Stop Podcasting Yourself - Episode 676 - Kliph Nesteroff

Episode Date: March 1, 2021

Writer Kliph Nesteroff returns to talk lottery tickets, graveyards, and a specific type of orange.

Hi, he's Dave Shumka and he's Graham Clark and together we host Stop Podcasting Yourself. Woo! Hello everybody and welcome to episode number 676 of Stop Podcasting Yourself. My name is Graham Clark and with me as always, I'm all tongue-tied. With me as always is a guy who, boy oh boy, I don't get to see him in person live enough, Mr. Dave Shumka. Well, I don't perform live very much anymore um haven't for about a decade oh you mean just like just in person socially sure yeah yeah yeah like uh we live close to each other but so so far away we ran into each other the other day

that's true you were you were packing two pizzas i was packing packing some frozen pizzas from the store and Graham was waiting in line to go to the coffee shop. Yeah. And the fact that I stopped to talk to him made him completely take his eye off the ball. Yes. And people snuck in front of him in line and went into the coffee shop ahead of him. And then the guy behind him in line was like, are you even in line? And so I had to, like, I i was i talked to you for 10 seconds and i was like i gotta i have to leave now we're an agent of chaos uh-huh our uh guest today uh hasn't been on the show for ages and ages and uh he's very funny he

has written two books his latest that's coming out is called we had a real estate problem or a little real estate problem um and uh he's here for us today uh it's mr cliff desteroff hey guys hey yeah hi cliff it's proof it's it's a testament to the fact that graham Graham refuses to use cue cards, that he always gets the titles of the projects wrong. Oh, no, that's quite all right. We'll change it. We'll change it.

For the paperback, I'll change the title and we'll be cool. I haven't seen you dudes since Montreal, Quebec. Yeah. When we were partying with Bonhomme. Yeah, Bonhomme was there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, he offered me cocaine. Yeah, I know. The snowman, they Bonhomme. Yeah, Bonhomme was there. Yeah. Yeah. He offered me cocaine.

Yeah, I know. The snowman, they call him. Do a line off of his arrow belt. I don't know how you translate that. Mitten hands are hard to chop lines with, though. Yeah. But somehow he makes it work. Yeah.

He's been doing it a long time he's been around since the 70s so he knows how to do it good old banam um should we get to know it no i'm really tongue-tied tonight should we get to know us yes get to know us graham you want to do some tongue twisters to get out of it yeah uh peter piper pick the pickled peppers what did he pick up a peck oh a peck okay yeah um no i don't that's all i know that's all i know tongue twister wise what do you got uh bilbo baggins uh bilbo baggins built a deck to becker on cbs very good wow um cliff how you doing i'm doing pretty good you know i feel guilty because i feel good and uh things seem good and uh everybody else is uh is miserable But I went through a miserable patch there, so I feel like I should enjoy myself a little bit now.

I wrote a book. I got a lot of attention. I feed off the attention. So, you know, life's good. Life's good here in Hollywood. I'm living in a depressing building. It's actually a really cool building, but when I say it's depressing,

it's like many notable Hollywood people have killed themselves here. Hmm. But I enjoy that. Not because I would enjoy it if it happened yesterday or this week. But you're a general suicide fan. Yeah, I'm a big suicide fan. Oh, can we guess?

No, I don't want to. I'll tell you. You're going to find out no matter what. Lupe Velez. Oh, you're sort of in the right league. It was actually a Canadian actor named Ken Duncan, who spelled it K-E-N-N-E. His claim to fame is being Ed Wood's leading man

in several Ed Wood movies. He played Dr. Acula in Night of the Ghouls and offed himself in my building in 1972. So those are the kinds of things that give me hope in life during this pandemic. And was that part of the walkthrough of the apartment? You may notice that the ceilings are awful high. Lots of clearance. Great clearance.

Yeah, your feet aren't going to touch the ground. It was actually pills, Graham. It was pills. Pills, man. But very Valley of the Dolls. But this building that I live in, in the 20s, 30s, and 40s, it's where cowboys lived when they came from Montana and Texas as cow wranglers who wanted to break into, like, Western movies. So it's got some vintage cow pie type smell to it but it's a it's it's cool as hell yeah um and you're right you're right in hollywood right in hollywood whitley heights which is a

famous old like 1920s neighborhood super cool i do love the idea like there are uh you know places um uh in hollywood where like you know canadian actors all all go and they all live in the same complex or like there's like um uh or maybe not even just canadians but like all the people i know happen to be canadian but like people go down for pilot season and there's these like you want to hear something funny that phrase pilot season i used to always hear that when i did stand up in vancouver and toronto going down for pilot season going down for pilot season nobody here has ever used that phrase only a canadian term which i never realized but nobody has ever said that here but i love the idea that oh yeah this is the place where if you want to break into uh cattle rustling for the

pictures you stay in this apartment it's a great place to network well i think it was like a caste system so if you were coming if you were just some cowpoke from montana you were not going to socialize with like real hollywood people you had to be with other cowpoke so this was you go all the way to hollywood and then you're only allowed to talk to other cow folks that stinks that's right i think there was a documentary though dave about some shitty apartment building that canadians lived at which is not far from here it's where janice joplin died session i'm sorry it's looking to be happening throughout the episode every other sentence to be a reference to some horrific death but um but how do you find out these things like are people telling you when you're looking at the place or how do you find out that this place was where so-and-so died uh well for this building when i moved in i

definitely like did my research once i was in here to like who lived here because it's from 1928 so you know somebody who did something lived here the one where janice joplin died is like famous and then there's like lots of bullshit history that makes me want to research the real facts because every real estate agent and every person in town is like, yeah, did you know Charlie Chaplin lived here? And the Black Dahlia had her last meal. And Sharon Tate was. And it's like, I don't think any of that is true. They're like, Elvis was playing pool with James Dean and Marilyn Monroe in this diner.

I think you're thinking of a painting from Woolworths. Dogs used to play poker in this spot i'm like no i think you're thinking of something so there's a lot of nonsense like that but yeah you know i just feed off of that i love that i love i love living in history and so you've you've well you you moved into this place and you're like i'm going to research the history and you found Ken Duncan. Yeah. So someone had to have lived here. Ken Duncan. Well, I mean, there was famous people too, but I prefer like the bedraggled weirdos who, you know,

I can relate to these losers who couldn't afford to pay rent more than I could relate to, you know, Greta Garbo. The Black Dahlia. Yeah. It was Charlie Chaplin is a suspect in the Black Dahlia. Yeah. Charlie Chaplin is a suspect in the Black Dahlia case. That's how they both were both here at the same time. But he had a clean alibi. He was shooting pool

with James Dean and Marilyn Monroe. While Elvis was tending bar. At Mel's Diner. I was going through the cogs of a machine at the time. Mr. Chaplin, what did you use this fork for and what is this baked potato yeah uh this house nearly fell on me that's buster keaton sir um so you uh this is your second book that you've written, which is two times as impressive than writing a book, which I think is already like the most impressive thing.

Somebody writing a book to completion and other people reading it. I do a couple of things to completion, but this, you've got this whole new book. Your first one, if people don't know is the comedians and it's all old showbiz stories, which you know. That's your whole thing. That's your vibe.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Writing a book is hard. I don't know how people do it either. And when I wrote that first book, I wasn't sure that I had written a book. I handed it in. It was almost like you felt like you were in high school. You're just scamming the thing. you just fill enough pages, and then

you hand it in, hopefully, they don't find out that you're a fraud, big font, and, you know, enter it. Yeah, you're like, just plagiarizing the thesaurus. And then it came out, and it was like successful. And I really thought I was gonna get get reviews that said, he doesn't know how to write a book. But apparently, I do. It was strange. But when I go back and read parts of that first book, I can still see that I don't know how to write a book. I'm like, I can't believe I scammed so many people into thinking

that I knew what I was doing. And with the second book, I've kind of sort of learned how to write a book, but not completely. I still don't know how to end a book. I sort of learned how to write a book but not completely i still don't know how to end a book i don't know you start at the ending and then you work back yes yes so you start at the uh index that's how i used to write stand-up punchline first how do i get to say this thing you push a bit of twist at the end yeah yeah uh or plug your next book that's you know to be continued like yeah like back to the future exactly you remember do you remember when back to the future came out in the mid-80s it said to be continued at the end of the

movie which is sort of like presumptuous as a screenwriter that you would expect the studio to give you a whole second movie i heard that it was a joke that they put it at the end well and they thought it was a funny thing to sign off on and then it became such a hit that they were like oh we're we're married to this now how could it not like you put that in the it's such a compelling end of a movie too yeah that's right it's like setting everything up but they yeah they just thought it was hilarious to say to put that at the end of a movie which it is that's a that's a solid like james bond used to do that right at the end like we'll see him

yeah i remember not to change the subject it's related and and shumka's here but i remember an episode of perfect strangers that was a two-part episode and at the to be continued point of the end of the first episode it was balky and uh larry is that his name yeah larry and balky are about to be capsized by a semi-truck they're like going to have their heads they're gonna they're about to crash into a semi-truck and like they're gonna lose their heads you know it freezes to be continued and it's like is this the death of balky and larry and even as like a eight-year-old i was like they're not gonna show their murder it's not gonna be faces of death and if they do episode two isn't gonna be they die in the first scene and then we have 21 minutes it's all the background not just 21 minutes but like 21 more episodes

that season yeah and so the next week they read they go previously on perfect strangers and it picks up and then they just miss it they drive underneath the truck and they're go on skates but they seem like a pretty sloppy uh plot Also, why would that need to be a two episode thing? That's because sometimes they would Was the whole episode taking place outside of the apartment or was it just that scene? Oh, good question. All I remember

of this episode is that specific scene where they almost got it. If you're a sitcom and you're doing a two-parter, it's got to be outside of the apartment. It's got to be like a wedding episode or a new baby. We're going to Hawaii, and John Stamos is drumming with the Beach Boys. Yeah, one of those.

