Hollywood Handbook - Tommy Orange, Our Mr. Books Friend

Episode Date: June 28, 2022

The Boys work on some new book ideas with author TOMMY ORANGE.Watch the video recording of this episode at Patreon.com/TheFlagrantOnes.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

this is a head gum podcast so it's five minutes before the bus to camp is about to pull i can actually hear it's early i can hear the screeching of the bus the worst feeling when the bus screech is just outside your door and you're not ready no and so well i'm on schedule but i reach for the armoire and i look down and i realize i'm completely out of pomade and so now i'm about to show up at camp for all all of camp, by the way. With no pomades. And they don't sell that at the little camp commissary. No, no. And they're going to shoot arrows at me. They're going to shoot the little rifle at me, the little.22.

They're going to capture the flag me. Oh, buddy. They're going to wrap you up in bed sheets tie your hands and feet together put you on a canoe and push you out into the middle of the water yes okay i mean like this is everything i feared about campus showing up with no pomade so i go to the fridge i start juicing different things yeah to see you're in panic mode you have to yes and so i'm just like throwing stuff in the juicer from a distance from across the the from across the kitchen banana no lettuce not at all please don't put lettuce that will that will not have pomade me yes peanut butter

didn't do anything didn't do anything in the juicer oh interesting it just i would have thought i would have thought that might help i i cleaned it out between each thing i actually now i sort of think that lettuce and peanut butter together would have actually worked really well if i hadn't cleaned out all the all the juice lettuce but you just put peanut butter in a juicer it doesn't change anything really about its consistency by itself yeah you might as well have just brought the jar of peanut butter yeah unjuiced so and and now of course i look at kevin and i see okay now i see where my jar went now i realize where my pomade went fucking dr pompadour mr pomp adorable

oh pompadour couple pomp and circumstance am i right or am i right welcome to my show where i'm the big star hollywood handbook this is the show where hayes is famous and i'm here as well and by the way kevin's always eavesdropping we have a real guest we have a serious guest tommy orange is here famous author obama likes his book he's doing all kinds of things tomm, thank you for being on the show. You want to say hello quickly? Hello. Stop. Stop. Before you go any further, I just want to address we've had a slight problem with guests, especially first time guests, telling me to shut up during the show um so we're just gonna start at least this episode maybe the next several episodes just laying down some i don't even want to call them

ground rules they're they're guidelines that a lot of guests have found helpful i think the guests who have not told me to shut up have had some pretty fun, funny episodes. And the ones who have been like, shut up to me, I don't think those episodes have been as well received. So your choice is yours to make. I don't tell anybody. I'm not here to police anyone's language, but it's something to be aware of and then you know that way uh if it does come up if you do say that to me um you know you you won't be shocked when you find out that uh yeah people don't really like that um so uh you know and just confirmation that that's been received that you've like that you've heard and like understood

that or that you have questions yeah if you have any questions which is ideal received that you've heard and understood that or that you have questions. Yeah, if you have any questions just tell me I've heard that I understand or ask me anything. Well, like variations on more polite versions or does it have the same outcome usually of people? What would that sound like? What's an example?

Yeah, hit me with it. And this is by the way, you're not I'm not going to hold you to what you said here we know this is like in like sort of a play acting state so like shut your trap or be quiet

you know I'd probably stay away from the whole area hearing you say it I'd probably avoid the entire area not bad yeah you could feel it a little bit coming out even in what was a completely safe you know kind of pretend mode

you sounded down bad as you were saying it I could feel that Tommy Orange yes Tommy Orange's new novel really is that good you remember that it really is Colm Joybin he said that yeah i saw it in the in the newspaper yeah he wrote that that was him in the newspaper he was in the newspaper right

who's in the newspaper toybin colm toybin i don't know if i'm saying it right toybent that sounds like where my he was in he keeps his play-doh he was in uh star trek uh he was in i want to say movies like like he wasn't he was in deep in next generation it seems like he could have been on there in in bruges but i don't know if he actually was the author was in these things yeah weird did some stuff with like alan partridge and things like that and i guess he wrote this thing in the newspaper yes tommy orange's new novel really is that good is the headline first of all perfectly interesting to me but it's not i wasn't even talking about that yeah i hadn't brought it up like you brought it up. Do you want to back? Are you confusing me with someone else?

