S2 - Ep. 69 - Mandee Johnson

Are you leaving?

I you wanna way back home?

Either way you want to be.

There, doesn't matter how much baggage you claim and give us time and a terminol and gay. We want to send you off in style. We want to welcome you back home. Tell us all about it.

We scared her? Was it fine?

Malborn?

Do you need to ride? Do you need to ride? Do you need to ride? Do you need to ride? Do you need to ride? Do you need to ride? Need a ride? Do you need with Karen and Chris welcome to Do you need a ride? This is Chris Fairbanks.

And this is Karen gl Gara.

I hello Karen, Oh, hello Chris. I did a taping for Commercial to Day and I had to do it a second time in Spanish and yeah, I'm just letting you know I am bilingual. It took me four hours, though I had to listen to it. I had to dictate it, translate it because it wasn't provided oddly, so I just translated the English. And it felt so weird doing the accent like I learned it in college. But it felt very strange to do a Spanish accent? Am I weird? Fore fronted by that?

Our French teacher in high school used to get mad at us all the time because she would be like, leipond you blee, and she'd be saying like that. We'd always be like, you know whatever, jamappel Karen, like we would not do French accents. We would we all refused to even especially not like do the r thing or the throat thing, but just like we would all keep our California accents.

Why are you doing it? I guess it felt like I was doing an accent, like when I do the reggae stuff. It seemed like I was comedically it seemed like someone would be offended if they walked in I was doing. But I'm just thinking I'm speaking Spanish though. It's it was so because it would go back. It was for the California Lottery. So as soon as it got to that, you know, I do California lottery, and then I dropped the accent. I don't know very' here it just give us a sampling. Oh god, I didn't

Count you back in you don't do the last two numbers in five.

Four three, Poor Caciente Tandiana reventur barbojas des plastico, poor la mis ma razon que hugamos Scratchers Day California Lottery, bonello un poco de juegoa too dia too dia. Oh, I hope I didn't do it like that. On the recording. I think I said do tilla, which means something about your aunt.

Oh. No, wow, you're supposed to be saying, are you saying today today?

Yes, you're right, thank you. I mean our French and Spanish. That's similar to where you just I'm smart. It's a count clue, you know what I mean? Be crazy. The reason I didn't do that well is because I didn't put on my father's glasses. I actually have trouble reading. Oh there they are, there they are. Yeah, I have I've grown blind during this, but that's gonna stick with me. Yeah, por la mis marison okay ol gamos gamos Scratcher's Day, California Lottery. That's how I was doing it because I'm

And I think that's how many people in many Californians, many native Spanish speakers also because they are bilingual. That's how they do. I always hear like the girls talking to each other where they're speaking in Spanish so that other people can't hear them. But then they're like, you know, Twitter, or they'll say a thing that's right American or Anglicized exactly.

This is a problematic conversation. Let's introduce our guests. It maybe is. But the reason I brought it up as I was worried that I did the lottery California line, but I didn't do the accent, so I shouldn't have even brought it up. I'm fine, I didn't do anything. That's the way.

That's the way I hear people do it on the radio when they're speaking Spanish, but then they say the thing in English they do it.

I in my mind, I did it problematically, but I think I did it correctly. I just had to talk through it at a strange time at the beginning of our podcast, and I hope that's okay.

Look, this is where it's the first four minutes of the podcast where we bring our worst problems right, and then we pull our guest into those problems and say, come and solve these for us.

Please. Are you sure we shouldn't change the name of the podcast Off on the wrong Foot. I think it's got a nice ring to it and it makes perfect sense. Yeah, we have a guest today, Karen. We certainly do. And I am holding her book. It's funny. Why am I holding it up? There's no TV cameras? But look, do you have it beautiful?

Yes?

I got some one very early because I'm friends with our guest.

Well, I r L. Since you're are such good friends, I will do let you do the honors of introducing her.

Okay, back all the way off, ladies and gentlemen. Today our guest. Our guest is a soup, is a multi hyphen it And you can tell me, Mandy if I get the order wrong. But I would say she is a producer. She is a photographer photographer. She is a book or extraordinaire. She is a helper of artists around the world and fucked up stand up comics who can't get their shit together. She's a facilitator of the arts. Her name is Mandy Johnson and.

A writer.

And a writer of books. I'm a writer of books, a curator of books and writing. Andy Johnson, I didn't back off. I didn't know it was perfect.

Many that's her official production.

That's so many additional multi hyphens. I'm going to keep all of them.

Karen Good, I think for me, I know you best as the person who when I started doing stand up again and knew.

It was a bad idea.

It was.

It was not a bad idea, not this, not this most recent time, but the first time when I was doing guitar, Yeah, that was great. Everyone likes it, thank you. But for me personally, just my personal experience was humiliation.

And and also there was a lot of tech involved that I couldn't There's a lot of things that were involved I couldn't handle. And when I did super serious well, and when I met Mandy the first time, it was just like I got you, here's the sparking spot for I'll meet you at the door. It was like she knew exactly how high maintenance I was and how to get me into that show so that I wouldn't like completely cave in inside before I got on stage. And

So sweet.

