Ear Biscuits with Rhett & Link - Ep. 22 Rhett & Link "Childhood" - Ear Biscuits

Episode Date: February 28, 2014

In this very special edition of "Ear Biscuits," Rhett & Link, best friends since the 1st grade, see if they can learn anything new about one another's childhood growing up in small town North Carolina. The episode features never-before asked questions, including some from fans. From blood oaths in cow pastures to gangster rap obsessions, to matching butt tattoos, Rhett & Link take you back to their roots. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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had an issue with support with a service that I use. With Squarespace? No, not with Squarespace. With another service that I use. Well then why are you, what other service? It was the service that I use to pay my homeowner's dues. So why were you calling Squarespace? No, not with Squarespace. With another service that I use. Well then why are you, what other service? It was the service that I use to pay my homeowner's dues. So why were you calling Squarespace? I wasn't calling Squarespace.

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They're going to be there when you call. And that, you know, that's good because, you know, when you're building a website, sometimes you just need to talk to somebody. True. Hey, what does HTML stand for? I know I don't have to know how to use it, but I'm just asking, you know.

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or for audio companionship. Use us for that here at Ear Biscuits. Let's make another one. here at Ear Biscuits. Let's make another one. Welcome to Ear Biscuits. I'm Rhett. And I'm Link. It's time for another conversation with someone interesting from the internet. Or not.

What? Well, I mean, don't sell us that short. I mean, what I was going to say, this week, that interesting person is you, Link. Oh, and you, Rhett. And me! Us! Okay, guys, here's what we're gonna do. We're just going to interview each other.

That's what Rhett and I have decided. We're gonna interview each other. This is an experimental, fresh, out-of-the-box thinking type of Ear Biscuit here. Hopefully, I believe that this is going to be a wild ride of in-depth conversation between the two of us. Right, okay. Involving some Twitter questions as well.

Yeah, I think the thing that we have discovered about Ear Biscuits is that it's been fascinating getting to know all the people that we've talked to. And we just have a feeling that because there is, or are, two of us. There is two of us. There is two of us. We are going to take advantage of the fact that there is two of us. And we're going to talk to each other because I'm kind of operating on the premise that

we know each other incredibly well and we have discussed a lot together. We've also incidentally discussed a lot on the internet. People know a lot about our lives. With you. But I still believe there is quite a bit that I don't know about you and that you don't know about me. And maybe things that need to be reh a bit that I don't know about you

and that you don't know about me. And maybe things that need to be rehashed. And I don't mean like, let's go back and, you know, open up old wounds or maybe, I don't know, maybe that will happen. Dig up the buried hatchet? No, I don't think that will happen. But maybe you're saying that, is there a challenge here that we'll see if we can learn something new about each other while the audience members out there learn about us and the intimacies of our inner workings?

I think that's where the magic is going to happen. I'm not kidding because we thought about, okay, we wanted to do a semi-regular episode of Ear Biscuits where we talk to each other. So I will say at the beginning, depending on how this goes, how we feel about it and how you feel about it, we're going to do it again if everyone agrees that this is something worth doing. So let us know. Yeah, let us know on Twitter, hashtag Ear Biscuits. But we're not changing

the course of Ear Biscuits. No, no, no. I do want to clarify that. We have a lot of amazing guests lined up and that's going to keep happening on, that will be the vast majority of what your biscuits is all about. Right. So every now and again, if this is something fun, if this is something that works for everybody, maybe we'll bring it back once a month or every so often.

I don't know. We're not committing. And the last thing I'll say before we dive in and starting to interview each other is you just yawned. I'm just going to pull a GloZell. I'm calling you out. I'm already bored with you. What is up with that?

Don't do that, man. It hasn't been that long of a day. I love my job. I love what I do. And one of the, I mean, it's a privilege to be able to just dream up things and do it and to have you listen to us and enjoy hanging out with us. I mean, I'm sincerely thankful for that. One of my favorite

parts of the job that I think is highlighted here in this exercise here is we get to try new things. It's, you know, the analogy of just throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks. And I think this is just another example of that. It's energizing from a creative standpoint to try new things and just to see what happens. I mean, that's the key to success and maintaining relevance in the world of entertainment anyway. I mean, for us to be as successful as they have been, and I feel like it's trying to keep your head above water and maintain relevance, and you just have to try new things and see what works.

So that's exciting to me. It's energizing, doing the same thing to get old. I'm not doing this to be successful, Link. I'm doing this because I care about you. Did it sound like I was saying doing it to be successful, Link. I'm doing this because I care about you. Did it sound like I was saying doing it to be successful? I mean, no. I mean, people might think that, though. Well, what I'm trying to say is that it's a creative endeavor to try new things and see what works.

Trying to innovate. And I'm just saying that originally when we were like, well, let's do an Ear Biscuit where we just talk to each other. At first, I was like, let's just shoot the breeze. You know, let's just do it when we talk and see where the conversation goes. But then it hit us. It's like, no, the tone of this show is inquisitive, right? It isn't just two guys building on ridiculous ideas like we do every day on Good Mythical Morning. It's inquisitive.

It's like there's things that— And personal. It's personal, and it's inquisitive, and that's what we're going to do. So what we have done is we wanted to, when we do a show like this, a special edition of a Rhett and Link only Ear Biscuit, we want to make it themed. So we decided that let's just talk about childhood. Okay, now we've done this thing where we talk about people's childhood

and their career and all this stuff. Maybe we'll get to all those things with us, but we wanted to start with childhood. So we've come up with some questions for one another, but we also prompted our Twitter followers. Link did this and I did this earlier. We said, hey, do you have any questions for the other that you want us to ask one another?

And so we have a collection of questions that we've come up with and a collection of questions that you have come up with. And we're just going to go back and forth and see where this goes. Yeah. We've never interviewed each other. I've asked you questions.

Yeah, I've asked you. In life. I've been like, where do you want to go for lunch? Yeah. Kind of questions. You did that today. And we went to that place. I got Juevos Rancheros.

It was very good. We went to that place. I still taste it. Okay. Is that your first question? No, because lunch is over. Can you still taste what you ate for lunch?

See, I can. I cannot. I think this is a good place to start. This is not my question. This is from Bob Saget Has Swag on Twitter. Oh, I thought that was Bob Sage Et Has Swag. Tell the story of how you became Blood Brothers.

Not really a question, but we'll go with it anyway. Would you please tell us the story? What if I added that? It would be polite. Okay, so the story of us becoming Blood Brothers, I think we may have mentioned it in places, but I don't know that we've ever fully unpacked the true story of the blood oath pact.

Which it really happened. That we really made in high school. And it has been cataloged or represented in our documentary that we made years ago called Looking for Ms. Locklear, where we kind of tell the story about the blood oath that we made. And in the movie, we reenact that, and we say we went back to the same place. No, we talked about how we went to the rock. To the rock, right. But we didn't talk about the blood oath.

We didn't say the blood oath. I don't know where we talked about it. We talk about things all over the place, but this is going to be the definitive place to tell this story now. Right. I really think it starts with the cow pasture. Don't you? I mean, that's the location of the blood oath, so I think that with the cow pasture. Don't you?

I mean, that's the location of the Blood Oath, so I think that's the starting point. Yeah, so we grew up in Buies Creek, North Carolina, near a country club. Not in the country club. We weren't those kinds of people, so don't judge us. We were outside of the country club, very near to a place called Keith Hills.

So this is a golf course. Yeah, an 18-hole at the time golf course. And what hole was it that was on the far edge of the golf course? Hole three? It was hole number six. It was hole number six, which is now, they changed the back nine and the front nine.

