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Calorokashock Media. Hi there, I’m Johnny Mack and I’m high on life. I just hung up with Pete Holmes. He’s got a new special. It’s called Silly Silly fun Boy, available now via early access on eight hundred pound Gorilla.
I grabbed it myself and watch it the other night. It is fantastic. If you don’t want to do that, it’ll be on YouTube Tuesday, March twenty fourth, but spend a couple bucks. Pete Home special. Silly Silly fun Boy is really good.
I gotta tell you, I been doing this for a while. I always get nervous before interviews because you never know if you’re gonna click or not. And boy, I felt like I could have talked to Pete Holmes for three hours. He was awesome. I just feel good about everything we talked about.
Here a couple square words. You know, normally I keep the show pretty clean, but there are a couple words we don’t normally use on the show. I’m sure you’ll get over it. Let’s jump in. Here’s Pete Holmes.
Got a couple random things to ask you about before we get to the special proper. I was watching the Scrubs reboot last night during the commercials, so I started playing on my phone. I’m on Reddit, I’m in the next effing level Reddit, and I put up this clip of you on Pyramid, just like absolutely murdering, crushing. Are you a Pyramid savant? Because you got cocky at the end and you were like, do you want me to slow down?
I hate to correct you, but I remember it so vividly. I believe I said, do you want to take a break? It’s a little bit embarrassing how proud I am of being good at Pyramid, just because I did no lie grow up watching that, and especially when comedians were on, like Billy Crystal obviously one of the goats, so when they started using me for that show, it was very meaningful.
And then when you’re playing with somebody, it’s inevitably like a school tea…
I take it so seriously. It’s like the level of humorlessness is just Pyramid and like going to the airport, Like those are my two areas that I take it very, very seriously. So I get all jacked up on caffeine and dialed in and when we get in the Winter Circle, which I’ve done a couple of times, if they’re good at it, as that person was, I’m just like, we’re gonna we’re gonna win. It’s it’s really you just have to have bad luck and get a category that is just kind of unknowable. There isn’t that mind mild.
But she was there and we synced up, and it was a thrill. It was like, none of that is Hollywood. When I’m putting my hands up and when I’m celebrating, it’s one of the biggest thrills. I can’t imagine. It’s so fun.
It’s so fun. I’ve got about ten years in you I remember it was ten thousand dollars pyramid, which you know, if you didn’t now you’d be like, gee, thanks guys, Yeah, exactly five fifty. And at one hundred thousand dollars pyramid for primetime that was was Dick Clark, right. I believe so. And that’s always our joke is they win one hundred thousand dollars and they tell you what they’ll do with one hundred thousand dollars, and we’re always like, these people don’t, well, they’re not factoring in taxes from like, this is not on the sly.
Everyone knows you just made a one hundred thousand dollars So all of your family members, Uncle Sam, it’s gonna it’s gonna get whittled down. You gotta be careful. It’s like winning the lottery. I was shading Nates. He’s got his new game show and you win sixty seven grand before taxes, and uh, you know he’s looking at the BARGATSI yeah, it’s the greatest average American.
So the average American salary is sixty seven whatever, So he’s giving that amount, so it works for the bit, but you know after taxes, et cetera. And I’m like, and then ABC runs one thirty, and you know they’d make it out on that show. I that I this is my first time hearing about it, and I take issue with that. You should do it household. Then you should be both parents are working, and you make one hundred and thirty or whatever it is.
That’s just sixty seven. That’s that’s no good for me, just because they’re gonna walk with thirty, you know what I mean? Like, now that’s not a game show. Comeline, all right, let me get your web team in trouble if you will, Pete Homes, this is really props to the people at Cannabis and Tech Today. The biggest picture of you if you google Pete Homes is they’ve got it stamped Cannabis and Tech Today.
I guess you did an interview with them years ago, but that’s the number one. Then it comes out. I love to face your throwing at. Me when you well, I have no memory of that. How appropriate, but I really don’t remember doing that.
And when you say biggest, do you mean the highest resolution? Yeah, so there’s like a big square in a couple of smaller squares. I went to steal a picture of you from the Internet to post on my Facebook page. But the I’m Google image searching Pete Homes. Oh you get Cannabis in Tech Today.
