This is me, Craig Ferguson. I'm inviting you to come and see my brand new comedy hour. Well it's actually it's about an hour and a half and I don't have an opener because these guys cost money. But what I'm saying is I'll be on stage for a while. Anyway, come and see me live on the Pants on Fire Tour in your region. Tickets are on sale now, and we'll be adding more as the tour continues throughout twenty twenty five and beyond. For a full list of dates,
go to the Craig Ferguson show dot com. See you on the road, My DearS. My name is Craig Ferguson. The name of this podcast is Joy. I talk to interest in people about what brings them happiness. My guest today everyone is a gentleman who is outspoken. He knows what he thinks, and he's not afraid to tell you what he thinks. He's going to tell you right now. He is the singular Corolla Enjoy all right. So we very briefly were talking about the right age to complain.
I feel like I'm sixty two. I'm going to be sixty three very soon. And I think that's now I can really start to complain. I can get people off my lawn. I can say that young people are rooting the world, and my hip harps and all three of those things are maybe true.
Yeah, But the problem is is we've now enacted as sort of demographic for complaint, which is, if you're heterosexual, male and you have money, and you're over six foot and you're white, then who are you to complain? Which is I feel like I don't want that taken away from me just because of the color of my skin or just because of my bank account. I feel like complaining is you know, maybe not uniquely American, but maybe
we've we've perfected the art of it. And I like the notion of having all these things going for me and still complaining, Like I feel like it should give hope to other people that even with all the privilege and all the money and all the luxury, I still can't complain.
Well, I think that it's not. First of all, I take I take issue with the fact there's a uniquely American skill.
No, I agree.
Now, I say, I think we've perfected it, but I don't. It's not it's it's worldwide but we may have put you know, like cinema. You know, everyone's got it, but we just we just perfected it.
Well, I see even then, I don't know, Adam. I mean, what about the Italians. You're you're Italian people. The Italians do some pretty good Let's be honest. It's just what you're talking about is that you're aware of it because you're in America. But if you were in Italy, you'd be like, hey, what's the coming a go? I we got some pretty good cinema.
Yeah, but I think this is a this is an argument where you go, well, what about this great film?
What about Fellini? Or what about this great film out of Paris?
Uh?
That all true, but but volume wise, I think I think we're the heavyweight champion.
I think here's where the where the agreement is that we in America have made a business of complaining that cannot be matched for sheared size and money and uh just the volume and scope of complaints. It makes everyone else just look like specialists.
Yeah, I agree with that.
All right, that's fair enough. So listen, I was looking at uh, you know that thing when you have someone on the show and you haven't told to them for a while, so you google them. I don't know if you still do that.
I did.
I googled you just before I come on, and I and what I didn't know. And I've been aware of you for a very long time. You and I have bumped into each other on campus a few times over the years. But I had no idea. And maybe this is no true, maybe this is internet. You were a boxer and a pretty good one too.
I was a trainer and a boxer, and a pretty good one from a technician standpoint. But I wasn't ever ranked or anything anything like that. I was just an amateur guy. But I did. I did do it for a lip. I did teach it as a as a trainer for a living for a period of time.
Did you teach these Hollywood women with the mets? Did you go like Beverly Hills housewives and just let them head the mets and tell them how powerfully were Yeah?
Well I what I did technically is I ran class is for the Hollywood women and their you know, lawyer husbands or producer husbands. And then I had some private students where I ran the myths for them as well.
And I worked in.
A place called Bodies in Motion, which had a couple of locations around Los Angeles in the day, and I worked at the one in Old Town Pasadena, which I built actually because the guy told me, if I built the place, then I built it out. It was already a structure, you know, then I could teach there. So I wanted to teach there because I was a carpenter.
That I think that's very booch that you're a carpenter and a books. I've never in my whenever, I like, I've never full but I did books and training to stay in shape, probably like lawyers and Hollywood ladies, and I've never been in the kind of shape them in when I was spa in and heading the bag and running every day. It's unbelievable.
