00:00:00
Speaker 1: Quest left show is a production of iHeart Radio. Yeah.

00:00:21
Speaker 2: I feel like people will be more honest when there's like not people in the rooms. Oh well, especially with these lineup questions, Oh shit, what is happening right now? I wanted to see how long it was going to take here we started cracking up. My guest today has one of my favorite laughs of all time. Actually sounds like she's crying every time she laughed. But anyway, our guest today has probably come to your attention, whether you know it or not. I credit her with seating the concept that we now today casually know as black Twitter.

00:01:01
Speaker 1: And you got to own this and I'm owning it.

00:01:03
Speaker 3: I hear you.

00:01:04
Speaker 1: You gotta own it.

00:01:05
Speaker 2: If you are a television watcher like I am, you probably watched one of the mini shows that she's had a hand either executive producing or consulting or writing for either or be it Scrubs or The Boondocks or The Jellies that should have never went off the air.

00:01:24
Speaker 1: I love the Jellies, the Last Og. There's also Bigger and Till Death and Oh mixed It.

00:01:31
Speaker 3: Ginny and Georgia, Tonda, Yes No, No, Jenny and Georgia alsold and the other black Girl.

00:01:37
Speaker 1: No, you're all over the place.

00:01:39
Speaker 2: She has authored best selling books mixed of course The Broke Diaries. But I saw a post of hers that sort of compelled me to invite her.

00:01:50
Speaker 1: We didn't quite plan.

00:01:51
Speaker 2: This so instantly. She asked, like, who didn't show up for me to show up? But I saw a post of hers, maybe like two months ago, where she's sort of skittish in celebrating the winds in her life and knowing the kind of the basis for which, or at least the cathartic process for which.

00:02:11
Speaker 1: This book that she's authored is for. I think that now's probably the most apropos time to celebrate our great friend of the show, Angela Nissel. How are you?

00:02:28
Speaker 3: I'm amazing man. We went from laughing to crying real quick. You got here.

00:02:32
Speaker 2: You're about to be like, by the way, the book is good Grief Past the Bread Mom is Dead is getting critical acclaim.

00:02:41
Speaker 3: Yes.

00:02:41
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:02:42
Speaker 2: And by the time this airs, this will have already been a bestseller. I don't know when this will be on the air, but you know soon, it'll be on the air soon, all right, So I'm gonna ask you a barrage of questions. It's not rapid fire, but of this latest style of question I've been going.

00:03:00
Speaker 1: For this show, this is probably the most rogue I've ever gotten. Let's start with give me your earliest memory. Technically, what would you call the part of Philadelphia that you grew up in? People would say it's Southwest Philly, but isn't known isn't it.

00:03:14
Speaker 3: Used to be known as Eastwick because we thought we were better than everybody.

00:03:18
Speaker 1: But remember it used to be the suburbs.

00:03:20
Speaker 3: It was like, but people didn't even realize it exists.

00:03:23
Speaker 4: But now I look, I was like, these are just regular Southwest Philly homes.

00:03:26
Speaker 2: I think in ninety seven, so there was a point where like places like Chester Yayden, like wherever the trolleys of Septa would go, like their destinations. I always felt like that was like the fancy places where I wanted to grow up in I had they had cable out there, we did not have cable, and so but then kind of I'll say ninety seven very silently, I think ninety seven.

00:03:55
Speaker 1: Is the year that the gentrification process happened, and I saw this all over the United States.

00:04:00
Speaker 2: So places that we would visit back in ninety three ninety four were like no longer, They're like, suddenly projects are getting raised and ever. And then I saw that people were trading places and they would place inner city black folk into what we thought was the suburbs, and then white people came into.

00:04:18
Speaker 1: The inner city.

00:04:19
Speaker 2: And so yeah, the last time I drove, I actually did a sentimental drive through that part. You ever find yourself rolling up the window, but you don't want.

00:04:29
Speaker 1: You don't want to be racist. To get Jophie, I'm like, we grew up.

00:04:33
Speaker 3: With a strip mall, and it's like, what you got a strip mall?

00:04:38
Speaker 1: Dude?

00:04:39
Speaker 3: You mean we really thought we was doing something.

00:04:41
Speaker 1: It was life to live out there.

00:04:44
Speaker 2: I felt special when Thriller premiered on MTVS, like going to the suburbs, the Uncle Juney's house and now.

00:04:52
Speaker 4: Man, right, okay, but I wasn't that good, but I lived there, like I maybe it's just because I lived in la And I was like, I remember my mom, I'm saying, at least our house is in abandon, the one next door, Like that is what it took to be successful in Philly, Like at least.

00:05:05
Speaker 3: We don't live on It's like that's what made us a little better than other people. Ugh.

00:05:12
Speaker 2: Yeah, So like, what is your earliest memories of living in that part of town.

00:05:18
Speaker 4: My mom mourned me when we moved, when we moved to that part of town that if I saw a group of white boys to run.

00:05:24
Speaker 1: Yes, she said that.

00:05:25
Speaker 3: Yes. You don't remember what Southwest Philly was going through in the eighties. The KKK march there.

00:05:33
Speaker 1: Oh I didn't know it was like that.

00:05:35
Speaker 3: Oh, they had.

00:05:35
Speaker 4: An interracial couple moved in and a black couple moved in, and it was all in the district of the church. I went to Catholic school, and it was like some wanna say sixty something in Woodland for anyone who knows Philadelphia. And once the black couple moved in and the interracial couple moved in, someone fire bombed their house.

00:05:54
Speaker 3: This was huge news that you can still google it today.

00:05:56
Speaker 4: And so then the KKK came through and they started recruiting, and every day when I would be on the trolley, I would just think, don't let anybody chase me home, Like.

00:06:04
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was crazy. So that's sad, but that is my first memory. Sorry, let's get back to me after this.

00:06:12
Speaker 2: I'm laughing at that because I had it all wrong because again, I thought that was the nice part of town because I would go out there for selective weekends.

00:06:22
Speaker 3: That is hilarious.

00:06:23
Speaker 4: No, And I didn't realize we were the Gentriman cake like you were the fire.

00:06:28
Speaker 1: You were, like, why we got to run? You're now a pioneer. You're a pioneer. There wee year did you move there?

00:06:35
Speaker 4: We moved like it's like eighty one and I lived down there. Oh we lived there until yeah, eighty one, until like ninety eight.

00:06:42
Speaker 3: My mom fabally moved out of.

00:06:43
Speaker 1: So technically, where did you come from? Like where were you born?

00:06:48
Speaker 3: Born in West Philadelphia?

00:06:49
Speaker 1: My West Philly?

00:06:50
Speaker 3: Yes, can you name the block fifty six? And oh my god, Catherine, Oh.

00:06:55
Speaker 1: Like real West Philly?

00:06:57
Speaker 3: What the hell?

00:07:00
Speaker 1: This is the thing?

00:07:00
Speaker 3: Man?

00:07:01
Speaker 2: Like again, you were like the special girl that lives in the suburbs and she's kind of nerdy, and yeah, because she lives in the suburbs.

00:07:11
Speaker 4: My mom would be proud of that though, because that's what she wanted us to believe. But when I look back again, I'm like, Mom, you bought a car for two hundred and fifty dollars and we could see the street like.

00:07:20
Speaker 1: You had a flintstone car.

00:07:22
Speaker 3: Yes, exactly, like we can only get out of one door. But she it's all about don't pay attention to that. Get in school.

00:07:30
Speaker 2: I gotta tell you, I'm glad that someone else had that experience. So during the summer of ninety three, when we were having like a seven label bidding war and we were broke, and you know, there was like seven eight of us and we didn't have money to get back and forth on the bus or amtrak.

00:07:50
Speaker 1: So rich Richard Nichols took like three.

00:07:52
Speaker 2: Hundred bucks to get a station wagon and kind of a middle passion style shut up, no, no, no, We piled in the station wagon. But the middle road, the backseat had no floor to it, so we took a whole bunch of boxes to make it a floor.

00:08:10
Speaker 1: But when I tell you, the core, like the level, like imagine sitting where you have to like hold your I can't even do it now.

00:08:20
Speaker 2: Example, but Tik's stomach was like rock solid, like all the skinny people basically had to sit for an hour and a half with their feet in the hair. And this is the roots auditioning for deaf jam. Like, yeah, that car died maybe two weeks.

00:08:37
Speaker 3: Oh my god, I never knew that story.

00:08:39
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was not one of the happiest moments of the career.

00:08:43
Speaker 3: Well, I remember how long it took you to get a car.

00:08:46
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're right, you know.

00:08:47
Speaker 4: I remember this because we picked up Erica I Badu from the airport one time in my crappy car and the bumper was falling off for some reason.

00:08:54
Speaker 3: You had nobody else to pick her up. And I remember as she saw me.

00:08:58
Speaker 4: Pulling around, her eyes kind of like, and then you as soon as she got in the car, I.

00:09:02
Speaker 3: Said, you said, I'm sorry about the car, eric No for you.

00:09:07
Speaker 1: You talked me out of all right. So there was a moment, Oh god.

00:09:13
Speaker 2: And I'm about to tell this story, all right, I gotta think of the most diplomatic way to tell the story. Okay, is February twenty third, when things fall apart comes out and the whole goal of the roots was literally for us to walk home from Kapa. And and this is I kind of blame boys to men for this one time. I saw Mike McCarry in the gallery. And you live out here in La so you can always tell, you know, like Juicy Couture became like the adopted where of like.

00:09:50
Speaker 1: Some strippers or whatever.

00:09:52
Speaker 2: Like some strippers, but they'll have an outfit that we'll try to you know know, like sort of a blow off the smoke to bring attention, but it's the outfit that everyone wears, like the rhyin stones and the hoodie or whatever, like, oh, you're trying to hide, right. So Mike had like literally like dark glasses, two hoodies on the thing like he's the only person dressed like I cannot be seen. And I don't know, like that made an impression on me. I was like, man, all I want to do is I want to blow up. And he couldn't give me a pound of it. Well, I gotta go and you know, like this kind of thing, and I don't know. I went home at night like yeah. So when we had an inkling that this album was actually going to be the album, I was like, yo, man, we gotta play the gallery.

00:10:48
Speaker 1: And they're like, just why don't you play in Tower Records, like a place.

00:10:51
Speaker 2: Where a wholes Like nah, man, it has to be the record store in the gallery. Like I wanted a pageant, I wanted a people lined up or whatever.

00:11:00
Speaker 1: He got that moment.

00:11:01
Speaker 2: So we were supposed to be there at like eleven o'clock to play and then sign autographs or whatever, and Tarik was late and Rich is like, yeah, he went to go get his car. I was like, get his car, And I didn't know that Tarik went and got his license, so I don't know. It's kind of like the sibling rivverything thing is I don't have my license, but I knew I was going to get me a car, and you you're like, dog, don't get a car, matter of fact. And this this is like the last time I let somebody sell me the Brooklyn Bridge, but in this case, it saved my life, so I'll cut it.

00:11:41
Speaker 1: No.

00:11:41
Speaker 2: You literally said like, man, you're gonna do that dumb rapper ship where you buy it.

00:11:45
Speaker 1: She's like, do you even have a license? I was like no, And I thought like I was going to do some.

00:11:49
Speaker 2: Biggie little sea ship because Little Caesar used to drive Biggie round. So I was like, all right, I'll pay somebody, like, you know, three hundred dollars a week to just drive me around like biggie.

00:11:58
Speaker 1: And you looked at me.

00:12:00
Speaker 2: He was like a mirror, that's the dumbest shit I've ever heard. In my life, like please, don't waste your money like that.

00:12:07
Speaker 1: And I was like huh.

00:12:08
Speaker 2: I was like, yeah, like do something, don't be a dumb rapper, like invest in your future.

00:12:12
Speaker 1: You know that money you could start a website and I was like, what website?

00:12:17
Speaker 2: And then I told you I had a computer I had was it a web TV?

00:12:22
Speaker 3: Oh my god, that's great?

00:12:25
Speaker 1: I had a web TV? And you're like, no, mere like a real computer, yo.

00:12:29
Speaker 3: But you thought you were killing it with that web TV because not everybody had like.

00:12:33
Speaker 1: You did so well.

00:12:35
Speaker 2: I came from an era where like the Beastie Boys were handing out like CDs. You remember when the internet used to be on CDs? Yes, right, how do we get online.

00:12:44
Speaker 1: With or whatever?

00:12:46
Speaker 2: So the Beastie boys were like I thought I was even more technically proficient than anyone else because I can go on my television.

