Jay Leno - Adam Carolla Show 11/15/21

well here with the great jay leno the game show it's a new game well it's an old game show that jay brought back you bet your life it airs now and you can go to youbetyourlife.com for local listings got his old uh band leader kevin eubanks right back and uh back with the old uh well what's old is new again as they say good to see you my friend good to see you uh i was talking about you the other day because uh i did a show with jay out at brea and everyone was so impressed by who you were and just how you hit the ground running you know i said when when jay got on the stage at the comedy club it was like a marlin in the open sea it just felt like where he should be like a whale in the open sea is probably fun it felt it just you walked out on stage and it i could just feel it wash over the audience and me well you should always have a joke to open you know i hate that when you go to go how's everybody doing everybody denver whoo denver boston yeah boss yeah tell a joke i'm i'm with you in the sense that when you see guys and they're trying to get 15 20 minutes of stage time and they're doing crowd work right it's sort of like i mean i'm i'm not a comedian snob but i'm like didn't you come out here to work out some material why are you doing crowd work exactly exactly so uh but i did also note and i remember this very clearly and it's made me a little insecure over the years but i said to jay i carry around these these buck slips because i i say something i think of something i forget about it immediately i got to write it down all the time and jay said uh well if it's funny you'll remember it and i thought no i won't like i forget stuff and then i realized talking to you about cars and motorcycles and then hearing you pull all these jokes out one after the other i think you have a photographic memory no i don't first of all there's no such thing as photography do you know that there's no i couldn't remember that there's no proof that there's such a thing as a photograph well what we would call what people would say is a photograph you know what i think as a comic things that it makes a notch in your mind you know i i always tell the story but the first joke i've ever told i remember being in the fourth grade and it uh mrs allen who i still see by the way because when i was like nine she was like 22 as a teacher right but i thought she was like 60 at the time you know again so when i go back to my hometown she's like 88 or something out you know but right we're still friends but she was talking about robin hood you know and robin hood and she said the sheriff of nottingham how cruel he was and uh uh he wouldn't when he captured robin's men he would boil them in oil and i put my hand up and i said you know why he did that to tuck and she said no why because he was a friar right and she went all right that's not funny but then i then i noticed she she smiled you know right so okay like a so then later on the class breaks you know so go through a couple of periods and i'm walking down the hall one of the teachers came with lotto lino come here what was he said something about robert what what mrs allen said he said something like a friar oh fire that's what i think i know i went oh she went back and repeated my job oh yeah so i always remember you know i i think as a comedy you just you instinctively remember the stuff that gets a laugh the stuff that's really funny but it that that is true but is somebody who knows uh a lot about cars and then to hear what you know about cars there's a lot of information out there on and again you know sometimes you meet car guys and they're mopar guys and they just know everything about right yeah those guys are always very funny they're always a delight super funny yeah those guys oh they just know this thing they have their niche and they know nothing about other cars you know the guy came out right who was a hemi guy oh you're hammer your hammy was both on a thursday by a guy named george johansson and he had been sick on friday but he came in the phone and they'll tell you all that then he says to me what's that over there that's a duesenberg or is it german no no it's some it's it's america you never heard no you never heard over those more that's all he knew were hemis you know i i completely agree and i sort of look at it as i have i always kind of liken it to the guys who claim they they love women but just redheads and i'm like why if you love women there's a lot more than that and i think uh jay's a lover of all cars yeah i think it rolls explodes and makes noise i i think it's a fair but and and again i'm not gonna force you into claiming the mantle of photographic memory or whatever the version of that is but you do have at your fingertips so much information about so many different kinds of knowledge you know the fact i get it i got like an example i had a ford guy we were testing the new mach 1 mustang and the chief engineer from ford got kind of everything about it and um he was talking about the the horse logo and i said do you know the one on the front you know where that's from and you go well he's one of us and he said no no and there was a guy named uh it began with a k canar something like that he was a designer from ford and he was in the 1938 olympics as an equestrian and then world war ii started then since he was in question he got drafted into the cavalry corps okay he got in the cavalry car his commanding officer was killed and since he was a leading question he was made commanding officer and he led the last charge on horseback in modern warfare against tanks wow got literally i mean everybody got blown up and he's got a sword and they're charging your tanks right these guys just get blown away anyway the war ends he comes to america he becomes a designer for ford and he designs this horse which is an homage to the horse he rode in that last calvary charge now the reason he never heard about this he was on the other side oh really wow yeah he was a german side and he goes he goes asking to buy american eggs but you think oh man what a story imagine a guy with a sword charging a tank you know right you guys are blowing up and you're just still charging that tank and you think what a bro oh he's on the other side oh it's like well you have a great drama so that's why you never heard the story did uh it just it just popped in my head that you brought up a duesenberg i know you drove your tesla plaid here with the yoke and the crazy zero to 60 zero to 100 quarter mile time the speed uh up at laguna seca i mean the stats are mind-numbing on that car but i i was thinking about you know some of life is kind of luck you know like what era you're in you know you weren't 18 when world war ii broke out right and that's that's good because you may have been on a horse charging a tank right right um and there's plagues and poverty and there's stuff but it seems to me like you with the duesenberg on on one side of the garage and the tesla plaid on the other seems like a good era to be born into because you have this crazy technology and then all this amazing whatever the tesla of the past was from the 20s actually the best time to be born is probably the year 1900 because you grow up in an agricultural society then the wright brothers come along then lindbergh comes along and then we walk on the moon all within your lifetime right i mean lindbergh soros walk on the moon did you know that yeah he died in 71 i think yeah and the idea that uh oh you flew across the ocean i was oh my god it was like going oh my god