We were so excited when Karen, Karen, when you came back to comedy, and I think at the time I told you that producers in the independent comedy see in Los Angeles were like, Oh my god, Karen Cogarf was doing shows again.

This is so exciting.

That's true truly how me Angela felt, were like, oh, this is so exciting, and we've always wanted to have her on and so when you came into our show, we were so pumped.

I was so excited about it.

So it feels a little bit like those dreams you have when you're in your late thirties early forties where you're in high school, but you like the early thirties early forties, where you're just like, I.

Shouldn't be here. Why am I taking this math death? Only it was my real life. That's how it felt. Yeah, that's my reoccurring nightmare is yes, I'm Billy Madison situation where I have to quit, I have to cancel all my gigs, I have to move out of my apartment. There's so much high school I missed, and I have to go back because of a class I forgot about. Not I didn't just go miss the test at the end. I absolutely forgot about my seventh period algebra, and I

And you tell you try to tell people, sorry, Oh, I was gonna say, I love this nightmare in your head. You're like, I'm a successful comedian, but I still need to go back and get my eyes.

Better, get it right. Why what exactly? I don't know. It's some honor thing, like I have to go do this. What I have framed and of course hung in my living room, this diploma prior to my college degree is a first.

I got it.

I lied. I have to go back.

I did that a lot with I would go back to play on my old softball team, but it was, of course all new young people, and I would keep looking at people and going, I wasn't even that good when I did it there, Why am I here? And I'd be like, listen to me, I'm forty two or whatever I was at the time, where I'm just like trying to explain to the other adults at the school, like please, I can't put this uniform on.

Please don't make me do this. Yeah, that's the same dream. What does it mean we need a dream analyzer.

Mandy, Oh, that's the other hyphen it analyzer Mandy analyzed.

It's probably to some form of anxiety.

I think that's all of my life, not being good enough, not succeeding, not completing whatever you said out to complete. I my recurring things are just versions of whatever my job is, time that I don't work. So like when I cocktailed in college, I would just dream that I cocktailed the whole night, and so I'd wake up, but.

I would feel like I ever went to sleep.

And when we were at like festivals, I would often dream of working the festival the whole night and then get up and have to do a whole other day of festivals all that.

Yeah, that's what I can't They're kind of realistic, like that's that that could possibly happen. So it's so disappointing for that to be a dream. Remember the action, the weird things, even being chased or falling. I don't dream those things anymore. They're just realistic where I'm screwing up an appointment or yeah yeah.

And in the pandemic and they've just been like versions of masked, or like I'm the only mask person and everyone else isn't, or I've forgotten my mask in some kind of very important, crazy way, and therefore I have put everyone who lives with me at risk, and like everyone I love somehow, they've just all been like weird versions of like how I'm going to somehow contruck COVID and then give it to everybody I love.

Which it's the most realist. Then that day that exact thing happens, it's just not scary because you're awake and you know how to deal with it. Yeah.

Yeah, I had a dream the other night that I everything that it wasn't stressful, wasn't anything. It's just no matter what anyone said to me. In the dream, i'd go, that's okay. I just kept saying that over and over, and when I woke up, I was like, this is I think this was a good dream. I think this is like this is a thing to focus on. Is it doesn't most things don't matter. Yeah, I think your

Yes, exactly. I I this is very specific and we don't have to talk about dreams the whole time. But you are a dream analyzer, Mandy. So it is how I make all of my money. So yeah, that and the tarot cards. So I have been doing this thing where I when I wake up, there is a moment I'm realizing now because I've been dreaming during this whole past year. There's a moment here I'm awake, clarified. Did you not before? I did not before? Okay, you did? You very rarely. And it might have to do with

Sometimes where I'm aware in the dream, I'm aware that I'm dreaming.

I'm aware that I'm asleep and I am too. Thing is a dream, right, I called lucid dreaming. Lucid dreaming your business, Mandy, so much care so much today? Not that are Maybe that's what you're doing, is like, and then you can kind of be like and then you're like, oh, I can kind of control this, right, I think I have special powers.

That's exactly it. I'm Lucid dreaming. I know I know I'm laying in bed, I know I'm in my house, I know the alarm is about to go off, but I don't want to open my eyes to see what time it is, So rather than open my eyes and become fully awake, I dream that it's three hours earlier. That's basically what.

Time is this normally at? Like what time is your home?

Yes, and it will be like if it's like right before the alarm goes off, my brain knows when the alarm's going off, and it's like really early in the morning, Like do you get up really earlier? Is it like more than he doesn't look at that hair?

He gets up early?

It's funny. The only days I wake up at six thirty are the days I go skateboarding with my seven am skateboard crew, which is like high.

Scheel, Like that's an oxymoron of a seven am skateboard crew.

We got to get there before Costco opens and then all the cars come, and then it's day We have to get there before the cars. And everyone I skate with has a day job. They're firemen and stuff, so we have to do it in the morning. What a brag there, Yeah, fireman, I know fireman. My nephew is a fireman, my brother in law's a fireman. How many firemen do you guys know Karen's father fireman?

Uh, and about one hundred other people in my family.

