Name: Are You Garbage Comedy Podcast: Donnell Rawlings!
Uploaded: 2024-10-06T23:00:35.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Are You Garbage Comedy Podcast: Donnell Rawlings!' from AreYouGarbage? Comedy Podcast on Comedy Buff. Published 2024-10-06. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Are You Garbage Comedy Podcast: Donnell Rawlings!' from AreYouGarbage? Comedy Podcast on Comedy Buff. Published 2024-10-06. Transcript available.

Are You Garbage Comedy Podcast: Donnell Rawlings!

Welcome to another exciting edition of Are You Garbage?
The show where you find out if your favorite comedians are classy individuals
or absolute trash.
Now, here are your hosts, Kevin Ryan and H. Foley.
Hey, everybody out there, and welcome back to everybody's favorite podcast.
This is Are You Garbage?
Oh, yeah.
It's that little show we sit down with your favorite comedians,
and we find out if they're good to be classy or just a big old piece of trash.
I'm your host, H. Foley, coming at you on a beautiful day.
We're out back here at Tootie's in the new edition.
She's upstairs, got a little spaghetti going.
Okay.
Using ramen noodles.
Fair enough.
What are you going to do?
All right, fair enough.
My co-host is coming at you from right next to me.
A little bit of a swing and a miss this week.
He is the CEO of Are You Garbage?
He is an international businessman and my best pal in the whole wide world.
Give it up for KJ.
Kevin James Ryan, everybody.
Oh, shit.
What's up, gang?
Thanks for tuning in.
As always, make sure you rate, view, subscribe on iTunes.
Full video available on YouTube.
Then obviously the greatest website of all time, www.patreon.com.
Slash Are You Garbage?
You go over there and get all that bonus content, gang.
Yes, sir.
And gang, we could not be more excited to have our incredibly,
and I mean incredibly special guest here with us today for the first time.
He is a legendary stand-up comedian, actor, and podcaster.
And you might have seen him in him, but not limited to,
you got Law & Order, Third Watch, of course, The Chappelle Show, Spider-Man 2,
The Wire,
Guy Court, Black Dynamite, Black Jesus, The Last OG, The Cabin with Mr. Burke
Kreischer,
our good pal, Clerks 3, Def Comedy Jam, Premium Blend, Last Call with Carson Daly,
Showtime at the Apollo, The Bad Boys of Comedy, BET's Comic View, I Am Comic,
The Kevin Nealon Show, Chelsea Lately, Guy Code, Something's Burning, Lights
Out with David Spade,
The Degenerates, The Joe Rogan Experience, and The Breakfast Club.
And his albums and specials include From Ashy to Classy, Ain't Worried About,
and Y'all Need to Chill.
And of course, you can hear him every week on his amazing podcast,
The Donald Rowling Show, over there on his YouTube page.
And he's going to be in Schoenberg, Illinois, at the Improv, October 10th
through the 12th.
But the big question, everybody's mind today, is he garbage Louis Vuitton
glasses
and a sharp suit?
This is going to be a tough one.
Give it up for the one and the only, Donnell Rowlings, everybody.
I have to start by saying, you should have just told people I'm 56 years old.
You know what I'm saying?
Because you go through your credits, you're like, God damn.
Premium Blend, Comic View.
I saw each one hitting me.
Coming to the Saints, you see them on Def Comedy Jam, yes, he's 56 years old.
Celebrate his 57th if he makes it that far.
Those were some of the oldest, but you know what?
I did some shit.
You did a lot of shit?
You said Premium Blend, I was like, Premium Blend was like,
that was like, really, really?
And then also-
I left off Little House on the Prairie.
Oh, shit.
You know what's so funny?
The youngest talking about, I posted a picture of me in the military,
and somebody said, we didn't know you was in MASH.
Right?
Because they had the oldest uniforms.
Staying in front of an old jeep.
But what I will say, with that credit, and distance to the young punk-ass comedians
out there-
I think he's talking to you, Luke.
