Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend - Ink-A-Dink

Episode Date: April 20, 2023

Conan chats with Kassem from Beirut about workplace romances, boxing, and his worst fear.

Konan O'Brien needs a fan. Want to talk to Konan? Visit teamcoco.com slash call Konan. Okay, let's get started. Hi, Kasim. Welcome to Konan O'Brien needs a friend. Hello, how are you? Hey, Kasim.

How are you? Hi, Sonia. Hi, Matt. How are you guys? Hi. How's it going, Kasim? Well, it's going well. Excited to meet you.

All guys, it's quite like a pleasure. Oh, well, the pleasure is ours. It's nice to meet you, Kasim. And where are you contacting us from? From Beirut, Lebanon. Oh, you're in Beirut? Okay. I've never been there.

Never been to Lebanon. Tell me a little bit about your life. I'd like to know about you, Kasim. Yeah, so I'm a humanitarian aid worker. I'm currently working as a grants coordinator at an NGO that deals with gender-based violence. Let me say, that's a very worthy cause. That's good for you. I think it shows a lot of character.

That's a great cause, and it's nice to know that you're doing that good work. I mean, I've been doing that for quite a while. I've been doing humanitarian work for a bit. This has been quite through a few sectors. And this is the last one I've landed on. And what about... Tell me about your life, Kasim. What's happening?

What's happening? What's going on with Kasim? Oh, Kasim is doing all right, jumping. I don't think it's going that well, Kasim, because you're referring to yourself in the third person, which is the sign that you're deluded and insane. But tell me, Kasim, how is Kasim? Does Kasim like the way things are going for Kasim? Well, it depends on which Kasim you ask.

Oh, your multiple personalities and an egomaniacal freak. But tell me just about your life, day in, day out. How are things going? Are you in a relationship or do you have kids? That kind of stuff. Oh, yeah. I kind of wake up, I self-deprecate, get to work consistently late. Wait, is that what you call it?

You wake up and self-deprecate? I call it masturbate. I call it masturbate. It kind of evens out the rough edges and then I'm ready to go, but whatever. Everyone has their own. I didn't realize that's what they call it in Lebanon. But so you wake up and what do you do? After self-deprecation, I make a long, very slow stride to work where I get late to work

and then I start doing a life-saving type of intervention. You had me really impressed, Kasim, that you do all this humanitarian aid and now you're saying I wake up late and I take as much time as I can to show up to work. Well, he's a human. He's just there for himself. I have a question about this masturbation of yours. When you say you self-deprecate to masturbate, is that what turns you on is just to shit all over yourself verbally or what do you mean?

Oh, no, no, no. I just thought that was his term. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. I thought that was his term. I thought you wake up and go, like, oh, you just, you're an idiot today. Well, I do that. And he gets off on that.

No, I do that. Yeah, I do. I wake up and I'm like, oh, you suck, O'Brien, you're the worst. And then all of a sudden I'm like, hello, and then it's time to take care of business. The whole thing is over in eight seconds. It's the opposite of daily affirmation. Yes. Okay.

All right. I see. So, Kasim, yes. Okay. And then you wake up, you do whatever you need to do, and then you take as much time as possible to get to work where you save lives. But what about your personal life? What's going on?

I'm kind of in this relationship with a colleague, so, you know, I kind of, yeah, I kind of depend. Oh, this is the best. This is where it gets good. You see. There's someone at work. It gets juicy, yeah. You're at work with someone and you guys are in a relationship.

Tell me about this person. Yeah. So, I kind of depend on company and it's one thing led to another. Wait, what did he say? Did you say we dipped in the company? Could you say that again? That phrase? Yeah.

So, I don't know if you know that saying don't dip your pen in company and this is basically like don't defecate where you eat or this kind of type of thing where everybody tells you hey, don't date your co-workers and everybody dates their co-workers at the end of the day. So, I kind of got into this kind of fling that ended up being a relationship. Oh, that's, well, wait a minute. That can be very good. I mean, it's very natural for people to meet at work. Oh, it is good.

Tell me, is this, do you guys live together? No, we live separate from each other. So, it's Lebanon, it is not exactly, it's frowned upon to live, to go meditate. I see. To live together for you to live with your girlfriend in the same apartment if you're not married is frowned upon in Lebanon. It's frowned upon. Now, Lebanon is kind of more open.

So, we are fun in certain places and uptight and all these kind of various schizophrenic and non-matter. That describes many cultures. Many cultures are really loose and wacky in one area and then arbitrarily choose other areas to be uptight. Unlike the Irish who are uptight about everything, we're just, everything, it causes us to be uptight. Well, you're loose about drinking.