Really, I don't.

I think I had a nephew ones who wanted to be a fireman. That's it some total like half of one basically, I mean, I wouldn't even give it one. That's none of them, None of them.

My nephew. My nephew is freshly become a fireman. Congratulations. Yeah, it's the outfit and everything.

I'm gonna trump you all in being boring by saying my uncle, my uncle Martin teaches at the fire College in San Francisco. So all, if you become a fireman in San Francisco, my uncle mark and teaches you like the book part?

Oh wow? Does he like it? Thanks?

That's I wanted to kind of blow your guys's mind.

It feels like I did. He does he like it?

Yeah?

I don't know.

I mean maybe he enjoyed doing it. He's been doing it a while, so I think he does. He's been doing.

It a long time. I'm I've never heard of such a thing as at fire college. Because recently I was thinking it would be very important and helpful if there was some kind of a police college.

I can't believe that you guys keep calling it police school and police college. When the Police Academy films the entire film series, there's six.

Or seven of us all that I thought it was. I mean, Mandy, Bobcat Goldthwaite is in your.

Book, and you know what, I thought that they made the name better, that they didn't actually use the real name.

I the episode of the I believe it was number three Citizens on Patrol. That that's the one that spoke to me the most as a skateboarder, because I realized as a teenage skateboarder, I could help solve crime by launching a sweet method over the hood of a car.

It feels like a TV show you pitched.

No, it was. It was Tony Hawk and the entire Bones Brigade. We're in Police Academy. Three. Tony Hawk is six four or six five and he was the stunt person for David Spade. No, who I believe is four? You know five? Well, I don't want to offend the man. He's in his mid five. He's in the mid five. He's petite. Yeah, he's a pilled on it. He's got jokes about it. Yeah, yeah, he would call himself dainty.

Even I would say that you just did the most perfect segue into talking about Mandy's book. I know, we went back to poets, I know, I know, but we should talk about it though, because it is beautiful. I mean, it is a gorgeous book, but it's also Stephen talked

Mandy, Mandy.

Let me ask you, Karen, how did you get the idea that you were like, I'll give comics basically free headshots.

I mean, it truly didn't start off as that, and it didn't even start off to be a book. It started off as a need to show people, audience members and comedians who has who had done the show and create SEO and drive traffic to the website. And Joel was like, it basically was our version of like a comedy club wall where Canadians sign headshots and then they put them up in frames and they sit there forever and gather gross dust.

Yeah. Yeah, but it's my favorite thing when I go to a comedy club it is to look at the wall and see comics that have moved on and become head writers of TV shows or just went off into obscurity. I love. I always look at the comedy club wall in any club. And this book is a lot of these photos in this book I do recognize from the comics using these photos as their headshots. You were giving away free headtree. It was definitely like.

And then when we started in twenty ten, we very very first started. We couldn't afford to pay, and then we got a sponsor about six or seven months and and so then we were able to pay everyone consistently, which was something that was always important to me and Joel. But in the meantime, I was like, well, none of you, all of you need photos, so here are some photos for you. I can't pay you, but here are some you all need photos. I've looked online.

You do not have them. Here are some.

Photos, yes, because most people tried to get the like one hundred and ninety nine dollars set when they look twenty seven and then just never do it again.

That's definitely what I did. It was just like get what you get.

When you you know, when you absolutely have to, and then never look back.

Yeah.

Yeah, there's a lot of comics I note that are doing well that still have fifteen year old headshots where of a hairline of the past.

I photo up a lot of comedians portraits that they'll use for headshots, and a lot of times they'll come and I haven't done this in like a decade. I'm like, sure, that makes sense, and then they'll tell me I hate this, and I'm like, you know, so if you're successful, this is a thing that you're going to have to do a lot.

Yeah. Well, it's awkward to do direct while you're taking photo, like give me a pay act like you're yeah.

I mean a lot of times because I think comedians will come to me because we know each other, and so yeah, you can have we can kind of chat and hang out where I take photos, and so eventually they just relax. Yeah, and you know, sure, there's like it's digital now, so there's like three hundred photos of them talking that are completely unusable, but then there's like, you know, one hundred and fifty that are great of them having a moment or like in between or you know,

Such it's so much easier. I just I think of when back when I snowboarding a lot, there'd be three or four photographers taking pictures of everyone, and you could tell who wasn't worried about money because it was in the film days. They'd be just snapping sequence after sequence, and other folks were like, well, I don't want to burn a bunch of film here like you had to. People used to have to worry about the expense of developing and then finding out that you wasted a bunch of shows.

It was cheaper to purchase and develop film back then, yeah, but it still was an actual cost versus just like a one time cost of a memory.

Card, you know, right, right, and so yeah, I guess that's the way.

I don't now when I shoot film. I never felt like that when I shot film, but now when I shoot film, I feel like that because it's so challenging and like you have to I send my film out to labs that don't exist that are in Los Angeles to get developed, because the one in Los Angeles that does like medium format is very expensive.

Deluxe I con I just wanted to guess a photo, see if I could get it right.

