Greg talks about his roller coaster ride to fame and then losing it all. He and Paul have the first “Fear Off” where they swap fears until one of them comes up blank. Of course they talk about their penises. And girls. And comedy. And surgery. Bet you didn’t know as a child Greg had an eye patch and ate off a stool with his hands taped to his sides.
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Episode Transcript:
[show intro]
Paul: A couple of quick notes before we get to the Greg Behrendt interview. Keep your emails coming. I love getting feedback from you guys. And now you can actually leave me a voicemail through Skype—it’s completely free. You can call 818-574-7177, or if you are a Skype member, my Skype name is “Mentalpod”. You can do it that way as well.
Visit the website, mentalpod.com. And there’s a survey—a mental illness survey that I kind of came up with that helps me get to know who you are and you can see the results that everybody else—their answers. So you can kind of browse through there and it’s a fascinating way to realize that so many of us think we’re terminally unique but we’re really not, and it helps me feel less alone, and I kind of enjoy doing that—especially when I find somebody that’s more fucked up than me. I’ll be honest, it feels pretty good. I feel victorious. …
There’s a forum on the website. Check that out. You can join it and exchange information with people. You can sign up for my Mental Illness Happy Hour group at Facebook. My twitter name is “@mentalpod”. I think it’s pretty obvious that we—there are just too many ways to contact each other, at this point. I’m really close to just heading into the mountains and shelving this whole fucking thing. But maybe I’ll hang on for one more week.
If you want to support the show financially, that would always be greatly appreciated. You can support it non-financially by giving us good ratings at iTunes. That helps us boost our visibility, and that’s always good for my ego. If you’re going to purchase something at Amazon.com, do it through us and I get a couple of pennies. Doesn’t cost you anything. And I think that is about—oh, the other thing I wanted to mention, I haven’t had any non-white guests on the show yet. It doesn’t mean I’m not trying. I’m reaching out, and, I’m not Hitler. But I do enjoy a nice parade. So … and one last thing was, I have a lot of sober guests on the program. I’m not trying to push any type of non-drug or –alcohol agenda, it just happens that most of the people I know that are willing to talk about their feelings, and their pain, and their fears, and all that stuff happen to be people that have gotten sober. So I am not anti-drug or anti-alcohol, just anti-that for me. That got a little jealous, that medical marijuana came around after I got sober. So if you’re enjoying that, fuck you. I’m here with—
Greg: There won’t be any calls coming in—that phone is for show business. [Paul laughs] So we will not be interrupted at any point.
Paul: I’m here with Greg Behrendt. I just asked him to turn his phone off, and Greg doesn’t believe that’s gonna be a problem.
Greg: It’s not gonna be a problem. I’ve actually turned my career off. [Paul laughs] So that phone will not be ringing at all. My wife is out of town, I don’t expect to hear from her either. And my kids are locked up until 3, so we are—we are good to go.
Paul: We’re good to go,—
Greg: We’re good to go.
Paul: —your dogs have no interest in you.
Greg: No, they’re not interested either.
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: Uh-uh.
Paul: I—
Greg: I have no food for them, so, yeah.
Paul: I’m at Greg Behrendt’s house in Southern California, and you know Greg from a variety of things. His—did a half-hour HBO special a while back that I loved. You wrote a book called He’s Just Not That Into You which then became a movie. You have a band that you perform with that’s great. I listened to your CD and loved it. It’s called The Reigning Monarchs, and you have a podcast called Walking the Room that you do with Dave Anthony that is really gaining some traction.
Greg: Yeah. In the house here.
Paul: In the house here.
Greg: Meaning I have download—I [have been] downloaded like two or three times.
Paul: Yeah, the nearby neighborhood is kinda cool to it. [Greg laughs] But, lot of fans in the house. Lot of fans in the house.
Greg: Lot of fans in the house, yeah.
Paul: Yeah. You sent me an email a couple of weeks ago and said that you’d listened to the podcast and if … if you ever—if I ever needed a guest, you’d be happy to come on, and I was so flattered because I’ve always admired your comedy. It’s—You walk that line that to me is so difficult to do in stand-up which is to keep the laughs coming but have a core of emotional honesty and vulnerability. And I think it’s lacking in a lot of comedy. I think podcasts are exploding now because it’s a perfect medium for it, but there was always a hint of it in your comedy, and—was that because you started out in the San Francisco scene? Was that—Was it more conducive to that, or is that kind of just who you always were?
Greg: You know what, I actually think it’s who I became. When I started, I was trying—
Paul: By the way, is that your gas or your dog’s ‘cause somebody is shitting themself—
Greg: That is not my brand.
Paul: Yeah. ‘Cause it smells like dog gas.
Greg: Yeah, no, mine’s woodsier.
Paul: Yeah. [Greg and Paul laugh] That is just rank.
Greg: That dog left by the way. That dog farted and then went, ‘You know what man, I can’t take this,’ [Paul laughs] and just left. ‘I can’t even sit in my own stink for this.’
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: No, I—you know I sort of came to that—my, you know—I did like, most of us do, which is you have a personality that you exhibit in life, and then you think you should do comedy with it, and then you spend a lot of time trying to get that person on stage. But at the beginning, you just—you’re David Cross, you’re Jake Johannsen, you’re “in-ing” ten people that you’re around that you love, and you know—you know, It’s funny because I really like joke writers and I really like the surrealist—I really like, like what Dana Gould was doing and Bob Rubin and Geoff Bolt—these are guys that were in San Francisco that were just so obscure. And I really like that. And that’s not—while I like that, that’s not who I am.
Paul: Right.
Greg: And I tried to be weird. I tried to be strange. I tried to be all of those things that in San Francisco people were encouraged to be.
Paul: Right.
Greg: And then I got sober, and went, ‘Well now you’re just fucking stuck with you, so now what?’
Paul: Right.
Greg: And—
Paul: And how long ago did you get sober?
Greg: So, I’m fourteen and two thirds there, to fifteen, you know what I mean I’m—
Paul: Almost fifteen years?
Greg: Almost fifteen—
Paul: Or minutes?
Greg: —years. Fifteen—Fifteen years—
Paul: Years or minutes? ‘Cause it’s a big difference.
Greg: Fifteen minutes I’ve been—for this—I’m gonna be coming on sixteen minutes [Paul laughs] of pure sobriety. And when I say “pure” I mean part of the way because I’m on a handful of awesome pills, that I took. Or did I? I don’t remember. No I have—I’ll be—I will be as they say, God willing, I will be fifteen in August.
Paul: That’s fantastic.
Greg: So, so when I got sober, I started to think more like myself, and I started to—In this crowd of hipsters that I was around, these incredible people—I was the guy that liked Poison sincerely. [Paul laughs] The band. And I started saying that on stage in these rooms that I was in, and sort of saying, ‘Hey, I know we’re all hip here but I like Poison, not as a joke.’
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: And that made people laugh. And I was like, ‘Oh, if I just tell the truth about who I am, maybe’—And my mom, interestingly enough, when I first started doing stand-up, she was like, ‘I don’t understand what you’re doing. Why don’t you just be like you are at dinner?’
Paul: Right.
Greg: And I’m like, ‘cause you don’t find that—
Paul: Hungry?
Greg: Yeah.
Paul: How are people gonna laugh at hunger? [Greg laughs]
Greg: Rude!
Paul: Africa’s not funny!
Greg: Eating with my fingers? I don’t get it. But I mean, she really did was like, ‘You are just naturally a good storyteller. Why don’t you do that?’
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: And I was like, ‘ ‘Cause you don’t understand the business. People like jokes,’ —
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: and you know, whatever. Blah blah blah blah. So, that was my thing, was to try and figure out how to create that on stage. You know.
Paul: And about how far into doing stand-up did you feel like—until you finally found your voice?
Greg: I still am finding—you know, that’s the kind of cool journey about it is, —
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: as I evolve as a person, and you know, you find it—I think what’s interesting is, I think it exists in the bits, and then they become not you. You start, and you start to—you mould an idea—for me, I—‘cause I write kind of on stage, so I have an idea and I’ll go up and it’ll be part of the way there, and then I will find it, and then it’ll be there, and then as soon as those words get locked in that bit is over, and then I’m insincere. So it’s a combination of like living—trying to live it a little bit, and trying to figure out how it exists on stage with sincerity, and—
Paul: Right.
Greg: —freshness.
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: You know? And it’s hard! Because it isn’t like this, which you … you know, which you mention, which is—this is absolutely completely happening right now, genuinely sincere and in the moment.
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: And I think that’s kind of the interesting thing about this podcasting stuff, is it suddenly—people can listen to their favourite comics, and if they’re good at broadcasting, go, ‘Oh shit, I almost like this better, because it’s happening now, —
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: ‘and it’s genuine.’
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: You know?
Paul: Yeah, there’s a depth to it that—We were talking before we started rolling that the stuff that I’m able to talk about on podcasts is stuff I’ve always wanted to talk about on stage, but I could never find a way to do it, because there’s that pressure of punchline punchline punchline. You know, you’re following a feature act who’s crushing.
Greg: Right.
Paul: You know, you’re the headliner, you’ve got to top him, the cheques are going out, people are distracted, —
Greg: Yeah!
Paul: I mean headlining is a motherfucker. It is hard work being a headlining road comic, and trying to get what is in your soul out on stage, and to survive financially at the same—‘Cause you can go up there and be true to yourself, but chances are, most of the crowd may not like it, because there’s a—they come into the comedy club with a preconceived notion of what stand-up is gonna be.
Greg: Right. They’re not actually interested in your needs. They’re interested in their needs, and their needs are that they want to be entertained on a—in a way—especially if they’re coming in uneducated about you. If they know something of you, they come in, and they’re like, ‘Okay, I think I’m getting the Greg Behrendt brand here, so I suspect I’ll hear a little bit about candy, and I’m gonna hear a little bit about football, I’m gonna hear a little about’—you know, whatever it is that they know you for. But, if they come in uneducated, they just want to laugh.
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: And they want to laugh pretty soon, and they also want a chicken wing, and they’d like to have that now, and ‘where the fuck is my beer?’