We're going to Australia with the rest of the girls from this orphanage. I don't know. What's the facts of life? You know who I've gotten to know is Bill Kirkenbauer. He played the gym teacher on Growing Pains, and then they had a spinoff called Just the Ten of Us. It's weird when you live here and you encounter people that you remember from when you were four. I've never smoked crack with Jody Sweden.

That's still on the bucket list. That's on the to-do list. Yeah. Yes. TGIC. that's on the to-do list yeah yes yeah tgi tgic um um yeah i remember uh there was a like a multi-part episode run of family ties where they went to britain and michael caton what was his name was michael alex p caton he like he solved a mystery he's like found a brush with microfilm in it and it was like this

big spy thing was it like supposed to be like a sherlock holmes like uh yeah it was like you know he was being chased by bad guys and like he jumped in a rowboat and got away from them that way and he had the microfilm and he was trying to race against time so nothing like the show like the rest of the characters fell to the backseat. Alex P. Keaton just became, I think maybe he was a backdoor pilot. You can tell that sometimes when you're just like, who are all these fucking characters and where

is everybody? Yeah. So this book, the second book that you've written, also about show business. Yes, sir. And focuses on indigenous people and their uh stand-up scene and stand-up world yeah and history yeah yeah because when i moved from canada to america like in canada it's like first nations stuff is in the news every single day

i moved here and is never in the news here ever so i just thought that was sort of weird so i had the opportunity to write a bunch of other books after the first book and uh the offers i was getting were like i couldn't understand i don't think my agent knew who i was or any of these publishers because they'd be like why don't you go try dan harman's biography i'd be like what i'm surprised i'm surprised you turned that down. That sounds pretty juicy. So anyone out there reading Dan Harmon's biography. That's right.

My fingerprints are all over it. It's not Cliff, and it's apparently not Dan. That's right. Although there is an interesting thing in publishing. You get paid more if your name as a ghost writer is not on the book like twice as much money and if your name is on it yeah in lieu of payment you get credit or without credit you get like double the cash but it seems like a lowly existence to write for somebody else and well i mean it's dan harman there's going to be all sorts of twists and turns yeah that that book really writes itself yeah yeah yeah so i had offers like that and like what else in that vein did you get off like a publisher was

like i want you to write about the modern comedy boom we'll talk about like the secret netflix contracts and podcasts and uh other than stop podcasting yourself i don't listen to any uh podcasts right kind of yeah and other than other than stop podcasting yourself this show, I don't watch any Netflix shows. That felt real. Yeah. We couldn't agree on numbers. That's in Netflix.

They kept passing a piece of paper and we would write more and go back to them. They assigned Adam Sandler's director to you. I would love it. So is this the same agent now that that you were working with before or did you have no i got a good agent he's the same guy he does all the comedy books so he did like patten oswald's book and mark maron's book and the onion books and anybody who does like a comedy related book pretty much he represents but i only really like

doing like history stuff but right this new book is like a combination of history and uh contemporary stuff sort of showcasing the fact that there's like indigenous comedians for the first time in any substantial amount of numbers uh over a hundred like native sketch performers stand-ups improvisers uh in america and Canada. So I figured I'd be using my platform to do something good, you know? Yes. That's 100 sales. That's 100 guaranteed sales right there. Or 100 guaranteed free books I got to ship in the mail.

Oh, yeah. Yes, yes. Yeah, yeah. One of the stories that you're telling is about a guy who lives, like, somewhere near Minnesota or not really near minnesota and he has to drive for like six hours to go yeah john roberts yeah he lives in red lake red lake nation which is minnesota yeah he uh he drives like five hours to do an open mic in minneapolis and then five hours home that's the only place he can get uh stage time he's got like

10 kids he He drives home. I don't know if he stays up and then gets them ready for school and then goes to sleep or something. But yeah, he's got like a tough, tough, arduous drive. There's a lot of indigenous comics who do, you know, urban venues or rural venues.

Everybody's different. But yeah, he's one of the main people I start the book off with. And then it goes from like the past to the present, or sorry then it goes from the present to the past, present to the past. And I chronicled Charlie Hill, who was the first Native American comedian to do network television, did the Richard Pryor show in 1977, then did Johnny Carson in 1978. And he was one of the first sort of Native dudes to appear on TV as himself, like as a regular person rather than a stereotype that existed in the past. So he's right. He's sort of central to the story. And the name of the book, We Had a Little Real Estate Problem is the punchline to one of his jokes that he did on

the Richard Pryor show. Wow. What was the Richard Pryor show? That's something I'm completely unaware of. It was a sketch comedy show in 1977 that only lasted well they did five episodes and only four aired and it was because wow prior prior quit and he just didn't want to do a show but it was um what if they kept going with the show after he quit they're like well we got the name the richard pryor show so we're gonna keep hearing we've got to call it the pryor family starring marklin baker yeah there was a show i think i told you this story in the past gram there was a show a few years later called pryor's place which was a richard pryor program and i remember i had a writing teacher in toronto named lauren frohman and he would always name drop richardryor. He would go,

when I was writing for Pryor, in the 70s, when I was writing for Pryor, and everybody in the class was like, wow, he was like another Paul Mooney. Like he wrote all the great Richard Pryor stand-up acts. And then one day I was in a video store when there was still VHS, and I was flipping through the children's section, and I found this show called Pryor's Place and it was a picture of Richard Pryor and a bunch of Sid and Marty Croft puppets it was a Saturday morning series and it was written by my writing teacher

when I was writing for Pryor yeah when I was writing picture pages for Bill Cosby oh man the um yeah just the uh picture pages for Bill Cosby. Oh, man. Yeah, just the, like the way that, you know, there's a guy in Canada,

I won't say his name, but he said that somebody said that a newspaper said that he was Canada's George Carlin. And that was because he called himself that in an interview, and then the interview was run. It was him saying it, but it was,

you know, that it is. Yeah. Globe and mail. A man who calls himself Canada's George. Oh man. That is awesome. That is awesome.

But like, okay. Take me through a little bit. Like writing a book, what do you do? Everybody says you have to do an outline, and that's where I quit. Do you want to write a book? Is this what this is about? No, I just am fascinated by anybody who can.

You mean to sell it in the first place? Is that what you're talking about? Or to actually write it? Because when you actually. Oh, yeah. Do you have to pitch it first and then they say, okay, write it.

Oh, yeah. It's a nightmare because I can't write proposals. It's like technical writing and it's sort of like pitching a TV show. You have to convince the person that you're pitching to

that it's their idea, basically. If it's your idea, they're going to turn it down or try and change it. And if it's their idea... Actually, my first book, The Comedians, wasn't really my idea. My idea was to write a book about comedians and the mafia in the 30s, 40s, 50s, and 60s. And then they were like, why don't you also write about podcasts?

It's always, I'm sorry guys, with all due respect, it's always podcasts. It's very cool. Yeah, there's a lot of people who read books listen to podcasts. It's just a fact. Our podcast, though, like, you know, remember Donahue in the 80s at the end of the episode? They'd say, for a transcript of today's program, phone 1-800-TEXT. We do sell a transcript. Because we just love to read about podcasts or read the dialogue of podcasts.

The notion that somebody would, yeah, well, that was a great episode. I got to get a transcript of that. That guy mumbled mumbled a lot well i want to know what he said well for your birthday we'll reenact that episode somewhere in america in some attic in ohio some fucking lunatic has an attic of like thousands of donahue transcripts just sit i'm going on ebay right now and trying to find them donahue or maybe oprah or i remember they had like a toll-free it was like we'll call 1-800-333-TEXT and you get your transcript and sally jesse rafael i think as well yeah didn't oprah i think oprah had at the time i think there must have been some kind of legal thing that i was a sally jesse man i never watched oprah in those days no okay yeah she was what was... What was her bent? Was she...

Her bent was that she had red horn-rimmed glasses. Okay, for $11.91 US, $15 Canadian, you can get the 1993 episode of Donahue entitled, You Too Can Make the Colonel's Chicken Twinkies. How did that sustain a whole episode? You too can make the Colonel's chicken, comma, Twinkies. So the transcript is different than the eBay listing. The Colonel's chicken, Twinkies, Big Macs, and more.

Recipe detectives reveal secret. See, that transcript makes sense, though, because if they were telling you on TV, you'd be going way too fast to get the recipe down. There's some logic to that one. But if it's just an interview with, you know, somebody who's been molested or something. Right, yeah.

That was the next show. There's nothing in between. Was Don the next Joe. Yeah, so we couldn't, there's nothing in between. Was Donahue also, like, I watch very little of him, but he went in the audience, right? Yeah, that was his thing. Donahue's thing was that he always played devil's advocate. So he would give, like, a point of view that he didn't agree with just to stir up the audience.

