Quick Question with Soren and Daniel - Bill Harder

Episode Date: April 3, 2023

The guys talk about some fun celebrity encounters and discuss whether or not they were allowed to wear sleeveless shirts in grade school! And as always big thanks to our sponsors.  Thanks Maev. meetmaev.com/QQ to get $40 off your first order

I've got a quick, quick question for you, alright? I wanna hear your thoughts, wanna know what's on your mind I've got a quick, quick question for you, alright? The answer's not important, I'm just glad that we could talk tonight So what's your favourite? Who did you get? What do I be? What's it up with? Oh, forget it I saw a movie, Daniel O'Brien When will I be remembered? Was it out there? Where did all that go? Did we not? Oh, forget it.

Saw a movie, Daniel O'Brien. Two best friends and comedy writers. If there's an answer, they're gonna find it. I think you'll have a great time here. I think you'll have a great time here. So hello again and welcome to another episode of Quick Question with Soren and Daniel, the podcast where two best friends and comedy writers ask each other questions and give each other answers. This is Senior Writer for Last Week Tonight, author of how to fight presidents friend to many

uh and uh i'm i really really fell off the rails immediately with this one it occurred to me in the middle of the intro that we're recording this on st patrick's day and i really blindly tried to leap into an irish accent in the middle of this thing. And I, I couldn't pull it off and I never quite recovered. I'm still spiraling right now. Daniel O'Brien joined us always by my co-host, Mr. Soren Bui.

Soren Slancha. Hello there, Daniel. It's great to be jumping off this bridge with you into our Irish accents. It's crazy how nuts I went just now, because I normally write these intros down, even if the intro is as simple and basic as my name and where I work and your name and where you work I didn't have it written down in front of me and I started off thinking like this is okay you've spoken before you've had unscripted

conversations that's how most of your conversations go but I I really really lost it without any kind of safety net why would would I launch into an accent, Soren? I don't know. Tip it up, top, top. You know what? It's actually really freeing to do an Irish accent because there's a lot of accents you shouldn't be doing anymore. Yeah, that's correct.

But a name like Daniel O'Brien, I've got kids named Ronan and Gillian. I feel fine about this. Yeah. We can still do Irish accents for a while. I think we've got maybe two years left for Italian accents. And then people are going to be upset about that. Right.

Get your licks in while you can, everybody. There was briefly a time, I think i think when everyone or not everyone some people tried to come down hard on the swedish chef from the muppets yeah they're like all right let's give this a fucking rest like all we're doing is making fun of swedish people and i love that everyone's response to that was like just stare them in the face and be like to film the quarter flip who gives a shit man yeah even give us scandinavia even swedish people were like we don't mind it actually give us give us scandinavia give us some funny accent please i think our old boss uh jack not to throw him under the bus but that's what i'm gonna do he really took great pleasure in mocking Italians. I don't know why.

I didn't know if anybody else remembered that. Like when we were writing the book, it was like, he wanted like a runner through the book where we made up like a whole mythos around Italians. Like we made up stereotypes. Yeah. I think i let him know one time that i'm i'm part italian i was i was never offended by anything that he did no but i did i i want him to be i wanted him to be aware and it did not deter him at all yeah he there were two nationalities one was italian he wanted like he wanted us to like talk about how short italians were like i don't think that's a thing jack italians are sure and then he was he was adamant that australians were racist yeah he met one australian person in his life who was

racist and he he used that to inform the entire continent. Weird how that pod kettle situation worked out. Thanks to our new sponsor alert. Thanks to our new sponsor, Maeve, for supporting our podcast. Dogs need unprocessed, high-protein, low-carb diets that kibble and fresh foods don't deliver. Make the switch to raw today. Right now, Maeve is offering $40 off your first order at meetmaeve.com slash QQ. Yeah, so I actually really enjoyed it. I loved when you're like, there would be a pitch and I knew that there was going to be like, even if

the pitch wasn't ready from the forums, but there was like some Italian aspect to it. I was like, I'm bringing it. I'm bringing it to the meeting because i just want to hear jack rant it was never from like i think he thought they were so benign like that there was like nothing to the and so he was like well let's let's spice things up like let's stir the pot a little yeah it's it's so charming to think about and look back on it because it's not just, he wasn't like fired up, angry at Italian people or anything like that. He was so happy to look on his face when he knew that he could make fun of Italians. Kid in the fucking candy store. Well, I appreciate that you tried the accent. accent yeah it made me happy when you did it and

happy saint patrick's day to you this is um uh i want to say your people's holiday sure yeah it's um someone asked me today a friend of mine texted me happy saint patrick's day and i was like oh yeah i guess it is and and she asked do the O'Briens do anything for it? I was like, oh, absolutely not. I don't know if people think, it never occurred to me to do anything for St. Patrick's Day. And I don't know if anyone thinks like, this is a very important holiday for Irish American families that we like, we get together and do anything for it.

