We Might Be Drunk - Ep 148: Nick Offerman & Bodega Cat

Episode Date: October 9, 2023

Nick Offerman is here and you should get his book, now on paperback! "Where The Deer And The Antelope Play" https://nickofferman.co/books/ We learn how Lagulvulin became Ron Swanson's scotch, back story on The Last Of Us and a lot of great humorist stories. Join us for this episode, the video on YouTube is worth a watch if you usually do audio only. Nick Offerman: https://nickofferman.co/books/ Mark Normand: http://marknormandcomedy.com/ Sam Morril: https://www.sammorril.com/ Shop: https://www.wemightbedrunkpod.com Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/wemightbedrunkpod Bodega Cat: http://www.bodegacatspirits.com We Might Be Drunk is produced, recorded and edited by Gotham Production Studios. Head producer: Matthew Peters  https://www.gothamproductionstudios.com/ If you want to start a podcast contact [e-mail] for a discount on services when referred by WMBD! Support the show and get 20% off your 1st order with code DRUNK at https://www.sheathunderwear.com Support the show and sign up for your free 60-day ShipStation trial at https://www.shipstation.com and use code DRUNK    

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Damn. But OJ got away with it and then wrote the book. That's true. It's funny you see OJ. He went through the trial and wrote the book. Right. This guy didn't go through a trial, did he? No, he was squeaky.

He was off. He was good to go. Yeah, I saw Suge Knight was like, I'm not going to testify. And we're like, yeah, well, your word's worth a lot at this point. You see when OJ puts on Instagram, every comment is just knife, knife, knife, knife, knife, knife, knife. He's on camera on show as like a sports correspondent really it's kind of hilarious it's hilarious to have just a show where you have a sports show where you're like yeah we'll just make oj the sports correspondent yeah that is amazing damn

that's legitimately funny that's what i keep hearing is he on barstool no he's got his own sports show but dude he there's a clip of him on like a new show we got to pull it up he literally dude he gets shot and he's like he's like yeah people came for me but they didn't get me like he was talking tough after like he was out of the hospital like a day and he's talking shit wow it's pretty cool if i got shot i would that'd be my whole personality i'd be like oh shit i don't want to go outside again i got got shot. This is my whole thing. I wouldn't be bragging about it. I'd be like, please don't do that again. Yes, please. I love you.

Whatever you want. I'll give you money. But the Tupac thing is crazy because I heard he got caught from TikToking. He was making TikTok videos. Yeah. He was bragging about it on TikTok, which too bad JFK never had a TikTok guy. That would be great if that existed back then. That would have been a shorter Oliver Stone film.

True. What do we got? Is this it? I don't know. Camera on? You paused on a... One last question. What...

No, this isn't it. What exactly did the... Did you hear the guy say? Like they said, it's not it, but you're going to let it roll out. Great Google guy we got. Google bitch. You're not touching that coffee? Take it.

I'm taking it. All right. So you were in Europe for a month. Oh, yeah. I missed you, man. I've been talking a big game. Hey, I'm a tough guy. I'm cool.

And I was like, I don't get jet lagged. It hits you two days later. Oh, man. What do you mean? What are you, Superman? You get jet lagged. I never got two days later. Oh, man. What do you mean? What are you, Superman? You get jet lagged. I never got it, really. I got to Europe.

I adjusted quick. I land back here. I'm wrecked. My head feels like it's this big. I'm cloudy. I'm gay. I'm all over the place. But Europe was a blast.

I'm cultured now. Can you explain the pictures of all you guys dressed like sure gay bathhouse a lot to talk about with david bowie yeah well we went to the kit kat club pull that up i'm sure there's not a lot of photos of it because they don't allow phones but no berlin everyone said uh if you're going to berlin you got to go to a sex club and i said you damn right who are you talking to you know i get that too in like montreal you got to go to a strip club i think i hang out with fucking scumbags well i was with just lane but um so yeah so i was like all right we got to do it but if you go you got to dress up you can't just show up in a fucking cardigan and an argyle sweater so uh the lady was all over it the wife

was like we're going to this store like the sex club store we're going to get the boots we're getting the shorts we're getting the garter belts we're getting the neck collar that's a manscaped uh boxer brief by the way i had no shorts and we spent a fortune on this shit uh but all right you've already lost it man what, what are you doing? Okay, so we got, yeah, were those uncomfortable? This does not look comfortable. Ah, you gotta get used to it. I mean, I'm wearing fishnets too, if you notice they're pink.

And I had a decent bulge. I took a blue chew. And yeah, I got eyeliner going. It was fun. You guys look like a sexy band in the 80s or something yeah yeah duran duran or something yeah so uh we show up the thing opens at 10 we got there at like 9 15 because like we should get some food first i didn't know you're supposed to wear like a trench coat you get in and then there's lockers so everyone why would you know that that's insane

yeah so we're walking around the street like this an hour before eating shawarma. So I'm at a shawarma place like, I'll have the lamb, please. And the guy's like, what the fuck? And I'm just eating it. I think they just thought we were weird Americans. So we get in there and it is insane. There's a room. There's so many different rooms.

There's a techno room, a tango room. There's a full swimming pool. Tango. Tango. That feels like too classy a dance for this outfit. Well, people start tangoing to get some cooking, and then they start fucking. Is there sex in there? Full-on sex, blowjobs everywhere.

There's a bunch of bars in there. There's a bunch of couches, and nothing is sanitized. Everything would get me too'd in like eight minutes here. No, because you're volunteering it. I guess so. The me too is the work environment thing. This isn't where Weinstein was doing his deeds. I don't know.

It felt like it. There was a casting couch. It was wild. But there's an old guy jerking off. What? How old? I'm talking 80. Like a Biden just walking around.

Woo, baby. Maybe it was him. There was a naked guy in a wheelchair. He was handicapped, just going around full dong out. It was crazy. In a wheelchair? In a wheelchair. It's a beautiful story.

They were dwarves with collars and a leash. Are people wearing masks? Are they protecting their identity? No, no, no. Why is mine shut? All out there. That's where i got covid no mask you got covid no i'm just kidding but uh yeah it was insane and then eventually

after being there because it just flies by because there's so much stimulus so much to look at and i go hey wife we gotta go bang and she's like what really i'm like here yeah i'm like well when in rome everyone's doing it so So we fucked. Like in public? In public. And the fact that I got hard is a goddamn miracle. That's fucking weird. I was looking at all the other men. It's like, I mean, I want to yes and you here, but you're fucking in public now?

What kind of person have you become? You blend in. You go to Berlin. You go with the people. Mark's next slide is, we went to a Nazi rally. I didn't want to salute, but you got to blend in. I was following orders. So I'm banging the people. Mark's next slide is, we went to a Nazi rally. I didn't want to salute, but you got to blend in. I was following orders. Yeah.

So I'm banging the lady. Now, here's where it gets real wacky. It wasn't easy. I mean, it took a lot of like, you good? Yeah, is there like a way to get hard in an environment like this? Mostly looking at the other women. That helped, because there's naked women everywhere. He looked at the guy in the wheelchair.

He's like, that'll do it. Oh, Lieutenant Dan over there. So I'm plowing the lady. And I got her from behind. This is open dance floor like that. Oh, my God. And this guy comes up and taps me on the shoulder. And I go, uh-oh.

We might be in trouble. I don't know if I'm doing something wrong. And I look back. And he goes, me next? And I go, what? The fuck? Get out of here. They don't have me too in Amsterdam. goes, me next? And I go, what the fuck? Get out of here. They don't have me too in Amsterdam.

They have me next. Hashtag me next. But that's normal there. He wasn't even being a dick. He was just like, oh, all right, you met some lady who wants to get railed. I'll do her next. So that was kosher. I don't mean to sound prude here, but it's so unromantic. Oh, yeah. sure it's i don't mean to sound you know prude here but it's so unromantic you know like like

part of the fun is the chase and the and the seduction and dude just being like you line up like it's the bathroom right a little weird isn't it yeah he took a number uh but like a deli yeah exactly i'm number two so ramming her he wanted that beef tongue you asked for a sample yeah what uh that's incredible you did that how many people were watching uh well it's so normal that like people walk by and go how about that and they just move on are you worried about getting recognized a little but the outfit helped i had a couple people say hey comedy which was weird i said comedy and they're yelling your catchphrase well yeah well mark's fucking his wife i gave a praise allah out of the gate and so i go ah get out of here i wave him off

and now i'm starting to get like all right i'm fucking this woman in public uh i got a guy tap me on the shoulder there's people everywhere people are staring at us there's the gimp in the wheelchair with the mask and a dick clamp. And I'm kind of starting to lose it. Like, all right, I'm freaking out. I got to stop this. Did you come? No.

I was about to. There's a guy next to me. I look to my left. Old guy jerking off, staring at me with his tongue out. And I said, that's it. Wrapped it up. Couldn't do it. The wife's like, what are you doing?

I was getting into it. I was like what are you doing i was going i was getting into it i was like ah that and she was like oh and i we walked away i hate to say but under the circumstances he was in the right no i'm not mad you're fucking in public at a sex club he should get the jerk off to it if he was a little better looking i would have gone with it but he was an ugly guy and he was kind of scary it was joe biden if it was hunter you would have done it yes exactly it could have been hunter that's true hunter gatherer but yeah so i i had to bail and she was kind of like oh that was a little anticlimactic and i was like i know but that the jerk guy i was out the jerk i can only go so far we're still you know comedians who live in new york i mean i don't think i could ever do could Could you ever do something like that? No, but I love how... Matt Peters, could you?

Yeah. How the peeves have gone from, the streets of New York are too crowded to, I don't like this guy jerking off on my wife. Yeah, Subway, I'll take it. Things have gone too far. Yes. Have you? How was that?

Yeah. A guy had sex with your wife oh whoa is that what ended it a 60 year old lady dude you know uh yeah i guess you don't ask your age but uh that's uh god damn matt you're like a whole nother life i guess that's who should be at the sex club is old people. If you're young and you're starting at that place, that's fucking weird. Well, that's the thing about this club is they're very picky. So everyone in there is either hot people with great bodies or anomalies. You know, the wheelchair guy, the dwarf, the guy with the gift mask and covered in tattoos like everyone had a thing or you were hot so the only reason we got in is because we our promoter got us on the list

thank god what a weird request yeah i love that you did that that's insane oh you pulled up the boogie nights damn what a sad scene. That was Peter's after the wife. That's a tragic character. Brutal. There's a lot of sad characters in Boogie Nights, but that one takes the cake. Yeah, sad. It's not a good sign when you're more sad than Seymour Hoffman in a movie. That's hard to pull off.

When you're the more depressing character. Yeah. Dude, Mark, I cannot believe you did this. Well, you know, I was out there so long, out in Europe. when you're the more depressing character yeah dude mark i cannot believe you did this well you know i was out there so long out in europe you kind of detach and you're just like who am i anymore and you kind of just start going into these weird yeah but how are you going to go back to just fucking your wife on your bed at home after doing something like this well i hired a guy he comes and he stands by the bed and we're good to go yeah no but it's actually nice to be back

because now i can like be myself and throw our legs around. In there, I was, like, head on a swivel. I was like a Cub Scout, you know? So you were there with a friend. Did he get to see any of this? No, I wanted to get away from Doug. Doug Key, everybody. But he had his own fun.

