Comedian Paul Virzi Talks Jaxson Dart's Stardom, Upcoming Tour, and Callers Vent About Mets

**Craig Carton** (0:00)
And this is my buddy, Paul Virzi, one of the best touring comics out there. He's got a great podcast and he's touring the country and comedy clubs and he's gonna have a big movie coming out later this year. Paul, how you been, buddy?

**Paul Virzi** (0:11)
Dude, thank you for having me. You're the best.

**Craig Carton** (0:14)
No, I'm doing good.

**Paul Virzi** (0:15)
I'm gonna tell you something right now. And I'm not just saying this because I'm on your show.

**Craig Carton** (0:18)
Yes.

**Paul Virzi** (0:18)
Because I wouldn't say it or it wouldn't come. No, that's right. You're a savage and I think you are the voice of sports in New York and you were the only person that was the voice of reason to me during this Knicks. Because you know what this Knicks thing meant to me.

**Craig Carton** (0:32)
Yes, I do.

**Paul Virzi** (0:32)
It meant everything to me. I've been waiting.
Not like these 26 year olds crying on the hood of cars and doing that. I remember Herb Williams as a coach. The days we had to get excited about who? Shandon Anderson.

**Craig Carton** (0:45)
Yeah, there's a lot of guys.

**Paul Virzi** (0:46)
Yeah, a lot of guys.

**Craig Carton** (0:47)
I go back to James Truck Robinson, Rory Sparrow and Trent Tucker. I remember Winterspoon.

**Paul Virzi** (0:53)
I remember that. And I lied to myself going, oh, this is going to be the squad. So for us, I think the people, late 30s, 40s, 50s, but it really meant something. And you were the person that, because you go through an emotional run. Yeah. But what people don't understand is when you care, when it's in your soul, I was dreaming, dude. I was dreaming about the Spurs. I was dreaming about stopping Wemby. I had dreams. I was waking up my wife, so what are you doing?

**Craig Carton** (1:13)
Woke up in a sweat.

**Paul Virzi** (1:14)
What are you nuts? Like what, you have children and you're talking about the Spurs. You know what? It was nuts.

**Craig Carton** (1:19)
Honey, you just don't understand.

**Paul Virzi** (1:20)
You don't understand what I'm going through here. This Wemby guy has got to be stopped and I think I figured it out.
So everybody's going Spurs in five, Spurs in seven, and I'm listening to you and I'm going, what are they seeing that I'm not seeing? I'm seeing a team that beat them two out of three times in a regular season. I'm seeing a team that matches up really good against them. I'm seeing a team that's having an epic run and you were saying it, and you were going, but when I really go, when I go, Craig's my guy is we're going into the series against Cleveland, you go, we are winning that series four in a row, book it now and you were giving me something I needed.

**Craig Carton** (1:55)
Yeah.

**Paul Virzi** (1:55)
But you were right.

**Craig Carton** (1:56)
I got lucky on that one. I pretty much got lucky the entire postseason. And the rules I had were, because if you're going to make a prediction, you got to own it, right? You got to, if good or bad, you got to own your predictions.

**Paul Virzi** (2:05)
100 percent.

**Craig Carton** (2:06)
We all make predictions, we all get them wrong at times, it's all good. But there are cop-out predictions. Like if you came on, like my partner did, you're like, all spurs in seven. That's a cop-out. That's like chalk. Or Knicks will win at six at home. Now you'll have some balls and say what you meant. Knicks in five, which is what I said. You're also a Yankee fan.

**Paul Virzi** (2:25)
I am.

**Craig Carton** (2:25)
Which means, I'm just wondering, the level of joy you're getting today, you may have just heard coming in to David Stern's press conference in City Field, the fact that the Mets are 13 games under 500, 15 games out of first place, and nine and a half games out of last wild card. Are you the Yankee fan that enjoys that? Or are you the Yankee fan that's like, I feel for you little brother.

**Paul Virzi** (2:49)
You know what, I used to be, because I didn't like the hate that Mets fans did to us. I didn't like that. The Yankees are the worst. They got to lose.

**Craig Carton** (2:56)
We got Soto. We're the new place to be.

**Paul Virzi** (2:58)
That's the thing. And it was the same thing that drove me nuts when the Nets got all those guys and they had to break it.