The Craig Ferguson's Fancy Rascal Tour continues in November twenty twenty three. For the full list of dates, please go to the Craig Ferguson Show dot Com slash tour website. My name is Craig Ferguson. The name of this podcast is Joy. I talk to interest in people about what brings them happiness. Here is Lewis Black, one of America's crankiest and best comedians. Thank you for coming, man, and we'll see you next time. Perfect. How are you peal?
Every day? Just bigger and better and brighter world, isn't it.
I don't know. I battle a little depression. I do do do you really? Do you really actually have impression?
This first time in my life during the pandemic, And during the pandemic it came on and after it's kind of lingered. It kind of went away a bit, and it's lingered, and then you don't know if it's grief because my mother passed away six months ago.
I was so sorry to hear your mother was She left to be over one hundred years old, under and four Wow. I mean it's funny, like I don't know if this happened to you. But if I have like people, I love it. You love really a long time. People feel like they you don't get as much grief as you would be allowed if they were younger. It's like you run out of grief. Is anyone you with that? Or am I just being an asshole?
No? That's what you think, right. But the thing is is they've been there so long it becomes something else. It's a different type of thing. Yeah, because when you, as I say in the Act, but when you're arguing with your mother about when to take Social Security, we've the Statute of Limitations has been passed, but one hundred and four and just to give you, because it's to give you a sense of it, what that age means is my mother. I got a call from the funeral
home and they said that they had discontinued. My mother wanted to be cremated. They discontinue or earn. Oh my gosh, she outlived me. Model get another word realized that isn't that the first off that they make that many that they're coming up with new earns because people going, oh this is.
A better it's a better earn. It's that's it's you know it's it's yeah, it's funny though because you were very close to your mom though, right, yeah, it's funny. I I don't know if you would agree with this, but my wife says that all good stand up comedians have kind of the same mom.
Is that's a better and more interesting than that thing of you know, some sort of a bitter life or no Catholicish, Italian and Irish.
No, you can. You can have all of that. You can have a better life and be Catholic, Jewish, Italian and iarye. But I don't think you can be all these things at the same time. But maybe you can. It's America.
It's spectacular.
Yeah, but she says, because she, you know, knew my mom and she was right. But my mom, she said, I love my mom. My mom loved me, but she was kind of a cold woman and she had poor boundaries and she and my wife says, that's kind of like a stand.
Up How did you find some You found a woman that that's smart and married you.
Yeah, I know, she's got a real bla book.
But she said that sometimes interesting because my mother was cold, right, But to me, yeah, you know, but it's not cold. But emotionally, not that you know, withdraw. You know, we're not going to talk about you know, no, no, no, I get it. You know. I mean to give you something I haven't really shared with a lot of people, like except my close friends. But and you're a good friend.
When I went to say goodbye, that is literally one of the few times I can remember my life when we look at each other in the eye.
Yeah, I understand that. I know that one. I was exactly a lot with my parents. I was exactly a lot. But I think I wonder if that was a generational thing as well with those guys, because they my father and mother were both kids during the Second World War and Glasgow was bombed really heavily, and they saw dance when they were young, and they I think it maybe they weren't frosty in the sense that they were emotionally distant, but they were very careful about using words like I
love you, you know, all that kind of stuff. No one I did all of that.
Yeah, my father was warmer, much warmer.
Yeah, my dad too, I think, much quieter. Yeah, I wonder if if it is that, you know, here's here's the example of it. I go, I want an Amy, and I said to my mom, I want an Amy. It was still alive and she went daytime, Emmy, yeah, well that is that's my mother. Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of that thing, right, because if you're a stand up and you've done that, every stand up is good and you're really good, right, Any stand up is good because there's a lot of studs, especially now, everybody's a stand up.
But you know, it's like there's a stand ups who are proper stand ups, you know what I'm talking about. There's you, there's like a tael there's like, you know, guys who really are it. And you've gone up on a stage at some point in your life and you've died horribly on that stage, probably in the first maybe six months of your career, oh easily, and you went back and did it again. Yeah see that and you smile when when and that's that's like I did that too.
And my wife says, why why would a person do that? And I said, well, I don't know, you just kind of want to again.
Well. The thing is is, I think is that this like with theater, and this has to do maybe with the mother. Yeah, boy, they're going to use this and seyological sociological textbooks this discussion. Yes, no, no, they're gonna steal from us.
Say, well, yeah, because because academics always steal from comedians.
Certainly do when there's insight, because they have none but the But what, No, I probably forgot what I'm gonna say because I wanted to make a joke.
But I know that happens to me all the time now nowadays, though I'm recently point in my life where I forget what I'm going to say, and I don't make a joke. I don't forget.
I steer in this space.
Yeah, let me give you an example of this. May jog your memory. So I'm talking you know Leno, right, yeah, all right, So Jay Leno I'm talking to. And Jay's mother was Scottish, and I was trying out my theory about all stand ups or my wife's theory about all stand ups having the same mom, all good stand ups having the same mom, and Jay, whatever you're thinking about Jay, Jay is a great stand up.
I mean.
And he said his mom when he got on the cover of Time magazine when he was doing the Tonight Show. He said to his mom, mom my mon cover of Time magazine. Oh yes, it's probably just the local edition time magazine. Mom, there is there is no local edition that's it. Yeah, it's perfect. It's never enough. It's never enough. And I think that that that part of getting on stage, getting back on stage, even when you've died, there's something in you the death. Death is the first off.
It's you choose because of your mother and set in part that you're we're comfortable with that dying. It's theater and stand up are the two places you learn from failure, right, You learn. You don't learn by being successful, because when it works, you're like, especially early on, you go, what the what the fuck? Did I just know?
