The James Donald Forbes McCann Catamaran Plan - when we were fish

Episode Date: October 20, 2025

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Thank you for listening to this episode of the James Donald Forbes-McCand-Catamaran plan. If you'd like to listen to bonus episodes, go sign up to the Patreon. That's patreon.com. Clom? Ah, we f***ed that. Anyway, you'll, look, you'll find a way. Camelam Home! Hello everybody and welcome to the pod.

This is James McCann, your friend and confidant. Hello, everybody. This is the James Donald Forbes-Mawks-Macon, Catamaran, Plan. here for you today. Come on. Hello. I am checked into the same... You guys still doing breakfast?

I'm prepared. I found out that justices on the Supreme Court do not have to wear a black robe. They can wear anything they want. I wonder if one day there will be a Supreme Justice of the Supreme Court who wears a leather jacket. Just on certain days for certain dissenting opinions to let everybody know, yeah, I'm a renegade.

What are you going to do about it? I've been reading Amy Comey Barrett's book about the law. I've been enjoying it. Not that one. Hey, no, not that one. Not that one. Knitting! It says, look how much time I want to give you.

Boy, if we're blowing through other ones, we're going with that one. These are notes, by the way. Every time I had a thought that I thought I could riff on on the podcast, I wrote it down over the last week, you know, because it's important to be prepared, and you deserve a top professional podcast. Hey, you know how Tom, Cruz, and Nicole Kidman? Here's the other thing. I wanted to, um, I wanted to do this from the grassy knoll. I thought I'd wear a nice outfit and go and stand on the grassy knoll, but it's a very rainy day. And the podcast has to come. You deserve a podcast. Hey, you know Tom and Nicole, Kidman, and Cruz?

Well, they broke up. Newsflash. And you know Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes? Yeah, they broke up. And you know Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban? Word on the street is they've broken up. They've all split. Anyway, they're all Hollywood couples.

Hollywood couples always be splitting. But what if? Now what, hold on now. Now, what if it had the best Hollywood ending possible? And Katie Holmes and Keith Urban got together now. That's the last couple. Katie Holmes and Keith Urban. I wonder if they'd be happy if they got together.

Katie and Keith. Homes and Urban. They could hyphenate. They could be Urban Homes. It's not a great hyphenation. Urban homes can be run down and violent. Great to be here on the James' top. force began catamaran plan. There are demons and curses and witches in the world and they are

trying to destroy me. I don't care if that sounds silly. It helps me relax and that's all the proof that I need. Hey, have you ever noticed that they've stopped making new kinds of chocolate bars? Like a snickers, Hershey's Mars, Twicks, Kit Kat, the big boys, they dominate the field. That's not a free market That's market capture We are hostage to big chocolate Who Will Be Brave and find a brand new chocolate bar For the masses

I wish I could say that's where that note ended But it goes on We earn for new chocolate bars That's why the existing chocolate bar companies Keep releasing temporary Versions of chocolate bars White Snickers Strawberry Kit Kat

Dark chocolate Reises It's all fiddling around the edges. Scraps from the table. Give us a true free market. Unleash the modern Wonka. Brand new chocolate experiences, please. I was passionate when I wrote that.

Some people, not that one. Why are earrings sexy? They are. Just evolutionarily. What's that? What's that pushing? What button are earrings pushing? like rouge makes a woman look flushed and ready for sex intercourse and lipstick makes a woman's lips look red and swollen ready for sex intercourse

and eye makeup makes a woman look very tired you know big bags around the big black eyes like she's too weak to get away but um what are earrings for Is that an old? When we were fish, would big beads pop out of our ears to indicate arousal? Was that the hard nipples of fish? I'm sorry. Jobs have two big phases. They've got apprenticeship and we're jumping around. We're jumping around.

We'll see if this works. We're jumping around. You know how jobs? I mean, this is just stuff that's not good enough to be stand-up. Some of it was good enough to be stand-up, but it's in the act. A lot of cities coming up. A lot of cities. I'm going to Buffalo.

I'm going to Nashville. I'm going to Washington, D.C. I'm going to Alabama. I'm going to other ones as well. It's been a long week. Anyway, you know how people have jobs? There's two phases. Apprenticeship and mastery.

I ignore journeymanship. Anyway, I was thinking about how some jobs have good apprenticeships and like the apprenticeship's good, but the payoff's bad. And some jobs have like bad apprenticeships and the payoff is great. Like a politician, that starts out fun. You're just hacks and stacks and you're moving the numbers around and you know all the secrets, you're having a good time. But then eventually you become like the prime minister or the president

and then everybody hates you and you're a disappointment to all history and you're very busy. Anyway, the opposite one I thought was like on the Weather Channel. Like how good is it to be the host of the Weather Channel? Like you just get to sit behind a desk and read off a card and they put clothes on you and makeup. And there's a, you know, sometimes it's two people on the Weather Channel and you always have a little rapport. You're not lonely up there. But to get there, you have to spend years standing in a... hurricane. Not even like accidental hurricanes. Whoa, lightning. You won't be able to hear that,

but it went boom, boom, boom. Anyway, there's probably someone for the weather channel out there now. They drive you to a hurricane and then you have to stand in it. That seems like a bad apprenticeship. The flesh is weak, but the will is also weak. But the spirit, the spirit, weak. The mind. Weakest of all is the mind. All right. No. If they've got into the act, they can't say them, but that hurts the podcast, but I'm sorry, you've got to pay to come and see it, or just wait until it's on the internet. It's important to remember that there was a time not so long ago when nobody had invented chocolate. Wow, I've been thinking about chocolate, I guess, over the last couple of days.