Yeah.
No, I'm telling y'all motherfuckers.
You know what that means?
A motherfucker that's been relevant for over 33 years.
I don't know if you got some clap music or something right now, but that's a
goddamn clap.
And yes-
Fix his cord for him.
And you were really slick about-
You know people got different ways to call you old now.
Like, what's up?
What's up, unk?
What's up, legend?
OG.
You know what I mean?
OG, that's like this.
Okay, you see it in the beard.
I'm an old motherfucker.
Call you a jive turkey when you walk in?
Oh, jive turkey.
That's something my father was saying.
Hey, listen here, you jive turkey, motherfucker.
And people wonder why I say bitch in my routine so much.
It's my dad.
Ah, it's funny.
Buddy, give us the origin story.
Buddy, thank you for coming in.
The crazy thing is people would not know this.
I was in the military.
Okay.
Four years.
Despite what you want to think, I got an honorable discharge.
I don't know why.
No, people look at me like this.
I think highly of you.
No, people like this.
Yeah, they kick me out.
What was the charges?
No, they tried to kick me out, but I was like, you know what?
I'll just say sorry an hour before that.
I was in the military.
I was a military police officer.
You were an MP?
Yeah, a lot of people don't know that.
My father was so disappointed in me because he was a heroin dealer in D.C.,
right?
You're not wearing a wire, are you?
No, no.
He said, this goes against everything I believe in.
Holy shit.
Right?
A military police officer.
I was stationed in Bolonar First Base in Washington, D.C.
Okay.
The first base I went to was Kunsan, Korea.
I was in Korea.
Okay.
Used to work the front gate there.
So after four years of being in the military, when you're in the military,
whatever job you
had in the military, normally that's what you pursue when you get out.
Right.
So I was waiting to be a D.C. police officer.
No shit.
I was that close to when Pet did the psychological exam, whatever the scholastic,
if you want to
say, exam.
I think that was just A through.
Anybody could be a goddamn D.C. police cop.
So in the interim, I was head of security at a grocery store.
Okay.
And I know you want to look at me like I was a rent-a-cop.
And I was.
I mean, head of security is a tall.
Wait a minute.
Is a big name.
But let me tell you something, motherfucker.
Detective at a shop right now.
No, no, no.
I was a general.
And the reason why I was a general is because I went and bought stars for my
uniform.
No shit.
That's awesome.
Right.
And then there was a guy that used to work in one of the stores I supervised.
He worked for Hostess Cupcake Company.
And he was a comic at night.
And he would come to the club and come to the store and give out tickets.
You know, it was almost like bringer shows.
So I used to go with a lot of friends.
And I went to this comedy club called Comedy Connection to Green Bell.
Almost all black comics in D.C. started here.
Gotcha.
I went to this club and I started heckling the comedians.
I mean, I was so nice with it that people started showing up to hear me heckle.
They would go to the door.
I was like, is that asshole going to be here today?
He's funny as shit.
Is the sergeant here tonight?
Yeah, no.
General, don't disrespect my rank like that.
My bad, dude.
You and this motherfucking producer are the worst people I ran into.
He thought I was in the military.
Sir, step to your left.
Step to your right.
Three inches.
A quarter of an inch.
One eighth of an inch.
I'm going to stay where I want to stay.
So, you know, most hecklers are people that want to do stand-up, don't have the
balls to be in front of an audience.
So, they dared me to go on.
First week, I was like, fuck that.
I'd rather be.
They said, I was so cocky as a heckler.
Signing autographs.
No, no, no.
It was worse than that.
You got merch.
No, no.
Worse than that.
I tried to get a door deal.
Yo, I tried to work.
I was like, I went to the club.
Let me get a 70-30 split out this motherfucker.
No, I think it was more like 80-20.
Sure.
My bad.
But I told him.
You got agent fees.
And I looked around.
I said, look, look at this room.
I'm like, I think it's time for us to do a deal.
I said, I think I've increased your business by 50.
