Transcript
Speaker: Welcome back to Dirty Briefs.
Speaker: Okay, hang on a second.
Speaker: I'm coming in a little bit hot.
Speaker: Did I just get back from Las Vegas?
Speaker: You know I did.
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.
Speaker: We packed out that room four times.
Speaker: I got to meet their staff.
Speaker: They were great.
Speaker: And I got to do Vegas.
Speaker: sober.
Speaker: Who wants to do that?
Speaker: What do you do in Vegas?
Speaker: If you're not getting messed up, you don't gamble, you don't like strip clubs.
Speaker: Wait a minute, Alex.
Speaker: You don't like strip clubs?
Speaker: No, I don't.
Speaker: I don't just like falsely looking at a woman who's pretending to pay attention to me and throwing money at her.
Speaker: That's not my idea of a good time.
Speaker: What do I do?
Speaker: I walk around.
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.
Speaker: Yeah, that's a thing that you do, right?
Speaker: Do you hear with your eyes?
Speaker: Do you see with your ears?
Speaker: Do you feel with your penis?
Speaker: Well,
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.
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.
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.
Speaker: And it at least makes me feel like I'm doing something productive, intelligent, worthwhile.
Speaker: Whatever it is, reading a book never feels like a waste of time.
Speaker: And I'm one of those people.
Speaker: It is difficult for me to stop reading a book, even if I'm not enjoying it.
Speaker: Last month, my friend Jerry gave me a book called Sutry, which is a Cormac McCarthy novel.
Speaker: And I like Cormac McCarthy.
Speaker: He wrote The Road, There Will Be Blood, Blood Meridian.
Speaker: I love those books.
Speaker: But when I was reading Sutry,
Speaker: I could not get behind it.
Speaker: The language was very difficult.
Speaker: It was incredibly descriptive to the point where I was like, okay, I'm bored.
Speaker: I kept falling asleep.
Speaker: I made jokes to my wife.
Speaker: I was like, I need to take a nap.
Speaker: I'm going to read this book.
Speaker: And it was a 450 page book with tiny little print.
Speaker: And I forced myself to get through it.
Speaker: And it did get better.
Speaker: It did get better.
Speaker: I just didn't want to stop.
Speaker: I don't know what my problem is.
Speaker: I can't stop watching a bad movie or reading a bad book.
Speaker: And this book wasn't bad.
Speaker: It just wasn't for me.
Speaker: I read One Floor Over the Cuckoo's Nest for the first time ever.
Speaker: Seen the movie.
Speaker: Never had read the book.
Speaker: Incredible.
Speaker: So good.
Speaker: That was a book that I truly enjoyed reading.
Speaker: The Deep by Nick Cutter.
Speaker: Wow.
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.
Speaker: It was great.
Speaker: Thriller, horror, that's the kind of stuff I like to read.
Speaker: Stuff that keeps me page turning.
Speaker: I could not put this book down.
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.
Speaker: Every scene was gripping.
Speaker: I was like, oh, I want more, I want more, I want more.
Speaker: Now, here's the reason why I wanted to do this podcast today.
Speaker: A couple days ago, I read Rob Delaney's book, A Heart That Works.
Speaker: If you're not familiar with Rob Delaney, he first came up on Twitter.
Speaker: He is a comedian.
Speaker: He has the show Catastrophe that is, I forget what network it's on.
Speaker: I think it's on the BBC.
Speaker: Rob Delaney, I knew him many years ago.
Speaker: He produced a
Speaker: performed on the roof of my house over 10 years ago, back when I was running rooftop shows in Culver City.
Speaker: And Rob Delaney was one of the first people to really take off from Twitter and turn that into a career.
Speaker: Well, he wrote this book, A Heart That Works.
Speaker: And I will tell you this, this is not a book for everybody by any means.
Speaker: This is the most heartbreaking piece of literature that I have ever read in my entire life.
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.
Speaker: It is excruciating.
Speaker: It's brutal.
Speaker: I cried so much reading this book that I felt like I had run a marathon afterwards.
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.
Speaker: Part of it definitely is because I lost kimchi last month.
Speaker: And look, I know, I know a dog is not a kid.
Speaker: I understand.
Speaker: These are two very different sides of the spectrum here.
Speaker: But still, that was my most recent loss.
Speaker: And that was the one that truly affected me.
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.
Speaker: So that affected me.
Speaker: His writing is hilarious.
Speaker: It's honest.
Speaker: It's vulnerable.
Speaker: It's visceral.
Speaker: It's real.
Speaker: And that's one thing I really appreciated about it.
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.
Speaker: Now, here's the weird part.
Speaker: This book and reading it,
Speaker: it made me so excited to have a child.
Speaker: That's weird, right?
Speaker: I read a book about a man losing his child at a very early age, not even two years old.
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.
Speaker: And I think that's what I took away from it.
Speaker: It wasn't the pain or the loss.
Speaker: It was the love that was so inherent.
Speaker: And that is something where as my wife and I, we've been trying to have a baby for a long time.