Icon it's the only one that I know that does medium form. Like there's a lot of great thirty five millimeter places, but myself kind of like being like, mmm, is this worth shooting film for?

Right?

Did you ever like mess with it? Like the actual emulsion process in the in the dark room and with chemicals.

I never processed color film, but I grew up grew up as a strong word, I guess. But from like high school, middle school, I process my own form black and white film for ages. I processed thirty five medium format.

In college.

I process my own four by five film, yeah, which is how the photos in the book are shot.

They're all shot on a four by five camera.

Okay, yeah, and that was kind of my cheat to like get around my nervousness for shooting them. Especially early on, I was like, look at this really cool camera. Don't you want to be photographed with this wool ancient camera?

Feel like Abraham Lincoln. I'll put a blanket over my head.

It is pretty amazing though, when you look at this book, and you definitely should and get Mandy's book because it isn't a I had no idea how many huge people you got on that show and it for that book. Like, as I flipped through it, I was just like, oh my god, there's legit big stars in this book. It's really cool, and.

It's cool because it is. I feel like I haven't gone all the way through it, but it seems like it's like specifically about the independent comedy scene in the exact time that I'm like it just starting with how far back did you go? Is it pre two thousand? Well?

I think I think it technically goes back to the seventh Oh wow, I think Andy Kindler talks about the seventies and the timeline hang on, it's dated nineteen eighty nine, I guess is the oldest. But I think Kendler talks about a little bit before that, but I guess James of domiin clocked it where he said I was like born and grew up or he moved there in eighty.

Nine, and that was like the earliest interview. Oh okay, specific year I had.

But Killler talks a lot about Kidler, Karen, Greg, Greg Barrets, yeah, Greg Bearris, Yeah. They all talk a lot about Pardo, about the time that I wasn't in Los Angeles yet, so they I mean the time that I didn't spend

Whole or money maybe back then. Yeah, yeah, that was the brag about New York. Yeah, we moved here around the same time. You pretty much listed every yeah, the history of my being here.

But so yeah, but so I got a lot of great historical contexts and things that I kind of knew from like Dana and Karen and that whole gang, and they didn't know, you know, and things that I kind of got clarified and stuff along the way in the interviews, which was really interesting for me as somebody who loves comedy and who has produced it for so long and found independent comedy, of course to be important, as is club comedy, but independent comedy to be important just to

Yeah, I've always tried to do both, and I yeah, I don't even separate the two anymore. I like that they're kind of just becoming the same thing.

That was the funny thing in the nineties because I'm yeah, so I was here probably a decade before you guys, because I moved here in ninety four, and it absolutely was the dawn of club comedy versus yeah, what they called alternative comedy, and it was very which is just what the era was like, just incredibly anti. So it was like you were supposed to pick a team or

Which was so cool.

It was just the opposite of how I started, because it was like, my my nervousness when I started stand up was just like you had to be good already,

Yeah, it is.

Do you know something, I've never thought of this before this moment, but like I remember Dana talking to me about like when he started his first independent show WHI Jeane Grafolo. It was because the owner of the Improv came up to him when he was trying some new stuff out at like a weekly show, not a weekend show, but like a weekly show. I mean they're still paying plenty of money for a weekly show. But he was like,

Right?

I mean, that's just it I've never really thought about it because now the worlds are so blended, or you know, pre pandemic, they were so blended that they could go to like independent shows because independent audiences don't care if you're a quote unquote club comic as long as you're not like, I don't know, I guess ending every joke with like.

Or something like that. I don't know.

That's just I think that was word that was part of the argument was if you only if like the time that you get on stage to try new stuff, it is in front of three hundred people in like the main room, you know, the comedy store mainroom, that you are going to tend toward crowd pleasing material That might not be the best material. It might just be clap trappy, you know, shock value, whatever that it's that it's going to bend your ear toward crowd pleasing as

Right, Yeah, And what's I think I think what really melded the worlds together was I It's been an interesting thing from the Oughts to now where Hollywood has right like famously, like so many of writers from the Simpsons were found at like Luna Lounge and stuff and and what so, Hollywood has been drawn to the independent comedians in the independent rooms and finding and scatting people through that, and then that you know, Sarah Silverman and stuff has

And then it's like a cyclical.

Thing that feeds itself, so that you know, motion Natasha or something, we're in independent rooms only. But then as they get famous and rise in a Hollywood standard, then they're more acceptable at clubs because club owners are like, oh, you're famous, so you can draw an audience, and then they do club you know, and it's a very funny. It's a very funny thing. Like famously, Kristin I think just did the improv for the first time like within

And I was surprised that there was comics I worked with when I'm sorry, comedy comedy Uh comedy store, oh right, no, yeah, I immediately just thought the comedy store because that's that's so many that used to be a scary place that there was hard to park and I didn't want to go there, and now all my friends are there and it's it's totally changed the environment. But when I would were in Austin open for these comp like Robert Hawkins was a guy that didn't seem like a road comic.

Like, meanwhile, that audience could exactly. Audience is like you were funny, audience.

Never has differentiated. Yeah, And that is like the real like line.

