Handsome - Kim Dickens asks about childhood memories

Episode Date: September 26, 2023

Kim Dickens (Fear the Walking Dead, Gone Girl) asks Mae, Fortune, and Tig to share some childhood memories! Plus elevator music, teacher gifts, Grandma stories, and more!Handsome is hosted by Tig Notaro, Mae Martin, and Fortune FeimsterFollow us on social media @handsomepodEmail the show: [e-mail]'t forget to rate & review Handsome wherever you get your podcasts!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome to the handsome pod with Tig Notaro and my co-host I'm Mae Martin and I'm Fortune Feimster and we're coming at you handsome as ever you're right you're both looking very handsome may is rocking a hat yeah i feel very cozy my brain's all tucked in tight i got massive headphones uh tight tight hat tight hat real tight hat and we're all rocking t-shirts of course yeah i got my cvs readers on yeah very handsome it's a good look for 2.99 and that is two dollars and 99 cents not to be confused with the bigger number fortune you're you're not wearing your merch no this time i'm wearing a t-shirt that was given to me from a venue honestly if anyone gives me T-shirts, I wear them if they're comfortable.

That's really good to know. Yeah. Yeah, if they're comfortable, they fit me, I will wear them. So I could be like a walking billboard. And are you ever like, wait, what does this say? All the time. And then you look down and you realize

that you've been promoting something. Some fascist group. I mean, I'm not that out of touch but i've definitely like been promoting like a local ice cream shop from some random city i went to or you know whatever or a pizza parlor and have you found out if they've seen any numbers go up? You know, nobody's followed up to say like business has been booming. I will say I did wear this one T-shirt. If you live in North Carolina,

it was known that whoever was in charge of our elevators, I don't know the position. It's one of those transportation elected positions. This woman put her face on every elevator in north carolina and her name was cherry berry so everyone anyone that lives in north carolina if you just say the one named cherry berry they would go they go she lifts me up oh my god so the this company made a shirt that said cherry berry lifts me up and i wore it on and they i think they like sold a bunch of those shirts that is so great i really want one i really want it's hurt like it's this older woman's face and it says cherry berry and so for years we'd go cherry berry well what about does cherry berry have people that are not behind

her that maybe started t-shirts that say cherry berry let me down well oh my god well people start to get i don't know what her political affiliation is. People start to get into that. And I go, no, no, no, I don't want to know.

I don't want to know. I don't want any information. Just let me have my cherry berry lifts me up. I don't want to know if she's, you know, you know what her belief system is. Yeah. Like,

let me have this. They also said that her name is actually sheree berry and i go uh everyone in wisconsin calls her cherry berry yeah so i repeat i refuse to hear the reality of the situation well i think that's that's a good uh stance to take there's there's other moments in life where you can refuse to hear the truth and that seems like a harmless one yeah dig your heels in yeah yeah cherry berry y'all anyway that's just a little bit of north carolina trivia for you i really like that i want to make her the most famous person in the world like i

if everybody just joined in and decided we're going to make Cherry Berry the biggest celebrity on earth. Well, so far, a real local legend in North Carolina. We should get a question submitted by Cherry Berry. Oh, my God. Yes. She would be like, first off, it's Cherie. If we have any listeners in North Carolina, which we do, if you run into Cherry Berry,

get the audio recording of her question and answer and send it on in. What if her question was, do you believe marriage is between a man and a woman? Yeah, or it was like vehemently anti-trans yeah we're like oh yeah she's like i got a laundry list of things i'm upset about one of them is not elevators yeah now there's a new elevator guy and everyone's like, screw this guy. His name doesn't run. Well, I feel like America does that.

Like people will just enter like the public consciousness. Like when I moved here and I watch a lot of Survivor and a lot of shows like that, every advert is for Jacobian Myers. Every advert is for that one law firm, Jacobian Myers myers well and now you just plugged it i know i know i mean if anything's catchy it it stays with you there's some mattress stores that i know about that i shouldn't know about yeah america is just a it's just a bunch of dumb dumbs so we're just like does like, does it rhyme? Does it rhyme? Is it a jingle? Is the t-shirt comfortable?

That I'm behind her. There you go. And how crazy that that is your thing is elevators. Yeah. Yeah. Is her face kind of like, do the doors close right in the center of her face and they open and her like... No, it's like in the corner where I think elevators in general have to... Oh, our listeners just wandered off.

It's a statement saying it tells you how many people are allowed in that elevator and what the maximum weight is. And then it basically says this elevator was inspected by Cherry Berry. Cherry Berry. So Cherry went out there with her little you know. Tape measure? I don't know.

She just signs off on the rules. Binoculars? Maybe she has people or had people under her that went out and did that but she's like I signed off on the rules of this elevator i love her she signed off on that on that uh firefighter helmet button that's right whenever i see that button in an elevator with the little firefighter cap i always think if i push it will one lower onto my head my head? I don't think I've thought about that. Well, you start thinking about it.

Because what a great fun thing if you could press a button and have a little firefighter cap on. Have y'all ever been stuck in an elevator? Yes. But can I just say, the reason I've been silent for 30 seconds is I Googled Cherry Berry. And I just want to say that in 2007, a musician called Dan Bryke recorded a song called Cherry Berry about the gal in the elevator. We got it. We got to find it. And then they played it on the radio. And Cherry Berry is quoted saying about the song,

I just think it rocks. See, Cherry Berry's having a good time with her fame in North Carolina. This song, y'all, her voice probably is very like, y'all, this song rocks. I love it. I listen to it all the time. The gal in the elevator.