I have to be able to do it again. I don't know what happened to the first.
Place, but if you bail, you kind of go I could try this, I could do this.
I can do that.
They've changed the line to delivery da da da da. I started too high with the audience to start, my energy was too low. That all of that, all of
that comes into play. And so I think it's that that we get from our our mothers, Like you know, Jay's mom saying that that sense of like we're comfortable with the fact that we've been in front of a major primary relationship that we take as our backboard is like, this is our judgment, and it's constantly going, oh, forget it, you have failed again, and so failing.
I know how to do that. And also failing can look like love, yeah, because because you just go like, well, you know, I failed, My mom loves me, and she's over saying mean things.
So and there's and the other thing is is that that I've said about it, which is I believe it. But what separates those who go on and stand up is there's a certain kind of a joy we get out of dying.
I totally do.
And the stupidity of that joy is, oh, you think you got me in a corner. Yeah, you guys, forget it, because I have something coming up now, even though nothing has worked for ten minutes, but this one, I say, this one, I can't believe what I'm gonna do to you. And then you pull that out and bump and it's worse and you're just digging your grave.
Well, what's interesting. The reason I started this conversation talking about that is because before I ever met you, I saw you perform doing exactly that in front of one of the worst audiences I'd seen in my life where and I've seen some really bad ones, usually when I'm in front of them. It was at the Latent Live gig ed at Edinburgh Festival years and years and years ago. You saw that I was there and I was like, oh my god, they're gonna kill them and you just
wouldn't back down. And I saw them turn, which was amazing, and I thought, Jesus Christ, I don't know how a guy can who.
Were there, because that's a that's for me. It was a historic moment. It destroyed. I had gone over the yeah, in hopes of then this is my way to get into England and Scotland, and that killed it really. Oh yeah, I never got I think they all. You know, it did because the thing that it kicked it off was that I did a joke about golf club stolen from a car that I had a rental car in Florida, and that the policeman who say who came was Jamaican and when I didn't there was something at the time.
I don't remember the joke because it's almost as if that night traumatized me with the joke. So I said that and it was just a true story, but I didn't know what he was saying. And that's when the audience, you racist, paced up shite and it started to pour out, and I was like, and that's why I put my foot down. You fucking really, you guys are gonna call me racist.
That's why I remember, which was awesome because it was fantastic towards and there's a very audio recording of Bill Bird doing pretty much the same thing. Do you remember that we'll let the audience or what they want to kill him and he's like, I don't care, I'm doing my time, you guys, and you know, like, and he just and he went at them and they're they're trying to drown him out at one point and he won't give in. I remember those nights. They don't happen often now.
In fact, I haven't had one for a long time. No, it'd be bad if you had them when you're in your sixties, but when you're a kid start Now, that's why I wonder, you know, kids coming up now, everybody does things differently, and they're they're doing their comedy on YouTube and stuff like that, and that's great. I would do it if I was that age too. You know, but they don't get put in front of the adversity.
They get it in a different way. They get negative comments on their thing and people saying mean things to them online, but they don't get the immediate, fresh in your face hatred, which I think does you so much good.
Well it doesn't. It also is how you learn. Yeah, I mean, you know, I think for some of them it works is like, uh, it works as kind of like okay, it's like sending out an audition tape to the people you really want to audition for. So that way there's an upside. I just did my uh special my specialties on YouTube.
Yeah, and I was going to ask you about that because I'm going I'm getting to the point and you know where every couple of years when you have an act and you're think, Okay, I'm gonna have to burn this stuff because I can't keep doing it and keep saying yeah, yeah, I can't keep saying it every night and pretending it's the first time I said it, so
we have to I'm gonna have to burn this. So I'm coming up to doing a special and actually somebody had told me that you had put your straight up on YouTube, and I went, you know what, I think that because Luit did that as well, doesn't he just like puts it up on YouTube and it is what it is?
Yeah, well, because a lot of it was, and it was, and I wasn't happy about it because I'm going, well, you know, who's you know?
This is for kids?
You know, I mean, but it apparently is where a ton of people are watching their stuff.
The industry is changing, and it's changing so fast that you know, like the writers strike and all that. I mean, everybody's like, you know what's going to happen. But I think in terms of stand up comedy, the idea of having any executive have any input on material is over. Sorry, I'm concerned. I just wouldn't be a thing that I would listen to. Now.
No, it's really absurd, But it also is. The Amazon Prime has a thing a part of their deal. Now I'm going to just tell you. We'll talk about it later, but you would find it unacceptable. Netflix basically, I don't know if that's a club. Well, they dismissed us because we were already creating this.
I did a couple of stand up specials from Netflix. Did you really I did? Yeah?
Back Prick I did not get one.
On No I did. I think I did that. You got I just one of the first ones I did. It wasn't the first one, but it was like in the I was all they could get a couple for them.
Forty million dollars you got the No.
No, I didn't get anything like that. No, I got like a free subscription when I when I did the Netflix vision, I think it was it was they were definitely streaming, but it was you know, it wasn't just.
The Yeah that was way back. Yeah, it was. It was before they went in the money psychosis, but when they started toss some money around for comics, and I was still in that kind of sweet spot of like, okay, you know I should be one, and no got blocked and then now forget it. We basically checked in. You know, the guys pitched yo, well what about Lewis, and well we have twelve people for every slot right now, and I don't get it. But as a result, you know,
bumped out of that. And then HBO was kind of gone its way, right, you know, show time make a.
Bit more Game of Throne? Can you be on fire? Is there a dragon? And it can have a dragon in it is there some blood, maybe test blood, and a dragon incests. Well, actually, now as you mentioned it, I think that is my sal I think that's what I'll call it. Tit's blood and incest. Okay, so attention and so somebody.