I think I've watched it happen so many times in like hot tub where it's a famous comedian and they're working out stuff and the audience is like, no, that's not funny, and they're like, okay, thank.

You so much for that. Honestly, yeah, yeah, yeah, there is a bit of that. I almost feel like in this city, it's people can smell when you're doing your material.

But I think it's also like you, we've definitely trained a specific audience that enjoy the process, which I think is really cool.

I don't think that every audience is like that. There.

They enjoy watching comedians workout stuff and being part of it in that way, and I think also I know that that's challenging sometimes when comedians want to just like go and do a set that's easy for them, and like go and do stuff that they know is going to be good, or they want to get a good

I think is well.

I think energy of the difference between when you're watching somebody kind of like you know, shoot for Shoot for the Moon as they're doing their stuff, where it's almost like they're talking over the audience and out into some like the camera of life of like here's my here's the fifteen minutes that's going to you know, make or break me, as opposed to a person that's kind of on stage and it's it's stylistic too, because I think that it blended into the style of it seems like

It's actually a very.

Bold move and it makes the audience go, oh shit, they really are like And I think that difference is there are people who are like it's it's the uprising of the comedy nerd, because there are people who are like, just like I like to laugh and they're sitting there and it's like that's great, and they'll never go, oh that's I've seen this bit before, or this is a very common trope. There are people who are just like I'm here to have fun and I don't care, you know,

New and risky, like they want you to risk it.

Yeah, you know what I always tell a lot of times when we have like British comedians, you know, who come over and do hot tepar, a super serious show, they'll kind of ask about the audience and like ask how it's different and stuff. And the thing I always tell people and I and I and lots of the times I wish somebody had told me this earlier in America, and it's like such a very simple thing.

I was like, in these rooms, you just need to.

Talk to the audience and not at them, like and it's I know, it's like a mind fuck of a thing because you're like I am talking to them. You're like no, but you're you're talking to that back wall, you're talking to that invisible camera. You're you're too presentational sometimes, you know, And and they just want you to talk to them.

They're there, They're part of the show.

They're an integral part of your experience as a comedian and the experience of the show as a whole. And that is the main difference I think between a big clubroom and a big independent room.

Is they just want to be talked to.

And you can actually like I taught myself a couple of tricks, which is definitely make a joke about one of the last jokes the comment.

Before you yeah, yeah, I do it all the time, right, you got.

To do that, because then that's saying I'm I've also been in the audience along with you this whole time.

I know what's going on.

And then something about while you're doing your set, which clearly is I mean that was also the pain of being a guitar comic. There's no way to pretend you're improvising, there's no way to pretend you're not doing a polished thing. And also as you're doing it, you're just stuck inside it. You can't bail, you can't do anything else. You're just like, now here's my three minute presentation or whatever. It's so painful.

It's funny. I whenever you say guitar comic, I know you as a regular stand up and then I also know you as a musician, so sometimes I would see you do stand up and also play songs. But when I hear guitar comic, I think of parody, like goofy songs. I know the rhyme and they're about farting and I'm in Tulsa and the guy is a cowboy hat I don't. I'd like it if you didn't just call yourself a guitar comic, you are I get a comedy show.

If you're on a comedy show and you walk out wearing a guitar, the audience is.

Like the audience in rooms like this.

I think if it was you know, like at the Improv, they it's a little show, it's like, oh, it's exciting.

I was I used to It would.

Blow my mind how well those weird little songs would do at a place like the Improv, because I would be like, oh, I don't think these you know, these tourists aren't gonna like it. And it's like these days and that was, you know whatever mid two thousands, everybody has has comedy chops. These days, everybody knows comedy, everybody's it's around so much. It's become so kind of ubiquitous in so many different ways that everybody has a little

I think podcasts, I mean did a lot of that.

I mean, podcasts brought comedians into this space of the fans and the most personal way where they listen to them. I mean, like I listen to podcasts the most when we go on like road trips and we drive a lot, and it's like, oh, I've listened to like eight hours of the Dollup or something, and so I just feel like I've been hanging out with Dave and Garrett and like there they are my friends, but it feels more personal to me, like they've been with me on this road trip, which.

They have not been.

They have like I know them and more friends, but they have not.

Been with me on this road trip.

And so I can imagine for like somebody who doesn't

So it's it's I think it's been a few the last few years for me. The audiences. It's people that kind of know me already, and it's become At first I was taken aback by it, and now it's so comforting to know that I'm like safe in front of these sweet people that listen to podcasts. It's the it's the best.

It's really nice. You don't have to you don't have to be like, let me my favorite phrase, world, let me tell you a little tithing about that.

Yeah, I know what you're thinking.

Yeah, always followed up with just nothing personal and a joke. But yet it is the the The other funny thing is and Chris, I think I know you witness this happen when April and I did that show at the Improv Lab that was the beginning of My Favorite Murder, and a bunch of or some of our listeners would

You're not sitting in your car into work. Yeah, yeah, there, You're not going to get trouble in trouble at your desk if you laugh about love. But I've gotten used to it, I can tell. I just pay more attention visually to the look on people's faces, and I'm okay with it not being uproarious laughter. Actually yeah, it's a lot of times when a crowd was that and they're laughing at everything, I'm like, I don't believe you. You're

Rose O'Donnell hosted it first. Do you remember you know what I'm talking about?