And then they would want to, like, confront, you know. And then he would do the like confront you know and then he would do the other point of view same thing he would really bait everybody right he was married to marlo thomas maybe he still is and he met marlo thomas on the show when she was a guest like talking about that girl or whatever yeah oh he met he met them i thought you said you met her and i was like oh congratulations on your relationship. No, no. Donahue.

Yeah, Donahue. Donahue Graham. Yeah, Graham. He's married to Marla Thomas. From Free to Be You and Me. That's right. Because that era is over. They don't do those type of shows anymore.

No. Where it's asking the audience their thoughts. Although I was flipping through the channels the other day and Jerry Springer is still on. Really? He is? I don't know if they're new episodes, but they're on. I should have checked it out because... Right, if it was just classics from the vault.

Yeah. Do you remember when they used to rent uncensored Jerry Springer? Oh, yes. Yeah, yeah. And there was also Cops, too hot for TV. Jerry Springer like uncensored jerry springer yes yeah yeah and there was also cops too hot for tv jerry springer uncensored that was a big thing back in those days yeah there was a lot of blurring a boob that fell out of a shirt during a fight i don't see that boob 1-800-333-TEXT for a transcript of the uncensored Jerry Springer

yeah it's just redacted yeah my friend when we were in high school my friend had a dad that went out of town for the whole weekend so that's what we did as we watched Jerry Springer's Too Hot for TV as a group and you took care of each other and yourselves but like didn't for a while jerry springer and then jerry springer's like security guard or

something at a show steve wilkos yeah steve wilkos and he but he would became like an interviewer guy he wasn't just kicking people out of the audience the whole show is just him telling people to sit down today's topic sit down while i make the colonel's chicken the colonel's chicken twinkies oh man yeah but like how did i'm surprised i'm surprised jerry springer never uh became president of the united states seems like there's still time he he seems like the type of guy who would right wasn't he mayor of cleveland or something at some point cincinnati i think but he was i think he's

maybe too decent i think he's like uh you know yeah like the way that donald trump is like pretends to be classy uh i think jerry is like pretends to be classy. I think Jerry Springer pretends to be trashy. Well, you should be his campaign manager, for God's sake, with us looking like that. Rhymed pretty much. Yeah, that's true. But like how, so he was the mayor of Cincinnati. Where did, like Geraldo was maybe a reporter that got his own show but where are these people like where do they come from Geraldo was considered like a real like uh you know the first sort of

celebrity Latino journalist in the early 70s so it was like a big deal when I think he was with ABC News and then he had his own late night talk show called Good Night America and it was Don Imus was the sidekick it's like from the 70s it's from 73 or 74 and it's sort of like uh got this sort of it's manufactured but it was supposed to have this sort of like latino power theme to it there's an episode you can find on youtube where he interviews freddie prince and they're like talking about you know like latino representation it's like from 73 or 74. And Freddie Prinze, it didn't age very well,

but Freddie Prinze says, we need more Geraldo Rivera. You're an inspiration to my generation. Yeah, an army of Geraldo Rivera. It turns out we ended up getting more Freddie Prinzes. Yeah, that's right. That's right. Yeah, Geraldo Rivera Jr. is also a terrible actor, let's face it. And then Sally Jessie Raphael came out of radio.

She was sort of like a female Larry King. She would do like an all-night. I used to listen to it when I was six for some reason. Good night. Cliff, if I come upstairs and you're listening to that radio show again, so help me God. But it was on all night. Like she was like Larry King. She'd come on at like midnight and take calls until like five in the morning the sally jesse rafael uh and she actually

had a voice not to be mean but she had a voice that sort of sounded like larry king's like this chain smoking gruff voice you know which was good for me at all okay but they did have a similar uh timber you know i don't think you can i don't think i don't think you can voice shame people i don't think that's uh we're there yet what if you you know well i feel like there's a way to voice shame people i just we haven't quite figured out but we'll figure it out yeah i mean we're if anyone If somebody talks to you and then you go... But that's just belittling their entire being. That is not just their voice. Oh, ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma.

Is it? I'm belittling their entire being. Oh, I'm deep some kind podcasting. Ma-ma-ma-ma-ma. Well, that's not how I sound. Ma-ma-ma-ma-ma. Balky. Ma-ma-ma-ma-ma. I, boo, boo, boo, Belky. Boo, boo, boo, boo. I'm not the one who brought up Belky.

Oh, fuck. See, I make fun of others when in reality I'm projecting what I actually sound like. Now, Cliff, you were last on the show, episode 66, back when you lived in Vancouver. That's right. Back when we were allowed to be in the same room all together yes well we on the same we were also allowed for the decade that followed um um i think i just uh a few months ago we had becky johnson on and she was uh she was the biggest gap between episodes and i i just want to think say that i

think you're now the biggest gap between episodes oh there you go hey that's a lot that's a it's watershed moment that's the right thing so yeah i will take the show i should take pride in this yeah i mean clear insult to my well we decided to give it take you a decade give you a decade off all right yeah to um did you you to process you didn't live you didn't live in vancouver for a long time and you still don't and we we never did these zoom calls until we had to yeah but it's nice that we were able to talk to you and like uh i love i love how much showbiz history you just have at the ready. May I be flaky for a moment?

I love how much history we have, because this year, it'll be 20 years since we met. Yeah. I think I talked about this last time I was on your show, on episode 66. We met in a ditch. We were walking to Plaza of Nations Yuck Yucks. Yes. We actually didn't meet in the ditch. It was after the ditch. But I was walking in front of you,uck Yucks. Yes. We actually didn't meet in the ditch.

It was after the ditch. But I was walking in front of you, and I could see you over my shoulder. And I was like, who's this fucking guy walking in a ditch? This is my ditch. Yeah. Again, I was projecting. I had a dumb little goatee at the time. You had a dumb little goatee. And I was like, who's this guy in a ditch with a goatee?

Better not be going where I'm going. And then we showed up at this horrible comedy club which had the worst location you did have to walk through a ditch yeah if you were a pedestrian to get like everything else was was boarded up there was like yeah fields and then like a big parking lot and just it was hard to get to and uh for that reason the club was always empty there was never an audience I remember we walked in together. I think it was the first time either of us had been there to sign up for their open mic night. And the owners of the club were sitting at the bar.

And I was like, hey, yeah, I would like to sign up for the open mic night. And they're like, just have a seat. We'll call your name. And I was like, you don't know our names. They're like, just have a seat. We'll call your name. I'm like, are you sure? Because really, I don't think our names. They're like, just have a seat. We'll call your name. I'm like, are you sure? Because really, I don't think you know who we are.

And then we took a seat and they did not call our names. That's right. Did they call any names? Sam Easton. Sam Easton was, yeah, he got on the show. There was another guy. What was his name? Oh, man.

Jose Garza. I don't think Jose was there yet. I don't think he was around yet. But I know Kevin Fox hosted the show. jose garza i don't think jose was there yet i don't think he was around yet but i know kevin fox hosted the show and then uh i don't know if you and i went together if i went by myself and then i took the bus to urban well for the first time after that because it was always tuesdays right um in those days yeah yeah yeah um we uh graham if we have sam eason on the show he will dethrone cliff as the longest gap.

Graham is trying to distance himself from his open mic past. Yes, that's right. I'm ashamed of it. Those two guys that own the club, I remember eventually the club shut down and the last that I ever saw of either of them was I was buying a pack of cigarettes

in a uh tiny little uh you know newspaper slash tobacco store yeah and one of the guys's pictures were on the wall for being a lottery winner then he won six hundred thousand dollars couldn't happen to a nicer guy yeah he won six hundred thousand dollars wow which i don't understand the logic of the store putting up those photos it it's to imply like this is a lucky store yeah he won it there yeah maybe anybody could say yeah yeah or you're not allowed to sell to that guy anymore because the six hundred thousand comes out of the store. It comes out of the till. Oh,

uh, have you guys ever played the lottery? I didn't, but I always thought that was weird. They used to, I don't know if they still do this, but they used to publish a newspaper with photos of all the winners with giant oversight novelty checks. And it was just like criminal,

any criminal who wanted to commit a home invasion had this perfect map of every place to hit. It's, it's, uh, I would love to win a lottery, but they do have to take your picture and like do a tiny press conference with you.

Yeah. And you need, and you need space in your house for that giant novelty check. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And then if you say something horrible during the press conference, the lottery commission has to back away

from you. Actually, that's actually a good plan, because then they won't publish it. They'll be like, actually, you keep the check, but... Yeah, we're not going to feature you. I would take the giant novelty check, because I don't think you can cash it, right? It's just a giant novelty check.

And then I would hold on to it until Timmy's Christmas telethon came around and I'd be a big hero. I'd show up with the giant novelty check like it was. But it's got the right void on the front of it. So they give you the money. They give you a regular check, I assume, as well. I don't think you get it all at once, is my understanding.

