Craig Shoemaker | Stories from Netflix & Showtime’s “Daditude” | A Prescription for Laughter

00:00 Part 1

Craig Shoemaker:00:00:04

This is what I try to get people to look inside.

Craig Shoemaker:00:00:08

There's where your answers are and you are funny.

Craig Shoemaker:00:00:10

You know, everybody thinks, oh, you're a stand up.

Craig Shoemaker:00:00:12

I don't have any training.

Craig Shoemaker:00:00:14

My training was my mom belly dancing my high school graduation party.

Craig Shoemaker:00:00:17

There's my training.

Announcer:00:00:19

Welcome to Story Craft.

Announcer:00:00:21

Now, here's your host, Mark Preston.

Marc Preston:00:00:24

Well, here we are.

Marc Preston:00:00:26

Debut episode.

Marc Preston:00:00:27

Thank you for checking it out.

Marc Preston:00:00:29

Story and craft has arrived and uh, my name is Mark Preston.

Marc Preston:00:00:33

Maybe you know me, maybe you don't.

Marc Preston:00:00:35

Uh, but a little handshake to get to know you here and uh, thank

Marc Preston:00:00:38

you for, for joining the program.

Marc Preston:00:00:41

Been, been working on this for some time now and finally, we get it off the ground,

Marc Preston:00:00:46

taking off with our very first episode.

Marc Preston:00:00:49

Um, now, right about here at this part of the show, usually, uh, I'm

Marc Preston:00:00:55

going to just kind of check in with you and uh, see how you're doing.

Marc Preston:00:00:58

Let you know what's going on with me and just kind of chat for a moment

Marc Preston:00:01:02

But today I just kind of want to get after it I want to jump into our very

Marc Preston:00:01:05

first episode because I had a lot of fun Craig Shoemaker first guest and

Marc Preston:00:01:11

there's a reason why I wanted him to be the first guest known Craig for Gosh,

Marc Preston:00:01:16

like 25 years or something like that.

Marc Preston:00:01:19

He is a really really funny guy Uh, comedian, uh, of course,

Marc Preston:00:01:23

actor, writer, uh, producer.

Marc Preston:00:01:26

He's an author and even an entrepreneur.

Marc Preston:00:01:28

Uh, he's known by many as the love master.

Marc Preston:00:01:32

And if you are not familiar YouTube type in the love master.

Marc Preston:00:01:38

Well, I don't know what's going to pull up.

Marc Preston:00:01:40

Hopefully you're pulling up something from Craig Shoemaker, but I don't

Marc Preston:00:01:43

know what happens on YouTube.

Marc Preston:00:01:45

Maybe other things show up.

Marc Preston:00:01:47

Not quite sure.

Marc Preston:00:01:48

Here's the thing.

Marc Preston:00:01:49

Craig has been on the scene for decades.

Marc Preston:00:01:52

Uh, just making people laugh.

Marc Preston:00:01:53

Uh, he has won Emmys.

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He's won an American comedy award.

Marc Preston:00:01:57

Uh, he's, he's still touring now.

Marc Preston:00:01:59

He's also had a lot of, uh, specials like Comedy Central,

Marc Preston:00:02:03

Showtime, Netflix, uh, Amazon prime.

Marc Preston:00:02:07

And, uh, right now Craig is working on something pretty cool.

Marc Preston:00:02:10

Uh, he's working on laughter as medicine.

Marc Preston:00:02:13

Laughter is healing.

Marc Preston:00:02:14

And I think that's such a, especially in the times we're

Marc Preston:00:02:16

living in now, such a cool idea.

Marc Preston:00:02:19

Uh, we'll discuss that.

Marc Preston:00:02:20

Also going to talk about Bob Saget and Louis Anderson.

Marc Preston:00:02:23

And I think you'll enjoy this episode.

Marc Preston:00:02:25

Hey, don't forget, since we are just getting rolling, go to Story Craft.

Marc Preston:00:02:30

pod.

Marc Preston:00:02:31

com.

Marc Preston:00:02:32

That's the website.

Marc Preston:00:02:33

All of the social media links are there and just make sure to, of course, as we

Marc Preston:00:02:38

get going here, uh, go to Apple podcasts, if you would please, uh, subscribe,

Marc Preston:00:02:43

uh, download every episode, enjoy it.

Marc Preston:00:02:45

Uh, but of course, uh, give us a little review, you know, uh,

Marc Preston:00:02:48

great guests again, coming up.

Marc Preston:00:02:50

But today It's Craig Shoemaker day.

Marc Preston:00:02:53

So let's get after it right here on story and craft.

Craig Shoemaker:00:02:58

Doing much better.

Craig Shoemaker:00:02:59

I got a cough drop in cause I got a little bit of a cough still.

Marc Preston:00:03:03

Hopefully it wasn't the COVID, was it?

Craig Shoemaker:00:03:05

Yeah.

Marc Preston:00:03:05

Oh no.

Marc Preston:00:03:06

I'm so sorry to hear that, man.

Marc Preston:00:03:07

But, uh, yeah, you got the, uh.

Marc Preston:00:03:08

It wasn't

Craig Shoemaker:00:03:09

bad.

Craig Shoemaker:00:03:09

It wasn't that bad.

Marc Preston:00:03:10

But you got the vaccine and all that.

Marc Preston:00:03:11

So it was, it kind of kind of took the edge off a little bit, I guess.

Craig Shoemaker:00:03:14

Yeah, I'm just, I'm fine.

Craig Shoemaker:00:03:16

You know, it just, it hit me like a common cold, I guess.

Marc Preston:00:03:20

I think more people have had it.

Marc Preston:00:03:21

And don't know they've had it.

Marc Preston:00:03:23

Uh, like my son had it barely bothered him, but he's still, I mean,

Marc Preston:00:03:26

we're over about almost exactly a year later and he doesn't, he still

Marc Preston:00:03:30

can't taste, uh, a hundred percent.

Marc Preston:00:03:32

Yeah.

Craig Shoemaker:00:03:33

That did not happen.

Craig Shoemaker:00:03:34

I I'm fully, uh, fully full taste buds and a full smell.

Craig Shoemaker:00:03:41

And, uh, yeah, so didn't get me bad.

Craig Shoemaker:00:03:43

I'm not a guy that gets sick very, I haven't missed a day of

Craig Shoemaker:00:03:46

work in 20 years until last week.

Marc Preston:00:03:48

So how things been going over the last, uh, my God,

Marc Preston:00:03:52

since the pandemic, I mean, here you are knowing your vocation,

Marc Preston:00:03:56

how have you been navigating going into clubs and stuff like that?

Marc Preston:00:03:59

Has it been a kind of a challenge at all?

Craig Shoemaker:00:04:01

Challenge to say the least.

Craig Shoemaker:00:04:03

I mean, You know, I'm in a business where people are not socially distanced.

Craig Shoemaker:00:04:08

They're, they're, they're laughing, you know, spreading out those germs.

Craig Shoemaker:00:04:13

Spewing good stuff right at the stage.

Craig Shoemaker:00:04:15

Spewing, yeah, spewing on each other.

Craig Shoemaker:00:04:17

And, uh, people are afraid to go out and unfortunately my

Craig Shoemaker:00:04:22

audience in particular, which is.

Craig Shoemaker:00:04:25

No, over 40.

Craig Shoemaker:00:04:27

Are we really that age now?

Craig Shoemaker:00:04:28

It's like, yeah, we're at that age, we're at that age where the, when they're giving

Craig Shoemaker:00:04:32

you those statistics on people that end up in hospitals and, you know, it's,

Craig Shoemaker:00:04:37

it's us, you know, so I'm personally not dialed into that energy, that fear energy

Craig Shoemaker:00:04:43

at all, like that's not my jam, but I can't convince other people that that's,

Craig Shoemaker:00:04:48

you know, the way to live is to live the way to live is to laugh, you know,

Craig Shoemaker:00:04:52

live to laugh and what it does for your.

Craig Shoemaker:00:04:55

You know, we're healing.

Craig Shoemaker:00:04:57

Yeah, you literally, I have an organization called Laughter Heals.

Marc Preston:00:05:00

Yeah, I meant to ask you about that.

Marc Preston:00:05:02

How long has that been kind of an endeavor of yours?

Craig Shoemaker:00:05:04

About 20 years.

Craig Shoemaker:00:05:05

My friend got brain cancer, gave him three months to live, formed it.

Craig Shoemaker:00:05:09

And it's a, it's a, what's happened lately though, is if you've noticed,

Craig Shoemaker:00:05:16

The world is doing the opposite.

Craig Shoemaker:00:05:19

They're cutting out the laughter.

Craig Shoemaker:00:05:21

They're censoring the laughter.

Craig Shoemaker:00:05:23

They're canceling the laughter.

Craig Shoemaker:00:05:24

They're so on top of that, where that's like the mandate now is like, let's

Craig Shoemaker:00:05:29

find evidence to cancel another comedian for words that he said in the past

Craig Shoemaker:00:05:35

words that he or she says now, whatever it is, it's like, so we're letting.

Craig Shoemaker:00:05:42

You know, uh, corporations, you know, poison our water,

Craig Shoemaker:00:05:46

our drugs, opioid addiction.

Craig Shoemaker:00:05:48

That's okay.

Craig Shoemaker:00:05:50

They don't get canceled, but tell a bad joke.

Craig Shoemaker:00:05:53

Tell a joke that someone's offended by.

Craig Shoemaker:00:05:56

No one's offended by poisoning, toxicity, all this negative stuff, killing,

Craig Shoemaker:00:06:02

all of that we mindlessly accept.

Craig Shoemaker:00:06:06

And yet we're after the comedians, censorship.

Craig Shoemaker:00:06:09

You know, we're on a podcast.

Craig Shoemaker:00:06:11

I guess I can curse.

Marc Preston:00:06:12

Indeed.

Marc Preston:00:06:13

Yes.

Craig Shoemaker:00:06:13

You, you, you can't curse because some illusion is that

Craig Shoemaker:00:06:17

it's going to destroy lives because you said a word that's offensive

Craig Shoemaker:00:06:21

to someone because they've been programmed, but it's offensive.

Craig Shoemaker:00:06:24

So,

Marc Preston:00:06:25

you know, it's ironic.

Marc Preston:00:06:25

They'll pay for a ticket to a movie.

Craig Shoemaker:00:06:27

I want to shift the paradigm.

Craig Shoemaker:00:06:29

I mean, I really do.

Craig Shoemaker:00:06:30

I want to shift this paradigm into we.

Craig Shoemaker:00:06:32

Need to focus on the positive, on the laughter, on the joy, on the

Craig Shoemaker:00:06:36

happiness, pursue Happiness as they say you're supposed to but they're

Craig Shoemaker:00:06:41

really not about that at all.

Marc Preston:00:06:43

That's actually a note I made to myself I want to ask you about

Marc Preston:00:06:45

today the whole cancel thing But Bill Maher, I think has been kind of on

Marc Preston:00:06:49

point talking about this talking about how you know Uh, I, I, along with my

Marc Preston:00:06:55

kids, I, you know, trying to be as safe as possible during the COVID times.

Marc Preston:00:06:58

Uh, but we've been vaccinated.

Marc Preston:00:07:00

Now we're kind of at a point we got to get back to it.

Marc Preston:00:07:02

But as far as what you're talking about, the whole cancel thing, what do you think

Marc Preston:00:07:07

as far as let's go back in time, let's say a Sam Kenison, you know, the guys

Marc Preston:00:07:10

that we were paying attention to in the eighties, they couldn't exist today.

Marc Preston:00:07:14

You know, is it, is it the internet?

Marc Preston:00:07:16

Is it just change?

Marc Preston:00:07:17

I can't quite figure out what that is.

Marc Preston:00:07:19

What is your take on that?

Craig Shoemaker:00:07:20

The internet definitely is a big impact

Craig Shoemaker:00:07:23

because now everyone has a voice.

Craig Shoemaker:00:07:26

You know, I used to spread the word about my shows through word of mouth,

Craig Shoemaker:00:07:31

through postcards, through, you know, I mean, this is how I built a career

Craig Shoemaker:00:07:36

and it was just based on talent.

Craig Shoemaker:00:07:38

Now it's based on trends.

Craig Shoemaker:00:07:40

It's, it's, it's not scalable, sustainable.

Craig Shoemaker:00:07:43

It's just, everything's temporary trends and fixes and temp fixes.

Craig Shoemaker:00:07:49

This is how we're operating right now, where we don't have a strong

Craig Shoemaker:00:07:53

base, a foundation of who we are.

Craig Shoemaker:00:07:56

So who we are is predicated upon a trend, or so what someone else feeds

Craig Shoemaker:00:08:00

back to you, the amount of likes you get.

Craig Shoemaker:00:08:02

So we've, we've taken our own sense of self.

Craig Shoemaker:00:08:05

I'm actually coaching this now.

Craig Shoemaker:00:08:07

I am so dedicated to this shift, this paradigm shift that

Craig Shoemaker:00:08:11

needs to take place right now.

Craig Shoemaker:00:08:13

To me, It's a spiritual rebooting call that we're going through right now.

Craig Shoemaker:00:08:17

That's what this pandemic has done.

Craig Shoemaker:00:08:19

This has taken all the politics and everything else and just, just

Craig Shoemaker:00:08:23

put it on steroids, and now you're either going to retreat, which

Craig Shoemaker:00:08:28

people are doing with distancing and masking and rules and mandates.

Craig Shoemaker:00:08:33

That's the retreat.

Craig Shoemaker:00:08:34

That's the response.

Craig Shoemaker:00:08:35

That's the fear response.

Craig Shoemaker:00:08:37

Or you can immerse yourself in truly becoming a better person,

Craig Shoemaker:00:08:43

a more healthy person, mentally, spiritually, emotionally, physically.

Craig Shoemaker:00:08:48

That's the direction that I choose.

Craig Shoemaker:00:08:50

And that's the direction I'm choosing to coach.

Craig Shoemaker:00:08:51

Now I'm working with clients, personal clients in classes, because Look, it's

Craig Shoemaker:00:08:57

great that I've done all this laughter.

Craig Shoemaker:00:08:58

I probably brought a billion laughs to people.

Craig Shoemaker:00:09:00

That's a really cool thing Absolutely.

Craig Shoemaker:00:09:02

It is but I can't rest on those morals.

Craig Shoemaker:00:09:05

I gotta go Okay, what was that all about that led to this that these experiences?

Craig Shoemaker:00:09:12

led to I get to share this gift now back.

Craig Shoemaker:00:09:16

I get to give it back.

Marc Preston:00:09:17

Yeah.

Marc Preston:00:09:17

But you're at that age now where you can kind of look back on the, in the

Marc Preston:00:09:19

rear view and go, okay, now I've done this, this, this, and this, what's

Marc Preston:00:09:22

that culminated into, you know, it's an opportunity now to kind of perspective.

Marc Preston:00:09:26

Isn't that what age gives you a little bit more perspective.

Marc Preston:00:09:29

And I was thinking about the comedians that I was, especially, um, gosh,

Marc Preston:00:09:34

just in the last, A couple of months you have Norm Macdonald, Bob Saget,

Marc Preston:00:09:38

Louis Anderson, you know, you know,

Craig Shoemaker:00:09:41

yeah,

Marc Preston:00:09:41

you know, these are guys who, who, who in the, I'm not saying

Marc Preston:00:09:45

they're necessarily on the Mount Rushmore of the eighties comedians, but these

Marc Preston:00:09:49

are guys that had a tone and had a vibe.

Marc Preston:00:09:51

And it seems like now comedians, I mean, there's a lot of great guys out there.

