Drew Carey
Appearances
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
But the night before, I was laying in bed. And I could not sleep. I kept imagining in real time I was doing this set because that set's pre-approved. So you have to do that set. So I'm doing this set in my head in real time, seeing the stage through my real eyes because I'd already been there.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
Another friend of mine suggested while I was in town, suggested I go to the Tonight Show and just be backstage. And when the show was over, just go out and look around so I'm not as nervous. Some of the best advice I ever got. So I knew what the stage looked like, so I could imagine the whole thing. And then Johnny calls me over at the end of my night dream.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
All in real time, like it's really happening.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
It was word for word. It wasn't like I was matching moments. Like it was 10 minutes, the whole sequence, or eight minutes, the whole sequence was time. I got up, walked around the hotel. Went back to bed, couldn't get out. Only slept on the plane on the way out from Chicago to L.A. And it happened just like I envisioned. It was a supernatural moment to me.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
Tons of people. My friend Fred Stoller, really funny comic character actor. If you saw his face, you'd go, I know just who he is. Really cool guy. He's written a bunch of books. He wrote one book called, I think it's called Five Minutes to Kill. It's when he did HBO Young Comedians, or maybe it's Ten Minutes to Kill.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
But when he was on the Young Comedians show, and he listed everybody else who was on the HBO Young Comedians show, and who made it and who didn't, and what happened to them, including him. Like, who got famous from that and who didn't. And they only had this five or ten minutes to make it or break it. And that five or 10 minutes affected the whole rest, the trajectory of their life.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
They either were famous and owned a house or they went to catering because they couldn't get booked anymore. Fred Stoller has a really good career, writes books, lives in an apartment. And he's the guy in the movie, oh, that guy.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
But he wasn't famous like the other people were that got in there. And it was always like, it's a thing that comics always talk about. I was with Messina Baker, this management firm, when I did my first Tonight Show. And after I did, that was a Friday, like the next week I was doing sets for CAA and UTA. The agencies, yeah. William Morris sent like 20-some agents to see me do a set at the improv.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Wednesday, Friday, I did a set every night for agents because everybody wanted to sign me. So freaking hot. It was insane. Somebody just set me on fire and everybody was like, oh my God, look at that. I was lit up like a light bulb. That's how I felt. And I'm sitting there with Jack, the other comic, who ended up being a writer on The Tonight Show.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
And there was another comic I didn't know. And Jack and I were both with Messina Baker. So we knew each other from that. Plus doing comedy, but we especially had a bond because we were with the same manager. And we're sitting at the improv and one of the tables and we're talking about this crazy thing that's happened to me. Like, what's it feel like to be flavor of the week?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
And I was like, take a lick, bro. I was like, it was like that. I was like, oh my God, it's like, it's crazy. And we were laughing about it and having a drink. And the guy looks at, he's talking to Jack and he puts me like, How many tonight shows have you done? And Jack goes, I don't know, like 10, 12. Wow. He's been on a tonight show like that many. He was a regular. Yeah.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
And he goes, how many times has this motherfucker been on a tonight show? He points at me and I go, just the one. And he goes, look at that. This motherfucker, he's been the friendly way. One tonight show, you've been on 10, 15 times. And then he looks really earnestly at Jack. And he goes, you know what the problem is, right? Jack goes, what? He goes, it's your management.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
And me and Jack just started laughing because he didn't know we had the same manager. Oh, God. There's three comics having a serious business conversation. You know what your problem is, right? It's your management. There's a great joke that comics used to do with each other. I'll do it to you. Like, hey, what agent are you signed with?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
Not for long. That's a standard comic.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
When I first started, I would go to every headliner. I would ask them advice. Do you mind watching my act this week and giving me some advice? And if you're funny and they like you, they will. There was a comic friend of mine that was getting a ride to a comedy club in Ohio from another comic, the opener. EMC, my friend, was the middle act.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
And they were driving down to this club to open up for this headliner that was in town. And on the way down, the opener who was driving put a cassette tape in the car and pressed play. And he goes, hey, I wonder if you mind listening to my act on the way down here and giving me some advice.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
In the comedy world, if you're funny, and people know you're funny, even if you're an up-and-comer, and they're like, oh, this is a funny guy, this is a funny person, they want to help you out. Sure. They want to mentor you. They want to see you succeed. And they'll hang out with you. And if you're not funny... They're like, oh, I'm just going to go to my room or I'm just, yeah, good set.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
Talk to you later. That's how it goes. Oh, interesting. You know, if you're in, you're out by if they want to hang out with you after. And if you're struggling, nobody wants to be around you. If you're not funny and you're a comic, nobody.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
It's just how it is. You just know. So these guys would give me advice. Thankfully, they thought it was funny. And one guy, a lot of Chicago comics came through Cleveland. I would go to Chicago to do sets all the time. I wasn't a Chicago comic, but I knew all the good ones. I would stand there like this with my hand on the mic and just stand in front of it like this.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
And I didn't know where to look and I didn't know what to do. And I was, what do I do to get over this? He goes, just pretend you're talking to friends in the living room. Then you can look right in the eye or look right at their forehead, top of their head. It's a good trick. Yeah, all these little tricks. Tell yourself you're in a living room. joking around with friends and treat it like that.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
That was great advice. So I started doing that. And now when I'm at the prices, right, I feel so comfortable there. And I know I'm in such a friendly place that as far as I'm concerned, I'm having a game night party and you're all invited. Nice to meet you. I'm Drew. And I'm going to look you right in the eye when I'm talking to you, even though I'm on stage.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
And when I'm doing improv or stand, I'm going to look you right in the eye because you're friendly to me. I don't fear you. I don't have to worry about your judgment. We're all pals. And that's how I treat it. It puts me in a really comfortable place.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
So I had it in the bag from comedy. People were asking me, I always get asked, what was it like to take over for Bob? Bob Barker, yeah. 18 years later, I still get asked that question. But I realize now, you know, when you're a comic anywhere, they had somebody really good there the week before or two weeks before. Oh, last week, Gary Shanley was here.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
Boy, he really killed the place, knowing you should have seen him. Or they'll be talking about something great the other comic did, or they'll have stories about at the club, like famous moments, or you should have seen them. Like, guys will tell stories after the show about this happened, that happened, like Bill Hicks' story you would hear about some club that he walked out one time.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
I was just telling a friend of mine the other day, Bill Hicks, he's dead now, but he was a legendary icon when I was doing club comedy. He was so looked up to and so funny. And he would talk about anything, like there was no limit to this guy. Edgiest of edgy comics.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
Bill Burr is walking in his shadow, honestly. Bill Burr would recognize Bill Hicks and go, yeah, that guy. Right up there with Lenny Bruce, as far as I'm concerned, as far as freedom on stage to do whatever you want. But funny. No offense to Lenny Bruce. When Lenny Bruce was going through his trials, he would get up on stage and read his transcript for his trials and complain.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
Like, he wasn't telling jokes. He was just ranting. And it was interesting, but it wasn't like, here's my act. It's a ballsy move, though. Yeah, but, like, he didn't give a fuck. Yeah, clearly. Which was great. But when he was funny, like a groundbreaker, no doubt about it. But then he just was, like, angry man. And no kidding, they were trying to put him in jail and putting him on trial.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
And I'd be pissed, too, if I got arrested after my act. Like what happened to him? And I was like afraid nobody would book me because you didn't want the police raiding the place because you're saying the word fuck on stage.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
Like crazy. So Bill Hicks was like, he had the freedom and the rights that people like Lenny Bruce earned for him. And then he was able to just talk about anything. So the story I heard, which is a true story, was the club owners were like, hey, Bill, welcome to the club. And they picked him up at the airport. Glad to have you here. And we know what your act is, but we're Christians.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
And we'd really appreciate it if you didn't say the word fuck. That's really our only rule. Right. And he went, all right. And first of all, Christians made them an enemy. Because he came up with Sam Kinison and the same club in Texas. And they were like part of these Texas Outlaw comics. There was Bill Hicks, Sam Kinison, and a couple other guys. But those were the two main ones.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
So that was his attitude. Fuck you. I'm going to get up here and do whatever I want. And I'm going to do a bump before I come on stage and tell you I did. And everybody knows I'm on cocaine right now. Go fuck yourself if you don't like what I'm saying. Leave. And that was his attitude. And he got up on stage and for as long as he could talked about fucking a child. Oh, my God.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
I enrolled in Kent State. I filled out the paperwork.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
