- Tommy gets off stage and they
go, "Yeah, Tommy,
come with us, guy." And they take him around
the corner, and the guy is handcuffed to a chair, and they
go, take a couple rips at him, there you go, and he-- Tommy just lights this
dude up. [engine revs] [dark electronic music] ♪ [mouthing words] [gunshot] [heart beating] [roars] [gunshots] [growls] [roars] [growls] [roars] [cheers and applause] - Hilarious man. You guys are
gonna absolutely love him. He's got his own
podcast called "FitzDog Radio," give it up for
Mr. Greg Fitzsimmons, everybody! [cheers and applause] - I wanna tell you a story
about Boston, Massachusetts. I started doin' stand-up comedy
there, and it is the place to learn stand-up because it's
not--in Boston, you don't perform for the crowd,
you perform against the crowd. There's a winner
and there's a loser. And when you first start coming
up, it's, like, you realize very quickly--it's
saloon comedy, and it's guys from Southie. They go, "What are you--hey,
Sully, Fitzy, "what are you doing tonight,
kid? Let's go downtown, heckle some
queers." [laughter] "Then we'll go down and beat up
some colored kids. Come on, guy." So they come out to these clubs,
and the comics are, you know,
these are bad-ass dudes. And they--there was a lot of
drugs, and there was a club called "Stitches Comedy Club,"
and the comedians used to sit at the bar and do coke while
the watched each other. They'd get paid 100 bucks cash. They would immediately hand it
to a guy, guy would give them an envelope
of coke, and they'd chop it up. And the club told them they
could no longer do coke at the bar, and they had a
strike for four days. The comedians went on strike
until they were allowed to snort cocaine at the bar. And they had a guy--there was this one guy named Tommy, like,
the best comedian I've ever seen, this guy out of Boston. I can't say his last name for
legal reasons, because this next story involves
him perhaps committing a felony. He was on stage, and some
wise-ass from Southie, he goes back and forth with him.
Guy throws a bottle at Tommy. Cops are in the back of the
club, 'cause the cops would hang out at Stitches, and
so would the prostitutes, 'cause it was in the Red Light
District. So the back of the room
was cops who were pretty much on the take.
The mob owned the place, and so these cops happened to be
in the back, and they grab the guy
who threw the bottle, and they take him out,
and I'm just thinkin' they are throwing a beating on
this dude right now. But then, Tommy gets off stage and they go, "Yeah, Tommy,
come with us, guy." And they take him around
the corner, and the guy is handcuffed to a chair, and they
go, take a couple rips at him, there you go. And he--Tommy just lights this
dude up--chest, stomach, and he goes, "Yeah, that felt
pretty good, thanks. Now I'll go do a couple lines
off the bar and relax." So the first time I ever did
stand-up comedy was at Stitches at this thing called--Sunday
nights, amateur night-- and they called it Comedy Hell. That literally would be written
on the marquee: "Comedy Hell." And it was hosted by a guy named
George MacDonald, and he he would start the show
off by saying, "Welcome to Comedy Hell, where
the dreams of a handful of "road comics can soar as high as
the lights on Broadway "or crash and burn in that fiery
pit known only as Comedy Hell." And I go up, and I remember my
first time, I followed a guy out of Providence who was
dressed as a clam. [laughter] And he sang "Mannish Boy"--
"I'm a man." But it was "I'm a clam."
Get it? 'Cause he was dressed--I don't
know if I mentioned he was dressed as a clam. And he kills, destroys. The place, like...
[roaring] And I'm in the back going like,
"Holy shit. "I have no clam outfit. I'm fucked." And so I go up on stage, and I
tank it. I am eating it, and it's going
so poorly, I'm between jokes, and I overhear a woman in the
front row say to her husband, "The poor bastard." [laughter] It was worse than being yelled
at, 'cause she didn't think I'd hear it. And so--so I work this club,
and I become a regular. And then I come in one
Sunday night, and there's a Jewish singles night
that's in the club. So they--all the--you know,
these rich kids from Boston have got the room for the night. And so the room is filled with
these kids, and then there's one table for four up front with
only one person at it, and he's heckling everybody. And it turns out that he is this
guy from the Israeli Army who's a cabdriver, and he heard
"Jewish singles night," and thought, "I am real Jew!