Marc Preston:00:09:55

Don't get me wrong, but it seems, everything seems more homogenized.

Marc Preston:00:09:58

Does that make, does that, does that, you know, it makes

Craig Shoemaker:00:10:01

sense.

Craig Shoemaker:00:10:01

It makes sense in a way.

Craig Shoemaker:00:10:03

And I.

Craig Shoemaker:00:10:04

I tend to sort of go that way sometimes, but then I step back and

Craig Shoemaker:00:10:10

I, I look at, it could be one of those cases where we're going the good

Craig Shoemaker:00:10:17

old days and all this kind of stuff.

Craig Shoemaker:00:10:19

Like you asked me a question a lot of people ask me, like, could

Craig Shoemaker:00:10:22

kinesin or rickles even exist today?

Craig Shoemaker:00:10:25

The answer is absolutely yes.

Craig Shoemaker:00:10:28

And they do exist today.

Craig Shoemaker:00:10:30

They are constantly, there are comedians pushing the envelope constantly.

Craig Shoemaker:00:10:35

They're just, they are the Kennisons of today.

Craig Shoemaker:00:10:37

The Richard Pryors of today.

Craig Shoemaker:00:10:39

They still do exist.

Craig Shoemaker:00:10:41

There's a pushback though, from society.

Craig Shoemaker:00:10:46

And like I said, it's a cancel of actual laughter and comedy,

Craig Shoemaker:00:10:49

because what that is, is you're really tapping into your true self.

Craig Shoemaker:00:10:53

And the corporations, the people in charge, the system, the paradigm

Craig Shoemaker:00:10:57

that's in charge right now, they don't want you to be yourself.

Craig Shoemaker:00:11:02

They don't want you to have this power within that we all have.

Craig Shoemaker:00:11:06

They don't want this light and levity.

Craig Shoemaker:00:11:08

They want to control that so that you get in their line.

Craig Shoemaker:00:11:12

I'm writing a new book called to get out of line and get out

Craig Shoemaker:00:11:15

of line and into alignment.

Craig Shoemaker:00:11:17

And if we're in our own alignment, that's going to inform what we laugh at.

Craig Shoemaker:00:11:21

That's going to inform where we gravitate towards, where we, where our energy goes.

Craig Shoemaker:00:11:26

That's what will dictate it when we're in the line.

Craig Shoemaker:00:11:28

But we're out of these lines because we're in their line.

Craig Shoemaker:00:11:32

They tell us where, how to get in line.

Craig Shoemaker:00:11:34

Now.

Craig Shoemaker:00:11:34

Now the, the mandates and the rules lately, really, you know, it started with

Craig Shoemaker:00:11:39

TSA by the way, which is a bunch of crap.

Craig Shoemaker:00:11:41

You know what I mean?

Craig Shoemaker:00:11:42

Like, uh, oh, you can have four ounce, three ounces.

Craig Shoemaker:00:11:45

You can't have four ounces of, of a, of a liquid.

Craig Shoemaker:00:11:48

I mean, all of this, you know, 'cause one guy with shoes that were

Craig Shoemaker:00:11:51

gonna explode, but it really didn't.

Craig Shoemaker:00:11:53

So everything is in chaos and disarray.

Craig Shoemaker:00:11:57

And then I, you know, I talk about like, when I'm on the

Craig Shoemaker:00:12:00

tarmac, get off your cell phone.

Craig Shoemaker:00:12:01

I said, why?

Craig Shoemaker:00:12:02

You know, well, you're going to interfere with the radio waves from the tower.

Craig Shoemaker:00:12:05

I said, meanwhile, there's 900 people, you know, 50 feet away in

Craig Shoemaker:00:12:09

the airport on their cell phone.

Craig Shoemaker:00:12:11

But 8B took the plane down, you know, like he's trying to back up, going, I'm

Craig Shoemaker:00:12:15

trying to back up 8B, you know, you're interfering with, it's so ridiculous

Craig Shoemaker:00:12:20

when you break these things down.

Craig Shoemaker:00:12:24

It doesn't make any sense, but we don't have the wherewithal anymore, the common

Craig Shoemaker:00:12:30

sense, the new thought to actually break something down to what it really is.

Craig Shoemaker:00:12:37

This whole pandemic has been There's a lot of corruption going on here, and we

Craig Shoemaker:00:12:43

don't even want to research it because now they have a new word called Misinformation

Craig Shoemaker:00:12:48

or they have a new word the old word that the CIA came up with is Conspiracy

Craig Shoemaker:00:12:53

theory you get that label affixed to you.

Craig Shoemaker:00:12:57

It goes in the Internet And bye bye conversation.

Marc Preston:00:13:00

Yeah.

Marc Preston:00:13:01

There's that whole cancel a thing that's going on.

Marc Preston:00:13:03

That didn't, I don't remember that ever being a thing.

Marc Preston:00:13:05

I think most people like, Oh, that was kind of ridiculous.

Marc Preston:00:13:07

Whatever onto the next thing.

Marc Preston:00:13:09

Now it's now don't get me wrong.

Marc Preston:00:13:10

There's some people doing some knucklehead stuff that probably do

Marc Preston:00:13:12

need to be called out occasionally.

Marc Preston:00:13:14

But I mean, I, when it comes to comedians, I look back to, um.

Marc Preston:00:13:19

George Carlin.

Marc Preston:00:13:20

Uh, I remember when people said, well, he's just really snarky and,

Marc Preston:00:13:23

uh, he's just, you know, he's old boy.

Marc Preston:00:13:24

Was he right?

Marc Preston:00:13:25

Huh?

Marc Preston:00:13:25

You know, when he, it's almost like he had this predictive sense of

Marc Preston:00:13:28

what was, what we were heading into.

Marc Preston:00:13:30

I think, because I think comedians almost have in a, in a way, a social commentary.

Marc Preston:00:13:36

It's not a responsibility, but, uh, you know, if you're a comedian, You're

Marc Preston:00:13:41

not beholden to, you know, I, after I worked in media for years, I don't think

Marc Preston:00:13:45

anybody ever told me to say something or not say something, but most certainly

Marc Preston:00:13:48

if you keep going one direction too far, they're going to try to reel you back in.

Craig Shoemaker:00:13:53

Sure they did.

Craig Shoemaker:00:13:53

They have an FCC.

Craig Shoemaker:00:13:54

They control you.

Craig Shoemaker:00:13:55

That's true.

Marc Preston:00:13:55

Yeah.

Marc Preston:00:13:56

There's seven words you can't say.

Marc Preston:00:13:57

Absolutely they did.

Craig Shoemaker:00:13:58

There's way more than seven words.

Craig Shoemaker:00:14:00

It's, it's amazing to me, but if there's money behind it, Like, if

Craig Shoemaker:00:14:03

I talked about, on your radio show, one of your old radio shows, right?

Craig Shoemaker:00:14:08

If I talked about boners, erections, you would, you would go, Okay, it's a

Craig Shoemaker:00:14:13

family show, that would be your response, that's your conditioned response.

Craig Shoemaker:00:14:18

If you cut to a commercial with a, with erectile dysfunction,

Craig Shoemaker:00:14:23

Because there's money behind it.

Craig Shoemaker:00:14:25

People are so mindlessly accepting of this with people in separate tubs.

Craig Shoemaker:00:14:30

I got to explain to my kids or what an erection is.

Craig Shoemaker:00:14:32

I have to explain to my kids now, but if I joke about it, they'll

Craig Shoemaker:00:14:36

throw me off the air or I do the love master with innuendos, you know,

Craig Shoemaker:00:14:40

the year baby, you know, it's all the, yeah, I'm doing a love master.

Craig Shoemaker:00:14:44

People go, Hey, it's a family show.

Craig Shoemaker:00:14:45

I said.

Craig Shoemaker:00:14:46

Family show.

Craig Shoemaker:00:14:46

How do you think you have a family?

Craig Shoemaker:00:14:48

If I have a family from sex, you had sex.

Craig Shoemaker:00:14:50

Did you, you know, here's a guy that's joking about it.

Craig Shoemaker:00:14:53

They'd say in the

Marc Preston:00:14:54

morning shows, you couldn't do that.

Marc Preston:00:14:55

But the irony is that's when the parents have the most control over the

Marc Preston:00:14:58

radio, if they're in the car, they can manage, you know, what the kids here.

Marc Preston:00:15:01

They said, well, it's safe Harbor after 7.

Marc Preston:00:15:03

PM, you can do pretty much whatever you want.

Marc Preston:00:15:06

And that's the time the parents have no control over the radio.

Marc Preston:00:15:08

The kids are in the room listening to whatever.

Marc Preston:00:15:10

So, you know, the rules weren't really balancing out to the, the intended.

Marc Preston:00:15:13

Intent, you know, but who's coming up with the rules?

Marc Preston:00:15:17

A bunch of white guys in Washington.

Marc Preston:00:15:19

Yeah

Craig Shoemaker:00:15:20

Yeah, what's who comes up with the rules and the rules

Craig Shoemaker:00:15:22

are all about control That's what the rules are about if you dissect the

Craig Shoemaker:00:15:28

rules if you jump back on the rules you go Okay, what's this really about?

Craig Shoemaker:00:15:31

This is about they're trying to control me this whole thing with the pandemic

Craig Shoemaker:00:15:35

I couldn't go into an open park You know, and they, that was the rule,

Craig Shoemaker:00:15:39

like, like they were throwing me out of parks and golf courses, you know,

Craig Shoemaker:00:15:43

with all this open space and vitamin D and sunshine, none of it made sense.

Craig Shoemaker:00:15:49

But if you say something about it, you're a conspiracy theorist, you're a rebel,

Craig Shoemaker:00:15:53

you're, you're not doing your duty, you know, because they decided that this

Craig Shoemaker:00:15:57

would be your duty is to stay indoors.

Craig Shoemaker:00:15:59

And that's what, it doesn't make it right because they're, because it's a mess.

Craig Shoemaker:00:16:05

You know, mandate.

Craig Shoemaker:00:16:07

It doesn't make it right.

Marc Preston:00:16:08

Well, you're living in Los Angeles.

Marc Preston:00:16:09

You've had kind of a front row seat to a probably more regulations in this.

Marc Preston:00:16:14

So, I mean, we all kind of were at the beginning.

Marc Preston:00:16:16

We're like, okay, what do I need to do to make sure I'm safe?

Marc Preston:00:16:18

Family safe.

Marc Preston:00:16:19

The people around me are safe.

Marc Preston:00:16:21

Then the data started rolling in.

Marc Preston:00:16:22

And then you, okay, the vaccine came out.

Marc Preston:00:16:24

We did what we should do.

Marc Preston:00:16:25

Um, you know, it made the most sense.

Marc Preston:00:16:27

By the way,

Craig Shoemaker:00:16:28

the vaccine came out.

Craig Shoemaker:00:16:30

And people acted like it was a panacea and everybody still gets sick.

Craig Shoemaker:00:16:34

And then, and then they go, and then they, then they hear from the, you know,

Craig Shoemaker:00:16:37

the powers that be, well, it's sick, but you won't end up in a hospital and die.

Craig Shoemaker:00:16:42

You know, so everything completely keeps flipping and flipping and changing.

Craig Shoemaker:00:16:47

But what doesn't change is we're empowering these people to dictate

Craig Shoemaker:00:16:52

how we live a healthy life.

Craig Shoemaker:00:16:54

And there's nothing about, this is why you were talking about Bill Maher earlier.

Craig Shoemaker:00:16:59

I'm not a fan of him personally.

Craig Shoemaker:00:17:01

I, I, he's, he's really not a nice guy.

Craig Shoemaker:00:17:05

I like nice people.

Craig Shoemaker:00:17:07

He's not a nice guy.

Craig Shoemaker:00:17:08

I've known him for 40 years.

Craig Shoemaker:00:17:10

Not a nice guy.

Craig Shoemaker:00:17:11

Not my jam.

Craig Shoemaker:00:17:13

You know, we don't hang, but I watch his show and I cannot believe some of the

Craig Shoemaker:00:17:18

things that he's saying that I'm feeling.

Craig Shoemaker:00:17:20

And that's what comedians do is we are curtain pullers like

Craig Shoemaker:00:17:24

Toto and the wizard of Oz.

Craig Shoemaker:00:17:26

And we're going to show you the charlatans.

Craig Shoemaker:00:17:28

You're not going to like it.

Craig Shoemaker:00:17:28

That's the best

Marc Preston:00:17:29

way to put it.

Marc Preston:00:17:29

Why did you wait?

Marc Preston:00:17:30

Oh, I just saying that you're social commentary, but no, I think pulling the

Marc Preston:00:17:33

curtain back and actually kind of, okay.

Marc Preston:00:17:35

It's a really raw look at what's going on in the world.

Marc Preston:00:17:37

I met George Carlin.

Marc Preston:00:17:38

That's what he did.

Craig Shoemaker:00:17:39

We examine in a way that has freedom to it.

Craig Shoemaker:00:17:43

You know, we have the freedom.

Craig Shoemaker:00:17:45

We are artists and we answer to something within.

Craig Shoemaker:00:17:49

We don't answer to the out, outside.

Craig Shoemaker:00:17:51

Most people listen to the outside, outside forces that dictate

Craig Shoemaker:00:17:55

how you feel, how you think.

Craig Shoemaker:00:17:58

I mean, even the cursing is all dictated by them.

Craig Shoemaker:00:18:01

It's ridiculous.

Craig Shoemaker:00:18:02

If I called you a sniff now.

Craig Shoemaker:00:18:04

In my language, that could be the worst F word ever.

Craig Shoemaker:00:18:06

It means nothing to you.

Craig Shoemaker:00:18:07

You're laughing.

Craig Shoemaker:00:18:08

I just called you a snuff nut.

Craig Shoemaker:00:18:09

You have no idea what that even means, but in my language from some

Craig Shoemaker:00:18:12

FCC and my other European language or whatever it is, that could be the

Craig Shoemaker:00:18:16

worst thing that's banned from the radio, but it doesn't mean anything.

Craig Shoemaker:00:18:20

It's all the meaning we put to it that they put to it.

Marc Preston:00:18:23

You know, Penn and Teller did a great episode of

Marc Preston:00:18:25

their TV show, Bullshit, where they talked about language.

Marc Preston:00:18:28

That was, it was, oh God, it was such a great episode.

Marc Preston:00:18:30

It just, at the end, you're going, yeah, that is kind of silly.

Marc Preston:00:18:34

I mean, people will complain, but go pay money for a movie ticket.

Marc Preston:00:18:36

Where?

Marc Preston:00:18:37

There is all manner of colorful language, you know, it's like, well, yeah, I

Marc Preston:00:18:42

think right now that people, I think in general, both sides of the aisle, the

Marc Preston:00:18:45

political spectrum, whatever, you know, I think that everybody having grown up,

Marc Preston:00:18:50

you know, in a kind of more liberal side, grew up more conservative area in Texas.

Marc Preston:00:18:54

And I think, I think what's happened over the course of years is, you

Marc Preston:00:18:58

know, people feel more and more car blush to tell you how to, to live.

Marc Preston:00:19:02

You know, and to me, comedy was kind of that freedom.

Marc Preston:00:19:04

You go into a comedy club, this kind of dark space.

Marc Preston:00:19:07

That's, you know, you grab a beverage, maybe a cheese stick or whatever, you

Marc Preston:00:19:11

know, a 20 basket or whatever they're selling you and you can sit back and you

Marc Preston:00:19:14

can kind of just department and you kind of could laugh at yourself a little bit

Craig Shoemaker:00:19:18

and look at, look at, look at.