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: You know, so then, you’re kind of dealing with all these other expectations, and the interesting thing about it is, as an art form, it was genuinely meant to be just performed almost in a theatre, you know.
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: But you can’t get to the theatre. You know, the comedy clubs sort of exist. And while I do like the way comedy clubs are set up—I actually like the intimacy of a comedy club—to really get people’s attention, you need to take shit out of their hands. Right, and let them sit there. And that is not it’s set up. So, it’s—
Paul: You’re set up basically in the traditional stand-up comedy club of today. You are really an appet—you’re the big appetizer, at the club.
Greg: That’s the weird thing about it, which is like you are not the main consideration. I mean in some of the clubs—a lot of the—to be fair, there are some very well run clubs in this country where the managers and the wait staff work very hard to make it your show while still running a restaurant, —
Paul: Right.
Greg: which is what you are in.
Paul: Right.
Greg: But in a lot of places, you are just, like, ‘Just dude, do your time. Be quiet. I’m sorry about that guy, but he—they bought—they have fifteen tickets, so we’re not—they’re not being kicked out.’
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: ‘You’ll just have to deal—
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: —with that guy yelling at you.’
Paul: I remember a club owner telling me one time, ‘Oh yeah, we’re having this other guy back because he sells more shots than anybody else.’ And I remember just thinking, ‘I’m fucked!’
Greg: Yeah well, —
Paul: ‘I’m fucked!’ You know, if this is the criteria that being a popular club comic is based on—You know, what I didn’t realize is that there are better clubs than that one, and there’s a lot of clubs out there that book people based on the originality of their comedy—But you know you gotta remember, like a guy like Bill Hicks who is beloved nowadays and idolized posthumously, he walked rooms full of people. [A phone rings] He was despised by the— [Greg laughs] And that’s him calling from the grave.
Greg: Yeah, ‘You guys, wait a minute—
Paul: ‘I was not despised!’
Greg: ‘That’s not at all how it was guys!’ [Paul laughs] ‘And I will kick you right in the teeth!’ I’m gonna just let that happen. Comedian—
Paul: Right.
Greg: ‘I don’t understand what this thing is he’s doing,’ and he’s a gay Southern comedian and he’s going on and on and on, and I—‘This isn’t who I expected to be here,’ and then he would just snap into another—and he just—he didn’t mind just fucking jerking people in one direction, and—
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: I was like, ‘That takes balls.’
Paul: It does, it does.
Greg: I think I’m losing you in a conversation and I start fucking weaving. [Paul laughs] I am like, ‘Well, let’s see if this works,’ you know? That is—the other thing I like about doing the podcast was, me and my buddy Dave—Dave is a—we love—we make each other laugh, —
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: and that’s enough.
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: But it’s so nice to just have that one concern and not worry about what a lot of other people do, and I think that’s made me a better artist because suddenly I realized, you know I don’t have to—I don’t have to get everybody.
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: There are people that I want to get, there are people that I think are on my team, —
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: and I want to get them, but I’m okay. It took me a while to get there post-book, but I’m okay with losing you.
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: It’s okay.
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: Girl last night—I end with a thing where I talk about Tim Tams, which are that Australian cookie that’s now here in the States, and it’s—they’re amazing, and I compare them to God’s vagina. [Paul laughs] And clearly, I rocked a woman’s boat last night.
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: She walked out and was like, ‘I liked that ‘til the end and then I hated it.’
Paul: Oh really.
Greg: And I was okay to let it go. She’s gotta go because that’s my philosophy, that’s my God, which is a Tim Tam. I’m gonna go ahead and have that feeling about it and let her go, because I—you know, we were never gonna—You have to realize too sometimes, like, those people aren’t gonna, for lack of a better description, “buy your t-shirt.”
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: They’re not real fans—you just want, especially in these days where—
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: —everyone is—gets only a little bit of the pie, —
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: you just want those hardcores.
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: They’ll keep you in business forever.
Paul: Yeah, that’s what Lenny Bruce used to say, is ‘Give me two thousand fans in every city, and I’m set for life.’
Greg: Set for life!
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: That’s all you need.
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: And because they love you—and I heard Paul Tompkins talk about this—it’s not that he doesn’t—is opposed to the idea of winning over people that he doesn’t know, where—how far can he go with people that he does know, that do know him.
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: What are the risks he’s gonna take? Where is he gonna go as an artist if the room’s already set up to win?
Paul: Right.
Greg: Right?
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: Some people don’t like the challenge.
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: Some people are like, ‘Well, then you’re not a real comic. If you can’t into a room.’ I’m like, ‘No, it’s all different. —
Paul: It’s all different.
Greg: ‘Maybe that’s you, but I love that idea of like, now I’m in a room where I have the love, —
Paul: ‘What am I gonna do with that?’
Greg: ‘Where—How can I go further?’ Yeah.
Paul: Yeah, yeah. I like that. Let’s talk about your childhood growing up. What kind of childhood—
Greg: I had an interesting childhood in that I grew up—my parents were … wealthy, my dad was in television, he was the general manager of the NBC affiliate in San Francisco. And my mom had some family money, and also worked at the TV station until she had me. And she was a Stanford grad, they’re both bright bright people, and so they were lovely. But my mom was an alcoholic, but high functioning. And I had bad eyes when I was born, I had very queer cross-eyed, and so I had a lot of surgeries when I was little, so I was in and out of hospitals a lot. I’d do a thing where I would get these surgeries and I couldn’t touch my eyes, so they had to tape my hands to my side and I’d—
Paul: No…
Greg: —eat off a plate, and—
Paul: No…!
Greg: I had eye patches a lot, so I had a very strange childhood. But I was very loved, —
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: you know, loved by two parents that grew up in that—this was Mad Men times.
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: I mean my parents were—they were kind of—that world—we—I remember watching the first episode of that, and my dad—with my father—my mother’s passed away but my father is still alive, very much alive. And he went, “That’s a little real for me.” “That’s a little real for me.” The drinking, and the smoking, and the thing, and just like that was the time, like—
Paul: When you—back up, I didn’t quite understand that. That—what’s a little real for your—
Greg: Watching Mad Men—
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: the first episode—
Paul: Oh! I gotcha.
Greg: and saying “That’s a little real for me,”
Paul: Yes.
Greg: like it was a little tough for him to revisit how we used to be.
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: The drinking, the smoking, the like, you know—I mean Mad Men’s not …
Paul: My dad was, except for the philandering—although he might have philandered as far as I know—but my dad was Don Draper. I have pictures of going to visit him in the early seventies in his office and, it … is just like Don Draper’s office. He had a bar in his office, —
Greg: Yes!
Paul: you know, he was an insurance executive, and he would come home, and you know, he would have a couple of drinks, he was always smoking a cigarette, and—
Greg: Yeah.
Paul: —and it was a big deal that he had been promoted—he worked for C & A Insurance and it was a big deal when he was made vice-president because he was Catholic.
Greg: Yes. Right? So there’s—but the thing about the Mad Men that is so interesting is that it is sort of no apologies.
Paul: Yes.
Greg: This is what it was like, we’re not glorifying it, we’re also not putting it down.
Paul: Yes.
Greg: You know I think it fairly paints people of that generation pre—these are pre-AA times.
Paul: Yes. And you gotta remember these people were raised by, you know, people that—from the Depression.
Greg: Yes, that’s right.
Paul: So they also were—had a different set of parents.
Greg: Right. And so you know, the morals were different and the times—so the times were different. So that was sort of the world I grew up in, but my parents were festive people, who liked to have parties, and we …
Paul: Would your mom, at the parties, ever get drunk to the point that it was embarrassing to you?
Greg: Oh, forever.
Paul: Talk about that.
Greg: So it’d just be that kind of thing where you and my sister and I sort of knew, after six o’ clock it’s a different lady.
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: It would really like, boom. And moments where you—
Paul: What time would she start drinking? At six?
Greg: Yeah.
Paul: Okay.
Greg: I mean it was very like—
Paul: But because she waited ‘til six she couldn’t possibly be an alcoholic.
Greg: Not at all.
Paul: Right, yeah.
Greg: Couldn’t be an alcoholic. Yeah, and so, she just—but there was always behaviour that was baffling and of course you’re wee, so you don’t understand any of it.
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: And it was always—
Paul: Can you describe what some of the behaviour was?
Greg: It’d be that weird thing of like my sister and I always—what I would always trip when we heard her feet hit heavy on the floor. Because you knew she was going to come in and have some weird conversation with you that didn’t make sense.
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: Where she’d be upset about something that hadn’t happened.
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: Or she’d be angry. Mostly it was at herself, like she had a—just went to a place of bizarre self-loathing and have conversations about—
Paul: So she’d get kind of dark.
Greg: Dark, but inwardly, like she never—She would be upset with you, but you wouldn’t know why, but she wasn’t like—she wouldn’t hit or anything like that. She was just sad.
Paul: The feeling that the world wasn’t right.
Greg: Yeah.
Paul: Would kind of come springing out of her—
Greg: Well again—and say things—“I guess everyone’s upset with me.” “I guess they’re upset with me.” And you’d be like, I don’t know where the conversation is.
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: So—
Paul: I’m just trying to eat without hands.
Greg: Right. ‘I’m taped. You gotta untape me.’ But it was interesting because—
Paul: Do you remember what you felt like having your hands taped eating—
Greg: Barely.
Paul: bobbing?
Greg: Barely. I remember being—
Paul: You were what, four to five? Three? How old?
Greg: I think it started at three. Three four, then went to like about six, —
Paul: Okay.
Greg: somewhere in there, I could—I mean, you know.
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: But I—
Paul: And hopefully they had you do it out on the porch where the neighbor could see.
Greg: Yeah, I mean I kind of like—look, there’s a part of it that I think built my show business career, ‘cause I think my parents were funny about it.
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: And my parents were both sharp and super funny, and so, you know, eating—it was novel. I was sort of a little celebrity in the house. I had to eat with my hands tied to my side, and I had to eat of a ta—you know, —
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: they put the plate on the stool, and then I would have to eat off the stool. I mean, —
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: you know, it was only for a short period of time, but there was that like, ‘Oh, this is special time.’
