The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe - 221: Tim Allen Lives on a Runway

Episode Date: October 12, 2021

Mike has a most enlightening chat with his TV Big Brother, the one and only Tim Allen, who still seems a little incredulous that Mike didn't return to Last Man Standing to finish what he started. As for why Tim now lives on the runway of an airport, well, that's a bit of a mystery...

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Hey guys, it's Mike Rowe. This is the way I heard it episode number 221. And it's called Tim Allen lives on a runway because I'm pretty sure he does. Tim Allen is my guest today because back in 2012, Tim Allen invited me onto Last Man Standing, his sitcom, to play his younger brother, Jimmy Baxter. It was a great phone call, a very flattering call because years earlier, I had come to L.A. for the purpose of breaking into sitcoms. That was my dream job in those days. I'd auditioned for a few, but it never worked out. So I hopped on a very different horse that happened to be running in a very different direction. That horse, of course, was called unscripted television. And I've been riding it for the last 25 years. But the idea, the idea of acting in a hit sitcom had always been a dream.

And when Tim Allen offered me a guest role on an established hit, I said, hell yeah. And a month or so later, I was there on the soundstage at ABC playing his younger brother. And it was awesome. The cast and crew of Last Man Standing were like a family. The script was tight. Everybody was super collaborative and welcoming. And I finally got a firsthand look at what working on a sitcom would be like.

And I loved it. After we wrapped, Tim pulled me aside and thanked me and predicted that our paths would cross again. Well, he was right. The episode I did was called Baxter and Sons, and it turned into one of their most popular episodes. And a few months after it aired, the producers of Last Man Standing reached out to see if I'd be up for another guest appearance. Unfortunately, I could not say yes. Dirty Jobs was still in production, and my crew was waiting for me in a sewer outside of me. Madison or someplace. There was just no time. There was just no time I could not find a week

to set aside to do this. And that's the thing about these sitcoms, especially these multi-camera half-hour sitcoms. If you compare them to movies or plays, they are unbelievably efficient. But if you compare them to unscripted shows like Dirty Jobs or somebody's got to do it or returning the favor, they're not. On shows like Last Man Standing, you get this script on a Sunday. You come in on a Monday for a table read. The writers tweak the script after that. Everybody comes back on Tuesday, and you start blocking out the scenes on the set.

And then after some more tweaking, you come back on Wednesday and run the whole show once or twice. By Thursday, you should have all your lines memorized or close to it. But there's still more rewriting and adjusting and tweaking and so forth. on Friday afternoon, you do a final run-through, and then that evening they bring in a studio audience, and you do the actual taping. You're off on Saturday, you get a new script on Sunday, and then you do the whole thing again a week later.

It's a machine. And for an aspiring actor, there is no better gig, steady work, generous paycheck, and you get to collaborate and act with talented people. But it just took too much time. especially for a guest appearance. You know, it just wasn't worth it. Anyway, a year later, Tim Allen called me again.

And he told me that the writers had been discussing my return ever since my departure. He told me how enthused that he and the network had been about the chemistry that we had on stage. And he suggested that there was a very real possibility that I could become a series regular on the show. And this was the call I had dreamed of getting for years, a series regular on an established hit. And when I got the call, I literally said to myself, while I was talking to Tim, I'm like,

my God, this is it. It's happening. This is my big break. All I have to do is quit dirty jobs and go to work. And that's when I realized something obvious. I mean, it was so obvious. It was strange to realize it when I did. But it was during that. call with Tim Allen that I finally realized I was no longer an aspiring actor waiting for my big break. My big break had come years earlier in a sewer in San Francisco when the stars had aligned around an idea that would become dirty jobs. And that's the funny thing about this crazy business. I knew I had a good thing going in 2012. I knew dirty jobs was a hit. I just didn't know how much I appreciated it until I realized that I didn't want to give it up in order to do the thing

I had always dreamed of doing. So I passed on the opportunity to play Tim Allen's little brother on a network hit. And Tim was very gracious. I think he thought I might have lost my mind. And maybe I had. You know, I still look at the road not taken. And I wonder where it might have led. That's not to say I've got regrets. I don't. But I always wanted to think. thank Tim publicly for inviting me onto his show and to apologize for not coming back. And today I get to do that here on the podcast and a good deal more in the conversation you're about to hear. It's impossible to sum this whole thing up because really it's a lot like two actual

brothers catching up after a few years of not seeing each other, except in this case, one of the brothers lives on a runway of a busy airport. In other words, apologies for my big brother's audio. It ain't great. But what he has to say is terrific. He's funny, insightful, exactly what you'd expect Tim Allen to be, exactly what you'd want to hear from the last man standing. Or from a wise older brother who has done everything there is to do in show business.

A guy who has been there and done that and formed some opinions along the way. Opinions he is not afraid to share. This is the way I heard it. is it weird to love people but despise human resources? If so, well, color me weird. It's not to say I don't respect the millions of people who work in HR departments and companies all over the country. I do.

It's just that I don't envy him. That's why MicroWorks doesn't have an HR department for better or worse. And it's also why I use ZipRecruiter whenever we need to expand. ZipRecruiter has proven themselves a million times. over by helping countless employers get through the hiring process faster and more effectively than ever before. And now they have a new feature that instantly shows you the most interested, the most passionate, and the most qualified candidates first. This is a huge time saver, hours and hours of save time. And it helps people like me find the people

who can function in a non-traditional work environment like MicroWorks. In other words, ZipRecruiter works for me, and they'll probably work for you, too. Post a job for free at ziprecruiter.com slash row. And watch what happens. Odds are you'll find a human resource that just happens to be a great fit for your company in 24 hours or less. ZipRecruiter.com slash row. ZipRecruiter.com slash row. The smartest way to hire. I mean, we've been at it for years now, and it's just every single week, you know, whether it's the audio, the video, the technology, it's just like Cal's looking at a new

gate, just marveling at the complexity of whatever the hell this is. What I like is that because I'm in this business and I like technology, this particular camera, is an old Sony camera that no one liked it. He was worth about $500,000, but you put a Sigma lens on it. And no matter who I was doing these with, no matter, there's always some male or female I went, what camera are you using? I got into this. Now I've got lights at home.

I've got a studio at home just because I like this technology. And I've been doing in the production business so long that I got cameras coming out of my rear end. And I got this, where she showed it to? This thing here. Oh, yeah. It's called a black magic. and at one point I had four cameras. We were doing a Zoom writer's meeting,

and I kept switching cameras going, you know, and then I'd look, and the cameras kept switching, everybody was going, at one point they'd go, are you switching cameras? I said, it took you 30 minutes of notice and I looked a different direction, and there was another camera, and of course, all the production people were like pissed.

How'd you do that? That's all we cared about. It's a miracle. He's so handy. You talk about cameras coming out of your butt. You know, they actually make the cameras now that can go up the butt and out the butt. I mean, you can put these things anywhere.

Okay, here's it. This is totally off. I've been doing this. I did Amarillo and San Antonio concerts this weekend. Have you ever heard the term? I was at a production meeting and somebody said, look, I'm not blowing smoke up your ass. I stopped. I said, you know what? I'd rather you wouldn't even do that. I don't know why that. Why is that a compliment?

How did that ever start with, hey, you're not, I'm just blowing smoke up your ass. And I started thinking about it. I stopped. I went, I don't want you to do that. That's no compliment. How did that ever be? What would it take for that not to happen? I mean, between sunshine and smoke, I suppose I'd rather have the smoke because the sun would be unspeakably hot.

But either way, it's an exit. Either way, I appreciate your talent or something instead of where did it even come from. I've done a whole thing about it. There's a book I read a lot of time ago called Word Origins, where some words, one of them was really funny that omelet. and as I read it, the Saxons would take over France as they came through France and they killed a farmer and everything. And before they killed everybody in the farmhouse, they go, what are you making there?

And the farm lady's ready to die. And she's pointing to the pan, which is a leomette, which is a flat iron pan. And so they go, well, make us, that smells good. Make us more. She goes, okay. And then they kept, you had to taste these omelets. And pretty soon it was omelet.

There you go. You got an omelet. You know, you made me laugh. Well, you made me laugh a lot over the years, but you were on some podcast. It might have been Mark Marens. You were talking about the sun. You had seen some documentary when you were a kid.