Right?

Stand up? Stand up?

I believe I know, I know what you're talking about I remember when they shot a stand up show at the Highs House, but I didn't know it was it was and.

It went on for years, and the audiences knew they were on a TV show. It was like, and it was produced for TV and whatever I got, I got booked on it, and I was just like, oh my god, this is amazing.

I walked out and I did.

I went into the setup of my first joke, and at the end of the first sentence, the audience burst out laughing so.

Loud that I like didn't.

I like, was like whoa, And I kind of got shook. I was like, I don't know what's going on, and the and the the audience was just laughing at pauses because they knew they were on TV.

Yeah, and it was one of the war sets.

And I've almost strictly done terrible television sets.

Early days by choice.

Early days.

Yeah, yeah, bye.

But that one was mind blowing because I was just like, oh, this, you guys, this isn't about my creative mind or these wonderful concepts I'm.

About to present you.

They're just like I'm where we live in LA, where actors were the audience. We're gonna give you audience, so it's just like, ah haha, nonsensically it was.

It was upsetting. They they reposted my old premium Blend, which was two thousand and three, and those they get those audiences. It was like a casting service or something. And I accidentally mentioned that New York. I just said New York and the whole crowd started screaming and hood and I literally plugged my ears and said no, no, I didn't, oh no, my ears. Plugged my ears and said my ears because I did not expect that to happen. It threw me off so much, and luckily they edited it.

I think, honestly, I think the set I did, if it ended up on the air, which I don't know if it did, but if it did, it was two minutes long. They cut it down to nothing because I think because I just kept like flinching at the audience's response.

Maybe that's how it's going to be now in coming months, people are going to be so excited to see comedy. I'm actually very much looking forward to it, but I wonder if the audiences will be rusty just like the comedians.

I mean, I think that they'll be so excited. Yeah, but I'll still take a really long time before we're going to have full rooms again.

I think, Yeah, the audiences will be excited, they'll also be shit faced up.

Yeah, you're probably right.

It's going to be an interesting walk back. I think into that space and into like them consuming comedy not from their living rooms again, you know, and not from because they can mute themselves and they can talk and do things.

And I mean, I think that they'll all be very excited.

To come back, and I truly can't wait to pack the virtual shoulder to shoulder. Yeah, but I was gonna say that, like super serious shows, audiences have always kind of been like that where they're like will you call them theatrical audiences where they would clap and they'd be like this is funny. I'm quiet now, yeah this is funny, and so like there's no there's none of the rolling

Maybe it's something about the acoustics of that stage or so, because I feel like every show like that, I just I always feel that experience. Yeah, whenever, I.

Mean, it's it's an interesting thing, and so I think it's it's so polite when audiences do that, and they're just they're they're trying to be differential. They're trying to give what they believe is the right risk back to the comedian. Yes, And what they don't know is like we just want you to laugh, like yeah, that's that's that's like laugh We don't laugh. Like we judge everything by your laughter or not your laughter, Like you know, it is like the barometer that this show lives and dies by.

I do like the fact that audiences have developed that understanding about like being quiet and not talking and you know what I mean that honestly, starting in clubs in nineteen ninety you were just fighting, drink noises, just full on conversational chatter at tables.

I mean like they were fighting so much.

Yeah, yeah, it was if you were the opener or you know what I mean, like lowered or if it was like a showcase night, it was just a battle. So the fact that it is slowly developed into this kind of thing where like the people who were sitting there didn't get free tickets off the radio. They're sitting there because they want to be there, and they know people on the.

On the show. Yeah, when someone heckles, now, I'm like, did you just step off a time machine?

Up?

Even in the audience too, they're like, oh my god, a heckler. You want to look at him?

I'm also so confused constantly. And I've had it where I've had a few friends who have done this, and I found I found it really hard, even as somebody who works in comedy to have this conversation with him.

I'm like, they're a positive heckler. They're like yes, like, and I'm like, they don't. They don't need that.

They're fine, yeah, like laugh, Like all they want is like, don't tell them they're unless they ask for like a rhetorical yes or something. Why are you They don't need your encourgiment.

Yeah, just the audience member that's like uh huh oh, yeah, I'm with you, I'm with you. You're doing great.

I'm like, no, I know you think you're doing such a nice thing, but please stop positively heckling.

It's really hard.

Well, I don't think they're doing a nice thing. I think they're doing a narcissistic actory thing or a kooky like either they're on something.

Yeah, that's that's la stuff.

Of making it about you, where it's just like there's I will always always get women who are drunk who are like, oh like, because I'll say something that they find so, you know, like I can't.

Believe she's said it or whatever, where.

It's just like okay, but this isn't about you and your college experience. Like it's hilarious to me, and.

It also makes me.

I am always very mean to those people because it's just like, just don't do it. And also, this is my job as a comic, Like you've now put a target on your forehead. It doesn't matter how much you love me, because I have to Now if I'm ever going to get on YouTube as comedian who destroys.

