Deece Casillas: Laugh Out Loud with America’s Best Comic
Deece is an internationally touring, Latino comedian, who has performed across America, Mexico, Costa Rica, Belize, and the Bahamas. He has been featured on LMAO TV, Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Roku Comedy Channel, has recorded two albums: The Northwest Comedy Mixtape Vol. 1 + 2, recently just filmed his special: “Not Your Cup of Tea”, and was voted Northwest’s Best Comic the last four years in a row.
He was a regular writer for the comedy website Points In Case, and two-time winner of the 50 Hour Film Slam Sketch Festival (Spokane, WA). A 15-year comedy veteran originally from South Central L.A. and now living in San Antonio TX, Deece combines big city energy with small town charm, creating a biting and sarcastic comedic style, headlining theaters, comedy clubs, and more, across the country and internationally.
He is author of the book, Insomniac, and is releasing his debut comic books series soon.
Interview Transcript Deece Casillas
Richard Lowe 00:02
Good evening. This is Richard Lowe, the writing King and this is author talk. I’m here with these Casius. Hopefully I pronounced that right. And he is an internationally touring standup comedian, writer and host of the weekly talk show the social hour. He just filmed his comedy special, not your cup of tea. I’m a ghostwriter, a LinkedIn branding expert and a writing coach. So I do all those things. And well, let’s just get right into the interview. Nice. How are you today?
Deece Casillas 00:33
I’m doing great, man. Thanks. Thanks for having me. Here. This is this is great. So
Richard Lowe 00:37
Absolutely. My pleasure. Absolutely. My pleasure. I see you have it looks like comic books in the background there.
Deece Casillas 00:43
Yeah. Yeah, this is in this isn’t even the whole. That’s only about a third of the room. It’s a pretty big collection.
Richard Lowe 00:53
Looks like me and my model kit collection.
Deece Casillas 00:54
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I’ve got stuff that dates all the way back to the 40s some golden age, Silver Age stuff, got a pretty big collection.
Richard Lowe 01:04
Yep. I used to have a collection of comic books that were more modern ones brought in with a comic book store to sell some of them and they said they would give me a nickel leads. And I got rid of my comic book collection. Yeah, there’s really,
Deece Casillas 01:16
you know, modern stuff. There’s hardly any value in it besides a couple you know, he key books other than that there, you know, that won’t give you anything that the older stuffs The only thing is really worth anything, you know, because they used to just throw him away or using his, you know, insulation for houses and stuff. All kinds of crazy crap.
Richard Lowe 01:37
I know. I know. I had a couple of high value ones I think a couple early X Men and Adam strange and Dr. Strange and stuff like that. Yeah, but they they bought all those for some money. I mean, maybe 500 bucks, but the rest of them are just wastepaper.
Deece Casillas 01:51
Yeah, most common bookstores are they’re just they’ll fleece Jana, man, you gotta go sell them on eBay or something like that common bookstores will give you you know, maybe, and again, if they got overhead, you know, it’s a business but they’ll they’ll give you a you know, pennies on the dollar for what? What they’ll sell them for?
Richard Lowe 02:09
Yep, yep. And of course, they get overloaded with all the modern stuff, I’m sure.
Deece Casillas 02:14
Yeah, they’ve got a ton of the crap that just you know, they’ve got buckets of it. Pete everyone’s coming in with a gun to sell it. So
Richard Lowe 02:21
yes, and this might be slightly controversial, but most of the modern stuff is crap. My opinion.
Deece Casillas 02:26
Bank gear pricing. There’s a lot of it. That is yeah, there’s a couple of things out there. I read still every month that I did still good has some merit, but most of its especially the mainstream stuff is pretty, you know, better days are behind them.
Richard Lowe 02:41
Yeah, I was I used to get into well, I was in a Marvel heavy for a long time. And then I got into stuff like Omaha, the cat dancer and Zippy the Pinhead. I’m sure you recognize those names. Yeah.
Deece Casillas 02:51
Yeah, I mean, you know, the big problem with the industry is the big two. Marvel and DC are owned by Disney and Warner Brothers respectively now, so when you’re a part of a conglomerate corporation that just has to toe the line for everything and make everything just palatable for everyone. You end up just shooting down the middle and you get it’s nothing you know, it’s neither fish nor fowl, you know, it just becomes the nothing. You can’t can get creative or edgy or actually have a definitive direction that pushes boundaries because you have to just make sure to rock the boat.
Richard Lowe 03:31
i I wish sometimes the day the days when I was younger were there before PSR the gaming company did DND but well bought d&d, back when it was more amateur It was much much much much better. Yeah now it’s now it’s just a big product thing with comic books same with a lot of Pixar back before was bought by Disney was a really good yeah. I guess that’s a natural now you know, as they make money Infocomm if you remember them, they became Activision.
