Pablo Torre Finds Out - Share & Tell & Feel Bill Walton, with Ian Karmel and Katie Nolan

Episode Date: June 13, 2024

What’s the best way to pay tribute to a Hall of Famer whose spirit transcends both time and space? By calling up his tipi-crafting spiritual advisor — and, additionally, Oregon’s own Ian Karmel. Who himself poses an important question: why is Hollywood so bad at creating overweight characters? Also: the Bill of Bill, Katie’s Bible study, and Shlomo Puddingtits.Buy Ian's new book, T-Shirt Swim Club, here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to Pablo Torre finds out. I am Pablo Torre, and today we're going to find out what this sound is. One of the reasons the bill has such great exuberous, because when you no longer fear death, now you can live. Right after this ad. You're listening to Drap Kings Network. It's actually why I'm reading the Bible, because I don't think I ever read anything in the New Testament.

And I feel like I want to get to the crazy stuff. I want to get to the wild shit. Yeah, there's some like, Look, as a Catholic school educated Alboy's product, there are some books where it's like, do you know about the book that's too dangerous for the Bible? And there are some like lost books. Huh? Lost books of the Bible. What?

Lost books of the Bible. Yeah. So I'm going to read it and I'm not even going to get the good stuff? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're going to have to get to like the director's cut version. Ian Carmel! Hey! Hey, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi.

I should get up, but I didn't. But I didn't. Nice kicks. Fresh kicks. Looking good. We're just talking about the lost books of the Bible. Don't worry. Oh, they lost them?

Yeah, they lost them. According to Pablo. I mean, there's a whole list. Are you saying I should try to find them? There's a whole list. Oh, shit, really? I'm thinking you may become an evangelical Christian by the end of your journey through. The lost books of the Bible and the forgotten books of Eden.

Two different things. Look, I'm not here to subject Ian to religion. religious... Are you actually going through the Bible? Yes, I am. No, you're not. It's a slog. Yes, I am.

It's an incredible thing that Katie's doing for fun. I'm just doing it because I'm curious. How long have you been on your... A couple months. A couple months. A couple months. And I...

And there's been times where I'm like really into it. And then there's times where I'm like, I don't want to read it today. And so I don't. But it's been a journey. Have you entered the New Testament yet? No, that's where I'm trying to get to. Because that's what the religion

I'm supposedly a part of, leaves, and I don't think I've ever... I feel like everything I was taught was Old Test. Yeah. So I feel like... Old Test is the big hitters. I know. It's the good stuff.

It's the... There's also some wild stuff. Like a lot, whose daughters were like, we don't have babies. And so they... When you say, it's a lot, you mean literally talking about... Yes. It's a lot. It's a lot.

You're aware for Ian to catch up. Where are you? Oh, I just finished Ruth. Yeah. Ruth. Which a very short... A short book of the Bible. She's an old bad.

Adelacs, huh? Yes, she sure is. She sure is. So I want to start and bring order to this podcast by doing something that I've done to Katie a couple of times. It could be anything. Which is get you drunk on a series of athlete alcohols. Body slam you through this table. Play some sound of some stuff that I have collected in preparation for this episode.

Field recordings. Field recordings because Ian, You're an Oregonian. Yes. Yeah, proud of Oregonian. Okay. And Katie Nolan. Beaverton's finest.

That's right. Top of the food chain. Jewel of the Pacific Northwest. And Katie Nolan, of course, Boston's own. That's right. Well, Framingham, but Boston can have me if they want me. Fair enough. And the Venn diagram of all of these things, plus me,

a guy who loves sports. Weird. Weird. Weird to be from here. So weird. But does sometimes love psychedelics. Okay. The Venn diagram of all of us is what.

forever will be Bill Walton. Shout out. The late, great Bill Walton. And I've been trying to figure out, how do I pay tribute to this man that I loved? Yeah. I mean, Ian, you're a Blazers guy. When he died, I was, you know,

contemplating his life and career in time with the Blazers. And I don't know if he's the greatest Blazer ever because he was there for such a short period of time. Right. But I do believe he's the most blazerist Blazer ever. Yes. There's no one who more epitomizes the Blazers or sports played in Oregon than Bill Wall.

And in fact, I interviewed, I had the pleasure, the great pleasure of interviewing Bill Walton on my show. And I had the experience that so many of us had at ESPN, Katie, which is you ask one question. And suddenly you're in Narnia. Yeah. And so I want to play you a clip of a conversation we had just to set the table for the field recordings. This is how my convo with the great Bill Walton went. Well, I was curious, now that we're just getting into it, I'm curious when you got your TP. Okay.

So by TP, I am a huge believer in the first Americans, the people who were here before we got here. You know, I grew up in an area that San Diego is ringed by a lot of Native American tribes. The big overarching family tribe here in San Diego is the Kumiyaz. There's lots of different ones. There's Barona and there's Sequon. We all went to school together. We played together. We fought together.

