Jay Jurden

Summary

Podcast Summary: "You Made It Weird with Pete Holmes" – Episode Featuring Jay Jordan
Release Date: June 25, 2025

In this engaging episode of You Made It Weird with Pete Holmes, host Pete Holmes sits down with comedian Jay Jordan to explore a wide array of topics ranging from fashion trends and the evolution of comedy to deep dives into masculinity, sexuality, and the human experience. Their candid and humorous conversation offers listeners a blend of insightful commentary and personal anecdotes, showcasing the unique comedic chemistry between Holmes and Jordan.

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1. Fashion Trends and the Rise of Gorpcore

The discussion kicks off with an exploration of contemporary fashion trends, particularly the emergence of "gorpcore"—a style that blends outdoor utility with streetwear aesthetics.

• Jay Jordan introduces the concept:
  “[02:08] Jay Jordan: Gorpcore now has been adopted by a bit of streetwear kind of aesthetic people where everyone who's obsessed with Arterics and anything Gore-Tex and water-resistant...”

• Pete Holmes adds his perspective on functional fashion:
  “[03:00] Pete Holmes: All of everything in Gap kids are minor pants. That's all we have is minor pants.”

The duo delves into how gorpcore reflects broader societal shifts towards practicality infused with trendy elements, highlighting brands like The North Face and J. Crew.

2. Masculinity, Sexuality, and Pop Culture

A significant portion of the conversation centers on the interplay between masculinity and sexuality, especially within the context of pop culture and media representations.

• Jay Jordan discusses the portrayal of masculinity in Hollywood:
  “[07:00] Jay Jordan: I'm gonna say he's He's. There's an avian quality to his face. A little bird. A little bird.”

• Pete Holmes reflects on male attractiveness and identity:
  “[09:55] Pete Holmes: I'm here for it, by the way. That's it, that's it. This is strictly fashion.”

They examine characters like Ryan Gosling and Adam Driver, analyzing how their unique looks contribute to their on-screen personas and the broader narrative of male identity.

3. Evolution of Comedy and Late-Night Television

Holmes and Jordan share insights into the world of stand-up comedy and late-night television, discussing the challenges and nuances of maintaining authenticity in sprawling entertainment landscapes.

• Jay Jordan recounts his late-night show experiences:
  “[10:48] Jay Jordan: I did Fallon three times. I did Cordon. And the craziest part is on the couch.”

• Pete Holmes empathizes with the pressures of late-night performance:
  “[10:45] Pete Holmes: Think it's, like one of those hard things to talk about...”

They explore how these platforms demand a balance between scripted performance and genuine comedic expression, highlighting personal anecdotes from their careers.

4. Video Games: Then and Now

The conversation shifts towards the evolution of video games, contrasting the challenging games of the past with today's more immersive and expansive experiences.

• Jay Jordan reminisces about classic games:
  “[20:06] Jay Jordan: You'd go, "I'm on level two. It's just a map... It's tough."”

• Pete Holmes comments on the shift in game design philosophy:
  “[22:25] Pete Holmes: Like, the game couldn't be that big because you had...”

They discuss how advancements in technology have transformed gaming from straightforward challenges to complex, narrative-driven experiences, reflecting broader changes in entertainment consumption.

5. Homosocial Relationships and Male Loneliness

A profound segment of the episode delves into the intricacies of homosocial relationships—the deep, non-romantic bonds between men—and the pervasive issue of male loneliness in contemporary society.

• Pete Holmes expresses concerns about male camaraderie:
  “[65:17] Pete Holmes: When we sit, I go, 'What are you ashamed of? Tell me something you're ashamed of.'”

• Jay Jordan offers solutions for building meaningful connections:
  “[66:24] Jay Jordan: There's a level of male loneliness online that requires authentic, in-person friendships.”

They highlight the importance of vulnerability and honest communication in fostering lasting male friendships, critiquing the superficiality often present in online interactions.

6. Mythology, Religion, and Queer Culture in Media

Holmes and Jordan intertwine discussions of mythology and religion with representations of queer culture in media, particularly through the lens of comic book narratives like the X-Men.

• Jay Jordan connects Mythological archetypes to contemporary narratives:
  “[35:04] Jay Jordan: Bugs Bunny is a trickster. Loki is a trickster...”

• Pete Holmes relates these archetypes to real-world identities:
  “[35:10] Pete Holmes: We can't stop.”

They explore how queer characters embody trickster roles, challenging traditional narratives and offering nuanced representations that resonate with marginalized communities.

7. The Meaning of Life and Personal Reflections

In the concluding segments, Holmes and Jordan engage in a philosophical dialogue about entropy, the interconnectedness of life, and personal growth.

• Jay Jordan reflects on entropy and existence:
  “[118:05] Jay Jordan: There is a beauty in the finite nature of that.”

• Pete Holmes visualizes life through metaphors:
  “[119:48] Pete Holmes: If you ever look at a lake when it's raining... like an effervescence rises from it.”

They discuss the transient nature of life, the beauty found in impermanence, and the ways in which personal interactions contribute to the larger tapestry of existence.

---

Notable Quotes

• Jay Jordan on Male Loneliness:
  “[70:03] Jay Jordan: Because the queerest thing you can do after you've reached peak gay is bring a straight guy and a girl.”

• Pete Holmes on Comedy and Authenticity:
  “[84:40] Pete Holmes: I like being done with it. If I have six shows, I just did Nashville...”

• Jay Jordan on Comedy Evolution:
  “[86:00] Jay Jordan: My approach to comedy was also a bit theatrical...”

These quotes encapsulate key themes of the episode, highlighting the balance between humor and deeper social commentary.

Conclusion

This episode of You Made It Weird masterfully navigates through diverse topics, offering listeners a rich tapestry of humor, introspection, and cultural analysis. From dissecting fashion trends to exploring the depths of male friendships and the complexities of queer representation in media, Pete Holmes and Jay Jordan provide a thought-provoking and entertaining dialogue that resonates with a wide audience.

Transcript

[Pete Holmes]

You made it with.

[Jay Jordan]

You made it with. You made it with. Oh, yeah. You made it with. Yes.

[Pete Holmes]

You made it weird.

[Jay Jordan]

You made it weird with Pete Holmes.

[Pete Holmes]

What's happening, weirdos? I am so glad you are here for the hilarious Jay Jordan. I love Jay. He is so funny. Where have you seen Jay? You've seen him on the Tonight show with Jimmy Fallon. He's been on James Corden. In fact, we are in Cordon the same time, which is how I first saw him. And he absolutely murdered. He's also been on hbo, Comedy Central, Apple tv. He's got a album called J. Jordan, y' all. And also follow him on social media. It's just his name. J G, J U R D E N J, U R, D E N, J Jordan. He's so funny and I loved this conversation and I'm so glad y' all are here. Only a couple things to plug up top for me. It's my tour. I am going to be in LA this Saturday on June 28, followed by Houston. We're rescheduling Michigan. I'm sorry, Royal Oak. We are moving that, but that will be rescheduled. Los Angeles is after that, D.C. boston, Massachusetts, Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Spokane, Washington, St. Louis, Cleveland, Chicago, Pennsylvania, and Atlantic City. And we'll be adding New York City on there as well. All those are available on petehomes.com so glad you're here. I loved this chat. J. Jerdan, y' all indeed. Get into it.

[Jay Jordan]

I like these, right? I really love these. There's a new. So I want to say North Face and paraboot. Maybe it's North Face. I don't know. Maybe it's J. Crew.

[Pete Holmes]

Can we please roll on this?

[Jay Jordan]

There's a new. There's a new. You're. You're on trend. I am. You're on trend.

[Pete Holmes]

We need to roll up and sort.

[Jay Jordan]

Of sort of make taking a big swing.

[Pete Holmes]

Is that right?

[Jay Jordan]

Yes. So this style of shoe, this sort of, like, quilted moccasin, it became really cool over the past two years.

[Pete Holmes]

Is that right?

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah. So North Face came out with one paraboot, has a collab.

[Pete Holmes]

This is Teva.

[Jay Jordan]

Okay. So Teva and any sort of gorpcore utility.

[Pete Holmes]

Gorpcore.

[Jay Jordan]

Gorpcore.

[Pete Holmes]

Good old raisins and peanuts. Is that what that means?

[Jay Jordan]

No. Gorpcore now has been adopted by a bit of streetwear kind of aesthetic people where everyone who's obsessed with Arterics and obsessed with, like, anything Gore Tex and water resistant, very Pacific Northwest kind of feel and outdoor kind of faux utility. It became super popular.

[Pete Holmes]

Yes.

[Jay Jordan]

So right now, it's not the first.

[Pete Holmes]

Time fashion has co opted like carpenter pants are like, yeah, all right.

[Jay Jordan]

See, I ain't got no hammer.

[Pete Holmes]

That's right. There was one that had the big.

[Jay Jordan]

The double knees.

[Pete Holmes]

The double knees.

[Jay Jordan]

The reinforced knees.

[Pete Holmes]

Well, wasn't that called like minor. Whoa.

[Jay Jordan]

There's like a pain apparent, then there's like a minor pain.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, yeah.

[Jay Jordan]

And then like if they're very similar, tiny, like they're minor pants. But then.

[Pete Holmes]

All of everything in Gap kids are minor pants. That's all we have is minor pants.

[Jay Jordan]

But there is this beautiful sort of like event horizon that happens with what I kind of just call unassuming white guys and fashion. And they go, wait a second, wait a second. I got two minutes.

[Pete Holmes]

I'm here for this, by the way. That's it, that's it. This is strictly fashion. Yes, not fashion. I'm sorry, function. This is strictly function. But my wife, who you will meet on the way out, she got a pair. I also have them in yellow. And I want to know what you feel.

[Jay Jordan]

No, we like a big swing. We like a pop of color. We like a big swing. There's so Viola Davis. Every now and then she wears yellow on the red carpet. And because she's such a beautifully melanated dark skinned black woman, yellow on her. Every comment is always like, it's crazy how she invented the color yellow.

[Pete Holmes]

Yes.

[Jay Jordan]

Because she looks so stunning in it. And every time anyone a little bit paler than Viola Davis even tries to wear yellow on the red carpet, everyone goes, you look sick.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, that's right, that's right. I just, I'm doing. I was shooting this movie with a lot of East Asians. So like Indian, Pakistani. And the way that this. I don't know if I'm allowed to say this, but I was looking at the way brown you. Golden brown. You're like, it'll give you the chills. You're like, that's just right. It just looks better.

[Jay Jordan]

But you.

[Pete Holmes]

I don't want to say it looks better. That's pejorative. But you know what I'm saying. I was appreciating how good it looked.

[Jay Jordan]

There's a fun kind of like play, but white guys with blue eyes, they get the blue shirt. And every. Yes, every time. That's our move. That's our one move. That's the move.

[Pete Holmes]

That's our move.

[Jay Jordan]

And you kind of just like look at people like Basilisk and try to like make sure they know you go, look, you see what's going on. You don't get to blink for the whole time.

[Pete Holmes]

That's our little, tiny, tiny, tiny effort. I'm. I love that you just are leaning in to my. I am. That's why I said I'm here for it. Basic kind of white guy.

[Jay Jordan]

But that's what you want. You want to. But you wanna. I want like any kind of unassuming older white guy to have like a happy fashion accident.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Jay Jordan]

Like, that's sort of like work. Work came back. Not being as kind of stuffy and pretentious. Came back.

[Pete Holmes]

Yes.

[Jay Jordan]

There's a lot of things that, like anyone now kind of over the age of 40, if you go, oh, this is my favorite shirt, people go, well, you look great in it. And because there's like in kind of worn feel, it makes it fashion now.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, that's interesting. So I have another pair of shoes that are real ugly. Real ugly. And my wife actually, dude, she forbid me. She didn't forbid me. She very playfully was like, I think you need to stop. And then somebody was like, that's actually very in right now. And then I was like, really? And they go, ugly shoes are in. And I was like, oh, okay. I don't know if I want to be in this line. I think this might be a mistake.

[Jay Jordan]

Is. I mean, the thing that it's close to maybe last summer and this happens. This happens when I guess people are trying to find ways to compliment non conventionally attractive leading men in Hollywood. Now, do you remember what happened? So last summer there was an entire write up about brat summer, but a little bit before that there was rat summer. So every leading man was. They were like, these guys kind of look like rats. Oh, my God. I've been in Timothee Chalamet, Mike Faist, who was in Challengers, Josh o' Connor, who's also in Challengers, and Paul Mescal. They were saying that these men, while handsome. Yes, there is a mouse, like.

[Pete Holmes]

But you don't. It turns out you don't want straight handsome. I don't straight handsome.

[Jay Jordan]

No, but you do.

[Pete Holmes]

Straight handsome. Yeah, you do want straight handsome. But again, I mean, like middle of the bullseye.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

You want interesting.

[Jay Jordan]

Interesting.

[Pete Holmes]

Ryan Gosling is kind of. He's my favorite. I mean, he's on the wall. He's kind of. I don't know how to say it. Left of center is what I'll say. I always say odd. But by odd, I mean why am I. I can't stop looking at it.

[Jay Jordan]

I'm gonna say he's He's. There's an avian quality to his face. A little. A little bird. A little bird.

[Pete Holmes]

Bird face.

[Jay Jordan]

And that is striking. It inspires, like, leadership qualities.

[Pete Holmes]

People go out into Prospect park with binoculars to look at birds. Turns out Hollywood's the same. We're like, look at that bird.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah, we love birds.

[Pete Holmes]

You want an avian client? And Adam Driver, of course, looks like a Siamese cat.

[Jay Jordan]

Yes.

[Pete Holmes]

Sort of.

[Jay Jordan]

Yes.

[Pete Holmes]

But. So, like. But remember, I'm older than you. I think I'm old. I mean, only.

[Jay Jordan]

I mean, barely.

[Pete Holmes]

Is that right?

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

I just assume you never. So much energy.

[Jay Jordan]

You'll never know.

[Pete Holmes]

When I watch your stand up dude, for real, I'm like, yes, I love it. And it's a Gatling gun. That's what feels youthful about it to me is like, obviously, you're having fun, but you're also like, I'm not tired. I'm not. I'm not. Like, I can think of more jokes.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah. I have a tendency to overwrite. Like, I'll talk to Matthew Broussard, and he and I both have this kind of, like, tendency to be like, tag this. Tag. Okay. Actually, basically, we'll go, this is the line and kind of the Jay Leno quality of like, I've overwritten this and now let me scale it back to peak laugh. But I have more if you ever want it.

[Pete Holmes]

I love that. Scale it back. Like, landscape.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Truly let it overgrow. But too many. Look, I say this all the time on the podcast when we talk about stand up. Most specials I watch and I go, that. That's it. I'll even watch that on myself.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

That's my main criticism of myself is I'm like, you brought us into this room. That's the premise. And all you did was pick this up and then put it back down. And then we left the room. And when I watch you, I'm like, oh, this dude, you figured it out.

[Jay Jordan]

That means so much to me from a theater background. But then also, like, and this is. This is the first time anyone knows about this. So you're part of the reason I started stand up in New York City.

[Pete Holmes]

No way.

[Jay Jordan]

So I started stand up around the same time as Crashing, and there were multiple instances where I was doing mics at the Grizzly Pair yard. Just shot a couple scenes of the Grizzly Pair. I was going up doing mics. You were going up in the series doing mics. I wasn't at the Cellar yet. I saw your seller audition.

[Pete Holmes]

You were there when we taped it. No, My real one?

[Jay Jordan]

No, the one in. No, no, no. The one in the show.

[Pete Holmes]

The one in the show.

[Jay Jordan]

The one in the show. I was doing NACA right after you did naca, I got a bunch of college gigs. When you did the college gigs, I. I eventually did warm up for a show I was writing for. I didn't warm up when I was writing on the promo.

[Pete Holmes]

Now you're on Daily, right?

[Jay Jordan]

No, I was on the promo. Jon Stewart on Apple TV plus. And I did warm up there after seeing you kind of do. There were all these, like, little fun moments. And so you as a character on Crashing, and then also as a comedian. So it was so funny because then I was like, oh, my God. And, like, you also loved X Men, So there were all these moments.

[Pete Holmes]

I was like, yes.

[Jay Jordan]

I was like, if I ever get the chance to tell people. So then when I did Cordon and we met, I was like, yeah, that's right. Enjoys it.

[Pete Holmes]

And you had an amazing.

[Jay Jordan]

Thank you.

[Pete Holmes]

You're really good at late night, and I think. Think it's, like, one of those hard things to talk about. Meaning I don't get a lot of opportunities to talk about it because not a lot of people are really good at late night. It's like, a weird skill to do five or whatever it is six months on late night. The pressure is so high. I didn't say this, obviously, but I'm, like, feeling for you. I think I was doing panel.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah, yeah, you're doing panel. You got to do the couch. You got to have fun.

