Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the bob Weft That's Podcast.
Speaker 1: My guest this week is the one and only Jackie Barton.
Speaker 1: But guest Jackie, that joke fan, Jackie? How you doing?
Speaker 1: I'm all right now, But last week I was in
Speaker 1: rough shape? You know? Oh really, Ron, what was it
Speaker 1: like last week? I don't know. I don't know. No,
Speaker 1: I actually, uh, the world is coming to an end
Speaker 1: and the epidemic is completely out of control. The President
Speaker 1: is the worst piece of ship I could ever, ever,
Speaker 1: ever imagine. But I live on the water. I actually
Speaker 1: went swimming again yesterday on November tenth or whatever it was,
Speaker 1: and I got a beautiful girlfriend and I haven't missed
Speaker 1: the meal. The only my only complaint is that I'm
Speaker 1: gaining weight because there's nothing to do except eat, because
Speaker 1: I masturbating. I think, Now, don't you live in Long Island.
Speaker 1: I live right on Long Island Sound Long Islands. And
Speaker 1: you went in the water, yes, and it was it
Speaker 1: was cold, but it was fine. It was cold, but
Speaker 1: it was fine. What was your motivation? I mean, it's
Speaker 1: not quite January first for Polar Bear Day. No, you
Speaker 1: know what, every year you start jumping in the water
Speaker 1: like in you know, the middle of May and the
Speaker 1: May beginning of June, and it's very cold, but you
Speaker 1: jump in because then with each passing week it gets
Speaker 1: warmer and warmer and warmer. And the truth of it
Speaker 1: is a long island sound is a huge body of
Speaker 1: water sort of holds holds the heat for a long time.
Speaker 1: I mean it was it was cold, but it was cold,
Speaker 1: just like it's cold in the beginning of June, you know.
Speaker 1: I mean I didn't really swim. I usually swim, but
Speaker 1: it was just a little too cold on my hands.
Speaker 1: So I just jumped in and thrashed around a little bit, uh,
Speaker 1: for the fun of it, because I mean, there's nothing
Speaker 1: like it. It just jumps, jumps, start your body and
Speaker 1: you come out. I have a nice outdoor shower, and uh,
Speaker 1: it's just reset your clock. It's just something fun to do.
Speaker 1: It's also something fun to talk about. What else am
Speaker 1: I gonna do? If it's middle of November? Are you
Speaker 1: done with the sound until May? Are we gonna see
Speaker 1: you in the Sune? No? No, you know, but it's funny.
Speaker 1: I got an next door neighbor, Phyllis, who's delightful. It
Speaker 1: fills some bill and every time she goes in. Of course,
Speaker 1: somebody called me today and said, I guess who was
Speaker 1: in the water this morning. I'm like, leave me alone.
Speaker 1: You know. It's like almost like a pan match, you know.
Speaker 1: But I don't really care, you know, I just I
Speaker 1: just if I feel like it. If the sun's out
Speaker 1: and it's bright, you jump in, and when you jump
Speaker 1: out it's it's warm. Even if it's not warm out,
Speaker 1: the sun is just a miracle worker. You know. You
Speaker 1: have to live on you know, people that live on
Speaker 1: the water understand that it's it sounds silly, but it
Speaker 1: really isn't you know, it's really it's quite delightful. Now.
Speaker 1: That begs the question if you live on the sound.
Speaker 1: I know. I grew up in Connecticut, a couple of
Speaker 1: months directly across at Stanford. Okay. The question is, though
Speaker 1: frequently you have situations where there is a storm and
Speaker 1: then the water comes up into your house. What happens?
Speaker 1: There're not here. I live in Bayville on the north
Speaker 1: shore of Long Island, and Bayville is a bowl. It's
Speaker 1: actually a bowl, and I live at the top of
Speaker 1: the bowl. It's funny. I'm here and then two doors
Speaker 1: down from me is my ex wife's house and then
Speaker 1: her other house, and uh, in Sandy I got no water,
Speaker 1: just like a half inch of water. I had to
Speaker 1: throw away my basement rugs. But I I'm so high
Speaker 1: up that I even had the bulls to have a
Speaker 1: rug in the basement. I got an inch of water
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty two d feet down the street. My
Speaker 1: ex wife got four ft in each of our houses.
Speaker 1: Because it's a bowl, and it's it's elusive how it
Speaker 1: how it's shape, but it's a it's amazing. But you know,
Speaker 1: you never know what's gonna happen. You know, in Sandy Um,
Speaker 1: we were waiting for the second high tide and we
Speaker 1: thought we're gonna be wiped out. And the wind shifted
Speaker 1: and we hardly lost a branch off a tree. And
Speaker 1: if the wind hadn't a shift that, you know, at
Speaker 1: the second high tide, we expected to get wiped out.
Speaker 1: And I was over at my friend's house. He lives
Speaker 1: in a big, huge, you know mansion up on the hill,
Speaker 1: and we're waiting for that second high tide and it's
Speaker 1: just it was like y two k. You know, it
Speaker 1: just never happened. And if the wind down the shifted.
Speaker 1: We're going the way a rockaway which was flattened. You know,
Speaker 1: it's all, you know, it's all. It's all a roll
Speaker 1: of the dice, no matter what you're talking about, it's
Speaker 1: all a damn roll of the dice, you know. Okay,
Speaker 1: how many times you've been married? Well, this ex wife,
Speaker 1: you've been divorced from her for how long? What do
Speaker 1: you mean? How many times have I been married? I've
Speaker 1: been married. I was married to Nancy once and we
Speaker 1: last that we're married fourteen years. But we got married,
Speaker 1: we lived together for seven years, and then we got married,
Speaker 1: and then we got divorced. So we made it together
Speaker 1: a total like a little over twenty years. But she
Speaker 1: lives two doors away, and her and her boyfriend are
Speaker 1: my girlfriend and mine's best friends. And we eat dinner
Speaker 1: together and have you know, eat meals at each other's houses.
Speaker 1: And she's just a wonderful, wonderful girl. I think I
Speaker 1: think my girlfriend actually likes her more than she likes me.
Speaker 1: And I'm still a little I'm still in love with
Speaker 1: every girl I haven't dated. Okay, but why did you
Speaker 1: get a divorce then? Because we would have killed each other.
Speaker 1: You know, there was a lot of a lot of
Speaker 1: personal stuff, a lot of you know, it's like, you know,
Speaker 1: it was in my book. You know, we tried, uh
Speaker 1: we couldn't have a baby. So we did in vitro fertilization,
Speaker 1: long before anybody really knew what it was. And and
Speaker 1: Howard was anti you know, science for having babies. So
Speaker 1: not only was it an incredibly pressurized situation where I
Speaker 1: had to sneak around and we were just getting to
Speaker 1: be really well known, but we failed six times, and
Speaker 1: there was if you know, anybody's ever been through it,
Speaker 1: there's nothing more heart wrenching in the world. And this
Speaker 1: is the early nineties, this is long before there were
Speaker 1: chat rooms and emails and people he could commiserate with.
Speaker 1: You know, misery loves company. You know, if you go
Speaker 1: through the worst thing in the world, but there's another
Speaker 1: couple or another person or somebody just bounce off of,
Speaker 1: it just changes the whole, uh, the whole situation. And
Speaker 1: it was you know, so that did a lot of damage.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, lots of reasons. You know, two
Speaker 1: strong personalities, and you know, we were very good friends
Speaker 1: for years, and then she came to work with me
Speaker 1: and we worked together and then we couldn't not fuck,
Speaker 1: so we slept together and then we were partners, and
Speaker 1: then we lived together, and then we got married. So
Speaker 1: we kind of were on a sign curve and now
Speaker 1: we're back to being friends and it's all, uh, it's
Speaker 1: all wonderful. That begs a question you said earlier, is
Speaker 1: still in love with all your old girlfriends? Have you
Speaker 1: looked them all up online? If you made any contact?
Speaker 1: You know, it really is funny you wind up circling back.
Speaker 1: I mean I had circled back. You know, a lot
Speaker 1: of girls I went back and revisited and found and
Speaker 1: uh it was so much fun. Um But yes, yes,
Speaker 1: you know, and it's fun to be in contact with
Speaker 1: people and I talked to them and you know, some
Speaker 1: from long ago, something from not that long ago. But
Speaker 1: it's I think it's just fascinating. It's so fascinating. What's
Speaker 1: really fascinating is when you get on the phone with
Speaker 1: an old friend. It it's still never fails to astound
Speaker 1: me how you instantly are there if it's somebody you know,
Speaker 1: I mean I I shared a lot of laughs and
Speaker 1: a lot of closeness with a lot of people. It
Speaker 1: wasn't really in passing like, you know, we would dig
Speaker 1: in and uh, two minutes on the phone. It's like
Speaker 1: the years just are not there. You know. Time time
Speaker 1: is the most incredible thing. I can remember so much
Speaker 1: of everything that happened. My first two years in comedy
Speaker 1: and the next thirty eight years are blur. I know nothing,
Speaker 1: but I can tell you everything that happened because in
Speaker 1: those formative years. You know, it's just like I don't
Speaker 1: know how how old you I'm okay, so you probably
Speaker 1: know somebody says, how Jackie, when's the last time you
Speaker 1: saw Bob Oh? I just I saw him five years ago,
Speaker 1: and like, yah know it's amazing. It's a little it's
Speaker 1: a little scary, you know. And I'm like when somebody says,
Speaker 1: I said, wow, that's not for a long time. No,
Speaker 1: it was a long time ago. You know, you know,
Speaker 1: I ain't. Being stupid doesn't help either, Okay, we all
Speaker 1: are victims of that. But you know, when you there
Speaker 1: are a lot of stories about reconnecting with old girlfriends,
Speaker 1: were rekindled some romance. Did you have any of that experience?
Speaker 1: Maybe you they wanted it and you didn't, or maybe
Speaker 1: you didn't. They didn't know because because I uh I
Speaker 1: was married and uh, and there's so many girls around here. Um,
Speaker 1: there were no real romances that I would have wanted
Speaker 1: to really revisit. I got so many stories of friends
Speaker 1: that that's such interesting, you know, interesting interesting things that
Speaker 1: happened for good or for bad or whatever. But no,
Speaker 1: it was never like an unrequirded love where all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, I'm single and she's single and wow, let's
Speaker 1: put this back together. And not immediately. You know, I
Speaker 1: didn't really have girlfriends, you know. Nancy was the first
Speaker 1: time I was really serious with somebody. I was so
Speaker 1: busy rocking and rolling and drinking and smoking pot and
Speaker 1: being plenty screwed up and just partying and trying to
Speaker 1: avoid growing up. You know. I I got my first
Speaker 1: paycheck from the Holage Starn Show when I was like
Speaker 1: thirty eight, you know what I mean. Like I had
Speaker 1: a I let h not too charming a life, you know,
Speaker 1: pretty crazy. It wasn't like, well, I had a girlfriend
Speaker 1: and we lived, you know, I mean I lived together
Speaker 1: with a girl in college, uh, for two right after college,
Speaker 1: for two years, just long enough to make me realize that, wow,
Speaker 1: I am not ready for this, you know, and I'm
Speaker 1: still in touch with her. You know, she lives up
Speaker 1: in Provincetown, and you know, God, you know, and I
Speaker 1: just to this day if I see an old letter
Speaker 1: from her and I see her handwriting, I get warm
Speaker 1: and I know that sound. You know, I don't like
Speaker 1: to talk about make it sound like I'm so funn No, no,
Speaker 1: it doesn't. One of the problems with people, as I said,
Speaker 1: you know, you see this all the time of celebrities. Oh,
Speaker 1: I got divorced, I'm over it. It takes forever to
Speaker 1: get over it. But but but the who wants to
Speaker 1: be unless somebody has hurt you and done crappy things too.
Speaker 1: And it's amazing how you can usually write that off
Speaker 1: for you know, you can remember your life the way
Speaker 1: you choose. You can remember an incident and told by
Speaker 1: one of my friends it was one way, and told
Speaker 1: by another of my friends the other way. You know.
Speaker 1: I remember at night in late George when the engine
Speaker 1: conked out on the boat and we had the paddle
Speaker 1: with the with the water skis, and it was dark
Speaker 1: and we couldn't see anything, and it was it was
Speaker 1: two hours of absolute hell. And I remember saying, I
Speaker 1: can't believe then a month from now, we're gonna be
Speaker 1: talking about what a great time this one. And I'm
Speaker 1: telling you it was a great time that it was horrible.
Speaker 1: You know. Yeah, how many times you have a song
Speaker 1: on the radio and you go, oh, man, remember this one.
Speaker 1: I'm like, wait a minute, I hated that fucking song.
Speaker 1: You know it's there's not can't listen to? Which is
Speaker 1: Bobby Goldsboro? Honey that I hated it? Then I hate
Speaker 1: it now that guy I did he something happened with
Speaker 1: him on the Tonight show that you know what it's
Speaker 1: gotta be. It's gotta be on YouTube by now. You know,
Speaker 1: anything you talk about sometimes you go looking for it
Speaker 1: and you can't find it, But six months later you can.
Speaker 1: You know, I got a very good friend. Were you
Speaker 1: a fan of the Start Show? Yes, but we'll be honest,
Speaker 1: you know you eventually I've been living on the West Coast,
Speaker 1: and eventually when he came to the West Coast, he
Speaker 1: was early morning. I'm a late riser at the time.
Speaker 1: I was right. Uh. The reason I'm asking is, do
Speaker 1: you remember a thing called the jetty actually that they
Speaker 1: they used to break my balls about? What was the
Speaker 1: float that that was outside my house here in Bayville,
Speaker 1: and uh, and it was very very famous on the show,
Speaker 1: you know, uh, because Howard broke my balls about it.
Speaker 1: But people came over my house and we get drunk
Speaker 1: and eat lobsters and swim out to the jetty and
Speaker 1: it was great fun. And uh. But it was built
Speaker 1: by Bruce Springsteen's first manager, and from them when I
Speaker 1: said that. When I said that, uh on the show,
Speaker 1: Gary said, who wasn't I told him it was. He says,
Speaker 1: I'll know you out of yourman. It was a guy
Speaker 1: named Mike Capell. And at the time, Mike Apell was
Speaker 1: on the Internet, which had just started, and that was
Speaker 1: Bruce Springsteen's first manager. But as time went on, the
Speaker 1: Internet fills in and it's like back times. It's like,
Speaker 1: you know, the the Encyclopedia Britannica goes from one leaflet
Speaker 1: to volumes, and all of a sudden, here's this guy,
Speaker 1: Carl Tinker West. And he was a good friend of
Speaker 1: a friend. He was a rocket scientist and a madman.
Speaker 1: He's still a dear friend. He's like eighty eight years old,
Speaker 1: and he he built the float. But here I am saying,
Speaker 1: you know, it was built by Bruce Springsteen's first manager,
Speaker 1: and they're saying you're crazy, And it turned out that
Speaker 1: I wasn't crazy at all, but it took time to
Speaker 1: fill in. But this thing with goldsborow he was on
Speaker 1: the Tonight Show and Bill Cosby was hosting, and Richard
Speaker 1: Pryor was on first, and then Bobby Goldsboro come out.
Speaker 1: I'm sure he sang that so long, honey, because I
Speaker 1: think that's the only thing he ever sang. But he's
Speaker 1: a good old boy from like North Carolina or South Carolina.
Speaker 1: He came and he sat down and prior moved over,
Speaker 1: so his Cosby and Bobby Goldsborough and Richard Prayer and
Speaker 1: he somehow he's talking about, Yeah, I'm from North Carolina
Speaker 1: and what it's like, and then he says, you know, sometimes, uh,
Speaker 1: it could be really scary there because whenever there was
Speaker 1: a fire up in the woods, all the coons would
Speaker 1: come running down from the woods and they were and
Speaker 1: he said the word coons and realized he's a Southern guy,
Speaker 1: and he realized he was sitting between two black guys,
Speaker 1: and he started giggling, and it was so fucking uncomfortable,
Speaker 1: and Richard Pryor looked over Bill Cosby and said, well,
Speaker 1: are you gonna kill this guy or mine? And when
Speaker 1: they came back from commercial, there was no Bobby Goldsboro.