Fucking eat soda bread it's not like a solemn or important day for for irish-american families as far as i know there's like it it feels like one of the just pure drinking holidays and and we're not gonna like hang out as a family and get shit-faced and eat cabbage together yeah this is not the irish analog to cinco de mayo yeah wait the only thing i think everyone does on this holiday and it's like i i think everybody assumes that they're irish on saint patrick's day like there's no being irish actually means nothing on the holiday. Right.

I was, I, as a kid, I was very excited because I would wear a green bow tie to school. That was, that was, that was thrilling to me to, to,

to dress up for St. Patrick's day and have a, an old man bow tie thing going on. Hey, that reminds me, I have just like a really quick question for you. Well, this isn't the time or the place, sorry. Did you have, did your parents institute a dress code for you for school?

What do you mean? Well, I'll tell you that when I was a child, I was not allowed to wear shorts or a t-shirt to school. That would have been, like I would have been in serious trouble if I had worn a t-shirt to school that was that would have been like i would have been in serious trouble if i had worn a t-shirt to school i had to wear collar shirts so in the summer in the spring and fall when it was still a little warm i would wear polos and then throughout the rest of the winter i'd wear a button-up and then uh you had to wear uh jeans there was no sweat pants there was no shorts yeah you had to wear jeans to school and you had so you had to wear jeans. There was no sweatpants. There was no shorts. Yeah. You had to wear jeans to school and you had to look nice. Now here's the other thing I will tell you is that growing up,

my dad never once wore his collar down on anything. If you have a collar, it was popped. So until I was about, yeah, until I was about nine or 10, I didn't know you were supposed to put a collar down. Like all of my class photos and everything from up until maybe even like until i was like 10 i'm i've got a pop collar wow that's here i was thinking pop collars were invented in like 2002 it felt like a thing i just started suddenly seeing assholes do and i was like, get out of here. Knock it off.

We don't need to invent new stuff. Throughout the 60s, 70s, and 80s, my dad was holding strong with a pot collar on everything he wore. We didn't have a family instituted dress code or anything like that. I don't think that I ever wore sweatpants to school, but I don't know if that was like an official policy. The closest thing I can remember is my mom telling me specifically that I was wearing my stone cold Steve Austin Jersey too often. And that I needed to sort of police myself and not wear it as much a thing that i was like completely aware of too she's like you can't wear it multiple times in

a week but i'm like but i just love steve austin please what does that even look like because steve austin famously wears no shirt so So like, what is Steve Austin jersey? It was just like a black and blue jersey with a bunch of, like a collage of Stone Cold's face all over it. Oh my God. That's incredible. That and a bow tie, a little green bow tie. Yeah. Yeah. I was, when I got, I can remember being in second grade.

So I was seven and starting to break the rule. And the way that I would do it is I'd wear a button up over the top. I'd wear my OP or my gotcha t-shirt underneath. And then while I was at school shed that outside layer even like the middle of winter just to have a t-shirt on in school felt very cool and very uh rebellious yeah that uh do you have um rules for Ronan? None. He'd wear whatever he wants. I put him in sleeveless shirts sometimes.

That, I think, was off-limits for us. I remember seeing kids in sleeveless shirts and being jealous about that because I knew it could never be me. Yeah. I mean, Gilly has to wear a dress. Sure. Every day. You never had a school uniform uniform right never never

once i did in kindergarten or clip-on ties and and button-down shirts and uh oh that's cruel wait they put the not even just like polos they put the kids in ties too yeah yeah 100 catholic school man would the girls have to wear ties no full none outfits well yeah i'm so my brother's kids have had to go through some schools where they had to have uniforms and it just seems like such a headache to me i mean as much as as nice as it is that you don't have to fight with your kids over clothes in the morning making sure that you have enough clean versions of that outfit seems yes it seems logistically puzzling especially for the amount of just the sheer volume of of shit i was constantly spilling on myself yeah of course you're a kid that you shouldn't feel bad about that that's my my children come home and they look like they fell through a chimney like i'm like how where did you even get all this charcoal all over you

yeah i would always just just trudge home my my shoes caked in mud and like weird brown stains on my shirt my mom's like where where were you like i don't know where did this come from well i don't all i remember was pe today okay those are generally the stories i get from my children oh well not gilly really but from ronan is like he comes home like yeah covered in the weirdest stuff. And I'm like, we're in his pockets. Like the insides of his pockets are lined with like a jelly. And I'm like, what is this? And he's like, I don't know, man. Wasp flies out of his hair. Oh yeah. I guess I was in the woods today. That's right.

