Name: Joe Rogan Experience #1162 - Valentine Thomas
Uploaded: 2018-08-27T21:57:21.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #1162 - Valentine Thomas' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2018-08-27. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Joe Rogan Experience #1162 - Valentine Thomas' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2018-08-27. Transcript available.

Joe Rogan Experience #1162 - Valentine Thomas

three two one boom you got to appreciate a person who shows up with not just
food but booze you
showed up you brought whiskey and fish that's very impressive that's why it's
exactly what my mommy
taught me your mother taught you to bring food and booze everywhere exactly
well you got a good mom
but so it's your name is you you would introduce yourself as valentine but your
mom calls you
valentine it's well i introduce myself to english speaking people i say i'm valentine
right but then
uh when i speak to somebody that speaks french i say valentine valentine okay
because you're from
montreal yes exactly okay um so i found out about you online and uh i've read
your story and it's a
very interesting story because you you were a lawyer right yes i used to be a
lawyer i did my law degree
in montreal and then i did my master in law to before moving to london and now
you are a spearfisher
yes full-time that's kind of crazy that's a that's an interesting transition
and i i'm fascinated by
spearfishing it seems like a lot of fun it seems very exciting and dangerous
and risky but how did
you go from being a lawyer and that's a big jump i mean you gotta you had to
pay for an education you
had to well in canada do you have to pay for that how's that work um it's kind
of cheap compared to the
u.s definitely it's about something maybe like three four thousand dollars a
year so
compared to the u.s is almost free i guess oh that's not bad three four
thousand a year but still
that's three four thousand a year for many years that you decided yeah i'll
just rather my mom
definitely didn't get a good return on investment now how do they feel about
you doing this um
she still sends me university applications time to time being like hey when i
used to do something
different or something and i'm like no i'm not having a midlife crisis i just
don't like what
i was doing so i just picked something else oh by the way i'm gonna have to
apologize for my english
seems perfect i'm from montreal so french is my first language or something
well listen you're way
better than george st pierre he was here a couple weeks ago and george is more
hard to understand
and he was fine yeah i'm not gonna speak like this and i'm gonna try to make
enough work
well listen i'm impressed with anybody who could speak more than one language i
was just in thailand
it's just amazing that they speak english so perfectly you know and then you
know their their language is
so oddly different than ours um you decided when to do this like how how deep
into your your law career
were you it was about i actually made a career switch when i moved to london in
2010 so i started working
in finance so i worked for hedge funds and i basically decided on quitting law
i didn't like
the part of law where i was stuck in one place so you know when you when you
study law let's say in
canada then you even in canada it's even worse because i was studying in quebec
which is civil law
and then i was stuck in quebec for the rest of my life and i just got like oh
that's not gonna happen
so meaning that okay so like if you pass the bar in california you would also
have to pass the bar
in new york if you wanted to work in new york exactly okay so it's a long
process that's different
then is that the same with like if you were a doctor would that be the case um
country wise i would
say state wise i couldn't know but state wise it is for law yes it is so for
you you would have got
stuck in quebec and quebec is a very interesting place because it kind of doesn't
want to be a part
of canada true we're very different in canada but my biggest problem with with
quebec is definitely
not a culture anything like that is the fact that it's an eight month long
winter it's rough i'm not
doing but the people are amazing it is it's a very european city actually in in
canada it's it's
people people are very about food about sitting outside yeah shout out to my
friends david and
fred from joe beef in montreal one of the best restaurants in the world you
ever eat there yes
whoo that's pretty good that's a jamming place um so i'm sorry so you decided
you didn't want to be
stuck yeah pretty much i kind of got like claustrophobic of being like oh this
is going
to be the next 40 years of my life how'd you get into spearfishing um very
weird story i was i got
into spearfishing when i was living in london which still doesn't make much
sense right and then i i met
i met this guy and he was like oh you have to try spearfishing you would be so
good at it
and he asked me to go do a course in egypt the free diving so i said uh all
right i'm gonna go
egypt yeah egypt it's very big for free diving egypt really the sea is like
very clear and deep and
water is beautiful and it's calm very often you can swim from shore and you
have very great depth so
it's it's really nice for that but so i did my course i went there literally
kicking screaming i didn't
want to go when i was um 14 years old almost drowned and i sat in france with
my parents
refused to swim in the ocean for about 10 years after that i like if i couldn't
see the bottom i
wasn't not even interested in going near the water and then i was like all
right i'm gonna try this
thing and i go there and i'm like okay it's not too bad no it's not that bad it's
actually really cool
so he said okay well now that you know how to free dive in three months we're
going to this very
big spearfishing trip on ascension island ascension island is literally one of
the biggest most elite
spearfishing destination in the world you go hunt for big fish it's right in
the middle of the atlantic
it's right between brazil and africa it's a military island divided between uh
the u.s and the uk
oh wow i've never heard of it before do people live on it yes they do they have