Speaker: That's something where I'm ready to have that feeling.
Speaker: I've been volunteering at the children's hospital in Los Angeles and, uh,
Speaker: It's again, it's, it's joyous.
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.
Speaker: And all I feel is,
Speaker: is love and admiration to these children, to these families, to these parents that are raising them.
Speaker: Because their parents, I'm sure it is a struggle.
Speaker: It cannot be easy.
Speaker: When I hear somebody say, have you ever been here before?
Speaker: And the people go, unfortunately, way too much.
Speaker: There's so much subtext in that statement that I can take in in those three seconds.
Speaker: And my job is just to escort these families to where they need to go.
Speaker: And I get a couple minutes with them and I try to give them my warm energy and try to make them laugh.
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.
Speaker: I have spent years trying to make other people feel good about themselves, trying to discover the best version of you.
Speaker: What if I do that with my own child?
Speaker: What if?
Speaker: And that's what this book, A Heart That Works, really made me feel.
Speaker: I think the reason why I was crying so much is because I don't want to lose a child, obviously.
Speaker: I'm not some kind of sick fucking monster.
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?
Speaker: But...
Speaker: I want to have that level of love for something because I know that I'm a loving person.
Speaker: I'm empathic.
Speaker: I'm a cancer.
Speaker: But I want to have that level of love when you, everything becomes about this other person, every single thing.
Speaker: That's where I want to get to.
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.
Speaker: But just know it has been a journey.
Speaker: It has been a journey.
Speaker: And people say with fertility or like people always say like, you know, it's not the journey.
Speaker: It's the destination.
Speaker: I'll tell you this right now.
Speaker: Fertility.
Speaker: It's the destination.
Speaker: Yes, we are having sex a lot.
Speaker: That's great.
Speaker: But we're trying to do it with a result.
Speaker: And when you're not getting that result, it does become very frustrating.
Speaker: And you have to keep a positive mindset.
Speaker: course you do.
Speaker: Everything in this life is about keeping a positive mindset, a growth mindset, not just positive, a growth mindset.
Speaker: I'm actually reading a book right now called Mindset, and there's a chapter about having a false growth mindset, and shh.
Speaker: I haven't gotten to it yet, but I'm honestly really scared because I think that's what I have.
Speaker: I think that's what I have there.
Speaker: I'm admitting it.
Speaker: I think I preach a lot of shit, but I don't know if I always put it into practice.
Speaker: I don't know if I'm always excited to learn a new skill that might take me to the next level.
Speaker: I might just be coasting and floating around this existence, hoping that things happen to me because I'm working hard.
Speaker: But I'll let you know what happens when I get to that point in the book.
Speaker: Because if that is true, uh-oh, you know what's going to have to happen.
Speaker: I'm going to have to change.
Speaker: I'm sorry, I just threw up in my mouth a little bit.
Speaker: Oh, that word, that word.
Speaker: The thing that I think I'm so good about is just embracing life.
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.
Speaker: They might put me up here.
Speaker: But I look at that mountain climb and I'm not excited to do it.
Speaker: But sometimes you got to do things you aren't excited about to get to the things that you are infatuated with.
Speaker: So.
Speaker: I'll let you know what happens when I get to that book.
Speaker: And I'll keep you updated on fertility stuff.
Speaker: Like, people always ask, they're like, oh, how's the baby making going?
Speaker: You'll know how it's going.
Speaker: Because I will not shut the fuck up about it once we are actually pregnant.
Speaker: Yes, I said we are pregnant.
Speaker: It's me too.
Speaker: I know she's the one that's going to go through it, but come on.
Speaker: So...
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: What are you reading?
Speaker: Will you tell me?
Speaker: Because I need more books.
Speaker: I always want recommendations.
Speaker: That's how I thrive.
Speaker: I was using Goodreads for a little while, but I got tired of using another app, so I stopped doing it.
Speaker: So now I just read whatever the hell somebody tells me to read.
Speaker: So please, tell me what you're reading.
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.
Speaker: A little exchange.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Man, all right.
Speaker: I feel good.
Speaker: Do you feel good?
Speaker: I hope so.
Speaker: I really hope that listening to this does give you a little bump in your week.
Speaker: I really hope it does.
Speaker: I hope it gives you just a little uptick instead of ticking down.
Speaker: That's what I want it to do for me.
Speaker: That's why I keep doing it.
Speaker: I'm like 54, 55 episodes in.
Speaker: I don't even know.
Speaker: I'm not paying attention.
Speaker: I'm just doing it.
Speaker: Sometimes you just have to do it.
Speaker: Or maybe that's my problem.
Speaker: Not having a plan.
Speaker: Just doing.
Speaker: Uh-oh!
Speaker: The Mindset Book's coming in!
Speaker: Ba-ba-ba!
Speaker: Send me your reading recommendations, everybody.
Speaker: AlexHoopersComedy at gmail.com or at HooperHairPuff on all social media.
Speaker: I will see you next week!