Craig Shoemaker:00:19:21

How people resist even going.

Craig Shoemaker:00:19:23

They'll pay a lot of money for a prescription of a drug that

Craig Shoemaker:00:19:27

was manufactured with chemicals.

Craig Shoemaker:00:19:28

You have no idea what's really in them.

Craig Shoemaker:00:19:31

You don't know if they're addictive.

Craig Shoemaker:00:19:32

They've obviously caused deaths and deaths and deaths.

Craig Shoemaker:00:19:35

And that's okay.

Craig Shoemaker:00:19:36

You'll pay any amount of money.

Craig Shoemaker:00:19:38

But ask for a 25 cover charge for laughter being the best

Craig Shoemaker:00:19:42

medicine, coming for your medicine.

Craig Shoemaker:00:19:44

There's your pharmacy.

Craig Shoemaker:00:19:45

And how people resist.

Craig Shoemaker:00:19:47

It's the, it's the last on their list.

Craig Shoemaker:00:19:49

We're essential workers with medicine, and yet comedy clubs closed down.

Craig Shoemaker:00:19:53

We had to go Zoom, we had to adjust, and here we are just wanting to offer

Craig Shoemaker:00:19:58

something that's an alternative to what you're getting on the news.

Craig Shoemaker:00:20:01

The news is 24 7 fear.

Craig Shoemaker:00:20:04

And then they have the commercials.

Craig Shoemaker:00:20:06

Every commercial has to do with the fear that they just gave you.

Craig Shoemaker:00:20:09

The anxiety they just gave you.

Craig Shoemaker:00:20:10

It's this, we got your fix for you, but the fix is never joy,

Craig Shoemaker:00:20:15

laughter, happiness, levity, laugh.

Craig Shoemaker:00:20:18

It's never the answer.

Marc Preston:00:20:19

Cause laughter is more relief.

Marc Preston:00:20:21

And I think what they're looking for is passion.

Marc Preston:00:20:23

Uh, I, I'm teaching, I teach, you know, voiceover to many

Marc Preston:00:20:28

students over the last 20 years.

Marc Preston:00:20:29

And one of the things I talk about, I said, Passion motivates and advertising.

Marc Preston:00:20:33

You look at a, they say sex sells, you know, what really sells his passion.

Marc Preston:00:20:37

You know, I mean, you look at a political ad, you know, it makes

Marc Preston:00:20:40

you angry or inspired or fearful.

Marc Preston:00:20:41

And over the course of years, I've learned and the people that I've

Marc Preston:00:20:44

watched that I admire, you know, the whole idea is kind of distilled down

Marc Preston:00:20:48

to make decisions from love, not fear.

Marc Preston:00:20:51

And you're probably going to be in a better place.

Marc Preston:00:20:53

And to me, the, the, uh, when you talk about laughter,

Marc Preston:00:20:57

That is, what is that relief?

Marc Preston:00:20:59

This is serotonin, not serotonin.

Marc Preston:00:21:01

Uh, what, what is it when they say dopamine, dopamine, and, you know,

Marc Preston:00:21:04

laughing for me, uh, or just experiencing it, it's kind of a, it's a relief.

Marc Preston:00:21:09

It's a weight off the shoulders.

Marc Preston:00:21:11

And I can't think of any time that's more applicable or needed

Marc Preston:00:21:14

than over the last couple of years.

Marc Preston:00:21:17

To talk about one more Bill Maher note, one of the things he keeps talking

Marc Preston:00:21:20

about, I wish more people would.

Marc Preston:00:21:23

The comorbidities with, with COVID.

Marc Preston:00:21:25

Talk about people who are, you look at people that are of a certain

Marc Preston:00:21:28

age, who haven't been vaccinated and are overweight, 90 percentile

Marc Preston:00:21:32

range, but take the vaccination

Craig Shoemaker:00:21:34

out of it.

Craig Shoemaker:00:21:34

Take that vaccination out of it.

Craig Shoemaker:00:21:35

We are unhealthy.

Marc Preston:00:21:37

Oh, indeed.

Craig Shoemaker:00:21:38

Here's the other thing.

Craig Shoemaker:00:21:39

I, I peeled this one back that no one wants to hear about.

Craig Shoemaker:00:21:42

People talk about Fauci has been there for all these administrations.

Craig Shoemaker:00:21:46

What does that tell you?

Craig Shoemaker:00:21:47

He's also overseen the worst.

Craig Shoemaker:00:21:50

Health in the history of the United States for 30 years.

Craig Shoemaker:00:21:54

We've declined.

Craig Shoemaker:00:21:55

Does anyone want to talk about that?

Craig Shoemaker:00:21:57

You're going to call me a conspiracy theorist.

Craig Shoemaker:00:21:59

That's just the fact that we are more overweight.

Craig Shoemaker:00:22:02

We're obese.

Craig Shoemaker:00:22:03

We have diabetes, all of these things that are self inflicted because we

Craig Shoemaker:00:22:08

eat these horrible foods and we're not, we're encouraged 24 seven.

Craig Shoemaker:00:22:12

The biggest people with all the money have crap that they're selling us.

Craig Shoemaker:00:22:17

We're literally eating crap.

Craig Shoemaker:00:22:19

And yet comedians are going to get canceled.

Craig Shoemaker:00:22:22

Don't go see this comedian because they told a bad joke, you

Craig Shoemaker:00:22:25

know, you can have a bad burger.

Craig Shoemaker:00:22:27

You get food poisoning.

Craig Shoemaker:00:22:28

We all have food poisoning, right?

Craig Shoemaker:00:22:29

Now you'll go right back to the place.

Craig Shoemaker:00:22:32

But, but you get a bad joke and you're done with that comedian.

Craig Shoemaker:00:22:35

I remember I said something political once and this guy

Craig Shoemaker:00:22:38

goes, I'll never watch you again.

Craig Shoemaker:00:22:39

I'll never pay a dime for you.

Craig Shoemaker:00:22:40

Because I said one thing.

Craig Shoemaker:00:22:43

That he didn't understand and he didn't have the wherewithal to look

Craig Shoemaker:00:22:47

within himself or examine it closer or even have a conversation about

Craig Shoemaker:00:22:52

what it was that bothered him.

Craig Shoemaker:00:22:54

He would just much rather, which we're taught now, just abandon yourself.

Craig Shoemaker:00:22:59

Just abandon everything.

Craig Shoemaker:00:23:01

Just to go with the party.

Craig Shoemaker:00:23:02

I was, I watched this movie King Richard.

Craig Shoemaker:00:23:04

Did you see King Richard?

Craig Shoemaker:00:23:05

Uh, no, I have been

Marc Preston:00:23:07

wanting to see it though.

Craig Shoemaker:00:23:07

Well, there's a, there's a scene where a guy has a gun

Craig Shoemaker:00:23:10

to his head and it's a gang member, and he, and he, I said, smoke 'em.

Craig Shoemaker:00:23:14

Smoke 'em.

Craig Shoemaker:00:23:16

And I thought to myself, you know how we look at gangs?

Craig Shoemaker:00:23:19

We go, oh, that's so horrible.

Craig Shoemaker:00:23:20

And I thought to myself, you know what?

Craig Shoemaker:00:23:23

That's what people do every day.

Craig Shoemaker:00:23:25

Religions do it.

Craig Shoemaker:00:23:26

You're going to smoke people that smoke, metaphorically, whether

Craig Shoemaker:00:23:30

it's killing them literally, or just killing them figuratively.

Craig Shoemaker:00:23:34

We're taught to get rid of things instead of, like, having compassion,

Craig Shoemaker:00:23:39

having an understanding, all that.

Craig Shoemaker:00:23:41

That's what we're taught.

Craig Shoemaker:00:23:42

Smoke them.

Craig Shoemaker:00:23:43

So we're all in gangs now.

Craig Shoemaker:00:23:44

Right wing, left wing.

Craig Shoemaker:00:23:46

Smoke the other one.

Craig Shoemaker:00:23:47

If I say one thing, It's outside of my alleged party.

Craig Shoemaker:00:23:53

Oh, look at you.

Craig Shoemaker:00:23:54

You're, you know, you're, you're, oh, you joined the other party.

Craig Shoemaker:00:23:57

Do you have any thought, you know, who's telling me this, do you have

Craig Shoemaker:00:24:00

any thought that's outside of your box that you're in, that you're fed all

Craig Shoemaker:00:24:04

of this information and you're fed the information to go smoke them, smoke them.

Craig Shoemaker:00:24:09

That's what we do in gangs now.

Marc Preston:00:24:11

Religions do

Craig Shoemaker:00:24:11

it and parties do it.

Craig Shoemaker:00:24:13

Party politics.

Craig Shoemaker:00:24:13

That's what they do.

Craig Shoemaker:00:24:14

Well, I mean,

Marc Preston:00:24:14

we're more than binary.

Marc Preston:00:24:15

You know, I think that's the, the big screw up in our society is that

Marc Preston:00:24:19

you're either this or you're that.

Marc Preston:00:24:20

Yeah.

Marc Preston:00:24:20

There's gray area.

Marc Preston:00:24:21

And as we grow, as it develops.

Marc Preston:00:24:22

Remember, that's like one of the things that kids think

Marc Preston:00:24:25

black and white, good and bad.

Marc Preston:00:24:26

Well, there is gray area, you know, people want to make decisions.

Marc Preston:00:24:30

They want to put you in a box.

Marc Preston:00:24:31

I don't know the cycle.

Marc Preston:00:24:31

I'm no psychologist.

Marc Preston:00:24:32

Give me a six years.

Marc Preston:00:24:33

I'll go, I'll get a degree.

Marc Preston:00:24:34

Um, but no, to, to break it down, what, what exactly, uh, is going

Marc Preston:00:24:41

on, what has kind of changed.

Marc Preston:00:24:42

I remember when you're when I was younger, you could disagree with people

Marc Preston:00:24:46

politically like, ah, you're full of it.

Marc Preston:00:24:47

Whatever.

Marc Preston:00:24:47

Let's go grab a beer, you know?

Marc Preston:00:24:48

And that's kind of where it stopped.

Marc Preston:00:24:50

Now it's a rage thing.

Marc Preston:00:24:52

And I think that when you talk about laughter, you talk about humor, you

Marc Preston:00:24:55

talk about the levity that that brings.

Marc Preston:00:24:58

I think there's, there's kind of a balanced diet of emotions

Marc Preston:00:25:01

that we have on a daily basis.

Marc Preston:00:25:03

And if all of it's kind of, especially last couple of years, fear and stress

Marc Preston:00:25:08

and everybody's been dealing with it.

Marc Preston:00:25:10

And then you don't have that levity, you don't have that, even if the, even if

Marc Preston:00:25:14

the supposed comedy is kind of gnarly.

Marc Preston:00:25:17

Uh, I think it's going to put us in an overall bad spot for being able

Marc Preston:00:25:21

to be empathetic to one another.

Marc Preston:00:25:23

Oh,

Craig Shoemaker:00:25:23

absolutely, and you're cancelling your own joy.

Craig Shoemaker:00:25:25

You're just cancelling, that's what you're doing, is you're

Craig Shoemaker:00:25:28

going, I'm going to limit my joy.

Craig Shoemaker:00:25:30

There is no limit to joy and happiness, there's no limit.

Craig Shoemaker:00:25:33

We live in abundance.

Craig Shoemaker:00:25:35

But the world will tell you that you live in limitations and you live in their walls

Craig Shoemaker:00:25:40

And you must go under their rules and don't defy their rules where Comics what

Craig Shoemaker:00:25:46

I love about being a comic is we are true independence We listen to a creator within

Craig Shoemaker:00:25:53

ourselves and that's what informs us.

Craig Shoemaker:00:25:56

That's what you know Has us speak that's what has us speak our

Craig Shoemaker:00:25:59

mind our thoughts whatever it is.

Craig Shoemaker:00:26:01

We are expressing it freely See What's happening now, you know, this

Craig Shoemaker:00:26:06

whole Joe Rogan thing is exploding.

Craig Shoemaker:00:26:09

I'm going to tell you what it is.

Craig Shoemaker:00:26:11

People are afraid to hear a different perspective than

Craig Shoemaker:00:26:17

they're pounded with daily.

Craig Shoemaker:00:26:18

They're pounded with something daily.

Craig Shoemaker:00:26:19

So they are afraid.

Craig Shoemaker:00:26:21

And this guy has brought in tremendous fear because he has like two or

Craig Shoemaker:00:26:26

three guests on that went against the norm, which is absolutely abnormal.

Craig Shoemaker:00:26:33

He had guests on.

Craig Shoemaker:00:26:35

And that's what he's guilty of to me We should encourage him to have guests

Craig Shoemaker:00:26:40

that have another voice and go research the voice go see if you know See if they

Craig Shoemaker:00:26:44

indeed are frauds or whatever it is But to cancel him is you're just cancelling

Craig Shoemaker:00:26:51

an entire side of yourself that you don't want to see You don't want to see

Craig Shoemaker:00:26:55

that you might have been fooled people people have such egos that they can't

Craig Shoemaker:00:27:00

say to themselves You know, I got fooled.

Craig Shoemaker:00:27:03

I have to tell you i'll be i'll admit something to you right now You Major,

Craig Shoemaker:00:27:06

I became, I was a conservative, raised a conservative, and this is a label

Craig Shoemaker:00:27:10

by the way, I don't even like labels, but just for lack of another term.

Craig Shoemaker:00:27:14

Went to liberal, I can tell you the exact day that it happened.

Craig Shoemaker:00:27:18

And I became a liberal because of my empathy, because I believe that

Craig Shoemaker:00:27:24

liberals, that was their jam is, you know, everybody's included and, you

Craig Shoemaker:00:27:28

know, humanity and, you know, it doesn't matter color, you know, but all that

Craig Shoemaker:00:27:31

kind of stuff, that's what I'm about.

Craig Shoemaker:00:27:33

That's my heart sings to me.

Craig Shoemaker:00:27:35

So nobody can convince me otherwise, but the difference is I have now left the

Craig Shoemaker:00:27:41

liberals because what they're as guilty of as the others is empowering people.

Craig Shoemaker:00:27:47

Empowering people to dictate how they feel, how they think.

Craig Shoemaker:00:27:51

They're just as guilty, they're just as guilty as labeling, cancelling,

Craig Shoemaker:00:27:56

gang, gang thought, all of that stuff, the liberals are now guilty.

Craig Shoemaker:00:28:00

So I am right, and I have my own party, it's called Centered.

Craig Shoemaker:00:28:04

I'm centered in me, I'm centered in what, I'll pull in my

Craig Shoemaker:00:28:07

own information from within.

Craig Shoemaker:00:28:11

a lot of what I do.

Craig Shoemaker:00:28:12

So I'm out of the party.

Craig Shoemaker:00:28:13

Cause everybody goes all in, they go all in.

Craig Shoemaker:00:28:17

And like, I'll say something that I said to a guy, I go, well, how

Craig Shoemaker:00:28:22

come if I question like some of the stuff that's going on now?

Craig Shoemaker:00:28:26

I said, what, why do people freak at me?

Craig Shoemaker:00:28:28

He goes, cause they think you're a Trumper.

Craig Shoemaker:00:28:30

So that's where we are now.

Craig Shoemaker:00:28:31

That's where we are now.

Craig Shoemaker:00:28:32

So we, Oh, that label gets affixed to you.

Craig Shoemaker:00:28:35

And if you're not a Trump or that's not a good thing to be a

Craig Shoemaker:00:28:38

Trump or, you know what I mean?

Craig Shoemaker:00:28:40

So you're, so we're divided so much so that there's no conversation going on.