I said to that quote. There's a headline. Were you talking about this with someone else who looks like me or something? Because I got plenty of stuff that I'm thinking about and talking about it. It's not this. No offense. It's a cool thing to say. It's not the first thing you would say normally.

But aside from that, I'm sure you were happy about it. You probably were talking about it. You're obsessed with your book. Writing books and serving looks. You say that. Isn't that what your bumper sticker told me? Is that or is that not what your bumper sticker told me and that's why you're in the car by the way so you can pop out and read your own bumper sticker about yourself writing books and

serving looks whenever you want is that or is that not what's true i'm i'm anti bumper sticker in general that's something that's the sentiment you could put on a bumper sticker is that a warrior's hat circling a line through bumper sticker yeah you got the warrior's hat on black on black warrior's hat no it's it's oakland like uh oakland it's a company out of oakland but they hayes wears their shirt a lot yeah the one shirt and he's he's he's beating the brakes off it man he's gonna wear it he's gonna wear it till the damn thing disintegrates but they put the tree on the the warriors put the tree on their jersey sometimes right they do so it is a warrior's hat i mean so it's nice to know that the novel's doing well, that you've been allowed to be a Warriors fan,

and that you have made some angel investments, that you've got a little VC action going. Sorry to hear about your crypto, but something tells me you'll land on your feet. Now, you're Mr. Books. Are you the only one who can do books? And there is a right answer. I'm the only one who can do books? And there is a right answer. I'm the only one that can do my books.

You're the only one that did do your books. That's right. That's for sure. Believe me. But I could do it. I also did it. So it's not true. That's actually what I was going to say.

You're not the only one who can do books i can do yeah it's i could do it's basically the same thing when i do when i do my books i'm basically doing your books but just a little extra sauce so uh we we've been talking about thinking about kicking around the idea hayes and i of doing some more books we saw your book we saw that quote that was like yes it really is that good when i we weren't even talking about it and we were like somebody's got to say this about our books soon and soon let's get mr books on here we're gonna get his blessing we'll kiss the ring you know I mean? We'll do your little dance. And then after we've gotten cleared for takeoff, books-wise, by Mr. Books, guess what we're going to do?

Clickety-clackety-clickety-clackety. Bing! Clickety-clackety-clickety-clackety. Bing! That's our home check printing machine. That's right. Mm-hmm. home check printing machine that's right forget it man printing checks then we'll get to record podcasts from our car like you the most expensive recording studio i've ever seen like tens of thousands of dollars just record a podcast mobile recording studio si size as a fucking

lincoln lawyer of book writing he's got to do it in the car he's always on the go man he works in his car because he's got like so many high profile book meetings to go to around the city it's unbelievable so we'll read you a passage here passage there you will provide your little comments um and then we can't you know we'll get the the red pen out and we'll like make the edits if it makes sense and we could give you feedback maybe on some of your ideas and then we'll ship it all over to your editor um you could probably drive it there you're in your car right now uh and then we'll just kind of get the get this train a moving um hey i mean i've got i've got just some general ideas hey did you want to go first with a passage or what do you how do you

i think we can start with an idea and then you can start writing that idea while I read a passage and then we can just go back and forth like that okay I think for time like efficiency of time that would make the most sense so none of us are just like sitting we're all actually like

doing something this first idea Tommy I'm bumping this one to the top actually because i do see how you've chosen to record and i think this will really connect to you so it is a guy like you um it's called the prince of rides uh so if you remember prince of tides obviously was a big uh successful book so i'm sort of using that to inform okay i've got a title it's about a limo driver he's the best limo driver in the city he's also very good at doing it at fucking he's so he gives rides in multiple ways

and he's afraid obviously he's getting a little older and he's afraid that he's never going to find true love because he's so good at sex he can never tell if someone loves him for him or because of the good sex that he does and so it's possibly the good driving or the or the driving so yeah i mean we can use some of your experience with that obviously it's semi-autobiographical uh on my end too so the driving stuff can be yours i could talk about some of the techniques that i've employed over the years um and and so it's this guy and you you know it's relatable it's like he wants to find love he is a romantic at heart it's not his fault that he can fuck all day and night so it's um it's kind of a beautiful uh story about a guy with like this one fatal flaw

uh which is that he can really hump it you know so i i think that that's cool and obviously the the limo scenes you could be extremely helpful with extremely because i have not recorded in my car i haven't um even driven that much uh and and so i think that we're kind of using both of our strengths here uh and the prince of rides is a great title so what we and we're already making accommodations it is a great title i did like the original one but we we we did have to zig when it was taken. It was called there, there, because that's what the chick said when he was hitting it. Yeah. Directionally, she was pointing.