[Pete Holmes]

I almost, like, girl. I was like, it's true.

[Jay Jordan]

That's true, though. That is true.

[Pete Holmes]

You graduate, meaning.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

When you do it, you don't even think about it.

[Jay Jordan]

Oh, my God.

[Pete Holmes]

You don't even worry about it.

[Jay Jordan]

Because on the couch, it's so. So I've done late night three different. No, four different times.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Jay Jordan]

I did Fallon three times. I did Cordon. And the craziest part is on the couch. So many of the rules, specifically from Standards and Practices, go out of the window.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Jay Jordan]

Because they just do not care. Jimmy Fallon, when I was on Fallon and he was asking Theo James about his dick on White Lotus, and I was like, what?

[Pete Holmes]

I mean, that's right.

[Jay Jordan]

Y' all made me crap my lesbian joke. But you're asking Theo James about his cock scene.

[Pete Holmes]

I don't remember a cock scene in White Lotus.

[Jay Jordan]

Well, okay, so not this past one. The previous one.

[Pete Holmes]

I remember balls in the first scene, and I always do fake balls.

[Jay Jordan]

Yes.

[Pete Holmes]

Can I get a take on this.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

I'm going to chime in first.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Show me the real balls. Yeah, just show me the real balls. It's always fake balls, but balls are a little weird.

[Jay Jordan]

We had real dick on your show.

[Pete Holmes]

We had real dick on your show. We had real dick. And you know what we got shit for? People were like, show a vagina. Like, that's what people were like, okay, show a vagina. Women were like, we want equal representation.

[Jay Jordan]

They literally said, us two.

[Pete Holmes]

Us two.

[Jay Jordan]

Please, us two. Not me. Show a labybia, but us two.

[Pete Holmes]

And, like, not like a, you know, Playboy centerful. Labyrinty. We want like a.

[Jay Jordan]

This is it, you know, like a real.

[Pete Holmes]

A real one.

[Jay Jordan]

Kind of, like, uneven a little bit.

[Pete Holmes]

We want it to look like it just got out of the rain, like it got smeared by a magical gnome and ran away.

[Jay Jordan]

There was any more. I was of the. I was of the true blood. I was in late college, maybe early grad school, whenever true blood was popping off.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Jay Jordan]

And I legitimately thought there was a mandate from the higher ups at HBO that for every pair of tits they show, they had to show one dick or, like, a guy's butt. Because true blood was so bisexual and so balanced. It was like, here's some tits. Yeah, here's some guys. Here's some tits. Yeah, some guys.

[Pete Holmes]

That's right. We want it all for vampires.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah. Empires, vampires.

[Pete Holmes]

Oh, vampires.

[Jay Jordan]

Vampires are very bisexual because everyone has blood.

[Pete Holmes]

Yes. And the neck. The neck fighting. I was watching. I watched the Pee Wee documentary. Do you watch that?

[Jay Jordan]

No, but I've heard nothing but good, beautiful things about it.

[Pete Holmes]

It's really good.

[Jay Jordan]

And all of my friends, this happens, Pete. This happens with every gay documentary. All of. All of gay Twitter and all of gay Instagram goes, by the way, Paul Rubens. What's up? Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

No, he looked good.

[Jay Jordan]

Back in the day.

[Pete Holmes]

He was dreaming.

[Jay Jordan]

They go, I'm trying to get in that playhouse.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah. We're gonna do some stuff on Cherry. Yeah. Okay. I don't know. I don't know.

[Jay Jordan]

That's what I. Yeah, the magic.

[Pete Holmes]

I want to do Cherry. There you go. It's it on my face.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

I'm jealous of Cherry sitting on her face.

[Jay Jordan]

God. Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, he looked dreamy.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

But that also goes back to Gosling and Adam Driver. He looks interesting.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

I think you show. You know where the exception is, is Denzel, because he's got that.

[Jay Jordan]

He's perfect, but Denzel. Yet.

[Pete Holmes]

I like looking.

[Jay Jordan]

Still has at the time. Denzel was, like, young and kind of Hot headed. So yeah, there is an element of danger that takes away. You can't be like that perfect and sweet. No, you kind of have to like Liv Schreiber does like a very animalistic sort of like go, that's a man. Yeah, he's hot, but kind of scary.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, yeah, scary.

[Jay Jordan]

John Bernthal, perfect, except for his nose is a little.

[Pete Holmes]

It looks like he got in a fight.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah. So that's why everyone's like, please punish me, please.

[Pete Holmes]

No, absolutely. John Barenthal. Val and I, well, we love John Barenthal. And Val noticed that every scene he does. Not every scene. A lot of times. And this is probably typecast. It's not like he's. Whatever. I'm just making sure he doesn't think I'm dragging him here. He does scenes where he's giving very, very high stakes news, but he's being very casual about it. So he's eating pizza and he's like, you like Hawaiian pizza? Yeah, Hawaiian pizza's pretty good. Listen, there are two snipers over there and they're trained on you right now. And they're gonna spill your blood all over the salad bar. Do you want something at the salad bar? And he starts getting croutons. And you're like, that's what you want. He's cool, easy, calm, high stakes. But eating pizza. It's Brad Pitt eating, always eating.

[Jay Jordan]

I even think he has occupied a new role now. He's always really dreamy, but dead brother or ex boyfriend, like he in the Bear.

[Pete Holmes]

Oh, he's dead.

[Jay Jordan]

Because he's dead. He's. This is sad. He's so much hotter because he's dead and everything's.

[Pete Holmes]

I know.

[Jay Jordan]

Dead hot.

[Pete Holmes]

I know. Dead hot.

[Jay Jordan]

Oh, my God. We don't have it anymore.

[Pete Holmes]

We got dead hot.

[Jay Jordan]

I need it.

[Pete Holmes]

It's like when paintings become more valuable after you're dead.

[Jay Jordan]

Yes.

[Pete Holmes]

So does that ass.

[Jay Jordan]

Yes.

[Pete Holmes]

Dead hot.

[Jay Jordan]

Here Anymore dead. It's the ephemeral state of this whole thing that we're doing.

[Pete Holmes]

I'm thinking of some real life examples. I'm not gonna say a single one of them.

[Jay Jordan]

Okay.

[Pete Holmes]

But I know you will. Dead high.

[Jay Jordan]

Like any porn performer from the 80s and 90s. When I look at that kind of like very 70s, like early 80s porn. The fact that so many of them aren't here anymore or don't look like that anymore. It's a time capsule and it's hot.

[Pete Holmes]

I know what you're talking about. I. It's not my thing. I would tell you if it was, but sometimes you see really old porn.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

And it's like, you know.

[Jay Jordan]

Are you talking about, like, on urns?

[Pete Holmes]

On an urn. You know, you go to Pompeii and you see some shit. Can you imagine if you looked at a. Like a ancient Greek class and you were like. You took it to the bathroom.

[Jay Jordan]

Hey, confession. Confession. Growing up and figuring out what was going to be my sexuality, every now and then, the History Channel would have a series called the History of Sex.

[Pete Holmes]

Okay.

[Jay Jordan]

And it would. And they would get away with showing some. They were just some baldy stuff because of history. So then. So the titties were never censored. The penis etchings and the penis drawings were never censored. The butts.

[Pete Holmes]

Yes.

[Jay Jordan]

Never censored.

[Pete Holmes]

I remember being a kid in drawing shit because I was so desperate. I was, like, taking a guess. My boobs didn't even have nipples. Could I. I'd never seen one. I was like, I don't know. There you go. It's something like that.

[Jay Jordan]

Some of the first things that I remember being like, oh, that's naughty. Like, and this kind of gets to shared interest. So because of the pulp nature of American comics from the 50s, 60s into the 70s and 80s, a lot of Marvel art and DC art was so sexual. Oh, my God. You look at the old Ms. Marvel suit. The warbird. The Warbird suit. That's just.

[Pete Holmes]

It's erotic.

[Jay Jordan]

A tiny one.

[Pete Holmes]

It's like Borat.

[Jay Jordan]

That is, like, just right down the middle.

[Pete Holmes]

Yep.

[Jay Jordan]

If you go find crime in that.

[Pete Holmes]

That's why Comic Con is still. I'm like, oh, yeah. Like, I go, like, I can't.

[Jay Jordan]

Well, you.

[Pete Holmes]

It's too much.

[Jay Jordan]

And because the people that cosplay, their dedication to cosplay is that they go, well, I have to look like this. And you go, okay.

[Pete Holmes]

I was actually thinking about you this morning because I'm like, okay, I bet we're going to talk about. I love talking about, like, I don't know, on a queer culture or whatever you want to say, Sexuality. Sexual identity. And my daughter put a bracelet on me, and I liked it. And I was like, oh, I'm gonna ask Jay. I was like, how much do straight. Nor. When I say normal, I mean like basic boring. Boring. That's what I mean. I don't mean norm. I mean boring. Just sort of like cracker barrel. Straight guys love having daughters because, like, my. My girl will put something kind of like. And it. It's fun. I'm sparkling. I got a sparkle.

[Jay Jordan]

Now there's a play. And Joy and whimsy. And that is robbed from a lot of stray.

[Pete Holmes]

That's what I'm saying.

[Jay Jordan]

Hetero.

[Pete Holmes]

You're hearing me.

[Jay Jordan]

Super traditional men, any sort of sparkle is robbed.

[Pete Holmes]

Yes.

[Jay Jordan]

Anything that's, like, saturated. The fact that y' all got to take, like, blue, like, highlighter, blue back is, like, a big deal.

[Pete Holmes]

No. And pink.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah, Pink.

[Pete Holmes]

I remember when pink was a big. No. No. And to quote G. Goman, I grew up in Boston where Sprite was considered to be homosexual. Sprite. If you drank Sprite. This is Gary Goman. He was like. I grew up in Boston, too. If you drank Sprite, There was something off about. Something was wrong with that boy.

[Jay Jordan]

God, that's fun.

[Pete Holmes]

Sprite.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah, you got to drink. It's fruity.

[Pete Holmes]

It's literally fruity.

[Jay Jordan]

Sprite. Okay. Are you a tiny, magical creature? Are you a sprite?

[Pete Holmes]

That's right. It's a sprite. Yeah, it's a spritely. It's lemons and lime. Limes. It's two fruits together. Oh, no, I'm not even trying to.

[Jay Jordan]

That's not the way God intended. No.

[Pete Holmes]

Adam and Eve, not lemons and limes.

[Jay Jordan]

But no, I.

[Pete Holmes]

Seven up is straighter. Yes.

[Jay Jordan]

Seven.

[Pete Holmes]

Seven up is straighter.

[Jay Jordan]

Up yours. Seven up yours.

[Pete Holmes]

That's aggressive. Seven Up.

[Jay Jordan]

The guy, the seven up, like, character was like, that little spot with the sunglasses.

[Pete Holmes]

And he had a video game an. That's right. He was an.

[Jay Jordan]

Oh, he did have a video game.

[Pete Holmes]

He had a video game on the Genesis.

[Jay Jordan]

I remember that video. That was hard.

[Pete Holmes]

It was a hard game.

[Jay Jordan]

That's back when video games. Now, video games are hard, but they're expansive and they're RPGs. Video games used to be so hard. You'd be like, I'm on level two. It's just a map. It's an. It's a. It's. It's this. It just goes this way. Yeah, it's tough.

[Pete Holmes]

You're on a voyage.

[Jay Jordan]

You'd go.

[Pete Holmes]

You call a friend. If you beat it, you'd call a friend. Because it was like a.

[Jay Jordan]

And then you'd find out. Now, in 2025, Pete Holmes. We were finding out. They'd be like, well, actually, you have to play this part backwards. What?

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right.

[Jay Jordan]

What.

[Pete Holmes]

And I watched.

[Jay Jordan]

You were playing parts backwards. In the 90s, I couldn't.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, I remember this. Zelda 2 Impossible.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah. There were moments on Crash Bandicoot where I was like. Well, he. Crash Bandicoot was like, in cortex. He wins. I'm Telling you, I don't got enough wampa fruit. Okay. I need an aku. AKU mask.

[Pete Holmes]

You knew the fruit.

[Jay Jordan]

I know the fruit. Crash Bandicoot. A sexy, shirtless Australian. You think I wasn't locked in?

[Pete Holmes]

Oh, my God. Well, that brings it. MAD magazine used to be really erotic to me. That's what we were talking about.

[Jay Jordan]

Sexy comic book, sexy movie.

[Pete Holmes]

Well, let's put a pin in that. We won't forget that. I was gonna say, you can tell video games and just life in general. We've seen, like. Look, I'm not saying things aren't horrible everywhere and difficult everywhere, but there has been, like. There is one line that's kind of going up. Comfort ease.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

The Internet has made things smoother.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

And video games used to be. What I'm saying is modern video games, they. They have a. It's like a distress threshold. Like, they. They. That's one of the metrics.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Is it colorful enough? Is it fun enough? Is it hard? But not too hard. Like, they're measuring it and they'll fix it. Then you watch, like, Crusty the Clown video game where you're getting the rats to leave the fun house and you're like, this is death. This is death. And nobody tested it.

[Jay Jordan]

They talk about, like, the Lion King video game, the Aladdin video game, a lot of the early Sonic video games. Toomba. There are all these video games that now it's so. There's a sense of versimilar to. They go, oh, this is so real. Red Dead Redemption. Oh, this is so real. All the God of war games now are just so real and realistic and fucking Assassin's Creed. But, yeah, the games to. To us, when the stakes were not that high.

[Pete Holmes]

Harder, harder, harder games, they didn't care because it. Well, arcade started. It was supposed to be hard to make you pay more. So then they start adapting them to the home console. But now home console is like, we actually want them to be engaged longer, not challenged. So they keep playing. We just make the game longer. But that also. You could break it down to, like, memory.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Like, the game couldn't be that big because you had.

[Jay Jordan]

Now they can store it infinitely.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Jay Jordan]

Up there in the cloud or whatever. To me, it was the craziest thing. I was getting my nephew and my niece, like, presents for Christmas. And so many video games. This is the first. I think it was maybe two years ago. They're like, no, you're gonna buy this thing. That's all of the information online for you to get the Game. And I was like, but I was such a very millennial. I said, but where's the disc?

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, yeah. Where's the instructions?

[Jay Jordan]

They said, there's not a disc in here.

[Pete Holmes]

I remember that feeling in the morning of, like, the art.

[Jay Jordan]

Yes.

[Pete Holmes]

Where's the art?

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah, where is it? I want something on the disc that I can put in to these two.

[Pete Holmes]

My brother's still that way. He's a physical media guy. He wants it.

[Jay Jordan]

I just went to a bookstore, and it was Beautiful to see CDs and vinyls and old magazines. And so that was like, kind of like, oh, okay, I see why harp on this.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, yeah. Object totems. Yeah, the thing. Yeah, like a mag. When you said magazine, I was like, yeah, my. I had a Playboy magazine that I hid in the lining. You know how this has a lining?

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

I cut the lining and put it in between the springs and the lining.

[Jay Jordan]

And like, I was like, listen, so there's two snipers.

[Pete Holmes]

You're gonna want to put it up there. Get the centerfold. Yeah, exactly. And if you saw the ritualized eroticism of me getting it out, it would be like life is a mist. You know what I mean? It was very different from just typing in jiggling ass gif and just being done. I was like, I'd, like, put an ear out. Like, is everyone asleep?

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah, yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

I close the door.

[Jay Jordan]

You put something in front of the door.

[Pete Holmes]

Exactly. Of course. I'm putting like a cup on the hand on the doorknob. It'll fall off. I'm like an assassin. And then. And it made it. I'm gonna say something. I really want to see what you get off this.

[Jay Jordan]

Okay.

[Pete Holmes]

It made it hotter. It made it sexier.

[Jay Jordan]

Yes.

[Pete Holmes]

It made it.

[Jay Jordan]

My argument in regards and connected to that is that's also why some people still love tan lines. Some people still love amateur stuff. Some people love an unexpected, non streamlined, sort of like. Like, old school approach to eroticism and sexuality. That's. I mean, that's why people are still looking at the classics.

[Pete Holmes]

Yep. The classics. I agree. I. I saw some AI. Like, it wasn't. I wouldn't necessarily call it full porn. It wasn't like a video, but it was an image that I saw online, and I was looking at it. I was like, this is weird. The computer is, like, going into our brain.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

It has all of our data, and it's like, you want this? And it was like, yeah, but also, I'm not even saying it was gross or repulsive or anything, but there was Something I was like, when you watch it, like you said, I think we might be having similar experiences. Like, these people are dead.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

You know what I mean? Like, there's a very human. Like when I was saying, they're old, old, old, old, old porn, I was like, these women are in nursing homes where they're gone. And they're almost like a. Look at them. They're so. They're alive. They're there. And that informed it.

[Jay Jordan]

That is the human experience. I think if there's an allotted amount of time you get to kind of go through all of this. There is a beauty in the finite nature of that.

