Jimmy Failla: NYC Cab Driver To National Radio Talk Show Host 01:09:45

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Well, welcome to the Jason in the House podcast. I'm Jason Chaffetz, and we're going to talk a little bit about the news. We're going to highlight the stupid because, well, you know what? There's always somebody doing something stupid somewhere. And then we're going to call up and talk to one of my favorites around here in the Fox world that you may or may not know, Jimmy Thalia. And he's got a Fox News radio show. He's been a stand-up comic.

Just a really highly entertaining guy. I cannot tell you where the direction of that discussion is going to go, but I tell you what, he's had a series of life events that I think you're going to want to hear about. And he's just an all around funny, funny guy. Grew up in New York and you're going to want to hear about his, his, his version of life and things that he went through. And I just really look forward to giving him a call. So stay with us on that. But again,

I got to tell you, there is... And this almost qualifies for doing something stupid somewhere, but...

A few thoughts on the news. Afghanistan is going to continue to be an ongoing problem, not only because we have Americans behind enemy lines and that they can't get out, and that at some point we're going to hear more about these horrific stories, harrowing experiences, and probably people that are going to not be able to survive along the way. And I don't know if there's going to be video or audio or just firsthand accounts of

I worry that there are going to be an untold number of stories that we're just not going to hear. The State Department has not been clear with us as to how many people, because if you start to come up with the count, then you obviously know who and who is not there. I saw this story that was on national public radio that said that the Taliban is...

is going to forbid women from playing sports. Now, obviously, they're not going to allow them to participate in the government. I thought it was laughable at best, sad at worst. It's just have our United States State Department express in feign exasperation that the idea that the Taliban government

apparatus is not going to have any women in it. I mean, what did they think was going to be? The Taliban has never been a champion or even acknowledged the role of women in society. It's highlighted by the idea that they're going to forbid women from playing in sports

There was a translation done by SBS and it said, this is from the deputy head of the Taliban's cultural commission. Okay. So they have a cultural commission there and it said, quote, I don't think women will be allowed to play cricket because it's not necessary that women should play cricket. According to the head of the Taliban's cultural commission. Now,

That's their approach to human rights. That's their approach to balance. That's their approach to how they're going to treat women. Of course, they're not going to have anybody in the cabinet. Who did the Taliban put into their cabinet? They put the interior minister. And by the way, the interior minister is different than how we do it here in the United States. The Department of Interior, the Secretary of Interior in the United States is dealing with public lands, Indian affairs, things like that.

host of other, you know, very important responsibilities. But in Interior Department, they're in a place like Afghanistan or others, Libya and whatnot, where

The Interior, that's their essentially law enforcement. They're the ones that protect their homeland. They're the ones that enforce the rules and the laws. They don't have a Department of Justice. They have the Interior Department. And who is running that? Somebody who's on the terrorist bounty list from the United States of America. I believe the number is $10 million. $10 million.

that the United States government has put up that if you are able to bring this person to justice, you'll be paid $10 million. That's how bad this guy is.

That's now who's in place and running Afghanistan. And to think that the Taliban is anything other than a terrorist organization, nefarious group of people who will have no regard for human rights. It's just kind of disgusting as we, you know, last Saturday passed by the 20th anniversary of 9-11.

The other thing I want to talk about on the news, a little bit of foreshadowing here. You have this $3.5 trillion package that they want to have passed. Now, you have Senator Manchin. You've had some, as Senator Sinema expressed, concern about how big and massive this package is. I think what you're going to see is a little insight, a little bit of a prediction, but a little bit of insight is they're going to pass what's probably first. It's what's called the continuing resolution.

So gone are the days of trying to pass things through normal, regular order. Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer have no desire to try to do this whatsoever. And what they do is there's a, you hear these different words. One is an omnibus. Okay. And omnibus is we're going to put a whole bunch of things in a package, um,

plus some of the other ongoing spending, and that'll be an omnibus, and it's just one up or down vote. Another one is what's called a continuing resolution. A continuing resolution is we're going to continue to spend at the level that we've been spending, but we're going to add on some other things to it.

That is probably what the United States Senate is going to pursue. This is going to be somewhere between $30 and $42 billion. And here, I guarantee you, you know, I wrote a book that was called They Never Let a Crisis Go to Waste, The Truth About Disaster Liberalism. It's right out of the Democrats' playbook. The playbook goes like this. Let's take all those things you would never vote against, put them in a package, and then put something really bad in there

that you're just going to have to pass. So you start looking at the debt ceiling and what's called SALT, the state and local taxes. State and local taxes right now was capped by the Republicans at $10,000. That is, if your tax bill for state taxes was whatever the number was,

You could pay that in state taxes and then deduct that from your federal tax bill. So it basically, for these high tax states like New York, California, New Jersey, what happened was they wouldn't mind that taxes were so high because then they just didn't have to pay the federal tax. Well, Republicans came in and capped that at $10,000. So if you earned and had to pay taxes in excess of $10,000, well, guess what?

In doing so, you couldn't deduct that from your federal taxes. So it became much more painful, particularly for those that are making a lot of income for the rich. So despite all the rhetoric that's coming out of the Democrats that says, oh, we need to have them pay their fair share, the Democrats are going to go exactly against that, paying their fair share and doing things for rich people by getting rid of that tax cap altogether.

and basically giving the rich people a break.

That is, they will pay less taxes on high income. It does nothing for your average person who's maybe making $60,000 a year. Raising the salt level or getting rid of that for state and local taxes does nothing for that person. It's only going to help people who are making six-figure incomes and above and beyond. Anyway, I think they're going to take the debt ceiling, which is a discussion that they don't ever want to have in Democrats' world, and

And they're going to take the salt issue and they're going to couple it with money for the flooding, money for the fires, money for things that nobody wants to vote against. They'll couple this together in an omnibus and say, here's this $30 to $42 billion. It's just a continued resolution. It just allows government to operate for a few more weeks.

But that's how they'll pass and dismiss this. Now, Democrats are going to have to go it alone. But then whenever you go back to a Democrat during the campaign season and say, you voted to raise the debt ceiling yet again, you voted to give a tax break to the rich. They say, no, we had no choice. We had no choice. We had to do it. It was money for the floods. It was money for the... And they'll be able to pivot and have an excuse.

It's something that is going to happen by Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi. So listen to what they're saying. It's going to be exactly the opposite. It's a tax benefit to the richest Americans. It is not something that actually helps the average American. Oh, but it was flooding money. They could have dealt with that separately. Anyway, I think that's what's going to be happening next.

But that's where they're going with this. All right. Time to bring on the stupid because you know what? Somebody's always doing something stupid somewhere. All right. I saw this story because I was actually on the Gutfeld show and we talked about this critical issue. So I'm bringing it up again. If you saw me on Gutfeld, it's the story of the Grimace. Now, can you picture...

What's going on with McDonald's? And you look at those characters that they had at McDonald's. This one, nobody eats more McDonald's than I do. So I know this pretty well.

But you think of all those McDonald's characters. Well, finally, somebody at McDonald's took an official position and said, well, we're going to explain to you what the Grimace is. Now, originally, it was called the Evil Grimace back in like 1971. Then it transitioned and just became the Grimace. Some call them Mick Grimace, but it's called the Grimace. Now they've come out and said, you know, when people are looking at this

purple thing and saying, you know, what is the grimace? And they said, well, it's actually a taste bud. That is the, but that is so stupid. That is not the right answer to what this question is, but they're saying that to be just, you know, perfectly politically correct. This thing is a taste bud. I come on folks, McDonald's. That's just a stupid answer. He was started off as the evil grimace and that is not true.

