Stop Podcasting Yourself - Episode 695 - Eman El-Husseini

Episode Date: July 13, 2021

Comedian Eman El-Husseini joins us to talk ‘90s fashion, tie dye, and laughing babies.

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 695 of Stop Podcasting Yourself. My name is Graham Clark and with me as always is a cool daddy who knows how to keep it cool here in the hot, hot city, Mr. Dave Shumka. Yeah, I guess I know how to keep it cool. I'm always, you know, I've got an ice gun that I shoot cubes of ice at uh passing by uh the city's asked me to stop uh there's police keep coming by my house but i say i don't know because the evidence melted

you know and it's all melted guys i've been shooting children with an ice bullet yes yes uh and our guest today first time guest to the podcast, a real treat, very funny stand up comedian. You can check out her cartoons that are on Instagram at at L Solomon. It's Iman Al-Husseini. Hey, guys, thanks for having me. Thank you for being here. This is great. This is I'm glad we could work this out.

We're we're afternooners here. We're not we're not evening time. This is great. Yes, it's wonderful. It's 5.30 my time in New York, so I'm having myself a rosé in a can. Oh. What is it called? Amble and Chase.

Amble and Chase. Rosé in a can. Okay. Very fancy French, but in a can. You know, they're catering to their American fan base. I remember when it was like a big deal that wine, and I've never really been able to understand how to drink wine, but I remember when it was a big deal that like you could twist off caps.

Like when they started coming up with twist off and they were like, actually even good wine people are twisting it off. You like a gin and tonic in a can. Yeah, I like anything in a can. Yeah? I love this kind of like independent cooler revolution and, you know, weird ciders and seltzers. The rosé that you're drinking are you a generally a rose person or is this just a fun summer version of you no i love rose i don't like drinking anything hot

really although no i shouldn't say that i love i love my espresso hot yeah um but it's better hot we can all admit it it's better hot and i have an admit it. It's better hot. And I have an espresso machine. I have the whole thing. Like, it has a grinder. I'm really serious about my espresso. What's the brand on that? The espresso machine or the espresso? The espresso machine. It is... What brand is it?

It's Breville. That's a Breville. Yeah, we got one of those, too. Do you have it with a grinder? Yeah. Oh, they're the best. Man. I mean mean it's so affordable too i couldn't believe i got it for like 500 bucks this is a really yeah i mean is

that is how affordable is 500 compared to going to a coffee shop yeah um but i make it at home it's so good i've had the machine for a while now um but as far as drinking anything like they always say to drink water at room temperature that way your body hydrates it but i can't it has to be ice cold for me yeah i drinking that's like something for after surgery or something drinking warm water that's right that's not normal human behavior. No, exactly. Apparently, it's good for digestion after surgery, but I like everything ice cold. And Rosé is one of them. Not a huge white wine person, but Rosé definitely gets it done. I could have Rosé, boy, from like the start of the day until the end of it.

Right. Now I'm pretending. I'm like, this is happy hour for me, 530 Nework time but i started this morning so yeah it's fine it's 2 30 here and we're not gonna pretend we're not drinking um do we want to get to know us yes get to know us now at the very beginning uh graham i mentioned your cartoons it's at the l solomons and these are uh cartoons you do with your wife past guest jess solomon that's right so they're based they're cartoon cartoon accounts so we come up with like a comic each week and it's based on our marriage usually better arguments um or any exchange that

we had that we thought was so hilarious after we stopped being angry did yeah do you find that this is a uh a tool to getting along or is this just a a disaster i mean no it's the best thing that to happen to us because now we settle all of our arguments publicly and we're not people who shy away from arguing and fighting in front of people. Yeah. And we encourage people to take sides. So the Cartoon Account helps us settle a lot, our status updates on Facebook as well. So it's been really therapeutic for a marriage is there anything that doesn't that it's too touchy a subject that you've been like oh this would be a good uh comic and jess says no i'm not ready yet

yeah i could i could never make fun of my in-laws that's off limits okay yeah that's fair because that could get awkward pretty pretty fast right um do you in-law wise do both of you get along with the others folks or is it just uh you don't graham why why put her on the spot i mean they don't listen they don't exactly they're not gonna listen um so i think what we tell people and i think the case is uh our parents pretend love us enough to pretend they're okay with our marriage. Okay. So there's a lot of acting. I mean, they're very polite.

They're really good at acting. I mean, both Jess and I are taking acting classes right now because we're terrible actors. You would think we would have, you know, had some of the acting skills our families have so naturally. But no, but they're nice nice everybody's on their best behavior are you taking acting classes together so this is what happened uh jess and i work a lot together we started doing our duo act maybe like four years ago um and it's not something that we wanted to do it was everybody was just

like why don't you guys work together we're like no who wants to work with their spouse um but then and it's not something that we wanted to do. Everybody was just like, why don't you guys work together? We're like, no, who wants to work with their spouse? But then I think the one time that we were on stage together, like just did a brief banter for 10 minutes. I introduced her after my set instead of a host introducing her

and that 10 minute made it in like a magazine review in LA and they were like it was so funny and then all these people started asking us to perform together and we're like this you know it was it's it's not good because uh we might get divorced you know and uh that's the end of the act no would you still tour together even if you got a divorce that's it so we're like now if we get divorced we have to be in the closet so we could keep getting these gigs that we're getting. We're getting so many gigs together and separately.

You guys, you're one of the very few comedy duos that are currently in existence. I can't even think of another. There's the Sklar brothers and they have to do it because they're, yeah, there's the other one. Those other friends too. Yeah.

And they just won an Oscar for their movie, Black Judas. Oh my God. Oh, yeah, I know who you're talking about. The Lucas Brothers? The Lucas Brothers, exactly. Yeah. I know we're the only other duo

and we're not siblings. We're married. Would you consider becoming siblings for your career why not how do you do that how do you adopt your spouse as a sibling maybe if we get divorced and we become siblings brilliant yeah this is good or maybe get like some kind of like twin plastic surgery where you kind of meet halfway yes she would want my hair i want her eyes yes we can make this work there we go everybody wins um tell me a bit about acting class because i have never been because i am terrified of it

uh how is it it's so scary you know everybody talks about how stand-up is the scariest i think acting is way harder it's just so hard so i got a couple of um auditions to play myself literally it was like the first audition was for a cool lesbian aunt like i could do that right the other character's name is Eman. The other audition was like a feisty Palestinian who isn't afraid to like get into arguments. I'm like, that's me. You know, both roles I didn't get because it was just so hard to be myself on camera,

which is so weird because you're just supposed to be, you know, like a standup comedian. You go up on stage and it's you. But with acting, it's a complete different ballgame. You're not getting any feedback, right? You're just like, with stand-up, you know, okay, this is working. But with acting, you're like, I don't know if any of this shit's working.

Yeah. It's so weird. And just like, I don't know why I would get self-conscious. Because I love the camera. I love, you know, being in the spotlight. But acting, for some reason, feels so embarrassing. Yeah. Yes.

You know what I mean? It's like. Anyway, so we had to we have Jess and I have the same manager and she suggested that we take acting classes because we were getting all of these auditions and we're not booking any of them. So that was their gentle way of saying you should. Exactly, she's like, we need to, yeah. And she recommended this teacher and Jess took the first session with this instructor

and I didn't want to take it because I'm like, listen, we do everything together. The pandemic is going on, so we're in the apartment together. we're working on this bbc podcast together oh we're doing our cartoon together we just finished doing our duo act together um just for laughs uh two years ago it's we can't also take an acting class together right so she did the first session and uh we both skipped the second session. I don't remember why.

Because you hated it. No, no, it was actually good. And she liked it. She preferred the instructor over me. I mean, it's always the same story. I'm like, yeah, anyway. So she preferred the instructor. And I'm like, I don't know.

I don't think she's that great. But okay, let's, I'll take the third session coming up. that great but okay let's let's uh i'll take the third the third session coming up so when they sent us the info we both thought that she would be in a higher level than me because she took the first session but it turned out that it was just one class so we found out we were in the same class like the day we paid the deposit and i'm like i can't believe we're like gonna do this together and they're like no don't worry it doesn't matter jess is a bit more advanced so she'll do different things but it wasn't it was like completely the same class so i would be in the bedroom with my laptop and she would be in the living room and we actually had to do a scene together

so even the acting instructor who knew we didn't want to take the class together made us work together so it's in the stars there's nothing we didn't want to take the class together made us work together. So it's in the stars. There's nothing you can do to to worm your way out of it. But teachers always know that. Teachers, they want you to do the thing you hate. Yeah. Especially I feel like acting.

