Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend - Jack Black

Episode Date: December 9, 2019

Actor/musican Jack Black feels shitty about being Conan O’Brien’s friend. Jack and Conan sit down to talk about the 1999 pilot Heat Vision and Jack, laying down hot tracks with Jack White, bringing the energy to max performing with Tenacious D, the greatest mobile golf game, and the later films of Ruth Gordon. Plus, Conan issues another State of the Podcast address. Got a question for Conan? Call our voicemail: [phone].

Hi, my name is Jack, my name is Black, my name is Jack Black. And I feel shitty about being Conan O'Brien's friends. Jesus. I didn't, in fairness, I didn't read the whole sentence before I threw in however you feel. You accidentally told the truth, didn't you? You did. Fall is here, hear the yell, back to school, ring the bell, brandy shoes, walk and lose, climb the fence, books and pens, I can tell that we are going to be friends.

I can tell that we are going to be friends. Hello, Conan O'Brien here, welcome to Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend. I'm saying my desperate ploy to use the podcasting medium to make a few pals. It's actually working, having a lot of fun talking with a lot of really terrific people. And enjoying the company of my good amigos, Sonia Mocesian, my assistant. Hello. Hi. And Matt Gorley, producer I suppose.

And what? No, just, whatever. I like a safety word in there, just in case. I don't quite know what it is you're up to with this podcast. But I got to say my mind's a little blown because today, for reasons I don't understand, I've been seated on the opposite side of the table. Now to anyone listening, if you're in your car or you're making love. Oh.

Do you think people listen to you when they're making love? I assume. I think that this podcast is sort of like a Barry White album. No. This is a contraceptive. You think the sound of my voice. This podcast is the abstinence method. It's a boner killer.

You just called this podcast, which by the ways, I think held in high regard, a boner killer? Yes. Yes. No, no, no. I disagree. I think people are listening right now. The sound of my reedy, pinched voice is causing people's erogenous zones to heat and swell. Ew, stop.

Jesus, stop. Ew, God. I think my slightly nasal, gender ambiguous voice is causing babies to just spring forth in the womb. Yeah. What do you think? I think you're the anti-fluffer. I think it's like.

As if there were a problem, you say that on porn sets, they need a fluffer. Yeah. But then sometimes there's a guy whose erection won't go away. Right. And so what they do, they used to have an anti-fluffer who would just hold up pictures of your grandmother playing baseball, but they then found an easier method, automated, which is just to play, and needs a friend. Right.

And the sound of my voice would cause the erection not only to fall, but the penis then to curl up inside the abdominal wall of any male. Is that what you're saying? Yes. Yeah. Yes, that's what I'm saying. Anti-fluffer. And then, yeah, yeah.

And for the penis to come back out again, it would need to be coaxed with various candies. Oh, candies. Promises of maybe, oh, we'll go see a movie, we'll take you to a movie, you know. I ain't coming out. Staying in here. No, don't worry. Conan's gone. Conan's gone.

I'm not gonna come out. Just come on out. We turned off. Conan O'Brien needs a friend, penis. You can come out. Don't trust you. I was gonna stay in here for a while, and he'll have abdominal cavity. Penis, you can come out.

We turned it off. I like it in here. It's got a magazine. You've got a magazine, do you? Yeah. I'm reading the Atlantic. Oh, you're reading the Atlantic? I have a question.

What kind of candy gets a penis to come out from the abdominal wall? Well, I'm not asking for meat. No, no, I know. I know. You gotta coax them out, but they love a gummy worm. Oh, that makes sense, I guess. Yeah, they love a gummy worm because it looks sort of like, you know, like a friend they might have known, maybe, earlier. They like a sour patch.

I do, too. But anyway, okay, well, that happened. Yeah. I don't know how we got into that. Well, because you're sitting cat-a-corner from Sona. Yeah, usually, Sona and I are side-by-side, and this time we're cat-a-corner, and I think, I'm gonna try and do the forensics on what just happened. But I believe what happened is that we were talking about, it's so weird to be on this side, and then I imagined people doing it while they were listening to the podcast, and then you said, oh, no one's listening while they're doing it.

Right. And by doing it, I mean sexual congress. You didn't have to explain it. Okay. And then you said, no, the show's a boner killer, and then, Matt, you were quite happy to say that it's actually probably destroy semen. Yeah, I think it's a sterilization tool. It's mass sterilization. Okay.

Yeah. The fertility rates. You know, I've been contacted by the Chinese government, very interested in using, they want to use this podcast. Try and keep population levels lower. So, all right, well, that was a wake-up call for me. Yep. It's a little boner killer, O'Brien, here. I'm just very unhappy right now.

You know, I shouldn't be. I shouldn't be unhappy because, no transition here, but I was gonna say, we've got a guest who's definitely not a boner killer, but what does that mean? That's creepy, too. That's awful. What does that mean? Do you know what I mean? That's awful. Everything's awful.

I'm trapped right now in this thick mud, and I can't, anything I do is wrong. So, I can't say my next guest definitely gets the old Johnson at full staff because that, what does that mean? That's weird. That's crazy. I can't say that. There's no transition. I'm stuck. So, I'm just gonna have to say, you know, am I happy?

Yeah. Don't make that noise. Okay, that's no good. Yeah. My guest today is an absolutely hilarious actor and musician. You know him as the lead singer and guitarist of the rock band Tenacious D, and from such movies as School of Rock, Tropic Thunder, and Jumanji. Welcome to the jungle. The sequel, Jumanji, the next level, is in theaters Friday.

Ladies and gentlemen, the very funny, multi-talented... Jack Black is with us. Jack, look at you. You're a huge star now. That's right. Remember when we first met and I said, you'll never be a star. Remember that? That was so cruel, but it planted a seed in me to say, I will prove Conan wrong.