Speaker 1: And I've been telling the story for fifty years and
Speaker 1: I still have to find somebody who saw it or
Speaker 1: knows about it. But I haven't googled it in like
Speaker 1: ten years, so I'm sure it's in there somewhere, because
Speaker 1: I couldn't make that story up. It was, it was,
Speaker 1: and he wasn't doing it. He wasn't doing it to
Speaker 1: be racist. What was racist was after he said it,
Speaker 1: he heard it and he made that connection. It was.
Speaker 1: It was very odd, very very fucking odd. But that
Speaker 1: that that is a tough song. That is the tough
Speaker 1: But I'm sure if I heard it, I go remember
Speaker 1: this one. Okay, let's come back. You're talking about the
Speaker 1: Bruce Springsteen's first manager. Are you ever wrong? Um? Sometimes
Speaker 1: sometimes you know, it's it's funny. Sometimes it can be
Speaker 1: a detail that you absolutely remember and you're absolutely wrong,
Speaker 1: but not about a whole event, but like about this
Speaker 1: thing and that thing. You know. It's like there was
Speaker 1: a show called Andy's Gang in the yearly fifties and
Speaker 1: and right, and I used to tell people what it wasn't.
Speaker 1: It wasn't Andy's gang before Andy's gang, it was uncle
Speaker 1: Ed's gang. And I remember the uncle Ed's gang so clearly,
Speaker 1: so clearly, and I'd argue with people, and finally it
Speaker 1: came on the web and I looked and it wasn't
Speaker 1: uncle Ed's gang. It was Smiling Ed's gang. And the
Speaker 1: minute I saw it, I was like, yeah, but in
Speaker 1: my mind I saw uncle Ed's gang on the TV screen,
Speaker 1: so that, you know, I mean, that's a very small detail.
Speaker 1: But it's funny how your mind plays tricks. But when
Speaker 1: I say to this day, I was like, he was
Speaker 1: the new guy. People like, you're ready mine. No, Andy
Speaker 1: was the fucking newgat. I hated. I love Crusado Rabbit,
Speaker 1: but they went in to Andy Divine. I hated it.
Speaker 1: Do you like and I didn't. I didn't. I didn't
Speaker 1: watch Carsade to Arrive and I wasn't a big you know,
Speaker 1: I it's so weird what you liked, you know. I
Speaker 1: read Superman. Uh, I wasn't anyways near as big a
Speaker 1: Batman fan as Superman, but the rest of them kind
Speaker 1: of left me cold. I read Aquaman and super Boy,
Speaker 1: but when they got wacky. I think, you know, the
Speaker 1: Marvel comics that was not my thing. But here I'm
Speaker 1: reading Superman and Batman. But I was a huge fan
Speaker 1: of Archie and Betty and Veronica. You know, they just
Speaker 1: had me. They just had me, and I love that.
Speaker 1: And I never thought in terms of it being weird,
Speaker 1: but that if anybody ever saw my comic book collection,
Speaker 1: they would say, what planet is this guy from? You know, Okay,
Speaker 1: let's go back to being right. We know that there
Speaker 1: are a lot of dummies and uninformed people in society.
Speaker 1: What I've learned going to psychotherapy is sometimes I gotta
Speaker 1: let it slide because it ends up reflecting. I mean,
Speaker 1: I may be right, but they dislike it. Can you
Speaker 1: let shi slide? Or if someone gets it wrong, you
Speaker 1: gotta let them know. No, you know, depending what you're
Speaker 1: talking about. You know, you get old enough, you don't
Speaker 1: you know, you don't care? You know, how much of
Speaker 1: my life am I gonna waste? You know? Like like
Speaker 1: I did a roast last night, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: I got the vibe that, holy sh it that you
Speaker 1: know a couple of these guys and girls whatever the
Speaker 1: Trump people, I wasn't gonna address it. I just want
Speaker 1: I'm gonna address it had nothing to do with the comedy,
Speaker 1: nothing to do with what we're doing. But you know,
Speaker 1: I guess if I, if I had a heart, you know,
Speaker 1: or at any conviction, I would have jumped in and
Speaker 1: tried to you know, sway the boat. But now you know,
Speaker 1: like at what point you know, I'm you know what,
Speaker 1: I'm not a confrontational type guy. I'm really not. What
Speaker 1: sounds funny because people thought I was so confrontational with
Speaker 1: Howard on the show. But I you don't have to
Speaker 1: be a confrontational type person to not put up with bullying.
Speaker 1: It's a whole different thing, you know what I mean? Like,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't get I don't care if you're
Speaker 1: for the mets of the Yankees, you know, but it
Speaker 1: don't don't tell my my cousin he's an assholet because
Speaker 1: he likes the Yankees, you know. Okay, So, now in
Speaker 1: your eighth decade, what have you learned? Because because I know,
Speaker 1: but as we get older, as we get older, we
Speaker 1: learned something. Listen, I'm in my seventh decade. I'm just
Speaker 1: to have entre two behind you. What have you learned?
Speaker 1: Because as you get older, you do get you do
Speaker 1: tend to get happier, and you do tend to get wiser. Uh,
Speaker 1: never waste the heart on, never pass the bathroom, never
Speaker 1: trust the fart. Those are the three things that people
Speaker 1: used to always say, and I never understood what they
Speaker 1: were talking about. And now it's the fun gospel. Well
Speaker 1: that begs a question. Do you annything begs the question?
Speaker 1: You need a couple of new phrases. That makes me
Speaker 1: want to ask a question. You know what that that
Speaker 1: brings something to mind? Begs a question. You sound like
Speaker 1: a fucking British politician. Okay, stress it. Do you go?
Speaker 1: Do you take any anti pee medication? No? No, no,
Speaker 1: no no no. Can you sit through a movie? You
Speaker 1: mean you mean you mean, uh, to make it through
Speaker 1: the night or something? No. I get up and pee plenty,
Speaker 1: and sometimes I don't. Uh. Usually I'm fine, uh with
Speaker 1: the movie. I'll sit there and I know there's gonna
Speaker 1: be fourteen commercials I mean fourth incoming attractions, And when
Speaker 1: I know it's getting close, I zoom to the bathroom
Speaker 1: and take my quick leak and zoom back. You know,
Speaker 1: I have no pride about that. I have And Pete
Speaker 1: in a popcorn box yet. But it's been a long
Speaker 1: you know, very rarely where you sit there in agony. Um.
Speaker 1: But I don't. I don't take any of that stuff,
Speaker 1: you know, to make you get when I wonder, would
Speaker 1: it have been like the early nineties or something. Nancy
Speaker 1: and I had moved up to our bedroom, was in
Speaker 1: our attic, you know, we finished the attic, and all
Speaker 1: of a sudden I started getting up in the middle
Speaker 1: of night to pee, and I said, Holy Christ, my
Speaker 1: life is over. And I was getting up like twice
Speaker 1: a night to pee. And I hadn't changed, you know,
Speaker 1: it didn't change my diet. I didn't have. It was
Speaker 1: the same getting up in the morning. And I thought,
Speaker 1: I am so screwed. And as quick as it happened,
Speaker 1: it just stopped and it never happened again. And I
Speaker 1: was like, what kind of god is that that? You know,
Speaker 1: I really thought that it was the end of the world.
Speaker 1: I thought I was done, you know, And but no,
Speaker 1: you know so but now, you know, I get up
Speaker 1: a bunch of times, you know, it was sometimes sometimes
Speaker 1: not so much, but it's built in, you know. I
Speaker 1: get up and a nasty taste in my mouth, so
Speaker 1: I get up and I brushed my teeth, and I
Speaker 1: take a pee and I kicked the cat. It's just
Speaker 1: part of it, you know, instead of instead of all crap,
Speaker 1: I gotta get up, it's oh, I get to go
Speaker 1: back to bed. And I spent a lot of years
Speaker 1: where I didn't get to go back to bed. To
Speaker 1: this day, it's twenty years later, I'm still like, look
Speaker 1: at that fucking pillow just waiting for me. Fuck everybody
Speaker 1: look at this, you know, you know, but when somebody
Speaker 1: says you do you regret leaving the Stern show, I
Speaker 1: don't look at my bank book. I look at my
Speaker 1: pillow and go you know what, you know it was
Speaker 1: it was it was a toss up, you know. So
Speaker 1: what what time do you get up? Now? Whenever? I
Speaker 1: fucking all fit? You know, sometimes seven, sometimes as in
Speaker 1: the summer. In the summer, I'm usually you know, up
Speaker 1: at seven and go for a really nice, nice long
Speaker 1: swim and then come back and I'm in bed with
Speaker 1: my girlfriend and we have tea and you know, watching
Speaker 1: TV and then at breakfast, you know, but otherwise it's uh,
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's it's more about when she wakes up,
Speaker 1: you know, she wakes up. She brings us up a
Speaker 1: couple of cups of tea, you know, one or two
Speaker 1: and uh, but there's no there's no pressure, you know,
Speaker 1: never any pressure, you know, once in a blue moon.
Speaker 1: You know, I haven't done in a while, spentional. I
Speaker 1: don't even been to my city apartment since the COVID.
Speaker 1: But it's so funny because once in a while I
Speaker 1: would do a Q one oh four with Jim Kerr,
Speaker 1: the morning show, all the way down in the A,
Speaker 1: T and T Building, and you know, i'd be on
Speaker 1: with him at like six, so i'd have to get
Speaker 1: up at six or quarter to six, and just getting
Speaker 1: up one day at quarter six, I'd be like, holy fuck,
Speaker 1: and forget quarter to six. I had to be in
Speaker 1: my chair in Manhattan at six o'clock living here in Bayville.
Speaker 1: You know, I got up at twenty twenty after four
Speaker 1: or you know, it's so funny. I got up at
Speaker 1: four fifteen years and all of a sudden the other
Speaker 1: day somebody goes, yeah, I can't believe you used to
Speaker 1: get up at four twenty. I never made the connection
Speaker 1: of four twenty before. And I was like, and they
Speaker 1: thought I was kidding. They said, oh, you're foolish. I
Speaker 1: didn't no, no, I never thought about before. You know,
Speaker 1: how did you meet your girlfriend that you have now? Um,
Speaker 1: it's so weird because we worked in parallel. But she
Speaker 1: was a singer on Long Island in different bands for
Speaker 1: thirty years or something, and then she started working with Omnipop,
Speaker 1: which is a booking a talent agency on the south
Speaker 1: shore Long Island. So we've been in the same industry forever.
Speaker 1: And I was headlining at a club here on Long
Speaker 1: Island called the Brokerage, and Omnipop has a division that's
Speaker 1: in California, and they have this act that you who's
Speaker 1: coming on strong She's kick an ask like crazy. So
Speaker 1: this is like five or six years ago. But her
Speaker 1: name was is Erika Rhodes and her her aunt is
Speaker 1: married to Garrison Keeley. I'm sure you know that name.
Speaker 1: And so she was opening up for me and she
Speaker 1: was coming in from California, so somebody from Omnipop had
Speaker 1: to pick her up at the train station and bring
Speaker 1: her to the show. And Barbara brought her to the
Speaker 1: show and said, for whatever reason, said you know, so
Speaker 1: I'll go in, you know, and it was it's just
Speaker 1: you know that you look back and say, it's so weird.
Speaker 1: But it's not weird because if it hadn't happened, you
Speaker 1: wouldn't be asking me this question. But you know, there's
Speaker 1: nobody in the bar because the showroom is packed, and
Speaker 1: I'm standing at the bar and no, she was standing
Speaker 1: at the bar and I came walking to the bar
Speaker 1: and he was just very pretty blonde standing at the bar.
Speaker 1: And I walked up and said who are you? And
Speaker 1: she said, I'm Barbara And I said, wow, you know
Speaker 1: you're married. At the time, I'm single. You know, I
Speaker 1: would wasn't dating anybody or anything, you know, nothing serious
Speaker 1: going on. And I said, you know, I'm a forward jerk.
Speaker 1: You know, the same old guys that are you married?
Speaker 1: She said, Now, I said, you've got a boyfriend. She
Speaker 1: said no. I said, well, then we got to take
Speaker 1: a picture. And we took a picture. And I said,
Speaker 1: now you gotta give me your email dress so I
Speaker 1: could send you the picture or you sit or your
Speaker 1: cell phone or whatever. And then I spent I sent
Speaker 1: up the picture and spent the next month or so
Speaker 1: trying to talk her and to go on date with me, because,
Speaker 1: as you know, as my reputation filled in behind me
Speaker 1: and then by too long a story to explain, I
Speaker 1: went up with four of the best seats in the
Speaker 1: house to a Willie Nelson concert way up in Simsbury, Connecticut,
Speaker 1: and I said, do you want to go to see
Speaker 1: Willie Nelson in Connecticut? It was like a three hour drive,
Speaker 1: so she took a chance. And when he drove to
Speaker 1: see William, by the time we got back the relationship,
Speaker 1: you know, and she's and she's great, she's you know,
Speaker 1: she's you know, she's the exact opposite of me. And
Speaker 1: she's so gentle and so neat and so clean and
Speaker 1: uh but she's great, you know. And you know she's
Speaker 1: kept me alive. Okay. Are you always so forward in
Speaker 1: every walk of life? You have any social anxiety or
Speaker 1: no matter who's there, you don't get up tight. You'll
Speaker 1: say what you need to. You know. I would love
Speaker 1: to say yes, I don't, but I'm oh, I'm completely uptight,
Speaker 1: completely uptight. But I just pushed past it, you know,
Speaker 1: and and I love it, you know. I I spent
Speaker 1: you know, eight years at the cann Film Festival and
Speaker 1: Sundance and Toronto, and you know, I I'll walk up
Speaker 1: to anybody I don't care, and I and I expect
Speaker 1: the same. I expect people to feel free to walk
Speaker 1: up to me, and they usually do that because they
Speaker 1: they say, you just seem approachable, and I am, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm certainly approachable. Now, I'm just a little
Speaker 1: old man. But when there was a time when I
Speaker 1: wasn't really famous, but I was known, you know, and uh,
Speaker 1: people can tell you know, it's it's like with a horse,
Speaker 1: the odds, the odd thing, and that I'm not petrified
Speaker 1: at horses, but I don't. I can't believe that something
Speaker 1: that big is that trust you can trust that that much.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I think anytime I've been a little terrified
Speaker 1: of walking up to a girl, I've I've done it,
Speaker 1: you know, just whatever. I'm not saying. I didn't get
Speaker 1: shut down a zillion times, but you know, well, you know,
Speaker 1: you really have nothing to lose, you know, it's easy
Speaker 1: to say that, and then you know, there must have
Speaker 1: been a million times where I just slinked away. I
Speaker 1: just don't choose to remember that, you know. Okay, So
Speaker 1: what kind of kid were you growing up? Were you
Speaker 1: the life of the party, were you an outsider? M
Speaker 1: I was raised by wolves. Uh, but not really. We
Speaker 1: were like the Waltons until say, seventh grade, and then
Speaker 1: my father was drinking way too much. Let's go back,
Speaker 1: what did you What did your father and mother do
Speaker 1: for a living? Uh? My mother was brilliant, but she
Speaker 1: dropped out of the workforce to get married in and um,
Speaker 1: you know, she got knocked up. My parents got married
Speaker 1: on July four and I was born on Valentine's Day,
Speaker 1: you know, do the math. And my father was a
Speaker 1: good looking guy, came out of the service and he
Speaker 1: didn't get married. He was thirty five, she was twenty seven.
Speaker 1: And um, my grandfather built the house I live in,
Speaker 1: and my father and mother lived downstairs, and my father's
Speaker 1: brother married my mother's sister and they lived upstairs like
Speaker 1: the Nortons and the Crampton's. And I was the first kid,
Speaker 1: adding the two brothers and two sisters. So for the
Speaker 1: first two years of my life I had four doting parents.
Speaker 1: And then my mother had another kid, my aunt had
Speaker 1: a kid. They moved out. I went from four parents
Speaker 1: to none, and I spent the last seventy years ago
Speaker 1: and where the fund did everybody go? All? Right? My
Speaker 1: mother was very smart, very witty, uh, unbelievably so, which
Speaker 1: I didn't. You don't know when you were a kid,
Speaker 1: because there's a fish not it's in water, you know.
Speaker 1: And my father had a very political job. My great
Speaker 1: uncle was the chairman of the National Republican National Republican Party.
