Name: A Carny | This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von #496
Uploaded: 2024-04-18T15:00:34.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'A Carny | This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von #496' from Theo Von on Comedy Buff. Published 2024-04-18. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'A Carny | This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von #496' from Theo Von on Comedy Buff. Published 2024-04-18. Transcript available.

A Carny | This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von #496

today's guest is a carney out of the new england area and his family has been
involved in the
carnival business for over 100 years i'm excited to learn all about the behind
the scenes of the
food the games the prizes the um the debauchery everything that goes in
to the carney universe today's guest is carney mitch candiano
and i will find a song
mitch the carney baby good to see you thank you man thank you for having me so
thanks for coming on
dude so we just want to learn about carnies and carnival employees fairs
everything like it
um what is carney an appropriate term yeah i was born and raised a carney
really my grandparents
were carnies my parents were carnies my brother and his kids are carnies no way
oh yeah so it runs
deep man 1918 he started and can i say before we really get going yeah i gotta
thank you for
having a poor pedestrian like me on because you know i don't wear a watch and i
don't use a washcloth so
tom would never have me on i appreciate it yeah oh yeah does he yeah he doesn't
like the pores i don't
know why yeah i don't know dude i think we're great people yeah look i don't
yeah i'm not yeah i don't
have a washcloth i'd i probably should have one that's what i use yeah yeah so
he hates washcloths
oh he hates them he hates them yeah yeah yeah i think well i uh yeah i'll use a
washcloth like to
get like in here though yeah right i mean how do you get it out get in there
really i try to use my
fingernail and getting it out and then just like putting it like that into the
drain or whatever but
i don't think that's enough sometimes especially as you get older yeah you know
um but yeah wet willie
yeah you got it doing a wet willie on somebody yeah yeah i remember doing oh i'm
gonna sneak one
up on you later oh are you really dude just wear a condom man oh i will okay
that's all i'm asking
for you know i mean it's a leash you could do dude the irish hello sure man
yeah it's our first time
hanging too so i'll definitely keep it covered yeah um but dude thanks yeah so
i guess i'm just curious
like so what is a carny what is the term so a carny carnival you know carnival
worker okay i guess is
where it came from and uh so that's what we are and i know there's all
different versions i know people
sometimes think of like uh somebody that just got out of prison covered in
tattoos smelling like cabbage
you know missing a couple fingers and they think that's a carny that's working
the ride or something
like that oh yeah that iris deodorant yeah you know and uh like we don't we
carnies don't call them
carnies we call them like 40 milers or green help or something like that
because like a 40 miler he's
just trying to get onto the road and get 40 miles down the street to the next
lot so you get out of
whatever situation he was in when he joined the carnival okay so there's
different types you have
actual carnies that are like they've been in there for a while yeah like their
families are out there
they have kids they raise their kids out there and then you got 40 milers yeah
we call them 40 milers
and those are guys that are just kind of like maybe just got out of doing some
time and they're just
trying to try to get a job and you know get out of town and get out of town yep
just trying to get
there for just something yeah and so a lot of times the carnival will hire
folks like that just because
they need like a lot of it's tough to find help out there you know people that
want to travel and
just be out there every day and you know living at the carnival yeah and you're
in a different town
every week and you know you don't get much time off so it's it's wild yeah it's
interesting well it's
kind of interesting it's kind of similar to uh comedians because you go to a
town or a city for a few
days and then you hit the road and you go to somewhere else yeah yeah um i'd
say like that's like the
calling like a open mic or like a comic is kind of like calling one of those
ride guys a carny is
kind of like the same thing you know okay i see what you're saying yeah yeah
yeah that makes good
sense man um and your family's been doing he said hundreds of years well since
1918 my grandfather
started selling cotton candy in 1918. wow yeah and what brought him into that i'm
really not sure he came
over from italy when he was born in 1900 and so he was about four or five years
old came over on the
boat to ellis island and all that and uh i don't know he was 18 years old and
started selling cotton
candy at like street fairs and little things like that and um yeah it's just
kind of how we started
and got into it i actually still have some cotton candy machines that he built
handmade like wooden
frame and like you know belt driven like old old school they obviously don't
work but because
then now they're like all sturdy metal like you know industrial looking like oh
yeah whirlpool makes
them yeah yeah something like that but um yeah we have yeah you'll have a sock
in it or whatever
you're like this is like one of these you're looking at yeah so we have a
couple like that
as a older those are kind of like the those kind of seem like residential ones
that you can kind
of like buy for your house so your grandfather came over and he started selling
cotton so he started
selling cotton candy yeah he's selling cotton candy and then like what he just
gets a job and he stays
like he just kept doing it and then you know he had kids and then my father got
into it and my father
mother started their own whole carnival business where they started buying
rides and games and food and
everything and uh you know we had a whole carnival called candiano's amusements
you know way back
before i was born and then when i was born they kind of split up and my dad