I told you, I took you by the shoulders and I looked you in the eye and I said, as sure as I draw breath, you will never have success in this business. You know, the first time we crossed paths, wasn't it when I came on your show to replace Andy Richter? That was my bit. That was my comedy bit. I don't know if that was the first time you came on, but you did a hilarious bit where you were auditioning to be the new sidekick. Yes. To replace Andy. Yes, well, because Andy was...

Absolutely hilarious. Well, he had announced that he was going to peel off for a while. He was going to pursue other things. Yeah. And that's what, yeah. So I took that lane. Yeah. That comedy lane.

You came in hard and you said, I want to be Conan's sidekick. Yes. And I wrote a new sidekick song. We're going to put this up online because it's absolutely hilarious. It's still one of the funniest things. It's the best thing I've ever done, but I did feel a little bad because it was so, I was enjoying it so much. And Andy, I could tell he was like, I felt a little bit like embarrassed that I was pointing so much attention at his impending departure. Right.

And relishing at how much better I would be at sidekicking. You know what, but it could never have worked. It couldn't have worked because of our, you know, you're just, you're one of those, you're one of those horses that can't be broke. You know, that's the problem. It's true. You're two, so what's your problem? Sorry. What is your problem?

That analogy is really funny. No, you're just, you're one of those crazy stallions that came out of the hills. And everyone's like, wow. You know, Andy, yes, he has pride in everything, but eventually I broke him. I broke Andy and now he's a mule. He's a mule. It's just, just clapping along and he's taking kids on a five dime ride through the past. But you, Jack Black, you can't be broke.

Yeah. No, it would have come to blows when you tried to break me. Yeah. We would have, yeah, we would have butted heads. And the way I break sidekicks is literally getting on their backs and wearing a cowboy hat and trying to ride them. And I, it's, it's embarrassing. It's an embarrassing and often confusing scenario. That's not a sidekick really.

That's more of a ride kick. You and your rhyming. It's all about the rhymes to me. I can't help it. You know, I remember the first time I heard your name was from Bob Odenkirk. Yeah. Bob Odenkirk said to me years ago, a tenacious D there's, and I remember very clearly him telling me tenacious D and I was like, wait, what's a tenacious D?

Cause I didn't know. And he was like, these guys are hilarious. And then eventually you and I met and the first time we met, you came out on the air. And I think I interviewed you or talked to you. And then in the commercial break, you leaned over and Robert Smile and I had written this really weird TV pilot. And you had also done a really weird TV pilot that had become sort of like weird underground cult status. You leaned over and you whispered in my ear, look well. Like, like it was a secret to open a cave or something.

And I was like, oh, you've seen look well. And you're like, look well, man. I saw it. I had a tape of a tape of a tape of a tape. And then I talked to you about your amazing pilot you made. Yeah, I made one with Ben Stiller at the helm. What's it called? It's called.

It was called Heat Vision and Jack. Heat Vision and Jack. And that was Dan Harmon, who now has this incredibly successful cartoon on the air, Rick and Morty. He wrote that pilot for me about, cause we had a little meeting at Swinger's Cafe. And Ben Stiller got us together and said, you guys should collaborate together. And I'll produce it and maybe direct it if I like it. And so we got together and we were riffing on ideas. And I was just like, well, my favorite show growing up was Six Million Dollar Man.

It'd be really cool if you could write a comedy where, you know, I have enhanced powers like Six Million Dollar Man. And he just took that and ran with it. And he and his friend Rob wrote this thing that was a combination of Six Million Dollar Man and Night Rider, where like I rode a talking motorcycle. It's hilarious. If you've got to find it and watch it. I'm sure this is old news to people with lots of comedy cred, but if you haven't seen it, Heat Vision and Jack is, and it's funny because your superpower is that when you're hit with sunlight,

is it sunlight or moonlight? It's sunlight. When you're hit with sunlight, you become the smartest man in the world. And so there's actually this moment where I think you're in like a jail or something and the sun is moving its way slowly across the room and then it goes up the bars and it hits you. And you, it's this really cheesy effect and you just say, I know everything. Yes. I know everything.

And that's what happens. And it would have happened every episode, you know, when I was in a really tight situation. Somehow I would gain access to sunlight and I would solve the problem. Somehow gain access to sunlight, the most readily available. But sometimes I'd see, you know, indoors and I couldn't get the sunlight. So there would have to be the reflection of a thing and a thing or whatever. But it was a really funny, stupid pilot and it borrowed a little bit from Charlie Kaufman where you take someone real like he did with being John Malkovich.

Yep. And you create a fiction around him. Yep. And we had this guy because I was from NASA and I was this astronaut that was on the run from the government and NASA because they wanted to chop out my brain and study how can he be the smartest in the world. And the head of NASA security, this just incredible killing machine was Ron Silver, the actor. Yes. Also known as the actor Ron Silver.

But then the thing you didn't know about Ron Silver is he was this killing machine. Yeah, and it's such a great choice because Ron Silver, it was not an obvious choice. Yeah. You know, it was so great that Ron Silver is, yeah, he's busy being an actor, but he's also got this other thing he does, which is he's a killing machine for NASA. Yeah. So here's my point because I always have a point because I'm very, very good at this. It sounds like you're killing time.

If you're trying to think of a point. No, no, no, here's my point and I'll tell you about this point when it comes. It's not a time killing measure, but points are important. No, like Heat Fission and Jack, you probably thought this is the path and then it gets turned down. Then it's, okay, what is it going to be next? Is it going to be music? Is it going to be, how do I find what is Jack Black? Yeah, I had lots of swings and misses.

You're trying to take me down this road where it was better than it didn't get picked up. It was meant to be, but I disagree. There's a sliding door reality where Lookwell was the biggest hit comedy of all time. But yeah, be that as it may. Well, now I'm depressed. I'm sorry to do that to you. So there's an alternate reality where I own a Greek island because I've created pretty much the Friends of 1990. Well, I'm just saying that, yeah, you can swing and miss and that's not the end.