the whole world celebrate you're the most you're the most popular figure in the world for flying to france right which seems so you know so yeah i think i think that's the most amazing era to live in because now now you expect stuff you know do you ever watch breaking bad if you watch the whole series i watch everyone my favorite line was when the aaron paul's character this is a stupid you know the meth head kid he and he and the uh walter white are trapped the cops are coming and he goes can't you just like make a robot or something get us out of here because i'm the scientist here can you just make a but now we live in an era where people just expect stuff to mm-hmm we're disappointed when it doesn't do this right you know as opposed to an error with what you you went to the moon that's not possible now we're well yeah it's okay mars he was one of mars yet i mean now you just expect it to happen yeah when i was growing up if i got into a car with air conditioning it was miraculous and now my kids get into a car that doesn't have air conditioning they're pissed and that's well we used you know when i was a kid it got so humid around hampton beach around new hampshire and salisbury beach massachusetts so what we got we got my dad's car we did not have air conditioning we'd roll out the windows we'd roll our sleeves down and we put jackets on right and drive around hey girls what a cool girl the girls are looking at you've got an air conditioning yeah and then they get like there's nowhere in this car no no no it's just it just broke anyway we beat women who would be too disappointed when we didn't have air we just looked like we had air conditioning we've got guys with air conditioning did you uh i mean we we know when you were nine that yes that that's a very real moment where you know the teacher who may have not really cracked in front of you but you know repeated your joke another member of the faculty that it's one of those little kind of watershed sounds like nothing but mean something moments was it that point on did you know comedy was in the future no not really but i knew what got a reaction from you know you know you never i never knew the power of words i remember once when i was a kid you know we would have the adults table and the children's table [Music] and one day we were my uncle lou we would have sunday dinner all the relatives and i said my uncle lou was the bachelor of the family you know and my mother said how's that lovely louise louie are you still seeing her and he said no i'm not seeing anymore and my mom said why not and lou said she's frigid i saw my mother just look furious what was that right and i saw everybody my dad kind of laughed you know what was all about you know so after that then if i could get a dictionary look up frigid frozen you know frozen to death okay so the next week loses dinner you know and i said uh and i'm sorry to hear about louise and luke said well what'd you hear well i guess she froze to death right she dies oh so what do you mean she froze to death wait didn't she freeze it off my mother what what do you mean well last week uncle said she was frigid and my dad wow oh you know all the guys that dave my mother that that that was the day they invented the children's table from that point on i was now sitting over in the other in the other room literally in the kitchen at the table while the adults had dinner but yeah i i just always remember that because it got a reaction from adele so i i've always been able to remember things that were said that got a reaction that was different from what normally would happen you know uh working with people in this business can be a pain in the butt sometimes um not with mr leno he's always early he's always ready to go um and i see the way you interact with your fans and i i see the way you you know comport and conduct yourself i should say but do you think of yourself as a pleaser yeah i guess i am i think so i would get i would take a lot of heat for that but uh i mean that's your job as a performer i mean you're there to make people laugh i guess or at least give it a shot uh but i do i i you know i'm a huge believer in low self-esteem i think it's the key to success yeah if you don't think you're the smartest person in the room you'll listen and pay attention like when i got the tonight show i just hired what i thought were the best lighting people best producer best director and they just let them do their job i never interfered and never said well hold on hang on i think we need more this light over here because it's not my area you guys do what you and it worked out fine we had the same people for 22 years and we were number one for 20 of the years and that was cool and that was fine i never felt i had to stick my nose in you know well you know something that i always took note of when i would do your show back in the day is you we'd be running through rehearsal and then one of your head writers or producer would say like hey jay don't do it this way do it the other way it's funnier that way and you'd go all right which sounds like it makes sense cause you hired the guy and he's funny and he's giving you some constructive criticism or note or whatever but a lot of guys that wouldn't sit right with i feel like a lot of people well i don't i understand i always wonder the under the premise and anybody can pull the court and stop the train which cause problems sometimes but it it it keeps it real okay what was wrong with tonight's show you sucked oh okay okay i suck tonight it's easier than taking a week and analyzing it no i just suck tonight i mean you have to be able to do that um yeah yeah that's it's the easiest way to get there plus when people feel like they're a part of something we're contributing when an intern can say i don't get that i don't think it's funny oh okay why and if it's a sometimes it's a valid reason sometimes it's totally not but just the fact that they get to contribute now they feel like they're part of the show you know my favorite scene in the godfather movie i think was godfather 2 he goes to cuba and he sees the guy blow himself up so he could kill the two policemen and he says okay when your own troops are willing to die to take you down that's what i thought and that's what i see happen in tv all the time people got a show oh and the writers and they they hate them so much they actually don't care if they lose their job as long as he or she loses her job and that that's usually what happens you know so i was always very cognizant of that fact so he always had a pretty good good crew you know yeah and a happy crew and a happy crew i mean when i was well i'm blowing my own horn here but when i was doing the tonight show i was making 30 million a year it was ridiculous okay and nbc said well we're gonna have to cut half the crew you know so we had a big meeting i said all right bro show hands how many feel i should take a 50 pay cut so we can keep everybody well i got out voted and i said i got screwed on that one but really i already have 15 million dollars i'm doing pretty good you know i never thought i'd get this far and you know something they were the best crew for the rest of the days uh you know everything was always terrific it was a union crew everybody made a good living you know guys who come up and show me the car they bought or the house they got around the corner or whatever it might be and it didn't cost me anything really because i had plenty money i was making plenty of money what year did you take the haircut from 30 to 15. it was in the 2000s maybe 