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David Spade was supposed to give a talk about his new memoir Almost Interesting to a Los Angeles audience Sunday night, but proceedings took a strange, far off-topic turn into the depths of the comedian’s childhood.
At the Live Talks Los Angeles event, he was joined by fellow Saturday Night Live alum Dana Carvey, who moderated the question and answer session and probed Spade about his upbringing.
“When we were 8, 10 and 12, my mom was really an on-the-go ‘70s woman. My dad scrammed. So, you know when you’re a single mom in Arizona, we all had guns ‘cause we’re from Arizona,” said Spade. “So, she would take us on the way to work to the end of the desert, and I had a rifle. Andy had a pistol. Bryan had a shotgun.”
Spade, his mother and two brothers lived in relative poverty after his father left (only to visit occasionally about twice a year and who apparently did not pay full child support). While Spade’s mom was left alone to work and support her sons, somehow this led to an unusual and dangerous form of playtime for the kids.
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“No, I was probably 10, so it was safer?” joked Spade. “We had a lunch, a canteen and Bactine in case everything went wrong. And then, she would pick us up seven miles away at the Chevron station when she got off work.”
“We had a quarter to call her if there was any problems. But the pay phone was at the Chevron so we had to get there at least. So we’d just walk, shoot cactus, shoot birds, shoot roadrunners, kill rattlesnakes,” continued Spade.
The 51-year-old comic laughed at the absurdity and sarcastically stated, “It was a little extreme, but it worked. We did that a few times…a week. But we made it, and if you all live, it doesn’t look that bad.”
Spade and Carvey also turned the promotional book event into a controversial improv skit. One of their main targets of the night was Caitlyn Jenner.
“What did they do with his voice?” questioned Carvey, who proceeded to speak to the audience in his best Jenner impersonation: “Hi guys. Why does he talk like this? Hi guys. I know Bruce Jenner and I don’t know Caitlyn yet, but I knew Bruce Jenner.”
Celebrity impersonations from President Obama to presidential candidate Donald Trump led to a conversation about Bill Cosby. Both offered their take on the comedian now accused by dozens of women of sexual assault.
“We all worshipped Cosby, and we got bummed out. We didn’t — we didn’t know,” said Carvey.
As for Spade, with a giant grin on his face, he laughed and said, “You have to say pre-rape Cosby is great. He was great!”
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