Yeah. Yeah. But also like science. They want you to like answer their questions and stuff. like science. They want you to like answer their questions and stuff. The, uh, like the only acting I ever did was in high school and very little of that. And,

uh, embarrassing is the right word. Like the whole time I'm was saying my lines of like, I am just reading lines in my head. I do not know how to attach emotion to them. Uh, have you, are these auditions, are you going out for uh tv or

advertisements or they were for tv and they were like for cool shows too i was so sad that i didn't book it especially the the cool and lesbian ant one yeah by the name of iman that somebody not iman got it but um sorry it was uh for high maintenance oh yeah yeah yeah on hbo it would have been so that's another thing being in new york you're just like going out to all of these things that are are made here by comedians that you've done rooms with you know it's so cool but um yeah so one was so that one was for tv there were two tv auditions and one um play oh cool yeah um and uh was like how long have you been in new york six years six years wow oh my god can i tell you i just remembered something about the play so they wanted me for the lead role and i

read for the lead role and it was terrible so I ended up booking a non-speaking role in the play in the play because they're like we really do like you so here's a role you can't speak what was the role uh I was like the mother of a younger guy with a bigger role. Sure. And like, do you feel like you were acting up there? Or were you just like, I'm just going to stand around? A little bit. Because I was supposed to be like a religious older woman who did not speak English, hence no speaking role.

So I just, the fact that i wore a head scarf made me come out of who i was i wasn't as self-conscious so in that case it was more acting because it was more physical yeah rather than speaking you know graham maybe that's a little tip wear a little uh wear a little headscarf uh yeah it's my method i have to do it at all auditions um i uh when i was doing auditions i booked so little uh zero that uh my agent she dropped me she said no she didn't even say take an acting class no it's just like this isn't working yeah so are you considering to take an acting class now no it's uh i don't want to accidentally get cast as the thing where i have to act okay i don't want to end up having to act opposite your wife yeah

um did you ever think like when you were growing up that you thought you'd be like a tv person person on tv or were you i yeah i wanted to be a movie star for sure i still want to be like a star and on on the big screen it's such a fantasy for me but from a young age i was so embarrassed by wanting that how come because i feel like acting. So I used to, I grew up in the Middle East before I moved to Montreal when I was 10. And I remember

I grew up watching these Egyptian hilarious plays. It was like really entrenched in our culture. They were so fun. And I would reenact them secretly like in my bedroom and would be so embarrassed if like my parents caught me oh yeah yeah acting you know um so i always had this idea in my head

that it's like an embarrassing thing to do and it's just like a secret fantasy and you know i didn't consider did you have siblings yeah a younger sister and a younger brother oh i had older siblings and they made everything i made i made me be embarrassed by everything i wanted to do yeah you're like i want to be a doctor they're like a loser yeah i don't think they hired dorky doctors When I was a kid, like I would do recordings of myself talking or whatever, and then I would immediately destroy the evidence because I didn't want anybody to find that tape and play it, you know,

at my funeral. Everyone stands around and laughs. I'm glad he's dead. Well, that's the thing. As stand-up comedians, we have to record ourselves. And that really helped me at the beginning when I first started doing stand-up. Oh, yeah? Although it's a torment to watch yourself, especially early on in comedy.

But it's so helpful to see yourself on stage. But that's something that i could barely do now um unless it's like you know a set that i really want to work on and tweak but even listening to myself is well i'll delete this i'll delete this episode as soon as we're finished recording it for both of your say just telling you that i'm not going to listen to it. Yeah. So six years in New York. How was Independence Day? Yeah.

That was the old Fourth of July. I mean, fine. This is Brooklyn. Everybody's too cool to celebrate this sort of thing. What's their holiday that they like in Brooklyn? Halloween is huge. Halloween. Yeah. Halloween is huge.

But I feel like a lot of people, because of the pandemic, left and during the summer, a lot of people go to their, like, upstate houses and beach houses and stuff like that. Must be. Nice.

And every year in our building, we have a rooftop, and every year they tell us that we won't be able to see the fireworks from our rooftop. And every year we end up seeing them. So we got to see a bit of fireworks. That was fun. That's the landlord's trick to keep you from making it.

I guess they don't want people. Yeah, they don't want people partying up there. You can't see it. The view is going to be obstructed. And it's always like so clear and perfect. And on Halloween, they're like, it's too scary up there don't go up there on halloween um uh so you've been doing stand-up the whole time you've been in new york yeah yeah i mean except we we really started again performing um indoors i want to say at the end of april oh wow yeah i've been at it a while now holy cow

end of april early may i'm trying to think yeah because i got my second vaccine on april 27th and that's when i started performing indoors again and before that it was like some outdoor shows because the weather is nice yeah and of course zoom shows but like uh is is it back to normal the live shows or is it still weird like weird kind of feeling no it's completely like i did a sold out my first sold out comedy night was at uh i want to say in in may like mid-may wow 200 people packed house but what's good about new york i feel safe about it because uh they ask you for your vaccine card so people that are not vaccinated cannot come in uh they gave me when i

got my first vaccine a piece of paper and it is i've kept in my wallet and now it's blank so you we have this like app on the phone that you could you could yeah yeah you'll be able to you'll you'll be fine graham have you got you when are you due for your second shot yet i'm due but i haven't got the i haven't got the call i haven't been how many weeks has it been uh since the first one yeah i don't know i tell you but my card got all i just got my second one i'm'm two weeks out now, so I'm like... You're Mr. Immunized. I'm Mr. Antibodies, yeah. So if anyone's looking for, you know, a handshake.

Game of ping pong. We can use the same ball. Oh, that must be big for you because now tennis is back. You can bring just one ball to tennis. Oh, tennis never really... I played tennis with my dad the whole time they they uh they weren't allowing doubles uh but uh yeah you can you could play just you're far apart from your opponent uh iman any sports that you take part

part in uh i love tennis that was my other thing so i wanted to be a movie star and if that didn't work out i wanted to be a tennis player but i'm also not athletic i love tennis uh very fun sport to play i'm not very good though um but speaking of sports very heartbroken over the habs loss i don't know if the rest of canada cares yeah the rest of hockey hockey game i don't know if you guys watched it yeah i watched it yeah yeah i watched some of it and then uh you know what other things came up life life gets in the way i um yeah i i i i see you i'm not heartbroken about it i don't want any other team to win other than Vancouver, but I empathize. Sympathize.

It was so close. It was so close. I mean, the fact that we made it so far was surprising. Right. But that last game, I feel like if we scored that goal that we missed, we would have went in overtime.

If we scored way more goals and they scored less you know what I found out because I'm not even like I don't even watch sports that much but I get into it whenever the Habs make it right I get into it when everybody's on board and I get in at the last minute like yeah also I like the Raptors just like you guys yeah I never

cared for the Raptors I think it's just like my beef with Toronto maybe because I'm from Montreal I don't know I'm like a Montrealer and. I think it's just like my beef with Toronto. Maybe because I'm from Montreal. I don't know. I'm like a Montrealer and I feel like I can't like Toronto. That's fine. Yeah. That's a, that's a fair,

uh, beef to have. Trying to think of what cities I have a beef with. Cranbrook, BC. I think. Sure. Yeah.

Any place that's like had a bad audience. Yeah. Yeah. Red deer, Alberta. Feel like Regina probably. Um, yeah.