Bill Labs. And it just, I literally, yes, I spit my coffee out because I narrate this incredibly depressing program called How the Universe Works, which has been on for 10 years now. And I tell them every year, I'm like, guys, we have to change the title to a thousand ways to die. Exactly. Because every single episode,

with depress a hyena from the quasars to the pulsars to the radiation to the dark matter. No one's getting out of the saline. No, and I said it was Bell Labs, the history of the sun. I was like, the sun is beautiful. Oh, it was on and on and on. And then it was just kind of, it was right before Easter, a break, and we're all in there. This is the best. I love science.

I love this world. And then it becomes a white dwarf, a red, it spans to a red. And I'm going, oh, that's getting kind of close to us. and then it shrinks into a dwarf and then extinguished itself and all life goes away. And everybody, oh, that's it. Everybody left the classroom and hold it. This is what happens to our son? I'm literally in nervous tears.

Well, this is, what are we saving anything? Why do we have museums? And the teacher's going to get it calm down. This doesn't happen for a while. I don't care. If that's the end of it, this is just horrible. And it was a weekend of trying to tell anybody that would listen that this isn't, going to last. And it was like, nobody cared. Well, on this documentary, it's not the facts or even

the possibility that it's coming to an end that's so off-putting. It's the casualness with which the experts discuss it. It's just like, yeah, we figure that no one knows exactly how long, but when it happens, it's either going to get very, very, very cold first or very, very, very hot. But either way, it's very, very, very bad for us. There was a great twice. There was a great twice. zone about that where the sun was getting closer to the earth and everybody was in New York apartments and it was horrific about how hot it was getting and liquid was vaporizing and everybody's saying goodbye to the people as the sun was getting closer. I've seen it.

It was closer. It was called constant moon. Well, she wakes up from a dream. She goes, oh, my God. It's not happening and it's snowing outside. And she gets up to, oh, God, what a relief. This isn't it? Now the sun is even further away today than it was just, and it turns out when she

wake up, it was actually moving away from us. And, uh, another one of those pleasant. Yeah. The one I'm thinking of is they wake up or they're going to bed and the moon comes up. And it looks like three or four times bigger than it normally does. And it's because the sun is getting closer. Right. And the other side of the earth has been fried and as the earth is spinning there next.

Anyway, it's all part of science. follow the science just follow the science how's that working out for you every time I think about that science is kind of variable isn't it the changes day to day so every time I hear that I go

I love science I live because I'm so interested in it it constantly is a moving target as I took my older daughter who left here in frustration she's the producer several shows on then and she said I took her to CERN Switzerland

to see the watch him look for the Higgs Boson years ago Yeah. And it's a moving target. I said, so what makes you think that's the smallest thing? Well, it's the smallest thing from the plank distance out that we can figure. And I said, but there's no reason to believe that you're going to get there. I go, oh, there's something inside that.

And he goes, we don't think that. I go, I know you don't think that. You didn't think there was a Higgs boson 10 years ago. So science is constantly a moving target. And I said, these days, I love science, and I'm a big science booster. to hear follow the science as though that is a object. You know, follow the science as an object. You know, you're actually following the science.

It's continually changing. Well, the problem isn't science. The problem is the word the. When you put the in front of anything, you turn it in, you like anthropomorphize it. And now suddenly it's this living thing that needs your respect as opposed to this great unknown chasm of ignorance that we're trying to. to Phil. The hell are you following. Do you remember when I was impersonating your little brother standing backstage, you and I, we missed our cue because you got so worked up. Sorry, I'm

free associating. It wasn't science we were talking about, but we were talking about a busted blender. Right. And you wanted to like fix the blender with your kid or your grandkid or somebody. And you couldn't. And you got so pissed off. And you went into, like you were like yelling at me. I didn't take it personally. I just happened to be the closest one to you. But one of the first things, I've got two notes here, but the first note was ask him, is he still angry about blenders that can't be, that can't be fixed but need to be replaced instead? It's become one of the huge reasons of glasses on and off is that I missed our television show because it's after 10 years that one's done, home improvement's done. I always had grips or electric.

And I'd bring crap in, and I'd go, because I'd mess with it. I go, what, why is this not working? And there's always a guy that instead of going, who cares? I like the guys that go, let me take a look at that. And then he'd go off and he'd come back. There's a solder right there. I've done this most of my life. There's several objects that set me on a path.

One was a vice that was malfunctioning because it was kind of loose. I said, what a wobbly crap. And so I went to this, when craftsmen seers near me was open. And they had 2995, 3995, 1.295, 129.95. No difference. They're all kind of sloppy mechanism. I said, is there such a thing as a good vice? And I went on this sojourn. And I got to a company, I hate to give up their name because I was there. Not rude. I was rude. It was called Wiltern vices. I called the lady. I said, I was like, P.O. And I said, what vices worth $3,400? Now I'm on the other end of it. She goes, let me start with. You called us. I didn't call you.

And she goes, you're looking at a machina spice. Look at the mechanic's spice. Machine as spices, declinations on everything. You put a watch in there and only stop it. Oh, plus this is forged steel. This is, it's compressed. It's not potted metal. This is an anvil.

You can't hit this indented. This is made by American workers in Ohio that are making $35 an hour. And the vice will be worth in 40 years. What's it worth now? So I end up buying two of them. I end up a coffee maker I've had, and it finally got fixed for the history show I did. Literally, the owners I did it was to get a guy, why can't I fix this stupid coffee maker? It was a toaster that started it after the vice.

What broke in the toaster? I take it apart. I can't find anything that gave up. And you get Toastmasters that go down and they're heavy, my grandma had one. You take those apart, and it's usually an electrical, something in the plug. There's actually nothing in the to go wrong. We have a quezonart coffee maker did this history channel show. Now I have experts.

Nobody could figure out how to take the bottom of it off. That was the key. We stuck long screwdrivers in there. And it looked like it was an Allen-ish or that torque thing. And then April, our resident expert, says, no, there's something in there. And she finally, like all of us, do you kind of break it to fix it? I snapped off something. they put a little tiny X in the middle of a torque.

So only a special screwdriver will take it off. The idea was we came up with as those paper dispensers in public restrooms are fastened to the wall with the screwdriver that you have to get a special screwdriver so people don't steal them. They've used that technology somewhat so you won't open up the damn coffee maker. It's a leak. So it's not metal. There's some gasket that gives way. The whole copymaker is based on one little gasket. And they don't want you taking that thing apart.

And that started being... So you're still pissed off, is the bottom line. I'm still pissed off that you can't fix stuff. This is what I'm talking about, Chuck. What just happened over the last four minutes is exactly what's happening backstage. I hadn't done a sitcom before. And here I am with Tim Allen. I want to get it right.

I'm playing his younger brother. It's a big day for me. I don't know how I wound him up. I think I said, like, how's it going? No. Is this still fun? And now suddenly the director's yelling at us, the producers are all. crowds, you know, we just missed our cue, and that's why.

Your work has always been about how stuff's made. That's how your head works. And so I don't know what we were talking about because it was probably something that was broken around. And I said, my whole life lately has been politically and everything else, I appreciate people that instead of going, oh, I don't know, they go, let's take a look at it. They dive into a problem. And most of my life lately has been being put on one political side or another.

Let's say that I wasn't about being right or wrong. I was going, what problem can we solve here? And that's lately I've asked every arguing person about what political side I'm on. I just want to know what problem are we solving with this solution. This is a right or wrong issue. You just want to be right. I understand that. It's a debate issue.

You just want to be right. And it's a power. Now I'm in control because I've won the narrative. What problem did we solve? really didn't solve a problem. I thought of this guy, I think is West Virginia Mansion. I always say Manson, that different guy. Different guy. Different guy. But he said something, and I looked it up, it's called means testing. And I said, I don't know what that meant. And I said, let's say there's two bridges up from my home state of Colorado or Michigan where I moved to. You need infrastructure.

Okay, let me dive into that. What do you mean? Let's give me one. Well, we have a lot of, I know, forget the lot word. Well, we got a bridge in Saginaw. Okay, which bridge? Well, there's a lot. Now, one bridge, give me three bids on it. Well, we have a lot. And now, for all the chuff, I understand, just three bids.

Let's probably take the middle one with some of justice. We'll send you the money for that. That's means testing. Did you do that when they get an infrastructure bill and it goes to the government? Does anybody do that? You get a contract. that does that. I look at government like the designer.

