Speaker 1: Are you leaving?
Speaker 2: I you wanna way back home?
Speaker 3: Either way, we want to be there.
Speaker 1: Doesn't matter how much baggage you claim.
Speaker 4: And give us time and a terminol and gay.
Speaker 2: We want to send you off in style.
Speaker 1: We wanna welcome you back home.
Speaker 4: Tell us all about it.
Speaker 1: We scared her? Was it fine?
Speaker 4: Malcorn?
Speaker 2: Do you need to ride? Do you need to ride?
Speaker 1: Do you need to ride? Do you need to ride?
Speaker 5: Do you need to ride? Do your need you ride?
Speaker 2: Ride with Karen and Chris? Welcome to Do you need
Speaker 2: to ride?
Speaker 4: This is Chris Fairbanks and this is Karen Kilgaroff.
Speaker 2: I am got a new record player. Did I tell you.
Speaker 1: That you didn't? And I'd love to hear about it.
Speaker 3: Well, it's uh, you know, it's a record player. It's decent,
Speaker 3: it sounds good, but it also plays cassette tapes and CDs,
Speaker 3: and so I'm listening to all my old CDs and
Speaker 3: I put in I was really excited to find this
Speaker 3: old hip hop CD Ghetto Boys, and then I it's
Speaker 3: it's edited Tipper Gore, Oh, who was solely responsible for
Speaker 3: the parental guidance thing that was like her mission, And I.
Speaker 2: Looked it up. Did you know she was like a
Speaker 2: rock drummer and a band called the wild Cats. Yes,
Speaker 2: I just was looking into it.
Speaker 3: They sounded like early Go Gos before our lips are field.
Speaker 2: She had a passion for rock music, but she hated metal.
Speaker 4: You know what, that makes perfect sense. She like Hitler
Speaker 4: being the heartbroken painter that he was. Tipper Gore was
Speaker 4: a frustrated drummer artist, a drummer.
Speaker 3: That's hilarious, continue to be. She played with Willie Nelson.
Speaker 3: She played on a tour with Grateful Dead.
Speaker 1: Well no no, no.
Speaker 4: No, someone made up a fake Wikipedia page. You know
Speaker 4: she's away. There's photos, she's got a headset.
Speaker 3: She started drumming more when her and what's his global
Speaker 3: warming guy split up in otell Al.
Speaker 2: I remember him, of course. I think he's I.
Speaker 4: Think we'll never forget al Gore, one of the more
Speaker 4: boring politicians of our time.
Speaker 3: If he just started talking about the weather when he's
Speaker 3: running against Bush, that it's like, maybe he is interesting anyway.
Speaker 3: Maybe now the Wildcats, there's no way that they were
Speaker 3: in a controversial high school rock band.
Speaker 2: She at least spun the sticks.
Speaker 4: And I bet you know what it's just like when
Speaker 4: like girls that were like true gutter punk's slash drug addicts.
Speaker 4: And when I went to high school in the eighties,
Speaker 4: those girls always ended up born again Christian always, but
Speaker 4: it took like it took like four to seven years
Speaker 4: after high school.
Speaker 1: But they always.
Speaker 4: Found the Lord and wore like, you know, yeah, those
Speaker 4: dresses that were kinda like jeans but a dress.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, a long denim waterproof skirt first snow skiing
Speaker 3: in Sometimes there's a girl I went to college with
Speaker 3: that big, long, perfectly cylindrical, clean looking white dreadlocks.
Speaker 2: And then the next time I.
Speaker 3: Saw pink, pink, you know, polo dress, like a tennis dress. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and said, good golly and things like that. It's unbelievable.
Speaker 1: She was no longer irie. Is that what you're telling?
Speaker 3: She used to be so rary, she had no island vibes.
Speaker 4: And then you know, she said, I feel like I'm
Speaker 4: okay with people going ahead and shaving off blonde dreadlocks.
Speaker 1: That's okay.
Speaker 2: You know what. I wasn't sad to see them go.
Speaker 2: It was her island lifestyle that I missed.
Speaker 4: It was those island vibes that you wanted back so badly.
Speaker 3: What if Tipper Gore is like getting older, and she
Speaker 3: kind of tourett'singly blurts out hardcore rap lyrics. She's in
Speaker 3: a rocking chair and she has a facial tick and
Speaker 3: she's like a murder contest. You know, I'll win it
Speaker 3: every male boxer. I'll be ahead with a knife in it.
Speaker 3: It's a ghetto boy. That's an actual lyric I used
Speaker 3: to rap about murder. I bet she secretly likes it.
Speaker 5: Is my point.
Speaker 4: She must because she had to review all those lyrics.
Speaker 4: That was her job before she put that sticker on
Speaker 4: that CD.
Speaker 3: You know, she was like, well this is catchy as hell,
Speaker 3: what a hook. But I got to put my stamp
Speaker 3: of disapproval.
Speaker 1: But something in.
Speaker 2: Me only to be combatd by.
Speaker 3: I also found Tom Morello's grandma is a ninety seven
Speaker 3: year old advocate for not censoring music.
Speaker 2: Really or as of the writing of an article, she
Speaker 2: might no longer be with us.
Speaker 4: Well, but in her final days she will fight yes
Speaker 4: for freedom.
Speaker 2: For her life. I mean, we all do. No one
Speaker 2: wants to die.
Speaker 1: We're all doing it right now, we are are we?
Speaker 5: Yes?
Speaker 2: Anyway? Time it is time. I just had to share
Speaker 2: that Tipper Gore was a rock star.
Speaker 4: I can't believe it, and I think you've been scammed.
Speaker 4: You know, the internet is a dangerous place.
Speaker 3: This is the skunk butts on the wall in a
Speaker 3: bar of music, and I'm not making it up.
Speaker 1: Okay, we'll see, fine.
Speaker 2: We'll see. Very excited for our guest today, me.
Speaker 4: Too easy, a classic, one of the greats doing it
Speaker 4: on the daily.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 4: Oh, he plays clubs and colleges all over this whole.
Speaker 1: Country of ours.
Speaker 5: Never played a college, mostly college.
Speaker 1: Steve not yet, never played to college.
Speaker 4: You might know him from the Chatterbox comedy show down there.
Speaker 2: In what a show with possibly.
Speaker 1: Coda in playing Covina, just.
Speaker 5: East of West Covina.
Speaker 1: Please welcome, ladies and gentlemen, Steve Hernandez.
Speaker 5: Still great to be here. How are you too?
Speaker 2: Terrific?
Speaker 1: Real good? Yeah, man, Steve.
Speaker 4: Let me just kick this off by saying, you're truly
Speaker 4: one of my favorite voices on Twitter. You're one of
Speaker 4: the only reasons I still read Twitter. I'm not really
Speaker 4: on it that much anymore, but just your pithy little
Speaker 4: statements all day long are just I really enjoy it
Speaker 4: because it's very it's sardonic, but then sometimes you're being
Speaker 4: very sincere but you're very funny.
Speaker 5: That's very from coming from the king. That's a high praise.
Speaker 5: So thank you so much. Yes, yeah, I did notice.
Speaker 5: I was thinking about you the other day. I was like, Oh,
Speaker 5: they're not tweeting as much as they used to. So no,
Speaker 5: you probably made a choice for your mental health, right.
Speaker 4: Right, I mean that's what we have to do sometimes
Speaker 4: it's not the safest place in the world to be.
Speaker 4: And also I think I've been doing it for so
Speaker 4: long that I've especially in quarantine, it started feeling like
Speaker 4: I was just tweeting one of the fifteen tweets that
Speaker 4: I tweet. So it's literally like, you know, it's just
Speaker 4: not that fun or interesting. I don't feel like I'm
Speaker 4: discovering new ideas.
Speaker 2: Yeah I'm not.
Speaker 4: I have.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I have some like that that I tweet once
Speaker 5: a year. There's a couple that I and then some
Speaker 5: people catch me. Sometimes I do it on purpose to
Speaker 5: make myself laugh.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Do you ever actually search for your first tweets in
Speaker 3: like twenty twelve and it's like, that was great, I
Speaker 3: got four likes because four people fall I'm really I'm
Speaker 3: reading launching this one.
Speaker 2: I do it all the time.
Speaker 5: I've done that exactly. But I do know sometimes, like
Speaker 5: I'm sure I've said this before, but my numbers keep growing. Man,
Speaker 5: I am like I'm you know, with Twitter, I'm like
Speaker 5: scraping guys. I'm like getting like a little I just
Speaker 5: passed ten k, and I'm telling you I fought hard
Speaker 5: for that ten k, like that in the time, grinding, Yeah,
Speaker 5: like grinding to get that ten k. And now that
Speaker 5: I've got ten k, I feel good. I don't need
Speaker 5: any more than that.
