Hey, everybody, aj Ben's are here with fame, is it? Bitch?
This is your daily Unfiltered podcast from March thirteenth, twenty twenty five oh three, two oh two five. Nice day today. You're gonna hit sixty degrees. Got to get the backyard ready for Roseley to plant flowers in a month or so, just in case it's not another freeze coming.
You never can tell in the Midwest, you know.
I mean when I got here a couple of weeks back, it was three degrees and now it's up to sixty sixty five.
It's very strange.
So uh, it's twelve good humming birds are coming around as you show out. The other day, I posted a picture of a red cardinal that we cardinals are red, a cardinal that came to the bird feeder in the window on the day of my father's death March seventh. It was also right above a framed picture when when nephew Jackie was young and just began to swim competitively in school, and it that picture is inside the room, and above that picture is the window where the bird
feeder is. And it's like I said to Rosalie, is this Jackie or is this daddy, who knows, but it's amazing to see this. And then another one came and landed on a tree branch about fifteen feet past the window.
That's two. Now.
I never see two cardinals together. I don't know where you live, but that's not an ordinary sight. So I always feel good and shit like that happens. It's an amazing thing, messages from the Great beyond, signals and signs that some of us don't really get in tune with, and others completely look for them and feel them as they happen. Speaking of which, as I said the other day, Rosalie and I stayed up late the other night just
talking watching the pasta Queen on Amazon. And you know, I always pepper her with questions because look, man, I mean not that she's ill, but you know when people go, when people leave, they leave with all knowledge and information about your family and your family tree, the legacy.
It's there's no one.
Else to go to to talk to, to find out stuff about the people who were there before me, were the people who were there when I was very young, and she was seventeen years older than me. So Rosalie knows all the secrets and all the stories and I couldn't believe I heard this story. I never knew this, and I was like, how would you not tell me this? So apparently, well not apparently. My mother's mother had I think six kids, Louis, Anna, Josie, Jenny, my mother.
That's five.
She had five kids, and then there was always Uncle Frankie and Uncle Vinnie. And I know that there weren't Grandma's kids. Grandma died before I was born. My mother was pregnant when her mother died, so I never saw her. But I do have her middle name, Joseph. She was Joseph Fiene, but she went by pitt Panella pit Beennie doing in Sicilian, and she took those two other boys in because her sister died and she took those two boys in. So now she's raising seventy kids. Uncle Frankie
i'd met many times. He was fine. I was a young boy, but it was fun to be around. It looked like looked like family. He was family. I didn't know at that point he was not really my grandmother's son, but in the years to come, I learned that. But I never knew that the other brother, Uncle Vinnie, was a flat out fag.
I could have. I'm like, how could you not tell me that I had a big gay uncle or great uncle? What have you? Oh, you didn't know? How could I know? He died before I was even born? I believe. No, he died like when I was very very young. I believe.
And I think I might have met him once, maybe or twice. It's kind of foggy, but yeah, big gay uncle.
I did not know that. Not does anything wrong with having a big gay uncle.
But back in those times, back in that era, he must have led a very interesting life, a life full of lies, because you had to back then before being found out to be gay or having a male lover.
I don't even know.
Wow, it's so hard when you know when when when you go back at your history. These are enough things you're gonna hear from Henry Gates on that TV show about your family tree. But there's so much mystery surrounding my mother's mother and father. And I've brought this up several times in the past about my uncle, my grandmother, my grandfather, Nicholas, who died when I was two. There's one picture of me sitting on his lap. I can't
find it. Never looked like any of us. He actually looked like somebody that done what's that paint through paints the American portraits family. You know that those famous paintings are people, you know what I mean?
He looked like that, like very Middle America, kind of looked nothing sicilian, a Bolidan. Nothing about him looked like us. I always thought this is odd, but what'll I know? And then you come to find out that Grandpa quote unquote no married Grandma because it was an arranged marriage. When Grandma got off the boat from Italy and saw him, she immediately didn't want to marry him. But his brothers were ma fiosa.
