The James Donald Forbes McCann Catamaran Plan - kids in america

Episode Date: February 19, 2024

(interview coming this week for serious) If I Could Sing by kirin j callinan : https://open.spotify.com/album/1lhquBDUbWwGWnd3Wmxvc6?si=0UlY2c1OS_-DMQU8MgJuAAOrder your one-of-a-kind James Donald Forbes McCann mystery merch today: https://www.jdfmccann.com/merchJoin the sailing club to contribute financially to James Donald Forbes McCann's journey to boat ownership: https://www.patreon.com/jdfmccannBuy one of the several books written by James Donald Forbes McCann: https://www.jdfmccann.com/books Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Thank you for listening to this episode of the James Donald Forbes McCann Catamaran Plan. If you'd like to listen to bonus episodes, go sign up to the Patreon. That's patreon.clom. Clom? Ah, we f***ed it. Anyway, look, you'll find a way. Catamaran Home! This episode is brought to you by Google Pixel. I'm Jessie Crookshank. 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.

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I still haven't edited the interview with Kieran J. Kallinan. Dreadful. Lazy. Nevertheless, I recommend you go listen to his new album, If I Could Sing. It is my favourite album of the year, and that's really saying something, because there's a new Kanye album out, and it's great. So Kieran J. K Callinan, link below. Get around that album. Interview coming soon.

But it's, wow, it's been a big, it's been a big fortnight. Excuses. Reprehensible. And I've made the executive decision to change this from a podcast about me owning a boat to being a podcast where robot-voiced ethnic women dominate me. Delicious. Nah, just skin around, folks. It's still about getting a boat to being a podcast where robot-voiced ethnic women dominate me. That is just... Nah, just skin around, folks. It's still about getting a boat.

It will never not be about getting the boat until I have the boat. And then, I guess we just end the podcast. Or we keep doing the podcast on the boat and using the money to maintain and get bigger boats. Undecided. Hello, and welcome to this episode of the James Donald Forbes McCann Catamaran Plan. I've been looking at the analytics of the episode we did with Tim Butterly a week ago, and I found that I think we picked up like 100 extra people on the Tim Butterly episode,

of whom, like 70 of whom, stuck around for the next episode. So clearly, I will need to be doing some interviews ongoing in the future, and then editing those interviews and uploading them which i'm not doing at the moment shame on you shame on you shame on you this is magnificent and the reason i haven't done it yet is that we are in new york i got um fairly last minute some uh opportunities to go on podcasts and do some shows so we packed the family into the vent now we've got the minivan we've got a toyota. So we packed the family into the van. Now, we've got the minivan.

We've got a Toyota Sienna. We packed them into the minivan, and we drove all the way across Pennsylvania, and we're staying with my dad, my wife, my three children in a tiny Airbnb in Jersey. And boy, people actually do talk like that. You drive across the whole Midwest, and people basically all talk the same way. And then you drive a little bit further, and all of a sudden, people talking like that. It's fine. You just, you drive across the whole Midwest and people basically all talk the same way

and then you drive a little bit further and all of a sudden people talking like this. I don't know if that's a good Jersey accent but I mean, I went to a 7-Eleven

and I was buying, I think I bought a juice. A L'Chaim. It was something, they didn't have a proper grape juice. L'Chaim.

I had to get one that had other types of, there were vegetables pressed into it as well, and that was very upsetting. But the guy goes, hey, what do you do? I don't know if that's a Jersey accent. Maybe that's just a New York. But all of a sudden, people talk like this.

Hey, brother, let me tell you something. It's great. It's just a whole, hey, sure, how's it going? It's this for 1,000 miles. It's 1,000 miles. Then all of a sudden, hey, how's it going it's this for a thousand miles it's a thousand miles and then all of a sudden hey how's it going what's up and this guy he said so he goes uh what do you do and i said i'm a comedian he goes really do you mind me asking do you make a living off that and i said i do make a living so not a good living but i live off it he goes listen my wife she's whoopi goldberg's makeup artist and i I'm always saying, I see Whoopi every day.

And I say, Whoopi, nothing you ever say to me is funny. You never say anything funny to me. Why don't you try to make me laugh? Don't you think I'd like to laugh, Whoopi? And it's, I mean, I almost, if I just come back here and keep hanging out with you, am I going to get to meet Whoopi Goldberg? The most successful black Jewish woman of all time? Lying.