Pete Holmes says, cannabis users ask the best questions. That is, that’s a reach right there. As you’re looking at that. So the other thing, and just because I was listening to you, I think it was with Bert and you happen to mention on that episode that you’re kind of done with the massage bit and they’re surfacing the massage bit there as well. On cannabis in tech No, no, no on.
The Google page. So if you as you search Pete homes, it’s. Every day. Yeah, yeah, No, I’m proud to say that the time in my life where I Google myself is over. That is a part of your life as a comedian when you’re beginning.
This is so funny. I wonder why you know it’s interesting. It’s not what you asked, But the massage bit is done. I retired it just because I’m at a place in my career where, for lack of a better, can we swear on this show? But it’s not really swear.
But like Dick jokes, right, I like Dick jokes. I think they’re very, very funny. I just having done you know, five or six specials now where the last joke usually has something to do with sex, I just kind of got it. I wouldn’t say I got it out of my system, but I’ve moved on to other areas where I’m like, can I mind something here? Instead of just going like, yeah, we can get a cheeseburger.
There’s nothing wrong with a cheeseburger. That’s that’s what those kind of jokes are. But like having been to stay with the metaphor a chef for twenty plus years, I just rather cook something else, even though I know everybody loves a cheeseburger. So when I did that joke, So that clip, that YouTube clip is the first time and the only time I did that on stage maybe twice, and it really works. But what’s great about YouTube is you can film it and you can throw it up and it’s not like it was to waste and I don’t have to do it seven hundred times on the road and feel sort of bored with the subject matter.
I want to ask you about the art of putting together a special versus an hour. So again, just a reference bird. Again. He put this in my head about a year ago. I forget who he said it to, and was talking about how in modern times because the TV viewing audience has, you know, some sort of add TV add that comics are moving the closers up to the first third and even sequences being thing.
So as I watched a couple specials this week, Kat Williams came out and did the old school, walked out to music, kind of settled it on the stage, grabbed the water bottle and then went into a set. Taylor does the the fake open, and hey, we’re backstage, and what do you know? The cameras are rolling and now suddenly I’m on stage and I think she’s into a chunk. So for you, what I wrote it down. You open with let’s see if we can laugh at this?
And I won’t touch the material there, but your first words are let’s see if we can laugh at this? So as we hit play on the special, we’re midstream. Yeah, I if I had seen you on tour? Was that the opener? Is that?
Later? I I draw the line at moving my closer up. I don’t think that this is just me. I’m old in comedy in the sense that like the closer works because of what came before it. It’s not just a great joke.
Closers are closers. You shouldn’t put a closer in the first five minutes of a special because it’s the best joke. That’s that’s ridiculous. That’s what they’re kind of doing in action movies and stuff. Let’s have the biggest set piece at the beginning.
But again, I’m forty six. I will cheat that. I’ll cut out what I’m doing to warm up an audience, and that is often bits about doing stand up. It’s bits about like, oh it’s seven o’clock, it’s the early show. Oh I’m kind of this way, I’m blah blah blah.
It seems like kind of handshake bits. I’ll cut those out. And what we did on this special jump to what I would consider still the beginning, but we’re warm, we’ve gotten the hello, how are you out of the way, because I actually think there’s something even more honest about that, because sometimes the early bits do better because there’s still the titillation of the show is starting. So like those opening ones will get a like a thirty percent boost. So we’re cutting all that grab ass and all that sort of overjuiced part, which is the woo.
Nobody needs to see that. We cut that out. I like that trend, but that on my set list was probably like, you know, the third thing I talked about, which is I think it’s Q tips or Mormon face or whatever it is, But like I like, I like what we’re doing with specials, which is like, let’s get to it because stand up isn’t compromised by that, It doesn’t doesn’t hurt the art to just kind of throw you in. You can’t do that live. I have gone out and just been like, hey, can the people that make you take your shoes off before you come to their house just fucking cut it out.
