Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend - Maker's On The Rocks

Episode Date: July 15, 2021

Conan chats with Michael from Reno about being a ‘spirits educator’ and which fictional bar he’d go to (and who he would bring along). Wanna get a chance to talk to Conan? Submit here: TeamCoco.com/CallConan

Conan O'Brien needs a fan. Want to talk to Conan? Visit teamcoco.com slash call Conan. Okay, let's get started. Hi Michael, please meet Conan. Michael, how are you? Hello, hello. What a pleasure.

It's a pleasure talking to you, Michael. It's a pleasure. This is my assistant, Sona. Hi. So excited to meet you, Sona. Hey, you too. You, I'm going to say this right away, Michael. I get a very good, cheerful vibe from you.

You seem like a cheerful guy. I do my best to be bright and shiny. I mean, I have my moments, but you know, it's better to be nice than anything else I always find. That's a very nice philosophy. And I agree with you. I don't think I'm bright and shiny. You're not. But I might be spiky and shiny.

I don't know. Where's shininess? I don't know. You catch more bees with honey. Exactly. You catch more bees. You catch a lot of bees with poison gas. No one ever mentions that.

Poison gas and then throw salt on them while they're having their death spasm. No one ever says that. No. Get more bees with honey. Yeah. Try poison gas. I took us on a wrong road. I know.

Here, Michael. I like where we're starting. I always like to start with poison and poison gas. Yeah. Michael, you read my mind. Where are you right now, Michael? I'm in Reno, Nevada. Okay.

Are you at a blackjack table? Where are you specifically? I'm in my office, actually. I'm a consultant and a beverage educator. I'm a spirits educator. So I'm in my office where I take most of my Zoom calls. Oh, that's so funny because I heard that you were a spirit guide before you got on. And I'm realizing, I swear to God, I thought you were a spirit guide.

You're a spirits guide. You're a spirits educator. The S is very important. Yeah. I'm sure there are people that come to you and say, can you help me find my, I want to find my great grandfather, and you say, I can't do that, but I have a really good port for you that you might want to drink. I do a fair amount of necromancy, but not a great deal.

Like I try to limit the amount. We try and, I love, man, here's another thing. He says necromancy. I know. All right. I love it. I love anyone who knows that word and says, I am a necromancer. It's such a menacing word that no one uses anymore.

Lots of drama in that word. Michael, tell me, tell me about this. I'm interested in this. I work with spirits. What does that mean exactly? Do you help develop types of drinks or do you mostly, do you study drinks? What do you do? All of it.

So my principal job as a spirits educator is to talk and teach and get people into products, teach people new things about drinks. I do beverage design for like menus. I design bars. And then my like full-time job, I work for a bartender advocacy agency, which is like a PR firm specifically for bartenders. Okay. That's fascinating.

What do people need? I mean, most people figure out drinking pretty much on their own. You know, don't you think most people, most people are self-taught when it comes to alcohol. They figure out what they like to drink and then they have way too much of it and they get sick. What do you find that you're teaching people about? Sort of more of the refined aspects of certain spirits? I always say I'm the Sherpa up the mountain of alcohol, right?

So my job is to help you find your new favorite thing. Okay. And what are your favorite drinks? What drinks do you... Tell us, what's your favorite drink that you find yourself moving towards in life? I mean, I love a pina colada. I love rum. So like I like a pina colada because they're fun.

Who doesn't want a pina colada? But I love bourbon. You know, I help host a bourbon summer camp that bartenders go to, which is its own magical thing. What? A bourbon summer camp. This sounds so much better than Cragged Mountain Farm where my parents sent me where there were peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and we had to climb the entire presidential mountain range in July in New Hampshire and be eaten to death by mosquitoes and no one had invented

any kind of sun lotion yet. So I just burned up and became a massive pustule. What you just described is a much better camp, a rum camp. It's bourbon. Oh bourbon. Okay. It doesn't matter. I'm going to tell you something.

