The James Donald Forbes McCann Catamaran Plan - Burdensome Ying

Episode Date: March 20, 2023

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I'm Jessie Cruikshank, and on my podcast, Phone a Friend, I break down the biggest stories in pop culture. But when I have questions, I get to phone a friend. I phone my old friend, Dan Levy. You will not die hosting the Hills after show. I get thirsty for the hot wiggle. I didn't even know what thirsty meant until there was all these headlines and i get schooled by a tween facebook is like a no that's what my grandma's on thank god phone a friend with jesse crookshank is not available on facebook it's out

now wherever you get your podcasts a cast helps creators launch grow and monetize their podcasts everywhere a cast.com Acast helps creators launch, grow and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com There's a lot of starting again. I'm here with Margot. Hello. Debut appearance on the podcast, but not debut appearance in catamaran plans in general. Margot has been extremely useful over the catamaran plan extravaganza.

No, you're right, that wasn't really a question. I've just put the microphone in your face. But gosh, we're having a good time. I wanted to record something at the start because it was my birthday this week. And when I recorded the podcast, I was too grumpy. Now, the Grumpy podcast is coming up, but we've got all these new listeners this week, all these lovely new fresh-faced American listeners

because I've been doing a lot of podcasts and I just thought not fair if I was grumpy, you know? And, oh, I'd like to be a little more energetic. And you said you had a complaint, Margot. About the podcast? Yes, you did. You started listening to it. And what did you say was an issue?

So, I don't want to be too critical, but I did think that it sounds better when it's really organized ahead of time. Yeah. So I think I listened to one where you laid out what you were going to say at the start and you had some jokes planned and I really liked it. It was really good. But you're saying they're warbling on and on once. It's less good.

No, the numbers would indicate that you're not wrong. Sometimes there's a drop-off when it's one of the old lie in bed and complain episodes. But, so in that spirit, Margot, of keeping it right and tight, here's what's coming up on the podcast today. I'm going to whinge about it having been my birthday for a while. I'm going to thank everybody before then. I'm going to thank everybody before then. I'm going to thank everybody for their work, including you. You get a shout out on the Catamaran Plan Extravaganza.

And I say how it all went. And then at the end, I talk about how I almost accidentally bought a stolen caravan. That's a lot of fun. I know a little bit about that, but I would love to hear it. You do. It's a great story coming up for everybody. But what I wanted to run through in exciting news is you made the merch for the Catamaran Plague Show.

I did. It was so good. And we're going to make more merch because I've realized we have fans who don't live in Adelaide. Yes, it's great. I would love to make more t-shirts. I made some t-shirts for the show. They were really good.

Margot, you said you were very nervous before being on the podcast, but you're doing so well. Honestly, I just want to let you know, it's a slam dunk. You made great shirts. Thank you very much. Do you want to talk through the process? I'll let you hold the mic. Do you want to talk through your process for having made the shirts?

Sure. It is a little bit intimidating when you shove the microphone in my face. Just a little bit. Just a little bit. But this is fine. I'll hold it myself. So I did lino prints on the shirts. There was a great, actually, there was one of your fans at an art shop that I called in Adelaide,

and he helped me, he gave me some advice. Into the mic, Michael. Sorry, he gave me some advice about lino printing on fabric, which I had not done before. I'm definitely a bit of a Luddite so I like to do things myself I didn't want to like Hours, you spent hours carving that lino print by hand It was ridiculous and I'm sure I look a little bit silly when I do these things by hand myself

and then the product is sort of very organic and there's a lot of beautiful errors and uniqueness. Margot, you're a star. And it was such a good line of print, you spent so long on it, that you know what we're going to do? We're going to make a shop. I think we're going to set up an online shop. People will have the chance to buy these beautiful shirts.

And then I'll take some money, some licensing fee, but I think you get the rest. And then everyone's working, everyone's making, everyone's growing. And before you know it, everyone's employed. I mean, the point of it is for me to have a boat, but everyone being employed is good too, isn't it? It is good. Yeah, I think the boat thing, maybe, I've always seen the boat as a bit of a metaphor. No, the boat's, I'm sorry, maybe we should have expressed the boat's real. I'm buying

this boat. I think we have... Well, listen, I don't want to go on too long. This is just a jolly positive introduction to Margot and the podcast. What a jolly uplifting positive start to the podcast for everybody. This is the uplifting yang to the devastating yin of what is to follow. Is that correct? I don't know. I haven't heard what is to follow. Is that correct? I don't know. I haven't heard what's to follow.

