Jordan, Jesse, GO! - Ep. 150: Fiche or Famine with Todd Levin

Episode Date: October 25, 2010

Todd Levin talks about writing for Conan, not writing for Swamp People, and more.

Give a little time for the child within you, don't be afraid to be young and free. Unto the locks and throw away the keys, and take off your shoes and socks and run you. I'm Jesse Thorne, America's radio sweetheart. And I'm Jordan Morris, boy detective. And this is... Jordan. Jesse. Go!

Icicles, tricycles, ice cream, candy, lollipops, popsicles, licorice sticks, salmon, friendly, raggedy, edgy, twiddle, dum, twiddle, Jesse, go. We cover all the bases with Todd Levin, what it's like to write for Conan's new show and how scary or not scary Jaws is at Universal Studios. Let's go. It's Jordan, Jesse, go. I am Jesse Thorne, America's radio sweetheart. Jordan Morris,, go. I am Jesse Thorne, America's radio sweetheart. Jordan Morris, boy detective. A beautiful evening in Los Angeles, misting outside.

The northern lights just visible over the horizon. The hate groups have all gone to sleep. They've all bedded down in their hateful beds. The rock and roll half marathon has finally concluded today. Dear God. There's nothing worse than waking up to the sound of the Rock and Roll Half Marathon. Oh, so this is something, if I'm not mistaken, as a half marathon along the route rock bands play. And it's like a lot of one-hit wonders.

It's like the 8-6-7-5-3-0-9 guys and stuff like that. I feel like that is probably the most ambitious uh uh person that you would see on this course like that's the top build person is tommy two tones or whatever his name is sure um i think mostly you're looking at a sort of third tier cover bands okay um it's a disastrous scene maybe like maybe like flipped gender cover bands yeah okay sure absolutely a lot of acd she's yeah here girl oingo boingo here with us joining us in the studio um my neighbor uh very funny man uh you might know him as a writer on the Conan O'Brien program. You might know him from his longtime popular web presence,

tremble.com. Or you might know his brand new book, which he co-wrote with several other authors as the association for the betterment of sex. The book is called sex. Our bodies are junk. I just lifted it up. I know there were cameras in here. It's a great visual.

Yeah. I just wanted people to get a sense of what the book looks like. Just get a feeling for it. Yeah, what it sounds like when slightly tapped on a table. Yeah. Anyway, Todd Levin. That's important when you're considering a book purchase. We're so happy to have you here on the show.

I'm happy to be here. Thanks. That's great. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The whole time, I didn't know what the protocol was, whether I was allowed to speak during your, your, your kind of ramp up. Our preamble. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Do you have some sort of opinion about flipped gender cover bands that maybe you were, you were kind of contained? Were you holding something in about Hell's Bells, the all-female ACDC cover band? I have very strong opinions about rock and roll marathons. Really? Let's hear them. Because I had to cover one for a job. This is a job.

At the time, you worked at Good Morning America. You were a reporter at Good Morning America. This was something I was doing for eBay. I was hired. I'm not kidding. Right, of course. eBay does a lot of event coverage in addition to its online options.

They're all over the place. We rode around in an RV like Charles Kuralt. And yeah, it was in San Diego. Wait, did you ride around in an RV with Andy Richter? I did, and Paul F. Tompkins. There you go. Okay. Did this ever appear on the internet?

It did. Yeah, it did. It shouldn't have. No, it was fine. It was fine. Ultimately, it was... This was a big thing. This was like a six-month project or something.

It was all summer long. Yeah. We were trapped in this RV driving up and down the coast looking for fun. We didn't find any, especially those guys. But for me, it was actually really exciting because I knew Andy a little bit before that. I had not met Paul. So I was getting to work with, you know, I was writing these videos for eBay. And Andy and Paul were the talent.

And it was exciting for me to hang out with those guys all day and all night. It probably wasn't very exciting for them. It was probably a low point for at least one of them. So you said you had not met Andy yet. This was before you worked. Oh, okay. Yeah, I had met Andy. I knew his wife didn't you had not met Andy yet. This was before you worked. I met Andy. I knew his wife from way back in New York. But this was before you worked for the

Conan O'Brien Enterprise? Yes, this was a couple of years before that. But one of the things we had to do was cover a rock and roll marathon in San Diego because eBay thought that would be fun. Where we talked to the winners of a rock and roll marathon. The whole idea was winning, you know.

Oh. Yeah, yeah. Okay. So we covered winners in a lot of small areas. And the very first, first of all, we had to get there at, I think, 4 a.m. Because those things start really early. It's inhuman. Absolutely.

It is horrible. You don't have to tell me that they start early because you live above one yeah my dad was a uh marathon runner uh when i was a kid and we would always yeah wow we would always make the trek up from orange county to la it's like about an hour drive i feel like your dad is a mythical creature i met him i've met maybe even more than once i've met your dad uh i feel like he if you told me right now that your dad had a horn in the lower back of his head sure i'd just be like well of course he did ever after the time you told me the story of how he came came home with like a 1920s reproduction car one day

um i feel like i would believe anything about your dad. Yeah, sure. He has certain magical properties. I think, yeah, the Indians believe that his fingernails give sexual potency. Wow. So if you want to sire a son, you have to trap my dad. Has he been hunted? Has he been hunted? Yes. I mean, that's currently where he is. He's in Oklahoma.

He's human prey on a game reserve. Yeah, this is kind of like the middle half. My dad's life right now is like the middle half of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Oh, wow. On the plus side, he gets paid a lot of money to appear at powwows. He gets all the fry bread he can eat. He gets all the fry bread. That stuff will kill you.

We always had to get up. We wanted to support him when he was running the marathon, so we would get up at 3 in the morning and drive up to L.A. And my parents would always bribe me, or my mom would bribe me, with a trip to the La Brea Tar Pits, which was a favorite destination of mine as a kid. Anyway. Was that during the race or after the race? This was, like, between the time the race started and the time that we would be cheering for my dad as he came by.

How did your dad feel about the people who would compete in the marathon dressed as like gorillas and things like that elvis yeah there's always a running band of elvis's uh he never expressed an opinion about the running a-holes i always thought it was cool as a kid because there was a huge pack of the elvis uh people dressed like elvis for the rock and roll marathon in San Diego. Natch. Yes. My wife's boss just ran a marathon and apparently she's like 40, I'm guessing. She's just taken up a side career as just like one step below world-class runner and triathlete. Just decided to do that now. I think there's this kind of people,

and it's the same kind of person that becomes a successful lawyer, that just can't live with themselves if they're not just worked into a frenzy about something. Right, right. You know? Todd, how did you find the winners of the Rock and Roll Marathon? What sort of person is this? Is it that same furious go-getter?

It's like any marathon. Someone from Africa won. Okay, sure. It doesn't matter whether it's the Rock and Roll Marathon, the Bluegrass Marathon. Somebody from Africa will win. It was some dude from Africa. I don't even know if the Elvis is finished.

Although I like to think of them crapping their suit. Sure. Don't a lot of runners crap themselves? That is pretty common, right? Yeah, from what I've heard. How's your dad? Oh, yes. And actually, Inuits believe that if you harvest that crap,

you mix it into a stew and you feed it to a baby. You can cure planter's warts. Exactly. Sure. Only babies' planter's warts, though. Once you're an adult, the magic knows what you're up to. Well, it's kind of like, well, it's more of like an immunization from planter's warts. If a baby is fed-

I always wondered why Inuits don't have planter's warts. If a baby is fed the shit stew at an early enough age. The Inuits have so much preventative medicine. I've talked about... A lot of it's shit related. I've talked with Jordan about this before, but I'm personally opposed to marathons. Okay. I don't believe in them.

You don't believe in them? I think that they are an affront to God himself. Which you do believe in. No, I don't believe in God either. I am an atheist. Okay. do believe in no i don't believe in god either i am an atheist but uh to any anything important i just think there are certain things that are reasonably within human ability and then there are other things that you only do just to be like hey fuck you god yeah right i got this god

yeah i think you're better than me? Like, it's really not. Your fancy car. It's not so much an athletic contest as just a misery-suffering contest. Right. It's like people who make up new kinds of insane sports. Yeah. Just things that they can punish themselves with. People who add things to athlons.

Yes, exactly. You know? Like, people's pentathlon, they, they're dropping skeet shooting. Right. What's that? Biathlon.

Did you guys know that they're the guy who, one of the, um, one of the big wigs behind the mixed martial arts movement is starting a new sport where it's arm wrestling, but you can punch and kick each other. Absolutely. It's called, like, X-Arm.

I cannot wait to see the first action film based on that. Yeah, it's kind of the sequel to Over the Top. Like Jim Cotta. Sure, sure. Look, I don't mean to, I don't mean, sometimes someone will write me an email telling me about how pretentious I am. Sure. And I don't mean to be pretentious.

How often does that happen? I don't mean to be pretentious now in saying this, but the other day I happened to be reading the Esquire survey of the American male. Okay. And I discovered that men under 30, their favorite sport is mixed martial arts. Oh, yeah. It's their favorite sport more favorite than football, at least according to this Esquire magazine thing.

They love it. It's horrible. It alternates, to me it alternates between boring and horrific. It's one of the two. It's either it's boring when they're locked on the ground and horrific when one's getting punched. And horrific when someone's pushing, slamming someone's face into the ground or something.

Right. When someone has blood on their face. Like, I don't even. Which is often, right? Yeah. I'm not even against, like, I'm not against boxing. But, like, I remember watching, like, one of the greatest traumas of my life was I was watching on pay-per-view at, like, a pay-per-view party that Tyson Holyfield fight. pay-per-view party that tyson holyfield fight and the second that tyson bit holyfield's ear it was like oh fuck there are no rules anarchy reigns right someone's gonna have to put one of

these boxers down sure exactly cattle prods will now be involved like there's there's so much difference between the thing where like you can even though they're both trying to kill the essentially trying to kill the other person, there's so much difference between the one where you have to wear special gloves and you can only punch in certain ways. Right, and there's a guy standing between you. The rule is just you can't tear at people's balls or whatever. Like a chimp. You can swat at people's balls, but you can't tear at people's balls.

