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Doug Stanhope: Hello, sir.
Kill Pretty: Hey, how’s it going?
DS: Good. Let me get a cigarette and my cocktail and I’ll go outside.
KP: Alright.
DS: I was just searching midget porn.
KP: For any specific reason or just to get off?
DS: I’m trying to buy DVDs of weird porn and I’m like, “How do you buy porn?” I can’t remember the last time I bought hard copy DVD porn. We do porn and eggs parties, occasionally, for brunch. Last time we had a vintage porn that somebody had sent us, like 1940’s shit, then there’s the potluck and....yeah.
KP: That’s shit’s crazy how they had to reel it on a reel and then set up a projector just to get 10 to 30 seconds of soundless porn.
DS: Yeah, but it wasn’t like that, it was more “burlesque,” girls stripping. It was just weird what we had, but it was funny. And then we waited as the day wore on and everyone got drunker and then we switched it out for hardcore tranny porn. So people noticed, “Oh, jeez,” but they stayed. So now it’s, “What do we do for the next one?” Do we do amputee porn, fatties, grannies - it can’t be regular porn. It’s gotta be weird on some level.
KP: You were probably jacking off in the 80’s when you had to buy those boxes or rent them at the video stores?
DS: Yeah, in the 80’s I had to rent them, but I’d go down to the liquor store when I lived in L.A. in the 90’s and they had them above the cigarettes behind the counter. “What’s the title on that one? Yeah, I guess it can be that one.” “Just give me the longest compilation. I’ll fast forward.”
KP: Was it a lot harder to find really weird shit at that time or could you still find the weird amputee midget stuff?
DS: Well, when you were in a video store, they would have that back section and you could browse, but not like today. You couldn’t click on Youporn and type in a fuckin’ word.
KP: We live in an incredible time. I remember you talking about your sex drive being almost completely dead and you not even being interested in having sex and I’m jealous as fuck because I wish I could live that life. Has that happened over time, you becoming less horny?
DS: Yeah. I’m older and grosser and more out of shape and fatter and I don’t want to do this to anyone else. And I stink at it anyway. If I get the urge, I’ll fuckin’ flip on Youporn and that urge is gone in fuckin’ 30 seconds.
KP: I’m fucking jealous. That’s amazing.
DS: As I said in the bit, I treat it like it’s a medical condition. I get rid of a fucking boner like I’m fucking draining a boil, as quick as possible.
KP: I feel like that sometimes: “Just get this over with so I can get on with my fuckin’ day.”
I wish there was a way to do an accurate accounting of all the bad decisions I’ve made in life and see which is more responsible, alcohol or pussy?
KP: Man, I would have to say pussy. But I don’t know, maybe not in your case.
DS: I’d have to say pussy because when you’re drunk you have an excuse. “Sorry I was drunk.”
KP: Yeah. That’s true.
DS: When just thinking with your dick, clearly sober, but you know that you’re not going to feel this way later; as Joe Rogan calls it, his “Post Cum Shame.” As soon as that last load hits her belly you’re goin’, “Oh fuck, what did I do?”
KP: That is such a fucking crazy moment. Your whole mindset changes so drastically. It’s like night and day. It’s like someone turned the lights on.
DS: Yep.
KP: I remember you talkin on a podcast about losing your virginity super fucking early. How old were you?
DS: I was 9. I always thought it was a regular, like 11 or 12. I knew I was wicked young, but then when I had to start doing research for the book, I go “Wait, no, we moved to Paxton in 1976.” And it was right before we moved there that I was with my little girlfriend Nora Elias and I was fuckin’ 9 years old.
KP: How did you guys even know that you were supposed to do that?
DS: We knew that’s how people made babies and people did that and we knew that it was wrong. Like I said in the book, like throwing eggs at cars, we were just doing something ‘cuz we knew it was wrong. There’s no pre-cumming here, it’s not like I was blowing loads or anything.
KP: After it was over what did you think of it? Did you think it was weird or were you into it?
DS: There wasn’t really an end to it ‘cuz you don’t come. You go, “Just try to put it in there,” and then you moved on to what other vandalism can we do. It was like kids playing doctor, only we were a little more advanced. We were just better doctors.
