (01:17:03):
Well, tell me more about the place that you come from.
But things that are important beautiful like treat It's like
a meditation on like don't comment on people's bodies.

Speaker 1 (01:17:14):
That's not important.

Speaker 4 (01:17:15):
Like what is more meaningful, Like let's let's you know,
get that evil thing back.

Speaker 3 (01:17:20):
Where have you ever read I've been reading this graphic novel.

Speaker 2 (01:17:24):
Uh it's called Beneath the Trees where Nobody sees have
you ever heard of that? Oh, it's like it's like
Berenstein Bears meets Dexter.

Speaker 3 (01:17:33):
It's like about a serial killer bear. Yes, yeah, it's so.

Speaker 5 (01:17:37):
It was so good.

Speaker 2 (01:17:39):
It was I was I really didn't think i'd be
into it, and I didn't know where the book was going.

Speaker 3 (01:17:44):
And it's it's graphic, but it's also adorable.

Speaker 2 (01:17:48):
And he just started he just started book two, which
I've been reading in each as each commic.

Speaker 1 (01:17:54):
Know that that's so cool?

Speaker 4 (01:17:56):
Uh, so you know what it's doing. Like I forget
if we've ever talked about this, but there's a guy
named Peter McGraw who is a social scientist who wrote
a book called The Humor Code where he was aiming
to sort of analyze like what makes like laughter, what
makes something funny?

Speaker 5 (01:18:14):
You know?

Speaker 4 (01:18:14):
And his theory is benign violation, like which means which
goes back evolutionarily to like let's say you're a cave
person and the.

Speaker 1 (01:18:24):
Bushes rustle near you.

Speaker 4 (01:18:25):
You get scared that you're going to be attacked by
a saber tooth tiger. So it's like, oh, no, a violation.
But then your friend jumps out of the bushes and
you're like Oh, thank goodness, and you laugh because you're
relieved and you're not going to die because it's not
a violation, it's benign. And so like in comedy, take
like Sarah Silverman her original like when she was more

(01:18:45):
of like a satirist, and like you could look at
her stuff written down and you're like, if a person
really believed this, they would be racist. They would be
you know, this would be a bad way to this.

Speaker 1 (01:18:56):
This is a bad look.

Speaker 4 (01:18:57):
But when you know that she is doing it, you know,
from a good hearted place to lampoon racism, for example,
You're like you can at least be like, I understand
that this is a different thing. It's not the violation
that it appears to be. It's intended to be benign.
And so I feel like that's what's going on in
that graphic novel. Also, like if it was if it

(01:19:18):
was like photo realistic, like human, yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:19:20):
It wouldn't work. If you like bisected a fucking person.
I'm like, this guy is a sick person. This is
a sick guy, and.

Speaker 2 (01:19:28):
Like it's crazy because like his picture, the author's picture
is on the back of the book and he's just
like smiling or whatever. But since I've read the book
now and I look at his picture. I'm like, this
dude might be a serial killer. They should check him,
check his back. This book too good, Like he got
a serial killer. Look, but only if you read the book.
If you just seen a picture that dude before reading

(01:19:50):
the book, it's like, oh, you just seemed like an
author of some type. But yeah, he's a real sick fuck.
Another thing, I was thinking about a specific and I,
you know, I don't do stand up, so I don't
know how to necessarily make this funny. And I don't
even know if it would be funny. But you know
the term lib tard.

Speaker 1 (01:20:09):
I do know that.

Speaker 3 (01:20:10):
Okay, you know that, you know what is it?

Speaker 4 (01:20:12):
No go on? So I made it to twenty twenty
five and I'm like, what, Yeah, I know about libs
and I know about nevermind, Yeah, please continue?

Speaker 5 (01:20:20):
So liberal?

Speaker 2 (01:20:21):
And then the R word is I assume that entomology
of it. I'm not intimate with entomology, but that's why
doesn't seem very complicated.

Speaker 3 (01:20:31):
And I was like, man, they really like saying that
about people.

Speaker 2 (01:20:35):
I think it's their way of saying the R word
without saying our word, which says something about them because
they're they're kind of saying, like another R word is wrong.
But if I put lib in front of it, and.

Speaker 3 (01:20:46):
I was like, why do they like that so much?
Why do they keep saying it?