[Pete Holmes]

Yes.

[Jay Jordan]

And some. Sometimes when everything becomes this series of ones and zeros. Now anything can be put into an image and made to talk to you. So now, like, you can see. Can you can type in anything on the computer and you can see it and you kind of go, well, no, because sometimes I want to be surprised by what I'm seeing.

[Pete Holmes]

I think the most erotic thing is an unexpected. It. Like, that's part of it.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

You're just like. You didn't even know that was gonna happen. I was walking down Vermont and I looked into. It's not the Dresden, but it's one of these clubs over here, and they have, like, a burlesque. Yeah, burlesque night. And nobody. This wasn't me peeping. It was just a window. And there were girls changing for the burlesque show. And I just saw a bunch of naked people. And I was like, I think that's the hottest thing that's ever happened to me because I was just walking my dog and I'm like. Like an erotic scream.

[Jay Jordan]

So my husband and I, when we go to Miami every now and then, and if you're in Miami and you watch this, maybe you'll see us.

[Pete Holmes]

Nice.

[Jay Jordan]

Go to the nude beach. It's the nude beach in Miami. Holover Park. It is so beautiful because it is people who want to be naked. But because everyone's so used to, like, oh, this is just kind of a flat image. I'm seeing a naked person on Twitter. I'm seeing a naked person on whatever website. When you see naked people in real life that you don't expect to see naked.

[Pete Holmes]

Yes.

[Jay Jordan]

It, like, triggers a bunch of middle school hormonal responses that aren't just like, arousal, but also like, we're naked. Are we supposed to. What? Everything.

[Pete Holmes]

It's exhilarating. Yes.

[Jay Jordan]

It feels. Skiing Alive. It feels alive. Yes. Yes. I also think skiing is a trick we played on Rich people for them to get injured. Cause every, every rich person I know has almost died.

[Pete Holmes]

Of course.

[Jay Jordan]

They've really almost died.

[Pete Holmes]

For real. It's like a repurposing.

[Jay Jordan]

It's crazy.

[Pete Holmes]

Robin Williams had a joke. He said, cocaine is God's way of telling you you have too much money. I would say skiing is also a sign that like you don't have enough danger in your life.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah. Because skiing is. I want to go downhill fast and they go. Tre. Forgot about those.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You think you would stop?

[Jay Jordan]

Woo. Right?

[Pete Holmes]

I've never. I'm white, but I'm not that kind of white.

[Jay Jordan]

That's why we get long. That is why we get long. I can, I can tell the ski.

[Pete Holmes]

I'm not ski white.

[Jay Jordan]

I can tell the ski. Cuz they'll say something. I'll go, really?

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah. There's just like a, there's a, a.

[Jay Jordan]

Person that skis every now and then they'll use only as a qualifier about a certain amount of money. And I'll go, okay.

[Pete Holmes]

When they say like only 10 grand, I'll go.

[Jay Jordan]

I go, yeah. You think, okay, you can't sneak that one past me. I don't care how much hamachi crudo we share at this restaurant. I know that you have a lot. You got some money in your pocket.

[Pete Holmes]

That's a great observation. I remember Birbiglia told. When I was doing the show at Housing Works in New York. So this is before crashing or anything like that. So probably had about $300.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

You know what I mean? Like that's a normal amount of money to have. I threw. Plus, you know, you paid your rent, you got 300.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

I'm watching Birbiglia and I. This is not putting Birbiglia down. But he told the story.

[Jay Jordan]

Put him down. When I'm putting him out. Put him down.

[Pete Holmes]

Oh yeah. Any, any press is good. Oh yeah, check it out. But he, he does. He got in a car accident. It's a true story. And it was the other guy's fault. And then he like was the guy who was drunk who T boned him, asked for $10,000. And the story is really like a rock and a hard place. There's nothing they can do. And they go like, I think we just have to give the guy $10,000. And I'm in the crowd and all I'm thinking is, you have $10,000.

[Jay Jordan]

You go, what?

[Pete Holmes]

I still go like, you have $10,000 dot. If somebody says only $10,000 on you, I've hung Out with some really rich people. And you'll see they pepper their. Their language and their stories with these little flexes that they don't even acknowledge as flexes.

[Jay Jordan]

Oh, no, no.

[Pete Holmes]

They're just like. So we got every entree or whatever. She's like, what. What was that is what.

[Jay Jordan]

It's when you. And as a comedian, like, as you continue to, like, succeed and have more opportunities, like, you kind of realize what numbers mean to certain people and, like, how people talk about it. But every now and then, even on. Like, even on the level that I'm at right now, you get humbled. You go to one apartment in New York City and you walk in.

[Pete Holmes]

Yes.

[Jay Jordan]

And they go, oh, this is all of us. And you go, wait, so this floor.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Jay Jordan]

Is you.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, yeah. No, no, that's true. And that's what makes money and power such a drug it becomes. Again, I. I won't well talk about it. I don't think it might. I, like, like, got to have dinner. I saw Rachel Ray's house.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

And I was like, yeah.

[Jay Jordan]

You went, wait a second. You 30 minute meals in there?

[Pete Holmes]

Yes. Well, you know, a line of olive oils. You know what I mean?

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah, exactly.

[Pete Holmes]

That's a brand.

[Jay Jordan]

Whenever you start being an empire and whenever you see your.

[Pete Holmes]

She's great.

[Jay Jordan]

Your face in Ralph's like this.

[Pete Holmes]

That's right. That's right. Paul Newman was giving away a lot of money. Yes, he gave away a lot of money. Okay, so X Men, eroticism. Yeah, I think. What. What is going on? Here's something I'm gonna. I'm gonna put to you too. Like, it's like, culture's so confused. Yes, we're homophobic.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah, sure. No, we're homophobic because of a number of kind of like super Christian puritanical thoughts about sex being for procreation only and queerness, specifically male. On. Male queerness is an aberration of that. I mean, the joke is like, gay sex is so good, if it was allowed, nothing would get done. And then you go, that's not true. Look at Rome. They got a lot. They got a lot done. They killed Jesus. They got a lot done.

[Pete Holmes]

Okay, that was on there to do.

[Jay Jordan]

That was. Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Wow, we're productive.

[Jay Jordan]

They were like, I mean, he's talking a lot. Prince of Peace. We hate peace.

[Pete Holmes]

So, yeah, I've never heard that of gay couples.

[Jay Jordan]

Gay Vikings had a bunch of gay sex.

[Pete Holmes]

And obviously Pee Wee was on my mind. I was like, oh, that's right. In our face. There's this magic trick that the queer community has been doing through all of known times, which.

[Jay Jordan]

Sneaky. He just called us sneaky.

[Pete Holmes]

I'll say it.

[Jay Jordan]

Duplicitous. You can't trust him.

[Pete Holmes]

What I'm saying is, is the most, like, picture, like a 1950s homophobe. That's like peak homophobia. And that dude loves Little Richard.

[Jay Jordan]

Oh, loves Little Richard.

[Pete Holmes]

And then we love Elton John before he comes out. And then we love.

[Jay Jordan]

Love Freddie Mercury.

[Pete Holmes]

That's what I'm saying.

[Jay Jordan]

People looked at Freddie Mercury and George Michael and went, just amazing.

[Pete Holmes]

We can't stop.

[Jay Jordan]

I just.

[Pete Holmes]

Liberace. Look, the list goes on and on.

[Jay Jordan]

I think with Liberace and Little Richard. Specifically. Specifically Liberace and Little Richard. The other thing that people enjoyed was that they. And this is to your point about gay people being a little tricky.

[Pete Holmes]

I didn't say I have a bigger Pete.

[Jay Jordan]

I have an even bigger sort of like, thing I'll get to. So gay people are tricky. And the way that straight audiences who are scared of homosexuality enjoy. The trick is if the gay person is asked point blank, so are you still a bachelor? And they go, yes, yes.

[Pete Holmes]

They love it.

[Jay Jordan]

An audience loves it. Wait a minute.

[Pete Holmes]

We love it.

[Jay Jordan]

There's no way they would wink about that. There's no way Richard would say things. He has these euphemisms that to me are still so funny because they're so southern and so queer. He talked about being turned on by something and he said, ooh, made my big toe shoot up in my boot. Made my big toe shoot up in my boot.

[Pete Holmes]

Looney Tunes level. Remember when Bugs Bunny would go. And I'm like, why is that funny? But it is. Is That's a big toe shooting up in his boot.

[Jay Jordan]

Well, and connected to the queerness and the camp of it all and why audiences love that, I think. And you brought up Bugs Bunny and it's connected to queerness. All of this is if our roots right now are super puritanical Christian. There's something that kind of predates that, that is alive in a lot of, like, I guess, like multi theistic religions. There's a trickster God. And so a lot of queer people get to occupy the role of the trickster.

[Pete Holmes]

Oh, my gosh.

[Jay Jordan]

Bugs Bunny is a trickster. Loki is a trickster. Hermes was a trickster. Brer Rabbit is a trickster. So that leads to Bugs Bunny and Mickey Mouse both being tricksters. And queer people get to sort of be avatars for that through line to something that predates Christianity. When we're trickster. And so that devious, sort of duplicitous, secretive nature. It's scary because in Lucifer it meant, oh, I'm plotting against God. But every trickster deity is still connected to the way they look at the devil. Currently now. So, like, Pan had horns and goat legs. Hermes tricked people. And so it's a Nazi trick to people.

[Pete Holmes]

Pan can get it.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah, from everyone. That's why they're called pansexuals.

[Pete Holmes]

That's it.

[Jay Jordan]

Yes. It's true. Is it? Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Shut up.

[Jay Jordan]

Pan was a horny goat God. He was a God of horniness. Pun woefully unintended.

[Pete Holmes]

But, like, wow, truly, he was horny.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah, he was horny. Well, because Pan was like the. The patron God of satyrs, and satyrs were known for running around chasing nymphs. Like a satyr.

[Pete Holmes]

We're back to sprite.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah, we're back to sprites. Satyrs are un. Sars. We'll pay. We'll pay. Jeff and David tell for that bumping mics we just did.

[Pete Holmes]

Oh, I know. I didn't know. I didn't know. I. I think we might pre date. Okay.

[Jay Jordan]

But there's a. There's a really funny nature to, like, being queer and being an aberrant and getting to do the things that straight audiences don't get to do. And that's why Little Richard and even, like, a little bit of Jerry Lee Lewis is there.

[Pete Holmes]

I was gonna say Prince, obviously.

[Jay Jordan]

Prince. I think that. And you're right.

[Pete Holmes]

These are. It was a. So mythology drag.

[Jay Jordan]

But it's not drag. It's you fooling this dumb man. It's Milton Berle in a drag dress.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, It's. It's.

[Jay Jordan]

There's so many elements. It's Eddie Murphy playing all the clumps.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Jay Jordan]

It's connected to queerness and connected to kind of sensible audiences going, well, what? No. What? You're not supposed to do that.

[Pete Holmes]

Right. But they. Okay. So mythology is like a collective dream. It's like the dream we all have. And you're right. I mean, obviously you're right, but, like, I love that you pulled rabbit. Found out a Brer rabbit in a minute. And like, the coyote was the. Was the animal that. That's tricking, but moving the story forward, helping the hero by being not helpful, not being straight is what I was gonna say. Like, they're trying to go on the path and they knock them off the path and they start going, I'm not even trying to be funny. They go queer. They Go off, they go left or right, and now they're lost or whatever it might be. But it's actually not bad. It's necessary.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

It's the dis. It's like holy disorder. And I'm not saying being gay is disorder. I'm just saying.

[Jay Jordan]

No, but it is.

[Pete Holmes]

We have, like, Prince, Wink.

[Jay Jordan]

I think Little Richard Wink. Ordering and a queering of a narrative is the best way to talk about it.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Jay Jordan]

Because so many people are kind of like, oh, well, why does America. Why is America both repulsed and obsessed with this? Why do people love. Why do people love Divine in every John Walters film and in John Waters film? And then why did people love Ursula? And Ursula was based solely on Divine.

[Pete Holmes]

I know, I know. And I. I actually was thinking about that recently. I was like, they could have done it. Yeah, they could have. But they could have had a drag queen.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

As Ursula, and that would have been pretty dope.

[Jay Jordan]

But we have a little McCarthy.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Jay Jordan]

Which is just as fun.

[Pete Holmes]

Well, I didn't see it, but I'm. I believe she did a great job. But that fascination, it's not benign. It's fascination. Pardon the interruption, weirdos. This is brought to us by one of our newest, Pete's Picks, which is absolutely. Not only only changed my life, but revolutionized my life, which is Kenobody, the makers of some supplements that are truly transforming my energy levels, my willingness, willingness, my motivation to exercise, and my decisiveness. What am I talking about? I'm talking about testosterone. There was a study that found between 1987 and 2004, men's testosterone dropped about 1% per year. That means 30 to 40% lower testosterone than their grandfathers had in the 80s. I didn't even know that was a problem. I went to my doctor, they checked it. I was normal, low. So I started taking Keno Body Mojo. And I'm like, is everything testosterone? It is a huge, huge game changer. I've noticed. I'm feeling way more motivated, way more driven, more creative. My workouts are longer and easier, and my energy is way up, including my blood flow. And wink, wink. Everything that that could possibly mean. That's why I think one of the reasons they call it Mojo testosterone is linked to dopamine, which is our motivational hormone. And dang, I am setting goals, I'm getting up earlier, and when I have something on my to to do list, I'm full on Nike about it. I just do it. Mojo is the solution I didn't know I needed. It gives your body the vitamins and minerals it needs to produce testosterone naturally and lower cortisol, our stress hormone that gets your mojo back. I love all of Kenobody's products, but especially mojo. I love shred, I love nitro and I love Keno Octane which is their all natural pre workout that gives you energy and euphoric focus. Try any of their products. I swear by this company they are legit. You can get 20% [e-mail] K I N O B O- dash-Y.com with your first order when you use promo code. Weird. That's 20 [e-mail] we're also brought to us by our friends at Element. Speaking of working out, speaking of the hot summer months, healthy hydration is not just water. It is water and electrolytes. But so much of the 80s and 90s, an electrolyte drink meant a flat soda. Element is here to fix that. It floods every cell in your body with healthy hydration. What does that mean? It means sodium means potassium and magnesium in the perfect dialed in ratio to give you you that boost to flood you with hydration to keep away fatigue, brain fog, cramps and just make you feel fantastic. For years I've been drinking Element before I do shows. I drink it first thing in the morning. It just jump starts my day. And now that we're doing all these hiking beach days workouts here in the hotter months, you need to get this in your life. Try their lemonade salt which is available now through the summer. It's their new flavor. It is unbelievable. Even if you've tried Element in the past before and it wasn't for you. Lemonade salt is a game changer. So get healthy hydration into your life. Go to drinklmnt.com weird and you will get a free sample pack of every flavor with any purchase. That's drinklmnt.com weird. This brings me to another thing. So you brought up gay, specifically male homosexuality. And I, I from for what it's worth. Yeah, I agree with you. I'm like I see that stigma being stronger meaning it's like the Schlitz gay. The SNL thing you never saw in the way that female homosexuality, which is obviously kind of like a cleaned up or whatever you want to say. It's the fear, the male fantasy version of that.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah. So there's a, there's a long sort of history of the in comedy too. The idea that like lesbianism is a bit easier to deal with than like guy on guy stuff. I think number one there's the anatomical nature of, like, male. Male penetrative sex that some people are just gonna always be like. Like super, like, disoriented by. And. Because people don't respect women's bodies, they go, oh, well, they. Lesbians don't even have sex. They just kind of, you know, kids. And you go, where are they kissing?

[Pete Holmes]

I just. To throw this in. I remember being a kid and one of my weird sex talks was my father was trying to help me understand how it feels. Aggressive.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

He's. He wasn't. My father was. Is and was a great person. He wasn't saying anything untoward. He was just like, you might have to get over the fact that you're this humping, thrusting, penetrating thing. And you're kind of like, there is this sort of like, is this. Okay, I'm talking about straight shame, like, coming to terms with just sexuality in general.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

It's very, like. Like, everybody poops.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

You know, things coming out, things going in.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Like, this is tricky for us.

[Jay Jordan]

It's. And it's scary because there are these kind of, like, markers that happen when you're a boy going through puberty that you really cannot hide. I mean, there's a reason why everyone knows. Kind of like, come up to the class and solve this math problem. It's like, I can't.

[Pete Holmes]

Right. My foot's asleep.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah. I wish I could. I cannot.

[Pete Holmes]

If people even knew just how I'm gonna say I was. Hard 70% of high school.

[Jay Jordan]

Right? No. Right. Right.

[Pete Holmes]

This is your body.

