📄 Transcript [show]
I have got so much, so much to worry about I am stepping up and never coming down I have got so much, so much to worry about Good afternoon, everyone.
My name is Sal Rodriguez, here with my co-host Chris Z.
Welcome to Registered Ear Offenders.
Sal, you had me at hello.
I did.
It's great to be here.
This is our 12th show, Chris.
This is the end of our first season.
That's right.
And here's the cool thing about us.
We never take a break, unlike your favorite TV shows.
We're here every Friday.
We even intend to be here the Friday after Thanksgiving.
Wow.
Wow.
All bloated and everything.
Yeah.
Half asleep from tryptophan.
That's right.
Anybody want to call in and join us?
1-800-893-9562.
Please be sure to like us on Facebook as well.
And also Twitter.
Follow Chris Z on Twitter.
What's your handle on Twitter, Chris?
ChrisZ34.
That's letter Z34 at Twitter.
And I am at Sal Los Angeles.
And I promise to be tweeting very, very soon.
You know, I hate to sound like a PBS pledge drive.
But you know what?
We have an open book policy here.
We're very...
Very transparent.
We apparently have close to 300 listeners.
And we're proud of that, especially for only our 12th show.
However, we do need more likes on Facebook.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I wish we could offer some kind of incentive.
Maybe we should do that.
The first person to like us on Facebook, we will mail them, at my expense...
Wow. ...a Nine Finger CD.
Wow.
Still wrapped in plastic.
This isn't like my Nine Finger CD that I'm tired of listening to.
A brand new...
Now, Nine Finger was our guest last week.
An awesome hard rock band.
They were here in the studio.
Yeah.
Chris will mail the next person to like us on Facebook.
He will mail you a copy of Nine Finger.
I will.
I made the pledge on air.
I'm going to hold you to that.
Thank you for reiterating that.
I'm going to hold you to that.
What have you been up to, Chris?
You look very nice.
You got a black shirt.
You're going to a funeral later?
What's going on here?
Thanks for that.
No, there's a camera in the room now.
And I can't be walking around with my flab all hanging out.
You know what I mean?
I got to...
The thing that sucks about the camera is I essentially have to suck my stomach in for one hour solid.
However, if you can get a glimpse of that camera's view, you can check out Sal's...
Newest...
What do you call this?
A new look?
I guess I'd call it a new look.
Yes.
Does it count as a makeover if it's actually kind of a step down?
No, it's actually a step up.
Let me tell you something.
For those of you who cannot see us, I have shaved my head bald and am amongst the bald men of society.
And I got to tell you, Chris, this is absolutely true.
It's been seven days I have shaved my head and I have had more attention, more flirtatious glances, more commentary.
I've been called sexy more than twice.
I am living...
Living a whole new way.
If you'd known, maybe you should have shaved it sooner, right?
I should have shaved it sooner.
Now, people ask me, they go, how does your girlfriend feel about this?
She could not give a shit.
We've been together nine years.
She doesn't care what I...
She didn't even notice, I don't think, actually.
She was actually stroking your head.
You know what?
Something's different.
Yeah, no.
She had no clue.
But let me tell you something.
The women of the world seem to respond to me more.
If there are any men out there who are experiencing thinning hair, especially, let's face it, if you're a guy over 30 and you shave your head, you're going bald.
That's what that means.
Let me ask you this.
Would you still...
If you had it to do again, would you still spend the money on a hair system?
Well, for those of you who are unaware also, I have been wearing a toupee.
I called it my Yamaka toupee because it was in the back on my bald spot.
So I was wearing a toupee for about three years.
And, you know, hey, it looked great on camera.
It looked great.
But it's kind of a...
It's kind of...
It looks great, but there's a lot of maintenance involved.
So I decided to...
And it's costly.
And it is costly, you know, to some degree.
But we do have a solution.
One of our sponsors is going to help you out with that.
I did enjoy the experience, but I would like to try the shaved head experience for a while.
And let me tell you something.
Shaving my head is kind of zen meditative.
Actually, it brought me to a whole new level of self-care.
Well, aren't you concerned about...
I mean, now you don't appeal to the same demographic you did before.
For those of you who just joined us or maybe are new to the show, Sal is a host.
He's done a ton of commercials for some of them pretty big.
And his appeal, though, is he was like the friendly young Latin dad.
So he covered several bases.
Yes.
Yes.
Several demographics.
You know, I mean, he was a go-to.
You know, because that's what they want now.
They want to be race-inclusive these days, but they don't want a scary black guy.
No, no, no.
I was friendly Latino dad.
All the breakdown was friendly Latino.
Yeah, so I went from friendly Latino.
Now I don't mind playing a tough guy.
I did play a tough guy in an indie film that's in post-production right now.
And let me tell you something.
It's fun.
I got tired of playing the friendly dad.
You know, I want to play a tough guy.
I am a tough guy, Chris.
Oh, okay.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
So you're playing yourself these days.
Exactly.
Yeah, exactly.
Chris, what do we got on our show today?
Who do we got on our show today?
I'm very excited about our guest.
For one thing, we're going to have three Latinos in the room.
I don't know.
I think we're going to ostracize all of our Caucasian and Anglo listeners today.
I mean, truthfully, it's not that unusual given that we're in downtown Los Angeles.
No, but no.
I'll tell you why this is.
Because normally, if this were just downtown LA, we'd have three Mexicans in a room.
Instead, today, we're going to have a Mexican, an Ecuadorian, and a Cuban today.
I think we might actually have the devil's triangle represented here.
The Bermuda Triangle.
I know one of the points begins in Cuba.
The other reaches Florida.
Yes.
Where I grew up.
Yes.
And then the other point goes to Mexico.
Oh, is it?
Either way, we got it covered.
Well, either way, we got to lock the door because Jan Brewer will be knocking down this door any second.
Right now, yeah, I imagine her and her forces lined up at the border going, we got no jurisdiction over there.
We got three in one room.
They're sitting ducks and we can't do a goddamn thing about it.
They're on seventh and olive.
Let's go get them.
We got, I'm excited about a new segment we got today called Turning Points.
Explain turning points to people, Chris.
Well, it's like you look back on your life and you look back where you are now and sometimes there's a reason, not a bevy of factors, not a host of factors, but one big thing.
Sometimes it can be, you know, maybe an extremely unpleasant situation, whether it be a, you know, passing of a loved one or a bad breakup, but something that without it, you have to begrudgingly concede you would not be where you are today.
And you consider that a better position than you were when this turning point occurred.
Yeah.
It's kind of here you are going along on your path and all of a sudden you do a right angle turn or a 90 degree turn and start going another way.
That's correct.
Is it 90 degrees or?
Yeah, you're right.
Well, it could be 180.
It could be 180.
It depends on how you look at it.
Depends on where you are geographically, whether it's 90 degree or where you are as a, as a geometry major, I suppose is what it is.
We also have Chris's Corner.
Chris's Corner is, I would say the answer to Sal's Weekly Rant.
I, I've been hogging up.
I've been hogging up.
I've been hogging up airtime every week with Sal's Weekly Rant.
It's, it's been a, people have been quite responsive with Sal's Weekly Rant, but Chris and I decided to have a special segment just to hear Chris's voice, Chris's opinions.
It's called Chris's Corner.
It's going to be here every week, premiered last week, and we'll be here every week.