2005 from that point on i think they uh the legend is is that you always kept all those tonight show checks oh yeah and made your money doing live performances yeah corporate things yeah yeah you got to be hungry i i i i live on i like i used to live week to week did you literally just put those checks you know in the bank and i loved the money i made as a stand-up yeah i i wanted to be a comedian i never thought tv was a job that would last year how many years did you do that until the very end i never touched any of it i always worked so i was doing 210 days a year i listen i know what you can get paid if you go out and sprinkle some corporate gigs in there there's money to be made oh yeah but uh you still have a pretty big nut you have guys who work for you you purchase a car every once in a while yeah yeah uh fly sort of private and that uh you have to refuel in muncie indiana every once in a while you can get all the way across the country but the the money just went to an account yeah still there still there yeah and um so how do you what do you think of this so it's not urban legend that uh that's what you did that's what you did no but i mean i'm not i don't have girlfriends and cocaine habits and stuff like that you know so you could save a tremendous amount of money did um how do you reconcile this sort of comedic mind with the mechanical mind because it's not a it seems like it's not a coincidence to me that most the comedians i know have zero sort of tangible life skills you know they they seem to be fairly inept but also mainly just not interested in cars and construction and mechanics and i sort of have you pegged as kind of a mechanical guy even more than a car guy well you know that's not really true i mean tim allen very much that way well you can find exceptions but i'm saying like by and large yeah i think i think you're right it's a genetic flaw that makes you a comedian it's not a plus we just happen to live in an era when it pays dividends i mean if this was the crusades it would be why are the soldiers laughing who's making him laugh kill that guy you know and that's what yeah because he's annoying just kill that guy just kill him right now because they're not paying attention but we live in the time now well now it happens to happens to pay very good dividends so that's pretty lucky but i mean i find most communities either just off the wall drunk cokeheads crazy or complete abstain i rarely find anybody in the middle you know don't you find that to be true too yeah i mean comedians maybe there's something to the fact that they're trying to construct and connect things all the time in their head i recently had a person say to me when i said i get home i just want to watch tv i just i i watch and people say like what do you watch i go old episode of starskin hutch and they go why because i just want to sit there and the person said that's because your your brain is trying to connect things all day and then you get home and you don't want to connect things but i'm wondering if sometimes comedians think a little too much i mean you well i think this is silly saying but the hardest healthiest when the head and the hands work together i go to the garage work and stuff all day okay you know you take your transmission out you smell awful and and you you keep washing your hands with brillo pads and and then you realize a guy made eighty dollars for doing that for the day then you stand on stage you tell a joke well this is such an easy way to make money i've owned it up here four minutes i already made back the 80. well is that i i have the same feeling it's a kind of a blue collar mentality which is when people people accuse me of working a lot and i go what do you mean working a lot like oh yeah i got it going you do a bunch of podcasts and you go to a show that night and i go that's not work yeah yeah exactly i'm the same way roofing is working yeah roofing being a roofer is the worst job you got to be in the sun and they're like no but you work then you go out of town then you write a book and i always go but it doesn't they're trying to convince me it's work it doesn't really feel like work no it's not working but maybe you need a kind of blue collar base to have that to be calibrated well i have a pool that i've never but not never been in i have a house in beverly hills i went in the pool in 89 to fix the light that was the last time because every time i get near the pool i get like 10 feet to the pool and i hear that boston voice wait wait big shot where you sit in the pool in beverly hills don't you do now huh you got nothing broke in here how you got nothing you got to fix really where are you going where are your trust fund baby you're going to sit in the pool there you go do float around no no i'm not going to go i mean i can't bring myself to get in the pool i i get near it i put my hand in it oh it seems okay and then i i rationalize i go okay i get in the pool now okay now i'm wet now what you know so i i can't so i go back and then i find something to do and you know seinfeld and i used to have this discussion all the time you know we were both young comics and we're doing like 250 dates a year we used to say what if we went on vacation and we liked it then we're screwed then we're really screwed so let's not ever go on vacation because you might like it and then then what oh man what is a normal day for you when you're not you know doing you bet your life or you know some some specialty corporate thing or gig or something well i do something every day but i i go to the garage i work on stuff or i help my wife with stuff and you get up and head into the warehouse every day yeah every day this is yeah it's awesome i mean if i do one oil change a day that takes a year and a half you know so okay today i changed the oil on the on a 1927 model x duesenberg so i just i finished that so it just came from so do uh do you have something out there car wise because i think a lot of guys go out and they pursue cars you know they go to auctions i know you don't buy cars at auctions uh but the guys they go i want this car and then they go out and they pursue it you know no i feel like cars kind of come not not to give them to you but i mean you i don't feel you out chasing cars no i i i i buy the story as much as i like cars that have great stories or it was fascinating to me you know and i i know i know like jail tell the story but if you go to jay's shop he'll walk past a lot of the duesenbergs and a lot of the lamborghini mirrors and a lot of the ac shelby cobras and he'll get to this little three-wheel handmade buggy i guess that was based on a motorcycle as a motorcycle engine in it and then he'll walk you over there and then he'll tell you the story of that guy that that trike i think it's a three wheel yeah and and the story behind it even though it's the least recognizable maybe the least sexy and maybe the least valuable out of all the cars but it's got the best story it's also got a good story you know i have this duesenberg uh the baron barrel side and the first owner got it when he was 17 years old his grandfather died what year was that approximately that was in uh 28. were they out of indiana yeah all duesenbergs were built in 1928. oh all in one year yeah oh i didn't know they were going to build 500 a year then the depression came and it took 10 years to sell the first 484 that they had finished but anyway this guy his grandfather left him 17 000 in stock so he and the grandfather go down to the duesenberg showroom they buy this duesenberg for seventeen thousand