Name: The Wild Life of a Traveling Carny
Uploaded: 2024-04-26T13:01:00.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'The Wild Life of a Traveling Carny' from Theo Von Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2024-04-26. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'The Wild Life of a Traveling Carny' from Theo Von Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2024-04-26. Transcript available.

mitts the carny 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 carny an appropriate term yeah i was born and raised a carny really
my grandparents
were carnies my parents were carnies my brother and his kids are carnies no way
oh 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
coming 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
shorts 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 did you guys call regular
people civilians what did
y'all call them marks marks yeah god and we got everybody that walked through
it was like we how
much can we gotta we gotta get it out of it yeah we gotta get it get that mark
and if you got one
you'd call it out like you know we got you got a fresh one you got a mark here
and a lot of people
would wear these pins called i love robin marks but it would be spelt out like
robin r-o-b-i-n and then
marks underneath it so it looked like somebody's name who was robin marks i was
i was robin marks
i got it and so what's the difference between a carnival and a fair because we
had the fair would
come a lot right 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 they had definitely yeah 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 what kind of like groups are at the car
at the carnival at the
uh yeah we definitely say separated okay what kind of groups are at the carnival
like are there
because there's the games right there are the joinies the what is it we call
them joinies joinies yeah
and why what is that the joints because the trailers we call them joints okay
and so they work the joints
okay so they work the games those are the joints and then there's the food yep
and the concessions
concessions and then there's and then you got the ride jocks ride jocks yep and
are those groups kind
of like they keep to their own a little bit or what yeah for the most part the
joinies and concessions
will mingle and you know i mingled with everybody just i knew everybody but you
know a lot of times
some of the ride guys would mingle with some of the rot some of the concessions
a little bit and you
know they would mingle a little bit but for the most part they were with their
own crews you know yeah
yeah i knew everybody you know they all looked out for me i was like oh it's
little mitch like i knew
it because i was running around as a little kid so everybody you know knew and
it would copy a little
bit of drugs or something sometimes oh yeah yeah it was it was wild was the
drug use out there a little
bit yeah yeah just a little bit and what were the drugs really what were some
of it i mean weed yeah
of course weed alcohol i mean especially i mean when we were at the fairs you're
open for so long
like you close at 11 at night you gotta open 11 in the morning so we're
crushing beers as fast as we can
once we close to get as drunk and as up as fast as we can to go to sleep
or just if we could yeah just have fun and were people doing drugs too like
what kind of uppers are
we talking cocaine yeah oh yeah yeah yeah plenty of cocaine yeah i'll tell you
just to step up though
they have straightened out these days they drug test and all that now but bro
if you drug test the
guy who's working the fair ride for me get you want a good ride or not i want a
real ride for a real
drug use in american that's what i want yes okay yeah it was fun we used to
throw a lot of after
parties in the gravitron in the gravitron yeah yeah take me through some of
that like and is it men and
women come to or no depend yeah i mean we had some girls out there working for
sure yeah some of the
guys were definitely better looking yeah but uh you know we had we had we had
some ratchets up
i mean if you're gonna work a ride and travel the carnival and especially if it
was 20 30 years ago
yeah yeah it was gotta be a tough chick you sure do and like there was some of
them i mean this one
girls you know they had crazy this girl had bust a nut on me tattooed on her
ankle oh yeah you know
head hoe was another one tattooed on her wow yeah these girls some of them had
the lot lizards tattooed
on their feet really oh yeah so it was women that were probably just doing
their best out there that
had been through a lot probably yeah i mean you got good ones too i'm not gonna
lie bust a nut on me is
a lot that was that was pretty rough well i felt like it was yeah i thought it
was sexual harassment every
time she walked past me i was like this is she wasn't good looking oh yeah well
she's not saying
marry me like yeah take me through like a good party night out there oh well
the party nights like
in the gravitron yeah because they had the sound system in there already oh
yeah you know and you
had the walls so you can get in there and like you know really be able to party
