i’m Sto Haggus and this is my last [Applause] [Music] meal every person has exactly two things in common we all got to eat and we’re all going to die today’s guest is a stand-up comedian podcaster and movie star who’s coming to a town near you on his dreamboat tour he’s so quintessentially Baltimore that he once threw a stand-up comedy show where a comedian got stabbed with a crab zabroskus welcome to the show hey what’s up Josh thanks for having me that is true i did i was the I was hosting an open mic at Jimmy Seafood where a man named Icepic Rick stabbed a suburban Baltimore mailman with a crab shell with a name like Icepic Rick cuz that could be an ironic nickname where he’s never stabbed somebody with an ice pick didn’t feel ironic if you knew this guy did not feel like a big put on joke uh to contrast his gentle nature that’s not even the most Baltimore part of the story the most Baltimore part of the story is that you returned to Jimmy’s Seafood to shoot the official Baltimore Ravens schedule release video that’s right last year I can’t quit Jimmy’s um yeah no I was that was wild the Ravens just asked me to be a part of it um and dream come true obviously I love the Ravens so much and yeah I got to eat a huge lobster i got to eat a bunch of stuff that didn’t make it i guess what we’re learning today and with what you just brought up is you throw you give me hundreds of dollars worth of food for free I’m there baltimore schedule release last meals whatever it is i was going to ask if you’d thought about your last meal before if all this was sort of a revelation to you as a man who loves to eat I’ve often considered what might my last meal be and this was nice cuz I kind of approached this like let’s let’s take something from every part of my life like what foods were very uh like meant something to me at literally starting from like age five to currently some of my favorites so it’s nice it’s almost like if I’m about to die I want to relive every every type of little fat guy I ever was that is kind of like my own worldview too though it’s like that’s how I I always say food is just a lens through which I view the world and that’s kind of how I experience it have you thought about death a lot before i’m 36 so is it halfway gone you know let’s be honest these haven’t been an easy 36 Josh you know I’m not doing the kind of lat pull downs you are you know what I mean so I’ve seen you do the lat pull down i’m just saying like you are i’m trying i’m trying like everything else I’m trying to procrastinate not dying i’m trying to like all right let’s start working out before it gets too bleak stabby for course number one of your final meal on this earth we have the galacto buro that’s right we have the yoooo we got the fried calamari we have the grilled lamb chops a little bit of lemon potatoes and I do have one more surprise because we have to complete the holy trinity of the helenic surfentur from Ikaros restaurant wow baltimore crab cakes holy [ ] on the table wow i didn’t want I thought it was too much to also ask for crab cakes all the way across the country these look good too do you guys make these the actual story behind these uh so normally we have a fantastic culinary production crew i was uh watching something you did where you mentioned Ekaros restaurant and your mother being a waitress there i’m on their Yelp page uh and I saw their helenic surf and turf and I was like what an insane point in time and place so my mom was the the waitress and if we were lucky she’d come home with whatever leftover calamari was there but the thing you wanted was a surf and like when she when you were good when you had like good grades you’d get a surf and turf this is actually those kids got ice cream growing up the the lamb and the calamari dude for real one of my first baby videos I have one top tooth and one bottom tooth i am not even a year old i am eating a lamb chop off the bone like I’m just like like a little typewriter and then re-shifting even this was hard while they were setting this up I felt like a dog like those videos where they show how well their dog is trained like I felt like come on you really got to set the cameras up let me get let me add it so this is You can go at it i’m in it now jump in man i’ll follow you where you go oh yeah you want to get the one with the little bone the dip immediately little bit of on there get some jadziki yogurt marinade on the lamb chop m very well cooked look at that look at that you guys know what you’re doing around here you ever think about you’d be the perfect intermediary between like a My Big Fat Greek Wedding and The Wire season 2 concert yeah you know filmed in Ikaros film it really a lot of the where the Greek the backroom of Ikaros was where they filmed a lot of like the Greek meeting wait in the wire or in my big wedding not my my big fat Greek wedding shout out to Nia Vardalos these are good i was skeptical cuz they’re little mhm but they’re fresh this is insane for me because I would have this sometimes I think back to how much this meal shaped my life because my mom worked late you know there weekends and I’m a little kid who should not be up and I would watch SNL and so it was like this kind of beginning of what my life ended up where it’s like watching comedy now I’ll do comedy late into the night eat fried foods and wait for hopefully get the affection