In Canada, you do. In Canada, you get a lump sum. In America, you can choose a lower lump sum or installments. But every one of those installments is taxed, right? Yeah, and the lump sum is taxed as well, but not in Canada. Canada, it's lump sum tax-free. Do they still do the thing on TV where they would have like a, what do you call it? It almost looked like a gumball machine with the balls that blew up oh yeah it was so exciting they should they don't demonstrate

they don't do it on tv anymore that was so exciting in the news at like 649 p.m 649 they would shoot out of a tube and they would pull the ball and yeah it was called kingo bingo in calgary and uh remember results are not official until validated never forget um you uh it might interest you both to know that the canucks vancouver canucks top line is the 649 line wow number six number 40 and number nine pretty good it's uh they arranged it that way i assume yeah i mean they're terrible they hate each, but they got to do it for marketing. Have either of you ever played actual bingo? Like in a bingo hall?

When I was in high school, it was like, I don't know what the reason was. It was like community service. You had to work at this bingo hall across the road. Where did you grow up? This was actually graham knows exactly where it is because he don't ask questions but he stayed at my parents house once um

the south slocan british columbia between nelson and casagar and in the evenings uh at certain times a year the high school students would have to like serve coffee to these degenerate gamblers or like sell them bingo degenerate gamblers or like sell them bingo cards or sell them cigarettes like it was in the days when you could just chain smoke like crazy and i don't remember why if i think maybe if you got in trouble like sent to the principal's office then you'd have to sell cigarettes and pour coffee at the bingo hall like in the evenings um but it was like a rural bingo hall so it was even weirder you know it was like people traveled to get to this random and every one of them drove home drunk yes absolutely

we saw it by serving them as much booze as possible i remember when i i did the same thing because my brothers played hockey and you had to like fundraise and one of the ways was you went worked at the bingo hall and i remember in the like uh orientation they said uh okay so uh if there's a fire and there probably will be because people there were these garbage cans at the end of the tables that was just filled with bingo cards and people would regularly throw their cigarettes in the right start of fire we'll finish that sentence if there's a fire and they're probably fire yell fire so that we could come put it out fire bingo fire bingo fire bingo a big thing around here i don't know if it's everywhere but uh we get a thing in our our mailbox regularly and my dad used to get them too uh like high schools to raise funds would sell manure like the rugby team will bring over manure for you this is in the old west this is for the yes to drop on uh biff's grandfather griff mad dog mad dog 10 um no it's um it was from it's for gardening

right yeah but like i got one in the mail the other day and i i i'm so worried that i would estimate the wrong amount and end up with a cart full um yeah I think that at my school you had to sell popcorn, seemed to be the thing, which was way readily available in any... Yeah, I think popcorn is probably worthless. There's not much value, street value. Yeah, exactly. Manure, you can't just go over the street and grab some manure. You know you've got a lousy product when literally shit is more valuable

than your product. Yeah, it's like, did you ever have to do that, Dave? Boy. Any selling or community service? No, I mean, boy, I was a Boy Scout, but I don't think we did anything we collected cam you know some you know uh some heavy bedding um no i don't yeah like i i that kind of thing of like selling wrapping paper or magazine

subscriptions wrapping paper that's another class i think they would send it home and the expectation would just be like get your parents to buy two rolls of wrapping paper and you're off the hook do you guys remember grit they used to advertise it in comic books sell grit they used to have these ads in comic books where it's like you could earn prizes a telescope a binoc, a fishing rod by selling grit. And it was like some children's newspaper that they would send you a bunch of stuff on consignment. And if you sold enough, then you would earn a pair of binoculars. If you look like an old Archie comics or old Superman, basically every single one of those had an ad for grit. G-R-I-T, grit.

Yeah, I remember all the like like just a page of things you could get but i didn't know how yeah you had to sell yourself well not yourself i drove past a uh a pink mary k cadillac today cool was it old style or brand no it was an suv it was like a new suv wow pink cat do you ever see those with the like and it has mary k written on the and it's like a reward for selling a lot of one of my friends in high schools mom was a mary k and so he the car he got that she she handed down to him was this pink mary k cadillac and he drove to school every day never like it was. It was the only one like it. I never saw another Mary Kay car on the road, but he got a car.

Can you imagine someone coming to your house? People still come to my house and want donations or whatever. Avon calling. Yeah, wanting to sell you makeup. Maybe we could set up a demonstration where uh you bring a bunch of your friends over and we give you i mean i guess you're all getting makeovers so what you're saying is the mary kay market is really dying right now no i think it must be because people have those uh you know doorbell cameras and they can just ignore you my my aunt was uh she she had everything in Tupperware. So she would regularly visit a Tupperware party.

And you name it, she had the Tupperware version of it. She had the thing that you pour cereal into so that it stays fresh. It all rules. Tupperware is awesome. Not even the brand. I'm not such a label whore that I need to have Tupperware brand Tupperware. You know what my problem is keeping the lids with the bottoms they should have like idiot strings to just keep those things together yes do people know what idiot strings are with keep your mitts on yeah yeah strings through through the mitts. You were really made.

Is that Canadian slang? Maybe. I've never heard that phrase, so probably. Yeah. Just so you know. You're Canadian, though. Yeah. No, not really.

You're from the Kootenays. I am. But, you know, I thought pilot season was a universal phrase. It ain't. Well, but if it's not a phrase in los angeles why does it exist yeah exactly the uh is there anything else like that that when you talk to people come down from canada that they have like a well you know i just did my i just recorded the audio book and the director was on the the horn from new york and he would

stop me whenever i did something Canadian. And I know all the obvious ones, but there were ones I didn't realize I was saying. So anything with an O-R, I was saying O instead of A. And he would stop me. He said, you said sorry instead of sorry. You know, that type of thing. You've got to train your mouth.

Nobody can flag my abouts anymore, but there's weird things that spring up every now and then. I wish I could think of one off the top of my head. But like the about thing, I just said it like the way that you should say it. Didn't I? Or did I say it with an accent? Well, it's not even an accent.

Because of the parody of what a Canadian sounds like, nobody understands the distinction. But it's just the duration of how long you say it. So in the States, they say about, and in Canada, we say a butt, basically. Like we say it really fast. Or a boat. Oh, yeah. I've always heard it was a boot,

but the Canadians I've met, it's a lot of a boat. And by Canadians, I mean Ontario. And it's usually short. It's like a boat as opposed to about. But yeah, nobody ever said a boot. Although one time when I moved to Toronto, I met a guy who was from some town named

after a beaver. I can't remember what it was. Beaverville. Ontario has a lot of places like that. And he said a boot. And I was like, you fucker, you're the guy. You're the whole reason that Americans make fun of us. It's you from fucking Beaverville. he's john all at

johnny appleseed but uh walking around every state of the union i remember his name too his name was lloyd he always wore pajama pants instead of pants hmm what year was this 1998 yeah that was a good year for just wearing pajama pants it was a prime prime rave year I think yeah was he did he live in the dorms I think he commuted I think he commuted from Toronto to Beaverville

sure please Beaverton um Beaverville is in Saskatchewan Beaverville's my father's name

I'm Jeff Jeff Beaverville Beaverman uh what's going on with you Dave I'm Jeff. I'm Jeff Beaverville. Jeff Beaverman. What's going on with you, Dave? Well, I wrote this book. What's it called?

It's called We Had a Bit of a Real Estate Problem. What? By Cliff Nesterov. Oh, you ghost read it? Yeah, I ghost wrote it. You don't see my name on it cha-ching and it's well basically it's what first nations comedy is like through the eyes of dan harman and podcasts um so uh not much is going on with me the other day i uh ran into you that was the highlight of

my week same here it's gonna be it's gonna be waiting till you hear what i have to talk about um so i uh uh it was a saturday and it was just like what what are we gonna do i gotta i gotta get these kids out of the house yeah because is it because they're going wild in the house or just like you feel an obligation these girls have gone wild my kids are they're flashing me that's another one you can order yeah with the jerry springer yeah yeah that's true uh no they uh yeah it's just like it's not that they're going wild it's that i know if we don't do anything, soon it'll be 6 o'clock. And what have we done? We need to have a gap between morning TV and evening TV.

Or even morning TV and daytime TV. There needs to be a window where i can turn off the tv so like a little pause between the view and uh let's make a deal it was saturday so you know the view is not on no they don't play the best of on saturday i've been too hot for the week they actually do like the view and the talk they meet up and they do a like a real crossover event yeah they have it out joy behar versus sarah gilbert it's the crossover fans are dying to see um so i uh i bribed the the girls i said uh hey do you want to come for a drive with me and we'll go get some donuts nice

and I tried to word it in a way where they weren't suspicious of what the drive was going to be but I was like oh yeah and we'll just go for a drive and we'll after I got them in the car I was like you know we'll go to the plant nursery yeah we're going to go to the plant nursery then I'm going to drop you two off

at the dentist and I was like because i really want to get this plant uh but i know the kids all if i said do you want to go to the plant nursery and then the donut shop they would say no just categorically no so i said do you want to go for a drive and get some donuts nice that's good parenting right there yeah um and i could tell that they were not impressed with when they were buckled into the car and they couldn't unbuckle themselves uh they weren't impressed with the fact that we were going to the plant nursery i feel like that was a uh an errand that i've been with my father on several times and it was the most boring in the world like there was no

fun buttons to press like in a canadian tire there was no gumball machine but i need we look i we need a little bit of privacy from our neighbors so we want to put a privet on the deck i don't know what that is me either what's a privet it's like a waxed leaf uh shrub okay if you wanna you can buy them uh very expensive they're they're like topiaries um like shaped into like balls that are very tall follow up question what's a topiary topiary is what edward scissorhands would cut like a shape a shaped plant okay but for cheaper you can just buy it on its own and have it grow wild and block your neighbor's view into your living room yeah sounds good um why why do you why do you hate your neighbors so much we just don't have uh we the window to like where our

neighbors would be able to see and we it just wouldn't work for curtains right uh so we just we're just putting something outside, just, you know, for a bit of privacy anyway. Why don't you introduce yourself and say, hey, you creep. I know what you're doing. No, they can only, like, it would only be like, it's not even our neighbors.