Narrowly edging out Sammy Davis Jr.'s trans period towards the end. No, I'm just kidding around. Hey, I'm just having a nice time. Whoa! Anyway, it's been a lot. We're here in New York and it's, well, not New York. We're here sort of in the western bit of New York and every day we get on a bus and we go into Manhattan

and we walk around and yesterday, we must have been there for 12 hours with the kids walking around Manhattan my family has really had a heart we've basically they've been locked up in the snow and then I've gone out to gigs in other cities but my wife in terms of what she has seen of America it's mostly been the inside of a house in Steubenville uh she can't drive and there hasn't been much opportunity to go places. So when I got these things that I got to do in New York, I was like, right, we're all going to New York. And it's been great. It's functioned as maybe the first holiday we've ever had.

I mean, even then, I'm going off at night to podcasts and gigs, but during the day, it's actually functioned a little bit as a holiday. No, actually, two years ago, we did go to the Gold Coast, and we stayed at a children's sort of like amusement park slash place that you can stay with your family in the Gold Coast. And gosh, the smell of blood was unbelievable, and there were big reptile mascots with big buzzies. Anyway, walking around Manhattan has been a delight.

What have we... Honey! What have we done in New York so far? We've done so much. What have we done? We went to Central Park. Yep. What?

Oh, yes. Dad got to go and look at the apartment building where apparently Yoko Ono lives. And he got to look through all the apartment building where apparently Yoko Ono lives, and he got to look through all the windows and hopefully see Yoko Ono. We went to... Oh, we saw Lady Liberty. We got on the Staten Island Ferry, and all these people try and sell you, like,

special boat tickets that cost a lot of money to go slightly closer to Lady Liberty, and we just said no to all of them, and the Staten Island Ferry is free. And it goes really close. And my boy, our boy, our oldest boy, how he loved Lady Liberty, glued to the window. And then, before then, we went to ground zero.

And my four-year-old girl, our four-year-old daughter, asked, I'm only talking over you because I know you won't talk into the microphone. If you want to come and talk into the microphone, honey, you can do it. Well, I have to recount it. She said, what happened here? And it's, yes, my wife. She said, are you going to brief her? Are you going to tell her about what happened at Ground Zero,

where the Twin Towers were? And so I said, honey, and i didn't know what i was going to say before i started talking i said honey some people don't love freedom as much as they do in america and they destroyed two big buildings and because america was so beautiful and strong they built an even bigger more beautiful building in its place i didn't tell her it was a fraught history building that building or that i thought the two original buildings were very ugly or that the new building was not anyway and you know i think we got through that i didn't go into you know bush did 9-11 because while i was there i had no sense that bush i'm telling you having

now been to grand zero bush didn't do it just on vibe looking at the memorials and how beautiful it all is i don't believe bush did it i don't know anything about 9-11 i don't know anything about what happened yes honey did i tell her about the deaths no i just said they made the buildings come down how old were you when you saw i i would have been like 10 no i would have been like 10 when i watched on television I certainly didn't say people were jumping out from right up there because they couldn't breathe and it was absolutely appalling. I didn't. Yeah, I was thinking about that there.

Yeah. A strange formative experience. Oh, it was a big formative experience on us, I would think. I mean, I just kept expecting more terrorist attacks to happen. And then they just petered out. You know, like some buses exploded and people did some knife stuff and the caliphate was mostly over there. But I really thought in Australia something would be destroyed.

Little did I know that Adelaide would remain safe throughout the next 20 years. I don't know what you would blow up if you did want to blow up something in Adelaide. Can you think of... What's the... You? What would you blow up if you were doing a terrorist attack on Adelaide. Can you think, what's the, you? What would you blow up if you were doing a terrorist attack on Adelaide, honey? She's struggling. The Maya Center, the West Back Building, you know what would really hurt us? If someone, there's a hard edit point there. I'm not going to go on and on about things that would be bad if people, what if they then did it? That would be absolutely dreadful. I don't believe in terrorism what were you gonna say

we just love adelaide so much we don't even want to think about it we miss it so and here's the other thing i've been organizing while we've been in manhattan is um a temporary return to australia it looks like i might to get get to go back and open for some people and add my own tour and i'm trying to figure out how many people I could get to come along and what venues I could do I think I could do like a 300 seater now in Melbourne and in Sydney and in Adelaide and less in Brisbane not a lot less but a little bit less in Brisbane and in Perth Perth listeners I don't know I don't know what I did to Perth. I don't know if it's that I'm too zany. Maybe they already have boats in Perth and so it's unrelatable.

