WEBVTT - Jackie "The Joke Man" Martling 0:00:08.600 --> 0:00:12.200 Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the bob Weft That's Podcast. 0:00:12.560 --> 0:00:16.079 My guest this week is the one and only Jackie Barton. 0:00:16.120 --> 0:00:19.599 But guest Jackie, that joke fan, Jackie? How you doing? 0:00:22.120 --> 0:00:23.880 I'm all right now, But last week I was in 0:00:24.000 --> 0:00:27.480 rough shape? You know? Oh really, Ron, what was it 0:00:27.520 --> 0:00:31.000 like last week? I don't know. I don't know. No, 0:00:31.440 --> 0:00:34.919 I actually, uh, the world is coming to an end 0:00:35.479 --> 0:00:40.760 and the epidemic is completely out of control. The President 0:00:40.960 --> 0:00:43.920 is the worst piece of ship I could ever, ever, 0:00:43.960 --> 0:00:46.320 ever imagine. But I live on the water. I actually 0:00:46.360 --> 0:00:50.440 went swimming again yesterday on November tenth or whatever it was, 0:00:50.680 --> 0:00:53.160 and I got a beautiful girlfriend and I haven't missed 0:00:53.159 --> 0:00:56.160 the meal. The only my only complaint is that I'm 0:00:56.240 --> 0:00:59.600 gaining weight because there's nothing to do except eat, because 0:00:59.640 --> 0:01:05.480 I masturbating. I think, Now, don't you live in Long Island. 0:01:06.080 --> 0:01:09.040 I live right on Long Island Sound Long Islands. And 0:01:09.319 --> 0:01:12.319 you went in the water, yes, and it was it 0:01:12.400 --> 0:01:15.000 was cold, but it was fine. It was cold, but 0:01:15.040 --> 0:01:17.280 it was fine. What was your motivation? I mean, it's 0:01:17.280 --> 0:01:20.319 not quite January first for Polar Bear Day. No, you 0:01:20.319 --> 0:01:24.479 know what, every year you start jumping in the water 0:01:24.720 --> 0:01:26.760 like in you know, the middle of May and the 0:01:26.840 --> 0:01:29.319 May beginning of June, and it's very cold, but you 0:01:29.400 --> 0:01:31.920 jump in because then with each passing week it gets 0:01:31.959 --> 0:01:34.440 warmer and warmer and warmer. And the truth of it 0:01:34.520 --> 0:01:36.319 is a long island sound is a huge body of 0:01:36.360 --> 0:01:40.399 water sort of holds holds the heat for a long time. 0:01:40.440 --> 0:01:43.959 I mean it was it was cold, but it was cold, 0:01:44.040 --> 0:01:46.600 just like it's cold in the beginning of June, you know. 0:01:46.760 --> 0:01:49.800 I mean I didn't really swim. I usually swim, but 0:01:49.880 --> 0:01:51.760 it was just a little too cold on my hands. 0:01:51.800 --> 0:01:55.040 So I just jumped in and thrashed around a little bit, uh, 0:01:55.200 --> 0:01:57.880 for the fun of it, because I mean, there's nothing 0:01:57.960 --> 0:02:00.840 like it. It just jumps, jumps, start your body and 0:02:00.880 --> 0:02:04.600 you come out. I have a nice outdoor shower, and uh, 0:02:04.720 --> 0:02:07.040 it's just reset your clock. It's just something fun to do. 0:02:07.240 --> 0:02:09.320 It's also something fun to talk about. What else am 0:02:09.320 --> 0:02:12.520 I gonna do? If it's middle of November? Are you 0:02:12.680 --> 0:02:15.040 done with the sound until May? Are we gonna see 0:02:15.040 --> 0:02:17.840 you in the Sune? No? No, you know, but it's funny. 0:02:17.840 --> 0:02:20.519 I got an next door neighbor, Phyllis, who's delightful. It 0:02:20.800 --> 0:02:24.360 fills some bill and every time she goes in. Of course, 0:02:24.360 --> 0:02:26.400 somebody called me today and said, I guess who was 0:02:26.440 --> 0:02:28.920 in the water this morning. I'm like, leave me alone. 0:02:29.040 --> 0:02:31.680 You know. It's like almost like a pan match, you know. 0:02:32.320 --> 0:02:34.240 But I don't really care, you know, I just I 0:02:34.280 --> 0:02:36.880 just if I feel like it. If the sun's out 0:02:37.080 --> 0:02:40.160 and it's bright, you jump in, and when you jump 0:02:40.240 --> 0:02:43.079 out it's it's warm. Even if it's not warm out, 0:02:43.560 --> 0:02:47.280 the sun is just a miracle worker. You know. You 0:02:47.360 --> 0:02:50.040 have to live on you know, people that live on 0:02:50.120 --> 0:02:53.320 the water understand that it's it sounds silly, but it 0:02:53.360 --> 0:02:56.480 really isn't you know, it's really it's quite delightful. Now. 0:02:56.480 --> 0:02:58.680 That begs the question if you live on the sound. 0:02:59.600 --> 0:03:02.040 I know. I grew up in Connecticut, a couple of 0:03:02.040 --> 0:03:06.840 months directly across at Stanford. Okay. The question is, though 0:03:07.280 --> 0:03:12.320 frequently you have situations where there is a storm and 0:03:12.320 --> 0:03:15.560 then the water comes up into your house. What happens? 0:03:15.600 --> 0:03:20.480 There're not here. I live in Bayville on the north 0:03:20.480 --> 0:03:23.839 shore of Long Island, and Bayville is a bowl. It's 0:03:23.840 --> 0:03:26.720 actually a bowl, and I live at the top of 0:03:26.760 --> 0:03:30.280 the bowl. It's funny. I'm here and then two doors 0:03:30.360 --> 0:03:33.120 down from me is my ex wife's house and then 0:03:33.160 --> 0:03:38.680 her other house, and uh, in Sandy I got no water, 0:03:38.880 --> 0:03:40.680 just like a half inch of water. I had to 0:03:40.720 --> 0:03:44.960 throw away my basement rugs. But I I'm so high 0:03:45.040 --> 0:03:46.600 up that I even had the bulls to have a 0:03:46.640 --> 0:03:49.120 rug in the basement. I got an inch of water 0:03:50.920 --> 0:03:53.480 hundred and fifty two d feet down the street. My 0:03:53.560 --> 0:03:56.440 ex wife got four ft in each of our houses. 0:03:56.640 --> 0:03:59.480 Because it's a bowl, and it's it's elusive how it 0:03:59.560 --> 0:04:02.680 how it's shape, but it's a it's amazing. But you know, 0:04:02.920 --> 0:04:06.760 you never know what's gonna happen. You know, in Sandy Um, 0:04:06.920 --> 0:04:09.200 we were waiting for the second high tide and we 0:04:09.240 --> 0:04:11.720 thought we're gonna be wiped out. And the wind shifted 0:04:12.720 --> 0:04:16.839 and we hardly lost a branch off a tree. And 0:04:17.080 --> 0:04:19.280 if the wind hadn't a shift that, you know, at 0:04:19.279 --> 0:04:21.640 the second high tide, we expected to get wiped out. 0:04:21.720 --> 0:04:23.520 And I was over at my friend's house. He lives 0:04:23.520 --> 0:04:27.160 in a big, huge, you know mansion up on the hill, 0:04:27.320 --> 0:04:31.440 and we're waiting for that second high tide and it's 0:04:31.480 --> 0:04:33.440 just it was like y two k. You know, it 0:04:33.600 --> 0:04:36.240 just never happened. And if the wind down the shifted. 0:04:36.520 --> 0:04:39.279 We're going the way a rockaway which was flattened. You know, 0:04:39.839 --> 0:04:43.080 it's all, you know, it's all. It's all a roll 0:04:43.120 --> 0:04:45.120 of the dice, no matter what you're talking about, it's 0:04:45.160 --> 0:04:48.160 all a damn roll of the dice, you know. Okay, 0:04:48.200 --> 0:04:54.640 how many times you've been married? Well, this ex wife, 0:04:55.000 --> 0:04:56.960 you've been divorced from her for how long? What do 0:04:57.000 --> 0:04:59.800 you mean? How many times have I been married? I've 0:04:59.800 --> 0:05:03.760 been married. I was married to Nancy once and we 0:05:03.960 --> 0:05:06.640 last that we're married fourteen years. But we got married, 0:05:07.080 --> 0:05:10.000 we lived together for seven years, and then we got married, 0:05:10.080 --> 0:05:12.760 and then we got divorced. So we made it together 0:05:13.240 --> 0:05:16.560 a total like a little over twenty years. But she 0:05:16.680 --> 0:05:19.479 lives two doors away, and her and her boyfriend are 0:05:20.320 --> 0:05:23.239 my girlfriend and mine's best friends. And we eat dinner 0:05:23.279 --> 0:05:26.000 together and have you know, eat meals at each other's houses. 0:05:26.040 --> 0:05:29.960 And she's just a wonderful, wonderful girl. I think I 0:05:30.000 --> 0:05:32.720 think my girlfriend actually likes her more than she likes me. 0:05:33.680 --> 0:05:36.120 And I'm still a little I'm still in love with 0:05:36.160 --> 0:05:38.520 every girl I haven't dated. Okay, but why did you 0:05:38.560 --> 0:05:42.080 get a divorce then? Because we would have killed each other. 0:05:42.160 --> 0:05:45.040 You know, there was a lot of a lot of 0:05:46.480 --> 0:05:52.200 personal stuff, a lot of you know, it's like, you know, 0:05:53.320 --> 0:05:55.440 it was in my book. You know, we tried, uh 0:05:56.000 --> 0:05:59.320 we couldn't have a baby. So we did in vitro fertilization, 0:06:00.279 --> 0:06:05.279 long before anybody really knew what it was. And and 0:06:05.400 --> 0:06:09.440 Howard was anti you know, science for having babies. So 0:06:10.400 --> 0:06:14.560 not only was it an incredibly pressurized situation where I 0:06:14.600 --> 0:06:16.520 had to sneak around and we were just getting to 0:06:16.560 --> 0:06:21.400 be really well known, but we failed six times, and 0:06:21.560 --> 0:06:23.520 there was if you know, anybody's ever been through it, 0:06:23.560 --> 0:06:26.640 there's nothing more heart wrenching in the world. And this 0:06:26.720 --> 0:06:29.800 is the early nineties, this is long before there were 0:06:29.880 --> 0:06:33.640 chat rooms and emails and people he could commiserate with. 0:06:33.920 --> 0:06:35.960 You know, misery loves company. You know, if you go 0:06:36.080 --> 0:06:38.279 through the worst thing in the world, but there's another 0:06:38.360 --> 0:06:41.839 couple or another person or somebody just bounce off of, 0:06:41.920 --> 0:06:45.880 it just changes the whole, uh, the whole situation. And 0:06:45.880 --> 0:06:48.640 it was you know, so that did a lot of damage. 0:06:48.680 --> 0:06:50.640 I mean, you know, lots of reasons. You know, two 0:06:50.680 --> 0:06:54.279 strong personalities, and you know, we were very good friends 0:06:54.360 --> 0:06:56.960 for years, and then she came to work with me 0:06:57.480 --> 0:07:00.719 and we worked together and then we couldn't not fuck, 0:07:00.839 --> 0:07:03.840 so we slept together and then we were partners, and 0:07:03.880 --> 0:07:06.400 then we lived together, and then we got married. So 0:07:06.960 --> 0:07:09.640 we kind of were on a sign curve and now 0:07:09.680 --> 0:07:12.080 we're back to being friends and it's all, uh, it's 0:07:12.120 --> 0:07:14.920 all wonderful. That begs a question you said earlier, is 0:07:14.960 --> 0:07:17.440 still in love with all your old girlfriends? Have you 0:07:17.480 --> 0:07:20.160 looked them all up online? If you made any contact? 0:07:20.760 --> 0:07:24.160 You know, it really is funny you wind up circling back. 0:07:24.560 --> 0:07:27.840 I mean I had circled back. You know, a lot 0:07:27.840 --> 0:07:30.960 of girls I went back and revisited and found and 0:07:31.160 --> 0:07:35.840 uh it was so much fun. Um But yes, yes, 0:07:36.000 --> 0:07:38.120 you know, and it's fun to be in contact with 0:07:38.120 --> 0:07:41.800 people and I talked to them and you know, some 0:07:41.960 --> 0:07:44.680 from long ago, something from not that long ago. But 0:07:45.040 --> 0:07:49.160 it's I think it's just fascinating. It's so fascinating. What's 0:07:49.200 --> 0:07:53.600 really fascinating is when you get on the phone with 0:07:53.880 --> 0:07:58.240 an old friend. It it's still never fails to astound 0:07:58.280 --> 0:08:01.880 me how you instantly are there if it's somebody you know, 0:08:02.400 --> 0:08:04.320 I mean I I shared a lot of laughs and 0:08:04.360 --> 0:08:06.560 a lot of closeness with a lot of people. It 0:08:06.640 --> 0:08:09.080 wasn't really in passing like, you know, we would dig 0:08:09.160 --> 0:08:13.080 in and uh, two minutes on the phone. It's like 0:08:13.560 --> 0:08:17.800 the years just are not there. You know. Time time 0:08:17.920 --> 0:08:23.040 is the most incredible thing. I can remember so much 0:08:23.200 --> 0:08:26.360 of everything that happened. My first two years in comedy 0:08:26.680 --> 0:08:30.400 and the next thirty eight years are blur. I know nothing, 0:08:30.720 --> 0:08:32.520 but I can tell you everything that happened because in 0:08:32.559 --> 0:08:36.680 those formative years. You know, it's just like I don't 0:08:36.679 --> 0:08:41.640 know how how old you I'm okay, so you probably 0:08:41.679 --> 0:08:43.760 know somebody says, how Jackie, when's the last time you 0:08:43.800 --> 0:08:48.400 saw Bob Oh? I just I saw him five years ago, 0:08:49.160 --> 0:08:52.520 and like, yah know it's amazing. It's a little it's 0:08:52.559 --> 0:08:55.600 a little scary, you know. And I'm like when somebody says, 0:08:56.720 --> 0:08:58.920 I said, wow, that's not for a long time. No, 0:08:59.400 --> 0:09:02.920 it was a long time ago. You know, you know, 0:09:03.040 --> 0:09:06.920 I ain't. Being stupid doesn't help either, Okay, we all 0:09:06.920 --> 0:09:09.480 are victims of that. But you know, when you there 0:09:09.520 --> 0:09:12.440 are a lot of stories about reconnecting with old girlfriends, 0:09:12.760 --> 0:09:16.280 were rekindled some romance. Did you have any of that experience? 0:09:16.559 --> 0:09:19.080 Maybe you they wanted it and you didn't, or maybe 0:09:19.120 --> 0:09:22.679 you didn't. They didn't know because because I uh I 0:09:22.720 --> 0:09:27.760 was married and uh, and there's so many girls around here. Um, 0:09:28.880 --> 0:09:31.880 there were no real romances that I would have wanted 0:09:31.960 --> 0:09:34.679 to really revisit. I got so many stories of friends 0:09:34.679 --> 0:09:39.520 that that's such interesting, you know, interesting interesting things that 0:09:39.600 --> 0:09:42.520 happened for good or for bad or whatever. But no, 0:09:42.800 --> 0:09:45.760 it was never like an unrequirded love where all of 0:09:45.800 --> 0:09:48.400 a sudden, I'm single and she's single and wow, let's 0:09:48.520 --> 0:09:50.840 put this back together. And not immediately. You know, I 0:09:50.840 --> 0:09:53.800 didn't really have girlfriends, you know. Nancy was the first 0:09:53.840 --> 0:09:56.600 time I was really serious with somebody. I was so 0:09:56.720 --> 0:10:01.200 busy rocking and rolling and drinking and smoking pot and 0:10:01.240 --> 0:10:06.160 being plenty screwed up and just partying and trying to 0:10:06.200 --> 0:10:09.679 avoid growing up. You know. I I got my first 0:10:09.720 --> 0:10:11.840 paycheck from the Holage Starn Show when I was like 0:10:11.920 --> 0:10:14.079 thirty eight, you know what I mean. Like I had 0:10:14.120 --> 0:10:19.240 a I let h not too charming a life, you know, 0:10:19.400 --> 0:10:21.959 pretty crazy. It wasn't like, well, I had a girlfriend 0:10:22.000 --> 0:10:23.600 and we lived, you know, I mean I lived together 0:10:23.640 --> 0:10:27.720 with a girl in college, uh, for two right after college, 0:10:27.760 --> 0:10:30.640 for two years, just long enough to make me realize that, wow, 0:10:30.720 --> 0:10:32.920 I am not ready for this, you know, and I'm 0:10:32.960 --> 0:10:34.840 still in touch with her. You know, she lives up 0:10:34.840 --> 0:10:38.280 in Provincetown, and you know, God, you know, and I 0:10:38.440 --> 0:10:41.560 just to this day if I see an old letter 0:10:41.600 --> 0:10:45.400 from her and I see her handwriting, I get warm 0:10:45.640 --> 0:10:47.360 and I know that sound. You know, I don't like 0:10:47.480 --> 0:10:51.400 to talk about make it sound like I'm so funn No, no, 0:10:51.600 --> 0:10:53.840 it doesn't. One of the problems with people, as I said, 0:10:54.000 --> 0:10:56.520 you know, you see this all the time of celebrities. Oh, 0:10:56.600 --> 0:11:00.040 I got divorced, I'm over it. It takes forever to 0:11:00.120 --> 0:11:02.800 get over it. But but but the who wants to 0:11:02.880 --> 0:11:06.640 be unless somebody has hurt you and done crappy things too. 0:11:06.679 --> 0:11:10.360 And it's amazing how you can usually write that off 0:11:10.440 --> 0:11:15.320 for you know, you can remember your life the way 0:11:15.360 --> 0:11:20.280 you choose. You can remember an incident and told by 0:11:20.320 --> 0:11:22.280 one of my friends it was one way, and told 0:11:22.360 --> 0:11:24.320 by another of my friends the other way. You know. 0:11:24.440 --> 0:11:27.040 I remember at night in late George when the engine 0:11:27.080 --> 0:11:29.200 conked out on the boat and we had the paddle 0:11:29.320 --> 0:11:32.240 with the with the water skis, and it was dark 0:11:32.280 --> 0:11:34.679 and we couldn't see anything, and it was it was 0:11:35.040 --> 0:11:39.040 two hours of absolute hell. And I remember saying, I 0:11:39.040 --> 0:11:42.360 can't believe then a month from now, we're gonna be 0:11:42.400 --> 0:11:44.800 talking about what a great time this one. And I'm 0:11:44.840 --> 0:11:49.679 telling you it was a great time that it was horrible. 0:11:50.440 --> 0:11:53.280 You know. Yeah, how many times you have a song 0:11:53.360 --> 0:11:55.760 on the radio and you go, oh, man, remember this one. 0:11:55.800 --> 0:11:58.679 I'm like, wait a minute, I hated that fucking song. 0:11:58.840 --> 0:12:02.600 You know it's there's not can't listen to? Which is 0:12:02.640 --> 0:12:06.199 Bobby Goldsboro? Honey that I hated it? Then I hate 0:12:06.200 --> 0:12:13.959 it now that guy I did he something happened with 0:12:14.040 --> 0:12:20.360 him on the Tonight show that you know what it's 0:12:20.440 --> 0:12:23.400 gotta be. It's gotta be on YouTube by now. You know, 0:12:23.480 --> 0:12:26.120 anything you talk about sometimes you go looking for it 0:12:26.160 --> 0:12:29.680 and you can't find it, But six months later you can. 0:12:30.960 --> 0:12:32.840 You know, I got a very good friend. Were you 0:12:32.960 --> 0:12:36.640 a fan of the Start Show? Yes, but we'll be honest, 0:12:37.000 --> 0:12:39.280 you know you eventually I've been living on the West Coast, 0:12:39.480 --> 0:12:41.560 and eventually when he came to the West Coast, he 0:12:41.720 --> 0:12:44.320 was early morning. I'm a late riser at the time. 0:12:44.360 --> 0:12:47.400 I was right. Uh. The reason I'm asking is, do 0:12:47.440 --> 0:12:50.880 you remember a thing called the jetty actually that they 0:12:51.160 --> 0:12:52.920 they used to break my balls about? What was the 0:12:53.000 --> 0:12:57.320 float that that was outside my house here in Bayville, 0:12:57.760 --> 0:13:01.120 and uh, and it was very very famous on the show, 0:13:01.280 --> 0:13:04.200 you know, uh, because Howard broke my balls about it. 0:13:04.280 --> 0:13:06.400 But people came over my house and we get drunk 0:13:06.400 --> 0:13:08.800 and eat lobsters and swim out to the jetty and 0:13:08.840 --> 0:13:11.560 it was great fun. And uh. But it was built 0:13:12.440 --> 0:13:19.080 by Bruce Springsteen's first manager, and from them when I 0:13:19.120 --> 0:13:23.280 said that. When I said that, uh on the show, 0:13:24.280 --> 0:13:26.440 Gary said, who wasn't I told him it was. He says, 0:13:26.480 --> 0:13:28.360 I'll know you out of yourman. It was a guy 0:13:28.440 --> 0:13:32.040 named Mike Capell. And at the time, Mike Apell was 0:13:32.200 --> 0:13:35.800 on the Internet, which had just started, and that was 0:13:35.840 --> 0:13:40.200 Bruce Springsteen's first manager. But as time went on, the 0:13:40.240 --> 0:13:44.480 Internet fills in and it's like back times. It's like, 0:13:44.559 --> 0:13:48.680 you know, the the Encyclopedia Britannica goes from one leaflet 0:13:49.040 --> 0:13:52.200 to volumes, and all of a sudden, here's this guy, 0:13:52.320 --> 0:13:55.200 Carl Tinker West. And he was a good friend of 0:13:55.200 --> 0:13:57.880 a friend. He was a rocket scientist and a madman. 0:13:57.960 --> 0:14:00.360 He's still a dear friend. He's like eighty eight years old, 0:14:01.040 --> 0:14:03.800 and he he built the float. But here I am saying, 0:14:04.480 --> 0:14:06.680 you know, it was built by Bruce Springsteen's first manager, 0:14:06.679 --> 0:14:09.120 and they're saying you're crazy, And it turned out that 0:14:09.200 --> 0:14:12.160 I wasn't crazy at all, but it took time to 0:14:12.320 --> 0:14:17.280 fill in. But this thing with goldsborow he was on 0:14:17.320 --> 0:14:23.760 the Tonight Show and Bill Cosby was hosting, and Richard 0:14:23.800 --> 0:14:27.640 Pryor was on first, and then Bobby Goldsboro come out. 0:14:27.720 --> 0:14:29.840 I'm sure he sang that so long, honey, because I 0:14:29.840 --> 0:14:31.680 think that's the only thing he ever sang. But he's 0:14:31.680 --> 0:14:34.800 a good old boy from like North Carolina or South Carolina. 0:14:35.280 --> 0:14:38.440 He came and he sat down and prior moved over, 0:14:38.520 --> 0:14:43.760 so his Cosby and Bobby Goldsborough and Richard Prayer and 0:14:43.840 --> 0:14:47.640 he somehow he's talking about, Yeah, I'm from North Carolina 0:14:48.360 --> 0:14:51.800 and what it's like, and then he says, you know, sometimes, uh, 0:14:51.960 --> 0:14:54.360 it could be really scary there because whenever there was 0:14:54.400 --> 0:14:57.960 a fire up in the woods, all the coons would 0:14:57.960 --> 0:15:00.640 come running down from the woods and they were and 0:15:01.840 --> 0:15:05.360 he said the word coons and realized he's a Southern guy, 0:15:05.480 --> 0:15:08.040 and he realized he was sitting between two black guys, 0:15:08.280 --> 0:15:13.200 and he started giggling, and it was so fucking uncomfortable, 0:15:13.200 --> 0:15:15.640 and Richard Pryor looked over Bill Cosby and said, well, 0:15:15.640 --> 0:15:18.600 are you gonna kill this guy or mine? And when 0:15:18.600 --> 0:15:21.119 they came back from commercial, there was no Bobby Goldsboro. 