Great to have you on the show, Marco. You've absolutely knocked that out of the park. We're going to update people about these shirts very soon. Let's begin the show. And now we hurtle back, way back to a grumpier time, a morose burdensome yin. Well, the first thing I want to say is thank you to everybody who came out to the James Donald Forbes McCann Catamaran Plant Extravaganza

at the Royalty Theatre. We had something like, I don't know, 400 people there. It felt good. It felt throbbing. I don't know exactly how many people were there. I haven't seen the final ticket report. I don't know how much money we made there I haven't seen the final ticket report I don't know how much money we made I have to

These things take time to come in The Fringe Festival They sell like a million tickets Over a lot of shows every year Mostly to topless circus and fat burlesque But also to shows like mine And we'll find out soon How much money we made

What all the expenses were exactly And how much money is going towards me owning a boat. But while we wait on all that information to come in, I just want to say thank you very, very much to everybody who came out and who helped me do the show. Margot, Brandon, Paul, Paul, Sam, everybody at the Royalty Theatre, Chris and Paul. We had three Pauls on the show, I think. I had a wonderful time. I think the audience had a wonderful time thank you for coming for helping

etc we recorded it we got our beautiful three camera record the audio is great the video is great all that has to be done is I have to sit down and have that edited the uncut version of that will be available on the Patreon.

So if you'd like to subscribe to the Patreon, there's a link there for you to do that somewhere. You can find it, the James Donald Fools for Canterbury and Plants Sailing Club. You'll get the full video, and then we'll cut down some version of it, still a long version for YouTube, and we'll plonk that on there as well. There's just certain stuff that was in the special that I can't imagine putting out there on public record outside of a paywall for anyone to see. Hooly dooly, goodness gracious, let's not shoot ourselves in the foot.

You know what I'm saying? There's a public self and a private self, as Hillary Clinton was always fond of saying. I really loved doing the big room. I think the big room was very nice. I was not sure how I'd go with the big room. The big room is better. It feels more powerful doing the big room, you know. As the old saying goes, if you see a strong horse next to a weak horse, you love the strong horse and hate the weak horse. Osama Bin Laden said that.

I'm quoting a lot of great people. And a lot of problematic people too. Do you know what I mean? Maybe I haven't explained that very well. Usually in a Fringe Festival, you know, you might sell the same number of tickets, but you do it over 10 days instead. And whatever, you just have 40, 50 a night, and then all the people in the audience, they look around, and they go, oh, yeah, look at that, 40 to 50 people are here.

I guess he's a 40 to 50 people kind of comedian. But doing it on one night and getting all the people together, then they look around and go, 400 people, 500 people. Well, I'm not a loon. I'm not witnessing just something random. There's a credibility that is garnered by sheer tyranny of size of audience. And it was very nice to have. And I think the video is going to be great. So I put that behind me until we're ready to release those videos and announce how much money there was. But just once again, thank you to everybody for coming out and for being so supportive and for helping on it and all that good stuff.

It's my birthday. Well, it's actually, it's 40 minutes past my birthday, but it's still, I haven't been to sleep since it started being my birthday when I woke up yesterday morning. Do you know what I'm saying? Oh, I'm all frazzled. I feel much better. I just went out and I had a little birthday McDonald's to feel better about myself. I'm very down on my birthday. I don't like them.

I used to, but the last three or four, something in the old brain chemistry just screams out, not today, sir. I don't think it's that another year older, another year closer to death thing, because frankly, I'm astonished that I've made it this far. If anything, my rational part of the brain goes, another notch on the belt. 32 years, Jimmy. They can never take that away from you. Unless they invent some sort of machine somehow. But by and large, good to have the birthday. Ah, but I never know. I mean, maybe it is another year closer to death and that's the thing that upsets me.