It was just our lives. It was fantastic. Anyway, so, you know, here we were. What was the question again? I got off track there. It was just when did you get it? When did you get the TP that you're describing? So I moved to Oregon to play for the Blazers.

And one of the first things I did when I got to Oregon, we took a tour of Oregon. We went down to the U.S. geological. service office in downtown Portland. We got a map of all the natural hot springs in the state of Oregon. And we went around and with the goal, the purpose, to take a soak in every natural hot springs in the state of Oregon. Wow.

I was hiking up this river valley somewhere near the Oregon coast. And it was, you know, it was kind of rainy, misty, fog, beautiful sunshine, rainbows, calliopies, clowns, elk, eagles, beavers, fish jumping. I mean, if it was like spectacular. And I looked up on the hillside as I came around the bend, and there, you know, halfway up the side of the hill, you know, was this teepee. And I said, whoa, this, you know, what's this and who's in there? I got up halfway up the hill

and this guy comes stumbling out and starts yelling and screaming. I mean, who are you? And what are you on? And I said, oh, I'm just admiring your TP, man. It's the coolest thing ever. That young man, his name is Jeb. And he and his wife Nicole, they have tpee.com, T-I-P-I-com.

One of the two coolest websites ever. Bob Dylan's website is very, very, cool too. Bill Walton, I am high listening back to that. His internal monologue is J.R.R. Tolkien. There's so much backstory. Every clause is the Silmarillion. What's wild is you guys didn't even put that Neil Young music band under that.

That's just what comes out when he starts talking and telling a story. It's naturally set to... That and pechula oil just exudes from his pores. If you get a map to go soak in every... Every hot spring in the state of Oregon, that sound just follows you around. Wild. That's a lot of hot springs. It's so many hot springs.

It's a volcanic state. I also love that he has a power rankings of websites, Bob Dylan's website, and tp.com. Okay. What's going on on Bob Dylan's website? You find that out. Okay. In the meantime, I want to tell you guys, that the aforementioned Jeb, proprietary of TP.com, is a man that I called up recently. Oh, wow.

I'm Jeff Barton. My interest in life has been human consciousness. So I've taught and studied that for about 55 years. And this was when I was lived on the coast in Oregon, looked across the highway, actually. And saw this little yellow Volkswagen pull up. And then I saw this huge thing begin to unfold out of this Volkswagen of all things. I said, you know, can I help you? Are you interested?

You know, obviously the TP, that's what I did. And said, are you interested in this? He said, yeah. And that's how that friendship started. And then we, over the years, got into much of deeper conversations and very unique conversations about the nature of, really, the nature of mysticism and the nature of reality. If you were to try to explain what Bill Walton's view of reality was.

That's actually not hard, because Bill and I talked about that a lot. There is what you and I see out here, streets and people and cars and buildings and things going on. But there's also something else. that is way beyond the superficial goings-on of personalities and things. And Bill knew about that. And that is where he hung out. He didn't hang out in the ego. And then the exuberant personality, the aliveness, the fun, the almost court gesture part of Bill,

was the result of being grounded in this deeper place, the invisible realm that he knew about. So Bill Walton, bonded with this guy, Jeff. And Jeb, when he says he practices and teaches the study of human consciousness and has been doing that for almost... 55 years. Yeah, yeah, yeah, six decades thereabouts. It's a doctorate at this point, right? Oh, he is... I just want to tell you that the conversation I had is so long.

No way. You don't say. I learned so much about myself, and it made Bill Walton the character into both more and less of one, because I was like, oh, Bill was about this life. This was the dude he was talking to, a dude who, by the way, we'll show this on the YouTube video version of this on Draftings Network as well. The dude has 125 plants in his apartment.

You can imagine Jeb. You know Jeb. Yeah, you know Jeb. I know Jeb. It's the most Oregonian conversation I've ever had. Did acoustic guitar music start playing in the middle? Yes.

Yes. When he says he lives at the coast, actually just across the highway, I also know exactly what he means. In Oregon, it's forests right into beach, right into ocean. There's, like, no membrane. There's no, like, planes or anything like that in between. It's wood.

So this is a man who lives in the woods by the misty ocean, which is where you would assume a wizard would live. Yes. Yeah, absolutely. He's inhabiting wizard spaces. Katie, did you know that in the Oregon coast, Pacific Northwest in general, which I have vacationed to, for the reasons Ian is describing, for the reasons Jeb Barton maybe lives?

I'm going to sound like Bill Walton here when I say there are bald eagles. Yeah. Orcas and humpback whales. And gooey ducks. Goody ducks all over the place. Lots of gooey ducks. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's more of a fugit sound thing.

