i am. a little bit of the middle of the interview the middle of the a folks dennis miller here still at home and hope you're all well joining us next is a great comedian you know love this guy tom papa i know usually has papa not to preach but you're going to love hearing this guy talk about what we might be missing in life and this specially in these times how we have to pay attention to well don't sweat the suppose of big stuff focus on the smaller more meaningful stuff tom popper right up to the sun dennis miller plus one. hey folks welcome to dennis miller plus one the home edition been doing this for

a couple months and i want you to know i don't leave this chair in between shows just frozen air like ted williams head in that hangar near phoenix sky harbor airport joining us today is tom papa so he's a great standup i just finished his book and it is of the like let me hold it up there papa you're doing great indeed he's got a brilliant conceit that he hangs these essays off abana deja's neukom coming special he's best known as a radio host for sirius x.m. radio show and what a joke with. pop and fortune i guess that's his partner tom has a new book out as i showed you you're doing great now there are reasons the say life currently available in stores online approach problem and this guy's a killer stand up is going to special on netflix you got a lot shit tommy how are you my friend i'm doing well it's good to see you. yeah nice to see whose over your shoulder ogle you who's on that poster over your

shoulder that's a george carlin sure it's you now that's an harlan yeah and i like it. because he's pointing at the door and this is my office i feel like he's saying if you're not workin just just get outta here. periodic plea for inspiration you must touch your finger to his music sistine chapel or something where george is the knowledge you know exactly. i don't know if you've gone back to but there's a brilliant you know george for tells a lot of this crazy sees moster dahmus like a funny nose damas yeah exactly that whole that whole run about how big the planet's going to be fine it's the humans that are the problem. very pressing it yeah yeah he was. not sure he did god isn't it funny

that there are so many platforms now and you inhabiting many of them that in on way the thing that is least impinged upon it's like a rise being high functioning alcoholic still less thing to go out sometimes as the or the last thing to go on is grown a virus thing is you can still have a pretty good stand up earlier or just a monologist career out of your own will yeah i know it's kind of crazy it's i'm still doing my radio shows and i do the n.p.r. show i do the sirius x.m. show i have this. getting breaking bread pock podcast which i just launched before the pandemic was coming it's yeah i feel like my office is like a studio now it's like i wasn't planning on doing this but it's it's pretty great i mean i just to give me some kind of structure to be able to talk to comedians and stuff it's been a blessing the only hitch of course is not being able to go out and tell the jokes at night and you know you it's like i feel like i'm writing on vacation where you

know you'll jottings down and i get a certain point like what's the point of writing any more until i try this that's where that's where i feel like i'm at now well your partner in crime jerry seinfeld must be climbing the walls tom and jerry good friends they go out a lot together maybe not as much but i know for a while they went out a lot together and i was thinking who with this is doing more because jerry loves the work he's all of all 4 well you know you talk to yeah talk to them and it's surprisingly he's been ok with it he's like it's i think because he's special just came out and he just i don't know if i expected him to be like freaking out we got to get back on the road and he's just kind of enjoying is time at home getting some extra time with his kids and he was he seemed oddly ok with it. it made me a little nervous i was surprised yeah i was surprised to see him teaching

a jazzercise course online till i signed up. very out of character. i didn't i didn't see that coming tom abyssinia folks i got to show it again you're doing great and other reasons to stay alive i love the promise of the song lay it on the blade on the viewers because i love what you work off of all the tributaries about life yeah yeah well i started i was working on the book over the last you know year and a half and i just got this overwhelming feeling that people felt like they weren't doing enough like their life wasn't big enough for great enough and they were always chasing more and more and more and i had this kind of anxiety that seemed to be going through the culture and when i was on stage i started telling people you know you're doing pretty great if you're yeah if you're able to take in a comedy show and you've got your health you've got your kids that is what a life is supposed to be you've got to lower your expectations i think in social

media we all started thinking that we had to go get like some bigger private jet kind of a life this thing that was unattainable it was like take a breath and realize a simple life is what wins and you're doing great and people started coming up to me after the shows and thanking me like sincerely you know in a stand up show were coming up and saying thank you for saying that i i really needed to hear it and i was like well this is a good premise to kind of launch off to just let people kind of open your eyes and realize lower your expectations in life and not to that not to like a that things are crappy but just lower your expectations and you'll be a lot more content than aiming for the for the moon you know tom i am right now reading a book by a great author called scott i met about cary grant and in the book great leads i. i think about i grant cooper has