I've never known how I'm feeling. The rational does not map onto the emotional very accurately for me at all. I wonder really how much it does for other people and how much they're just lying. But I found out that a friend was going in for a cancer check this week just to check if they had cancer. And I didn't really, I was aware aware it was happening but I didn't pay it much mind and then later in the day I just had this enormous angry headache and I thought am I uncaffeinated what's going on and then I drove past their house and I thought about them having the cancer check coming up which by the way just I don't want to it's not the point of the story it

seems like they're fine so it's all good but I remembered another person I knew who'd had cancer and died and then all the and I thought oh this is everybody it's so and then I just I wept I drove and I wept and as I wept I didn't have a headache anymore. And I realized that the headache was because I was keeping from weeping over the thing that I was worried about, which was the cancer and other people dying. And how often is my back pain something I don't want to think about? Tonight, I had a little bit of back pain before I ate my Whopper cheese meal. Now I've eaten a Whopper cheese meal. My back feels absolutely fine.

Maybe this is what a therapist is meant to do, is to help you rationally map your rationality onto the emotional and physiological outbursts. I don't believe in that sort of shit, personally. But, yeah, it is hard to know. It's hard to know how you're feeling. But how am I feeling? I told you, I feel sad because of the birthday. But also, I was very happy when that catamaran plan went well. But man, that was like 10 days ago. I've moved on. I've moved on.

We've got so many other things to do. I wrote a document this week of all the things I'm going to do this year. Boy, it's a good document. I wrote some poems this week. Boy, they're not... Yeah, they're not the best poems I've ever done. But why not read one to you now? Here's a poem. This poem is called big homosexual

who calls the shots in big homosexual who decides what they run and where they do it at who picks the flags who writes the checks who picks the spot where the marching will happen where is the hq for big homosexual who negotiates deals for lanyards, etc? Now, I'm not talking pop and pop homosexual, yesterday's small-time, small-town homosexual. I mean homosexual with an enormous H, discussing brand strategies with Emirati businessmen. I know who calls the shots in big capital S straight. Small H homosexuals in Vatican City. Are there small S straights running big homosexual,

simultaneously proud and anonymous? That's what I mean, man. These new poems, I don't think they're any good. I don't think they're... We'll find out. It's not for us to say which of our poems are good and which are bad. It's for us to just keep making work and to find out afterwards what... This episode is brought to you by Google Pixel.

I'm Jessie Cruikshank. I host the number one comedy podcast called Phone a Friend. I also have three kids. I need help making every day easier. So I switched to Google Pixel. It's a phone powered by Gemini, your personal AI assistant. Gemini can help you summarize your unread emails, suggest what to make with the food in your fridge, and it helped me achieve a family photo where everyone is smiling at the camera. I didn't think it was possible, but it is with Google Pixel 9. Learn more at store.google.com. Breaking news happens anywhere, anytime. Police have warned the protesters repeatedly, get back. CBC News brings the story to you as it happens. Hundreds of wildfires are burning. Be the first to know what's going on and what that means for you and for Canadians. The situation has changed very quickly.

Helping make sense of the world when it matters most. Stay in the know. CBC News. Time dictates. Someone very kindly wrote to me this week and they said, James, how do you do it? How are you producing all of this work and being a family man? And I thought the answer is simple. It's bad work and I'm an absent family man.

But I think I wrote back something else. Ah, it's untrue. I'm home a lot. I'm home more than most people with a nine to five. Oh, I haven't told you about the caravan. I haven't told you about the caravan. It's a bit of a saga. I've got this money now, right?

We've saved some money. And there's the catamaran money. And I want to use the catamaran money to help me on towards getting this damn boat but it's so far away but anyway so i thought what i would do because i don't have an office and i record in my car just even trying to maybe this is one of the reasons i'm down now that i start to talk about it it feels like this probably is the reason that i'm so down. We decided we would buy, the wife and I, a caravan. And that when our lease was up, maybe we could just get in the caravan with the family and drive around the country. And I could do gigs right across the country from September till when my daughter starts school.

If that, you know, ends up getting off the ground. She could start next year or the year after. It's all much of a muchness. Oh, so we thought caravan, save money. And then also, if we have the caravan, rather than me paying for an office, I could just go out and work in the caravan. And then I'm still nearby, but I'm far enough away that it's, you know, I don't have to do it at night all the time. I might be able to even record a podcast once again during those daylight hours. Anyway, I had a big stoush with my neighbors. I went over to my neighbor and I said, I'm thinking of getting a caravan. And at first they said, yeah, all right. And then suddenly they were coming around the house. I was getting phone calls and they were going, oh, no, we don't want you to do it.