It'll be huge windows. We'll have 70-foot windows. It'll come in, well, the builder goes, you can't really do that without a, got to be a joystick in there. No, we don't want a choice. I want a 70-foot window. Well, we can't really do that because we're going to have to put a bar

in the middle. Otherwise, all your fabric's going to get, you know, the sun, then they can work it out. We need more in my business. It's a line producer. The studio says this. You didn't say this. Creative says this.

He goes, none of that shit's going to happen. Right. This is what we're going to end up with. And it's that ugly thing called compromise in the building trades. You wanted this. This is kind of what it looks like when you can really do it. Right. I said, and you've always been that person that I've watched that has gone into those details

and also celebrated the people that, unfortunately, in the position, going, that ain't going to work. And they get, oh, that's because you don't like women. No, they had nothing to do with what I like or dislike. This is just what the solution looks like. Well, look, the rules changed, right? And you and I get a lot of similar headlines because somebody will take a thing that we say,

and that goes up, and then they'll write the article that they want to write. For me, and from what I've seen, the same thing happened to you, the problem wasn't anything you said about Trump or anything you said about politics. It's what you didn't say. You didn't step out. And look, silence is violence. If you weren't there to help drive in the nails,

then you must have been part of some sort of problem. And then, wow. I mean, we can talk about that for hours, but I'm fascinated. How did you navigate it? And how do you still navigate it? Guys worked for Disney for the last 25 years. I mean, what a weird spot for you.

It's a really weird spot for me. And as I explained to both, we had on the staff of our staff, show you had people so far right that I look like a communist and you have people so far left and then sometimes the stories would bring us together because the real big-hearted left-wingers, which I always appreciate their sentiment, take care of poor people. I've always appreciated that. I've appreciated my family comes from a group of Scottish Canadians that just go, who's going to pay for it? That's all they cared about. Well, how are we going to pay for that? So you get those two mixing.

And what they did is they appreciated clarity. That's all the character I played was about clarity. What I found funny, we just never said anything like you said. We just didn't torture the last president. The more people didn't like that, I'm such a smart ass, I go, then the more I twisted that. I just, I thought it was kind of funny. Personally, I know the Clintons,

and I just didn't think it was a good idea to put him back in power. That's where I came from. There was another person that's like, how elections work. Okay, let's try that guy. And that was how it started. Our show got so divided at times, and at one point I said to everybody,

now, Brian Cranston isn't actually a crack deal. And Tom Cruise doesn't actually shoot people. We got to remember people. We're doing a television program that's a sitcom. And we're doing this as an expression of a family, and this guy drifted it all over the place. did it work at Outdoor Man, Mike Baxter. It was a great show.

I didn't want women on the softball team because they don't play as aggressively as men or whatever. Mike Beck said, cut to, I went home and they were saying my younger daughter couldn't be on the football team. I said, nobody's going to tell me my daughter can't play football. And so that's a bunch of bull crap. Right. And at one show that broke me up, because I got so emotional about it,

one of the daughters who's very, unindependent, But she really got a lot of BS from all of her friends about being on the show because he was so not anti-Trump. We just didn't deal with it. And I did a show with her once. And she wanted me to do the commencement speak and she was graduating from high school. And I'm sitting there reading the speech and I said, ladies and gentlemen, she says that, you can't say ladies and gentlemen anymore. You got to say, you're people. I went, okay, but at the emergency room, you've got to be one or the other.

You know, and she goes, okay. And then she did something else. She says, now you can't say success because a lot of people aren't successful, so you can't. I said, okay. I went through this. I said, why don't you just give me a list of the things I'm allowed to say? And she goes, oh, they do have that list. And she pulls it out.

And I actually got teared up with I didn't even know it. And I couldn't get through the tape. I said, you don't want to tell me what to say. They want to tell me how to think. And that's the difference where I got kind of, I didn't realize it was me coming out. As I said, every time you say notice on any network. when they say, we all can see this. We all can see it.

It's very obvious that this problem exists. You know what it is. Like one time I mentioned, I have a, we have a mixed race situation in my family. It's been a wonderful thing because it's been going on for 30 years. But we always have this question. I said, whenever I hear, it's a white people problem. And I said, when I asked my brother, I said, my brother, brother. What do you mean by white people?

You know. And I said, if you took the word you know out of that answer, I've been after this on stage for 20 years. I don't even know what it means because you get my wife's Polish, but in my joke, they sound Russians when they're arguing. And we go, you guys sound like, we're not Russian. They get really angry because Polish people do not want to be Russians. And I don't know anything about that. I'm Irish, Scottish, and you get my parents. They don't want, we're not English.

I go, I don't know where that is. And you get into this, in the weeds of this. and started diving down in that TV show. And I said, this is where I love what we did. He said, I don't like to be told them. What my words mean, I'll tell you what my words mean. I don't. An old Lenny Bruce bit in 61.

I have to point to it now. I can't, oh, I never, I don't want to get anybody upset. 1961 in New York City, if you can Google it and look it up, what he said, changed my life because he was right. My mother's... What do you say? I can't even get into it. He said, every slang, ethnic slur,

in an audience. And he kind of did a rap. We got this many, this many, we got two a good. Oh, sure. And he said, the intent is in the heart. Martin Luther King said it. So many people have said it. A Baptist preacher, I believe, in Memphis, we've repeated it at my family's churches. Sticks and stones may break our bones, but words will never harm me. And my mother lived by that. She told us all the time when we were bullied, mostly by my older brothers, called you a, your little monkey boy. Where do you call me a monkey boy? Words won't hurt you. All of a sudden, out of nowhere in this world, words now have power. Oh, yeah.

And I didn't mean that. I never said that. I was caught off guard by a guy asked me for the show in Tampa Bay, and said, do you make jokes about Palladine when she went through that effort slow? No, I don't. And I said to what she said. And I went and said what she said. He goes, well, you just said it.

I go, no, I'm referring to what you said. I want to make sure we're clear. Can't do it. That's a magic word. That's a magical word. I got on CNN and a D.S on MSNBC. Why is he allowed to say this? I said, I didn't say it.

I was clarifying. I just want to make sure he was talking about that that's what he was saying. And he kind of got into it. And I said, let's make sure I do not say these words on stage. You just said it again. Okay, I didn't say the word near the P word or on the other side of the O word. You can't. I didn't want to get into the word of it.

It's six letters. north of the S word. I don't know how can I point to it without you've given that word such power. So many words such power. For a comedian that we play with words, it's disheartened is what it is that I can...

Well, there's nothing left but charades. I mean, we're reduced to charades. Sounds like first letter rhymes with... Carlin, I guess, was ahead of the curve on all of this. I mean, so far ahead. But, Lenny Bruce... I mean, Richard Pryor. You go on.

Yes. If you watch Blazing Saddles, I would make it today. Even in your home theater, you're going, you're looking around in the theater, go, my God, if we gone backwards in time? And it so folds into where I'm at now, is it I so appreciate either people that have other stuff to do.

And there's no ethnicity to people that fix them. Right. I just love the look of often said this. I don't know what it is. There's a big concrete tank at the top of my head. hill that loads up with gray water and then flows out the drains and then eventually comes down my driveway. And there's always guys in there digging something out.

There's a big device on the side that's coated in tar. And I just see the top of their head. Hey, guys. Hey, Mr. Allen, what's going on? It says, so it's a cistern, I think it is. Yeah, it's loaded up. And I said, God, man, what a horrible.

I'm thinking. And they're smiling, pulling the, I don't know what out of this thing. And I said one day I was joking about. So I bet a lot of women are pissed. They don't have this job, right? They all went, what? You know, like the glass ceiling. This is the concrete floor.

A lot of women are going, how come we don't get to do this? And I was kidding around. He goes, I don't think women would want to do this. They're just shoveling crap out. And it got me thinking about there was no judgment to it. I said, it is a moment of clarity about what I admire about men is it eventually. we will be doing, forgive me, the dirty jobs. That's what we'll be putting tar on ceilings, digging out sewers.

My driver in Biloxi, Mississippi, worked in a formaldehyde plant, 87 years old, and I said, a what? Yeah, we went down there, and we were knee-deep in formaldehyde. It's not that bad if you don't breathe. And I said, you worked in formaldehyde, and you're 86, carry my suitcases. I said, maybe we should rethink whether it's bad for you. He goes, no, I don't think it's good for you. But you cleaned for Malda.

I didn't know it was a liquid, number one. I didn't, I don't know what it is. And I just so appreciated people that, look, dirty jobs. That's where I got to be a fan of years. Just people that do stuff. And that's what your engagement is this place we live in. Whatever we screwed up and we've screwed up a lot, we can unscrew up. That's the one thing about human being.