He's the grimace and he's not actually a taste bud, but they think it is. So that's my take on something stupid this week. You're listening to Jason in the house. We'll be back right after this. The world of business moves fast. Stay on top of it with the Fox Business Rundown. Listen to the Fox Business Rundown every Monday and Friday at foxbusinesspodcasts.com or wherever you download your favorite podcasts.

All right. Now it's time to phone a friend. And like I said at the beginning, Jimmy failure is, uh, he's just a great guy. And I hope you take some time to listen to this because if you're around Jimmy, I'm telling you, it's just a fun conversation. He just puts a smile on everybody's face. He,

He's a stand-up comic. You go to Amazon Prime. He's got a show up there. He's been a taxi driver, and he's got a Fox News radio show that I highly encourage you to listen to. He's got great insight. So let's give Jimmy a call.

Hello. Is Jimmy there? Oh, wow. This is Jimmy Fela right here. I'm glad you pronounced your last name because nobody else can. Yeah, nobody can. Don't feel bad about this, Jason Chaffetz. I have heard my name mispronounced, and I mean this. It was once mispronounced at a family reunion. I'm like, wait, we can't pronounce our name? Like, at that point, I was like, all right, everybody else gets a free pass. This is embarrassing now. Well, I thought Chaffetz was bad, but, you know, at least...

Do you want to know what happens in this day and age? Because it's F-A-I-L-L-A. Everybody sees the double L and they want to be like, you know, everybody's like so culturally sensitive. Yeah. They think the L is like F-A-I-L-L-A. I get a lot of that. And it used to happen in my cab too.

And it was so funny because when I was a cab driver in New York City, like people thought of, you know, like a white cab driver is kind of an endangered species. There weren't a lot of us left, but they wouldn't say that. They would say, oh, it's so good to see a Native American New Yorker driving a taxi.

because they didn't want to say white. I'm like, I get what's going on here. It's okay. Yeah, there's not a lot of me, but okay. I'm happy to be here. Nonetheless, Jason Chaffetz. The funniest thing is, you know, Chaffetz actually has some Jewish heritage to it. Is it true? So when I was in Congress, I'd do fundraisers in like, you know, Florida or in New York, and there'd be a number of Jewish people in the audience. Inevitably, they'd pronounce my name perfectly. Meanwhile, I'm running for Congress in Utah, and they're like,

Yeah, shaflets. You know, they can't get through it. Well, I will tell you that it's funny about background traveling. As a cab driver, I really did know three guys named Osama bin Laden.

So on the fateful Sunday evening in which they announced his killing, someone had texted me they got Bin Laden. I was like, for what? Speeding? I told them to slow down near LaGuardia because I just didn't know. But here we are. It wasn't one guy that was like abnormally tall and skinny. No, it wasn't. It wasn't the guy. But I will just add one more caveat to traveling with our last names. I was recently vacationing in your hood. I was out in Utah. Okay.

which is a beautiful place, as I told you when I ran into you this morning. But when you travel to Utah with my accent, everyone there assumes that I'm in the witness protection program. Everyone I met, if I had been asked to kill someone for money one more time while I was out there, I'm like,

no, I'm just visiting family, man. But everybody thought I'd been stashed away under some. We watch, we watch a lot of movies in Utah. You know, the bar scene is not quite as big as maybe it is in other parts of the country. So we watch a lot of movies. So I love, yeah. Witness protection in, in Springville, Utah probably makes a lot of sense. That's exactly what it was. They're like, were you in good fellas? I'm like, no, no, not, not the real one. No, just a guy.

Well, so let's go back here. I mean, I'm fascinated by it. We're sitting in a studio here when we're having this discussion and it's filled with all sorts of memorabilia. This is, I'm taking it, this is stuff that you grew up with? This is like my bedroom, my childhood bedroom, circa like 1986. So there are, you know, He-Man toys. There's a Voltron, if you remember Voltron, the five lions that make the B.

There's an old school Millennium Falcon. My radio studio basically looks like the inside of a van that promised you candy. You know, come here, little kid. It's not good. And I've had people come in and have like severe reactions. I've also had people have emotional breakdowns.

Because seeing like a childhood toy, like a Ricky the Dragon Steamboat wrestling toy triggers some type of like flashback emotion, you know. So it's been on both ends of the spectrum. But I basically have this stuff here because it looks good on the Fox Nation shoot. But it also does a good job for guests of establishing the low intellect of my show.

It's like, once you come and you see the toys, you're like, all right, I guess this shouldn't be too wonky. Well, you know, there are things that I can relate to. First of all, the Game Boy here with the baseball, you know, between the football and the baseball one, I mean, just...

and it was so old school in that, that game we're referring to, it would, it was a baseball game. It would pitch you a ball, which was just a red dot. Yes. The red dot would come down. It would flash once or twice and you had to hit your own red dot at the same time. And sometimes you'd hear a batted ball sound and a crowd would cheer, but it was not baseball. It was a red dot in your hand is what it was. This is old school electronics. And then the USFL, because my dad was actually, um,

the general manager for the Arizona Wranglers. Well, was that a thing? That's amazing. Way back in that day in Arizona. And right in front of me is the generals, which was Donald Trump's team. His team. You remember Donald Trump actually sued the NFL because he couldn't get a team. Yes. And he won that lawsuit. True story. Yeah. And I remember I actually asked the president about this because I made the mistake of saying...

Well, how's your relationship with Roger Goodell? Oh, no. You asked the wrong question at a party. Maybe I shouldn't, because, yeah, you know, I did win that suit, but I only got a dollar. And so, whoops, maybe I shouldn't have asked the president of that question. But he had the generals, which was Herschel Walker. Yes. Herschel Walker. And so in the visiting room...

of the Arizona Wranglers. I worked in the visitor's room. I was just a teenager, skinny teenager. Here is Herschel Walker. In fact, I've got it. I got Herschel Walker's autograph. Now he's running for the United States Senate. Donald Trump's been the president of the United States. It all started in the USFL. It all started in the USFL. So you have two USFL helmets. Listen, you know, this show in a lot of ways is really just a cry for help.

It's like my childhood intellect hasn't evolved. There's clearly some type of a gambling overtone, if you notice. I have a game bowl here from a 15 strikeout performance I threw in 1987 that, you know, there's a lot of weird stuff going on. But I'm trying, you know, again, I'm trying to give everybody who interacts with the show. There's only one thing that scares me. What is it? It's the framed Pee Wee Herman photo. I see.

Listen, I consider Pee-wee's Big Adventure. Okay, I'm not going to speak. You got to separate the art from the artist. I love the movie Pee-wee's Big Adventure. Not that I wouldn't sit at a theater with Paul Rubens, if you get what I'm getting at. I wouldn't go to the movies with him, but I would watch him in the movies. I loved Pee-wee's Big Adventure. It's such a great American road story.

And I have that up because that's evil, angry Pee-wee. He's like moments away from beating up Francis who has stolen his bicycle. Yes. In an epic fight scene. Deservedly so, yes. The Buxtons are not thieves, Pee-wee. That's what the father says. And then he offers them the chewing gum, the trick chewing gum that like, you know, inks out their mouths or whatever. But I consider angry Pee-wee kind of the spirit animal for what we do. Okay. We're tackling fierce issues, but...