Heckler, oh god crossed, I'm going to have to attempt to descry. I one day hope to own a Heckler. Oh own them, that's the next level you can destroy that.

Sorry are you?

Are you discussing like owning a human being?

That's judging by what all these YouTube videos I've seen a lot of comedian owns Heckler, and so I guess it's I'm sorry, but yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, And they come live at your house and uh, and then they do like this couch, it's really comfy. Yeah, they become your pool boy, kind of like Hardcastle and McCormick, a show that I should have referenced.

I have had a son like Kurt out before. I'm been like, hey, we have a positive Heckler in the crowd, so I need you to do a thing where you tell everyone not to hackle. That's a video like the things, but I also explain that like positive hecklean's bad too, Okay, thing's bye.

Yeah, yeah, good luck Kurt. This weekend, I'm doing an outdoor jazz festival and I feel so rusty, but it's out I'm actually looking forward to. If there is a band on stage, I'm gonna sit in with them and do mouthhorn. I'm very excited about that. Where is this? Where is San Diego? Oh? And is it daytime? I think it's early evening. Yeah, but it's I've as told it's outdoor. I will be nowhere near anyone, just go

Mandy, do you have any like the best, uh the best thing that you ever saw happen at a show, or your favorite moment or something along those lines. Having watched what ten thousand hours of stand up comedy, like any of those kind of beautiful live show moments that can only happen at live shows, I.

Think that, Yeah, I think that the ones that are always in my memory are the ones that only happened that one time. That And it could be Worry doing an all improvised set. It could be a crowd work moment with Andy Peters where somebody breaks the glass and then it leads them onto a weird train where he's like interviewing the person and then like has bits about

But it's all those like moments that what it won't ever happen A yeah, yeah, yeah. And I love it when I love it when an audience recognizes it as once in a lifetime moment and then they clap, they recognize that, well, we've been left. Let's clap for that because that was a moment in time. I love that moment where they decide to clap instead of they're acknowledging that it was, oh, an artistic moment just happened. The best feeling I miss it.

I mean then when you like you talk to people like I remember the first like high planes that we went to, Like Reggie had a big, you know, closing set that was very fun, but it's also the highest I've ever seen Reggie like ever, And I talked to her about it all the time because I'm like, do you remember that one set when Rochie was like it was like so hot, you know, and so like you can then have that moment with that person or those people that were with you that nobody elseo really ever

And I think that that's what a lot of times when you film comedy and you cut a.

Ten minute set down to two minutes, or a seven minute set down to two minutes for a TV show, and then the people who watch it are like, oh, this is so like stunted and like stiff. It's because that's not their real set, that's not their real thing.

You know.

It's like it's inauthentic to the comedian. It's not a good representation of who they are on stage and right, and you know, it's like the best version of it that's been recorded, as like Jimmy Pardo's crowd Work album, which I don't know if you ever I could like listen to that over and over and over again. It's like, I don't even think he meant like he was recording an album, but he just did crowd Work for an hour and.

It was so funny. Oh yeah, and it was just unbelievable.

But it was just like perfect in the way of capturing that energy that's so hard to capture on film and in an album and in a way that feels real and not staged.

You know that it just made me think that if I had to pick someone for that, I most of the time, it's been memories of watching Andy Kindler because when Andy starts eating it, like there's a dynamic Andy brings out where the comedians can't stop laughing because the audience is not laughing, and Andy is reading off his index cards and then getting mad and then having and

Why didn't you like that? You know what I mean?

Like he's constantly confronting the audience about what they are or are not doing.

It's just, yeah, I miss life for he is the comices acknowledges every moment as it's happening every moment, and yeah, he's the only person where I'm like watching him and I'm thinking, God, he's a genius. While simultaneously the audience it's a little confused. There's the way he deals with that is, Oh, it's my favorite.

He likes he gives the opportunity he gives the audience the opportunity to judge and dis miss him, and it's like he's like because since because some of his jokes are incredibly corny, but they're usually the kind of current event ones like and then he but then he just starts ripping through those cards.

It is just like it's that kind of thing where you're.

Watching the audience think they're the expert when actually the expert is in charge, Like the expert is doing it on purpose.

Yeah, I remember, yeah, I remember in like late Obama years, he would do hot Tub and the audience that hot Tub is very progressive. I would say that they were, you know, as a whole Bernie supporters. Yeah, if you had to, like, you know, paint them with one brush. But so he would say something positive about Obama and the audience and be like, no, we don't know, he's not progressive enough for us, and it would kind of catch Andy off guard because he'd be.

Like, Oh, this is going to be a thing that's going to be fine, and then it wouldn't.

And watching him recruit from that while comments and unrecouping from that, while commenting on how we thought it was safe, well, commenting on how we thought it was to progressive, was such a very funny like loop of information, and then it would eventually break the audience, you know, and like watching that moment when the audience.

Finally gets on board with that is so perfect. Yeah, that's a really good way of putting it. Stacking comment commenting on the comment on the comment, it's the best until they're finally like, okay, you got us, now we know, now we understand, we've just learned something. Thank you.

