The James Donald Forbes McCann Catamaran Plan - S2 Ep8: sad road

Episode Date: April 8, 2026

US TOUR TIX: https://www.jdfmccann.com/gigsPATREON: https://www.patreon.com/c/jdfmccannThanks to this weeks sponsors:Quince: https://quince.com/catamaranSquarespace: https://www.squarespace.com/catamaran to save 10% off your first purchase of awebsite or domain

Hello, you're listening to what's about to be a podcast that also has a video version. Okay? And that's on YouTube. So the YouTube people, they'll have the video, but you on the audio, you get this extra bit of me just speaking with the audio. We don't have to use any of the video here. We're just using the audio. And it's me saying, the podcast that you're about to listen to, should indeed you decide to keep listening to it, is quite avant-garde. And there are lots of silences, poignant silences, that I thought we were replacing.

But Sweet Sam Clark, the visual element, decided it was better with the silences. And I think there is a certain artistic continuity and form they're having the silences. So I don't have a big problem with that. We can keep the silences. But it seems that which is avant-garde in the visual medium would to me seem for those audio listeners that we still possess to be a kind of bullying. Because there's not as much pathos in the silence without the accompanying video. it's just a long they might go he's made a mistake

and so that's what I that's what this is for now just to go at the start of the audio of that episode to say Sam's pushed it further than he's pushed it before I think people will come along for the ride with the video

I think they'll be pretty alienated with the audio alone but if they're not prepared and as a special additional treat come over here come over here you you you you Come over here. As a special additional treat, here is Darcy to say hello. What do I say?

You just say hello. Hello. So Darcy will be on the next episode. So if this one freaks you out too much, don't worry. The next episode will have Darcy on it. And thus concludes the audio that we'll be doing for this podcast. Now we may play the podcast. Thank you.

God, life is hard. put me on an airplane and fly me off to Switzerland put me in one of those machines where a buzz sword out into a tiny little pieces new clothes make you feel nice we'll start the podcast soon hey brother

how you going oh no he's off doing his own thing I'll start the podcast now oh I believe we're being asked to leave are we being asked to leave Sam you cannot film here are we being asked to leave no filming

can leave if we if we have to leave we can leave do you think this fellow would like to come and talk to me on the podcast you must leave hey mate you are listening to the james donalded four mcane catamaran play hello and welcome to this episode of the james donald forbs mccan catamaran plan oh clap hello and welcome to this episode of the james donald forbs mccan catamaran plan sam was right and i was wrong and that's kind of annoying because i like to be right, but in this instance, I was wrong. And thus, I am back on the street. I determined that it was time for an out and about podcast episode,

and in that I indeed may have been right, who am I to say? I don't know. Anyway, we tried going to the mall, because we've been out in the city for like a lot of episodes, and I thought, it's time to go to the mall, time to go to T-Tree Plaza. We've been spending too much time with the bohemian inner-city types, time to go out there and press the flesh with the real, human beings of the mall.

And Sam said we would get kicked out of the mall and I said, listen, it's in the northeastern suburbs. Everyone's asleep. He said, no, we're going to get kicked out. I said, you wait and you said, we got kicked out almost immediately. I think I, but in about 50 seconds after a camera coming out of a case, it was done. So we go out and I tried to sit on the steps and record there. called there. It didn't work either. So I ate some,

ate some of the colonel's finest to feel better about everything. And we noticed that they'd set up a fun fair over there. They'd set up a, they're setting up a fun fair. And I thought maybe we could, you know, I could go on a ride or something. And they said, oh, yeah, talk to Luke. I don't know, Luke. And then they said, oh, we'll phone into Luke. And Luke never came over. So I just feel dumb and full. fat and bad and I've eaten a lot of KFC and I'm back in the middle of a street again and I bought this hat and these glasses and jumper and this picture of Mullen Brando yeah I can see I can see no reason that I James Donald Forbes McCann wouldn't endorse

this product this should sound to everybody like a personal endorse Personal endorsement. Endorsement. The endorsement personnel. The endorsement personnel. Anyway, what's new with you guys? Got a lot of... Man, I'm so sad.

I'm just... I'm so sad. Dopamine is not firing in my head. I have come off booze for Lent. and I think considering how sad I am not drinking, it would not be a bad idea if I actually buy an large state off of booze. This one might require a little editing.