Until everybody left, and he walked the whole audience. Like, one by one, people were, like, upset. They didn't want to hear it. He just stood there and looked them in the eye, and the graphic, as horrible as he could make it, and they all paid their checks and walked out until the very last couple got up and left. And then he was like, great, there you go. I didn't say the word fuck.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
He never said the word fuck. There, you want me to not say the word fuck? This is what's going to happen. Oh, man. You give me complete freedom or I'll tank my career. It's like a political statement almost, yeah. And he never got as famous here as in England. Like wildly popular in England. Huh. But here he was popular with comics and people in the know and people that were hip to him.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
Yeah. There was no Bill Hicks sitcom because the people were like, what do we do with you?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
No, not that guy. He would just be arguing all the time with the writers about how he can't talk about what he wants to talk about.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
How can I talk about drugs and how they should be legal? You do that now? Yeah. He had a great bit about how great drugs were. You never hear that from people, do you? Jeez. Drugs are great.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
They make you feel good. Why can't you take drugs?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
I never met Steve Martin, believe it or not. One of my idols growing up. You might take your call at this point. I don't know. Get a little plate of banjo. He's still Steve Martin and I'm still Drew Carey. You know, he's legend. He's like Mount Rushmore.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
Yeah, I don't know. He's like untouchable to me in my head. That's God. You're going to meet him. He's going to be like, oh, I saw every episode of your show. Knowing what I know, he's not a Drew Carey show. Too smart. Too above it. But his first album that came out, I read every interview and he said in an interview, that's 10 years of comedy there. That's my best stuff from 10 years.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
One year they honored me and put me in the homecoming parade, and I think I got an honorary degree and met the president of the— This is the only degree I have from Kent State now. Yeah. They really treated me right once I got famous and had money.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
And now my next album, it's like, what do I do now? I don't have 10 years. They want me to do another album in a year. And I know if I do it, I'm going to get this extra money. And it's almost like you're putting out B material. If an author had one big novel that they've been burning inside and they write it, that was great.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
A band has their big hit breakout album, and the next album is, oh, it was pretty good. Yeah. But that happens to comics. You don't have five hours, four hours. Nobody puts eight. Jerry Seinfeld said he did. I believe Jerry Seinfeld wrote eight hours a day, treated it like a job. But he might have been using eight hours a day.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
It could have been six hours and two hours of having coffee and fucking around until he got back in the mood, like how writers do.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
Yeah, I knew he took it seriously enough to go like, okay, this is my job and this is part of my day. I'm telling you, from being on the road, comics didn't do. Most comics did not treat it that seriously. And if they wrote, they did it a couple times a week and go, I think I'm going to write for an hour. Oh, all right. Jerry Seinfeld. Yeah. Yeah.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
So all of a sudden, then you're famous, and now you've got meetings to go to. You've got other projects to do. When I was on The Drew Carey Show, I didn't have time to write. Any writing I did, all the jokes went to The Drew Carey Show. I wasn't writing jokes for my act, and I was famous enough as a stand-up then, if They wanted a stand-up special. I could have done one.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
But if they wanted me to do a second one, when am I going to write it? When am I going to have time to go on stage? How do you guard against that? You said you have to guard against that, so I assume you came up with a way to guard against that? Yeah, plus another thing is you don't live a normal life anymore. When you're rich, your assistant's doing things for you.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
You're getting dropped off at the VIP. to go into the club. You're not dealing with the everyday frustrations that people deal with. Are you stuck in traffic like everybody else, in your shitty car like everybody else? In LA, yes, but everywhere else, maybe not. Yeah. When you're a good stand-up comic, it's every man against the world. You're speaking up to power. Why are these people doing it?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
Why is this technology doing this to us? Why are we living in this system that's so frustrating? This is hypocritical. This is stupid. This is wrong. Ha, and you make a joke of it. That's how every successful comic works.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
You're in that world now. What are you going to make fun of? You're the guy next door because you're rich too? It really hurts you. So you have to be in a mindset of drive yourself. Do your own fucking shopping if you can. Try to be as normal thinking as you can. Because the more you insulate yourself from the world, the less you have to joke. Like, what are you going to joke around?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
There was a guy named Martin Mull, a really famous guy from Cleveland Comic. I used to watch him on The Tonight Show because it would be Martin Mull or Steve Martin when I would look at comics on The Tonight Show. Sometimes I got mixed up. When I was first following them, I go, Martin.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
One of the Martins. Yeah. Martin Muller had his albums. Really famous, really good, funny songwriter. So he'd be on The Tonight Show with a couch and a guitar to do funny songs. He wasn't like a stand-up, but he'd pat her in between. On one of his albums, he has a song called Rich Person's Blues. And it was, I woke up this morning. I saw both cars were gone. I felt so low down deep inside.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
I threw my drink upon the lawn. God. broke when I heard that. I was just a fan. I thought it was the funniest thing to me. Yeah. I listened to it over and over on an album. Rich man's blues. So what are you going to joke about? What frustrates you? My jet was late. Yeah. Go fuck yourself.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
Or live that mindset. Live that mindset, eh? Be aware of it. It's tough. Recognize that you're in a private jet because you're famous and rich. Yeah. And Disney got you a private jet at that time, which they did to me, or somebody's flying you somewhere because you have to get somewhere, or make a joke about how rich you are. You've got to do something to humanize yourself for everybody.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
Well, I was in the reserves when I started doing stand-up. I was just at the end of my sixth year. About to finish up my sixth year in the Marines when I was like, okay. And then when I decided to do my first amateur night, that's just how I had my hair. That was once a month. The drill was once a month. What are you going to do? You can't grow your hair out. So that was just my haircut.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
And then the glasses. The Marine Corps, I don't know what they do in the Army. In the Marine Corps, they call them BCGs, birth control glasses. That's what the drill instructor called it. That's what every other Marine called it. I don't know why they officially just don't call them that. But even when you're getting ready... Don't forget your BCGs. I got to go get new BCGs.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
You got to find a way to ground your... That's why I love being about the price is right because everybody there is normal. Yeah, it looks like you're having a fun time every day. So many average Americans in there. Like, you want to know what America is like? Go to a Price is Right taping. That's how Americans dress. That's what they look like. This is what they believe.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
Just being a guy and loving sports, I would think that everybody loved football. Because everywhere I go, I can strike up a conversation about... how the football team was doing. And I would watch ESPN and I'd watch it so I knew some stats because when I started a conversation, I didn't want to look like an idiot in front of my friends.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
And I would catch them and me repeating stats I heard on ESPN or talking points I heard on ESPN or sports radio. I really had to know that because I didn't want to look like a fool when I talked to my friends. I see. You know what I mean? I go to the Price is Right audience and I'm like, boy, did everybody see that game? And blanks. Really? No. Middle of America, not watching football?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
Nobody gives a fuck. That's funny. There's guys there that do. There'll be a few guys that'll raise their hand, but the average person, if you look at the ratings... The Rams or whoever, they get a percentage, just like everybody else, of the ratings.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
So when I was doing stand-up, they would have you do radio shows on Friday morning because it was always a local rock and roll station or country station, depending on where you were, that would sponsor the club.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
Or you'd be in the morning zoo show, somewhere with their version of the morning zoo. And they would be, oh, this guy's great. He gets eight share. What does that mean? So 8% of the people listening, listen to him, which would like in this market, if you get a two share, three share in LA, you're a God. But then it's like in Indianapolis or someplace, if you get an eight share, like forget it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
And then I would think to myself, man, I'm getting up at fucking six in the morning. I worked last night. I got to do two shows tonight. So we're all getting up early to do radio. And then we're going to take a nap and fucking figure out, go to Applebee's or whatever. So we can get our shit together, take another nap. All because we can do this. It was every week.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
This guy's really big, gets an eight chair into my head, I would think, oh, so you mean 92% of the people in the city aren't listening to this guy? And that's only the people they're measuring who are listening to the radio? That doesn't count people who are just driving in their car in silence or have a cassette tape in? Psychopaths driving in your car without music.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
Or aren't driving anywhere and just sleep in and don't listen to them? I'm supposed to be kowtowing in awe of this eight dude? No. No. Not going to do it. And on the Drew Carey show, they were like, oh, you know, like 15 share. Watched the Drew Carey show. So 85% of the people watching TV don't give a fuck about me.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
Oh, that was huge also. Yeah. I remember talking to Dietrich Bader, like, hey, man, have you seen West Wing? I go, no. He goes, oh, it's so good. You really need to watch it. And I go, it's the fuck?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
