Jordan, Jesse, GO! - Ep. 142: The Power Exchange with Mike Schmidt
Episode Date: August 17, 2010Guest Mike Schmidt, from The 40-Year-Old Boy podcast, joins Jesse and Jordan to talk about high school friends, under-appreciated films and more. ...
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Give a little time for the child within you, don't be afraid to be young and free.
Unto the locks and throw away the keys, and take off your shoes and socks and run you.
I'm Jesse Thorne, America's radio sweetheart.
And I'm Jordan Morris, boy detective.
And this is...
Jordan, Jesse, go!
Icicles, tricycles, ice cream, candy, lollipops, popsicles, licorice sticks,
Solomon, friendly, Go!
We talk about my travels, adventures, and general stick-in-the-mudness
with special guest Mike Schmidt.
Let's go!
It's Jordan, Jesse, Go!
I am Jesse Thorne, America's radio sweetheart.
Jordan Morris, boy detective.
It's a beautiful day here in Los Angeles.
The cross breeze coming through the studio is spectacular.
The light is wonderful.
I think this is called the magic hour, Jordan.
Yeah, it is.
Or maybe that's just the personal magic that you're bringing to this.
No, no, it is the magic hour.
Let's get Megan Fox in here so we can shoot her.
She's at her shiniest.
I heard something about michael bay only
shooting during the magic hour i think that's i have heard that too and i think that's why i made
that remark okay well i support it i think that's a great thing for michael bay to do sure only at
the hour before dusk uh when the light has to travel the most horizontally through the atmosphere
and is the most flattering to the human being um i support only shooting in
fact i just support michael bay just michael bay and around as long as i don't have to watch the
movie you know what i mean it's good to know that john totoro is working somewhere somewhere john
totoro is getting money hey he hired our our pal andy daly's in transformers 3 i've heard that i
think i think it's fantastic anyway we've got an amazing guest on this week's program.
You might know him from his own podcast, The 40-Year-Old Boy.
You might know him from his upcoming stage show that no one has seen yet, The 40-Year-Old Boy.
Success is not an option.
Proudly sponsored by the Sound of Young America.
Friday, September 20th at the Darkroom Theater on Mission Street in San Francisco.
Or August 20th.
There you go, August 20th. That's the correct month.
Please welcome
Mr. Mike Schmidt. Mike, it's great to have
you back on the show. Thank you for having me. It may be
held over. It may be there September 20th.
I don't know. It's likely. If you do
want to have it held over, you're
going to have to supplant like
Harry Potter the Musical. Oh, sure.
Or possibly like
a stage production of
the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Maybe.
Or perhaps Gay Life Story
number 12. Yeah.
I was going to say Unfit Burlesque Night.
Yeah.
That's different from Infirm
Burlesque Night, which is not as fun at all.
Oh, man.
We've performed at the Darkroom Theater in San Francisco.
We did our first Monsters of Podcasting show at the Darkroom Theater. Sure.
I did some shows up there this year for the SF Sketch Fest.
It's a great place to do a show.
It's right there on Mission Street.
The folks who run it are really great.
They live in the theater.
No way.
Yeah, absolutely.
They certainly do.
There's a restaurant across the street, which is a Mexican food restaurant, but it's all vegetarian.
So something that would have meat on it has squash.
No, dude.
Seriously?
Yeah, it's pretty tasty.
That's their meat fill-in?
Yes.
Everything has squash.
I'd rather have squash as a meat fill-in than substitute meat.
Yeah, well, I mean, you never know when you go to a Mexican
joint what kind of meat you're gonna get
anyway I mean it you know they could say
that it could be dog they dog do they
dog in Mexico they don't eat dog Jesse
why are you just alienating everybody
of the Native Americans but I did I had
a show once at the dark room we've had
some great shows there that monsters a
podcasting show was really a blast.
I think we may have done a Prank the Dean thing there one time.
I did something.
Jordan and I, when we were doing sketches, Prank the Dean,
we had a show at the Off Market Theater in San Francisco,
and it was our biggest headlining show to that point.
It was like a 100-seat theater, and we didn't really have a reputation.
So we were doing everything within our power to –
That was before we were on Star Search, right?
Yeah, exactly.
And this is before your reputation that you have now?
McMahon actually came – Ed McMahon came to that show, and that's how we ended up on Star Search.
Wow.
But –
Wait a minute. Hold on a second. Let's look at the timeline on that.
Ed McMahon came to that?
This was 1986.
That's his Star Search.
You're not an Arsenio Star Search.
No, this is 1986.
So you're what, seven?
We were five.
Oh, okay.
I was five.
Jordan was four.
Well, good for you guys.
That's John Bonet early.
That's good for you guys.
Well, we were very precocious as a light film.
Just like now.
Yeah.
So we were doing this show, big headlining show we didn't
have any way to promote it really but uh i so i was looking around for any way that we could promote
this show in san francisco especially because i think maybe jordan at the time was in santa cruz
maybe he was already down in los angeles um uh everybody was all over everywhere except for uh
me and our friend jim who was living in Oakland at the time.
This was pre-Facebook, people.
Exactly.
So pre-Facebook.
Hard to get the word out.
Well, again, it's 86.
For you guys, it was almost pre-face.
You're five and four.
Yes.
We had not yet developed faces.
That comes right around the time you learn to read.
And so I heard about this variety show at the Dark Room
hosted by this guy called Harmon Leon.
And I knew Harmon Leon a little bit
because he'd been on The Sound of Young America.
He's a guy who writes those, like,
I'm infiltrating blah, blah, blah articles
for the San Francisco weekly newspapers.
So it's sort of like, oh, like,
I'm going to the Scientology Celebrity Center or whatever.
Oh, he's got a collection of wax mustaches.
Exactly.
He's probably doing something Juggalo related right now.
I'm sure he is.
Who isn't?
I got to wish I was.
I watched the Tom Green Juggalo video.
Oh, I haven't watched it yet.
What happens?
There's this amazing part where this guy says...
Wait, is this where...
Okay, to be specific,
this is the Tom Green Juggalo video
where Tom Green tries to stop them
from throwing rocks at Tila Tequila?
Is this the one you're talking about?
Yeah, I didn't know about the throwing rocks part,
but there was an amazing moment.
Well, there's one part where Tom Green is performing
and it just
goes on for a really long time it's just him saying when i say corn you say on the cob
oh he still got it he still got it um people think that uh but there's this moment where
he's interviewing this sort of fat middle-aged bald guy like not balding like but shaved bald sure scary bald and
that's how did he find one of them at the juggalo i know it's hard to find um he had to sift through
a lot of too skinny 23 year old guys with wild eyes and no shirts um don't forget the mustache
attempt but this is this is this is a direct quote from that guy that was just really beautiful.
Whoop whoop, he said.
Mama Gypsy's in prison this year.
She couldn't bring no space cakes.
Yay.
So that's on MaximumFun.org.
You should look at that.
But getting back to the darkroom theater.
So I knew Harmon did this variety show.
And me and Jim decided we were going to do sketches at this variety show.
We said, Harmon, could we do an act?
And we'll promote our show that's the next week.
And it'll be great.
And go to this show.
Now, was Harmon actually contracted to host this show?
Or was he infiltrating the show as a host?
Yeah.
I don't know.
He was doing an expose of small time weeknight open
mic behind the scenes of emceeing yeah and uh we went on this show and um it was it was in this
theater it's a 50 seat theater um and uh there were um i'm gonna say six people there. Oof. Possibly four. Two of them were like a 30-something African-American couple.
All right.
Who were not, I mean, on Mission Street in San Francisco,
it's, you know, it's gotten progressively tonier over the years.
But still back then, you're mostly looking at, you know,
35-year-old Mexican-American women and the occasional hipster who's wandered down from Valencia Street one block up.
So you're saying my show is going to go great.
Yeah.
Well, you've got to know.
That's your demo, right?
That's your –
I'm sure it is, right?
Wheelhouse.
There is no – there are no sort of like middle-class 35 year old African American people in the mix at all.
Okay.
These people just wandered in off the street because someone said,
Hey,
there's a show going on in here.
And lost hipster,
which I enjoy again,
very much went my wheel.
Yeah.
And,
um,
it was four people.
So Harmon and,
uh,
his cohost,
Mike Spiegelman,
uh,
a sort of a scion of the San Francisco comedy scene,
and by all accounts,
a very decent –
Yeah, sure.
You know Speaks.
Speaks is there, sure.
They do about 20 minutes of what I would describe as nothing.
Just nothing.
They clearly have not prepared anything for this evening's entertainment.
And the audience is bored, upset. I mean mean there's only a few people so they can
really like you know each person has their own reaction and you can like and you can you know
because you have so much time to look at them each individual you can gauge their individual
specific reactions right exactly and you want to do as much time as possible for that smaller crowd
yeah oh and by the way uh like a few days before this happens, Jim mentions that he has to be out of town. So I'm going up solo. So I'm doing these two monologues, one of which is my monologue, one of which is Jordan's monologue. I'm going to do these two on the show. And then I get there and I'm like, okay, I'm cutting it down to one monologue. I'm doing one piece because I said I was going to do something.
One piece because I said I was going to do something.
And then after they do about 20 minutes of nothing, they introduce the transsexual folk singer.
All right.
Who is insane.
Man to woman or woman to man?
This is a man to woman.
Okay.
Still functional?
I didn't check.
All right.
I didn't check the undercarriage.
How do you not?
Yeah, if I'm going to sit and listen to a transsexual folk singer,
I want to see some credentials.
Yeah, I want to know what's happening down there.
You've got to have a metronome working or something.
This lady was batshit insane.
Yeah.
And saying, I'd say she took up another 15 to 20 minutes of stage time.
And again, there's no content here.
No content at all.
I have never... I mean, there was some guitar playing, wasn't there?
I have never performed in front of a more bored and hostile crowd of six people.
Plus the two people that were in the show and the two people that own the theater and live there.
I'm glad you included the number because I would have, you know, accepting today, of course. I did my monologue.
I did this monologue.
He got my name wrong and didn't mention our show that was coming up.
And I just left.
My wife had been sitting in the audience.
My then girlfriend, now wife, had been sitting in the audience for this whole thing.
I came out to the audience after that was,
and she just said to me,
we're leaving.
She never said this to me before.
Anytime in any show,
she's the most supportive,
kindest person in the history of the world.
She just says,
we're leaving.
She was sitting there like Mark Wahlberg in boogie nights when he's in
Alfred Molina's apartment and he's just rubbing his temples and he,
we're leaving.
He stands up,
gone.
That's what it was like.
Dick and all.
Anyway, I'm sure your show will go really great.
Yeah.
As soon as I clean all the shit off of it, you just dump on top of it.
No, but it really is a great little place.
I think you're really going to enjoy it.
It's great for the audience, too, because it's close quarters.
It feels like a place
where something cool is going to happen this is only my uh third time ever in san francisco
the other two times were one day each i went to the stick once and we were going to go to the
holy city zoo once i had a friend who had an interview for a radio job up there and uh this
was this was back when you used to perform with robin williams oh yeah me and mort saw we were
together we were a team just riffing off the newspaper oh that's how i just take out the This was back when you used to perform with Robin Williams a lot. Oh, yeah. Me and Mort Saul. We were together.
We were a team.
Just riffing off the newspaper.
Oh, that's how I do it.
You just take out the newspaper and just riff.
Yeah.
And then 25 years later, David Brenner did it, and it was just as unfunny then.
You said The Stick?
Is that an old comedy club?
No, no, no.
Candlestick Park.
Oh, The Stick.
Yeah, I went to a game, a Giants game, the one Giant game.
So you went to San Francisco just to go to a Giants game?
No, I went twice, and I lived in Tahoe.
Okay.
And I had a friend who had radio interview – radio job interviews,
and I had tagged along both times with her.
And one time we went to a Giants game, and then the other time we went to –
I was going to go to the Holy City Zoo, but we wound up at the wharf and then, you know, things happened.
And then the chowder and the rest is history.