Speaker 1: He was Eisenhower's campaign manager, and he coined the phrase
Speaker 1: I like Ike. So everybody in the family had a
Speaker 1: Republican job. In the fifties, Nassau County on on Long
Speaker 1: Island was like the forty ninth state. So we always
Speaker 1: went to the ball games, to the World Series, you know,
Speaker 1: and uh, we had a great, great, great life. And
Speaker 1: then my father started drinking too much, and I was
Speaker 1: I was fun. You know. People used to say, well,
Speaker 1: you the class you know, when we first started getting
Speaker 1: famous on the Stern Show, people had asked for just
Speaker 1: what you said, and people will say, well, you're the
Speaker 1: class clown. And I wouldn't just say yes, because in
Speaker 1: my twisted mind, that would be like given myself a coronation.
Speaker 1: That who am I to coornate myself if I was
Speaker 1: the class clown? And then I was like, wait a minute.
Speaker 1: The cover of my first comedy album is my eighth
Speaker 1: grade class picture and I'm giving the finger and I said,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, maybe by the fault. I was the
Speaker 1: class clown. And I absolutely was the class clown. I
Speaker 1: was just you know, always, always a ball breaker, and
Speaker 1: then started playing the guitar in high school, you know,
Speaker 1: like every other guy, to meet chicks and to have fun.
Speaker 1: So you're in school, good student, Yeah I was. I
Speaker 1: was very, very smart. Um my eighth grade math teacher,
Speaker 1: my eighth grade homeroom teacher, my math teacher. It's a
Speaker 1: very small school and I lived on the street. We
Speaker 1: had uh excelled, uh excelled math class preparing people for college.
Speaker 1: But you had to come in at seven thirty, a
Speaker 1: half hour before school started, and she would call my
Speaker 1: house to get me roused up, so I would come
Speaker 1: in and and come to and uh I did really great.
Speaker 1: But I mean I almost didn't graduate because you know,
Speaker 1: I got so drunk for all senior high school. You know,
Speaker 1: I got accepted in Michigan State in December. They they
Speaker 1: passed you right away at those big schools. So I
Speaker 1: spent the next six months drunk and missed so much school.
Speaker 1: But I was, Yeah, I was smart, and I went
Speaker 1: to I graduated from Michigan State University in nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: one as a mechanical engineer. Yeah, that's my question. Why
Speaker 1: a mechanical engineering is not a easy course of study
Speaker 1: so hard? My father had been an engineer in Alabama
Speaker 1: for a couple of years that he went to school.
Speaker 1: I just innately knew if I didn't take a really
Speaker 1: difficult major, did I would just get drunk and funk
Speaker 1: out of college somehow. And all my craziness and all
Speaker 1: my fog, I knew that. So here, I'm taking this heart.
Speaker 1: I mean, my roommates, you know, taking two hours of
Speaker 1: Shakespeare and getting four credits, and I'm spending eight hours
Speaker 1: in the chemistry lab for four hour, I mean four
Speaker 1: times a week to get the same four credits. You know,
Speaker 1: it was really really difficult, you know, but I'm taking
Speaker 1: atomic physics and mechanics and it's the late sixties, so
Speaker 1: I'm going to college with bare feet, with my dog
Speaker 1: with a ponytail, and the other guys are cheating off
Speaker 1: my paper. You know. It was like pretty storybook, you know,
Speaker 1: it was good. And I tuned and I turned on.
Speaker 1: I dropped out. I missed, I dropped out a term.
Speaker 1: I failed enough classes to miss the term, and I
Speaker 1: missed another term because I I've screwed up my knee.
Speaker 1: So I was missing an entire year of school. And
Speaker 1: then I met Darlene and we fell in love and
Speaker 1: I had nothing better, nothing better to do, so I
Speaker 1: went back to school and finished. Okay, did you have
Speaker 1: any intention of being and no intention of doing anything?
Speaker 1: All I knew was I wasn't gonna get a job.
Speaker 1: You know, the people I was graduating with, like, right,
Speaker 1: I'm starting at Forward for two dollars and they give
Speaker 1: me a house. Oh, I'm starting with GM and they
Speaker 1: give me a car. And I didn't even I didn't
Speaker 1: even take one interview. Are you kidding me? And I stayed.
Speaker 1: I stayed in East Lansing, Michigan another two years. I
Speaker 1: was there for seven years in the bubble, the bubble
Speaker 1: that was the college town of East Lansing, Michigan in
Speaker 1: the late sixties. I mean, talk about dying and going
Speaker 1: to heaven. It just was. It was beyond spectacus. Okay,
Speaker 1: but you're going to college in the late sixties and
Speaker 1: your family is Republican, and based on your earlier commentary
Speaker 1: anti Trump or whatever, at what point the Vietnam War.
Speaker 1: What how do you turn you yeah, Vietnam. And you know,
Speaker 1: of course, you know my father, you know, my father
Speaker 1: was a local politician and my brother took a Nixon
Speaker 1: bumper sticker and put it on my parents car upside
Speaker 1: down so it said noxing and oh my father blew
Speaker 1: a gasca, you know, like it was. But there was
Speaker 1: it was all. It was all. Everybody in politics is
Speaker 1: just on the take on the take on. My father said, listen, Jackie,
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, Nixon's an asshole. But Nixon didn't do
Speaker 1: anything any different than any other politician has ever done.
Speaker 1: He just was stupid enough to get caught. And that
Speaker 1: is running my head for a long time because my
Speaker 1: father wasn't a dishonest guy. He was. He was a
Speaker 1: stand up, great guy. You know. Um, I'm not I'm
Speaker 1: not really a political guy. I just know I hate
Speaker 1: Trump because I I don't you know, I I hated
Speaker 1: him when he used to come on The Stern Show.
Speaker 1: He's one of those people that would come in the
Speaker 1: room and he didn't know there's anybody else in the room.
Speaker 1: And I don't put up for that, you know, I
Speaker 1: don't give a funk who you are. Were you anti war?
Speaker 1: Did you protest the Vietnam? Of course? You know I
Speaker 1: had a ponytail, and you know, I actually, uh, there
Speaker 1: was a day I woke up and I had dropped
Speaker 1: out of school, and the guy the and the social
Speaker 1: science professor didn't know I had dropped out of school.
Speaker 1: And we used to have h student uh not student students,
Speaker 1: said instance, And what we did was Mrkin State was
Speaker 1: so big that somebody would give a lecture, but there
Speaker 1: would be uh satellite satellites of that lecture in different
Speaker 1: halls around the campus, and the student assistance would going
Speaker 1: through the room and plug in the TV and turn
Speaker 1: it on, and they'd be the professor who was giving
Speaker 1: the lecture somewhere else on campus, and all the kids
Speaker 1: would be sitting there and at the end of the
Speaker 1: lecture to turn off the TV and lead the discussions.
Speaker 1: So I was a student assistant, but then I dropped
Speaker 1: out of school, but I was still doing it. And
Speaker 1: then when all of a sudden this should hit the
Speaker 1: fan and everything was crazy. I actually walked in and
Speaker 1: wrote on the blackboard, please do not come to class,
Speaker 1: please stay home, you know, And of course that they
Speaker 1: Professor Calemton said Jackie, I gotta fire you. You can't
Speaker 1: do that, you know, and uh, and then so you
Speaker 1: wanted them to stay home to protest. Yeah. So that afternoon,
Speaker 1: me and my friend us go to see the movie Woodstock,
Speaker 1: and we come out of wood Stock like craze hippies,
Speaker 1: and I go by a six pack. And the professor
Speaker 1: that had fired me that morning was having a barbecue
Speaker 1: for all the student assistance and he was saying, Jackie,
Speaker 1: I can't even fire you because you're not in I
Speaker 1: want to fire you, but you're not in the in
Speaker 1: the pace pay thing because you're not registered, because you
Speaker 1: dropped out. So he couldn't stop my paycheck because I
Speaker 1: couldn't have got one. He was having a barbecue that
Speaker 1: night out in NASCAR's East. Let's say I bought a
Speaker 1: six pack. Hits like to the middle of nowhere. I'm
Speaker 1: walking along, I got a ponytail holding the six pack.
Speaker 1: I'm drinking a beer, and an off duty cop pulls
Speaker 1: over and comes up and says, you can't walk along
Speaker 1: drinking a beer. Made me walk back to the gas station,
Speaker 1: called the cops, made me pour out the beer's they're
Speaker 1: threatening like they're gonna cut my hair. And kick my ass.
Speaker 1: This Michigan in ninety eight or something sixty nine, and
Speaker 1: the cops show up, and I have an outstanding muffler
Speaker 1: ticket from ann Arbor from two years before. And I
Speaker 1: go to jail, and I called the professor who had
Speaker 1: fired me that morning at He left his own barbecue
Speaker 1: and came ten or twenty miles to bail me out
Speaker 1: of jail and brought me back to the party. And
Speaker 1: of course I walked into the party. I was a
Speaker 1: big hero, and I ran the whole story of going
Speaker 1: to jail, just like Carla Guthrie analysis restaurant, and I
Speaker 1: fucked the best looking student assistant. It was like one
Speaker 1: of those days that you lived your whole life in
Speaker 1: one day, you know what I mean. I got up,
Speaker 1: I got fired, I went to Woodstock and I got arrested.
Speaker 1: I went home. Oh oh, and that's not even jeez.
Speaker 1: It always sounds like I'm making up as I go along.
Speaker 1: I'm banging this girl, and they called me. They had
Speaker 1: taken the doors down at the dormitory Snyder's Phillips Hall
Speaker 1: in Michigan State. One side was the boys, one side
Speaker 1: was the girls, and underneath in the middle was the
Speaker 1: wreck room and they had taken the doors off, so
Speaker 1: and the boys were moving them with the girls, and
Speaker 1: the girls were moving them with the boys. And my
Speaker 1: band was playing in the in the in the hall
Speaker 1: in the middle. So I had to stop banging this
Speaker 1: girl and go to go play with my band. And
Speaker 1: we played like I know, if you all know, there
Speaker 1: was a song called Volunteers of America jeplane the Jefferson Airplane.
Speaker 1: We played it for two hours. I mean we just
Speaker 1: that dad, that that dad, that bad. I mean, I
Speaker 1: lived a life. You know, I should have been dead
Speaker 1: five times, you know. You know, high school was crazy,
Speaker 1: college was crazy. Graduate from college or in least lancing
Speaker 1: for another two years? What are you doing? Uh? My
Speaker 1: girlfriend and I broke up, and you know, I told
Speaker 1: her she had to leave. You gotta leave, you gotta leave.
Speaker 1: And once she left, uh, I was destroyed. And uh.
Speaker 1: I had lived with a couple of guys like drunks
Speaker 1: and heroin addicts, and they, you know, they lived, they
Speaker 1: moved into my house. But I had some great friends.
Speaker 1: We had a good time. And finally a friend, an
Speaker 1: old friend, came from New York and well, a couple
Speaker 1: of guys came from New York to live with me
Speaker 1: for a while and uh. And then another old friend
Speaker 1: came from New York. He said, look, I'm getting you
Speaker 1: out of here. And he said, look, we'll go to
Speaker 1: Denver and we'll say hello and uh, and then we'll
Speaker 1: go to Amsterdam and buy some hash and make some money.
Speaker 1: I said, all right, sounds good. He came to pick
Speaker 1: me up and he's lancing. He stayed three months. I
Speaker 1: hadn't had a car for years, so all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: he's got a car. So we're stealing steaks, living like kings,
Speaker 1: having the time of a fucking lifetime. Finally, my kid
Speaker 1: brother comes out. He's nine years old. We put him
Speaker 1: and my dog and the two of us and everything
Speaker 1: we own in this tiny Babo sports car and drove
Speaker 1: to Denver. And we stayed in Denver for six months.
Speaker 1: That's a whole eight guys from the hometown of Oyster Bay,
Speaker 1: Long Island living in the same condo, working construction. It was.
Speaker 1: It always sounds like I'm making up as I go along.
Speaker 1: And then my old friend that I played music within
Speaker 1: high school and during summers in college came through and
Speaker 1: he said, Jackie, what are you doing? And I said,
Speaker 1: I can't do this anywhere I'm working construction. I can't
Speaker 1: even play my guitar because my hands are all kalous.
Speaker 1: He will also go back to New York and start
Speaker 1: a band. I said, I'll tell you what. I'm writing
Speaker 1: songs and I want to be funny. If we could
Speaker 1: tell jokes and play original songs, I'm in. He said,
Speaker 1: let's do it. We came back and the entire seventies,
Speaker 1: me and the Sky had a band called the off
Speaker 1: Our Rockers. H H O you are. And we drove
Speaker 1: around in the seventies, in the nineteen fifty five bright
Speaker 1: Yell Cadillac Hearsts, and we always had girls, We always
Speaker 1: had booze, we always had pot, and we had so
Speaker 1: much fun, and but we never got anywhere. Did you
Speaker 1: did you try to get something? I wrote so many songs,
Speaker 1: and my heart was so in it. And when it
Speaker 1: comes to art, how much your heart is in it,
Speaker 1: and how successfully you are at it, and how much
Speaker 1: money you make at and how famous you get is
Speaker 1: not necessarily in any way correlated to how deeply invested
Speaker 1: in that you were. I mean, I I ground out
Speaker 1: these songs. I wasn't looking for moon June Spoon. These
Speaker 1: songs were coming out of my I don't know whether
Speaker 1: you know when you're talking about being an artist, the
Speaker 1: minute you say that word, you feel like you're full
Speaker 1: of ship. It's like, to this day, if I tell
Speaker 1: somebody I'm a comedian, I'm still waiting for somebody tapping
Speaker 1: on his shoulder saying, no, you're not. You know, I
Speaker 1: mean that whole insecurity comes with it. But we never
Speaker 1: got anywhere, and we were so much fun. We told jokes,
Speaker 1: we did routines, we played original songs. But there was
Speaker 1: no video of that band, and we broke up in
Speaker 1: n and a year later, everybody had VCRs and video
Speaker 1: cameras and it's just beyond the pale. But the band
Speaker 1: broke up, and I had been telling jokes and telling
Speaker 1: jokes and playing gigs by myself with my guitar and
Speaker 1: my jokes. And then I met some comedians and they
Speaker 1: would come to my gigs and get up on stage
Speaker 1: because there was no place to have stage time. And
Speaker 1: like Eddie Murphy and Bob Nelson and Rob Bartlett, Richie
Speaker 1: MINDBEDI the Bob Wood's, they've walked to my old friends.
Speaker 1: To this day, they would just show up and I
Speaker 1: put them on stage and you know, and we'd be horrible.
Speaker 1: And then I started booking shows around. Okay, this was
Speaker 1: still when you were singing songs. I was. I was
Speaker 1: singing songs, but it was a comedy act. It was
Speaker 1: it was, it was my origin, all songs, but I
Speaker 1: told jokes. And when I started doing comedy, like I
Speaker 1: called my official start to January nine nine, and I
Speaker 1: went from being a uh a guy who sang songs
Speaker 1: and told jokes to being a guy who told jokes
Speaker 1: and sang songs. Now you're you're known that sounds say
Speaker 1: said subtle. But you know, for the whole whole first
Speaker 1: year as a comedian, I always had on my guitar. Oh,
Speaker 1: I had a ponytail for me. You're known for telling
Speaker 1: jokes in a rapid fire away. What was your act
Speaker 1: back then? Just a couple of you know, I'd tell
Speaker 1: a couple of jokes and it wasn't really I never
Speaker 1: even thought in terms of an act. You know, do
Speaker 1: you remember that you remember the jokes you told? Then? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I told him last night. It's the same ship, you know,
Speaker 1: I found and I got everything here and my you
Speaker 1: wouldn't believe my, my, my garage here, and I got
Speaker 1: everything I ever recorded, and I found out that some
Speaker 1: of these old VHS tapes are okay. And my friend
Speaker 1: Ed took a night six MR rips in Valley Cottage
Speaker 1: and he and he saved it onto an MP four
Speaker 1: and he said it to me, And I'm watching it
Speaker 1: and it's the same jokes. And I'm sitting there laughing
Speaker 1: at myself, laughing at myself, And I knew those jokes
Speaker 1: were already old. The jokes I tell I heard nineteen.