It's very approachable in that we have like a peewee sensibility. We laugh at it. Yeah, well, if he's the inspiration that you need to hold. We didn't use that in the oversight committee to get inspiration. We had Abraham Lincoln up. It's a different crowd. Like I said, your dad was running the Wranglers. My dad lost our house betting on the Wranglers. It's a different sensibility, Chafe. I can just see it now. Jimmy, whatever your last name is. Billy. Ha ha ha!

Failure. You don't, yeah. Jimmy Failure. You'll get there. Failure. You know, in the oversight room, one of the things you get to do is decorate the oversight room. You get to decide what paintings would not go up. Oh, that's funny. And in Congress, what they did is normally it's who the congressman had been before. And so they put these big, nice $100,000 paintings up of

of some which members are still in Congress. Like, what the crap is that? So I had it torn down. Politico wrote this whole article. Everybody got whipped up because this young member of Congress is taking down all the members. And I put up pictures of the American people, like steel workers and postal workers. And the only president we put up was Abraham Lincoln because he had actually been the chairman of the Oversight Committee. Think about that. I did not know that. It's a good fun fact. And did you know my son is named Lincoln? Yeah.

Oh, very good. After Abe Lincoln. And there was a funny point this summer where, if you remember out in San Francisco, the school district was, you know, they were flirting with the idea of taking his name off of a high school. Yeah. And it had gotten so adverse, we thought my son was going to have to start going by his middle name, OJ. We didn't, I kid. But no, that was a moment. And they wouldn't take that down. No, but he is. He's named Lincoln. My son is named Lincoln. But I didn't know he was on the oversight committee. That's a good one. That's why you come on the Jason Chaffetz podcast. Yes, he was.

But I can only imagine if you were the chairman. I mean, this would be what's up on the walls, right? Is that Skeletor? No, it's Nancy Pelosi. So it is an impressive array here. Listen, I...

I want people to understand a little bit more about your background and growing up. I mean, because I mean, it's all kind of laid up on this table here, but do you have a lot of brothers, sisters? Did you just, um, I come from a pretty big law enforcement family. Like I would probably be a cop myself if it weren't for the background check.

We'll touch and go there in the twenties. Uh, no, I grew up on Long Island in Levittown, which, you know, as everybody knows was the biggest post world war two settlement for American GIs returning home. They were buying Levitt houses on the GI bill. Basically I grew up around a lot of old men. You shouldn't make a sudden move around. I loved America. They drank a lot of loud noises, a lot of cheap beer. They built a lot of above ground pools. It was great. But everyone in my family, uh,

Everyone. I mean, my dad, both of my brothers are cops. My uncle, every male cousin in my family is either a cop or some kind of first responder. And I actually did take police tests as a young kid, got hired by the Port Authority and the NYPD. But at the time I was already doing stand up and I didn't want to go get yelled at in the police academy because I had, you know, like a $30 gig three hours from the city to get to. I'm like, I'm in showbiz. I don't need this stuff.

There's a city two hours outside of Buffalo that's paying me in mozzarella sticks. I can't abandon my showbiz career. But that's how it starts out. So I started out growing up on Long Island. And again, I don't mean to pistol whip everyone with my prosperity, but I did go to Nassau Community College and I drove a cab. I was a New York City cab driver doing stand up at night and just driving. You drive a cab from 5 a.m. to 5 p.m.

So you get it in the morning. That's kind of living the dream. I mean, this is right out of the movies. It was honestly, it was the best time of my life. Is that how you learned what America's thinking about? What do you learn? That is, a taxi was the original social media. Now you post something on social media and the next guy comments and the next guy comments and the next guy comments.

That's what a taxi was. The first guy would get in and he'd be like, God, you know, you see this thing we did over in Afghanistan? And, you know, when the second guy got in, it would come up and he'd like, you know, somebody made a point earlier on the way to LaGuardia and it became its own form of social media that there was a conversation that would filter right through the day. And it helped in terms of like my appreciation for what I say is our American privilege is every single person you would pick up at JFK that was returning on some type of business trip would be like, kid, you have no idea how lucky you are to live in this country. And,

And you had a hard time agreeing at the moment because your alarm clock was going off at 310 in the morning and your soul was in a fetal position. But comparatively, I was still in the world's 1% in terms of your overall quality of life here. So I've always kind of been in on the joke.

that were pretty lucky to be here. But what happened is through the process of doing stand-up and driving a cab, a Fox booker one night saw me at a comedy club downtown when I was getting ready to film. I have a stand-up special on Amazon that'll probably get me canceled if anybody listening watches it. So don't go nuts. I only get a 10-cent royalty from Jeff Bezos if you watch it. So, I mean, you know, we don't have to go crazy sandwich boarding this thing. But when I was in the process to run up to that,

a Fox booker saw me and brought me in to start doing Kennedy show. And I guess they deduced from watching me, they're like, well, if you throw this guy in camera, we'll look a lot less crazy. So let's start booking this kid. And that's kind of how I started here. Like, you know, about four years ago. Wow. That's, that is good now, but go back. When did you like figure out that? Hey, you know what? I'm, I'm kind of funny. Is that, is that the way you skirted through school? Is that, was that how you survived in the family? Two things. I grew up in one of those families where, um,

you know, back then there was a lot of vigilante justice. You know, it wasn't necessarily your parents straightening you out. It might have been your brothers. It might have been your neighbors. You get beat up a lot. I was like, I was a fat, like wise guy as a kid. And I would get myself out of a lot of trouble through humor. I found that to be a good bridge. And then again, getting into middle school and, you know, pursuing women.

I had no physical deliverable I could offer my voters. There was nothing. And to be clear, my head has been this size since kindergarten. Like my brother used to charge the neighborhood kids a dollar to look at me in the backyard. It was a mess. But when I got into middle school socially, I found like a sense of humor was an equalizer.

You know, people could play sports. People could be other things. Girls like funny guys. You crush. You have no idea. I have dated like seven tact brackets beyond what my physical income level is. Like, it's embarrassing. It is a big noggin. I'll give you that. It's a big hokin'. It's a thing. So, what did you recall? So, I was always kind of into like telling jokes and stuff like that. And I had like a weird revelation when I was in college. I had a buddy who was a ball player who...

was in the school play at New York Tech because he needed an elective and he was in the school play and I was sitting there watching my buddy Steve-O do some silly Shakespeare thing but I did think it was kinda cool that like his family I really mean this his divorced mom was in the audience and I was like wow it's so cool that she has someone to go on a Friday night now she never did

But now she had this thing. And my parents, we've been married 27 years. They eventually did divorce, which is fascinating because when you get divorced and like, you know, at an advanced age, you're basically saying to the other person, you know, I'd rather die alone than roll with you for another 10 years. It's a

way more insulting when you get a divorce after 30 years than it is when you get divorced after two days. You know, you hear about those celebrity marriages. But anyway, I had the same revelation. I was like, you know, if I actually started to do stand up as opposed to like telling jokes, I would actually get my mom out of the house. And I'm not kidding. That's really how it started. And then within like just months of it starting, it just it snowballed into like another thing. And I started to be like the guy who performs before the guy you've actually heard

You know what I mean? Like they, so they would say if, you know, in certain instances, I'd be at like Gotham and Seinfeld would be on. No one paid to see Jimmy Fallon, you know, but they'd see you because they were coming to see Seinfeld. So it'd be like gigs like that. That's kind of how it starts. You start out as like the, they call you the, either the MC or the feature.

Okay, the MC is the guy who goes on, obviously, as you know, when everybody's seated. The feature gets the cushiest spot on the gig because everyone's had their drink. The room's been quieted down. He does 15 minutes on a road the MC paved, and then he just hands off to the celebrity, and they murder, you know? So the guy, you know how they say in boxing, it's not what your record is, it's who you fought?

