We have a new sponsor today, Casper Mattress. You can purchase a Casper Mattress at Casper.com forward slash Feldman or by using the promo code Feldman and now on to the show. Welcome to the broadcast. I'm David Feldman, DavidFeldmanShow.com. On today's program, the hilarious Jim David. We've been trying to get him on the show for a while now. He's finally in town, hysterical Jim David along with Liam McEnany. Stick around. We've got a great one. We'd like to welcome Tom Karmic and Robert Schoenbroom to Team Feldo. They've become monthly subscribers and for only $5 a month, you too can gain access to all our premium content for free by becoming monthly subscribers. Today's show features premium content. We have about 30 minutes of Jim David, Liam McEnany and me telling filthy jokes. Go to DavidFeldmanShow.com. Sign up for our premium content. It's only $5 a month and you'll be supporting an important show. Coming up this week, we have Frank Conniff and from the nightly show, Colleen Werthman, doing our weekly round table. Also, author Joe Dominic, author of Blue, the history of the Los Angeles Police Department that's just out and the director of the new documentary that's going to win an Oscar or at least be nominated for one. Listen to me, Marlon. A lot of great stuff in the pipeline so keep listening to the David Feldman show. Since you and Frank made up, I've not been on your show. Frank Conniff and I have made up. We buried the hatchet inside Liam McEnany's back. Frank is one of the quickest people. Frank Conniff is so quick. Andy Kinler says he's the funniest man on this planet. Andy Kinler says that. I bet Frank Conniff. That's the voice of Jim David. Oh, are we on? We are. We are on. We're recording. Welcome to the show. I'm David Feldman, DavidFeldmanShow.com. Hey, Jim David is here. Hi, David. You are one of the best comics who's ever done it. I watch you. Thank you. I watch you and I want to be better. Oh, thank you. You are clean and funny and smart. I'm not clean. No, I'm not clean. Not anymore.  Yeah, that's it. That's it. He wants to be more like that. I douche. And speaking of douche is Liam McEnany. I need, he says to Liam, you need to pick on me. And Liam's a ball buster. I am a queen's ball buster, but you know, it's like I have respect for my elder. That's great. Oh, there you go. You know what I was talking about. Especially the very, very elderly. I was talking to a guy and I said, you know, I'm having trouble with middle age. And he said, well, it's a good thing you're past it. It doesn't get pretty. The age discrimination in this world is not an attractive thing. The last time I saw you was, I believe I'm embarrassed to say was tough crowd. Well, that was where we learned the tricks of the trade.  I was I was asked if I wanted to be a guest on Tough Crowd at one point and I said, I don't think I can handle that. I really like it was such it was such a, it was a strange show. This is Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn on Comedy Central for those who don't know what you're talking about. It was on from 2002 to 2004. Our last show was two days after the reelection of Bush. And it was just about time that we got the hell out of there. Because a lot of people that do the show would not have been able to stand another year and a half, two years with the fervent Bush supporters that were regulars on the show. That was a real rough time. But it was a fun show, but it was a hard show to do because you had to go in armed with funny lines to say. But you a lot of the time you never got to it because the conversation would start off.   It became that. And so the conversation was all over the place. And that's why it never held on to the Daily Show audience. It was it was kind of a Yahoo kind of show. You know what I mean? That's why certain people loved it. I mean, a lot of people loved it because it was it was raw, it was unscripted. But the network didn't know what to do with it. You know, they were not behind it. They never would publicize it. You know, I mean, Colin complained about you'll ask Colin, he'll tell you they never publicized it. They never was part of his act on the show. By the way, have you ever played Sandusky, Ohio? No, I've played, I think Dayton and Toledo. I played Youngstown and that was close. I'm going to. Yeah, we have two of the funniest people in the world. Well, Alex is, oh, you know, he's a nice guy, but I don't think he's Sandusky, Ohio, anybody? Actually, no, but I, I, how about Haster? I did perform at the acronym. I did Jared Vogel. I know I did Jerry Sandusky. Is anyone? Yes, I did Jerry Sandusky. I performed at the Akron, Ohio Home Depot caulking conference. Is that a real thing? Yeah, don't know. I don't know. It will. It should be now. Because it's a good joke. Jim David, yes, you are coming at with your fourth comedy CD. How about that? What is the name of your fourth CD? Hard to Swallow. Okay. The first one is called Eat Here and Get Gas. And the second one is called Live from Jim Ville. And the third one is called Notorious F.A.G. That was a good one. But this fourth one, Hard to Swallow, I think it's my best one. I think it's the cleanest. It's the most cohesive whole. I think it's good. I'm proud of it. It'll be out in a couple of months. And what is your website? Where can we buy your previous three? You can get them on iTunes. Okay. You know, if you want to get a hard copy, you can go to Amazon. But I don't know who would want a hard copy these days. But you can go to iTunes and download all three of them. You've been doing comedy for 30 years. It'll be 20. Well, I started in 86. So, okay, then next year, it'll be 30 years. Where are you from? Asheville, North Carolina, originally. Where did you start doing stand-up comedy? Here in New York at the Comedy U on Grand Street. Actually, the first gig I ever did was at the Lotus Room right around the corner from Port Authority, which was a combination cabaret and Thai restaurant. And there was a bug zapper over the stage. So I'd say, hi, I'm from North Carolina. And that's a great state. It's the state that gave you Jim and Tammy Baker, you know, Jesse Helms and tobacco. That's three cancer-causing agents. And then these Thai people are in the back going, I went up to the manager and I said, could you have these guys be quiet during the show? And he goes, my customer, my customer. No for you. My customer. Yeah. But I started doing it there. And then I started doing it at Comedy U, which was on Grand Street in the West Village. That's not there anymore. But I was doing it then with Ray Romano and Joy Behar, Judy Gold, Mario Cantone, and a bunch of people. Reno, you remember Reno? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I remember her. Reno, she had a special on HBO. She did. Yeah. And then I started doing it, Catcherizing Star in Dangerfields. And then I was, that was during the Comedy Boom. So, I looked out, I was making my living as a comedian within a year, you know. And then we've been doing it for the same amount of time. Uh-huh. Why aren't we famous? Because we're on my show. Why are we famous? I can tell you exactly why. I know exactly why. What happened with Comedy? Suddenly, we are being viewed, not me, but you, are being viewed the same way they clapped and looked at old blues singers. It's a very interesting thing. It's a phenomenon. It's a fad, just like Disco was. When did that start? When? Because I was reading in The New York Times. I think it started with John Stewart in The Daily Show because I... Well, let me ask you this question. You say it started with The Daily Show. I don't think so. I read in The New York Times earlier this week an article about comics who never made it. And my name wasn't in that. So, apparently I've made it. That's how I... No, I haven't made it to the point where I'm not even in an article about comics who haven't made it. See, that's how...  Dr. Heng S. Noor had a bigger career than I do. Dr. Heng S. Noor, yes. Star of the... He used to kill. He killed. Those fields were just... Those fields weren't dead.  Sydney Schoenberg is building a grave so he can laugh inside it. No, the reason I say The Daily Show is because all of a sudden people were turning to comedy to get their news. Well, let me... No, no. You're not letting me ask my question. Oh, okay. Okay. Let me ask my question. I forgot that it was your show. I'm sorry. I tend to take over. If only. Well, that's probably because you were here before David was for David's show. Exactly. There is a guy in The New York Times who covers the stand-up beat. Jason Zimmerman, yeah. There wasn't a stand-up beat 10 years ago. There wasn't a stand-up beat five years ago. They wouldn't even put comedy listings in The Times. Comedy stand-up... We were like strippers, basically. About two or three years ago, and he referenced this in this article about comedy nerds, that there is this new phenomenon of comedy nerds who are fascinated by people like you, maybe me. Is it Marin? Alex Brazell says it's because of Mark Marin. I'm sure he helped. I'm sure he helped. But there was never this fascination with stand-up. Oh, yeah. Well, when I first started, there was the comedy boom. There was a comedy night in every Chuck E. Cheese. I went out to Long Island. But that was a financial thing. This is a true fascination with the art of stand-up comedy. And we're not being viewed as strippers.  We were the lowest form of show business. Yes. You know what I mean?  And that's not the case anymore. It's the internet. When I was a kid, I would watch stand-up comedy on television all the time. I was fascinated by it. I would read up on it as much as possible. But there wasn't a place for me to discuss it. And there wasn't a place for like-minded people to kind of create a community behind it and like really show that there was an actual interest in what goes on with comedy and not just like going out to the club once a year and watching stand-up. You know what though? I would caution against- I mean, I think that there- Do you remember the alternative comedy boom? You remember that? Yes. When like all of a sudden, Michael show Walter and Jeanine Garofalo and all these people were doing like at Rebar on 8th Avenue.  And this was supposed to be funny.  I called it comedy that's an alternative to humor. But the shows were free and people would go because oh, we don't have to go to the clubs because that's where old people go and that's where all the old school comics go. You know what I mean? And they would have called Jerry Seinfeld an old school comic. We want to see what's new, what's young, what's hip, what's happening. And I think there's a lot of that that's part of this. That all of a sudden people are like oh well, we don't need to go to- We don't need to pay a $20 cover- For mainstream comedy. Yeah, we don't need to pay for that. Let's go to this barbershop in Queens where the guy stands at the end of the barbershop and everybody sits on the floor and it's- And you don't think that's better? Not necessarily, no. I mean I think it's a fad. I think it's young people with something cool to do. It reminds me of music in the 70s in that when I was coming of age in the 70s people made fun of me for liking Billy Joel and Elton John or Kat Stevens or Al Stewart because You had a terrible taste in music. What? We have to review it. I love all those guys. Yeah, of course. And the ELO and people said to me oh that's just all bubblegum, that's top 40. What are we still listening to today? Exactly. What are we still listening to today?  Carlin, right? Who is selling out. Rodney Dangerfield, you know, New Heart. I mean these are the ones that last. So what does that say about human nature or the marketplace or young people that they are, it seems now with comedy to be rejecting the mainstream, searching out unknown acts? Well there's that sense of, so they can own it. There's that sense of discovery, you know. I saw this guy win, you know what I mean? I saw this guy back when he was, I remember I came to see the Pointer Sisters in New York when one of my college trips to New York. It was when all four Pointer Sisters were together. And that was back when they were, that was back before they went disco. You know, before I'm so excited and before automatic and jump for my love. That was back when they were doing jazz and they were singing yes we can, can. I know we can, can, yes we can. And there was this sense that we were seeing the coolest thing in town because it was just like nobody we'd ever seen. And then all of a sudden they went, Richard Perry the producer got ahold of them and then they went disco. And I lost interest in them. You know what I mean? Because I thought that they, it was, they sold out. Well they went away from their original thing. You know what I mean? But there was like, I've been watching all of Woody Allen's movies in order. All 49 of them. And I'm up to like 38. But I've been watching all of them just to see his progression as a, and then there was a documentary about him on PBS. Did you see that? Yeah, Robert Reed. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I mean it all, like when he first became a comedian, there became this buzz about him that there wasn't about other people. And it was because he was Woody Allen, he was a genius, but he was also doing something different and new. And so people naturally gravitate towards the new, the different, when they hear about it from their friends. Oh, you don't, don't go to the comic strip.   And you know, that's just how I feel. And I'm performing there. And his hero, his hero, Mort Saul, would do stand up at the hungry eye with like an accordigan instead of a suit, which was the style of the time, like a newspaper under his arms. Yeah. And so it's like, there's all this sense of every generation is going to, going to want to see the new and the, and the untried. This is different, but we're in uncharted territory for standup comics specifically.  At Madison Square Garden. Yeah, the big room. Woody Allen didn't play Madison Square Garden. He could have if he wanted to. I bet he could have. Yeah. He became a filmmaker and then went on and did whatever he did. Okay. But he was doing, by the time he quit stand up, he was doing big shows. Like his last album, the third one, was recorded at this gigantic Democratic fundraiser for a beam, I think. You know, like, so he was definitely getting the bigger multi-thousand audiences. Yeah. You had superstars playing Madison Square Garden. 