He met some girls? He met some girls, and he's a good-looking guy. He's ripped, and the guys in there weren't great. The women were gorgeous, but the guys weren't great, so he really stood out, and he got hit on quite a bit. Yeah, he's a good-looking dude. Good-looking guy, 12-pack, huge arms, and yeah, they loved him. Is there a language barrier when you're trying to hook up with someone there?

No. The only thing was the bouncer was a bit of a dick because he's so important. This big, Nazi, bald bald buff guy was like how come we gotta learn english you can't learn german and we were like uh we don't live here and he's like yeah yeah you're damn right you don't live here and i get in there and i think that's just part of it like they're kind of fun when they are yeah you ever go to like a burger place like uh paul's burger joint and the and the waitress is just kind of rude to you and and you're like, I kind of like it. Yes. That's where it starts, the minor abuse.

Then you end up in a sex club. Yeah. And I will say there was something fun about the no phones. You're like, I got to take a photo of that. I got to take it. And then after 20 minutes, you're like, fuck it. Let's live. I like that there's no phones.

I don't want this on video, this jerk guy. The phone you break out because you're bored. You're not bored at a sex club. Good point. You break your phone out when your girlfriend's telling you a story not when you're good point fucking your girlfriend also makes you feel pretty good about the dong size i'm no prize here but there's losers lose i'm some some real acorns in a bush acorns in a bush is the worst way that little turtle head popping you know what i'm talking

about yeah like uh oh god and guy, you know what's weird? The guy jerking off. That guy, he's got a whole backstory. Like, that person has a life. I know. You know, maybe he's like a widow or something. And he's like, yeah, I'll be a jerk off at the club guy now. I had the same thought.

You go to Subway Sandwiches and that guy's in there. He's eating. Or a lady, a hot lady's just like at the airport. But they don't know about the secrets. Yeah, he's deep thrown in the sub, but he's still eating that. He's got a 12-incher, yeah. But yeah, there was some impressive dongs too, but I felt pretty good at the end of the day. I mean, you feel good enough to whip it out and fuck your wife in there.

That's true. This episode's going to be demonetized in a second. We literally open with Mark's like, I fucked my wife in a club. I didn't even think about that. I mean, whatever. It happens. It's a true story, and it was at a sex club.

You know, I did it in the right place. It was appropriate. I can't believe it. I don't think I could perform in public. If this was in the Bronx, I couldn't have done it, but the fact that you're so far away, you know.

I think there's another reason you couldn't have done it in the Bronx, to be honest. Not a lot of acorn in there. Yeah, good point, good point. But, no, I know what you mean. The removal, you're gone so long, it's almost like who cares, right? Exactly.

There's a weird thing. When you're on the road long enough, there's a party that takes over. Like, who gives a shit? Give me other highlights of Europe. Okay, so we got three days off, which was a gift, because you're living out of that suitcase. You're on a flight every day, a train every day. It's one country to the next to the next, and it's a lot on you.

So we had three days off. The wife left because she was like, I've got to go back to work. I have to go back to civilization. Me and Doug go, fuck it. We got three days off. What should we do? Fuck it. We got drunk.

We bought tickets to Paris. we flew to paris which was a horrific flight we had to connect in reykjavik reykjavik whatever my favorite tennis player yeah no vax and uh we had to get it it was like an eight hour travel day we wanted to kill ourselves this is why at least you're with someone though yes and this is why i love doug this motherfucker bought those boots he bought like you know eight inch platform whatever boots to wear to the club he's like i got the receipt i'm going to return these boots when i get back to america to pay less because they were 60 he carried those boots all over europe oh my god i couldn't believe it so

we go to paris he's got the boots with him. But we go to Paris, and you want to kill yourself. The fucking flight is hell. Connecting, language barrier. You're tired. You're hungover. You're packing. You got the boots. Right when you land in Paris, you get in an Uber.

You pass by that Eiffel Tower. You go, this is the best decision we've ever made. We got a little Airbnb. Doug's such a nut. He set up four shows. We set up four shows at a little club. We sell them all out. And we had a great time.

Oh, Paris. It's so cool that you're at a point in your career where you can go to Paris and say, I want to sell out a show in Paris. And people come out. That's how I felt like it's not the same. But like, I had a canceled flight in Montreal and I was stuck for the night pop-up show that night sells out. And you're like, it's amazing.

We're at a point in our lives where, you know, we do that it's i'm grateful totally agree that's so so give me some paris highlights i mean paris it's a reason why it's cliche like the prettiest city because it really is i mean there's a lady singing opera on the bridge and the sun was setting i'm holding a prosecco at a restaurant just looking at everything. The boats go by. The Eiffel Tower. Doug Key, we went to Sacré-Cœur, Sacred Heart Church. He cried.

He wept. It was so pretty. He was like, I was supposed to come here with my grandmother and she died. I'm like holding Doug. We look like two weirdos. I'm eating a baguette. He is a baguette. I feel like you're doing the weird part

of the relationship with him. You're fucking your girlfriend in the sex club then you're like they're there to him in paris like what the hell that's true that's true what the hell happened here then i fucked doug he fucked him in the church yeah the same old guy was jerking off in the church oh yeah no jadam so uh we had a great time did the shows the shows were great and then we flew back and just did dublin dublin was the hottest crowd that vicar street is an amazing venue if you ever get a chance to do it dublin yeah it's up there with like the wilbur or the moore it's just magical i'm filming my next special at the wilbur oh in march tickets on sale later this month but yeah i'm pumped man i feel good about the hour. It's cooking.

My friend saw you in Chicago and was like, holy shit, I was blown away. I feel all right. That was a hot night because we had Mateo Lane plays the Chicago theater. Chicago kid, big deal. Right. And then we're on the same flights, his husband, him, me. And we literally, I go up to him with the urinal. I just see a mohawk.

And I realize I take a chance because I was just like hey you pussy and then i was like oh shit this might not be mateo but then i was like thank god i just chanced it on the mohawk wait he's a mohawk yeah oh i didn't even know that yeah yeah well that kind of sex club stories yeah yeah then i started fucking him in the bathroom yeah i jerked off so we're So we're sitting on the, you know, we're on the flight. We're going there and he goes, hey, I'm making pizza at Lou Monati's later tonight in the kitchen for my YouTube channel. You want to do with me? I was like, of course. So I, you know, I do.

We make pizza. It's so fucking fun. But, you know, that deep dish pizza is no joke. Oh, yeah. So, you know, I had three slices. I'm dying. I feel sick. And then my girlfriend sees me post about it.

She's like oh i wanted chicago pizza so i was like fucking ordering it again i had it for dinner as well i wanted to kill myself i worked out twice the next day we go to a yoga class i did i swam like 60 laps in the hotel we're in a hotel with a sick pool uh but we do uh yoga the next day i just was like i need something to do she set it up so so we go. It's called Funky Friday. It was the worst thing I've ever done in my life. It was a hot class. We're in the dark. We were the only people that, like, I guess

they're all regulars, so they have inside jokes that we didn't get. They're just like, are you guys ready for Funky Friday? And I'm just like, everyone's laughing. I'm like, I don't get how this is funny. Is this like fun mom stuff? Is that what this is? I guess. But they keep making jokes like that.

And they're like, it's funky because the room is set up different. And I'm like, okay, I have no basis for comparison because I've never been here. I don't get the joke. Anything funky is never fun. It's never fun. And she kept saying it. Oh, that's weird. It's like those places where you drink and paint.

Whoa. Everybody watch out. We're drinking wine and painting. Woo. Crazy. So lame. it's like drinking on a podcast just to make it stand out it's like pathetic losers um but yeah chicago theater he does it friday i do it saturday so we do guest sets on each other's shows and i was like what a fucking crazy weekend that we just can do that that's incredible uh yeah both both sold out it

was like you know his crowd was amazing. My crowd was amazing. He got a nice little Chicago pop when he came out for my audience, which was nice. Oh, that's great. Hometown kid. And yeah, his whole family's there. It was pretty cool. And yeah, it was a hell of a night, man.

Chicago is just the best. It's the best. That's why I did the special there. Me too. There's something about it. Yeah, exactly. I love it. I even mentioned Jamesames webb on stage

he's a chicago kid everyone applauded because he's filming yeah because he's so cool i bet he brought i think he brought a lot of friends you know oh and that's a great theater that theater is special that marquee you can't beat it dude i was doing crowd work in a close to 4 000 seater wow because it's that intimate for a 4 000 you know 3600 or something so you know i only did it for like you know seven minutes or so you know toward 3,600 or something. Sure. So, you know, I only did it for like, you know, seven minutes or so, you know, toward the end just to fuck around a little bit. But you can do it in a theater. That's how crazy it is.

Yeah. Beautiful play. I think Mulaney did a special there as well. Yeah. I feel like he picks really classy theaters always. Didn't he do one at Radio City? I think he did one at Town Hall too. Oh, maybe.

He always picks like really classy, beautiful theaters. Yeah. Wow. That is so cool, though. I love Chicago. I can't believe Mateo got hair plugs and then does a mohawk. Isn't that a weird move? Getting cocky.

Yeah. Who do you think you are? Well, our guest today, Nick Offerman, is an Illinois guy, so he messaged me. He's like, the Chicago theater, you know? Wow. I'm excited he's coming on today, man. He's a where did you meet him I met him in Calgary so uh I actually met him years ago at a benefit in Austin he was hosting um and it was like me him uh a bunch of a bunch of big comedians were on it I was like the smallest comic on it but he hosted and he was

really cool and then uh we did this gig the great Great Outdoors Fest in Calgary with me, him, and Dan Soder. Fucking amazing hang, hot show. So fun. Does he have jokes? Does he do an act? He does a lot of musical stuff, some stories. Yeah. I mean, he's super funny.

All right. Obviously. You've seen him, and he's an incredible comedic and dramatic actor. I can't wait to meet him. I've told this story before, but the only time I met him was at Conan, and he was in a robe, and he jerked off.

No. He was in a... Oh, I was in a robe, and I was getting a haircut, and he said, shave the boy and bring him to my room. That was the only exchange we had.

We all laughed. It killed in the room, and that was it. Yeah. I saw him on TV this morning. He was on Morning Joe promoting his new book, so pumped to have him here. Is it just a... I't know this is it a biography is it no it's a travel

book oh great uh so yeah why don't we pull that graphic up so we're prepared yes yes sally just pulls up mind comp gonna get it together sally so why don't we uh yeah there we go why don't we we want to just chill till he gets here. We got seven minutes. I got to pee anyway. All right, you got to pee. Should we get ice for the scotch too? I think we have it there.

Oh, hey, I didn't see you there. Just want to let you know that I'm performing at the Madison Square Garden Theater November 4th. I can't wait. Tickets on my website. We got it? Okay. What do I do about the burning sensation? What do I do?

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Two girls, one cup. Had a soundtrack, I guess. So you got a new book out, we should say, out of the gate. Oh, yeah. Right here, Nick Offerman with a deer and antelope play. Thanks for joining us, man. This is a travelogue book. It is, yeah. Do you do the audio book?

I do. I love to do audio books even more than writing the book, I think. Thank you, Matt. Totally. It's like a really long podcast. Cheetos. Is this your second book? It's my fifth book.

Your fifth book. Okay. Fifth book. That's a lot. Jesus. That's crazy. What are you, Grisham? Jeez.