0:15:21.240 --> 0:15:23.920 And I've been telling the story for fifty years and 0:15:24.000 --> 0:15:26.880 I still have to find somebody who saw it or 0:15:26.920 --> 0:15:29.240 knows about it. But I haven't googled it in like 0:15:29.280 --> 0:15:31.400 ten years, so I'm sure it's in there somewhere, because 0:15:31.840 --> 0:15:34.320 I couldn't make that story up. It was, it was, 0:15:34.600 --> 0:15:37.560 and he wasn't doing it. He wasn't doing it to 0:15:37.640 --> 0:15:41.320 be racist. What was racist was after he said it, 0:15:42.200 --> 0:15:45.480 he heard it and he made that connection. It was. 0:15:45.600 --> 0:15:48.360 It was very odd, very very fucking odd. But that 0:15:49.040 --> 0:15:51.040 that that is a tough song. That is the tough 0:15:51.080 --> 0:15:53.080 But I'm sure if I heard it, I go remember 0:15:53.160 --> 0:15:55.600 this one. Okay, let's come back. You're talking about the 0:15:55.680 --> 0:16:05.200 Bruce Springsteen's first manager. Are you ever wrong? Um? Sometimes 0:16:05.360 --> 0:16:07.680 sometimes you know, it's it's funny. Sometimes it can be 0:16:07.720 --> 0:16:14.360 a detail that you absolutely remember and you're absolutely wrong, 0:16:15.040 --> 0:16:18.200 but not about a whole event, but like about this 0:16:18.320 --> 0:16:20.600 thing and that thing. You know. It's like there was 0:16:20.640 --> 0:16:24.720 a show called Andy's Gang in the yearly fifties and 0:16:24.720 --> 0:16:29.640 and right, and I used to tell people what it wasn't. 0:16:29.760 --> 0:16:34.480 It wasn't Andy's gang before Andy's gang, it was uncle 0:16:34.640 --> 0:16:38.080 Ed's gang. And I remember the uncle Ed's gang so clearly, 0:16:38.200 --> 0:16:40.680 so clearly, and I'd argue with people, and finally it 0:16:40.800 --> 0:16:43.240 came on the web and I looked and it wasn't 0:16:43.360 --> 0:16:47.120 uncle Ed's gang. It was Smiling Ed's gang. And the 0:16:47.160 --> 0:16:49.920 minute I saw it, I was like, yeah, but in 0:16:49.960 --> 0:16:53.400 my mind I saw uncle Ed's gang on the TV screen, 0:16:53.480 --> 0:16:55.560 so that, you know, I mean, that's a very small detail. 0:16:55.920 --> 0:16:58.040 But it's funny how your mind plays tricks. But when 0:16:58.040 --> 0:17:00.320 I say to this day, I was like, he was 0:17:00.360 --> 0:17:03.280 the new guy. People like, you're ready mine. No, Andy 0:17:03.440 --> 0:17:09.119 was the fucking newgat. I hated. I love Crusado Rabbit, 0:17:09.119 --> 0:17:11.080 but they went in to Andy Divine. I hated it. 0:17:11.680 --> 0:17:14.359 Do you like and I didn't. I didn't. I didn't 0:17:14.400 --> 0:17:16.600 watch Carsade to Arrive and I wasn't a big you know, 0:17:16.680 --> 0:17:19.960 I it's so weird what you liked, you know. I 0:17:20.160 --> 0:17:25.119 read Superman. Uh, I wasn't anyways near as big a 0:17:25.119 --> 0:17:28.440 Batman fan as Superman, but the rest of them kind 0:17:28.440 --> 0:17:32.000 of left me cold. I read Aquaman and super Boy, 0:17:32.000 --> 0:17:34.159 but when they got wacky. I think, you know, the 0:17:34.200 --> 0:17:36.920 Marvel comics that was not my thing. But here I'm 0:17:37.320 --> 0:17:40.720 reading Superman and Batman. But I was a huge fan 0:17:40.800 --> 0:17:45.479 of Archie and Betty and Veronica. You know, they just 0:17:45.560 --> 0:17:48.080 had me. They just had me, and I love that. 0:17:48.600 --> 0:17:50.840 And I never thought in terms of it being weird, 0:17:50.960 --> 0:17:53.840 but that if anybody ever saw my comic book collection, 0:17:53.840 --> 0:17:58.040 they would say, what planet is this guy from? You know, Okay, 0:17:58.119 --> 0:18:00.760 let's go back to being right. We know that there 0:18:00.800 --> 0:18:03.720 are a lot of dummies and uninformed people in society. 0:18:04.359 --> 0:18:07.119 What I've learned going to psychotherapy is sometimes I gotta 0:18:07.160 --> 0:18:09.720 let it slide because it ends up reflecting. I mean, 0:18:09.760 --> 0:18:12.320 I may be right, but they dislike it. Can you 0:18:12.400 --> 0:18:14.399 let shi slide? Or if someone gets it wrong, you 0:18:14.520 --> 0:18:18.720 gotta let them know. No, you know, depending what you're 0:18:18.720 --> 0:18:21.560 talking about. You know, you get old enough, you don't 0:18:21.560 --> 0:18:24.439 you know, you don't care? You know, how much of 0:18:24.480 --> 0:18:29.520 my life am I gonna waste? You know? Like like 0:18:29.560 --> 0:18:32.639 I did a roast last night, and all of a sudden, 0:18:32.640 --> 0:18:35.879 I got the vibe that, holy sh it that you 0:18:35.920 --> 0:18:39.000 know a couple of these guys and girls whatever the 0:18:39.160 --> 0:18:42.160 Trump people, I wasn't gonna address it. I just want 0:18:42.160 --> 0:18:44.320 I'm gonna address it had nothing to do with the comedy, 0:18:44.400 --> 0:18:47.320 nothing to do with what we're doing. But you know, 0:18:47.400 --> 0:18:50.639 I guess if I, if I had a heart, you know, 0:18:50.840 --> 0:18:52.840 or at any conviction, I would have jumped in and 0:18:53.160 --> 0:18:56.439 tried to you know, sway the boat. But now you know, 0:18:56.600 --> 0:19:01.080 like at what point you know, I'm you know what, 0:19:01.200 --> 0:19:03.879 I'm not a confrontational type guy. I'm really not. What 0:19:04.040 --> 0:19:07.320 sounds funny because people thought I was so confrontational with 0:19:07.440 --> 0:19:10.000 Howard on the show. But I you don't have to 0:19:10.000 --> 0:19:13.560 be a confrontational type person to not put up with bullying. 0:19:14.240 --> 0:19:16.479 It's a whole different thing, you know what I mean? Like, 0:19:17.240 --> 0:19:18.600 you know, I don't get I don't care if you're 0:19:18.600 --> 0:19:22.040 for the mets of the Yankees, you know, but it 0:19:22.200 --> 0:19:25.160 don't don't tell my my cousin he's an assholet because 0:19:25.160 --> 0:19:28.159 he likes the Yankees, you know. Okay, So, now in 0:19:28.240 --> 0:19:32.240 your eighth decade, what have you learned? Because because I know, 0:19:32.920 --> 0:19:36.000 but as we get older, as we get older, we 0:19:36.119 --> 0:19:38.359 learned something. Listen, I'm in my seventh decade. I'm just 0:19:38.400 --> 0:19:40.879 to have entre two behind you. What have you learned? 0:19:41.480 --> 0:19:43.680 Because as you get older, you do get you do 0:19:43.840 --> 0:19:47.880 tend to get happier, and you do tend to get wiser. Uh, 0:19:48.000 --> 0:19:51.600 never waste the heart on, never pass the bathroom, never 0:19:51.640 --> 0:19:54.000 trust the fart. Those are the three things that people 0:19:54.160 --> 0:19:57.000 used to always say, and I never understood what they 0:19:57.040 --> 0:20:02.760 were talking about. And now it's the fun gospel. Well 0:20:02.800 --> 0:20:07.040 that begs a question. Do you annything begs the question? 0:20:07.119 --> 0:20:11.240 You need a couple of new phrases. That makes me 0:20:11.320 --> 0:20:13.840 want to ask a question. You know what that that 0:20:14.000 --> 0:20:17.399 brings something to mind? Begs a question. You sound like 0:20:17.440 --> 0:20:23.280 a fucking British politician. Okay, stress it. Do you go? 0:20:23.680 --> 0:20:29.159 Do you take any anti pee medication? No? No, no, 0:20:28.880 --> 0:20:32.000 no no no. Can you sit through a movie? You 0:20:32.080 --> 0:20:35.119 mean you mean you mean, uh, to make it through 0:20:35.160 --> 0:20:39.040 the night or something? No. I get up and pee plenty, 0:20:39.359 --> 0:20:45.040 and sometimes I don't. Uh. Usually I'm fine, uh with 0:20:45.160 --> 0:20:47.880 the movie. I'll sit there and I know there's gonna 0:20:47.920 --> 0:20:51.760 be fourteen commercials I mean fourth incoming attractions, And when 0:20:51.840 --> 0:20:54.720 I know it's getting close, I zoom to the bathroom 0:20:54.880 --> 0:20:57.119 and take my quick leak and zoom back. You know, 0:20:57.240 --> 0:21:00.359 I have no pride about that. I have And Pete 0:21:00.359 --> 0:21:03.680 in a popcorn box yet. But it's been a long 0:21:03.800 --> 0:21:07.479 you know, very rarely where you sit there in agony. Um. 0:21:08.280 --> 0:21:10.520 But I don't. I don't take any of that stuff, 0:21:10.680 --> 0:21:15.120 you know, to make you get when I wonder, would 0:21:15.160 --> 0:21:17.840 it have been like the early nineties or something. Nancy 0:21:17.880 --> 0:21:20.439 and I had moved up to our bedroom, was in 0:21:20.480 --> 0:21:24.719 our attic, you know, we finished the attic, and all 0:21:24.720 --> 0:21:26.359 of a sudden I started getting up in the middle 0:21:26.359 --> 0:21:30.760 of night to pee, and I said, Holy Christ, my 0:21:30.880 --> 0:21:33.280 life is over. And I was getting up like twice 0:21:33.280 --> 0:21:35.800 a night to pee. And I hadn't changed, you know, 0:21:35.880 --> 0:21:37.800 it didn't change my diet. I didn't have. It was 0:21:37.800 --> 0:21:40.040 the same getting up in the morning. And I thought, 0:21:40.080 --> 0:21:43.720 I am so screwed. And as quick as it happened, 0:21:44.520 --> 0:21:47.199 it just stopped and it never happened again. And I 0:21:47.240 --> 0:21:50.879 was like, what kind of god is that that? You know, 0:21:51.040 --> 0:21:53.560 I really thought that it was the end of the world. 0:21:53.600 --> 0:21:55.679 I thought I was done, you know, And but no, 0:21:56.160 --> 0:21:58.520 you know so but now, you know, I get up 0:21:58.520 --> 0:22:01.640 a bunch of times, you know, it was sometimes sometimes 0:22:01.640 --> 0:22:03.480 not so much, but it's built in, you know. I 0:22:03.480 --> 0:22:05.919 get up and a nasty taste in my mouth, so 0:22:05.960 --> 0:22:07.639 I get up and I brushed my teeth, and I 0:22:07.720 --> 0:22:10.040 take a pee and I kicked the cat. It's just 0:22:10.160 --> 0:22:12.800 part of it, you know, instead of instead of all crap, 0:22:13.440 --> 0:22:16.919 I gotta get up, it's oh, I get to go 0:22:17.000 --> 0:22:19.520 back to bed. And I spent a lot of years 0:22:19.560 --> 0:22:21.399 where I didn't get to go back to bed. To 0:22:21.480 --> 0:22:24.360 this day, it's twenty years later, I'm still like, look 0:22:24.400 --> 0:22:27.480 at that fucking pillow just waiting for me. Fuck everybody 0:22:27.520 --> 0:22:30.160 look at this, you know, you know, but when somebody 0:22:30.200 --> 0:22:33.359 says you do you regret leaving the Stern show, I 0:22:33.400 --> 0:22:35.240 don't look at my bank book. I look at my 0:22:35.320 --> 0:22:38.679 pillow and go you know what, you know it was 0:22:38.880 --> 0:22:40.679 it was it was a toss up, you know. So 0:22:40.880 --> 0:22:44.200 what what time do you get up? Now? Whenever? I 0:22:44.320 --> 0:22:50.600 fucking all fit? You know, sometimes seven, sometimes as in 0:22:50.640 --> 0:22:54.000 the summer. In the summer, I'm usually you know, up 0:22:54.000 --> 0:22:57.480 at seven and go for a really nice, nice long 0:22:57.560 --> 0:23:00.480 swim and then come back and I'm in bed with 0:23:00.520 --> 0:23:03.760 my girlfriend and we have tea and you know, watching 0:23:03.840 --> 0:23:09.359 TV and then at breakfast, you know, but otherwise it's uh, 0:23:09.640 --> 0:23:13.040 you know, it's it's it's more about when she wakes up, 0:23:13.320 --> 0:23:16.040 you know, she wakes up. She brings us up a 0:23:16.080 --> 0:23:17.920 couple of cups of tea, you know, one or two 0:23:18.680 --> 0:23:22.520 and uh, but there's no there's no pressure, you know, 0:23:22.680 --> 0:23:25.080 never any pressure, you know, once in a blue moon. 0:23:26.320 --> 0:23:28.000 You know, I haven't done in a while, spentional. I 0:23:28.000 --> 0:23:30.359 don't even been to my city apartment since the COVID. 0:23:30.480 --> 0:23:33.440 But it's so funny because once in a while I 0:23:33.480 --> 0:23:36.080 would do a Q one oh four with Jim Kerr, 0:23:36.760 --> 0:23:38.600 the morning show, all the way down in the A, 0:23:38.760 --> 0:23:41.600 T and T Building, and you know, i'd be on 0:23:41.760 --> 0:23:44.160 with him at like six, so i'd have to get 0:23:44.240 --> 0:23:48.160 up at six or quarter to six, and just getting 0:23:48.240 --> 0:23:51.600 up one day at quarter six, I'd be like, holy fuck, 0:23:51.720 --> 0:23:54.520 and forget quarter to six. I had to be in 0:23:54.600 --> 0:23:59.600 my chair in Manhattan at six o'clock living here in Bayville. 0:23:59.680 --> 0:24:01.880 You know, I got up at twenty twenty after four 0:24:02.000 --> 0:24:03.680 or you know, it's so funny. I got up at 0:24:03.680 --> 0:24:07.919 four fifteen years and all of a sudden the other 0:24:08.000 --> 0:24:10.080 day somebody goes, yeah, I can't believe you used to 0:24:10.119 --> 0:24:12.760 get up at four twenty. I never made the connection 0:24:12.880 --> 0:24:15.840 of four twenty before. And I was like, and they 0:24:15.840 --> 0:24:17.680 thought I was kidding. They said, oh, you're foolish. I 0:24:17.680 --> 0:24:20.159 didn't no, no, I never thought about before. You know, 0:24:21.160 --> 0:24:26.840 how did you meet your girlfriend that you have now? Um, 0:24:26.880 --> 0:24:31.679 it's so weird because we worked in parallel. But she 0:24:31.800 --> 0:24:34.399 was a singer on Long Island in different bands for 0:24:34.960 --> 0:24:38.200 thirty years or something, and then she started working with Omnipop, 0:24:38.760 --> 0:24:41.560 which is a booking a talent agency on the south 0:24:41.600 --> 0:24:44.600 shore Long Island. So we've been in the same industry forever. 0:24:45.640 --> 0:24:49.680 And I was headlining at a club here on Long 0:24:49.720 --> 0:24:54.560 Island called the Brokerage, and Omnipop has a division that's 0:24:54.560 --> 0:24:58.160 in California, and they have this act that you who's 0:24:58.200 --> 0:25:01.240 coming on strong She's kick an ask like crazy. So 0:25:01.320 --> 0:25:03.520 this is like five or six years ago. But her 0:25:03.600 --> 0:25:07.600 name was is Erika Rhodes and her her aunt is 0:25:07.680 --> 0:25:10.400 married to Garrison Keeley. I'm sure you know that name. 0:25:11.960 --> 0:25:16.600 And so she was opening up for me and she 0:25:16.760 --> 0:25:19.560 was coming in from California, so somebody from Omnipop had 0:25:19.600 --> 0:25:22.080 to pick her up at the train station and bring 0:25:22.080 --> 0:25:25.719 her to the show. And Barbara brought her to the 0:25:25.760 --> 0:25:30.159 show and said, for whatever reason, said you know, so 0:25:30.200 --> 0:25:34.800 I'll go in, you know, and it was it's just 0:25:35.040 --> 0:25:36.920 you know that you look back and say, it's so weird. 0:25:36.960 --> 0:25:38.920 But it's not weird because if it hadn't happened, you 0:25:38.920 --> 0:25:41.560 wouldn't be asking me this question. But you know, there's 0:25:41.560 --> 0:25:44.560 nobody in the bar because the showroom is packed, and 0:25:44.600 --> 0:25:46.960 I'm standing at the bar and no, she was standing 0:25:46.960 --> 0:25:48.360 at the bar and I came walking to the bar 0:25:48.400 --> 0:25:50.600 and he was just very pretty blonde standing at the bar. 0:25:51.800 --> 0:25:53.960 And I walked up and said who are you? And 0:25:54.040 --> 0:25:57.040 she said, I'm Barbara And I said, wow, you know 0:25:57.240 --> 0:26:00.040 you're married. At the time, I'm single. You know, I 0:26:00.040 --> 0:26:02.560 would wasn't dating anybody or anything, you know, nothing serious 0:26:02.560 --> 0:26:05.560 going on. And I said, you know, I'm a forward jerk. 0:26:05.680 --> 0:26:07.480 You know, the same old guys that are you married? 0:26:07.520 --> 0:26:09.520 She said, Now, I said, you've got a boyfriend. She 0:26:09.560 --> 0:26:11.000 said no. I said, well, then we got to take 0:26:11.040 --> 0:26:12.680 a picture. And we took a picture. And I said, 0:26:12.720 --> 0:26:14.240 now you gotta give me your email dress so I 0:26:14.240 --> 0:26:16.600 could send you the picture or you sit or your 0:26:16.600 --> 0:26:19.760 cell phone or whatever. And then I spent I sent 0:26:19.880 --> 0:26:21.480 up the picture and spent the next month or so 0:26:21.640 --> 0:26:24.359 trying to talk her and to go on date with me, because, 0:26:24.400 --> 0:26:27.000 as you know, as my reputation filled in behind me 0:26:28.320 --> 0:26:31.359 and then by too long a story to explain, I 0:26:31.400 --> 0:26:34.359 went up with four of the best seats in the 0:26:34.400 --> 0:26:38.280 house to a Willie Nelson concert way up in Simsbury, Connecticut, 0:26:38.320 --> 0:26:39.920 and I said, do you want to go to see 0:26:39.920 --> 0:26:42.600 Willie Nelson in Connecticut? It was like a three hour drive, 0:26:43.640 --> 0:26:45.560 so she took a chance. And when he drove to 0:26:45.560 --> 0:26:49.440 see William, by the time we got back the relationship, 0:26:49.760 --> 0:26:51.879 you know, and she's and she's great, she's you know, 0:26:52.000 --> 0:26:55.639 she's you know, she's the exact opposite of me. And 0:26:55.680 --> 0:26:59.000 she's so gentle and so neat and so clean and 0:26:59.119 --> 0:27:03.560 uh but she's great, you know. And you know she's 0:27:03.600 --> 0:27:06.919 kept me alive. Okay. Are you always so forward in 0:27:07.160 --> 0:27:10.240 every walk of life? You have any social anxiety or 0:27:10.280 --> 0:27:12.680 no matter who's there, you don't get up tight. You'll 0:27:12.680 --> 0:27:16.480 say what you need to. You know. I would love 0:27:16.520 --> 0:27:20.000 to say yes, I don't, but I'm oh, I'm completely uptight, 0:27:20.680 --> 0:27:25.560 completely uptight. But I just pushed past it, you know, 0:27:25.800 --> 0:27:27.840 and and I love it, you know. I I spent 0:27:28.000 --> 0:27:30.879 you know, eight years at the cann Film Festival and 0:27:30.960 --> 0:27:34.919 Sundance and Toronto, and you know, I I'll walk up 0:27:34.920 --> 0:27:37.439 to anybody I don't care, and I and I expect 0:27:37.440 --> 0:27:39.440 the same. I expect people to feel free to walk 0:27:39.520 --> 0:27:41.840 up to me, and they usually do that because they 0:27:41.880 --> 0:27:44.760 they say, you just seem approachable, and I am, you know, 0:27:44.800 --> 0:27:47.240 I mean, I'm certainly approachable. Now, I'm just a little 0:27:47.240 --> 0:27:49.879 old man. But when there was a time when I 0:27:50.040 --> 0:27:54.840 wasn't really famous, but I was known, you know, and uh, 0:27:55.400 --> 0:27:58.240 people can tell you know, it's it's like with a horse, 0:27:58.640 --> 0:28:01.879 the odds, the odd thing, and that I'm not petrified 0:28:01.880 --> 0:28:04.920 at horses, but I don't. I can't believe that something 0:28:04.960 --> 0:28:07.440 that big is that trust you can trust that that much. 0:28:07.480 --> 0:28:13.840 But yeah, I think anytime I've been a little terrified 0:28:13.880 --> 0:28:16.399 of walking up to a girl, I've I've done it, 0:28:16.720 --> 0:28:19.360 you know, just whatever. I'm not saying. I didn't get 0:28:19.640 --> 0:28:23.000 shut down a zillion times, but you know, well, you know, 0:28:23.040 --> 0:28:26.400 you really have nothing to lose, you know, it's easy 0:28:26.480 --> 0:28:27.960 to say that, and then you know, there must have 0:28:28.000 --> 0:28:30.760 been a million times where I just slinked away. I 0:28:30.800 --> 0:28:34.399 just don't choose to remember that, you know. Okay, So 0:28:34.480 --> 0:28:36.639 what kind of kid were you growing up? Were you 0:28:36.720 --> 0:28:39.920 the life of the party, were you an outsider? M 0:28:42.480 --> 0:28:46.160 I was raised by wolves. Uh, but not really. We 0:28:46.200 --> 0:28:49.080 were like the Waltons until say, seventh grade, and then 0:28:49.160 --> 0:28:51.560 my father was drinking way too much. Let's go back, 0:28:51.640 --> 0:28:53.640 what did you What did your father and mother do 0:28:53.760 --> 0:28:58.320 for a living? Uh? My mother was brilliant, but she 0:28:58.520 --> 0:29:05.520 dropped out of the workforce to get married in and um, 0:29:05.680 --> 0:29:08.240 you know, she got knocked up. My parents got married 0:29:08.240 --> 0:29:10.960 on July four and I was born on Valentine's Day, 0:29:11.120 --> 0:29:13.320 you know, do the math. And my father was a 0:29:13.320 --> 0:29:15.640 good looking guy, came out of the service and he 0:29:15.680 --> 0:29:18.400 didn't get married. He was thirty five, she was twenty seven. 0:29:19.440 --> 0:29:23.400 And um, my grandfather built the house I live in, 0:29:23.880 --> 0:29:29.040 and my father and mother lived downstairs, and my father's 0:29:29.120 --> 0:29:33.800 brother married my mother's sister and they lived upstairs like 0:29:33.840 --> 0:29:36.680 the Nortons and the Crampton's. And I was the first kid, 0:29:37.560 --> 0:29:40.000 adding the two brothers and two sisters. So for the 0:29:40.040 --> 0:29:44.320 first two years of my life I had four doting parents. 0:29:45.080 --> 0:29:47.760 And then my mother had another kid, my aunt had 0:29:47.760 --> 0:29:51.040 a kid. They moved out. I went from four parents 0:29:51.280 --> 0:29:54.840 to none, and I spent the last seventy years ago 0:29:54.880 --> 0:29:57.600 and where the fund did everybody go? All? Right? My 0:29:57.680 --> 0:30:02.000 mother was very smart, very witty, uh, unbelievably so, which 0:30:02.040 --> 0:30:03.800 I didn't. You don't know when you were a kid, 0:30:03.920 --> 0:30:06.640 because there's a fish not it's in water, you know. 0:30:07.520 --> 0:30:10.160 And my father had a very political job. My great 0:30:10.240 --> 0:30:14.719 uncle was the chairman of the National Republican National Republican Party. 