Buy a t-shirt and buy my new album she's retired now because she's just going around you know she made all that elevator cash yeah she's selling merch there's nothing sweeter than elevator cash that's right i got stuck in an elevator with my mom and three strangers okay what happened tell it was in south carolina so jerry berry wasn't in charge oh wait thomas has the song before we get into that let's hear the song okay elevator with cherry berry oh cherry berry cherry berry oh cherry berry i want the way i gotta trust you see because she's in charge of the elevator

cherry berry six comments my love for you is so scary honestly it's more of a jam than i expected i expected like a folk song i know it's right on the nose i was i thought for sure you thought it was like a british yeah Like a British Yeah Oh Cherry Berry Oh Cherry Berry My love for you is scary Wait What are those six comments? I got enough And honestly If her political views

Don't line up with ours I apologize in advance Me too Me too I'll have to get the tattoo removed That I just got Of her name Let's see what the

Comments were Oh my god Okay These are the comments on this on the cherry berry song this song perfectly encapsulates my loves for the commissioner her protective and watchful gaze fills me with an almost motherly warmth knowing that she is personally watching over my safety while on the elevator oh my gosh too funny oh all hail the elevator queen cherry bear you lift me up you let me down i love you and then someone commented perfectly sad i can think of us folks in north carolina had too much time on our hands yeah it seems like it that's folks wait so you got stuck

in an elevator with your with your mom yeah i, I was doing a show in South Carolina. This was probably like seven years ago. And it was like a crazy evening. There was all these weddings and they were having like 20 people in the elevator at a time. And I think it just like made the elevator peter out. And we got in it and it just stopped. And we were like, oh my God. We were in there probably about just stopped. And we were like, oh, my God. We were in there probably about an hour.

No. Yeah. No. They didn't call the fire department. Did you press the fire hat button? I did. And guess what? No hat came out.

So wait, did anybody, there were 20 people in there? No. Thank God. The 20 people had just gone up and it came back down for us and it was me and my mom and like three or four strangers anybody have a meltdown my mom was about to have a panic attack and she was like talk her down um yeah i was just like it's okay we're gonna it's gonna be fine and i i was like calling the hotel front desk like we're in your elevator so you had cell service i had cell service okay that's good yeah and so you were not spiraling you were just like we're in no yeah uh immediate danger

yeah i would have been more concerned if like the elevator was like showing signs of falling or something but it just felt like we were stuck yeah between floors so i was okay living hell it is weird you start looking at these strangers being like how long are we all gonna be in here together who's eating who yeah yeah yeah and that and i have to take care of my mom. Yeah. Would you have eaten your mom? Yeah, would you? No, I would have probably started with a stranger, right? Yeah, that makes more sense. How would, well, let's not get into the weird details.

Mae, tell us about. I've been stuck in one too. And it was, yeah, maybe 45 minutes or something. It was me, my ex-fiancee her mom her eight months pregnant sister and her 90 year old grandmother and uh it was so stressful and i i immediately started trying to force everyone to play games to take our mind off it i think it made it worse it was like guys let's play improv games let's do one one word at a time. Oh, and Uncle Peter was in there. Oh, how is he? You know, he's not great.

Yeah, so we were doing one word at a time, make a story. And we were going around in a circle. And it's like, once upon a time, some people were stuck in. And it gets to Uncle Peter. And he just goes, pass. Pass. Oh, no, some people Pass. Oh, no. Some people passed.

See, that's how I would read it. I thought you were going to say you immediately just started eating everybody. Immediately. Yeah, well. We've been talking about it on the podcast. I've been treading water lately. Just a few minutes out of my day that I take for myself to do something that's good for me. I wake up feeling better. I have more energy. And you know, small actions like that can have big benefits, like how taking care of your gut can support

whole body health. Well, Seeds DS01 Daily Symbiotic benefits your gut, skin, and heart health in just two little capsules a day. Now, I've been using Seeds DS01 Daily Symbiotic, and it's great. My skin feels better. I feel better. It's just good. So trust your gut with Seed's DS01 Daily Symbiotic. Go to seed.com slash handsome and use code 25handsome to get 25% off your first month. That's 25% off your first month of Seed's DS01 Daily Symbiotic at seed.com slash handsome, code 25handsome. I love the show hacks and it is is back baby for season three. That's right. We are going to see what kind of antics Debra Vance is up to this season. She is such a treat to watch because who doesn't love Jean Smart? She is so freaking talented. Now season two left off with Ava being fired. If you haven't watched any of

Hacks, guess what? It's on Max. You can catch up, and I highly recommend that you do so before season three starts. There is also an official Hacks podcast. In each episode, Hacks creators Lucia Agnello, Paul W. Downs, and Jen Statsky speak with cast and crew members to unpack the emmy winning comedy series so check out that podcast but watch hacks streaming exclusively on max and listen to the official hacks podcast on max or wherever you get your podcast i definitely would not want to be stuck in the elevator with like my partner's family. Yeah. And I really was worried about peeing. I really, you know, I pee quite a lot.

I mean, my wife's family is cool. But like if we had a 90-year-old grandma with us and a random uncle I don't know very well, that would not be ideal. Why? I don't know. Because you're like still trying to like keep it together and not show them your like panic situation. Right. And yeah, some people act like a fool when they're in a crisis and then crisis averted.

