Latest / NYPD Through The Looking Glass / NYPD Cop Turned Stand Up Comic John DiResta

Transcript

NYPD Cop Turned Stand Up Comic John DiResta · NYPD Through The Looking Glass

0:01
SPEAKER_01: Got hit by the train.
0:02
SPEAKER_01: He's hanging upside down.
0:05
SPEAKER_01: His feet are caught in the train, but he's fully spread, hanging upside down.
0:10
SPEAKER_01: So from the street, he's hanging upside down, and uh his foot was cut off, and it hit the windshield of a chef who's waiting to pick up his wife.
0:20
SPEAKER_01: So he when he got out of the car to see what hit his windshield, he got splashed with the guy's blood.
0:26
SPEAKER_01: So now he had a red cross of blood.
0:29
SPEAKER_01: It looked like Diver Down, the cover of the Van Halen album, you know, whatever the diver thing is.
0:34
SPEAKER_01: And the transit cops are all like, those sneakers are brand new.
0:38
SPEAKER_01: What size are they?
0:40
SPEAKER_01: They're sniffing around to steal the guy's sneakers.
0:42
SPEAKER_01: Now, this is how crazy it gets.
0:45
SPEAKER_01: He had killed his mother.
0:46
SPEAKER_01: We found out, you know, uh weeks later.
0:48
SPEAKER_01: This guy had killed his mother years before because she didn't make the right meatballs on Christmas Day.
0:56
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
0:56
SPEAKER_00: John DeResta went from patrolling the New York City subway as a transit cop to starring in his own sitcom, appearing in movies with Sandra Bullock, Robert De Niro, and co-hosting a show with his brother.
1:07
SPEAKER_00: He's also a working stand-up comedian who's done thousands of shows and still brings that pure New York energy to the stage.
1:13
SPEAKER_00: John DeResta, welcome to the show.
1:15
SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Vic.
1:16
SPEAKER_01: Thank you for having me.
1:17
SPEAKER_01: I think we were both New York City cops together.
1:19
SPEAKER_00: We were.
1:20
SPEAKER_00: So, John, introduce yourself.
1:21
SPEAKER_00: Tell our listeners a little something about yourself.
1:23
SPEAKER_01: You got it.
1:24
SPEAKER_01: I was uh born in Far Rockaway, Queens, lived in a housing project.
1:28
SPEAKER_01: Me and my brother were the only two Caucasian kids, so I had to get really funny really quick.
1:33
SPEAKER_01: That's what my mom said.
1:34
SPEAKER_01: As a little tiny kid, I started cracking people up to keep them from beating me up.
1:39
SPEAKER_01: And then Vic, we moved to the most Jewish town in the world, and suddenly I became the only Goyam.
1:46
SPEAKER_01: We moved to Woodmere, the Five Towns.
1:48
SPEAKER_01: And Stan Lee was our next door neighbor, and he moved out.
1:52
SPEAKER_01: The real Stan Lee moved out because we moved in.
1:54
SPEAKER_01: So, you know, we were the Goyam, and I was raised in the Five Towns, always wanted to do something comedically, but my dad jammed it down my throat.
2:03
SPEAKER_01: You need a pension, you need benefits, you need a pension.
2:05
SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, Dad, I need pot and twisted sister.
2:09
SPEAKER_01: And when I failed at two colleges, Newports and Nassau community, I moved to California to live in my brother's garage in Huntington Beach because he was in the Marines, and my dad said I registered for the police test.
2:23
SPEAKER_01: So I was so excited.
2:25
SPEAKER_01: Fall of 84, NYPD took the test, the medical, everything.
2:30
SPEAKER_01: And July 15th, I got assigned to the New York City Transit Police.
2:34
SPEAKER_01: The most anticlimactic thing that could ever happen.
2:40
SPEAKER_00: Joe, what years were you active on the job?
2:43
SPEAKER_01: I did uh eight years as a New York City transit cop.
2:47
SPEAKER_01: And as you know, the merge went in April 4th, 1994.
2:50
SPEAKER_01: I did four more years as a New York City cop, NYPD.
2:55
SPEAKER_01: But the last seven was in the homeless outreach unit.
2:59
SPEAKER_01: Uh three or four in transit, and at midnight we just switched to patch on a windbreaker, and I did another three or four years as a New York City cop in the homeless unit.
3:09
SPEAKER_01: And uh I started doing stand-up in '92.
3:12
SPEAKER_01: I at 27.
3:14
SPEAKER_01: I knew I wanted to do it my whole life, but I just got sandwiched into a corner.
3:18
SPEAKER_01: Three kids, wife, long commute, hated being a cop, and I tried one open mic and I got hooked.
3:25
SPEAKER_01: And five years to the day, I got a sitcom deal for a couple of hundred grand and I left the job.
3:32
SPEAKER_00: So I'm guessing in the police academy, or right after you got out of the police academy, you you get transit.
3:38
SPEAKER_00: I'm sure that wasn't your first choice.
3:40
SPEAKER_01: No, not, dude.
3:41
SPEAKER_01: I'm from Long Island.
3:43
SPEAKER_01: I I'd never been in a subway in my life.
3:46
SPEAKER_01: I just knew that they smelled like piss and they were dangerous, and you work alone.
3:50
SPEAKER_01: So while I was in the police academy in the fall of 86, while the Mets were winning the World Series, I took the police exam again.
4:01
SPEAKER_01: I went through the medical, the physical, the psych.
4:04
SPEAKER_01: I went through Skippy twice.
4:05
SPEAKER_01: Did you go through with Skippy?
4:07
SPEAKER_01: I got to go through Skippy twice.
4:09
SPEAKER_01: And on July 23rd, 1987, my 23rd birthday, I cleaned out my locker in Coney Island, District 34.
4:19
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to the real job.
4:21
SPEAKER_01: Later that afternoon, I got assigned to the New York City transit police for the second time.
4:28
SPEAKER_01: And I cried.
4:29
SPEAKER_01: I actually cried.
4:30
SPEAKER_01: And the guy, you know, young guy, like, you know, nice.
4:33
SPEAKER_01: He goes, hey, dude, I'm transit.
4:34
SPEAKER_01: It ain't so bad.
4:35
SPEAKER_01: I'm transit.
4:36
SPEAKER_01: It ain't so bad.
4:37
SPEAKER_01: I said, I'm transit, and it sucks, and you know it.
4:40
SPEAKER_01: While I was crying, but watch this, Vic.
4:42
SPEAKER_01: I noticed the guy had a unique tattoo.
4:45
SPEAKER_01: While I was crying, I looked down at his tattoo.
4:47
SPEAKER_01: And years later in Coney Island, we get a new sergeant.
4:50
SPEAKER_01: And I know that guy.
4:52
SPEAKER_01: I know that for six months, but it's winter.
4:54
SPEAKER_01: Long sleeves.
4:55
SPEAKER_01: The first day it was short sleeve, he comes to give me a scratch at Sheep's Head Bay, and I saw the tattoo.
5:01
SPEAKER_01: And I said, You son of a bitch, you're the guy that gave me transit for the second time.
5:06
SPEAKER_01: And he said, You're that guy?
5:08
SPEAKER_01: I tell that story every day of my life that you cried.
5:13
SPEAKER_00: What was it like?
5:14
SPEAKER_00: So you do your you go to the little transit academy after the NYPD Academy.
5:19
SPEAKER_01: Subway school.
5:20
SPEAKER_01: Subway school.
5:21
SPEAKER_01: A former sweater factory in Brooklyn under the BQE, Gold Street.
5:25
SPEAKER_01: Dude, they treated it like a joke.
5:27
SPEAKER_01: It was six weeks.
5:29
SPEAKER_01: The teacher would come in and go, All right, the next three hours is about the Guardian Angels.
5:33
SPEAKER_01: Three hours.
5:34
SPEAKER_01: The next three hours is about the Guardian Angels.
5:37
SPEAKER_01: They're all a bunch of assholes.
5:39
SPEAKER_01: Stay away.
5:40
SPEAKER_01: You have a two-hour and 59-minute break.