[Jay Jordan]

I can't. Can still remember. I was a freshman. There was a senior girl. She wore a T. She. First of all. The perfume she wore was, I want to say, Clinique Happy. Like, it's like that locked in. She wore a shirt one time. I just want a random ass shirt. It was like. It was this 2003, like, maybe 2002, tiny shirt. It was a shirt that was, like. It barely passed wardrobe, like, inspections.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Jay Jordan]

She, like, kind of put her hands up and the shirt kind of came up. And at that point, you're like, forget it.

[Pete Holmes]

Forget it. It's so funny that you say that, because I remember being in math class and there were girls that. The style in the 90s, I guess, show the bra strap. And I was like. Like a cold sweat.

[Jay Jordan]

You're just like.

[Pete Holmes]

Just like, obviously this is before. Way before I even had sex or even did anything. But it was just kind of like. Like, what am I seeing? And it's also. I think this is important to note Pre porn.

[Jay Jordan]

Pre porn.

[Pete Holmes]

I'm not looking at porn. I don't know really what a bra.

[Jay Jordan]

Is, but you're seeing a bra and you go, I know I'm not supposed to see bras, but I'm seeing one.

[Pete Holmes]

That's right.

[Jay Jordan]

Me and my friend Pat.

[Pete Holmes]

This goes back to. It was more. It was like edging.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

It was like. You know what I mean? I was like that. I saw a bra and thought about. This is going to sound absurd, but there are certain traditions where they'll teach you something profound. It might be spiritual. It might just be wisdom about life. And they'll make you carve it into wood and carry it with you. So you're carrying a quote from Meister Eckart carved in wood with you. Like the way they make teenager kids walk around with an egg.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

You know what I mean? To learn the responsibility. So you have to, like, be, like, off put.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

What is the word? Inconvenience. I guess by inconvenienced by this thing.

[Jay Jordan]

That you're this burden.

[Pete Holmes]

And I had to, like, slowly eek out, like, caring around bras.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

And I just think on bras, like a Buddhist teacher would be like, bras. And I'd have, like, three years of just thinking about what a bra might be. That's really erotic. It's really erotic. Then just walking into the funhouse and.

[Jay Jordan]

Then you see a bra and you. I remember we got. My friend Patrick Roach and I, we got in trouble because we were snapping one of our classmates bras. And we were both doing it in a way where we were, like, little seventh graders being annoying, but also we were horny. And, like, she told us to stop, and we stopped. And then she was like. And then she turned around, was like, I bet you won't do it again. We were like, oh, my God, what are we supposed to do? That's the craziest thing ever. Of course, we can't conjugate these verbs. We're busy.

[Pete Holmes]

Yes.

[Jay Jordan]

It was insane.

[Pete Holmes]

It's very, very horny. I wonder what it's like now.

[Jay Jordan]

I'm beautifully horny because maybe it's because I, like, have the. The ability to reflect. But it was like this very coming of age. Like, I kind of go, oh, everyone did have, like, this weird movie of middle school.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Jay Jordan]

That I think some people now get to portray. Like, I saw Dee Dee, and that's such a beautiful example of that. Like a film.

[Pete Holmes]

Is that a movie?

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah, it's a beautiful movie. It was so good. And, like, a couple of Other coming of age movies have done a very good job. There is this weird part of growing up where you go, is everyone else going through? Because I am. I feel like I'm crazy right now.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah. Yeah. Crazy horny.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah. Not only just crazy horny, but like you said, like, I'm thinking about bras and sometimes I'm. Sometimes I'm aroused, but sometimes I'm just like, what? Yeah, they're just like, everywhere.

[Pete Holmes]

I know. Well, every week in youth group, I've said this a million times. They would ask for. It's so weird. This is also. I think it feels kinky too.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

It's just a group of guys sitting around being like, what are you struggling with? It's very. I'm telling you, it seems like a rot. It's a rot. It's like, quiet and it's like, what are you struggling? And you're like, lust.

[Jay Jordan]

Okay, what is this?

[Pete Holmes]

The opening of a dirty movie? You know what I mean? Like, it feels like that. And what I was saying was, and what makes it sort of sexual is there's like a thing that needs to be released and no one's talking about it.

[Jay Jordan]

And there's a buildup and tension.

[Pete Holmes]

There's tension and buildup, but there was no release. I would just go, so lust. But I wouldn't say, I can't stop jumping off. I wouldn't say, I'm obsessed with bruh. I would just be like, lust. And we never. When the youth group disbanded, we're seniors, I was like, you guys knew I meant jerking off. And they were like, here's what's fucked up, dude. They weren't like, yeah, we were too. They were like, yeah, we assumed. They didn't say, we are too. And I don't even know if they were. Which I look back and I'm like, that's crazy.

[Jay Jordan]

I know. I think, like, the. The homosocial and somewhat kind of of homosexual component of, well, homosocial. Basically the idea that, like, men's, like, relationships with other men. Maybe not in a sexual way, but homoerotic.

[Pete Holmes]

Homo doesn't necessarily mean sexual.

[Jay Jordan]

Not even homoerotic. Just like being or being in the company of men, discussing manly things and discussing men's issues. For so many people and for so many kind of like patriarchal societies throughout the history of the world, those moments where it kind of veers into eroticism. Up until, I want to say, like, mid century in America, people kind of went, yeah, you can jerk off with your boys. Here's why we're all Gonna get married one day. This is just kind of what we all do. Don't worry about it. And so there was a whole frat.

[Pete Holmes]

Guy is drinking off on a cookie and I'm like, ookie cookie.

[Jay Jordan]

Limp Biscuit. Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

What's Limp Bizkit?

[Jay Jordan]

Limp Bizkit. Limp Bizkit is the. Sorry, that's Limp Biscuit. Well, sorry, yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

This is where I found out Alanis Morissette is something gross too.

[Jay Jordan]

I know, but Limp Bizkit is the original name for ookie cookie, so Limp BizKit is the UK version. Because biscuit means cookie.

[Pete Holmes]

Oh, of course.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Why limp, though? Yeah, Soggy.

[Jay Jordan]

And because everyone is done if. Well, unless you're the last one, then you have to eat the cookie.

[Pete Holmes]

So not only. You don't even get to have a finish after you eat a cookie.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

You know, I'm going to say through the history of Limp Biscuit and Okie Cookie, you know, there's people throwing that game.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

There's some Shoeless Joe Jack. Shoeless Joe Jack off. He's not even trying to. He's not even trying.

[Jay Jordan]

I think you just like this. No, I hate it.

[Pete Holmes]

No, no. And respect. That's what we're saying.

[Jay Jordan]

Shoeless Joe Jackoff.

[Pete Holmes]

Shoeless Joe Jagoff.

[Jay Jordan]

That's funny.

[Pete Holmes]

Shoeless Joe Jackson. No, come on. Come on. I'm gonna say, if one of us does it, you can have it.

[Jay Jordan]

That is funny. That's one of the. Okay, but that's also one of the Those stories that people go, oh, why were frat guys doing the elephant walk? Why does everyone have to be naked? Why do we have these both like kind of kinky humiliation rituals?

[Pete Holmes]

Yes.

[Jay Jordan]

And I think it's because you have to be forged by the fire of proof that you'll go through all of this gay and still follow the rules. Marry a woman, have a kid, preferably a son, who can work at the business that you got from your dad.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, that's right. Right.

[Jay Jordan]

So there is a.

[Pete Holmes]

You can go into the fire and come back.

[Jay Jordan]

Yes, yes. You will be unchanged.

[Pete Holmes]

You won't be tricked by the coyote.

[Jay Jordan]

You won't be tricked by the gay ass coyote.

[Pete Holmes]

You're not scared of him. Yeah, you'll that coyote.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah, you'll that coyote.

[Pete Holmes]

You'll let that coyote you.

[Jay Jordan]

But that is part of it.

[Pete Holmes]

I agree.

[Jay Jordan]

I think that's something that a lot of guys. I have a joke where I say the word can come out of your mouth as many times as a has gone in. And so if you were in a frat, you can say it. And to me.

[Pete Holmes]

To me, it's like a quarter in the pinball. Now you can play. Now you can play.

[Jay Jordan]

And some of the guys have a string attached to their quarter. And they go, but to me, the girls laughing at that joke laugh because they go, how. How incredulous and silly and ridiculous is this? And a lot of the boys laugh at that joke because they go, ha, ha. That's crazy.

[Pete Holmes]

Interesting.

[Jay Jordan]

That's wild, right?

[Pete Holmes]

That's fascinating.

[Jay Jordan]

So many people think that when we kind of joke about these experiences, they kind of go, oh, you know, P and J. They're being a bit hyperbolic when they talk about how much. How horny they were as teen boys. And I go, no, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, my. The only reason I knew how to jerk off, one of my friends in fifth grade gathered us. Benjamin or Lansky. I'll say your name.

[Pete Holmes]

Oh, Benjamin Orlando. Yeah. Sounds like a sports team. Yeah. Listen, have the ball.

[Jay Jordan]

He's wonderful. He's got two kids now, a beautiful wife. He lives in Austin. He gathered us. He. He. Cuz he had two older brothers.

[Pete Holmes]

Yes.

[Jay Jordan]

So he came back as an emissary. He was like, I got some news, y' all. He said, y' all know. Y' all know. You know, like, when you get a boner. We were like, yes, Benji. We all know when we get boners. He's. At first there's something you can do about it. And we're like, what? He went, okay, you can keep going. We were like, no, there's. He's like, you can keep going. And then something happens. And he told us. And I know at least four of us went home that week. And we're like, let me see what Benji's talking about. Let me find this JCPenney's catalog.

[Pete Holmes]

I remember wanting a wet dream. We thought, what? Like, girls got their periods.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

And boys got their wet dreams. And I. I got. I finally had one. And I was like, I really wanted one. But then I'm like, that's not a thing. That is not a thing. Like, what are we talking about?

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah, that was one of.

[Pete Holmes]

We wanted an initiation.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah. You wanted a kind of, like, doorway into manh. And I mean, as a. I didn't know I was queer. I didn't know I was going to identify as bisexual later. I just was kind of always like, oh, this is interesting. Oh, this is interesting.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Jay Jordan]

And so my entire kind of like, high school existence was this duality of like, oh, I'm really attracted to Girls. I have all these, like, fun relationships with girls. But then I also have this, like, weird. One time a new guy came to our school, and I just remember being obsessed with him in a way I couldn't articulate. So people be like, oh, my gosh. Like, this new guy be like, man, he's really. We should figure. We figure out, like, what he likes to do. And they'd be like, what?

[Pete Holmes]

This is like, anchorman.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

This is all over. We should get an apartment together. I miss your most. Very much. I miss your most. But why does that joke work? It's because we know the anchorman boys. There's a homo social.

[Jay Jordan]

Yes.

[Pete Holmes]

Charge to it.

[Jay Jordan]

And I was like, we got to talk to him about his old school. What did they do there? And everyone was like, we do not care. I was like, I care. And so I had, like, those moments. And I also would have, like, this. Me and this girl once. We would just, like, make out in a car in. Because I would have to go to, like, my theater classes at the end of the day, and in between, there was an interim where we could, like, go to that part of the school, and we would just, like, make out in the car and probably look so performative. I was like, before I went to go do two hours of theater, I was like, yeah, let me make out in the car with this cheerleader. We'd make out, and then she'd go. And I'd be like. And then I'd go, this is crazy. I'd go to theater, and there was a guy named Chaz who we would like. This is so funny. We would like. He's a chef now. He's a ladies. You get it? If you get it, He's a chef.

[Pete Holmes]

Hey, what does chef mean to you?

[Jay Jordan]

Chef. Ladies love girls, love line cooks and chefs. There's a.

[Pete Holmes]

They're dangerous. They smoke cigarettes.

[Jay Jordan]

They also, like, they're good at something.

[Pete Holmes]

But there's something about, like, I'm not. I couldn't.

[Jay Jordan]

Working class bad boys.

[Pete Holmes]

They are. And they know the. When they. I say grotesque, I don't mean gross, but they're like, if you want to eat. Yeah, this. You have to get through this. Like, they're not afraid of blood. And there's something. There's like an oyster.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

And a vagina, and they're just like, I love oysters. You know what I'm saying? Like, that is not a new point.

[Jay Jordan]

But there's a dedication to. There's a dedication to, like, tactile elements and tastes and.

[Pete Holmes]

But they're dealing with the raw thing to get to the presentable thing.

[Jay Jordan]

And they're. And in a very kind of like, old school masculinity way, they're manly. They're manly because they do a thing with knives and they yell at people. People yell at them. They yell back. There's fire.

[Pete Holmes]

It's urgent.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Everything's on a clock block. It's so funny. Cooking is feminine.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Until it becomes, like, intense. And then it's like, now it's the most masculine.

[Jay Jordan]

And then. And this is my kink to bear. And then you kind of go, can the lady yell at me? Then you kind of get there, where you go, cat, Cora, yell at me.

[Pete Holmes]

When you shoot on set, you'll see a lot of mask leaning women that are on cruise.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

And it's. I've done hundreds of things, and there's always guys going, like, that's what's up. Like, I want that. There's something underrepresented, sexy about a woman that can pick up a camera. And you're just sort of like, what the am I looking at right now? And it's kind of. It's in there.

[Jay Jordan]

I think. I think that, like, so that. So that element of like, oh, what do I want sexually? That was present with me.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Jay Jordan]

All throughout high school and then college.

[Pete Holmes]

Who are you saying was a chef, though?

[Jay Jordan]

This guy that I would.

[Pete Holmes]

Oh, you'd go to the theater class.

[Jay Jordan]

I'd go to theater class. And he's a chef now. But at the time, we would, like, cuddle in a way that we could easily pass off as like, oh, just a bunch of teenagers. Just kind of, like, chilling. But I was like, but why? Listen, why am I in your lap?

[Pete Holmes]

Okay. You're really bringing me back to high school. School. There were those people that would just kind of pour into each other like.

[Jay Jordan]

A cuddle puddle, like a puppy pile.

[Pete Holmes]

And they'd play with hair and they'd run their hands on your arm or whatever it was. I had that, dude, you're bringing me back. My friend Liz would draw henna on my hand. Right. And I was like.

[Jay Jordan]

And you'd stay there.

[Pete Holmes]

I would do this. And I felt like I was being initiated.

[Jay Jordan]

It's. I mean, like, if. If we kind of look at this from an anthropological standpoint, it's a very primate grooming circle. It is of us to kind of just pick at each other and rub on each other.

[Pete Holmes]

Yes. And so the theater was the place.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

I envied the theater.

[Jay Jordan]

Oh, we.

[Pete Holmes]

They did.

[Jay Jordan]

You had carte Blanche to do whatever you wanted to do in your theater department.

[Pete Holmes]

And you could pretend to be a grown up. Look, when I say kink, I don't mean bad.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

There's something erotic.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

About it. It's like, I'm gonna be Hamlet. Hamlet grown dude.

[Jay Jordan]

Hamlet is a grown dude who is not processing the death of his dad well. And he's like, you know what? I think a couple people should die.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Jay Jordan]

Like. And so. So imagine saying, hey, you're 16. Go for it.

[Pete Holmes]

That's right.

[Jay Jordan]

There were moments where we would. One of my first, like, big makeouts was on stage backstage, because there was a kiss in the show. And so because there was a kiss in the show, everyone in the show was like, well, we should kiss.

[Pete Holmes]

And so wait, the people who didn't have a kiss.

[Jay Jordan]

The people who didn't have a kiss were like, well, we're kissing too. If y' all are kissing, we gotta kiss. And so this was not on stage, and some of it was not scripted. And sometimes the director, who was also. I'm looking back on it, she had to be only, like, 28. She was dealing with us. Us. She's only 10 years. 12 years older than us.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Jay Jordan]

We would kiss backstage because they were going to have a kiss on stage and be like, oh, well, let's like, make fun of them kissing. So it was always like, we're kind of making fun of y' all. No, we're just kissing. We're just kissing.

[Pete Holmes]

My friend Earn was in. His name's Aaron, but we called him Earn. He was in a bigger. We. He was in a theater thing. I. I went and saw him do this play, and he kissed a girl like, 15 times in this play. And I'm still mad about it. I was in the crowd. I was like, we had a deal. Like, we're lame. Like, we're. We're not.

[Jay Jordan]

You and the kids aren't.

[Pete Holmes]

I mean, those best friend things, it never went sexual. But that. That closeness is a type of. I don't know how to. How to categorize social. It's homosocial.

[Jay Jordan]

It's homosocial. And you're aware of each other.

[Pete Holmes]

You're aware of each other.

[Jay Jordan]

I remember the first time I saw my.

[Pete Holmes]

And there was a possessiveness. That's actually what it was, was I was possessive. And when he started dating a girl, this is also home. We're learning homosocial. It's like peewee. The word of the day is homosocial. Because I remember being more angry. And again, I would Tell you, if I had overt sexual feelings, that wasn't in my consciousness, but I was. There was unshadow. And I don't mean bad. I mean there was like unconscious like, but you belong to me. We have each other. And Earn was my friend that was. Was like saving me from my family. I love my family. But it wasn't like a very chill house. So I would walk like four miles to earn something.