They'll be turning, They'll be turning on YouTube a lot, boy boy.
But I think what's interesting as.
Well, it's coming. I'm serious. I may even use that.
I think that putting it on the egalitarian nature of just throwing it out there and then anybody wants to watch it watching it. I don't think the streamers have quite understood. I don't think that the executives are executives, whether they were working for CBS nineteen fifties or Netflix now, just the same fucking middle management pricks that they wear back then. And so what they do is they don't
see when change is coming. They didn't fucking see that, and they think, like all humans, they think that they're the end of the evolutionary cycle. And you go, you fuckers don't understand Netflix, You're going to be done. You're going to be done because people don't need to pay for stuff anymore. It's it's like for music, what'll happened
to the musicians. People just grab the ship from wherever they want, and now musicians have to go out like that's why all these eighties bands right on tour again, Nick oh God and playing casinos and stuff with the knights and wordsheaded.
Well, you know, but that's the and it's in part the one thing about what YouTube does, because where the money is going to come, you know now as much like with rock and rolls coming from the gig. Yeah, you gotta do you live so so that YouTube, you know, brings in more, more diverse, in a different audience for U. Right, Well that's what they tell me. But we'll see.
I know that's working. That's happened to me. I don't know if you know. I noticed my audience is getting younger. I even had to say them one night, you fuckers better bear to be here. Ironically, I don't. I'm not Rick Astley. You don't be here like never gonna give me old chicken bungkein. Hello everybody, This is Craig Ferguson letting you know that my Fancy Rascal Tour continues throughout the fall of twenty twenty three. For a full list of dates and tickets, please go to my website, The
Craig Ferguson show dot com slash tour. Do you think that the thing with stand up because we were talking earlier about the immediate failure of live stuff and what happens is maybe it's changing for us too. Maybe live stuff is kind of like like the kids that are coming up, they start out on YouTube, they start out on free content. But if you start out in free content and you don't have an hour and a half to do once you get to the theater, it's going to work against you a little.
Yeah, which I think when they started doing you know, when you had the five minutes, people were working on their seven minutes except for Carson stuff. They you know, they would go and that that's what they had, and they didn't have the even the thirty minutes to be a middle act. Yeah, you know, yeah, And it's crazy. I mean and now I mean, now it's really but I'm crazy because now I actually people go to you
go to clubs to work out your material. Go, No, I just go into a theater and work that what you do, right.
I kind of mix it up a little bit, especially because the mechanics are touring, because I know you tour a lot too, and we're dinosaurs, man. We tour like fucking old rock bands and get on a fucking bus and you've got the big foreign guy with the tattoos doing the sound check and all that kind of stuff, and that's the kind of old model. But I do it.
So if there's a you know, if you book a theater on a Thursday and you don't have another theater until a Sunday because because Lewis Black's and the fucking theater that night, so you can't have it.
Or you can't or there's not a city in between.
Right, So I'll do a club. I'll do it, and I'll do a run of clubs. There are clubs that I really like. Which one is the Comedy Works in Danver, both great clubs. The one in Charlotte, North Carolina. Oh yeah, it's really good. It was the name of that one in Charlotte. I like the the Comedy Zone.
Yeah. The Comedies, which is weird, used to be a really weird because they had about a hundred of them and they were.
No, it's just one.
Yeah, I think it's kind of There's still a few of them around, but they're not That one is if it's a particularly good one, that's.
That would be one's a fine No, no, it's good. It was the Comedy Zone in Charlotte. And there's there's a couple of really nice ones, like there's some mprovs that really nice. There's one in San Jose and there's.
One great one theater. Yeah, I love that one, and the.
One in Librea in California. So they're they're there.
I like, did you ever play hilarities?
No, where's that?
That's Cleveland. That's another great one.
I saw John Love It's there one night.
Nick is the guy who owns It's great and importantly and sadly to say, really great food, really great food, and not to you wouldn't appreciate this, and a really good wine list.
Well I think that's okay. I mean, look, I just because I don't drink wine. As you know, I used to drink a lot of wine.
I know.
Yeah, you don't have a thing with that, or you've never had a problem. I probably did.
But what I had was I was functioning right, really well. I didn't have a I would basically it kind of you know. It was like, so let me get this straight. I got a job where I can drink when I'm done with the job until six in the morning, let's say, yeah, and then I still have I can sleep for twelve hours, yeah, and then wake up. I don't have to be on stage till nine. So I don't see how I.
Could possibly see that's a very healthy attitude, I think, because the way I was doing it is that I would like, so I have a job that I have to stop drinking for it. That seems like a lot. So I had a different approach to it. That was a long We've both seen people who screw.
Up, I mean, and from that to drugs, I mean where you where they call you and they say so and so passed and you knew it, you know, just when was it going to happen? The great moment that the thing when this just this is a little off to the side, but it's really one of the stories I repeat in terms of drinking was you and I. And also it's about drinking, but more importantly it's about why it's important you just talk to somebody who I
really loved being on your show. I loved it. I thought the great thing about it is we just you ripped up the cards and just.
Just talk grab. I'm glad you and I love having you on the show.
Oh, and it was terrific because I was completely comfortable and we were enjoyed, and I knew if I had nothing, you had it. You knew if you had nothing, I had it. It was like a great ping pong match and nobody was trying to win, right but you and I. And this was and it's what made Pars show and why I watched it, you know, aging me or not, But those early shows like Alan and Steve Allen, that what made them great was the fact that they were
in a conversation. They weren't trying to promote anything. And how is it to work with Licky Dick? Ohick, my dick? You know that stuff, And so it really gave We discovered while talking that we lived in the same neighborhood. We didn't know that that's right in the East village. Right that we discussed which bar did you go to? We went to the same same bar you and we both sat there and it was like, literally we went through a progression of understanding that we've been fucking around
each other. We were both drinking that we never knowed.