Now where this came from, I know that when I watched SNL, for example, I particularly look forward to the opening sketch, which is typically political humor.
Yes.
And I also look forward to the headlines.
That, that is, has and always has been, is and always has been my favorite segment of the show.
So I thought we should do something like that.
Like, you know, maybe there's somebody who isn't necessarily thrilled about, you know, whatever, some topic that we covered, but they know that they're going to stick around.
They're going to get rewarded either with, through Sal's Rant or Chris's Corner or both.
Ideally.
Yeah.
And I like that they kind of, they're different, but they compliment each other.
But sometimes I think, are you, are you ranting in Chris's Corner at all?
Not necessarily.
It's not always anger that drives me.
Mine is more.
I'm fueled by anger, but I'm going to blame my bald head now for the anger.
There's typically a storytelling angle to my.
My corners.
That's what we'll call them from now, my corners.
But Sal, let's not overlook our guests for this week.
Yes.
We have, now this is pretty unique because look, you turn on any TV show, you're going to see celebrities.
You're going to see rock stars, movie stars.
Stand up comedians.
Yeah.
We have a guy who is a bonafide artist.
Yes.
In every sense of the word.
I mean, this guy has published books.
He travels nationally and in fact has traveled internationally doing his storytelling.
Yes.
And he's award winning.
Yeah.
Very multicultural.
He's a very cultural Cuban American.
Yeah.
Parents actually fled Cuba.
Would he be considered Cuban American or Cuban?
Well, you know what?
I don't know.
Was he born in Cuba?
No, he was not born in Cuba.
No, his parents are from Cuba.
So he would be, I think, hyphenated Cuban American.
As I am Mexican American and you would be Ecuadorian American?
That's correct.
That's a long ass one.
Yeah, you don't often hear that phrase.
I've never heard Ecuadorian American because you look so white, people just assume you're white.
They just call you a white guy.
I don't think anyone wants or would go to the trouble of identifying themselves.
I'm just an Ecuadorian.
Hey, God damn it.
I'm going to, you need to know that I am an Ecuadorian American.
What?
Why would you lower yourself on the social strata?
You live amongst the whites.
I know.
I am something of a double agent and who knows how this would turn out.
What I really enjoy about our guest Antonio is that he's a storyteller.
When I think of storytellers, I imagine Native Americans around a fire and you have the shaman weaving a tale about the great spirit.
I mean, he is a modern day storyteller.
Let me tease him with this.
I'm going to tease this out because there's no way I can, I can read all this before he gets up, but this is just one paragraph of his bio.
His stories have appeared in numerous magazines, journals, and on NPR.
His storytelling recordings have won numerous awards, including the American Library Association's Notable Recipient Award, the Parents' Choice Gold Award, and Silver Awards, and the National Association of Parenting Publications Gold Award.
So lots of gold.
He's got a lot of gold medals.
So he is.
He's a Mr. T.
He is multi-award winning.
We have won no awards.
We've won a fan in Pakistan.
We do.
We have a fan in Pakistan.
We always keep mentioning them.
I hope this person actually exists.
We have a fan in Pakistan.
We have a fan in Argentina.
And I guess the rest are in Los Angeles, I guess.
And I hope to God when we do a, when we peak, say a month or two from now, Sal, I'll say, remember when we had a listener in Pakistan for one week and then he got bored and he tuned out?
I hope that's not the case.
I hope we get to say, hey, Yemen, we just got our first Yemeni listener.
Hopefully he's not, hopefully he's not a member of Al-Qaeda.
Is it Yemeni or Yemenian?
Is it Yemenite?
Yemenite.
I like that.
Why don't you be- Call in if you know the answer to this question.
Exactly.
1-800-893-9562.
Anytime you want to call in for the show.
We also have Sal's weekly rant, of course, a mainstay and a new segment called What If?
What If?
Actually, no, we've done this once before.
We've done What If once before.
Do you want to go ahead and launch into turning points?
You want me to start or you want to kick it off?
I think you start turning points.
All right, Sal.
A couple of years ago, I'd say about 10 years ago now, I had hit rock bottom.
I was in a relationship, but it was a long distance relationship.
The only one I've ever had, and I truly, genuinely loved the girl, but she was in Canada and she was focusing her energy on moving to Los Angeles.
I was in Florida, focusing my energy on moving to Los Angeles.
And at some point, it became increasingly clear that I could not, I could not support both things at once.
At this point in my life, I've made so little money, I was down to $300 in the bank, and I was spending on average about $100 a month just in phone calls to her.
This was, you know, long time ago and long distance was a big deal.
Sure, now you have 600 in the bank.
So I remember what happened one night as I was so short on funds, I signed up to work for some employment agency that paid like barely minimum wage.
They sent us to some kind of a universal city walk, Orlando's Universal Studios, and they had us doing...
The most grueling physical labor I've ever done in my life.
They had us moving two pool tables, two full-size pool tables up two flights of stairs.
It was so rigorous, in fact, they had to send a guy home because he was literally like just bathed in sweat and looked like he was just going to drop any minute now.
Yeah.
And the supervisor told me, he's like, I can't, I can't in good conscience keep you here, you know?
Yeah.
So that night I worked so hard, I was so exhausted and just so miserable.
And you are Ecuadorian, not Mexican, so it was extra hard.
Yeah, yeah.
We're not used to that type of work.
It's a type of physical labor, you know?
At least I'm not.
Neither am I, actually.
But, you know, at some point while working that night, I decided, you know, I just can't sustain this relationship as much as it kills me to think that.
And I remember that very night I went home and I broke up with her via email and I sent her a very thorough explanation of why that was.
Is this becoming an amends segment?
Are you going to be making an amends to her?
No, no, no.
Because in hindsight, I've kept somewhat kept in touch with her.
And I realized that it was for the best and that she was very career driven and that at some point she would have bailed on me if a better opportunity presented itself.
Yeah.
I wholeheartedly believe that.
Yeah.
But at the time.
So in other words, hey, you can't fire me.
I quit.
Because you said she would have bailed on you eventually anyway.
Eventually, if the opportunity came along.
I mean, she was a career actress.
She was on TV when she was 12 years old.
So she was, that's all she knew.
That's all she was.
Was, you know, motivated by the pursuit of success.
Sure.
Opportunity.
Yeah.
So anyway, it worked.
I mean, I turned my life around.
I didn't, I stopped, you know, flying up to see her every couple months or whatever.
I saved that money and I packed everything I owned into my Hyundai and I drove cross country.
And that was July 15th, 2004.
So it's 2004.
Now it's 2012.
And you still drive a Hyundai.
That's right.
It's brand loyalty, people.
I'm not driving the same.
I'm driving a Hyundai for Christ's sake.
And now we know why you love Gangnam style so much.
You are all about the Koreans.
Let me get into my portion here.
My turning point, as I have confessed on a previous show, I was a juvenile delinquent.
I used to steal.
I used to write graffiti.
I mean, you know, so today when people see me carrying a knife, I mean, that's nothing.
I was running the streets here.
We used to come to downtown LA and front stolen goods to the Koreans.
Koreans again, stolen goods over here.
Well, one time my friends and I are out.
I think we were the former Savon.
Savon drugs.
We used to shoplift from that.
So we got caught by undercover officers in the store.
I ran.
I ran all the way to the beach.
