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Get Booked!
60 Plays1 year ago
Have you ever read a book about a dying child and it makes you want to have your own kid? Me neither....until now. Reading influences us in so many ways. I give a few recommendations for page turners but what I really want to know is...What are you reading?? Hit me with recommendations!
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Find Alex:
Website: https://www.hoopercomedy.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hooperhairpuff/?hl=en
https://twitter.com/hooperhairpuff
https://www.facebook.com/alex.hooper.334/
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Transcript
Opening Act Experience at Jimmy Kimmel's Comedy Club
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome back to Dirty Briefs.
00:00:04
Speaker
Okay, hang on a second.
00:00:06
Speaker
I'm coming in a little bit hot.
00:00:09
Speaker
Did I just get back from Las Vegas?
00:00:11
Speaker
You know I did.
Exploring Las Vegas Without Typical Vices
00:00:14
Speaker
I was out there performing at Jimmy Kimmel's Comedy Club for the first time ever, opening for my good friend Craig Gass, and man, it was a blast.
00:00:23
Speaker
We packed out that room four times.
00:00:26
Speaker
I got to meet their staff.
00:00:27
Speaker
They were great.
00:00:28
Speaker
And I got to do Vegas.
00:00:31
Speaker
sober.
00:00:34
Speaker
Who wants to do that?
00:00:37
Speaker
What do you do in Vegas?
00:00:39
Speaker
If you're not getting messed up, you don't gamble, you don't like strip clubs.
00:00:43
Speaker
Wait a minute, Alex.
00:00:44
Speaker
You don't like strip clubs?
00:00:45
Speaker
No, I don't.
00:00:47
Speaker
I don't just like falsely looking at a woman who's pretending to pay attention to me and throwing money at her.
00:00:52
Speaker
That's not my idea of a good time.
00:00:56
Speaker
What do I do?
00:00:57
Speaker
I walk around.
00:00:59
Speaker
I was there for two days and I walked about 17 miles around Las Vegas, just looking at stuff, listening to the sights, the sounds, listening to the sights.
00:01:11
Speaker
Yeah, that's a thing that you do, right?
00:01:12
Speaker
Do you hear with your eyes?
00:01:14
Speaker
Do you see with your ears?
00:01:17
Speaker
Do you feel with your penis?
The Host's Reading Habits and Challenges
00:01:21
Speaker
Well,
00:01:23
Speaker
Already, this is a little bit off the rails, and it shouldn't be, because I'm here to talk about what I'm reading, and I want to know what you're reading as well.
00:01:36
Speaker
Reading is such a big part of my life, because I don't have a job, so I read a lot, because it feels better than watching TV all day long.
00:01:47
Speaker
So when I don't have a lot of work to do or I can't figure out exactly what to do with myself, I just pick up a book and I start reading.
00:01:55
Speaker
And it at least makes me feel like I'm doing something productive, intelligent, worthwhile.
00:02:03
Speaker
Whatever it is, reading a book never feels like a waste of time.
00:02:07
Speaker
And I'm one of those people.
00:02:09
Speaker
It is difficult for me to stop reading a book, even if I'm not enjoying it.
00:02:16
Speaker
Last month, my friend Jerry gave me a book called Sutry, which is a Cormac McCarthy novel.
00:02:23
Speaker
And I like Cormac McCarthy.
00:02:24
Speaker
He wrote The Road, There Will Be Blood, Blood Meridian.
00:02:29
Speaker
I love those books.
00:02:31
Speaker
But when I was reading Sutry,
00:02:33
Speaker
I could not get behind it.
00:02:35
Speaker
The language was very difficult.
00:02:39
Speaker
It was incredibly descriptive to the point where I was like, okay, I'm bored.
00:02:44
Speaker
I kept falling asleep.
00:02:45
Speaker
I made jokes to my wife.
00:02:47
Speaker
I was like, I need to take a nap.
00:02:48
Speaker
I'm going to read this book.
00:02:49
Speaker
And it was a 450 page book with tiny little print.
00:02:54
Speaker
And I forced myself to get through it.
00:02:55
Speaker
And it did get better.
