#2373 - Dave Landau

Good to see you, brother. I'm rocking Shinola—Detroit pride. Wild to think the place was built for like seven million and now you’ll see a million-dollar condo next to eight abandoned buildings. It’s the Paris of the Midwest story gone sideways.

Detroit’s a cautionary tale—unions got bloated, corporations chased cheap labor, and the city hollowed out. I remember Top Gear buying a house for five hundred bucks. You let jobs go overseas and then call it prudent—it’s a slow-motion collapse.

There should’ve been a middle ground. Back in the day you were basically unfireable—great until the drunk guy’s putting doors on F-150s Friday afternoon. Now they rushed electric trucks and guys on the line tell me the batteries hate heat and cold. I still want an engine.

My Plaid is from the future—carbon brakes, crazy low center of gravity, and the self-driving will take you to the Mothership by itself. It’s not perfect—cameras can be tricked. Someone painted a fake highway mural and the car drove right into it. It’s funny now, but it will grow up and kill us if we’re cocky.

I watched a sex-bot movie and thought—this is the problem. We’re giving AIs personalities, kids bond with chatbots, and one even told a kid how to tie a noose. Then you add dysphoria, isolation, SSRIs—it’s dark fuel.

Most mass shooters were on psychiatric meds—RFK Jr. wants to dig into that link. Media won’t touch it because pharma money. I’m not saying meds turn everyone violent; I’m saying the pattern’s real.

I’ve been on SSRIs a decade and I’m weaning off. Cold turkey gave me brain zaps, nausea, stuttering, vision weirdness—classic withdrawal. I got on after my mom killed herself. She was bipolar but misdiagnosed. My dad—Vietnam—got a soft tissue sarcoma from Agent Orange. The VA denied everything. He lost millions paying out of pocket—and kept joking with a halo screwed to his skull. That’s why I’m not left or right; I’m ‘do something real.’

Vietnam wasn’t just helicopters—it was heroin. Same in Afghanistan: we guarded poppy fields that supplied most of the world’s heroin. Corrupt factions profiteer—like the CIA-Contra crack era. The Golden Triangle cranks out synthetics too.

I worked in a pharmacy in the 90s—bad place for a drug addict when pills were weighed not counted. Later the feds act shocked about street supply. Detroit’s White Boy Rick got used as a teen informant, then buried for decades while the FBI denied knowing him. He finally got out—and launched a weed line. That’s Detroit now—weed stores stacked door to door.

It’s still federally illegal, which is wild—schedule one, yet there’s a shop on every corner. Prohibition just hands power to gangs.

Detroit wrote that book. The Purple Gang ran liquor from Canada—ruthless guys, Capone steered clear. Prohibition birthed them. You still see the river tunnels. Anytime you outlaw demand, you grow organized crime.

Fentanyl is the sequel. Sacklers created pill demand; laws tightened; cartels filled the gap with weak heroin spiked with fentanyl, then fake pills—Xanax, Percocet—kids don’t know. Overdoses every few seconds.

I lost three friends in months when fentanyl started showing up. I’ve done heroin—snorted, smoked, shot it once. Shooting felt warm, euphoric—no problems exist. I tried crack once by accident in a joint—it’s electric and short; immediately wanted more. That’s why people vanish into it.

I knew a pro pool player—Water Dog—would shoot up, nod, then run two hundred balls like a machine. Zero nerves. I almost staked him in an L.A. tournament, but he needed a ride to score heroin. I’m not driving my Supra to South Central to buy dope. That’s how your car gets seized—or you get carjacked.

Robert Downey Jr. is the rare comeback—Iron Man after a racecar bed low. Just skip the vegan thing. I tried fake meat—Beyond tastes like processed sadness.

Those stocks were a mirage. Hyper-processed slop that even rats hate. If you want to be kind, eat real vegetables. Don’t LARP a trans burger. Meanwhile, we sprayed Red Forty on cereal but sell a dye-free version to Canada—insane. The old food pyramid was an inflammation pyramid. No wonder everyone’s fat and pre-diabetic.

We grew up on microwaves and TV dinners—sugar with toast. Now the poor are obese on scooters at Disneyland. Rides don’t fit; safety bars don’t lock. I blew my knee at a party—rods in it to this day. Took six months to walk right.

I concussed myself skiing and quit. Culture of lawsuits is gross—friend’s neighbor got sued fifty grand because a friendly dog scratched someone. People see opportunity, not community.

Dogs need respect. Kids grab faces, dogs think they’re litter-mates. I’ve had rotties and border collies—sweet with training. Pit bulls are dicey with dogs and kids if you don’t know what you’re doing. At dog parks, if a jaw locks, hoses work. In emergencies…yeah, a finger up the butt works too.

I watched a wolf-dog enter a park—every dog bailed. They knew it wasn’t a dog. Some dogs radiate boss energy—one walked into a brawl and the yard parted, instant alpha.

