Joe Rogan Experience #193: Jim Gaffigan

Joe Rogan: Some people get tired of the stress. I mean Jim and I were talking about how much we love stand-up and we would never quit doing it. But everybody's got a different psychological make-up. And for some people, the anxiety of performance is really intense. 

Jim Gaffigan: Its also, I think some of it is luck. I mean it is a real cruel business. 

JR: Yes.

JG: So, I mean, I was definitely an angry guy. A lot of people were successful before me and I was angry for a couple years.

JR: You were bitter?

JG: Yeah.

JR: Really? How did you get yourself out of that?

JG: Therapy. 

JR: Really?

JR: Yeah. You know. And just also I came to the conclusion that I was not doing stand-up... you know I wanted to be... I was happy for my friends' success but I felt like I was a failure. But like I had to come to the conclusion: What is success? And what success is, is like doing what you love and actually getting paid for it. And so then I adopted that attitude. And then things started going my way. 

Joe Rogan Experience #193: Jim Gaffigan / aprox 50:56

Joe Rogan Experience #193: Jim Gaffigan

Jim Gaffigan: I had more time so I was working out more consistently and not eating horribly at three in the morning. And it entered my mind, its like, am I going to be too in-shape for some of these jokes? But that's just me being neurotic. 

JR: (laughing) Am I going to be too in shape for some of these jokes! That's hilarious. What a great escape clause: My act is so important I can't do sit-ups.

JG: I can't, you know, I work out but it might mess up that third chunk in the hour. 

JR: This is so stupid but I really believe this. I was getting into meditation and I was getting into yoga and a bunch of things when I was young. And when I first started getting into comedy, I thought about it and I said, you know what? Maybe I shouldn't do this 'cause maybe becoming more enlightened is probably bad for my act. 'Cause then I wouldn't be making fun of so many things or picking as many victims...

JG: Now that's a comedian thinking there, right?

JR: Especially Boston-style comedy is so mean, so attack-style. And I was thinking, man, if I become enlightened and I was all like peace and love, this would be terrible for my act. And I'm not going to stop being a comedian. 

JG: I wouldn't want to eat healthy, you know? I think I got another hour in me being fat.

Joe Rogan Experience #193: Jim Gaffigan / aprox 50:56

Joe Rogan Experience #193

Jim Gaffigan: I think in New York it was important to appear tough when I was starting out.

Joe Rogan: Really?

JG: Not having emotion attached. You see that in Louis… Louis has it. And Attell has it. And Kevin Brennan has it. And uh, Maron, I mean even though Maron is such an open book he has a little bit… Like being unphased by… at least on stage. Does that make sense?

JR: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

JG: You have it too.

JR: You have to really be into what you’re thinking about. And if you’re into what you’re thinking about then you’re not going to be really phased if people are into it or not.

Joe Rogan Experience #193: Jim Gaffigan / aprox 50:56

Joe Rogan Experience #223: Bobcat Goldthwait

Bobcat Goldthwait: I have a blue collar background so my whole thing is actually trying to go out and do a show for people, you know? I mean, it sounds corny and stuff but if you're there to see me I try to work really hard. Now if I end up on a bill with other comics then I don't mind screwing around. You know what I mean. On Comic Relief I would dress up as Christ and do magic tricks, you know, "Water to wine, wine to water, tap the deck, and back to rice again." And I was The Amazing Christo and stuff. That's an example of me just having fun. But if you come out to see my show I am going to work really hard. I mean, you don't want to disappoint people that have actually paid to see you. 

Joe Rogan: I feel the exact same way and I know what you're saying about, "It sounds kinda corny." But its admirable. That's the relationship, that's how its supposed to be. They're paying and you wanna do the best fucking possible job you can. Just the fact that you're asking people to pay to hear you talk sounds ridiculous.

BG: You gotta work really hard. But my friend John Evens and I always say this and its kind of true... Unfortunately in comedy, you're trying to keep the dumbest person in the room occupied. You know what I'm saying?  

