WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 957 - Charles Demers

Episode Date: October 8, 2018

Writer and comedian Charles Demers has a lot of thoughts on the differences between the United States and his home country, Canada. Differences that are political, social and professional. But he also tells Marc his thoughts about how Canada presaged Donald Trump in one specific way, how socialized medicine in Canada helps the national psyche as well as individual lives, and how the alt-comedy scene in Vancouver took off with the help of a couple prominent American comedians. This episode is sponsored by YouTube Music, The Alec Baldwin Show on ABC, Policygenius, Stamps.com and SimpliSafe. Sign up here for WTF+ to get the full show archives and weekly bonus material! https://plus.acast.com/s/wtf-with-marc-maron-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly, host of Under the Influence. Recently, we created an episode on cannabis marketing. With cannabis legalization, it's a brand new challenging marketing category. And I want to let you know we've produced a special bonus podcast episode where I talk to an actual cannabis producer. I wanted to know how a producer becomes licensed, how a cannabis company competes with big corporations, how a cannabis company markets its products in such a highly regulated category, and what the term dignified consumption actually means. I think you'll find the answers interesting and surprising. Hear it now on Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly. This bonus episode is brought to you by the Ontario Cannabis Store

and ACAS Creative. Lock the gates! Alright, let's do this. How are you, what the fuckers? What the fuck buddies? What the fuckadelics? What the fuckocrats? What the fuck publicans? Whatever few of you are left listening, I don't know. How's it going? I'm Mark Maron, this is my podcast WTF. How you holding up? I know, I know, not great, many of you.

I know, myself included. It's rough going. Rough going this weekend. Rough going this year. Rough going the last couple. But I do want to say, I want to say a couple things. First, I'd like to talk about a thing I'm doing that is, well, it should be uplifting. It should be spiritually comforting on some level. I'm doing, I'm hosting a great event, I think. It's not a political event,

but it's a music event. And I just wanted to draw a little attention to it. It's called Across the Great Divide. And it's a benefit concert for the American Music Association and the Blues Foundation. It's going to be here in Los Angeles

at the Ace Theater on October 19th. I'm hosting it and performing that night will be John Prine, Bob Weir, Lucinda Williams, Doyle Bramhall II, Shemekia Copeland, Larkin Poe, Joe Louis Walker, Cash Neal, maybe some special guests, and Jimmy Vivino, my old buddy from the Conan Show, the amazing guitar player and band leader, will be the music director and band leader of the event. And you can still get tickets for that. You can just go to acehotel.com and click on the calendar there and get tickets. It's going to be a fun event. And who knows, maybe Jimmy will let me play a number.

That said, today on my show, on this show that you're listening to now i have sort of a i would like to consider a special guest because i don't get many guys down here from canada and uh charlie demers is a comedian uh social activist uh and writer uh who i've worked with many times and a lot of you may not know him but he's a sweet guy he's a smart guy politically engaged guy and a very funny guy he's open for me many times up in canada and we've shared meals and he's just one of the the lovely people that i've met in my life doing this job uh you might know him actually because he is uh he's actually if have kids, you've probably heard him as a voice on stuff like My Little Pony and Beat Bugs. But today, he's actually promoting his book.

It's a comedic crime novel called Property Values, and it comes out on October 16th. And you can pre-order it now. It's a great book. It's a great book. It's a smart book. So look forward to that conversation I'm going to have with Charlie Demers in just a few minutes. I just wanted to get that up front because some of you, it's interesting. I get emails and feedback from a lot of people over the years. You know, my my interviews with guests that people all know and that draw people in that may not have listened to show or one thing. But a lot of people have told me over the years that my interviews with people they've never heard of are generally better interviews. And you look, I have my own opinions and I'm not I don't think they're they're better necessarily. But I think what makes them interesting is that people like yourself out there listen to the show and you're like, I don't know this guy. Am I going to listen? And those of you who are into the show and not just into celebrity,

you'll end up hearing these cats you've never heard or these women that you've never heard. And I do think women can be cats, too. I'm very sensitive to my language right now at this moment in history. But but they tend to some people tend to enjoy the unknown people to them better than the largely known people. So I don't know why I'm giving all this setup. I'm just a big fan of Charlie. And I was happy he was down here for doing some book promotion and meeting with people. Because he's one of the good ones. He's one of the good guys in this racket of comedy.

So onward. He's one of the good guys in this racket of comedy. So onward, I'd like to thank everybody who came down to the intimate shows at Dynasty Typewriter here in Los Angeles, a great venue. And on Thursday night, we had a pretty freeform show. A lot of the stuff I've been working on, trying to put together, but it was about an hour and 40 minutes. And a lot of it was new stuff. I had a lot of freedom of mind, which I like to do.

And I like to have in a small environment. But Saturday was a little rough. Saturday was a little rough, folks. I will not deny that. Saturday night, that was the day that all women in this country were psychologically, emotionally and spiritually assaulted by the confirmation of Judge Brett Kavanaugh. action on behalf of this Senate and this president is trauma. And it's trauma to a large group of people, mostly women, but all of us. Now, there are obviously two sides to this. And I still am fascinated at how close it is, that there is sort of an almost 50-50 divide on how people feel about what's going on in this country.

And I am baffled by that. And I don't need any feedback from right-wing people about, you know, the reason you're baffled is because you're whatever. There's a hyper-nationalistic shit show going on in this country, and it seems almost unresolvable. But the bottom line is, is that on Saturday, But the bottom line is, is that on Saturday, all women in this country were psychologically, emotionally, spiritually and within the laws of this country and how they work assaulted. And that's insanely traumatic and can create a lot of hopelessness, a lot of anger, a lot of frustration. But the issue becomes sort of like, well, how do we move through that? How do you stay engaged and take action?

And obviously, we're all hoping the voting works. And when I say I hope the voting works, I hope that people get out. I hope that all of you are are getting registered you do need to register to vote and i also hope that that uh that it works just on a uh on a on a bureaucratic and technological level that it's not going to be fucked with because this government that we have it's done nothing to protect that on purpose obviously having performed on saturday night for you know they were my crowd They came to see me and mostly grownups. It was 10 o'clock at night. But when my buddy Ryan Singer went on stage, I could hear the type of laughter that was happening. I know that kind of laughter. I know the laughter that I experienced working in New York City in the weeks and months after 9-11.

There was a laughter on behalf of people. People didn't know what to do with themselves. So they come out and they want relief. It's not even that they want distraction. They want connection and they want some sort of reprieve. They don't want to get lost. They don't want to run away. But they just want a break.

They want an engaged human emotional break from you know what seems like a dire and hopeless situation which it does seem like that and i could hear the quality of laughter that type of laughter the laughter of of trauma you know comes in spurts it's like yeah it's almost a a desperate reflex to to find some sort of relief. And I could feel it Saturday night. And I had to address conversationally in between bits my own sort of sadness and frustration at what's happening. But somehow or another, we have to go on. We have to keep living.

And we have to do what we can do. You do what's in front of you. And you also, you know, make plans to do whatever action you can to, uh, to correct the course, or at least give it your best shot, uh, to, to, you know, make our way through this fucking dark period. We, no one knows what's going to happen, but there, and there's no real way to console yourself. I mean, you know, countries have fallen.

We see, we've seen it in my lifetime all around the world. Things shift, places become shitholes, places become tyrannical disasters, dictatorial disasters, a fucking banana Republics. And we always thought we were above that.

And we always thought that, that America. And we always thought that America, given that we were given a certain amount of freedom to sort of live the lives we want to do and make a way for ourselves, that there is a, it's not so much entitlement, but I can't fault people that got too comfortable in the sense that that's sort of one of the reasons we live here, one of the reasons we love this country. But I do think a lot of us got over the eight years of Obama, there was a kind of, what were we doing? Working on me, being mindful, getting our core tight. But yeah, now we are where we are and I'm not blaming anybody. That's just, why not experience relief and excitement and progress? Well, now it's all been shattered and

we have to figure out how to re-engage and not crumble into ourselves and allow and turn that anger inward as they say which is what depression is and now there is plenty of evidence for what we assume the future will be that's real anger that you should feel. And if you do turn that on yourself, you will get depressed and apathetic and crumble. So don't start drinking again. Don't stay in bed all day. Live your life. Take care of the people that are in your life. Do the right thing by them.

