Jason Rouse's Safe Word

Jason Vest is a veteran, stand-up comedian, and the man behind Hard Ons for Heroes — a project that started as a comedy video and somehow grew into a legitimate initiative to get care packages and OnlyFans access to deployed troops. Maddie Mae and her 58-year-old former lawyer mother are involved. I'll let him explain. We walked Austin and covered a lot of ground — the 48-hour comedy content shoot in Las Vegas with a porn star, getting permanently banned from Lifetime Fitness over a TikTok, the Barton Springs sugar incident, doing stand-up at a swingers party while a woman rode a Sybian in the background, childhood trauma from a small town in Michigan, and what it actually takes to make it as a headlining comedian without doing material about dentist appointments. He's got a custom rifle coming in two weeks, upcoming dates with Dave Landau and Charlie Mack from Kill Tony, and a movie on Amazon called Sangreen Teeth and a Driftless Road. He played a burner. Charlie played a vampire. We're all gonna be okay.

Bonggun Kim. Capital B. Capital G. Double G. And yes, his mom is responsible for the spelling. Bonggun and I walked Austin fresh off his first real trip to the States, figuring out the lay of the land — comedy scene, cost of living, scooter infrastructure.

Mike Eaton is one of my absolute favorites, and this one proved exactly why. We walked around Austin on a beautiful February day — Mike's been doing stand-up for seven and a half years and has one of the sharpest, most unfiltered minds I've come across. He talks about what it actually feels like to be on stage when you have anxiety — why performance is the one place his brain shuts up — and why he thinks Austin might not be where he belongs long-term. We also spent a concerning amount of time on peanut butter. I'm not sorry. This is the walk-and-talk format at its best: no agenda, good weather, two people who should probably not be given a microphone, given one anyway.

Greg Dobroski - by Jason Rouse Safe Word

I walked through Austin with Glenn Foster, a Canadian comedy veteran with almost 30 years in the game, and we covered everything from blowing it at Evening at the Improv with Tony Curtis to making $200K in the 1980s without ever touching cocaine.

I walked through Austin with Dan Guiry, and this conversation was 20 years in the making. We started on Congress Street and wound our way down to 6th Street, hitting every major comedy venue along the way while catching up on two decades of chaos. Here's the thing about Dan—I met him 20 years ago in Calgary when he was 19 and had done maybe three open mics. Someone told him "You gotta see Rouse, he's crazy." So he shows up, I'm with four pirate-looking ladies, and I ask this kid if he wants to come fuck these bitches with me. He tells me he's a virgin, almost shits his pants, goes home and "feverishly jerked off." That's how we met in 2006. Fast forward four years, Dan's been touring across Canada five times and moves to Toronto. Then he gets into the San Francisco Comedy Competition, doesn't win, and decides to hitchhike to LA. This maniac puts his thumb out on the highway with just a guitar and a burner phone. He messages our mutual friend Brian O'Gorman asking what to do, and O'Gorman tells him to hit me u

All right, welcome back to the Roustabout Podcast. I’m Jason Rouse, and today we’re rolling through Austin at noon, taking you along for a walking podcast with Tomek Kołecki, our Polish comedian fresh on the Austin scene and diving into the Kill Tony chaos. And just a heads-up for everyone listening: you can catch me whenever I’m in Austin at the Secret Show at the Sunset Comedy Club. We’ve got the Nightmare Before Christmas show with Danny Martinello and the Danger Cats on November 25th, and I’ll be at the Comedy Store on December 9th, the Laugh Factory, and the Hollywood Improv in December as well.

Austin, Texas

Walking and Talking With Kill tony Guest Sebastian Fowler

Austin, Texas

Austin, Texas

Austin

Marina del Rey, California

Brussels, Belgium

Finnbogi Örn Einarsson by Jason Rouse Safe Word

Roustabout Boomer by Jason Rouse Safe Word

Copenhagen, Denmark

Morten Larsen by Jason Rouse Safe Word

11 Minutes on Stage on Kill Tony W/ Trish Smart

It's bar mitzvah in a bottle W/ Ari Mannis