Yeah, it is. It's a it's a good workout. It's kind of a sport mixed with the workout. And you can you can. It's kind of nice about it is you can skip rope for ten minutes and that's its own thing. And then you could go shadow box in front of the mirror for ten minutes and that's its
own thing. And then you could hit the heavy bag for ten minutes and that's its own thing, and then you could spa for ten minutes and that's and you could hit the focus paths, you know, so you can kind of move around versus sit on a rowing machine for an hour, yeah, or a treadmill for half an hour or whatever. That's super repetitive part of working out,
which gets really taxing. You can you know, when you're skipping rope and you're being miserable, you go, oh, in another four minutes, I'll be able to put the gloves on and hit the heavy bag and that'll be better, and you can keep going from station to station. Still do that, well, My hands are so screwed up from so much boxing and so much carpentry that it's it's
really difficult. But what I do almost on a daily basis is a shadow box, and shadow boxing is actually probably better than hitting the heavy bag in terms of technique because you're forced to kind of work your technique.
Sometimes when people get.
On a heavy bag that just kind of wail on it, yeah, which isn't really technique. It's just kind of you getting out aggression or trying to thump it as hard as you can. I would I would say that most people who wanted to get better at boxing. If they just really worked on skipping rope and really worked on shadow boxing, they would get much better versus you know, sparring and hitting the heavy bag.
Well, I think it's too late for me now. I think it's sixty two. I should just like maybe go for a walk and have a coffee.
I'll tell you one thing I discovered recently, you know, semi recently about I'm with you going for a walk. I got, I got a weighted vest I got. I did that, dude, Oh you did that, dude. Yeah, And it's amazing. You go for a walk, and especially if there's an incline. Man, if there's a hill by your house or something, put that twenty five pound vest on hike up the hill. It'll be a walk and a workout.
You know what.
I was doing a show once, like a comedy show, and I had to wear a fat suit, like a really heavy fat suit for this like bet and the show. And because of the way it was, I was wearing the fat suit all day. And I thought this would be a great like workout thing for somebody because not only is it is it like really a lot to carry around, but when you take it off, the day. It's like you're before and after picture. You get used to yourself being really heavy. Then you just take it
off and so it motivates you and sweats the ship. Yeah, that's what I think. The the weighted vest is a bit like but maybe it should be dressed up a little bit so you look more portly.
Well, maybe they'll make a weighted vest with stretch marks.
I think. I think that might be the way to go.
That's my idea in case anyone wants to do it.
Yeah, I think that I own it now because it's this is.
Yeah, well you suggested it.
I suggested it, so now I own it. So I'll take it on Shark tank or something.
How did you.
Get into doing boxing? Was it because you went You went to school in Hollywood? Right? Was it tough? It was that? What it was was it self defense.
No, I went to school in North Holly, which is like not Hollywood at all. It's just North Hollywood, you know, it's kind of the valley like Yeah, yeah, No, I wasn't. I was kind of the captain of the football team, so I wasn't really picked on or anything. I was picked on by my own jock friends and we picked on each other. But we didn't really get picked on outside of our friendship.
We just had I had very aggressive.
Friends who just did horrible things to me physically, but but there were friends, you know. So No, it wasn't out of a sense of self defense. It was more like I did. I played football for a long time, and then at some point I couldn't play football anymore, and I wanted to do something that had some physicality to it, you know, a contact sport so to speak. You know, because football it was a lot of fun, hitting people and getting into it with people and just
the physicality of football. I liked it, but I couldn't really play football at that level anymore. So boxing seemed like a physical thing to do that was like sort of a contact sport.
And that's kind of when I took it up.
Are you still the fun of it? Do you follow it? Do you watch the fighters coming up?
And yeah, I watch it.
I mean, a UFC is probably a little more exciting than boxing, but I enjoy boxing as well.
And it's nice to see the UFC guys really coming to their own in terms of technique with their hands, because at the beginning they were kind of sloppy and now they're getting pretty tight. And it just over the last decade they've really cleaned up their form. You know, in the in the hands world.