Speaker 2 (01:20:49):
And I was like, what if they're saying it because
when people were saying the R word, they thought the
R was for Republican, and so now they're getting some
it back as opposed to them going now it's a
vengeance to call us lib tards, like they're like, you've
been wronging us since inception time, you started this whole thing,

(01:21:13):
and we just need to explain to on that that
that's never was the purpose of that word. You guys,
if we weren't talking about Republicans, We're just that was
not how that happened.

Speaker 4 (01:21:21):
That was a literal turn repub tards.

Speaker 2 (01:21:25):
Yes, that's that's not what it was. We would have
said pub, we would have added it to there. And
now it's a big misunderstanding. So we can all drop it,
we can all stop saying it in all the forums
now that it's all we understood.

Speaker 1 (01:21:38):
I love it.

Speaker 4 (01:21:40):
Let me just say that makes me think also, like
I think that's I think that could be a great
I mean that's funny. It's great.

Speaker 1 (01:21:45):
You could be become a stand up teller.

Speaker 2 (01:21:47):
And I just it just feels like the kind of
thing where a stand up person would have to figure
out where the landmine in that joke is because I
can feel there's a you could lose a room easily.

Speaker 4 (01:22:00):
Yeah, did you guys watch Mark Marin's newest special?

Speaker 5 (01:22:03):
Yes?

Speaker 4 (01:22:04):
Like I think he does a great piece on group
of people who like saying that word, and you know,
does does a good job of you knows, as some
might say, walking the line and like, you know, meeting them,
like I think where they need to be met and
not going hopefully you know, farther than you know, you
can't please all the people. But I think something that

(01:22:27):
you included and what you said like speaks to something larger,
which is the you started it of it all. I
think that so there's so much you started it, he
started it, They started it that people use to justify,
you know, preemptively attacking or like you were gonna start
it or that, and that's why and somebody needs to

(01:22:50):
you know, like I think Maya Angelou has said, like forgive,
forgive everyone. Forgiveness is like the best gift that you
can give to yourself because if you keep perpetuating it,
Like sure, it might feel good in the moment to
like get someone, but they say, you know, if you're
if you turn the tables on someone, you're still at
the table. But like in a Buddhist paradigm, we this

(01:23:11):
world like what's happening now is happening because of what
happened before, causes and conditions. What happened before is because
of what happened that we are the result of what
our parents generation did, and theirs and theirs and theirs
and so far back to what they call beginning less time.
So at a certain point you can't be like who
started it. It's like, well, let's it's also that it's

(01:23:32):
not great, let's finish it.

Speaker 2 (01:23:33):
It's also the mirror in the world, right, it's the
it's the whole, Like at least I'm coming to understanding
if there's certain things, if you squash it within yourself
or you accept it within yourself, it's probably a better
term than squash it. But if you like say no,
this is a thing in my control and this is
my view of it, you in some ways you kind

(01:23:55):
of entered the matrix, you know, like, uh, I know.
For me, a bit thing we talked about social media
a lot here, and a big thing for me was
learning how much of my perceptions of social media were
leading there were like a self fulfilling prophecy. Right, So

(01:24:16):
like if I say something and one hundred people understand it.
A perfect example today, I said I made a joke.

Speaker 3 (01:24:25):
Steven A. Smith is this commentator is very annoying.

Speaker 2 (01:24:28):
To most people, and he for years and there's a
lot of black people that don't like him because he's
like repulsed. He's like conservative, he's like a weirdo, but
he almost exclusively targets other black people whenever he's doing
one of these like furious takedowns he does on this
podcast and stuff.

Speaker 3 (01:24:46):
And so someone last week Carry Champion.

Speaker 2 (01:24:50):
Was like, Hey, you're always talking like this to all
these other black people. There's this white lady, Michelle Beatles.
She doesn't like you. She's been very loud about it
for years. You never say anything to her, What the
fuck is up with that? And of course he goes
at Carry Champion first because you know, she's still a
black lady saying something. And then he goes after this
white lady for the first time, and everybody was like, oh,

(01:25:11):
he finally said something back, and then this news dropped
today that he's no longer going to be on the NBA.

Speaker 3 (01:25:17):
Monday Night show or whatever.

