Stop Podcasting Yourself - Episode 830 - Kliph Nesteroff

Episode Date: February 13, 2024

Writer Kliph Nesteroff (Outrageous: A History of Showbiz and the Culture Wars) returns to talk Canadian TV history, buzz cuts, and acting moms.

Hi, he's Dave Shumka and he's Graham Clark and together we host Stop Podcasting Yourself. Woo! Hello everybody and welcome to episode number 830 of stop podcasting yourself my name is graham clark and with me as always is a man who he just recently went uh under a huge change huge change mr dave shumka yeah graham's referring to i i got my head shaved because you're joining the army right this? This was done. I was in a mental institution because I thought I was Michael Jackson. Oh, yes.

Yeah. They made me write a birthday song for Lisa Simpson. How did it go? It went, there's 365 days in a year. Why'd you have to be born today? You didn didn't write that that's i know i they brought in a ghost writer um our guest today returning guest here to the podcast uh a fantastic writer he has a new book out called outrageous the history of showbiz and the the culture wars. It's Cliff Nesteroff. Hey, Cliff. Hey, Graham Clark.

Hey, Dave Shumka. What is happening in Canada? Oh, you know, lots of Tucker Carlson was here doing a rally, and so that's kind of where Canada's at right now. We're American part two. But I'm sure he's widely ridiculed in canada it's always uh i don't know i'm sure somebody in canada mentioned it nobody pays attention to him here but uh he's a big deal up here anybody we get from the states oh man we're so glad to have

it was only a year and a half ago that he did not know how to pronounce ottawa do you remember that it went like viral he goes the capital of canada a place called ottawa and everybody and now he's the self-proclaimed canada expert this dumb putz no he'd still take it back he's great he's great and smart and uh he's a handsome young boy and his father uh was in charge of syndicating uh jeopardy and wheel of fortune king world oh really yeah that was his dad's i would always see were they there was always a murph griffin television production and a king world thing at the end of those shows king world one of them had like a griffin with a winking yeah uh was it a griffin well that probably would be the murph griffin logo oh my. I freaking figured it out, dude.

But yeah, I don't remember it winking. Maybe it was just, you felt special. Like it was winking at you, but I don't think it was. Boy, I was, a couple of weeks ago on the show, we talked about Dharma and Greg and after all that was like, oh, I think I'll go back and watch the Dharma and Greg opening credits. Cause I love the part where she runs over, jumps up on Greg and wraps her legs around him.

That's not part of it. I was the Mandela effect. That is one of those. Man Dharma effect. That is the one show that I've never seen. It wouldn't be able to describe. Don't want to. If you were paid to write a book about it,

would you? Very reluctantly. I did revisit a sitcom I somehow missed during its original run. Certain things when they aired, I just assumed they were shit, so I never looked at them. And now I look at them and they're less shit than I would have assumed. But on YouTube, somebody put every episode of Norm MacDonald's sitcom up there. Three seasons of The Norm Show with Laurie Metcalf. And I remember seeing but on youtube somebody put every episode of norm mcdonald's sitcom up there three seasons of the norm show with laurie metcalf and i remember seeing part of it and thinking oh it's

not right for him was completely contrived with the laugh track and it had that same sort of rhythm as like the drew carrey show or darman greg you know the the little music interstitials when they transition from one scene to the next you know oh i love them you know and it fades out yeah yeah yeah and it just feels so cornball but it was interesting to watch it now that norm is gone and uh is there's some good stuff in it and a lot of canadian isms he plays a former edmonton oiler and they reference it a lot it's an American sitcom but they have all these Canadian references and then the theme song is by Doug and the Slugs

oh wow really? yeah oh shit yeah the Vancouver I don't know was it an existing song? yeah yeah

their big hit their big hit whatever their big hit is was it too bad? was it a big hit? too bad you're not as smart day by day bum bum ba da

bum bum ba da does that sound familiar? yeah sure do we want to get to know us? Sure. Get to know us. Cliff? This is your third book.

And it's your third time on the show. God damn right it is. All three times I have essentially booked myself on this show. I've been waiting by the phone for the call it doesn't come i have to well well first of all we don't make phone calls that's not our it's expensive canada to us i looked up you're on episode 66 uh you must have still lived here back then yeah i think we did it in person i sat on somebody's filthy futon and i think we yeah yeah that was that would have been mine and we still have it get rid of it no it's good they're hard to move they're hard to move those mattresses those futon mattress that collapse in the middle and they become like 10 000 pounds

when was the last time either of you slept on a futon i think i've stayed in an airbnb and they call it a bed and you show up and it's a fucking uncomfortable nightmare. Cliff, do you have a delicate back? I can. I can go delicate with the back. I've learned how to stretch. I didn't know how to do that before. I just thought I was crippled for life.

What are your favorite stretches the ones that go now we're watching we're talking to you on zoom which has noise cancellation so it just looked like you were like a fish it'll speak pure silence oh god is everything i say going to be silenced by zoom yeah funny funny like a sound effect it says it has noise cancellation it just means funny noises in brackets when it's subtitled well i like it i like it when the back pops i was like crippled for like a few months i was like oh i'm in so pain so much pain i'll be like this for forever and then one day i just moved in a different direction somehow and it made this it was like ice unthawing after a long winter it just my back unthawed and i was like oh i feel great so i'm not crippled for life so uh i don't know my favorite stretches

i don't know nothing about stretches i know but like which way do you like to go is it over the top is it side to side upside down oh yeah yeah upside down it's a good stretch let the pain go through the top of your head into the floor i never understood that like if you take an acting class and you did breathing exercises feel like there's a string at the top of your skull breathe down each vertebrae and i was like not good at like science or school and i was like how how do you breathe through the vertebrae like i was like in a metaphor everybody else in the acting class seemed to understand it but i never really feel like bradley cooper would know if you said how do you do it he'd be like i'm

totally i spent months doing it he would say and he'd look over his shoulder back at you not doing it and the contempt i was always really bad at um like i could play sports but if they if a like a coach tried to break down the movements of like all right you're square to the ball now transfer your weight from your back foot yeah yeah i still don't understand that yeah keep your eye on the ball they would tell me that in t-ball when i was four and i was like huh like everything is literal when you're four years yeah yeah you would do some kind of uh your face against the wiffle ball yeah yeah get kicked out of t-ball did you uh were you like me not great in the old gym class you're trying to skip gym class you know what i was good at was floor hockey

and oh shit and i remember they had one of, one of those things in the eighth grade where they're like, uh, you guys are going to grade yourself. And you ever have that? And I was like, every time, of course, give myself a plus what kind of stupid idiot would give themselves anything

else in a plus if you're allowed to grade yourself. And then the teacher would change it. You're like, no, it's not a plus you get a seat. I'm like, wait, wait,

wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait a plus you get a c i'm like wait wait wait you said grade yourself like yeah well that i was grading you on honesty i gave myself a plus on

floor hockey once they met us grade ourselves in gym class and they did he degraded it to c and i was like i don't think you understand how hard i play floor hockey i put my all into floor hockey yeah i used to be on the edmonton oilers like norm mcdonald that's right me and dug in the slugs and in the game the whole team was there holy shit i do love when they try to put hockey into like hollywood tv shows and they get all the equipment wrong yeah and it's all it's called ice hockey yeah i was playing ice hockey with my full face mask wasn't dave coulier wasn't he like a secret skater guy and then he came out uh with a red red wings jersey if i recall correctly yeah it was part of his uh uh tchotchkes in the background of his bedroom you know like a pop

eye doll and a red wings thing but he does play he does play hockey in real life i think he's part of those those weird hollywood people that rent ice time somewhere in the weird uh hollywood cult that's uh well it is weird if you're not canadian like dave coulier i realize it's a french canadian name but still it's weird i know and everyone thinks he's canadian he voiced um uh wayne gretzky on the pro stars tv show as well and he voiced either bob or doug mckenzie yes really well he was landing all those gigs because he was hot because he did slimer on the ghostbusters he did slimer yeah he's oh man have you ever seen the clip of jerry seinfeld and him on Oprah in like the early 90s? Does Seinfeld tell him to cut it out?