5:43
SPEAKER_01: Don't get me in trouble.
5:44
SPEAKER_01: We did that for six weeks.
5:46
SPEAKER_00: So after your little transit academy, they take you, they basically throw you out into the subway system.
5:52
SPEAKER_00: What is that like for a kid, like you said, from Long Island?
5:54
SPEAKER_00: You're out there.
5:55
SPEAKER_00: I know as a rookie on a foot post, people are coming up to you, they're speaking Spanish.
6:00
SPEAKER_00: You don't know what's going on.
6:01
SPEAKER_00: What was that like for you?
6:03
SPEAKER_01: The um, I'll tell you the very first night they sent us, it was New Year's Eve, 86 to 87.
6:10
SPEAKER_01: Like we're still in the transit academy, but this is going to be your big night out in a real uniform on patrol, and then come back to the academy.
6:19
SPEAKER_01: I stood at uh Bryant Park, like 4-2 and 6 downstairs while the whole world was having fun upstairs.
6:26
SPEAKER_01: I stood at the bottom of a cold, windy with a training officer that didn't want to be, you know, they didn't even have training officers.
6:33
SPEAKER_01: You're with a guy, you're ruining his night.
6:36
SPEAKER_01: He wants to sleep, get drunk, get injured, and get laid, and I'm in the way.
6:40
SPEAKER_01: And I said to him, Is this all we do?
6:43
SPEAKER_01: We just stand in the subway and be cold?
6:45
SPEAKER_01: And he said, What did you expect?
6:48
SPEAKER_01: Wait till the summer when you have to spend your whole meal hour switching your uniform because it's so sweaty.
6:55
SPEAKER_01: It was horrible, dude.
6:56
SPEAKER_01: It sucked.
6:57
SPEAKER_01: You rode the train at night.
6:58
SPEAKER_01: You know about that, right?
6:59
SPEAKER_01: A new train at eight at night to four in the morning alone.
7:04
SPEAKER_01: And uh I used to go from Coney Island to Van Cortland Park twice a night.
7:11
SPEAKER_01: Remember the movie The Warriors?
7:12
SPEAKER_01: I was the warrior.
7:14
SPEAKER_01: The most you don't even know what the next stop is.
7:16
SPEAKER_01: If you get in a fight and you get in a tussle with real criminals because you're in a police uniform, you have to say, Hey, can you stop beating me up for one second?
7:25
SPEAKER_01: I need to check the map to call for help.
7:28
SPEAKER_01: You literally don't know what the next stop is.
7:30
SPEAKER_01: But it teaches you survival.
7:32
SPEAKER_01: It teaches you, you know, in 12 years, I never got in a tussle with anyone.
7:37
SPEAKER_01: I never got injured.
7:39
SPEAKER_01: Uh, and and then when I moved to LA, this is a horrible, horrible, horrible business.
7:45
SPEAKER_01: But I learned how to survive from being a New York City transit cop for 12 years.
7:50
SPEAKER_01: How so?
7:51
SPEAKER_01: Just survival.
7:52
SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
7:52
SPEAKER_01: You get rejected a lot out here, and uh, it doesn't really uh affect me because uh, you know, I survived 12 years in the subway.
8:00
SPEAKER_01: Transit cops have a really weird brotherhood.
8:03
SPEAKER_01: I know you're a New York City cop, all due respect, but being down in the subway alone, uh, I always say I move I transferred to Coney Island, District 34, because those guys were all fun-loving and kind of police work was fifth down the line.
8:19
SPEAKER_01: However, when the shit went down in Coney Island in the uh late 80s, early 90s, if you called a 1013, you had a group of guys that were coming up split heads and uh and and they meant it.
8:32
SPEAKER_01: I mean, these were some uh it was and then I had Coney Island steady.
8:36
SPEAKER_01: I didn't tell you.
8:37
SPEAKER_01: Still all I have in your station was my post for three years, all alone.
8:42
SPEAKER_01: And it if you did a midnight, all you had was hookers and homeless people, because you work alone.
8:47
SPEAKER_01: All you had was hookers and homeless people hanging out with the funny cop.
8:50
SPEAKER_01: And I was I I learned how to get really funny with bums and hookers and uh homeless people.
8:57
SPEAKER_01: Because they would all just hang around the, you know, G1, the state, you know, the booth and the tokens, you know, the token uh things.
9:03
SPEAKER_01: We all just hung out and I was funny.
9:05
SPEAKER_01: That's how I learned how to get really funny.
9:07
SPEAKER_01: And then in the homeless unit, every client, you know, we call them clients, yeah, because you can't say bring that smelly bum up from Times Square.
9:15
SPEAKER_01: And when they got on the bus, they all got food.
9:18
SPEAKER_01: They got a bag of food.
9:20
SPEAKER_01: And everyone that caught the bag of food got made fun of by Officer De Resta in a fun-loving way.
9:27
SPEAKER_01: It was like having your own personal comedy club, except the whole audience stunk and had rotten teeth, but they were regulars.
9:35
SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
9:36
SPEAKER_01: It was like, hey, there's the onion, hey, there's the, you know, they we needed that, dude.
9:40
SPEAKER_01: We had a quota.
9:41
SPEAKER_01: I know you're not supposed to say that out loud.
9:44
SPEAKER_01: We had a quota of 15 clients a night.
9:47
SPEAKER_01: So we brought food for our wives made food for them.
9:50
SPEAKER_01: We brought clothes, we brought no-name cigarettes, we brought hats that we bought with our own money.
9:56
SPEAKER_01: Because once you got to 15 clients and dropped them off at the shelter and the sergeant scratched your memo book.
10:04
SPEAKER_01: Sleep, drink, hang out, Madison Square Garden, go to football, go to Met Games, go to Yankee games, go to comedy clubs.
10:12
SPEAKER_01: Because we were playing clothes, and we had we had the right to go anywhere in New York City.
10:17
SPEAKER_01: You know, in a precinct, you drive in the same square five miles or whatever.
10:22
SPEAKER_01: Dude, we were at Coney Island, an hour later or at Yankee Stadium, an hour later we're at the end of Queens, an hour later.
10:29
SPEAKER_01: Dude, we used to go to Staten Island.
10:32
SPEAKER_01: There's no subways, but the New York City Police Department would call us for homeless problem, you know, homeless problems.
10:38
SPEAKER_00: You said it's a Stillwell Avenue Station, Coney Island.
10:40
SPEAKER_00: Is that is that that's an above ground, right?
10:43
SPEAKER_01: That's an above ground.
10:44
SPEAKER_01: Four trains all end there, and the District 34 is right inside.
10:50
SPEAKER_01: So I liked it because I could have lunch, I could go to the bathroom, and a lot of times, if there was a big crime, the rest of 10-1.
10:59
SPEAKER_01: Now I'm I'm the extra guy.
11:01
SPEAKER_01: I'm involved in a lot of like pretty big crimes, you know, helping detectives do this or that.
11:06
SPEAKER_01: It was a fantastic gig.
11:08
SPEAKER_01: And then my wife and I made the stupid move from Long Island.
11:13
SPEAKER_01: We moved to Harriman, thinking it's gonna be nicer.
11:16
SPEAKER_01: I didn't know it was a 70-mile ride and no friends.
11:19
SPEAKER_01: So I transferred to the Bronx.
11:21
SPEAKER_01: I went to a district that I didn't know anybody.
11:25
SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
11:26
SPEAKER_01: And they were nice guys, but I was like, I miss all my friends.
11:30
SPEAKER_01: Oh, the first night I got to the Bronx, they put me in a police car.
11:34
SPEAKER_01: A transit police.
11:36
SPEAKER_01: In Coney Island, you don't get a police car until 15 years on the job.
11:39
SPEAKER_01: And in the very first night in the Bronx, I'm in a police car with a guy that's got this many medals, and we got a call about um a carjacking, and he's looking for the car.
11:52
SPEAKER_01: Dude, I know this sounds like bullshit.
11:54
SPEAKER_01: When you were in Coney Island and you got a call for a car jacket where the guy had a gun, you made like you were looking for the guy.