It was their exclamation point, their exclamation point, but we were told that the punctuation doesn't make that big a difference, that the title is still owned. It's still in the same place on the shelf. Your involvement, everything. Yeah, it's going to be a problem. a difference that the title is still owned on the same place on the shelf your involvement everything yeah it's it's going to be um a problem and yeah it it just that we heard you were very protective of of the title we heard you were going to be kind of a b word about the whole thing and we just said hey let's get it you know let's get it out of the way let's let's bring him in you know i think it you know i

vaguely remember this and uh i think there was i had a problem with the sex in the car thing in the limo it it felt like a violation of the that's his work that's his workplace but he's that's his rule he makes a rule a rule in the very first scene. He goes, hey, just so you know, babe, I never do it in the car. He goes, I'm a professional. People ride in that thing. And that's one line you'll never see me cross. And when he believes he has found the one, right, he takes it to the back seat with her.

And the next day when the businessman sits in the stain and she's not returning his texts, you realize that he betrayed his own code of honor and for nothing. Because she was just in it for the there there which is what she said when he was hitting it and after when she was telling him where to drive yeah i didn't i don't think i had the context or i didn't feel it was earned when i whatever i had known before so maybe i could it is earned so you definitely didn't have the context because it was definitely earned

yeah it's definitely earned it's actually i i don't have the contacts because it was definitely earned. It's definitely earned. I don't think the story works without it. You don't make that rule unless he's going to at some point break that rule for the chick he thinks is the one who actually likes him for him and not just because he's so fucking good at smashing.

I would hate to lose Prince of Rides, though, I have to say. Yeah, no. That works. There's a little would hate to lose prince of rides though i have to say yeah no it that that that works um there there's a little smarter i guess uh look who i'm telling mr brooks mr book mr books i'll read you a quick passage this is something i've been working on with sean for a number of years basically my whole entire life um and we can this is page one we can jump around but this is page one paragraph one this is how it begins butterflies were flying in my chest it was the last day of school at college and freshman year

had been an amazing ride the ride was like a roller coaster except with grades and parties instead of hills and candy. Now it was time for me to conquer my biggest fear, going to the bathroom. I had been too scared to go to the bathroom my entire freshman year of college. It was my first time living on my own, and I had no idea if this bathroom worked the same as the one downstairs at home. I was scared to ask people at college if the bathroom was different, but I did anyway. I asked everyone I saw for the entire school year if the bathroom here was different from ask people at college if the bathroom was different, but I did anyway. I asked everyone I saw for the entire school year if the bathroom here was different from the one at home.

But not one person had even heard of the downstairs bathroom at home, so they didn't know if it was different. Everyone was really nice except for one person who completely freaked out. So that's sort of like the, that's laying the groundwork for what's to, for what's to, to come. The bathroom becomes sort of this like portal almost into another world, you know? Not literally.

It's not literally. No, it's just, just for the, just because it's so brave for this character. Right. Who I think we connect to. And who, by the way,

could be the same character in prince of rides i mean well you know just if we have all this writing already done i don't know why we couldn't meet this guy a little bit earlier before he's got the limo job you're college boy right i think it's really intriguing this downstairs bathroom part part. And the person freaked out, I'm really curious about. You want to follow them? These two elements. They're the villain. Yeah, we're not going to hear from them again.

The fact that everyone's weirded out about the downstairs bathroom being a thing. It's not that they're weirded out. They've just never heard of it. They're not aware of it. You know what I mean? In a way, it's like this is to educate people. Because everyone only knows about upstairs bathrooms? They've just never heard of the downstairs bathroom that he's...