I've never really watched the UFC fight. Now I'm aware of a biolays. I was always a bit of a snob about it because I just liked the fight that. You know, that box is all technique and to watch guys who are so gifted and so fast that but you know what, I should watch UFC a little bit. It seems like it's a whole circus now as well. It's huge. It's kind of like, did you get into it early on? Yeah, I mean I liked boxing. I liked the combat sports. You know, I was working in
that world a little bit. I mean I was working, you know, I was always training and then working as a trainer and stuff. So I was always kind of you know, in that world, if there is going to be a fight, someone will invite you over.
Hey, we're going to watch the fight. You know.
It's a kind of a it's a little fraternity of you know, you work with guys that are trainers. You're training guys who like boxing. A fight comes up, inevitably, they say, I'm having people over come over Friday, we'll watch the fight, you know, so you get sort of, you know, kissed into it a little bit.
Because that's who you're working with, you know what.
About in the world of sports radio and radio and like podcast and I think of you as being one of the real kind of oujis of this game, like you kind of is one of the guys that started the podcast world, weren't you.
I was one of the earlier podcasters. There were others, but there were very few back then.
I kind of what I will.
Take credit for is not for podcasting, but for sort of starting the business model of podcasting, of getting advertisers and kind of formatting it in a way which isn't really anything new. It's just the old radio format. But sort of taking podcasting and kind of turning it into a business is something I'll take some credit for. And also the live podcast. I started doing a live or doing live podcasting fifteen years ago, more than fifteen years ago.
And now everyone does a live podcast. But when I did it, no one knew what it was. They didn't the people in the audience didn't know what it was.
It's such an odd thing because it's kind of the dominant strain of of for people like you and I do know, isn't it. It's kind of like it used to be, kind of like a sight hustle, and no, it's it's the main thing I can't imagine. I mean, this podcast is you know I do with iHeartRadio, but I can't see me, you know, doing that forever. It doesn't seeven make any sense. You could just put it up on YouTube and you're done.
Yeah, you know YouTube.
And the visual component of podcasting is turned into something that wasn't anything when I start. Nobody really needed to see you podcasts. They just need to hear you podcasts.
I still am a little confused as to why they need to see you podcast but for some reason it's turned into a large aspect of podcasting, which to me I'm a little sad about because I really like the notion of speaking and you putting earbuds in and going for a hike and just listening to what I'm saying versus you know, sitting on your phone waiting at an airport watching what I'm saying.
Well, I think also as well, because it is the funes that do it. I think that it's it's weirdly less intimate, because I always thought like radio is really kind of an intimate thing as a listener. It really feels like, you know, you're you're much more involved in it somehow, which is weird because you've not seeing it.
And then the other thing is I think now, is that and I know this has happened to you that, uh, there's such a hunger in the in the zeitgeis that in the media for any kind of controversy or clickbait or or something that will spike somebody else's a little little headline that they'll take a tiny piece of what you're saying and make it sound different to what you were actually saying in order to create a problem. And
I think it. Do you think it's kind of you're kind of more of a setting duck than you used to be. Does that bother you at all?
It doesn't bother me. But I have a unique gene of not being that concerned about what people say about me or think about me, even as long as I feel like I know what I feel about me. I don't mean some bullshit about in my heart. I just mean like, there are things I will say that are that are deeply unpopular and get the ire of a lot of people. But if if it's the truth, then
it's the truth, you know. So I look at myself as a doctor and I'm just telling you you have cancer and you don't want to hear that, and I've ruined your day and now you're weeping, and maybe you're angry at me. And my feeling is is I am sorry to present you with this information, but that's my job and that's my field of expertise and you should know about it. And now at some point you're angry at me, and I don't know what I I don't have anything to do with that. I'm just presenting you
with what happens to be the truth. And I've I've done it, you know, on the air, and I've done it.
I've had it happen socially as well, where you know, I had a whole table of friends turn on me while eating brunch, about ten people because I just told them the truth about a certain topic, a subject we're talking about, and they all started, you know, yelling at me, and they got they got angry at me, and I just told them, look, I'm sorry if you guys can't handle whatever this thing is that I happen to know about. But I'm just telling you and that's your business, and
yes I will be. I will ruin this brunch and I will be the least popular person at this table, but that's not going to prevent me from telling you the truth and what I know about it.