And they looked at me like I was fucking nuts.
Sure.
They challenged me to go on stage.
It didn't go then.
The following week I went on.
And the first time I ever touched a stage, I caught a standing ovation.
No shit.
There you go.
And I know it wasn't because I was the greatest comedian.
What it was was it was like everybody used to come.
They was rooting for me to do it.
It was the story of the guy in the crowd got up and fucking did it.
You know, it was always like, you should do it.
You should do it.
You should do it.
And I ran the light.
I didn't know.
I didn't know what the light meant.
I didn't know shit.
And it was like chaos.
How long did you run it?
I did a hot seven.
I ran like 35 seconds.
Whatever it was.
But the thing was, I didn't know the rules to comedy.
I didn't know anything.
And when they, you know, this is the worst thing when a comedian has got the
crowd going,
right?
And this is the psychological shit you play with the audience.
You know, you need to get the fuck off the stage.
Then you'd be like, they don't be like this.
Oh, man.
Oh, I got to leave.
I got to leave.
They're making me leave.
It's not me.
Is that the light?
Is that the light?
Yeah.
Oh, and they're just like, boo.
Everybody's like, boo, boo.
And my good friend, Mike Washington, and they, people knew, I don't want to say
a star was
born, but they knew something special was about to happen.
I love it.
And they were like, and Mike was like, no, no, no, y'all don't understand.
See, Donnell, this is his first time.
Donnell don't know what the light means, right?
But out of all the things I did in my life, it was, I feel like a show.
It was in that moment that I knew I wasn't going to do anything else with my
life.
There you go.
The whole idea of being a D.C. police officer was out the window.
But see, I think, not like a white man, I was like, I had a job, right?
And I was like, wait a minute, how do I support myself?
I want to quit this job.
You can't quit, because if you quit, you don't get unemployment, right?
So I did everything to get fired from this job, right?
Got fired from that job, took that six months of unemployment, and moved to New
York.
And that was it.
Oh, shit.
Yeah.
Damn.
That's my story.
And never look, I never, I think, I keep trying to trim my time, but I think I've
been
in the game 33 years, and never, you know how some people say, was there ever a
hard time
you thought about not doing it?
33 years, I never, ever gave myself any other options other than I'm going to
make this work.
No plan B.
Yeah, you can't have a plan B.
I mean, I can't have a plan B, you know, when you go raw, you got to have a
plan B.
Sure.
No.
But I didn't, I didn't, I didn't have that plan B.
You know, come on, you know what I'm talking about.
Pop goes a weasel.
You ever kiss a girl, buddy?
Go back a little bit, when you're talking about your dad.
Brothers and sisters?
And where'd you grow up?
I grew up between D.C.
And Alexandria, Virginia.
Okay.
Okay.
I lived in D.C. until I was like about 11 or 12.
Then my dad moved my family to Alexandria, and it wasn't until I got older that
I realized
the reason why he got one of my mother to leave D.C.
Because all his other girls was in D.C.
No shit.
And then as I got even older, I realized the house that he got my mother was a
motherfucking
stash house.
No shit.
And I didn't realize, I was like, something peculiar about all these black
dudes coming
and we at the kitchen just counting hundreds and hundreds of thousands of
dollars.
I think my dad is trying to teach me how to count, right?
It was a stash house.
My dad, that was relationship I had with my dad.
Did he live there with you?
When he felt like it.
Sure, okay.
When he was, when any other, the women did.
Gotcha.
He was dating.
And was it just you or did you have brothers?
It was me.
I got two younger brothers.
See, this is a question when you ask black guys to get real tricky.
How many brothers and sisters do you have?
Well, on my mother's side, right?
On my mother's side.
Yeah, yeah.
Like, you got to separate the sides.
When I hear people say, parents, you show off, motherfucker.
My mom and two other, my mother had two other sons and my dad.
Older?
Young.
Everybody's younger.
Everybody's younger than you.
Okay.
And then my dad, I mean, we still,