I've got like one quarter of the audience in Perth that I do in Melbourne and Sydney. I don't know. It's probably about a quarter of the size. But I went to Perth for years slogging away. And something about the James Donald Forbesccann brand is not resonating with the people in perth i have to totally recalibrate what i'm doing to get a perth audience this is for perth do you like this perth excuse me what else i've been making the mystery merchandise i've been sending that out brief reprieve while we're in new york also oh i had one of the worst

days uh dear listener i had one of the worst uh. Dear listener, I had one of the worst moments. I went to what I, Office Max, I think they're called. I think they've been a sponsor on the podcast before. In the Acast automated commercials. Well, certainly, maybe that was Staples. I don't know. Anyway, it was like Office Works in Australia. It's an office supply shop and they also do mailing things.

And I brought a lot of the mystery merchandise to there to buy packages. Boy, the packaging was expensive and limited in scope, and boy, I brought the three kids to give my wife time to pack while we were coming to New York, and it took an hour and a half to send what turned out to be three parcels by the end, because they wouldn't do any of the ones that were meant to go overseas including Canada not that that's over a sea it's over a small lake it's around to see and I was it was just dreadful so I have to figure out a better way I have to figure out a cheaper and easier way man they just had to enter can I not print it off and just go in there and they pop a stamp on it and take it? Why does the guy have to enter a full thing of details? They were very patient with me and my children were very loud and very unpleasant.

They're running around and they're going after sharp, weird things. Man. Being in Manhattan with a full family is not something you're really supposed to do. I wrote a poem about it, actually, and I'll read you the poem now about families in Manhattan. And I posted it to the Instagram. Here it is. It's called The Big Apple. There are no children in Manhattan. There are babies, single baby families, and lots of little dogs, but no children.

When a woman gets pregnant, she has an abortion or readies herself to flee. And some people liked that, and that was very nice. Thank you very much. But then all these people wrote, well, not all these, two people, two people who don't seem to know each other, are popping off in the comments going, that doesn't make any sense, is what it says. The premise of your poem states there are no children due to abortion, but your third and fourth line state that there are babies.

And then that goes on. I think that's a s*** posting, but then someone else who's not s*** posting also goes on. It's like, do people not appreciate the difference? You know, you start out as like an embryo, and then aus and then you're like what's the one that comes after fetus honey pre-baby is that just a fetus just immediately before it comes out oh zygote embryo fetus that's the three and then it's like a baby and then that grows into a you know like a toddler and then i would I would say, he's a child. And then you'd go, he's a teen.

And I know that child is also a broad term for all your progeny, but I wrote that and didn't think anyone could possibly misunderstand it. And then clearly, well, either people have, no, but I think some people just genuinely didn't get it or thought that i made some mistake in my own 12 what 11 line poem or whatever it is and you just anyway so i have to it's great that the instagram and the poems are big enough now that very stupid people have started reading them and i think that's beautiful you know it would be terrible if i if my poetry only had a very small audience so that only the intellectual elite were reading the poems it's great that we've now branched out into people who suck lead paint down like it's mayonnaise anyway there's no there's

there's do you know what i mean there's look in case in case i'm not making myself clear people have like a you can get pregnant and have a baby, but then once that baby gets a bit older and it's like a child, they clearly leave Manhattan because they're not there anymore unless they're having the babies and slaughtering them. And even then, there's not that many babies. And there's no playgrounds for kids. And getting up and down the subways with a pram

is a beautiful little insight into what it must be like to have a wheelchair although i supreme the pram is a wheelchair if you think about it but man there are not there are accessible stations and inaccessible stations but the accessible stations are not that accessible and yet it's what i'd like to get to even though manhattan has none of the infrastructure for a family. And the birth rate is... I mean, clearly you need to have abortion for the economy in Manhattan. Otherwise, it would all fall apart. Because it's so anti-feminist, the way that they make it entirely impossible.

Unless you have so much money, you have a team of nannies. I don't see how... You know, if you're in a mid-sized town or a country town, you're a woman with a job, you can actually have a baby and sort of, you know, it's challenging, but you can continue with some version of your life. Impossible in Manhattan. It's an existential break that you have to flee. And I think it's terrible that they've built a place like that but also wonderful to visit really lovely to visit and it

would be so nice to be a gay man or a lesbian you know they're just a perpetually childless walking around having little coffees having some sex in the city and i can really see that they're living it's like dis like Disneyland for grown-ups is what my dad called it and it's magical so much of it is magical and so much of it is sterile hey it's great to be here

on the James Donald Forsbuck and Catamaran plan a show that is meant to be about me trying to own a boat and it is that's why I'm in Manhattan that's why I'm doing all these things what I wanted to say is I was so proud of my family

honey get in here I want to say is I was so proud of my family. Honey, get in here. I want to say this to you. Honey! I was so proud of you. I was so proud of you on our trips to Manhattan because the whole family, I mean, even Grandpa was doing such a good job. We worked so cohesively as a unit to get through it.

