Music

Come on, you're a fucking rock star at this point.

I'm still thinking, you know, it's deep fryer awaits at any moment, you know, I was doing overnight things.

So, well that's, I'm feeling pretty lucky and like if you'd all evaporated any minute, right?

Well that's what's interesting, man, I mean, because you know, I'm familiar with your stuff a bit and I've read your stuff and like the similarities between where you come from and where stand-up comics come from is profound.

It's gotten closer and stranger because at this point, you know, I started, you know, one minute I'm standing the next to the deep fryer cooking, then I write this little article for free newspaper that ends up in the New Yorker, a day later I've got a book for you.

I write a book, somehow I end up on television, but at the end of the day, I would say the probably the largest amount of my income comes from live performance like speaking kids, which are essentially work in the same rooms that you probably you're probably very familiar with and played all over the country.

And I do, but you're probably a little bigger actor than me.

Yes, and we're playing the same rooms. It's me standing on stage for an hour and talking to a live audience, doing Q&A for another hour, but an hour up there talking one city after another and let's face it, you're up on a stage talking for an hour, a whole bunch of people, there better be a dick joke every 60 seconds or 90 seconds and you better get a laugh.

So that's a bit of steep learning curve for me, but those are the kind of people you're talking to, they really expect dick jokes. I mean, it would seem to me that you to I guess you attract, you know, chefs and and the rabble of the cooking industry, but I would think that you're probably attracting a bit more or bane an audience now.

The similarities between us are so so you never know what on Mondays it'll be the whole room will smell a smoke fish and onions and it's you know, cooks and restaurant people you think would be my constituency.

But the other you know, you never know you're pulling a town in this old golfers. Yeah, you know, I'm done like, you know, Palm Springs,

I've done the showroom at Harris and we know some some events drunk gamblers, right, I've really had a learn.

But you know, the weird thing is it's like, you know, because I worked in restaurants and there was a time in my life where, you know, that's what I wanted to do.

And there was a time in my life where the I'm talking about the immediacy of it. When you tell a joke, you know, right there, whether that joke's going to work or not,

when you flip a fucking egg or you get a plate out, it's that same feeling of media gratification, it can repeat itself over and over again.

And there's a there's a thrill to it. When I worked in a kitchen when I was younger, I was just a grill cook. I didn't have the chops to do anything else.

Once they put me on a line, it was a disaster. I was working as a waiter. I wanted to do a line. I wanted to try the line.

And it was a disaster because I couldn't do it. I felt intimidated. I, uh, my onion rings clumped up and that was the end of my cooking career. That was the end of my line work.

But what I really relate to when I when I read your stuff is that weird mixture like where I don't even get a sense, you know, from when from where you're coming from.

And it's same with me. And this just from from, you know, reading your books, like I know I make people laugh. And I think you know on some level, you make people happy.

But that cigarette you smoke after you've just gone through a rush and you're covered in grease.

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