The downstairs bathroom at home that he's most comfortable using. Because the upstairs bathroom is kind of dad's. Yeah. The upstairs one is basically dad's. So they're mostly in the downstairs one you heard of a pittsburgh toilet oh god this is gonna be some actually we could use this in prince of rides maybe he's the guy who invented the pittsburgh toilet it's some kind of toilet in the basement of a house and there's no doors or anything around it it's just sort of like a toilet in

the middle of the basement related to like not if there were ever leaks or ruptures you're already sort of have the pipes down there and they're sucking up out of the floor yeah the toilet's just just right there yeah I mean we've got all these like exposed beams and stuff

is like such a cool you know architectural feature but suddenly exposed toilet pipes is uh not something to brag about not something to be shown off like i think that's a really limited way of thinking so definitely there could be a pittsburgh toilet somewhere in the book um maybe you know after he doesn't get a text back and he gets fired from his job because the businessman sat in the stain the prince of rides who you know the after he doesn't get a text back and he gets fired from his job because the businessman sat in the stain, the Prince of Rides,

who, you know, the downstairs bathroom has always been such a source of comfort for him, goes to one level lower, goes to the downstairs, downstairs bathroom in the basement, and there is a Pittsburgh toilet. And I don't know what he does there.

He grabs the pipe, hugs the pipe hugs we probably won't use it i i don't think we're going to use it tommy thank thank you for trying you know i i would love to be able to incorporate some of your stuff um but that's pretty good you know i i have a slightly more fleshed out idea and it's again a lot of this stuff might work together a lot of these this one's a little more romantic I was worried that

Prince of Rides might be a little too adult and too dirty this one's probably more young adult and this one I actually believe could use your pittsburgh toilet idea before we go on i just want to i feel like we gave a little bit of praise to prince's rides and and not that much to hayes's idea i do want to say well he's not writing that together i do love the butterflies in the chest opening. It's fucking kicks ass, right?

It's so amazing. It's a fucking bomb going off. You can fucking feel it. You're like, this is the beginning of the book. They started with that. They burn that. It's like they opened with Freebird. Where the fuck they going to go from here?

That takes major cojones. But you know what? The fucking thing delivers. So I love that. Thank you for giving those props. And thank you for just saying that was Sean's line. Not saying shut up. I still haven't gotten a compliment.

Well, maybe you'll find one here and actually tell me to compliment you i actually think the pittsburgh toilet is going to work really well in this next one okay so i'm glad you brought it up because i didn't know what that was and i think it's perfect for this this book is called the ringer Justin Ringo is a culture columnist for TheRinger.com. After a full day of ranking Marvel directors, he goes on a date where he has planned a romantic proposal for his longtime girlfriend. He has the chef hide the ring in her favorite dessert. She inhales the food and swallows the ring without realizing it so he delays his perfect proposal and resorts to constantly checking their toilet for the ring their pittsburgh toilet the twist

a few days into checking he finds another different engagement ring in her stool and finds out she has been having an affair wow i mean is that powerful i love mr books i really love that i i don't know who you love that that happened to him i i don't know who calls somebody who is looking for rings and poop a ringer the ringer the ringer well he works at the ringer.com and his name is justin ringo yeah so a ring's happening but i don't know that it all works together and and he also he played d1 ball and and they have a um a softball league with a bunch of other websites and he kind of isn't that great a writer but they hired him to be sort of the ringer on the team on the softball team because he because he hits dingers he's the ringer who hits dingers and his name is justin

ringo and he works for the ringer.com and he gave her a ring a lot of ring stuff happening so yeah so i guess i don't know what the fuck your bump was just on the title like and i and i applicable thing yeah that's probably the one thing i don't need help with is finding a way for the ringer to be a good title oh i got it starts with th er this guy is trying to clear space on the fucking shelf he doesn't like this guy. We heard he's protective of the title. I knew he doesn't want us that close. He says, get over there with the W's or something, bitch. This book's going to push my book down a shelf.

Buddy, it's over, man. You had a hell of a run. Fuck. Hey, you got me, man. I bought the fucking thing. I read man. You had a hell of a run. Fuck. Hey, you got me, man. I bought the fucking thing. I read it. You know? Good on you.

