Hi, I'm Murph

Meyer.

I was a student in Gethard's parentheses class.

And the catchphrase about Murph became he's got the mustache of a cowboy and the haircut of a samurai.

He had like a samurai ponytail, a big mustache, and then dressed like one of the reservoir dogs.

White shirt, black tie, black pants.

Murph's outfit, which seemed crazy when I first saw it, had a real purpose behind it.

And I think the safest way is for you to think he can do it and try to get him to be able to do it.

How did that come to be?

We were just in the office one day, and our showrunner actually came into the room, and he was just, like, on Tumblr.

He's like, oh, somebody just put a picture they're throwing Letterman's set in a dumpster.

He's like, that's really sad.

And I immediately was like, well, we...

Like, we planned shows for dogs.

Like, we don't need to spend more time planning that.

you went, you actually went through some channels to get approval from Dave before you actually showed him on the show.

You can kind of hold that actual raw energy of grief in a way that you might not be if you weren't necessarily coming from the world that you come from.

I think so.

And I think so much of comedy is actually about active listening.

It's actually about understanding where your audience is at, where they come from, what the tenor of the times is, what the tenor of that room on that night is.

So I do think that a lot of comedy is inherently empathetic.

I do think that a lot of my favorite comedy and a lot of what I've aspired to do is comedy where when the whole room laughs, there's some sense of shared understanding, shared value system, catharsis.

And not all comedy is that.

It's not a show in the sense of I'm performing the whole time.

[laughs]

Now, this main guy, he walks up to me.

He, he and I have never spoken before.

We'd never interacted in any way.

He walks right up to me.

He locks eyes with me.

He does not say a word, and then he just cocks back and backhands me right across my face.

[laughs]

Okay.

Like, undeniably funny people back then for sure, and, uh, the guy who played Napoleon Dynamite was cast as the lead.

And then with about three weeks out, he was no longer part of the show, and nobody knew if he quit or if he got let go.

But they auditioned 10 people, all of them pretty unknown, and the two people who got callbacks were me and, uh, Matt Braunger, stand-up from LA.

And then I got this job, and it was on, like, a week's notice.

And, uh, all of a sudden I'm-

Yeah.

And now I would have the knowledge to know, like, that's part...

But at the same time, you're like, "If we don't

don'tWell, no, David, I mean, I understand all of those obligations and I also feel like, you know, I- if there's a counterpoint I would say even with all those obligations on the table I never short changed the people.

Beyond that- You sure you never did ... has Getherd- You've never short changed anyone ... ever seen a self-destructive or self-harming bit that he hasn't run headfirst into? [laughs] If I know one thing about the man, my friend- That's true.

Although I feel like a little bit- My hero ... you're a little bit like, "Yeah.

Well, you know, those were the glory days.

That's, you know, back when I was-" Do you always got that itch? Oh, yeah.

But I mean, I'll- If, if we can do something ridiculous, that's what...

... and, and bub

A question I got and, um, I'll read directly was, "Can you make ends meet by 100% standing your ground with a liberal and progressive worldview?"

I don't know that I have the most progressive and liberal worldview.

I am an interesting case 'cause I think by the standards of comedy in 2011 and 2012 when I started my public access show, I was very progressive.

I'm- I'm- I'm like a, a pretty cheesy white suburban dad at this point.

Um, some, you know, I just did a show for the USO and a bunch of people on, on Instagram got mad at me and were like, "This is a betrayal of who you are." And I was like, "I don't know, man.

It's a bunch of kids who, like, had no way out of their small towns, uh, and they signed up and I got asked to help them and I went." People were like, "This is fucked up, man.

You're supposed to be super progressive." So I'm getting the sense I don't have the most progressive worldview.

Mm-hmm.

What, what was the Tarzan Swing?

There's a wire with a sort of triangle-shaped bar at the bottom, and you jump off a platform, and you just swing out over water.

There's a couple very important things about the Tarzan Swing, which is, one, it was a natural spring.

The temperature was unregulated.

It was notoriously freezing cold.

So, you're dropping from 15, 20 feet, depending on how much momentum you get, and you are dropping into really slimy-looking, frigid water.

The design of the Tarzan Swing was really genius, especially in a place as rowdy as Northern New Jersey, because the line looped around in a way where everyone on line watched you jump.

[laughs]

Right.

... have, have side effects.

But they allege that there are some people who don't.

I don't know.

I hope, I'm glad for them.

But I always get side effects, whether it's nerves.

Like, if I take Wellbutrin, I go completely...

Yeah.

Right.

But like, like, I'm willing to let it roll off my back, but if you manage him t- are you texting him jokes about me at the same time? Like, no, no, no, no, no.

You gotta slice through it, and, uh, he called me the day after all that came out.

He was like, "Dude, like, as soon as I got to New York..." It was actually very touching in a way, because there were a bunch of comedians that turned to him, and they were like, "Hey man, like, Gethard's act is a little weird, and it's a little soft." But he told me, Dan Soder was someone that, that he's really close with who was like, "I don't really get, like, picking on Gethard, man." Like, and I thanked Dan for that, and I don't wanna air out Dan too much or put them in any sorta weird beef or set their fans off, um, but like, a, a few comedians in New York were like, "Hey man, like, his act is not like ours.

He tells 10-minute-long stories.

He does weird shit on public access, but any time that dude's ever gotten any success, he tries to give, like, five other New York comedians their first writing job.

So what's wrong with that?" And a lotta people stepped up on my behalf, and, and Shane actually reached out to me immediately and was like, "Dude, I was fucking, like, you, your HBO special..." There were even a couple things that made me giggle.

Right.

Right.

"... which would be a lovely career." And Mike has been a mentor to me.

And I said, "I know." And he said, "But that being said, I also know that your wife is on the show, that you have friends who met through The Chris Gethard Show who have babies now, that this is literally something that exists between friendship and job and family to you in a lot of these cases, and that ye- last year of doing The Gethard Show was probably a massive mistake momentum-wise." But what am I gonna do? I built it, and I have a sense of ethics that told me, "You take this one over the finish line," and you don't, you know, there's close to, on any given shoot week, 100 people have their jobs because of this thing.

I'm gonna take 100 people's jobs away 'cause I have a chance to go be the punk rock Mike Birbiglia? Like, it's just not who I am.

So, sometimes I look back at the past 24 years of doing comedy and go, sometimes I have maybe held onto being, like, Mr.

Punk Rock a little too much, or trying to be a little bit, "What would Ian McKaye do? What would, what would, what would Ian McKaye do right now?" And go, "I'm the only one who cares." And sometimes I have sabotaged in that way, and it has hurt me.

And in other ways, I'm actually immensely proud of it, because there's comedians out there who can make fun of my act, um, and they have.

Right.

Toast to Toasty.

[cheering] Toast to Toaster.

To Toaster.

To Toaster.

That I will, that I will cheers to.

I love that little dude.

He's 14, blah, blah, blah.

It is.