It's horrifying, right? Is that a Fuel thing? Do they do mixed martial arts? Well, not to get too corporate on you guys. Todd, for you, my primary job is I work for Fuel TV. It's an action sports network. It specializes in skateboarding, snowboarding, that kind of thing. Affronts to God. Things I know nothingboarding that kind of thing affronts to god um things i know nothing about those aren't affronts to god yeah you don't put those in the same category like you know doing some sort of no no no no i think i think those

things i think uh you know as you probably know i don't think the world of skateboarding sure but i don't think it's an affront to god you don't think the stuff at skateboarding. Sure. But I don't think it's an affront to God. I think the stuff at the Olympic level where they're, you know. Well, they're sports based on arrested adolescents. Okay. That's what they all are. There's a kind of snotty adolescence about the whole thing that is distasteful to me. But, like, I'm not against it. Okay.

I don't want to watch it, really. Sure. Or be involved in it. But I'm not against it. Frankly, I don't want to watch most of the things in a given olympics they're fucking boring uh fuel uh for the longest time had a no mixed martial arts policy despite how brave yeah yeah and that was kind of the attitude that they have was how brave of us right right for. Right. Is this because the target audience of, because a significant portion of the audience of Fuel

is sort of like teenage and tween age people, and it's not just 18 to 35, it's sort of like 12 to 28? Well, I think that was the idea at the beginning of the network, was that it is younger kids. But recently, they had a big shift. I guess they learned

that A... Eh, I'll go ahead and talk about this. No one from Fuel listens to this. Eh, they kind of do. Sorry, I'm talking about this, guys. They learned that A... There's no doubt to people, there's no doubt for our regular listeners how much Jordan loves his job at Fuel. Yeah, sure.

Really great job. Don't fire me. He does really cool stuff. But sure. And lots of our listeners love to watch you on Fuel. Right. Why wouldn't they?

A, they learned that the network is not doing well. And B, that the audience that they do have is a little bit older than they thought. Interesting. The no MMA principle has... And also gay. Yes, for some reason. well and B that the audience that they do have is a little bit older than they thought uh so the the no MMA principle has also gay yes and for some reason it's super super into purses yeah

I feel like if I watched Fuel I saw Jordan I'm not gay now but I'm I might end up becoming certainly would tell my gay friends sure hey there's this hot dude on there for about two minutes a week I know you like guys of all types. Sure. Yeah. You should go check him out. Maybe you'd like to watch one. Particularly sensual guys. He's a bit of a trophy cub. Not in shape, but in a kind of a fun way. That's how I sell myself to potential mates. Not in shape, but in a fun way. Sure. No. So they have uh they are now exploring several different mma shows uh so that that principle has kind of gone out the window now are you to be to be more

a general interest and be in line with this older kind of 18 and up dude you personally does mma make you feel uncomfortable uh okay here's and we touched on this a little bit last week uh we talked about mma last week we talked about sports and liking of sports i had no idea i'd come here and we'd be talking about sports yeah that is the last thing i thought we've only been talking about sports okay let's let's move on to our favorite huey lewis album mine is sports oh wait we're still no uh uh Jesse likes baseball I don't really like any sport I did not grow up with

sports in my life I like other sports too How do you feel about skorts? I don't like them Jorts yes Skorts no because you think you're going to see the girl's butt and then you don't The snorks?

Like them, prefer them to Smurfs That's what i always thought about smurfs put this shit under water huh monchichi don't care for it you look a bit like a monchichi oh thanks uh delightfully out of shape cuddly yeah yes um fun fact rapper pharaoh monch uh named after monchichi pharaoh monch as in Monchichi? Yeah. Did his friends call him that? A girl when he was like a freshman in high school thought he looked like a little Monchichi and he got the nickname

Monch. That's great. Yeah. I love that he kept it. Ferocious rapper, Pharaoh Monch. Um, I, uh, yeah, for the longest time my opinion of MMA was like this is boring and then gross and then boring again. I was saying, Jesse, that I feel like I can appreciate a sporting event if someone will sit with me during the sporting event and explain to me why everything is dramatic.

Gotcha. Like if there's a rivalry, if someone... Like what is there to get excited about? Yeah, who wants this the most? Who's got the most to prove? And recently I was working and had kind of a bunch of time to kill between work thing A and work thing B.

And, you know, I was just sitting at a bar with a coworker, and MMA was on. And he was nice enough to explain to me the drama of it, and I was pretty interested in it, to tell you the truth. It's a culture battle, isn't it? Isn't a key element of MMA... Oh, of mma oh yeah the ties versus the whites and more a very popular hispanic fighter right i would say

that that was most of the uh was most of the cultural matchups was another guy versus the hispanic guy interesting and there were yeah and then there was like definitely a big hispanic guy contingent in the bar we were at, rooting for the Hispanic guy. I'll tell you, as a guy who grew up in a largely Latino neighborhood, there is nothing more that an American Latino loves more than a race war by proxy. Except the Smiths. That's only in Southern California.

Northern California Latinos, at least in San Francisco. Someone needs to explain that to me. It's one of the great mysteries of life. I love it. I went to Interpol last night, which was boring. It couldn't have been more boring.

Yeah, so boring. I don't... Come on, you saw that coming, though, right? Well, I lived in New York, and I very much associate that band with my time in New York. Okay. Did you ever see them live when you were in New York? I did.

I saw them for the first album and I didn't think it was boring then. But there was a huge number of moody, goth Mexican kids in the audience. And I was really like, oh, okay. That's a Southern California thing. Yeah. No, definitely in my neighborhood, the Mexican-Americanamerican your salvadorian-american your guatemalan-american teens uh like rap music okay okay yeah they definitely like rap music but um i go to i go to a lot of metal stuff for work and there's also i mean maybe we're just in southern california and there's a lot of hispanic

people at everything right but it seems deliberate it seems like this is a thing anyway no there's a lot of Hispanic people at everything. Right. But it seems deliberate. It seems like this is a thing anyway. No, there is a very specific, especially Chicano culture in Southern California that's really Southern California specific that I think births the Smiths, the Smiths second generation immigrants. It's amazing. The metal second generation immigrants

and also a lot of punk rock second-generation immigrants. And also really into the Saw films, I think. Yeah. I think there's like a weird overlap there. Sure. There's like Morrissey, metal, and Saw. Something about, yeah, you know, I go to see the Saw films in the theaters.

Yes, it's me and a bunch of Hispanic kids. Nothing brought my, to conclude my point, nothing brought my neighborhood together like Oscar De La Hoya. Talking about race, yeah. Yeah, and it was just all about what other, you know, partly it depended on whether he was fighting another Latino guy or whether he was fighting a black guy. If he was fighting a black guy, it was race war by proxy.

If it was a Latino guy, it was, you know, national war by proxy and if it was a latino guy it was uh you know a national war by proxy okay that's fair yeah um oh that i wanted to tell you something about the saw movie oh yes i went to see so i went to see jackass today and one of the previews was the 3d saw movie yes that's coming out and the way the preview i don't really know if this is in the movie or if it was just a thing they did for the preview but they make it look like in the preview like you're part of it yeah you're in the trap sure and they show all these people in a theater wearing 3d glasses sitting in their seats watching a saw movie and then getting like like restrained yeah like restraints come out of the theater seats circular saws start flying out from the screen to murder the entire

audience and that's how they're previewing this film. Like, you will all be murdered by saws if you go see this film. But I bet you can get away, guy who's seen them all. Yeah, I talked to somebody recently who thought that was the theme of the movie was people

watching a saw movie getting killed, but I think that's just what they're using for the preview. But I don't know specifically. Anyway, it is weird. We'll all know soon. Yeah. I'll tell you guys. Midnight show, guys?

Midnight show? You guys want to get in line? It sounds pretty fast and pretty furious. Sure. Can I ask you about this jackass movie, Todd? Yes, you can. I know everything about it. I saw...

That's funny. I saw Johnny Knoxville on, I'm going to say Letterman the other day. Okay. Probably the David Letterman program. You're thinking of Frontline. You saw him on Frontline. You know what? Now that you say that, it was the American experience.

Oh, okay. I was watching the American experience on Jackass and the Dust Bowl. It was a dual topic American experience. I saw Johnny Knoxville on there. And I think we can all agree that Johnny Knoxville is the leader of this team. And he is the leader of this team because he is genuinely very interesting and charismatic. He's very charismatic. He's the sort of court jester.

Yeah. And ringleader. And I feel like without him, it wouldn't necessarily be a thing. I don't think those guys are very ambitious on their own. I think it's maybe more that. I think he sort of brings them together. very ambitious on their own. I think it's maybe more of that.

I think he sort of brings them together. I think they would be probably setting their pubes on fire at home, not thinking, hey, this could be something. Right. I think he's a sort of organizing force. But now on this David Letterman, they showed a clip of Johnny Knoxville doing something, I'm going to say two years ago, roughly two years ago,

where he rode a motorcycle that he didn't know how to ride a motorcycle. So the guy that punched Jordan in the face, whose name I'm forgetting right now. Ah, Travis Pastrana. Travis Pastrana actually punched you in the face? Yes. I was interviewing him for something he was horsing around and punched me in the face. On purpose, but kind of not really. It's like one of those things where you're like wrestling with your girlfriend and you

hurt her and you feel bad. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He felt bad then. He yeah um and he's my boyfriend travis pastrana apparently had to put the bike in gear for him like let the clutch out or whatever he was trying to do a jump he lets go he falls on the ground the motorcycle is still in the air it falls on him punctures him and apparently this is two years later he still has um he still has like like uh a colostomy bag a colostomy bag oh yes or a catheter he's partially cath yeah catheterized catheterized he has to clear out his he has to clear himself out periodically

yes i'd heard that and um my wife said something that really like named the feelings that i had for this which was that it made me feel sad because johnny knoxville had tried to be a guy who did other things besides this and he's now too old to be doing this i mean there's no way which you should i thought about that very thing after seeing the movie he tried to be a movie star for a little while. It didn't work out. It seems like in that world, he's not as charismatic as he is in the world of Jackass. And now you're right.