You got my ass, man. God bless. You got Obama. But now, it's time to move on. The ringer is not competing with there there. It's a totally different story i have a more technical question how do you because the the pipes and the flushing and the poop goes away how is he getting how is he capturing the poop to look through it for rings

it's pittsburgh toilet so he gets right into the pipe so every time he hears a flush he goes ah babe i really gotta get in there i don't know what's going on for me lately he goes running in right behind her starts undoing the pipes goes you know goes rooting around through it and we talk about it in a very like classy way like we don't have to get yucky with it at all and we say like it's not yucky um her diet's really good and and then as he's going through everything you know he's going i gotta find an engagement i gotta find sees the glint of a diamond pulls it out it's a different engagement ring now she was proposed to by someone else who also put it in her favorite dessert that's why that's why the waiter was acting so weird right because he had seen it

happen the other day that she didn't realize either time she didn't realize this she swallowed she loves this she loves this budino she loves this delectable budino mr books and and she doesn't even use a spoon and you know who the other man do you know who the other man was ring lardner jr but wait why is it called the ringer that's you but wait how would that even but that's not that's you unfortunately for both of us so it's just an idea we don't have to do it and by the way this guy could be the prince of rides i waited until everyone at college was asleep i quietly opened my door and looked out in the hallway. The coast was clear. I made sure to

not let the door close too loudly so I wouldn't wake anyone up. I tiptoed down the hallway, careful that the sounds of my footsteps didn't make too much noise. I tried to control the motion of my pants and shirt so that nobody would hear their rustling. Just then, a door opened. Somebody poked their head out the door. It was the RA. What are you doing out here, they said. I realized I was nervous, so the verbal noises and sounds I was making in the hallway had been loud. I was hooting and hollering uncontrollably and saying gadzooks. Then the RA noticed it was me. I had announced my entire plan to him for days in advance in case of exactly this situation.

He shut the door and I continued my journey. Wow. So pretty powerful stuff, huh? Scary for a moment there. Right? But when the RA comes out, you know, I'm getting ready to close the book. I'm reading it, just peeking at the pages inside like this because i have to be ready at a moment's notice to completely shut the book in case the jig is up are we thinking this is a prince of rides flashback and some and we there's sort of attention created in knowing that

something maybe didn't go right at college and that's how he ended up a limo driver as opposed to you know maybe a better job well whether or not you're not really it's not an anti-limo driver book like that wasn't really or or or podcasts yeah so you know uh i know you're a college boy but like that's actually a fine job first of all and also they don't make you like it does has no impact on your grades whether or not you like go to the bathroom you could use the bathroom every day you could never use the bathroom in your dorms and your professors are not allowed to change your grade based on that i've checked so i i guess you know what i thought was so and you didn't really notice this i guess what was so creative and the way we kind of played with time here is we've been with this character a lot they

had butterflies flying around in their chest you know we've been inside their head but we carefully omitted the scenes where they went to the ra to describe their plan which happened multiple times in the days leading up to the event and then when you get to this moment where they're almost caught you know they're almost busted by the ra they're going to be in trouble i mean they're saying gadzooks in the hallway that can affect your grades so they're about to be busted and then we sort of fill in the background it's sort of this like flashback where it's like oh every time in the previous chapters when the character said i'm gonna go to the bathroom walk downstairs and came back up without going to the bathroom they were going to the ra's room which is next

to the bathroom and saying hey i'm gonna do this later and then you go oh that's what was going on so this thing that seemed like a mistake or confusing now has become intentional the plan is a swiss watch oh these guys are like brainiacs it's like oceans 11 or something they know the whole time that that's that they were doing that or is that a downstairs bathroom in any way it just i mean it just demonstrates to me a total lack of like paying attention like just a total inability to listen to anyone but yourself i guess it's technically sure fine it's a it's a it's a third floor bathroom the dorm is on the third floor so depending on what floor you are on it could be a downstairs bathroom yeah sure and the character lives on the fourth floor

and by the way our original title for this just so you know which we've generously changed was there there and it was the character you know finally in the bathroom spoiler alert going like where do i go like which is it one of these stall thingies like do i go there do i go there and we were told that obviously we would not be allowed to do that so that's why we thought well let's let tommy in or one of his famous hissy fits gonna have another tantrum one of his legendary tri-county fits i would prefer there not to be thr you know especially towards the beginning Whatever you guys end up writing. Anywhere towards the beginning of the book.

