Name: From Mike & Molly to Here with Bill Gardell | You Made It Weird
Uploaded: 2025-11-19T15:01:29.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'From Mike & Molly to Here with Bill Gardell | You Made It Weird' from Pete Holmes on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-11-19. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'From Mike & Molly to Here with Bill Gardell | You Made It Weird' from Pete Holmes on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-11-19. Transcript available.

From Mike & Molly to Here with Bill Gardell | You Made It Weird

You made it weird. You made it weird. Yes, you did. You made it weird. Yeah.
You made it weird. With Pete Holmes. You made it weird. Yes, you did. You made
it weird. Yeah.
What's happening, weirdos? This is one of my all-time favorite episodes ever. I'm
calling it. I mean it. Matt McCarthy, my dear friend who just was on the show,
introduced me to Billy Gardell, who you may know from Mike and Molly.
He was also on Bob Loves Abishola and other wonderful things. And he's
incredible. And I just wasn't prepared for the rich, delightful, hilarious
goodness that you're about to hopefully enjoy as much as I did.
So I'm glad you're here. I'm so glad Billy took the time to come in. It's a
smash. I love it. I love it so much.
So as I always say, let's get to it as quickly as possible. I'm just opening up
my own tour dates here.
At Largo on December 5th here in Los Angeles, followed by Milwaukee, Brea, San
Francisco, North Carolina, South Carolina, Miami.
What happened to my voice just then? Michigan, Madison, Wisconsin, and Denver,
Colorado.
All of those tour dates are available right now on PeteHolmes.com. Hope you can
be there.
And in the meantime, enjoy my chat with my new friend, the incredible Billy
Gardell. So glad you're here. Get into it.
It's like being at home.
You have mics in your home?
No.
You just mean as a performer?
From what we do.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I like it.
Yeah.
Because you can do this.
Oh!
Yeah.
All that. All the technique.
Whisper.
Loud.
Whisper.
Loud.
And nobody does it.
No. No. Everybody just screams like they're a DJ at a strip club.
It's the new wave. Just yell and be loud.
That's how that works.
It's true.
I have to give myself that note. By the way, we're rolling if that's okay.
That's fine.
We just jump right in.
That's okay. Great.
My favorite part of Comedians in Cars is watching them order. So we like to
catch that moment of, not as a trick.
The spontaneity.
But we'll take it out if you want. We can start here if you want.
No, we're good.
We can start here if you want.
We're all good.
Start here if you want.
Whatever.
You seem like a real piece of shit, Billy.
We got 82 minutes left. We're good. Let's just kill time.
I love the sense I get from you immediately. I consider Pittsburgh East Coast,
even though it's kind of Midwest.
It's the perfect Mason-Dixon line for the East Coast and the Midwest because we
have sarcasm, but it's not cruel.
And so I kind of like that kind of humor. That's my favorite thing.
Me too.
Yeah.
We were just there.
Yeah.
Literally, I was there two nights ago. We just got home. Well, no, yesterday.
Where were you playing?
The improv.
The improv. Okay. The water frame.
And I love it.
Sure, yeah.
We go there every year.
Yeah.
And I have these stories. I don't, it's actually kind of a, there was a humbling
thing that happened.
Last time I played Boston, which is where I'm from.
I've never done well there.
It's not, it's not easy.
Well, the other thing was I, for when I was on television, that was a thing we
used to watch
before all this happened.
Before it was on the phone, yeah.
Before it became Wayne's World.
I, no, but I, I, I, I, I would always, I would always, I would always, I would
always get on the Patriots and how much I didn't like them.
Yeah, that's not good for ticket sales in Boston.
But there's a lot of...
They hold a grudge.
You, you, you, you just need a good blast on my mailing list.
I feel like a lot of the softer, gentler, more, I don't know how to put it, but
I'm not a Patriots fan.
Great food, great city, clean city.
Great seafood.
And enjoyed all that.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But when I was there, I told all these stories about being a dad and they have
a certain, all I want to say is I don't really think of myself as a person from
Boston.
And then when I was in Boston, all of these stories that really have a lot to
do with how I parent, which has a lot to do with how I really am deep down,
were doing better than other places.
And I walked off stage and I was like, oh, I am from Boston.
I am from Boston.
Like it was weird.
Sure.
But those same stories do really well in Pittsburgh.
Well, it's the working class.
It's that Rust Belt thing that, you know, that look out for your neighbor, work
hard, you know, put the project first, not yourself.
All those little things that I learned in Pittsburgh, that's Pittsburgh, Philly,
Chicago, Cleveland, Buffalo.
Like it's...
And those are all good comedy cities.
Yeah, it's the salt of the earth people.
That's who I like.
There's something about it.
Yeah.
I don't, I can't, if I took a stab at what it was, I would just sound like a
coastal elite.
I think it's just authenticity and it's the ability to, you know, to keep each
other right-sized without being cruel, I think is what it is.
And is that a role of comedy, do you think?
I don't know if it's the role of everybody's comedy, but it's the role of mine.
Yeah.
I mean, you know, I tell young comics now, you want to be a punk rocker, you
want to be a rebel, be kind.
Oh, wow.
Not a lot of that going on.
That's so funny.
And I don't, you know, I'm prepping this for my daughter.
I really, I don't drink and I don't want to, I want to play it cool, but I do
want to say to my girl when she's older, if you want a superpower, just maybe
just don't drink until you're 25.
Like that alone.
As long as you can hold off.
Yeah.
If you could hold off, that would be amazing.
I haven't drank in about 17 years.
Oh, wow.
My wife put that in a suggestion box.
How'd she do that?
She's a smart lady.
She taught me how to impersonate a human being, but it's the best thing I ever
did.