When you're an emcee, you fought everybody. You know, you fought the bachelorette party, you fought the loud room, you fought the drunk, you fought everybody because it's your job to tame the room. So I find that that's what actually makes you a better comic. So getting into stand-up, you start as an emcee and that's how it kind of turned into a career. So if you're an emcee, they'll send you everywhere. Everywhere. Go a little deeper on that. I mean, how do you fight back on that, you know, and keep it funny and keep it moving in the right thing? I mean...

In stand-up, for real? So here's the thing. The line we use in politics a lot doesn't apply to stand-up. But we say it a lot. We say, read the room. They say, oh, you got to read the room. And no comedian that's a professional performing good comedian ever reads the room. Like your job as a comic, certain professions require you to lead the room. You're absolutely in charge. Like a commercial airline pilot. He doesn't come on the speaker and say, if it's okay with you, we're going to take off. Right.

If everybody in section nine is cool with it, we're going to go to 37,000 feet. I know this is offensive to the 36,000 foot crowd, but we're going to go to 37. You actually have to just, you really have to own your space and you have to establish, you know, some currency in that what you're supposed to do as a comic. And this is where guys get in trouble in terms of like off color material and offensive stuff.

is you can never ask an audience to hate something unless they like you first. And that's a mistake a lot of comics make, is they open with offensive stuff. That's where they get in trouble, because they haven't established that currency with the audience of like, hey, some of this is going to be bananas, but...

Who am I? I'm just some dope who's up here pimping liquor for this club. You guys are paying $12 for a beer, and I'm trying to make that experience interesting for you. There's no reason to come after me. I got much bigger problems, folks. And that usually buys you enough currency to do whatever the heck you want. But a lot of comics don't necessarily know how to do that.

Because they're just, you know, they're not mindful enough of what's really hanging in the balance. But I would just say this really quick. When it comes to offense in comedy, most of the people getting offended at comedy aren't actually consuming it. You know, they're not in a club where everybody has bought the drinks and hung out and they're part of that thing. They're usually consuming it on the internet.

where it is being, and this is a danger to comedy, it's being consumed in venues where that premise hasn't been established. Hey, everybody here is cool. We were all fine with this off-color, you know what I mean? Because we're just being silly. But on the internet, we're not just being silly because we've incentivized outrage. So a lot of people, not necessarily offended, but can claim offense as a way of gaining that other kind of currency of likes and everything else. That's interesting. Now, when you grew up,

Who were your icons? Like, who did you listen to and think, all right, now that... To me, it was like Steve Martin, Bill Cosby. I mean, these are the people that were... They were so good. They were so good. Bob Newhart. Bob Newhart's fantastic. He's like so super dry. He's the great bit. Yeah.

Bob Newhart does a lot of sketches. So like he'll say to the audience, all right, so here's the guy working the telephone dispatch on the day King Kong climbs the Empire State Building. And it's outrageous. And he's just sitting there depicting this conversation he'd be having with his boss. A little bit of a stutter. What he's witnessing is a gorilla is climbing the Empire State Building. They're firing at it. It's fantastic.

So I liked as a little kid, I always liked things that were repeatedly funny. And what I mean is you could watch it, laugh at it, and tell the next person why you laughed. You know, does that make sense? Like physical comedy I didn't like because you had to now do Dane Cook's impression of a sprinkler in order for the person to laugh. And even if you did it well, they might not laugh because it wasn't that funny. So I liked Rodney D, Rodney Dangerfield, because he told a lot of good jokes. And as a little kid, though, I really liked Eddie Murphy just because

I didn't, um, I was in this weird cusp where I didn't consume Richard Pryor as a little kid. I saw Eddie Murphy first. Right. So he was the first guy I watched who was cursing his face off and doing this. And as a little kid, that was outrageous just to be around that kind of language and that kind of vibe. So I loved Eddie Murphy. What's funny about Pryor is when I got into comedy, um,

I was consuming so much Pryor, not of him, but of every other comic in the country ripping him off. Like by the time I had seen Pryor, I was like, oh, wow. So like none of that guy's jokes are original. None of that guy's jokes are original. Like straight out. And I didn't know that. Pryor is probably the most single stolen from comic on earth. And he's fantastic. He was just like a few years before my time.

What made you think, hey, you know what? I can go stand up on that stage and I can go do that. I mean, the first time's got to be just so intimidating, right? You're insane. And there's a certain amount of delusion that goes into showbiz and that you know. You've watched so many of these stories where it just ends in shambles.

But your ambition to do it is kind of diluted. It kind of convinces you that you're the one odds-defying guy that's going to make it through in one piece. And you might be, but you still have to get through this horrific showbiz birth canal of performing for nobody or performing in the worst circumstances known to man for like a year and a half, two years. Well, the pay's so good. I can understand why you do that. The old line is, in comedy, we get paid weekly, very weekly. Hey, all right, ha!

The first time I was on stage, it was at the New York Comedy Club. This is so crazy. It was an open mic. And a woman had gone on before me to actually do a monologue that she was dedicating to her late grandmother. And she punctuated it by placing a rose on the stool and crying her way off stage. And then it's tag team. So it's not even an MC. So I just got to run up on stage now. And be like, my wife, she's fat. Ha!

How fat is she? Like one of those. It was horrific. And I remember, I'm not even kidding. Like I died a thousand deaths. Like it was, you talk about bombing. Like Hamas called the club afterwards. They're like, that was us. That was our bomb. And, but I remember running out onto the street like, yo, I'm in showbiz now. Because you're crazy. Because you have to be to get into it. So it's not as scary as it sounds. And I would tell you to this day, like anybody who gets into standup, it's usually harder to be off stage, about to go on.

than it is to be on. Because once you're on, it's live ammo. You're too busy figuring out how to execute to actually feel any of the nerves. Like I never feel nervous for a show. And again, that might be some of that little sociopath thing you have going in the beginning that propels you through. So what would you be doing in life if you didn't say, hey, yeah, you know, I think I'm going to go do that comedy thing. I mean, would you still be driving a cab or what would you? No. So listen, driving a cab is definitely, it's something I took up a

because we moved into the city to like chase down some standup. Jenny Fela, I was actually like sort of making a living. I mean, again, a comedy living as a comedian doing colleges and stuff like that. But Jenny Fela was pregnant with our only kid, Lincoln Fela. And I started basically driving a cab to supplement that income. But if I hadn't got into comedy period, I would be doing some type of like

sales gig where I just make a lot of money and just be left alone, you know, because I believe those people have the best, the best lives. You know, those guys that have like selling what lizards to pet stores or what would you care? I had a fentanyl. I'm kidding. It doesn't matter. I'm kidding. Anything because those, I really do harbor a suspicion that the guy who has like

8 million bucks that none of us have heard of is probably the happiest guy because he's just barbecuing and doing gosh knows what. We're all crazy because we just fly into this bug light. So now you've got this gig on Fox. You've got your radio show. You've got all these affiliates all over the country. So...