12:00
SPEAKER_01: Which way did he go?
12:01
SPEAKER_01: He went that way to the left.
12:02
SPEAKER_01: So we go to the right.
12:04
SPEAKER_01: Why are you going to the right?
12:05
SPEAKER_01: Ah, he might have made a turn, you know, with the crim with the victim of the crime in the back.
12:10
SPEAKER_01: So the first night in the Bronx, I saw a guy slashed in the back.
12:14
SPEAKER_01: The guy, oh, we pulled over a drunk driver, and the guy I was with, Joe Hartin, he took the guy's keys and threw them in the sewer.
12:21
SPEAKER_01: You know, because he was drunk driver.
12:22
SPEAKER_01: I never saw that.
12:23
SPEAKER_01: In the first night, I went to more calls than I did in five years in Coney Island.
12:28
SPEAKER_01: And then I got into the very quickly, I said, this ain't for me.
12:32
SPEAKER_01: I don't like this shit.
12:33
SPEAKER_01: These guys think the job is for real.
12:35
SPEAKER_01: That's an actual terminology in Coney Island.
12:38
SPEAKER_01: He thinks the job is for real.
12:40
SPEAKER_01: So I got into the homeless unit, no police work.
12:43
SPEAKER_01: All we did was pick up clients.
12:45
SPEAKER_01: Nine at night to six in the morning with weekends off, and I started doing the stand-up, so I had weekends off to do shows.
12:53
SPEAKER_00: The Stillwell Station, isn't that where they filmed Serpico?
12:56
SPEAKER_01: They did film that part in Serpico, and that's where we used to get our coffee every night.
13:00
SPEAKER_01: 25 cents, and you got a cookie.
13:03
SPEAKER_01: The guy walks up to him and says, You're Serpico.
13:06
SPEAKER_01: We do uh$500 a week on a pad.
13:09
SPEAKER_01: That scene is at Coney Island at Phillips.
13:12
SPEAKER_01: Warriors.
13:12
SPEAKER_01: They wanted to get back.
13:13
SPEAKER_01: And when I got to Coney Island in 87, 88, it still looked like the Warriors.
13:18
SPEAKER_00: You know what I mean?
13:19
SPEAKER_00: It was really run down.
13:20
SPEAKER_00: Well, you were in transit.
13:21
SPEAKER_01: Did you have a lot of uh space cases of suicides down there?
13:25
SPEAKER_01: There was always the occasional.
13:27
SPEAKER_01: I never saw a space case.
13:30
SPEAKER_01: Um there's a fa there's a famous story.
13:33
SPEAKER_01: It's you're not gonna believe it, but you're a writer.
13:36
SPEAKER_01: No Hollywood writer could write this.
13:38
SPEAKER_01: There's a famous story of uh an Asian man committing suicide on Christmas Day before I got there, 1982.
13:47
SPEAKER_01: It's a famous story.
13:49
SPEAKER_01: And uh all the sergeants, detectives, lieutenants that should have been on duty Christmas Day sign in and go home to Staten Island or Bay Ridge.
13:59
SPEAKER_01: So there was nothing but patrol cops.
14:01
SPEAKER_01: And a poor young guy commits suicide, Chinese guy in the Coney Island area, dives under a train.
14:08
SPEAKER_01: A lot of pieces.
14:09
SPEAKER_01: I wasn't there.
14:10
SPEAKER_01: But Jerry Jenkins has to make the death notification.
14:14
SPEAKER_01: A mutt New York City cop, street cop, transit.
14:17
SPEAKER_01: He says, ma'am, I have bad news.
14:19
SPEAKER_01: Your husband has passed away.
14:20
SPEAKER_01: No, he gets the milk for the cookie, he good guy.
14:23
SPEAKER_01: No, your husband's no longer with us.
14:25
SPEAKER_01: No, he gets the milk for the Santa Claus.
14:27
SPEAKER_01: He's good guy.
14:28
SPEAKER_01: He be back.
14:28
SPEAKER_01: The language barrier, you know, he no, he's good guy.
14:31
SPEAKER_01: And finally Jerry Jenkins yelled, Look, Papa San, no come home, chop suey.
14:39
SPEAKER_01: I uh I never saw any of that till I got into the homeless outreach unit.
14:44
SPEAKER_01: Almost every person that gets run over by a train is homeless in the tunnel.
14:49
SPEAKER_01: I would be home in Harriman and called in.
14:53
SPEAKER_01: Hey, we got a guy chopped in three pieces at 168th Street on the A.
14:58
SPEAKER_01: And I would have to go on duty and see if I can identify him.
15:02
SPEAKER_01: So me and a couple of the guys from the homeless unit got called in to see physically a lot of the people.
15:08
SPEAKER_01: We didn't have to touch him, we didn't have to bag them, we didn't have to deal with them.
15:13
SPEAKER_01: But uh yeah, I saw them afterwards.
15:16
SPEAKER_01: But I never saw a space case, which you and I know what that is.
15:19
SPEAKER_00: Chuck, you you told me earlier that you almost shot two people during your transit career.
15:26
SPEAKER_01: That's funny.
15:27
SPEAKER_01: Uh, I was a rookie transit cop.
15:29
SPEAKER_01: I probably only had about three months on the job, and the last stop of your run is 242nd on the number one.
15:36
SPEAKER_01: Van Cortland Park.
15:37
SPEAKER_01: Right?
15:38
SPEAKER_01: You know what I'm talking about.
15:40
SPEAKER_00: Is that your precinct?
15:41
SPEAKER_00: I worked there for a while, yeah.
15:42
SPEAKER_00: I know exactly what you're talking about.
15:43
SPEAKER_01: Okay, so you know Van Cortland Park, last stop, I'm eight at night to four in the morning, and it's a Friday night at like one o'clock, and I go down to the diner downstairs.
15:51
SPEAKER_01: Might have been Mike's diner, I'm not sure.
15:54
SPEAKER_01: And it's packed with college kids, and I'm in a police uniform, and I'm their age.
15:58
SPEAKER_01: I'm 21 years old, 22.
16:00
SPEAKER_01: And I sit down at the counter, and there's a white guy to my right, about 35 years old, but he's homeless.
16:07
SPEAKER_01: And he looks he just instant to me look like a cop that got fired.
16:11
SPEAKER_01: And I said, hey, and they asked me, officer, can you get rid of your homeless?
16:14
SPEAKER_01: Can you I just said, dude, you they want you to leave.
16:17
SPEAKER_01: And he started with, you ain't nothing but transit, you're a lowlife, you have a white picket fence, you live in East Cupcake, all this police academy stuff.
16:27
SPEAKER_01: You'll you know, and and now I'm thinking this guy's a an ex-cop, alcoholic, homeless, because he knows all the jargon.
16:35
SPEAKER_01: And then he starts saying, I'll show you.
16:37
SPEAKER_01: I'll I could pay for, I'll show you.
16:39
SPEAKER_01: I got and he's making now everyone's looking, he's yelling, I'll show you.
16:43
SPEAKER_01: And he puts his right hand into his dirty coat, and I pull my gun out in a diner and point it at him.
16:49
SPEAKER_01: I duck behind like a booth of kids that I got my gun, and he brings up a handful of money and slaps it down.
16:56
SPEAKER_01: And I'm like this, like Barney Fife.
16:58
SPEAKER_01: And I almost shot and killed this guy when all he was gonna do is grab out a bunch of money.
17:04
SPEAKER_01: The next time I almost killed somebody, I was in uniform in Coney Island, my station, uh, like a Sunday afternoon, nice day, and all of a sudden they call me to booth G1, you know, the tokens spot.
17:19
SPEAKER_01: And there's a homeless African American woman wearing a bag dress, a bag skirt, bag shoes, and a black bag koofy.
17:29
SPEAKER_01: She's dressed in black garbage bags, she's the ultimate bag woman.
17:33
SPEAKER_01: And I said, Look, you have to leave.
17:35
SPEAKER_01: That's it.
17:36
SPEAKER_01: I'm very nice, just you gotta leave.