Yeah, at the same times as the Pyramid on seventh five, and you know there was the last resort on sorry c W DBO or whatever, the one right on seventh right, so, and the Pyramid Club was on Avenue B or something Avenue AI Avenue, that's right, it's Avenue next to the Odessa Russian Restaurant, a really good borch that you could get the man. Now, Yeah, of course it's a fucking YouTube or something. It's it's a Netflix screen or something.
But it was like all of that time when I look at because I was tooling around as you were tolling around New York in the eighties and the East Village. They make movies about shit like that. Now they make movies about you know, like Bascacht and this. I remember Baskach, you know, hanging out at the Pyramid Club and it
saved the robots. And you don't think anyone's going to make a movie of these things, you know, but I guess that, you know, you get old enough and you don't die, and they start making you know, bag of the old and in the before time, So when you were doing it that you were doing stand up then, right, but only off and on I was doing I really was theater.
Yeah, I wanted to be in theater.
What drew you more in a stand up man? Or do you still want to do theory because we can?
I mean, I still would like to do more theater, but I just you know, the stand up kind of fulfills the writing. It builds everything writing and acting.
Yeah, it does.
And I've never been a director, but I'm directing and it doesn't take much. I mean, no, you're directing your stand up. Yeah, I mean it's the thing when I talk to young actors, I go, do it. Do it, just to do it because you're learning directing, writing and acting simultaneously.
It was the reason I started doing it as well, because in Britain you had to in order to be an actor who working a theory, you had to have an equity card. You have a union actors union card. I don't know what it's like now, but back then, and you had in order to get the union card, you had to do three shows in a union theater. But in order to get a show in a fucking union theory you needed to have a union card, Like
what the fuck? But there was one loophole, which is if you did stand up, they would put you on to do stand up and give you a union contract. So I did three and by the third one I was like, Okay, I don't think. I think I might have found something that I enjoy or at least I could do sufficiently to get by. So when did you start? Uh, during John's show, because that was like, that was like a real gear change for you, wasn't it when you started doing the Daily Show?
Yeah, that was a big gear change. But that when I was doing. But I'd already kind of transitioned into the stand up and.
I was, oh, yeah, I knew that.
Yeah, but I was doing I was doing it when Kilbourne was. I was there from the very very beginning.
How did you get I never met much. I talked to him. I did his show that I ended up hosting the late night show, and he was always really nice to me. I didn't really connect with him. I didn't I didn't really know him.
I don't think it was much to connect. Yeah. I was with him and it.
Was Yeah, he was kind of a shut, quiet guy.
Yeah.
Yeah, he kind of kipt himself to himself.
Yeah. I think he went from sports to that and I think he was a little bit of a fish out of water there because a lot of the times, I mean, he didn't know what the joke was, you know, I mean the idea was we weren't.
Like that woman in the in the Marx Brothers movies. What was her name?
I can't remember, but yeah, is it Dumont?
Mary Margaret Dumont?
Right, I get fifty points in the rights to come back next week? Do you know?
It's a great, a great grouch of marks quote about someone gave her a job. He said, Oh great, I'm glad you gave her a job. She hasn't worked since the last Marx Brothers movie. What am I saying? I haven't marked since?
Yeah?
No, the the Daily Show.
The Daily Show was I mean I was on like the first of the second week, right, and have been on ever since.
And then when I became of the gear change, like I knew you were. I'd seen you in Edin, Bryan knew you the stand up. I knew you were the stand up that you are. I knew what you what I was dealing with when I saw you, and and how good you were at it. But I became aware of the gear change for you on that show, and it was round about it was after Clinton was after Clinton was a George was a Bush. Bush.
Yeah, it was that kicked it in, all right, That's where I believed, began to believe and when I talked to people that it was part of what success has to do with in our business is timing, and it's got nothing to do with reality. No, this was George Bush came to power. It was right in my sweet spot. The show was on. There was finally you know, they began to you know that the audience, which I already knew, was paying attention to this stuff. Their knowledge and interest increased,
let's see, even ten percent. And I had George Bush and it really cracked things wide open.
And it's an interesting thing though, that that show, because the phenomena of that show kicked off a law both for I mean, obviously for John it changed his career. But the idea of the fake news, which was a great joke and now it's kind of it's a kind of it's fucking real. Then nobody, and I don't care if you're on the far right Hitler or the far left of Trutsky. Nobody believes anybody anybody. You don't know
where to go for your any news. And people used to trust the Daily Show for news, which was the fake news show. This is strange, right.
Yeah, and then what it evolved into was news shows. I think it evolved into MSNBC and Fox because then if we have news, but what we're going to do is comment on the news, and that came from the Daily Show.
Yes, and that, of course is a Frankens Thing's monster because now it's not even news, it's just we're going to comment on everything all the time.
And it's really reached a point. I keep screaming it on stage four years ago. I was saying it five years ago, before the shit hit the van. I was going, we don't have two party system of ideas. It's two separate realities people they are living, we are literally, I mean in this country is living in two separate realities, if not four, but two solids with realities that they've
bached it on. And I see it when I sent out the special, the YouTube special, you know, some of the comments are like, well, you know, yadi y, you didn't do that. You know your take on this and that, what are you talking? I'm talking about me, schmuck, this is yah. You've decided that was your reality. I'm telling you what my reality was.
But the thing is, because everything now has a polemic, everything has a polemic, that even to not have to not be political is to be political. And it's it's so funny. It's such a weird twist. It's like, I'm not going to do politics. Oh so you're a Trumpet. Where I'm not going to do politics. Did not say that, you know, it's kind of Oh so you're not a Trumper? Fuck you? Trump's great. It's like, what's happening is that?