Speaker 2 (01:25:19):
Now, this is not a punishment, this was planned in
this contract. Nothing bad is really happening to him. But
I made the joke from the screenshot of like the
news and was like, he finally says something to a
white lady, and now look what happened, and all right,
it's just a joke, Like I don't mean it. Yeah,
most people respond it ha ha, whatever, right Cole. People

(01:25:41):
were like, well, this was always planned in his contract
that he would step down from this eventually, and I
was like, this joke was always planning. When I found
out in this contract was he was stepped down eventually.
But there was a time where I really would have
let a couple people not getting a joke.

Speaker 3 (01:25:59):
Bothered me more bother me. More than one hundred people
that had fun gave me joy.

Speaker 2 (01:26:05):
And that is a complete mind frame, like that's not them,
that's me, Like I control if I get upset because
these two guys don't get it, I'm gonna explain it
to them that they should get the joke and then
it is funny. And it doesn't mean I do know
that what happened with Tea right, But a lot of
that was within my control. So like I do think

(01:26:27):
a lot of that is that mirror, right, because what
I go back to is the times when I felt
that way, like I'm gonna correct them and they're gonna
see that I'm right, and I'm gonna show them. I
don't care if it takes thirty minutes. That was my turmoil.
That wasn't theirs. Like their turmoil might be what made
them be like I'm deciding to not be funny to
this funny guy. But that's only something they can deal with,

(01:26:50):
they can fix, and it's and like, I really do
feel like my life changed when I started thinking like that,
probably like four or five years ago.

Speaker 3 (01:26:58):
It's just like, Okay, yeah, you get it. That's a
thing you get to have. I don't. That has nothing
to do with me.

Speaker 1 (01:27:03):
You've always right around and I came back on.

Speaker 4 (01:27:07):
It's almost as if the Epiphany talk to a white
person and all of a sudden, that's.

Speaker 2 (01:27:14):
What I'll say changes. That's what happened to Stephen A.

Speaker 5 (01:27:17):
Smith changed.

Speaker 1 (01:27:20):
I've been on threads.

Speaker 4 (01:27:22):
You know, I'll put jokes and sometimes people will like,
you know, I consider myself a recovering argument to holic.
And I used to go back and forth with people
indefinitely and it was not healthy. And now like, I'll
give you. I'll give you one, and if you're not
coming at me with you know, respect or good faith
or kindness, then I'll stop.

Speaker 2 (01:27:44):
Uh.

Speaker 4 (01:27:44):
But I do understand like wanting someone to some of
the people just don't get the joke, you know, sometimes
people are I had one the other day. I was like,
I put a thing about placebos, and my I was like,
because here's the truth is. And before I get to
what I wrote, the truth is that I've learn that
the placebo effect is real, like and even if you

(01:28:05):
know that it's a placebo, that makes you feel better
than not taking anything. And so I just posted something like, hey,
I've heard that they say that placebos actually do help
you feel better, So why aren't we all taking massive
amounts of placebos all of the time? And like, I
know why that's not a real thing that would work,

(01:28:29):
Like it's a joke.

Speaker 1 (01:28:30):
I'm a comedian. Most people took it that way.

Speaker 4 (01:28:33):
Some people wrote back and They're like, that's not how
placebos work, in which case, I like found some links
and I'm like, actually, it kind of does work that
way a little. And they want to do more research
to determine can we utilize the power that is under
you know that's going on here, like and so. But
one person wrote back to me and said something like

(01:28:55):
a little scientific literacy would would have prevented you from
posting this, And I wrote back, why would I, a
comedian want to prevent myself from posting this a joke?

Speaker 1 (01:29:09):
And they wrote back, well, I don't know that you're
a comedian.

Speaker 4 (01:29:11):
I get a lot of medical things in my feed
and I looked at your profile and doesn't even say
anything about that you're a comedian. And I'm like, is
that true? And I look and it says I have
a new special coming out. It doesn't say comedy special.
I'm like, thank you for the note. I'm gonna say
it's a comedy special. And then I have a newsletter
and it does say comedy is one.

Speaker 1 (01:29:27):
Of my interests. It was there.

Speaker 4 (01:29:28):
They didn't see it. It was at the bottom. But I
was like that that's a reasonable point too, to know that,
you know, especially at a comedy show, I expect people
to know that I'm a comedian, but online truly, like
some people are comedians, some people are not comedians, some
people are you know.

Speaker 2 (01:29:45):
Also, the way that online is set up, the way
the dopamine works, it's more like the absolute value of
things as opposed to the positive or negati.