KP: I’ve never met a girl that I felt I could be with forever because most women that I meet are boring. And I’ve always felt if I met a girl that I could stay with forever she would have to be a little bit crazy. But all the crazy girls I meet are usually too crazy. You seem to have found a girl that is just the perfect amount of crazy for you where it’s fun and it stays exciting, but it’s not so crazy that she’s burning your house down or calling the cops on you or anything like that.
DS: Crazy is an overused term. She has a mental illness. A lot of girls that are called crazy are just cunts. There’s no diagnosis. There’s not a medical diagnosis, they’re just assholes.
KP: How did you know Bingo had the right kind of mental illness that worked for you? That’s something I strive for, meeting a girl with the right kind of illness that fits with my illness!
DS: I’m kind of a play it as it goes guy. I didn’t ever go, “Oh, this is the one.” I didn’t have to decide, I’m going to be with you forever it just happened to work like that. There were times early on where I thought, “I don’t know if I’m equipped to deal with this.” Now she’s well medicated and it’s more off and on. She’s not nearly as bad as she was. You know like going through cycles where she’d purposely bang her head on sharp corners. Not for attention she’d lock herself in her house. Next time you see her, her head is all carved up from a pair of scissors. There’s an actual, physiological reason that people do that. She can explain it better than I can but your body immediately focuses all of its attention on the wound and stops the whirligig that’s going on in your head. It kills the voices so to speak. I’m guessing you’re a lot younger than me.
KP: I’m 31.
DS: Yeah, I’m about to be 50. I’m a drunk, too. A lot of stuff I can let slide, “Oh, huh, that’s kind of weird. I should probably pay more attention to that but fuck it, let’s have a cocktail.”
KP: I’m really into psychedelics and as you can tell the magazine is pretty psychedelic. I know you stopped taking them for a while and I’ve heard you talking about taking them again.
DS: I feel like I should the same way I feel like I should get out and exercise more. I just hate doing it. Once I’m tripping, I’m glad I did. Just thinking about tripping, “Fuck, that’s like eight hours.” I hate puking and occasionally I’ll puke in the beginning. Drinking, at the end you go, “Oh, I’ll never drink again.” Psychedelics at the beginning you go, “Oh, I don’t know if I want to go through with this.” And at the end you’re like, “Oh, I’m so glad I did.”
KP: How have psychedelics affected your life?
DS: I couldn’t tell you. That’s like saying, “Well, what if I had stayed in school?” I don’t know. Would I have been any different if I hadn’t? Absolutely. If I had kids, I would tell them definitely do psychedelics. I couldn’t give you a specific thing that I’m different because of but I definitely am and the only time I ever did DMT, I kind of wonder if that zapped my ambition for life. DMT is like having an injection of ultimate knowledge and it kind of gives you a lazy nihilism. “Alright, nothing matters.” Not in a negative way like, “Fuck this.” Sometimes.
When I did DMT, it was at the end of The Man Show with Joe Rogan. We know the show sucks and we know its not getting picked up but we still have to write the monologues for the last few things were filming. We smoked DMT and its five minutes of higher lucidity than is explainable and then you come down and you have to go back to writing dick jokes for a horrible Comedy Central show.
“What is the point? What am I doing?” I’ve said this and it’s the only analogy I could ever find for DMT so I’ve said it before but it’s the equivalent of if you were a rat and you lived a rat’s life. Never questioned it. Lived in sewage and dumpsters. Then you smoke some shit with Joe Rogan that gives you the consciousness you have now as a human being. Then five minutes later you’re a rat again. You didn’t forget what you learned but you still have to live out a rat’s life. Live in sewage and eat garbage. Then you try and explain it to people.
KP: It’s horrible trying to explain a DMT trip to someone.
DS: Any kind of trip. I was just talking to Lynn Shawcroft. She’s doing a book about Mitch Hedberg. She’s releasing some vinyl. She’s like, “I’m just asking people to write up some short stories, just 200-300 words, just a story about Mitch that I can put on this. Anytime I’ve been interviewed with Mitch, all of our best stories are when we were tripping our balls off and you can’t explain those stories, they don’t come across. It’s like trying to tell your wife about the weird dream you had.
KP: Mitch Hedberg seems like the perfect tripping partner.
DS: Oh, he was. That’s how we became friends, we bonded over an acid trip the first time we worked together. We had one of the best fucking nights ever. There’s no way to explain it, it was just silliness.
KP: Those are the best trips when it’s just silly, crying laughing.
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