you know him from his comedy central special.

He's got a sketch special with comedy central,

with the Hasan Minhaj called Goatface.

Please welcome the very funny, Fahim Anwar.

(audience cheering)

[Moses] Fahim, how are you?

Thank you hold for applause, hold on.

Let's talk about your career.

What new forms of revenue Yeah let's talk about

multiple specials. I know.

Hey, how do we survive in this COVID world,

in this uncertain times, Moses?

I don't know, it seems like you kind of knew

how to pivot immediately.

You do a lot of online videos.

Yeah kind of, like, I think of you as a comedian too.

It's like standup is our main jam.

And then we have these other outlets, like, all right,

I'll do a dumb thing on Instagram

or I'll do a tweet, and once the stage is gone,

I guess you just kind of lean in on what's still available.

Yeah, because the stage, I think it's still kind of works

if you're a one-liner guy, but I think you and I,

I mean you're on a much higher level.

are very physical performers,

a lot of it, it's like in your body,

which you can't really do.

Totally, and it's a conversation with the audience.

So it's like, if they're really liking something,

that informs, you go, oh, let me milk this.

So it's the song and dance with an audience

and that's kind of informs your act.

So when you strip an audience away,

you're kind of creating in a vacuum

and that's tough for a standup live performer.

Yeah, 'cause unlike a musician,

where you just play your three minutes song,

stand up, if you're doing it right,

when you get beyond like out of your head

and you're doing it long enough,

you're essentially asking the audience for permission

every 15 seconds or so.

It's like, can I keep talking about,

my dick, my dick sucks. (Fahim agreed)

Yeah, so you've seen my new stuff?

Yeah, I've seen it.

I had an hour, it was about to come out.

We were about to tape, it was gonna be called

"My Dick Sucks".

And we had like MSG, and we had that rent out,

it was gonna be three nights.

Yeah, My Dick sucks.

And that's now my big catch phrase.

Oh my God.

But now it's like on hold.

And then you had the merch already printed out.

Yeah, I had so many boxes of my Dick sucks

and I don't know where to put it.

I have some of it in my place right now.

And it's not gonna make sense when things open up.

And my Dick is getting better. My dick is soft

My dick's as soft as this shirt.

It's not even true anymore.

It's not, it's a false narrative.

It's completely healed since the accident.

Totally.

I mean, there's some very sad options.

Like I was talking to Tom.

I mean, you can perform in a-

Wait, you did the truck show?

Yeah it's the best version,

I heard it's good.

I got asked to do it, but I think I was in Denver

for that week or whatever, but I hear it's great.

Oh yeah, you were in a COVID's fake protest in Denver.

Forgot about that.

No, I did some charity gig. I did some like charity gig

and it was in a airplane hangar

and they were all in tuxedos.

It was just like upper crust Denver.

I swear to God it's like I was doing stand up

in a bond movie.

Insane, all the hell gigs are things that were

essentially competing for.

Like yeah absolutely, airport hangar, who books that?

Like the tallest ceilings.

You know, the best thing for comedy is like in a basement,

low ceilings, packed together.

This was a hangar, like the voice just evaporates.

They're sitting so far away from each other,

but they were still happy.

Yeah, it's like, what can you do?

So that's the thing about standup comedy and yesteryear,

that we were just a distraction,

to shovel food and drinks into people's mouths.

Like we were there to keep them in their seats long enough

to pull up a dump truck and put it in their mouth.

Yeah people wonder like,

why do you do 45 to an hour of material?

Cause that's how long it takes to order a drink,

some food and then another drink.

Yeah.

That's what this art form is,

no painting is fueled by like how many people

can sit through it Yeah totally,

and I love how nimble this art form is too.

Where like, if they're a little late

they're putting the checks out on the table,

they'll tell you to like, to go like this.

You know, like go along, stretch it out.

And then you just, you know, do some more bullshit

for 10 more minutes until everyone signs their checks.

Nothing else, you couldn't do that like with a magician,

be like, more magic.

More cards, just get more cards, introduce more decks.

Just the magicians just vamping,

just trying to make some tricks on the fly.

Yeah that's why I used to go like, ugh,

I always cringe when people make the argument,

but let me say this is free speech.

And it's like, it's really, it's chicken wing speech.

It's just long enough.

The thing is, I think that there is that free speech thing

and you should be able to.

But it's up to you to jump over the hurdle of making it

funny for the room.

If like people are turned off all the time,

you haven't done the work.

The real trick and the beauty of standup

is taking that controversial idea or whatever your idea is

and doing the gymnastics and massaging it enough

where it's digestible for even someone

who has opposing view.

Like Bill Burr will do that all the time and it's great.

Like they earn the laugh.

You can still get your idea across,

you just got to do the work

instead of like free speech man, you don't like it.

People confuse just bombing with

people don't like free speech.

Yeah, like you didn't...

Your writing wasn't good enough.

Don't pretend you're Bill Hicks or something.

Right, I don't need structure. I'm screaming about--

Or they don't get it!

Like you're part of the problem!

No, just write a little more.

If you're doing your job, they should get it.

They should get it and like it.

So does everyone in your life

know that you have all this time off,

you're not performing on stage?

Like, are your parents being like,

Hey, why are you living out there?

Do you want to come home?

I have this thought, like, you get a sense of how much

your parents really believe in you,

by how quickly they tell you to get into real estate.

You know what I mean?

To like start selling houses.

For me, it was like, a few days like.

Yeah, the shutdown, like a week later,

like you should sell houses.

Like, Oh, you never believed in me.

(chuckles)

I'm finding out now and I always like

how that's the solution for like parents everywhere.

It's just like, if your kid was like

kind of a fuck up to begin with,

you think they're gonna kill it in the real estate market.

Like suddenly they're gonna be awesome.

If someone can't be a comedian

and muster to work for 15 minutes a night