Keeping Records - The Grand Game of the Goose (with Chris Gethard)

Episode Date: May 28, 2021

Comedian and writer Chris Gethard has a vision for how he wants the world to be, and that vision is one where you never know what's going to happen next. For that reason, his record is a collection of truly bizarre audio-visual television moments that he's encountered over the course of his life. Wrestling, bizarre Spanish-language gameshows, and a whole lot of Mr. T, like probably to the point where the aliens will believe he is a deity—which he, of course, is. Chris's Artifacts Drunk Ewoks on The Today Show (audio-visual) The footage of Mr. T on El Gran Juego de la Oca (audio-visual) Conan goes apple picking with Mr. T (audio-visual) The unforgettable debut of The Shockmaster (audio-visual) Malice at the Palace, a Pistons vs Pacers Fight 2004 (audio-visual) Legacy viral videos mentioned in episode Grape lady falls! Gay Mount Everest Keep Fucking That Chicken by Ernie Anastos on Fox 5 WNYW Scare Tactics, Rat Monster Follow Chris, and watch his new special Half My Life on June 1st, on Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, Pluto TV, Peacock, Tubi, and more! But preferably Tubi, because, well, you know. Tubi. Twitter Instagram Follow the show @keepingrecordspod Advertise on Keeping Records via Gumball.fm See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is a HeadGum Original. In 1977, NASA sent two solid gold records into space so that aliens might find them and understand life on Earth. I send greetings on behalf of the people of our planet. And friendly wishes to all who may encounter this voyager. Now, we're making new records with our friends. Bonjour tout le monde. Konnichiwa.

Hola y saludos a todos. Assalamualaikum. We step out of our solar system into the universe seeking only peace and friendship. We know full well that our planet and all its inhabitants are but a small part of this immense universe that surrounds us. Hello from the children of planet Earth. Well, Shelby, how you doing? Caleb, good. How are you? I'm good.

I will probably talk about this a little bit later in the episode, but I went to Sephora for the first time in my life today. Okay. Did you like it? I did. It was really interesting a very um extremely knowledgeable man talked to me for 45 minutes about um skincare i learned a lot something i don't understand about a sephora is that there's so many testers that you could put on a full face for free just from testing and i don't know how they stay in business

you can well eventually they would uh you won't be able to do that too many times before you got caught you know what i i went out of my way what? I, I went out of my way. There's so many of them. Shall we? I went out of my way to not go to a mall location because I didn't want to fucking deal with a mall. I love a freestanding store. I love a freestanding store.

But today I went to Rowe, LA, Rowe, downtown LA. Never been. I hope they're cool because you're giving the girlies free clout. I mean, it's, I think just owned by the city so i don't know but um it is like a bunch of stores bunch of restaurants bunch of cafes everything was so cute it is ultimately uh pretty like standardized like gentrified but it was cool i will say that very telling that standardized and gentrified are interchangeable for you. Yeah, actually, we do have to back up and erase some of that. No, no, no, no, no.

People need to know who you are. I'm always saying this. When people show you who they are, believe them. And that's something I'm always saying. I think what I meant is it is, you know, when you see, you know, when you see a bunch of houses that all look the same and you're like oh that's gentrification like and and the rest of us would go oh that's bad shelby goes that's amazing i want more of that i didn't say that but you're like oh i know what you mean yeah standardized it standardized isn't like the standard like it should be this way you're saying like everything yeah not setting the standard

everything is the same color the same gradient it's um very 1985 1984 is that the book 1984 yeah speak on that thank you i don't know anything other than that apple made an ad based on that book um do you want to talk about our guest i'm really f word excited and the f stands for fucking oh my ew i am really fucking excited about our guest today he has a brand new comedy special coming out shelby you know the name of it it's chris gathered's half my life and the reason that the name is before half my life is because that's the name of our guest today everybody please welcome our guest chris gathered hello Chris Gellert. Yes, Chris Gellert. Hello, hello. Hello, hello. It's very good to be here.

I am so excited to have you here. Before we got on, you mentioned the Meg Stalter show. You're friends with Meg. I am, yeah, and I've seen you on there, and I admire that show greatly, and shouted to the hilltops about it when I discovered it. It's so psychotic. Meg used to shoot that in Chicago when we all lived there in the Onion Studios. But I actually saw you for the first time when you were testing your...

Well, I saw you about a million times when I lived in New York in college. I'm a huge fan, but I saw you testing Career Suicide at Shea Stadium in Brooklyn. Oh, you were at that. I was just thinking about that show today, actually, because blah, blah, blah. The specialist shot in all these DIY venues and Shea Stadium was like the big one for me in New York. And I think if I remember that show right, did not the air conditioning go out?

It sure did. And it was really, it was really tough. Blasting fans while I'm trying to talk about killing myself. It was horrible. Perfect. It was horrible. Wait, that sounds like about killing myself. It was horrible. Perfect. It was horrible. Wait, that sounds like an incredible night. It actually was.

It was like one of my favorite spaces. They really took me in like family and being up there with the fans blasting. And I'm like pouring my heart out in an early version of the show. And then we did a Q&A and there were some things that were said by um audience members that really were very raw and kind of shocked me i viscerally remember this night because um my friend caleb doyle is a huge uh fan of yours and i called him out shout out doyle and um i was walking back to the train and And I think this is the first summer I lived in New York. And I was trying to explain to him the Q&A section.

And I was crying walking to the train. And there were several people around me not paying any attention to me, which I thought was very strange. But now I know it's just living in a city, but I'm not from a city. It was a great show. It was a very fun night. Thanks. It was fun i remember there was someone who in the q a i think like bared their soul about trying to explain to their parents about like their if i remember right it was like i'm trying to like explain my my gender to you and it's and it was like a hot room and we were all sweating and everybody was just like oh

my god but it was it was um like when judd apatow produced the show he's the one who was like we could sit here and like have actual notes but he's like i think you need to take this thing all over the country and do q and a's afterwards and i was like that sounds awkward but he was right he was right yeah it turned out so great. Well, we brought you, Chris, because we want to ask you about a really important question about what you would put. If we were sending new records into space, what would you put on yours? So I thought very long and hard about this. Okay.

