Stop Podcasting Yourself - Episode 811 - Brent Butt

Episode Date: October 3, 2023

Comedian Brent Butt returns to talk his debut novel Huge, tastelessness, and clown fears.

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 811 of Stop Podcasting Yourself. My name is Graham Clark. With me as always is a man who has told me recently that he's too blessed to be stressed. Mr. Dave Shumka. I told you that. I was being ironic. Oh no, too stressed to be blessed?

I'm too cursed to be, I don't know. Worst? I guess so. To be first. No, I'm, yeah, no, I'm too, I'm so blessed. But, you know, a little under the weather. Yeah. But we'd love to be able to get our guest in studio, but it's just not safe in this post-COVID, current COVID world. And you know what?

I'm over the weather this rainy weather that is i'm over it already yeah really i'm done with it i want sun back please uh you want you're you're sort of i think of you as like a you know a tropical guy yeah yeah a parrot head yeah grass skirts uh t-shirts um our guest today returning guest to the podcast one of our favorite all-time guests uh he has a book out today called huge it's his first book and it's being sold coast to coast it's brent butt everyone hello hello thanks for having me on you guys and thanks for haranguing i don't know how you arranged this, that I'm your guest on actual publication book day.

Well, we work with Penguin very closely. Is it a Penguin book? You got them in your pocket. I forget sometimes how powerful Spy Podcast is. The corporations, you guys, the strings puppet man media puppet master yeah well Graham said we were working with Penguin he means the Batman villain oh no yeah there was another show wanted to book you but uh a certain uh Gotham uh villain uh shut them down for the day with a kind of quacking palm i didn't realize like i knew you guys were powerful but you know beyond being a sun

worshiper graham is also in cahoots with uh the dark side of the evils yeah the uh well let's get to know us get to know us because i want to talk about uh burgess merritt this portrayal of the penguin he he didn't he didn't have anything to go off except the comics right there was no batman live action so he he invented like i believe you're right i think you're right well did any of them have anything to go off of except the comics? They all like, I guess they, well, there,

there had been, there had been Batmans before, like old serial movie Batmans in the 30s, 40s. Yeah. Yeah. For some reason on my Facebook feed, every other thing that it wants me to watch is uh somebody's done fan art of all

the batmans and uh and all the bruce waynes and all the jokers fantastic yeah sometimes they include that old one so yeah the uh and caesar romero had the comic book to go off of and he was like no yeah i'm keeping my mustache yeah they couldn't convince him to shave the stache. He was like, you want me? Do you want Caesar or not? Because me and my mustache are walking. So they put the white powder over the mustache,

the white paint. How come no one on the internet is doing like, um, you know, uh, those things that they do for the Joker, like stylized art for all of the Riddlers. Oh, yeah, yeah. Have there been three?

There's been at least, no, yeah, there's been Jim Carrey. Mm-hmm. Frank Gorshin. Frank Gorshin. Yeah. And Paul Dano in the new one? Yeah, Paul Dano. Yeah.

Which is a very different take on the, on the creature of the Riddler. Did you like the Riddler as a character when you were reading comics growing up? Cause it kind of, to me it was a second tier tier villain. Yeah. He was up there with like, it's like when flash fought,

you know, boomerang like a boomerang episode. I think I could take boomerang. What was boomerang's deal? Yeah. He was good at throwing boomerang episode i think i could take boomerang what was boomerang's deal yeah he was good at throwing boomerangs at people you know against the fastest creature in the galaxy and you're winging boomerangs at him something you use to hunt kangaroos presumably but and you know so he had like trick ones it would blow up or one would be i think that was it i think he had the one trick he had the regular boomerang clonk or he had the

one that would clonk and then blow up but would it blow up and then come back to him on fire oh no i didn't think this through what batman had a boomerang as well what did he use that for a batarang the batarang yeah just to knock guns out of people's hands pretty much would it come back or would he just like was that he's such a good boomerang thrower that he could yeah i know he's the best detective in the world but no one said anything about his boomerang ability well in the dc universe when you look him up in the dc universe one of the things i remember saying, Batman is an incredible athlete, far superior to mere Olympic level.

I just love that. Mere Olympic level. Get out of here with your... You call that a pole vault? Watch this. US persuades him to join the Olympic team, and he does every single sport. He's probably a strong swimmer hey oh i'm sure even with the cape imagine if he did imagine how fast he'd be going without the cape that's what

the commentators say yeah that's how he gets so strong he trains with the cape it's a training cape yeah it's a swim cape it's got big training pockets in there dragging the water i do go to the pool and i see people have uh they wear, sometimes they wear flippers and sometimes they wear the hand flippers. Oh, yeah. Like webbed fingers. Really? Yeah.

That seems too easy. Yeah. The whole creature from the Black Lagoon outfit. Mm-hmm. If I walked down to the pool and saw somebody with flippers, I would just turn around and walk away. This isn't for me. Or cannonball them right in the middle of their back.

One of the two things. Depends what mood I'm in. This ends here. Cannonball. You can't do a cannonball without simultaneously screaming cannonball. That's 90% of the fun of it. Cannonball.

Geez, I'm trying to think of the last time i can't no i cannonballed this summer at a lake i did a good cannonball into the lake yeah i cannonballed a week and a half ago you really yeah off a diving board oh shit that's the best that's the best cannonball you can do a cannonball into bed every night boom blow n Nancy out the window. I cannonball out of bed. I got to take on the day. You know what dawned on me the other day? I'm more than twice Nancy's mass.

It never hit me. Like I knew I was considerably, if you asked me which one of us was heavier, I would know, I wouldn't have to think about it. But the notion that I'm more than twice her body mass, that hit me like a ton of bricks. Is it because someone for your anniversary made a diagram of the two of you on a scale and there were two of her on her side? I got to stop hanging out with scientists. His egg heads.

Yeah. Someone designing like a designer for a science book speaking of egghead was he the weakest he was probably the weakest of the batman villains right oh yeah did he just like eggs did vincent price play him in the tv he did a 60s tv show yeah and it was just a guy who he just more than anything he had a fondness for eggs and looked like an egg i like how a lot of those dc villains have just become like their names are also like sarcastic put-downs like brainiac egghead boomerang boomerang egg gorilla grod people what did he just call me? Now, speaking of all things fictional, you have written a book.

A novel, Graham, because a book is just a book, but a novel. That's true. You didn't just write like the Brent Butt Guide to fix it. I believe really that's the vibe that I got from publishers when we first spoke about me doing a book because i was approached and the idea was you know hey have you ever thought of doing a book and as a matter of fact i said i'm writing one right now and they were like oh excellent and they were hoping it would be like you know brent butt's favorite hot dogs across canada like where to get the best chili dog that can try and stop me from purchasing that book holy shit so yeah they were a little taken aback to say oh no it's not that it's a dark violent psychological thriller and they were like oh but um are there any tips about where to get hot dogs

in it no in hindsight it was a real missed opportunity. I should have, you know, I got to know where my bread is buttered. I mean, especially because it's about comedians on the road. Yeah, that's the thing. It's about, it's sort of an idea that I had percolating for a long time because in stand-up, you know, often the situation will be like, you know you know okay you're going to be meeting this guy some comedian he's from north carolina you're going to meet him at edmonton and you're going to spend two and a half weeks together doing shows oh okay and you you meet the person and then you're like uh you know three hours into the first road trip and you're hearing their

world views and you're like oh boy and it of snowballs, they get crazier and crazier. And eventually you're like, you're thinking, oh man, there's a lot of places to hide my body up here in the prairie, you know? So I wanted to, I had the idea that it would be great to write a story that captured that sort of dread about being with somebody that you're just at their mercy and they're not wired upright and you are in the middle of nowhere um i remember the first time that i went on the road with a comedian name redacted uh but uh it was he was somebody that you wouldn't want to go on the

road with uh kind of character and uh my then roommate sean proudlove gave me a bunch of envelopes with affirmations in them to uh open along the way that is super thoughtful probably kept you alive right you need that kind of straw to hang on to sometimes when you're on the road the whole world's against you and some lunatic is driving you god knows where while they tell you their political theories yeah i did a one of my few road trips i uh this comedian from portland was coming to do a set like to do he was like picking people up on his tour and then uh he was going to where there was on Vancouver Island. And so we were like a little late, uh, but we got the ferry and then we were fine.

Once you're on the ferry, you make the ferry that you're hoping for. You're good. Yeah. Uh, but he was like, he just couldn't get out of the mood that we were late and we were going to be so early to this show. And it was, uh, what's that city, the city the town that's like uh there's a ski mountain new york yeah it might be new york new york british columbia big show business how they do shows there but it was it was uh yeah it was on a uh like a mountain town and we were driving in and he was speeding down the highway and it was

snowing like it started snowing and i was like i think we're gonna be there in time and we spun off the road and ended up in a ditch he was like projecting right it was self-fulfilling prophecy yeah if i panic enough this won't go well it's also weird because uh and you can attest to this you don't just drive together and do shows together you're like connected to this bird this is your only tether in this weird well that that's part of it too in the book is that this guy that they're traveling with, he creates all kinds of problems. And the expectation is, it's like, you guys got my back, right?