What woods? There are no woods here. You had to go like 30 miles to get to the woods. I got lost, Dad. Speaking of spilling stuff on myself, I choked on a massive gulp of water earlier and couldn't keep it down. Just really gasped all this water. It's always so humbling and terrifying when you lose complete control of your body i'm just like spitting up water all over my couch like oh no

oh no come back in there that's a yeah that would be a humiliating way to drown on your couch humiliating way to die yeah um you know i i that feeling of like losing total control is it's really very humbling yeah this body doesn't totally belong to you yeah you're just tripping tripping on something and falling and just being like oh no um dan i wanted to ask you about something else. Cool. You recently won another prestigious award, which they just seem to be racking up for you at this point. Oh, thanks, man. We won the WJ Awards. Yeah, yeah.

It's just for writers. It's very- You won a Gildy. We won a Gildy, yeah. It was, we lost the last two years in a row uh and we expected to lose again and we didn't which is fun there's also like the night is is it's very wild to me uh because again it's it's uh you're hoping to win a trophy you get as a result of doing the job that you're paid very well to do. And you're an adult the whole time.

So there's always like a little bit of silliness behind it. But it's also like, it's our union. So it's all writers and we're amongst our peers. And that's kind of fun. And winning feels better than than not winning uh it's a very long ceremony and i i i really want to hit this point over and over again it's all writers who are not people who should talk and it's not like it's not like the emmys were like every once in a while i'll be like

oh thank god it's someone from succession good let the let the beautiful fancy person talk for a while no there's none of that there's none of that to to break it up it's just all right now these people uh they wrote for radio all right now we're gonna let them do some public speaking for a while okay how about that this next person wrote documentaries like oh brother someone sing a song please now i i've never been to an award show that wasn't designed to be filmed yeah do that do they have cameras at the wgas or are they just like oh fuck it i think they have cameras uh i don't know i i imagine it has to it has to be streamed somewhere i couldn't find it like my family couldn't watch or anything like that but

i've never once seen it i did look for it yeah and it does not exist we had uh another another very humbling moment because like we're as writers we're sort of expected to be uh black sheep everywhere and an afterthought because no one cares as writers we're sort of expected to be uh black sheep everywhere and an afterthought because no one cares about writers as as like yeah like an industry rule um but we have a red carpet for the wgas and we have a specific time that that last week's night was going to go to the red carpet get our picture taken that's how it works like 6 50 everyone meet here and we'll get our picture taken and as we're shuffling into this room full of photographers who are there to take pictures, we could see one of them point his camera at the wall, just like completely turn

away from us and start looking at the more interesting wall. And he's like, you must have known writers were going to be here i'm sorry i'm so sorry please take our picture and i and on the one hand i was thinking like why did like this is our birthday just like it's it's it's all writers all day you just have to accept that you're not going to find anyone more interesting and then lo and behold as soon as we leave the red carpet the person who takes our place is steven spielberg and i was like oh yeah yeah that's right don't waste any film on us i get it yeah um did you happen to see any famous writers like with jesse armstrong there did you get to get chatted up with him again i did not see him i talked to uh f murray abraham for a while

which is like yeah wait he's not a writer is he i know he was just there to present something and i he is like absolutely for for all the you know steven spielberg is there spike lee is there donald glover was there lots of plenty of famous people were around mingling and i was like f murray abraham like that is exactly anyone who doesn't know that you know him most recently from from uh the second season of white lotus he's the farter yeah yeah uh he was in he was famously salieri and amadeus and he's great uh he was in grand budapest hotel he's been in a lot of things for a very long time uh i really like his work. And I was like genuinely starstruck to see this 78 year old man.

I was like, F. Murray Abraham, congratulations. I really, I'm an admirer of your work. And he was mentioning the ballroom. It was the Edison ballroom.

And he's like, this used to be the Edison theater. And I said, yes. And I didn't know, but I was like, yes, of course it is.

It's whatever you want it to be. Yeah. It's just a conversation going. It did used to be a theater, sir. And together we can make it one again. You and I, let's do it. Was he, I'm just like expecting him to be horned up and like talking to you about the girls that go by. But that's only because the very last character I've seen play.