It's just they're all like steps on a ladder. Right. Like me and Kyle did a movie called Pick of Destiny. Nobody went to see it and did not get good reviews. It was clearly a miss on all counts. But here we are, you know, 15 years later, still going on tour and we still play those songs. Those songs from that movie. From Pick of Destiny, yeah.

The biggest reaction of our whole set because, you know, that little movie that nobody liked at the time has over time gotten a little cult status amongst, you know, your heavy metal stoners of the world. That's a slightly bigger group than you think. You know, I used to think that you were a music guy who became a comedy guy. And that's really not the case. You were, you picked up the guitar late. Yeah.

Relatively late. I got going around 23 years old, which is not usually when you start a musical. That's me. That's me too. I think I started when I was 22. Yeah. And it was, me, just a lack of, I didn't have money. I was kind of a shitty drummer.

I had a drum set. I came to LA in 1985 and I thought, you can't have drums in LA. I have a $380 a month apartment. You're going to let me have, you know, the landlady isn't going to let me have a drum set. And who would I play with? So I remembered going to a pawn shop and getting a freedom guitar in Hollywood and getting a $90 guitar and a little court book, the Mel Bay court book and saying, well, When you self taught.

For a while. And then I was wise enough and smart enough. And I recommend this to anyone out there listening, get a talk show with a band. And then every day you're with someone who's like, no, no, no, no, you slide up the neck this way. Thanks a lot. But you got, I mean, you dove into it strong. I dove into it, but I had my Jim Aveeno early in Kyle gas.

He was my buddy from the actors gang theater here in LA. He was the one leaning on you to get better and better and better. No, I was leaning on him to teach me his ways to make me a rock star. I wanted him to guide me and I would bring him Jack in a box food in exchange for guitar lessons. And we would record the jams that we would do. And then we would go stony playback. That was our thing.

Let's smoke a J and then listen back to what we did. That's called stony playback. We have to do that with the, with the podcast. I would love to do that. I know you. Yeah. I mean, I won't partake, but I'll watch you. Don't be a square.

Hey man, you might be a narc. What if all this time Sona was a narc. She's just biting her time over a 10 year period to catch, to catch me. But you know what's cool is so you have, you get all of this accolades and you create a lot of joy with tenacious D and I understand you just, you and Kyle just worked with Mr. Jack White, your opposite in all things. Yeah. You worked with Jack White and you cut an album at third man records.

We had this opportunity because we were going on tour through the South doing Texas and all these different places and we were going into Nashville where his headquarters now are. He moved from Detroit to Nashville. Oh, I've been there, but I think he's still got a finger and a toe in each place. Like I think he's got a little Detroit headquarters as well. I think he does. Yeah.

He heard that we were coming there and he said, Hey, when you guys come to Nashville, why don't you stop buying, lay down some hot tracks at my studio. We'll do this cool thing where it doesn't take any time. You can like come right before soundcheck and just record live to vinyl in this weird like antique booth the way they used to back in the olden times. And we were like, well, we have to do it. We can't say no to Jack White's invitation. If for no other reason, just to hang out with Jack White, it'd be very foolish to bypass

that opportunity. Why did you do that to the word foolish? It was no reason. It comes from insecurity. I go for weird pronunciation comedy. But anyway, so we say yes, but we don't know what we're going to sing. I don't want to sing an old song. We have to write a new song for Jack White, you know, and so we wrote this, this little

jam basically on the way to the studio about how nervous we were about jamming with Jack White and for him in his studio and making just wanting to do so well, wanting to rock so hard. Don't blow it, Cage is the name of the song. Don't blow it, Cage. Just play the best shit you've ever fucking played. And so Jack White's like, you know what, guys, there's actually a couple options. We can do the thing where I put you in the weird antique booth where you just play live

and it goes right on to an album or you could come over to my house to my home studio and we could do like a slightly souped up version of that in my home studio and it'll be like more legit and like we can track it. Yep. And we're like, we're doing that one, the better one, because mainly we want to see what your house looks like. Yep. We want to gain access to the inner sanctum.

So we go over to his house and, oh my God, my itchy trigger finger was so hot on my phone I wanted to be snapping photos, but he was like, as soon as we got there, it was like, guys, if it's cool, no photos. Yeah, yeah, no, of course, of course not no photos. So we go in through the house and it's like a museum. It's like you would expect with Jack White because he's always been a visual artist along with his music. There's always been this kind of aesthetic, right?

Oh my God, yes. The colors and the shapes and the things. A lot of thought goes into, yes, micro details in the house and like funny, strange rooms that have jokes to them. Like there's these, there's this gorgeous like throne room where you would go and sit in the throne and this chair was ornate and filled with details. And on either side of the throne, there's these two giant lions, taxidermy lions that are, and he's like, that's where I go to read if I just want to read between the lions.

No. No. You're supposed to read between the lions. You may say boo. And this now. I say boo. I say yay. But I was wandering through there and I was thinking, God, why can't I take pictures?

Why wouldn't he want to share this with the world? Why would he keep this all hidden and secret? And then I realized why. I didn't say anything then, but I was thinking, this is his Graceland. Yeah. Someday when he dies, people will wander through these. It'll be open to the public. Right.

I need to make my Graceland. We all have to make our Graceland. Well, here's the revelation I had because I got to hang out with him in Nashville a bunch of years ago and we, we, we made an album with my band and I'm at Third Man Records and I'm thinking, what is it about this place? Because there's all this crazy stuff on the wall. They'll be like, like you said, like some kooky antique taxi-dermied animal that has a digital clock in its skull.

And then there'll be, oh, you know, like a weird machine in the corner that's a fortune-telling machine from 1911. And then you notice that everyone who works for him is wearing their dress in a certain way. The guys are all wearing bowler hats and they look kind of like hip Hasidim. And then the women are all wearing another, another kind of different costume. There's no rhyme or reason to anything. And then I had this revelation.