Joe Rogan Experience #223: Bobcat Goldthwait / aprox 1:48:00

Joe Rogan Experience #223: Bobcat Goldthwait

Joe Rogan: Can you watch people bomb?

Bobcat Goldthwait: Yeah, I have no problem watching…

JR: It doesn’t bother you at all?

BG: Oh, it feels right. You know. Like watching people eat shit is probably one of the few things that entertains me in a comedy club.

JR: Really?

BG: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I have no compassion for them. You know, I think its great. I love to watch someone eat shit.

JR: Why is that?

BG: Because, because, here’s the thing. Here’s something that at one point I took really serious and you’re trying to think that its just easy. Or you’re just thinking that…

JR: How about if they’re just bombing. They don’t have to be thinking that…

BG: Again, like a talented comedian bombing is hilarious, you know?

JR: Is it really?

BG: Oh my god, Kevin Meaney bombing is the funniest fucking thing on the planet.

JR: I can see that he’s very animated, very funny guy.

BG: It’s the best. Kevin Meaney bombing, “(singing) I don’t care if my jokes don’t go over…”

JR: But that’s just Kevin Meaney. That’s not even real bombing. He’s singing. He’s having a joyous time. Real bombing is not knowing what’s coming next… you’re just eating it up there… you can’t remember your material and your fucking mouth is dry… bricks of shit are tumbling out of your mouth and you’re trying to pass them off as gold to the crowd… overhyping every fucking premise ‘cause, “This is the one that’s going to turn this set around.”

Joe Rogan Experience #223: Bobcat Goldthwait / aprox 1:54:00

Joe Rogan Experience #207: Tom Segura, Christina Pazsitzky

Tom Segura: I kind of feel like you get, well I get like energy out of opening with new stuff. 

Christina Pazsitzky: I like to do it too. It’s risky. It’s scary. 

Joe Rogan: Christina, you’re a risk taker! 

CP: Yeah! I’m a daredevil, man! 

JR: Thrill seeker! 

TS: That’s exciting… 

JR: Yeah, you have to be, to be a comedian, right? 

CP: Oh yeah! 

JR: Don’t you? 

CP: Oh, you have to be completely willing to not have comfort financially, emotionally…. Sometimes physically. 

JR: But if it works out… 

CP: It’s awesome. 

JR: If it works out, you have such a much better way of life than doing something you don’t want to do. 

Joe Rogan Experience #207: Tom Segura, Christina Pazsitzky / aprox 2:20:00

Joe Rogan Experience #207: Tom Segura, Christina Pazsitzky

Joe Rogan: Yeah. Well I’ve definitely… we’ve all gone through that experience of recording something and then the next week you have a new tag line.

Christina Pazsitzky: Oh, it kills me. It kills me.

JR: Mitch Hedberg actually redid a bit on the second album because he didn’t have the tagline and said it on the album that he was doing that. “Here’s the new part…”

CP: Yeah, cause that’s tempting when you’ve actually recorded the bit… then maybe you should throw it out. Because you’ve recorded it. You know, why hold on to something that you can’t use again?

JR: Well, I talked to (Jim) Gaffigan about this and he and I are sort of in agreement about this. Yeah, you gotta have all new shit but you also have to do well. You can’t have a bad show and if you’re tanking it with all your new stuff it might be time to bust out some shit that really works and just pull this bitch out of the fire. You have to find… when is that time?

Like some guys, I think Louis CK pretty much just guts it out. And when he does new stuff he just does only new stuff. You know? Chris Rock used to do that too. Remember he used to come to the (Comedy) Store and he would just do only new stuff. And you know, not be concerned whatsoever about it not going well. He’s trying to make it go well, but if it doesn’t, he’s sticking to it. He’s not going to pull out some old shit out of his bag.

Tom Segura: Well, that’s the way you build.

JR: That’s one way. That’s certainly a way. Some guys like to sandwich it between other bits and you know, then slowly develop them as new chunks. 

