Ep 24: "Your grandfather, ruined my Saturday" with Paul Antonio

Paul Antonio tells us how his grandfather ruined an audience member's show. https://www.instagram.com/thepaulantonio

Episode Transcript

(00:06):
Fucking Boo. Hey, what's upeverybody? Welcome to fucking Boo Bombing Stories
with Big Irish Jay and uh helloto all the bombardiers, the Boo crew.
Fucking Boo. Anyways, I gota good buddy on with me today.

(00:28):
He's a comic out in l A. He also is a producer.
And should I say you're like thesheriff of the podcast or what would I
say? I guess that works right. That's that's how everybody knew me as
like, oh, that dude thatdoes the podcast for people, so yeah,
whatever, you know, just thedude that does Paul Antonio, My

(00:49):
good buddy, Paul Antonio. What'sup, Paul? What's up? Big
Jay? It's dope to see you. It'st to be on the pod.
I know we've been planning this fora for a while, so yeah,
I'm excited to be here. Man. Now, where you where you?
It looks like you're in a fuckingsex trafficking warehouse right now? Valid?
Valid? Yeah, this is myman cave. But I'm showing you the

(01:11):
non done up part of the mancave right now. Got you? If
I turned you to my beautiful view, I have a little bit more significant
stuff going on. But then ifyou get the regular view, I see,
Okay, you're in the garage.Okay, yeah, that's the only
part of the house that that mygirlfriend lets me have, so and he

(01:32):
trust me. I just got ahouse in August and my girl and I
get it. I get it.Meet the spiders in here. So yeah,
exactly. So what's tell me yourbombing story? All right? So
during the pandemic, I don't know, I never gaged you on this.

(01:52):
How big were you on doing virtualshows too? I did one with Steve
Hofstetter, which was pretty cool.I mean it was, I mean it
was probably it was probably as bestas one of those shows could be.
And then I did a show whereI co headlined where I had to do
forty five minutes, and when Iwas done with that, I was done.

(02:16):
I was like, I never wantto do one of these again.
Well my experience, I was thebiggest like hater initially on virtual shows because
I'm like a comedy purist. SoI was like, what is this.
There's that you need a stage,you need a dynamic. And then I
got booked to do a gig.This isn't the bombing story, but I

(02:36):
got booked to do a gig forthe Hollenbeck Police Activities League. And this
was before the protests, so thiswas before they were the enemies. I
didn't know better at that time.They sent me a bunch of swag.
I couldn't wear any of it.It all had sheriff badges and stuff like
that, so I had to throwit away. But I did this gig
for them. They wanted me tohost Sinco de Mayo, like their their

(02:57):
virtual event, and everybody was onmute. And the only reason I did
it was because, you know,if they didn't even pay money, they
just gave me a swag bag,and you know, I'll do anything for
a swag bag, you know,So I did this. My prices are
low even still, So I didthis gig right, and everybody's muted,

(03:22):
but I just see people kind ofbobbing their heads and stuff, and I
was like, all right, thisis probably the worst it's ever gonna be,
so let's just go for it.So after that, I linked up
with Samue Obaid who was running atthe time KO Comedy and this became a
huge virtual comedy club. I meanit's still running to this day, which

(03:42):
is bizarre to me. But Iguess there's still people who would rather watch
comedy on an iPad than you know, go out and experience it. But
it was huge. We had thisis the name drop portion. We had
people like Judah free Blinder and JoeList and comics like that. So it
was popping man. I mean therewere times where we had like a thousand
people in the audience for a virtualshow. Yeah. It was bizarre.