We bought some trinkets.
Sure.
T-shirts that say who farted.
Yeah.
So I'm looking forward to going.
Like I said, I've never been.
How long are you going to be up there?
Just the two days that I'm working.
It's a beautiful city.
Great city in the world.
It's a wonderful place to walk around and enjoy yourself, the Mission District.
That will not be happening.
It's my home. It's where I'm from, where I was born and raised.
I'll be sitting in a room sweating furiously, wondering how things are going to go, because that's how I do things.
It's going to go great.
You're nice to say so.
I have high hopes for this operation.
You and me both.
High hopes and low expectations.
Yeah, again, I'm on board.
It's going to be great. Mike Schmidt, one of the funniest guys around.
All right.
That's my proclamation.
I'm proclaiming that.
Yeah.
Let's try and get that in writing.
Get it notarized.
Anyway, it's been a long time since I've been behind the microphone.
I took some time off to go on vacation.
Sure.
Jordan filled in ably last week.
Mm-hmm.
It sounded like you doubted yourself for the first half of that.
Yeah, a little bit.
I don't know. It was fine.
You did a nice job. I enjoyed the show.
I listened to the show on my way back from
Marin County.
Enjoyed listening to it very much.
It was a lot of fun.
Anyway, we've got a lot to talk about
so we'll be back in just a second on Jordan, Jessica. It's Jordan Jesse Go
I am Jesse Thorne
America's radio sweetheart
Jordan Morris
Boy detective
Mike Schmidt
Guest of said hosts
Yeah I like that
Okay
Do you remember
What your nickname was
The last time you were
On the show
I don't
I think maybe
We didn't
We were making people Pick nicknames The last time you were on the show? I don't. I think maybe we didn't. We weren't making people pick nicknames.
The last time Mike was on the show was during the marathon.
Okay.
We weren't making people pick nicknames then.
Sure.
The last time, yeah, that was that show.
But, I mean, the last time it was just the three of us and Juanita.
Juanita showed up on the phone.
Oh, Juanita's the best.
Yeah.
You know what?
I lost my cell phone.
Lost Juanita's number.
People have been emailing me to ask why Juanita no longer contributes to the show
It's because I lost my cell phone and had her number on it
I think we just assumed you guys had a falling out
Or she held out for more money
Contract negotiations broke down with Juanita
I would describe
I would describe Juanita as
Sour tempered and erratic
And now unreachable.
Completely unreachable.
It's been two weeks.
Maybe even three weeks. I know that I had to sift
through like 75 calls
this week. I didn't even make it through
all the calls. So if you don't hear your call this week...
Are those calls of complaint about Jordan?
Yeah, people complaining about Jordan and how
he said faggot like ten times.
I don't know if it was in double digits.
I certainly said it too much.
Well, let's go to the faggot tote board, ladies and gentlemen.
It's cute.
It's shaped like a giant thermometer.
I enjoy that.
I had a very eventful couple of weeks there on vacation. I went to – my wife and I, first we drove up to San Francisco, went to my childhood best friend's wedding.
Then we flew to Massachusetts and went to Martha's Vineyard.
And then we flew back and then drove to the Sierras to visit my wife's grandparents' cabin.
to visit my wife's grandparents' cabin.
Well, first of all, I'm glad you're back because I don't know if my phone could have handled more photos
of the Cape, the coast.
Where were you?
Martha's Vineyard, the vineyard.
With sarcastic notes about how terrible it was.
And he was like, I'm having the worst time ever.
And then I opened it up to this incredibly scenic view
and I'm like, are you tied to a stake?
Why is it so bad?
It's beautiful there.
I can see, having been now to Martha's Vineyard, I'd never been there before,
I can see why rich people and the president like to hang out there all the time.
If I was the president, I would be fucking hanging out there.
Fuck ranches.
Yeah.
Who needs to clear brush at the ranch when you can go to Martha's Vineyard?
What are you doing at Martha's Vineyard?
Are you water skiing?
Well, inner tubing.
He's taking photos. What are you doing at Martha's Vineyard? Are you water skiing? Well, Inner tubing. He's taking photos.
It's a,
it's a beautiful,
it's a beautiful island.
It's wooded on the interior.
There's beautiful beaches on the exterior.
You can watch the sunset,
which is very novel.
You can watch the sunset over the water,
which is very novel for East coasters.
Since the sun,
since the sun rises over the water.
Right.
It's just,
it's just very lovely.
There's also towns. I didn't spend a lot of time in the towns. The towns are rises over the water. Right. It's just very lovely. There's also towns.
I didn't spend a lot of time in the towns.
The towns are sort of what you would imagine.
They're very sort of northeast ritzy tourist destinations.
I see.
But anyway, this wedding I went to, the first thing I did was this wedding.
It was in San Francisco.
It was my best friend from childhood who his parents and my parents met in Lamaze class.
And then we were born in the same hospital.
In the same hospital.
Yeah.
Just one after the other.
Boom, boom.
Your mom's linked ankles and boom, your heads collided.
Exactly.
It was an experimental thing they were trying in the late 1970s early 1980s um uh we were born in the same hospital one day apart we just sort
of grew up together and um we weren't close friends after our starting with around our teenage years
but still friends we went to high school together how come uh how come we're't close friends? He was a little bit cooler than me.
And he was never a dick about it.
Yeah.
And, you know, we didn't go to the same schools.
It's just one of those things, you know.
I see.
So you didn't grow up in close proximity. It wasn't like a thing where you were friends from birth and then lived next door to one another and made the way through.
We often visited.
I mean, I would say that two out of three weekends we spent at each other's house.
Oh, okay.
As kids.
But that sort of changed.
You know, things just sort of change when you become an adolescent.
And, you know, it's just a little different.
You get your own crowd, wind up with your own friends.
Exactly.
We played on the same baseball team through the park leagues, you know, until we were 15 or 16.
But that's about it.
Sure.
Maybe he got a little more into music and you got a little more into jacks.
Yeah, absolutely. In your teen years. Absolutely. Okay, so he was
marrying this girl whose parents were pastors.
Her father was the minister of this sort of
inner city social service organization
in San Francisco in the Tenderloin.
And it was just the most spectacular wedding.
They closed down a block of the Tenderloin, which is, for folks who don't know,
it's probably the poorest part of San Francisco.
It's right in downtown, right off of the area where,
sort of right in between sort of City Hall and stuff like that
and Pacific Heights and stuff like that.
So it's the kind of area of the town that you can close down
and no one really cares, quite frankly.
Yeah, well.
You could have raised it and no one would have minded.
You know, it's still downtown San Francisco.
There's still a lot of traffic.
You could raise it better than you could close down the street.
I see.
People still got to drive through.
You see what I'm saying?
Yeah, sure.
They closed down this block.
It was spectacular.
There was chairs out along this whole block of street with sort of a stage at the end of the block.
And behind them, the hills of San Francisco and fucking cable cars and shit.
Wow.
It was just wonderful, really beautiful and spectacular.
There was, I'm going to say, nine bride groomsmen and bridesmaids.
Wow. Nine of each, which was pretty spectacular. That's what I had. to say nine bride groomsmen and bridesmaids. Wow.
Nine of each, which was pretty spectacular.
That's what I had.
You had nine?
Eight.
We had eight.
Wow.
Yeah.
Eight and eight?
Eight and eight.
No, actually eight and one.
It was very hot.
I only had one guy to put up there, but my wife went with eight.
Yeah.
You know, that happened to me.
My wife just kept adding people to the list.
You're going, I don't don't yeah i was like i started
out with like well i'm fine with just these people oh well i'll throw these people in there jordan was
the last person on the list that's what i'm trying to yes wow just kidding jordan was not the last
person on the list by any means um but uh what was amazing about this thing is they had it on
the street that's right outside this you know basically soup kitchen uh slash other stuff where the parents work and um where the girl you know
was worked through her life you know as a volunteer because she believes in helping the poor so is
this a is this a scheme to to get the homeless to provide the food for the wedding yes well we ate
the home we ate homeless oh did you really yes again the city's on board with that they were
already dead but you were just fin fairness you know they would have just normally burned the corpses
but but now they're what was truly remarkable hearing them was that in it was that in addition
to this being this uh uh picturesque san francisco street in addition to the fact that
walking alongside the barricades along the sidewalks were just random european tourists
lost european tourists um and uh junkies uh winos also usually one of the same yeah uh sure
absolutely that's if you're if you're looking for somebody who can buy a ticket from europe
to san francisco you're going to want to look at junkies absolutely um and besides these odd
things in this beautiful ceremony,
it was right outside this soup kitchen,
which coincidentally was next door to the power exchange.
Now, I don't know if you guys know what the power exchange is.
It's not a literal power exchange.
Gay bar?
Children's show?
I'm going to ask you to take...
A gay children's show.
Jordan?
Children's bar. children's bar children's bar if you were gonna tell me if you were gonna tell me what subject on jordan jesse go you were
most fascinated by uh what would that subject be well now it's children's bar it's changed
um but jordan you're famously fascinated by the secret sex party.
Sure.
Now, I wouldn't call the power exchange a place for secret sex parties.
Reason being, not secret at all.
Open to the public.
Nice.
So in the city of San Francisco, God bless San Francisco.
I mean that sincerely.
I'm all for it.
I've got very San Francisco values.
You can just have a sex club. And that's right next door to just have a sex club and that's right next door to soup kitchen yeah and it's right next
door to the soup this is one-stop shopping for a friday night you go you stop and you go get some
chowder and then you run next door and you get some chowder it works out perfectly absolutely
but it was it was amazing to see this wedding being performed by um bride's – there was a sermon by the youth pastor and then like the cool guy priest.
And then the bride's father performed the ceremony.
There was a lot of God talk.
All of this was going outside, immediately outside the doors of this place where you pay $20 to get in.
the doors of this place where you uh pay twenty dollars to get in uh you have to bring a woman and uh and it's advised that you bring a whip or chaps now is that the soup kitchen or the power
exchange yes it's both making sure both of the places you don't want too many dudes in the soup
kitchen of course you know it gets gross people get uncomfortable it's a sausage gumbo party at
that point and then of course the and then course, the reception was at the Basque Cultural Center in Daly City.
Oh, yeah.
Why not?
I thought we were thinking.
Why didn't they just have the reception at the Power Exchange?
That's what I was thinking.
I mean, you don't have to have.
Why make everybody drive and repark?
That's just kind of rude.
You don't have to fuck at the Power Exchange.
It's just a nice, intimate venue.
Sure.
Say, oh, leave the gifts over in the dungeon room sure
you know well this this cum stained mattress is a great place to sit down and have a game bird
eat a game bird how do you know it's a cum stained mattress if it's wrapped that's a good point
that's a gift i get it no yeah there's a stretch. Yep. No, that's good. Was it there? I put it together. Yeah.
I wouldn't say good, but I made sense.
It wasn't a string of babble.
Can I say it was fine?
No, sure, please.
Totally fine.
Yeah, absolutely.
But the Bass Cultural Center, it was a weird, it was a whole weird thing because I realized
I went to high school with this guy, which was sort of an unusual occurrence because we hadn't gone to school the rest of the time.
I heard you had a falling out.
You know, we got along fine.
He was a trumpeter and I an actor in high school.
So we both went to School of the Arts there in San Francisco.
And among his nine bridesgrooms, what are they called?
Groomsmen.
grooms. What are they called?
Groomsmen. Among his 17 groomsmen, there were
I would say that one was his
cousin from Australia who used to
live at his house sometimes.
So I knew Yogi.
His name was Yogi. Of course it was.
Yeah, sure. And the other
16 were just guys we went to high school with.
And you don't make the cut.
And I didn't make the cut.
Wow.
It occurred to me,
I think I talked about my 10-year high school reunion on Jordan Jesse Go.
I'm pretty sure there were more people from my high school class in the wedding party
of this wedding than there were at my 10-year high school reunion. Really? Or roughly
equivalent. Because I'd say maybe there was 15 or 20 people at my high school reunion,
and there was definitely at least a dozen among the groomsmen.