Speaker 4: But well, now the momentum will build and then suddenly
Speaker 4: you're gonna be like fifteen twenty five.
Speaker 1: It'll just it's you're rolling downhill at this point.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but it's like turn in forty. It's once you
Speaker 3: get that actual k there. Yeah, it's visually so it's
Speaker 3: just it's beautiful to see.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think I'm I'm acceptable to people now, you know.
Speaker 5: I I started stand up here in LA and I
Speaker 5: was very bad at first, but I'm better now. And
Speaker 5: in the alternative space, the new the second round of
Speaker 5: alternative comedy. Karen, you're part of the first one, but
Speaker 5: I'm part of the Dave the children of Dave Ross
Speaker 5: and holy fuck. But yeah, I've been around long enough,
Speaker 5: and sometimes people won't follow me back on things, and
Speaker 5: I'm just like, well, I'm not going anywhere. I'm gonna
Speaker 5: keep getting like rising. My phoenix will continue to rise.
Speaker 5: And then at one point, sir, you will be forced
Speaker 5: to follow me back professionally or face dire consequences.
Speaker 1: It would be in your best inter Yeah him back.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, because people sometimes, don't you know, I've I've
Speaker 5: upset a few people. I'm telling you, running one of
Speaker 5: the hottest shows in Los Angeles. That's not that's not
Speaker 5: in Los Angeles, is uh? And I have a very
Speaker 5: strong he. I mean, I have other producers Lisa Shanu,
Speaker 5: my wife, Julie Lokan, and Scott Leres. But I have
Speaker 5: been booking that thing and there's just some people I
Speaker 5: won't book. I bartend there. I've bartended there for fourteen years.
Speaker 5: I've got to look these people in the face. I
Speaker 5: don't care what kind of heat you got out here
Speaker 5: in LA. If you're not talking, if you're not talking
Speaker 5: to working class Mexican and white people, I don't know
Speaker 5: what the fuck to tell you. Okay, yeah, get out.
Speaker 4: You might as well get out now if you can't.
Speaker 4: If you can't lessen yourself quote unquote wait, speaking of
Speaker 4: being bad when you first started stand up, which we
Speaker 4: all were, by the bye, can we hear some of
Speaker 4: the early Steve Hernandez material that we would have been
Speaker 4: able to hear.
Speaker 2: It's not just premises, no full joke fu.
Speaker 5: All I can remember kind of uh is I think
Speaker 5: the first time I kind of cracked the alt scene
Speaker 5: because I was, you know, you start off and you're
Speaker 5: saying things that are like you don't realize that are
Speaker 5: shitty towards women and stuff like that. Because I'm from
Speaker 5: West Covina. The first thing, the first open like I did,
Speaker 5: was that Casey's downtown and I remember Dave was there,
Speaker 5: Jeff Watt and Iver, Alan Strick and Williams, and I
Speaker 5: remember I got up. I did the like rookie mistake
Speaker 5: of getting up and like talking shit about someone that's
Speaker 5: beloved to the community and they're like, who the fuck
Speaker 5: is this fat Mexican guy. But I remember Alan Strickle, Williams.
Speaker 5: Alan was there and I didn't know anybody, and I said, hey, come,
Speaker 5: nobody told me Vampire Weekend was going to be here, Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 5: and nobody laughed, you know, and I just felt like
Speaker 5: a moron. I don't, Yeah, I don't. I can't remember.
Speaker 5: I will tell you that I did try to do.
Speaker 5: I am queer and I have some pretty killer queer
Speaker 5: material now, but I tried to do that stuff from
Speaker 5: the top, and it took a long time to make
Speaker 5: that stuff fly, and so I was just saying like
Speaker 5: crazy shit up to I was like people were avoiding me.
Speaker 5: Like that kind of opened my comedian where you're like,
Speaker 5: you know, I was talking about polyamory and group sex
Speaker 5: and sucking dick like just like in not the right
Speaker 5: way for these people, and so they're just like, God, damn,
Speaker 5: keep that guy away.
Speaker 2: Then you were doing that In Covina, Central Covena.
Speaker 5: I started the Chatterbox. It was a monthly the first
Speaker 5: year it's been going on to twenty ten. That's when
Speaker 5: I started and monthly. Yeah, right away I started to
Speaker 5: do that stuff. And I'm very grateful towards the chatter Rocks, because,
Speaker 5: like I said, I was doing these jokes for like
Speaker 5: regular like Mexican and Filipino and white people, and so
Speaker 5: they were not having it, and so I had to
Speaker 5: figure out how to do it to them. And so
Speaker 5: I'm basically able to come to LA and like kind
Speaker 5: of work this stuff out to take it back to Covina,
Speaker 5: which is basically Middle America, and get away with doing
Speaker 5: gay shit for people that hate gay people.
Speaker 4: I mean, I was there one night when Michelle Bullin
Speaker 4: was in town and she was doing set and I
Speaker 4: was watching that and it that club or the bar
Speaker 4: reminds me because there are people in that audience that
Speaker 4: are like, it's like they decided to stay, but they
Speaker 4: did not come for comedy.
Speaker 1: Is the vibe? It might be not true. So there
Speaker 1: was like there was a there was a real, uh
Speaker 1: host minorly hostile vibe.
Speaker 4: There were some people like kind of talking full voice,
Speaker 4: but they were sitting close to the stage. There was
Speaker 4: like a lot of that kind of stuff that I think, yeah,
Speaker 4: in in like your classic LA Place's meltdown or wherever
Speaker 4: where people are like we're super fans and the comedy
Speaker 4: nerds as they'd call themselves, you really it was much
Speaker 4: more of a challenge. Like I was in the back
Speaker 4: kind of nervous, Like this reminds me of hideous clubs
Speaker 4: in the nineties that I'd have to play where you
Speaker 4: basically had to fight for your life while trying to
Speaker 4: seem cash like the worst, the worst feeling, and everybody
Speaker 4: was powering through.
Speaker 1: But they were like, I think someone got kicked out.
Speaker 5: I have I'm going to die kicking someone out of
Speaker 5: that place. I swear to you. I've gotten in almost
Speaker 5: like multiple fights. I've got many threats of guns being
Speaker 5: pulled on me. I've never seen. It's Covina. It's very
Speaker 5: dangerous though, on Covina. To be a Mexican. I'm third general,
Speaker 5: and so we get a lot of like our parents
Speaker 5: who grew up in La Proper moved their kids out
Speaker 5: of bad neighborhoods to West Covina, Covena, and so you
Speaker 5: get like a second and third generation which they don't
Speaker 5: feel like they're as manly as their dad, so they
Speaker 5: almost pop off even more. Like I mean, there's been
Speaker 5: a couple of shootings there in the in the thirteen
Speaker 5: or fourteen years i've been there.
Speaker 3: And then in the venue outside sure, sure, in the
Speaker 3: parking lot.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but yeah, but I mean, you know people bullets
Speaker 5: go through walls, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they do famously.
Speaker 5: Yeah yeah, yeah, So there's it's you've got this kind
Speaker 5: of mentality like that, and yeah, it's really not like
Speaker 5: that anymore. But it is. But it is sometimes though too,
Speaker 5: and it is definitely they're not gonna it's with that
Speaker 5: kind of energy. Also, you can get like nothing like
Speaker 5: in Los Angeles. You can get the room rolling in
Speaker 5: a way with the energy because these are just regular
Speaker 5: people and they don't give a fuck in their drunk.
Speaker 5: You could get that room rolling in a way that
Speaker 5: you cannot get anywhere in Los Angeles.
Speaker 2: And it's it's important.
Speaker 3: I felt like when I was getting ready to do
Speaker 3: Conan or some set where you know, normal folks are
Speaker 3: going to watch it.
Speaker 2: Middle America is going to watch it.
Speaker 3: You have to test out those sets in the closest
Speaker 3: you can find to a regular audience, non La audience.
Speaker 3: All I hear is great things about Chatterbox.
Speaker 5: I've never done it.
Speaker 3: I think I've been booked a couple of times since
Speaker 3: for some reason I couldn't go or I messed up.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you always have these young girlfriends and they like
Speaker 5: spin you out.
Speaker 2: And that's another thing I mention, not anymore.
Speaker 3: That's maybe seven years ago, but around that time I
Speaker 3: had a girlfriend that we were at a car dealership.
Speaker 2: I may have told you this.
Speaker 3: We went all the way to West Covina like Subaru, and.
