Barbecue smoke rises into the air, mixing with the earthy odors of dust, sweat, and livestock. Booths offer knives, hats, and other cowboy gear. Although only two hours north of San Francisco, we could be anywhere in rural America. Except for, perhaps, the bartenders serving glasses of Chardonnay.

Behind the rodeo arena, Martin Kiff sits in his trailer in front of a mirror, calmly dabbing white makeup around his eyes. He’s been a rodeo clown since 1981, carrying on a long-standing tradition that we all recognize, but few of us really understand.

I grew up in a rodeo family, and I have to admit, the most interesting aspect of any of it was always the clown. As a kid, I watched these country comedians entertain crowds with wacky and corny routines, usually involving little cars, toilet seats, suitcases filled with lingerie, brooms, burros, birds, monkeys, chickens, or in one case, a Chihuahua named “Pimiento.” Today Martin has graciously allowed my slight obsession, and agreed to explain the world of rodeo clowns.

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Over the years, Martin has worked rodeos around the U.S., including the Professional Bull Riders tour and the Dodge National Circuit Finals (whose winners qualify for the National Finals Rodeo in Las Vegas). He’s worked with some of the biggest clowns in the business, people like Leon Coffee, Flint Rasmussen, and Loyd Ketchum.

But he still loves to do the smaller rodeos, and today’s event is definitely small. There’s no ESPN camera crews, no big-name professional cowboys on the schedule at Duncan’s Mills. Just local guys and gals competing against each other.

“What you’re going to see today, this is what it used to be,” he says, pulling on a pair of garish yellow and black striped socks. “This is how it started.”

Another bonus of a smaller rodeo, is that the clown actually gets more time. “I’ll be doing two bits today. Usually I just do one. At the big rodeos, they want it done in two hours. It’s Hollywood, it’s fast, not that much fun.” He chuckles: “Give me the opportunity to goof off a little!”

The staple of any rodeo clown act is material the audience recognizes, he adds. “You try to keep it somehow ag-related. One of the funniest things about comedy – pain sells. I do a bit with a little fire truck, I have to rescue a cat out of a tree. Everything breaks, there’s a chance I could fall off the ladder. Your classic comedy. All those Jackass movies – if those guys weren’t getting hurt, you wouldn’t be watching it.”

He recalls a favorite routine, where he announced to the crowd, in great detail, that inside one of the chutes was a vicious fighting bull, and he was going to release it into the arena. The chute opened and out charged his trained Great Dane dog, outfitted with fake bullhorns.

“He came running out 90 miles an hour past all the chutes,” laughs Martin. “Cowboys were killing themselves to get out of the way, falling over the fence. I’d just howl.”

Circuses like Ringling Brothers will hire the best clowns in the business, but Martin believes rodeo clowns are actually funnier. “We work in front of more people. You gotta play it by ear, you gotta deal with the elements. I’ve been in snow, I’ve been in 110 degrees, I’ve been in pouring rain.”

And when the bullriding event starts, the job gets serious, because a clown must also help protect a cowboy from getting stomped.

Bullriding is considered one of the most dangerous sports in the world. A rider attempts to hang on to a powerful 2,000-pound animal for eight seconds, and if he gets hit by the kicking hooves, the force can break bones, puncture a lung, or even kill a man. The pro rodeo circuit averages one or two deaths each year.

Fortunately for the riders, clowns study the psychology of the animal and learn how it moves, how it turns. A bull running at full speed is easiest to avoid, you simply step out of the way. But the smart ones, Martin says, will walk slowly toward the clown, because they know the human has to wait for the very last second to run away.

Sometimes being chased by a bull can be very entertaining. Martin recalls one rodeo in Salina, Kansas, when it was inevitable the bull was going to catch up to him. “I knew I was gonna get it, and I just started yelling as loud as I could: ‘AHHHHH!!’ He hit me right in the butt, and I went up and hit the top rail, flipped over and rolled, and landed in the seating area. I got up and kept going up the stairs, and there was this big fat lady coming down with a tub of popcorn. I stopped and thought to myself, clear as day, ‘You shouldn’t do this.’”