He's too old. He's broken. And he has to do this. Yeah. I mean, I like I do. Jordan and I have talked on the show before about Jackass. Like, I think it's kind of an amazing thing. I can't necessarily sit through an entire one because there'll be one or two things that i are just that i just don't want to look at

right um but i do really admire their spirit of idiocy like i find it really charming it's gleeful it's it's really there's something like there really is something there like i i when it first came out i just assumed there wasn't but i but I was totally wrong. I feel like they're all still operating at this. They've preserved this moment of your development in Amber, which is when you discover that your penis is funny. That it can stretch out, that it can bend and things like that. I feel like they're all still celebrating that very specific moment in one's development. development they've sort of bear they've sort of burrowed into it yeah they really have and i really i mean like one of those fish that goes up your urethra yes exactly the the river fish yeah that lives in your urethra um and yeah i i you know i think you know one was better than two and two is better

than three but i do appreciate how creative they are and how much they seem to be having a wonderful time doing what they're doing. It's also a great thing to do in 3D. It was, and you know what? The 3D was really good. It was actually one of the better 3D films I've seen. Yeah.

They did a really good job. I feel like I've seen a lot of shitty 3D movies lately and was wondering if The Jackass was just one of these after the fact. You know, let's convert it so we can charge $12 instead of $10. They did a lot of really great stuff where they actually just had things operating at different depths in the brain. That's fantastic. Yeah.

Not too many coming at you kind of things. Except for a dildo. Would you say it's the best 3D movie since Dial M for Murder in 3D? Or since Captain EO? I would say it's the best 3D film since Coming at You. How would you compare it to Jaws 3D? Oh, I remember loving Jaws 3D when I saw it.

I'll tell you what I love. The head flies at you in 3D. I love the sort of like embossed Jaws 3D poster that I had at home despite the fact that I never saw Jaws 3D. Really? I for some reason

had a Jaws 3D poster that was like, literally it was probably four inches deep. Have you seen a Jaws movie? I've never seen any of the Jaws movies. You've never seen the first Jaws movie? I've never seen Jaws.

Have you been on the Universal Studios tour where Jaws bites the tram? Never been to Universal Studios. Huh. Wow. That was all I wanted to do as a child was go on that tram. And when I was working at the Tonight Show, we shot on that lot.

So we could actually just kind of, we could take a tour. Traips around, yeah. Traips around and take golf carts up to the tram and just watch Jaws come out as many times as we wanted. And again, like Interpol, it was boring. It turned out it was really boring. We definitely went there for family vacations growing up. And I remember being terrified of the Jaws part of the tram. And I swam a lot as a kid.

And after we did that, there were periods where I would not go in the pool. Like I had to fake sick from swim team because I was just so afraid of a Jaws attacking me in the pool. You were going to get Jaws. Yes. And then I re-rode that tram recently. And I was like, oh, fuck, I sucked. Oh, that thing is awful. That thing is comically awful.

But the best part is now watching the shark reset itself. Yeah, that is kind of funny. If you have that kind of casual moment where you can walk and study it, he sort of swings backwards. A good tram driver will have a little joke about that. Oh, he will? Okay. Like something in their back pocket. I myself once was on the lot

and I can't remember. Maybe it was the Warner lot or something like that. I'm not like you guys. I don't spend a lot of time on Hollywood back lot was this a drive-on or did you this was just a drive-on this was just a drive-on

I didn't get the discount at the studio store if that's what you're wondering but it was the lot I recognized the lot from Pee Wee's Big Adventure oh yeah and all I wanted

in the world this is as a grown man this is only a year or so ago all I wanted in the world was a is as a grown man, this is only a year or so ago. All I wanted in the world was a golf cart to drive around. That was like the only thing, all I want, just run up to where they're plugged in, yank the cord out of the wall. And just start scooting around. And just start driving through the Godzilla set.

Yeah. Todd, where does the Conan show film now? Is it on a similar lot? Yeah, we film on Warner. And I feel the same way. Especially when we were at Universal, it's more of a theme park. And all the back lot stuff is very, very far removed from where we were shooting. So it never really felt like a busy working lot.

It didn't fulfill that childhood fantasy. But Warner, it's busy. There's stuff going on. There are people making movies and TV shows. There's Santa Clauses water skiing down the street. It really is like that. You might see Ed Asner in a golf cart. I know this is complaining about this

is just like complaining about McDonald's or something like that but uh so so painfully apparent to me that chuck is one of the best looking guys in the world not a nerd but playing a nerd yeah right this is a constant riff of mine okay by the way i and i was setting you up for it because i'm a i'm a good co-host i like to say say he's too nerdy. Yeah. I can't believe him as an action hero. He's too nerdy. Sure. Yes, he's a very handsome guy that was created in a lab somewhere in Hollywood.

Yeah, like... As are all people named Jack. Yeah, way taller than most people. Anyway. But yeah, the fact that him as nerd is weird. The television show Chuck? Yes, the television show Chuck. Fuck that.

I recently saw the movie Unstoppable, which is Denzel Washington versus a runaway train. Oh. And it's this... You know how he stops it. Spoiler alert. His dick. His dick.

Oh, okay. I thought through prayer. Yeah, right. Okay. Yeah, about 89 minutes in, his co-star looks at him and he's like, Denzel, you're a dick. His character is Denzel.

It was there all along. It is. He has a flashback to when they were at a urinal early in the film. Sure. And his buddy looks over, he's like, you could stop a train with that thing. Yeah, yeah. Ah. Well, that'll never come up.

Back to my blue collar train. Lucky I don't have to do that. So this movie is really, really blatant about, The movie is a celebration of blue-collar heroes. There's evil business guys, and the blue-collar guys step up and do the right thing. Like that movie, Dung Ho. When you say the blue-collar guys, you're talking about Ron White... Jeff Foxworthy, Larry the Cable Guy. It's a celebration of them?

Yes, it is. And their comedy? I know. They're not in it. They couldn't book them. They were busy. Sure. So they had to settle for Denzel.

Denzel actually plays Larry the Cable Guy in the movie. I did not know that. Yes. He can't really get it right. He just says, get her done. Yeah. Anyway, his diction's too good. Too elegant.

Too eloquent. Okay, but on the same lines as Chuck as nerd, the, you know, the scrappy blue-collar three in this movie, Denzel Washington, Chris Pine, Rosario Dawson. The three most beautiful people in the world. No skin, no pores. Perfectly symmetrical in every way. That's always hard to swallow.

Yeah. Well, does he take care of the train he does that's what's important with his butt though that's the surprise so weird i loved uh the original taking of the pelham one two three yeah i've never seen that but it's a really fun movie to watch because the transit cops yeah are played by like walter mathau like they're real guys in the office where the transit cops worked it looked like it smelled like burnt coffee it was just this dour sad place there's a kind of movie world that you're not allowed to create anymore that for some reason like i feel like you mean you can't you can't

create a world that doesn't look like an apple store yeah exactly like i feel like at this point they they'd make if they make a movie about the Chilean miners, it will look like an Apple store. Yes. But in 1974, if they made a movie about the space station, it would look like a Grand Central Station bathroom. Or like a DMV. It's true. Everything just has like Dustin Hoffman in a watch cap. Yes.

Yeah, everything was almost too real. A lot of hair on people's forearms. Just crawling up over the watch. Nowadays, that's a budget line item. Forearm hair removal. Yeah. They tend to it. They don't remove all of it they don't want

something that's perfectly slick well jude law's hair grows very fast you gotta you gotta strip that guy every two days jordan can i ask you a question about fuel tv yeah do you think they might be willing to cover the world's fastest emerging martial art which what is that jude law hair removal jim kata oh sure I mean, it does have gymnastic skills and karate kills. What about Gunnkata? Oh, from the Kurt Wimmer movies. From the movie Equilibrium. Sure. And then, of course, the spiritual follow-up, Ultraviolet. Oh, is that a same director? That is the same director, also considered a Gunnkata film. Also looks like the Apple

Store. Yeah, right. I know. Gun kata cracked me up because it was like, you don't really need martial arts if you have guns. Right. I know. And why have you spent all this time making gunfighting look like a beautiful ballet? Shouldn't you just shoot the guy with the gun? Stand back as far as you can and aim.

Right. I feel the same way about the killing power of gymnastics. Yeah, that's true. Like, if you can just do one pommel horse move, why would you do ten? Oh, he got so lucky that there were natural forms of pommel horses

in Tibet, wherever he goes. Thank God. Thank God the village of the crazies has that pommel horse at the end of that alley. I love that movie so much.

Oh, dear God. I had a conversation at this wedding that i went to a couple weeks my cousin's wedding i'm talking to this other cousin's uh girlfriend her name was missy and uh she was telling us about her gymnastics career she'd been a gymnast like a nationally ranked gymnast until she was like 15 and then she she gained weight this is just how it happens you know you you either stay tiny or you don't yeah yeah um and uh so she she had been a gymnast for a long time and i said oh and she was telling me she was sort of listing to us all of the famous gymnasts that she'd met while she was being a famous gymnast

or slight just one step below famous gymnast and i don't really care about famous gymnasts and i don't really care about famous gymnasts she's listing them it's taking a long time she's just going like carrie strug i that's the only one i can think of right now but there was a list of like literally like 10 that she's just saying i met this one i met this one i met this one and i realized that there is there is one gymnast that i'm excited to know whether she'd met i said well did you meet olymp Olympic champion or world champion Kurt Thomas star of Gymkata? And, uh,

I said, that's the movie with gymnastics skills and karate kills. And she said, yeah, I think I met him. And then she went back to listing. How dare she? She went back to listing gymnasts as though I hadn't just brought up

Gymkata. Were any of those people in a fusion martial arts gymnastics action film no not even one of them not even one of them not even how can you how can you just ignore that i just brought up jim kata and just move on as though nothing had happened it really is is a good movie. It was, I consider it to be a notable moral failure on her part to not want to talk about Gymkhana, to want to go back to talking about actual gymnastics. We'll have more when we come back. Todd Levin,

our guest on Jordan, Jesse go. La, la, la, la, la, la,

la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la,

la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la,

la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, Todd Levin. Young man about town. Young man about town, Todd Levin with us. Last of the international playgirls.

He is the author of Sex, Our Bodies, Our Junk, along with the other members of the Association for the Betterment of Sex, also a writer for the Conan O'Brien television program, which is now called Conan, if I'm not mistaken. Yes. Right to the point. Todd, can I ask a Conan question? Please.