Speaker 2: She was on the phone with her dad who used
Speaker 2: to sell Subaru's.
Speaker 3: So they were getting all these options, and then comedy
Speaker 3: came up just conversationally, and the guy was like, Oh,
Speaker 3: do you ever go to Chatterbox? He said he was
Speaker 3: there every week, so there's no way you wouldn't see
Speaker 3: this guy and know him. And I think she got
Speaker 3: free tinted windows after.
Speaker 2: That, all these options.
Speaker 3: He loved comedy and he said he looked forward to
Speaker 3: it every week. So I should have got the guy's
Speaker 3: name or his card, because I wanted to tell you
Speaker 3: for years.
Speaker 5: But you know, we have a few pretty big car
Speaker 5: dealership guys that are big fans. It could be a Hondai,
Speaker 5: it could be a Subaru. I've got a Toyota guy
Speaker 5: that absolutely loves the chatterbox. But yeah, that's the other
Speaker 5: thing I think that people forget. I think there's like
Speaker 5: chatterboxes all over the country now. But the Internet has
Speaker 5: absolutely changed everything. And so I worked there. I bartend
Speaker 5: in Covina three nights a week, two nights a week
Speaker 5: for thirteen years, but I picked up a third night
Speaker 5: in my fourteenth year. Absolutely absolutely just changed my life.
Speaker 5: So because I've make I make fifty percent more money
Speaker 5: than I've made for the thirteen years now, and so
Speaker 5: I'm rich. And if I were to tell you what
Speaker 5: I think, it's rich, it's just straight up embarrasscene. But
Speaker 5: but I don't have any kids. I'm doing great, man,
Speaker 5: I got a beautiful white wife. Everything's going good for me.
Speaker 5: But there are these you know, I talked to working
Speaker 5: class people, tattoo artists, guys that work at Costco and
Speaker 5: stuff all the time. But because of Netflix and the
Speaker 5: Internet and everything, you've got people that you would not
Speaker 5: like think watching like the craziest shit, watching Tim Robinson
Speaker 5: and watching all this stuff, and they just cholos and
Speaker 5: they just know about this stuff. And so yeah, I
Speaker 5: think that, yeah, that brings just a wildness to the
Speaker 5: whole thing too. But yeah, I'm very proud of what
Speaker 5: we've built out there. And now I'm raising up a
Speaker 5: young Latino army too to come and take Hollywood down.
Speaker 5: So that's why. Yeah, these motherfuckers aren't giving us anything,
Speaker 5: so we're gonna have to fight for it. Tang style.
Speaker 3: I'd love to make it back to their show at
Speaker 3: the peak of that transition.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, Well, again. Bring you, Chris. You have that
Speaker 5: vibe to you know, there's a certain kind of white
Speaker 5: guy that Mexicans love, and you have that vibe. We
Speaker 5: felt that way about Paul Walker as well. Big hit,
Speaker 5: big hit to the community, big hit to the community
Speaker 5: when he passed.
Speaker 3: Yeah you, because I always describe myself, you know, in
Speaker 3: bios as every as a fast and furious type. So
Speaker 3: it's good to finally hear it from one other person.
Speaker 3: Thank you, thank you, thank you very much. I got
Speaker 3: I love the I love that the idea of a
Speaker 3: bunch of well known local car dealers at your shows,
Speaker 3: because I did the same mistake you said with Alan
Speaker 3: Strickland Williams where I was in uh, North Carolina and
Speaker 3: there was a guy with long, illustrious white hair, like
Speaker 3: the same hair. Oh, it just looked like he was
Speaker 3: an ex rock star, and I made some comment I
Speaker 3: don't even remember what it was, but the whole crowd
Speaker 3: turned on me because he's on commercials every day, the
Speaker 3: Toyota guy, and they love it.
Speaker 2: I love it.
Speaker 3: He gave everyone a heal on a Sienna and yeah,
Speaker 3: I yeah, don't.
Speaker 2: I can't. You can't ever riff in a room of strangers.
Speaker 5: I guess I'm so happy to be here with people
Speaker 5: my own age. It's grateful. You you mentioned I am
Speaker 5: a foot soldier. I'm out at the MIC's. I'm rocking
Speaker 5: these shows every day, and it gets very sad, and
Speaker 5: especially you know, I've been bartending this long, and so
Speaker 5: there's twenty two year olds that come in. I'm forty
Speaker 5: three years old. There's twenty two year olds that come in,
Speaker 5: and I'm older than their parents. Oh wow, I met
Speaker 5: I met a Trinity the other day and I'm like,
Speaker 5: it's after the Matrix, isn't it. And She's like, yes,
Speaker 5: oh wow, absolutely after the matrixcept that's amazing.
Speaker 1: You know what's funny.
Speaker 4: I tried to go back, and Chris and I've talked
Speaker 4: about this a bunch of times. I tried to go
Speaker 4: back and start doing stand up again, like I think
Speaker 4: it was you will obviously pre COVID, but just before,
Speaker 4: like a year before, and that was the main thing.
Speaker 1: I just I love the people.
Speaker 4: You know, there's so many great human beings that are
Speaker 4: that are the younger generation your you know, your group
Speaker 4: that I adore. But I just truly stand up there
Speaker 4: and go I don't I don't relate to you. I
Speaker 4: don't play your video games. I don't give a fuck
Speaker 4: about the things that I know really matter to you,
Speaker 4: like in this kind of cultural cultural age way. And
Speaker 4: then I was just like, and stand up comedy is
Speaker 4: a young person's game. It's just like you do have
Speaker 4: to be there, kind of putting in night after night.
Speaker 4: And it's just like, and I'm a lazy older person that, like,
Speaker 4: you know, I love it. I love it in a way,
Speaker 4: but then I don't think I love it enough to
Speaker 4: be the oldest person in the building.
Speaker 5: Uh, Chris, what do you have to say about that?
Speaker 2: It's so well, I'm just thinking about being on the road.
Speaker 3: It's uh, I'm fine that stand up has been easier
Speaker 3: for me now than I'm not the young guy that
Speaker 3: was always in here.
Speaker 2: I was always nervous. It's part of my nature.
Speaker 3: I'm still a nervous, stammering weirdo, but I'm more confident now.
Speaker 3: And I am the age of if you go to
Speaker 3: some random city and work a comedy club, they're all
Speaker 3: most audiences aren't really that as young as audiences here
Speaker 3: there They're going to be couples in their forties and
Speaker 3: up and I find that.
Speaker 2: I relate to them now or they like me more
Speaker 2: now that i'm their age.
Speaker 3: And that's just something that I had no control over,
Speaker 3: you know, the earth spinning and time being a concept.
Speaker 2: Calendars can't control it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but yeah, in in Los Angeles when I do
Speaker 3: these shows, the one down my Street, I just did
Speaker 3: the you know, the good Heroin show. Everyone was young.
Speaker 3: The audience was so young. So young they're able to
Speaker 3: like sit cross legged on the cement. That was the
Speaker 3: like you don't even need a chair, No, my bones
Speaker 3: still bend. There was I mean, I've never been able
Speaker 3: to it on the ground. That's just a side note.
Speaker 3: But yeah, everyone was so young that I did feel
Speaker 3: a little weird, like I'm like, well, Dave Ross is here. No,
Speaker 3: I'm more than ten years older than Dave. Like it
Speaker 3: never used to bother me, and now it's starting. It's
Speaker 3: just a voice in my head. But I'm trying to
Speaker 3: let it mean nothing because there's still you know Eddie Pepatone.
Speaker 5: Yeah and yeah, so it's still it's the voice your
Speaker 5: heads that you're like fighting against the industry to like
Speaker 5: whatever the industry, because you know, that's not why you
Speaker 5: started doing this. Anyways. No, it's the same voice that's
Speaker 5: talking about your age and that way to compare yourself
Speaker 5: to Yeah, people, that is it's all disgusting. It's very gross.
Speaker 3: It is disgusting, and it's something I never even thought
Speaker 3: of for a second before I moved here.
Speaker 2: I was also a young person.
Speaker 5: I had neither until the pandemic. I think the pandemic
Speaker 5: really freaked me out me two way where yeah, where
Speaker 5: I just never compare myself. I was always saying, I'm
Speaker 5: happy I have what I need today. I'm becoming a
Speaker 5: better man, a better person all the time. That's very
Speaker 5: important to me as well. And that pandemic really just
Speaker 5: fucking threw me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we all hovered above our bodies and looked at
Speaker 3: ourselves sleeping.
Speaker 4: And judged sleeping in the afternoon. Yeah, there's nothing else
Speaker 4: to do.