So, uh, yeah. Now that I think of it, I have a grudge against a lot of cities. Dave, any cities you've got a grudge against? I mean,

I don't like any other hockey team in Canada. Yeah. How about the States? Will you go? There's a few I dislike, but, uh, mostly just like growing up as a vancouver canucks fan and having

the like you know if montreal comes to town the crowd is like 75 percent montreal fans and the canucks losing like the canucks just getting killed by edmonton like my whole childhood there's no such thing as Canada's team as far as I'm concerned but you gotta support Montreal they're the only team left no fuck them

you see I'll support I love the Vancouver team and the Ottawa team just because they're great comedy cities I'll root for the Senators and the Nats. You're more noble than I am. But I absolutely I don't expect

their fans to stop supporting their teams because I don't like them. Like I'm like, yes, of course. Yeah, you cheer. When I was a kid, I picked I hope you're happy for a few minutes. I picked a team at random to follow and i picked the buffalo bills and you could never see a game with them on because

they you know maybe you get it in calgary one game out of every four or five uh-huh so i lost interest halfway through the season that but i bought a hat at a buffalo bills hat uh-huh and uh then man i jumped off that bandwagon they have you know who does not like the buffalo bills or buffalo in general in general john bon jovi tell me more tell me everything so i i read this where did i read this i think you wanted to buy i don't know if you wanted to buy like the hockey team or any another sports team that they have and they just didn't want to sell it to him and he said that he would never step foot in buffalo again wow that's oh man and like the buffalo citizens of the buffalo heights or uh buffalo buffalo yeah what is the demonym devastating devastating it's when you hear

because like a lot of people won't uh do things in georgia because of their kind of regressive policies but like people in georgia are probably like what the fuck did i do we liked having uh whatever walking dead filmed here um but yeah it's it's tough when you hear a celebrity doesn't like your town uh uh what's his name david ducovni he hated vancouver yeah how could anybody hate vancouver it's the best because he was tail leone at the time he was addicted he had a sex addiction he uh is that how he got divorced he got divorced because he had an affair in vancouver no i think he got divorced because he had a sex addiction but uh he uh hated vancouver because the x-files shot in vancouver and he was so far from

los angeles and he wanted i think he also wanted to be a movie star yeah and he and he became one with that x-files movie so yeah there you go uh ben affleck had an affair in vancouver or at least yeah cheated on jlo with a stripper oh my god and they're back together yeah they tried to leave that out of the dinner table conversation i think of doing a double why do why did we break up in the first place i don't remember was it the stripper at brandy's in vancouver that was it yeah no good yes um tell me when you were growing up in the middle east uh did you get any like north american films or tv shows or anything like that or was it just egyptian plays yeah we had that we had two channels two tv channels the arabic channel and the English channel.

Okay. And the English, so a lot of cartoons. Oh, yeah. And the shows that I remember, definitely the WWF was huge. Okay. Yeah. So Hulk Hogan, I mean, was everybody's hero. And Star Trek.

Oh, yeah. Original Star Trek? Yes. Nice. If you had only two shows to pick from, those are excellent shows. Hulk Hogan era WWF and original Star Trek. I can't

think of another one. Maybe Gilligan's Island. No, that one's dumb. Wow. Because I was the same like i grew up in canada and i mostly watched the wwf not um i mostly watched gilligan's island as well so yeah yeah gilligan's island was i feel like it was on every day on some channel always yeah yeah I feel like there's so much more old TV to watch now. Like if you are a kid now, you could watch stuff from the 90s would be our equivalent of

Gilligan's Island. And there were only like four old shows, like Happy Days Mash, Gilligan's Island, and The Monkees. Monkees! I remember watching The Monkees in the 90s, yeah yeah yeah but uh i feel like kids now like they just have if they want to feel nostalgic for a different time they can watch the friends or how i met your mother yeah there's like yeah thousands of them

yeah i love that i grew up in the 90s. So my formative years were really my first, you know, years in Canada, because that's when I was like exposed to Western culture and of course, living it and all of that. But I feel like the 90s were the best. The TV shows were amazing. Music was amazing. Even sport, basketball, huge basketball fan in the 90s. I mean, such a good time to grow up in. in uh in the 90s i mean such a good time to grow up in do you do you notice uh all around you that the kids are dressing like uh kids from the 90s where i mean i feel like fashion always comes back it always recycles right and it comes back to old stuff like people are not innovative they just bring back the oldies my feeling of what's coming back trucker hats trucker hats are going to come back there's i think von dutch is gonna their stock is gonna rise um and yeah i saw a couple of younger folk walking down the street and they looked like they were picked out of the video for you gotta get what you give or whatever that 90s song sure i mean there's only so much you can do with

covering your body yes you can go wider or skinnier or middle what's a 90s thing you hope comes back into vogue you know what did come uh and it made a huge uh impact and it was considered so uh cheesy and a full pot in fashion is big brand names on your, on your clothes. Oh yeah. And that's all over the place now. And that makes me really happy. Yeah.

Like big Nike. If you go to like Gucci, if you go to like the fancy stores, they all have brand names all over. Cause it was supposed to, yeah. You're supposed to, if you're wearing something expensive,

you're not supposed to show it. you're supposed to be humble about it because you're not no more reach i'm a huge fan of no more reach fashion so walking around all of these expensive department stores seeing you know people horrified by this uh by this comeback is it's uh makes me very happy that's so funny my espresso machine has a huge breville on it yeah just put stickers on yeah are you in on the trend are you wearing uh you wearing any clothes with big brands on it i mean you've got a montreal canadians cap on but that's not a brand that's a team right um i did buy a sweatshirt that has jord. Do you remember that brand? That's from the 90s. It's fluorescent green

and yeah, it's like the print is just all over the sweatshirt. That's so great. Jordache. With the horse and the whole thing. Yes! They were a big jean company if I recall. What were they special about them? Were they tapered or something?

Some special thing? Their jeans genes do they have weird colors were they um were they like acid washed it might have been acid washed yeah is that coming back i'm i'm on board of acid watch i'm looking for acid wash uh jeans jeans any luck nothing so far okay what are the uh i remember in the 90s there was a brand of jeans called boy i think it was yeah it was a buffalo was the name of the brand yes and uh the commercial was a woman boy did she like take off her jeans and jump off a pier into the water and then get out all wet and try to pull them back on and they were i mean they it wasn't funny they they got back on but then the voice would come on and say jeans buffalo

manufactured in buffalo yeah the buffalo jeans yeah uh what like uh the nike or reebok pump shoes that was from the 90s right or was that yeah yeah yeah because i think i've seen some kids walking around with the pump shoes and uh i remember when i was a kid you had it made if you had those pumps you were the you're the most popular kid in school you could write your own ticket yeah and you definitely needed them in school yeah i gotta make sure that my my tongue is secured to the top of my foot because that's all it would do right is it would just tighten around your foot like i would inflate the tongue yeah yeah do you either of you have them yeah i had

pumps but my pumps were on the side of the shoe oh so my my kid uh my six-year-old i was just looking because they had to line up because of covet they they you got to see every kid every morning and they all lined up outside and one day i was looking and i realized none of them have shoes that have laces I realized none of them have shoes that have laces. Like there's a new, there's a kind of like elastic lace now and you just strap on the top. And some, some kids had like a shoe that you like cranked the side.

There was like a wheel on the side that you cranked tighter, but like no one knows how to tie their shoes. Huh? At six. That's weird. That's like a, now it's tying shoes is like a bygone like handwriting or something like that yeah it'll be like cursive yeah wow so did they do this so kids don't feel bad about not being able to tie their shoes i don't know i think it's i i just like i'm i don't do the shoe shopping generally i guess so i don't know

what the options are right yeah huh you're talking about that wheel that spins on the side i have that i have that for my uh like bike shoes oh really yeah something like that shoes it's got like a little crank on the side to yeah to pay to net yeah the uh i remember when i was a kid there was one kid always in a class that didn't couldn't tie his shoelaces and then did velcro and thought he was kind of passing for a while and uh but eventually we're all like hey we're we're uh laces people now yeah yeah it was i don't know i i feel like by you know grade one i could tie my shoes but i don't really remember that wasn't like a breakthrough for me where i remember like where i was i remember i definitely remember putting shoes on the wrong feet and being like

flummoxed like why do these feel terrible but graham now you're making me want Velcro shoes to make a comeback. Oh, yeah. Velcro shoes are the best. I can't believe I ever went laces. They're so lame. Velcro rules. There was also when I was a kid, there was a brand of shoe that were Velcro that had a little pocket on the side that you could put quarters in.