And I mentioned before, right? Like, I want to live in the world where Meg's show gets picked up. Right. Right. I've done a lot of strange comedy in my life that has led to me having a cult fan base, but it's probably also part of why I'm living in New Jersey and have 20 years of doing this and I'm not a mainstream name.

So I thought that this would be a good opportunity for me to launch things into space, whereupon if an alien race was ever to locate them, they would assume that the world we live in now was much more akin to the world I wish it was. It's not representative at all of actual society or culture. It's what I would use to shape an alien race's thoughts on us. Idea. Yes. Yes. I'm manipulating them into remembering the world as the world I wish it was. We sort of talked about this the other day about like if we could identify them by like we send something and we tell them this is normal and they come and try to assimilate by being that perceived idea of normal and it's completely abnormal, it'd be the easiest way to identify them. Yeah.

I'm with you. If we were like, everyone paints their face orange. Yes. And they did that. When we see some orange faced dudes dudes walking around we'd be like oh if it was like an infiltration yeah if they came and they were like we're trying to assimilate we're trying to we would be like okay well we can identify you by like the little bits of information we just like seeped into the records to try and trick you and is that most of the crux

of the podcast assuming that there will be an invasion that we need to thwart? Is this a running theme? No, I would say that we often are concerned about what would happen based on what we send up. If they did come, would it be perceived as a threat? Are they coming for a fight? Or would it be like, it's more, I think the crux of the pot is let's send some stuff to space but the but then sometimes the questions we ask are like are we setting ourselves up for murder at the hands of a a smarter alien race and we also have we have we have a we have a disagreement on um whether or not the existence of aliens yeah shelby shelby team yes. I believe in them. Caleb does not. And I'm team probably not.

Now, how do you feel about the fact that no one in the news talked about it when Barack Obama was like, oh, no, yeah, there's UFOs. And it's just nobody mentioned it. Because Caleb's whole thing is, yeah, there are UFOs. It's a plastic bag. My whole thing is. Okay, okay, okay, okay. Let's pause. Let's pause 12 seconds on that.

My whole thing is, of they're ufos we have a term for these things that appear in the sky sometimes they do literally turn out to be plastic bags or or or military tests or whatever but i'm not saying they're completely explainable i'm just saying are there little uh creatures in them that live on another planet who run them and are doing like recon on earth i don't know i don't think so but maybe i'm open-minded i just tend to err towards and probably from mostly for my own mental health i tend to just err on the side of no i was gonna say caleb caleb can't really i don't think deal with the idea that we'd have other people to deal with no i got you know i i for like uh six months in college i started allowing myself to think about death and what happens after we die.

And it really fucked me up. So I put that away. Let's get into it. What does happen after we die? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Chris, what's the afterlife, do you think? I assume worm food. Okay.

Physically, sure, yeah. That's my guess is that you just decompose and you hope that the obituary was kind. Like, that's it. Oh my God. I hope my obituary is kind. I think I'll have a pretty cool obituary. I'm proud of that. I'm proud of that.

I think you will. And I hope it's like, I want mine to be drippingly sincere. I want it to be so sincere and heartfelt. I don't want one of those like, he couldn't go a day without a Dr. Pepper. Like, that's true about me, but I want like, he was the kindest. He was the nicest friend. Even if it's not true. I hope it's one sentence long and that sentence is he couldn't go a day without a Dr. Pepper.

I hope that's the entirety of your obituary. Rest in peace. I have a really good plan for my headstone, actually. Oh, please do tell. A bust. A bust of your head. No, no, no, no. Way, way creepier than that.

Well, I worked for a number of years at a magazine that was largely about haunted places and ghosts and things like that. It was called Weird New Jersey. It was all haunted stuff in New Jersey. Because the magazine wasn't like, we're trying to prove ghosts are real. It was like, hey, if you go to Bernersville, there's this haunted prove ghosts are real it was like hey if you go to bernersville there's this haunted tree called the devil's tree and if you touch it you die and that's the story they tell and it's not we're not trying to say that's true or prove it but

i love i always loved as a teenager even before i worked there reading this magazine and like going and breaking into abandoned mental hospitals or finding the devil's tower, like all this stuff. And there's a part of me that wants to have a headstone that says, ye who walk across this grave shall meet your demise within 24 hours. Like to just start an urban legend that if you stand on my grave, you die within a day. I think that would be cool. Have people terrorize my grave. That would be amazing and horrifying i would love that for you for you and for all the kids in town in that way you'll live

forever i mean because people will be like calling your name and mirrors they'll be it'll grow so far beyond just the headstone it'll be like chris gather like there'll be such a story about that that gets built i hope so i hope so i'd really perpetuate it i would love to become like a an urban legend it would be an honor and yeah to haunt teenagers forever would just i think that's the best way to spend eternity so you're you're creating a world you're creating a world that is the world you want to live in not a representation of the world we do live in yes i am i am tricking the aliens into thinking this world is cooler than it is, in my opinion. I love that.

Let's prank them. I want them to think this world is a world of ridiculousness and chaos where anything goes. That's what I want. I love that. So you're sending up Jackass, the show? I'm sending, I actually am a huge fan of jackass and I would argue actually that I'm sending up the things that imprinted on my DNA in the exact way that made me love jackass yes okay I would

say it is it's that part of my brain is going up into space yes Chris what is the first thing on your records okay so all of these are videos um at least of the first four I explained to you guys that I have some options for five, but I don't want to overcommit until I see how this goes. The first one is something that I think everyone should know about and see. Many people do, obviously. It's a viral video. It is a thing that when I am depressed, I watch. I have recommended other people in my life do the same. I say that genuinely, and I very notoriously suffer from real depression, and this sometimes solves it. It is a video from a Halloween segment of whichever, was it ABC or NBC that Al Roker was the morning show host? It was the Today Show. They had a Halloween segment that I don't know if you've seen it or if you'd like to watch it or just have me describe it.