Well, you know, I had an advantage with that. show in that there was no character for better or worse, right? I mean, I had a network, obviously, that I had to be mindful of, but there was no script, there was no pre-production, there was no casting, there was nothing like that. And so to the extent that I have a point of view on those issues, I got to share it really, really candidly in the moment. I know you feel the same way about virtually every important topic going on right now as I do. I've always wondered, when did it become important to you to be able to express some of that through the shows that you worked on and through the characters that you had to embody? I know you've already kind of touched on it.

It's like nailing jello to a tree, you know, and it's interesting right now to see you on assembly required, right? To see you doing something that is so spot on. I mean, here you are on a fairly straightforward show. It's history channel, right? Our first season was assembly required, and now we're doing this season we start next week. It's called More Power. And I want to dive more into my version is I'm sitting right,

looking at an RV that I rebuilt the side of this camera. And more power, as I said, I like, whenever we screw up, we can unscrew up. And that's what the new show is going to be looking at people that have taken stuff, taken it apart, screwed it up and went, wait a minute. I wonder if we put a new pipe in here and did this. And it's always people that come up with solutions.

And I said, I lucked into this again, is because of literally my oldest daughter, Kate, who was helping here. She and I've always had this conversation when I was growing up. We should celebrate the people that fix stuff. And especially became important these days because there's so much. Not only that, I've got a younger one and spend in this time. And I tell anybody. who listen and I'm a phone freak

and I also live near an airport. I'm a phone freak and because of that I probably have 50 phones. I just love taking them apart and playing with him. Being on the phone is not doing anything. It seems like you're doing something. It's like a video game. There's some

engagement in it and it feels like you're doing something. You are doing something. To me it's like putting a car in neutral. Sounds like it's moving. The motor's running. All you're doing is putting stress on the system. put it in gear, you engage it. That's where a car likes to be is moving in engagement.

And right now, there's so much emphasis on, I don't know what it is, fake stuff, TikTok, Instagram, all that. And some of that's cracking now is they know it's about money. In my little neighborhood here, it's all car-fixing shops, and even during the virus, there was some sort of pandemic there. Apparently, yeah, still going around. It was still mechanics doing stuff. There's still doors open.

It was funny how it didn't seem to affect the people that were working on stuff. There's no amount of respect that I can say when I watch it, because I don't know plumbing. My plumber, who I get to know, I don't understand it. The fact that he does it, he seems to really get something out of it, not just air and whatever he pulled out the other day and go, wow, you're quite a man to be able to go in there. What is that?

Don't want to know. That's for you. Your tip. I have so much respect for internally my ability to want to fix stuff. And then it's superseded by the people that actually do it. All I do is I wish, hoped, focus on. I wonder what would happen if you let the people that fix stuff make her, like I've asked all these guys. It's clearly a little bit large.

Income inequality. It's been happening since. Roman times, it's never stopped. How would you fix that? And they've tried so many times. Well, we could tax people that have a lot of money and make programs. They don't, you can't go door to door and just give people money. That doesn't work.

So you create programs. I said, like the thing at the baseball stadium, get your programs. Is it what, what do you mean by programs? I've never seen one here in Los Angeles that works. I don't know incoming equality. how would you fix it other than moving closer to an airport? You are right in the flight path. Yeah.

That's exciting. Yeah, kind of another story. I bought this old plumbing warehouse, and the lady kept saying, it was a great price. And I said, that's a good price. Why don't you come out and I'll meet you from 114 to 126? And then we'll go to have lunch. It was always specific times. I go, well, this is a good one.

I stole this place. And then as soon as I bought it, it's, I'm right under Southwest. is this all still fun for you i mean all i mean it's just your resume is ridiculous you can do anything you want here you are popping up on podcast i guess whenever you feel like it you're weighing in maybe on purpose maybe not who the hell knows so many people have pulled me aside over the years and said why don't you do what tim allen's doing i'm like what like just hop in some movies maybe starting a sitcom and they're like yeah and so i don't know i'm older than i've ever been and i'm guessing you are too. And you've kind of done it. And so what do you do now? Do you really want to weigh in?

Do you really want to entertain? Do you want it somewhere in between? It's funny because I miss Last Man Standing more. I mean, home improvement was a great group. I was kind of near the airport. Why do I keep saying that? Oh, because I can hear the point down. Home improvement ended in that show was the same time Gretzky, I think, Michael Jordan, Brett Farr, there's a bunch of sporting people that were quitting, and they had offered, they wanted another year or two years. And I had this decision, do you leave one, it's right? And it was a great decision.

I can't believe I made that because money aside, you know, my brother said, how bad to nine months be, you could buy your own studio. And I said, it's not about that. It's about creatively it wasn't, we'd gone through every cycle of every script. And I wanted to move on. But at this point, I got back on stage,

I've been doing concerts the last five years, not as many as I used to. Not as many as I was Leno. Geez, that guy's never stopped. But he's, I mean, what in the world? I'm so blessed to be in the position of making people laugh. It's the best I could do to be a spiritual person. It's a gift I saw prior do it to me,

Carla do it to me. I was a changed person at a concert. Now, granted, it's sometimes gutter humor, especially in my case. However, the connection I have with the audience, you're even a better move than he came in. And I've always said, my father and my grandfather, funny guys, it was a gift from, they didn't develop these skills. As they said, depending on your point of view of the words, they've got given gifts. If there came through you, as long as I can keep doing that, I saw prior in concert and he changed my life.

Because he didn't live near Newport. That one's San Francisco. That one's the Frisco plane. And that will land on A, runway A. Get on down there for runway. Well, are you sick of it yet? Are you sick of AI hogging up all the headlines and sucking up all the bandwidth? You find yourself wishing we lived in a simpler time?

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And again, it's free at netsuite.com. Slash Mike. That's net suite.com. NetSuite.com. Mike. That's where I go with that. I said, the rest of these are challenges. And I said, this history channel, which I call the Monocle Channel, I always joke that

there's probably, there's a big studio that looks like a wood library. got those ask spots. We'll tell them down on the set, that we don't have that sort of IQ. They're not like that at all. No, they're not. I don't know where they are, but they come on a microphone.

Now, that's not going to work. I don't know what they say. I find this a privilege to be able to do this. I like that we get builders, and it's always new something that was transitioning to. I met William Shatner after I did Galaxy Quest, and he loved that movie. A lot of the Star Trek people loved it,

because it was, we weren't making fun, of Star Trek or the fans, and we're paying an homage to it. It's a very big different. And it's, that was amazing movie. All of us that did it are close friends because of that. Shatner keeps reinventing himself. As much as, I mean, the guy, I think he's 140 years old, and he still looks good, and he keeps re-16. Yeah. He keeps reinventing himself. And I was privileged to sit with Clinicewood at one point, and he's what, in his 90s. And he says, I don't feel 90. I have a several older gentleman in my life that are mentors to me, which you're very lucky in life if you find a woman or a male mentor.

That isn't your father or your mother that can crack you wise, but also they have something I want and they don't. They show by example. And all these guys are, Hector Alessandro from Last Man's Stand. There was so much about that man. The standing there, I just want to be like him. It wasn't persuasion. It was just his physical being.

My mother-in-law saw he did a scene with a, with a shirt off there. It was supposed to be to be the steam bath with Kyle. And my mother-in-law was watching TV, and she said, whoa. Look at me that. Gunshund. She stopped, whatever she said,

she went, huh, are we going to see any more of that? Is that scene over now? I said, wow, that was kind of neat and creepy at the same time. Well, you got yourself into some pretty, I mean, not to make this weird, but you went all shirtless in Galaxy West, and

you must be sick of talking about it. because I don't know when it happened, but it's become one of the most underrated movies of all time. At least in our circle of friends, Chuck and I, in fact, go way back with Rico, Colin Tony. Known him for years. Mathesar. Mathisar. God, there's just so many great stories.

They came up with all that. That was ad-lib. They came into the scene, and all of us were in a lunch situation. And they came into the room to say hello to us. They had the camera over us, and they just invented that. And you have Rickman, Sigourney, all of us burst out laughing, so we can't use any of it because our laughter was over that. And they continued this basically written. Some of the details are uncomfortable because they fired people.