and get loud and
not bother too many the the you know the bosses because you know the bosses
still stayed out there
in their trailers too so you didn't always you didn't want to wake them up in
the middle of the
night and have them come out like bars everybody get in the bunkhouse everybody
you know we open in
three hours wow so yeah and what was the sleeping quarters like so i mean be
honest with you my
family didn't care where i slept at that point like i was 13 14 just sleeping
wherever wow yeah mostly
in games i'd sleep in the game at night one of the games no way really yeah wow
it was pretty wild yeah
it was i mean i've even slept i mean wherever sometimes especially when you're
going over the
road like everything's torn down you got no place to go you're waiting for your
ride like i passed out
in the generator box before just waiting and what is that just the electrical
thing yeah the giant
generators that run everything yeah and because everything's packed up and that
thing's always open
you got a nice cozy pile of wires you can crawl up on like a cat and pass out
for a little bit yeah
and it's kind of romantic almost yeah it's it's wild i mean for the most part
when we got a little older
you know um yeah were there bunks so like where did everybody sleep so they had
bunks the ride guys
had bunks okay so the ride operators had bunks yeah they would put most of
those guys up in bunks and
were they like a trailer like what type of bunks yeah it was just a giant
trailer they would buy like
they almost looked like one of the uh like an 18-wheeler trailer and they would
just turn it into
bunk rooms they would just chop it all up okay um some of them they had some
that were built
professionally as house trailers they had those ones too and they were i mean
those were it was pretty
tough because it was like two bunk beds and you know you're in there with and
it was times like a
closet with just two beds yeah and you know that's where they had the ride got
the uh the games and the
joinies were on their own unless you know what do you mean on their own like
people would sleep in
sleeping bags or people stay at motels or what yeah wherever you could like if
you made enough
money to get a motel you get a motel if you didn't you didn't sleep in a tent
or like there
was a at a point after i stopped staying staying in the games when i was
younger i ended up bringing
a couple of my friends out on the road with me and so as soon as high school
was done for the summer
we'd go out on the road until you know school started back up and so i'd bring
a couple of
friends with me out there doogie jay and uh we we'd set up like our own tent
city away from everybody
so we could party and not bother anybody yeah yeah we'd have a nice campfire we
even brought we used
to travel with uh a lizard with us too we always brought him with us we had a
nice little cage
for him and he was our little buddy and we'd set him up yeah and we'd just
drink we had out we had
all our tents and nice fire going and we'd party out there a couple men and a
lizard bro it's like the
bible on our part you know like a whatever the new bible will write will be
yeah yeah i mean there
was one crazy party we were at we were um we're all partying it was like the
beginning of the year
it was like the second or third carnival so we were all like warmed up now we're
like all right let's
have this is one because you'd have parties where everybody would party
together like the ride guys
everybody food joints even some of the owners you know what i mean some of the
parties once in a while
and so this was like a beginning of the year like let's get you know let's have
a welcome home party
everybody's in and so we're partying all throughout the carnival like we're on
the sea dragon and you
can unlock the sea dragon and get it swinging manually you just get a couple of
kids on each side
swinging it one way and you just really you can get it going and so we were
partying yeah we were
partying up on the sea dragon late one night and uh there was a new guy that i
guess the ride super
didn't like he had just started oh yeah and uh he passed out drunk in his car
and he was driving like
this brand new white escort or something like that you know nice and white
pretty nice yeah
but it was small car cheap car but it was it was new and uh the ride super
really didn't like him
and he was passed out drunk in his car right on the side of this on the sea
dragon and we're up in
the top seat just sitting up there having a couple drinks putting them back and
what they do they set
them on fire all of us well not quite all of a sudden the ride super goes over
to his house trailer
and he opens up his he gets a five gallon bucket yeah and he opens up his shitter
drain his tank and he
fills up the five gallon bucket with all the water and he goes over and he dumps
it on the guy's car
and nothing the guy doesn't wake up nothing so he keeps doing it over and over
again until he dumped
his his whole tank onto this dude's car and he just slept through the night
like that all day and we're