Hello, this is Greig Ferguson, and I want to let you know I have a brand new stand up company, Spatial, out now on YouTube. It's called I'm So Happy, and I would be so happy if you checked it out to what's just basically just go to my YouTube channel at the Greig Vergison Show and is this right there? Just click it and play it and it's free.
I can't look.
I'm not going to come round your husband and show you how to do it. If you can't do it, then you can't have it. But if you can figure it out, it's yours. Do you ever get angry if someone tells you something and you profoundly disagree with it? Does that ever make you meant? I?
Yeah, I mean there's for me. It's a kind of a yes. I'll answer that.
Yes.
When Governor Gavin Newsom was sitting in here years ago, over a decade ago, and I was telling him that homeless people were basically drug addicts and or people with huge psychological disorders or both, and that's who was sleeping on the street, and that's what we need to focus on.
And he told me the real picture of homelessness was a mother who was divorced, who had a full time job, who's got kicked out of her house because she got divorced or something, and had two kids and worked full time minimum wage.
I said, that's that's not it at all.
It's what I'm talking about, and then I got angry at him because he's made the problem worse by not listening to what the truth was about homeless So, yes, I will get angry at these people because they're exacerbating problems and they're actually they're making the problems worse, you know,
So yeah, I guess I'll be that way. I've always been pragmatic and just told people, here's what you need to do, and but you know a sort of micro macro, like I used to be a carpenter and I went to my mom's very tiny house years and years ago, and she said she was going to remodel the bathroom, and I said, uh, all right, and I went and kind of looked at the space, and I said, you need to make sure you frame in a pocket door, sliding pocket door here when you're framing this out, because
if you open the door, it's just going to cut off the hallway, and if the door swings in, it's just going to hit the sink that's on the inside the bathroom.
So make sure you get a pocket door.
She said, all right, And then I came back like six months later, and I looked at it and she didn't have a pocket door. And I opened the door and it opened and smacked my stepdad in the ass, who was standing at the sink. And I just thought, Okay, why didn't you listen to me? Why didn't you do what I told you to do? By the way, not for me, for you, this would have been so much better. But most people don't. Most people don't. But here's what I.
Think that the head lane of that particular morality tailors do. You didn't see your mom for six months, there's your problem. If you had been there as the construction work was going on, you could have said, way, wait, we have to put a polka door in but because you neglected your mother for six months, so really you're to blame.
You know what, I got to find a mirror to be fair, could have been three months. And also I could have met her for brunch two times in that that hero play that showed up at her house.
Brunch is a meal that comes up for you quite a lot, which is interesting because I think of you as a very kind of butch, straight down the lang guy, and brunch, let's be honest, is America's only openly gay meal. So I find that it's it's an interesting mix for you.
I don't subscribe to that statement that you just made about openly gay brunch. And I'll tell you why. You're old enough to remember a book, a very popular best seller, uh from the seventies called men Don't Eat Keishe?
There?
Yeah that real men, Real men don't eat keishe? I will file that under brunch, which is hell Yeah, I eat keish. It's eggs, it's ham, it's in a pastry shell. It's delightful. What does that mean? Real men don't eat keishe? You know what I'm saying. It's there's bacon, cheese, eggs, and it's in a pis shell what I love a pie. I love bacon, I love cheese, and I love eggs.
So we're even come off with real men don't.
Eat keiche I love. I would eat keishe during brunch happily.
Wait, so so you eat keys at lunchtime brunch, I'm saying.
We eat keiche I would eat the I would eat the food that real men don't eat at the only openly gay meal of the day.
Did you just come out to me?
Is that what happen? Not intentionally, but yeah, practically.
Under nineteen seventies rules, you just that's what you just It's funny because it really is is an odd thing because I mean, I don't want to kind of bang on about cancel culture and the way things have.
Changed a lot, because I feel like, you know, I feel like I talked about it too much. But it does seem interesting to me that you and I will laugh at hardships. So not just you and I, people will laugh at a hardships and stuff that offends me. I find it quite funny stuff that offends me. I kind of seek out comedy that offends me. But that's very that's kind of very different. Now it's a different taste. I think, well, I gotta wonder.