a few guys the quintessential famous movie star life so pines for the regularity that you're talking of but you know to me yes take yatom set off the fastball and getting it over the plate he longs for it yeah it's a weird thing like we're built to just go and go and go and the more people i've met throughout my career i realize those lives are complicated not everybody so set up for those lives and it's like if you can just you know it was actually the process of writing the books this is my 2nd one and i for the so for the like the last 4 years i've been writing a lot and that really just kind of put everything into perspective for me because when i'm writing i was off the road i was home i was making coffee i was seeing my kids i was walking the dog it was like and i started to just feel better i was like this is what life is supposed to be and it's kind of funny now with this pandemic and we're all sitting at home this isn't like. i mean there's suffering and we have

got to adjust and stuff but this is a very similar to what life used to be you cook your meals for your family you didn't go to restaurants every other day you had a lot of time to be around you weren't planning these crazy vacations you knew the summer you were going to be this is closer to real life than what we were experiencing for like the last 10 years. yeah but a cajun allay some work very soon we're going to want to well out of the cave and whack a saber tooth tag are over they had to procure cutlets for the babies back in the cave it's going to get it's going to get cave many pretty soon because i think let's let's put it this way gavin newsom just sent me a say the date card for next year's quarantine and i don't know how i'm going on that how. i'm no man i had an offer to go to salt lake city and perform next weekend at wiseguys comedy club and if i was

a single man i would have been on that plane for sure i mean i'm ready to go i'll come to your house and perform in your living room if you let me i'm reading. your talking to tom papa in the book is you're doing great and other reasons to stay alive it's so funny jerry's. still remind me tom you're rhythms and the larrys rhythms of the great larry miller another great condition jerry's dusty's with and you guys i can hear it in your voice there's a timbre you guys must you jared just how when you're back together i can hear some particular rhythms there. yeah absolutely it is really and you know larry i haven't seen larry in a while and. we just in honor of fred willard's passing we watched waiting for guffman and showed my daughters that movie for the 1st time and i forgot larry was in it. what a funny funny character it is the best. you know the thing

about a tom is the the writing so chris i love your jokes so this works on 3 planes for me i love the writing i love the jokes i love your delivery and i can hear your delivery in my head i don't have that with everybody but the form of the book is so beautifully conceived i love that you came up with the core promise and then you worked off from it each chapter has a different anecdote in the book and. i don't know for manically you don't always find out as a comedian sometimes a little more scattershot you've got to pull these disparate elements together and turn them into a close but this forum on this is beautiful it must've been easy to write too in a way right thanks yeah i mean it definitely gave me it definitely gave me a direction to go in and then it kind of just starts to form as you go as i went along on and just kept writing and then you start seeing you know it started off as something slightly different and then became what it is now i just i have to say i

just really love the process of stretching out you know stand up is so much about getting rid of the fat and boiling it down to the fewest amount of words for the big most potent products you can get it's like poetry you know you wanted to stay he hit me hard and really sink and here is like a kind of let it out a little bit more and go in these different directions and you know without people waiting for a laugh every 2 seconds so if i wanted to say something that was a little more meaningful you know i was able to do it but still like you said like having that core thing to kind of give you a little guidance i gotta say you know i have a lot of friends who comedians who went off and wrote a book and then like i never want to do that again i for them glad he got through it but that was how it's had the opposite effect i mean i or me. yeah you seem like a contemplative man and a man in full it seems like you know you're where you're at life and i don't like

men who know exactly i think men who know exactly where they're at in life feel comfortable sitting in like a good sized pieces or basis between creativity they can sit there and not get off or and oh yeah when you talk about it but when you talk about fine tuning these jokes there's no more vivid example that and i know you remember the great ronnie shakes i know jerry was a big fat of us and ronnie used to have that beautiful joke about how they always had that day in new york this is show you how you make they have to find it perfectly you wrote a great job they have that they have all day but he said they should have they should reach stretch out a little have something like something different you don't expect like pope's hat day at yankee stadium where a man steps into the batter's box and he looks up at the crowd and there's 60000 people wearing pope's hats and he steps out and he looks and he thinks wow i hope it's pope's hat day and i said. i said that such

a brilliant little twist at the end he set originally the joke was it must be pope sat day and he said that a rudimentary sense but i knew yet one more twist in the shifting exchange that's in the existential i hope it's folks that. don't miss derrick these niggas bums yeah doubt it's amazing i never heard that before that so perfect but i love that i mean that's why i was always a huge fan of yours it was like you like the joke comes by and you would just say a line and you laugh and then you just you have to replay it in your head to see like wait a minute how did he how did he did have to be get there what was the stacking of those words and i mean you know nobody has that better than you well thank you but it is a fun thing each comedian finds is that yea and the guys who i find get them. her this kind of delight in it and sit there and will pick over syllable counts and

stuff like it why did he end it if you're just going to throw it all away i used to do a footnote on the nick cage quarter blue glasses. on the joke and find out where the nuance was. on top of his book as you're doing great and other reasons to stay alive after the break we'll talk to well we'll talk all things papa and i know he's working on n.p.r. and i know he does a game show i don't even know that game shot i've never seen it or heard of it but i know people absolutely love it i'll pick his brain about that right after this on dennis miller plus one more tom puppet. we're told with a new cold war with china it is not coherently explain to us why even worse is the strategy there isn't one also the sad death of arms control.