0:30:15.160 --> 0:30:18.880 He was Eisenhower's campaign manager, and he coined the phrase 0:30:18.960 --> 0:30:21.760 I like Ike. So everybody in the family had a 0:30:21.800 --> 0:30:25.520 Republican job. In the fifties, Nassau County on on Long 0:30:25.560 --> 0:30:29.080 Island was like the forty ninth state. So we always 0:30:29.080 --> 0:30:32.560 went to the ball games, to the World Series, you know, 0:30:32.760 --> 0:30:35.640 and uh, we had a great, great, great life. And 0:30:35.680 --> 0:30:39.720 then my father started drinking too much, and I was 0:30:39.800 --> 0:30:41.560 I was fun. You know. People used to say, well, 0:30:41.600 --> 0:30:43.240 you the class you know, when we first started getting 0:30:43.240 --> 0:30:45.280 famous on the Stern Show, people had asked for just 0:30:45.360 --> 0:30:48.080 what you said, and people will say, well, you're the 0:30:48.120 --> 0:30:52.200 class clown. And I wouldn't just say yes, because in 0:30:52.320 --> 0:30:58.120 my twisted mind, that would be like given myself a coronation. 0:30:58.200 --> 0:31:00.320 That who am I to coornate myself if I was 0:31:00.360 --> 0:31:02.719 the class clown? And then I was like, wait a minute. 0:31:03.840 --> 0:31:06.840 The cover of my first comedy album is my eighth 0:31:06.840 --> 0:31:10.680 grade class picture and I'm giving the finger and I said, 0:31:10.680 --> 0:31:13.680 wait a minute, maybe by the fault. I was the 0:31:13.760 --> 0:31:16.280 class clown. And I absolutely was the class clown. I 0:31:16.360 --> 0:31:19.440 was just you know, always, always a ball breaker, and 0:31:19.480 --> 0:31:22.200 then started playing the guitar in high school, you know, 0:31:22.360 --> 0:31:24.880 like every other guy, to meet chicks and to have fun. 0:31:30.720 --> 0:31:33.719 So you're in school, good student, Yeah I was. I 0:31:33.760 --> 0:31:38.160 was very, very smart. Um my eighth grade math teacher, 0:31:38.360 --> 0:31:40.640 my eighth grade homeroom teacher, my math teacher. It's a 0:31:40.760 --> 0:31:43.240 very small school and I lived on the street. We 0:31:43.320 --> 0:31:50.120 had uh excelled, uh excelled math class preparing people for college. 0:31:50.480 --> 0:31:52.080 But you had to come in at seven thirty, a 0:31:52.080 --> 0:31:54.920 half hour before school started, and she would call my 0:31:55.080 --> 0:31:58.760 house to get me roused up, so I would come 0:31:58.760 --> 0:32:02.920 in and and come to and uh I did really great. 0:32:02.960 --> 0:32:05.040 But I mean I almost didn't graduate because you know, 0:32:05.080 --> 0:32:07.640 I got so drunk for all senior high school. You know, 0:32:07.720 --> 0:32:11.400 I got accepted in Michigan State in December. They they 0:32:11.600 --> 0:32:14.320 passed you right away at those big schools. So I 0:32:14.360 --> 0:32:18.200 spent the next six months drunk and missed so much school. 0:32:18.920 --> 0:32:20.760 But I was, Yeah, I was smart, and I went 0:32:20.800 --> 0:32:23.840 to I graduated from Michigan State University in nineteen seventy 0:32:23.920 --> 0:32:26.959 one as a mechanical engineer. Yeah, that's my question. Why 0:32:27.200 --> 0:32:32.000 a mechanical engineering is not a easy course of study 0:32:33.000 --> 0:32:36.120 so hard? My father had been an engineer in Alabama 0:32:36.200 --> 0:32:37.959 for a couple of years that he went to school. 0:32:38.600 --> 0:32:41.520 I just innately knew if I didn't take a really 0:32:41.560 --> 0:32:44.960 difficult major, did I would just get drunk and funk 0:32:44.960 --> 0:32:47.880 out of college somehow. And all my craziness and all 0:32:47.920 --> 0:32:51.560 my fog, I knew that. So here, I'm taking this heart. 0:32:51.680 --> 0:32:54.720 I mean, my roommates, you know, taking two hours of 0:32:54.800 --> 0:32:57.960 Shakespeare and getting four credits, and I'm spending eight hours 0:32:57.960 --> 0:33:01.280 in the chemistry lab for four hour, I mean four 0:33:01.320 --> 0:33:03.960 times a week to get the same four credits. You know, 0:33:04.000 --> 0:33:07.160 it was really really difficult, you know, but I'm taking 0:33:07.160 --> 0:33:10.280 atomic physics and mechanics and it's the late sixties, so 0:33:10.360 --> 0:33:13.680 I'm going to college with bare feet, with my dog 0:33:13.800 --> 0:33:16.800 with a ponytail, and the other guys are cheating off 0:33:16.880 --> 0:33:19.760 my paper. You know. It was like pretty storybook, you know, 0:33:19.800 --> 0:33:21.719 it was good. And I tuned and I turned on. 0:33:21.760 --> 0:33:24.960 I dropped out. I missed, I dropped out a term. 0:33:25.040 --> 0:33:27.480 I failed enough classes to miss the term, and I 0:33:27.520 --> 0:33:32.160 missed another term because I I've screwed up my knee. 0:33:32.680 --> 0:33:35.440 So I was missing an entire year of school. And 0:33:35.480 --> 0:33:38.280 then I met Darlene and we fell in love and 0:33:38.280 --> 0:33:40.040 I had nothing better, nothing better to do, so I 0:33:40.040 --> 0:33:42.840 went back to school and finished. Okay, did you have 0:33:43.160 --> 0:33:47.320 any intention of being and no intention of doing anything? 0:33:47.680 --> 0:33:50.320 All I knew was I wasn't gonna get a job. 0:33:50.680 --> 0:33:52.720 You know, the people I was graduating with, like, right, 0:33:52.760 --> 0:33:55.680 I'm starting at Forward for two dollars and they give 0:33:55.720 --> 0:33:58.280 me a house. Oh, I'm starting with GM and they 0:33:58.360 --> 0:34:01.640 give me a car. And I didn't even I didn't 0:34:01.640 --> 0:34:07.200 even take one interview. Are you kidding me? And I stayed. 0:34:07.200 --> 0:34:09.719 I stayed in East Lansing, Michigan another two years. I 0:34:09.760 --> 0:34:13.000 was there for seven years in the bubble, the bubble 0:34:13.160 --> 0:34:16.000 that was the college town of East Lansing, Michigan in 0:34:16.040 --> 0:34:19.279 the late sixties. I mean, talk about dying and going 0:34:19.360 --> 0:34:23.120 to heaven. It just was. It was beyond spectacus. Okay, 0:34:23.120 --> 0:34:26.120 but you're going to college in the late sixties and 0:34:26.560 --> 0:34:30.960 your family is Republican, and based on your earlier commentary 0:34:30.960 --> 0:34:33.799 anti Trump or whatever, at what point the Vietnam War. 0:34:33.880 --> 0:34:36.480 What how do you turn you yeah, Vietnam. And you know, 0:34:36.680 --> 0:34:39.120 of course, you know my father, you know, my father 0:34:39.239 --> 0:34:42.320 was a local politician and my brother took a Nixon 0:34:42.440 --> 0:34:46.120 bumper sticker and put it on my parents car upside 0:34:46.120 --> 0:34:50.120 down so it said noxing and oh my father blew 0:34:50.160 --> 0:34:54.799 a gasca, you know, like it was. But there was 0:34:54.960 --> 0:34:58.799 it was all. It was all. Everybody in politics is 0:34:58.840 --> 0:35:02.800 just on the take on the take on. My father said, listen, Jackie, 0:35:02.800 --> 0:35:06.080 you know, yeah, Nixon's an asshole. But Nixon didn't do 0:35:06.120 --> 0:35:09.359 anything any different than any other politician has ever done. 0:35:09.440 --> 0:35:12.319 He just was stupid enough to get caught. And that 0:35:12.520 --> 0:35:14.640 is running my head for a long time because my 0:35:14.719 --> 0:35:17.080 father wasn't a dishonest guy. He was. He was a 0:35:17.160 --> 0:35:21.080 stand up, great guy. You know. Um, I'm not I'm 0:35:21.120 --> 0:35:23.439 not really a political guy. I just know I hate 0:35:23.440 --> 0:35:26.440 Trump because I I don't you know, I I hated 0:35:26.520 --> 0:35:28.359 him when he used to come on The Stern Show. 0:35:28.400 --> 0:35:29.719 He's one of those people that would come in the 0:35:29.800 --> 0:35:32.279 room and he didn't know there's anybody else in the room. 0:35:32.320 --> 0:35:34.200 And I don't put up for that, you know, I 0:35:34.200 --> 0:35:37.640 don't give a funk who you are. Were you anti war? 0:35:37.880 --> 0:35:40.680 Did you protest the Vietnam? Of course? You know I 0:35:40.680 --> 0:35:44.759 had a ponytail, and you know, I actually, uh, there 0:35:44.840 --> 0:35:47.720 was a day I woke up and I had dropped 0:35:47.719 --> 0:35:51.200 out of school, and the guy the and the social 0:35:51.239 --> 0:35:54.200 science professor didn't know I had dropped out of school. 0:35:54.600 --> 0:35:59.760 And we used to have h student uh not student students, 0:35:59.800 --> 0:36:03.360 said instance, And what we did was Mrkin State was 0:36:03.400 --> 0:36:06.200 so big that somebody would give a lecture, but there 0:36:06.239 --> 0:36:12.400 would be uh satellite satellites of that lecture in different 0:36:12.440 --> 0:36:16.640 halls around the campus, and the student assistance would going 0:36:16.719 --> 0:36:19.959 through the room and plug in the TV and turn 0:36:20.000 --> 0:36:22.479 it on, and they'd be the professor who was giving 0:36:22.520 --> 0:36:24.920 the lecture somewhere else on campus, and all the kids 0:36:24.960 --> 0:36:26.880 would be sitting there and at the end of the 0:36:27.000 --> 0:36:29.880 lecture to turn off the TV and lead the discussions. 0:36:30.440 --> 0:36:32.560 So I was a student assistant, but then I dropped 0:36:32.560 --> 0:36:35.240 out of school, but I was still doing it. And 0:36:35.280 --> 0:36:37.320 then when all of a sudden this should hit the 0:36:37.320 --> 0:36:40.759 fan and everything was crazy. I actually walked in and 0:36:40.760 --> 0:36:43.480 wrote on the blackboard, please do not come to class, 0:36:43.520 --> 0:36:47.440 please stay home, you know, And of course that they 0:36:47.440 --> 0:36:50.080 Professor Calemton said Jackie, I gotta fire you. You can't 0:36:50.080 --> 0:36:54.000 do that, you know, and uh, and then so you 0:36:54.040 --> 0:36:59.160 wanted them to stay home to protest. Yeah. So that afternoon, 0:36:59.239 --> 0:37:01.719 me and my friend us go to see the movie Woodstock, 0:37:03.239 --> 0:37:06.560 and we come out of wood Stock like craze hippies, 0:37:07.000 --> 0:37:09.360 and I go by a six pack. And the professor 0:37:09.440 --> 0:37:13.040 that had fired me that morning was having a barbecue 0:37:13.080 --> 0:37:15.960 for all the student assistance and he was saying, Jackie, 0:37:15.960 --> 0:37:18.840 I can't even fire you because you're not in I 0:37:18.880 --> 0:37:21.160 want to fire you, but you're not in the in 0:37:21.239 --> 0:37:25.200 the pace pay thing because you're not registered, because you 0:37:25.320 --> 0:37:28.279 dropped out. So he couldn't stop my paycheck because I 0:37:28.280 --> 0:37:31.040 couldn't have got one. He was having a barbecue that 0:37:31.160 --> 0:37:33.319 night out in NASCAR's East. Let's say I bought a 0:37:33.360 --> 0:37:36.279 six pack. Hits like to the middle of nowhere. I'm 0:37:36.360 --> 0:37:40.399 walking along, I got a ponytail holding the six pack. 0:37:40.520 --> 0:37:43.840 I'm drinking a beer, and an off duty cop pulls 0:37:43.920 --> 0:37:47.440 over and comes up and says, you can't walk along 0:37:47.520 --> 0:37:50.840 drinking a beer. Made me walk back to the gas station, 0:37:51.360 --> 0:37:54.000 called the cops, made me pour out the beer's they're 0:37:54.000 --> 0:37:56.800 threatening like they're gonna cut my hair. And kick my ass. 0:37:56.880 --> 0:38:02.719 This Michigan in ninety eight or something sixty nine, and 0:38:03.000 --> 0:38:06.600 the cops show up, and I have an outstanding muffler 0:38:06.680 --> 0:38:11.719 ticket from ann Arbor from two years before. And I 0:38:11.760 --> 0:38:15.879 go to jail, and I called the professor who had 0:38:16.000 --> 0:38:21.359 fired me that morning at He left his own barbecue 0:38:22.120 --> 0:38:27.359 and came ten or twenty miles to bail me out 0:38:27.360 --> 0:38:30.920 of jail and brought me back to the party. And 0:38:30.960 --> 0:38:32.719 of course I walked into the party. I was a 0:38:32.719 --> 0:38:34.719 big hero, and I ran the whole story of going 0:38:34.800 --> 0:38:38.200 to jail, just like Carla Guthrie analysis restaurant, and I 0:38:38.280 --> 0:38:40.960 fucked the best looking student assistant. It was like one 0:38:41.000 --> 0:38:43.120 of those days that you lived your whole life in 0:38:43.160 --> 0:38:45.200 one day, you know what I mean. I got up, 0:38:45.239 --> 0:38:48.000 I got fired, I went to Woodstock and I got arrested. 0:38:48.080 --> 0:38:51.840 I went home. Oh oh, and that's not even jeez. 0:38:52.680 --> 0:38:54.760 It always sounds like I'm making up as I go along. 0:38:55.120 --> 0:38:59.279 I'm banging this girl, and they called me. They had 0:38:59.360 --> 0:39:03.319 taken the doors down at the dormitory Snyder's Phillips Hall 0:39:03.880 --> 0:39:06.760 in Michigan State. One side was the boys, one side 0:39:06.840 --> 0:39:09.040 was the girls, and underneath in the middle was the 0:39:09.040 --> 0:39:13.000 wreck room and they had taken the doors off, so 0:39:13.160 --> 0:39:15.120 and the boys were moving them with the girls, and 0:39:15.120 --> 0:39:17.160 the girls were moving them with the boys. And my 0:39:17.239 --> 0:39:20.520 band was playing in the in the in the hall 0:39:20.640 --> 0:39:23.600 in the middle. So I had to stop banging this 0:39:23.680 --> 0:39:26.440 girl and go to go play with my band. And 0:39:26.520 --> 0:39:29.239 we played like I know, if you all know, there 0:39:29.280 --> 0:39:35.080 was a song called Volunteers of America jeplane the Jefferson Airplane. 0:39:35.160 --> 0:39:37.239 We played it for two hours. I mean we just 0:39:37.480 --> 0:39:42.040 that dad, that that dad, that bad. I mean, I 0:39:42.080 --> 0:39:43.640 lived a life. You know, I should have been dead 0:39:43.680 --> 0:39:46.840 five times, you know. You know, high school was crazy, 0:39:47.000 --> 0:39:51.160 college was crazy. Graduate from college or in least lancing 0:39:51.200 --> 0:39:55.239 for another two years? What are you doing? Uh? My 0:39:55.320 --> 0:40:00.439 girlfriend and I broke up, and you know, I told 0:40:00.440 --> 0:40:02.719 her she had to leave. You gotta leave, you gotta leave. 0:40:02.760 --> 0:40:07.800 And once she left, uh, I was destroyed. And uh. 0:40:07.920 --> 0:40:10.880 I had lived with a couple of guys like drunks 0:40:10.920 --> 0:40:13.040 and heroin addicts, and they, you know, they lived, they 0:40:13.040 --> 0:40:15.760 moved into my house. But I had some great friends. 0:40:15.840 --> 0:40:18.040 We had a good time. And finally a friend, an 0:40:18.040 --> 0:40:21.399 old friend, came from New York and well, a couple 0:40:21.440 --> 0:40:22.880 of guys came from New York to live with me 0:40:22.920 --> 0:40:25.680 for a while and uh. And then another old friend 0:40:25.680 --> 0:40:27.239 came from New York. He said, look, I'm getting you 0:40:27.280 --> 0:40:29.759 out of here. And he said, look, we'll go to 0:40:29.840 --> 0:40:35.440 Denver and we'll say hello and uh, and then we'll 0:40:35.480 --> 0:40:38.880 go to Amsterdam and buy some hash and make some money. 0:40:39.160 --> 0:40:41.640 I said, all right, sounds good. He came to pick 0:40:41.680 --> 0:40:46.600 me up and he's lancing. He stayed three months. I 0:40:46.640 --> 0:40:48.800 hadn't had a car for years, so all of a sudden, 0:40:48.800 --> 0:40:52.120 he's got a car. So we're stealing steaks, living like kings, 0:40:52.600 --> 0:40:56.799 having the time of a fucking lifetime. Finally, my kid 0:40:56.840 --> 0:40:59.520 brother comes out. He's nine years old. We put him 0:40:59.600 --> 0:41:01.920 and my dog and the two of us and everything 0:41:01.960 --> 0:41:05.880 we own in this tiny Babo sports car and drove 0:41:05.960 --> 0:41:10.040 to Denver. And we stayed in Denver for six months. 0:41:09.800 --> 0:41:13.680 That's a whole eight guys from the hometown of Oyster Bay, 0:41:13.800 --> 0:41:18.120 Long Island living in the same condo, working construction. It was. 0:41:19.640 --> 0:41:21.920 It always sounds like I'm making up as I go along. 0:41:22.000 --> 0:41:25.160 And then my old friend that I played music within 0:41:25.280 --> 0:41:28.799 high school and during summers in college came through and 0:41:28.800 --> 0:41:30.319 he said, Jackie, what are you doing? And I said, 0:41:30.320 --> 0:41:32.680 I can't do this anywhere I'm working construction. I can't 0:41:32.680 --> 0:41:34.960 even play my guitar because my hands are all kalous. 0:41:35.200 --> 0:41:36.960 He will also go back to New York and start 0:41:36.960 --> 0:41:39.200 a band. I said, I'll tell you what. I'm writing 0:41:39.239 --> 0:41:41.799 songs and I want to be funny. If we could 0:41:41.800 --> 0:41:44.040 tell jokes and play original songs, I'm in. He said, 0:41:44.080 --> 0:41:47.279 let's do it. We came back and the entire seventies, 0:41:47.360 --> 0:41:49.319 me and the Sky had a band called the off 0:41:49.520 --> 0:41:54.080 Our Rockers. H H O you are. And we drove 0:41:54.120 --> 0:41:59.360 around in the seventies, in the nineteen fifty five bright 0:41:59.719 --> 0:42:03.960 Yell Cadillac Hearsts, and we always had girls, We always 0:42:04.000 --> 0:42:07.000 had booze, we always had pot, and we had so 0:42:07.120 --> 0:42:10.480 much fun, and but we never got anywhere. Did you 0:42:11.440 --> 0:42:14.520 did you try to get something? I wrote so many songs, 0:42:14.560 --> 0:42:19.000 and my heart was so in it. And when it 0:42:19.040 --> 0:42:22.080 comes to art, how much your heart is in it, 0:42:22.520 --> 0:42:25.719 and how successfully you are at it, and how much 0:42:25.760 --> 0:42:29.360 money you make at and how famous you get is 0:42:29.440 --> 0:42:35.840 not necessarily in any way correlated to how deeply invested 0:42:35.840 --> 0:42:39.000 in that you were. I mean, I I ground out 0:42:39.040 --> 0:42:41.719 these songs. I wasn't looking for moon June Spoon. These 0:42:41.719 --> 0:42:43.479 songs were coming out of my I don't know whether 0:42:44.520 --> 0:42:46.600 you know when you're talking about being an artist, the 0:42:46.600 --> 0:42:48.719 minute you say that word, you feel like you're full 0:42:48.719 --> 0:42:50.279 of ship. It's like, to this day, if I tell 0:42:50.320 --> 0:42:52.640 somebody I'm a comedian, I'm still waiting for somebody tapping 0:42:52.640 --> 0:42:55.040 on his shoulder saying, no, you're not. You know, I 0:42:55.040 --> 0:42:58.919 mean that whole insecurity comes with it. But we never 0:42:58.960 --> 0:43:02.200 got anywhere, and we were so much fun. We told jokes, 0:43:02.880 --> 0:43:06.960 we did routines, we played original songs. But there was 0:43:07.080 --> 0:43:10.319 no video of that band, and we broke up in 0:43:10.400 --> 0:43:15.640 n and a year later, everybody had VCRs and video 0:43:15.760 --> 0:43:20.640 cameras and it's just beyond the pale. But the band 0:43:20.680 --> 0:43:22.640 broke up, and I had been telling jokes and telling 0:43:22.719 --> 0:43:25.960 jokes and playing gigs by myself with my guitar and 0:43:26.000 --> 0:43:29.360 my jokes. And then I met some comedians and they 0:43:29.719 --> 0:43:31.760 would come to my gigs and get up on stage 0:43:31.800 --> 0:43:36.000 because there was no place to have stage time. And 0:43:36.040 --> 0:43:39.680 like Eddie Murphy and Bob Nelson and Rob Bartlett, Richie 0:43:39.640 --> 0:43:42.640 MINDBEDI the Bob Wood's, they've walked to my old friends. 0:43:42.680 --> 0:43:45.360 To this day, they would just show up and I 0:43:45.400 --> 0:43:48.000 put them on stage and you know, and we'd be horrible. 0:43:48.080 --> 0:43:50.839 And then I started booking shows around. Okay, this was 0:43:50.880 --> 0:43:54.640 still when you were singing songs. I was. I was 0:43:54.680 --> 0:43:58.239 singing songs, but it was a comedy act. It was 0:43:58.480 --> 0:44:01.000 it was, it was my origin, all songs, but I 0:44:01.040 --> 0:44:06.520 told jokes. And when I started doing comedy, like I 0:44:06.600 --> 0:44:10.520 called my official start to January nine nine, and I 0:44:10.560 --> 0:44:15.080 went from being a uh a guy who sang songs 0:44:15.120 --> 0:44:18.240 and told jokes to being a guy who told jokes 0:44:18.480 --> 0:44:22.160 and sang songs. Now you're you're known that sounds say 0:44:22.520 --> 0:44:24.759 said subtle. But you know, for the whole whole first 0:44:24.800 --> 0:44:28.520 year as a comedian, I always had on my guitar. Oh, 0:44:28.880 --> 0:44:31.160 I had a ponytail for me. You're known for telling 0:44:31.239 --> 0:44:34.560 jokes in a rapid fire away. What was your act 0:44:34.680 --> 0:44:37.799 back then? Just a couple of you know, I'd tell 0:44:37.800 --> 0:44:40.440 a couple of jokes and it wasn't really I never 0:44:40.480 --> 0:44:43.920 even thought in terms of an act. You know, do 0:44:44.160 --> 0:44:47.399 you remember that you remember the jokes you told? Then? Yeah, 0:44:47.520 --> 0:44:50.319 I told him last night. It's the same ship, you know, 0:44:50.360 --> 0:44:53.520 I found and I got everything here and my you 0:44:53.520 --> 0:44:56.480 wouldn't believe my, my, my garage here, and I got 0:44:56.560 --> 0:44:59.600 everything I ever recorded, and I found out that some 0:44:59.680 --> 0:45:03.160 of these old VHS tapes are okay. And my friend 0:45:03.320 --> 0:45:08.840 Ed took a night six MR rips in Valley Cottage 0:45:10.000 --> 0:45:12.200 and he and he saved it onto an MP four 0:45:12.239 --> 0:45:13.960 and he said it to me, And I'm watching it 0:45:14.040 --> 0:45:16.560 and it's the same jokes. And I'm sitting there laughing 0:45:16.600 --> 0:45:19.000 at myself, laughing at myself, And I knew those jokes 0:45:19.000 --> 0:45:22.440 were already old. The jokes I tell I heard nineteen. 