And then you go, we're all cool. Right, guys. I know. guess i know well so my fear first of all they saw that my first go-to crisis response was improv see improvisational comedy which is hell then also there were diapers in there because uh there is a toddler but luckily the toddler wasn't had gone taking the stairs with someone else well that would have been perfect for you who have to go to the bathroom all the time i know that's what i was imagining that i was gonna have to in front of my girlfriend's whole family pee in a diaper was this the beginning of the end of the relationship that was no it was like if

anything in the end i think it brought us closer together oh okay yeah i have to say i didn't even know you were had been engaged at one point i was yeah 20 to 25 i was with a really wonderful person yeah five years but then you were like you're awesome but i gotta go yeah we lived in different countries by the end yeah that's young yeah we're still really good friends in fact i still i'm friends with uncle peter and well i go to they still invite me to their cottage and it's like probably my my healthiest relationship and also my healthiest breakup. It's with Uncle Peter. It's with Uncle Peter.

Uncle Peter and I remain friends. I'll tell you, I got stuck in an elevator briefly when I was dating this woman in D.C. And the elevator stopped. and I always thought why does everyone freak out with an elevator stopping you know no big deal and the elevator stopped and I was a little like uh what happened like like uh really started to unravel, kind of. Really? Right away? Yeah. I was, probably after a minute or two, I was like, all the fun is gone. I need to get out. Yeah.

And then it got moving. But then I was really challenged about a year ago. I got stuck in a bathroom in my hotel room oh fuck for 30 minutes stop and i really learned something about myself what did you learn i am claustrophobic and i unraveled oh wow and and in fact this whole year i've been dealing with coming back from what that did. What? Yeah. How did you ultimately get out?

Oh, interesting. Oh, my gosh. It was, it's one of those, you know, pocket doors that close and latch. Yes. Yeah. I could not, it was just spinning and wouldn't undo the latch. Yeah. And I was kicking the door hitting the door i was yelling and then i was

thinking okay maybe i could just i mean this is true i didn't know what to do and i just thought okay yeah maybe i could just get in the shower and take a shower and um i i didn't none of it makes sense but i was truly like oh you know i could i didn't know what to do and i didn't, none of it makes sense, but I was truly like, oh, you know, I didn't know what to do. And I didn't have my phone in there. And I had just taken a shower. And so I thought I was fine before I knew the door was locked and I was taking a shower. So maybe I'll just get in the shower. And I had a show, like I was supposed to be on stage in like an hour.

So I thought, well, somebody is going to come look for me. Yeah. But yeah, all the kicking and taking breaks and then it was truly like a miracle happened the door pops open and just slides open i thought i was hallucinating i reached out and was like what what just happened oh my god and then you had to go on stage like half an hour later yeah that's wild fucked up and well yeah and i called stephanie backstage i was so emotional i was so emotional and i called her right before i got on stage i burst into tears i mean i was so it really disturbed me.

And then I went on stage and I just thought, okay, well, I can just go on stage and do my regular show and it'll be fine. And then I walk up to the microphone and I'm like, I was just locked in a bath. I mean, I immediately went into it and I did like 10 minutes on it. And I've jokingly thought, well, maybe I'll just release that as the hello. Good evening. I was stuck in a bathroom. Yes. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. To my cancer show. But yeah, I've truly been in like heavy therapy over what that did and what that uh yeah what that means and yeah wow is that like flashing back when you're in a small like a yeah yeah it had it i i've the anxiety attacks i've never gone through that but i'm i'm coming through them finally but i was having three to five a day that were over the top wow it's crazy how that can trigger something like that it really did so it was um it's been hard for me to be in elevators

sometimes on planes sometimes having a mask on the planes thing i get yeah i know we have to get to the question but i have a related thing thing that when I was in rehab, there was this kid called Benji and he never spoke. And everyone just was like, Benji's not going to speak. Just don't ask him to speak, whatever. Months went by and we just got used to Benji just being around and not speaking. And then we were doing group therapy and we were going around in a circle and we were saying why we thought we used drugs, like what the reason was and everyone was kind of like had vague answers and you know it feels good or my parents did it whatever and

then we get to benji we just assume he's not gonna speak like usual and he just starts speaking and tells this story and it um was crazy to hear his voice after so long and he goes i was cat sitting for my parents friends and his parents lived friends lived in like a massive house in toronto and it was so big that it had an elevator in it he was meant to be there from friday to sunday he was 15 and he gets in on the friday night on the elevator and the elevator breaks down and it's pitch black the lights off and he has a pack of cigarettes a lighter no phone and he's in there till sunday night and he's like oh my god off and he has a pack of cigarettes a lighter no phone and he's in there till sunday night and he's like oh my god yeah and he's like that's why i do drugs and we were

all kind of like yeah fair enough like that you don't come back from that ah yeah isn't that wild even though it's not even that long but yeah it is it is in the dark in darkness for 30 minutes that i was in that bathroom you went to all kinds of places i cannot even begin to tell you that's so primal it's like when your body your body wants to not be somewhere but it is not able to leave like yeah wow i've had that experience as well. I've had hints of this issue. Like one time when I was hospitalized, I was so I had anxiety because of the pain and being stuck in the hospital bed that I wanted to rip the lines out of my arms and just but that created that same kind of trapped feeling. Yeah. And they couldn't get me the relief I needed. And so it just kept escalating.