And they more or less said to her, or made sure she knew if she didn't go forward with this arranged marriage, they would send word back to her village in Italy saying she's a big bhutana here in America, a big tramp just to hurt her name and image and whatever you want to call it, be disgraceful. So she marries Grandpa Nick Nicholas Nicole, and they go on to have all those children, but the last two were
taken in by Grandma because her sister died. However, my mother and my uncle Nikki, the last two children, the last two siblings. Dare I say this, But they had a different look. They had a darker look and the features were different than their other siblings. And me and Rosalie and Lorraine and Grace, Mee and my cousin Joanne, we kind of all look alike, but not the same, not in the same way. Actually, Grace may looks a
lot like Roselie and myself. But it was just weird that I always felt in my bones that is this really our grandfather?
He doesn't look anything.
Then you come to find out the big story that my mother and her sisters desperately didn't want us to know that at some point in his life Grandpa Nick, who was a bricklayer, fell off a building. I don't know how how high it was, but he never recovered. He always act like he was a young kid. He just his whole personality changed from this head trauma. And I heard from relatives and my sister he play hide and seek with the little kids, and he wasn't.
A father or a man anymore.
And Grandma, if she's anything like me, you know, loves love, loves passion, loves desires, has a fire in a heart, Well, where would she go because her husband was no longer being that kind of man.
Along comes a man named Monino.
I was always told half black hair fattalion, or part black and half for that. Whatever it was, it was a mixture, that's the way. That's the story I got. Rose says, no, that's not true, but I heard it from another relative. Either way, The story goes that since Grandpa couldn't perform anymore, was just out of his head. Grand Grandma took in Moneino, this this man as a border you know, he pay rent. Grandma had a knack for money. Both my grandmothers knew how to hustle and
make money more than the men did. So she brought him in and he lived I guess in the basement, whatever the hell, and he paid her portion of the rent.
But then proceeded to have two children with her.
As the story goes, my mother and uncle Nikki, and at some point Grandpa Nick walk up out of his whatever you want to call it, and said, something's wrong here, something's wrong, you know, I he understood that he wasn't
having sex with his wife. I get this, two more kids, she's pregnant again, and again, what's going on and apparently, so the story goes, he had made a reference to Monino that he'd had it and he's got to get out of the house, and whatever manhood he had left, he expressed that, and this man Monino left because it was the respectful thing to do. There was also a story about a television arrived in the house. He bought allegedly bought a television for my grandmother so the kids
could see TV, et cetera. And that was the final straw for Grandpa. In addition to the children, there's now a television set where they didn't have one. He knew he wasn't working to afford that, so it was always strange and he just wouldn't have it. Years years, years later, it stayed in that apartment in Brooklyn with one of my aunts who had passed away, and I said, go to the apartment, I talk to her daughter.
I want to get any kind of things that I.
Think was Jenny who died, maybe Josie, I forget, but I want to get anything that would be something that I have close to my heart that once belonged to that. I went to Brooklyn to Benson Nursta and went in that room. It was like she still was alive. Everything in that apartment was just so old. I'm talking about this in the late eighties, and it looked like I was.
In the fifties. It was a time capsule. I took that TV.
I tied it to the top of my Mazda RX seven, big black and white console TV with rope and straps, and I went from Brooklyn back to Long Island, fifty miles. I said, let me try and put it on and see what happens. I plug it in the garage. Nothing, so I start to mow the lawn. It's getting kind of dark out and a sunset, and I'm not paying attention to the TV. It's in the middle of my garage. It's getting dark out, and I plug a TV and
then forget about it. And about ten minutes later, the garage and the fucking TV is on and it's a black and white movie, believe it or not, which made it even more eerie, and I forget what channel was. But I turned the volume up and the TV worked. Don't get me startled the fact that I no longer have that TV. It got all mixed up with storage and who's moving where I'm going to the city. I'm going to Los Angeles. I just couldn't keep lugging it around. So what's gone.
But there's so much mystery in that story.
We don't even know for sure if that's our grandfather, if Monino was our real grandfather. There's even stories that I think are very true, that you know, my grandmother made wine and pasta and she would feed the local mafios. So that was both my grandmothers did that and they loved her. And back in the day, there were tunnels underneath Brooklyn. They might still be there today that led from different neighborhoods of different neighbors, basically for bootleggers and
during the Prohibition era. And everybody associates al Capone with Chicago, but al Capone was born in Brooklyn, and my relatives, especially Grace Mary, has always said that grandma fed al.
