- You started in stand-up.
That's what people don't really know.
- They don't know. - And I did not know that.
I didn't know that either. - I know.
- So, what made you do that?
And also, was it like a certain comedian
or a certain experience that made you like,
oh, "I wanna do standup."
- I was a legal secretary, legal secretary
and I was just bored with life.
And I said to the other legal secretaries,
there's like eight of us, and I said
"Let's do something different."
'Cause legal secretaries, any secretary,
we do our work, we go home and we go to bed about 8:00
and the we come back and do the same thing.
- It's all about the overtime,
the pension plan, the profit sharing,
the Christmas club, that's it.
And so I said, "Let's live a little.
Let's go do, like go see stand-up."
And we went to Sizzler, All You Can Eat
'cause I had the cheese bread, the garlic and cheese bread,
and I had the shrimp all you can eat and I had my Coke.
- Okay wait, how long ago was this?
- Oh girl, this is about twentysomething years ago.
- And you even remember the meal?
- Oh, I remember everything.
I remember everything 'cause I was so excited.
And we went to Sizzler and after Sizzler
we went to the Comedy Store, and it was the main room.
And I remember seeing everybody's name on the wall
above the main room.
And we went in and we were waiting
and I just happened to be making people laugh around me.
And so all these comics went up,
Charlie Fleischer, Tamayo Otsuki,
Eddie Griffin went up.
And I noticed when Eddie Griffin went up
everybody was laughing back and they would come forward.
And I said, "What is that, what's that feel like
that you got all of these people, 300 people, laughing?"
And then Andrew Dice Clay went up
and that's when he was doing "Hickory Dickory Dock,
I got you sucking my." - I love Andrew Dice Clay.
- Yeah, and he made all the women mad.
And this one woman turned around and she said,
"You're as funny as him.
Why don't you do that?"
And it just showed me the power of your words.
You can build somebody up with your tongue
or you can tear them down.
And when that woman planted a seed in my life
when she goes, "You're as funny as him.
Like you should do that."
And the whole night, I zoned out and I said, "What if?"
"Could I do that?"
And I asked all my legal secretary friends
and all seven of them said no.
They said, "You make $40,000, you got a pension plan.
It's gonna take you 10 to 20 years to make it.
This is stable."
And one girlfriend said to me,
"If you don't try it, you'll never know."
And then I was standing outside of the comedy club,
everybody went home and I was standing there,
and I saw Eddie Griffin and Andrew Dice Clay.
He was smoking a cigar, just smoking a cigar.
And I was looking at them.
Eddie Griffin swears to this day
I was trying to sleep with him, that I was a groupie,
but I was just nervous.
I was a Jehovah's Witness and I just was looking at him.
And I walked up.
- (laughing) I was a Jehovah's Witness
- And I probably did sound like a,
that's probably how groupies sound.
They sound like, "Oh my gosh."
And I went up to them and I said.
And at the time my voice was really high,
'cause I was like in my twenties,
and I said, "I wanna try that.
Like, how do I do it?"
And Eddie Griffin or Andrew, they say "You just do it."
And I said, "But I'm scared"
And I don't know which one it was,
but, I think it was Eddie Griffin, he said "Do it scared."
And that's my mantra that I live by, do it scared.
And the next week, I had the legal secretaries
'cause they had garnished my check
and repossessed my car, and I had been to jail
and all this other stuff, girl.
- You really just speeding over some stuff.
- Oh girl, I mean literally girl. You can't be a comic
until you done went to jail
for about seven to eight days, literally.
That's a whole 'nother podcast.
But, I didn't have any money 'cause they kept
garnishing my check, but I told the legal secretaries
"I really wanna try doing stand-up."
And they all, all the ones that told me not to quit my job,
they put together money for me to go
to stand-up comedy class. - Wow.
- And to this day, all of those legal secretaries
come to all of my shows.
They've come to both of my weddings
and they've been to all of my comedy shows.
- The cool quote from that is, "You cannot be a stand-up
unless you've been to jail."