00:02:57
Speaker
It did get better.
00:02:58
Speaker
I just didn't want to stop.
00:02:59
Speaker
I don't know what my problem is.
00:03:00
Speaker
I can't stop watching a bad movie or reading a bad book.
00:03:05
Speaker
And this book wasn't bad.
00:03:06
Speaker
It just wasn't for me.
Book Reviews and Personal Impact
00:03:09
Speaker
I read One Floor Over the Cuckoo's Nest for the first time ever.
00:03:12
Speaker
Seen the movie.
00:03:13
Speaker
Never had read the book.
00:03:15
Speaker
Incredible.
00:03:16
Speaker
So good.
00:03:17
Speaker
That was a book that I truly enjoyed reading.
00:03:21
Speaker
The Deep by Nick Cutter.
00:03:23
Speaker
Wow.
00:03:24
Speaker
My sister Caroline gave me that for a Christmas present and it's kind of sci-fi, like what's happening on the bottom of the ocean during a pandemic while they're trying to solve this thing.
00:03:35
Speaker
It was great.
00:03:37
Speaker
Thriller, horror, that's the kind of stuff I like to read.
00:03:40
Speaker
Stuff that keeps me page turning.
00:03:42
Speaker
I could not put this book down.
00:03:45
Speaker
When I read 11-22-63 by Stephen King last month, 850 pages, I devoured it in less than a week because it was just so compelling.
00:03:54
Speaker
Every scene was gripping.
00:03:56
Speaker
I was like, oh, I want more, I want more, I want more.
00:03:59
Speaker
Now, here's the reason why I wanted to do this podcast today.
00:04:04
Speaker
A couple days ago, I read Rob Delaney's book, A Heart That Works.
00:04:10
Speaker
If you're not familiar with Rob Delaney, he first came up on Twitter.
00:04:14
Speaker
He is a comedian.
00:04:14
Speaker
He has the show Catastrophe that is, I forget what network it's on.
00:04:18
Speaker
I think it's on the BBC.
00:04:20
Speaker
Rob Delaney, I knew him many years ago.
00:04:23
Speaker
He produced a
00:04:23
Speaker
performed on the roof of my house over 10 years ago, back when I was running rooftop shows in Culver City.
00:04:29
Speaker
And Rob Delaney was one of the first people to really take off from Twitter and turn that into a career.
00:04:37
Speaker
Well, he wrote this book, A Heart That Works.
00:04:41
Speaker
And I will tell you this, this is not a book for everybody by any means.
00:04:45
Speaker
This is the most heartbreaking piece of literature that I have ever read in my entire life.
00:04:53
Speaker
It's a story about losing his son when he's less than two years old to a fatal disease and all about the process of trying to keep him alive and everything that's going on in the hospital while his son has a brain tumor.
00:05:12
Speaker
It is excruciating.
00:05:15
Speaker
It's brutal.
00:05:16
Speaker
I cried so much reading this book that I felt like I had run a marathon afterwards.
00:05:24
Speaker
I would literally have to stop every few pages because I was weeping to the point where I had to catch my own breath.
00:05:32
Speaker
Part of it definitely is because I lost kimchi last month.
00:05:38
Speaker
And look, I know, I know a dog is not a kid.
00:05:43
Speaker
I understand.
00:05:44
Speaker
These are two very different sides of the spectrum here.
00:05:48
Speaker
But still, that was my most recent loss.
00:05:51
Speaker
And that was the one that truly affected me.
00:05:53
Speaker
And when he's talking about just holding his son and putting his head into his hair and just kissing him on his face, all that stuff made me think of kimchi and how I'll never get to do that again.
00:06:09
Speaker
So that affected me.
00:06:11
Speaker
His writing is hilarious.
00:06:14
Speaker
It's honest.
00:06:15
Speaker
It's vulnerable.
00:06:16
Speaker
It's visceral.
00:06:17
Speaker
It's real.
00:06:19
Speaker
And that's one thing I really appreciated about it.
00:06:21
Speaker
He didn't shy away from the pain, the humility, but also just the pure joy he got from looking at his son every single day.