Why is that a good fit for you? Well, this is what's weird about it, is that I'm delivering distilling radio from the viewpoint of a consumer. This is the one superpower I have. I say this on the air, as I've spent so much more time in a car listening to this the way my listeners have.

as opposed to being the guy on this side of the mic giving it to him. And I've kind of figured out, and I do mean this, you know, we talk about algorithms. There is an algorithm to talk radio in the sense that what they really want is they want entertainment. Obviously they want to be informed, but they do want to feel like they're, they're a part of a community, but B, um,

I guess the best way I could explain it to you is they don't want to just be sold negativity, you know, because it's exhausting. And it's so one note. And what people, I think, failed to realize in the early, you know, infancy of social media is that around four or five years ago, maybe, maybe say six, and I was still driving a cab.

everyone in the country was now in the entertainment business. You know, with Facebook, everyone's running their own one-man news network now. Hey, it's my dog's birthday. Film at 11. We'll have a video of him with a hat on. Here's a quiche I cooked. Check it out. What do you think? You know, it's funny, but that's... So when you're on the air now...

Like, you have such an obligation to be entertaining to these people because they themselves now fancy themselves entertainers. So if you sit there and just yell and scream all day, I think to most people it's so one-dimensional they don't engage it. And that's why I think the show grows so well is it's not that I know what I'm doing. It's that I probably don't. You know, I'm just one of them. I know when I was sitting in a cab for three hours a day, I really appreciated something fun. You know, I really appreciated something that was self-aware. You know, so if there was...

a moment where it was worth calling out your own political party for and you didn't do it as a host, it kind of cheapened your next attack on the other side. Right. So I try to do a self-aware show because it looks a little bit more credible. You're listening to Jason in the House. We'll be back with more of my conversation with Jimmy Failia right after this. Where do you think the country is these days? I mean, it's fascinating to look at the country and see how we've changed.

you know, nine, nine 11, which was just last week was an inflection point. You know, a lot of these younger generations, they weren't even born. Yeah. It's crazy. Or they were infants when it happened. And to me, 20 years ago, it's like a blink of the eye. It's amazing. Like how did that go by so fast? But,

There are a lot of people in this country that feel so disaffected. They feel so separated. The country feels like it's just two different ball teams. Yeah, that's a really good point. But they always say like, oh, we feel like we're on the verge of the Civil War. I don't think that's true because we're the laziest country on the planet right now.

Like, unless someone made an app, we're not fighting a civil war. There's an app for that. It's probably out there already. I think Call of Duty is the civil war or Fortnite, whatever they're playing on Xbox. That's a civil war, if we're being honest, is what it is. But we're definitely there. I think it would help. It would really help. And I don't know if anyone would commit to it. But I always say on the show, we need, like, a national, like, moratorium on social media. I think if people walked away from it for, like, two weeks, they would realize how crazy they sound.

because social media you know it's incentivize conflict so it's catering to emotions in the worst kind anytime you've ever been in a fight with you know maybe wife for saying somebody in a relationship with you always know in that when you're operating from place a banger usually denied the self-awareness to know you're saying stupid or crazy things you know social media is you're jumping into a pit with twenty million other people operating from a place a banker and no one knows how crazy they sound

But I always feel like Twitter is a fight club for people who don't want to get punched. That's all it is. It's the same thing. You go there knowing there's a fight. And I always feel like whenever I log on to Twitter, I'm showing up to a party where everyone's been drinking for four hours. And I'm like, I'm never going to catch up with this mood. What am I even doing here? So here's a promo for my show and I'll get out of here now. But I think where we are as a country is we would really get perspective back.

if we just got outside of our phone. And I'm scared because I don't know if we will, but that would be my A1 remedy. That's why I always say the top of the show, I always say like, oh, you could be a Republican, you could be a Democrat, just don't be a beep. And we beep it out, you know? But I think that's the truth. I think if you looked at this American moment as you described it as, you know, two Americas and all of that, we don't need more of one or the other. We just need less Republicans.

of that thing, that provocative crush the other side mentality. And my fear when we referenced 9-11, you know, as we, you know, just sailed by the anniversary last week, it was really fast, is I always wonder if we could demonstrate that same sense of resiliency and team ball, you know, because... Well, that's... Yeah, see, I think that...

What are the things that are going to unite us? You know, what I worry about is politics has just injected itself into everything. I think people want to go to a ball game. They want to go to, you know, and not have to think about politics or watch a movie or do something and not have politics injected into it. Totally true. I mean, when you think about sports and how that was such a rallying point for us post 9-11 with the George Bush first pitch. Yeah.

in this day and age, whoever that president is, probably getting booed by half the stadium. And it's horrible to think. And you think of when Bush threw out that pitch in New York, New York, which does lean overwhelmingly Democrat, and we had just come out of a pretty contested election with him in Eldor...

But we still recognized what this moment was for all of us. And that's the thing I feel like social media has gotten us away from is it has created those two Americas that incentivized conflict America of will characterize the other side in the worst light possible.

And here I am injecting politics into it all. But I think this is one of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris's biggest problems is that when they took out Donald Trump on Twitter and Facebook and when they got rid of him, guess what? They didn't have the nemesis on the other side to be able to point to and say, there's the bad guy. It's his fault. And they wouldn't pay anything to get to Jack Dorsey to get him back. I'm pretty sure that $3.5 trillion spending bill includes like a half a billion for Jack Dorsey to get him back on because they do. They need the distractions.

It's really funny, but I feel like we're watching. There was a guy who had this silly comic strip he had on the internet. It was called Garfield minus Garfield.

And he had taken the cat Garfield out of the comic strip. So now it was just Odie the dog and the owner John. And it was a really boring show without Garfield. And what the Biden administration realizes is they took Garfield out of the comic strip. And Odie and John aren't that interesting. But even worse is they're really bad at what they're doing. And they're being subjected to a lot more scrutiny than they would. Like if Trump was out there heckling them right now, everything they're botching could just be discredited as like, oh, it's just Trump.

But they don't have just Trump and they got a real problem on their hands. And it's going to be interesting to see how it plays out, because, you know, I don't want to say they lost the media. They lost the media for a few days because everybody wanted to distance themselves from Afghanistan. But they have put themselves in a precarious position in that the media, who is as transactional as anyone who ever lived. And if you don't believe me, ask Andrew Cuomo.

You know, they built him up, but then they couldn't get rid of him fast enough post-election. You know, they will. They are capable of turning on Joe Biden because understand at some point there's another election to win. They realize Biden's not going to run. So they would hammer him on the way out of office. And I think they're starting to wake up to that reality.

that he could, he might get clobbered, you know, and Kamala too, because knowing what the scuttlebutt is, there's nobody that sees her at the top of the ticket in 2024. Well, this is their problem, right? They don't have a communicator. If Afghanistan had gone so well, yeah, Kamala would have been standing right by shoulder to shoulder. Look at her. Look at what we did. Yeah, she didn't even showed up. I mean, she's actually pulling behind the Taliban right now. She's like two points behind the Taliban. It's margin of error. So it's not over yet, but it's within the hunt.

But you're right about that. You know, they nowhere to be found. And, you know, for her as a vice president, when you think of what she was tasked with, whether it was the border, you know, whether it was the Voting Rights Act, you know, H.R. 1, it does seem like on some level that they have it out for her. Like, do you not get that feeling like that Biden and her? It's it's not a. I think it took her about 60 days to figure it out. Remember that time of the debate?

When you said I was a racist who supported segregating busing and you said you believed my accuser. Well, anyway, I don't know why that came up, but I have an assignment for you. I'm going to need you to head down to the border. Well, not the border. You can go to El Paso. Take care of Texas.