And then, you know, take the actions that we can, however you're able to do it with the time you have to try to do your civic duty and do what's right. So take care of yourselves and stay strong. Stay focused. You know, process the grief, process the anger. But don't don't internalize it. Don't give yourself cancer and don't take yourself out of the game and don't drink if you're sober.

OK, and vote, could you? So Charlie Demers, this is a special conversation because he's a Canadian comic, but he's also a Canadian activist. And in Canada, there's still the ability to have an active political dialogue and social dialogue around things that uh you know many people don't even know the definition of or certainly the application of in this country like socialism class differences you know indigenous peoples so it was it was a it was a it was a very well rounded and great conversation he's a great guy and his new book is a crime novel that is a politically informed it's called property. It comes out on October 16th. You can pre-order it now. And this is me talking to Canadian comedian, Charlie Damaris.

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For alcohol, you must be legal drinking age. Please enjoy responsibly. Product availability varies by region. See app for details. Be honest. When was the last time you thought about your current business insurance policy? If your existing business insurance policy is renewing on autopilot each year without checking out Zensurance, you're probably spending more than you need.

That's why you need to switch to low-cost coverage from Zensurance before your policy renews this year. Zensurance does all the heavy lifting to find a policy, covering only what you need, and policies start at only $19 per month. So if your policy is renewing soon, go to Zensurance and fill out a quote. Zensurance, mind your business. These are my big problems. I mean, I aspire to them.

Yeah, that and my diet, which I don't want to bring up again because you've told me that you're tired of people half your size. Yeah, well, I said a third, but that's very kind of you. Well, they're watching their weight, these guys you were standing with? I mean, fat is one of those problems where when people talk about it, and someone who is just objectively much, like they're standing there, they know that you're a fat guy and they're like a regular size guy and then they'll talk

about how fat they are. Right. And how, like just with that feeling of disgust at themselves. Right. And, and,

you know, like Graham Clark has a joke about like when a, when a beautiful person says like, oh, I look like I'm such a mess. Yeah. Well,

you must think I'm a monster. Like, if you are worried about, so yeah, I'm such a mess and he's like well you must think i'm a monster like if you are worried about so yeah i'm in a like you know trader joe's yesterday with um yeah thin young friend who's accounting the uh he goes oh five grams of sugar in this um fat-free yogurt yeah it's five grams of sugar that's up there yeah and uh i i was like i gotta stay a whole week with them so what are you gonna do what i mean i mean i don't know if it implies that you're a monster but uh it does imply that your friends are self-involved uh i mean that's a possibility i mean i think uh it's i think taking a certain amount of, I do, like I do try to eat healthy when I can.

I'm more of a, it's more of a binge problem than a eating bad food problem. I've always, I've always wondered that, but it's hard to breach the topic with that. You've always wondered that about me? Well, just about people who are a little heavier in general. Like it's like, cause I, well, I mean, we went out to eat and you weren't holding back. No. are a little heavier in general like it's right because i well i mean we went out to eat and you weren't holding back i mean that's kind of you to remind me no from what i recall no there was blueberry gastrique involved there was a blueberry gastrique a famous uh i mean what was the name of

that place argo yeah the argo cafe i mean this could be the the like the death knell if i like um because you know everybody keeps worried about the secret's going to get out about the Argo. About the Argo. And it'll just be overrun. It was almost on- Are you mean the Argo Cafe in Vancouver? Ontario in second.

Yeah. But yeah, there was a blueberry gastrique. Yeah. A duck, I think. Was it duck? It was a duck confit. Yeah. I always get the duck.

I mean, and when you're eating duck at lunch. I mean, I was at the Argo a few weeks ago with a friend who, you know, is a high up at an animation studio that's close by, Atomic Cartoons. They're like a couple blocks away from the Argo. And we went over and there's a lunch specials board. Yeah. And we got brisket which was served on gnocchi.

Brisket and gnocchi, that's the end of your day. Like it's not a lunch. It's like afternoon canceled. Yeah. Yeah. And then those are the moments when you have a problem. But no, I would say like on the whole that's so good i tend to eat fairly healthy things in unhealthy amounts would be i i would think yeah the tendency um i that brisket on nokia i'm still hung up on that that like uh that's a

i used to work at a deli and they used to make a sandwich if you could call it a sandwich it was basically brisket in between two potato pancakes you know i just nearly did a spit take all over yeah and i think there's like gravy involved that you know just sort of like crazy i mean it sounds so good yeah i've been on i've been on a sugar detox once i get into a diet thing i could get i've gotten emaciated in my life and thought like this is amazing and people are saying are saying, are you sick? You look sick. Yeah. You get older, you get gaunt.

Yeah. But like, what's the process? So you consider yourself heavy. I mean, you're being very sweet about it. I mean, I'm a very fat man. I mean, it's, so I'm the second generation in my family that I know of who, so my mom, both my mom and I were very young when we lost a parent.

So my mom lost her dad when she was seven and my mom died when I was 10. She had cancer. Yeah. And we both, I guess, you know, and I've heard this, there's a great Canadian writer named Paul Corrington who talked about, you know, when his mom died in his mid-teens, then he just spun off into booze and drugs. Really? Because that's what you do with the...

But if you're 10 or 7, you don't necessarily... You don't think, oh, I'm going to... So I've often wondered... Start shooting dope. Exactly, yeah. So maybe if I'd been 20 when that had happened, I'd be a heroin addict. And thin. And thin. Exactly, yeah. So maybe if I'd been 20 when that had happened, I'd be a heroin addict. And thin.

And instead I got on the gastrique. I got right on the gastrique. I guess that makes sense, you know, that sort of like the kind of comforting, like strange attempts at self-parenting when you lose a parent or they're detached or whatever. Because you're sort of left to your own devices emotionally to feel good. I have been told that there is a, um, uh, like orphaned among obese men, uh, like some sort of orphaning or quasi-orphaning. It is kind of overrepresented that it does tend to be like, um, and you know, I mean, when, when my, when my daughter was born and I would watch her, you know, nursing at my wife's breast, it occurred to me that like, you're struck by this feeling of like every feeling of safety and security and comfort that she's ever going to have in her life is going to be essentially like a metaphor for what she's literally feeling right now. Yeah. And so you can definitely understand it,

how putting stuff into your mouth, feeding yourself, it is kind of... It's very satisfying. Yeah, and it's a surrogate kind of parenting. And also, yeah, right. And then when you're not eating, it's just you're panicking.

Yeah, yeah. It's like I get that with like i notice that about myself in terms of doing those things like to to feel better you know there's nothing better than just shoveling food into your face really i mean and i've done a lot of drugs i mean there's nothing more satisfying than just eating and when i'm not eating or i'm not fidgeting with something or i'm not like engaged like i was smoking a cigar when you walk up to here, they're just like, if I'm not on my phone, if I'm just sitting there, I got about 10 good minutes with that. I thought you were going to say seconds.

I mean, minutes is like, I feel like, isn't that normal? Can people sit for longer than that? Sure. I think so. Wow. But like, I can sit for longer, but the thoughts aren't going to be great. No. No.

It's going to go downhill. Yeah. But it's interesting that you can tag it to that. So she died when you were 10? I was 10, yeah. She got very sick when I was five. And so she would be in and out of the hospital. Sometimes it'd be six weeks at a time.

Sometimes there'd be kind of a warning. You'd go to school and then come home. And during the day, mom had had to go to the the hospital and maybe she was going to be there for weeks. Oh. And, you know, it's one of those things where, I mean, it was an early political lesson because it was laid out to me in pretty clear language for a little kid that, like, if we lived in a different country, this could have wiped us out. I mean, it is essentially, it's the kind of thing where, like, if we'd been a different country this this could have wiped us out i mean it's

essentially it's the kind of thing where like right uh if if we'd been in the states right uh it would have been i would have had um all the emotional trauma but also my family would have been just economically if they didn't have the insurance yeah yeah um and so it's almost uh yeah it's it's it's a political, but there's something also sort of like indoctrinating about it. Like totally Canada is the best. I mean, these kinds of moments do keep coming up in my, you know, the prime minister who legislated official multiculturalism in the 70s, Pierre Trudeau, that's what led to my mother-in-law moving from Chicago to Toronto. She's from Hong Kong.

And on my wedding night, my mother-in-law was quite into her cups, and she demanded that I acknowledge that Pierre Trudeau was responsible for my marriage. That if it weren't for Pierre Trudeau. Trudeau Sr. Trudeau Sr., yeah, Justin's dad. Yeah. That I would not have met the love of my life. Now she's doing it to you.