Oh, sorry. We don't claim that in Oregon. It's not okay. He said Pacific Northwest. But we'll work through with the next. It's not the same thing. We were talking about Oregon, pretty specifically, Oregon. Okay.

So you don't claim the penis shells. No, we don't claim the penis shells. We do claim elk. Okay. And some of them have penises. Okay. Do they have shells? I'm back in.

Some of them have sheds. The elk there just wander through the towns, as they, though they have this knowledge. that the towns are incidental and unpermanent. And they're like, well, we're just going to keep walking through here. Nice. And for the next thousand years, we'll do the same after you people have... Are gone.

Are gone forever. And that feels like what Jeb was talking about, incidentally. Like the hidden reality, the hidden space that he and Bill accessed, I imagine them in a teepee together, basically doing what you just described the elk doing. I think right. You see it just meandering through time and everything permanent is incidental. there's this sense, I think it's being on the West Coast where you're at the end, you know,

and being especially on the coast of Oregon. Like, you can be in L.A. or even in San Diego where Bill is from, and, oh, there's civilization here. It's city right up into the ocean. When you're the Oregon coast, it really does feel like you're at the end of something in a way that's kind of fighting back against everything that's tried to take it.

You know what I love about the Oregon Coast also? The beaches are wide as hell. Yeah, they are. Wide. Meaning what? You know a wide beach? Like the... As in like, you know, it's not like a little strip of sand.

It's like a lot of sand? Deep, deep, yeah. You can drive a Jeep on it. You can build a bonfire. Oh, riding a bike. Yeah, I rented a bike and rode it. Yeah. It's real fun.

You can eat Boys and Berry saltwater taffing on the coast of it. Okay. Marion Berry? Marion Barry. That Mary's having a moment right now. I had never heard of it until recently. Now it's kind of like popping up. It is.

Ben Lillard was a Marion Berry. What's who does? Van Lewin? Oh, Van Luen has a Mary and Berry cornbread? It's the Chaparron of berries. I love Chappelrohn of Berries. Did you see a crowd at Governor's Ball? She's like, it was crazy.

I'm so happy for her. She's like this Gen Z. Kate Bush musical artist. She rules. Who's taking the country by store. You know, she works with the same guy who Olivia Rodriguez works with, who used to be the lead singer of a little band called As Tall as Lions that Katie Nolan was a big fan of in college.

Now it feels like we're getting a little rural Oregon in this conversation. I don't know. I've never, I think I've been to Oregon once. And I think it was to go to the comedy club. So I don't think I've been one of, I think one of Dan's favorite comedy clubs. I just, I just turned my microphone off. Or my headphones. What did I do?

I've done whatever you've done so many times. What did I do? I'm a dial. And I'm back. Yeah, the comedy, it's a great comedy club. I would not say it's indicative of. I didn't get an Oregon experience. There's a nice mural behind you, which portrays some bridges.

I did go to a Mexican restaurant in Portland that also had a strip club behind it. Okay. Were they one or were you downtown? Was it Mary's and then the Mexican food restaurant next to it and they shared a bathroom? Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I've been to one of those two places. I've been in the bathroom.

I've relieved myself at either of those establishments. Mary's Club, which has since moved and no longer. shares a space with that Mexican food restaurant. Shame. But that was like the oldest strip club in Portland famously. I mean, it's history. Yeah. WW2 soldiers partying at that strip club.

Yeah. Speaking of old shit, how is Bob Dylan's website looking? Oh, it just looks like an artist's website. It just says like, here's, you can buy his album that's being re-released or like, here's a review of his. There's nothing. I think he was probably just trying to say he really likes Bob Dylan. But I can't see how anybody would spend that much.

Unless I'm missing something because I'm on the mobile version. He's just like clicking around. Like, oh, links, dates. Oh, my God. Part of the thing about Bill is that I, every time I saw him, he made me happy. Yeah. And so when he died, I want to ask you guys, like, what was the sensation that you felt? Because he wasn't just, wow, here's a historical figure.

And he was, by the way, maybe the greatest college basketball. player of all time as well as one of the would have been greatest NBA players of all time. Ian as a as our Oregon delegate. Thank you. What was your reaction? It was sad but not

almost more like oh the earth is missing out on this energy and not the energy is like missing out on experiencing the earth anymore I felt like if you're going to die and you can look back you know on your deathbed

and like that kind of life it's almost not even sad anymore, right? I'm sad for the people around him. It's sad for his family, obviously, that kind of thing. It's sad for us who weren't going to get to hear him popping on that, well, there's no Pac-12 anymore. So what would he even pop on to? Right.