Yeah. Well, there was kangaroo shoes that had them on the tongue coins in the tongue yeah i mean all of that stuff if we could bring that back it would they would make a killing that's true but kids they grew up now with like wheelies they've got like wheels in them or they have shoes that light up when they walk yeah well lighting up we had that too yeah yeah was the la gear yes yes la gear they should make a comeback you guys are making me so nostalgic now for all the bills la gear had uh they lit up and i remember a news story of like some some criminals got caught because they were like running from the cops in the dark but the cops could always see them because their shoes were lit light again

um i feel like i didn't know they were light i don't maybe they just didn't make it to my school we got velcro that's all we got you're from calgary everyone was wearing boots that's everyone's wearing cowboy boots um that's yeah have you ever played in calgary perform comedy yeah yeah of course i love performing western canada i mean i'm so sad i found out before yesterday that the vancouver yucks is no longer yeah yeah oh my god it makes me so sad so yeah i love the western clubs because they were run by women and it was always like such a good time and i felt like they were so organized and always full and always great do you love you like do you love touring in general do you like the travel do you like the hotels and getting to do different shows in different cities or is the travel the sacrifice

you have to make in order to just do the show no i love that i love exploring the different cities i love i mean i get sick of it sometimes when i'm like doing it for two months or right before the pandemic started i was in toronto uh doing my my week at yaks my two last shows got canceled oh um and it was like after being on the road for three months so i was ecstatic on the road for three months so i was ecstatic that the pandemic started because i thought like we did a mini tour together jess and i and then i would go on the road and do some of the yachts and then come back and do some of our tour and then toronto was like my last stop right and the pandemic happened and i was like thank goodness this is great i was like so exhausted i didn't realize that we'd get like a year and a half off um from everything but yeah you're like i definitely i shouldn't have i

shouldn't have cheered this on so quick yeah i mean well it was really bad in brooklyn when i was still on the road in toronto so i was treating my trip to toronto like last fall i was still like going to restaurants and like getting everything in before coming back to brooklyn because i knew it was over like jess was here uh you know washing the the groceries and stuff and she's like what are you doing i'm like getting into these restaurants i wasn't able to get into for so long um but then uh but then yeah a year and a half was a bit yeah a bit too long i didn't i never had the presence of mind to like pack in some fun things you know like go on a water slide or like

like eat some saltwater taffy or something like that no to me everything when i say fun it's like really just going and trying restaurants that restaurants are super fun that's like my to-do list my to-do list is a list of restaurants right which you never run out of in new york right there's just constant that's true like constant new restaurant what's your favorite restaurant that you've been to in new york there's a palestinian restaurant it's kind of far though it's a bit of a trek yeah it's uh in bay ridge and it's incredible i've like brought so many comedians to that because it would have to be like a whole event because it's so far um and yeah it's excellent like really good quality authentic uh fun delicious restaurant called tannery tannery there you go you're blowing up your spot but that's nice they probably they would love the

business and uh what do they know you there when you show up or do they know your order i think they recognize me because i tag them a lot like uh you know pictures on instagram like best food and like 18 palestinian flags and so they yeah they definitely recognize me i don't know if they know me by name but oh they they will. They will. Now they will listen to this podcast. When you're up on the big screen doing a reboot of, what were the two shows? WWF.

Star Trek and WWE. Yeah, having a non-speaking role in the wwf even the wrestlers were so much cooler in the 90s oh yeah absolutely like thinking back like macho men brave men heart whatever their names i don't even remember their names but i just feel like they all had such cool outfits and they were like cartoons yeah yeah they were like this guy's named tugboat and he'll be he'll wear a sailor hat and he'll act like a tugboat this guy's a clown yeah this guy's a clown this guy's a millionaire jake the snake with the snake oh man yeah there's no way that

was sbca approved rightrying around a snake in a sack. It ruled though, like showing up and being like, okay, just so you know, if I win, I got a snake in a bag. Yeah. When he like place it on the person that he had defeated. Yeah. That is, it's a ballsy move. Yeah.

We have a puppy. Oh yeah. How a uh puppy oh yeah how's the puppy the puppy's good uh but we all like holding him we always say it's like holding a bag of snakes so because he's just wiggling uh so it uh yeah i feel for Jake the Snake. My heart goes out to him. What kind of dog? What kind of puppy? He's a half Boston Terrier, half Chihuahua. His name's Monster. He's really transformed our lives. We are constantly worried about stepping in something uh we can no longer have um like tea towels on our uh handles

in the kitchen because he'll just pull them down yeah so now we're constantly like i wash my hands in the kitchen i'll be like what do i dry my hands on and i have to like find a towel somewhere else and then i'll drip water on the floor and i'll think, oh no, the dog peed on the floor and then I'll, it's just a cycle of of violence. Yeah, yes. You got this puppy recently then. Yes, this is a 13 week old boy.

So cute. I love bus interiors because they look like they have cat ears. Yeah, that's true. Right? They look like that. We had one before as well uh but he went over the rainbow bridge yeah he's uh he's in a better place now okay so you wanted to get

a puppy because you guys are dog people it wasn't like your kids wanted a dog or is it a combination of yeah it was i mean we want we wanted it like yeah the kids didn't really have a say in it. The kids would have taken any dog. The kids were like, we actually don't want a dog mom and dad. I can't believe you're bringing this animal into our house. No, the kids would take any animal, I'm sure. Snake? Would they take a snake?

They might take the snake. Snake in a sack? Take the snake robbers. Is your dog, Iman, a genius? Tell me why. Take the snake, Robert. Is your dog, Iman, did you get... A genius. A genius? Tell me why.

She's a genius. It's not what we're going to ask, but she is a genius. No, no. I want to know about her being a genius. So we did get the dog before the pandemic. Yeah. So we had her on purpose, is what I like to tell people. She wasn't an unplanned pregnancy.

No. And I took a lot of pride in training her so a lot of our friends in new york have dogs and one of them in particular like trained his dog to be so perfect so i went to him for advice and he suggested a book called um the art of raising a puppy so i read that book and i watched a lot of videos on youtube now i had a lot of time because i was happy the pandemic started and i'm back from toronto and i begged jess to uh leave new york and go to canada because i don't know if you guys remember andrew cuomo was begging for medical supplies yes and i'm like just wanted to be a tough new yorker and i'm like we're canadian we're getting the hell out of here so we left like on the last day they were going to close the border

oh we really waited to the last second anyway so we got to go to canada for four months and i really just embraced um everything about the lockdown like from baking banana bread to learning spanish to training my puppy. Training your perro. Yeah, exactly. Exactamente. Banana bread. Pan con banana.

Is it banana? Is banana banana in Spanish? I don't know. It is around the world. Banana is the standard. In Minyanine. I'm trying to think what it is in arabic it's moza it's not banana what is it moza moza that's a better word for it maybe no banana is the perfect word banana is better don't don't pander. So I watched all these videos. I was training her.

And I mean, like, I got her to give paw, to roll over all of this stuff within like two months. But it turns out because she is half poodle and they are known to be the genius of all dogs. She was just a quick learner and it had nothing to do with me who's the uh dumbest of the dogs because a dumb dog is a lot of fun like a dog that never learns this lesson yes it's so much better and it's so much easier she's so much maintenance she's not only is she a genius she's also very athletic and has a lot of energy so we like i we need to spend like five hours she walks with the dog walker and her group of dog dog friends for like two hours a day then we take her out you know another three hours so like five hours of constant like our whole schedule is around her schedule and jess is so soft with her right so so you know

the disciplinarian i am so i'm like trying to train this dog and trying to like you know be a bit more strict and jess is like hand feeding her on the floor lying on the floor with the dog the uh according to this the dumbest dog breed is the afghan hound yes long long flowing long hair it doesn't need to be it's so beautiful it doesn't need to be smart that's right yeah that's how i feel about myself uh i just always remember the beagles were not smart either i think like really hell a lot right yeah they're just they're terrible i think they're terrible pets to have because you can't teach them anything and they just bark all day what's uh what's the laziest dog is it like a bulldog has to be bulldogs for sure or like the gigantic like

um irish wolfhounds or like uh great danes things that just are too big to to function um yeah no i'm with you on bulldog i think i've always liked the idea of a bulldog but uh they're they're like don't they have a bunch of health issues or something like that they do i mean i love british bulldogs so much they so cute. But just the maintenance on cleaning their face alone with all the layers, I get too grossed out. Yeah, yeah. So I do love them. I get really happy when I run into Bulldogs. They're so cute and so

lazy. And so I'm in Brooklyn again, so a lot of them are in strollers because they hate the heat. Oh my god. In strollers. But they need to leave the house. So they have to put them in strollers then they go on a play date with another yeah i forgot to let them down to go to the bathroom we gotta clean the stroller um dave what's going on with you man well speaking of fashion trends and ways to beat the heat

uh this past week uh it like the kids are on summer vacation we have not signed them up for any kind of camps or anything right because we didn't you know the we didn't know that the pandemic would be ebbing at this at this point So they're just around all the time. So in an attempt to find something to do, last week I went to Michael's, the craft store. Yeah. And bought a tie-dye kit. Ooh, okay.