I think is my theory about it. I don't know if you agree that people love to feel smart, and the thing about politics is it's a really great way, particularly for politicians. It's a really great way for focks to feel like they're clever. Like they say stuff and they get to wear a suit and walk around in big buildings and say, oh, very important and there. I don't know about you, but the politicians have made all the way up to presidents. I'm like, I can't believe
I'm fucking stupid. This guy is like, they're fucking stupid. But then I get it because who else would be a politician? What a fucking idiot? This is crazy, right, because you was half the audience right there.
Well, there are also nerds. Yeah, and they used to be better at being nerds, which was like not try to get beyond their nerdishness and just I'm going to go there. What they wanted to do was go in that room and work, right. I didn't want to go out. And then then they found out you could make more money.
You know. It's kind of when Hollywood and DC. I'm from d C, right around that area, from Silver Spring, Maryland, and literally, you know, when I was young, there was no Hollywood was here, and then and then once Reagan came in, there was the and then it's the we're going to present you with this.
And did you ever do the Hollywood they what do you call it? White House correspondence? No?
I did the Congressional correspondence.
All right, okay, is that is that like the Illuminati one or something?
No, that was. It was had its own. It was the same. But you know, I never got I never got that high. Was that's my career. It's like, did you do that?
No? What I did? This? It's fun. I did the White House corresponds the last year of Bush.
I remember you, Oh my god, that's so it's such a weird guy because you know, when you do a corporate gig and you.
Like, you know it's gonna suck, because like they're like everyone like you can smell the warm lobster before you start talking. But those better gigs, well sometimes it's warm. What's I used to do this? I had this thing was going with them. I did this thing was where I used to just bet in the act about Tom Cruise, Like it wasn't particularly nice about Tom Cruise. It was about like, you know, his take on depression and all that kind of stuff, and it was just about I mean,
wasn't particularly nasty about him. But it was a thing, and I did it. I used to kill every night. I used to kill every night. And one night I do a corporate gig, total silence, and then I come off stage and somebody says, you know, this is Tom Cruise's law firm, Like, oh my god, are they gonna sue me? Like no, but I don't think they'll have you back. God, God, it's great. Do you do a lot of corporate gigs you No, no, no, they do not even come near me. I don't know they came.
They they kind of dried up during the COVID. I think be gonna come, but.
They have stopped before the COVID, they stopped there. I had some and some really worked well. And then but also they you know, there was this thing that they didn't realize. I could you know, oh, that he's gonna come here, He's gonna say fuck a lot.
No, you're idiot. Yeah you you pay X.
I'm not gonna say fuck. I'm not here to save fuck.
It's funny how people will say that. It's like, please don't say fuck. Like I'm capable of that. I didn't want to. I remember it's in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Just before I walk on stage, the guy says to me, please don't say fuck. And I'm like, I knew it, right, I mean I knew it. It's when I say the
contract says, you know, PG. Thirteen or something. But but I walked on stage and I said to the audience, I've just been told that I'm not allowed to say the app I've just heard this minute, so we're gonna have to. I'm just we're just gonna have to make
up another word. And I actually played pretty good. But I think that the whole world because of social media has become hr like everybody is like, you gotta be You've got to not offend this, You've got to not do that, And you're like, what, But offending people is a byproduct of doing what we do. You don't have to be an asshole or a bully. But you you are going to offend someone, You're gonna you're gonna say something that you don't So I think when I see you,
I think you're so good at this. You will say a thing that you patently don't believe in order to make a joke. But if I write down lud Black said this, it's going to look like you do believe that, because they remove your skill from what you just did.
Exactly, and it's gotten out of hand. And also for me, a part of it is I'll find myself on stage, I'll say something like I'll say it's something you know, and the guys will will understand, and then I go, oh, fuck, okay, look, by guys, I said, I did not mean to exclude
every woman on the planet. Do you understand this? And the fact that I even have to fucking stand here and make sure that before you leave this theater that you understand that this had to do with everybody, And I didn't say everybody and that somehow I slipped that word in and you kind of go and they get it. Of course they've been dragged through this because it's both sides have created this man.
Yeah, yeah, it's not. I don't think it belongs to any particular No.
No, because it works. You know, I said, just recently I was talking about I brought up George Santos.
That's oh yeah, on stage he's a trip. Oh god.
So I bring him up because I started it as a joke about I used to say herschel Walker, right, and that's all I gotta say. And the audience when I said his name, the audience would be like, how, just how, I said, that's where we're at. Do you understand I don't need you, don't need me anymore.
The name, but just out.
So I tried it with Santos. He doesn't do as well. So but I met, you know, I started to talk a little about it. I said he was a liar, and on one side of the stage.
Well, Joe Biden's a liar, and.
I okay, look all right, do you understand the difference between the types of lies I'm talking, and then the guy and the other guys at the stage goes, you know, Biden wouldn't be where he was if he was I said what, I said, what are you talking about?
And I go stage.
Now, all I've said is George Santos, yeah, and that he makes shit, you know that he was lying. And I started to get into, you know, the two jokes, and then I tell the audience you can make a joke, right, just pick anything that you think he might not have ever done, and you're gonna get a laugh. And so so the guy says, and this shocked me and actually stopped me because I you know that moment where you go I can't believe this is fucking coming out of
this person's mouth and this is happening. He says, well, you know, if Joe Biden's wife and son weren't killed in that accident, Joe Biden would be a used car salesman, okay.
And I was like, what the fuck did that have to do with what?