Speaker 6 (01:30:02):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:30:02):
So like sometimes.

Speaker 2 (01:30:04):
People it's more valuable for them to misunderstand or to
assume bad faith on your part without you really interjecting.
Like this guy's anti science. It's like, I don't know
why you need that boogeyman, but today your monster mic
until proven otherwise you're It's like here he got hating

(01:30:29):
people that he wants people that get cancer to take
placebos and die, like they.

Speaker 3 (01:30:33):
Go to a place shouldn't have to be.

Speaker 2 (01:30:36):
Yeah, and I think part of that is because the
ecosystem has elevated that type of stuff, right, Like, like
for every this is one of the hardest things about
being funny. Now, for everything that I find humorous, there's
a real person who's like, yeah, like if I go, hey,
if you get cancer, just drink water and take a walk,
ha ha, cause I think that's ridiculous.

Speaker 3 (01:30:59):
There's a guy RK Jr.

Speaker 2 (01:31:01):
Who's running health care for Americas, Like, if you get cancer,
drink some water, take a walk. What the fuck, I'm
in charge and I'm making the rules. So now my
comedic thing is no longer comedic or or like you
would have to know me or have my saying principles
to know a ride's completely joking and hah. But it's

(01:31:22):
not as funny in a world that that's a real thing. Now,
So I think about that too, because that placebo thing
should in a world where there's everyone's on the same page,
you know, where we all believe in science, we're like, oh,
it's funny because because it's the word play and the
idea of the concept and all this stuff. But in

(01:31:43):
a world where somebody's like actually guns talnand all causes autism,
it's like, this motherfucker right here, better be a comedian.

Speaker 5 (01:31:49):
Right, Like, what's really happening to going on here?

Speaker 4 (01:31:52):
Yeah, that's a great point. I mean, I truly, Oh,
I mean, and there is no absolute objective truth. Like
here's a thing my Buddhist friend Gus shared with me, like,
is it true that the sun rises in the east?

Speaker 1 (01:32:06):
Yes?

Speaker 4 (01:32:07):
But wait, is it actually true? That the Sun doesn't
move at all, and so it doesn't rise. It's actually
the Earth that's going around it. That's what's true. Wait,
but is it true that the Sun doesn't move at all? No,
it's actually hurtling through the cosmos like our solar system,
our galaxy is not still with respect to all of
the other solar systems and galaxies. So it's not true.

(01:32:28):
Is it true that the Sun isn't moving. But all
of those things depending on the context. The sun rises
in the east, or the Earth revelves around the Sun,
or the Sun is hurtling through space, those are all
true in different frameworks. You know what's false. The sun
rises in the west. There are some things that nothing
is objectively true. Here's the fun thing. At the end

(01:32:50):
of the day, the sun rises in the east. No,
at the end of the day, the sunsets in the west.
The point is nothing on the more or true? He says,
nothing is more true then the sun rises in the east. Like,
there's things that are equally true depending on your framework.
And so when I do comedy, like I always want

(01:33:10):
people to know what is true. Like there's some really
beautiful comedy art, like what Nathan Fielder is doing like
with the rehearsal, I don't know what he believes.

Speaker 1 (01:33:20):
Is true, and that's fine. I don't need to know.

Speaker 4 (01:33:23):
He's a magician, magician, I don't know everything that's going
on with a magician internally, But for everyone else, like,
if you're a truth teller, I want to know what's
the true if you're if you're I want to know
if you're Sarah Silverman, or if you're RFK Junior when
you're saying something that like, am I to laugh at this?

Speaker 1 (01:33:39):
Or is this?

Speaker 4 (01:33:39):
Like if Trump were an entertainer, it would be absolutely fine.

Speaker 2 (01:33:43):
There's people who do impressions of Trump and they're hilarious.

Speaker 3 (01:33:47):
JL Covid does an impression of Trump. Yeah, and it's
so hilarious.

Speaker 2 (01:33:51):
But part of what's hilarious is that it's so accurate,
Like he's done, He's picked up his phone and done
an impression of Trump after hearing just like a story
and we don't even know Trump's responds yet, and then
Trump will respond exactly as j L did. And in
the one hand, it makes what Jail did so funny
and uncanny, but then in real life, it makes what

(01:34:12):
Trump did so scary.