No, he just seems like, like a very gracious and sweet old man who seems, uh, genuinely surprised that anyone is still very excited to see him. He seems really taken with the fact that he is, that he continues to be a famous man that, uh,

that people cheer for. Oh, I like that. Yeah. It makes me think maybe I'll get famous and then become an old man. I mean, one of those things I know I can do. It must be like, it's got to be fascinating to be someone like him who has been a working actor for a very long time and now between he did a season of a marvel show he did moon night and white lotus now he is like very known to a much younger and uh more enthusiastic fan base and it

seems like a strange shift to like be in your 70s and suddenly have crowds of teens screaming for you yeah yeah I guess that would be true of all actors as soon as you do a new movie you've got like this whole new demographic of fans yeah

that must be very surreal that god I didn't even think about that that's not something you are dealing with uh yeah like you all of a sudden you've got like the you've got this new group of people who are like yeah this guy all the way this is this is my new jam you're like i you're you're young enough to be my grandchild yeah i will say easily that the the greatest part of the wgas and i'm not going to use this it's like a decently famous person but uh a newly famous person that i won't name here uh who was presenting an award and he was so drunk and yes it ruled and like one of the uh things about the the wgas is a lot of these shows have really large writing staffs like there's 13 writers on

last week's night there's like 20 something on colbert and you read every single name of every single person and i'm telling you the you will never find a crowd that was more on the same page than the entire audience watching this very famous very drunk person really do his best getting through like no exaggeration 75 names all told you know they're not they're not always uh you know it's not you're not getting john smith over and over again there there's names from from all over the world and you're watching this guy and like we can see the list of names too so we know what's in his future and you're just you're you're watching him and like okay well well thank goodness he's got bill haters in this list that that name is a gimme. And then he goes, Bill Harder.

I'm like, oh, fuck, man, that was the softball, and he blew it on the softball. The rest of this list doesn't stand a chance. And we were just so pumped for him. Every time he finished a show's list of names, we were losing our minds for this guy, and you could tell he was smiling and like happy that we were cheering him on,

not very sure why we were doing it. And we were all just like, you've got this, man. You've got fucking barrel through. You could do this. There's only, I'm looking ahead. There's only 25 names left, man. This is the home stretch. You got it.

And we really gave him a huge applause when he finished all those names. It was awesome. Man, I would love a compilation of announcers at, not presenters, presenters at award shows that are clearly on something. Yeah. Because there's tons. I mean, there's tons of examples and they're always fun. I'm riveted by them. There's one from like Mel Gibson when he was, just started his career where he's so coked up at the Oscars. And it's fascinating.

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that level and a friend of ours used to work with like talent representation and was let's just say it's john ham even though it's not yeah was brief before a presser was like here's the thing you need to know about john at these press junkets he is so shy he really gets gets so nervous being on camera and talking to reporters and so he's very drunk and he's going to be drunk the whole time he's like oh that must be that must be nice to have like a handler who ahead of every one of your visits is just like hey just just uh just heads up he's very drunk don't talk about it leave him alone it's fine i know who it is who is it what that's right oh that's right that's who it is that's awesome are we allowed to say that i don't know yeah i waited till you were done talking so that we have

like a clean a clean cut for it but um who who told us that i can't remember i think that was oh man we may have to pull that. Yeah, certainly. We'll bleep full name, too, I think. Well, that's very exciting. Did you get to wear tux? No, I wore a suit. I think they they're. Man, what was the stupid dress code that they they they said i think it was like

holiday cocktail they said something fun you yeah i wore a suit um the most exciting thing uh which is very on brand for a boring award show celebrating writers that no one cares about is our trophies were mislabeled so now it's it says that I won for writing for last night tonight which is not all the show and someone from like we all saw it and we all started laughing and taking pictures of it and someone from the WGA was like oh my god I am so sorry this is this is embarrassing please give us the statues back and we will put new labels on them and man and some of my co-workers were like absolutely not we're going to keep this forever and they're like yeah but

it's embarrassing for us it's like that's i don't know who you are that's fine for me good yeah like then it won't happen in the future um that's fucking wild i think it feels very slapdick yeah and now we have it's like a collector's item right yeah you got an error card that's very cool well congratulations on your award dan thanks man it's a fun night congratulations on a long terrible ceremony were there at least after parties that were fun yeah there there was uh an after party and i as soon as i got there beelined to where a giant bowl of french fries was at the last time they had an after party here and i went to go find the fries again but there were no fries this time

and like my huh no they just had like they had like uh fried shrimp and other stuff but like you could see my entire staff confused as soon as i get off the elevator and bank a hard right away from the bar straight to where my total victory was supposed to be. That must have been such a nice moment the first time you discovered that. Like seminal almost, where you're at an award show, you're not feeling very comfortable, and then you walk to this table that just has a glorious giant bowl of fries for you i went to a wedding once that was in um oregon and it was at an orchard so i should have known but i was kind of like you know you do the ceremony and the ceremony is always kind of there's a lot of just