Paul: Right.
Greg: You know, I also knew, and I shared this before—
Paul: So it wasn’t necessarily a painful memory, it was—you got attention and you kind of liked that?
Greg: Yeah, but it was weird in that also going in and out of hospitals as a young boy, I’d come upstairs and I would see the little plaid suitcase and know I was going to the hospital.
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: And that fear of like, ‘Oh God, I’m going in for another surgery.’
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: So there were all those surgeries. So that was sort of it as a young—little little boy, you know then my sister was born and then my father—in kind of a—you know, my father was about to be promoted and he didn’t like the people he worked for, and he quit.
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: Said, ‘forget it.’ And he—we moved to Marin County, which was not as developed as it is now, and he—we bought a home, and he had noth—wasn’t doing anything. He was like—and then he bought a radio station up in Oregon, and then he bought another one, and bought two radio stations, and he ran those, and that’s what he did. He was a broadcaster, and he ran radio stations, but he lived in Marin. And, so now he was an entrepreneur—now he was—now it wasn’t that world, it was a different world, and he was—he had his office downstairs in the house, so he was around, and—And that’s when I—you know, I was like ten, and from ten to eighteen I was in Marin with my parents there, and had a really white suburban upbringing. Really walked to school every day, and—
Paul: Let’s back up a little bit to the surgeries as a child, because … I had a lot of surgeries as a child and I think in a lot of ways it kind of informed who I became later in life. I had a thing that a lot of little boys do where their testicles don’t descend.
Greg: Right.
Paul: And so you have to go in—you gotta get a surgery for that, and I was so asha—I felt so ashamed about my body. I felt like, you know, like I’m a freak, I was so terrified that—
Greg: Yep, yeah.
Paul: —anybody else was going to know. You know, and for years—I mean even through my teenage years I—even though I had the surgery to fix it—you know, it’s—it wasn’t perfect, and so I would be like, just ashamed of my genitalia.
Greg: Right.
Paul: You know what I mean?
Greg: Right.
Paul: ‘My dick’s not big enough. My testicles aren’t perfectly even.’ And I remember thinking, you know before I ever, you know, got laid, ‘Am I gonna be rejected for this?’
Greg: Sure.
Paul: ‘Am I gonna—‘Why, if there’s a God, why are you putting me through this?’
Greg: Right, right.
Paul: I mean, did you, did you—what do you remember feeling about your—
Greg: I don’t recall being sad much as a kid. I do remember thinking that there was something wrong with me, that I wasn’t bright enough. Like I had a lot of trouble because of my eyes. It made it so it was difficult for me to read and to learn, and I was slower than everybody and I was aware of it really quickly, and I felt from the very beginning like, ‘I am not as smart as everybody else.’
Paul: Right.
Greg: ‘This thing makes me less.’ So I definitely felt like, ‘Fuck, I am—And so, I stopped trying early. I mean I really didn’t—I was like, ‘Ah, I’m just not—‘I can’t, I can’t … I don’t really like work. I don’t—
Paul: Right.
Greg: ‘Reading and writing is too hard.’
Paul: Right.
Greg: Because you know, my friends could all do it better. I was keenly aware of what everybody else was doing as a young boy. Keenly aware that other people didn’t have eye surgeries and didn’t, you know, whatever. And keenly aware that like, ‘He already finished his. How could he have finished his? I’m still on the first page.’ Like I was really on other people’s pages. And I had a very difficult time focusing on my own shit.
Paul: Right.
Greg: You know, so I think if it did anything it made me feel less than, as—
Paul: Felt a little broken maybe?
Greg: Little bit, yeah.
Paul: Yes.
Greg: Little bit.
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: Little broken, little bit like, ‘Nah, not going to be as good as everybody else.’
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: And because of it, it made it diffi—I had to re—It took me a longer to learn things. I could learn them, and I could adapt. My eyes would adapt, but like, it took me longer to hit a baseball. It took me longer to catch a baseball. I was always afraid things were going to hit me in the head because I didn’t know where they were. So that gives you that fear.
Paul: So depth perception was—
Greg: Depth perception—barely any. Like I’d focus out of one eye at a time. So I could only track one eye and then you switch to the other eye, like if a ball’s crossing your plain, it changes—
Paul: Right.
Greg: It’s up and then it’s down. Right, so—
Paul: Oh wow.
Greg: So it takes a while to kind of instinctively know where that’s supposed to go.
Paul: Right.
Greg: So it just was very difficult for me to—
Paul: How did other kids treat you? Was there an acceptance or did you have to really try hard to win approval from other kids?
Greg: I think that I was—I was always pretty well liked.
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: I was always fairly social and pretty nice. I wasn’t like a super shy kid. But I—but when it came to sports, which—when I was a kid there weren’t other alternatives, you were either good at sports or you were a pussy. That’s just what it was.
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: You just were not as good as the other kids.
Paul: Right.
Greg: Like, we revere other things now, in children. There are many different places you can go—I mean, when I was in high school, you had a guitar, you were a burner. You like—you were not—the guys that had guitars listened to Nugent and they fucking drove muscle cars, and I loved them, I wanted to be them, but I couldn’t, ‘cause I grew up a very preppy yuppy kid, —
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: and so I didn’t quite, you know like, ‘Oh—you know what I mean, so it took me a long time to transition into—I became a burnout, but it took me a long time to get there, you know.
Paul: So, talk about that, because I also did the same thing. I stopped growing—It took me longer to hit puberty than it did everybody else. So when I was sixteen years old, I was still four foot ten and weighed eighty five pounds—
Greg: Wow.
Paul: and had glasses.
Greg: Yeah.
Paul: Yeah, hello ladies. [Greg laughs]
Greg: Right.
Paul: So, I wasn’t able to compete in sports the way I was when—you know, in six, seventh, and eighth grade—
Greg: Right.
Paul: —when I was decent at baseball. All of a sudden I couldn’t make the baseball team. Football’s out of the question, you know.
Greg: Right.
Paul: I played a little bit of hockey but it was—I remember making the conscious decision that, ‘I’m gonna be a burnout. I’m gonna—because if I have a bag of weed, I will have friends.’
Greg: Right, well I also just thought, I—There was something about me that always was attracted to, from the very very beginning—This is another thing I remember: I didn’t give a shit kind—like I wanted to play sports because I wanted to be accepted by my peers, but I only wanted to be accepted by my peers because I thought that would be how I would get girls. From the very beginning, from the moment that I was conscious, I liked women, and I wanted to be where women were. And I wanted to get with women. I’ve always been very romantic, I’ve always been very sexual, I was like, ‘I want to be where the girls are. I don’t understand this dude shit. I will do this until we get girls. This is all fine, you wrestle.’
Paul: Right.
Greg: ‘Where are the women?’ [Paul laughs] ‘Where are they? How do we get near them?’ I mean, —
Paul: Right.
Greg: ‘I don’t wanna throw rocks at them. Why are we throwing rocks at them?’ [Paul laughs] ‘Let’s go talk to them.’ Like I just—and I was as a ver—I remember coming through, I have this very vivid memory of my dad and I, it was at Christmas time, and maybe I’ve—you know it’s codified into something more grand than it was, but I remember us being—walking through the Macy’s at Christmas time, and we were in the makeup department. And we were around all these women, and my dad looked around, and he turned to me and he goes, “This is where you wanna be. You always want to be around this. —
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: “You always want to be here.” And I understood what he was saying: women’s where it’s at.
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: Wasn’t saying “go fuck chicks.”
Paul: Right.
Greg: He was saying women are like—that’s the thing, man, —
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: that’s what you do. You’re around women, right? And you know, my dad was married to my mom. I mean that was that, but he—he had a real appreciation and respect for women ‘cause he’d grown up single—you know with a single—his dad had died when he was young so he grew up with just his mom. And they had been very poor, and he worked and earned everything that he got, so I got that from him, and I—He was right. So that was that thing of like, Star Wars came around, I watched the first Star Wars movie and the second one came out, and I was like, ‘I—fucking where are the girls?’ Like, ‘I don’t—
Paul: Right.
Greg: You know what I mean, like, I—
Paul: Did you have any sisters?
Greg: Yes, I have a younger sister.
Paul: Oh okay. ‘Cause I wonder about that. I didn’t have any sisters. I have one brother, and a cousin that grew up with us. But there was a family across the street that had three girls, and they were all gorgeous, and nice and sweet, and I would remember just the feeling when I would go visit, it was just like this warmth would come over me, like there was something so missing from—
Greg: Yeah.
Paul: —from my life and I remember—
Greg: Yes.
Paul: —sometimes we would go to their cottage for the day. They had a little cottage on the lake. And we would ride in the van and I just remember I could—I could live in this van with these girls the rest of my life.
Greg: rest of my life. I—you—
Paul: And I remember the Carpenters song coming on, and it was … not the “Rainy Days and Mondays”, what’s the other, the big song in their—[Paul sings the opening melody of “For All We Know”]
Greg: “We’ve Only Just Begun”? I can’t remember.
Paul: [Sings] “Love, look at the two of us.”
Greg: Right right right.
Paul: Yeah yeah. Anyway, I remember that song came on and I remember just, to my core, feeling this loneliness, at the same time as feeling this happiness, and it just being so bizarre to feel such—
Greg: Right, right.
Paul: —such sadness—
Greg: Yeah.
Paul: —and such—
Greg: Visceral.
Paul: —elation at the same time.
Greg: Yeah, no, that is the—I mean that’s the shit that people write about. That’s the stuff that—like, I had all my—I had a lot of cousins, and my mom’s sister had four daughters. And they’re all older than me, and they were all gorgeous. Heather, Cameron, and Kimberly, and Hillary. And, you know, we’d go on these vacations—I mean they were family, whatever, but they—you know, I was a little boy. And I was just like, wherever they were. I remember walking into a bedroom and seeing a pair of their—one of the girl’s underwear was on the floor. I was like, [gasps] ‘That’s agh! God!’
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: ‘What is that?’
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: Just the mystery—
Paul: The scalp would just tingle. Yeah.
Greg: Just the mystery of—
Paul: Well, and more things.