Yeah, exactly. That's what I'm saying. Canada's the best. Yeah, I mean, believe me, dude. I mean, I think I talked to you right when Trump was elected, and I looking. I talked to you and then you the me the the 300 pound dude who like but the the the the older brother is like is like strung out on meth and so it's like you're just a fat guy so you don't have to deal with your own problem conjoined twin yeah it's strung out on meth because canada is like canada's got horrible problems with inequality and racism

and environmental devastation all these kinds of you know there are there are huge parts of the country on on um you know indigenous reserves where you can't drink the water that comes out of the sink yeah but every night and we all watch american television we watch american movies you turn on cnn and there's some guy you know some senator from wherever saying oh wait we're presenting the bill we're gonna use mexican babies as snowshoes and like yeah you know you're like yeah well compared to that dude yeah we don't it doesn't seem as nuts but it's it's a real problem because people put off dealing with canada's very real problems i think that i mean i've always assumed and I might be wrong, that there's something

about being able to live with some self-respect because you can get sick and not be afraid that it does change the disposition on almost a genetic level. Totally. You know, that there's sort of a comfort that what I find when I go to Canada, I may be romanticizing because I've gone both ways. I've gone up there and thought, you know, this is the most boring place in the world. And then after Trump, I've gone up thinking like, this is the way life should be up here. Well, boring is good in some way.

No, I think that's true yeah i think that it feels like there's that whatever component that socialism on whatever level may bring is a a lack of of the insane kind of greedy competition that that is at the core of almost every transaction, both emotional and financial in this country. I mean, yeah, but we have those guys. Am I romanticizing it? We have those guys too, but they have to be passive aggressive about it. So there is, to a certain extent, there is a kind of honesty to at least a money grubber

in the United States, like doesn't feel like they have to hide it. Doesn't feel like the, like I would, you know, I was in Beverly Hills earlier today and you know, there's guys driving around in a Ferrari. Yeah. And I mean, any, you, for as a Canadian, I just think like even a rich Canadian would be embarrassed to be that on the nose, like to drive a Ferrari in Beverly Hills. They would be, but there's an honesty to that a Ferrari in Beverly Hills. They would be... But there's an honesty to that at least where you know what you're dealing with.

And I think Canadian racism is much more passive aggressive. Canadian greed is much more passive aggressive. It's just... And I don't want to say that it's... I really wouldn't want to come across as saying like things are just as bad. So you're saying they don't use the N-word, they just give a condescending look?

Some of them use the N-word, but yeah, definitely condescending looks. You know, there's, although now, I mean, in the age of social media, you get to see now every little explosion. Sure. So there was a small town you know coffee donut donut shop uh confrontation that went viral recently from small town canada there's definitely some ugliness i mean there's some there's some really good parts well that's the other problem with with the type of shameless ugliness that's going on now here is that it kind of somehow or another gives some kind of zeitgeistian free pass to monsters everywhere.

I mean, it's like, I remember Slavoj Žižek during the George W. Bush torture stuff talking about philosophically the important distinction between a society where we know torture is happening, but we pretend it isn't. Yeah. Versus the guys just go, yeah, no, we torture. Yeah. You want to see a picture? Exactly. that desire for the hypocrisy actually does play a slightly civilizing role of just like wanting to pretend that you're not doing well yeah denial is an important uh uh part of

civilization yeah it's an important component i don't think that's true yeah see what i um into at least pretending you're civilized for the most part that you know that you know what we're living in now is some sort of strange uh mixture of insane constant barrage of lying and yet the most transparent uh government that we've had in years yeah because of the persistence of the press and just because of the shameless behavior of of these uh craven monsters. But that was the terrifying thing. And in a way, that was where a situation in Canada

kind of preceded the American version, which was what we had with Mayor Rob Ford. In Toronto? Yeah. Yeah. You know, that was the first time somebody said, well, what if I just didn't resign in disgrace? Like, what if I just, I know you're saying I have to yeah but i don't legally have to right and if it's just a you know that

i'm being governed by social norms what if i just yeah and and it's the same thing of like what if i just don't mind if you call me racist well that's the fucked up thing is like you know i've been doing that bit on stage or talking about it. And like, so there are no rules, apparently. Yeah. There was just an understanding laid down by a certain continuity of presidential behavior, but nothing was written down. So I say like, you know, I think it's time we make notes. We should make notes and people should write some shit down. Yeah.

If we survive this. Yeah. Norms. Yeah. It's just like we just assumed that people would behave properly. Why would anyone assume that? Well, the other thing is that feeling of like when your guy gets in. So like, you know, there was an immense concentration of executive power during the Obama years, too.

Sure. There was a continuation of what was happening under George W. Bush. But because people felt like, wow, this is one of our guys. This is a good guy. Right. It's okay. And what could because people felt like, well, this is one of our guys, this is a good guy, it's okay. And what could go wrong? Well, yeah, I guess it was always the assumption constitutionally that these people, these leaders would put the nation into some sort of priority around how people are treated,

respect for the law, and respect for the actual system of government. But once the government over time got turned out to be just as like as pgo works at a parliament of whores you know that they don't give a fuck yeah about the country really that's the one thing i will give canada is i feel like the lies that we tell are at least the good lot like so there is this idea of like canada's not we don't conquer countries we're a peacekeeping country all of that is bullshit but at least it's nice that that's what people want to believe about the country yeah um and uh and i so it is kind of you know the lies that a civilization tells itself right are important the other thing

you risk and you're you're probably more lefty than i am i don't know i consider myself uh you know a lefty yeah to a degree but i mean but but there's an idealism to progressiveness that is almost unattainable and and that's you know what we're dealing with in this country, I think a bit is that we don't have a real leftist movement that has any traction governmentally. So when you get real leftist thoughts and ideas, you get people that are to the right of the leftist, but still within the same party ish. Yeah.

We're like, you know, you're going to fuck this up. You know, we got nothing but monsters in 48% of the country that just want to, you know, they, they,

they don't want to steamroll all of it so if we're going to have this problem amongst ourselves you know how are we going to move forward and then there's always a negotiation which implies that denial that you're talking about yeah i mean i think the the thing that uh the left the problem is that the left and the center often have to work together yeah but the left understands the anger that's on the right yeah and then the center doesn't just doesn't understand anger the idea they think that anger always has to be ugly and i think you know people on the left and people on the right they way right right way right they they they yeah they at least they they get that right something's

wrong yeah and that being angry about the situation is a natural human. Now, the question is, do you take that in a really ugly, racist, misogynist, like how does that anger come out? Sure. Because there are ways for anger to come out that can be really beautiful and can actually make things better. Yeah, transcendent. Yeah.

Or at least transgressive culturally, but elevating. Yeah. Yeah. So, like, okay, so you're being told as your mother is dying that you're better than Americans. Yeah. Because at least we still have a house. Yeah. So my dad would say, you may have lost your mother, but always keep your smug sense of self-righteousness.

No one can take that from you. But I think the point I was going to make, and oddly I'm going to get back to it in terms of seeing your own daughter it is, right? Yeah. Nursing is that this idea of primal union, the idea that there is a period in a child's life where they are in true symbiotic relationship with the mother to the point where like this is something i learned psychologically that that at some point you have to actually disrupt that on purpose yeah in order for that person to have a sense of self so if that isn't actively like if you continue the symbiotic dynamic through codependency as the child ages you're going to get somebody that's going to be in need of self-parenting

and it's going to end up a bad thing. You know what I'm saying? And it just makes you feel like too much love or not enough love, they're going to end up fucked. It's so hard to... I always tend towards the slightly sappier... Too much love?

End, yeah. Well, I think it's a matter of... If I look back at my life you know just that an ability to be uh firm and have you know uh identifiable uh values yeah uh and and not buckle uh to pouting yes yeah you know you you you might be serving that purpose no but that's the thing too is like when you as a parent i mean the the discipline that you give is a form of love and and and saying no to your kid is a form of love you just gotta sell them on that well i mean well you don't really they're much smaller than you and they can't reach these things on their own uh like uh and and she'll figure that out yeah down the line how

old is she she's four oh um so i mean right now it's just peak just everything's adorable everything's hilarious like it's she's just this little um person she just like where there's just every day there's some two weeks ago she says, because my father-in-law was in town. She's figuring out who's got penises, who has vulvas. And then she says to me, she says, daddy. She's figuring that out because everyone's naked? Yeah. Well, this is the other thing about Canada that you guys don't realize.