The original director was waylaid because he didn't want me in it. So they got another director who was Dean Parasso, who was more of a documentary director at that point. So he kind of shot it as though it was really happening. it's such a subtle difference and so he wasn't making any statements he let the actors we would be a cheesy actors that turned into heroes at one point

there was so many stupid things as I'm a freak when we're going down to the planet to get the barolium spear we get into a lot of the stuff had already been set up when the director came on and he said I just want you to run on

I go, oh, ho ho ho if we haven't tested the oxygen on the planet he goes of course he said there is no planet we're on a set I go I know but in the movie you have to have to have have a reading, you can't just land on a planet.

And he goes to him, I don't know what the hell you're talking about, but we don't have any readings. We don't have a, well, somebody's got to have a device that just press some buttons and we take the oxygen. We can't just land on a planet without knowing that there's oxygen. And he's losing it. So Tony Shalub goes, I got it. I'll figure it out because he's piloting the ship, who, by the words, always eating something.

If you notice, he always had a bag. Always. He carried that bag home with him. It was weird. And he lands on the planet. we opened the door and Sam Rockwell did my line. He goes, you can't just open the door we need to have those oxygen. And then Tony just goes, wait, it's good.

And he walked and he walked. There was so many freaking moments like that. I didn't have, speaking of no shirt, when we landed on the planet, I fight Grignac, which is, oh, no. And held me upside down. I had to train for so long with a trainer just so I could, I said, I kind of blubbery. so I chiseled up because I used to weight lift a lot. So we got onto this, and the shirt came off.

So I landed in the, they get us back into the transporter room. Seema's over and I go, wait a minute, where's my shirt? It fell off with Grignac. Well, that means I have to the rest of the show, which is the tail in show, with no shirt. He goes, oh, yeah, I guess now it's helicopter. The director goes, so what? I go, no, so what? You can't just almost have a shirt on.

where to get the shirt. He goes, I don't know. And so you'll have to notice in that scene at one point, I just go like this, grab a shirt off the counter and put a shirt on where the shirt came from. We don't know. But the director's just, I don't care. Put a shirt down the table. Like somehow the shirt magically appeared. The thing I remember from that scene, Tim, more than anything else, Alan Rickman does this through the whole movie. He did it in virtually every movie he was in. But he just had a way. I think the exact line was, so you have.

managed to get your shirt all. Yes, exactly. Right. And what a wonderful mix of contempt, regret, judgment, and ennui. All bundled up between him, Rockwell, obviously Tony Shloob and Sigourney. I have one job on this ship, and I'm going to do that one job. You just repeat the computer. Computer, what are we doing? The computer says this and she's repeating, that's one job. Oh, shit. There's just so many, we had to kiss at one point. And so she realized I'm a little uncomfortable with that. She was, I think we should practice.

I'm good. We'll just do it because we're going to kiss with it. Eight, seven, six. They always end at one. They always plug it at one. And she kept trying, I'll just come to your trailer. We'll practice. I go, no, I'm good.

I think what we should do is she wouldn't leave that alone. I said, there's a whole bunch of scenes you see Alan in every. So Alan and I, it took him. These were actors. I was a comedian that loved science fiction. So I'll do whatever I'm talking. told acting came to me because it's just do what you're told and just did it act like you're doing this but my process is ball and sack jokes vomit jokes whatever i can up to camera

the director going when you got a minute tim i said action you know it's all right and alan is livid he was we're going to do more jokes i've just said he was livid like i was some he was so proper and then after about ten days of that he goes he He brought a bottle of wine. I don't drink, but he bought a bottle of wine to a dinner at my house. And all the actors came over. And he was so sweet. He goes, I can't do his voice.

He was such a wonderful guy. Still a wonderful guy just passed away. I apologize for everything I've said to you because I realize that everybody has a process. Their process, all these guys would be before the scene going, no, no, tomato, tomato, tomato. And they do these. I go, what the hell are they doing? Yeah.

And Alan said, not comparing me to Brando in any other way than processes, he said, Brando sometimes would do jokes, he'd had food, he would do anything to avoid thinking about it, because he wanted to go action. And he's just saying, Tim, whether you know it or not, you have a very interesting process. You've drilled every scene. So I apologize for putting my judgment on top of your process.

And we became very close friends after that, because he was an amazing guy literally playing himself. the greatest scene ever is when he saved the thermians in that thing and he opened the door and they cheered me oh the captain is saved this he walks out god christ he's just saved hundreds of people's lives and they give me the credit for it and the look on his wonderful face with him well that is so interesting that he wasn't quite in on the joke early on no because he epitomized it by the end of that even those shots where his wig was coming off and his makeup was all jacked up and just for a serious actor to put himself in a role where he has no choice but to take the piss out of himself.

He did it. And man, it was just, it was magic. And then Sigourney had just done aliens too or something. And I said, the fact that she signed on to this went from Ripley to this cleavage monster that she turned like like your constantly going, where are the boobs come from. You know, because she had there's nobody that didn't notice her because I was one of those guys. I sell the poster, when she got out of

that alien suit in Alien 1 and she had a bikini bottom on. Oh, yeah. You're like, I'm in love with her. I don't know what that. I'm going to go to space and be with her. I don't care about the lizard. I just want to be in the spaceship with her. And it wasn't that much of it. It just for some reason was a sexy

shot. That's what made it so sexy. It was kind of lecherous in the way that they shot it. It made us, the viewer, feel like a fly on the wall. Right. Like a peeping Tom. And it was exciting, but I knew that it was naughty. I'm not supposed to be looking at this. She's changing her clothes in a private space, but the alien gets a look at it. I mean, why to blame him. Yeah, right. If it's good for the alien, it's good for us. Who was very small. That was one of those things. How did that alien hide in a, they get really small?

Clever. It's very clever, yeah. It was clever, but weird when you get into it. I remember reading about. But the director, why am I forgetting his name? Ridley Scott. He said, the guys that did me and my costume in Santa Claus did the first alien. And he would see them going down the hallway, he goes, Scott! That's a guy in a suit!

There's no way, guys calling like a dog. He goes, hey, slow it down. All right, this is perfect. It's two guys in a suit. And he couldn't do it. So apparently, as the story goes, he started strobing it. and adding loud music, so you wouldn't see much of it. There's no way that looks real.

It looks like a guy in a rubber suit. And I said, there's so much about that movie that was him adjusting to special effects that just don't work. And to me, he goes, does that alien, it hid in that pot? The pod is like, you can't even move around. How did that alien hide in a shelf? Remember it was up in a shelf and it didn't quite get how it got different sizes. I'm a sci-fi freak somewhere after Prometheus, which I don't know what happened there. But somewhere I always dreamt that there's got to be an animal somewhere that that alien goes,

there's got to be some sort of animal that that alien goes, I will kill everybody. Oh, God, no, no, no, no, no. Like there's a big slothy thing that just eats it as like a crumb cake. It's probably like blossom. Like what would really terrify that alien would be something that spent a lot of time in syndication that should have never gotten there. Something truly hideous. But look, it's not that you have a memory lane. It's that there's so many branches on it.

And whether it's Galaxy Quest or the Santa Claus stuff or Toy Story or all the voiceover crap, can we talk about that for a minute? I mean, is there a better gig on the planet? You know, I'm not talking about Buzz Lightyear. I'm talking about like Michigan tourist hero stuff, which I do in Baltimore too. The best I've done is there's been a series of Cleo Award winning Michigan spots. I take no credit and I've told McCann Erickson, it's a new. agency now doing them, still doing them. The visuals of that, what is done for that state of Michigan has highlighted how beautiful the state is. And there's been some stuff that has been so

remarkably beautifully written and a young director who slapped me around ego-wise because I was in the middle of wild hogs and I was just doing it. I said, hi, Michigan. It would come to Michigan. And it was big. And he goes, can we do it so it doesn't sound so phony? And I'm on the phone. It got that first impression. Do you know who you? you're talking to. And I said, what do you mean phony? He goes,

I like the quality of your voice. I don't like the phony attitude. Ooh, okay. And he calmed me down so it had no sense of humor. And then it became what they called brilliant. And now we've got all these cleoes because it's just this droll voice. I'm like Martin Short.

If I'm not making jokes, I don't think I'm doing my job in those cases. And I look around my shop, I did Chevrolet for about six years. I was the voice of Chevy. It's fine new roads. It never made any sense. It's fine.

As you know, voiceovers, you get little hung up on little words. But I did one where I love Chevrolet and did some forward works of that being said. But I said, No offense. Get a Corvette going sideways across a track. So that's the video we're going to get to. But on this is it, we've always done things and it has a Saturn arc. You've gone to the moon.