But that was my attitude just from doing those radio shows. It was my strength, too, because I knew... I just needed a sliver of the pie. The Lamb of God doesn't need to be a household name like Kiss or Taylor Swift. And even Taylor Swift, I'll argue, artists like her have a sliver of the pie.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
And you hear a lot about them, but as much as you hear, it doesn't match the record sales in the big market because people buy country music, classical music. They go to jazz clubs. They go to no clubs. They know the song because it's played in the mall. They know the song because it's on the radio when they're Maybe listen to the radio or people reference her when you're watching the game.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
But average person doesn't know every song on a Taylor Swift album. That's true. And that's just how it is in show business. You can be famous, but everybody only has their own little sliver of the pie. And you have to service your audience. You have to service your sliver of the pie and really make sure they're happy. Seattle Sounders, we have a sliver of the pie in the soccer world.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
Nobody would just say glasses. Oh, God, that's really funny. It became a part of your brand, right? Well, that's how I look. And the thing is, back then I was broke, stone broke. Paycheck to paycheck, shift to shift when I was waiting tables. I had cash on Friday that lasted the next week when I got cash tips. And that's how I was living, literally counting my pennies.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
In Seattle, it seems like huge, but it's really a small sliver of the pie. And we go out of our way to service those people so we don't lose their business. And that's how every business works. You don't have to appeal to everybody. The analogy I would make with people, they'll go, well, you know, this is the most popular thing. You've heard that argument. Sure. It's good because it's popular.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
I go, really? You think McDonald's has the best hamburger in the world? You think that's the best restaurant in the country? You think McDonald's is the best place to go eat. They're the most popular. Sure. That's not the best. They're good. I enjoy McDonald's every once in a while. This podcast sponsored by McDonald's and The Gap. Sausage McMuffin with egg.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
I was making a joke to myself in the car, like all the things I would eat and consume. And pretty much if you advertise in the Super Bowl, I'm in. I drank Budweiser because they advertise in the Super Bowl. I bought this because they advertise in the Super Bowl. It's got to be the best one. They advertise in the Super Bowl. I get hooked in by marketing so easily by everybody. That's funny.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
You market to me the right way. An ad comes up when I'm scrolling the news. Somebody came up with a place that was selling bed tents, a place called Timu.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
I was like, oh, man, that's really cool.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
I was this close to buying it just because I saw it while I was reading a news article. And I'm like, what the fuck? I had to snap out of it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
I would feel so personally attacked if somebody wrote something bad about the Drew Carey show.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
And I was just thinking, I took everything so personally because first of all, my name's on it. And I knew that this was my only one chance to not ever have to work again. But it ran for nine, 10 years, right? Nine years. Save your money. You'll be fine. Yeah. Yeah. But your fourth year, fifth year, nine years, you want a 10th year.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
10th year, you want an 11th year. Like you don't want it to end. Some things are so good, you don't want it to end. Do you want the party to end when you're at a party and it's raging and you're in the midst of like the peak of it? When it's over, you're like.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
Keep this thing going. Rubbing your nose. I don't do coke, but I know the feeling.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
Yeah. I'm like, ah, man.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
Yeah, at Las Vegas Motor Speedway every May 17th, 18th, and 20th, I think, this year.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
Yeah. I was at Disneyland when I was on the Drew Carey show. Every year we would take the writers and the cast to Disney World. That was our thing. The guy that created the show, Chris Helford and I. Would drive across country. We would rent a car. He didn't fly. And we would drive from LA to Orlando. And we would meet the cast. Drive from LA to Orlando? How long does that take? Like a week?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
I had a journal where I would keep track of everything. Like one of those little accounting journals you'd buy at the CVS or Walgreens. back then. And I keep track of every expense, pack of gum. I knew down to the penny and the change in my pocket. Good for you. How much I had. Wow. That's how broke I was. You don't do that now, I assume. No. Okay.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
A few days. You take turns driving, listen to rock and roll. Sure. talk about the show, what went wrong, what didn't, what we liked, what we didn't, what we want to do next year, what about this, brainstorm, shoot the shit, eat at diners, joke around, okay, we get a motel. This looks like good, Holiday Inn Express, let's stay here. What are you doing here?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
Well, the Celebrity Holiday Express is closed. We get to Orlando, and ABC is owned by Disney, so ABC would get the rooms and make sure we pay for our guides. And we basically get a semi-free trip to Disney World for everybody. And it'd be all the writers and all the cast. We did it every year. So one year, I wanted to have everybody drink the world at Epcot Center.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
Which is a thing to do. You can eat the world or drink the world. And we were going to drink the world. So there's 10 countries in the Epcot Center. Starts out with Canada. United States is in the middle, of course. And then Mexico is on the other side. So you start with Canada.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
Work your way through Japan, China, England, Norway, all the other countries, Germany, Italy, and you end up in Mexico at the end of the night. And the idea was to get to Mexico right before 10 o'clock because that's when the fireworks went off. So we're like, yeah, we got to get an early start because 10 drinks.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
And you had to have a drink in each country. So we were supposed to start in Canada and everybody was late. And I was like, where the fuck is everybody? And everybody didn't get there until like 1.32 or something like that. And I was like, okay, let's go now. We got to make up some time. So we chugged a beer in Canada. And we got to walk everywhere.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
So we walked to the next one, walked to the next one. And by the time I got to the United States, I'm having a beer. And then in Japan, I'd have a sake. China, I'd have something else. And Germany, I'd have another beer. Italy, I didn't have a glass of wine. It wasn't Carappa or something. Yeah, it wasn't. I was mixing and just fucking stumbling.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
And by the time I got to Mexico, I'd been quarter to 10. It was nighttime out. I was like running around and like giggling and like tagging people. And I had mouse ears on. And people were worried about how I was acting. And they're like, we got to do something about true.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
So it wasn't like, yeah, thank God. But it wasn't before cameras or instant cameras that you would buy at Disney World to take around all day.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
Or like throwaway cameras. Disposable cameras, yeah. Everybody had something. They didn't have a phone, but they had something. And I'm acting like an idiot, just like drunk out of my mind. Fucked up drunk, but in a really good, happy way. Like, we got to do something with Drew. And somebody had the idea, let's put Drew in a wheelchair and wheel him out of here.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
So they got the guide, Disney guide, to get a wheelchair, the red vest guy. Yeah. Got me a wheelchair, plaid vest guy. Put me in the wheelchair, and they're going to wheel me out of there, which they do. And I'm in the chair just like fireworks going off. A month later, whenever we're back and we're starting in the writer's room, was it Weekly World News or Weekly World? Some tabloid.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
I have a general idea, but that's what I did back then. And like, I remember with my brother, back then it was like the oil embargo. Suddenly, we were learning about drafting behind trucks on the freeway, getting an extra couple miles a gallon.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
Tabloid, double page, Drew Carey drunk at Disney World. Oh, no. The picture that made everybody laugh so much was me in the chair with my mouse ears askew on my head. They weren't even straight. I have a red solo cup in my hand.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
Yeah. That's my face. I got beer spilled all over the front of my shirt. There's a beer stain on the front of my shirt. I'm in a wheelchair with a Disney guy behind me. Keepin' the place classy. I have a picture of that framed in my house.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
Well, after I did the Phish thing, when I went to the Phish concert and sent out those tweets about how I would stick my dick in a blender, I also said, by the way, that I would give you all my money and give up pussy for the rest of my life. Nobody mentions that part. All they bring up is the dick in the blender part. Like, I offered, like, three big things. Yeah. Yeah, I'll take the cash.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
You know, you can have all of it, but why are you concentrating on only that? Yeah. Because for a guy, that's like the worst thing. Like, you can have everything, just don't do that. It's a visceral feeling. Yeah. But after that, I remember talking to an executive at CBS, and that Diddy thing just came out where he dragged her through the hallway. Like, that video had just come out.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
She was like, you're just having fun. It's not like you're dragging it in your way through a hallway and beating them. I'm like, exactly. Like, who cares? If you're honest with everybody about how you live and if you're not hypocritical, you can pretty much live your life. In my book, I wrote about me going to strip clubs and all that stuff. Yeah. It wasn't shocking because I'm open about it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
And I was open about it. I would go into a strip club as Drew Carey and go, hey, man, VIP's here. Where's my table? Everybody knew. Hey, Drew. Hey.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
Remember the guy that was the president of the American Evangelical Association? He was a TV preacher and he got caught with iron gay hookers. And then he went to a Christian conversion thing for like two weeks and came back and he said, I'm healed, I'm not gay anymore. And I gave this joke to Greg Proops. He would do like a nightly...