00:12:56
Speaker 1: And I thought it was a shit.

00:12:58
Speaker 2: And the way you just you came to my house and looked at my setup and I'm all like.

00:13:04
Speaker 1: And you look like no mair. And that was the moment where I felt.

00:13:10
Speaker 2: So doweeby that I gave up and I said, look, what do I have to buy?

00:13:18
Speaker 1: Like what is your nerd paradise. What do I have to do? And then you me and someone else that I met him once, Doug.

00:13:27
Speaker 2: It wasn't Doug yet. It was someone else, Eric, not Eric. It wasn't Eric. It was another guy. He might've went to pen or whatever. He was nerdy. Y'all drove.

00:13:38
Speaker 1: Y'all drove me to comp Usa. We drove the comp Usa.

00:13:43
Speaker 2: Somebody I do with a car back then, and I'm telling you, I had this seventeen thousand dollars like it was a paper route money, like.

00:13:51
Speaker 1: Dumb shit like Karen Cash or whatever.

00:13:54
Speaker 2: And reluctantly I just watched my car just fade out the dream and got a computer.

00:14:02
Speaker 1: And then y'all built a new world.

00:14:07
Speaker 2: And like I had to fall in love with someone heavy out of state for me to actually get a license.

00:14:13
Speaker 1: And even then, I only got a.

00:14:16
Speaker 2: License because I agreed to do a car commercial and they didn't know I wasn't licensed, and so the day before they were like, hey, so where's your insurance and all that stuff?

00:14:25
Speaker 1: No, and I was like, what are you talking about? For Sion?

00:14:27
Speaker 2: That's why I drove a Sion And I was like, oh, I don't have a license, and They were like, wait, why are you doing a car commercial?

00:14:35
Speaker 1: Well? The money was great.

00:14:38
Speaker 2: The money was awesome, So I was like, hell, y'all do a car I thought I was going to play this sound like.

00:14:43
Speaker 3: Did you think I was just gonna pull you down the street that you didn't really.

00:14:45
Speaker 1: Have to drunk? I didn't know I was going to drive.

00:14:47
Speaker 2: I thought like, if they're coming to quest Love, I'm like, oh, you want me to drum on the car. I was dreaming the concept of the commercial in my head, like I'm gonna.

00:14:55
Speaker 1: Hit the tires and hilarious. Right.

00:14:58
Speaker 2: And the day before they had the call, well, they didn't want to let the client know that I was not licensed, so they had changed the entire concept of the commercial. And in the next three days I had to cram all night. Dorn Ngeleheart, my manager. She uh taught me how to drive.

00:15:19
Speaker 1: This is the unspoken.

00:15:21
Speaker 2: Part is what we're not We won't laugh at. Dawn still jokes about, yeah, I taught you how to drive. Let's just say that Dawn does not look like you or I.

00:15:33
Speaker 1: She's not white. So what else we got out there? Yeah? And so I was forced to get my permit and my license so I can shoot this commercial and they gave me the car, and then you know, that's so I like willed myself into that.

00:15:49
Speaker 2: But yes, you you talked me out of Hey, I could have gotten that car and probably would have gotten arrested for driving me out a license or.

00:15:56
Speaker 4: But also, why didn't I just tell you to get your license? Like you had a major record at this point? What would I want you to do? Catch the subway?

00:16:03
Speaker 2: You didn't do the wagging finger thing. But the shame, I felt like, that's the first time I didn't feel smart.

00:16:11
Speaker 1: I was always the.

00:16:11
Speaker 3: Tweevy, not with the web TV, Like literally the.

00:16:17
Speaker 1: First time I was like, damn, maybe I'm not smart.

00:16:21
Speaker 2: And I let you talk me into taking my car money and that's how I seedd the Okay player.

00:16:30
Speaker 4: So what's funny is I love that computer more than I would have loved a car. You would have never like let me drive your car, But I was on that computer all the time.

00:16:37
Speaker 1: Oh you house, you and the house way more than I was. You let Malick in the house.

00:16:46
Speaker 3: Hold up.

00:16:46
Speaker 1: You literally were on the road once and I heard Malek's voice in the background.

00:16:50
Speaker 2: I was like, yo, not only that, Malick leaked a root song.

00:16:55
Speaker 1: I think the first time the song got leaked, I never even knew that.

00:16:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, like we that's why I took quick Sam Millennium was supposed to be on Phrenology and I was like Malek rooning now like leaking songs on the internet.

00:17:06
Speaker 4: So you see, this is why friends shouldn't work together, because like Eddie, you would have had like, hey, here's who letting you literally were like, all right, I'm.

00:17:15
Speaker 3: Going on tour.

00:17:16
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I didn't know this was a billion dollar idea of business.

00:17:20
Speaker 1: I didn't know that I.

00:17:22
Speaker 3: Had something to put on the website.

00:17:23
Speaker 2: Hey, Malick, right, I now see that you were running out of resources.

00:17:29
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's gonna be a lot of inside baseball talk.

00:17:31
Speaker 4: Yo.

00:17:43
Speaker 1: What TV show defined your childhood?

00:17:47
Speaker 3: Different strokes? Which is that sad?

00:17:51
Speaker 1: It depends on which character you are. Who did you relate to the most timberly or no?

00:17:57
Speaker 3: Wait, because this is gonna be this is so he could.

00:18:00
Speaker 4: Be Charlene and not the answer you're looking for. I just remember, this is the dumbest answer you're.

00:18:05
Speaker 3: Ever going to get. There was an episode where I had a crusher on Dudley.

00:18:10
Speaker 1: Oh, don't bring up that episode.

00:18:14
Speaker 3: No. I thought, my brother always gets to see boobs. Boobs are all the way, always on TV.

00:18:19
Speaker 4: Boobs were everywhere in the eighties like you could, and I thought, I'm finally going to see a penis.

00:18:25
Speaker 1: On that episode.

00:18:26
Speaker 3: I was young.

00:18:27
Speaker 1: Oh god, I don't even want to explain to people. Hey, just google the special episode of Different Strokes in Dudley. Ah yo, And you know what, I actually rewatched that episode during my Christmas vacation. Dog Dudley's dad was not mad enough at what Gordon Jump was doing.

00:18:55
Speaker 2: Like the way they busted in it was sort of like, you know, to Lee to have kids and uncompromising positions. You remember, like he gave him drugs or whatever. They were like all disc a bible matter of fact? Did Dully ever come on the show after that?

00:19:10
Speaker 4: All I know is I don't remember it the same way because I just remember that whole thing being I didn't see.

00:19:14
Speaker 3: A penis, Oh my god show because they had the same thing they put like parents should watch this with their children. I was like, I'm not watching it with my mom.

00:19:27
Speaker 1: Welcome to the fifth hour of The Today Show. Angela and this all right?

00:19:34
Speaker 2: In junior high, were you a shy kid or were you the class clown or were.

00:19:39
Speaker 1: You the teacher's pet.

00:19:41
Speaker 4: I think I was the class clown because I just want we changed school so much. Whatever school my mom found out was the best one to get you into college, and that was the one. So I went to Mastermin and I came to that from a Catholic school, and I just remember thinking, when I get to Master.

00:19:56
Speaker 3: I'm going to reinvent myself. I'm gonna be funny. People will like me. Wait really yes, but and then oh but here's what I did wrong.

00:20:07
Speaker 4: I also felt the pressure because it was Mastermin is a selective junior high in Philadelphia. It's my mom told me, you know, you have to be smart to get in. So I went in thinking everyone's going to be little urkles. And so I remember I was the first one called on to read a page from some book and I read it like Shakespeare, thinking that's what you're sted to do in a whole class bust out laugh.

00:20:29
Speaker 2: Wait, okay, So when we first met at our job, like you had a whole nother code switch persona that like you were like the hood joined and later when I found out you were nerdy, I like, wait a minute, wait what happened to In proper English?

00:20:49
Speaker 3: There's always been nerdy girls in the hood.

00:20:51
Speaker 1: And you know it's funny, is my mom tried to I want you to show me the book this one?

00:20:56
Speaker 3: Yeah, oh hilarious.

00:20:57
Speaker 2: Yeah, so when and sits next to me At my job. Many of you know that I took on a telemarketing insurance job to pay for the roots demo that never happened, And so you know, it was rare that, like, you know, Q girls come in to office or whatever, and you were new and I got your number, and when I got home, you gave me the first three digits, the next three digits and a question mark.

00:21:26
Speaker 1: Yes for the last digit.

00:21:28
Speaker 3: Yes.

00:21:29
Speaker 2: And I looked at this thing and realized, wait, what is the last digit of your original home phone number?

00:21:37
Speaker 3: I don't even remember you remember the whole thing?

00:21:40
Speaker 1: Well, I know it's two on five, three sixty five, but I don't know the.

00:21:43
Speaker 3: Oh, yes, it was the original one wasn't nine.

00:21:46
Speaker 2: So I went it was already eight o'clock, and my dumb ass is like, d zero, no, one no.

00:21:56
Speaker 1: And when I finally got.

00:21:57
Speaker 2: To you, you laughed, you laugh, And I lied to you and said, well, you know, I just went backwards and was like I started at one and literally had to work my way up to So when she asked me to sign my first book, I did the same this is my old number, so it doesn't work it. So I did the same thing that she did to me, which was put a question mark. All right, So what teacher in your school experience do you feel like, really like saw you.

00:22:33
Speaker 1: Who's the teacher that like changed you?

00:22:35
Speaker 4: The school you taught me to go to. Her name is Missus Pritchett, The Schools Britchett.

00:22:40
Speaker 3: Yes, okay, okay, you told me to go to Performing Arts.

00:22:43
Speaker 4: You told me I was going to another one of those fancy schools. My mom was like, this is the one, but we can't afford it. So I was working at RMA change with you, and then you said you should go to Performing Arts. And I remember she sat me down and she gave me the most loving, yet honest speech about what makes good writers. She's like, you're a little off, but it's all. She compared me to her cousin who's a little off but a little great writer.

00:23:10
Speaker 3: And she was just giving me one of those speeches that people given the movies, like I believe in your kid. You got this, you know.

00:23:16
Speaker 2: Oh everyone's always looking forward to be the savior of like, but no.

00:23:19
Speaker 3: One said that to the writing majors. We were the nerds.

00:23:22
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was gonna say, Okay, you know now at Kappa there's like nine majors. Wow.

00:23:28
Speaker 2: Yeah, I didn't even know there could be nine majors. But yeah, I mean at the time, you were either dance, you were TV radio like production, like if you wanted to be a cameraman or that person on the other side of that acting. And in music you were either in the choir or in the band. And then there was creative writing majors, and we just never knew, like what would you guys do, like walk me through a day at Kapa, because I never was. You were the only person I was friends with from creative writer.

00:24:02
Speaker 3: That says it, all, right.

00:24:05
Speaker 1: Are you the most successful person out of like who else has done notable things in creation?

00:24:10
Speaker 4: It's so funny because I always see your name and I don't see any creative writers.

00:24:14
Speaker 3: There were some good writers. Literally, what we did.

00:24:17
Speaker 4: A lot of grammar, a lot of reading other and I agree to be a good writer, you have to read.

00:24:22
Speaker 3: But back when we were in school. I'm like, did they at least diversify a little bit what we read?

00:24:26
Speaker 1: I was like, if we see the usual tilia a big Gilga mission?

00:24:33
Speaker 3: But no it was.

00:24:34
Speaker 4: And then it certainly prepared me for Hollywood because ninety nine percent would be rewriting, Like you know, just write something and work on it the whole week to try to make it better. But at that point in your life, you're just working to get the A. There was one teacher who loved whenever I wrote about the Holocaust, I could write anything.

00:24:52
Speaker 3: She had her pride, you know, so I was like, this is a guaranteed day. Yeah, that's Hollywood.

00:24:56
Speaker 1: Do you have Miss Silva ever?

00:24:57
Speaker 3: Or was she going Miss Silva? No?

00:25:00
Speaker 1: Was she there in school?

00:25:01
Speaker 3: I think so? Yes?

00:25:02
Speaker 1: Yeah. She She would have like one big giant college word per year that was like over three syllables and four syllables, and then she said it so much that it stuck to you and then you found ways to try to drop it in, you know, but the rest of your grammar isn't good. So I'll be like around the way like.

00:25:24
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, so if you could you know what I'm saying, Like, you know, recapitulate you know what you just said, then I'll just like, hell you talking about it? Like literally, Miss Silva was that person?

00:25:38
Speaker 1: You never had her?

00:25:39
Speaker 3: No, But I love.