Nobody wants that. I mean, like you can’t you kind of do. But for me, I would much rather the comedian be there, be in the room, be in the city, address what’s going on before, just kind of like going into and doing the album, as we say, but when it’s the album, just do the album now. That makes sense. I had the fortune I got to know Jerry Hamseley was George Carlin’s manager, and he explained to me how Carlin would put together a set and that George would open up with the ratitat tat you ever noticed that, and then go into the long sweeping that he would warm up the audience, but then he had to let them breathe and go into the big statement of this particular hour that George was doing, and then finish up with the rat of tat tat.
So I always look at this stuff analytically. It’s right on and everybody can relate to this like you have a date. The beginning is when the nerves are high. Everybody’s kind of like just sniffing each other’s butts, you know what I mean? Like do that?
Don’t skip that? Like is a good date? Where like they just go like, so tell me your biggest fear? Like, that’s not that’s like a douchebags idea of a good date. You warm up to that.
But then if I’m going to cut a movie and I want to give you the best part of the date, I might cut into so what’s your biggest fear? Like, because that’s a weird thing to say on a date. As the delivery system has evolved, I suspect I know the answer to this one. In your case the specials on the eight hundred pound Gorilla, it will eventually be on YouTube. Is there any thought into pacing for YouTube that let me do eleven minutes here and then take a breath so they can throw in the commercial break so that you know the AD’s not stepping on mid sentence or mid chunk.
I just assume whoever’s doing that is doing an awful job, and it’s terrible. I’ve never I’ve never been like, I can’t think about things like that. I hope this is literally the first time I’ve thought about that. My first special is on Comedy Central, and you did think you had some say you were like, and this will be where the commercial goes. You call it an act break.
This is where the act break is. With this and with all YouTube, I’m just sort of like, God, I hope they have the sense to not put that little fifteen second go daddy ad in the middle of a bit, But I don’t know. I can’t control that. True, nobody asked me to control that. If they did, I would, I would chime in, But like it’s an online streaming service, I’m at their mercy on that one.
Sure, I felt like you were using more swear words early in this special that I’m accustomed to. Is that a conscious choice or am I imagining that? Then once we settled in and you were surfing the room, I felt they were less swears. But it just as I watched it, I was like, oh, interesting, I’m not offended. I just thought it was different.
No, I appreciate that. I think you’re right when I watch it, I noticed that. And what’s interesting about filming a special is you’re watching I’ll go back to the date metaphor, like you’re watching a date right, You’re seeing this exchange of energy and different dates, different crowds respond differently. All I’m doing, and I’ll use any color in my toolkit, is I’m trying to get them to laugh as hard as possible. I really want, I want to be understood, I want to be seen.
That’s in the mix, to just want to delight them and that crowd. I think the majority of the special was the late crowd. That’s not entirely true, but the majority is the late crowd on a Friday night at the Aladdin in Portland. It might have been a Saturday, but I think it was a Friday. So I remember we were starting and like there were seats empty, and my opener, my friend Matt McCarthy, is doing a set, and I’m noticing people are rushing in, like there’s stress in the room, like it’s fucking Friday, it’s late.
We had to find parking, it was hard to get here. I’m feeling that energy. So when you’re very right, when you’re looking at an ingredient like swearing, I would include the volume and the pitch of my voice, like how am I delivering these jokes? It was that night. It was that crowd needed.
That was my interpretation needed. That play called I’m mixing all my metaphors, but that was the play. It’s not because this material needs it. It’s not because that’s how it was every time I did it. It’s because that night I felt you need like, hey, I’m just now another metaphor.
I’m the coach of the team, and for some reason we’re starting the game. We kind of feel like we’re down a little bit, like I can feel your Friday stress a little bit. That’s a completely different play than that you would call on a Saturday at seven or nine o’clock. This felt, you know, every special I’ve ever done the first show, I go, well, that wasn’t it, And then I’m going in hungry for the second hour. We end up always using a lot of the first hour, but I inevitably think it’s worthless the second one.
I’m going in and the vibe the room is big, the energy was whatever. I mean, there were a great crowd, but there was a little chunk in the water. And the swearing is a and the and the way that I’m saying it delivering it, there’s there’s more oration going on. All of that is addressing a certain crackle in the room that I’m like, if I don’t harness this and claim it. Here’s another metaphor.