So a small high school, or just nobody came to the reunion?
It was a combination of both.
I see.
Our graduating class was around 100.
Okay.
And I would say maybe there was about 20 that came to the reunion.
But there was at least that came to the reunion.
But there was at least 15 or 18 there. And I was worried because I didn't know.
These guys were guys that I was, I would say I was cool with, but that I didn't see outside of school.
So, and like I said, cooler than me probably in high school.
So you're hoping not to get a swirly at the reception.
I'm wondering because, I mean, you can imagine I was a ridiculous high school student.
Now, if you're looking for a venue for a ridiculous high school student, it's going
to be School of the Arts in San Francisco.
That or the Power Exchange.
Yeah, exactly.
Well, they do run a nice alternative school there.
I would think so.
It's very good.
It's a Quaker school.
It's Society of Friends.
Excuse me.
Anyway. First Nations. um it's society of friends excuse me um anyway first nations uh that's people seem glad to see me uh and uh one guy listens to the sound of young america on the radio in san francisco
see that's great it made me feel like my high school years were not a waste it made me feel
like i should try and go to other things because apparently
I'm the guy that you're happy to see 10 years later.
Yeah.
And also because you've moved on from that.
Oh, absolutely.
You've moved on from high school.
Well, yeah, but how many times – and I will say with you, it's a different thing because
you had a much smaller school.
How big was your school growing up?
My graduating class was like 1,000 people.
Have you been to a reunion yet?
No, uh-uh.
Yeah, I was going to say, when you go,
you'll find there's you who've moved on.
You work for Fuel.
You do important things.
Well, let's maybe take out important.
We're talking about Fuel TV.
We're talking about CNN.
We're talking about the International Herald Tribune.
We're talking about Reuters.
Doctors Without Borders. Solo hosting. Reuters. Doctors Without Borders.
Sure.
Solo hosting.
Oh, by Doctors Without Borders, you meant I made funny comments in front of a green screen during a clip show for the doctors.
Yeah.
It's actually not Doctors Without Borders.
That is what I meant.
But when you go to your reunion, you're going to find that there's you and then there are some people who are still ensconced firmly in the high high school hierarchy and they think that they can you either if they were cooler than you then they think
they're cooler than you know they're gonna keep my car aren't they well you never know i mean that's
what i'm saying there's some people who really are stunted in their development have not moved on i
mean christ i am i'm that way when i get around my friends the second we all you know you get me and
nine guys in a room immediately you're telling stories about what happened in 1984 it's retarded
i mean you you try not to,
but you wind up doing it anyway.
You know, every time I get together with,
every time I get together with friends from high school,
a significant chunk of the conversation
is dedicated to, like,
recounting funny Simpsons episodes
from the first three seasons.
Jordan, did you skip your 10-year high school reunion?
Was there one?
No, I haven't gotten anything about it yet.
It should be this year.
It's coming up, right?
Yeah, I don't know how they would find me.
I don't know how did they find you for a high school reunion?
I know on Facebook now.
It's a ton easier now.
Well, yeah.
Much easier now.
Somebody with a yearbook looks everybody up on Facebook.
Oh, well, I'm not on the Facebook.
So, yeah, maybe I'll just...
Oh.
But should I go to it? Is that... Absolutely absolutely you should go well I think you should go do you have uh I
mean how was school for you did you did you hate it if you're one of those people oh no no I liked
high school I had a good time in high school you have to go yeah you absolutely have to go because
again like I said there will be like like uh Jesse had the one experience here where he met these
guys and he went oh oh this is great you. You're going to have that same experience.
You're going to go and you're going to run into people because you may be dreading it.
You might be thinking not to go.
But then the second you walk in the door and you see one or two people and they're nice to you and you go, why did I even stress out about this at all?
This is going to be fun.
And you'll run into that numbskull who wants to poke you in the chest and make fun of you for gym class from 10 years ago who hasn't moved on and let it go.
In my high school, that's the guy who would call you not a faggot.
Faggot was the status quo.
Oh, okay.
Yeah.
So the expectation was that you would be a faggot.
The insult would be insufficiently faggot.
You call that an art installation?
Yeah, exactly.
I was really happy.
It was really neat to talk to guys.
Oh, if anybody out there is listening who went to high school with me and is on Facebook,
when is the reunion?
You can DM me on Twitter.
Yeah, at Jordan underscore Morris.
Go ahead and find him.
Send him a Twitter.
It was neat to me, too, to see these guys that I really hadn't seen in 10 years or really
like been in time.
Like a couple of them were my Facebook friends.
But, you know, like I don't couple of them were my Facebook friends. Um,
but you know,
like I don't really pay attention to my Facebook friends,
frankly,
because it's,
I'm,
you know,
like I'm a public figure.
So there's like thousands of Facebook friends.
I don't know.
Yeah.
So I don't really pay attention to it.
Um,
but,
uh,
uh,
the guys I hadn't seen a long time,
guys that I was fond of,
but like I said,
I didn't,
and then I just see them 10 years later.
Now they're men.
Yep.
Just like me.
Isn't that amazing?
I don't know about just like you,
but they're certainly men.
Sure, sure.
But it was really a fascinating experience.
So you went to yours?
I went to, did I go to 10?
No, I went to 20.
Okay.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And good, positive?
Yeah, it turned out real well.
You know what?
It was great upstairs in the hotel where everybody got along.
Everything was great.
Downstairs in the fight club it was last night.
Very uncomfortable.
But you felt so alive.
Oh, sure.
Illegal kickboxing.
I can't talk about it.
Sorry.
So upstairs it was great.
You finally got to face your old high school rival, Shao Niu. bagwell actually okay and he did not attend it's the you weren't tight
with shawn you shawn you and i were good we were very close yeah but uh unfortunately and he would
tell me he's like dude you gotta kick the shit out of bagwell and i'm like i know get your hands
and glass have not had the chance um but then it was great for the reunion but then afterwards
we wound up uh splintering off in the hotel
To go to, you know, and have the drinking
Sure, of course
And we wound up in a basement
Like a basement conference room
Of the hotel
So it was all the splintering off
Was within the hotel
Like some people went to the starlight room
And some people just went into a hotel
And you went to the basement.
We wound up downstairs where people wanted me to do a set.
Oh, wow.
They were drunkenly imploring me to do jokes in a basement.
And I'm like, eh, that's not going to happen.
But it didn't matter because then another guy goes, well, I'll tell some jokes.
So Jammin' Melvin Davis climbed up on a chair and he started to tell knock-knock jokes and dirty pussy jokes.
Sure.
For everybody's wives.
And it just – it became high school.
It went from upstairs.
It was like we were all adults and this is really neat seeing each other to when we went downstairs.
Immediately we regressed 20 years to the back roads and people are drinking beers and, yeah, it was getting odd.
Was there – the actual thing where everyone was being civil, was there booze at that?
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah, there was booze upstairs.
I had an incident.
All right.
I've told this story on my podcast.
I was on the elevator.
There was a girl in school I didn't get along with very much.
And as it's – I mean, I like her.
She seems – she's nice.
And 20 years later, she's still nice.
But for some reason, we rub each other the wrong way.
So we get in an elevator and it's me and my –
This is present tense now.
Yeah.
You switched from
20 years later
She's still very nice
But we rub each other
I expected you to say
But back in high school
There was
Well you know what
In school
Again yeah
We just for some reason
She and I always
Kind of bumped heads
Right
Alright
And it's because I'm a jagoff
I mean I get that
It's because you have a giant head
That could be it
Yeah
And we were always
In close proximity
Yeah sure
Just like banging
Into each other with paper mache
skulls.
Basically, the real problem was
you were doing Mexican
santo days.
And she had on her costume
for Carnival.
It wasn't a personality conflict. It was more of a haberdashery
conflict.
Gigantic skulls. You were San Simone
and she was a
shit. Something for Carnival. She was a shit.
Something for carnival.
I don't know.
Giant octopus.
I just know that.
Yeah.
Giant octopus woman.
Okay.
Fair enough.
We are insufficient faggots.
We don't know what you're talking about.
So whatever.
We wind up on an elevator and she goes to light up a cigarette and there's like 10 people
on the elevator and there's clearly a no smoking sign like evidently right there.
Well, you don't really need, in my opinion, you don't really need to put
a no smoking sign on an elevator.
I agree with you.
But she'd had a few, I guess, and so she lit up
and I looked at her and I'm like,
come on, you're serious. Are you going to smoke on the elevator?
That's not happening, right?
And she started with the, look, you know what?
We're only going one floor. It's okay.
And she's kind of waving the cigarette around.
So I do what any normal human being would do.
Eat the cigarette.
If I was close enough, maybe.
But instead, I threw, I had a glass of water,
and I threw the entire glass of water on her.
Sure, what any normal human being would do.
Trying to get the cigarette, but again, she's waving it to and fro,
so I don't know where it's going.
So instead, I just kind of aim for her face.
So I throw the glass of water.
No, that's good. Yeah. Because you figure the cigarette's headed there eventually. Of course. She's going to put, there's waving it to and fro, so I don't know where it's going. So instead, I just kind of aim for her face. So I throw the glass of water. That's good.
Yeah.
Because you figure the cigarette's headed there eventually.
Of course.
She's going to put it.
There's a pie hole right there.
Right in the pie hole.
And splash.
I mean, just pin drop quiet in the elevator.
I mean, silent in the elevator.
And my buddy Max is just looking at me, and he's trying not to.
He wants to laugh, but they can't because, again, it's 20 years later.
We're all real people.
So it was a dick move.
I know it was.
But they can't because, again, it's 20 years later.
We're all real people.
So it was a dick move.
I know it was.
So I splash her with the water, and she looks, and she's like, I can't believe you did that.
And I said, I swear to God, I just went, I can't believe you didn't melt.
And that was it.
The elevator door opens, and the evening turned.
What's up? We'll be back with more in just a second on Jordan, Jesse, go.
It's Jordan, Jesse, go.
I'm Jesse Thorne, America's radio sweetheart.
Jordan Morris, boy detective.
Mike Schmidt, third chair.
Yeah, I like it. Third chair bassoon?
Bafoon.
Hey, yeah.
Thank you.
The orchestra of comedy.
Yeah.
I sit on this old chair and
lick my dog.
Is that a bafoon voice? No, that was the voice of the dad from Frasier. Oh, alright. I can tell from my chair and lick my dog. Is that a buffoon voice?
No, that was the voice of the dad from Frasier.
Oh, all right.
I couldn't tell from my pitch perfect impression.
It was really good.
My fault.
Yeah.
You were Frasier.
Jordan, you were Niles.
Yes.
And I was the dad.
You got a Niles thing happening.
I mean, we all know that, right?
We recognize it?
Yeah, I'm kind of a fop.
You have a Frasier face, but you have a Niles sensibility.
I get that all the time.
And Daphne's figure.'s been okay so jordan we were talking i feel like i need to talk about one more secret sex
party thing okay um you don't feel like it's uh you know pardon the turn of phrase, but fucked out? I just want to mention an email that I got.
Okay.
So I, you know, unless it's from time to time,
sometimes I have the intern screen the calls,
but usually I'm the one that's reading the email,
screening the calls.
And we got an email from a listener who is known to me.
That's all I want to say about it.
I know we can't include his name for reasons that will become clear,
but a listener who is known to me, not a listener who would email us to bullshit us.
Okay.
Okay, this is not some bullshit artist.
There's no hook in your mouth.
This is not some European tourist that walked in off the street.
No, uh-uh, this is someone who's there, established.
This is a guy who has a reputation for straight shooting.
If you will allow me an older reference, this isn't
going to be a penguin in the pants. No, this is
no penguin in the pants. Okay.
And I applaud
you for that older reference. No, thanks.
So this listener emailed me.
This listener is a
children's librarian,
which is the reason that this listener
didn't want his
or her name included in any discussion of this email.
A children's librarian, a professional children's librarian who attends...
Not an amateur children's librarian?
No.