17:38
SPEAKER_01: And she starts screaming, I'll have your gun and your paycheck.
17:42
SPEAKER_01: N-word.
17:43
SPEAKER_01: She's calling me the N-word.
17:44
SPEAKER_01: I'll I'll be living in your house.
17:46
SPEAKER_01: I'll have your gun and your paycheck.
17:49
SPEAKER_01: And she was really crazy.
17:50
SPEAKER_01: So I called, probably the only time ever, at 1085.
17:53
SPEAKER_01: All of a sudden, three NYPD, two housing, five transit.
17:59
SPEAKER_01: Everyone showed up.
18:00
SPEAKER_01: How nice is that?
18:01
SPEAKER_01: And they all, like 12 of us, we pushed her out of the subway, right to Phillips, where Serpico got the warning.
18:08
SPEAKER_01: That's the street.
18:10
SPEAKER_01: Now she's a problem of the NYPD, the 6-0 precinct.
18:16
SPEAKER_01: I turn around to thank the 12 cops that helped me.
18:19
SPEAKER_01: They're all gone.
18:20
SPEAKER_01: Like as if they were taken up by like a ninja cable.
18:24
SPEAKER_01: They're all gone.
18:25
SPEAKER_01: And now it's me and her, and she reaches into a garbage pail and takes out a bottle of champagne, breaks it over the edge of the garbage pail, and comes right at me.
18:36
SPEAKER_01: And my back is to that Phillips coffee candy stand, and she's coming right at me.
18:41
SPEAKER_01: And I pull my gun, I point it at her, and the first thing I think of is, I don't want to go to jail for 30 years.
18:47
SPEAKER_01: But she's coming right at me.
18:49
SPEAKER_01: So I holster my weapon and I run.
18:52
SPEAKER_01: And she chases me, screaming, I'll have your gun and your paycheck, through all the rides at Coney Island.
18:59
SPEAKER_01: They might as well have been playing the Benny Hill music.
19:01
SPEAKER_01: She was chasing me, and everybody was watching.
19:04
SPEAKER_01: And somehow I lost her and uh I didn't go to jail.
19:08
SPEAKER_01: I didn't have to shoot and kill her.
19:10
SPEAKER_01: Those are the two times I pulled my gun.
19:11
SPEAKER_00: Well, my next question, I think you answered it.
19:13
SPEAKER_00: Well, what was the the craziest or most absurd thing you ever saw as a transit cop, but I think you covered that.
19:20
SPEAKER_01: That might have been it.
19:21
SPEAKER_01: I I watch this.
19:23
SPEAKER_01: This sounds gross, but we were always looking.
19:26
SPEAKER_01: We're in the homeless unit.
19:27
SPEAKER_01: You see a lot, we went to all the big calls.
19:30
SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
19:30
SPEAKER_01: When Tupac was shot.
19:32
SPEAKER_01: Like we had the right to go to any call, and we show up in a windbreaker, everybody thinks we're detectives.
19:37
unknown: Right.
19:37
SPEAKER_01: They don't know we give out sandwiches to bums.
19:40
SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
19:41
SPEAKER_01: So we we were around when Tupac got shot.
19:45
SPEAKER_01: Tupac got shot in Times Square.
19:47
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, remember.
19:48
SPEAKER_01: And the joke I do in my act is that we, you know, he had his testicle blown out right on the street.
19:53
SPEAKER_01: When we got back in the police car, my partner said, Hey, looks like your old buddy Tupac is gonna have to change his name to OnePac.
20:00
SPEAKER_01: That's a joke I do in my act.
20:02
SPEAKER_01: But oh, I'll tell you the worst thing I saw.
20:04
SPEAKER_01: I was in uniform in the Bronx before I got to the homeless outreach unit.
20:09
SPEAKER_01: Now you're going to calls in stations you never heard of.
20:12
SPEAKER_01: Zarega, all these stations, you know, Zarega.
20:17
SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
20:18
SPEAKER_01: You're going to places Pelham Bay and one of these elevated stations on a 4-12.
20:27
SPEAKER_01: Uh a guy got hit by the train.
20:31
SPEAKER_01: He's hanging upside down.
20:34
SPEAKER_01: His feet are caught in the train, but he's fully spread hanging upside down.
20:39
SPEAKER_01: So from the street, he's hanging upside down, and uh his foot was cut off, and it hit the windshield of a chef who's waiting to pick up his wife.
20:49
SPEAKER_01: So he when he got out of the car to see what hit his windshield, he got splashed with the guy's blood.
20:55
SPEAKER_01: So now he had a red cross of blood.
20:58
SPEAKER_01: It looked like Diver Down, the cover of the Van Halen album, you know, whatever the diver thing is.
21:03
SPEAKER_01: And the transit cops are all like, those sneakers are brand new.
21:07
SPEAKER_01: What size are they?
21:08
SPEAKER_01: They're sniffing around to steal the guy's sneakers.
21:11
SPEAKER_01: Now, this is how crazy it gets.
21:14
SPEAKER_01: He had killed his mother.
21:15
SPEAKER_01: We found out, you know, weeks later.
21:17
SPEAKER_01: This guy had killed his mother years before because she didn't make the right meatballs on Christmas Day.
21:24
SPEAKER_01: So he got put into a psycho home.
21:26
SPEAKER_01: He earned the right now to chaperone five or six other psychos to trips to New York on the train, you know, whatever Central Park and come back.
21:35
SPEAKER_01: On the way back, he lost one fellow psycho and thought he was going to get in trouble.
21:41
SPEAKER_01: So he dove under a subway train at like Tremont or one of those elevated stations.
21:47
SPEAKER_01: That's my neighborhood.
21:48
SPEAKER_01: When you just naming this Morris Park.
21:50
SPEAKER_01: Whatever district was out of Morris Park, I worked.
21:53
SPEAKER_01: If you remember transit.
21:54
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, 180 in Morris Park, District 12.
21:57
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's so that's where I worked for six months in the University.
22:00
SPEAKER_01: Form and then thank God I got into the homeless unit.
22:03
SPEAKER_00: So, John, how did being a cop shape your comedy training and material?
22:08
SPEAKER_01: Well, if a lot of people say now, you know, I've been doing stand-up almost uh 34 and a half years, but I have a very clipped staccato rhythm, which everyone says I sound like a cop.
22:20
SPEAKER_01: You know, compared to guys that go, well, you know, they tell a three-minute story to get to the word uterus.
22:26
SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
22:28
SPEAKER_01: My stuff is very clipped and specific.
22:31
SPEAKER_01: I was a New York City transit cop for 12 years.
22:34
SPEAKER_01: Our motto, you ride, we hide.
22:36
SPEAKER_01: I had nine arrests in 12 years.
22:39
SPEAKER_01: My own son has been arrested more than that.
22:42
SPEAKER_01: My gun was so rusted shut, I would have to throw it at a perpetrator.
22:46
SPEAKER_01: So I I think the elocution, that's an SAT word.
22:51
SPEAKER_01: I know.
22:52
SPEAKER_01: Has come out of the cop thing, but then I'm super, super, super observant.
22:56
SPEAKER_01: You know, I had to stay alive for 12 years in the subway.
22:59
SPEAKER_01: I'm super observant.
23:01
SPEAKER_01: Like what my first joke almost all the time is a comment on what happened in the room that night, and everybody's like, oh my God, he made it up on the spot.
23:10
SPEAKER_01: Where I'm like, how did the 10 other comedians not notice this obvious joke?
23:16
SPEAKER_01: Do you know what I mean?
23:17
SPEAKER_01: I I kind of I look at stuff very specifically if that answers your question.
23:22
SPEAKER_01: And it's and I show up on time.
23:25
SPEAKER_01: I'm sure I'm I'm at every gig 15 minutes early because I was on the football team and I was a cop.
23:31
SPEAKER_01: You gotta be there on time.
23:32
SPEAKER_01: I show up on time, I dress nice.
23:35
SPEAKER_01: You know, I always remember the one or two transit cops that's dressed like, you know, their uniform was pressed every day.
23:42
SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
23:43
SPEAKER_01: There was very few of them.