I thought it was all going to fall apart. Over and over and over again, you know, you take a wrong turn, you go on the wrong subway, you have to go up a platform, I'm carrying all these things, we're in a museum, people have to be quiet, there are rude people. I mean, it's a very hostile environment for a family. And the fact that we made it through like full days and got to see all this stuff, I think that's a testament to us as a team. It's beautiful. I'm happy. I'm thrilled. I love you.

I just wanted to share that with you and with the listeners. It is good preparation for the boat. Boats are not necessarily child-friendly. Yeah. Yeah, the upper body's getting there. I did feel the back start to go at some point, but it's held up. That's what it's got. Your Manhattan is like being on a...

You've made a great point, and I wish you would agree to say it into the microphone, but you refuse to let anybody seriously... My wife is... You're behind the scenes. You're a very private person. And as soon as these kids are a bit older i'm going to set you to work in the james donald forbes mccann catamaran plant salt mines

you'll be making sure the merch gets out on time you'll be doing the mailing lists no our family's just my family who i love so much arriving home. My father took them to the park so that I could quickly record this podcast. And may I just say, I don't... I... Not for... It's important to take them out for longer, Grandpa. Grandpa's doing a great job. Grandpa's doing a really sublime job.

But we managed to get through 17 minutes of podcast. Hold on. Let's get them in here for goodness sake. Come on in. Come on in, mate here for goodness sake. Come on in. Come on in, mate. Come on in. Come on in. Now, what did we do yesterday?

Do you want to tell people on the podcast? You've got to say it right into the microphone. What did we do? We did... We saw... We didn't want to... The... Teldon's Park. We didn't want to the children's park.

We didn't want to tell... Oh, no, we didn't go to the children's park just now. You didn't make it to the children's park? No. But yesterday, did you see Lady Liberty? No. Yeah. What did you think of Lady Liberty?

Oh. He's walking away. All right. Well, he got the mummy gene, clearly Honey! Alright, honey What have you done since we got to New York? Is that so? And how was that? Man, it is difficult to transform this into a Jackson 5 type operation where everyone is pulling their weight in order to grow the digital footprint

and break through the business. All right, Grandpa's standing at the door, desperate to get on the podcast. Come on in, Grandpa. Grandpa, return guest, gets to go on the podcast. Grandpa, what are your thoughts and feelings about the greater New York area and trip? I love... Feel free to hold the microphone. I love Americans and I love greater New York.

Yesterday, what James has said, he and Taylor were brilliant in their parenting. I did say that. Oh, he said it. He said it right. We saw so much in one day. It was amazing. And two days ago, we saw an incredible lot in one day, including Central Park with snow all over it.

And I think we're having a little bit of a slack day today. And tomorrow, we're going to hit the Jewish Quarter and the Children's Museum. I'm passing it back. All right. Excellent stuff there. Well, thank you for listening this episode thank you grandpa for coming on that's jimmy that's good jackson five we are the mccann six there's a baby asleep in the next room it's incredible that he's managed to stay asleep

through my shadow um we're having a great time we're getting it all done thank you for listening this episode of james donald forbes mccann catamaran plan big things coming up soon holy dooly and the australia trip and then back to america and i'm lining up all these shows i think i might when we get back to steubenville i am going to need to line up an office space and just crush out a whole bunch of the online work because of the... Woo! All right, here's the song.

I love you. I love you. I miss you. I want you. I need you. Catamaran ho. Also, we're working on a special. Sam Clark is editing up sort of a documentary slash special

that he made on VHS, and it's coming together real nice, so we're working on that as well. It's a lot of... And I've almost finished my book essay. A lot of things. A lot of things happening. A lot of things moving.

A lot of things grooving. We've never been so close to boat ownership. So many people joining the Patreon. So many people watching on the YouTube. So many people listening to this podcast. All right. Thank you. Terima kasih telah menonton! Hey, it's Mitch from SideNote Podcast, Hooray! basically my personal AI assistant. Since I'm truly terrible at keeping up with emails, I use Gemini to give me summaries of my inbox, which is a lifesaver. And if I'm feeling stuck creatively,

I just ask Gemini for help and bam, instant inspiration. You can learn more about Google Pixel 9 at store.google.com.