The Conference of Champions. Yeah. All Cal's track team would magistarial performances on the steeplechase out there. But like, echoing of a Mankin's approach to philosophy but portrayed through a pole vault. I don't know, man.

really sad as much as it was. It was also so nice the way social media came together. Katie, it was like one of the few things that happened on social media recently where I'm like, this is heartwarming. This is what it's for.

Very rare when you log on and your algorithm is serving you up a lot of heartwarming, kind, loving, thoughtful, introspective retrospectives on a guy's life. I felt sad in the sense that like we miss that energy. I feel like he represented for me and I never met him,

but represented for me, like, the whimsy that sports should be, like, embracing more and that we don't, and I know it's because he came from a place of, like, I also am very good at the sports, so you really can't discredit anything I'm saying. Right. And I so appreciated what he brought. And I hate when, whenever, I use social media so stupidly

that whenever somebody I really, like, respect or admire or care about, I'm like, how do I even say anything here that makes any sense and isn't just like, I liked him too? Like, I never know what to, so I just retweeted what other people said. That's where I've, that's where I've netted out on my RIPs for people is like finding people who knew the person and amplify their voice. That's me letting you know that like, damn, I'm bummed about this.

But what you just said, I think actually is, for me, one of my big takeaways also, which is he was somebody who took sports so seriously that he compared. random athletes to like, you know, fucking Leonardo. Like the ancients, the drinks. When I watch Boris Dio, I think of. It was 201 years ago today. Yeah.

Both Beethoven's symphony number three in E flat, which escorted in the age of romanticism and music. And when I look at Boris Dio, I think of Beethoven and the age of the age of the, advantage. And at the same time, he was so the opposite when it came to his whimsy. Like, taking something so seriously and also not at all at the same time is something that only a Hall of Famer can pull off with credibility to Katie's point. And it's also, like, why I want to figure out, like, the right way to remember him, because he was all of these things. Yeah. He loved the pack, fill in the blank number so unironically, while also

being so absurd about it. Yeah. All of which made me want to ask Jeb Barton how he and Bill in their voyage through mysticism talked about death. Deb, I'm just curious

how you think Bill may have viewed death, how you and he may have talked about it. Yeah, we did discuss that because it is an integral part of the mystical understanding about how to live. One of the reasons that Bill has such great

exuberous, because when you know longer fear death, now you can live. Now you can live uninhibited. Because Bill knows, and I know that really no one dies. You only, if I may be kind of flip it here, you simply change email addresses. No one dies. Your essence cannot be annihilated. Yes, your biology will stop. It will stop functioning. But it's like a car. We are the driver of the car. The car is our neurobiology. It will drive this card around for a while and then when we're finished with it we'll go somewhere else and get another car. Bill knew that. And so that's, I'm sure that he was, you know, looking forward to, well, this is going to be a next really great adventure, you know. So I definitely still feel very

much like you're sitting across the table some of me. I can feel Bill's essence, the bill of Bill, the essence of Bill Walton. There is the real you. I can talk to Pablo, what I'm I speaking with now, But there's also a Pablo of Pablo. The Pablo of Pablo is the one that keeps going on. And that is untouchable and is beyond time space. So in a way, he's not gone anywhere. The Bill of Bill. I love Jeb.

Yeah, Jeb rules. I also found myself feeling relieved when he was talking about the Bill of Bill. And then when he brought up the Pablo of Pablo, I felt scared. Yeah. It was like, oh, Pablo's going to continue. the Pablo of Pablo will stay here? The Pablo of Pablo is still going to be podcasting. That's the rub.

My essence is podcasting. Content, content, content. But in the sort of like hippie-dippy mysticism, there is like a fundamental thing that I felt resonate with me, which is that when you either get super high and or zoom out in your brain on what is the, what's happening here? It's the idea that all of us,

if we believe in anything, it's the idea that there is something truly essential and essence about us that is not about the meat sack we inhabit. Right. It's weird to have talked about websites with Bill Walton and email addresses with his buddy when it comes to, you know, mysticism. You just changed to TP.org at some point. Yeah, you never died. Bill Walton is just on Gmail now. You know.

You know that, dude. You know Bill Walton wasn't on Gmail. He must have had the early, he was on like, like, an AOL account. Yeah, AOL or. Earth Link. Earthlink. Earth Link. The redheaded stranger Earthlink.

A third party email address. Well, more like the missing link.com. But there is something to these Oregonians where I'm like, I am not at the level of transcending consciousness that they are at. But I want to be. The more I hear from them. And I too feel like we are, we are. We are indulging both the absurd and also like the very sincere. Like that is how Jeb actually feels.

Yeah, right. He thinks Bill Walton and he knows Bill Walton is at the table with him. And I want, when any of our loved ones pass on, I want to have the conviction that Jeb has about like, no, they're just on Yahoo.com. The grandma of grandma is still out there. We still want that grandma of grandma. Yes. I honestly, I mean, going back to the Oregon of it all, I think there, and this is probably true in any area where it's more natural than industrial or commercial, right, which is true at the Oregon coast. I think there's something about having the biggest things around you be trees instead of buildings.