But Al Roker was dressed as Han Solo. One of the co-hosts was dressed as Queen Amidala. And they had a guest on who was showing you how to make Halloween-themed alcoholic beverages and candy treats. And like a flowered pumpkin, like putting flowers inside a pumpkin. Things like that. Crafts and treats for Halloween. And they very foolishly, for the Star Wars theme,

booked two little people to come portray Ewoks. Sure. And the Ewoks, even through the costume, you can tell, probably hit that green room and see this other act. Here's what I assume happened is one of the little people, actors walks in and it's like,

uh, cool, man. Good to see you again. We're going to do another job together, huh? Dave. And he's like,

yeah, but it's always fucking elves and Ewoks. Like they always give us that. And then they're like, let's just do some shots and chill the fuck out. And at six 30 in the morning, these Ewoks just got some shots together and they run roughshod over this segment wait wait one of the ewoks is drinking already you know it's not

time yet the ewoks are always a scene stealer for goodness sakes okay they i mean they're like chugging candy they're throwing candy they're're chugging candy. It gets so much worse. It gets so much worse. They're moonwalking. They're pushing each other around. They're kicking. They're fighting at the end. Yes, they start karate kicking each other.

One of them has sex with Al Roker's leg. I feel so dirty. These are some of the risks of live television. It's incredible. One of them starts doing push-ups, I believe. They do push-ups. One of them grabs doing push-ups i believe he's there do push-ups one of them grabs a martini from the alcohol lady it's really worth watching the full thing uh on your own time because the lady who was booked up getting booked on the today show to promote like

your craft business is a huge huge massive big and she tries so faithfully to just stay the course. And she starts getting, you can tell there is a seething anger building towards these Ewoks. And she's trying to just say like, oh, they're really going nuts now, but maybe we can focus on the candy corn flavored muffin that i made and and you can hear she's trying to act professional but it's a a volcano of bubbling anger towards these ewoks as they and oh and the other part when you watch the whole thing is clearly they had set up like a sound person whose job was to put ewok sound effects over them as they walked around and the person was not smart enough to stop so there's like an ewok having sex with the ground and then there's sound effects over it of people like you don't like ewok talking as this ewok moonwalks and then does the worm and then humps the floor

on national television it's it i i want the world to be like that every day absolutely yeah you know what it seems like it seems like a segment on speaking of the meg stalter show which i think has some vibe share with the eric andre show yes and it seems like something eric andre would have done to someone like book someone earnestly on his show and then intentionally got but this is like fully unintentional i'll also say i did a public access show called The Chris Gethard Show. And I was a very, very happy and creative stretch of my life that I still look back, can't believe I got to do it.

But I've never told Meg this, but I will say when I first saw an episode of The Meg Stalter Show, I had a brief 10 seconds of fear that it was actually a video made just to mock me because the vibe, I was like, oh, this vibe feels like public access. And then I realized no one would put in this amount of work to make fun of someone they've never met. Well, YouTube actually does just that for some people. There's certainly people I've never,

there are other comedians I've never met who have had a lot to say about me, believe me i got the sense oh no these are these are people actual real world life and also looking at that crew and and knowing hell trap nightmare and stuff i'm like oh these are just kindred spirits what's happening here yeah yeah yeah just chicago weirdos yeah i love it i love chic Chicago weirdos historically. Chicago weirdos should be in charge, but... They should be in charge. Back to this video, I have to say that not a small part of it, it's going to seem like a small part to anyone who...

I hope that the listeners are watching this, took a break to watch it, coming back, whatever. It's going to seem like a small part to just hear me say this of the video, but it actually, I think, plays such a huge role. The wig that Al hooker is wearing while he tries to like so bad he tries to maintain some kind of order and be like ha ha well anyway but he is in this wig that is so fucking funny yeah it's really bad it does not look like han solo at all no it's more like um hanzel from hanzel and gretel like that's none of the wig

energy that he's deserved he's serving oh it's so funny this is also this is not an alroker quote but there's a moment where he says something like this where he because you said like he's wearing this wig and he's trying and and there's moments where he's like guys can we calm down oh someone needs to tell the ewoks to chill out and then it takes a turn where he's finally just like look what they're doing now like he just starts leaning into it and it is great it is great there's a part where he tries to break up the fight like he is standing between them and like like pushing one away i think that's when they have sex with his leg if i remember right and and another not small part of it that might

sound small but again watch it is i think for this to be as funny as it is, it's one of the funniest things I've ever seen. The ground did have to be covered in loose hay. Yeah. And it is. Every time they shuffle, it moves in the morning and really build this and think about it. And that the lady who had the craft business probably did a walkthrough and said, I'd really like the hay to be a little thicker, please. Or can we push it a little further into the corners? Like she was a very type A person who probably meticulously thought about this, but she could not anticipate what was about and the crafts i mean they're so also bad that's like also a part of it like yes putting a bunch of holes in a pumpkin and filling them with orange flowers is such a an insane thing to do nobody wants that that somehow that feels also like just so unhinged and unearthly

i mean it is very earthly it's the best it cheers me up every time i watch it it should cheer it should cheer anybody up and i think it's a the my favorite thing about a clip like this is um there's not really a world. It's the same with like a lot of clips that go viral, like where the woman is. Um, you remember that old viral clip where the woman is stomping grapes at the winery on the news.

That's like an old school first wave viral video. I'm not kidding. The funniest video I've ever seen. Yeah. The thing about that video that will always get me is that she goes, stop, and then tries to like get ahead in the stomping. And that's what makes her fall. They're all a special brand of thing that we would have never seen or talked about had

they not gone horribly wrong and that is my favorite kind of viral clip where it's like this was just supposed to be some throwaway two-minute tv segment that no one was ever really supposed to watch like you know other than people who passively have it on for breakfast and now it's like gonna live on for a very long time on the internet i love that like that um caleb i think you really like this one but maybe i'm wrong the news clip where it's like going to live on for a very long time on the internet. I love that. Like that. Caleb, I think you really like this one, but maybe I'm wrong. The news clip where it's the guy who like climbed a mountain and they go. We're going to interview Eric Weihandmayer, who climbed the highest mountain in the world, Mount Everest. But he's gay.