Yeah, I never expected to be a touring humorist i just wanted to get good parts and plays in chicago and i had a scenery shop i built scenery for plays and then like i got cast in a couple movies and a couple people said uh you should come to la you make funny faces so i did and um and here we are uh so i started touring performing as a humorist and rashida jones came to one of my early shows and said i love your your talk with like an agenda it sounds like you're reading from your book and i thought oh actually i have some more stories of jackassery. Yeah. So then I cast about to see if I could get a book deal, and I did.

Now, what does a humorist entail? Well, it's interesting because I've been devouring both of your work. I've been fans of yours before. Like, I met Sam doing a gig together recently but uh you both had just caught my eye over the years because i described you to my wife as like the grandchildren of carlin and what i mean by that is dan you're not super you're not very attractive what i mean by that is you can tell you spend a lot of blood and sweat and tears like fucking with language and fucking with the line of like what's what's funny what can i get away

with there's intelligence because in watching in listening to episodes of this podcast uh people kept talking about david tell And I've always heard his name. And I texted Sam and said, I literally have never, I've only heard his name for years and years. I've never seen him. And so he told me to check out his album, Skanks for the Memories. Yes. And I listened to it in a hotel room the other day. And it was, I mean, it's so, he's so aggressive.

His energy is so aggressive that you like, you either turn it off or you turn it up. And I turned it up. I love it. Where it's just like, he's not going to fucking let you catch your breath. Right. And he got me laughing. And of course, there's stuff that's 20 years old. So there's stuff that's like, oh yeah i can't do that one anymore but uh but in the same in the same vernacular

you can tell that you're not just like you know telling dick jokes you're playing with the form in a way uh that that uh when i decided to start doing this I was aware that I don't have the kind of brain that writes jokes. I knew, I think Zach Galifianakis is one of the comedians I've known the longest, and he was just always aware of how he can sit there and just take any banal situation and think of the funniest goddamn way to describe it or just the stupidest non-sequitur that you're like fuck man like a mitch hedberg isms that i'm like god damn it look what you just

did with a bag of doritos right right yeah galvin agus has great one-liners that people don't talk about because he's such a big actor with the hangover and whatnot but killer yeah we watched i remember it was like half hour on comedy central being like this is fucking great oh yeah he's he's somewhere between like he's got a little stephen right to him as well yeah out of left field but so when i started doing this i i was like okay i don't write jokes but people laugh at the slow way in which i talk and so i just decided to start calling myself a humorist and i i wrote out like a 90 minute show and i do songs and i just felt like it allows me because when uh initially netflix had my first special on netflix it was called american ham oh yeah they since pulled it off uh but um

but people would complain people would go through all the comedy and they'd get to me and they'd be like this isn't fucking comedy this isn't a comedian right and i was like i don't really disagree with you like you read the comments you're nuts no i don't uh i don't remember where i came across that because i didn't know you could have comments on like a on that streamer um oh we did youtube special so i i saw them all but i'm like you know i don't i don't dwell on them but i'd be like oh okay i read the comment i read reviews of my books and people really love my books uh like probably you guys 93 percent of people of people know what they're in for and they love it. And 7% somehow thought you were a Christian or like, they're like, Nick Offerman, if you

have ever been to church, Nick Offerman thinks you're an idiot. And I'm like, no. I was drunk when I wrote that. Well, I mean, I wouldn't say idiot. No. I was drunk when I wrote that. Well, I mean, I wouldn't say idiot. No.

Whenever I talk about religion at all, I go into all camps mode and literally say, to each their own. I absolutely have no judgment about any of this. But if you're going to try and make kids pray in school, if you're going to do shitty things in the name of religion, that's what I want to talk about. Which is the most shitty things have been done in history. Also extremists. It's okay to have an opinion on extremists.

That's another thing. If you have an opinion on anything, like Brian Regan has bits that offend people. I know. But I just did Dublin and we did a little Q&A after. One guy was like talk about the the catholics and the protestants they're just crazy divided it's like they hate each other still and i i was like guys relax both of them aren't real that was the punch line and i posted the clip you know fun times comedian humorist and i got a million like you're going to hell screw you and these are all the free

speech guys like i can't do a religion bit but yeah yeah it is it's it's a it's a very uh tough time who by the way we have i haven't been introduced to our friend here this is winnie this is my girlfriend's dog and she goes to work and i was like i just i feel bad leaving the dog at home yeah when he deserves to be here and to weigh in on she's a good matters of religion oh yeah she hates the jews she only knows one it's not her fault you know i have one jewish friend he forgets to let her out sometimes yeah he can't eat American ham. So, yeah, you're doing like the press tour now. I saw you on MSNBC this morning. I just flipped it on.

I was like, oh, shit, there it is. That's fun. It was actually nerve-wracking. I am doing the paperback publication of this book. I'm very proud of my book. But I also just recently did a psa and this is the least sexy thing that will ever happen on your podcast um i don't know he farted on allison brie that was pretty bad oh man yeah i got hard she loves it uh i um i am invested in agrarian farming. And so I made this PSA for with the NRDC, the Natural Resources Defense Council. It's this lobbying group purported like in favor of soil health, like encouraging.

We're lobbying Congress to encourage farmers to plant cover crops. It's a great climate change fighter. It's a great agriculture thing. And it's something that I will always be invested in. There's a lot of it in my book, although the book is also very entertaining. There is soil talk, though, full disclosure. But so the MSNBC appearance was not funny. The PSA is funny.

You got a line or two in there. I played dirt. Yeah. But they're asking me, and it's like, you know, people always shit on me, basically. I'm dirt. But we should take care of our dirt. And, you know, you can imagine it needs its health, its microorganisms. And it actually makes it a great carbon sink.

If you have healthy dirt, it saves water. It does all these things. And so it's nerve-wracking to go on MSNBC and not be there as an entertainer. Where they're like, so tell us about fucking farming in Congress. And fortunately, there was a really smart lady named Arohi from the NRDC. And I could sort of set her up. I'm like, well, 11% of our nation's emissions come from agriculture. And then she would kick in with a paragraph of intelligence.

Yes. Classic humorist. The old Garrison Keillor, throw to writers in the sky. It's got to excite the TV people, and they're like, oh, this guy's got some dirt on people. And then you get there, and you're like, no, literally, soil. This is it. You grab a napkin too, Matt? Also, I want to try some of Nick's scotch, too.

Nick Offerman has his own brand of Lagavulin. How the hell did you pull that off? You have a deal with, I would say, the best scotch. Yeah, it's up there for sure. Thank you. Thank you, Sally. Can you imagine?

It's insane. When I was 29, so two years ago, when I was 29 in 1999 I was at a film festival in Chicago and my filmmaker Scott King

bless his name he's in Europe now he said you know we introduced the film and we'll be back in 90 minutes for a Q&A and he taught me

the first lesson of film festivals which is then you go have a drink it's the perfect amount of time so we go to a bar and he taught me the first lesson of film festivals, which is then you go have a drink. It's the perfect amount of time. So we go to a bar and he says, up to that point, I was a broke theater actor, so I would have pints and pints of beer and then on a special occasion,

we'd get Jameson and pound some Irish whiskey. Which is not even the best whiskey. That's funny that you were that broke. But Jameson's great, though. It's solid. I love Jameson. But when Jameson's your number one, it ain't pappy. Sure, sure.

But, I mean, I wouldn't have known. Like, it was all about, what do you have? What's the best affordable whiskey that you have at the Chicago Theater Pub? Is it cool if we drink yours and you have ours? Oh, sure. Because Mark and I have our own rye. It's Bodega Cat rye. Oh, yeah.

We're in the same biz. I did not know that, but I'm a big rye fan. Hell, yeah. Same. So he bought me my... He said, do you want to try some scotch? I said, sure. I've heard of...

Eugene O'Neill wrote about it. Like, let me check it out. And he got me a glass of Lagavulin. And so he didn't say anything else. So it. Like, let me check it out. And he got me a glass of Lagavulin. And so he didn't say anything else. So it was like, this is scotch. And then I was ruined. Yes.

It's amazing. Thank you very much. But then how do you get in cahoots with them? There's a lot of things I like that no one's putting my face on. Cheers, by the way. Oh, hey. And thanks again for coming. Cheers. To lucky sons of bitches.

Hell yeah. Get the book. That is so good. Your rye is quite nice. Thank you. As well. Thank you. Top notch.

It's so smoky. It's like drinking bacon or something. It's like a campfire in your mouth. Yeah. So I was 29. So then that became my drink. And then, you know, I learned, and I'm not picky. If we have whiskey, we're in good shape.

I'm not persnickety. Sure. But over the years, if pit places had lagavulin that's what i would order and naturally i learned to then have a rival a rivalry with lefroy oh yeah um and they're actually they're next door neighbors on the coast of isla oh really lefroy lagavulin and ardbeg are right next to each other and they're all i like art bag too yeah they're all nice winter scotch totally yeah so when i was then 38 i got the job of ron swanson on parks and rec sure and somewhere early on it was in the script ron leslie comes in for a meeting amy poehler and ron pulls out two glasses and a bottle of scotch so we get to there to the day and i opened my drawer it's

lagavulin 16 and i thought this these prop people are so good that they found out my favorite scotch that's amazing and it was like a year later i went to mike sure who create was the main creator of the show i went to his birthday party and i was talking to him and Adam Scott walked up and gave him a bottle of Lagavulin 16 and said happy birthday. And I said, you know, that's on the show because that's my favorite scotch. And Mike said, no, you fucking idiot. It's my favorite scotch. Did you think they read your mind or something? And so thanks to Mike, who also had exquisite taste uh it became ron scotch and we used it frequently on the show

and eventually we said has anybody heard from lagavulin we literally have given them like a two million dollars worth of screen time yes and we we made a big deal out of it on the show and finally towards the end the answer was no we hadn't heard from them that's crazy they never reached out like this is so cool they were pretty small obscure shows so i think it hadn't quite and american shows take a couple few years that's true to get over and infiltrate the uk right and ireland um and so uh towards the end chris pratt got cast in Guardians of the Galaxy, and that was going to shoot in London. And so if we wanted to still have him on the season of Parks, they had to come up with a way to go shoot in London. Whoa.

Our little Indiana show. Yeah. So our brilliant producer named Morgan Sackett, who shoots all the Lagavulin commercials, by the way, came up with this way to take the show to London, and they sent my character to the Lagavulin distillery. Ah! And so, I mean, it just was...

It's kismet. It was ridiculous. And so we all hit it off. They liked me, and they said, maybe what if we start doing commercials? And I said, oh, yes, that would be fine. Just inching your way in. You want to pay me to say that I like oxygen?

Sure. Right. I'll fucking back oxygen. And so I started doing these commercials. You can find them on YouTube. We have a channel called MyTalesOfWhiskey.com. Pull it up. There are, I think, 50 of them by now.