(04:05):
And the tips were good, andI was in my boxers the whole time,
Like I didn't need to get ready. I would literally just log on
for an hour and be inundated withtips and you know all this type of
stuff. Wait wait, you saidyou were comedy purists, but yeah you
were doing stand up in shorts.Oh yeah, yeah, you know what
I'm telling you. Really it reallychanged me from that. I went from

(04:29):
being that guy of like jeans andyou know, don't expose your ankles on
stage to like, bro I couldjust roll out of it. There were
times where I would sleep twenty twohours in a day and just roll over
for the show. So it wasexciting. It was income, you know,
it was dope. Oh yeah,no, no, I get it.
Yeah, so they they asked meto start my own show, which

(04:51):
was sweet. So I had myown show rolling for a while. And
the thing about virtual comedy was youit was really the same audience members every
single time, so you really gotto develop relationships with these people. And
at the time I thought that everybodywas like an actual audience member, and

(05:11):
I didn't learn until after the pandemicthat it was all people that wanted to
do comedy or wanted to try,but nothing was open for them to try,
so they were like, let mebe an audience member. And then
once everything opened up, I guesswe just made it look too easy for
them, where they were like,I can do that, right, right,
I can do that. But whenyou run your own virtual show,

(05:34):
as you do when you run yourown live show, you run into like
completely insane people. There was onetime where I had to cancel the show
because my grandfather passed right. Itwas very sad, and I canceled the
show kind of last minute, becauseyou know, we're dealing with family loss.
And I got messages from one particularperson who was like, you ruin

(05:59):
my Saturday. I look forward tothis show every week. I can't believe
you did this, and I sentthe message like, you know, uh,
you know, I'm sorry, butyou know, family, this is
what happened, I'm sorry, whatever, and they blocked me. So that
was insane reaction, Emily. Yeah, yeah, and that's not so that's

(06:19):
all leading into the bombs right rightright now. But dude, it's a
I've had that where you know,it's you have no control over it,
and you know, I thought youwere gonna say, you know, you
apologize and told them what was goingon going on, and then that person
was like, oh, I understand. But they went the other day where
they're like, I don't care.I don't care if you have a loved

(06:41):
one that dies. I want myfucking zoom comedy. Yeah, they went
into the this is my day andyou took this away from me. I
want to bury you with your grandfather. Like that's pretty much what the conversation
went into. You know. Soit was you know, just I mean,
we ran into a horrible audience membersall the time. It's just is
different in that regard because I alwaystell people, I'm like a lot of

(07:04):
comics treat their people as like fans. But given the situation of like what
we were seeing each other every Saturday. It's like they had a relationship with
me and I had a relationship withthem, you know. So it's a
little different of a dynamic. Butto explode on somebody for taking something away,
it's like the entitlement of audiences exactly, you know, we see so

(07:27):
in particular, there's one one audiencemember who I'm not even gonna bring up
a name. We're just gonna referto him as audience member. This man
is homeless, but he has acell phone, which I guess was our
demographic we were trying to get.I don't even know how he found out
about the virtual shows, but hegot. He had some mental problems,

(07:54):
right, and he's a good dude, but he used guys Gona, Well,
don't fucking defend him, Paul.He's a he just has some mental
stuff going on, you know it. He's one of He definitely has like
bipolar where he'll be like vibing withthe show, vibing with the show,
and then something will set him off. So on this particular night, I

(08:18):
had I think the comic was ShangForbes show. Uh and Shang is I
mean, he's a legendarye. Hedidn't just do Shang didn't just do Deaf
Jam comedy back in the day,he did Deaf Poetry Jam, which was
the show before that. Like thisdude goes you know, way back.
So one of the benefits of doinga virtual show is you're able to work

(08:41):
with comedians that you know. Sometimesthey don't want to drive out to,
you know, wherever you're having yourshow. But in this instance, you
know, all they have to do, like we said, is roll out
of bed. They can be intheir boxers, they can jump on the
show, and they get paid.Arguably, they were getting paid more than
they were getting paid to do likeyou know, local headliner spots and stuff

(09:03):
like that. So whatever Shang said, I don't know what he said,
but the it started with messages inthe chat. It started with while this
guy's fat as fuck, Like that'sthe first thing you go when you're trying
to insult somebody, you know,the first thing he goes in appearance or

(09:24):
whatever. Right, So he startsgoing off on Shang, and it's because
I think, so this man ispart of the LGBT community, and I
think Shang said something about sleeping witha guy and that just triggered the this
guy's a homophobe. This guy's this, so he starts putting crazy messages in

(09:45):
the chat and at this time,don't forget where you're at. But I
just want to say, for theaudience members, so doing those Zoom shows,
it's it's a not I was gonnasay a little. It's a lot
different trying to deal with the heckclear versus you know somebody in the club
that says something. Because somebody inthe club that says something, you can
hear it and you can respond realtime, whereas when you're doing those Zoom