laughing hysterically about this but it's outside of the car right it's outside
of the car it's on his
car but on the outside so it's just covered now and yeah just everything and uh
but that night i didn't
see him but the next spot i remember i'm walking by and he's outside and it's
he's trying to scrub it
all off and it's just got this brown tint and you could see where it like swirled
all around like he
could not get that thing clean for the life of him he didn't last another week
he didn't no yeah what so
yeah take me on some of the other periphery characters that were part of the
carnival yeah
the dunk tank clown guy was he was i mean you have to have a really special guy
to be updated really
like be able to like go at people all day get them pissed off enough to like
spend their life savings
trying to knock you into a pool like what kind of stuff is he saying he's just
saying like i slept with
your wife last night like you know your brother's an n-word or whatever yeah
you know and he would
have to get wise sometimes he would have to have cops protect him when he
closed like to walk him to
his you know get him off the lot because people wanted to kick his ass i mean i've
seen people
you know beat him like not beat him up but go after him if they're what if he
didn't have protection
you know because not all the time you know at the fairs you had cops around but
he wouldn't always
have cops at the carnivals and stuff and he would really get people going like
they're not even trying
to dunk him they're trying to throw the ball through the fence like they're
smashing that fence with
the ball really oh yeah so that guy had to have some real cojones or just be
not even mentally that
great or whatever yeah wow it was wild he would uh yeah they would he would get
into some serious
yeah a lot of beefs you don't see him anymore what were they yeah so they were
just like yeah yeah i was
with your sister's mother last night oh i was with your daughter last night you
know what i mean with
your daughter and the guy's saying his daughter's 11. yeah they don't care that's
what i'm saying
these guys were getting mad the dude's just yelling like i slept with your 11
year old daughter last
night what are you gonna do about it jesus yeah the dude's just like hey i'm a
pedophologist he
thinks he's protected by 40 gallons this dude's just like walking by with his
kid doesn't even know
all of a sudden the guy's like what what did you say what's some of the wildest
like was there some
pretty good like sex activity going on out there because everybody always
thinks i think there's
this vibe you think about like carnies like the rides shut down and then the
party starts yeah yeah
like i think that's what the the energy you feel like happens you know yeah
like i said you get
those car full of girls show up oh yeah one of those girls that showed up the
head hoe tattoo i was
telling you about that was one of the girls that she wasn't even an employee
she was one of the
girls that showed up looking to party it said bust a nut on me no and this one
said head hoe
head hoe on it yeah wow yeah just the advertising that they have that's wild to
me usually you don't
know like a girl's tattoo will be like a secret you know yeah like any like you
know like love is
forever or whatever you're like well i'm gonna have to decipher this you know
but if somebody's just
like bust a nut on me or whatever it's like well it's just like not as much
guesswork i guess but
yeah and it would be crazy i mean they the girls like to party just as much as
the guys so you know
there would be a lot of crazy stuff going down you know um looking to party
looking to get down and
yeah i've seen some stuff i mean there's you know a friend yeah i've seen some
stuff a friend of mine like
this chick really wanted to get down with a couple friends of mine so he breaks
into somebody's house
trailer that we had never i don't know whose trailer it was he climbs through
the window goldie
locking huh next thing i know he's kicking the door open and the door comes
flying open we're all
standing outside and we're like well the hell what's going on he's like we got
a spot now let's go
and he brings her in there and right on somebody's bed i don't know whose bed
because they had
the couch pulled out so the door is wide open he's going to town right there
wow yeah just making love
huh no i don't want to call it love but there's something going on yeah making
almost love my god
yeah any love stories over the years you see where carnivies met each other and
yeah i met i'm i mean
back in the day that's the only place i really met i mean my friend april who i
was been with i was
with for you know almost 10 years or something we were 16 17 when we hooked up
and met at a carnival
yeah she worked for somebody and i was working out there and she worked for a
friend of mine another
family let me dart that balloon huh she was actually pregnant when we hooked up
already too
really yeah wow that seems illegal that's crazy in the eyes of god but i don't
know and we're still
friends that i still i mean raekwon her son is works for me now yeah yeah
really yeah or something