Like a pilot going on the PA, there’s a little turbulence, you have to get on and you speak in a different way. When there’s turbulence, you’re more calm, you know what I mean, You’re more authoritative. So yeah, I bet I could play you the other three hundred times I’ve done that hour and I might not have said, like do the Q tip. People know what the fuck we’re doing, But like I, I’m a scrapper, I Am not going to do badly on my special. You’re coming with me on this joke?
Would I prefer to be super laid back because, like you said, after I slap them around a little, my hands in my pocket, I come down. I bet you could look at my data, but my heart rate is lower. We’re all eased in. But guess what, everybody sat. Everybody snapped in.
Here’s another metaphor. I’m like a substitute teacher that those first couple minutes, that’s when they’re deciding does this person have our respect? So that’s why the beginning of that set I’m so with you has more fervor to it, and one of the symptoms of fervor. Is me saying fuck more because I’m like, this is happening. We got to do this.
I need you to come with me.
And then once they’re with me, watch you know, once we get to the Mexico scor…
Yeah. As a watching, I made note of that that once you settled in this wearing kind of went away. Now I come out of talk radio, so everything you’re saying makes sense to me. I always teach my producers. We make a rundown, we make a script, but it’s not a blood oath.
You gotta feel the room. You gotta feel what’s happening with the show. That’s what I is infinitely fascinating about stand up. And I know we have too many podcasts with comedians talking about what’s beautiful about stand up, But I’ve always envied golf and racketball, these games you can play your whole life, you know what I mean, and stand up talking about Carlin imagine being something so compelling as to keep in mind, like George Carlin’s engaged until he died. And that’s why it’s like it’s never the same.
It’s not an album. In a musical sense. It’s way more like jazz. It’s way more like a conversation. And that recording was that night, that mood, that dinner, that night’s rest.
It’s a living thing. Like remember in Sideways, They’re like, you open a bottle of wine, it tastes different than if you had opened it on any other day. That to me is stand up. I’m all over with the metaphors. But I think you understand what I’m saying.
Sure, can I ask the magician? Are we looking at one show or two cut together? I think it is, Yeah, it’s. Two in fact, same night, two shows Mexico. I think is the first time we cut to the first show because that gopher broke tone isn’t always what you want, and you’re like, let’s bring it down, and it’s always nice to have that that variance.
So it’s happened with this special and I’m not for everyone. Every single one of them is two, and every single one of them, I said, except for Nice Try the Devil, I believe that was one, But every single one of them. I said after the show that that was garbage. We couldn’t use a second of that.
And then it ends up being about thirty forty percent of the special, which is…
You don’t know you have to be humble enough to be like or or feel paid. You don’t have to be humble. I find one way to avoid the suffering of the process is to just go, yeah, I’m wrong all the time, I don’t know what I’m talking about, and listen to great directors like Ricky and my wife who helped edit it this special as well. You mentioned podcasts. You’re one of the ogs.
You might be the og now that Maren gave up. Hey, should we tell maarn he retired five minutes too early? There was Netflix money that was about three weeks away. Bro Oh no, right, Ah. I just saw Mark.
I was crossing the street in La and I saw him and it was he. I think he plays up how much he doesn’t like me question Mark. But he’s certainly like a big brother, like annoyed by my Golden Retriever energy kind of guy. And that’s fine. I wouldn’t change it for the world.
But I again, this is me for the first time, considering that maybe Marin could have been acquired but his wasn’t. Video Yeah, and I guess who knows. Who knows. I won’t put you on the spot here. I could see you on a streaming service and I would absolutely watch that.
I appreciate that. Yeah, yeah, we’d do it. I’ve got you a couple of times. I definitely maybe five years ago you opened up Sorry, you hosted New Faces up at Montreal and I’m trying to remember did you do one of the shows? I know John Marco did one of them this year, and I’m like, did I see Pete this summer?
And I’m just getting old and I can’t remember or not, but you definitely did it in the past. I’m trying to remember too, I didn’t do it. I think there was one I didn’t do because I did it two years in a row. And I do to answer the question I think you were about to ask, I do enjoy I sound old, but being with the young people, I think it’s really fun to do what no one in particular did when I did Montreal. And by the way, it turns out a lot of the kids don’t even need this, So it’s more about me feeling like I’m doing something because I noticed that so many of them are way cooler than I ever was.