Seinfeld can not mask his contempt for Dave Coulier the whole time. Wow. At one point he goes, he says to Dave Coulier, he does an impression and Jerry says, it's just that easy, huh? Wow. No, I haven't seen that. Is it on YouTube still? It's on YouTube. Oh, and no i haven't seen that it's on youtube still it's on youtube yeah oh wow i gotta watch that yeah well he showed him full house versus seinfeld yeah well they're both you know well that's really kind of like the there's two kinds of people in this world and in dave coulier's defense they've only rebooted one of those shows so that's true

and also you know they both played stand-up comedians in their respective shows yeah i feel like yeah you were either team i was team coulier i think he's it was the original barbie or oppenheimer yeah yeah yeah but he on that show lived in the living room basically that's where his room was was kind of like i think it was the basement no i don't think he lived i didn't i think jesse lived in the living room and dave no coulier was upstairs wasn't it no jesse was upstairs yeah coulier was in the basement the living room was the living room i think in the early seasons i may have no i think in the pilot jesse lives in the living room and they changed it i'm pretty sure in the early seasons i may have no i think in the pilot jesse lives in the living room and they changed it i'm pretty sure in the first episode i remember not just the first episode of

full house i remember the commercials leading up to the premiere and it showed uh showed them in an attic in the commercial what was why do you remember that because we only had like one channel so uh we we got kxly from spokane washington graham i know growing up in calgary you probably got the spokane we did we got the spokane and then we also got cordelaine cordelaine was another big uh okay we didn't get cordelaine remind me where you grew up i grew up in the slocan valley region of british you know when you say british columbia not even just in america but when i was living in toronto everybody just said assumes you're from vancouver even though i'd never been to vancouver up to that point i grew up and it's a nine hour drive from vancouver to where i

grew up and everybody's like ah vancouver huh and i was like no but i made that drive many times my grandmother was from trail yeah exactly that's exactly it so if you grew up in trail or castlegar or the slocan valley new denver yes um nelson's not that far away is it yeah they're all part of this sort of same trifecta oh yeah i took you down there to nelson once right yeah we went on uh we went on a comedy crusade comedy crusade yeah i lost so much money on it we uh yeah because i think the first night there was a bunch of people in the audience and then the second night it was like maybe 10 or 15 people what do you define define comedy crusade it was a pack of us went up to conquer nelson as a group yeah they weren't into it in nelson turns out um so okay i'm sorry

i interrupted well tell me more about the lead up to the first episode of full house and is this what is this what the book is about yeah that's right that's what the entire book well uh kxly spokane was like the only American channel we could get. The reception wasn't very good. We got CBC, Crystal Clear. And in those days, it was the dead zone of comedy. I was too young to have seen SCTV. And the kids in the hall had not yet started.

So it was just Wayne and Schuster specials. And on CTV, there was a show, which I've discussed with Graham I think several times called Smith and Smith. Yeah, Smith and Smith Comedy Factory, right? With Morag Smith and her husband, I think he did something else. Yeah, so it's the worst fucking show ever made. And you told me

that, if I'm not missing it, that they sang a song every episode so they could count themselves as a variety show. Yeah, because of the Gemini Awards, there was no comedy category. There was only a variety category. So they had to open every show singing a song.

She had a very pretty voice. Well, why don't you marry her, Dave? I can't. She's married to Steve Smith. Yeah, the worst damn show. Smith & Smith Comedy Mill, CHCHTV, Hamilton, Ontario. Fucking curse um yeah the worst damn show smith and smith comedy mill ch ch tv hamilton ontario fucking curse on canada it's the whole reason i moved the whole reason i moved to america to get away get away from the smith and smith comedy mill yeah i could fucking the stink of it was on me anyways growing up in the rural area you only had uh access to these uh terrible channels but you

could get kicks a lot of sp spoke in where I grew up. So it was the only American channel. So we watched every single thing it had to offer. So we knew all the ABC shows, who's the boss growing pains. What the fuck was it called? There was a, there was a,

there was a late night talk show hosted by Rick D's. So I couldn't say, couldn't see Letterman, couldn't see SNL, but I could see Rick Dees. And on CBC, Late Night with Ralph Ben-Murgy. With Ralph Ben-Murgy, of course. Did that last more than a season? No. And it was Canada's last major attempt at having a late night show.

No, before Mike Bullard, your favorite. No, but that was on a cable. just and it was canada's last major attempt at having a late night show no before mike bullard your favorite no but that was on that was on a cable this wasn't on one of the the the national broadcasters and but i mean he was he was on for years i give him credit where credit's due before we started recording we were talking about imdb um for some reason i was looking up the that show on imdb and i laughed out loud when i saw the star rating for open mic it's like 1.2 star and there's like thousands of votes yeah i remember because he uh for anybody you're gonna tell the same you're gonna tell you always tell the same quote he had no No, it's not about a quote.

Okay. He, uh, for people who have never seen it, they didn't have writers on the show. They only had one writer. So he'd go and crowd work off the top. Uh, you tell a couple of, uh, you know, jokes of the day. And then it was just him. He would have been huge on Tik TOK. Are you kidding me?

Yeah. Right. That's right. Well, he was famous at yuck yucks in toronto for being king of crowd work and that's all he did so we're like you're right to keep the expenses down they just had him do it on the show but they never mic the audience on that show for a show called open mic you think they would mic the crowd so you never heard he'd be like where are you from, sir? Silence. Oh, really? I'm like, that's not good for TV. And then, you know, if there was laughter, which dubious if there was, if there was laughter again, you couldn't hear it.

They never mic'd the audience. So it's like he was probably bombing in real life, added to the fact that even if he got a laugh, you couldn't hear it. That show was a disaster. I remember being in the green room for that show. I was never it that show was a disaster i remember being in the green room for that show i was never on that show but i went to a taping of uh comedy now the stand-up specials and they did it in the same theater in toronto at the masonic temple and in the green room they had the wall autographed with every person that was ever a guest on open mic with mike bullard and it was people like morag smith and like nothing impressive on the autograph wall whatsoever.

Like Craig Berube. I was like, who cares about? I recall him having a young Tom Green on and Tom Green showing up with a dead raccoon in a bag. Yeah. And Mike Bullard was visibly furious. I think he threw up. I think he might have actually thrown up at a bag. Yeah, and Mike Bullard was visibly furious. I think he threw up. I think he might have actually thrown up at the show.

Yeah, you would think that as a comedian would play along, Mike Bullard being a tromp. What's to play along with, though, in Mike Bullard's defense? Well, I mean... He should have a bag of something that he brings out. I think he tried to physically throw him off the show. But, like, if something smells so bad that it's making you throw up i'm pretty sure i'm mike bullard was a yuck yucks road comic i'm sure he's used to terrible smells and being in cars with people that smell horrible i you know he

wasn't very professional in that uh in that moment i think all right sorry mike i tried i don't know i'm just defending tom green because i I like Tom. Yeah. Fair enough. And that's throwing Mike Bullard on the bus because that's where he belongs. Jesus. No, I take it back. I take it back. He doesn't belong under the bus,

but that was it. That was Canada's late night TV show. What a disaster. It lasted forever. This is the weird thing. It was on forever. Yeah. There's these shows in Canada that nobody likes, and then they last for decades.

You know, I've been researching Wayne and Schuster. And contrary to my assumption that somebody must have loved them. Their family, probably their wives. No, their family despised. uh their family probably their wives no their family despised every review of wayne and schuster from like the 50s and 60s it's like how many more years of this crap you know the toronto star nobody is laughing why is the cbc giving them another chance this was like 40 40 years before the end of their career people are complaining about them but uh there's always these Canadian shows

that just last forever. Nobody likes them. And then people that are sustained don't want to name any names. You can cut them out. If I do, Elvira, Kurt, Gian Gamischi, they were all like... Those are getting cooked out.

