Comedian Ron White, who famously smoked cigarettes and drank scotch during his sets, used to tell a joke about vegetarians. “You ever seen a healthy vegetarian?” White would ask his audience. “They look like s***. They’re all plump and gray.”“It’s because their bodies become intolerant of things they need, and I’ll give you an example,” White continued. “I’m on the way to the Melrose Improv in Hollywood to do a set with my buddy, and he says he feels nauseous and has a headache because he thinks the vegetable soup he had for lunch had some beef broth in it.”
“I didn’t know what to say,” White nears the punchline. “Your system is kicking back … broth? You’re a real manly man, aren’t ya?”
I thought of that Ron White joke recently after seeing a clip of podcaster Steven Bartlett talking to fellow podcaster Chris Williamson about the supposed evils of alcohol.
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“It’s one of those areas where you don’t understand the hidden cost until you really give it up for a while,” Bartlett tells Williamson. “I stopped drinking at 30 years old. I’m now 33. When I was 31, I thought, I’ll have a drink again because now I could really A/B test it. I had a year of not drinking, decided to have a drink again.”