But The fantasy was do new faces, just to say guys like, we’ve all been here, please please just have fun and I’m here if you want to talk, and some people did. Some people did, but I really just wanted to be like, fuck this, they have a festival. You guys are the real thing. Own it. Own it, You’re why they have the festival, Like you’re the thing.
Don’t let them think they’re the thing. I’m grateful for Montreal, but it’s not the thing. It’s container. The thing is the comedy. That’s the thing.
So I just wanted to, in an appropriate way, blow some wind in their cells and be like, just go do it. This is a victory laugh. Auditioning is when you should be nervous, go out and just fucking be yourself, all that classic stuff. I didn’t do a big speech. I just wanted to say like, if anybody wants to talk, and like these kids were amazing.
I didn’t get the sense that they needed that speech. But then the other thing I wanted to do was just have the tone as the host way more than anything I would say in the green room, just have the tone of like fuck you laugh, like you have to laugh, stop taking notes. This is their dream, like give it up, don’t? Oh is that good? Shut the fuck up?
This is the kid’s future. Give And I think that helped I could be pretty as a warm up comedian. I think I can be pretty insistent in a helpful way because I’m just like sweating, yelling at them, and then comedians who are amazing come out and clean up. That’s a nice you know what I mean. I’m not going out trying to crush, trying to set a nice tone for the whole show.
I’ve talked to other new Faces hosts about that. You. I was explaining my my son came with me one year and this was the one like twenty twenty two in the nice theater, the one with a balcony, and I said, I said, Pete’s throwing at about eighty six here. I’m like, he’s got more. But if he comes out and he does his a material and passes it off to a new bee, that’s a little unfair.
So I’m like, he’s just soft tossing it in there. It’s still that’s all you do. Very funny. Yeah, it’s more about when I every almost everything I’ve done, like when I did my talk show, I went out first and did my own warm up, and I just said, like, guys, no pressure, but this is my dream, you know what I mean. Like we’re filming a pilot to maybe have a talk show, and I’m not trying to freak anybody out, but I’m you know, hey, this is real, this really matters, and please give it up, Please please be generous, and please have fun.
And I had them chant let’s not fuck this up. Let’s not fuck this up. And that honesty and that icebreaker really made a difference. I was trying to do that for those guys, and then look who it was. Now.
The people I’m talking about are Shane Gillis, Jean Marco, you know what I mean. Yeah, it’s an incredible group. So yeah, they didn’t they didn’t need it, it turns out. More coming up with Pete Holmes. His special Silly Silly fun Boy, available now via early access on the eight hundred Pound Gorilla and it’ll be on YouTube Tuesday, March twenty fourth.
Pete Holmes is on tour right now. He’ll be in LA on March seventh, and you get to ask him about the tour because we went so long. I asked for twenty minutes and I kept him for forty so I didn’t get to ask him about the tour. It’s just curious he’s doing like two dates than taking a break, than doing some others. But let’s see Royal Oaks, Michigan, Tallass, Irving, Texas, Madison, Wisconsin, Denver, During, North Carolina, Charleston, Vancouver, Hey, Vancouver, October, Mike Chisholm, you’re listening Seattle and then Portland, Oregon.
Now interesting to me. He taped this special in Portland. He has taped a previous special in Portland. I didn’t get ask him about that either. I wonder if he’s going to wrap up the Pete Here Now tour by recording another special.
Time will tell. But let’s get back to Pete Holmes. As I watched this special and listen to you with Taylor, I couldn’t quite get a feel for where you are on spirituality or religion these days. You know, I don’t want to go deep here, but just at a top level, are you? Is there a higher power?
Or where are you these days? I? You know, I love that question. I’ll starve by thinking. It’s really hard to talk about these things without while maintaining some sort of felt experience of it, So I’m going to try and do that.
