- Hi, I'm Mo Welch.
I'm a comedian, I'm a cartoonist, and this is "The Drawing Room."
On this show, I draw my guest and my guest draws me.
Today on the show, very funny guy.
He's loud.
He's confident.
Oh, hey, Jon Gabrus.
- Loud and confident?
Someone read my Hinge bio.
- Just from what you know about me, do you think I would be fun at a party?
- No.
- Yeah.
- I think you'd be fun to like talk to for an extended period of time.
But I feel like I'd be concerned about how little you're enjoying the party that I'm at.
- God, that is like really accurate.
- I would say to you after like three minutes of catching up of like, "Oh yeah, I saw that thing on Instagram.
Oh yeah."
And then I would just go like, "You can leave if you want."
- I'm gonna start with a really hard question.
Where did you grow up?
- I grew up on Long Island in New York.
- Are you like, oh, you're from West Long Island or is it kind of like a whole?
- There's South Shore and Nassau.
The South Shore and North Shore is like Billy Joel said you either date a rich girl from the North Shore or a cool girl from the South Shore.
Like South Shore people are a little poor.
- And which one are you from?
- South Shore, baby.
Come on.
- That's right.
- Don't you worry about it.
They won't even let me in the North Shore still and I'm on television.
I grew up like 40 minutes from New York City, but like 40 years behind it.
It's an island full of people proud to have not been to Manhattan.
People on Long Island are like, "I ain't taking the train in to go see the Knicks.
I got a big-ass TV in my yard."
I'm a little nervous.
Did you start drawing me?
- I did start.
- And I know you're a bit of an artist.
- I'm a cartoonist, and I've never taken an art class.
- I took a bunch of art classes, but I don't have patience or a work ethic or ambition or a good eye.
- [Mo] When you were a kid, did you draw?
- Yeah, I drew all the time, but it was always the same thing.
It was just like me with guns.
My self-portrait always had a machine gun and nunchucks, two things that of course pair very well together.
Very easy to dual wheel.
I have drawn one little line and I don't even know what it's going to be yet.
- I'm gonna draw a cartoon.
- Oh, okay.
Cool.
I'm gonna do something similar, I think.
- Do you have siblings?
- I have two younger brothers, yeah.
- Are they artistic?
- No.
- Because obviously you're artistic.
You are in the arts.
- Yes.
I am an improviser and comedian and quote unquote... I'm a podcaster, which is about as far away from art as you can get these days.
- Yeah, but you've been podcasting, I feel like a for long time since the beginning.
- Yeah.
I started probably 12 years ago at this point.
- Who was your favorite comedian growing up or who do you look to as an idol?
Which is a hard question.
- It is a hard question, but there's a few based on my age, like Sandler, Farley, but specifically "Dana Carvey's Critic's Choice" standup special.
"Megachi, megacha, megachu.
Every time I click my finger, it's 1995 for you."
That's Dana Carvey doing Ross Perot as a baby at Toys R Us.
- Wow.
- I didn't ever really want to be a comedian until I was in my 20s in school.
And I was just like, "Oh, that makes sense in hindsight how I end up getting activated to want to do comedy."
I wanted to be a Navy SEAL, believe it or not, special forces.
- I definitely had a phase where I was like, "I could fly airplanes in the Air Force, you know?
I could do that."
- Yeah.
- I did my research and saw that you played rugby in college.
- Correct.
- And have you played since?
- Yes, I played men's league in New York City for like five years too with the... Shout out the Village Lions where my crush and hero Ilona Maher also played, but we never played at same time.
- Oh yes.
- She's amazing.
- She is amazing.
- Rugby, you know that's really hard to understand if you've watched American sports.
I like the part when they lift the guy up with his shorts.
- Yeah, me too.
And when I was in college, when I was a little smaller, I was the guy being lifted and then in my men's league I became the guy who lifts.
I am the one who lifts.
It's my favorite sport in the world to both play... It's like another thing, not that I'm trying to be a pick me and connect here, but it's another thing that I have in common with lesbians.
My love of rugby.
- It's true.
- I drive a Subaru.
- And when did you start doing improv?
- I started my freshman year of college.
I started doing improv and rugby in the same year.
- That's incredible.
- And also the summer before that I became a beach lifeguard and those three things are pretty much my personality even now.
All of them are, I consider major facets of my life.
Super important to me.
I don't know how to phrase this without sounding, "Lifeguarding is super important to me."
"Hey, are you crying, man?"
"Just a little."
- I always felt like because I played basketball growing up- - Hell yeah.
- And I continue to, and I know that it has helped me so much.
I mean, I don't do improv, but that team mentality and taking that into collaborating as an artist and as a creative person is really- - I could do a TED Talk about team sports and it's carry over to the creative arts.
When I was coming up in the theater community and I could tell when someone didn't play team sports because if you play team sports and there's someone who's better than you, you understand that they get to play and you have to wait.
- That's so true.
- And that just, people in the arts do not realize.
It's like "Why can't..." Because he's funnier or because they're funnier than you.
That's what happens.
It sucks.
And I've been bad at sports my whole life too.
Rugby I ended up being really good at because freshman year of college, no one had played it before.
So we all started at zero and I had lost weight.
I had a growth spurt at 18.