Speaker 1: You know, they're just funny. They're just timeless, you know.
Speaker 1: And what was really funny. The reason I know more
Speaker 1: jokes than anybody in the world is I always absorbed them.
Speaker 1: They always stuck to me, and I don't know why,
Speaker 1: but they just did. But then, when we had the
Speaker 1: band in the seventies, we used to tell jokes and
Speaker 1: play songs, and we played in the same two, three
Speaker 1: four clubs week after week after week. Now, nobody ever
Speaker 1: took the time to tell us that a comedian has
Speaker 1: an act and he does it to a different audience
Speaker 1: every night. We were playing to the same audience every week.
Speaker 1: So we're scrounged around doing everything. We could define new
Speaker 1: jokes and new ideas because we had to play to
Speaker 1: the same people week after week after week, and so
Speaker 1: I just accumulated this ridiculous but I already knew the jokes.
Speaker 1: It's it's hard to explain, you know, if you're a
Speaker 1: joke teller, people cannot wait to tell you a joke.
Speaker 1: I know. That's ridiculous. They're so sure they have a
Speaker 1: joke you haven't heard. Now. Of course it's the jokes
Speaker 1: that somebody's gonna tell me. Of course, of course gonna
Speaker 1: be something that I know, because it's popular. It's going
Speaker 1: around as early as like nineteen seventy five. We'd be
Speaker 1: on break and somebody come up and say, all right,
Speaker 1: I got a joke to you, and I'd say, all right,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna count down from ten, and when I get
Speaker 1: to zero, if I haven't told you a punchline, I'll
Speaker 1: buy you a drink. En seventy five, I never bought
Speaker 1: anybody to drink. I got so if somebody's talking about
Speaker 1: the Indian and the cowboy going down the river on
Speaker 1: a canoe, I said, you know what, this is the
Speaker 1: priest in the nun going across the desert. I just
Speaker 1: could see the parallels, figure out jokes, and they just
Speaker 1: they just stuck with me. I can't really explain it,
Speaker 1: but they And then when my band broke up, what
Speaker 1: I have all I knew was all I knew was
Speaker 1: I had a zillion jokes, a lot of original songs,
Speaker 1: and the desire to never ever get a regular job.
Speaker 1: I was never going to be become a commuter. And
Speaker 1: then I went up on the Stern Show and the
Speaker 1: people that got up to commute laughed at me because literally, okay,
Speaker 1: getting up so early. You know, how important is the
Speaker 1: telling of a joke as opposed to the lines of
Speaker 1: the joke? Uh about? So what are the keys to
Speaker 1: telling a good joke? It's actually very simple. You you
Speaker 1: pare them down. I remember, even very very early on,
Speaker 1: I get so angry because like the Playboy jokes, you
Speaker 1: know on the Playboy, you know the open Playboy. Uh,
Speaker 1: the the handsome, gorgeous, voluptuous young blonde sauntered into the
Speaker 1: bar and found herself at the bar stool and looked
Speaker 1: over at the bartender and I said, now a girl
Speaker 1: goes into a bar, stage is set. That's all you need.
Speaker 1: A fat girl goes into a bar, stage is set.
Speaker 1: You chop everything away, and you also tell things it's
Speaker 1: got to be in the present. And that sounds that
Speaker 1: once again, that's subtle. You know, a girl went into
Speaker 1: the bar and said, it's already history. A girl goes
Speaker 1: into a bar, A guy walks into a bar. Now
Speaker 1: it's real time, it's president, it's now. I know it
Speaker 1: sounds stupid. And the main thing, yeah, I've I've written
Speaker 1: lots of articles for people. Yeah, I mean for magazines
Speaker 1: and stuff. Also is you make sure that you know
Speaker 1: the punch line absolutely cold, because you can stumble through
Speaker 1: a whole damn joke and fudge and screw around, and
Speaker 1: as long as you hit the punch line just right,
Speaker 1: that makes up for a real lot. You know, if
Speaker 1: you you stumble over a punchline, get a word wrong,
Speaker 1: you know you lost. I mean, well, none of this
Speaker 1: means anything to anybody. Nobody cares about telling jokes. But
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, how many people people are telling
Speaker 1: jokes all over the universe today? Oh no, no, I
Speaker 1: know that, but they don't care about getting it right.
Speaker 1: I spent I spent so many countless, countless hours at bars, parties,
Speaker 1: getting stone, getting drunk, doing acid I would be. I
Speaker 1: would listened to every joke that everybody ever told me.
Speaker 1: And as the years went on, it became more and
Speaker 1: more and more rare that somebody tell me something I
Speaker 1: hadn't heard. But I I still get so excited what
Speaker 1: I hear joke I haven't heard before. And sometimes they're
Speaker 1: really obvious jokes that just slipped through the cracks. My favorite,
Speaker 1: my favorite example, Uh, do you know what Mark Hudson
Speaker 1: is the Hudson. Oh, he's a good past so so
Speaker 1: Mark Hudson Um that was doing a show at Iridium
Speaker 1: at fifty fifty one Broadway. Uh, downstairs and uh it
Speaker 1: was called Thursdays on the Hudson, and he would he
Speaker 1: would you know Billy J. Kramer, people like that, you know,
Speaker 1: people who's that? What was that? You know? People of
Speaker 1: note from notes past. There were always great shows and
Speaker 1: Mark is so talented, so funny. But if you know,
Speaker 1: if I I never could just go to these things,
Speaker 1: I go to see somebody that's they always asked me
Speaker 1: up on stage, and I'm always, uh funk, I gotta
Speaker 1: go on stage. And meanwhile, then if they don't ask me,
Speaker 1: I'm like, why didn't they ask me? You know? Every
Speaker 1: performance the Saint. But I went up and uh, the
Speaker 1: place is packed. Where and when it was doesn't matter,
Speaker 1: but I just like it just it makes more interesting
Speaker 1: to me. So the show is done and we go
Speaker 1: on the back. We're hanging out in the green room
Speaker 1: for like a half hour, and we come back out
Speaker 1: and the place is still packed that people want to
Speaker 1: say hellad of Mark and say he load of Billy
Speaker 1: and say hello Jackie. Whatever, it's still crammed. And a
Speaker 1: guy comes up to me and he says, Jackie, I've
Speaker 1: been a fan for forty years, and I know you
Speaker 1: know every joke in the world, but I got to
Speaker 1: try one on you. And I didn't do those, but
Speaker 1: I said listen. Of course, you know I listened. I
Speaker 1: listen to everybody's jokes. This guy told me a joke
Speaker 1: that's too dirty for my act. I tell her I
Speaker 1: have a very, very filthy fast but it was too
Speaker 1: It's too dirty for my act because it slows people
Speaker 1: up because if people go oh, or they get the
Speaker 1: least bit thront, just like Jesus. I could care less
Speaker 1: about Jesus, but I don't do much Jesus jokes because
Speaker 1: if somebody goes, oh, I get get hit by lightning,
Speaker 1: I've lost them for the next joke or the next phrase.
Speaker 1: You know, I don't want to do anything to slow
Speaker 1: up put up any hurdles. Right, So this guy told
Speaker 1: me a joke that he's one of my favorite jokes
Speaker 1: of all time. But I can't use it my act
Speaker 1: because it slows down what's going on, because it's so disgusting.
Speaker 1: So you gonna tell it, that said, it's a joke
Speaker 1: you could tell on terrestrial radio, and it's a joke
Speaker 1: you could tell to a five year old kid. It's
Speaker 1: not about it's not a scenario, think about the city,
Speaker 1: the police, the scenario just created. It's too disgusting for
Speaker 1: my act. But you could tell it to a kid,
Speaker 1: and you can tell it on terrestrial radio. If you
Speaker 1: tell it to a kid, will the kid laugh? You die?
Speaker 1: A girl calls a doctor and should stock I have diarrhea?
Speaker 1: Can I take a bath? And he says, if you
Speaker 1: have enough, which is just so But it's just so funny.
Speaker 1: It's SuperFect, and I felt he's a jackie. You don't
Speaker 1: have to pretend. I thought, not pretending funny? My God
Speaker 1: is beautiful. Oh I love that's just so funny. You
Speaker 1: know I do. I do cameo dot com Do you
Speaker 1: know what that is? I do those cameo dot coms?
Speaker 1: I do you know? I did like three today, You
Speaker 1: know I I love doing them and I could have
Speaker 1: done fourteen. I could have done fourteen while I was
Speaker 1: waiting to do this. How much huge? How much you charge?
Speaker 1: I only charge fifty bucks because I'll tell you I
Speaker 1: don't I don't get to perform. I haven't had a
Speaker 1: show since March. This is They're like my method ome
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. I tell three, four or
Speaker 1: five six jokes on each of these things and have
Speaker 1: fun and laugh. That gets me through the night, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. I really enjoyed doing them, and
Speaker 1: uh that that diarrhea joke is always in there. It's
Speaker 1: always in there. A lot of times I start with
Speaker 1: it because it's really fun, you know. So you put
Speaker 1: out your first comedy record in Augus. What happened was
Speaker 1: I had worked in a recording studio after they liked
Speaker 1: a song that we had, a crazy song called the
Speaker 1: Pots song that Howard always played on the radio, and
Speaker 1: my band recorded it, and the guys that owned the
Speaker 1: recording studio asked me to work there, and I did,
Speaker 1: and learned enough about recording to know that any idiot
Speaker 1: can have an album. And then I told my girlfriend
Speaker 1: they left and all my jokes. I borrowed a hundred
Speaker 1: bucks from fifteen different people and made my first comedy record.
Speaker 1: The covers my eighth grade class picture I'm Giving the
Speaker 1: Finger and um. It was recorded at upstairs at a
Speaker 1: restaurant with two microphones hanging and Ana Camici cassette player
Speaker 1: with me on one side and the crowd mike on
Speaker 1: the other. And uh. Then I made another album, and
Speaker 1: then I made another albuh. This was back in the
Speaker 1: days before the Internet. Independent distribution was difficult. How did
Speaker 1: you get the there was there was no distribution. I
Speaker 1: sold them at gigs, I sent them to everybody. It
Speaker 1: was more of a promotion than anything. You know, nobody
Speaker 1: was selling anything. I was the first guy by a
Speaker 1: decade to do that. And when I first gome I'll
Speaker 1: tell you when I want to pick up my first
Speaker 1: thousand albums at Port Authority, it was like I was
Speaker 1: picking up quintuplets. I mean I was. I can still
Speaker 1: remember the aurora around my head. I was like, oh
Speaker 1: my god, and there's even so much more to it
Speaker 1: that I will not bore you with. That's really crazy,
Speaker 1: and I never forget. I worked at Pipps in Brooklyn,
Speaker 1: and I must have been so excited that I promoted
Speaker 1: the hell out of it. And I think I was
Speaker 1: making forty bucks for the night, and I sold fifteen
Speaker 1: albums at five bucks apiece, which was an extra seventy
Speaker 1: five bucks, which in nineteen seventy nine for a low
Speaker 1: Ashlon comic. And then I would sell them after my gigs,
Speaker 1: and the other guys used to make fun of me, Oh,
Speaker 1: there goes Jackie with his albums. Oh, but I wanted
Speaker 1: Jackie's out. And then one day somebody said, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: we all made thirty dollars and he made an extra
Speaker 1: eighty dollars. Maybe he knows what he's doing, you know,
Speaker 1: Like all of a sudden, they realized, maybe I'm not
Speaker 1: an idiot because I'm signing autographs and warming up to
Speaker 1: people and having a great time. And then I wind
Speaker 1: up making a second album and a third album, and
Speaker 1: all along the way I sent him to everybody, Like
Speaker 1: if I if I ran into you, I would say,
Speaker 1: what's your name? What do you do? Oh, you're in
Speaker 1: the music industry. Let me send you my comedy album,
Speaker 1: so I would. I would hand them at the albums everybody.
Speaker 1: I was so proud of it. And by this time
Speaker 1: I actually had been in contact with Rodney Dangerfield, so
Speaker 1: I asked him to send me fight dollars. I still
Speaker 1: have my fight allar check from Rodney buying my album
Speaker 1: A little bit slower. How did you make connection with Rodney? Well,
Speaker 1: that's that's way off topic. That's but it's basically the
Speaker 1: same thing. It's me reaching out to people. I've always
Speaker 1: reached out to people. Bull Um, We'll come back to Rodney.
Speaker 1: But what happened was I put put out an album,
Speaker 1: put out another album, and each time I put out
Speaker 1: an album and send it to everybody, and put out
Speaker 1: another album and send it to everybody, and put another album.
Speaker 1: So by Nancy, who was going to become my wife,
Speaker 1: was working with me, and we must have sent out
Speaker 1: copies of all three albums with the matching cassettes and
Speaker 1: all the promo too, so many, I mean hundreds of people.
Speaker 1: And the albums were expensive, and the cassettes were expensive,
Speaker 1: and the postage was expensive, and we and we were
Speaker 1: I was hosting a Governor's Comedy Shop, this club that
Speaker 1: we started with these guys, and I mean, we're putting
Speaker 1: everything back in and we had no idea what we're doing.
Speaker 1: We didn't have any game plan, We didn't have any
Speaker 1: any you know, carrot. At the end of the stick,
Speaker 1: We're just just work. And you know, she thought I
Speaker 1: was funny, and she thought we thought something could happen.
Speaker 1: We liked our music. And then I found out from
Speaker 1: a guy in Washington that the sky just got fired
Speaker 1: and that he was moving to NBC and I should
Speaker 1: send my records to him. And I had no idea
Speaker 1: who Howard Sterne was. I just put my records in
Speaker 1: a in a you know, mailer, and we just mailed
Speaker 1: the records. And a couple of months later, Nancy called
Speaker 1: up and said, Hey, that this jockey from w NBC
Speaker 1: wants you to call him. So I called him and
Speaker 1: he said, you want to come in and help judge
Speaker 1: your talent contests over the telephone, and I said, well, sure,
Speaker 1: I'm sitting in my mother's attic nothing nothing to lose.
Speaker 1: That's where my first joke land was. And I went
Speaker 1: in and sat there and it was Howard and Fred
Speaker 1: and Robin and I sat down and we laughed for
Speaker 1: four hours, and when we got done, he said, man,
Speaker 1: you are a lot of fun. Why don't you come
Speaker 1: back next week? So I came back next week, once
Speaker 1: a week for free for three years. So I was
Speaker 1: that's pretty immediate acceptance, you know what I mean? Okay?
Speaker 1: Were you bothered by the fact that you weren't getting
Speaker 1: paid for that three years? Not the slightest amount? Okay?
Speaker 1: Because I know compensation although with NBC or was an
Speaker 1: issue further down the line. So how did it turn
Speaker 1: into a full time gig? They asked me to come back?
Speaker 1: And uh I I inherently knew how incredibly valuable that was.
Speaker 1: I mean, for fifty thousand watch UH station in the
Speaker 1: Tri State area with him to be saying see Jackie
Speaker 1: Martling at Governor's Comedy Shop every Friday and Saturday. I
Speaker 1: knew how valuable that was. And you wouldn't believe. Comics
Speaker 1: still come up to me and say, I can't believe
Speaker 1: you asked me to come on the Howard Stern Show.
Speaker 1: And I said no because I would say to somebody, hey,
Speaker 1: you want to come join me on the Howard Stern
Speaker 1: Show on Tuesday, And they would say, what's it, hey?
Speaker 1: They said, what do you mean? What's it? Hey? It's
Speaker 1: the flagship station of w NBC A m are you
Speaker 1: out of your mind? And then I parlayd I told
Speaker 1: the guys that Wrastler's Comedy Club, Look, let me do
Speaker 1: a show on Tuesday nights. I'll host Open Mike and
Speaker 1: I'll advertise it, and then you could pay me, because
Speaker 1: it's worth it for me to advertise you on the radio.
Speaker 1: And what happened was very, very very gradually I gave
Speaker 1: him ideas. Like when I first gave him some some
Speaker 1: ideas for one of his bits, he kind of looked
Speaker 1: at me like, what are you doing? I don't need help?
Speaker 1: And then I heard him doing him on the radio.