I have a huge fondness for rum. I really do like rum and I like rum in kind of a fruity punch. And I'm probably not supposed to admit that. But I do like a fruity, rummy drink. Like a rum punch, a planter's punch, if you will. Why can't you admit that? Because I also like it when it has fruit in it floating around. And I like it when there's like a little plastic statue in it too.

But it's on the top of the swizzle stick. I like it to be a drink that emasculates me immediately the minute it's brought to my table. Those are my favorite drinks. Big twisty straw. I like a twisty straw. I love all that stuff. I'm a big guy with a big beard and I like a silly cup.

Like that's my favorite thing is to walk around with like the most ridiculous cup I can find because I like the disarming element of that. You know what also? Michael, you and I are, we are comfortable in our incredible masculinity. Both of us, right? It's a milky white masculinity. I can hold, we'll speak for yourself. People think I'm pale, but in real life, right?

Don't I have the skin of Desi Arnaz? No, you're pale. Very pale. Okay. Thank you. Very pale. So that's cool. You like a rum drink.

You know what I wish? I wish I liked bourbon because bourbon's such a cool drink. Of all the drinks, you can order at a bar if you're a guy. If I walk into a bar or let's just say a saloon and I walk up, okay, and I walk up and the piano stops playing immediately because this badass just walked in who's got his own talk show and podcast. I walk in and I chest up to the bar, belly up to the bar. The bartender says, what's your poison?

I want to say, give me a bourbon. It just sounds cool. Yeah. But I never do. I always first say, do you have Coke Zero? Oh. Try it Coke, but Coke Zero. And if they don't and they're like, sure you don't want a drink, drink, then I'm in this

whole world of, do you have a punch, like a sweet red punch and can you add some rum to it? And then do you have some plastic toys that you could put in it? Yeah, like a little umbrella and the twisty straws and a fun cup. I thought being a history buff, you would love bourbon because bourbon is America's national identity spirit. We're the only country in the world that can make it. Ooh.

Is that true? Yeah. What is that? I mean, we're the only country that's allowed to make bourbon? So cognac is like an identity spirit for France. Like there's a region specific to cognac. It's the same thing for bourbon. You can make it anywhere in America, but you have to make it here and there's rules like

charred American oak and 51% corn and like some other very specific rules that make it bourbon. Okay. Here's what I want you to do because I want to be a cool drinker. That's what I'm aiming for at this stage in my life. Now some people would say you've got children still that are fairly young and a wife maybe should be concentrating on that or on your career. I say no.

I say I want to learn at this stage in my life to be a cool drinker and I want to devote all my energy to that. I want to learn to drink bourbon. So tell me what's the bourbon I should order when I walk into a bar that's going to make me sound cool? Ooh. This is where I get in trouble because I work with lots of brands, but I will say this. So I think the best way to start is MakerSpark, right?

It's a nice, soft, easy bourbon. You want a weeded bourbon? Right down. That's cool. MakerSpark bourbon. And you said what kind of a reedy bourbon? A weeded bourbon. So there's weeded.

What does that mean? So weed, rye, and barley are like the bourbon. Oh, wheat. I thought you said weeded. Yeah. Weed. Like THC bourbon. No.

You don't want that. No. Does that exist? Settle down, Sona. You're expecting twins in like three weeks. No, you can't have any weed-infused bourbon right now. Well, for after. Yeah.

Your twins are going to stumble out. I love you, Mom. You're a killer, Mom. Oh, my God. I love that you want to be cool and you're writing down the suggestions he's giving you. That's what I do. I have a legal pad here and I'm writing MakerSpark, and then you like a weeded bourbon.

So for people like starting out with bourbon, it's a softer flavor, so it's going to be less spice in the back end. And there's no wrong way to drink something you like. So if you want ice in it, go for it. The Coke Zero thing, maybe not. No, we're not going to do that. I'm going to exclude the Coke Zero, but let's say, okay, I walk in and I just go, Maker's Mark Bourbon, and what do I say?