Yeah. Oh, the Irish. Oh, yeah, that's what I meant. Oh, hello. Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Kasim, I've just been attacked in my workplace. This is an intervention. Yeah.

Yeah. You don't mean my drink. Do you mean the Irish in general? The Irish in general. Yeah. They like their drinky-winkies. Yeah, sure. Yeah.

I guess that's fine. That's a fine generalization. Oh, okay. But yeah. And you guys like potatoes as well. Thank you. Thank you, Kasim. Thank you.

He gets it too. He knows about your culture as well. Kasim, I'm doing all I can to be sensitive, reaching out to the people of Beirut. And you're a clover love and lucky charm, little leprechaun. So Kasim, this is interesting to me that you kind of have to keep your relationship quiet. Can you tell me the name of this person or you can't disclose her name? I can't disclose. I think we had a previous conversation about not disclosing much about her.

And I made the mistake of talking about her, just what kind of a schizophrenic person I am. Is that okay? Is that trouble or anything? Oh, no, no, necessarily. But it's fine. It's fine. Can I ask you something?

Then who do, where do young men then who haven't married, where do they tend to live? What's the common place where men live if they're not married yet and they're in Beirut or Lebanon? At their parents. It's often that people stay at their parents' place until they're way into adulthood. Really? Yeah, yeah, I know people that kind of married at 40 and then left at their parents' house. I got married at 43.

I can't imagine. And you were still living with your parents? I still am. No, I'm not. No, I'm not. I'm kind of out of the, like an odd one out. I left my parents' house like at 26. Can I ask you, I don't want to be indelicate.

I don't want to be indelicate, but in Lebanon, if you're a young man, a virulent young man with various urges, but you have to live with your parents, right? How do you take care of business with your loved one? How do you self-deplicate with another? You kind of have to, you get good at it with time, with time you kind of need to wait for everybody to get sleep, sneak out. If you want to do the business and self-deplicate, you kind of need to keep an ear out. You watch pornography on mute.

Realize to having like any sound in there. So you have no idea what pornography sounds like. You've only watched it on mute. You're basically watching silent movies. You're missing some really good music. Why don't you give him a little taste of it? You think he's missing the music of the porn? Listen, can I say, I've often been watching pornography and it's the music that captures me.

You think he's really missing out on the music? Often I don't even, I forget and I miss out on some key action because I'm really listening to the bass. You know what I mean? He thinks it's a 70s cop show now. Well, I think what Casem does is what a lot of, I think most cultures probably do, which is people stay at home till they get married. That's how Armenians are too. Yeah, I think you guys are the abnormal ones.

What do you mean, you guys? You people. Okay, wow, you are just in front of his sensitivity today. You know, Sona, we have a huge Armenian community. I know. My sister-in-law's family is from Beirut and that's how I know what Halawajipna is because it's like my favorite thing. Isn't that Lebanese? What's that?

Isn't that Halawajipna, that dessert that's like the cheese with the cream? It might have been pronounced like that. Halawajipna. Describe that dessert for me. What is it? It's Halawajipna. So this dessert is made with cheese and like a lot of sugar. Sounds good.

What? And it's a, are you saying it's a Lebanese dish? I think it's Lebanese, right? But because my family, my sister-in-law's family is from Beirut, they make it and it's delicious. Okay. Let's get the word out on that stuff, it sounds good. What are you plugging a dessert? Can you repeat what he said, what it's called?

I'd like to hear it one more time, if it's okay. It's Halawajipna. Halawajipna. Halawajipna. Halawajipna. Halawajipna. It sounds like a British person saying hello to a monkey. Yeah.

I give it. I give it. What sports do you enjoy, Kasim? You seem like a well-built athletic fellow. What do you like to do? I do boxing. Boxing? What kind of boxing?

I actually used to, I've done a few martial arts, but I mainly focus on boxing and kickboxing. And I used to do that when I was much younger, I was much more athletic. And then I got into the labor force and fell off and became fat, but I still do it occasionally. Yes, kickboxing. I've always been intrigued by kickboxing. I think I might be very naturally gifted at kickboxing because I have very, very long legs. I think they would be like whips. I'd be whipping people with my legs.

Exactly. Rashing them. Do you remember Whirly Gig? Oh, that's right. Yeah, that was your whipping, kicking character. Yeah, Whirly Gig. Superhero. Yeah.