But anyway, escalating. Like an escalator. Yes, if only I was on an escalator. Cherry berry. But you know what? Speaking of drugs, I've never done any sort of hallucinogenic things. I haven't either.

But I, after this happened to me, I did a three-month microdosing of mushrooms to help me through this past year. And did it help? I believe it did. I would say in the past month, I've come to a completely different place. I've been hearing more about people doing that lately.

It's going to be massive. It's already kind of like a lot of official medical places are going to, are starting to use it, but it's prohibitively expensive, but it's going to, it's going to be revolutionary. I think. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, well, I wasn't expecting revolutionary. This episode is brought to you by Microdicing and Cherry Berry. She has her own flavor of mushrooms.

That's right. It's berry flavored. That's right, Fortune. Or it's cherry flavor. That's true. Give me any. What if today's question is, have you ever been stuck in an elevator? And we're like, well, we could repeat all this all over again.

Would it have been funny if, so when you said it's berry flavored, and then you said it could have been cherry flavored, would it have been funny if I said, or chair flavored? Nah, I'm glad I didn't say it. I mean, we'll have to see we'll have to see our listeners will let us know i was like what if i said that glad i didn't well shall we get to our question yes yes today's question comes in from an award-winning actor who you know from the TV shows Deadwood, House of Cards,

and Fear the Walking Dead, as well as the movies Gone Girl, Thank You for Smoking, and most recently, The Good Nurse. It's Kim Dickens, folks. Woo! Yeah. Nice. Kim has this question for The Handsome Pod. Hi, this is Kim Dickens.

My question is, is there an early childhood memory that you have that for some reason pops up a lot for you? Like it can be a significant memory or just like some random childhood memory, but it shows up often like weekly or biweekly or monthly, but it's like why is this? Do I always recall this memory? Oh, wow. I might have to think about that for a second. It's weird because I feel like in our jobs,

like I'm always like desperately trying to mine my, trying to comb through my past being like, I hope there's something funny in there. And so I'm actively pulling stuff up all the time. I'm trying to think if there's one that in there. And so I'm actively pulling stuff up all the time. I'm trying to think if there's one that pops in unbidden, like, I have a memory that I think about a lot. And it's and it's like, elementary school. Embarrassing. Nice. But it's not. It's not really embarrassing. But it's just such a funny thing of what happened? Why did I think this?

is such a funny thing of what happened why did i think this um i went home one day in fact i just told my sons this story when i put them to bed at night they like to hear stories and it's they want to hear a story from like your life i love that i love that and so this isn't even that interesting of a story but i i just recently shared it with them. And I was like, okay, well, one time when I was in elementary school, and I think I was in like maybe first or second grade, something like that. that all of the kids in our classes got the teacher's plants that are on their desks and that we have to get plants for all of my teachers and my mother's like oh gosh okay we don't we didn't know how we missed this note that went home. And so my mother went out and got whatever six or seven plants. And we drove up to the school together. And we were delivering them to all the teachers.

And there was never, nobody told the kids to get the teacher's plants. Nobody told the kids to get the teacher's plants. I don't know how I thought that everybody got the teacher a plant. Do you think you did think that or you just wanted to? I did. What? I did think it. I wasn't even being funny or doing some, because I certainly have always enjoyed a prank that plays out.

There was nothing like that it was just there was some misunderstanding or i saw some maybe a kid gave a teacher a plant and i was like i didn't get my teacher a plant and so how many plants do you think you guys bought i think it was like six or seven no matter because there were so many different teachers you know you go to math class and oh my god you know english class and so i um my mother parks the car and we get out and we're carrying all these plants in and go around what was their reaction just like thank you this is so nice but what is this about oh my god my mother, and I was watching my mother say to the teachers, oh, well,

Tig told me, and I was sitting there, everything started to come crashing down. And the teachers were like, well, no, we didn't instruct the kids to bring us plants. And then I was just left like,

I don't know. I don't know you're like well enjoy your pie yeah oh my god so everyone got a plant they're like god now i gotta water this thing did the other kids like notice and make fun of you or so this embarrassment just lives deep in like that the memory obviously well it's not haunting it's not like a deep embarrassment it's just at the time in first grade or second grade i was like oh gosh what what did i misunderstand like how did we end up in this situation where my mother is going with me room to room delivering a plant. An unwanted plant that you went to a plant store, you chose them out. Yeah, we picked out the plants, loaded up the car, drove them up to school and delivered them all for nothing. Were you generally liked by teachers?

Yeah, even though I failed three grades and dropped out, I have that whole history. But I was oddly liked by my teachers. And in fact, I'm still in touch with and close with my vice principal, who I was often sent to. Your best friend? Yeah, truly. I'm in touch with my grade one teacher, Mrs. Reiki. Yeah. Yeah, that's so'm in touch with my grade one teacher, Mrs. Reiki. Yeah. Yeah. That's so, I love that story.

I'm Facebook friends with a few teachers. Some I'm close to and some I learned during the insurrection were cute. That's always such a bummer. You're catching up with someone and then at the very end, they throw in a little comment like, well, you comment. I start going, putting two and two together. I was like, wait, oh, no. Well, at least you could put two and two together. I mean, thanks to the QAnon teachers.