Craig Shoemaker:00:28:45

You can't get any better.

Craig Shoemaker:00:28:46

If you can't have conversations, if you can't, you can't get any better

Craig Shoemaker:00:28:51

until you listen to creative artists.

Marc Preston:00:29:01

One of the things I was curious about is when you go

Marc Preston:00:29:03

to the, when you're doing a show at a club now, how have cell phones

Marc Preston:00:29:06

changed the way you do comedy?

Marc Preston:00:29:09

Uh, is it, is it, does it, does it put you on edge a little bit knowing that somebody

Marc Preston:00:29:15

may whip out the camera, just film the five seconds that they pull out of context

Marc Preston:00:29:19

and it's gonna, it's gonna ding you?

Craig Shoemaker:00:29:21

You're right.

Craig Shoemaker:00:29:22

Um, it's changed it in a, in a number of ways and I, and,

Craig Shoemaker:00:29:25

and not, and not good ways.

Craig Shoemaker:00:29:27

Um, there's also the, just the, the distraction of can

Craig Shoemaker:00:29:32

we all be together as one?

Craig Shoemaker:00:29:34

Because, so I, when I perform, I take people like a, like a orchestra leader,

Craig Shoemaker:00:29:41

and everyone is in the orchestra.

Craig Shoemaker:00:29:43

Every person is important in that audience.

Craig Shoemaker:00:29:46

So if you have someone who goes solo, goes rogue, they're off, they're

Craig Shoemaker:00:29:50

texting something, you know, they're out, they're out of the orchestra.

Craig Shoemaker:00:29:53

You now do not have harmonious moment because they take you out of it.

Craig Shoemaker:00:29:58

One person can do it by the way.

Craig Shoemaker:00:30:00

So now with cell phones, it's a distraction.

Craig Shoemaker:00:30:02

It's taking you off of your, like, I love to conduct this beautiful

Craig Shoemaker:00:30:08

symphony is amazing to me.

Craig Shoemaker:00:30:10

And, you know, you've maybe seen my shows and this is not

Craig Shoemaker:00:30:13

in a braggy way, but I get.

Craig Shoemaker:00:30:15

You know, everybody says I get the, I'm the only one that gets standing

Craig Shoemaker:00:30:17

ovations, just about every show.

Craig Shoemaker:00:30:20

And you know, your club owners tell me that waitresses, waiters, the reason

Craig Shoemaker:00:30:24

is, this is not like I'm some, you know, great talent, but the reason

Craig Shoemaker:00:30:28

is I conduct it like that, like that.

Craig Shoemaker:00:30:32

We're all one.

Craig Shoemaker:00:30:33

We are in this together and bring them into that force, that force field.

Craig Shoemaker:00:30:39

So that genuine energy flow, which is what I teach when I coach, So if you're

Craig Shoemaker:00:30:43

in that genuine flow and you take yourself out, so now what they've done

Craig Shoemaker:00:30:47

is, so I'll stop the show by the way.

Craig Shoemaker:00:30:50

And I'll say, Hey, what are you doing?

Craig Shoemaker:00:30:52

You know, I've, you know, I do whatever I can do to get them off of

Craig Shoemaker:00:30:55

this cell phone, but now guess what?

Craig Shoemaker:00:30:58

Mark, they have, they said, I'm just ordering.

Craig Shoemaker:00:31:02

So now they order with their son.

Craig Shoemaker:00:31:05

So as much as that's a nice convenient thing, you don't have to chitter

Craig Shoemaker:00:31:10

chatter of waiters and waitresses.

Craig Shoemaker:00:31:12

Now you've got these bright lights.

Craig Shoemaker:00:31:14

I, I, you know, they have on their crotch.

Craig Shoemaker:00:31:17

I said, it looks like a smurf has giving you head with this blue light.

Craig Shoemaker:00:31:20

I said, you know, I, so it's just taken us away from, the goal is

Craig Shoemaker:00:31:26

to, we're having a night off.

Craig Shoemaker:00:31:29

We're having a night off of distractions.

Craig Shoemaker:00:31:31

We're all one, we're all unified there.

Craig Shoemaker:00:31:34

There's no political party, there's no religion, there's no judgment.

Craig Shoemaker:00:31:38

There's no labeling.

Craig Shoemaker:00:31:39

We're just in this and that's what I love to do and the cell phones take you

Craig Shoemaker:00:31:44

away But you know these days some of the bigger comedians that have more power

Craig Shoemaker:00:31:48

They have you put this, the phone in some sort of like a purse or whatever,

Craig Shoemaker:00:31:53

and you get it later because they're so afraid of their stuff being recorded.

Craig Shoemaker:00:31:58

Yeah,

Marc Preston:00:31:58

you know, it's almost the same thing of going to a theater now.

Marc Preston:00:32:01

Yeah, it's great having a big 75 inch TV, watch your stuff, you stream it

Marc Preston:00:32:05

at home, but there is that communal feeling when you go to the theater.

Marc Preston:00:32:08

It's a communal feeling, yeah.

Marc Preston:00:32:09

Yeah, when you go, when you're around other people.

Marc Preston:00:32:10

That's exactly right.

Craig Shoemaker:00:32:11

And by, and by the way, you know what really

Craig Shoemaker:00:32:12

bothers me is when they film you, And I've been guilty of it as well.

Craig Shoemaker:00:32:17

Like I went to, you know, my friend, REO Speedwagon the other

Craig Shoemaker:00:32:19

day and I'm filming, I'm, I'm going, what am I going to do with this?

Craig Shoemaker:00:32:23

Am I going to like have a film night at my house and go, let's watch, let's

Craig Shoemaker:00:32:28

watch me on my iPhone so I can show you what good seats I had, you know,

Craig Shoemaker:00:32:33

and let's go listen to this through the iPhone, through a television, you

Craig Shoemaker:00:32:36

weren't even there for the experience.

Craig Shoemaker:00:32:38

When is it ever going to be shown?

Craig Shoemaker:00:32:41

This is how silly we've become.

Craig Shoemaker:00:32:42

It's, it's, it's ridiculous that we film.

Craig Shoemaker:00:32:46

So now you're detached.

Craig Shoemaker:00:32:47

You're getting all your spacing it, you know, okay, let me zoom or whatever it

Craig Shoemaker:00:32:51

is, instead of taking in this music, taking in this art, taking in this comedy

Craig Shoemaker:00:32:56

for what it is in its natural form.

Craig Shoemaker:00:32:59

You're now getting in the way of that.

Craig Shoemaker:00:33:01

So I don't want to be the cranky guy, you know, here.

Craig Shoemaker:00:33:05

I do want to encourage people to take a pause for yourself.

Craig Shoemaker:00:33:10

Get off of it for just that hour and a half.

Craig Shoemaker:00:33:13

I do a 90 minute show.

Craig Shoemaker:00:33:15

Just join me.

Craig Shoemaker:00:33:16

Just take 90 minutes.

Marc Preston:00:33:18

Well, you've got young kids.

Marc Preston:00:33:20

I've got a point.

Marc Preston:00:33:21

I'll snap a couple pictures and then I'm done with my phone.

Marc Preston:00:33:23

Then I'm watching whatever is going on back.

Marc Preston:00:33:26

My kids are in their late teens now, but when they were younger, if you're

Marc Preston:00:33:29

sitting there with a phone, you're videotaping their play or whatever.

Marc Preston:00:33:32

It's like, it reminds me of that scene from daddy's home and the lady on the

Marc Preston:00:33:35

stage before performance like, okay, everybody, don't worry videographer,

Marc Preston:00:33:40

you can get it after the show.

Marc Preston:00:33:41

And then, you know, every parent just whips out their

Marc Preston:00:33:44

iPad or the phone or whatever.

Marc Preston:00:33:45

If you are looking at it through your phone, you're not looking at it.

Marc Preston:00:33:49

And experiencing it and you got to trust your memory a little bit.

Craig Shoemaker:00:33:51

You're not experiencing it.

Craig Shoemaker:00:33:53

You're not in the moment You're teaching your kids not to be in the moment.

Craig Shoemaker:00:33:58

You're by the way the kids this is the funny thing is look I'm guilty of it.

Craig Shoemaker:00:34:02

I have never had one of my kids say Let's have family movie night.

Craig Shoemaker:00:34:07

Let's see me in that pool when I was four years old.

Craig Shoemaker:00:34:12

Nobody's ever done that.

Craig Shoemaker:00:34:14

I keep souvenirs for them.

Craig Shoemaker:00:34:16

It's just projection because I'm thinking this is what I would have wanted.

Craig Shoemaker:00:34:21

They don't, I have game balls that they, I said, let's have a garage sale.

Craig Shoemaker:00:34:27

And I look and there's a pile of game balls.

Craig Shoemaker:00:34:29

You know, it says Jackson Jew maker, you know, number one today.

Craig Shoemaker:00:34:33

He's like, just give them, just sell them.

Craig Shoemaker:00:34:36

He doesn't care.

Craig Shoemaker:00:34:37

They don't care about any of this memorabilia.

Craig Shoemaker:00:34:39

They don't care about any of this.

Craig Shoemaker:00:34:41

Because that's the way they've been raised.

Craig Shoemaker:00:34:44

So we were raised, and we're projecting our own stuff onto them.

Marc Preston:00:34:47

I mean, I think years down the road they'll have perspective

Marc Preston:00:34:48

and go, Man, maybe I don't want that.

Craig Shoemaker:00:34:50

I don't agree, because I've been asking, and

Craig Shoemaker:00:34:52

I've been checking this out.

Craig Shoemaker:00:34:53

I don't agree.

Craig Shoemaker:00:34:54

It's, it's a different society that we're in right now.

Craig Shoemaker:00:34:57

There's so much of it.

Craig Shoemaker:00:34:58

They've already been, been, been bombarded by posts.

Craig Shoemaker:00:35:02

By, you know, the seeing it, the, you know, lot, all that.

Craig Shoemaker:00:35:05

That is true, yeah.

Craig Shoemaker:00:35:06

They don't have this longing to have, because it's a big bombardment anyway.

Craig Shoemaker:00:35:12

I mean, it's like, which ones do you choose to show them?

Craig Shoemaker:00:35:15

Which ones do they want to look back?

Craig Shoemaker:00:35:16

Everything has been documented now, as opposed to think about you.

Craig Shoemaker:00:35:21

Think about you.

Craig Shoemaker:00:35:22

Have you ever seen a video of you when you were younger?

Craig Shoemaker:00:35:24

I've got like three.

Craig Shoemaker:00:35:25

Three, maybe, maybe, and wish,

Marc Preston:00:35:27

I do say, I wish I had some more, and you know what I wish I

Marc Preston:00:35:30

had more of, is more like family stuff.

Marc Preston:00:35:32

Like people that are no longer with us, you know.

Marc Preston:00:35:35

Like, you know, grandparents around talking about whatever.

Marc Preston:00:35:37

I wish I had some of that kind of stuff.

Marc Preston:00:35:38

A little bit of that.

Marc Preston:00:35:39

But as far as me, I got pictures, I know what I look like, I know what

Marc Preston:00:35:42

kind of goofball I was, you know.

Marc Preston:00:35:44

It's how you,

Craig Shoemaker:00:35:44

it's how you felt though that's the most important thing.

Craig Shoemaker:00:35:47

Uh, precisely.

Craig Shoemaker:00:35:48

You know, I, I was talking to a client this morning and, Um, You

Craig Shoemaker:00:35:52

know, I was, I was, um, you know, I do, I do psychic work as well.

Craig Shoemaker:00:35:56

You know, that's what makes a really good comedian is we have very deep empathy

Craig Shoemaker:00:35:59

that we can see even into the past.

Craig Shoemaker:00:36:01

And I saw into her past.

Craig Shoemaker:00:36:03

And one of the things that happened for her was.

Craig Shoemaker:00:36:06

She stopped being her true self at a certain age.

Craig Shoemaker:00:36:10

She stopped being a child and had to grow up really fast.

Craig Shoemaker:00:36:13

And a lot of people do have that happen where it's like, you're forced to grow up

Craig Shoemaker:00:36:18

and you're forced to take things serious.

Craig Shoemaker:00:36:20

And you're forced to cancel your laughter happens at a very early age.

Craig Shoemaker:00:36:24

You're taught not to be silly in class, right?

Marc Preston:00:36:27

Yeah.

Marc Preston:00:36:27

I think it all, can it also happen when, uh, going through a traumatic

Marc Preston:00:36:32

relationship, going through traumatic experience, and you kind of,

Craig Shoemaker:00:36:35

yeah.

Marc Preston:00:36:36

You kind of shift all your focus to the new paradigm and

Marc Preston:00:36:40

you kind of leave something behind.

Marc Preston:00:36:41

You weren't loose.

Marc Preston:00:36:42

You weren't really supposed to leave that behind you.

Marc Preston:00:36:43

That's who you are.

Marc Preston:00:36:44

You know, it's who

Craig Shoemaker:00:36:45

you are is light and levity and laughter.

Craig Shoemaker:00:36:48

So you know what I did with her?

Craig Shoemaker:00:36:49

I call her name's Beth.

Craig Shoemaker:00:36:50

I call her Bethy because Bethy was when she was that girl who was just

Craig Shoemaker:00:36:55

all about love and light and happiness.

Craig Shoemaker:00:36:58

And then it stopped and she giggles every time I call her Bethy.

Craig Shoemaker:00:37:02

Marky, uh, Marky, see you even giggled it.

Craig Shoemaker:00:37:07

So, but that's when we're kids, when we're called with the E or the end, you

Craig Shoemaker:00:37:12

know, then we become adults and it's Elizabeth or Beth or whatever it is.

Craig Shoemaker:00:37:16

I said, no, let's bring back that child like essence that we all want.

Craig Shoemaker:00:37:21

You know, kids laugh 200 times a day and adults laugh 20.

Craig Shoemaker:00:37:25

So why don't we go catch the kids?

Craig Shoemaker:00:37:27

You know what I mean?

Craig Shoemaker:00:37:28

Is that

Marc Preston:00:37:28

like you grew up in a Philly and I know you still keep

Marc Preston:00:37:31

up with a lot of your friends.

Marc Preston:00:37:32

Isn't it great when you get together with your friends and

Marc Preston:00:37:34

they're still referencing it.

Marc Preston:00:37:35

I talked to a good friend of mine last night.

Marc Preston:00:37:37

I've known him 30 years.

Marc Preston:00:37:39

He's kind of retired now and talking to him, man, that's like

Marc Preston:00:37:42

a zips you right back to that.

Marc Preston:00:37:45

To get your head space and those people you can't be asked because they know

Marc Preston:00:37:48

where your bodies are buried, you know, they know you and that's that's

Marc Preston:00:37:51

a really, uh, I know you got, you got friends back home in Philadelphia.

Marc Preston:00:37:55

You, you, you stay in touch with them and they kind of keep you grounded

Marc Preston:00:38:00

to kind of keep you from getting a little bit too full of yourself.

Marc Preston:00:38:02

I'm sure.

Craig Shoemaker:00:38:02

Well, the other thing they do is there's your videos.

Craig Shoemaker:00:38:07

The videos are through stories.

Craig Shoemaker:00:38:09

And I'd much rather recall a story with them with laughter.

Craig Shoemaker:00:38:14

Again, there's one of the things I coach is I say, tell me about some

Craig Shoemaker:00:38:17

stories about you and your friends.

Craig Shoemaker:00:38:20

And everybody has those stories.

Craig Shoemaker:00:38:22

We all have, our best friends are the ones that make us laugh and bring us joy.