They will love me!" It's like, no, they love
the Jew-ish guy, not the Jew-guy, they want
the guy--the pre-med Jew-guy. And so he's heckling everybody,
but here's the thing: he's good. He's like a heckling savant.
He goes inside people's heads, and he breaks them down. There's a girl on stage, and she--and she's bombing
and he goes--he goes to her, "You have loneliness
in your eyes." [laughter] [screams feebly] And another guy--another
guy gets up, and he says to this other guy,
"You lack basic confidence." You can't come back from that.
Once you're told that, it only gets worse as you try to say,
no, I do have confidence. And so I'm watching this,
and I'm like, "Shit." But I--what I've learned
from watching Boston comedy is you fight for that space. You don't give
that shit away. So I'm ready, and I go on,
I'm three minutes into my act, and he goes,
"You are [bleep] man." [laughter] Like I'm a superhero, like
I should have an F on my chest and--and leap over dicks,
and so, and I--and it does make you
think, all right, if he was so on the money on
these other guys, is that
what people think about me, that I'm a [bleep] man? And I'm angry, but I'm angry at
myself. Maybe I should have--whatever,
so-- so now, he calls me this, and so
then I just go right after him. I go, "All right, pal,
you want to get in my head? How 'bout I get in yours?" I go, "You"--this is the worst
thing you can say to a Jewish person--"You are a bad Jew. You left Israel." [laughter] And he says to me,
he looks at me, and he says, "Nothing more." I said, "Really--nothin' more?"
I go, "I want you to think "about this: every time you're
driving your cab down Com Ave, "and some ugly American gives
the 'Heil Hitler' sign, you pull over,
and you give them a ride." [laughter] [laughs]
And the flames come out of his eyes, and he just jumps up
on stage, fist clenched, comes straight at me,
and so I've got the microphone, and it's, like, it's, like, this
kind of wire mesh, but I don't know if you remember
back in the '90s, they were--it was big steel. It was like a--it was like a
"Game of Thrones" weapon. And so I just take it,
and I just-- I crack him across the forehead,
and he is bleeding all over his face.
And the audience is like, "What the fuck is happening?" And then he comes at me, but now
he's this stocky dude from the Israeli Army, and he gets me--
he gets me into a headlock, and does some Krav Maga shit,
turns me around, and now my ass is towards the audience,
and they just see him pummeling me while my ass goes in the air,
and then he starts spinning me like a helicopter.
My legs are flopping around the front row, tables are goin'
down, drinks are smashed, I'm screaming, crowd's
screaming, bouncers-- bouncers are--they're out back
smokin' a joint. So it takes about three minutes
of beating before finally these guys come on stage,
and they grab this guy, who's name was Simpka, by the
way. I remember his name was Simpka,
'cause I remember telling him that was the name of the village
idiot in Woody Allen's movie "Love and Death," so...so they
grab Simpka, and they throw him
out of the club. And I'm standing next to
the stage, and my neck is on fire, and the club owner
comes over to me, and he goes like this, he goes, "All right, Fitzsimmons,
you got five minutes left." [laughter] So the MC--the show is now
stopped. The MC then reintroduces me, and I walk up on stage, and I get up there,
and the crowd jumps on its feet, my first standing ovation
of my life. [cheers and applause] Because--
'cause this is Boston. They'd rather see a fight
than a comedy show any night of the week.
So they calm down, and I just look around the crowd, and I go,
"All right, who's next?" All right, you guys have been
great, thank you very much. [dark electronic music] ♪