Usually you start getting in your head and all that feeling of connection or whatever goes away. So I’m going to try and keep one foot in each pool. The way that I would phrase it is is what science calls consciousness is what I would call God, meaning we’re talking about the same mystery. So it’s awareness. But the difference with awareness as opposed to like thinking, oh, I believe in God or I don’t believe in God?
Is you right now? John, You’re having the experience of awareness, like you are present and you are aware. So that’s what makes it different from like reading a book like the Bible all respect. I’m just saying reading someone else’s experience. It could be an Indian sage and reading about their experience.
What’s interesting, infinitely interesting about awareness is you’re having that experience right now. So we’re moving outside of the realm of belief and we’re moving into what mysticism is. Mysticism is experiential spirituality. So you’re going, Okay, I am present, I am aware. Meditation or self inquiry is going in and asking yourself what are the qualities of that awareness.
It seems like Pete’s personality. Like, let’s say my thoughts, my thoughts emerge and they recede in what do they emerge and into what do they recede? We could call this consciousness. This is almost you seem interested, by the way I’m just saying for the listeners, this is almost over. We’re looking at that which doesn’t change.
Your thoughts change, your body changes, your feelings change. We might think of awareness like a blue sky and everything else’s weather. So it’s not just oh, I know what the meaning of life is. That’s sort of meaningless. What’s meaningful is going, oh, I’m not who I think I am.
I am the awareness in which everything that I call Pete and everything that I call the world emerges. Now, what are the qualities of that awareness? Well, it’s very peaceful, it’s spacious, it’s empty, it’s quiet. You could also say it’s full of itself. It’s fresh, it’s alive, it’s present.
These are all the attributes human beings would like. And the good news is why they call it good news, is that’s what you are. You’ve just sort of forgotten yourself. Like when you’re looking at a movie, you think you’re looking at a landscape. You’re actually looking at the screen in the same way you think you’re talking to me.
What you’re actually knowing is knowing, and the qualities of that knowing is fresh, alive, peaceful, no matter what’s going on in your life. That’s what in the Bible they call the piece that passes understanding. That’s something greater than oh I have this teacher, or I have this tradition. I’m talking about something that you can tap into an experience on a normal day like today, when you’re dying, when the chips are up, when the chips are down. Spirituality is the exploration of that which does not change.
And I would call that your awareness. That’s where I’m at right now. So we can do that on our own, unorganized. We don’t need a physical building. Absolutely not.
I like churches. I think they’re very cool. If you look at them. A lot of them are very trippy. So churches can be very evocative places.
Reading books can be very evocative. Teachers can be very evocative. But what are they evoking. They’re evoking an experience that’s so familiar to you and I that we’ve overlooked at and why should we recognize it? Because its qualities are the qualities happiness.
You might call it peace, you might call it because it’s what you really are, and that’s what people that are meditating are doing. But it is sort of snuggling with your true self. But when it starts bleeding into your life, you recognize that we’re all, to use a very overused metaphor, we’re all waves in the same ocean. So if I’m a wave and you’re a wave, I’m not going to be mean to you. I’m not going to be cruel to you.
I’m going to be I’m going to love you. I’m going to be concerned for you to I’m going to recognize our shared being. That’s what love is. It’s not just I like Johnny, he asked good questions. It’s actually recognizing that what I fundamentally am and what you fundamentally are is the same awareness.
Because there can only be one infinite, boundless, boundaryless space, so we’re sharing that in the same way that Mario and Mario Brothers is made out of pixels, and so are the clouds, and so are the blocks, and so are the piranhas, and so is bowser. Mario recognizes that whatever his essential nature is must be the essential nature of the whole game, which it is, which ends up at the end of the day being the mind of the programmer. Let’s do some ketamine. I picked up somewhere in one of the things I listened to in the past week getting ready for this. Like many of us, you hit your forty and you just kind of hit that spot of this is who I am.
I hope people like it. If you don’t, I don’t care. And you just seem very comfortable and understanding of who Pete Holmes is in twenty twenty six. Oh yeah, I didn’t know you were saying that about me. Yeah I was.
I’m right there with you the forties. There’s a great surrender to it. I think you know we can try. Obviously, I’m still interested in growth. I still go to therapy, I still accept feedback from friends I need to.