00:25:40
Speaker 4: How good your brain is because to me, all of these people are background noise to getting beat up on the boys and end video set and thinking a mayor told me to come to this.

00:25:51
Speaker 2: Oh god, wait, did you guys ever have like normal things like high school dances or anything?

00:25:58
Speaker 1: Did you guys have it.

00:26:00
Speaker 3: My version of Kappa? No, there weren't enough boys one. That's why my mom said I could go.

00:26:06
Speaker 5: Oh she knew you would not get pregnant.

00:26:11
Speaker 3: She came to my audition. She was like, all gay and.

00:26:13
Speaker 1: All right, did you know your grandparents at all?

00:26:19
Speaker 3: Yeah?

00:26:19
Speaker 1: Yeah, what were they?

00:26:20
Speaker 3: Like? Whoa?

00:26:21
Speaker 4: They were your typical move up from the South, don't show any emotions, drink quietly, black.

00:26:28
Speaker 1: People yes, boomers and black people yes.

00:26:33
Speaker 4: Move into West Philadelphia when West Philadelphia High is still half white, and then by the time you get out, it's.

00:26:38
Speaker 3: Like what happened?

00:26:39
Speaker 1: Wait, West Philly was half white.

00:26:41
Speaker 3: It was Overbrooks. Sorry, my mom went to Overbrooks.

00:26:43
Speaker 2: I was about to say, oh, by the way, all right, so I'm getting my mural. And I didn't know that West Philly is now apartments and so West Willy High it is yeah for my face to be on the West Philly High Wall. Well, the place that I was when I was driving by there, that was like lean on me.

00:27:05
Speaker 1: That was like a prison.

00:27:06
Speaker 4: I go there now. Wait, I went up near to where I used to live, and my mom used to be like, be careful out there. You know, people selling stuff on the street. And I said, oh my god, that has gentrified.

00:27:15
Speaker 1: Like okay, So when you go to Philly, do you chase ghosts? Do you?

00:27:20
Speaker 3: What does that mean?

00:27:21
Speaker 1: All Right?

00:27:21
Speaker 2: When I go to Philly, even if I'm in New York and I got like a good twenty four hours off, I'll get in the car and I will drive to Philly and chase. Chasing ghost for me is just going to my Grandmam's neighborhood. I never get out the car. I just sit there and Jack Meyer's you know fruit stand, and that's where Nana used to send me to get bread. And this is where we built the basketball court. But I used to always ridicule youah, hear like basketball players going back to the old projects. Yes, And then something bad happens and you're like, dumb motherfucker, like why would you go back? But I find myself doing the same thing every time. Like what I really love to do though, Like my all time favorite shit is if it's winter and I have like a hood one, I will actually get on the thirty six, No, dude, the way to produce tears with me, you know, the former Warner Makers or Macy's. Oh god, I hate when I date myself like that.

00:28:24
Speaker 1: Back in nineteen twenty two, it was a Macy's. You know when you go to the thirteenth Street L and the trolley thing, you know that art mural where it's like it looks like the Whiz logo but it's like red, green and black.

00:28:42
Speaker 3: No, like, oh I kind of remember it.

00:28:44
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's artwork. It's like this mural thing. It's been there forever. It's been there since like when I was in first grade, like seventy six, And I will get on a thirty six sit and go all the way to the end and east Wick or whatever.

00:29:01
Speaker 4: The right the nice part of Southwest God.

00:29:06
Speaker 2: And then circle around come back to to the end of the line. Then I'll get on the L and do the whole entire trip. Matter of fact, of the pandemic. I would go on YouTube. Do you know there's people that like document entire train rides of the L.

00:29:24
Speaker 1: From the front. I'm backing up.

00:29:27
Speaker 3: I'm like famous people. They're different than us. You couldn't pay me to get on the L or on the train on my day off.

00:29:33
Speaker 2: When all right, so the day that we decided what was it, March thirteenth, the day that we decided the world was going to shut down. Yes, and there's this whole apocalypse like revelation thing in the air.

00:29:46
Speaker 1: I was like, all right, my last act. I ran to.

00:29:49
Speaker 2: Gods we used to get a cheese steak, and then I ran back to spring Garden and rode the l one more time.

00:29:57
Speaker 5: And then I had my driver drive me to the farm.

00:30:10
Speaker 2: That I quarantined and in pound Ridge, like this very richy Poundridge farm where you know, the people let me stay in their guesthouse. But yeah, I don't know why I have this obsession with Septa wow, And.

00:30:25
Speaker 1: So I'd sit there.

00:30:26
Speaker 2: One day I discovered I went on YouTube and someone had the entire ride there. I probably watched ten hours worth of train stops.

00:30:36
Speaker 1: There's one from like nineteen seventy nine.

00:30:38
Speaker 4: That says more about your age than anything else. You said, you and my husband just other people's experiences.

00:30:45
Speaker 3: I've had enough of my own. I'm just going to turn on YouTube and it's literally just trains.

00:30:52
Speaker 1: Well, okay, do you not have a recurring all right? So the recurring dream I've had before, like therapy, finally went away. No, there's a reason why. I'll say that.

00:31:04
Speaker 2: From from tenth grade probably until I was like forty five, it's.

00:31:12
Speaker 1: The same dream.

00:31:14
Speaker 2: I'm on the l headed home, and it's the most dreaded bad report card day, feeling like whatever, feeling that makes you want to stall not to go home.

00:31:28
Speaker 1: You ever been suspended from school or whatever? No, oh, that's right, you're a nerd. No, you said, beat my ass.

00:31:37
Speaker 2: Right, No, I have bad report cards before, or you know, you got to see or whatever. But I would dream that I was in school and I'm always failing and I'm gonna get it when I get home.

00:31:50
Speaker 1: But I never get home.

00:31:51
Speaker 2: But I'm perpetually between thirteenth Street and fifty second Street. And that was like the dreams I would have from like maybe fifteen till forty five, Like the last ten years of my life, I've been free of that.

00:32:10
Speaker 3: But how I'm like, that's abnormal. I have that dream at least once a month for real.

00:32:14
Speaker 1: Do you have the same recurring dream.

00:32:16
Speaker 4: It's the same one, except I'm in Kappa And somehow they figured out that I haven't graduated, and I got to come back at my old age and go back and sit there for my diploma.

00:32:25
Speaker 3: I'm like, but I graduated. Nobody cares.

00:32:27
Speaker 1: Did that happen for Roda?

00:32:29
Speaker 3: No? Never?

00:32:30
Speaker 1: You were like a great student, right, I.

00:32:31
Speaker 4: Mean, I yeah, I went to good college, graduated. I mean, but that it freaks me out, and I still have that dream. So wait, I got to get a better therapist, right.

00:32:42
Speaker 1: Mine? Mine is kind of weird.

00:32:44
Speaker 2: My dad was doing a residency in Lake City at the Tropicana, and I was drumming for him, and you know, I didn't have a pager or we didn't have cell phones Backfit and Bowser If you remember Bowser from Shanna Na?

00:33:00
Speaker 1: Wow, No, yes you do, She'll just fake it it like you don't.

00:33:05
Speaker 3: You're a little bit older than me.

00:33:06
Speaker 1: And have you heard of the group?

00:33:08
Speaker 3: Yes?

00:33:09
Speaker 1: Okay, one of them.

00:33:10
Speaker 2: You've seen Greece okay, yes, yes, there's a whole bunch of guys.

00:33:15
Speaker 3: Well, I mean the same thing.

00:33:17
Speaker 2: But he wore all black and he had the low voice or whatever anyway, like right, but I mean he didn't talk like that backstage, but he's like he's like a mirror. There's a phone call for you. And uh, who was who is our Do you remember our science teacher?

00:33:37
Speaker 1: Oh? God, no, not mister. I think it was.

00:33:40
Speaker 3: Corey, the one that didn't make us do anything.

00:33:43
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, it begins with a I forget that name.

00:33:47
Speaker 2: And literally is like, mister Thompson, you still have to take your your final exam. Don't think doing a residency. What your father is going to get you out of this. If you are not in class tomorrow at a.

00:34:00
Speaker 1: You're not going to graduate. And literally like I.

00:34:05
Speaker 2: Did the show and dad had to drive me back to Philadelphia and I passed by the skin of my teeth and so wow. But yeah, so even as a good student, you thought you were going to be.

00:34:16
Speaker 1: A bad student.

00:34:17
Speaker 3: I don't know. I never talked to my therapist. What is this dream about. You're the first one that is like something so far in our past.

00:34:25
Speaker 2: I don't know what the bottom line was but okay, so more than that, like I decided to I mean, it's past therapy. It's also like this whole metaphysical thing where you actually have to say, like, you know, I'm not in high school anymore, I'm not fifteen. I'm da da da, Like I had to do these and literally talk it away. So I've not had the nightmare of failing. But even as a foty year old, I was about to get my ass beat for getting a bad grade or whatever. So yeah, all right, because you brought me into the tech world. Did you ever have an embarrassing AOL or MSN screen name?

00:35:04
Speaker 3: God, your memory is so good. I can't remember.

00:35:07
Speaker 4: I remember having an embarrassing one on my Commodore sixty four back when I was like eleven or twelve.

00:35:13
Speaker 1: Wait you could.

00:35:15
Speaker 3: There were little groups. That's where I first started.

00:35:17
Speaker 1: Wait what year did a guy?

00:35:19
Speaker 3: Ooh, this had to be eighty six, eighty seven?

00:35:22
Speaker 4: And I remember my dad weekend Dad, not even weekend Dad, but got you something new that I can't afford? Yay, And yeah it was like and I just remember.

00:35:38
Speaker 1: So you talk to your friends or a community of.

00:35:40
Speaker 3: Friends, usually strangers, because it was just an all green screen and you could go into a place called like sewing.

00:35:46
Speaker 2: You know, and wait a minute. Okay, go go ahead, go ahead. Yess just reminded me of something, no.

00:35:51
Speaker 3: Go, because I was the whole thing.

00:35:54
Speaker 1: The first time.

00:35:55
Speaker 2: You introduced me to AOL, like a group community thing. Yes, Prince was in the group chat wow, and his screen name was white Mansion. But he was an asshole about it because if you remember, like AOL had like an all white screen. He would type in all white and I didn't know how to copy paste so that I could see the cryptic message.

00:36:24
Speaker 1: And I think Doug is the one.

00:36:27
Speaker 2: Doug who worked at Oka Player taught me how to blacken the screen so I could see.

00:36:33
Speaker 1: And then I asked him like, yo, was that you? And He's like, yeah, that was me. So I didn't know that Prince was my first time in a group chat.

00:36:41
Speaker 4: What's also crazy is I remember specifically thinking, Wow, do we get a mirror online? I just had a web TV all right, let's start him off for aos.

00:36:52
Speaker 2: Oh man, I miss AOL chat so much, and you know people like when people on special like, oh my god, there, I do miss the days.

00:37:01
Speaker 4: Of There was some mystery to it now I'm just like everyone has a video, but I had no idea who I was really talking to back then, you know, and so you could be in a room with Prince and not know it.

00:37:13
Speaker 1: All right, what's the furthest place you've ever traveled?

00:37:16
Speaker 3: Oh wow, it's probably gonna be with you down to Brazil.

00:37:21
Speaker 1: I don't know how you did come to Brazil with us? Ah, you did come to Brazil. Wait did you go sight seeing?

00:37:29
Speaker 3: Yes with Tina Ferris one time?

00:37:32
Speaker 1: Were you accosted by no kids? Or Okay?

00:37:36
Speaker 2: I made the mistake of like walking by myself and someone told me like if you walk by yourself, like have a bag of toiletries with you. And I was like why and they were like, well, you know, some more of the fly ship might happen, and the kid might come.

00:37:51
Speaker 1: Up to you and be like Sarah, could you give me?

00:37:53
Speaker 2: And then you'll be like, oh, here kid, and then suddenly everyone just pops up. You mean, like the Michael Jackson Dad video, like bobbing from nowhere. I wasn't prepared so literally, like I had to run my way out of there while like seventeen.

00:38:10
Speaker 1: Kids just like please please please, like chase me. H. Yeah, so and then I didn't go out after that.

00:38:16
Speaker 4: But I'm laughing because y'all must have got They must have said, bring whoever you want, because y'all never brought me to it. It were so many people y'all bought on that trip.

00:38:24
Speaker 1: Wait a minute, So were you there when someone got in Tina's face? Were you backstage for this? I was there, okay, okay, and.

00:38:33
Speaker 3: I thought, lord, we all about to be arrested in Brazil.