A lot of nude partying. Parenting nude. Yeah. She says to me, she says, Daddy, do you have a penis? I said, yes. She goes, do you have an ugly penis? Like, that's the follow-up? Like, she's got a sub-question.

What's she using as her gauge? You might want to ask that question. Well, yeah. um what's she using as her gauge i mean you might want to ask that question well yeah i mean and then it was uh but uh it's a it's a constant like uh i remember her walking in on me in the bathroom yeah uh when she was much younger yeah and she just points um she points at my crotch just that you're vulva there yeah like uh just kind of making chit chat yeah um but uh you know that whole thing is very different for me because you know like i said i lost my mom when i was 10 i was in a house with it was me my brother my dad yeah so the whole like feminine side of the the world yeah it was like

it's uh and now you know i should qualify that by saying like both my dad and my brother are gay. It was not a macho house by any stretch. They're both gay? They're both gay. Huh. I mean, if you could see me, you'd know how hard it is to stay straight, you know, 18 years in the house with this. No, it's, yeah, they're both gay. How'd that happen?

Well, I don't think there are any rules. But I mean, was your dad gay when he was married? He was. So he... Oh. So, well, he was... Yeah. So this is...

So he came... So my dad's from Montreal. Oh, that explains it. Yeah. It's not gay. It's European. Yeah, yeah. He's Quebecois, Francophone, French speaker.

In the 70s, he hitchhiked out to vancouver yeah he's about 20 years old and he writes a letter back to my grandmother in montreal coming out of the closet to her yeah it wasn't a general coming out but he let her was vancouver a groovier place at the time or like yeah i think it was just it was a combination of like, he was hitchhiking with his buddy who had a sister who was working as a nurse in Vancouver. I think it's a really attractive place for a lot of French Canadians because it's, Vancouver's almost totally outside of the historic English French antagonism. It almost seems swedish yeah i mean it's it's a it's an it's an asian city in a lot of it's a pacific city i guess it just looks new architecturally yeah everything is sort of uniform in some way vancouver and chicago had the similar

thing of like they both had fires early in the history of the city and had to decide like how they would rebuild right and chicago was like we're just going to make this the most magical architectural place on earth and vancouver was like we're going to make the most forgettable buildings anyone's ever seen we're just going to take it all from the same set of plans yeah just in case it all burns down again uh so um but yeah he ended up in Vancouver. Vancouver did, as it does today, have a pretty thriving gay scene. Yeah.

But then he met my mother. They were working together. He met my mother. Doing what? They were working dispatch, which they were taking like emergency calls. Oh, interesting. Yeah. which they were taking like emergency calls so and they they met they fell in love and he wrote my dad wrote another letter back to my grandmother saying I've

scratched woman I fall in love yeah and so so they were together for you know until until my mother died in 1991 and then um all through my teens i thought that my dad was like you know one of those sicilian widows who just like enters a period of mourning that just lasts the rest of his life because he never moved on really romantically well no he did no i know but you thought that but there was nothing no action no boyfriends i mean he he would have friends who would come over. Did they seem like they were having a better time than most men? There's no flags, no rainbow flags.

I think even in those days, it was not that long ago, but 20 years ago, 25 years ago, the worst thing in the world you could think of was like your dad was gay right right um at least to your friends i guess oh no i guess you know what i mean as a teenage boy um and so i had i i had a i had an idea that he was gay when i was about 13 and i just pushed it down to a place where i where i couldn't um right see it right so he then came out to us when he was uh when i was like 20 oh um and uh the you know by then i was already you know totally fine with it obviously politically and more like like not at all the only thing that was messed up was that i realized in retrospect

that i had built up a whole false idea of how to properly grieve and mourn, which was to just like stop your whole life dead in its tracks. Like you never move on. Cause I thought. Oh, so you thought you were emotionally aping your dad? Well, yeah. Cause he was, to me, he was this hero who had never, he had never replaced right his love so how did you manifest that as a kid i mean like you know what was your version of that's i mean it's a good

question i think it's still sort of playing out uh now i'm in my um i'm i'm gonna be i'm 38. Yeah. I was 10 years old when my mother died. And I've only recently started to get beyond the trauma of that, even at just a basic physical level. It's stuck with me a really long time. That feeling of loss? The feeling of loss, the feeling of just visceral anger of having had that taken away. Yeah loss the feeling of loss the feeling of like just visceral anger of having had that taken away yeah the injustice of the feeling of like uh of just being able to kind of start crying kind of at the drop of a hat right that feeling of um yeah if you think about it or something hits you the wrong way and you start um it just uh it it never it never became a scar it was always scabbed over. Like it was never.

Right, right. Never fully healed. And the scab would come off occasionally. Yeah. And I think part of that was that I thought that you kept that connection with that person alive by basically never moving on. We're sort of talking about, or I was anyways, about the sense of primal union needing to be sort of um you know uh disrupted but disrupted in a managed way as opposed to that kind of like wrenching why i think that it seems that the grief should have been as well yeah yeah oh the grief disrupted that's a really that's what

i mean that that you know what you're holding on to is is this strange kind of the symbiotic uh hold of her death totally right so that it just never goes away because there's like anger bitterness all those all the stages but they're all things that you're feeling that uh are passions that you're feeling for this person and so as long as you have them i think the term is called wounded attachments oh the idea is like as long as you're still destroyed by it yeah it's like that that connection is is still alive so you have all this self-awareness around it have you done any got any help for it um i've gotten help for like other you know i've been in therapy for a long time, but I was mostly dealing with, I had obsessive compulsive disorder and various anxiety disorders. It's all from the same source, I bet. I think so.

But with cognitive behavioral therapy, you basically kind of deal with- Stop doing that. Stop doing those things, essentially. Yeah. But haven't necessarily driven exactly at the- Right, the source. Like the kind of the sort of nuclear center. Becoming a father myself, like becoming a father, becoming a parent, I should say, I think helped.

Yeah. Because there is that understanding of like once you are a parent parent you know that if your kid ever lost you yeah they would they would devastate you to think that they would never move on and have a happy right right that you would not want for them to throw themselves on right funeral pyre which is like what maybe a 10 year old boy right for life thing to do well that's interesting that the Right, for life. It's the only thing to do. Well, that's interesting that the, what, so you had anxiety and OCD?

Yeah. Because OCD is basically a compulsive desire for control, right? For some sort of system. So the subset of OCD that I have is a version called primary obsessions, obsessive-causal disorder, which is essentially intrusive thoughts. Oh, yeah. Like the morbid ones? Yeah, which are almost always they're like some way of, it's basically about thinking violations of your moral code. So like some people have, like if you're religious,

right. You might have blasphemous, intrusive thoughts. And actually all my first thoughts were blasphemous. Why'd you grow up Catholic? Uh, Anglican, which is like,

um, in the States, they call that Episcopalian, which is basically, it's like, it's like diet Catholicism. It's like, it's like not quite Protestantism,

not Catholicism. Um, and I was about, you know, maybe five, six years old. And I would have the, diet catholicism yeah yeah it's like it's like not quite protestantism not quite catholicism um and i was about you know maybe five six years old and i would have the the phrase uh i hate you god would run through my head and i think no no i don't hate you i love you i love god and i and you'd have these intrusive thoughts that was before your mom passed away yeah yeah um so yeah this kind of stuff is all kind of part of its's hardwired or chemical well no but like it seems like in my mind given what i know about you and what we do for a living i'm like so you've found a good outlet for them yeah pretty well the intrusive thoughts are sort of like no might as well just say that one exactly yeah get paid if i say that one well like one of the things that i did love about stand-up

when the intrusive thoughts were really bad and i i've actually had really good success in in treating these i got an amazing psychologist and and what is the fundamental treatment the cognitive behavioral therapy yeah like you get it and you're like no yeah you just like like you sit with the anxiety for a while you um having the thought yeah there's a there's a a great book out there called overcoming obsessive thoughts and it kind of lays out the um the basic sort of uh cbt approach to treating ocd um but one of the things that i like early on in standup, I just, I loved that the exigencies of doing a show, like that whole like show must go on thing is that it leaves no time for rumination.

Right. You can't go back over a moment and pour over it while you're on stage. Oh, you do that too? Oh, yeah. Because that's not intrusive thought. That's another thing. Yeah. Yeah.