I had this. Actually, she was never my teacher, but she was a teacher at the school who my vice principal encouraged to, you know, spend time with me to kind of try and encourage me to be interested in school. And she, I was close with her because she would take me out to lunch and just whatever, spend time. But she was so conservative, very religious, very conservative. And then years later, she sent me, I guess, a friend request on social media.

And then I started to see just this wildly different person on social media where she's like trans rights and black lives matter and like all of these things and i i reached out to her and i've seen her when i've been back in town but we went to lunch and i just i told stephanie i said i want to sit down and ask her because you know how people can kind of you can miss the gap when they became something new and then they'll deny that they were ever something else. Yeah, yeah. And I said to Stephanie, I really want to go to lunch with her and just ask her very directly what made her change. And also to acknowledge that I remember certain things she would say and do. And I wanted to

see if she was going to own the things she said or did before. Yeah. And did you? And I did. And I Oh, my God, this is so juicy. Yeah. And so we sat down, I just said, I, I have this question that I want to ask you. And I asked her just point blank. And she completely owned it and said, yeah, I said these things. I did these things. I thought these things. I believe these things. Just a completely different vibe.

So was there like a particular incident or a family member or did she just? Yeah, the shift. She said that, and i believe that this is in fact i bet she will listen to this episode she she follows most things that i'm up to but i believe what she said was that she was raised in this environment and so she just took on these ideas and values and this belief system. I mean, she's still a religious person, but you cannot find somebody more in support of...

But where does that come from? What changed and made her more accepting? I guess there wasn't a particular... That's what I was asking her. Was there a pivotal moment in your life like was she visited by three ghosts at christmas yeah she's like well i'm trying to think there were those three ghosts but those three handsome ghosts yeah you know i i feel like i i did press her for what what specific thing happened and i don't remember hearing anything other than getting out and um seeing the world and yeah evolving yeah that's kind of more admirable

like if you know it's not that like a family member came out and she was forced to reckon with it it's like she just was a curious minded enough person that she yeah go out and find these new opinions and then challenge her her beliefs that's cool yeah it's it's uh i'm i'm endlessly impressed let's get her a plant yes let's get her a plant good call back may thanks but also there there is something it's always weird when your parent enters your school like it's worlds colliding like when when your parent enters the world of your school for whatever like parent teacher night or like to clear out your locker or whatever it's a weird it's a weird feeling yeah it is especially when there's like parent teacher conferences is especially when there's like parent teacher conferences without plants oh my god yeah yeah yeah uh waiting for my phone to ring and because my parents would go to parent teacher conferences

and i'd know that i hadn't done that i've been lying for months like i hadn't done any of the homework i'd been coming up with elaborate lies about what we were doing in those classes like because my mom was hyper vigilant about academics. And so I would just make up these, like dig myself into these holes. Like, oh no, this term we're actually not doing any work because we're all studying archaeology and we're digging up a bone. And then they'd go and I'd know

this shit was going to hit the fan. And they would always say that, well, we're going out for dinner after and we'll call the house from the restaurant phone oh yeah because they'd know how anxious i was and then they'd call me and they'd say we're gonna talk when we get home i was oh i yeah i remember telling my mother and my stepfather that um we i i mean i was just across the board failing everything and it was inevitable that they were going to find out that I once again had straight F's and and they'd be like where's

your report card and I'd say oh we didn't get them again today and it's like meanwhile my brother brought his home from the exact same school and and it's like how i was just buying another day each time and i think it only lasted like three days but i was such a nerd i was like perfect attendance overachiever my mom was like all right good for you and i'm like thank you yummy thank you that feels good that compliment that's why i do what i do yeah get all this good feedback mommy dearest now can you please stay at home and not go see your boyfriend this weekend yeah i i uh i don't have any like specific childhood like thing that is recurring to me. The only thing that's recurring to me is my grandmother in different ways.

She's just always very present. She died when I was 18, the day after I moved to college. And she's a big part of my childhood like my parents were always working and she i just kind of was her shadow so i have these like visions of her dry she would like pick up my friends and i from like junior high and drive us we had to go to the high school for like track practice and she would point out like the trees and she's like oh that's a cherry tree that's an oak tree but my and i remember thinking like i was so embarrassed as a kid by everything like anything but i was never embarrassed by anything my grandmother did i'd be like yeah

that's a that's an oak tree oh my friends in the back seat would be like okay we would have like sleepovers at her house and uh she would like teach us how to make mints like you know like very old-fashioned how do you make mints i don't know like those like the creamy mints wait like mint m-i-n-t-s yeah yeah whoa yeah i want to know i don't well god i don't know. It's like so long ago, but there was like a recipe to make those like creamy mints. Wait, and then she died and now we won't know? We'll never know. I know.

The recipe died with her. But she would also, her big thing was cutting flowers out of her garden and she would go all over town like to the bank tellers and to the librarians to the school secretaries and she would give them plants and roses and things like that and they loved it so that always stood out for me like that act of doing that on a regular basis i thought was yeah like she was just a very selfless woman yeah and so i have visions of her that pop up pretty regularly of her just doing things that were so like simple and like you know feeding the birds and you know like i don't know that that like small stuff yeah that was meaningful and um do you feel like you got something from her like do you

try to emulate her yeah i mean she was a huge influence on me she's who wanted me to be named fortune oh no way yeah it's her because it's my middle name and um it was her uh grandma it was her mother's maiden name and she just always i just always felt like she kind of knew me before i knew myself yeah and she had that unconditional love for me that kind of that kind of thing you need to get through your childhood yeah she gave to me so yeah she's a big influence so she's just always kind of like here on my shoulder in a weird way, like that memory. What was her name? Her name was Evelyn.