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
thing at a club like it was like a chat show but it was live at a club in la i went every week it was so good and i gave him that i got a great joke but i don't do stand-up so here's this joke for you because it was just in the news he goes yeah greg proofs like killed it he goes yeah so this guy i can't remember his name got caught with gay hookers and he went to a christian conversion thing for a week now he's not gay anymore and what they did was they took him up behind the barn and made him smoke a pack of dicks till his tummy hurt
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
And, oh, let's get behind this truck, and then we'll draft, and we'll drive into Columbus or something. We'll get an extra two miles a gallon.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
People were like pounding the table. I was so proud of myself. And I wouldn't have given it to anybody else because Rick Proofs can tell a joke like nobody. Oh, man. But yeah, you get caught doing that, then you're in trouble. Yeah. But if I'm like, yeah, I go to EDC. What do you fucking think I do at EDC? Not drugs because you're the host of The Price is Right.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
I was on another TV show telling a story, a drug story. It was the show called This Is Not Happening. And that was my joke. I'm at ADC, my friend's doing mushrooms. I'm not, because I'm the host of Price is Right. I'd be an idiot to do mushrooms and then talk about it in public. So it was just him. He was, not me though.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
Yeah. A little, but not that. My brother's an engineer, and we were obsessive about keeping track of our miles per gallon. Yeah. made like a game of it. I wouldn't fill it up. I didn't have that money.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
Howard Stern could talk about anything he wanted, admit to anything he wanted. Nobody fucking touch him.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
But that's why people listen to Howard Stern because he's truthful and he's honest and he's saying exactly what he did and he's not trying to bullshit his way through. And, you know, you're on the Howard Stern show. That's what he was like. Off mic. Off mic, yeah. On mic. You can't fake it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
You can't be, I'm meeting you. You can't be on the show and fake it for this long. Impossible. And your show would suck. It would be terrible, yeah. That's why people listen. That's why people listen to podcasts because they're getting a real thing and have a real conversation with people. If I do a nighttime talk show, I talk to a segment producer and we talk about what we're going to talk about.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
What if we have a story, but it's all pre-planned? That makes complete sense. The host has cards. So I heard you did this. I got a great story. I was on Letterman. And I did the pre-interview. There's always a pre-interview, which I hate because I can talk for 10 minutes. Like, what are you fucking doing to me? Maybe somebody else can't, but I can.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
It's insulting almost that they give me a pre-interview.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
That plus they want to know what's happening because it's a seven minute segment.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
We got to hit bam. We don't need dead air. Can't afford it. So they're like, Hey, this isn't going to be a whole show. So that segment, if you just have a minute segment, let's do, let's hit it. And then these are great stories and those will be viral, whatever they do. They want, give me your most interesting. I get that.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
Yeah, I get it. So Letterman, it was going okay. The interview was, And then towards the end, he set me up with a story. He changed the wording and I didn't hear the keywords I was expecting. So I didn't tell the right story. Oh no. I just was like fumbling. It was interesting. You told a different story. It wasn't funny, but I was like, yeah, blah, blah, blah. And then it trailed off.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
$2 worth. I need a gallon of gas to last me this next couple days, and I'm getting 30 miles per gallon. I need to get 30 miles today. So let me just get my dollars worth, or two gallons, and I would hand the guy two $1 bills. That's just how I lived. I need enough to get me through to the next time I can afford to put five bucks in. I really felt like a big shot if I could fill it up.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
And then he goes, okay, well, we're going to go to commercial. And he goes to commercial and it was in December. Around Christmas time. And he leans over to me. He goes, hey, man, I'm really sorry about this crowd. This is such a nowhere crowd. It's the holidays. This crowd's nowhere. They bring a cigar out. He's smoking a cigar. It's crazy. In studio. Wild. Smoking a cigar during the commercials.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
And I go, oh, I'm really sorry. I just didn't hear the cue right. And it was different when I was back then. And he looks straight out above the audience's head with his cigar. And he goes, fuck it. Just fuck it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
Thinking about his flight to the Bahamas in five hours. The next time that I was on Letterman, I was doing a show, and I forget the name of the actress. She was a child actor then. She was in All the Pretty Horses, and she's a famous adult, but I can't blank on her name. But she's like 14, 13, something like that. I was the lead guest. She was on.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
And Warner Brothers had given me a Porsche to renegotiate my contract. They just gave me a car. Taxes paid for and everything. Here's your car. And that was one of their common negotiating tactics. Because I remember driving them a lot one time and in front of...
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
set there was like 10 porsches lined up you're like oh there's the entire cast's cars yeah they must have just signed their deals yeah that's what they did smart but all the talent wanted porsches that's the talent car you don't want a mercedes or jaguar that's the executive car yeah we had a whole discussion about what car to ask whatever this one it's funny
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
Podcast one, I'm open to this idea, by the way. Yeah. I just got this Porsche, and I had three weeks to get to New York. I had all the time in the world. So it was one of the best vacations I ever had. I want to get away from everybody. I don't want to talk to anybody. You probably value your alone time.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
Or even without the kids. You're like, can I have an hour just for me?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
It's church time. Don't fucking bother me. Everybody has that, including me. So I was doing a driving trip all by myself, and I left LA. I went to... 29 palms to get massages for a couple of days. Cut that short because I over-massaged. I was like, I can't get three massages a day. I'm bruised. It went out of my mind. Then I drove up and I went to Vegas.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
I kept going north through Idaho, got to Montana, made a right. I just wasn't even looking at a map. I just knew generally where I had to go. All my clothes weren't even in a suitcase. They were in my trunk. I would grab a shirt, underwear, socks for the next day, and I'd grab my toiletry kit, my computer bag, go into my room. That's what I had.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
I'd put the dirty clothes in a bag, and I would mail dirty clothes home. Mail them home. Oh, wow. And if I needed new clothes, I would stop at a Gap Outlet store or a Gap, and I would just buy new clothes and just put on a T-shirt. I was just driving. Three weeks. Wow. Nobody bugging me. And when I got to Montana and made a right...