And now I've been living this lifestyle, you know, several years.
I literally supported myself as a criminal in my late teens for a couple of years.
So I made my way from, where was I?
Culver City to the beach of Venice, which what's that?
About eight, nine miles.
Jesus.
Yeah.
So I made my way and I was on the beach.
And this is where I had my, my moment with God, as I call it.
Cause here, here I, I just, I had just escaped.
And I said, God, if you let me get away today, if I do not get apprehended today, I will turn my life around and I will never do this again.
I will leave this lifestyle.
And I did.
So I left the criminal element behind.
And then I started to work in a gym then.
And then I started becoming a personal trainer.
That's what I did all through my twenties.
So essentially that was my turning point.
Who knows where I'd be today.
In fact, I'm in a gym.
In fact, we're not far from men's central jail.
I might be there right now.
So that explains the gaudy Catholic Virgin Mary's that adorn your home.
I've always wondered about those.
I just assumed it was because you were Mexican.
It was just bequeathed to you.
Or you were just given that at birth.
You know, here's a Virgin Mary.
Here's a rosary.
Here's a.
Believe it or not.
I used to be considered the spiritual guy in my twenties.
No longer.
No longer.
Believe me.
But I was the spiritual guy, spiritual books, Zen meditation.
I was all about it until finally I became corrupt by life.
And I'm no longer the spiritual guy.
I have to tell you something felt strange to me.
I couldn't put my finger on it.
Now I realize this is the first time we're right on time.
Is this what it feels like?
Whoa.
We are right on time.
And now we're getting into our new segment.
Chris's Corner.
Chris, are you ready?
I'm ready.
All right.
Hit it.
Showroom was meant for live music.
Sky high ceilings.
A towering stage.
And a huge dance floor creating an unbridgeable chasm between the performer and the front row.
The antithesis of the ideal comedy club feng shui.
An emcee's chief duty is to congeal disparate strangers into a crowd.
By the time he or she leaves the stage, the audience should be primed to follow the next performer's lead.
Our emcee set that night was little more than him killing time till he had none left.
I took the stage to tepid applause.
For the next 30 minutes, the crowd stared at me like I was teaching their.
Court ordered traffic school class.
Roy Haber, the headliner, took the stage with the kind of charisma and confidence one only gains from years on the front line.
The only open seat was at the end of a table occupied by six strangers, five of whom were waiting patiently for the gimmicky house band to begin.
Number six was a woman in her mid 40s who was not just stunning for her age, but stunning for any age.
She fidgeted like a child forced to sit through a longer than usual Sunday.
Service.
I was just close enough to overhear when she turned to her neighbor inside.
This is boring.
Her neighbor replied with a listless nominal nod, the kind one gives strangers on airplanes when they toss out trite conversational gambits.
Attractive girls are my least favorite persons to perform for.
Not being the center of attention is so alien to them.
They instinctively act the fool to summon the spotlight.
Maybe 10 minutes passed before Barbie piped up a second time.
When does the.
Band.
Start.
She fired a third flare.
Not long after that, the tables occupants bided her nonsense with saintly restraint.
Though she never acknowledged my present, she had seen me sit down seconds after my set.
Dumb luck had placed her on the summit of an asymmetrical power relationship, and she jumped at the chance to make her candle burn brighter by smothering somebody else's.
She shielded her mouth with her hand and said something to her neighbor while shifting her eyes to and from me in the kind of radical, conspicuous.
Arcs one would expect from a high school's most pretty and popular girl when the homely new girl in hand me downs walks by.
Her bow, judging by appearance, was a successful businessman straight from central casting.
Though he pretended not to notice his sex toys tantrums, his poker face was not well rehearsed enough to hide his thoughts.
I wonder if my ex-wife will take me back.
Leaving her for this bimbo felt right when we were fucking like teens on ecstasy.
But now that I'm thinking with this head again.
Not so much.
What really must have salted her wounds was that Roy was killing it.
He milked the same crowd that showed me a silence I did not expect to hear until my interment for countless applause breaks.
I suspected if the show had gone even five minutes longer than it did, she would have erupted from her seat screaming, look at me, please.
This is all I have.
I recognized her behavior, though I failed to place it at the time.
Years before, I'd shared a house with two dogs as dumb as they were.
One was a miscreant wall-eyed pug named Hercules.
The other, BJ, a British bulldog with the brains and brawn of a Jersey Shore cast member.
BJ was the alpha by virtue of his size.
Table scraps were his to enjoy until he was full or there were none left.
Toys were his to ignore until Herc took an interest in them.
BJ never allowed Herc to receive affection unless he was allotted an equal share.
The moment one laid an affectionate hand on Herc, BJ would bulldoze his way between the two.
the petter and the petted.
Once, in an effort to quash his selfish instincts, I continued cuddling Herc while intentionally withholding affection from BJ.
Incensed, he employed an ear-splitting whimper that escalated in frequency and intensity, just like the soulless skin suit who inspired this piece.
What I wouldn't give to be there in 10 short years when she finds that first AARP newsletter in the mail.
What I wouldn't give to be there the first time she can't recall the last time that her overt flirtations with the bartender got her a free drink instead of a toothless smile.
All the Botox on earth won't suffice to hide her chagrin when it sinks in that the currency that's carried her since puberty has deflated to insolvency.
He who laughs last, laughs best.
Chris, do you hate women?
Um, my mother's a woman, so no.
That's also a...
A nice salute to Roy Haber as well.
Yeah, big shout out to Roy Haber.
Guys, if you're ever...
And this guy's a consummate road dog, constantly touring, doing more headlining work now.
If you ever get a chance to see him perform, he really is a...
He makes a masterful blend of really intelligent, witty stuff, a political commentary, but makes a palatable mass audience.
This is something I openly admit I've never mastered.
Also, also a brother of mine.
He is also bald.
Oh, that's right.
That's correct.
That's right.
By the way, every time I see a bald man now, I'm like, actually...
Some sort of, yeah.
Well, I'm either like develop a kinship with them or I resent them.
The other night I was at a party, I was the only bald guy in the room.
Then another bald guy walked in.
I was like, what the fuck are you doing here?
Well, that doesn't sound like a kinship.
That sounds like the opposite of a kinship.
It depends.
It depends.
If they're friendly, I'll let them off the hook.
Well, Roy, yeah, you had me for a second.
You had me sweating there because I couldn't make the connection because Roy was born in Israel, raised in Kentucky.
He's Jewish, Caucasian.
So I didn't see where you were going with that.
Is he Israeli American or Jewish American?
No, his parents are...
I think his dad is an actual Israeli with an accent and everything, but he doesn't know.
I mean, he left when he was two years old, so he doesn't...
He was never served in the army or anything like that.
But he was there long enough to be circumcised?
I never asked.
Hey, man.
Hey, thank you.
That was Chris's Corner.
Hey, we're going to get into our guest here.
I'm very excited about our guest.
This guy is an award-winning storyteller, author, and solo performance artist.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Registered Ear Offenders, Mr. Antonio Sacri.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
The studio audience is...
What's up?
Nick, please get the studio audience to sit down in their chairs again.
Turn off the applause sign.
Antonio.
Hey, guys, what's going on?
How's it going, man?
How you doing?
Get right up on that mic, will you?
What's that?
Get right up on that mic.
All right, sure.
Get up on that mic, man.
Headphones on.