of a woman like that’s what that’s what that’s what all my Saturday nights have turned into and I’m like “Wow that set the entire blueprint for my life.” So right now I’m kind of nostalgic how central of a role did food play in your life from such a young age that do you have like an earliest food memory something that didn’t make the cut was one of my favorite you know I’m just going in with my hands one of my favorite things just a big Hebrew National hot dog that was a go-to lunch when I’m like five coming back from school being like “Yeah ma I think I’m not going to eat whatever [ ] vegetables you made fire up a big hot dog for me that’s what I called them a big hot dog because the Hebrew Nationals were the founders exactly there’s only snapshots from especially your early life that like show your relationship with food one of them is the Greek lady dealing bootleg pastries in your elementary school yeah miss Sophia miss Sophia miss Sophia kind of destined me to a life of being a little fat boy because my mom would send me with milk money so there was a little table where whoever didn’t want their milk just let it out and you could have some and when I realized like oh I can get milk for free and then get a cupcake from Miss Sophia i would get three pastries for the price of one milk and so I just had a three pastries problem like I started my the second I could buy food I was eating three pastries a day that’s how you bulk up as a third grader you know what I mean that’s how I think one of the most interesting things you said is when you were talking about this idea of every culture kind of being roughly the same every culture loves food too much they argue too much their family guilts them they’re loud they party the only culture that doesn’t fit that is like sort of the white American waspy wasps culture and so I don’t know it’s easy to look over the hill and say the grass is greener but does part of you like really value that level of community that you grew up with like for sure i think that’s a real that’s the unifying strength is like everyone is the same who are we kidding what you’re serving might be different but everyone’s light to the meal like no one’s punctual everyone’s a loudmouth you know we love food it’s like yeah everybody loves food everyone’s late i don’t want buttoned up investment bankers in my family i want a guy who’s running a restaurant illegally i want a guy who has the best food and no permits and just like that’s who I want in my life you know so you tried to sort of be a normie on that corporate hamster wheel though you had an incredible six-month stint as a parallegal yeah where you really did a lot of great work with that law firm pretty quickly I’m realizing they’re like doing foreclosure law firm and I was like well I can’t be a part of this so I just stopped working like two months in and it took them like eight months to fire it took them it took them like seven months to fire me because they were so buttoned up because they were so we have to go about the book i just take I was taking two-hour lunches i didn’t have my I lost my like badge to swipe in 2 days into the job I was just trying to time other people’s entrances into the building i would get there and I would just be like “All right all right all right she’s gone.” And I would get out of my car and like kind of walk fast and try and sneak him and they like show when they fired me was so funny cuz they had like a highlight reel of everything I did wrong they were like they were like and this is how this is how what a piece of [ ] company was they got everyone in trouble who I snuck in like they like had a record and then they showed me how little work I did compared They had like graphs and they showed me how many how little work I did compared to like Yeah I know man and I was like I know i was like I was like I’m shocked i’ve been living the grape i’m like I cannot believe this took this long cuz I was fun that’s the thing you can get away with anything if you’re fun right so I was the my boss had had talks with me multiple times where she was like nervous and she was just begging me to do work and I was like I’ll do what I can you know i was like I just cuz I was already living with I was on house money and I kind of wish I hadn’t gotten successful cuz I would have been a great corporate grifter oh man I would have been so good at CEO of PepsiCo by now yeah without question i’d be dude uh golden parachutes i just tanked another company i just got $20 million somehow i would have been so good at stealing money from corporations but alas I’ll just have to settle for a career in the thing I’ve loved the most since I was a child sucks dig into the galactical it’s dessert time sorry um yeah galacto the best this is my childhood right here and then a yohoo because let’s not pretend that everything was home-cooked delicious meal there was a lot of processed [ ] that I was What’s processed about yoooo chocolate drink it’s a good source of vitamins there sabi for course number two of your final meal we have the Toro sushi this is the fatty tuna belly and then we have the KBY Korean barbecue uh we have the live setup a little bit of pill leaf and lettuce for the bosom we have the samjang the ku jang the sesame oil a little bit of rice on the side and then of course all of the bonchan the kimchi fishcake radish kimchi