Caponent when he was very young, before he moved on to Chicago.
I don't know, guys. I know I'm spending ten minutes. Oh it's eleven minutes and eleven seconds.
That's another sign either way. It was a very eventful evening learning about family history.
Whether how much of it is true, I don't know, but It certainly takes on a life of its own, but let's get into the present day. Sorry for that trip down memory lane, here's a good story. Finally, sick of all the girls claiming men rape them. I'm fine with people saying P Diddy raped them because he's a sick though, but enough is enough. So many women are saying men rape them and it turns out not to be true, and we can go down the Harvey Weinstein rabbit hole, but I don't want it today either way.
It's just been going on forever. And finally a guy fought that. Jay Z has been fighting back this particular claim that this woman has had that he raped her cup of decades back actually twenty five years ago.
With Sean P.
Diddy COLLMBS after the Video Music Awards in New York City back in twenty twenty.
Okay, so that was a big story. Is jay Z like Diddy? All these hip hop guys and rappers crazy? First she went by Jane Doe, this girl, but.
It turns out, well, she's now identified, but it turns out she now says that never happened. He was just there, she said, but he didn't have anything to do with any sexual acts toward me. An investigator asked her did he have anything to do with any sexual acts towards you?
And she said yeah.
Now, jay Z, like I said, always denied this and was ready to fight and is still fighting. But elsewhere in that same recording by the private investigator, this girl's call her Jane Doe is now saying her lawyer Tony Busby, pressured her to follow this suit against jay Z. She said he was the one that kind of pushed me towards going forward with this and blaming jay Z, And the investigator says, Buzzby did, she says, yeah.
Busby is the.
Guy that's representing a bunch of P Diddy accusers that have filed charges against the rapper, And this one turns out to be not true. And I'm glad, And you know, people might say, you know, we got in the habit of saying, hey, if these guys aren't gonna counter sue these girls, that they're probably guilty.
Well, jay Z was very quick.
With counter suing and he's continuing to do so, the lawyer and her, So I hope he does well in court.
God knows he has enough money.
But I don't see jay Z as a rapist the way I look at P Diddy in some of the assholes he hangs around with. To me, jay Z, he has a little more class and didn't have to live that kind of lifestyle.
Not that he's a real looker in the looks department.
But you know, he has a confidence and a swagger about him that make him very New York and you know, very powerful in his own image. But I'm glad, I'm glad this happened. This girl finally coughed up and said, no, this didn't happen. And you know, I gotta tell you this forrest Gump of my.
Life.
I was at that those VMA's at Radio City Music Hall in two thousand.
It was like it was one of.
The last Hollywood type things I did, you know what I mean, Like I still had connections into the hip hop world, and I I remember that night I took two Brazilian girls, one was like a bathing suit model that they were in New York and hanging around rock Though's friends. His girlfriend was Brazilian. They all knew each other, so I took them both to this party and looking back with an asshole like really, I did that just for Cloud obviously. I mean, my head must have been
so far up my ass. I can't believe it, even like this is embarrassing. But when Harvey Weinstein, and at that point his partner at Miramax's books was the famous British editor Tina Brown, were working with me on my book, and we had many meetings together.
And at big.
Meeting was we're taking pictures of aj because he wrote they were gonna put an excerpt to my book in Talk Magazine, Harvey Weinstein's magazine that Tina Brown was the editor of. And uh okay, we're gonna do his shoot at Lotus, which was the best night club in New York. I went there every night. It was like my Cheers, where everybody knows your name. I held court there on top of the grand piano. It was a magical time. So it's stage, the picture of stage with a red velvet rope and people around.
The door can't get in, and me walking through the through the aisle with this stunner six foot Brazilian blonde model forget the name Anna something, I.
Forget, tall, beautiful, all her legs were up to my chest. Just a monster.
And Harvey's like, this is gonna look great, and I'm such a what the fuck. I'm like, no, I want two girls. He's like one, I said, I want to have two girls, one on each arm. I think that's even cooler. How many guys take two girls out? I mean, of course it's been done, but I in my own mind of narcissism, I'm like, I want too. He got
me another one. I forget her name, another stunter. And that picture in that magazine ran with me walking through the velvet ropes with people trying to kind of picture paparazzi. It was stage, but that's that's the magazine world.