So it's whatever that would be. It's the sixth hole of the back nine. So I guess that would be hole number 16. I've never played golf. I'm honored that you're asking me. Hole number 15. You're like asking me math plus golf, and my mind is blown. It was hole number six, and I'm just telling you this

because it's the old number six, and if you happen to live in the area, if you go down there, and it's a par four that goes up a hill, and then to the right, there's a creek, and across the creek, there is a cow pasture that was constantly filled with cattle. And this was more attractive to us, not that we were attracted to cows. I mean, we did grow up in Buies Creek, but that's not what I mean.

We were more attracted to the cow pasture than we were to the golf course, especially Link. Yeah. Okay, that's true. So what we would do is we would, after school, I mean, we had to have been like 16 years old because we would drive our cars. I know we would ride our bikes.

We might have been 14 or 15 when we started doing this, but we would go out to the cow pasture. No, we started in middle school because Ben Greenwood was the one who came up with the idea, and we were really active with Ben all throughout elementary school and especially middle school. So our favorite hobby was to go across the golf course, across the stream into the cow pasture and chase the cows.

You just called Buies Creek a stream, just so you know. That was Buies Creek. That was the creek of Buies. Really? You called it the stream. I never knew that. You didn't know that until right now? I've already learned something. I didn't know that until right now? I've already learned something.

I didn't know that was Buies Creek. That was Buies Creek. Wow. It ran behind my house, and then it kept going all the way through Keith Hills. So nothing is more exhilarating in the town of Buies Creek than having a herd of cattle flee your presence. And it's just exhilarating to do that until the farmer shows up and chases you off. But there was a pond there that the cows would get in, and around the pond there were some rocks, one of which was a very big rock within—I'm talking it was probably a five-foot-tall boulder.

It was big. It was obviously a rock that had been dug up out of the ground. You know those farm ponds that are completely rectangular, and they have two hills of dirt on each side of them because they just dug it out with a big tractor. So this big rock comes out and a little rock beside it. And for some reason, and this is what we talked about in the intro to the film, was we devised this plan

where we would just have these long, drawn-out conversations after we were, when we were resting from chasing the cows, we would sit down on the rock, and we came up with this system that whoever was sitting on the big rock would have the floor to talk, and then the other person would sit on the small rock and listen and can only ask questions to keep the conversation going. We need that here on Ear Biscuits. It was very much...

Like a bigger chair and a littler chair. It was very much like an Ear Biscuit, wasn't it? Well, it was. It was kind of like this. And then after a while, you would have your time

and then you would trade spaces and the person would sit on the big rock and they would have the floor to dictate the conversation. And I want to be clear here that our conversations... I don't remember

a whole lot of details, but that is what we're going to kind of talk about is what we ended up talking about. Our conversations were probably... If we were to go back and listen to them now, we would laugh at what we thought, how we thought, the things that we said to each other. But we weren't just talking about what it was like to be in middle school. We were talking

about the future. We always talked about the future. We were certainly talking about girls at times. We would talk about what you would imagine that kids would talk about. Look at that big cow. But we would talk about things like that. There was a lot of that, yeah. What if that cow could fly? Would you ride it? You know?

What if, I don't know, just stupid stuff. Very amateur middle school philosophical questions. But the thing that strikes me is that— But we were very future-oriented as well. Yeah, we would talk about— Dreams. What it was that we wanted to do. And I want to be clear here that we grew up in Buies Creek, which was an amazing place to grow up,

but it was not the kind of place that you just naturally— you didn't think about careers in entertainment or comedy. You didn't know anybody who did that kind of thing. So there wasn't any real sense that that was going to happen. But we decided one day that we started talking more about we wanted to do something, just this big something that we didn't know what it was, but we wanted to do it together. Right. When we grew up.

We wanted to, yeah. And first of all, I'm sure this whole future orientation is something that knowing you and knowing myself better now, I can pretty much bet that this, that whole future bend is something that came from your mind

because you just were always, that's how you think. Whereas the whole system of who was talking when and how we, how we talk, you came up with the rules of analyzing questions. I'm sure that was probably my idea. I can't remember, but just the way that our brains work differently, uh, I could see how that would come together. But yeah, we would talk about what are we going to do? And it wasn't, we didn't talk about entertainment at first. I think we did, we certainly knew we liked to entertain and show off and take advantage of any audience that we could find.

But we had the idea to do the blood oath without saying okay we're definitely going to be filmmakers it was let's make a blood oath that we're gonna we're gonna be teammates in creating something we're gonna be like business partners in whatever we do that like yeah we're friends now but we we have a sense that we're gonna we're gonna like make something big. I don't know what it is, but we should probably write it down. Correct.

And then, well, if you're gonna write it down, we should probably cut ourselves and sign it in blood. I mean. And that's what we did. We took two sheets of paper out there. We wrote down, we wrote something that was,

I mean, unfortunately, I'll go ahead and tell you, we don't have these sheets of paper anymore. As sad as that is. And in fact, Link is the one that was, I mean, unfortunately, I'll go ahead and tell you, we don't have these sheets of paper anymore. As sad as that is. And in fact, Link is the one that would, I lose everything, or I used to lose everything. You'd lose things more now than I do now. But back in those days, you collected everything, right? But you don't have the paper, but I can attest to you that it did exist at one point.

And we wrote something that was like, we're going to do something awesome and we're going to do that something awesome together. Now let's cut ourselves. And do you remember how we cut ourselves? I think it was like a shard of glass that was like laying in there. Yeah, it was like a sharp piece of glass. In the dirt. Yeah, yeah. This is not advised, by the way. And we cut our palms. Yeah, you should cut your, if you're going to do a blood oath, you should cut, like prick the end of your finger. Why? Why cut your freaking palms? Well, I've established that we were misguided. And I kept that thing in my wallet for like two and a half years.

Yeah. And then I lost the whole wallet. That's the problem. Oh, that's what happened with you. I lost the whole wallet. Yeah, yeah. I just went home and probably set it down, and then my mom threw it away. But it meant a lot.

The idea. It meant a lot, the idea. I was definitely committed to the idea. Yeah, so that was the question from Bob Saget Has Swag. That's the story. So I guess from that point on, it wasn't necessarily something that we talked a lot about, but there was always this guiding principle that was...

Well, it's in blood. Yeah, yeah. We don't have to talk about it all the time to know that it's going to happen. Yeah, we've got to stay committed to this amorphous idea that we're going to do something together. Something big. The word big was definitely in it.

Are you going to ask me a question now? Yeah. You want to go first? I'm going to, yeah, I'm going to move. There's another question that I think is good for the both of us to discuss, kind of like that, but I want to move this into a more one-on-one place. It's a little weird. Yeah, this is going to be strange. Go for it. I like it, though. Now, when we first met, we met in first grade. I moved from North Carolina. I mean, I moved from California to North Carolina, and I met you at the time. You were at Buies Creek Elementary School.

Do you think I forgot? This is for the benefit of the audience. This is for everyone listening. And we met on that first day, and, you day and there's a movie about that. But you were living with your mom and your stepdad, Jimmy, at the time, right? Which was in Buies Creek. Now- Jimmy Capps. Before that, where did you live? I don't know this. Before you moved in with Jimmy, where'd you live?