00:38:37
Speaker 2: Well, I don't want to out him, but I forget what his name was, but he was angry. I think that we went five minutes over.

00:38:45
Speaker 4: Something like that, and I just remember Tina trying to handle it and him trying to handle it back, and all of a sudden.

00:38:50
Speaker 1: Trying to handle Tina.

00:38:51
Speaker 4: And then and then everybody you invited came off like you didn't know the route.

00:38:56
Speaker 3: Somehow had twenty five airplane tickets to this thing.

00:38:59
Speaker 1: Yeah, uh yeah, that was It was a riot.

00:39:03
Speaker 4: And then the toper to that story is he left his check on the table and then someone, I will say, signed we left our check on the table and signed his name.

00:39:11
Speaker 3: I didn't do it his room number.

00:39:12
Speaker 1: Oh okay.

00:39:16
Speaker 2: In my mind, it was not ego eye cherry. But it's someone that's like starts.

00:39:20
Speaker 3: With an F. I'll remind you if I don't want to get sued on you.

00:39:26
Speaker 1: I feel getting very nervous right now. What is the first thing you do when you check into a hotel?

00:39:45
Speaker 4: As I got older, it is literally see if the bathroom is clean, because I've been stuck in a hotel where not where you're like, all of a sudden, you're just on You're like, oh man, really yeah, I mean I've.

00:39:56
Speaker 1: Had like, see you a person that has to go and clean the hotel before.

00:40:00
Speaker 4: I mean, it depends on how I can not clean it my own if it's like a roadside, but if it's like a nice one that.

00:40:04
Speaker 3: Hollywood's paying for. No, but that's to me. I've just realized growing up in Philly.

00:40:11
Speaker 4: I'm used to everything being old and dirty.

00:40:14
Speaker 3: That's just Philly the fault. I got out here and I was like, this is how bathrooms are supposed to look. You can have more than one.

00:40:20
Speaker 2: Yes, okay, So when you're creating, when you're writing what four things must you always.

00:40:28
Speaker 3: Have prozac weed? You want me to tell the truth, Yes, I don't know, No, it is it's definitely Weed.

00:40:40
Speaker 4: It's definitely a funny movie to start me off some a good friend on the phone and actually, now meditation, I put that in there.

00:40:51
Speaker 2: So you do that all the time, So you have to put intentions and yeah, just miss what.

00:40:55
Speaker 4: I mind, not wander and just getting all the other noise out of my head.

00:41:01
Speaker 1: Okay.

00:41:01
Speaker 2: So I have the hardest time with writing, especially with books, so and the way I do it fragment like okay, this is about whatever.

00:41:12
Speaker 1: Tell me about ninth grade and then you you know, but.

00:41:16
Speaker 2: I'm also like, oh zebra, and then not have anything or easily fall asleep and then the computer falls on the ground, Like.

00:41:23
Speaker 1: For you, how much straight work can you do without any distractions whatsoever?

00:41:29
Speaker 4: See, it's interesting for me because I see you as somewhat of a perfectionist, and you always come into things with a plan, and so at least from when I knew you, and so.

00:41:38
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm still tightly wound.

00:41:40
Speaker 4: And so that was me too when I used to write. Then I used to think, why are people like Treik so happy on weed? And I wasn't forty until I tried it, actually tried it with my husband and had a horrible experience.

00:41:50
Speaker 1: So you're late weed, yes, but it's.

00:41:52
Speaker 4: Wonderful for getting outside of your head and just letting yourself let go of that tightly wound.

00:41:56
Speaker 1: Stuff post or pre pandemic.

00:42:00
Speaker 3: My husband and I married in two thousand, not two thousand. No, yeah, I was like, wait a minute, you need twenty started the pandemic, So it's probably twenty nineteen because I remember cursing him out. I was like, you don't know, I can't handle this was I was so high. I just but he also taught me how to taper.

00:42:16
Speaker 1: And you and I have the same experiences. But I'm an edible person.

00:42:22
Speaker 3: Not me too.

00:42:23
Speaker 2: You know what I've tried. We I cannot get high. I've had a whole thing to myself and it's nothing happens.

00:42:31
Speaker 3: I remember when you first went to Amsterdam, Yes, and.

00:42:34
Speaker 1: Did I call you?

00:42:35
Speaker 3: Yes?

00:42:38
Speaker 1: You and Dreamhampton Man like, ah, you've seen sides of me that the world has never seen before.

00:42:47
Speaker 3: Yes, Oh that was hilarious because you were you were in the most innocent, like just you know, and you were so high it was so funny.

00:42:55
Speaker 1: Yeah, I shouldn't have done that.

00:42:58
Speaker 3: Back then, people were getting arrested for we to wear week so that was an experience you wanted to have, but you were so high that was a wonderful.

00:43:04
Speaker 1: Yes, all right. Do you talk to yourself when you're alone?

00:43:09
Speaker 3: Usually not outside my head?

00:43:11
Speaker 1: No, just inside your head? Yeah yeah, but never like out loud as in no, unless.

00:43:15
Speaker 3: It's like I want my husband to kind of leave me alone for a little while, and.

00:43:25
Speaker 2: I wasn't expected that part. Are you a window seat or an alca person?

00:43:30
Speaker 4: Oh?

00:43:30
Speaker 5: See?

00:43:30
Speaker 4: This captures both sides of me because I don't like asking people to get up when I have to pee, you know.

00:43:37
Speaker 3: But I really like looking out the window. We're a pie, we're on a plane.

00:43:39
Speaker 4: So I always picked the because I don't want an inconvenience anybody else.

00:43:43
Speaker 1: Okay, so you're an own person. Okay.

00:43:46
Speaker 2: Have you ever considered moving to a place where nobody knows you have.

00:43:51
Speaker 3: To do that? Honestly, my husband and I are talking about it, moving to Minnesota. His family is from there, and I went out there.

00:43:58
Speaker 4: And I, oh, well family, but yeah, you mean no one like not even my husband.

00:44:03
Speaker 1: Well, now you gotta have your husband with you?

00:44:06
Speaker 3: What I Yeah, I would love to do that.

00:44:07
Speaker 2: Actually, Okay, I'm gonna I'm gonna change your life right now.

00:44:12
Speaker 3: Okay, So here's you nude when you don't know?

00:44:19
Speaker 1: Okay it is So I went up there once to clear a sample.

00:44:26
Speaker 3: To Minnesota to Prince's house.

00:44:28
Speaker 2: Oh this is long after he passed. But there's a place that is called the Orfield Labs. Now Orefield Labs was once famous because probably the most notable creation of the studio was lips incorporated Funky Town, Won't You Do Me Right? Also for Bee Boys, if you're a DJ. Kat Stevenson's Dog was a donut was created at this very studio. Around nineteen eighty six, I believe they stop being a studio for music purposes and they transformed to like scientific Audio lab. And what they've invented was they've invented two types of rooms and it's very unique. One room is a room for which sound will never die. So if you clap your hands, you hear the sound of that clap like resonate forever. There's a kind of a fake chimney thing that they open to let the sound go. But in the other room is a the.

00:45:40
Speaker 1: Exact opposite, and it's a silent room.

00:45:43
Speaker 2: Not only was aware of this because again with clickbait and social media. You know, it starts with you know, can you survive fifteen minutes in the silent room where you know, like apparently like you're gonna go crazy. It's like the equivalent of I mean, you've seen movies where people get thrown in solitary comfort.

00:46:00
Speaker 1: Or the padded white room or whatever.

00:46:04
Speaker 2: So long story short is, they put you inside of this room and look up or filled labs or silent room Minnesota. They sit you in the studio room and there's literally no like the noise is sucked out and there's no light. The only way I can describe it is if you are on the verge of wanting to do an ayahuasca journey. This is probably the plant based version of it, where you don't have to take anything, but the results are the same.

00:46:37
Speaker 1: And what I've discovered was when.

00:46:41
Speaker 2: When you don't have your senses, when you can't see, when you can't hear, your brain panics and thinks you're about to die. So the first thing your brain does is it pumps levels of serotonin or dopamine in your head, which is kind of what you feel if you were to do heroin. And literally like I sat there and maybe two minutes later and I'm not saying words because I saw it, like.

00:47:10
Speaker 1: My hand flashing. I was like, wait, am I hallucinating? Like literally, it does something to you. It's one of the best spiritual experience.

00:47:18
Speaker 3: Really, because as you were talking, I was like, this sounds.

00:47:22
Speaker 2: Like hell again, like because of the hype of are you going to survive or not survive? Maybe like after three minutes, I'm like, oh, clearly, I'm not going to die. Like the first thing you hear is you hear your insides, you hear your heart beat, you hear all those things. And then when I close my eyes, I see, you know, like when we dream, like if like imagine your childhood home, you close your eyes and there's my childhood home.

00:47:48
Speaker 1: You see it. To me, that's normal.

00:47:50
Speaker 2: But when I open my eyes and you don't see anything, that's when you start to panic.

00:47:55
Speaker 1: Like, wait, am I blind? Am I blind?

00:47:57
Speaker 2: And the dopamine just keeps it puts you in this very relaxed state.

00:48:05
Speaker 1: I highly reckon.

00:48:06
Speaker 3: No, you know, it's funny, I have turned now.

00:48:08
Speaker 4: I was like, because I truly love meditating and the way it makes me feel, in the way it grounds me.

00:48:12
Speaker 2: I was like, okay, and you know, like people now, well they'll do like medicine journeys and all these things. And you know, like a lot of us, I'll say, for the most part black people who are very skeptical, very church. You know, if it's against God, I want nothing to do with a mirror, don't come to me with that. Twenty twenty had us in a place where like we were just slightly open to something other than kind of this Christian hearing anything that we're going through right now. And I will tell you that, yeah, that experience alone, and I've been kind of kicking the can that like would do in ayahuasca.

00:48:49
Speaker 1: I will eventually do it.

00:48:50
Speaker 2: But for those that are averse to that, this is probably the closest thing to it.

00:48:56
Speaker 1: So I'm so.

00:48:57
Speaker 3: Proud of you in a weird way, Like seriously.

00:48:59
Speaker 1: I would highly recommend this.

00:49:01
Speaker 4: I'm i just because I remember you didn't drink, you didn't smoke, you were just and so I know a lot of people who come up like that that won't touch anything like aahuasca.

00:49:09
Speaker 3: Or just you know.

00:49:10
Speaker 6: So yeah, I think in the pandemic, we all were like fuck it, and we had to there had to be something else, you know, I mean it just has to be something else, all right.

00:49:22
Speaker 1: So if you were allowed to go back to the age of ten for one hour, what would you do?

00:49:33
Speaker 4: First thing I think is ride my bike until the very moment the very last street light came on, just because I missed that freedom of just being ten and mom and Dad didn't care where you were as long as you came back when the street lights were on. And I just remember thinking when I had that bike at ten, that.

00:49:50
Speaker 3: I could almost make it anywhere in the city, you know, you just oh, you.

00:49:53
Speaker 1: Would go off the block into different neighborhoods.

00:49:55
Speaker 4: Like three four blocks, but it felt like bigger because it's like I used to have to walk these.

00:50:02
Speaker 3: You feel a little it's the first time.

00:50:04
Speaker 1: Having a bike. Yes, you're right.

00:50:06
Speaker 2: Actually I would take my bike and I could make it to like I live on fifty second Street. I think I could make it to pins Landing in like forty five minutes.

00:50:17
Speaker 3: See if there weren't any cars. I'm like, that's just a dream, just being free.

00:50:21
Speaker 2: Well, Pine Street was a little bear, so just you know, between Pine Street was a street where I didn't have to worry about like getting here.

00:50:30
Speaker 3: Who actually did it?

00:50:31
Speaker 1: Oh? All the time?

00:50:32
Speaker 4: Do.

00:50:33
Speaker 1: Yeah, i'ma do that all the time. What do you consider your bravest act to date?

00:50:39
Speaker 4: Oh, I would have to say moving my mom to Los Angeles and you brought her out here to get yes, yes, okay, and stealing her away from her.

00:50:49
Speaker 3: I didn't steal her away, even though he sued me for kidnapping. It's in the book she married. Yo. This is what I want to say about.

00:50:57
Speaker 4: They always worried about us and our generation in younger on social media and then the older people.

00:51:03
Speaker 3: She met a man, you know, and it's like people need to watch their parents and this technology.

00:51:09
Speaker 4: All of a sudden, she's, you know, falling in love and but the guy is just a scammer.

00:51:13
Speaker 3: He's a mess.