And they're mostly stupid comedy shorts. Is there like a favorite of yours we could pull up? Gosh. Well, the one that has a gazillion hits was this one-off idea. A writer from Brooklyn Nine-Nine named david phillips came up with just pitching you know bullshit and it was to replace the yule log you know how there used to be uh the yule log channel at christmas you put it on the tv and it's just a burning fireplace so we did our version of that where it's a fireplace and me in a chair next to it

and somebody turned it into a 10-hour loop and like every 15 minutes i take a sip that's the yule log wow and it it has it has you know it's a so there's no words no that's amazing all i do is sit there so it looks cool as hell though that's brilliant at christmas then people like in bars or workplaces will put they'll just put it on yeah it's like wallpaper so that was our biggest hit that's like some sort of warhol type yeah art piece at a party yeah and of course it was just a prank on it was like a uh throwaway idea and at the time the longest media we had we could do a 45 minute take on the card that we had and so the director is like crawling or it i mean how bad you you must be farting you gotta pee

i mean no i mean do this that's my bag it was a 45 minute take wow i love it it's like kind of zen it is i mean and then we did we did one for new year's eve out in front of the distillery so so we start doing these commercials and uh it's morgan sackett and uh dean holland a great tv director who directed the most episodes of parks and rec uh we often go back been to the distillery six or seven times in the last 10 years. And then eventually they decided to make a Lagavulin Offerman version. Finally. Which is, so it's just, it keeps, I mean, I guess they're going to offer me the company at some point. Yeah, eventually.

It continues to escalate. Well, the first time we saw it, I was like, oh, like Nick Offerman. And then Matt was like, no, seriously. I was like, oh, I didn't know. Yeah. It's crazy. i'm very grateful um it's it's a it's a apparently you know the the show and my uh my endorsement has done them a lot of good okay and so we're very grateful for the relationship like every time they pick us up for another year, we're just like, okay, great.

Yes. Yeah, we're trying to get Sam one with Pepto. All right. We got to get your face on a Pepto because he drinks it all the time with the hangovers. I mean, upset stomach on the road. I've switched to peppermint pills, but like, you know, you're doing a gig on the road. Sure. You chug a Pepto.

Yeah. I'm trying to get into plan B. I want my face on the pill. That'll definitely make women want to take it. It'll show us up. I'm inside of them. So, yeah, this is an amazing gig. So what kind of input did you have in the making of the Offerman scotch?

There's a brilliant guy named Stuart Morrison who, and now, there used to be an obscure independent distillery. And now there used to be an obscure independent distillery. They have since been purchased by Diageo, which is a big beverage company. So through Diageo, I've also done commercials for Talisker and Oban. But mainly Lagavulin. Talisker's pretty great. I mean, they're both great.

They're fantastic. Yeah, it's insane. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. But this great alchemist named Stuart Morrison, he's the guy in the laboratory. And it's pretty fascinating because they have, think about it, like for, this is 11 years. So in order to come up with like 50,000 cases of this, they have to find that much liquid available. And then the one that we're doing right now or this one, for example, we finished it in these charred oak casks. So he does these experiments where we do tastings and they're very generous. Like they let me he sends me a kit and we we do

mix we he's like try a drop of this and you know taste now taste this one taste that one and so ultimately he's the chef he knows what the fuck he's doing and i'm the sorcerer's apprentice where i'm at his elbow and i ultimately get to say which one is yummy right and then and then he's like thanks to nick offerman's expert pal and they try to they try to goose it up as though i know what the fuck i'm doing which all i'm doing is saying i like number seven b um and and so i love it i mean i also write all the copy on the back of the box and like you know i pitch sort of jokes there's little illustrations of me and stuff um so i'm i'm very active in it because i whether it's my books or anything that i endorse i don't you know i i don't put my name on something if if i don't stand

behind it and i try to be as involved as possible just so, because I think it's douchey to just. Yeah. If it was just my name, I don't think anybody would pay me for that. Right, right. Wow. You did also in Parks and Rec, isn't your character, it's Elmo's a steakhouse, right? St. Elmo's. St. Elmo's. In Indianapolis. Yeah.

Was that you or is that they're like the character is gonna is that a thing that you brought in or did they just say like oh he's gonna like this steakhouse oh well i mean they you know great tv writers what their alchemy is they take aspects of your personality and distill them in a way where the you know whether it's aziz or aubrey plaza or amy or me when they were creating the show i was in my wood shop i actually have a wood shop in la and i kept talking to them on the phone we're creating like before we ever started and i would have to turn off the table saw or whatever the dust collection and and eventually they're like wait wait, what is this?

And I said, I have a wood shop. I build heirloom furniture and boats and shit. And they said, can we come over there? And they got on a bus, and all the writers came to my shop, and they said, this is hilarious. Like, can we make your character a woodworker? And I said, yeah, great. I love it.

So on the show, Ron's shop is my shop. And so somehow my love of meat, there are certain aspects of me that they then like crank up to a superhero level. Right. So in my touring show, I do a song called I'm Not Ron Swanson. And there's a line that's like, he can eat a big ass steak for every single meal because his colon is fictitious, but mine is all too real. And his scotch intake would be my liver's doom. Right. Because mine is controlled by nature and his by the whims of the writer's room. Humorous. That's a humorous

but you did have a you had a couple drinks with us and he had a 5 a.m pickup the next day he still had a couple drinks with us before he left i was like that's a fucking that's a that's not a humorous that's a comedian hell yeah my bona fides oh wait i had a question. Shit. Oh, I lost it. What were you talking about? Ron Swanson's Stake. Oh, we got it back. Thank you. Now, be honest. My wife watches the show a lot. She loves the show.

She puts it on all the time. She's wildly attracted to you. That character. She's like, he's so manly and he's so masculine. You must get dozens and dozens of letters that's that's an interesting question uh and i'm that i'm suddenly resentful um because i i feel like i should be getting a lot of mail um come on you're a good looking guy great hairline i'm grateful grateful. Thanks to your bride.

She's here, by the way. She wants to stop. I think because I used to get a lot of fan mail early on, and I used to, on Sundays, I used to really enjoy answering my fan mail. And that was about 2009, 10. And that was about 2009, 10. And then one of the reasons Parks and Rec, I think, hit, because we almost got canceled every year. We were never a hit show. In later years, once streamers showed up, then it became wildly popular with young people.

And they don't understand that we almost got canceled all the time. We barely- I feel like it's the same with 30 Rock, The Office, all these classic comedies. It's not true, though. The Office was a hit, was a ratings hit. But it blew up on another level, though, on Netflix. For sure. Yeah. Absolutely.

That's also true. I mean, in this weird new advent of, like, comfort shows, because for the first time, even post-cable, you could just have your show available yeah just watch it over and over um but so somewhere towards the beginning suddenly when parks and rec did uh take off to the extent that it did i was suddenly hugely unable to return fan mail like it yeah it exploded and and in order to like just maintain any personal time i also had to not really engage on social media and so wherever that would exist if if anyone is soliciting my sexual favors uh i'm unaware i'm really unaware of it like wow it's out there

i'm glad i'm frankly glad i'm grateful because you it. Wow, it's out there. I'm glad. I'm frankly glad. I'm grateful. Because, you know, my wife and I have a great thing, and we still maintain a healthy amount of heat between us. And so I'm also grateful that it hadn't occurred to me. I was like, where are the – I do hear on occasion from the sort of bear community. Oh, I bet. Depending on what facial hair I'm rocking. Right. Well, you're an alpha.

Well, I appreciate that. You're a top? I mean. In that world. Yeah, by and large, I suppose. Are the bears always the top? I didn't even know that. I assume they're the ones doing the two bears go at it from time to time yeah sure i'm not sure yeah i think i think you can be a pitcher or catcher

and i'm relatively ignorant but i do know there are bears and there are cubs yeah because i've met cubs uh and generally i you know i hate to make a stereotype, but Cubs are probably more likely to be found on the bottom of any arrangement. Especially in baseball. They're in the bottom of the division. Well, boy. Chicago. They're my team. Oh, it's just a bunch of Burt Kreischer's.

And I wish I could argue with you. Well, I've been called an otter. What is that? That's like a scruffy, skinny guy. I'm not a twink level that's too small i'm like a otter and then i think you're a giraffe i would assume are we allowed to say twinks i remember doing on at i did that show at midnight back in the day and jesse joyce was like helping with my punch up of the jokes and i said twink and he goes you can't say that and i was like this guy wrote

roast jokes for greg geraldo he's telling me i can't say this you know i didn't know that was yeah i don't know huh i don't know i didn't know that either i mean i thought it was i don't know maybe not it's a cute word i mean i suppose in some circles it could be considered derogatory that's not how we mean it though but yeah right i thought it was just a category of like a puckish or fairy-like. Yeah, fairy, easy. With an E, F-A-E-R-I-E. Yes, like Staten Island fairy. Like the wee folk. Got it, got it.

Like a nymph. That's right. Not to make too obvious a segue here, but the gay character you played on Last of Us, that's an incredible episode. Great arc. Thank you. That was like, it was a slow burn.

And great segue. Yeah, killer, killer. But I mean, I was watching that and I was just like, the way, it was like a short, it was like a film. It wasn't like an episode of TV. It was. I mean, and hats off to Neil Druckmann who created the video game.

But Craig Mazin who did the show Chernobyl. And also, Craig Mazin also wrote Hangover 2. What? Is that right? He has the most incredible arc. At the time, his son was on a Little League team that my woodshop sponsored. So one of my Little League dads, and he wrote movies's called superhero movie uh at least a couple of the scary movies oh wow so he's this great which ones did he write can you look it up so he knows

comedy he's this great big brain that like writes creates these satires of a form and then one of my little league dads wrote hangover 2 and i was like holy shit what it's so incredible cut to he had the idea for chernobyl and nobody would make it, of course, because they're like, you're going from Hangover to this? And so he kind of had to make it on his own. He had to produce it himself, and, of course, it won every award. Yeah, great. And it's astonishing.

I've got to watch it. Everyone's told me to watch it. I've got to put that on. It's incredible. It stopped us up in the beginning of the pandemic when it came on because it's fucking chernobyl like it's nothing is more bleak yeah it's a true depiction and like people are melting from radiation and shit so we shut it off for a year and a half and then came back to it and it's it's worth it it's that actor from madman right it's uh

jared harris yeah that guy's incredible son of richard harris yeah oh i didn't know that that guy could put him back richard harris yes he was like a legendary yeah they would i mean those guys and peter o'toole and oh yeah and uh um oh what's his name i believe it was a sir now. Probably. Yeah. They would, Oliver Reed, they would do Shakespeare on the West End. And at intermission, they'd go across the alley to the pub. And the stage manager would have to go pull them back on stage for their entrance. And, you know, generally, they would come out and successfully elocute Shakespearean monologue. You know, they would destroy the audience, just totally shit-faced.

There's these old Hollywood stories of Spencer Tracy being such a blackout drunk that the studio would hire people to shadow him and have to, like, carry him into a car so there wouldn't be an article. And you're like, holy shit. Not stop drinking. It's like, oh, no, we'll help you.

Right, right. We'll help you get this drunk. That's great. It's a crazy thing. Craig Mazin wrote that episode. And so, I mean, that – and I guess I'll tell – no, I'm not going to tell this story. This wasn't in the video game, I assume. There wasn't a weird random gay couple.

It's touched upon. Oh, it is. Yeah. it's it's random gay it's touched upon oh it is yeah um and and most people breeze by like you had to really dig in deep to understand uh that they had a relationship so this here are some minor spoilers for the last of us video game please uh which i've never seen beyond seeing like stills of the character. You meet my character and he's angry and he has these interactions with the leads. Frank is, I think you meet, I think he's hung himself. And so you understand that they had a relationship and you see frank's writes a letter about

there's something about a partnership like it's it's intimated and then also in bill's bunker you find gay porn magazines i think so there are clues and frank talks about their part being partners but the letter that you find it's really well done on on neil's part it's angry right it's it's like fuck i always fucking hated you like i'm killing this is my suicide note and i hated you but but if you if you get all the clues you're like oh you you were lovers like yeah this is this is a marriage. You've got to hand it to me. We've come a long way since Frogger. Depth and relationships.