So we... Stained the floor. We went out, We did it outside We got some white t-shirts Trying to find other like You know blank like masks Cause I'm never gonna wear any of this shit Like I'm not wearing it

All three of your kids? Four and six Cute That's the right age for tie dye I feel like Right? No I think people wear it 106. Cute. That's the right age for tie-dye, I feel like. Right? No, I think people wear it into their 60s, 70s.

That's true. Yeah. I guess I have seen seniors wearing tie-dye. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, you're fish fans. You're Grateful Dead fans. Yes, yes. Traveling fan.

Yes, you're traveling fans. So we did did a like i'd never done it before i've for some reason in my head it feels like it's complicated uh but no it was you just you know the little the kit we got came with you know eight examples of different designs you can do if you twist the shirt in a different way right and um i've never done this have you done this iman no no this is uh i i did my i did three pairs of socks oh cool for myself because i was like well maybe i'll wear these i got enough white socks i can sacrifice three pairs yeah and you know what i'm really happy with how the socks came out nice uh but like also i have not worn socks in six weeks anyway

yeah i mean uh yeah i've got i've got really far away from socks in the last year so uh any kind of special socks i have are just they've been benched yeah yeah but maybe i had a pair of tie-dye socks yeah well maybe christmas is coming if you're very good i might give you a pair of the tie-dye socks they came out looking more like like a gobstopper oh okay yeah than any kind of like hippie-ish design um iman was there ever a thing when you were a kid that your parents like that you kind of clued in that this was busy work that your parents were giving you just to get you to quiet down for a bit i mean no my parents are middle eastern so they just like yelled at us or told us to play outside you know just go outside yeah i graham did you um i feel like there was uh

you know like um what do you call it like an erector kit like uh oh sure like screw different things into metal and you make like a crane or something like that that always felt like shut up and do this now i feel like the idea of a parents having to entertain their children is relatively new yeah that's true right like kids were parents having to entertain their children is relatively new. Yeah, that's true, right? Like, kids were just told to entertain themselves. Yeah. Did you, like, on our, I was talking about this the other day, and I just, like, because our kids aren't in any summer camps, and I don't think I went to any, like, day camps or anything until I was, like, 10 in the summer.

So, I was like 10 in the summer. So I was like, what did I do? And then I just remembered, oh yeah, there were like four other kids on my block and we would go to each other's houses. Yeah, that's right.

And you just like, maybe you were lucky enough to have a friend in your group of friends that had a trampoline. And if you're super lucky, you'd have somebody that had a pool. They have a lot of people in Montreal have pools, right? It's true. Did you have any friends that had one? Yeah. One of my closest that had a pool they have a lot of people in montreal have pools right it's true did you have any friends that had one yeah one of my closest friends had a pool but she

hated it why you know a lot of the people who had pools when they were young he had like a hate relationship with them because they were responsible uh to clean them so they never really like they wanted nothing to do with the pool right and i did it also feel like they were like not real friends they were coming over like did she suspect your friendship at all that was connected to a pool no no way we know we were close friends but um i was gonna say my dream was to be sent to sleep away camp oh really yeah well i wanted to also go to boarding school i didn't like my family that much i want to go sleep outside of the house and you never that was the dream i never got no i got like day camp um also 10 and 11 and i'm so jealous because jet my wife got sleep away camp that she

hated to go to and she also went to American college. So she lived the dorm experience, which is also a huge dream of mine. We have dorms in Canada. I lived the dorm experience here. Oh, did you? So lucky. My parents wouldn't let.

Did you, how long did you go to sleepaway camp for like, because I went for a week. I was talking to my friend and she was like, I went every summer the whole summer. Yeah, I'm pretty sure she'd go for like a month or two. I think her parents would like send her and her sister to sleepaway camp and then they would go to like Europe or something.

They make no bones about the fact that like, you're the reason that we don't go to Europe. This is all your i remember my dad used to threaten me with going to private school that was my dream i'm like please take me away i'm a terrible child nieces and nephews who are like i want to go to private school and i'm like yeesh Little did I know it was an empty threat. Like you have to like want to go and like do an entrance interview and like do essays. And yeah, they don't just let bad kids who have bad grades go because their dad is following through on a threat. I was always threatened with military school, which I'm not sure that we even have those in canada i don't know that's like a sitcom device yeah exactly and i just know that it sounded bad but surely the military schools don't want to adopt a nation's problem children that's all they want to do they

want to adopt adopt don't shop they say um but they yeah and they would whip you into shape you'd be you'd have hospital corners on your bed oh man you'd be able to like uh you know disassemble a gun yeah put it back together in the dark uh hold my breath for over 120 seconds climb of you know uh one of those wooden walls with a rope yes yes these are the big military fun thing yeah climb crawl underneath barbed wire yeah yeah dave what do you do with your kids or they're too young to threaten uh oh what it was to threaten uh it's all screens so like you get more screens you can have less screens depends how you play this what's the least popular screen is it a watch yeah the watch they don't like looking at a wristwatch

they uh they can't stand like just when i make them look at a shine a light through a fly swatter. The windows are pretty, uh, unpleasant screen. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The name we have.

So the house next to us was just torn down and this past week they dug, they like dug out the excavated the lot. And now the neighbors on the other side, like the, the house that the other side, like the house that was two houses away, suddenly we can see into each other's windows. Oh, yeah. And so we're trying not to ever. But we are also constantly looking out the window to watch them excavate this empty lot.

So we're like, hey, yes, we can see into your window. Let's pretend we can't. Yeah. Iman, is your apartment to stare into another person's apartment window or you have a view or? No, we're on a low floor. So we just have a beautiful building to stare at across from us. Actually, in a wine shop. Nice.

Is that where you get that can yes if it didn't even have to cross the street or maybe just cross the street and then that's it you cross the street so it's really nice we live in dumbo which is um reminds us of old old montreal where jess lived in montreal right so it's very similar with the cobblestone and the old buildings and stuff yeah it's very uh it's a quite quaint for the big it is it's nice and we also feel um good about living here because it wasn't like a gentrification situation right they were all just it was an industrial area up until 15 years ago right so no nobody was kicked out or anything and that's so hard in new york to find yeah well

you found you man you found it that's you're you're the queen of new york you've done it that's it as a palestinian it's very important for me that people do not get kicked out of their homes i guess yeah uh so yes i've been tie-dying uh will never wear this these clothes but uh but love the the process yeah what's going on with you graham very little very little i can tell you that i uh at one point this week i had the occasion to um find an electric fly swatter and oh the little tennis racket yeah a little tennis racket and uh are you are you plagued by flies no this was a this was over at somebody's house and i tried it on my hand and at first it didn't do anything and i was like ah this doesn't do

anything and then i it was still just warming up. So then I touched it again. Oh, baby, that hurt a lot. Oh, yeah. Oh, man. It hurts so much. Yeah, but it's a real, it's a good pain. Yeah. It made me feel like my heart stopped for a second.

Yeah. Oh, I miss it. Yeah, like I knew it was a bad thing to be doing but i did it anyways and uh yeah and i paid an immediate price yeah if you can get your you get your like you have to because they make a little grill on the outside that you can't touch it with but you got to kind of get your pinky in between the yeah oh i haven't done that in a couple of years. Boy, it is a weird, it's like putting your tongue on a nine volt battery times a million. Yeah. Do you ever do that, Iman?

The battery licking? I feel like, yeah, when I was younger, for sure. That's something we all did, right? Yeah. Yeah. I feel like also I challenged a friend to lick a like a battery that had kind of exploded like that it was too old okay that's not something we all did no he did it though and we were we remained friends because of it uh he rose to the challenge um so yeah i shocked myself real good. Uh-huh. Um. Do you have one of those yourself?

