first time ever on stage was The Improv ever uh and I did well did you do well the first time that kind of tends to be the of course not how could you do well the first time because it's audition night and and the crowd is very generous and I don't know it was that seemed to be the the way it went that's not my memory my memory was said it was terrible I was you know gasping for the oxygen of laughter rudely awakened to the fact that making my friends laugh was a whole different animal than making a room strangers laugh um I did obviously get enough laughs to get asked back but I had the the horrible experience the second time I went on stage so I had the false hope that oh this is easy and then I was rudely awakened right well you must have been if you actually quit I mean when you quit quit yeah I I quit it it scared me so much and then I tried again and I I I quit again and then the third time is when I said I got to give it a shot so you you quit and did what I was uh I mean I did a lot of Everything But at the time that I started working as a standup I was delivering futons in New York from my friend and you went back to that I don't even think I was doing it then when I was 23 I wasn't doing anything I was going to college dropping out of college was that's how painful standup can be when you're not good at it it can make you go back to delivering Fons right it could make you quit yeah as as as exhilarating as the first night was that's how equally horrible the second night was right and yeah it scared me into it's an amazing phenomenon that people well first of all just that a human being would want to like take the mood of a whole room of people or a thousand people or sometimes 25,000 people in music 50,000 people and put that on your one back that that alone is a little weird to want to do and then to like endure that kind of apprenticeship I mean every industry has a type of apprenticeship if you're a computer program you're working you're learning the computer it's not humiliating learning the computer it can be frustrating or you know you wish you were going faster or slower or something uh but it's not but we had like rank humiliation I mean real yeah that's the hardest part ego crushing that's what I tell there's always young guys who kind of ask me about what's the best PA path or whatever sure Ray you're a big star you're worth hundreds of millions in your big shows and movies and acting career and stand for stand up royalty what give us your advice Ray can I call you Ray or should I Romano hold forth who are you are you mocking me or them I'm mocking that whole syndrome that we've all lived through a billi times where there was like I remember not to blame him for it he was good at it but Lena when we started was a older than us Comics who had started and was doing better and he would he had smoked a pipe back then and he would occasionally forth but I've seen Rodney do it and you know it's do what like hold Court well yes the young Comics gather around and they want wisdom from the elders and by the way I'm not saying I ever offered it I'm talking about when kids when guys asked me I don't say I don't know they ask me too I'm just saying it's it's how you handle it about the whole syndrome just creeps me out I heard Seinfeld give um one of the best pieces of advice to I I don't know what it was but he said someone was asking him how do you make money in comedy in standup and he said the way to make money and stand up hey thanks for watching the clip hit the Subscribe button now so you never miss out on our club random content that's posted daily