five they drive at home the kid's father the son of the grandfather furious that the grandfather wasted the stock on the stupid car threw them both out of the house just furious then of course the depression hit and the stock was useless now but he had the car okay he had the car he sold it to a guy who was one of the first gi's into berlin and this guy with four other guys raided a bunch of german banks busted open satan's deposit box uh didn't take cash because that was used but took diamonds and gold then they bought an old motorcycle they cut it open they buried all the diamonds and the gold in the frame with the motorcycle welded it back up left the motorcycle with the motorcycle deal when germany gave him some money he said we're going to come back in a year and pick this up they said fine went back in the air imported the motorcycle cut it open took out the diamonds bought the duesenberg from ashton and a huge estate in connecticut you know then the guy got despondent over a woman within this within a year come bringing it in drove the car into the barn left it running and died in the car and across that from 1948 it's 1988 when i got it and i got it from his brother but his brother would never sell it to anybody that knew the story of his brother you know dudes are broken i heard your brother died in the car we liked it but no it's not for sale it's nevertheless so i was at a motorcycle meeting i was taught this old guy and he was uh you know drew somebody i said yeah i gave him some you know useless duesenberg facts and he seemed very impressed he goes would you ever want to buy one if one came out i said yeah you can't buy him there aren't any around he goes well i got one and i'll sell it okay so i bought it never knowing the story it wasn't till after i got it i heard from all the duesenberg collectors who didn't get it you know so it was an interesting story i have another duesenberg that was owned by strauss that owned macy's and he bought it in 1929 and he parked it in a garage in downtown manhattan in 1931 and it sat there until 2005 in the same space in the garage well there was always a rumor there was a duesenberg in a parking garage somewhere in new york so i'm not the new york guy so my wife want to go new york you go shopping i'm going to hit every parking garage so i'd go down the village like go east west east west just just hitting every parking garage just looking to see if you can look at it dude any any old cars say oh yeah whole car oh it's a falcon no it's something yeah okay so i get to west 57th street and the old cars yeah there's old duesenberg or something that rolls royce up the rules there it is there's the car it's been parked there all those years i mean the roof had collapsed because there was a hole in the roof of the garage they owed a ton of money on uh on the rental like eighty thousand dollars in back storage in the parking for the parking yeah and so i asked it for sale and the guy says well they they haven't paid us so we're going to have an auction well let me know what is our auction i bid on and i got it you know uh and we we dragged it out of the parking garage where had been sat since 1931. wow yeah i mean that's what i mean imagine a treasure like that buried in new york city you know yeah and like i said most car guys have some sort of car that's kind of commensurate with whatever tax bracket they're currently in and they kind of as they move up in tax brackets they go oh well now i want this car but i've never and and also if you also most guys kind of declare major we talked about the mopar guys and there are other guys that are american muscle guys and that's the japanese car guys and um i like paul newman race cars so there's a theme or something right right but do you just like cars and stories and the story behind it i just like the stories i like noble failures i like cars that were ahead of their time in their time duesenberg was like that it was ridiculously expensive nobody i have a car called a uh uh the uh my will sinclair uh a guy named c harold wills was henry ford's first employee and he and harry henry ford agreed to split everything 50 50. uh ford was not a chief skate but he didn't like to give credit and and wills was the guy who invented the ford logo you know they still use today the blue oval uh planetary transmission a bunch of stuff and he always come up with great ideas and like everybody else would work before they fought and he took his millions of dollars worth of stock that he had by 1912 and started the will sinclair car company and he built an overhead cam v8 bevel drive i'm a very sophisticated motor and henry ford said nobody wants to go 70 miles an hour believe me you're not going to sell this thing oh no and it was going to be a reasonable price car by the time he finished it was very expensive it was close to four thousand dollars when a model t was 260 and they sold they sold 12 000 of them but at that rate again depression hit and went out of business and so to find one of those is pretty rare there's only about 80 of them left in the world but i managed to find one in a storage container down in san diego you know people's i just hear from people who have old cars and when i heard wilson what will sinclair yeah so i went down to look at it and there it was well people have a thing with cars that is sort of unlike real estate or other things people sell which is they want the car to go to the right place many people do uh not all that is that is the reason there are plenty of cards i've gotten because people know hey i'm not going to flip it nobody wants to sell a car and then two weeks later thing and i bring a trailer for twice the money right you know i had you talk about real estate my wife and i we used to live on mandel zoro and we had a house and uh so when when when when i was up in the hollywood hills mohawk you want to sell in the house um we're asking i came up with 300 something like that and this woman shows up with a kid single mom and marc says oh let's sell it to her let's give her a break so my money we're not getting a lot of money all right so we knocked like 50 grand or whatever it was this is before housing prices went crazy okay the more i said let's let's get the drapes dry cleaned and stuff like honey we didn't dry clean the drapes when we lived here right now but we're giving her she's got a kid and it's going to be done all right so take them drank like you'll want to go again oh so we sell her the house and you feel pretty good about that and about a month later i'd let's go by and see how they i get there just as the bulldozer and i see my drapes i'm being crushed and i go and what happened like well it turned out the woman worked for a realty company and she was just flipping it yeah she she goes with his kid and pretends to be oh interesting with the sob story and we fell for i felt like the biggest rube yeah uh hilarious hello everyone oh but i remember just seeing my my drives i just thought i just saw the just crunch them up and yeah they just knocked it down and put some sort of iranian palace in there so let's uh let's talk history with uh with you history yeah when do you once you i don't know i mean we talked about very early making your dad laugh making your teacher laugh right when did you professionally kind of realize that's something you could do what's today uh you know i i don't know i guess i don't know i think you always have that doubt you always think it's gonna end tomorrow which i think is good you don't get that confident um uh i i would say probably in