My mom and dad split up when I was two years old. And where were they? I don't remember. I was two. They weren't, I do remember. Well, I know. I don't remember. My dad was a farmer at the time, like a tobacco farmer in Boone Trail, which is like, I mean, you know, between Lillington and Sanford, there's like nothing out there except fields. And, you know, some of those were my dad's. And then a trail to Boone. I guess so. And there's, so that's where I was born. And so, but my, I mean, my first memories are my mom got remarried to Jimmy and they were friends, they were like friends from like high school. And yeah, so they had known each other for years and then they had both went through a divorce and then I think rebounded.

They both had, they were in the rebound marriage together. They're not together now. When I was 13, they got divorced. they were in the rebound marriage together. They're not together now. When I was 13, they got divorced. But my first memories are in that house where you met me with Jimmy and my step sister. The house in Buies Creek.

In me, his daughter. So, but where, but your mom, okay, so you were in Boone Trail. And I remember, I guess I remember the house that I was like born in where my mom and dad lived. I'm pretty sure. And then where did your mom live? My dad still lived there. After the divorce from your dad. I remember the house that I was born in where my mom and dad lived. I'm pretty sure that- And then where did your mom live-

My dad still lived there. After the divorce from your dad? I'll explain why I'm asking this in a second. I think that she moved into a trailer in her parents, like next door to her parents. Yeah. In Anger. In Anger.

I asked this because I've never thought about this. Yeah? This is kind of crazy to think about, too. I know why I was in Buies Creek. You know what I'm saying? Like, I came to Buies Creek because my dad got a job at Campbell Law School teaching law. Still teaches law at Campbell Law School until this day. And that's why we moved from Thousand Oaks, California

to Buies Creek, North Carolina. And I never really thought about the fact that like, you were in Buies Creek because your mom married a guy who lived in Buies Creek. Yeah, Jimmy had a house. And I just want to point out that that was the seminal moment. You know, if your mom had been like, you know, let's just stay here in Boone Trail,

or I'm gonna stay in Anger, or she had not had a romantic connection with her former high school classmate, Jimmy Capps, you would have never been at Buies Creek School. Because I always wondered, I was like, what? I didn't know why your mom was in Buies Creek, you know? Because it was, or why Jimmy was there. Because all of my family is in Lillington.

Other places. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No family, I mean, within 15 minutes. So we can thank Jimmy Capps for this. There would have been no blood oath if there hadn't been a Jimmy Capps. We should call him right now. I don't have his number. Okay.

I mean, I remember the number when I lived there. It's probably the same number. Okay, well, I'll just put it out there and then anyone can call it if they want to. Do you remember the number? My first phone number where we were friends? This is a really good question because— Can you remember a phone number?

No, but do you— No, I think this is something that younger people today will not understand. We knew everyone's phone number. Like, I remember Leslie Peebles' phone number. Oh, all the girlfriends. My first girlfriend. Now, there was a speed dial, but yeah, you had to basically know everybody's phone number because you had to punch it in.

You couldn't pull it up on some smart device. Okay, I'm going to give you the number that we can bleep out. Okay, 910-893. Nope, that's close, though. Wow! That was pretty close. I mean, that's amazing. I have not dialed that number since what year?

For like 25 years. And I almost got it right. Yeah, but I did get it right. Do you remember my phone number, which is still my parents' phone number? Yeah, that's easy. I'm not going to say it. Give it to me. It's still your parents' phone number.

I don't want them to have to beep anything out. It's too much work. You know that you know it, though. Yeah, I'll definitely know it. You want to call it right now? Yeah, I call it all the time. I talk to your mom. Okay.

We have a connection. That's good. Me and Mama Di. Mama Di we call her. Diane. But it's weird. I mean, your parents are still together. It's weird having your first memories and growing up in a house where I know this guy's not my dad.

He's just a stepdad who, like, I didn't have that much of a connection with him. It was like there was this feeling of, well, you're not my real dad. You're just my stepdad. You're my mom's husband. So we're not going to be that tight, you know? He still spanked you, though. But he, and he should have, and he needed to the times that he did. He probably should have done it more than that.

But we weren't that close. And it was this thing of, okay, I have a sister, but she's not really my sister. And I don't like her. And I don't like her even more because I have permission to like her even less because she's not a real sister. And I don't have to really love Jimmy. I can just either like him or not or tolerate him. That's kind of what I grew up in. And that's all I knew. But it was, I mean, I was certainly envious when I'd go to your house as a youngster. And, oh, look at this happy family.

There's two brothers who are real brothers. And both the parents actually live there. And they drink milk for dinner. We did. Isn't that nice? We drink a lot of milk. That's why I'm 6'7". And I remember thinking, wow, I'm going over to a house

where there's like an intact family. Like there was a sense of pressure. You thought about that. Yeah, and I was like, I guess if the parents are still together, you drink milk for dinner. And I hated milk. It never crossed my mind.

I never thought, I never was like, I wonder, kids don't think about this. I think kids nowadays think about this because they're more like in tune with what everyone's feeling. Because of the internet.

But I definitely didn't think about that. I never thought that. I wonder how Link feels about this. Does the fact that, you know, I have a dad and mom who live together, how does this affect him? And I also did not ask probably the more important question,

which was, how does the fact that he lives with a stepdad affect him? I mean, we didn't even talk, and you didn't even think about that, really. At nine years old, you don't have these type of deep conversations. Matter of fact, you don't have them

until you have an ear biscuit without a guest. Well, but you know the sad thing, and you know this, probably by the time when this ear biscuit comes out, my parents will not be in that house. That is sad because I have a lot of memories of being jealous of your family in that house.

No, I wouldn't say. They're moving on. My parents bought a new house. I don't think that I was jealous. But Jimmy wasn't a bad guy. Remember, he built that fort for me. And really for us, you were pretty much the only friend

that came to my house. And we would walk out there. I went to a lot of people's houses. Not to make you feel bad, I went to your house more than anybody's, but I was addicted to spending the night at people's houses. I would meet a new kid at school, he would be there a week,

and I would invite myself to spend the night with him. I don't understand why. I was just like, hey dude, can I spend the night at your house? Can I look in your refrigerator and see what your family's like? I think it's a, I mean, it's a personality thing, but I also think it may be a sense of security. I was absolutely terrified to stay at anybody else's house. I mean, that one time that we had that sleepover at Adam Nicholson's house, and he showed us Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Yeah.

And then afterward, we walked around in the dark in the woods in pitch black, and we're like in fifth grade. Yeah. Like, I was terrified, man. And then I opened his refrigerator, and it was like, wow, there's a lot of food all over the place in here. Yeah, the refrigerator was scary. I was fascinated by him.

My refrigerator at home was very neat and very orderly and that made me secure, as secure as I could be. But I guess I was still, I didn't have the security of comfort to be able to leave home.

But we had that fort. It was basically just, you remember it was just two trees I remember it. With two two-by-fours connecting between the two trees like eight feet in the air. It was probably like five feet in the air, but we just felt like it was really tall. Well, it was the kind of fort that you get up there, and then you sit there, and you're like, well, what do we do now?

And then you get down out of the fort. Come back down. Right? But Jimmy made that fort. It was awesome to be out there for a few seconds. Okay, I should ask you a question. You should. At this point.

there for a few seconds um okay i should ask you a question you should at this point um did you or do you resent your dad no oh finish the question finish the question do you resent your dad for all the basketball drills he made you do i i really want to know how you feel about that today i know we've talked about the fact that your dad was basically the the impetus in in both of us going to engineering instead of going to film school which by the time we were graduating from high school that was the application of the blood oath was let's go to film school at at UNC Asheville and he's like no you need to do something sensible Rhett and. And I'm like, well, okay, I'll do that too. But he wanted you to be a basketball player in college and he made you do all these drills. Like how, there was a span there when I couldn't,

you were like, oh, don't come over to hang out until I've done my drills. So I'd have to wait two hours. How much, you were being groomed to be a basketball star. Well, I. For nothing. Do you hold that against your dad? For nothing?