Deece Casillas 04:01
No, I don’t remember that. But yeah, I know. I know the Activision so yeah, it’s it’s everyone you know, you either die here or Lin live long enough to see yourself become the villain, right? Isn’t that Jesus said that I’m not sure it’s true. Well, we
Richard Lowe 04:15
kind of got off on a tangent there. But once you tell me a little bit about yourself, so you’re a comedian.
Deece Casillas 04:20
Yeah, yeah. So I am touring standup comedian. I’ve been doing comedy for a long time. I just feel my first special not your cup of tea available now. At least comedy.com Just my first name and comedy.com We’re doing a special right now it’s available for donation only so you can name your price $1 all the way up to a million and you’ll get the you’ll get the link for the download but
Richard Lowe 04:44
obviously I’m gonna put a million dollars on that. Yeah.
Deece Casillas 04:48
It was I’ve had people throw in $1 You still get it you throw in 20 bucks you still get it? Anything helps in the the old copper there. So and yeah, I’ve right are also working on my debut comic book actually. That’s kind of the next project that’s coming down the chute pretty quick here. And yeah, I’ve been a writer for done writing for different websites. I wrote for some, some punch up for some script stuff when I lived in LA, where I’m from, and all kinds of stuff.
Richard Lowe 05:19
You sound kind of like me and we I was born in the tech field. Yeah, I started in tech for 33 years and then decided to become a writer full time, and that’s what I do.
Deece Casillas 05:30
You can end up you know, it’s like, you don’t have one, you don’t have one full time job you have 18 part time jobs, you know, it’s a it becomes this a every little trickle into the bucket, you know?
Richard Lowe 05:42
Well, now I’m diversifying a bit and I’m starting a line of PDFs that are courses on how to write. Okay, I just started that. And then I’m also selling on eBay. I’m going to be selling. What’s it called? Drop Shipping on eBay, and I’m selling a lot of junk that I have. Well, it’s not junk. It’s good stuff. But yeah. Probably my Omaha the cat dance or comic books. Yeah.
Deece Casillas 06:07
There’s a market for it out there somewhere.
Richard Lowe 06:09
Well, I have original hardcovers that are signed. They should be worth a little bit. Yeah, yeah, definitely. And they’re just collecting dust.
Deece Casillas 06:18
Eventually, you just got to let them go. That’s it. I keep thinking I hope I have a buddy who loves I don’t have any kids up everybody that loves comic books, because they’re gonna get a hell of a collection when I die.
Richard Lowe 06:28
Well, I just looked around and thought, you know, I’ve got about 50 grand worth of stuff here. That’s just collecting dust. It’s time to sell it on eBay. Yeah. Some of it
Deece Casillas 06:37
should have hit it during COVID. Man, everyone had that extra money they’re burning. I’ll tell you what the the comic book market was crazy that people were I mean, all the collectible market people were just spending all that extra money on trying to, you know, ribeye their childhood and
Richard Lowe 06:53
yeah, I understand a lot of I got my business went up during COVID to people wanted to read books. That’s mostly what I do is write books. Okay. 48 for other people so far. Wow. In 10 years,
Deece Casillas 07:05
any Are you allowed to talk about any of them or any ones you’ve like,
Richard Lowe 07:11
wrote about an Afghani politician. That was quite interesting. He had a different life. Lot of Metaverse and AR and AI type books. children’s book on artificial intelligence and a children’s book on on cyberbullying. And young adult book that was young adult books, my favorite. It’s my favorite story. The lady was under seven years old, and she had a dream of writing a book all her life of her dreams. Yeah. So she wrote and wrote all her dreams. She hand wrote all her dreams, I had to come, I had to translate all that. Transcribe. And she wanted me to write her a book based on those dreams. So we did took 16 months, got published, she was so happy. And she passed away. Three months later, but she achieved her goal.
Deece Casillas 07:58
Well, hey, sometimes it’s all it takes, you know, you just want to say you did it.
Richard Lowe 08:03
Yeah. My advice to anybody is if you’re thinking about a book or any kind of big item, just do it. Yeah. Court and you’ll figure out how, yeah, definitely,
Deece Casillas 08:11
definitely. I mean, yeah, I self published a book like, God 2009 2010 2010, it probably was, so about 12 years ago. And yeah, you just kind of figured out, you know, the writing the editing, the publishing, and you just kind of figure it out. So
Richard Lowe 08:34
yeah, I found that if it’s important to you, you’ll find the money you’ll find the way. Yeah, I’m a premium Ghost Rider. So I’m expensive. Like most people’s minds, but if it’s important, you’ll find a way to do it. It’s not important. You won’t write works in life, you know? Yeah. People come to me and say the books the most important thing in their life, it’s a bucket list item, and then they can’t do it, or won’t do it. Yeah, I guess it’s not the most important thing in their life.