the 80s i guess when i i bought a house in beverly hills was this pretty good you know it was my mother's from scotland it's very hard to impress my mother you know i remember when i first came here i would uh i i would try to impress my mother with show business tales i i remember i called and stallone had just gotten 10 million dollars for two weeks work for some movie and i called my mom and told her this long pause he goes but what's he going to do the other 50 weeks i mean what if no other job comes in what happens then i said yeah you're right you know that's right but you make a hundred dollars every week you know you got that hundred dollars coming in rather just get 10 million for two weeks work yeah yeah i mean yeah so that's that i guess i'm a product of having depression era present parents rather you know my parents grew up doing the depression so i i never really thought i was i when i was a kid i always had two jobs i worked at wilmington ford and i worked at mcdonald's and i would either bank to wilmington ford money and spend the mcdonald's money or vice versa then when i became a comedian oh okay well i could quit mcdonald's so i kept the other job and then i spent the money i had made as a comedian bank the other one but then oh i was making more money as a comedian so and then eventually i dropped the other job and just lived on being a comedian then when i got the tonight show i went back to my old way of okay i'm gonna bank that job save that one and live on what i make on this one you know how much of uh you know when we always talk about but when i was working across the street from your house del zorro back in the day and i was making eight or nine bucks an hour i just wanted more money and i was doing the math on construction and i knew i liked cars and not only do you not make a lot of money in construction but you have to drive a truck right and that wasn't you know maybe there's a handful of sports cars out there maybe you get an mg or a datsun 2000 roadster or something like that if you have a job at a bank you can still kind of drive a nifty car right even if you're making 11 bucks an hour but if you're making 11 bucks an hour swinging a hammer you need a truck right and you don't have a second car and you live in an apartment there's no place to park it an apartment's not in a good neighborhood and it's going to get broken into and blah blah blah so a lot of my motivation was i want cars i i want tools i want i want to place a warehouse to put the cars and i was kind of motivated comedically because i wanted these things right right how much of that factored in for you i think it was some of that i i i was very fortunate i was always happy with whatever i had at the time i thought well this is pretty good i'm getting paid to be i'm living on what i make as a comedian well that's pretty good i thought that was just unbelievable i remember i was here in town and i was dead broke and i went down the unemployment office and i stood in line and the woman said did you look for a job this week i said not hard enough no no not like i couldn't i couldn't take them like i i couldn't i couldn't take the money i just couldn't do it i just went now look i i got two legs i got two on what am i doing you know no i said i'm i'm going to be one of those guys so i went out and you know tried to live on what i made as a comedian and i was all able to live within my means i bought a vega for 100 bucks it was an old piece of chevy vega was it was one of the well it was kind of chevy's version of uh pinto yeah yeah terrible car japanese kind of came in vw bugs i mean before that but america of gas crunch and everyone's america said we got to make a small car and they didn't know how to make a small car but i never i i was never a credit card guy i was i always i always tried to live within my means unless by the way it was a cosworth vega well no it wasn't that in which case you had a twin cam yeah the twin cam and you only got 15 more horsepower oh really with all that cosworth vega i'm just bragging letting you know i knew what a cosworth i know with vega by the time you were done with that it cost almost as much as the corvette it was the most ridiculous car there aren't many cosworth vegas all it was is that sand cast block with aluminum ahead with twin cams and and it gave maybe 15 more i think it was a little horse and it wasn't anything but but it made the vehicle like 4 200 when a corvette was like 4 400 so you had a hundred dollar vega yeah what year are we talking about here late 70s early 80s and was it the comedy store where you kind of made your bones out here yeah the comedy store well i i started you know i was lucky i i started in new york in boston so when i got here i had a bit of a reputation at least in the comedy community and i could you know i loved the comedy store in the early days but mitzi sort of had this thing where she here's what i see you doing right you know yeah i always tell the story of there's a great comedian named jack raymond he was very funny he was one of the comedy store regulars and mitzi said i want you to be a jackie bananas you wear like a yellow sport coat you'd be jackie banana and because she owned the club he had i didn't want to i didn't want to take advice from somebody i mean she was very nice and had the club i remember seinfeld too seinfeld was a well-established comic by the time he got here and he would go to the comments and he just wanted to do a set and mitzi would give him advice and tell him what to do and yeah i just i just want to stand on the stage so he never really was a comedy store guy but i knew i i only used it you know my attitude was always when you get good somewhere get out and go to the place where you're bad anybody can be good where they're good go to the place where you're bad or where they don't like you and that's what i think happened there's a lot of great comics at the comedy tour who just chose to live in mitzi's apartment or stay at the comedy condo whatever they had and eat eat their meals at the club and get a free drink and do a set and and pretty soon they had comedy store acts they had 20 minutes on the thing in the window and 10 minutes on this and it would get big laughs but as soon as you left the environment of the comedy store nobody know what you're talking about who uh i'll tease it but uh who are some of the comedians that you really um the current older people we've heard of uh that you really just said that guy's got the goods or that gal's got well jim carrey unbelievable jim carrey jim carrey yeah i mean as a stand-up or as a talent well as a stand-up who could do impressions who could do he did people nobody else did and he did them in odd ways and different ways now he was well still is i mean just brilliant really good really really impressive um oh god there's so many uh i'll tease it i'll let you i'll let you think about it for a second first i'll hit a sponsor scribd that's right with so much content out there you might spend as much time looking for your next book is reading it scribd instant access to millions of ebooks audiobooks magazines and more plus thoughtfully curated editors picks and smart recommendations based on what you've read all for just 9.99 a month streaming changed everything we used to flip around tv channels and look for something interesting now we just pick from thousands of great options scribd does that for books wired and forbes calls it the netflix for books i have all my books unscripted uh you should check out some of them because i'm told they're