Headphones on, brother.
This is no joke, Sal.
We actually had to edit Antonio's bio because he's...
Got so many credits, we just don't have the time to read it.
His bio is much like my youthful rap sheet.
And he's a fellow Fringe performer.
I actually did two shows for the Orlando Fringe Festival myself many, many years ago.
I did not win an award for either of them.
As a solo performer, he gets one Best in Fringe Festival Award for Excellence in Acting and a Best in Fringe Festival Award for Excellence in Solo Performance at the New York City International Fringe Theater Festival of all Fringe Festivals.
How do you do it, man?
You are prolific.
I'm on this guy's email list.
And you do at least one new one-man show, what, a year?
I do try to do that once a year.
As a storyteller, I work during the school year.
And then in summers, I'm off.
So I have all this free time off.
And so I try to work on new stuff.
So that's kind of what I'm doing, what I'm up to.
Summer's off.
Are you hiring?
What the hell is going on here?
What are we doing wrong, Chris?
Let me ask you this.
How did you figure out that this was your calling?
Because clearly, this is way more than a hobby for you.
What age?
I mean, what was your first endeavor?
Well, I tried to be an actor.
I was in Chicago.
I was studying acting, and I took a storytelling class.
So that was one thing that I had heard about.
And I was in my mid-20s, I guess, when I started telling stories.
And one of my friends says, you'll know you've found your calling when people start calling.
So as an actor, which I love doing acting, I was trying to get agents and jobs and auditions.
Couldn't do it.
But schools were calling me left and right.
Can you come and tell stories?
Can you come and tell stories?
Can you come and tell stories to these kids?
And part of it had to do with the fact that I was bilingual.
I'll talk to you a little bit about this.
So I was performing stories in Spanish to kids who had given up speaking Spanish when they were younger, which is something that I had done.
And so part of it was sort of self-serving.
I wanted these kids to hold on to their language.
Part of it was they were paying me to do it.
And so I fell in.
I was able to quit my job as a waiter and tell stories to kids, which was great, except that I got a little crazy because I had missed performing for adults.
So in the summers, I would write for adults.
And that's when my fringe career started.
So I had these two careers, performing sort of adult storytelling shows at fringe festivals in the summers.
I'm actually doing one in New York this in November and then performing for kids in schools the rest of the rest of the year.
Now, do you change the way that you perform or is it merely a matter of the change of the content itself?
There's definitely different different ways of performing for sure.
And obviously content.
So first of all, when I perform for adults, the language restriction doesn't really doesn't really exist for kids that that does.
For younger kids, there's a lot of repetition.
You know, you would tell a story and there's the refrain that repeats.
I don't tell the story, but the three little pigs refrain repeats, you know, 10 times I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow, you know, and adults get bored with that.
So that's that's one thing.
And also style with with some of the fringe performances I do, I sometimes slip into some, some poetry or some myth or some rhyme or you know, whatever it is, depending on the show.
Now, Sal, I might have mentioned this to you, but how the first time I saw Antonio, we were doing Bang Theater used to have a spectacular show.
They do it once a month.
Yeah, that's on Fairfax.
On Fairfax in...
What's Los Angeles?
Is it West Hollywood?
Yeah.
Maybe it's West Hollywood or it's just Los Angeles.
It's on Fairfax.
Very Jewish part of town.
Yeah.
Are you Jewish?
No, I'm not.
It's right next to...
Because I've met Cuban Jewish people before.
Yeah.
It's right next to Cantor's.
Yes.
Which has been there for an eternity.
Yes.
Anyway, that aside, so he was performing there and I, you know, typically the girl who books the show doesn't book ham and eggers.
So everyone was good that night, but Antonio really stood out.
I mean, you knew that this was not his first endeavor.
You knew this was not a fluke.
The story just, you know, had characters.
It had different...
deviations in rhythm, you know, where you would talk about the girl dancing on stage.
Right, right.
Especially when you went into that part, it was like a song changing, you know, like a change in a song.
I mean, it was really masterful and I was genuinely impressed.
So that's why I've tracked his movements since then.
He's been talking about you for a long time.
He's been excited to have you on the show.
Now, let me tell you, we were going to have something played.
We're going to play something of Antonio's, but instead we're going to ask him to do it live.
I'd love to.
So we'd love to have you perform one of your pieces live today.
Excellent.
Thank you very much.
Hit it, Antonio.
All right.
How did I become a storyteller?
My father's from Cuba.
My mom is Irish American.
A friend of mine calls me a leprechaun.
And how did I become a storyteller?
I think it's because I love strippers.
My brother got kicked out of high school.
You talk about juvenile delinquent.
My brother was a juvenile delinquent.
And he became an athlete as well and changed his life.
Interesting.
I'd love to talk to you about that.
When he got kicked out of high school, he went to live with our Cuban grandmother, Mimi, in Miami.
I'm super close with my brother back when he was a delinquent and not a delinquent, all the things he is, and I visited him all the time.
When I was visiting my brother in Miami, he had picked up Spanish again like that, his perfect Spanish.
And the old Cuban men on the street would say to me, Oye, keep learning Spanish.
You can do it.
And to my brother, they'd say, Te ronda tu cuevran, chucho, Cuba, chacho.
Where are you from in Cuba?
And I was so jealous because my grandmother would say to my brother, Mi cubanito lindo, my little Cuban darling.
And to me, she'd say, Oye, gringo, güero, diablo, blanco, sucio, you dirty, black, white devil.
Anyway, I went to college.
My brother was in Miami.
And he became a bartender.
And he got hired at the only place that would hire a first-time bartender, the very bottom of the barrel of all bars in Miami, a nasty strip club in one of the scariest neighborhoods in Homestead on US 1 called Piggy's.
The place was called Piggy's.
And I went to visit him every single break that I got from college, which was a lot.
I spent more time in strip clubs than I can even believe it.
He was there, and I would get in there, and I'd bribe the doorman there to get into the club.
And I'd see him there.
And every...
Couple of months, he got promoted to a better strip club.
So he went from Piggy's to the landing strip by the airport.
It was called the landing strip.
And I'd bribe the bartender, but the doorman said, Hey, no, man, keep that.
We love your brother.
When you get inside of the bar, tell your brother, everybody has a PhD.
We love that guy, man.
I get into the bar, and my brother's an amazing bartender, but it's a strip club.
And guys are asking for beers and dollar bills, but they're staring at my brother, watching him twirl the bottles.
How can my brother do that?
Jealous of my brother?
All of it.
He can speak Spanish, that he has that charisma.
And at 4 a.m.
after his shift, we'd all go out with those girls, you know?
I'm too buttoned down college for any of these strippers.
So I'm my brother's wingman.
Late night at Denny's at 5 a.m., closing time.
The drunk guys getting into their cars and smashing them on the street right in front of the strip club.
And we sit with these women, these girls, the young strippers, the old ones, tall, short, fake, real, watching the sun come up over the water in Miami.
Girls just in their sweats with telltale signs.
A glitter on their throats.
And my brother making them feel like queens.
Taking their chairs out for them and bowing for them and making them laugh.
And he does the dances that they do and they love it.
And I love listening to these girls' stories.
In some ways, those stories in Miami were the beginning of my storytelling career.
Stories about where else are they going to make $1,000 a night?