We're worried about prowlers. Peeping Toms. Peeping Toms seeing us in the kitchen um what are they making put it in the oven yeah stick it in and pull it out um so i tell i but then uh i even i abandoned that as uh as i was driving my daughters around. I was like, well, maybe let's go to the donut shop first. And so we were driving to Duffin's Donuts. Oh, nice.

And on the way there, I pointed out, oh, yeah, there's the graveyard. And they were like, let's go to the graveyard. Yeah, they've heard the Monster Mash. They know what happens and i was like with pleasure and so we uh got some donuts and then on the way back stopped at the graveyard and i it was a great like a morning of you know explaining death yeah yeah hey it's time it's time um so mr hooper's not around to uh explain it on a very special episode anymore it's the father's responsibility so we went and like they know

halloween they know they know like what spooky means right and so we went for a little walk through the graveyard we stopped uh and i had to explain war to them oh wow this was a this was a big conversation like where where i parked the car there were so many uh soldiers buried from 19 like between 1951 and 1953 maybe not buried but memorialized uh and i was like did we lose that many in korea i like i don't remember learning that i don't remember were we there were we in korea yeah all i know about korea was like a clinger sure yeah and hawkeye andips. I think that's the big three. Klinger was the one who dressed in dresses, right? Yeah, it was like Jamie Farr.

Jamie Farr, yeah. The great Jamie Farr. What was his thing was if he wore a dress that they would take him out of the military? Yeah, exactly. But he was wearing it for years. Graham, I remember one of the great Elko Cal prizes was a glass that you gave away of Jamie Farr. It was like the Calgary Stampede, and it had a drawing of Jamie Farr on this glass. It was, what was it called?

It was like a dinner theater that he had appeared at called Stage West. It was called Stage West. And Jamie Farr was on the glass. That's right. And then Jamie Farr did a bunch of retirement commercials or something. Yeah, he was really common in Canada doing regional, like

Grand Marshal. He did some commercials with Alex Rocco, where they were on a golf course. Wow. The two great voices of our time. Alex Rocco. Sex symbols of our time. Yeah. Who's Alex Rocco? All they need is Dan Hed time, Alex Rocco. Sex symbols of our time. Yeah. Who's Alex Rocco?

All they need is Dan Hedaya. Alex Rocco was, was he the dad from Rags to Riches? He was Mo Green in The Godfather. He's the guy with the big bushy eyebrows. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. He's in all kinds of movies in the 70s. Anyway, so I explained Death to My Daughters. Now, do you feel like they got it or no okay um

well they i mean they they do but they did not get what a graveyard was poppy who's four was very disappointed that she couldn't see any dead people yeah she was like where are the dead people where are the dancing skeletons playing their bodies like xylophones for two days she complained my dad took us to the graveyard we didn't even get to see any dead people yeah so and i would i explained if you saw dead people it would be so first of all so scary and so sad yeah but uh then does she try to play off like mom would let us see dead bodies if she took us out she'd find a dead body for us to poke with a stick and i think i've only been to a graveyard like twice before so this was like and when i went when i was a kid i think we went

with my grandma and visited where my grandpa was who i never met but it was like this is where i'll be buried and i remember like being scolded going through the cemetery being like don't step there don't step there that's a dead body you're stepping on a body don't step there don't step there oh my god yeah i my mom was a big fan of going to every graveyard on any holiday we were on we'd have to go to the graveyards in the city so you know what i did go to i've been to the uh one in my grandma's hometown the one i had already been been to in Vancouver, and I went to the famous one in Paris. With Jim Morrison and

you know, Oscar Wilde. Next to each other, as they both wished. Oscar Wilde was like, hey, one day. I recently went for a little bike ride here in Hollywood and by accident, I did bike through a graveyard, so it wasn't that big of an in Hollywood and by accident, I did bike through a graveyard.

So it wasn't that big of an accident, but by accident I stumbled across, uh, the grave of Don Adams. And there's a, there's a, like an engraving on the headstone of him, like talking into a shoe on the,

on the headstone. And then the, uh, epith, epith, epith, epithet, epithet,

epithet, epithet, epithet, epithet, epithet, epithet, epithet, epithet,

epithet, epithet, epithet, epithet, epithet, epithet, epithet, epithet,

epithet, epithet, epithet, epithet, epithet, epithet, epithet, epithet, epithet, epithet, epithet, epithet, epithet, epithet, epithet, epithet, epithet, epithet, epithet, epithet, epithet, epithet, epithet, epithet, epithet, epithet, epithet, epithet epithet epithet epitaph epitaph i was gonna say epithet but that's different right that's sort of a slur yeah that's right which is by the way what i want on my gravestone fuck this guy big arrow down i'm in hell but what was the epithet don adams epithet the epitaph was like insulting like his family obviously like paid for it and was like don adams beloved comedian actor sometimes difficult like sometimes difficult and then like loved the horses i'm, you're saying he's a gambling degenerate on the stone. It was like their revenge is on this headstone.

Also, do you think that it was his idea to have a picture of him talking on a shoe or did that, was that made posthumously? Is that like his family saying, well, this is, this is how people are going to remember him talking into a shoe.

Oh, it's a good question, but I think he probably by that point in his life, you know you know no maybe he asked for a drawing of him on uh check it out the classic grocery store sitcom made in calgary you don't remember that dave uh no i don't oh my goodness don adams was he was like a spokesperson for some kind of denture or something in canada he he literally was in hawk to the mob to the tune of like 150 000 like he owed the mafia money for gambling he would play las vegas in the 60s as a stand-up comic not because he wanted to pay play las vegas but because he had

to pay off his debts so he'd have to perform headline at the sands hotel for free to pay off his debts and so i had heard that when he started this horrible canadian sitcom check it out as opposed to check it out check it out yeah which was filmed in calgary maybe one of the only sitcoms made in calgary it starred don adams as the manager of this grocery store he had a mustache by that time yeah yeah yeah it was like shot on shot on videotape you know and uh not on uh tripods at all just lots of handhelds real shaky and blurry and even when i was seven i remember thinking god this is the worst thing i've ever seen but i always wondered why don adams came to calgary to make a sitcom and then i heard from a dude that i interviewed he goes oh yeah he was paying off his uh gambling

debts to the mob so he would go to can Canada and get all this quick money doing commercials. And that's when you could do that. And nobody would know that you went up to Canada. Yeah. Right. It was like doing a commercial in Japan. Yeah. Yeah. Do you,

so like when you die. Yeah. Wait, I'm just learning about this now. Explain. Do you, so I presume the one time I wrote a will was when abby and i were both going to be on the same flight without our kids yeah uh but i don't know if

i've updated that but i didn't make any preparations for i don't think i made preparations for what to do with my body i don't care yeah um. Um, but, uh, yeah. Like, is that something that you can be like, here's what I want on my gravestone, but the family could be like, actually you were sometimes difficult.

Is there enough space to slide that in? Um, yeah. Uh, like, but there's people who plan, they not only figure out their will they like plan their own funerals that's my grandfather did that well i'm the kind of guy who laughs at a funeral

what does that mean it's from a song i soon will understand um uh do you have either of you ever written a will not officially i think i i wrote one to my brother because he gave me money to buy cigarettes and i was like if i die you get all the money that uh you know what that i was coming to me on my birthday so yeah and if neither of us are married when we're 40 the brother trap what do you want to do what do you want to happen to your uh how do you want what what do you want when you die i really you mentioned uh uh monster mash and now i can't get it out of my head and now i'm thinking like that would be good that would be like a good funeral song wouldn't it like it's

a graveyard smash that would be sort of fun some people want their their funerals to be like happy right like a festival this is the way you would like it yeah celebrate me yeah so monster mash would be great maybe i wouldn't mind yeah i like yeah it's either happy or sad it's never scary so i think yeah that's a good move spooky i would you know what i quite like uh i like landfills so I wouldn't mind if you just tossed me in a landfill then I could be around all the neat stuff that people threw away somebody would scavenge you

can't believe they threw out Graham Clark rats have eaten most of them still good I can sell this on eBay these bones can be turned into a xylophone Bats have eaten most of them. Still good. I can sell this on eBay. Yeah. These bones can be turned into a xylophone. Played by a skeleton.

Do you want any memorial to you? No. Yeah. I feel that like, if I'm, just cremate me. Take my organs, give them to whoever. To the highest bidder. Burn me up. I don't need to be spread anywhere just like burn me up and throw me away and uh the you know the less the less said about me the better

certainly nothing needs to be written in stone about me um yeah wasn't there like a thing uh it's going around the internet like years and years ago somebody that uh commissioned his own park bench that said like here this is memory of this guy who hated this park and everyone in it oh yeah how do you feel about funny headstones when people try and make a joke on their headstone have you you seen those? I'm for them. I haven't seen any in real life. Like I'm with stupid with an arrow pointing to the next plot, you know, that type of stuff. And the next plot is somebody who died in Korea.