I mean, he's gay. Excuse me. He's blind. Oh, my God. because it's in, the reason that one's also so funny is that it's in, it's in perfect news voice. Guy climbed Mount Everest, but get this, he's gay. They don't do well with altitude.

Blind. You never see a gay person do that. do i mean but also it's kind of true oh man god that's so funny that's my favorite like news but get this he's gay okay whoa no all of the any any time especially anytime the news is just such a funny place for things to go that wrong because that's a whole genre of news mess-ups i mean keep fucking that chicken is great you know that one no what is that keep fucking new york new york newscaster ernie anastas who i grew up in north jersey he was on TV from when I was a child. There's a bizarre clip where someone ends a segment, and he's like,

It's a tough man to make a tender forecast, Nick. I guess that's me. Keep fucking that chicken. It makes no sense, and he claimed it was something else, but when you listen to it, there is clearly Ernie Anastas saying, Keep fucking that chicken.

Keep fucking that chicken. I love it. I love it. Okay. All right, chicken. I love it. I love it. Okay. All right, Chris. Wait. What? Do we have to take a break?

Yeah, I think it's time to take a break. Fuck. Let's just do it. Let's get it over with. Okay. Okay. What's next? What's next on the record?

This one makes the Ewoks one look grounded. This is something that, to my knowledge, has not gone that viral. But there's a backstory to it. So I'm old. I turned 41 on Sunday. So I'm part of that little micro generation that straddles Gen X and the millennials. So I grew up where you had to like get stuff on videotape and like with your vcr and there was this spanish language game show that my brother and i me

and my brother were both total weirdos it was a spanish language game show called el gran juego de la oca the grand game of the goose and this was a game show that we did not understand because we did not we are not bilingual but it had a big giant game board and you'd roll dice and then you'd like land on one and they'd make you do truly dangerous games um like i saw one where it was really simple they had a bunch of cars parked next to each other and the window was open and they explained, oh, I was able to discern, you have to climb through that window, get all the way through, climb to the next car

and get to the other end, get out. And the first one had all these balloons so you couldn't see. And then the next one, I think smelled real bad. The third one was filled with snakes. And then the fourth one had a full-grown mountain lion waiting in the car. So this person is fleeing the snakes and then just gets pinned down by a lion and has to be rescued. So we loved this show.

It was the greatest show we'd ever seen, but we didn't understand it. Until, inexplicably, one day, I turn it on and I start screaming for my brother because there were no DVRs. You had to see something in the moment. And I start saying, Greg, get up here right now, because there was a contestant on the show named Mr. T. And Mr. T was wearing a translator headset. So they were speaking to him in Spanish and he was reacting in English. Be careful. Ten cuidado. Preparado.

You don't tell me when to jump, right? Yeah. All right. Preparado. Tres, dos, uno, tiempo. And all of a sudden it was like we could learn the rules of the show. So it's like a Rosetta Stone into one of the most bizarre game shows I've ever seen. And then on top of it, it's not just anybody speaking English.

It's Mr. T. And they have him doing crazy stuff. The one I remember most vividly, and you can find a lot of clips out there and you can find the full episode if you search well enough. But I remember one where they made him crawl through a cave. And the cave was, it was almost like with the ants, like when you're a kid and you have the, you know what I mean? And you can see into the ant colony from the side. Yes, yes, an ant farm.

An ant farm. So it was like that where the wall was plastic so you could see into the cave he was climbing through. And there was a big countdown clock. And as it got to 10, Mr. T, with genuine fear in his voice, starts going, No, oh no, no, oh no, no, no, no, no. And then the cave explodes while he's inside. This is what I want the aliens to know of Earth. It's the Mr. T of it all.

Yeah, the Mr. T of it all really. Could have been anybody. Had to be Mr. T. I just think he's such a, he's such a big personality to do something like this. And to be like a translator is something you, that's usually like, I don't know. I feel like we consider translators or like sign language interpreters to be very like um not bland but like you know just truly like message translators like not big huge personalities

with like iconic uh imagery around them mr mr t makes it so much funnier to me he makes everything funnier i'm watching a clip from this where he is climbing across a bridge, which is on fire. In the sky. In the sky, yeah. Over a pool while he unscrews a bunch of bricks. I'm not watching it now, but if I remember right, is there not a pirate ship in the pool? Not yet. And a net, a big net hanging above it?

Yeah. the pool not yet and a net a big net hanging above it yeah and then also at some point there's an entire uh synchronized swimming performance as he just watches watches he just enjoys it he takes it in well what would you what would you have him do well i would have them not do a performance you have mr t on have him get in the what would i have him do get Well, I would have them not do a performance. You have Mr. T on. Have him get in the pool. What would I have him do? Get in the pool. I want him in the pool.

It is one of the things about El Gran Juego de la Oca that I never fully understood, but that I do love, is sometimes you'd land on a square on this game board and you'd have to do one of these things where all of a sudden you're in a net in the sky above a pool. But then sometimes 30 scantily clad women would emerge from the back and start dancing. And there's one game board where, if I remember right,

one of the spots on the game board has a skull and crossbones. And if you land on that, you automatically have to go and wrestle a man who's dressed as an executioner. It's an incredible game show. Hugely influential on me. Hugely influential on me. It's so weird and it's so bizarre. Like I just, we really need more.