Speaker 3 (01:34:13):
Because you're like, oh, you're in charge of things.

Speaker 2 (01:34:15):
And when jail made up a joke that you would
say that it's no big deal that.

Speaker 3 (01:34:21):
This crown prince killed a journalist because things happen.

Speaker 4 (01:34:26):
That that.

Speaker 2 (01:34:27):
When he did that an hour ago, I was like,
that's so Trump, that's so Trump. And then Trump doesn't.
I was like, we're so cooked. We're so cooked.

Speaker 4 (01:34:37):
That's so Trump. That's that's what's great. Like it reminds
me of the old uh when Stephen Colbert was on
the Colbert Port and the White House Press Correspondence Center
right next to George W. Bush during you know, the
Iraq War, and he says like something O, this man
is consistent, this man is steadfast. This man he says

(01:34:59):
about George W. Bush, he believes the same thing on
Wednesday that he believed on Monday, no matter what happens
on Tuesday. That's that's what's happening. Like, so there's you know,
Paul F. Tompkins is one of my favorite comedians who
went years ago when it wasn't even before, Like people
were anti woke, when people were anti when they were

(01:35:19):
on PC when they're politically incorrect, and people would ask
I think Paul was asked in an interview at that point, like, Hey,
what isn't it bad that you can't say whatever you
want to say? And he's like, uh, if you want
to say the same things you were saying twenty thirty
forty years ago, then you're a dinosaur who hasn't advanced.
And like you, I think most of us shouldn't want

(01:35:41):
to be saying the exact same like the words or
the concepts. Like we're as as human individuals and as
a society, we're hopefully able to advance and progress and learn.

Speaker 1 (01:35:53):
And yeah, you thought something.

Speaker 4 (01:35:55):
But then there's people like, you know, the ripple effect
of like, you know, the the eminem line that I like,
he's like, you know, like will cut Will Smith needs
to cuss to sell records.

Speaker 3 (01:36:05):
Well, yeah, well don't need to cut record him you too.

Speaker 4 (01:36:11):
Yeah, Like that's a funny line and that's a real
and that's like so much of the comedy bro podcast
verse now that when people are doing it, Like I
love Doug stan Hope and I don't think that he
is one of that can be. He is a thoughtful artist,
you know, and but but there are people who like,

(01:36:32):
look at you know, you can look at your Richard
Pryor's or your Doug stan Hopes or Bill Hicks's or
Anthony Jesselnick's or you know, anyone who's doing something that's
like a high wire act that really takes a lot
of skill and work and perfect like wording and your
heart in the right place to not just be like, oh, well,

(01:36:52):
fuck you too.

Speaker 1 (01:36:53):
Then, Like people can.

Speaker 4 (01:36:54):
Listen to eminem and be like but there's so many
people that are like, oh, you're saying I can't say that,
like say that.

Speaker 2 (01:37:00):
Was the I think that was one of the saddest
That was one of the saddest revelations in the last
few years. And I feel like social media, slash blogs,
slash stand up taken out of context kind of did
it all collaborated to create this weird reality. But one
of the saddest things was finding out which people were
like this, like this is not a character or like

(01:37:24):
the comedic framing, I really am a piece of shit
like I where you're like, WHOA, I thought this whole time,
Like the reason we're laughing with you is that you're
letting us laugh at you because you're gonna go on
stage and be like, I'm actually kind of wrong to
do this right, and like when you pull that away,
it just it takes something out of the art to

(01:37:44):
where it's like, ohn't know. Now, you're just a guy
who's on stage being a dick to everybody, and there's
not a lot of fun to be had for us
as an audience.

Speaker 4 (01:37:54):
It's like if a magician was like, all right, I'm
gonna need a twenty dollars bill for this one, and
then they just walk away with your money.

Speaker 1 (01:38:01):
Yeah, that's not a trick. You just robbed me.

Speaker 4 (01:38:05):
I thought I was watching the character Monster Mic played.

Speaker 1 (01:38:08):
By the real human being Money Mike.

Speaker 4 (01:38:11):
Right. In reality, you know, inside of each of us
there's a Money Mic and a Monster Mic, and you
know one of them like which one is gonna win
in the battle, And they're both passive fists, right, they're
the passive aggressive fists. You know so much each other.
And you gotta feed the Money Mic. Everyone feeds.