Yeah. Merv Griffin had a famous one that said, like, I will not be right back after this message or something like that. Oh, that's good. That's pretty good. Yeah. Yeah.

We, you know, one thing I noticed was there's still so much room in this cemetery. Like I expected. You can step wherever you want. Yeah. You can step wherever you want, but you can, like, I thought real estate is such at a pre, at such a premium in the city. I was like, well, surely every plot is spoken for but no there's you could uh get buried today hmm no money down no money down oh that sounds pretty good will it be approved

without a credit check oh man what about a show like that where it's uh house hunting but grave hunting grave hunting? Grave hunting? Or like, just people want to flip a grave? Well, we buy this grave for cheap and then we're going to, you know, polish it up. With your host, Bobby Boris Pickett. I read that guy's autobiography. It is the worst book I've ever read. If you want to read the worst book ever written,

Bobby... For the listener, Bobby Boris Pickett, the singer of The Monster Mash. Yes, exactly. So that's all he did. He never did anything

other than sing Monster Mash. Well, you wouldn't need to. Was he a singer even? No, he was like a failed actor. He was like a California surfer turned actor who hit on this...

And he hanged himself in your apartment building if only if only that would be a yeah that would be a graveyard smash but he uh he wrote this book and because that's all he did it's like just padded with things that you would never put in a book it's like literally there's a section where he says, watch Jerry Maguire last night. Great movie. Like in his autobiography. I mean, it's not wrong. He's writing it up to that present minute. The name of the chapter.

Show me the money. That's actually what I want on my grave. Show me the money? No. Watch Jerry Maguire last night. Great movie. And then Bobby Borstein. no watch jerry mcguire last night great movie and then bobby boris um what's up with you graham um like really nothing uh monumentally nothing but uh two two things that i was able to scrape at the bottom of the barrel uh one is i'm now uh officially

addicted to a specific type of orange okay is this uh are we gonna guess i want to play guess the orange yes guess the orange absolutely now is this when you peel yourself or like is it a peel one yeah it's a peel one yeah so it's asian in uh persuasion yeah it's like the asian persuasion is it a sumo ding ding ding right at first guess the sumo i bought it at whole foods i didn't look at the price but i was like this looks Actually, it looks obscene. It does look like, like, I don't know, a nipple at the very least. Like maybe it's a,

like they're using them to make fleshlight molds. Yeah. I was picturing like the buttocks of a sumo wrestler with a little ribbon sort of thong thing. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know why they call them sumo. I guess they're big. Or it's racist.

Maybe it's racist. It could be racist. Oh, that's true. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know why they call them soup. I guess they're big? Or it's racist. Maybe it's racist. Or it's racist. It could be racist. Oh, that's true. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's always on the table. But I bought one. So the grocery store is at Whole Foods, and they have this kind of like... And you go there every day.

Every day. I wake up, I go get a grass juice, and then I come back later in the day and I get some... How can I give more of my money to Bezos? Yeah, Bezos. So there's this kind of gauntlet you have to go through to get to the cashier. And so I got all the way there, and then the cashier said that said that my that my orange cost

six dollars one one orange oh six bucks but there's nowhere for them to like you're you've been called to the thing everybody's looking at you uh you can't say oh no i forgot that i didn't like oranges or whatever all eyes are on you this could be your big break that's right there's a lot of like scouts of the audience yeah yeah quick talking to your shoe um so yeah the uh so i bought it i had to i felt like i had to that was the only thing you bought yeah i ate a six and then man oh man it was a delicious orange you know what i would have paid seven for the experience of eating that orange i mean like a blizzard costs less than that but uh i mean if it's if it's delicious if it fills that uh if it gets you from whatever 1 p.m to 5 p.m yeah i feel like it's a good snack but it was gone by the time i got to the train i ate it so fast because they peel like a mandarin orange just kind of tug on it and the orange is like peel me daddy so

and uh so yeah i ate a six dollar orange what's the most expensive piece of fruit you've ever eaten not necessarily fruit fruit or vegetable or i have been too ashamed to not buy one two five price up one time i went to whole foods and i i needed pine nuts and pine nuts i didn't realize are so expensive really uh more expensive than any nut uh but i did uh like the the cashier very kindly at all they're more expensive even at all they're more expensive than any nut and then at whole foods even more expensive right and the cashier very kindly said uh this is going to be very expensive when you when i weigh this and you don't have to buy this so that comes to mind wow talk to me because that's yeah like that was a nice service that that cashier did for you because i definitely was like as soon as they scanned it

i was like well i've been taken here most expensive produce you've ever bought cliff well i don't know but oranges not to rub it in they grow uh in the alley of hollywood for free so uh don't know what to tell you just go with a shirt and then do that kind of turn it into a bag i don't know if you ever picked an orange off a tree but they're very hard to get off the tree like if you're stealing an orange oranges grow wildly but generally they're coming off of somebody's property and hanging over the alley so you don't really want to cause a big scene if you're like a bum stealing an orange like a like a hobo stealing a pie from a windowsill but yeah yeah yeah which is also you cannot you cannot pull citrus from a tree a lime or an orange without

making an enormous ruckus you have to pull the branch down and like brace it and then like tug it and then the whole tree just makes this enormous sound, this shaking sound. So no matter what. This sounds like somebody explaining it who has done this. Yeah. So everybody knows you're stealing an orange, but if you steal them, they're free. It works the same way in Whole Foods, actually. Right. If you steal them, they're free. That's true.

That sounds wonderful. A couple of years ago, I remember remember going i think we were in palm springs and i went to the grocery store and the avocados were so big yeah and it was like whoa boy these must be local avocados are still expensive here though so it's kind of like i don't know why they do grow here but uh they're still expensive like salmon's still expensive here that's true um do we we just do salmon we don't do lobster out here right that's an east coast thing yeah lobster's but lobster is cheap on the east coast so it doesn't really make sense it doesn't seem fair like if you go to newfoundland they sell lobsters

in convenience stores which you can eat there and it's like pretty cheap i'll take one lobster and one lottery ticket please yeah it is like that they have like convenience store diners in Newfoundland, like with the Coca-Cola sign, you know, like on the awning or whatever. And then like little tables like in a diner and you just order lobster and French fries. It's amazing. Lobster is my all-time number one favorite food. And the one time I went to the East Coast. Wait, wait, wait a minute.

I was led to believe you. Ice cream. Ice cream is my favorite food. Yeah, that's right. Ice cream is the favorite food. Lobster is my favorite food yeah that's right ice cream is the favorite lobster is my favorite savory uh and the one time i went to the east coast i'm pretty sure i had swine flu because i couldn't taste anything it was 2009 it was in halifax for the comedy festival and i uh couldn't taste anything for weeks oh really yeah so you didn't you couldn't enjoy the bounty that was the east

no it was a it was a big bummer that's yeah that is a bummer did you at least get to enjoy the comedy of ron james i don't know if i did here's who i remember from that uh dat fan uh i remember going through a sound check with dat fan where he was like okay but just so you know for lighting my hair is gonna be about six inches higher than it is now so you're gonna want to put a stand in with a bucket on his head i was at that same festival uh and the year I was there Michael Winslow I love him

he was very nice to me yeah he was the nicest guy and he also went around town as a tourist and took a lot of photos and he's like doesn't resemble anybody enough that you would recognize who he is unless he was doing the sound effect

i love michael winslow and i did a tv show with him and i thought that it was going to be like sort of sad you know what's michael winslow he was like the sweetest kindest most positive guy i felt bad because i like was i was like making requests it's like dude jimmy hendrix dude jimmy hendrix like i couldn't help myself i was like love police academy for citizens on patrol and uh god damn it was fun being around michael winslow he was a good guy yeah he's i mean like his whole career has been fun yeah and like every audience loves him yeah he does electronic music festivals now where they sample his voice in real time and he fucking kills. He's not doing his dana,

but he's just making sound effects with some guy who's got a fake panda head on and is scratching. Sure, okay, Grandpa. Yeah, so he bought a very expensive orange. What? He bought a very expensive orange. but there's something else that happened which never have you have you had another sumo since have you found a cheaper sumo i found a cheaper

sumo but it's not as good as the six dollar one it doesn't hold a candle to it at all i'll still eat it and think but i'll be thinking of that. What fruit is good here? Like, do we have local fruit? I think we have crappy fruit. I think we got apples, apples. We have apples and we have,

um, like there's Barry, people come and pick berries here. If you go to the Okanagan in the summer, isn't it good? Yeah. It's P it's peaches and berries. And, but like,

yeah, if we're close to the city all you get is apples which is uh i don't like them apples do you have a favorite apple uh the big apple um apple computers and finally the granny smith my top three what do you like what's yours i like ambrosia what what is that it's just a kind of apple is it a different color than other apples or is it just i was you know between green and red and yellow a little bit of everything um yeah so about a very expensive orange the other thing no i don't even need to say another thing i think that's as good a story as ever is going to be told. Yeah, leave them wanting more.

Yeah, that's right. It's what you figure out the ending of your podcast segment. Something Cliff never learned. No, I still haven't figured it out. Should we move

on to some overheards? Please. Maximum Fun is a network by and for cool, popular people. But did you know it also has an offering designed to appeal to nerds? A show for nerds? On Maximum Fun? The devil, you say? It's true.