All right, just making sure.
Well, there's certainly children's library enthusiasts.
Yeah, they're called child molesters.
It's a child molester who specifically
is really into the Dewey-Tessimals. Yeah, who has a
bookmobile. Yeah.
It's just a van with highlights
magazines in the back. I think
we can agree that while we
Jordan, we talked to someone who
goes to secret sex parties
as a broad category on the show a couple weeks ago.
When we talked to the guy who goes to swinger events, large-scale swinger events,
what we didn't talk to is someone whose description, whose idea of a secret sex party really exactly matched yours.
Your feeling is that when people are getting together to celebrate a common interest,
there's a secret sex party going on underneath it all.
Yeah, that's true.
That's about it.
The premise for it, especially when a group of,
I think we can safely say geeks,
are getting together for an event around a common interest,
such as a Comic-Con or a Renaissance Fair,
that what's really going on is they're going there to fuck
in an organized, costumed, fuck group way.
Okay.
I'm agreeing.
I'm on board with what you're saying.
Any sort of wrestling convention, anything like that,
it's just an excuse to get together with like-minded people
and try to bang them.
Exactly.
Up to and including something that was going on
when I was last in Las Vegas in my hotel, a female bodybuilding event oh that's forget about it that's off the
fetish chart that's retarded um and i think we can agree that going to a swingers party since
it is specifically for fucking it doesn't exactly fit with what we were looking for. Sure. So what this listener told me is that this listener has,
goes every year to the American Library Association Conference.
The ALA?
The ALA.
And can independently, and as I said, no penguin in the pants,
confirm there are secret sex parties at the ALA.
Nice.
Okay.
He or she has attended the secret sex parties,
specifically S&M-themed ones.
By the way, these are the quietest secret sex parties
you'll ever attend.
That's part of it, yeah.
You have to...
They call themselves shushers.
Yeah, that's part of the fetish.
You have to whisper your safe word.
So I just wanted...
And your safe word must have more than four syllables.
I just wanted you to know, Jordan, that...
That I'm right about this and everything else.
Yeah.
Good.
Exactly.
My thirst has been slaked.
I want to ask you guys a question with regard to my recent travels.
All right.
Yes, we did miss you.
Yes, it seemed like fun.
It seemed like you had fun.
Yes, you sent too many photographs.
There was literally two.
Yes, there was.
There was two.
Far too many.
Okay.
So Martha's Vineyard was very lovely.
We visited my wife's good friends.
Oh, here are three things that I confuse.
Yes.
Martha's Vineyard.
Yes.
Camp David.
Yes.
Cape Canaveral.
Wow.
Sometimes when people are talking about one, I'm thinking of the other.
Oh, I just said the coast of the Cape.
I see what you're saying about Canaveral.
I definitely get that.
I went to Martha's Vineyard to launch a satellite.
Okay.
Which doesn't usually happen there.
I had to talk to Anwar Sadat's kids.
The only thing I wanted out of Martha's Vineyard that I didn't get was a round of golf with Bill Clinton and Chevy Chase.
What?
Who are best friends whose families stay together in Martha's Vineyard.
For real?
They do coordinated vacations
to Martha's Vineyard together.
Have you ever been more disappointed
in a person after admiring them
more than you have Bill Clinton?
Seriously?
Hey, I'm a big Chevy Chase fan,
so you're not going to...
I can't.
I'm sorry.
Chevy Chase has just turned
into such a fucking grease spot.
I mean, he's so terrible.
I watch Community, and I see him and Joel McHale, and it's like the ghost of douche past and the ghost of douche future.
That's fair.
Let's move on.
That's fair.
What do you guys think is a cooler pair of buddies?
Is it Bill Clinton and Chevy Chase, Bob Newhart and Don Rickles, or Al Gore and Tommy Lee Jones.
These are three famous celebrity buddy pairs.
These are the big guns.
Yeah.
Of celebrity buddies.
These are the William H. Macy and Felicity Huffman of buddy relationships.
Yeah.
Celebrity buddy relationships.
Felicity H. Muffman.
Yeah.
Stephen Colbert.
I don't want to yank it if you didn't know the reference. I don't even that guy all right i'm gonna show um al gore and tommy lee jones
is my favorite of that okay because i think clinton and chase actually get along and do
things together and uh i i think al gore is like it's the odd couple completely he's fastidious
and tommy jones is a grumpy asshole who keeps hitting him with a captain's hat he keeps hitting
him with a cat and al gore falls out of his hammock. Yeah, exactly.
I picture Tom Lee Jones making that noise a lot.
Oh God.
It's so hard to pick.
I,
I,
you couldn't find somebody that I admire more than Bob Newhart.
And I've never been more delighted than I was when I found out that he was
best friends with Don Rickles.
Yeah,
they,
they,
it appears to me they would just get along very well eating,
you know, soup at 4.30 and wearing
high-waisted pants.
You know what I mean?
They look like they're tailor-made to be friends.
They're still old guys despite all of their personalities and things like that.
So you see them at their heart as old guys.
Yes.
But what about this?
Aren't Bill Clinton and Chevy Chase at their heart arrogant dicks?
Isn't that...
But they're the world's best arrogant dick
yeah but I the problem is I never as it
gets like like Newhart and Rickles have
not surprised me okay Chevy Chase has
not surprised me they've they've turned
out to be who they were it appears to me
anyway Bill Clinton surprised me I mean
he's the first person I ever voted for
in my life you know what I'm gonna I'm
gonna pitch you a curveball I'm gonna go
off the reservation and choose uh meatloaf and big time gene o'neill's dad oh i didn't know that yeah high school college
roommates wow still friends cool meatloaf and big time gene o'neill's dad mr o'neill i hear uh
i hope so uh i hear jack black does a uh does a duet with meatloaf on his latest album that's
great yeah i got nothing against meatloaf i don't want to listen with Meatloaf on his latest album. That's great. Yeah.
I got nothing against Meatloaf.
I don't want to listen to Meatloaf songs, frankly.
Sure, why would you?
But he seems like...
No reason to.
None.
You're done.
He seems like a decent fella.
Sure.
By all accounts.
So I'm going off the reservation making that selection.
Okay.
That's your pick.
All right.
Yeah, I go Clinton.
I'm sorry, I go Gore-Jones.
Again, they strike me as such an odd pairing.
So weird.
What do you think they have in common?
Hotel prostitutes.
Certainly.
And then proximity to each other in school.
That's it.
Literally, they strike me as just two guys who wound up.
Maybe there was a whole group of them, and now they're all dead.
Because they're not famous enough to hang out with those two, that's who they wound up with and you know jones is furious that
that's the guy he got out of the group oh fucking gore it's funny it's funny how that works out your
college roommate just is that thing i was thinking about my fondness for my high school my my
freshman year college roommate uh eroticist um and i was thinking of the time there was just this one time just the
other day it came up when we were walking through the halls of Porter College at University of
California at Santa Cruz and eroticist who was a Filipino guy about how tall would you say Mike is
five six maybe yeah five five five five five". A short guy. Shorter than average. All chest.
Just monstrous guy.
Like a little bit roly-poly, but incredibly strong also.
He just went, oh, and punched a hole in the wall.
Yeah.
And I see that as a very sweet thing to do because of that close bond that you have with your freshman college roommate.
Sure. But if you saw me do it. i saw you i'd be would be sincerely afraid i'm sincerely mike i'm
not gonna lie to you i'm afraid when you tell a story about doing something like that on your
podcast it worries me i have a guy a listener in australia a guy named greg who writes me and he's
very nice and he enjoys me but he also he's very clear to point out in his notes i have no interest in meeting you i could not he said i am scared if it comes up yeah if i'm
visiting los angeles or you're visiting australia we should not try and get together he's very
comfortable with the do not go a wall thousand tilde with me mile buffler buffer he's very happy
with that um and again very friendly really nice long emails and very supportive donated to the show very cool since since the beginning episode one yeah but it very clearly has these borders of no
we could not hang out or be friends so when i when i was on vacation that was the first half
of the vacation martha's vineyard bill clinton the whole nine yards um the second half of the
vacation was visiting my wife's cabin my My wife's grandparents and her grandfather
and her grandfather's sister
and her grandfather's late brother's son
share ownership of this cabin.
So it's a Catholic family.
So the ownership of this cabin and use of this cabin,
it could not be more dispersed.
So it's sort of a situation where, you know,
everybody gets four or five days at the cabin and they all have to – they basically have a fantasy league draft at the beginning of the year.
A year?
Yeah.
Only four or five days a year?
Because there's so many.
My wife has 30 first cousins.
I see.
Oh, so all the cousins.
I thought you were just saying –
Everybody's – there's three branches at the grandparents level.
The executives, the legislative, and the judicial.
Exactly.
All right.
And I've gone there a number of times.
It's where I proposed to my wife.
It's a very important place to her because she grew up going there every year.
It's a place that she's very close with her cousins.
And yes, Mike.
I'm just saying, you proposed to her there.
I kept calling on Mike.
Thank you.
Just because I need to know, did you have to get involved in the fantasy draft to get
the perfect day when you knew you were going to propose?
Or did you propose when you were just there?
I took what came.
I took what came.
Okay.
I'm not involved in the fantasy draft.
Well, at that point, maybe you pull aside the executive branch and go, hey, look, I'm
involved.
Try to get the perfect day.
A new moon.
You try and catch the air.
You make a few key donations.
Yeah. I don't know how you do things. Absolutely. You try and get an right the perfect day trying to cash the air you make a few key donations yeah i don't know how you do things absolutely you try and get an earmark exactly um so i uh i've gone
there several times and i i'm fond of this place um and my wife is very fond of it because she grew
up going there with her cousins and her aunts and uncles and her parents and they would go like two
families would go up together three families would be there together like people sleep on the porch like it's a very like super intense family place for my
wife's very intensely family oriented family which is in direct contrast to my family who
basically have nothing to do with each other i mean my parents love me and everything but i mean
they're they're they're brothers and sisters you know they don't sure it's not like they have a
hostile relationship they're just in all different not like they have a hostile relationship.
They're just in all different places, and they're just not a big part of each other's lives.
Yeah, and they're not sleeping stacked like cordwood on a porch in a cabin somewhere.
Exactly.
They would never sleep like cordwood.
Okay.
Kindling, perhaps.
Bound kindling of some kind.
Yeah, my family's all kindling.
But what I realized when i got there this time and i had sort of i don't
know maybe i had pushed through it before or something maybe it just came up before and i
just put it out of my mind because i wanted to be supportive i don't i my brother went this time
my uh my sister-in-law's boyfriend who's a park ranger in Yosemite, came along.
Wonderful guy.
I love my brother very much as well.
I was very happy to see him.
I'm useless at a cabin.
There's no thing for me to do.
You put me in a cabin.
I am completely lost.
It's like putting a cat on a tropical island
oh that's a cute image that's really nice in that it's adorable it's really adorable
it's like you i have no maybe the cat is uh laying on a beach towel with little sunglasses
on oh my god oh boy on his back yeah totally oh my god wait can i ask you a question is he wearing
zinc oxide on his nose he is now oh what do you want you want it it's it yeah uh serve it to me
on a plate please um i went to we went to guy if you uh internet if you could just get on that
yeah please oh come on it's out there it has to be out there already right yeah no i think
well at least someone tell me where it is i don't want to browse through the millions
of cat things i just want to see that that we have a message board thread for each episode
there's a place to put it sure go to 4chan on saturday you'll get there caturday it's I am there. I do not hate the nature things,
but I don't have any interest in them at all.
And so there was a point where we went to play miniature golf.
So if you drive about 35 or 40 minutes,
you can go to this town called Gray Eagle that has a mini golf course.
Do you think the golf course was there before the city?
Yes.
That sounds like a name of a golf course.
It's a naturally occurring golf course.
And they sprung up around it?
Yeah.
Oh, that's funny.
All right, that made me laugh.
And going to play miniature golf
was such a relief and a joy to me.
So do you hate it?
That's the thing.