0:45:23.320 --> 0:45:26.680 You know, they're just funny. They're just timeless, you know. 0:45:26.880 --> 0:45:30.200 And what was really funny. The reason I know more 0:45:30.280 --> 0:45:34.480 jokes than anybody in the world is I always absorbed them. 0:45:35.000 --> 0:45:37.600 They always stuck to me, and I don't know why, 0:45:37.680 --> 0:45:40.400 but they just did. But then, when we had the 0:45:40.440 --> 0:45:43.719 band in the seventies, we used to tell jokes and 0:45:43.760 --> 0:45:47.720 play songs, and we played in the same two, three 0:45:47.840 --> 0:45:52.560 four clubs week after week after week. Now, nobody ever 0:45:52.719 --> 0:45:55.399 took the time to tell us that a comedian has 0:45:55.440 --> 0:45:58.600 an act and he does it to a different audience 0:45:58.640 --> 0:46:03.360 every night. We were playing to the same audience every week. 0:46:04.040 --> 0:46:07.560 So we're scrounged around doing everything. We could define new 0:46:07.640 --> 0:46:09.719 jokes and new ideas because we had to play to 0:46:09.840 --> 0:46:13.279 the same people week after week after week, and so 0:46:13.320 --> 0:46:16.920 I just accumulated this ridiculous but I already knew the jokes. 0:46:16.920 --> 0:46:19.279 It's it's hard to explain, you know, if you're a 0:46:19.360 --> 0:46:23.000 joke teller, people cannot wait to tell you a joke. 0:46:23.520 --> 0:46:26.080 I know. That's ridiculous. They're so sure they have a 0:46:26.160 --> 0:46:27.960 joke you haven't heard. Now. Of course it's the jokes 0:46:27.960 --> 0:46:30.879 that somebody's gonna tell me. Of course, of course gonna 0:46:30.880 --> 0:46:33.319 be something that I know, because it's popular. It's going 0:46:33.360 --> 0:46:37.040 around as early as like nineteen seventy five. We'd be 0:46:37.080 --> 0:46:38.719 on break and somebody come up and say, all right, 0:46:38.760 --> 0:46:40.239 I got a joke to you, and I'd say, all right, 0:46:40.239 --> 0:46:42.600 I'm gonna count down from ten, and when I get 0:46:42.640 --> 0:46:44.960 to zero, if I haven't told you a punchline, I'll 0:46:45.000 --> 0:46:49.000 buy you a drink. En seventy five, I never bought 0:46:49.000 --> 0:46:51.919 anybody to drink. I got so if somebody's talking about 0:46:52.120 --> 0:46:54.880 the Indian and the cowboy going down the river on 0:46:54.920 --> 0:46:56.600 a canoe, I said, you know what, this is the 0:46:56.600 --> 0:46:59.279 priest in the nun going across the desert. I just 0:46:59.280 --> 0:47:03.160 could see the parallels, figure out jokes, and they just 0:47:03.880 --> 0:47:06.080 they just stuck with me. I can't really explain it, 0:47:06.120 --> 0:47:09.520 but they And then when my band broke up, what 0:47:09.680 --> 0:47:12.080 I have all I knew was all I knew was 0:47:12.120 --> 0:47:16.640 I had a zillion jokes, a lot of original songs, 0:47:16.760 --> 0:47:19.839 and the desire to never ever get a regular job. 0:47:20.000 --> 0:47:21.960 I was never going to be become a commuter. And 0:47:22.000 --> 0:47:24.279 then I went up on the Stern Show and the 0:47:24.360 --> 0:47:30.080 people that got up to commute laughed at me because literally, okay, 0:47:30.280 --> 0:47:33.239 getting up so early. You know, how important is the 0:47:33.320 --> 0:47:35.880 telling of a joke as opposed to the lines of 0:47:35.920 --> 0:47:42.520 the joke? Uh about? So what are the keys to 0:47:42.640 --> 0:47:46.120 telling a good joke? It's actually very simple. You you 0:47:46.200 --> 0:47:50.440 pare them down. I remember, even very very early on, 0:47:50.520 --> 0:47:53.200 I get so angry because like the Playboy jokes, you 0:47:53.239 --> 0:47:56.600 know on the Playboy, you know the open Playboy. Uh, 0:47:57.200 --> 0:48:03.239 the the handsome, gorgeous, voluptuous young blonde sauntered into the 0:48:03.280 --> 0:48:06.000 bar and found herself at the bar stool and looked 0:48:06.000 --> 0:48:09.080 over at the bartender and I said, now a girl 0:48:09.120 --> 0:48:13.680 goes into a bar, stage is set. That's all you need. 0:48:14.000 --> 0:48:16.560 A fat girl goes into a bar, stage is set. 0:48:16.719 --> 0:48:19.759 You chop everything away, and you also tell things it's 0:48:19.800 --> 0:48:22.840 got to be in the present. And that sounds that 0:48:22.920 --> 0:48:25.319 once again, that's subtle. You know, a girl went into 0:48:25.360 --> 0:48:29.720 the bar and said, it's already history. A girl goes 0:48:29.800 --> 0:48:34.280 into a bar, A guy walks into a bar. Now 0:48:35.239 --> 0:48:37.960 it's real time, it's president, it's now. I know it 0:48:38.040 --> 0:48:40.920 sounds stupid. And the main thing, yeah, I've I've written 0:48:40.960 --> 0:48:43.680 lots of articles for people. Yeah, I mean for magazines 0:48:43.719 --> 0:48:49.000 and stuff. Also is you make sure that you know 0:48:49.160 --> 0:48:53.359 the punch line absolutely cold, because you can stumble through 0:48:53.400 --> 0:48:58.239 a whole damn joke and fudge and screw around, and 0:48:58.280 --> 0:49:00.160 as long as you hit the punch line just right, 0:49:00.640 --> 0:49:03.120 that makes up for a real lot. You know, if 0:49:03.200 --> 0:49:05.680 you you stumble over a punchline, get a word wrong, 0:49:05.800 --> 0:49:07.960 you know you lost. I mean, well, none of this 0:49:08.000 --> 0:49:10.640 means anything to anybody. Nobody cares about telling jokes. But 0:49:10.719 --> 0:49:13.640 you know, I mean, how many people people are telling 0:49:13.719 --> 0:49:16.880 jokes all over the universe today? Oh no, no, I 0:49:16.960 --> 0:49:19.120 know that, but they don't care about getting it right. 0:49:19.160 --> 0:49:26.520 I spent I spent so many countless, countless hours at bars, parties, 0:49:27.000 --> 0:49:31.239 getting stone, getting drunk, doing acid I would be. I 0:49:31.320 --> 0:49:35.920 would listened to every joke that everybody ever told me. 0:49:36.400 --> 0:49:39.200 And as the years went on, it became more and 0:49:39.239 --> 0:49:41.640 more and more rare that somebody tell me something I 0:49:41.640 --> 0:49:44.840 hadn't heard. But I I still get so excited what 0:49:45.000 --> 0:49:48.439 I hear joke I haven't heard before. And sometimes they're 0:49:48.480 --> 0:49:52.720 really obvious jokes that just slipped through the cracks. My favorite, 0:49:52.760 --> 0:49:56.480 my favorite example, Uh, do you know what Mark Hudson 0:49:56.600 --> 0:50:01.480 is the Hudson. Oh, he's a good past so so 0:50:01.600 --> 0:50:06.880 Mark Hudson Um that was doing a show at Iridium 0:50:06.920 --> 0:50:11.920 at fifty fifty one Broadway. Uh, downstairs and uh it 0:50:12.040 --> 0:50:14.880 was called Thursdays on the Hudson, and he would he 0:50:14.920 --> 0:50:18.880 would you know Billy J. Kramer, people like that, you know, 0:50:19.000 --> 0:50:22.200 people who's that? What was that? You know? People of 0:50:22.320 --> 0:50:26.960 note from notes past. There were always great shows and 0:50:27.040 --> 0:50:29.920 Mark is so talented, so funny. But if you know, 0:50:29.960 --> 0:50:31.879 if I I never could just go to these things, 0:50:32.160 --> 0:50:34.200 I go to see somebody that's they always asked me 0:50:34.280 --> 0:50:37.319 up on stage, and I'm always, uh funk, I gotta 0:50:37.320 --> 0:50:39.319 go on stage. And meanwhile, then if they don't ask me, 0:50:39.360 --> 0:50:42.480 I'm like, why didn't they ask me? You know? Every 0:50:42.520 --> 0:50:45.400 performance the Saint. But I went up and uh, the 0:50:45.440 --> 0:50:48.839 place is packed. Where and when it was doesn't matter, 0:50:48.840 --> 0:50:51.400 but I just like it just it makes more interesting 0:50:51.400 --> 0:50:53.320 to me. So the show is done and we go 0:50:53.400 --> 0:50:55.080 on the back. We're hanging out in the green room 0:50:55.080 --> 0:50:56.919 for like a half hour, and we come back out 0:50:58.200 --> 0:51:00.680 and the place is still packed that people want to 0:51:00.680 --> 0:51:02.520 say hellad of Mark and say he load of Billy 0:51:02.600 --> 0:51:06.160 and say hello Jackie. Whatever, it's still crammed. And a 0:51:06.200 --> 0:51:09.879 guy comes up to me and he says, Jackie, I've 0:51:09.920 --> 0:51:12.160 been a fan for forty years, and I know you 0:51:12.200 --> 0:51:14.080 know every joke in the world, but I got to 0:51:14.120 --> 0:51:16.880 try one on you. And I didn't do those, but 0:51:16.920 --> 0:51:20.120 I said listen. Of course, you know I listened. I 0:51:20.160 --> 0:51:23.840 listen to everybody's jokes. This guy told me a joke 0:51:25.280 --> 0:51:28.799 that's too dirty for my act. I tell her I 0:51:28.800 --> 0:51:33.680 have a very, very filthy fast but it was too 0:51:33.760 --> 0:51:37.600 It's too dirty for my act because it slows people 0:51:37.719 --> 0:51:41.440 up because if people go oh, or they get the 0:51:41.520 --> 0:51:43.600 least bit thront, just like Jesus. I could care less 0:51:43.640 --> 0:51:47.640 about Jesus, but I don't do much Jesus jokes because 0:51:49.000 --> 0:51:51.440 if somebody goes, oh, I get get hit by lightning, 0:51:51.520 --> 0:51:54.360 I've lost them for the next joke or the next phrase. 0:51:54.960 --> 0:51:56.840 You know, I don't want to do anything to slow 0:51:56.920 --> 0:52:00.000 up put up any hurdles. Right, So this guy told 0:52:00.040 --> 0:52:02.520 me a joke that he's one of my favorite jokes 0:52:02.520 --> 0:52:04.880 of all time. But I can't use it my act 0:52:05.480 --> 0:52:09.239 because it slows down what's going on, because it's so disgusting. 0:52:10.040 --> 0:52:14.399 So you gonna tell it, that said, it's a joke 0:52:14.480 --> 0:52:18.680 you could tell on terrestrial radio, and it's a joke 0:52:18.760 --> 0:52:23.000 you could tell to a five year old kid. It's 0:52:23.040 --> 0:52:26.760 not about it's not a scenario, think about the city, 0:52:26.840 --> 0:52:30.279 the police, the scenario just created. It's too disgusting for 0:52:30.400 --> 0:52:33.200 my act. But you could tell it to a kid, 0:52:33.840 --> 0:52:35.920 and you can tell it on terrestrial radio. If you 0:52:36.000 --> 0:52:39.320 tell it to a kid, will the kid laugh? You die? 0:52:40.920 --> 0:52:44.080 A girl calls a doctor and should stock I have diarrhea? 0:52:44.800 --> 0:52:47.680 Can I take a bath? And he says, if you 0:52:47.800 --> 0:52:57.760 have enough, which is just so But it's just so funny. 0:52:58.320 --> 0:53:01.200 It's SuperFect, and I felt he's a jackie. You don't 0:53:01.239 --> 0:53:05.400 have to pretend. I thought, not pretending funny? My God 0:53:05.560 --> 0:53:08.719 is beautiful. Oh I love that's just so funny. You 0:53:08.760 --> 0:53:10.640 know I do. I do cameo dot com Do you 0:53:10.680 --> 0:53:14.240 know what that is? I do those cameo dot coms? 0:53:14.280 --> 0:53:15.920 I do you know? I did like three today, You 0:53:15.960 --> 0:53:18.160 know I I love doing them and I could have 0:53:18.200 --> 0:53:20.400 done fourteen. I could have done fourteen while I was 0:53:20.440 --> 0:53:23.560 waiting to do this. How much huge? How much you charge? 0:53:24.160 --> 0:53:27.640 I only charge fifty bucks because I'll tell you I 0:53:27.680 --> 0:53:29.719 don't I don't get to perform. I haven't had a 0:53:29.719 --> 0:53:32.960 show since March. This is They're like my method ome 0:53:33.600 --> 0:53:35.160 you know what I mean. I tell three, four or 0:53:35.160 --> 0:53:37.640 five six jokes on each of these things and have 0:53:37.760 --> 0:53:40.440 fun and laugh. That gets me through the night, you 0:53:40.440 --> 0:53:42.799 know what I mean. I really enjoyed doing them, and 0:53:43.000 --> 0:53:47.319 uh that that diarrhea joke is always in there. It's 0:53:47.360 --> 0:53:49.440 always in there. A lot of times I start with 0:53:49.440 --> 0:53:58.120 it because it's really fun, you know. So you put 0:53:58.160 --> 0:54:02.319 out your first comedy record in Augus. What happened was 0:54:02.400 --> 0:54:07.320 I had worked in a recording studio after they liked 0:54:07.640 --> 0:54:11.520 a song that we had, a crazy song called the 0:54:11.520 --> 0:54:14.160 Pots song that Howard always played on the radio, and 0:54:14.239 --> 0:54:16.640 my band recorded it, and the guys that owned the 0:54:16.640 --> 0:54:19.200 recording studio asked me to work there, and I did, 0:54:19.400 --> 0:54:21.960 and learned enough about recording to know that any idiot 0:54:21.960 --> 0:54:25.280 can have an album. And then I told my girlfriend 0:54:25.440 --> 0:54:28.080 they left and all my jokes. I borrowed a hundred 0:54:28.080 --> 0:54:31.960 bucks from fifteen different people and made my first comedy record. 0:54:32.040 --> 0:54:34.759 The covers my eighth grade class picture I'm Giving the 0:54:34.840 --> 0:54:41.560 Finger and um. It was recorded at upstairs at a 0:54:41.640 --> 0:54:45.840 restaurant with two microphones hanging and Ana Camici cassette player 0:54:45.920 --> 0:54:48.600 with me on one side and the crowd mike on 0:54:48.640 --> 0:54:52.719 the other. And uh. Then I made another album, and 0:54:52.719 --> 0:54:55.279 then I made another albuh. This was back in the 0:54:55.360 --> 0:54:59.319 days before the Internet. Independent distribution was difficult. How did 0:54:59.360 --> 0:55:03.279 you get the there was there was no distribution. I 0:55:03.360 --> 0:55:06.880 sold them at gigs, I sent them to everybody. It 0:55:07.000 --> 0:55:11.200 was more of a promotion than anything. You know, nobody 0:55:11.320 --> 0:55:14.080 was selling anything. I was the first guy by a 0:55:14.120 --> 0:55:17.040 decade to do that. And when I first gome I'll 0:55:17.040 --> 0:55:18.600 tell you when I want to pick up my first 0:55:18.640 --> 0:55:21.840 thousand albums at Port Authority, it was like I was 0:55:21.880 --> 0:55:25.200 picking up quintuplets. I mean I was. I can still 0:55:25.239 --> 0:55:28.480 remember the aurora around my head. I was like, oh 0:55:28.560 --> 0:55:31.440 my god, and there's even so much more to it 0:55:31.520 --> 0:55:34.799 that I will not bore you with. That's really crazy, 0:55:35.000 --> 0:55:38.480 and I never forget. I worked at Pipps in Brooklyn, 0:55:38.640 --> 0:55:41.240 and I must have been so excited that I promoted 0:55:41.239 --> 0:55:42.880 the hell out of it. And I think I was 0:55:42.920 --> 0:55:47.440 making forty bucks for the night, and I sold fifteen 0:55:47.520 --> 0:55:51.600 albums at five bucks apiece, which was an extra seventy 0:55:51.680 --> 0:55:54.279 five bucks, which in nineteen seventy nine for a low 0:55:54.320 --> 0:55:57.800 Ashlon comic. And then I would sell them after my gigs, 0:55:57.840 --> 0:56:00.080 and the other guys used to make fun of me, Oh, 0:56:00.080 --> 0:56:02.319 there goes Jackie with his albums. Oh, but I wanted 0:56:02.400 --> 0:56:04.600 Jackie's out. And then one day somebody said, wait a minute, 0:56:05.880 --> 0:56:08.480 we all made thirty dollars and he made an extra 0:56:08.560 --> 0:56:12.480 eighty dollars. Maybe he knows what he's doing, you know, 0:56:12.560 --> 0:56:14.319 Like all of a sudden, they realized, maybe I'm not 0:56:14.360 --> 0:56:17.560 an idiot because I'm signing autographs and warming up to 0:56:17.640 --> 0:56:20.640 people and having a great time. And then I wind 0:56:20.760 --> 0:56:24.359 up making a second album and a third album, and 0:56:24.600 --> 0:56:27.080 all along the way I sent him to everybody, Like 0:56:27.120 --> 0:56:29.640 if I if I ran into you, I would say, 0:56:29.640 --> 0:56:31.960 what's your name? What do you do? Oh, you're in 0:56:32.320 --> 0:56:35.160 the music industry. Let me send you my comedy album, 0:56:35.200 --> 0:56:37.760 so I would. I would hand them at the albums everybody. 0:56:37.800 --> 0:56:40.640 I was so proud of it. And by this time 0:56:40.680 --> 0:56:43.480 I actually had been in contact with Rodney Dangerfield, so 0:56:43.960 --> 0:56:45.960 I asked him to send me fight dollars. I still 0:56:46.040 --> 0:56:48.560 have my fight allar check from Rodney buying my album 0:56:48.600 --> 0:56:52.200 A little bit slower. How did you make connection with Rodney? Well, 0:56:52.239 --> 0:56:55.799 that's that's way off topic. That's but it's basically the 0:56:55.920 --> 0:56:58.880 same thing. It's me reaching out to people. I've always 0:56:58.960 --> 0:57:03.120 reached out to people. Bull Um, We'll come back to Rodney. 0:57:03.160 --> 0:57:05.000 But what happened was I put put out an album, 0:57:05.040 --> 0:57:08.440 put out another album, and each time I put out 0:57:08.440 --> 0:57:10.120 an album and send it to everybody, and put out 0:57:10.120 --> 0:57:12.960 another album and send it to everybody, and put another album. 0:57:13.000 --> 0:57:17.200 So by Nancy, who was going to become my wife, 0:57:17.440 --> 0:57:19.800 was working with me, and we must have sent out 0:57:19.960 --> 0:57:23.200 copies of all three albums with the matching cassettes and 0:57:23.360 --> 0:57:27.760 all the promo too, so many, I mean hundreds of people. 0:57:28.120 --> 0:57:31.080 And the albums were expensive, and the cassettes were expensive, 0:57:31.120 --> 0:57:35.240 and the postage was expensive, and we and we were 0:57:35.280 --> 0:57:39.000 I was hosting a Governor's Comedy Shop, this club that 0:57:39.040 --> 0:57:44.000 we started with these guys, and I mean, we're putting 0:57:44.120 --> 0:57:46.880 everything back in and we had no idea what we're doing. 0:57:46.960 --> 0:57:49.280 We didn't have any game plan, We didn't have any 0:57:49.520 --> 0:57:52.360 any you know, carrot. At the end of the stick, 0:57:52.440 --> 0:57:55.240 We're just just work. And you know, she thought I 0:57:55.360 --> 0:57:58.240 was funny, and she thought we thought something could happen. 0:57:58.320 --> 0:58:01.720 We liked our music. And then I found out from 0:58:01.720 --> 0:58:05.720 a guy in Washington that the sky just got fired 0:58:06.520 --> 0:58:08.640 and that he was moving to NBC and I should 0:58:08.640 --> 0:58:10.840 send my records to him. And I had no idea 0:58:10.840 --> 0:58:12.960 who Howard Sterne was. I just put my records in 0:58:13.040 --> 0:58:16.640 a in a you know, mailer, and we just mailed 0:58:16.640 --> 0:58:18.800 the records. And a couple of months later, Nancy called 0:58:18.840 --> 0:58:21.080 up and said, Hey, that this jockey from w NBC 0:58:21.240 --> 0:58:24.320 wants you to call him. So I called him and 0:58:24.440 --> 0:58:26.200 he said, you want to come in and help judge 0:58:26.200 --> 0:58:29.640 your talent contests over the telephone, and I said, well, sure, 0:58:29.680 --> 0:58:33.120 I'm sitting in my mother's attic nothing nothing to lose. 0:58:33.160 --> 0:58:35.880 That's where my first joke land was. And I went 0:58:35.920 --> 0:58:38.240 in and sat there and it was Howard and Fred 0:58:38.240 --> 0:58:42.920 and Robin and I sat down and we laughed for 0:58:42.960 --> 0:58:45.160 four hours, and when we got done, he said, man, 0:58:45.240 --> 0:58:46.640 you are a lot of fun. Why don't you come 0:58:46.680 --> 0:58:49.960 back next week? So I came back next week, once 0:58:50.000 --> 0:58:52.000 a week for free for three years. So I was 0:58:52.640 --> 0:58:56.320 that's pretty immediate acceptance, you know what I mean? Okay? 0:58:56.360 --> 0:58:58.760 Were you bothered by the fact that you weren't getting 0:58:58.760 --> 0:59:03.680 paid for that three years? Not the slightest amount? Okay? 0:59:03.680 --> 0:59:07.560 Because I know compensation although with NBC or was an 0:59:07.600 --> 0:59:09.760 issue further down the line. So how did it turn 0:59:09.800 --> 0:59:12.640 into a full time gig? They asked me to come back? 0:59:12.840 --> 0:59:19.520 And uh I I inherently knew how incredibly valuable that was. 0:59:19.960 --> 0:59:23.880 I mean, for fifty thousand watch UH station in the 0:59:23.960 --> 0:59:27.400 Tri State area with him to be saying see Jackie 0:59:27.480 --> 0:59:31.200 Martling at Governor's Comedy Shop every Friday and Saturday. I 0:59:31.320 --> 0:59:35.240 knew how valuable that was. And you wouldn't believe. Comics 0:59:35.240 --> 0:59:37.400 still come up to me and say, I can't believe 0:59:37.440 --> 0:59:39.200 you asked me to come on the Howard Stern Show. 0:59:39.240 --> 0:59:41.840 And I said no because I would say to somebody, hey, 0:59:42.120 --> 0:59:43.720 you want to come join me on the Howard Stern 0:59:43.760 --> 0:59:46.520 Show on Tuesday, And they would say, what's it, hey? 0:59:46.680 --> 0:59:49.520 They said, what do you mean? What's it? Hey? It's 0:59:49.560 --> 0:59:52.880 the flagship station of w NBC A m are you 0:59:52.960 --> 0:59:55.439 out of your mind? And then I parlayd I told 0:59:55.440 --> 0:59:58.200 the guys that Wrastler's Comedy Club, Look, let me do 0:59:58.240 --> 1:00:00.760 a show on Tuesday nights. I'll host Open Mike and 1:00:00.800 --> 1:00:03.360 I'll advertise it, and then you could pay me, because 1:00:03.360 --> 1:00:05.520 it's worth it for me to advertise you on the radio. 1:00:06.560 --> 1:00:12.000 And what happened was very, very very gradually I gave 1:00:12.080 --> 1:00:16.040 him ideas. Like when I first gave him some some 1:00:16.360 --> 1:00:18.760 ideas for one of his bits, he kind of looked 1:00:18.760 --> 1:00:20.520 at me like, what are you doing? I don't need help? 1:00:21.040 --> 1:00:22.960 And then I heard him doing him on the radio. 