Martin couldn’t help himself. “I yelled twice as loud, turned around and ran back into the arena, and jumped over the bull who was still standing there at the fence! She was pissed. But the crowd went nuts, you know? I got in trouble, but it was just perfect.”

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Rodeo clowns trace back to the early 1900s, when organizers would provide comic entertainment to keep people in their seats during a lull in the action. The early acts dressed like actual clowns, hillbillies, or inept policemen, and performed rope tricks and riding stunts. Many were performers from circuses or Wild West shows, or actual cowboys making extra money between events.

The clown’s additional duty of protecting the cowboy from an angry bull began in the 1920s, when rodeos started using Brahma bulls from Texas, a breed known for its distinctive humped back and nasty habit of attacking a man on the ground. Barrels were later added to clown routines, to both distract the bull, and protect the clown from harm. (One of the most famous clowns from this era, Slim Pickens, eventually starred in dozens of movies including the classic “Dr. Strangelove.”)

Until the early 1980s, there was only one type of rodeo clown. They did comic bits, joshed with the announcer, and protected riders from a wild horse or bull. At this time Wrangler began sponsoring bullfight competitions, and the events were so popular a subset of clown evolved called the bullfighter. These guys dressed like clowns, but usually without makeup. They didn’t tell jokes or brandish wacky props. Their sole task was to protect the cowboy, running around the bull and distracting it away from the rider.

The clown then became known as the barrelman, or “the man in the can.” Most rodeos now feature bullfighters as well as a barrelman. Dividing up the duties meant that clowns now have more time and freedom to develop their material.

Utah native Troy “The Wild Child” Lerwill features trick motorcycle riding as part of his routines. Nebraska’s Butch Lehmkuhler incorporates a trampoline into his act. Dale “Gizmo” McCracken from Missouri has created the character of a crackpot inventor, and introduces a series of homemade contraptions. Montanan Flint Rasmussen, perhaps the most famous rodeo clown working today, uses his natural athletic skills to perform acrobatic comic bits based on rock music and popular movies.

“Flint has basically put us back on the map,” Martin says. “He has dance moves that a white guy shouldn’t have. He’s a funny, funny guy. It’s nice to have someone at the top represent you, that you really have a lot of respect for.”

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Martin grew up in the nearby town of Healdsburg, and like most young adults in the 1970s, he loved the zany wit of that era’s comedians. He absorbed everyone from Richard Pryor to George Carlin, Woody Allen, Bill Irwin, and Monty Python.

While studying at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, Martin got involved with the school’s rodeo team. He paid his dues, and when rodeo expanded to include bullfighting, he chose to remain a clown.

“Some people like the pain,” he says now. “I was always a wuss in that sense. I thought if I had a shot to keep going in the business and stay around, that was where it would be.”

When he started back in 1981, the clown business was in a slump. “A lot of guys were getting out of it. The image of a rodeo clown was the washed-up drunk. That’s the way the country songs described it.”

He quickly learned how to translate comedy you love personally, into an act that works in the arena. Many of the classic rodeo clown bits get handed down from generation to generation, and not always with permission.

“A lot of people would see a good clown act, then they’d throw that into their own routine,” he remembers. “Then the guy who started the act, it wasn’t his anymore. It’s hard to go to a town and say, ‘This is what I do,’ and someone will say, ‘Well, we already saw that.’ Texas is famous for that.”

Martin tells me one of his bits he’ll do today is a classic circus clown car routine, that he’s adapted for a rodeo crowd. He loads his lip with a pinch of chewing tobacco and I follow him out of the trailer.

The afternoon progresses through the bronc riding and roping events, and throughout, Martin wanders around the arena, carrying a hockey stick. When the announcer asks what he’s doing, he explains that he’s looking for pucks. “The green ones,” he adds helpfully.