But I don't know.
I think I know that when I left New York for Los Angeles, it made me feel alone and untethered. That's a perfect word, because I was losing my way.
You know.
I missed Jack and Rowe and the guys, and the guys I held down New York City with, whether it's Frankie, Giant, Mario, Joey, Jack, Chico, you name it.
I missed them all terribly.
And I've told this to Mike and Kenny because they thought I was out there, and they kind of were right.
For a while.
I was a little bit too fucking stupid and acted like I was the shit, you know what I mean. But I never felt that way, and I always longed to be back with those guys, but they didn't know that with that's water under the bridge now.
But that's the way they felt for a while.
I don't blame them, but I was taking those necessary steps to become quote unquote famous. It's a dumb thing to chase if you think about it, and I have, but I was very lucky to have a TV show waiting for me as I landed in Los Angeles. Most people, if not all, people, come to Los Angeles and chase the dream. Well, my dream was given to me on a silver platter to host mysteries and scandals. There was no guarantee it would work or succeed, but the E
Network gave me that shot. You know, here's your chance. Can you be a TV star or pardon the word star? Can you be a TV host and make your your lane in that capacity? No guarantees it was gonna work or succeed, But when I got to LA it was like I wasn't.
I can't explain it. When I'm in New York. When I used to be in New York.
I felt it from my heels up to my ass. It's a different feeling standing in New York City. There's a rhythm, there's an energy about it.
It might sound corny or stupid to you.
I don't feel it in Illinois, although I love Illinois, love Chicago, but I.
Don't feel anything on my feet. I have images in my.
Head of how beautiful it is and green and water and nice people, well mannered.
But in New York, my feet hit the ground.
I swear to God, there's an energy that shoots up my legs into my immediate midsection area where a lot of arousal is sparked and just fireworks.
I mean, you may have that feeling with where you live. I don't know. In La it was different.
You know those things in airports that what do they call travelators, Those moving walkways that some people just stand on and some people walk on while it's moving to get to their gate, quicker whatever is. I felt like I was on one of those things every day, all day, you know, because you got a team of people all of a sudden doing things to you, making plans to you, arranging your schedule, photo shoots, gym appointments.
You know, what are you eating?
Everybody's eyes are on you because we're gonna sink a lot of money into you.
Buster. Don't fuck up, you know.
Wardrobe trips to Barney's to get Mike suits to the episodes, And that only happened because Johnny Boy Calvani, my man, was friends with a guy named Michael Sharky who worked at Barney's. In this special, how do I say this when stars go in to shop, this is the guy. Michael Sharky is one of those guys that can shut the store down for a star that kind of shit.
Now, he didn't do that for me, But.
Because I knew Michael Sharkey, he was agreeable and amenable and know that people were like this at the time to let me wear suits at Barney's and return them after they were dry, clean, properly, shirts, suits, ties, you name it. Of course, the shoes I kept, but he had a small budget, so I couldn't keep all the suits, but I ended up.
With a lot of them. At the end of the day, can't fit in any of them anymore.
But Michael arranged that at the time, only myself and padd O'Brien, the TV host and sports sports analysts was allowed to go to Barney's, get their clothes and return them.
It was a big deal.
I mean, it was kind of a big deal in the sense that the family that owned Barney's, I know, they air Jeene Pressman, came to my wedding because that's how close people were together at Barney's, and that all came from Johnny Boy Calvani's connections.
But with all those.
People and an entire network around me, it just helped to keep my mind off how heart broken I really was to leave New York City. But still, I mean, I remember that day when I was told about getting the gig, and of course I was happy, but I was bitter. I felt bittersweet because I knew I had to go.
I had to go.
I did always want to be on TV and movies and be quote unquote famous.
You know what I mean.
That word fame is associated with me, whether you think I was famous or not. It's just I can't hear that word without thinking of me, the show, my book, the TV show. It's just now, there are worse words to have associated with your life, you know.
But I remember the day I knew I was going to go. Plans were in effect.
I had, the tickets were sent, blah blah blah, and I went to my ex girlfriend, Calie Young's apartment in the West Village, and you know, I was crying where he sat in the back patio, and I cried that I got to go.