sitting through it and you're not feeling very good in your suit or anything yet nobody's really drinking or anything and so after the ceremony i kind of wandered around and as i was wandering stumbled onto this meadow where there was a big spool used as a table and all of these this ripe fruit all over it just like overfloweth with ripe fruit and i was like looking around and there was no one around it was all just for me and to this day, like sometimes when I'm going to bed at night, if I'm like having some, um,

negative thoughts, I'll be like, no, sorry, go back to the wedding. Go back. Just like, remember how perfect that was that you got to eat as many peaches as you

want. And then, and then shit all night. I've been, uh, eating so much frozen berries lately. Really? Yeah yeah i don't want to investigate if that's if if that's if that's bad for me or not the sheer amount but like i had a bag of frozen berries in my freezer um a strange impulse by weeks ago it was like maybe i'll be the kind of

person who makes smoothies at some point you You know, sometimes when you're shopping, you're so hungry that you completely lose your mind and you shop for a person that you might one day be. That's what I was doing. I still have not made any smoothies with those berries. But like, first thing in the morning, just grabbing like a small, a tiny handful of frozen berries, like a little woodland creature. It's awesome. The texture is completely wrong, though, on frozen berries like a little woodland creature it's awesome the texture is completely wrong though on frozen berries i mean part of the joy of a of a fruit is that it bursts in your mouth

and you get that juice when you eat a frozen berry it's like it's like there's like ice inside of it yeah yeah i think what part of what i'm doing is I'm tricking myself into thinking I'm having an ice pop or like a sweet treat. And that's helpful. Oh, it's like a bite-sized popsicle piece. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, my mom really tried to get us on frozen grapes as children. And I was like, no, you don't. Come on. What are we doing here? Yeah. Give me the carob I'm used to. I used to eat a lot of frozen grapes when I was a bartender. We had some drink that by design

required a garnish of three frozen grapes. So we just always had them behind the bar. And I went nuts on those things. I just don't find them enjoyable at all. I find it very off-putting to bite into something. Because it's kind of like a squeaky fruit. You know what I mean? Yeah. It sometimes can be very unpleasant. Oh, okay.

Those things that you went ham on are occasionally deeply unsettling when you ate them. Okay. Well, Dan. when you ate them okay well dan i think i'm just like like as someone who famously only drinks coffee and water and sometimes uh seltzer uh and i don't snack during the day and i'm trying to in general eat better and be a healthier person i'm really confronted with the boring realities of my like available food options. And so like- It does shut a lot of doors for you, doesn't it? Realizing that I can have frozen berries for breakfast is thrilling for me.

There was definitely a period of my life where I just, you know, for like fiscal reasons, like I couldn't just eat anything that I wanted. And so it was really like keeping me in line. It was like, if I was going to buy something, well, it better be something that's good for me as well. I just empty calorie tree food is like a silly waste. And then as I got older and was able to just like eat whatever I wanted, I started to do that and then you know within like a year you're like oh shit i can't do this like yeah this isn't a healthy lifestyle and then you just start shutting doors like you just like okay well let's see what this one oh burgers no we don't

do that anymore okay yeah that's shut milkshakes oh we don't do those anymore um and that's that's hard so it is nice when you get to open a new one even if it's a door to fucking hell where you eat frozen grapes all the time but if you could trick your brain into thinking it's good i mean i've done it with kale i've done it with yeah essentially tree bark yeah what. Yeah. Every lunch, I'm like, oh, I can't wait for my kale. What I really can't wait for is that chicken that I put at the bottom of the kale to surprise myself. That'll be great. It's kale for lunch.

I mean, I hate kale. I absolutely hate kale. And that's one of those, like, there's a lot of things I hate that I still eat because they're good for me. And kale, I'm just like, absolutely not. No, I'm not like that. That won't be the thing that adds five years onto my life. And I have to draw a line somewhere. It's bad enough that I eat a salad for lunch every goddamn day. I'm going to, it's going to be spinach and kale is just going to be for someone else. Well, yeah. So spinach is like a great,

spinach tastes better, certainly. But spinach is a, it's so, I would have to eat so many pounds of spinach to feel full. Like spinach just disintegrates inside of you. It's like, if you've ever seen like a raccoon with cotton candy and it's like trying to wash it in the water

and it just like disappears. The raccoon's like, no, no. Like that's how I feel about spinach a kale it it is terrible i agree with you but it just sort of like piles up in your stomach very easily so that when you're done eating a giant pile of kale you're like hey i'm genuinely full man that sucks i I guess I'm never full after lunch, but I also have agreed that that's fine and that's the point. And I'm not supposed to enjoy making my salad or eating it. And I'm not supposed to feel good afterwards. And I tick all those boxes.