I don't hate it.
I don't.
I just, here's the thing.
Like, all the things that you do there is, well, they're basically all either hiking or jumping or hiking to a lake.
Yeah, to a jump.
And the lake is really cold because it's in the mountains of the Sierras.
And the hike is very, it's a hikey.
I mean, in their world, a short hike is, to me, quite a long hike.
Right.
And I don't want to be a dick about it.
And there are people who hike to hike.
Like, you would hike if there was a reward at the end yes exactly yeah exactly and i don't even like and and so i was completely the
only things that i found that i could do at this event um were the miniature golf to stalk the
teens at the camp across the lake yeah and for everybody. I kind of like cooking.
I'll cook.
I cooked a couple meals.
Cabin food?
Like, do they have a accoutrement?
No, they have a kitchen. There's a kitchen.
Are you cooking over, like, an open bean tin?
I would like to cook over an open bean tin.
That does sound kind of fun to me.
With burning a kindling in it, sure.
And, you know, it's funny you mention that, because my wife and I went camping, and I think I talked talked about it on Jordan Jesse Go maybe like a year ago or a year and a half ago.
And I basically felt like once the tent was set up, well, OK, let's just go to bed.
And then once I woke up and I cooked the bacon over a fire, I liked that.
And I was like, OK, well, time to go home, right?
Yeah.
My wife's like, no no we have to go on
a hike like enjoy I'm like no we did the stuff we built the tent that was kind of fun and we
cooked bacon over an open fire that was kind of fun you don't want to go actual camping you want
to go like to west world for camping yeah it's just a camping simulation and then you can go
stay in a hotel that night sure well after you get chased by the insane robot Yul Brynner. Of course.
His face plate falls off.
But it's funny because it's kind of backwards
because the activity, like the camping stuff,
like I kind of like, to me, sleeping in a tent is kind of neat.
Like it's not that I like can't bear the idea of being in the outdoors
or something like that.
Like, oh, I need my, you know, I need my facial massage in the morning.
It's just that I don't like any of the activities.
Once you've done the sleeping in a tent and the cooking the food, I have no interest in going for a hike.
Yeah.
I don't even know what that's for.
I don't like leaves.
Yeah.
Are you ever a camper?
No, I went camping when I was a kid.
We went to the dunes, and that was fun because it was with my friend Mike and then we were girls in bikinis and you're 13 and that's cool.
But I will tell you this.
As I'm older now, I just turned 43, so I talked to my friends and I actually dropped this on my friends and I said, you know what?
We should get like a cabin and go fishing.
Like we should all go stay at a cabin and go fishing.
And my friends – I think they're still laughing.
I told them this like five months ago because they're like, dude, you can't even like function in the real world.
You're going to go out there?
And they said, you hate that.
You hate being in one place at one time.
You hate waiting.
But the thing is I miss my friends.
That's all it is.
I mean I want all five – me and my good friends to get together and hang out like Big Chill style for four days and toss a football around.
Sure. And lay around and have a good, I want to be 15 again is
what I want.
You know what I mean?
And if it means that I got to go fucking catch a fish to do it.
If it means you got to throw a glass of water on a lady for smoking in an elevator.
Take that.
But I mean, I still am 15.
Unfortunately, you know, it's my friends that have all grown up and realized their potential.
You know what I mean?
Here's the real problem though.
my friends that have all grown up and realized their potential.
You know what I mean? Here's the real problem, though.
This was the – hiking was one thing, but it goes back to something we talked about
a couple weeks ago on Jordan, Jesse, Go.
We bought the board game Settlers of Catan.
Oh, sure.
We bought it because everybody – I think we got 25 emails about how fun it is and stuff.
Very fun board game.
And –
Are you playing along or do you realize? Do you really think it's a fun board game? No, no. I do think it's a fun board game. And Are you playing along or do you realize?
Do you really think it's a fun board game? No, no, I do think it's a fun board game.
I see. Yes. Do you play board games?
Not a lot. This is one of the few board games
I've played. I don't have
a board game enthusiast in my life
right now. I see. But when you did...
Yes, we played Settlers of Catan. Okay. I've also
heard, again, I'm curious because
there's a baseball writer named Keith Law
who cannot stop
talking about that game. You're talking about Keith Law, formerly of the Baseball
Prospectus. Indeed, and now of ESPN.com.
Yeah.
I'm right here with you. Good, I'm glad to hear it.
Don't worry, you're not going to lose me. I'm a fan of Keith Law,
and he likes
a lot of things, books and games.
Went to Prospectus to work for the Royals?
Toronto Blue Jays. He was in the front
office with J.P. Ric Ricciardi and then he wound up
leaving. You would know him as
the former assistant to Billy
Bean, Jordan. Okay.
I was trying to put the
pieces together until you said that.
So yeah, so Keith Laws
mentioned Settlers of Catan, so that's why to hear you
both mention it is interesting to me. You know what?
You would know Billy Bean from his
three or four dozen at-bats
with the Oakland A's in the early 1990s.
True.
You also –
See that bald ultimate boxer from 1998?
That's Butterbean.
Butterbean.
What was that?
Was that some sort of prelude to ultimate fighting?
Excuse me.
Are you talking about that bald ultimate Fighter from 2010, Butterbean?
Is Butterbean still fighting?
He is absolutely still fighting.
Okay.
But maybe this is something you could explain to us.
Okay.
He is fighting Mariusz Pudzianowski, actually, the strongest man in Poland.
He's fighting him.
Coming up in a scant month.
And specifically, he's fighting them in the video game Mike Tyson's Punch-In.
His bald bowl will be taken on afterwards.
No, Pudzianowski is the strongest man in the world.
Is his name Pudgenowski?
Pudgenowski.
P-U-D-Z.
Punch him out-ski.
Yeah, exactly.
But he's a guy who just started Ultimate Fighting,
but he was one of those guys who would carry a fucking keg up nine flights of stairs on ESPN.
One of those idiots.
Yeah.
Hey, look, I can pull a fridge.
You know, one of those guys.
Sure.
Well, now he's Ultimate Fighting.
The smart guys, by the way, are doing it on Fox Sportsnet.
Oh, are they?
That's where the real money is.
Yeah.
So Pudzianowski just got into Ultimate Fighting, and he will be fighting Butterbean because
Butterbean owns and promotes this particular promotion.
Okay.
And is not afraid to use his name.
But he still fights.
Absolutely, Butterbean still fights.
Okay.
What did he do before the UFC mixed martial arts trend?
He was a boxer.
Okay.
But he was a special attraction boxer because he's built like a thumb.
And then he would fight four round fights.
And he was Homer Simpson.
You can punch him in the head over and over and he's not going anywhere.
And then if he hits you once, you're dead.
In this case, special attraction boxer means not a real boxer.
Exactly, yeah.
He's the guy where they'll be like, you know,
they'll give you four amazing fights and Butterbean.
He's like Truckasaurus.
He's the guy, he fills the seats, and then you can put on a bunch of fights around him.
To distract from the legitimate competition of regular monster truck driving.
That no one cares about, exactly.
You can watch them drive in a circle all day,
but until a giant robot dinosaur eats them you don't care in my experience frankly the
monster truck rally is primarily people riding motor motorcycles in a circle over uh small dirt
hills yeah and then at the end there's about five minutes of monster truck action they cram it in
right there at the bottom yes you mean action action action so what i
struggled with at the cabin is that i can't deal with the fight of competition even in a board game
that is it is a fun board game you were right and so were the dozens of nerds who emailed me
um it is a fun board game but even that i did perfectly well did not win the game but did
perfectly well in
learning the rules which was in the guy who had played before ended up winning it sounds like a
all right i need a thumbnail on the game because you know when i played games with people it's a
resource management game i think that'll suffice okay because you know you'll play pictionary or
you'll play uh you know uh scrap categories or you know Those kind of games are what I'm used to playing with a group of people.
It's sort of like, it's a little bit like Risk if Risk wasn't all about battles.
Okay.
So it's about sort of like...
So all the fun drained completely out of Risk.
Yeah, all the competition anyway.
But I couldn't handle it.
And the other big activity at the cabin is ping pong tournament.
Now, number one, I'm terrible at ping pong.
And number two, I'm terrible at ping pong. And number two,
I hate losing.
So I can't really participate
in the ping pong tournament that's going on 24 hours a day.
So what does that leave me with?
Well, once all my magazines have been read,
it leaves me reading Vanity Fair.
Oh.
The best dressed list in Vanity Fair.
That's what I did at the cabin.
You should watch Vanity Fair starring Reese Witherspoon.
That was my mistake.
Not doing that. Or you should watch
Sweet Home Alabama because there's a cabin involved.
Did you ever do nature things, Jordan?
No, no. I've only done a few nature things
in my life.
We went to Jim Rayall,
the master of Would You Rather's cabin once.
No, I never went.
Really?
Yeah. I feel like
everybody in their life has or everybody has someone in their life with a cabin who's always going up to it.
But I don't.
Yeah, I never really have.
I've never gotten – I just don't get a lot of invites to do outdoor things.
I think it might be the supposition that I'll suck at it.
Yeah, you will. Yeah, sure, which is fair. I donosition that I'll suck at it. Yeah. You will.
Yeah, sure, which is fair.
I don't think I wouldn't enjoy it, but I – yeah, it doesn't come up a lot.
A friend cabin is sounding pretty good to me.
What about – I'm interested in the idea of – and I'm sorry if I'm excluding you from this, Jordan.
No, no.
A couple's cabin where some friend couples go, and then I do a lot of cooking.
And now we're back to Secret Sex Party.
Exactly.
Well, we'll be back in just a second.
No, I'm...
We'll be back in just a second on Jordan and Jesse Go. Love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, love you, his arm i'm hoping so dominating the floor yeah locking down the key this is a fantastic uh
location i will tell you that this is my first time in the new jordan jesse go studios location
and you weren't lying about the cross breeze i'm a huge fan of the cross breeze like when you told
the story about the cabin and the people sleeping outside i i actually got goosebumps because i
would love to do that even though i hate outside i don't care so fresh yeah but uh it just sounded
neat to fight you can see so many stars i'm a fan of falling asleep wherever you are
in a non-bed place it's the best because there's something so freeing about it where you're just
like you know what man i don't have to move i'm just gonna that's it i'm out i'm camping out right
here i love to sleep in a chair i'm very archie bunker i'm just i just i love falling asleep places man it's great and a breeze ed in a breeze jesus what i
like what i like about it is not so much that you love this but that it seems to be one of your core
principles oh sure the bedrock bedrock ideals there's no doubt it is is to your life as, say, freedom of association is to the public life of the citizens of the United States of America.
Okay, nerd.
I don't know what any of that meant, but no, I'm teasing.
Of course.
Yeah, absolutely.
I agree with you.
I just love it.
I want to take some telephone calls.
Something that you were talking about on last week's show, Jordan, that had come up a few weeks ago on jordan jesse go was underappreciated movies that you love um and
movies that other people didn't like or were critically commercially unsuccessful uh that you
love i finally when you brought that up before all i could come up with was pootie tang which i've
talked about plenty on this show there's no shortage of me talking about how much i like
pootie tang on this program. But I thought of one that I
really loved, which is Devil
in a Blue Dress, starring Denzel Washington.
Okay. Adapted from the Walter
Mosley novel of the same name.
Also stars Don Cheadle
as Mouse. Alright.
Two,
especially Cheadle, it's the best
performance that I've ever seen Cheadle give.
And he's a gifted actor.
Even better than a Hotel Rwanda?
I did not see a Hotel Rwanda.
Ah.
Iron Man 2.
He also played Mouse in that.
Yeah.
In Hotel Rwanda.
It was a crossover thing.
Same universe.
They took place in the same universe.
It wasn't a sequel, but...
But just a really...
I would say one of my 15 favorite movies
was a total box office failure, I think.
I think probably it was one of those things where, frankly, too many black people.
Sure.
Spoils the broth.
Yeah.
Just, you know, America doesn't want to go see a movie with mostly black people in it.