I think there's I think it depends how you feel about yourself in that. I feel secure about myself in that. I think there's a couple of things going on. And it was weird. So I think it was yesterday somebody wrote me a tweet and all paraphrase, but it said, like, when did you become some sort of diarrhea tampon that just absorbs all the diarrhea around you and sucking up to your billionaire friends who make fun of you behind your back?
When did you become this? And I just wrote two thousand and nine? But it was funny to me.
It was funny to me, And then I thought to myself, this guy just wrote the most vile thing he could think of he could summon about me, and I thought it was funny. Now why did I think it was funny. I'm not saying, oh, I'm so secure, nothing affects me.
I'm just saying I found it amusing, and so I wrote, I just wrote back, two thousand and nine is when I began becoming that diarrhea absorbing diarrhea, right, And so I wasn't bothered by it at all I kind of I kind of like it, and people will say to me things, so you won't do this, or you're that, or you just you know, you're only famous because you've sucked off Jimmy Kimmel or whatever. But I know what
I did, I understand what I do. Or some retis people go, you know, you're the least funny person on the planet. I'm like, have you met my stepdad John, I can't be the least you know, so I mean second, top five maybe unfunniest people in planet. So it doesn't really work. But then I also realize a lot of this I think is born of some sort of insecurity. And I'm not a boastful person, but I'm I'm horribly secure.
I am very secure. But it's only because I have a sort of track record of achievement and I do a lot of things, and I achieve in many different departments of life, and I understand it. It's like, I really think part of what we're missing is a skill set. I really do believe the base of my sanity is having a trade like being a carpenter actually physically tangibly
knowing how to build a house. There's something about that that gives you a security, like a base, like I totally understand a skill, you have a field of expertise.
I think that's totally right. I mean I don't have that, and I kind of wish I did, but I but I understand it from a point of view is I'll tell you something I did very similar that when I started in Late Night in two thousand and five. That because of it, because I had I had to sign a very punitive deal with CBS and and so I wasn't allowed to do anything at all on television unless
I got their permission. So they kind of owned me for everything, like can do a movie, can do a radio show, can do a commercial, can do anything unless I got their permission to do it. The only one thing they allowed me to do was live stand up. Live stand up. They weren't interested in and it didn't bother them, and I could go and do that. And I had done that, you know, as a kid, and I had done that start now, so that was the
closest thing I had to a trade. And as time went on in Late Night, I always stayed going and doing stand up because I felt like it was the thing I could fall back on. You know the way you're describing having a trade that it was my autonomy if you like it, you know what I mean. It's like, if everything does, I can do this.
A trade isn't necessarily plumber or carpenter. You know, stand up is a trade. Being a pilot is a trade.
You know.
Being a certified accountant is a trade. You know, there's you know, I'm saying, a field of expertise, yes, which could be I think could be sculptor really.
Yeah, it's you know, I think that's a very difficult game. Aaron eleven on this, I'll just sculpt a couple of things to the end of the month and maybe a little.
No, I'm not talking about a financial I'm not approaching it from a financial Oh askact. I'm saying there are a lot of people that are certified pilots, right, but they don't get paid as a professional airline pilot. They fly private planes on the weekends or whatever. But they're pilots. They can operate a helicopter or something like that.
I'm one of them.
I can fly an airplane. Oh you can't, Okay, Yeah, I have a license. Yep.
That's a field of expertise that you have that other people don't have, and it gives you a kind of a base, you know, Like I'm calling it a confidence, for lack of a better term, but it's sort of steady.
Understand.
I don't know, speaking a second language, playing the stand up base, you know what I mean, just things you can do.
And I think the.
More that you have, the more secure you are, because if you think about the people that are sort of melting down at town hall meetings and screaming as loud as they can and sort of going out of their mind, you couldn't imagine them having a pilot's license, could you.
And you couldn't.
Imagine them being a skilled electrician like a journeyman electrician or something like you really can't or sitting down at the piano and playing chopine, you know what I mean.
I mean like having.