What do you think? Do you think I might make a good kickboxer? You would be a great kickboxer. You'd be an amazing outside boxer. And if you want to get into like become full drunken, this type of stuff, you can kind of, your lankiness would allow you to basically evade punches. Yes, I could evade punches by just staggering around drunkenly. Because you're Irish.

Exactly. And Wardo jumped in now. Wardo jumped in because no one had demeaned the Irish quite enough in this session. It's not so much that Irish has demeaned his engineer. What the hell? Unbelievable. Man, now a guy's going to come out of the duct work. I was working on the AC, but I just want to say you're a goddamn mix.

Oh my god. Hey, Kasim, here's the problem. I have very long legs. True. But my legs have no muscle at all. It's just one, they're each one long tendon. Is that going to be a problem? I mean, the way I think about it, and I'm sure you punch your employees in your spare time.

Yes, I do actually. And that's because you pay them a lot. So I think you can pay your opponent a lot and like win in the second round. Oh, so you're saying I'd be a good boxer because I have the finances to pay off the person I'm fighting. That, well, for the right price, I can give you a very good win with like a pretend first round. I pretend to be, pretend it is challenging and then you can knock me out second round. The description of your legs, I'm not bringing stars into this for any other reason than it just reminded me. Oh, my Lord.

The creature that sings in Jabba's Palace size noodles. That's who you look like. Oh, my Lord. Look at that. Size noodles. I wish I could show this to you. I don't think you can see it, but yeah, he's got very long, skinny. It's a she.

Oh, it's a she. Oh, no. I mean, look at those lips. Now I've been canceled. I misgender identified an alien in Star Wars. Yeah. And you're speaking to a person who works on gender-based violence. You're right.

Congratulations, man. This is alien gender-based violence, which gets even more specific. And that's my cause. So I don't know. I don't know. I think if I was kicking someone with my long legs, it would feel to them like someone was striking them with threads, sort of wet threads. I think that's how it would feel. But I think if you work on your whipping technique and you can whip very well, but now that would be a whole different way of canceling you.

So I retract. Yeah. Okay. So here's what we know about you, Kassim. You have a secret relationship with someone at work. You dinked your pen in the company. Dink? Oh, boy.

In the company well. What? What? What? You dinked it. You dipped your, you dipped, he dipped his pen in the company ink. He dipped his pen in the company ink. Dinked my ring.

You dinked it. Yeah, I'm sorry. I was thinking of something I did. Oh, you're thinking ink, a bink, a bottle of ink? No. What? I don't know. And guess what?

No one was. And no one knows what you're talking about. You guys don't know anything. It's, you know what it's time? It's time for a cat scan, Mr. Gorley. They're going to find a large mass pressing up against your cerebellum. No. Ink, a bink, a bottle of ink, the cork fell out and you stink.

That's how you like it. Oh, my God. Did you grow up? Where did you grow up? With Hera. You're younger than me. And you're like, you're the only guy I know who used to roll a hoop down the street as a child wearing short shorts.

No one did that, the elimination. No one knows what you're talking about. No, come on. I have a closer connection with you, Cassim. I'm confident there's a listener out there that, well, at least the people that grew up on my street sounded off. Anywho, I'm trying to pull this together. Sorry.

That's okay. You're doing all you can. And in only the ways that you can. Cassim, you're in this secret relationship. Would you ever think about saying enough? It's the 21st century. I want my girlfriend and I to live together in this apartment. And I don't care what others think.

Is that a possibility or just not a possibility? Oh, it is. It is a possibility. But here's the thing. I seem to be calm and collected. And if you met her, you would think she's calm and collectible with crazy people and shouldn't live with other people. So we decided that it is better that each person gets a reliving in their own apartment

and meet occasionally. Oh, it's interesting. When I first heard you describing this, I thought, oh, these ancient rules in Lebanon are interfering with our modern way of living. But no, you like it. This works for both of you. Yes, it kind of does. It kind of gives me my time to self deprecate.

Yeah. Okay. Enough of that. Enough of that. Well, I also noticed that you have some superhero figures behind you in the background. Yeah. Let me tell you what happens when your girlfriend does move in. Oh.

Those are going away. Those are being replaced with a table lamp. Okay. Exactly. And maybe a chiapet. But there's no way that Batman, Superman, and the rest survive your girlfriend's wrath. Okay. Oh, my God.

Yes, that's really weighted. There's a lot there that we need to dissect. Have you watched 40-year-old version? Yeah, I'm saying, what did Liza take away from you when she first moved in? I had a LEGO statue of myself. Oh, God. That's a different thing she's doing. That has nothing to do with you.