1:00:23.160 --> 1:00:25.200 And then like the next week, it was like you 1:00:25.240 --> 1:00:28.720 know what else you got? You know? And slowly but 1:00:28.840 --> 1:00:31.640 surely I was just giving him little pieces of snippets 1:00:31.640 --> 1:00:36.560 of paper and ideas. It was so gradual and so organic. 1:00:38.040 --> 1:00:43.280 And then he got fired uh from w NBC, and 1:00:43.320 --> 1:00:45.680 he got rehired at kay Rock, and after like a 1:00:45.720 --> 1:00:47.200 couple of weeks he called up and said, hey, we 1:00:47.240 --> 1:00:48.960 want you to join us again. Once a week. It 1:00:49.000 --> 1:00:51.320 was the afternoons and when I went in, there was 1:00:51.360 --> 1:00:54.680 actually a place for me to sit and right, and 1:00:54.720 --> 1:00:59.560 I physically would put the notes on half of an 1:00:59.600 --> 1:01:03.080 open loose leaf and just physically put them in front 1:01:03.120 --> 1:01:06.600 of him, and it had it had migrated to where 1:01:06.640 --> 1:01:08.520 I was. I had an actual stack of paper. At 1:01:08.560 --> 1:01:10.520 one point in the NBC, I just said, this is busy. 1:01:10.600 --> 1:01:12.560 I just got a stack of paper and a sharpie 1:01:12.960 --> 1:01:15.040 and started writing it nice and big so he could 1:01:15.040 --> 1:01:18.000 see it. And then once I was set up the 1:01:18.000 --> 1:01:20.160 way I was at k Rock, Fred would give me 1:01:20.240 --> 1:01:22.160 little ideas on a piece of paper, and one day 1:01:22.200 --> 1:01:24.000 I gave him a big stack of paper, said look, 1:01:24.480 --> 1:01:27.080 here's the paper, and here's the sharpie. You hit me 1:01:27.120 --> 1:01:29.480 a little snippet of paper. By the time I rewrite 1:01:29.520 --> 1:01:31.520 it and put it up for Howard, the moment's lost. 1:01:31.560 --> 1:01:34.640 We're already going a hundred thousand miles an hour. So 1:01:34.720 --> 1:01:39.400 he started doing that, and then they decided to put 1:01:39.480 --> 1:01:44.200 them on in mornings, and all the millions of dollars 1:01:44.960 --> 1:01:48.840 and all the millions and millions of listeners, and fifty 1:01:48.960 --> 1:01:52.240 five stations and number one on lots of them. My 1:01:52.800 --> 1:01:57.640 entire job description was he called up and said, listen, 1:01:57.680 --> 1:02:01.080 we're starting mornings. I need you to come in two 1:02:01.200 --> 1:02:04.520 days a week and do your thing with the notes. 1:02:05.440 --> 1:02:09.040 That was my total job description, do your thing with 1:02:09.080 --> 1:02:11.280 the notes. And I went in and the two days 1:02:11.320 --> 1:02:13.120 I was there, he was much funnier. So all of 1:02:13.160 --> 1:02:14.840 a sudden I was on three days, and then four 1:02:14.920 --> 1:02:18.480 days and then five days, because it was a glaring difference. So, Jackie, 1:02:18.520 --> 1:02:21.960 when you started to give Howard those notes, Prior to 1:02:22.040 --> 1:02:25.520 that point, no one was performing your role. No one 1:02:25.600 --> 1:02:28.160 was giving him any help. As far as we know, 1:02:28.400 --> 1:02:31.480 nobody had ever ever done that. Like in the old days, 1:02:31.560 --> 1:02:34.160 the radio Bob Hope and being Crossby, if those guys 1:02:34.160 --> 1:02:36.280 were doing a radio show, they would go to commercial 1:02:36.520 --> 1:02:38.600 and the writers would come over with ideas and they 1:02:38.640 --> 1:02:42.240 try and top each other. But I actually, you know, 1:02:42.280 --> 1:02:44.600 I coined it one day. I was getting interviewed and 1:02:44.600 --> 1:02:47.480 I said, yeah, it's flying gag writing, and everybody made 1:02:47.480 --> 1:02:51.320 fun of me. But that is totally descriptive to describe 1:02:51.360 --> 1:02:54.880 what it is. I mean, obviously, I've an cities questions 1:02:54.880 --> 1:02:57.480 a million times. If me and you and your wife 1:02:57.840 --> 1:03:00.640 were sitting there having lunch and we're all kind of 1:03:00.680 --> 1:03:03.880 funny and kind of all kind of interesting, and we're 1:03:03.880 --> 1:03:07.360 having a conversation. I see something, you say something. Maybe 1:03:07.400 --> 1:03:12.080 she says something funny. Uh, you say something funny. I 1:03:12.200 --> 1:03:15.960 say something funny, and this is a fun conversation. Now 1:03:16.040 --> 1:03:20.320 picture that same conversation. I'm a kind of funny guy. 1:03:20.440 --> 1:03:23.280 Whenever I think it's something funny to say, instead of 1:03:23.320 --> 1:03:27.160 saying it, I write it down and put it in 1:03:27.160 --> 1:03:30.160 front of you. Now, obviously you've got to be pretty 1:03:30.160 --> 1:03:32.440 smart and pretty quick on your feet to work it 1:03:32.520 --> 1:03:35.240 in to whatever you're talking about, even though you know 1:03:35.280 --> 1:03:38.600 it's right along the line. But Howard was brilliant. He 1:03:38.640 --> 1:03:40.600 would just look at whatever I wrote and absorb it. 1:03:40.640 --> 1:03:44.040 He would very often just read it with hardly a preread. 1:03:44.080 --> 1:03:48.320 He just trusted me so much, and uh, it was seamless. 1:03:48.880 --> 1:03:51.080 And then Fred, give me, give me an idea, Give 1:03:51.080 --> 1:03:52.680 me an idea of a couple of ideas you might 1:03:52.720 --> 1:03:54.640 give him at that point in time. You know, I 1:03:54.960 --> 1:03:57.840 can't even give me just like a punch line for 1:03:57.960 --> 1:04:01.680 something like it's it's too hard to give you an 1:04:01.680 --> 1:04:04.480 example out of context. However, I do have every note 1:04:05.240 --> 1:04:07.600 that I ever wrote, that he ever said, and my 1:04:07.640 --> 1:04:10.560 mother's attic, and there are countless thousands of them might 1:04:10.600 --> 1:04:13.880 be glad to whip them out. Okay, so you say 1:04:13.920 --> 1:04:17.440 you have everything, Are you, generally speaking a hoarder, a 1:04:17.480 --> 1:04:19.680 pack rat? No, not even a little bit. But when 1:04:19.720 --> 1:04:21.640 I started doing it, I said, this is gonna be 1:04:21.640 --> 1:04:24.680 no evidence of anything I've ever done. You know what 1:04:24.720 --> 1:04:32.280 I've got. At some point, Um, I used to pull 1:04:32.400 --> 1:04:34.960 so much stuff for you know. I'm fun, you know. 1:04:35.080 --> 1:04:37.360 And I didn't mind that he was the big star. 1:04:37.480 --> 1:04:39.880 I didn't care. I didn't want to be Jackie Martling show. 1:04:40.240 --> 1:04:42.600 I didn't have any I didn't want to ever carry 1:04:42.640 --> 1:04:44.800 the ball. I just but I like the funk around. 1:04:44.800 --> 1:04:47.600 I'm the guy that likes to break balls. And people 1:04:47.600 --> 1:04:50.120 would come on and Howard was it was very rude, 1:04:50.640 --> 1:04:53.040 like a celebrity come on and sit right next to me, 1:04:53.080 --> 1:04:54.760 and how it talked to him, but how it wasn't 1:04:54.800 --> 1:04:57.240 the kind of guy that would say, this is Jackie, 1:04:57.280 --> 1:05:00.640 that's Fred, how you doing? He just that's not in 1:05:00.720 --> 1:05:03.240 his wheelhouse. He's he's he's not he's a bad guy. 1:05:03.320 --> 1:05:08.360 He's just not. That's that's not him. So I would 1:05:08.360 --> 1:05:12.240 get the address of the manager or the home address 1:05:12.360 --> 1:05:17.160 or whatever from celebrities and I would send them my 1:05:17.720 --> 1:05:21.080 either my albums or my cassettes, and later on, once 1:05:22.160 --> 1:05:25.680 I guess it hit, I would send them c ds 1:05:25.680 --> 1:05:28.880 of my jokes and stuff. And the musicians or the 1:05:28.920 --> 1:05:33.200 performers whoever came in, of course love filthy jokes, and 1:05:33.240 --> 1:05:35.640 they would listen to them and love them, and the 1:05:35.760 --> 1:05:39.120 next time they came on the show they would forget 1:05:39.920 --> 1:05:43.920 that they had never met me, which was great. Like Diamond, 1:05:44.000 --> 1:05:51.760 David Lee roth And and Branford, Marsalis and uh Roger Daltrey, 1:05:52.040 --> 1:05:55.360 Clarence Clemens. They come in and say, hey, Jackie, how 1:05:55.440 --> 1:06:00.200 you doing, like it was so funny, and they tell, oh, 1:06:00.280 --> 1:06:03.160 how Jackie's albums are the funniest thing in and he would, 1:06:03.320 --> 1:06:05.480 you know, the steam would come out of his ears, 1:06:05.560 --> 1:06:08.479 you know. But at some point I said to Steve Grill, 1:06:08.520 --> 1:06:11.840 oh listen. I would take the funniest note that I 1:06:11.840 --> 1:06:17.400 had written about somebody and handed the Grillo Steve and say, hey, 1:06:17.440 --> 1:06:21.200 get them to sign it and and maybe say something silly, okay, 1:06:21.800 --> 1:06:23.880 like one of them. I'll send you these I got. 1:06:24.120 --> 1:06:26.880 I got about a hundred and twenty of them. And 1:06:27.040 --> 1:06:30.480 you could not sit down and write this eclectic group. 1:06:30.960 --> 1:06:35.120 You could not write this random a group at gunpoint, 1:06:35.600 --> 1:06:41.560 you know, John Wayne Bobbitt, alb Michael's Um Tiny, Tim 1:06:41.680 --> 1:06:49.400 David Lee, Roth, Branford, Marsalis um Uh, Heraldo Rivera just 1:06:50.040 --> 1:06:54.040 names that you know, Barbara Barbara's uh streisand and sister 1:06:55.440 --> 1:06:58.960 you know Adam West. I mean you couldn't. You couldn't 1:06:59.000 --> 1:07:03.520 concoct the slists of people who signed right, And like 1:07:03.560 --> 1:07:07.480 haraldough Uh he came into to announce that he just 1:07:07.560 --> 1:07:11.840 got his own show on CNBC and the note I 1:07:11.880 --> 1:07:14.360 wrote and put up and Howard said, your own show 1:07:14.400 --> 1:07:19.880 on CNBC, wouldn't the lemonade stand be more profitable? All 1:07:20.040 --> 1:07:23.080 went wild and Haralda wrote on the note fuck you, 1:07:23.080 --> 1:07:26.080 you know, which is so fun, you know? And Daltry 1:07:26.120 --> 1:07:28.800 did not get along with Pete Townsend and the note 1:07:28.840 --> 1:07:31.160 I wrote that I that he signed. It was like 1:07:32.200 --> 1:07:34.840 Roger when you guys were on stage, did you ever 1:07:35.400 --> 1:07:37.960 hope that when Pete was doing that stupid windmill he 1:07:38.320 --> 1:07:40.720 hit himself in his big nose and knocked himself out 1:07:42.960 --> 1:07:45.760 And it was classic And of course they're laughing. Everybody's laughing. 1:07:46.120 --> 1:07:49.080 Whoever know those I'm sure those lines are all on 1:07:49.120 --> 1:07:51.880 YouTube somewhere And here I have the note, and then 1:07:51.920 --> 1:07:53.840 he caught us doing it. He caught me doing it, 1:07:53.960 --> 1:07:57.800 and I got braided forever and ever for harassing you know, 1:07:58.040 --> 1:08:00.240 the celebrities, which they didn't care. They loved, you know, 1:08:00.280 --> 1:08:03.400 we had so much fun and uh, but that that's 1:08:03.400 --> 1:08:06.240 an example of some of the you know, like, okay, 1:08:06.240 --> 1:08:08.960 so they he caught you sending the stuff in advance 1:08:09.040 --> 1:08:11.720 or having that. He just got wind that we were 1:08:11.760 --> 1:08:13.640 having people saying, oh, how can you how can you 1:08:13.640 --> 1:08:16.479 be so rude to our guests. I meanwhile, the minute 1:08:16.479 --> 1:08:18.720 they walked into the show, they were up in those 1:08:18.800 --> 1:08:22.040 with a camera like for the show. You know, He's 1:08:22.080 --> 1:08:26.439 like he has uh Barbara Streichs and sisters Rosalind Kind 1:08:26.760 --> 1:08:30.960 and uh uh what's bigger your husband's penis or your 1:08:30.960 --> 1:08:38.040 sister's nose? Just great? Great, Okay, So now Howard has 1:08:38.080 --> 1:08:40.599 a team of writers. When you were finished with Howard 1:08:40.640 --> 1:08:45.040 two thousand three or so, were you still the only writer? Well, 1:08:45.240 --> 1:08:49.200 I wrote, and Fred would have the ideas. Fred Fred 1:08:49.280 --> 1:08:52.519 is the guts of that operation. When I got there, 1:08:52.560 --> 1:08:56.000 he had written every song parody. He never wrote lines 1:08:56.040 --> 1:08:58.840 for Howard, but he did all the bits and recorded 1:08:58.840 --> 1:09:01.960 everything and did the voice says, and he's just super 1:09:02.080 --> 1:09:04.519 super brilliant. And I was so thrilled, and we were 1:09:04.640 --> 1:09:08.120 we were, we were Lennon McCartney of song parodies. Just 1:09:08.680 --> 1:09:11.400 fit like a glove. And he loved going to it 1:09:11.439 --> 1:09:14.360 with me on the air. He wouldn't argue, you wouldn't 1:09:14.360 --> 1:09:16.200 go to it with anybody else because nobody else could 1:09:16.240 --> 1:09:18.479 handle him, you know, but me and him was like 1:09:18.520 --> 1:09:20.559 an even match because we could work with each other. 1:09:21.040 --> 1:09:23.640 And then a couple a couple of years before I 1:09:23.760 --> 1:09:25.519 left that all of a sudden, how it stuck this 1:09:25.560 --> 1:09:29.719 guy Benji right next to me in my space, and 1:09:29.760 --> 1:09:32.640 Howard's agent, you know, just I'm sure to make me 1:09:32.720 --> 1:09:34.880 realize that, you know, I could be replaced, as it 1:09:34.960 --> 1:09:38.120 was like putting Robin, putting somebody next to Robin and saying, 1:09:38.439 --> 1:09:41.080 you know, want you to do this this newscast instead, 1:09:41.200 --> 1:09:43.800 or sitting next to friend and say, don't use that cart, 1:09:43.920 --> 1:09:47.479 use this card. It was very unnecessary because we were 1:09:48.200 --> 1:09:52.160 such a smooth, well oiled machine. It was like clockwork. 1:09:52.240 --> 1:09:54.320 For years and years, we didn't even write a bit. 1:09:55.000 --> 1:09:57.439 You know. Howard would sit down and start talking, I'd 1:09:57.479 --> 1:10:00.880 start writing. Frederic started playing sounds been would giggle and 1:10:00.920 --> 1:10:03.639 we were just and they'd be four or five hours later, 1:10:03.720 --> 1:10:05.519 and you know that at the end of I'd stand 1:10:05.640 --> 1:10:08.120 up and I go, that was a great show. And 1:10:08.160 --> 1:10:09.920 they would make fun of me, but it usually was 1:10:09.960 --> 1:10:12.080 a great show. You know, we get done. We'd laughed 1:10:12.120 --> 1:10:14.200 for four hours. I go, that was a great show. 1:10:15.040 --> 1:10:17.639 And it was just at what point? At what point 1:10:17.640 --> 1:10:20.760 did you start to make real money? Not until later on, 1:10:20.960 --> 1:10:25.320 you know, like, um that what happened was I started 1:10:25.479 --> 1:10:29.120 so low. You know, if somebody's given you four dollars 1:10:29.160 --> 1:10:30.800 a day and all of a sudden they've given you 1:10:30.840 --> 1:10:32.679 eight dollars a day and they say, hey, we doubled 1:10:32.680 --> 1:10:37.840 your salary, you know. Um, so I started very low 1:10:38.040 --> 1:10:40.000 and then I walked out. I think that was the 1:10:40.040 --> 1:10:44.040 fourth time I had walked out, um, because it just 1:10:44.160 --> 1:10:48.280 was so unfair. I mean, they were printing money. At 1:10:48.280 --> 1:10:49.920 one point, I had been off the show for a 1:10:49.920 --> 1:10:54.840 couple of weeks and uh, Dominic, Barbara called me up 1:10:55.680 --> 1:10:59.840 and she Jaggy still really needs you. What are you doing. 1:11:00.000 --> 1:11:02.679 You gotta come back on this show. I said, Domic, 1:11:02.720 --> 1:11:05.120 I'm not asking for all that kind of crazy money. 1:11:05.120 --> 1:11:08.120 I'm really not. I deserve more than I'm getting. Oh, 1:11:08.200 --> 1:11:11.519 come on, it's ridiculous. What what is it? He said, 1:11:11.520 --> 1:11:14.840 what are you looking for? And I said, I'm looking 1:11:14.880 --> 1:11:18.559 for four hundred thousand dollars And he said he almost 1:11:18.520 --> 1:11:21.840 strove about that. He said, everybody thinks you're making a 1:11:21.960 --> 1:11:23.840 million and a half and you're asking for two and 1:11:23.920 --> 1:11:26.920 a half. I'm saying no, I was making three hundred thousand. 1:11:26.920 --> 1:11:28.799 I wanted to make four hundred thousand. We had doubled 1:11:28.840 --> 1:11:32.320 the amount of you know, stations. Blah blah blah. Yeah. 1:11:32.320 --> 1:11:36.600 I had totally rational thoughts with everything I was. I 1:11:36.680 --> 1:11:38.840 never tried to price myself out of the ball am. 1:11:38.880 --> 1:11:40.880 I just tried to get myself into the ball game. 1:11:41.520 --> 1:11:44.240 But you know, but it's up. You're up against city Wall. 1:11:44.520 --> 1:11:47.479 Not only was I against city Hall, but Fred had 1:11:47.520 --> 1:11:49.840 been with Howard forever. And Fred is the greatest guy, 1:11:50.040 --> 1:11:52.479 and he's a sweetheart, and he would literally take a 1:11:52.520 --> 1:11:58.200 bullet for Howard. But I would bet my life that 1:11:58.400 --> 1:12:03.599 in forty years, Fred has never said the words I'd 1:12:03.640 --> 1:12:06.840 like more. Now if I'm sitting there next to a 1:12:06.920 --> 1:12:09.519 guy who's been loyal to Howard from day one, and 1:12:09.560 --> 1:12:12.120 there's never asked for anything, and all of a sudden, 1:12:12.120 --> 1:12:14.760 I'm well, I'm also and I'm saying, wait, I want 1:12:14.800 --> 1:12:17.360 some more. It was like, no, why can't you shut up? 1:12:17.400 --> 1:12:19.240 He didn't say this, but why can't you shut the 1:12:19.240 --> 1:12:22.280 funk up and be like Fred? You know? So I 1:12:22.320 --> 1:12:24.400 was just fighting to get some more money, and it 1:12:24.520 --> 1:12:26.479 was I wasn't looking for unfair money. I was looking 1:12:26.520 --> 1:12:29.559 for money that I thought I deserved. Now, when you're 1:12:29.560 --> 1:12:33.400 talking to your boss for the company, there's always gonna 1:12:33.439 --> 1:12:35.200 be you think you deserved this, and they think you 1:12:35.280 --> 1:12:38.160 deserved this, and there's always gonna be gray area and 1:12:38.240 --> 1:12:41.840 who's right, who's wrong? Who knows? But you know, I 1:12:41.840 --> 1:12:44.120 mean then they wound up banding it about on the air. 1:12:44.240 --> 1:12:46.920 I never heard it, but they said, oh yeah, Jackie 1:12:46.960 --> 1:12:49.240 wanted two million dollars Jackie one three but you know, 1:12:49.320 --> 1:12:53.679 but but you know, I asked, and and the offer 1:12:53.720 --> 1:12:57.439 that was on the table was more than handsome. And 1:12:57.520 --> 1:12:59.519 I actually called back a couple of months later and said, 1:12:59.560 --> 1:13:01.760 listen to office still there. I'll take it because I 1:13:02.479 --> 1:13:06.000 you know, what, are you a radio guy or what what? 1:13:06.160 --> 1:13:09.360 I don't even know what you do? Radio and podcast? 1:13:09.680 --> 1:13:13.559 Because what I didn't realize when I left the show. 1:13:14.920 --> 1:13:21.479 It is an so abnormal, such an unreal thing for 1:13:21.640 --> 1:13:24.000 three or four people to sit in the room and 1:13:24.120 --> 1:13:27.400 laugh for four hours a day. It is a it's 1:13:27.439 --> 1:13:32.599 a it's a illogical situation that just isn't created anywhere else. 1:13:33.520 --> 1:13:36.679 And it never dawned to me. That's what you missed. 1:13:36.720 --> 1:13:39.000 You don't miss people saying allody on the street or 1:13:39.040 --> 1:13:41.960 having a million dollars in your bank account, but that, 1:13:42.120 --> 1:13:45.680 the endorphins and the fun and the laughing, you know, 1:13:45.800 --> 1:13:49.960 the actual sitting there and having fun far surpassed walking 1:13:49.960 --> 1:13:52.360 outside and people say, hey, you guys were great today, 1:13:52.960 --> 1:13:56.559 you know. And uh, but I didn't prace myself by 1:13:56.600 --> 1:13:58.200 the ball. I mean, then they just didn't come back 1:13:58.200 --> 1:14:00.519 to me. But you know, I was ready, you know, 1:14:00.920 --> 1:14:03.360 people did. I did a podcast like last night. That's 1:14:03.360 --> 1:14:04.880 all I can say is, oh, what an idiot? What 1:14:04.960 --> 1:14:07.760 an idiot? What an idiot? I'm like, I'm sitting here 1:14:07.760 --> 1:14:09.800 and I'm ten, and I live on the water in 1:14:09.840 --> 1:14:12.320 a fucking beautiful house with a great girl, and I 1:14:12.360 --> 1:14:14.479 lived the life of Riley and I look at my 1:14:14.560 --> 1:14:18.960 pillow and laugh. Fuck you, you know what I mean? Okay, 1:14:19.000 --> 1:14:22.120 were you negotiating for yourself. I had a guy, had 1:14:22.120 --> 1:14:26.160 a great guy, I Larry Shire from Alan Grimman Dusky. 