He's a Batman villain. I had this revelation, which is he's a Batman villain. And you know what? The only place I've seen this before is on Batman because if you're the Penguin, you hire 15 people and you say- Adam West, Adam West era. Yeah. And you say, and you, you've hired 15 people and you say, you're all dressing like penguins

and they're like, okay, and we're going to put penguins all over the place. Sure. And then you have the abandoned macaroni factory on the bad side of town. So that, that was my big revelation is that he's an insane superhero villain that really exists. And I also was trying to picture, what if you're the UPS guy who, and that's your part of your delivery route. Yeah.

And you come to the door and you go, yeah, I've got a, a Gaddling gun. I've got a World War I Gaddling gun that's been turned into an Edison era music player and it has fur on it. And to be, to be Jack White at the door going, yeah, wrong address. That's not for me. You asshole. I know it's you. But if he's the Batman villain who is the Batman, that's the problem is he doesn't have a Batman

to battle against. Right. Unless you say maybe the black keys. Yeah, exactly. But they don't, they don't, well, it could be a Batman and Robin those two. Yeah, sure they are. It's two of them. It's two of them.

They're not playing along though. They don't have like the costumes. We don't know what to do. They need to step the costume game up. We don't know what they do at night. They might be protecting us all, the black keys. There must have been a day when you realized I can do things with my eyes. I can make my eyes, crazy jack-o-lantern eyes.

There's a day where you catch yourself doing that in the mirror and you're like, got it. I've got that. That's one arrow. My earliest memory of getting attention, I had, as you know, I was obsessed with the six million dollar man. And I did get some wires from the garage and put them up my sleeve and hid them though in the sleeve, tucked them away so that you wouldn't, it would, if I was at school and they would accidentally come out, then people would think, oh, and then I would hide them.

I don't want you to see these wires, then people would think I was bionic and I had bionic powers. And so that's not really comedy, but it's deeply sad, but it's from the same place of wanting to get attention and be special. Very radiohead. I'm a creep. Yeah. Wish I was special.

But oh, here's one. This is not politically correct, but back in the day of, you remember a weird alley Yankeve at the height of his powers in the seventies, there was a song before Weird Owls, My Balona, the song that was making fun of My Chirona. There was a song called Ayatollah that was making fun of My Chirona. And me and some other kids did a cover of that at the school assembly, and we had the turbans and the beards, and it just killed. The funniest thing that ever happened to Hermosa Beach North School, but I don't recommend

doing that now. That gag did not age well. It was of its time. Yeah. But that was an early experience that gave me the bug of going, this could be a fun, I love to make people laugh, and I was doing like improv, I remember at a Passover Seder, we went to a friend's house, a friend of the family, and she was this red lady who was a Holocaust survivor, and she was really intense.

But then after we finished the Seder, she said, now it's time to play the freeze game. And we went to the living room and she, and she taught us this old viola-spolen improvisational game where two people go up there and just have a little conversation, and then anyone in the audience can say freeze, and they have to freeze in their body position, then you go up and tap one of them on the shoulder, and they leave, and you take their body position, and you change the scene based on this body position. And I did it all night, and I just kept on saying freeze, and I couldn't stand being in the audience.

I only wanted to be up on stage, which when you think about it, that's a super annoying personality trait, but I think that's what it takes. You have to want it so bad that you've just... Your eyes just... People can't see this on the podcast, but your eyes became demonic as you were talking about it. But it's a hunger. It's a fine line between a sickness of being empty and too needy and actually being meant

for the stage. Well, I'll tell you, my father said to me years ago, early in the run of my late night show, 26 years ago, he said to me, and he's a scientist, he said, oh, I see, and he wasn't doing a joke. He just said, you're making a career out of something that should probably be treated. And it's true. It is actually true. It's, you know, I wish he had said I love you or something, but I'm sure that was coming

later, but no, that's his way of telling me he loves me. It's true. There is a fine line between this is good, this is fun, this is healthy and a great way to make a living, and probably this needs to be medicated in some ways. I think that it's a scary way to make a living because there's so much adrenaline involved with getting up in front of an audience and entertaining them because the idea of not entertaining, going up there and bombing is so terrifying. They're judging you.

So the only way that it works is if you want it so badly that you're willing to risk that kind of humiliation. So it takes a kind of desperation. I don't know many performance that don't have a seat of desperation at their core. Yeah. Again, your eyes got crazy. You really spike. You pick a certain part of the sentence and you go, it's true.

You found my, that's my technique. That's your technique. I've been doing it since sixth grade. Yeah. I'd like a latte, please. And if you could just put a little bit of a pumpkin spice in there, I'd appreciate it. I don't know why I do that. There's just certain words and sentences where I kick into overdrive right in the middle

of the sentence. But also like the way you perform, when you go out, especially, I mean, in comedy and in music, you take it to 11 in a way that I would think it would take you hours to come down afterwards. Oh, yeah. It's hit or miss. You know, sometimes I'll see a performance in a movie and I'll go, good Lord, God take it down, Jack Black.

Your weapon 11, this scene clearly called for a six, but other times it feels great to take it to the maximum. When me and Kyler out there performing with Tenacious D, yeah, I go full throttle and I'm on like a literal high afterwards for sometimes for hours and it's definitely like a drug and that's the sound of green tea still going going down. Hey, kill the whole bottle in one go loop. That was pretty good. I have a little bit of ADHD, I think, where I'll start a sentence and I think I know what

I'm talking about and I think I know where I'm heading with what the point of it is. And then I'll lose it in the middle of the sentence. I can't remember what the hell I was talking about or where I was going. That happens to all of us, I think. You know what, it gets worse, I will say. I'm a little older than you. It gets worse over time. I heard that it gets better, though, if you exercise super strenuously.

I read this in the New York Times article just yesterday. I wouldn't know. I was thinking about climbing a mountain later. Do you know what my favorite exercise? I like to push my bicycle up the mountain because it's too hard to ride it up even in the super easy gear that looks ridiculous like a circus performer, by the way. It's like, wait, why don't you just walk? You're pedaling way faster than a person walking next to you would be stepping.

