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Joe Rogan · 2024-06-27 · 2h 39m

Joe Rogan Experience #1981 - Pauly Shore

Pauly Shore joins Joe Rogan to celebrate the Comedy Mothership, reminisce about his mother Mitzi Shore and the Comedy Store, and riff on fame and culture.

Joe Rogan Experience #1981 - Pauly Shore
The guest

Pauly Shore — Comedian and actor (Encino Man, Bio-Dome, Pauly Shore Is Dead), former MTV VJ, and son of Comedy Store founder Mitzi Shore.

The gist

Pauly Shore visits Joe Rogan around the opening of the Comedy Mothership in Austin, praising the room and how it has grown the local comedy scene. Much of the conversation is a deeply personal reflection on Pauly's mother Mitzi Shore and father Sammy Shore, the origins of the Comedy Store, and the brutal mentorship that shaped a generation of comics. They swap stories about Sam Kinison, Nicolas Cage, Dave Chappelle, and the heroin culture of Seattle rock. The episode also ranges over homelessness and mental health policy, ibogaine therapy, the geopolitics of the Russia-Ukraine war, the collapse of the sitcom era, and how the internet and podcasts replaced gatekept media. It closes with Michio Kaku-inspired quantum computing talk and Pauly plugging his tour, album, and movies.

Big reveals

  • Pauly took his Parkinson's-stricken mother Mitzi to the Bahamas for fetal-cell injections, which he believes prolonged her life.
  • Sam Kinison dumped cocaine on Pauly's saltwater fish tank at a party and let teenage Pauly and his friend snort it.
  • Pauly explains his father Sammy Shore co-founded the Comedy Store with partner Rudy De Luca before Mitzi took it over.
  • Mitzi Shore disliked Seinfeld and refused to be nice to him even while walking past his house.
  • Mitzi never told Pauly she loved him, believing that saying it would stop him from becoming a comic.
  • Nicolas Cage made Pauly promise never to post any photos or videos of them together because he wants privacy.
  • A fan stitched 450 phone videos into Frank Ocean's full Coachella set, then got threatened with a lawsuit by Coachella.

Things worth remembering

  • The Comedy Mothership building has carried the 'Ritz' name since 1927 and the sign must stay as a historical landmark.
  • Michio Kaku built a particle collider in his garage at 17 and photographed antimatter.
  • The 1981 repeal of the Mental Health Systems Act under Reagan is tied to the surge in homelessness.
  • Pauly was a 14-year-old short-order cook at the Westwood Comedy Store, feeding hamburgers to Sam Kinison.
  • Mitzi Shore bought a theater on Las Palmas and Sunset and named it the Richard Pryor Theater.
  • Louis CK advised lowering the ceiling and shrinking the stage of the Mothership's small room, delaying the opening.
  • Journey's singer Arnel Pineda was discovered from YouTube cover videos and is from the Philippines.
  • Kaku told Joe a true quantum computer would crack any encryption and grant technological superiority to whoever builds it first.

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Books, products and media the guest or host genuinely endorsed here — with the buy link.

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