They'll see a movie with one or two black people.
Unless one of them is dressed up like a lady.
Well, that's just black people going to see that. Yeah, yeah true a lot to them they're just going a lot and multiple times
um but i think you know that's it's this it's a sad thing you can't really make a mainstream movie
apparently with with a mostly black people cast uh but it's a wonderful movie uh really great
really really lovely what is it about what if you were to find a white people movie equivalent,
what would it be?
It's a mystery.
I would say the white people equivalent might be Chinatown.
Oh, see?
It's not as epic as Chinatown.
Right.
But similarly toned,
sort of, it's set in the 1940s,
based on the acclaimed mystery novel
by Walter Mosley.
Denzel plays E.Z. Rollins,
the titular character.
And it's really sad that it was a failure because it was probably set up to be a franchise.
Oh, okay.
Because he has multiple best-selling
and critically acclaimed novels in this series.
And it's really sad
that it didn't work out because Denzel was
so wonderful in the role.
What year did that come out?
Was it when Denzel was Denzel?
Was it after Training Day?
This is before Training Day.
After Virtuosity.
This was after Virtuosity.
But he was certainly a big star at the time.
I would say this was maybe 1997.
Okay.
Something like that.
So it was Hunt for Red October,
around like those...
Sure.
I think after that and before...
In between that and Training Day.
Okay.
I mean, yeah, 97.
Because after Training Day,
you would think he would have the hammer to pretty much make whatever he wanted. Yeah. And then, of course, he made Book Training Day. Okay. I mean, yeah, 97 sounds about right. Because after Training Day, you would think he would have the hammer to pretty much make
whatever he wanted.
Yeah.
And then, of course, he made Book of Eli.
Sure.
And why wouldn't he have?
And those train movies.
Oh, true.
You know what people, you know what movie there was a broad consensus around on the
forum as an underappreciated movie?
Speed Racer.
I've heard that, too.
One of the artsy theaters out here that does midnight movies is doing
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Is doing midnight Speed Racer
showings, which leads me to believe that maybe it has some sort
of cult fan base that goes to a midnight movie. Midnight is a great time
to be high. Sure. To be tripping balls. And I understand that that's the way to watch Speed Racer.
Yeah, maybe so. I did not get high. get high i loved speed racer really a lot of people really liked it
my wife and i we went and uh because you know everybody tried to look at it like a movie or
whatever but it's it's it's a video game but it's and it's done very influenced with by japan and
it's you know a lot of wipes and you know that kind of thing i mean it's really great i mean i
talked about it on my podcast when it came out i said people are savaging this but I dug it the only thing is I can't
it's like two hours and 40 minutes long so I can't imagine it being a midnight movie
but it was super long but it was I thought I really enjoyed it
okay so like I want to hear there's someone called in with one that a lot of people have talked about
and what happened
whoa And what happened? Whoa!
Hey, Jordan, Jesse, guests.
This is Jordan from Bloomington, Illinois,
and I want to speak on the topic of movies that I love that aren't as popular as I'd like.
And the movie I want to say is Mystery Men.
This is the movie where...
Do you like how...
An interesting thing about this call
is how much emphasis he gives to various words
in his non-contentful lead-in,
and then how much he buries the...
Mystery Men, sure.
Mystery Men part.
Mystery Men, several people suggested Mystery Men.
Nope, they're wrong. Nope, they're wrong.
Nope, they're wrong.
It sucks.
That's like one of those movies like, oh, God, I mean, like, you know, it came out around the time that I was so excited to see a movie with Ben Stiller and Janine Garofalo.
William H. Mancy.
William H. Paul Rubens.
Basically every single person in that movie, i was shitting my pants with excitement to
see that this is like maybe my my i think i remember my senior year of high school when my
kind of comedy dorkdom was at its you know most rabbit i think i had read uh ben stiller and
janine garofalo's um self-help parody book that year too um yeah yeah mystery men sucks it sucks
directed by the director of the Got Milk ads.
Yeah, I remember that being the story around it, too.
It's like, oh, let's give this guy a movie.
Yeah, it was, it's horrible.
There's a couple of funny things in it.
There's some, it's one of those movies that has some funny ideas in it that are very poorly executed.
Yeah, it's a neat, it's a super neat idea.
Like, all their, all their, you know their fake superhero character quirks are really funny.
I think it's one of the worst directed comedies I've ever seen.
I think the director just really sucks the laugh out of even the best jokes.
And I think that maybe it's the kind of movie that, if you'll pardon me,
geeks like to celebrate more, not just because of the amazing cast,
but because I think sometimes geeks like the idea of something as much as they like the thing.
No, sure.
And that's a great – yeah.
I think when we are talking about these panned movies, I think that might come up a lot.
Something that has a solid idea.
Before we move on, as you guys kick the shit out of Mystery Men, and by proxy, Jordan from Bloomington, Illinois.
Yeah, fuck that guy.
Let's back off on Jordan and Scosche, because you did ask for movies that are loved by particular people.
Absolutely.
We just disagree.
Well, yeah, we disagree vehemently, and he does not have a forum to reply.
I remember Janine Garofalo saying something.
He may call in again.
We are giving him permission to call in again. I remember Janine Garofalo saying something. He may call in again. We are giving him permission to call in again. I remember
Janine Garofalo saying something very funny
at one point.
There was a number of funny things.
What year was that?
I think it was before you seen her in high school.
What year did Janine Garofalo say something funny?
I'm going to go with 1997 or 1998 on that one too.
Because I think I was a little earlier in high school.
I don't think I was a senior in high school by then.
You're a year younger than I am.
It had some great jokes in it.
There's no doubt about that.
I love Janine Garofalo.
Romantically?
Yes.
Oh, sure.
I did.
I met her at the Laugh Factory, Christ, in the late 90s.
It might have been.
Yeah.
97, 98.
And I almost couldn't talk to her.
I mean, because there's something about her. I interviewed. And I, I almost couldn't talk to her.
I mean, because I just,
I,
there's something about her that I.
I interviewed her on stage
and I almost couldn't talk to her.
Oh my Christ.
I just,
man.
What,
how did you,
did your love,
I mean,
it doesn't seem like it has,
but did your love of her wane
when she was kind of in her
political pundit phase?
You know,
I didn't love her
because of her act
and her material.
I don't know what it was.
It was,
it was her personality.
And yeah,
I mean. Did anyone? I, I and her material. I don't know what it was. It was her personality. Did anyone?
I saw her live.
I saw her open for David Spade and Dennis Miller, and she was very funny.
I saw her do a full set at Bumbershoot two years ago when we were there, when I interviewed her.
Full set being in 45 minutes?
Yeah, 40 minutes.
So a real set, okay.
A real set.
I mean, 35, 40 minutes. So a real set, okay. A real set. I mean, 35, 40 minutes.
And there were some parts that weren't funny,
but the parts that were intended to be funny were quite funny.
Yeah.
Does that make sense?
Yeah.
Yeah, I think she's beautiful.
I think she's very funny.
I just find her to be really, really attractive.
And I just saw her last year in the green room at the UCB.
And again, same thing. Yeah, she's very good looking and everybody's everybody's talking
got all those crazy tattoos now too yeah yeah and but they're being funny back and forth and i want
to kind of jump in but i also don't want to say the clunker and then uh who's this idiot you know
what i mean that that because you're in a green room with you know janine and marin and you know
that's always an intimidating joint to be in even Even though you think you can hold your own.
But then the second you say one wrong thing, you're like, oh, Christ, I can't.
It's like diving into the deep end of the pool right away.
I mean, if I meet Lisa Loeb, at least I won't have to worry that she's funnier than me.
Well, dude, I got nothing.
I was going to try to be cute there, and I'm like, no, there's nothing.
He's right.
I mean, I can't even top it.
Yeah, I'm going to have a be cute there and I'm like, no, there's nothing. He's right. I mean, I can't even top it. Yeah. She's going to – I'm going to have a hard time talking to her.
But at least I won't have to worry that while having a hard time talking to her, my goal will be to be really funny and that she'll be too funny.
Exactly.
That's a good point.
Yeah.
She was – she's very funny.
So I think we back off Jordan a little bit from Bloomington, Illinois because he gave of himself.
He opened himself up.
And he's responded to the assignment.
Exactly.
He's not like he picked a movie that was like, you know.
Yeah, and then we put the boots to him.
Popular.
A lot of great lines in the movie.
They're all basically stepped upon by the horrible milk commercial-like direction.
But there's a lot of things when you think back on the movie, you can think, oh, that was a really funny thing that happened in that movie.
Although I will say this, Paul Rubens, no need for me to say this, given that there's a giant print of him on my wall in a frame.
Yeah.
My hero, probably my number one favorite all time comedy person of any kind.
But he was horrible and not funny at all in that movie.
Just not funny at all.
Blame it on the milkman.
Yeah, okay.
Let's go back to the phones and get one more.
Hey, Jordan, Jessica.
This is Elizabeth in Washington,
and I was calling with an action item about overlooked movies.
One of my favorite movies is Step Up 2, The Streets.
Step Up 1 is a perfectly fine dance movie, but Step Up 2 just
has awesome jams, really great routines, and they don't waste too much time with some, you know,
storyline that you don't really care about. So Step Up to the Streets is my overlooked movie
recommendation. Can I say that there is a not insignificant portion of me
that wants to go see Step Up 3D?
Although, you know, I hear you.
I maybe want to backtrack and say that this isn't the assignment.
Okay.
Because that was successful enough to make a third one.
So maybe it was critically panned, and maybe, you and maybe I'm assuming she's... I think it's fair
because when she tells her
buddies that she really loves Step Up 2,
they're going to rag on her.
Sure. But anyways.
Continue.
You know, a movie
that gets
a lot of this is Roll Bounce
starring Bow Wow.
That has a very
significant and committed
fan base.
And I have to say I was kind of disappointed by Roll Bounce.
I watched it based on the fact that people
kept telling me, hey, you would really
like Roll Bounce.
This is a dance movie. This is a dance battle
movie? This is a roller
skating battle movie. Set in the 90s. This is a dance movie. This is a dance battle movie? This is a roller skating battle movie.
Okay.
Set in the 19...
This is a period roller skating battle movie starring Bow Wow.
It does have some charming elements to it.
It does not work as a film.
And the problem with it is that the roller skate dancing isn't cool enough.
Sure.
I think roller skate dancing is actually kind of cool.
There's guys not cool in the sense of like miles davis is cool but neat i think roller skate dancing is neat
you're talking to the wrong guy there's guys who do roller disco in goldgate park in san francisco
and whenever i see it i'm like hey cool look at those guys doing roller disco isn't that charming um but that having been said uh i can see the dance potentially the dancing in step up 3d
being good enough that i would enjoy watching step up 3d especially because it's in 3d okay
really you're finding the 3d something you enjoy yeah well it's a yeah i kind of i mean i don't
here's the thing i don't want to watch
a real movie in 3d particularly yeah i think there's a legitimization of 3d that i can't
buy into because it kind of gives me a headache and it's annoying to look at and definitely takes
me out of the film i'm i'm an old man and i'm in the phase of you know you kids get out of my yard
in my movie going so i'm i'm angered by 3D. I found Avatar to be a very upsetting movie going experience.
I just found it so unpleasant.
I mean, in many ways, but especially the 3D.
I really enjoyed Avatar.
I recognize the script is flawed.
I recognize it's a child's story.
We're not going to get into it.
You don't have to worry.
Every time I say it, I get savaged.
Luckily, I haven't seen Dave Anthony
because I think he'll probably still punch me in the face.
But I just –
It was one of the worst movies I watched all of.
Yeah.
I was so intimidated by the accomplishment, which I've talked about.
I actually was in my own head for a week about how he created a world and a language.
Where everything is blue.
It was just – it was like Black Hawk Down, like when I saw that.
I've talked about this many times
where I,
just the sheer enormity.
So maybe someone could fly a helicopter
because there's so many levers.
Those scenes when they're filming
the chase through Somalia
and every window is covered
by a camera.