[Jay Jordan]

Oh my God.

[Pete Holmes]

That's romance. I don't mean sexual. I mean it's romantic. It's like, you're my best friend. You're about to saving me.

[Jay Jordan]

You're close to solving this male loneliness epidemic everyone's talking about, which is having a deeply rooted, kind of like fully realized relationship that's beautiful with another person, whether it be a man, but something that gets you kind of out of what has now become a very sort of market style relationship complex based on dating apps and the Internet and perceived desirability. If you have a relationship with someone who you care about and you don't have sex, but you do have moments where you go, I love you so much. I'm so happy we get to have this.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Jay Jordan]

That doesn't exist as much for guys, young guys right now.

[Pete Holmes]

Let's. Let's dive into that. We're gonna go to the mid rolls here because it's been an hour and we'll be right back because I want to talk about male loneliness. I know all of a sudden it feels like we're doing a TV show. I just happen to notice we're changing topics right at the hour. So instead of the ads just being dropped out of nowhere, here they are.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah. We'll be right back for better help, hopefully.

[Pete Holmes]

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[Jay Jordan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

That you had. And. And again, I'm not saying anything sexual. I just want to be careful. Like with the army, like these, these guys that are bonded together through intense experiences or a sports team. But for me now, I. I have some close guy friends. And what we do. And I really want your advice. Your take is when we sit, I go, what are you ashamed of? Tell me something you're ashamed of. And we do it.

[Jay Jordan]

That's good.

[Pete Holmes]

I see more men's groups popping up and more just. Like, I realized it was exhausting to hang out with my guy friends. This is through my 20s and most of my 30s, if I'm being real, because all I was doing was competing with them and kind of like bragging. I was trying to be like, well, yeah, I'm doing Conan next week. And I was like, that's not relationship.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

And then with my girlfriends, I would be like, like, probably smothering them with too much. I was like, can we just kind of have a more well rounded. Can I have one guy that I'm like, you know, I'm. I'm really scared that, like, this or this or like, what, what does this mean about me? Or I'm ashamed about this? What?

[Jay Jordan]

Well, I think that that is that relationship dynamic and that sort of, I guess, like, delineation between, like, I can only talk about this with my girlfriends. I can only talk about this with my guy friends. It's ruined. And two and a half generations, almost three now we kind of have this group of young men online who think they're not desirable, but who also think that they're owed something versus, like, going out there and forging real life friendships and bonds with people. And then some of the relationships they have with people online now are toxic. Or these people are manipulating them and taking advantage of them and kind of like using their grievances that are real to kind of boost their clout online and to have just an army of followers.

[Pete Holmes]

Oh, by pandering.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah, by pandering. And by saying you deserve these things. You should say this thing about black people. You say this thing about Jewish people. You should say this thing about women in general instead of being like, you know what? You actually just need to talk to a dude in your neighborhood who's close. I don't know. Like, if you like Yu Gi oh, go play Yu Gi oh. With someone who. You know. I don't know.

[Pete Holmes]

That's why Dungeons and Dragons. I don't even play Dungeons and Dragons, but it's making a comeback because we are.

[Jay Jordan]

Exactly.

[Pete Holmes]

Breaking. Exactly breaking. And it's funny. Can I say to that? Because that's great advice. And I'm like, oh, okay, I'll go get a slice of pizza with this male friend from work. And then you're like, but it's gonna be weird.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Like, there will be, like, lulls. And I'm like, if there's one thing, I could just kind of, like pixie dust over everybody. Sprite dust. I would just be like, yeah. And you can be, like, honest about. Yeah, Like, I'd love to go hang out. I'm a little worried it'll be weird, but I think if we push through that. Yeah, it's like a good date. Like, you could say the same thing. Like, this might not work, but can we talk about, like, it's also, like, stand up. Yeah, it's not working. Then the show becomes about how it's not working. Like, it's an ownership of what is.

[Jay Jordan]

And it's scarier to, like, go through life not having at least one person you can talk to about something. I think it's so much scarier to tell these men they have to become these sort of, like, stone statuesque figures. Because the overcorrection is people say, oh, I have to become this, like, alpha male. And I have to. I have to really get in the. Because have you seen this, like, kind of evolution where it went from? I have to get really into sports, and it's like, no, I have to get really into bodybuilding. And now it's like, no, I have to really get into, like, mixed martial arts. And so even the aesthetic they're attempting to pursue because, like, if you're in shape now, they're like, oh, but is it functional? Actually, I know a couple of guys who. Who do jiu jitsu who could, like, beat your ass when, like, a couple years ago it was like, oh, you want to look like you want to look like Chris Evans when he comes out of the Captain America chamber. First of all, most important tits in Marvel history. I would argue they look great. I know.

[Pete Holmes]

I'm going to say I'm going to.

[Jay Jordan]

Ever do it again, because I. I get it. Chris Evans was sick of it, but.

[Pete Holmes]

He won't do Captain America.

[Jay Jordan]

I mean, no.

[Pete Holmes]

That's almost. You know, Chris Evans did this podcast.

[Jay Jordan]

Can you believe it?

[Pete Holmes]

He wasn't in the TV where Zoom.

[Jay Jordan]

I was about to smell this.

[Pete Holmes]

But I'm gonna say that is. It's not like Little Richard, but that.

[Jay Jordan]

You remember when that happened, every guy was like, I gotta look like Captain America and Thor.

[Pete Holmes]

Every.

[Jay Jordan]

So many of my straight male friends were like, oh, I need that man. I was like, say it again.

[Pete Holmes]

Right, right.

[Jay Jordan]

They're like, I need to look like that. That man. I was like, okay.

[Pete Holmes]

But there. The line between I want to be like. I want to be like. Is a kind of love. You know what I mean?

[Jay Jordan]

Admiration.

[Pete Holmes]

Admiration. Adoration.

[Jay Jordan]

Adoration.

[Pete Holmes]

And flattering.

[Jay Jordan]

And like. Like, they're. They're goals. These are demigods who you get to say, oh, I get to do what he does. Thank you so much for inspiring me, you man. Well, when I have sex with my wife, I'm going to think of you. And thank you.

[Pete Holmes]

Right. And even the way you do that in a heterosexual way, which is what we're talking about, this is the trickster kind of getting in there is. I'll pretend I'm him. Yeah, he's still there. You know what I mean? Like, you're superimposing him on you.

[Jay Jordan]

Yes.

[Pete Holmes]

I think there's. It's a very interesting thing when, again, in the normal. Normal. You know what I mean? Heteronormative narrative, a guy watches Captain America and goes, I want to be that.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

That is so intimate. I want. Call me by your name. Call me by your name. Call me Captain America. Call me Jason Bourne. You think it's distancing you. It's actually as close as you could be to it. I want to be you.

[Jay Jordan]

You're a priest in that church. You're an acolyte.

[Pete Holmes]

You're an acolyte.

[Jay Jordan]

You're inside of it, and it's inside.

[Pete Holmes]

Of you, and it's inside of. And I'm not even trying to be. I mean, we can. We can. We can do that.

[Jay Jordan]

But I think. But there's like a level. There is a level of male loneliness online. That kind of. The way people get out of it is through gym relationships. They Have a guy. I have. I've had this. Men who, like, we've never really talked about anything other than how we're looking that day in the gym and what we're working on and what we're trying. There's an older gentleman at my gym in New York City during the pandemic, we were both kind of worried about, like, the gym closing down, and we'd seen each other all the time. And you know what this man told.

[Pete Holmes]

Me his dream was gym clothes laws.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

We were a little worried about the gym clothes loss. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Jay Jordan]

I love that. I went with it. Well, I also was like. I mean, I get it. Like, this is a social component for him. He wanted to do porn, and now he does porn.

[Pete Holmes]

Waiting.

[Jay Jordan]

He told me he wanted to do it. He. And he's like a straight guy. Older. Older guy. And he told me he want. He was like, I really kind of want to get into, like, nude modeling. And then that kind of turned into, like, I kind of want to do, like, porn. And I was like, I'm me. I was like, oh, like, sex workers work. Like, okay. Like, I'm very much like, hell, yeah. And he, like, does it now. And to me, that wasn't sexual, but it was intimate because I was like, what?

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's. You know what it is. You're going to know. I can't wait to say this to you.

[Jay Jordan]

That.

[Pete Holmes]

That is. That is sold in the same store as people, regardless of their sexual identity, talking about their dreams. Yes, we love it.

[Jay Jordan]

Yes.

[Pete Holmes]

Or here you were in my dream last night is.

[Jay Jordan]

And you go, what?

[Pete Holmes]

Girl, it is. Girl, it is. We need these. And there's something. Again, I'm not even.

[Jay Jordan]

I had a dream about you getting the. I had a dream about you text or in person. You go, what?

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, that's right. And we know it's the. I need to talk. I need to talk is. Or we need to talk is break up.

[Jay Jordan]

Can I talk about something?

[Pete Holmes]

And I had a dream about you. And everyone. People play with it, too. They'll send it as a standalone text. And then you got the three bubbles, and you're like, send it as one. Actually, don't. Because it's very titillating to wonder where it's going. But what. What. I think what we were having. I think there's a fascinating conversation about that Coyote. Meaning culture wants you to think that you're on a conveyor belt.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

And. And you're. It's the game of life. And you're given A shirt and, you know, the briefcase. I'm not even talking about. You're supposed to. It could be gay. It could be straight. But actually, I think for the purposes.

[Jay Jordan]

Of this, you can talk about the reason it has to be straight, and here's why it has to be straight. Maybe not 100% straight, but it has to be straight enough that you. And this is so, like early modern era, like, great chain of being. You have to make kids, and the reason you have to make kids is because you're working so hard to have all this stuff. Don't you want to make sure your stuff goes to something that came from you? Your stuff. Stuff. Get your stuff. If your stuff doesn't get your stuff, what are you even getting stuff for? You're gonna give your stuff away to strangers. Well, that's chaos. That's communism, actually, which.

[Pete Holmes]

What you just brought. That is so funny. It was so funny. I comedy laughed at it. I'm like, that's very funny. That's really good. Because I do think there's something really there. And then the old guy who has a billion dollars, like, knives out the sevens.

[Jay Jordan]

Yes.

[Pete Holmes]

Who's gonna give it to his young wife.

[Jay Jordan]

Yes.

[Pete Holmes]

We hate that you're going to give your stuff. You broke the rule. You broke the rule.

[Jay Jordan]

I get the stuff.

[Pete Holmes]

And gay relationship or childless relationship. You know what I mean? I'm not judging. I'm saying you're breaking the rule. Yes, but what I was going to say too, is like, you think you're on this again. I think it's important you're on this straight line. When. If you've ever had an epic dream or if you've ever had a psychedelic experience, those things make you realize you're in a three. It's more than three.

[Jay Jordan]

Six.

[Pete Holmes]

And it's swirling and it's confusing and it's strange. And these devilish. Not devilish. These wicked, but they are devilish. Yeah, devilish, but in the Loki way. Not Satan.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

I mean, like Loki. Whether or not you meet a Loki character on a. On a psychic quest, on a vision quest, you feel that sort of like it is. Will you be. When we're talking about the initiations of, like, my dorm room was constantly naked. What are we doing? Yeah, what are we doing? And it wasn't as simple as, well, you want to suck each other's dicks. It wasn't that simple, but it. It feels dreamy and ethereal and it's not conveyor. But that's all I'm saying. I'm Saying, no, but it is the things that play. We need Little Richards and we need Prince and we need all this stuff. We need Burning man and we need ayahuasca or whatever it is. We need all this stuff.

[Jay Jordan]

We have to have those off ramps from this highway that you're describing, because those off ramps make you go, oh, this is what life is about. It's about this weird little experience I had here. And then I get to move on this way a little bit. And then I go, actually, let me do this. Oh, this is. And for me, I started to do comedy when I was 29, so my off ramp became a main path when the. I thought the main path was going to be a personal trainer and actor and just kind of doting husband. And even before that, I thought the main path have would have been if we get back even to earlier stuff, was theater teacher at the collegiate level. And before that I thought it was going to be Laurie. And before that I thought it was going to be Doctor because I went to. I went to school for biology. And then I was like, I don't want to do this. I don't want to. It's like those. The main path as you're describing.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Jay Jordan]

It exists in theory. And then because of these little tricksters and because of these parts of life, you kind of go, oh, it's actually over here.

[Pete Holmes]

That actually end up being. I know this is such a cliche. Your teachers.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah, they're your teachers, but they're also never going to tell you directly. They're trickster gods. And the trickster deity of it all is, I can't give you this information directly because then you won't even do that.

[Pete Holmes]

Right.

[Jay Jordan]

I can't tell you to do this because then you're going to say, what do you.

[Pete Holmes]

It actually goes back to the carving of the giant saying you actually have to kind of suffer it into you or be tricked into it.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Because if you could just explain it, we would have a YouTube video that would, like, explain life to you.

[Jay Jordan]

And that's just being a robot.

[Pete Holmes]

Exactly.

[Jay Jordan]

That's. What if there's a prescriptive method and model for life. The minute someone succeeds without it, then it's outdated. If someone says, this is the only way to make it go, what about that person? They go, I guess you could do.

[Pete Holmes]

Well, you know, in comedy that. That's been happening over and over. That's what's been really humbling in the great way where I'm like, sometimes people say, say, how did you make it? Yeah, And I'm like, every. Almost everything I did has no application. I kind of like that. I kind of think it's fun. There are some principles that remain. But then you're like, I don't know, man.

[Jay Jordan]

I'm also like, I'm on the cusp of that as well. Like, I was one of. I think maybe one of the last groups of people who were like, okay, so these are the steps. Do these steps.

[Pete Holmes]

Steps, yeah.

[Jay Jordan]

And the steps don't guarantee success, but they guarantee. They guarantee a couple of eyes on you in a way that can lead to success if you execute.

[Pete Holmes]

Yep.

[Jay Jordan]

Correctly. And so, like, those steps happen. And now I'm hyper aware of both, like, the old school way and the new emerging way and taking elements from both and what I really like. Like, I'm still very punchy, and I love working a set. People are like, oh, you love. You love set up punch. And I go, here's the thing. Crowds love setup punch because crowds love being fed. If you've ever. Sometimes. And you know this sometimes you go, oh, I love telling these jokes. I could go weird right now, but y' all aren't. I need y' all to really be locked in on the easy stuff before I can ever get weird.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, yeah.

[Jay Jordan]

Because you earn it. You earn it. Because if you don't, crowds go. They just. He came out confusing me at first.

[Pete Holmes]

I go, val pointed that out to me. Me, it's been 25 years. And she goes, Pete, usually the first 10 minutes of your set is you daring them to not like you and, like, saying something weird, like. Like uncomfortable. Usually she was like, there's always some weird porn joke, and it's this weird churchy reflex where I'm like, if you're gonna enjoy all of this, I need to know I can trust you. And she's like, you can just stop doing that.

[Jay Jordan]

But you. And you know who matches? You know. Oh, okay. You. You and Taylor both do occupy those. Those ends of the spectrum where you're both very porny sometimes and very theological and not Christian. Yeah, both porn. You are. You know how to.

[Pete Holmes]

I say this all the time. I go, you guys love the jizz jokes and you love the God jokes. I'm like, who are you? Yeah, like, I didn't know you guys existed.

[Jay Jordan]

Oh, I. I love the fact that as a comic right now, I still have that reaction. I go, who. Wait a second. Y' all at some of the craziest stuff. This is just stuff I said to the mirror and in the shower, y' all Are weird.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you earn it. You. You. You gotta, like, walk them in with the setup punch. You know what's interesting? Maybe this is a stretch or you'll really know what I mean. One time I watched the John Wick movies. I might have been stoned or I might just kind of been feeling fanciful, like feeling flighty in my thinking. And I was like, oh, my God, John Wick is the old and the new karate.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

All those guns and guns and guns. And we love it. We want to see the old and the new. So I like. You're John Wick.

[Jay Jordan]

Yes. You're.

[Pete Holmes]

You're going like, I know how to do what Davitel is doing or, you know, that kind of thing. And I know how to do. Yeah.

[Jay Jordan]

When I tell you, that's one of the highest compliments. Well, thank you. I love David Tell. And when people go, oh, would you watch Growing up Insomniac with David Tell every. And David Tell was doing everything that everyone with the camera on the street was. Is doing now back than.

[Pete Holmes]

That's right.

[Jay Jordan]

David Tell was dealing with drunk people at 2am he was with a camera.

[Pete Holmes]

He was the original Hawk to a girl.

[Jay Jordan]

Not even originally.

[Pete Holmes]

That's what it was.

[Jay Jordan]

True.

[Pete Holmes]

Well, he was finding the original.