Deece Casillas 09:00
Well, I think, you know, it’s so funny. I talked about this all the time. It you know, I think people are just scared. Come, you know, what, what’s familiar is comfortable for him. So it’s easy. And, you know, it’s not that those things maybe aren’t important, but man they just taking those steps are hard and scary. And it’s it’s easier to just live in misery or unhappy with what you’re doing and to like, push through the uncomfortable phases to get to the things that will make you happy.
Richard Lowe 09:33
Yeah, my attitude is Don’t get yourself don’t step out of the box. Just get rid of the box entirely.
Deece Casillas 09:39
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Richard Lowe 09:40
Why are you in a box?
Deece Casillas 09:42
Yeah, it’s, it’s, I mean, when you talk about things like stand up comedy with it, if you if I sat down and told someone how, what it took to get to where I am today, you know, being able to do stand up comedy full time and been able to do it that way for several years, which, I mean, there’s, there’s comedians I know that have never Like specials that still have a job, you know, because it’s just it can be tough to really make a living at it. And, you know, there were times when you this the, the logistics of it seem crazy, like no one would you’d never say no one would ever start, you know, it’s like, oh yeah, I would get off work at 6pm and drive, you know, three hours would show and get paid $20 to do five minutes, and then I’d have to drive three hours back because they didn’t give me a hotel. And I did that Thursday, Friday, Saturday, while working my day job. And it’s like, you do that for like, you know, eight years and then maybe you’ll start making some real money at it. It just seems crazy.
Richard Lowe 10:46
It seems crazy. And it is crazy. But that’s the way you become great at what you’re doing. Is you just do it. Yeah. One of my favorite stories with comedians is have you ever heard of Mick Foley? Oh, yeah. Wrestler. Yeah. He, he, of course, broke his back numerous times and had lots of other things. So finally, he mostly retired from wrestling and I say mostly, and he became a writer, and he wrote his two autobiographies. And he wrote about 10 others fiction books, and he’s really good. Then he became a comedian. Like, okay, and he went in and he was going to be at a venue in Tampa, which is close to me. Yeah. So cool. I got to go meet Mick Foley. And there’s a VIP set VIP seat ready. So I was just about ready to buy the VIP seat on April 30 2020.
Deece Casillas 11:34
And oh, yeah. In the world, excuse me. A halt.
Richard Lowe 11:40
Just just two days before the pandemic groundball. And I was gone. And he he’s not hasn’t come back to Tampa and I wanted to sit down and I got the meet and greet tickets and everything was going to Yeah, yeah, he’s got a very life. And
Deece Casillas 11:55
yeah, yeah, I met him one time at a club. I was working at years ago that he came through and performed at so this guy
Richard Lowe 12:05
seemed like it didn’t want to meet. Yeah, he’s a nice guy. I didn’t meet the undertaker for about three seconds. Okay. Just because I was photographing WWE from the second row. Those are expensive seats, by the way, I would imagine but they let you keep the seat. He didn’t bring it home. You can bring it home with you. Has the dresser printed printed on it and stuff?
Deece Casillas 12:25
Yeah. Like I want this to someone. I want a whole Cogan to bash someone over the back with this thing that I’m taking it home I was.
Richard Lowe 12:34
Yeah. That day I went to I went to the WWE Staples Center in Los Angeles. I decided to take the bus that I didn’t know they gave away the seats. I had to come home on the bus with the damn seat.
Deece Casillas 12:48
Like Well, actually, that’s probably great because you don’t want to use the seats. The bus in the LA transit system has those are horrible. See, they’re like you’re gonna get syphilis that way. But you should bring your own seat.
Richard Lowe 13:01
Well, yeah, everybody’s looking at me funny because the undertaker is on the on the seat and I got to seat still. Yeah, it’s not worth anything. I mean, if I gotten him to sign it, it’d be worth something. But I only have three seconds. Hi, I’m Richard. Thanks, bye. Oh, still something still something guys seven feet tall.
Deece Casillas 13:18
Yeah. I like I’m not a huge like as a kid, I was a wrestler. I like wrestling. So I think every kid did as I grew, I kind of grew out of it. But I have this bucket list to go to a WrestleMania sometime before I die, you know, which is likely soon. So I should
Richard Lowe 13:39
I’ve been to three pay per views live. All all of them were in from the second row or third row? Yeah, those are about $500 seats. They’re much more now. They’re their $1,000 seats now. And it was fun. It was interesting and I wouldn’t want to do it from the back row or anything.
Deece Casillas 13:55
Yeah, you got to be clutch part of that. You know, if you’re not close, you’re not really feeling it, you know? You end up watching it on the big monitor instead of watching the actual game you know, I mean, I’ve gone to sporting events and stuff like that or like UFC events where you’re you get too far back and you’re like I’m just watching this the the giant TV up there instead of watching the actual I might as well stay at home.