Oh, Evelyn. I called her Nana. And so I think about her like, it's weird when I see like a beautiful tree in bloom, I'm like, I like drive by it and I think about her like, if I see like roses in like a jar or something like a homemade situation yeah just those little things like that i think about her try to remember like to be a little bit more thoughtful with the little things love it i was

gonna also talk about like my grandma's house pops up in my dreams a lot I have all my dreams mainly take place at this one house in England and yeah and and also my dad's dreams and we're all like stuck in this house that doesn't exist anymore but my dad grew up in that house and my grandma lived there until she was super old and they just rented it but I guess it was like the longest house in the family like like we all have just rented and we moved around a lot, but yeah, my grandma was like, not,

I wouldn't say nurturing in the way Evelyn sounds like she was, but she was a wild and she was like a huge, because we'd go every Christmas and it just felt kind of glamorous and exciting. Cause she was an agent and she would, an agent. Yeah. Like,

like an agent, like what is that like like an agent like an actor's agent oh for actors yeah yeah oh interesting yeah and she was just like fun and um always was like the breadwinner in the family and just work like going out to dinner and she she spent money like she didn't have a penny to her name when she died but she she lived like she was a real heatheness yeah she wanted to party and like she loved men and like she really encouraged me to do comedy and stuff and she was hilarious herself and kind of could be very cutting and like i just was actually looking through like old emails that she'd sent me in the sort of she's like hey bitch hey bitch like grandma did she did she rep anybody

of note tons of people yeah like i mean her funeral was like what an event it was like but they're sort of british people like alan bennett and tom stoppard and these like writers and they're all british actors and stuff How your grandma was like in it. Yeah, she was. And she kept working right up till when she died almost. And she was an agent like to her core. Like that was her whole reason for being.

And she loved like pushing other people to success. And I was living with her when she was dying. And I was kind of the main caregiver. I was living in England and my fiance had gone back to to Toronto and I had to call the ambulance one night they come and pick her up and she's in the back of the ambulance and it's like chaos like bad times like she's on a ventilator and stuff and then she's trying to say something in the back of the ambulance and we're all like what what what is it and she like takes off the oxygen mask and she goes may tell them about your comedy oh my god she's like always yeah she's like you could you don't know who they know that you could

may tell them about your comedy but she was fucking funny and she she one time she was really good at that's what she said jokes like i don't know but she'd always say said the vicar to the call girl like i was teaching her how to use a laptop and i said you know so the the mouse pad is actually in the laptop so you know you could have an external mouse and i said some people like it in their hand and she said the vicar to the call girl it's crazy god i want to be like your grandma yeah in the emails that i just found she wrote in an email this beautiful story where because she sort of got scared about heaven and hell before right before she died because she she's a big sinner you know but in a fun way so she started to think that maybe isn't that fucking tragic Yes. Just in the final years of her life, I was suddenly like, oh, God, I better go to church just in case. So she was going to church with this woman called Allison, who was like a meek little mouse of a sort of church woman.

Maybe she even had a position in the church and she would come and take my grandma to church, which was really nice and have tea with her and stuff. And my grandma wrote me in an email. I went to the accent. She's like, I went to church with Allison. No, do the accent. Yeah, do the, we want the accent. We want to picture grandma. No, I can't.

You are great at it. You've been doing it. Take a deep breath and let's get back. I've been picturing your grandma because of this accent. Okay, so she. Now it's just Mae Martin's face telling us a story yeah we were a grandma yeah she's keep in mind she's like five feet tall and and so she's like um allison took me to church and i we stood up to sing the hymn and i couldn't find the hymn in my

hymn book and i was fumbling with the hymn book and then allison took it out of my hands and she passed me her handbook and it and it was open to the correct page and I thought, if she does one more thing like that, I'm going to fucking strangle her. See, picture grandma the whole time. But I thought she was telling this lovely story about this and she actually was like, fuck you. Fucking strangle her.

See, grandma, she was who she was till the end, even though she was having these doubts totally you can't change who you are no and you know what's like similar to your teacher to like she had a sort of change of like when she was in the hospital at the very end and she asked to see the chaplain or whatever the hospital chaplain and she comes in and it's like quite clearly a trans woman like a sort of maybe even like recently transitioned trans woman and my grandma's eyes just kind of widen and and then um they have their session and then the chaplain leaves and my grandma's like so what's going on there and

so i just sort of explained and she was like okay and just, and then became quite close with this chap. Yeah. Oh, interesting. Yeah. How long ago did your grandmother die? 2012. Okay. Yeah, yeah. But I was really lucky that when I moved to England, I ended up, I had a couple of good years hanging out there a lot.

Yeah. Yeah. She sounds fascinating. Hilarious. Yeah. My grandmother worked at a gift shop. For what? In a Hilton Hotel in Jackson, Mississippi.