potato salad a Dr brown’s cream soda zero sugar that’s right it’s healthy that This is protein this is protein bro um this is the adult region of the final meal cuz I’ve become a a diet soda freak mhm and this might be the best i’m a zero sugar root beer guy but this might be the best one uh cheers bro and so you know I like a wild cherry Pepsi i like an A&W root beer i like all the you know I like a classic although I’ve become a Coke Zero guy over Diet Coke rec in recent years tastes slightly less like poison yeah i didn’t know any cuisine i didn’t have tacos until I went to college like it was Greek food papa John’s that’s the only thing I ever knew so college is where I actually like I had ramen for the first time when I was like 20 and I was like when my friend wanted me to go to a ramen restaurant I was like “What are you talking about that’s the shitty soup you drink when you’re sick.” You know what I mean that’s the like And to this day I still think if I have kids they’re not allowed to know what real ramen is until they’re adults because it’s I just that’s a big differentiator dig into the Torah we got to eat this to fuel us the rest of the journey please please oh hands respect dude hands we’re friends galori galiori there we go good good pronunciation sasa karisto how often do you think about the meeting between Achilles and Odysius and Hades where dude where Achilles says “I would rather be a poor housekeeper above ground than king of kings among the dead.” That is nuts put that on real quick sorry let me interrupt you this is the thing I do best is like dealing with uh mortality and grilling meats at the same time they’re one and the same really there’s the Iliad and the Odyssey the two great Greek epics and Achilles is the man in the Iliad right he’s just like the first superhero no one can mess with him at all he could kill everybody if he wanted to he has pride whatever also gay which is really fun the first ever superhero was he gay or is he just like having sex with dudes yeah that’s a great you know that’s a very ancient Greek way to put that i think the only way to get attention back then was be a sick warrior i think if like RuPaul’s Drag Race was around Achilles would have been the greatest drag queen of all time cuz he was sassy it was like watching two drag queens go back and forth you know like they’re kind of cutting each other down yeah they’re reading each other to film it’s totally reading the filth he’s still the guy right he’s like the best and all he cared about was glory and Odysius in part he has to go into the underworld in part of the Odyssey and one of the people he he sees like friends of his that died and Achilles this guy who all he wanted was to be known as the greatest warrior and was right like he died but he was known as the greatest warrior he got his wish he’s telling Odysius how much he regrets it and how much he just he would have traded it all to just have a simple like you said simple farmer’s life and obviously I’m not the I’m not think I’m I’m ever you know the greatest anything of all time but that to me is just so emblematic of having these goals that get in the way of actually being a human being or like caring about whatever it is success money i think we have a big problem with overrating money instead of like quality of life in this country and I think like to me I definitely had the last couple years of my career where I was just like whatever opportunity I got I just said yes and it ruined me that quote is just the classic on your deathbed was it all worth it quote and this is beyond his deathbed this isn’t even like he found some peace in the afterlife this man for eternity is like I [ ] up so bad like that’s his whole thing is like why did I why was I so cool that didn’t make it into the movie Troy sexy Brad just like you look at a lot of comedians especially like comedians who are known for being fat chris Farley John Belalushi John Candy all going out not a good life expectancy no certainly you don’t want You don’t want to be on those actuarial tables of like you don’t want to try and get insured as a fat comedian over 30 yeah for real though how do you How do you balance that it’s just that man where I’m like I’ve been sticking with my workouts actually i’ve been lifting and stuff like that i think it kind of snapped into play kind of this year just cuz I was so unhealthy and I was like “Oh yeah.” Kind of that thought where it’s like you know by some metrics I’m overdue right you know I’m older than Farley Blue you know what I mean so it’s like even this tour it’s like “Yeah we go and please buy tickets to the Dreamboat tour out now.” Um we go pretty hard but then there’s like a nice a really long break and we’ll probably pick it up in the fall and like I’m just not I’m trying not to overdo it as much there’s a moment in your movie Let’s Start a Cult mhm where you’re sprinting towards the clown the exoter kick the [ ] out of him and the physical comedy is so good and I’m literally watching you do this and it’s like this kind of is Farley incarnate in a lot of ways like you really embodied Chris Farley in a lot of ways i mean that’s a huge that’s a huge compliment I can’t even accept you know but like I understand why and I appreciate it at my best I’d love to be able to someday get like get that kind of level going i’d love I mean that’s one thing