We need more of it. We need a remake. I don't know if it's still on the air. We need this. There was some Japanese game show that I got really into for a period of time where they would like have to run up an oil slicked hill covered in mud and then like like it was like but you never knew what was going on you just saw a bunch of people like running around doing like crazy shit and i could watch that for hours

i love it i love fucked up tv and languages I don't know. I think it enhances the experience to not know exactly what's going on. I love that Japanese prank show where there were a bunch of men at a ski resort in a mountaintop bathhouse and then the walls shows that just go way too hard, just way too hard where there's like the glowing translucent ghost of a little girl who emerges from in between two cars in a dark parking garage, like anything that just goes too hard. I love it. One of my favorite shows of all time is Scare Tactics. I just love things that are chaotic and not supposed to be happening. And that's kind of the theme I've realized of my choices today. Is there a theme song for this game show?

For El Gran Juego de la Oca? Yeah. I'm just curious what it would sound like. There is, and I remember it well. And there's an accompanying hand motion that they all do. It goes, if I remember right it goes uh and you make wings with your hands and fly them because it means the grand game of the goose grand game of the goose yeah grand game of the goose that that i it's not quite it's definitely nowhere near as extreme but it really

reminds me of did you guys ever watch um silent library oh yeah yes great show i we used to watch that shit for hours like just as much as i could i thought it was so funny i thought that was funny i also thought boiling points was pretty funny which was around the same time what is boiling points boiling points was they would just like pick the same time what is boiling points boiling points was they would just like pick a person a prank and see how long it took for them to like boil over oh sure the little rat man episode of scare tactics is one of the greatest and most brilliantly executed pieces of comedy i've ever seen in my lifetime do you know this one no what happens well if you remember scare tactics the part that is morally concerning is that they very

often would put up craigslist ads for jobs so they were just baiting poor people into being terrified. That's not okay. Wouldn't change a thing. Love it so much. They hired someone who had to do a cleaning job, a commercial cleaning job, and joined this crew. And the person came in, and they were cleaning up this lab. And they said, like, yeah, we don't know what this is. It was like some science thing or pharmaceutical company. But there's all this rumors.

They were doing like research on animals and it kind of went wrong. And that's why they cleared out and left all this stuff here. So we just got to clear it out. And then it keeps coming out. And they're like, we actually heard a rumor that they were like doing weird stuff with animal DNA and human DNA. And there's all these rumors that I'm sure aren't true. And then they have the guy cleaning, and he opens a cabinet at one point. And they have the shortest little person actor I've ever seen in very, very realistic rat prosthetics.

But he's standing on two feet. So he opens a cabinet, and there's a little rat man who just goes like, ah! But the best part is the guy at first flips out and is on the verge of tears. What did you see? There's like a little monster man running around in here. And then he starts yelling. Do you need help, little man?

Little rat, little rat man, are you okay? And he starts showing empathy and sympathy to the little rat man, and I love it. I love it. I want the world to be less... And he starts showing empathy and sympathy to the little rat man. And I love it. I love it. I want the world to be less controlled is what I want. That's what I want. We need more little rat men.

I want to live in a cartoon world. We need more little rat men. We need more little rat men. I'm realizing all the things I'm telling you. First of all, are just us discussing viral videos, which I imagine kind of sucks as far as my record to be shot into space but also no they're all just things where i go i want i they're all just sort of like live action cartoon moments that's what they are the reason it doesn't suck and the reason it's dope is that everybody's episode reflects i feel like a really beautifully who they are and you want to live in

cartoon world and and you want to live in crazy cartoon world and these are crazy cartoon moments and that's why that shit goes viral is because it's like yeah you can watch it 200 times it literally is so it's always going to be funny it's always going to be like and it doesn't it's so unhinged that you don't have to like it it completely takes you out of the realm of reality. Like you're like, oh, I don't have to worry about my shit. There is a fully different like plane of being that exists. I also will say too, all of these things are things that I genuinely love. And I hope people listening understand that. And like these are things that I saw when I was young.

And they really helped me grow up with this attitude that has helped my career where I always was just like, you know, the common theme of everything that I'm talking about today is like, that's not supposed to be happening. Like that is disrupting the algorithm. Today's show is not supposed to have that. You're not supposed to see Ewoks fist fighting on the today show. Like you're not supposed to see it. You know, like, anything that goes wrong on TV, I've worked in TV enough now to know, like, they would prefer that everything is meticulously accounted for with each passing second.

They do not want anything to happen by chance on 99% of television. So I like when it goes wrong. I love when things go wrong. Well, that's also, to a much much lesser scale why people like watching people break and like, like on SNL or whatever, like the people's favorite moments are the parts where like the cast can't keep it together. And it's not because that's the funniest writing. It's because you're like, oh, they're people and they're like, because something's happening. You're watching something.

I will say to not to talk bad. I was a guest writer there many moons, 14 years ago. And I have a lot of friends who work there now and have over the years. But I am consistently confused that that's probably the most prominent live show outside of sports and news. And they have like Gary Richardson working there, Steven Castillo, Dan Licata, like people who are fucking troublemakers.

And I sit here and go, and I'm sure there's reasons, but I go, they've never done an interactive bit that incorporates Twitter to my knowledge. I don't think I've seen that. I don't think they've done something where it's like every, every person watching this show probably has a phone or an iPad within reach. And you could be doing so much stuff with a live show that would cause so much disruption in ways that could be very funny or could be very shocking. but it's up to you. There's truly like apps that like corporations use in like corporate training that is like use your phone to vote for X, Y, and Z.

And they could literally do that for like a choose your own adventure sketch that the audience, like that's probably the base level of what they could do. But like they've never, yeah, they've never just let it be loose. And it's like, it's new every week. Why not do that?