00:51:14
Speaker 1: So I picked her up like Prince scam level.

00:51:17
Speaker 4: Except Philadelphian preacher scammer. Like every time every time I came home, my mom would be like, well we found out this degree wasn't worth anything. I'll just pull out of my pension and send him to another school so you can get another degree.

00:51:30
Speaker 1: Oh no, I know, I know.

00:51:32
Speaker 3: And so finally, you know, our parents, especially my mom came of age.

00:51:37
Speaker 4: Jim Crow just everything's hard in life, and you know, I don't want to be a burden.

00:51:41
Speaker 3: And I was like, no, I'm getting you the hell out of here.

00:51:44
Speaker 4: So I moved her in with me while he sued the hell out of me back home.

00:51:48
Speaker 3: But just the same feeling as you had as a kid on a bike.

00:51:52
Speaker 4: It was just the freedom. It was just me and her and me taking care of her in this beautiful place.

00:51:57
Speaker 2: Well it's California like for her, way different than Philadelphia.

00:52:00
Speaker 4: I remember asking her that exact question and she said, a lot of Mexicans.

00:52:09
Speaker 3: We did, at least not when I moved.

00:52:12
Speaker 4: You know, early two thousands, Philadelphia was pretty much black and white mostly coming up. And you know, she was, yeah, so this to her, like people speak in Spanish, She was like, you know how people from Philly are at least it's going to be an earthquake every day, and you know something's.

00:52:25
Speaker 3: Going to go wrong.

00:52:25
Speaker 1: But experienced an earthquake.

00:52:27
Speaker 4: No, thank God, because she would have, even though she had stage four cancer, she.

00:52:29
Speaker 3: Would have rolled her back to phil.

00:52:34
Speaker 4: But I think then I remember her saying to me once she said, people just seem a lot chiller out here, like a lot calmer, And I was like, well, you've never been on set with me. Other than that, yeah, there's just I'm glad she got to experience that laid back kind of California thing, even though she didn't know my house was in foreclosure and all this stuff and oh yeah, it's all I don't want to give anything away.

00:52:58
Speaker 3: Literally, there was a.

00:52:59
Speaker 4: Man taken pictures of my house when my mom when I finally got off the plane and my mom said, who's that?

00:53:05
Speaker 3: I was like, Papa Rozzi, Mom and pop last was somebody coming to make sure the.

00:53:10
Speaker 1: Condition of the house before they Oh god.

00:53:13
Speaker 4: So not only bringing her there but lying to her the whole time so that she would stay there.

00:53:18
Speaker 1: And she was never the wiser.

00:53:20
Speaker 3: You know, looking back, I think she.

00:53:23
Speaker 1: Probably knew, but what was she didn't want to embarrass.

00:53:27
Speaker 3: I'm stuck here now. I got on the plane.

00:53:30
Speaker 1: What was what was your twenty twenty like?

00:53:35
Speaker 3: Actually, and I hate saying this, it was great.

00:53:37
Speaker 2: What did you pivot and morph into in twenty twenty that you weren't before?

00:53:43
Speaker 1: Then?

00:53:44
Speaker 4: I realized I think in twenty twenty. I also got married right at the beginning of twenty twenty, and so we literally.

00:53:50
Speaker 1: Just picked the place January or February January. Oh my god. So then when the world came doing in.

00:53:55
Speaker 3: I was like, I'm stuck with this money.

00:53:57
Speaker 1: Y'all stayed together.

00:53:58
Speaker 3: That's what made it great.

00:53:59
Speaker 4: I was like, I picked the right person this time. I was like, I actually like this.

00:54:04
Speaker 1: Was there a close call? Though?

00:54:06
Speaker 3: Actually no, I.

00:54:07
Speaker 4: Wish I could lie. It was great because he's introducing me to more weed. We're sitting there watching the world burn, you know. But also it was I was on the show Mixed Dish, and I realized how much life I lost in commuting every damn day, you know, just getting to and from the place where I already have to give such mental energy and you don't have a lot to give her to a relationship when you're giving it all to others.

00:54:31
Speaker 3: So it also made me think I want to focus more on my personal relationships than career growth all the time.

00:54:38
Speaker 1: Are you saying in terms of like like we all discovered zoom during that period, So not having to take a two hour trek and sitting on the are you one of these Californias Like I hate the four or five and dead?

00:54:50
Speaker 3: Guess why should I?

00:54:51
Speaker 1: I love see, I love traffic, I love driving, but I just love.

00:54:56
Speaker 4: My free time even more because I picked up hobbies. I didn't have hobbies before.

00:55:00
Speaker 1: What did you learn to do? Don't say sourdo please?

00:55:03
Speaker 3: No, no, I'm learning Spanish apprendiendo espaniel really see for dad.

00:55:21
Speaker 2: What is the most overrated or unsolicited advice that people gave to you as a caretaker? First of all, did you have a circle or at least a threat to fall back on?

00:55:38
Speaker 4: For no, I moved my mom out, was like, come on, I'm saving your life. And then someone eventually said, yeah, that she's pretty far gone. You can't save her life. And I was like, I haven't called City of Hope yet. Like that was me, And I think as.

00:55:52
Speaker 3: A caretaker, people are very taught me to be actively caring in terms of make sure how she's not in pain, make sure this, makes sure I will and testament are in place. But and forgot to tell me to just have quiet moments of just asking her questions about her past and even how to frame questions about her past so she talked to me about them. She wasn't my mom wasn't a.

00:56:13
Speaker 4: Very like this was my favorite Christmas, so this was my favorite time to ask her question.

00:56:19
Speaker 3: Yes, in my own way, like.

00:56:22
Speaker 4: No, because no, because it just felt like I have one recording of her. Okay, But also, my mom passed right before video on phones. She was in the people were transitioning from flip phones to iPhones, so you had to still had She still had to flip Like when I text her, she'd be like, what's wrong?

00:56:39
Speaker 3: Was on my screen? And I'm like, I got this iPhone, you can text on it. But yet we weren't. And I'm actually glad that I didn't, because when I look back at how sick she was, I was like, you dumb asshands. You really thought you were going to save her life, you know, like it's and I'm like, damn.

00:56:54
Speaker 4: You may have moved to California, but we no one taught us to just have that time together. And I think, when I look back, that's why she moved out.

00:57:03
Speaker 2: What was your primary source of comfort, like during this time period, you move your.

00:57:08
Speaker 1: Out in twenty twenty, and when did she passed?

00:57:10
Speaker 4: Oh no, I moved my mom out in twenty This was fifteen years ago, right on the border of iPhones and flip phones. Oh okay, yeah, so like twy fourteen, twenty fifteen.

00:57:20
Speaker 1: Okay, and when she passed.

00:57:22
Speaker 3: She passed. She only lived with me for three months.

00:57:26
Speaker 1: Yeah she was Oh damn, yeah, I'm glad you.

00:57:30
Speaker 3: But I took care of her in Philly too.

00:57:31
Speaker 4: It was but she didn't let me know how bad her cancer was, which is something I learned that parents do, and her as a nurse, she also knew how to hide it, so she would just.

00:57:40
Speaker 3: Tell me, yeah, I got a missect. To me, I got another mastectomy and no cancer's going.

00:57:44
Speaker 1: I don't want to be a bother. I don't want to be a burden. I hate when people see that. Oh yeah, you know.

00:57:49
Speaker 4: So then one time she was supposed to come out and see me, and she said, I can't fly the doctor. I had to have another little procedure done. So I got on a plane and said, what is happening? You know what is happened?

00:58:00
Speaker 1: Did you ambush her?

00:58:01
Speaker 3: Yes, also had.

00:58:04
Speaker 4: To ambush her husband because he was a fake preachers, and so they had that hierarchy within the house.

00:58:11
Speaker 3: I'm the man of the house now, and I'm like, she just met your.

00:58:15
Speaker 4: Ass and him and my brother ended up throwing down and.

00:58:21
Speaker 3: It got real Philly. They got real Philly.

00:58:25
Speaker 1: I totally understand that what personal habit.

00:58:28
Speaker 2: Did you find hard to manage during this period of taking care of your mom?

00:58:34
Speaker 4: Gratitude? I used to practice that. Have my gratitude journal, still have it now. Everything was so rushed and life just seemed to suck because damn, you know, I haven't had an easy road in life anyway, and to lose my mom early, you know, it was just but also trying to keep her spirits up. I would try to think of one thing we could both be grateful for.

00:58:56
Speaker 3: But man, that was hard.

00:58:58
Speaker 1: That was aging gratitude.

00:59:00
Speaker 3: Yeah, even harder when she passed. I was an angry motherfucker all the time.

00:59:04
Speaker 2: During this period of caretaking what one item of clothing?

00:59:11
Speaker 1: What was your what was your survival uniform?

00:59:14
Speaker 4: You know, I'll never forget because she moved in with me and she only bought one suitcase. Because we were just like, time is not on our sides. You got cans, you got this stage four cancer. I'm going to find a really good Hollywood doctor.

00:59:24
Speaker 3: To cure it. And so we went to Target to make a quick run to get the way we see someone for cancer. And because my mom was also very frugal, which she probably would have went to CVS.

00:59:37
Speaker 4: So she could have or target, but we went to get her a nightgown and I got a matching like pajama set, and I still have that fifteen year old pajama set.

00:59:47
Speaker 3: I keep everything though.

00:59:48
Speaker 1: This is such an angel in this times and conversation.

00:59:52
Speaker 2: Is there a song that makes you cry instantly when you hear it?

00:59:57
Speaker 3: This is a weird one too. What was the Luther Van song about Father's.

01:00:03
Speaker 1: Again?

01:00:03
Speaker 4: Yes, because that's the only song I saw my mom ever cry on when her father passed. My mom never cried, and I just remember that song coming on the radio after her dad died and her crying, and I thought I thought of her as a mother for the first time, and not just you know, I mean I thought of her rather as more than a mother, like someone who was something's daughter who was having those feelings, and I just remember that a human.

01:00:24
Speaker 2: Yes, that's swear that Luther's known for many things, but that that one song might be like his signature, his signature song.

01:00:32
Speaker 4: Yeah, because I remember she sent me to a concert with her and her friends. They were her babysitters, and I was like, yeah, they still don't know he's gay.

01:00:38
Speaker 3: I was young.

01:00:45
Speaker 1: My mom too. What memento keeps your mom's memory alive.

01:00:50
Speaker 4: Woo what oh her nursing id I keep it in my bedroom because she was so proud of that thing because she was not only an r N, she was a BSN actually a science and nursing they put your back, you know, yes, yes, but she would always say, you know, they don't expect a black woman to be you know, So she would always wear that with pride, like when someone would try to talk down to her something, it's.

01:01:13
Speaker 3: You know, I'm like, maybe it's a little elitist, but it's also a source of pride. She worked hard for that thing.

01:01:17
Speaker 2: Got what was the deepest regret of yours during that time period?

01:01:21
Speaker 1: Did you have any.

01:01:22
Speaker 3: Oh man, that whole time period, Yeah, you know, I had a lot.

01:01:26
Speaker 4: I started redecorating my home and remodeling it to make a commune so my entire family could move in because.

01:01:36
Speaker 1: You thought the world was just coming to it in.

01:01:37
Speaker 4: But also I just thought my mom died and I'm all alone. I got to move everybody from Philly into.

01:01:42
Speaker 1: My Oh god, I know, I know. And that was And so then and your marriage is doing to.

01:01:48
Speaker 4: Wait because nobody in Philly's gonna tell you, Yeah, we thought it was a good idea when we were all in grief.

01:01:54
Speaker 3: When we said that, because your ass was crying.

01:01:56
Speaker 1: Right for you, we don't want to move.

01:01:59
Speaker 3: All the way out. But I was so deep in grief and just the family is all important. And I moved out to California and everybody's back in Philly.

01:02:07
Speaker 4: I mean I literally was looking up schools for people and all this stuff, and one by one I had a falling out with people because I came to the realization that was the dumbest idea.

01:02:16
Speaker 3: But I didn't want to give up on it.

01:02:17
Speaker 1: I was like, wow, you pulled that off.

01:02:20
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, I'm so glad in hindsight that I didn't.

01:02:23
Speaker 1: One do you create better when you are happy or sad?

01:02:29
Speaker 3: Here is the process I've learned. That's how weed comes into play.

01:02:33
Speaker 4: For me.

01:02:34
Speaker 3: Think about all the shit, the deep.

01:02:36
Speaker 4: Shit, like oh, until you can't almost take it anymore, you're like, fuck, what is this life?