It'll make it hard for us to back out the drive. And I said, well, I'll buy you a little mirror. And they said, oh, you can't ask someone to hang up a mirror on their house on the opposite side. It was just, you know, whatever problems they had, I found good solutions, and they didn't like it. And I could just tell that they'd gotten a bee in their bonnet because we've moved to a nicer part of town, and they moved here not long before us, and they probably moved here thinking it would be upstanding,

beautiful sort of sensible people, and instead the family with all the toys in the front yard is going, I'm getting a caravan. I'm getting a big, dumb second-hand caravan. I'm going to have that, and we're getting it so I can work in it, and then I'm going to live in it. Anyway, I found a caravan. I found what looked like a perfect caravan, an old caravan, but it was in price range, and we went out and looked at it, and the guy gave me this whole spiel about how this was his family's caravan.

They've got the new, that's why they've got the second caravan there now. They've upgraded because they've got another child. And I saw no reason not to think the spiel was new. And he said he loved caravanning in the caravan. And just before we decided to definitely get the caravan, my wife said, why don't you check the license plates and i did this caravan had last been registered 10 years ago what is going on i assume it was a stolen caravan uh and we decided not to well then i started to ask a couple more questions and then

the guy didn't respond to me, and then I think he's now sold the caravan to somebody else. So there's no caravan. And there's no office, and I'm still recording in the Volvo. Yes. Yes. Yes. One day there'll be either an office or a caravan.

We're still looking at other caravans. I mean, it was an exceptional deal on that caravan. It's one of the reasons we checked the license plates, because it seemed like it was a little too good to be true. And lo and behold, yes, it was. I think I'm not able to buy a stolen caravan. I think that would be not good. Maybe it wasn't a stolen caravan. I think that would be not good. Maybe it wasn't a stolen caravan.

Maybe the guy just felt nervous. Maybe they were living in the caravan and he just never renewed the license. Jimmy, did you ever think of that? That there was another explanation? Maybe there is. I don't know, but we'll figure it out. I think that currently is the plan for in september get this family in a caravan or take this family to america and do a little tour of america with my family or take this family to the uk or take this family to zimbabwe or take this family to aruba either way i don't think we'll be able to stay in this house past September. Oh. It's hard to know what to do. It's hard to know what to do now that we have a little money. It's true. We're making money. We have money and we're making money. The Patreon

has never been so successful and I can only imagine how much more successful it's going to be when it's the exclusive home of the uncut, complete, uncensored James Donald Forbes, McCann, Catamaran, Plan Extravaganza, which will be soon, as soon as we bother editing that.

But then the YouTube is making money, the Patreon is making money, the live shows are making money, and then it's like, well, okay, what do we do with it? What's the prudent thing to do with it? Is it to reinvest in making content? We've got so much exciting content coming up, but you know, if we get a YouTube video that really pops, maybe that will make enough money for me to buy a boat. Maybe if I make more podcast episodes at the moment we're doing one podcast a week and then usually usually not all the time but usually

there's an additional episode on the patreon maybe if i get a little better at that and maybe we go two episodes a week if i can have the time to do that maybe the podcast will grow at an astronomic rate and then we'll finally be getting some money from the advertising. I don't understand why we aren't getting any money from the advertising yet. They place so many ads on this bloody podcast and the Acast network and none of that money is coming through to me. I've got to make some phone calls this week. I've sent out some emails, but there's been no response, so it's time to do some phone calls. Do you know what I mean? It's like, oh, mo' money, mo' problems.

As Biggie Smalls, the third in the quotable trifecta goes, hard to know what to do. When you have no money, it's relatively easy to know what to do. It's just do everything as much as you can all the time. But when you have money, you want to be a prudent custodian. You want to grow prudently. So one thing is, for the recording of this podcast, I do it on my brother's laptop that I borrowed

because my laptop broke very early on in the Making the Podcast journey. And that brother's laptop is, I would say, nearing the end of its usefulness. I can't update it to a more contemporary operating system because it won't update. I can't update Chrome, and then I can't upload the podcast with that laptop anymore because it won't open the website. It refuses to run the website that now uploads the podcast.