Totally. And hidden meanings. Yeah, this has all the nuance of a child. I feel like video games make more money than movies now, right? It's pretty crazy. I gave, me personally, in the late 90s, I played a couple games and lost a couple weeks to them. Oh, yeah, I did.

Banjo-Kazooie and Earthworm Jim. Oh, I loved Earthworm Jim. And it was the same guy. This is all about Scott King, the guy who gave me my first Lagavulin. It was the first couch I surfed when I got to L.A. And he's a wonderful, brilliant brainiac. We made a really weird movie called treasure island that i'm really proud of it was at sundance in 98 i was couch surfing with him he was a gamer and he was like hey i just

got these two new games do you want to basically eat pizza all day for two weeks and play video games and i was like yeah yeah man hollywood is awesome yeah so we did and we we methodically beat each of the two games wow and then at the end of those two weeks i might as well have been masturbating for two weeks because i was like that was amazing and as soon as it's over i was like what the fuck did i just lost two weeks of my life this is pre-meghan malali it is okay because i can almost hear a vagina drying up you earthworm jimming all day no i met her but a year or two later and and my life got very happy yeah yeah and i've never needed another playstation yeah you talk about like it was a heroin phase i did that for a while

and i got out of it then i met my wife i'm very grateful yeah i've had those lessons in life where i've had the opportunity to try something without getting arrested or or killed and enough to say oh i i get it i get why people throw their lives away on narcotics right or video games or whatever it is and for me uh i have an addictive personality so i'm thankfully able to say all right that's enough of that yeah we were talking before you got here matt and i about uh the episode you did of last of us and it's like first off i think it's cool as hell that you don't see a lot of like badass gay characters on screen right like your character is like a survivalist badass got a gun got a camera set up but then we were talking we're like, was he gay?

Or was he, did he know he was gay? Or does he show up and he's like, I'm lonely? Because I was thinking about it. I was watching with my girlfriend this episode and I was kind of like, I don't know if I would be gay in this type of environment. Then by the end of the episode, I was like, oh, I would definitely have been gay. Right. Because it was like a meaningful relationship.

And that's the only type of relationship you could have. Well, I mean, to sort of answer your intimated question, I think he was going to be goddamned if he was going to be gay because he didn't fit the stereotype like because he was also this badass. And that's how I felt so lucky to get the job because they needed a guy who could use a shovel. And there's only three of us in Hollywood. Harrison Ford passed. And Jane Lynch was not available. And that's one of the two jokes that I've written. I've written two jokes. That's a great joke.

Since I became a humorist. Lesbian jokes, they always work. I was pretty happy. I said it to Mateo Lane, my friend who's a gay guy, the other day. I was like, you know, gay guys make neighborhoods nicer. And I said, but do lesbians? He goes, they build them. That's great.

Yeah, they're not as visible in the parade because they're fixing the floats. It's so cool that you've done these like is it is it okay to to perpetuate positive stereotypes like lesbians are great with tools yeah i don't see why black guys big dicks asians are smart that's right that's exactly what i mean oh no well that's the jewish one is always so we were like jews are successful these pieces of shit i'm like that's your zing i know but also a lot of the conspiracy theories end with Jews eat babies. There's a lot of bad ones. Sure, too.

You wait long enough. That's why you don't see a lot of Jewish conspiracy theories, because we see where they end up. Babies aren't kosher. How could that work? Lesbians are heroic unless they're Rothschilds. Yeah. That's the headline. It's so cool you've been in these movies that are like, first off, you've been

in so many funny movies and funny parts, but then like, are you kind of more hungry for these dramatic roles now? It's a good question. I, like I said earlier, I wanted to get good parts and plays in Chicago theater. I went to theater school at the University of Illinois, which is kind of funny. It's Champaign-Urbana in the middle of the cornfields. But it's actually a great theater school that prepares you, that teaches you how to stand and perform Chekhov. But and so in Chicago theater, I had a theater company with my friends called the Defiant Theater.

And you kind of do whatever is in your toolbox whatever is on the season and so i love doing comedy but i also love being a scary motherfucker like the only time i really won a good award for acting was in a play in 1995 called the kent and, uh, that's me in the Kentucky cycle. I wore a suit and I was very tired. Uh, I, um, it was a seven hour play. It was this Pulitzer prize winning play by Robert Schenken. And I played an Irish indentured servant who was a murderer and it was a scary motherfucker that you love to hate. And so that I thought was my bag. I thought I was like Alan Rickman and in Robin hood where I was like, or die hard. Like, and I thought that was my niche.

But then I also love making people laugh. And so I don't really, my ambitions don't lie in genre. I have been lucky enough to just kind of be open to I read what comes in. And like after Parks and Rec, I never dreamed that I would get that I would have such a effective comedy character. And it took the genius of Mike Schur in his writer's room and Greg Daniels and all these and Dan Gore, who created Brooklyn Nine-Nine, like they thought of what to do with this. Yeah. In so much more of a clever way than I ever could have come up with. And so then after 125 episodes of that, then I got these great offers from hot shots with tv deals that were like and i

was like okay the one thing i don't want to do obviously is another ron swanson and they're like yes of course uh us either so we have this guy he's like an ex-marine he's great at grilling you know and they so i got like three offers of huge jobs that were just another, you know, he's known for his mustache or whatever. Sure. And I was like, thank you so much, but that's like. Too similar. Yeah, I think I'm not thin. My ambitions aren't shallow enough.

I could just make a ton of money playing a guy with a mustache for the rest of my life. Yeah, then you're the one note guy. Yeah. eye with a mustache for the rest of my life yeah then you're the one note guy yeah yeah but isn't it a hard line to walk between between being the one note guy and also like well this is what people want i mean i feel i feel like you can look at a lot of jim carrey's movie movies in the 90s and he's kind of doing a similar character or bill murray or will ferrell even who are all great i agree and it's and that's the thing is like and we all have our, you know, our certain toolboxes. Like when I went to theater school, I aspired to be more of like a Gary Oldman or Daniel Day Lewis, where you become a little more unrecognizable.

Then I think I walked the line between because generally it's hard to disguise my voice. People generally, although in the Lego movie, I play Metal Beard the pirate. Oh, yeah. And I sound like a weird Irish pirate. That's the one time that somebody let me do something that doesn't sound like this fucking guy. It's weird because they want Nick Offerman for the voice and then you come in with that voice. Are they annoyed? No, it was really fun.

It was Lord and Miller who make like the Spider-Man multiverse things. And they made the 21 Jump Street movies and the After Party. These guys are brilliant and prolific. And so we're in a Warner Brothers recording studio. And we're messing around. And the character had a song. And so I start I was just fucking around, you know, like in a stoned way, playing with voices. And we happened upon that voice and they let me do it.

And I was I was so grateful that for once that I didn't have to sound like this. But to answer your question. So I don't I don't care if it's funny or dramatic i was just telling uh a friend i just i just signed on to produce and and be a supporting actor in an independent film that came my way by a total unknown it's kind of his first script and it's a fucking hilarious brilliant script and i i got a hold of the guy and i was like where the fuck did you come like this is great yeah and i the reason i read everything is because by god at some point that motherfucker's gonna show up you never know and it's and it's so inspiring and so my buddy and

i are gonna help produce this movie um i love that and it's and it makes you cry and it's really funny it's a great script so um when i when i was getting offered those post ron swanson roles i talked to my agents and i said you know what i'm just gonna go to my wood shop and make some shit and let's create some daylight let's create a vacuum because nature abhors that and sure enough after a couple months of like saying notice stuff alex garland called me who made the movie ex machina annihilation to be in this machina is like incredible it's incredible it's a masterpiece he for me he's like the kubrick of our day oh yeah and uh or or if if you're a douche, the Kubrick of our day. If you say Bertolt Brescht. Right. But he wanted to meet me to do this sci-fi series called Devs. And I was standing in my woodshop when I got this call and I started crying.

I was like, it fucking worked. Like Kubrick called me. You know, I said no to all the grill guys. And now I get to do this beautiful series. Kubrick called me. You know, I said no to all the grill guys, and now I get to do this beautiful series. Although you have to have a mustache in this movie and talk about it. I did have a beard, but I'm pretty unrecognizable. Oh, great. Yeah, and he didn't require it.

That was my choice. Good. It's cool that scripts are still coming in, because, you know, we see the same Marvel and even Top Gun. Like, they do well, and it's great that theaters are still open in because, you know, we see the same Marvel and even Top Gun. Like, they do well and it's great that theaters are still open and movies are being made,

but it's nice to hear when just a great script comes through. You're like, all right, let's do this. It is. And it's interesting. I'm lucky enough

to experience tastes of both ends of the rainbow because I have a supporting role in the uh mission impossible movie that's coming out next summer wow is another one which yeah it's the seven it's this this is eight eight and it's the second half of seven so it's it's called dead reckoning one and two okay and those chris mccorry who makes those he's made something like a dozen movies with Tom Cat since, like, Valkyrie. Oh, yeah. And that was so fascinating because I don't ever work on that level on big studio things.

What type of character is it? I'm not sure. Yeah, it's a guy with a really masculine beard. I feel like I'm trying to remember what has been, what's out there. I'm a high, I think I can safely say I'm a high up military presence. Gotcha. I don't want to, you know, I don't want to. Do you have scenes with tom cruise

i can't remember was there a guy on an apple box to be honest but but the um but the thing the thing was it well i mean you know it was fucking fascinating like these guys while we were shooting uh i don't know now i'm getting confused in my years, but at least a year ago? Yeah, it was a year ago, a year and a half ago. While we're shooting, the new Top Gun came out, which our writer-director, Chris McQuarrie, wrote. Wow. And so he and Tom are coming to work every day. So we're working, shooting, while their movie passed a billion dollars in like a month.

So they're feeling good. And so there's that sensibility of like they're really. And when they when when Chris McQuarrie, they call him McHugh, when he set up a call to offer me to ask me to come do the job, his opening line, I hadn't met him. So this is us meeting. And he said, so this is really fun. He's a really funny, smart, personable guy. You would think somebody like that would be, I don't know, I feel like James Cameron would be hard to talk to, and he probably is. Because he's openly said that he doesn't like actors.

Oh, really? Yeah. What a weirdo. Sure. They helped him make a billion dollars he doesn't need them he just needs computer versions of them right but chris mccorry is incredibly personable so we get on the phone and he was literally in south africa they had just shot you know tom cruise like jumping off a fucking rocket ship and um and he said nick so

here's the deal uh here's how we make these movies we jump out of an airplane and we start sewing a parachute as we're like we we know where we want to get to we get all these people together and and you know we start shooting and we like literally make it up as we go and so So I got my first pages of script day one sitting in the hair and makeup chair. They brought me my first pages of script. So you don't know what you're doing. That's correct.

I mean, I know my character and I know the circumstance, and there's like eight of us in this big scene. And so we all at the last minute are like, hey, nice to meet you. I'm just I'm learning my lines as I'm about to go into my first day, you know, working with with these A-list actors. And so it's very different from all the theater and indie film shit that I'm that I'm used to. But it's fascinating. And it was interesting because on a certain level, you know, you can't argue that they make very successful, that they're the best at what they do.