And for me, for me, for my choice.
And I have talks with my son about that all the time.
And I think, you know, he went away to college and you have to learn the hard
way, you know, drinking fireballs and whatever and feeling sick.
And I think he finally is getting it.
And I think this generation is a little smarter than we were.
Like we were having drinks at nine to go out at 10.
They're usually home by 10, hitting the bong and watching YouTube, which is
probably a better way to go.
I think it's probably a better idea.
It's not ideal, but it is better.
I think it's better.
I saw a guy, Dr. Amen.
He has these clinics where he scans your brain.
It doesn't matter.
It's not a plug.
It's just who he is.
Right.
I actually, I did it.
One of those.
Anyway, who cares?
I guess I have a lot of energy at the top.
Whatever.
It's all burning off.
It's just the atmosphere burning off.
I'm going to calm down.
It's all right.
But he was saying he's so against drinking before 25.
This is just brain science.
Yeah.
Not sobriety, not any program.
But he was like, I don't think kids should go to college.
That's how against drinking is.
Because he's like, the damage you're doing is worse than the knowledge.
Yeah, and I told my son before he went, man, I said, the most powerful word in
your vocabulary
is no.
Yeah, that's right.
Okay.
And you have to learn to be able to say that instead of people pleasing or
putting yourself
in a position that you don't want to be in.
And I said, the first time you say no, they'll tease you.
Second time, they'll tease you a little less.
But by the third time, they go, no, when that guy says no, he means it.
And I go, and that's the most powerful thing you can have in your vocabulary,
period.
We could just end now.
I mean, it would be more viral to put out a 45-second podcast.
It would be like, what happened?
Did he walk off?
I'm proud of you for doing it.
I can't do it.
What pods?
No, I don't know what I'm doing.
You're doing great.
I was on TV for the longest time, and then TV went away, and now it's like
starting over,
which is kind of fun.
That has a Gen X thing to it, which I like.
What do you mean?
Well, it's got that, you know, all right, we were in a band.
The band was good.
The band's broken up.
Like, all right, I still can play guitar, so what do I do now?
And so I'm trying to enter into this.
I literally, you can call it eccentric or whatever, old genic, whatever.
I ignored the internet a good part of my life.
Yeah.
I'm actually proud of that.
I did emails, text, and music.
That was basically what I used to.
That was your internet.
That was it.
And so as I came off of my show and started to do stand-up again, the whole
world had shifted,
and I made myself unrecognizable, which was a great business move.
But what I did was I kind of re-embraced just the creativity of it, and that's
why I'm trying to do that.
And I'm trying to be smart about where I go and what things I become a part of,
but it's all new to me.
I'm still horrified by ugly things.
Like, I wade out into the internet like an old guy at a pool, like, oh, that's
cold.
I'm going back.
It's too much for me.
I can't imagine what it's done to our kids, which is a reason I kind of defend
them.
I root for them because they have all the free cuts we had in adolescence.
You know, who am I going to be?
Who am I going to love?
All that stuff.
And then you had social media.
You had politics.
You had the environment.
These kids are terrified.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And so I try to come at it like, you know, I'm rooting for you, and if you need
some advice, and if I have it, I'll give it to you.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And I find that's a peaceful place for me.
Well, it's interesting.
The young people are smart.
I know we're just two old guys talking about the young people, but it's true.
No, I root for them because I have one.
Like, you have one.
Yeah.
So I think it's our job to root for them.
I completely agree.
This is very Mr. Rogers-y, and I'm not just saying it because of your sweater
in Pittsburgh.
I swear, and listen, at this rate, I wear a sweater 24 hours a day anyway.
Take your shoes off.
I just freeze.
I will toss it from one hand to the other and snap twice.
Do it.
There's a trolley on the way, and there's a traffic sign.
I love Mr. Rogers.
What's that?
I said, I am a train guy at Christmas.
Are you?
I got the whole thing, yeah.
I actually have a Mr. Rogers trolley.
There, now you know.
Oh, my God.
Tell me the value.
You must be dying to tell somebody how much money you've sunk into your train
set.
You must be dying.
Just own it.
It's great.
I probably put about, I don't know, about five grand into it, which is moderate
compared to
some of these guys.
I thought it was good.
But that's over the years, and I had a dear friend who was a cameraman on Mike
and Molly
who was a model railroad train guy.
And when I was a kid, my grandfather and I, we did the thing where he got me
like a $60
Tyco train and put it on a piece of wood, and we put the grass over it, and
then we nailed
the track down so I could play with it year-round.
No, I had a drunken stepfather get mad at me one year when I was about 10
because I'd spilled
some Kool-Aid on his Florida Gator shirt.
Oh, no.
And so he broke that board and that train that my grandfather and I made.
So kind of to refix that hole.
Wait, to like get revenge?
Well, yeah.
Can we pause there and say-
Just petty, but-
If you're seeking revenge on a child, stop.
No, but I, well, he's a scumbag, but people are, there are folks out there.
But my job is to not carry his mess with me.
My job is to fix that hole.
And so the way I did that was I built a pretty big layout in my own house, and
I got to do
that with my son, and my friend taught me how to do all the little nerdy stuff
like aging
the trains and the wheels, and I just, I like, it's therapeutic.
You've already, you've said 17 things that I'm just like, my heart is just full,
and I
feel a lot of love for you right now.
Oh, I got you, man.
It's just beautiful.
I got you.
I like decent people.
Well, this is good.
Let's own it.
That's another big one that I give my son, man.
You're going to be the five people you hang out with.
So be careful what you hang around.
There's an energy transference.
You hang around miserable, liar, cheater, anger, you're next.
Yeah.
But if you hang around loyalty, kindness, someone you can be vu