Craig Shoemaker:00:38:27

Are our best friends the ones that tell us, you know, Uh, that we're telling a bad

Craig Shoemaker:00:38:31

joke, or telling us that, that we should be cancelled, or we should join a certain

Craig Shoemaker:00:38:35

party, or we should listen to this.

Craig Shoemaker:00:38:36

Are they our best friends?

Craig Shoemaker:00:38:38

No.

Craig Shoemaker:00:38:38

They're not our best friends.

Craig Shoemaker:00:38:39

They're trying to control us.

Craig Shoemaker:00:38:41

Our best friends are just simply We don't care about politics.

Craig Shoemaker:00:38:44

We don't care about the outside world that's chosen for us.

Craig Shoemaker:00:38:47

We care about our world that we create together and we have fun.

Craig Shoemaker:00:38:52

I get together.

Craig Shoemaker:00:38:53

I swear my family, I'm sure very sick of the stories that when I get together with

Craig Shoemaker:00:38:58

the uncle, uncle Saram, you know, but.

Craig Shoemaker:00:39:01

We will tell these stories till we are dead, you know, and I was about to ask

Marc Preston:00:39:06

you, do you tell your kids, do you sit down and do something

Marc Preston:00:39:09

like I take my kids, I grew up going to South Padre Island on the South

Marc Preston:00:39:12

Texas coast and I took my kids there.

Marc Preston:00:39:14

It's become a kind of a done it a few times, uh, Christmas time, New

Marc Preston:00:39:17

Year's, we take them down there and when I go to a restaurant or I see

Marc Preston:00:39:20

a thing, it'll bring back a memory.

Marc Preston:00:39:22

Yeah.

Marc Preston:00:39:22

Uh, 40 years ago.

Marc Preston:00:39:23

Yeah.

Marc Preston:00:39:23

And I'll tell, I, I, I don't know if they're like, oh, that's cool.

Marc Preston:00:39:26

I'm getting insight into my daddy.

Marc Preston:00:39:27

Or if it's like, Jesus, here we go again.

Marc Preston:00:39:29

I've heard this story five times.

Marc Preston:00:39:31

, you know, well,

Craig Shoemaker:00:39:32

I, I don't know the, I, you know, it's funny, I've

Craig Shoemaker:00:39:34

had that same introspection as I, I wonder, but I'm going to continue

Craig Shoemaker:00:39:40

to do it because that's who I am.

Craig Shoemaker:00:39:42

And by the way, the results are, they come, sometimes

Craig Shoemaker:00:39:46

the results sneak up on you.

Craig Shoemaker:00:39:47

Like, where do you wanna go on vacation?

Craig Shoemaker:00:39:50

You know what both kids told me.

Craig Shoemaker:00:39:53

One of them said, I want to go, whatever our vacation is,

Craig Shoemaker:00:39:58

I want to go to Pizza City.

Craig Shoemaker:00:40:00

That's the pizza parlor I grew up with, and Tony is still there,

Craig Shoemaker:00:40:04

and that's where he wanted to go.

Craig Shoemaker:00:40:07

Like, literally, you could, I was like, where in the world do you want to go?

Craig Shoemaker:00:40:10

You want to go to Ireland?

Craig Shoemaker:00:40:12

You want to go to Africa?

Craig Shoemaker:00:40:13

What do you want to do?

Craig Shoemaker:00:40:14

I want to go to Pizza City in Philadelphia, this small,

Craig Shoemaker:00:40:18

tiny little pizza shop.

Craig Shoemaker:00:40:20

It's 60 years old.

Craig Shoemaker:00:40:21

And that's what he wants.

Craig Shoemaker:00:40:22

And then my daughter says, I want to go to the Jersey Shore.

Craig Shoemaker:00:40:24

That's where I grew up going.

Craig Shoemaker:00:40:26

So we live 3, 000 miles from there in California with

Craig Shoemaker:00:40:29

beaches and everything else.

Craig Shoemaker:00:40:30

And we go to the Jersey Shore.

Craig Shoemaker:00:40:32

So it is an answer to your question is it, it gets into them because it's tradition,

Craig Shoemaker:00:40:39

it's something that's very simple,

Marc Preston:00:40:42

something they're connected to, you know,

Marc Preston:00:40:43

it's, I think they want that.

Marc Preston:00:40:45

Yeah,

Craig Shoemaker:00:40:45

exactly.

Craig Shoemaker:00:40:45

There's a connection that's there and it's a connection to dad.

Craig Shoemaker:00:40:48

It's a heart connection.

Craig Shoemaker:00:40:50

They, they are, oh, those are, oh, My friends are their uncles

Craig Shoemaker:00:40:54

and aunts and they know this.

Craig Shoemaker:00:40:56

It's loyalty.

Craig Shoemaker:00:40:57

It's something that you cannot teach.

Craig Shoemaker:00:41:00

And my son to this day, the oldest son, 23.

Craig Shoemaker:00:41:03

Oh, he says, one of his biggest things is he has his, he is, he says,

Craig Shoemaker:00:41:07

I have my Saram is his friend Cade.

Craig Shoemaker:00:41:10

I've got my Frank.

Craig Shoemaker:00:41:11

And that's his friend Shay.

Craig Shoemaker:00:41:13

You know, he has those for life.

Craig Shoemaker:00:41:15

And he said, if anything, I passed on to him, it was to value these things that are

Marc Preston:00:41:21

indeed.

Marc Preston:00:41:21

Indeed.

Marc Preston:00:41:22

Yes.

Craig Shoemaker:00:41:22

And it doesn't matter who Frank, who just passed

Craig Shoemaker:00:41:25

away, by the way, last week, one of the saddest moments of my life.

Craig Shoemaker:00:41:29

I'm sorry.

Craig Shoemaker:00:41:29

Yeah.

Craig Shoemaker:00:41:30

I'm unbelievable.

Craig Shoemaker:00:41:31

I mean, I just, it was such a shock and you know, and all the memories that

Craig Shoemaker:00:41:36

came up and, you know, at the funeral and people speaking, it was all about,

Craig Shoemaker:00:41:41

How beloved he was because he was always a giving person and that's his

Craig Shoemaker:00:41:46

energy that he brought and instilled in others and he was beloved and that's

Craig Shoemaker:00:41:52

what's the phrase Native Americans

Marc Preston:00:41:54

have that that you die two deaths one uh when you're physically

Marc Preston:00:41:58

you die and the second is the last time somebody mentions your name and

Marc Preston:00:42:01

you know being I'm Jewish and I we have there's hardwired into that as

Marc Preston:00:42:04

well you Keep talking about people.

Marc Preston:00:42:06

It keeps them alive and tell my kids about what would be their great grandfather,

Marc Preston:00:42:09

my grandfather learned so much from him.

Marc Preston:00:42:12

And I just keep talking, going, you know what I kind of, uh, maybe you're

Marc Preston:00:42:15

getting to that space in life also is what, what are you, uh, leaving?

Marc Preston:00:42:19

What lessons are you leaving?

Marc Preston:00:42:21

What's your, what's your legacy or what, you know, you get all

Marc Preston:00:42:24

highfalutin and it really boils back down to like, how do you, yeah.

Marc Preston:00:42:28

How do you want, at least for my kids.

Marc Preston:00:42:30

How would you like to be remembered?

Craig Shoemaker:00:42:31

How do you want to be remembered?

Craig Shoemaker:00:42:33

It's like, I want to be remembered for how I make people feel.

Craig Shoemaker:00:42:36

And if I can inspire, uplift them, make them laugh, then

Craig Shoemaker:00:42:41

I've done my job on the planet.

Craig Shoemaker:00:42:42

And, and by the way, when I talk about my grandmother, I don't do tell some

Craig Shoemaker:00:42:47

phony story of, you know, honoring her.

Craig Shoemaker:00:42:49

I tell the story about her being drunk and passed out on the, on the floor.

Craig Shoemaker:00:42:54

And my kids imitate her to this day.

Craig Shoemaker:00:42:56

They've never met her.

Craig Shoemaker:00:42:57

You know, they never will.

Craig Shoemaker:00:42:58

Is this

Marc Preston:00:42:59

one with a loose joint?

Craig Shoemaker:00:43:00

I picked her up.

Craig Shoemaker:00:43:01

Oh yeah.

Craig Shoemaker:00:43:01

With the joints.

Marc Preston:00:43:03

She was

Craig Shoemaker:00:43:04

a

Marc Preston:00:43:04

trip

Craig Shoemaker:00:43:04

man.

Craig Shoemaker:00:43:04

And I'm going to talk about her and that's how I honor her is she was not.

Craig Shoemaker:00:43:09

A grandmother that you revere, that has all this respect.

Craig Shoemaker:00:43:13

Nah, she was a drunk pot smoker, big Genesee cream ale shitter pants.

Craig Shoemaker:00:43:18

You know, I picked her up this one time and she sees this guy that

Craig Shoemaker:00:43:22

she would flirt with my friends.

Craig Shoemaker:00:43:24

And she's upside down and she looks at him.

Craig Shoemaker:00:43:27

And she sees him upside down because I've got her, you know,

Craig Shoemaker:00:43:29

cradled and she goes, Is that Herb?

Craig Shoemaker:00:43:32

Is that Herb?

Craig Shoemaker:00:43:33

I don't want him to see me like this.

Craig Shoemaker:00:43:35

And then she looks at him and she goes, with her flirting, she goes, Hi, Herb.

Craig Shoemaker:00:43:40

And I tell my kids that, my kids to this day will go, Is that herb?

Marc Preston:00:43:45

Well, you're touching on something that kind of goes

Marc Preston:00:43:47

back to what we were talking about before that the whole cancel thing

Marc Preston:00:43:50

expecting people to be perfect.

Marc Preston:00:43:52

Yeah.

Marc Preston:00:43:52

When you're telling real honest stories, you remind your kids, you

Marc Preston:00:43:55

remind the people you're talking or speaking with that, Hey, these

Marc Preston:00:43:58

aren't, these are imperfect people.

Marc Preston:00:43:59

But.

Marc Preston:00:43:59

They occupy a space in this world and they had something to contribute.

Marc Preston:00:44:03

They have sometimes it turns into a funny story.

Marc Preston:00:44:06

I mean, let's be honest.

Marc Preston:00:44:07

When you're a kid, some of the stories where you almost died and

Marc Preston:00:44:10

like, Oh my God, it's catastrophic.

Marc Preston:00:44:11

Now are the things you laugh about over, you know, a beverage or just, but I'm not

Marc Preston:00:44:16

encouraging, you know, Potentially, you know deadly activities, but the things you

Marc Preston:00:44:21

do when you're a kid you can sit around.

Marc Preston:00:44:22

What's that phrase?

Marc Preston:00:44:23

I keep seeing uh shows up in on facebook It's if you can't look

Marc Preston:00:44:27

back on your life and realize that you're an idiot when you're younger.

Marc Preston:00:44:29

You're still an idiot Yeah, I know yeah that uh that idea but didn't

Marc Preston:00:44:33

you write on uh fuller house?

Marc Preston:00:44:36

Didn't you didn't were you as a writer and I i'm i'm a Amateur budding screenwriter.

Marc Preston:00:44:41

I just for me, it's fun.

Marc Preston:00:44:42

It's hobby.

Marc Preston:00:44:42

Maybe one day I'll sell screenplay.

Marc Preston:00:44:44

Do you find catharsis in and putting a story?

Marc Preston:00:44:48

This isn't on a stage.

Marc Preston:00:44:49

Naturally, the audience a little bit different on Netflix.

Marc Preston:00:44:52

It's family driven, but is there a catharsis in writing, crafting stories,

Marc Preston:00:44:57

you know, that kind of thing where you're creating or, or, or, um, you

Marc Preston:00:45:00

have empathy for characters to tell me what that's like to, to write and

Marc Preston:00:45:04

to create on when you're not on stage.

Craig Shoemaker:00:45:07

On that show in particular, like I had a

Craig Shoemaker:00:45:09

writing session yesterday.

Craig Shoemaker:00:45:10

I'm minting a, um, NFT right now, uh, based on an animated project

Craig Shoemaker:00:45:16

that I have with a big animator.

Craig Shoemaker:00:45:19

And I got together in a collaborative sense with these people and we

Craig Shoemaker:00:45:23

started throwing out things.

Craig Shoemaker:00:45:26

And to me, that is a true joy.

Craig Shoemaker:00:45:29

Uh, like they laughed and said, that's a good one.

Craig Shoemaker:00:45:31

And so one of my things stuck and that's really cool.

Craig Shoemaker:00:45:35

You know, I came up with it on the spot.

Craig Shoemaker:00:45:37

I then did an impression.

Craig Shoemaker:00:45:39

They had never heard me do before of captain Picard.

Craig Shoemaker:00:45:42

And I told a story and I made them laugh.

Craig Shoemaker:00:45:45

And now we're in a collaborative process.

Craig Shoemaker:00:45:47

It's safe.

Craig Shoemaker:00:45:48

It's fun.

Craig Shoemaker:00:45:50

It's unifying and so forth.

Craig Shoemaker:00:45:52

I will tell you, honestly.

Craig Shoemaker:00:45:54

Yeah.

Craig Shoemaker:00:45:56

The Fuller House experience was not that.

Craig Shoemaker:00:45:59

The Fuller House experience was almost the opposite, because first of all,

Craig Shoemaker:00:46:04

you have all these standards and practices, you have all these rules,

Craig Shoemaker:00:46:07

all these definitions of what's clean and what's not, so when you're at your

Craig Shoemaker:00:46:12

full self, you can just say anything.

Craig Shoemaker:00:46:15

You know, you and I can say anything right now and there's nothing that's filtered.

Craig Shoemaker:00:46:19

You constantly have to filter because if there's rules and guidelines, you

Craig Shoemaker:00:46:23

have to follow when you write a show.

Marc Preston:00:46:26

The

Craig Shoemaker:00:46:26

second, that's a hard to create

Marc Preston:00:46:27

a process.

Marc Preston:00:46:28

Most certainly because if it's easier to reel it back in, I can tell my,

Marc Preston:00:46:31

my students, uh, I say, listen, I'd rather reel you back in and have to

Marc Preston:00:46:34

get my foot on your butt to get you to create, you know, it's good just

Marc Preston:00:46:37

to kind of throw it all out there.

Marc Preston:00:46:38

Then you kind of trim it out.

Marc Preston:00:46:39

That's why you've got the shackles

Craig Shoemaker:00:46:41

to begin with, though.

Craig Shoemaker:00:46:42

It's doesn't work.

Craig Shoemaker:00:46:43

It doesn't work as well.

Craig Shoemaker:00:46:43

You're not in.

Craig Shoemaker:00:46:44

Like I say, genuine energy flow.

Craig Shoemaker:00:46:46

And here's the other thing is the people in the room are in fear that they have to

Craig Shoemaker:00:46:51

go, they have to get the job next year.

Craig Shoemaker:00:46:54

They're auditioning constantly.

Craig Shoemaker:00:46:55

Writers are always auditioning for the job the following year.

Marc Preston:00:46:59

Isn't

Craig Shoemaker:00:46:59

that crazy?

Craig Shoemaker:00:47:00

Oh, the entire time.

Craig Shoemaker:00:47:02

So there's backstabbing, there's shaming, there's, there's, um, one upsmanship,

Craig Shoemaker:00:47:08

there's, you'll throw out a joke and someone else will say it 10 minutes

Craig Shoemaker:00:47:11

later and that, and your joke ends up in there, you can't say, I came up with

Craig Shoemaker:00:47:14

that 10 minutes ago, you know, it's an hierarchy, there's, you know, uh, there's

Craig Shoemaker:00:47:18

the, the bigger producers, there's, It's unbelievable how it's not in flow.