Richard Lowe 14:17
Exactly, exactly. Yeah, I was close enough where I was getting the sweat off the body sometimes. I oh my god, a friend of mine likes to go to the the more was it UFC it’s the it’s the hardcore. Yeah, one. And she said they put plastic on you so that you don’t get all bloody. I bet UFC loves
Deece Casillas 14:36
SeaWorld, you know, first three rows, you got to be careful. That was
Richard Lowe 14:41
a blood splash song and she loved it. She went there all the time. And I’m not into that hardcore stuff. I started in the WWE watching web. It was WWF at the time, because it was one of the few things that the wife and I had in common. Oh wow. She liked it and which is very strange. A woman like that. And you’d be like God
Deece Casillas 15:05
screaming, but whatever you can bond over, right, whatever brings you together.
Richard Lowe 15:09
Well, she was very sick from from smoking and cancer and lung cancer lung disease. So she sat there and watched the paper. He was with me. Hey,
Deece Casillas 15:18
it was good. Yeah, I mean, it says something like I said a new bond over.
Richard Lowe 15:23
Yeah, it was bonding moment. For sure. For sure. It got to learn all the storylines couldn’t miss them for Steve Austin and the rock and the other guys. I don’t remember their names.
Deece Casillas 15:33
That was the heyday for him. The 90s
Richard Lowe 15:35
Yeah. Yeah, the 90s and early 2000s. It was it was that’s my time of wrestling. Yeah, it’s now it’s been toned down and tried to make it PG and it’s just not the same anymore. I
Deece Casillas 15:46
feel like that’s everything though. Although some of those guys are still I was listening to interview with Ric Flair. recently. He he wrestled in the WWE is like three years ago or something. He was saying. I’m like, Dude, you’re like 72 years old. Like these guys are still out there doing it.
Richard Lowe 16:05
And it makes you wonder, are they doing it? Or are they just at that point acting because wrestling is real? It’s choreographed? Sure, but it’s still real sure sure. We’re getting bang over the head with a chair. Yeah. Yeah,
Deece Casillas 16:17
yeah, I mean whole. This whole Cogan, was talking with talking about how he can hit someone in the head with a hammer, a ball peen hammer, and he does it in a way that like, it doesn’t actually like if, if you hit him with a hammer, you think you’re gonna crack their skull and he’s like, No, I can do it. And you would, you know, it’ll hurt but you’ll be fine. Like, how do you? I mean, that’s real. There’s you can’t fake that, you know?
Richard Lowe 16:40
Right. Same with the chair. And same with the tombstone and stuff. People break their necks with a tombstone. It’s actually a very dangerous thing. I don’t think they do them anymore. Yeah. You know, Tombstone, was it sort of hold somebody upside down and throw down? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Right now I’m trying to figure out how to sell my stamp collection. The problem with stamps, is they’re very tiny. And you have to catalog them, and then sell them one at a time and it’s very pain in the butt. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I
Deece Casillas 17:07
mean, any that it’s but again, it’s that whole niche, you know, you find someone who’s into it, you can, you know, they’ll, they’ll go, you just got to find that market.
Richard Lowe 17:16
Well, I’m gonna go through and find the high values first. Because most of his wastepaper you know, just like comic books, and then sell those and then probably bring the rest of comic books or to stamp shop and get like a nickel each or something. Yeah, at least just move them you know, just get rid of them. But I want to get the high values out first. Yeah, I got some good the stamps and things that are probably worth some money. Yeah,
Deece Casillas 17:36
that’s crazy. I mean, everything is there’s a market for everything out there. Girls are selling their farts online. You can I
Richard Lowe 17:45
know. That’s bizarre to me.
Deece Casillas 17:50
Yeah, you know, but hey, but BOGO sales a BOGO. I couldn’t pass it up.
Richard Lowe 17:55
So yeah, yeah, that’s just bizarre to me. But whatever.
Deece Casillas 18:03
Hey, you know, you get that money. It’s a down economy. You know, what are you going to do?
Richard Lowe 18:08
It is a little bit down. It’s a sting. And we just had a hurricane here. Just pass through by the way.
Deece Casillas 18:13
Oh, and oh, is that was it?
Richard Lowe 18:16
A Dahlia? I think it’s okay. Okay. Yeah. They’re running out of names. It missed missed us. My area. Still was very wet and very rainy and very, very windy. But we didn’t get the eye of the storm. That was further north. Oh, yeah. Camp have barely got I mean, the storm surge was apparently deadly. 16 foot storm surge. That’s huge.
Deece Casillas 18:39
Yeah. Man, the you got to be careful out there in Florida. In that storm season rolls through. Although California just got one two, which was the first time in since like, 1927, I think or something
Richard Lowe 18:53
like that. Yeah, it was the first it was the second one in recorded history. Yeah. Yes. Well, whether it’s changing I don’t know why.