[Jay Jordan]

Found a few original Hakua girls. And if that would have happened, I mean, you can't even tell me that those people know about Davitel because I don't know if they do.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Jay Jordan]

But like, I know about Insomniac.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That. Well, he is the ultimate. Like, I'm going to come. Like, it does feel like karate. He's going like, on one of those things that just has the nubs.

[Jay Jordan]

He does this amazing thing where, like, he is aware that he is both, like, part of the old guard, but also existing in a new world. And he doesn't resist it. He lets it wash over him and he plays with it. And there's this beauty. There's this beauty in someone who you look up to still crushing the last show of the night at the Cellar. And you're there with him. And you go, that. In my head. And I know some people don't want this. In my head, I go, okay, so I could still be, like, telling really fun, timely jokes, like, at that age.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, yeah.

[Jay Jordan]

And some people go, I don't want to have to do that. I want to be doing arenas. I want to be retired in a big house. I don't care. I think there's a beauty in that because that Means you're the old head that gets to come. Come in super late at night and play with the band and people go watch this.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Jay Jordan]

That to me is like, well, that's.

[Pete Holmes]

That feels like old showbiz. In fact, the bar where I saw the Naked Ladies was Jeff Goldblum does A Night of Music there. It's right over here. And that's. That's a tell.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Jeff Goldblum doesn't need to do that tell. I, you know, I, I think he doesn't need to do that. You know what I'm saying? He wants to do it because I think these guys have figured out something that's really hard to figure out, which is this is your life.

[Jay Jordan]

Yes.

[Pete Holmes]

This. Right. Whatever you're doing right now, it's not sitting in a mansion and going like, boy, we did it.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

And it's also not just insatiably doing it. It's finding what you like to do and do it. And Jeff Goldblum likes to sing and entertain people.

[Jay Jordan]

And that entertainment aspect, to me, enriches all of the other stuff. Like, I.

[Pete Holmes]

It gives a purity to it.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah. Especially I just saw Sinners and Delroy Lindo, his character, blew me away. As a Mississippian, as a person who knows a bunch of old, old black men from Mississippi, he occupied this space where, yeah, he's a kind of mean drunk, but he's funny, but there's heart. And at his core, he's a musician.

[Pete Holmes]

It's like the Color Purple. I haven't seen it. But you remember the husband and color.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah. Yes.

[Pete Holmes]

But I kind of like him.

[Jay Jordan]

Yes. Well, okay, here's the crazy part. And here's the crazy part about being a comedian and seeing older showbiz people. So much of comedy now has been kind of connected to Hollywood. So that youth is this thing that people have to have. But then I know. And you. And you've learned this, like, as a, specifically as a, like, comedian. As you get older, you kind of just get better. As long as you don't start hating like trans folks. You get just a little. You. You know what I mean? You just get more seasoning on the cast iron pan.

[Pete Holmes]

I agree.

[Jay Jordan]

You kind of stuff slips off.

[Pete Holmes]

I heard a Malcolm Gladwell thing. He was talking about Paul Simon.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

He was like. And Paul Simon's an anomaly because he's. He never stopped. He's just been doing music all this time. And a lot of people do go like, well, that's enough. And I'm like. And a lot of comics, their careers get Interrupted by some other thing. But there are guys like. Like, I know we just said trans jokes. So Chappelle came to my mind. But like Chappelle with those. Whatever you want to call blind spots also.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Is like been doing it.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

For 30.

[Jay Jordan]

Was a kid. That is a while. Like Dave Chappelle. Once again. Killing them softly is one of my specials.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Jay Jordan]

That. It was a baby. My life.

[Pete Holmes]

It was a baby.

[Jay Jordan]

You probably know this. And you see on the corner. I'm selling drugs, nigga.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Jay Jordan]

I said it so Pete didn't have to.

[Pete Holmes]

I know I said we go to.

[Jay Jordan]

Color bars, but there is an element of going. I know this, like, super important seminal text. And I. Whenever I first started doing stand up, I would hear people. This is what people were doing when I first started. They were doing. All the white boys were doing Mark. You were doing Normand. Or they were doing kind of a mix of Mulaney and Birbiglia. The soft white boys were doing that. The ones who wanted to be. Who wanted to.

[Pete Holmes]

Like, those are your choices.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

It is like D and D. Do you want to be an elf or do you want to be.

[Jay Jordan]

And then a lot of the young. Exactly. A lot of the young black boys were still doing either Kevin or Chappelle. And I would hear it and it made me. I had a rule earlier.

[Pete Holmes]

Earlier.

[Jay Jordan]

I never wanted to end a joke with As a punchline when I didn't have a good enough actual punchline. Because I just knew. They didn't know they were taking it.

[Pete Holmes]

From your book is a tag.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Have a good joke.

[Jay Jordan]

But they didn't know that they were doing Chappelle. They didn't know they were doing that. That's because it was. It was something that was so. In his voice.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Jay Jordan]

And so kind of ingrained in him. And he probably was like. He probably was channeling. Who. Who is the person that like. Not just Chappelle. Oh, my God. Who was. Oh, who's the guy from D.C. that Tony. Oh. Oh, my God. Is it Tony? I forget Tony's last name.

[Pete Holmes]

I'm forgetting there's a D.C. comedian that they greatly inspired. Chappelle.

[Jay Jordan]

Yes.

[Pete Holmes]

And did some shows with Chappelle. I think he opens from sometimes it's Katie. Would you just. Dave Chappelle. Tony Woods.

[Jay Jordan]

Tony Wood. Shout out Tony Woods.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Jay Jordan]

But like, you see Dave really kind of taking that and then it transmogrifies and becomes more Dave. And so that's the standard. And you see other people kind of do that.

[Pete Holmes]

But what's Weird is when you watch. Did you watch that? Now we're just talking about Chappelle. I'd rather talk about you, but I'm just saying, like, you see Chappelle in high school and you're like, he. He's doing him. It was there.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

That's the weirdest thing about See the Flashes. You see him do like this.

[Jay Jordan]

Well, I saw. I mean, like, Kevin Hart is another example of someone to me who, like when Kevin Hart found out that his magic was a little bit of patter, a little bit of finger snapping and a little bit and losing. Kevin Hart made it cool to be a black male comedian who was losing so much. So much of it was like, we have to win. In the stories. Kevin Hart was always losing.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Jay Jordan]

All of his early stories, Lil Kevin Hart was always losing.

[Pete Holmes]

He was.

[Jay Jordan]

People were making of fun, fun of him. His ex wife, his dad growing up. He was always losing.

[Pete Holmes]

Well, it's funny to me that I love Rock, obviously. Rock. I'll never forget. I won't say who it was because it's their story to say. I remember when I started, I was 22, 23. I'm like, obviously, Chris Rock is the best. And this guy goes, yeah, but I, I like a little bit more vulnerability.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

And I never even considered that. But Chris, to me, is coming from that time when you get the last laugh. Yeah.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

That's why I made it so challenging that he got slapped, because I was like, this isn't the guy that's gonna do the bit about, like, what he learned. I actually. It doesn't matter what he does. I just thought when he did the bit, he was doing what he does, which is like my heart, I connect to Chris. I'm like, I know you, man. I know you got like teased and hurt and you became Iron Man.

[Jay Jordan]

But he gets.

[Pete Holmes]

And you're like, you're not gonna do that.

[Jay Jordan]

He gets, gets to tell that version of the story. I think in Everybody Hates Chris. Yeah. TV show, he gets to like get beat up by like racists in the 80s and his mom smacks him around and his brother's the cool one and yeah, makes fun of him. You're right.

[Pete Holmes]

He dumped it all there.

[Jay Jordan]

He gets to tell it all there because on stage, I think it just is a bit. Maybe it's a narrative that he never really wanted to like because with his stand up, he's a proud howler. He's like, he's. He's walking the full length of the stage and telling you something that you need to know about race relations in America. Whereas on the show, it's kind of like just a kid who's a loser.

[Pete Holmes]

Right.

[Jay Jordan]

Which is beautiful.

[Pete Holmes]

Right?

[Jay Jordan]

Because you get to go, huh, that's funny.

[Pete Holmes]

But there and then you're saying Kevin.

[Jay Jordan]

Kevin was doing that on stage.

[Pete Holmes]

Did it on stage.

[Jay Jordan]

Kevin was doing it on stage. When Kevin was like letting. He has this very, very funny story. And it happened as he, as he continued to rise in fame because he would find new levels. So then he was famous enough to hang out with Dwayne Wade. So he has these funny jokes about Dwayne Wade taking him out. And he's like, oh, so we like, you ain't paying for it. Okay, okay. And he's like, I'm a loser. Again, it's him hanging out with the Rock. And so physically there's a difference. So he makes fun of the Rock, the Rock makes fun of him. The Rock gets the last laugh. Then he gets to call the Rock a big dummy. But everyone, everyone enjoys seeing Kevin lose. And to me, when I was like, okay, so there are all these elements of stand up, where you can be a winner, you can be a loser, you can be sassy, you can be dumb, you can. And so, like, as a, as a comic, I'm like, okay, what parts of this do I like? I love losing, but I also love kind of getting last laugh. When you're queer, you get to kind of be the arbiter of wit sometimes. So you get to be like, actually, I get to make this point.

[Pete Holmes]

Well, there's a lot of dynamics here. Right?

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

In fact, before you pause there, I was gonna say Kevin is very handsome.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

And he's short.

[Jay Jordan]

Yes.

[Pete Holmes]

So you want him to win. You could. Don't get me started on, like, justice. Like, what the audience thinks is just. And when I. I'm not here to tell you what a queer person. But there's a different dynamic.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

We want you to win in different ways. There's a different sensibility. And. And I think Kevin's good lookingness helps us. I don't know, it's hard to tell.

[Jay Jordan]

But Kevin also gets to queer the narrative because if he's a man who's losing, men don't lose. Short men can lose. Why? Because short men, Men aren't manly enough. Why aren't they manly enough? Because every man has to be this amount of height. But as you know, after a certain amount of height, you and Goldman talk about this like, there is a level of height where it's silly that now that you aren't holding a ball. You go, what's all this for? You go, wait a minute. This is actually funny.

[Pete Holmes]

Well, you.

[Jay Jordan]

Wait a second. You go, Garrett, you down here at the cell, you're gonna hit your head.

[Pete Holmes]

That's it.

[Jay Jordan]

That's it.

[Pete Holmes]

Yes, You. There's a certain. Well, a joke. I actually think this is good. A joke is a benign violation, right? Like a safe violation. And a tall guy who isn't doing anything with it is already funny. It's already funny. What is he doing here?

[Jay Jordan]

And then people make fun of it. It's Veep.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Jay Jordan]

Veep was all about that. Like, there are so many times where you go, oh, that's how we like. That's the comedy math on this. And so whenever you're a queer person, a black person, a person from the South, I don't know, like, I get to, like, lose and win. So, like, the justice then is I. If I make fun of racism in the south, to me, the funnier joke is making fun of people who think there's not racism outside of the South. So I have this joke where I say, oh, you move, New York. And people say, oh, Jay, you must be happy to be out of the South. The racism down there must be so pronounced. And I go, you pronounce it just fine up here. And, like, they. That's a very Southern way to handle that and diffuse that. But it comes from the fact that when I moved to New York in 2015, people were like, oh, Mississippi's so racist. And I go, y' all know, just killed, like, a dude up here. Didn't y' all just strangle a guy to death?

[Pete Holmes]

Right?

[Jay Jordan]

Okay. All right.

[Pete Holmes]

We. Well, scapegoating is one of the most human things.

[Jay Jordan]

Oh, yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

In the world. And we get so excited. I mean, all of humanity gets so excited. If we can say our evil is in. I'll go to the 90s. It's in Iraq.

[Jay Jordan]

Yes.

[Pete Holmes]

If we can say racism is in the South. And that's exactly what scapegoating is. Is you go, I'm not from the South. I'm not.

[Jay Jordan]

You go, I get to put all this there.

[Pete Holmes]

Nobody hid people in our trees. It's like, yes, they did.

[Jay Jordan]

They go. And if they didn't, they just beat them on the sidewalk or they hit them with a car.

[Pete Holmes]

Like, but we just want to go. It's over there.

[Jay Jordan]

And that. I think that, like, because my approach to comedy was also a bit theatrical, I was always. I didn't.

[Pete Holmes]

It really doesn't seem like an When. When I first saw it, because I was like, oh, okay, Jay is an actor. Which is so funny because Chappelle also went to school for drama. But I'm. I'm like, I have a guess. And then when I watch, I was like, it's just a compliment. I go, oh, no, that's a real comment. Yeah, I grew up.

[Jay Jordan]

I grew up. I was. I was indoctrinated so early because Comedy Central, to me was fascinating, because think about this. Every other station, like, you didn't see people talk that uninterrupted for that long. You saw dialogue, you saw interviews.

[Pete Holmes]

You.

[Jay Jordan]

The first time I was like, like, the first time I saw Pablo Francisco or the first time I saw, like, Wanda Sykes or Jim Gaffigan special with, like, the corn in the back in my.

[Pete Holmes]

You have to remember Skinny Jim.

[Jay Jordan]

Skinny Jim. Jim with the glasses. And I remember thinking, they're talking a lot. Oh, my God, they're talking the whole time. And so then you just watch it. And you watch as a. As a person who was in theater at the time, I was like, these are monologues, but there's something different about them. Oh, they, like, are planning these, like, laughs. And then I watch Tough Crowd, and that's just like ball busting. And then I watched Last Comic Stanley, and then Stand up kind of is like popping up everywhere. And this is before anything else. So, like, my introduction to Stand up was Comedy Central and then a little bit of Last Comedy, and I was just like, blown away.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, yeah. But I. I thought you were also gonna say it. Really? Because a monologue would terrify me. If I was gonna do an hour or plus of a monologue along, I'd be like, that's hor. If I was just going like, think about cobblestones. They always make me think about meeting my first wife, you know, like that. Cuz I don't know where I am. Yeah, but stand up every five seconds, you know where you are. So it really is. And I am partially saying this to make myself. It's a dialogue, it's a scene. You're doing a scene with them.

[Jay Jordan]

And I love stand up because you get to construct it and. And you really get to construct it over time with the monologue. Maybe you sat down and wrote it, then you edit, then you wrote. But like, in Stand up, there is a give and take where you go, that one. Okay, that one's not working the way I want. Okay, put that one someplace else.

[Pete Holmes]

Stopped working.

[Jay Jordan]

Or you go, that. Oh, I already said that word. Yeah, I can't use that word again. They liked when I said it the first time. Diminishing returns.

[Pete Holmes]

Okay. Yes.

[Jay Jordan]

They're like all the. These kind of. I guess, I mean, it's kind of market research that you get to do where you go, okay, over and over.

[Pete Holmes]

And over and over.

[Jay Jordan]

All right.

[Pete Holmes]

Over and over.

[Jay Jordan]

And so then my hour isn't just my hour. My hour is this, like, stitching together of all these different fibers from the shows I did to build up to this hour. My hour is someone coming up to me after a show in Philly and being like, oh, what about this? And I go, so, you know, know I'm stealing it and thank you.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, that's right. Like, it's that the audience is helping you with it all the way. I don't mean by talking.

[Jay Jordan]

Not by. Not by. Yeah, we love that you're in a relationship. I can see it now. Back to me. I. The obsession with asking people if they're dating or. I know that it's like, easy. It's easy to put a video like that up. But the hard part to me is that, that I. I really want people at my show to have a good day. I never want to stop someone from getting laid because I asked about it. It's so scary.

[Pete Holmes]

I feel like an old man. But, like, I remember doing comedy and there's a guy and he's clear. I was too young to know. He's clearly with call girl. He's with a. With a sex worker. And you're like, oh, no. Like, you saw. You didn't know. A guy could say a full sentence in silence. But he was like, please don't talk to me. Don't talk to me. This is not. Or I saw a pregnant woman smoking and she's like, don't talk to me. Like all these things. And I was like, look, I'm not here to judge anybody. I really just want everybody to have a good time.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

And there is a risk. You start asking them about.

[Jay Jordan]

And the good.

[Pete Holmes]

You guys happy?

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah. The good time that I want people to have is I also want people kind of to your John Wick point is to leave a show of mine and go, Jesus Christ.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Jay Jordan]

I really like, stand up. I still have stand up virgins and stand up newbies. Come up to me after.

[Pete Holmes]

Oh, I love it more and more.

[Jay Jordan]

This is my first time I got out of the house. I'm happy. I got.

[Pete Holmes]

And I always go, like, it goes downhill. You know, I'll share this with you because we're having such fun the cockiest thing I say on stage if I go up early in a show is I go, you guys think it's going to get better after I. Because I feel them pacing themselves. I'm like, this is it. This is it.

[Jay Jordan]

Last night.

[Pete Holmes]

Let's enjoy this now.