Greg: —what women were all about, —
Paul: Yeah, yeah.
Greg: and their things, and their smells, and their—you know, just—and their giggling. And I was like, ‘This is—I—This is all that I need.’ Like I had—I always had friends, I’ve had three or four best friends that I’ve had since grammar school. We’re all still friends. We all went through high school together, and then for college for a little while, blah blah blah. But—And we all love each other—great guys—but I always was like, ‘Where are the girls?’ And as soon as my buddies—we were all at the same colleges. As soon as my buddies left and went to Arizona, I stayed at University of Oregon, I was just where the girls were. Always.
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: Got into the theatre department, girls.
Paul: Yes.
Greg: Theatre department—I’m like, ‘Fuck I’m like one of three straight guys— [Paul laughs]
Paul: Me too!
Greg: —in this whole goddamn department!’
Paul: Me too! It was like … falling into just a pillow factory!
Greg: Yeah!
Paul: It’s like, ‘This is the greatest!’
Greg: You would have been like, ‘Fucking don’t tell anybody about this.’ ‘Do you wanna know where the girls—‘No don’t fucking tell anyone! I’m the only—
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: Yeah know, and so—And that was sort of my thing the whole time. I mean I think it was no …
Paul: Let’s talk about you becoming a theatre major. Was that—how was that greeted by the folks?
Greg: So I go to University of Oregon, and I—
Paul: Is that Eugene?
Greg: Yeah, so here’s what happened. So in high school, I’m a terrible athlete, —
Paul: Tell the story by the way, about the—
Greg: the only compliment that I got—
Paul: the only compliment you’ve ever got regarding sports.
Greg: Four years of high school football, I was a senior, it was half-time of a game we’re losing, and I’m the second-string fullback. Now I’d just been made fullback that year, I’d been a quarterback all the way along. And when I—and so now I’m the second-string fullback, ‘cause I got big. And, we’re losing a game, and the guy that’s playing fullback first-string is having a shitty game and the coach gets us in the locker room, and this is the only complement I got in four years in high school football. He goes, [effecting a loud impression] “We’ve got a guy out here, number fourty four, Ken Flax,”—who was a great athlete and would go on to throw the hammer in the Olympics—“We’ve got a guy, Ken Flax, he’s out here. He’s running like a goddamn pussy! And we got guys like Greg Behrendt here, work hard all week, will never see the field!” [Paul laughs]
Paul: I love it!
Greg: And I—
Paul: And you were happy ‘cause your name got mentioned—
Greg: Yeah—
Paul: —but you were also—
Greg: I didn’t really—I didn’t get it. I mean that is me, all—That story is my life, like I was like, ‘Yes! What!?’ [Paul laughs] Like in one moment, right? Now the story that I don’t always tell that’s the addendum to that is, so now, senior year football—we were not a good—there was no—none of the sports at our school were very good except for baseball. They started a rugby club, and the rugby club is made up of all the athletes that were shitty at all the rest of the sports. So, the failed baseball players, like that, the failed football players—we all joined this rugby club for fun, ‘what the hell.’ Well we went on to win the national championships in rugby. And I was the starting hooker, which is the position in the center—
Paul: Right.
Greg: —of the scrub, the guy who hooks the ball back. So I had this sort of little, you know, senior year comeback as an athlete. I’m the starting hooker on the national—high school national champions.
Paul: Wow.
Greg: Which was very very cool. And …
Paul: I didn’t even know rugby was big out West. I would have thought—
Greg: Well it really wasn’t!
Paul: —for sure the national championship would be some East Coast team.
Greg: We came back and we beat Virginia. We came back and we beat Langley. We beat a school from Virginia. And—But we won the West Coast division, and then we flew back, and then it was at Dayton, Ohio, and it was at the army base there, and we played and we won the championship. And it was—
Paul: And the six people there went crazy?
Greg: Was—No, I mean it was weird but there was like, you know—No, because what had happened was, all the California teams were winning. Cal won, and […] San Francisco’s team won, and so all the schools—Everybody came [and] watched. It was literally a Disney movie. These losers get together, and their burnout coach who lived in a van and smoked pot, [Paul laughs] truly, coached us differently—
Paul: I think we got your next screenplay—
Greg: I mean—
Paul: —buddy.
Greg: You know, the football coach was from the old fucking Lombardi school—
Paul: Sure.
Greg: —of yelling, and this guy was like, [effecting an impression] ‘It’s about finesse, bro. Right, the guy who doesn’t have the ball doesn’t have the ball. Do you know what I’m talking about?’ ‘No, you’re high as a kite, but I’ll do it.’ [Paul laughs] And, you know—and then the—
Paul: ‘Go to the open space.’
Greg: And we’re so—
Paul: ‘It’s what you do without the ball.’
Greg: Right, and so we’re the club—it’s a club, it’s not a part of the school necessarily, but it’s from the school, so we’re sort of like, you know—I don’t know, it was just a great thing to have happen and—
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: —and you know I met a girl when I was in Ohio, and there was a car wreck, and there was a whole thing—It was a total Disney movie.
Paul: And you were how old at this point?
Greg: So, is—what are you senior year? Seventeen years old?
Paul: Okay.
Greg: Eighteen years old?
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: So then I go—I get accepted to the University of Oregon early, because we know the governor. [Paul laughs] And I go there, and I sign—I’m gonna play rugby and be a business major. I was a little bit of a Republican, at that time.
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: Just a young conservative kid. I had no political point of view, but I think I sort of straddled that conservative—Joined a fraternity because that’s what my dad had done, and—
Paul: Right.
Greg: And I, you know, I was a nice kid—
Paul: And again, it’s where the girls were. I think that’s why most guys—
Greg: Girls were there—
Paul: —join a fraternity.
Greg: And yeah, that seemed like the thing to do. And my bros were buddies—they were gonna do it, and so we did that, and I immediately went, ‘This is not a fit for me. None of this.’ And I broke my hand playing rugby, and I didn’t—wasn’t the same as being in the high school team anymore, and I was struggling with the business part of school. I really couldn’t get it, and my buddy and I were sitting in the frat house and we were getting high, and we’re picking our classes and he’s like, [effecting an impression] ‘Dude, you should just do theatre, man. Just fucking get high and go down there and be a tree. How hard is that, right bro?’ [Paul laughs] ‘Get that credit.’ And I was like ‘Yeah, that’d be kind of cool.’ So, I took a theatre class, and I fucking loved it. And I called my parents, and I was like, ‘I’m gonna a theatre major.’ My dad was like, ‘Jesus, finally.’ ‘Cause they were like, my mom was always like, ‘Why don’t you perform? You’re so funny.’ And I’d be like, ‘I am not funny. I’m a fucking athlete.’ [Paul laughs] Right? ‘You don’t fucking know me. I’m a jock.’ Now the same thing [which] happened in my senior was, this: I also had this other experience, it was coming along at the same time, when I was a senior was—I worked at my dad’s radio station, and—music was just a thing we all like and did, and I love music, but I had never had a—I had a moment with an Aerosmith record where I put on their first record one night at this radio station and—
Paul: Toys in the Attic?
Greg: No, Aerosmith Aerosmith, the first one.
Paul: Okay.
Greg: And I put on the song, the cover that they do …
Paul: “Train Kept A-Rollin’”?
Greg: “Walkin’ the Dog”
Paul: Okay.
Greg: And there’s a part where Joe Perry plays sort of a percussive moment, and he plays, you know, [imitates guitar chords] on a, you know—on the guitar. And I went, ‘I want that. I wanna be that.’ Like, that was the door that opened to like, ‘Oh man, this is—And I remember looking at the back of this album cover and there are these dudes and they’re dressed like girls, and I was like, ‘That seems awes—like these guys—nobody’s, like pl—they were the antithesis of being an athlete. Like they didn’t have—nobody was knocking them down, they didn’t have to beat people up to get women to fuck them. In fact they get to do the opposite, they were dressed like chicks and they were getting chicks. ‘How the fuck—like, I just was—
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: And there was—I was always in my head, like, even the athletes I like, even the Joe Namath, I always like the rockstar, sort of, you know, that male, that not particularly stereotypical male archetype.
Paul: You like the showmen, no matter what you’re—
Greg: I like showmen, —
Paul: no matter what you’re doing.
Greg: and I also like things that were not straight up … macho.
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: You know? I like—
Paul: That’s what I’ve always liked about you, is you’re unafraid to do that. In fact I think we were exchanging emails a couple of days ago, and I said, ‘I’m sure you’re gonna wear—you know, when we do the podcast—I’m sure you’re gonna wear something hip and yet bordering on gay.’
Greg: Yeah, yeah, just right on the edge.
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: Or maybe just straight up gay.
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: I mean I might just be—I could have just put a skirt on.
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: I—Yeah, I always was like, ‘Look, I don’t—The math in your head’s always the same. It’s like, ‘Well I like chicks, so that’s—I don’t—I’m not gonna identify—
Paul: ‘I don’t need to defend that.’
Greg: I don’t need to defend it. And I don’t need to also broadcast it to everybody.
Paul: ‘And even if I didn’t like chicks, I don’t need to defend it.’
Greg: Absolutely.
Paul: ‘Fuck you if I’m gay!’
Greg: But at the time I didn’t understand. I mean I really did like—you know, even though I grew up in San Francisco, you know, you just didn’t want people to call you “gay”.
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: Because that was—I mean it was just an insult.
Paul: It was a different time.
Greg: It just—yeah. Because it meant more actually than gay, it meant ‘you don’t belong, bro.’
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: And everybody wants to belong, and you’re a young boy, and whatever. But I always had these leanings of like, I just liked art and design and colour and that kind of stuff, and—But I didn’t know that those kind of jobs existed. I didn’t understand that, and the only thing—the closest to it was, ‘Oh, band. I want to be in a band.’ That way you can dress like a chick and you can get girls, and you can, you know, explore just different ideas. There were just a lot of ideas—
Paul: And how old were you when you had your Aerosmith moment?
Greg: Seventeen.
Paul: Okay.
Greg: So, late bloomer with the Aerosmith.
Paul: Okay.