And you know, I was already thinking of before I even went there.
I was taking how soon can I get back, how often can I get back?
How long can I stay? You know that kind of shit, and.
Anything to try and make this long distance relationship work. It worked when we lived a half a mile apart, but three thousand miles that's tough. And she saw my tears. She cried too, but she straightened me out. And I don't want to sound corny, but she said to me, you're a star. I mean again, I feel funny saying that we use that word star a lot back in the day whenever we see people in New York who are doing great.
But we said that he's a fine star. I don't mean it in the sense like a movie star, but we said that she's a star.
It's just the word we use. And she said, you're a star. You've been a star here in New York City. Now you got to go be one in LA. You have to grant this and be You give her a lot of credit for standing up like that. But I knew we'd no longer be together. I knew i'd lose her. I knew the miles would be very hard on us.
But you know, truth be told, A lot has been said about she then moving on to Donald Trump and how it made me so terribly angry, Like I'm talking, filled with rage I never have felt before or I've ever felt since.
You know what I mean.
It was the kind of anger that that song by Cypress Hill here is something you can't understand. How I could just kill a man that was beating in my head every fucking I threatened to kill him on the Howards Thronshaw Live. I was nuts, But I'd be lying if I said that. When I got to Los Angeles, I began to be blinded by the beauty around me everywhere, not only in my office, in my apartment complex, in every night club, every bar.
And when you're a.
Guy on TV and you got a little game and you're decent looking, and you wearing the nice suits and whatever, you got a good line of shit you're from New York. You're talking quicker and faster than any guy Los Angeles.
The girls come around, and then you begin to what well.
I began to weigh allse miles, I'm not gonna see you for three weeks. This beautiful woman is presenting herself to me. I began to, you know, have a lot of fun before the Donald Trump shit began. So as mad as I was that that happened, I was no fucking boy scout, you know what I mean, So that that part never gets said in this whole conversation about Trump. I haven't listened to me and him arguing on stern for several years. But whatever I do, it makes me win.
Some of the things I said about him, if you stack it up with how much I love him now, like I am crazy about him. I'd rather see him. I want to see a Trump TV channel, just have him on all day like Sea Span. I want to watch him walk in the oval, get on the phone. I just do because I'll tell you some guys, I'm
not going to make it political. I was around him, you know, the billionaire building and the fucking phone calls, he got, the women around him, the swagger he had, He had everything never thought of as a president, but man, he was as.
Big as one of his buildings.
And I just love what he's doing with the country, and I love the fact that I knew him and know him, and I swear in the next three and a half years, I got to get down tomorrow Lago and make sure he knows how much I've been, you know, been behind him and did my share of whatever I could do.
He's unlike any president we've ever had.
I know, he's got qualities that make people pissed off, but there's so many great qualities about him that time will be the final judge. I think, all right, this is sounding insane. He's not gonna be Winston Churchill. There's no big war in America right now. But I think that his name in the next thirty forty years, when all this bullshit calms down from the progressives and everything else, he'll be known as one of the greatest men of
his era, along with Elon Musk. Right now, the verdict is still out because so many people disbelieve what he sees and what Elon sees and jd.
Vance has yet to do.
It's gonna be fine anyway, I'm way off the point, you get it.
So it was a different time to come out.
To LA and make it and try to make it and get bigger and bigger, and either way, eventually I settled down.
I got used to La.
I would go back to New York time and again, and when I did, I would say with her. If I wasn't alone island, I was staying with her, either at a hotel or at her apartment. And then it got fuzzy because that's when we kind of crossed swords one of my trips, I was with her.
The next trip, I see him and her in a magazine that I'm back in New York. I'm with her. It got weird, and god, I'm glad it's all over. It was a horrible time, but I loved it. I loved our relationship. I love the man.
We've all moved on with families, new wives and husbands, and it's way over. But it is what it is. I'm getting way off the topic. I want to talk about Naomi Watts and leave Schreiber's youngest kid, Kai Schreiber. Okay, uh, careful trigger. Whenever you hear a name that's not quite decipherable, girl, a boy Kai. Okay, this is the new world. Genderless names whatever you wanna call him, uh names that could
be either gender. We gotta go down the rabbit hole to find out, get to know the kid, the special kid.