And she also rented Avis Rent-A-Cars. No way. Yeah. And so when my brother and I would go out there for the summers, we, of course, wanted all of the toys at the gift shop. And she, of course, would give us all of the toys at the gift shop yeah and she of course would give us all of the toys at the gift shop that she needed to sell that's a sweet hookup yeah and you were driving an avis rent-a-car age 12 but it's so crazy to think back on how there were no video games there was nothing yeah it was the 70s and my brother and i

loved going my grandmother's name was mildred i mean i had two grandmothers but this particular one we loved going and hanging out in mildred's gift shop while she worked and we were just hanging out playing with the toys at the gift shop then i'd go back to my mother's house just with a whole new suitcase full of toys and stuffed animals oh my god that feeling when you're a kid and you covet something and yeah or like like you go to like the museum gift shop after the museum and you see like some tiny piece of like garbage that you're like i must have it and you're gonna lose it in three hours but yeah in the moment yeah all your toys are like

welcome to jackson jackson beautiful welcome to jackson avis at the hilton hotel now fortune you've mentioned that um you don't like a lot of things. But when you were little, did you like things then and then grow out of it? Or have you always been a little like, nothing for me, thank you. I didn't ever want like a bunch. I just want marbles. Yeah, I didn't want like a bunch of things. But if I had my eyes set on like one thing, I really wanted that thing.

Because another memory that popped up for me when kim asked that was one of those uh gift exchange you know like a christmas where you like pick a number yeah my girl scout troop did it and you like get your present but then anyone after you can like swap and they can be like no i want your present yeah and i hated that game i hated it it doesn't feel like a game i know i've got like a marker set and i hated everyone else's present like that they had been open so far but i was like super into this set of markers and i remember someone took it from me and i was like no they're allowed to just take it yeah if someone's yeah that's the game if someone behind you wants your present they can

then you go pick another present and i got like a something skirt you know girly or something and i i didn't want anything else, but I was like really wanted that marker set. And I remember being like, this game fucking sucks. Yeah, that is brutal. I am so sorry you went through that. I'm sorry too. But yeah, I didn't have like a lot of stuff,

but I was like, if I zeroed in on something, I was like all about that thing but like obsessive yeah what was like the like the big toy when I was a kid was Furbies came out that like in the mid 90s I guess like you remember those guys Furbies they were weird little sort of penguins I don't think I had a Furby yeah I was I said, in the 70s where it was just like candy cigarettes. Yeah, which are great. I guess I would have been 80s. Growing up in the 80s, it would have been like, gosh, like G.I. Joe and Barbie and stuff.

Slinky's pretty good. Slinky was popular. Slinky now, though, you give it to a kid and it like goes down the stairs once they're like cool and they're like that's it yeah yeah that's so true yeah slinky is nothing now it was nothing then we just hadn't uh yeah we just had nothing else yeah we played outside all day we like leave our house and didn't come back till like night time on the weekend that's so fun i played a lot of just intensely involved imaginary games like make believe games with sylvanians these little like uh animal families that you know about the size of a of a finger

and uh yeah they would all have really dark plots and stuff but i would make i'd make whole worlds and i'd be like desperate to finish eating dinner so i could run back and like save the kidnapped child from the or like whatever horrible thing was happening i had this uh just the minutiae of um playing like that yeah um i i got into as well oh my gosh are you kidding me i first of all had so many stuffed animals for my grandmother's shop of course and um and then i would i had this restaurant that all the stuffed animals could not wait to eat at and so so I would line them up. This is the restaurant. Yes. They would all be lined up patiently waiting down the hallway to get into the room where I had, you know, little plates and forks and everything and fake food.

And so I had a table of four and four stuffed animals. I'd take the time to walk them each in and be seated and then they would order the food from me and I would write it all down and then I would go in and I'd start cooking and then I'd come back out and like have them have their conversations and I was just it was so exhausting but it took hours and i would make sure every single last one of those stuffed animals were fed oh wow i went through the whole thing the whole like getting i'm imagining you like getting off your shift working at the restaurant at the end of the night just exhausted exhausted exhausted

i didn't have time to throw a slinky down the stairs yeah no do you did they ever like you run out of what they ordered or like they're not happy with their meal they're sending it back no because here's the thing i never ran out because it was fake food and I could reuse it. Oh, smart. And luckily they always ordered like a can of peas. Yeah. And, you know, just all of the things that I happen to have. But wait, your kids also do fake restaurants, right? Because I saw either you or Stephanie posted on Instagram the menu that they made.

One of the things that was on the menu was like milky gray or something milky blue milky blue yeah cracked me up yeah they're into fake restaurant too well yeah i guess so they'll cook they love to cook and so they'll um you know get out a cookbook and then if we don't have all of the ingredients, they'll just kind of make it make improvise. And then so in fact, they even hung up a sign that says, employees only. And so anytime I cross that line, and I go into the kitchen, Finn is standing there pointing at the sign sign even when they're not even playing restaurant he always reminds me that i do not work there and to please get out of the kitchen

that's a really good hack for a kid just employees only yeah employees only well let's hear what kim's uh memory is yeah okay the memory that i have that recurs all the time for me is when i was about six or seven years old and i was with my cousin little danny we were at my grandma rosie's house in alabama and the kitchen linoleum floor had just been mopped and my cousin danny was was walking towards it and i said you better watch out that floor's wet and he goes you a lie and my grandma rosie who was very you know southern baptist said don't say lie say story and he said you a story and right as he has said the word story his foot hit the wet linoleum and he wiped out and i just uh think about that a lot and it still makes me

laugh oh my god you you you a lie i've never even heard that you a lie you a. You a lie? I've never even heard that. You a lie? You a story? You a lie. You a lie. You a story. Oh my God. I can't believe it was a grandma-based memory. It was also-