And I was like, I said, you know, I got to stand here now and explain to you the difference between these two people that I have to reprimand you for the fact that this is not the type of thing you say. You want to say this home, you say to No, that's fine, right around the dinner table with your family. Fine, I don't care, but you don't come into a public space and say something that nasty about anybody.
No, that's what home is for. That's what Thanksgiving dinner is for, exactly. It's like that thing when you know, Meghan Markle and Prince Harry said someone in their royal family is racist, and I'm like, yeah, it's a it's a family, so there, yeah, someone in the families. If you don't know who the racist is in your family is because it's you, it's a family. It's like Thanksgiving dinner. Grandpa would like to say a few words. No, no,
it's not you're not saying anything. It seems to me that I don't know, being offended is some kind of badge of honor, and I don't understand it. I get offended, but so what you know, Rickie, you should raise his good, very nice little phrase about it. Just because you're friends. It doesn't mean you're right, you're just offended.
But this was astonishing. I mean I just hadn't yeah, because I hadn't heard that in so long that kind of mean spirited. I just won't. I don't bide it. I mean, that's what we get to do, and the reason we get to do it is we try to put it, take it, encapsulate it, and put it into.
A joke and make it ridiculous. So if you take a if you take a sentence which is mean, or you take a sentiment which is me, and you hold it up for being foolish or stupid or reprehensible. But I think that you know the nuance. It's I think it's a little I don't want to be like cranky about social media, but at the same time, it's hard not to be because it's kind of really just a bathroom wall. You know, you're just right. You know, Craig Ferguson is shit and shit, so therefore it's true.
Yeah, you know, and you were never funny.
Yeah, you're just you're not funny, which I don't really understand because you don't see the musician. You're not music. Go yeah, yeah, fucking am people are dancing. Like if all these people are laughing and you're not laughing, maybe I am funny. Maybe you're just an asked funny.
It's like, what was I think, you know, did I if I just you know, there's nobody laughing and I'm hearing it. That's what the level of psychosis I'm not. Yeah, and they're really unbelievable in terms of the fact that they it's high school.
Yeah a little. It feels about like that.
Well, that was the thing I've been I've been thinking about this is that social media is all the things that people hated in high school and it brought back. So you're walking down the hall hall and somebody found out, you know, you were missing in the ural. You miss the urinal, and you're walking down the hall you missed the urinal, you know, and so you.
Get sixty of those and eighty of these.
And part of the problem was, and it's happening now with AI, is they just said, okay, here's Facebook, go do it. And it was like when it happened, I was like, this is bullshit. Never in the history of anything did you become involved with something and they don't give you any instructions, right, you know, just play with it. Well, you know, just playing with it created real problems.
Fuck nut. It's interesting, though, I have a slightly different feeling about AI. Maybe I'm wrong, but I feel probably you are probably wrong, You're totally wrong. Goddamn it. I can't believe I've got to sit here.
He shit, I wrote an in shit, so it must be true. I said, we're not gonna talk about it. AI A.
I think finally devalues it completely, like it completely devalues it, like I saw are values devalues all social media because it's all it's all garbage all the time, which is you know, obviously one of my favorite performers of all time saying all garbage all the time, but it is, it is, it's all garbage all the time. And I think the AI makes it so worthless as a see.
I think the failure of journalism in the sense that they got so lazy they used social media as a source that they gave it some credence and some validity that it doesn't actually have. Is that true, right?
So it started with it was started before him, but it was really blew up in the Trump era.
But he used it very effectively though, I mean, because he just used the noise. But the big.
Tragedy there, I used to say, was is that when they started putting his tweets and stuff on TV I got. You don't get to do that. That's our job. Yeah, okay, your job is to discuss the political. These tweets are the pathological. That's our bread and budding.
Yeah.
And I would go out there and I said, you know, I would read these tweets to you, but you've already heard him three hundred times and you shouldn't have hurt him at all. And I said, and that's why my act will be sure tonight. Yeah, because they've taken away taking away all your stuff.
The third of what I mean it was unbelievable, as I know, I thaying that you can say. But that's why I think AI is actually gonna save the human rights because you can't believe a fucking word of it, and you're gonna have to grow up. You can't. It's not like while I get my news, so it doesn't matter where you get your If you get your news from an electronic device, you're fucked. You're gonna have to
go and see for yourself. So if something happens in Ukraine and you think what's going on in Ukraine, get on a fucking plane and go and find out, because that's the only way you're gonna fucking know. I wouldn't advise it because I suspect it might be dangerous. But if you really want to know what's going on, go and fucking see.
Now that you can do the mean which AI is. You know that you can. It came out before the thing is is too with AI IS. It's really literal. We're talking about this, And this is probably four weeks after they announced really AI.
Right where they told the world, Hey, look what we got.
We're gonna fuck with everything. Now you thought we were fucking with you, but now we got something we're really gonna be un Yeah, we're gonna shove something right up your eyes.
Boy, oh boy, get ready for this.
But it is that thing now too, which they kind of just before AI they said, oh, you know, we can put fake people into these things, right, and they look just like you.
What I want to be in porn without having to do it? Yeah, Like so, I like you use my face and then give me on this huge penis and make me make me great at porn. Uh, And I'm fine with it. Go right ahead, Uh, just don't focus on me going like that. But I don't know I think that because look, the human race is evolving if evolution doesn't stop, everybody thinks, well that's it now, you know. It's like, well we got the wheel that said no, well we got fire. That's it. Now what that's fire?
It's like snoglig is gonna fucking stop? Well, streaming, that's the way of the future. No, it's fucking not. It's the way of the now, the future.
You know what's coming The AI too, is I think is they say you have a world filled with people who have no intelligence, tons of us, and from out of that group of people who have no intelligence, a number of people who have a little more of no intelligence than those people without intelligence, just to touch more are going to create intelligence.
