Remembering “Bald” Bryan Bishop

Adam Carolla (0:00)

All right, everybody, a sad episode today.

So, just so you know, Dawson's here. Say hi, Dawson. Hey. Chris Laxamana is here. Hello. It's a sad day. A bald Brian passed. He passed, I think, about 6.15 on Friday a couple of days ago.

We sort of tried to scramble because we had the episode Ready to Go, Monday's episode already sort of ready to go. So, obviously, we didn't want to do something like that and not address this very serious issue. So, everyone's going to say their piece, memories. Gina is traveling. She was out of town, but this caught everyone off guard, not by surprise, but off. You never think it's this weekend, this day, now.

Dawson (0:58)

We were prepared that something could happen at any time.

Chris Laxamana (1:02)

For 18 years.

Adam Carolla (1:03)

Yes. For 18 years, yes. Which I keep thinking is 17 years, but I got to work this one out. You guys can help me. I brought my phone in, and I never bring my phone in studio, but I'd been going back and forth, having some texts with Bryan's wife, Christy, and also Bryan earlier in the week, and I just thought I wanted to share some of that with you.

Christy is a very stoic person, I think. Bryan was a very stoic person. I didn't know if he was stoic or he was just positive all the time. He never seemed that set back by this thing that was a death sentence.

Dawson (1:48)

Right, he had all the good parts of Mike August.

Adam Carolla (1:51)

Yes, his personal momentum.

Chris Laxamana (1:53)

I was thinking about that because obviously when I heard the news, I started going through our old texts and our old e-mails. And about 70 to 75% of our exchanges were, I'm not going to make the show or I'm going to be late because I have a treatment or something with the doctor or the hospital. He would always come in with the hospital wristbands.

But then when I thought about it, I don't remember being that much of our exchanges, but maybe just because the way he presented himself and composed himself when he came in, you never thought about it.

Dawson (2:23)

Right. We never saw him as a victim of this brain tumor.

Adam Carolla (2:27)

He was always incredibly stoic.

Dr. Drew Pinsky (2:29)

No.

Adam Carolla (2:29)

He didn't think of himself as a victim.

Dawson (2:30)

Exactly.

Adam Carolla (2:31)

And I should say for those who have only been listening to this show for the last year or two or whatever it is, Bryan worked with all of us for many years.

I met him at Loveline and I'm guessing... I was trying to think when I met him. I'm the worst with that kind of dates and stuff like that, but I met him early 2001, 2002 or something like that. 2000?

Chris Laxamana (2:57)

Yeah, you did the foreword of his audio book.

Adam Carolla (3:00)

Oh.

Chris Laxamana (3:01)

And I emailed it to you if you want to listen to it. We can listen to it another time. Oh, okay. Where you basically just laid out your history with him and I thought...

Adam Carolla (3:08)

Oh, so I met him in 2000

Chris Laxamana (3:10)

Yeah.

Adam Carolla (3:10)

So I've known him for 26 years. I brought... So let me just back... I got this from Christie that said he passed peacefully on Friday night at 618

Try to keep it together. Yeah.

Chris Laxamana (3:27)

It's, yeah, it's tough. We don't have his drops to save you.

Adam Carolla (3:30)

I know. There's so many good drops. People, I started drop threading. It just kept going. I just said, look, you know, we went back and forth. He realizes that he had so many more years than he was supposed to get.

When I first talked to Dr. Drew and Dr. Bruce, after he'd diagnosed with his tumor and he, the tumor's an O9, right? Yeah. I think so.

Chris Laxamana (3:59)

I think so, because it was right when the radio show was. Right.

Adam Carolla (4:03)

The radio show ended. We started doing this. I was going to get him a job working on this TV show I was working on, and he gave me the news. He couldn't come in and do the thing, the TV show.

Drew and Bruce said, six months. He's got six months.

Chris Laxamana (4:21)

I believe the quote was death sentence.

Adam Carolla (4:23)

Yeah, death sentence. And they both said six months. I verified with both of them, and that was 17, 18 years ago. So we got all that. He's got a beautiful daughter. He lived a lot of a lot of life.