Greg: I mean a lot of kids were, you know—
Paul: So you become a theatre major, and you’re starting to play music at the—
Greg: Yeah, I have a band. I have a band. I start a band at the University of Oregon. I grow my hair out, I get kicked out of the fraternity. I move into a house with like six guys.
Paul: What was the reason for getting kicked out of—
Greg: Drugs.
Paul: Oh, okay.
Greg: Yeah. Just, blow—Just doing—I mean I was just—I was at the University of Oregon—My mom, bless her heart … ‘Go. Here’s what I want you to do. I want you to go to college out of—Go, go away.’
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: ‘Go away. Go—basically, go freak out. Take whatever you’re gonna do as a man, and as a guy, go out of state, and do it there.’
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: You know. ‘Find a community of friends,’ you know—The University of Oregon is a beautiful campus, and it is—it’s like this little home, you know what I mean. Everything you need’s right there on campus. Don’t have to drive anywhere, you don’t have—you walk everywhere. ‘Go—
Paul: Jesus, you are describing my experience at Indiana University as a theatre major and a fraternity guy—except I didn’t get kicked out for drugs—but every other thing [laughs] is the—
Greg: Right?
Paul: I just have to tell you that, ‘cause it’s—
Greg: Right.
Paul: I didn’t want to interrupt you—
Greg: No no no. But that’s what it was—It just—
Paul: —but I just, my brain is—
Greg: It was just like, ‘Go—And I—
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: I picked my college ‘cause that’s where they filmed Animal House. And I was—
Paul: It’s like it stopped being school.
Greg: Oh complete—
Paul: It’s like there was no work. It’s, ‘Oh, I gotta go to directing class? That’s not work! That’s fun!’
Greg: No! I mean I’m, fucking, making out with chicks at my theatre class, [Paul laughs] and there’s—two girls want to go in the closet, and then—and that’s only at three in the afternoon, and then we’re all gonna go watch a movie, —
Paul: Yes.
Greg: and then I’ve got a film class, and then we’re gonna meet at Rennie’s and drink, and then I have band practice, like it was—
Paul: Yes.
Greg: —kind of a heaven, —
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: when I look back on it. There’s a part of me that wishes I hadn’t gotten so into drugs and alcohol there, because I do think, ‘Fuck, there are some classes I want to take again. Why didn’t I pay attention in the—You had to take sewing, for your—
Paul: Costumes.
Greg: —theatre degree.
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: But I had someone do all my sewing for me, —
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: —‘cause I just didn’t want to do it, and I love clothes, and I love to make them, and I wish I could go back and take “The History of Costume” and that shit, because I’m fascinated with men’s and women’s clothes. I love clothing.
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: I—If I had even thought about it then I might not have even gone into theatre. I might have just gone right into fashion. I would have just done that, if I knew that was a job that men did, but I didn’t—you know, I didn’t know. So—
Paul: Have you ever talked about that on your podcast?
Greg: Yeah.
Paul: Because, you should—
Greg: Oh yeah, my nickname for me on the podcast, they call Dave “Man Tits” and they call me “Sweater Girl”.
Paul: Oh, okay.
Greg: Like I talk about it—Yeah because I’m—Because I love it.
Paul: I bet you somebody’s gonna contact you about that, and take you to their factory, or you know, do something—
Greg: Well a few people have. I’ve started to dabble in it this last couple years.
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: I’ve started to figure out—I mean I’ve made some pants, I’ve done some things, you know?
Paul: And your idea for the logo, The Clash logo, the shirts—
Greg: Right.
Paul: with The Clash logo.
Greg: The Clash logo on it, right?
Paul: Yeah, the album cover of The Clash, where the guy is about to break the guitar.
Greg: Yeah. Paul Simonon smashing his base.
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: Just right there on a polo shirt, right?
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: So I—So I started—Wait a minute, so you are—you’re in that insular world, and I’m starting a band, and you know, it’s like, you know, the band is only as popular as the campus. You know what I mean, like you’re a popular band on campus—
Paul: Right.
Greg: —but feel like fucking heroes because—
Paul: Yes.
Greg: It’s like your own little—it’s literally your own planet.
Paul: Yes.
Greg: And, and—
Paul: And the theatre department thing is wonderful, but you’re also still being supported by your parents. So you don’t have that need—
Greg: No! Right.
Paul: You know.
Greg: Right, no—I got a job—
Paul: It’s a glorified kind of world.
Greg: Yeah.
Paul: It’s all the good, but none of the bad real stuff.
Greg: Right, exactly. And you’re also like, you know—because the University of Oregon was all classical theatre, so we are doing Shakespeare, we are doing Sheridan, we’re doing some of this really interesting shit, and people are taking ecstasy at rehearsals, and—you know, it was a great great six years, or whatever—I extended it. I really like—But I also like, did like, you know, there were—mushrooms were there, and ecstasy was coming up from Berkley, and you know, I mean it was really—Those were high times, and things were cheap, and you know, all that kind of stuff. And, I didn’t get as much—I guess I didn’t get as much out of the education but I really did like—It was a har—It was a tough act to follow. Soon as I graduated, I was on a downhill. I was—It was a bummer until stand-up. There was—
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: —two or three years of like, —
Paul: Fear?
Greg: Fear, ‘What do I do? What am I doing?’
Paul: ‘Where am I going?’
Greg: ‘What am I doing?’ Yeah. ‘What do I—I get this theatre degree from the University of Oregon, it’s worthless.’
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: I mean it’s a beautiful adventure, but it’s a worthless piece of paper.
Paul: Yes.
Greg: ‘I might as well walk into this job with a rock,’ you know?
Paul: Right. [laughs]
Greg: ‘You want this rock, or my degree? Because a rock will at least hold your papers down.’ [Paul laughs] ‘I got nothing with this! Nothing! There’s no weight to this degree at all.’ So—
Paul: Let’s talk about fear, for a—
Greg: Yeah.
Paul: —second. Because I think that pivotal moment when you enter the real world, you’re done with college, you’ve kind of laid the groundwork for what your dreams are, and your aspirations, but then suddenly the real world is colliding with this—Now you have to support yourself.
Greg: Right, and also, what were you thinking you were really gonna do? Like, —
Paul: Exactly.
Greg: You know, I was a good enough actor to be in plays at the University of Oregon.
Paul: Right.
Greg: But even then I wasn’t as good as the other guys. My band was a punk rock mess of clowns. All of them graduated and went away, and it was never going to be an actual band.
Paul: Right.
Greg: And these were in the days where you couldn’t just—I mean, the idea of recording something was exotic and for fancy peop—You know what I mean?
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: Like, you know, even the punk bands seemed like they had something—you know, like, ‘Oh, how exotic it must be to be in Black Flag.’ You know? [laughs]
Paul: Right.
Greg: Right, but they made a record. You know, we—How do you make a record? Now you can make one at your house, but it just was one of those things where it seemed all so far away, and once it all ended, and then—I was terrified because I was like, ‘I don’t know what to do.’
Paul: ‘Where do I begin?’
Greg: Yeah, and I don’t have much of an education. And I don’t—And I know that I like performing—And that was the weird thing. I know I like performing and I know I don’t like acting. And that’s a weird thing, like I don’t love it. I never really connected with it, I had a very hard time doing it, and I don’t know how to do it. But I do like being in front of people.
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: I love being in front of people. And it was really fun in the band, because you know, you’re up there and you dance around with your guitar, and whatever. But, I don’t know what that becomes, you know. So I go home, and I’m living with my parents for a little while, and then my buddy and I get an apartment right on the corner of Haight and Ashbury, right above—on the exact corner—right above the Ben & Jerry’s, right across from the Gap, in the turret right above the famous sign, —
Paul: And I would imagine somebody steals that sign every day.
Greg: Well no, it’s—they had to move it further and further up. It’s literally out of reach.
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: You cannot get it, because they—people—yeah, people—
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: —just try and bust it off—
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: —all the time. And I’m sure, you know, someone’s figured out how to do it, but it was—You know, the Haight is a kind of a[n] interesting place, but not rea—you know what I mean, it’s sort of like living in Venice Beach.
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: You know, lot of transients,—
Paul: Little touristy.
Greg: Touristy, cold up in that part of San Francisco, it’s wet a lot, you know. And I was working at Chevys Mexican restaurant, I was waiting tables, and drink—Now I’m deep into—Now I’m—This is when it really starts to—my alcoholism really starts to escalate, ‘cause it’s not going well for me. I’m sad. And I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing, and …
Paul: And what do you—
Greg: I’m going on auditions, and—
Paul: What are feelings that you remember having when you were in that time?
Greg: Well … I was angry, ‘cause I didn’t like—I was angry ‘cause I didn’t like my roommates, I was fearful of like, not knowing what I was gonna do, and also like, ‘What—Like, I—There was a part of me like, ‘Did I just waste six years?’
Paul: Right.
Greg: Like, ‘What the fuck do I do?’ I have an agent, because my dad knew a guy, and he sends me out on commercial auditions and they’re horrible, —
Paul: The worst.
Greg: and I’m horrible.
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: And then I’m going for terrible plays that are being held in someone’s basement, —
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: I mean it just is really sad. And my mom was encouraging me to read the—you know, whatever the ca—you know whatever that thing is that actors read, you know those magazine…
Paul: The call sheet?
Greg: The call sheet—
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: —or whatever those things are called. She says, ‘There’s an audition for an improv group.’ I’m like, ‘Mom, just fucking back off.’ And she’s like, ‘Just please—Just go. Just try. You were good, you taught improv in college, just try.’ So I go to this improv group thing, and I enjoy it. And I get in the group. And two weeks later Margaret Cho joins the group. And—It’s—We’re terrible, but it’s fun, and we also—This particular group also performs at the Renaissance Fair and does a play every year. And Margaret says, ‘You gotta try stand-up.’ And I was like, ‘You think?’ She’s—And there’s another kid in the group named John Bowman and they were like, ‘You gotta try stand-up.’ And I’m like, ‘Are you kicking me out of the improv group?’ [Paul laughs] ‘I don’t understand.’ They’re like, ‘No, you would probably be good at stand-up. You should think about it.’ And I had never thought of it, so I never came to stand-up with a great need to do it. It almost became like, ‘Well, here’s what’s left for you, kid.’