Joe Rogan Experience #207: Tom Segura, Christina Pazsitzky / aprox 2:20:00

Joe Rogan Experience #207: Tom Segura, Christina Pazsitzky

Joe Rogan: …like Ari (Shaffir) had a real good point. Like he was saying that, you know, if you worked on a bit and you decided to work on that bit for 5 or 10 years, you know, that all that energy you could’ve used on that bit you could’ve abandoned it two years ago and then worked on a new bit for another 2 years. And then you end up completely abandoned it and started all new and all that creativity would’ve gone into something completely new and different. It’s totally true, isn’t it?

So there’s a line you have to cross. Like when is it? Is it a year for a new act? Is it 2 years?

Tom Segura: I think a year... If you start always turning over stuff after a year you actually lose something. I think a year, you have to be… if you’re like talking about just abandoning everything and doing stuff every 12 months. I mean just from experience of watching stand-up I feel it gets better in that 16 to 24 month frame. Where it gets super tight, you know?

Joe Rogan Experience #207: Tom Segura, Christina Pazsitzky / aprox 2:18:00

Joe Rogan Experience #207: Tom Segura, Christina Pazsitzky

Joe Rogan: When you have a bit, man, it’s like a samurai sword. You fuckin’ bend that blade and hammer it down and sharpen it up. And as time goes on you’ll edit some lines out and add some to it and then, somewhere along the line it reaches its perfect form. You know? And I think when you, ah… you can use that sword to cut heads off after a couple of weeks. But it might not be the same sword… the delicate instrument of destruction that you’ll have after 2 years when its your closing bit.

Is there a better feeling than coming up with a new bit and having it crush? I wonder. I wonder. Cause I have this new bit and I have… like its my little toy. Like I can’t wait to use it. And then I use it  and I’m like, (sigh), okay let’s play with our old toys. The new toy is a monster right now. Wooo!

I love the fact that, too, that as you get older and more experienced and more education, and more information in your head and better as a comedian, that every time you come up with new shit it’s like better new shit. You know, its scary to abandon everything. But once you do and then you come up with…

Joe Rogan Experience #207: Tom Segura, Christina Pazsitzky / aprox 2:17:00

Joe Rogan Experience #220: Bert Kreischer

Joe Rogan: When I realized that I had to stop fighting and stop teaching and just do comedy was… I was talking to a kid, his name was Jonathan – I wish I remembered his last name, we were open mikers together. About 6 months into comedy. I was still dabbling in it; I still had my feet in all my other worlds… trying to find my place. And this dude who I had done open mics with goes, “You were really funny in the beginning, but man, you just kind of petered out after a while.”

Bert Kreischer: (laughing) Really?

JR: And I couldn’t even say anything because I knew he was right. I couldn’t say anything. I couldn’t say anything because in my head… like if someone says, “You don’t work hard enough.” My instinct is always to go, “Fuck You.” But I know as a person who has, you know, benefitted greatly from very uncomfortable criticisms before… some of the biggest growth moments you can have was where someone knocks your dick into the dirt so you know what the fuck is up…

BK: Great statement…

JR: And you step back… and so I recognized early on to be able to step back and objectively assess when challenged like that. So when that guy said that, I wanted to go, “That’s a dickhead thing to say.” Cause, you know, he was my friend. But, I was like, he’s right.

BK: Oh!

JR: I couldn’t say anything. So I said, “This is it. Fuck this. I’m a fuckin’ professional comedian. I’m not having one foot in the door.” I closed down my school. I quit my job.

BK: Shut the fuck up.

JR: I was teaching Tae-Kwon-Do at Boston University and I had a school in Revere at Nautilus Plus…

Joe Rogan Experience #220: Bert Kreischer / 05/24/2012 / aprox 55:00:00

The Joe Rogan Experience #178

Joey Diaz: But that Comedy Store… I ran into so many crazy, fuckin’ women…

Joe Rogan: Men too, man. Men, women, everything. That Store was a, it was an attractor, and it still is an attractor of crazy people.