Do I say I want it on the rocks? On the rocks. On the rocks. Maker's Mark, on the rocks, is that what I say? Yeah. You sound very cool. Even when I'm saying it right now, it's not sounding cool, is it? You know, I have a question.

Should we get him like a decanter and those like crystal glasses for him to keep in like his office like they did with like like Don Draper did, you know? You know what? When we grew up watching TV, you guys might be too young for this, but they had shows like Dynasty. And just on every TV show, there was a glass decanter in any room anybody was in, no matter what their profession. I mean, it was, you know, JR Ewing on Dallas, someone would come in for a meeting and someone

would always walk over and they would pour themselves a drink and it could be 11 o'clock in the morning. Yeah. And their profession could be I'm an eye surgeon and they would still go, eye surgery, eh? Performing eye surgery on you, am I? Well, let's just see about that. And then they would pour a drink and go, hmm, we'll remove the retina. And they'd start drinking.

It's a very sexy move, like I think there's very, very few things as sexy as like standing up and pouring yourself like something from a decanter. It doesn't make anything better, but it's a power move at the bare minimum. Yes. And I'll say this and God, I like this guy, Michael. Here's another thing I'll say is that it makes even innocuous things seem evil. You know, if you cross the room, if people came into my room, let's say Sona came into my room and she said, um, uh, yeah, your wife called the, uh, the lawn sprinkler is busted

and it's leaking. Do you think we should get, uh, the, the gardener to come over and put a new lawn sprinkler in? I could cross over. Normally I'd be like, yeah, it's probably the thing to do, but instead I can cross the room and I can go, hmm, sprinkler a and I can remove the top of the glass decanter and pour myself a drink and not looking at Sona, but looking out the window, take a little sip and go, yes, make the call, get it done, see that it's done.

And it's just like all she did the same thing. She called the guy and said, put a new sprinkler in. Yeah. So it's all the same. But then I go, yes, but the aura is nothing but sexy. We'll get that lawn nice and wet. Oh, God, no, why does that sound so awful? Um, well, he's drunk at this point because he's had, he's had to walk across his office

so many times. Yeah. Uh, I'm just staggering the office crashing into things. I'm going to get, I'm going to do this, I'm going to follow your advice and I'm going to do it responsibly because I don't believe in, uh, overindulging. Um, I do think, but I do think that's a good drink that I can have and it's a good sipping drink. And if anyone's around and I do find myself sometimes in a situation where someone says

is offering me a cocktail and I freeze because I am not an experienced drinker. I'm a guy. Sony, you know this. I'll have, I'm a wine drinker, but I'm, I'm not a big beer drinker and I'm not a spirit drinker, but I freeze and I want to say the right thing and it's happened so many times. I'm like, scotch and vodka, like, and they're like, what mixed? What do you mean? I'd be like, no, I mean, I meant, and they're like, do you want two drinks that are separate?

You know what to do. I panic. Well, I think that confidence comes from knowing what you like. And it also, all bars are different, right? You go to some bars that have tequila and some bars that have rum and they're all kind of different. So knowing what you like when you walk in is a big part of it. Yeah.

But I think from now on, my thing is going to be bourbon, please, maker's mark bourbon. I want it on the rocks. And if they go like, well, actually we're tequila, bro, I'll go, fuck you. Oh, yeah. That's the key. Fuck you. And makers mark. Fuck you.

Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. And they'll be like, sir, just please leave. Sir, this isn't even a bar. Sir, you just walked into a juicery. We have a sidebarry and we have, fuck you, bourbon, sir, please, please get off the

bus. Sir, get off this bus immediately. You're frightening the children. Fuck you. We are an elementary school bus. Oh, bourbon, fuck you. Man, I love this guy. Michael, you've changed my life.