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
I just knew the road was going east and it was one of these like two blacktop roads. It wasn't the main freeway. I didn't want to go on those. And the speed limit then was you had to drive judiciously. I forget what the sign said. No actual speed limit. Yeah. So I was like, fuck, nobody's around. I'm in a Porsche. You can go 110. Had the top down. Got it up to 110, 120 with the top down.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
Then I pulled over and I go, I'm getting dragged from having the top down. Let me put the top up, see what this thing can do. Got it up to 160. I don't know, three minutes. That's scary. It was. Yeah. But there was literally not another car in sight this whole time. I could have been dead. You could have hit a pebble and flown 30 feet in the air.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
It would have been an hour before somebody found me. It was one of those roads in a noir movie where they leave the body. And I was just like, bam. And then I slowed down. I was like, wow, that was, I was like shaking. I was like, wow, that was really cool. I ended up driving to New York City when I got to Letterman. I told that story.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
I was in Montana and I got to go 160 because they don't have a speed limit. And he had owned like four Porsches. He was like, really? Huh. That's pretty funny. Everybody was laughing because they knew Letterman had a Porsche and we were laughing about guys talking about speeding and getting away with it. Sure.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
And then the actress came on and talked about filming All the Pretty Horses in Montana, how beautiful it was and how gorgeous Montana was. And I remember backstage, Letterman saw me backstage at the theater. He goes, hey, great job tonight. I go, yeah, thanks for having me, man. And he goes, Montana, huh? And I go, yeah, it was great. No speed limit. All right, take care. I leave the next day.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
I start driving down to Orlando because I'm going to meet all the cast. And on Monday, I forget what little town I'm in, but I stop for breakfast. I buy a USA Today. I opened it up as a little article that David Letterman over the weekend had gotten a ticket in Butte, Montana for going 40 in a 25. Fucking guy flew to Montana. Oh my God. Probably in a private jet. Yeah. Shipped his Porsche over.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
Or rented some kind of car because he was going to go to the freeway and just gun it. Yeah. And he got a 40 and a 25 and beat Montana.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
Never booked that guy again. If you book that guy again, send him the bill for this ticket. And the next time I was on a show, I was telling that story. Okay.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
I lived in Vegas for a time, and I was just, again, stone broke, counting change in my pocket, and I would have enough change... And spare cash to get a box of Kraft macaroni and cheese. And then I would buy like the quarter stick of butter. But I couldn't afford the little pint of milk. Or I could afford the pint of milk.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
And then I would use water instead of milk.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
You might want to get a paycheck. You got to keep people like that around you. That'll just tell you the truth all the time in Hollywood. If you don't have those kind of people around you, I pity you, honestly. If you don't have a ball buster next to you, that'll tell you. My comic friends, keep me humble. Don't tell a comic your weakness. That's all you'll hear about the rest of your life.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
I wanted to get into the soccer business, and I wanted money to buy into a soccer team or purchase my own team. I didn't know how it was going to go, but I needed some soccer money. And I did it because of the money. Yeah, but it's fun though. Because it wouldn't be full-time. It's not full-time? Well, I work like 25 hours a week.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
I guess I just assumed it took the whole day to tape each one of those. It does, but it's three days a week, four days a week.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
You know what I mean?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
And then I get a week off every month. I get 10 days off, 11 days off every month. Because it's three weeks on, one week off. Oh, okay. It's a great schedule. I remember when they went from two shows to three, and I was working eight hours instead of six. And I'm thinking to myself, like, fuck, I've been here all day. Then I go like, oh, no, it was eight hours.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
Normal people do this five days a week. I remember thinking to myself, like, just shut the fuck up. Just shut up. Nobody's going to be pitting you.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
It's the story. The punchline is once I got on the Drew Carey show and made money, I would buy Kraft Macaroni and Cheese Deluxe. Liquid cheese you squeeze out of the foil. No mixing. And I'm rich, bitch. Who knows what chemicals are in there? Didn't even care.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
Yeah, it's like being a celebrity is... I tell people all the time, it's like being an infant. It's like being a toddler. They bring you water. You okay? I see you look a little sad. No, I'm fine. It's a little hot in here. Make everyone else uncomfortable because he's... Yeah, they lay my clothes out for me like they're animals before I go on stage. I don't have to think about a thing.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
Someone comes and does your hair when it's out and out of place? Yeah, yeah. I just show up. All I have to do is show up in a good mood. Or... by the time that door opens, be in a good mood.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
Yeah.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
As fun as you can have at work. Yeah, I suppose. There's worse places to work, man. Probably you heard yourself horror stories about working on one set or another set where it's tense and nobody likes each other and they're like, another 16-hour day with this motherfucker and
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
Yeah, that price is right. It's super chill, super cool. I mean, everybody's hustling. They work really hard. Everybody hustles. Everybody does their job. It's hard work, like all the grips and stuff. They're really working. But there's worse places to work. Like as far as showbiz, we all have it pretty good at the price is right.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
I don't watch it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
I don't like watching myself. I never watched the Drew Carey show. I just don't like watching myself on TV.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
He's the game producer.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
I'm usually looking at him. If you see me looking off camera, I'm looking at Chris.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
Chris Donnan. His official title is game producer, so he's the guy that picks the grocery items.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
And puts in the fake numbers on all the games, and it's you against Chris. When you're on the price is right. And he knows where to put the X on secret X, where to hide the $25,000 card on punch a bunch, all that stuff. When we're doing the dice game where all the numbers for the car, one through six, it's like on these dice, no zeros, no number higher than a six. And they roll the dice.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
And I'm acting like an idiot, just like drunk out of my mind. Fucked up drunk, but in a really good, happy way. Like, we got to do something with Drew. And somebody had the idea, let's put Drew in a wheelchair and wheel him out of here. So they got the Disney guy to get a wheelchair, put me in the wheelchair, and they're going to wheel me out of there, which they do.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
Squeeze the Velveeta bag into the thing with the pot on and pray. George makes jokes all the time about when you have frozen dinners or stuff as one of the grocery items. He'll go, just like mom used to throw in the microwave, just like the can mom used to open. That's funny. Do people recognize you, by the way, without your glasses on?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
And if they get the right number of dings, if they don't, they have to tell me whether the actual number is higher or lower. So if they roll a two, they'll go higher. If they roll a five, they'll go lower. But then they'll reveal the thing And they've rolled a five, but the actual number's a six. They've rolled a two, but the actual number's a one. And the first thing I do is I look at Chris.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
I go like, really, there's a six and a one dice game? He looks at me and goes like, hey, man, can't give it all away. Yeah, can't give it all away. Whatever look on his face is, what's a game? Win some, lose some. Whatever his look on his face. Or I'll say something to the audience about odds or something, and he'll go, that's not really... We do. We can change it any time we want.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
We have a game called Flip-Flop that we play all the time. We have a lot of either-or games that are quick games that we need for time. Not all games are long game. Flip-Flop's one or the other, but it's presented as three choices.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
We show you the wrong price, and you can flip first two numbers, so it's 7,800, it's 8,700, or you can flop the last two numbers, so instead of 34, it's 43, or you can flip and flop. Do both numbers. But one out of a hundred is a flip-flop. You go a whole season without a flip-flop. It's really only flip or flop if you watch the show and play the game. Like a super fan would never flip and flop.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
I see.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
But we're well within our rights to make it a flip and flop. Sure. Because that's how we present it. If we did it, in their head, people would be right to go like, fuck. Why did I come on the unlucky day or the one day? And our argument would be like, we have to do it. It's just like TSA. Are you in TSA pre?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
So they have to do that. Sure. So the terrorists, whoever don't think that you're just get away with it. There's always a chance. Sure. So they have to know there's always a chance that it'll be a flip flop to make it even more exciting or playable, but practically never is to be honest. Don't ever flip-flop.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
Heavier than people think it is.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
I don't know if people were in better shape in 75 and late 70s when they first started it. Because it started at 75 and it was a different wheel and then they changed it to what it is now. But yeah, it's all plywood. Huh. I've seen all the wheel spins since I've been there. Every single spin. And so if somebody's like a... Older, they don't seem as strong.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
If they can only get it exactly one time around and they're first, I think, oh, they're going to hit a dollar or five or 15. A good chance they're going to hit a dollar if they can eke it out one spin around because that's all they can manage. It's better to be not super strong.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