Yeah, like trees, just being able to walk through them and having that be the thing that makes you feel small rather than other people's accomplishments. Industry rather than industry. But putting yourself, I mean, having your. yourself put into perspective. Yes. By these things that are also infusing you with life. Yes, at the same time, returning, I never feel better than when I'm walking through a forest. And I know that feels corny.

No, like, truly... Same. I feel, like, amazing. I feel like my blood pressure go down and my pulse slow and just, like, feel really, like, at peace. It's why Jeb Barton surrounds himself and why I, on my own small New York apartment level. How many plants do you have? I only have, like, 25 plans. That's a lot of plants for a New York apartment.

No Jeb. I have four fake trees. I'm afraid to kill anything. Have you named them? No, God, no. No, no. Too attached. Too close. Katie's going to name them after the books in the Bible.

Ah. Possibly. Just reading it out of curiosity. Leviticus. We're all searching for answers as to what's going on here. I feel like the world's about to end. Are you building an arc? I could.

You should? I could. On the Oregon of it, although the thing about you said about trees, the thing that brought at home for me was and they started talking about how every day you should go outside and ground yourself by like touching, literally touching grass. I know it's the thing we say to people now to be like, go touch grass. But when I realized how far I would have to go from where I live to try to find grass and not just like grass that was like kind of shipped in. Sure.

Naturally occurring grass. Kind of bum me out. Yeah, yeah. Brush ascro turf? Yeah, go to the dog run on the second floor of my building, which is actually just a giant piss pad and smells as such, especially in the warmer months. Oh, God. That bouquet. It's summer.

It's summer, baby. Oh, God, there's dogs that have peed here many times. The piss winds of New Jersey. That's right. Yeah. So speaking, though, of sensing something, smelling it, perhaps, feeling it perhaps, something in the air. I got a voicemail. Oh, my God.

From Jeb. Okay. And Jeb, again, has studied human consciousness, mysticism for 55 years. And after we had talked and had this conversation, he left me a voicemail. And as an update, we have a bit of a bit of a bit of. bit of breaking news. Oh. Good morning, Pablo.

That's Jeff Barton and Bend, Oregon. Well, Bill Walton did show up. He showed up at 5.40 in the morning this morning. I was completely in a dead sleep. And all of a sudden, I just woke up, and I was looking in my mind at Bill's face. And with that big smile on it, only there was more than a smile. It was like a grin. It was even bigger than a smile, and his eyes were squatted, and it's,

It's a kind of a grin that a person has when they know they know something and something's about to be said or something, but very, very interesting. I've got a list of 34 of such things that have happened to me in my life through the years, all, you know, very anomalous like that, some of them, you know, much more extreme. But I thought it was very interesting. It's not uncommon that that kind of thing happens. It's not really that uncommon at all. So I am currently on another investigative quest to get the full list from Jim Martin. Yeah, 34.

34 encounters. He has as many encounters as Donald Trump has felony convictions, which is a remarkable statistic. It is. I feel like years ago, society met Jeb with an exclamation point. And now we've met Jeb with a question. That's right.

Followed by an exclamation. It's an entero bang. He's an entero bang of a man. Followed by a comma and then several hieroglyphs. Yeah, yeah, yeah. At earthlink. At earthlinked. At earthlinked.

Yeah. At tp.org. Now he's in Bend, Oregon. So now he's on the other side. Now he's in the mountains. Oh, God. Yeah. We're going to get into a yellow Volkswagen bug and go visit Jeff.

I would love to reverse Oregon with the yellow Volkswagen bug. My dream for all of us. Let's do it. All right, Ian. So when does it come out, actually, tell me. Today. Today. Yeah.

Congratulations! I don't know it was today! Okay, so we're congratulating Ian because he's at this table to share and tell, and also because his book is out this week. Author of T-shirt Swim Club Stories from Being Fat and a World of Thin People. It's by you and your sister. Yeah, Dr. Aliza Carmel. I have an advance uncorrected proof.

You do. Full of things that have been uncorrected. Innuendos, threats, rumors, just all sorts of stuff that could get me in legal trouble. Pre-lawyer review, Ian was talking all sorts of shit. All sorts of stuff. I saw the Kennedy assassination in there. You think it's just about being fat. No, no, no, no, no.

That's just a jumping off point. So what did you bring us today, Ian, in terms of how you want to share with us something from this book? Well, the book is about growing up as a fat kid, turning into a fat adult, and then eventually trying to get healthier. But one of the chapters in there, and the thing I wanted to talk about the most

is my experience with the character Fat Bastard when I was a kid. So we got to explain for those who are, I think we're just old enough where we need to do the thing. I think so. That's crazy. That's crazy. It is. You all don't know who fat bastard is?