00:06:34
Speaker
Now, here's the weird part.
00:06:38
Speaker
This book and reading it,
00:06:43
Speaker
it made me so excited to have a child.
00:06:47
Speaker
That's weird, right?
00:06:50
Speaker
I read a book about a man losing his child at a very early age, not even two years old.
00:07:00
Speaker
And all I could think about when I was reading is how I want the experiences of caring so deeply about my own kid.
00:07:11
Speaker
And I think that's what I took away from it.
00:07:13
Speaker
It wasn't the pain or the loss.
00:07:16
Speaker
It was the love that was so inherent.
00:07:20
Speaker
And that is something where as my wife and I, we've been trying to have a baby for a long time.
Volunteering and Parenthood Desires
00:07:24
Speaker
That's something where I'm ready to have that feeling.
00:07:30
Speaker
I've been volunteering at the children's hospital in Los Angeles and, uh,
00:07:37
Speaker
It's again, it's, it's joyous.
00:07:39
Speaker
It is soul fulfilling because I see these parents with these kids that are, some of them are in such bad shape, you know, little kids with cancer or with huge mentally, mental challenges, physical challenges, kids that I don't know what they're going to grow up to be if they are going to grow up.
00:08:02
Speaker
And all I feel is,
00:08:04
Speaker
is love and admiration to these children, to these families, to these parents that are raising them.
00:08:11
Speaker
Because their parents, I'm sure it is a struggle.
00:08:14
Speaker
It cannot be easy.
00:08:16
Speaker
When I hear somebody say, have you ever been here before?
00:08:18
Speaker
And the people go, unfortunately, way too much.
00:08:22
Speaker
There's so much subtext in that statement that I can take in in those three seconds.
00:08:30
Speaker
And my job is just to escort these families to where they need to go.
00:08:33
Speaker
And I get a couple minutes with them and I try to give them my warm energy and try to make them laugh.
00:08:38
Speaker
But doing, being there again, it's reinforced my desire to be a parent because I want to pour that love into a child.
00:08:51
Speaker
I have spent years trying to make other people feel good about themselves, trying to discover the best version of you.
00:09:00
Speaker
What if I do that with my own child?
00:09:03
Speaker
What if?
00:09:05
Speaker
And that's what this book, A Heart That Works, really made me feel.
00:09:09
Speaker
I think the reason why I was crying so much is because I don't want to lose a child, obviously.
00:09:16
Speaker
I'm not some kind of sick fucking monster.
00:09:19
Speaker
I didn't read a book about somebody getting stabbed and immediately go plunge a knife into my throat to be like, what does this feel like?
00:09:28
Speaker
But...
00:09:29
Speaker
I want to have that level of love for something because I know that I'm a loving person.
Mindset and Personal Growth
00:09:35
Speaker
I'm empathic.
00:09:36
Speaker
I'm a cancer.
00:09:39
Speaker
But I want to have that level of love when you, everything becomes about this other person, every single thing.
00:09:51
Speaker
That's where I want to get to.
00:09:53
Speaker
And the frustrations we've had with fertility, which look, I'm not going to go too much into that because that's really my wife's and my business and not yours, whoever's listening to this podcast.
00:10:02
Speaker
But just know it has been a journey.
00:10:05
Speaker
It has been a journey.
00:10:06
Speaker
And people say with fertility or like people always say like, you know, it's not the journey.
00:10:12
Speaker
It's the destination.
00:10:13
Speaker
I'll tell you this right now.
00:10:14
Speaker
Fertility.
00:10:16
Speaker
It's the destination.
00:10:18
Speaker
Yes, we are having sex a lot.
00:10:20
Speaker
That's great.
00:10:22
Speaker
But we're trying to do it with a result.
00:10:23
Speaker
And when you're not getting that result, it does become very frustrating.
00:10:28
Speaker
And you have to keep a positive mindset.
00:10:31
Speaker
course you do.
00:10:34
Speaker
Everything in this life is about keeping a positive mindset, a growth mindset, not just positive, a growth mindset.
00:10:41
Speaker
I'm actually reading a book right now called Mindset, and there's a chapter about having a false growth mindset, and shh.
