#1530 - Duncan Trussell

Joe Rogan (0:06)

Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.

Duncan Trussell (0:15)

How are you, my friend?

SPEAKER_3 (0:16)

I'm great, man. I'm psyched to be here.

Duncan Trussell (0:18)

Cheers, sir.

SPEAKER_3 (0:19)

Cheers, brother.

Jamie (0:19)

Hare Krishna.

SPEAKER_3 (0:22)

Great to see you.

Duncan Trussell (0:22)

Always.

SPEAKER_3 (0:26)

That's good.

Duncan Trussell (0:27)

My friend, these are strange times, and we're both departing this land.

Jamie (0:32)

I know.

Duncan Trussell (0:33)

For greener frost years.

SPEAKER_3 (0:35)

I keep thinking back to when we first became friends, and the strange path since from there to here, and all our predictions and all the things that we never would have imagined this. You know, specifically, like that there would be this fucking global pandemic that we would suddenly be like some kind of like refugee is way too dramatic a word for it, but suddenly just part of this diaspora of comedians pouring out of LA, like, and not just comedians, but just people. Lee Levin, man.

Duncan Trussell (1:15)

Well, I talked to Joey today from New Jersey.

Called, you know, I called him. He's in New Jersey, and it was just such a so strange. I'm like, you're in Jersey. He's like, that's right, motherfucker. Yeah. You know, he's all happy in Jersey.

SPEAKER_3 (1:29)

You know, he was the last, like, you Levin was intense.

But I was still like, you know, maybe we'll stick around and see what happens. And then, like, I'd been getting all these, you know, the problem with me is like, I get weird vibes all the time. And like the last I was on here, I legitimately thought a meteor was going to hit the earth.

I really thought that. So I worked very hard on not listening to that part of me most of the time. But I was getting this real weird vibe from LA. And I'm like, come on, man, you're just like superstitious. It's it's probably nothing. And then then my wife would say, like, I'm getting a really weird vibe. Like, maybe maybe I don't know if we should stay here renting, if we should stay in the place. And I didn't want to tell her, oh, I've been getting a weird vibe, too, because I didn't want to amplify whatever that was. And then I got on the phone with Diaz. He's like, yeah, I'm leaving, getting the fuck out of here. And that was it.

Duncan Trussell (2:22)

Diaz was telling me Burbank was sketchy, where he lives in Burbank. Because my neighborhood turned to shit, like, instantly.

SPEAKER_3 (2:29)

Dude, it's like, yeah, it's not just any one thing, you know? It's not just like some of the stuff I get, stuff had to get shut down. And because stuff was shut down, it got a little more weathered than usual.

And it's like, you know, the homeless encampments, I was in Echo Park, man.

And I really feel like the red state people, one of the things they love to tweet is like, don't bring your liberal bullshit here, right? They're right. Well, that's where I'm eating shit a little bit, because I do still believe that we need to decriminalize drugs, that the drug policy is bullshit, the way we're handling it's all wrong. But there used to be a way that they could get people who are like camping out on the streets. And a lot of the times that was possession of like illegal drugs. And because that stuff got removed, suddenly you were witnessing like, holy shit, man, there's people who are making like real, like a rational decision from the perspective of a heroin addict, which is, they love heroin so much. You know that Doug Stanhope joke, some things are better than life? Like they love heroin so much. They're addicted to it. They love it.

And the shelters that are apparently available won't let them do drugs in the shelters.

Duncan Trussell (3:52)

They want you to kick it.

SPEAKER_3 (3:53)

Yeah. And so that's ridiculous. But now I could be wrong about that. But that is what I've heard is one of the reasons these people are staying out in the street is not because they don't want to be in a shelter. It's because they don't want to be prevented from getting high.

And so this has produced this like situation in a lot of the big cities, which is we're seeing like massive tent cities. And by the way, the tent city thing, aesthetically, it's not the best look. But the stuff that I began to experience in Echo Park, I took my kid to the playground, right?

And there's like a dude that looks like he emerged from a time portal, from an apocalypse, you know what I mean? I'm not talking about like, you know, run of the mill, like somebody who's a junkie, who's like, I'm talking like covered in like soot, like pure dilated eyes, not wearing like, you know, the disheveled clothes you might expect from someone who's been addicted to heroin for a long time. But like wearing like, like he broke into wherever the costumes for Mad Max were, like some kind of weird leather vest thing, and like, like creepy fucking cutoff shorts, and he had a machete.