Speaker 1: And then like the next week, it was like you
Speaker 1: know what else you got? You know? And slowly but
Speaker 1: surely I was just giving him little pieces of snippets
Speaker 1: of paper and ideas. It was so gradual and so organic.
Speaker 1: And then he got fired uh from w NBC, and
Speaker 1: he got rehired at kay Rock, and after like a
Speaker 1: couple of weeks he called up and said, hey, we
Speaker 1: want you to join us again. Once a week. It
Speaker 1: was the afternoons and when I went in, there was
Speaker 1: actually a place for me to sit and right, and
Speaker 1: I physically would put the notes on half of an
Speaker 1: open loose leaf and just physically put them in front
Speaker 1: of him, and it had it had migrated to where
Speaker 1: I was. I had an actual stack of paper. At
Speaker 1: one point in the NBC, I just said, this is busy.
Speaker 1: I just got a stack of paper and a sharpie
Speaker 1: and started writing it nice and big so he could
Speaker 1: see it. And then once I was set up the
Speaker 1: way I was at k Rock, Fred would give me
Speaker 1: little ideas on a piece of paper, and one day
Speaker 1: I gave him a big stack of paper, said look,
Speaker 1: here's the paper, and here's the sharpie. You hit me
Speaker 1: a little snippet of paper. By the time I rewrite
Speaker 1: it and put it up for Howard, the moment's lost.
Speaker 1: We're already going a hundred thousand miles an hour. So
Speaker 1: he started doing that, and then they decided to put
Speaker 1: them on in mornings, and all the millions of dollars
Speaker 1: and all the millions and millions of listeners, and fifty
Speaker 1: five stations and number one on lots of them. My
Speaker 1: entire job description was he called up and said, listen,
Speaker 1: we're starting mornings. I need you to come in two
Speaker 1: days a week and do your thing with the notes.
Speaker 1: That was my total job description, do your thing with
Speaker 1: the notes. And I went in and the two days
Speaker 1: I was there, he was much funnier. So all of
Speaker 1: a sudden I was on three days, and then four
Speaker 1: days and then five days, because it was a glaring difference. So, Jackie,
Speaker 1: when you started to give Howard those notes, Prior to
Speaker 1: that point, no one was performing your role. No one
Speaker 1: was giving him any help. As far as we know,
Speaker 1: nobody had ever ever done that. Like in the old days,
Speaker 1: the radio Bob Hope and being Crossby, if those guys
Speaker 1: were doing a radio show, they would go to commercial
Speaker 1: and the writers would come over with ideas and they
Speaker 1: try and top each other. But I actually, you know,
Speaker 1: I coined it one day. I was getting interviewed and
Speaker 1: I said, yeah, it's flying gag writing, and everybody made
Speaker 1: fun of me. But that is totally descriptive to describe
Speaker 1: what it is. I mean, obviously, I've an cities questions
Speaker 1: a million times. If me and you and your wife
Speaker 1: were sitting there having lunch and we're all kind of
Speaker 1: funny and kind of all kind of interesting, and we're
Speaker 1: having a conversation. I see something, you say something. Maybe
Speaker 1: she says something funny. Uh, you say something funny. I
Speaker 1: say something funny, and this is a fun conversation. Now
Speaker 1: picture that same conversation. I'm a kind of funny guy.
Speaker 1: Whenever I think it's something funny to say, instead of
Speaker 1: saying it, I write it down and put it in
Speaker 1: front of you. Now, obviously you've got to be pretty
Speaker 1: smart and pretty quick on your feet to work it
Speaker 1: in to whatever you're talking about, even though you know
Speaker 1: it's right along the line. But Howard was brilliant. He
Speaker 1: would just look at whatever I wrote and absorb it.
Speaker 1: He would very often just read it with hardly a preread.
Speaker 1: He just trusted me so much, and uh, it was seamless.
Speaker 1: And then Fred, give me, give me an idea, Give
Speaker 1: me an idea of a couple of ideas you might
Speaker 1: give him at that point in time. You know, I
Speaker 1: can't even give me just like a punch line for
Speaker 1: something like it's it's too hard to give you an
Speaker 1: example out of context. However, I do have every note
Speaker 1: that I ever wrote, that he ever said, and my
Speaker 1: mother's attic, and there are countless thousands of them might
Speaker 1: be glad to whip them out. Okay, so you say
Speaker 1: you have everything, Are you, generally speaking a hoarder, a
Speaker 1: pack rat? No, not even a little bit. But when
Speaker 1: I started doing it, I said, this is gonna be
Speaker 1: no evidence of anything I've ever done. You know what
Speaker 1: I've got. At some point, Um, I used to pull
Speaker 1: so much stuff for you know. I'm fun, you know.
Speaker 1: And I didn't mind that he was the big star.
Speaker 1: I didn't care. I didn't want to be Jackie Martling show.
Speaker 1: I didn't have any I didn't want to ever carry
Speaker 1: the ball. I just but I like the funk around.
Speaker 1: I'm the guy that likes to break balls. And people
Speaker 1: would come on and Howard was it was very rude,
Speaker 1: like a celebrity come on and sit right next to me,
Speaker 1: and how it talked to him, but how it wasn't
Speaker 1: the kind of guy that would say, this is Jackie,
Speaker 1: that's Fred, how you doing? He just that's not in
Speaker 1: his wheelhouse. He's he's he's not he's a bad guy.
Speaker 1: He's just not. That's that's not him. So I would
Speaker 1: get the address of the manager or the home address
Speaker 1: or whatever from celebrities and I would send them my
Speaker 1: either my albums or my cassettes, and later on, once
Speaker 1: I guess it hit, I would send them c ds
Speaker 1: of my jokes and stuff. And the musicians or the
Speaker 1: performers whoever came in, of course love filthy jokes, and
Speaker 1: they would listen to them and love them, and the
Speaker 1: next time they came on the show they would forget
Speaker 1: that they had never met me, which was great. Like Diamond,
Speaker 1: David Lee roth And and Branford, Marsalis and uh Roger Daltrey,
Speaker 1: Clarence Clemens. They come in and say, hey, Jackie, how
Speaker 1: you doing, like it was so funny, and they tell, oh,
Speaker 1: how Jackie's albums are the funniest thing in and he would,
Speaker 1: you know, the steam would come out of his ears,
Speaker 1: you know. But at some point I said to Steve Grill,
Speaker 1: oh listen. I would take the funniest note that I
Speaker 1: had written about somebody and handed the Grillo Steve and say, hey,
Speaker 1: get them to sign it and and maybe say something silly, okay,
Speaker 1: like one of them. I'll send you these I got.
Speaker 1: I got about a hundred and twenty of them. And
Speaker 1: you could not sit down and write this eclectic group.
Speaker 1: You could not write this random a group at gunpoint,
Speaker 1: you know, John Wayne Bobbitt, alb Michael's Um Tiny, Tim
Speaker 1: David Lee, Roth, Branford, Marsalis um Uh, Heraldo Rivera just
Speaker 1: names that you know, Barbara Barbara's uh streisand and sister
Speaker 1: you know Adam West. I mean you couldn't. You couldn't
Speaker 1: concoct the slists of people who signed right, And like
Speaker 1: haraldough Uh he came into to announce that he just
Speaker 1: got his own show on CNBC and the note I
Speaker 1: wrote and put up and Howard said, your own show
Speaker 1: on CNBC, wouldn't the lemonade stand be more profitable? All
Speaker 1: went wild and Haralda wrote on the note fuck you,
Speaker 1: you know, which is so fun, you know? And Daltry
Speaker 1: did not get along with Pete Townsend and the note
Speaker 1: I wrote that I that he signed. It was like
Speaker 1: Roger when you guys were on stage, did you ever
Speaker 1: hope that when Pete was doing that stupid windmill he
Speaker 1: hit himself in his big nose and knocked himself out
Speaker 1: And it was classic And of course they're laughing. Everybody's laughing.
Speaker 1: Whoever know those I'm sure those lines are all on
Speaker 1: YouTube somewhere And here I have the note, and then
Speaker 1: he caught us doing it. He caught me doing it,
Speaker 1: and I got braided forever and ever for harassing you know,
Speaker 1: the celebrities, which they didn't care. They loved, you know,
Speaker 1: we had so much fun and uh, but that that's
Speaker 1: an example of some of the you know, like, okay,
Speaker 1: so they he caught you sending the stuff in advance
Speaker 1: or having that. He just got wind that we were
Speaker 1: having people saying, oh, how can you how can you
Speaker 1: be so rude to our guests. I meanwhile, the minute
Speaker 1: they walked into the show, they were up in those
Speaker 1: with a camera like for the show. You know, He's
Speaker 1: like he has uh Barbara Streichs and sisters Rosalind Kind
Speaker 1: and uh uh what's bigger your husband's penis or your
Speaker 1: sister's nose? Just great? Great, Okay, So now Howard has
Speaker 1: a team of writers. When you were finished with Howard
Speaker 1: two thousand three or so, were you still the only writer? Well,
Speaker 1: I wrote, and Fred would have the ideas. Fred Fred
Speaker 1: is the guts of that operation. When I got there,
Speaker 1: he had written every song parody. He never wrote lines
Speaker 1: for Howard, but he did all the bits and recorded
Speaker 1: everything and did the voice says, and he's just super
Speaker 1: super brilliant. And I was so thrilled, and we were
Speaker 1: we were, we were Lennon McCartney of song parodies. Just
Speaker 1: fit like a glove. And he loved going to it
Speaker 1: with me on the air. He wouldn't argue, you wouldn't
Speaker 1: go to it with anybody else because nobody else could
Speaker 1: handle him, you know, but me and him was like
Speaker 1: an even match because we could work with each other.
Speaker 1: And then a couple a couple of years before I
Speaker 1: left that all of a sudden, how it stuck this
Speaker 1: guy Benji right next to me in my space, and
Speaker 1: Howard's agent, you know, just I'm sure to make me
Speaker 1: realize that, you know, I could be replaced, as it
Speaker 1: was like putting Robin, putting somebody next to Robin and saying,
Speaker 1: you know, want you to do this this newscast instead,
Speaker 1: or sitting next to friend and say, don't use that cart,
Speaker 1: use this card. It was very unnecessary because we were
Speaker 1: such a smooth, well oiled machine. It was like clockwork.
Speaker 1: For years and years, we didn't even write a bit.
Speaker 1: You know. Howard would sit down and start talking, I'd
Speaker 1: start writing. Frederic started playing sounds been would giggle and
Speaker 1: we were just and they'd be four or five hours later,
Speaker 1: and you know that at the end of I'd stand
Speaker 1: up and I go, that was a great show. And
Speaker 1: they would make fun of me, but it usually was
Speaker 1: a great show. You know, we get done. We'd laughed
Speaker 1: for four hours. I go, that was a great show.
Speaker 1: And it was just at what point? At what point
Speaker 1: did you start to make real money? Not until later on,
Speaker 1: you know, like, um that what happened was I started
Speaker 1: so low. You know, if somebody's given you four dollars
Speaker 1: a day and all of a sudden they've given you
Speaker 1: eight dollars a day and they say, hey, we doubled
Speaker 1: your salary, you know. Um, so I started very low
Speaker 1: and then I walked out. I think that was the
Speaker 1: fourth time I had walked out, um, because it just
Speaker 1: was so unfair. I mean, they were printing money. At
Speaker 1: one point, I had been off the show for a
Speaker 1: couple of weeks and uh, Dominic, Barbara called me up
Speaker 1: and she Jaggy still really needs you. What are you doing.
Speaker 1: You gotta come back on this show. I said, Domic,
Speaker 1: I'm not asking for all that kind of crazy money.
Speaker 1: I'm really not. I deserve more than I'm getting. Oh,
Speaker 1: come on, it's ridiculous. What what is it? He said,
Speaker 1: what are you looking for? And I said, I'm looking
Speaker 1: for four hundred thousand dollars And he said he almost
Speaker 1: strove about that. He said, everybody thinks you're making a
Speaker 1: million and a half and you're asking for two and
Speaker 1: a half. I'm saying no, I was making three hundred thousand.
Speaker 1: I wanted to make four hundred thousand. We had doubled
Speaker 1: the amount of you know, stations. Blah blah blah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I had totally rational thoughts with everything I was. I
Speaker 1: never tried to price myself out of the ball am.
Speaker 1: I just tried to get myself into the ball game.
Speaker 1: But you know, but it's up. You're up against city Wall.
Speaker 1: Not only was I against city Hall, but Fred had
Speaker 1: been with Howard forever. And Fred is the greatest guy,
Speaker 1: and he's a sweetheart, and he would literally take a
Speaker 1: bullet for Howard. But I would bet my life that
Speaker 1: in forty years, Fred has never said the words I'd
Speaker 1: like more. Now if I'm sitting there next to a
Speaker 1: guy who's been loyal to Howard from day one, and
Speaker 1: there's never asked for anything, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: I'm well, I'm also and I'm saying, wait, I want
Speaker 1: some more. It was like, no, why can't you shut up?
Speaker 1: He didn't say this, but why can't you shut the
Speaker 1: funk up and be like Fred? You know? So I
Speaker 1: was just fighting to get some more money, and it
Speaker 1: was I wasn't looking for unfair money. I was looking
Speaker 1: for money that I thought I deserved. Now, when you're
Speaker 1: talking to your boss for the company, there's always gonna
Speaker 1: be you think you deserved this, and they think you
Speaker 1: deserved this, and there's always gonna be gray area and
Speaker 1: who's right, who's wrong? Who knows? But you know, I
Speaker 1: mean then they wound up banding it about on the air.
Speaker 1: I never heard it, but they said, oh yeah, Jackie
Speaker 1: wanted two million dollars Jackie one three but you know,
Speaker 1: but but you know, I asked, and and the offer
Speaker 1: that was on the table was more than handsome. And
Speaker 1: I actually called back a couple of months later and said,
Speaker 1: listen to office still there. I'll take it because I
Speaker 1: you know, what, are you a radio guy or what what?
Speaker 1: I don't even know what you do? Radio and podcast?
Speaker 1: Because what I didn't realize when I left the show.
Speaker 1: It is an so abnormal, such an unreal thing for
Speaker 1: three or four people to sit in the room and
Speaker 1: laugh for four hours a day. It is a it's
Speaker 1: a it's a illogical situation that just isn't created anywhere else.
Speaker 1: And it never dawned to me. That's what you missed.
Speaker 1: You don't miss people saying allody on the street or
Speaker 1: having a million dollars in your bank account, but that,
Speaker 1: the endorphins and the fun and the laughing, you know,
Speaker 1: the actual sitting there and having fun far surpassed walking
Speaker 1: outside and people say, hey, you guys were great today,
Speaker 1: you know. And uh, but I didn't prace myself by
Speaker 1: the ball. I mean, then they just didn't come back
Speaker 1: to me. But you know, I was ready, you know,
Speaker 1: people did. I did a podcast like last night. That's
Speaker 1: all I can say is, oh, what an idiot? What
Speaker 1: an idiot? What an idiot? I'm like, I'm sitting here
Speaker 1: and I'm ten, and I live on the water in
Speaker 1: a fucking beautiful house with a great girl, and I
Speaker 1: lived the life of Riley and I look at my
Speaker 1: pillow and laugh. Fuck you, you know what I mean? Okay,
Speaker 1: were you negotiating for yourself. I had a guy, had
Speaker 1: a great guy, I Larry Shire from Alan Grimman Dusky.
Speaker 1: So how did you end up on one oh one
Speaker 1: when that used to have different programming? That is the
Speaker 1: That is the question for the ages. Um. I didn't
Speaker 1: go out and do much um. And uh, finally my
Speaker 1: girlfriend at the time said, you gotta go down there
Speaker 1: opening up the laugh Factory at forty at Times Square
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, eighth Avenue and forty two Street,
Speaker 1: it's a big grand opening. I said, all right. I
Speaker 1: went down there and everybody's there. I've seen people in
Speaker 1: a long time, and they said you gotta get and
Speaker 1: I got up and told maybe ten jokes and hit
Speaker 1: ten home runs and it felt so good. And there
Speaker 1: was this young guy there. He said, Jackie, I'm such
Speaker 1: a big fan. He said, that's so great. He said, listen,
Speaker 1: I'm doing a show on Serious ex M, a request show.