10 years ago, what you had was somebody like, you know, he didn't do it, but Robin Williams could play Madison Square Garden. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Not somebody like. I did Madison Square Garden. I opened for Shirley Bassey. Really? At the theater. I mean, it was the 6,000 seat theater, not the, the Garden Garden. What was the score at the end of, at the Garden? Did a fight break out? I have no idea. No, but I opened for- Did she sing Goldfingers? That's how she opened the show. She comes out and that's the first thing she sang. Really? Yeah. She started with everyone else's encore. Like, anyone else should have done it as an encore.   It was like a drag queen. But that must have been an amazing show. She was great. It was amazing. It was amazing. But I opened for her and then I saw her in intermission and she comes over to me and I went over and I said, Hi, Miss Bassey. I'm Jim David. I just opened for you. And she grabs my arm and she says, How are they? And I said, they're great. They're gonna love you. She goes, Thank God. And then just walked away and that was it. But yeah, I was at the garden, so goddamn it. Two things are going on right now. And this is not as I know it. It's never happened before with stand-up comedy. And then we'll, we'll, we'll move on. I don't want to turn this.  I love it. No, I'm fascinated by it. Well, no, I just, but I don't think there's that much explanation for it. Well, there are two things going on. Okay. These are the two things that are going on. We have a young generation of comics who are upset, of comedy fans who are obsessed with stand-up comedy. Right. And that's, this is unprecedented. This was never, when I started out, comics were discovering comedy. Right. But there wasn't an audience discovering comedy. It was, yeah, there was. I mean, it was a, it was a, not like this. If you look at like Bob Newhart's first album, when Gold, like there, there was that era. I'm not a peer of Bob Newhart. No, but I'm saying like there was that era when every, every big comedian. Well, you and I are right. You and I are right in the middle between this, the young generation and Bob Newhart. And now he's our father. We're their father. And now what's happening is you have young people seeking out comedy that they can own. And then on the flip side is corporate comedy, being shoved down America's throats. I'm not going to mention any names, but I have a lot of, you know, 99.999% of Americans don't breathe comedy 24 hours a day. And if they see somebody who has a television show or a special, they automatically assume this person is funny, not realizing that there's publicists, agents, managers, corporate money behind this person. Oh, sure. They just assume there's a certain, there's a certain comedian right now that I don't know how in God's name. He or she. He has gotten to be the size that he is. And I think it's corporate because I think he fits a niche. But I saw his special and I went, what the hell is this? You know what I mean? It's like nothing. It just was nothing. It was like, it was the material I thought was the level of a middle act at the funny bone around the country. And so, and it's because this person has a television show. And so all of a sudden, well, do you remember Last Comic Standing, the first season, the kid that won Dat Fan? He was a little Asian kid. Yeah. I think Vietnamese. Yeah. And he won. And he all of a sudden was going around the country headlining clubs, but he only had 15 minutes of material. And that's all he did, which was on the show. And so it became very clear when he was quote the star of the show and people would pack the clubs to see Dat Fan, he couldn't deliver the goods. And this is, I'm not telling tales out of school here. This is well known. And all of a sudden people who meddled for who were the middle would have to be the headliner. The club owner would switch them around because once, you know. The Dat Fan, his delivery before that consisted of slipping menus underneath the apartment doors. I always thought a good TV show would be alien beings who arrive in the form of Chinese takeout menus. Yeah. I'm getting a dirty look from Alex Brazell like that. Oh, come on. I know he's falling asleep. Okay, so let's talk about something other than comedy. Because it's just, I'm catching up with you. It is fascinating. It is fascinating. I'm fascinated by people being so fascinated by something that we've, you know, we're told. Well, I was told I was a stripper basically. But let me say one thing about comedy that I'm not used to because the internet is still a very new thing for me. Because I didn't grow up with it.  We didn't grow up with the internet. And now younger people, especially under 35, I guess, live their lives online. And they'd never watched television. This is what they watch. And I got this email from Slovenia, from somebody who saw my YouTube and my Comedy Central special, said, you have big fans in Slovenia. I have viewing party of Jim David fans. Wow. In Slovenia. Dude, I mean. Pablo Francisco, I think it's Pablo Francisco, became huge in Finland and Norway and Sweden because he put a special up online and it just got passed around from one person to another.   Oh, yeah. Well, one of the great things about the internet, now this show, you've never done my show before. No, I have not. This is wildly popular. Right. And we get emails. So this is the letter segment. And I'm going to have you read people right into me all the time. I want you to read this one first.  And this is some of your fan mail. This is fan mail that comes in through the transom. And you still have an AOL address? Jesus. Well, that gets forwarded to an AOL. Don't read that AOL. I'm not going to read the AOL address, but Feldman, you have to. So this says, hot babe looking for a shy guy, you will be able to touch me wherever you desire. To some hot blonde girl, need a horny man.  You are better to hurry.  Well, but I think that's very sweet. Who can't complete a sentence. It is sweet. And what is the name on that? It's from Lee Colon. Lee Colon. Lee Colon. C-O-L-O-N. Yes. Well, I want to thank Lee. Thank you so much for sending me that. That fan letter. This is obviously a spam email from some. No, wait, wait, wait. You hot Asian girl. No. My babe is looking for a shy guy. You're killing the bit. The bit is I'm not supposed to know it's spam. Well, I'm saying that it is. It's a merciful part. We'll do. All right. That was the bit. The bit was. Well, wait, wait, wait.  Well, no. The joke is that you were going to read my spam and I was going to take it as a compliment and go, wow, Lee Colon. She really must love me if she want. Oh, OK. Well, listen, here's what Shell UK said about me. OK. Thank you. Yes, Chef. Let me just say to the audience, let's just pretend that I don't know that this is spam and I'm delusional. And I think these are actual fan letters with people.  That's OK. That's why I don't have more of a career, because I kill people's premises. It's like somebody will say, my wife, what a cook. I didn't know toast had bones. And then I'll say, well, you know, actually toast doesn't have bones, David. I mean, you should have known that. You know what? That happened to me one time in a club. I'm like saying, I have a joke where I say, I have an autistic cat. He can't find the litter box, but he can fly. That's the joke. Somebody in the audience went, autistic people don't do that.  