1:14:27.400 --> 1:14:29.240 So how did you end up on one oh one 1:14:29.800 --> 1:14:33.960 when that used to have different programming? That is the 1:14:35.720 --> 1:14:41.599 That is the question for the ages. Um. I didn't 1:14:41.640 --> 1:14:48.439 go out and do much um. And uh, finally my 1:14:48.520 --> 1:14:50.400 girlfriend at the time said, you gotta go down there 1:14:50.439 --> 1:14:53.320 opening up the laugh Factory at forty at Times Square 1:14:53.439 --> 1:14:56.519 and uh, you know, eighth Avenue and forty two Street, 1:14:56.960 --> 1:14:58.559 it's a big grand opening. I said, all right. I 1:14:58.600 --> 1:15:03.240 went down there and everybody's there. I've seen people in 1:15:03.280 --> 1:15:04.880 a long time, and they said you gotta get and 1:15:04.880 --> 1:15:07.000 I got up and told maybe ten jokes and hit 1:15:07.200 --> 1:15:10.599 ten home runs and it felt so good. And there 1:15:10.680 --> 1:15:14.040 was this young guy there. He said, Jackie, I'm such 1:15:14.040 --> 1:15:16.120 a big fan. He said, that's so great. He said, listen, 1:15:16.160 --> 1:15:20.240 I'm doing a show on Serious ex M, a request show. 1:15:21.720 --> 1:15:23.960 And what happens is people call in and they request 1:15:24.000 --> 1:15:27.160 the comedian and would you come and join me at 1:15:27.200 --> 1:15:30.320 noon a couple of days. So I went in and 1:15:30.360 --> 1:15:32.360 it was great because people call in and say rot 1:15:32.560 --> 1:15:35.120 Red Fox or any young men or something like that, 1:15:35.960 --> 1:15:37.519 or if he played something like that, and I had 1:15:37.560 --> 1:15:39.920 a story about everybody, you know, I had met them 1:15:39.920 --> 1:15:42.320 all or for whatever reason. And it was so much 1:15:42.320 --> 1:15:44.759 fun hanging out with this guy Phil. And at those 1:15:44.840 --> 1:15:50.000 days when you walked into serious it was like Nasa. 1:15:50.640 --> 1:15:52.680 I had a big map of the world and the 1:15:52.760 --> 1:15:55.680 satellites beeping, and everything is brand new, and everyone was 1:15:55.760 --> 1:15:58.439 so cheerful. It was so wonderful. It was so much money, 1:15:58.960 --> 1:16:01.880 you know, obviously put into it. Everybody was. It was 1:16:02.240 --> 1:16:09.240 just a delight. And then at some point a while later, uh, 1:16:09.360 --> 1:16:11.200 the s guy was a friend of mine, Toby Ludwig 1:16:11.920 --> 1:16:13.639 talked that they called me up and said, we would 1:16:13.640 --> 1:16:16.360 like you to be the voice of road Dog. And 1:16:16.479 --> 1:16:19.240 road Dog is a station on Sirius where I don't 1:16:19.240 --> 1:16:21.880 know what they do now, but where they play, you know, 1:16:22.080 --> 1:16:24.719 a big chunk of Dice, a big chunk of red Fox, 1:16:24.760 --> 1:16:27.880 a big chunk you dirty, dirty stuff. And I was 1:16:27.880 --> 1:16:29.960 gonna do the wrap rounds Hey, that was Dice. I'm 1:16:30.040 --> 1:16:32.719 Jackie jump Man, two Jews going to the bar. Ha ha, allright, 1:16:32.840 --> 1:16:36.479 is David Brenner. And it got to where it was 1:16:37.040 --> 1:16:39.120 it was ready to be signed, and it was for 1:16:39.720 --> 1:16:41.880 it wasn't for stern money, but it was for a 1:16:41.960 --> 1:16:45.000 lot of money for a guy that was doing nothing. 1:16:45.479 --> 1:16:52.519 My my, my accountant told me that when I quit 1:16:52.560 --> 1:16:54.960 the show, it was like I took a nine eleven 1:16:55.000 --> 1:16:59.840 to my bank account. That's what I said. So so 1:17:00.200 --> 1:17:02.479 I'm all of a sudden they say, listen, Jackie, we're sorry, 1:17:02.520 --> 1:17:05.360 the deal is off the table because we think we're 1:17:05.400 --> 1:17:10.800 gonna get Howard Stern here. And I actually wanted to 1:17:10.800 --> 1:17:14.200 say them, listen, guys, if you change your mind and 1:17:14.240 --> 1:17:17.400 you don't want me, so what, this is show business, 1:17:17.479 --> 1:17:19.200 but you don't have to make up some whopper of 1:17:19.240 --> 1:17:22.599 a lie. Because to me, of course, Howard wouldn't come 1:17:22.640 --> 1:17:27.519 to cable radio because to me, that whole show was 1:17:27.680 --> 1:17:30.639 dancing right up to the line and dancing around the line. 1:17:31.000 --> 1:17:33.400 You know, I go to eat at somebody's house, says, hey, 1:17:33.479 --> 1:17:35.280 be careful with my grandmother's here. I said, what the 1:17:35.320 --> 1:17:38.000 funk you? We were on the on the air for 1:17:38.080 --> 1:17:41.800 eighteen years, and I we we we couldn't curse, we 1:17:41.800 --> 1:17:44.800 we weren't allowed to be dirty. The whole point was 1:17:44.840 --> 1:17:47.240 we're getting right up to it and stopping on the line, 1:17:47.280 --> 1:17:50.920 and that's what was making everybody crazy. And so I 1:17:51.000 --> 1:17:53.400 was sure there was no way he was going to satellite. 1:17:53.720 --> 1:17:55.599 And then a couple of months later, a big headline 1:17:55.680 --> 1:17:58.920 Howard Stern going to sirious. I was like, oh, at 1:17:58.960 --> 1:18:02.120 least they weren't lying, right. So meanwhile, going in to 1:18:02.160 --> 1:18:04.320 see Phil once a while. And in the course of 1:18:04.320 --> 1:18:06.920 this that people, everybody's like, Jackie, you gotta come see, 1:18:06.920 --> 1:18:09.360 you gotta come see. And they walked me back and 1:18:09.439 --> 1:18:13.479 show me the Stern studios as it was in the 1:18:13.479 --> 1:18:16.040 progress of being made and being set up and everything. 1:18:16.040 --> 1:18:17.800 I was like, you know, like I give a fuck. 1:18:17.880 --> 1:18:22.920 But and then, and I'll never know if this was 1:18:23.000 --> 1:18:31.200 by design Phil's Phil's Show was at the exact opposite 1:18:31.280 --> 1:18:34.600 end of serious from where the Stern Show is. And 1:18:34.640 --> 1:18:37.559 one day I was on Phil's Show and I came 1:18:37.600 --> 1:18:40.080 walking out. We came walking out of the door and 1:18:40.120 --> 1:18:43.920 Gary Della Batti standing, He said, hey's that hell? You man? Hey, 1:18:43.960 --> 1:18:47.000 you want to see a new studio? I said, sure, 1:18:47.000 --> 1:18:48.559 and I don't want to getty body in trouble and sad, 1:18:48.600 --> 1:18:50.479 so are a million times ready. So we're go walking 1:18:50.479 --> 1:18:52.960 back and we look around it, and you know, it's impressed. 1:18:53.000 --> 1:18:56.040 It was beautiful. Of course, it's beautiful and then we 1:18:56.160 --> 1:19:00.599 walked out of a different door and Tim Say was there, 1:19:00.640 --> 1:19:03.599 who at the time was running everything for the Stern Channels, 1:19:04.360 --> 1:19:06.320 who had known for you know, thirty years or whatever, 1:19:07.240 --> 1:19:09.200 and he goes, hey, Jack, it's good to see. He said, 1:19:09.200 --> 1:19:11.560 how come you don't have a show on on satellite? 1:19:11.640 --> 1:19:14.600 And I'm like, nobody ever asked me you should have 1:19:14.640 --> 1:19:17.280 a show on satellite. I'm like, well, tell somebody I 1:19:17.320 --> 1:19:22.040 would love that. And then he's talking to me saying, uh, yeah, 1:19:22.080 --> 1:19:23.920 you know, come in, and i'd go in and talk 1:19:23.960 --> 1:19:28.400 to him and like he's he's a bullshit artist. He's 1:19:28.439 --> 1:19:31.200 just hems and whares. You know, he's rich. His whole 1:19:31.240 --> 1:19:33.360 life is making deals. Once the deals made, he's got 1:19:33.360 --> 1:19:37.200 nothing to do. So finally I wont I'm like, Tim, 1:19:37.240 --> 1:19:39.160 this is bullshit. I want to show. And I turned around. 1:19:39.200 --> 1:19:43.200 He had a big, uh calendar of the week, you know, 1:19:43.439 --> 1:19:46.200 Monday Tuesday, when you know, in all the different slots. 1:19:46.240 --> 1:19:49.800 I look and said, look, Tuesday five o'clock is open. 1:19:50.120 --> 1:19:53.600 I'll take Tuesday five to six. And he goes, okay, 1:19:54.320 --> 1:19:58.960 and so then you know you better talk to Howard okay, 1:19:59.080 --> 1:20:00.880 And then me and Howard, you know, went out to 1:20:00.960 --> 1:20:04.760 lunch and went out to dinner and he said, oh, 1:20:04.840 --> 1:20:07.360 so I hear you're trying to get a show. I'm serious. 1:20:07.439 --> 1:20:11.200 I'm like, no, you know, Tim asked me if I 1:20:11.280 --> 1:20:13.920 wanted to show, you know, like, I'll never know whether 1:20:13.960 --> 1:20:16.880 Gary fetched me and led me to Tim. And then 1:20:16.920 --> 1:20:20.000 Tim asked me, because I don't know whether there were 1:20:20.080 --> 1:20:21.760 I was gonna go on some of the station and 1:20:21.840 --> 1:20:25.200 have a radio show and talk about who knows, maybe 1:20:25.200 --> 1:20:30.960 it was totally happenstance, who cares at any rate? I said, yeah, 1:20:31.000 --> 1:20:32.599 I would really like that the show. I think it'd 1:20:32.600 --> 1:20:35.840 be really fun. And uh and that's how I went 1:20:35.960 --> 1:20:37.479 up with the show. And then of course it became 1:20:37.520 --> 1:20:40.160 oh yeah, Jackie came crawling to me for a gig, 1:20:40.280 --> 1:20:42.760 So what the fuck? I gave him a job, you know, 1:20:43.880 --> 1:20:45.679 you know, you just learned to live with that ship, 1:20:45.760 --> 1:20:50.160 you know. And uh, so we did it for eight years. 1:20:51.040 --> 1:20:56.040 We did four hundred and two Jackie's Joke Cunts and 1:20:56.160 --> 1:20:59.720 uh it was an hour dirty jokes, short jokes, long 1:20:59.800 --> 1:21:05.000 Joe pokes, listener jokes, guests told jokes. It was so funny, 1:21:05.160 --> 1:21:08.000 so fun I had the original cast of Jersey Boys, 1:21:08.080 --> 1:21:14.920 had Sid Bernstein, Pat Cooper, the tokens a whole a 1:21:15.000 --> 1:21:20.320 whole smattering of of who's who's that, you know, and 1:21:20.400 --> 1:21:23.000 everybody told the joke. I told a joke, Ian, my 1:21:23.640 --> 1:21:26.760 co partner, My partner told a joke, the engineer told 1:21:26.800 --> 1:21:29.040 the joke, the guy working the board told the joke, 1:21:29.120 --> 1:21:31.599 the guy answering the phones told the joke, the guests 1:21:31.640 --> 1:21:34.559 told the joke. It and it just was a free 1:21:34.560 --> 1:21:37.680 for all, and with the jokes went on and on 1:21:37.760 --> 1:21:41.160 and on and on and and they replayed they replayed 1:21:41.160 --> 1:21:43.760 it like five or six times a week, you know, 1:21:43.840 --> 1:21:45.880 which was great for me, you know, which I loved. 1:21:45.920 --> 1:21:48.240 And then they, after like six years, one day we 1:21:48.320 --> 1:21:51.640 walked in and and said that before we got a 1:21:51.720 --> 1:21:55.880 chance to tell Tim we want to raise now they 1:21:55.920 --> 1:21:58.400 we They made a deal with us and then paid 1:21:58.479 --> 1:22:00.800 us much less than the deal was supposed to be. 1:22:01.360 --> 1:22:03.040 And then we went on like that for six years. 1:22:03.040 --> 1:22:04.800 Then we went in to tell him we want more money. 1:22:04.840 --> 1:22:07.560 And that's when he said, we're cutting you down to 1:22:07.680 --> 1:22:11.479 once a month, as it makes no sense to do 1:22:11.520 --> 1:22:13.680 a show once a month. I said, just pay us 1:22:13.720 --> 1:22:15.880 for once a month and we'll still still do it 1:22:15.920 --> 1:22:20.519 once a week. So pay got slashed by a quarter. 1:22:21.800 --> 1:22:24.080 And then it was like by the end of the 1:22:24.080 --> 1:22:27.640 eighth year, close to the eighth year, they out of 1:22:27.680 --> 1:22:33.120 a clear sky. They decided to let us go a 1:22:33.160 --> 1:22:36.840 week before Thanksgiving and they were having a huge Now 1:22:36.880 --> 1:22:38.720 you can interpret this, how you want to having a 1:22:38.840 --> 1:22:43.240 huge party for Howard's sixt birthday birthday and it's a 1:22:43.360 --> 1:22:47.120 serious x M is throwing the party for Howard. We're 1:22:47.160 --> 1:22:50.360 not only on Serious x M me and Ian, but 1:22:50.520 --> 1:22:54.400 we're on Howard's channel one oh one on serious x M. 1:22:55.040 --> 1:22:59.960 And the entire world is invited to Howard's birthday party 1:23:00.040 --> 1:23:03.519 except for me in the end. Now you you can 1:23:03.560 --> 1:23:06.759 interpret that? Hell yeah, I you I countless friend said Jackie, 1:23:06.880 --> 1:23:09.240 can I be your plus one at Howard's party? And 1:23:09.280 --> 1:23:12.320 I would tell them We're not invited, and nobody believes. 1:23:12.720 --> 1:23:16.080 Just no, it was It was pretty pretty impossible to believe. 1:23:16.240 --> 1:23:19.880 But not for me because I know, because I know 1:23:20.040 --> 1:23:23.040 if one person walked up to Howard as the sixtieth 1:23:23.080 --> 1:23:25.679 thirthday party and said, Howard, man, it's great to see 1:23:25.800 --> 1:23:29.320 Jackie again, that would erect this fucking night. And I 1:23:30.080 --> 1:23:34.320 know that sounds for the ultimate time. Huh. So what 1:23:34.520 --> 1:23:40.639 is your relationship with Howard, you know there is none. Um, 1:23:40.720 --> 1:23:43.120 I'm sure if somebody said, how's the relationship with Jackie? 1:23:43.240 --> 1:23:46.120 Say fine? You know, people say you guys still friends, 1:23:46.120 --> 1:23:49.759 and I'm not comfortable saying I'm still friends with somebody 1:23:49.800 --> 1:23:54.800 that I haven't physically seen in five or seven years. 1:23:54.840 --> 1:23:56.920 I went on the show maybe seven or eight years 1:23:56.960 --> 1:24:01.360 ago to promote something, you know, briefly, and it was great. 1:24:01.400 --> 1:24:07.960 And you know this and the things that sound pompous 1:24:07.960 --> 1:24:10.160 that aren't really pompous. It's funny because I just read 1:24:10.200 --> 1:24:13.479 about this in Jackie Gleeson's biography and it just struck 1:24:13.560 --> 1:24:17.360 me great. I have Howard's funny bone, which sounds like 1:24:17.360 --> 1:24:22.360 a a made up thing. But there's some people that 1:24:22.760 --> 1:24:26.800 the chemistry between people I can make him laugh at 1:24:26.840 --> 1:24:30.040 will I just can't just with from the same place 1:24:30.720 --> 1:24:33.680 we have. Yeah, it's it's hard to explain, but I 1:24:33.720 --> 1:24:36.360 can bury him very easily. Not not something ha ha 1:24:36.520 --> 1:24:39.120 funny that anybody else would laugh at, but I got 1:24:39.120 --> 1:24:42.200 his funny bone, and and he can't help it. But 1:24:42.320 --> 1:24:45.080 he likes me a lot, and it's it's very weird. 1:24:45.760 --> 1:24:49.400 And he really had Sophie's choice because he, you know, 1:24:49.520 --> 1:24:52.960 he was already so so rich, and he had a 1:24:53.000 --> 1:24:56.000 guy sitting right next to him that made him laugh 1:24:56.479 --> 1:24:59.240 for four hour forget about making the people laugh, made 1:24:59.320 --> 1:25:03.080 him laugh for four hours a day. He went to 1:25:03.160 --> 1:25:06.560 work known he was gonna have a good time every day, 1:25:06.680 --> 1:25:10.160 and he let that go, which is a it's a 1:25:10.200 --> 1:25:12.600 tough call. I you know, I can never put my 1:25:12.680 --> 1:25:15.280 finger on it, and I it's not and I'm not 1:25:15.320 --> 1:25:17.519 flipping a coin. I mean, I can make the guy laugh, 1:25:17.680 --> 1:25:22.280 and it's it's a little bit weird. I don't know. 1:25:24.520 --> 1:25:26.000 At one point I said to him, you know what, 1:25:26.040 --> 1:25:28.040 if we could make a lot, you could make a 1:25:28.080 --> 1:25:31.080 lot of money for charity. Somebody just said, all right, 1:25:31.120 --> 1:25:34.160 let's put Howard and Jackie in a room by themselves 1:25:34.200 --> 1:25:36.479 for a half hour on New Year's Eve some night. 1:25:37.240 --> 1:25:38.760 You know, I would love to say to him, let's 1:25:38.760 --> 1:25:41.880 sit and have a talk on cable and charge money 1:25:41.960 --> 1:25:46.120 and give the money to charity or whatever. But he 1:25:46.240 --> 1:25:48.519 just never would do it. You know, no writers, no 1:25:48.640 --> 1:25:52.760 extra people, no Robin giggling, just us fucking around, you know. 1:25:52.800 --> 1:25:56.840 But he's not built for a level playing field, you know. 1:25:58.120 --> 1:26:00.720 But it's it's a high. It's a hard thing to 1:26:00.760 --> 1:26:02.400 put your finger on, you know, I mean I got 1:26:02.560 --> 1:26:05.519 birthday cards from him. I'm sure that Howard's got his 1:26:05.600 --> 1:26:07.600 take on it, but that's not where we're coming. Oh No, 1:26:07.720 --> 1:26:10.000 I would love, I would give anything to hear his 1:26:10.120 --> 1:26:13.479 take on it. You know, it would be stupid. He 1:26:13.520 --> 1:26:15.360 walked away from a lot of money. I didn't really 1:26:15.360 --> 1:26:17.200 need him. I was doing him a favor. You know, 1:26:17.439 --> 1:26:20.320 I've never heard his take on it, but I'm sure 1:26:20.360 --> 1:26:23.640 it would be it would be dismissive. It wouldn't be 1:26:24.800 --> 1:26:28.800 it wouldn't be an explanation. It would be dismissive. Well, 1:26:28.840 --> 1:26:31.400 whatever history you guys have is between the two of you. 1:26:31.800 --> 1:26:34.599 But do you ever or since you've been off this show, 1:26:35.439 --> 1:26:38.799 ever listened to it. That's another thing that people always 1:26:38.840 --> 1:26:40.960 ask me. And it's very funny because I never listened 1:26:40.960 --> 1:26:44.960 to it when I was on it. I never listened 1:26:44.960 --> 1:26:48.080 to the best of when we're on vacation, I have 1:26:48.240 --> 1:26:51.400 never listened to two seconds of it. And what's really 1:26:51.439 --> 1:26:53.760 funny is the only time I really listened to the 1:26:53.760 --> 1:26:56.559 show was when I first met him, because I had 1:26:56.600 --> 1:26:59.320 no idea what was going on. And that's how I 1:26:59.439 --> 1:27:03.400 found out he used to do a character, a black 1:27:04.280 --> 1:27:09.040 traffic reporter named Mama Look a Booble Day, and I 1:27:09.080 --> 1:27:12.240 gave him a whole bunch of black type chokes, you know, 1:27:12.400 --> 1:27:17.599 like weird, weird stuff for that for that character. And 1:27:17.640 --> 1:27:20.400 when I came back in the next week or two 1:27:20.439 --> 1:27:22.080 weeks later, I handed it to him. He looked at 1:27:22.120 --> 1:27:25.280 me like, I don't need this, you know. And then 1:27:25.320 --> 1:27:29.440 I was listening to the show and I heard him 1:27:29.560 --> 1:27:31.880 using some of the stuff I had given him. So 1:27:31.920 --> 1:27:34.920 the next time I walked in and said, hey, there's 1:27:34.960 --> 1:27:37.360 some jokes, and he was like, you know, thank you. 1:27:38.280 --> 1:27:44.360 But what's really funny is I was listening to the show. 1:27:44.800 --> 1:27:47.559 This is like this had to be three. I just 1:27:47.720 --> 1:27:52.360 joined the show, and I love the story because I 1:27:52.400 --> 1:27:54.320 was in the kitchen at the house. I was written 1:27:54.360 --> 1:27:56.439 me and then answer were written, and I was standing 1:27:56.479 --> 1:28:01.080 on a stool in the kitchen, a step stool, fixing something. 1:28:01.320 --> 1:28:04.200 And the reason I remember is because I don't fix anything. 1:28:04.600 --> 1:28:06.320 I have no idea why I was, but I was 1:28:06.400 --> 1:28:10.240 up on this step stepping stool and Gary came in 1:28:10.280 --> 1:28:12.519 and said, Hey, how the girl he is says he 1:28:12.600 --> 1:28:16.519 wants to get naked, and he said, really, well, have 1:28:16.600 --> 1:28:19.479 her come in and she came in. She said Hi, Howard. 1:28:19.560 --> 1:28:22.719 He said hi, and he says, have a seat. He says, 1:28:23.520 --> 1:28:27.439 who you? And she says, my name's Maria. And I 1:28:27.520 --> 1:28:30.840 worked the door at the Comedy Factory outlet in Philadelphia, 1:28:31.080 --> 1:28:35.160 and my favorite comedian is Jackie Martlin, and I almost 1:28:35.200 --> 1:28:38.400 fell off the fucking stool. I have not heard I've 1:28:38.439 --> 1:28:41.919 never spoken to one person that remembers hearing that wherever 1:28:42.720 --> 1:28:44.920 as her. I don't know if it exists on best 1:28:44.960 --> 1:28:48.320 of or whether it was chopped out. But I couldn't 1:28:48.320 --> 1:28:52.599 make up that story. But that was way way way back, 1:28:52.960 --> 1:28:57.000 and you know, I would just listen. Once I listened 1:28:57.000 --> 1:28:59.040 and got the gist what he was doing, and I 1:28:59.040 --> 1:29:01.040 would give him some Joe. So I didn't I didn't 1:29:01.080 --> 1:29:03.000 listen like to see if he was using any you know, 1:29:03.640 --> 1:29:05.240 I was just I was just trying to get my 1:29:05.240 --> 1:29:07.479 foot in the door. That's all I cared about. You. 1:29:07.920 --> 1:29:10.680 So out of your tenure there, what are two or 1:29:10.720 --> 1:29:14.599 three highlights other than bullshooting with the gang and having 1:29:14.600 --> 1:29:20.759 fun um sitting knees and you know the first actually 1:29:20.800 --> 1:29:24.479 the second studio we had was so tiny that where 1:29:24.520 --> 1:29:28.759 I sat, the guests sat at a forty five degree 1:29:28.800 --> 1:29:32.679 angle to me, so close that literally my right knee 1:29:33.160 --> 1:29:36.680 would just about be banging their left knee. And we 1:29:36.680 --> 1:29:39.360 had James Taylor on the show, and he sat there 1:29:40.320 --> 1:29:44.800 and sang four songs knees to knees with me, and 1:29:44.800 --> 1:29:48.120 in between songs, I'm writing insults about James Taylor, who 1:29:48.160 --> 1:29:52.519 I fucking loved beyond any stretch of the imagination. And 1:29:53.760 --> 1:29:56.640 were sitting there on our knees are touching, and I 1:29:56.680 --> 1:30:00.840 said to myself, you know, I bet and nobody has 1:30:00.920 --> 1:30:05.639 ever sat this close to James Taylor when he sang before, 1:30:05.760 --> 1:30:10.080 because there would be no reason for anybody, even if 1:30:10.080 --> 1:30:11.840 they were a fan, they would never go and put 1:30:11.880 --> 1:30:14.760 the seat this close. It was like it was. It 1:30:14.880 --> 1:30:19.960 was absolutely surreal, and that strikes me as so great. Um. 1:30:20.000 --> 1:30:25.519 Another unbelievable time was a guy came in. He was 1:30:25.520 --> 1:30:28.200 sitting in the same exact place, and Howard started with 1:30:28.280 --> 1:30:31.840 his regular crap, you know, like, hey man, thanks for 1:30:31.960 --> 1:30:34.200 coming in, all right, hey hoy, you tell me how 1:30:34.240 --> 1:30:36.519 big is your penis? And the guy was like, don't 1:30:36.600 --> 1:30:39.760 don't start with me, man, you don't start with me. 1:30:39.880 --> 1:30:42.519 I'm not your dancing monkey. Man. I'll come right over 1:30:42.560 --> 1:30:45.200 and right away Gary and Ronnie are right behind him. 1:30:45.439 --> 1:30:48.000 I mean, this guy went from zero to sixty in 1:30:48.080 --> 1:30:51.559 a flash, and he was crazy hot. And I said 1:30:51.600 --> 1:30:56.719 to myself, Jesus Christ, this this guy's gonna kill somebody. 