problem drugs don't always come from unscrupulous dealers but from pharmacies to in every state in the united states we've seen very sharp increase in the number of people seeking treatment for addiction to prescription opioids invaded america under the banner of medicine persisted with the pain but instead of trying to wean him off though she just goes after dose after dose after dose and really became his drug dealer so who's to blame patients doctors manufacturers other governments and . they folks welcome back to dennis miller plus one or joined by comedian tom papa also a great radio they got a little garraway at him i find he works on many mediums and there's something about his contemplative nature that for me makes him very watchable very listenable

and you know like it's wise and it also doesn't great there's not a lot of staccato to it you're doing great as the book and other reasons to stay alive song i have met you recently in life or we've talked i met you a cherry years ago to which we don't know each other well but i'm wondering when did you start where to just start to tell me about your birth as a comedian. i started on. june 12th 1903 in new york city i was i graduated college i always want to be a comic when i was a kid like 7th grade was when it i discovered that there was a such there was such a thing as comedians like grown ups who work comics you know willis and sue who's your let's get small let's get small but steve martin and in the same week then it was like with my friends older brother so it was like so cool i mean understand the

jokes i just saw them laughing at this guy and then george carlin's class clown and then my other friend's house later that week and i was like oh man this is i was always funny but i didn't realize it was a job you know the actually being a comedian so i just had my sights set on it from that point on and then i went to school and started acting and when i got out of school i realized people have to hire you to be an actor and i looked in the village voice i was living in north jersey and the village voice said if you came to the new york comedy club and brought 3 of your friends to sit in the audience you'll get some stage time and i loaded them up and i went drove in and it was like 5 in the afternoon the new york comedy club was on top of the western bar is still light out you know summer and i walked in there was a mc stage and a young greg giraldo. was waiting to go on and that was

yeah a killer such a great guy and we struck up a friendship and i wouldn't on and did my 1st set and that was it i was just like ok this confirms that everything that i that i thought like the rush the i actually you know had a couple jokes written out that were you know like in structure and and they worked and i was just hooked and that was it and then i just started pounding it out in new york from that point on. god if it was that much fun at dusk imagine what it would. be less to. go on a night. just comedy dusk with your friends your friends he just drove in with staring at you couldn't have been more but i've never i've never been to a comedy club before that you know i'd never seen comedy in a club i saw it on tonight show and saturday night live and all that stuff but i've never actually been in a club to stand there and have

a microphone in miami was like i was just so excited yeah i remember oddly enough when we were all starting in new york jerry going out to jersey and working the playboy club he worked in something called the laney examiner own at the great gorge new jersey playboy club we all met up later to comic strip i remember we were all existing on burgers from but you know but that was a monocle and he's checking out on a bench or put on a burger that's not broke we are very good you know like 175 bucks he said read it we boys we thought oh my god think you think of 170. no money. you're rich you've made it you made it oh my god it was so great i mean that's what's interesting now like people keep asking me like so when is comedy coming back what's going to be like him and i you know i got an offer like i said to go to

utah and do this show it's a 300 seat room with maybe 100 people they'll put in it so they can distance and someone said to me will what if they're all wearing masks would that be weird i'm like you don't understand. anyone that's a comedian that's has a career as a comedian has done far worse gigs than anything you can devise during the pandemic you know i mean we have fleet played ours where they didn't want comedy we played in front of nursing homes with one person and i mean please there's nothing you can serve up that will make me upset or get terminal. yeah oh i quits grow up who cares or folks you let. men getting between men and primordial ringback urges. and said what they throw you up yeah. reagan has access to the button i will interest my grandfather the t.v.

remote control you know they're. just for the next dude want it so that's until they so grim but what's so funny and so amazing and you look back on all of that and it sounds like it's it must have been horrible and it was the total opposite it was the best time of my life i just loved every minute of it i didn't even think it was strange to be getting $5.00 at the comic strip and living on that to the next day i mean playing like the strip clubs are horrible places driving your car all the way to maine just for 10 minutes and then driving back it all sounds crazy but it was so great it was so great because you knew you were doing something that was just a part of you it was just you found yourself in a way and it was so natural and fun and a man i so grateful we got to go down that road. down life in the bunker you look back on it you made fast friends and people were close enough that you would laugh