I think it was a setup. So this world, your son Lincoln, right? Lincoln failed. Yeah, what do you expect? By the time he turns the corner going to college, what do you want that world to look like for him? Well, you've got to hope. I mean, Lincoln is 12. I think college is a little ambitious for anyone with our DNA, but no, he'll be there. He'll be there. College age. We'll call it that. Listen, they're going to need a groundskeeper. Let's not kid ourselves. No, Lincoln's a good kid. He's smart. Yeah.

You got to think. So he's 12. So he's college. I guess we're talking 10 years. Yeah. So let's assume 10 years from now. I mean, ideally, President Honey Boo Boo is doing a good job. Or is it going to be Northwest Kardashian? I don't know. It'll be one or the other. Or maybe The Rock has a kid. I mean, let's not kid ourselves, folks. This doesn't end good. No, I'm kidding. I do think, you know, they say necessity is the mother of invention.

I think we're going to force ourselves to a reckoning on a lot of the reckless things we're doing now in terms of not only taking a country for granted, but, you know, maybe a good example of this would be defund the police. You know, that was a trendy thing to do in big municipalities, cut police budgets. But what did they ultimately do is in a lot of instances like New York, restore them. And that was, you know, necessity becoming the mother of invention. It was a horrific necessity. And that's what scares me about our society is I think we're going to force ourselves into a couple of hard choices that we didn't have to make.

But I think we will course correct because the majority of the people in this country, when you get outside of the bubble, we're kind of in in terms of, you know, being on cable news and consuming a lot of cable news. The majority of the people aren't as bogged down by this as we are. You know, Twitter is not a reflection of the real world. Most of these people, you know, in the middle of the country, my wife's family's from Ohio. They're having a great time. I mean, they watch this stuff. They get mad at what Joe Biden does, but they still remember to live a life outside of their phone.

And I think we will get back to that place. I am an optimist, despite all of these dire predictions about civil war apps and everything else. But I do think sadly it'll take something, you know,

And I hope it's not something catastrophic like a 9-11, but something that forces us, you know, to have that moment of, oh, yeah, this whole time we were fighting, we were really playing for the same team. And no one remembers that. Yeah, I read an interesting article recently, and part of what it talked about is the loss in belief.

and respect for government institutions. Now, you can argue that Ronald Reagan had that approach back when he was popular, and that added solution to the problem. Government is the problem. Yeah, the worst words you can hear, right? Hello, I'm the government, and I'm here to help. But I do worry that our debt is going to force that issue to a degree. And yeah, could there be some catastrophic impact

environmental event, something like that. Yes, but perhaps... I still believe the United States of America is the greatest country on the face of the planet because the spirit of America, I don't think you can break that. But there are other factors that can push...

that breaking and causes to fight amongst ourselves. And that's, I guess, over the next 10 years, what I worry about. That's a good point. When you see the funding liabilities we have, you know, that would ultimately force some type of... I get too wonky on this answer because I started looking at the books again. You know, there's got to be a day of reckoning at some point where the Lincolns of the world are going to come back and say...

yeah, you know, that dollar. Wasn't that cute when we thought gas was only going to be $5 a gallon? That was cute. It's horrible to think the whole union is riding on Joe Manchin's back right now. Do you know

mansion can you tell them to vote no on a couple of these things because him and cinema are all we got left otherwise they're just printing it and they're spending it and it's it's horrifying and it's so reckless but is that what modern without getting too wonky that is essentially what modern monetary theory is you just keep printing it right yeah and they don't they don't embrace debt as as some type of an adversity but it's crippling if it becomes what we think it might

And I think you made the good point though, is that's how we'd probably wind up having that family meeting. You know, we have X amount of income, we have Y amount of bills, okay? And for all of the things we wanna do, we have things we need to do that we will be unable to do. We have to get away from this pie in the sky notion of, yeah, the kids would love to go to Disney World every weekend,

But if we actually did that, at some point, Dad's turning tricks behind Space Mountain. And Dad ain't that cute, so it's going to be a lot of tricks, kids. I mean, I might not even have time to go on a ride. And I think everyone just needs to realize that. Try to figure out how to explain to the younger generation what those tricks might be. Oh, yeah, juggling cards, three-card Monty. I don't know where your head was. I don't know how they do it out in Utah, Jason Chaffetz. Three-card Monty. Yeah.

I had a point about this, but I can't get my mind off Dad doing tricks beyond Spades Mountain. Hey, it's a long season. Nobody goes undefeated. You know what I mean? The rent don't pay itself. You know what I mean, kids? It gets tough out there.

All right. So, yeah, that is the one way to get yourself out of debt. New York, you'd be surprised what I'd pick up in a taxi all those days. There's a lot going on out there in these streets. What's the worst part of being a taxi driver? I mean...

probably people say the traffic but here's the trade-off because you're in traffic all day you're paid to be in traffic yeah i was gonna say if you're smart you just kind of resign to your fate in the beginning you're gonna be in the car anyway yeah exactly you're like everyone who gets in is late for work but you're not late for work you you don't realize that the first like two weeks you're like we gotta get there i'm gonna late i woke up late and you're just as stressed as they are but then you ultimately you know i'm never gonna see this guy again

And it's not my fault his alarm didn't go off or, you know, especially like the guy you don't feel bad for is when he gets in and he has glitter on his shirt. There's clearly out some kind of debauched party from the night before. I'm like, can you take off the eyes wide shut mask if you at least want me to garner some sympathy for you? But in the beginning, it's probably the traffic. I would think ultimately, if you have an ambition beyond it.

It's that there is like a fatigue issue for your brain in that you are driving 12 hours a day on a short day and there's not much left of you by the time you get on stage. So I'm blaming the first two years of my stand-up act on cab driving. That's my disclaimer. Fair enough. You're researching all the material, but yeah, then you've got to execute the material and have that energy level. And you've got nothing left in your brain. But I mean, aside from that, people are cooler than you think.

And in this day and age still, it's so rare for anyone to talk to a stranger and get out of a phone that they do appreciate like a chatty cab driver. Assuming you're cool, you know? Yeah, yeah. So that part was like fun. You talk to everybody known. And I do mean everybody. Like I've met people on other planets, 100%. I love that. The whole premise of Men in Black was really quite good, you know? All those strange people that you meet, they're really aliens. They really are aliens. Every one of them.

do. I guarantee. That's a great premise for a movie. Alright, I gotta ask you some questions. Let's go, man. And I don't care how many cab fares you've collected along the way, how many tips. You're not ready for these questions. Are you ready? Let's go, Chaffetz. You don't scare me. Alright, first concert you attended. Wow. I don't, again, this is gonna be very masculine, but it was the Cranberries. Ha ha ha!

It was the Cranberries at the Beacon Theater. They had a big song called Zombie and Linger and a girl I liked at the time liked the Cranberries. I remember the Cranberries. Aren't the Cranberries, isn't that the, they do the Friends theme? That's not them. I know who you're thinking of. But the Cranberries sang, you know, Do You Have to Let It Linger and...

A couple other jams. They were Irish band. They had a big from Cork. I got that. I got that. I got my own answer. All right. What was your high school mascot? The Blue Dragons. Blue Dragons. Can I take something really quick? I was such a horrific heckler in terms of my ability to destroy people's lives that our team, which won four state championships, are a coach. In what sport? In baseball. They were phenomenal. The late, great Doug Robbins.

He used to take me out of my class in seventh period and actually give me info on the kids we'd be heckling that day. And this is another time in America. New York's a little tougher than Utah. He would lose his job now. He'd probably be in prison. I used to get scouting reports. You got scouting reports on who to heckle. Brian D is the catcher for Garden City. He applied to Princeton and he didn't get in. Oh, my God.