No, I don't have any flies. I got little, little guys. I, yeah, I'm surprised I haven't got more flies. In past years, we, they all come inside and we get little orgies, fly orgies just buzzing about inside the house. Oh yeah. I saw something that i've never seen before bug wise like do you know the bugs when it's like sun kind of sunset and like they're just in a big cloud and they're all yeah producing in that big cloud of bugs yeah you know what i'm

talking about um that i saw them where they come from they all kind of rise up out of hedges and stuff and it looks like reverse rain and it's so disgusting yeah that's gross but that's where they come from they're all hiding out in hedges and in the grass and then they all come out at once and it's it's i mean at first it's kind of pretty but then when you realize what's going on you're like ah this is awful iman you're you're a bug fan i'm not but when we were in canada we we stayed in in the country and uh there was a fly in the house and nothing drives me more crazy than that sound and just fly buzzing around like crazy but my dog needs again a lot of stimulation and that plot she was so fascinated by the fly and kept following the fly around that it was like the best babysitter for this dog that we ever had so i i don't yeah you were staying out

in the country yeah so instead of we couldn't stay with our parents obviously and uh so yeah we rented um a cabin in the country in quebec like an hour and a half away from michelle it was the best it was great for the dog because she could just like run around outside you know and she's like used to she grew up in the disgusting streets of new york so now she has like grass and different animals and nature and it was it was so good that's i love when a fly when a dog is chasing a fly because their mouth they their mouth kind of like it doesn't like snap shut like they're trying to bite like they're yeah they're not biting but their lips are slapping shut in a weird it's very uh satisfying

sound yeah and they never catch it and maybe yours did because my dogs have all been stupid. So I was going to say my dog is a genius and she's very athletic, but she can't chase. I don't know. It's just she's just so gentle. So like whenever she sees pigeons in New York, she wants to chase them, but she walks up to them so slowly that the pigeon has time to walk away from the dog, not even fly away, walking away. And today, this morning, this happened. I always go to this coffee shop nearby, although I have an espresso machine

because my dog loves the treats that they make for dogs. So I go, I grab a coffee and I give her a treat and I gave her a treat today while waiting for my coffee and the pigeons ate her treat and she didn't do anything. Like there's two pigeons eating her treat right there. And I'm like, I can't believe you're just standing there. It's just looking at me like you do something.

I'm not going to hurt these pigeons. Yeah. Way to go genius. So I touched an electric fly swatter and then also then this is this is a monumental for me uh i've been zoom kind of zooming with my brother and my nephew because that's the only way i've been able to see him and it's always been kind of like he doesn't really know what's going on with the being on the monitor or doesn't really care but this week i got his attention and i made him laugh

for the very first time wow oh man did it feel good because because you know i know that he's like he's generally a very happy kid but i never got to see laughter you know and especially i wasn't able to create it and so what do you know what you did oh i know exactly what i did i moved my head side to side like this and then i did then i did shaking my head no and he thought that was hilarious and then when he would offer me food to the screen i would just go and he thought that was hilarious i couldn't lose i was on such a hot street this is stuff all out of your act this is right but he doesn't know that yeah yeah yeah it wasn't it wasn't your half hour special called home yeah i would give the audience spoons of peanut butter um but it feels it feels really

good that feels like almost as good as having done it for a room of apples sounds like someone's having baby fever it's true my biological flock is ticking I'm lactating here.

Is that your first nephew? Yes. Yeah. Oh, cute. Yeah, first nephew. And so, of course, he's being doted upon. Do you think I know the name of your nephew? I don't know.

Do you? Finn. You got it. It's Finn. Named after the book. His name is Mason. Mason named after the book uh his name is mason he's mason named after the jar yeah exactly um do you have lots of nieces and nephews iman i don't well through jess we have two nephews um and her sister has two two boys yeah did they go to sleep away camp no but they will yeah i know that they will rambunctious so jess and her her sister complained about sleep away camp but the first thing uh

jess's sister said when when she had her second was that they're both gonna definitely go to sleep away camp these kids are going to military school i'm not waiting for them to do something bad um no i guess they just like want their life back because it's it's so you know i talk about the dog taking up like five hours of our day but imagine kids that's like that's well that's it seven hours a day seven i like that yeah two maximum no yeah they're the they they can kind of now that they can kind of like find a snack of their own that's like um things have gotten a lot easier you don't just put a snack in like a kong and let them kind of figure it out. They'll get to this eventually.

Oh, no, this will be a long one. I froze the comm. With their teething. I wish I could have like screen time for Esther, honey, for our dog. That would be the best. To get her distracted with like Peppa the Pig or something. But doesn't she nap a lot barely so when she she did like when we first got her but now she'll yeah maybe an hour oh during the day maybe maybe you gotta get a little you gotta get a bulldog yeah i know i hear they're very lazy

yeah i just don't want to clean their folds oh right i forgot but can you just hit them in the face with a hose first thing in the morning yeah oh fire hydrant go down the street where they can yeah sure is that a thing that actually happens in new york is that only just in movies i saw no i saw it once yeah i wonder why they did that i guess they have to like the pressure gets too too high or something no they do it for kids they let it out for kids they do it for kids yeah because there's no like pools or anywhere else to go right they open it up on on streets and then that's how i've always been told that it's right right then kids run around in it because there's no lawn sprinklers or anything like that right but no i mean in their

park there's like um i'm pretty sure it was like a water fountain and now it's just like for kids to run through yeah yeah yeah but if they actually did that with a fire hydrant maybe um i i only saw it once in manhattan on a busy, so I don't think it was for kids. Okay. But they did it for, yeah. In a theater. It was probably for stockbrokers or investment bankers. Run through here.

Well, should we move on to some overheards? Yeah. Here we go Hello, I'm Riley Smurl I'm Sydney McElroy And I'm Taylor Smurl And we host Still Buffering A cross-generational guide to the culture that made us

Every week, we share media that made us who we are Things like Archie Comics Sailor Moon And lots of Taylor Swift And now that Riley's an adult, it comes with 100% more butts. And now I am totally comfortable with it. So check out new episodes of Still Buffering every Thursday on MaximumFun.org. Butts, butts, butts. Join in, Riley. Butts, butts, butts, butts, butts, butts, butts, butts, butts, butts, butts, butts, butts.

Overheard. Overheard's a segment where if you can hear it and you can remember it and you can speak it, then we want it here on the podcast. And we always like to start with the guests. Iman, do you have something you've overheard? Yes. So before, I'm a huge Madonna fanonna fan nice i've seen her in concert a lot and the last concert she had was in a theater which was uh different from her usual huge sold-out stadiums right um so a nice nice theater i mean it's still a big theater that fit like thousands of people, but, um, very intimate for a huge star like Madonna,

um, at the Brooklyn museum. Anyway, really amazing. And of course she made us wait for hours and hours, at least three hours. I want to say before she came out, I mean the couple and we got really good seats.

I really splurge because I'm a huge fan of hers. Yeah. Um, so we got really good seats that are pretty close to the couple and we got really good seats. I really splurge because I'm a huge fan of hers. Yeah. So we got really good seats that are pretty close to the front and the couple next, next to my wife and I got up and left after like the second hour waiting for her. So that's like, that's a lot of money to get up and leave. You must be so pissed. Yeah. Unless they didn't pay for the tickets, anyway so they like the concert was amazing she's

a perfectionist she's so great but there's something that madonna always wanted to be good at and she couldn't um and it's to be funny that's why she's friends with a lot of comedians she's she can't be funny so she's friends with stanford brunhart rosie uh o'donnell who was actually there rosie o'donnell was uh at the concert anyway push balls on stage that's how you know Rosie O'Donnell's in your crowd yeah Rosie O'Donnell Debbie Mazar is another good a good friend of uh Madonna who's very very funny anyway uh so at one point so the concert is amazing everybody's dancing huge like a lot of you know madonna fans all these like gay guys dressed up like from different eras of madonna's so great and the

there's two guys behind us we're just like singing along to her songs whatever and at one point madonna stops and she says i'm gonna tell you guys a joke And I just hear the guy behind me be like, Oh no. The one thing she can't do. Oh no. What is your favorite era of Madonna? It's so hard to pick, of course, but I really love American life. life 2003 it was the first time i

visited new york in my life and it coincided with her album coming out and i just have you know such a good association with the whole thing the one with like the the western shirts which is yeah the western shirt and she played guitar yes yeah wow yeah yeah going through a real rugged phase yeah yeah i don't know what my favorite madonna era is probably one i grew up with the you know her being the express yourself express yourself being in a suit and she owns a factory where they make wet men. Yes. Dave, do you have an overheard? No, I was. Oh, you know what?