Yeah. And, you know, have you ever been in that situation where you're like, no, you're starting all this unnecessary trouble. Like, why would I have your back? Yeah, no, I remember saying saying i've got your back and then walking immediately away from the cake and going back to the hotel yeah i'm there for you man double hits um was there any stuff from your specific like memory of going on the road and stuff that made it into the book? Um, I don't think specifically, I don't think there is,

although one thing that, um, there's one moment in the book where, that I kind of adopted from something I used to do on the road. And I would still do sometimes now with, uh, if I go on the road with, uh,

Jamie Hutchinson, usually who I actually reference him in the book as getting he gets burned out of a gig in the book so I called him up and said hey in this story you uh you're getting shafted out of a gig you had books by the way but anyway uh you know sometimes when you're doing a gig at a place and they don't even know it's comedy night you know and they're sort of against the idea there is that tonight so so that sort of attitude is in there at a couple and they don't even know it's comedy night you know and they're sort of against the idea there is that tonight so so that sort of attitude is in there at a couple of these gigs but also sometimes nobody's going to introduce you and so to go up and just start trying to be

a comedian with no introduction is very difficult so what i started doing in the old days is i would go up as though i was just introducing the comedian i'd give him a hell of a big intro you know one of the funniest guys you're ever going to see please welcome and then i would just kind of turn around for a second then come back and it's me and it's sort of just a dopey enough gag to get everybody on board a little bit yeah it's not bad it does serve the purpose of giving you uh giving you an an intro so i i wrote that into the book but not specifics you know like the the antagonist of this book and the protagonists are sort of just a uh collage of their archetypes of comedians but as you start writing characters one of the things i love is like you you start finding things out about them and discovering things and and realizing how much of each of them

like i sort of didn't realize until i was reading the first draft how much of the two protagonists sort of come from me different aspects of me which makes sense i guess if you're writing it but i wasn't conscious of it at the time but once like one of the characters their father died at a young age and it sort of puts it puts things in perspective for them and the other one is like a you know a comedian who is um you know on the the he's he's performing with much younger comedians right so there's that element of me like i'm often doing shows where i'm you know the same age as comedians parents yes that are on the show yeah so there's more and more it seems unwittingly i was writing more and more of myself into it i didn't realize

until after i read the first draft but i think that that's what sort of that's what makes it there's a bit of an authenticity to it if you can arrange that and if we said what the actual like whole premise of the book have we said the title oh yeah it's called huge yeah it's called huge and that's uh uh it's about three comedians on the road two of whom do not have a disturbing capacity for violence um you know the they're they're it's really about the they're the road the road in and of itself is a difficult enough thing and then when you add into the mix a real violent x factor it's their their tours becomes less about getting laughs and more about just getting off the road alive yeah it is it's a it's a dark thriller um some some good moments of dread good moments of violence and um yeah it was a lot it's very very different from anything i ever wrote before and i

didn't know if i would be able to do it or not but i i knew i was going to sit down and and try it and it was you know it was about halfway through the book i was like i found that i was really enjoying the process but i was also really enjoying the story and i thought well this might actually work well uh how many pages is it brent yeah what's it listed it's listed at 304 pages okay but it's really about 60 you know it's like lots of glossy inserts of uh pictures of a pro wrestler listed as six six but you meet him and he's like clearly 511 no it's uh it it's 304 pages but i believe the story is comes in just under 298 pages i believe nice. Nice. Lean. It's about 83,000 words. I would write a thousand words a day. That was my goal as I was writing this.

I mean, I often wrote more than that, but that was my, I gave myself the daily deadline. You got to do at least a thousand words. And everyone's dying to know where is the best hot dog in Canada? Yeah. The best hot dog in Canada is the one that's within reach you have to learn to be content in this life see that was less than a book and more of a bumper sticker so it's good you didn't stick to that the uh the best one ever that my favorite chili cheese dog of all time and that's why you know i love chili cheese dog that's why i wrote

it in the corner gas there was a um, a, um, comedy club in Toronto used to play called the laugh resort and below the laugh resort, there was a bar pool hall and they had, you could get snacks and they had a chili cheese dog. It was, the place was called Milwaukee's. It's long since gone. That building I think has gone, but, um, man,

it was good. The chili cheese, my mouth is watering as I'm thinking about it now. And they would, so it was a great hot dog, great bun. All the component parts were individually great. So, and then they would put chili on it. Great chili. And then smartly, they would put the cheese on top of that and then sort of put it underneath a, uh, what do you call salamander or grill, you know? Oh yeah.

So the cheese would melt and sort of seal the chili in. So you, so it was so hefty and yet strangely tidy for a chili cheese dog. Oh yeah. Cause it's all contained. Yeah. It was genius. Wow.

I was in Halifax and I had a veggie burger at a bar and it was, it tasted exactly like a hamburger from a school cafeteria would taste. It was kind of like smushed. Man, it was the most delicious hamburger I've had in like a decade. I almost ordered another one. Cause I was like, Oh,

the nostalgia is just washing over. Start panicking. You don't have your homework done. Oh yeah. I'm 46. I can be a lot of these teachers dead you so you found your ultimate hot dog uh the book is 304 pages uh what i mean it sounds like we're done here i think we're wrapping it up we're getting the high sign here. So what, what, how does it end? Very clever.

Mr. Shumka. You almost had me. Why is it called huge? So huge. There's sort of three reasons that the name huge stuck with me. It's sort of references. So the,

the, the big problematic guy, he's, he's an enormous man. He's at least six and a half feet tall and he goes by he's given himself the stage name hobie huge oh and it's also he called it that because it's his goal is to be uh huge it's one of the things he says because i'm going to be fucking huge right but it also has to do with so it's kind of symbolically

everybody's dreamed in comedy to be huge one day but it's also they're driving across this rural stretch of remote countryside one of the comedians is from chicago one's from dublin and they've never experienced you know that just sort of expanse in canada in between communities when you're just driving and it's just nothing for hours it's like the one character is from ireland and she says you could fit the whole of my nation in between the towns in this country yeah exactly um and so that's part of it too is and that comes into play just the expanse um that they have to deal with the expanse, um, that they have to deal with the expanse of driving across Canada,

going town to town. And there's nobody you can really rely on. Your closest ally is thousands of miles away. And this guy, Hugo, who huge, that his name will be. Oh, be huge.

Have you ever like, uh, there's a guy from New Yorkork that uh calls himself big j okerson and i only ever heard him before and then when i met him i was like he's kind of big it's not really i mean uh there's earthquake earthquakes pretty big earthquake was big absolutely typhoon less i actually have quite a small butt really for a, you know, a heavy guy. I mean, it's twice as big as Nancy's.

I have quite a small set of ass and legs. And if there's something genetic, like I've spoken about this before, if I somehow just became 700 pounds, just eating ice cream and Milwaukee's chili cheese dogs and potato chips, my ass and legs would be the same size. And I would just start at my temples and balloon out like a muffin, but my ass and legs would not put on any weight.

I know it. Yeah. It's, I mean, I disagree. I, I don't think that would happen. And I,

I got, here's 20 bucks. It says, we want you to be huge. How about that? We want you to put on we want you to be 700 pounds and uh then come back we'll talk about it um the and then we'll look at your ass yeah do you have uh because i i have no i have no butt either and i did i can't find i just can't find the right pair of pants i feel like they're always just hanging loose in the back and i can't ever hey listen i'm not i got a nice ass oh hey okay i'm happy with my the shape the what else is there oh the performance the smell not the texture what's the word i'm looking for

the nap it's just uh it's just small for my you know for a guy that's over 200 pounds right i mean i'm no big jay oakerson no he's he's pretty big he's six foot eleven yeah i saw a clip yesterday for his adam sandler and jennifer anderson on a red carpet and there's one uh reporter that's crouching down they're like why are you crouching down he's like i'm too tall again everybody's way with the cameras and they're like stand up and he stands up he's like nearly seven feet tall oh they freak out um i was i forget what it was but it was like something a sports thing and someone was able to pick out who the best players were by who had the biggest asses and it was just like the bigger your ass is the better you are at sports didn't mark mcguire have like a really prominent big ass well let me look at my poster on the wall yeah it is fairly fairly big i don't know how i got this poster of him by the pool

yeah it's quite good stepping out of the shower yeah i just remember thinking that he had a but maybe he wasn't famous for it i think jose can say oh maybe it's the steroids is the steroid yeah that was all ass steroids that's where they would inject them that is where i want to gain weight if i yeah i'd rather gain it in the butt than anywhere else. Well, or in the biceps. If I got fat,

really fat biceps. Are you there? God, it's me, Graham. I would love to have a big fat butt, please. Amen.