It's called The Greatest Generation. And they review episodes of a television program for nerds called Star Trek. They've reviewed TNG, DS9, and are now reviewing Voyager. Hey, Star Trek. My daughter enjoys that program. Well, if she enjoys that, and she enjoys humor of the flatulent variety, might I recommend she subscribe to The Greatest Generation? Hey, are you calling my kid a nerd? Boy, I ought to... Well, gotta go.

Become a friend of DeSoto by subscribing to The Greatest Generation on MaximumFun.org today! Overheard. Overheard's a segment in which it gets tougher and tougher to overhear a thing. Oh, yeah. And if you're lucky enough to grab one out of the ether, don't hold it to yourself. Share it. Pass it around. And if you want to send one to us, you can send it into

spy at maximumfund.org. I don't know what's going on with my brain today. You double-clutched on that one. Yeah, I'm pretty much... Just think about that orange. You know what I mean? That's a really cotton and I bet even if you spent $6 on another sumo it wouldn't

it wouldn't blow my mind as much and did it peel in one full swoosh that first one and since then no it's broken off into little pieces I think that's part of it right there. Yeah, they're so satisfying. The one peel that then looks like an elephant.

It's a great time to be alive. Now, we always like to start with the guest when it comes to overheards. Cliff, do you have something you've overheard? I haven't overheard, but like you say, it's getting tougher and tougher, which also means they're getting less funny and less funny. But still heard. You still, you don't have to draw on something from the past year.

You have, I believe you were last on in 2009. So anything after that is fair game. Well, see, this was not part of the information packet that was sent in advance. I got to talk to our intern yeah um he's fucked up a lot of stuff for us yeah i haven't overheard from november and like you say it's hard like i don't go out and i don't socialize anymore so the only thing i overhear is me like muttering to myself mostly like fuck when's it gonna end but i did have a pretty good overheard it's not funny but it's exciting okay uh i think in yeah i guess mid-november it must have been

not early november i guess mid-november it's was a Sunday morning. I was asleep here in my Hollywood apartment. And I was awoken by this sound outside, just like screaming, like, and it wasn't just one person. It was like a crowd, like somebody had won the Stanley Cup, just like a roaring crowd. I was like, what is that? I get out of bed, 8.30 in the morning. I open the door to my

balcony and just people screaming. I realized, oh, they just announced that Biden officially won the election. And so people were just screaming joy and like roaring. It was the weirdest thing because I thought it would die down. And it just kept getting louder and louder for two hours, like 1030 in the morning, people were roaring louder than when I woke up would die down. And it just kept getting louder and louder for two hours. Like at 1030 in the morning, people were roaring louder than when I woke up at 830. So I put on the mask. Got on, not a face mask, but the mask. You know, Jim Carrey.

Oh, yeah. Literally, that's what I thought of as well. Got on my bicycle and biked around Hollywood to be a part of this spontaneous parade that was going on. People cheering and dancing. It went on for hours somebody stop cliff it's talking with my butt or no that's a different different jim carrey movie but uh but it was so exciting and so cool and uh i'd never been a part of something like that before because usually when people like take to the streets and are like celebrating it's like at night after like somebody wins a championship and everybody's drunk and if it's vancouver they beat people up and like things on fire because we lost the championship yeah but i've never

been a part of a spontaneous celebration at 8 30 in the morning and uh well you haven't lived yeah but it was really cool so that was my overheard was just people screaming at the top of their lungs uh spontaneously and simultaneously it was a sad day So that was my overheard was just people screaming at the top of their lungs spontaneously and simultaneously. It was a sad day over here. But we know something's coming March 4th. We're going to rise up against the tyranny. Is that a date that's been set?

I feel like I saw that somewhere. All right. That makes sense. March 4th. March 4th. Oh, sure. Yeah. It's like, sense march 4th march like march oh sure yeah it's like may the 4th be with you march 4th is a thursday and uh boy okay looking forward to the mel brooks parody march shorts it's gonna be big yeah yeah it's good um dave do you have an overheard? Yeah, mine is, I went to a store.

Congratulations. Yeah. And they were at the store in the checkout line. They were selling like tote bags or like shopping bags, reusable bags. So you don't have to get a plastic bag. Right. And this reusable bag had something written on it for when you go to the grocery store and it said and it just caught my eye because i didn't quite get it and it said i'm only here because i eat food and i need more of it wit so it's like yeah you're at a grocery store yeah but like we're all that's what we're all

here for yeah like like is anyone giving you a hard time that's right you can't hang out here in the grocery store um yeah i mean i don't know it's clever is all how you absorb it i suppose yeah i mean i i'll tell you where i saw it it was at the plant nursery and i got that privet so you did get the plant but it doesn't work properly for what you want it to do it doesn't work no what do you mean it is fine oh i thought that it would didn't block out the view the way you had hoped no it's um it will when it grows oh i see it's just small for a second i thought like it blocks out the view into your house but you hope that you would still be able to see into their house no it's not a two-way plant or a one way it's more of when they're outside it's when they're on their deck and their their decks above ours and they

can look down into our place and uh i just i just need something to be yeah there's something there's a uncomfortable power dynamic to that yeah yeah and i don't like it um i'm not too worried about it because they're very rarely out there they're very they're very uh they keep to themselves quite a bit but you know more shade the better man yeah yeah absolutely um that's been my motto of my whole life more shade the better um and you're throwing a bit of shade here tonight yeah that's right sorry i get spilled on here and he's a big supporter of is podcast. Is he dead? He's dead, isn't he? No, he's alive. Oh. I think he's alive.

Yeah. Do we want to, what's the over-under? He's alive. He's alive. He's alive? Oh, yeah. I think he's dead. I think he may have died during, yeah, he's dead to me.

That's right. He owes me some money. He's dead to me. He's 85. Mm-hmm. And he's alive. Well, I shouldn't have put so much money on this bet. My overheard is courtesy of going to the thrift store.

And I went because I had bought some pants previously that didn't fit. So I was trying my luck again at the thrift store trying to buy some new pants. And there was... See, one of the thing is no matter what line i get in that's going to be the worst line so i was standing in line and there was a woman at the front that was had bought all these individual like teacups and stuff so they had to be scanned one at a time and uh and then she paid with coins and change and uh so that took forever and the guy in front of me uh he was just you know he's like kicking the ground and kind of grumbling under his breath and then he looked at me and he's like can you believe this and i was like yeah i guess i can believe it we're in line at a store and we're gonna pay money and away we

go and uh then he said to the clerk he he's like, can you call in another clerk? And which I thought was, he was a real jerky guy. And then when he got up to the thing, he was only buying like two things. But then he did the card the old fashioned way by putting the card and having to put your. So it's like, well, now you're the, you're the problem. You're the source of the credit card. What do you mean? Well, you know, like now it's all tap, right?

Now you just tap on the thing and away you go. This guy didn't have that. He had to put it in the machine and then type in the code. Chip and pin? Chip and pin. And then wait for it. That's not so slow. It's slower than tap.

Tap, but tap, look, I'm a chip and pin apologist. Because my tap doesn't work half the time yeah someone put their cell phone next to my wall one day and uh and that was it not so reliable when you said the old-fashioned way i pictured like in the old taxi cab where there's the thing you put the credit card down it goes you know yeah you get the little carbon copy referring to yeah yeah yeah and that's that's why we're at the it was at the thrift store that's their prerogative to have i i haven't been to a thrift store in a while but i assume that's that the coins are the fastest way of doing things i have not been to a thrift store that had like interact oh wow this thrift store did so

you know what i mean it's been a while that's a canadianism right interact interact yeah debit pardon me yeah oh yeah if i was recording my book for a book on tape quit saying interact yeah exactly every other page is aboutact and how tap is so good. I remember being, when tap came along, I remember being very hesitant to use tap. How come? Just because any new technology with money, I'm hesitant. Like that thing where you can take a picture of a check, I feel like, Oh, I'm going to get defrauded. Yeah,

that's true. Deposit a check by taking a picture or tap is like you, they do. Anyone can use your card and they don't need to know the code. They just tap it. Yeah. I mean, but yeah, I guess it's the same as the lottery problem is that if you take a picture of

a check and it doesn't work, they know that you have that juicy check at home. And yeah, do you, when was the last time you got a picture of a check and it doesn't work they know that you have that juicy check at home and uh yeah do you when was the last time you got a check in the mail maximum fund sends me one that's right every month and then i have to send you half after i deduct what we give the guests cliff you're gonna get a little something oh nice excited make sure it's in u.s funds please uh no do you have interact e-transfer otherwise i'm paypaling you 71 dollars canadian tire check yes not yeah money but check um now we also have overheard sent in from people all over the map. If you want to send one in to us, you can send it in to spy at MaximumFun.org. And this first one comes from a guy named Graham C. from Calgary.

What? I know. He said, now he lives in Ottawa, but I went to high school at Ernest Manning, which is now an LRT station. So he put that in, because I know where Ernest Manning used to be, and I guess it station. So he put that in the... Because I know where Ernest Manning used to be, and I guess it got plowed under to be a train station. Oh, okay. Which is as important to kids getting around.