Oh, you know, well... Not to lump those two together, but they both had like 100 different shows on Canadian radio and TV tv and even if they failed they got another chance and that is true there is uh there is a parade of the same uh people over and over and it is like not us though yeah nope not us not uh not us not ever yeah exactly everybody else is shut out and then because we you know what we were about to we just had a we had a big meeting coming up with with mike buller's production company but they had they said we

bought some microphones for the audience this time around so yeah this mic is not open to you yeah it's closed i guess i'll cancel our appointment at Gomeshi Co. tomorrow morning. Gomeshi Industries. Yeah, this new podcast. Yeah, I forgot that he's a titan of industry. Well, he once was the king of space. You know what's funny? Whenever a Canadian tries to do something in America, if they've had a long-running thing in Canada,

it's like a big news story. And then they flop here. It was Stromboombo remember they tried to put him on cnn and there was all these stories in canada like oh he's gonna be the big thing in america and they canceled it after like a month or two months you know i love it when a network cancels something so fast where they're like we're bleeding we're bleeding in ratings here we're gonna staunch this whole situation yeah there's no tax subsidy here for your career get lost yeah it's but you know what you go to the states come back up here you're good as gold baby yeah that's it jason priestly has been on tv consistently since uh 2001 in canada i did Just for Laughs Comedy Festival for the first time after I moved to America. And I've done it

three or four times since. All flying from Los Angeles to Montreal every single time. Never got to do it when I would live there. Comedians will list living in New York City

as a credit. Well, I remember when Todd Levin came to Vancouver at the El Cucal back in the day you remember todd yes yeah from new york and he went on to write for cornel brian for like a decade but he was new to stand up and he was not good at all and he would say the same um but we were so like he was the first person any of us had ever met from New York. And we're like, tell us more. Oh, how do you do it?

What is it like? You know, we all befriended him. If he had been from Vancouver, we would have ignored him because he wasn't good at standup. But we were just like, yeah, I think it was as I was my space friends with him. I remember living, living the American life vicariously through the eyes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. American life vicariously through the eyes of time. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Interestingly, him and Levi McDougal both ended up on the same writing staff at Conan for years. Oh, yeah. See? Levi could come up here. He could have two shows. He could have a sitcom and then also hosting, you know,

some sort of reality competition. If he wants, if he wants. But Levi was in so many Rogers commercials that he was also widely despised for a while there because every every single commercial break on hockey night in canada they'd show the same rogers commercial with levi going up an escalator uh like three times during the same commercial break you know and it was just so much of his face that he became this is canadian showbiz these are the things people remember

are are like well yeah you know uh sure i do remember ralph ben murgy a little bit but i do remember these uh rogers commercials where levi mcdougall didn't have rogers and this really handsome guy did have rogers and levi mcdougall was always in some awkward situation where oh my phone's not quite working well he told me that he was able to buy a house after uh that commercial run it where you got a check every time it aired so oh i'm sure he yeah he's a great dude i just saw him he was at my he came to my book launch at book soup here in hollywood and uh book soup and he bought a bunch of copies of my new book and had me inscribe them to people we know from our past in Canada who emailed them to. Dear Mr. Ben Mergey, thanks for all the support.

One of the people he had me inscribe a book to, I couldn't believe he was still in touch with him. You wouldn't know, but this guy, Lauren Froman, who is a Canadian comedy writer who did stuff in the States in the 70s. uh comedy writer who did stuff in the states in the 70s and uh levi and i were both enrolled in a writing class that he taught not at the same time different times but uh he was a funny guy lauren froman but he would invoke he would name drop people and it was before the internet was really the internet so we weren't able to fact check what he was saying with a quick google search i still don't i refuse i'm whatever i'm told that's fine he would tell lauren would tell anecdotes in the in the in the writing class he goes well when i was writing for prior in the 70s when i was writing for prior and we're all like wow he was like paul mooney he wrote richard prior stand-up and then And then two years later,

I was in a video store in Toronto, Suspect Video, and I'm flipping through the VHS things, and I've come across a children's show. I was going to guess that this, was it called Pryor's Place? Yes, Sid and Marty Kroff present Pryor's Place. Sid and Marty Kroff,

the guys who made H.R. Puffin stuff, Sigmund the Sea Monsters, and all these sort of live action Saturday morning shows in the 70s. Richard Pry prior had a children's show saturday morning show for like half a season i flip over the vhs box and it said written by lauren froman it's all those years when i was writing for pro when i was writing you know you were writing for puppets you're employed by sid and marty croft never mentioned that detail and i love it oh man it's uh yeah there's a comedian i won't say his name but his uh big credit was and it's just like if you get a credit like the tonight

show you can just put that for the rest of your career you don't have to specify what era and no one no one no one knows no one maybe no one even saw it maybe it was pre-videotape yeah so you could have that but i know somebody who's big credits that he was on the arsenio hall show and that definitely has frozen in amber over time is his name ron vodri i refuse to comment on whose name it is because you just bleeped it so there zoom's noise canceling just went into effect yeah man i actually you know we were talking smith and smith i have to confess i there's a playlist on youtube of the entire season four of smith and smith and i did go through it because uh and i don't think it's season four i I think it must be earlier that YouTuber got it wrong because it's seems

older. Uh, or maybe it was taped in 1980. It didn't air. What season did it get really good, but no, there's this one season of Smith and Smith where they have a segment in the last third of each episode where they just feature a standup comic doing

standup like a tonight show thing. And it's all yuck yucks comedians from the year 1980 and so really yeah it's really weird to watch it's like who's that guy what is this guy there's a guy who just does a pierre trudeau impression that's it and it kills and i was like who's that still kill he just goes hey you've heard about this true dope uh you know here's what his dad sounds like oh i didn't i've never even thought of true dope that's cool but that could go both ways that could mean he's cool as well oh yeah that's true oh shit oh those convoy people are gonna be so mad at me um but the smith and smiths showcase these

yuck yucks comics and it's just and some of them are those people who had like the one credit i mean i don't think they put smith and smith on the fucking poster but but some of them went on to do as seen on smith and smith but some went on to bigger things like the pat sajak show oh yeah how long did pat sajak have a show for a year but that was norm mcdonald's first american stand-up and he did it six times and those have never surfaced on youtube he did it six times in one year yeah norm became a pat sage actual regular oh yeah but and then didn't alan thick had one right thick of the night alan thick had two so he had one that was canadian and one that was american alan hamill who was suzanne

summer's uh widow he had a talk show on bctv called the alan hamill show starting i think in 77 and the guy who booked it was this guy craig tennis who ended up being the or maybe he was the booker for the comedians on the tonight show starring johnny carson so all the comedians that that came up to vancouver to do this piece of shit bctv daytime talk show oh it's a daytime talk show okay that really yeah that really changed but they were all comedy store comedians so david letterman did it and jay leno did it before they were famous and then anyways alan hamill ends up uh marrying suzanne summers and quits show business just to have i guess, have sex with Suzanne Somers. Yeah, that's what a lot of people there,

that's what we get into show business for. He was in the garage inventing the Thighmaster. Yeah, well, it was named after him. It was named after him. That's what she called him in the bedroom. But anyways, Alan Hamill quit the Alan Hamill

show. Alan Thicke, who had been a semi-regular on the show, replaced him. It became. Because it was easier. They only had to replace one part of the side. No, no. I meant in the bedroom with Suzanne Somers. Alan Thicke replaced him, tapped him out.

The Thicke master. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's why they call him Thicke. But anyways, the Alan Hamill show became the Alan Thicke show. And so same thing. But anyways, the Alan Hamill show became the Alan Thicke show. And so same thing that somebody else on YouTube put up a bunch of clips of comedians like Rick Dukeman and I don't know who else. But a lot of the same people. We have to bleep all these names.

All of the names. Yeah. They're not going to be like, and who had this talk show? Yeah. And then there. And that. Smith. Smith. there's a which was his nickname in the bedroom but and comedy mill no we should believe comedy mill as well

the uh a long time ago like i think when i was a teenager, there was a special on NBC that was about the history of late night talk shows. And Conan O'Brien, I remember him talking about watching this show. It's a premiere episode where the host came out and grabbed a guitar and jammed with the band. And he just said, he was just like, oh, what an asshole. He says it was the worst thing he ever saw. That does sound like Alan Thicke. Oh, sure. Yeah.