And that's, I have that really bad. But they're both kind of, it just seems they're both, what's interesting, and I'm not psychoanalyzing, but what's interesting is they both seem like just sort of ingrained opportunities to beat the shit out of yourself. Yeah. Which, you know, I think, you know, and I have done some kind of, you know, self-administered Freudianism of like, look, you know, you lose your mom. Who's your mom in most cases you know and i know this isn't everybody's experience of having a mother but in most cases your mother is the person who if if if you blew up a plane yeah she's the one to go hi i well i know we can sort this out i love you whatever you know like your mother is the is the place that

you know you know that you're, you know that you're loved. You know that you're good. Supposed to. Yeah, supposed to. That's the ideal situation. So if you don't have that, you know, and, you know, comedy, of course, is also a place where you get to go up on stage and have people who sit in the dark tell you that you're good. Right.

And also that thing I was talking about before is that that you know the the sort of self-parenting you put in place yeah is you know it's got no um it's got no you know cap to it so you know it's it's you know most likely you know just to you mean you're going to be incredibly judgmental of yourself yeah you know because you don't know what you're doing and a lot of times what i read about children who are uncomfortable for whatever reason, when they're too young to know better, they just assume that their parents are great. So whatever it is must be their fault. Right. So then you're on top of yourself like that.

Absolutely. I feel weird. They're great because they're my parents. It must be me. I've always had such a deep envy of people who go into situations where something's wrong yeah their immediate instinct is like what have the other people in this situation done to make this wrong because mine is just like well obviously i fucked this up yeah the city's on fire what did i do god damn it did i how did this connect to me yeah it's like it's double-edged sword it's like

it's problematic in the thinking but it's also incredibly self-centered totally narcissistic so okay so your dad comes out when you're 20 but what about your brother he came out just before that my dad was waiting for my brother to come out he i think my dad thought it would put undue but your dad knew everybody knew that my brother was gay oh yeah before all the kids at school all the kids yeah no like so my it was not a hidden yeah uh thing with with my brother he was a um but did your brother and your dad know like did your brother know about your dad that's a good question i mean i think my brother sort of um he had a better sense than i did is he older or younger he's a younger oh so my brother's my brother's three years younger. Yeah. But only feels that way recently.

Yeah. So I feel like he and I ran in different directions from the trauma of our mother's death. So I was 10, he was seven. Yeah. And the next day, I was 18 years old, and he was like three. Right. So my aunt and my grandmother, we lived in the house with them. And like my brother really,

you know, my mother had asked my aunt basically to be our mom forward. And I wasn't so much able to take her up on that. What's been amazing is I've been able to take her up on that as being a grandparent to my daughter. Sure. Yeah. And their relationship is incredible.

But my brother really like, he was a very young seven and i became a very very old 10 right you fought like so we were like and and then you know my dad um my dad had become a teacher uh uh he he he had worked dispatch and he was a suit salesman when i was a kid and then um as my mother was dying the two of them sort of figured you know what could he do where he'd have enough money to raise the two of us and he would um he'd have the same holidays as us so he became a teacher interesting um yeah so so at the time it was fairly easy especially if you were a francophone in parts of the country that didn't have a lot of French speakers. Yeah. Because we had just started as a country, the French immersion program where you could

send your kids to school to learn French. And so they, especially in places like Vancouver where there were no Francophones, it was like if you had a university degree and you could come and learn how to teach, get a teaching certificate, you could get a job pretty easily so he went back to school so he went back to school um and then he discovered this like it was like a vocation for him i mean it was like this it was a passion yeah um and he went back he did a master's in education and and uh so while he was doing that i was about 11 12 and i was you know making dinner for my brother and I, and we were in this weird kind of I'm half your parent and I'm half your brother. And so I think that put a lot of stress on the situation.

Plus, we were a house where there were two gay men in the closet and one guy with obsessive compulsive disorder who didn't know what it was and so no by that time we were living on our own yeah um uh and uh and my aunt would kill me if i didn't say that she wasn't an old lady my my granny was old but uh no my aunt was uh no my aunt was very beautiful yes um so yeah it was already as it was already a house where like each of us was in our own little closets and all dealing with kind of some sort of post-trauma. And it was, we're a very close family. My brother and I are still, you know, when I get off the phone with my brother, you know, we say, I love you.

Yeah, sure. Like that's the, but. That's interesting. You're so tight and probably like you know out of complete necessity but but it is kind of interesting that that you you're all maintaining something i wouldn't say a lie but no but you are you're dissembling like there there is something that you don't feel um that everybody else in the house is ready to ready to hear but i wonder if there was a shame component to it all

absolutely i mean if there was for me i can't speak for for my brother on that one i mean i know that you know that was he was right on the cusp of attitudes really shifting in urban centers at least in north america right he got so he kind of lucked out he i think he did in some ways yeah he would have been even luckier if he'd gone to school maybe five years later than he did. So I think it was hell for him. And I think that was a big part of why he didn't want to go to college, university. And so he, like my dad, went back later in life and learned his trade. What does he do?

He's a horticulturalist. So he works at the- I think he told me that. Yeah, he works at the bot a horticulturalist. Oh, interesting. So he works at the- I think he told me that. Yeah, he works at the Botanical Gardens at the University of British Columbia. Oh, yeah, he told me to go see a plant there. Wasn't there one of those death plants there or something? I mean, it's incredible. It's just like, it's gorgeous.

And so he does, he posts these photos all day. He just spends his whole day with beauty. I mean, yeah, it's gorgeous. So what do you think provoked you? with just beauty. I mean, yeah, it's gorgeous. So what do you think provoked you? Like, you know, what was your position, you know,

carrying these intrusive thoughts and anxiety and obsessive compulsion and bitterness over your mother and, you know, and having the responsibility that you had because of her absence? I mean, so how do you, what's your high school life like? I mean, you know, how do you define yourself in that world? Yeah, I mean, it was an interesting time. Black trench coat? No, not quite.

I went, again, like I broke in the other direction from that of like by 15, I was getting pretty politically active. You were? Yeah. How did that start? On the left. So I had an english teacher who was

um just one of these teachers that people tell you about who just the republicans are trying to fire all them exactly yeah um and uh she was her name was marlena morgan she died this past fall and i spoke at her funeral and she was um she was my debate coach and she was my English teacher. And she, you know, she had this program where she introduced us to Chomsky and Orwell and all this. And, you know,

she let me write these funny stories. You know, she really nurtured the comedy side of it. That you could do in front of the class? I don't remember reading them out in front of the class. Right. There was one point where I performed one of the soliloquies from Hamlet. That was a kind of turning point.

Was she an English teacher? What did you say? She was an English teacher, yeah. But it ended up being kind of like almost civics, English. How it all fits together. Yeah. And so I started getting involved politically. And then when I was about 16 years old, actually like joined up with a little like Trotskyist socialist organ, like, like, like fairly kind of going all the way. Somewhat cultish situation where I was like, were you the youngest among them?

I had a few friends from high school who joined with me and we were like, so basically what it was is like, there was like, there was an adult party. So basically what it was is there was an adult party, and then we were in the youth auxiliary, and the youth auxiliary was a pretty cool place. Now, what are the tenets of a Trotsky cult? So Trotskyism, it's just basically like communism, but without apologizing for the tyr tyranny of like the soviet union basically right so it was like we were for you know the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism but we also didn't think that um the ussr was good right right but so basically it's sort of like you know that happened it was bad you know got away from us, but we're pure. We're going to do it right this time. Yeah, when we do it, it's going to be good.

And, you know, there was this communist newspaper that was published in New York, and we sold it on weekends, and I occasionally got to write for it. The Workers' Party, what was it? So in the States, the party's called the Socialist Workers Party. Right, I remember that paper. The newspaper's called The Militant. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, and so I would- Aggravated old hippies used to sell it on street corners in New York.

Well, and the reason they were aggravated was because they started as hippies. But in the early 1970s, the party did something called the Turn to Industry, which was basically we've got all these college kids 1970s, the party did something called the turn to industry. Yeah. Which was basically we've got all these like college kids who've joined the party because of to fight the Vietnam War. But socialism can only be built by the working class. Yeah. So they made all these kids go get factory jobs. Right. And so you had all of these like teachers and whatever, like go get jobs in like aerospace.