Deece Casillas 19:05
Yeah, I don’t know why I’m not a scientist. I don’t know why I don’t even think the scientists know why. They say they do. But they want funding. So yeah, I don’t believe anything those guys say. You know, we just like you. It’s the again, I’m not a scientist, but it’s like we’ve we’ve cut down what is like 80% of the world. And then we wonder why we’re, you know, the air is different, why we’re heating up and like we not understand what trees do how cooling and the oxygen effect they have on our atmosphere. But it’s probably the cows here, right. It’s probably the cows.
Richard Lowe 19:40
It’s probably the diesel engines and stuff. Yes. Yeah.
Deece Casillas 19:44
So yeah, I don’t know.
Richard Lowe 19:48
It is what it is, you know, um, I just I’ve gotten to the point where I’m not wise enough to know. So I stay out of it.
Deece Casillas 19:57
Yeah, well, I uh, For sure, I don’t think anyone’s wise enough to know I think it’s just whoever, you know, buys them and gives them enough money to say what they need them to say. It’s that seems more like the case that’s happening now. It’s not it’s just, it’s just whatever, like BlackRock and Vanguard is best for us right now. You know, the people who just own everything in the world, you know, like, you’re on social media, the food, the the news corporations, and in the pharmaceutical corporations Hmm, okay.
Richard Lowe 20:42
Yeah, it’s all it’s all very strange. I’ve just one of the things that I’ve written on recently is about logical fallacies and cognitive biases. You’re familiar with those? Yeah. And one of them’s the the authority bias, which is where you have you appeal to an authority, that authority becomes you’re basically the center of everything that you believe. And like Greta Thornburg. Sure. You know, Greta Thornburg is not a climatologist, right. She’s, she’s a young lady who spoke on climate is very passionate.
Deece Casillas 21:12
Sure, no, but in probably with good intentions, good intentions,
Richard Lowe 21:15
not not doubting that, but why would I listen to her? Right? Yeah, yeah. Or the Playboy Bunny? Who said vaccines were bad. I mean, Playboy Bunny. Remember that?
Deece Casillas 21:28
What’s her name? Jenna. Jenny McCarthy.
Richard Lowe 21:32
That’s it. You dress that up from archive storage? I think, yeah.
Deece Casillas 21:36
I had to go back and pull it. So in 1994.
Richard Lowe 21:42
He said that vaccines are bad, and they hurt her kids and all that and everybody believes her. But she’s a Playboy bunny. She’s not a she’s not a person who’s exploiting vaccines. Yeah. Why would I listen to her? So it’s appeal to authority bias. And there’s, there’s people faulted a lot. And I think social media made it worse. A lot worse.
Deece Casillas 22:00
Yeah. Well, unfortunately, Social Media gave everyone a voice and not everyone needs a voice. I think most people don’t need a voice is the problem. Well, you know, the the bias of social media is what is made it that you can find your stupid clan, and other people who in which just bolsters your dumb ideas, cause you to feel more confident in your dumb ideas. And then just keep espousing them and get rewards like some sort of treats for your for your idiotic thoughts.
Richard Lowe 22:35
Well, one of the things that reinforces that is echo chambers. Are you familiar with those? No? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Just for the audience, and echo chambers, like when you start getting information back, that is what you believe. So the only information that you see is what you want. And that’s what all of the news sources are doing now on all of the social media and so forth. Because of advertising advertising wants you to if you’re interested in chocolate bars, they want you to go see chocolate bars, yeah. Not other things. So it produces an echo chamber, which means if you’re on the left or the right, or the center, or whatever, politically, you only see stuff that reinforces your belief. Right? And that is very bad for society.
Deece Casillas 23:18
Yeah, well, I mean, not only, not only just seen it, but only I mean, we we’ve created a society where we close ourselves off to any dialogue, that isn’t exactly what we believe. You know, which, which doesn’t solve anything, like I’m not, you know, it’s like, the, there’s a, like, there’s a, there’s a gentleman. I’m really, I’m gonna forget his name right now. And I feel really bad because he’s a really, really intelligent guy. But he’s this new, he’s actually a musician. By trade. He was this black, like B blues musician, and he decided he’s made it his life goal to talk to Klan members about their beliefs. And he’s actually had something like 60 Klan members turn their robes over to him because after having a just an open dialogue with these people, they realize that they’re racist ideas are incorrect, and they had foul you know, they were uneducated, on race relations, or in so many people wouldn’t even be willing to have a dialogue with someone they they fundamentally disagree with, on something like that. Whereas like you, you have to be able to talk to these people who believe different things than you and have a reasonable discourse. Otherwise, you’re just creating a larger divide. There’s no chance for for reconciliation here.