These base sort of skills I do think is a foundation for sanity.
I think you're absolutely right, And you know what, it's kind of it occurs to me as you say, run about twenty sixteen and the election cycle in twenty sixteen, I made a decision that I was never again in stand up going to discuss any politics. I'm not going to do any politics at.
All, none, And.
It was an experiment, first of all to see if I could do it, and then secondly to give myself a break. And I think what it does is that it allows you to go into a thought process that is not part of the noise that's going all the time. And I think what you're describing is right, Like if you're flying an airplane or building a house, or applying yourself to the area of expertise you're talking about, you know, thinking about all the things that make you mind, you're
concentrating on something else. And I think I think that that's what it is. I think you're I think you're right. It's it's an odd thing too. Do you think that's what the noise is? That you know, the kind of hyperbolic nature of everybody talking to each other on social media and everyone getting you know, on fire with everything all the time, is because that's all they think about.
Yeah, oh, absolutely absolutely know that. When you are well, I mean it's it's tied to this sort of lack of physical.
Existence that we've gone into.
That you used to work on a farm and you used to chop wood, you'd be in a logging camp you know, you just have to get up and go do something thing physical men and women. You know, women would go milk the cow, collect the eggs, you know, start the fire and you know, cook the whatever like whatever.
They did everything.
Everyone sort of had a task, you know, and people were you know, that's how they got paid. And then at some point everyone moved indoors and start getting in the cubicles and lots of air conditioning, and they start staring at the computer screen and they become very sedentary. And while they did a task, the task was sort of endless and never had a beginning, a middle, and an end.
You know.
It's this kind of data entry, you know, just the next piece of data to enter. You know, when you build a when you build a barn, at some point you step back and you look at that barn and you think to yourself, I built that barn, and it's done now, and then you move on. But we removed that from about ninety percent of the populace, and people's minds started turning on themselves.
They don't really do that.
I worked with blue collar guys always and they never They just think in a pragmatic way.
And also.
They don't have any issues with things, like they don't have dietary restrictions. I would just go I'm going on a lunch run, and they'd go, all right, boss, And then I wouldn't even tell them where I was going, you know, and I would just come back with, you know, ten hamburgers and ten fries or ten burritos and ten tacos, you know, or whatever it is.
None of them had any.
Issues with gluten or allergies or something upset their stomach, or there was nothing.
They just just ate whatever it ate.
And then you just got back up and you went to work, and no one said a word, and there were no rules, and there's no restrictions.
I think, and I think there's also the idea that everyone wants to appear smart and and if if you're indignant, it can make you feel like you're smart. I always thought that about comedy comes in for that, even if you just look at the way comedy is treated like it's a very rare thing for a comedy, a comedy thing that when an oscar or a golden globe or any of that, because because comedy, it's not kind of the thought is done by the person who's performing it.
But not necessarily the perfon that's absorbing it. And I think that you know, if you make people laugh, they don't feel clever. But if you make them think, you know, if you kind of like massage them or make them kind of being angry as well. You know, anger is I think, or being indignant or being outraged feels like I'm clever. I notice things that other people don't know,
so therefore I'm better. And to kind of boost your confidence because you don't have your carpentry or pilot's license or whatever the hell, has something else to kind of bolster you. So the indignance is the kind of the airst's skill, do you know what I mean?
Yeah, I it's also I think there's a lot of virtue signaling too, which is they care more than you care. You don't, right, okay, going with the indigenous people or the climate or whatever's going on, and they care, you know. So Trump is an existential threat and he's going to attack democracy and they're going to fight Trump, whereas you're going.
To sit back and watch SportsCenter.