Big guy will get up there and just pow and give it a spin, which just spins like four times because I can count the rotations in my head while I'm watching it three times. We're going to be here all day watching the spin and then that's too random to me. And some people will try to finesse it. Like in my head, if I ever was a contestant, I would try to finesse it one around or one and a half.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
But I know how much it weighs. If you bowled with a rental ball, you wouldn't know how to throw it the first time. And that's what's happening to them. They're throwing a rental ball for the first time down a lane where they don't know that it's oiled or even the oil pattern is. They have no clue.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
That's our advantage. So it really is random that way. But if I give you that rental ball and let you play a couple games and then said, okay, now we're going to make it real. you'd have a really big advantage over us.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
You've had glasses your whole... I've been wearing glasses since I was eight. They do and they don't. It depends on the context. And in LA, nobody cares. And if they do, they don't show it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
There's famous stories on the internet you can find about a guy beating a roulette wheel, and what they've done is they bought that brand of a roulette wheel and put it in their house.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
And they figured out the pattern, and they figured out the speed, and they figured out the sounds, and they know when they go they have a way better chance of winning than somebody else. There's a guy named Darren Brown.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
The guy's bananas, right? Yeah. So I saw his special where he would bet 5,000 pounds on the roulette wheel and he was only one number off, but he trained himself. The whole special was about him training himself to listen to the sounds and learn all those things. So he was going to be able to go in and beat that one particular roulette wheel at that one particular place.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
And he was only off by one number.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
A guy wakes up in the morning and hears a voice in his head. Wakes up in Ohio, quit your job, sell your house, take all your money, go to Las Vegas. He doesn't believe the voice. Takes a shower, goes to work, quit your job, sell your house, take all your money, go to Las Vegas. Finally, he hears it every five minutes, quit your job, sell your house, take all your money, go to Las Vegas.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
He believes the voice. He gets home, sells his house for cash to the very first buyer, quits his job, takes all the cash, everything he owns in one bag, flies to Las Vegas. Gets off the plane. The voice says, go to Caesar's Palace. He listens to the voice. He goes to Caesar's Palace. The voice says, go to the third roulette table on the left. He goes to the third roulette table on the left.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
Voice says, put it all on black 17. He puts it all on black 17. Guy spins the wheel. It comes up red 16. The voice goes, fuck. And that happened to Darren Brown. That's the first joke I thought of. That's so... I heard that was one of my favorite jokes. He was off by one. He built up that whole hour.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
It's not cool to show it in L.A. No, like there's this diner I go to all the time, Swingers. And tons of celebrities go in there regularly and come in and out to actors. And the servers all know that they're regulars. And when you see them in there, there's no line to get their autograph. But when I was on the Drew Carey show and really banged out my first fame, I couldn't go anywhere.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
Man.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
Nobody sends in tapes or anything. We did during COVID, but not a normal show. It's just whoever shows up. We've got to get lucky. Do they get interviewed in line? Like, oh, she's so animated and fun. Very briefly. Okay. What's your name? Where are you from? What do you do? Oh, great. Nice talking to you. Boom. On to the next one. You get a few seconds. Five seconds.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
We've got to interview like 200-some people. There'll be a person interviewing another person with a clipboard. And they'll have a code. They don't do it now. When I first started, his code, he'd be like, oh, that's really interesting. And if he said that, mark that contestant's number down. Or if you said nice talking to you or something else, don't.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
They come back to this room and they have 20 people who knows how many pictures of everybody and that they print up right away on a printer. And they'll have the number and they'll just hold them up. This guy's really interesting. He's a professor and he's here on an anniversary with his wife. And this woman is just recovering from cancer. This girl's college and she's really energetic.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
We could use her. And then they narrow them down, who they want to bring up the first four, who's going to be last. They want somebody energetic to come up last. They want a demo of who's watching the show. So it's not going to be all white people. It's not going to be all black people. It's not going to be all old people. It's not going to be college kids.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
So if you're in the military and you're a vet and you're retired and there's three of you, and you see another military vet retire just got picked, you're not getting picked. If you're a college kid and they got their college kid, if they got their old married lady, whatever the demographics of the show is, we want that to be on the show. We want it to be representative of who's watching.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
Not necessarily of who's in the audience, not random, but who's watching. Because we want the experience of people watching themselves and rooting for themselves and empathizing with whoever's on the show because those people are the stars of the show, not me. It's those people and the prizes. It's an aspirational prize. I would love to go on that trip. I need a new washer and dryer.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
Even a bedroom set. Fuck, that looks great. I would wish I had a new bed. Like things you don't even think of. If somebody offered you like, hey, you want to get rid of this old washer and dryer you've been using for three years and get a brand new one that does steam? Yes, I'll take it. I know maybe you can't use all this game room, but look, it's a pool table, a dartboard, a video player.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
You weren't thinking of it, but wouldn't it be cool?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
It's something like that.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
Or even if you didn't think it'd be, well, that'd be fun to have. And then the small items, grocery items, we had a butter churn on the show. That's not a prize. That's a thing you have to price to win the bigger prize. Yeah. We're not offering a butter churn. We're seeing if you know the price of a butter churn to win the better thing. It's all gamed out.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
And so that's how we do it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
So a common thing that happens is somebody will come up on stage and they'll have a shirt on that says, pick my friend, it's her birthday.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
Everybody recognized me. In Cleveland? Yeah, or outside of L.A. I remember I went on a driving trip. pulled into Holiday Inn or whatever roadside thing where I could just pull in and park. I wanted to be able to park my car outside my door. It was those places. And they'd be like, what are you doing here? My joke was the Celebrity Hotel was closed. What are you doing at 7-Eleven?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
And I'll talk to them in between. I'll go, who's the friend with the birthday over there? And what happens is when they're in line, the friends of the birthday girl, birthday guy will go, no, my God, you got to pick my friend. It's his day. We're bringing him here. Pick my friend. And the friend is like, oh, come on. Don't make a big deal out of it. Yeah, it's my birthday.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
So we pick the energetic person who's all hyped up. Happens all the time.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
Right. Yeah, that makes sense. We pick nine people. If there's 15 people up to 11, somebody's going to get left out. A lot of times you have to come back like five, six times or more and then finally get your turn. But it's a fun taping to come to anyway. And it's free.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
They tried to go wireless with him once and it didn't work because it was brand new. It pooped out on him. Yeah. And he didn't trust it after that, they told me. That's interesting. I always wondered because I was like, hey, it's 1995 and he's still using it. People that are watching this instead of listening, you can see our microphones are pretty big.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
And if you're not used to be on TV, you get this big microphone stuck in your face. It's off-putting. But if I have this little tiny thing that I can just flip out and put it right here and you barely notice it and flip it back. But they're mic'd up themselves.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
When I first got on stage, what do they think of my body? Do I look ugly today? How's my hair? Oh my God, I'm fat. Look at these jeans. Everybody goes through that the first time they're ever on a camera. And honestly, in acting classes and stuff, the biggest thing an actor can learn is to say fuck it to all that. It's the fear of judgment that makes people a good actor or not a good actor.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
Jack Black has no fear of judgment.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
He doesn't give a fuck. I saw him, we did a charity thing. He walked out, he stripped down to his little tiny underwear and walked out all fat, bouncing around. You see his whole packet and he was just like dancing around and laughing.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
Didn't give a fuck. Didn't give a flying fuck. And everybody was like, wow, Jack Black doesn't give a fuck. That's what you aspire to. If you can do that, when people are doing a scene where they're sobbing and crying and just a complete wreck, they have to not give a fuck about looking weak. They have to not give a fuck.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
Whatever scene that they have you in, you're playing a character and you need to be as real as possible. You cannot think, oh, what if my wife sees me with this chick? What if my friends see me groveling to this guy in a scene because I want something for him? I'm going to look weak. Yeah, your character's weak.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
So when you're talking to this guy and he's a mob boss and you want something, fucking grovel. Fucking cry like your life depends on it. You would never do that in real life, but you have to be able to do that. And some people can't let that go. They're not as good an actor. And people that can not give a fuck for that moment.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
And just go, you know, I'm just going to grovel like there's no camera around. You have to not be in that kind of mindset. If you do that, you'll be the greatest actor in the world. That's the difference. All that acting technique stuff is bullshit. Yeah, interesting. Or that's just technique. That's just craft. But to be a really good actor, you have to not give a flying fuck.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