It takes a lot of pressure off of the writers it's also it is impressive what they do and i'm not trying to talk shit and i'm not trying to add to the dialogue of like snl's lame like every generation has that conversation but the people you know people consuming it now love it it's speaking to young people but i just i just sit there i go man i would get fired if I was a writer on that show because I would never write a sketch. And I'd just be like, let's have a thing where Kyle Mooney and Beck Bennett are on screen in the beginning

and we say one of them's going to get kicked by a fucking donkey in the head at the end of the episode. Go vote on who it is and return to them four times and show their mounting fear. And they'd just be like, get the fuck out of here. That's not a sketch. And I'd be like, the fuck out of here that's not a sketch and i'd be like fair point fair point but that's like very similar to what like i went to summer camp for a lot of

years everyone that listens to this podcast knows that because i keep talking about it but there would be like days where we would have like game shows as evening activities and there would be like activities that were purely like this happens at the beginning and then we wait till the end to see how it's going and we check in like once or twice and there's one that i think i've talked about on here where they have to like sit in an ice bucket and there's like a bunch of people out that are having to do it and try and stay in the longest and just they sit on stage during the show just freezing their ass off and then um people would like have to go race to

get them clothes throughout the whole thing to try and warm enough. They would just be like, how's it going? Like in the middle of other games, and they would just be like, bad. I'm having a bad time. I the worst I ever injured myself on stage was in a similar bit, where we did the Chris Gethard show live at South by Southwest. And I came up with an idea called the human Sunday where I sat in a kiddie pool and they dumped the cast. My castmates dumped gallons and gallons of ice cream on me and the crowd could yell out what toppings they wanted. And then the crowd, I invited people to come up and eat it at the end.

And some did, which is horrifying. But I, in my mind, here's how stupid i am in my mind i go great my body heat will melt the ice cream and what actually happens when you sit under giant piles of ice cream is that the ice cream cools you down it fuses to your skin like that scene in christmas story with the tongue in the flagpole yeah and i had burns and blisters all over my body because i sat in ice cream like an asshole no was it worth it totally yeah exactly exactly that's when i felt young and awake and creative and alive and now my whole set is about lawn care so i can't regret it no i tell us something about lawn care we don't

know anything yeah what do you know about lawn care how about this my lawn right now is overrun with mouse-eared chickweed and i'm pissed how about that who's having that conversation in the mainstream media no one no one no one everyone's afraid to talk about it but here i am i have chickweed mouse mouse plants in my yard. Mouse-eared chickweed? Mouse-eared chickweed. It's worse than regular chickweed. It's mouse-eared.

It's bad. It spreads in a worse way. You never want mice around even if it's just their ears. It comes back every year. The other chickweed dies and it goes away. This chickweed comes back. It's a perennial. It sucks.

Last year I had the crabgrass. I fought off the crabgrass finally and now I got the This chickweed comes back. It's a perennial. It sucks. Last year, I had the crabgrass. I fought off the crabgrass finally, and now I got the chickweed? Come on. Mousier chickweed. So it comes back every year. How do you officially get rid of it? You rip up the lawn, put a new one down?

No, you got to keep trying to strengthen your lawn. Every fall, you aerate your lawn. You overseed the areas that are problematic. You have a whole rotation of different fertilizers and herbicides and insecticides and you use them at certain times and you research it. You can find out what zones you're in. The United States, I think, has six zones and it tells you different times of year they should be doing things. You have to time a lot of it around average soil temperature. There's an app you can get called Yard Mastery that will tell you your area's average soil temperature for that day. Grass is only going to grow after it hits. Caleb, your face is actually so profoundly disgusted that I'm this knowledgeable about this.

We just don't want to be a lot like old. Don't ever get to be my age. Don't ever do it. Spontaneously combust at 38 years old and you'll be good this is the second time today i'm not disgusted with you i'm disgusted with myself this is the second time today that somebody has i i stood in sephora today a store that i've never been in until today and for 45 minutes a genius a man who should be it probably in charge of a hospital or something somewhere i mean this man is a genius he stood in the store and he explained what I should be doing to take care of my human skin. The one human skin that I've been provided for my time on earth.

And I just stood there and all I could think was, I'm never going to remember this. I'm such a fucking idiot. I'll spend, I'll give you $200. Just give me the, give me the products. And I had, he, he felt so unsure that I would do good with what he told me and sold me that he forced me to follow him on Instagram so that he could message me reminders about what I'm supposed to do it for my skin and I feel the same way listening to you talk about the lawn I'm like this is so smart and probably good to know and I just will never retain it and and also like you said that man should be doing something better than that and I don't know how I've slipped through

the cracks in the past three years since my TV show got cancelled but no one really wants to take my pitches seriously so I guess I should sit here and talk about how I like the Black Beauty Ultra Brand of Grass Seed because it's a combination of perennial rye, Kentucky bluegrass and tall fescue. I can do that. You can absolutely do that.

HGTV needs to give you a lawn care show. That's what I think needs to happen. I would love that. But never get old. Never get old. We'll get on the phones. Thank you for being some of the young people who still have things to say. Because I still enjoy watching comedy from the troublemakers,

even though I'm no longer apt to do it myself. What we need is, I mean, I feel a little bit encouraged on the front of, I think the same thing. I look at some of the people who write for SNL who I know and have seen perform, and I go, God damn. I mean, if I felt like they were really in charge and not just pitching to other people, this show would definitely look a lot different. But I feel encouraged by Christopher Carman.

His new special looks very weird. Oh, Carmen Christopher. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Carmen Christopher, his new thing. I don't know him, but I know him from the web. And his shit looks great. He's one of my best friends. He and I go on the road together.

I watched him develop all that material. And it was so fucking cool. Him and Meg and Sarah Squirm and a bunch of other people in Chicago who are not getting any money or attention for comedy uh just need like starting though it's it is it is starting it's starting that crew is starting to really roll and I like seeing it I also don't know I don't know Holmes but only from the appearance on the Meg Stalter show but that show is about to pop off and I think that's gonna go well yeah it's based on like a hugely popular show in england i think it has a

really good chance like all these people coming out of the woodwork it's gonna get cool it's gonna get cool the holmes project for people listening is uh welcome to flatch holmes is welcome to flatch coming probably in the winter probably january it's based on this country from um the uk that is going to be dope and that is a very weird. That is going to be dope. And that is a very weird show. It is going to be very strange. Whatever mid-season means, whatever mid-season means, that's when Welcome to Flatch will be releasing. I can't wait.