Speaker 3: Oh man, and I got did you go? I keep
Speaker 3: getting blinder and blinder. There's just a lot of stuff
Speaker 3: that hit.
Speaker 5: I did have to get my first pair of readers
Speaker 5: in the pandemic.
Speaker 2: Oh you mean these things?
Speaker 5: Yeah, these are too.
Speaker 3: These are in case I need to read something further
Speaker 3: than arm's length.
Speaker 2: And these are up close phone glasses.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Karen you don't need to do it. It's just
Speaker 5: for losers. And I mean, I really do believe. I
Speaker 5: was like, this is the stupidest, dumbest thing in the world.
Speaker 5: It's so dumb you're successful. As soon as I get
Speaker 5: any kind of success, I'm off the internet. I'm gonna
Speaker 5: I'm gonna stop doing all the my so I can't wait.
Speaker 4: You will get there. You will get there. You know
Speaker 4: what it is, You're right there. I feel like the
Speaker 4: drive to come up, Like I really always loved being
Speaker 4: an underdog and was for you know, thirty years or whatever.
Speaker 4: So that kind of thing of like fuck you, I'll
Speaker 4: show you, or I'll be in this room and then
Speaker 4: you won't expect I'll be the comic that whatever.
Speaker 1: Like all of that.
Speaker 4: It's like if you don't have enough of that, you know,
Speaker 4: for me, it was always bitterness or it was always
Speaker 4: like kind of I hadn't gotten I hadn't convinced enough
Speaker 4: people yet or something. And once that is gone, then
Speaker 4: then I am left. That took up so much of
Speaker 4: my brain. If that's gone there, then it's just weird. Insecurity,
Speaker 4: where you can it's that thing if you catch eyes
Speaker 4: with one person in the audience and then you'd start
Speaker 4: projecting all your weird psychosis on them or something, or like,
Speaker 4: you know, god forbid you see like a blonde man
Speaker 4: not smiling. That's my keast favorite thing, yea doing stand
Speaker 4: up comedies like oh I fucking hate.
Speaker 1: You and your everything. I stand up.
Speaker 2: I saw that toyotas fuck you dude.
Speaker 4: But yeah, I think as much as I love the
Speaker 4: fact that I have done it and maybe could do it,
Speaker 4: it just does feel like it's like, let the other
Speaker 4: ones who really are putting their heart and soulo out
Speaker 4: there do it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, the only way I'm like still going, even though,
Speaker 5: like I said, I have a very good time doing it,
Speaker 5: but I am branching out and doing a bunch of
Speaker 5: other things too. But is I swear? I was like,
Speaker 5: I've got like ten twelve Latino comics out of the
Speaker 5: Chatterbox where I started a monthly out here, just to
Speaker 5: start a pipeline from the Chatterbox out to la I've
Speaker 5: got a bigger idea for that in the fall. But
Speaker 5: to me, I'm just like, well, even if it doesn't
Speaker 5: happen for me, these guys are hungry and smart enough.
Speaker 5: And I mean when I first started doing comedy here
Speaker 5: in La There was only one other Latina, know, alternative comic,
Speaker 5: John Vargas, who lived with Canaan.
Speaker 2: Yeah, where's John? I love love that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, he just stopped doing it, you know he did.
Speaker 5: There was right decision and.
Speaker 4: He quit because I think he got a job as
Speaker 4: a sound guy somewhere and he was doing a lot
Speaker 4: of sound stuff for a while.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, I mean how long can you be poor for?
Speaker 5: Like how long can you just grind it out and
Speaker 5: be poor for?
Speaker 3: This podcast was started on a Zoom six that I
Speaker 3: purchased from Sammy's cameras from Argus's. Yeah, he told me
Speaker 3: what I needed to get and everything. He is a
Speaker 3: sound savvy son of a gun.
Speaker 1: And he also.
Speaker 4: Not in a style like not in a phony La
Speaker 4: style way dressed super Yeah, he's straight up but like yeah,
Speaker 4: like like alo but not a yeah yeah yeah button
Speaker 4: to the top. That's that was always my favorite. I
Speaker 4: was like, oh, it's like he's the real deal, you know.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, he was not refried comedy. That's what we're
Speaker 5: always battling against. His Latinos with this like a George
Speaker 5: Lopez kind of like you know how we are like
Speaker 5: that kind of a thing. So I've got ten or
Speaker 5: twelve young younger comics that I think have what it
Speaker 5: takes to be mainstream. And then you have Chris Astrata,
Speaker 5: you have Chris Garcia, you have Marcella. You got a
Speaker 5: bunch of people that in the next five years we're
Speaker 5: going to crack. We've never been in the conversation before,
Speaker 5: but it's like, well, I've got to do my best
Speaker 5: to help these young guys crack into it.
Speaker 1: Then that's brilliant.
Speaker 4: Well also because that's it's like you just need to
Speaker 4: see one person that you think you relate to or
Speaker 4: that can somehow that makes you believe you should be
Speaker 4: doing it, like some reflection on stage that you go,
Speaker 4: this is secretly what I've always wanted to do. Now
Speaker 4: I see this person doing it. If they can do it,
Speaker 4: maybe I can do it. Like that is super important.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's so cool that you've kind of decided to
Speaker 3: take that on and feel responsible that way.
Speaker 5: That's former youth pastor you guys can't shake.
Speaker 2: You know, I want, you know, I want to talk
Speaker 2: about that. Yeah, yeah, very much.
Speaker 4: But it is ridiculous that we live in Los Angeles
Speaker 4: where the population is like the percentage of Mexican Americans
Speaker 4: is like and Hispanic people is huge, and yet the
Speaker 4: numbers of stand up comics in alternative comedies are small.
Speaker 1: That surprises me.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's just I think just this country, the country
Speaker 5: is always uh, it's a story of black versus white.
Speaker 5: And when you think of Mexicans, I think people have
Speaker 5: always and other Latinos people have always just thought of
Speaker 5: us as kind of like the help. And so whether
Speaker 5: or not, like they choose to admit it or anything,
Speaker 5: we've got to crack that idea and and and we're
Speaker 5: well on our way.
Speaker 3: So even in like where I started in Austin, it
Speaker 3: was a huge scene, but it was separate, like that
Speaker 3: whole scene. And when Gabriela Glacias had come to town,
Speaker 3: I couldn't believe the audience around the block.
Speaker 2: It was like, wow, how is that? It was totally separate.
Speaker 3: And like you said, the improv isn't still calling it
Speaker 3: Reeve Fried Fridays, right.
Speaker 5: They don't. We would take it, Yeah, we'll take it.
Speaker 5: They don't even have that.
Speaker 2: They did for a while well then yeah, yeah sucks,
Speaker 2: but it needed a better name. Is all the same
Speaker 2: like that is that is like oh god.
Speaker 5: Well we'll see. We're I'm excited. You know, Chris Astrada
Speaker 5: has a show coming out, And Chris Astrada is the
Speaker 5: great Brown Hope. He's the perfect bridge between like all
Speaker 5: kinds of Reek fried comedy and mainstream stuff. He's brilliant
Speaker 5: and yeah, right when he started, I think he's like
Speaker 5: three or four years behind me. Everybody knew he was
Speaker 5: just so smart and so funny. So his show's going
Speaker 5: to drop on Hulu this year. That's going to be
Speaker 5: a big step forward. We've got Frankie Cononez and yeah.
Speaker 2: Frankie man.
Speaker 6: Yeah he I just watched his video where he's like
Speaker 6: where he's like, I'm the I'm the dad for you today,
Speaker 6: Like he's starts he asked this guy of me as
Speaker 6: a dad, and then he's like, I'll be your dad today.
Speaker 6: But he would just look it up if you I'm
Speaker 6: the dad for you today.
Speaker 2: It is the best thing.
Speaker 3: It's so specific and random and it he's singing it.
Speaker 3: That's why I won't fully commit. And you know I
Speaker 3: don't commit to other people's jokes. You should good, Oh
Speaker 3: not this one. It is so Yeah, he's the best man.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's some good people coming up. That's true.
Speaker 4: Chris Ostrada had a tweet that was so amazing and
Speaker 4: it's it was the first time I knew who he
Speaker 4: was because someone retweeted it was the one. I'm going
Speaker 4: to completely ruin this, but it was basically like, I
Speaker 4: didn't smoke crack in a motel room in a West
Speaker 4: Covine or wherever it was so that I could have
Speaker 4: somebody criticize, some youngster criticize my jokes.
Speaker 2: In the back of the room.
Speaker 1: So good. Should we talk about the Bible podcast?
Speaker 5: Yeah, if you want. You know, I have a Bible podcast.