After the team roping finishes, the action stops and Martin drives a tiny yellow truck into the middle of the arena. Bales of hay are lashed to the back of the vehicle. The announcer again asks what he’s up to, and Martin replies he has a truckful of rodeo clowns. The announcer acts skeptical and makes a bet, that he’ll give 20 dollars for every clown Martin can produce.

Martin says no problem, opens the door, and a stream of children pours out of the truck. The announcer counts each one out loud as they emerge, on up to an amazing 26 kids total, all laughing and fidgety. It’s hard to describe in words, but it’s really hilarious to watch.

“Okay, but I thought you said these were rodeo clowns,” says the announcer. “They have to be funny.”

Oh, they’re funny, Martin answers. He gathers all the kids and says he’s going to teach them all to walk like a bulldogger – a burly tough guy who jumps off a horse and wrestles a steer to the ground by the horns.

The kids all scoot their butts down, hold out their arms as if rippling with muscles, make tough facs, and swagger about like a group of apes. The crowd roars with laughter.

Martin says they’re now all going to walk like a barrel racer – a female rodeo competitor whose cliché is that of a stuck-up beauty queen. As one, the children all point to the sun, then take their index fingers and push up their noses into the air, and strut about the arena. Again the crowd goes wild.

Being from a family of barrel racers myself, I feel slightly guilty for laughing along. But not much.

The routine ends, and the kids dash out of the arena, faces beaming with excitement. I catch up with Martin afterwards, and he tells me proudly, “Every one of those kids falls in love with rodeo.”

After 26 years, Martin says he no longer works the clown circuit full-time. He is busy raising a family, and running a custom metalwork business. But he still does several rodeos each year around the country, and is current president of the California Pro Rodeo Circuit.

“If you’re good and you show up and you’re nice to people,” he says, wiping the paint off his face, “it’s a hard job to screw up.”

# # #

(A version of this appeared in American Way magazine)

This is the original Batmobile, from the 60s TV show Batman. For over 40 years it’s traveled the globe to conventions and car shows. Three generations of fans have wiped their sticky fingers on its sleek velvet-black metalflake finish.

Everyone in the world knows the Batmobile. For many of us, it brings the image of a leotarded Adam West and Burt Ward cruising the streets of Gotham, thwarting crime at every turn. And respecting all parking laws:

Batman: Better put 5 cents in the meter.
Robin: No policeman’s going to give the Batmobile a ticket!
Batman: This money goes to building better roads. We all must do our part.

Batman was possibly the goofiest show on television at the time. For legendary Los Angeles car designer George Barris, Batman gave him his career.

Barris has created literally thousands of cars for celebrities, car companies, private clients, and TV and film productions — The Beverly Hillbillies, Dukes of Hazzard, Starsky and Hutch, Mannix, Knight Rider, Flintstones, Jurassic Park, Back to the Future, the list is endless. But for eternity, he will be known as the Father of the Batmobile.

Here at his Barris Kustom Productions showroom on L.A.’s Riverside Drive, jammed with cars, movie posters and other memorabilia, he gives me the rundown on how he pimped the ride of the Caped Crusader.

Batman’s producers had only three weeks and $15,000 to come up with a vehicle. Barris happened to have an experimental car sitting on his lot, a peculiar one-off Lincoln Mercury concept vehicle called the Futura, which had been used in a 50s film and then retired. Barris and his crew quickly re-sculpted the entire car, and shaped it to match the theme of the show.

“This…is the ears of a bat,” he gestures to the front end. “These are the lights, which are his eyes. This is his nose, which comes down…there’s a chain-slasher which comes outta there. And then outta the front, gas nozzles come out to shoot this way. As you carry down the side, you find out that all of a sudden — boom — there’s a set of 15-foot bat wings. Very aerodynamic.”