Yes, well, we need both. Exactly. And so I feel very lucky that I get to dip my toe into the separate waters. Yeah, yeah. I'm just worried that the indie is going away so i'm glad like it's good to have a pulp fiction and a forest gum you know but i worry without dvd sales to maybe like prop up an office space yeah we talk about this all the time on the pod we love we love movies we love you know obscure movies we love big budget stuff too but but yeah yeah, I agree with Mark.

We need the kind of, you need like a sideways, too. Yes. Totally. A hundred percent. And I'm an optimist, but I don't think it can ever go away because that's the one thing you can never replicate. Like, to each their own. Like, I'm not interested in shitting on Marvel movies, for example. But they're not my bag.

And here's the thing. I mean, I've thought about this quite a bit because I actually auditioned to play Wolverine. Wow. And there's a crazy story. That's hilarious. Wolverine if he just got divorced. This was like, this was 98 or 99 when they made the first one. And it was Brian Singer. Great guy.

He's very friendly. I've been given to understand. They cast a Canadian actor named Doug Ray Scott, and he was doing a Mission Impossible movie. And they kept holding him. They wouldn't release him. And so Hugh Jackman got flown in for day one without ever having met Bryan Singer. So he ended up, of course, getting a lifetime career of this role of Wolverine, which he was incredible at. I remember hearing about it, like, who the hell is Hugh Jackman? This is X-Men, you know?

And now I'm like, oh, that guy, he's pretty good. Yeah, he's a hot guy. I remember at the time, my friends were like, it should be Mel Gibson. I was like, yeah, Mel Gibson. Then five years later, I was like, good thing it's not Mel Gibson. Yeah, thankfully. That would be a different movie. I was a big fight choreographer for the stage.

I love sword fighting, and I love combat. I love Jackie Chan. Sure. I love the sense of swashbuckler. And it's something that I miss with modern CGI and editing. It's very rare that you see a cool character with the panache of like gene kelly so if somebody's gonna beat somebody up very rarely do they like bing like flip a prop right and catch it and you're like oh man they're fucking cool as hell now it's all editing or it's cgi they do something super cool but you know they didn't really have to learn to do it right

and that to me personally uh when cgi took over and it's not just the marvel movies which is like one one fantastical movies now dr strange is one that i love the comic but there's nothing dr strange can do or thanos or you name it that i'm gonna be like how the fuck did they do that but if you go back back and watch Indiana Jones, you know those props, those stunts are physical and real. Yes. The guy slides under the truck with that whip and all that shit. You're like, holy shit. You know that.

And that's a big part of why Tom Cruise still sells so well is because you know he's doing that. They show you, here's Tom Cruise jumping off a cliff on a motorcycle it's insane yeah he's still doing it it really is I mean they really we saw a bunch of footage cut together uh it was on his 60th birthday oh my god what's he running from how does he have that in him still He could just put his feet up in Barbados and take it easy. Why is there a picture of me as Wolverine? We got a lot of windows open. That's pretty incredible.

What does he do? Oh, my God. Oh, this is apparently the biggest stunt in movie history. Whoa. Come on, man. I mean, that's McHugh. God, that's my cue to shit my pants. Come on, man.

He did that. Jesus. And they showed us a bunch of footage that is going to be in number eight. Jesus Christ. Of them getting up to some tomfoolery with a couple of biplanes oh i like straight blades and thank thankfully we're uh i mean yeah they um we're standing next to him and i and i i was so tense yeah watching these stunts uh that i was like thank goodness you're standing here because otherwise there's no way somebody could survive what he does in these things.

I mean, Jussie Smollett must watch that and go, ah, shit. I'm a hoax. I'm a fraud. Yeah. He's really doing it. It's true. But so that, to me, is why we'll never lose the sense of indie films. That's why, you know, we're on strike right now partly because we have to get

it in our contract that you can't replace us with ai which is i think pretty reasonable it is yeah but of course also you can just imagine the capitalists like the the big story that came out that they want to be able to hire an extra and create by the way this is a friend of mine worked on the Fast and Furious where, sadly, Paul Walker died in the middle of it. And they had to create him with four different guys and CGI to finish the movie. A little weird. And ever since then, she was a makeup artist. She was a makeup artist, and she came back and said, be careful, because from now on, any big-budget movie is going to build a digital version of you in case you die in an accident. Right.

So it started with pure motives, and then, yeah, beware. So now producers, for example, want to be able to hire an extra and build you. So they hire you and pay you for one day. So extras get fucked, too. Yes. Here's $30 and a sandwich. And they build you, and then they just use that software for the extras get fucked too. Yes. Here's $30 and a sandwich and they build you. And then they just use that software for the run of the movie. Wow.

And so it's, it's extrapolate that into like, now some people argue the other side of it where they're like, well, if, if you sell the Nick Offerman software, you could be making 10 movies at once and make a lot of money and turn into a bigger asshole than you already are. I, you know, I'm an, I want to come down

on the side of artistry versus commerce. And so I, I insist that there will never be anything approaching the magic of a human being, like put a person on stage and turn the lights on and you can you can't beat that whether it's on screen or stage yes with something computer generated it's phone sex versus real sex you know there's always going to be a winner i was like fucking a sex doll it's not even phone sex it's not a person on the yeah oh yeah good point that's a good point so and so the for for me once cgi took over and dr strange does the most astonishing things i'm still left a little cold where i'm like yeah but he didn't really do it did he and also the marvel stuff there's too many of them. Like, there's literally, like, once Disney Plus took over and started making, like, shows out of it, I was like, it's becoming insane.

Like, I loved Star Wars growing up, but there were three of them. Yeah. Now there's, like, all these extended universes, which is fine, but you do take away the magic. I love The Sopranos. I didn't like the movie. You know, it just lost the magic for me. I think sometimes you take that time off too and the magic's gone It'll be interesting to to talk to like the next generation

Because we both are referencing early Indiana Jones or Star Wars where I would argue that like the weird fucking aliens at the nightclub playing instruments the cantina They have the magic of the Muppets where you know they exist in physical reality. Right. And if you give me a cartoon, even a realistically rendered cartoon of the cantina, I'm just not going to feel the same pull. Yeah. But I wonder if like Gen Z kids or whatever. I don't think they care.

They don't care. They don't care about anything. I don't think they care about artists. or whatever. They don't care. They don't care. They don't care about anything. I don't think they care about artists. I don't think they care.

Like, if an artist paints these, you know, amazing paintings with a brush, it's different than doing it computer generated right now. Yeah, they're just swiping. They're just scrolling. I was at a museum earlier looking at some woodworking at an art museum, and there were these cool artifacts on the wall that drew my eye, and I was talking to the docents, and I was like, wow wow these are really cool i can when you get up close you can see that it's made out of plywood and they're dyed pink and then i

realized they were made with a cnc a computer driven router and i immediately was like this is garbage like i don't care about this yeah yeah and it's it's nonetheless it, I don't care about this. Yeah. Yeah. And it's, nonetheless, it's, I don't even mean, I don't want to fully denigrate, but it lost the magic. Of course. It wasn't a sculpture. It wasn't sculpted. Yeah, it's like when we love stand-up comedy, obviously, when you go, oh, he has writers. You're kind of like, oh, I thought it was out of his brain, his point of view. When a comic has writers, we always lose a little respect.

Because, you know, I understand if you have a TV show, that's one thing. But for your stand-up, if you have writers, it's kind of, it loses the magic. Yeah. I understand that powerfully. I mean, yes, it's one thing. If you're doing a monologue every night, obviously, who can do that? But, yeah, if you're touring an hour, that's your voice. Yeah, exactly.

That makes a difference. You want Rodney. That's right. You don't want the team. But yeah. Oh, I had another thing. Shit. I lost it.

Ron Swanson. No, no. Can I do peeves or anything? Yeah, we should do peeves. Oh, yeah. Oh, right. We didn't talk about our assignment. I did send in peeves, and I even thought of another one.

Please. Uh-oh. Does anybody have what I sent in? And I'll pick between. Yeah, we do have. We'll pull it up. You can do them all. Oh, I remember what I wanted to say.

We'll fill the time. I did see the Indiana Jones new movie. Email. And the AI is unbelievable because they make them look young, and it's pretty convincing. I mean, sure. Every conversation requires nuance. Sure. is unbelievable because they make them look young and it's pretty convincing i mean sure there's every conversation requires nuance sure there's good and bad to all of it of course of course but the whole time you're just watching going i can't believe they pulled this off instead of

this is a good movie i mean i have a book that i want to adapt let me have taste into a film and it's it's a guy's life story and i can play the guy probably from i'm 53 i get you know with makeup i could probably play the guy from like 40 on sure sure but there's there's some great scenes of the guy at 20 like riding a horse and he's a period farmer yeah and so even as i'm conceptualizing the movie i'm like do i what do I do? And I think I would rather cast, try and cast somebody close to me. I think that's cooler, though. You get two performances.

Like, they did that movie on Brian Wilson, and you get John Cusack playing him older, and Paul Dano, and now you get two great performances. Right, right. I understand that that is costing the studio more money, but I think it made the movie so much better. I agree, and I'm trying to the movie so much better. I agree.

And I'm trying to get Cusack to play the young. Keep going younger. We'll see. Joan Cusack. There we go. While I'm stretching for time here, Mark, can you share with him the story from Conan that you shared earlier? Oh, yeah. Well, you had a great line.

I met you for eight seconds, like a rodeo. And I was in they didn't like my outfit so they had to give me a button down to wear so i was in a robe and you walked by and said shave the boy and send him to my room and i got a huge laugh in the room and that was it fantastic so always fun when you can get a zing in i remember that riff and i mean that um that's like a mel brooks thing or something i'd have him shaved and sent to my room oh really we got it killed yeah i don't write some of nick's peeves here um people cutting off in traffic is the first one um yeah well let's jump to number three, podcasts of aimless chat, which I thought might get a laugh, but also is for real. Like, it's a thing.

So now, I mean, for years now, everyone has a podcast. Of course. And I enjoy them or despise them like anybody, like anything. I love some country. I hate some country music. But when there are people that I like and I'm like, oh, cool, I'm going to check out their podcast. And you tune in and they're like, hey, here I am in my garage in Denver with my two friends. And they proceed to talk about a laundry anecdote for the first

28 minutes. I've done that one. And I'm like, I don't know what the percentage is, but it's people who don't think they're cuter than they are. Totally. Totally. Where it's like, hey, I fucking love your, you drew me to your podcast. Indulgence.

At least drive towards some content like yes and it's it's before they bring their guests out and it's uh you know i mean it's a crazy stat but they say i think two percent of podcasts make it past 20 episodes oh that's wild so it's wildly like we're in the way way upper echelon just with a certain amount of episodes well dude the amount of pods that will do that it is insane and that's why we try to have some structure at this but uh it's what's a good mix but you're you're intelligent curious people and so the conversations you didn't do half an hour before i got here that's that's what kills me we did like 15 minutes i think but i'm just to build it up but but you but you're driving towards something like you guys

are interested in the world it's not it's it's navel gazing that where and and when a pod even podcasts of people that i love if there's three hosts i'm always like i don't want to do that podcast because i'm like i'm not going to get to talk yeah yeah that's why we don't let them talk you're all funny yeah would you mind going in the hallway but here's something i want to touch on because i want to there's a little bit of a psa to it because it just happened to me again and this is a little bit rarefied all right because it involves uh funko pop dolls but it doesn't have to but for me specifically here's here's the peeve autograph people now do a thing oh i've seen these they uh no they now do a

thing uh where they find out they have people on the inside at airlines uh put in uh see how many ron swanson ones you can find please uh they have people at the airline i've seen this and they find out when you're flying in to philly to cleveland to vancouver and they fucking hit you at baggage claim they get in somehow. For these dolls, they want you to sign them? Yeah. So there are at least eight of these. There's eight versions of Ron Swanson.