23:44
SPEAKER_01: There was a transit cop I worked with that had the uh, you know, when you step in snow and it has the salt and it and now it's but they had that in August.
23:53
SPEAKER_01: They haven't washed their clothes ever.
23:55
SPEAKER_01: They had that in August.
23:56
SPEAKER_01: There was another guy that used to spray his underarms with AquaNet.
23:59
SPEAKER_01: Willie Rodriguez used to spray his underarms with Aquanet.
24:04
SPEAKER_01: So I notice all this stuff.
24:06
SPEAKER_01: Maybe that's it.
24:07
SPEAKER_01: And just hanging around with nothing else to do except be funny for eight, nine hours at a time on a homeless outreach bus.
24:17
SPEAKER_01: You know what we used to do?
24:18
SPEAKER_01: We either had a van or a bus.
24:20
SPEAKER_01: We would pick up NYPD guys on a foot post.
24:24
SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
24:25
SPEAKER_01: And let them get warm.
24:26
SPEAKER_01: You know, we'd have 15 New York City rookies in the homeless outreach van, and guess what?
24:31
SPEAKER_01: It was time.
24:32
SPEAKER_01: It was time to me to make fun of the job.
24:34
SPEAKER_01: How much it sucks, and how you're gonna do 20 years and your wife's gonna marry your partner, and at year 15 you're gonna live in your old bedroom with your twisted sister posters because your wife took everything.
24:46
SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
24:47
SPEAKER_00: No, I know I know what you mean.
24:48
SPEAKER_00: So, how did you wind up on a radio show with New York City subway vigilante Bernard Getz?
24:56
SPEAKER_00: I I can't even picture you talking to each other.
25:00
SPEAKER_01: I I lived in California and I'm headlining Caroline's Comedy Club, right?
25:05
SPEAKER_01: I live in it's a spring of '99.
25:07
SPEAKER_01: The sitcom is just about to go down.
25:10
SPEAKER_01: It was the lowest-rated sitcom in the history of TV.
25:13
SPEAKER_01: But Howard's, they called the uh the comedy club called Howard Stern.
25:18
SPEAKER_01: And Baba Bowie said, Yeah, we read about this guy.
25:21
SPEAKER_01: We'll have him on if he's willing to talk about he lost his pension, moved to LA for the American dream, and his sitcom became the lowest-rated sitcom in the history of prime time.
25:33
SPEAKER_01: And, you know, now he's basically out of a job and out of a pension.
25:37
SPEAKER_01: But if he's willing to talk about that, we'll have him on.
25:40
SPEAKER_01: So I'm ready to go do Howard Stern Friday morning, spring of 99.
25:45
SPEAKER_01: And a friend of mine says, Hey, remember that guy Combs?
25:48
SPEAKER_01: He was on with Hannity.
25:50
SPEAKER_01: What was his name?
25:50
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
25:51
SPEAKER_01: The guy's like kind of cross-eyed.
25:53
SPEAKER_01: So he does a midnight to six in the morning radio show in New York.
25:57
SPEAKER_01: So my friend says, Hey, you want to do combs with me?
26:00
SPEAKER_01: I said, Sure.
26:01
SPEAKER_01: He said, We're going to get there about midnight.
26:02
SPEAKER_01: We step into the studio, the show is already on.
26:06
SPEAKER_01: And I sit down, and who's sitting to my right?
26:08
SPEAKER_01: Bernard Getz, as a guest on the radio show.
26:11
SPEAKER_01: I didn't know he was going to be there.
26:13
SPEAKER_01: And on the air, I shook his hand and I said, Bernard, it's nice to meet you.
26:17
SPEAKER_01: My name is John DeRasta.
26:18
SPEAKER_01: I was a transit cop.
26:20
SPEAKER_01: You did more for subway safety in 12 seconds than I did in 12 years.
26:25
SPEAKER_01: And I made that joke up on the spot, and that might be my, you know, that's kind of my thing to develop a joke that sums up our now moment.
26:34
SPEAKER_01: Like right now, it looks like you're sitting in front of your washing machine.
26:38
SPEAKER_01: Are you?
26:39
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
26:40
SPEAKER_01: I tried to fancy it up.
26:42
SPEAKER_01: Dude, I built this wall just for the podcast.
26:44
SPEAKER_00: Do you want to hear more about Bernard Getz?
26:47
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
26:49
SPEAKER_01: So obviously he's a bit of a weirdo.
26:52
SPEAKER_01: But we're at the elevator.
26:53
SPEAKER_01: It's three in the morning, we're at the elevator.
26:55
SPEAKER_01: And he goes, Can you give me a ride home?
26:58
SPEAKER_01: So my brother had a Mercedes.
26:59
SPEAKER_01: My brother was on the radio show too.
27:02
SPEAKER_01: And uh my brother said, some reason my brother went down early to go get the Mercedes-Benz to give Bernard Getz a ride home.
27:09
SPEAKER_01: And I wanted to drive past the the comedy cellar, all the comedy clubs to show him I'm with Bernard Getz.
27:16
SPEAKER_01: That's the only reason we offered him a ride home.
27:18
SPEAKER_01: And we're good guys, but but it wind up all the comedy clubs were closed by then.
27:22
SPEAKER_01: But waiting for the elevator, with just me and Bernard Goetz, I said, Bernie, you know, we bonded.
27:28
SPEAKER_01: Tell me what really happened.
27:30
SPEAKER_01: And he went.
27:30
SPEAKER_01: He looked at the ground, he went, Well, five black guys surrounded me with a screwdriver, so I shot him.
27:37
SPEAKER_01: And he had this really eerie smile, like he was looking to shoot somebody.
27:41
SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
27:42
SPEAKER_01: And uh, and that was it.
27:43
SPEAKER_01: We drove him around, we couldn't find any other comedy club friends, and we dropped him off.
27:48
SPEAKER_01: And I never saw him again.
27:49
SPEAKER_01: But dude, I've had a lot of interactions with with, you know, from Steven Spielberg to De Niro to Sandro Bullock, you know.
27:56
SPEAKER_01: I have a lot of I've lived a crazy life, you know, growing up at Woodmere Transit.
28:01
SPEAKER_01: As a transit cop, I met uh uh Joey Ramon and I got his autograph on a$5 bill.
28:07
SPEAKER_01: I spent it two days later.
28:08
SPEAKER_01: I met Larry Bud Melman.
28:10
SPEAKER_01: Remember Letterman guy, Larry Bud Melman?
28:13
SPEAKER_01: I met Vanessa Del Rio, the porno star, Vanessa Del Rio.
28:18
SPEAKER_01: And dude, in the homeless outreach unit, every New York City transit cop that tried to commit suicide and lived, guess where they got sent?
28:28
SPEAKER_01: To the homeless outreach unit.
28:30
SPEAKER_01: It's less, you know, now every cop you're working with was every transit cop is already a psycho.
28:36
SPEAKER_01: Now you're working with double psychos.
28:38
SPEAKER_01: And you're dealing with, dude, on a cold night, we would have 50, 60 clients on a bus, and they all stunk.
28:45
SPEAKER_00: You work with seven Academy Award winners.
28:48
SPEAKER_00: I've met six, so let me give you my list.
28:50
SPEAKER_00: I met Sissy Spacick, De Niro, Julianne Moore, F.
28:54
SPEAKER_00: Murray Abraham, Sally Field, and Sam Rockwell.
28:57
SPEAKER_01: Okay, wow.
28:58
SPEAKER_01: My my list is different.
29:00
SPEAKER_01: I'm in Miss Congeniality one and two, which Sam.
29:04
SPEAKER_01: So I worked with Sandra Bullock twice.
29:06
SPEAKER_01: In that movie is Michael Cain.
29:08
SPEAKER_01: That's two.
29:09
SPEAKER_01: In Miss Congeniality, I had two African-American girls.
29:14
SPEAKER_01: I can't think of her name right now.
29:15
SPEAKER_01: She's an Oscar winner.
29:17
SPEAKER_01: I was in Sidney Lamette's last movie.
29:20
SPEAKER_01: Uh I worked with Matthew McConaughey.
