Joe Rogan Says Comedians Are Jealous of Carrot Top

Comedians claim they hate seeing other comics doing the same old hacky bits, claims Jeff Dye, but then they’re dismissive when someone is truly out of the box. For example, he told Joe Rogan last year, he was performing at comedy festival Skankfest when he took a side trip to see another comedian in Las Vegas. 

“I went and watched Carrot Top, Scott Thompson. I went over to the Luxor, I watched the show,” Dye said. 

He returned to Skankfest, and his fellow comics couldn’t believe it. “Carrot Top?” they sniffed.

“He’s better than all of us, just so you know,” Dye told the other comics. “Ninety minutes of not missing. It was relevant — he was doing topical things. He had a P. Diddy joke that happened the night before I saw him. It wasn’t all props — there was a lot of topical, tons of Trump stuff, political stuff.”

Dye went in with an open mind, he told Rogan. “If it’s going to be shit, I’ll say it’s shit. If it was great, I’ll say it’s great,” he said. “Ninety minutes of not missing. He’s the nicest guy in the world. And he’s crushing it.” 

Rogan is definitely a Carrot Top believer, even though in the early days when the prop comic was taking off, “everyone was shitting on him, including (Bill) Hicks. Hicks had a whole bit about Carrot Top.” 

“Which sucks,” argued Dye,” because he’s so good.”

“It was just a jealousy thing,” Rogan said. “It was shitting on the guy who was doing this thing that you think is somehow or another coloring outside the lines. Didn’t make any sense.”

Another reason Carrot Top was alienated from other comics, according to Rogan? “He did a residency in Vegas. He was one of the first big guys to just do it. He’s been in Vegas forever.”

Nearly 30 years, agreed Dye. “That must mean he’s pretty good.”

There was one brief segment in Carrot Top’s show that Dye believed was hacky — at first, anyway. The red-haired comic made a Luxor joke, something like, “They made it a pyramid because if you try to jump out the window, you’ll just end up back at the casino.”

Dye had a moment of “I’ve heard that kind of joke,” but then he started thinking about it. Carrot Top has been doing the gig for 29 years — he probably wrote the joke that’s become a cliche. 

Dye likened it to listening to Richard Pryor telling jokes about the differences between Black women and white women. “At first, you go, ‘That’s hacky,’” Dye observed. “No! He did it first!”

Rogan takes credit for setting things right. “(Carrot Top) said that after he came on my show, he started getting a lot of love. He said it was way different. A lot of people are coming to his shows that were fans of my show and then wanted to come see him. He turned a corner.”