Name: Loni Love and Bob Discuss the Beauty in Comedy and the Importance of Sharing Our Stories
Uploaded: 2021-03-23T17:00:15.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Loni Love and Bob Discuss the Beauty in Comedy and the Importance of Sharing Our Stories' from Bob Saget on Comedy Buff. Published 2021-03-23. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Loni Love and Bob Discuss the Beauty in Comedy and the Importance of Sharing Our Stories' from Bob Saget on Comedy Buff. Published 2021-03-23. Transcript available.

Loni Love and Bob Discuss the Beauty in Comedy and the Importance of Sharing Our Stories

hey everybody yeah right i always say hey everybody but it's just you hi person
hi nice
person it's bob saget here bob saget's here for you is the name of the podcast
i don't know why
i need to tell you you know that because you clicked on the thing i have a
guest today who
i i met years ago and then i did some show called nashville squares for 10
minutes that i actually
enjoyed doing and she was adorable on it and i just know that she's been a
comedian forever
and had affection for her um just through comedy osmosis and she is uh doing
quite well and quite
uh successful in the world of uh media and what she does it's lonnie love is my
guest today and she's
pretty interesting she has a deal with lifetime she's hosting specials she's
got the real uh that
talk show that is uh incredibly successful in syndication and uh they won emmys
a couple years
ago for daytime emmy awards which is pretty cool and a couple n double acp
awards which is quite
wonderful she wrote a book called i try to change so you don't have to true
life lessons it was published
in june and got great reviews so i'm going to talk to her about that because it
has a lot of the stuff
that some comedians write about and how they got to where they are and why they
chose comedy
and how they found love and i know that that's part of who lani is originally
from detroit woohoo and
she's passionate about stem which we'll discuss and started her career as an
electrical engineer
there you go and she was a stand-up comedy for many years so we're gonna be
talking to her right now you
know what to do you rate review you subscribe right it's just an easy thing to
learn and that's why i
say it anyway i'm sending you guys my best i hope you're all doing well and um
i'm excited here comes
so here you are you're in you're in wardrobe it looks like or you're in your
dressing room with clothes is that correct
yeah i'm in my home studio bob that's i can't afford to no i forgot you're not
in yeah you're not in the
studio i forgot you're still virtually zooming yeah we so we're doing
everything here and um i smash
everything together and then i'm just doing everything here so this is the lani
love studio
if you saw my setup you'd be laughing out loud it's like sometimes i'll take a
box of bottled waters and
i'll put a ice bucket on top of that and then put the computer and then hope
things work i know
i'm so happy to see you we we met we nashville squares was like this funny
little blip in our lives
that i did this show and you were so adorable on it oh thank you truly it was
like i was so happy that
you were there it was like lonnie's here and and we we we met a long time ago
right where yeah when was it
it was it um at the laugh factory you were performing i was an up-and-coming
comic and i was just in
admiration and um you were so kind because um i would be uh i would host a lot
of the shows and you would
come up and do your set and that's how we we you know got to know each other
and everything and just
a total different type of comic and which i love and i learned so much watching
your career
so it's just nice it's really nice to be able to now you know be able to work
with you and actually
get to know you because it's just it's two different sides of you i think i
think there's four now i'm
so i'm trying to grow up but it's it's very hard when you're a comedian and i'm
always putting my
foot in my mouth i don't know what to say anymore because of this world we're
in no we love it though
bob you have to continue to be you we love it i'm doing it i'm finding out that
i'll just tee it up
more before i say something wrong and then apologize after so exactly so you're
you're so wonderful to
watch and i remember all the hugs we used to hug a lot when we were allowed to
hug
yeah and and you you always had so much love in you and your name is you were
born with that name
or did you choose it i chose my name um because you know my my name is lonnie
but i wanted something
to kind of be memorable and i wanted to you know i was trying to envision
myself as this entertainer
and what is it that's something that just sounds cute so i was like lonnie what
goes with lonnie
lonnie lonnie and i was like love and it's like ll and monnie and then i you
know you start writing
all the of like the way to look and the logos and i was like way ahead of my
time so that's why i chose
love and i'm glad i did because you know it's just i like to spread love and
joy and and peace and and
levity too so and that's what i'm trying to do and um you know it's it's been a
long long road for me
but it's been a good road and i wouldn't change anything for the world you came
up the heart the
way i came up the hard way but yours is harder than mine and i know from your
book and i've been able
to not read the whole thing but read as much as i could and it's it's um i'll
just show it because i have
a picture of it so why not it's it's uh i i tried to change so you don't have
two true life lessons
it was published in june and it got great reviews and here it is so that that
would be the book and
it is it's very honest you change some names and then other stuff you go spot
on when it comes to you
oh yeah my mom that right there i tell you you know it's like whoa i didn't
change her name
so your mom what you would say she was a bitch you know there is you have to
read the book to see why
i i'm joking but why people people it's revealed um what she did and a lot of
people were really really
shocked and um you know of course whenever you're doing a memoir um you're over
it you know but when
you have to relive it and when new people see it they're like oh are you
serious right and you're