You know, it's not an autistic person, but here's what Shell UK said. Well, let's forget this. Let me ask you a question about cats. I have two cats. Liam is champing at the bit to do the bit. Champing at the bit to do the bit. Read the thing. Oh, oh, I'm sorry. Yes. Oh, David. Wow. You got a fan letter. Oh, really? Oh, from Isabel Fields. Fields, yes. I don't, I don't, you know, you can bleep this out, but I just want to read her email address, which is isabel underscore fields at habilitaciones de bomberos.com. Yeah. I can see that's the bit right there. You have fans in Slovenia. Yes, I do. Spanish is about fields. You have Mexican fans who are going to kidnap you and hold you for ransom. And what is what is what does my listener say? One new sex call from a stranger. This is this is the problem. You know what, Jim? This is the problem of having a good podcast that has millions of listeners. Women get turned down by the sound of my voice. And I've so they're chuckle fuckers. Yeah. And they so I get these these women. It's a problem. My whole email box is just filled with this kind of stuff.  Oh, here's a new one. Want to get an ocean of pleasure? My goal isn't that nice. My goal is to make you end. My goal, her goal is to make me end. Just one night and you will never forget it. Check out my best pictures. Hope to see you again. Isn't that amazing? This is the power of the podcasting. I know. What an amazing women wanting to to make me end. I was scammed of $1,000 on on the on Facebook one time. And I didn't see because did you hear about that? That whole scheme where people were sending emails that say, you know, sending instant messages on Facebook and on AOL and everything said, thank God you're there. I'm stranded in London. Yes. What do you think paid for the studio exactly? But I fell for it. I totally fell for it because I'd never heard of this scam. And all of a sudden out of nowhere, I get a Facebook message from a friend of mine and he says, we're stuck over here in London and, you know, because we were robbed. And I think I was just going through my Facebook friends to see if anybody can wire me some money and I'll pay you back when you're back. You're a good friend. Yeah. And well, I mean, this was a good friend. And I didn't think to say, where did we meet? I didn't think to say, you know, how did we meet? How long I didn't know you were going. Where do you live in America? I didn't think to ask those questions. I just fell for it. And I went and I wired the guy a thousand bucks. The best was I totally lost it. Totally. I haven't done a bit about that. I should, you know. Yeah. When a comics comedy club was around, Todd Barry was headlining a weekend. And that was like a comedy club in Lower Manhattan, which is where Todd lives in Lower Manhattan. And they got a call from someone that was like, yeah, Todd is Todd's car broke down and he's stranded and he's not going to be able to make the show unless he can get it fixed. Can you wire him $250 to fix it? And the booker was like, well, I know Todd doesn't drive. And I also know Todd will take the e-train to get here. Right. I don't think this is Todd Barry. But apparently there was someone that was going around the comedy clubs finding headliners and pulling the scam and making money. Apparently they don't really. Apparently they don't know comedy club owners. Kidding me. I got somebody, one comedy club owner offered to pay me in cocaine. Yeah. Back when, and I never did cocaine. You know, so I was like, no, I'll take the $500. Right. You know, I will not take the coke. This is a measly little, you know, no, man, I got some great blow. It'll do it. Yeah. And of course, he's no longer in business. So I'm glad that that's weeded out a lot. Today's show is sponsored by Casper. Casper the online retailer of premium mattresses for a fraction of the price. Casper mattress is an obsessively engineered mattress at a shockingly fair price. It has just the right sink and just the right bounce. 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One comedy club owner just a month ago was telling me about the problems he's attracting audiences because there are so many free shows out in Brooklyn and Queens and he won't do a free show. Well, that was always a problem back in the 80s and 90s of papering. Giving out free tickets and you get their drinks. What's the Brooklyn scene like? I hear it's a whole different ballgame than Manhattan. I haven't been over there. I don't know. Liam? You know what? It's very young. I've aged out of the New York alternative. Two young people only like. You've aged out of it? I've aged out. How old are you? I'm 29, 39. So that's a lot of 25-year-olds. But do 25-year-olds only want to hear from other 25-year-olds? You know, that's- A lot of them. A lot of them. Or at least that's what the- That's what the club owners think. That's what a lot of people think. That's what Comedy Central thinks. That's what Comedy Central thinks. They point back and told me that. Yeah. Yeah. They said, you know, we're going for a younger demographic. After they asked me to audition for- After Comedy Central said to me, we'd love to see you do another special. Do you have another special in you? I said, yeah. And so, because I did my first special, which was great, and people can get it on iTunes. You just search Comedy Central presents Jim David. It was just great. It was wonderful. And I'm really proud of it. But they wanted me to do another one. I mean, they were interested. And she said, well, do you have another special in you? And I said, yeah. And so, I worked for three months on it. And, you know, TV quality. And I had- They gave me a 30-minute spot at the comic strip so I could show the whole thing, right? And then she came and the whole audience was in their 20s. The entire audience was in their 20s. And I killed. I hammered for 30 minutes. And I walked off there thinking, I just got my next special. And she said to me, Jim, you know, it's really great to see you still got it, but we're going for a younger demographic. And what I wanted to say, but I didn't, was first of all, bitch, if you were going for a younger demographic and you know my age, you know, which is middle aged, why did you even ask? And secondly, you just saw that group that I just killed for in there. Not a one of them was over 30. Can they back this up with actual proof of what? That young people only want to see young people. No, no, see, because that's the stupidity of the industry. They don't know, because you put a great middle aged or even old comedian in front of a young crowd and they'll love it. I mean, look at any of them. Because in my work around the country and on ships and stuff, I see the proof of that.  Right.  But that causes more of a problem. But yeah, if you look at a guy like Eddie Papaton, he's like old bald dude. He's huge in that like LA alternative young people scene.   