You can’t really train wolves—handlers come home and have to reassert dominance nightly. Wolf-dogs will kill sheep and owners pretend it wasn’t them. Coyotes? They’re everywhere now—jump fences and nab small dogs.

Wild hogs rip up lawns, attack pets, and taste amazing—darker pork, lots of acorn fat. If you bowhunt big animals like moose or elk, a frontal shot is lethal if you hit a softball-sized window under the beard—otherwise get behind a tree and don’t miss. Moose will stomp you. Elk want love or a fight; moose want you gone.

Grizzly Man plays like a dark comedy. He named bears like pets and ended up as lunch—bears don’t kill you then eat; they eat while you’re alive. He did get beautiful footage—and befriended foxes. Foxes act like dogs if you raise them young.

We turned wolves into lap buddies. My golden is the homie—greets me with a toy, watches TV on my chest. The Cavalier King Charles Spaniel is the furthest from a wolf physically; your Cavapoo takes it even softer.

My Cavapoo, Higgins—bow tie and all—will flex his toy at huge dogs like he’s a bouncer. He’s the best. I’ve had big dogs forever, but not carrying a hundred-pounder up stairs is underrated.

Why are we cutting dogs’ balls off? I do not fix my dogs. Be responsible so they do not breed, and let them keep their natural hormones. When testosterone is gone, dogs get depressed and tired—same as people.

I used to fix them—Bob Barker drilled that into me. Next dogs, probably not. In Detroit I saw roving packs when the city emptied out. If you meet a strange dog, do not run or do the hand-out thing—stand still, let it smell you, keep eyes on it, and yeah, hopefully you are armed if it goes bad.

Wild dogs will kill you; so will bears and wolves. Reintroducing predators sounds sweet until wolves wipe out calves. Colorado moved problem wolves from Oregon into ranch country; now ranchers lose cattle, the state pays depredations, and then tries to kill the same wolves. That is ballot-box biology by well-meaning but uninformed folks. Bears are not cuddly—they will eat you.

They brought red wolves to the Smokies—they are small, more like big coyotes—but these fixes backfire. Michigan dumped ladybugs for mayflies and got biting beetles. Zebra mussels shredded feet and boats. So-called sterile carp ate all the weeds; lakes turned into bare bowls and bass lost habitat.

Australia shows how bad invasive solutions get. Feral cats annihilate birds, and toxoplasmosis from cats makes people impulsive and weird. I raised a feral cat—sweet with me, hissed at everyone else; wild as hell but he purred like a motor when he felt safe.

My grandma was a cat lady with a basement casino and pet spiders. My brother took a brown recluse bite—necrotic nightmare. I quit booze but still keep a bar for guests. My last DUI came with an ankle alcohol monitor and an in-car breathalyzer pinging me while driving—I was dodging a jackknifed truck while blowing so the car would not shut off. I even had to plug my tether into a bar’s phone jack to upload data.

Drug tests are crazy—poppy seed bagels can flag heroin. I knew a fighter who had a guy inject clean urine into his bladder to pass a test. On performance drugs, I want athletes healthy and recovered; we demonized creatine in the nineties while Mark McGwire was clearly on the real stuff—bending bats mid-swing. Pete Rose should be in the Hall. Jordan was a degenerate gambler; that same risk drive fuels greatness and trouble.

Cosby was the darkest reveal—Spanish fly bits, a Cosby Mysteries opener with a pill dropping into a drink. I think he kept doing that old quaalude move long after everyone knew how horrific it is. There is no universal aphrodisiac. Bath salts had people chewing faces in Florida. Pill mills in Florida pumped Oxy; no database, doctors and pharmacies side by side, then the pills rode north and wrecked people.

I got hooked on Vicodin after a knee injury; detox wrecked me for almost a week. Addiction runs in my family—Irish side, abandonment, a lot of alcoholism. I was blacking out young, waking up with charcoal in hospitals.

Addiction and mental illness are brutally hereditary. I have watched friends vanish into blackouts. Do you put all this on stage?

Yeah. I wrote Party of One and mine it on stage. I had arrests stacked—first day with a license I wrecked my dad’s Buick doing lawn jobs; later DUIs, breathalyzers, all of it. I got institutionalized; my roommate thought he was a werewolf and attacked me—staff hit him with booty juice and peeled him off. I did rehab and lit a joint the moment I got out. I was a depressed kid self-medicating with acid, mushrooms, and ketamine—funny how those are now legit depression treatments.

Comedy was always the plan. My dad woke me up for SNL and gave me Carlin and Kinnison. A teacher shoved me toward Second City; I worked Detroit improv and Ridley’s, learned every kind of room. People from that scene—Sam Richardson, Tim Robinson, Keegan-Michael Key—blew up. It was a great proving ground.

This was a blast. I am glad you are alive, man. You are always great at the club. Tell people where to find you, and I will see you this weekend. Thanks, everybody.