Yeah. Good night. And you wake up every morning and rush to the mirror and look, it doesn't seem any bigger at all. Boy, I don't know what is involved in a brazilian butt lift um i think it might be a rescue operation involving a helicopter but uh it's uh seems to be all the rage with the butt the cheeks crew oh man like it's like my uh brother went to turkey which apparently is uh famous for hair plug surgery so he said every attraction you go to there's there's just several men wearing ball caps no matter what direction you look in so i wonder if that's the same in brazil with the

butt lift oh sure you'll uh you know you go see uh ipanema Beach and there's just a bunch of people with bandaged casts on their butts. Both times that you said Brazilian butt lift, my mind went to old time wrestler Bobo Brazil. You ever see old time wrestler Bobo Brazil? No, it's his day of big butt? I can't remember. I don't think so. He was pretty, he was pretty beefy for the time, you know,

in the 60s. He had a lot of guys, pro wrestlers in the 60s that were like 5'10", 180, you know, that kind of thing. Yeah. A little soft in the middle looking, but,

uh, but Bobo Brazil was a little more, he had more muscles. Yeah. I'm looking him up right now. He's, uh, yeah,

he's quite fit. Um, I was watching, have you watched the series series the dark side of the ring on uh no from because i lived it i don't have to watch it literally is there anything is there anything part of wrestling culture other than the um matches themselves that are uplifting. Every documentary is the seedy side. People are like, what? There's a seedy side to pro wrestling? To low-level pro wrestling?

I think it was you who told me a story about a bunch of wrestlers being in a car together driving through Saskatchewan. I can't remember what. I did tell you. The story was told to me by Mike Wilmot. I think... of car together like driving through yeah saskatchewan yeah i can't remember what i did tell you the story was told to me by mike wilmot i think if i remember it was mike wilmot's dad who was a cop i believe in the middle of the night saw a car whipping down the highway

somewhere in ontario and pulled him over just because it was kind of you know two or three in the morning or whatever pulled him over and it was like just jammed full of pro wrestlers just packed in. And he said the two things that really jumped out at him was when he asked for the guy's driver's license, the driver handed him his license and he said it looked like a postage stamp in his hand because his mitt was so big. And then the other thing that stuck out to him was each of them there was like five or six guys in the car and each had their own bucket of chicken they were all enjoying let's each get a bucket of chicken and hit the road cheers it'd be fantastic smelling vehicle a bunch of greasy sweaty pro wrestlers jammed in after a match mowing down a bucket of

chicken each oh fantastic smell i'm trying to think what is a hat but i think the rock his story is pretty happy in the wrestling realm he's got a he doesn't have any dark side of the story as far as i know but he's it he's the only there's uh hulk hogan just got married i know and uh for a scientist oh she's a scientist yeah oh nice he'll become one don't you think it's a long time coming that hulk hogan becomes a scientist yeah i'm cruise officiating the wedding he wore that it drives me up the wall that he like wore his bandana for his for his wedding that we all know you're bald your wife certainly knows you're bald uh maybe not maybe she's never seen it maybe this is like the rule in the house it never comes off you gotta

live with that did he wear a sleeveless tuxedo no but it wouldn't have been out of place at the yeah after their vows he rips it open yeah did you hear the story about speaking of big arms so so um jesse ventura when they're shooting the predator jesse ventura is in with wardrobe right and he the wardrobe people they measure his arms for like some outfit or something, his bicep. And they say, oh, you know what? Your arm is actually three quarters of an inch bigger around than Arnold's. So he's like, oh, is it really?

And so like a day or two later on set, they're talking about it. And, you know, Arnold's like talking about his big arms. And Jesse says, you know, I's like talking about his big arms and uh uh jesse says you know i think my arm is actually bigger than yours he's got the inside scoop right yeah and and arnold's like no no i don't think so i don't think yeah and so they have a bet i can't remember what the bet was for but there's some bet and they measure and arnold's is like an inch bigger than jesse and arnold had set it up with the wardrobe people tell jesse that his arm is bigger than mine then i'm going to start talking about my arms he'll bet me that is so clever slash psychopathic i love that though

he's always doing stuff like that and then he pulled off his mask and he's george clooney i have to prank people but he it also just works because you're like well of course it makes sense that arnold would be talking about his arms yeah it all plays into the whole thing and it and it's like plucks on the you know jesse's own ego because like once you like they say it's easy to get somebody to believe something they want to believe man i'm victim to that all the time so if you tell jesse ventura you know your arm is bigger than arnold he'd be like oh yes it is you wouldn't question it for a second because you want to believe it uh yeah that's the backbone of politics right yeah i'm gonna say something that you like and

then uh jesse ventura is gonna run for office and then look where that got us he went from wrestling eccentric to kind of middle of the road politician back to eccentric no he was a political eccentric too was he was he like speeches like like you you were doing cutting wrestling promos yeah but he was he was less strangely like politically he seemed less extreme to me and i oh yeah i couldn't sit down here and tell you his his platform but like he seemed less because i remember one time when they were he was on cnn and there was a debate going on about whether or not waterboarding is actually torture or if it's just a military thing and he was to my surprise he was like it's absolutely torture should not be allowed and it's also it's not reliable anyway you know you're you're waterboarding somebody to get there to get some information from them and they'll tell

you whatever they want and his thing what he said i can't remember who the other politician was who did he suggest maybe trying like a figure four leg lock well he said to the he said he challenged the other politician whoever it was he said tell you what let me waterboard you for 15 minutes and i'll have you confessing to killing kennedy that's pretty good that's a good well he was he was debating Lee Harvey Oswald. Yeah. To be fair, who surprisingly was alive. I didn't know.

It was ahead of the polls until they keep up the dates with the current events. Last I heard, he'd got gut shot. I thought I assumed he died. Uh, yeah, it's a forever action in my brain of what a man looks like when he's

being shot in the gut. Ooh, he's got that. the gut okay enough lee's a friend yeah that's right he's a big he's a contributor we've had him on actually a couple times now boy i i'm not a big like JFK conspiracy or whatever assassination follower. He was shot by Jack Ruby, right? Lee Harvey Oswald. Lee Harvey Oswald. Yeah. Then what happened to Jack Ruby?

He went to jail, didn't he? And then he died in jail, I think. They weren't like, hey, why'd you do that? He caught syphilis from Al Capone. Yeah, man, that guy spread it around everywhere. Have you heard the, I think it's probably an urban legend, but that Al Capone

like some family members or some kids in his neighborhood got sick and so that he was the guy who lobbied for expiry dates on things that uh no yeah like apparently they had bad milk or something and uh he was like he had he had bottles because of his rum running so he started bottling milk and so you know he wasn't all bad uh wasn't all bad you're one of those guys you gotta to try and search out the positive nuggets.

Yeah. You know, Hitler did invent the Volkswagen. You know. Gotta have to do it. Yeah. You gotta. You know,

Genghis Khan advocated for seatbelts. Nobody knew what he was talking about, but he was a big proponent. Oh, there's somebody posted like an old CBC news story of when they made seatbelts. The law that you had to have seatbelts. Oh, people were bellyaching. You couldn't like just why? Why the tyranny of the government telling me I have to wear a seat belt it's never gonna catch on

i saw a similar thing too when they surprisingly when they could it's weird to think that there was a time when this wasn't the law but the whole drinking and driving right you can't drink booze while you're driving your car and there was people outraged and there was one guy that was his whole thing was like why the hell i work hard all day you know it always starts with that kind of thing and he pays his taxes and if i get into a car after work i can't have a couple of beers on the way home like it was so crazy to him like how dare the government tell me i can't have two beers in my car on the way home so you're telling me i need to drink a lot more before i get in my car to tide me over yeah great now i gotta stick around

for work an extra 15 minutes and get loaded there before i drive home uh when i was a kid i i could have sworn that drinking and driving just meant you're not allowed to like have a sip of anything while you drive stay dry at all times yeah no water no well because cars didn't have cup holders back then yeah and uh until al capone was like you got to put cup holders in these cars there's no uh how long has it been since a new car came out with ashtrays built? Oh, that's a very good question. When do you think that stopped?

I think my, in the two thousands or before two thousands? I don't know. Cause they still have like a place to put coins, which is basically an ashtray. Yeah. And they still have like, when did they just take the,

like, uh, the cigarette lighter out and just had it as an energy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Just have like the little rubber cap on top of it. Yeah, I wonder, have you ever been on a plane in the last decade or so where they have the ashtrays in the bathroom or whatever? Yeah, you tell where they used to be. Yeah, and you're like, ooh.

This is way too old, man. When did he last change the oil in this pig? Well, I think they still make them because like in some countries, you can still, like in Russia, you can still smoke on a plane or whatever. That's true. Yeah. Yeah. They won't let the US government tell them what to do. Mm-hmm.

they won't let the u.s government tell them what to do yeah we can't you we can't let uh russia be the barometer for for what's uh best for the populace yeah um oh well what's russia doing oh they're doing a lot of stuff they're not allowed to be in the olympics but uh that doesn't stop them from getting up to all that's just because they're afraid of batman they're batman's gonna be the olympics you know with their coming over with their mere olympic level athletic abilities just get shellacked and everything i would really like to see batman versus drago oh that would be the match for the ages. I mean, Batman would kill him almost instantly, I'm sure. Yeah, I guess even Rocky beat him. It would last exactly as long as Batman wanted it to last.