I looked up American Life. It's different than what I was thinking. Don't tell me it's on American Life, isn't it? No. Because she plays guitar on American Life. I am i just that was it it was on music tell me some music right which is another great album she's friends with ali g yes yes yes that's right i mean that video the music video is one of my ultimate if i have to remake one of her videos the music video well no one is telling you you have to remake one of her music videos

no don't you remember there was a show again in the 90s i'm like so stuck in the past but uh i don't know what music program they had like on vh1 or something where they're like if you get you can pick a video to remake really yeah that seems like something they would have done back when they were doing reality shows that like still tried to have something about music in them. Yeah. Right. So they bring you in and be like, Graham, what music video do we, and they dress you up and style you up and like make you look like.

Oh, like you star in the video. Yeah. It's you remaking the video. It was Becoming. It was called Becoming. Becoming. What was that? H1?

MTV. MTV. What was he? what what uh video would you remake if you got the chance who me yeah yeah she just told you oh music oh music but i also like the uh where she works at a store that makes wet wet guys dave what video would you do? Oh skater boy Get the undershirt and the tie together Get the undershirt and the tie going and my hair straightener And you? I don't know I think one of the Sum 41 videos would be a lot of fun

They seem like they were just having a good time in their videos Sure with DMX riding around the party I'd want to play yeah with dmx riding around the party i'd want to play that role the dmx driving around the party um dave do you have an overheard oh yeah mine is uh this is uh i was downtown i rarely go downtown but i had an appointment at the apple store and i got there early because i had to go pee so badly and the geniuses won't let you if you show up during but i didn't want to park at the mall where the apple store was so i parked a few blocks away and as i was hurrying to go pee in the mall i uh overheard a woman say oh my god ain't that just the sweetest thing and i i made a note to look up what she was talking about when i came

back and uh the sweetest thing to her was that a starbucks had closed and the employees had all written down like i had cut out a bunch of hearts out of like starbucks wrappers and just written like personal notes to their uh to their former customers oh that's which was that is the sweetest damn thing yeah i mean a lot of it was um like hey and they like would always it would be like anna uh you know with the dark coffee with cream. And like they would remember their order and write a little note to them. Hey, I always like talking to you. Right.

And then some of them were like, you could tell, you know, that the customers weren't always pleasant. Like it was like, thanks for being understanding when we didn't have the, the, your thing. Like one of them was like, uh, raspberry steamed milk. Thanks for being understanding when we didn't always have raspberry because why on earth would a coffee shop have raspberry? On call raspberry. And then like, thanks for always being so upfront front which i took to mean like that was a passive-aggressive way of saying hey you were mean to me yeah you were mean yeah um but all in all that sounds like a really sweet project it was a really sweet project i hope the employees got

paid on their last day for actually doing it and not expected to do this as part of their severance yes exactly you've got to you got to finish an art project it's either this thing or tie dyeing they're the two things you choose um yeah that's sweet that's nice yeah it was kind of nice yeah it's kind of nice uh my overheard comes courtesy of i was in the grocery store around the time like there was nobody in the grocery store maybe like seven o'clock in the evening not like a popular time of the grocery store so just me and like another woman that was in the fruit section and then two teenage boys and one of the teenage boys went up to the till and very politely asked excuse me where's your spiciest chip like uh what is the spiciest chip i mean something with a pepper uh iman do you like a spicy chip i do i'm trying to remember what i had recently that

was really spicy i remember growing up there were like jalapeno kettle chips that I did not care for. Yeah. Say, I don't like kettle chips. Just in general. Yeah, in general. I'm not a fan of kettle chips. Just get me like regular Lay's or, you know. Yeah.

Just regular chips. President's Choice does this buffalo chicken wing chip that is blue cheese as well so you get the hot and the cool in one bite i'm not a chip enjoyer but i enjoy these i am i don't care about chips until i go somewhere where there are chips and then i become obsessed with chips but like it if right now i wouldn't go and get chips but if somebody had a bowl of them i would hang out with them the whole afternoon and eat those chips you know what i've rediscovered like ruffled chips i haven't had those a long time and yeah them a couple weeks ago pretty amazing but you have them like regular or with the ripples yeah with the ripples and ripples yeah and then you that's that is will make your nephew laugh when you go, that is the origin of.

But Iman, you shook your head. No ripples. I just like regular chips. Well, next time I see you, I'm going to give you a bag of lathes. Well, there's a, you know what? There's different strokes for different folks, different ripples for different tipples. You're right.

I don't know why I'm taking this way too seriously, but Muncho's chips are very underrated regular chips. Oh, Muncho's, yeah. I think they're very popular in Montreal. You can find them here in Vancouver, but you got to look. You got to sniff it out. You know, last time I was in Vancouver,

sorry to interrupt. No, no, go ahead. What I saw, bringing me uh to the 90s clearly Canadian at a store amazing I'm I'm shocked that they're still making it or do you think like are they like I know it was like a special edition or what but that was so fun But speaking of a spicy chips, I was in the liquor store today and, uh, they had a mango ghost pepper, IPA beer,

gross, which, yeah, I don't, I like, I wouldn't even want an IPA, let alone a spicy one. Yeah.

And mango, what's mango doing in there? Get real. Just give us a plain chip. But also if it was a, if, if I didn't have to buy a four pack i would probably buy it just just to taste it yeah i don't know i'm not adventurous beer wise and not

really chip wise i think ripples is as exotic as i like to go with chips that is pretty exotic uh now in addition to our overheards we have overheards sent in from people all over the map. If you want to send us one, you can send it in to spy at maximumfund.org. So this, I don't know where it's taking place. Oh, New York Finger Lakes. This is Kate from on vacation in New York Finger Lakes. One afternoon, I got ice cream at the roadside with cement toadstools in the seating area. A boy of about 10

ran over and jumped up on one of the toadstools, shouting to another boy, We have to do parkour! Come do parkour with me! Boy 2, I can't. Boy 1, why not? Boy 2, um, because I have glass in my foot? Permanently? Or just because I have a glass in my foot permanently or just today,

just like, that's a perfect excuse to get out of parkour. Um, which, you know, my mom was always writing my note. Graham doesn't have to do parkour today. Um, from parkour class,

which took place on the roof. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. You had to get up there and then get back down um what was the wasn't there like a parkour movie about it was like a guy's name it was like huge herald or something dangerous dave i know there was one james bond movie where all the bad guys were parkouring all over the place. But that's not... Are people still parkouring? Climbing up buildings and stuff like that? Do you see it in New York every month?

It seems like a place that you would see a lot of parkour. I guess it's like window cleaning is considered a form of... Yeah, that's right. Swinging on a stool way high in the air. Yeah. That seems like a really cool job. I saw a couple of guys like cleaning windows and I thought this like looks like superhero stuff, you know? Yeah.

And the satisfaction of also the squeegee. It's a combination of like two fun things. Can you imagine being that? And the satisfaction of the screeching? I'm surprised that there's no modern solution to having to put a person, you know, 35 stories up in the air. Would you do it, Iman? If you had the chance? Would I do it? Yeah.

Yeah? Really? I try. I'm not like afraid of heights or anything. I am very afraid of heights. Yeah. Are you? I'm surprised there aren't like drones that do it

yeah i respect heights very much and i don't want to get on their bad side i leave i leave heights to brave people that watch windows and of course yourself not afraid uh this next one comes uh from kM in Surrey, British Columbia. We stopped at the market on our way home from a camping trip. There were three young women standing around a display of three huge rounds of Parmesan cheese. They didn't seem to be having a conversation, but as I passed by them, I heard one today to the other. I didn't put my whole hand on it. If you touch that Parmesan, you have to buy it that's right um i didn't know that that was called a round wouldn't you call it a

wheel i would call it a wheel a wheel yeah a cheese wheel well you know what kcm get it together in college we once someone went we did like a uh cheese roll where we all went to Beacon Hill Park in Victoria and rolled a wheel of cheese down and the first person to catch it won it. I was talking to somebody. And just before you say your thing, yes, I won it. Did you really? Yes. So what did you win? What was the prize?

The wheel. You got the wheel. I got the wheel. Was it good cheese? Yeah, it was too much. It was a whole wheel of it yeah i forget what i could not tell you like i immediately was like yeah i don't let's share it yeah yeah yeah i don't know why we're competing help yourself yeah how many pounds do you think uh i'm not really good at estimating, but probably 200. Wow. No, maybe two, two, three pounds.

Yeah. And then, but also like it was over in five seconds. Like it was, it was fun. But after I won it, we were like, well, let's keep, let's do like 10 more rolls down the hill. But people get really hurt doing that yeah yeah i only did it the first couple rolls and then i was like well i've i've won it so i yeah there's a lot of elbows flying you get to stand on the podium and have the cheese put around your neck yeah spray put my thumb over the the cheese hole and have cheese foam spray out on everyone. Yeah, I would never.