funny scribd am i right dawson right now script is offering our listeners a free 60-day trial go to try.scribd.com adam for your free trial that's try.scribd.com adam to get 60 days of scribd for free well we'll take a quick break we'll come back with the jay leno and some of the comedians he loves right after this all right back with the great uh jay leno who um i must say is um hold me famously doesn't have to be difficult and uh it's just one of the uh easiest guys in hollywood most generous guys in hollywood but uh i think it's a little the low self-esteem that bleeds through which which i like i i feel like i have low self-esteem maybe everyone thinks they have low self-esteem but really don't know how many people meet you just think they're unbelievable people just think i guess there's a lot of that and i i mean i know comedian i'm not gonna say who they are they'll tell you they're they're the greatest comic in the world i mean there's nobody funnier than them you go oh yeah you're good no i am yeah i mean they just i mean you go wow okay this is really good well i think you also have to realize that you're jay leno and you're in a certain position and i think people may want you to anoint them or may want your blessings somehow because you you do have a legendary status in the industry so you're probably i know you have low self-esteem it's hard to digest but people are going to come up to you and try to get you to validate them i mean ultimately you're only as funny as your last joke like i enjoy working flappers here in burbank when i work with a younger generation of comics probably never even i mean they might know you from the tonight show but they were maybe 14 when i left you know it's eight years now you know so they're kind of like and they're surprised you're funny you know like oh they expect you to do old guy stuff i don't i don't know what it is but they did there's that there's that and that you know we were the same way when we started out you know older comics you thought oh what could they be like and think oh well they really are good you know well that this brings me to a point which is um being so jay was at least from the cheap seats jay was the comedian's comedian he was the young guys to go on letterman and destroy and it was jay leno jay leno jaylen at some point you became the man and we have a weird relationship with the man as it pertains to comedy it's sort of if you just start and it was a little different because we don't it's not quite the same with guys like dave chappelle but at some point if you started playing big venues then you became a sellout or you've got on the tonight show now you're selling out right you're not keeping it real with the artist and it strikes me that you went from uh the comedian's comedian to the man mm-hmm and people were kind of shitty with it sometimes oh yeah please yeah yeah this is look when you're playing football who do you tackle the guy with the ball right that's pretty much the way it is i mean i was the same way when certainly you know before you make it had that guy you know you have that in the back your mind then you get there you go oh this is how it is i i get it i get it you know like i find out it's like when you do an interview with a journalist i don't answer the question i break my silence leno breaks his silence no no i i wonder what i have a silence i've been talking for an hour i don't think you know or leno lashes out i go i didn't lash out the guy asked me a question i gave a personally reasonable answer you know it just always makes me laugh you just learn how to you know i don't believe the good stuff and i don't believe the bad stuff i did take oh that's right well thank you that's very nice you know when i go for the tonight show i walked up the door on thursday and friday i did four nights in florida i gave you the next night i didn't take stuff off the wall and take pictures and things it was a job i worked there for 22 years i loved it i enjoyed the people i worked with but i didn't you know here's hollywood don't marry a hooker okay because it ultimately will break it'll break your heart so you know i i got the same wife i got the same car my 55 buick i have the same friends i had in high school and and i go through life with that i don't shoot for happiness i shoot for content i'm content because happiness is like it's like champagne if you drink it every day now you're a raging alcoholic you're not enjoying it at all so i shoot for contentment the end of the week i go i was pretty happy on wednesday i think wednesday was a good day i did this i did my wife and i went here or whatever it might be you know i mean the best day of your life is the day before that horrible thing happened right you know every time i think of like this horrible thing with travis scott and alec baldwin and you go the best day of his life was the day before that happened right now your life has changed immeasurably which essentially is every day for us if that thing doesn't happen so recognize nothing terrible this is fine you know yeah i'm smiling because when i went and saw you at the universal amphitheater in 19 that was 90 89 i i was 86 86 that that early yeah 86 yeah 86. saw the universal amphitheater and you had a whole bit about your 55 buick right right and how big it was right right and i i i'm going to screw the joke up but you'd have to go under the fenders and clean off the volkswagens that you ran over so the idea was you hit you handed the dash they hose it off and sell it to somebody else that that right that the big metal dash yeah right right but there was also running over cars or something there was a joke in there the car was so big there was no radio live acts we brought live action that's right you know just stuff it's just it was it's stupid it's stupid do you look back on your stuff and wins sometimes well i think everybody they doesn't every everybody does yeah yeah you know like i i was getting beat up for a while for not apologizing for monica lewinsky jokes i go well i told them in period as they were happening the whole country was talking about this and we did jokes about it okay i mean 35 years later oh am i supposed to apologize for that i don't know i don't think i did anything terribly wrong i i saw the events of the day and i commented on them and that's as everybody else did at the time so that's the age we live in now do you feel like and i guess it's something comedians have to kind of uh wrestle with a little bit which is um do you feel like you're better comedian now than you were 30 years ago do you feel like you're learning something and not every day but it's been sort of growing refining i mean i was up on stage with you you're sharp and fast and and funny i think people think sometimes people think of comedy like professional sports like well he's getting getting past this prime now he's not you don't have any signs of that but i'm just saying that can happen i i you know uh it's funny when the real test for me is when i watch old monologues because you did 4 631 tonight shows so you don't you can't remember and when you hear jokes that i'm like i'm hearing them for the first time yeah i have no recollection i have no reckless joke and i and i laugh out loud because i don't laugh at my own stuff but if they don't remember it i go oh that was a i could tell that joke today you know it's fun yeah it's it's it's sort of like here's one that was looking like that he's looking back at an old picture yourself right no it was pretty good looking back then you can't say it in real