1:30:56.960 --> 1:31:03.200 And it was Robert Blake. That is funny. That is 1:31:03.360 --> 1:31:07.320 very funny. Scary but funny. Oh my god. And and 1:31:07.600 --> 1:31:14.080 one time we're sitting there and um, six fifteen in 1:31:14.080 --> 1:31:20.000 the morning, just bursting through the door was Sam Kinnison, 1:31:20.479 --> 1:31:24.920 Pat McCormick, Chuck McCann and Jack Riley from the old 1:31:24.960 --> 1:31:27.840 New Heart show that Samon got done and at the 1:31:27.880 --> 1:31:33.000 comics at the Comedy, uh, Comedy Factory whatever it's called, 1:31:33.439 --> 1:31:38.719 the Comedy in Los Angeles, and uh, he said, come on, guys, 1:31:38.800 --> 1:31:40.800 let's go. You see the how its stern showing. They 1:31:40.840 --> 1:31:43.599 hupped in his jet and did coke all the way 1:31:43.600 --> 1:31:45.799 to New York and came bursting in at six fifteen 1:31:45.840 --> 1:31:47.600 in the morning and they were right behind me and 1:31:47.600 --> 1:31:50.519 I'm looking at looking at the Mount Rushmore of comedy. 1:31:50.560 --> 1:31:54.040 It was like just unbelievable, and you know, and stuff 1:31:54.080 --> 1:31:55.920 like that just went on, and you know, we're in 1:31:56.120 --> 1:32:02.479 England for a week. We broadcast from the room, the 1:32:02.560 --> 1:32:06.400 room in abbey Road where it all happened, the actual 1:32:06.600 --> 1:32:09.519 fucking room in abbey Road. I never to this day. 1:32:09.560 --> 1:32:12.200 I got the chills thinking about it. And then we 1:32:12.240 --> 1:32:14.519 went to the Princess Trust concert and was sitting up 1:32:14.560 --> 1:32:18.280 in one of these little, you know, ballrooms doing radio, 1:32:18.880 --> 1:32:22.120 and the bags sat across from me Howard and Robin 1:32:22.400 --> 1:32:26.200 and sang a capella from from me to the screen 1:32:26.280 --> 1:32:28.920 or you know. I mean, I could go on and on, 1:32:29.000 --> 1:32:31.120 and I thought that ship was just like and it 1:32:31.240 --> 1:32:33.439 was happening so fast you didn't get a chance to 1:32:33.479 --> 1:32:36.040 digest anything, you know. I was just going through my 1:32:36.080 --> 1:32:39.640 notes and I found a scan letter from Kurt Vonnegut 1:32:39.680 --> 1:32:42.800 that he had written in n to his family on 1:32:42.840 --> 1:32:45.920 an old typewriter, and it was signed, I mean, it 1:32:46.040 --> 1:32:50.479 was a scan, but it was a scan. He must 1:32:50.520 --> 1:32:52.560 assigned it and given it to some people because it 1:32:52.640 --> 1:32:56.200 said seasons greetings. And there was a guy who was 1:32:56.240 --> 1:32:58.200 a fan out and you know, these people that were 1:32:58.200 --> 1:33:00.280 fans like, what can we do for the you know, 1:33:00.280 --> 1:33:02.880 and they knew Howard got everything, so they sent occasionally 1:33:02.960 --> 1:33:06.960 they send stuff to me or Fred or Gary. It 1:33:07.080 --> 1:33:09.559 was beyond exciting, and it just it just went on 1:33:09.680 --> 1:33:13.200 and on and on. Okay, so, who are the greatest 1:33:13.200 --> 1:33:18.240 comedians ever? Me leaving you out of it? Bill Mahr 1:33:18.360 --> 1:33:20.639 says the same thing about himself. We're taking you out 1:33:20.640 --> 1:33:23.360 of it. No, there is there is no greatest you know, 1:33:23.680 --> 1:33:26.519 and I am not a fair judge because I don't know. 1:33:26.960 --> 1:33:30.719 You know, people say, who's to me, the new comedian 1:33:30.840 --> 1:33:33.360 is Chris Rock, you know what I mean? I'm not. 1:33:34.320 --> 1:33:36.360 I was the you just know I don't want to 1:33:36.400 --> 1:33:41.680 go deep. No. I was was the you just fan 1:33:41.800 --> 1:33:45.640 in the world of Rodney Dangerfield. And the fact that 1:33:45.680 --> 1:33:50.760 I wound up and step with him is so beyond anything. Like. 1:33:51.200 --> 1:33:53.479 I wasn't a comic. I had no intention of ever 1:33:53.560 --> 1:33:57.679 becoming a comic, because it never dawned on me that 1:33:57.680 --> 1:34:00.640 that was a choice anybody can make, you know. I 1:34:00.680 --> 1:34:03.280 always thought show business you had to be chosen. I'll 1:34:03.400 --> 1:34:07.280 not like there some things I remember so vague so vividly. 1:34:08.320 --> 1:34:10.960 In my band in college. It was this big fat drummer, 1:34:11.040 --> 1:34:14.320 Nick Petrovitch, and we had just all started getting together 1:34:16.080 --> 1:34:20.040 and I'm I'm it just goes to show what an 1:34:20.040 --> 1:34:23.519 idiot I am. Somebody said, Nick, what's your major? And 1:34:23.560 --> 1:34:27.040 he said, radio and TV, and you could have knocked 1:34:27.080 --> 1:34:30.759 me over with a feather. I was like, what, what 1:34:30.760 --> 1:34:32.559 what do you mean that though you're major, you don't 1:34:32.560 --> 1:34:35.960 get to choose that that chooses you. You know you don't. 1:34:36.680 --> 1:34:38.680 It never drawn to me that was a path that 1:34:38.720 --> 1:34:41.879 you could choose and pursue, as stupid as that sounds. 1:34:42.520 --> 1:34:44.479 And as far as being a comedian, I never knew 1:34:44.520 --> 1:34:46.840 it was something you could work towards. I thought they 1:34:46.880 --> 1:34:49.679 just annointed you just like class clown. Like somebody said, 1:34:49.680 --> 1:34:51.719 all right, you know, George Colin, you're gonna be really 1:34:51.760 --> 1:34:54.960 funny or whatever, and uh, I had no intention of 1:34:55.000 --> 1:34:58.160 being a comic. But I love to laugh at any 1:34:58.160 --> 1:35:00.880 young man's jokes. And when was in the band, we 1:35:00.920 --> 1:35:03.519 had all the Red Fox's old albums because they were 1:35:03.560 --> 1:35:07.479 just filthy jokes, filthy jokes, and I was a great lamp. 1:35:07.560 --> 1:35:11.599 My mother his favorite thing was to watch me watch 1:35:11.640 --> 1:35:14.200 Red Skelton because I got such a kick out of 1:35:14.200 --> 1:35:17.479 Red Skelton enjoying himself and laughing at himself. So she'd 1:35:17.520 --> 1:35:21.639 watch me because I would howl watching him, and I'm 1:35:21.680 --> 1:35:25.160 sure I became that. But Rodney, you know, he would 1:35:25.160 --> 1:35:26.920 go on and then we'd all call each other up 1:35:26.920 --> 1:35:29.320 and quote the lines back and forth and back and forth. 1:35:30.479 --> 1:35:34.519 And when I first started toying with comedy, uh this 1:35:34.960 --> 1:35:37.200 a couple of guys working at this place called Richard M. 1:35:37.200 --> 1:35:39.840 Dixon's White House in and Dixon wouldn't pay us. So 1:35:40.520 --> 1:35:42.920 me and this guy, Richard and Richie Mannavini, decided to 1:35:42.960 --> 1:35:45.240 start our own show, which is where I recorded my 1:35:45.280 --> 1:35:48.479 first album. But when we first started, I'm living at 1:35:48.680 --> 1:35:51.360 the house with after my grandmother died, and Richie would 1:35:51.360 --> 1:35:55.840 stay there sometimes and comics lie. In the beginning, comics lie, 1:35:55.920 --> 1:35:58.600 it was still lie because you want to, you know, 1:35:58.640 --> 1:36:00.680 you gotta build yourself up. And Richie came in one 1:36:00.760 --> 1:36:02.400 night and says, hey, man, I went on the Danger 1:36:02.479 --> 1:36:05.519 Fields tonight and I killed man. And Rodney you saw me. 1:36:05.600 --> 1:36:08.000 Rodney loved me. He's gonna use me on TV. It 1:36:08.160 --> 1:36:10.240 was greatest. Man. I can't and I tell you I 1:36:11.040 --> 1:36:14.040 when I repeat that right now, I'm still jealous. So 1:36:14.120 --> 1:36:16.920 I said, you know what, and I sat down and 1:36:17.640 --> 1:36:22.160 took paper and made carbons, and every joke that I told, 1:36:22.360 --> 1:36:24.240 or that I knew, or that I could think of, 1:36:24.720 --> 1:36:28.679 that I could put in Rodney's speak. I typed out. 1:36:28.720 --> 1:36:32.600 I typed out six pages of jokes. One of the 1:36:32.720 --> 1:36:35.519 jokes that I had come across. A couple of weeks ago, 1:36:36.479 --> 1:36:40.960 a friend of mine was in Peru selling and buying 1:36:41.120 --> 1:36:44.759 cocaine and doing cocaine. And he called me from Peru 1:36:44.920 --> 1:36:47.360 and he said, Chief, this guy just told me the 1:36:47.360 --> 1:36:49.880 funniest joke I ever heard. You gotta stay awake. I 1:36:49.880 --> 1:36:51.880 know you probably drunk, but stay awake. You had to 1:36:51.920 --> 1:36:55.240 hear this. And he told me this joke by Tennessee Bob, 1:36:55.760 --> 1:36:58.759 and I thought it was really funny, and I wrote 1:36:58.760 --> 1:37:01.920 it down. So among the six pages of jokes that 1:37:02.000 --> 1:37:05.400 I sent to Rodney was this joke. I wrote these. 1:37:05.520 --> 1:37:08.679 I wrote these jokes all out, folded them up, putting 1:37:08.680 --> 1:37:10.800 them an envelope. And next time Richie came into my house, 1:37:10.840 --> 1:37:13.400 I said, Richie, please do me a favor and give 1:37:13.439 --> 1:37:17.240 these jokes to your friend Rodney. And Richie got embarrassed. 1:37:17.280 --> 1:37:21.720 He said, oh man, he said, I lied. He said 1:37:21.760 --> 1:37:24.439 I didn't meet Rodney. I didn't even get on stage 1:37:24.479 --> 1:37:27.240 that night, but I did go. I swear to god, 1:37:27.280 --> 1:37:29.559 I went this two story. You don't have to believe, Bob. 1:37:29.600 --> 1:37:33.439 He reached his pocket and took out a matchbook and said, 1:37:33.720 --> 1:37:38.439 you know, Rodney going, you know, one thousand one First Avenue, 1:37:38.600 --> 1:37:42.759 New York, New York. There's the address. I just wrote 1:37:43.160 --> 1:37:46.080 the address underneath where I'd written Rodney danger Field on 1:37:46.120 --> 1:37:48.120 the envelope. I had already written the jokes. They were 1:37:48.120 --> 1:37:49.960 already in the envelope. What do I got to lose? 1:37:50.000 --> 1:37:51.719 I put on a stamp and put it in the mail, 1:37:52.600 --> 1:37:55.400 And two days later, the phone rings, and nobody knows 1:37:56.800 --> 1:37:59.400 the phone number. Then my grandmother's dead. Everybody she knew 1:37:59.680 --> 1:38:02.879 were head, So who the hell would call there? Pioneer 1:38:02.920 --> 1:38:05.519 six to five for one, you learned that when you're 1:38:05.560 --> 1:38:09.120 three years old, your grandmother's phone number, the phone rings, 1:38:09.160 --> 1:38:15.280 I answer, I go hello, Hello, who's this this Rodday? 1:38:15.479 --> 1:38:18.719 He said? Rodney? Who oh? I knew you were fucking funny. 1:38:18.720 --> 1:38:20.840 I knew you were funny. And my girlfriend's like, who 1:38:20.920 --> 1:38:23.839 is it? That's Rodney Dangefields, just bullshit, who is it? Richiet? 1:38:23.960 --> 1:38:27.200 Fucking Rodney? You know the funny? Shoot is I'm really funny? 1:38:27.280 --> 1:38:29.720 This fucking two bags. The funniest joke I ever read. 1:38:29.800 --> 1:38:32.080 You know, the joke that he fell in love with 1:38:33.280 --> 1:38:36.479 was the girl was known as a Tennessee two bagger. 1:38:36.640 --> 1:38:38.439 That's the girl is so ugly. You're not only got 1:38:38.439 --> 1:38:40.880 to put a bag over her head, you gotta put 1:38:40.880 --> 1:38:44.679 a bag over your own head in case her bag rips. Well, 1:38:44.720 --> 1:38:47.599 he went fucking nuts for that, and he said, here, 1:38:47.680 --> 1:38:49.439 come to Westbury, you know, come to Westbury. You know 1:38:49.439 --> 1:38:51.200 I'm gonna buy I think four of these jokes. I 1:38:51.240 --> 1:38:53.040 love him, you know, come on, could be my guest, 1:38:53.080 --> 1:38:55.400 bring your girl. So I went to We went to 1:38:55.400 --> 1:38:58.800 see him in Westbury's VENTI seven. I got a ponytail 1:38:58.840 --> 1:39:01.600 down my back and orang jeans, and I got a 1:39:01.640 --> 1:39:04.559 girlfriend ten years younger who was beautiful. And he's fucking 1:39:04.600 --> 1:39:06.920 his eyes are spinning, you know, He's like, oh, she's 1:39:06.960 --> 1:39:09.160 sucking beautiful. I have a piece of fruit, some funny 1:39:09.240 --> 1:39:10.960 fucking jokes. You I'm gonna buy him? Yeah, you all 1:39:11.000 --> 1:39:13.360 look at her? Wow? Not? But what's with the fucking hair? 1:39:13.439 --> 1:39:15.160 I look at the jeans? What the fund is wrong? 1:39:15.240 --> 1:39:19.960 She's very pretty, you know. And that was that I 1:39:20.080 --> 1:39:22.000 was off and running. He bought four jokes for two 1:39:22.040 --> 1:39:26.320 hundred bucks. And and here I am in step and 1:39:26.360 --> 1:39:29.000 I badgered him and badgered humuntil he took away, took 1:39:29.040 --> 1:39:31.000 me away with him and we went to Fort Lauderdale 1:39:31.040 --> 1:39:33.280 for a week, in Las Vegas for a week, and 1:39:33.280 --> 1:39:36.800 it was I'm still still pulling stories out of my 1:39:36.880 --> 1:39:41.160 ass about those two weeks forty years. Okay, do you 1:39:41.240 --> 1:39:45.599 ever write jokes or the jokes come to you? I 1:39:45.680 --> 1:39:49.479 write them, but not a lot of them. Um. And 1:39:49.479 --> 1:39:54.360 and also if you write a short choke, it's it's 1:39:54.439 --> 1:39:59.679 pretty tough to write something, you know. As a student 1:39:59.680 --> 1:40:01.640 of Joe books, I mean I was, I've been. I 1:40:01.720 --> 1:40:05.200 was penn pals with a guy named Gershon Legman for 1:40:05.320 --> 1:40:11.360 twenty years before I put one of the jokes that 1:40:11.479 --> 1:40:16.000 I really really loved in my joke book. This guy 1:40:16.040 --> 1:40:22.640 wrote these incredibly thick, pedantic, unbelievable joke collections, and I 1:40:22.680 --> 1:40:26.240 came across it and all my stories away too long. 1:40:27.240 --> 1:40:29.360 Like I said in the in the seventies, we were 1:40:29.400 --> 1:40:32.400 doing everything we could to get material and find jokes 1:40:32.439 --> 1:40:35.640 and joke books. And in the back of some magazine 1:40:36.320 --> 1:40:39.040 it was like any ten books for cents, and one 1:40:39.040 --> 1:40:43.200 of the books said rationale of the dirty Joke. I said, 1:40:44.280 --> 1:40:46.599 so I sent whatever the other books were, I threw 1:40:46.640 --> 1:40:50.080 them out and looked at this thing big, thick book, 1:40:51.560 --> 1:40:53.719 and it was all went on and on about jokes. 1:40:53.760 --> 1:40:56.160 But the guy was kind enough to put the actual 1:40:56.320 --> 1:41:00.080 jokes in italics so you could read it like a 1:41:00.160 --> 1:41:03.559 joke book. And the introduction was like thirty pages long. 1:41:03.600 --> 1:41:05.640 And the guy goes on and on and on, and 1:41:05.720 --> 1:41:08.200 at the end of introduction he had his name in 1:41:08.240 --> 1:41:13.120 his his address, and you know me, and I'm reading 1:41:13.160 --> 1:41:14.760 and it says, this is part two of the two 1:41:14.800 --> 1:41:20.000 book collection. This is eight There's there's no Internet. I 1:41:20.000 --> 1:41:22.439 wrote the guy a letter. I sent my cassettes, I 1:41:22.520 --> 1:41:24.960 sent my jokes and everything said listen, I don't know 1:41:25.000 --> 1:41:26.920 if you'll ever get this, but I'm a comic. I 1:41:26.920 --> 1:41:30.439 would give anything to have a copy of that first 1:41:30.520 --> 1:41:32.960 volume of your series. And the guy wrote me back 1:41:33.000 --> 1:41:35.439 a couple of weeks later. I think it's like Jackie, 1:41:35.520 --> 1:41:37.960 I really enjoy your stuff. You're so funny. I got 1:41:37.960 --> 1:41:40.360 two copies of the first series of my book. I 1:41:40.400 --> 1:41:42.360 don't need to I'll sell you one of them. And 1:41:42.400 --> 1:41:45.240 he sold it to me for eighteen dollars and I 1:41:45.280 --> 1:41:48.840 still haven't it says and signed by Gershawn Legman. It 1:41:48.960 --> 1:41:51.880 turns out you can't read it. It's like the Bible. 1:41:51.920 --> 1:41:56.080 It's so goes on and it's so packed, packed with jokes. 1:41:56.439 --> 1:41:59.000 And one day I happened to notice like I had 1:41:59.040 --> 1:42:01.880 heard the Aristocrat joke from a guy named Martin Lewis, 1:42:01.880 --> 1:42:05.800 a comedian, a magician, comedian from Los Angeles, and I've 1:42:05.840 --> 1:42:09.360 been telling the Aristocrats for years and I'm looking at 1:42:09.400 --> 1:42:14.640 Legmans and the Aristocrats is the last joke on the 1:42:14.760 --> 1:42:19.360 last page of the second volume of his series. And 1:42:19.400 --> 1:42:22.639 I couldn't believe it. And his whole premises, you are 1:42:22.720 --> 1:42:26.920 thoroughly defined by what you find funny, and he said, 1:42:26.960 --> 1:42:30.600 this next joke was taught to told to me by 1:42:30.640 --> 1:42:35.120 a magician comedian who was raised in Squalor by parents 1:42:35.160 --> 1:42:38.920 that battled for forty years but stayed together for the 1:42:38.960 --> 1:42:41.400 good of the family. And I said, holy funck, this 1:42:41.439 --> 1:42:45.439 guy just described my life. And so twenty years later, 1:42:45.439 --> 1:42:47.920 I'm writing a joke book. So I made the last 1:42:48.000 --> 1:42:53.280 page of my joke book the Aristocrats, just like Legman had. 1:42:54.240 --> 1:42:58.599 And then ten years later, Paul Prevents and Pendelt come 1:42:58.640 --> 1:43:02.160 into my apartment and said, Jack, we're making a movie 1:43:02.200 --> 1:43:05.240 about the Aristocrats, and we gotta put you in the 1:43:05.280 --> 1:43:08.320 movie because we did a search on the web and 1:43:08.320 --> 1:43:11.160 we only got two hits for the Aristocrats, and they 1:43:11.160 --> 1:43:16.120 were both your website, because I had Legman's version and 1:43:16.200 --> 1:43:18.479 I had my version. And if you look at the 1:43:18.520 --> 1:43:22.799 poster for the Aristocrats, I don't it's every famous comic 1:43:22.880 --> 1:43:25.680 you've ever heard of in your in your life, with 1:43:25.840 --> 1:43:28.040 me thrown in the middle. I mean, they're all head 1:43:28.040 --> 1:43:31.439 and shoulders above me. But it was just just just 1:43:31.560 --> 1:43:35.240 so fucking interesting. And there was a joke that was 1:43:35.360 --> 1:43:38.920 so Rodney. If ever there was a joke that somebody 1:43:39.000 --> 1:43:43.280 sat down and wrote specifically for Rodney. There was this 1:43:43.360 --> 1:43:47.599 joke and I here it is in the Legman book. 1:43:48.240 --> 1:43:52.920 It's two guys talking in the Civil War and there's 1:43:52.960 --> 1:43:55.479 the joke. And I'm like, and I'm I'm like, there 1:43:55.560 --> 1:43:57.880 is nothing new, and the joke was here. You know, 1:43:58.560 --> 1:44:00.960 you know, my wife don't know. You know that she 1:44:01.040 --> 1:44:03.040 cut me down to twice a week, but that's nothing. 1:44:03.120 --> 1:44:05.120 I know. A couple of guys she cut out all together, 1:44:06.840 --> 1:44:10.439 which is so funny. And there's two several war guys 1:44:10.479 --> 1:44:13.240 and two black guys. And one guy said, yeah, this 1:44:13.520 --> 1:44:16.759 rash thing is crazy. They rather and they're rashed and everything. 1:44:16.760 --> 1:44:20.000 They're rashton cigarettes and they're rast and vegetables. And the 1:44:20.080 --> 1:44:23.200 guy says, yeah, he says that my wife cut me 1:44:23.200 --> 1:44:25.720 down twice a week. You know. The other guy said, yeah, well, 1:44:25.760 --> 1:44:29.599 I know some guys she cut out all together. There's 1:44:29.600 --> 1:44:35.160 the joke. But it fits Rodney that that's joke writing, realized, 1:44:35.439 --> 1:44:40.479 re repackaging, and reassigning. That's that's the game of comedy. 1:44:40.479 --> 1:44:43.240 But people don't realize that. You know, I've been around 1:44:43.240 --> 1:44:46.200 so long as it eat nothing slips by, you know, 1:44:46.439 --> 1:44:49.799 like here and there. You know, the other day somebody 1:44:49.800 --> 1:44:52.880 told me joke and and I said, I wrote that, 1:44:53.000 --> 1:44:56.080 And I'm saying, you know what, I'm sure five thousand 1:44:56.080 --> 1:44:59.200 people right, Why did Jewish girls swallow? Because they wanted 1:44:59.200 --> 1:45:02.000 to be the spinning images of their mothers? Okay, which 1:45:02.000 --> 1:45:07.840 is it's a funny, dirty joke, but who cares who 1:45:07.840 --> 1:45:09.760 came up with it? Okay? How about two people who 1:45:09.800 --> 1:45:15.800 tell tales like Dave Chappelle today or Richard Lewis. Those 1:45:15.800 --> 1:45:18.280 are two different you know, that's as different as you know. 1:45:18.360 --> 1:45:20.960 One guy throws batting practice and the other guy hits 1:45:21.000 --> 1:45:24.000 home runs. And one guy pictures no hitters and another 1:45:24.000 --> 1:45:26.840 guy plays hockey. You know, you know, they're they're all 1:45:26.920 --> 1:45:30.479 playing sports. It's completely different, you know. I mean, I 1:45:30.560 --> 1:45:32.560 love stories. I love I love nothing better than to 1:45:32.560 --> 1:45:35.120 sit and tell a story. I loved writing my book 1:45:35.160 --> 1:45:37.240 more than doing my You know, people read my book, 1:45:37.280 --> 1:45:39.960 they're like, Holy Christ, that's that's an interesting ship, you know. 1:45:40.840 --> 1:45:43.080 But that's not what I do. You know, what, what's 1:45:43.080 --> 1:45:47.439 your favorite joke? I always tell people my favorite jokes, 1:45:47.439 --> 1:45:50.120 the last joke that got a big laugh. So what's 1:45:50.160 --> 1:45:54.240 the last joke that got a big laugh? The the 1:45:54.280 --> 1:45:55.960 one that I liked telling when I when I do, 1:45:56.080 --> 1:46:01.280 I do cameo dot com slash Jackie Martlin. And people say, oh, 1:46:01.920 --> 1:46:04.320 my mother likes poop jokes. Or do this for my sister. 