29:22
SPEAKER_01: Uh I auditioned for Steven Spielberg over the phone.
29:27
SPEAKER_01: They wanted a New York accent in a TV commercial for War of the Worlds.
29:31
SPEAKER_01: So I auditioned for Spielberg over the phone, but the next day I got a check for 700 bucks.
29:37
SPEAKER_01: So it's it's kind of a technicality whether I worked with Spielberg, but I asked my live audience and they always say yes.
29:45
SPEAKER_01: Because I did interact with him for 10 minutes, and then I got who gets paid for an audition?
29:49
SPEAKER_01: I got a check from Amblin Entertainment.
29:51
SPEAKER_01: The next day, FedEx was 725 bucks.
29:54
SPEAKER_01: That's six, and I can't think who the seventh one is, but there is a seventh.
29:59
SPEAKER_01: But I'm in scenes with them, you know, uh making funnies.
30:02
SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
30:03
SPEAKER_01: With De Niro, Sandro Bullock, Michael Cain, Matthew McConaughey.
30:06
SPEAKER_01: That might have been it.
30:07
SPEAKER_01: Matthew McConaughey was my brother-in-law in How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days.
30:11
SPEAKER_01: So I'm in, you know, I'm not just in the movies with them.
30:14
SPEAKER_01: I'm in movies with other Oscar winners, like uh what's her name?
30:18
SPEAKER_01: The Real Hot Blonde from South Africa.
30:20
SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
30:23
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
30:23
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
30:24
SPEAKER_01: She's in 15 minutes, but I had no scenes with her.
30:27
SPEAKER_01: And then I don't know if you know this, my New York voice appears in War of the Worlds, The Terminal.
30:34
SPEAKER_01: These are Spielberg movies.
30:36
SPEAKER_01: I get hired, mean three, four guys, if it's a New York movie, it's completely shot, and literally the day before it goes out, they add flavor.
30:45
SPEAKER_01: So in the movie The Terminal, when you see Tom Hanks, you know, walking around and he's got a foreign accent in the background, you hear, I told you you brought too much luggage.
30:55
SPEAKER_01: I wanted hot dogs.
30:57
SPEAKER_01: You got hamburgers.
30:58
SPEAKER_01: So I'm in three Steven Spielberg movies, my voice, uh, and I get paid residuals on that.
31:04
SPEAKER_01: Do you got any funny stories working with these people?
31:06
SPEAKER_01: And Robert De Niro put aside the politics, was the nicest, funniest New York schmuck.
31:15
SPEAKER_01: He was like every one of your uncles, every old-time cop that you worked with.
31:19
SPEAKER_01: He was as sweet as can be.
31:21
SPEAKER_01: And uh in the movie 15 minutes, him and I are chasing a criminal and and and now cut, and now, you know, you gotta slow down.
31:30
SPEAKER_01: Now me and Robert De Niro are out of the scene, past the Orange Cones.
31:34
SPEAKER_01: Him and I are just walking back to the set through the streets of New York City.
31:38
SPEAKER_01: And everyone's like, what the hell happens?
31:41
SPEAKER_01: So to make conversation, he goes, You must be used to this.
31:45
SPEAKER_01: You know, I go, used to what?
31:47
SPEAKER_01: He goes, you know, chasing criminals.
31:49
SPEAKER_01: You're a cop.
31:49
SPEAKER_01: I said, dude, I was a New York City transit cop.
31:52
SPEAKER_01: I never traced one criminal in my life.
31:54
SPEAKER_01: I never even thought of it.
31:56
SPEAKER_01: That's why they give us police radios.
31:58
SPEAKER_01: I'm not gonna chase a criminal.
31:59
SPEAKER_01: And the next day, I watched Ronin.
32:02
SPEAKER_01: Did you ever see the movie Ronin?
32:03
SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah, sure, sure.
32:05
SPEAKER_01: So every night I was watching a Robert De Niro movie, and I had the license to hang out with him.
32:10
SPEAKER_01: Even if I wasn't on set, on, you know, working.
32:12
SPEAKER_01: I went to the set every day to watch Robert De Niro and Burns to see how a movie was made.
32:18
SPEAKER_01: And I catch Robert De Niro, he's in the basement of a Chinese restaurant, sitting in a director's chair, and he would always read the daily news in the post, and it's just me and him.
32:27
SPEAKER_01: And he's reading the daily news, and I slip up on him.
32:30
SPEAKER_01: I say, Bob, I don't mean to bother you.
32:32
SPEAKER_01: I'm doing my homework.
32:33
SPEAKER_01: He goes, he never even looks up.
32:35
SPEAKER_01: He goes, Yeah.
32:35
SPEAKER_01: I said, I watched a movie Ronin last night.
32:38
SPEAKER_01: He goes, Yeah.
32:39
SPEAKER_01: I said, you gotta tell me what was in the case.
32:42
SPEAKER_01: The whole movie's based on this metal case, and they don't tell you what's in the case.
32:46
SPEAKER_01: I said, Hey, Bob, you gotta tell me what's in the case.
32:48
SPEAKER_01: And he goes, like this.
32:49
SPEAKER_01: How the fuck do I know?
32:50
SPEAKER_01: Uh, Sandra Bullock, uh, a couple of real Oh, I'll tell you funny, Sandra Bullock.
32:56
SPEAKER_01: In part two, the opening scene we're in a van, putting on bulletproof vests, you know, all of it, we're gonna.
33:03
SPEAKER_01: So there's big long, there's hour-long where there's nothing to do.
33:07
SPEAKER_01: You gotta sit in a van next to Sandra Bullock with the air conditioner blowing in.
33:11
SPEAKER_01: So and I said to her, uh, so this is part two.
33:15
SPEAKER_01: Will there be a part three?
33:16
SPEAKER_01: And she said, No way, no how.
33:19
SPEAKER_01: Even if this one makes money, I'm done.
33:21
SPEAKER_01: And I said, Why don't you do a uh Mr.
33:24
SPEAKER_01: Congeniality?
33:25
SPEAKER_01: I'm in one and two, right?
33:29
SPEAKER_01: You produce it, you know.
33:31
SPEAKER_01: And she's just started to date Jesse James.
33:35
SPEAKER_01: It was a secret.
33:36
SPEAKER_01: It was everybody in the set knew he'd show up on his big Harley, but it was a secret in the real world, right?
33:42
SPEAKER_01: But I have a big mouth and I'm imitating him.
33:45
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, do you mean you pull up?
33:49
SPEAKER_01: So I'm doing imitations of him to everyone in their cracking out.
33:52
SPEAKER_01: Now watch this.
33:53
SPEAKER_01: When you're a wise ass New York cop and a sarcastic douchebag that mocks everyone, and you forget you have a microphone on, it can cost you your job.
34:04
SPEAKER_01: On 15 minutes, I said to Ed Burns, hey, that producer, Jerry, he's getting married to a man.
34:11
SPEAKER_01: And Ed goes like this.
34:12
SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
34:13
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
34:14
SPEAKER_01: So I got I didn't get caught on that one.
34:17
SPEAKER_01: So the next day, I'm making fun of uh, what's his name?
34:20
SPEAKER_01: Jesse James.
34:21
SPEAKER_01: About two days later, Sandra Bullock, I'm in the makeup.
34:24
SPEAKER_01: She says, you outside.
34:26
SPEAKER_01: Really serious.
34:27
SPEAKER_01: I go, this is it.
34:28
SPEAKER_01: You know, she heard me making fun of her.
34:30
SPEAKER_01: She's you outside.
34:31
SPEAKER_01: No smile.
34:32
SPEAKER_01: We step between two uh downtown LA, like two big hang uh campers, and she says, Let me tell you something.
34:39
SPEAKER_01: I did press for this movie yesterday in front of 250 reporters, and they asked me, is there gonna be a Miss Congeniality 3?
34:47
SPEAKER_01: And I said, Yeah, it's gonna be called Mr.
34:51
SPEAKER_01: Congeniality.
34:52
SPEAKER_01: And I got 30 seconds of laughter.
