Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend - Tanks for the Memories

Episode Date: February 3, 2022

Conan speaks with Forrest in Maine about his work designing commercial tanks and what sort of tank Conan would drive (if he was allowed). Wanna get a chance to talk to Conan? Submit here: TeamCoco.com/CallConan

Konan O'Brien needs a fan. Want to talk to Konan? Visit teamcoco.com-slash-call-konan. Okay, let's get started. Hi, Forrest. Welcome. Meet Konan and Sona. Hi. Nice to meet you guys. Hey, Forrest. How are you? Very good. Very good. How are you guys? Good. Let me explain to our listeners right now. I'm looking at a strapping young man with a full beard and a lumberjack shirt.

You look like you just walked Babe the Blue Ox through the forest after felling 35 trees and you're about to eat a stack of hoe cakes a mile high. Man, where are you right now? So, I live in Maine. So all of that. Of course you live in Maine. That was all completely true. I've had oxen, so I mean, yeah. At least I had oxen. I had oxen sausage for breakfast. Yes, I've also consumed oxen. That's the best part.

Yeah, yeah. Can't do that with a horse. It's good stuff. I try not to go a meal without having oxen. Yeah, I'm trying to cut back, but you know. When people say they have a problem with oxy, I think they're talking about oxen. And I'm like, yeah, me too. I have it almost three times a day. And then they're like, hey man, I thought I was bad and it gets very confusing.

It's like an episode of 3's company. It's a big misunderstanding. But then we get it straightened out that they're terrible addicts and I just like consuming oxen. Anyway, Forrest, tell us a little bit about yourself. You seem like an interesting fellow. So yeah, so I live in Maine. I've always lived in Maine. I don't get out much. Have you ever left the state of Maine?

I have. Yeah, I recently got married and we went on a honeymoon. We went out west. Congratulations. It'd be great if you went to a honeymoon to Vermont. Yes, yeah. Normally I consider Vermont way out west. You're like, should we do it, honey? Yeah, let's do it. Okay, here we go.

Round up the wagons. This is too crazy. I can't handle it. Run away. We're going to take the covered wagon. We're really going to, yeah. Okay, so where did you go on your honeymoon? We went out. We started in Denver and then we rented an RV and went all around. Went up to Yellowstone and down Moab. And yeah, so that was like the first time I'd ever seen anything other than very much Maine climate.

Large black flies. Yes. And really crappy yard sale. We have those. Yeah. Yeah, trust me. I've driven through Maine and everyone acts like you want a piece of a flatware made of tin that I got six years ago. I know what I have. I know what I have. You can't trick me.

I know this is where the fortune. It's a Rubik's Cube with half the squares missing. You can't get there from here. No, sir. So besides going to your summer camps, though, do you have any other memories of Maine? I know you got tan to death in a canoe, but other than that. Oh, good for you for listening. Thank you. Yes, I did.

As a young man, a lad, as a child, I was put into a canoe. This sounds like a punishment, but I was put into an aluminum canoe. And back then everybody wore short, short shorts. Everybody. I mean, there was no such thing as long shorts and there was no such thing as sunscreen. So I was put into an aluminum canoe with shorts that exposed most of my penis. And then I was set adrift on the Soco River for three days. I'm originally from Soco, so that's where that feeds out. Okay, there you go. So I was put on the Soco River.

And I don't know if you can understand this, but when you bake a potato, you wrap it in aluminum so that the heat is forced back down into the potato. I was a wrapped potato in foil. I was put into an aluminum canoe and it was very, there was no clouds. And for three days I sizzled and cooked. I remember thinking, who's cooking ham? And it was me that was cooking. When the trip was over, everybody jumped out of the canoe and I tried to get out of the canoe

and I couldn't. And they had to pick me up and pull me out of the canoe. Wait, was it because you couldn't move because of the pain or were you like melted to the aluminum? I wish it was, it would be more dramatic to say it was the second, but no, it was because I couldn't move. And then they put me in a corner. They set up their tents and had a really good time and ate s'mores.

