The Exchanges

Q But Tony, was there a period during that time when you were gonna quit, where you said, it's not working?

A No, no, these were my favorite times. In fact, after that, after the 400 rent, which, by the way, because I couldn't make the 400 rent, I got downgraded, not only was there someone else on the loveseat, someone else moved in that could afford the 400 rent, So I paid 300 rent for a bean bag on the ground. And let me remind you, the bathrooms were in the other guy's bedroom, so you had to tiptoe, if you had to pee in the middle of the night, through somebody else's bedroom. So it was after that, actually, after basically the first year was that, I decided to just start sleeping in the backseat of my car, behind the comedy store, where I wasn't, you weren't even allowed to park there. It's a tiny parking lot. So I would be up on one of the hills in the Hollywood Hills, and after at two 30 or three a.m. when you're done, I would walk up a hill and get my car and drive it back into the empty Comedy Store parking lot, pull into the back. Juan Carlos, the maintenance man there that would show up at like four or five a.m. was nice enough to wait a few hours to try to let me get a few extra hours of sleep before he would start nailing shit and fixing everything. And it's literally the times now that I have a touch of success. Um, it's the times that I think about all the time now. Every single time I find myself looking at the skyline of Austin from my beautiful fucking home with a craz…

AI assessment note: “No, no, these were my favorite times.”

Q again, you can eventually get somewhere. You started out in LA. Can you just talk about not just the idea, but then what the process was like going from the idea to having yourself on stage with the future president at Madison Square Garden, giving us, like, what was that experience like, and how hard was that iteration, that build, and the struggle to get to where you got to?

A Oh, it was insane. I, I, I actually, um, just mentioned this I was on Rogan this week with John Cena, and it came up, but I had this, ah, moment a few weeks ago where I Venmoed a buddy Because I thought that I owed him rent from 18 and a half years ago. I was sleeping, I had, I was renting the couch in a living room with four comedians total. I was one of them. One had a bedroom with a bathroom, another one had a bedroom with a bathroom, and me, and there was a little love seat. A guy was renting the love seat, and I had to pay 400 dollars A month rent, and I literally, even though I was working all the hours from literally 11 a.m. on the phones to seven p.m. at night, and then I would put on the Comedy Store t-shirt and work the door from eight p.m. until 2:30 in the morning, and then do it again the next day. And, uh, because the Comedy Store didn't have, comedy hadn't had its second huge boom yet, which was a few years away, um, Uh, they would cut your hours at the Comedy Store. They just wouldn't, not only would you not get overtime, you wouldn't even get the hours that you actually did work, or really anything at all. I couldn't make the 400 a month rent. So anyway, a few weeks ago, I said to one of the other buddies that had a room, I go, hey, I think I owe, I still think I owe the main guy a few hundred bucks rent. He goes, you do. He mentioned it last time I saw him. Wo…

AI assessment note: “I had to pay 400 dollars A month rent, and I literally”

Q bills are fine, and it made it all the way through in California, except Gavin vetoed it, but those sorts of bills are showing up that were in the EU and throughout Europe. I mean, do we worry about that here in this country? Because I've always viewed comedy to be the most important test of free speech. And it really does define what we're being given permission to do.

A It's so interesting because I, uh, work directly, and, and, and I'm insanely in touch with these things on a weekly basis with YouTube, which, uh, you know, is, I do believe, the biggest streaming platform right now. And what's insane is that Netflix and Ted Sarandos Literally is like, do whatever you want. Go as hard as you want. Push it to the limit. Let's go. And meanwhile, YouTube, every week, something's different. Uh, a black guy right now is only allowed to say the N-word. A black comedian can only say the N-word two or three times per minute, but they're not very clear. I mean, you don't even notice when these guys do it, by the way. It's obviously different than a white guy saying the N-word.

AI assessment note: “meanwhile, YouTube, every week, something's different.”

Q Can I ask, how did that whole MSG, um, thing come about for the Trump campaign? Because I remember when they asked me to help, and I just threw a dinner, and when you did it, you, you know, delivered a killer set that almost, like, burned the campaign down, but, um.

A Fake news. 20% Puerto Rican increase in the state of Pennsylvania. An uptick, because they have an unbelievable sense of humor. Puerto Ricans do. You know, when you do this every night and all the time, you get a really good feel for what you can and can't get away with. What exactly, where is the actual line? And I think, and I'm, I think in retrospect, a lot of people think that the mainstream media trying to make it appear like a comedian, I don't think any of these journalists did their research. With a simple Google, you see that I have the most diverse Comedy show in the world, and that I am, I push the limits on the, whether it be the Tom Brady roast, or the Snoop Dogg roast, and all the roasts that I've written on, like the last 13 Comedy Central roasts.

AI assessment note: “Fake news. 20% Puerto Rican increase in the state of Pennsylvania.”