Paul: Right.
Greg: ‘You have a sense of humour and you like standing in front of people, and you’re a little bit of a sociopath, so why don’t you do that?’ You know, I was trying to put a band together that wasn’t happening at that time, and so I took a shot. I made some friends in this improv group, made a good friend named Laura Milligan, and we went out on a Tuesday night I think it was—Monday or a Tuesday night, and it was February twenty eighth, of eighty nine, and I was thirty fifth on a list. It started at like, seven o’ clock and went to midnight. And thirty four, a guy named Mel, went up, and just stared at everybody and panicked and ran off the stage. And then it was me. And I went up and for three minutes I said some horse shit, some goofy and surreal bizarre shit, and people laughed, and I tagged myself out, I’m like, “Well that’s enough from me. Goodnight everybody.” And again, you were allowed five minutes and I did three.
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: And it was the best thing that ever happened.
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: I was like, ‘Oh, okay, alright. Here—There’s what I do.’
Paul: You were hooked.
Greg: ‘There’s what I do.’
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: ‘I do this. This is what I’m gonna do. This is my thing—I did it, and it worked the first time.’ I’ve never—My whole life has been a series of, ‘I’m just gonna have to work harder.’ You know? Everything. Sports, even with girls, like I just couldn’t get it to work, and stand-up just—boom. Opened that door, to the point where you’re like, ‘Oh, I don’t have—This is something I can actually do.’
Paul: Right.
Greg: ‘That I can put a minimal amount of effort in—I mean I can put a lot too—but I can put a minimal amount.’
Paul: So the lesson that I get out of that is, always listen to alcoholics.
Greg: Well, always listen to your mom. Here’s the weird thing. I’m realizing this as a parent. It’s like, you see people, and you know them, and you know what they’re—it’s hard and you know, as an alcoholic, like you can’t have enough control over people, places, and things, but if you keep whispering into somebody’s ear, maybe it’ll—maybe some day it’ll—I mean—
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: —every good decision I’ve ever made is one my mom would’ve agreed upon. I mean I didn’t even—
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: Wasn’t til I met Amiira that my mom went, ‘Yeah, okay.’
Paul: Yeah. There’s something that’s so great about the energy that moms have towards their kids. My relationship with my mom—She was always encou—[laughs] She wanted me to be a dancer, which, you know—
Greg: That’s great.
Paul: [effecting an impression] ‘Oh, you have such good sense of rhythm. You should be a dancer.’
Greg: Right.
Paul: And I always try to say, ‘No, I’m really not [laughs] interested in doing that.’
Greg: Right.
Paul: But she’s always supported my comedy, and she would—I was so afraid after I got out of college, just like you, was auditioning for theatre companies that I had no respect for, for plays I wasn’t even interested in, and—But I was afraid to get up on stage by myself, and my mom kept saying, ‘I read somewhere—
Greg: Where is it? Where is this?
Paul: Chicago.
Greg: Yeah, yeah.
Paul: And my mom kept—And I auditioned for an improv group, and got in—It was Dino Stamatopoulos who went on—
Greg: Ah, Dinos, yeah.
Paul: —to do Mr. Show, Andy Dick, —
Greg: Yeah.
Paul: Actually we were trying to get Andy in the improv group, and the guy who had started the group didn’t think Andy was funny, and we kept saying, ‘He’s a funny guy, you should let him in.’—
Greg: Oh my God.
Paul: And then Andy and Dino went off and started doing their thing, but this whole time I wanted to do stand-up but I was so afraid to get up on stage by myself and my mom kept saying, ‘I read somewhere, that if you keep your ideas down—just jot ‘em down on three by five cards, and then when you get enough three by five cards, you can just go up and do it.’ And she would—just kept saying, ‘Just try it. Just try it.’ And I would just go into the basement, after my day job at the insurance company, and I would drink and I would get high and I would fantasize about the someday that I’m gonna get up and then for some reason, I just—one day, I just tried it!
Greg: Just did it.
Paul: And she was right!
Greg: Yeah.
Paul: You know, God bless you moms.
Greg: Yeah, I mean I—It’s funny, my mom and I had a very, like—I always—What—My mom was not a very good del—did not deliver the message well. [Paul laughs] She would always be—
Paul: With her heavy feet and her thick tongue.
Greg: Well, it would just be like, ‘Well I don’t understand why you don’t do stand-up.’
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: Well that’s not the way you want to tell someone to do something, —
Paul: Right.
Greg: —but I think—But I think I wanted a spiritual solution. I feel like I was looking for hope. I feel like all of that was just, ‘How do I feel happy? Where is my—‘Where—I’m looking for God. I’m looking for God in a handful of ecstasy, I’m trying to find that moment, because that’s all that is is chasing that perfect, high, that feeling of like you belong, and you’re—
Paul: That feeling that you just go, [sighs]
Greg: Yes.
Paul: Yes.
Greg: ‘I’m okay, and I—but—and I have purpose.’ And I think, since like October, I’ve found that like—so that was really it. Because I didn’t—I mean, it would have been nice if my mom hadn’t been an alcoholic and there are some things, maybe I have some resentments or whatever, but I never felt like—I never real—Like my story’s not one where I go, ‘I always felt weird.’ I’m like, ‘I always thought everyone’s weird.’ I don’t believe in normal people. I don’t believe in them. I think hipsters are almost the most normal people in the world ‘cause of the—they’re the most extreme conformists to the point where their conformity sets them apart and makes them such unbelievable assholes that I, you know—
Paul: Right.
Greg: When they’re like, ‘Well I’m not like normal people.’ Well fuck, I don’t know a normal person.
Paul: Right.
Greg: I really don’t.
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: Everybody I know is bizarrely beautifully fucked up in some weird way. They have some little weird thing—that’s what makes us so fucking awesome.
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: Right?
Paul: The emails that I’ve been getting from people that have found this podcast have been so encouraging because they’re so many people out there that are blown away that we feel just the way that they do. They think that they’re alone in having insecurities. You know, I have this survey on the website that you can take. And I ask—there’s about twenty questions you can [be] ask[ed] and like you know, one of the questions are “What are the common negative thoughts you have towards yourself?” And, you can go and you can see other people’s responses. And about four hundred people have taken the survey so far, and there is such a common theme running through there of negative ways people look at themselves, —
Greg: Right.
Paul: the fears that we have, the things that we feel shame over, the things that we feel guilty over.
Greg: Right.
Paul: And I’ve never felt so connected to other people since I started doing this podcast. I felt connected to people once I got sober and stopped anaesthetizing my feelings, —
Greg: Yeah.
Paul: but I’ve been really blown away at how much thirst people have to feel a part of, and how pervasive that feeling that we’re broken, we’re not enough, and we’re alone, is.
Greg: Right. Right, it’s—I think it’s standard operating procedure for being a human being, and because we have—I look at religions … and I probably will offend some people here, but I look at religions almost like … your phone carrier. Everybody has a different service, to get to the same thing. There’s basic—I mean you know, —
Paul: That’s what I say. It’s different rooms—different doors into the same room.
Greg: And I’m happy for people to go whatever way they want and think whatever they want, but I do believe the one commonality is, is that a lot of us want to believe that there’s a purpose to all this, —
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: —and it just seems like there is. My feeling is, that like … you know, God isn’t, a sentient being that’s going to like, solve things. We’ve got the whole th—We were given the whole thing. And I think it’s like, ‘Okay, now go play.’
Paul: ‘How do you tap into that? How do you let it out?’
Greg: Well, it’s, you know—I think part of it is like, make good decisions, and stop hurting each other. ‘I gave you a fucking planet, I gave you animal, I gave you a brain—I figured out—You guys—This is a fucking—It’s a gigantic game, that I gave you, that should end up perfect if you just do it right. If you just treat people with love, if you just allow people to have their things, if you just, you know, police each other in a way that any decent human being would be—and if you just make good decisions and if you’re of service. If you spend most of your life thinking about others, everything will go fine. As soon you start thinking about yourself, it’s—that’s when things go awry.
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: It’s just not as complicated as we’ve made it. That’s my—That’s how I—
Paul: Right.
Greg: —need to process it.
Paul: Right.
Greg: That’s my—Again, this is all just me. And when I had that very simple understanding of things, my life immediately just got better. I’m like, ‘Oh okay, so this is really it.’ You know.
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: ‘I have my crosses to bear like everybody else, but I’m not gonna—you know, I’m not gonna carry these resentment—‘I’m gonna lay my burden down. Lay it down.’
Paul: What are some common fears—I wanna try something. I’ve never done this before, but let’s go back and forth … with, fears, that we have.
Greg: Yeah.
Paul: And see—try it until we run out.
Greg: Right.
Paul: And I’ll start it off with a bad one. I’m afraid that my genitalia is ugly.
Greg: I’m afraid that mine is too small.
Paul: I’m afraid that my wife isn’t as attracted to me as she used to be.
Greg: I am afraid that I won’t work again.
Paul: I am afraid that I am going to regret how I live my life when I’m in my sixties.
Greg: I’m afraid that the band won’t play enough shows this year.
Paul: I’m afraid that I am going to … misjudge how this podcast is going to be received, and put too much energy into it and be disappointed.
Greg: I’m almost afraid to say the thing that I’m most afraid of is that something awful will happen to one or both of my children.
Paul: I’m afraid that we’re due for an earthquake, and I’m gonna see my pets or my wife suffer.
Greg: I am afraid that I’ve taken my family down a really bad path, and I don’t know how to get back.
Paul: I am afraid that I’m going to get cancer.
Greg: I am afraid that I’m not going to … get all of the things done that I want to get done, before I leave.
Paul: I am afraid … that I’ve run out of things to say I’m afraid [of].
Greg: I’m right there with ya.
Paul: Ahuh, I think that was enough then.
Greg: Yeah.
Paul: That was good. That felt good.
Greg: Yeah. I mean those are like real—I mean—I went through a really anxious period a little while ago. I went through a bad patch. And, coming off of the He’s Just Not That [Into You], you know, I co-wrote this book for—we wrote it for fun. It became a much bigger deal than anybody ever expected it to, least of all me. It took my life in a direction that I wasn’t sure how to go to. That make sense?