Richard Lowe 24:42
Yeah, I’ve got a good story about that. When I was growing up. It was in the 70s when I went to high school and they started the busing. Junior High Excuse me. When they started this desegregation, they started busing black kids to white schools, like it’s black schools. And we had a black kid coming or school. Now, my parents taught me that black kids, black people are evil and they will kill you and blah, blah, blah. I mean really prejudiced stuff. So I believed it of course. Yeah. And I’ve been to Florida, I get it. Well, I was in California at the time I grew up in California get it? So, that’s the way I grew up, and then have to get on I got on the bus and I looked around, there’s only one seat left, switch to black kid. I thought, oh my god, I’m gonna die. And I was nervous and sweaty. And you know, I mean, I really honestly thought because of what my parents told me that he was going to kill me. That’s what you’re gonna do. That sat next to him. Cuz I had no choice. And then I looked at him. Just as scared of me as I was with him. Yeah. And I went, Oh, my parents like, yeah. And from then on, we became best friends to the whole junior high. We used to spend hours and hours and hours together. And it was interesting, the side effect because I was hanging out with the only black kid who was kind of bulky. All the white kids were beating me up left me alone. It was quite funny. And I was the nerd. I was, I was a scientist. Yeah, I got beat up all the time. So we became best friends. And since then, I couldn’t care less about color, race, religion, whatever. As long as you’re not a jerk. I don’t care. Because why would I?
Deece Casillas 26:18
Sure. Well, yeah, I mean, it’s interesting. There’s there’s people in some areas that literally like you take, you know, there’s areas like the Appalachians or West Virginia where you have these p these white people in these backwards ass Townsville, they’ve literally probably never even met anyone darker than Tom Petty. They don’t, you know, it’s just been this perpetuated racism. So like, it’s almost not their fault, that they’re that they’re racist, you know, they were have prejudices because they’ve never experienced anything but that. Now, again, you get these people out in the world, you start having conversations with them, you get them exposure to other things, all of a sudden, most of them start to realize, oh, like you, you know, this was a this was some perpetuated lie that isn’t actually real. But you know, people are just so closed off now they’re not even willing to have conversations with people that don’t agree with them. 100% military day, it’s very dangerous. It’s It’s unfortunate. And it’s dangerous, because it’s it’s created. I think it happened even more during COVID with, you know, wherever you fall with vaccines, or wherever you fall with, with validity of COVID and facts around it and things like that. That was such a divide in you know, it’s got to create got crazy, and like, it’s just gotten worse and worse. And you know, maybe my conspiracy brain goes too far. But unfortunately, I feel like it’s part of the it’s not it’s not without reason, you know, I think a country divided is very easy. And a, you know, people divided are very easy to control.
Richard Lowe 27:59
Well, I actually did a book on misinformation and disinformation and stuff like that. And the divide a lot of the divide the United States is actually part of Russia doing it. Oh, yeah. Yeah, they are intentionally dividing the United States because it’s soft power, and it’s cheap. Yeah. And they don’t have they don’t have a lot of hard power that he’s against United States, you know, missiles and things. So they, they use soft power. And one of those things is to create a divide. Now they don’t they did affect the election. They didn’t care who won. Right. They just want to dissent. They wanted to chaos. Yeah. And I’m sure they were just as surprised everybody else that Trump won. Yeah. But I think Trump was equally surprised that he won. Yeah.
Deece Casillas 28:42
I don’t think he ever really wanted to do it. It just it just steamrolled.
Richard Lowe 28:46
I think he wants to do it now. But back then, yeah, well, now he
Deece Casillas 28:50
wants to do it. Now. I think he just wants to, same thing. It’s just an ego thing of like, I need to show these people that I’m bigger, better, you know, like than they are. It’s just an ego thing. It’s I mean, if deep Devi shadow is sodium pentathol, you know, and asked him if he really wanted to be the president. He’d be like, No, I want to be you know, I can do in methamphetamines. And at Mar a Lago playing golf. And, you know, make it’s a, but he also why he can’t look weak.
Richard Lowe 29:21
Let’s power and he had power than he had fun. I’m sure it was, it was hilarious and fun. And, you know, I’m not going to get into the Trump versus no Trump versus Biden argument because it’s it’s not my thing. And the electrons are far away and I’m gonna worry about a closer if I worried about it at all. But I’m going to turn off social media because it’s gonna get bloody
Deece Casillas 29:44
Yeah, yeah, it’s it’s it’s a mess. I it’s, it’s it’s real unfortunate. Because, you know, I have my my view is that they like, if you’re an elected official, you’re a criminal. I don’t Don’t care what color tie you wear. So you’re dirty and you’ve committed crimes and you will commit crimes, you don’t have the people’s best interests in mind. And that, you know, in a nation where Pete mostly half the nation is red or dead or Blue Through and Through or whatever it’s like, I’m like that, hey, both you guys, I have no,
Richard Lowe 30:26
I think with rare exceptions, and they tend to be at the local level. You’re correct. The local people, I think, tend to be reasonably not criminals and not as corrupt. But as we get higher, they have to sell sell out, because how else do you fund? Because it costs a billion dollars to become president now? Yeah, yeah. How do you do that? How do you? How does How did Obama raise that much money? Yeah.