And so when I finished high school, I wasn't going to go to university. I went and got a job in a factory where I could sell the newspaper. I could work with my like fellow workers, my comrades, fomenting revolution. I mean, it was not totally clear. Well, like I worked in a plant that made lighting fixtures. Yeah. So I'm pretty sure we made, if you're ever in the SeaTac airport, you're probably walking under something that I loaded onto a truck.

So thank you. For the people. I'll give you that. For the people. Exactly. So they didn't have any political arm that had any traction, so it was sort of an idealistic thing that if you just hand out these newspapers and get everybody working those type of jobs,

that maybe a leader would pop up that would do some form of unionizing that would provoke the next wave. Essentially, I mean, there's... I really don't think it was very well thought through. I mean, it was... Which makes it more of a cult than a movement. Exactly. And it was shabby enough that even as an 18-year-old,

I kind of went like, oh, okay, well, I think this... You took the gig. I would say that as like a 16-year-old, a 17-year-old, those weekends, those like, you know, they were probably pretty good

for my intellectual development. What'd you do on the weekends? Like we'd go, like they were, they were probably pretty good for my intellectual development. I, you know. What'd you do on the weekends? You, like we'd, we'd go, we'd go like Friday nights. There would be like, um, uh, the, what was called the militant labor forum. So there'd be like, someone would give a presentation on like what was going on in Yugoslavia or Palestine or whatever. Um, you know, there'd be study sessions on the Sundays.

So it's interesting. So you're dealing, you're engaging with world politics from a very specific point of view. Very specific. But yet, you know, I imagine that the presentation was relatively true. You know, the solutions may have been a little extreme or not quite practical but the the conflicts that were being discussed were probably real i mean i feel like i feel like i got a pretty good understanding of for instance what was going on in the middle east or i got a pretty good understanding of like you know i remember we were we were doing um uh anti-war organizing around the the bombing of Serbia in 1998. Right. And I feel like the line that we had was, you know, not, you know, against the bombing,

but also the Albanians should have some sort of self-determination there. I mean, I feel like that was a relatively, you know, non-lunatic position. I feel like that was a relatively non-lunatic position. But it was not in a healthy... There was no kind of connection to real people, like what people were actually going through. I mean, one of the things... Really, the guys at the light factory? Well, so this is the thing.

When you're at the light factory, for the first three months of your employment, you're on probation. Yeah. So during those times, nobody knows that you're there with the other communists. Yeah. So you hear from the actual workers in the factory what they really think of these guys who sell the newspaper outside of the factory, which is that they think they're fucking nuts.

of these guys who sell the newspaper outside of the factory, which is that they think they're fucking nuts. So, and then as an 18-year-old, it's hard to like, you go, well, yeah, I mean, I get that. I get that you like, where the best case scenario is kind of a condescending like, that person, you know, they've got good intentions. That's the best case scenario. Right, right.

And the worst case scenario is like, oh, Jesus, those fucking nuts again. So that's funny. So the actual, the people that you're there to commiserate with and inspire are just sort of like, we just want to do our job. Yeah.

I don't know what that guy wants. He's a nut bag with the paper. Well, the other thing is they're all looking at you, an 18-year-old kid, and they've got 18-year-old kids at home that they won't let do this kind of work. Because they want a better life.

Yeah, yeah. So they're like, why are you not, like, you're 18 years old. Go to school. Like, go to, like. And what is the socialist component in the government of Canada, you know, in terms of these workplaces? I mean, isn't everybody, what are the benefits of that? I mean, you're almost working against a culture that is more socialized than most. I mean, in a way, that's true, yeah.

I mean, it was, again, I think it was a good stuff. It introduced me, for instance, to a much more sort of sympathetic understanding of the fight for indigenous sovereignty in Canada. And so I think for a lot of people, I was about, I would say I was about 15 years ahead of most sort of mainstream non-indigenous Canadians in terms of wrapping my head around, you know, sovereignty issues. Sure. Like there were elements of it that were, you know, I don't want to just write whole thing off but it was it was definitely goofy and it was definitely cultish right um but also it was a good experience I think it was a good all in all like having gotten out of it it

was a good experience so what did you end up going to school I went to school yeah you quit the light factory I quit the light factory I got a job at a um at a video arcade at the mall there you go which i there you go which i unionized you did yeah uh so i couldn't quite i couldn't quite leave the communism yeah so um we never got a first contract but we did unionize and that but i was doing that and i was getting a degree got an organizer experience in history yeah yeah the other thing that uh and i guess kind of led me back into comedy was i was writing on the school paper in college yeah so when did you first try stand-up uh the summer after i finished uh school so i was 24 the first time but you'd been writing i've been writing satirical and funny pieces. Yeah, yeah. So are some of those early essays in that one book of essays?

No, no. The early writings of Charlie Demers? No, those have not been unearthed yet. Hopefully they don't get it. I mean, I don't know how many of those I'd be proud of to see today. I mean, I'd be proud of the kid who wrote them, I guess, right? I'm saying your name right, Demers, right? Demers.

Demers? Yeah, it's a... I just realized. Yeah, no, no, no problem. Demers is a more French kind of... So it's a... So in French, we would say Demers.

Demers. Which is only in Quebecois French. Yeah. The French from France. So in America, we say Diemers. Diemers, yeah. And you say Demers. Demers, yeah.

But like that's the... You know, that's another incredible thing, watching from Canada, the way Americans pronounce French words. I mean, Brett Favre is like just a total mindfuck for a French-Canadian child to be like, what do you mean, Favre? What is it? Favre. But it's like the R doesn't even come before the v it's like you've you've actually your pronunciation is reordering the letters and is um but then like yeah like punch a train like it's uh yeah there is something charming about say that right american

it's better but i do a punch a train yeah it does feel uh it feels right yeah no i mean you know i you know we do it that's that's our magic down here we'll just level everything to it was an amazing thing for me like when i was in school and taking an african-american history class and uh learning about web dubois yeah and like the hardest thing to wrap my head around was that it wasn't dubois but his name was dubois. He pronounced it Dubois. It's Dubois. Yeah.

And that took like months. Yeah. Oh, really? Dubois. Yeah. No. Of the woods. Yeah.

Yeah. So you're writing for the paper in college? I'm writing for the newspaper. So you're finding a voice, you know? Definitely. Yeah. Yeah. And finding a way to be political in a way that had more, where you had to, that was outward facing.

Well, yeah, right. It didn't seem like, you know, you were, it seemed like early on you got a scope of the world and it wasn't kind of just some exercise that a college kid does. You know, you were, you knew how and what to get involved in. Right. Right. But it was, you know, when you're writing and then, you know, ultimately with comedy, you're having to put your thoughts in ways that like they're just they can't be solipsistic. They have to resonate with other people in some way or another. Otherwise, you know, you'll fail. Or have a very small audience of the other guy you're laughing with. Precisely. Yeah. And then he'll figure out a way to split. Yeah. Yeah. Um, uh, but yeah, I was writing for the school paper and then, um, yeah. And then, and then after school, you know, started a website with some friends who had been on the paper and we'd all graduated.

And, um, that was right before I started stand-up and i was writing a lot more of these kind of funny pieces funny essays and really being reminded of like how important it was for me growing up to be funny yeah to be a funny guy to be to like uh and uh and so i tried um yeah because you get you know you you know you I imagine it was a relief from the intrusive thoughts I mean I it was it was did you resist when people like like were people always telling you you got to try stand up and and were you like no no I'm funny with my friends no because when I was like I'm 54 so it was not you know it was not as an accessible like there wasn't like a mic at the coffee place yeah you know when i was right when i was coming up you know like yeah if you like if you understand that people are like how do you

even start what do you do like it was not part of the country do you have to live in right it was not even a conversation you know it was an obsession i had and you know and i had no idea how to start it i mean i think your generation was sort of like you could there were open mics around and shit yeah definitely and so i went down to one and um you know cliff nesteroff who's been on the podcast was up ahead of me and very intense maniacal cliff nesteroff yeah and he was doing a bit about um you know this uh the words he used were the squeegee anarchist who had just introduced noam chomsky at a big anti-war rally in Vancouver. He's making fun of this guy and what an idiot he was.