Barris is a master promoter, full of endless soundbites and anecdotes. He’s described this car to people for four decades, but the project still genuinely excites him.

“Everything had to operate, all the trinkets had to actually work. Because they had to do it on camera. Nowadays, they can blue-screen it, put it on a computer, give you whatever you want.”

The enduring popularity of the Batmobile isn’t surprising. America boasts an ongoing obsessive relationship with customizing our automobiles, from reality shows like Monster Garage and Pimp My Ride, to the popularity of souped-up imports. Car owners scour catalogs and websites, hunting for parts and accessories they cannot live without.

The car custom scene developed after World War II, when restless young servicemen raced hotrods on dry lake beds of the California desert. Car shows sprouted up to support the racing, and began featuring customized cars built by designers that were street-legal and still attracted attention. Robert E. Peterson launched Hot Rod and Motor Trend magazines, which began covering the nascent world of car customizing. George Barris, a young Los Angeles hotrodder and car builder who had opened his shop in 1944, was in the right spot at the right time.

The rebellious life of hot rodders gave him credibility when he started working with Hollywood.

“We used to race up Sepulveda, where there was nothing coming up over the hill, and the cops would chase us,” he says. “Yeah, it was dangerous. That’s why the movie industry liked us. We were rebels. We enjoyed doing things to cars. We were all young engineers and designers.”

One of his first big jobs was creating cars for the teen exploitation film High School Confidential. Barris points to a poster for the movie, hanging on the wall of the main showroom. More films and TV productions needed cars, and Barris kept building. For the Dobie Gillis show, he adapted a Ford Model A coupe, which had been used for actual racing at Bonneville Salt Flats.

By the early 1960s, Barris was a go-to name for producers who needed a custom car for a project. People on the West Coast all knew him, he was the guy who insisted on spelling Kustom with a “K.” But the rest of the country discovered him after an article appeared in Esquire magazine in 1963, written by a journalist named Tom Wolfe.

In describing Southern California’s custom car culture, Wolfe focused primarily on Barris and car designer/Rat Fink cartoonist Ed “Big Daddy” Roth, christening them the emerging icons of this strange new art form. With typical Wolfian art-brat flourish, he described Barris as wearing a white T-shirt and off-white pants, “in the manner of Picasso walking along in the wind on a bluff at Rapallo.”

Although he’s traded in the white t-shirt for a Baywatch Hawaii jacket, Barris remembers Wolfe and liked the story very much. “He loved my wife because he was a gourmet cook, and they loved cooking Lebanese food together.”

Wolfe’s article and subsequent book “The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby” exploded on the national consciousness, and made Barris a known entity. In the 1960s, pop culture was all about cars. TV shows had cars, music groups had cars. You were what you drove.

The work kept pouring in. Barris and his designers built matching beach carts for The Beach Boys. He devised a coffin-themed hotrod for the Munsters. He made an outrageous twin-engined coach for Paul Revere and the Raiders, and a guitar-shaped car for the Vox guitar company.

Celebrities began approaching Barris for often-ludicrious requests. Elvis Presley wanted a stereo turntable. Frank Sinatra demanded two gas pedals and two brakes, in case one might fail. Zsa Zsa Gabor insisted that her Rolls Royce limo drip with jewels, from the gold wine goblets and make-up kit, to upholstery encrusted with diamonds and rubies.

The spry 82-year-old Barris walks me through a room lined with framed photos of celebrities and their cars he built:

“There’s the Beatles, Clint Eastwood, there’s Travolta, Farrah Fawcett, Joe Namath, Sammy Davis, Redd Foxx, Frank Gorshin, the Riddler. Frank was great. Four packs a day. There’s Phyllis Diller, John Wayne’s son Pat Wayne. So you can see, we’ve been pretty fortunate.”

Many of the shots feature a younger Barris with flashy sunglasses and bell-bottoms. He was becoming just as famous as his clients.