That's my question. Well, then that was a statement. For nothing? Question mark? You're not a basketball player. I was one heck of a basketball player at one point, though. And I could still beat you. Well, first, before you give you at least category

characterize the amount of work that you put into it and and how your dad was involved yeah okay so you know uh i was tall that's a well-known fact i still am uh i was athletic that's disputed at this point but i was very athletic played all kinds of sports and was successful at them and loved them and was very competitive. Still am competitive, but I wanted to succeed. I mean, I had an older brother, three years older than me, two years older in age and three years in school. And we were very competitive. We played a lot of basketball. We were a very athletic family. My dad was very much into sports. And so we were too. So as soon as I, I was self-motivated up to a certain extent, I was very self-motivated. Eighth grade, you know, I wanted to be the basketball star. When we got to high school, all I could think about was getting onto the JV team. By the end

of my freshman year, I'd been put on the varsity team to play in the state playoffs. And I just thought, I mean, it had definitely been ingrained in me that, listen, you can be a basketball star. You can pay for your college this way. And you've got to understand that from a very young age, not only was I interested in basketball, but I was the ball boy, one of the ball boys for Campbell Basketball. I remember how much I was into Campbell Basketball. Went to every single game.

I was the ball boy along with my brother and Brooks Lee and Michael Juby. And I wanted that really bad. It was like really important. So when high school rolls around and then it's just like, okay, now you've got to get good so that you can get recruited and play college basketball. My dad was not, he,

he was, uh, he wasn't overbearing. It was, I mean, he, he has that kind of personality and people see that he, you go to a basketball game. My dad's there. He's going to yell at the ref. He's going to yell at the coach. He's going to yell at me if I'm on the court. I don't know if something about my personality, I never, it never hit me until later in life that like that should have been embarrassing. Like to have your dad yell at you to do something differently from the stands in high school in front of everyone like most people would be embarrassed by that but i was just like your pants up i was like looking at him and then the coach would coach gage would have to tell me he was like don't listen to your dad listen to me you know what i'm saying and i was just like oh okay i you know so there was you

didn't care i didn't care i wasn't embarrassed by it and then he would be like you need to you know what I'm saying? And I was just like, oh, okay. But you didn't care. I didn't care. I wasn't embarrassed by it. And then he would be like, you need to do these drills. You need to do the 300 shot drills. So I would do things where I would shoot 300 shots a day. How long does it take to shoot 300 shots?

I don't know. And I had ball handling drills. And first of all, you got to understand, I was actually, I was very naturally talented and did a lot of work, but I didn't do nearly as much work as a guy who actually ends up being a great player

does. He got the strength shoes. Yeah, so Rat had a in his front yard, he was basically at the end of a dead-end street. Not really a cul-de-sac, but your dad put a basketball goal out there, and then you would play on the street because it was the end of the street.

But then I remember coming over there one day, and under the basketball goal there were three increasingly larger sized boxes made out of plywood. Oh, yeah. And the tallest. Painted burgundy. And the tallest one was like four and a half feet tall. No, it was big enough for a white man like me to jump up onto from the ground.

And then I was like, right, what's this? And then he's like, well, it's my strength shoe boxes. And then you had these shoes. Shoes that looked like the Starship Enterprise turned upside down. It was a shoe, but then it had a platform built off of the- The toe. Of the balls of the feet.

But just the toe. So that your heel was suspended in air and you were forced to only use the balls of your feet to run around. Yeah. Sounds like a torture device, right? It was. It was supposed to increase your vertical,

I couldn't jump, but I was tall and it didn't really matter. It was supposed to increase your vertical leap and your quickness and all these things. You know, my dad also had the big ball. You remember that? Yeah, big basketball. It was a ball that was a few inches bigger than a normal basketball. And if you could shoot with the big ball, then you could shoot with the regular ball. You know, the interesting thing, sidebar, my dad is still into these devices. My dad is a prolific golfer. He plays once a week and he's probably going to, he's going to retire soon. He's going to play all the time. And he wears strength shoes. He has, if you know, you're watching TV and you see a device, a golfing device being sold. My dad has that. Like every single

thing that you can buy, every contraption, every driver, he has all of it. And every time I talk to him, he's like, I got the so-and-so saying saying it's a thing that'll make you break your wrist in the right place. And so I see that going back, and I'm the same way. You know, he's compulsive. The gimmick. The gimmicks. Yeah, he's into the gimmicks. He's into the things being compulsive about that, and so am I.

But your question was, do I resent that? I don't. Because there were long hours. I mean, you would have to wear the strength shoes and jump up on the box, jump down, jump up on the bigger box, jump down, jump up on the third big box, jump down. I mean, this is like, whenever I came to visit you, I was like, man, it's like going to a torture camp, like Guantanamo. I honestly can say I don't resent it. Here's what happened. I worked pretty hard, a lot harder than most kids work at their sport probably,

and I was good at it. I had a lot of success. I had the opportunity to play college basketball. I turned it down so we could go to NC State and be engineers. That's kind of a different story. But the idea of being taught that, no, to work hard you have to practice you have to devote x amount of hours to this if you're going to be better than everyone else at it you're going to be the best yeah because this isn't just some hobby right this is like do you want to be the

best at this and i just think that's how it's how my dad thinks and that's how he taught me to think and so i think that the long story is that we ended up getting, we started this band, the Wax Paper Dogs, and we thought that we were gonna be rock stars and that immediately took me off of the basketball track and I was like, I don't wanna do this. Superseded the basketball aspirations for you.

Yeah, because I was like, you know, I'm not gonna be in the NBA, I wasn't that good. You know, I might go to like a lower level Division I college and basically just be a basketball player. But I'm like, I'm not going to be able to play music. And what is Link going to do? Because we wanted to go to the same school. The Blood Oath?

Yeah, the Blood Oath. It all comes back to the Blood Oath. And my dad accepted that. And I know that it let him down a little bit because he wanted one of his kids to be a college athlete. I know that for a fact. And I had, and my brother was very good at basketball too. And he could have played at a smaller school too, but he ended up going to Carolina. He wanted to, you know, go to a good school and get a, get a real degree. And so I ended up doing the kind of the same thing. And so I know

that that was a disappointment, but he never let me know it. He never said it. He never said anything. When I decided, hey, I'm going to NC State. So no, I don't resent it. It wasn't overbearing. It was just, he's an intense individual, but I think I needed that. I remember kind of watching from the side, well, literally watching from the sidelines.

I certainly was no basketball player. But not only that, but watching from the sidelines. I certainly was no basketball player. But not only that, but watching from the sidelines of this whole drama of, are you going to be a basketball player? And we didn't talk about this blood oath thing when we're like juniors and seniors in high school. It wasn't like, man, you can't be a basketball player because we signed a blood oath like a couple of years ago. But we did talk about it a little bit because remember we went through that whole phase where we talked about UNC Asheville. Because I was being recruited by UNC Asheville. But I remember thinking that I just couldn't, it's not like I could make an argument to convince you that you shouldn't be a basketball player.