Paul: Mhmm.
Greg: I suddenly went from being a stand-up to being a self-help—to use somebody else’s terminology—“guru” or “expert”. And while I feel comfortable giving—answering questions, I didn’t feel comfortable with the title “guru” or like that, —
Paul: Right.
Greg: and I never wanted that. I never wanted it.
Paul: Right.
Greg: Never. I never even in writing the book assumed that it would happen, so I didn’t—it wasn’t something that I put on my plate.
Paul: And I think that anybody that calls themself, a “self-help guru” can’t be that good.
Greg: No!
Paul: It’s like I saw a licence plate that said, “Idea Man”. How good are your ideas if that’s one of them?
Greg: Right! [Greg and Paul laugh] That’s a terri—Right. And I—So I—And I got, sort of—But I didn’t, you know—Things happen in your life and you’re like, ‘I guess is what I’m supposed to do, now. I suppose. My instincts are saying, ‘Well, maybe.’ But all these opportunities are coming, and they’re—some of them are financial and some of them are professional, and—
Paul: Right.
Greg: But it’s—But I’m now on a different path than I was on before. I was really on a stand-up—
Paul: And this is a couple of years ago.
Greg: Yeah, this is five years ago, 2005. This is when the book hit. And I went to this weird place, and—And I was, you know, I became enormously popular for a brief moment. Like a just a—It was almost like an afternoon. And—
Paul: You told me about being in a hotel in—who’s the rap guy that asked to have your autograph or picture taken with you—
Greg: Ah yeah, Nas.
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: Yeah. I didn’t even know who he was.
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: ‘My mom loves you show man, I love your show.’ And I’m like, ‘Oh, what do you do?’ ‘I’m a musician.’ ‘What’s your name?’ ‘Nas.’ ‘You’ve gotta be shittin’ me. What is happening?’ [Paul laughs] But I was … But I just—And proud of—You know it’s interesting, it’s like you do something, and you’re proud of it, and you love it, but it’s not all of who you are. But you can’t explain that to people as it’s happening, —
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: —and that’s all people want from you, and look, it’s a classic story.
Paul: You probably don’t know what else to do at that point.
Greg: You don’t, and opportunities are coming, and you know, your wife’s pregnant, and she’s, you know—suddenly some of these things happen, but the trade-off you make is, when it’s over, and it ends, and it will end, then where are you? And I was miles away from the comedy shore that I’d been at. Not that I was like a—ever a very popular comic beforehand, but I had put a lot of time into that, and establishing that. And I wiped it out, because the people that like me just got bored and went somewhere else, or the people that—or they decided they didn’t like me, or I became more famous for that, people forgot that I did comedy—A lot of people didn’t know that I did comedy. So when I go out and do shows, people would come out, I’d sell tickets, but they weren’t there to see stand-up necessarily. And while they would—you know, the shows were fine. I’d come back the next time, they weren’t there. ‘Cause they had wanted some other experience that I wasn’t able to give them, and suddenly I watched my career really start to like—I mean I dropped from this very high place that I was for—I would say I had an afternoon of fame. [Paul laughs] An afternoon. I had a nice afternoon of fame. And it—And I got very very scared, and the thing that I did wrong was, I fought it. And as soon as you’re on somebody else’s problems, soon as that phone rings, and it’s a guy, that I talk to, and say, ‘Oh, shit, yeah I know what you’—And I’m not—I’m not—The thing that’s different about like, what the self-help book is like, I’m not telling a guy what to do, I’m never telling someone what to do, I’m just saying, ‘Here’s what I did.’
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: ‘Here’s how I screwed up. Here’s what I thought helped solve my problem.’
Paul: And sometimes halfway through the phone call, you realize you’re more fucked up than that person, and they’re helping you. That’s the thing that is so amazing about helping other people,—
Greg: Yeah.
Paul: just putting yourself out there, by saying, ‘Hey, here’s my phone number. Call me if you want or need to talk.’
Greg: But—It—Because—The thing about it is, it’s not ‘I know more,’ it’s just one person talking to another, just sharing—
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: —the fucking human experience, and saying, ‘Look, here’s what I’d do.’ And people love to be able to answer your questions. That helps him, ‘cause now we’re not talking about him anymore. And I think—
Paul: And he feels a sense of purpose.
Greg: Yes!
Paul: He gets to get out of himself.
Greg: Yeah, he’s like, ‘Ah, I can’t believe you’re asking me a question.’
Paul: Right.
Greg: ‘Well, blah blah blah,’ and then he’s thrilled, and he had an answer!
Paul: Right.
Greg: And I liked his answer, and I was like, ‘That’s gonna do it. That’s gonna solve my problem. Thank you.
Paul: And—
Greg: ‘That’s exactly what I’ll do. I’ll take your advice.’ You know, sometimes, you know—And that’s all we’re really meant to do—you know, on a bigger level, it doesn’t have to be in the context of a program, it can just be with your wife, or with your kids, or with—
Paul: Group therapy,
Greg: —whoever, your friends, your roommates, just see—
Paul: Going to a coffee place and hanging out.
Greg: Spend one day just saying to people—the first thing you say to them is, “How can I help you today?” or “What can I do for you today?” “Is there anything you need?” You know?
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: I mean, it feels powerful to actually say that to people because they’re like, ‘Wow, that’s so funny, last night, I really’—You know? I don’t mind, and occasionally you end up—finding myself driving a guy to the airport. Alright, you know, whatever.
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: You know. But it—You know, enough of that starts happening and I forget that, ‘Oh, right—I—Oh, it’s—I have a career that I’m unhappy’—You know what I mean?
Paul: Right.
Greg: And suddenly something happens.
Paul: Isn’t that the—Let’s talk about that for a second. It almost seems like helping other people is little breadcrumbs on a trail to this beautiful life that has always been there, —
Greg: Yeah.
Paul: —but it just becomes revealed, —
Greg: Yeah.
Paul: when we take time out to consider other people, and their feelings.
Greg: Yeah.
Paul: And by that—You know, without being a doormat. Without, you know, being enabling, or—
Greg: Yeah, —
Paul: co-dependant, but taking time out to care about the world, things happen … on their own. There’s synchronicity that is mind-blowing.
Greg: Well that to me—That for me is the spiritual connection. That’s like, ‘Well now I’m locked in.’
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: ‘Now I’m on my plan.’
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: ‘Now I’m on my thing. When I do that, I get handed the things I need. You know, they—
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: ‘come in different shapes than I thought, —
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: ‘come in different ways than I thought, —
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: ‘they come at different times than I expected them to come, —
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: ‘Some things come back up, some things go away, something random comes away,’ I mean—But … I remember years ago I’d lost a job, and I was out working with a guy, and I literally—I had nothing going on in my career. Nothing. And I’d just lost a big job, and, I’m with this guy, we’re just, you know, we’re talking about life or whatever, and I get a phone call from my wife and they’re like, ‘Variety decided you’re gonna be one of their ten—[I’m like,] ‘Why?’ [She] said, ‘I dunno, they decided—they just did’—they decided just they’d give me one of their ten comics that they’re profiling, blah blah blah. And I was like, we’ve been mon—like nothing had, —
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: like it just took care of itself. It just—
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: I—Because I’d done work, because I’d done—I mean you can’t have an imaginary career, you have to go do open mics and—
Paul: Right.
Greg: —stand-up and do that sort of—you have to do the little work. You have to do the work. You know, part of what—
Paul: But then step back and stay out of obsessing about where it’s gonna lead—
Greg: Can’t—
Paul: —and what the results are gonna be.
Greg: You can’t do anything about the results.
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: That’s the problem.
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: You just can’t do anything about the results.
Paul: It—That to me is one of the biggest … tools, to having a chance at sanity, is getting a clear picture on what I have control over and what I don’t have control over.
Greg: Right.
Paul: And for so much of my life I tried to control things that I had no control over. […] Something interesting happened to me—Somebody had suggested that I try meditating because I was just caught in one of these negative thought kinda loops that I could see was just degrading the quality of my life. And this person said, ‘Well, you should consider meditation.’ So I took this meditation class, and the woman that taught me how to meditate, she said you know, ‘One of the things that people who meditate discover is the world becomes more fluid and there’s less friction. Things come to them easier.’ And I remember thinking, ‘I don’t understand how meditating is really gonna do that.’ I had to go back home to do a hockey fundraiser later that week and I—there’s three pieces of equipment that I needed to get. I needed to get a new helmet, a new pair of hockey pants, and a pair of hockey gloves. And the night before I was gonna go buy those three items, a friend of mine said, ‘Hey, this guy I know bought this equipment and was gonna play hockey, but never took it up.’ This is a couple of days after I started meditating. He goes—He gave it to me, and, ‘You’re the only person I know that plays hockey, would you like it? It’s a pair of hockey gloves, [Greg laughs] a pair of pants, and a helmet.’
Greg: Yeah.
Paul: And they all fit perfectly. And I just—It’s like there are times when the universe just throws you these bones that keep you going and you just kind of—
Greg: Totally. I—No, I mean—And the thing that’s so funny, so you tell a story like that, and certainly there are people listening and in their head the word “coincidence” is coming in. And it’s like, ‘Absolutely, want to call it a coincidence, —
Paul: But you get enough of them.
Greg: But also like—But what do you get out of blocking the idea that it might actually be some divine intervention, like, what’s the big—what’s your big mistake in going, ‘Well maybe there is somebody paying attention to me up there. Maybe the universe—however that works—is paying attention to me on some level.’
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: It’s not solving my problems, —
Paul: Right.