(10:09):
shows, you're just kind of lookinginto the camera and maybe you'll see like
reactions of people like with their handsor whatever, but you're not You're focused
on your stand up. You're notreading the chat. So he probably because
I was gonna say, Shane likehas no problem destroying somebody exactly right.
But but I'm sure he wasn't.He wasn't seeing the chat. Is that

(10:31):
right? Not at all? Wasn'tseeing right? Especially like so a little
bit about like in specific like Zoomcomedy, is you spotlight one of the
cameras, so you're not even reallyseeing all the audience. You're just seeing
a few audience members on your screen. And for sure, if you are
just focusing on your set and youhave your chat minimize, you won't even

(10:52):
be seeing what's going on. Right, So there's one added component to virtual
comedy, which it's just the abilityto whisper to people, which you would
never have during a show. Right, So I have at this time,
while this guy's going crazy in thechat, I have other audience members whispering
to me and tell you what's wrongwith this guy today? And so it's

(11:15):
like this whole world, weird dynamicof I'm trying to balance communication with random
audience members who now have opinions onwhat's going on, and I'm making sure
Shang's doing good and making sure thisguy's you know, I'll let him say
whatever he wants in the chat,but you know, once it gets past
a certain line, whatever, right, Right, So shangans his set,

(11:37):
and at this point, now thathe ends his set, this guy starts
unmuting his microphone and talking and noteven really attacking Shang, but just kind
of yelling, yelling random nonsense,you know, random bust stop nonsense about
homophobia and stuff. And now Ihave to say the good thing about virtual

(11:58):
shows is you're able to mute people, and if you have your settings correct,
you can mute people and they can'tmute themselves unless you would mute them.
So I wish we did have thatability in comedy clips because we wouldn't
have to kick people out. Wecould shut them up and have them be
shut up, you know. SoI start doing jokes as you try to

(12:20):
do afterwards, and it just continuedin the in the stream, and so
finally, mercifully, you know,shang was our headline and the show ends,
and as the show ends, wealways would do a little hangout because
literally nobody had anything else to do, so we would we would drink.
It would turn into like a virtualhappy hour where you're just drinking with random

(12:41):
strangers and you know, seeing what'sup. So then I noticed as soon
as the show ended, he gotoff, he got off the stream,
the bipolar dude, the bipolar dudeand gay, bipolar homeless activist. Yeah.
And he also, my phone startsblowing up and it's messages on Instagram.

(13:07):
So this person is now sending memessages on Instagram. Uh, and
these messages are like you should beashamed of your dick. Yeah, I
wish that was a tip I waslooking for that. I wish that's the
one time that people were worried lessabout STDs and more about COVID. I
think we got to get back tothat point. It wasn't are you clean,

(13:28):
it's can you wear a mask?I'll ignore the blisters. Uh.
But yeah, So my phone isblowing up and all the messages are like
you should be ashamed of yourself,and uh, you know this is I
can't believe you're promoting this, andI send At this time, you had
to get good at like customer serviceright when you had a virtual show,
because we had had upset people before, you know, and I'd been called

(13:52):
every name, and you're a misogynist, you're sexist, you're homophobic, and
then the opposite was like people arecalling you gay and people are call it.
You're like, I can't be everythingat once. Yeah. So I
I talk to him and I say, hey, I regret that you know
you had that response to to Shang. I tried to book, you know,

(14:15):
comics with credits, and comics thatare entertaining and people that you would
normally have to pay to seat.Once again, this is a free show,
you know, people send tips,but this is a free show.
I mean even a five dollars showwould would have probably been out of this
dude's budget. So maybe, inhindsight, we should have charged the ticket
price. It would have weeded outsome of the you know, the nonsense.