Conan is? So he'll be appearing on the show? Yeah, yeah. From time to time. I think a lot... I remember this being a topic when the TBS thing was originally announced, but I don't know if it

got resolved or not. One of the issues was does NBCUniversal own all those old characters? Technically, yes. They actually, all of our props department from The Tonight Show and Late Night and costumes and all of that stuff was basically impounded. Wow. Yeah, yeah.

With like padlocks and stuff like that? I heard that they sold all that stuff off to somebody that NBC had. But yeah, all that stuff is technically their intellectual property. So just to take an example, the famous character, the masturbating bear. Correct. I assume from now on that will be known as Larry Bud Melman. Yes. It will be known as David Letterman's mom.

Calvert DeForest. David Letterman's mom who covered the Olympics at one time. That's right. He had to call Larry Budd Melman Calvin DeForest when he had him on the new show. Yeah. And I can't say for sure, but there might be some type of that thing that will happen on the new Conan show. How is it? Is it difficult to sort of like, how is it, is it, is it difficult to, um,

is it difficult to sort of like, or is it fun? Cause you, you don't, you'd only been at the show for about a year, right? Right. I started at late night,

right at the end of the run. Um, I was, I think I was hired as a potential writer for the tonight show. Um, so I only worked at late night for about the last month and a half or so. Cause they, they liked that you, that you were good at writing celebrity-heavy sketches.

Oh, God. And song and dance numbers. Exactly. Stunts. A lot of reveals of large things. I could do that. A particular skill I had. We called them ta-das.

Initially, they hired you because the network already had its eye on the Jay Leno show, and they knew that you wrote really well for a Ford electric car. Right. I could go back and forth. Yeah. Todd, was that you who wrote that piece in GQ about... It was. It was a great piece.

That was great. Oh, thanks. I felt like a lot of people talked about that issue, and they're like, oh, look at this great Bill Murray interview. I'm like, but what about that Conan guy who had to move to la like a year after yeah anyway that was todd levin's wonderful piece i think people should head to their local library and take a look at i think it's on micro fish yeah you can get it on fish or film whatever you know it's micro one way or the other it's all fish or famine at the library that's why i write for the show

granted it didn't really make sense it didn't really have an internal logic nope i just wanted to say fiche or famine yeah really i was gonna figure it out somehow but you know we take what we can get from a top 11 but writing that article was a harrowing experience. How so? Well, because it was a, you know, I was writing about my boss, who was no longer my boss at that time, but who I hoped would be my boss at some unknown date in the future. And you didn't know that he was going to be your boss again? No, no one did. We didn't know we were coming back to the show until, I want to say, I didn't know officially until about August. Wow. Yeah, yeah.

So were you just looking for other LA writing jobs? I was, I mean, I was using some of that time. You know, I worked on the tour. I did that part of it. You know, so I had work up until working, doing various things for Conan and other people for until about July anyway. So I wasn't really, I didn't really have that much time off, but yeah, I was starting to think, well, if I don't hear something,

I will have to figure this out. I'll have to write my way into another job somehow. Wow. Yeah. Okay. Well, I didn't, I, and I say that it shouldn't, it's not as heavy as it sounds because I didn't, I'd hoped that I was coming back.

I figured I had a good chance, but I didn't know. At the end of the day, I'm guessing you could have just stayed at Brian Stack's house. Is the writing staff the same size on TBS as it was on? It's a little smaller. Okay. Yeah, yeah. It's a little smaller. Comparable.

Okay, so here's the question. okay so here's the question when you're when you're starting anew is it scary to is it cool to have the opportunity to sort of like reimagine what it is again or is it scary to do that um or is it just is there just not going to be a lot of reimagining and I should just settle for the blimp? This blimp was funny. There's going to be a lot of blimp stuff. It's huge. Have you noticed how big it is? Yeah.

Yeah. That's going to provide a lot of ta-da moments on the new show. It's the blimp again. Your assignment since August has just been to write jokes where the punchline is showing a picture of a blimp. Somewhere. I don't know. It was, I mean, it's been interesting because I think I wonder what people's expectations are. I really have this

idea that... Well, I know it's going to be more like George Lopez, right? There you go. Okay, that's the problem. Like Lopez tonight? Yes. I saw George Lopez. It's going to be spicier, yes. Conan has a blimp. But I saw at some sort of big

street event out here there's a promotional George Lopez party bus and it is kind of... I thought you were going to say he got a hovercraft or something. Oh, yeah, right yeah right no it's gonna be furious uh it's a party bus and it is uh it is kind of flanked on all sides by like scantily clad promo models sure why wouldn't it be lopez brand that's what most parties are like

right sure yeah there's a woman with a logo on her behind and a bus sure am i mistaken in thinking this about george lopez and i really have no problem with george lopez as a comedian but he really has transformed himself from sort of a lovable dad type into like a scary teenager in the body of a 50 year old you mean in his in his comedy persona it's like on air like he was like he was he was the like um he was like the latino comic that the whole latino world could agree on all three generations yes um you know grandma could watch it too and when i watch lopez tonight i feel like he's just gonna fuck a stripper just right there on the stage. And he's like really gaunt now.

Like he's lost a lot of weight. He looks like he's got muscles or something under his shirt. Well, he was very sick, right? Was he? Yeah. Do you know that his wife donated a kidney to him? No. I had no idea.

Yeah, he had to get a kidney transplant, which is part of the reason he looks... I'm sorry to blow this for you because you have a whole theory about it. Actually, he's not. This is going to be a funny jag. He's on his last legs. He was very sick. I think he's been taking medication that's changed

the way he looks. It's changed his weight. It's changed... I think he was taking some sort of steroid type drugs for a while, which is why he's got a little rounder. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He was sick. Wow. His wife gave him a kidney, and now they are getting separated. a tone like he wants to maybe like get in a fight or go to see foxy boxing no foxy boxing

i don't know the gorgeous ladies of wrestling there's just a weird kind of there's a weird kind of sunset strip um mechanical he seems like he's on the make he's on the make i think it's like it's the tone of that show i think he's adapting to his intro music and set and like weird catwalk he has to walk down to get to his desk i never would have thought of george lopez as like a comedian for the hip-hop generation which seems to be how that show presents him yeah maybe and maybe that was just that was their thinking like well there isn't one of those guys now so lopez can be that guy just because he's latino like i sort of like thought of him i sort of thought of him as being like a like a sort of like a jeff foxworthy like figure like a sort of a and i

don't mean that as an insult at all again i think he's a funny comedian but uh sort of like uh sort of like a charming sly dad yeah and now i feel like he he you know he wants to whip it out yeah he wants to whip it right denzel style stop a train just wants to or pull a train. I don't know. Why not? Maybe be a train. His dick can be used to haul goods coast to coast. He just wants to hang out with Snoop Doggy Dog now. Yes.

Everybody wants to hang out with Snoop Doggy Dog. Yeah, right? Come on. Who doesn't want to hang out with Snoop Doggy Dog? When he was on the Tonight Show, they built a special private area for him on the roof where they could smoke weed outside. Undercover with all these potted plants around. A little alcove. He never stopped smoking weed.

I guess that's just the thing. Yeah. I hiked past his house one time. I recognized it from Cribs. Really? I was really excited i was like wait a minute that's snoop doggie dog's house from cribs that's where he played uh basketball with uh gosh i want to say new edition the cash money millionaires no it was an r&b i think it was

new edition okay snoop doggie dog something i really like about snoop doggy dog is his commitment to r&b guys he's just got a like no other like scary rapper and like that's really is part of his appeal is being slightly scary i mean he's he's certainly sanded off a lot of the sharp edges but i mean it's still like snoop doggy dog part of the thing when he was 19 and on the make was like he looks like the kind of shifty guy that might pull some shit see i always thought that he just he was 19 and on the make was like he looks like the kind of shifty guy that might pull some shit see i always thought that he just uh he was the cool one like he was the very cool almost removed he was like the uh like pink from dazed and confused he did shoot and kill someone didn't he okay yes maybe it was the case maybe he did he um but he he. But he's always stood up.

I mean, his single-handed preservation of the career of Charlie Wilson, lead singer of the Gap Band. That's a really impressive... I hope it is the Gap Band that he's the lead singer of. I don't know. Oh, geez.

Jordan, look at him. All right. Where's your intern? Yeah, I know. You guys talk about something. I'm going to look it up on the iPhone. But seriously, when you're making this new show, do you feel like it's going to be the show that everyone had come to love?

Is it going to be the broader show that was the Tonight Show? Is it going to be a fan service show with nothing but weird nonsense cable channels? I think, I mean, you know, I feel like it's very difficult to capture the, those last two weeks and sustain that for an entire show without seeming very

self-conscious because that was a singular moment, you know? And I think a lot of people, I worry that that's what their expectation of and i think a lot of people i worry that that's what their expectation is that it was sort of like we left off there and now we'll just pick right up there um it was really hard because we had a very unified point of view because of what was going on um and it was sort of a mad dash it was everything but the kitchen sink and we knew we were we were leaving it was that lamborghini giardo or whatever it was? Oh, the Bugatti Veyron mouse.

Or the giant sloth spraying beluga caviar. On a priceless Picasso, is that what it was? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, there was a general sense that we did not give a fuck. And it was because we didn't. Because we knew we were getting fired. Right. And, you know, and I think that Conan's feeling, you know, at least what he's expressed to us for the new show is that he does, you know, want there to be a kind of looseness. I think he felt like and I think we all did that.

The Tonight Show was very pressurized, you know, our whole experience there was very pressurized. Everything was this kind of like precious presentational kind of thing. And all every little bit had to be super tight. And we put a lot of pressure on ourselves. And as a result, it wasn't a ton of fun. It was certainly fun from moment to moment. But the overall experience was not a ton of fun for everybody. And I think including Conan, if I can.

I hope it's not unfair to speak for him, but I really do think that. And I think that he wants to have more fun on the new show. Does it have to be really successful in order for it to be successful? No. Or do you get to not be that successful? And I think that that takes some of the pressure off.

Yeah, I think that that's the case. But I don't think it's going to be, you know, two weird dudes popping up from the corner of the screen and sketches that have no dialogue are just bizarre visuals and all satellite channels. I mean, as much as I love all that stuff, you know, I think Conan was doing that stuff when he was still in his, like, 20s and wasn't maybe as assured as a performer and as a kind of comedic presence himself. He only had a couple of his world-famous dance moves. Yes, exactly. Now he's got many. Now, I assume... Before we get too much into this, Jesse, I'm sorry, you were wrong.