works for me like really yeah so wow that's love man yeah well that's still
best friends you know
really yeah we're not together obviously but yeah we're best friends still and
damn
yeah it's it's been quite a ride man it's definitely been interesting and i
want to change it for the
world it's taught me a lot and uh it got me yeah it got me it i mean it's where
it's where i am today
it got me here to meet you yeah man it got me here to meet you and i'm i'm the
job i have now like
selling food out there is uh they treat me like a rock star out there and i'm
not gonna lie like they
they really do and i have to give a shout out to all those all those all my nieces
and nephews out
there in the world that really like support me and take care of me and out
there like they really
love uncle mitch's munchies home of the turtle dick sandwich really yeah and it's
real meat yeah
turtle dick sandwich there's only two places in the country that could sell it
oh wow yeah it's in
day it's got to be endangered or whatever yeah so we do it we do it you know
now we go get we get the
turtle we snip it and send it back off in the wild you serious no oh

The Wild Life of a Traveling Carny

mitts the carny 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 carny an appropriate term yeah i was born and raised a carny really
my grandparents
were carnies my parents were carnies my brother and his kids are carnies no way
oh 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
coming 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
shorts 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 did you guys call regular
people civilians what did
y'all call them marks marks yeah god and we got everybody that walked through
it was like we how
much can we gotta we gotta get it out of it yeah we gotta get it get that mark
and if you got one
you'd call it out like you know we got you got a fresh one you got a mark here
and a lot of people
would wear these pins called i love robin marks but it would be spelt out like
robin r-o-b-i-n and then
marks underneath it so it looked like somebody's name who was robin marks i was
i was robin marks
i got it and so what's the difference between a carnival and a fair because we
had the fair would
come a lot right 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 they had definitely yeah 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 what kind of like groups are at the car
at the carnival at the
uh yeah we definitely say separated okay what kind of groups are at the carnival
like are there
because there's the games right there are the joinies the what is it we call
them joinies joinies yeah
and why what is that the joints because the trailers we call them joints okay
and so they work the joints
okay so they work the games those are the joints and then there's the food yep
and the concessions
concessions and then there's and then you got the ride jocks ride jocks yep and
are those groups kind
of like they keep to their own a little bit or what yeah for the most part the
joinies and concessions
will mingle and you know i mingled with everybody just i knew everybody but you
know a lot of times
some of the ride guys would mingle with some of the rot some of the concessions
a little bit and you
know they would mingle a little bit but for the most part they were with their
own crews you know yeah
yeah i knew everybody you know they all looked out for me i was like oh it's
little mitch like i knew
it because i was running around as a little kid so everybody you know knew and
it would copy a little
bit of drugs or something sometimes oh yeah yeah it was it was wild was the
drug use out there a little
bit yeah yeah just a little bit and what were the drugs really what were some
of it i mean weed yeah
of course weed alcohol i mean especially i mean when we were at the fairs you're
open for so long
like you close at 11 at night you gotta open 11 in the morning so we're
crushing beers as fast as we can
once we close to get as drunk and as up as fast as we can to go to sleep
or just if we could yeah just have fun and were people doing drugs too like
what kind of uppers are
we talking cocaine yeah oh yeah yeah yeah plenty of cocaine yeah i'll tell you
just to step up though
they have straightened out these days they drug test and all that now but bro
if you drug test the
guy who's working the fair ride for me get you want a good ride or not i want a
real ride for a real
drug use in american that's what i want yes okay yeah it was fun we used to
throw a lot of after
parties in the gravitron in the gravitron yeah yeah take me through some of
that like and is it men and
women come to or no depend yeah i mean we had some girls out there working for
sure yeah some of the
guys were definitely better looking yeah but uh you know we had we had we had
some ratchets up
i mean if you're gonna work a ride and travel the carnival and especially if it
was 20 30 years ago
yeah yeah it was gotta be a tough chick you sure do and like there was some of
them i mean this one
girls you know they had crazy this girl had bust a nut on me tattooed on her
ankle oh yeah you know