You know? But I remember being nervous about it. I was like, well, you know, we had this kind of vision for what we were going to do, and it was being threatened, but it was just something that I couldn't press. But I also feel like when we made the decision to be engineers,

we also kind of concurrently made the decision, I think passively, that this blood oath thing was probably just this, like, we're going to be friends forever. Yeah. Because I think that the practical really overpowered the dream. And we didn't have a lot of opportunity. It was like, well, we're not going to film school. That seemed like the only shot that we had at this. I'm not going to was like, well, we're not going to film school. That seemed like the only shot that we had at this. I'm not going to move to Los Angeles. I'm not going to.

Well, we didn't even talk about that. Los Angeles didn't exist. We didn't know a person, a person who had ever moved to Los Angeles. I had moved from there as a child, but we didn't know anybody who moved there to do anything. Not one person. We never discussed it. Yeah, yeah. It was totally off the radar.

So I just think we, you know. Yeah, and as engineers, it was the type of thing that, yeah, it was just, okay, yeah, now we're just going to do this. But we're still friends. Yeah, yeah. And listen, I don't want to, I also want to isolate this conversation to childhood and high school. We can talk about the career stuff sure let's let's move

it back a little bit so you have another question another question for you um and that question is why did you care about school because let me premise that with i cared about school because i was scared of my dad, as we've established. Loved my dad, respected my dad. I was fearful of my dad because he did not put up with, you know, he didn't put up with bad performance, including grades. And so it's just like I was always a straight A student, except for conduct. I had problems in conduct, but I got straight A's in the subjects. And if I made a B, it was a really big deal. You can't make a B in the McLaughlin household. That's a failure, right? So I carry that all the way through high school, all the way through college. And never made a C, always made a B. That was the worst I ever did. But you did exactly the same thing. Actually, probably were a slightly, definitely a better college student than I was, and a slightly better high school student.

Why? Why did you care? I was just naturally smarter than you. No. I don't know. I think I just felt like, and it wasn't this, well, if you're going to do something,

you got to do it to the best of your ability. It wasn't an external value that I was taught. But I think it, and I don't know that it, but on the other extreme, I don't know that it was kind of a people pleasing thing. But it was like, well, if, I mean, I'm a student, I'm supposed to do the best that I can. It was just. But if you had a brought home a C. It was just an approach. There was.

Your mom would, your mom would have been disappointed, but that would be the end of it. No, my mom was not a disciplinarian in any way, really. I mean, I was her only child, you know, and the only child she would ever have. I think that she had that sense. So, you know, I was her only child, you know, and the only child she would ever have. I think that she had that sense. So, you know, I was the baby. It was, there was not a lot of discipline going on or,

so she was not driving me to do it, but it was something that I've just always had that, and I don't think it's a good thing, by the way, that I just felt like, well, okay, I'm just supposed to, I just, I have to be good at this. And so I don't even think I know. I think now there's. What were you scared of, though? I wasn't scared of anything.

Well, I would maybe just feel like a failure. I would maybe just feel like a failure. It's like if you don't do your best, you just feel like, well, I just kind of like, if I'm going to do this, I have to really try. I wasn't trying to please anybody.

I don't know. What do you think? Well, I got you. Do you have a theory? No, I don't. And it hit me recently. Because I know, like I said, I know exactly why I never slacked off.

My parents, both my mom and my dad, they just instilled this fear. My mom used to say all the time, like, even as we were going off to get ready to go to college, she was like, now you've gotten by with straight A's in high school just because you're smart. But when you go to college, everybody's smart, and you're really going to have to work. So I remember that first semester, me and you roomed together and we just studied. Our freshman year, we just studied all the time. You know, 4.0 freshman year.

And at a certain point, you realized that you didn't care that much and it didn't matter. So work less. Sophomore year. I never had that realization. Like you'd be out, you and Greg, our roommate, you'd be out playing video games and I would be studying for like four more hours because just a blind sense of obligation to, well, if you start it, you have to finish it and you

have to do as good as you can. If you don't do the best that you can do, you're robbing yourself of something. I mean, maybe my Nana kind of taught taught me that if you're gonna mow grass, don't just make sure all the grass is cut. Make sure it's cut the best it can be cut because I cut all her neighbor's yards. And she said, don't half-ass anything. The only time I heard my nana cuss as a kid was when she told me that.

Don't half-ass the grass. Don't half-ass the grass is the only time I ever heard a cuss as a kid was when she told me that. Don't half-ass the grass. Don't half-ass the grass. It's the only time I ever heard a cuss as a kid. Now she's just, you know, she's found out. She doesn't care and neither do I. But I don't know that she instilled that. I think it was, I don't know.

It was just, if I can do it, I have to do it. And I'm gonna be a failure if I don't. Yeah, because just, if I can do it, I have to do it, and I'm going to be a failure if I don't. Yeah, because it didn't hit me until... By college, it was a, I got to make the best grades because that links directly to getting a good job, and I've always been anxious about money. I don't think money was related to grades at a young age, though. I should give you another question. You should.

Wasn't it weird watching horror movies with your mom? I know that as a kid she would put on Hellraiser and watch it with you. Yeah, she would. You've kind of talked about it as, isn't this funny? You come from this really conservative family

but in this particular area, and that was kind of the joke, that your mom literally, when you were in middle school, watched Hellraiser with you. She would go and rent videos all the time, and then you'd watch horror movies with her. Yeah, well.

And after that Texas Chainsaw Massacre, I wouldn't watch a horror movie until I graduated from college. I think the deal with my mom is that she took the Motion Picture Association's guidelines very, very, very literally. It said parental guidance, you know. So she guided you in front of the television to watch it with her. Yeah, yeah. As long as she was there. Hellraiser's not PG, dude.

No, no. It's R. It's restricted. It says parents strongly cautioned. It says, you know, children not permitted without their parents. But that means you are permitted with your parents. What age were you when you saw Hellraiser with your mom? Middle school, man.

And what was that experience like? Awesome. Because for me, that would have been the worst thing ever. I loved it then. I love it now. My mom, you know my mom. She's the sweetest lady. She is, first of all, she's the sweetest lady,

but she's still very conservative. But she has this part of her which is dark side. No, no, she likes that kind of thing. And she called me, she texted me a couple months ago whenever this movie was in the theater, and she was like, I just watched Insidious 2 in a theater all by myself so you know she she's this me not me not only meaning she didn't have a date like your your dad didn't go with my

mom goes to movies by herself but there was no one else in the theater she was the only one and then and she said something like it was so scary but i I loved it. And I totally relate to that. She instilled that. When we invited all of our friends over here for my birthday to watch The Conjuring. Well, that's the point. You had to get together for your birthday, and that was the idea. It was to get a bunch of grown men together and to scare the crap out of them and watch them act like little children, and that's what they did.

It was embarrassing. I was embarrassed for half of those guys. Now, I was scared out of my mind, but I loved it. I don't know. It's just that we like thrills like that in my family. And my mom has just always been like that. Was it weird? No.

It was awesome. Did it affect me negatively? I don't know. I still like horror movies. But it turned out okay. I went to my dad's. I had visitation every other weekend. movies, but I turned out okay.

I went to my dad's. I had visitation every other weekend, and I remember he rented Lethal Weapon 2, which has a sex scene in it. And I guess by the time the sex scene came on, and I was like in third grade or something, and he didn't, you know, it was like, just let it roll. Regular speed. Regular speed. Regular speed. I watched a lot of sex scenes in Fast Forward.

With your mom? A lot of really quick thrusting. Yeah, oh gosh, because that's horror movies. There's gotta be the sex scene. Lethal Weapon 2, I mean, it was a great movie, but there's a sex scene

that I wouldn't recommend for any of my kids or a third grader. Yeah, my mom never let the sex scenes just live in their regular pace. That would have been wrong. But fast. Yeah, you had to get through it.