There's a great video of him singing along with some Ninja Turtles. So one episode of the Alan Thicke show and one episode of Smith and Smith, they both feature Mark Breslin doing stand up comedy. Wow. And now for our listeners, tell them who mark breslin is mark breslin is dave shumka's hero he modeled his career after him he's a diminutive little man from toronto who founded a venue called yuck yucks comedy cabaret that's right with two k's comedy cabaret just like a convenience store uh cheekily changes the spelling of its name.

Yuck Yucks Comedy Cabaret, where Howie Mandel did his stand-up for the first time, where Jim Carrey did stand-up for the first time, where Seinfeld writer Marjorie Gross did stand-up for the first time. Wow. Yeah. Mark Breslin's Yuck Yucks. But in those days, it was called yuck yucks comedy cabaret two y's two k's if anybody's gonna google it uh it's not no c's in there except we couldn't go back then yeah why 2k for short we're comedy cabaret both with k's as well or was that both with k's both with k oh they got they skirted it there. Four K's.

Sometimes Yuck Yucks has an apostrophe. Like it's Yucks' Comedy Cabaret. It belongs to Yuck Yucks. Ruth's Chris Yuck Yucks Comedy Cabaret. And then they added Mark Breslin's name to it. And so the apostrophe moved to Breslin's. And then Yuck Yucks, I think, dropped the apostrophe. This is important.

And this is very, how was the standup? Oh, horrible. The worst standup. So I, the thing is like, um, I mean, I didn't understand this either when I was doing standup, but the idea of joke structure, if you watch Mark Breslin standup, he's just talking. So you're supposed to find it funny, but there's nothing constructed to make it funny. Like, it's amusing. You know, it's like the word humor. You know, if you go into the humor section of a bookstore back in the day, it just meant not that funny, right? It didn't qualify as comedy, so you just call it humor. That was the aisle I would go to any time I was at a chapter or anything. I just wanted to see what was new in humor. Yeah, and

nothing was funny except for the Farside cartoon compilation. Everything else was like, Irma Bombeck. Oh, see? Irma Bombeck. She was a garage sale superstar. She headlined garage sales. And Cliff's not saying

but there's a chain of comedy clubs that are set in different garages across the country yeah yeah i mean that's where people read it's how smith and smith got their start yeah there was a guitar for sale and boom next thing you know steve smith's picking it up telling people to keep their stick on the ice and the rest is history uh it truly is the rest is canadian showbiz history i'm fascinated by it now though because it i go on youtube and i watch like canadian tv shows from the late 70s and early 80s mostly i'm fascinated by the uh the commercials oh maybe you guys will remember this because i feel like a crazy person trying to describe it to

others i used to watch bctv growing up was one of the channels we got and i recently found on youtube somebody finally uploaded one of these i never knew how to search for it so i found it by accident bctv at night they would show movies and they showed some great movies i saw some great movies charlie varick starring walter math or i remember seeing on bctv and a terrible movie called high stakes starring dave foley before kids in the hall they had just built the sky train and it like takes place in the future and they have a shootout at the sky train it's supposed to be like a futuristic machine four years from now there's a nazi war criminal like hoarding nazi gold and he's played by the vancouver journalist jack webster really tv show yeah he had a tv show called webster and

he was on front page challenge he had a thick accent and these jowls and it's jack webster and dave foley and they engage in a shootout scene at the sky train it's not a good movie despite this great description. It's one of the worst things I've ever seen. But anyways, BCTV would show these movies at night and then they have a commercial break and then they would show scenes of nature with a BCTV

logo in the corner and like Muzak, but not for like 10 seconds, like for 10 minutes. Yeah, it is jogging a memory. Yeah. And then it would fuck up my VCR settings because the movie's supposed to be two hours long. I would set it to tape high stakes starring Dave Foley and Jack Webster. I'm going to bed.

You guys. And then I go to watch the movie and it fucking missed the end of the movie because they put in a 20 minute interstitial of waterfalls. And then they'd show and they'd show like PG, the mascot of Prince George. And then and then clouds and then and then somebody like fucking kayaking the Columbia River. And the whole time it would be like, do, do, do, do, do, do, do. Yeah. What was I? That definitely rings a bell. But why? Why was it? Exactly exactly like i could see if it was like the end of the broadcast day yes and we need to get to midnight to play oh canada but like

sometimes i would stay up late to watch the movie it's only supposed to be two hours long and you're just sitting there watching nature scenes i think it was part of the canadian content rules they were like you gotta show some you know some of canada during this film yes yes yes yeah you can't show there's certainly no canadian content in this dave foley movie god damn you pierre trudeau and your waterfall claws that says we have to show nature for minutes on end that's all it is it's all it is but there's all it is. But there's somebody uploaded to YouTube, a clip of it. And there's even a YouTube comment below it where somebody is like, Oh,

somebody remembers this, you know, like about how annoying this was. It was the most Canadian TV thing ever that you would interrupt. Who books that? Who books that show? Yeah. That's one of my credits.

I was the sparrow nature interesting well there was also there was hinterlands who who's who yes which was like a just like telling you about an animal for more yeah for more information about the prairie dog right prairie dog ottawa ontario right prairie dog on a postcard and see what happens mail it to the prairies because they also had um oh shit who was it it was a canadian singer and they were doing ads for unicef or something in that realm i just remember that no it's bruce coburn it was bruce coburn and he was doing ads for some kind of humanitarian amnesty international no it's pronounced it's pronounced cockburn

sure in the states and anywhere people read as well yeah that's uh that's what uh suzanne summer's husband suffered from cockburn yeah after too long in that garage slept with him again she should have known i mean the the warning is right there the name but the uh uh thing at the end of it that he would say to write to it was uh 56 spark street ottawa and i remember the first time i was in ottawa and standing on spark street and be like wow i made it i did it yeah yeah you just saw a pile of postcards in the gutter all addressed they all and some of them were addressed to the prairie dog people got confused about where to send which postcard yeah that was all very common canadian tv, I'm sure it still is, but garbage. No, no, it's,

it's better than American TV. Everybody said it. Yeah. You are a liar. No, no, no, no.

Yeah. Classic Canadian liar. No, we got it all. We got, name a show. We got it. You should,

I'm going to nominate you for the fibril party. Ah, true dope. Yeah. I'm sure those are, that's what they say, right? Yeah. The reactionary. The fibril party ah true dope yeah i'm sure those are that's what they say right yeah the reactionary the fibril so clever the con-servatives and then there are a lot of people that just uh straight up fuck trudeau is there yeah that's that seems to be yeah how come there's a drawing of calvin urinating on

trudeau's head that's a it seems like a missed opportunity right i'm pretty sure there is on a mud flap somewhere it's gotta be right can't be just me who came up with this yeah i mean on my uh on my truck i have a mud flapap of Calvin urinating on Smith & Smith. I get asked about it a lot every time I park the car. Yeah, yeah. Keep your piss on the ice! I have to explain it a lot, because no one really knows who Smith & Smith is. Well, Red Green, the progenitor of Red Green.

Apparently, people have nostalgia for the Red Green show. When it was on again, I thought it wasn't funny, but I guess it has greater charm than Smith & Smith. Cliff, I feel like our listeners are going to be like, this guy doesn't think anything's funny. Well, hopefully he hasn't devoted his life to cataloging comedy. Tell us about your new book. Yeah, tell us. Tell us about the book book i don't want to not yet okay i want to keep talking about canadian tv there's a there's a website there's a guide devoted to you uh uh you can

subscribe to it like it's a canadian streaming service just old canadian game shows this is good it's got every episode of Acting Crazy starring Wayne Cox. Yeah. Yeah, with Dennis Simpson. Yeah, and a guy that Graham and I both know named Billy Mitchell. Billy Mitchell, yeah, who then, he like was in a campaign for aging gracefully, and he was like naked in the campaign.