They're all special. Nobody has a transgender kid and has a problem with them that they can say. He's just like any other kid, or she's just like any other kid. They're pain in the ass.
Everybody who's got a trans kid acts like they are miraculous.
Hold on water break.
And it bugs me. It bugs me. We all think our kids are miraculous. We all think our kids are are the bomb and the best. Won't tell me your kid who already arrived. God, don't get mad at me, a little fucked up in ahead. Now he's miraculous. So this kid Kai walked the runway for Valentino at Paris Fashion Week. She's six off, it's sixteen years old. Uses she her pronouns obviously was born a boy sixteen years ago, but walk the catwalk wearing all these crazy outfits, leopard
print mini dresses. You know, got long legs like her mother, but the girl's got her face like her father. The girl, this transvestite or transgender person looks like Ray Donovan in a mini dress. It doesn't work on the runway. The days are gone when models walk down the room with a sullen, serious face like every bad thing in the world just happened to them that day. Smile, beat chipper, give a wink, blow a kiss. When monos throughout the
crowd goes wild. I loved fashion Week. I was always front row speaking the Devil with Donald Trump and Russell Simmons and other people. People who've been Pete Diddy, a lot of bad guys who've been put away. Some became president, some became podcasters. But she, I'm sorry, I'm gonna say she because it's a model I'm talking about. I know it's a boy, and I don't know. Well, I'm sure there's no operation yet. She he still has the package in.
The middle of his pants, so it's all weird to me.
It'll never make sense to me. And I'm sure their appearent's out there right now. Or listen to the show who might have a kid that's trans. My heart goes out to you. I'm not stupid. I don't think.
How I say this.
It's so hard to go through life as just a sixteen year old kid, whether you're a boy or girl to transition, who would heap that much more trouble on their back? Like I said, life's hard enough, and it fucking bites back. So I don't know what to say. I don't think they're all lying, but I think a lot of it is a lie.
I just do. I think it's a cry for a ten clout. Is that sounds weird? I apologize, but.
I don't believe it all, not not every It's like it's like these rape cases.
I don't believe all the cases.
I don't believe all these transgender cases are all the same. Believe all women, no, believe all transgenders. Absolutely not believe all men. No, everybody's different.
But we treat these transgenders like they're so miracted, gifts from the heavens, none than that.
And look their parents, so of course they're gonna be there looking over and writing tweets about how gorgeous she looked and he looked.
Whatever you want to say, might be still my beating heart.
Naomi Watts said, live, so that's my Mason Valentino.
Baby, I'm squealing with pride. Okay, I've met lev.
Actually it was in a movie with him, Ransom, great fucking guy. I mean, one of the most serious actors out there. Do I think he's lying?
No, he loves his child, she loves her child. I get it, but I don't know what are we doing. And then all the.
Other people out there with Linda Evangelista and the kid that's Amelia Hamlet, Lisa Renna, and Harry Hammerin's life, they have to go on the internet and say how great and beautiful she look.
No, she didn't, she didn't. Can we just stop this?
It's no different than calling Lizzo healthy and that's the look, and she looks great, and she shocked people with this outfit.
People are blown away by Lizzo a bikini. We got a fucker. Stop.
Amy Shuma walked into a restaurant the other day with a long dressed I had horizontal stripes. Anybody with a weight issue do not wear horizontal stripes in a dress, big bold, horizontal stripes. And of course the caption was Amy sure was stunts. I'm fucking stunned at anybody look her well recorded her. Give me a break. This is no longer a fan. This whole transgender bullshit and Hollywood family is thinking it's great.
This is the normal in Hollywood, many not many.
Several years ago, when I was doing Lonette Corolla's podcast, I Forget, and I'm glad I forgot her partner's name because I don't I don't listen to that show.
But at the time, Lynette and I were getting tight.
And she was really sweet to me, and I was getting enveloped in the Corolla family and I loved it.
They're great people. Linette and Adam are great people. I hate that I'm not. I'm no longer on his radar.
And it's just nothing happened between Lonett and I was written up and read it.
We had an affair. We did not. It's all bullshit, but I know. I also came out.