Fuck you.
Okay.
I saw a robot when I was in La. I was Ala with my son about a couple of months ago. I saw a delivery robot and it was a robot on its own, going down the road delivering a thing. And I was like, it wasn't a commercial, No, no, it's real robot. They have delivery robots, I know they do, but I've never seen one. Yeah, well I saw one. That was the only one I saw it. I was thinking, you know what, I don't care how well you've made that robot. If I want what that robot's got, I'll
fucking take it. And I don't need a gun. I just need to unplug that motherfucker. I know where his batteries are. The whole idea of it. I refuse to be frightened of it. People are are who they are, you know. I just I refuse to say, oh, the AI is going to gas fuck them.
Well, I don't think it's going to get them, but I think it's going to undermine education for a while.
Well not as much as the fucking failure of the education system is undermined the education.
Well that's true too, but that's got to do with another problem. But I mean, when you for those who are kind of passed, you know, in college, once you get to college and you kind of go, fuck, I got three papers this week. Oh that's true, that critical thinking thing goes out the window. Yeah, I mean, you know, it's like when they said, you know, you don't have to this was an amazing one that I did on is talk about stupid. Okay, this is how dumb I am. I said, I'm just gonna tell you this. This is
not funny, it's not anything. It's just information you should have when you go to a PTA meeting. They've stopped teaching cursive writing. Really here lot of places in the time, God, can you imagine? Yeah? And do you write stuff down? You write it right?
Yeah? You do? Or do you tie? I did both?
Yeah, exactly, And so I said, you know, I had I had written plays and for a long time. And then you know, when the word processor and all that came out, I started to try to write plays. Oh, now I'll be able to keep up with my brain. And I try to do that, and I kept doing I wasn't writing as well, and I realized then I went back to writing in Longhand course, and I went, fuck, I'm thinking different. Yeah, it's a completely different way of thinking.
Oh, well, do you how much do you read versus before or after smartphones? Like what I mean? I used to read. I always had a book in my hand. I always read, and now I read, but I read like garbage on and this fucking little little toilet funnel in my hand.
I read less, much less. And I also think the pandemic did it me too, Yeah, because I sit down and it was like there was still like, oh, I got plenty of time I'll read this, and then the next day I'll read this. Then the next day I'll read this, and it was really almost true. I would start to read something and in my head is it would be. I'd get about three paragraphs and then my brain would stick, going, you stop, drop the book, You're gonna die. Did you get COVID? No, you got it?
I had it twice. Well, and I've had all the shots and I'm like, I'm like a COVID petri dish.
Wow.
Yeah, I've had a couple of times. I think you're doing. The second person I've ever met that's no had it.
Yeah. I know a few who didn't. And I had this kind of spray that I don't know if that's what did it? Yeah, that they claimed worked.
Would you spray other people to keep them away from you?
That would be a different spray. Wow twice? Did you did knock you out?
First time? First time a dead? Second time? I was like, Okay, it's no big deal. But the first time, I think what was worse with the pandemic wasn't the COVID was awful, of course it was, but no, were you there or here when I was in Scotland?
When you got ith. Yeah, but you've never been a clean people.
No, no, we're not. We're damp and we do a lot of breathing on each other and touching, touching things, so we are washing our hands. That's for the English. So the thing about it was the fear that they put into Do you remember in the nineteen eighties when they were trying to terrify everybody when AIDS first started,
and that the fear campaign. Rather than saying look here's what we know so far, which would have been helpful, I think to a lot of people who subsequently got sick, they just tried to make it about shame based sexual contact. It had echoes of that in it. It's like the main thing you have to focus on here is your fear. It seems kind of sinister to me. Anything that comes is like nobody kind of wants to help. Well, at least that's the kind of vibe I go from it.
It's like, I don't think you guys want to help, you're just loving us. I mean the media.
You know, it was very weird because you know, it was that thing. It was my whole life. I thought if we were invaded by uh, you know and other aliens, aliens that the world because of all the books, you know, and all the science fiction, would come together to defend themselves and here is an invasion by an alien nothing, not even close, not even in the ballpark.
No, what are you doing? Don't tell them?
Don't tell Yeah, I mean it was like, what fucking are you? People? This crazy? And here too it was you know, and my special has his stuff in it about what happened.
Yeah, yeah about it.
And the response some people is is that you know, well you're you know, and it was like, you know, they had their own take on it, and I said, the problem, and to me, the problem always was is that what you had to have happened here was the whether whether it worked or not. They're people who are
going to ignore it. But the Democrats and the Republicans had to get together, Yeah, and they had to sit down as one and with him with the perfect storm, you know, with Trump, and kind of present a united front and say here's what we're going to do. And they never did it. They never did you could do this, or you could do that, or you know. I was fucking I mean, seriously, I was. And it wasn't a joke. I'm watching shit with clorox. I could have killed myself.
Yeah, you know, it's it's like and Brenton, the Prime Minister, was making the rules for the COVID lockdown, and at the same time that's why he kicked him out. He's having like parties number ten down the street and he's like, oh, yeah, you're not allowed to see your grandmas. She's dying out.
I was like what. But it was an odd, a weird I don't remember Anthony like it in my lifetime when things got that strange for that little period, that first six months of COVID, I'm like, oh my god, it was bizarre, really weird, really weird.
And then really, uh, you know, boy, you know this whole thing about you know, I'm not going to take the vaccine, and then that became a political How does that?
It's not how does it get political?
And it's not a political Okay, it's either you you trust that science or you know or you don't.
Yeah, that's it.
I mean if by taking it, I am not striking out at you, and if you and if I don't want to see you because you didn't take it, it's because I'm going to go see my mother and I can't fucking afford I'm not even worried about me as much as I am getting something because I see my mother.