Which is both terrible and I guess wonderful in a way. And probably good. Maybe it's progress. Maybe that's what progress looks like. But you used to be able to do call in response with these jokes. I mean, like, get in my belly. That's right. These were the memes before memes, right?

These became- 100%. Movie quotes. It's Simpsons quotes. These were how people communicated with each other. They have these big monocultural moments. And when the sequel to Austin Powers came out, Austin Powers, I think it was the Spy Who Shag me was number two? I think.

I'll double check, but that sounds right. They introduced this character Fat Bastert, which was Mike Myers playing a Scottish character, which is, you know, well within the... But done up in some of the most... Sweaty? Sweaty, but also unfortunately realistic-looking fat makeup I've ever seen portrayed on, like, better than the whale.

I agree. Brendan Fraser, you are a pale imitation of the prosthetic sag. It hurt in every way. It was amazing. It feels like this shouldn't have been able to air uncensored. It should enough. They greased the wheels. They greased a lot of things.

So many. It felt like there was a, the only way they get one that accurate is if there's a call coming from inside the house. There had to be a fat person on the inside being like, no, make the breasts a little bit more like this. Move them out to the sides a little bit rather than forward. Right, yeah. Put them over here. They should be in the armpits. Too perky. Too perky. No, he's been fat a while. And it was horrible because it was so funny. And it was so funny. Like Michael, this is Michael Myers at the peak of his powers. Yes. But you're sitting there in the movie theater watching fat bastard like at some kid's

birthday. You're laughing. Everyone else is laughing. And then as you're leaving that theater, you're filled both with, oh man, that was really funny. I love that. And because you know how the world works at that point, you're like, oh, no, I'm going to hear get my belly, yelled at me for the next two, three, four years. And it wasn't just that when I was, you know, I was born in 1984. So when this came out, I was 13, I was still catching, like, Fat Albert and Truffle Shuffle demands.

Like, I would, like, I don't even remember Fat Albert. But you were getting the, hey, hey, hey. I was going to hurt, her, hurry. And I'm like, it's probably the one. thing we will preserve from Bill Cosby's legacy is people doing the fat out right now. That's going to be weird. People will be...

It's far enough removed. It is. Still holds up. It's like, well, we can still use that to bully fat kids, right? We're not getting rid of that. Let's not get crazy. People will demand I do the truffle shuffle, and I'm like, I have not seen the movie you're referencing.

But I will, you know... What is that? Goonies. The Goonies. But it's basically, I mean, for those who are uninitiated, it is the chubby-kid. Doing it to himself, right? Doing it to himself.

Right, like, lifting up his shirt and then, like, grabbing his... rolls and just shaking them around. And people would do that. I'd be on the football field. Other people would come up and like do that to me. Like do the truffle shovel kind of thing. Yeah.

And they would laugh about it. And I get like the kid doing it to himself is actually pretty representative of, you know, the whole reason I got into comedy. Right. So what is the evolutionary adaptation here? How does this work? Yeah. So you think it's going to get better. You know, like Eric Hartman was another one.

Even like Star Wars like killed me. Job of the Hut. Job of the Hut is the only, there's two fat. characters in all of Star Wars. That name alone. They could have called him Jabba the Space Lug, and we would have got it, or like Craig the Hut, and they still would have been, you mean a fat guy? Okay, we got it.

But he's a fat guy, and he's a slobbering, disgusting space gangster who commits sexual assault on Princess Leia. And then the only other fat character in all of Star Wars is named Porkens. Oh, that's right. He's an X-Wing pilot, who lives for three seconds, blows up, he's just fat, and his name is

Porkens, and then he dies. And meanwhile, you have Darth Vader. Who is fat guy cultural appropriation? Explain? He's asthmatic. He loves magic. Yeah. He's got a deep voice.

He's got James Earl Jones, a fat king. They used his voice, but they... Not his body. Not his body at all. Never. Never that. You should have been a big thick dude walking around. Like, what would have heard?

Your culture is not a costume. It is not a costume, but they had this skinny British actor play him. Right. So they couldn't even do us that favor. Damn. By the way, Porkins, I'm in the... the Star Wars Wiki. His nickname was Piggy.

Yeah, yeah. What? But your name's already pork in? They don't even have pork in space. It's Star Wars. There's no pigs. There's no pork. Anyway.

So this was your reality growing up. And as I got older, I was like, okay, I'm sure it's going to get better. It's going to get better. I started getting in a stand-up comedy. I started by making fun of myself because that's what you do. You walk on stage.