Speaker 1: And what happens is people call in and they request
Speaker 1: the comedian and would you come and join me at
Speaker 1: noon a couple of days. So I went in and
Speaker 1: it was great because people call in and say rot
Speaker 1: Red Fox or any young men or something like that,
Speaker 1: or if he played something like that, and I had
Speaker 1: a story about everybody, you know, I had met them
Speaker 1: all or for whatever reason. And it was so much
Speaker 1: fun hanging out with this guy Phil. And at those
Speaker 1: days when you walked into serious it was like Nasa.
Speaker 1: I had a big map of the world and the
Speaker 1: satellites beeping, and everything is brand new, and everyone was
Speaker 1: so cheerful. It was so wonderful. It was so much money,
Speaker 1: you know, obviously put into it. Everybody was. It was
Speaker 1: just a delight. And then at some point a while later, uh,
Speaker 1: the s guy was a friend of mine, Toby Ludwig
Speaker 1: talked that they called me up and said, we would
Speaker 1: like you to be the voice of road Dog. And
Speaker 1: road Dog is a station on Sirius where I don't
Speaker 1: know what they do now, but where they play, you know,
Speaker 1: a big chunk of Dice, a big chunk of red Fox,
Speaker 1: a big chunk you dirty, dirty stuff. And I was
Speaker 1: gonna do the wrap rounds Hey, that was Dice. I'm
Speaker 1: Jackie jump Man, two Jews going to the bar. Ha ha, allright,
Speaker 1: is David Brenner. And it got to where it was
Speaker 1: it was ready to be signed, and it was for
Speaker 1: it wasn't for stern money, but it was for a
Speaker 1: lot of money for a guy that was doing nothing.
Speaker 1: My my, my accountant told me that when I quit
Speaker 1: the show, it was like I took a nine eleven
Speaker 1: to my bank account. That's what I said. So so
Speaker 1: I'm all of a sudden they say, listen, Jackie, we're sorry,
Speaker 1: the deal is off the table because we think we're
Speaker 1: gonna get Howard Stern here. And I actually wanted to
Speaker 1: say them, listen, guys, if you change your mind and
Speaker 1: you don't want me, so what, this is show business,
Speaker 1: but you don't have to make up some whopper of
Speaker 1: a lie. Because to me, of course, Howard wouldn't come
Speaker 1: to cable radio because to me, that whole show was
Speaker 1: dancing right up to the line and dancing around the line.
Speaker 1: You know, I go to eat at somebody's house, says, hey,
Speaker 1: be careful with my grandmother's here. I said, what the
Speaker 1: funk you? We were on the on the air for
Speaker 1: eighteen years, and I we we we couldn't curse, we
Speaker 1: we weren't allowed to be dirty. The whole point was
Speaker 1: we're getting right up to it and stopping on the line,
Speaker 1: and that's what was making everybody crazy. And so I
Speaker 1: was sure there was no way he was going to satellite.
Speaker 1: And then a couple of months later, a big headline
Speaker 1: Howard Stern going to sirious. I was like, oh, at
Speaker 1: least they weren't lying, right. So meanwhile, going in to
Speaker 1: see Phil once a while. And in the course of
Speaker 1: this that people, everybody's like, Jackie, you gotta come see,
Speaker 1: you gotta come see. And they walked me back and
Speaker 1: show me the Stern studios as it was in the
Speaker 1: progress of being made and being set up and everything.
Speaker 1: I was like, you know, like I give a fuck.
Speaker 1: But and then, and I'll never know if this was
Speaker 1: by design Phil's Phil's Show was at the exact opposite
Speaker 1: end of serious from where the Stern Show is. And
Speaker 1: one day I was on Phil's Show and I came
Speaker 1: walking out. We came walking out of the door and
Speaker 1: Gary Della Batti standing, He said, hey's that hell? You man? Hey,
Speaker 1: you want to see a new studio? I said, sure,
Speaker 1: and I don't want to getty body in trouble and sad,
Speaker 1: so are a million times ready. So we're go walking
Speaker 1: back and we look around it, and you know, it's impressed.
Speaker 1: It was beautiful. Of course, it's beautiful and then we
Speaker 1: walked out of a different door and Tim Say was there,
Speaker 1: who at the time was running everything for the Stern Channels,
Speaker 1: who had known for you know, thirty years or whatever,
Speaker 1: and he goes, hey, Jack, it's good to see. He said,
Speaker 1: how come you don't have a show on on satellite?
Speaker 1: And I'm like, nobody ever asked me you should have
Speaker 1: a show on satellite. I'm like, well, tell somebody I
Speaker 1: would love that. And then he's talking to me saying, uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, come in, and i'd go in and talk
Speaker 1: to him and like he's he's a bullshit artist. He's
Speaker 1: just hems and whares. You know, he's rich. His whole
Speaker 1: life is making deals. Once the deals made, he's got
Speaker 1: nothing to do. So finally I wont I'm like, Tim,
Speaker 1: this is bullshit. I want to show. And I turned around.
Speaker 1: He had a big, uh calendar of the week, you know,
Speaker 1: Monday Tuesday, when you know, in all the different slots.
Speaker 1: I look and said, look, Tuesday five o'clock is open.
Speaker 1: I'll take Tuesday five to six. And he goes, okay,
Speaker 1: and so then you know you better talk to Howard okay,
Speaker 1: And then me and Howard, you know, went out to
Speaker 1: lunch and went out to dinner and he said, oh,
Speaker 1: so I hear you're trying to get a show. I'm serious.
Speaker 1: I'm like, no, you know, Tim asked me if I
Speaker 1: wanted to show, you know, like, I'll never know whether
Speaker 1: Gary fetched me and led me to Tim. And then
Speaker 1: Tim asked me, because I don't know whether there were
Speaker 1: I was gonna go on some of the station and
Speaker 1: have a radio show and talk about who knows, maybe
Speaker 1: it was totally happenstance, who cares at any rate? I said, yeah,
Speaker 1: I would really like that the show. I think it'd
Speaker 1: be really fun. And uh and that's how I went
Speaker 1: up with the show. And then of course it became
Speaker 1: oh yeah, Jackie came crawling to me for a gig,
Speaker 1: So what the fuck? I gave him a job, you know,
Speaker 1: you know, you just learned to live with that ship,
Speaker 1: you know. And uh, so we did it for eight years.
Speaker 1: We did four hundred and two Jackie's Joke Cunts and
Speaker 1: uh it was an hour dirty jokes, short jokes, long
Speaker 1: Joe pokes, listener jokes, guests told jokes. It was so funny,
Speaker 1: so fun I had the original cast of Jersey Boys,
Speaker 1: had Sid Bernstein, Pat Cooper, the tokens a whole a
Speaker 1: whole smattering of of who's who's that, you know, and
Speaker 1: everybody told the joke. I told a joke, Ian, my
Speaker 1: co partner, My partner told a joke, the engineer told
Speaker 1: the joke, the guy working the board told the joke,
Speaker 1: the guy answering the phones told the joke, the guests
Speaker 1: told the joke. It and it just was a free
Speaker 1: for all, and with the jokes went on and on
Speaker 1: and on and on and and they replayed they replayed
Speaker 1: it like five or six times a week, you know,
Speaker 1: which was great for me, you know, which I loved.
Speaker 1: And then they, after like six years, one day we
Speaker 1: walked in and and said that before we got a
Speaker 1: chance to tell Tim we want to raise now they
Speaker 1: we They made a deal with us and then paid
Speaker 1: us much less than the deal was supposed to be.
Speaker 1: And then we went on like that for six years.
Speaker 1: Then we went in to tell him we want more money.
Speaker 1: And that's when he said, we're cutting you down to
Speaker 1: once a month, as it makes no sense to do
Speaker 1: a show once a month. I said, just pay us
Speaker 1: for once a month and we'll still still do it
Speaker 1: once a week. So pay got slashed by a quarter.
Speaker 1: And then it was like by the end of the
Speaker 1: eighth year, close to the eighth year, they out of
Speaker 1: a clear sky. They decided to let us go a
Speaker 1: week before Thanksgiving and they were having a huge Now
Speaker 1: you can interpret this, how you want to having a
Speaker 1: huge party for Howard's sixt birthday birthday and it's a
Speaker 1: serious x M is throwing the party for Howard. We're
Speaker 1: not only on Serious x M me and Ian, but
Speaker 1: we're on Howard's channel one oh one on serious x M.
Speaker 1: And the entire world is invited to Howard's birthday party
Speaker 1: except for me in the end. Now you you can
Speaker 1: interpret that? Hell yeah, I you I countless friend said Jackie,
Speaker 1: can I be your plus one at Howard's party? And
Speaker 1: I would tell them We're not invited, and nobody believes.
Speaker 1: Just no, it was It was pretty pretty impossible to believe.
Speaker 1: But not for me because I know, because I know
Speaker 1: if one person walked up to Howard as the sixtieth
Speaker 1: thirthday party and said, Howard, man, it's great to see
Speaker 1: Jackie again, that would erect this fucking night. And I
Speaker 1: know that sounds for the ultimate time. Huh. So what
Speaker 1: is your relationship with Howard, you know there is none. Um,
Speaker 1: I'm sure if somebody said, how's the relationship with Jackie?
Speaker 1: Say fine? You know, people say you guys still friends,
Speaker 1: and I'm not comfortable saying I'm still friends with somebody
Speaker 1: that I haven't physically seen in five or seven years.
Speaker 1: I went on the show maybe seven or eight years
Speaker 1: ago to promote something, you know, briefly, and it was great.
Speaker 1: And you know this and the things that sound pompous
Speaker 1: that aren't really pompous. It's funny because I just read
Speaker 1: about this in Jackie Gleeson's biography and it just struck
Speaker 1: me great. I have Howard's funny bone, which sounds like
Speaker 1: a a made up thing. But there's some people that
Speaker 1: the chemistry between people I can make him laugh at
Speaker 1: will I just can't just with from the same place
Speaker 1: we have. Yeah, it's it's hard to explain, but I
Speaker 1: can bury him very easily. Not not something ha ha
Speaker 1: funny that anybody else would laugh at, but I got
Speaker 1: his funny bone, and and he can't help it. But
Speaker 1: he likes me a lot, and it's it's very weird.
Speaker 1: And he really had Sophie's choice because he, you know,
Speaker 1: he was already so so rich, and he had a
Speaker 1: guy sitting right next to him that made him laugh
Speaker 1: for four hour forget about making the people laugh, made
Speaker 1: him laugh for four hours a day. He went to
Speaker 1: work known he was gonna have a good time every day,
Speaker 1: and he let that go, which is a it's a
Speaker 1: tough call. I you know, I can never put my
Speaker 1: finger on it, and I it's not and I'm not
Speaker 1: flipping a coin. I mean, I can make the guy laugh,
Speaker 1: and it's it's a little bit weird. I don't know.
Speaker 1: At one point I said to him, you know what,
Speaker 1: if we could make a lot, you could make a
Speaker 1: lot of money for charity. Somebody just said, all right,
Speaker 1: let's put Howard and Jackie in a room by themselves
Speaker 1: for a half hour on New Year's Eve some night.
Speaker 1: You know, I would love to say to him, let's
Speaker 1: sit and have a talk on cable and charge money
Speaker 1: and give the money to charity or whatever. But he
Speaker 1: just never would do it. You know, no writers, no
Speaker 1: extra people, no Robin giggling, just us fucking around, you know.
Speaker 1: But he's not built for a level playing field, you know.
Speaker 1: But it's it's a high. It's a hard thing to
Speaker 1: put your finger on, you know, I mean I got
Speaker 1: birthday cards from him. I'm sure that Howard's got his
Speaker 1: take on it, but that's not where we're coming. Oh No,
Speaker 1: I would love, I would give anything to hear his
Speaker 1: take on it. You know, it would be stupid. He
Speaker 1: walked away from a lot of money. I didn't really
Speaker 1: need him. I was doing him a favor. You know,
Speaker 1: I've never heard his take on it, but I'm sure
Speaker 1: it would be it would be dismissive. It wouldn't be
Speaker 1: it wouldn't be an explanation. It would be dismissive. Well,
Speaker 1: whatever history you guys have is between the two of you.
Speaker 1: But do you ever or since you've been off this show,
Speaker 1: ever listened to it. That's another thing that people always
Speaker 1: ask me. And it's very funny because I never listened
Speaker 1: to it when I was on it. I never listened
Speaker 1: to the best of when we're on vacation, I have
Speaker 1: never listened to two seconds of it. And what's really
Speaker 1: funny is the only time I really listened to the
Speaker 1: show was when I first met him, because I had
Speaker 1: no idea what was going on. And that's how I
Speaker 1: found out he used to do a character, a black
Speaker 1: traffic reporter named Mama Look a Booble Day, and I
Speaker 1: gave him a whole bunch of black type chokes, you know,
Speaker 1: like weird, weird stuff for that for that character. And
Speaker 1: when I came back in the next week or two
Speaker 1: weeks later, I handed it to him. He looked at
Speaker 1: me like, I don't need this, you know. And then
Speaker 1: I was listening to the show and I heard him
Speaker 1: using some of the stuff I had given him. So
Speaker 1: the next time I walked in and said, hey, there's
Speaker 1: some jokes, and he was like, you know, thank you.
Speaker 1: But what's really funny is I was listening to the show.
Speaker 1: This is like this had to be three. I just
Speaker 1: joined the show, and I love the story because I
Speaker 1: was in the kitchen at the house. I was written
Speaker 1: me and then answer were written, and I was standing
Speaker 1: on a stool in the kitchen, a step stool, fixing something.
Speaker 1: And the reason I remember is because I don't fix anything.
Speaker 1: I have no idea why I was, but I was
Speaker 1: up on this step stepping stool and Gary came in
Speaker 1: and said, Hey, how the girl he is says he
Speaker 1: wants to get naked, and he said, really, well, have
Speaker 1: her come in and she came in. She said Hi, Howard.
Speaker 1: He said hi, and he says, have a seat. He says,
Speaker 1: who you? And she says, my name's Maria. And I
Speaker 1: worked the door at the Comedy Factory outlet in Philadelphia,
Speaker 1: and my favorite comedian is Jackie Martlin, and I almost
Speaker 1: fell off the fucking stool. I have not heard I've
Speaker 1: never spoken to one person that remembers hearing that wherever
Speaker 1: as her. I don't know if it exists on best
Speaker 1: of or whether it was chopped out. But I couldn't
Speaker 1: make up that story. But that was way way way back,
Speaker 1: and you know, I would just listen. Once I listened
Speaker 1: and got the gist what he was doing, and I
Speaker 1: would give him some Joe. So I didn't I didn't
Speaker 1: listen like to see if he was using any you know,
Speaker 1: I was just I was just trying to get my
Speaker 1: foot in the door. That's all I cared about. You.
Speaker 1: So out of your tenure there, what are two or
Speaker 1: three highlights other than bullshooting with the gang and having
Speaker 1: fun um sitting knees and you know the first actually
Speaker 1: the second studio we had was so tiny that where
Speaker 1: I sat, the guests sat at a forty five degree
Speaker 1: angle to me, so close that literally my right knee
Speaker 1: would just about be banging their left knee. And we
Speaker 1: had James Taylor on the show, and he sat there
Speaker 1: and sang four songs knees to knees with me, and
Speaker 1: in between songs, I'm writing insults about James Taylor, who
Speaker 1: I fucking loved beyond any stretch of the imagination. And
Speaker 1: were sitting there on our knees are touching, and I
Speaker 1: said to myself, you know, I bet and nobody has
Speaker 1: ever sat this close to James Taylor when he sang before,
Speaker 1: because there would be no reason for anybody, even if
Speaker 1: they were a fan, they would never go and put
Speaker 1: the seat this close. It was like it was. It
Speaker 1: was absolutely surreal, and that strikes me as so great. Um.
Speaker 1: Another unbelievable time was a guy came in. He was
Speaker 1: sitting in the same exact place, and Howard started with
Speaker 1: his regular crap, you know, like, hey man, thanks for
Speaker 1: coming in, all right, hey hoy, you tell me how
Speaker 1: big is your penis? And the guy was like, don't
Speaker 1: don't start with me, man, you don't start with me.
Speaker 1: I'm not your dancing monkey. Man. I'll come right over
Speaker 1: and right away Gary and Ronnie are right behind him.