I often, at this stage of my life, you'd think I wouldn't be having these kind of thoughts, but I have these kind of thoughts all the time. When I see mixed martial arts, like if see a ufc event my mind goes to if if bruce wayne was in here like if batman was in mixed martial arts yeah like like what we talk in him as bruce wayne or as batman where he has all the gear yeah like you wouldn't just hand to hand combat i don't care if he's got the mask on or not. You can't be sleep gassing people or whatever. But the notion is he's so far beyond anybody else's physical hand-to-hand.

Even as a little kid, I was like, you know, even if he practiced like 23 hours a day, there's a limit to how, you know, and how good you can get at shooting that little bat harangue with your rope. You know, if you miss once, even if you get so good, like 90 times, 99 out of a hundred times,

you don't miss that one time you miss you're staying on the sidewalk. Yeah. Even as a little kid, I was like, I can only buy this. I'm going on to spider-man i do like the idea that like every time a new sport comes out you're like oh pickleball huh but i wonder how batman would do a pickleball he would thrash everybody like

i'm just i'm always annoying about it in your face it about it. Yeah, yeah, Brent, it's fine. You guys are lucky Batman isn't here. What are you talking about? Don't get so worked up, Brent. Why do you always kind of bring Batman into everything? Now that's a chili cheese dog that Batman would enjoy. He's got such a weird frame of reference for what's good and bad. He holds everything up against Batman. What do you like for the Oscars this year?

Well, there's no Batman movie, but I think Batman would have really liked the Banshees of Innocence. What? How do you? Lucky Batman wasn't in there. He would have chopped more than his fingers off Batman. he would have chopped more than his fingers off. It's one of my favorite kind of thoughts is, uh, about a fictional character playing some other character in a movie.

So Batman is one of the guys like, uh, yeah, he's one of the guys from Chris Finn, Chris Finn, comedian, Chris Finn had a very funny idea that neither of us had the nerve to ever do. But he thought it'd be funny to do a set dressed as Batman.

But then, so you go out, Batman, right? And then you kind of, partway through, you realize, oh, this is stupid. This is a bad idea. And you want to quit. But the person from the booth is like, no, no, this will work. Just stick with it. Just go into your material. And so he starts talking about Canadian politics and stuff.

But he keeps stopping. No, at least let me take the mask off. I feel really stupid. No, no. It's working. Everybody's like. So he's talking about politics, dressed as Batman, very self-conscious about it. Was it Dustin Ladd used to do a set as Darth Vader?

Darth Vader. Yeah. Oh, really? about it like this was it dustin ladd used to do a set as darth vader yeah and it was really yeah he had like a darth vader mask and the voice thing so it sounded like him and black gloves and but then the rest was like you know like a hacky 70s comedian i think yeah it was really good do you remember uh did you guys ever see dan leacop used to do uh he would be mel silverback yeah yeah so he was like he had the gorilla mask but he had like a loud old plaid suit you know and he would do like hacky sort of cat skills comedy but all from like a gorilla's so it's like he was a an orphaned gorilla who was raised by cat skill comedians and so he had all these like you know sort of

cat skill jokes but from a gorilla's perspective he's like wow there's a rough hotel i left a wake-up call i came in at 6 a.m and chopped off my paw you know it was all kind of it was such a funny character mel silverback that could be in the sequel. That could be huge, too. An actual gorilla. Why did we go on the road with a gorilla this time? We thought it would be fun. Like last time wasn't bad enough. He has a car. Dave, what's going on with you, man?

Oh, you guys. Well, the reason we're not in person is because I'm sick. I tested positive for the first time in this three and a half years for His Majesty's novel coronavirus. And let me tell you, folks, it's not great. No. And it's, uh, what type of, uh,

test do you have? Do you have the small Q-tip or the super long Q-tip? It's the super long one. You can just keep pushing that into your head. Well, I think it's pretty average. If you compare it to most other Q-tips, I think the one I have is pretty average.

It's not important. It's not going to do with anything. Yeah. It's like, I actually heard it's bigger important it's not something to do with anything yeah it's like i actually heard it's bigger than arnold um no it's i think it's uh the only kind i've had i i don't think of it as i think it's probably the small one then yeah yeah i feel like there's the ones i have the most of are the long ones and they you could just keep pushing those into your head.

There's quite a distance you can go. Well, we got them, uh, Margo missed school last week and like all week, like she had a cough and it just never got better. And so we kept her home the entire week, which has never happened before. And so we tested her and she was negative

right and so was her attitude um i get that thing out of my nose and then a few days later i started feeling sick and i tested positive and i've tested positive every day since just got just waiting for this thing to pass yeah do you have, is it instant as soon as it? Oh yeah. It lights up like a Christmas tree. They tell you to wait 15 minutes, but boom, bada boom. It's right there. Yeah.

I feel a lot better though. Um, and then yesterday Abby started getting sick, but like a stomach bug. And then today Poppy's sick and throwing up. And so like, we're just just we're getting it from every angle yeah but only one covet i think being staying home for a week from school was like uh that was the golden standard that was if you could stay a whole because then it's like two weekends on the other end too yeah i don't recall ever being you know being home from school for any like a big great length of time i think part of it was just like depression era parents right so

they're like just go to just suck it up and go to school like a couple of days being sick after that it's like okay come on just go to school yeah i think it's uh the longest for me was probably chicken pox which was maybe the better part of a week. I think the longest for me. Oh, it was probably chickenpox as well. But I remember staying. I have to stay home quite a bit after I got my wisdom teeth removed because it was quite, quite an ordeal. And I did not did not go easy.

Those wisdom teeth. When I had my wisdom teeth out, my mom said, are you saying this is as smart as you're going to get? Just roasting me. But I do have the thing as described where you lose your sense of taste and smell. Oh, shit. That sucks. Oh, that's terrible.

I mean, not when everyone's throwing up around you. That's terrible. I mean, not when everyone's throwing up around you. That's true. But I weirdly have like a loss of appetite with it. I guess so. Not in the sense of like, oh, I'm, you know, when you normally think of losing your appetite, you're like, it's because you're nauseous. Yeah. But this is more just like, oh, I forgot eat because i i didn't smell any food this morning yeah that would be that's a very foreign notion like i'm i'm you know i'm a real food abuser

and so the notion of like just not being like being apathetic to eating is so the foreign concept me too i love i love my snacks i love my ice creams i would just start eating super healthy all the stuff i never well that's what i was abby was like hey can i finish this ice cream and i was like i guess so i can't taste it yeah it's just normally i'd be like don't you fucking dare you don't even look at me this covid might save your marriage avoiding these heated confessions uh yeah and then there's certain foods that i've had that i'm like okay like i can tell that like pineapple tastes like it's bright in my mouth but i can't yeah i can't tell that it's sweet huh and i can see sounds

it's the strangest thing yeah and also like have you noticed that if you play a dark side of the moon when the third lion roar happens at the beginning of wizard of oz i might just be on mushrooms actually i may not be on covid i I've come to think of what I just took a handful of mushrooms. Yeah. Yeah. I've never, I guess like when you're, when you have like a cold and your whole head stuffed up, you can't taste.

I get that a lot. Where you just can't taste things. Yeah. Well, just with like a regular cold, but I, that's never like been connected to my appetite. Yeah. That was one of my big fears when I got COVID was like, that's, uh, never like been connected to my appetite. Yeah. That was one of my big fears when I got COVID was like, oh man, I, my big fear was that,

uh, I wouldn't be able to smell or taste things forever. Like it would, you know, go away and never come back. Yeah. That was my biggest fear. What would you miss the most? Aside from chili cheese dogs, what, like what taste would you be like? Oh, I can't possibly never have that again is it caramel yeah i think like it you know that sort of italian food like

tomato cheese beef combo you know yeah so basically chili cheese dogs what you're saying i'm i would be more worried about like i have stepped in something and I don't know it. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Or I have my house stinks and Graham's coming over and I need to clean it up. But I don't know where the stink is coming from. Just walking around with a handful of feces. Why are you doing that?

I wasn't aware. I wasn't aware. Have you tried this? Your touch around food also goes away so you're just completely blind too do you feel brain foggy at all i experienced that like big time because i remember thinking okay well if i got to sit in my office because i sequestered in my office right um so to keep n from getting, she had it early on. Before people knew what the hell COVID was, she was one of the first, you know, early, she was an early adopter. Early adopter.