And I just shivered for, I think, two nights. And then they took me, I think they took me to an emergency room. And then my, I blistered so much that giant sheets of leg skin came off, which I wish I had kept. I'd sell them right now on eBay as you can have, you can have Conan's legs because it's all one piece. They're like socks. It's like a shower curtain?

Yeah. No, no, no. There's two full socks. They came off in whole pieces. It's like a later hosin made of Conan's freckled flesh that's been cooked. Oh, and you think people want that? Oh, I think that would go for, I'm going to be, I'm going to be conservative and say it would go for $1.6 million. Hey, he knows what he has.

All right. Thank you. Thank you. Of course. Yeah, cancer. Don't encourage it. Okay, Forrest, please. Let's, you got me off on a tangent and I blame you. Is that your only memory in Maine though?

Is that all you've done? No, I also, we went to, I mean, Forrest is great at interviewing me. This is a very strong memory. We once stayed at an inn up there on a lake and my father, being an incredibly unwise and unsavvy businessman said, you know what's pretty cool at this inn? That Ford station wagon they've got with fake wood siding that says, a pine, some pine manner in, and he said,

I think we should try and buy that car that has only 75,000 miles on it. And I bet, and I'll drive a hard bargain because I'm a microbiologist who never goes outside and I know how to deal with these rubes. So anyway, they sold him an overpriced used car and that's the station wagon that I had to learn to drive on. And it said, pine manner in on the side and had a painting of a pine tree. And that's the car I was driving around trying to scope out the chicks That would work in Maine.

I mean, oh man, wood siding. Yeah. And the other thing is there was a, I think a food shelter in Boston called Pine Street Inn. And my mother, who always wanted us to be, you know, like we're the O'Brien's a dignified family that has the highest standards. And we're driving around and everybody kept saying, oh, you guys work for the food shelter.

Anyway, yeah. That was the car that ensured I was a virgin until I was 38 years old. Your dad knew what he was doing. Yeah, my dad, my dad, he was like, I can buy him condoms or I can make him drive this car. Well, there's plenty more to do in Maine. So you should definitely come back. I mean, it's cold and I know you like that.

And there's craft brews, which I know would get Matt and they legalized weed. So I know they'd get Sona. Oh, man. You know us so well. I do. I do. You know what, Forrest, you seem, I like you. You're a very funny fellow.

You seem like a sharp guy. Tell us what you do. What is your profession? So I am a mechanical design engineer and I design tanks of various types, not tanks, not like tanks like that. Like like the puke, puke hand, like not the, not the water tanks or fuel tanks, but like, like a Sherman. Yes. With like tracks and they, and so we have,

what are you talking about? Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. You design military grade tanks. So some are military and then some are commercial. So the commercial, the commercial. Wait a minute. Wait a minute.

Wait a minute. Okay. First of all, I, I'm fascinated by tanks. I am a military history buff. I actually have a favorite tank from history. What is that? I don't know if you do mine is the Russian T 34. Okay. Nice.

That I liked that tank because that tank really saved Russia and kicked the Nazis' asses. And they never saw that tank coming. They had contempt for the Soviet Union. They thought we're just going to roll in there and these people are beneath us and we have our cool German tiger tanks. And suddenly the Russians show up with this. Amazing tank that's technologically very simple,

but just wouldn't break down and, and the German shells couldn't pierce it. So I think the T 34 is one of the most heroic tanks in history. Yeah. I think it's, it helped save the world. Well, there's something definitely be said for simplicity. I mean, it's the, the pinnacle of design is not when, you know,

what's left to add, but it's what, what can you take away when there's nothing left to take away than you've hit it. When there's nothing left to take away than you've hit it. There are famous stories of the Soviet crews that, the Russian crews that had to work the T 34, there was a giant stick, like an iron stick, you know, an iron shaft that was pretty much what made it go forward, backward, sideways.