Craig Shoemaker:00:47:26

Now the show runner, Jeff Franklin, my old friend, he did a great job.

Craig Shoemaker:00:47:30

I thought, and by the way, got fired, you know, from his own show that he created,

Craig Shoemaker:00:47:35

um, under, you know, some pretty shady accusations and, but there, again, by

Craig Shoemaker:00:47:42

the way, there is another hierarchy.

Craig Shoemaker:00:47:43

They took him down.

Craig Shoemaker:00:47:44

The people down here took him down because they didn't like the way,

Craig Shoemaker:00:47:48

He conducted himself or they didn't like their own egos were hurt.

Craig Shoemaker:00:47:52

And so it's an ego, ego driven business.

Marc Preston:00:47:54

Has this always been like that?

Marc Preston:00:47:56

And in terms of writing, when you only had four net worth

Marc Preston:00:47:57

three, no, we write a room that

Craig Shoemaker:00:47:59

are notorious, except for like, everybody loves Raymond

Craig Shoemaker:00:48:01

is also notorious for the opposite.

Craig Shoemaker:00:48:04

Very, very, I happen to know a number of the writers and absolutely positive.

Craig Shoemaker:00:48:08

They were out by six o'clock to get home with their families.

Craig Shoemaker:00:48:11

You know, Phil Rosenthal apparently was like one of the best show runners

Craig Shoemaker:00:48:15

in history, and then you've got the others that it's constant angst and fear

Craig Shoemaker:00:48:20

and control and power and all of that.

Craig Shoemaker:00:48:23

Where listen, the results are, they have great shows, but I'm letting

Craig Shoemaker:00:48:28

you in on the process on the inside.

Craig Shoemaker:00:48:30

Most of creative rooms are like that.

Craig Shoemaker:00:48:33

They're not supportive.

Craig Shoemaker:00:48:36

Uh, it's egos and fear.

Craig Shoemaker:00:48:38

And when people are in fear, the results aren't, you know, aren't so great.

Craig Shoemaker:00:48:43

So, um, but obviously there's exceptions to that.

Craig Shoemaker:00:48:47

And I hear everybody loves Raymond and some other, some other places,

Craig Shoemaker:00:48:51

you know, that they, they end up, you know, together for life.

Craig Shoemaker:00:48:53

You know, I know Sandler has his crew, they're together for life.

Craig Shoemaker:00:48:57

You know, you see that with the Will Ferrell group, although that just

Craig Shoemaker:00:49:00

broke up from what I understand, Adam McCain, Will Ferrell, over again, her

Craig Shoemaker:00:49:05

ego and stuff like, I mean, Mark, I'm, are you looking at them going, really?

Craig Shoemaker:00:49:10

You guys have kajillions.

Craig Shoemaker:00:49:12

You've had unbelievable success.

Craig Shoemaker:00:49:14

And now you're going to fight over this one thing and like not be friends anymore

Craig Shoemaker:00:49:18

To me my friends are friends for life

Marc Preston:00:49:22

Yep.

Marc Preston:00:49:23

Yeah,

Craig Shoemaker:00:49:23

and certainly if if there was a misunderstanding I would straighten

Craig Shoemaker:00:49:26

that out But they are friends for life and that goes to show you this transactional

Craig Shoemaker:00:49:31

Community that we're in in hollywood.

Craig Shoemaker:00:49:33

It's a transactional community, which again is why I left the liberals as well

Craig Shoemaker:00:49:38

You know, I left, I'm not going to be a conservative either, but I'd left the

Craig Shoemaker:00:49:42

liberals because it's a bunch of phonies.

Craig Shoemaker:00:49:44

Well, did you leave liberals

Marc Preston:00:49:45

or do they, or did liberals move in a direction?

Marc Preston:00:49:47

You're, I think, you know, we all grow and develop and evolve hopefully,

Marc Preston:00:49:52

but where you are here, but maybe the definition of what a liberal

Marc Preston:00:49:54

or conservative is has changed.

Marc Preston:00:49:56

I remember growing up in Texas.

Marc Preston:00:49:57

I remember I grew up in a more conservative area.

Marc Preston:00:50:00

My family was more liberal.

Marc Preston:00:50:01

There, there was still discussion.

Marc Preston:00:50:03

Some of my favorite teachers would stop down the class government or history and

Marc Preston:00:50:07

You know, we would have discussions about whatever, and they wanted you to know how

Marc Preston:00:50:10

to think and express yourself, and I was fortunate to go to a really good school,

Marc Preston:00:50:15

but, but as far as the Fuller House thing before I'd be remiss if I didn't

Marc Preston:00:50:19

bring up Bob Saget, you know, it's funny.

Marc Preston:00:50:24

Having grown up in the, well, the eighties and then seeing Bob Saget, Bob Saget was

Marc Preston:00:50:28

the dad, but I also saw him play, uh, his stage act was much more blue, you know,

Marc Preston:00:50:34

but, and then after he passed away, he had all these people kind of, he's the, one

Marc Preston:00:50:38

of the sweetest guys he was, there it's, I realized, wait a minute, I never knew

Marc Preston:00:50:42

anything at all about Bob Saget outside of his kind of Polar persona, not polar

Marc Preston:00:50:49

persona, but you know, being the dad or the blue comedy, that's a very good,

Craig Shoemaker:00:50:52

uh, it's a very good observation.

Craig Shoemaker:00:50:54

It is a polar persona because they're complete opposites.

Craig Shoemaker:00:50:57

He, he, he dove into that too, but the true him, you know, I've

Craig Shoemaker:00:51:01

known him since he was the deli slicer at pantry pride for my mom.

Craig Shoemaker:00:51:06

So I've known him since he was before comedy.

Craig Shoemaker:00:51:08

And then my first days in comedy were with him on stage.

Craig Shoemaker:00:51:11

And he was already a little ahead of me.

Craig Shoemaker:00:51:13

I was 17 and I started, he.

Craig Shoemaker:00:51:15

He used to do a bit that I love was, uh, he had a rig on his guitar and he

Craig Shoemaker:00:51:19

would like press a button and quarts of water would pour down from the guitar

Craig Shoemaker:00:51:23

while he sang while my guitar gently.

Craig Shoemaker:00:51:27

And, uh, you know, he'd say bottle of red bottle of white that makes pink.

Craig Shoemaker:00:51:32

Yeah.

Craig Shoemaker:00:51:32

These really silly, fun things that he would do with his guitar.

Craig Shoemaker:00:51:37

And he was like the man back then.

Craig Shoemaker:00:51:39

Then he went to Temple university.

Craig Shoemaker:00:51:40

I ended up at Temple university.

Craig Shoemaker:00:51:42

So I've known him since we were kids.

Craig Shoemaker:00:51:44

Basically.

Craig Shoemaker:00:51:45

And.

Craig Shoemaker:00:51:46

He was always the same guy.

Craig Shoemaker:00:51:50

He was always the same guy, no matter how big he became, he knew his roots.

Craig Shoemaker:00:51:56

He knows about love and commitment to family.

Craig Shoemaker:00:51:59

And that's who he always was.

Craig Shoemaker:00:52:01

And that's why he was beloved.

Craig Shoemaker:00:52:03

So playing that father was a very much a part of him.

Craig Shoemaker:00:52:09

And also playing that dirty guy is very much a part of him.

Craig Shoemaker:00:52:13

He got to explore both ends.

Craig Shoemaker:00:52:15

And I, it's crazy how much people have accepted that too, because a lot

Craig Shoemaker:00:52:20

of times people would cancel if he went on stage and talked about sodomy

Craig Shoemaker:00:52:25

or whatever he would talk about.

Craig Shoemaker:00:52:26

Well, I love

Marc Preston:00:52:27

this character he played on, uh, the movie or the TV show Entourage,

Marc Preston:00:52:30

and he played this guy who's just out of control, Hollywood guys like, well,

Marc Preston:00:52:34

is that more like what he's like?

Marc Preston:00:52:35

He was one guy, but after he passed, there was, I was, I can't

Marc Preston:00:52:38

think of the comedian's name.

Marc Preston:00:52:39

I mean, you probably know, but he and John Mayer.

Marc Preston:00:52:43

Uh, went out to the airport to go pick up his car, uh, pick

Marc Preston:00:52:45

up, um, Oh yeah, Jeff Ross.

Marc Preston:00:52:47

Jeffrey Ross.

Marc Preston:00:52:48

Jeff Ross.

Marc Preston:00:52:48

And, and, and,

Craig Shoemaker:00:52:49

and Mayor, yeah, they went and got his car.

Craig Shoemaker:00:52:51

That

Marc Preston:00:52:51

was an enlightening and very sweet and kind of

Marc Preston:00:52:54

like a really cool exploration.

Marc Preston:00:52:57

I guess it was about 45 minutes, an hour long.

Marc Preston:00:52:59

And I watched the whole thing.

Marc Preston:00:53:00

I was like, I did not know this about, how did I not know this about Bob Saget?

Marc Preston:00:53:04

Um, You know, but everybody said he was a total sweetheart.

Marc Preston:00:53:06

He was a mensch.

Marc Preston:00:53:07

He did what he could to help you out.

Marc Preston:00:53:09

And, and to kind of take it to Louie Anderson, people said the

Marc Preston:00:53:12

same thing about him as well.

Marc Preston:00:53:13

And I kind of see this, this through line that, and I had known that

Marc Preston:00:53:16

about Louie Anderson, that he on the down low would help people

Marc Preston:00:53:19

out just as a matter of course.

Marc Preston:00:53:21

Um, but, but did you, did you know Louie?

Marc Preston:00:53:25

Did you have to spend time with him?

Craig Shoemaker:00:53:26

Oh yeah, absolutely.

Craig Shoemaker:00:53:27

For 30 years and just a, a very giving spirit, a loving spirit.

Craig Shoemaker:00:53:34

Um, that was a wounded man, a wounded man who dealt with his wounds.

Craig Shoemaker:00:53:42

In a way of giving back to others.

Craig Shoemaker:00:53:46

Um, that was his jam is he would, he was very present, a good person, you know.

Craig Shoemaker:00:53:54

Um, obviously some, some wounds that affected him for his entire life,

Craig Shoemaker:00:54:00

including his, You know, obesity or whatever he was dealing with a lot

Craig Shoemaker:00:54:04

of stuff, but one of the ways he dealt with it was to give laughter,

Craig Shoemaker:00:54:08

give joy, hand that to people and acknowledge you in the room.

Craig Shoemaker:00:54:13

He was just one of those guys.

Craig Shoemaker:00:54:14

Both of them had that in common was.

Craig Shoemaker:00:54:18

They'd stop and acknowledge you in front of them, you know, even though

Craig Shoemaker:00:54:23

in this crazy busy world of fame and people pulling on you and agents

Craig Shoemaker:00:54:28

and producers and all that kind of stuff, they would stop and have these

Craig Shoemaker:00:54:32

qualities that could not be compromised.

Craig Shoemaker:00:54:35

And about both of them had that in common.

Craig Shoemaker:00:54:37

Well

Marc Preston:00:54:46

you made a really good point.

Marc Preston:00:54:47

You said they, you said that there were wounds that he

Marc Preston:00:54:51

dealt with by helping people.

Marc Preston:00:54:52

Laugh and isn't there kind of this the Rubicon there's this place you cross I

Marc Preston:00:54:57

think as you get older that you could either be bitter and pissed off and angry

Marc Preston:00:55:01

at people that done you're wrong or you Go, I'm gonna be true to what it is that

Marc Preston:00:55:06

I am and who I am and do the best I can to leave the best mark I can and and

Marc Preston:00:55:10

sometimes it seems hard But you know what as much as you do it for others it bounces

Marc Preston:00:55:14

back on you That's that's what I've found, you know, and that's I'm not saying I'm

Marc Preston:00:55:18

perfect God knows we all have our flaws, but, you know, it being a comedian, isn't

Marc Preston:00:55:23

that your part and parcel right there?

Marc Preston:00:55:24

You're taking your life and you're balling it up and you're coming

Marc Preston:00:55:27

together with Ideas and and and whatever they're gonna be made people

Marc Preston:00:55:32

think at the same time You're gonna make them hopefully feel better and

Marc Preston:00:55:35

be able to laugh themselves go this.

Marc Preston:00:55:36

It's not really not all that bad Yeah, no, and that's actually

Craig Shoemaker:00:55:40

I'm teaching it now Instead of just coming and performing and,

Craig Shoemaker:00:55:45

you know, all that kind of stuff, which, you know, that inspired me in the past.

Craig Shoemaker:00:55:49

I was inspired by people's attention and love and all that kind of stuff.

Craig Shoemaker:00:55:54

But then it switched for me, and now it's switched into, I'm trying to get people,

Craig Shoemaker:00:55:59

I'm teaching them how to alchemize their own humor, their own laughter, their own

Craig Shoemaker:00:56:02

sense of self, and turn it into gold.

Craig Shoemaker:00:56:06

And this is what I, this is what my purpose is now.

Craig Shoemaker:00:56:09

Uh, and that's my legacy.

Craig Shoemaker:00:56:11

That's, that's, that's what, if from now on I'll still make people

Craig Shoemaker:00:56:15

laugh, still do great shows,

Marc Preston:00:56:17

but it's just going to be more.

Marc Preston:00:56:18

What about like, is there, is there a website that if people are like, Hey, that

Marc Preston:00:56:21

sounds like something I need in my life.

Craig Shoemaker:00:56:24

Yeah.

Craig Shoemaker:00:56:24

You go to craigshoemaker.

Craig Shoemaker:00:56:25

com or enlightenedup.

Craig Shoemaker:00:56:27

com.

Craig Shoemaker:00:56:27

I have enlightened up podcasts where it really is about shifting the paradigm from

Craig Shoemaker:00:56:32

this fear and doubt and worry and disease.

Craig Shoemaker:00:56:36

And it really is about enlighten, my slogan is we

Craig Shoemaker:00:56:39

need to enlighten the fuck up.

Craig Shoemaker:00:56:42

And you know, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, my, my other thing in my bio now is.

Craig Shoemaker:00:56:47

I'm still raw.

Craig Shoemaker:00:56:48

I'm still Philadelphia.

Craig Shoemaker:00:56:49

I still give it, you know, I've still got the angst and anger and all that

Craig Shoemaker:00:56:53

stuff, but I'm also along this other path of peace and prosperity and abundance.

Craig Shoemaker:00:56:59

So I'm stuck between namaste and kiss my ass.

Craig Shoemaker:00:57:02

That's kind of where I exist.

Craig Shoemaker:00:57:05

You know, it's our job on this planet to, you know, have these discoveries and

Craig Shoemaker:00:57:09

do this expedition inside of ourselves.

Craig Shoemaker:00:57:11

You know, when we project it to the outside, it's not going to do us any good.

Craig Shoemaker:00:57:15

And, and, and I live a lot healthier that way and a lot happier.

Craig Shoemaker:00:57:19

And that's the thing is we don't pursue happiness.

Craig Shoemaker:00:57:22

We thought the pursuit of happiness is not there.

Craig Shoemaker:00:57:24

That's a misnomer.

Craig Shoemaker:00:57:26

There's nobody that's actually doing that in our society at the top of society.

Craig Shoemaker:00:57:31

They are not encouraging that they're discouraging it, if anything.

Craig Shoemaker:00:57:35

So we now have the power.

Craig Shoemaker:00:57:37

So I have an enlightened up group, actually.

Craig Shoemaker:00:57:40

It's a private group.