JD: But when a woman comes up to you and says, “Can I talk to you for a second? You know, how do get funny? You know, I just want to be funny, and they won’t give me spots. What do I have to do to get spots here?” That’s the magic answer. When they just say that to you, “What do I need to do to get spots?” You try to beat around the bush, “Well, uh, you could write jokes, uh, you could go to a stand-up class, or you could suck my dick.” (laughing) You know what I’m saying? You got three options…

JR: (laughing) Is that what you said?

JD: Oh my god, its amazing!

JR: Well you had the one girl, you talk about her in the podcast. You sent a message, a letter, about how you broke her…

JD: Oh, broke her. And I didn’t mean to break her. She was always willing to suck my dick so… I remember her sucking my dick with dirty fingernails on night. And me going ‘this is terrible’. And this… in that little bathroom, the cubicle on the second floor. Remember the one by the phone, where you answer the phone?

JR: Yeah, totally.

JD: How many fucking blow jobs did you get in there from women who said, “If I just suck
your dick, will you put be on in the Belly Room show with you next week?”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, call me.”

And they’ll just suck your dick for a fuckin’ spot. Like in The Belly Room. Like fuckin’ Steven Soderberg is going to show up…

----------

JD: I started going to an acting class. And you book something, and a girl sees you in acting class? Oh my god, they’re all over ya outside. “What do I need to do?”

“You need to start sucking my dick, or show me your pussy, or something.” You know how many fucking victims I had that were confused from acting class? Bro, when I was 415 pounds, like in ’98, I had this 21 year old who let me come over and fuck her in the ass. And I would fuck her in the ass and feel guilty, like, when is she going to realize I’m a fat, disgusting slob? This chick was like, “I seen you on Law & Order SUV taking the garbage out, let me suck your dick.”

“Really?” I’m a fuckin’ co-star. You know what I’m saying? You gotta hold out for the big fuckin’ stars. She was sucking co-star dick. What is wrong with you? What is wrong with you? I got twelve-hundred for the fuckin’ day and you’re suckin’ my dick like I’m some star.

The Joe Rogan Experience #178 / aprox. 2:02:00

Deathsquad: The Ice House Chronicles #20

Joe Rogan: Sometimes when someone says something to you, and they’re correcting you, they might be right, but that’s not why they’re correcting you. They’re correcting you because they’re psyched that they found something that you fucked up on. Or they’re psyched that they found something that’s a weakness in you. And its really hard to accept advice from those kind of people: people who say things cunty.

Like I am really sensitive to the fact that when I give some advice I try to, unless I’m like trying to defuse some crazy drunken social situation, I try to give them advice in the most humble and easy-going way of explaining that, you know, I have been through this exact same fuck up. "Just look at it like this, this is what helped me." I’m like really sensitive. 

But some people aren’t. And some people when they’re correcting you, the reason why they’re correcting you is because they want to make you feel like shit. They don’t like you shining in front of them, they don’t like something that’s good. And they might be right, they might have found something, but they’re so psyched that they found something wrong in your game. They’re psyched that they found something wrong in the way you tell jokes.

The real key to life is to turn those people into your employees. Every one of your haters, every one of your critics, or anyone who gives you maybe even good advice but maybe in a cunty voice. Those people work for you. And what they do is they give you even more incentive. They provide a free resource. The most important resource maybe ever, and that’s motivation. Those people provide motivation to prove them wrong. So these cunts actually work for you.

Deathsquad: The Ice House Chronicles #20

Joe Rogan Experience #193

Joe Rogan: I truly believe that people who steal can’t write. I really do. I think its… I don’t think you can do both. I think something happens when you steal and that this, this, this being disingenuous, this pretending, this bullshit, knowing that you’re not really doing what you’re claiming to be doing and that you’re pretending, that you’re ripping people off and lying, and projecting this false self image which is all ego, which is exactly what shuts you off from the ability to come up with new shit.

Like when you come up with new shit, its not like you thinking about you, you see something and you go, “huh, look at this right here, this is ridiculous”. And you know what I mean, its not you… its you coming up with it, but you’re not involving yourself, you’re not trying to project a certain image, you’re not, you know, making sure that people think of you a certain way. You’re not even thinking that. Because when you do think like that, that’s, that shuts off creativity. 

