#2555 - Ron White

Matt Rife had a solid set, man; he’s funny. Crowd work just ain’t my thing. When I was short on time, I’d talk to the crowd to fill it, but once I had enough material, hell, I wanted to do jokes.

I get why it works. You have to make something funny happen immediately, and that improvising muscle is real. Big Jay Oakerson can take a ridiculous answer and fold it into a story or bit without showing the seam.

Young comics say they need crowd work. You don’t necessarily. Write some damn jokes. Pat O’Neill is a machine, though, and Brant Reid cracked me up. He froze and bombed on Kill Tony, then came back after working at the club ready.

That return had pressure: Tedrick Flynn had just annihilated. But Brant found his feet opening for you, even with a couple that missed. Kill Tony’s room and a regular stand-up crowd are different animals.

Kill Tony may be the greatest platform comics have had. You can grind for years, get a half hour together, hit one monster minute there, and suddenly people know your name. I liked it in L.A., but I didn’t foresee Tony turning it into this.

You called it early. The format was singular, and Tony’s hosting makes it work. Seeing somebody break through makes stand-up feel possible, not like a Hollywood pipe dream.

Foxworthy sharing that Blue Collar stage changed my life, but I’d been at it fourteen years and headlining eleven. There’s no replacement for road time. Opportunity before you’ve built the act can turn winning a contest into a damn death spiral.

Comedy’s fragile: writing, finding your voice, selling tickets, maybe booze, drugs, debt. When somebody who struggled gets comfortable onstage and earns a living, that’s a beautiful fucking thing.

I spent every penny, even television money. I’d been broke and could be broke again, but I wasn’t living small on TV. You work your ass off first; then twenty days in Switzerland with people bringing food feels earned.

Switzerland sounds unreal: trains, tunnels, gondolas, mountains, dinner in Italy and back. But that pay toilet got you—you thought you needed Swiss cash to take a shit until somebody showed you the card reader.

It was gorgeous, and they spend money on infrastructure instead of war. Still, I’m thinking, now I’ve got to borrow money to shit? At least let a man use Apple Pay and proceed directly to the shitter.

Cuban cigars carry that embargo mystique: counterfeits, pre-embargo collectors’ humidors, generations of rollers, beautiful tobacco. People pay wild money partly because it’s hard to have.

Yeah, cigar porn. Once you buy every regular thing, maybe you chase forbidden stuff. Those cheap listings looked suspicious, but I was ready to order a box and let Ron White investigate.

On golf, huge distance isn’t the whole game. A long-drive specialist can hit four or five hundred yards and still not compete with elite golfers. Rory averages around three twenty-five; placement matters.

I’ll hit two thirty-five or two forty, maybe two fifty-five if I catch it right, and I’m damn near seventy. But these athletes getting into golf are something else. A five seventy-nine-yard drive is bonkers, even with elevation help.

South Park kills me because those guys are fearless and rich enough that Comedy Central can’t push them around. The rename to South America made me laugh alone. We remembered VHS tapes circulating before home internet.

I saw that little Christmas tape around ’95 through a woman at an agency. Before the show was everywhere, it already had that wild thing. I stay off the internet now; reading people gets in your head fast.

The rescue vehicle we helped buy after those Texas floods saved people when nearly the same storm returned a year later. That made me proud. It climbs rocks and riverbanks, runs on torque, and stores fuel in those massive tires.

Those floods are terrifying because granite sends rain straight into the Guadalupe and water rises unbelievably fast. Nepal footage was worse than ordinary flooding: ice, boulders, logs, cars—everything moving. You’re not outrunning that wall.

We act like civilization-ending disasters are too unlikely to worry about, but Earth’s clock is huge compared with ours. An asteroid could arrive, and I don’t think we’re prepared to redirect a big one. We’ve got ideas, not a proven answer.

Political donations need a hard cap. One penny past it should bring serious consequences. Same for corporations and lobbyists buying influence. We get grifted when people write laws for donors, then leave office for ridiculous speaking money.

China is the warning label on the strong-leader argument. They may build efficiently, but freedom gets crushed when government and business lock together and people can disappear. A benevolent dictator is a nice fantasy; power attracts the wrong people.

Texas ought to mean freedom, and the marijuana fight is stupid. Alcohol sales are falling, young people don’t have money for getting hammered, and plenty would rather smoke weed. Liquor was wrong for me, but I still need a little buzz.

Jelly Roll caught hell for a Kimmel monologue, but that Trump line sounded like a mild joke, not an unforgivable offense. He’s new to stand-up, it looked teleprompter-written, and he’s talented, kind, healthier, and will get past it.

Everybody does something they regret, and people love piling on when somebody’s on top. Jelly Roll used to weigh five hundred pounds; now he hops a backstage rail like a cat. That’s a different human being, and inspiring.

End-times talk from politicians bothers me. If somebody says they know exactly what God intends, I’m done listening. I grew up deep in church, and my preacher uncle was my hero until he hit on my girlfriend. How the fuck do I know?

Church taught me good things—be honest, live right—and how to work a room. My uncle made people laugh and saved souls; that’s where I learned I wanted onstage, just with dick jokes. Believe what you want, but don’t force it on everybody else.

All right, let’s get the fuck out of here and do a show. Florida dates coming, then the forty-year anniversary at Grand Prairie. Tatersalad dot com, baby. We’ll play some golf, and that’ll do it.