time pompous ass but go ahead right right no the joke was uh oh that i remember the joke about a kid in china was born with the vestiges of a third eye didn't have a third eye but with the vestiges of a third eye and today lenscrafter said they can make him glasses in about an hour and a half and i love that joke that was another another one was uh about um oh i done a gig in because i i i saw myself telling this on a rerun on car carson was showing you on sound i didn't i didn't remember what the punchline was and it was that i was doing a gig in alaska i took this gig in alaska in february and i'm in my hotel and the sun comes up at like 11 30 in the morning and then goes down at 1 30 it's only up for two hours it's 50 degrees below zero i put on my coat i just want to i'm in this hotel room and the hotel has that that thick glass like urinal glass like in a subway that lets light in but you can't see anything so i'm just going to go out outside i go out i go to the thrifty drugstore and the ice cream is still soft i don't understand how that can happen you know and i saw i didn't see that coming in oh that's a pretty good job i could do that joke now that's a good joke so yeah i mean obviously you see ones where you go oh you can't do that anymore this because it's sexist or whatever but uh yeah yeah so i'm not sure what the question was well i do you find yourself you know growing or feel like yeah tom brady is a is better arguably at 44 than he was at 24 or not even arguably he's just better at 44. now but but not faster not faster but but better and you know common wisdom is you're out of the league by the time you're 33. yeah yeah so he's defied that right do you feel stronger now as a medium than you did when you were 44. comedies like golf you can do it to your 75 or 80 if you play it right but to me real growth for a comedian because all communities start out with jokery joke joke jokes and you do those and then we would go down to cantors or theodores or any one of these popular spots when we were kids uh comedians around young comedians and we'd sit and we'd tell stories and then one day i said i'm just going to tell that story that i told at the table on stage it didn't have a really a beginning or an end it was just a story and oh the people laughed and i said all i really need for this is a punchline and nobody can steal this because it's my story it happened to me as opposed to two guys going to a bar and they say you know what right so to me that was always the real growth when something can happen in your life chappelle does that very well you know and you just tell the story of what happened in your life and because your natural ability and your ability to be a storytelling oh it works you know and you go that's that's the real growth as a comedian when when it becomes so you people oh that's an adam corolla kind of story or whatever it might be so you do feel yourself getting stronger as the years yeah you know i'm really enjoying it now because at this point you meet people who used to watch you when when they were like seven mm-hmm like oh he's one so you know oh i saw you on you know when you were a magical figure on tv to them as a kid and it always makes me laugh you know when when you go to do a radio show they please the legendary legendary it just makes me it makes me laugh i i mean i i find it very humorous do you have uh any religion are you religious at all no not at all is that uh so you're kind of an enigma to me because you come from this family and the family feels very traditional oh it's very true i don't drink i don't smoke i don't gamble um there's just there's a dumb joke that goes that way by the way but what's the joke what's the change it's uh it's from when i was 10 yeah it wasn't my joke it was i don't drink i don't cuss i don't smoke god damn it i left my cigarettes at the bar right right yeah funny when you're not so so you're very traditional that way but you're not religious you don't have kids of your own like there's parts you that feel non-traditional do you know you know what i'm saying well i think the i think the real key to being community is you don't fit in anywhere as far as being classified no just just you know you're not you don't fit in you know i remember seeing the movie the friends of eddie coyle with robert mitchum you ever hear that well there's a movie it takes place another one you did with pat maria no no no no this takes this takes place in massachusetts and i thought oh movie takes place in massachusetts what year was the movie oh it's probably in the 70s but robert mitchum's uh sitting there with his old gang that planted a bank job mm-hmm and he just sent me he's holding the bearing he's gone this is great and this beer steaks on the grill wives are talking kids are playing how do we get the hell out of here i mean they just i just thought that i said that was me i was living in massachusetts my wonderful parents nice house so why what's why am i fidgeting why is this and i thought i just remember that line from the movie they were going to go rob a bank because it was exciting right and i thought that's that's kind of cool when i lived in massachusetts i was lazy dyslexic terrible student i come here suddenly i'm the hardest working person people i don't know where that came from but you grew up in new england with that work ethic you know that uh what are you gonna sit by the pools how are you gonna do really got nothing to do you know and you come here and then suddenly oh it works to your advantage you know yeah well how you know this is interesting and maybe you feel this way my friend dennis prager always says he's a very hard-working guy and he says because there's a lazy person essentially living inside of it right and he's fighting it he's overcompensating and i used to feel very lazy as well i i was lazy i it was more like i didn't know what to do so that just made for lethargy because it's like saying i don't know what direction to go so you can't hike the trail right if you don't start down and then people say you got a bad knee and you go no i i could probably hike for 10 miles if if i could find a direction to hike in right i just kind of knew what i didn't want to do from working at mcdonald's and digging ditches and stuff like that but i do feel like there's a lazy old version of me in me that i'm trying to over compensate i am exactly the same way i go i should be doing more well you know i whenever i have free time i go really so what are you doing now uh nothing i'm just sitting here you know i just i should be coming up with more material i should i i should be doing something you know and i think maybe part of that mindset is not becoming too enamored or reflect reflective about your past success no i'm i'm not at all i mean you're as good as your last joke that's what i when i go to the floppers comedy club i don't go on as a former host of the tonight feeling it should be you know i follow a half a dozen other people you know some brand new i don't need the headline i just want to get up and try my jokes see if they work and people oh okay and this you get a real sense of where you are it's not like even when i now when i go on the tonight show or something with fallon i always go on with a set i don't go on as you know on my day when we did the show you know nobody cares they don't care you know that's what i loved about rodney dangerfield rodney wright loved he never knew his pollocks didn't know anything he always had jokes rodney never came sat down and went yeah things are good i'm taking it