So she, I mean, she restricted me somewhat. Your performance expectations now in marriage are to be very quick about it. I brought a lot of weird perspectives into my marriage, having seen only fast-forward sex my entire life. Wow. That's great. I was so embarrassed with that, I remember.

We didn't discuss it. I didn't tell my mom. Now, speaking of guilty pleasures, like horror movies, you, now I'm in the same boat, but I feel like you had a special passion for it, gangster rap. Tell me about your obsession with gangster rap and how that came about.

Now, one of our first videos on our YouTube channel was White Boys Visit Compton, which was a podcast. First, you'll see that it says Rhett and Link cast, and we released it on iTunes, and we started putting them on YouTube. That video, we give a little bit of this story, actually. I haven't seen it in so long, I don't remember,

but the start of my love for rap music was your brother Cole. Cole was, it was so cool to go to your house Because not only did we get to hang out And we were friends But a guy who was four years older Three Three years older

Was there I was like okay This guy's a We're in eighth grade He's a junior in high school man Yeah And He would

Try to pin me against you like not physically but like i remember that he would say okay you'd say i got the new okay i got the new dj jazzy jeff tape and he'd be like i got the new young mc tape and this is this is way back in the day but and he would say which link which one do you like better and i'd'd be like, well, I gotta pick whoever Cole likes better because he's older and he's cooler. You didn't think he was cool. Well, he was a jerk. You would get in fights, and I would just laugh

and laugh and laugh, he would make you angry. Oh, it made me so mad. He would make you angry in front of me just to embarrass you. Oh yeah. And I took the bait every time. And I remember you got mad that one time, and you started chasing him. He ran in his room and slammed the door, and you threw your speed stick deodorant against

the door, and it went everywhere like a firework. But you know what he was saying at that moment? He was saying that I liked Melissa Hood. Ooh. Remember that, Melissa Hood? She lived in the neighborhood. Oh, yeah. I remember. There's nothing wrong with liking Melissa Hood. I didn't that, Melissa Hood? She lived in the neighborhood. Oh, yeah. I remember.

There's nothing wrong with liking Melissa Hood. I didn't like her, though. I mean, to this day, I'll throw deodorant at you if you tell me that I liked Melissa Hood. No, but he just would start it, and he kept pushing it and pushing it and pushing it. And I remember the two of you ran. I can vividly remember this.

I had a good arm, and you ran into his room, and I came to the top of the steps, and I remember speed stick de good arm, and you ran into his room, and I came to the top of the steps, and I remember, speed stick deodorant, and I threw it. It would have hit him between the eyeballs.

If he didn't slam the door. He slammed the door, and it just blew up all over the door. And white. White. Everywhere. Dust, particles everywhere.

I was so mad. But he liked gangster rap. Ice-T, NWA. And it was so off limits to listen to this stuff. Well, that's another thing. My mom let's watch horror movies with her, but she did not know. She was ignorant about the gangster rap.

She did not know what was being rapped about in my brother's room. And I felt like it was so cool to come to your house, and I felt like I was friends with a high schooler. I mean, I wasn't, but I had that illusion, because if I took his side, you would be angry, and I would seem cool. It was great.

And this music was, everyone always thinks that things have gotten worse. Everyone thinks that things get, you know, there's moral degradation as time goes on. It has not, no. That's not the case, okay? People have always been bad, people have always been good. Now, the music has not gotten any worse.

I mean, maybe there's a little bit more mainstream acceptance. I mean, N.W. was very misogynistic, and it was very, I mean, and it was very brutal. I mean, talking about... It was over the top. Gang violence, but also... I mean, talking about over the top gang violence, but also I mean,

she was just, it was out of this world. The worst songs were, they were explicitly sexual, misogynistic. It was, I mean, there were a couple of songs

that Cole felt so bad about that he taped over them on his cassette tape. He had a little bit of a conscience. And the first CD I ever saw was one that Cole bought

of a rap of like Gangstar. And I was like, this is so cool. One day I'll have his cassette tape. He had a little bit of a conscience. And the first CD I ever saw was one that Cole bought of a rap of like Gangstar. And I was like, this is so cool. One day I'll have a CD player. He didn't, to his credit, he did not have 2 Live Crew. He knew there was a line somewhere. And if it was just like, okay, 2 Live Crew is just rapping about sex. That's it. So he's like, okay, I'm not going to do that.

But we can stick with the other stuff. We haven't gotten to any Twitter questions. Maybe we should move a little faster for these last ones. RandomTVUSA wanted me to ask you, who was your best friend before Link? I don't know the answer to this, actually. Do you remember anybody in California? That's a really good question um i can honestly not tell you the first name of anyone in from california i was three four and

five when we lived there i'm sure that my mom could help me think of this but no no nobody do you remember i mean i grew up up in, my first best friend was Brad, this guy who I went to preschool with for years, and we like would dig holes in the driveway of. What's his last name? McDonald, Brad McDonald. So we were like preschool buddies. It was just two of us.

Loretta kept us. She's like four foot three inches tall woman. And then kindergarten, Matthew Enzor, who we were friends with all through high school, was, I thought he was the coolest guy because he could run almost as fast as Randolph Clegg, who was a black guy. And you weren't friends with black people when I was in kindergarten. I'm just, you know, that's just the way it was. So Randolph was the fastest guy. I wanted him to be my best friend, but he was black. So Matthew, the fastest white guy,

had to be my best friend. And I want to clarify, because I think that there's a lot of people who don't come from the same area and the same time that we came from. And it was a time when- Yeah, he saved me if I've said anything offensive. I want to clarify that we come from a place

where there was, you know, systematic racism. It was ugly. But it wasn't open. You know, by the time it was 1983, 1984, no one was saying any, we didn't hear people say racist things directly to people. We didn't hear white people talk directly to black people in a racist way, hardly ever. But they also didn't hear white people talk directly to black people in a racist way.

Hardly ever. But they also didn't talk to each other. But white people would talk negatively about black people and vice versa within their own groups. And then you were friends with people of other races. And really where we come from was just white and black people. That was it. There were really very few Asian people, very few Hispanic people.

But you didn't hang out and you weren't real friends you didn't go to each other's homes and that kind of thing and it was just the way it was and we didn't know we didn't know any difference so i'm just clarifying there wasn't like thank you for rescuing me i i was i was no more racist than anyone else at the time but i was i was brought up in that and so i felt like, the coolest people are the people who can run the fastest because in recess every day, we would have like student organized race, foot races. The fastest people were the coolest people. I was nowhere near the fastest. I just wanted to be friends with the fastest person or the fastest white person because that was my only option. Yeah, Matthew Ensor.

And then it was first grade when the next year when we met. So I had a couple of best friends. Now, Matthew Ensor's best friend was J.R. I can't remember his last name right now, the blonde kid. So I knew that it was not reciprocated. I was not his best friend. He didn't give it back. I was very frustrated.