(14:37):
Uh. But yeah, So Iget all these and then finally I'm
like, you know what, Oh, so I sent him you know,
I'm sorry you reacted this way,and he's not having any of it.
He is just going off and offand you're you're Hitler, You're the devil,
You're you're this. So I decidedto do something that I thought was
reasonable. But like I said,I was bored at the time. I

(14:58):
start using Instagram to FaceTime him.I start calling him, and the calls
would consist of him answering, screamingno, I don't want to talk to
you, and then hanging up andI didn't maybe ten times in a row.
It was kind of it was kindof entertaining, you know, to

(15:20):
just be I don't want to talkto you and then hang up. Like
he didn't ignore the call. Heanswered every single answered to tell you that
he didn't want to talk to you. Yeah. Yeah, it's like that
key and Peel sketch with Meg Meganor whatever. She's like, I'm over
it, no, but like shedoesn't want the attention to stop. So
then that's when this turns into theworst bomb of my career, which is,

(15:45):
uh, this guy starts threatening tokill himself over this comedy show and
just saying I'm sorry, I snapped, I'm just done. I shouldn't be
doing this blah blah blah like andand remember the root of all this is
comedy and not even and it's noteven your set, no, not necessarily,

(16:10):
but you know, it was theculman. It was my booking,
That's what it was. It wasme. I don't know if there's some
gray person that's out there that appealsto every race and gender and there's not.
So yeah, and you didn't,you didn't bomb the booking because Shane's
a great comic, you know comic. This guy just had a problem with

(16:30):
with you know, a word orsomething triggered him and with everything. And
you were the face of the show. Yeah, yeah, I was.
I told you people were. Itwas like a weird relationship with fans where
it's like, uh, and don'tget me wrong, some of them are
still super cool to this day.I actually I'm starting to have them come

(16:52):
out to real life shows, whichis dope. And I I make sure
to tell the producers too, likeI'm like, hey, those are my
two, right there, those tworather and I've known them for years,
even though I've never met them before, but they know every dark secret of
mine except how much I really weigh, which now they can see him person
So yeah. But the conversation continuedand it was just, you know,

(17:15):
I'm gonna kill myself. I'm gonnado this. So he didn't, luckily,
I'm pretty sure Luckily. I don'tknow if I wanted that attributed with
the I didn't want a casual likeif they had the COVID casualties on like
a screen. I didn't want likeCOVID and then like Paul's show one,
you know. Yeah yeah, butuh yeah, so he didn't, And

(17:37):
to this day he still comments onmy stuff and it's all like hearts and
I miss you and I love youand this kind of stuff, you know.
So I know. The pandemic wasa time for many of us to
go soul searching, and we hadprobably plenty of times where we were breaking
down wondering if you know this stuffwould ever start again. But man,

(18:00):
this guy, he's still going throughit. And I want to say that
my comedy show brought him close,but he didn't push him over the edge.
So when we post this, he'llsee it. Maybe there's a chance,
but I can block him from seeingit. So let's let's go with
that. Or if I want anotherfun FaceTime rollercoaster, then I could just

(18:25):
keep it open and then we couldtalk about yea, yeah, all right.
So I'll ask you what I askeverybody, uh after their bombing story,
what would you what would you havedone differently in the moment, and
what did you learn from it?So a lot of people probably regret it.
I think I would have doubled down. I think I just want to

(18:47):
I would have seen how far outclose we could get to the edge.
Maybe killed himself. Yeah, notall the way, but you know,
like maybe like a maiming you know, maybe maybe like I don't know,
I feel like there's there's some weirdstreet credit involved with something like that.
Uh so maybe that direction. Butat the same time, it's like it

(19:10):
was a really good lesson in comedyof like you can play it safe.
You know, like, you cando everything in your power to appeal to
everybody, and no matter what youdo, you're going to have these people
that just show up and they havewild opinions and wild assumptions of you and

(19:32):
who you are as a person andwhere you came from and stuff, And
the best thing to do is justkind of take it as like a badge
of honor and be like, well, there's another one that hates me.
You know, yeah, we can'twe don't. We can't pull the audience
before every show and go, okay, give me your give me your button
issues or the things that are goingto trigger you. Okay, let me

(19:52):
go to the next person. Letme do that for three hundred people.
You just be like, so knockknock jokes, guys, that what you
want. Fucking It's like, youknow, some people just should not go
to comedy clubs, and there's orcomedy shows, and then there's also the
people that they literally are just waitingfor the one thing that's going to trigger