when somebody was going belly up your facts. like that somebody stuff. i remember. right lord of the grudge bahama island on a boat had to do to 2 hours i came to get new york i saw jerry pets i said hey you want to do this cruise i better on 7 dollars and he said you know i've never felt the need to vacation with my audience. cherry was june before. you're doing to reasons to stay alive you know took my i always like writing to the requirements of the gang you know people say to me sometimes when you're on t.v. or football for a couple years to always say and then there are other gigs i swear we're pretty sure precisely and you know people say is it hard to do that and you know when they

talk about political correctness today or that i always find it an interesting puzzle it's like doing. some doku or whatever those puzzles are called where i like to write to it times are yeah well i don't find it all that hard to work right away do you yeah no now i agree with you i mean there's you know there's when you look back there was there's a reason why maybe we shouldn't be attacking certain groups of people and making them feel bad and you know it's actually had a funny moment in that yes as you age you know there's younger people come up and they're seeing things differently in their changing at the same way we did when we were coming up and and that's good and that's we get a little set in our ways as we go along and you know we were here and stayed home with 2 teenage daughters and they're telling me after having to live with me for all this to all this time very closely when they should be out at parties and doing all this stuff they're just watching me stumble around the kitchen and my daughter

said to me last night she said you know i noticed that a lot of people meaning me. stalk with their with food in their mouths a lot. then my reaction was no i don't have you know this is the way and i was like no you know what be open minded enough to accept some criticism and change your behavior if that's what it takes she's probably right she's probably right i probably do and as the meal went on i went to talk and i had food in my mouth and i realized yeah i do do this all the time so my point being with the writing in the change of the culture. be open minded and allow yourself to be corrected and i don't think there's anything wrong with that let's stay relevant since that i mean there couldn't be anything worse then somebody saying no i'm telling these jokes the way i used to tell him while the rest of the culture moves on if you're going to be become irrelevant very quickly yeah. you know i went from

a hellion to the great santini overnight and some of my references are not so dated i'll be sitting there like kid now do assimilate and my son will like continue reading will say hey that reference a d. or b c. brutal. they keep. my older son time you'll like this he got out of college and he was looking for a job in new york get a couple jobs in the digital world were offered and he said i'm going to go bake bread i said what do you mean son you graduated from n.y.u. with like you know killer grades what i said yeah i feel like i've been in the serial world for a long time i want to do something is i want to be bred for a wise or not for a life. is i want to take a year and do it and i know you're mazing that. yeah that's amazing is he doing it

now he was doing it now he's a very he's doing well he's a writer now and he sold something that i think that he thinks that that year informed his ability to write better because he felt like he had dealt in the kingdom of ideas so long and he was hot it was brutal but i loved the sound as i would pull out the thing and make print it's amazing yeah i've been doing it for a bike for like the last 5 years i really got into it and got i know exactly what he's talking about and you know i did the show on the food network for like a season where i went and visited all these bakeries all around the country and the stories are very similar to that some of them it was passed down through the family but a lot of the stories where i was an i.t. i was a lawyer i was doing television and i just why i didn't feel completed didn't feel

real and they go into baking and just getting their hands everything your son saying like it it center them and gave them this great life it's hard you work really really hard really long to early hours but they all they just glowed you could just see it they were living they felt alive and i you know i bake bread all the time a pretty serious home baker and every once in a while thing maybe i'll maybe i could could i do that could i go and do that and the answer is no at this point maybe 20 years ago but now that i'm not getting up at 2 in the morning to make other people christiane's. a lot of times times got a new special out called stranger walking in the woods talking about yeast and you can find it i don't. know. great you can get it in the book for the stand up it's a great special tommy you're a good man and i'm glad everything seems to want it so well for you after this is

not let's let's break bread appropriately enough i'll see you down the road i think it's about time that we do that down to i feel like we've talked enough through these kind of things i would love to do that. now we should actually meet before we grow tired of each other. let's get together so we can end this relationship. folks perfect right there all right. and it says that a similar plus one that might. happen and you know the point i was going to sway the food. bank itself mukti about. plus we've got to talk so hard not to think i know how to dissipate

the state of the marketplace and i don't miss the mark and i think. this is the only thing that we do is music because everybody fights his way. through and you can move the feet on this bill frist wouldn't call him a tough call. but i think is this is the funds that is going to come from. international memorial awards are now open for entries all media professionals are eligible whether you're a freelance journalist work for all terms of media or part of a global news platform to participate in the show published works in video or

written for. go to award dot com and to now. greetings and. welcome back everyone to another start of another week's worth of hawk watching here on our t.v. you know there was so much out there to cover so today let's kick things off with a story about coverage a little too much coverage if you will i'm talking of course about the news that last week both republicans and democrats in the u.s. senate joined together to pass the usa freedom reauthorization act of 2020. 9.