You want to demonstrate some level of self- knowledge. you want to say, I know what you're thinking, and then you get to some joke. One of my first stand-up jokes was me going on stage and saying that it's ridiculous that my name is Ian Carmel because I'm a 6'3-350 p.on Jewish man,

and my name sounds like a whimsical British candy store. My name should be Shlomo pudding tits. And my catchphrase should be, better to put some butter on it, you know? And to me, that was like turning it on its ear a little bit, being like acknowledging the role that fat people play in stand-up comedy. But that's not why they were laughing.

They were laughing because a fat guy was up there. maybe some of them were. So you start to get involved in your own self-immolation, which continued to this point where I played, I got a audition for the show I'm Dying Up Here, which was a show about stand-up comedy in the 1970s. On showtime? And the audition was for a character called Tubbs the obese comedian.

Jesus. I mean, that's a hell of an IMD credit. It's like Java the Hut, but worse, right? Tubbs, that you could call them Tubbs, and we get it. Or you could call them, again, Craig the Obese comedian. comedian, we get it. And I went in thinking like, okay, this is a funny smart show. They're going to be doing some kind of...

Send up of the idea of... Exactly. And then he's going to come off stage and be like, you know, like a smart person who understands what he's doing up there. They wrote, like, in the script with some bit about, like, I'm so fat that when I get off a bus it catches on fire. Which I don't really understand is a joke? Trying to diagram that.

I don't... Is it because it goes... It had to work so hard? I don't know. I don't know. I'm not sure. They didn't let me punch it up. Right.

And I get up there thinking, and you don't know, like they send you your scene. So you don't know what else is happening. I go up there and do it. And when I do the audition, I'm like, I'm going to make them choke on Tubbs of the obese comedian.

So, you know, I weighed 420 pounds at this point. So I went full, like I gave myself a pronounced double chin and like wobbled my jowls after every joke. Just like, all right, here, this is what you want.

And then I got the roll. Oh, God. And that should have been like a warm. Morningstar, I guess, and I go up and do it, and then I film it, and you leave thinking, well, hopefully the other characters are going to be like, hey, he's so much better than that, or something. But no, it was just this fat guy pastiche. He was annoying, dumb. They talked about how he was, like, one of the worst comedians.

And then you watch that. And you realize, once again, like, oh, I'm someone's fat bastard. Fewer people saw I'm dying up here, but I'm still the guy who went up there. Significantly fewer people saw him dying up here. Say what? I just said significantly fewer. Significantly fewer. I want to say it out loud.

Way fewer people. Showtime was a tough one. You had to pay extra just specifically for show. It was the first one to go for me. You had to like that show about pirates. You had to be like really into the black sales. They're really like Dexter or what's the one with the dysfunctional family? Oh.

Oh, it's such a shameless. Shameless. Those were the big. I feel like those were their big vehicles. What a two episode arc on I'm dying. Oh, yeah, baby. I went back for seconds. He left that bus and it blew up behind him for some reason.

I went back. in the seconds because you're just, I don't know, man, you're like, you get beat down to where you're like, this is what I am in this town. This is who I am in Hollywood. I've since really not continued acting. I was going to say, the title of the show was also, in a sense, a description for how you were feeling about all of it. Right, like I was dying. Yeah. It feels like to me the, the, like, reaction to, like, representation is important. It's like, it's not just about seeing other fat people in media. It's like seeing other, you need to see other fat people in media whose entire identity and, like, existence and reason for being is as the fat guy.

Right. It's like there wasn't ever in our childhood. This is what reading your book, which I did. Did for me. Splifting in between chapters of the Bible? Yeah, I took a little break and read from my savior. But, like, we didn't have any representations of a character who was something else and happened to be fat. It was always, it led with, like, isn't this person?

I don't know. Dennis Nedry in Jurassic Park was a very multifaceted character. That's true. That's true. He had a lot going on. He was conniving. The exception that proves the rule. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

No, he was an evil fat guy. Boy, that, uh, but that barbassawk can was satisfying, huh? Didn't you want one of those? Yes. Yeah, it still had the, the shaving cream in it. I almost called a whipped cream. It does look tasty, though. It did.

It's like a nicer foam. Yeah. We were all thinking it. But to Katie, your point, like, I, the other part of the, This is we're living in the era of OZembeck, of course. And the era of us sort of like trying to figure out, okay, what are we blaming people who struggle with their weight for? And are we at a point where, and again, as a comedian,

as someone who wants to make jokes, I also get like, if something is funny, we want to laugh at it. And so there is this, we're at an interesting inflection point where we're welcoming complexity while also wondering if welcoming complexity is making us lose something about what, comedy actually is about. I mean, it has to come from pain. That's one of the...

Comedy doesn't have to. It can come from absurdity or any number of things, but it tends to come from pain, or at least some of the origin story of comedy often ends up being pain. And as the world, hopefully, gets more comfortable for fat people, then maybe there'll be less pain around that.