I went from 5'10" to 6'2".
It was awesome.
I went away to college.
No one knew I was a nerd.
I lost like 20 pounds.
I was tan from lifeguarding and I had grown like three and a half inches.
You have great teeth, Mo.
- Wow, thank you.
- Yeah.
- Of course you gave me a compliment, so I have to tell you what's wrong with me.
- Yeah.
Yeah.
- I got a tooth extracted from my mouth.
- What happened to the tooth that you had to get it out?
- I think it was just like, "I'm good.
I'm out actually.
I'm not living in your mouth anymore."
- It euthanized itself.
- Yeah, it did.
And my daughter was doing a lot of tooth fairy business while she's losing her teeth.
And then she noticed that I didn't have a tooth and she said, "When is the tooth fairy coming for you?"
- That's so sweet.
- I was like, "That's so sweet."
But I was also like, "Oh."
- And then you look at your wife and you're like, "Better put a few bucks in there, Sweetheart" - "Hey, pay up, if you wanna go to Sarah McLaughlin this year."
- And I know you do.
My buddy, he had to break it to his kid that Santa was... Again, delete this.
I don't know what kids are watching this.
- We'll bleep it.
We'll bleep it.
- She got so upset and she said to them, "So does that mean you've been lying to me?"
And she was like, " What about the tooth fairy?"
And he just like, "She's real."
- You can only take so much in a day.
Do you remember when you realized the truth about Mr.
Claus?
- I was a little nerdy, advanced, smart, little preternaturally smart little kid.
I would make these justifications for myself where I'd be like, "Well, there's no way that actually exists, but there's probably like a bureaucracy of Santa Claus's and there's one for like our town and they are in charge and the guys that work at Macy's do the front facing work.
And I'm like, "Elves aren't real," but of course there's probably overworked minorities in a sweatshop making my PlayStation or something like that.
- These are union guys.
- Yeah, yeah.
But then I found a Super Nintendo.
So this would be probably 1992 or something like that.
I found a Super Nintendo in our closet and we were just like... It didn't even matter that Santa wasn't real because Super Nintendo was coming soon.
So we were totally okay with it.
- What game did you play on Super Nintendo?
- I think "Final Fantasy 3."
Before you come for me nerds, that's the US number.
I know it's like six in Japan or whatever, but relax.
I am not that much of a nerd, just a little bit of one.
And we had a TV in the basement that was actually a computer monitor that was like 12 inches and we sat this close to it on a seat that my dad took out of a van that we totaled.
- Do you Mario?
- I did Mario, of course.
Yeah, you know?
I got my Italian representation.
You know, your uncle was a plumber.
Oh, that's beautiful.
- We're gonna do a quick draw right now.
I'm going to put one minute on the clock and I want you to, from memory, draw Mario.
- Oh, okay.
Cool.
Cool.
- 15 seconds.
- Oh, right.
There's the timing.
Yeah.
That way I can just blame the time.
- And time.
- If I had like another minute, it would be perfect, but I'm pretty proud of it.
- Okay, let's see it.
Love it.
Oh my God, I love this Mario.
- Thank you.
Thank you.
I really- - That's adorable.
I feel like you would've been so good on SNL because just generally, but also because you would be so good at those parties.
- I would, yes.
But I can't do characters, that's the thing.
That's my only issue, yeah.
Because I auditioned and the characters I did, they were just like, "What the is this?"
- Was it intimidating to audition?
- Yeah.
It's not my wheelhouse at all.
I hate auditioning for anything, even stuff I'm good at, which is rare that someone's like, "Hey, we're auditioning people to eat chicken wings."
It's like that's something I am actually good at.
- Do you do standup a lot, by the way?
- Yeah, I've started.
- Okay, great.
- As part of my midlife crisis.
I'd always done storytelling shows, but I've been more and more trying to see how I could do it in 10 to 15 and eventually hour long chunks.
One time I had a talk with someone about standup and they were like, "Well, why don't you just do whatever you wanna do?"
I'm like, "I can't do standup because I don't really like writing."
It's like, "Well, why don't you just do what you want to do?
And if the crowd likes it and you like it, you've succeeded."
And I was like, "Oh, okay.
Yeah."
And it really opened it up for me to just kind of do more freewheeling kind of no real plan kind of stuff.
I could work on this for hours perfecting the masterpiece.
- You ready to reveal?
- Yes.
- Okay.
Come over and see mine first.
- Let's see how self-aware I really am.
- [Mo] Yeah.
- Oh my goodness.
That is so cute.
Oh man, that's awesome.
- You got the Long Island.
- Long Island.
- Oh, so cool.
Oh, this is really making me happy.
Mo, why don't you come over into my studio here?
- All right, here we go.
- Oh, yes.
I love this.
What is that?
- That's your bloody tooth.
That's your dead molar.
- Oh my God.
- With dripping blood.
But I kept smearing everything with my hands the whole time.
- I do feel seen though.
Like she is a clown, okay?
She has dental issues and she's a baller.
- Hell yeah.
- I see it.
I feel like my aunt at a wedding, you know, there's like six professional cameras.
I'm like, "Let me get one with my phone."
- Yeah.
- This is so freaking cute.
- I love this drawing so much.
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