34:55
SPEAKER_01: I had a hold.
34:56
SPEAKER_01: And then she goes, as I began to talk, the laughter came back.
35:00
SPEAKER_01: And then she smiled and said, I just want to thank you.
35:03
SPEAKER_01: And the whole time I thought I got caught.
35:05
SPEAKER_01: So, yeah, there's a lot of funny stuff like that.
35:08
SPEAKER_00: So the you're you're a woodworker, your brother's a woodworker.
35:11
SPEAKER_00: Tell us about that with your American body shop.
35:14
SPEAKER_01: American Body Shop, I've had five TV shows canceled.
35:17
SPEAKER_01: You know these comedians that are all bitching and moaning that they're not gonna get their$400 every four months from uh do you know about that?
35:26
SPEAKER_01: Sirius Radio is cutting back on all these comedians.
35:29
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
35:30
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
35:31
SPEAKER_01: You know what I want to tell them all?
35:32
SPEAKER_01: I had four shows, five shows canceled.
35:35
SPEAKER_01: The sitcom was canceled, uh, trash to cash.
35:38
SPEAKER_01: Me and my brother had three woodworking shows: Trash to Cash on FX, Hammered on HGTV, um Dirty Money was on Discovery, and the show you're thinking of, American Body Shop, was a fake reality show where I played a mobster in hiding.
35:56
SPEAKER_01: I was a big mobster back in Brooklyn, and now I work in a tire shop in Phoenix to stay out of the public.
36:02
SPEAKER_01: And that was Nick Offerman's first show, who's now famous.
36:06
SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
36:06
SPEAKER_01: Nick Offerman and I worked on that, and we worked on Miss Congeniality 2 together.
36:11
SPEAKER_01: So uh my dad was the local handyman in Woodmere.
36:16
SPEAKER_01: My dad was a New York City fireman and had a workshop, so he became the handyman and the woodworker.
36:21
SPEAKER_01: So me and my brothers learned how to woodwork.
36:24
SPEAKER_01: And then about 30 years later, Fran and I moved up in Harriman.
36:28
SPEAKER_01: We moved to a place that had a big barn.
36:30
SPEAKER_01: So I went into the barn and it was all reclaimed wood.
36:33
SPEAKER_01: So that gentleman taught me how to do tables and benches out of reclaim wood.
36:38
SPEAKER_01: And I would just go in his shop for 10 bucks an hour, make stuff for him that he sold in sugarloaf.
36:44
SPEAKER_01: You know sugarloaf?
36:45
SPEAKER_00: Sure.
36:46
SPEAKER_01: Right.
36:46
SPEAKER_01: So I learned how to do the reclaimed wood furniture from him.
36:50
SPEAKER_01: Then I moved to LA, had three or four very successful years.
36:54
SPEAKER_01: I did the Tonight Show.
36:55
SPEAKER_01: I was a panel guest on the Tonight Show, not even a stand-up.
36:59
SPEAKER_01: You know, Jay Leno said, Were you really a New York City cop eight weeks ago?
37:03
SPEAKER_01: And I was fat at the time.
37:04
SPEAKER_01: I said, look at me.
37:06
SPEAKER_01: Those are my first three words on the Tonight Show, and they were already clapping.
37:09
SPEAKER_01: I said, look at me.
37:11
SPEAKER_01: Cop hair, no neck, man boobs.
37:13
SPEAKER_01: I got a foopa.
37:14
SPEAKER_01: My bulletproof vest the second year fit more like a ballist ballistic lobster bib that barely covered my areolas.
37:22
SPEAKER_01: Remember that piece of shit white vest they gave us that was like a lobster bib.
37:27
SPEAKER_01: So um, I don't know what I was getting at, but oh, I did a couple of really good years, and then all of a sudden, you know, Fran and I was white trash with money.
37:35
SPEAKER_01: My wife was from the deep south, Rockaway Beach.
37:38
SPEAKER_01: We're spending money like, like, you know, like it was never gonna end.
37:42
SPEAKER_01: And then 9-11 happened, and guess what?
37:44
SPEAKER_01: You couldn't be funny for six months.
37:46
SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
37:47
SPEAKER_01: And and and now I have no income.
37:49
SPEAKER_01: And uh I said, shit, I gotta, I I don't want to get a day job.
37:54
SPEAKER_01: So I started the woodworking business.
37:56
SPEAKER_01: And it's been little by little, but like I make this wall right here, I make accent walls, and little by little it grew.
38:03
SPEAKER_01: But watch this, Vic.
38:04
SPEAKER_01: I did 22 years at a flea market in Hollywood.
38:09
SPEAKER_01: If I wasn't on the road as a comedian, I dragged out 30 benches, five huge dining room tables, I had an overhang, I had signs, and for 22 years, I sold out of that spot or sold it, delivered it later that week, right, and handed out a business card.
38:27
SPEAKER_01: And handed out a business card.
38:29
SPEAKER_01: And hand so now a lot of those customers, like while we were on the phone, I got three texts, and probably one or two of them, hey John, you remember me?
38:37
SPEAKER_01: Do you still do that?
38:38
SPEAKER_01: Hey, John, you remember me?
38:39
SPEAKER_01: Can you make this?
38:40
SPEAKER_01: And I used to take on every job where I had no idea what I was doing with doors and glass, and now that I'm older and I'm not broke.
38:49
SPEAKER_01: No, now and it's totally not worth it.
38:52
SPEAKER_01: Now it's big, easy tables, benches, and shelf units.
38:56
SPEAKER_01: And I'm 62 and I get two checks a month, and I'm single.
39:00
SPEAKER_01: So that's the pickup line.
39:01
SPEAKER_01: When you're 62, yeah, how you doing?
39:03
SPEAKER_01: I get two checks a month.
39:05
SPEAKER_01: And the two checks a month I get a Social Security disability.
39:10
SPEAKER_01: I had a I had a toe amputated, and I got a new kidney six months ago, and I get a SAG pension.
39:17
SPEAKER_01: Very few people out here get a SAG pension.
39:21
SPEAKER_01: Very few.
39:21
SPEAKER_01: Usually almost just really hardworking uh actors and famous people.
39:27
SPEAKER_01: And I got very lucky.
39:28
SPEAKER_01: The miscongeniality residuals paid this crazy amount for 10 or 12 years that equaled to a pension.
39:36
SPEAKER_01: So what I'm getting at is I don't have to chase down you know, making a dresser that has 15 drawers with the sliders.
39:43
SPEAKER_01: I just want to make a big rustic table out of old wood.
39:46
SPEAKER_01: I could do it with my eyes shut.
39:48
SPEAKER_01: And the whole time I listen to heavy metal.
39:51
SPEAKER_01: I'm addicted to heavy metal.
39:52
SPEAKER_01: I don't know if you know that.
39:53
SPEAKER_01: I did not know that.
39:54
SPEAKER_01: It's called I just got diagnosed, it's called OCDC.
39:59
SPEAKER_01: Or quack Sabbath or Dread Zeppelin.
40:03
SPEAKER_01: If I don't listen to heavy metal every seven hours blasted in my ears, I get a uh I get a twisted blister on the end of my penis.
40:12
SPEAKER_01: I get a man headache.
40:15
SPEAKER_01: All right, you get it.
40:17
SPEAKER_01: John.
40:17
SPEAKER_01: And the only cure, I'm going on a quiet diet.
40:21
SPEAKER_01: All right, you get it.
40:22
SPEAKER_00: John, any advice you got for someone coming up, balancing a day job that wants to start chasing comedy?
40:28
SPEAKER_01: 100%.
40:29
SPEAKER_01: Do not listen to your relatives, do not listen to your friends.
40:32
SPEAKER_01: Listen to this, listen to this, and do three to five sets a week.
40:37
SPEAKER_01: Get on wherever you can, videotape it or audio tape every single one and listen back with a pen and paper and take notes.
40:47
SPEAKER_01: And don't, don't listen to anyone.
40:49
SPEAKER_01: And if you have the the worst thing is to have a wife or a mate that doesn't believe in it, the very first night you go to do an open mic, come home with a$50 bill to your mate and say, I got paid that to do four minutes to talk about my cock.
