Well, you have a rejected,

I wanna talk about rejected jokes from it.

So that's your--

By the way, I do have,

you asked an incredible question, Rob.

Wait one second. Thank you.

I'm gonna get something.

Can you stall for seven seconds?

Yeah, absolutely. Okay.

We can cut this whole thing out, watch this

and we've cut out and we're about to come back

and we are back.

Nope, nope, we're not gonna, we're gonna be back.

By the way, have I had too much coffee today.

I think I'm very lit up

like a fucking merman. I couldn't hear

what you were saying, but I'm sure it was amazing.

Don't worry it wasn't good.

(Ben laughing)

All right, so I have something

that I haven't taken down from the,

I have like a ledge with like all fun like

props and books and stuff like that,

but so I wrote for Letterman.

Oh, look at that, that's a big, that's the biggest binder

I've ever seen. So this is

every page of this is 10 to 15 jokes.

Now wait, are those jokes that all made it on the air

or just everything you wrote? I'll say,

out of all of these and I have 'em by,

so I'll say the first third are Letterman,

then the next are Saturday Night Live,

but this is I wasn't a staff writer

'cause I couldn't get the staff writer job,

so I was freelance, so I would have to write the jokes

Yes. by like 6:30 AM,

print them out, put them in a fax machine,

fax them to Letterman or SNL

and then you only get paid if they get on the air

and you would get paid,

for me it was $75 a joke for Letterman

and $100 a joke for Weekend Update.

So that's it.

And basically what would happen is

I got 21 jokes on Letterman

and only two jokes on Weekend Update.

But the ones on Letterman

I was working as a page at the time.

So I'm inside, so every time he went on stage

I would have no idea if he's gonna use a joke or not

and I was a page watching

and when he was done,

he would go like this ladies and gentlemen

Paul Schaffer and the CBS Orchestra

and then, you know, the monologue was over.

There's literally an episode where you can hear me

in the background and say, fuck,

'cause he didn't use any of my jokes

for like the 20th straight day.

And I got yelled at by my boss

being like, you can't, you cannot do that, you cannot yell.

And I was like, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry.

But yeah so I have, and I never thought to keep them,

but my dad after I faxed 'em, I would fax 'em to my dad

'cause I was like, nobody's seeing these jokes.

So the first one started June, 2004

and then the last joke I wrote was November, 2006.

Do you remember your first joke that got used?

I don't, isn't that terrible,

but you give me a date, give me a month and an date

and I'll pick one joke. Yeah.

But by the way, Just--

I'm sure some of these are not past the Pete.

No, no. Like, yeah.

I understand, there's no reason to,

lower our expectations.

Our expectations are really low.

Give me, pick a random joke.

This is amazing that you have--

Pick any month.

So pick any month and a year.

Gimme March, March.

March. Any year you want,

but I want March.

Okay, here we go, March.

That's what I want.

Okay, so this is, remember this is March, 2000.

Oh my God, what if it's a joke, making fun of you?

That would be, nothing would make me,

what were you doing in 2005? Wait a minute,

you wrote jokes making fun of me?

Oh my God, if you were in anything that was in the news

that I thought a 75 year old man would make fun of

because it's Letterman, I would do.

What were you doing in,

do you remember what you were doing in that year?

2005?

I had just left,

I had, I probably had had a failed TV show called Dr. Vegas,

if you didn't write a joke on that then you were not,

you were not paying attention.

I was doing The Christmas Blessing

my producers are reminding me,

which is a, I'm just gonna say is as cringy as that sounds

was a follow up to the biggest Christmas movie

ever made at that time called The Christmas Shoes.

Christmas Jews?

No, that would've been good.

Directed by Garry Marshall.

(Ben laughing)

Well, here's a real cheesy one, ready?

It is so cold outside that Jose Canseco injected his heater

with steroids to stay warm.

You get what's happening here.

(both laughing)

Oh man, some of them are really funny.

Some are not great.

Come on, you're killing me.

No one cares what we say,

no one listens to this podcast.

You can say whatever you want.

Oh here, California governor

Arnold Schwartzenegger won reelection

giving him his first full term in office

since 2003 recall victory,

seems that California believes

the longer Schwartzenegger is in power,

the safer they will be from robot attacks.

(Rob laughing)

I mean, listen, I'm trying my God damn best here.

It's so great.

What if Letterman had used a joke?

If Letterman used a joke, I would smile.

I would be so excited.

I would find out by receiving a check,

but what I also found out is back the day

that's you know, a story would come out

and everybody kind of knows what he's gonna make fun of.

So anybody else writing could write the same joke.

So I'll get a joke that sounded just like mine,

but I wouldn't get paid for it

because someone else had it as well.

So, but that was like,

it was just a matter of trying to sell enough jokes

to pay for the landline and the fax machine

and it wasn't like I didn't make money it was just

and then I remember I was doing it for like six months

before I got a joke on and I refused to put it

in my like resume that I was a joke writer there

until I got paid for it.

And then I was like, okay, I'm a freelance writer,

I've gotten a joke on and stuff like that.

I just love the notion of you in your page outfit.

Letterman tells a joke

and you just turn to some audience and go, huh I wrote that.

(Ben laughing)

Literally the person that tells them

where to go to the bathroom,

when they have to get up and they have to go to the bathroom

like this way, also I wrote that joke.

Get out of here, you psycho.

Who are you?