You've launched satellites. You put things in order. You know what? We've always loved building the rockets. And that has this corvette close up going around a hill. It's sideways smoking. We love rockets. It was so freaking great because they don't advertise corvettes,

primarily because they don't need to sell them. They're already sold before they're made. And so to do a Corvette commercial, it was a huge deal. That transition to doing Buzz Lightyear is so hard because you're actually acting against a guy in a window. Hank's and Dave. We never got to work together. We're very, very close friend because of that movie.

And you're acting against a guy with headphones. This is what Tom will be saying. And then pause because you can't run line on top of line. And so I never get to work with the other actor. And that story was the last one, the story story for. I did my end before he did. And I was reading it. I thought there was a page after, I say to infinity.

And he says away from, we're not to be separated. He goes, and beyond. And I went, whew. And I said, that's the end of it? There I'm in a studio. I get, I think there's some allergens in here. There's, this is, it broke me up. And I called, thanks.

I said, be prepared for that last page. He called me right after that. He goes, I did the same thing. I was looking at everybody. He goes, do I have a minute. Could I just? And he said, I got to turn around and say this to the wall. And I said, that being said, it's been a huge part of my life.

I've never not wanted to have all of us together for Children's Hospital or something where we do that as an improv. All of us are on a stage, and you get to see us do it. It's a little problematic for the audience. I've done this where I remember Mel Blank from Warner Brothers cartoons. He's never allowed, or again, the story goes, maybe he's not wrong. to do Bugs Bunny or any of those things in public. It's like watching a green screen. When you go, oh, it takes all the magic out of movies

when you see how the effects are made. I did it once in an elevator in New York. A kid was really being rude to his mother. And I said, you know, sometimes you have to know when to stop infinity and beyond. And the kid throws up like he was having, like he had a brain freeze. And then he burst in tears.

And then she's pissed at me. Because the kid's now having something. kind of a meltdown. And on the way out, he goes, why did that ugly man swallow Buzz Light here? And then so I said, okay, it's too confusing. Now, Hank's got a good, we went to the glorious Children's Hospital, Cancer Center in Florida. And by the way, any of the people that are working with kids with cancer, I have so much gratitude and do all that I can to assist that.

The kids that were in there, and Tom would go over to a kid, and he kind of look at us, like, who are these two old men? and Tom, gentnesses to shut your eyes. And we'd make the kid shut his eyes. And we'd do a Woody and Buzz. And they'd look on their face. They'd look around and say, who are these ugly men?

Where's Buzz and Woody? It's really a weird deal to do it. And I don't do it except for fun, people that understand. It's not a good thing. It takes the kids out. My kid's school. Some of the kids say,

that's Buzz Lightner. And some of the other kids doesn't look like Buzz Lightyer. It looks like an old man that's pretending to be Buzz Light. But it said it's when a marvelous point my life, the voiceovers, probably as you will know, to do voiceovers, you're part of something. What was the one that was real creepy? Oh, I did one for Disney for chimpanzees. There's a lot of

video that the public doesn't see. The chimpanzees are terrible. They're not nice creatures. They're not nice at all. I was going, oh, God, what are they doing? They go, well, they like to get spider monkeys and they just twist their heads off and eat them. I go, well, we're not going to show that. And they go, no, no, no, we're just making it look like that. there. God, this is terrible. I couldn't even get through it. Spider monkeys were like making jokes up in the tree, and they act like an old one is down here. And meanwhile, all the young ones are behind the make, oh, shoot, they're right here. Then they just grab them and kill them and eat them. I said, they're not nice at all.

He goes, there's five years. It was all about one older chimpanzee, which is very rare male adopted of, they said they killed the mother from a neighboring tribe, and then they had a baby chimpanzee. And he did raise it. They said it was very rare. And that's what the story was. But in the middle of that, what are they doing back over there with the coconuts? Those aren't coconuts.

Those are spider monkey heads. Oh. Yeah, it's a bloodbath. It's a long way from Lance Link. You remember Lance Link? Secret Chimp? Yes. Oh, my God.

What was it? Montahari. Yeah, so much. Lucy. It's so good to see you. It's one of those things were, We got our daughter, our younger one, a dog. I used to travel so much.

It's hard. I've had dogs. I came from nine kids, and we always had dogs in the house. I never trained him. I don't know. Now I'm doing that. And one of the trainers, literally, the guy was 101 years old. I went online and got a trainer to help us go through it.

And he said, he was not rude. It depends on your point of view. He was direct. He goes, let me just pick this. Don't humanize dogs. Do not humanize. you will be surprised how stupid they are. And I told that to the vet, and she went,

I wouldn't put it like that, but I would say there are dogs that are on this spectrum. Your dog is on this part of the spectrum. They're not that bright, and you tend to humanize animals in your trouble. I remember because I'm a freak for orcas. It was at the SeaWorld when they were allowed to be Sea World. I don't know what they...

She said, we wouldn't know anything about Killer whales had we not had them in captivity. So there's a positive negative to that. And that's a magnificent animal. Number one, it sounds weird. The texture they let you touch a female orchid. Sure. Two things happen. It's like

synthetic rubber. It feels like silicon. It was the most beautiful thing. But that eye opened up right there and I went, all right, this thing doesn't like, I want nothing to do with this thing. Because that black eye opened to me and I went, I don't think there's a lot of love here. I don't know what that is. And

They're not nice animals. The males, they romanticize those. They separate the males quickly. Oh, look, anything that can eat a great white shark didn't come to tiptoe through the tulips. I mean, these guys are, they're not even in the food chain. They're over there. It's for the power-hungry part of me.

What it would be like to be an elephant, the only thing elephants are afraid of really is packs of lions, and it has to be a lot of them, and they have to be injured, really. They're not really afraid of anything. And there's nothing. They're at the top of their food chain. Nothing really hurts them except bacteria.

I mean, they get diseases. I get into this stuff with animals, and I said, when that Disney thing, they romanticized all that. I've never forgotten that because these English guys says, yeah, well, that's just some video, we won't show that. And you taped all that. He goes, a lot of their lives are not very pleasant. They go in, they take over other tribes and kill them all. The mothers and the children, this was a story about one that they didn't massacre the baby. It went, that's not in the title anyway.

Baby that wasn't massacred only on Disney chimpanzee. With Tim Allen. Do do do do do do do do do do. My guest today, Tom Olbenice, is an American giant. And I'll tell you why. Tom understands on a fundamental level that the business of mining is a non-negotiable prerequisite of our civilization and our economic independence, just like the business of making things. American Giant knows this, which is why they committed themselves 16 years ago to make all their excellent clothing right here in this country.

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I did a David Mamet movie Red Belt where I played an evil guy. I found something very interesting in facing the crowd with Andy Griffith. And I wanted to do that movie. I've always wanted to do a villain, a sociopathic villain, who's very charming and funny. And unfortunately, they do too much of that now. I mean, villains now are kind of the gray area. And I use that sopranos and Breaking Bad as an example. And I have mixed feelings about, well, I understand why he killed everybody.

So can you do bad things for the right reason? I was a philosophy major in college. That being said, I love facing the crowd for a variety of reasons. He's met with Scheinberg to get the rights of that movie. I actually drop in the cover. I asked Jody Foster to be in it with me. Nobody would believe that I would do a movie like that. Andy Griffith is at top of his family career, and he did that movie.

And he played so beautifully about it, dark. Yep. He was able to use Will Rogers in that to me. And I always admired Will Rogers. He could be around, I say this. Like, this is like you are. You can be around influential people, and you can influence, but you're not part of the deal. And that's how Will Rogers was.

And that's how that movie was. And I'd love to play with it. And I say it because it's been a struggle. It's been an eight-year script. I'm close to it. It's been a labor of love. My older daughter and I used to argue at the table. So what if I was in?

terrible patient. What would you do? And you knew who I really was and you knew why I was being terrible. Can you do the wrong thing for the right reason? Is it possible? Is it possible to drop three atomic bombs on another country for the right reason? Wow. Well, we saved what could have been a massacre of ground troops. What could have been? So now we're profits and fortune tellers. Is it possible? Human beings, I just don't know philosophically if it works. And I'd love love to be a guy that shows everybody what that really looks like. If I gave every, if I was a leader, that I'll give everybody what you want. Let's just take a look at what that feels like.