Speaker 5: It's called Read the Bible with Me with Steve nanez Uh.
Speaker 5: I think I was at such a different place. I
Speaker 5: was very like pumped up after Black Lives Matter because
Speaker 5: I had gone to so many like rallies and heard
Speaker 5: all these like strong black women preachers, and it reminded
Speaker 5: me of of the God that I used to believe
Speaker 5: in and stuff. So I had the idea to, oh,
Speaker 5: you know what, let me go back into this thing
Speaker 5: because I did used to be a youth minister at
Speaker 5: a megachurch in West Covina to I was like twenty two,
Speaker 5: and I was like let me, uh, let me go
Speaker 5: back and read this thing and you know, try to
Speaker 5: see what it's like. Still, but you know, about three
Speaker 5: and I still do it. I still open up. I
Speaker 5: still read the Bible every episode. But this thing is
Speaker 5: so fucking stupid. I can't believe I got conned. I
Speaker 5: can't believe so many people get conned by this fucking thing.
Speaker 5: And this is something I know, like, I know the
Speaker 5: Bible in my heart. I love it like an old uncle. Uh.
Speaker 5: And it's just crazy to go back and to understand
Speaker 5: what each of these different authors was trying to accomplish.
Speaker 5: The Book of John, out of the four Gospels, Matthew, Luke, Mark,
Speaker 5: and John, the Book of John, Jesus is just straight
Speaker 5: up a superhero. He straight up. He's straight up like Zeus,
Speaker 5: you know, Like it's so it's all Greek mythology where
Speaker 5: God comes down and have sex with the mortal woman
Speaker 5: and then you create a half God. It's just such
Speaker 5: Greek mythology, which they fucking ate up two thousand years ago.
Speaker 5: I'm not an atheist person. I don't try to do that,
Speaker 5: and I really like do feel the thing. I try
Speaker 5: to live my life by my conscience. But I used
Speaker 5: to call my conscience the Holy Spirit. I have no
Speaker 5: problem calling the thing like the right thing to do
Speaker 5: in life God saying God told me to do this,
Speaker 5: even though I don't believe in any kind of being
Speaker 5: or anything, but I do believe in the divine. I
Speaker 5: do believe there is a truly right, loving way to
Speaker 5: do things, and I try to live my life by that.
Speaker 5: But that Bible, this Bible A got shit to do
Speaker 5: with any of that.
Speaker 3: And to have a shorter conversation with people are religious,
Speaker 3: do you ever say you have faith?
Speaker 5: Absolutely not, No, I will.
Speaker 3: I you know, I believe I am a person of faith,
Speaker 3: but then I can't get any more specific than that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, no, I don't have faith in it, and I
Speaker 5: do wonder. I am at the place in the podcast
Speaker 5: now where I and I, you know, I talk about
Speaker 5: all this stuff in the podcast, and then I interview
Speaker 5: a lot of either former believers or kind of renegade
Speaker 5: believers now, people who have left the church and are
Speaker 5: still trying to like have a relationship with God on
Speaker 5: their own terms in like renegade ways. But yeah, no,
Speaker 5: I absolutely don't believe in any of that, and I do.
Speaker 5: I'm at that place right now when we're wondering how
Speaker 5: much this has fucked me up. I'm not in guilt.
Speaker 5: I don't really. I've never been a very fortunate I've
Speaker 5: never been like a guilty person about my seeing or
Speaker 5: anything like that. But that I'm always trying to, like,
Speaker 5: I don't know, do things in an ethical way. I
Speaker 5: know it sounds like I'm saying I'm trying to be
Speaker 5: a good person, but I wonder if the Bible has
Speaker 5: warped what being a good person is to me.
Speaker 4: Well, there's such I found because I was raised Catholic
Speaker 4: and went to Catholic school, so there was a lot
Speaker 4: of Bible reading. There was a lot of writing out
Speaker 4: of things we were reading and really studying, like word
Speaker 4: for word, and I found that there was an intense
Speaker 4: contradiction from chapter to chapter and book to books. So
Speaker 4: it was just like, sorry, didn't we just read that
Speaker 4: you're not supposed to do this or that this isn't okay?
Speaker 4: And then it's like then there would be the ones.
Speaker 4: There was like some you know, some stuff that was
Speaker 4: real hardcore and real like real old, and then there
Speaker 4: was some stuff that was real like hippy ish that
Speaker 4: was like very seventies kind of like everything's cool and
Speaker 4: just be cool to people. I mean, maybe that's a testament.
Speaker 2: So it's a handful of different dudes writing the stuff with.
Speaker 5: Different audiences in mind. And so you're just like us
Speaker 5: as stand up comics. I have my you know, I
Speaker 5: have an hour and fifteen worth of jokes. There's ones
Speaker 5: I'm not going to pull up in certain rooms. Yeah,
Speaker 5: there's ones I'm not going to do because it would
Speaker 5: not work.
Speaker 3: So some of the guys that wrote the Bible were
Speaker 3: alt guys. The other guys were more mainstream.
Speaker 4: Well, and what about all the different versions of the
Speaker 4: panels of people hundreds of years later editing it? So
Speaker 4: like I remember learning about that part where it's like,
Speaker 4: I'm sorry, why are we going so deep on this
Speaker 4: when why aren't we talking about that bigger picture of
Speaker 4: who has influenced what these essential ideas used to be
Speaker 4: versus what? You know?
Speaker 1: Was it like this the King James Bible or the whatever.
Speaker 3: There's the ones videans leave in your in your what's
Speaker 3: the only one I do through?
Speaker 4: But it's like everybody has an agenda. Everybody that got
Speaker 4: their hands on that thing had an agenda. And then
Speaker 4: there's now people in twenty twenty two who are like fundamentalists,
Speaker 4: who are like, word for word, this is the.
Speaker 5: Truth, and it's like and they're the reason why our
Speaker 5: country is like falling apart. I do believe, like my
Speaker 5: much of this stuff with Trump and everything, that those
Speaker 5: are very there's fundamental Christians and they've been allowed or
Speaker 5: if you want to believe that the bible's the errant
Speaker 5: of God, word of God, then you have to like
Speaker 5: stop using your brain. And so these people have stopped
Speaker 5: using their brain. You know, my mom voted for Trump,
Speaker 5: and I love my mom, and you know, we continue
Speaker 5: to get along, but it's it hasn't been easy and
Speaker 5: all of this stuff. My mom's still she's a very
Speaker 5: uh she's evangelical Christian, but she's always very She's also
Speaker 5: very mystical.
Speaker 3: She thinks she's evangelical means were you take the Bible
Speaker 3: word for word like a literal in a literal way.
Speaker 5: Yes, she's very mystical too, so she thinks she can heal.
Speaker 5: I have seen her kind of like know things about
Speaker 5: people after she just met. I don't think that can
Speaker 5: be a true You could attribute that to God if
Speaker 5: you want. I don't, but she's not completely crazy, but
Speaker 5: she does believe a lot of this crazy shit and
Speaker 5: she's listen to this podcast and it causes strife in
Speaker 5: our relationship for a few months.
Speaker 1: Oh man, then what happened? You guys just put it aside?
Speaker 5: My mom. I'm very fortunate. As much as crazy as
Speaker 5: my mom is and stuff too is she really is
Speaker 5: like always striving to stay connected with us. But she
Speaker 5: still like thinks gay people are going to hell, but
Speaker 5: she's like does it. She's always trying to not be
Speaker 5: that way, and she's trying to make it make sense
Speaker 5: to connect with us. So I know a lot of
Speaker 5: people aren't as fortunate to me as me to have
Speaker 5: parents like that that are believers. But yeah, she just said, hey,
Speaker 5: you know, however you want to have a relationship with
Speaker 5: God is up to you. I can't judge that. So
Speaker 5: I'm like I said, I'm very fortunate about that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, thank god, thank God. There's a lot of other
Speaker 3: stuff to talk about with your mom.
Speaker 5: Not much, not much when we have talks. When we
Speaker 5: get together, we'll have talk for like four hours. And
Speaker 5: I just kind of have to code switch for her
Speaker 5: because I do know the Bible and I am trying
Speaker 5: to live my life in a way that kind of
Speaker 5: lines up with a lot of things. So I just
Speaker 5: like I told you, like I said earlier, I'll say
Speaker 5: God told me to do this and that kind of thing. Yeah,
Speaker 5: and she's it is so funny though. She just saw
Speaker 5: me do stand up for the first time last Saturday. Saturday.
Speaker 5: Yeah yeah. I mean I didn't want her if I
Speaker 5: accidentally say a curse word, it like really bothers her.