locals that
what language do they speak english really yeah it's it's a very very odd place
but it's very pretty
and it's the one of the there is jamie nailed it got it up there how what's the
google maps tell
us how long does it take to get there they finish in the middle of nowhere that's
crazy in the middle
of nowhere but wow it's between africa and brazil that's fucking nuts to get
there we had to go to
the military base in the in the uk which is like about an hour and a half away
from london
and we have to take your borough air force flight there that's the only way to
get there there's no
commercial place really it's a stopover on the way from the military base in
the uk to the falklands
so how does a civilian get a ride on a military flight they allow about five
civilians per flight
oh wow so how do you book it do it through a travel agent or something i i didn't
do the booking myself
but i think it's like through to the airline or something wow it was a weird
experience i was imagining like
when i was like being strapped down and then facing the other side it's
actually a commercial flight
oh okay so it wasn't like bigger guys like the movie predator no i was really
expecting that
i thought like a door was open in a bag and i was like run out and because i
have some friends that
have done some gigs overseas um and they have had to fly in those kind of
planes that sounds pretty
cool yeah i guess until someone shoots at you yeah that would make it a bad day
that would change
so when you were free diving before you went to this elite spearfishing
destination how long could
you hold your breath when i started yeah there's zero probably like 15 20
seconds and so you were
going there with 15 20 seconds worth of breath i was pretty bad i just did my
deepest dive on my way
there was something like 15 meters oh shit i'm canadian uh no that's okay it's
close enough to yard we
understand what that is 45 meters yeah at 45 feet yeah so it was something like
that it wasn't that
great and i actually remember my first time i went spearfishing i was in a boat
and the water was
really bad it was rocky you know when it sees like black black because it's
raining and i was in the back
of the boat i was shaking i was holding my my little gun and i was like what
the fuck am i doing here
i'm like well i'm not watching tv right now like i don't want to be here i don't
want to be here i
want to be here and then my friend was like come on stop being a freaking pussy
just jump on the boat
just jump in the water and come i'm like so i was like okay i take a deep
breath i jump in
and then the water that was so dark and so horrible and chopped just became
super clear and there was
fish everywhere and i was like wow this is actually pretty freaking cool and
you're doing this again
free diving no tanks no no tanks so i take my first drops i'm a little bit
clumsy because i have my gun
and then i'm like i don't really know how to how to dive with that and then i
took a shot on my first
fish and i stoned it and my friend was like oh you stoned it me you killed it i
killed it on the first
shot yeah and that's that's hunting terms too oh is it funny you said stoned it
and yeah and then i my
friend was like well you're not done you know you have to grab like the fish
you have to drag it all
the way to the boat and i was like all right i grab the fish i have waves in my
face and then i get it
it was kind of big fish it was a big what kind of fish was it it was a blackjack
which is not that
great to eat blackjack yeah probably something that not many people would eat
why why wouldn't they
eat it it's a it's edible it's not bad it's just not one it's not a very flaky
fish i would say it's a
little tough the meat is a little tough oh so it's uh just too dense or
something yeah kind of it's
they're very strong fish so whoa that's cool looking fish that's what it looks
like yeah
oh okay it looks exactly like that it's a good first fish to dale it was pretty
big too it was about
like like 25 pound oh wow your instagram is filled with this stuff which is um
i guess one of the ways
that i found you it's hard to remember how i find people online but your
instagram is filled with you
with all these cool fucking fish and all these uh i mean you look like you're
living a life of
adventure this is one of the reasons why i wanted to talk to you about is that
a lionfish you killed
yes that's a lionfish can you eat those they taste they're probably one of the
best tasting
fish ever that really out there they're fantastic do you ever get them on are
they commercially
available do they or is it something in florida yeah you can find them at
publics in florida
oh really which is what i was very surprised about you just have to be really
careful when you
harvest them of course because if you touch a spine it's is it poisonous yeah
very poisonous but it's
just painful it's not deadly no you can get into a bloodstream epileptic shock
oh well that's so you
can you get what can happen but normally you just have like if somebody was
somebody told me it's
like you had a hammer in your head repeatedly oh it's like a throbbing pain for
about a day and a
half whoa so like a bullet ant almost it's a pain it's not it's it's you really
try to avoid it at
all costs oh so what would you compare the meat to
hogfish i don't know what that tastes like so or maybe a very tiny chilling sea
bass maybe okay that type
of like oily flaky did you know that chili did we talk about this on the
podcast chilean sea bass is
not really a bass it's a cod it's horse shit it's also endangered but it's so
good is it endangered
how's it on every menu if it's endangered yep people are assholes um so you you
go to this one
destination you uh you shoot this blackjack were you hooked immediately yes
really it was the not
about the spivishing part actually i was still traumatized in the water i still
had panics attacks
when i was in the water and um but i fell in love the second i arrived to shore
and we barbecued the
fish on the beach and i was like okay this is this is for me that's the same
exact thing that happened
to me when i went deer hunting when we were me and m