Because of the saturation of television, Barris creations were now in every household. Jay Leno has said, “While other kids watched TV to see the stars, I watched TV to see the Barris cars.” In the 60s, Barris also seized the potential of licensing, and saw additional revenue from toys, model kits, bolt-on car kits, and Kustom Kandy car paint.

The 1970s gas crisis put a crimp in the car custom market, Barris remembers. “The government said, no more big engines, get rid of performance, downsize your car. Of course when you tell the American public you can’t have this, they’re going to do the opposite. So we were flooded with making big coach-built cars.”

Barris’ shop created many convertibles for Cadillac dealers, because convertibles were banned at the time. He modified a Ford Thunderbird into a Titan, for Sammy Davis, Jr. He did the Partridge Family’s mondrian-psychedelic bus, the muscle cars for Mannix and Starsky and Hutch, vehicles for RoboCop and Tucker. The Dukes of Hazzard show was so rough on cars, he built 21 identical Dodge Chargers to stand in for the “General Lee.”

In the 1980s and 90s, he created a talking car for Knight Rider, the driverless vehicles in Jurassic Park, and the Ghostbusters ambulance, among others. But the industry was changing. The Batman and James Bond films were using computer effects to depict their cars, rather than use custom shops. Car manufacturers were producing more custom-styled cars, like the Plymouth Prowler. And there was also the issue of product placement.

“We did Fast And Furious one. We did Fast And Furious two. Now, Fast And Furious three, it’s all business,” he admits. “Mazda comes in, here’s five cars and $10 million. Toyota comes in, here’s five cars, here’s $10 million. Before they even start production, they got $50 million from the product placement. And of course the cars are done either by prop department or by the manufacturer, rather than individuals like us.”

Perhaps Barris should have gone into the clothing business. The Von Dutch garment line, named for the cranky but talented artist who virtually invented pinstriping, is today a multi-million dollar enterprise. Von Dutch passed away in 1992, and never saw his renaissance. But every time Paris Hilton is photographed wearing a Von Dutch cap, it seems, a new retail store opens somewhere in the world.

“He’s in his grave right now saying, ‘What the fuck happened? Where did this come from?’” laughs Barris, who was friends with the madman and even hired him on occasion. “I see some gal with a Von Dutch shirt on, and say, ‘Gee you got a Von Dutch, that’s great looking. You know anything about it?’ ‘Oh yes, he’s a young 35-year-old artist that creates this.’ He was a car pinstriper that died 25 years ago! The money didn’t mean nothing to him. But today he’s the biggest marketing value there is.”

Not to say that Barris isn’t busy. He’s not just showing off the Batmobile to the eleven-thousandth journalist. In another corner of the shop, his newest concept creations are waiting to go to another car show. The Pontiac GTO appears, on the surface, a stock model from the factory. But the color is vintage Barris, a pearlish metallic tangerine color, with hydraulic vertical doors popularized by Lamborghini. Instead of rear-view mirrors he’s added tiny cameras connected to monitors on the cockpit panel. The wheels are larger, 22 inches, with low profile tires.

Next to the GTO sits a Toyota Prius hybrid, one of the ugliest cars on the road today. The Barris shop has accepted the challenge, and sculpted the front end, opened up the wheel wells, added 18-inch wheels, and sprayed the car with a beautiful two-tone pearl Kandy metallic and green scheme. Barris says when Toyota approached him to customize it, he thought the car looked like a turtle. But it would be fun to do, so he agreed.

“The thing today is it has to be quicker, and you do have budgets,” he says. “But you have more to work with. In the old days we had nothing.”

By the end of the year he’ll have finished another new project, an electric/gasoline hotrod combination of a Prius, ’32 Ford, Mustang, and Prowler. “I got four-wheel steering. I’ve got steering on the rear, with power, I’ve got steering on the front with power. It’s the new hot rod of this decade!”