And then when we were, I mean, I don't know that we were his best friend. He didn't give it back. I was very frustrated. And then when, you know, we were, I mean, I don't know that we were immediately best friends. We were very close friends, but I don't know if you'd apply that label until that we were best friends. Were we really? I would say that we were as good of friends as I had at the time, all through elementary school. But I had these friends that, I mean, really, first and second grade,

it was kind of like, you know, I had you and Tate Maddox and Michael Juby. Tate Maddox at the time, I mean, he was kind of a tool. I mean, he wore duck head shorts with his shirt tucked in. Nobody else did that. But we thought that was super cool i did he always had a girlfriend yeah but i hated him for it but then third grade third grade is when ben greenwood moved into town and ben became you know we me and you and him whereas and there were and there were probably times and i think this relates to lexi poe's question from twitter says, was there ever a point when you guys were kids that you thought your friendship might be over? Like a fight? No. But in terms of, am I a second best friend now? Yes. So two part question. The first one,

there was definitely a time in which I thought that Ben was my best friend. I'd say like fourth, fifth grade, we lived closer together. We spent more time together. The three of us were together almost all the time, but then there was also a year in their fourth grade and fifth grade, which we were in different classes. Right. So I was in my class. And I would, I would go over and hang out with you guys at Ben's house or your house And you would report to me All the things you had done over the past two weeks When I wasn't hanging out with you

We found this weed That is hollow in the middle And we've decided to smoke it And we're calling it the Big George Now they did not put anything in it It was just like It was just an actual weed. It wasn't weed.

It was an weed, a weed. And you lit it on fire, and you simulated smoking it like a cigarette. You had no clue what you were doing. You didn't even know what marijuana was, certainly. It was horrible, though. But it was a weed, and you called it the Big George. And you would build lean-tos, and Ben had all these ideas.

And I remember feeling threatened then that, oh, yeah, they're best friends. I'm on the fringe. I live across town. You lived across town, and you were in a different class. But I never thought that a friendship— Like not social class, like a different teacher. You were in a lower class. You lived in a smaller house.

No. Yeah, a different teacher. And I don't know how they do it in eighth grade, sixth, seventh, eighth grade these days, but the way we did it is you were in the same class all day. Well, no, it's sixth grade. But starting in seventh and eighth grade, we did have different classes, different teachers. At this point in the,

I'm just going to come back to the reality of the ear biscuit here. And at this point, I'm thinking, all of a sudden we've lost our, I feel like I've lost myself in our past, and I have no clue how this feels to anyone listening like I feel like oh Redlink come back to us. You're reminiscing about your past, but that's why it's experimental

I mean this is why we this is why we tried it is this We want to know how you feel about it And if you want us to continue to do this kind of thing But let me answer the second part of the question okay? Was there a point when you were kids that you thought that your friendship might be over? I would say that there were times, and you've relayed this to me before,

which I think is also a question that you might have for me about girls. I have a question for you about girls. I do, yeah. And that is that I was very obsessive about women and would go from one girl to the next fixated on a girl, whether she reciprocated or not. Yeah, so what's your question?

Because I don't want to go too far. Well, it's not really a question. I'm saying that there were times in which Because of a girlfriend. I was so into a girl that I kind of forgot about you for a while. Oh, I mean, that certainly happened, but I didn't feel threatened as a best friend because it wasn't another friend. It was a girlfriend. That's a different thing.

I kind of feel like I definitely had the question. I wanted to ask you, why do you think you were so obsessive about girls? I almost don't want to ask it now because I feel like we want to keep the podcast to a certain length that I think there's some good stuff to unpack if we decide this is a good thing to do. We can do the relational, the girl stuff, because there's a lot of girl stuff. Oh, a lot of really good girl stuff. I mean, sharing first girlfriend, sharing first kiss.

Your obsession with girls and my fear of girls. That's what they call a teaser, Link. That's good. Let's make that another podcast. Not that we have to end it right now. I'm trying to see if... I'm looking through these Twitter questions to see if there's another one.

I feel like this is kind of part couples therapy. What's happening here? Maybe a little bit of that. Do you feel like you're getting an appreciation of our friendship? It's so easy to lose sight of how long we've been friends because you just get into the grind of what are we going to accomplish or what do we have to do this week or this month or where are we going? No, I think I am gaining appreciation of it.

Finally. I do think it is a little bit like, not that I didn't appreciate it, I think it is a little bit like counseling without a mediator. I do, unless you call the mythical beasts who are listening, the Ear Biscuiteers, the mediator, which is a weird way to think about them. Well, I sense their presence.

But I do, I think this is a good question to close with, and this is a question that we used as a teaser over and over again on Good Mythical Morning season three, I guess it was, when we would, on our question episodes, we would say, did you do this, do you that, and have you ever punched each other in the face? And we never answered the question. Did somebody ask that?

So DealBiz on Twitter, who's followed us for a while, says, have you ever punched each other in the face? Hashtag Throwback Thursday. He's been a fan for a while, so he knows that this is something that we use all the time as a teaser on Good Mythical Morning. So let's just close by answering that question. Have we ever punched each other in the face? No. We haven't.

Okay, so that's it. We haven't. But I will say, Have you ever reared back your fist at me? I mean, No. You were throwing the deodorant at me and Cole. That was because Cole was involved. And I think that's the point I wanted to make. And that is, as children, as children, I don't think we were even ever even close to being on the verge of a physical altercation with one another.

And I think that, here's my theory, okay? I have a theory. But I think that now, in current, our friendship is much deeper, much more complex, stronger than it was when we were 12 years old. But the nature of our friendship and the nature of our business, the nature of this being in this creative endeavor together,

there are times when we get very mad at one another. And there are a couple of times where we've gotten really mad at each other. I'd say probably 10 times in the past 10 years where it's crossed my mind that we might be about to get into a fist fight. Like we might be, that might happen.

Really? Where we've been so mad at each other that it's crossed my mind that it wouldn't be totally out of the question right now if one of us punched the other. But are you really thinking, it wouldn't be out of the question if Link punched me at this moment. Is that really what you think?

Yeah, because I feel like you get madder than I do. Right, I feel like you think, I would never punch him, but sometimes I just don't know. He just might go loose cannon on me. Yeah, yeah, I'm like, he's a lot madder than I thought that he was right now. And what I'm going to say is that when you were a child, before you became a man, that never happened. Like you never had that in you. You never had this like, I might punch you right now. I'm so mad I'm going to punch you. You never had that. That was something that like began to emerge like after college, I think. As a kid, I remember getting so angry at certain things that my mom

floated the idea that what if you got a pillow that when you got angry, you would punch it? Like I remember that. It's very unsatisfying i think that was going into like dealing with puberty but i do remember her making that suggestion hormones you know hormones going crazy puberty going nuts no pun intended but uh i actually tried it i went to my room and i punched my bed and i don't remember it helping. But it didn't play out in our friendship. We didn't really fight. I don't think we argued.

No, I mean, what was there to argue about? I mean, we got stuff to argue about every 30 minutes now because we're creating things. And there's, you have, creation requires opinions. you have creation, uh, requires opinions and, uh, we're not always going to share the same perspective on things. Um, well, I think we've learned to accept that, uh, not that we couldn't do a better job of this, but in general, the creative, the creative process there for us, there's, there's a give and take and there's a, like, let's throw this idea back and forth, sometimes, like, throw it pretty hard back and forth until it shakes out into what it should be.

Well, I also think that's another conversation, is the whole creative process, the fact that there is a lot of conflict involved in it that nobody sees. So now we've got three special episodes, if you count this one. Then we've got the girl episode, and then we've got the creative process.

Unless this is a fail. I mean, I'm open to that. All right. I'm open to that. Maybe it was. But I think it was good for us. If no one else hears this, I think it was good for us to have some perspective on our friendship that... Oh, this one's going out.

Oh, you think? Oh, yeah. This one's going out. Are you going to tell them that we recorded a one earlier that never went out? Is that what you're implying? Because I think I just accidentally told them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That we already tried this and it didn't work.