And it was so hard to maneuver that the, the guy in the crew that maneuvered it had a giant wooden mallet and we just bash it to the left, bash it to the right, bash it forward, bash it backwards. And that is how they operate the tank. But it worked. The thing wouldn't break down. Well, I'll have to take that for inspiration because that sounds pretty foolproof.

Yeah. Yeah. Please check out. And this is, I'm going to do a quick ad for the Russian T 34 tank helped defeat the, the Nazi invasion in, in 1942, 41, 42 and turned the tide of World War Two, in my opinion, get yours today. Yeah. Now, now let me ask you a question because I know I've done a lot of talking and

I be honest with you, I had a lot of cocaine this morning with my. Yeah. It goes so well with oxen. Perfectly. Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. It just hits the spot.

If you order oxen and you ask the Somalia to come by to ask which wine he'll often till you skip the wine, you should have Peruvian cocaine. Finally ground. But so have you sold tanks to the military? So imagine or. So the thing about tanks is now it's like in modern warfare, what purpose do they really have? And that's kind of been the question as of recent.

The particular ones that I've designed are fully unmanned robotic tanks. So you sit anywhere in the world and drive this around. They're mostly for like reconnaissance. So going out and getting an idea of what's going on and kind of mapping out the landscape and then getting back. Can they fire? Do they have any munitions? They do have a turret on top, but the idea is it's a very modular platform.

So you could remove that and you could just put on like a drone on the top or you could remove. Boo. Boo. That's true. If you have a tank and it can't fire anything, then I'm sorry, you do not have a tank. You have you have a Hummer. You have an SUV.

That's what you have. A fancy camera. It sounds. Yeah, I suppose. Can you do anything where it is like fires like a t-shirt cannon or funfetti or something like that? Well, there is a mick lick, which is like a rope of C4 that it shoots out. We call it a spicy nerd's rope and it goes out like a quarter mile and everything in

that stretch is gone. So you're like, there might be something over there. Just shoot the spicy nerd. Wait a minute. I don't understand. What? It shoots a rope of basically pure explosive. And then it blows up everything in its path.

That's nothing we make. That's just the things other people make that we could put on it. So. Oh God. Oh no, no, no. So I know you should have no moral qualms. You're just building. It's not my fault.

This happens. You're just. Yeah. This is worse because it's like you're enticing people to play jump rope and they pick it up and then boom, they're gone. Yeah. Well, it's a good way to lure in the enemy. Yeah.

I like to put landmines on a hopscotch court. No, no, listen, listen, I'm going somewhere with this forest. I really am, which is that I'm so intrigued by the idea. It sounds like what you're saying is that I could own a tank as a private citizen. Is that true? Yeah. Not the ones that have the pupews on them, but you can have ones that have fancy cameras. Let's be men about this and not call them pupews.

Let's call them. Okay. How about. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You got it.

Yeah. Okay. None of this pupew. Yeah. No. Well, so they have. So there's the military ones, but then there's also the, the luxury commercial line. So those ones, there's no weapons, but it's got an 800 horsepower Duramax engine on it.

And it's got tracks and everything, like a tank. And then you're in an air ride, floating cockpit. So it feels like you're in, and like the whole cockpit is laid out with like leather interior, you know, touchscreen dash, all the stuff. So it's like you're in a super, super fancy luxury car, but you have tracks and you can go anywhere. Excuse me. Do you have a brochure?

There's a website. I'd like to see some, I'd like to see some literature. It's called the rip saw. If you just go online, you search rip saw. I'm writing this down right now because I don't know how to go online. Yeah. If you go to your local library. Thank you.

How do you expect to drive a state of the art tank if you can't go online? It feels just like a car. Oh, oh, you know, Gourley, first of all, you're on my team here. You're supposed to assist. Sorry. Not taking them. I just don't think it's those two levers like you're used to. I think it's.