started working for
bigger carnivals like the real big ones that did big the big county fairs and
state fairs and stuff
like that yeah so he started working for a company like that and then went for
ended up working for
uh another the biggest one in new england called fiesta shows and so he worked
for them up until he
died and so he was kind of like you know a big shot out there he ran like food
and games and stuff for
him out there and was a lot man so what and so did you what was one of your
first jobs in the
carnival yeah yep and so what's the difference between a carnival and a fair
because we had
the fair would come a lot yeah so the fair is the same thing yeah it's
basically except the fair is
they have like the animals and everything like that like you have the whole
agricultural part of it you
know and sometimes they'll have like demolition derbies and oh yeah and all
that and like the races
and um all the agricultural like the pigs definitely yeah all that stuff so
that's what kind of
distinguishes it from a fair to a carnival and they kind of been long running
like up up where we are
we have the tops field fair it's been around for like 150 years or something
like that yeah how
does that 4h element fit in because that's also a whole different element than
the rides and the
games yeah that's kind of you would always like i remember we'd always have to
walk over to like the
livestock shed or whatever it's like a bomb shelter or whatever that had a
bunch of pigs in it and
stuff and you'd have to go over there and uh pig races you ever see those yeah
and they have like the
kids art like you'd won like third place or whatever and it was pretty bad a
lot of like
jesus christ like they hid it over here behind the goats you know it wasn't
that great of art but
you'd be able to go over there and like um they had like crocheting and a lot
of local crafts but uh
did you guys ever have beef was there like a lot of like beef between carnies
and the livestock was in
the carnivals between the carnival wow like so during the spring when we're
doing just carnivals
we would split up into like three different sections so you could do three
cities at the
same time but then when we got to the fairs we would all get together and then
the fights would
break out oh yeah like crazy fights so what was a lot of the beef between the
people the workers
oh i'm a first unit no you know you're just a lonely from guy from the third
unit like you know you
shouldn't be over here like with us or partying with us or hanging you know
they kind of look down
on you like it's just like anything else you know the first unit got all the
big rides and the nice
stuff and then the second unit was kind of stepped down oh yeah and then the
third unit was like they
got all the all the bad rides all the bad stuff so whenever they all teamed up
it was all these beefs
going on like you know oh territorial stuff territorial stuff yeah yeah huh so
like what was
your first job in in it i think my first i think i was probably probably
selling cotton candy probably
in the in the floss we call it a floss stand and it was the one that did cotton
candy snow cones popcorn
and candy apples oh yeah yeah and the caramel apples with sprinkles i love that
man i still make
caramel apples do you oh that's so good that's so good man and people don't
think about them that much
no if you ask somebody what are you thinking about they never say caramel
apples that's true it just
you know it's like something you don't hear as much as you wish you should
because they're so good when
you get them they're so good yeah they really are and was that like what goes
into making cotton candy
like what is it sugar and and coloring oh okay that's it sugar and coloring
yeah and it's honestly
not a lot of sugar but what how does it get the um cotton or whatever it heats
up huh so it heats
the sugar up so it like gets real stringy and like fluffs out like that it goes
in the machine so
that's that head there in the middle spins really fast and it heats up some
people get crazy with the
cotton candy have you seen the people that make the animals and stuff with the
cotton candy
candy uh-uh oh no you should check that out really oh they get crazy they make
all kinds of animals
and stuff with the cotton candy to give to the kids i don't know how they do it
i got a girl that works
for me one of mitch's yeah yeah and she wants to start figuring out how to do
that really yeah and
that's what you call them mitch's i don't call them that they call themselves
that oh yeah so don't
cancel me guys no it could be a union yeah you know a lot of different yeah
there's a lot of different
unions i'll study yeah so there's in the pipe fitters union and he's always
yelling about something
but um yeah these girls they call themselves mitch's bitches huh yeah they all
made shirts that say
mitch's bitches on it it's pretty wild and those are your friends yeah friends
yeah i pretty much
hire friends or they become friends real fast once they start working for me
yeah like sill love you
babe and so what about this bring that back up sorry i'm just trying to learn
about this so cotton candy it is
made by heating and liquefying sugar and spinning it centrifugally through
minute holes minute holes
causing it to rapidly cool and re-solidify into fine strands it is often sold
at fair circuses
carnivals wow so you just put some sugar in a hot in the hot yeah and that
thing that spins in the
middle you pour sugar in there and you call it you call it the sugar ahead of
time okay and you start
spinning and next thing you know it makes cotton candy yes it's coming out
crazy and you got your stick
and you're whipping it around how fast how long does it take it doesn't take
long to fill up a bag
wow but i don't know if this guy's gonna get crazy maybe he does i don't know i've
seen some
there are some people that really make some intricate stuff with the cotton
candy yeah there's a machine
that's just kind of like the one i have just like that so that was like my
first gig you know like
there's a picture of me i was born in the summer so like as soon as i was born
my mom had me right
out on the road with her uh-huh so there's a picture of me sitting by the con