Okay. Well, there you go. Dan, I wanted to talk to you about well two other things one is that since we're already on the subject of celebrities and writing i watched a movie the other day and you'd be happy to know uh it's fairly recent it was creed creed three two oh buddy did you would it also surprise you to know that I got confused and thought that I was watching the most recent Creed? Well, what did you think? Let me see if I can remember how to talk about this movie.

That's Drago? Drago's kid? That's right. Everybody's kid. Everybody's kid is in it. And everybody's kid has the same job as the parent. That's the whole premise of the movie is that both Drago has a son who's going to be a boxer. Apollo has a son who's now theirs.

Those two are going to fight. And then also the trainers. His new trainer, because Rocky won't train him for this fight. Rocky doesn't think he can do it. And still Michael B. Jordan goes to, um, the,

the trainer of the son who was, fuck, how did this work? He, in the original Rocky movies, he was a trainer that wouldn't train Rocky. It gets, it's very convoluted, but everybody, it's just Muppet babies. Like everybody has the same a job as the adults did in the 80s movies.

It's very funny. You'd have to do some very serious parental brainwashing to train your child from birth to beat up the son of someone you have a tenuous connection to. Well, super weird that it's like, you have to go beat up the son of the man that I killed to redeem our name. If you kill him, that's fine. We just have to redeem the name. I'm so mad that Rocky beat me 40 years ago. Dad, why don't you just kill him?

That seems easier. No, you have to kill this other guy's son who I killed. That's the only way. Yeah, it's a strange movie. You know, Tessa Thompson's in it. So she's singing and there's a sex scene and it's just really great things. You know what I'm saying let's let's let's cool it man let's let's take an easy sword do you know do you know tessa

thompson uh i saw creed 3 and it was great oh good hey did aaron covington write all these yes that's great good for him yeah um and i also saw aaron covington yeah we used to do stand-up with him i think too um i saw the the new scream movie also i will see as many screams as they want to make i will keep seeing them as many screams as they want to make. I will keep seeing them. You know what else I did when I saw Creed III? The timing worked out for me because I wanted to see like a mid-afternoon movie and the only available Creed III was in IMAX,

which is a format that I never take myself to. And now I think I want to see every movie at IMAX because it's just so much bigger and louder and uh i i didn't know it was gonna have because i don't think that movie was like filmed for imax or anything so i didn't think there would be a noticeable difference they're they're they're super it's just a better way to watch movies okay i don't even know where an imax is around me oh I assume they all closed during the pandemic. I'm probably wrong about that.

I'll find one. I'll find one and I'll go see when they show Creed 3 in, like, in loving memory, like, for nostalgia's sake, in 2046. I will go see Creed 3 and then we can talk about it. Oh, shit. Victor Drago go see Creed 3 and then we can talk about it. Oh, shit. Victor Drago is in Creed 3. Yeah, yeah. The sun. Yeah, the sun shows up. He's not

angry anymore. He's given up that whole vendetta. He's just like a boxer who's still hanging around. Yeah, they did. I was surprised that they gave him some pathos in this one because in Rocky 4 there was, we never liked the Russians. There was nothing redeemable in that entire movie about them. But they gave

the Victor Drago Jr., they gave him some real pathos. It was nice. There's another thing that I wanted to talk to you about, Dan. Fine. I mean, that's we're here. I don't need to talk about creed too nobody wants to hear me talk about creed the only fun part of that story is that i thought i was watching the most recent creed how did you think you were watching the most recent creed you must have

you must have been watching creed 2 at your home. Yeah. No, of course. And I thought, you know, because everything jumps onto streaming so quickly, I thought, oh, great. It's already out. And I didn't realize that I had missed an entire Creed. I thought there was Creed 1 and then there's the most recent one. That is so funny. Do you remember, you and I used to go to a gym called Burn Fitness that was in Santa

Monica. In retrospect, maybe one of the best gyms I ever belonged to. There was nobody ever there. It was like beautiful, wood floors. have I made so many friends at a gym than I did at, at, at burn. Like we would see each other socially, not just at the gym, just like gym friends that you made their staff and other people there. We're just like,

Oh, I'm, I'm excited to see, uh, that douchebag Keith. Let's see what that asshole's up to. You know, normal friendships.