Stories about their horrible lives in Detroit and West Virginia, fleeing abuse and going down to strip clubs in Miami, paying their way through college.
Although my brother laughs loudly whenever he hears that, right in their faces.
He can pull that off.
He says, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I'm a bartender at a strip club too to pay for my PhD.
My PhD in posay.
And they throw pancakes at them and we get kicked out of the Denny's again to repeat it the next night.
And this is what I look at it.
I look at it so you pay a cover fee to buy a ticket to go to a place where a bunch of people gather.
Whether a fringe theater in New York or a strip club in Miami.
You go to chairs, sit around the stage.
Stage is lit.
The MC introduces the next act.
And a person comes out and strips away clothes.
Or words to get at the core of what they are.
And if they strip away enough, they might get applause or dollars or ask for lap dance.
Or invited back to a fringe or some award.
Who knows?
And all the strippers or performers I've ever met, it seems to come down to some hurt or pain that gets them on the stage or gets them on the pole.
And I figure, get out into that light.
Step out near naked, music blaring and just move.
Move.
Turn yourself on.
Turn each other on.
Turn us all on until all we are are just there listening to what we want to be.
And like Y-Club says, just cause she dances go-go, that don't make her a ho-no.
Maxine, put your red boots on.
We're going to a disco.
I love strippers.
Now that's the one you perform at elementary schools, right?
Exactly.
That's the one they turned into a children's book.
Exactly.
With illustration, complete with illustration.
Yeah, good job.
Well, you know, I'm glad that you were able to share that story like that today.
I mean, because let me ask you, how often are you able to share stories like that, seeing as how you do much performance for kids?
I'd say two or three times a month.
I'm on a stage like the Bang.
Bang stage around the, and then, you know, two or three times a year I do an extended run of a show.
So last year I did a different show that ran for about two months in Los Angeles and it was nominated for best in LA, which was great.
And so this year I'm working on a new show and actually this piece, this stripper piece that I wrote for that piece at Bang years ago is folded into the show.
And the show is about my brother and his transformation from a juvenile delinquent to a professional triathlete.
And so that stripper piece made its way into it to try to.
Describe what that is.
And so, you know, I do, I'll do it in New York in November and then I'll probably do a run of it in LA next year.
So fast.
So what, what initially started out as a standalone piece became a chapter in a book, so to speak.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
That's, and so I use, I use places like pinata are these other places around town to work out new material.
And that's going to be the 2012 United solo, right?
At theater row for 10 West 42nd street, New York city tickets, $18 available at the theater row box office and online through telecharge at www.telecharge.com.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thanks for promoting that.
I appreciate that.
I want to ask you about this too.
We had Abrams books for young readers have published two of your picture books, not no chair, buena, a Christmas story and a mango in the hand, a story told through Proverbs, uh, which were both chosen for inclusion.
The prestigious California readers book collections for school libraries.
That mean I could go to the studio city library on Witset and Moorpark and get your book.
Yeah.
My books are in, are in the most of the LA public libraries.
Um, and, and in California as well, the fact that it's concluded in that collection of.
California readers.
It's in a lot of the public and school libraries as well.
So yeah, you basically, you know, I, I, I've combined these things, you know, I spent a lot of time in Miami.
And so I wrote these adult stories about my brother living in that world and my grandmother telling me stories about what it was like in Cuba and, you know, telling me I needed to learn Spanish and she would cook the Christmas Eve meal.
And it was this beautiful meal that I wrote a story about, or she would talk to me in details, these Proverbs, you know, I tell her, you know, a girl dumped me, you know, these details, right?
We've got them all over.
Yeah.
Some of them are similar.
I'm from Mexico and some of them are different, but you know, like, you know, girl dumps you like, and she's like, there's nothing bad that something good doesn't come from it fits right in with the turning point.
She's got like, I don't know, a thousand of these.
And I would, I started to collect them at the end of her life.
I'm like, this is wisdom.
I got to hold onto these.
Of course she passed and I miss her.
And so I put some of her, my favorite details that she told me as a kid into a book for kids.
So it's about a kid who wants to pick a mango and he can't get the mango.
And his dad says, no, I'm not.
There's nothing bad.
That's something.
Goods doesn't come from it.
And his dad shares all these details with this kid as he picks a mango.
So these are, these are some of the things I try to keep these memories of my family and the Cuban upbringing and bring them to kids now.
Well, it's fantastic that it occurred to you to kind of, um, preserve that legacy before she had passed on, you know, it would have been, you know, it would have sucked.
I should have recorded these things when she was still alive and still there to produce them.
But we had, my mother had a bunch of those and unfortunately she would share them with me.
Um, when I was too young to understand that.
So me and my.
My brother would just, you know, kind of clown around.
Sometimes we'd make them up because they never made any sense anyway.
But now, of course, that you're older, you go, oh, fuck, you know, maybe my mother, maybe she was a hell of a lot smarter than I am.
You ever hear this, um, this, um, uh, what's the, the, the, the, the old folksy writer, Mark Twain.
Mark Twain.
You remember the, um.
I was going to say Andy Rooney.
When I was, when I was 17, I thought my father was ignorant.
When I was 21, I was amazed at how much smarter he'd gotten.
Yes, exactly.
It's true.
Let me ask this question, Antonio.
Related to your writing and your performing and your culture itself.
Um, how, how do you ever have to tell yourself you want to write more about your culture?
You want to write less about your culture?
Do you ever feel if you're speaking to a certain audience that you might ostracize them if you get too much into your culture, if they are not of that culture?
Yeah.
So one of the, one of the stories I wrote early in my career was called tribes and bridges and the idea of how do we cross between, you know, so I'm not truly Cuban.
It's true that when I go to the little, the Cubans in a little Havana, they're like, who is this gringo?
And when I'm with my cousin.
Who are Boston Irish?
Like, who is this Latino kid?
Right.
So the fact that I fit into both, I don't really fit into both, but I'm sort of of both.
So I'm sort of a, I'm sort of like, you know, Cubanito light, right?
Like I'm like an introduction to the Cuban culture.
Like here's my, my wonderful grandmother and her beautiful meal.
We all have grandmothers, regardless of the culture who made us beautiful meals or crappy meals, whatever.
But we, you know, so we share all this in common.
And so I think in some ways, like I, I, I'm an introduction when I travel around the country and some places I'm in places I've never seen anybody speak Spanish.
And it's like, Hey, I got a cool grandma.
She's great.
She's funny.
Like your grandmother.
It's really great.
And then I'm in places, you know, in the middle of, I, I, I perform a lot down here in Skid Row and Parados Ninos and different places around here where those kids are straight, straight, straight from wherever they're coming from, you know?
And so it's a different, it's a different performance.
So, you know, I don't, I, I always feel like it's a, it's a, it's an honor to be able to introduce people to my culture and also to, you know, I'm not really political, but like to be like, you know what?
Let's put a little face on these immigrants.
Let's just, you know, my dad's an immigrant.
And, you know, most of us are, if we're not American, you know, Indian.
We're sure.
So, uh, you know, it's, it's part of what I do.
Yeah.
I don't feel like, and, and to be honest, the publishers only want to publish those kinds of stories.
All my other stories I'm trying to get published.
They're like, well, you know what?
We still haven't really gotten to the bottom of this Cuban Irish American culture yet.
So that's where that, that is for me right now.
