"I had dinner with Jerry a few nights ago," he said. "The man, the myth, the legend; Jerry Seinfeld."
Not a typical comment for your average Joe but how about Joe from "Family Guy," Patrick Warburton.
Warburton and Seinfeld had been working together on "Bee Movie" and, like any old friends, they enjoyed catching up and telling stories, as he said in a recent phone interview for The Current.
You might recognize Patrick from his infamous stint as Puddy on Seinfeld, or maybe just his voice as Joe on the animated TV show "Family Guy."
His massive frame makes him stand out in a crowd, and his distinctive voice makes him stand out on a screen of animated characters.
But who is the man behind that voice? The very first time I met Patrick, I was struck not with his size or his voice but with his piercingly blue eyes and his oh-so-normal Pearl Jam T-shirt.
According to his mother Barbara, in another phone interview, the very young Patrick Warburton's life dream was "to be a priest who runs a drive-in movie theatre."
Well, that is not exactly how life turned out.
"She just can't let that go," Patrick says. He claims that at a slightly older age, it was, "either a marine scientist or an actor." He did fulfill one of those, as he definitely has made his living in Hollywood.
As a boy, Patrick used to go with his mother, a fellow actress, to her performances in a little theatre where she acted in what she describes as "mostly silly British farces." He remembers "hanging out backstage, watching the audience."
There, he fell in love with the audience interaction; when there was a good crowd, and they just got the comedy. "That and Jerry Lewis movies," he said.
According to the natural order of things, Patrick met his wife Cathi in college and they now have four children together. His mother views his current show 'Rules of Engagement" as "reminiscent of the time when he was with Cathi but before they had children."
His character Jeff on the show does not have children. She adds that when Patrick's first came along, "it matured him immensely," Barbara says. Patrick's response to that is, "Moms can think what they want to think."
Mature or not, it is his nonchalant humor that has earned Patrick his fans.
He is happy with the projects in which he is now involved. CBS's Monday night show "Rules of Engagement," where Patrick plays Jeff, is his current live action gig. "It's very different," he praises. "It has a lot more dimension than say, Puddy, ever did."
But ah, the question: live action or voice acting? Well, voice acting is relatively quick (it must be, or he would not have time for anything else), only one or two hours in the studio, and that is a wrap for the day.
Patrick, however, finds that it is "more satisfying to do live action stuff." With an impish edge to his voice, he added, "I like voice acting when I want to play golf that day."
Voice acting is not something for which Patrick really prepares. "I'm not an impersonator," he explains. It is really more about, "how much of a dose of testosterone does this character have?" For instance, his Family Guy character Joe, "is about 90 percent testosterone."
The 100th "Family Guy" episode aired last Sunday, Nov. 4. Before the all-new episode, titled "Stewie Kills Lois," there was a half-hour special showcasing the shocking antics of the Griffin family. The special featured spoofs, musical numbers and the all around funniest moments of the last 100 episodes. The centennial episode is no different. It is filled with jokes and spoofs about celebrities, homosexuality, the handicapped and abortion, not to mention some pretty outrageous sexual innuendos.
Patrick's character Joe plays a pivotal part in the 100th episode. Besides dressing up as Lois to trick Chris into thinking his mother is still alive, Joe is also the one who initially suspects Peter of murdering his wife.
While with the boys at The Drunken Clam, Peter openly admits to taking out a life insurance policy moments before Lois goes missing. In a fit of investigative work, Joe finds the drawings and machine gun that Stewie had recently thrown out, and mistakes them for Peter's. Convinced of Peter's guilt, Joe takes him down to the station for a little "good cop, developmentally disabled cop."
Joe's suspicions are carried all the way to trial, where Peter is almost sentenced to life in prison, but at the last moment, Lois shows up and says it was Stewie instead. The episode was "to be continued," and the second half aired last night.
Last night's episode had Stewie escape the courtroom only to tie up his family at home and take Brian hostage, forcing him to do his bidding at gunpoint.
This includes telling Joe, "Hahahahaha, you're in a wheelchair," to which Joe responds, "That's not very nice." And Stewie's retort via Brian is, "neither is your mother's ass."
The rest of the episode followed Stewie breaking into the Central Intelligence Agency, taking control of the world's power grids and subsequently becoming president of the world.
Lois decides she would rather kill Stewie than allow him to continue in his dictatorship, and a Rambo-style fight to the death ensues, including a shootout with automatics, hand-to-hand combat and a knife fight. In the end, it is Peter who takes Stewie down, with one in the chest, then another in the head.
Lucky for all of you fans out there, the entire scenario was created in Stewie's simulation unit, "to find out exactly how killing Lois and taking over the world would turn out for me," he says. "Not well," is the conclusion.
Besides "Rules of Engagement" and "Family Guy," Patrick is also now voicing guest roles on several Disney shows, as well as one of his recent films, "Bee Movie," which is in theatres now. Patrick voices one of the rare humans, Ken, in Dreamworks' "Bee Movie." Like a lot of the animated characters that Patrick voices, Ken bears a striking resemblance to his off screen counterpart.
Not every project Patrick has done was received with tumultuous applause.
Around the age of 21 or 22, Patrick was in South Africa shooting "Dragonard" and "Master of Dragonard Hill."
"They really are the most atrocious things I've ever seen," he says, "and I am the worst thing in them."
It was not all bad. He was young and good looking, hanging out in Africa, drinking with the crew. "I was in my drinking prime. I thought I could keep up." And did he? "I did pretty good."
That he did, in more ways than one.
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