We had, yeah, remember we had the beans for chocolate, but we didn't. We had the beans for chocolate, and we couldn't figure out what to do with them. surely there are other secret beans with as yet undecoded uses they say it's impossible to laugh and be afraid at the same time you ever heard that it's impossible to laugh and be afraid at the same time i guess they don't know about my poisoned ticketing gloves ah we can't even get it right success is a series of rooms seven rooms you only want to go through five room six is very scary room seven just a lot of work

I think I'm about room three when I make a U-turn hey you ever be driving when I make a U-turn when I make a U-turn you know I'm just sick of rambling incoherently for no reason about nothing and I thought this would help give structure

but if anything I feel this is more insane whenever I make a U-turn it feels as though I'm doing something wrong I'm fairly certain that my technique is legal and orthodox, it is the act of a U-turn in the abstract that has the aura of impropriety. Do you feel that way? How many things in life must be like that, like the U-turn? You know, they're normal and allowed, but possessed by the vibe of scandal.

I can think of no other examples at this time. That's what I wrote on the card, and I can still think of no other examples. Because, you know, even shoes without socks, people go. Oh, no one goes, ha, with a U-turn, but I still feel guilty when I do a U-turn. Is it beginning or is ending? Which set of credits is proximate? Is this the first act of a redemptive arc or the final act of a cautionary tale? My son screams when he wakes up.

He runs around so we can all hear the screams. For so many people, that is what life is. Pain, pain weakly remedied by inflicting it on others. People used to think posture was important. You know, posture? I might have to have good posture for this bit. You know, people used to think that posture was important. I don't usually care about posture, but recently,

I was at Laguna Beach and the Asians there had the most beautiful posture I had ever seen. It made me want to be a better person. Do you think people would go back to making... What? Do you think people would go back to the... movies if they started making good movies again or did people stop going to the movies before the creativity dried up and that's why the movie industry said let's pump out another doctor strange it doesn't matter anymore she i'm disappointed with myself god will sometimes break us

so that we will depend on him i really wish he would just ask nicely but he probably did ask nicely and i wasn't listening i was feeling pretty depressed i think when that one came out Some people go days without a bowel movement. I cannot imagine. I have a soundtrack. I will now play the soundtrack. And the rest will have a soundtrack. Some people go days without a bowel movement.

I cannot imagine. I have so many bowel movements sometimes. They bore me. I think, I can't believe. leave, I'm back here again on the toilet with another bowel movement. Enough already. Two, three a day. How I yearn to go a good length of time without a movement of the bowel. Be still, bowels. More people should own swimming pools and sports cars if they can afford them. Because it is nice to have a friend with a sports car and or a swimming pool. You get to get in them and go,

nice. You're doing well, so I'm doing well. Swimming pools and sports cars are treats for people lucky enough to have a friend with cool things. So many people are oblivious. I'm oblivious to the need to take a razor on the road. My... He spews out of my face. Gets into my lips, comes back into the face. Get out of the face. Chop it off. I went to, I tried to have a haircut this week. Yesterday. And then I had to go to the airport. I'm always coming and going from an airport. And there was a guy in the hair cutting shop and he was just saying he was, he was, he was just, I'll tell you what he was, ah, he was saying his girlfriend had had a Caesarian section and she got angry at him for going skiing.

too much as she recovered from the caesarian section. And there's probably a way to convey that sentiment with charisma. But I couldn't help noticing that he sounded whiny. I mean, no one can relate more than I to wanting to go skiing while your woman recovers from a caeserian section. And I know that barbershops are places where people open up and talk about their deepest, darkest, most challenging in a safe environment. But this man was spending so long talking about wanting to go skiing in a whiny way

while his girlfriend, not his wife, while his girlfriend complained about it, went on for like 40 minutes this man's haircut, and I kept looking up at the haircut because I was next. I was getting the next haircut. It didn't happen. The hair's still. as it was. Whinging and winging this man and his hair not changing. The barber circling, listening, making quiet, helpful noise. Oh, yeah, I must be out. I was skiing.

That's great. The hair not changing. And then I had to leave. So many people are oblivious. They have no idea how ridiculous they are. What a joy. What a joy. What a joy. What a joy. What a joy. Socrates said the unexamined life is not worth. living. I disagree. The unexamined life is happy and stress-free, and you get to go skiing.