Speaker 2 (01:38:27):
Whichever one you feed, whichever one you feed is gonna
get stronger, guys, the Money or the Monster. That's how
we find out, Mike, tell people where to find your
special and all that than you and all that other
good stuff.

Speaker 4 (01:38:42):
Uh so, yeah, Mike, Mike Kaplan spelled my weird way
m y q k A p l A N. That's
my social media. That's my website. That's my substack Mike
Kaplan dot substack dot com. I send out a newsletter
for free every week and more if you subscribe. I've
got all my albums and uh on the streaming places.
I've got my podcast that you have both been on

(01:39:03):
and but mainly yeah, I perform live. You can go
to my website.

Speaker 3 (01:39:08):
Is your music? Is your music album stuff still up to?

Speaker 4 (01:39:11):
Yeah? The in my on my Spotify there is and
I know Spotify is. I hope they stop advertising ice soon.
And I don't know what to do about that, specifically Spotify.

Speaker 3 (01:39:22):
Other times I I didn't even know this. I'm out
of the loose.

Speaker 4 (01:39:25):
That was the thing I heard in the past couple
of weeks.

Speaker 2 (01:39:28):
Ice is in our city right now in Charlotte, North Carolina,
and my ring and neighbor app is just nothing but
updates of like ice, ice.

Speaker 3 (01:39:37):
On this street, Ice on that street. There's using an emoji.

Speaker 2 (01:39:40):
It's crazy ice ice baby, Yeah, Ice ice losers.

Speaker 4 (01:39:45):
What I say, and I posted this today is like
no ice is noise? You know?

Speaker 5 (01:39:51):
Great?

Speaker 4 (01:39:51):
How you spell it. But if back to sorry for
the commercial for anti I mean I'm not sorry for.

Speaker 2 (01:39:57):
Them, No, No, I prefer that because it's if I
was gonna put a commercial in this and that's four Ice.

Speaker 3 (01:40:03):
I hope that there. It comes right after the anti
Ice part that we just did.

Speaker 2 (01:40:08):
Yeah, it's like, Yo, you know who's a real dickless loser,
those masked Ice fucks. Yeah, and then the next thing
here is like, join Ice if you want to be
a great guy. I got a bunch of money for you.
And then it comes back it's like, cause you'd be
a real fucking asshole to do some shit like that.

Speaker 4 (01:40:23):
Yeah, a real icehole. Yeah. So to answer your specific question,
your generous question, the special that is called Reenie starting
tomorrow November nineteenth, twenty twenty five, eight pm Eastern US
time on my YouTube channel in collaboration with my producers

(01:40:44):
at Blonde Medicine. So you can subscribe right now. You
could go there and click notify me and they'll send
you a thing when it starts, and I'll be in
the chat like this. It'll be exactly like this, except
without YouTube, and I won't be interacting as the human being.
But I will be in the chat, chatting with people, engaging,

(01:41:05):
So thanks for checking. I'm starting tomorrow at eight or
any time thereafter until the universe ends or beyond. We're
gonna it's spelled and beyond the universe it spelled our
I N I. For those are I n I Rene yea.

Speaker 6 (01:41:21):
And for those are looking, do you have any I
know you're talking about the recording of the special, but
do you have any live shows coming up that our audience,
if they're out and about, could could come and check
you out live. I've never had the privilege of seeing
you live. I am actually jealous. Roger have seen you
live more than once. So eventually that's my goal, is
to see you in person.

Speaker 3 (01:41:41):
One time, I didn't even know he was coming.

Speaker 2 (01:41:43):
I was just there and he showed up and I
was like, oh shit, Mike Caviln's here.

Speaker 3 (01:41:47):
It was awesome.

Speaker 5 (01:41:48):
Yeah. And the one time he was in Charlotte, we
were out of Charlotte.

Speaker 4 (01:41:51):
Yeah, yeah, Well I got I gotta get back down there.
That is going to be my plan. And uh, did
I think you know, do you guys know Steve Hofstetter.

Speaker 3 (01:42:00):
I don't think so.

Speaker 4 (01:42:02):
I don't think he is a comedian who's a good
friend of mine, and I believe now here, I hope
that this will not reveal I'm gonna reveal my ignorance,
and my ignorance is that I know that Charlotte is
a different town than Charleston, right yet I always forget
when somebody mentions one of them, which one, uh, the we.