People would recognize me. Oh, my God. What are you doing at 7-Eleven?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
She was going to play Plinko, and she was wearing white pants, and she got up on stage, and she was like prancing, and she goes, oh, my God, I'm going to pee. I said, but first, hang on, before you do that, you're going to play Plinko. And she went, oh, my God, and she peed herself. And then she had to walk up those stairs. Wow. A stain on her pants. She got it on the local news. So they ran it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
We couldn't help but run it. She got it on her local news.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
And laughed about it. Yeah, good for her.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
I need gum.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
No. But the guy that had the perfect bid, we didn't know what the fuck was happening. They had just changed producers- And the old producer had been at the show for 35 years and it was the first year without that guy. And there was a big huge fan group online that were really upset.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
The only fan presence we have online is this big forum where everybody, they keep track of every show, every game, every price, every contestant. They have a database like you wouldn't believe of everything. Super fans.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
That was our website. This third party run group of super fans. And I remember the producer telling me like, if those guys like you, then you're good because they're the super fans. So this guy gets a perfect bid and, I don't know the prices ahead of time. Nobody does on stage. Nobody has any way of knowing any single price who's on the stage or interchanging with the contestants.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
It's only Chris, the game producer, and the people in the booth are the only ones that know the prices. And I go backstage to find out who's going first and who won the showcase. And the producer goes, she's like in shock.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
And he just said that. It was exactly to the dollar. And I was like, does that ever happen? And she went... No, we were like, what the fuck happened? Cause this would never happen. And in my head, I was like, did somebody leak information to fuck us? Cause they're mad that the old producers in here now that somebody fuck us. Cause they're mad. We got a new guy and things are changing.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
It's my second year. So I'm going to be the guy that ruined prices, right? Am I going to be a middle of a scandal? Like I was really scary. I was like, what the fuck? And everybody backstage was like, what the fuck? And there was like a good 15 minutes stop down. Just seems like forever, 20 minutes, something like that. They made a documentary about it that I didn't watch because I was there.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
Because you were there. And we have cameras all over the fucking place running all the time. And just at rest, they're somewhere in the audience. And during the show, we're like filming the audience. I thought the guy cheated.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
Yeah, that's my standard joke. The Celebrity blank was closed. Yeah.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
And so when I read the thing, I was like, all right, you got an exact price. Good for you. I wasn't going to give him the satisfaction in my head. I was like, fuck this guy. And I got all kinds of shit online. Oh, this guy got a perfect bid and Drew Carey wasn't even happy for him. But I was like, I'm going to be happy for this cocksucker.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
In my head. That's why I was like, fuck this guy. I'll go through the motions and that's all you're going to get. Then we had all kinds of meetings. And I remember being in one meeting and one of the lawyers said, what if you don't allow the audience to allow prices anymore? And we were like, what? That's the whole show. Shut up. Get out of here. What exactly do you do here anyway, buddy?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
A lawyer. Okay. And then we found out that everybody was getting their prices from one guy in the audience. It was like in the second, third row, towards the middle. And he was from that website. He was from that forum group. And at the time... Everything was, if it ain't broke, don't fix it attitude. Like, this is traditional. This is what we do. And everything was fine. Bob was there.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
And all of a sudden, Bob wasn't there. Overdue wasn't there. Now it can't be traditional anymore. It's all got to shake it up. There was a woman playing a game called One Away, and I remember her looking on the audience, and she got all her numbers from that guy, got them all right the first time, which rarely happens once in a hundred. That happened.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
1,000?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
And the guy that got the perfect bid, I think he won his bid. I don't know if he got a perfect bid and got the extra 500, but he might have. And then he was on door two, which is the farthest away, and the camera's in the middle. So he couldn't see the guy and he lost his game, but then he won on the wheel and got to the showcase. Then he's able to see the guy and he gets his numbers from the guy.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
Was there any sort of triggering event? The first time, my bow tie phase, when I first... Dropped all that weight was because my son, Connor, he's 19. I hope he 20 in April. I just realized that I wasn't going to live to see him graduate high school. Like we would play in the backyard when he was five and run around like daddy's tired. I couldn't chase him around the yard.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
We got it all on camera.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
At the time, we only changed like six prizes a week. So if we had a couch that was $800, we'd have that same couch on another show, an $800 couch. When we had a can of soup, it was only Campbell's cream of mushroom soup. Because Bob was vegan, and it was a vegan show. And Campbell's Cream of Mushroom doesn't have beef stock or chicken stock. And it was $1.29, then it was $1.30, then it was $1.31.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
That was the soup. You just knew. If you watched the show enough, and if you were that big of a fan, you would just know what the prizes were. You would just know. Like any gamer. So this guy was there. They used to come to every show. Looking back, I shouldn't have been mad. It was all fair game. All these people had every right to do what they did, and I'm glad they did it, and I'm glad he won.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
But I didn't know that at the time. And he was just like yelling out because he wanted people to win. And he knew all the prices because he'd watched the show and they never changed the prizes. And it was early enough in the season. The new guy was just learning the show before we changed everything over. We were changing things on the fly. And that's how it happened.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
Yeah. But that was one thing where I thought it was cheating, but it wasn't. It was just people finding a weakness in how we presented the show. We could have the same car in every act and you would never know the price.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
You're always trying to heal your inner child some way. Something's happened to you that you want to make up for, get over with. Then there's tons of psychologists that based their whole career on that kind of thing. And your neurons get wired a certain way where you make the same choices just because that's the pattern in your head.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
And until somebody shows that to you, I thought it was normal to eat pasta every night and drink Pepsis all day. If you quit all this and only eat fat, go on a keto diet, you'll have a lot more energy. No. That makes sense. Got to have sugar. Right. Sure. That's nonsense to me. Remember when Atkins first came out? Yeah. What?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
Get the fuck out of here. You're crazy. It seemed insane. Yeah. One of our artist friends was smoking and she went home and she was hacking, going down the stairs and her mom said, oh honey, you want a menthol? People don't see beyond the horizon. So yeah, every birthday, every New Year's, I look back on the year or I look back on recently. I do that all the time anyway, like every weekend.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
Like how was the week? Did I do what I wanted to do? Am I on the right track? to what I want to do. Is it okay for me not to have a goal? Can I just exist this week and not have to worry about anything? I've hit everything. Why can't I just chill and relax? I do that all the time, just with different things. I'm constantly self-searching. I'm constantly looking to grow.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
I'm constantly looking to learn. What can I do that's fun, improve myself? What can I do that would keep me young, keep me in a young attitude? I go to EDC. I don't want to get old and set my ways. I want to know all the new songs, all the new fads. I want to know what Riz means.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
I couldn't play tag with him. I was just exhausted. Like my feet hurt. I would leave prices, right? My feet would hurt. And I was looking for orthopedics.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
All that stuff. Yeah.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
Yeah, just mid. You're so Ohio. Midwest. Quit being so Ohio.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
Live a little. So I'm constantly looking to grow. And once you stop growing, that's the end of you.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
All the usual suspects. It's a great selection. Yeah, because all the best guys are there. I remember seeing Cascade once on the main stage and it was so good. I looked at my friend and I said, this sounds like when James Brown came on the Tammy show. Just changed everything. It was great. Everybody's great. But then Cascade had such a good set.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
People were just like up and everybody was dancing, not just a few people. Bottle service girls were dancing, like everybody. And we're like, man, this guy's killing it. We were fist bumping each other and just like, what in the fuck is happening? And once in a while, a guy gets a dream set. I went to the Sphere in Vegas and we saw Marshmallow at a club. He had a great set.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
When I was there, I was like, man, this must feel good. Because I know what it's like to go on stage and have a magical set.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
Or even in a club. All week I've been doing the same act, but then Saturday's second show, for some reason, it just hit better. every laugh was better. And if there's no better feeling, like however many times you have sex with your wife, one day you'll have that night where like, woo, are we dating again? This is like, I can't believe we just had that. It happens.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
And that's what happens when you're seeing a DJ set. Somebody will have their night at EDC where it's just because they want to bring their A game and it'll just be like, I stood behind Diplo once when he did a set. I'll never forget it. I thought I was watching Beethoven play piano or something. So he was hitting the boards and working the board so well. I was like, what the fuck is this?