I don't remember that being. Ew, that's horrible like not you know he wasn't like hanging out front he was his leg was kind of moved to block yeah i mean canadian tv has always been a little bit more permissive than american tv this is my uh i think either one of my sisters swears to god she once saw david suzuki fully nude on tv but there was there was a picture of him in a forest somewhere and he was naked except he had a leaf over his crotch and uh oh he looks good it was a hinterland's who's who and it's just david suzuki wandering through the woods the naked suzuki can have to be found uh they got bumper stumpers on there uh i don't know if they

have a bumper stumper they got some weird ones i never heard of um wayne cox is where really prevalent on it there's talk about talking crazy was it the news new liars club was that a new liars club is on it yeah uhition. Definition, of course. Yeah. Supermarket Sweep. Definition's a weird one because it's hosted by an American, Jim Perry, who hosted Card Sharks in America. But he was also host of the Miss Canada pageant on CTV and the host of Definition. Who won the Miss Canada pageant this year?

This year? Yeah, I forget. It was Front Page News. The name was Morag something. i can't remember the last name her talent was singing yeah yeah she got her started doing the garage sales circuit has anybody ever on any of those pageants done comedy as their their talent it's about time i bet jenny jones did jenny jones was in it i don't know but she but she wasn't but she was a yuck yucks comic i remember when i started doing stand-up her headshot was on the wall of every yuck yucks like niagara falls and didn't she have a mohawk or

something at one point no but she had big i don't know maybe but she had big 80s hair and then i remember thinking that's not the same jenny joe's who does the daytime talk show they're like yeah yeah that's that's the same one and then her career ended when somebody got murdered that's right somebody got murdered as a result of a uh it happens to most yuck so it's not so bad like in retrospect open mic isn't so bad no one got killed nobody got killed um that we know of well that raccoon that raccoon certainly yeah for more information about dead raccoons who's who about tom green as a raccoon but tell us about the book i want to listeners to know what's what they're in for when they buy this book unless levi mcdougall already bought it for them the new book is called outrageous history of showbiz and the culture wars and it is uh

let me just grab my copy here hey there you go open to open to a page at random and see what it holds here we go yes i you know i could as an audience member i can confirm this was a random yeah this was a random page table Yeah, this was a random page. Table of contents. Here we go. How many pages is this bad boy? I don't know. I don't know. But this is on page 130. Six years after Kiss Me Stupid was condemned as dirty and immoral,

Billy Wilder called the modern Hollywood a whirlpool of filth and dirt. Billy Wilder said, I'm totally rattled and to tell you the truth, also disgusted. There's a different set of values today. They think it's very romantic. I think it's a lot of shit. Whoa. That's the end of chapter nine. Nice. Whoa.

Livehanger. Yeah, what happens? Does he continue to think it's shit? I quote a lot of letters to the editor editor which i found in my research to be very similar to social media people getting really really angry and predicting the downfall of america primarily um and it hasn't happened yet it's uh they're still uh good as gold in the uh the survival rate so there you go yeah yeah i mean ralph murphy is not on the air anymore but generally comedy continues to thrive i have a letter quoted

here uh i was disappointed in sergeant bilko making a burlesque of george washington's crossing of the delaware some things are sacred and this is one of them it is not gratifying to see a low comedian make fun of our beautiful history. This can lead to Milton Berle making a stooge of Abraham Lincoln or Martha Ray

making fun of Eisenhower. You know. So. Or, let's see, I don't know, Johnny Carson

making fun of, let's say, Woodrow Wilson. There are complaints about johnny carson in this book he did remember he did aunt blabby where he put on a shawl and was like an old lady yeah that was one of his characters it was a ripoff of jonathan winters um he was protested by a senior citizens uh lobby who wanted him to stop defaming the elderly with his aunt blabby character and uh did he say i do it with love you only roast the ones you love he would say who wanted him to stop defaming the elderly with his aunt blabby character.

And, uh, did he say, I do it with love. You only roast the ones you love. He would say, I love old people. He invited them onto the show to like debate him. There's an episode of the tonight show where a bunch of elderly people are

yelling at him. Nice. That's good television. Yeah. Yeah. That's true. Whenever they look back at Johnny Carson, they're like,

Oh, he was such a great interviewer and he was so uh fantastic off the cuff but they never show clips of aunt blabby or uh whatever other crazy characters he had at the time that seems to be unwashed away from history yeah well they did she used to show those on the best of carson in the 80s it was always the sketches that were in the best of carson i don't know if it was a rights issue, but that way they didn't have to pay like a royalty to somebody who would, was being rerun. So it was always like him water being dumped on his head or a cockatoo

pissing on his jacket. That's why they poured the water over his head. Clean the jacket. Yeah. Yeah. I met, I met a guy in Boston. He only,

I don't know if you knew this but in the 70s johnny carson franchised his own line of apparel the johnny carson collection i met a guy in boston he only wears johnny carson apparel wow it's for a long time in the 90s it was a you could find it in a lot of thrift shops yeah yeah and they have a little label so this guy his whole thing is that he wears nothing but johnny carson clothing yes that's his only thing yeah he buys it second hand of course and then he takes it literally to a tailor so they bespoke it is it a verb they bespoke it for him so that it fits perfectly onto his contours these plaid garish things he's very proud of it like when he met me he like unbuttoned the thing and showed the he goes check it out like to read the label and like yeah look you're the only guy i think that would be impressed by this

he goes i think you're the only person that would be impressed by this check it out i go what the don adams sitcom from calgary check it out now now the label uh yeah how come jay leno never put out a line of denim denim yes leno's levi's yes yes excellent co-brand first time i ever saw jay leno he was doing uh doritos commercials taking over for avery schreiber somebody just posted that in our facebook group i believe is the uh because he he's he's doing kind of jokes and his head is wiggling back and forth. It's in the classroom, right? Oh, yeah. The original bobblehead.

Yeah. And I saw when I was a child, there's an episode of Sesame Street with Jay Lowe. This was all before he did the Tonight Show and stuff. Would he go on a rant on Sesame Street? Here's what gets my gears, he would say. No, it was a really it was a cute joke he played like a uh marlon brando wild one biker like in a leather jacket on a harley davidson and he pulls up in front of a mr hooper's store and he's like this rebellious guy and you remember sesame street they would have like the live action part and

they go to the cartoons and then they come back to the storyline in the middle yeah so i don't remember the storyline but at the end of the episode after jay leno this rebellious guy in a leather jacket has stirred shit up on sesame street he's saying goodbye to everybody and he's going to leave and so the harley davidson is parked there on sesame street and he goes to get to get on the harley davidson but what you don't realize is that behind the harley davidson is the real thing that he's getting onto and it's a tricycle and he drives out of the scene on a tricycle and then they say brought to you by the letter t for a tricycle nice good mystery yeah yeah i thought it was a cute little thing that was my introduction to jay leno was that that episode of sesame street and really i think it was his peak. Yeah, I think, uh,

uh, I didn't really know who he was until he took over the Tonight Show. But, but by then it was too late. You know, he doesn't, he's never touched any of his Sesame Street money. Do you think he's got that,

that tricycle and his airplane hanger? It was a tricycle from 1904. Operated on steam, which is weird because it doesn't need any engine. It's usually pedals. You would think. This guy refuses to pedal. Barooga! Well, it's a tricycle.

Why does it sound like... A tricycle is more like ding ding. So the book is about Jay Leno. Yeah, book is about Jay Leno. Yeah, it's called Jay Leno's Tricycle. It's a novel. Oh, it's a novel. It's about people getting mad at showbiz stuff.

Yes. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah, it's a history of controversy throughout the history of show business. And I just quote a lot of, well, it's a combination of people acting ridiculous in their objection, but also acting rationally and some of the pushback being irrational. So there's a section in there when blackface is going out of favor and people are protesting blackface and then editorial writers saying, you people need to get a sense of humor. Blackface is great. You know, so it's like.