So essentially it's like JK Rowling going, you know, I'm kind of done with the Harry Potter thing.
I want to try something different.
And they're like, no, no, no.
We want, we want you to shit out Harry Potter's till the day you die.
You know, it's funny.
And part of the, if I had success.
I still, I still don't feel I've told all the stories of that side.
I still would do that as long as I can.
I think my guess from, from just a cursory glance at your body of work is that you will never tell all the stories until the day you die.
I mean, if you're a storyteller, it's a compulsion and I don't, I wouldn't put myself on the same level as you.
But these things that I do, I mean, I spend hours writing these pieces and I haggle sometimes over syllables.
It's a compulsion.
I mean, if it were drugs, I'd have to enter rehab.
You know, it's something.
It clearly is the labor of love, but it's not a choice.
It chooses you, not the other way around.
That's interesting.
Yeah.
Or the, or the fact that these stories need to be told, you know, having the kids, you know, a deadline with the kids.
I don't, I, I do stress about the syllable, but it's also like, wait, I got a performance in 10 minutes.
I got to come up with something.
You know what he means?
But yeah, it's definitely, it is a, it's a labor of love and it's also fun.
It's fun to be up there.
Yeah.
I mean, you really do.
For me, when you complete the piece and when you present the piece, it makes it worth the sometimes weeks or months of work you invested in it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The fact that you said a story needs to be told tells me that you are indeed a storyteller at heart because the fact that you feel that compulsion, I want to think the average person feels that, that, that uncontrollable impulse to share this story with the world, to somehow think that the world is going to be a better place once you present this information to them.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's a hard, yeah.
And Tony, let me ask you about writing style and particularly censoring yourself.
You know, there's one thing that writers experience is that inner, the inner critic.
I think that the artist way talks about that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So when you're writing something, do you?
Do you ever think, okay, let me ask you this specifically.
You're going to write something that's, that may be about someone who's alive.
Right.
They, you might not want them to hear it, but do you write anyway?
Well, so there's, there's, there's two things.
My, me personally, I have to be comfortable with the fact that that person might be in the audience.
Even though my grandmother's dead, I still believe that she's in the audience there and I want her to be proud of it or I want her to be okay.
If, if it's something that she did that's bad or whatever, I want to be truthful about it.
So if I, if I personally can't, I know that some people are like, oh, I'm not going to write this.
I moved to LA.
My family lives in upper, you know, North Dakota.
They're never going to see me.
I can say whatever the hell I want to say about it.
Well, with the internet now, nobody's safe.
Nobody.
Yeah.
So, so in a way it's like, I, I don't, I try to protect myself by knowing that sometime they're going to be in the audience.
So in, in this, this piece about my brother that I'm working on for New York in November, you know, my dad is probably going to come.
My dad shows up in the piece and I want to be, I want to be honest.
I want to get to the honest of it.
So that's one thing.
The way that I get over my inner critic is by words.
You know what I'm saying?
I literally, I set a timer and I just write.
Because it's, I, it's hard to not judge.
So I'm, I say to myself, all right, for five minutes, I'm going to write crap.
This is going to be terrible, terrible.
I need to solve this problem in this piece, but I'm going to keep writing anyway.
So that there's, there's two things.
One is just solving the problem of coming up with the right words by writing way more words.
And in terms of, for me, I need to know, I mean, it's different for standup comedians for sure.
You know, so I feel like I need to, to honor those people, especially if I'm telling their stories on stage.
So in other words, you don't mind that you might offend someone then?
I don't, if it's true or the truth of what I came up with.
You know?
Like the things my dad said, he said that he can't, he can't deny that he said them.
And this is how I felt.
He can't deny this how I felt about them.
And then these are things that I thought were great about, you know what I mean?
So, so for instance, my mom, who's, there's a lot of, we have a phenomenal relationship.
There's a lot of things she's not comfortable with me sharing.
If she were in the audience, she would be cringing.
And so I just don't share them.
Well, that's how I, I've got a lot of stuff about my mother that I hope to reveal one day.
Yeah.
But because my mother's alive, because she's been to some of my shows, I literally will, I will not tell these stories.
Yeah.
That I sometimes feel should be told.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I have, I had a similar situation, Sal, in the last year or so.
I was very excited about a successful comedian who I'd befriended.
And, you know, he kind of saw what it is that I do and how much time I spend writing.
And we came up with the idea that he needed, he's, he's a, he's a joke teller.
He's a Latino comic.
So he's, you know, a lot of physicality, a lot of wackiness.
But he needed somebody who could actually write.
And we were going to pair together and write his, you know, his one man show about what I thought was just an almost, almost unbelievable.
If I didn't know him as well as I do, I didn't know it to be a fact.
I wouldn't believe it.
That's right.
A good point.
That's a good story.
Yeah.
You told me about that.
Yeah.
His, his father was a Mexican immigrant who turned to, to making crack cocaine for a living.
He would make it in his home and he would actually.
The original Breaking Bad.
Yeah.
He would employ his children.
And which of course at first on the surface sounds horrifying.
But part of the show was presenting the fact that that was his way of keeping his kids off the street.
He knew if they were there working with him, they weren't out with the bad guys, so to speak.
I know it's crazy.
It's just.
Yeah, it's true.
But ultimately it was his family's opposition to the show that made him decide to not pursue the project because he would have had a, out his father who's now deceased.
And, you know, maybe, I guess his mother felt it would sully his legacy.
And same thing with his brother who was something of a, something of a ne'er-do-well.
And I think he went on to manufacture drugs as well.
And it was just too much risk involved, I guess, for him.
And he, you know, shit canned it and it really, really depressed me.
Well, now I'm depressed because essentially if we don't tell these stories, the stories die.
That's right.
That's one.
Another thing though would be to turn them into fiction.
You know, I mean.
Specifically.
Names have been changed to protect the innocent.
You know, you, you, I, I heard a fiction writer who said, you know, basically they changed.
They changed the name and they changed one detail.
Like instead of growing up in Texas, they put her in Minnesota.
And the, the, his mom read the book and like, wow, can you believe this woman named, you know, Mary in Minnesota did that?
And it's exactly what she did in Texas, but she couldn't see it.
So this is interesting to me that, that fictionalized, slightly fictionalizing something.
My storytelling goes, treads that line.
Like, did it happen?
Did it not happen?
Well, that's what I wanted to ask you in relation to fiction.
Do you ever take creative liberty and, you know, embellish a little bit here and there?
Well, the biggest thing is I have a huge family.
I have 15 cousins on one side, 20 on the other.
Many, many uncles and aunts.
And so when I tell like, in this story that I'm telling in November, Uncle Tom is a compilation of six different uncles.
And so, you know, that's not true.
He didn't say that.
Uncle Mike said it.
Uncle Pat said it.
Uncle John said it.
You know what I mean?
So, so that's.
Is it amalgamation?
It's an amalgamation.
So there's, there's that some sort of liberty.
And then also timing.
Like, you know, the story, crafting a story so that it works really well.
You come up with the timing.
It didn't happen that way, but it should have.
You know what I mean?
Or that's the, you know, it's one of the things.
We got time for one more question.
And I wanted to ask you recently, you had something to do with Comedy Central.
Apparently it didn't go quite the way you wanted it to.
Your mother wrote a letter.
Tell me this story.
I think Sal will be hearing it for the first time.