[Jay Jordan]

Last night, I said something similarly cocky. I said, wait a second. Y' all ain't never met someone with confidence before. Shut up. I got stuff to say.

[Pete Holmes]

That's it. Okay, so going back to the. The gay coyote.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

The Loki.

[Jay Jordan]

Yes.

[Pete Holmes]

I think stand up helps me imbibe the spirit. Like, the thing that I always say, I say it on the pod, so I'll say it quickly, is mask work. And tribes that put on a mask.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

They would behave like that.

[Jay Jordan]

This is very theater of you. I love that we do mask work and.

[Pete Holmes]

Okay.

[Jay Jordan]

Pedagogy. My acting training, like, we did math work in undergrad and in grad school.

[Pete Holmes]

So, you know.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah, it's commedia. You go, these are the stock characters. You have to embody Arlecchino. You have to embody, like, Colombina. Like, you have to be this part of commedia, and you have to do the poses and occupy their place in the story.

[Pete Holmes]

What?

[Jay Jordan]

So you have to be. You have to be a tricky servant. You have to be a lecherous old man. You have to be this stoic male figure who, like, beats people up.

[Pete Holmes]

Because we're having a dream together.

[Jay Jordan]

Yes.

[Pete Holmes]

And you're gonna be. And this is what dreams are like. And it's not random. No, it seems random. That's why when you watch a movie, the. The mantra is always surprising but inevitable. When you're writing a story, you go, it surprised me, but yet when I think about, I go, it had to be that.

[Jay Jordan]

And that's why they can have flashbacks right before the ultimate scene where you go, this is. Okay, they were spoon feeding it to us.

[Pete Holmes]

That's right. Then you watch again. How did that surprise me? The movie opens with him dying, and I'm surprised that he dies.

[Jay Jordan]

But that's what comedy is. Comedy. You go, pattern recognition skills. Everyone has it. And people go, yes. And you go, okay, 1, 2. And they go, 3. And if you're clever, you go, see? They go, oh, C is three. Okay, let me do some math. And then sometimes you go, 1, 2. And they go, 3. And you go, penis. And they go, why'd you say that? And you go, it's transgressive. And they go, oh, you're right.

[Pete Holmes]

But like, that's like Chappelle Sorry to keep. I'm not forcing it.

[Jay Jordan]

No.

[Pete Holmes]

He talked about when he was in theater school, learning how to get them all to look at one thing so you could hit them.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

With something. And it's. It's like, that's. Focus their attention.

[Jay Jordan]

That's on the commedia. That's what. That's what slapstick comedy is. That's what, like, a lot of early kind of comedy work was. Was like, everyone look over Punch and Judy. Is that.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, yeah.

[Jay Jordan]

That's what these puppets are.

[Pete Holmes]

It's here.

[Jay Jordan]

Here. Bonk. What? It's like.

[Pete Holmes]

That's right.

[Jay Jordan]

I think that's. That so much of this. That's. Yeah, exactly.

[Pete Holmes]

That's what is.

[Jay Jordan]

And it's also, like, fun because you said about the movie. It's surprising. It's surprising, but inevitable. That's a lot of what comedy is. You go, okay, there. Listen, Pete Holmes would not make me pay for these tickets if he wasn't going to say something funny. Now, I'm going to be surprised because I don't know where this funny is coming from, but I'm expecting some funny.

[Pete Holmes]

Right. That's right. And that's the greatest privilege of doing comedy for more than at the beginning. I still look back. That's what made crashing interesting to me, is like, you're. No, I don't mean you're nobody. Everybody's somebody. I just mean, like, to the audience, there's no relationship.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

And you have. That's why the first 10 years of comedy is like, I'm Pete. I look like this guy.

[Jay Jordan]

Oh, my God.

[Pete Holmes]

And this is what I'm about.

[Jay Jordan]

I like, talk about this idea of comedic anonymity all the time. And the reason I specify comedic anonymity is that you walk in, the host says your name, and the car crowd goes, who the is that? And if you do a good job, people, as you leave, they don't say your name, but they go, who the was that?

[Pete Holmes]

Yep.

[Jay Jordan]

It goes from who the is that? To who the.

[Pete Holmes]

Oh, the good. Who the is that good?

[Jay Jordan]

Who was that?

[Pete Holmes]

Same words.

[Jay Jordan]

Same words. Word economy. Because it's comedy.

[Pete Holmes]

It's very good.

[Jay Jordan]

It's. It's. I mean, like, I. I love it, and I'm obsessed with it, and I know that that comes across, and I hope that people also kind of realize it's fun and cool to be obsessed with something. Like right now, some people still kind of go, I'm doing stand up until I get to do this. And I go, well, I'm doing standup because I'M lucky enough to get to do stand up. And I like it.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, it's interesting. I don't like it. I don't like the first thing you said. You know what's funny is because I think a lot about this. I was like, I like doing standup, but it's not my favorite part. My favorite part is having done stand up. Ooh.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

I like being done with it.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

And if I have six shows, I just did Nashville, and we did six, so it's two a night for three nights. I'm not relaxed or happy until the last show, and then I put it all down, and then I'm as happy as a boy can be.

[Jay Jordan]

I can be happy. After the two shows that night.

[Pete Holmes]

I know it. It goes like this. It's cr. It's cranking up.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

After the first show, this is it, man. I can't believe you relate. I'm. I'm so happy. First show, we got that out of the way. I'm loose now. I got it. I feel pretty good. Then every show after, I feel better and better and better and better. Then when it's all done and we usually get an ice cream or something, I'm. This is the best feeling.

[Jay Jordan]

Innocent, I would say. I would say my obsessions right now are like, stand up and then related to you. I still am very much obsessed with the X Men in a way that is so silly and boyish, but also like.

[Pete Holmes]

Well, that's probably part of the fun now, right?

[Jay Jordan]

The fun now for me is because I love narrative and I love of. I also was a big. I liked Greek mythology, and so Greek mythology directly ties to comic books, but I also liked animals, and so taxonomic breakdown and learning as much as I can about.

[Pete Holmes]

I have to say, great vocabulary. I've been over here melanin, but you.

[Jay Jordan]

Know what I mean?

[Pete Holmes]

You said something earlier about melanin. Very melanin. I melanated. I've been learning all these words. I'm like, this is great.

[Jay Jordan]

But, like, taxa, like taxa, like. Like, a taxonomic breakdown is basically like, kingdom, phylum. Like, all of the way that we categorize animals and the way we categorize life.

[Pete Holmes]

Okay.

[Jay Jordan]

On this planet. And so for me, X Men was a part of that, because to me, X Men were comic books in general, but X Men because of, like, the queer and kind of like, minority status and marginalization element. But I was like, but this is so cool. Imagine being like, this person has powers, and instead of being like, they just have powers, be like, actually let's explain why. And you go, what? To a certain. How would people take it and how would people respond?

[Pete Holmes]

I say Little Richard is a mutant.

[Jay Jordan]

Yes.

[Pete Holmes]

In the X Men way. I mean, that is a very high compliment.

[Jay Jordan]

100.

[Pete Holmes]

And when you watch the story of those people.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

You see they do have an origin story. And there is. I know it's Spider man, but there is a spider bite.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Or there is, you know, for X.

[Jay Jordan]

Men is it's connected to what we talked about earlier. It's pure.

[Pete Holmes]

Oh, yes.

[Jay Jordan]

So a lot of X genes manifest at puberty. So you're going through the most stressful time ever.

[Pete Holmes]

Yes.

[Jay Jordan]

And then all of a sudden you blow a wall off with half your face.

[Pete Holmes]

Well, isn't that funny? That rogue, who is very beautiful. If I touch somebody, there's intense consequence. It's kind of like a. Well, I can't vouch for what it might or might not be saying, but it's almost like you're incredibly beautiful. You have this power that you don't even know. You kind of have to learn how to use that for your good. Right.

[Jay Jordan]

And you talk about.

[Pete Holmes]

Doesn't that sound like puberty?

[Jay Jordan]

Cuz. Yes, yes. And you have to talk about all of the psychological elements and the components of like everyone's power was connect. Like there was always a dual something gained but also something lost. Like, like even if you were one of these hyper powerful individuals. Okay, let's like you. I mean, you did a whole series as Professor X. Yeah. The amount. Amount.

[Pete Holmes]

But he's overwhelmed of stress and the.

[Jay Jordan]

Amount of kind of duplicity and lying you have to do when you know everyone else's truth.

[Pete Holmes]

Right.

[Jay Jordan]

Like their entire X Men arcs with Professor X lies to these people who are his students, basically. Sometimes they feel like his foster children, where you go, why would you lie to them? And he goes, cause I had to. And you go, oh my God.

[Pete Holmes]

He's like an oracle.

[Jay Jordan]

You had to.

[Pete Holmes]

Why are the oracles are always blind?

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

They're always in a trance or they're always in a wheelchair.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah, yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

He has. It's surprising but inevitable thing away. He has to be in a wheelchair. We were listening to Stevie Wonder on the way down and I almost said to my daughter, I was like, this guy's blind. Yeah. I was like, maybe later. I didn't want to go there. But I was like, that's surprising but inevitable.

[Jay Jordan]

Well, they put Brandon the wheelchair at the end of Game of Thrones. Like there's, there's an element of constraining someone with power that immeasurable, you kind of have to say, I have to. It's like in any. It's like when Luke loses his hand, you go, you have to lose something.

[Pete Holmes]

Yep.

[Jay Jordan]

There's something that has to be taken away from you.

[Pete Holmes]

Right.

[Jay Jordan]

And even, I mean, all of my favorite X Men characters have that like, storm. People kind of go, oh, storms can control the weather. You go, yeah, but that also means she could kill so many people.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Jay Jordan]

And she also, like, she was. Her origin story is like she was literally with her parents, dead bodies after an earthquake in Cairo for like two days. And so she had for the time, immense claustrophobia and didn't trust anyone because she was orphaned. She had to roam the streets. People tried to rape her. Like, it's like insane.

[Pete Holmes]

And that feels like hormones too. Like, teenage girls turn on their parents. So that's like the, the collateral damage. Like you're becoming this powerful thing. You really just broke your mom's heart sort of thing.

[Jay Jordan]

Oh, my God. Whenever. Whenever. You know, that is seen in almost every teenage movie movie, there's a big fight and like, there's a door slamming moment. And the. And like the daughter or the teenage son says something that's not. The whole movie's been funny. They say something not funny, but cutting to their parent. And at the time you were like, oh, why does this feel weird? And now if you're older, you're like, God, that hurts.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I. I'm with that. And I was going, who's Magneto? It's funny. It's funny that the, the bad guy guy. Obviously Magnet is a complicated character. Like hate or what? Or self hate.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Is sort of powerful. You know what I mean?

[Jay Jordan]

Extremely.

[Pete Holmes]

That feels correct.

[Jay Jordan]

And isolationism. I mean, there were so many, so many through lines that people were trying to weave with different writers about him. Like, I think the.

[Pete Holmes]

Am I misremembering that he's kind of Malcolm X? Yeah.

[Jay Jordan]

Okay, so what happened is that Stan Lee wrote them as two kind of figures that weren't necessarily gonna be MLK and Malcolm X. But that sort of like later impressed upon them MLK and Malcolm X. I.

[Pete Holmes]

Could just hear Stanley saying it. Well, one of them's going to be MLK Magetto.

[Jay Jordan]

He also was like such a Magneto. Yeah. That. That's what he kind of. He had that accent when maga. Wow.

[Pete Holmes]

All right. It was there, man.

[Jay Jordan]

But there is an element of Magneto that, that especially 80s where people were kind of questioning what it means to have an ethnostate so it's connected to that because he's a Jew. He's arguably one of the most famous Jewish characters in comic books. And he's created two, not three, different kind of nation states for mutants exclusively. And because I think he has like a very interesting relationship with media. Like, because he kind of became more of an anti hero than a full on villain and he wouldn't time people to train tracks. He was like, stop hurting mutants. But in the 60s, he was like, I want to take over the world. And they're like, we're going to stop you with this wooden gun. And he was like, you got me. You got me. Actually, who told.

[Pete Holmes]

Who told your name?

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah, wooden handcuffs, too. Y' all are prepared.

[Pete Holmes]

Triple lacquered handcuffs. We got Magneto. I love this. I love this so much. Okay. I don't want to run out of time. Let's talk a little bit about the meaning of life.

[Jay Jordan]

Okay.

[Pete Holmes]

That's also tied for first. You have so much funny standup about being married but not being boring. And I'm obviously like anybody. I'm like, what does this mean? Like, you out here.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah. Then we have fun threesomes every now and then.

[Pete Holmes]

Is your husband bisexual?

[Jay Jordan]

No. So I'm bisexual. My husband. He is. My. My husband is gay. But I would say he probably identifies more as like, homo. Flexible now because we also understand that there's so many ways that you gender can pop up for people that if you. I mean, hot people kind of get to do whatever they want. That's the rule.

[Pete Holmes]

And that's your husband.

[Jay Jordan]

That's my husband.

[Pete Holmes]

He can.

[Jay Jordan]

But yeah, the jokes about us.

[Pete Holmes]

Whoops. I was straight for 15 seconds. You get to look at me, though.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah, I think, I think that me joking about like the fact that we've had threesomes. The. The fact that we've like had like fun with other couples.

[Pete Holmes]

So I love your joke about your wedding and how there's overlap.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah, yeah, it was that.

[Pete Holmes]

But you people that you've slept with.

[Jay Jordan]

But at a gay wedding, there are moments where you kind of go, okay, I've seen his ass, I've seen his dick. I've hooked up with him.

[Pete Holmes]

Well, Jay, forgive me for making you the representative of.

[Jay Jordan]

Please do.

[Pete Holmes]

But I'm just talking to you.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Not the whole culture, just you. But it is something I've heard is like, there's a wedding.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

There's six gay guys. They're going to.

[Jay Jordan]

Oh, yeah. Or they have.

[Pete Holmes]

Or I mean all like, we'll get together. There'll be like a party. Because I won't say who, but a gay friend of mine will be like, you don't know what it's like to be the seventh gay guy that wasn't invited. I will. It's, it's, it's a comic. Bren. Bren. James Sullivan has a great joke where he's like, you're not invited to the gay orgy.

[Jay Jordan]

Or, or even like not full on orgy as far as like everyone participating, but sometimes on like a fire island house, like, let's say there is a bedroom and a bedroom and two downstairs bedroom rooms. Sometimes, like, if there's a big pool party, you'll be like, oh, those people are kind of hooking up in the stairwell. I have to get past these people jerking each other off and kissing to go upstairs to my husband to have good Christian gay sex.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Jay Jordan]

And you're like, well, if they're jerking off for a little bit, I gotta watch them jerk off. So now I'm kind of involved in this. I gotta go up to my husband. I go, hey, they're jerking off downstairs.

[Pete Holmes]

It was an impediment. Yeah, it was an obstacle.

[Jay Jordan]

These video games are hard. And so then I frogger the VR goggles. And so then my husband goes, they're not jerking off. I go, go downstairs and look, he goes, will you come down with me? So like at that point. Yeah, it's not sometimes. These are. One time in Fire Island, I specifically remember I was in the pool and my husband like kind of gave me the signal that he was like, he wanted to go upstairs, so we went upstairs. But because other gay guys sort of also were looking at you. If my husband accidentally gave the signal to another guy, so he comes up, but then his boyfriend's got to come up. So now there are four people. So then four people are in the room. And so then the owners of the house have an adjoining room. So they hear what's going on. They come by, say, hey, check and see if everyone's okay. So now there's six people in the room. If you give a mouse a cookie, it's very. I think that there is.

[Pete Holmes]

Give a mouse a cookie.

[Jay Jordan]

There's a, there's a silicone based slippery slope to a lot of this.

[Pete Holmes]

Water based.

[Jay Jordan]

Water based. Yeah. Yeah. We want to be able to wash the sheets. I, I think that like, there's also like a little bit of. And this goes back we were talking about with homosocial relationships for a lot of gay guys. And unless you're like very Prim and proper. Sometimes jerking off or giving a blowjob. It feels very much like a handshake in the sense you go. It's your skin. We're kind of just being naked again together.

[Pete Holmes]

And everyone's destigmatized.

[Jay Jordan]

It's destigmatized in the same way that. Okay. And this is for straight people, the closest thing that they have is chicken. So if you're in the pool and you're playing, like, the chicken game.

[Pete Holmes]

Oh, the game chicken.

[Jay Jordan]

The game. Chicken on the shoulders. So having someone's crotch on your neck, a hot. And it's usually girl. It's the guy of the base. Girl on top. And you know, now always 20, 25. So flip it if you want to.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Jay Jordan]

Progression.

[Pete Holmes]

Sure. But either way, something's getting pressed against.

[Jay Jordan]

And you're in the water, you're in swimsuits, in various states of undress. If there wasn't the threat of impregnation or the idea that, like, you know, straight people have to follow all these rules, they would hook up, too. It would be. It would be an orgy.