01:02:42
Speaker 3: Smoke some weed and think about it again. It works for me. I don't know why, because they always say the lessons are in the hard part, But when you're trying to write through the hard parts, it's just too much. At times, I wanted everything to.

01:02:56
Speaker 1: Be like gaps go by where you didn't write or oh god.

01:02:59
Speaker 4: Yeah, because I found myself. My husband was with me as I was writing, and I love writing comedy. But we know so many great comedians that are miserable and who took their own life, and I mean I can name some top names out here, and I'm like, oh, hanging around with him is like like.

01:03:14
Speaker 1: Oh, every comedian I know is so it's how you.

01:03:18
Speaker 4: But I I was with my husband at the time, he just was just married. We were and I had to figure out how not to be depressed all the time. And he was like, try some of this.

01:03:28
Speaker 3: This is all that's worked for me.

01:03:30
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, what part of yourself are you just rediscovering now?

01:03:35
Speaker 3: Who as a grown asked woman what the hell I like to do and not what everybody else wants me to do?

01:03:42
Speaker 2: And my people pleasing whoa you know for real, Like I'm so glad that landed because I'm so bad, like I want to do on TV where it's just like no one looks and.

01:03:53
Speaker 1: Then they I'm always like.

01:03:55
Speaker 3: The man and that the world's not gonna fall apart when you do it.

01:04:00
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'll be honest with you.

01:04:02
Speaker 2: I just learned not only no, like you remember, like Rich Nichols used to be just say what he felt. Yes, Tik's that way sometimes Jesus. Yes, literally that part just transforms you. And I was like, wow, this this is the zero fox part of my life, like happening right now. But I mean there's a way to not alienate people and still hold your ground and maintain but like literally not people pleasing. I didn't know how much like pain in my body, Yes, yes, I was used to those.

01:04:39
Speaker 1: Things and the throbbing, the throbbing, the throbbing and not knowing that your body's thriving throbbing because you promised that you would do this remix and you don't got time to do it, or you know, come and watch somebody's rough cut of something or whatever. And I'm like, yeah, yeah, I'll check it out, and literally just like wear myself felt. So yeah, people pleasing is was my Do.

01:05:04
Speaker 3: You think you learned that as a kid.

01:05:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think people pleasing comes from wanting to be likable.

01:05:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, And in my case, I think the kind of perceived charmed life that I've always seemed to have when I was a kid you have both parents.

01:05:22
Speaker 1: I went to private school, you get all these all these records of yours.

01:05:27
Speaker 2: You know, like it just always seemed easy for a mirror and then was way easier for questlove. So I think a lot of the times I tried in subconscious ways to make myself relatable by people pleasing and sometimes doll myself. A lot of the weight gain was like really trying my best not to be a threat and doll myself as much as I can and still survive. But I think after these series of me finally getting to the bottom of the autism journey, At first I took it as facts like oh, okay, autistic, everyone is altered, But then I really learned, like I don't know, I just woke.

01:06:13
Speaker 3: Up one day like, wait, is that an autism trait too?

01:06:16
Speaker 2: Here's the thing, like especially, and it's understandable why I think black people have been averse to science or any sort of thing with medical like therapy and all that stuff.

01:06:32
Speaker 1: This is in allfice. I don't think I have anything that's more unique than anyone else. I'm just like learning.

01:06:38
Speaker 2: This is probably the most I've ever spoken about it in public. But once I know and know that I know, like there's a level freedom there.

01:06:46
Speaker 3: Oh I love that.

01:06:47
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like I highly recommend taking that exam and doing that what do you do for like self care?

01:06:55
Speaker 3: Meditation and hobbies and just going outside. I realized I live in a place that it's warm all the time, and I was working myself to death so much I never got to experience a warmness because I would be until it got night and it got cold. And so just really like I always think, how did the first people on the earth and people before we even invented mirrors, they.

01:07:15
Speaker 4: Didn't care what they look like, you know, Like it's like you listen to the birds. And I had a revelation one day when I was in my bed, I now wake.

01:07:23
Speaker 3: Up with the birds.

01:07:24
Speaker 4: That's what they made the alarm clocks like after so we would wake up when they wanted us to wake up and get to our jobs. And just enjoying simple stuff like that listening to birds, going like, I love old people, man.

01:07:36
Speaker 3: I hang out with them all the time.

01:07:38
Speaker 4: Yeah, because they're retired and they just noticed suff This guy says, just saw Cooper Hawk up there.

01:07:43
Speaker 3: I'm in I'm like show me. You know, they have time and they enjoy stuff.

01:07:49
Speaker 1: Do you collect anything?

01:07:51
Speaker 3: No, because I my husband collects everything, and I can't stand.

01:07:57
Speaker 1: Makes them throw away the record collection, not the record of collection.

01:08:01
Speaker 3: But if you have wrestling figures that some of them are worth. I look him up to see you. But he's also the type my husband is.

01:08:09
Speaker 1: He's a legend. Also yeah, and so, but he's not.

01:08:12
Speaker 4: I remember when I first saw Tarique take someone's I thought someone's giving you their CD. How gracious he was, Like, but we were young. But also I understand now as a wife who has a husband who people give things, but he doesn't.

01:08:28
Speaker 3: He keeps them all.

01:08:29
Speaker 1: Every painting of him and every painting, every you know, and his WWE fans are like so intense, Oh my god, do you go to those matches?

01:08:40
Speaker 4: I've never seen I have seen him wrestle once, but yeah, when I went, I didn't know anything about wrestling.

01:08:45
Speaker 3: I was like, damn, this is dangerous, this is scary, but it's awesome. I love it.

01:08:50
Speaker 1: Like do you ever get afraid for his safety? End?

01:08:53
Speaker 3: No, because he stopped.

01:08:54
Speaker 4: But when he did a backflip right when he was forty nine, because he wanted to do one more and like gotten rid for the road.

01:09:00
Speaker 3: But everything.

01:09:01
Speaker 4: I tell him the reason that WGA went on strike is because of him using up my insurance because all those injuries.

01:09:11
Speaker 2: God, what is your dream project? What is the project you are dying to execute and get off the ground.

01:09:20
Speaker 4: I be honest, anything with Regina King, And because I know nothing about her and I just see all that and I don't want too m K.

01:09:30
Speaker 3: She's not nice because I've met too many people and just let me have my dream that Regina King is my best friend in my head.

01:09:36
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think she's nice.

01:09:37
Speaker 3: Okay, have you met her? No, never met her, never worked with her?

01:09:40
Speaker 1: Wait? You work out here in Hollywood?

01:09:43
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I mean she's she didn't do TV until recently. And no, that's the thing. Here's the thing.

01:09:49
Speaker 4: Also, I don't work in Hollywood because of the changes in the industry. I work in Toronto, and I work in New York. I was a New York last show for six months. So it's like I'm barely here.

01:10:00
Speaker 1: Okay. Is is Hollywood just a concept now? Because even for me, like all my friends are going to Atlanta or Tomronto or Vancouver or yes, is anything just straight up shot and produced out here?

01:10:18
Speaker 3: Very few things?

01:10:19
Speaker 4: And I mean you have to have a high, high level of stardom to get it done out here. But no, most of my friends and even like the Scrubs reboot, they're all up in Vancouver.

01:10:29
Speaker 1: It's an are you a part of it?

01:10:32
Speaker 3: No? I like my marriage, I don't want to go back.

01:10:35
Speaker 1: Congratulations for choosing yourself over.

01:10:38
Speaker 4: And I realized that the last time I went away and we have to be away from each other for four months, it's not fun. People like you get to travel for work and no, we work day to night and just go home. Like I remember going to New York. I think I'm gonna call I mean, I'm gonna see all these things. I didn't see anything.

01:10:55
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've been on sets where, especially with comedy shows, where literally don't get yes yes time to yourself.

01:11:03
Speaker 1: And I didn't realize like how hard it is like to be funny in the in the face of pressure.

01:11:13
Speaker 4: And Yeah, and it's also every show you go into there's a big managerial aspect to it. That some people are funny and come up with great stories, but they don't know how to manage your room, so they realize they don't like any jokes at four am in the morning and I'm like, dude, I'm over fifty now I can't.

01:11:31
Speaker 3: When I was on Scrubs, I was like, sure, Bill Lawrence, I'll pull another all nighter.

01:11:34
Speaker 1: Yeah.

01:11:35
Speaker 2: I was gonna say, Okay, so I want what show I visited? I went to Two and a Half Men once right, and.

01:11:45
Speaker 1: Was chuck there. I think all I know is that whenever they took a break, like someone didn't like a line, and the directors like, hut, cut cut and it take five whatever, and they took five. And the way that those writers formed a magic circle, they all knew what order they had to be in. It's like, I don't I don't like the da da da, not only the da da d D. So what do you got for me? No? What do you got from me? What do you got from me?

01:12:08
Speaker 3: What?

01:12:09
Speaker 1: And it felt like a creative version of Russian roulette. Ooh.

01:12:14
Speaker 4: And here's the thing you don't see is that sometimes we have already worked on that line in the room. And sometimes I've worked with some talented people, but there's some people won't say anything in the room. Then you're gonna get on set where the stars are it's like they kill it. Yeah, and then everybody from the network is looking and I'm like.

01:12:30
Speaker 3: I pitched that last week in the room, you know. So it's just like then you get up to the room and someone's fighting because it's like it's a lot, Like you say, it's a lot.

01:12:40
Speaker 1: Does your dream project have a title to it like.

01:12:42
Speaker 3: The you know what?

01:12:43
Speaker 4: Actually, my dream project would be about a fifty year old woman trying to get back in the workplace, figuring out what she really likes to do. And I started writing it just because I know a lot of women now who are their forties and fifties, and we all took that this is what our parents wanted us to do. I did it very well, but realized what the hell do I like to do? But also having to deal with I just had the realization that I could have given birth to Megan the Stallion without being a teenage mom. And that's always the level I see if I'm old, Like if I was a teenage mom, maybe I'm still She's top of.

01:13:13
Speaker 3: The charts, and I could be your mother without being a.

01:13:15
Speaker 1: Teenage could be Wow, whoa It hit me.

01:13:20
Speaker 3: Oh, and so now when I talk to younger people, I'm always thinking that I know you didn't just tell me what time I could go home. I could be your mom, you know, but that's the industry.

01:13:30
Speaker 1: That's gonna sit with me all day to day. Like I could be Megan the Stallion's dad and not have been that hit me hard. That's the quest left show, ladies and gentlemen. We'll see you later. Okay, I mean to ask you the same question three different ways. Okay, you were in Capa. What year tenth No, middle of eleventh, let's go before tenth grade? What was sixteen year old Angela Nissile's version of what success was? What five things would have been? Like I made it?

01:14:18
Speaker 3: Oh god, this is I.

01:14:20
Speaker 4: Mean, it's embarrassing. But a boyfriend who is eventually going to ask me to marry him. Okay, some place to work with a cubicle where I can maybe have off days.

01:14:30
Speaker 3: I needed to go to the hospital or like go to.

01:14:34
Speaker 1: I remember thinking you didn't want a better place to die?

01:14:37
Speaker 4: Thinking, how do you, as an adult like ask your Boston that you need a day off?

01:14:42
Speaker 3: And do you? God? What else?

01:14:44
Speaker 4: Oh god, it's so a nice back then, at least a nice car only had to be a Benz or something, not like a Bentley.

01:14:50
Speaker 3: Like now I was like a benz An apartment downtown in the nice section of Philadelphia where the cobblestones are.

01:14:58
Speaker 1: Yeah, can I tell you, I gotta tell you something. I hate Michael Bivens for this.

01:15:05
Speaker 2: When they shot the Motown Philly video and you know the cobblestone place on like second, you know, the Wow Wow is on like second in South Street. So Michael Bivins purchased one of those houses there, and man, Me and Rieke were like, Yo, that's what's up. Like I go by that place now, It's like, Yo, how did I think success was living? I almost purchased. Matter of fact, before I purchased what do I call it? The sixth cens Housey.

01:15:37
Speaker 3: I didn't know you purchased that. That's hilarious.

01:15:39
Speaker 2: Oh when I tell you what I have to do to hang on to that house because it's now like literally four lawyers are trying to like, I'm the last black owner, wow that entire neighborhood. I lived on the block that was formerly the six cents block, and they've since then, four people have taken it in regental like there's no abandon houses and I'm the last person hanging on to that place. And they're trying every way to get me out of there. But before I brought that house, there was like a spot. I swear to god, maybe it's like nine hundred square feet, but I thought, man, I'm living off South Street, Like I can go right to the diner, take a joint of the diner, go to a rich movie theater.