But so I thought, well, at least I'm going to sit in my office and I'm going to read a bunch of books. It's going to be sweet. I'll be like Burgess Meredith in the Twilight Zone, you know? And then the ironic twist of it all was that my brain didn't work i couldn't absorb i would keep reading the same sentence over and over and not ingesting it i've had super brain fog for the whole while there uh i i always kind of do like i'm a big uh uh like enter the room and forget why i came in here. What did I need? Um,

but, uh, it hasn't been worse. Did you, were you, when you had COVID and you had brain fog, were you, had you finished writing your book or is there a passage in the middle of it's like,

duh, it's really, it's just me go, what was I writing about? Um, yeah, I had, I had,

I had, yeah, I was probably like second draft done. what was i writing about um yeah i had i had yeah i was probably like second draft done how many drafts do you do in for a book well it's hard to say like it all comes down to how you annotate how do you decide what's a new draft some people anytime they make a new anytime they make a slight change they call it a new draft but i would only i would only call it a new draft if there was fairly substantial changes if you're just like tweaking a word here there as you're reading through i didn't regard that as a new draft but i would probably say in terms of substantial changes like four maybe oh the rafts but a lot of tweaking along the way you didn't have like uh at the

very end was the final file that you delivered uh huge draft for final master this use this copy only it's just it's always just v and a number right version 10 version 7 whatever how did you if you don't mind me asking, how did you, how do you like sell the idea of a book to a publisher? That's first, you have to get them off the idea of this hot dog. You got to talk them down from hot dog land.

Well, I'll tell you, I'll do one for you. One for me. Okay. I'll do hot dog book. I'll give you the hot dog book, but you got to publish my psychopath book. Um, the first thing I did was approach an agent.

I didn't want to be dealing with the publishers myself. Right. Because it's all new to me, and I'm not the sharpest marble in the pouch to begin with. So I thought it would probably behoove me to get a literary agent. thought it would probably behoove me to get a literary agent. And, you know, I knew the agents,

the Cook McDermott agency. And I saw that one of their agents, one of their principal guys was, he had just sort of put out there that he was open to reading queries about like thrillers or, and thrillers. And I thrillers or, or, and thrillers. And I thought, okay, well,

here's a guy who's asking for this exact thing that I have. And so through my manager, we approached him and he knew who I was and he was surprised that I had written a book that wasn't like a funny book, but he was intrigued that it was about comedy, but it was sort of a scary thriller. So he said, yeah,

send it to me. I'd like to read it. Nice. And he liked it. And so he took me on as a client. And then he was the one who shopped it around to the publishers. And we actually had a couple different publishers came in and were interested in buying the book. Oh, more than one?

Nice. Yeah. Nice. All right. Mine would be that i would submit would be gone girl two it's uh picks up right after gone girl one and uh gone girl two here we gone again i would call it again and you keep referring to you keep calling the guy ben affleck through it yeah that's like walk downstairs to find it but not as batman this isn't batman

um so yeah it just came to and then so the publishers are like okay send us the book send us the book you know he he pitched it they read it and and liked it like the feedback from the publishers was quite uh encouraging they're not one of these publishers from publishers clearinghouse are they yes so you get the book a penny a page over the course of your life it never stops you never stop getting pages from my books yeah and the more time more books you subscribe to the higher chance you might win a million dollars yeah was it a million i guess it was a million did they ever up it or was it just always stayed in the middle i don't know

what it was i'm confused as to what it was magazine subscriptions i think so yeah but it wasn't ed mcmahon no that's one of those what do you call them mandela effect mandela effect yeah oh yeah i'm a victim of a then because i thought it was ed mcmahon yeah me too but who was it was it somebody famous or it was just like we're the publish clearinghouse we're the publish clearinghouse and we're here to say we love to sell magazines in a major way it was just a rap crux the crux of hip-hop in the early 80s was the important things is to tell people what your name is and what you're there to say after that you whatever yeah exactly yeah it's up to you after that well that's why i was i'm like uh so intrigued by the beastie boys because they never got better they became one of the most successful groups but the rapping

stayed that same kind of like uh you know what the what i'm rhyming with already because i said i said the first word and you know what it's gonna rhyme with in 10 seconds but why mess with perfection you know what i mean they got it they got a good right out of the box just keep it i say um graham what's going on with you okay here's the thing okay i've i've closed a circle in my life uh that started right here on this very podcast years ago we were talking about fear of clowns that i had an uneasiness around clowns, especially when they're in, especially when they're in a sewer, in a sewer, uh,

chasing Batman. These are the clowns I feared the most, but the, the fact that they would put on the makeup and then be the character and would never, you know, never kind of wink at you. Like,

uh, like I'm just playing a character was like, you're talking to a clown always freaked me out. And it was, I talked about it on the podcast and then my mom listened to the podcast. When did you develop this fear? As a kid. And I didn't know why. Like I just always from being a kid to growing up. Like I don't know, I didn't know why, but then my mom listened to the podcast. Because I remember a chapter in this as well yes yeah so oh well yeah then about the date yeah when you

went on a date with two clowns so yeah uh yeah sidebar i uh asked a gal out for for coffee and she showed up with her friend and they were both in their full clown outfits i was like oh god damn it oh it's like that is it the last time i i asked someone out at a fringe festival dear penthouse i never thought these stories were true but so uh my mom listens to the podcast she said i know where you first got your fear of clowns it was from like my dad's company had a christmas party for kids and there was a clown entertainer named buddy who for whatever reason freaked me out and that's where it all started there was no kind of like now your mom told you this recently or a while back when we uh when we talked about on the podcast i was like that was

such a big revelation and i remember she she said by buddy the clown i was like oh yeah i totally remember this guy and what his look was and yeah and it's his car His trunk had a bunch of dead kids in it. It was a van. Thank you very much. Um, so then, uh, sometime passes and a comedian who lives in Calgary gets in touch. And cause I talk about this on the podcast,

but by the client, she gets in touch and says, buddy, the clown is my father. So please call me uh susan yeah so uh she reveals to me that not only is there buddy the clown his wife is also a clown named button and she as a kid was also a clown so she uh i thought you were gonna say she as a kid was also a clown. So she, uh, I thought you were going to say she, as a kid was also afraid of clowns,

terrified of her parents. Um, and so it was kind of like, Oh, okay, this is all, this is all come together. And,

uh, I know who he is. And, and so fine, that's where it sat for a while. But then the radio show, the debaters was going to go to Calgary. And I thought,

this is it. This is the perfect chance. I'm going to ask Amy Edgar is her name. Were you debating something about clowns? Yeah. Fear. We should all be afraid of clowns was the debate. And,

uh, she was, she was interested and she has so much funny material about it that uh it was the perfect thing and then i asked who amy ed wait amy amy is she the daughter of she's the daughter and buster yeah uh buddy uh oh and she's a comedian okay yeah yeah so you know uh the only way she could rebel i guess is if she became like a chartered accountant or something like that um so i said yeah let's debate and then i asked her do you think your parents would come down and kind of make a cameo during the debate she's like she said yeah i i can't stand them i'm terrified of them i can't be in the room so So they say, they say they're,

uh, cool to do it. But the big, one of the big hangups is, uh, bud, her dad is a trick roper as well as a clown. And so he has an old Western mustache and he was like,

I have to shave it off to be buddy, the clown, the opposite of Cesar Romero. Wow. That's commitment to a radio bit yeah and uh yeah and he showed up backstage and uh it was him like in my mind i was like that is the exact guy yeah and you get like anxiety and panic i got uh by the idea of it i kind of did but i had uh approached my like clown fear head on by uh volunteering to be on stage with a guy called puddles the clown and uh he's like a singer yeah

i know yeah so he was kind of the my like immersion therapy and uh being not as afraid of clowns but when he showed up this is the great thing backstage they're just people they're just people and wearing clown outfits it's only when they hit the stage that it's like you know and all that kind of stuff so i uh i gave them both a hug and i feel like that circle is complete it was afraid of clowns not clowns anymore that was a so many you've you've had a lot of uh clown run-ins for someone who's afraid of clowns i you know i i i don't love clowns but i'm it's not coming from a fear thing it's coming from no thanks more of like a yeah who's this for yeah i'm afraid of polka dots. So it just comes with the territory.

I try to explain that to the clown. I'm not terrified of you. It's these damn polka dots. I'm terrified of them. I wonder, because like, you know, clowns go back like centuries. And when did they all agree? Like big shoes, automatically hilarious. Red nose, you know, cookie hair. Like when did they just kind of like, big shoes, automatically, hilarious, red nose, cookie hair?

When did they just kind of stop the development of a clown and just said, that's it, we've picked what a clown is? How old is the concept of balloon animals? Because it's something they all got onto. You can get balloon animals that aren't from a clown. Yeah. I got them from my grocer grocer from my grocer's freezer i don't think they're sanctioned though i i won't take i won't accept a balloon animal if it's unsanctioned if it doesn't come from the clown community honestly when did balloons

themselves when were they invested i probably around the exact same time the condoms were invented. That's my guess. Is when they had like a durable rubber Oh, I don't know. The rubber balloon was invented in 1824. That must have been a huge huge year when people discovered balloons. What were they made of before that?