Deece Casillas 30:49
Well, yeah, it’s Yeah, I mean, well, it’s the power, you know, power corrupts. No one can get that much juice. And not, I think, I think it’d be impossible. Even people who go and altruistic and people with good, good morals and ideals, I think there’s no way to do it without getting truly corrupted by the system. And also, I think it’s a self selecting group. So I think if you want to pursue that, I think you probably already have a personality disorder of some sort.
Richard Lowe 31:18
Narcissism comes to mind. Yeah,
Deece Casillas 31:20
that’s one of them.
Richard Lowe 31:23
Yeah, it’s hard to it’s hard. I firmly believe that anybody who gets to that level of power is a narcissist. Yeah. Because they have to be sure. Yeah. Same with anybody who’s a billionaire. I mean, probably there are exceptions. But they, how else do you make a billion dollars you step on people? You become ruthless. I mean, gates, and jobs were ruthless. Yeah. That’s not saying they’re bad. And they’re just they’re utterly ruthless. And that’s how they became multimillionaires. And Elon Musk, same thing. Yeah. And that’s narcissism.
Deece Casillas 31:57
Yeah. You know, there was a yacht in Prague, I guess.
Richard Lowe 32:03
Musk will fire somebody drop of the power of a pin. Without even thinking about it. Well, that’s narcissism. I mean, what about those people? What are they about their feelings and so forth? Yeah. Didn’t care.
Deece Casillas 32:14
Yeah. He only got to have that attitude to get that level.
Richard Lowe 32:19
Yeah, he’s the richest man in the world. I think one of the or at least one of the top ones. He’s
Deece Casillas 32:22
definitely up there. I think I think there’s at least its record. I mean, in America for sure. There’s a lot of like, Saudi oil barons that are that have like, trillions of dollars that we will net but they don’t actually like reveal how much they have you
Richard Lowe 32:42
been thinking of trillions? How the heck did Apple become a $3 trillion company so fast?
Deece Casillas 32:48
Man put out 10 iPhones a year, I guess you gotta you gotta I gotta wait just just one. Headphone Jack at a time. I gotta buy one Dongle for every phone I get. That’s a lot. You know, it’s an extra 10 bucks a unit. You gotta buy I gotta buy an extra piece to plug my USB for my hard drive into my computer.
Richard Lowe 33:10
And my phone is 10 years old and it works fine. Yeah. No, I had to upgrade it six years ago, because it needed to get the 5g. So it’s a little bit younger, but okay. I don’t tend to buy new phones. They mean, all I do is phones. I do phone and email, and texting. And that’s it. I don’t do apps because I’m a security guy. I’m cybersecurity guy. And you know, those apps don’t want to get near those.
Deece Casillas 33:34
Yeah, yeah, that’s get tick tock and all that stuff.
Richard Lowe 33:38
Is Chinese espionage? Yeah.
Deece Casillas 33:40
100%. You know, it’s really interesting. It’s about tick tock is that I mean, I don’t know if you’re doing the cybersecurity. I don’t know how familiar you are with this. But if you go on tick tock in China, the what’s shown to the kids is educational. It’s like math problems science. That’s what’s in their algorithm there. And then you go to America, it’s in the algorithm is just stuff completely dumbing down society.
Richard Lowe 34:08
And what they’re doing is they’re building profiles and everybody Yeah, and monitoring communications and so forth. They know more about you than you do. Probably. Yeah. If you’re on Tik Tok.
Deece Casillas 34:16
I am not.
Richard Lowe 34:19
I’m gonna use it for my business. I’m gonna start chopping up videos like videos like this with just 30 seconds of you saying something profound on Tik Tok. Maybe if I can find something I’ll do the automatic because I’m not about to do manually just for the extra hits. If it works if it works, but I haven’t done that yet, because I’m still debating whether it’s worth the trouble.
Deece Casillas 34:45
Yeah, I get all the comedian, comedian friends like you got a tick tock it’s a new thing you got to get on tick tock and I looked at it and I’m like, I I don’t want to do this. It isn’t even before all like the Chinese spying crap. I was just like I can’t learn another app. I don’t give a shit. I’m already posting to Facebook and Instagram. And like, you know, I had Twitter, but I never was active on Twitter. I’ve had it for 15 years. I’ve never I was never active on it. Like, I can’t do another one. I just,
Richard Lowe 35:16
I’m pretty much centered on LinkedIn, Facebook and YouTube. Yeah. And that’s three. And that’s enough. Instagram, I’m thinking of doing because of the videos. And probably not tick tock, but I might just because, yeah, I got video here. I might as well take advantage of it. But it’ll just be post and forget kind of stuff.