Speaker 5: So if she were to see my stand up, I'm like,
Speaker 5: there's no reason to put you through this. But Joel
Speaker 5: and Mandy, the people who were on Hot Tub, did
Speaker 5: a show at Union Station and we got paid like
Speaker 5: a lot of money to be very clean, and so
Speaker 5: I was I was like, just mom, this is the
Speaker 5: one for you, Like, get out to this one. And
Speaker 5: it was a great show. It was beautiful. It was
Speaker 5: jam packed out in the courtyard. And Julia, my wife,
Speaker 5: was like walking my mom to the bathroom or something
Speaker 5: and she's like, are you having fun? And my mom
Speaker 5: said the thing I liked most so few curse words,
Speaker 5: and I was, yeah, this is what my Mexican mom
Speaker 5: loves about the whole thing. But she had a great time.
Speaker 5: I took a picture with her with all.
Speaker 3: She wanted she had. She been asking if she could
Speaker 3: come watch you the past few years.
Speaker 5: She'd asked like once before. But I think she'd got
Speaker 5: found some of my stuff on the internet too. And
Speaker 5: you know I talk about sucking dick and getting fucked
Speaker 5: and stuff, so I don't I mean, I think that
Speaker 5: stuff has It's not.
Speaker 2: That that bothered her.
Speaker 1: Beforehand.
Speaker 5: Some guy was committing whoopee in my butN.
Speaker 2: Why did you have to say sucking?
Speaker 5: It's the alliteration, Mom, You don't get it. I made
Speaker 5: love with that guy's penis in my mouth much better.
Speaker 2: Thank you for saying. Grace.
Speaker 1: There's there are a lot of those.
Speaker 4: It makes me think of when I was young and
Speaker 4: we drive to church on Sunday morning, and if I
Speaker 4: saw like a kid playing in a yard in the yard,
Speaker 4: I would get really bummed for that kid because I
Speaker 4: knew that if they weren't going to church, then that
Speaker 4: meant that they were probably going to go to Hell.
Speaker 4: And that was just kind of this ingrained, preset thing.
Speaker 4: It was just the way we were raised until in
Speaker 4: no joke, this is gonna sound very uh like phony,
Speaker 4: but I swear to God Andy Kandler was the first
Speaker 4: stand up comic I ever met, and it was I
Speaker 4: was like twenty.
Speaker 1: This is when I was in college.
Speaker 4: It was when I lived in Sacramento and my friend
Speaker 4: was dating him and she was a waitress at the
Speaker 4: laugh what's the club up there?
Speaker 1: The laugh?
Speaker 4: Anyway, she was a waitress at the comedy clubs. So
Speaker 4: I meet Andy Killer and I had just started staying.
Speaker 4: I think I did like my first set two weeks
Speaker 4: before or something like that. And so then later on
Speaker 4: I had dated a guy who was evangelical Christian, but
Speaker 4: he didn't he kept it a secret until like until
Speaker 4: like week three, and then he was like, I need
Speaker 4: you to say these seven words.
Speaker 2: And then yeah, sometimes you got to save it for
Speaker 2: the bedroom. Yeah, exact.
Speaker 4: And it all came together and I thought to myself,
Speaker 4: if this is if he's right, that means automatically and
Speaker 4: without any interaction, it is laughs, unlimited, Thank you, Casey,
Speaker 4: it is laughs. So that by this guy's definition, that
Speaker 4: means Andy Kndler is going to burn in hell no
Speaker 4: matter what.
Speaker 1: I'm like, there's just no way that's the truth.
Speaker 4: And so then suddenly it all just kind of evaporated
Speaker 4: in that way where it's just like, oh yeah, these
Speaker 4: there's ingrained things that I didn't think to question because
Speaker 4: I'm just you know, that's like being Catholic, and it
Speaker 4: was just kind of how the how it was of it.
Speaker 4: And then it was just like, oh, yeah, that's all
Speaker 4: of that is just these weird scare tactics to keep
Speaker 4: you in line and keep you going to work and
Speaker 4: coming home and not fucking around and and not doing
Speaker 4: whatever you want, like taking away your agency.
Speaker 5: So I had no problem with people going to hell
Speaker 5: that that seemed right to me. I was like, yeah, well,
Speaker 5: I'm timing.
Speaker 3: That's great that you were super young and you were
Speaker 3: full on like head past or.
Speaker 5: Like did they have of the youth minister. Well, it's
Speaker 5: called Faith Community Church. It's still I don't know what's
Speaker 5: gonna happen with it. They recently This is kind of
Speaker 5: part of the reason why I started the podcast too,
Speaker 5: is they just sold their property to Amazon for thirty
Speaker 5: million dollars. Yeah, when I was fifteen. This is all
Speaker 5: in West Covino. When I was fifteen, we bought that
Speaker 5: property for three million. So I'm just I was trying
Speaker 5: to figure out, like, what the fuck happened? Is gonna
Speaker 5: happen with that money. Also, the senior pastor's son, he's
Speaker 5: taken over the preaching. This guy was my friend one
Speaker 5: year older. The daughter the senior pastor daughter, my first loved,
Speaker 5: my first girlfriend. So I know this family and he's
Speaker 5: one of the worst preachers I've ever seen in my life.
Speaker 5: And so I just started posting clips and I just
Speaker 5: don't Yeah, I'm just going after him because I'm like, Dan,
Speaker 5: you fucking suck. You're a bad preacher. I don't even
Speaker 5: have to say anything else. I just know preaching, and
Speaker 5: I'm like, this is terrible, this is so I'm so
Speaker 5: mad that you guys are putting him right here. So
Speaker 5: oh yeah, but yeah, yeah, I grew up in that church.
Speaker 5: It was about five hundred when I was little. I
Speaker 5: started going there when I was seven, and by the
Speaker 5: time I left, they were at about fourteen thousand. I
Speaker 5: think it's I think it's shrunk dramatically because that guy
Speaker 5: Dan is such a bad preacher. But and mega churches
Speaker 5: are kind of going down too. But yeah, fuck, I
Speaker 5: bought into this hook line and sinker, and I do
Speaker 5: think a big attraction for me is this idea of
Speaker 5: justice and right and wrong. But you know, for gay people,
Speaker 5: I always felt I always felt bad that they were
Speaker 5: going to go to hell because even when you're little,
Speaker 5: you know gay people when you're little, when you're in
Speaker 5: first grade, there's a gay kid in your class. You
Speaker 5: don't know the words for it anything, but you know,
Speaker 5: oh yeah, Conrad's different. There's something different about him. But
Speaker 5: I was just like, well, that's kind of just you know,
Speaker 5: it's so funny. I'll never forget. When I was nineteen
Speaker 5: years old, I went to visit my friend Brian liinback
Speaker 5: in England. He was staying like as a like a
Speaker 5: class exchange thing in college, and we went to see
Speaker 5: Rent and I saw Rent and we walked out. He's like,
Speaker 5: you know, somebody dies in Rent from AIDS and we
Speaker 5: walked out of the thing. He's like, what'd you think.
Speaker 5: I was like, it was, it's pretty sad, but I
Speaker 5: gotta say, the wages of sin or is death. You know,
Speaker 5: the wages of city is dead. So I just always
Speaker 5: was like, that's just how it is.
Speaker 1: You weren't being sarcastic, Oh no, I was serious reactions.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, I was just like, that's what's gonna happen
Speaker 5: if you sin is you're gonna die of AIDS. So
Speaker 5: I mean, if you're a gay person, that's gonna do.
Speaker 5: I always felt bad for gay people because I didn't
Speaker 5: seem like they had a choice to me. But also
Speaker 5: that's just what the Bible said. It wasn't until like,
Speaker 5: you know what, six feet under you guys have seen
Speaker 5: six Feet Under Sure that first season with David and
Speaker 5: like loving God and like fighting through his faith and
Speaker 5: being so ashamed that he was gay. That was the
Speaker 5: first time where I was like, oh, this is stupid,
Speaker 5: Like that's dumb, Like God, I loving God would not
Speaker 5: do this to a person.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's that's interesting because all God aside that that.
Speaker 3: I remember that being the show I watched my dad.
Speaker 3: He loved it and he like was rooting for that couple,
Speaker 3: and I think all dads before that were.
Speaker 2: A little homophobic.
Speaker 3: And I remember him loving that show, and I thought
Speaker 3: that was kind of important that that show was that
Speaker 3: for him, because they were not My parents were not religious.
Speaker 3: I started going in high school to church without ever
Speaker 3: having looked at a Bible, you know.
Speaker 2: Until college. I had a.