Burlap. Paper balloons. Cow gut or cat gut um wow that's good for you are you uh

but like when you say the circle is complete now what's next are you is there more clown stuff on

the way are there other things you have to hug yeah my fear of my fear of pumas did not this was a bad solution for my fear of pumas did not this was a bad

solution for my fear of pumas but a puma agreed to debate me on the radio so yeah i had a lot of material my father was a puma as well my mother's a lynx but yeah the uh i don't know i mean i guess i have other uh, I don't know. I mean, I guess I have other fears, but I don't particularly want to confront them. I feel like the clown one was a doable, you know, confronting heights is to, I'm not going to do that. I'm just not going to go, not going to go to high heights. You're not going to debate a building? Yeah. A ladder.

I feel like, I feel like I'm, I'm sort of developing a fear of heights. I never had a fear of heights. I feel like I'm sort of developing a fear of heights. I never had a fear of heights. But the older I get, for some reason, like if I think about it or if I see, you know, like a movie where somebody's like, you know, on a tall building or whatever like that, I'm affected by it in ways I never was prior to. Like, I feel like the last 10 years or so, i've incrementally been developing a fear of heights yeah i'm i'm this i never liked them but i could tolerate them as as a kid and a teenager now i'm like i get that in i started getting vertigo so that was a new fun twist in getting older as i suddenly fell off vertigo that's a good comma once you get old and your hip is fragile

now you're more prone to falling down it seems i don't know why it's counter-revolutionary yeah i think as we got more dizzy and prone to falling our hips would somehow get sturdier our pelvis would become unbreakable because of course when you're older you fall so nature's balance it's all about balance nature really shit the bed in this regard or at least pardon my french maybe we start with vertigo i feel like you sort of do when you're a kid you're throwing up all the time you're falling over yeah that's true the i'm also i'm not a fan of depths that's the other thing heights i don't like depths i don't like yeah anything johnny depth yeah i mean he's pretty cool still right to me they're kind of the same

thing like i get what you mean but yeah it's the same trigger for me like if i was if i was like looking over the edge of a tall building or looking over a deep chasm that was the same height it would be the same trigger to me i think but like the idea of getting into a small you know like rocks and kind of freaks me out the idea of squeezing in i yeah like i get that thing of like if you go to the bottom of the deep end of the pool and then you get up and you're like oh my god i almost died but then you know you didn't almost die you probably could have struggled a bit have you ever had uh where you jump in the pool and it's like a bunch of like it's a pool party lots of different people there and somebody's on like a flotation device of a floating bed or whatever and you come up under that. Like,

that's terrifying. There's no surface! Just let me surface here. Do we want to move on to a bit of business? Sure! That means it's time for a little bit of business that we call a Jumbotron.

Yep, a Jumbotron is a special time in the show where a listener gets to send a message to another listener. And this one is for Orgel and it's from Loxie. Orgel and Loxie.

My favorite radio duo from back in the day. Say goodnight, Loxie. Goodnight, Loxie. Goodnight, Loxie. The message is, thanks for the show, Dave and Graham. Just wanted to wish my loving husband a happy 40th birthday. You're such a great dog father to Lubo and Grizz. This family's got, I mean, I guess those are fine names. Yeah.

They don't say it enough because they are dogs, but you're the best. I'm writing this as Grizz incessantly chews an annoying LaCroix-ish dog toy. Now Lubo is humping Grizz. No friggin' way. Yeah. There was a lot going on in that one. Yeah, yeah. Happy birthday to Orgel. Orgel, Loxiegel loxi lubo and grizz the whole fam ronnie bobby ricky and mike um the original cast of air farce

my dogs uh so i have two dogs uh monster's a boy and Irma's a girl. And Monster is half of Irma's size. It's sort of a Nancy and Brent kind of thing. But Monster, as the boy, will try to hump Irma. And she doesn't even care. She doesn't notice it happening. She's usually... Well, she's more like us than I thought. I should...

Usually it's because she's worked up about something else and he's uh going at it but we we think it's great and uh but apparently just now as we started recording abby sent a message saying that irma tried to hunt monster and he was not okay with it okay okay uh typical huh uh anyway if anyone out there would like a message read on the show go to maximumfun.org slash jumbotron overheards yeah overheards the human mind can be tricky your mental health can be complex your emotional life can be complicated so it helps to talk about it. I'm John Moe. Join me each week on my show, Depression Mode with John Moe.

It's in-depth conversations about mental health with writers, musicians, comedians, doctors, and experts. Folks like Noah Kahn, Sashir Zameda, and Surgeon General Vivek Murthy. We talk about depression, anxiety, trauma, imposter syndrome, and perfectionism.

We have the kind of conversations that a lot of folks are hesitant to have themselves. Listen, and you won't feel as alone, and you'll have some laughs, too. Depressed Mode for Maximum Fun at MaximumFun.org or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, this is Daniel Barwella, technology and data specialist. I'm here with... Kira Gowen, ad operations specialist. And we are both worker owners here at Maximum Fun. October is National Co-op Month, so we're celebrating our brand new co-op

and others with an event called Co-Optober. We've got special events all month long, starting with a live Q&A on YouTube, where MaxFun worker-owners will answer your questions on Friday, October 6th. And much more to come! We also want to tell you about some incredible limited-edition merch exclusively available to MaxFun members until the end of October. If you're already a member of MaxFun, you've shown that you care about our shows and what we do. If you also want to help launch us into this new cooperative era and show off your support, go ahead and get yourself a hat, pin, Thank you. T-O-O-P-T-O-B-E-R. Happy Co-Optober. Overheard.

Overheard. Graham, shut up. I have a big question I need to ask. Talk it to me. Last week on the show, we had comedian Jordan Brown. Jordan Brown, yeah. From Regina, Saskatchewan. And we asked her whether she calls hoodies bunny hugs.

Brent, you're wearing a hoodie right now. You're from Saskatchewan. Yes. Same question. Yeah, I have to fight the urge to not say bunny hug when I'm around other people. It's ingrained in me, thinking of it as bunny hug. But I haven't lived in Saskatchewan since the eighties. So I'm slowly, I mean,

really slowly three, three, four decades, but my mind is starting to process it as hoodie first now, but it took a long time because the term hoodie, I don't think I had until like like i don't think i heard that until the 90s anyway oh yeah man i don't even call these this type of a garment growing up a hooded sweatshirt or just like yeah yeah it wasn't hoodie until like i feel like i was out of high school

well maybe not maybe earlier than that but it's i feel like it's the more modern term and i think you're right i think it was a hooded sweatshirt or uh kangaroo shirt because you had the yeah i've heard that term yeah but i think bunny hug is exclusively saskatchewan right like if you say it in manitoba they think you're crazy right yeah it's a weird i wonder why that is do you know about the in manitoba the socials do you know about that phenomenon that's that's manitoba only as far as i know where um like where you would just have like like different kind of events where everybody would get together right like a no this is a very specific oh together it was you would throw one to pay for your wedding so you would everybody would pay whatever 20 bucks or whatever and there'd be a big party and but it was done specifically to pay for

uh the couple's wedding and then they would have a wedding so see my my mother who also grew up in saskatchewan she referred to box socials which was was sort of everybody getting together for, you know, like a party dance kind of thing. But everybody brought something sort of like a potluck dinner. But it was like a dance and a big whoop up. But everybody brought a thing they call a box social. Box social. Yeah. And at the end of the night, there'd be a bout.

And my mother was the champion undefeated champion for 14 years now brent do you have an overheard yes do you i do i kind of have no let me know if this is allowed what's the protocol on this what's the etiquette i sort of have two one is a an instance an overheard instance and the other is sort of a overheard series now the the protocol on this is you can either do them both at once or you can bookend yeah we can go around the horn and come back to you um but i also am excited for this like a boomerang, I'll start with the series because I think the series is probably, you know, I'll close with the event I think is stronger. Okay. I think it's stronger. Okay, okay.

But the first one I'll do, the series, I'm just sort of fascinated by it more than anything. So, there's this older couple. I think they must live in the neighborhood because this is the only place I see them. And the only time I see them is riding by on their bikes. I would say they're in their seventies. They're clearly in terrific shape. They're biking all the time. I see them almost every day.

They're riding. I almost said the street I live in, which I don't want to do that. You live on electric Avenue. Everybody knows. I was going to ask because my parents live like five houses down from you. Are they the old couple? No. I know your parents.

It's not them. So they ride past, and they're always in a fight. They're always in an argument. So I'm getting like, as Rich Hall would say, just splatches of conversation conversation as they ride by one of them is angry at the other or you know it's always and it's fascinating to me i've never seen them ride by either quiet or talking nicely about something it's always well yeah well if you would just think they're right and then they go by in a like you hear the doppler effect of it, right? Well, you never even think that twice. And like the next time, two days later, you see by and he'll be like, well, if I was a graduate, it's always like, it's fascinating to me.