Greg: but it just like—I let go of a need, because I couldn’t do anything about it, and it just sort of showed up. I had a very similar experience when I first got sober. Like I had no money, called my parents, told them I didn’t want anything from them anymore, that I had taken too much from them, that I had used them, and I was sorry, and I was gonna make my own way, and all I wanted was a fucking candle. I wanted a candle in my bedroom. I wanted some sort of thing, and I didn’t have any money, and blah blah blah, and I went to a friend’s house and she goes, ‘You know what, I got this box of candles today,’ [Paul laughs] and I—you know, it was like, ‘Okay, okay’—You know I really wan—And it meant so much more, it was from a friend and came, and I wanted it for the same reason you know just so I can light a candle and meditate or do whatever, —
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: and there are those times where I do feel like it’s just nudging you, like—It’s almost, like a light going, ‘You’re on the right pa—It’s not, —
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: ‘I’m solving your problems,’ it’s like, ‘This is were you’re supposed to be.’
Paul: Right.
Greg: ‘For this stuff to happen. This is the—Keep doing the thing that you’re doing, you’re going back to do this thing, you know you’re going back to do an event for somebody, you know, the—and it doesn’t cost me anything to have faith, —
Paul: Right.
Greg: that something good could happen.
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: You know, to be slightly optimistic—I mean that’s how I knew that I was in trouble when I first stopped drinking, ‘cause I was like, ‘Oh, I hate everybody.’ [Paul laughs] ‘And I’m blaming everyone for my lot in life and—
Paul: Right.
Greg: ‘it’s clearly my fault.’ And I’m actually not predis—I’m chemically not predisposed that way. I’m a fairly upbeat, fairly positive guy.
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: And I was a lot of my life, even throughout my mom’s alcoholism and the weird things that we went through, so—
Paul: So you’ve never had bouts of, sustained bouts of depression or, —
Greg: Only right after—I went through a pretty black time right after the—He’s Just Not That Into You came out. And then I had a talk show and the talk show was cancelled, and then—
Paul: That led to the black part?
Greg: Yeah.
Paul: Because—
Greg: I lost everything. I lost my—my agent became—went over and became the head of A—I lost my agent, my manager, my lawyer, I lost everything. I literally lost everything. Our book company dropped us, like we—I lost everything, I couldn’t get any—It was [the] classic show business thing where you go, ‘Oh, this actually happens.’
Paul: Right.
Greg: ‘People dump you. They’re done with you, and they dump you,’ —
Paul: Right.
Greg: and I didn’t know—What I did know, I wouldn’t accept.
Paul: Right.
Greg: The only thing that’s gonna fix this is time. That’s the only thing. You had your dance, everybody saw you, [laughs] they fucked you. They’re done.
Paul: Right.
Greg: Go home, put on an outfit, wait a while, [laughs] come back.
Paul: Right.
Greg: And that is show business. The tide comes in and the tide goes out.
Paul: Right.
Greg: And I feel like—I refused to—I was like, ‘No, no. I’m the exception to the rule. I will fucking fin—And I tried—I fought it. I fought my reality, and I got very depressed.
Paul: And can you describe how you fought that reality. What were you doing that—
Greg: Yelling at my manager, trying to figure out why I couldn’t get certain things to have happen and … being upset with audiences that came out that weren’t—didn’t understand that I was also a comedian—like just finding, finding fights. I was finding fights. I was finding fights with people. I wasn’t accepting the reality of my life, that this thing was going to be bigger than me for a while, and that I was going to have to find new ways to do it. I mean, you know, the one nice thing was about it was—I work at things all the time, and so I was like, ‘Oh, I think I’ll play some music. No-one’s expecting it, no-one needs it, —
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: ‘there won’t be—I can’t disappoint anybody, I want to write instrumental surf style music because then it can be interpreted by anyone anyway. I don’t want to be in a band with a singer.’ And so, I did that. And I found a project I could throw myself into that I loved, and was pure, and was artistic, and had no—there was no goal with it.
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: I wasn’t—There wasn’t like, ‘This is my thing.’ This was like, ‘This is something that’s har—simply so that when I get into my car, I can listen to it.’
Paul: I—that’s where I listen to it. You gave me a CD and I loved it.
Greg: Thank you.
Paul: It’s great. It’s called The Reigning Monarchs, is the—
Greg: Yeah.
Paul: is the name of the CD, and the title of the CD itself is—
Greg: The Reigning Monarchs.
Paul: Yes.
Greg: Self-titled debut, —
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: you can get it at thereigningmonarchs.com, you can download it for free or a price of your choosing.
Paul: And “reigning” is spelt “R E I G N—
Greg: Yeah.
Paul: I N G”
Greg: And that was the beginning of like realizing like, you know, for a while you’re gonna have to make things on your own. Everyone’s—You know, it’s not—
Paul: That you’re not gonna die.
Greg: You’re not gonna die.
Paul: You’re not gonna disappear.
Greg: Well that was—My wife was like, ‘I don’t understand, we—you know, there’s a roof, and the kids are in school, and—
Paul: How do they not f—Why are—Are we wired to be the ones that freak out, or it just that one spouse—
Greg: Yeah.
Paul: —freaks out and the other one automatically—
Greg: Well I think probably—
Paul: —because my wife—
Greg: you assume whatever role that you’re in, —
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: you know. My wife has never been a freaker outer.
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: It just—My wife is just a solid solid human being. And I think, I don’t feel … as a man, I don’t feel complete unless I’m working.
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: I just don’t. I—You know, I can’t attribute that to anything other than—for Greg Behrendt, Greg Behrendt needs to be working to feel complete. I love—You know, you can’t put that—People are like, ‘Well, what about your kids, and your family?’ I’m like, ‘Well that’s a lot of pressure to put on them, to bring my happiness.’ My job is to make them happy. My job is to make sure that True and Mighty are sorted, and that they’re getting connection from me, and that we’re doing things together, and I certainly get some joy out of that, but that is not my vocation, nor is it my—it can’t be my passion. My passion can’t be my children. They don’t want that.
Paul: Right.
Greg: What do I do when that’s done? And they leave? That’s the wrong way to parent. I think that, you know, my job is to make sure that they are feeling good, and encouraging them, and being there with them, but I don’t want them to feel the pressure of, ‘Oh God, dad wants our attention now.’
Paul: Right, yeah.
Greg: You know, ‘Dad needs to feel happy, so we’re going to do what’—You know what I mean?
Paul: Yeah yeah, no, I think there’s a lot in this generation of parents that are smothering their kids because they’re trying to compensate for the lack of attention they got from their parents.
Greg: Yeah, I mean, what my kids know is that they’re loved, they’re well taken care of, that they can ask us anything, that they are—that this is, you know—
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: That this is a safe environment for them to be around two, you know—I’m sober, my wife’s a normie, so—But that they—But they also get to have their own lives.
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: And they get to be their own people, and they don’t have to, you know—But I can’t derive—Just like I can’t derive pleasure from my wife, she’s not my thing, she’s my wife, I’m in love with her, but I can’t make her my happiness, —
Paul: Right.
Greg: or my kids.
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: They would just be—
Paul: They’d be disappointed, —
Greg: Yeah.
Paul: because nobody can [laughs] fulfil that.
Greg: And I’m happy in creation.
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: Like I think that’s what the plan is for me. Like I—Every time I went to that area, like I’m happy when I make my podcast. I don’t care that it—For me, the money thing is more about making sure my family’s taken care of.
Paul: Right.
Greg: ‘Cause I can do without money. But as far as creating goes, I just, you know, —
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: I go up, I do my podcast with my buddy, and we put it on our website, and people listen to it, and we make our little videos, and we have a blast, and we’re not making a dime. But we love it, and it’s pure me, you know?
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: And so then I feel healthy.
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: So that also came out of it.
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: So those are things I did to get better.
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: I started to create my own fires, instead of asking for show—Hollywood if I could be in show business, I just started making my own show business.
Paul: Dude, I’m so glad to—I came over today and got to—That was fun doing the fear thing. I enjoyed that. I always feel so good when I get my fears out in the open.
Greg: Yeah.
Paul: You know, without doing it inappropriately and just you know, dumping on a stranger, you know, “Hey, you’re gonna have a lot to—you know I’m afraid that [laughs]
Greg: Well sometimes too, like I notice when you’re doing—you’re acknowledging it like, ‘Well that’s not really that bad of a—you know what I mean? Like, if you put—if you give voice to them, they sort of then dissipate a little bit, —
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: —they feel a little bit less like—you know, as you’re thinking of them and they’re coming out of your mouth, you’re like, ‘I’m afraid of that, but I could—you know, I can handle it,’ you know what I mean? Like they—You make up—But you know, when you have a family, and you decide you’re gonna have kids, that’s the gamble you take, that something’s going to happen to them. They’re people. Things happened to me as a kid.
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: That just is the way it is. But you know, you don’t want them to, and so you hold that thought, but you know, there just isn’t—We were built … to navigate these waters.
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: You know, that’s how we were built. You know there really is nothing you can’t handle, you know. And when you can’t—you know, the beautiful thing about life is—and this has been—In all of our books, in all of our self-help books and in the He’s Just Not That Into You, and in It’s Called a Breakup Because It’s Broken. We’re always saying, ‘Look, there’s always someone you can talk to. There’s always someone.’
[1:14:31 Outro music begins]
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: Clergy—there are so many people who have dedicated their lives it. You know, our book is simply a jumping off point. ‘Do you know that you’re good enough not to be in a shit relationship? If you don’t know it, I will—I will fucking tell you.’ And we say it in that tone. ‘And fucking, get it together. You’re a superstar, this is horseshit. Stop accepting less than good behaviour from [them], and get to it. And then, if you’re having trouble with it, see a professional.
Paul: Yeah.
Greg: Go talk to somebody. People love to hear you talk—People want to help you. I know that I lo—Like I told you before, I love it when my phone rings, ‘cause now it’s not—now the voices in my head have to be quite ‘cause we’re listening to somebody. [Paul laughs]
Paul: Yeah. And I think that’s the perfect note to end on, so if you’re out there and you’re struggling and you’re feeling stuck, get some help, talk to somebody, don’t try to solve it yourself. Know that there is hope, and you are not alone. So thanks for listening.
Dana MacCaughtry
06/03/2011 at 10:55 amOMG I love you….and miss you and Carla….you are hysterical! When can we do lunch again????? Please o please lets try…..and medical maryjane aint all its cracked up to be…hahahaha….Seriously, lunch, Danielle will be into it to! This is fantastic – I am gonna take your survey too! talk soon!