00:10:49
Speaker
I haven't gotten to it yet, but I'm honestly really scared because I think that's what I have.
00:10:53
Speaker
I think that's what I have there.
00:10:54
Speaker
I'm admitting it.
00:10:55
Speaker
I think I preach a lot of shit, but I don't know if I always put it into practice.
00:10:58
Speaker
I don't know if I'm always excited to learn a new skill that might take me to the next level.
00:11:03
Speaker
I might just be coasting and floating around this existence, hoping that things happen to me because I'm working hard.
00:11:11
Speaker
But I'll let you know what happens when I get to that point in the book.
00:11:17
Speaker
Because if that is true, uh-oh, you know what's going to have to happen.
00:11:22
Speaker
I'm going to have to change.
00:11:23
Speaker
I'm sorry, I just threw up in my mouth a little bit.
00:11:28
Speaker
Oh, that word, that word.
00:11:30
Speaker
The thing that I think I'm so good about is just embracing life.
00:11:39
Speaker
Yet I know I'm a stubborn fucking asshole when it comes to things that are truly going to take work that I don't want to do, even if they might get me to the X level.
00:11:51
Speaker
They might put me up here.
00:11:53
Speaker
But I look at that mountain climb and I'm not excited to do it.
00:11:57
Speaker
But sometimes you got to do things you aren't excited about to get to the things that you are infatuated with.
00:12:06
Speaker
So.
Seeking Book Recommendations
00:12:07
Speaker
I'll let you know what happens when I get to that book.
00:12:10
Speaker
And I'll keep you updated on fertility stuff.
00:12:13
Speaker
Like, people always ask, they're like, oh, how's the baby making going?
00:12:16
Speaker
You'll know how it's going.
00:12:20
Speaker
Because I will not shut the fuck up about it once we are actually pregnant.
00:12:26
Speaker
Yes, I said we are pregnant.
00:12:29
Speaker
It's me too.
00:12:30
Speaker
I know she's the one that's going to go through it, but come on.
00:12:34
Speaker
So...
00:12:36
Speaker
All right.
00:12:37
Speaker
What are you reading?
00:12:38
Speaker
Will you tell me?
00:12:39
Speaker
Because I need more books.
00:12:41
Speaker
I always want recommendations.
00:12:43
Speaker
That's how I thrive.
00:12:44
Speaker
I was using Goodreads for a little while, but I got tired of using another app, so I stopped doing it.
00:12:49
Speaker
So now I just read whatever the hell somebody tells me to read.
00:12:52
Speaker
So please, tell me what you're reading.
00:12:55
Speaker
I'll tell you some great books that I have read in the past year, and maybe we'll do a little swappy swappy.
00:13:02
Speaker
A little exchange.
00:13:05
Speaker
Yeah.
00:13:08
Speaker
Man, all right.
00:13:11
Speaker
I feel good.
00:13:12
Speaker
Do you feel good?
00:13:13
Speaker
I hope so.
00:13:14
Speaker
I really hope that listening to this does give you a little bump in your week.
00:13:20
Speaker
I really hope it does.
00:13:21
Speaker
I hope it gives you just a little uptick instead of ticking down.
00:13:27
Speaker
That's what I want it to do for me.
00:13:28
Speaker
That's why I keep doing it.
00:13:30
Speaker
I'm like 54, 55 episodes in.
00:13:33
Speaker
I don't even know.
00:13:34
Speaker
I'm not paying attention.
00:13:35
Speaker
I'm just doing it.
00:13:37
Speaker
Sometimes you just have to do it.
00:13:39
Speaker
Or maybe that's my problem.
00:13:41
Speaker
Not having a plan.
00:13:42
Speaker
Just doing.
00:13:44
Speaker
Uh-oh!
00:13:44
Speaker
The Mindset Book's coming in!
00:13:46
Speaker
Ba-ba-ba!
00:13:48
Speaker
Send me your reading recommendations, everybody.
00:13:51
Speaker
AlexHoopersComedy at gmail.com or at HooperHairPuff on all social media.
00:13:56
Speaker
I will see you next week!