Oh, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to buy a rip saw and I'm going to buy one from Forrest and I'm going to rip out all of his fancy gadgets and I'm going to put just a lever that goes forward backwards left and right in the middle of it and I'm going to, that's how I'm going to drive it around. There's going to be no touchscreen, no, you know, that's just like the Russian's tank for me. Go back to the good stuff.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Are you going to do sound effects while you drive Conan? Be like. Yeah. Not Pew Pew. Oh, sorry.

Not that one. Yeah. I'm going to say copy. I'm going to say copy leader, copy leader headed, you know, enemy ahead and swivel turret left, swivel turret left. Hurry. You know that dramatic thing where both turrets there, the enemy turrets starting to swivel your way and you have to swivel your turret and who's going to fire first.

Oh man. I love that. You know, this sounds like a good episode of you guys do the sound effects that. Oh no. Sound effects theater. Yeah. Man, you're a loyal fan. I like that you listen to all this.

I am. Very much. Complete nonsense. Even though, despite the fact that you clearly have incredible skills, you're very talented and you're a useful member of society building real things, you still listen to our bullshit and I appreciate it. I do. I do.

Especially when I first listened to you guys, I was binge listening and then I was just getting this mood where I just wanted to do bits and engineers are not great for bits and I just go around and I just say things and they just look at me and I get nothing. But then that made me like more giddy and more excited that I was getting no reaction. I know. I know. So good. Yeah.

Forrest, tell me about it. That's called living with my family. They're not even engineers, but I do bits constantly and there's just a deadness in their eyes. You know, when you catch a fish just after it's died, how the light goes out of its eyes and becomes flat. That's how my wife looks at me. Just like, well, he'll just keep doing this for a while, but then eventually he'll leave

this earth. If I just stay still, maybe he'll go. Yeah. Maybe he's like a T-Rex. If I stay still, he won't be able, if he doesn't register movement, he'll stop doing bits. Well, I am fascinated by this. I want to check out the rip saw.

Is it legal? Yeah. What's that? I got a rip saw. Hold on. Hold on. You didn't let me finish. Can I put some kind of military-grade cannon on the top, if say I lived in Texas?

We've had requests, but for liability, we don't outfit things. I mean, once you have it, if you decide to put stuff on it, that's kind of out of our control. Well, wait a minute. It's my constitutional right to have a very powerful nuclear-tipped weapon on the top of my privately-owned tank. That's what the Founding Fathers intended. They wrote that in.

Yeah. Yeah. There's a whole thing. There's a whole other page. It says, see other page. Jefferson put this in, and it says, should there ever be a tank constructed, this too, shall be a right of every citizen. Oh, my God.

No, no. I think, wow, can you imagine? So cool to have a tank. Wait, so you'd be just like driving it down like Hollywood Boulevard, or I don't understand. You can just drive it on the streets? Can you imagine me pulling up to, no. Where do you take it? I happen to know that treads tear up.

Well, it has all, it's a completely rubber track. So you can drive on payment, you can drive off payment, like, well, you should be driving off road. But is it street legal first? It depends on the state, I think. There's a guy that bought one. They had it in Vegas, and it was at like an auto show. And then leaving, they're just like, well, this is where you drive out.

And he's like, well, I'm not sure if I'm supposed to be here, but I'll just drive down the Vegas Strip. And he had train horns and stuff, and he was just tooting, and nobody stopped him. So I guess that means yes. Very few people stop a tank. Yes. He's going to pull you over. Proceed.

Yeah, you don't pull over a tank. There's nothing you can do to a tank. Yeah, I'm very interested. I'm going to check out the website, and what is your favorite tank in his street? Do you have one? I don't, I mean, pretty partial of my own. So I guess. I said in history, like the important history, yeah, I'm partial to my own.

Conan, who's your favorite historical figure? Well, I'm partial to myself. Would anyone be surprised if you said that, though? I mean. No. No. Thank you. They wouldn't at all.

I believe I'm Lincolnian. Anyway, let's see. Do you have a question for me before we wrap things up? Well, my question was, if you were to have your own Ripsaw, what would you outfit it with? What kinds of features would it have? Oh, my God. I mean, you kind of covered that.