Dude, I just,
I couldn't do it.
I can barely talk every week
on the show.
And I see them making these films
at Avatar.
Like I said,
just the enormity of the task
bowled me over.
I'm interested in the message thread.
I'm sure there are some people out there who have watched Step Up 3D.
And in fact, I know that Mariel, former Max Fund intern Mariel Reyes, who is a huge film geek, went to see Step Up 3D and loved it.
Yeah, I heard about a comedy hipster trip to see Step Up 3D.
Did we view it ironically?
Was that doing it ironically?
Because I would not be doing it ironically.
Yeah, I don't know what the tone was.
I don't know the guy who was telling me about it well enough to judge if they were going to, like, get high and laugh at it or – hard to say.
Unclear.
But I am saying that I recognize there is a contingent of uh non-13 year old girls going
to see this i have to say one thing about comedy hips hipster field trips sure um yesterday i was
recording a sketch for uh the sound of young america with uh past jordan jesse go guests
and all-time great funny guys uh paul sheer and seth morris and paul was relating to us the story of his trip to see
weird al at the orange county fair yes um he along with basically every every person from
who's ever come from the upright citizens brigade theater and become famous and michael sarah
uh got a limousine to take them to Orange County to watch Weird Al.
And Paul said with absolute sincerity and very charmingly, I thought, that he thought
it might have been the best concert he'd ever seen.
Yeah.
As someone who has seen Weird Al at the county fair before, the Orange County Fair specifically.
Whoa.
Yeah.
No.
I mean, Weird Al is a cool character i
think because he definitely straddles the line of like just saying weird al is like a funny reference
of here's something goofy from the 80s like you know if you need if you were talking about how
goofy the 80s was you could just say weird al in place of hyper color shirt or thomins. Thompson Twins, sure. And that gets a laugh.
It's a reference and it's kind of even a placeholder-y one. But I think Weird Al, unlike
those other things, Weird Al was a very good performer. I mean, you know, definitely the songs
are more funny to a 10-year-old. And he also got
it. And Jamie Lee Curtis. That was the other element of this story.
Jamie Lee Curtis was standing in front of this story jamie lee curtis was
standing in front of paul sheer at the show and paul said that she sang every word to every song
including the new ones so good wow so it's like yeah everybody knows eat it yeah but
who knows that new song that's sort of jonathan col-y about being a failed actor who works at Disneyland.
Sure. Last I knew was the Craiglist
Doors parody. That was the last one I saw.
It was pretty recent.
And it was great.
It was great! Sure, but Weird Al, like, yeah,
he's a good musician. He's a good singer.
You know. And like I said, he gets
it. He knows. Yeah.
He's not a... When you say he's
a caricature or a creature of the 80s the character
of weird al is but i think he himself yeah understands that and he plays that role at the
fair to do his thing but off stage he's not like dice clay who's still walking around as dice clay
right yeah yeah so he he kind of gets that that's a role he fills and then he can be himself when
he's off stage and uh you know then he's on tim and eric and doing all that kind of stuff yeah
but i also suspect that maybe you know currentyear-old boys still like Weird Al albums.
They do.
Yeah.
And God bless him for it.
If you say a bad word about...
By the way, one other thing.
I know people...
So you say a bad word about Weird Al, you're on my shit list.
And I don't even really care about Weird Al. I didn't grow up listening to Weird Al and loving Weird Al, you're on my shit list. And I don't even really care about Weird Al.
I didn't grow up listening to Weird Al and loving Weird Al.
But he just seems like a great guy and God bless him.
So fuck you if you're going to bitch about Weird Al.
But I don't think that's...
I don't think anybody does.
I feel like it's universal.
However, I want to say one more thing, which is this.
Michael Cera, who starred in the recent film Scott Pilgrim that I went to see...
Is that still in theaters?
...starred in numerous...
Yes, it is.
I'm just checking. It wasn't a total failure.
It was very enjoyable.
I'm not sure if it
worked, but
basically, I give
10 stars to Edgar Wright, the director. Everything
he did worked in a way that I did not
expect. Are you a Scott Pilgrim
comic? I had read the first couple
of ones. I'm not a big comic book guy, but I read the first couple of ones i'm not a big comic book
guy but i read the first couple of ones because i'm negotiating i'm hoping to get the guy who
writes them on the sound of being american i see and so you wouldn't it's not like you went in
judging it or having preconceived notions not at all i i had enjoyed the first two i mean it
didn't change my life but um uh you know it's not a core part of my identity they seemed they were
fun um i liked i liked them that's not what i'm here to identity. They seemed they were fun.
That's not what I'm here to talk about.
What I'm here to talk about is this.
Sorry.
I'm tired of people ragging on Michael Cera.
Number one, he's really funny.
He's really good at what he does.
Number two, he's the same in every movie.
Yeah, that's called being in a fucking movie.
Tell me the people who have multiple personae who are starring in comic films yeah um and you know what no one was
mad at charlie chaplin for playing the same character in every movie oh yeah that hack
you know what's and and uh and like the guy is the guy is really making an effort to do good
things like some of his efforts have failed. But you know what?
If you're in a lot of movies and some of them don't suck, you haven't been in a lot of movies.
Like the reality of the situation is that, you know, most movies suck.
I think the problem with Michael Cera and this perception is I think it's because we're being told we're supposed to like him over and over.
And they keep putting out his vehicles and his movies. And he continues. Come on. I think it's because we're being told we're supposed to like him over and over.
And they keep putting out his vehicles in his movies.
And he continues.
Come on.
He is doing Michael Cera in all of his movies.
Because that's the role he's been called to do. In contrast to, say, George Clooney or Will Ferrell.
Oh, don't.
Will Ferrell.
I'm with you.
Jim Carrey.
Dude, yes, I agree.
But those guys are 35-year- who are can do over the top and
big laughs and craziness and had established goodwill with an anchorman or you know or ace
ventura whether you like it or not and they became so they were able to go kind of and coast
on those personalities and be those guys michael cera hased development And super bad Super bad
Was a monster hit
But everybody
Walked away from that movie
Going wow McLovin
Oh my god McLovin
You know what I mean
It's like
I'm not
Believe me
What I'm saying is
The man's really funny
And I don't say
Here's the thing
Actually I think
Maybe when
When people
When there is
The negative Michael Cera feeling
I think maybe
What it more is
It is
It's not like
Not liking Michael Cera Because yes He is maybe what it more is, it is not like not liking
Michael Cera. Because yes, he is
totally funny, but I think it's more of a...
That's the thing. He could do that and
not be funny. That's the other thing.
He is a gifted comic actor.
It's not just happenstance. People
act as though, well, all he does is just
show up on screen and schlub around a little
bit.
But you're talking to the wrong people.
That's the same people who yell at Barry Bonds.
Oh, you know what I mean?
Right, exactly.
And all these people can go fuck themselves.
And I think maybe this is kind of a, it's a burnout.
And it's a burnout on that kind of movie.
So this is what I would like to ask.
Okay.
If you are burned out on Michael Cera
He's been in a lot of films
And I can totally understand being burned
Just as I could understand being burned out on Will Ferrell
For example
Who is I think one of the funniest people that exists
But I can understand being burned out on him
Have you seen that other guy?
I enjoyed it
The other guy is funny
Because of my I'm burned out on Will Ferrell
I have not seen it
And here's the thing.
A relative departure from the character he usually plays.
I mean, it's still super Will Ferrell-y, but, I mean, it is a different kind of.
Semi-pro was it for me, where I just went, yeah, that's, you know, these guys are just showing up and getting four of their improv friends together, slapping on mustaches and doing whatever they want.
Slapping on some mustaches.
Here's the thing.
I don't mind.'t i don't mind i
sincerely don't mind if you're not into that anymore you're tired of it it's not that funny
to you anymore because you've seen it before whatever that's all sincerely totally fine with
me but don't tell me about how he sucks or you hate him but because fuck you yeah you're you're
right you're absolutely right because he doesn't suck no and if you say you hate him good but that's
on them that's on those people because again it's the same thing with these people are assholes that's why i hate them that's why i'm
telling them to go fuck themselves i see all right i apologize yes you're right yeah i'm with you
because i i don't but that's michael cere was on the sunday young america five years ago the nicest
guy ever just a super nice guy working really hard living in fucking toronto with his parents
right but the problem is the the spin the problem is the you know where
they come at you with one is the spin of i'm a human being that isn't a dick and the other is
i'm the spin of like oh i'm so catty about pop culture fuck you you're misinterpreting what i
said the spin that is coming from studios and are the people who are trying to you know michael
sarah michael sarah and so people eventually just go, fuck, I'm tired of this guy. I've seen him do the same thing over and over in four different movies about realizing
that's what he was asked to do. Nobody said, dude, could you make Taxi Driver for us?
That'd be great. No, they want him to do what he does and does best,
and he's really good at it. Yeah, and I think
the advertising does have a lot to do with that. I remember the advertising specifically
for Youth and Revolt. advertising does have a lot to do with that i remember the advertising specifically for the um
for youth and revolt uh-huh um the tv spots for youth and revolt which was the the uh before this
most recent one the most recent michael cernan failure movie um but it seemed like it was maybe
a movie that you know was was maybe a little more to be fair youth andolt was not a movie that was made with intentions of it becoming super bad.
Right, and I was going to mention that.
Maybe it was mentioned,
maybe made to be a smaller movie,
but maybe because of the presence of him
and the recently famous Zach Galifianakis,
it kind of got this push to be this bigger movie,
this big comedy hit.
And I remember the trailers for it
were super obnoxious
and cut in the style of a trailer for a, you know,
oh God, what's a terrible comedy?
Lottery ticket?
It was cut in that style and had that style of announcer saying,
and the quotes were like,
Michael Cera shows his badass side
and then there's Zach Galifant, that guy from The Hangover.
And I think that's where the bad feeling
comes from. And it's not
that that movie, I didn't
see that movie, but maybe it's great.
So it sounds like we can agree
that what we don't want to hear
is this stuff against people
who are making things
when they're good just because somebody else
is selling it. And that our ire should be focused on the dickhead
who decides to,
or maybe we should just take responsibility
for our own lives
and not go see movies that we don't like
and not complain about it.
Make those decisions.
Dude, again, I don't want to get into this thing,
but it's the internet.
The internet has crushed everything.
Everyone has an opinion.
Everyone thinks that you should hear their opinion, and everyone thinks that their opinion is right.
So nobody will listen.
There's no discourse.
I'm a huge Van Halen fan.
You guys are young.
But there was a band called Van Halen from the dinosaur era that was my favorite band of all time.
A dino band.
Exactly.
They had a reunion tour in 2007.
This was the band with Louis Prima, right?
No, I'm sorry. A modern-day louis prima and young david lee roth um so then just last week they announced they're making a new album with david lee roth uh-huh and it was on yahoo is one of the
top news stories diamond david yes sir diamond dave and uh it said van halen to reunite of
california girls remake absolutely and just to take a little fame. And he is on this thing on Yahoo.
And I look underneath.
There's 2,300 comments.
And I go, don't look.
Don't look.
But I said, I have to look.
And I said, I'll look at the first five.
The first one is, man, Eddie must be fucking broke to get back with Dave, stupid.
And then another one was, Dave hasn't had a girl since he went bald and got kicked out of the band.
These are the first three quotes.
And I just want, you guys know they each made $30 million in 2007 from their reunion tour.
Yeah.
If you're a fan of the band, the worst thing that could have happened was the reunion tour before the album.
Because now they don't have to make an album.
Yeah.
But these people, again, he's broke.
They're stupid.
It's just like with Michael Cera, where they just savage a guy.
Oh, I've seen this fucking movie before. Then't go and shut up enjoy the things that you enjoy
go ahead and get devil in a blue dress which i understand is fantastic and don't fucking harangue
michael cera for doing what he they want him to do can i take a second to add something to our
complaints about complaints department yeah um there's one other thing that's been bothering
me lately and we're not going to
have time for momentous occasions this week we're already probably running long um but it's something
that came up for me when i was reading magazines at the cabin uh and that is jokes in magazines
yeah dear magazines for god's sakes quit it with the not joke jokes you're not funny just be
informative maybe if this was
four years ago when Chuck
Klosterman was writing for Esquire, but
he's not anymore.