The industry thinks, the industry doesn't know what it's talking about a lot. You know, I've always thought that. You know, I've always thought that the powers that be in... Well, let me put it this way. I've made a good living for almost 30 years at this. And the only true friends that I've ever had in the industry is the audience. The audience has always gotten me. But the industry has a lot of them looked at me and went, well, he's great, but he doesn't fit what. And it's like, let me just go with what I know, which is this smart alec college guy. Do you know what I mean? Or the right and who will do everything we tell him to do. Exactly. You know, and women comedians always had a problem because of the sexism in the industry. I had a problem because of the homophobia in the industry, which isn't as bad now, but it was then. You know, my theory is always that they want 20 year olds because they can pay them nothing. Yeah. You know, an exchange for exposure. That's right. You know, like that's really what I think drives it is the less you pay talent, the higher your returns are when you sell ads on something that you bought once, and then you air 300 times. We're all becoming Chinese, David. This is why I quit blogging for Huffington Post.  But then I realized, I'm getting nothing out of this. They don't pay me anything, you know. She's not making anything. Well, yeah, excuse me. Did she sell to AOL for like millions? It's for like $150 million, something ridiculous like that. Yeah.  We're moving towards China, you know. It's like everybody is the whole work model. Actually, China, I'm not trying to be funny. You're China is moving towards us. They are literally bringing factory work to southern states because they're finding that it's actually cheaper to have the stuff made here in China. So Chinese companies are literally building factories in the south where there are no unions. And the labor costs are about equal. Yeah. Well, it was all good before Ronald Reagan came in, and then he started to ruin everything. Reagan planted the seeds and laid the fertilizer for the garden of shit we find ourselves into today. He did. I am convinced. No, that's a fact. I'm convinced that it all started with him. And I've tried to do comedy about this, and you should feel the, it's like I talk about, it's like I'm talking about, you know, Jesus Christ. It's like, you know, as Vic Hinley says, it's like I'm telling a Jesus joke in Bethlehem. You can't get away with it. All of a sudden, I'll start talking about how Reagan, I'll start trashing Reagan in my act, and you can hear, you can feel half the audience. They get, what? What? What? What? You can trace the American flag. Yeah. Right, exactly. It was made in China. All your jobs are gone. I'm a patriot. Yeah. You can trace the decline of the American Union to the air traffic controller strike. Absolutely. Totally. I 100%. Oh, totally. You know. Do you do political material anymore still? I mean, do you still do it in alternative rooms, but not in mainstream? Mainstream, they're butt cheeks tighten when you talk about something that's true, unless you're really great at it. And, you know, I do like to tease an audience and take bizarre opinions.  And I thought that was one of the, I just remembered that. That was like a classic Feldmanism. Well, thank God Hillary's running again, and that joke still works. Yeah, that's exactly, of course it does. Yeah, I mean, that's the best I could do in terms of politics. I could never really take a stand and make a statement and speak the truth. Oh, I do. I know you do. It gets me in trouble. You know, it's always gotten me in trouble. I've gotten fired because of it.  So when you bring up something really serious, you're going to lose half the audience. Well, I find that it's, I've learned how to do it now. I was very bad at it during Bush, I thought, because Bush made me so furious that I couldn't understand. I simply could not understand how anybody could support the guy. You know what I mean? I was just like, what? And people would wait for me after the show and yell at me, you know? They were very angry, especially like in Vegas in Atlantic City, where you have those mainstream crowds, this one guy, one guy in the military waited for me after the show. He said, are you implying that I'm going to my death and it's useless? And I said, well, gosh, it's like, you look like you have a lovely wife here. What is her name? They got very angry with it. I'm not implying, I'm saying it straight out. But now I find that I can sneak it in the back. Like I have a new joke where I say, I love playing with words, like I love oxymorons, like two words that are the opposite, like jumbo shrimp, pretty awful, crash-landing President Trump. And that gets a huge, huge laugh with a totally bipartisan audience, both Republicans and Democrats. And then I'll say, I look at Donald Trump and I say, my God, I owe Sarah Palin an apology. And if the joke itself is really strong, I can get away with it. But if I come out and say, like Reagan was the worst president of my lifetime, that's not a joke, that's a statement. And like when I'm teaching students, I always say, you got to be a joke, you can't make a statement. And that was a lot of my stupidity is that I would make statements because I got very messianic for a while there. You know, we tend to, we're on the stage and we've got a microphone and we have a room of several hundred people staring at us, hanging onto our every word, the temptation does arise to start preaching. That was what the problem with Carlin at the end was that if you look at some of Carlin's later specials, like maybe the next to last one or the last one, it's, you know, there weren't that many jokes. It was just anger and statements.   Right. True, but where's the joke? Oh, I disagree. Oh, OK. I think he was able to actually pull it off just by speaking. Sometimes just... Well, but he did because he was Carlin. But the truth... I think that if somebody else had done the exact same material, it wouldn't have worked. Right. Because it was funny coming out of him. Well, let me move into an area that we shared a class. I filled in for you. Uh-huh. You teach... And they loved you. They teach for, you teach for Andy Engel. For the Manhattan Comedy Institute. Let's plug, because I'm having drinks with Andy Engel tonight. Uh-huh. My old friend Andy Engel. And I filled in for one of your classes. For one of mine. Yes, thank you. So let's give a free plug to your class in Andy Engel's school. What is it called? Well, it's called the Manhattan Comedy School. And it is a course... There's several different tax that we take, those of us who teach there. I'll just teach a course when I'm in town. I'm hoping I can do one in September. Right. And I'll just do it when I'm available. But I was a teacher before I became a comedian. So I'm not doing it. What were you teaching? Theater, high school theater. I was a high school drama teacher, yeah. Yeah. In Ohio? No, no. In North Carolina? No, in New York. In Glen, in Long Island. And then I ran the summer drama program at Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire. For seven years, yeah. I was the head of the department. Because I was a theater major. And I was a... I mean, I wanted to be... I wanted to have a career in the theater. And the theater