So anyway, you know, over the course of time, people ask me to do things.
I say, yes, sometimes it'll lead to big things.
Sometimes they don't.
You know, the fringe festivals are a big deal.
So, you know, for the last, you know, 20 years, I've had, you know, seven different shows and each one has been considered.
One was by HBO and it got closed and they said no.
And then another was Warner Brothers and it got closed and they said no.
And now maybe I'm past my, maybe I missed the boat.
Anyway, so Comedy Central has a workspace here in Los Angeles and it's a beautiful space and there's free shows there throughout the month.
And they're trying to get people to come and, you know, eventually, I mean, some people get discovered there.
And so, you know, I had my big shot at Comedy Central, one of my shows, and it was sold out and awesome and went great.
And they passed on it, which is fine.
I mean, it's the chances are for sure that's where they're going to develop stuff.
So my mom wrote a letter to Comedy Central and said, what the fuck's a man with you?
Don't you know my son's a genius?
And I don't know if she got a response or not.
But.
But, you know, it's just one of those things like, you know, it was an honor.
It's like the equivalent of your mom swinging her purse.
Exactly.
I have to tell you, Antonio, I can see where Comedy Central is coming from because they've got so many foul mouth, pretty young people that they have to give stage time to and air time to.
I can see why they couldn't fit in an actual artist and his actual artistic contributions to society.
Now Chris is swinging his purse.
Yes, he is.
Thank you, Chris.
By the way, Comedy Central happens to be watching our in-studio camera.
Fuck you.
You're the MTV of comedy.
You are completely useless and you've betrayed everything you stood for a few short years ago.
Wow.
They've been a good space for me to where I'm constantly working on stuff there, which is great.
It is a workspace.
That came from me, not Tony.
That did not come from Tony.
That came from Chris Z.
Yeah.
We're going to get into Sal's Weekly Rant.
Awesome.
Can't wait to hear it.
I have tremendous pressure on me right now having experienced writers in the room.
But what I want to make sure is as soon as I wrap this up, which is going to be pretty quick today, I definitely want you guys to chime in and hear what you guys have to say about this.
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I cannot believe it.
We're going to get into Sal's weekly rant.
Let's get this party started.
People aren't satisfied with having their picture taken.
They have to do something with their hands.
A common practice is the gangbang gesture where the subject gives a signal with contorted fingers.
If you're a gangbanger, this is acceptable.
You're telling the viewer, this is what you represent.
But it seems everyone is making some sort of hand signal now.
A popular one is the horizontal peace sign, or as I call it, the sideways scissors.
What the hell does this mean?
I don't know.
And neither do you.
Perhaps because I'm an actor and I've taken many headshots, I'm comfortable with the non-involvement of my hands.
After all, I'm not a hand model.
Why does the viewer need to see my hands?
Another tradition is pointing.
I recently saw an ad with fitness personality Jillian Michaels where she points to me.
She's directly at me.
Me?
What the hell is she saying?
Is she calling me fat?
Surely she can't see me at home eating sun chips.
Did Uncle Sam start this?
I want you for the U.S.
Army, was the slogan.
As he pointed, scowling, bringing both a sense of shame and patriotism to the viewer.
Jillian Michaels wants me?
For what?
To buy her book?
Fuck you, Jillian.
Speaking of fuck you, who are these assholes that give the middle finger to the camera?
Is that meant for me or for the camera person?
I'm sure it's supposed to, to show that you're a badass full of rebellion, but who is their intended target?
We have not met, sir, yet you signal fuck you to me?
No, sir, fuck you.
It seems the subjects in pictures no longer rely on facial expressions to do just that, express.
The point that they're at a party with a drink in their hand, surrounded by like individuals all smiling, is not enough to convey the idea that they're having a great time.
They need to invoke sign language to let the viewers see their real intentions.
to play rock, paper, scissors.
Well, I see your scissors and I raise you rock.
I would throw a paper sign, but that would look too much like a sig heil.
And although this speaker is a friend of the Jews, at least that hand gesture has a meaning.
That was Sal's weekly rant.
What's that?
That was a rollercoaster ride of a rant.
Was it?
That was the most organic rant I think you've done today.
I mean, it could have been off the cuff.
It was sometimes off the cuff.
You know, one thing I respond to, Antonio, is writing under pressure.
I will write my rants the morning of the show and I feel so much pressure.
Shit, I got to pick up Chris at 11.
He's got to pick me up.
I got to get this shit done.
So pressure really, really gets to me.
But have you seen these people with their hand signals in this picture all the time?
Yeah, storytellers are promo shots.
Most storytellers don't come from the acting world.
So we have a lot of the finger on the cheek and a lot of the, you know, this kind of thing.
So it was very funny.
How about authors?
The authors with the hand on the cheek.
Exactly, exactly.
Or the old chair turned around with the, you know, where you're leaning on the back rest of the, you know.
It's supposed to look like, you know, very organic, very in the moment, but it actually has the opposite effect now.
It looks so contrived.
Well, you know, I saw an ad for an attorney on a bus bench and the attorney is on the phone.
And I'm going, you couldn't put the phone down while you're taking your promo shot?
What the hell is this?
What are you trying to tell me?
That you're so busy, you can't even listen to me tell you my story without taking a phone call in the middle of our consultation?
Yeah, put that shit down, man.
And then my boss took out a bullwhip and, hold on, I got to take this.
That would be like an ad for a porno and the girl is texting while you're having sex with her.
Funny you should say that.
That's probably my single biggest gripe about pornography is when I watch a video.
And I'm not saying I do.
No.
But hypothetically.
No, of course not.
And the girl just doesn't look interested.
Like, have you ever seen where the girl, where they're spooning and the girl will actually put her elbow down and like, and she's like, lean her head on her hand?
No.
Okay.
Well, if you do.
Wait, are they spooning or are they fucking?
What is this, porn?
No, what do you call that if not spooning?
Where they're laying on their sides.
The man is behind her.
It's sort of like a more vigorous spoon.
Yes.
Sort of like a- A vigorous spoon.
A pre-orgasmic spooning.
Yes.
What's that Indian book of lovemaking?
Oh, yeah, yeah, Todd.
The Kama Sutra.
The Kama Sutra has a term for that.
I'm sure it's like, you know, facing the dog or something like that.
I've actually seen it.
I've seen that.
And to me, that's one step above checking your wristwatch.
Let's get into our what if, because you know what?
I would love to hear a what if, a spontaneous story from Antonio.
Let's get into what if.
Chris, go ahead.
Sure thing.
I moved to Los Angeles about, what, eight years ago, maybe eight years, two months or so.
Before that, I used to work at a gym.
I lived just outside of Orlando.
I didn't know you worked at a gym.
No, no, sorry.
Worked out at a gym.
Oh, I thought you said worked at a gym.
Sorry.
And there was a guy named TJ there, one of the trainers, and who I was somewhat friendly with.
And one day, you know, somehow it came out.
I go, yeah, you know, I'm an aspiring comedian.
I do open mic down the street at the Why Not Lounge in Altamont Springs.
And he said, oh, you know Larry?
And I go, no, nobody even knows.
Larry the Cable Guy.
Yeah, he's like, you know, he does some stuff on the radio.
And apparently, Larry kind of started a very grassroots kind of organic following where he would do a little segment for radio.
And the segment proved so popular that it got picked up more and more and more, and it kind of crept.