And just to keep the eccentric ‘60s alive, Barris is also finishing up a green toilet on wheels, an electric street legal vehicle called the Flushmobile. He points to the toilet, sitting in a corner, and explains, “It’s for a cartoon that’s being filmed in New York.”

From a distance, the fact that George Barris is still creating any cars, whether it’s a Prius or a toilet, is astonishing. Most 82-year-olds would rather sit on a porch. But Barris keeps on going with the energy of a man 30 years younger.

He is among the last of his generation of Kustomizers. Von Dutch is gone. Ed “Big Daddy” Roth has passed away, along with Robert E. Peterson. Many younger designers who were inspired by him, like Darryl Starbird, Chip Foose and Boyd Coddington, are now in some ways his competition for commissioned work.

Barris has survived for such a a long time, in part because of clean living and a keen sense for business. Barris Kustom Productions still works out of the same building Tom Wolfe visited in the early 1960s. A crew of 25 employees create the cars in three facilities in San Diego, New York and New Jersey. Twenty or so cars are always in circulation at various car events. Many of his older creations are in a Star Cars Museum in Tennessee. A few are on permanent display at the Peterson Automotive Museum in Los Angeles, a few other in the hands of collectors. The rest is anybody’s guess where they ended up.

I get the sense that he still gets the Hollywood meetings, and people constantly pitch him ideas. But his staff – including daughter, son and grandson — tells me he’s home only two days a week. The rest of the time he’s on the road, touring car shows with his cars and signing autographs. After our conversation he will leave for another show in Sweden.

Gearheads around the world consider him an elder statesman, the “King of Kustomizers.” At a car show, anyone can actually walk up to Barris and get their picture taken with him. His press kit bulges with photos of fans, from wealthy concourse auto collectors, to long-haired rock musicians, to young kids in Japan. Occasionally someone will come up to him at a show and stare uncomfortably, and say, “Don’t you remember me? I came into your shop in 1942, and I brought in this 1940 Ford, and you put a bullnose on there for me.”

Barris chuckles. “That car? Out of 17,000 cars? How can you remember the guy? That was 40 years ago. I don’t want to be rude. The people are people. Everybody changes in age and looks.”

He wants to show me something else. We walk over to a wall of children’s toys and he pulls out a series of design sketches. “This shows you what us, as a family, thinks about doing with a car project.”

Dodge has proposed a new idea to Barris, and it involves his family. Each member of his family will receive a Dodge Magnum, to redesign however they wish. The varieties of Barris DNA are amazing. Grandson Jared’s version of the Magnum is completely tricked out, like something from the Pimp My Ride show. He’s a musician, so there are giant audio speakers everywhere. Son Brett has envisioned the Magnum as a hearse, because “He likes the casket look – there’s a big group of guys just into hearses,” Barris says. Joji, the daughter, will chop up the Magnum into a pickup truck, because she’s a motorcycle nut and it will carry bikes in the back. George’s version is more dramatic than the others, somewhat conservative, but at the same time very Barris.

“We start compiling all the parts,” he continues. “We get together with the different manufacturers. The ram air scoops, the American racing wheels, the Goodrich tires. And we’ll photograph it and assemble it, showing which car each one of us is doing.”

He looks at the sketches proudly. This is the work of his bloodline, continuing the family tradition, ensuring that there will be Barris Kustom Kars being made for many years to come.

I say goodbye to Barris, and stumble out into the LA sunshine, my brain loaded with way too much information about cars. I look back at the showroom window, at the outlines of one-of-a-kind vehicles — James Dean’s Porsche, the Knight Rider car, William Shatner’s motorcycle — and think, George Barris is an American treasure. Even if, God forbid, you’ve never seen an episode of Batman.