Yeah. Charles Charlie Wilson. Uncle Charlie. A United States Naval officer and former 12-term Democratic United States representative from a second congregational district in Texas. He's best known for leading Congress into supporting the Operation Cyclone, the largest ever CIA covert operation. And what did Snoop have to do with that? You know what? Nothing that I can say.

You know what? Nothing that I can say. You know what? I was in my head. I thought I was thinking of the Snoop Doggy Dog song Beautiful featuring Pharrell and Uncle Charlie Wilson. But now that I think about it, I was thinking of the movie Charlie Wilson's War. Sure. A lot of people confuse the two.

Yeah. Philip Seymour Hoffman. Snoop had a guest verse in that movie though, right? He did. He did a verse. Yeah. He dropped 16 bars. He sung the hook. He did a guest spot on that movie, though, right? He did. He did a verse. Yeah. Yeah. He dropped 16 bars. He sung the hook. He did a guest spot on that.

Yeah. I believe he did. I believe he did. Anyway, so about this Conan program. Yeah. So you only have to be as successful as like The Daily Show or something, right? Do you have to be that successful? I don't know.

I don't know. I don't know. I mean, we're still, it's very much a honeymoon phase. What do you think is going to happen? Do you think people are going to watch it or not? I can't watch it. I don't't have cable i think some people are gonna watch it yeah that's what i think just like some people will be viewed well just like some people watch everything there are no huge breakaway people successes anymore people even watch me

in jordan on television if you can imagine that there you go it's there's an audience for anything even conan o'brien even conan o'brien you genuinely think there's an audience for con. Even Conan O'Brien? Even Conan O'Brien. You genuinely think there's an audience for Conan O'Brien? No, I don't. Have you seen his show before? I have. It is no good. But that's an interesting point, and I guess that's something I haven't thought about, and I feel like I do a reasonable amount of thinking about TV ratings,

but I guess that's true that there aren't those smash hit national phenomenons anymore. There's a lot of hype for things and then people get excited and then they instantly get turned off like the the turnaround the emotional turnaround these days is incredibly fast you know uh kurt anderson the other day posted a tweet on his twitter kurt explodo anderson host of the wonderful public radio program studio 360 um as well as acclaimed novelist and co-founder of Spy Magazine. Okay. Kurt Anderson posted a wonderful tweet the other day.

It was a list of three shows that have more viewers than Mad Men. And one of them was something called Swamp People. Right. There you go. There you go. Swamp People. We all think that it's the most successful show in the world because it's the show that the media wants to talk about because it's a smart show and an interesting show. Yeah.

So it's everywhere because the people that cover television are talking about it. Now, I'm not saying swamp people aren't smart and interesting. Yes, you are. You're implying it. Hey, who's more interesting than celebrity chef Paul Prudhomme? Is he one of the swamp people? I believe he's part swamp. He's part swamp, yeah.

I think that, and also the... Okie finokie, if I'm not mistaken. His arms and his limbs can regenerate? At least his daughter's been telling people that she's one-eighth okie finokie. And probably another interesting thing about the swamp people v mad men debate probably an episode of swamp people costs like the tie budget of an episode of mad men to make

you just follow the swamp people around for a day and a half they have to trim the switch grass that grows off their bodies somebody told me that the most popular show is the closer which I had heard of but then they told me that the second most popular show is the show that comes after the closer which, which is called Ingrid and Martha or something. Oh, Rizzoli and Isles.

Rizzoli and Isles. I had never even heard of that show. I literally never heard the word. And I'm a professional media personality. It's the people who are too terrified to turn off their televisions for some reason. I'm a member of several casting websites so i get like casting notices day to day and um uh for maybe two weeks straight every day i would get and you know you kind of fill out your general information when you join one of these casting websites you know

gender height weight you put a headshot and stuff like that. How much swamp you are. Sure, yes, exactly. To what, yeah, how far back in your lineage is there a swamp person? And, you know, so in theory, these kind of casting

notices will be... That's 1-8, 1-8 swamp. You know, the star of it is swampy swamp person eighth swamp sure that's a call back to an old episode a very old episode um so i would you know so in theory these casting notices are supposed to be kind of something that you could potentially uh be right for and for maybe two weeks straight, once a day, I would get a Rizzoli and Isles casting notice, all for corpses. Really? So it seems like they're killing a lot of 20-something dudes. Is this a real show, Rizzoli and Isles?

Yeah, it's like it's two kind of brassy, middle-aged female detectives. It's like a CSI, but like your mom is the hero. When I read about it, I looked it up. 7.75 million people watch it. Jesus. Wow. That's a huge hit. That's like bigger than like 85% of network television shows. 90% of network television shows.

90% of network television shows. Absolutely. Unbelievable. What's it called again? Rizzolian Isles. And what's its relationship to swamp people? That it is unrelated in every way. It's done some crossovers.

They take place in the same universe. It's like when the law and order people will go to SVU or something. Sure. We'll have more when we come back in just a second on Jordan and Jesse Go. Love you, love you, love you, love you Love you, love you, love you, love you Love you, love you, love you, love you Love you, love you, love you, love you Love you, love you, love you, love you It's Jordan, Jesse Goh. I'm Jesse Thorne, America's radio sweetheart.

Jordan Morris, boy detective. Todd Levin, I'm made of denim. The whole, your whole... It's true. The whole thing, inside and out. Wow. Even his studs attached? Organs have some rivets.

Ha! You gotta rivet those stress points, my friend. They do. You can't just bar tack them. Like Chuck Norris' action jeans. Yeah. I read it. Hey, listen.

Some important messages this week on Jordan, Jesse, Go. Do you mind if I share them, Jordan? No. I don't. important messages this week on Jordan, Jesse go. Do you mind if I share them, Jordan? No, I don't. Um, was something that they, something that they asked me to work on at, uh,

uh, at my television program, my television program, the television program that I work on one day every two weeks. Uh, the grid, uh, was they,

they want to make sure that, uh, I sound, I don't sound sales pitchy. Oh. Sorry, guys. You have to sound like Howard Stern. Sorry, guys.

That's pretty much how I sound. Two things. Two great sponsors this week. This is how it works on our program for your benefit. The listeners out there can send us $100 if they'd like us to share a personal message, $150 if they'd like us to share some sort of commercial message, and we will share it here on the air of Jordan, Jesse, and Go. We ask that the people actually be listeners and not advertisers.

We have had real advertisers that are like brands, and they're like, well, we heard you can do it for $150. No, only if you're actually part of the thing. Yeah. Right, part of the thing. Fuck you, Pepsi Max. You're not going to do a free ad for, say, Swamp People. We won't talk about that for 20 minutes

and get people curious. First of all, Josh Bauman, could be Bowman, Bauman, he is the author of a webcomic called Caffeinated Toothpaste. It is a diary comic strip. It is about his life in Berlin, Germany.

Maybe you've heard of it. Sorry, Todd. You wouldn't have heard of it. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. It's a little bit too cool for you to have heard of it, Todd. It sounds a little cool. Anyway, he describes it as an ode to caffeine occasionally inappropriate humor lactose intolerance and also caffeine um so it's like

kathy exactly well it's the kathy of things about americans americans expatriates in berlin a lot of people don't realize that all of kathy took place in düsseldorf well because most of it's not an office building so you don't realize that all of Kathy took place in Dusseldorf. It did. Well, because most of it is inside an office building so you can't tell. Yeah, exactly. So you can find that online at caffeinatedtoothpaste.com

if you'd like to read it. I'm sure he would love it if you subscribed to his RSS feed. RSS, of course, stands for Really Simple Syndication. Very nice.

Really Simple Syndication. RSS. I wasn't cool enough to know that either. I would also like to, on behalf of myself and Jordan, wish a happy anniversary to Dave and Joya of Chicago, Illinois. November 4th is their wedding anniversary. And Dave wants to offer Joya his love. Through the medium that is the quickest way to any young lady's heart,

dick joke podcasting. He says his special message is that he is very proud of Joya's hard work as a nurse and as a grad student, two very virtuous occupations, I would argue. And also that he really appreciates her forbearance with something that I know a little something about, which is the sad loneliness of the life

of the spouse of a law student. As you watch that person throw their life away. Just kidding, Joya. You've made a great decision. Hey, guys. Way to go. Yeah. So anyway, happy anniversary to Dave and Joya

on November 4th. We wish you all the best. If you ever want to sponsor an upcoming Jordan Jesse Go and have your message in jumbotron style. You can email our development director and my beautiful wife, Teresa Thorne at Teresa, T-H-E-R-E-S-A at maximumfun.org. We'll be back in just a second with more. It's Jordan, Jesse, go. I am Jesse Thorne, America's radio, la, la, la. It's Jordan, Jesse Goh. I am Jesse Thorne, America's radio sweetheart.

Jordan Morris, boy detective. Todd Levin, one-quarter swamp person. Only a quarter? Mm-hmm. But you've been upgraded from Octoswamp. My grandfather on my mother's side is from the swamp. After I heard about Swamp People, I learned about it from that tweet. I had never heard of it.

I was just laughing that there was a show called that. I watched about half of an episode of Swamp People on an airplane maybe or in a hotel room, something like that. And this is what happened. This was the plot of the Swamp People episode. There was two swamp people, two gentlemen, swamp gentlemen. Swamp fellows. That's what they prefer to be called. Swamp fellows is their fraternal organization.

They were out to get some gators or crocs. I can't remember which one they have in this particular swamp. Which was it, Jesse? Socks or shoes? They were bringing... You really zinged. Is that a callback? No. It felt like one.

Fiche or famine? There it is. That's the kind of callback I can get behind. Fiche. So they were going to catch gators. Okay. But the drama was introduced by the fact that their fat

dumb friend was coming with them and he was only a deer hunter he'd never hunted he didn't have the gator and they didn't know if he would be able to hunt the gators and part of the reason is because of the refractory issue of a gator being partly submerged underwater listen it doesn't matter Listen, it doesn't matter. It's harder to point your gun at them. It doesn't matter what you've hunted as long as you know gun kata. Then you can shoot anything. Yes, close range. Deer, gator.