I’m always making an ass of myself. But the great gift of your fourth decade is like, I think I kind of know at least what my patterns are, and I go, oh, there, I am overreacting here. There I am, like I said, jackass, Like I’m a jackass all the time, Like stand up stand up is being a jackass at an allotted time, you know. So I’ve seen the pattern, I’ve seen the strings at the pot A show, and that makes me take it a little less personally while still being interested in improving whatever that means. I’ll head for home.
I want to be respectful of your time. But for the listeners, can you talk about that awesome Chicago comedy series at the turn of the century. I think we’re far enough now, and then I can say the turn of the century. Wow, I mean they were just in the century. There were killers, and you were one of them.
I know. I sometimes am stupefied at you know. I don’t want to Please don’t take this as me puffing myself up. I just noticed that there are certain trends. Bill Gates was seventeen when computers became available, so you remember that phenomenon.
So he was young enough to be porous just when computers were becoming available in schools. Obviously, I’m not saying i’m Bill Gates or at that level. I’m just saying there’s something about time and place, and when you look back in your forties, you go, oh my god, I’m the pro of a time and a place, and that time in that place was Chicago in two thousand and one, two thousand and two thousand and one, and what’s crazy, John Is? I swear I had a sense of it at the time. I said to people, they’re going to write books about this, Like I’m a kind of a mania kind of person, so that’s not entirely out of character for me.
But there was a sense. And Kumil was there when I said that, and he didn’t disagree with me. There was a feeling of like, you know what it was. It was like bad news bears. We weren’t, you know, like nobody cared about Chicago in a sense.
It was the improv city, but here for some reason, the open mic scene was really alive. And Hannibal and Cumale and John Roy, Matt Bronger, I always forget people, but like Matt Bridenstein, just really really good comics all coming together at this one open mic in two thousand and one. And it gets even weirder for me is I was resisting stand up because stand up is rather scary. I had done it maybe five six times. Then I moved to Chicago to do improv because I wanted to be with a group.
I thought that was and it is in a sense more fun. You know, you kind of have five people to either lick your wounds afterwards or celebrate with. It’s more communal. I started getting frustrated with that because I realized I noticed that I was way more committed and driven, Like I knew I wanted to do it for my job, so I wanted to rehearse more. I wanted to do more shows.
I was insatiable. So then I started getting curious about doing stand up again. I’d only taken a couple months off. It wasn’t like I retired, but I every day it was the Irving Park brown Line in Chicago. I would go to work at Bennegan’s restaurant downtown and I would take the Irving Park brown Line.
So I’d walk fifteen minutes to that train stop and I would pass the Lions. Then, which was the open mic, and it just said Monday comedy. It didn’t even say stand up comedy. You didn’t see open mic. It just said Monday comedy.
And I was still so, you know, like every hero’s journey, you’re supposed to resist the call. Like I’m feeling called to do stand up, but I’m resisting it. I’m a little afraid of it. It’s a lot, you know, these smoke filled nightclubs and people talking about their balls, and I didn’t know if I could fit in there, very much like the show Crashing, Like I really was that version of myself, a little doe eyed, kind of sweet, didn’t know what if I could do it. Talking about Nate Bargatsi, he and I had a similar experience in that way.
You walk into these clubs and everybody’s talking about the g spot and you’re just kind of like, golly, like, what am I doing here? My closer’s about RoboCop, you know. But I had to walk by the Lions then every Monday, and one Monday, I remember it wasn’t even a Monday. One day, I just walked in and looked at the stage like talk about putting a toe in, and then I left.
And then one Monday I went and I watched, which to this day is still my advic…
I’m like, just go to an open mic and watch. Don’t sign up, what are you insane? Don’t sign up the first time you go to an open mic, Just go and watch. Like it’s masochistic to go. I’m gonna go to this crazy thing.
I don’t know what it is, and I’m gonna do it. No, go and watch, don’t sign up. That’s what I did, and I met Robert Ruscemi that night. The next night I did Covey Bear, which was another open mic. I met Kunail He and I became really close, really fast, and then I signed up and did it, and you just see it’s not It’s like driving in Manhattan.