I would never. It looks like you trip and then people just fall over you. It's too much like parkour. This last one comes from Kelly G. I was waiting at the cash machine behind three teenage boys one of them was using the machine when his friend said excitedly if you pull the cash out really fast you can get extra money i love those things you could trick the cash machine yeah if you do

it really fast it will just keep pumping money out um that was a big thing do you have one of those in mom where it was like somebody told you that if you do this thing you'll get like the big one for me was you put a quarter in a candy machine and they said if you cranked it really hard that it could go around and round and round you just get infinite jelly beans or whatever but it never it wasn't true it was uh every kid tried it it never came true once it actually happened to me at zeller's i put it in a quarter and i just went uh once but it just kept coming out i didn't need to put the quarter so that was like being at a casino for a teenager you're the first person i've ever heard that that happened to i couldn't believe

that and i ran to my parents to be like look how much candy i have and they're like this is so bad like this is too much and i was already like a hyperactive kid and back in the day they didn't like believe in add and all of that stuff so um throw that out and i'm like this is money like i earned this yeah i'm putting this towards my nest egg i heard that if you drilled a hole in a quarter you could put it in a machine and pull it out oh like a what do they call it oh yeah yeah or like you drilled a hole and then like uh you know put fishing line or dental floss around it you could pull it in and pull it out but i don't know if anyone did that i did who had access to a drill?

Yeah, that sounds familiar. Also, I think there was some kind of scam that you could do with pay phones. Like if you dial a certain number, it would give you a free call or something. 1-800-COLLECT. But yeah, I tried the quarter thing. It never happened for me.

So I'm glad it happened for one of us. that doesn't mean there's some truth to the matter no it wasn't it's not like somebody told me something about a quarter i was just like going to get candy with a quarter but it just so happened that the machine was broken right and it kept i'm i'm we're still happy for you yeah thank you absolutely i just wanted to set the record straight sure sure yeah uh is that all you did? Did you do three, Graham? Yes, I did. Okay.

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. Ugh. SpyPod 1, like these people have. Hi, David Graham and possible guests. My name's Hayley.

I'm calling in with an overheard. I was leaving the IKEA parking lot in Burlington earlier this summer, and I noticed in my rearview mirror, the car behind me, the gentleman at the wheel was doing what I can only describe as harmonica hands. So I turned my radio down to see if i could hear if he was actually playing the harmonica um that was inconclusive but that's what he was up to while we were waiting for the light you know big ups to that guy uh love the show off i go uh guess you could you could look like you're blowing warm air into your hands on a cold day that looks yeah but not in the winter if you're

you got harmonica hands in the in the summer what if you're chewing on your nails that also looks yeah or corn on the cob yeah oh yeah while you're waiting at a red light or just like keeping your dukes up you know in case you get in a fight yeah yeah uh man oh man like harmonica is a thing I really enjoy for about five seconds. And then I'm like, knock it off. You know? Some of it is like, I don't like the like folk music harmonica, but I like Stevie Wonder harmonica.

Yeah. Yeah. Or the harmonica solo in that Spice Girls song. Where they're in the desert on the salt flats i'm giving you everything what's that song called this i swear this i swear yeah uh say you'll be there say you'll be there that's right yeah and uh harmonica also like if you were in prison and some guy was doing harmonica that would suck do you remember when we worked at CBC and there was the stairwell that was so echoey and there

would be a guy playing harmonica in there like he was on death row? Yes, I do remember that. For his, like, instead of taking a coffee break, he would take a... Just a quick honk break. Yeah. Honk break. Alright, here's your next phone call.

Hey Dave, Graham, possible guest. This is Blake from Atlanta calling in All right, here's your next phone call. Hey, Dave, Graham, possible guests. This is Blake from Atlanta calling in with an overheard. A couple days ago, I was going down the Beltline in Atlanta, which is one of our public walk-in cycle paths, and this guy on a bicycle almost hit a Hari Krishna that was out there asking for donations. And as he rolled past the avoided collision,

he said, Damn, his peaceful ass almost got hit. All right. His peaceful ass almost got hit. Yeah. Well, that's what it would say

on his headstone. His peaceful ass got hit. He lived as he... He died as he lived with a peaceful ass. I don't see the Hare Krishnas out very often. No. Once in a while, they seem like they've got a really good summer wardrobe. They've got like a lot of loose flowing robes. And they often have shaved heads or am I making that up?

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Shaved heads with the little ponytail, is that right? Yeah, and like I don't know, I think they're ready for summer. Yeah, Hare Krishna. This is going to be Hare Krishna summer. I have said it all the way right now. Hare Krishna summer.

Alright, here's your final phone call hello dave and graham and lovely guest uh this is eric from portland i was listening to the recent episode where you were comparing the awesome blossom to the stack of uh onion rings at red robin and it reminded me of an overseen uh from God, years ago. Anyway, it's the apocalypse. Nobody sees anything or does anything, so it's fine to bring up things from years ago. So I'm sitting at the Red Robin with my wife,

and we're both just having burgers and whatnot, and we're kind of down the way from a family of four, and it's two screaming kids, and they're, you know, with the crayons and everything everywhere, and it's kind of a scene, so it's hard to not pay attention to them. And they got one of those onion ring towers, and to a man, every single one of them cut open their onions,

pulled the onion part of the onion out, put it on the discard pile plate where they just disposed of their onions and then just ate the outer shell. And I thought, yeah, that's not right. Anyway, off I go. No, it is right. It's just the onion's just a grease delivery function. Yeah, there's no, like, you're not getting any vitamins out of the deep fried onion.

Yeah, but I feel like that was a common kid move to take the onion out and just eat the the crust what did you say the fried bit the skin like it do you like an onion ring iman i do i love onions i love garlic uh i love them in every form yeah so i have the whole thing yeah yeah it's good yeah i love when they do the crispy onions too sometimes on a burger. Yes, yeah. Man, I'm with you. If a restaurant has the choice of fries or onion rings, I will get onion rings every single time. I'm just tired of fries being the default. Yeah, they really became...

Potatoes really wormed their way into a lot of pretty cool scenes. They're default for junk food. They also hash browns at breakfast. They really figured it out. And then vodka for dessert. Yeah. I like when the fries are really well done.

I think that's why I don't care about fries in general. Right. Unless they're like matchstick fries or really well cooked. they're like matchstick fries or really well cooked those yeah those matchsticks fries when you get them and you didn't know that that's what was coming it's a real yeah it's a real yeah latkes these are all the big potatoes i love this is potato business yeah a well-done potato yeah but i love mashed potatoes too. Yeah. I just want my potato cooked. Yeah.

Really well. Yeah. That's fine. I think you're still, you're still a potato. I wish I was like a potato. That's like shaped in a circle. The put in batter and then deep fried.

And then I take the potato out and I just eat the batter. Can you imagine fried mashed potatoes? That would be like something you get at a carnival oh yeah like i can't no i'll be honest i can't imagine neither can i but it would be like crunchy on the outside and then like the sweet taste yeah like when they try to make the macaroni and cheese yes deep fried balls that are on paper like that's delicious and they are always a disappointment. Yes. Yeah.

Well, I believe that brings us to the end of this here program. Sure. I think so. Yeah. Eamon, thank you so much for being our guest. Guys, it was the best. Thank you so much for having me. So people can find the El Solomon cartoons on Instagram.

New one every week or? A new one every week or a new one every week we started uh back up again uh now that kids could go back to school and the pandemic's over and our illustrator has more time okay oh you're not drawing me no no we're not drawing them um no we just do the jokes and the dialogue but um yeah and if you want to follow me uh because i have an independent career on my own as well at iman underscore el underscore husseini also on instagram or twitter and twitter facebook everywhere everywhere you want to be. And you and Jess, you also were, I don't know if you still are hosting a show on BBC. We did two seasons. Nice. Yeah. I think, I think it was a pandemic thing.

I'm not sure if we'll do something else. Um, but yeah, there are two seasons that you could listen to on the BBC world service. Nice. It's called comedians versus the News. Good name for a show. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for being our guest today. It was a real treat. And thank you, all of you out there in the listening world. You know, hang tight, hang loose, and hang them high.

Come on back next week for another episode of Stop Podcasting Yourself.