They've been married for, I assume, a long time and it must work for them. Yeah, maybe this is how they get it all out. You know, they get a question out, they ride their bike and then they start to have a fight at home and they're like i said get on the bikes and now they go to solve this it's fascinating to me yeah don't go to bed angry i've had clear for sure over a dozen encounters of this couple really by uh arguing and never not arguing i uh, yeah, I'm trying to think. Whenever I see cyclists talking to each other, I'm like, how can you be so good at cycling that you can also carry on a conversation

while you're doing it? Or joggers will do that sometimes. That's mind-boggling. How are you not just gasping for breath nonstop? I heard somebody once say that the right pace for running is that you can still talk while doing it i was like so walking is what we're talking about walking just sitting on the sofa i did see a thing about like look at me i'm jogging i'm finding the perfect like jogging

rhythm it's like there was like a certain amount of steps a minute where your uh your body like automatically like springs your feet up like you step down and it springs you back up i haven't found it me neither i don't have that flat i think that's a fictional thing but man if batman was you should yeah he would make usain bolt feel stupid just picturing him running with the cape flapping in the background. You're telling me Batman is both the fastest distance runner and the fastest sprinter? Yes. He's like, whatever you want. However you want to do

this. Him running in a marathon with the little penny? That's kind of snowboard. The Gotham Marathon. Dave, do you have an overheard um yeah and i suppose i do it's an overseen um and i as on instagram i follow the the basic uh sports channels all the big sports channels, all the big sports channels in this country. And they'll just, on Instagram, they'll just post every sports story. And they posted one from Formula One Racing,

which the same guy wins every weekend. Oh, yeah. Max Verstappen wins every weekend. Okay. It was, there was a Netflix show about formula one racing that i got into and then i started kind of watching it a bit uh but i'm uh i i because it was like during the transition from when one guy won every race to now this new guy wins every race yes and that was kind of exciting but now it's very boring and uh so someone commented um on a tsn post that said and they

said f1 is so boring every weekend and then the person replying said maybe so because the same winner all the time but still amazing battles go on and we are witnessing history right now so you should be thankful you are able to watch it wow completely yeah i won't be bored i'll make myself be entertained i like the uh that's one of the things i love about the internet is how simultaneously the internet requires demands that you be upset about everything and not upset about anything yes it's like simultaneously paradoxical demands upon you you don't have any right to be upset nor do you have any right to comment about something that doesn't show how upset you are about something yeah in fact you should be thankful and if you're upset about this why aren't you upset about the other thing why doesn't your tweet contain every horror in human history answer me that you can't can you

uh yeah also don't complain about things you got it good you got it exactly don't you yeah um yeah i remember somebody writing a whole article about how Bono wasn't the most ideal, you know, uh, candidate because he was a rock star or won't take his goddamn shades off. But yeah, they were picking apart his like rock and roll legacy because he was so

involved with the UN and charity and all that stuff like well he's not a hundred percent i want everybody to remember he's not a hundred the un is kind of a toothless organization and i think we can put that on bono get him out of the rock and roll hall of fame yeah um my overheard came from uh being in an airport bar and man oh man there there's no crazier cast of characters than who's hanging out in an airport bar was this in calgary this is in calgary oh was it the chili's express or whatever oh and that's i texted my brother i was like i'm still at the airport i'm in the bar and he said enjoy chili's um but there was a woman i thought there's a woman talking these two guys i thought the two guys were talking her up but then somebody else they left and

another person sat down and she started in with them so she was just going to be there all night just amazingly drunk but i didn't catch what she asked but i can assume what she asked to one of the guys the guy said just jump in the first dirty taxi and he'll take you to where the coke is oh god problem solver so this guy has on his business card problem solver the first dirty cab you see yeah you're in the taxi line at the airport. You're like, no, I'm actually waiting for a dirty one. Yeah, is there a filthy cab? Go ahead of me. Keep moving.

Keep moving, car wash. Oh, and a sidebar. When I was sitting there, a guy sat down next to me and very tried to get a conversation going by kind of giving me some prompts like he saw my beer and he's like well that beer looks pretty good i'll have one of those then he just said yeah long day cold beer i was like i'm not taking the bait i don't i'm not gonna say i'm not saying anything i'm not taking the bait do you remember graham speaking of tall buildings and uh conversations uh when we were in the sears tower yeah and we were looking out over the lake and a guy walked up to both of us and said hey did you know that that building

over there that oprah has an apartment in that building and and i just backed away as you as he talked to you they stuck you with him yeah does gail live anywhere i shared an elevator with gail once oh nice that's good celebrity sighting at the beverly wilshire we shared an elevator nice and she had a total like um uh i hope you don't talk to me because i'm famous vibe and And I was like, you got it. No, Brent, I understand you. Yeah, you have another over her? Have another over her? Oh, yeah, the book ended.

So the other one, I was out walking Oliver, and we strolled by. I let Oliver take the lead usually when he, you know, if he wants to go down the hill, if he wants to. Who's walking whom? Exactly. Even though I'm more than twice as masked. I have this weird obsession about my mask in relation to other creatures. So we're walking by this school

and I guess it's recess because the kids are out playing. I assume it's recess or there's been a coup. The teachers are no longer in charge. Kids rule. So anyway, there's a group of young boys i'm guessing like somewhere between eight to ten years old you know and uh just at a fantastic age and i i think it's like four in my mind this happened a little while ago this was

one of those things where i was like oh i'm putting this in my pocket for the next time i'm on this five show so there's like four boys they're sort of clustered around semi-circle clustering around this other kid who has two hands clasped together i'm trying to articulate this verbally because there's no visual reference for your podcast listeners so he's got the one boy has his hands kind of cupped and the others are looking around and he opens his hand a little bit and the whatever is in there all of the boys like they're grossed out like all at once and he's like and the one kid says to him you are disgusting and he goes guilty so god knows i was all i could do not to go back and say i gotta know what's in your hand what is it but you know just creepy yeah it's my brand yeah it's a but i love that

that's why they call me stinky but i still i think about it to driver. But I love that he's doing the kind of like, guilty as charged. That's why they call me stinky. But I think about it to this day, what was in that kid's hand? The gross out a bunch of nine-year-old boys. That's a high bar. I mean, it's got to be a booger. Yeah, or booger adjacent. Was there a kid in your school that was the one that would find dead birds or worms or anything like that?

Yeah, not a lot of body horror. I don't think so, no. Yeah, I was a gross kid, but just with like... Your political views? Well, just with like my own body i guess i after saying body order um yeah i was like you know i was kind of like they knew me as like you know the loogie kid the loogie kid from the town of loogie uh now we also have overheard sent in by people all over the place if you want to send one in you can send it into spy at maximum fun.org and uh first one comes from chris m parts unknown oh i think he's the lead singer of coldplay that's right i didn't

even think about and it's nice that he took time out of his world tour to send it yeah ah boy and he i hope he gets back with gwyneth yeah i was gonna say his his overheard is about my ex uh could could be the guy from sloan too oh yeah yeah um this is a five-year-old son to uh chris's wife son i have an idea how to make the sun die sooner my wife why would you want to do that? The sun goes, it's just a cool idea. Yeah.

Yeah. I'm not going to do it, mom, but it's just a thought experiment. Get it to die sooner. Like it's gonna, when do we know it's going to die? Eventually.

Um, I love it. Like the scientists know that the sun is going to burn out eventually yeah and they you know i'm sure there's like a date billions of years in the future when it's going to happen but no one's worried about that yeah yeah exactly like uh yeah we don't yeah we can kick that can down the road a little bit yeah we got 11 billion years from you could have been working towards stopping this this whole time and we didn't 11 billion years let my kids worry about i don't even like the sun since the dawn of time and just wanted to destroy the sun. This next one comes from Kelso J.

I was watching the local news and looked up to see this on the screen to describe a story. Really old fish was the headline. And his picture of Abe Vigoda. Barney Miller theme playing. Yeah. I mean, it's uh you know they said that apparently the fish is at least 92 years old which is i don't know if that's long or short for a fish i guess it's pretty long yeah for goldfish it's a lifetime i mean considering how delicious they are yeah yeah exactly generally speaking delicious things don't have a long lifespan. What?