Speaker 2 (01:42:22):
All have that we all have that I I do
this with Jamie Press Presley and Margot Roby. It's not
our fault, like it just happens our brains wise, but.

Speaker 4 (01:42:34):
I'm right, it is so Steve you still he grew
up in New York. He was living in Pittsburgh for
a while and opened up with sort of a comedy
collective there, but he recently, like passed earlier this year,
moved to Charlotte, And so he's passed down there and
does a lot of shows I think at Duckworth's maybe yeh,
duck down So, but he's a guy, I mean, so

(01:42:56):
I don't have anything scheduled with him right now, but
at some point I'm going to add ask him, uh
and I'm gonna try to get back down there. But
I mean so certainly people check him out. I'm gonna
I should connect you guys because you got y'all would
uh fuck with each other? Uh in the way that's
good for that to go. I know that can mean
two different things. You guys would really mess with each
other and try to play some mine games. I will

(01:43:18):
try to get down to Charlotte right now. I have
shows this weekend in New York City, where I live.
I'm actually doing a Don't Tell comedy taping on Friday,
which I'm excited about. What.

Speaker 3 (01:43:30):
Okay, let me ask you this.

Speaker 2 (01:43:32):
I always if people say Don't Tell, what, what is
the hook of that show? Because the title sounds of productive.

Speaker 4 (01:43:42):
Well, so the the hook of the show is like
it's sort of akin to you know how sometimes there's
restaurants where they're like, uh, you know, like the chef's
choosing that you don't know, you don't order what you're ordering.
You just start, We're gonna bring you something good, server
to you in the dark, you know what I mean.
Like there's some kind of gimmick to it. And so,
so what it is is that the audience, for some

(01:44:03):
don't tell us a few different legs or arms of
their their business. One of them the one that we're
talking about I'm doing a taping, which is they will
eventually be like on their website and you can, you know,
on their YouTube you can find a lot of great
new comedians that way, or some comedians that you know,
but the for their live shows that aren't taped basically

(01:44:26):
in New York City, in New Jersey, in you know,
probably in every state, like I know, I've done them
in Delaware, I've done them in California. People have done them,
I know in Florida, in Boston, like maybe even some
in Europe. But their their model is they book good comedians,
like usually it's like usually a showcase where they'll have

(01:44:46):
like a host and maybe three to five other comedians
for you know, an hour and a half show somewhere
certainly not more than two hours, usually between an hour
hour and a half, and the audience does not know
the exact local of the show or the comedians that
are going to be on the show until the day
of the show, like you know, the neighborhood, like in

(01:45:08):
New York, you might if you go on there's probably
some in Charlotte or somewhere, you know, not too far
a drive. Yeah, some of them, they do, like one
a month. You know, sometimes like in I think Delaware,
they do multiple shows a weekend because they don't have
any comedy clubs full time in Delaware, that two shows
every weekend. So I did two shows, like early in

(01:45:30):
January of this year, I went down and did two
shows in a comic book store on Friday and two
shows in the back of a restaurant on Saturday. And
so the other thing is it's like usually not a
standard performance space.

Speaker 1 (01:45:43):
It could be like a gym.

Speaker 4 (01:45:44):
I've done a lot of them in gyms, like a
barbell gym or an archery range or and because like
they're businesses that if they're not being used at night,
they're like the space is available, so don't tell producers
will come in and just set up lights, they'll set
up the sound system, they'll set up chairs, they'll make
it look cool, and then they'll just have like a

(01:46:07):
really cool indeed, like you know, oh, it's like and
it's the experience is that it's like it's a surprise,
it's a novelty at first, but then because most of
their shows are packed and good, you're like, oh, that
was great. Kind of the same way that you go
to the comedy cellar. Whether or not you know who's
performing that night, you trust that the comedy seller is

(01:46:28):
going to have a good lineup. You can lose there
at the comedy seller. But sometimes even the biggest names
won't put their name on the lineup. They'll put like
a pseudonym and you're like, well, I don't know who
Joe Jablonski is, but maybe it's Jim Norton, you know.
And so same deal. You go to a don't Tell
show because you're like, oh, I've heard these are good.
You experience that it's good, and then you tell your

(01:46:49):
friends about it, and I mean, it's.