said, We don't really see you as an actor. We see you as an usher. And so, you know, that was what I did. Yeah. You taught theater. Uh-huh, yeah. I taught theater. And directed plays, indeed. I directed One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. With kids? Uh-huh. Jesus Christ Superstar with kids. Ken Deed, a little under Bernstein musical with kids. Yeah, we did a lot of crazy things. Who was the guy who wrote One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest? His name was Ken Keesey. That was the novel. The play was adapted by a guy named Dale Wasserman. But Ken Keesey would go see every amateur production of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Well, that was his novel. Did he go see your... No, he was dead. Oh, sorry. I believe he was dead at the time. And how old were these kids? High school. Grades nine through 12. And give me the spectrum of talent. It was from... Some of them were absolutely gifted and should have had a career. And then there were other ones that couldn't say a line if their life depended on it. And are they doing method? What are you teaching them? I'm teaching them to say the line and mean it, not method. Just do it like you would say it. Well, the magic if, Stanislavsky's magic if is that every actor uses or should, is what would I do if I were this character in these circumstances? Not what would this character do. Not what would Uncle Vanya do. But what would I do if I were Uncle Vanya? If I were here in this house holding this gun, talking to this woman, what would I do? How would I react? And so that's what I tried to say. So you're not teaching them notation line by line. No, no, no, no, no, no. I was just teaching them to say the lines like they would say it. See, because most people when they're amateur actors, they start off like most amateur comedians. Most comedians get up and imitate other comics. I used to imitate Roseanne. I used to imitate Dangerfield and Phyllis Diller. That was my cadence. Because I grew up on Phyllis Diller and I just thought she was a riot. And still to this day, I think she's a genius.  The whole setup is my mother-in-law was visiting. King Kong with an overnight bag. Jello with a belt. We didn't have a sunken living room till she came over. Just one after the other. But I mean, a lot of... Beth Midler told me she was a huge fan of Phyllis Diller. And she actually tracked her down and I think went to UCLA and sifted through her archives of jokes. I always think of Phyllis Diller as... First of all, her autobiography is amazing. Like a lampshade in a whorehouse. When she overcame the abuse of husband in Oakland. Joan River's parents were going to commit her to an insane asylum because she wanted to be a comedian. And Phyllis Diller's decision to become a comedian to escape the abuse of her husband. Exactly. It's so rooted in tragedy. Yeah. Well, that's where she came up with all these, you know, trashing her husband. So she made up a fake husband and did it. But anyway, with an amateur... Like when you're an amateur comic, you imitate other comedians. When you're an amateur actor, you act in quotation marks. And the thing that I was doing with my students is... And what I do with my comedy students too is show me you. I want to see you. Because Luda Hagen, who's one of the greatest acting teachers in history, would say... She said we harbor the suspicion that we ourselves are actually boring. And that nobody actually wants to see us. But like for me, in my career, I didn't really start to have a major audience connection with, okay, now I get it, until I came out on stage. Until I decided to, you know... Oh, so you were doing comedy backstage. And so that's a good... That was it. Yes, I came out and did the comedy. Well, I decided to do it facing the audience. See, that's what I did. Before, I would always be up in the corner. It's tearing at the corner. Yeah, with a dunce cap on it. What year did you come out? Well, it was the year I did my comedy... It was the year I did my Comedy Central special. Because I wanted to do it for years before, but everybody in the business told me not to do it. Everybody. Except for comedians. They all wanted me to do it. Are we going to get to a point where you don't have to come at it anymore? No. Or you can... No, we're not. Because for example, a straight audience thinks you're straight the minute you walk on stage. Why wouldn't they... Unless they have come to see you knowing what they do. That's why whenever I start talking about my marriage with a regular audience, there's always a little shock in 2015. Okay, in my lifetime...  In our lifetime, will we... For the next three weeks. Until your next stroke. Do you think... Because it sure felt like it this year. This was an amazing year. Yeah, it was. Yeah. And I know with my kids, they don't... You know, we like to believe this is true about 20-year-olds.  I think that's largely true. I think there is going to be a point where people are just going to be able to say, well, this is my husband and nobody's going to blink. You know, you don't have to start it. Right. But when I did it, it was a big deal because nobody had done it on Comedy Central. I was the first on Comedy Central to do it.  Yeah, I think so. Well, it already is getting to be like that. And is that a problem? Is it a problem? Culturally. It was more fun the other way. It was more fun when we could go to discos on the weekends and be really bad boys and we were doing this forbidden thing and then we had to go back in the closet on Monday. That was more fun. Are you... I'll tell you something. It really wasn't, I'm kidding. I know, it was really...  By the way, have you seen The Nance? Yeah. What did you think of it? With Nathan Lane. Yeah, did you see it? Doug Bean, who wrote that, is a friend of mine. Can you...  Can he come in and do... I'll ask him. I would love. He's great. He did my podcast a couple years ago. I think The Nance... Let me ask you a question. Okay. Okay. I went to see Tangerine. Oh, the movie that was made on the iPhone. Amazing movie. Really? Well, but let me ask you a question because... And it has to do with The Nance. Now, I think The Nance... And you don't have to respond to this. For those of us who aren't necessarily up to speed, what's The Nance? The Nance was a play written by Douglas Carter Bean starring Nathan Lane. And Nathan Lane played this stock effeminate character in Vaudeville, right? It was in Vaudeville. And it was The Nance. It was The Nancy Boy. And so he was the stock gay, foppish character. Back in Vaudeville, the effeminate man was like the Steppenfetcher character. You know what the Steppenfetcher was? You know, the Steppenfetcher character was the black guy who comes and says, Yeah, that's right, boss. You want me to shine your shoes? That's right. Yes, ma'am. That was the Steppenfetcher. So The Nance was the effeminate character. And then there were all these scenes where he was being set up to be caught by undercover agents. They would come into the cafe where he was and try to pick him up. And then he would say, yes, they'd arrest him. Right. Yeah, so that's what The Nance is. So Nathan Lane plays The Nance. And you can watch it by going to pbs.org. It's on? Yeah. I don't know what series it's called. I think it's a lot. Great performances. Live from Lincoln Center or something. Yeah, something like that. One of the best things I've ever seen on television, his performance is absolutely remarkable. And I suspect it didn't get the Pulitzer Prize and all the awards because it touched on some difficult issues for the gay community.  