I love about movies you get to be funny in different ways i know i came up do stand up and it’s all write your jokes say it then you also learn like damn this shit’s hard even your guys show is like there’s four guys you know there’s like four people with [ ] with like and then four cameras like there’s eight more people the I went to the bathroom there’s a full kitchen my podcast is me and my dumb friend who constantly gets things wrong you talked about like the feeling of food and comfort i know you’ve talked about food being the addiction that’s like the hardest to overcome i can’t exact like 100% empathize but I was like 290 lbs when I was like 13 14 years old the points where I reached a food for comfort are in like points of extreme loneliness and even we did our first tour ever where we just you know 10 cities in 17 days like rookie numbers but I never felt that feeling where you have people screaming for you on stage then suddenly you’re off a bus into a hotel room or just in the bus cabin and the little coffin by yourself and suddenly it was just this vacuum feeling of loneliness does any part of that make tour especially difficult to like stay on track with a diet unfortunately touring you have access to every vice imaginable yes and I don’t have great self-control but you could probably have that in your hometown too if you wanted to but I think there’s something different about it’s like a liinal space being on tour people know you’re only there for one night they want to party with you they want like everyone’s putting their best foot forward when you’re there on tour but that’s what it is it’s like every everything’s available to you you’re lonier than you ever than you ever were as much as I don’t want to end up lonely and I’ve definitely battled that in the past and like right now I want to get the ratio right where it’s like I was working way too hard and yeah someday I’m not one of these people that say I don’t know what I’d do if I was retired I hate working I love my job I got lucky as [ ] dude but even that it’s still work so for course number three we have the Popeye’s fried all dark meat chicken sir white meat that’s for losers Thank you and then we have the seaside fried shrimp and fries basket coleslaw ranch tartar cocktail all the sauces you could ever want classics and the brisk iced tea the brisk iced tea god my dad always had these oh my god this I haven’t had one in years this is so sweet my dad always had these on deck at his uh wood shop sometimes I would get you know he would babysit us at his wood shop but and I would crush Brisk Popeyes there was a Popeye’s between my mom would kind of drop us off at a public library and like do her errands and stuff and there was a Popeye’s between our house and the library and if we were good we got Popeyes so it’s like for real Popeyes like helped me learn how to read cuz it was like I again the food motivation in my life is so extraordinary and so Popeyes will always hold us this is very much childhood right here this just Popeyes and Brisk combo this This is what I graduated to after the Greek food this is me at like 10 and 11 just crushing brisks and Popeyes jesus oh man that’s so good you said that you wanted to be in a movie about Fat Camp mhm i imagine both of us grew up watching heavyweights at least like six seven times a year classic heavyweight so good do you have a dream cast for your Fat Camp movie maybe Jonah Hill now has to be the evil owner of the other camp cuz he lo he betrayed us and lost weight but he’s a a fat boy legend for sure my boy Caleb’s hilarious jamal Johnson caleb Herren caleb Herren unreal yeah it’s funny to just be like well I’m complimenting these people but also calling them fat at the same time grace Grace Kunel Schmidt’s hilarious do you view it as like an insult cuz I feel like within the body positive movement right it’s supposed to be like relatively neutral on the term but also you know there’s a reason people wax between like plus size and fat yeah yeah yeah i don’t for myself but so you you know everybody’s thing is like personal you know you don’t want to be like “Yeah they’re great.” What about the seaside fried shrimp and fries cuz this is I kind of base this around positive memories I had mhm and this is like oh it was so good i was in kind of a rocky relationship that but we just had one of the best days and we don’t we don’t talk anymore but that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy the good thing you know what I mean you can’t remember like that was maybe one of the best days of my life where we just like get a huge pile of some shitty seaside like this is such better quality than whatever we got like a Malibu you know seaside thing we got this on the beach then we did get Korean barbecue and we might have gotten the dessert we’re ending with too like I think I think I kind of recreated that from that day relive that day i’m going to try and kiss you at the end of this i might be receptive to it man we talk about food and comfort you know trying to relive that day though do you think if you were able to live that day multiple times it would have sort of lost its luster this is Odysius on the island of Calypso man wait hold on right odysius on the island with Calypso where he’s sort of tempted with this idea of like hey you can live paradise every day and then he realizes paradise