01:16:18
Speaker 1: Like if I thought that was living.

01:16:21
Speaker 3: Right, we didn't. People didn't realize your whole world was your city, the pre internet, you know, and that's all we knew. And those were the best houses we saw.

01:16:27
Speaker 1: Now I'm like, oh god, exactly, Wait, you didn't name your last one?

01:16:32
Speaker 3: Oh my god, what would be the last one?

01:16:35
Speaker 1: Boyfriend? You wanted a better place to die that gave you time off to go to the hospital.

01:16:40
Speaker 3: You wanted a Ben's animal sanctuary.

01:16:42
Speaker 4: I always wanted, always would bring home the animals drops Parkway.

01:16:51
Speaker 1: What is your greatest extravagance?

01:16:55
Speaker 3: Wow?

01:16:56
Speaker 1: Or actually your first big check? What did you get?

01:17:00
Speaker 4: Oh my god, this is so you remember when Nike had this thing online where you could uh design.

01:17:05
Speaker 1: Your own doings, design your own doings?

01:17:12
Speaker 3: You were just that was my first check. I was like, yeah, I'd be sitting like with my feet on.

01:17:17
Speaker 1: Behind everybody like, where'd you get them from? One on one? You know?

01:17:21
Speaker 3: That was what I did? Oh my god.

01:17:24
Speaker 1: When we got our checks, I purchased yeah, eight, that's I didn't let my dad know one. He didn't know we had a record deal. I told you. Dad didn't know about till the second alb until do you Want More came out? He didn't know about. Like I hit it perfectly.

01:17:39
Speaker 2: My cousins gave me away because you know we're in the inquiry, you know whatever. But I purchased seven pairs of Pumas.

01:17:48
Speaker 1: Yo. When you get you remember.

01:17:49
Speaker 2: When new shoes like that feeling I'm having new shoes Like I lived in a might get one pair of shoe a year. For school, you get play shoes and then your school shoes. But there's nothing like a fresh pair of sneakers. So the first thing I did was got seven pairs and you couldn't tell me nothing. But then one day my dad was like, then you have red Puma's on the other day and I was like, yeah, I brought two pairs and I had to hide like I think I hit him in some girl's crib, Like that's yeah, but having having wait.

01:18:26
Speaker 4: What's so funny is when you say that, people think you came up so easy. When you say your dad, this is the biggest memory I have of your dad, me calling your house, him saying he's practicing Click.

01:18:38
Speaker 1: Yes, my dad was. He was Jill Jackson in West Philadelphia.

01:18:43
Speaker 3: So I was like, damn, I don't have a dad, but I'm glad I don't have that one. He just up on a friend. He didn't know what I needed.

01:18:53
Speaker 1: The rules were.

01:18:54
Speaker 2: I better be in this house before the Opra theme comes on, like you know, like the Fresh Prince of Belly thing when Carlton here is you started dancing. That song is so nightmares to me. That part of my therapy of getting over that, Like you don't know what yeah, I mean you you know where we went to school, and you know how long it takes to get to Market Street and the distractions you're in enough gallery or whatever, and then you gotta get to West Philly and then take another bust like I have an hour to get home before like the happiest song in the world is also just do not let that theme come on and your ass is not in this house no more.

01:19:43
Speaker 1: Soul trained for three weeks, like literally and I got soul trained punishments even like yeah, sorry.

01:19:49
Speaker 3: No, I'm cracking because that's a mirror that I know.

01:19:52
Speaker 2: So that's I was like, whoa, all right, So the first half hour of your day when you wake up, what do you do?

01:20:01
Speaker 3: My animals? My dog?

01:20:02
Speaker 1: How many animals do you?

01:20:03
Speaker 3: I only have a dog and a cat. But my dog looks at me like we going out yet? And so I'm like, that's why.

01:20:08
Speaker 1: So they wake you up?

01:20:09
Speaker 4: Yeah, because he wants to. Of course, he wants to go outside. Animals love outside, I mean, but he just gives me that look. And I'm glad I never had kids, because if a human.

01:20:17
Speaker 1: Ever looked at me the way he looks at me, like what kind of dog is?

01:20:20
Speaker 3: He's a big lab mutt mix. But he's like, oh, you still love me, You're gonna take me outside.

01:20:26
Speaker 1: He doesn't jump in the bed, No, it's just like the sad look.

01:20:29
Speaker 3: But then once we get out there, pip, so that also good. That's also good for me. It gets me out of the house first to talk to my old friends.

01:20:36
Speaker 1: I'm in a new relationship with a It comes with a dog.

01:20:40
Speaker 2: I didn't realize that they wake you up when they're hungry, so usually and motherfucker will sit anywhere like on your neck, on your face, which basically tells me like you little late with the see with.

01:20:58
Speaker 3: You can also train them out of that.

01:21:00
Speaker 4: Because my dog, whenever he comes up to me, and I know he's already had everything he needs, I just go. So he thinks that him coming up to me makes me fall asleep at a certain time.

01:21:07
Speaker 1: Of the day. And he respects us.

01:21:09
Speaker 3: He's just like I turned mom off when you do it enough. It's repetition.

01:21:14
Speaker 1: How old is this dog?

01:21:15
Speaker 3: This dog's five?

01:21:17
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, mine's it's hiawa, but it's fifteen. Oh yeah, yeah, the whole old dog trick thing, doesn't you know? Do you believe in past lives?

01:21:29
Speaker 4: That question worries me because I don't want to be reincarnated, so I kind of do, but I'm scared because then that means I gotta come back here again.

01:21:38
Speaker 3: I don't want to. This is how life can be a lot.

01:21:45
Speaker 1: Man not to self removed. But have you ever seen soul?

01:21:47
Speaker 4: No?

01:21:48
Speaker 3: I not, actually never saw them move.

01:21:49
Speaker 2: Okay, so I their their version. I highly recommend, first of all, every Pixar film. It's really for adults.

01:21:58
Speaker 1: It's not for kids.

01:21:59
Speaker 2: I believe that there and that's why I got involved with it. Then that was the seventh draft, Like the first draft.

01:22:05
Speaker 1: Literally, I was like, yo, you guys are going to release this version because it was so mind blowing, how brazen they were about metaphysics, reincarnation, all these things. And in my mind, I'm like, oh, man, like, I gotta think about this movie because I know many a right wing pund and be like, yo, liberal Hollywood's trying to get our kids off of God and into But I know that that version of the film, that's what I believe that the Cycle Life is.

01:22:38
Speaker 3: Now I'm gonna watch it.

01:22:39
Speaker 2: It's a must watch, all right. Can you tell me what is your most overused emoji?

01:22:48
Speaker 3: According to my niece, it's the laughing while.

01:22:51
Speaker 1: Crying sideways or straight.

01:22:55
Speaker 3: See. I always feel like the sideways is trying too hard, like I'm better than the other people. I don't know to use that it means the same thing. Why can't you just use that one?

01:23:05
Speaker 2: But five of those laughing sideway also, that's sort of like, all right, I laughed at your joke and now I'll.

01:23:10
Speaker 1: Leave me alone. Yeah, a scene five of those are Do you have your phone on you?

01:23:17
Speaker 3: Oh it's out there?

01:23:19
Speaker 1: Someone grab No no, no, no no.

01:23:21
Speaker 2: This is hilarious only because, uh, someone taught me this thing where.

01:23:30
Speaker 3: You you can just wear the whole bag.

01:23:32
Speaker 1: So someone taught me this thing that whatever your most used emojis are, that represents where you are in life.

01:23:42
Speaker 3: But I started a new thing. So if you're gonna look at my most used emojis, it's gonna be really weird.

01:23:47
Speaker 1: Because you had a unique response to somebody.

01:23:49
Speaker 4: Because I tell everyone that there's certain emojis that don't get enough love, and.

01:23:53
Speaker 2: You started using Yes, all right, I did feel bad for Okay, so when they did the update with nine new emojis, right, so they updated and added nine new emojis, and one of them seemed really boring. I felt bad for that one, so I started. I did it as a joke, but now I'm using it out of pity. Are we the same person you said that before?

01:24:20
Speaker 4: I'm cracking up because I'm like, if you literally see my emojis, you'll be like, ange, what are these?

01:24:25
Speaker 1: Okay? So, so does the pretzel mean that you missed Philadelphia? Wait?

01:24:31
Speaker 2: I've never seen a person use the pretzel emoji. Yeah, it's literally all right, So this is me analyzing you based on.

01:24:40
Speaker 1: Your rose so everyone knows that the left side is the one that you used the most. All right? Is this like the punch in the face one like that?

01:24:50
Speaker 3: I it's wait, I just knew that one.

01:24:52
Speaker 4: That's the last newsed. That was just to send my cousin something because we go. Is that like a U or I don't even know what that one. I just feel like it's confusion or all right?

01:25:01
Speaker 1: So the heart one is good, the sad one, the shrug all right, shrug one we always use. All right, you're wearing purple? Oh mine is blue? What is all right? So the chicken inside the egg those recently, that's right, we did have eastern what's the pretzel represent That was.

01:25:21
Speaker 4: Just me sending because we know when you have a t when you live across the country from people you love, you run out of things to talk about. So with my cousin, now I just we send emojis back and forth that mean nothing and just the bestel Yeah, like.

01:25:37
Speaker 3: I canna let you see you know what.

01:25:38
Speaker 2: I absolutely believe you when you use it, just non sequitor like random ship.

01:25:44
Speaker 1: Wait a minute, use the cats. No one uses the cat emojis.

01:25:50
Speaker 3: Like the cat faces they doing my sewing forums?

01:25:57
Speaker 1: How many? How many? This is hready my favorite of this series. How many friends do you.

01:26:06
Speaker 3: Have on my sewing for him?

01:26:09
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, how many?

01:26:10
Speaker 3: Take?

01:26:11
Speaker 1: What are you sewing? You mean knitting?

01:26:13
Speaker 3: Well, Crouch, I've really tried. I realized for real, like during the pandemic, is like, I don't have no hobbies.

01:26:20
Speaker 1: So I started to Yeah, what have you learned?

01:26:23
Speaker 3: I learned that I should not try to redom on the floor by myself.

01:26:29
Speaker 1: Okay, No.

01:26:30
Speaker 4: YouTube makes everything look so easy, and I am very frugal. I'm so I'm like peeling stick.

01:26:36
Speaker 1: Oh god, all right, what have you succeeded in as far as YouTube tutorial?

01:26:42
Speaker 3: You know, just sanding down and finishing furniture with a nice difference. I love thrift stores and if there's a chair for five dollars, I'm gonna make it work with a sounder.

01:26:52
Speaker 1: I am addicted to there.

01:26:53
Speaker 2: There's a YouTube show in which they'll take old furniture and make it into new furniture and kind of makes me think I can do that. But then I realized I'm quest love and that's not a good idea. So I don't do that, but someone recently, like this morning, I saw someone take a treasure chest and they turned in like too elegant green, like it almost looked like a Louis Louis Vauton test.

01:27:18
Speaker 1: And so that's what you do.

01:27:20
Speaker 3: That's what I want to do when I retire.

01:27:22
Speaker 4: Like that's oh man, just I swear to god, I could be Laura Ingles. I just I mean, minus a few things.

01:27:29
Speaker 1: But wait, someone just posted on Instagram where if you remember who's Laura Ingles's arch nemesis on the show, Oh my god, I do not the blonde girl that we all have Nelly. Wait, how do you know?

01:27:52
Speaker 5: Wait?

01:27:54
Speaker 1: How old are you? Okay, so your grandma will watch?

01:28:00
Speaker 2: Okay, it's an episode where Nelly was faking an injury so that she didn't have to go to school, and you know everyone's going to school, and she was making Lara do her work for her, like do these hard chores, carry bucket up of water and all.

01:28:17
Speaker 1: These things, do her homework for whatever.

01:28:19
Speaker 2: And one day Laura had left like some sort of item in the house and she like, remember, I gotta go back and go get it. And right as she was walking to the house. She caught like Nelly like celebrating, like literally like.

01:28:37
Speaker 3: Like she's in the.

01:28:39
Speaker 1: Crib, like oh, like all that stuff.

01:28:41
Speaker 2: And Laura got so incensed right that she knocked on the door and she, like Nellie got back into the wheelchair like oh yes, And Laura came in. She's like, oh, you know, just I forgot to take you on your morning walk. And she walked up this big hill and then she just tossed her.

