do you have a joke folder well you have
rejected i want to talk about rejected
jokes from it so that's your by the way
i do have
you asked an incredible question rob
wait a second i'm gonna get something
can you
stall for seven seconds yeah we
absolutely we can cut this whole thing
out watch this and we've cut out and
we're about to come back and we are back
nope no we're not gonna we're gonna be
back by the way is
if i had too much coffee today i think
i'm very lit up like a i
couldn't hear what you're saying but i'm
sure it's amazing don't worry it wasn't
good
all right so i have something that i
haven't taken down from the
i have like a
ledge with like all fun like props and
books and stuff like that but so i wrote
for
letterman
oh look at that that's a big that's the
biggest binder i've ever seen
every page of this is uh 10 to 15 jokes
now wait are those jokes all that all
made it on the air or just everything
out of all of these and i have them by
so i'll say the first third are
letterman then the next are saturn at
live
i but this is i wasn't a staff writer
because i couldn't give it to sapphire
job so i was freelance so i would have
to
write the jokes by like 6 30 a.m print
them out put them in a fax machine fax
them to letterman or snl and then you
only get paid if they get on the air and
you would get paid for me it was 75 a
joke for letterman and a hundred dollars
a joke for weekend update
um so that's so that's it and basically
what would happen is i got 21 jokes on
letterman and only two jokes on weekend
update but the ones on letterman i was
working as a page at the time so i'm
inside
so every time he went on stage i would
have no idea if he's gonna use a joke or
not and i was a page watching
and uh when he was done he would go like
this ladies and gentlemen paul shafer in
the cbs orchestra and then you know the
monologue was over there's literally an
episode where you can hear me in the
background and say because he
didn't use any of my jokes like the 20th
straight day
and i got yelled at by my boss being
like you can't you cannot do that you
cannot yell and i was like i'm so sorry
i'm so sorry but yeah so i have and i
never thought to keep them but my dad um
after i faxed them i would fax them to
my dad because i was like nobody's
seeing these jokes so the first one
started june 2004 and then the last joke
i wrote
was uh november 2006. do you remember
your first joke that got used
i don't isn't that terrible but you give
me a date give me a month and a date and
i'll pick one joke but by the way just
i'm sure some of these are not past the
pete like
yeah i understand you there's no reason
to
lower our expectations my our
experiences are really low um get give
me pic pick a random joke this is
amazing pick any month so pick any month
in a year maybe march march march any
year you want but i want march okay here
we go march that's what i want
okay so this is remember this is march
2000 oh my god what if it's a joke
making fun of you that would be nothing
would make me hap what were you doing
2005. you wrote jokes making fun of me
oh my god if you were in anything that
was in the news that i thought a 75 year
old man would make fun of because it's
his letterman i would um do what were
you doing and do you remember what
you're doing in that year 2005 um i had
i had just left i had i probably had had
a failed tv show called dr vegas but if
you didn't write a joke on that then you
were not
you're not paying attention i was doing
the christmas blessing my producers are
reminding me which is a
i'm just gonna say as as as cringy as
that sounds was a follow-up to the
biggest christmas movie ever made at
that time called
the christmas shoes kiss christmas jews
no that would have been good
directed by gary marshall
well here's a real cheesy one ready uh
it is so cold outside that jose canseco
injected his heater with steroids to
stay warm you get what's happening here
oh man some of them are really funny
come on you're killing me
no one cares no one listens to this
podcast you can say whatever you want oh
here california governor arnold
schwarzenegger won reelection giving him
his first full term in office since 2003
recall victory it seems that california
believes the longer schwarzenegger is in
power the safer they will be from robot
attacks
i mean listen i'm trying my goddamn best
here it's
so great um
what if
letterman had used a joke a letterman
user joke i would smile i would be so
excited i would find out by receiving a
check but what i also found out is back
in the day that's you know a story would
come out and everybody kind of knows
what he's going to make fun of so
anybody else writing could write the
same joke so i'll get a joke that
sounded just like mine but i wouldn't
get paid for it because someone else had
it as well so
but that was like it was just a matter
of trying to sell enough jokes to pay
for the landline and the fax machine and
it wasn't like i didn't make money it
was just and then i remember i uh i was
doing it for like six months before i
got a joke on and i refused to put it in
my like resume that i was a joker there
until i got paid for it and then i was
like okay i'm a freelance writer i've
gotten a joke on and stuff like that i
just love the the notion of you and your
page outfit letterman tells a joke and
you just turn to some audience or i
wrote that
literally the person that tells them
where to go to the bathroom but they
have to get up and they have to go to
the bathroom like this way also i wrote
that joke get out of here psycho who are
you