So if you sort of went back historically and you want, you know, Hitler was rising to power and one group of people were going to fight Hitler and the other group were going to a pub to have a beer. You'd go, well, who was the more noble person, And that's equation. You need to go, well, a person who obviously was going to go fight Hitler. That's that's who the real hero would have been in this equation. So I think there's some of that because they announce here's
what's going on. You know, there's an existential threat against humanity and it's known as climate change, and they're going to fight it, you know, or whatever it is, that whatever the subject is, they're going to fight about it, and sort of de facto, if you're not fighting about it or fighting for it, then you're sort of complicit in this thing. Whether it's climate or Hitler or whatever,
whatever the subject is. You're sort of on the side of the evil or or the Big Company or Monsanto or Trump or Hitler or whatever it is, and so you're sort of de facto for it and they are against it, which makes them the hero in this equation. But the problem with this equation is I haven't signed off on the premise, you know what I'm saying, I if I, if I do think this person is Hitler,
then I'm going to help you fight against them. But that's where the that's where the rift is, I think, which is what they're doing versus what what I'm doing. Like Newsom declared that it was the noble mother of iie that was homeless, and he's going to do something about it.
But I think it's junkies.
So he is more noble than I if that's what he's going to go do something about. But my problem is is that I know that's not what the problem is, and he's not going to fix anything, and thus he hasn't because he hasn't identified the problem.
So that's where the chasm is.
You have a toy of the idea of going into politics yourself, get into a proper no.
I mean, my problem is is I have a lot of pragmatic ideas and I'll give you. I'll give you for instance, and this part of the politics I would do. Like I was at a party at Mark Geragus, the attorney's house, who knows a lot of politicians and judges
and those kind of people. And I think Mark introduced me to some guy who said he was, you know, a district selectman or something in this area, and I said to him, you know where I work on the street behind me, there's lots of people dumping garbage, dumping construction materials, busted out stucco and drywalls, stuff like that. He said, yeah, I know, I know that's a problem. We have to go in there and clean it up all the time. It's people dump it back there. I said, yeah,
do you know why they dump it? He said not really no. I said, well, the dump cost one hundred and eighty bucks. That's why they dump it there. And he goes yeah, okay, And I go, who's doing the dumping? He goes, eh, I don't really know. I said, poor Mexicans who do all the construction work out here. They're going to pay one hundred and eighty bucks to go to dispose of it the right way because they're on a real tight budget. And they can come here for free on a Sunday night and just dump it in
two minutes and leave. He goes, oh, yeah, yeah, because you know, these are poor Mexicans who do all the construction work out here. So I go, there's a home depot literally up the street.
He goes, yeah. I go, why don't you have a guy handing out.
Leaflets in English and in Spanish that say you can dump for free at the dump that's you know down the street.
This is a coupon you don't have.
They're not going to charge you one hundred and eighty bucks and when you go over there to dump it, they'll give you a twelve pack at Takati. And he goes, yeah, that's that's a good idea. That's a good idea. And then about a half hour later at the party, the guy circled back to me and he said, what was that idea you had again about the dumping? And I said, oh man, this is why we're at where we're at. Just let's figure out what's motivating people and let's fix it.
You don't have to judge, you just fix it. Who is doing the dumping construction guys, how do we know it's all stucco and drywall and bust it out, demo out stuff. Who's doing it? The super poor guys should do the demo work. They do the hauling, you know, the haul garbage. You know what I mean?
Good?
How much is the dump? It's too expensive for these guys because they give a bid. The bid is like, I'll do it all for a thousand bucks. All right, they want to peel off two hundred more bucks out of that and hand it to the city.
Why isn't it dump free?
Make it free if you don't want them to dump everything on the side of mulhalland then make the dump free.
How do we get the word out?
Go to the home depot and have it on a sign in Spanish, hand out flyers at the home depot.
That's where they shop.
It's very hard to argue with that as a solution because I'm trying to find some way to kind of be responsible and kind of say, but wait a minute, but I kind of can you know, it's like it? It does make sense. I think the thing with government and why probably you don't go into it is you describe it. It's just the frustration of getting anything done because it's not really what they I don't know that they fucking care about getting anything.
Now their process In certain places they do, but in Los Angeles they're all just process people. They want to have a meeting. We would have a meeting about this point. I'd be called culturally insensitive. At some point it would be explained to me why it's not gonna work, we take a vote, I would lose the vote, and then I would get angry, and then I'd yell, all right, fuck you clean up your garbage in the street for the rest of your life.
I don't give a fuck, and then I would.