Iceland! Special! Do they have a good poet who exists only in the original language and loses a lot in translation? If so, I'd like to know about it and learn Icelandic, but I won't. Is that the name of the language? Not sure. I've just found out that the Russians have different Christmas carols to the rest of us. Honestly, no disrespect. Ours are much catchier. I don't have any tattoos, but if I did have to have a tattoo,

if it was mandated that I had a tattoo, if I had no choice but to get myself a tattoo, I'd want it to be a hundred Scottish guys playing the drums. It is important, I find increasingly it is important to dress like a sane person. I was on a plane and there were some people who were late and they explained once they got on the plane that their connecting flight was late and oh I'm sorry the connecting flight was late they had to hold they held this one so we were just five minutes we just ran down but the woman was wearing a hoodie with cat ears on it she was a big woman with a dirty

with cat ear I don't know if it was dirty but it didn't look no one looked at airports anymore but She was cat-earing it. And it's very hard to have sympathy for someone who's dressed like a crazy person. If you dress beautifully, you get away with more. You want to go and use the toilet at a fancy restaurant? Wear a suit. You don't need a reservation. You need a suit.

Do I wear suits? No. Did I do that one time and get to take a pup and a fancy restaurant? Yeah, sure I did. It's all these pups. do it. Yeah, yeah. How come they can't make nicotine food? Take the Zen out. Don't like the Zins. Love nicotine. Hate all the nicotine distribution mechanisms. At this point, I'm open to taking nicotine intravenously. I have to quit nicotine, but I wish they could just make it into a sandwich.

And I know there was an episode of The Simpsons where they accidentally did that. But what I would like to know is, why in real life can't we? have nicotine food. Cigarettes kill you, vaping, not great visually, good for the lungs. Zins are disgusting. Patches a week. The gum is also disgusting nicotine food. Why not? I watch The Godfather.

Am I Michael and my Frito? I am Sonny. Sunny is equipped. Hate is a finite resource. But your life is finite also. There's more hate to draw on than you could ever use up in one lifetime. I don't know what was going through the brain. How do you get back vitality when it's gone?

Where do you go and who do you talk to to get vitality back? Gee, I really do hope that the answer is not the blood of the innocent. Sometimes, oh, this one I thought was all right. Sometimes, you know, anyway, you'd be watching a TV show or a movie and there'll be a character whose screen is cracked. and it conveys something about that character that they've got a cracked phone screen I think I was watching the OA and someone had a cracked phone screen and it says like not quite together it says watch out not together

a little out of control not maybe poor not organized but then I was thinking about how to make the cracked phone screen someone has to like drop it or hit it with a hammer or something you know what I mean like they actually have to crack it but you can't crack it too much, or else it won't work as a prop. The screen won't work. You just have, you have to crack it just right.

And that the person who makes the cracked phone screen with, and it's also expensive, you know, you've got to buy a phone and crack it. If you get it wrong, you've got to get another one. It's also the act of putting that in the movie. It's very thoughtful and careful. And it's that the decision to do that and the act of doing that is the opposite of what then conveys about the character. What do you think about that? I was pleased with that. Colonization and imperialism get a bad rap nowadays, but let's not pretend we'd have modern Vietnamese

food without many years of intercontinental violence. The lesson, Mexico must invade Japan or vice versa, whatever works for fusion cuisine. Business opportunity. Everybody knows about hot sauce, but what about cold sauce? What about? What about? room temperature source. I've heard it said that discipline is doing what you don't want to do. Yeah, this one I try it anyway. This one's not making the stage. Discipline is doing what you don't want to do when you don't want to do it.

I once heard a college football coach said that. Well, my definition of discipline here doing what you don't want to do when you don't want to do it. But what does that make masochism, wanting to do what you don't want to do when you don't want to do it? And what does that make a man who is addicted to massacist practices, but yearns to make a change? Somebody who doesn't want to do what he does not want to do, which is doing what he does want to not want. You know what I'm saying? I love the O.A. I think 20 minutes is about the right length of time for a podcast.

20 minutes is about the right length of time for anything. 20 minute bath? Nice. 20 minute nap? Fantastic. 20 minute walk? Tremend. 20 minutes with Charles Baudelaire right about the right amount of time 10 minutes is nothing 10 minutes is a mistake 10 minutes is blip

30 minutes it's half the day 20 minutes 20 minutes is right about them I'm aiming for 20 minutes just about but I do want to share that I also watch Tokyo drifting for the first time on a flight here yesterday and I love it

It's a fetal dream. It's gone with the wind for young men in the early... The early 2000s. Tokyo drifting. I mean, it's insane. It doesn't make sense. It doesn't have to. It's Tokyo drifting.

This has been your episode of the James Donald Forbes-McCann Camaran Plan. I think that format is... Well, we'll see how the... format goes, I'm not opposed to it. Preparation. And not too long, we'll have a proper cameraman standing on the hill. The roads, the roads, I'm beat up by the road. I've got to do something to revitalise. I'm thinking about getting an IV drip. I'm not even getting all fucking up. It's just, uh, I get myself right for the shows. I get this, you know what it is?

I get this wave of adrenaline in the evenings. And for the rest of the day, I'm a spent force. Can't just start recording the podcast at the shows. Can't I? No, I can't. I love you, I miss you, I want you, I need you. Can I'm ran home. Goodbye.