Don't get me wrong. There have been funny people
who wrote for magazines. My issue
is not with someone writing something funny
in a magazine. For example,
this week our friend Simon Rich,
Saturday Night Live writer and
brilliant, brilliant genius comedy writer, has a piece in The New Yorker that's very, very funny.
Not that most of those comedy pieces in The New Yorker are funny.
What?
You don't like shouts and murmurs?
But Simon Rich does write a piece for shouts and murmurs every few months, and it's almost invariably hilarious.
I'm not saying that funny people shouldn't write for magazines or that there shouldn't be funny pieces in magazines.
I'm saying that magazine writers shouldn't try and be funny.
Ah.
That is something that happened with Maxim in 1995.
And all of a sudden, every section of a magazine that comes before the articles is all just non-joke joke.
Just like I get – I got a $5 subscription to Esquoke joke. Just like I get,
I got a $5 subscription to Esquire magazine.
So did I.
Well, I'm a, you know,
I'm a men's style journalist.
I should do this.
I just got off a plane
where I was reading an Esquire
so we can talk about that.
Me too, I subscribe.
Esquire, this is a world.
We're all subscribers.
We're in.
This is a magazine.
We get the little black style book.
This is a magazine that'll hire a
fuck i know the guy who edits the black book um the the this is a magazine that'll hire george
saunders uh the brilliant and hilarious literary writer to do real writing like it's not a magazine
that's full of that's exclusively for the retarded it It's not Maxim. But guess what?
There's 40 pages of bullshit non-jokes.
Sure.
Oh, I think GQ comedy issue was what pissed me off.
That was rough, too.
That was rough.
I'm like, this is a thing that's full of things about comedians
that are brilliantly funny.
They did a pretty good job of picking funny people to be in it.
Sure.
Among other things, our friend Tom Sharpling, jimmy pardo were both mentioned in this uh very happy to have
lots of great talented people highlighted in the comedy issue um and some people some of the
comedians wrote funny things there was a thing of uh uh donald god what was donald glover's thing
and it was funny don glover wrote something very funny. It was an alternate version of Precious.
Precious, sure.
There was lots of funny stuff in this magazine that was created by funny people.
And then, for some reason, just regular people who write for GQ made jokes in it a lot.
And also they took a lot of pictures of comedians slipping on banana peels and shit.
And those are the same thing.
If we can backtrack to Esqu esquire the most non-funny
funny thing in there uh is that sex columnist who gets like these legitimate sex questions and i'm
like hey you know what i might like to read some sexual advice but they're all reading dan savage
sure absolutely but yeah but uh but she's just uh just just terribly unfunny and it's all a joke
and then you don't get any information so terribly unfunny and and it's all a joke, and then you don't get any information.
So terribly unfunny, and she had a photo, which was her photo with the column for a while.
And then she changed it, as they will update their photos.
And I think she went in and said, do me a favor.
Make it look like I have a condominium on my face.
Please, do me a favor.
I don't mean to be that guy who's catty about a picture, but she went from being semi-attractive to, oh, you're the sex columnist?
My first question, do you have any ever with that photo?
Seriously, with that mug?
I think it's a broad condition.
It sure is.
It's easily solved.
That broad's got it.
It's easily solved.
Here's how you solve it.
If you're a writer for a magazine, think to yourself, am I a professional humorist?
If the answer is no, don't try and be funny.
But the problem is, and this gets back almost to the Michael Cera thing, everybody thinks they're a professional humorist.
Especially a professional journalist.
They're like, I'm a writer.
Yeah, I can be funny.
I can turn a phrase.
I can do this.
And everything is just artless, sn snark and non-funny funny did you know that
david mammett submits cartoons to the new yorker i did not know that that's really great he is kind
of funny uh in a funny way but i bet you i bet you we don't maybe we don't know who it is but uh
per our last conversation i bet you david mammett has a surprising celebrity buddy uh jonathan
katz they're best friends yep there you go no way yes way yep good lord game over best friends
the mismatching continues they're best friends they went to college together in vermont judaism
i'm sure is important absolutely in in mammoth's case uh specific uh jewish ethnicities yeah among the jewish people
and distinctions therein would be very important anyway uh wasn't that nice that you that you said
that he had a just surprising celebrity friend yeah i don't know if i just knew that out out
out of the back of my mind or if it was just a charming coincidence man you know you know who's
one of the two you know who's really delight? Jonathan Katz. No, sure.
Come on.
I talked to him on the phone a couple times when he first started podcasting because he had been on the Sound of Young America right around then.
He just makes jokes continuously in his deadpan voice.
Like, they're corny jokes.
Just not – I mean, he's a very great – he's a great joke writer as well.
But he just – you can tell all he cares about in the world is making a joke.
And I think that probably him and Mamet just sit together and make corny jokes to each other,
one after another, after another, after another, for hours on end.
Come up with ideas for New Yorker cartoons.
Exactly.
Okay, we'll be back in just a second on Jordan, Jesse, go.
La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la. It's Jordan, Jesse go.
It's Jordan,
Jesse go.
I'm Jesse Thorne,
America's radio sweetheart,
Jordan Morris,
boy,
detective,
Mike Schmidt,
inconvenience.
Oh,
it's wasn't it nice to have Mike Schmidt here?
Absolutely.
Always is the men's number one.
He's hilarious.
Sure.
Number two,
the man's a professional.
Yeah.
Number three,
he comes in here ready to go.
Oh,
I don't mess around. No,
I'm,
I'm,
I've been home chatting for six hours on my own, talking to a shoebox, taking calls. professional yeah number three he comes in here ready to go oh i don't mess around no i'm i've
been home chatting for six hours on my own talking to a shoebox taking calls
we've got uh we've got sarah from easy credit on the line oh hey sarah hey sarah checks in the mail
um mike schmidt is uh we're i'm so proud that The Sound of Young America
could be part of sponsoring
the world premiere
of his one-man show in San Francisco.
It's called The 40-Year-Old Virgin.
Success is not an option.
It's called The 40-Year-Old Boy.
Success is not an option, but you're very close.
You're right in the neighborhood.
I promised that was a slip of the tongue.
That's okay. Look, when I'm sponsored by Sound of America
Mike said sex
We all know he has
Again, I was up preparing all morning
That was an embarrassing slip of the tongue
But only a slip of the tongue
It's going to be at the Darkroom Theater
On August 20th
I got the month right this time
And 21st?
I thought it was two shows on the 20th
Nope
August 20th and August 21st
At 10 o'clock both nights.
Oh.
Well, hopefully people who read my email blast will figure that out.
I'm sure they will.
And I think it's going to be a fucking delightful time.
Tickets are only $15.
If you go to MaximumFun.org, you will see it in our events in the sidebar.
You can click on it.
There's a ticket link there.
It's very much well worth your money.
You get to go out there see an amazing show our pal bucky sinister past jordan jesse go guest is
is hosting the show um it's really going to be uh really going to be a great time um and so i insist
that if you're in the bay area you make some time to go out there well i want to thank you guys for
for throwing uh first of all having me on and secondly for for actually promoting or helping
and throwing behind the sound of young america on on, and secondly, for actually promoting or helping and throwing behind The Sound of Young America
on this show, because, I mean,
you know, nobody knows who the hell I am, so it's nice
to have anybody who has a built-in
audience telling them about it. People who live
in the Bay Area know about
the promotional power of KALWFM.
Of course they do.
They know about this because where else would they
turn to find out what the school lunch menu is?
Which is a real thing that they do on KALW.
Fantastic.
And I want to thank Bucky Sinister, too, because this does not happen without him.
Oh, Bucky Sinister.
What a great guy, right?
He reached out to me and said, dude, I will take care of everything if you'll come up here.
And that's all I need, pretty much.
So if you guys have a town and you want me to come to it.
If you have a town.
Just call me.
You own your own town.
We'll do everything.
And I said, fine, I'm in.
I'll come and talk if you want me to.
Bucky's a prince of a guy as well.
Good.
I'm looking forward to meeting him.
I have not met him.
I also want to mention before we go that the Sound of Young America Live in New York City DVD,
now available in the Max Fund Store, maxfundstore.com.
It's a DVD for those who didn't get one in the pledge drive or are looking for one.
A lot of people have been asking me they want one so they can have one to share with friends
or introduce somebody to the show, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
It's our full live show that we did in New York City about a year ago
with Andrew W.K., Nellie McKay, Scott Adsit, Rick Cordero,
the hip-hop music video director.
Amazing comedy set from Kumail Nanjiani,
who's a fantastically funny and was,
uh,
profiled in the New York times about,
uh,
10 days later.
And,
uh,
and profiled at LaGuardia two days after that.
Hey,
Hey,
that was,
that was a good one.
I like that one.
I can say good on that one.
Um,
uh,
as well as the short that Jordan and I made,
um,
it's the only place you can get it.
It's not on the web.
The Sound of Young America TV pilot may be hidden in there.
It may be that I don't have the rights to it, so it's not there.
Oh, okay.
Yeah, it's not there.
But it's conceivable that someone, a rogue DVD engineer, might have hidden it in there.
Could have been an accident in Sound of Young America Industries.
It's a hot coffee situation.
Interviews with... Hot coffee would make you
include a television pilot? Oh,
there was a rogue
programmer hid a sex
scene in Grand Theft Auto
and the phrase
hot coffee entered into it somehow and it kind of
became the Fox News...
It was the... If you remember
Fuckface, the Billy Ripken baseball
guy. That I do. It was the fuckface of the video game industry.
I've actually seen that scene online, but did not know that it was an accident.
Yeah, that's some sort of, you have to hack it in some way.
But it kind of became the Fox News, let's show this clip every time we want to talk about how video games are destroying America.
Of course, in one clip out of billions of bytes.
Anyway, so many people have written to me that they were so amazed that it was such a beautiful DVD,
the packaging was so nice,
that we had nice menus, and the quality was high.
It is a real thing, I promise.
We worked really hard to make this a real thing.
And it's only $18 at maxfundstore.com.
In addition to all the cool stuff that you can get there,
Sound of Young America t-shirts,
Jordan Jesse Go t-shirts,
Max Fund Rocket Chip t-shirts,
you know, all kinds of shit,
all at max fun store.com two Oh six nine eight four four fun is the number to
call.
Um,
if you'd like to leave a message,
if you've had a momentous occasion,
um,
et cetera,
et cetera,
et cetera.
Um,
can I,
can I do something?
I'm sorry.
Of course.
Just to take advantage of your large audience,
just to say that they can go and find me At MikeSchmidtComedy.com
Yeah and you can
They can listen to your podcast
The 40 Year Old Virgin
Indeed
It's fantastic
I'm not mistaken
But I would search
40 Year Old Boy
In iTunes
You'd probably find it
A lot sooner then
And then also
You can go to
Facebook.com
Slash Mike
Slash The 40 Year Old Boy
Yeah
And then you can also
Go to Twitter.com
Slash The 40 Year Old Boy
It's a good place
To learn about a
Full and generous accounting
of the mistakes that you've made in your life.
And continue to make.
Yeah.
Our theme music is Love You by The Free Design,
courtesy of Light in the Attic Records.
And actually, I got an email from a listener about The Free Design,
and there was kind of some sad news about uh the
free design one of the members of the free design and i'm looking up his name so that i don't i
should have uh i should have said this so you don't call him knocked up chris chris dedrick um
chris dedrick of the of the free design um uh passed on passed on this just about a week ago.
So we're very sorry to hear that.
And as always, we really appreciate them and the label sharing that music with us.
So anyway, we'll see you online at MaximumFun.org,
at Mike's show on the 20th and 21st in San Francisco,
at MikeSchmidtComedy.com, next time right here on Jordan, Jesse, go.