(A version of this story first appeared in Southwest Spirit magazine)

Ron White
“That Boy’s Got a Lot of Quit In Him”

Comedian Ron White cuts a distinctive image onstage, cigarette in one hand, tumbler of Johnny Walker in the other, a sharp-suit combination of Dean Martin and a wisecracking oilman. He’s best known from the Blue Collar Comedy Tour, a three-year marathon road show co-starring good-ol’-boy comics Jeff Foxworthy, Larry the Cable Guy, and Bill Engvall. The act played to 90 cities, and lit up the comedy world. An accompanying concert film has sold 2.5 million units.

White is the standout of the show. Although from rural Texas, he appeals to urban as well as NASCAR crowds. His sly humor sneaks up on listeners, more witty and adult-oriented than the southern drawl might suggest. On being arrested for drunk in public: “At that point I had the right to remain silent—but I didn’t have the ability.” On family: “My brother’s a doctor, my sister’s an attorney. And I hate Thanksgiving.” On strip clubs: “You’ve seen one woman naked—you wanna see the rest of ‘em naked.” On paternal approval: “That boy’s got a lot of quit in him.”

Although a 19-year comedy veteran, until recently White was running a pottery business in Mexico, driving across the border for weekend shows. All that changed when Jeff Foxworthy invited him aboard for the Blue Collar tour. White has since taped a live TV special, “They Call Me Tater Salad,” and released a CD, “Drunk in Public.” His current solo tour sells out theaters across the U.S., and a new TV special for the WB network airs in 2005. We caught up with him over the phone between gigs.

The Blue Collar tour grossed over $15 million. The film is everywhere. Comedy Central is airing the sequel soon. Did you expect it would be so popular?

It’s bizarre. Two years ago I had a development deal, shootin’ a pilot, living in Beverly Hills on Fox’s nickel in this big suite. We got this [Blue Collar] movie coming out. And I thought, well, this is it. I’m gonna be so huge a star I won’t even be able to sleep with myself. And then the movie tanked at the box office. Fox didn’t pick up the series. And I’m back in Omaha at the Funny Bone, goin’ ‘Wow. This is one of those don’t count your chickens things.’ The thing that dumfounds me, is there’s no guarantee—no matter how good you are. Because something’s gotta happen to make that happen. And what happened for me was Blue Collar. [To someone else in the car] Yeah, where we goin’? Sorry, my family’s with me. I’m not sorry they’re with me. That may have sounded wrong.

One of your funniest bits describes getting new tires at a Sears, and one of them falling off as you drive out of the parking lot. And how the mechanic must have missed the training on Lug Nut Day. How much of your act is based on real-life experiences?

Nearly all of it, because I’m not that creative. I just keep my eyes open. I would get sued if that [Sears story] wasn’t true. In fact they’re suing me anyway. But I like telling the story. They offered me $5,000 with the stipulation that I would quit doing the bit. And I told them to eat a steamin’ bowl of fuck. I believe that’s the way I put it.

So your style is less about jokes and more about stories.

I’ve never been much on structure, I’m not much on sitting down and writing jokes. I can, but if do, they usually suck. It’s almost like Leno-quality monologue shit, you know, that’s just pure drivel. If I have a skill, it’s kind of the thing that ten people could watch something happen, and when I told the story, it would be a funny story. If it was a car wreck and people died in it, when I told it, people would laugh. This is even since I was a kid.

You mention Fritch, Texas in your act. What was it like growing up there?

It’s a part of Texas that had at some point been forsaken by God. Dirt roads, a little hayseed town, about 800 people when I lived there.

I hadn’t been there in 30 years, I was doin’ a show for Hastings Music, their corporate office is in Amarillo. I still have a sister in Amarillo. We went to Fritch to see if I could find my childhood home, which I did. I kinda knew basically where it was, basically what it looked like then. Dad built the house, kinda had a wavy top to it. At first, we’re driving up and down the street, I didn’t notice it. So I’m going up and down these dirt roads in a big white stretch. People looking at me, going what the hell is he doing here? I went back to find my grandmother’s house, and it was kinda weird, and then I went to the Dairy Queen, and signed some autographs. It was all just spur of the moment. We ate at a restaurant, where my dad would let us go out to eat maybe once or twice a year.