- You have got to go to jail.
You got to get your car repossessed.
You got to have thug boyfriends
that are also in prison and want to burn you up
and want to grind you up and pour your bones
into their salad.
That's what mine told me.
That you gotta have craziness in your life.
- So now, you're, you know, super successful,
but do you miss like that time?
- That crazy time? - Anything about it?
- Girl no. - No, okay.
- I actually, no, I actually had a boyfriend
that said, "If you leave me, I'ma kill you."
And what? And then "I'ma pour, put you in a tub
full of boric acid and what don't dissolve
- What, who were you dating? - I'm gonna pour in my salad and eat.
Al Capone?
- No, I was dating a guy,
who was the guy that ate the brain of the girl,
the FBI agent?
- What?
- That's who I was dating.
Ol' crazy stalker.
Do I miss those days?
No, do I miss- - Was that a comic?
- No, that one wasn't a comic,
but I done dated some crazy comics.
But, yeah girl, no I don't miss those days.
I don't miss going to jail.
I was in jail for eight days, I don't miss that.
- Okay, for what?
- Oh 'cause, oh girl, I was in jail for eight days
because I had traffic warrants.
I had $10,000 worth of traffic warrants.
- Yeah, L.A. don't play that.
- They don't play, 'cause my registration
was two years expired because I was a Jehovah's Witness
and we had been taught that the end of the world was coming.
So I thought, well, since the end of the world is coming.
- Was that 1999?
- It was like 19, yeah it was around 19, yeah.
- I remember that.
- And so, I was like, well, since the end
of the world is coming, why am I paying my bills?
So I didn't pay any bills.
So when I would get traffic warrants
and when I would get tickets from
registration being expired I was like,
"But Jesus is coming so why am I paying my bills?"
- I mean that's how I feel about now.
Trump is President, why am I paying my bills?
- Thank you.
Why don't you go to Casual Corner and shop?
- Why do I pay off my.
- Why you paying your bills that apocalypse is coming.
And so I felt like, well, the apocalypse is coming
why am I paying my bills?
But, I kept wracking up these tickets
and if you don't go to court it becomes a traffic warrant
which becomes, if you get stopped, they take you to jail.
So, I was on my way to the Comedy Store
and I had like shorts like this
and I had long braids and with the high heels
and they stopped me because it was $10,000 worth
of bench warrants and they took me to jail
to rampart division.
Which turned out to be the most corrupt
police department in L.A.
And they took me there and I remember being chained
to the bench. - Oh my goodness.
- And I was trying, and the police kept telling me
no, don't say nothing, be quiet, be quiet.
So I was trying to communicate with my eyes.
I do that a lot, try to communicate with my eyes,
that I'm really like nice and I'm a legal secretary
and I'm saying I decided to do stand-up comedy
and I was trying to communicate that with my eyes.
And they were like, shut-up.
And there was these prostitutes,
they were chained next to me and I realized,
I looked at them, and I was like
we're wearing the same thing.
They think I'm a hooker, oh my gosh.
And I had a spot at the Comedy Store.
Mitzi Shore picked me up as a regular.
- A comedian is a certain kind of hooker.
- You are kind of a hooker, you get pimped out
- You selling laughs. - at the comedy club.
- for minimal money.
- Okay.
If you're a comic and you ain't been through nothing,
I'm like, you better make up something like Vanilla Ice.
- I gotta go to jail.
- Yeah, you gotta make up something if you're a comic.
- I'm gonna get locked up while we're down here in New Orleans.
- Or you ain't gonna get no respect from me.
- Yeah, alright, so.
- Yeah, "I was on Bourbon Street
and I got arrested for showing my ta-tas."
Something.
- Yeah, I'm gonna go flash somebody later.
- Yeah, you have to flash somebody.
- I don't even think you get arrested
down here for that though.
- Yeah, you really can't.
- I don't think there's no laws in New Orleans.
- Yeah, you can't be crazy in New Orleans.
You're not gonna stop nobody.