Yeah, getting around is more important than education. This is from his son. My over-ear comes from my four-year-old son, who got up from the dinner table and yelled, Okay, I'm going to go poop. When I'm done, I'll be a man.

Wow. This is something poetic and true about that. It does sort of give you that feeling in a way. And it's the most awkward part of every bar mitzvah. No way. And it's the most awkward part of every bar mitzvah. The ceremonial from the Torah to the toilet. But then you can dance afterwards.

Yeah, sure. They hold you up on that chair, which is a toilet. They don't do that at bar mitzvah, do they? That's a wedding thing? I don't know. at bar mitzvah do they that's a wedding thing i don't know what do you mean they uh i mean the people who plan these type of things event planners their group i can make fun of right that's true um this next one comes from Amy from Auckland, New Zealand. I was riding the train with my school friends, and as an obnoxious preteen in uniform, felt my duty to talk really loudly so the whole carriage could hear our conversation. My neighbor had just had eye surgery,

which was pretty much advanced for her late 90s. I was fascinated, so I said to my mates, which they would call them This is the audiobook director who would be cutting all of this out. Let's just go to the glossy photos. So he was talking about eye surgery, and I said

yeah, they had to remove her rectum. Yeah, I do have a detached rectum. Yeah, the rectum is the eye of the butt. The audiobook director would cut this out, not because of any lost in translation, but just because of the content alone.

The rectum is the eye of the butt. This last one comes from David B. from Tennessee. Ooh, David Blaine. Yes, David Blaine. He sent a picture of himself. Poor David Berkowitz. Oh, man, I bet you David Berkowitz was so sore when david blaine came along he's the new david b what about david brenner oh yeah geez louise um my family and i were

traveling and needed to stop in a gas station to get some road snacks as we were cashing out a large group of university age kids walked in there's about 30 of them my eight-year-old said after watching them all walk in said that's the most tiktokers i've ever seen in one place yeah it's um are all kids teens they're all tiktokers by default unless you opt out yeah it's a slur it's a slur for teenagers here lies tiktokers oh yeah i mean you're still on tiktok graham yeah i i'm on tiktok i have 12 followers i uh mostly uh watch there's a there's a lot of kids on there that do scams and flams like how to get a free coke out of a machine and stuff like that i'm interested in scams and flams on tiktok and you know sure they have cute animal videos you bet you know you're gonna see a lot of those i

don't have tiktok because i'm worried that the chinese government will get into my phone by hook or by crook uh but the uh i understand that it's you don't follow people you just you end up being on you know food tiktok or uh scams and flams tiktok or uh you know uh yeah weightlifting tiktok i'm mostly on the weightlifting tiktok they mostly just said like but depending on what you've been interested in they the algorithm knows you and they give you more of that and uh the algorithm knows me and i know it and we're in love yeah and you're a big weightlifting guy and when's the last time you lifted weights graham i'll describe weights like in a gym scenario or even a home scenario yeah where you uh something that was not just a like a can of soup or not a can of soup but like something like a bag of laundry does that count as weight no what about two bags of

groceries no something something that is designed that is their weight um i don't know but when i did it my arm fell down like a little you and flopped around i definitely haven't done it since my well maybe uh oh maybe my early 30s you did some you blasted your pecs maybe there was a kettlebell that i framed in my perineum um we're not a huge fitness podcast we strive to be but look i use my own my body's own resistance and it's been resisting for years dave shumka aka henny youngman please i just you know what i just love his politeness um in addition to overheards that are written and we also accept your phone calls if you want to call us our phone number is 1-844-779-7631

that's one spy pod one like these people have hey david graham this is brett from atlanta with an overheard my daughter goes to an arts high school, and right now she's taking classes virtually, and so she has her ballet class, and she takes it in the room next to where I'm working, so I can hear what's going on, and they oftentimes will dance to piano versions of popular songs, and there was a song that kept coming up that I was very familiar with, but I could not figure out for the life of me what it was. And then one day it dawned on me that my daughter was ballet dancing to the theme song of the 1980s hit television show,

the A-Team. Oh, nice. Thanks guys. Thanks for the show. Love it. Bye. That's a very beautiful piece. Yeah, the last time I went to the ballet,

they did the same. And the Silver Spoons theme. It would be good if they did an A-Team, like, if they gave them costumes. Oh, that would be, yeah, that would be amazing. That they had to sell wrapping paper to buy. And the baller, one of the ball one of the ballerina dressed as, you know, Mr. T. Someone gave him some warm milk.

Yeah, I feel like that's as iconic a theme song as ever existed. Prove me wrong, is there one more famous? I mean, not as, not not graceful it's not graceful but that you know that could be a battle sequence during the the ballet does that exist in ballet the battle sequence no i've i mean i haven't seen ballet since before i last lifted weights yes um i've never seen ballet never never once in my life. I'm taking it on everybody's word that it exists as a thing that people go and see. But I haven't had the pleasure. I'm a big culture guy.

I'm a ballet. If I'm not at the ballet, I'm at the opera. And if I'm not at the opera, I'm... Well, then I... If you haven't got a hay penny thank god bless you and if not at the opera if a bumper sticker says i'd rather be at the opera yeah uh yeah if you're not at the ballet or the opera you have no alibi for this crime yeah i mean the word aria appears in a lot of crossword puzzles uh but other than that i couldn't tell you much about the

opera next overheard try dave graham and probable guest um this is dana calling from philadelphia and i'm calling you with an overheard um my partner and i were walking past a grocery store in the city that we shop at a lot and and they have this whole, like, cart sanitizing station that they have out front to clean all the grocery carts with. And there were two employees of the grocery store, and you could tell they were employees because they were in their uniforms, and they were on some sort of smoke break, and they were smoking cigarettes right outside the front doors of the store.

And as we were walking into the store, we hear the female worker say to the male worker, sort of like in a flirtatious tone, she was like, uh, you know, but don't take my advice. I blow off my probation officer all the time. Like, that's a really cool,

sexy thing to do. I don't know. We laughed about it for days afterwards. Off I go. Thanks. I do think it's a sexy thing to do yeah i blow off my probation officer yeah um it's a combination of blow and jerk off blow off that's why i get such great probation from them premium probation best in town that is something I don't understand

when like that part of the penal system what? the way the probation works and you have to check in with a guy yeah and like if you don't check in then a bounty hunter comes and looks for you it's a very complex system yeah but you know what it works

all right here's your final phone call hi dave hi graham hi possible guest this is caitlin formerly from utah soon to be caitlin from n Nashville, calling in with an overheard and overseen. My husband is a local news personality. He's an on-air meteorologist. I know how you love local news bloopers. And today, while my husband was reporting the weather, the female news anchor was trying to segue from a fairly dark news story to weather and tossed my husband in the field and she was trying to talk about people enjoying the snow and maybe uh telling my husband to enjoy some skiing but instead on live tv she said hey dan we've got great snow be careful not to blow your wad my husband's face was hilarious

because he just had to smile and nod. Anyway, it goes on. Why would that be the phrasing in any case? Like, what was that person trying to express? She meant blow off her probation officer. Confused. Oh, man. Try not to cream your jeans this weekend. Or, I mean, your snow pants. Try not to cream your jeans this weekend. Or, I mean, your snow pants.

Try not to cream your snow pants while you nut in them. This podcast has gotten filthy since the last time I was on this show. We've really taken it to the gutter. We really save it for the last phone call. Yeah. Then we smut it up, and then everybody goes away feeling dirty. Stop podcasting yourself after hours. Yeah, this is what you rent. 1-800-333-TEXT.

Yeah. This is the one you get when your friend's parents go to town. You rent the dirty version. Should we do a dirty version of the podcast? Yeah, let's do uh that will that will be our gift to the subscribers we'll be the filthy yeah maybe yeah we'll do like a bonus episode for the subscribers with guest chris delia i don't know who's yes we can get him now yeah uh on his comeback tour, um, emphasize on the back.

Uh, well, uh, that brings us to the end of the show. Cliff, thank you so much for being our guest. This is a, this is such a rare treat. So thank you so much.

Fun to be, uh, be, be here with you guys. I love it. And, uh, when is your book?

Is it officially out now? People can buy it or when does it come up? Yeah, no, you'll be able to buy it. Uh soon as you hear this nice and i will time it so thanks and no it's out say the name of it yeah say the name of the book it's called we had a little real estate problem the unheralded story of native americans and comedy available from simon and schuster whoa they're like the best yeah they're like the they're great guys both of them simon and schuster garfunkel is nice as well you got muscled out though by schuster schuster well he just he created superman

oh wayne wayne is nice as well and And Schuster. They're all good guys. Wayne and Garfunkel are, like, no offense. The harmonies are good. But they suck. I was wondering where the offense was going to come. You guys should get Wayne and Schuster on this show, I feel like. We have a longstanding grudge. Yeah, it goes back i mean we did get uh

who's red green and his wife steve smith and mrs smith smith and smith yeah morag is her name the comedy mill weirdest yeah that's right um. Canada has a rich and diverse history of comedy. Between you and me? That morag? Comedy milf. Keep your stick on the ice. Well, that's the end of the show. Thank you, everybody, for listening.

Take care of yourself out there Be safe and we'll come back Next week for another episode of Stop Podcasting Yourself Maximumfun.org Comedy and culture. Artist owned. Audience supported.