Speaker 3 (01:46:51):
Cool, but yeah, because then you tell, but you are Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:46:56):
They're like, hey, don't tell, but really, like it's the
absolute value of don't tell, which is tell.

Speaker 3 (01:47:03):
Lutely.

Speaker 1 (01:47:03):
You don't tell, but you're gonna tell.

Speaker 4 (01:47:05):
And so they've built and then yeah, they've had over
the past many years. Like really some people's like my
friend Liz Glazer did a taping I think last year
and it came out I think earlier this year, and like,
I know, I don't remember exactly how many views it
got on YouTube, but you know, the first couple of days,
like some tens of that, like maybe forty thousand views,

(01:47:27):
but then they chop it up into you know, reels
and tiktoks and stuff, and some of her clips had
like millions of yous so's. They've got a good comedy
mechanism going. So they're like, I'm I'm happy to work
with them and be in business with them, and you know,
advertised definitely support, don't tell, don't support ice those are

(01:47:49):
I agree?

Speaker 3 (01:47:51):
And what was yeah, go back to your to your shows.

Speaker 2 (01:47:53):
I'm sorry, Yeah, but that question has plagued me for years.

Speaker 4 (01:47:58):
Yeah, that's so that's where I'll be in like this weekend,
and then i have shows mostly around New York City
into January, no sorry, into December. I've got like maybe
one in New Jersey. And then mid December, I've got
some shows in the Ohio area, so western Pennsylvania, then
several in Ohio.

Speaker 1 (01:48:18):
I'll be doing New Year's in New Jersey.

Speaker 4 (01:48:21):
Then you know, in the coming months going forward, I've
got some shows out in the Chicago area. I've got
some shows in DC, and you know, if you look
at my website or Mike Kaplan or a punch up
dot live slash Mike Kaplan I put my tour dates there,
and if I'm not in a city near you, ask
the venue that has comedy that.

Speaker 1 (01:48:42):
You love nearest you to bring me.

Speaker 4 (01:48:45):
And hopefully if enough people do that, they'll be like, well,
we're so I'll work on it from my end.

Speaker 1 (01:48:49):
But it's certainly you know the power of the people.

Speaker 3 (01:48:53):
And I assume you're doing.

Speaker 2 (01:48:54):
All those shows outside of New York because Mom, Donnie's
gonna be the mayor and you're scared because he's gonna
bring the socialists. The Socialist nine to eleven is coming to.

Speaker 4 (01:49:04):
Surely, Rod. The truth is that when I was I
was in California when uh the election happened.

Speaker 1 (01:49:11):
I voted early. We went to California, I did a
bunch of.

Speaker 4 (01:49:14):
Shows, uh, and so then he was voted in on
like I think November fourth or so, and I flew
back on the seventh, and I was like, because Mom
Donnie won, I'm returning to New York.

Speaker 1 (01:49:28):
I'm going to New York.

Speaker 3 (01:49:30):
I'm back, all right, Right, that's hilarious.

Speaker 1 (01:49:34):
That's a joke.

Speaker 4 (01:49:35):
That's true.

Speaker 2 (01:49:39):
That's the magic trick, folks, all right, Chiad, that's my man, monster, Mike,
the money money Monster, Mike he's a monster on the mic.

Speaker 3 (01:49:47):
Make sure you guys go see him in.

Speaker 2 (01:49:49):
Person, and we'll be back, uh for our premium listeners.
We'll be back tomorrow because we're doing our sports show
and it's gonna be a good one. There's a lot
of sports happening everybody, and lots of stories that are
sports adjacent, which is where we come in.

Speaker 3 (01:50:05):
We don't really talk that much about the.

Speaker 5 (01:50:06):
Sports, but actually got the cell going on.

Speaker 3 (01:50:08):
And we have a cell going on right now.

Speaker 2 (01:50:10):
Our annual African American Friday Cell has started early, starts
earlier and earlier every year. Unlike the stereotypes, our African
American Cell is never late.

Speaker 3 (01:50:21):
It's always running on early people.

Speaker 2 (01:50:23):
Time, and you can get it on Patreon now and
you can also get on our website and if you
ever have issues, email us the blackouts as at Gmail.
I'll address it. I'll email you, I'll talk to you,
I'll walk you through it.

Speaker 3 (01:50:36):
And yeah, that's it for now, So until next time.
I love you you nah, I love you

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