every day is no longer paradise like there’s a reason he left that island to seek greater fulfillment now with Dishius you could argue had to get back to his wife his home he was the king of an island i don’t really have [ ] so if you came to me and you said you could relive paradise every day I think I take that you know what I mean i don’t have any said some [ ] man i want to stay on the island [ ] yeah yeah yeah i would have been there for sure sign me up uh that that part of the book actually like as a kid I was like sounds sick you said that you don’t really like to do a lot of political material you’d rather go up there and like tell dick jokes is that because you don’t want to talk about it or because everything just seems sort of like futile and doesn’t actually help i I think it’s just that that’s not my job is really what it comes down to now does it get harder and harder to not at least hint at some politics yeah I think and I think my second special had a little more politics than the first one i think this next one will have and not even politics but just like basic life ideologies that I think filter in um but at the end of the day we are comed like we’re clowns on the like spectrum of like a got a street mime and like a philosopher with a accredited degree in published literature we are we’re here yeah and here’s where the philosopher is here’s where the you know the the clown is right the guy making balloon animals and I think like that’s that’s what bothers me when And I’ve experienced it cuz dude you do a sold out 3,000 seat theater i’m not even an arena act right like some of these guys are arena acts you have 10,000 to 20,000 people like screaming cheering you on you’d think you were a genius too it just it just completely messes with your brain where you’re like I’m I’m Julius Caesar you know what I mean like I’m a genius that needs to be listened to but that’s not true fundament in my opinion right like there’s a real danger to thinking you’re too important in my opinion and I think I think this idea that we are important is nuts like I think we can be and I think but I think it almost has to be accidental like my job is to be is to be entertaining not tell you how to think you know you made a movie about someone starting a cult i feel like it’d be pretty easy for a comedian to transition to that cult leader i think you might be seeing that a little bit now you know with people having these big microphones do you think there’s something uniquely suited about comedians to like lead these cultlike movements we were the lowest rung of show business and the people that found us really if you really if you like us you have to really like us and then you’ll follow someone if you’ll listen to them talk for two hours about nothing you’ll do whatever they say you know what I mean when they start trying you’ll be like “That’s my guy that’s my thing.” Sounds like a cult leader to me man yeah I could do it i think I could do it why not do it i don’t know i’ll follow you man i have to find a compound yeah I have to cruise Zillow and then it’s like what side of the country what’s the weather going to be like that’s a good point it’s just a lot of little stuff you know but the actual cult leading I could do no problem it’s the logistics around it but like part of me I don’t know thinks that after this is all over and this will be all over one day that I can just like teach in a public school and mentor young children try and fix you know the the school lunch program is the one thing I want to do do you like have those dreams of like returning back and I don’t know actively trying to do some work i think being exposed to performing arts when I was very young was really helpful for me even in ways that I don’t realize now like I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I channeled my efforts into that and so I love starting small with where I went to school and all that kind of stuff but cuz I was very lucky my mom went above and beyond but she had a full-time job and she drove me cross town to like a slightly better school and that’s too much to ask for a lot of parents and I think if you can provide some support for kids that are struggling you should you know that’s a theoretical good i don’t want any credit for having a thought about what I might do in 20 years so don’t say I’m a good guy uh but you know it’s I do think about it so for the final course of your final meal on this earth we have simply the bread pudding alam mode bread pudding all I don’t know why but bread pudding just maybe it is the fact that it’s not as decadent and every part of my life is marked by decadence but the first time I ever got it was like it was like I wanted something else i was at this bakery and every time you’re visiting New York you’re like New York’s magic and I went to some place where somebody told me about some pastry and I got there late and they didn’t have it and then they were like “Well we also our other special is you know bread pudding alamote.” And I was like “I guess.” And ever since then I’ve been seeking them out and they just It is my favorite dessert ice cream’s great it really is just wet soaked bread it’s just bread it’s like a This is great it’s kind of peasanty mhm like this does feel like the kind of thing a peasant came up with with stale bread all lord stale bread and raisins a