Every two weeks. Yeah, and that must have been a thing because your mom was what like one hundred and two time at the time, ever got COVID geez in a nursing home where they were dropping Yeah, yeah, that happened in Scotland as well. They put a bunch of people from the hospitals that had him back into the nursing homes and oh it was a mess. Well yeah, it's crazy. It was a mess.
But and then they and then people blame people for that, you know, blame the do It's like nobody knew.
Anybody knew what was going on. Yeah, remember because right at the beginning we thought you could get it from not having enough toilet paper. That was not the world's greatest moment where I was panic buying the fucking toilet.
Paper and then I would get things on my Uh. You know, there's comments because I talk about, you know that I.
Had food delivered. Okay, yeah, well, you son of a.
Bitch, you made those people come out and fucking you know, deliver food, deliver food to you. I said, well, you know, no, I didn't really do that.
I didn't.
I was trying to you know, I paid for it. It wasn't like I put a shit.
This is Lewis Black. But if you do not deliver food to me, I will have you gone.
Let's you know, So what's my choice? You know they're going to deliver the food or do I just not eat again?
It's uh, I don't know anyway, everybody is enough beat. Yeah, there's a bit of joy. We're kind of done.
We can't end on that.
Oh I've enjoyed myself, Immen's.
So we can't end on this.
What do you want to end on me? You work with this guy?
We trying to sell a product here, No, trying.
To sell a product idea. See the whole idea I like about this podcast thing is that because I used to think, do you have a podcast?
I have a rant cast? A ran cast and I'm going to go home after this and ran above this and say I sat with that son of a bitch and it was so depressing. I hadn't seen him in years. And he ended with this thing about about COVID starting with age, started with age.
Yeah, to be good to go.
Back in the because we lived in that neighborhood.
Was like the worlds. Yeah, remember I thought I had it? Did you think you had it?
No? I was barely poking.
No. Well, and I say you got it? But no, I thought wow a couple of times. Do you know he is the truth? Do you remember it very beginning? Well, no, it was a little bit into the ages. Maybe it was as late as the nineties. I think it was in the nineties the first because I never wanted to get a test, an AIDS test, but then they came out with the mail in AIDS test. So what you did was it was like I think the movie phone
guy was involved. And what you did is like the You got a card from a drug store and you picked your finger with it, and you put your little bit of sample of blood on the card and you send it away and you waited a week and then it gave you a number of dial and you dialed in the number. I swear to God, you dialed into the number, and then you had a number on your card.
So you said, punch in the number if you want to know if you have ages, and so I'd like, you know, eight, three, three, four or five six or something, and I said, h three three, four fives, you do not have age. If you if you want to hear this message again, press one. So of course what you do is you go, boom, I want to hear it again. You pressed one, he goes you do not have AIDS. Do you want to hear this message? If you want
to hear this number of pressed once? They pressed again and go you have exceeded the amount of times you can hear this. You must reapply. And you had to reapply for the thing? Did you ask the one? I did? Wow? That was it was scary.
I had a friend talked about the only one of my friends got the thing where it just you know, it took the test. You know, we went, you know, and he took the test and they said, oh you have age. Now he's like been, you know, he's close to getting married. And so I got age and then like the next stake, nah, only getting I mean it was literally like you got false positive positive.
See the thing was as well right back then if you go AIDS, you're going to die.
That was it.
It was done. Yeah, And I mean I've got friends who have had AIDS for years or no is HIV positive figures and they haven't valientines. So let's end on that. Yeah, there's something up well really a believable but they're fine.
I am really glad.
I have a buddy who's in a car accident. But please do it. Okay?
No, is this what you're doing now? Is this it?
No? No, this is just like a sight hustle. Everybody says to you, you have to have a party. It's like, who made you have a Twitter account? Kathleen.
Kathleen really said you gotta because you have to keep your name out right.
That's so. And I tell people where I was going to bring and I bet you the rant cast is the podcast is the same.
The ran cast was when I was stuck inside and I and I didn't. I wasn't one of those people I need an audience to do stand up right. I can do it with you, you know. I mean the people that I can bag your back and forth with them and stuff like that. But basically, like I'm going to go home and sit by myself and talk about the writer's strike is gotten. I got one rant that came in, but I had all of these rants that
people had already sent it. I've been doing it for years where I read these rants on stage live and they went throughout the world. And what was great about it is some of them, respect I mean so fucking good. In the last year they were really remarkable. And my tour manager said this would be a great thing to put and I thought great because people didn't you know, if you didn't see it that night, you know it. And so I was able to get those out there and and then I do an intro of what happened
that week. And then I started reading rants that were coming to me.
And so people write down the rants and you read them out for them.
Yeah, And so I'll be reading the rant of one of the writers today that was.
Now technically if that writer or wrote I rant for you, read out, didn't that right? Or then write for you?
Oh no, No, I didn't write it for me. I just wrote, just wrote it, wrote a thing saying this is talking about it and sending it to some friends, all right then, and they're not you know.
I don't want you to get in trouble. That's why I'm not.
Getting in trouble for this, because it's really about getting it out to the public as to why this is bullshit and why why we need to go and strike?
I want to strike, Yeah, I want to strike. None of this was written down excellent. Yeah, and you're a w g A member, right yeah, yeah, me too, So we're on strike.
We are in strike.
Yeah.
But you know, did they did you ever get anything asking you for your vote?
Now? Did you?
No?
I think I think you had to go and vote in the auditorium.
No, there's no auditorium. And the fact that you even use that word means that this this this podcast has dropped ten percent. What's an auditorium?
That'sh people go to get COVID. All right, let's everybody, good night
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