Anything about Fritch that made you funny?

I don’t think so. I don’t know what makes anybody funny. My uncle was very, very funny. He was a preacher, and eventually became the president of the Southern Baptist Convention. Great guy. Preachers, especially Southern, they’ve got a great pace. And I was a huge comedy fan as a kid. I listened to everybody. Andy Griffith, Bob Newhart, Flip Wilson, Bill Cosby. And then Cheech and Chong, Steve Martin. I don’t think I even understood the jokes at that age. I just liked listening to the laughter, over and over again. I think that instilled some sort of comedic timing.

You worked for several years as a counselor and public speaker for Houston’s Palmer Drug Abuse Program. How did that experience help your comedy?

Well, that’s where I found out that I was very, very comfortable standing up in front of a room full of people. They’d have an auditorium full of kids, and I would talk to them for an hour. I would just tell ‘em what happened to me. I had a pretty respectable drug habit at 21 years old. I would do that sometimes three times a day. It was just like developing a stand-up show. And I was really good at it. The problem was, that eventually they started saying, ‘Well, drug addiction shouldn’t be this funny.’ And I’m like, ‘Well you go tell ‘em your story then. See if they face the right direction.’

I would do that sometimes three times a day. They’d have an auditorium full of kids, and I would talk to them for an hour. It was just like developing a stand-up show. I didn’t know it at the time, but I would do it so much that it’d just get better and better.

But I didn’t see that as any prelude to show business at all. I didn’t actually do stand-up comedy until maybe five years later, when I was 29.

But you weren’t afraid of getting onstage and being funny.

It was very easy for me. And I’m a one trick pony, I don’t have any other skills. It’s a good thing I was successful, because my retirement plan was, ‘Maybe something neat will happen.’

You cut your teeth with some great Texas comedians at the old Comedy Workshop club in Houston. Larger-than-life personalities like Sam Kinison and Bill Hicks. What was that like?

That room was a great room to come up in. You couldn’t be a hack, because these guys would just run you off. Ron Shock, Kinison, Hicks, Jimmy Pineapple. I stopped in there one time and did a set. I had just done Vegas, and I was kinda braggin’. I had been doing stand-up about six months at the time. These guys were really good comics, and they knew I was green, and just an egomaniac. So when I did my set, I mean, nobody—nobody laughed. I chewed it with a shovel. It was just pathetic. And those guys were in the back chuckling to themselves. I look at it now, and it makes me shake my head with wonder that I would have the gall to do that, in front of some of the best comedians that ever lived.

So what’s funny to you?

I don’t do anything topical, because Letterman’s got 19 writers staring at the television, and Leno’s got 19 writers staring at the television. So I want my comedy to come from someplace other than the television. The good stuff just flips through my mind, real late at night, and if I’m sharp enough I write it down, cause I’ll forget it. I have really funny friends, too, And my wife’s very funny.

I see comedians and actors using whatever stage they have to promote their political views. And man, I don’t do it. I choose not to. If any celebrity ever starts talking about their political views, I quit listening right away because I genuinely don’t give a fuck what they think. Play your little horn, or tell your little story, you know, whatever, that’s what we pay you to do. It’s like that chick in the Dixie Chicks. That’s fine if that’s her opinion about the president. That’s great. But you better know who your fucking fans are, before you start spouting off, because it’s gonna cost you millions of dollars. It irritates me when people use that platform, use whatever fame to get people to listen to them talk about something else. If you’re in show business, I think you should just do your job and shut the fuck up. That’s what I try to do.

You’re 47 this year. Are you grateful success happened to you later in life?

Aw, you kidding? I’da been deader than a doornail. They woulda found me with cocaine and a whore: ‘There he is, folks. Doesn’t he look rich?’

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(A version of this story appeared in Southwest Spirit magazine.)