Wow. That's pretty good. Yeah, that's pillbox hat dancing Ron. But baggage claim is already held. You've gotten off the flight. Now you're waiting with the bag. So specifically for me, because these, and I really would like to maybe do some homework to find out what are you actually getting for a Funko Pop that I've signed?

Because these guys show up, and it's always big bearded guys. Yes. There's no way they're keeping it, right? No, no, no, no. No, it's clearly, it's openly, because they have several. They have a bag of stuff. A good way to ruin that for them is, let me make it out to you. Well, no, I try that, but they get around it.

800 clams. Holy shit. I mean, you could get a real job for the amount of work it takes to go to the airport, get in, get these Funkos. That's what I say to them. So, A, please, I basically, a long time ago, even before these dolls, I began saying to professional autograph people, because they also meet you outside of Letterman or Colbert. And when they have it taped off, and it's obviously going to a collector, like a sale, I just say, I don't want to encourage this. Like, you're a parasite and I'm friendly about it, but I'm like, what the fuck are you doing with your life? Like, how long are you hanging out here at baggage claim?

And how much are you to roll the dice that you can sell something I signed? can sell something i signed and i always think of my wife who's who's much more of like a sex symbol and like where i'm like i don't want to encourage you to do this because then you're going to do it to people like my wife who couldn't beat you up good point and and because sometimes they show up at your hotel and i'm like don't please don't like i'm not gonna i'm not gonna participate in this and i did it recently and these guys in Philly got in my face. And I said, listen, let's just take a breath and take a step back. You're getting upset with me because I won't sign your doll. And these guys are in Philadelphia Phillies gear, wearing their jerseys and their hats.

And this guy gets up in my face, this sad Philly fan, and was like, hey, man, we know where your show is. We know where your hotel is. What? Like, have fun getting safe to your hotel tonight. The saddest tough guys ever. And I was like, wow, man. And I got my phone out, and I was like terrorists wow man i and i you know i got my phone out and i'm like videoing the whole thing yeah and i went over to this tiny security guy they're talking to

a mob boss he didn't sign the fucking doll yeah hey he didn't sign it get jimmy get in here where's my where's my funko pop i went and found a tiny asian elderly security guy and was like, Hey, these guys like, you know, and they were already gone. Yeah. He's like,

I love Funko. But the P the P the P the PSA is please don't go to the fucking baggage claim and ask people to sign your shit. Like that's crazy. Get a job. Yeah. Like do something with your life. That's so sad.

I had a weird, I had a weird situation in Toronto a few weeks ago. It was like a really fun gig. I was playing the Meridian Hall Theater. It was really exciting. And it's part of the JFL Festival. So I'm going in after Jenna Fisher and Angela Kinsey. They're doing their podcast before me in the venue.

So all the fans out there are hoping to meet them. And then they turn to me like once one person recognized me, they're like, oh, autograph. And I'm like, I don't want to be your sloppy seconds. You know, it's like you hit on the girl at the bar. She wasn't there. You come to me. But I signed him. He signed the Jennifer.

I signed Angela Kinsey. Yeah. Have you ever seen The King of Comedy? Great movie. Yeah, sure. It's De Niro's profession in that movie. Rupert P ever seen The King of Comedy? Great movie. Yeah, sure. That's De Niro's profession in that movie. Rupert Pupkin. Rupert Pupkin.

He's an autograph seeker. Oh, that's right. He collects and sells them. Damn. Yeah, but then he makes it. Ma! The worst people always make it. Yeah.

That's the moral of that story. Well, we have a Funko here. I'm in. You got another peeve here with the, what is it? The airport stadiums named after corporations. Oh, that's a great one. That's a great one. We're going to Nokia to see the Super Bowl. It's so sadly American.

I mean, our fealty to our corporations is so complete that the poor white socks are now playing in guaranteed rate field or the padres play in petco park where it's like look i understand that you have to slather advertising across every available inch around the baseball field so i'm watching joey vato or like i'm watching some hero yeah and it's like you know hefty hefty hefty where i'm like this can't can't i have my baseball i grew up in new orleans we had the superdome that was like our pride and joy and now it's the mercedes-benz superdome they did a great joke about this in uh basketball where they were playing at maxi tampon arena love that well the storied lakers now play in

crypto.com arena well before it was a staple center it wasn't like it was a cool staples kind of works but yeah staples because there's there's a great r&b group so you can mistake it for like well there's also a staple center i'll take you there there's better than the r kelly center office depot uh the office depot arena or something there's an office depot yeah which sounds like the saddest fucking place in a strip mall not not a place where a team plays it is i mean and so so you know don't just complain offer a solution my solution is get together understand that if you can have class with your corporation it's probably going to help your sales.

Like, I would argue, I don't know that the Staples Center is like, by the way, I need some three-hole paper. Where should we stop? I know. Does it really work? After the game. Oh, that's a good point. Well, next week I'm doing the Funko Center, which is super annoying.

But, yeah, no, that's a great one. It's so true. It strips it with a little less dignity, a little less fun. It's just corporations all day. I love the Cubs. I mean, I'm a lifelong Cubs fan. My whole big family in Illinois. And we love going to Wrigley Field,

and I love singing the stretch and throwing out the first pitch. Did you throw a strike? I have not thrown a strike yet i i threw a ball and then i've done it two more times and i one time i had my cousin do it maybe i i don't or then the other time i had my dad do it oh fun um because we we bring a bus with like 24 people um so yeah i i didn't i did a whole bit with my dad we planned this thing where we come out and he and i we plan this thing where we shake hands and i do an elaborate stretching and then i i get lined up like i'm gonna throw to center field and he's like no no no

other way and so we spent all the time doing the bit and then i didn't like get settled before throwing the pitch because i'm a like you know i got i practiced for like a month of course you gotta practice you don't have a fauci but uh it's something that that i greatly enjoy and i love listening to both the tv guys and the radio guys we have this great guy pat hughes and ron coomer on the radio and and so quite often i never have the luxury where i can sit and watch a game but so quite often like i'll be at my wood shop or i'll be doing getting something done so i listen to the radio more than i have the tv guys and the and both of them it just it cracks me up i mean you could christopher guest could do a whole movie about it

where they're like, okay, and, you know, here's Nico Horner comes to the plate. The plate is sponsored by Solo Cups, and every single thing has a scripted line that they can't get through an inning without hitting, like, eight endorsements. Just like, guys. And they're great at casually just like throwing them out there but i'm like god damn it what can't can't you disgusting anyway this podcast is brought to you by chance.com i will to piggyback on your uh your peeve i will say with stadiums enough with

the the music every two seconds all right everybody here we go how do you feel about this we're doing the hokey pokey. Now we're doing that. And you're like, let me just enjoy it. I went to a soccer or a football game in London. I went to Arsenal. There's none of that. It's just game beer.

It's all for the kids. That's why. That's what it is, I guess. It's not for the adults anymore. But I would offer in British, in European football or footy, the thing that I envy them is in America, we get drunk as a group and just scream violence and filth. And we're fully prepared to fight each other and your kids. I'll beat your fucking kid up yeah damn right he's wearing the wrong jersey in in english football they have a culture that that predates like is ancient where the entire

stadium will sing songs together yes and they're clever and they're by and sometimes they're horrible racist yeah but they're but my favorite was and and everyone knows everyone joins in immediately so instead of just like you know dot dot dot dot dot dot dot dot like we're kindergartners the whole stadium is singing to the other team your support is fucking shit yes we're like everyone on moss and it's it's this it feels like a gladiator arena. Yes, exactly. And it's still drunken and boisterous, but it's like you and your team sucks in a group. It feels neighborly instead of just like illiterate screaming. The players feel kind of corporate in a weird way.

They're not, but. Oh, here. Yeah. Now, you know what? The other thing is every... Sports gambling was illegal, what, three years ago? Oh, man. Now every...

DraftKings, FanDuel, BetMGM. It's insane how it went from illegal to like, is this mandatory? Do I have to bet on the game now? Yeah, right. And again, it's in the channels that you're watching and listening to with your kids, which I don't have kids, but mean it's fucking gambling like you you know we we've learned not to have me come on like selling marlboros like we're like okay that's fucked yeah in every way and now suddenly gam like you and you even have athletes you have baseball players being like hey it, it's me, whatever. I can't think of which one was on, so I don't want to say the wrong one,

but it's me, Pete Rose. About time we forgave him for that one. I'm putting 50 bucks on, you know. That would be great. In the middle of watching it on TV, and I think that's upsetting. Yeah, well, we act like this is a new thing. I mean, they used to have, like, the Velveeta Comedy Hour, you know, or the Pennzoil Variety Show.

Brought to you by Chesterfields. There you go. You made me think of a bit I'm working on. I don't know if there's more here. Can I try a bit? Sure. So this was, you're talking about the fighting at the game, or, you know, the drinking at the game, but, like, every football game now,

it's like I watch the NFL, and it's like every week there's a fight. There'll be women fighting. And one of my angles I want to try is um you know it's always a dude losing the fight who's in the opposing jersey yeah I'm like you're the do you not realize you're the only one wearing green what do you so I think my angle is like that's not where you pick a fight I'm a Jew I'm not walking into a mosque like any of you pussies like Islam let's dance that. I'm going to try it tonight. Going in outnumbered. Read the room.

Read the room. Yes, exactly. But on the flip side, the mosque guy will go into the synagogue with the dynamite vest. You're like, that's how you do it. That's how you win against hundreds. You win, that's right. Can I do it? Let me do a peeve, too.

Hit me with a peeve. I think I got a peeve as well. I got a peeve here's i got a peeve i got a peeve um hold on hold on don't leave nick um oh i got a peeve how about this people uh uh when people say uh i'm gonna make an executive decision that's a fucking peeve it's never like it's always at like uh're at a fucking restaurant. You're not running a Fortune 500. You want to order chicken fingers? I fucking hate that shit. That's a bit. Maybe that's a bit. I don't know.

You guys take your time ordering, but I'm going to make an executive decision. Can we get two guacs and one salsa for the table, please? All right, I got one. How about this one? This one's weird. I can't wrap my head around this one. I'm in a store. I'm kind of lost.

And I go up to a guy and I go, hey, man, do you work here? And he flips. He's like, fuck you. I don't work here. What do you think? I work here. And I'm like, what's so bad about working here? I don't get why that's the biggest insult.

There's always a dude wearing a blue polo at Best Buy, too. It was a guy in a red shirt at Target. Like, you're wearing a red shirt. So it was like, you can see why I made the mistake. Yes, and wouldn't it be worse if you were? Like, what if he was like, I do. I know, you got me. I think, I mean, yeah, I think it taps into the stereotypes, perhaps, that we're afraid of.