So when you're pushing it up, does it have a little bell? Because the saddest thing in the world is to be pushing a bike. I've done this. Pushing a bike up a hill and then occasionally, ding ding, ring the bell, without ever getting on the bike. I think it's really sweet that you have a bell on your bike. I do. No, I don't have the bell.

It's a safety. It's a safety thing. It's a safety equipment. I like to mountain bike, and so on the way down, you're supposed to have this bell that's constantly ringing. It just rings because every time you, well, what it is, it's just a bell that you take the clapper or you take the muffler off. So on the way down, you're making a little gajing, gajing, gajing sound.

So if you're coming around a corner, people have warning that a bike is coming down the hill. That's smart. It's smart, but it's also very emasculating. Because, you know, I've got my gear on, and I'm going down the hill and Dustin's fine around you. He's like, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing. I've got ice cream for everyone.

It's just, I don't know, it takes some of the cool factor out of it. You could just, like, put a card, a baseball card, or something in between your spokes, right? to do that to make a frrrr sound. Well then people will just think a Blackjack dealer is coming down the hill. Someone's shuffling out behind them. You're quite the gamer, aren't you?

I do enjoy gaming, but I have to say, as of late, I've been all about my iPhone games, which has ruined my console gaming. Like I used to be all about my Xbox and PlayStation. And I still haven't even conquered Red Dead Redemption part two, which I was so anticipating for years. You know what, I was actually,

I heard so much hype about Red Dead Redemption two that I was going to get it. And my son is a really talented at computers, and he built a computer for me so I could play games. I mean, I gave him the, I said, look, if you build this thing, it's a really cool thing. And he did it with his friend. I'll buy the parts.

So they put together this really cool computer for me to just, you know, so I could do Red Dead Redemption two. And then before I even got the game, people were telling me, people who are good at games were saying, yeah, so far I've just been wandering around and collecting hay for my horse. And I saw like, well, how long you've been playing?

About six weeks. What else did you do? I got some wax and I put them on my chaps. And then I got more hay for my horse and some oats. And then my horse wandered off, so I had to go find my horse. And that took about six weeks. And I got dispirited before I even tried it.

So yeah, you never even saddled up. I didn't saddle up. That game is, from what I've gathered, it's more like living life really than playing a game. Right. And I'm playing a game where I live life called living life. I don't need to do that. You can choose to be more proactive

and get to the story and get to the next piece. Oh, I see. So I can just press a button and it gets me to, you get yours, let's draw, that kind of thing. Yeah, you can avoid the conflict and just, you know, go buy some moonshine and wander through the desert aimlessly. Or you can go where you know the story wants you to go.

I just, it's a real commitment, a time commitment that my phone has taken so much of those. So what are you doing on your phone? It's all, right now, it's all about WGT golf. What? And it's really embarrassing because. What are you talking about? Golf? It's a golf game.

Yes, that's it. And you do it on your phone? Yes. Do you do a swipe to do the swing? Yes. And it's extremely satisfying and truth be told, expensive. How is it expensive? It's just horrifying because they figured me out.

They know my brain and I have a little bit of OCD and there's a bunch of choices of clothing that you can wear. And the clothing doesn't just look rad, which is important to me. I do want my avatar to look super sharp. But, and also a big mistake a lot of people do is like, you got to match. Make sure the socks matches the shirt

and the pants match the hat. No, dude, you look dumb. You look like a circus performer with your weird triangle patterns. You got to go like tasteful top, loose hang-in, green pattern and then not a matching color down below. But. This is so nice.

The main thing with the clothing is that each piece of clothing has a value that helps your game. Like this is going to help your short game. It improves your accuracy on your drive. This one gives you more strength on your drive. And to buy these little pieces of digital clothing, you actually either have to put in tons of hours of work

or you can just buy it and get it done real quick. And I'm not going to tell you how much money I've spent on these clothes, because I don't even know. It's been so much money and it's horrifying. So your children will not go to college because you wanted the avatar on your phone that plays pretend golf to be dressed appropriately. I have set aside some money for their college, but it will.

You'll dip into it, you know you will. Yeah, they're not going to be going to the best college. They're still enough to send them to a good college. Sure, a good state school. Yeah, it's not just money, but hours of time, both. And it's so foolish. I did this with Clash of Clans. My son was really into Clash of Clans,

like four years ago, five years ago, and his friends were into it too. And then he got me into it. And I wanted to partake with my son. You know, I wanted to be part of his world. And so, again, it was like you can spend all this time slowly making sure that you get a tiny little catapult. Or you can just buy the catapult.

And so I started doing that. And then you see this little like, bloop, you know, like Mastercard Charge, bloop, you know. And you don't think that much about it because each one is so small. And then I started, I remember showing my son and his friends. And I'm like, check out my fortress. And so he and his friends online checked out my fortress.

And his friends were like, wow, you know, your dad's got the cannon that shoots lava. And he's also got the special massive dinosaur bird that drops boulders. And he's got six of them positioned on each. And I was getting some props from my kids. And then my son was like, you're buying this stuff, aren't you? And I was like, yeah.

And then I started to, I think I checked a bill and it was, oh my God. I could have bought an okay watch. And instead I've defended something that doesn't exist to impress friends of my son that I haven't met. It was bad. And that's when I had to go cold turkey. And I think that fort exists somewhere.

You cut yourself off? I cut myself off. No, that fort has definitely been raided since then. You can't just leave a delicious fort like that out in the open. It's a really good fort. And I think it's been raided and pillaged and destroyed. No, those things take maintenance to protect them.

I know. They're so smart, these gaming companies. And you carry it around in your pocket while you're waiting for the dentist or anything. You can't do that with the console games. You wait for the dentist? Yes, I wait. Now you're doing it all wrong, man.