Speaker 1: I mean, this guy went from zero to sixty in
Speaker 1: a flash, and he was crazy hot. And I said
Speaker 1: to myself, Jesus Christ, this this guy's gonna kill somebody.
Speaker 1: And it was Robert Blake. That is funny. That is
Speaker 1: very funny. Scary but funny. Oh my god. And and
Speaker 1: one time we're sitting there and um, six fifteen in
Speaker 1: the morning, just bursting through the door was Sam Kinnison,
Speaker 1: Pat McCormick, Chuck McCann and Jack Riley from the old
Speaker 1: New Heart show that Samon got done and at the
Speaker 1: comics at the Comedy, uh, Comedy Factory whatever it's called,
Speaker 1: the Comedy in Los Angeles, and uh, he said, come on, guys,
Speaker 1: let's go. You see the how its stern showing. They
Speaker 1: hupped in his jet and did coke all the way
Speaker 1: to New York and came bursting in at six fifteen
Speaker 1: in the morning and they were right behind me and
Speaker 1: I'm looking at looking at the Mount Rushmore of comedy.
Speaker 1: It was like just unbelievable, and you know, and stuff
Speaker 1: like that just went on, and you know, we're in
Speaker 1: England for a week. We broadcast from the room, the
Speaker 1: room in abbey Road where it all happened, the actual
Speaker 1: fucking room in abbey Road. I never to this day.
Speaker 1: I got the chills thinking about it. And then we
Speaker 1: went to the Princess Trust concert and was sitting up
Speaker 1: in one of these little, you know, ballrooms doing radio,
Speaker 1: and the bags sat across from me Howard and Robin
Speaker 1: and sang a capella from from me to the screen
Speaker 1: or you know. I mean, I could go on and on,
Speaker 1: and I thought that ship was just like and it
Speaker 1: was happening so fast you didn't get a chance to
Speaker 1: digest anything, you know. I was just going through my
Speaker 1: notes and I found a scan letter from Kurt Vonnegut
Speaker 1: that he had written in n to his family on
Speaker 1: an old typewriter, and it was signed, I mean, it
Speaker 1: was a scan, but it was a scan. He must
Speaker 1: assigned it and given it to some people because it
Speaker 1: said seasons greetings. And there was a guy who was
Speaker 1: a fan out and you know, these people that were
Speaker 1: fans like, what can we do for the you know,
Speaker 1: and they knew Howard got everything, so they sent occasionally
Speaker 1: they send stuff to me or Fred or Gary. It
Speaker 1: was beyond exciting, and it just it just went on
Speaker 1: and on and on. Okay, so, who are the greatest
Speaker 1: comedians ever? Me leaving you out of it? Bill Mahr
Speaker 1: says the same thing about himself. We're taking you out
Speaker 1: of it. No, there is there is no greatest you know,
Speaker 1: and I am not a fair judge because I don't know.
Speaker 1: You know, people say, who's to me, the new comedian
Speaker 1: is Chris Rock, you know what I mean? I'm not.
Speaker 1: I was the you just know I don't want to
Speaker 1: go deep. No. I was was the you just fan
Speaker 1: in the world of Rodney Dangerfield. And the fact that
Speaker 1: I wound up and step with him is so beyond anything. Like.
Speaker 1: I wasn't a comic. I had no intention of ever
Speaker 1: becoming a comic, because it never dawned on me that
Speaker 1: that was a choice anybody can make, you know. I
Speaker 1: always thought show business you had to be chosen. I'll
Speaker 1: not like there some things I remember so vague so vividly.
Speaker 1: In my band in college. It was this big fat drummer,
Speaker 1: Nick Petrovitch, and we had just all started getting together
Speaker 1: and I'm I'm it just goes to show what an
Speaker 1: idiot I am. Somebody said, Nick, what's your major? And
Speaker 1: he said, radio and TV, and you could have knocked
Speaker 1: me over with a feather. I was like, what, what
Speaker 1: what do you mean that though you're major, you don't
Speaker 1: get to choose that that chooses you. You know you don't.
Speaker 1: It never drawn to me that was a path that
Speaker 1: you could choose and pursue, as stupid as that sounds.
Speaker 1: And as far as being a comedian, I never knew
Speaker 1: it was something you could work towards. I thought they
Speaker 1: just annointed you just like class clown. Like somebody said,
Speaker 1: all right, you know, George Colin, you're gonna be really
Speaker 1: funny or whatever, and uh, I had no intention of
Speaker 1: being a comic. But I love to laugh at any
Speaker 1: young man's jokes. And when was in the band, we
Speaker 1: had all the Red Fox's old albums because they were
Speaker 1: just filthy jokes, filthy jokes, and I was a great lamp.
Speaker 1: My mother his favorite thing was to watch me watch
Speaker 1: Red Skelton because I got such a kick out of
Speaker 1: Red Skelton enjoying himself and laughing at himself. So she'd
Speaker 1: watch me because I would howl watching him, and I'm
Speaker 1: sure I became that. But Rodney, you know, he would
Speaker 1: go on and then we'd all call each other up
Speaker 1: and quote the lines back and forth and back and forth.
Speaker 1: And when I first started toying with comedy, uh this
Speaker 1: a couple of guys working at this place called Richard M.
Speaker 1: Dixon's White House in and Dixon wouldn't pay us. So
Speaker 1: me and this guy, Richard and Richie Mannavini, decided to
Speaker 1: start our own show, which is where I recorded my
Speaker 1: first album. But when we first started, I'm living at
Speaker 1: the house with after my grandmother died, and Richie would
Speaker 1: stay there sometimes and comics lie. In the beginning, comics lie,
Speaker 1: it was still lie because you want to, you know,
Speaker 1: you gotta build yourself up. And Richie came in one
Speaker 1: night and says, hey, man, I went on the Danger
Speaker 1: Fields tonight and I killed man. And Rodney you saw me.
Speaker 1: Rodney loved me. He's gonna use me on TV. It
Speaker 1: was greatest. Man. I can't and I tell you I
Speaker 1: when I repeat that right now, I'm still jealous. So
Speaker 1: I said, you know what, and I sat down and
Speaker 1: took paper and made carbons, and every joke that I told,
Speaker 1: or that I knew, or that I could think of,
Speaker 1: that I could put in Rodney's speak. I typed out.
Speaker 1: I typed out six pages of jokes. One of the
Speaker 1: jokes that I had come across. A couple of weeks ago,
Speaker 1: a friend of mine was in Peru selling and buying
Speaker 1: cocaine and doing cocaine. And he called me from Peru
Speaker 1: and he said, Chief, this guy just told me the
Speaker 1: funniest joke I ever heard. You gotta stay awake. I
Speaker 1: know you probably drunk, but stay awake. You had to
Speaker 1: hear this. And he told me this joke by Tennessee Bob,
Speaker 1: and I thought it was really funny, and I wrote
Speaker 1: it down. So among the six pages of jokes that
Speaker 1: I sent to Rodney was this joke. I wrote these.
Speaker 1: I wrote these jokes all out, folded them up, putting
Speaker 1: them an envelope. And next time Richie came into my house,
Speaker 1: I said, Richie, please do me a favor and give
Speaker 1: these jokes to your friend Rodney. And Richie got embarrassed.
Speaker 1: He said, oh man, he said, I lied. He said
Speaker 1: I didn't meet Rodney. I didn't even get on stage
Speaker 1: that night, but I did go. I swear to god,
Speaker 1: I went this two story. You don't have to believe, Bob.
Speaker 1: He reached his pocket and took out a matchbook and said,
Speaker 1: you know, Rodney going, you know, one thousand one First Avenue,
Speaker 1: New York, New York. There's the address. I just wrote
Speaker 1: the address underneath where I'd written Rodney danger Field on
Speaker 1: the envelope. I had already written the jokes. They were
Speaker 1: already in the envelope. What do I got to lose?
Speaker 1: I put on a stamp and put it in the mail,
Speaker 1: And two days later, the phone rings, and nobody knows
Speaker 1: the phone number. Then my grandmother's dead. Everybody she knew
Speaker 1: were head, So who the hell would call there? Pioneer
Speaker 1: six to five for one, you learned that when you're
Speaker 1: three years old, your grandmother's phone number, the phone rings,
Speaker 1: I answer, I go hello, Hello, who's this this Rodday?
Speaker 1: He said? Rodney? Who oh? I knew you were fucking funny.
Speaker 1: I knew you were funny. And my girlfriend's like, who
Speaker 1: is it? That's Rodney Dangefields, just bullshit, who is it? Richiet?
Speaker 1: Fucking Rodney? You know the funny? Shoot is I'm really funny?
Speaker 1: This fucking two bags. The funniest joke I ever read.
Speaker 1: You know, the joke that he fell in love with
Speaker 1: was the girl was known as a Tennessee two bagger.
Speaker 1: That's the girl is so ugly. You're not only got
Speaker 1: to put a bag over her head, you gotta put
Speaker 1: a bag over your own head in case her bag rips. Well,
Speaker 1: he went fucking nuts for that, and he said, here,
Speaker 1: come to Westbury, you know, come to Westbury. You know
Speaker 1: I'm gonna buy I think four of these jokes. I
Speaker 1: love him, you know, come on, could be my guest,
Speaker 1: bring your girl. So I went to We went to
Speaker 1: see him in Westbury's VENTI seven. I got a ponytail
Speaker 1: down my back and orang jeans, and I got a
Speaker 1: girlfriend ten years younger who was beautiful. And he's fucking
Speaker 1: his eyes are spinning, you know, He's like, oh, she's
Speaker 1: sucking beautiful. I have a piece of fruit, some funny
Speaker 1: fucking jokes. You I'm gonna buy him? Yeah, you all
Speaker 1: look at her? Wow? Not? But what's with the fucking hair?
Speaker 1: I look at the jeans? What the fund is wrong?
Speaker 1: She's very pretty, you know. And that was that I
Speaker 1: was off and running. He bought four jokes for two
Speaker 1: hundred bucks. And and here I am in step and
Speaker 1: I badgered him and badgered humuntil he took away, took
Speaker 1: me away with him and we went to Fort Lauderdale
Speaker 1: for a week, in Las Vegas for a week, and
Speaker 1: it was I'm still still pulling stories out of my
Speaker 1: ass about those two weeks forty years. Okay, do you
Speaker 1: ever write jokes or the jokes come to you? I
Speaker 1: write them, but not a lot of them. Um. And
Speaker 1: and also if you write a short choke, it's it's
Speaker 1: pretty tough to write something, you know. As a student
Speaker 1: of Joe books, I mean I was, I've been. I
Speaker 1: was penn pals with a guy named Gershon Legman for
Speaker 1: twenty years before I put one of the jokes that
Speaker 1: I really really loved in my joke book. This guy
Speaker 1: wrote these incredibly thick, pedantic, unbelievable joke collections, and I
Speaker 1: came across it and all my stories away too long.
Speaker 1: Like I said in the in the seventies, we were
Speaker 1: doing everything we could to get material and find jokes
Speaker 1: and joke books. And in the back of some magazine
Speaker 1: it was like any ten books for cents, and one
Speaker 1: of the books said rationale of the dirty Joke. I said,
Speaker 1: so I sent whatever the other books were, I threw
Speaker 1: them out and looked at this thing big, thick book,
Speaker 1: and it was all went on and on about jokes.
Speaker 1: But the guy was kind enough to put the actual
Speaker 1: jokes in italics so you could read it like a
Speaker 1: joke book. And the introduction was like thirty pages long.
Speaker 1: And the guy goes on and on and on, and
Speaker 1: at the end of introduction he had his name in
Speaker 1: his his address, and you know me, and I'm reading
Speaker 1: and it says, this is part two of the two
Speaker 1: book collection. This is eight There's there's no Internet. I
Speaker 1: wrote the guy a letter. I sent my cassettes, I
Speaker 1: sent my jokes and everything said listen, I don't know
Speaker 1: if you'll ever get this, but I'm a comic. I
Speaker 1: would give anything to have a copy of that first
Speaker 1: volume of your series. And the guy wrote me back
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks later. I think it's like Jackie,
Speaker 1: I really enjoy your stuff. You're so funny. I got
Speaker 1: two copies of the first series of my book. I
Speaker 1: don't need to I'll sell you one of them. And
Speaker 1: he sold it to me for eighteen dollars and I
Speaker 1: still haven't it says and signed by Gershawn Legman. It
Speaker 1: turns out you can't read it. It's like the Bible.
Speaker 1: It's so goes on and it's so packed, packed with jokes.
Speaker 1: And one day I happened to notice like I had
Speaker 1: heard the Aristocrat joke from a guy named Martin Lewis,
Speaker 1: a comedian, a magician, comedian from Los Angeles, and I've
Speaker 1: been telling the Aristocrats for years and I'm looking at
Speaker 1: Legmans and the Aristocrats is the last joke on the
Speaker 1: last page of the second volume of his series. And
Speaker 1: I couldn't believe it. And his whole premises, you are
Speaker 1: thoroughly defined by what you find funny, and he said,
Speaker 1: this next joke was taught to told to me by
Speaker 1: a magician comedian who was raised in Squalor by parents
Speaker 1: that battled for forty years but stayed together for the
Speaker 1: good of the family. And I said, holy funck, this
Speaker 1: guy just described my life. And so twenty years later,
Speaker 1: I'm writing a joke book. So I made the last
Speaker 1: page of my joke book the Aristocrats, just like Legman had.
Speaker 1: And then ten years later, Paul Prevents and Pendelt come
Speaker 1: into my apartment and said, Jack, we're making a movie
Speaker 1: about the Aristocrats, and we gotta put you in the
Speaker 1: movie because we did a search on the web and
Speaker 1: we only got two hits for the Aristocrats, and they
Speaker 1: were both your website, because I had Legman's version and
Speaker 1: I had my version. And if you look at the
Speaker 1: poster for the Aristocrats, I don't it's every famous comic
Speaker 1: you've ever heard of in your in your life, with
Speaker 1: me thrown in the middle. I mean, they're all head
Speaker 1: and shoulders above me. But it was just just just
Speaker 1: so fucking interesting. And there was a joke that was
Speaker 1: so Rodney. If ever there was a joke that somebody
Speaker 1: sat down and wrote specifically for Rodney. There was this
Speaker 1: joke and I here it is in the Legman book.
Speaker 1: It's two guys talking in the Civil War and there's
Speaker 1: the joke. And I'm like, and I'm I'm like, there
Speaker 1: is nothing new, and the joke was here. You know,
Speaker 1: you know, my wife don't know. You know that she
Speaker 1: cut me down to twice a week, but that's nothing.
Speaker 1: I know. A couple of guys she cut out all together,
Speaker 1: which is so funny. And there's two several war guys
Speaker 1: and two black guys. And one guy said, yeah, this
Speaker 1: rash thing is crazy. They rather and they're rashed and everything.
Speaker 1: They're rashton cigarettes and they're rast and vegetables. And the
Speaker 1: guy says, yeah, he says that my wife cut me
Speaker 1: down twice a week. You know. The other guy said, yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I know some guys she cut out all together. There's
Speaker 1: the joke. But it fits Rodney that that's joke writing, realized,
Speaker 1: re repackaging, and reassigning. That's that's the game of comedy.
Speaker 1: But people don't realize that. You know, I've been around
Speaker 1: so long as it eat nothing slips by, you know,
Speaker 1: like here and there. You know, the other day somebody
Speaker 1: told me joke and and I said, I wrote that,
Speaker 1: And I'm saying, you know what, I'm sure five thousand
Speaker 1: people right, Why did Jewish girls swallow? Because they wanted
Speaker 1: to be the spinning images of their mothers? Okay, which
Speaker 1: is it's a funny, dirty joke, but who cares who
Speaker 1: came up with it? Okay? How about two people who
Speaker 1: tell tales like Dave Chappelle today or Richard Lewis. Those
Speaker 1: are two different you know, that's as different as you know.
Speaker 1: One guy throws batting practice and the other guy hits
Speaker 1: home runs. And one guy pictures no hitters and another
Speaker 1: guy plays hockey. You know, you know, they're they're all
Speaker 1: playing sports. It's completely different, you know. I mean, I
Speaker 1: love stories. I love I love nothing better than to
Speaker 1: sit and tell a story. I loved writing my book
Speaker 1: more than doing my You know, people read my book,
Speaker 1: they're like, Holy Christ, that's that's an interesting ship, you know.