I know, right? Yeah, and as she was telling it, I was like, is this a trauma memory? And then she's like, I laugh so hard. So I was like, okay, phew. And then, wow. Also, my grandma also called rosie oh grandma rosie i was curious what your grandma's name was was rosalind and her clients called her roz and then i called her rosie she didn't want to be called grandma or anything she wasn't a very maternally person she and she's like working she's like call me rosie uh of course she was roz at the agency

you gotta be right i mean you're not gonna be booking a lot through grandma rosie yeah it's gotta be raw yeah yeah so in a way the story that kim's hooked on is like that feeling of vindication of like i've i warned you it's it's a wet linoleum yeah that's interesting because she's stuck on that why am i stuck on delivering plants to for no reason to my teachers i mean what am i what can you read through on that may you gotta heal the shame that binds you there's a book about it but kill the shame that binds you. There's a book about it. Heal the shame that binds you. Yeah, and Kim needs to,

well, maybe needs some of your shame. I wish all three of our grandmothers were agents, like hard-nosed agents, where it's like Roz, Evelyn, and Mildred. They start their own agency? That would be amazing. That would be so good. Can that be a TV show, actually? Like our version of the Golden Girls?

Yeah. But these three ladies have a talent agency. They could even be ghosts. Ghost agents. Ghost agents. And I feel like they do sort of good cop, bad cop. Like Evelyn would be the sweet one but then maybe deep down she's harder than any of them yeah yeah maybe and mildred keeps

trying to get people jobs in the gift shop they're like no i want to be an actor she's like well well once you get your job as an actor mildred can rent you your avis rent a car to just that's right yeah plow on through to the to the job on that studio a lot yeah pride did a lot of your toys have the hyatt logo on it well it was the hilton may i'm sorry oh my god it's not anyway i feel like you don't even listen to me okay that now is going to be a foundational memory that haunts me. Yeah. The time I said Hyatt instead of Hilton.

Oh, my God. Yeah. I'm going to think about that tonight. I don't know. I don't remember the Hilton being on a lot of the things that I owned, you know. I don't know why anybody would stamp like a Siberian husky stuffed animal with Hilton. Hilton. Hilton. Unless it was the mascot

of Hilton. This is our husky mascot. And also our otter mascot. And our octopus. Whatever you're into that's our mascot. Hilton. It's pretty cool for a hotel to have a gift shop like that. Like the hospitals did too.

Yeah. Oh my gosh. Oh, I care so much about you. Last minute thought, I'm going to grab you something at the gift shop. This metallic balloon. Yeah, while you're on your deathbed. I can't show up empty handed. Yeah yeah and you can just sit and watch this balloon slowly deflate yes well a big thank you to kim dickens for yeah for her um question and

answer yeah we're gonna start calling people stories if they're lying you're a story you you a story yeah story well you know when i little, my mother didn't like the word lie either. Really? Yeah. And so I don't know if this is just in my family or if it's other places, but she called it fuggaboo. What? I definitely have not heard that in any other family. I have never heard that.

I don't know if any other families say heard that yeah she would say don't you fuggaboo oh you little fuggabooer whoa yeah it's like a perversion of fibber like it's yeah fuggaboo whoa yeah i truly i was like is this southern is this mississippi is this just my mother is i think it's your mother. Yeah, Fugaboo. I love those things that you think are universal and you say them on stage. And a gigantic group say no.

No. We don't know what Fugabooing is. Fugaboo. All right. I feel like I learned a lot about you guys in this one i love hearing about your childhoods it's i know i did like reminiscing yeah today focused uh on school and grandma's school grandma's yeah yeah it's nice to go back to the to the grandmother memory memory bank yeah because i always feel bad for people that don't have good

grandmother memories yeah yeah so suck it yeah we do the the grandma ghost agency all right fortune so before we uh say goodbye do you have anything you'd like to promote? Well, coming up, I have some fun shows in Portland, Oregon, Spokane, Washington, Boise, Idaho. Then in mid-October, Sioux Falls, South Dakota, Oakland, California, Evansville, Indiana, Dayton, Ohio, Charleston, West Virginia. And around Thanksgiving, Grand Rapids and Royal Oak, Michigan, Kansas City and St. Louis, Missouri and Louisville, Kentucky. And we just added a bunch of shows in Florida after Christmas, St. Petersburg, Orlando, Jacksonville and West Palm Beach, Florida. Go to fortunefeimster.com for tickets. How about you, Mae? I am tonight at UCB, September 26th. I'm doing stand-up. October 10th, I am at the Elysian doing improv with Alanna Johnson and Stephanie Allen. And then I'm back at Largo on the 12th

for Mae Martin and Friends. And then on the 22nd, I'm doing like a crazy one-off show with my favorite Canadian band, Half Moon Run. I'm so excited. And I'm going to do stand up and some music and they're going to play some of their amazing heartfelt Canadian tunes. So please come. For me, I would like to invite everybody to come on out to Breckenridge, Colorado, September 28, 28th, La Crosse, Wisconsin, October 28th, and Brooklyn, New York, November 4th for my next stand-up special taping. And I'll be doing a European tour in October. Go to tignotaro.com for all of those ticket and show details. And yeah, come on i will i'll see you out there on the road all right well i'll see you guys next time uh you absolutely will tell them what to do may keep it handsome boom handsome is hosted by me tignotaro may martin and fortune theme stir the show is produced recorded and edited by thomas willett

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