Like, I'm trying to think of where would I be that I'd have that reaction. Oh, yeah. Maybe at Chippendales or where I'd be like, no, fuck. Thunderdown under. I have a BFA, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

That job, that's a compliment though if they're like, do you work here? I suppose, yeah, that's not a great example, but. You're kind of insulting

the people who do work here by getting that angry. Yeah, exactly. I mean, also people say to me i don't give a shit i'm like oh no i don't but sometimes i'm like the bathroom's that way yeah you try to help i'm with the comedy cell that people are like i'm like why don't i'm not the bouncer but i'll fucking i'll show you where the bathroom is yeah why not i don't get why i

got so angry i don't work here but i do i can't tell a tell a fucking Phillips head from a standard, so what can I do for you? There you go. Home Depot. Do you have any recs, Nick? Oh, yeah. I do. I mean, I'll tell you what I'm listening to right now. The premier short story writer in our country right now is named George Saunders.

He's amazing. I like George Santos. He's got really great stories. He also is great at fiction. Creative. in our country right now is named george saunders he's amazing i like george santos he's got a really good story he also is great at fiction creative george uh he and he he won uh the man booker prize for his one novel uh called lincoln and the bardo but here's the wreck um go on to your channels and listen to, listen to him, read his own stuff for being the preeminent, like the, the scholarly, you know,

short story writer who studied under Tobias Wolf at Syracuse. And now he teaches at Syracuse. He sounds, he sounds like the most down to earth, like Chicago guy. Yeah. And if you listen to him, read his stuff.

And my rec to, to give you an appetizer, uh, speaking of guac is a story of his called fox eight okay it's a short story um if you can read along because there's some tricks to the way it's written that are visual but you hear him read his stuff and he's just so funny and brilliant and most of all i learn empathy from him. He also has this great commencement speech that came out as a little book called Congratulations, By the Way.

And so these are short takes, but I'm telling you, he's so funny, but it's also medicinal. So this graduation speech is basically just about kindness, which, again, like my soil material, it doesn't sound like super sexy and funny. But he's just a hero to me. The way that he in the same way that Mike Schur exudes kindness with his television comedy. Yeah. George does it with his fiction but it's not corny kindness either it's like it's like it feels real sincere i think some shows do the they they kind of beat you over the head with it where it just doesn't even feel real

didn't he write the thing about the two test subjects who were having sex yes yeah what's that called again it was so good well um is it is it the one that uh hemsworth made into a movie i didn't see the movie but i i yeah i think so yeah it's called like uh pull it up saunders sex test subjects having sex yeah escape or something it was escape from something yeah it's so good it's so funny and weird and like and his um his big uh number one no spider head spider head it's really good um he blown by eight women yeah it's so his stuff is is kind of futuristic but but really banal and funny so for example in the future where there are like theme parks, like we have Colonial Williamsburg, there will be future things where people are like live. Things are so shitty that some people live in the theme park and they their job and their life as they live is like a cave dweller.

Oh, interesting. And so it's like normal banal language of like okay day 721 the you know the the green food paste is blah blah blah and like you fall you fall in love with your co-worker so he takes the banality of daily life and then just gives it the most incredible stakes of of love and loss and it it's and hearing him read his own stuff even though he he has this like really everyman voice is just gorgeous i'm listening i'm re-listening right now to his book uh the 10th of december which is like there's a one of the best stories in it uh called the the something diaries simplifor diaries or something like that um it's cool in the future to order asian girls and you string them up in your yard and they and they do it with

like uh glass fibers that that feed them and sustain their life and it's a it's a it's a status thing so the more girls you have on your clothesline and so it's just people trying to deal with like we do shit that weird as a society it's like i i have large hoops in my earlobes or it's just extrapolating sure to the nth degree so it's people trying to deal with the the reality of like are they okay like yeah is this is this is this not fucked up and the the the um the sophisticates are are like what are you talking about like we are leaders in this community we have 17 girls yeah in our yard interesting it's really fun he's really i've read some of his stuff and he's amazing. I'm definitely going to check this out.

And there was another book you sent, the Walter Berry thing. I saw you talk about it in the news this morning. A Wendell Berry. A Wendell Berry. I just ordered it because I'm curious now. But, you know, I love George Saunders, what I've read. So I'm going to check out this book. Wendell Berry is, I had lunch with him yesterday in Kentucky.

He is my hero, who I also have befriended, he and his wife, Tanya. And they have a farming program. And if you want to know what's going on with our country and where our food comes from and how we should be paying attention to our farmers. Agreed. Start with his book, The unsettling of america which you can hear an audio version in a voice that sounds a lot like this one right here um and then also uh sort of dovetailed with him is michael pollan's omnivores dilemma oh it's that uh these books are incredible where you'll never be able to go to the grocery store

the same again where you're yeah and and all it comes down to is beginning to understand which food is good for you and which isn't which is being made for a profit rather than for nutritional value oh we need that stuff because i went to Europe for a month. I can't eat bread here. I feel horrible. I eat bread over there. I was fine. It's incredible. I mean, just because

they didn't let industrial consumerism take over some of their food systems. They do, like, their capitalists desperately want to become American.

Oh, really? There are factions there in grocery stores, yeah, because you get rich. And they're like, fuck nutrition. Like, fuck your family. there. Because of the money. In grocery stores, yeah, because you get rich. And they're like, fuck nutrition. Like, fuck your family. Yes. I'm making money.

I know. It's terrifying. I've been drinking tap water my whole life. Then you see all this stuff about fluoride. And you're like, Jesus, what are you doing to the American people? So, yeah, I don't have great comedy recs, but I have great life hack recs. I got a good movie rec for you guys. Sometimes I'll just watch.

I'll be on the road or on, like, a flight. And I'll just watch, like, old Siskel and Ebert life hack recs. I got a good movie rec for you guys. Sometimes I'll just watch, I'll be on the road or on like a flight and I'll just watch like old Siskel and Ebert from the 90s. There's something so calming about watching them. They're so good together. Was it Night at the Theater? What do they call it? I don't remember the name of the show,

but they're just together. They're so passionate and great. And one of the movie recs that they threw out. At the movies. At the movies. They threw out a movie rec that I was like, this sounds good let me watch it it's called red rock west with nicholas cage and dennis hopper it's so fucking good it's like a weird obscure noir from the 90s highly recommend really loved it i'm in okay good check it out it's really cool

it's dennis hopper being a psycho and nicholas cage being you know nicholas cage it's really cool with probably some gorgeous utah scenery yeah it's it's awesome is it david lynchie a little bit uh it's you know who did it that guy john doll what else he did last seduction oh that was a pretty cool movie and i mean you know for for the sake of uh fair play let's doff our caps to Laura Flynn Boyle. She's awesome. I love Flynn Boyle. She can do comedy, too. Yeah, I mentioned this to Colin Quinn yesterday, and he was like, I used to know her.

She's very cool. Oh, yeah? Yeah. She was in Men in Black. Yep. Another book rec, too, because it's coming out this weekend. So, Killers of Flower Moon. Read that before the movie comes out.

The book is fucking incredible. So, highly recommend. Oh, is that the Sc the movie comes out. The book is fucking incredible. So, highly recommend. Oh, is that the Scorsese? Yeah. Oh, that looks fun. The movie's coming out this month, but the book is insane. It's like a true crime. Really?

It's like a true crime, a noir, a murder mystery. It's incredible. I love it. It blew me away. So, I'm reading his other book, his newer book now, but David Graham, incredible writer. This and the Napoleon movie. I'm like jerking off to the trailer. Dude, I can't wait.

Joaquin Phoenix is Napoleon. I know. Amazing. It's going to be so cool. I know. I hope that that is presaging me as Teddy Roosevelt. Please, God. Yes.

Well, we know you have to get there. What show are you doing next? Great question. Oh, where am I going next? I have the rest of the day off. Oh, good. The next two days, I'm doing a bunch of, like, The View and Today Show and Seth Meyers. I was supposed to do Colbert, but I got bumped when

the strike ended. They were like, we're going to do way bigger, cooler shit than have you on with your paperbacks. So they shunted me to Seth Meyers, who is a real champagne problem. Like, oh no,

I have to do another primetime network show. Well, check out Nick's book. Get the book. We're big fans. And the audio book. He does it. And we have some dates for the comedy tour.

Oh, humorous tour. Oh, right on. Oh, the 8th? So we have Los Angeles on the 7th. Then we have Windsor, Ontario on October 19th. And you're up in Prior Lake, Minnesota, which I've never heard of. Just outside the Twin Cities. I've played that casino before.

That's a nice casino. I love it. And then Brooks, California on October 21st. Outside of Sacramento. And then on to Baltimore. That's a great room to work. Legendary room. That's north of Miami.

Wow, that's a good spot. Good room. Guys, drink our Bodega Cat Whiskey, bodegacatwhiskey.com. Thank you so much, Nick, for coming on, man. My pleasure. Thanks for having me, gentlemen. Great scotch. All right.

All right. Thank you, man. Good F. What an F. Guys, you can see me on tour. I'll be November 4th at the theater at Madison Square Garden. That's the big one. There's still some tickets available.

Also, late October, you could see me in Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Columbus, Cleveland. And then I will be all over Australia in November. You could see me in Tampa, Fort Myers, Vegas at the Wynn in December, Philly in January. I mean, I'm going to be everywhere truly everywhere so Blue Room in Springfield Missouri December 28th through 30th Buffalo as well your hometown Matt

in December all over Omaha Dallas Dania Beach Madison Oklahoma City Dallas Irvine, Salt Lake City. And that's all leading up to my special, which will be on sale later this month in Boston in March. So see you on the road.

Now go to Mark's. Mark Norman. You could see this guy everywhere. Man, he's got to get bigger font on his website. Mark Norman, you could see this guy everywhere. Man, he's got to get bigger font on his website. Yeah, you got to go to the city, though. Zoom in on the city.

Zoom in on the city? Yeah, right there. Hershey, Tacoma, Oklahoma City, Mark Norman. You could see him in Dallas, Portland, Maine, Providence, Cleveland. He's going to be in Grand Rapids, Denver. Two shows in Denver. Look at that shit. Grand Junction, Maine. Providence. Cleveland. He's going to be in Grand Rapids. Denver. Two shows in Denver. Look at that shit. Grand Junction, Colorado.

Yeah. Hartford. Hartford, Connecticut. What's at the bottom? Concord, New Hampshire. Mobile, Alabama. And hometown hero, New Orleans, Louisiana, Mark Norman. She's got to piss, so I started reading yours. Oh, all right.

I'm ready. What else you got there? Sacramento, Santa Rosa. Two shows, Omaha, Kansas City, Norfolk, Baltimore, Birmingham, Shreveport, Tampa, Jacksonville, Columbus, Ohio, Indianapolis, Lexington, Kentucky, Charlotte. We don't have to do the whole. MarkNormanComedy.com. New dates added.

You don't say tour. Come on by. It's going to be a hot one. New hour. Hell yeah. Same here. I'm gearing up for that one at samuel.com slash shows. Buy Bodega Cat Whiskey at bodegacatwhiskey.com.

Nick Offerman was awesome. Great ep. And thanks for listening, guys. Hell yeah, Bodega Cat. All right, let's bring a weenie down. Weenie. All right. Sunday's the day for my next bender. Weenie down. Weenie. Alright. Up on the roof like a cop's coming And naked Samuel is feeling dangerous

I'm out to lunch here in New Orleans This woman doesn't look like I remember her And I get down in the same way We might be true