Speaker 3: Literary criticism class where we had to decipher half of
Speaker 3: the Old Testament and it was a very hard class
Speaker 3: and I got a very low grade and I was
Speaker 3: really trying.
Speaker 2: I just was dumb.
Speaker 3: But I started going to this after school program because
Speaker 3: the girls I liked. I've talked about this before, but
Speaker 3: the pastor was the coolest guy ever, and he was
Speaker 3: I was like, I don't know how into this Bible thing,
Speaker 3: you know, I'm really into it that much. And he
Speaker 3: didn't care. He's like, no, you're a good person to
Speaker 3: have around. He wasn't trying to convert me. He was
Speaker 3: just a good person, like an early other adult that
Speaker 3: I looked up to.
Speaker 2: You know, it's rare that you have those that aren't
Speaker 2: your parents. And he was.
Speaker 3: I still to this day, it's like a great guy.
Speaker 3: But I yeah, So I had like such a different experience.
Speaker 3: I think my dad was like, well, what are you
Speaker 3: doing going to church. I'm like, it's an after it's
Speaker 3: free dinner on Wednesdays. One then we got to go
Speaker 3: on these work camps. It was really fun.
Speaker 5: So I was not I was not that kind of
Speaker 5: a pastor. I had. I had intentions and I had
Speaker 5: I wanted to like reach goals and stuff.
Speaker 3: And did you did you use fear like try and
Speaker 3: scare people into with the hell thing, because.
Speaker 5: Yes, but not really that was not the way that
Speaker 5: I wanted to do it. But I did run a
Speaker 5: Christian hunted house called Inferno. I have to know about that.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, it cost seventy five thousand dollars and we
Speaker 5: made it.
Speaker 4: In this life you have like an abortion room at
Speaker 4: the primary sex room all this stuff.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, we and yeah it was called Inferno and
Speaker 5: the headline was It'll scare the hell out of you.
Speaker 2: Yeah that's good, though.
Speaker 5: I know we had to fight for that too. I
Speaker 5: had to fight for that, and I was like put
Speaker 5: the Christ in them, and they're like all right, all right.
Speaker 5: But I mean all of like the marketing, all that
Speaker 5: kind of stuff, the stuff that you know, I basically
Speaker 5: do now as a stand up was stuff that I
Speaker 5: like really loved to do. But even me then I
Speaker 5: kind of remember thinking this is kind of shitty. We
Speaker 5: would throw these huge events with like sumo suits and
Speaker 5: video games and like skateboard rams, just a trick the
Speaker 5: kids to get there, and then you know, then you
Speaker 5: lock the doors, you know, and make them accept Christ.
Speaker 5: I mean I was doing I was doing all that stuff,
Speaker 5: and I didn't feel great about it, but the numbers.
Speaker 5: It was very effective in terms of the numbers. And
Speaker 5: like my bosses really loved to be able to say,
Speaker 5: you know, four hundred kids gave their life to Christ
Speaker 5: this past week and they love that, just that kind
Speaker 5: of stuff.
Speaker 3: But they're maybe counting like there, have you heard the
Speaker 3: cavalry or tell Shane, tell me.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: They always throughout most.
Speaker 2: Isn't it a church chain?
Speaker 3: They always had skate parks, indoor skate parks, so you'd
Speaker 3: have to go and listen to guy talk for a
Speaker 3: little bit and then they just like eskate.
Speaker 2: So we all were like, yeah, yeah, we're faith faithful,
Speaker 2: riddle faith and then we got to skate. So I
Speaker 2: wonder if they put us on the roster. I got
Speaker 2: seven more guys.
Speaker 5: If you raised your hand, they put you in the roster. Right,
Speaker 5: gave your life to Christ? Yeah? Oh yeah, I remember
Speaker 5: bragging about those numbers and everything like that.
Speaker 4: So, so, Steve, when you were preaching, is that where
Speaker 4: you first got the idea that maybe you want to
Speaker 4: do stand up? Were those things somehow intertwined or like funny?
Speaker 1: Were you to use humor?
Speaker 5: Yeah? Funny preacher? Yeah, I just tell all like these
Speaker 5: crazy stories, or I picked verses in the Bible and
Speaker 5: then like come up with stories to back the point.
Speaker 5: It's all just stand up still. It's you know, stand up.
Speaker 5: You're basically the way I write stand up is you're
Speaker 5: coming up with a thesis sentence and then a few
Speaker 5: thesis like points to back the thesis sentence. So it's
Speaker 5: all just the exact the exact same place where I
Speaker 5: would get my sermons from the Holy Spirit. That same
Speaker 5: place is the same place I get my jokes from. Now.
Speaker 5: It was exact, but that's not how it went down.
Speaker 5: After I quit. You know, I was twenty two to
Speaker 5: twenty three years old, and then I just fucking I
Speaker 5: was just a burnt. I worked at a gas station
Speaker 5: full time, or no, a liquor store full time, and
Speaker 5: like a gas station. Then I worked at TJ Fridays
Speaker 5: in West Covina for six years and partied and partied hard.
Speaker 5: Yeah yeah, I did ecstasy a couple of times at work.
Speaker 5: Yeah yeah. I flipped my car on break. I got
Speaker 5: so drunk at BJ's, like the restaurant next door on
Speaker 5: break that I drove. I flipped my car in a
Speaker 5: pole and the bussers ran out and like picked it
Speaker 5: up and like moved it to a spot and they
Speaker 5: just sent me home like just I mean, I was
Speaker 5: just a crazy, like West Covina party.
Speaker 3: Guy on any of those party. Did anyone recognize you
Speaker 3: as the pastor from the church?
Speaker 5: Uh oh yeah, oh yeah. And to this day and
Speaker 5: to this day, I just went out with one of
Speaker 5: my junior high kids. Yet last night she's thirty five.
Speaker 5: Now I thought, you know, I was only eight years old.
Speaker 5: Of them like a twelve, twenty year old and a
Speaker 5: twelve year old. But yeah, I see those I see
Speaker 5: these people still all the time. But yeah, then I started.
Speaker 5: I've got married from my first wife when I was
Speaker 5: thirty and then I started stand up when I was
Speaker 5: thirty two and that was the end of my marriage.
Speaker 3: So although I do see it help people that maybe
Speaker 3: need that. Like one of the work camp trips I
Speaker 3: did in high school, we went to this camp near Mendocino,
Speaker 3: and these guys were just out of prison and a
Speaker 3: lot of them had done scary things and they I
Speaker 3: felt so my back was sweating because they they were intimidating,
Speaker 3: they were just we were just mingling with them. A
Speaker 3: bunch of high school kids, but they all wanted to
Speaker 3: talk about their like do you want to talk about
Speaker 3: the Bible? And I was just admitted, I don't know much.
Speaker 3: I just like to go on these trips and help people.
Speaker 3: I know I'm not helping you right now, but uh,
Speaker 3: and they it obviously that's what was Shane, making them
Speaker 3: want to be a better person. So on that level,
Speaker 3: it's like, how can you be mad at that?
Speaker 2: You know what I mean?
Speaker 5: Like, yeah, no, I I And you know it's funny
Speaker 5: I'm talking all this shit, but my I was abused
Speaker 5: when I was a kid. Not not crazy, it's just
Speaker 5: regular Mexican level. And yeah, I could tell these there's
Speaker 5: a b I have a whole bunch of abuse jokes
Speaker 5: that I could tell in front of a mexicanized that
Speaker 5: you can't stay in front of whites because they get
Speaker 5: like very sad.
Speaker 2: But how do they do at the Mega Church?
Speaker 5: These these those jokes, Yeah, you probably didn't know, but
Speaker 5: I would bring out that. I would part of my
Speaker 5: testimony was that I was abused. Chris, that's very oh
Speaker 5: wow interesting, But oh yeah, I am very grateful because I,
Speaker 5: like I said, I have a chaotic home life and
Speaker 5: without the church, I would have never gone to the beach.
Speaker 5: I've been all over the world a few times on
Speaker 5: mission trips, and it doesn't really count because we're doing
Speaker 5: dumb god shit. But you know, I've been to France
Speaker 5: a few times, and I went to the beach and
Speaker 5: I just was around people that were kind of healthy.
Speaker 5: And more importantly, I fell in love with the Bible.
Speaker 5: I fell in love with the written word, and I
Speaker 5: fell in love with like coming up with ideas and
Speaker 5: concepts and thinking in a way that I don't know
Speaker 5: if I would have ever encountered this stuff. Like my
Speaker 5: parents didn't even the idea of college. They never mentioned
Speaker 5: it to us. I didn't go to college, but like
Speaker 5: it was just not that kind of I don't know.