Speaker 1: But that's not what I do. You know, what, what's
Speaker 1: your favorite joke? I always tell people my favorite jokes,
Speaker 1: the last joke that got a big laugh. So what's
Speaker 1: the last joke that got a big laugh? The the
Speaker 1: one that I liked telling when I when I do,
Speaker 1: I do cameo dot com slash Jackie Martlin. And people say, oh,
Speaker 1: my mother likes poop jokes. Or do this for my sister.
Speaker 1: She's got a Jewish husband, she loves Jewish jokes. Or
Speaker 1: do this for my uncle, or he really likes a
Speaker 1: hand job, you know whatever, And I do whatever, and
Speaker 1: some jokes I just and I put this in very often.
Speaker 1: A girl goes to a high school prom and the
Speaker 1: next day she sends her mother a text, Mom, the
Speaker 1: problem was great, But now Mom, I'm at the beach
Speaker 1: and I'm freaking out. I got come in my hair.
Speaker 1: So a mother sends her back a text honey, I'm glad.
Speaker 1: The problem is great. Listen, sometimes when you're blowing a
Speaker 1: guy and he decides to shoot on your face and
Speaker 1: he pulls it out of your mouth, they can't really
Speaker 1: control work goes and sometimes some of it goes in
Speaker 1: your hair. But it's not a big deal. Just jump
Speaker 1: in the water. It'll wash right out. If she sends
Speaker 1: her mother back a text, Mom, thanks for the information,
Speaker 1: but I meant to type, gum, well, that's the same joke.
Speaker 1: You know, the joke about the person who's tapping your WiFi.
Speaker 1: You know that one, right, But then of course they're
Speaker 1: you know they anything's mixed and matched, you know. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you know we live in the politically at correct era.
Speaker 1: Can you tell these ethnic I don't care, you know,
Speaker 1: I backed off. I just do what's funny, you know.
Speaker 1: I know my act now is like fifty minutes or
Speaker 1: an hour joke. So I don't do a lot of
Speaker 1: black jokes, a lot of Jewish jokes. But but I
Speaker 1: don't say Polish so much. It's not that I care,
Speaker 1: you know, it's not even necessary. You know, I'm old now,
Speaker 1: you don't you don't need to be too Jewish. Guys
Speaker 1: going down the street in the car. There were two
Speaker 1: guys going down the street in the car. It's it's
Speaker 1: just as funny because we're all old, all confused, you know, Um,
Speaker 1: have you gotten in any trouble for telling? Ever? Ever? Ever?
Speaker 1: One time, when I just started, I got a job
Speaker 1: working a bachelor party. And I where I come from,
Speaker 1: it's weird, Long Island's crazy, we're all horny, we're all
Speaker 1: out of my mind. But nobody really had bachelor parties
Speaker 1: with strippers. And that was like a New Jersey thing.
Speaker 1: And I get invite. I'm gonna do this bachelor party.
Speaker 1: It was a lot of money. I think it was
Speaker 1: like seventy five dollars, which was a fortune back then.
Speaker 1: I wasn't on the radio. Nobody knew who I was,
Speaker 1: and no I would take my amplifier and sit on
Speaker 1: the amplifier and play songs and tell jokes. I brought
Speaker 1: my friend Red with me. I said, come on, we're
Speaker 1: gonna go do this bachelor party. And I sat there
Speaker 1: on my amplifier and was about maybe twelve maybe twenty
Speaker 1: guys in a semicircle standing there in front of me,
Speaker 1: watching me, and I'm doing my jokes. And then insulting
Speaker 1: the crowd, you know, with the guy saying something. But
Speaker 1: and I played a song and I looked up and
Speaker 1: I said something insulting, and this guy walked through the
Speaker 1: crowd and grabbed me and bent me over my amplifier
Speaker 1: and said, you motherfucker, you talk like that to me.
Speaker 1: I'm like, man, I wasn't looking at anybody. This is
Speaker 1: my act. I was just fucking around. I wasn't talking
Speaker 1: to you. That's the only time in forty years anything
Speaker 1: like that ever happened. And it was I thought, Wow,
Speaker 1: this is this is things to come, because you hear
Speaker 1: about Jackie Gleason getting beaten up and Rickles getting his
Speaker 1: nose broken. Everything mean, while the I get done doing
Speaker 1: my thing, and then the next thing I know, we're
Speaker 1: all sitting there and chairs and there's this little stage
Speaker 1: and the girl comes out and the lies down, the
Speaker 1: groom lies down, the groom and pulls down his pants,
Speaker 1: and I'm sitting beside the groom's father and the groom's
Speaker 1: fucking father in law to be, and They're sitting on
Speaker 1: either side of me and this girl so box the
Speaker 1: guy's cock and all the guys that cheering, and I'm
Speaker 1: like what fucking planning them? And then she went in
Speaker 1: the bathroom and the guys rolling line. I'm like, what
Speaker 1: what I was like? I was in pludo, you know,
Speaker 1: like it was the oddest thing, you know, and I
Speaker 1: that was one of those crazy days. I thought, Wow,
Speaker 1: I got a lot coming up into my future here,
Speaker 1: and nothing like that ever happened before or since. I
Speaker 1: mean lots of sex, lots of craziness, but not like that.
Speaker 1: I mean his father bad enough for his father in law,
Speaker 1: you know. Like so so that was, you know. But
Speaker 1: one time the people from the Polish Eagle and West
Speaker 1: Orange uh wrote to me and threatened me and said,
Speaker 1: look we shut down John Rivers will shut you down.
Speaker 1: We hear what you're doing. Blah blah blah. Yeah, got
Speaker 1: gayak you hate the pope, the Polish Pope, you make
Speaker 1: And I said, I don't know what you're talking about.
Speaker 1: I think I wrote him a letter said to just
Speaker 1: come by, just come by the show. The next time
Speaker 1: I was at Rascals, a bunch of these guys came
Speaker 1: by the show, and they came up afterwards and said,
Speaker 1: you told jokes about everybody. It was the funniest act
Speaker 1: we ever saw, and so I told you, and and
Speaker 1: that was that. The Polish Eagle their their newsletter was
Speaker 1: memeo graph Are you all enough to remember me? The
Speaker 1: whole thing at school smell? But I skated, you know,
Speaker 1: And I never changed things. You know, if I was
Speaker 1: telling a black joke, I would look at the black guys.
Speaker 1: The one time in my life that I actually skipped anything,
Speaker 1: I was I was packed shell like four people in
Speaker 1: Boca ratone at the New York Comedy Club, and I
Speaker 1: killed that. When I went there, I had so much fun.
Speaker 1: And I looked down and sitting ringside right in fuck
Speaker 1: in front of me was a midget couple. Not a midget,
Speaker 1: a midget couple, I mean in their legs with dangling
Speaker 1: and I had like, like, you know, five six seven
Speaker 1: midget chokes in a row in my act, and I thought,
Speaker 1: you know what it's gonna look like. I threw that
Speaker 1: in just to be mean to them, and I and
Speaker 1: I just leaped over that. I didn't, you know, I
Speaker 1: got enough stuff. I can go on for hours and
Speaker 1: hours and hours, and I just I always felt a
Speaker 1: little hypocritical that I skipped that because I maintained it.
Speaker 1: I'm just working around and you know, usually a midget
Speaker 1: of that's that's really funny. You know, so who knows?
Speaker 1: But it never it never stops being interesting, Baba play
Speaker 1: that never stopped being Okay, So now what do we
Speaker 1: got in the sense of years of Jackie Martling's life.
Speaker 1: They just finished the documentary on me, which is so fun. Uh,
Speaker 1: Willie Nelson, Mark Cuban pen Gillette already lang cast my
Speaker 1: family cast of characters. I'm sure you'll really enjoy it.
Speaker 1: I put out my autobiography, which I would love to
Speaker 1: send you the joke Man about a Stern. I just
Speaker 1: got a deal to do the second half of that,
Speaker 1: which has already written. I had too much for one book.
Speaker 1: I'm doing the cameo dot com, which I love and
Speaker 1: selling a lot of those things that people are getting
Speaker 1: up on him. Um, you know, I'm not. I'm never
Speaker 1: gonna stop doing my stupid act once the COVID lifts,
Speaker 1: you know. I sometimes I make a lot of money.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I don't make so much money. But I you know,
Speaker 1: I'll do a firehouse, I'll do a club, I'll do
Speaker 1: a theater. I I actually I actually enjoy it, you know. Okay,
Speaker 1: any goals that you still have at this point, I
Speaker 1: was always sad that I didn't have, you know, I had.
Speaker 1: I had a little role on Leverage one time and
Speaker 1: I did so good, and then they wrote me into
Speaker 1: a whole episode and I said no to it because
Speaker 1: my nephew was duating from college and he's his father
Speaker 1: had passed away, and like, I don't God knows where
Speaker 1: that might have led. I never got. You know, people
Speaker 1: every day like, why don't you doing cartoons? Why don't
Speaker 1: you doing voiceovers? I'm like, I don't know. I auditioned
Speaker 1: for a million of them. You know. I stand in
Speaker 1: the line to bank people turning around and said, Jackie,
Speaker 1: are I know that voice anywhere? Why don't you doing cartoons?
Speaker 1: I never did, you know. I always wanted to put
Speaker 1: out a sne of my songs. But I certled, circled
Speaker 1: around and did that. And I would love to send
Speaker 1: you that. You'll get a kick out of that. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, it was with the best players in the world,
Speaker 1: so it's really fun. But um, I'm sure you know.
Speaker 1: I just got offered this thing. I think I'm wind
Speaker 1: up doing a streaming show of some kind with either
Speaker 1: with young comics or old comics. Are talking to people.
Speaker 1: I love to talk about old show business, but everybody's
Speaker 1: not enthralled with them. I am voracious, so I wouldn't.
Speaker 1: I would have had a working iPod if I hadn't
Speaker 1: to spend four hours this after reading about Jackie Gleason,
Speaker 1: you just did. It's all fascinating, the old old stuff
Speaker 1: when they were first starting. You know what, what what
Speaker 1: is fascinating about it? Just because because every you think
Speaker 1: you went through a fight, you went to you think
Speaker 1: you went through amazed, you went through craziness. Nobody just
Speaker 1: walked down the day aisle and walked up on the stage.
Speaker 1: You know, everybody has their story and it's it's it's
Speaker 1: just interesting. It's just interesting to me, you know, and
Speaker 1: it it inspires you, makes you glad you kept going.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you my life is a pinball machine. It
Speaker 1: just was like bing bing bing bing. You know. I
Speaker 1: started playing the guitar, then played guitar in high school,
Speaker 1: and played guitar in college, and play guitar in the seventies.
Speaker 1: And I didn't go anywhere. So I started telling my
Speaker 1: jokes on stage and then I stumbled into Howard Stern
Speaker 1: went up in the radio. But I kept doing my
Speaker 1: comedy and put my CDs out and then end up
Speaker 1: being a comedian without ever looking three weeks and well,
Speaker 1: I know is when I started telling my jokes on
Speaker 1: stage in nineteen seventy nine. After every three or four months,
Speaker 1: I would look back and I realized, I would realize
Speaker 1: I had made more money than I had the previous
Speaker 1: three months. So I just stayed on the path. I
Speaker 1: got lucky at bumpthing to how people are like, oh,
Speaker 1: You're so lucky you bumped into Howard Stern. I said, yeah,
Speaker 1: I am, and he's lucky bumped into me, which once
Speaker 1: again is pompous, but I don't care. It made a difference. Okay,
Speaker 1: so let's just assume you never worked again. You've got
Speaker 1: enough money to get to the end. You know what
Speaker 1: Jackie Mason says when you asked them asking that I
Speaker 1: never have to work again unless I want to buy something. No,
Speaker 1: I'm find my house is paid. Well, I got a
Speaker 1: million dollar house here on the water, and you know
Speaker 1: I got my after and uh, you know, and then
Speaker 1: I would never not work. That's not you know, if
Speaker 1: I'm not working, that means I'm dead, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean? So do I have to work? Not really.
Speaker 1: You know, I got I got so much stern memorability.
Speaker 1: At some point I'm gonna start selling that off with
Speaker 1: just just for the fun of just and everybody off.
Speaker 1: You know. Okay, Jackie, this has been wonderful. We could
Speaker 1: go out for another two hours. Maybe we'll do that
Speaker 1: at another time. It's great to hear the story. And
Speaker 1: I think we covered some stuff that's not in your book?
Speaker 1: Is that true? What what I always tell interviewers, excuse me,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry you were the first. What I always tell
Speaker 1: interview is this, listen if your listeners happen to enjoy
Speaker 1: this interview. And number one, they might not believe something,
Speaker 1: or they might want to hear more about something, or
Speaker 1: they have a question about something that they didn't hear
Speaker 1: anything about. I always say, do me a favorite. Just
Speaker 1: tell them to write you questions and next time we
Speaker 1: do this, you know, they might think the questions that
Speaker 1: you wouldn't necessarily think of or you wouldn't realize they
Speaker 1: want and and we'll go into the questions and I'll
Speaker 1: have a merry old time. I could do this for hours.
Speaker 1: You know, people come up to me and said, oh
Speaker 1: I love John Howard starn Show. But I'm sure you
Speaker 1: get sick of hearing that is that if I have
Speaker 1: to get sick of here and I put a bullet
Speaker 1: in my head, you know, I love it. It was
Speaker 1: great fun and it's still great fun. One other thing,
Speaker 1: I got a guy that answers all my email me.
Speaker 1: So anybody that writes me I right back. Joke land
Speaker 1: at a l dot com, j O K E l
Speaker 1: A n d at a old dot com right to me,
Speaker 1: I'll write you back. I love hearing from people and
Speaker 1: old girl friends. You know that's so funny because you
Speaker 1: were saying you ever hear talked to old people and
Speaker 1: blah blah blah. And then we took a break and
Speaker 1: I came out and picked up my phone and it
Speaker 1: was this girl that I was so in love with
Speaker 1: in the seventies that I wrote most of the songs
Speaker 1: that I wrote in the seventies, And yes, she is,
Speaker 1: I said, I was just talking about not you, but
Speaker 1: about the concept of you. You know, there's a song
Speaker 1: for the concept of you. You better tell me to
Speaker 1: shut up, Bob, because I'll just keep Okay, do you
Speaker 1: hear from this woman on a regular basis? Now? It
Speaker 1: just happened to get in touch about six months ago,
Speaker 1: a year And okay, so did you see each other
Speaker 1: face to face? No, no, I haven't seen her in
Speaker 1: twenty years, thirty years. But she was great, you know.
Speaker 1: And it was at the high time when my band
Speaker 1: was really cooking and we dinagle the house on the water,
Speaker 1: and she lived two houses away, and she was a
Speaker 1: school teacher. You know. I was twenty nine, she was
Speaker 1: twenty seven, and but I had no money, and I
Speaker 1: was a bomb and I was a drunk, and she
Speaker 1: came from a house full of drunk so she, you know,
Speaker 1: kept me at arms length, which we all know attracts
Speaker 1: a man like nothing else. So and then, you know,
Speaker 1: this used to be a cash business. So I assume
Speaker 1: it was a cash business during your career prior to
Speaker 1: Howard Stern. Uh, it wasn't. It wasn't, um no, no.
Speaker 1: Once I hit the Star and Show, yes, it actually
Speaker 1: stopped being a cash becausiness still sometimes well yeah, before that,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, no, My first paycheck was from k Rock.
Speaker 1: You know, I never got a paycheck from NBC. You know.
Speaker 1: Actually The Governors was cash, but that was that was
Speaker 1: on the books. That was a comedy club where we
Speaker 1: actually made good money. Me and my girlfriend Nancy booked
Speaker 1: the acts, hosted the acts, etcetera, etcetera. But there was
Speaker 1: a lot of a lot of cash. At one point,
Speaker 1: I had so much cash and all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: you're looking, it's not there. You know, that's a nature
Speaker 1: of cash. Okay, I'm gonna cut you off because we
Speaker 1: will go off forever. Jackie, thanks so much for doing this.
Speaker 1: Until next time. This is Bob Leftsons