I'm not so sure every gay person could relate to that. You've got a lot of younger people who are like, what's the big deal? I don't understand. You've got a lot of people in their 20s now. They haven't had a friend die of AIDS. They haven't gone through what we went through. Or just getting beaten up at the automobile.  You know what I mean? They haven't.  You'll read about gay bashing every week. Right.  But it's just not as... And somebody's always getting thrown out of their home by a religious fundamentalist, a Taliban gelical, which is my favorite word. But it just is not as big a thing for them. They're like, well, what's the problem? I don't understand. They don't even know what it's like to... They don't even know what it's like to meet somebody that they didn't meet on an app. Now, I'm older than you. And I remember going off to college during the waning years of the Carter administration. It was after Watergate. And I thought, well, Vietnam has settled law. Integration has settled law. We are just moving full steam ahead on starship liberalism. That was a very sad day in David's life. And then Ronald Reagan became president. And all of a sudden, I realized it's not over. No, it's barely begun. And now it's gone full throttle insane. Well, but now if you are not paying close attention, you would say there's still pockets in this country that are resisting gay marriage. But the Supreme Court has weighed in.  But this is over. It's like I remember it's like the end of the Vietnam War. Yeah. It's over. Or the end of the civil rights movement, where black people are now equal to us. And all of a sudden, it's like that Bruce Willis movie, where you think it's over, the villain is dead. And he's come back for the last 15 minutes. So is it over? No. No, it's not over. No, no. It's going to take a long time. But that's progress. I mean, you know, it's like progress always takes a long time. Hey, look, look, segregation was, I mean, what year was the Civil Rights Act? 64. 64 and 64. Okay. All right.  I still did not have a black friend. My parents did not know any black people. The only black people I knew were my or are made, you know, and her husband. And then occasionally her family, because we would go over there at Christmas and take them presents and stuff. The blacks were still very much on the other side of the tracks. The blacks are still not integrated into people's neighborhoods. They still today. Yeah, people's people still tend to self-segregate. We've still got this black lives matter things going on.  And black people could rightfully say economically. They're not participating. A lot of them aren't in the same way that they weren't participating in 64 and 65. A lot of them aren't. But of course, also a lot of people, a lot of white people aren't either.  Oh, is it? Yeah. So I don't know. I would assume it wasn't that high in 64 and 65. Yeah. Black people weren't being incarcerated the way they are now. Well, it's, you know, we're not, we're not having job programs. We're building prisons. Yeah.  It's like they can just throw them in there. So I mean, there's a lot of evidence that Republicans and black people can point to that shows black people are worse off now than they were during Lyndon Johnson's great society program at the beginning of the great society program. I don't think that could possibly be worse off than they are. Then they were then.  Well, you're talking above my pay grade. I really don't know. And look, there weren't two and a half million people behind bars back then.  I think the police were killing black people back then. Back then, oh, yeah, they just weren't being videotaped. They were hosing them down. We still have that. They were setting attack dogs on them, which. How quaint. Which is what they're doing to Muslims now. Right. There's always got to be a group to hate, doesn't there? I think black people in Ferguson wish they still had attack dogs.   You know, we ended slavery in this country, but now we are creating a class of indentured servitude. Of indentured servitude, which is people who, you know, are trapped in this, in this cycle of poverty, of debt, like really crushing debt.  And, you know, so even though we don't have slavery in this country anymore, we have something very new and actually even more disturbing, which is almost like corporate slavery.  And what they're saying is like, I've. You've got presidential candidates who are saying that we should not raise the minimum wage. But you have people who are saying like, look. And I have no money. I deduct food as a medical expense. I have to have the minimum wage. I must. And I was supposed to play the Ferguson Comedy Club. I was. Yes. But it got burned down. But you have people. Oh, hang on. I don't know. Which if you are joking around. No. Oh, OK. That was a lame attempt. That was a lame attempt at humor. I don't know what, you know, we've reached a point now where people say things on television. I don't know if they're being funny or not. You teach comedy is comedy teachable or is it innate? It's it depends on. I can teach the actual mechanics of joke writing. Most people don't know what a joke is when they come and do it. Why are you looking at me?  No, but you can teach them the mechanics of a joke.  What would you say? My career. Well, there you go. You've done very well. You're still in the game. Don't don't, you know, totally. How would I define a joke? I would say it punctures some kind of tension that you've created. Well, what is it? Mechanically, what is a joke? I mean, structurally, that's what I mean. It's set up punchline. Well, yeah, it's a sentence with a surprise at the end. You know, okay, my wife said she wanted to go somewhere she'd never been. I said, try the kitchen. That's it's that simple. Right. And so most people don't understand that. And so and so they don't they don't know that they have to get to the surprise and set it up like that. Then after you teach the basic mechanic of writing a joke, then you can only hope to God that they've like I've had several people who I had one student. She was a 75 year old grandmother. She was from Alaska.  One time she told me about how her husky got stuck to the sidewalk because it was so cold. The dog froze on the sidewalk and couldn't move. And I said, that's hilarious. You got to write about that. And she said, it wasn't funny at all.  And then about how the boiler and her trailer broke.  And I said, that's great. You could do a whole Dr. Javago thing where you're in the you're in the pie. But it wasn't funny. She just didn't get it. So some people don't get it. But some people can be taught. Yes. Yeah. Some people can be taught. I look, I cannot be taught chemistry. That's why I'm not a doctor. Because I was a chemistry major. I mean, I was a biology major. I was a pre-med major.  