And when a guy steals, what a guy is doing when he’s stealing is he’s trying to make himself better than he is. He’s trying to pretend that he’s smarter than he is, he’s trying to put out stuff pretending that he figured this out and its really someone else. Its all ego. 

Joe Rogan Experience #193

Joe Rogan Experience #193

Joe Rogan: There’s been a few instances, uh, in the past where there was a guy that was kind of like clearly plagiarizing another guy and then, you know, one guy became famous with other people’s shit. It’s happened more than once. And we’ve all the real pain and frustration of watching someone do somebody else’s material where you know that they’re stealing and they’re not compensating them… they’re just stealing. And it was like a Wild West thing. It was like no one was doing anything about it and it was a… to treat it like it was no big deal… you’re absolutely crazy. It’s the core of someone’s ability to perform on stage… is having great material.

Jim Gaffigan: It’s their life. It’s their life.

JR: You could be the best comic in the world and if you have nothing to say on stage, for that moment, if you go on stage and you having nothing prepared and you have nothing to say you’re fucked. Its not going to be good. You need premises, you need material and so to pretend that it wasn’t a big deal… that the industry was treating it like it wasn’t a big deal, and we were like, “this is crazy… you’ve got an insane person…”

JG: I told you that night what you did was very important. I mean it was very important.

JR: Well for us, it had to happen. It had gotten to a point where everyone was just turning a blind eye to it because they were profiting off of it. And that’s what happens when a person becomes successful… and is a plagiarist. If it was any other form of art, you know writing, writing would be super clear, I mean the guy would go to jail. You know if it was music, they would take all your money. If they can prove you have the same beats and you’re copying it, they take all your fucking money.

JG: And we’re not talking about similar premises…

JR: Which we all have…

JG: Which is always going to happen.

Joe Rogan Experience #193

The Joe Rogan Experience: Podcast #174

Joe Rogan: Well that bit was the only bit that, in the history of my act, where I had to change my act because of the bit… twice! Once I had to change my act because of the bit because it was bombing so bad I thought there was no… nowhere it was going to get good. This bit is going to eat me… I gotta get rid of it. Its fucking me up… sometimes you commit to a good idea and the good idea somewhere along the line, along the development process, falls apart. And then its not funny anymore but you’re still committing to it so you have to do this bit and while you’re doing this bit no-one’s laughing and its just weird.

And then somewhere along the line I realized that what I was doing was… The bit was about watching tigers fuck and it makes you feel like so inadequate… when you watch these wild predators and they’re just fucking on television and there’s no warning about it. And I realized that the only way… what I’m doing right now is I’m explaining how these tigers are fucking and the people are not feeling it… they’re not feeling it.

What I gotta do is  be the tiger. You gotta be that tiger. You gotta throw yourself  into that thing where he’s fucking and you know I forget the words to the bit but you know the point of it was that it was so primal that you know there was, there was nothing, no…

Eddie Bravo: Your tiger voice is amazing.

JR: I just decided… You gotta think like you’re an animal. I mean, I think its… look, the narrow perception of that animal must be pretty fucking simple, “Fuck, Kill, Sleep… that’s the menu” that’s part of the bit and that’s what I was thinking, like when if you’re thinking like a tiger there’s not a whole lot of variables going on.

Then I worried about politics and shit. They’ve got laser beam focus on fucking and killing. And they’re giant. You know, you gotta think like that. Then the bit became so strong that I had to put it at the end. Because I put it in the middle because it was dying, you know, I would do it and it would eat a dick and then I would still have my good stuff to pull myself out and maybe I could joke around a bit, “Well it was pretty funny to me when I was writing it, heh heh heh” and then I’d pull myself out of it.

But then it got to a point where I couldn’t leave it in the middle because it was just slaying. Once I figured out how to be the tiger, and I would do this violent fuck thing where I’d throw the fucking stool down and roar… (editors note: listen to the podcast to hear Joe Rogan growl like a tiger)

The Joe Rogan Experience: Podcast #174 / aprox. 2:06:00