It's good to see some of the weirdos sneaking through the back door, getting on network. I like it. Speaking of back door, tiny little TV shows, what is the next thing you put on your records? It's another Mr. T related thing.

I want the aliens to think that Mr. T is one of the central figures of human civilization. In my opinion, he is. I think he's more important than we give him credit for. It's a clip called Conan Takes Mr. T Apple Picking. Conan O'Brien is like an actual,... Everything we were just talking about, about how I like seeing the young weirdos bubble into the surface lately, especially the Chicago crew.

I feel like when I was 20 and starting out, his show was everything I wanted to be a part of. So strange. Talk about a show that really shook up the algorithm and the status quo. This is probably my favorite

piece of comedy of all time. It's just what it sounds like. Conan takes Mr. T apple picking, which is already just such a simple premise where as soon as you hear it, you go, I understand that and I get why it's funny. Then you have the added joy that Mr. T just acts like such an

unpredictable weirdo throughout. And you get to see someone as funny as Conan O'Brien keep reacting to him. The height of it being when Mr. T starts claiming that he found an apple that had a bee embedded inside it. And he then smashes it with his elbow and says, All right, dead bee. T1, bee zero. smashes it with his elbow and says all right dead b t1 b0 and you get to watch conan o'brien react to that which is just there's nothing better it's the it's my favorite piece of comedy that i've ever seen yeah mr t i need to see mr i need i need a whole series of mr t going to places that um you wouldn't think of mr t i at. I need Mr. T at a

china shop. I need Mr. T at a knitting circle. Maybe kind of quiet places where Mr. T can go and just be himself and fucking take over. Mr. T at Retirement Home Bingo. Mr. T at...

I would watch that show. That's my brain. I i'm like why isn't that on abc at 8 p.m that show mr t at water aerobics oh that would be a really good he would kill at that yeah uh conan conan does i mean even like a couple years ago i think about all the time that conan and billy coney had conan had billy eichner on and uh they created a grinder account together and like drove around in a van and like tried to pick up guys on grinder which i thought was so fucking weird and like trying to imagine like jay leno doing that or you know so which jay leno's whatever i mean people like jay leno that's great i'm just the weirdness and the adventure that

conan was willing to do with stuff was so dope. Well, something about Conan also makes that not like, this is no shade, but if Jimmy Fallon did that, I would be like, this is homophobic. It would have, it would have a different air to it.

I would say, Oh, this has a taste. This has a taste. Like even like Jon Stewart, Jon Stewart doing it. I would be like, I don't think you should be doing this. You're kind of right. Conan is like, everyone knows that Conan is like a trickster god.

Like he's not, he's not trying to make any points. He just wants to crush trouble. He has enough of a like, of a just like wild card energy that you're like, oh, this isn't him being fucked up. This is him being just like, him sitting in the room and one of his writers is like, walk with me. And he's like, all right. You also, I think you get the feeling that Conan,

I think you get the feeling that Conan maybe got picked on at some point in life. So you go, he can go on Grindr. Jimmy Fallon can't go on Grindr. You're not allowed to do that bit because it feels like it's probably been a little bit different for uh fallon than it was for conan just in life yeah conan conan lets himself get picked on still no one's picking on the rest of them but like conan has some guests on and he just like lets them beat him up

emotionally and then he's like all right well then he like carries on yeah it's it conan's the whole show i mean it, what is it? Is it ending this month? Next month? His show's almost up this month. Yeah. But he's trying to get onto some other platform. He's going to be on HBO Max and I'm excited to see what he does there.

Cause I actually feel like we've, uh, although his podcast brought it back in a big way and was huge, but I feel like with his TV this tv show like like we kind of forgot how lucky we were to have him so i hope his hbo max show is just everything he want every strange fucked up idea he wants it to be and we can all be like right he's the best he's the best he's the best at it a conan sounds a conan appreciation sounds oh i love it i love it. I love it. Okay, what else, Chris? What else would you put on your records? This next one is something that most people haven't seen unless they're fans of professional wrestling, which I am,

but that I think everyone will enjoy and that I think the, this is one that the aliens will have to wonder what's going on. This is called the Shockmaster. It fits the theme of everything else I've been talking about. The backstory on this is that Sting from the WCW was feuding with Sid Vicious in the Harlem Heat. Sting kept saying he had a new partner who was going to join him to fight these enemies. And this new enemy's name was the Shockmaster.

And he had teased it a couple times. So everybody's watching going, who is the Shockmaster? What's he going to be? And this is the video of what happened when they introduced him. It's not that long. I don't know if you guys are watching now, but Sting finally says,

All I have to say is our partner is going to shock the world because he is none other than the Shackmaster! Hurrah! The Shackmaster! And then I almost feel like one of you should describe what you see when this man enters for the first time after hype. So it's going to go ahead and be there's a yellow wall.

Mm-hmm. It's going to go ahead and be there's a yellow wall. And he yells, Shockmaster. And then a large man in a bedazzled Darth Vader mask and a black. I'm going to jump in really quick just so the listeners know. He's not just large. He's fat, which is a huge part of it. It's cool. It makes it way cooler. He's a big, chunky.

He's a big, chunky guy. He's not just like tall or muscular. He's a chunky dude. All right. Fat guy. Burst through chunky dude. All right. Fat guy. Bursts through the wall. Falls over. Helmet comes off.

Helmet comes fully off. Puts it back on. Tries so hard. That's an accident. So he definitely tries to put it back on quickly. And then he shakes his head off. You know, he's... I don't know if he's talking.

I will say that. But he's just sort of standing there for me. And he's in sort of a denim with a sort of Western belt and cowboy boots. And there's, from the helmet, and he's wearing a blouse, like an open blouse jacket. Yeah, he's wearing a royal sort of cape.