You think the people that drive in Manhattan have to be special people. They’re not. They’re just people who took the wrong exit off the FDR. They’re just They’re just like you. And the people at the open mic are also just people.
They’re just people. They’re just trying. They don’t know. So you’re in good company, don’t be afraid. So then you know, as that scene got better and better, it just it just blew up.
There are so many great comics that had such a huge influence on all of us, and you know, I don’t want to say the rest is history, but like it really kind of baked a certain generation that I will always feel a kinship towards. Yeah, all Stars, you mentioned crashing and I was checking before we jumped on here to see where it’s streaming, and it’s pretty much streaming everywhere except Netflix. So here’s my prediction. At some point that show is going to land on Netflix and it’s you know, we see this with shows like Suits was the big one. This thing that’s been a you could have watched it on some other streaming service like mad Men now right, so everybody was watching mad Mental stuff.
But I feel like at some point, if Crashing gets on Netflix, people are gonna be like, oh my god with this. I had a college student today just in my class I teach, and I was telling them what I was doing later today and she knew about Crashing. I’m like, oh, good, this thing has legs because that was a fantastic. I look, I would love that. Obviously it happened.
I don’t know talk about my forties. It’s not that I’d given up on those things. There was a time when I was a little itchier and I was like, why can’t we get that on whatever? I’m happy it’s on HBO. I had that more for some of my specials, some of my Comedy Central specials.
I was like, if we could just get those acquired by Netflix, more people would see them. I always just got the run around. People were like, they don’t really do that, and I was like, what about Millennia. They did it with Millennia and they’re like, well it’s mullany and I’m like, this is a weird phone call, Like I hate this phone call. So I stopped.
I stopped kind of sniffing around in that way. But then something interesting happened was we’re just doing Silly Silly fun Boy on YouTube, and then my special that was on Netflix because Netflix now leases special so they’ll do it for three or four years. I don’t know, so I Am Not for Everyone, which was my Netflix special, became mine again. So after I don’t know when we’re doing it, but in like a month or so, we’re going to put I Am Not for Everyone on YouTube as well, so when you watch Silly Silly fun Boy, it’ll say, hey, there’s also this. I saw that happen with Nice Try the Devil, so Comedy Central put my full hour on YouTube.
I don’t know how it’s doing it. Like I said, I stopped googling myself, but more people tend to see these things, and at the end of the day, anything that gets something I’ve done in front of people that would like to see it. That makes me, That makes me happy. Yeah. Final question, could you tell me how you say the title of your book?
And the reason I’m asking is there are no commas and there are three different fonts. And I read it one way and I go, that doesn’t sound like Pete and then I read it the other way. But there are no commas. So how do you say the title of that book? I say, comedy sex god.
Okay, I put I. Put in You’re not a comedy sex god. No, I wouldn’t. I don’t do a lot of regrets. I I did consider after we published it, calling it comedy and sex and god.
You know those T shirts you see that say like Bono and Bruno and you know, like their favorites. I said, Bono, I’m old. But that could have been the style doing it again, Like you know, I tinker with another book from time to time. I would do a title that might be a little bit more clearer. That being said, my editor Luke Dempsey really loved the title.
He loved the people would be like, what, like wanted the to use the word itchy again, the itch that picking up the book would solve. It’s like, what does he mean, oh, it’s about these three topics. It’s about comedy, it’s about sex, it’s about God. But he really he was British, so he got a real kick out of the cheekiness of comedy, sex God. Pete Holmes, thank you for your time, my.
Sincere pleasure, John. I really I enjoyed every moment. Thank you for having me. Boy. I love him.
Pete Holmes. His special Silly Silly fun Boy, available now via early access on the eight hundred Pound Gorilla. Why don’t just support Pete because he was really awesome. I hope you enjoyed that as much as I do. Back in the morning with a normal episode.
Pete Holmes, thank you. Go Asian, African American types of people, races, mermaids, sunken ships, things under an aquarium, things in the sea, things in the ocean. I’m what you used to point at. People on your hand. You might say what a fingerprit said, the.
Obituaries, parts of the newspaper, the ocean, the sky. Things that are blue. You want to take the time, little break Ramen, things he might be eat in a bowl. Let’s get this don