Blackface is great. you know so it's like my face is great yeah it's like an analogous to today just to try and through historical examples just show the absurdity of some of the debates that we have today you know people trying to defend the indefensible or get angry about the most innocuous thing there's a whole run in there about people protesting three's company and demanding that the dating game and the newly wed game get thrown off the air for being disgusting and imm company and demanding that the dating game and the newly wed game get thrown off the air for being disgusting and immoral and what were the what was the problem with three's company that he was he was pretending to be gay well let me grab this book called outrageous and look at the index and see if they index three's company look under c

for company comma threes you know authors don't do their own indexes they always um farm it out to interns so sometimes they're incomplete aha threes company tv show in brackets page 155 so let me just refer to this you know i did i didn't read my own index i didn't oh well this is good. All right. Page one 55, a fundamentalist churchgoer from Naples, Florida founded cleanup television cut to combat programs. She considered quote, an immoral insult to decency cut listed Saturday night,

live Charlie's angels, Dallas, the newly wed game and three's company as quote, a negative influence on young people. John Hurt, a reverend from the Churches of Christ, called the love boat a vector for adultery, fornication, and homosexual activity. Whoa. Yeah. The family viewing hour applied in the evening, but even daytime television was considered a corrupting influence. The Church of Christ

in Joelton, Tennessee purchased a full page ad in Newsweek denouncing the dating game and the newlywed game and announced a boycott of their sponsors Aniston, Jell-O, Maxwell House, Sani Flush, Woolite, and Gravy Train dog food. Woolite, Woolite, no

I'm not going to feed my dog because the show is making me too horny general foods distanced themselves from the dating game and the newlywed game they dropped their ads because the program had quote deteriorated below general foods standards of good taste newspaper columnist frank leeming complained quote television particularly the soap operas and trash like the newlywed game use the phrase to make love meaning nothing other than sexual intercourse i don't know what else it would have meant the connotation today refers to two people valentine's the connotation today refers to two people who are not married at least to each other

doing something once considered illicit or immoral oh i do like that idea of not, at least to each other, doing something once considered illicit or immoral. Oh, I do like that idea of not married, at least to each other. They should have a dating game for people cheating on their spouse. Oh, that would be amazing. Paging Mike Bullard. I honestly think that that could be the basis of a reality show. The soap operas were accused of encouraging garbage sex i would like to know garbage sex i would like to what are you doing in there i've been accused of

encouraging that myself stay away from the garbage disposal please i would like to i would like to know what is happening to general hospital wondered a 1976 letter published in the indianapolis news And here is the anecdote in this new book, which got picked up. The game show Family Feud was accused of promoting and spreading herpes. Now, this anecdote got picked up by the tabloids when my book came out a month ago. People Magazine, Entertainment Weekly, they all picked up on this and ran with it. And it got my first bit of press for this book. And I'll read the anecdote to you. Well, let me read the anecdote first, and then I want to tell you the reaction i got from a morning tv show about this family feud mc richard dawson greeted female

contestants with a kiss on the mouth several game show fans were repulsed one viewer complained richard dawson spreads more bugs every week than a flu epidemic a letter published in the philadelphia daily news says as a physician i have wondered wondered about the risks Richard Dawson takes in kissing every female contestant on Family Feud. The diseases that could be transmitted by promiscuous kissing are too long and too loathsome to recount here. Does Dawson or the producers take any caution to prevent infection? And so in the research for this book book i discovered that in the last season of family feud they did instate precautions and that uh contestants of family feud were cotton swabbed and they tested them for herpes before they could go on family feud and kiss richard dawson wow

so hell yeah i didn't just have a dental dam. I don't think they had been invented yet. But anyways, I wrote that in the book. And, you know, one of the publications that profiled the book mentioned it. It got picked up by all these press things. And then somebody sent me a clip to this guy in like a regional morning show. And they were talking about it. And this guy was really upset that i had relayed this anecdote in the book about richard dawson and family feuds contestants being tested

for herpes he goes can't we let him let him rest in peace the man is dead why bring this up now i mean it's on his headstone that's why also it's a history book it's a history book. It's a history book. Why are we dredging up this old history? Because it's a history book. But somebody was very defensive that I was defending. Also because he died of herpes. Yeah. Oh, survey says.

I'm dead. Dead of herpes. Dave, what's going on with you, my friend? Well, that sounds great, Cliff. Well, check it out at all your local stores. Check it out. The John Adams sitcom. Check it out. Cannot stop mentioning John Adams' Check It Out.

Where was that shot again? Halgary Alta. A-L-T-A. Remember when that used to be the abbreviation? Yeah. Well, here's what's going on with me, my friend. I got a haircut. You sure did. I was, you know, I'm feeling curious. I was like, what's my I want to see the shave of my head.

So you got it done, shaved all the way down. I got it. I went to the haircut store and I said to the guy, I had booked it online because it's just the place around the corner from my house and that you can book it online and you can click buzz cut. And I was like, I'll get a buzz cut. And I sat down. Well, first of all, I got in there and I was waiting. And the person getting their haircut before me, the guy was trying to talk him into hair plugs. Oh, sure. He was getting more hair in. You were going to take more hair off yeah he was saying

oh you know you know i think the guy might have been turkish and he was like the barber he was like you go to turkey get your hair done get your hair plugs done it's it's like uh only ten thousand dollars you spend three weeks there play golf it's it's great that does sound really nice and then that guy left and i was like what's what's gonna happen yeah so i i uh he said do you just want a regular haircut and i said no i said buzz cut and he said okay what guard level do you want it at what number yeah and i i was like uh it's a little i because i i shaved my head when I was like 15. And again, when I was like 23.

And that was really your taxi driver phase when you were 23. Yeah. I haven't seen that. Is it good? Yeah, it's good. He shaves his head at one point and do a mohawk. Well, I didn't do that. You got your driver's license just to drive around

the city and go i wish they'd wash away the scum and the garbage you're shaved head i often wonder if people are talking to me um well who else would they be talking to yeah it was 2003 2004 though so i uh it was more of a faux hawk that i got sure yeah i call it the no doubt special because they're i feel like their drummer had a faux hawk when i first not to to interject too much but when graham and i first met we both were sporting uh very spin doctory uh facial hair yes oh it's a perfect way of describing it spin doctory yeah like large beards not even large it was like a narrow thin like goatee thing yeah and uh and i i have photos that i can't ever share of me like with don rickles but i got that fucking thing on my face i need to photoshop it out of there before

i could share same thing when tommy smothers died that's like oh i have a photo with him and then like oh no i've got the spin doctor's look going not gonna it was cool at the time or was it maybe it was a little late at the time i think you know like most things in canada we were 10 years behind the spin doctors were like 1993 but we didn't get the facial hair we also gave the spin doctors their own show on cbc open mic with mike bullard please welcome all the way from the united two princes uh well there used to be that show uh that show club 54 it's called comedy club 54 and it was like filmed in burlington ontario rams obsessed i'm obsessed i want i want copy do you have copies of this well somebody made a youtube documentary about the history of it so you can go on youtube there's somebody a historian of that show on youtube the

total virgin but anyways that that's a little virgin but are you uh familiar with what freud calls the narcissism of small differences but but the the that show was doing new episodes when i was doing stand-up in toronto like in 1999 and 2000 i would meet people they go oh you do stand-up have you ever seen that fucking hilarious show it's so bad from the 80s it's called the comedy at club 54 i go it's not from the 80s they're they filmed it last week like it's a new show but they would show the audience and the audience had like spin doctors beards yeah that's true yeah everybody looked like they were at a heavy metal parking lot but it was from like the year 2000 um anyway so i got i'm getting my mullet yes yeah phase one have you uh so so my guard i i said i haven't had my hair cut in a while uh but over my head shaved in a while i think i'll go for

number two and the guy goes oh i don't know well he thought you meant you were going to the bathroom yeah he did and i was yeah um and uh he i was like i don't know what do you think and he said i don't know it might be it's kind of cold out well yeah let's leave a little rug up there and i said no no i don't care i'll get the number two yeah well it looks like it because you still got hair on your head you look like a uh like you could have been in the smothers brothers in 1962 with that yes my button down mind that's them right um and so i uh then he you know does the back and then he does the in the army now uh yeah full metal did you do a couple fun things like shave the top to see with it you know what you're called the sack

you did the fryer talk yeah exactly all the funny things you could do with a haircut it gives you male pattern baldwisson and enhance you the hand mirror take a look what do you think yeah what do you think you want to go to turkey uh past guest of the show sean proudlove had a friend who got expensive hair plugs and then a month later went and got his haircut at like a easy cuts or something like that. And they destroyed them. Oh no. Yeah. Because you have to have them styled in a certain way or they'll just,

uh, fall apart. Good Lord. Of all the things to save money on in barber school, they don't like get you to practice on a balloon that has hair plugs. So you know how to do it. And so, uh, but other than that silence throughout the whole haircut the guy's just and like it felt good because he he was really getting it done like really like holding on to my skull and making sure it was nice and even how old was your barber because i really trust

elderly barbers and oh younger than me i'd say he was oh i don't think that's good yeah i don't think that's good he had riz um and he uh so we finished it up and then so he says nothing to me through the whole haircut and at the very end he goes are you a coach and i said what he said are you a coach? Like, you know, baseball, hockey? And I go, no. He said, oh, I thought you might be a coach. I mean, why are you wearing that whistle, sir? That's funny.