easier now he always had funny jokes did i even tell my rod anything at his funeral i would tell you this no or maybe listen tell me that's my favorite thing you know i had rodney on the tonight show 2004. uh 2005 i guess it was and he seemed off you know when you know a comic you know their movements oh i'll tell you you know rodney's got a little and the hand didn't go all the way up like it normally did you know what time yeah and you know he he did fine but he seemed a little off so i said to deb i said well he's doing the same i think rodney's having that was your longtime producer yeah debbie vickers right i said i think rodney's having a stroke called a paramedic she goes why don't i go i think he's having a stroke he's sweating more i said i know his act and he just seems not off but different you know okay so he called the paramedic side and rodney sits down he's funny and the show ends he's in the dressing room now and the paramedics show up and they go he had a stroke like oh he can have a stroke so i'd take her out anyway okay and then he came back from that room but then he had a massive stroke and he was in a coma and i went to the hospital and joan called me he said oh ronnie's going to call me his wife yeah so his younger wife who had the big flower you know something great lady yeah she loves that guy like this is the woman you want to love you i mean because i think everybody's thing with his rodney with this beautiful woman you know no i mean she worshipped him uh you know she started the rodney 53 died the rodney foundation and i mean really just a nice nice woman and and someone you'd want you know i i can't imagine not wanting someone like her you know anyway so ronnie's lying there to come here and john says to me he's in a coma but i think he can understand what we're saying but he can't respond so i said oh so she said jay put your finger in rodney's hand so i put my finger around his hand and she goes rodney rodney if you know it's j just try and squeeze his finger any movement at all so i feel just a little bit of a squeeze and i whispering around he's here i go rodney that's not my finger you know and rodney and he and he did a jump you know really like you know like if you hit somebody with a taser they go like this and you and joe oh yeah he left he may i think he's laughing about and he and i you know and i mean it sounds selfish but i made rodney laugh one less i mean i just it just you know i i think he enjoyed it and he died right after that wow and it was really sad but it was it was he was a comic to the end you know and it was just it was so touching and he yeah he was he was great he was a great great comic always had jokes never he never relied on i'm just gonna go out and be me he knows you're only as good as the material you have so it's a good lesson for comics always be prepared you know a lot of times i'll go to flappers and i'll see young comics and they'll do a different set than they did the night before but not get many laughs and i go you know this is hollywood you don't know who's in the audience it could be a casting director if you're in des moines break your material in there okay you don't know who's in the crowd here do the best you can do and tighten it and tighten it and tighten it and even if it's down to four minutes it'll be a really funny four minutes i think for you and it's kind of the same i have the same feeling which is i think sometimes people i notice this in radio so not so much with tv because you have a big in-studio live audience right radio there's no live audience right and so sometimes comedians again put them in front of the crowd everyone kind of straightens up right and tells their jokes go to radio well you know club holds 300 people but you may have 750 000 people listening right but nobody in the club right but the microphone goes to all the cars which are all small clubs and people out there and people would come in and kind of mail it in you know they were half cocked they were tired you know you could tell they didn't really want to be there right and i would always kind of go these mics are hooked up you know there's people out there and if you're if you would burn the calories for the 250 people in the club then do the math because we have 250 000 people that are listening right right and i always felt the same way which is if i'm going to go on somebody's show i think a lot of people go well it's the tonight show i'm going to show up you know but this cable show i've never heard of like who cares or the local radio show i'm phoning into my thing is just have one mode just and i notice you're that way which is like you have one mode if you agree to it show up and burn some calories and be funny yeah give it a shot i thought it wasn't that funny today but yes yes but you are interesting and engaging and always funny jay leno uh let me hit my last sponsor here which is uh marshall headphones marshall rocked the stages worldwide for over half a century and now you can carry on their legacy and enhance your music experience nothing's been compromised while expanding marshall's amps heritage of big stage performance to individual enjoyment of music with marshall's headphones and speakers don't let the chords get in the way of your journey you can grab a portable bluetooth speaker from marshall the emberton it's comeback portable speaker with a loud vibrant sound only marshall can deliver durable 20 hours worth of play time this thing is great it's substantial if you like construction and engineering like mr leno and i do you will love your new marshall bluetooth speaker comes in for screen black on black and brass and cream it is marshall headphones right dawson get your own portal speaker today at marshallheadphones.com use code corolla 15 for 15 off any portable speaker at marshallheadphones.com i should point out that uh you should definitely tech check out jay leno's garage as well which is on cnbc we're also on youtube and on on youtube as well and his amazing car care products which are flying off the shelves yeah those have done really well and we're and we developed those ourselves we didn't just take a check and put our name on somebody else's product and of course you bet your life.com is where you can go to find out where you bet your life's going to be airing uh near you and in your in your town uh jay always a pleasure thank you my friend i'm always glad to talk to you well we had fun the other night i enjoyed being on stage and you stole the show and uh you showed once again why even if you're uncomfortable with the title people say legend before they bring jay leno well thank you very much the legend is is that you always kept all those tonight show checks oh yeah and made your money doing live performances i never thought tv was a job that would last year how many years did you do that until the very end i never touched any of it i don't have girlfriends and cocaine habits and stuff like that you know so you could save a tremendous amount of money

Channel: Adam Carolla

Views: 277,754

Keywords: Adam Carolla, Stand-Up, comedy, live, funny, jimmy kimmel, loveline, man show, corolla, adam, improv, joke, adam carolla show, cnn, fox news, interview, celebrity news, jay leno

Id: lDZCxccGPv8

Length: 65min 48sec (3948 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 14 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Beavaconda]

Why do you keep bringing up old episodes that have already been discussed (on the day of release) with no additional commentary?

Either have an opinion orrrrrrrrr STOP.