You'd like us to clear... We've got to get those letters out of the beginning of the book. So it's out of the title. That's gone. And now we have to comb through the first several chapters to take out some of our most favorite letters to use. We can do that. We actually have multiple tools in our toolbox. And so that's actually's actually not an issue for us no we'll figure it out but

it's just it's a lot of work losing that butterfly line is going to be rough you need the t the t and the r in that one uh yeah i guess it can't be moths yeah and that's got th in it could it just be bugs is it just bugs birds and bugs birds and bugs are doing the birds and bugs

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for a human to wear yeah and one of them was a dressing yeah one of them was it was it was a vinaigrette it was a raspberry vinaigrette it was a french raspberry vinaigrette dressing they'll even try to get you a refund for the last couple months of wasted money and negotiate to lower your bills for you by up to 20 all you have to do is take a picture of your bill and rocket money takes care of the rest they have over 5 million users and have helped save its members an average of 720 a year with over 500 million dollars in canceled subscriptions and that was i mean just to be fully transparent that 500 million was most of that was the the dresses well yeah i mean you're talking about hollywood

memorabilia you're talking about like ornate gowns you know in some cases and so that was uh yeah that was costing me a lot a lot a lot stop wasting money on things you don't use cancel your unwanted subscriptions by going to rocket money.com slash the boys that's rocketmoney.com slash the boys rocketmoney.com slash the boys i have one more book idea and and i i think i've actually identified your issue with some of the other ones um and it's that they dealt a little too much maybe with romance and human emotions and being aware of people other than yourself and kind of getting outside and putting yourself in the shoes of someone else who has a really challenging

difficult time dating because they're so good at sex or someone who learns that they're being betrayed by you know uh they're the closest to them so i i think that uh didn't connect to you and this might be more your speed this one is called the munchie games it's the hunger games on fucking weed dude it's they're smoking that funny stuff man the ganja pipe is burning they're doing hunger games but they keep forgetting the rules and shit and they're being way funnier so i mean this to me and and i think we can have a lot of fun with the names where like have a lot of fun with the names where like katniss was like the main girl but maybe the name is like

weedness you know something that really gets you like right in the funny bone right off the rip by the way right off the bong rip should have said. And I think this could maybe connect to you a little more. You're obviously high as shit right now. The way you're acting is totally goofy and insane. It can't be justified any other way. And so is this finally something that you will fully get on board for? Let's hear it. That's it. You did just hear it. It was called the munchie games it was the hunger

games on fucking weed dog i thought we were gonna get some element of story it's just the same thing but dude yeah i mean like the spine of the story is there but imagine if imagine if when they were doing the hungry games instead of all being all uptight they were uh puffing on the chiba you know what i mean they had a little bit of the green stuff and you know maybe instead of all being like hey he's gonna kill that guy they would have been like hey man come on dude stop doing hungry games on my ass hey can we eat any of this leaves dude you know and it wouldn't have been like so fucking intense. Cause the way I read that book, by the way, they're all trying to kill each other all the time.

I'm, I'm peeking at it. I got just the teensiest sliver of a page. And every time I finish, like basically any sentence at all, I'm like, I shouldn't have read that. I mean,

I think you could have a whole genre of sort of remakes with wordplay for the weed thing. I think that's probably something you could do. What's another? What's another one? I don't know if we're going to the dystopian genre. Well, Harry Potter feels like

there's a pothead thing we could probably easily do. That's really good. I guess he's right that's awesome that's awesome that's so fucking good so i'm attached to the ringer now now that we have gone that down there and how well what if that you know what if that so what if that's the opening is sort of the excerpt we have from the ringer and then he gets like summoned to the fucking division thingy and volunteers his tribute or whatever because he's so upset that his girlfriend uh is stepping out on him uh and then is just like doesn't care if he lives or dies but then throughout the course of the munchie games realized that it was