[Pete Holmes]

I understand. I can hear my. My wife agree.

[Jay Jordan]

Would your wife let you put another woman on your shoulders?

[Pete Holmes]

This is Pulp Fiction. I wouldn't give another woman a foot massage either. I absolutely wouldn't. In. In. It's funny. Val is of the thing. She's like, I want to see everybody's butt.

[Jay Jordan]

I do want to see everyone's butt. That's me and Val. Me and Val are locked in. I want to see everyone.

[Pete Holmes]

I would get her in here and. And she's helped me be like, wait.

[Jay Jordan]

I. I kind of want.

[Pete Holmes]

I want to see everybody's butt, too. She's like. She also is like, everybody should be kidding. Kissing.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah. Okay. Yes.

[Pete Holmes]

Okay. I thought you were gonna take it away.

[Jay Jordan]

No, no.

[Pete Holmes]

She's like, I don't know. We love people. We should be kissing.

[Jay Jordan]

I. Yeah. Listen. That is the one thing that as a person who kind of. As a day walker, as a gay walker, a bisexual.

[Pete Holmes]

Is that a Blade reference?

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah. So Blade's a damn fear. I'm a damn queer. And so I try to bring that energy to all my struggles. Straight friends, because my gay friends have it in excess. I try to. I'm bringing a straight friend of mine who's a very funny comic. John Marcos is racy. He's. We're going to fire John Marco did the show. He's doing a show in a Speedo, I think, on Fire island with me.

[Pete Holmes]

Well, he's a Baby.

[Jay Jordan]

But he's also going to be objectified. But there's also. He's going to bring his girlfriend. But there's also. To me, there's a very fun and almost 70s style element of like bringing straighter people to queer space spaces and having. Because the queerest thing you can do after you've reached kind of peak gay is bring a straight guy and a girl. Cuz now a lot of this is what's going on in the gay streets. Pete. I don't know if you know, a lot of gay guys are now figuring out their bisexuality.

[Pete Holmes]

The cul de sacs.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah, The c.

[Pete Holmes]

I just needed a second.

[Jay Jordan]

That's very good. Yeah. The roundabouts. So a lot of gay guys are figuring out that they have these burgeoning feelings of bisexuality and kind of homo flexibility.

[Pete Holmes]

Interesting.

[Jay Jordan]

Because their aversion to women was one that was impressed upon them and one that was a bit performative and one that they thought they were kind of getting rid of heteronormativity and getting rid of these like social norms. And now because they have time and they're older, they can really investigate and say, oh, well, actually there is a part of me that really does want to like, I am attracted to this girl. I'm attracted to a number of different body types. I'm attracted to these people.

[Pete Holmes]

This is Chasing Amy. Remember Chasing Amy?

[Jay Jordan]

Yes.

[Pete Holmes]

Where she's like. Wasn't the whole point of getting into being a lesbian.

[Jay Jordan]

Yes.

[Pete Holmes]

Was to, like figure out what I am. And now I'm in love with a guy. Yeah.

[Jay Jordan]

Which is, to me, the fun that we get to have with things now. So I think that, like, whenever I talk about all the gay stuff as a comic, my favorite thing is when straight couples come up to me afterwards and like the girl. Girlfriends. The girlfriends love doing this. They go, he's a little bi. And the husband goes, no. And I go, yes, you are. Okay. I said, you bought a ticket. I said, I'm usually a mosquito on my Instagram. You follow me?

[Pete Holmes]

Okay.

[Jay Jordan]

I love talking about it.

[Pete Holmes]

No, I love all of this. I don't want you to not get to talk about the meaning of life. Because I am. I am fascinated with sexuality and all of its expressions and because it's so intermeshed with freedom and identity. So I could do it all day.

[Jay Jordan]

No, let's do it.

[Pete Holmes]

But you need a proper. You made it weird. 10 minute here at the end.

[Jay Jordan]

Okay.

[Pete Holmes]

Do you have a. In this moment, like a feeling about what this is?

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah, I. And it's A tiny bit connected to your Netflix special and connected to something that someone very smart and beautiful kind of told me. There is a beauty in entropy. And so right now, tell me what that mean. Okay.

[Pete Holmes]

I always think it means moving, so.

[Jay Jordan]

Moving and a spreading and a diffusion of all of this. So right now, it's very condensed, and at the end of all of this, at the end of all things, it will scatter about and I will be reduced back to whatever components and elements I came from. From. And I think that going towards that is a bit like going towards the collective and going towards heaven for some people. So heaven, if heaven is you getting to be with God again forever, and if God is the universe, then that's all that means to certain people, is when I die, there's a part of me that will be spread far and wide. Like, also when this rock gets gobbled up by the sun, and then that kind of, like, weird swirling mass of what's left is what's what we're striving for. And so. So many people get scared because they go, oh, like, it's nothing. And you kind of talk about what people mean when they say nothing and what nothingness is, and I think it's not nothing, it's just everything. But it's just in such tiny little parts that we're going to be spread out amongst it.

[Pete Holmes]

Right.

[Jay Jordan]

And that's what every. That's. That's what we do. No matter what. That's what I do when I, like, meet people. When I meet someone, I met them. And that is part of this spreading, swirling mass. Because we interacted for that long, we, like, collided into each other, and that bumped them into some other trajectory.

[Pete Holmes]

That's right.

[Jay Jordan]

That's what it is. So, like, on a macro and a micro level, that's what I think it is.

[Pete Holmes]

I think that's.

[Jay Jordan]

That's what I think about.

[Pete Holmes]

Well, I'm so glad I asked. Yes. That the image that you brought to mind, I sometimes think about, like, if you ever look at, like, a lake when it's raining, it's raining hard, and it's almost like. Sprite.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Like an effervescence rises from it. I sometimes think of us as this effervescence that's above a lake that's created by the rain. So the interaction, like you said, of these two things creates this illusion of almost like a hologram.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

There we are. And when that hologram goes away, it looks sad, like something ended, but really it was always just water.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah. And it was water that Was active and moving.

[Pete Holmes]

And because that's its nature. It's entropy. It's what it wants to do. Using your word.

[Jay Jordan]

No, exactly. That's because it wants to do well. Because when I was even kind of first introduced to the concept of, like, life and death, the first death I really, really had to deal with hard. And this is so funny. It was a barber who was my. He was my barber. And my mom would drop me off at Paul's with my brother and he would cut our hair. My mom came home one day crying, and she told us, well, Paul passed away from a motorcycle accident. And I, like, just lost it. It was the first time I had, like, someone who I saw every two weeks.

[Pete Holmes]

Yep.

[Jay Jordan]

And they were gone. I went and I just didn't know.

[Pete Holmes]

It's an abduction, basically.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah. He was taken from me in a way that I don't think I'll ever really know how. That first moment, like, my heart dropped in a way. I was like, I wasn't close close with him, but, like, I was close with him. And so when my mom would talk about heaven, I would kind of be like, I'd have like, a very kind of, like, young Christian view of heaven, where, like, everyone is going to be up there and white and clouds and stuff. And so as I continued to, like, move through the world and my relationship with Christianity changed, I started to think in a more humanist and kind of universal perspective. And so when I was introduced to this concept, like, if we're from the universe, we will return to the universe. And if you think that God is universe and you will be with God at the end of all of this, if that's your relationship and that's the nomenclature you to want to use, I was like, oh, so, like, they're not wrong. My mom still devout Christian. My mom's one of those Christians who goes Monday, Wednesday, Saturday, Sunday, like, loves church, loves the communal aspect of the Southern black church. My mom casually will talk about how, like, Dr. King came to her church in the 60s. My mom was born in 1958, so she, like, saw it. She's seen everything. And my mom loves church, and my mom, she doesn't. Even when I came out, there was no, you're going to hell. When I got married, there was no, like, this isn't right. It was always like, my mom has a ministry and a relationship with Christianity that is so love based and so kindness based. Primarily because she's a teacher, because she teaches. She taught special needs for 30 years. That her version of Christianity is so Beautiful and so works oriented that, like, I can't even say, oh, I don't believe in God. Because the God that my mom believes in and works towards to me is one, is a God of help and a God of service. So, like, I love. If I believe in, like, anything, it is that serving people while you're here is such a beautiful and selfless act that of course my mom's God is real. And so I have a slightly different relationship based on, like, you know, a couple of teachings that other people have. Kind of like, what was the other thing? The other thing that I got.

[Pete Holmes]

I didn't mean to cut you off.

[Jay Jordan]

But the other thing that I got a lot of was that we are here to also be humans and enjoy our bodies. And that came from acting. That came from, like, also, like, just queerness and the celebration of, well, the.

[Pete Holmes]

Incarnation, meaning just becoming into form isn't a mistake. Yeah, this has been coming up a lot conversations.

[Jay Jordan]

Why do we have skin? Why do we have nerve endings if we're not supposed to be pleasuring them?

[Pete Holmes]

Well, I. I would agree with that. And also the idea that you don't know better than. Let's. Let's use very classic religious language. Who are you to say you know better? Like, it should have. Like, life should have started in heaven. It's here. It's here. And this is what we're doing. Right.

[Jay Jordan]

Listen, that. I mean, a lot of black. A lot of Southern missionary Baptist, Baptist is be a good person, have a good time. Be a good person, have a good time, have some children. And you go, well, how you supposed to make them? You know? You know what I mean? Like, there is a level. And then my church was also never like, that girl's going to hell because she had a baby out of marriage. That we were just happy that baby has support. Oh, make sure that baby gets something to eat. Like, I have a. My. I want to say one of the things I was very lucky with was that even my pastors were never very fire and brimstone. They didn't necessarily really talk about queerness at all. So that erasure wasn't something that, like, I would even, like, know how to, like, deal with. But neither did Jesus. They were just. Neither did you. Right. Exactly. Exactly.

[Pete Holmes]

And I think the sin, the sins. Yeah. I don't mean that of the body we're so obsessed with. It has so much to do with.

[Jay Jordan]

Right.

[Pete Holmes]

Shame. And it has nothing to do with.

[Jay Jordan]

Spiritual and King James being a. Himself. Right. Don't do this gay stuff. I'm doing well.

[Pete Holmes]

That's one. Based on your metric. That's one. So you can say it one time. That's your rule.

[Jay Jordan]

But there's like a very, very huge.

[Pete Holmes]

By the way was King James.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah. Yeah. Whoa.

[Pete Holmes]

Surprising but inevitable.

[Jay Jordan]

Surprising but inevitable. Who wrote all these gossipy ass stories in this book?

[Pete Holmes]

That's right.

[Jay Jordan]

My relationship with Christianity because. Cause, like, my sister's still a very, like, very good practicing Christian. And my brother, he still goes to church. And his two kids, my niece and my nephew, they're being raised in the church. I have like, a new bit I'm working on about Jesus getting blow jobs. That to me is like giving, getting, or giving, but getting. And part of one of the things I even say is I go, y' all are uncomfortable right now because to maintain his divinity, a lot of y' all are kind of robbing Jesus of the human aspect of his life. I want you to remember he was just a dude. And if you don't want Jesus to get his dick sucked, think about how much he's done for you.

[Pete Holmes]

That's great. That's very, very.

[Jay Jordan]

And so people laugh at that, but they're also. It's. I'm also kind of embodying some preacher stuff that I remember from growing up because being a preacher to me was like one of those other elements of like, oh, it's a big performer who's talking for a long time who also gets laughed.

[Pete Holmes]

Like stand up.

[Jay Jordan]

Kind of stand up.

[Pete Holmes]

It is. Yep.

[Jay Jordan]

Even it's a kind of rite of passage. As a young black comedian, you have a bit where you kind of do preach future.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Jay Jordan]

On something that isn't religious. And you kind of map that and the kind of. The distance between the two is funny.

[Pete Holmes]

That's right.

[Jay Jordan]

So, like, I. I still think that, like, religion has such a good place for so many people when it's not used as a cudgel to bonk people on the head. They're like, I. I'm never gonna be one of those people who's like, get it out of here. But I'm gonna be like, oh, this is such an interesting take.

[Pete Holmes]

I love narrative.

[Jay Jordan]

Narrative, too. I love mythology. I love comic books.

[Pete Holmes]

There you go.

[Jay Jordan]

Right. Come on.

[Pete Holmes]

You can't be all mad.

[Jay Jordan]

You can't be mad at it.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, yeah. A couple things came to mind. One is Father Greg Boyle, who I'm obsessed with, talks about the mystical lens, which is the lens you look through to know which parts you take and which parts you don't.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

And he's like, and if you think that he doesn't say it exactly like this, he's like, if you think that's weird. Like, we always thought, like, if you were a Christian, you believe the Bible. You can't leave this part. It's right there. It says this. This horrible thing. He's like, Jesus is doing it constantly.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

When he's talking about the Old Testament, he's. He's picking and choosing. So that's called the mystical lens. And you have. You are.

[Jay Jordan]

You're the lens.

[Pete Holmes]

You are the lens.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

And. And that. What you are.

[Jay Jordan]

If we're the lens, the light that shines through us, the prism that's created, that's your relationship with the divine.

[Pete Holmes]

It is the divine. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

[Jay Jordan]

That's rainbow. It's a rainbow.

[Pete Holmes]

It is rainbow. Wait a minute, wait a minute. Well, we don't have time because my family's here. But I mean, I think the. The arc of any transformative story, spiritual transformation, sexual. Understand. Whatever it is, it's the same story over and over.

[Jay Jordan]

Oh, my God, it's over. We think about this. I mean, in X Men, the four horsemen of the apocalypse are actually manifest. Like, Apocalypse. The X Men villain has four horsemen. Why? Because riders know religious iconography is so ingrained in us, especially as through Western media, that they have to figure out, like, he made angel the archangel of death for a. Like, it's so there. And that to me is like one of those beautiful moments where I was like, I'm obsessed with this. Why am I obsessed?

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Jay Jordan]

X Men and religion. Religion at the same time.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah. I mean, and then I don't know how you feel about Deadpool. Wolverine, but, like, them holding hands and dying and coming back, I'm like, it's over.

[Jay Jordan]

Whoa. I mean, stop. The religious implications of like, a man who can raise, like, raised from the dead and what he feels like his duty to have a good life is that to me is like Wolverine.

[Pete Holmes]

You mean Wolverine. Yeah, yeah.

[Jay Jordan]

And Deadpool.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He's sort of Wolverine with gun.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

It's not. It's not. And that's why I always. I always like Deadpool. I don't have a lot of things that I can be like. I liked it before. It was cool. I did. I. I had Deadpool.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Good. Come on.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Well, I mean, X Force.

[Jay Jordan]

You.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah.

[Jay Jordan]

You're such a fun. I love people who are to me, like this cobbling of different things.

[Pete Holmes]

Yes.

[Jay Jordan]

And that is everyone. But sometimes when you really get to meet someone and you go, oh, you have so many interesting things. You like.

[Pete Holmes]

Yeah. You know, it's funny, we talked a lot about homosocial and what I got, what I took from that. I'm sure it's not. The whole thing is like, it's just precious to spend time.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah.

[Pete Holmes]

Bonding, connecting. There was shame, there was fear there, but there was just laughing. This was a beautiful episode. I. I hate to wrap it up.

[Jay Jordan]

This was a beautiful episode.

[Pete Holmes]

This would have been a three. This would have been a three hour episode for sure. But my family's here.

[Jay Jordan]

Family's here.

[Pete Holmes]

We can hug. We're going to hide. I felt. I felt a lurch forward for.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah, I'm going to hide.

[Pete Holmes]

We're going to do it.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah, it's happening.

[Pete Holmes]

We could have talked about personal training. I'm over here. I'm like, I need some tips, some acting tips.

[Jay Jordan]

The personal training is. It's fun, but it is like, it's. It's a tough gig. It's a tough.

[Pete Holmes]

Do you still do it?

[Jay Jordan]

No, I don't do it anymore. I. I did my first Tonight show appearance and literally the next day I showed up to the gym to train my clients and someone's like, but you did a tv. And I was like, do you think I'm going to live the rest of my life in New York off of that? 1400? $800. I said, I'm about to make $800 from y' all today. Give me my money. I got three sessions.

[Pete Holmes]

That's a bet.

[Jay Jordan]

Yeah, Four set. Like it was a. What's true? People go, I saw you on tv. I go, and yeah, okay. You saw Dua Lipa up there too. You think we make the same amount?

[Pete Holmes]

Well, you'll come back.

[Jay Jordan]

Yes, I'll come back.

[Pete Holmes]

You'll come back and we'll plug whatever you got up top. Would you say, keep it crispy? What we've been talking about. Everything we've been talking about is crisp.

[Jay Jordan]

Keep it crispy.

[Pete Holmes]

There it is. He didn't. There it is. Jean Marco in a Speedo. Thanks, man.