Deece Casillas 35:39
Yeah. But also, you can’t there’s no thing with tic tac toe. And if you never I mean, you don’t know what you’re actually getting. Because the numbers they show you a complete a complete farce. There’s so many bot accounts, you have no idea like, the views you’re getting, like, Are these real views? You know, it’s like,
Richard Lowe 35:57
I suppose you can tell if you’re if you’re monetized, and you can get money from it. Yeah, I don’t know. And Twitter always considered the cesspool of the internet. It’s always been terrible. And Musk just made it worse. And it’s going down fast. It’s It’s interesting watching that.
Deece Casillas 36:15
Yeah. You know, the funny thing with that is I think, I, I think Elon Musk knew this would be where it would go. And, you know, I have to say, at least I respect the guy’s willingness to be like 100% A free speech absolutist, like this, is it and like, at the cost of my whatever he paid for it. 45 million, or I don’t even remember 45 billion billion. Yeah. So they to have that ability of discourse for people, you know, even as ugly as they can get, I think is still important for other aspects of, you know, because I mean, it’s, I hate to be a slippery slope guy, but you know, the minute you start taking away, and censoring things, you know, it’s like we look at let’s look at how many things during the pandemic, did YouTube demonetized people for the platform, people did Facebook, Instagram, D monetize the platform, people for that, since then, have been proven? True. Not only have they been proven true, but they’ve been proven that they Willie, they knew they were true at the time, but were still lying to us. And then those people are still the platform. demonetized it’s like, so you know, this whole, like, people get to decide who what is real. What is good speak. What is, you know, misinformation is like, that’s that. It’s a very dangerous game, you know, because the letting the people decide what, what you should hear, you know, and like, that’s just, you know, I mean, it’s cliche, but Orwellian.
Richard Lowe 38:07
Well, it’s a really in but it’s corporate based, instead of government based. Sure,
Deece Casillas 38:11
sure. Which one could argue are the same thing now, since the corporations have bought the government? Essentially, they own the government? In a sense?
Richard Lowe 38:18
Well, I think corporations, I think the corporation moved into the government because the government wasn’t doing his job. So I don’t think they bought it so much out of wanting to I think they bought it out of necessity. Governments have not been doing his job for decades and decades and decades, other than maybe the military
Deece Casillas 38:34
here. Yeah, I guess depending on Yeah, the Well, I mean, lobbyists move in and they get to decide, you know, it’s like, hey, we buy your campaign. So we are buying your vote. Now you vote for this. Yeah. So which just helps the corporations and then you know, everything?
Richard Lowe 38:59
Well, we think we’re becoming a corporate corporate Tosca P, whatever, you know, run by Corporation, government, but it’s behind the scenes, and that’s probably one of the problems is that we didn’t vote in those people. Right. We didn’t vote in corporates, but then again Well, I’m not gonna go there about politics. I’m just gonna stop talking about
Deece Casillas 39:23
keep it safe. Okay. Yeah.
Richard Lowe 39:25
This is not a political thing. And I’m not interested in talking politics. Right. I get it. Yeah. Don’t get into those arguments getting too mature to just it’s for the younger folks.
Deece Casillas 39:37
Yeah, well, it’s so in the weeds. You know, there’s just so it’s again, like I think all criminals everything is bought and paid for so there’s nothing that there’s nothing.
Richard Lowe 39:50
Yeah, it’s yeah, yes. Well, we’re coming on 45 minutes. Been a nice talk. Yeah. Yeah, thank you. Anything you want to say to your audience before we go away? Yeah, yeah,
Deece Casillas 40:05
let’s get just go to DS comedy.com. Check out everything going on, you can follow me on destaque comedy on Instagram, I am touring across the country. If you’re in America, I’ll be somewhere near you. You can check out my tour dates, you can buy the special ad DS comedy.com. Again, for as little as just $1. And also, yeah, new comic book, debut comic book coming to more details on that will be released on Instagram. So follow me. And you’ll get that too. That’s kind of the next time I’m trying to tour less and do more on the writing and the comic book. I’ve got a couple of ones I’m working on. So those will be kind of the next chapter of my life.
Richard Lowe 40:52
Alright, nice. Well, thank you for coming to our author talks. So hope you enjoyed it. Yeah, thank you. And this is Richard Lowe. I’m a ghostwriter. Which means I write books for other people. I’m a writing coach. So if your writer need help, come see me. And I’m on LinkedIn branding or spirit. So if you’re not getting any traction on LinkedIn, I can help with that. And that’s over and out until the next one. Thank you.
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Thanks Richard! This was a fun interview.
My pleasure! I enjoyed it also.