like all a misunderstanding and that it was just a friendship ring that he found uh from ringleader jr and now like has to win in order to get back to his one true love uh and that would be like i guess then she's weedness i don't know somebody's weedness and ultimately the whatever the munchies he ends up eating we could you know sort of loop back to the toilet and there could be some conflict we could find there whether it's downstairs or you don't Pittsburgh I mean I'm kind of had enough of the toilet stuff at this point I know you really liked it I tried to cater to that as much as I could yeah I don't know if we're gonna use that but not for this anyway i'd probably not go back there at this point especially because we have so much

of the prince of rides backstory is about trying to use the bathroom it just feels it's a tonnage issue for me um i want to be able to do more than one thing and which is in this case toilet stories i don't think much of games needs it well we do feel heavily tied to the college experience and i had finally made it i was inside the bathroom the special move i did to get through the door had hurt my legs so badly i had to lie on the ground for a really long time i was underneath the hand dryer which was motion detecting my head and blasting me the air dryer was making my head burn up but I couldn't move because the move had given me a

severe leg injury and basically exploded part of my leg so the air dryer kept blasting my head and burning it up somebody passed me outside the bathroom door which I had propped open with a gigantic table hey Hey, he said, dry head. So it's a little something about like, there are actually good people in the world, you know? Yeah, just that one moment of kindness, you know, that like ray of hope. And what otherwise pretty bleak landscape, we had the one person that freaked out on them,

obviously the villain who we don't want to give a lot of oxygen to despite your notes um and then we also have uh i just people who didn't weren't really familiar with the downstairs bathroom um but now this person who we could follow or not uh you know, is actually trying to kind of make lemonade out of lemons and say, hey, dry head. I do see how you're moving away from toilets at the end here.

You know, it's much more based on... Well, it's not the only thing in a bathroom, Tommy. It was the big moment. I had wedged myself under the bathroom stall somebody had thrown out a lariat in the bathroom trash that i was able to use to lasso the door of the stall and pull myself across the wet floor my now useless leg was stretched out behind me so now my foot was under the air dryer triggering the motion detector so it was burning my shoe and my leg i couldn't believe how hot my shoe had become in just one year of college i'm a little logistically just how close if he's lying on the floor could he be to the air dryer where there's burning happening he's

close enough that his foot is uh directly underneath it just to paint the sort of picture for you is he a really long is he tall is it a small bathroom this college boy went to one of these big ass bathroom colleges right college boy was at a college with bathrooms so big he couldn't even see the fucking air dryer from where he was under the stall unbelievable the level of privilege. You know what? Forget about that part of it. Really, what I wanted your notes on was just the lariat,

which we've been told by our editor needs. They're fine with it. It needs a little bit of bolstering. So that it was implausible that somebody threw out a whole lariat and threw it out and that it was functional if they had thrown it out it should be somehow flawed it shouldn't you know allow them to haul their way in i i had suggested perhaps there is a student at the college named lariat the spy who um you know sort of sneaks around into the various buildings and always uses a lariat to get in and

out of the windows and never uses the same lariat twice uh which i you know i'm comfortable exploring that and kind of building that up uh but if there's a cleaner path to it that doesn't require an additional two to six hundred pages which I think is what it would take to really service the lariat the spy idea we're open to it and we would hear from it and just this time I know you haven't actually said shut up but sometimes the way you say what you

think about the ideas we have there's sort of this silent shut up there that I'd like to lose if possible that is why i was asking originally but i i don't mean that when i'm not what is it right and i don't i've never heard of it i don't even know what a lariat is i don't know how much it's adding to the story oh it's adding the physical means by which our primary character is accomplishes his

only goal of the entire book the main goal is it's related to the toilet and getting there i guess you could say it's related to it i mean it is it that is the entire thing it's related to it. I mean, it is it. That is the entire thing. So it's more in the flashback and the college experience in this bathroom is really kind of the climax moment. You know, amazingly, I've underestimated just how high you are. Like, I knew that you had blazed up

to get ready for this. And we could actually hear the bubbler that you were firing and it sounded like you got some pretty premium stuff in there uh but i still thought i guess because you're mr books that you would be able to follow a couple of sentences of text read expertly by Hayes. I mean, I was in there. Jesus Christ,

man. I'm looking at my zoom window like this. Like I might have to dump out of this thing in a second because it, but they, you know, with that shoes getting hot, I'm like, Jesus jesus fuck gonna be okay i'm scared man so uh you know i i just like it's funny how our experiences are different