I had several statues of myself. That's different. They were removed. I had a lot of, I had an equestrian statue of myself. I had nine statues of myself. But that's, Kasim, that's what guys do. They have bronze statues made of themselves. No.

Forged in Germany and then shipped at great expense to Los Angeles. And what's your greatest fear? I do very much fear dying a very silly death, like a comedic death. Sleeping in the shower. Any kind of dripping type accident that would result in my death would be very, very scary to me because I think it would, I would basically take my life down the lowest level. Like nobody would ever talk about me without laughing because it's like, oh, he tripped and died. Oh my God.

What a specific fear. You're afraid of dying a silly death. You're afraid of slipping or tripping or maybe you're doing a funny little dance move that goes wrong and you fall and hit your head and you die. And you're afraid that everyone's going to come to your funeral and be laughing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

When people come to my funeral, they better be sobbing and crying. So a genuine concern. I have to say, I think, I have the opposite. I fear a death that isn't silly. I mean, I think people are going to expect me to go out in a silly way. Right. I don't know what to do. I have to hire somebody to be with you at all the time with a gun.

So if you just start to slip, they could shoot you. Oh. And that way everyone's like, oh my God, this is terrible. Kasim got shot. He was in the shower and he was about to slip when this person he hired. So the person doesn't stop him from slipping. He just shoots him. If the person thinks Kasim's about to slip or fall or he's getting a little wobbly on his unicycle,

this guy's job is to merely shoot him. What if he's going to trip and it's just going to be a mild trip? Hey, there's no such thing as in this plan of total security. You know, if you want to avoid a silly death, this is the only way having someone 24 seven watching you who's going to fire away at the first second, you have to admit it's really the only answer. I don't know. I was thinking sticky shoes.

That's another way to go. Sticky shoes. You guys know that one's two sticky shoes. Okay. I don't know. I do. You're such an odd man, but it's not your fault. No.

No, no, you just grew up in 1885 in Western Connecticut, the son of some Mennonite preachers. So there you go. What are you going to do? It's not far off. Kasim. It's very nice getting to talk to you. And if you ever decide you would like to move in with your girlfriend, maybe I could intervene. Maybe I could come.

No. Don't you? Hard pass. I must be very well respected in Beirut. No. I mean, I would say you're known in Beirut. Wait. Charles Manson's probably known in Beirut.

Wait a minute. I must be respected and you changed it too well. You're known. That means people have seen or heard my work, but they don't respect me. No. When they put their kids to sleep, they tell them the cautionary tale of Colin O'Brien. Well, anyway, Kasim, I wish you all the best. I really do.

And I think it's, I say go for it. Let's move in with your girlfriend. Okay, let's find out if this relationship can really go the distance. You're going to, it's either going to blow up right away or she'll be the love of your life. But you'll find out. Go for it. I say go for it. Just wait.

Yeah. Just wait. You guys is right for you. Yeah. Just wait. Okay. That's another way to go. Yeah.

Follow your own instincts. She's just going to kill me when she knows the entire, the entire meetup was me talking about her. So I'm going anyway. That's okay. I'm going to go for sure. I'm not identified here. Just keep it real cool at work.

Real chill. Okay. Just keep your dink in your pants and you'll be fine. Jesus. If my dink is the same. Kasim, thank you very much. How do we say goodbye in your language in Lebanese? Well, in Lebanon, we speak, we mix all the languages together.

So you would be hard set to hear anybody say the bye word in Arabic. And like formal Arabic would be Wadaan. Wadaan. Wadaan. Wadaan. Wadaan. Wadaan. Thank you.

You should see my feet. Oh God. Oh my Lord. Help me. Kasim, can I come stay with you? That'd be okay because I'm a dude. I can come live with you, right? You'd be more than welcome.

Thank you. I'm going to need it. I have to get out of here. This guy's lost his noodle. All right, Kasim. Wadaan. Take care. Bye, Kasim.

Bye. Thank you, Kasim. Conan O'Brien needs a fan. With Conan O'Brien, Sonam of Sessian, and Matt Gorely. Produced by me, Matt Gorely. Executive produced by Adam Sacks, Joanna Salateroff, and Jeff Ross at Team Coco, and Colin Anderson at Earwolf. Produced by Jimmy Vivino.

Supervising producer, Aaron Blair. Associate talent producer, Jennifer Samples. Associate producers, Sean Doherty and Lisa Berm. Engineering by Eduardo Perez. Please rate, review, and subscribe to Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever fine podcasts are downloaded. This has been a Team Coco production in association with Stitcher.