My golf. I show up and I go, Conan O'Brien's here. Everyone shit themselves. I actually say that. I say, I'll just be sitting in this chair now. You're sitting on an old woman, Mrs. Hepstein. Well, I don't see her television show. Does she have a television show?

You're hurting me. Toss. Crunch, that's her bones crunching. She hits the ground. Lie down, that's the sound effect of me lying down. In the end of the seat. It's a lazy sound effect. Lie down, reach.

Those are my sound effects from now on, yeah. When I go to the dentist, I really look forward to that laughing gas. You get laughing gas? And the last time I went, I was hit with a cold fish that they just realized that laughing gas, nitrous, actually is bad for you.

And it's bad for the people that give you the nitrous. They get a little whiff of it on the side. They get like a contact high. It causes something, like it can mess with your reproductive organs. Wow, I never heard of any. I thought laughing gas was something from like the 1950s. I didn't know people still got it.

Yeah, nitrous did. I guess maybe I'm the last of the Mohicans. Anyone else here? Get the laughing gas? My wife does, you know. Amanda, she goes to a chicken dentist because she's afraid of shots. So she gets gas every time.

Only a chicken dentist has it? What does that mean? Like for chickens. For dental chickens. Oh, for scared people. Yes, I'm a chicken. So you don't want to get novocaine? I hate that numbness feeling.

That puffy numbness? Oh, I don't like it. I just didn't know there was an alternative. I've never been offered gas. The gas, you'd have to ask for it. They've got it. They just don't offer it. And now especially since they found out about the Yorkans.

And I don't think you can get it. I'm not having kids anymore, so. That's what I'm saying. Gas them. Gas them balls. But the thing that's great about the gas. Wait, they're going to gas the balls? That's how they do it now.

Oh, they put a little mask, two masks over each testicle, and gas the balls. Sweet. Here's the thing that's great. I got to do this now. So now book me a dental appointment with a pervy old dentist. Ask for the ball gas.

Yeah, I want, hey, say Conan's coming and he's going to want ball gas. And he's going to sit on any old woman who's in the chair when he gets in. OK. You get the gas, the gas you up, and you're just blitzed. You're like, nah. And my mind just travels and wanders

to strange exotic places. It's a wonderful blazing high. And then as you're coming down, they switch it to oxygen, just pure oxygen. So it flushes all of the toxins out, and you're good to go. So you're perfectly, it wears off, and then there's no pain. Or are you aware of the pain, but you don't care? OK, I do it even just for like a cleaning.

You do it for a cleaning? I actually go in there, and I don't need dentistry at all. Just like hooking up that juicy ball gas. Are you sure you're even seeing a dentist? I think you're just going to a place where they just put on ESPN. They send you to a special world. Remember when Woody Harrelson had oxygen bars?

Yeah, I do remember that. It was just like that. It's just Woody Harrelson. I go over to his house. Any gas is my balls. Man, I wish you had that at your house and that I was invited. What happened to that oxygen bar thing? That didn't really take off.

I think they realized that it's in the air. And you know what I mean? It's one of those things where it's like you'll go to a special place, and you'll get oxygen, and we'll charge you. And then someone realized that, oh, well, no. Wasn't it flavored, though, fruity pebble flavor? I don't remember that.

I never went. I never experienced it. I imagine it was based on that rad movie. Did you ever see that incredible movie, Herald and Maude? Yes. And you remember she had a little oxygen bar in her house, and he would take a whiff. And she would say, what do you smell?

And he'd be like, hot fresh buttered popcorn at the movie theater. Oh, autumn breeze in the sunset strip. Oh, winter in my, you know. Yeah. You remember that actor, right? Bud Court. Bud Court and the legendary, what's her name?

You say it first, because I know it. Her name? Yep. We both know it. She's like the best actress of all time. She was fantastic. I don't remember. Ruth Gordon.

Exactly. I was waiting for you, and you got it. She knocked it out of the park in that movie. That was the movie about the 80-year-old woman and the 20-year-old boy. Classic. Falling in love. One of the, it's like the first cool, quirky, independent

movie. Yeah. They ever made. It might be time for Carol and Maude Redux. You know what I mean? Who are you going to cast? Good question. In the role.

Did you not have time to say question? You didn't have time for question? It's just more fun with the pronunciation. Ruth Gordon. She didn't do a lot of movies. And I don't remember Ruth Gordon from before she was 70. You know what I mean? No, no, there's no.

If you had this run, no one's had a run like this. Starting at 70 and ending at 80, that was just crushing, crushing, crushing. Do you think she knew her whole life? People were like, eh, sorry, Ruth. It didn't quite work out for you. Just you wait when I turn 70. I don't know much about her.

I'd love to, I should do a little research on her because she's a fascinating lady. I assume that she was a writer because she had that kind of approach to acting where it was like she's such a brilliant actor. It feels like she had the mind, a writer's mind. Can you kind of tell when you see a performer who is also a writer?

Yeah, I think I can. She was a writer. She was a writer. Look at that. Yeah, numerous plays, film scripts, and books, most notably co-writing the screenplay for the 49 film Adam's Rib. That's a great movie.

She was a Broadway actress at 19. Oh, damn. So she was acting all the way back in the day. She was, but she probably knew the whole time. At 70, I'm putting this into hyperdrive, which is what I intend to do. I'm holding back. What an inspiration.

And who saw us going there? That's the magic of this podcast. You never know where we're going to end up. That's right. And we ended up with you regularly, Gas Your Balls. Yeah, and Dream of Ruth Gordon. Dream of Ruth Gordon. This is the beginning of a true friendship.

Don't you think now we've crossed paths many times over the years. I've a huge admirer of yours. And now I feel like there's a real friendship here that will. It's really going to get in the way of my WGT golf time, though, which is literally all the time. So if you would really an annoying one, I have to stop playing my WGT golf to do anything.