He thought you looked like Craig T. Nelson with the haircut. Yeah, maybe. Same haircut, same haircut. I went from Dauber to Craig T. Nelson. Yeah, maybe. Same haircut. I went from Dauber to Craig T. Nelson. Cliff, you also shave your head. Is that old barber doing that? Or are you doing it yourself? Are you self-maintaining?

Most of the old barbers have died. When I lived in Vancouver, though, I went to the... Because I kissed Richard Dawson. Oh, good callback. Mike Bullard would be proud of the callback. I used to go to a barber shop in Vancouver, Sorrento's, which is an old Italian barber shop. And it was just old dudes. And I loved it, man.

And I would go in there. I always used the same barber, Mino. He was from the old country, and he gave the best straight razor shave. In fact, sometimes BC Lions football players would go there to get their heads shaved by Mino. He was from the old country and he gave the best straight razor shave. In fact, sometimes BC Lions football players would go there to get their heads shaved by Mino. He was the master of the straight razor. And you'd go into the barbershop sometimes and it was like first come, first serve. And it'd be crowded. There'd be like 20 old guys. And I'd be like, oh, I'll come back later when it's not so busy. And he'd go, no, no, it's available. It's just 20 old guys go there

and hang out. They're not waiting for their go no no it's available it's just 20 old guys go there and hang out they're not waiting for aircon so it always looked right but they're just talking shop um and mino was the best and then the guy who ran at sorrento was a bookie who was nearsighted and didn't wear his glasses so if you ever got a straight razor shave from him it was all fucked up man it's like people come in and argue with him you know they felt like he was not being an honest bookie and he but he had this like uh ledger and so in between you're shaved you'd be over at the ledger penciling things answering the phone he goes yes hello hey second race yes third horse yes got it got it yes yes and then you go back to shaving your face and then i come home there'd be like giant hairs sticking out of my face.

He missed it. He wasn't paying any attention. I remember once he was giving me a shave. And this guy came in to dispute something with the bookie. I don't know what the problem was. He goes, Joe, you said the third race, the horse. It was not. It was a.

And he goes, I did not see the third race. You said the third race. He goes, no, no, no, no, Joe. That's a bullshit. That's a bullshit. That's a bullshit. and he goes I did not see the third race you said the third race he goes no no no no Joe that's a bullshit that's a bullshit that's a bullshit and Joe stops shaving me

and he looks at the guy and he goes he points at him with a razor he goes no no no no no it is not bullshit you are the bullshit

hey and like everybody like cheered in the barbershop he put him in a place he's the bullshit but Mino the barber he was the most agreeable barber all the the barbershop he put him in the place he's the bullshit um but mino the barber he was the most agreeable barber all the other barbers like talked and like he didn't talk he just agreed

so i remember when michael jackson died there was a viral video of like prisoners in the philippines doing a coordinated yeah michael jackson thriller dance and so they were talking about it and joe was like you see the philippines the barber joe was said to me you know it goes you see that video he goes no no what is the video you know it was the guy who died the guy who died jackson jackson oh yeah yeah the guy who died yeah jackson yeah yeah everything you said to me you know he just go oh yeah yeah oh jackson yeah there's the prisoners they died yeah Jackson yeah everything you said to me he'd just go oh yeah yeah oh Jackson yeah the prisoners

they were dancing oh yeah yeah the dancing the prisoners yes Jackson the guy who died but he was but I always went there

I went and didn't shave myself like my face for two years I just went there every three weeks and got the straight razor shave with the towel on the face

and the old school barbershop and the spin doctor yeah yeah the spin doctor oh yeah the doctors who yeah. You do the spin doctor. Oh, yeah. The doctors who spin. Yes, yes, yes. The doctors.

They spin the doctors. Yeah, the two princes. Yes, yes. It looks like a bullshit on the face. Yes. Do you guys remember Martha Chavez,

the Yuck Yucks comedian? Yes. I remember the first time I met her when I started doing stand-up in Toronto. I was so intimidated by her. She was a major headliner. And I had that dumb spin doctor-y goatee on my face.

She got off stage and she came into the green room. And she came right up to me and she grabbed it. She yanked my beard. And she goes, ah, you got a pussy on your face. You look like you got a pussy on your face. And she was yanking it. And I was already intimidated by it. I was just totally horrified,

mortified being bullied by this yuck. Yuck's headliner was yanking on my face and calling me a pussy face. Is this in the book anywhere? Is this in the, this'll be in my, in my memoir memoirs. Yes, yes,

yes. From Smith, from Smith and Smith to open mic in the trenches of Canadian comedy. Graham, were you ever bullied for your beard?

I worked at a coffee shop at the time, and I feel like there was a guy that used to razz me about it. But he was no prize pig himself so i didn't take it uh so badly um or maybe i should have that an ugly guy was calling me out uh but yeah we had a strange barista customer relationship over the years and uh and graham do you still keep in touch with your bookie yeah yeah yeah he's um he's only doing like oscar bets and uh that kind of bet he doesn't do any sports stuff anymore sure

i did see that there's like you can now bet on whether taylor swift will get to will get proposed to at the super bowl oh shit that would make it worth watching if you ask me that would uh right at the maybe the halftime show just centers around that. Ooh, that would be good. But I bet the odds are pretty good for that. You could make more money if you bet, maybe, on far odds.

I don't understand odds at all, because it was like, plus 2,700 that... I think it's sort of arbitrary. Minus 1,300, no. Yeah, what are the odds she'll get proposed to at the Calgary Stampede? I like those odds. I like those odds.

10,001, you got it, buddy. Anyway, so I had a guy shave my head. And you know what It's a new year new me Do you think this is going to be A reoccurring look or is this just an experiment And then back to longer I honestly was a little just curious about what

What was going on down there On the old scalperino And it's fine seems fine Sure we got this area here Lorenzo Lamas is pointing at me with a laser pen. I'd fix that. That's the Bruce Willis in Moonlighting

look. So I got a few more years of that and then it's just put me on a nice flow. Just send you to sea. No, I don't think I'll do this for this won't be something i keep up but it's fun it's a fun look it's fun to freak people out yeah get a headshot while you have it like that then it'll always be um incongruous no matter what you do i thought i

was booking this guy oh shit do you do you find that graham do you do comedy clubs that still have like ancient headshots on the wall or they take yeah they don't take that but i mean there's new comedians all the time so don't they run out of space or they replace the headshots yeah but when if like a really famous comedian gets too big to go back to that club they've got his headshot from 1992 oh yeah they got a lot of russell peters in burlington uh club 54 there was somewhere in ontario at one of the clubs that had a picture of harland williams with a mounds bar like that was his actual headshot it wasn't an ad for mounds and uh i just i i couldn't get over it and i still can't i think it's one of the weirdest things I've ever seen on a comedy club wall.

There was a lot of Yuck Yucks comedians that I only knew as headshots, but I knew who they were like Donny Coy. I never met him, never seen his act, couldn't tell you what he did, but he wore- My bleeping button is just wearing out. Why do you have to bleep it? But I'm not going to say anything bad,

but he had like a white Panama hat in his headshotshot so every club you went to you saw him and i think he kind of was doing double guns to the to the camera as well and i was like oh is it that guy but there was a lot of those dudes that just their infamy was a headshot more than yeah their act i know i did the tally ho motor in in victoria british columbia did you ever do it yep oh yeah fucking nightmare gig um and they only had one headshot on the wall because it wasn't a comedy club it was like a rough bar and it was like way up top by the ceiling like you couldn't even see it uh if you're walking by you had to like look at the ceiling which i did because i was bombing and it was uh brent butt with a mullet. Whoa, shit.