Where's my effing? Where's my phone? Where's my effing phone? Where's my telephone? For crying out loud, I have a telephone. Ah, there it is. I'll go through my tour dates. Sorry, mate.

I'll be in Melbourne soon. I don't have that date on me, but I'll be in Melbourne, Australia. One of the shows sold out, and there's another one coming up. That'll be the day before I head off to America, so it'll be before the 24th. I think it's on the 18th of this month. Anyway, here are my tour dates. I'm going to be in Austin, but they've all sold out. Thank you.

I'll be in Albuquerque. That's still available. San Diego, Phoenix, Hollywood, Seattle, Portland, Schaumburg, which is, I think, just Chicago, Toronto, New York City, Boston, Pittsburgh, Orlando, Naples, Tampa, Denver, San Francisco. Please come and see me do comedy over the next month. that's me April, May and June just the very start of June just the very end of April

Darcy couldn't do the podcast today um we could do it tomorrow so we might get to record one then I feel so silly for having tried to do it in the mall and even as I was in the mall I felt that there wasn't any a special electricity to doing it I was really trying to

gee myself up and feel good about doing a podcast in the mall But, you know, I like to believe that you can find something good in the suburbanized automotive, hollowed out, post-industrial. You know what I'm saying? Just the sprawl. The decaying sprawl in which we live. That you could find something still poetic and magical about it. But then, I don't know, a security guard was telling us off and I just feel like an idiot.

And that maybe it's wrong to try and take something ugly and turn into something piquant and beautiful. And that actually a mall is just a shitty soulless place and you can't really pump life into it. You know? I think about that with like football teams because some football teams you know they're real football teams Hello Do you want to come and be on the podcast?

You can circle the block All right come back You know what I like about being out in public Is the opportunity for conviviality And it's Even Illich wrote about it I think But it's You know you want coincidences

You want interest things to... I'm so down. I'm so down. I'm so down. Why am I so down? You want to hear some new poems I've been working on? We're working on some new poems. Farms seem like nice places until you're actually there, and it's boring and the animals are stupid and shit is everywhere. I went with my kids to a farm this week. My daughter wanted to go to a farm. They had pony rides. I didn't get to write a pony. that's a better poem. I took my daughter to a...

Anyway, I think there's a very good chance I will be at all of these shows in America. Is it possible that Australia completely runs out of jet fuel and all flights out of the country are cancelled? No one's saying that. But we don't seemingly have any ability to produce

our own jet fuel. Is it possible to like double fill up the plane with more jet fuel so that they'd have enough for the return trip and they just pop in and pop back? I don't think so. Maybe business class could be handed over to kerosene. Also this week I found out that kerosene is jet fuel. I don't know if we all knew that.

I feel like such a fool for having taken Sam Clark out here. We could have been in the office and possibly having a better time. Man, I'm telling you, there's like, there's advertising on these buses for products that haven't existed for a very long time. Like the billboards on the side of the buses. For movies that have gone out of cinemas three or four months ago. Did you want to come on the show? No one wants to come on the dang show. I don't want to be on the dang show.

Darcy wanted to be on the show. Oh man, my kids are at school. and this has been going on for a couple of weeks now but we had our kids out of school we were just homeschooling and the kids are in school because we've got this new baby and I'm on the road a lot

and it's not an easy time domestically and I think if you're going to homeschool you really have to kind of homeschool properly you don't want to half ass your child's education some of the kids not all the kids

some of the kids the ones who are of school and age have gone to school and they love it. The kids are very, very happy being in school. One of them was sick this week. Just for one day, there was a cough. That child got to stay home.

But oh, by lunchtime, that child wanted to be at school. And I'll tell you this, I did not like school. I don't like the structure of it. When I was out of school, I felt an incredible free. Maybe that's just the freedom of being an adult as opposed to the freedom of being in child, but I felt throughout all schooling from preschool to primary school to high school. Let's not forget middle. I felt other than like a couple, like a tiny handful of teachers.

I just felt like I was being, who is this dumb stranger who has power over me who I'm not going to see next? next year, you know? It was really nice not having to have my kids in school and our life has changed such that they now have to be in school. Just about as best as we can manage, I think they've got to be in school. And again, they're having a great time. I feel bad about it. And it's weird.

I went to a parent-teacher interview this morning. They had to cancel it this week. But I went and I had the first to parent-teacher interview and it's like, you know, you kids doing this well. gets having problems with this. Here are the standardized ways in which you have succeeded or failed up until this point. Yeah.