Well, I would want to simplify it so it felt like, and maybe with your help, I would like to simplify the cockpit so it felt like a World War II tank, okay? But still had, meaning my leverage still connects to all of your computerized systems, do you know what I mean? Yeah. But I don't have to, and I think you could assist me in doing that. I'd like to pretend it was a World War II tank. I would also like there to be pretty much like a snack dispenser in there.

I'd like to be able to be able to get those little Cheez-Its and Keenan M&M's. Combos. Combos. Yeah. Combos. I'm just going to talk about combos today. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. The best. And you know what? We're not getting paid a dime by combos. Yeah. It's going to be because I've questioned the authenticity of the cheese inside the combo, but that's neither here nor there. I've noticed that it has a radioactive half-life, and that's probably why I'm never going to

get an ad with combos. But I'm very curious about, I'd like it to fire something. I'm not a violent person. I mean, I don't want to cause damage or destruction, but I like the idea of having it look like a tank that has a long barrel on it. But I would like, picking up on girly suggestion, if I had a really badass tank that fired T-shirts, that would be cool. Like to just, because I would come up through the shrubbery, and people would start screaming

and running, and I'd start firing away. And then they would notice that T-shirts that said, kiss me, I'm Irish. I'm with stupid. My parents went to Barbados, and all I got was this stupid T-shirt. That would all start to rain down on them. But it still really hurts. You shoot them pretty hard. Oh, yeah.

I'll be honest with you. Some people will get killed by the sheer force, because what I'm going to do is I'm going to forget. I'm going to fuck up and put the T-shirts in a brass canister, so when that hits you going 900 miles an hour, yeah, that's going to be, yeah, I'll be arrested. And I will be put away forever for murder. But listen, Forrest, I really like you. You seem like a cool guy.

And I do like Maine. I just want to put that out there at the end. I know that my legs were horribly burned in Maine, and that a Ford panel station wagon with Maine emblazoned on the side humiliated me as a teenager and made me sell a bit. But all those things aside, I like your state. I like you, Forrest, and I want you to get to work on my tank. Okay. Now, this is really going to piss people off when I start trying to fund this online so

that Conan can have a tank. People are going to be furious. Yeah, go fundraising money. You don't even buy it yourself. You beg for it. You know, when a really affluent actor says, I want to make a movie, and then they start to go fund me page, and people get furious, think about what's going to happen when I start to go fund me page to build a tank that shoots t-shirts.

And I'm saying, hey, I'd pay myself, but I don't feel I should have to. I know what would happen. I know what would happen if we get funded in about 20 minutes. And then I'd have to read, I don't know, 10,000 lines of pure hate coming out of the internet every second. But I'd been my tank, eating my combos and firing t-shirts. Yeah, for charity. You're giving these t-shirts away, so it's really a charitable deed.

Hey, man, I'm not doing this for myself. Okay. Yeah. The world needs these t-shirts. They need fine with stupid t-shirts. They really do. They need a hoof hearted t-shirt, and I'm the one to fire it at them at 800 miles an hour.

Yeah, blasting it at their head. Hey, Forrest, so cool talking to you. You're a really nice guy, and we're lucky to have you as a fan. And keep doing those bits. And guess what? When people you work with aren't laughing, that means the bit is really funny and keep going. Okay, awesome.

All right. Trust me. That's my professional opinion. I'll take that to heart. I'm serious. I'm gonna roll up my sleeves, and I double down. That's what you strapped your hold. Yeah.

Yes. All right, take care, Forrest. Thanks a lot. Thank you. Bye, Forrest. Bye, Forrest. Bye, Forrest. 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 Soloteroff, and Jeff Ross at Team Coco, and Colin Anderson at Ear Wolf, music by Jimmy Vivino, supervising producer Aaron Blair, associate talent producer Jennifer Samples, associate producers Sean Doherty, and Lisa Berm, engineered by Will Beckton. 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.