lord throughout his window literally yeah i mean I’m I’m sure it is but it’s so good you’re the oldest but also like the smartest child with all due respect to the Hawas brothers um but you’ve talked about this and having like the pressure from your parents to sort of like be the savior in a certain way and I imagine a lot of that was self-imposed but how did that play into your decision to become a stand-up comic and leave the leave the high-flying world of parallegalism i definitely felt the pressure to be to yeah get rich to save my family basically but I always thought that was through a regular job i was on scholarship i did all this stuff um but that’s I started standup at 19 and my dad always kind of blamed us as being like we forced him into a life of obligation like implicitly or explicitly you just said that to your face fully explicitly i should like during the Greek financial crisis like we should have stayed in Greece it’s like people are boiling shoes for dinner what are you talking about we should have stayed in Greece so much like Greek literature and the classics it’s about duty and legacy what do you want your legacy and your relationship to duty to be by the time you die in terms of I feel some artistic duty to like make good stuff i definitely want to make one i’m not happy with this you know I like my specials i think they’re very good go check them out fat Rascal on Netflix live at the lodge room on YouTube but I’m not satisfied and I want to keep growing as an artist and because I do love standup I think I have a duty to like try my absolute hardest to make something great but then after that you know whatever just live a good fun life you know from somebody who does tow this line of just being like an absolute dude bro homie who you can eat Korean barbecue and and drink beers with i think it is like a really special balance that you walk and I really love that i appreciate that thank you very much what do you think happens when you die i’m kind of in camp nothing i’m kind of in camp like nothing or something we can’t comprehend at all like to even talk about it would be like ants trying to sing opera you know what I mean like we can’t if it’s something afterwards our dumb little brain our human brains can’t we’re so ethereal that it might as well be nothing is what I think but again I don’t know [ ] i only take solace in the fact that I’m hoping the DMT releases you’re about to die means I’m just like perennially eating Korean barbec it’s going to be great hell yeah dude sign me up you ready to go on the lightning round let’s do it so if the one person dead or alive you’d want to share your actual last meal with I think I would go Martin Scorsesei i’m a big I’ve been getting into movies he’s the man he makes my favorite uh and just just so much was an animal was a complete piece of [ __ ] you know cokehead whatever made the best movies now he’s like a sweet grandpa dad like he’s kind of lived he’s made incredible stuff and kind of you know his wholesome Tik Toks with his daughter he made Taxi Driver and then like what does my dad think my male makeup is you know what I mean he’s capable of that range dude i’d love to be that guy at some point uh what song do you all played at your funeral uh Big Pimpin who’s your dream eulogizer at E Funeral i guess I’d like for it to be somebody I don’t even know yet i guess I’d like it to be like a nephew a kid uh you know what I mean like I don’t want to be first of all I want to outlive my friends because that’s going to piss them off the fattest unhealthiest one of us lives the longest that would be funny and then I would like it to be one of their children that loves me more than them this is an ultimate spite maybe one of them is back there listening right now uh what percentage of blame do you give Lamar Jackson for Mark Andrew’s version drop i’m sorry it’s written on the card for Mark Andrew’s two-point conversion drop in the divisional round against the Bills do I give Lamar yeah what percentage you give Lamar zero zero zero i don’t even like 10 it was short armed a little bit lamar had a didn’t have the best game but we could have won that one what’s your biggest fear i don’t care man you piss me off thinking about the Ravens now i’m never seeing another Ravens Super Bowl in my lifetime do you predicted the Ravens Eagles score to be 100 to nothing at Jimmy’s at Jimmy’s Seafood do you remember the actual score i don’t and we don’t have to go over it right now it’s finally stop are you happy i am happy yeah you seem happy and that’s awesome thank you dude i can’t thank you enough for being if you want to look in that camera right there and deliver your final words um my final words that I’ll definitely say on my deathbed buy tickets to the Dreamboat tour we can keep that audio just sub in whatever tour is happening yeah just just add it in every time uh for real man this is an incredible time i love what you do and I love you guys out there thanks so much for subscribing to Mythical Kitchen click the bell leave a comment i’m so I’m so full i’m hooked i’m done for the rest of the day for I’m canceling whatever I have tomorrow you know shotgun some diet Red Bulls and they’ll get us right no I’m going right to the nap zone we’ve got a double feature just for you watch Survive the Mythical Kitchen and Good Mythical Evening on Demand now at mythical.com