because i i think it's so clear what's happening and i think it's so intense and touching and sort of beautiful um and then you have these questions that feel clinical and stupid and bad and it makes it it makes it hard to engage at all can you guys explain what a lariat is for those that out there who don't know what it is either you see wonder woman not i saw the first one not the 1984 one wow very supportive wow uh sometimes i support women yeah i know i think one for you huh the first one you kind of like you kind of like the other like the old way they were doing things yeah they should get a taste but not too much no wonder he didn't understand prince of rides carry right i mean this guy's getting them off four or five times so you know uh but you know the first one is kind of all you need

another word for a lariat and now it's all going to come together for you i think a lariat and now it's all going to come together for you i think is a lasso in her lariat when she would lasso you you would have to tell the truth let me find a let me find a movie basically what i do to myself every time i'm about to write a great novel i use wonder woman's golden lasso on myself and i and i swear the most truest words i swear that the page will be filled to the brim with nothing but pure truth it's being a pure truth let me mention a a movie with a lasso slash lariat in it that i'm sure you did see and you could picture it this way city slickers no women there you know it's just a bunch of

dudes on the dude ranch take all my money please wait you didn't see the Curly's Gold one I only saw the Curly's Gold one you only saw the Curly's Gold one unbelievable wait so he's way the lariat and that's somehow also how he gets into the toilet stall he uses the lariat to lasso the door of the stall drag himself

across the wet floor his leg is injured from the special move that he did to get into the part of his leg exploded and he's gonna pull himself he did to get into the restroom. Part of his leg exploded. And he's going to pull himself up onto the toilet using the laryard. Well, let's see. Well, let's see what happens. Why don't we find out? There was no getting around it. I was completely inside the toilet. I had pulled too hard on the laryard and was flung into the stall

and ended up nestled inside the toilet. My leg was now so injured big pieces of it were not even in the room anymore worse yet the lariat was caught on the toilet handle so every time i tried to move i would flush myself even farther inside the toilet after all that work i realized i didn't even have to go to the bathroom anymore there was no getting around it the downstairs bathroom didn't work like this at all and that's where we are that's where here's tommy's first question was there any getting around it that's that's you that was for you i thought do i have to go back to this a second

time you have tommy's reading this i'm gonna have to the fucking munchie games so i got so hurt it was it left the room big pieces of it we're not even in the room anymore yeah that's how injured it is it like exploded out and maybe did a special move to leave the room itself no it was a special move that led to the injury in the first place which then basically if you think about the amount of force it would take to pull yourself onto a toilet when the lariat has only you know looped around the handle and how hard you would be pulling with a leg injury with like exposed tendon and bone yeah like a ligament's probably gonna shoot off and shoot out the door into the hallway when you're pulling that hard just from the strain of it

and then yeah that's gonna be pretty surprising make you turn lose your focus and probably go up and land inside the toilet bowl then flush yourself down over and over again when you try to pull out i find myself going back to a head guy the dry head guy yeah you you really want to keep following him huh i want to know why somebody would think that that's what he was doing and also is it a supportive statement it's definitely supportive yes yeah it's sort of the opposite of what you've been doing the whole time where what he does is see something someone else is doing and tries to get on board and be positive sometimes all it takes and this is for some other guests than our past too sometimes nice thing to do is just to come on the show and say hey nice podcast

and just fucking keep walking that's all is that so hard hey man nice podcast you got there you done alright for yourself that feels good

but uh yeah but anyway your thing is what the dry head guy you think he's like being mean or something it sounds like it's like making fun of him like you're standing under the thing with your head under it and that's your comment it sounds bad yeah you're bringing that to it yeah well so what's your pitch? So let's change that line now. Let's do Tommy's version. Hey, you're standing under that thing.

You're lying down, first of all. Hey, you're standing under that thing with your head under it. This college boy in his big-ass, like, high-ceiling bathrooms where you don't have to lie down under the hand dryer. Unbelievable. Must be nice getting on a step stool to dry your hands. Fucking college boy, bud.

I prefer Mr. Books. What's the line? What line do you want for that one scene? So, hey, hey is in there. Hey, we can't change. So, he walks past the bathroom. Hey. Hot enough for you goodbye that was a hate gun podcast