And that was me who had introduced Chomsky. So this is my first night ever doing stand-up and there's this guy on stage telling a joke about me. And he's such a snot. I can't imagine that the tone had anything remotely embracing about it no so yeah so he goes uh buddy you're uh you're introducing noam chomsky not white snake that was

the punch line yeah and then uh when i so then i went up on stage and i opened i said i said uh that was me i introduced Noam Chomsky. I didn't realize that I'd done anything inappropriate. But now I'm starting to get an idea of why my family was so mad at me after my grandfather's eulogy. And- Got a laugh? Yeah, we got a laugh and it was-

You're on your way. It was just such a fun time in the Vancouver scene. I mean, that was the point when Zach Galifianakis was living in Vancouver because he was filming this now forgotten show, True Calling. And so he would do standup every week at that spot, the place that I went down to. What was it called? It was called the El Cocal.

It's now part of an organic grocery store. The El Cocal was a Salvadoran restaurant. And I've said this before. It's like it was a restaurant. It was like somebody had set up a simulation in which to train future food inspectors. Yeah. Because it had like inception-like levels.

So there'd be like buckets on the floor capturing rainwater. And you'd be like, I don't think it's sanitary for the restaurant cat to be drinking from that bucket. But that was the... Then there's the cat. It was the heart of what was then kind of self-identifying as the alt comedy scene in Vancouver. And so the second time I ever did stand-up, Zach Galifianakis is in the audience and, like, comes up to me. He's chatting afterwards about the set. You know, Zach is, like, I mean, he's such a good guy.

Yeah. It's like it was a time when you felt like you were doing something, like, so exciting. Well, that's interesting that just by virtue of Zach being stranded in Vancouver, he helped define the alternative comedy scene of the place. Absolutely. The other person who was spending a fair amount of time in Vancouver at the time was Robin Williams. And so he would come through and he did the other sort of independent night that was happening in town, which was run by Brent Butt at the Urban Well. Actually, by that time, he was no longer running it um but uh rob williams would come and do a set and then for the next three months

every room in town was just on fire with crowds yeah because there was a chance rob williams right right yeah and he was another one who was just like, he was very generous. Yeah, very sweet guy. And yeah, generous to a fault, I think. We did a show, you know, I was doing, I was part of a comedy duo. I was working with a guy named Paul Bay, who's terrific. He does, he actually does these sort of scripted podcasts, The Big Loop and the Black Tapes podcast. Just brilliant guy.

And we were comedy partners. and the Black Tapes podcast, just brilliant guy. And we were comedy partners. And somebody asked, you know, Robin was at the back of the room. We were up on stage. He said, you should watch these guys. And you hear that, like, Robin would laugh when no one else would.

Like, ooh. We came off stage. And he goes up and says, oh, you know, that's the future of comedy. You know, a white guy and an Asian guy working together. And afterwards we said to him, like, listen, don't be angry if you see, you know, that quote out of context, you know, future of comedy, Rob Williams on promotional materials.

And he goes, future of comedy, future of comedy, just like lets us know that it's, I mean, I literally sometimes people still throw that in an intro for me. I like doing a corporate. Robin Williams calls him the future of comedy when he's with the other guy. Yeah. Let's see how he does on his own. That's a great story, though. So you got your history degree and you started doing comedy after college, but you kept involved with politics.

Yeah. So it's still a very big part of my life. I mean, my wife and I met at a political conference. But you don't identify as a communist anymore. I identify as a socialist. I don't identify as a communist. identify as a communist anymore i identify as a socialist i don't identify as a communist i mean i i would identify as a marxist in my general approach to uh history or economics um uh where it doesn't make sense i just don't abide it but um i would i would describe myself as a socialist

which you can do in polite company now again in north america and and so did you work in government no never did no i've done some work for i've written like uh the closest i've come to it is uh i've written jokes for socialist politicians in canada who were like so there was a guy named uh adrian dicks who is now the minister of health in british columbia uh but he was running to be the premier, which is essentially just like a governor. Yeah. And I was his joke writer. Yeah.

How'd you do? I mean, so the first jokes I wrote for him, like the first speech that I wrote jokes for, the three of the jokes made it into the column of the biggest political pundit in BC. So they were pretty happy with the work. I mean, he lost the election. Don't blame yourself. No, I try not to. So he was running against this.

That one goddamn joke, Charlie. He was running against this right-wing politician who had, she said she was going to introduce something called Free Enterprise Fridays. Yeah. And so I had Adrian say that he was going to preempt that with theoretical Marxism Thursdays. And he delivered that joke at the Vancouver Board of Trade and it made it into the papers.

Got a good laugh? Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, because I noticed that, like, when we worked together the first time that, you know, you're definitely politically informed and, you know, you're connected to the Canadian people. Yeah. I can't remember when we first met, though. I know you did a lot of the debaters, but I feel like, do you remember where we first met?

I'm trying to remember where it was. I think it was, you came up and did the Vancouver Festival. Oh, yeah, early on. And my sketch partner, Paul, was a huge, huge fan of yours. Yeah. Partly because of the Air America stuff and then partly because he was, he actually said this to me last night

because he's in LA right now and so we were talking last night and he says, you know, I wonder if you'd remember the like depressed Korean-Canadian comedian who asked him how to make divorce funny because he was going through a divorce himself and in canada in canada yeah yeah yeah in vancouver right and so i feel like

that's where we first met but the the real sort of memory that i have and i hope this isn't too schlocky is i in 2009 i did just for laughs for the first time yeah and i the homegrown competition is the canadian version of the um uh new faces yeah and i had lost the competition it was in and it was in toronto that year and then we went to montreal yeah and my wife was with me but she was flying back and so she was in montreal and we're like walking through the streets of downtown montreal and i'm talking to her and i'm saying i I don't know what I'm doing. This is like, you know, you feel so tiny at that festival. Oh, yeah.

It's the worst. I feel tiny when I go now. I don't even go anymore. No. I just, like, and it was just such a depressing thing. And I'm walking down the street with her like an hour or two before she's leaving for the airport. And you were getting interviewed on the side of the road. And I'm literally, I'm in the middle of telling her how, you know, I might as well not exist at this festival.

And you go, hey, it's Charlie, right? How's it going, man? And I, like, it was this epiphany. Because one, I mean, American comics, with a few notable exceptions. Yeah. So Zach's definitely one. Yeah.

Rory Scovel is another one. Yeah. Andy Kindler. American comics tend to very quickly forget right canadian comics who they've worked with or with whom they were once peers yeah their careers move a lot faster than ours because there's a lot more industry there's a lot more and i think some people make the mistake of thinking that means that all the talent is here as well yeah and so there is you

know margaret atwood once described the u.s american border as like a one-way mirror uh and so there is that feeling of like yeah oh that nobody's ever going to remember me nobody's and so it meant so much to me to have you like say hello like just a human yeah kind of uh um and so i i always kind of think of that as like, I mean, although by definition, it can't be the first place we met because you were recognizing me. No, because I think we did a show at Yucks. It's possible. Right down, like for the. Downtown.

Yeah, yeah. Right? Because I said, you know, and this was right after, you know, the podcast and everything had really landed. And I said, you know, this guy, we all thought he was great. But, great but you know he was and the way it came out was like he wasn't really going anywhere we all knew he was funny and now here he is um he's succeeded uh but it's like uh could you have been hosting i was i was mcing yeah i was hosting and i um but it was like that uh you know the line about you in the um the david rakoff essay from aspen yeah where he's, you know, the line about you in the David Rakoff essay from Aspen. Yeah.

Where he's like, you know, in the old days, a guy like Marc Maron could have made it. Yeah. And it was like, I was like the happy version of that. Like, we all thought, here's a guy. I know why I knew you, because your jokes are good. And, you know, it struck me. You know, I mean, that's why I remembered your name. So let's just talk about, like, you know it struck me you know i mean that's why i remembered your name so let's let's just talk about like you know uh all the books i have um vancouver special oh right on you know

which you sent and that's like sort of a a unique sort of uh overview of the city yeah so what it was is in the kind of lead up to the um 2010 olympics uh arsenal pope which is kind of a, you know, punk rock kind of publisher. They're an independent publisher. They put out a lot of cool stuff. And it's definitely not the kind of airport coffee table books. But they wanted to put out kind of a beautiful design object that had these. And actually, the first time I was at, just for laughs, I was also coming up against the deadline for the book, which was another reason why I was so down.

Vancouver Special and my first novel, The Prescription Errors, those both came out in 2009 within about six weeks of each other, just by kind of accident. And what was the angle of Vancouver Special? Vancouver Special was like essays about the city divided up by sections of like neighborhoods, people, and culture. Great. And yeah, I mean, I come from, Vancouver's one of those places, it's one of those cities that everybody's from someplace else.