So you think the chances are you and I won't hang together because of your WGT golf on your phone. I'd love to make a date to push bikes up a mountain. And I'd love to hear them bells jingling, jangling on the way down. It's all about the way down, you know what I mean? Oh, yeah. The punishment of pushing the bike and the embarrassment

as you cross people are like, oh, nice push in there. Because everyone knows you're supposed to be riding it, but it's too hard. Right. So you're pushing it up. But when you get up to the top and you look down, you're like, I'm going to ride this baby all the way home. Because I'm next to a hill, like in the Los Feliz area.

Got it. Griffith Park Hills. Nice. You come riding down that hill, you can ride it all the way home. I tell you my dream, my dream, and this is real, is a fantasy of mine, is I've had friends, because I ride with these other guys at Mountain Bike, I have friends that ride up in the hills above LA

and they've encountered like a bobcat, you know? And the bobcat usually looks at them and then walks away. I want to be on my bike and encounter a bobcat and fight it. I really do. I really want to fight it. And I know I'd get somewhat hurt, but I know that I would come back out of the hills and people would have a real respect for me

for the first time in my life. I would fucking fight a bobcat. I would come back, so I mean, can't you see this? Like I'd be scraped and scratched and I would have wrestled the cat. And the cat eventually, and I would have parted company, and then they'd be... You would have been murdered.

What, what do you mean? Wouldn't you? Would I be killed? Yeah, very easily murdered. Who is? Yeah, not murdered, but killed. You're murderable. Yeah, you're very easily killable.

So I think you would be killed. I would cover my throat the whole time, because that's where they try and get the jugular. That'll help. I would have one hand covering my jugular and the other, I would just be swatting at this bobcat. No. No?

No. You'll die. You'll die quickly. There was a story about a guy who was attacked and fought and killed a bobcat. Yes, I saw that. Not that long ago, like a year ago maybe. And it seemed like he was this heroic figure

for the first like 24 hours of this story coming out. And then the next day a little morse came out that it was actually a tiny little baby bobcat that he had murdered, and it was less heroic. And it was sleeping. Or just sort of sad, but no. Then he had the next day after that, it was like, no, you don't understand.

Even though it was a little one, it was really dangerous. And it was still self-defense. Yeah. I was almost killed. Right, it turned out that he had four machetes and it was sleeping. So at the end of the day, he was 50-50 hero and 50-50. No, I think it's 80-20.

80 douche, 20 hero. I feel like that would be kind of your story coming down to the bottom. They would find out later on, no, that's a cat. It was Bobcat's gold-tweight. Yeah, it was Bobcat gold-tweight. Bobcat gold-tweight was sleeping on a park bench taking a nap in Santa Monica,

and you rode by, got off your bike, and hit him with a manhole cover. So, well, this has been a real joy. I, you are one of the most enjoyable fellows in the whole business of show. Oh, well, it's a feeling of mutual. No, please. It's true.

Well, it's really, you know, stretch that thought out a little bit in about 10 minutes. Feel free to snip and cut if there's any long, awkward sections where I rambled on. No, no, no, we like to only have the long, awkward sections. Cool. It's called long and awkward with Conan O'Brien.

That's you. What? That's you. Yeah. Oh, God. I don't like the way this ended. All right, Jack, you're a great man. Thank you very much for being here.

Thank you kindly. Every so often, I think it's good to do a state of the podcast, sort of a state of the union thing. Your voice started really high there. It did? Did you hear that? Every so often.

You went, every, do you hear that, Sonna? A little bit. Yeah, you went every so often. But anyway, I think go ahead. I don't want to criticize or make you feel self-conscious. No, you've never done that. Go ahead. Okay, so I thought we'd check in

and see where we are. I'm really having a great time. I'll admit, I was a little worried. Oh my God, we're gonna do this a second season and what if it starts to feel like a job? I think we have retained our level of unprofessionalism. I think it's as foolish as ever. Trickles down.

Yeah. We should be commended on our levels of maintaining this unprofessionalism. Yes, I think so. And yeah, I've been really having a good time and loving the guests this season. And just enjoying it, really enjoying it. And for me to truly enjoy myself is unheard of.

Mm-hmm, yeah. So, Sonna, what about you? That's cool. No, I'm sorry. You see an edible fell out of her mouth when she said that? No, I'm fine. Are you okay?

Yeah, I'm fine. Okay, it's all good, right? What are you doing? I don't know, seem a little buzzed. I'm not buzzed. Okay. Don't do that. It's 1130.

It is, it's 1130. I didn't do anything. Okay. If it worked for you, you'd be high all the time. That's great. If I worked for me, I'd be high all the time. Yeah, you'd put it in your breakfast. I'm a lovely boss, I think.

Oh, huh. I really do. Yeah, I am a good boss. We were just talking about how you called my dad, Gepetto, because he has a mustache and you said he made my brother out of wood. Yeah, your father. It's true, when I first met your father,

I saw that he had this big white mustache and then you have an older brother and then I started imitating your father by putting my finger under my nose, pretending it was a mustache and talking about how he carved. He wanted a boy, so he carved your brother, Danny, out of wood.

And then Danny came to life and started trading in stocks. Yeah, are you proud of yourself? Yeah, I thought it was pretty funny. I remembered you actually laughing really hard at the time. It was, it was funny. It was funny. And I love your dad.

I danced with your dad at your wedding. We did a crazy dance together. And people threw money on you. Yes, people were throwing money. It's an Armenian, I guess, tradition that they throw money up in the air. And so I remember just getting showered with dollar bills while I was doing an insane dance with your father

and I couldn't keep up with your dad. He must jazzercise constantly. It was amazing what your dad was able to do. Yeah, no, but you did really well. You did. That's a video. It's out there. It's a video that's out there.

It's Conan dancing at my wedding with my dad and people throwing money and it's really, it was really fun. And I made $66 that day. You took the money? I actually, I fought a child. There was a little boy that came out who must have been four years old.