Basically, I mean, they talked a lot about... They talked a lot about nothing happened in the course of this thing. I didn't think so. And nothing ever happens on a reality television show. It's unbelievable. They found one eventually, and after about 20 minutes of building up how dangerous this was going to be,

here's how it happened. The croc was just sort of sitting there, mostly underwater, and they shot it in the head. They just came up to it and shot it in the head. It was reading its children a story. Well, that's the end of that, they said to themselves. About how friendly humans are. From time to time out there in the audience, we ask you to give us a telephone call when something momentous happens in your life. And share it with us in a pithy manner, of course.

It's a segment called Momentous Occasions. And we've got a few momentous occasions to share with you. Let's roll the tape. Hey, Jordan, Jesse. I don't know if this qualifies as a momentous occasion, but pretty funny. Just a dude, definitely a dude, bro type fella. Had a hockey jersey on, and on the back it says number four. And where it normally would say a last name, it said titties.

That's pretty awesome. I don't know if that's awesome. Four titties? No, the number four, the player's name was titties. And the't know if that's awesome. Four titties? No, the number four. The player's name was Titties. And the player apparently was named Titties. Was that former guest Jonah Ray, by the way? Did you hear that?

That's probably one of those XFL nicknames. Yeah, right. Sure. Here's Titties, Flamin' Eagle. He hate me. Jordan, I think we can both agree that this T titties hockey guy is no Madison Bumgarner. Yeah, well. By the way, I'd like to offer my congratulations to the National League champion San Francisco Giants,

who won the sixth game. You're looking at me like I thought they couldn't do it. You're looking at me with this shit-eating look on your face. And you're gesturing like Charles Foster Kane. Thanks. I really was. I wished them well. This is not...

You're not sticking it to me. Behind another strong pitching performance from one 21-year-old left-handed starter, Mr. Madison Bumgarner. So here Mr. Madison Bumgarner so here's to Madison Bumgarner and his completely normal name that is not that funny

I look forward to all of you from Philadelphia and environs sending me tasty cakes in the mail I'm not as sure what a tasty cake is but I know that's something in Philadelphia. Oh, Tasty Cake's pretty good. Yeah, they're pretty good.

What is it? What is it? It's like their version of Hostess. Yeah. Oh. What's in there? Is it chocolate? All sorts of things.

Cream. I think there's chocolate, but then there's also like a Twinkie version. Yeah. Oh, wow. It's a golden cake and cream. Oh, that sounds great. Yeah, they're really good. Yeah, send those guys.

Send those. There's like a frosting on top. Send them. Send those. Send, that sounds great. Yeah, they're really good. Yeah, send those, guys. Send those. Send them. Send tasty cakes. The address is on the website at MaximumFun.org. Let's listen to these telephone calls. Hi, this is Dylan from San Francisco, and I'm calling with a momentous

occasion. I finally finished the cake that I've been drinking for two weeks. Oh. It's not really... Congratulations on throwing your life away. And for having such a shitty party in the first place that the keg didn't get finished. Before we verbally assault Dylan, let's be clear.

Dylan is a monk from the 17th century. Oh, I'm sorry. Oh, my'm sorry. Not only does he get most of his calories from beer, but he can't keep water because it would become fetid. I understand. He needs this to live. He does. Hi, Jordan, Jesse Go.

This is Joe in Oakland, California. I'm calling with a momentous occasion. I'm 24 years old and I just came out to my parents tonight. It went really well. They were really loving and supportive and I'm feeling very

relieved and very happy. I just wanted to share that with you. Thanks. Bye. Bravo, Joe. That's wonderful. It was just about a Yeah, way to go. It was just about, what, a week, ten days ago, it was National Coming Out Day.

We've been in the midst of all this rigmarole about the horrible anti-gay bullying and gay teenage suicide being in the news, you know, for once. It's unfortunately, it's a horrible problem for gay teens and has been for forever. But in the news, I'm very happy to hear that, Joe. That's great. And hey, if you're going to come out to your parents and you're worried about it and you're wondering,

are Jesse and Jordan on your side? Yes, we are. As long as you keep sending tasty cakes. Don't let us run out. I'd also like to add that I thought it was really cool that he added some levity to the moment of coming out to his parents by wearing a jersey with the word titties on the back. It's kind of a fun, ironic, like... A cute touch of irony. Yeah, totally not the type of guy who would wear that sort of thing.

No, he's a whole other kind of guy. A different fellow. Now, look, we didn't take any calls last week. I felt bad, so we had some sort of... I talked a little bit to Leo, our trusty intern who screened the calls. I told him we can take a couple of calls this week that are just interesting, miscellaneous calls, not momentous occasions, not necessarily for a current action item,

just some fun stuff to talk about because we want to reconnect with our audience. So we brought in a Todd Levin. We put in some of these calls that's the two main ways that we connect with the audience sure that's fine hey J.J. Coe it's Shelby in New York

dude you guys I just like okay I walk a lot in New York and I see a lot of crazy shit but I just walked by in fucking Times Square a professional bull riding ring.

Like, they have put some sort of bull riding ring in Times Square. No. And, uh, yeah, I don't know. Uh, thanks, thanks, bye. Wow. New York City. I was- How dare you. Bull fighting?

Bull riding. Bull riding. Like an electric or mechanical bull. No, no, a real bull. No, I can't be. Yeah, bull riding ring. She didn't say a mechanical bull. A real bull.

Like a rodeo. Yeah, like a rodeo in Times Square. That's more like it. Okay. bull. Like a rodeo. Yeah, like a rodeo in Times Square. That's more like it. I was just in New York City. Just came

back yesterday, in fact. It was a joy, as always. Sure. Had the pleasure of doing a live sound of Young America there. Thanks to everybody who came out to that. Had a really great meetup, which makes one, two, three awesome meetups since you said you were going to top me

in the meetup department. Not about quantity. Not about quantity. Anyway, it was really... This is not what this is about. Really awesome meetup. I hung out with a very nice television celebrity, Judah Friedlander. It was really a pleasure to get to know

very nice, and the band Les Savi Favre, who are big Sound of Young America fans, by the way, in addition to being awesome guys. So we had a lot of fun there with them and all the young people. And I, at one point was, I want to say, I was in a taxi cab that went through Times Square. And number one, New York City is the greatest city in the world, an amazing place.

But Times Square is a real shithole. There's no reason to go there unless you're watching the ball drop. And there's this thing. It occurred to me like this is 2010. This is 2010. In 2010, I don't think there's any place that you should feel obliged to go to that sucks. And I don't know a lot. I feel like San Francisco, my favorite city in the world, has Fisherman's Wharf, which fucking sucks.

It's retarded. It's stupid. It's nothing. Always crowded. Yeah, and it's nothing. There's no reason to go there at all. It's just fucking bullshit through and through. Not even to eat soup out of a sourbread bowl? I don't know.

I mean, you might as well just eat it at the TGI Fridays. All right. That's what that is. Do they have one of those on the wharf? I'd like to go. They probably do. I'd like to go and I feel like there was a time

say 1985 where if you're going to New York and someone's like oh you gotta go to Times Square well you know what the fuck do you know you know what I mean like you've never been to New York before you're not gonna go buy a book about New York to try and figure out whether you should go

to Times Square there's probably only one book at that time yeah if you don't know somebody... It was called the Encyclopedia. If you don't know somebody that lives there, you have no way of knowing that it's bullshit. You know what I mean? But this is the information aid. Is this maybe akin to our Sunset Strip conversation from last week? Absolutely.

I think the Sunset Strip is a really perfect example. Oh, I think people should absolutely go there, though, because it's a horror show. That was a place that before I moved to California, I thought, well, this is going to be great. I really did. And no matter how many books have come out since 85, I really did. And it is sad and pathetic like time square isn't really it isn't squalid like like the sunset strip is i think that's the a big difference is that sure it's it's almost the opposite of that it's it's family oriented yeah

yeah but it is sickening yes but it's not squalid in a cool way i think the sunset strip is squalid well it's not in a cool way but in a the Sunset Strip is squalid, well, it's not in a cool way, but in a fascinating way. Yeah, I kind of think the conversation we were having the last time we did the show was that the Sunset Strip likes to call attention to its glory days. It has all those banners celebrating 20 years of rock, and it has all those guitars that are painted all around. It's like, Sunset like sunset strip why are you talking about your glory days when you're so lame now right like maybe that it's like shouldn't be your strategy guy talking about how what a great quarterback he was in high school

sure yeah it's the al buddy poke high yeah sure um wait what happened in times square it was just lame and it occurred to me and i wanted to say so. No, it just occurred to me that, like, really, it takes focus to find a lame part of New York City, especially if you're just like in Manhattan. Like, certainly there are parts that are less cool than other parts. There's certainly things that are better than other things, et cetera. There's gradations. But it's a pretty small place with a lot of awesome packed in there that is true so you really have to make a strong effort to go to the one really genuinely shitty thing there like the really lame nut like fucking the uh the empire state building's pretty cool yeah Yeah. You know? Like, the Statue of Liberty is pretty neat.

Going up in the Statue of Liberty is way cool. You know? Herald Square is terrible, which is right around the corner from the... That was a place that's where the famous Macy's is. Yeah. And a lot of tourists would go there, especially around Christmas. It was a real crush. But that's...

Talk about a place that glory days are long gone that is a sad sad place yeah just don't go to those places jordan you you've started this tradition of the having a thread on the maximum fun forum like i'm going to so and so sure what's a not lame thing yeah i thank god for not a not a real robust thread no it's done quite well it's okay it's lasted many years sure um you know it appears and disappears from time to time, but people will share recommendations. But sure. People can go on Ask Metafilter. Yeah.

Type in Ask Metafilter. Ask it on Ask Metafilter. I just really feel now is the time, the information age, for us to seize the power to know what is and isn't lame before we go there. Right? Fair enough. Yes. Jordan we go there. Right? Fair enough. Yes. Jordan, fuck you.

What? Hey, Jordan, Jesse. This is Jessica from Brooklyn. I'm really stoked about Sunday Young America coming to New York. And I'm calling you from the Good Fort Restaurant in Red Hook, Brooklyn. Myself and the rest of the staff, who are really good friends, Jordan, Jessica, and the young America, would like to invite you to come eat dinner here.