Of the hospital after thirty days and needing a story from my podcast, and I knew they were getting a divorce. No one knew but me, well only journalists who knew was me, and I settled on the show and that that was not something he thought. I think he didn't like that I did that. I understand, I understand, but I wanted a big story, to get back on the horse and have you guys say, hey, AJ's back with a big story. Whatever it was, I regretted, and I'm out of the Corolla fold. But that fold is all
weird now too. Adam is gone, but that who know how fuck knows. She's got a new girlfriend. She's got a guy. He's living in Marlable. The house burns down. Now he's in Nevada building another house.
It's all weird.
But her partner on her podcast was a woman who had a transgender child, and every I swear to God, almost every time she brought up her kid, she would always start the sentence by saying, well, I have a transgender child and whatever. It was, little league, sports, health and diet. I don't care what I was talking about on the podcast. Oh well, it's funny he said it. My child is transgender. And I finally said, I know
you said it like four times. It's like me saying, well, my son Rock was six feet and he thinks this, Oh what does he eat?
Well, he's six feet Now, shut the fuck up. It's not special.
You're not gonna get special treatment for me because your kid's trends.
Oh.
She came at me on the internet, called me a pile of bullshit.
I went back at her. Lynette was laughing because between me and you, Lenet can't stand her. But she did this. I guess they're still doing it. I don't even know.
But she did it back then because she needed more of a profile because Adam and her were starting businesses like Corolla Drinks, and she was responsible for that. It was a whole thing that they did to market their products. And I understand good hustle on both their parts. But either way, I don't even know where this show's going. I'm just blabbing today. Thank you for letting me just talk and talk and talk. But I do want to
say before I go. Jack Kirouac, the famous author. He died well today's March twelfth.
Today. He died March twelfth, nineteen sixty nine. And he was a guy that I'm sure you've read all many you've read.
Read On the Road, one of the first books I dove into when I really got into writing and wanted to know more about the Sallengers and the Kiillacs and the hunterres Thompson's.
And I dove in.
I'm not a big Hunter s Thompson guy, not really Salinger genius, Killac, so bold and so brave and so fucking crazy for words that he got me at Hello put it that way. But this guy was involved in the jazz era of the poetry era, the beatnick ear. He was a beat poet, a drift, or a dreamer, and he just every time he put pen to paper or a typewrite to paper, I saw everything he said.
But I wanted to just end the show talking about him because of his spirit, the fact that he most of the time when he wrote things, he was making us well, reminding us is a better word, reminding us to live, to just go have new experiences, and for me that meant women jobs, chasing fun, going to different countries, going to countries behind the iron curtain.
Just let's have a love of fair and Cuba.
Why not just crazy shit, go out there and get a story, bring a story back. And that's what I was as a writer, even when I was doing high school sports. Go watch the game, bring back a story. I love that simple sentence. It's what I do every day. But Kirawak was one of the first writers who really made me understand about living loud. So I think today we should celebrate this guy, the King of beats. Grab one of his books if you got them, read some pages to your kids, even read them to the dog.
You know, Andrew's been reading a book. She's reading right now, and the.
Two dogs, Tutsi and Gizmo stare at her face while she reads aloud, and they like it, and they begin to fall asleep when she starts to fall a thing. It's a very strong These logs are fucking human, I swear to God. If you see pictures, they're human. And grab a Curauacic book if you got on the road, Read a few paragraphs, read a few pages, or finish the book in one city if you want.
But get him into your head and heart.
I'm sure you've got a dusty shelf in the garage or a bookshelf somewhere that has one of his books. Go grab it. Read his poems too, man, his poems are great. Turn up the music, you know. Kirouac once said. One of the greatest quotes to me is the only truth is music, he said, And you know me with music that I believe that. Before I read that, I don't know. But music has always affected me in a great way. And it's true. Music is the only truth, man.
But in the spirit of Jack Kirouac. I think we need to let ourselves live, man, you know, just forget about the bullshit on TV, the pre Palestine and doze and every just forget.
It all for a few days.
Go outside, sleep outside if you want, Go look at the stars at night. Go go climb a mountain, Go walk down a dark alley, Go dancing if you can find a dance hall somewhere.
In his words, go mad for the day. You know, get on the highway, just go do it.
Do something, something out of the ordinary, something that.