Craig Shoemaker:00:57:41

You know what I have them do?

Craig Shoemaker:00:57:43

I say, why don't you guys share your favorite funny

Craig Shoemaker:00:57:47

movies and television shows?

Craig Shoemaker:00:57:49

Like, you know how people deal drugs or they deal alcohol

Craig Shoemaker:00:57:52

and go here, have a drink.

Craig Shoemaker:00:57:55

Here, have an All in the Family.

Marc Preston:00:57:57

You know,

Craig Shoemaker:00:57:59

Tell them about your favorite episode of All in the Family.

Craig Shoemaker:00:58:01

Oh, that's a show.

Marc Preston:00:58:02

Do you think All in the Family could be on TV right now?

Craig Shoemaker:00:58:05

That's something that people say all the time,

Craig Shoemaker:00:58:07

Rickles, they keep saying, you know, like, can it be now?

Craig Shoemaker:00:58:10

Can it be now?

Craig Shoemaker:00:58:11

Anything can be now.

Craig Shoemaker:00:58:13

It's a it's just anything can be now because now we have, you know, well,

Craig Shoemaker:00:58:18

if they don't take you down Now we have the freedom of podcasts and so forth and

Craig Shoemaker:00:58:23

that is the one good news There is nobody that's going to take your podcast down.

Craig Shoemaker:00:58:27

Yeah, but you know We do have these freedoms.

Craig Shoemaker:00:58:32

It's just that We need to get together and start a movement.

Craig Shoemaker:00:58:36

This is one of the things I'm trying to do right now is start a movement, a laughter

Craig Shoemaker:00:58:40

movement, where our energy will take over.

Craig Shoemaker:00:58:43

Well, right now it's misery loves company right now.

Craig Shoemaker:00:58:45

It's all about, you know, fear, angst, worry, all that stuff.

Craig Shoemaker:00:58:49

What if we one by one.

Craig Shoemaker:00:58:53

One person at a time, start forming this group that the only purpose is higher

Craig Shoemaker:00:58:58

purpose, is to bring joy, laughter, and happiness, levity, and light to the world.

Craig Shoemaker:00:59:03

It doesn't cost

Marc Preston:00:59:04

you anything to do it.

Marc Preston:00:59:05

It doesn't cost

Craig Shoemaker:00:59:06

anything.

Craig Shoemaker:00:59:06

So if you can gradually do that, and like I said, share funny moments, I'll have

Craig Shoemaker:00:59:11

them tell funny stories of their past.

Craig Shoemaker:00:59:14

Really, getting down to the roots of things is like, what

Craig Shoemaker:00:59:19

made you laugh in your life?

Craig Shoemaker:00:59:21

Why don't you share your joy instead of sharing some information about a

Craig Shoemaker:00:59:26

political opponent that you don't like, or some guy who's hosting a podcast who

Craig Shoemaker:00:59:31

five years ago dropped some N words.

Craig Shoemaker:00:59:34

Instead of sharing that to take someone down, let's lift

Craig Shoemaker:00:59:37

someone up by sharing that.

Marc Preston:00:59:41

It probably, in my mind, it takes a little bit less, it takes

Marc Preston:00:59:44

less effort to do that too, you know.

Marc Preston:00:59:46

It does, it's no effort.

Marc Preston:00:59:48

Uh, but you mentioned something about Don Rickman.

Marc Preston:00:59:49

What's your

Craig Shoemaker:00:59:50

favorite, what's your favorite comedy movie?

Marc Preston:00:59:51

My favorite comedy movie, um.

Craig Shoemaker:00:59:54

One that made you laugh, one that didn't turn off the screen.

Craig Shoemaker:00:59:57

I remember I had one, I was like, you gotta shut that screen off.

Craig Shoemaker:01:00:00

I can't, I can't laugh anymore, I hurt.

Marc Preston:01:00:03

I think anything Judd Apatow has out there, I, I, I think the stuff,

Marc Preston:01:00:08

I think the movies he puts out, I think are just the best kind of ridiculous.

Marc Preston:01:00:13

We need more of that.

Marc Preston:01:00:15

We need more kind of, in my mind, rated R comedies that are just kind of like

Marc Preston:01:00:19

It's nothing's meant to be taken serious.

Marc Preston:01:00:21

You know, that kind of a thing.

Marc Preston:01:00:22

I don't know why we don't have more of that.

Marc Preston:01:00:24

Uh, you know, he does,

Craig Shoemaker:01:00:26

he does have some, by the way, he started by opening for me.

Craig Shoemaker:01:00:30

I still have a, I still, I still have a mixtape that he gave me as a, like

Craig Shoemaker:01:00:34

a kiss ass present to, Hey, can I, can I drive with you to San Bernardino?

Craig Shoemaker:01:00:40

So, uh, yeah.

Craig Shoemaker:01:00:41

And Dave Chappelle started with me when he was 14.

Craig Shoemaker:01:00:44

And Whitney Cummings toured with me, you know, selling my merchandise.

Craig Shoemaker:01:00:48

A lot of these people, you know, I've either guided, mentored,

Craig Shoemaker:01:00:51

or just blazed the trail.

Craig Shoemaker:01:00:54

And it's amazing to me to watch them.

Craig Shoemaker:01:00:57

I love that you just said Judd Apatow.

Craig Shoemaker:01:01:00

I wasn't even expecting that.

Craig Shoemaker:01:01:01

That's great.

Craig Shoemaker:01:01:01

That's a real Kudos to him, man.

Craig Shoemaker:01:01:04

He kept at it and he keeps on delivering.

Marc Preston:01:01:07

Uh, this is 40 when that came out.

Marc Preston:01:01:09

He, sadly, with humor.

Marc Preston:01:01:11

That's

Craig Shoemaker:01:01:11

one of the really funny.

Craig Shoemaker:01:01:12

Oh my God.

Marc Preston:01:01:13

But the thing is, there's so much heart to it.

Marc Preston:01:01:15

I remember, uh, this, the way he brought his daughters into it, the

Marc Preston:01:01:19

way he had, uh, um, um, you know, I got an age where I try to think of

Marc Preston:01:01:24

somebody's name who I know very well, probably talk about him all the time.

Marc Preston:01:01:27

Who played the dad?

Marc Preston:01:01:28

Um, Paul Rudd, Paul Rudd, Paul Rudd.

Craig Shoemaker:01:01:32

Oh, there's a scene in there.

Craig Shoemaker:01:01:33

There's a scene in there.

Craig Shoemaker:01:01:34

I thought I was going to die.

Craig Shoemaker:01:01:35

I thought they were looking at tapes of my house.

Craig Shoemaker:01:01:39

Like did he had a magnifying glass looking for a hemorrhoid?

Craig Shoemaker:01:01:44

I mean, I was like, are you serious?

Craig Shoemaker:01:01:47

Or her smoking cigarettes, smoking cigarettes.

Craig Shoemaker:01:01:50

That's I'm going, are they did Judd?

Craig Shoemaker:01:01:53

Send cameras to my place.

Craig Shoemaker:01:01:55

I mean, it was like one of those movies.

Craig Shoemaker:01:01:57

I remember laughing my ass off.

Craig Shoemaker:01:01:58

My number one, by the way, is planes, trains, automobiles.

Craig Shoemaker:01:02:01

And it was one of those movies

Marc Preston:01:02:03

that

Craig Shoemaker:01:02:04

just laughed my ass off.

Craig Shoemaker:01:02:07

That's what I would encourage your audience to start trading, like trading

Craig Shoemaker:01:02:12

cards, your funny moments of your life, things that made you laugh, share it

Craig Shoemaker:01:02:17

with others, then you get together.

Craig Shoemaker:01:02:20

You go, yeah, you watch, so you watch that.

Craig Shoemaker:01:02:22

Oh, you watch Schitt's Creek.

Craig Shoemaker:01:02:23

Yeah, me too.

Craig Shoemaker:01:02:24

What's your favorite scene, all that kind of stuff.

Craig Shoemaker:01:02:27

And watch the energy shift, just watch the vibration change that you are creating

Craig Shoemaker:01:02:33

now, you're not allowing others with their fear to create your space, you

Craig Shoemaker:01:02:38

make your own space, this is what I.

Craig Shoemaker:01:02:40

Try to get people to look inside.

Craig Shoemaker:01:02:43

There's where your answers are.

Craig Shoemaker:01:02:44

And you are funny.

Craig Shoemaker:01:02:46

You know, everybody thinks, Oh, you're a standup.

Craig Shoemaker:01:02:48

I don't have any training.

Craig Shoemaker:01:02:50

My training was my mom, belly dance in my high school graduation party.

Craig Shoemaker:01:02:53

There's my training.

Marc Preston:01:02:55

Well, I know you got to get going.

Marc Preston:01:02:57

My friend, I appreciate you.

Marc Preston:01:02:58

But I got my, what I call my Preston's lucky seven quick seven questions.

Marc Preston:01:03:01

All right.

Marc Preston:01:03:02

Something a little, a little fun, little insight.

Marc Preston:01:03:04

First question, favorite comfort food.

Craig Shoemaker:01:03:09

Oh, I'd say.

Craig Shoemaker:01:03:11

Cashews.

Marc Preston:01:03:12

Cashews.

Craig Shoemaker:01:03:13

I love cashews.

Craig Shoemaker:01:03:15

I was just given the biggest, most giant bag I've ever seen in my life.

Craig Shoemaker:01:03:20

I had to give them away.

Craig Shoemaker:01:03:21

There were so many, and I just completed them literally yesterday.

Craig Shoemaker:01:03:25

The bag with crumbs is right over there right now.

Craig Shoemaker:01:03:28

I love cashews.

Craig Shoemaker:01:03:29

I used to steal cashews when I was a kid.

Craig Shoemaker:01:03:32

I had a, I had this, uh, like big pocket in this jacket that I would wear and

Craig Shoemaker:01:03:37

I'd put I would throw them in there when I went to the local Acme market

Craig Shoemaker:01:03:42

and I would put, I would steal cashews.

Craig Shoemaker:01:03:44

That's my, that's my comfort food.

Craig Shoemaker:01:03:46

I love, I love them.

Craig Shoemaker:01:03:47

Although they give me cash.

Craig Shoemaker:01:03:48

It's healthy.

Craig Shoemaker:01:03:49

It's not

Marc Preston:01:03:49

chicken McNuggets or something, you know.

Marc Preston:01:03:51

Now, who are three people alive or dead, uh, you can sit down

Marc Preston:01:03:55

with for y'all over coffee.

Marc Preston:01:03:57

Who, who would you want to sit down with if you had the opportunity?

Craig Shoemaker:01:04:01

It wouldn't be coffee because I never had a cup, despise

Craig Shoemaker:01:04:05

coffee, but we'll say the metaphoric coffee, the tea, the water, the

Craig Shoemaker:01:04:09

sit down, somebody that I, that I know or somebody that I don't know.

Craig Shoemaker:01:04:15

Yeah.

Craig Shoemaker:01:04:15

You know,

Marc Preston:01:04:15

three, three, three people that just anybody,

Marc Preston:01:04:18

anybody like, you know what?

Marc Preston:01:04:19

I would love just to sit down for me at Judd Apatow is one of

Marc Preston:01:04:22

the guys I would love to talk to.

Marc Preston:01:04:23

Of course, I've had a chance to talk to you a number of times, but somebody

Marc Preston:01:04:26

that you, you feel like you could learn from that you're having a conversation.

Craig Shoemaker:01:04:30

Bruce Springsteen, without a, without a doubt.

Craig Shoemaker:01:04:33

Someone just got me a book of Bruce Springsteen and Barack

Craig Shoemaker:01:04:36

Obama, their conversations.

Craig Shoemaker:01:04:37

So I'd say Barack Obama, I think that, uh, he and I, believe it or

Craig Shoemaker:01:04:41

not, have a very similar background.

Craig Shoemaker:01:04:44

And, um, someone pointed out to me that some very successful people

Craig Shoemaker:01:04:48

come from single parent families because we had to try harder.

Craig Shoemaker:01:04:52

So Springsteen had a missing father, basically Obama, same thing.

Craig Shoemaker:01:04:58

I'd like to, I'd like to, you know, I like to sit down with them.

Craig Shoemaker:01:05:02

And, um, let's see about a woman.

Craig Shoemaker:01:05:05

Um, I mean, there's, there are several women that Meryl Streep, Meryl Streep

Craig Shoemaker:01:05:11

is a genius of a different level.

Craig Shoemaker:01:05:15

She is a whole other level.

Craig Shoemaker:01:05:17

And don't

Marc Preston:01:05:18

look up.

Marc Preston:01:05:19

Did you see don't look up?

Craig Shoemaker:01:05:20

I did.

Craig Shoemaker:01:05:20

And I also saw, I saw outtakes.

Craig Shoemaker:01:05:25

Where she did 20 different conversations on the phone that she made up on the spot.

Craig Shoemaker:01:05:31

You should see this.

Craig Shoemaker:01:05:32

Adam McKay put it out.

Craig Shoemaker:01:05:34

It's 20 different, completely different conversations that

Craig Shoemaker:01:05:39

she's having on the phone.

Craig Shoemaker:01:05:40

Make, made every one of them up on the spot.

Craig Shoemaker:01:05:43

It took her to a whole other level for me.

Marc Preston:01:05:47

Like you saw improv.

Marc Preston:01:05:48

That's not something you would expect from her.

Marc Preston:01:05:50

That's Jedi.

Marc Preston:01:05:50

No.

Craig Shoemaker:01:05:51

She's Jedi.

Craig Shoemaker:01:05:52

She's a Jedi master.

Craig Shoemaker:01:05:54

I would love to sit down with her.

Craig Shoemaker:01:05:56

And, and maybe even make out with her too.

Craig Shoemaker:01:05:58

I'd like to make out with

Marc Preston:01:05:59

her.

Marc Preston:01:06:00

Why not?

Marc Preston:01:06:01

Why?

Marc Preston:01:06:02

Life's life, my friend.

Marc Preston:01:06:03

She's very

Craig Shoemaker:01:06:03

sexy to me because she's so talented.

Craig Shoemaker:01:06:06

I love talent as sexy to me.

Craig Shoemaker:01:06:09

Like Stevie Nicks, if she could sing.

Craig Shoemaker:01:06:13

Silver Springs to me, you know, I don't care how heavy she is.

Craig Shoemaker:01:06:18

I don't care if she's older.

Craig Shoemaker:01:06:20

That song just really hits my whole self spirit.

Craig Shoemaker:01:06:25

And that is somebody else I'd probably want to sit down with as well.

Craig Shoemaker:01:06:29

But for me, you

Marc Preston:01:06:30

know, for me, it's Helen Mirren.

Marc Preston:01:06:32

I was an older person, you know, cause she's got that sass, you know, you know,

Craig Shoemaker:01:06:38

I'm in complete agreement with her.

Craig Shoemaker:01:06:41

She, that is one sexy woman because she has confidence in who she is.

Craig Shoemaker:01:06:47

She's even been naked.

Craig Shoemaker:01:06:48

She doesn't care that that is, she's another one.

Craig Shoemaker:01:06:52

She's an auteur.

Craig Shoemaker:01:06:53

She's really, really at the top of her game.

Craig Shoemaker:01:06:56

Uh, yeah, I'm, I agree with that.

Marc Preston:01:06:58

Well, on that note, when you were a kid, who was your celebrity crush?

Craig Shoemaker:01:07:02

Farrah Fawcett.

Marc Preston:01:07:04

And of course you had to have the poster, right?