Leave that it seems a place any to to let it go. I think you're right. I think it's just it's a long job. I don't under I don't know how anyone could go into politics. I just don't fucking know what anyone could do it.
Well, you could, I'll tell you what you could do. And I've been because I've been really drilling down on this a lot lately, and I talked to doctor Drew about it a lot. There are people who want to do things and then they're process people. And I know it because my mom was a process person, my dad was a process person. They wanted to sit and talk about things, but they never really wanted to get up and go make a run and buy materials and start
the project. They wanted to discuss the project, you know what I'm saying. And there's a lot of people that all process people, probably percentage wise more women than men, but there's plenty of men that are processed people as well. And so if you inhabit the La City Council or whatever the city council is, if you fill it with process.
People, then you're gonna get a lot. And we're gonna need to.
Do a report on and we have a we have a committee that's going to discuss this and we're gonna make Meanwhile, five years goes by and we have twice as many homeless as we had when you started the first meeting, and nothing ever really happens, but it's a long discussion about it. Those are processed people, and they get attracted to politics. Now there are nonprocessed people. Like we had a mayoral race a few years ago. We had Rick Caruso. He's a commercial builder. So commercial builders
are like, hurry, what's going on? Hurry, hurry, hurry. You know, like when Trump spoke to Karen Bass, he was like, let's go clean up those fires. Now, people need to do it themselves. They want to start tonight.
Tonight.
He's yelling and she's going whoa, whoa, whoa, slow down, safety safety. So that's a commercial builder talking to a process person. So we elected a process person, not a commercial builder who's like all the commercial builder goes, is, we aren't the foundation guys done informing's done. Where's the concrete. Where's the concrete guys? We got to start framing. We got to get to pour in before we start framing.
It's everything is hurry, hurry, what's next. But we we like process people here where we sit and have a discussion about things.
And my mom would have liked it that way. She liked the.
Process and the processes people are good because they give very soothing speeches and discussions. But the problem is is at some point you got to fix the potholes and fill the reservoirs and that kind of stuff. And that's not the work of a process person. That's the work of the commercial builder person. And then so what happens is is the commercial builder person becomes an annoyance to the process person because because they come in and they go,
what's going on? And here, come on, let's go, let's go, and the process perd goes slow down, slow down, we want to keep it safe. Now, the process person doesn't say I'm a process person, I'm never going to do anything. They go, I want to get it done as bad as you do. But we got to take our time, do this safely. We've got to make sure get the right permits, do the testing, check the soil, slow it down.
And then five years goes by and nothing's happened. And that's kind of la is kind of a process person thing. That's that's what we do. We talk about things, but we don't really do that that much.
You know. It's the truth. It's like it's in show business. It's in the television business, is in the movie business. It's a it's a lot of even when they do do something, they want to check before they pull the trigger on what they've done. You have to get a focus group on a movie you've already made. You have to say.
They have so many meetings, I know, and it never comes out the other end, and they always it's funny.
They always go, could we just get together?
And I go, I already told you whatever this or that, it's we're done, you know, yeah, but we want to get together one more time.
You know.
It's always funny they'll do. They'll even do stuff, you know, from shooting stuff. We're all gonna meet in the lobby at six thirty in the morning and the van is picking us up at seven and I go, well, why don't I just be down there at seven? Well, we all want to get down the lobby at six thirty and make sure we're all there.
I'll go. When's the van showing up? Seven?
All right, I'll be down at seven. We're meeting at six thirty. Okay, I don't know what you're doing. I'll be there at seven. We're getting into the van, right, yeah, where's the van ting? The van's taking us to the set. Okay, So i'll be down at seven. I won't be down at six. We're all meeting at six thirty.
You guys get done there at six thirty. Get me a kiche that my keiche be hoo, and I'll eat it in the van on.
The way to the zet Ana Mimosa.
All Right, we gotta go because we'll be completed about people talking too much and I've been talking too much. But it's lovely to catch up with you again, Adam. You're always a breath of fresh air. Continue success in. It's good to check in with you. Let's do it again soon.
I hope. So my friend, take care, Thanks buddy, Thanks ding you too.
Bye