So if you have some time on your schedule, come on down for some VIP reservations. Oh yeah, and if you have any food allergies, this call will make you a special meal. Bye! Wow. I just got back from New York yesterday.

Too late. What's the name of the restaurant? The Good Fork. Oh. It's a great restaurant. Sure. Yeah. It is in Red Hook, though, so you'll have to take the stagecoach to get there.

In the wilds of Brooklyn. Wow, that's really neat. Well, listen, I just got back from New York. However, this is the month of October. In the month of November, I'll be returning to New York City. And in fact, I haven't talked about this on any of our programs, but I will be providing the keynote address on November 11th at the annual grand meeting of the Corduroy Appreciation Society. In November 11th, of course, being the date that most resembles Corduroy. I'll be there, and I'm really, it's a tremendous honor.

Sloane Crosley, who was a guest on this program a few weeks ago, has given this talk before. Jonathan Ames has given this talk before. Good company. Do you know what the location is? Is it actually just a thing? Is it a society that appreciates Corduroy? Yes.

Okay. It's at a mechanics library i want to say um i i don't think they've announced all the details yet um uh we'll post them on the website as soon as we have that that group the corduroy appreciation society is that what yeah it's corduroy appreciation club i think i said society but they they were the ones that were responsible for kind of rehabilitating this social club in Park Slope. That's a great old, and now I can't, I'm so embarrassed I can't remember the name of it. It's a great old social club.

And they kind of got, tried to bring in younger members because it had been sort of an aging, fading social club. And I actually, that's where I got married. Wow. It's a great, great old place. And I was wondering if that's where it was. Well, Miles Rohan, the founder, has been exceedingly kind, along with the good people at Cotton Inc. Oh. I'm not familiar with their work.

The look, the feel of cotton. Oh, those guys. Sing it more like Zooey Deschanel, and maybe he'll know. I'm contractually obligated to sing that song every time I mention the good people at Cotton Inc. Oh, boy. The look, the feel of cotton. Just make sure he doesn't mention that name again. Which name is that?

Cotton Inc. Oh, shit. The look, the feel of cotton. I should have seen that coming. Anyway, I'll be there. I'll be there with my good friend Adam Lissagore, a.k.a. Lonely Sandwich. We're going to be shooting some stuff for our web series,

Put This On. So we'll come to that restaurant. Send me an email, lady from that restaurant, jesseatmaximumfun.org, and we'll totally come to it. Absolutely. I'm excited by the prospect that there are places where you're welcome or you're not chased out i think that's essentially i think that's a really good summary of it actually like i'm not to put too fine a point

on it but yes yes that there are places where we are welcome people that want you to be there when we when we went to um when we went to sweet Action Ice Cream in Denver, and the owners welcomed us there, and they made a special Dr. Pepper flavored ice cream for me. Are they affiliated with the magazine Sweet Action? I don't know. I think they're affiliated with the ice cream store Sweet Action in Denver. Because they are that. But then I met a guy who was a big Sound of Young America Jordan Jesse Go fan at the meetup this past weekend who used to live in Denver and work there.

And apparently they all used to listen to Jordan Jesse Go and talk about it. And the idea that there are, because let's face reality, our show is essentially a failure. Sure. No one listens to our program. Basically no one. This is not a popular program. No. This is not even a popular program for extended cable. I've bamboozled yeah no this whole thing i mean basically it's

just our moms listening to this and frankly our moms don't listen ultimately the real story is that our moms don't listen and so when we hear about like a business where everyone has taken up caring about us like a little corner of the world where people actually like what we do, it's very gratifying. There's that one dildo store. Yeah. Well, there was one lady at Good Vibrations in San Francisco.

I like to think that our podcast is the in-store soundtrack to that particular dildo store. Do you think that we could somehow target dildo stores? The cool lesbian dildo stores. Sure. I'm sure there's a network. Right, yeah. Of dildo stores the cool lesbian dildo stores sure I'm sure there's a network of dildo stores

they've got a channel in Muzak right? or SiriusXM Dildonics Dildonics29 smooth Dildonics I would love to be on get us on

get us on in babes in Toyland. Sure. Toys in Babeland. Whatever it's called. The New York one. The Pleasure Chest. Sure.

Not the creepy kind. Again, we want to be on in the... Not the weird ones. The kind that's owned by a lesbian. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what we want. That's the kind I don't like, though. Really?

I prefer the creepy kind. Really? Yeah, because there's less... I feel like at places like Toys in Babeland, they're just too eager to help you. There's too much pressure. It's like, I'm trying to buy porno. They're too eager to show you how a butt plug works.

I like the ones where the guy works there, and he's just like, this is what I wound up with. You know what? I could have been selling stuffed animals. I feel like I see through your ruse number one okay and uh what i see is that you feel too much pressure to perform cunnilingus that's right it is yeah that's it who needs it though he's pushing hey jordan jesse go this is tony from the midwest uh ps well not ps because i haven't said anything yet jesse it's really great to hear your voice on my telephone.

Anyway, what I wanted to say is I've got a possible... I prank called this guy. Oh, I didn't realize that. Okay. Sorry, I should have given you a break. But he knew it was you. You pick a random listener to be your prank call target. Yeah, absolutely.

Selection for your guys' segment, jokes that I fucked up or nobody got. So I came up with this joke a while back, So a dick and a fart walk into a bar. Is that not a joke? Because I clearly thought that that was a joke. I don't know. What do you guys think? No, it's not a joke. That's called a setup. That's a setup. You're missing the second part of the joke, which is called the whizbanger.

And the third part, which is the prestige. Sure. Sure. Todd Levin. title of the episode what was the other one fission prejudice or the prestige hey what's up jordan jesse and guests um so i've been listening to podcasts for a long time i've been well by a long time i mean let's say a year and a half, I've been listening to podcasts for a long time. I've been, well, by a long time, I mean,

let's say a year and a half now. I've been fairly entertained by the whole thing. I like this guy's shitty attitude. Rest assured. It came to my realization

a couple days ago that you guys were both, well, the two of you and he were contemporaries at UC Santa Cruz. You were both there

at the same time and he says that he thinks you guys are both douches. Do you guys have any response to this charge? So let's begin at the beginning. Number one, he says he's fairly entertained by the program. I'd like to say to that, you're welcome. I'm more than happy to have contributed this to your life That's the first thing Number two

Were we douches at UC Santa Cruz? Yeah, I mean, probably I don't, yeah, I don't completely deny the claim I mean, I think, I don't, I wouldn't consider myself an all-around douche But I mean, certainly I'm kind of surprised to hear that, to be frank. What would have made somebody think you were douches? I, my, most of my freshman year, well, for maybe the first two years, I did carry a boombox. Okay, well, yeah. What were you playing on that? Rap music. Did you really carry a boombox around campus? Yes. yes okay now i have to say that um this was mostly

pm dawn it was all pm time people people are like why is that guy falling asleep on a memory draft what is this fucking thing called is he wearing a kimono um why is that guy keep getting beat up by KRS-One. You know, this was a thing that young people in San Francisco did. It was normal. You know, like you'd see people holding a $40 radio from Walgreens. Instead of a Walkman. Instead of a Walkman, listening to rap music on it. It was a totally normal thing in San Francisco. Okay.

And- Did you know that it wouldn't be normal at UC San Francisco? I did not know that. Okay. But I will say that when I found out that it wasn't, I didn't really care. There you go. I've never been one to shy away from eccentricity.

There's no doubt about that. I think a lot of people assumed that I was being arch or ironic, which was not my intent at all. I actually genuinely like rap music. And wanted to share it with the campus. Yeah, the same boombox I used to strap to the back of my bike when I rode my bike to school. Who was in heavy rotation on that boombox?

We're talking about 1999, 2000, so you're talking about Black Star, probably. Pharaoh Monch, actually, would probably be. That was a bad time for hip-hop. The Snorks theme song. Yeah, the Snorks theme. Theme from Snorks. Yeah. Love theme from Snorks. Yeah. MF Doom. So this is pre-MF Doom.

Okay. But anyway, I don't feel like we did anything douchey. Eh. Did we? I get if this guy was a part of the college radio station that we worked at. I can see how we might have like douched around there and like maybe wised off in meetings and stuff like that. It depends.

I would like to know where this guy knows us from. That is kind of something. Here's the thing. I can speak more to it. I feel like this guy doesn't know us. Yeah. He didn't know us. Okay.

That's what I think. He has a very specific impression of you. I'm willing to do follow-up on this. If the guy wants to quiz his friend about the way in which we are douches, I'm willing to speak to that and apologize for it if I feel like it's justified. And I, in turn, am willing to speak to it and dispute it. Do you think it's possible that the two of you, I'm guessing, got along very well and you kind of had a real connection,

right? Sure. That's true. Okay. And that maybe, I want to be clear. We only went as far as oral. Okay.

That's fine. That's fine. Um, but is it possible that the way you guys related to each other and the various inside jokes in the kind of twin language that you probably develop because you knew each other so well, along with Jim Royale, the master of Would You Rather. Sure.

There you go. Could be somewhat alienating for somebody outside of that bubble. Was there a time, Todd, when Jim Royale, the master of Would You Rather, got a pair of pants he really liked and called us and said he'd invented something called love them pants which is something that you say when you really love your pants um and we all discussed love them pants together pretty consistently yeah became a thing yes was love them pants a thing certainly but was love them pants exclusionary no anybody could step in was love them pants exclusionary? No, anybody could step in and love them pants. Now, did Jordan and I have a Radio Shack intercom between our dorm rooms at one point?

Yes. Sure. We did. And if that's what this guy is saying is douchey, this is probably just jealousy that he didn't have a Radio Shack intercom that went to his friend's dorm room. You know what? This guy sounds to me like a real douche. Yeah. Real meatball.

A real microfiche. You know what happened when we were in college that he might be thinking of? September 11th. You guys did that? No, we didn't, but he might just be misremembering it. It was a group of Islamic terrorists, but he might be...