You've made me cool. You've given me a drink. I do. Yeah. Is there any way I can help you? No. Is there any way I can help you? You know, honestly, I hope that now, like, makers mark will pay me, but for this wonderful

product placement, I've done for them, but. I think they should. What's your full name, Michael? My name is Michael Moberley. Michael Moberley and you live in Reno and you work in the spirits business. I'm sure, look, if makers mark doesn't reach out to you, first of all, they may reach out to me and trust me. I did not ever get into the podcast business or in television for any kind of recompense.

I always meant my work to be free. Anywho. You do so many ads. Please. There's no time, Sona. Okay. No, I never, never wanted to profit in any way. That's not what I'm about.

But my point is if, please, if they do reach out to me, I'll make sure that you receive the benefits. I appreciate that. If they send me a free bottle, I'll, well, I'd keep the bottle because you probably have enough. Well, I can say if they're going to do anything, the distillery, if you can go to Kentucky, do Bards down, see the distilleries, the history there, the buildings there, the people who work there.

It's unbelievable. Like, you get to see people every step of the way and Makersmark has a beautiful facility. Are they all drunk as they're working? Well, so barrels are really heavy and all this stuff is very flammable, so you can't be that drunk. But like after four o'clock, most people are feeling, feeling their way out of the distillery. Well, you just lost anything you were going to get from Makersmark. I tricked you into blowing it all up.

Classic Conan switcheroo. Old switcheroo. Michael, it's been a delight talking to you. You're really a funny guy. Well, I appreciate that very much. That means the world to me. Oh, did you have a question for me, by the way? I mean, I had a question.

You kind of answered it. My main question was to help facilitate other bartenders who, if you come walking up, what is your drink of choice? But we decided that today. We decided that. Yeah, good. Yes. And then my one question I ask all like people when I do interviews in different capacities

is what's the one fictional bar you'd like to go to and what fictional character would you like to bring to that bar? Wow. That's a really good question. What fictional bar would I want to go to? So like bringing Wolverine to the Cheers bar. Cheers. There's Moe's Tavern.

Yeah. No, I've spent too much time at the Simpsons to want to go to Moe's. Yeah. Moe's is a dump. I'm thinking now, oh, I know which one. I know exactly which one I want to go to. The bar in John Wick in that cool hotel. Yeah.

I want to go to that bar. I watch those movies again and again with my son. We love those movies. I want to go to the bar in the hotel that Keanu Reeves frequents where you're supposedly not allowed to kill people, but that seems to be all they do. Yes. I want to go to the Continental, which is in that really cool hotel, the Continental. Yes.

I want to go there and I want to walk into that bar and who's going to be with me? I'm just going to say Mr. Spock from Star Trek. Oh, okay. I want to go to that bar with Mr. Spock, but I don't want him dressed as 1960s Mr. Spock. I want him dressed sort of like Keanu Reeves in a black suit, but he's still Mr. Spock. He's just wearing a black suit. So he just looks like an elf with you. Yeah, but he's still Mr.... Yeah, and he's very logical, but he has some bourbon with

me at that bar and we pay with one of those special tokens that they use in John Wick. And then Mr. Spock gets like a little loose and he starts talking shit, not about Captain Kirk, but about William Shatner. And sort of spilling the beans on William Shatner and it gets all week. We break the third wall. It gets very weird, but we're both wearing those cool John Wick suits. That's what I want to do. Yeah.

All right. I love that answer. Michael, you've changed my life. I am now a very heavy drinker of bourbons and it's all your fault from here on in. I'm happy to destroy your liver, Conan O'Brien. No, it's Conan O'Brien needs a friend, not I'm happy to destroy your liver, Conan O'Brien. Hey, Michael, really fun talking to you. You're a great guy and I hope our paths cross for real.

I'd love to have a drink with you. It'd be fun. I love that. Well, thank you guys so much for the time. Can I screenshot this? Is that allowed? How about I'll give you one of these. Give me one of those?

All right. Thank you so much, sir. You're a good man. Thank you very much. Take care. Thanks, Michael. Conan O'Brien needs a fan. With Conan O'Brien, Sonam of Sessian and Matt Gorely.

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