It is like kind of like taming a wild horse. I remember the very first I think when we started Hot Sub Curt and Christen were there for like the first year and a half, like straight and it's.

Never ever happened again.

But and then the very first guest host we had with Sean Patten, and he had to like it was like breaking a horse. He had to like go into the audience. He had to work so hard. And when he finally broke them and got them on board, because they were just mad that Curt and Kristen weren't there, right, They're like, m how dare you?

This is my favorite horsey.

Yeah, But when he finally broke them, then he started the show and it was such a magical thing to watch a comunian and be like, no, no, no, you're gonna get on board with me. We're gonna have fun tonight. I don't care what it costs. I will stand up here and say brown butter baby until I'm blue in the face.

That's the best. It's so funny that I thought before this that you had done the podcast with Joel. But I just because I love going to the airport. One time I was picking up Nate, and Nate Craig had flown with you or something or ran into you at the airport, and I did pick you up. I did drive you home, but we just weren't recording.

No, no, no, it was just me and you weren't there yet all these I definitely do not remember being in a car from the airport with Yeah.

Yeah, yeah it was. It was just me, it was, But in my mind, I was like, oh, yeah, I remember vividly. We all used to live on the same set of town. You moved, Yeah I did. I moved moved to the old Echo Park area. But yeah, I'm no longer near that airport, and I don't miss it. Karen and I neither of us missed the airport.

We really don't miss driving to Los Angeles with International Airport all the time.

A lot of where you guys were taking people right for the real Yeah, you can't fly on a burbank usually unless you are a millionaire.

Yeah, we quickly are so much, so much more, so much more. Man. Did you have anything to plug anything?

Yeah, book, I do want to plug the airbnbm at I'm staying. And I know listeners you can't see this, but I'm saying this very beautiful airbnb. That is Abbey Launders. That is Moonridge Cottage on Airbnb. It's up in Big Bear and it's beautiful. It's a three bedroom, two bath and it is lovely and it's very cozy and comfortable. And I just think that anybody who's up in this area I should stay here.

I'll stay there moon Ridge mm hmmm. Yeah. And she has a dear friend of mine.

But it's also the first Airbnb I've ever stayed in where I'm like, oh, I kind of feel at home, like you know, sometimes they have those uncomfortable couches or like, yeah, the furniture is just kind of.

Weird, you know what I mean, It's just not quite right. This one.

I actually like, I'm like, oh, this feels like I would live here.

Yeah. I love that you're plugging an air. You're supposed to be a producer and plug my book.

Where anywhere anywhere books are sold, super serious in oral history of independent stand up comedy in Los Angeles. And we're still doing hot sub home edition, which you can find us on YouTube and the easiest way is to go to our Instagram Twitter and just click on the link tree and it'll take you right to the place to watch us and as every Monday night at eight pm Pacific.

That's terrific. And you can see me doing mouthhorn at a series of outdoor jazz festivals. Just kidding this one. Are you going to plug the one your past? It's tomorrow. Yeah, I'm talking about something from the past, a classic podcast mistake. You know what, Chris, when we come back to live shows, I'll book you, but just for mouthhorn. Oh I hey, it's a challenge accepted. Thank you.

You could be Chris could be the opening act mauthhorn behind a mask.

Oh yeah, and you just kind of set that toned. I hope you guys like Mangione but really muted. Yeah. Yeah, many thank you so much for being here with ye. Thank you so much for having me. Yeah, I'm sorry that I thought you'd been on before. My memories get crossed, you know, it's it's love.

I've done more podcasts than ever in my whole life, and they've been all nerve rocking and terrifying, but also very fun because I'm just talking to friends.

Yeah, it's just to hang out.

Yeah, that's all. Let's pretend we were just at a party, Karen. When parties come back, I am still going to come and cook for yours. Oh oh, and I'm coming. We made that plan. Yes, we did in February. February of twenty nineteen. Yeah, no, I'm twenty twenty. Did we do it like directly before? Yeah?

I remember I came over. I made that tomato gilette yo. We had dinner and you were like, I'm going to do monthly parties and I was like I want to cook for them, and then like and you were like, great, we'll plan one from March, and then like two weeks later we were like, I guess that did never realize that.

Was like I didn't realize it was in February.

That's hilarious. Oh what then I was just like, see you later. I won't be answering your text the next year.

Food.

I know you have all those daily harvests. We can just blend up a couple of daily harvests. I was like, do you have enough food to eat?

Just me checking all my friends? Are you gonna start to death?

Thanks for never Thank you man. Absolutely great to see you. Great to talk to you. You've been listening to Do you need a ride? D y n A to hear that horn? Oh boy, oh my god, that's that's nice. That's good, that's good.

Are leaving on you wanna way back?

Either way?

We want to be there, doesn't matter how much baggage you clean. Give us time and turman On and Gabe.

We want to send you off in Stormer.

You want to welcome you back home. Tell us all about it.

We scared her? Was it fine?

Melbourne?

Do you need to ride? Do you need to ride? Do you need to ride? Do you need to ride? Do you need to ride?

Do you need to ride?

Do you need to ride? Do you need with Karen and Chris