We tried this and it was a totally different format. We didn't like the way it turned out. Okay? There, we admitted it. Maybe it'll be like on some secret channel at some point. Yeah, it'll be, yeah, one day we'll exploit it. When we can make enough money off of it. We'll sell it for $5 from a website.

And you'll be severely disappointed. A website created by our sponsor of this episode, Squarespace.com. No, you didn't. Really? Well. You're doing this? I wanted to transition to an outro,

and then I thought about our sponsor again, and just thought, well, I'm going to make it natural. And then you screwed it up. Okay, I'll go there with you. Make your own website. It's easy. It's going to look good. Squarespace.

Don't go to spacesquare.com. Yeah, go to Squarespace. Actually, I don't think it exists. So you can go to squarespace.com. They'll help you set up a domain for spacesquare.com. And that can be your website. That's confusing. It could be anything you want it to be.

And just remember, you get a free trial without a credit card. But then if you decide to do it, you get 10% off if you use the code that helps us, R&L. Are you still doing the plug? No, no, I'm moving on. Okay, you're moving back to Like we were in this like heartfelt moment of And then you're like in the middle That's the story of our lives

Yeah, it is, man Hey, listen, I got, you know We gotta pay for this Wow, I mean that is So pristinely Where we are professionally And personally It's just mashed.

It's all mashed together. Listen, I would sponsor my face if I could. What? What? What does that mean? I could... I'm just kidding, man. Okay.

I did sponsor my hair, though. If somebody would buy your face, you would... Yeah. I mean, I wouldn't tattoo it. This is maybe like a shaving company or something. All of a sudden, we've gone from heartfelt introspection to blatant commercialization. Okay, let's go back.

No, no, we don't have to go back to crazy town. What are you talking about? Sponsoring your face? Like your face is a show? It could be a billboard. No, your face is a brand. A billboard. You mean sell your face with ad space.

That's what you meant. Yeah, yeah, yeah. People will do this, by the way. You talk at me like I'm crazy. You talk at you. But, you know, we've got this Google Glass thing that's happening. Well, that's going to keep happening. And then they're going to start

looking cool. And then there's going to be a button that you press on the side of them and a message comes up on your glasses for other people. Billboard face. Yeah, yeah. And it'll be like, square space. Square will be in one lens and space will be in the other lens. Or if you buy that URL, then space square if you're selling stuff.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or if you're selling squares in space. You could probably hit a button and switch them. And what I'm saying is if I believe in the brand and it'll help us keep doing what we're doing, I'll do it. I'll do it for you. You'll put it on glasses? I'll put it on anything.

I will not permanently tattoo it to my body. I will only do that with my wife's name, which I did, and you also did. For the right brand, I would tattoo my other butt cheek with the brand, but I would do it smaller than my wife's name, or I would make my wife's name bigger, because that would not fly at home

when I drop the trowel, and next time, it's like, what's the price tag on that? Black and Decker is just as big as my name. Seriously, what's the price tag for a butt tattoo? Well, I can't answer that because if I answer that, it gives people a window into how much we get for sponsorship anyway. I'm not comfortable.

Yeah, yeah, we can't disclose that. I'm not comfortable giving people any point of reference for how much money we do or don't make. I won't say how much I'm willing to get paid, yeah, we can't disclose that. I'm not comfortable giving people any point of reference for how much money we do or don't make. I won't say how much I'm willing to get paid, but I will throw it out there that if you want my butt cheek, I'm willing to get that sponsored too. No one will see it. Do you realize the irony in this?

No, no. What are you talking about your butt cheek? Nobody sees it. Well, my wife does. They're going to pay to advertise to your wife? My wife will buy whatever it is that's being advertised on my butt. And since when has she looked at your butt?

Every morning. No, she- I sleep in the nude. You think- I sleep in the nude and we- Why is this happening? And we have a mirror- And by this I mean us discussing it.

One whole half of our bedroom wall is a mirror. So if she doesn't see it when I get up, she sees it when I turn around. Can we put this vehicle in reverse? You asked about what it would take, what the effectiveness would be of me getting my butt tattooed with a sponsor. You mentioned Black & Decker. I don't know if they're available.

I don't know why. I don't know why I mentioned Black & Decker because that would take two butt cheeks. Yeah, you put black on your cheek and I put and Decker on mine. You can just put Decker. We can hold the ampersand between us. What is this about tattooing on butt cheeks that is something that comes out of your psyche? Because we did it.

Because we did it, yeah. I saw it actually yesterday. I don't see it often. But every once in a while I'm like,, yeah. I saw it actually yesterday. I don't see it often, but every once in a while, I'm like, oh yeah, I do have a tattoo. It's of my wife's name and it's on my butt.

That's cool. I mean, I don't regret it. There's never a day that goes by that I regret it. It's unlike a face tattoo or a neck tattoo. This is a butt tattoo. This is a different ball game.

I've never regretted it either. Yeah. I would, I've never thought about adding to it either though. Or adding any type of tattoo. I thought about getting it underlined for Valentine's Day. No, you didn't. Yeah, okay, because it's minimal investment. Yeah, it's like.

It's just a line. What did you get me for Valentine's Day? I got you this line of ink. I underlined your name. So it's like every year, then there's an a line. What did you get me for Valentine's Day? I got you this line of ink. I underlined your name. So it's like every year, then there's an expectation that- Next year, I put it in quotes. Oh, God. No, no, no.

That's condescending. It's like, oh, yes. No, no. Like my wife, yes. I'm using it like they use it on billboards and stuff that they don't understand. They use quotes for emphasis. I'm using it in that colloquial sense. No, I think that the expectation would be, okay, did you underline it again?

Did you double underline it this year? I could keep underlining it. And then it could become like all of a sudden it's on a pedestal. I could probably underline it for the rest of our marriage if the lines are small enough. I think it should be like a pedestal. Yeah, it's just a little line that if we stay married long enough. This is the best idea I've had all week, by the way. If we stay married long enough, there's going to be a pedestal going down my right leg that holds up your name on my butt cheek.

It's like, what is that tattoo? Well, it kind of leads to my wife's name. On my butt cheek. Yeah. Or you could do like puffy letters. I mean, it's like cursive. I don't think you could do that at this point without screwing it up. But I could put a drop shadow on it.

This year I gave you a drop shadow. I mean, there's something to that. Because there's a creative challenge that resonates with me. Yeah. That every Valentine's Day, well, you did the underline. You can't make it italics. That every Valentine's Day, well, you did the underline, you can't make it italics. No, it's cursive.

Yeah, once it's done, you can drop shadow it, you can quote it, you can underline it. I think we should end this. Put a balloon around it? I don't, I mean, I'm not gonna say I don't trust Alex or Stevie

in order to make the editorial decision, but I'm saying I think I want an easy letdown. I think we just took that tattoo as far as we could, and now we can just say that, you know, again, I want to remind you of a couple of things. Number one, if you liked this, let us know.

Number two, it helps us a lot when you go to iTunes and you rate our podcast, you leave a review. Have you ever seen those reviews where, not reviews, tattoos, you said review, where they make a whole arm sleeve totally ink? Or like the guy for Rage Against the Machine, his whole left pec is ink, like solid ink? It's when they mess something up. They just make it totally ink? I could make everything on my right butt chink total ink, except for her...

Your chink? Butt chink. Except for her name. So it would be like a dark room with a spotlight on her name is what it would be. Try that. See how that feels. Well, it's going to take time because I'm going to do it by underlining her name. I'm going to circle her name every year.

You squealed so much when that happened. I can't imagine you getting the whole butt cheek done.