(20:14):
them so that they can be offendedand feel important and go, you know,
tweet or fucking write whatever on whateversocial media thing. Excuse me,
and have you have you booked?Shang since then on. That was my
That was my other lesson, neverbook Shang for I have. I have

(20:34):
work with Shang. And the funniestthing was after I talked to him,
he was like, I didn't thinkit went that bad. I'm sure it
didn't. It was just one personthat fucking you know, had the energy
of a hundred you know, sofuck that guy. So tell everybody I'm

(20:55):
gonna end. Uh. We wetalked about this before we started recording.
But Paul is going to come backon later at a later date and tell
another bombing story. And where canpeople follow you? You got shows coming
up. This will come out Thursdayif you put it up. Yeah,
I know, right, drop theball on the last one. No,
no, although the fans got aspecial two episodes in three days, a

(21:18):
little little treat right there. No. So if people want to follow me,
follow my stand up at the PaulAntonio. I have sets on YouTube
if you guys want to check meout doing comedy, but also if you
want to follow the comedy production side, which includes the podcast that includes the
live shows. Follow at Comedy popUp. The guy who ran Comedy Pop

(21:44):
Up. Who you know who youmet Nick who's an amazing guy. He
moved to Dubai, so he justpieced out and by holy went to Dubai.
Meta girl has a whole life outthere. It's amazing, great story.
But he basically said, hey,you have my blessing. Whatever you
want to do, a comedy popup, run it. So basically right

(22:07):
now, I'm the producer and allthat stuff behind comedy pop up. So
follow comedy pop up. We gotshows. I'll rattle off some cities.
We got shows in Pomona, wegot shows in Montabello, Boyle Heights,
Lancaster. These are also cal shows. And just added San Demus if I
could add a quick note, welost somebody in the comedy community just a

(22:30):
couple of days ago. This dudewas literally the nicest human in the world.
And speaking about bombing. You cantell on social media who didn't know
this guy because they posted rest inpeace Nick Lanny, who we love.
This man was one of the funniestcomics I knew. If you ever read

(22:51):
that that person was not close withhim, because anybody that was close with
him would never describe him as oneof the funniest people that they knew.
He was one of the nice peoplethat we knew, but a sweetheart,
you know. And he ran thisroom in San Dimas, California called high
Point Brewery. It was a monthlyshow and we did a little memorial to

(23:11):
him at the last time, andComedy Pop Up is one of the partners
that's going to take it over andjust continue his legacy. So if you
guys are in the So Cal area, stop by a high Point Brewery.
We're gonna have a show that isused to kind of raise funds for his
funeral and all that stuff. Thirtyfour years old man so young. What
was his name? Say his nameagain, Nick Lannie. You can find

(23:33):
Lanny. You can find him onYouTube. He has one set on YouTube
from a show. So basically thisguy was like a like a big nerd
kind of like he loved like nerdystuff. He was super religious nerd.
Right, And he did my showup in Lancaster, California, which is
at a Funko pop slash collectible slashanime store. So it was an opening

(23:56):
spot. So I think I onlypaid like forty bucks, right, I'm
like, hey, I could giveyou forty by because that kind of covers
gas, Like just come up here. Uh, he spent two toys at
the store, so this is anet loss for him, but like just
seeing him be happy. So thatset from that show is on YouTube now

(24:17):
it's Nick Lannie. It's either lA n n Y or l A n
n I. He had used bothspellings, and he has two YouTube channels
with a different spellings. So justlook up Nick Lannie at ab pop Shop
and you'll see this kid who wasso wonderful and yeah, just check them
out. Oh rip to Nick anduh check that out. And as far

(24:41):
as shows I got this weekend,I will be this this Friday and Saturday.
I'll be in Boston at Laugh Bostonfor my annual Big r J and
Friends show. You can go toBig r J dot com for tickets or
laf Boston dot com for tickets.And then the week after that, I
will be in Connecticut at the theSteam Brewery the brew Haha Comedy Show.

(25:03):
Again, go to Big RSJ dotcom for tickets. And thanks Paul for
doing this, appreciate it, andagain we'll have you back for the other
bombing story. And until next time. This is my favorite and worst part
of this show. Let me justsay to everyone out there bombs away,
terrible, fucking