Sure. They're either from someplace else in the country or they're from someplace else in the world. Um, and, uh, I'm, I'm a fourth generation Vancouverite. Both of my, uh, like I would walk through when I would pick up my daughter from her first daycare, we would walk home through the school grounds of her great grandfather's elementary school, like, which is, which is a very rare experience in Vancouver. So wait, your family goes all the way back? Yeah.

But your father came from Montreal? Yeah. So my dad came from Montreal in the mid-'70s, but on my mom's side, we've been in Vancouver for almost 100 years. Wow. And so it's this city that just completely has kind of percolated through me.

So you're fascinated with the history of it. Definitely. Yeah. And then the Prescription Errors, that's your first novel. The Prescription Errors was a novel about comedy and mental illness. And it's essentially, it tells kind of the stories of, so it's primarily the story of a guy with obsessive compulsive disorder who is um working through uh you know the the trauma of having lost his i mean it's

this sounds like a very unique story where did this come from charlie after talking to you for an hour powers uh he's powers. He's very thin, though. No. It's about a guy with six-pack abs and no mom. So he's essentially trying to rid himself of the trauma of having lost his mother by immersing himself in this long study of medical technology. Yeah. And that's told alongside the story of a guy who is a sound alike,

who replaces a beloved cartoon actor who is in a car wreck. Oh. And so it's basically their two stories kind of intermingled. Yeah. And, okay, so the new one, you did a book of essays as well. Yeah, I did a book of essays called The Horrors, which is a book of humor essays, basically about, I try to write something funny about a horrible subject for every letter of the alphabet. Okay. Yeah.

It's almost like your take on Shel Silverstein's ABC. Something like that, yeah. Or like the Edward Crumb, no. Edward Gorey. Or Edward Gorey, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Or like the Edward Crumb. Edward Gorey. Or Edward Gorey, yeah. Yeah, definitely. So the sort of childlike construction, but with a, and I was sort of writing that one. The darkness of an adult.

Exactly. Yes. Backloaded into the child's point of view. Yeah. And I was writing that one at more or less the same time as I was writing the Dad Dialogues, which is a book that I co-wrote with my friend George Bowering, who was the first Poet Laureate of Canada. He's in his 80s.

He's kind of a major literary figure in Canada. Over the course of the first year of my daughter's life, he and I would write letters to each other every two weeks or so about fatherhood. And he was working from his journals of when his daughter Thea was born in 1971. And what ends up happening over the course of the book as well is that during that year, it looked like my father was going to die of lymphoma. He's okay now, but it was very touch

and go. And so it kind of becomes about George's life as a father my beginning life as a father and your dad's illness the possibility of losing my wow what was it called the dad dialogues oh and that's available to that is yeah so the new book property values is it seems like the kind of is a culmination of all your your points of view and angles like a fictional like how you gonna fight the good fight in an engaging you know sellable way definitely uh right that's i mean that's a hundred percent the uh the thinking behind it i mean a big part of it was i i looked at my paul who i mentioned earlier i looked at his podcast and um it was just one of these things where you're watching

a friend have enormous success doing something that leads. The worst, right? They're fucking horrible. What's the Gore Vidal thing of like, it's not enough for me to succeed. I need my friends to fail. Yeah. But I looked at like what Paul was doing. Yeah.

And he was just having this tremendous success with a project that just used every muscle he'd ever been working the entire time i knew him and i just like this is the using every single bit of like and it inspired me to ask like like if i were to do something equivalently if somebody were to say like that used every bit that he has been developing yeah um what would it look like and i i knew it would be like i knew it would be a crime story because of this sort of lifelong fascination i've had with organized crime yeah i knew it would hopefully it would be funny i knew it would be political and so property values is a it's a it's a crime story that's set in the world of sort of vancouver's crazy housing market which is not unlike uh california no it's very much a california story

escalated and absolutely uh so vancouver and san francisco are almost identical in that respect right everybody's getting priced out who is actually lives in the city totally yeah and and you can't run a functional city anymore because uh no one who does working class labor can afford can afford to live yeah um and so uh property values is about a group of friends who uh one of them can't afford to stay in the house where he grew up right and uh so uh they stage a drive-by shooting in order to lower the asking price. Yeah. And that decision draws-

But no one gets killed in that first one. Nobody gets killed in the first- Right. No, the guy's inside, his friends shoot up the house, and they stage this whole kind of pantomime. Right, yeah. But then it draws the attention of- The real gang.

The real gangsters. Yeah, yeah. And they get sort of drawn into this escalating sort of comedy of errors. And I just feel really happy. Like you say, you spend your whole kind of life trying to put these somewhat esoteric ideas into a shape that- Everyone can process. Have fun with yeah process and like that it's actually something that uh um that hopefully can resonate and and it's it's out in canada now it's out in

canada and uh the you know the reason i'm i'm i'm down in california is it's been uh it's been optioned and i've been hired to write the screenplay with my buddy, Ryan Knighton. Yeah. And so it's a dream. That's great. Yeah. That's a great story. Well, I hope that that process yields something other than frustration. I'm hoping, you know, the kind of dramatic weight loss that'll get me a TMZ.

There's also something I wanted to show you before we wrap up here is that my business partner and producer sent me a picture of of his son owen with with the character with that's a with that little toy animal that you're the voice of some sort of snail right so this is walter walrus he my brendan says i was looking at his credits and saw that he's the voice of that slug thing which is one of my son's favorites oh that's very sweet yeah i uh i am the voice of walter the slug on the uh netflix series beat bugs yeah well owen's a big fan oh well and i uh that so i that that toy is amazing because you can't get them in this in canada yeah because the deal for the toys is with target oh and we don't have target in canada so i was in duluth last summer uh visiting like with my wife's family yeah and i go into the duluth uh target yeah

buy like a whole shopping cart full of these giant blue slugs yeah so i felt like i owed an explanation to the um to the woman at the cash register i was was like, so this is, I'm this guy's voice on the cartoon. And, you know, I didn't, I should have stopped to think about it, but like that instantly made me the biggest celebrity to ever come through the Duluth Target. I thought you were going to say,

that obviously made me to her a lunatic. Oh, yeah. Like a crazy person who's claiming to talk for a toy. That's also possible. Maybe she was just like, that's very sweet. It was this incredible moment where I'm going through the store

with my daughter and she's in the shopping cart and we're looking for the toys. We know that they're there, but we don't know exactly where. And then we find this wall of them. Yeah. And it was like,

it was like in a movie where like we looked at the, we looked at the shelves, we looked at each other, we looked back at the shelves and then we both just cracked up

because she understood even at like, what, three and a half I guess at the time that this was like completely surreal. That's great.

Yeah. Good moment. Yeah. I hope she remembers it. Reminder. I do every day. Great talking to you, Charlie. So much fun. Thanks so much for having me see that what a nice decent intelligent conversation obviously between two

like-minded people but nonetheless the freedom of thought that is available politically in canada is we have it here but it is not a cultural norm that's for sure uh so charlie's book as i said earlier property values comes out on october 16th you can pre-order it now but again a lot of uh attention for my new uh for my new uh echo pedal a gift from the brilliant Tal Wilkenfeld. It's an Echoplex delay. I believe Echoplex was an old-timey box that MXR has recreated in their smaller format, but I have been getting a lot of people asking, a lot of guitar players asking, and that's what this sound is, and I'll do a little bit of it in my limited scope of guitar playing. I do seem to be quite into this pedal. And I'm plowing it through directly into the old 58 Deluxe. So, you know, all that dirt you're hearing around the edges,

that ain't the Echoplex. That's old dirty tubes. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Boomer lives! brand new challenging marketing category. And I want to let you know we've produced a special bonus podcast episode where I talk to an actual cannabis producer. I wanted to know how a producer becomes licensed, how a cannabis company competes with big corporations, how a cannabis company markets its products in such a highly regulated category, and what the term dignified consumption actually means. I think you'll find the answers interesting and surprising.

Hear it now on Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly. This bonus episode is brought to you by the Ontario Cannabis Store and ACAS Creative. It's a night for the whole family. Be a part of Kids Night when the Toronto Rock take on the Colorado Mammoth at a special 5 p.m. start time on Saturday, March 9th at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton. The first 5,000 fans in attendance will get a Dan Dawson bobblehead courtesy of Backley Construction.

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