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
Yeah, not old enough to be like, oh, my – everything hurts. You know, my back hurt, my knees. I always needed a nap because I ate so much junk and sugar all day. Like my diet was awful. And when you're soaking in something, you just think it's normal. Like we all have our own normal now where you realize, oh, it might be normal, but it's not good. Like just because it's normal on the bell curve –
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
When you see Liberace play piano and like how his fingers moving so fast, that's what it looked like to me.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
Thank you. I appreciate it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
Doesn't mean that's ideal.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
Yeah, so this is how I thought. I would go to whatever diner. I was a big boy back then. I was working at Warner Brothers. Go to Bob's Big Boy and I would have steak and eggs and toast and like three, four cups of coffee with sugar. Two things of sugar.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
In my head, I thought, well, I'll use brown sugar.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
A little healthier. Sure. And I won't have pancakes this morning because I'm trying to be good. But if I was just like, oh, yeah, sure, pancakes. Put a side of pancakes on there because it's a regular day.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
I'm not trying to be healthy.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
Yeah, yeah. And devour all the hash browns. And then I'd get to work, have a Pepsi, look over the script. There'd be snacks at the – Craft table, maybe a little bit of bagel or something. And, oh, a cookie. Have a cookie. And then lunch, same kind of thing. Burger, fries. At night, I would leave and I would go to Swinger's and get pasta with heavy cream. Alfredo chicken with chicken in it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
And I'm in the chair just like fireworks going off.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
And then extra cheese on top. And then a cupcake. But then if I was being good, I would not have a cupcake. Or I'd be like, nah, I'm kind of down. Let me have two cupcakes. And then I would drink iced tea with that with extra lemon. So I'd put two slices of lemon in the iced tea. And then another, it would be like five, six wedges of lemon and iced tea.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
And I'd already had three Pepsis at work all day and crashed after every show. And then feet would be hurting. And then I'd get home. Crack open another Pepsi. Oh, at night? Oh, man.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
Doritos, ranch dip. Ooh, that sounds good. Something Twizzler, something like that. Watch TV, have a beer, have a couple beers, and then go to bed. And I wouldn't be able to sleep, so I was taking Ambien, and I would take one.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
I think Ambien is like the work of the devil, honestly.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
And I would end up having to take, I don't know if I had to, but I think I did, taking two Ambien's just to sleep. And then I'd get up exhausted. Couldn't wait to get a coffee in me. And that's how I lived. That's scary. And to me, that was like, oh, this is what everybody does. You're probably not too far off. I think a lot of people do that. And I'm at the Gap buying clothes.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
I had such a stupid mindset. Like, I bought everything from the Gap because in my head, this is only temporary. So why am I going to invest in expensive clothes when I'm going to lose this weight in a few months anyway? So I just buy Gap clothes. I knew it fit me. It was fine. I was just going to work and who cares? And if they were selling XXLs, that's...
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
normal because it's hey it's at the gap it means i'm still a normal person's side i'm not over the limit i have to go to the big and tall place right that was in my head i remember going to urban outfitters once i only style up a little bit and i went to urban outfitters and the biggest waste they sold was like 36 i was like these motherfuckers was the only kids allowed to buy hair and sell the clothes to adults i was really like okay fine you're not getting my money yeah yeah
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
Drew Carey came in here, looked around, and then left.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
Man. So I used to be an evangelical Christian. Oh, wow. But I remember feeling like I just got saved by Jesus.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
That's the only feeling I can relate it to. Like I was floating. I was in such a flow state. I think your listeners are probably familiar with the flow state.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
You've heard of it. And if you haven't, there's whole books on it. YouTube videos, if you're not into reading, but it happens to you when you game, you get a flow state.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
If you're really into the game or when you're driving with the radio on or off, you really get in a flow state when you're anything where you have hyper concentration, where you look up and you're like, Oh my God, it's been an hour already. I thought I just sat down. That's a flow state. And I was in such a state of flow. I might as well have floated out there and floated over.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
And it was like a dream state the whole time. So I'd rehearsed that set. When I walked out, Jim McCauley, RIP, he was the guy that booked the comics. And he was the guy that if you were in a comedy club and you knew Jim McCauley was in the audience, you'd be like, oh my God, you're up right away. Yeah, because he can make or break you by putting you on The Tonight Show or not.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
Back then it was like just very few gatekeepers. And if you got past those gatekeepers, you were in. And if you didn't,
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
Yeah, there's no podcast to go on. There's no YouTube channel you can start. There's no third tier like this podcast. Now there's like many avenues. Back then there was just the one and then just the two when Letterman started.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
Then after you got famous from those, then you could have an HBO special.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
Or a Showtime special. And that was it. Now you could make your own special, put it on YouTube, get a YouTube following, and then you're set.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
Nothing like that. You had to go through the gatekeepers. Always a gatekeeper.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
So Jim McCauley was the biggest gatekeeper in the country. And he said, hey, Drew, you're on next. Ready to go backstage? I had my notes, my set list that I hadn't barely glanced at. And I was going to look over it one more time before I went on. And it was on the top page of my notebook. It wasn't a separate sheet.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
I just had my notebook and I would fold over the top like a lined Oxford line notebook. And he walks me backstage and he goes, well, have a good time. And I go, am I next? And he goes, yeah. And I go, well, I guess I don't need this. And I tossed it.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
You didn't have a chance to look at it before it went out. And the next thing you know, it's Johnny introducing me, the curtains open, and I float out on stage. And I'm in a flow state. It's going great. I'm like electric inside. I feel like I'm on another planet. It's going so well where I'm not associated with reality. And then I get called over just like in my dream the night before.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
I had like a vision of exactly how it would go. I was working at a club in Chicago, Funny Bone in Chicago at the time, and Schomburg. And I got a call like, hey, Macaulay called. He wants to do the Tonight Show. And the club owner was really excited because that's extra money on the weekend when I come back from that. And just to have a comic there that just got his first Tonight Show.
The Jordan Harbinger Show
1153: Drew Carey | The Price Is Right, But These Stories Are Priceless
And he was a good friend of mine anyway. And I was like, what? Well, I need Friday night off. So Thursday night, I got the call Wednesday. And Thursday night, I told the audience I'm doing the Tonight Show. I did my set. And I go, that was my Tonight Show set. So let me just figure out the rest of this. Because you already heard my closer. Wow. And I flew out there.