Those guys were kind of douchey. Attributing it to us just because we were, you know, we were sort of large and in charge around campus. So it to us just because we were you know we were sort of large and in charge around campus yes so it's two sort of big memories that have sort you know how memories kind of run together it's almost 10 years ago when the new york times covered september 11 attacks they there they said total douche move that was the headline well also well also before they hijacked the planes they were talking loudly in a bar about their cell phones and about their favorite quotes from billy madison that's the worst right

you know well they're bragging about what they got in their verbal section of the sat yep um i want to say that i look back on a lot of stuff I did and said and thought in college, and I think, what a douche. Really? That's why I always wanted to get into it. Because I'm going to tell you something, Jordan. Sure. When I heard about this, I thought, I think a lot of people interpret me as being pretentious or arrogant or something like that. Stop bringing up all these Esquire articles.

Right, exactly. Shitting on Times Square, a national treasure. When people say something mean about me... Shitting on the movie National Treasure. When people say something about me, it's that I'm... They tend to say, you know, he's pretentious or arrogant or something like that.

Sure. And I think that people could interpret my, you know, the way I am, and misinterpret the way I am in the world is that. You know, it's certainly not... I don't think that people could interpret my you know the way i am and misinterpret the way i am in the world is that you know it's certainly not i don't think that it is that but i i can see that but frankly as somebody who's known you for a long time i really have a hard time coming up with why someone might think you're a douche you know i i just you're really a pretty nice guy and you and you really kind of you're the kind of guy who you know like i will just

you know when there's something that i don't like in the world um i will either say that i don't like it or just not engage it at all uh you will go out of your way to be considerate and and nice to someone that's lame, something that's lame, etc. Well, thanks. It sounds like this guy was painting you with Jesse's douche brush. Yeah, right? Some of the douche runoff. Although I do feel like I look back at the various phases of my life. Now I look back at my various phases of my life. Like now I look back at my, you know,

early, early adulthood and, you know, and then at college and then at high school, I pretty much think I was a douche and all those things. Like I don't. Wait, like name one douchey thing.

Just being like, I don't know, just like being a, being too opinionated or like having dumb opinions about music or something like that or like look we all know that you have dumb opinions about music sure and certainly when you were with our friend brian heater you were co-hosting that ska show yeah yeah that was that dumb yes yeah i did host this gosh on college radio what was it called uh it had a couple of names uh all names of famous scott songs for the for the longest period it was called the special brew got it uh then it was called one step

beyond for a while okay anyways it was great they did a great i mean i hate scott music don't get me wrong i just hate scott band names yeah you don't like it when they insert scott into the name of the band scott of the hut scott tommy bomb like you don't like it when they insert Ska into the name of the band? Ska by the Hut? Ska-tomic-bomb? You don't like any of these? Clarence Scott Thomas. But Jordan and Brian did a really great job.

And then the spinoff band, Kristen Scott Thomas. Kristen Scott Thomas. Sorry, I'm thinking. Ah, sorry. They did a great job on the show. I don't know. I sincerely can't think of anything. Jordan, I mean, what you may think of as being overly opinionated is just absurd to me because you're one of the least opinionated people I've ever met. I have no BS, sure.

You have opinions, but you're so uncomfortable making other people uncomfortable. I can't imagine you making someone else uncomfortable enough for them to think that you're a douche. Fair enough. Although I am willing... Anyways, I'd like to hear more is all I'm saying. Okay. Well, Jordan would like to hear more so that he can make other people more comfortable. I'd like to hear more so I can pick a fight with them.

We're in agreement of that. I've heard quite enough. We'll be back in just a second on Jordan, Jesse, go. La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la. Jordan, Jesse, go. I'm Jesse Thorne, America's radio sweetheart. Jordan Morris, boy detective. Todd Levin, friend to the animals.

You are. Everybody knows that. I love all animals except for corgis. Yeah. What's wrong with them? They're an abomination. Yeah, it's grotesque. There's been a squirrel and bluebird perched on your shoulder this whole time.

Sure. We should know. And they've been very well behaved. Exceptionally so. They're well cared for. I also, I just wanted to commend you on your integration of animation and live action. Oh, do you like that? Yeah.

Thank you. your integration of animation and live action. Oh, do you like that? Yeah. Thank you. Todd Levin, of course, is one of the authors of Sex, Our Bodies, Our Junk. He is one of the members of the Association for the Betterment of Sex, along with not that long ago Sound of Young America guest Mike Sachs,

who edited the great book of interviews of comedians and comedy writers called In Here's the Kicker. Lots of other people from lots of other cool outlets are involved in this little operation, this little cabal of comedy writers you have. Listen, if you buy only one comic sex parody book this holiday season, you're going to have a hard time deciding between this one and Kristen Schaal shaw's because kristin shaw was on the santa young america she was great and look i mean both of them are great they're both good books the reality is both of these two books are hilarious i say you pick them both up you read 20 pages straight on each one and you make your choice look and that choice is both um buy them both at the end of the day at the end of the day

you can buy a dvd of flight of the concords if you want to laugh at some kristen shaw jokes i mean for god's sake for goodness sakes todd levin todd levin didn't even know whether he was going to get another writing job on a major late night television program he has now granted um he rides around on a little fucking golf cart or whatever. I do. With Santa Claus and Godzilla. He's tricked out. Sure, and he can see Jaws whenever he wants to.

But he didn't know. For a while, he didn't know whether he was going to be able to. So buy his book. It's called Sex, Our Bodies Are Junk by the Association for the Betterment of Sex. And of course, watch the television program Conan. Yes, Conan. The legendary Conan O'Brien. Conan O'Destroyer.

Yeah, 206-9844-FUN, the number to call if you've got a momentous occasion. Please do check out our forum where we have the King of the Children contest in full bloom. This is a contest where we've asked listeners to have their children

draw pictures of Jordan, Jesse, Go. Now, we insist that their children not listen to Jordan, Jesse, Go because it's not appropriate for children. Okay.

But just to describe some stuff from Jordan, Jesse, Go to their children so they can draw it. You send it in to us here at the show. Again, the address

is on the website or you can email it to jjgo at maximumfund.org. And, you know, we're just sort of, you know, conglomerating them together into a big ball. We're going to pick a winner eventually. But what's fun about it is because the kids don't listen to the show. They won't know when they've lost. Yeah.

We encourage parents to lie to their children and tell them when they've lost. We encourage parents to lie to their children and tell them that they've won. And part of the King of the Children promise is, if you give us a heads up, we'll back you up on that. Okay. So if we meet you at a meetup or whatever, and you say, this is my kid, remember he won the King of the Children contest,

we'll say, oh, all hail your majesty, the King of the Children. And again, kings can be men or women in this scenario. Sure. I want to make that clear, too. But we will not say queen. No, we won't say queen. Because we're homophobic.

You will not bow to the queen. Sure. You will not bow. No. No, absolutely not. We will bow to a girl king. That's fine. Because who wouldn't bow to a girl king?

It's an impressive accomplishment. Sure. I think most of the entrants are girls, too. Yeah, most of them are girls. Girls are more talented than boys. Sure. Realistically. But boys are better at math.

Yeah. Sure. Why not? And cooking. Yeah, right? Look at Mario Batali. Yeah, he's great. And Bobby Flay.

Hey, listen. I have one request for everybody out there. People know the signature Jordan Jesse Go segment, Judge John Hodgman, in which our friend John Hodgman settles disputes, large and small, both large and small, real disputes live on our air. Now, I have some bad news that will no longer be a part of Jordan Jesse Go. From here on out, you will no longer hear Judge John Hodgman on Jordan Jesse Go. However, I also have some good news.

We are working on a secret project, and we require your disputes for Judge John Hodgman. So if you have a genuine dispute with someone you know, again, it can be large or small, but it should be actual. We don't want something that you made up for the thing. An actual dispute, anything from, you know, I want to sleep on this side of the bed, he wants to sleep on that side of the bed, he always sticks his knife in the jelly after he's been eating peanut butter

and gets peanut butter in the jelly. Anything, large or small, with a friend, a lover, a partner, a business associate. A horse. Let us know about your problem and include your telephone call, your telephone number. Email Hodgman at MaximumFun.org. It's that easy, Hodgman at MaximumFun.org. And's that easy. Hodgman at MaximumFun.org. And tell us what your dispute is and include your telephone number so we can give you a call. And let us know if we might be able to reach you and your co-disputant and if you might be interested in judgment.

I'm not going to say anything more than that. This is a secret project. But he is not doing Judge John Hodgman. On Jordan Jesse Go. On Jordan Jesse Go. No longer will he be doing Judge John Hodgman on Jordan Jesse Go. However, if you have a dispute for Judge John Hodgman, we are working on a secret project about which I will say nothing.

Do not expect to hear it on Jordan Jesse Go. It's not going to it on Jordan Jesse Go. It's not going to happen on Jordan Jesse Go. It's gone. Jordan Jesse Go is now 100% Hodgman free, and thank God for that. Yeah, right? He was really gumming up the works. Sure.

And 100% Hodgkins free. Congratulations on that, boy. We're completely a-lymphomatic. I have contracted lupus. That's true. And I have sickle cell anemia. I have contracted lupus. That's true. And I have sickle cell anemia. I do have a case of dropsy. At least you just don't have that galloping pneumonia.

Can we just keep listing all diseases? Email those to Hodgman at MaximumFun.org. Run out and buy Todd Levin's book, Sex, Our Bodies, Our Junk. Mail us a big box of tasty cakes. Our theme music is love you by the free design courtesy of the free design and light in the attic records um listen i'm gonna give out our address for those tasty cakes 1553 silverwood terrace los angeles california 90026 yes um i'm looking forward to uh the san francisco giants the World Series. Congratulations to Madison Bumgarner and his teammates on the San Francisco Giants. I really insist that everyone watch Giants closer Brian Wilson's interview with sports talk host Jim Rome,

because he says about a thousand amazing things that you never thought you'd hear a professional athlete say. Just says crazy nonsense. It's just amazing. That's it. We'll see you next time. Yep. On Jordan, Jesse, go. Oh, watch me and Jordan on television.

Yeah. Thursdays at 745 Pacific on IFC's The Grid. Yeah. Okay, bye. Breaking news. I said 745 Pacific on IFC's The Grid. Yeah. Okay, bye. Breaking news. I said 745 Pacific. I meant 745 Eastern.

445 Pacific. We'll talk to you next time.