It's way across the country.
And before you knew it, people were tuning in specifically to hear his segment.
And that's part of, you know, and he would show up to a standup show and there'd be, you know, the place would be sold out, even unbeknownst to him.
So that's kind of how he blew up.
But it turns out that he lives in a place called Sanford, which is Orlando's sister city.
It's about 20, 30 minutes away.
And he would come to my gym and this guy, TJ, introduced us.
And at the time he had just put out one of his CDs, the one that has like him tipping a wheelchair and the grandma's falling out of it or whatever.
So I met him and he was actually a very nice guy.
And he, you know, he invited me to play basketball at his house.
And I told him, I'd love to, but Tuesday is our open mic.
So I can't, you know, I can't be there.
And I think I saw him maybe once or twice after that, but I can't help but wonder, what if I just go in?
Because remember, this is just before blue collar comedy.
This is before he blew up.
But this shows what a stubborn work ethic that Chris has.
That I actually hurt myself by working too much.
Yeah, you're like, no, no, no.
I'm booked at the open mic.
I gotta go.
Yeah, I could do five minutes or invest an hour to have some fun, maybe make a friend and who knows where I'd be right now.
And I'm not saying that he would have taken me on the road because I was way too green.
What if?
But what if?
I mean, what if?
I'm sure he's out here now and out in Los Angeles.
Larry, if you're listening, I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
I'll come over, I'll play basketball.
Any goddamn time you want, I'll buy the basketball.
I'll bring the Gatorade.
You name it, buddy.
But you know, I can't help but wonder at the very least, if, you know, he could have placed a couple of phone calls on my behalf and my comedy career wouldn't be so, you know, I don't know.
Uh, at such a standstill as it's been for- I wouldn't say that.
And I disagree.
To our listeners, I would say Chris's career is not at a standstill.
He's always booking shoes, going all over the place.
Weren't you just at a casino recently?
I was, but again, it's about, you know, my aggressive networking.
For a guy who's been doing as long as I have, worked as hard as I have, it shouldn't be so hard for me to get a, for me to get club dates around the country.
You know, some people know me out here in California, but nowhere else.
You know, I've done 25 states, 15 countries.
I should be performing, uh, in a lot more places than I do.
I should be the Antonio Secker of standup comedy.
But you know what though?
From my perspective, that's a what if.
If that would have happened, let's say you would have started touring with a blue collar comedy tour.
Who knows where it could have gone?
Obviously, what if?
You would not be here today.
I would be sitting here just scratching my balls.
And there would be 60,000 listeners wondering what exactly was missing from the show.
Not knowing what, but knowing that something was missing.
They would not know.
Yeah.
I'm going to breeze through mine because I want to see if Antonio has anything to add on this.
My, my, what if, uh, I, I, I thrived as a trainer.
I would say I had a large clientele and had a successful business all throughout my twenties as a personal fitness coach.
One of my clients was an older gentleman that had a successful furniture business that supplied furniture to various, uh, resorts, hotels, casinos, successful furniture business.
He had a daughter.
The daughter was going to rabbinical school, had no interest in his furniture business.
He wanted an heir.
He wanted a son.
He wanted to take over the business.
He then took me around to some of his factories, showed me around essentially telling me, hey, you want to be a part of this?
I need someone to start taking over this.
He was in his sixties.
And I was like, nah, I'm going to be the next body by Jake.
No, thanks man.
Hey, hey, thanks Al.
I appreciate that.
Well, after that, after I turned him down politely, he then carried on for the business for a while and then eventually sold it for over a million dollars.
But what if I would have said, you know, you know what?
Maybe I don't care about being the next body by Jake.
Maybe I would like to go into your furniture business, Al.
I would like to take over Westwood Furniture.
So the question is, what if I would have taken advantage of that opportunity?
I might not be here today.
So maybe a what if is, I'm glad I didn't take advantage of that opportunity, but that's my what if.
What if I would have been a successful furniture entrepreneur?
Antonio, you want to add to this?
Yeah.
I got kicked out of a theater company in Chicago, which got me thinking about what else I could do.
And I saw John Leguizamo do some solo work.
And I'm like, I want to do solo performance like that guy.
That guy's talking about his crazy Colombian relatives.
I can talk about my crazy Cuban relatives.
It's going to be awesome.
I had enough material for 15 minutes.
And I had a friend who was a farmer.
He had a 15 minutes material and a woman who had 15 minutes.
And the three of us put together a show.
It was called The Hick, The Chick, and The Spick.
And it was my very first and only storytelling show.
And that show was a hit that ran for three years in Chicago.
Now, we decided to break off into our own careers.
And all of us are doing pretty, pretty well.
But I'm wondering if we stayed together and just ran that show to death, would it be like a Blue Man Group?
Right, where you'd actually franchise it out and had streams of income coming from different plants.
You could have franchised it, licensed it out, and then I could have played The Spick in your local LA show.
Exactly.
And we're sort of friends now.
And none of us had that level of success where like the papers are going crazy, sellouts all the time.
We've been fighting hard ever since.
So that's my what if for the day.
Wow.
You know what?
I'm happy to hear that because as Chris and I are telling our what ifs, I kept thinking, Antonio's not going to have any what ifs.
He's living his dream, man.
He's living his life.
There is no what ifs.
He is doing it, man.
Yeah.
But I mean, what particularly impressed me about you, man, is just the wealth of kind of creative endeavors that you've undertaken.
And you seem to be successful in several different venues.
Part of that is just straight up fear.
Like, you know, you're saying, man, you're going to be a part of that is just straight up fear.
Like, you know, you're saying, I want to do stand up.
And I was like, I want to do storytelling, maybe children's book writing, maybe poetry, maybe performing.
So I'm sort of good at all of them.
I'm not super successful in any one of them.
And that's sort of my security blanket.
Okay, well, my show's bomb last night.
I'm gonna tell stories to kids.
They're going to like it.
So part of that is fear.
And I'm also part of a lot of his luck too.
Are you working on anything that we haven't covered at the moment?
Yeah.
Tell us, give us a plug.
No, that's it.
The United solo show, that's solo.org in New York in November.
That's the thing I'm working on.
I'm always working on children's stories.
I mean, I'm, my job as a children's book writers to get rejected as many times as possible.
So I'm constantly getting books rejected.
So I'm getting a young adult novel rejected as we speak.
The reason I asked that question is because I just saw Tyler Perry on TV and I think it was Leno and he was saying that he took two months off because he's, you know, he's, he's a, he is a, he does everything production playwright.
And, uh, you know, he says he did that for so many years that he can't get out of it.
He can't, that's his mentality now.
So, yeah, I hear you, man.
Hey, listen, we want to thank, uh, well, Antonio Sacri, our, our wonderful guests.
We want to thank Wes Hambright for providing, providing some music today.
Orange dog music, Jeremy Hansen, Nicholas Chacon, Skid Row Studios, Registered Ear Offenders, Chris Z.
Got any final words?
Uh, yeah, yeah.
Please like us on Facebook once again, or check us out on Twitter.
I'm Chris Z 34, Sal.
At Sal Los Angeles.
Gotcha.
Um, and who do we got next week?
Who do we have next week?
I don't know.
Dylan Brody.
Also another playwright, uh, comedian.
Uh, thanks for listening guys.
Thanks.
And I can step