Well, I got no problem with it. This is what it looks like. You want to get rid of drug deals. I once said in my fascist head, I'd go to Afghanistan and say, listen, here's a deal. I get where heroin comes from. We all know it. All the Western countries, we're going to give you $2.3 billion and buy all the heroin. All of it. No black market heroin. And we will deal with it after that. One ounce of that

goes black market. I will burn this mother back. And I would like to be that guy. And I know it will happen. And I will burn the top heart of Afghanistan down. And I will put funcicide on it. You'll never grow another thing. And who's going to stop me? Nobody. And I will burn it down. And it's done. You don't want criminals in this country? I'm going to hang them all. Who's going to stop? You said you want to no crime? That's what it looks like. You want to dilly dally with this stuff? I'm going to send in special ops through the cartel,

and I'm going to wipe the minds. Is Mexico going to stop me? I don't think so. This is what taking care of the problem looks like. Ah, you didn't like that. I get it. And I just always, my daughter said, somebody would stop you.

I get somebody would stop. I said, but what would it look like if everybody, this is what we want, Any political viewpoint has this is the world we want. It says, well, what if you were a builder? And said, all right, this is what you want. Well, we didn't mean it like that. So you didn't think of unintended consequences is a big word to me.

Everything I build, I screw up first. I go pink and squeeze up a little noise out. Oh, sure. Right. Right. We built a carburetor on my car. I bought. I love cars.

I've always bought a car in a hurry in the rain at night. That's always, they go, yeah, it looks pretty good. That's great. I get a homeless rod knock. No connecting rod. I built a carburetor at night, finished it, and I had extra parts. I learned a lesson. They don't give you extra parts.

No. If there's extra screws with little valves on them, and then I turned the car on and caught you missed a step. I missed a step. These large philosophical questions, comedy, I skirt by it. I would love to do a movie. that express us by frustration with. We haven't really moved them either.

Money is the root of everything. Underneath, as the Romans have called it, Cibono. It said in every Roman debate starts with that. Who profits by the position? Who profits? That's it. That's it. Follow the money.

Show me the money. You've heard it in religious slogans. Underneath everything, I got to go to D.C. I went through a veteran saying and raised a bunch of money. and one of the gifts is my family. You got to go to Washington, D.C., kind of like ambassadors.

We could go anywhere in D.C. cloak room, and I got to get four congresspeople from any side to ask four questions. I got no answers, which is starting to me. Who profits by the immigration system the way it is now? It's messed up. If you put Mike Rowe on it, anybody that solves problems, oh, I see, this is what a solution would look like. Who's the one?

Who likes it? it the way it is. There you go. Somebody and they hide very well. Whoever likes it hides very well. And then I sound like a condo. You know what you sound like, man? I assumed

I read your autobiography and I know your past and you've talked about it forever. And I figured so much of your journey was informed by the time that you did and your experiences in that life. But

Listening to you talk now, I mean, you literally just took me from the northern provinces of Afghanistan where everything was burned to buying a car in the middle of the night in the rain and having left over parts. My point is, I think everything I've seen you do is actually informed by however many years you spent studying philosophy. Yes. I mean, your comedy, every comment, I've heard you say, you're cursed with a level of thoughtfulness that's not supposed to, opposed to a company, a sitcom guy or a movie guy, and that agitation that I started with that I saw in your face. And I remember what happened, Tim. We went backstage through that door in the set. And the doorknob came off in your hand, and you shoved it back in there. And you were kind of pissed off

because it wasn't a real door and it wasn't a real knob. And you think you could get a better door at this point in your career. And that's what set us off. And the next thing we knew, we're talking about this blender. And there you are, taking a thing, a small thing, a micro thing, and making it a macro thing. And if there's not some philosophy in that, too, then I don't know what philosophy is. Well, you know what it is? It's the Zen and the Air and Motorcycle Maintenance. Again, that's what the book was about. I literally gasped in that book to give it away when you realize that Fadris is him. And he had a mental breakdown. He went nuts over that question he asked his students, if I recall, just to find quality and no one could figure out what it is.

Just think harder. And then that's the whole, he takes apart a motorcycle to find out how things work. And the other guy just lets, like the other dad and son, they just take it to a mechanic and have a fix. They don't figure it out. They kind of lazy and fair. I'm not even sure what they were pointing out, but his point of view, he was using the motorcycle is pretty damn easy.

Well, that's the problem right there. There it is right there. That's little, everything's held together by a little weird, little thing. And it's a weird little tweezer thing that it's an o-ring. There's always an O-ring and there's always a problem. But an O-ring that has these two little circles on it, you put another weird little thing that undoes. They go, the whole thing is kept together by that. I'm shocked that gears in a car completely off topic. I have a Tesla word customizing. And it's the end of the world as I know it. There's no moving parts in the thing. You got an armature and a bearing.

on a big motor and a lot of batteries right under your ass, I might add. And a screen. And I open up the hood and go, God, goodbye mechanics. You need a guy at Best Buy. I'll fix it because you got to update your software. Look, if there's a problem, just unplug it. That's my biggest joke in the world. I don't care how much tech I got.

Eventually, a van will show up with a ladder on it with a guy going, just go down to get the flamilmala, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and unplug it. All of life could be unplug it, wait 30 seconds and plug it back in. That's it. I mean, power down, power back on. Why don't you add that to the device?

Just that it powers itself off every now and then it goes, well then you need to power that on and off. I don't know why they got it anyway. So looking at where we're going, and again, unintended consequences. Go look at pictures of Peru, Chile, and Bolivia where they're mining lithium. And you're going,

This is like they don't tan leather in the United States anymore because it's so freaking dirty that you move it to where it's okay to be dirty, I guess. Lithium. Sure. It's one of those follow the unintended consequences. Are we really recycling stuff? Really? I've got the two bin. Key Bono.

Who profits? Who's profiting from recycling? You'll make yourself crazy peeling back the layers of all of it. But look, I don't want to keep you all day. I do need to ask you, though, with Last Man. I apologize. I wanted to come back in that last season and be your little brother again. It didn't seem like it.

I really did. I swear to God, I did. Tell your face. Look, this is weird, man. I did one episode with you. One. And they kept airing it. And I got, I heard so many things from so many people saying, what the hell is wrong with you?

why don't you go back? That's kind of what we were saying. But you're a big shot. You got other stuff to do, apparently. You should talk. We left on that Friday. You went right into your giant magic bus and drove to Vegas and did however many shows you did. I mean, I'm such a fan of how you've carved out your world because I don't know how to describe you.

I never have. You're a stand-up. You're an actor. You're a philosopher. You're a mechanic of sorts. But you figured it out. And I tried to do something similar in a slightly different way. But the truth is, I loved that experience.

That was a really fun week. And I got a lot of. Everybody wanted you back every day. I did. Those two as brothers, it was such a good episode. It was great. We were all so excited that you said yes to do it. And I said, the way they weed stories, they kept saying,

we were getting back in the sitcom world, babies disappear, dogs disappear. You all of a sudden go, didn't you have another child? Brothers disappear. You never mentioned our dad. He passed away in reality, too. And I said, you never mentioned him and we never mentioned you again. It was creepy and it worked so well. And I said, I stayed out of it except told him all the time.

We could have brought you back again for whatever reasons your people gave us. I don't have any people. It was a week. It was always a week. It was like, yeah, just come in. All we need is a week. It's like just the tip, dude. I mean, wow, a week.

How about we do a couple of months? So every conversation I ever had about it, it always came back to the same thing. If you're going to do it, you're going to go all the... Something's going to happen, and you're going to wind up being a series regular, or you're going to fall so in love with that world that everything else is going to shut down.

And at that point, I had a foundation, at a couple of other nonfiction shows, and I had this thing. And so I couldn't do it small and I couldn't do it big. The deal was we didn't stop talking about on the set because they loved the chemistry we had. It looked like, of course, I thought you looked much like the older brother yourself. However, it said it worked so freaking well that it was constantly on my mind. I said, especially when Forrester was there and we did this whole thing about it was a really sad show about how he treated both of us.

and then you weren't there to respond to it. The sitcom world is really difficult, and they have to weave stories. And they said, these guys were not, they're not easily frustrated, but they were with several storylines that we couldn't accommodate you. Like you said, either get him in there for six months, make him a series regular, or try to slip him in one of these things. And we got to open in here. And said, well, he can't quite do that.