Craig Shoemaker:01:07:06

I had the poster and then she ended up

Craig Shoemaker:01:07:08

doing my movie, The Love Master.

Marc Preston:01:07:10

Uh, really?

Marc Preston:01:07:11

Yeah,

Craig Shoemaker:01:07:12

so I was rehearsing with her, in a car, in a SUV, just the two of

Craig Shoemaker:01:07:19

us, and I was practically calling her Ms.

Craig Shoemaker:01:07:22

Fawcett, you know, thanks for doing my movie, I really appreciate it, you

Craig Shoemaker:01:07:26

know, oh, geez, I'm a big admirer of yours, long time, and she goes, oh,

Craig Shoemaker:01:07:31

shut up, I'm just here because I want to know if that love master is real.

Craig Shoemaker:01:07:35

And she reaches over and I mean, there was no horn in my crotch.

Craig Shoemaker:01:07:39

I'm not carat type.

Craig Shoemaker:01:07:40

She reached over and grabbed my junk.

Craig Shoemaker:01:07:44

And I, what was sad about this Mark is I was not ready for my

Craig Shoemaker:01:07:48

closeup because I was so nervous.

Craig Shoemaker:01:07:50

I practically had an any in my crotch and I was so nervous.

Craig Shoemaker:01:07:55

And then, then I was ready for my closeup and she wasn't.

Craig Shoemaker:01:07:58

Um, but, uh, you know, I could not believe.

Craig Shoemaker:01:08:01

you know, she did it like 100.

Craig Shoemaker:01:08:04

I

Marc Preston:01:08:04

think she did this for that.

Marc Preston:01:08:06

That's, that's, that's, that's, that is such a cool

Marc Preston:01:08:08

experience to have that person.

Marc Preston:01:08:09

You can correct.

Marc Preston:01:08:10

Pretty

Craig Shoemaker:01:08:10

cool.

Craig Shoemaker:01:08:11

Like my lifetime crush here.

Craig Shoemaker:01:08:13

She was grabbing my junk.

Craig Shoemaker:01:08:14

So, um, but yeah, I mean, I'd say that that's the one

Marc Preston:01:08:19

we're now, as we're wrapping up the questions, definition

Marc Preston:01:08:22

of a perfect day for you get up.

Marc Preston:01:08:25

What, what, what, what's the arc of that perfect day for you?

Craig Shoemaker:01:08:29

Well, I really love watching my kids sleep.

Craig Shoemaker:01:08:34

So they would still be asleep and I would go and I'd peek in them.

Craig Shoemaker:01:08:38

And I'd just see these beautiful innocent faces, just in dreamland.

Craig Shoemaker:01:08:42

And that's one of my starts of a day that I absolutely love.

Craig Shoemaker:01:08:50

Connecting with others, you know, however that may be, um, really nice

Craig Shoemaker:01:08:56

connections, how are you, here's some, you know, share some wisdom with them,

Craig Shoemaker:01:09:01

share some, something I read, some, you know, meme or whatever it is, share some

Craig Shoemaker:01:09:05

laughs, that's a real big one for me.

Craig Shoemaker:01:09:08

Um, getting together with friends with no pomp and circumstance, just getting

Craig Shoemaker:01:09:16

together and, um, and sharing with one another, you know, who we truly are.

Craig Shoemaker:01:09:22

I mean, that's my, that's my great day.

Marc Preston:01:09:25

It comes down to connection and laughter a lot of what you're saying.

Marc Preston:01:09:27

I dig it.

Marc Preston:01:09:28

And, um, now if you're on one year exotic Island, you can bring one CD or album,

Marc Preston:01:09:33

one album and one movie one for one year.

Marc Preston:01:09:36

What are you, what are the, what's the album and movie

Marc Preston:01:09:38

you're going to bring with you?

Craig Shoemaker:01:09:39

Wow.

Craig Shoemaker:01:09:41

You know, I can watch Braveheart over and over again.

Craig Shoemaker:01:09:44

You know, I like epics.

Craig Shoemaker:01:09:46

You know, Godfather's in there.

Craig Shoemaker:01:09:48

You know, I mean, I love epic movies.

Craig Shoemaker:01:09:52

So I'd say, I'd say Braveheart sounds weird for a comedian.

Craig Shoemaker:01:09:55

It loves to laugh.

Craig Shoemaker:01:09:56

There was no laughs in there except for when they do something with their

Craig Shoemaker:01:09:59

skirts, but that's, that's about it.

Craig Shoemaker:01:10:02

And album, um, I guess the best of the Eagles.

Craig Shoemaker:01:10:09

Really?

Craig Shoemaker:01:10:10

It's not Bruce

Marc Preston:01:10:10

Springsteen.

Craig Shoemaker:01:10:12

That's a, that's a good point.

Craig Shoemaker:01:10:14

The problem with Springsteen is, yeah, well, it would have to be a best of.

Craig Shoemaker:01:10:18

Yeah.

Craig Shoemaker:01:10:18

Because there's so much It is weird that I didn't say him, but I love the harmonies,

Craig Shoemaker:01:10:25

and Springsteen doesn't really have those.

Marc Preston:01:10:27

Yeah, that's true, yeah.

Marc Preston:01:10:28

Um,

Craig Shoemaker:01:10:29

you know, I love harmony, and I think it's so beautiful

Craig Shoemaker:01:10:32

the way they harmonize, even though they had They were not harmonious as

Craig Shoemaker:01:10:37

people, Glenn Frey and And so on, they were, they were at odds, Don Felder.

Craig Shoemaker:01:10:45

But to listen to that guitar riff on hotel, California, that's

Craig Shoemaker:01:10:51

something I could listen to over and over and over again.

Craig Shoemaker:01:10:54

I mean, yeah, the extended version.

Craig Shoemaker:01:10:56

So they have, they have so many hits that are just, and it's diverse.

Craig Shoemaker:01:11:02

Their music is very diverse.

Marc Preston:01:11:04

So the last two questions are 16 years old.

Marc Preston:01:11:07

You're jumping in the DeLorean.

Marc Preston:01:11:08

What's that one piece of advice you're going to go back

Marc Preston:01:11:10

in time and give yourself?

Craig Shoemaker:01:11:13

I'd say it's, um, it's to find, find my true spirit.

Craig Shoemaker:01:11:21

Um,

Craig Shoemaker:01:11:24

the, the answers are spiritual, not visual, not anything on the outside that

Craig Shoemaker:01:11:32

constantly regroup in that way, in a way of significance with a higher source and

Craig Shoemaker:01:11:40

tap into that As opposed to the stuff, you know, look, I've had the Emmys, I've

Craig Shoemaker:01:11:45

got comedian the year, all these awards.

Craig Shoemaker:01:11:48

I would like to say that my, my best trophy was the horse's ass trophy I

Craig Shoemaker:01:11:52

got at my ex-wife's family reunion.

Craig Shoemaker:01:11:54

I earned that.

Craig Shoemaker:01:11:55

I earned that horse's ass trophy . But

Marc Preston:01:11:58

I am so, and by the way, that's, that's

Marc Preston:01:12:01

something I would love to get.

Craig Shoemaker:01:12:02

I know, I, I'm so sorry about that, that I brought that up.

Craig Shoemaker:01:12:04

I didn't wanna make you jealous.

Craig Shoemaker:01:12:06

But I truly earned it.

Craig Shoemaker:01:12:07

But, but that is significant to say that the other thing, the big lesson

Craig Shoemaker:01:12:12

in the DeLorean is going back is be okay with the failures, lean into them.

Craig Shoemaker:01:12:18

You know, I teach this all the time is like, that's the funniest

Craig Shoemaker:01:12:22

stuff is when you can admit your faults and your failures, don't try

Craig Shoemaker:01:12:26

to be something that I'm not, I, I kept pursuing things and stuff.

Craig Shoemaker:01:12:32

And I will tell you this, the loneliest night of my life.

Craig Shoemaker:01:12:36

Was winning the comedian of the year at the American comedy awards.

Craig Shoemaker:01:12:40

Loneliest night of my life.

Craig Shoemaker:01:12:43

It was so filled with shame.

Craig Shoemaker:01:12:46

I was shamed literally.

Craig Shoemaker:01:12:48

It was just, I had a target on my back at that time and all the things I thought

Craig Shoemaker:01:12:53

it would achieve were the opposite.

Marc Preston:01:12:56

And that's a common thing with a lot of people I've heard.

Marc Preston:01:12:58

It's that when you think you've reached the mountaintop, really,

Marc Preston:01:13:01

it's all this other stuff that really is of more substantive value.

Marc Preston:01:13:06

You know, the, the awards and all that stuff in and of themselves didn't hold

Marc Preston:01:13:09

the value, but the, you know, like you talk about friends back home and family

Marc Preston:01:13:12

and, and the things that you do hold, you know, so, you know, really kind of

Marc Preston:01:13:16

finding who you are sooner than later.

Marc Preston:01:13:19

And that's, that's something we're always doing.

Craig Shoemaker:01:13:21

That's exactly right.

Craig Shoemaker:01:13:22

That's, that's when you're jumping at DeLorean.

Craig Shoemaker:01:13:25

That's what you, that's what you do.

Craig Shoemaker:01:13:27

You, you, you get into your, your higher purpose, your highest

Craig Shoemaker:01:13:30

self, your source, your source energy, your genuine energy flow.

Craig Shoemaker:01:13:34

That's what you go into.

Craig Shoemaker:01:13:35

Not someone else's no agents and producers and fear based people and parties and.

Craig Shoemaker:01:13:41

Religions, just dive as deep as you possibly can into your own essence,

Craig Shoemaker:01:13:48

your true self, which is joy and laughter and light and levity.

Marc Preston:01:13:51

And last question, who, if you had a choice of anybody, when

Marc Preston:01:13:55

it's time for the Craig Shoemaker documentary, who's narrating it for you.

Craig Shoemaker:01:14:02

Well, you know, everybody wants Morgan Freeman.

Craig Shoemaker:01:14:05

Yeah.

Craig Shoemaker:01:14:05

I'll do, I'll give you my Morgan Freeman.

Craig Shoemaker:01:14:07

I ended the frame.

Craig Shoemaker:01:14:08

That's all sag prison where nothing but a set of mother prison clothes and a, an old

Craig Shoemaker:01:14:13

rock hammer nearly worn down to the nub.

Craig Shoemaker:01:14:15

I would want him doing my March of the shoemakers.

Craig Shoemaker:01:14:17

Um, he, uh, Yeah, there's no better, no better narrator

Craig Shoemaker:01:14:23

than him or James Earl Jones.

Craig Shoemaker:01:14:25

Uh, but, um, yeah, I mean, I think that's, uh, you know, uh, Liam Schreiber,

Craig Shoemaker:01:14:32

you know, maybe if I was, I would like him to narrate all my bad sports

Craig Shoemaker:01:14:37

moments, cause it's the opposite of him narrating all these documentaries

Craig Shoemaker:01:14:42

and, you know, back, uh, you know, watching athletes and stuff, I would

Craig Shoemaker:01:14:46

love to have all of my non achievements.

Craig Shoemaker:01:14:50

I'll put it,

Marc Preston:01:14:51

put it in one.

Marc Preston:01:14:52

He's knocking it out of the park.

Marc Preston:01:14:53

Yeah.

Marc Preston:01:14:53

Uh, with those mattress store commercials, he just had that dry, just

Marc Preston:01:14:57

kind of humor thing he's got going on.

Marc Preston:01:14:59

It is spot on, but, uh, man, my friend, uh, I appreciate you, uh, more than,

Marc Preston:01:15:04

you know, spending time with me.

Marc Preston:01:15:06

This is, this is great.

Marc Preston:01:15:07

It's the official very first.

Marc Preston:01:15:08

First episode, of course.

Marc Preston:01:15:10

Thank you again.

Marc Preston:01:15:11

Your generosity with your time is more appreciated than, you know,

Craig Shoemaker:01:15:15

no problem, bro.

Marc Preston:01:15:19

Okay.

Marc Preston:01:15:19

I told you he was a cool guy, right?

Marc Preston:01:15:21

Craig shoemaker, uh, the love master.

Marc Preston:01:15:24

Don't forget YouTube.

Marc Preston:01:15:26

Check out the love master, you know, back about 20 plus years ago, uh, my

Marc Preston:01:15:31

best friend, uh, Roger and I were, we're watching Craig and at a comedy show.

Marc Preston:01:15:36

You know, I knew there was something special about Craig because, uh,

Marc Preston:01:15:39

my friend, Roger, when I turned around at the, at the improv to

Marc Preston:01:15:42

look at him, he was turning red.

Marc Preston:01:15:44

I realized he hadn't taken a breath and I don't know how

Marc Preston:01:15:48

long he was laughing so hard.

Marc Preston:01:15:50

So that is a Jedi skill and a Craig Shoemaker is solid citizen.

Marc Preston:01:15:55

Uh, Love talking to him anytime I have an opportunity.

Marc Preston:01:15:58

And thank you again for checking out this, this debut episode of story and craft.

Marc Preston:01:16:03

I am so happy to have you here.

Marc Preston:01:16:05

Uh, this is something special I've been working on.

Marc Preston:01:16:08

Great, great guests are coming, uh, really intriguing people.

Marc Preston:01:16:11

So, come on by.

Marc Preston:01:16:12

Check it out each week.

Marc Preston:01:16:13

Uh, don't forget you can subscribe on your favorite podcast app.

Marc Preston:01:16:17

I do encourage you to do so.

Marc Preston:01:16:18

And also, uh, we have a really cool way for you to sign up for

Marc Preston:01:16:22

the newsletter at storyandcraftpod.

Marc Preston:01:16:26

com.

Marc Preston:01:16:27

Once again, storyandcraftpod.

Marc Preston:01:16:29

com.

Marc Preston:01:16:30

Now, when you get there, you can also leave me a voicemail.

Marc Preston:01:16:33

Kinda cool, huh?

Marc Preston:01:16:34

Uh, shoot me a note.

Marc Preston:01:16:35

It's cool if you have any comments about the show.

Marc Preston:01:16:38

And of course, if you want to follow me on social media, both Instagram and

Marc Preston:01:16:43

Twitter, you can follow me at air Preston.

Marc Preston:01:16:46

That's a I R P R E S T O N air Preston.

Marc Preston:01:16:50

Uh, now, uh, story and craft is on Instagram.

Marc Preston:01:16:53

Go to story and craft pod.

Marc Preston:01:16:56

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Marc Preston:01:17:00

And of course, again, you can find those links at story and craft pod.

Marc Preston:01:17:04

com.

Marc Preston:01:17:04

All right.

Marc Preston:01:17:04

That's it.

Marc Preston:01:17:05

I'm going to get on out of here and, uh, let you enjoy the rest of your day.

Marc Preston:01:17:09

Come on back next week.

Marc Preston:01:17:10

Next Tuesday, we will have a brand new show.

Marc Preston:01:17:12

Great guest right here on story and craft.

Announcer:01:17:16

That's it for this episode of story and craft.

Announcer:01:17:18

Join Mark next week for more conversation.

Announcer:01:17:21

Right here on Story Craft.

Announcer:01:17:23

Story Craft is a presentation of Mark Preston Productions, LLC.

Announcer:01:17:28

Executive Producer is Mark Preston.

Announcer:01:17:31

Associate Producer is Zachary Holden.

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Please rate and review Story Craft on Apple Podcasts.

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Don't forget to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher,

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Spotify, or your favorite podcast app.

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You can subscribe to show updates and stay in the know.

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Just head to storyandcraft.

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com.

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and sign up for the newsletter.

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I'm Emma Dillon.

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See you next time.

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And remember, keep telling your story.