I think it was one of your nephews. Pinocchio. Yeah, a little Pinocchio. He was, I mean, he was made of wood, but he was slowly coming to life. And I remembered he was picking up the dollar bills off the floor and I thought, I'm the one that danced. So I gave him a hockey hip check

and he went flying into some baklava. And I picked up all the money. Like an exotic dancer. Yeah, and stuffed it into my pants. Like a freak. Yeah, those were good times. That was a great wedding. Thank you.

Yeah, really good. So I was invited. So the state of the podcast is pretty good. I would say, look, there's a lot of, we have a little bit of dysfunction here at the show. But I do think that it's real. Here's what I'm learning about as I do this podcast. I'm learning.

Sona, I love that the real you comes across. Sona's gift, I think on this podcast, is that she is always 100% herself. And I've seen you in, you meet all these famous people and you're always just Sona. You don't freak out. You're always like, oh, hi, you know, Hillary Clinton

or hi famous person and you're just yourself. Gourly, I'm learning that you are a God in the podcast here. Every time guests come in here, they're like, oh, I love your podcast. Jim Jim and with jub-jub or flip-flop and squub-squub. You know, you have all these. Squub-squub's good. Thank you.

That's my pattern. You have like, I guess you've, have you hosted like 40 podcasts? Something ridiculous like that. It's not, I'm not proud of it. Why? Well, it's ridiculous. It's absurd.

I mean, some of them are truly absurd. No, but you get a lot of street cred. When people come in here and I'm always surprised, cause sometimes it'll be, you know, someone who I won't think will know you. Yeah, me too. Like a Robert Carroll, like a great historian is in his 80s.

He did not. Yeah, he came in and he was like, oh my God, you do flub-flub on the Squanto. And I love it. I love the one, you know. Robert Carroll did improv with you. Yeah, yeah. Remember the time you went on it?

We did improv, we did improv together, really, yeah. He's a regular at UCB. So anyway, I was, that's what I'm learning. Well, we, the three of us, we really bring the goods, don't we, in our relative expertise of hosting, of podcasting and of being yourself.

Yeah, it's sort of a, yeah. It's a 95-5, I think, of bringing. Wow. I think that's an accurate. 90-5-5? Yeah. I think I bring an incredible, like 90%, you know, and then. No, I think if this podcast is.

Hey, be happy, be happy with five. I think if this podcast was just you, people would hate you. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. We make you likeable. Yeah, you humanize me. We humanize you. Yeah.

Because you are, you could be. Untrue. Whatever you're gonna say now, you're gonna go too far and say I'm a monster or something. I was actually thinking monster. You know me so well. I was thinking inhuman monster. Yeah, but no, that's not true.

You are, you know what, you are, you are. You know, let's keep in mind. We all love each other. Yes, sure. We love you. Let's keep in mind, Stalin was fun at a party. Okay. Yeah, that makes sense.

Why did you say that, though? That makes sense, yeah, I think that's right. Why would you say that? Have I collectivized farms? Have I displaced millions? Yes, in my own way, I have. But at a party, I'm really fun. Well now, Stalin had a kind of Gepetto mustache.

He did, you know. Okay, thanks for comparing it with my dad. Yeah. That was nice. You just did a nice tie-in. That was good, thank you for that. At least in my telling, so in his dad as a kindly man,

who all he wants is a boy, in yours, he's probably the worst mass murder in history. Well, you were likening yourself to Stalin. Only in the good qualities, in that I love to talk to my staff late at night at parties where I forced them to drink a lot of vodka and I'm incredibly paranoid. And yeah.

I don't like it. You don't like what now? You compared yourself to Stalin and then you got angry that I was gonna go call you a monster. But you yourself, you do it to you. You're just, you know what? I don't know, I'm over it.

Yeah. Well. We're walking out. We're unionizing. That was the least coherent clapback. Yeah, well you just, because you, but I'm over it. Gloop.

Wow. Sona claps back incoherently. Hey, guess what? The English language just clapped back at you. This is a full on Twitter feud between you and the English language. Oh my God. Oh, come on.

Sona, we're just having a good time here. Everyone have some vodka. Come on. Oh, thank you. Thank you. Go, go, go, go, go, go. Well, the state of the podcast is strong. I really don't think it is.

No, it's not. Strong as ever. Trainwreck. It's barely hanging on. This is, we're going full steam ahead. By a very thin thread. Depth and up a notch here. We go home to our podcast home

where the three of us live. Oh God. Yeah. This is my nightmare. I think the state of the podcast is strong. And I have both of you to thank for that. I thank you. 95-5 still?

Yeah. Well, I'm gonna what? I'm 88. Thanks. You're two in Gorley's 10. That might be, that's actually. If you take this, you get 10. That's accurate though, kind of.

I can't throw you under the bus. Do it. You know you want to. I know, you can't. Favorite nations. No. Yeah. You're not gonna try the wedge.

If you've enjoyed listening to Gorley today, check him out. Are you, what, how many podcasts do you have right now? Right now? Yeah. Two, two, three. Oh, they're clearly very important to you. I know, they come and go, in a way they're not,

but that's why they're fun, right? Nope. I believe in really caring so much about your work that it's an indelible part of your soul. But that's where you and I differ. Oh God. Yeah, I have a soul. Yeah.

Yeah. Conan O'Brien needs a friend. With Sonam of Sessian and Conan O'Brien as himself. Produced by me, Matt Gorley. Executive produced by Adam Sacks and Jeff Ross at Team Coco and Colin Anderson and Chris Bannon at Earwolf. Theme song by the White Stripes. Incidental music by Jimmy Vivino.

Our supervising producer is Aaron Blair and our associate talent producer is Jennifer Samples. The show is engineered by Will Beckton. You can rate and review this show on Apple Podcasts and you might find your review featured on a future episode. Got a question for Conan? Call the Team Coco hotline at 323-451-2821 and leave a message.

It too could be featured on a future episode. And if you haven't already, please 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 Earwolf.