head hoe was another one tattooed on her wow yeah these girls some of them had
the lot lizards tattooed
on their feet really oh yeah so it was women that were probably just doing
their best out there that
had been through a lot probably yeah i mean you got good ones too i'm not gonna
lie bust a nut on me is
a lot that was that was pretty rough well i felt like it was yeah i thought it
was sexual harassment every
time she walked past me i was like this is she wasn't good looking oh yeah well
she's not saying
marry me like yeah take me through like a good party night out there oh well
the party nights like
in the gravitron yeah because they had the sound system in there already oh
yeah you know and you
had the walls so you can get in there and like you know really be able to party
and get loud and
not bother too many the the you know the bosses because you know the bosses
still stayed out there
in their trailers too so you didn't always you didn't want to wake them up in
the middle of the
night and have them come out like bars everybody get in the bunkhouse everybody
you know we open in
three hours wow so yeah and what was the sleeping quarters like so i mean be
honest with you my
family didn't care where i slept at that point like i was 13 14 just sleeping
wherever wow yeah mostly
in games i'd sleep in the game at night one of the games no way really yeah wow
it was pretty wild yeah
it was i mean i've even slept i mean wherever sometimes especially when you're
going over the
road like everything's torn down you got no place to go you're waiting for your
ride like i passed out
in the generator box before just waiting and what is that just the electrical
thing yeah the giant
generators that run everything yeah and because everything's packed up and that
thing's always open
you got a nice cozy pile of wires you can crawl up on like a cat and pass out
for a little bit yeah
and it's kind of romantic almost yeah it's it's wild i mean for the most part
when we got a little older
you know um yeah were there bunks so like where did everybody sleep so they had
bunks the ride guys
had bunks okay so the ride operators had bunks yeah they would put most of
those guys up in bunks and
were they like a trailer like what type of bunks yeah it was just a giant
trailer they would buy like
they almost looked like one of the uh like an 18-wheeler trailer and they would
just turn it into
bunk rooms they would just chop it all up okay um some of them they had some
that were built
professionally as house trailers they had those ones too and they were i mean
those were it was pretty
tough because it was like two bunk beds and you know you're in there with and
it was times like a
closet with just two beds yeah and you know that's where they had the ride got
the uh the games and the
joinies were on their own unless you know what do you mean on their own like
people would sleep in
sleeping bags or people stay at motels or what yeah wherever you could like if
you made enough
money to get a motel you get a motel if you didn't you didn't sleep in a tent
or like there
was a at a point after i stopped staying staying in the games when i was
younger i ended up bringing
a couple of my friends out on the road with me and so as soon as high school
was done for the summer
we'd go out on the road until you know school started back up and so i'd bring
a couple of
friends with me out there doogie jay and uh we we'd set up like our own tent
city away from everybody
so we could party and not bother anybody yeah yeah we'd have a nice campfire we
even brought we used
to travel with uh a lizard with us too we always brought him with us we had a
nice little cage
for him and he was our little buddy and we'd set him up yeah and we'd just
drink we had out we had
all our tents and nice fire going and we'd party out there a couple men and a
lizard bro it's like the
bible on our part you know like a whatever the new bible will write will be
yeah yeah i mean there
was one crazy party we were at we were um we're all partying it was like the
beginning of the year
it was like the second or third carnival so we were all like warmed up now we're
like all right let's
have this is one because you'd have parties where everybody would party
together like the ride guys
everybody food joints even some of the owners you know what i mean some of the
parties once in a while
and so this was like a beginning of the year like let's get you know let's have
a welcome home party
everybody's in and so we're partying all throughout the carnival like we're on
the sea dragon and you
can unlock the sea dragon and get it swinging manually you just get a couple of
kids on each side
swinging it one way and you just really you can get it going and so we were
partying yeah we were
partying up on the sea dragon late one night and uh there was a new guy that i
guess the ride super
didn't like he had just started oh yeah and uh he passed out drunk in his car
and he was driving like
this brand new white escort or something like that you know nice and white
pretty nice yeah
but it was small car cheap car but it was it was new and uh the ride super
really didn't like 