So I make the... I mean, do you care? Is it necessary? I want to share warts and all the creative process. I talk into a microphone that doesn't plug into the laptop. It plugs into a recording machine. I then take the micro SD card off that, put it in a macro SD card converter,

plug that into the laptop. It works sometimes. There's a lot of unplugging and replugging. Then I upload the, I drag and drop the MP3 or the WAV or whatever. I put that on GarageBand. I add it on the laptop. Then AirDrop doesn't, it's temperamental. Sometimes it'll work, but usually i will then email the

bounced down podcast file from the garage band back now over onto my phone and then i will go onto the acast website and upload the mp3 from my phone which is just it's a whole effing rigmarole and i think if i had a laptop and a little box to talk into with the microphone, I think we could get the whole thing done way quicker, way easier, way better. And with that extra time, yeah, I reckon I could probably, I mean, what? The Patreon podcast is just me talking. So if that frees that up, I could do a whole other podcast a week with the amount of time that I would save.

But then you go, all right, well, look at the laptops. other podcast a week with the amount of time that I would save. But then you go, alright, we'll look at the laptops. I know how to use the Mac. I want to use Final Cut Pro for editing. I could use, I'm happy to keep using GarageBand for the time being for the podcast. No one seems to, maybe it's time to move to Logic at some point, but the audio quality is good enough

I think. But what do I know? I think I know a great deal. I'm a wonderful... And I'm looking at the MacBooks, and you go, okay, MacBook Pro. That's the one you'd usually use for a thing like this. I think it has a fan in it. And if you're making stuff, that's the one they recommend. You can't. It's like $3,000.

I'm not paying for that. I can afford to pay for that now, which is new and exciting for me, I think. Not quite sure how much money we're making through the catamaran plan. Extravagan. Bizarre. But it's like, all right, well, maybe I'll get an old one, but then if I get an old one, I want it to be a trustworthy one. I don't want to get a stolen MacBook.

I don't want to make the same horrifying caravan escapade mistake, but with a laptop. Ah! Maybe I'll get the Air, maybe the air's better, maybe it's time for me to make a jump and go over to a non-Mac, I have no idea what to do, like if getting a laptop is the solution to those problems, I, you know what I mean, and then whatever money I spend there, that's money I can't spend on other stuff, that's money I can't spend on advertising stuff. That's money I can't spend on advertising. Like, should I just suffer on the way I'm suffering now and buy some podcast

advertising? You know, would that be better? Maybe I could rent a laptop. Maybe I could steal a laptop. Maybe I could invent my own laptop. Anyway, the point is I'm just, I'm at a bit of a, yeah, I'm at a bit of a crossroads to how to, having grown to the point we're at through tyranny of will, I think we can accelerate the growth now if we reinvest somehow, whether that's towards making a better product or having more people know about it. And I just don't know what, I will reflect will reflect i'll pray on it that's what people say i'll pray on it i'll reflect and we'll figure out the right way forward but hoolidooly goodness

gracious as a fizz member you can look forward to free data big savings on plans and having your unused data roll over to the following month. Every month. At Fizz, you always get more for your money. Terms and conditions for our different programs and policies apply. Details at Fizz.ca. If you're looking for flexible workouts, Peloton's got you covered. Summer runs or playoff season meditations, whatever your vibe,

Peloton has thousands of classes built to push you. We know how life goes. New father, new routines, new locations. What matters is that you have something there to adapt with you, whether you need a challenge or rest. And Peloton has everything you need, whenever you need it. Find your push. Find your power. Peloton. Visit Peloton at onepeloton.ca. Visit Peloton at onepeloton.ca. I get to phone a friend. I found my old friend, Dan Levy. You will not die hosting the Hills after show. I get thirsty for the hot wiggle. I didn't even know a thirsty man until there was all these headlines.

And I get schooled by a tween. Facebook is like a no, that's what my grandma's on. Thank God. Phone a friend with Jesse Crookshank is not available on Facebook. It's out now, wherever you get your podcasts. Acast helps creators launch, grow, and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com.