like yeah it happened but the reason why you tell the story is not to you know
keep bringing it up is
to show that you can outdo and you can outgrow and you can overcome all kind of
tragedies so it's it's
fine and that's what i believe in and so that's the purpose of telling that
story to show that look at
where i am today i mean i grew up in the projects during the crack era and i'm
not even supposed to
be here i was looking at you doing full house and look at what happens when you
put hard work yeah and
you know what kills me is that when people want to talk about our country and
say you can't make it yes
you can i didn't know anybody and you can you just have to put some hard work
and that's really what this
book really shows is what did i do to make it to this point where i'm sitting
here talking to a
to bob sag i don't look at myself i'm playing with a light i'm so i'm so
confused i'm in the shade
you know i i met you and i went through stuff i wrote a book about it and dirty
daddy and i lost two
sisters i lost my parents you know a lot of people a lot of loss you know got
divorced difficult stuff
and you you went through a lot mm-hmm i but you know this is the thing we have
to share our stories
you know um a lot of people they think that they know me they they see us on
television bob and they go
oh you guys just got there you're lucky and it's like no no you don't
understand understand people's
stories you know um i had to i worked at a a a car company for like six months
before i decided you
know i'm gonna go and do something different in my life i was building 500 cars
a day in detroit and um
i ended up getting a mentor and he told me hey you need to go to college
because you you know this
isn't the type of life for you and so i'm glad that i did i got an engineering
degree and and that's how
i really started doing comedy because i was a clown um but i was also a broke
college student and one
day i was at a bar and they had a story they said well we'll give 50 to someone
that has the best story
and i really needed that money because i needed um to buy an english book and
so i just got up there
on stage and made up a story and i didn't realize that that was my stand-up
career that was the start
of it because i was amazed and were you like 19 or 20 yeah i was like 19 years
old and uh i don't even
remember what the story was about i just know i needed that money and it's
funny how when you're
desperate and you need things what your mind and what you can do when you
really need it um but i went on
ahead and i got my engineering degree uh because i thought that it would be
important i didn't never
think i would be a serious stand-up comic and i ended up getting a job at xerox
in el segundo and i
looked at i always look at signs bob i like you know signs that you know there
before i make moves
i got a feel or see a sign and i got this job offer from xerox because it was
an el segundo and i said
red fox on sanford and son always talked about el segundo you remember that
yeah absolutely i'm going
to el segundo so that's why i took the job in el segundo because red hot you
know and um i was an
engineer for about eight years um it was good but then it was bad at the same
time because i just wasn't
happy i knew something was different um i didn't want to just get married i you
know for a black woman at
that time i was 20 23 years old um it was a culture shock for me because you
got to remember i grew up
in the projects now i'm put into this corporate environment and i talk about
that in the book how
different it was like you know monday morning meetings bob they're like okay
everybody go around
and you know people are like oh yeah we went to big bear with the family you
know we went skiing
what'd you do lonnie i went to the snoop dog concert so like it's nothing
different i would have chose
that over big bear i know but you know it was like it was just a cultural a
culture difference but
i never felt like i was out of place i just felt like this wasn't the life for
me and i try to
encourage people that when you're not happy you're not feeling happy to do
something different with
your life and so one day i went to the comedy store and um and i had been going
to a lot of the comedy
clubs i saw you at the uh laugh factory one day and i saw the whole show and
that had me thinking and
then i went to the comedy store one day and there was all these guys doing
stand up and there was only
one female and i was like wow only one and i said i started just researching
and i said you know there
has to be more females in this and that's when i started doing stand up i i you
know started dipping
my toe and went to open mics and i worked really hard i did free gigs all the
stuff that you know when
you don't have a name and you don't have an act you start building it up yeah
and um got out of it
and then how did you start on the road because you you've been touring for a
long time yes i um i had
been doing like i needed to get into the laugh factory that was the first thing
because i wanted
to get and see you guys the professional comics as because i had been doing the
chilling circuit which
for people that don't know what the chilling circuit is it's like the hole in
the walls um not really
established place you might get paid you might not get paid you gotta cut
somebody um so yeah that's
what you have to do but and so the laugh factory had a um every tuesday i don't
know if you remember
this to become a regular jamie masada the owner would have uh open mic every tuesday
but you would if you
would take the first 20 people and you would have to sit there in like sign up
at six o'clock in the
morning because we were so desperate to try to get on that if you left someone
would come and scratch your
name out so you would have to literally be there at six o'clock in the morning
and stay there so nobody
would scratch out your name i did that for three years um and it was like you
would get a spot and then jamie he would uh
uh he would actually critique you and he would say you got to come back in in
six months so you only
going on twice and he kept passing but the last year the third year that i did
it i got a standing
ovation he gives you three minutes and i remember sitting down talking to him i
said look if