I could not be taught it. How do you teach joke construction? Like how do you take that experience and turn it into a set up punchline? You have to you have to go wade through their life experience wade through the story they're trying to tell and then, you know, bring it down into a bunch of jokes, right? Into a bunch of lines that say something and it's a series of, you know. Right. Like I wanted to do a joke about years ago. I wanted to do a joke about doing acid at Disney World, which is what I actually did. I actually went to Disney World and dropped windowpane acid with some friends of mine. And I was like, well, what's funny about that? And then I sort of was able to say the only time I ever did it, LSD, I was at Disney World. I didn't go there. It came to me. I was Snow White. Right. And then I built from there. So you just you just go through that kind of thing. Does that make sense? Yes, it does. Yeah. My class absolutely loved you when you you must have said something right. What did you say to them? I yelled at them for three hours. I, you know, because I'm not there all the time, I kind of lectured them on what I like in comedy. Sure. I'm beginning to think, though, I had a long talk with Alex Brazel about, I don't know anything about comedy. That's what I'm beginning to realize is that I You know a lot about comedy. You've always been a really good joke writer. Yeah. You've always been a really good joke writer. Why do you think you've they've hired you to write all these things? Sympathy. Yeah. Okay. That's it. Yeah. That's Donald Trump before we wrap it up and let's plug some gigs. Huh. Let's plug some gigs for me. Yes. I have no gigs to plug right now. Okay. You know, unless they're going to be. I'm going to Bermuda tomorrow to do a corporate show in Bermuda. So they can come to that. That sounds. And then I perform at Gotham and the comedy seller here in New York. And you know, people can go to my website and they can follow me on Twitter at Comic Jim David. And you know, are you and whenever my CD comes out, they can get it because it's real funny. How often do you get up on? Are you as hungry as you were? No. No.  I will easily not have to get up on stage every night. No. What's the longest you've gone without doing your act? Oh, a month. And after a month, are you better or rusty? Rusty. Totally. Oh, yeah, you need to get back. You need to you need. I'm totally rusty and I'll need to get back in the saddle and, you know. And how do you keep your act? Is it on cards? Is it written out now? I've read it all down. I've got it. Well, I got my CDs. So that's got all the, you know, that's it'll be for like close to four hours of material. And if I said to you, do four hours of material, do those four CDs right now. Could you do them? No, because I'd have to go back and listen to them. A lot of jokes I haven't done in years. And I forgot them, you know, like I'd forgotten one of my, one of my favorite jokes, which was a racial joke. I heard, you know, when you had Kurt Metzger on, you were talking about how difficult it's talk about race. And I love to talk about that. In fact, one of my best jokes that I loved had the N word in it. Can I do it? Sure. Well, the joke was, you know, I did a show on, it was about doing tough crowd and how we had what would, what was called corporate censorship. You know, they would give us the list of things that we could and could not say.   I could even say nigger. I could not say McDonald's or Walmart. Wow. Because they're going to be, there might be a sponsor. Nigga ain't going to be no sponsor. Now, the only time I could talk about McDonald's or Walmart is if I'm on HBO, but HBO is owned by AOL Time Warner. So I can't make a joke about Time or Warner or any of their subsidiary companies because then I'd be sued and I'd be out of a job and I'd end up working at McDonald's or Walmart. Right. Okay. I had to stop doing that joke because the audience, the white audience, whenever I would say the word nigger, when they went, and when I, especially when I'd say nigga ain't going to be no sponsor, they would like that. But the black people got it and they thought it was hilarious. You know, Marina Franklin, she's an African-American comedian. That's one of her favorite jokes of mine. She says, you got to do that. But I had forgotten about that joke because I had to stop doing it. And there's a lot of other stuff. One of the earliest jokes I ever did that got attention from other comedians was I was standing in the middle of Manhattan and there was this man standing around looking at the population. He said they ought to take every one of these homos and put them on an island. And I said, Merry Christmas, Bozo, you're on it. You know? And I had, I stopped doing that after a while because other people started stealing it. Like there's famously this one comedian in California stole it or was doing the exact same thing. And then he was called on the radio by Jim Norton. And what's his name? What's his name? Joe Rogan, who we're talking. Joe Rogan was, had this big thing going on about thieves. He was going after Carlos Mencia for a long time. Over a joke, who's going to build the wall? Exactly. Which is just as old. I mean, nobody came up with that. I had to do a couple of things that other people were doing. I remember Joy Behar and I wrote the exact same joke. And of course she was Joy. So she, you know, I had to acquiesce to her. She's more famous than me. Well, can you stick around for some premium content? Oh, sure. We're going to, we're going to sign off. This was a great show. And so we're going to take it. I hope it was, it was, I feel like we were all over the place. But I hope they were list. They were in the show. That's what we do. I hope they were interested. We don't have a compass here. Oh, okay. We go, we go in all directions. And the great thing about Feldman's show is he makes a lot of, like, an outline of all these stories he wants to hit and then he hits none of them. Yeah. Yeah, but we are well prepared. I was very well prepared. Well, I got some stuff. I want to, we, there are 199 Donald Trump quotes. Oh, God. So I want to talk when we come back about Trump. Because nobody can be this popular without some redeeming value. So we're going to, what we're going to do is we're going to sign off. We're going to thank our listeners. If you would like to sign up for some premium content, please go to David Feldman show.com. And you can buy an extra, I don't know, 10, 15, two hours with Jim David, depending on how this goes. How long we talk. And you can get all the premium content for free by becoming a monthly subscriber for as little as $5 a month. We will see you later. Thank you. Thank you, David. Thank you, David. That's our show. If you would like to listen to 30 more minutes of premium content with Jim David and Leah McEnany, I urge you to become a monthly subscriber for as little as $5 a month. You will get access for free to all our premium content from the show.


We have discussed of position vector. See it is like this. Right now the object is r1. And then the object the position vector becomes r2. Can I write instantaneous velocity? Let's say this is x1 and that is x2, delta x is x2 minus x1. At the same time but at different time. Who is ahead?