01:28:57
Speaker 3: Over a damn that's not where I was expected as started.

01:29:00
Speaker 2: She tossed her over a mountain and whatever, like and the mom's watching the mom who's equally is evil.

01:29:07
Speaker 1: Okay, I'm sorry this became like two old people talk about I know.

01:29:11
Speaker 3: After the young person in the corner was like, my grandmom like that show.

01:29:17
Speaker 1: Uh do you make up your bed every morning?

01:29:20
Speaker 3: Yes?

01:29:20
Speaker 4: I do, because the dog does jump in and I want him to jump on the top, not on my sheets. Other than that, I never made it before the dog.

01:29:27
Speaker 1: All right, what is your motto? What is your life motto?

01:29:30
Speaker 4: Who?

01:29:32
Speaker 3: God? It's funny because I had literally just written this down because I decided I needed a life motto, and now I can't remember. I swear to God my notes.

01:29:43
Speaker 1: He was like, I need inspiration, something to.

01:29:45
Speaker 3: I just thought, I will crack up if this is at the top of my and watch it be something stupid.

01:29:51
Speaker 1: Note to self, get yourself a life motto.

01:29:54
Speaker 3: No, I'm laughing because this is let's see, No, that ain't God. If I had a life mottol it would.

01:30:02
Speaker 1: Be find a life model that and honestly.

01:30:08
Speaker 3: Be kind, be kind, be kind, be kinder than you think you need to be. Don't take anything personal.

01:30:14
Speaker 1: That's what if you don't authentically feel like being kind.

01:30:17
Speaker 4: You know what I've learned that most well, I mean, I mean if someone's punching you in the face. But yeah, I mean just from going through taking care of my mom and her death and just a bunch of other things, divorced, and you just never know what that person walking down the street is going through. And some of the people I remember most of my life are people who just stopped to give me a smile, or like I could name that teacher right away who bucked me up, but can't name under the other ones. So it's like, I just want to be that person that might say, someone from jumping off a bridge.

01:30:51
Speaker 1: Okay, I totally understand that. What is the best gift that you've ever given?

01:30:59
Speaker 3: The best gift, I would say, taken my taken one day to give mind this is hilarious. I would say, taking my niece to go to the slime Museum in New York, taking a day off from work when I was working on that show, and we went to someplace called the Slime Museum. And it is the most bootleg you can tell.

01:31:18
Speaker 4: Somebody just rented the bottom of this and threw a bunch of slime and a bunch of unhappy workers.

01:31:23
Speaker 1: Like, wait, what is the slime museum?

01:31:25
Speaker 3: That's what they call it.

01:31:27
Speaker 4: It seems like someone just rented a place they knew that kids loved slime. And I mean there was a it was like getting into a club, you know. But I bought VIP tickets for her, so we went past the club. She felt so she got to make her own slime and I got.

01:31:40
Speaker 1: She enjoyed it. THO, yes, yes, it meant the world too. Who is the funniest person that you know?

01:31:47
Speaker 3: Oh god, that I personally know.

01:31:50
Speaker 4: Now, See this is weird because it would be like a tie between Dave Chappelle and a dude who talks to himself on the corner at CRENSHAWL.

01:31:57
Speaker 1: And Oh, I thought you meant the Gus Christ guy.

01:32:00
Speaker 4: But there's just so many people who that's so funny. That's the person I sent the pretzel to. But there's just so many people I find that are funny. They just don't know how to hone it or make it specific enough. They're just funny, funny, funny, funny.

01:32:16
Speaker 2: Okay, I'm not anywhere near like that level of screenwriting whatever, but I am a person that will take notes if someone tells a funny story, are you the person to whom? Like if you're in a group and someone tells the story of like, oh, man, the time that I went skiing and I caught my husband no.

01:32:35
Speaker 1: No, no no, and you're like I'll be right back, and you're like, so all your notes are Yes, you still people's lives.

01:32:42
Speaker 4: That's but that's but it's also I want to punch up people's lives because there's stories you can tell.

01:32:48
Speaker 3: Like my husband will tell a story and I'm like, rap it up.

01:32:53
Speaker 4: It could be so much better if you come up with the setup, get people emotionally involved, joke not you don't.

01:32:57
Speaker 3: He's like but I need to tell the whole truth. The truth's boring.

01:33:05
Speaker 1: You said this, and I god, oh man, all right. So the person I'm seeing now we had our first heart to heart story and she sat down sos, Honey, I want to tell you something you know, And I knew it was serious when the compliments came first.

01:33:26
Speaker 2: The last time this happened to me was Obama, where literally the compliment came first, and then I was like, all right, what did I do? And literally she's like, you got to figure out a way. Like I'm surprised you work at a comedy show and you don't know the art of.

01:33:43
Speaker 1: And I'm like, you don't even write comedy, so like what the hell? Like you criticize me for? But I realized at this very moment, like, wow, man, I could have used Angeline Life to teach me how.

01:33:54
Speaker 3: To My husband would be like, no, you don't. He gets so mad.

01:34:01
Speaker 1: All right. My final question to you, yes, sir, what is the hardest part of your job that no one gets to see or experience that it is?

01:34:12
Speaker 4: Everyone thinks that it's a bunch of people throwing around funny jokes, because again, they didn't show that part on thirty rock because truth is boring. It is a bunch of no's, and we can't say that. And you've offended someone, You're gonna offend this sponsor go back in. Someone's offended. One of the actors are offended because it reminds them of their ex boyfriend, and just the number of people that whole list you see at the end of the show. We have to accommodate what everyone will and won't do, you know.

01:34:39
Speaker 1: So we'll even come up with that edging expectations.

01:34:42
Speaker 3: No, we don't have the set design for that. So it's a lot of just or we don't have enough days. It's a lot of just sitting there like everything we built just burnt to the ground and we have to shoot tomorrow.

01:34:51
Speaker 1: You know. It's a lot of So is there an actual scientific formula to a joke?

01:34:59
Speaker 2: Like Chappelle did a thing where he's like, the joke starts with the punchline. He has a whole bunch of punchs and this is real. He has a whole a jar or whatever with punchlines written, and it's his job to figure out what the setup is that will make that punchline funnier.

01:35:14
Speaker 4: See, I think for him that's true because he's always Dave Chappelle and so that's where he thinks of a place of jokes. But with characters, it's like, I need to think what this character really do, and so I need to think like five different.

01:35:27
Speaker 3: People, you know. So it's keeping it so people people online love to say, you.

01:35:32
Speaker 4: Know, that's not what that character would really do and did they have any black writers in the room, you know, or something like that. So it's making sure that you keep all these voices in your head consistent and going with what the audience will recognize from them, even if the joke is easier that you want to go for.

01:35:47
Speaker 2: Okay, So I grew up around a bunch of old people, so I'm still using like I'm a jazz person, so I still call people cats and men that's hip or you know, that's killing dog or whatever, but that's not the language of Now. I'll give Spike Lee a legendary past, but like we're kind of past the the hip hop jargon of the truth or yes, you know whatever. But in Spike's world, okay, it's through his lens. But do you find pressure, Like how often are you on Urban Dictionary?

01:36:25
Speaker 4: Here's the thing, though, one, there's always going to be a younger person in the room to correct you, but also spending time with the young people in my family, Like my niece just lectured me about saying the word dope and don't say skibbity anymore.

01:36:40
Speaker 3: That's totally yeah. But then it's funny because most of the words that they use are our words. She was like, yeah, you don't know what clock means? Yes, I do.

01:36:50
Speaker 1: They're bringing that back, okay.

01:36:52
Speaker 3: Yeah, So talking to her.

01:36:53
Speaker 4: She just at that age where she just puts the FaceTime down forgets that I'm even there. He doesn't go about her day, but then she'll chime in when she remember there.

01:37:00
Speaker 2: So you literally like do time with younger people, just didn't see what their language is.

01:37:05
Speaker 1: Yeah, ah, man, I want.

01:37:07
Speaker 3: To be that person, the one that's just like, see, I'm.

01:37:10
Speaker 2: That way with music and it. One time it bit me in the ass. I did one bar mitzvah one you're already laughing at the points line. I didn't even get to it. No, someone hired me for a bar mitzvah and I made the mistake. Because I work at thirty Rock. There's a whole bunch of interns so I was like, oh, easy, hey, what was you listening at when you was like, you know, because they're already nineteen twenty twenty one, whatever, Yo, what was you listening at?

01:37:37
Speaker 1: Fifteen?

01:37:37
Speaker 3: Oh?

01:37:37
Speaker 1: I was listening to d D Da Da Da Da Da. So I had this list already, you know, Taylor Swift thirty seconds to Mars Jonas Brothers.

01:37:45
Speaker 2: I had the zone and I arrived to the spot and it's a black bar mitzvah, and the look a tear I had when I walked in and it was like hood like right, And I was like wait, I said, apartments for right, and she's said, oh wait, you didn't know that my husband played.

01:38:04
Speaker 1: For the Denver Nuggets. I'm dead And I was like, no, I didn't. And his side of the family was there. And that's the only time where I stalled, like I needed an extra hour just to find internet and download clean versions of hip hop stuff that I didn't have was live. Well it was.

01:38:26
Speaker 2: But when you're that person, yes, yes, then you know I'm on wrap caviar looking up like what are the kids listening to?

01:38:37
Speaker 3: Wait?

01:38:37
Speaker 4: You just reminded me of a story because whenever people ask me about like groups and stuff. The roots is the first one that comes to my head, and I remember saying this recently and they were like, no, someone neurrant.

01:38:51
Speaker 1: Yeah, even I would take myself out of that, all right. My final question is how cathartic and healing was it to I know where the concept came from, but when did you start it and why was it necessary for you to write this book.

01:39:09
Speaker 4: I'll say I've heard authors say that writing you know about the hardest times of their life is cathartic and healing, and I'm like, what the fuck drugs.

01:39:17
Speaker 3: Are you on? Because for me it was no. It was crying and then like trying to make sure I look like my husband. We were newly married. He's like, what is this. I'm like, I'm a writer, but it was just no.

01:39:32
Speaker 4: It was really hard because looking back at fifteen years, I'm also closer to my mother's age when she passed, and I see things why she did a lot of the things, and not having her to ask questions of and stuff like that. But then once I got to the jokes, I was like, all right, who I like this part, but yeah, the story, the actual story.

01:39:53
Speaker 3: Oh god, I was like, not for this amount of money, if I were do this again, someone punched me in a face. Don't nobody read no more?

01:40:00
Speaker 1: Like, yes they do.

01:40:02
Speaker 3: Wait, this is like every time I talk to some Okay, if they read, why they got to tell you. I don't usually read, but I'll pick up your book.

01:40:11
Speaker 1: Even I've heard that a few times. I've heard that a lot of times.

01:40:14
Speaker 3: But yeah, apparently, I mean, I thought it was coming back. And I've never stopped reading.

01:40:18
Speaker 4: But there's just you asked some get on a dating app and ask him, man, how the last time he read a book.

01:40:24
Speaker 3: It's the most sad thing.

01:40:26
Speaker 1: I Well, see, I thought everyone during the pandemic matters. I've read more books post pandemic, Like I felt bad that as an author, as a person that has New York Times bestsellers. Maybe I was on one two books a year.

01:40:43
Speaker 2: Now I'll be done a book in like five weeks, and if I really love it, I might get done through it.

01:40:48
Speaker 1: Like I've read more books in my life in the last like five six years. Ange, I thank you so much for this conversation.

01:40:56
Speaker 3: Oh this was awesome.

01:40:56
Speaker 1: Thank you. I enjoyed its great Angela Thistle on the Quest Loft Show. Please purchase a book can I keep this polease? Yes? This is beautiful.

01:41:16
Speaker 2: Quest Left Show is hosted by Me Mirror, Quest Loft Thompson. The executive producers are Sean g Brian Calhoun and Me. Produced by Brittany Benjamin and Jacob Pain. Produced for iHeart by Noel Brown, Edited by Alex Conroy. iHeart Video support by Mark Canton, Logos Graphics and animation by Nick Bloe. Additional support by Lance Coleman. Special thanks to Kathy Wrong, Special thanks.

01:41:51
Speaker 1: To Sugar Steve Mandelo.

01:41:54
Speaker 2: Please subscribe, break review, and share the Quest Love Show wherever you stream your podcast. Make sure you follow us on socials That's at QLs. Check out hundreds and hundreds of QLs episodes, including the Quest Love Supreme Shows and our podcast archives.

01:42:14
Speaker 1: Quest Love Show is the production of iHeartRadio.