41:04
SPEAKER_01: Okay?
41:04
SPEAKER_01: You can't they can't argue with it.
41:06
SPEAKER_01: Lie.
41:07
SPEAKER_01: It's unfortunate.
41:08
SPEAKER_01: I've been through it all.
41:09
SPEAKER_01: But three to five sets, I do a set every 24 hours.
41:13
SPEAKER_01: In the back room, shittiest places, they don't speak English.
41:17
SPEAKER_01: They're shooting pool, but guess what?
41:19
SPEAKER_01: It's like working out in the gym.
41:21
SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
41:21
SPEAKER_01: It makes me tougher.
41:23
SPEAKER_01: And it makes your act more real.
41:25
SPEAKER_01: In other words, it's easy to go on a cruise ship and go, hey, don't you hate it when you go to Costco and you get a nine-foot bottle of ketchup?
41:32
SPEAKER_01: Boy, that's hard to carry.
41:34
SPEAKER_01: But when you're in a room with 15 bikers that aren't listening, you have to get their attention.
41:40
SPEAKER_01: And you ain't gonna get it by talking about Costco.
41:42
SPEAKER_01: You gotta be real.
41:44
SPEAKER_01: But uh I've done, I keep a running count.
41:46
SPEAKER_01: You probably don't know this.
41:47
SPEAKER_01: I've done 7,667.
41:51
SPEAKER_01: Tonight I'll do 7,667.
41:54
SPEAKER_01: I'm en route to 10,000.
41:56
SPEAKER_01: I did two shows in Hong Kong.
41:58
SPEAKER_01: I've been to Alaska five times.
42:00
SPEAKER_01: I did the Hells Angels headquarters, it was killing, and then mentioned I was a New York City cop.
42:06
SPEAKER_01: And bro, I thought I was getting a bottle thrown in my face because it was really dark, because of all the lighting.
42:12
SPEAKER_01: And you talk about problems Jerry Seinfeld said comedians are the greatest problem solvers because they have to do it second to second.
42:20
SPEAKER_01: You can't go back to the office and figure it out.
42:23
SPEAKER_01: I got I I was killing with the Hells Angels, and I said, I'm a former New York City cop, and it went dead silent.
42:31
SPEAKER_01: And I said, Wow, I gotta get out of this very quickly.
42:35
SPEAKER_01: And I said, Look, I wasn't even a real cop.
42:38
SPEAKER_01: I was a transit cop in the subway, and that got a little giggle.
42:42
SPEAKER_01: I said, our motto, you ride, we hide.
42:44
SPEAKER_01: That got a giggle.
42:45
SPEAKER_01: Then I said, uh, I had nine arrests in 12 years.
42:49
SPEAKER_01: That got a giggle.
42:50
SPEAKER_01: I said, my own son has been arrested more than that.
42:53
SPEAKER_01: That got a laugh, and I said, he might become a hell's angel.
42:56
SPEAKER_01: That got a bigger laugh, and dude, I just changed the subject.
43:00
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, just keep going.
43:01
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
43:02
SPEAKER_01: But yeah, uh again, and if anyone watches this and wants to start doing stand-up, I'm on Instagram, hit me up.
43:08
SPEAKER_01: I'm a le uh, I don't know what the word is.
43:10
SPEAKER_01: Uh look, I'm a sponsor for people that want to try stand-up but are afraid.
43:14
SPEAKER_01: I'm a sponsor for nail biting.
43:17
SPEAKER_01: Dude, I was the most vicious nail biter you you can imagine.
43:20
SPEAKER_01: It's a it's a mental illness called onkiphasia.
43:23
SPEAKER_01: I'm cured.
43:24
SPEAKER_01: So I help cure other people.
43:26
SPEAKER_01: I'm uh I'm a liaison for uh dialysis.
43:30
SPEAKER_01: I did dialysis for three years, so I get people like that are nervous about it.
43:35
SPEAKER_01: And now, six months ago, my son donated a kidney.
43:39
SPEAKER_01: My name is out there if people I I've already spoken to a few people.
43:43
SPEAKER_01: Even one girl came to see me at governors Thursday night, and I spoke to her afterwards in the lobby about her husband's needing a kidney, and she just texted me and she said, You absolutely made my night.
43:53
SPEAKER_01: She said, Talking to me in the lobby about my husband's kidney.
43:56
SPEAKER_01: So my son, I don't know if you know, my son donated the kidney, and he had a very bad drug problem.
44:01
SPEAKER_01: So the side effects have kicked in.
44:03
SPEAKER_01: I stopped paying rent, car insurance, and parking ticket.
44:06
SPEAKER_01: But yeah, dude, I really got a kidney through, and do you know you keep the other kidneys?
44:10
SPEAKER_01: I have three kidneys, nine toes, and a one-inch penis.
44:14
SPEAKER_01: And that equals 13, which is uncanny because that's how long my balls are.
44:20
SPEAKER_01: I have a 13-inch ball sack and a one-inch penis.
44:23
SPEAKER_01: I have a genital mullet.
44:25
SPEAKER_01: This gets dirtier if you want me to go on.
44:27
SPEAKER_01: No, no, no.
44:28
SPEAKER_01: Listen, you got anything you'd like to plug?
44:31
SPEAKER_01: Uh, I'll be uh the only uh the only gig I got coming up is in LA uh next Tuesday night at Yamashiro.
44:40
SPEAKER_01: Uh I might be at one of the governors.
44:42
SPEAKER_01: Do you still live in Long Island?
44:43
SPEAKER_01: I never lived in Long Island, I'm in Florida.
44:45
SPEAKER_01: Okay, I was just gonna say, if guys from Cedars in New York, uh I might be at Levitown Governor's New Year's Eve, and they're doing, Rick, I don't know if you know, How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days Part 2 is in the works.
44:58
SPEAKER_01: And I was Matthew McConaughey's brother-in-law in the first movie, and in a version of the script that was written 10 years ago, I'm the drunk asshole at the wedding that tells the off-colored jokes in the speech that goes on too long.
45:13
SPEAKER_01: But I don't know if that's still in the script.
45:15
SPEAKER_01: But I hope to be uh, like I said, there was allegedly a Sons of Anarchy Brooklyn, and I got the tattoos, so that my name came up.
45:24
SPEAKER_01: And uh oh, dude, I got my uh shield number.
45:26
SPEAKER_01: Look, 1623 transit.
45:38
SPEAKER_01: I kept the the same shield number on both departments.
45:41
SPEAKER_01: What was your shield number?
45:42
SPEAKER_01: 15299.
45:43
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
45:44
SPEAKER_01: I was 1623 in two departments.
45:47
SPEAKER_01: And do you know there's a website?
45:49
SPEAKER_01: You could go now and find out who has your shield number.
45:52
SPEAKER_01: Did you know that?
45:52
SPEAKER_00: I know, yeah.
45:53
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
45:54
SPEAKER_01: A highway cop uh in Brooklyn that's got a bunch of tattoos is one six two three.
46:00
SPEAKER_01: I was hoping they would retire my number, but yeah, good luck with that.
46:06
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
46:08
SPEAKER_00: John DeResta, thank you so much for spending your time with us today.
46:12
SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah, dude.
46:12
SPEAKER_00: A lot of fun.
46:13
SPEAKER_00: And as always, I'd like to thank everyone for tuning in, especially my listeners in Kirkland, Washington, Augusta, Georgia, Piscataway, New Jersey, Middletown, New York, and Palmyra, Virginia.
46:22
SPEAKER_00: If you worked in law enforcement and had an interesting criminal background, please drop me a note on Twitter or Instagram at VicFeroy50.
46:28
SPEAKER_00: If you're watching on what YouTube, please hit the like and subscribe buttons.
46:31
SPEAKER_00: If you enjoy the content, check out my Amazon author page.
46:33
SPEAKER_00: Just type in my name, VicFeroy Like the Car, where you can preview all my NYPD books for free.
46:37
SPEAKER_00: Thanks again, everyone, and I'll see you next week.