That's great. You know? Sit down behind the stands drinking a Slurpee full of gin. Ah, you know, maybe you would have caught that. You would have got into Princeton. And it's like blowing the guy's mind. Diddy's paying attention. At the parade game in 1996, Memorial Day game, Dennis Schneider threw a no-hitter. And I got the game ball in front of the team. The kid who threw the no-hitter did not get it. Coach Robbins gave it to me. It's like epic ragging. You could actually change the outcome of a game back then. But it was militant heckling. It was bad. I'm not proud of it.

But it was effective. At the same time I am. Coach loved it. Yeah, those state titles don't lie. You know what I mean? All right, that is a classic New York story. I've never heard that. Well, who was your first celebrity crush? Oh, that's a good one. Hold on a second now. And I'm going to give it some real thought because I really want to think about this. It was probably Debbie Harry.

Because Blondie was like a happening thing. She was? Yeah. She was happening. And she had the big late 70s, early 80s hair. And that vibe was everywhere. But she was the first one that I knew was like a celebrity that looked like people I walked around with. My sister had a lot of great looking friends that used to babysit and stuff. And I was a dirtbag kid. Because they would always try to scare you. I believe you. As a...

I remember when I was a little kid, my sister and Diana were like, you better go to bed or I'm going to give you a smooch. And I'd be like, baby, I'm up all night. Yeah.

It was a loser. All right, Debbie Harry, that's a first. That's good. What's your favorite vegetable? Oh, wow. I guess I'm going to say fried zucchini, but it has to be fried. Anything fried is going to work out. Yeah, it'll get popped. You know, I've asked this question like two dozen times. I've never gotten the same answer. Oh, is that true? Not everybody sticks to the actual, they can't even name a vegetable. Yeah.

But that's good. So if you had a chance to sit down and interview and maybe go to dinner, break some bread with Bigfoot, what would you be asking him? Oh, Bigfoot. Like, how did you pull off the hiding, I think, is what I would ask, right? You know, I just read Chris Wallace's book about finding Bin Laden. Like, he pulled it off for eight years, which we're all amazed by, or 11 years. Bigfoot has pulled it off, assuming this is our guy. Yeah, Daryl. Yeah.

Since the beginning of time. I don't know. Is there more than one? I mean, that's what I want to know. Is there a Mrs. Bigfoot? That'd be a good, that'd be funny. If Bigfoot surfaced, it'd be like three days before he got canceled for some problematic tweets. Like, you know, he actually had a burner account in the woods and said some things about the election we didn't like.

Let me add this caveat. I think that would be my question to Bigfoot. It would actually be, why did you bother coming out? Because why would you want to be a part of this? The woods sound great right now. Do they not? Like, if you could be Ted Kaczynski minus the male habit, you know, minus the expensive FedEx bill, you could just be a guy in the woods minding his own business. I might sign up for that. Why did you come out? All right. So you have been on television. You get recognized. But if you...

If people recognize you, but they don't recognize you as yourself, what other celebrity do they? Oh, you know what? You look just like. You know, it's funny when I was younger and I had, and I mean this, when I first got into standup, I had so embarrassing. I had platinum blonde hair and people thought I was Lance Bass from insane. I'm not kidding.

Lance Bass. Yeah. I'm going to call you that one. That's funny. I see you in the hallway at Fox. I'm going to say, hey, Lance. Lance Bass. It's easier than pronouncing Faloli or Falafel. Jimmy Foley's here. It's Lance. And now, yeah, later in life, I look like the behind the music version of the lead singer of Smash Mouth. Like, he just, life took a bad turn. No.

That is such a great show behind the, I love that show. Smash mouth. All right. That's good. Um, do you have a pet growing up? What was your favorite pet? I had an indoor outdoor cat named Frisky who lived to be 24. Wow. That's a long time for a cat. Four kids in my family and she was indoor outdoor. She watched a lot of wiffle ball, a lot of touch football, but 24, it's probably a state. What do you account? What do you chalk that up? Um,

Good eating? Just good New York living? Maybe some good genes, yeah. Frisky the cat? She eat a mouse once a week? Yeah, that's probably what it was. She was doing an Atkins. She was eating a lot of birds. She was eating a lot of birds, a lot of mice. She put up big numbers. If you had Frisky on your fantasy team, she was getting you like five seagulls a weekend. I mean, you were crushing people. Didn't matter who they started.

Most embarrassing moment in your life. Whoa. I mean, obviously the easy would be this podcast, but I kid. No, we've acquitted ourselves. Well, I'm just giving us some tough love. I think I want to be fair about this. This is a good story. When I was a junior in high school, it was a girl, Andrea Cullen, who was an aerobics instructor at Lucio Roberts. Just a knockout Fox. She was in my biology lab and I wanted to ask her to the prom.

What ensues next is a billion percent true. So the next day, I was going to my gym. My brother worked at it. It was called a Jack LaLanne. Oh, yeah. Jack LaLanne, the whole workout guy. Next to Jack LaLanne, it was like in a strip mall. There was a Nana's Little Diner. There was like a nail salon. There was like a tanning salon. It was a strip mall.

As I'm walking into Jack LaLanne, who should come walking around the corner, but the girl I had planned on asking to the prom. Just the spectacular confluence of events. There's Andrea Cullen. She's got her yoga mat. She's on her way down like five stores down to go to Lucio Roberts.

So I run into her, we have some kind of nervous, dumb exchange, but there's nothing along the lines of anything. It's just nervous and dumb. But as she keeps walking, and I'm about to go into the gym, I pause so I can check out her butt. Guilty. That happened. Okay? She's about 50 feet away when she looks over her shoulder, sees it happening. Okay? Just like a smile keeps going.

Next day at lab, I'm going to ask her to the prom. That's the plan, right? So when we get our break at lab, I go over to her to start my little nervous conversation. She goes, can I ask you a question? I'm like, yeah. She goes, do you really go to the gym? I go, why? She goes, because I saw you standing outside and I thought maybe you were really going to Nana's diner, but you didn't want to admit it because you're fat. I was like, oh, dog, will you go to the prom with me?

And I didn't. I didn't spit it out. I just took the loss. I was like, no, no, I go to the gym. I'm getting there. You know, I'm trying. But it happened just like that. She had been chewing on that all night. She was like, you just go to the gym. But again, that told me back to reading the room. Now, that's the moment where you read the room. You don't ask to go to the prom. All right. That's pretty good. All right. If you could meet one person dead or alive, who would it be?

Great one, Elvis. Definitely Elvis. I love the king. I grew up in a big Elvis house. I liked fat Elvis. You know, jumpsuit Elvis, even though he probably lost the fastball a little bit. There was a little bit of all of us in fat Elvis. You know, he liked his food, the peanut butter and banana thing. But he still had like Elvis status, you know? And I just feel like he was more accessible. Nobody could be young, handsome, suave, debonair, you know, postage stamp Elvis, but we could all throw on a jumpsuit. Did you ever notice you never see an Elvis impersonator doing the young guy?

That's true. If you go to Vegas, you go anywhere else, they're all fat. They're all fat. Limestones are very forgiving if you've got a big enough cape. All right. Unique talent nobody knows about. Ooh. Hold on a second. I can beat Mario Brothers on One Life. Really?

Really? That's how many dates I didn't go on in middle school. And yes, I can beat Mike Tyson and Mike Tyson's punch out, which was at the time my most substantial athletic achievement. That was a big deal to me. Yeah. Because he throws a minute and a half of uppercuts. But if you learn this, if you're as shut in as I was, he winks and tells you, if you notice which eye he winks with, that's which eye the uppercut's coming from. So if you see his right eye wink, you dodge left. If you see his left eye wink, you dodge right.