And I really appreciated that she even took the calls. It was a blessing to have you on there at that point, because I really wanted to meet you number one, and I wanted to have you part of it. It seemed perfect, especially with Forrester as our dad, that we just loved that story. As many of the stories that we had, we had two gay motorcycle women racers as our neighbors.

It was a funny story. They were great, and then did they move? Did the... What happened? We had a dog. We always good... Did Muffin just go out? Seven years later, Muffin, Muffin!

Okay. Muffin, get me. back here. Come out. Oh, never my. She went out. Eventually, we were doing that, and we had a kid that disappeared. One of my grandson.

He just, what happened there? Gone. He's at a special camp. He's with muffin. On a farm. Here's what we do, Tim. And now this is way out of the box, and I don't know if your instrument plays this tune, but when you get yourself cast as the villain in this face in the crowd thing,

you're probably going to have a younger brother. Here we go. probably going. I'm just soft pitching it. Yeah, I hear what you're doing. There you are out on the thin branches, playing a villain, and here I come, Jimmy Baxter, and you're not quite sure who I am, because I got this weird name. And suddenly, I mean, look, if you get David Mamet to write that script where you're a bad guy and I come back as your sitcom brother, I really believe we can do something.

Just out of nowhere. It's a sitcom. Wait a nowhere. I like it. Wait a minute. Where did he come from? And I'll bring muffin and you're missing kid. get this dog your head and a kid you go my whole life it came back to me that was all a dream you're brilliant out of a box and i brought the blender yeah and i got the blender and i got it working again look at this yeah for just a second oh shit no it's the spine right here or we could just go on leno's show he's always desperate for guests i did it last year and had a ball and i know you're on there every couple hours how we just show up one day and freak him out. It's literally a mile from my house.

You've seen his shop, right? Oh, yeah. Jesus. No, I just shot something over there with Optima batteries, like at the height of the plague, which was super strange. He walked in at the end of it and had a few laughs. I've been over there

sometimes constantly trying to get rid of me. Anyway, okay, that's good to see over here like that. This is walking towards the garage. We're going to have lunch to me, right? You know what, I've got to have this whole thing over there. I got a little citron over there and the Pujo sitting here, and then it's a door will slam and he's gone.

He's gone, man. Why is he gone? There's like a hole in the wall shaped like Jay running. He just keeps walking away from you the whole time. You go, Jay, you asked him to come by here, right? Yeah, I did the hell of the thing. I got to tuck the neighbors. I'm talking to him. Jay. Door shuts. I'm sitting there.

Imagine he sounds so much like Mike Tyson. It makes me want to see some kind of wrap-off or something. I never noticed until you just did that, but he got me Jim Rockford's car. The original firebird car. Yeah, never liked it. It was a six-cylinder.

It was nothing. I've never seen a car with less personality on a TV show ever, except for, I think I think called Shannon. It was a private detective that had a camera that came up out of the middle of the car. My brother-on-I-N-I-Slech special. It was not on very long. I don't remember the actor, but it was called Shannon. It was a four-door Beulich special.

I believe my brother-in-law. Well, you really know how to weave a story, right, Tim? He was called Shannon. Don't know who was in it. It might have been on a week. You know the one. He was tonight on Shannon. And then the Dukes of Hazard always squealed out on a dirt road.

And it took me out of that show. How do you burn rubber on a dirt road? They constantly... That's bad sound. That's a bad sound guy. You're supposed to be looking at Daisy's cutoffs at that point, not paying attention to the sound of rubber on it. That's another weird story.

During Santa 1, I did a scene in the park, and they were sitting in this park, and kids had to come up, long scene, long camera lens, and John Paskin directing, in the dailies, watching it, there's this subtle but noticeable, lower that, we're hearing a buzz. And then you hear the guy, it's through the whole scene. And it turns out that the sound guy had a hearing problem that we weren't unaware of, and he couldn't hear a whole level of sound. Literally, the whole scene had to be ADR. which if you haven't done it, it's terrible.

Where you've got to go, beep, beep, and then mouth your own words. And it wasn't two lines. It was the whole freaking scene. And you might want to alert the studio that the sound guy has a hearing problem. Well, have I ever told you about the podcast I did with the guy who lived under a fucking flight path? Hold on, Memphis. All right, man. Jesus, it's really great to see it.

It's awfully nice time. I love it. I wish some of this audio was usable, but whatever. We'll figure it out. It's the helicopter training that comes in soon. And then every now and then it's a train. Literally there's a train. You hear the far, over here, then a helicopter, and then a jet. And this we use as a sound studio.

That's so, you know what? That is the sound of infrastructure. And that might be the title of this episode. I bet it pleasure, man. I'm a really big fan of you. what you do. Likewise. And I said, the fact that you got on the five, which I love that show, because I said sometimes with Juan Williams, they capture kind of a light look at everything, in which they had another independent on there to argue a little bit. But when you're on there,

it really settled it down. I really appreciated it. Have you been on The View before? I have done The View. I did The View. I think it was Rosie O'Donnell's first day. And I went on there, and it was a thing. But you were on that long ago. right and said something. Well, I said it's alarming. I kind of got in a very weird way, like Tom Selleck and maybe Kalamese would not in the same talent level,

I don't put it in myself in those guys. They got a pass because they've been at this so long and they've never made excuses for who they are. Like Tom was head of the NRA, and he just said, we're not talking about guns. But just don't ask, I'm not going to answer it. He just moved past it. They talk about in the same way,

the view, I've known those girls for a long time. I've been Kurt Russell was on there one time did the same thing. Just moved past it. She said it best. I don't like celebrities that have a point of view on this. It's on your business. You know, let me talk about what I do, and then I can do some philosophy, and I do look at this stuff, overview,

but defending in, no, because you get into this, who's right and wrong, and it's really not accurate or inaccurate. It's mostly winning this skirmish right here, vocal skirmish, we're not really solving anything about it. Yeah, well, look, I'm

a big fan, and I say it a lot, I appreciate celebs who stay in their lane. Problem is, every now and then, you legitimately have public figures who occupy multiple lanes. Or go off the road. Or go off the road and sometimes squeal out on dirt. I mean, these things happen when you get to this point in our career. Anyhow, thank you for the whole Sigourney Weaver throwback. I'm going to watch aliens again as soon as we finish. maybe even Galaxy Quest and say hey to anybody from the old gang.

They all remember, they still talk about you. Now, we'll end this. What does Sigourney say in that exoskeleton to the big alien mother? Remember when she's? Oh, in one or two? She gets into that exoskeleton. I think she goes, stay away from her, you bitch. Yeah, it definitely calls her.

In the new History Channel show, we're looking at guys that have exoskeletons, if you can lift stuff, heavy stuff in your shop. And, of course, me, I'm looking at go, unless you have leg attachments, you don't want just an upper body thing that can lift 600 pounds because you still have your normal knees. And I was stuck on all the engineers,

they go, no, you can lift it. And I go, I know, but you still have to stand there. And everybody went, oh, yeah. Because now you're holding 800 pounds with the normal human knees. So you're going to need to be on a platform of some sort. So we need the Sigourney piece, the kink, kink. Love it.

Well, let's just change the title of that to stay away from her, you bitch, with Tim Allen, only on the history channel. When does that air? We'll start. Production, so we'll finish. And I imagine we'll probably get eight episodes to do starting in the next week. So give it. You do finish eight. And then they'll start probably in March or eight years.

Well, enjoy the world of nonfiction. And should you have any questions about the slings and arrows outrageous decision making in companies like that, I have all the answers. I'm standing by. I'm at your disposal. Very good, buddy. Don't hang up. We have to upload your thing. Whoa. Otherwise, get HR in here. You're not uploading my thing. Get Katie back, who, by the way, your daughter

has quite a potty mouth on her. She's pretty funny when the technology doesn't work out. Yeah, they want you to upload something? She's terrific. Oh, no, no. All you have to do, chuckle stop it, and then you just hit no thanks. I will see you guys. She's right here. Come on. Kate's going to say goodbye to you.

We're not supposed to hang up. Thanks, Kate. Bye, guys. You were awesome. Thank you. See you guys. Adios. If you're a maintenance supervisor at a manufacturing facility and your machinery isn't working right, Granger knows you need to understand what's wrong as soon as possible. So when a conveyor motor falters, Granger offers diagnostic tools like calibration kits and multimeters to help you identify and fix the problem. With Granger, you can be confident. You have everything you need to keep your facility running smoothly. Call 1-800-Grangeer. Clickranger.com or just stop by.

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