Stirs your blood.
Too many of us get lazy and complacent, and we forget what it's like to have a blood stirred.
And that's our gasoline. Man. You can't just let it sit there in the tank. You gotta read the engine sometimes on.
One of his best passages is not a poem, but a passage in his book that says, the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like a fabulous yellow Roman candle, exploding like spiders across the stars, and in the middle you see the blue center.
Light pop and everybody goes ah.
So that's what I mean by let it go. Get rid of your worries for a day or two. The bullshit, meaningless little fees you have that ordinarily don't come true.
We're just always scared they're gonna come true.
We've all faced so many battles, but you know what, we're still here.
So the battles didn't beat us. We beat the battles. Live like that.
Get the fucking anchor off your back, put all that bullshit pulsing in you, and just light it up on fire man.
Just watch the smoke curl up with the sky. Just be bold, like.
I always tell you, guys, we only got a few breaths here, We only got a finite time on this earth. So sometimes you gotta disregube your fears and inhibitions and just jump straight in, feet first, head first.
Belly flop.
I don't care, jump in, get in, forget yourself, forget the rules, forget the fucking clock on the wall. We are all just a flicker in the great wild rush of time. So throw it all in the fire, heart head bones, every ounce of your spirit, watch it burn, because Jack Kirouac said at one point it all ends in tears anyway.
That's tough. So yeah, like I.
Said, taping this on March twelfth, the day he was born in nineteen twenty two and Lowell, Massachusetts before he just raised as much hell as he could and went on to produce more beautiful words that go good together to the next twenty offors combined. The guy went for just forty seven years before he died in nineteen sixty nine, and he's got a lasting legacy like very few of the people. So the next time you listened to Bob Dylan, or or the Beatles or even the Doors, you gotta
remember that he was their hero. They wanted to be like him. And as a kid who always wanted to play with the power of words, I always felt, this guy's the best.
This guy's one of the best.
He got me when I was young, and as many of you know, I have a roster of heroes in my heart that goes from Pete Hamill to Jimmy Breslin, to Muhammad Ali, to Dylan Thomas to Tennessee Williams.
Salinger, Kiroak.
I grew up wanting to be those guys, or at least in my time on this earth, be able to do something that maybe cast me in that same light. I know it's a very high order, but what's the use. What's the use in living if you don't set your sights above and beyond yourself. You know, there are faces of people I see when I write, and they flash across the backs of my eyelids, like an old sixteen millimeter film strip, like I saw my family in Brooklyn
back in the sixties. It's almost as if these people who flash across, these men who flash across my minds, I'm not only seeking their advice, It's almost like I want their approval. And then there are times that I do things and say things and write things that I'm sure wouldn't meet their standards, and it fucking bothers me. Man,
it just bothers me. I get up and that it doesn't keep me up, but it wakes me up early, sometimes at a god for saken hour, three o'clock in the morning, and I'm up, why stewing in my bad decisions and misdeeds, just going over life. Those guys wake me up, I know they do. And I've always had this desire to be close to them. I got to work with Pete Haddele and Jimmy Bresden talk about reaching for things that were well beyond my reach, but I got them. I don't care they fired me. That makes
the story better, man. But to be near them in a spiritual way is just I cannot split how great that feels, you know, just to want to know what they felt when the world was theirs.
And as morbid as it sounds, I'm gonna say it anyway.
There was that day a couple of Novembers ago, when I found myself thrown up black blood. Never saw a black come out of my mouth. That's blood. I didn't know that. Had to go to the emergency room, have somebody fix me, to bring me back from the brink.
It was bad. Curtains were closing, man.
Apparently they found that an ulcer in my stomach had burst, and I was in dire need of help. And yet, as awful and scary as that time was, i'd be lying to you guys if I said I didn't briefly think that maybe I'd gotten too close to Jack Kurouac's way of life. Since his manner of death was from an abdominal hemorrhage caused by a lifetime of heavy drinking, and that was a little too close for me.
I've told you to pass.
It's not always fun to beetry heroes, but it can be disastrous if you want to be just like them. So you can still live your life in the spirit that Kirouac wrote about, but just don't pour any spirits as you set out to do.
Just that. Have some fun on Jack. I'll talk to you guys tomorrow