Like, if we didn't treat fat people differently, like, I wouldn't have a joke about, you know, sitting next to me, on an airplane if that didn't suck. You know, like if the brute of that wasn't that it sucked. But I don't know, you look at like fat bastard. And other than him being absurd, you sit and wonder, like, why is this inherently funny? Like, why is a fat person inherently funny?

And the only answer I can come up with is that, like, I guess we've, it reminds us of mortality in some way? But that it's, they wear their insecurities on the outside, whereas the rest of us kind of have to dig for them. Like, I still can't really identify that. And there was truth in that character. Because one of the most devastating things about fat bastard, there was a part where he said, like, I eat because I'm sad. And I'm sad because I eat. And I'm a 13-year-old kid watching that.

You know, I'm like, oh, man, he just like, nailed something I never thought of before. And then two seconds later, he farts. And it's so... I'm still laughing at the memory of when I first saw that. It's so good. It's so good. Yeah, but you're right. I mean, as the world gets more accommodating to people

and more afraid to make fun, I think it would be easier to make fun of fat people if the world didn't suck so much for fat people, kind of on every level. Because you'd be like, all right, the joke's okay. I got so fat that my friends didn't even make fun of me. And that's you know when you've crossed across the threshold, right? Right.

Yeah. Right, right. God. So what do we do? How do we fix it? The three of us here now? Ideas on the table. It sounds like what you want to do is at the very least, Ian.

Yeah. Urge Hollywood to come up with better names. That would be a start. Can we start with that? Name the character before you even decide they're going to be fat. Try that. Try that. Name the character before you know what their body looks like.

It's like what Katie was saying. Let fat people play just like a school teacher or a barber or whatever, and it's not about them being fat. They can have other even toxic characteristics. Just don't make the basis of it being fat. Can I ask you a question? Because I'm not up on this culture as much, but where do we stand on the word fat?

I love the word fat. I say the word fat. I tend to think that we will switch out words like their NASCAR tires. You know what I mean? Or F1 tires, I guess it's more hot right now. Where it's like, we'll put that on. We'll let that soak up all this in.

Then we take it off and then we switch a new word in. So I have been with animosity called fat, overweight, obese, tubby, chunky, Which one do you love the most? I mean, I separate each chapter in the book with a different one. I do love well-apulstered is my favorite. Well-apulstered, that one rules. I feel like a love seat. You know who loves that term also?

The grandma of grandma. The grandma of grandma loves well, although she has put plastic over it. That's right. She has put plastic over the upholsterer. At the end of the show, Ian, at the end of the show, we say what we found out today. Yes. And so what did we find out on this journey through human nature and actual nature? I found out that gooey ducks are not from Oregon.

They are from Puget Sound. And I should get my shit right before I speak on it. It's going to be a real explicit image. Like, of all the things we've talked about, showing a gooey duck, even more profane than fat bastard. It is more profane. It is more visually jarring than a shirtless fat bastard. You go to grocery stores in like the... Pacific North us.

They'll have gooey ducks and tanks. And that is not what you want to see around food, even though they are technically food. They look like a space peanut. Have you ever had one? A gooey duck, yeah. Do they taste good? Are they chewy?

Chewy? Oh, God. You don't want them to be chewed. More like a, more like a chewy duck. Get out. Get out. Get out. Ian Carmel.com for two or not.

What did you learn today? What did I learn today? I learned a lot. I learned that it's T-I-P-I and not T-E-E-E-P-E-E. Well, don't ask the New York Times crossword, because sometimes they'll even do like T-E-P-E-E. Well? I don't know between the old gray lady and Jed.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, how to spell T-Pee. And I learned that I, that I, once I started talking. Actually, Pablo, I learned that you have vacation on the Oregon Coast and you have just as deep in appreciation for it as I do. The air. Oh. I just want that air.

It's incomparable. It really is. It's annoying. today, Pablo. What I learned is that in my friendships, inspired by Jeb Barton and by Bill Walton, I am honored to get to know people like you guys, for whom the Ian of Ian and the Katie of Katie are things that I am always trying to remember, transcend whatever the fuck is happening right now in this moment on this planet. I want to continue to cultivate friendships with people that I will carry literally forever, insofar as forever, also encapsulates whatever is beyond space and time. That's what I want, and that's what I found out today. Pablo of Pablo has to have somebody to podcast with after the flesh is gone.

That's right. Yeah. The Pablo of Pablo will get lonely if he doesn't have friends. Maybe the Pablo of Pablo will pay the Katie of Katie. The Ian of Ian has to leave right now. Wait a minute. We have one more breaking news update. Oh, what?

You got me. Oh, that was a juicy one. This has been Pablo Torre finds out. A Metal Arc Media production. And I'll talk to you next time.