Yeah. Um, I agree with you. It was, we were all there and we were it was weird and that we were all like the same age and we all had similar interests and we all just became really good friends at this gym well there was a guy i don't know if you remember him he would show up there and he was yoked but he was older than us he was really really strong and uh he carried around his jacket in his bag refused to put them in a locker which was suspicious of maybe steroids but he carried that stuff around and he honored me by making me his shoulder guy which means that like when he was going to be lifting shoulders he asked for my spot and that would be the guy that he'd go hunt out and get to do his shoulder spot. And I was so honored by that.

And then because, you know, he's huge. I had no business trying to help him. But his name was Lee Reierman. And I figured out while we were at the gym that he was Hawk from American Gladiators. Wow. Yeah. was hawk from american gladiators wow yeah now i was told the story to my pod the other day our riot writers room and i was so excited to tell them about uh lee reierman and how he goes to burn and somebody said no he doesn't he's dead and i was like what 2016 he died. My gym buddy died, Dan.

I'm so sorry. Well, I guess I should. What do you want me to do? I want you to do nothing. I'm just telling you. Okay. All right. You don't need to solve this problem for me.

Just be there for me. I thought this was, when you first started talking about burn i thought for sure you're going to talk about uh a different older man also named lee who went to that gym oh shit like that guy he is um surely dead but that guy uh was an older gentleman who was always kind of shaking. I don't know if there was something wrong with him or what, but he was always shaking. And he also was so taken with you. He was such a, not in like a romantic way or anything like that.

Jury's out. I think it really felt like a genuine, like, I don't know if it was, if he felt very paternal towards you or if he was deluding himself into thinking like, ah, yes, we are two peers. Me, a million years old and Soren in his 20s, just a couple of gym rats. You were always very friendly and communicative with him, and he just, he wanted to know your story. He wanted you to have dinner with him. He wanted to, like, hand you things, little gifts and stuff from his shaky fucking hands all the time.

It was really bizarre. I had completely forgotten about Lee, but yeah, he was a, this guy at a gym who, if he was going to be there that day, I had to like, I had to carve out another 20 minutes for my workout so that I could just sit

there and talk to Lee for a little while. Cause he like, yeah, he'd come find me and then he wanted to just chat for a while. And he was the nicest guy in the world and very eager to help me in any way he could yeah so yeah he would go on trips and then bring me back stuff from the trip or he would go he'd be like he had he knew someone who knew someone at a studio and when he found out that i was doing like sketch comedy and stuff at this theater that was basically downstairs he was like i'll get you on the lot i can get you on the lot and i was like i

don't need to go to the lot and he's like nonsense i will get you on the lot okay nonsense he puts a finger to your lips to shush you and then that finger gently just slides into my mouth. Yeah. It's not, it was never totally clear what he wanted the relationship to be. It was clear that we weren't there for him. He was striving towards something new and different that we hadn't achieved yet. But it wasn't clear if it was sexual or not. I think it was very smart of you to not ever accept any large gifts from him because romantic or not there was something in your body that was like i can't be in debt to this person i can't i can never owe him i don't want lee calling in a favor

um i hope he doesn't listen to this oh no he's dead jesus you might be um anyway i went through as we started like going down the rabbit hole of american gladiators i also mentioned to them just in passing they're like somebody said that they're like i watched had said that they, they're like, I watched it. And I was like, do you know Hawk? And like,

no, I wasn't really paying attention to the guys. And I was like, that's fair. I really had a crush on one of the women siren. I thought she was the best. Do you remember siren at all? Dan?

Nope. Okay. Well, siren was deaf. And, uh, as a child, I,

I was very taken by that, that she was this big woman and not letting her deafness get in her way. And that she also had a very pretty face didn't hurt either. I will tell you, and I'm sure you already know, yes, she was blonde. Yeah. I don't know what I was expecting when I Googled her, I guess if, if, if I'm putting, if I'm putting any real thought into this, Siren didn't sound like a, uh, a white name. That's on me.

Siren's a made up name. Uh, but as soon as I saw her, I was like, oh yeah, this is like a 1980s blonde woman. Sure. That makes sense. Um, yeah. She has the hair. She's got everything in the 80s. The 80s could have wanted, she's got it. Yeah. She has the hair. She's got everything in the 80s. The 80s could have wanted.

She's got it. Yeah. And so I start telling them about that. And they're like, oh, dude, she's dead. And I was like, what the fuck is going on? So I think she killed herself. Pretty much all the American gladiators at this point are, like, dead. I don't know if maybe it was just steroid use or if that

even does it or if it was just they all came from troubled places anyway but they i do like just in hearing that so many of them were dead i started thinking back on the show did you spend after saturday night live i don't know if you that was during your era or not i uh will will not be helpful here i don't have a great uh memory for american gladiators i'm certain it's a show that i watched i don't know anyone's name okay let me take you back because i it was i would stay up specifically to watch american gladiators because i was young enough that i also thought i could take her leave Saturday night live. I didn't get it, but American gladiators was going to be on. And I wanted to be in that gym so bad. Everything there looked like the coolest thing in the world.