In this cruel world. What is the, was it, did you get any, I guess, no, it wasn't your overheard. No. But like, you know how they say that a fish just keeps growing to the size of its receptacle? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Unlike my ass. You're wearing big apple bottom jeans and it's uh uh receptacle oh yeah yeah unlike my ass you're wearing big apple bottom jeans and it's still not yeah i just wonder does a 92 year old fish just keep growing maybe yeah maybe they never stop going through growth spurts um uh this last one comes from Erica

N from Lansdale Pennsylvania I was watching the local morning news NBC 10 and at one point they switched to the standby camera showing the station logo the mics were still hot on the anchorman and woman random chat

something about a genetically engineered tree and then the anchorwoman said oh my god and the same exclamation from the anchorman random chat something about a genetically engineered tree and then the anchor woman said oh my god and the same exclamation from the anchorman he reads out an email that they have both received saying 13th floor restrooms are going to be closed for three weeks and you'll have to go down three floors to use the restrooms oh this is crazy this is terrible anchorman well i only have to deal with it for a week can't wait to be on that sabbatical sabbatical this doesn't affect me i'm gonna be sitting on a beach somewhere

um the uh so that were they taking a dump on the beach were they uh not supposed to be like did they not know they were on the news they didn't know they were on the mics were still hot there's just station logo so i love that like those times i've visited a news set and like you're like oh they've got a like you i noticed the the anchor has a little laptop down and you know yeah yeah below where you can see it but you can you can tell there's a laptop there uh and then the time i visited a news set it's like oh he's just on facebook he's not like on the breaking news yeah this is coming off the wire i'm invited to my high school reunion here's a collage of different batmans from the era

now 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 hi dave and graham um i work in a bookstore and over the weekend a group of teens came in and they were all taking out their books except for one girl and her friends asked her, are you going to get anything? And she said no, I'm in my illiterate era. We all try it on at some point in our life and see if it fits, you know, being illiterate. Era seems like it's got a lot of weight to it. Like it's very got a lot of weight to it like

it's very a lot of gravitas yeah this person committed to it that's a whole era that's can you forget how to read can you lose it huh or is it like riding a bike you get the yips but for for reading you get the yips yeah I just can't get the mechanics right about how did I ever do this? Just the books flying out of your hands constantly. I don't think outside of like you know, some manner of dementia.

I think if you're otherwise, like if you're functioning otherwise, I don't think you just learn just lose the ability to read. Yeah, like you can lose another language if you don't practice it oh yeah i guess so hey think about that but i wonder if you can lose reading it like if it's in a different alphabet oh yeah that might be i don't know i don't i still struggle with our alphabet i can't take on another yeah sure i'm

not taking on another alphabet at this time uh graham i've got a great cereal for you it's good it's full of vitamins and nutrients and it's good for practicing as well i think the vowels are marshmallows delicious don't come talking to me until i have this in soup form wait they have alphabet wait what are this there's a cereal called alphabets yes yes what is the because there's like a um like a noodley thing as well that's not alphabet soup but it's like zoodles like zoodles yeah alphagetti yeah nice yeah i reference it in my my hilarious stand-up comedy routine oh okay how okay. How so? I would like to know.

Big laugh. It's always a big laugh. I was talking about how in Italy the food is so good in Italy, but I mean you expect it's going to be, right? Fantastic food in Italy. That's the birthplace of alfaghetti. You know what they're doing. I love it.

This is what I've noticed, and I'll fight anybody on this. I know this to be true. And I've actually had a couple people when I've said it'll, I'll fight anybody on this. I know this to be true. And I've actually had a couple of people when I've said that they've backed me up on this in Italy. When we were in Rome, you know, the, the better restaurant you go to the more high end, the more five star Italian restaurant you go to, the more the sauce tastes like chef Boyardee. It's like that.

It's like chef Boyardee nailed it in the sixts. He knew exactly what everybody else in Italy is shooting for. And he just. Like every time you have like the high end pasta sauce in Italy, you're like, wow, this tastes a hell of a lot like Chef Boyardee. He nailed it. Oh man. I remember my like very early twenties when Zoodles was on the menu nightly or yeah you know every time when i was a kid like chef by rd was one of the things i could prepare by myself yeah he was employed by

the family yes i'm still on nancy's just opened the door to ask if i'm still on you're a chatterbox it's not me she's blaming me like you guys want to go. It's not me, dude. And I'm just talking nonstop. Ten more minutes, Nancy. Ten more minutes. Ten more minutes. You've been on the show. You know what they're like. You know how they can be.

All right. Next phone call. Hi, Dave and Graham. This is Noah in Indiana. I live near Notre Dame, the university, and today I was in an area near campus and I saw two college-age women walking down the sidewalk and arguing, and one of them seemed like she was kind of in a defensive mode,

and she says to her companion, she says, I don't know, I just, I forgot women could deliver pizzas too, okay? And then I didn't hear anything after that. Well, off i go i wasn't very feminist of you to assume our pizza delivery person would be a man i forgot i cannot it's like i it's like the alphabet i forgot that's like that riddle about the like the language we used to use but we don't remember how to do i've I've never had a female pizza delivery person.

That's only guys all the way down. You guys, have you had a female pizza delivery? I think I'm with you. I don't. I'm sure I have. I'm an equal opportunity pizza orderer. Yeah. I do get my pizza from, I order from Rosie the Riveters.

But it's not like you're calling the shots as to who, and don't send a woman over. Or I'm sending it back. And you know what? Send a woman over and maybe have her wear something for daddy. Hello? Hello? Hello? I like it though.

I like the defensive posture. Look, I just forgot that women could deliver pizza. Yeah, exactly. No need to make it a federal case. All right, here's your final phone call.

Hi, Dave Graham, impossible guest uh this is sorry i just forgot that men could be the only people calling into the show hi dave graham impossible guest uh this is reese from minneapolis i'm calling in um with an overheard i was just in the drive-thru for Taco Bell getting some food, and I was waiting at the window, and a gentleman, an employee, I think it was the manager, he's wearing a big hat with a taco on it, walked by, and he was talking to some of his co-workers, and the manager said this, I'll tell you what, Jeremy, I ain't ever going to fall for that banana

tail pipe. And that was it. Thanks, Mike. Beverly Hills cop. Don't bring that Axel Foley bullshit downtown. I've been around the block, buddy. I'm picturing, because you said it's a big hat with a taco on it. The mind reels, are we talking to? Or is it a taco, a hat with a big taco on it?

Yeah, exactly. Because the natural way would be to invert the taco. That would be the most natural way to wear the hat. That's right. The way that makes the most sense is invert it so that your head is in there with the ingredients. And then you're trying to dress down your employees. It's hard to get taken seriously. It's down over their ears.

You must be the manager because his hat had a big taco on yeah he's the poobah can i speak to the manager he just points to the hat um do you remember there was a brief uh silly uh trend with people wearing the gigantic foam baseball hats yeah yeah that's what I'm picturing with a taco on it. Well, Brent, this is the end of this here episode. What the hell?

Yeah, no, it just flew by. Just because my wife, you guys, you got to stop living in terror of Nancy. She's only half the size of you. Graham's afraid of heights.

My wife. Canyons. Brent, we're twice as afraid of you as we are of Nancy. Mass-wise. Don't be afraid of her. I got twice her mass. I got your back. And then I just leave.

We've learned never trust anybody who says they have your back. Now, your book, your book huge out today everywhere canada america canada and the u.s yeah in bookstores and online we're sort of wherever you buy your books in canada and the u.s you can find my book huge my my debut novel um well i can't i cannot wait to uh to read it and uh yeah this evening as this comes out you're having your book launch is actually happening so i'm gonna get wasted at that i plan on just really alienating you for the are tickets still available for that at the time of this it's at the hollywood theater in vancouver if anyone wants to check on that it's put on by the vancouver writers festival so uh oh you're gonna get a uh commemorative tote bag

so they're the ones to get get in contact with okay but by the time people are listening to this it's happening now i'm not here i'm on stage there that's right yeah with charlie demers now i'm not here i'm on stage there that's right yeah with charlie demers yeah yeah with uh host host an interviewer i think that he's another uh another stand-up who wrote who uh wrote he writes these crime books that aren't um funny like that's the thing with huge i think we but you know what i'm saying like their actual crime their thriller. He tries for them to be funny, but. He's got this one out about hot dogs and it's real. He's really stole my thunder. But yeah, huge is, uh, it's not a comedy.

It's about comedy, but it's a, uh, it's a psychological thriller. And you also got like a huge shout out from a fellow comedian, Patton Oswalt. Yeah. That was awful. Nice. Yeah. Yeah. I,

uh, we follow each other on Twitter. We don't know each other real well. It's sort of like, we know who each other is. We've done a couple of shows together long time ago in the past. Anyway, I reached out to him and said, I wrote this book about being on the road in the nineties and it's a

scare. It's a thriller. And he was like, Oh, send it to me i want to read it and um but i didn't expect him to uh like he posted a picture of him holding it when he got it and i thought well that's fantastic because he's got a big audience yeah i thought that would be the end of it but then once he started reading it he he he tweeted about it

again saying that he was really enjoying it and posted a page from the book that he really liked. So that was an awful nice shout out. Yeah. Um, it'll probably, I'm sure it will be the first of many. I mean, you know,

Dave and I are shouting it out right now. We haven't read it, but, uh, how could you, it's only come out today. And we both lost the ability to read. We got the reading. Yep. I couldn't expect that. And we both lost the ability to read. We got the reading

yips. I'm in my illiterate era. Foolishly wrote it in a language you don't use very often. Well, thank you so much.

And thank you everybody out there for listening to the podcast. Go on, get that book. You know what? If the next book you

read is going to be maybe it's a cookbook with that following that check out Brent's book huge and thank you for listening and come on back next week for another episode of stop podcasting yourself Maximum Fun A worker-owned network of artist-owned shows supported directly

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