1:46:04.560 --> 1:46:07.519 She's got a Jewish husband, she loves Jewish jokes. Or 1:46:07.640 --> 1:46:10.320 do this for my uncle, or he really likes a 1:46:10.439 --> 1:46:14.120 hand job, you know whatever, And I do whatever, and 1:46:14.200 --> 1:46:17.040 some jokes I just and I put this in very often. 1:46:18.880 --> 1:46:22.360 A girl goes to a high school prom and the 1:46:22.400 --> 1:46:25.120 next day she sends her mother a text, Mom, the 1:46:25.120 --> 1:46:28.200 problem was great, But now Mom, I'm at the beach 1:46:28.240 --> 1:46:31.040 and I'm freaking out. I got come in my hair. 1:46:32.439 --> 1:46:34.679 So a mother sends her back a text honey, I'm glad. 1:46:34.680 --> 1:46:38.080 The problem is great. Listen, sometimes when you're blowing a 1:46:38.120 --> 1:46:40.920 guy and he decides to shoot on your face and 1:46:41.000 --> 1:46:43.360 he pulls it out of your mouth, they can't really 1:46:43.400 --> 1:46:46.120 control work goes and sometimes some of it goes in 1:46:46.200 --> 1:46:49.320 your hair. But it's not a big deal. Just jump 1:46:49.360 --> 1:46:53.479 in the water. It'll wash right out. If she sends 1:46:53.520 --> 1:46:57.840 her mother back a text, Mom, thanks for the information, 1:46:57.920 --> 1:47:03.000 but I meant to type, gum, well, that's the same joke. 1:47:03.439 --> 1:47:06.719 You know, the joke about the person who's tapping your WiFi. 1:47:07.160 --> 1:47:10.600 You know that one, right, But then of course they're 1:47:10.640 --> 1:47:15.400 you know they anything's mixed and matched, you know. Okay, 1:47:16.000 --> 1:47:20.880 so you know we live in the politically at correct era. 1:47:21.400 --> 1:47:24.280 Can you tell these ethnic I don't care, you know, 1:47:26.520 --> 1:47:31.040 I backed off. I just do what's funny, you know. 1:47:31.200 --> 1:47:33.880 I know my act now is like fifty minutes or 1:47:33.920 --> 1:47:36.600 an hour joke. So I don't do a lot of 1:47:36.600 --> 1:47:38.800 black jokes, a lot of Jewish jokes. But but I 1:47:38.840 --> 1:47:42.080 don't say Polish so much. It's not that I care, 1:47:42.240 --> 1:47:45.400 you know, it's not even necessary. You know, I'm old now, 1:47:45.600 --> 1:47:47.559 you don't you don't need to be too Jewish. Guys 1:47:47.600 --> 1:47:49.680 going down the street in the car. There were two 1:47:49.680 --> 1:47:51.599 guys going down the street in the car. It's it's 1:47:51.640 --> 1:47:56.560 just as funny because we're all old, all confused, you know, Um, 1:47:56.720 --> 1:48:01.599 have you gotten in any trouble for telling? Ever? Ever? Ever? 1:48:03.640 --> 1:48:10.160 One time, when I just started, I got a job 1:48:11.400 --> 1:48:16.160 working a bachelor party. And I where I come from, 1:48:16.160 --> 1:48:18.599 it's weird, Long Island's crazy, we're all horny, we're all 1:48:18.600 --> 1:48:21.720 out of my mind. But nobody really had bachelor parties 1:48:21.760 --> 1:48:24.280 with strippers. And that was like a New Jersey thing. 1:48:24.320 --> 1:48:26.880 And I get invite. I'm gonna do this bachelor party. 1:48:26.920 --> 1:48:28.120 It was a lot of money. I think it was 1:48:28.160 --> 1:48:30.800 like seventy five dollars, which was a fortune back then. 1:48:30.920 --> 1:48:32.880 I wasn't on the radio. Nobody knew who I was, 1:48:33.800 --> 1:48:36.200 and no I would take my amplifier and sit on 1:48:36.240 --> 1:48:40.519 the amplifier and play songs and tell jokes. I brought 1:48:40.520 --> 1:48:41.920 my friend Red with me. I said, come on, we're 1:48:41.960 --> 1:48:47.240 gonna go do this bachelor party. And I sat there 1:48:47.240 --> 1:48:50.559 on my amplifier and was about maybe twelve maybe twenty 1:48:50.640 --> 1:48:53.720 guys in a semicircle standing there in front of me, 1:48:54.240 --> 1:48:57.920 watching me, and I'm doing my jokes. And then insulting 1:48:57.960 --> 1:49:01.000 the crowd, you know, with the guy saying something. But 1:49:01.439 --> 1:49:03.720 and I played a song and I looked up and 1:49:03.760 --> 1:49:07.920 I said something insulting, and this guy walked through the 1:49:07.960 --> 1:49:11.400 crowd and grabbed me and bent me over my amplifier 1:49:11.439 --> 1:49:13.920 and said, you motherfucker, you talk like that to me. 1:49:14.000 --> 1:49:16.800 I'm like, man, I wasn't looking at anybody. This is 1:49:16.840 --> 1:49:19.679 my act. I was just fucking around. I wasn't talking 1:49:19.680 --> 1:49:24.960 to you. That's the only time in forty years anything 1:49:25.000 --> 1:49:28.320 like that ever happened. And it was I thought, Wow, 1:49:28.360 --> 1:49:30.439 this is this is things to come, because you hear 1:49:30.439 --> 1:49:32.960 about Jackie Gleason getting beaten up and Rickles getting his 1:49:33.160 --> 1:49:36.160 nose broken. Everything mean, while the I get done doing 1:49:36.240 --> 1:49:37.639 my thing, and then the next thing I know, we're 1:49:37.640 --> 1:49:40.920 all sitting there and chairs and there's this little stage 1:49:40.920 --> 1:49:46.000 and the girl comes out and the lies down, the 1:49:46.040 --> 1:49:49.679 groom lies down, the groom and pulls down his pants, 1:49:49.760 --> 1:49:54.000 and I'm sitting beside the groom's father and the groom's 1:49:54.040 --> 1:49:57.559 fucking father in law to be, and They're sitting on 1:49:57.600 --> 1:50:00.280 either side of me and this girl so box the 1:50:00.360 --> 1:50:02.639 guy's cock and all the guys that cheering, and I'm 1:50:02.680 --> 1:50:06.519 like what fucking planning them? And then she went in 1:50:06.560 --> 1:50:10.439 the bathroom and the guys rolling line. I'm like, what 1:50:10.439 --> 1:50:13.960 what I was like? I was in pludo, you know, 1:50:14.080 --> 1:50:18.080 like it was the oddest thing, you know, and I 1:50:18.520 --> 1:50:20.559 that was one of those crazy days. I thought, Wow, 1:50:20.600 --> 1:50:22.800 I got a lot coming up into my future here, 1:50:23.240 --> 1:50:26.080 and nothing like that ever happened before or since. I 1:50:26.120 --> 1:50:28.840 mean lots of sex, lots of craziness, but not like that. 1:50:29.120 --> 1:50:32.120 I mean his father bad enough for his father in law, 1:50:32.720 --> 1:50:35.840 you know. Like so so that was, you know. But 1:50:36.520 --> 1:50:40.240 one time the people from the Polish Eagle and West 1:50:40.320 --> 1:50:44.760 Orange uh wrote to me and threatened me and said, 1:50:44.840 --> 1:50:47.200 look we shut down John Rivers will shut you down. 1:50:47.680 --> 1:50:50.000 We hear what you're doing. Blah blah blah. Yeah, got 1:50:50.000 --> 1:50:53.639 gayak you hate the pope, the Polish Pope, you make 1:50:55.400 --> 1:50:57.880 And I said, I don't know what you're talking about. 1:50:58.200 --> 1:50:59.800 I think I wrote him a letter said to just 1:51:00.000 --> 1:51:03.599 come by, just come by the show. The next time 1:51:03.640 --> 1:51:06.040 I was at Rascals, a bunch of these guys came 1:51:06.040 --> 1:51:09.120 by the show, and they came up afterwards and said, 1:51:09.520 --> 1:51:11.840 you told jokes about everybody. It was the funniest act 1:51:11.880 --> 1:51:15.320 we ever saw, and so I told you, and and 1:51:15.400 --> 1:51:20.479 that was that. The Polish Eagle their their newsletter was 1:51:20.600 --> 1:51:25.120 memeo graph Are you all enough to remember me? The 1:51:25.160 --> 1:51:30.200 whole thing at school smell? But I skated, you know, 1:51:30.960 --> 1:51:33.320 And I never changed things. You know, if I was 1:51:33.360 --> 1:51:35.439 telling a black joke, I would look at the black guys. 1:51:36.280 --> 1:51:41.120 The one time in my life that I actually skipped anything, 1:51:43.600 --> 1:51:47.000 I was I was packed shell like four people in 1:51:47.040 --> 1:51:49.640 Boca ratone at the New York Comedy Club, and I 1:51:49.760 --> 1:51:51.679 killed that. When I went there, I had so much fun. 1:51:52.439 --> 1:51:57.120 And I looked down and sitting ringside right in fuck 1:51:57.160 --> 1:52:02.320 in front of me was a midget couple. Not a midget, 1:52:02.760 --> 1:52:06.080 a midget couple, I mean in their legs with dangling 1:52:06.880 --> 1:52:10.080 and I had like, like, you know, five six seven 1:52:10.120 --> 1:52:14.320 midget chokes in a row in my act, and I thought, 1:52:14.360 --> 1:52:16.599 you know what it's gonna look like. I threw that 1:52:16.680 --> 1:52:20.600 in just to be mean to them, and I and 1:52:20.640 --> 1:52:22.640 I just leaped over that. I didn't, you know, I 1:52:22.680 --> 1:52:24.559 got enough stuff. I can go on for hours and 1:52:24.560 --> 1:52:26.439 hours and hours, and I just I always felt a 1:52:26.439 --> 1:52:29.400 little hypocritical that I skipped that because I maintained it. 1:52:29.640 --> 1:52:32.320 I'm just working around and you know, usually a midget 1:52:32.320 --> 1:52:35.240 of that's that's really funny. You know, so who knows? 1:52:35.640 --> 1:52:38.920 But it never it never stops being interesting, Baba play 1:52:39.000 --> 1:52:41.439 that never stopped being Okay, So now what do we 1:52:41.520 --> 1:52:44.840 got in the sense of years of Jackie Martling's life. 1:52:44.840 --> 1:52:50.320 They just finished the documentary on me, which is so fun. Uh, 1:52:50.360 --> 1:52:57.120 Willie Nelson, Mark Cuban pen Gillette already lang cast my 1:52:57.200 --> 1:53:00.080 family cast of characters. I'm sure you'll really enjoy it. 1:53:00.560 --> 1:53:02.720 I put out my autobiography, which I would love to 1:53:02.720 --> 1:53:07.040 send you the joke Man about a Stern. I just 1:53:07.080 --> 1:53:09.760 got a deal to do the second half of that, 1:53:10.000 --> 1:53:13.799 which has already written. I had too much for one book. 1:53:15.200 --> 1:53:17.519 I'm doing the cameo dot com, which I love and 1:53:18.080 --> 1:53:19.960 selling a lot of those things that people are getting 1:53:20.080 --> 1:53:24.640 up on him. Um, you know, I'm not. I'm never 1:53:24.720 --> 1:53:27.439 gonna stop doing my stupid act once the COVID lifts, 1:53:27.479 --> 1:53:30.080 you know. I sometimes I make a lot of money. 1:53:30.160 --> 1:53:32.479 Sometimes I don't make so much money. But I you know, 1:53:32.880 --> 1:53:35.000 I'll do a firehouse, I'll do a club, I'll do 1:53:35.040 --> 1:53:41.320 a theater. I I actually I actually enjoy it, you know. Okay, 1:53:41.360 --> 1:53:46.599 any goals that you still have at this point, I 1:53:46.680 --> 1:53:48.960 was always sad that I didn't have, you know, I had. 1:53:49.080 --> 1:53:51.320 I had a little role on Leverage one time and 1:53:51.320 --> 1:53:54.360 I did so good, and then they wrote me into 1:53:54.360 --> 1:53:58.360 a whole episode and I said no to it because 1:53:59.120 --> 1:54:02.280 my nephew was duating from college and he's his father 1:54:02.320 --> 1:54:05.880 had passed away, and like, I don't God knows where 1:54:05.920 --> 1:54:08.679 that might have led. I never got. You know, people 1:54:08.720 --> 1:54:11.080 every day like, why don't you doing cartoons? Why don't 1:54:11.080 --> 1:54:14.400 you doing voiceovers? I'm like, I don't know. I auditioned 1:54:14.439 --> 1:54:15.800 for a million of them. You know. I stand in 1:54:15.800 --> 1:54:17.719 the line to bank people turning around and said, Jackie, 1:54:17.760 --> 1:54:20.320 are I know that voice anywhere? Why don't you doing cartoons? 1:54:21.240 --> 1:54:23.720 I never did, you know. I always wanted to put 1:54:23.720 --> 1:54:27.519 out a sne of my songs. But I certled, circled 1:54:27.520 --> 1:54:29.840 around and did that. And I would love to send 1:54:29.880 --> 1:54:33.000 you that. You'll get a kick out of that. Um. 1:54:33.040 --> 1:54:34.960 You know, it was with the best players in the world, 1:54:35.000 --> 1:54:41.120 so it's really fun. But um, I'm sure you know. 1:54:41.320 --> 1:54:43.880 I just got offered this thing. I think I'm wind 1:54:44.000 --> 1:54:46.800 up doing a streaming show of some kind with either 1:54:46.840 --> 1:54:49.440 with young comics or old comics. Are talking to people. 1:54:49.440 --> 1:54:52.600 I love to talk about old show business, but everybody's 1:54:52.640 --> 1:54:55.960 not enthralled with them. I am voracious, so I wouldn't. 1:54:56.120 --> 1:54:58.640 I would have had a working iPod if I hadn't 1:54:58.640 --> 1:55:01.440 to spend four hours this after reading about Jackie Gleason, 1:55:01.640 --> 1:55:05.080 you just did. It's all fascinating, the old old stuff 1:55:05.120 --> 1:55:08.480 when they were first starting. You know what, what what 1:55:08.600 --> 1:55:14.360 is fascinating about it? Just because because every you think 1:55:14.360 --> 1:55:16.440 you went through a fight, you went to you think 1:55:16.440 --> 1:55:20.720 you went through amazed, you went through craziness. Nobody just 1:55:20.840 --> 1:55:23.560 walked down the day aisle and walked up on the stage. 1:55:24.040 --> 1:55:28.360 You know, everybody has their story and it's it's it's 1:55:28.400 --> 1:55:31.360 just interesting. It's just interesting to me, you know, and 1:55:31.360 --> 1:55:34.880 it it inspires you, makes you glad you kept going. 1:55:34.960 --> 1:55:38.040 I'll tell you my life is a pinball machine. It 1:55:38.160 --> 1:55:42.800 just was like bing bing bing bing. You know. I 1:55:42.800 --> 1:55:45.320 started playing the guitar, then played guitar in high school, 1:55:45.320 --> 1:55:49.400 and played guitar in college, and play guitar in the seventies. 1:55:49.520 --> 1:55:51.560 And I didn't go anywhere. So I started telling my 1:55:51.640 --> 1:55:54.880 jokes on stage and then I stumbled into Howard Stern 1:55:55.240 --> 1:55:57.440 went up in the radio. But I kept doing my 1:55:57.520 --> 1:56:00.320 comedy and put my CDs out and then end up 1:56:00.360 --> 1:56:03.840 being a comedian without ever looking three weeks and well, 1:56:03.840 --> 1:56:05.440 I know is when I started telling my jokes on 1:56:05.520 --> 1:56:09.360 stage in nineteen seventy nine. After every three or four months, 1:56:09.400 --> 1:56:13.720 I would look back and I realized, I would realize 1:56:13.760 --> 1:56:15.760 I had made more money than I had the previous 1:56:15.800 --> 1:56:18.280 three months. So I just stayed on the path. I 1:56:18.480 --> 1:56:20.320 got lucky at bumpthing to how people are like, oh, 1:56:20.400 --> 1:56:22.920 You're so lucky you bumped into Howard Stern. I said, yeah, 1:56:23.000 --> 1:56:25.960 I am, and he's lucky bumped into me, which once 1:56:25.960 --> 1:56:29.480 again is pompous, but I don't care. It made a difference. Okay, 1:56:29.520 --> 1:56:32.440 so let's just assume you never worked again. You've got 1:56:32.520 --> 1:56:36.360 enough money to get to the end. You know what 1:56:36.440 --> 1:56:40.160 Jackie Mason says when you asked them asking that I 1:56:40.240 --> 1:56:45.880 never have to work again unless I want to buy something. No, 1:56:46.000 --> 1:56:47.600 I'm find my house is paid. Well, I got a 1:56:47.640 --> 1:56:50.040 million dollar house here on the water, and you know 1:56:50.080 --> 1:56:54.640 I got my after and uh, you know, and then 1:56:55.320 --> 1:56:57.920 I would never not work. That's not you know, if 1:56:58.000 --> 1:57:00.080 I'm not working, that means I'm dead, you know what 1:57:00.080 --> 1:57:04.160 I mean? So do I have to work? Not really. 1:57:04.720 --> 1:57:07.640 You know, I got I got so much stern memorability. 1:57:07.720 --> 1:57:09.640 At some point I'm gonna start selling that off with 1:57:09.880 --> 1:57:12.080 just just for the fun of just and everybody off. 1:57:12.240 --> 1:57:16.280 You know. Okay, Jackie, this has been wonderful. We could 1:57:16.320 --> 1:57:18.480 go out for another two hours. Maybe we'll do that 1:57:18.520 --> 1:57:21.480 at another time. It's great to hear the story. And 1:57:21.560 --> 1:57:23.840 I think we covered some stuff that's not in your book? 1:57:23.920 --> 1:57:28.800 Is that true? What what I always tell interviewers, excuse me, 1:57:28.840 --> 1:57:32.040 I'm sorry you were the first. What I always tell 1:57:32.080 --> 1:57:35.320 interview is this, listen if your listeners happen to enjoy 1:57:35.400 --> 1:57:40.040 this interview. And number one, they might not believe something, 1:57:40.280 --> 1:57:42.680 or they might want to hear more about something, or 1:57:42.720 --> 1:57:44.600 they have a question about something that they didn't hear 1:57:44.640 --> 1:57:47.680 anything about. I always say, do me a favorite. Just 1:57:47.720 --> 1:57:52.560 tell them to write you questions and next time we 1:57:52.640 --> 1:57:55.880 do this, you know, they might think the questions that 1:57:55.920 --> 1:57:58.040 you wouldn't necessarily think of or you wouldn't realize they 1:57:58.080 --> 1:58:00.840 want and and we'll go into the questions and I'll 1:58:00.840 --> 1:58:03.680 have a merry old time. I could do this for hours. 1:58:03.960 --> 1:58:05.160 You know, people come up to me and said, oh 1:58:05.200 --> 1:58:07.080 I love John Howard starn Show. But I'm sure you 1:58:07.160 --> 1:58:08.840 get sick of hearing that is that if I have 1:58:08.920 --> 1:58:10.320 to get sick of here and I put a bullet 1:58:10.320 --> 1:58:12.160 in my head, you know, I love it. It was 1:58:12.200 --> 1:58:15.360 great fun and it's still great fun. One other thing, 1:58:15.960 --> 1:58:19.720 I got a guy that answers all my email me. 1:58:20.760 --> 1:58:25.000 So anybody that writes me I right back. Joke land 1:58:25.360 --> 1:58:27.960 at a l dot com, j O K E l 1:58:28.040 --> 1:58:30.800 A n d at a old dot com right to me, 1:58:31.000 --> 1:58:33.960 I'll write you back. I love hearing from people and 1:58:34.640 --> 1:58:38.640 old girl friends. You know that's so funny because you 1:58:38.680 --> 1:58:41.080 were saying you ever hear talked to old people and 1:58:41.080 --> 1:58:44.000 blah blah blah. And then we took a break and 1:58:44.040 --> 1:58:47.120 I came out and picked up my phone and it 1:58:47.280 --> 1:58:49.200 was this girl that I was so in love with 1:58:49.360 --> 1:58:52.320 in the seventies that I wrote most of the songs 1:58:52.360 --> 1:58:54.720 that I wrote in the seventies, And yes, she is, 1:58:54.760 --> 1:58:57.680 I said, I was just talking about not you, but 1:58:57.760 --> 1:59:01.480 about the concept of you. You know, there's a song 1:59:01.560 --> 1:59:05.120 for the concept of you. You better tell me to 1:59:05.160 --> 1:59:08.480 shut up, Bob, because I'll just keep Okay, do you 1:59:08.520 --> 1:59:11.160 hear from this woman on a regular basis? Now? It 1:59:11.280 --> 1:59:13.360 just happened to get in touch about six months ago, 1:59:13.960 --> 1:59:15.920 a year And okay, so did you see each other 1:59:15.960 --> 1:59:18.440 face to face? No, no, I haven't seen her in 1:59:18.560 --> 1:59:21.320 twenty years, thirty years. But she was great, you know. 1:59:21.640 --> 1:59:24.120 And it was at the high time when my band 1:59:24.280 --> 1:59:28.000 was really cooking and we dinagle the house on the water, 1:59:28.120 --> 1:59:30.280 and she lived two houses away, and she was a 1:59:30.320 --> 1:59:33.240 school teacher. You know. I was twenty nine, she was 1:59:33.240 --> 1:59:35.880 twenty seven, and but I had no money, and I 1:59:35.960 --> 1:59:37.520 was a bomb and I was a drunk, and she 1:59:37.640 --> 1:59:40.280 came from a house full of drunk so she, you know, 1:59:40.440 --> 1:59:43.520 kept me at arms length, which we all know attracts 1:59:43.520 --> 1:59:47.320 a man like nothing else. So and then, you know, 1:59:47.440 --> 1:59:50.120 this used to be a cash business. So I assume 1:59:50.160 --> 1:59:53.160 it was a cash business during your career prior to 1:59:53.240 --> 1:59:58.800 Howard Stern. Uh, it wasn't. It wasn't, um no, no. 1:59:58.960 --> 2:00:00.839 Once I hit the Star and Show, yes, it actually 2:00:01.200 --> 2:00:04.120 stopped being a cash becausiness still sometimes well yeah, before that, 2:00:04.200 --> 2:00:09.120 oh yeah, no, My first paycheck was from k Rock. 2:00:09.560 --> 2:00:11.640 You know, I never got a paycheck from NBC. You know. 2:00:12.720 --> 2:00:16.840 Actually The Governors was cash, but that was that was 2:00:16.880 --> 2:00:18.720 on the books. That was a comedy club where we 2:00:18.720 --> 2:00:22.440 actually made good money. Me and my girlfriend Nancy booked 2:00:22.440 --> 2:00:25.960 the acts, hosted the acts, etcetera, etcetera. But there was 2:00:25.960 --> 2:00:28.120 a lot of a lot of cash. At one point, 2:00:28.200 --> 2:00:29.720 I had so much cash and all of a sudden, 2:00:29.720 --> 2:00:32.560 you're looking, it's not there. You know, that's a nature 2:00:32.560 --> 2:00:34.760 of cash. Okay, I'm gonna cut you off because we 2:00:34.760 --> 2:00:37.680 will go off forever. Jackie, thanks so much for doing this. 2:00:37.800 --> 2:00:39.920 Until next time. This is Bob Leftsons