It's an adult playground. And all these mats are like six feet, six feet thick. And there's also these courses where somebody's shooting tennis balls at you and you're just running and diving it looked like the i wanted like a birthday there so badly yeah and just like peripherally there were also all these really meat-headed giants that were very fun to watch as they would punch a much smaller person who had come on the show as a contestant into the ground. And that was very fun for me to watch as well. But what would happen is if these

contestants beat them, they would lose their shit. American gladiators would get so angry in a genuine way. I mean, they know they're on television and everything. They know there's cameras on them, but they can't help themselves. They would lose lose their minds they would get so upset and then they'd be interviewed afterwards which is maybe the best part of american gladiators because they would just talk shit about the contestant because they were so angry they didn't know how to how to present themselves they didn't know anything so they're just if they didn't do it if they didn't do the thing that they set out to do or if the at one point there was a guy there's a i'll give you like a brief rundown that you have to get 10 yards with a football past a gladiator but there's walls

on each side so you only have uh you're trying to get into an end zone from the red zone but then you also have maybe like 20 feet on each side to work with. And so there's just no way to get past these. It's virtually impossible. One guy runs directly at the American gladiator and does a front flip over the American gladiator. It's the most incredible thing I've ever seen. You can find this clip on YouTube. Does a front flip over the American gladiator and gets into the end zone. And this gladiator, I was like tower or somebody.

He just went nuts. He was so angry that he had been bested that like then when he gets interviewed he's just like ripping this guy to shreds it was incredible yeah um i mean anyway the conceit of that show remains uh hilarious and and beautiful You're going to get these normal average people and have them compete against just these born athletic giant monsters who pretty consistently dominated them. It's so... You would think they would build something into the show to give the

average athletes some kind of advantage but they don't they're just like hey you're average and this person's better let's see which one of you wins oh it was the bigger guy that we paid to beat you better luck next time buddy and and every single one of them looked like a professional wrestler like they're all juiced up it's like like you could see that the steroids coming out like tearing out of their eyes because they're so juiced up and they would just destroy these people like they it seemed like they genuinely hated the contestants because they would do what they could to just hurt these people they would there was a one with rings where like you had to get past this gladiator by swinging from rings and the gladiator was also on rings and you try and like maneuver around and just get your body swinging the right way and

all the gladiator had to do was get close enough to you that they could grab onto you and then they would hold you and suddenly you had 400 pounds hanging off of you but this one guy kept his grip and so this gladiator's hanging onto his legs and can't get him to fall and so the gladiator just starts punching the guy it really seems like the show is truly uh like when you and i used to volunteer with children and we would just destroy them in football, basketball, and soccer because we were in our 20s and they were seven and eight-year-old kids. There's no surprise element to it. There's no like, all right, one hand behind my back is like,

no, we're just going to destroy you because we're superior athletes. That's all there is to it. Yeah, those children would never in any danger of scoring a touchdown against us. No. those children would never in any danger of scoring a touchdown against us. No. And so it always was really surprising when somebody would beat a gladiator. Everyone in the stadium would go nuts. Like it was,

it was crazy. And it was just such a joy to watch the gladiators themselves go nuts and not in a way where they're like, I can't, that's really impressive. What you did was really impressive. They're like, no,

run it back. Fucking run it back. we're doing it again anyway they're all dead yeah shame but i got to spot one and i'll remember that forever yeah those moments that haw Hawk and I shared. I guess he was an actor too. Does Burn still exist? It doesn't, right? I think it does. It moved. It moved further down.

It moved over the Adidas store. Yeah. That place really set a pretty incredible bar as far as gym experiences go that no other gym has come close to it's really a shame yeah that we got that so early it's like me growing up in aspen after i left i was like oh shit that was the spot um yeah burn was just like one of our first gyms and we're like i don't know it's a gym whatever and then no gym could have ever held a candle to that it was really a joy uh we're doing a huge sponsorship for burn right now i feel like they should be giving us some money yeah someone

should i'll talk about uh your fucking spinach brand or like can we get in we'll get some money from Kirkland assorted berries Kirkland signature berries Dan give them their do signature berries did we did we ever get a proposal for a for Creed 2. Did that come through for us in 2023? Well, we should just end the show. Oh man, that's, that's great. The show is called.

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