Speaker 5: I would have been a cop. I tried to be
Speaker 5: a cop. I tried to join the military. I would
Speaker 5: have been a cop. If I didn't go to church,
Speaker 5: you'd be a funny cop.
Speaker 4: It feels to me like TGI Fridays really is really
Speaker 4: is the turning point that made all the difference right there.
Speaker 1: Really, you open with those license.
Speaker 4: Plates saying everywhere just like fucking madoris tour Marguerite.
Speaker 5: I mean we had a blast sometimes again, so I
Speaker 5: get mad because I started stand up so late. And
Speaker 5: then I look at these kids in their twenties and
Speaker 5: out here like doing like the youth doing stand up
Speaker 5: and how much fun they're having. But I was like, no,
Speaker 5: I'm so glad because I just was a loser, like
Speaker 5: doing molly, like just getting fucked up in West Covina,
Speaker 5: and I have like nobody knows about that stuff, Like
Speaker 5: nobody I could like it's my deep dark secret. Were
Speaker 5: people still in Covino, West Covina like know about me?
Speaker 5: If I walk into a sandwich shop, They're like, were
Speaker 5: you guy that guy who flipped his car when he
Speaker 5: was on break? And I was like, yeah, that's me.
Speaker 4: I love the fact that the bussers came and turned
Speaker 4: it back out, turned it back right side, so you
Speaker 4: wouldn't so so there was no report.
Speaker 1: You did not get in trouble.
Speaker 5: I will only say this on this I have never
Speaker 5: talked about this part of it, but I had I
Speaker 5: had hooked up with my manager at that time too,
Speaker 5: and so that day when I did that, I was
Speaker 5: black eyed drunk, and you know obviously it's you should
Speaker 5: not drunk driver. An I'm so The reason I'm laughing
Speaker 5: about it is because it didn't affect anyone except for
Speaker 5: I totaled my car. But I flipped, Yeah, I flipped it,
Speaker 5: totaled it. And the manager at the time was a
Speaker 5: different guy, and everybody liked me, and they were somebody
Speaker 5: was like, I saw Steve lose control, and some other
Speaker 5: guy said, I think we should send him home. He
Speaker 5: seems out of it. And someone's like, oh, I'll stay,
Speaker 5: and they gradu just went and got the bussers and
Speaker 5: some of the cooks and they just flipped over my
Speaker 5: Honda Civic and put it in a spot.
Speaker 2: What were you were you drifting or something? You know,
Speaker 2: I'm a fan of that.
Speaker 5: What I was, What I was was blackout drunk Chris Wow. Yeah,
Speaker 5: I mean, you know I don't drink anymore. I stopped
Speaker 5: drinking a few years ago.
Speaker 3: But I forgot about the God and thank God it's Friday.
Speaker 2: Is that what it stands for? Of course it did.
Speaker 2: It's also must see TV. I always but it is God.
Speaker 2: The word God is I just it isn't realize that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, no, I'm not. I mean that them putting my
Speaker 5: car on the spot allowed me to drink for an
Speaker 5: extra decade and for that, I'm grateful.
Speaker 1: That's the kind of enabling you can find.
Speaker 4: Yeah, thank the good God Lord.
Speaker 1: It's Friday.
Speaker 2: That is absolutely crazy.
Speaker 1: That's really a life well lived.
Speaker 2: Now are you two lives?
Speaker 1: Several lives?
Speaker 4: Are you guys still making those videos that you were
Speaker 4: making during quarantine? You've made some fucking hilarious and Julia
Speaker 4: shot him and you were doing shit.
Speaker 5: Like she she shoots my eye. I run a show
Speaker 5: called Worship at the Allegion with Amy Miller and Jamal Johnson,
Speaker 5: and I won a monthly called Hernia at the Yard,
Speaker 5: and so I am constantly making videos to promote those things.
Speaker 5: And yeah, Julia my wife, Julia Lokan, who's has a
Speaker 5: huge Straw podcast, but she's also a comedian. I mean,
Speaker 5: we just shot something yesterday for this thing. But I
Speaker 5: mean she's just absolutely brilliant in terms of editing, and
Speaker 5: like she's my absolute artistic partner. I really do feel
Speaker 5: like I'm shooting myself in the foot because I am polyamorous.
Speaker 5: But it's so evident how in love I am with
Speaker 5: my wife. I feel like I'm fucking myself in terms
Speaker 5: of like being polyamorous, because nobody will have anything to
Speaker 5: do with me. I think people think I'm joking, but
Speaker 5: I am polyamorous, okay, just the only guys who the
Speaker 5: only people who hit on me are gay guys, which
Speaker 5: I am grateful for. I would never know that I'm
Speaker 5: sexy except for gay guys that were always dropping in
Speaker 5: on my box. I want to suck your dick right now.
Speaker 5: I'm like, come on down. I'm at workfall there's an
Speaker 5: alley out back. I would definitely let you suck my dick.
Speaker 3: We got to let him do it at the in
Speaker 3: the parking lot on the Mega church.
Speaker 5: We just went by the shoot a video and yeah,
Speaker 5: they're not there anymore. So I think Amazon It's going
Speaker 5: to start to take over pretty soon.
Speaker 3: Oh and not in a church way. They're maybe building
Speaker 3: a warehouse.
Speaker 5: No, they're actually staring Amazon church.
Speaker 3: Wait, they're making them. I think I drove by it.
Speaker 2: It's a giant cement structure like the stretches for.
Speaker 5: In West Covina.
Speaker 2: Maybe not.
Speaker 3: I drove by something else with a with a giant
Speaker 3: Amazon logo on it, and it was just the foundation
Speaker 3: of what looked like, uh, you know, where they're constructing
Speaker 3: like a millennium falcon in there, something so big.
Speaker 5: Yeah, they're building. It's just another place to send out packages.
Speaker 5: So yeah, it's a.
Speaker 4: Church where if you just hold up your phone as
Speaker 4: you walk in, then all.
Speaker 1: Of your tithing is taken care of. Amazing. It's been
Speaker 1: super fun to talk to you.
Speaker 5: Yeah, thank you, thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 5: I love both of you guys. Great talking to you
Speaker 5: as well.
Speaker 1: Do you have any plugs? I mean the Yard.
Speaker 4: You're doing monthly at the Yard, you do a monthly
Speaker 4: at the Allegian.
Speaker 5: Sure, we're doing worship at the Allegian. I'm just the devil.
Speaker 5: I'm dressed like the devil, and it's the most fun
Speaker 5: I've ever had in my life.
Speaker 2: And you always host as the devil at worship.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, I'm just the devil. I was trying to
Speaker 5: come up with a way for promotion to differentiate this
Speaker 5: from Hernia, and I came up with the devil. And
Speaker 5: now I'm just the devil there and it's the most
Speaker 5: fun I've ever had in my life. I'm just I
Speaker 5: bought a real pitchfork. I spent seventy five dollars for it,
Speaker 5: and I'm just running around. I'm talking about having a
Speaker 5: group sex I'm trying. I'm trying. The Devil is like
Speaker 5: trying to break into stand up comedy, talking about grinding
Speaker 5: getting spots at the store. So it's I mean, that's
Speaker 5: a very fun show. Amy and Jamal are very talented.
Speaker 5: And then you can find me of course on Twitter
Speaker 5: at big Hearn and Instagram at Hernia. So those are
Speaker 5: my plugs.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what do you do at the Hernia show?
Speaker 5: I'm just me. I just do twenty up top. I
Speaker 5: try to write a new twenty every month. And I
Speaker 5: talked to Zeed Kutzinger plays God and that, so him
Speaker 5: and I write pieces together where I kind of do
Speaker 5: stand up and then we weave me talking to God
Speaker 5: in between those things too.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, that sounds interesting as well.
Speaker 1: You're really doing it. You're doing really doing it.
Speaker 5: Hey man. As soon as I get any level of success,
Speaker 5: I'm out, Baby, I am out.
Speaker 3: You're not getting out until you do some colleges.
Speaker 4: That's right, We're going to get a booked at colleges.
Speaker 2: Yes, thanks for being here, Steve, thank you. You've been
Speaker 2: listening to Do You Need a Ride?
Speaker 6: D y N.
Speaker 2: This has been an exactly right production.
Speaker 1: Produced by Casey O'Brien.
Speaker 2: Mixed by John Bradley.
Speaker 1: Artwork by Chris Fairbanks.
Speaker 2: Theme song by Karen Kilgarriff.
Speaker 4: Follow the show on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook at dinar podcast.
Speaker 1: That's d y n aar podcast.
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Speaker 1: Thank you, Oh You're welcome.