All right. Okay. Thank you. Hey, brother. Yeah, it just makes me... I think also my wife did not have a great time at school. Some good friends. We both had some fine friends.

But I don't think... I think obviously school is just set up to get you ready to work in an office. used to be set up to get you ready to work in a factory but now it's just getting you ready to set up in an office and it doesn't like i again for a couple years it's probably good for a child to get to go to a school to develop the ability of how to survive in groups you know social dynamics strangers the unnatural world of hundreds of children rampaging around. I wanted

it's also, it's odd because school is just, it looks worse than school looked when I was a kid because they've got iPads and things now. You know, there's a lot of bright lights and exciting colors on those iPads, but around the room there's this, you know, we had a lot more, I guess, utopian scholastic type, primary school globalism type stuff.

I think it was a cheery place. Maybe as I'm not a child, it looks different to me now. But just this overwhelming feeling of like you work so hard and you try and lift yourself up. And then what do you get to hand off to your kids? It's just a, it's a worse version of the life you had. With technological whiz bangs and what are you saying? I guess I'm asking for it by being in the middle of the street. I'm sad to be going.

And all my other trips I got the... travel around with the family. And this will just be me alone for a month. Trying to get an hour of stand-up comedy together to a filmable standard and then filming it. And it'll be hotels and I'll get to hang out with my opening acts and I'll get to go to swimming holes right around the United States of America. But it's so nice traveling with your kids and getting to see it through their eyes. You know, you go to St. Louis alone and you go, oh yeah, the arch.

Okay. You go with your kids, you go, look, honey, look at the size of that arch. And they go, wow, and I've seen such a, not since we were all in Hiroshima together, have I seen an arch of that size? It's really nice traveling with kids. It's a, what? That's a lie. There are really nice moments.

It's nice to, you know, After a while, there's no more wonder for you to experience as an adult. And the only wonder you get to feel is looking in the eyes of a loved one, whether that's a child, whether that's someone who's especially given to wonder, or someone who's suffering that you can alleviate. And you get to participate in the joy that you get to facilitate for them. You know what I'm saying? Make, I guess. That's my wife.

Oh, look, there usually is joy. I'm just not drinking. So I'm meant to be turning my mind towards God. It's what Lent's for. I should be going hungry more often. I tried fasting and then I think I had inflammation of the bowel. That's probably, that's Linton. I've got to do this test where I poo into a tube and find out what's going on.

Anyway, no one or no. James, why don't you talk about your bowel more? Got to read some ads. I'll read some ads. This podcast is sponsored and brought to you by Squarespace. Squarespace is the all-in-one website platform designed to help you stand out and succeed online. Whether you're just studying out or scaling your business,

Squarespace gives you everything you need to claim your domain, showcase your offerings. I thought claim your domain was, anyway, maybe I'll start again, hey? This podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. Squarespace makes it easy to make a website. I have a Squarespace website. maybe you'd consider getting a Squarespace website as well. Whether you, you know, if you need it to make a website, Squarespace, I mean, I don't actually know what kind of website you're trying to build.

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I've never found it to be so difficult that I've gotten rid of the website. Do you what I mean? I keep it. Squarespace has brought you this episode. Squarespace has paid me some money to read a message about Squarespace. Squarespace makes it easy to have a website and buy a web address. I use Squarespace. Showcase your offerings with a professional website.

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Welcome to this episode. How's that? You like that? Do you want to do that with the lens? Is that a good razzle-dazzle moment? Welcome to this episode of the James Donald Fawkes-Bakhan, Catamaran plan. Yeah!

That's a better start. That's a better start. That's a better start. That's a better start. Have we had a good day today? No. But that's a better start. That's where the podcast...

Yeah. Yeah. Do you ever notice that your first day at a place, they usually, like that first week that you spend at a place, they have the evacuation, the fire evacuation. You start at a new office and then like on the second or third day, it's always like evacuation day and then you'll be there for a couple years. It's like, man, we never did another evacuation. But it's just when you start that you've got to go and do the evacuation. Maybe that's just me. I don't know if that's ever happened to you.

Maybe we could drive down to the roundabout and I could stand in the roundabout and I'd feel more creative. Do you want to get motorcycles for the podcast? I'm done. I'm a spent force. Oh, excuse me. All right. Yeah.