Like it's got pillowed sleeves. And there's glitter all over his chest from the helmet coming off. So there's like glitter on his boobs and his neck. And he's got long hair coming out the back. It really is quite a fit. It's quite a look. The helmet looks like,

and Shelby, I was kind of watching while you were talking. So I don't know if you said this. The helmet looks like a Darth Vader helmet. Yeah, I did. It's a bedazzled Darth Vader helmet, for sure. Wow. It's really something. And Chris, this is one of your favorite things.

Absolutely. I'm happy to tell you that as a child, I was watching this live while it happened. It's since become legendary. But again, just the idea of we're going to hype this dude up. And you can tell from the outfit, this was already not going to be a successful idea. To keep saying, oh masters coming the shock masters like if it went well and he emerged in a glittery purple

stormtrooper helmet with a weird vest if it went well the fans were not going to go with this it was not going to entice wrestling fans into liking this person and then it didn't go well. He busted his ass and the helmet fell off in the intro that's supposed to establish

him as this badass equalizer. And I almost died as a child watching it because I couldn't breathe because I was enjoying it so much. Chris, do you have more things you want to put on your records? How are you feeling? I'm feeling rather proud of my calculated strategy to just try to confuse aliens. I feel

like if they landed on Earth after watching all these clips, they would expect something wildly different than what they'd receive. They would expect a lot of stunts and heavy Mr. T involvement and all this stuff. So I feel like, I think what I'd like to end on is more footage just to confuse them,

which is the most notorious fight in NBA history was the malice at the palace, the Detroit Pistons versus the Indiana Pacers. It goes on forever and it's nuts. And there's not, I'm not going to sit there and claim that it's funny, but I think it's like the perfect cherry on top to confuse these aliens about what they're getting into. So that I think is the perfect way to end this, where they might just go, like you're saying as far as how do you know if they have infiltrated us?

I would argue that this list I've come up with would make them completely uninterested in even coming here. I think that a fight at a sporting event is a really, really good encapsulation of at least American culture. It's just so pure. I mean, here we are playing a game and then we get so mad about the game that we're playing,

which is just made up. We just made this up and decided to do this with our bodies. We're so mad that the game that we're playing, which is just made up. We just made this up and decided to do this with our bodies. We're so mad that now we're physically hurting each other. I think it's so funny. And let's keep in mind too, this is the fight where the fight started amongst the players and then a fan threw a beer onto Ron Artest who turned around and basically broke the fourth wall

in a sports sense by charging into the stands and beating up a man who had paid for a ticket, which again fits into my love of things are supposed to go a certain way. You're supposed to be on the court. I'm supposed to be in the seats. And then you throw a beer like a dickhead and the next thing you know,

you have like a seven foot tall professional athlete. On you. Charging upwards. Fighting you. Up the stands fighting you. And you fucking deserve it. And it ties into all sorts of stuff too about like athletes being like basically like commodified humans. And especially the NBA where

there's only one black owner of a team and it's Michael Jordan. Like you have to be Michael Jordan to actually be one of the people scooping up billions of, and I just love there's, I would never say that what he did was a good thing, but I certainly think that like whoever threw that at him was probably some fucking yokel who never anticipated oh that's a human and there's there's nothing actually stopping him from hurting me from coming back at me when i do an aggressive killing me even so yeah again as far as wanting to let the aliens know that this is an unpredictable world full of endless chaos. I think, because I guess to relate it back to lawn care, I almost feel like Shelby, you were saying like,

how do we root out the aliens? And that's almost like you're saying, I'm going to pull the dandelions when they show up on my lawn. Whereas I'm saying, why don't we go ahead and get a pre-emergent fertilizer that deals specifically with broad leaf yes yes yes yes perfect chris this was uh an amazing record is there anything that you want to um tell people before we log off i just want to say that i have a new special it's kind of like a half standup special,

half road documentary, and it's called half my life. And there's funny standup in it, but then also a lot of footage of what it's like to be on the road and featuring the aforementioned Carmen Christopher. It's like me and him traveling around the country doing shows. And I don't know. We'll see if people like it.

I hope they do. I self-funded the whole thing so i didn't have to get any notes on it and uh i'm pretty proud of it so i hope people check it out and where is that it's gonna be streaming on like a bunch of places amazon prime and apple tv and i think peacock and then some of those weird ones too that live on your roku that you never open like it's yeah it's on to crackle it's on to be to me i am so i wish they would let me i'm so tempted to just only plug to be in every promotion i do to just make people think to be it's just just to be crack open to be open that up you never opened before get on there and watch chris's special my specials the only thing special the number one show

we could do it we could do it if we just tried i wish i had thought of that everybody go to tubi let's get huge half my life the biggest show on tubi now everyone you heard it here first tubi's blowing up with with chris's half My Life. And I filmed it at 10 different venues, and I just realized one of them is the hideout in Chicago, which I think is your old stomping ground. We love the hideout. Yeah, yeah. We love the hideout.

That makes me want to cry. That's so special. It's a beautiful place. One of the best venues in the country. In Baltimore, a woman got on stage and physically fought me, and there's footage of a show that I did just for alligators. Like there's a lot of, there's a lot of regular standup and then a lot of like shit that is akin to

the videos I have plugged today. Yeah. That's awesome. Everyone go check it out. And Chris, you have been an amazing guest. We do want to ask you one thing before you go, Shelby,

do you want to ask Chris about his message? On the original records, in a bunch of different languages, there were like quick greetings. Yeah. If you had to include a greeting just as like a headliner before your things, what are you saying to the aliens? I would say, what up, party people? This is MC Chris G on the ones and twos.

Check out these cool videos. Catch you on the flip side. And that's it. Also, if you walk walk across my grave you will be dead within hours and also please look out for mouse headed something something's on your lawn that shit will really fuck you up chick grass mouse ear chick grass chickweed check me out on tubiousier chickweed sounds like an insult. Like, all right, you mousier chickweed. It's so shitty and awful, and I don't want it as a part of my beautiful grass.

And it shouldn't have to be. All right, take care of your chickweed, folks. That was a Hidgum Original.