Wow. You get a lot of people now that are going to. Oh, I just changed a life because beating Mike Tyson in punch out was a big deal to a lot of people. Yeah, that was a big game. I met Mike Tyson at like a boxing event. Nice guy, but he really chews your ear off. Good night.

Good night, everybody. Come on. All right. Pineapple on pizza. Yes or no? No, absolutely not. Good. You got that answer right. Judges like that answer. If you want to kind of get away, just clear your head, you know, you got the intensity of the show and life and your dad and all that. How do you just like, I want to step away. What's that other thing that Jimmy likes to do? Driving.

I like the road. I miss the road. Because as a cab driver, you drive 12 hours a day. Now, you know, you get basically get on New York City Mass Transit, cheat death for five minutes and you're here, you know? So I, whenever I need an outlet, I actually just get on the road and go anywhere. Could be tri-state. You really do need to live out West. You really, the West, I mean, everything's a drive and it's not close. It's amazing. Everywhere we go in my family,

We always rent a convertible so we can just see more and we never stop driving. The week we were in Utah, we put 1,600 miles on that car. It's not really a vacation. You just pop the top blast of radio and you go. And Utah, where you guys are at, are fantastic. Route 15, we didn't see a cop driving.

From West Jordan all the way up to the Idaho border, which is probably 100 miles. Didn't see a cop. It was great. The minute you get into Idaho, like Pocatello, it's eight cops, nine cops. Well, and if you go down southern Utah, the speed limit's 80. Isn't that nuts? Yes. That's amazing. But you can't, I mean, there's no grace period, though. Like in a 65, if you're doing a 70, you'll get out of a ticket. But in an 80, if you're doing 82, you're probably getting a ticket.

That's right. That's right. They figure, oh, we can give you a grace on 55. They'll probably give you 15 miles. If you're at 70, they may give you eight miles. But when you're going 80, yeah, you don't get away with 85. Yeah. And it doesn't help that my son Lincoln, when he's in the back, like whenever I've been pulled over with him in the car, he'll start banging on the trunk. Like there's someone in there. I'm like, no, no, you can't do that. Oh, he is a comic. Yeah, he's fantastic. Oh, that's awesome. I love that. Yeah.

That's a great one. You love it because he's not doing it to you. When you go to the grocery store, my son walks around and goes, my dad won't buy food for the dog. Will you just feed the dog? And everyone in the food store thinks you're this horrific character. And I've had women say, you should feed the dog. Tell your dad to feed the dog. I'm like, my son is a jerk.

Our dog is fat. He's a beagle. But, you know, that's what he does. He likes awkward humor. I like this. Next time we're going to do the... Yeah, he's a better... He's a much better interviewer. I should have probably done the podcast with Link. We'll talk to his agent. What do you think about UFOs? Real? Not real? Listen, I actually do think there's something out there. I think they probably have come here, observed this culture, and were like, nah.

you know there's a funny story about better larry david back in his stand-up days kind of hated stand-up and there's this famous story of him walking out from behind the curtain he looked at the crowd and he goes nah and he just walked away and didn't do his set and i believe ufos spent five minutes on like twitter or facebook and were like yeah no these are they're all looking at some device in their hand you know it's all stupid stuff here's a for some reason they're all giving out their unsolicited top five rock

Nobody knows why. It's so stupid. All right, last question. Best advice you ever got. Oh, wow. Your attitude defines your experience. Someone told me that in my cab. You have a good attitude. You can make a good life for yourself regardless of circumstance. You have a bad attitude. It can really drag you down. Yeah.

And I have kind of used that as like my north star through everything. I'm like, is this not working or am I just being a baby? You know, because we get tired, you get depressed, you drag yourself down. Other one is, you know, go to someone, if you go to someone looking for help, you'll get advice. If you go to someone looking for advice, you'll get help. So just go looking, you know, in life, people do want to help you, but just go looking for advice. Don't put the bite on everybody. That's the problem now, especially in showbiz is

is everybody in showbiz wants to meet the guy who knows the guy. But the problem is if you meet the guy, okay, and you don't have an act, you just wasted all of that crazy dumb nepotism. So you're just better off getting advice and like holding yourself accountable. So have a good attitude. You can have a decent life. I mean, if I can sit here with you,

you know, and we've got millions of people around the world who know who we are and we're listening. Like, I think that's supposed to be the reminder to everybody that anything is possible here, you know, like where we live. And that's what I want people to embrace more is like, there is a level of upward mobility in our society that doesn't exist anywhere, you know? Yeah. So that's what I hope people get that. Yeah. I think, and you mentioned that right at the beginning here and that is,

that you're kind of in on the joke that we have it better than 99% of the world. Everybody. We are the 1%. Like if you live in America, no matter what you do, you drive, you hit the lottery. Yeah. You won. Yeah. And everyone forgets that it's like we hit the lottery, uh, but we're all tearing up the ticket. You know, we're all like, if we live in the biggest party in the world and we're all fighting for control of the iPod, that's playing the music instead of just enjoy the party. Everybody chill out. Yeah. No, a lot, a lot of good advice. And, and, uh, a

A lot of good insight, a lot of good fun that you bring to a lot of people and it's got to be real satisfying that way. Sometimes I think you sit in a studio and you don't feel it, but then when you go out across America and you get to talk to people and

and see and hear their stories and recognize that, yeah, we all have hardships. We all have places we don't want to go and hard things that happen. But we also are part of the greatest country that's ever been on the planet. Thank you. We should end this before I sing Lee Greenwood because I'll do it, Chaffetz. You know, true story. I was at the Stadium of Fire, which is the big celebration. And this year's lead was Lee Greenwood. Yeah.

Well, you didn't ask me what my last concert was, but I was in a casino and Herman's Hermits came on. They sang, like, something tells me I'm into something good. And it was funny because he told the story about it. He's like, yeah, this something happened in 1958, which was the last year we had a hit. It was actually funny. Well, I was actually driving from Arizona to Utah, which is actually kind of a fun drive to take.

We were out in the middle of an Indian reservation, and I hadn't seen a human being for I don't know how long. And there's going to be another couple hours of just, there's just nothing out there except a billboard, which was air supply. How bad did things get for air supply that they're playing out in the middle of absolutely nowhere? Stay in school, kids. Stay in school. Jimmy...

Yes, that's your name. Boom. Failure. I can get that. Jimmy Failure. He's got a great show. I highly recommend that you listen to on Fox News Radio. And just an all-around good guy. I've been very blessed to be able to interact with the Fox family here and glad our paths have crossed. So thanks for joining us on the Jason and the House podcast. We'll always have this.

Be well, man. All right, Jimmy, I can't thank him enough for joining us on this show. That is just a hoot to listen to. There's so many things that he said and talked about in that podcast. I appreciate him joining us. We want to thank you all for listening to the Jason and the House podcast. You can find more from the Fox News Podcast Network over at foxnewspodcast.com or wherever you listen to podcasts.

We'd love it if you would rate it, subscribe to it, but certainly rate it, hit those stars to be helpful to us. And we'll be back with more next week. I'm Jason Chaffetz, and this has been Jason in the House.

The Fox News Rundown. A contrast of perspectives you won't hear anywhere else. Your daily dose of news twice a day. Featuring insight from top newsmakers, reporters, and Fox News contributors. Listen and subscribe now by going to foxnewspodcasts.com.