Yeah, way before Corner Gas. Even when I was doing that gig, it was before Corner Gas. But they had Brent's head shot up on the wall there at the Tally Ho. With a mullet, no less. Wow. This is my tip to young comics. Don't accept gigs at any place where the suffix is motor in. Not good.

Yeah, and I think bren butt said don't go to any town that's a a saint a port or a fort those are the places to avoid good advice good advice absolutely what's going on with you graham um i uh my mother graham um i uh my mother uh trish clark she uh she's doing some acting in her retirement and she's crazy acting crazy absolutely dennis simpson has come back to life to uh do a reunion show um but she is uh she was cast the lead in a play so i know is this is this has your mother did she act when you were younger no this is a this is a retirement uh uh you know hobby has she ever expressed interest in this nope was she ever like when you kids are out of here and i'll wait till you kids are out of here up on the footlights um but she was doing the show she was the lead so i snuck

i secretly went to calgary to watch the show and and surprise her and uh graham go you slow down this is sorry this is big time stuff your mother has become the star of a local play yeah uh and you know what it It was really good. Because you never know when you're going to see a family member or a friend's project. Or a local play. It would be great if you had shown up and she had just stolen your act.

She was just reading a phone book. Maybe she'll have some success with it. Graham, we've got to wrap this up soon because i'm recording stop mom casting yourself stop for my mobile podcast um but yeah it was uh it was a play about um seniors being um uh getting scammed through like internet scams and she her character uh has correspondence with somebody that pretends that she's from their high school and was kind of catching up and then slowly over time you know she's kind of getting details wrong and then of course the inevitable is that she asks for money and then asked for more money

and more money and uh and your mom gets scammed she gets scammed she gets scammed big time is this a uh comedy a tragedy this is a history a history yeah it was just a drama i would say it was a drama had a couple of funny lines in it had a couple of uh you know harsh lessons so uh yeah i'd say drama drama all the way down and so you you snuck to calgary yeah i snuck in you got where did you stayed with your brother so your mother wouldn't know i stayed in a hotel treating myself to a hotwire deal on a hotel h-o-t-w-i-r-e hotwire.com's why we're sponsored. Yeah, this week's podcast is sponsored by Hotwire. Hotwire. Not just for cars anymore.

Hotwire. Yeah, when Hotels.com does you wrong, find a Hotwire. Oh, I didn't know what you guys were talking about for the last 30 seconds. It's like an Expedia type of thing? Yes. It's like a kayak meets Expedia. I thought it was the name of the hotel. Okay.

I got it. Oh, staying at Hotwire. Holy shit. Yeah. Oh my God. No, you were,

you were staying, you were staying at the best Western on McLeod drive. I, I honestly, that's where I was. I was in not, not the best Western, the carriage house,

but it was on McLeod drive. So there you go. Oh my God. I was just totally trying to grasp Alberta references. And now yeah, the cloud trail, that's where it was on McLeod drive. So there you go. Oh my God. I was just totally trying to grasp Alberta references and now. Yeah. McLeod trail. That's where it was. Um,

and, uh, this is a thing I think maybe has happened once before, but I can't recall it. Uh, where I, I ordered a pizza to the room and then, uh,

the pizza delivery guy was at the desk and they called me and said i have to come down and get the pizza from him yeah what's that all about and i was like that's insane and usually it works yeah i don't want uh you know to confront the customer service staff it's not their policy um but there were three of them hanging around i was like maybe one of you guys could have uh hopped in the elevator with this dude and brought up a pizza so that's my harsh review the concern is that he oh do you need a room key to get up yes yeah yeah pizza delivery is different in this post 9-11 world yeah thanks a lot bin laden you. That's how it happens. Did he have to take off his shoes? Yeah. His belt.

How undressed were you when you got this phone call? I had pants, but no socks or shoes. So, I just was like, yeah, shirt, pants, no socks, no shirt. We were waiting for you to tell us where the shirt came into the situation

oh i wore it kind of around my waist is like at a concert and overheating exactly a spin doctor's concert yeah oh shit yeah when are they gonna play two princes two princes i'm guessing last you gotta assume i once saw the spin doctors open for uh rolling stones what oh yeah i saw them on the same tour that my brother saw counting crows opened for uh rolling stones uh the voodoo lounge tour and my brother was like ha loser you had to see the spin doctors i got to see counting crows wow i feel like that would be, that should be the lineup though. That should be the narcissism of Small Differences.

Just Spin Doctors with the Counting Crows, maybe Crowded House thrown in there. I remember I missed a Spin Doctors concert because I had to go to summer camp, but they played, it was Spin Doctors and Soul Asylum and maybe Screaming screaming trees playing the Pacific Coliseum. Shit.

And you can go, never got a chance to see because that lineup is never going to happen again. That's a once in a lifetime. I mean, unless it does. Oh yeah. And it probably will, to be honest.

I only, I only ever attended one thing at Pacific Coliseum despite having watched the Vancouver Canucks my whole life. And it was a super dogs it was Super Dogs. Yeah, that's my only time I've ever been in the P&E Coliseum. It's just as magical as that 1994 Stanley Cup run. Yeah, it's just as magical as Pavel Buri. This is better than Pavel Buri. It's a dog running fast through a hoop. Yeah. Do we want to know everything i saw the pacific coliseum okay peter gabriel i saw uh radiohead i saw uh moist and i mother earth uh together together what about sergio mameso i saw sergio mameso passing to jeff cortnell dropping it back to robert dirk oh wow graham's laughing like he knows

but we know i know they're hockey players i know that much yeah yeah and really isn't that all i need to know it is yeah okay so you're you're eating your pizza yeah and it was not good uh and uh the it plays the next day so i'm i'm still sneaking right i'm still putting on a room your mother could spot you anywhere so you're you're walking around town in a trench coat and a hat yeah and i'm getting uh rested uh because uh there's also a flasher wearing the same yeah and also because that's what you were wearing when your pizza guy came yeah i was wearing an overcoat and fatara and nothing underneath just bare legs um but uh yeah my my dad got the tickets and i surprised her after the show and she said

that she had sensed that i was that i was somewhere close she said said and to her castmate that day said that i feel like my eldest son is somewhere in the city wow momdar yeah she's got the momdar and uh you know that's that's gramdar not momdar momdar she would sense other moms or graham would sense her. Yeah, that's true. Okay, sure. Graham Dar. Anyways, I thought that was weird. A little psychic phenomena.

Yeah, but moms make that stuff up all the time. What's Abby's big lie? Oh, yeah, I don't know. She's not my mom. But she's our mom. Oh, I don't know. We not my mom but she's a mom oh i don't know we don't talk about that kind of stuff um uh yeah oh and the other thing i managed to do this this whole weekend flight hotel 200 bucks whoa pretty good right pretty good but you have to kind of uh it's one of these no no

nice luxury things like getting a carry-on bag or no suitcases allowed yeah so i had a backpack and i wore several layers and i was so hot on the plane you have to stand the whole flight you're not allowed to wear a shirt in your hotel room yeah there's advertising all over the place for uh different it's just the number 20 bus yeah exactly it is kind of like a bus in the sky really yeah um but it uh uh i did all for 200 bucks i'll do it again the fact that it's that cheap to get back there have uh have some tom's house a pizza pizza go to peter's drive-in um just stomp around the stampede grounds honestly every minute you're not in calgary you're losing money exactly i can't afford not to do this uh i've talked to my accountant he says i'm

hemorrhaging money but yeah your accountant's one of these guys it's like I'm crazy I'm the best accountant in town whatever is the pizza good in Calgary? Calgary good for pizza? this was a restaurant that I worked at for a while I kind of became addicted to their pizza so I have fond memories

of it but I don't know that that would that I would hold but did it but did it reach the memory like when you taste it did it like did it yeah oh yeah did it reactivate that part of my brain absolutely but you did say it was bad right uh it was the reason it was bad is because it came cold this was another trip to calgary that i got this tom's house of pizza pizza it was cold so that's why it was bad but

well you're a road comic just warm it up in the coffee maker shove it into the Keurig Keurig how do you say it yeah I kind of a memory came up of me prepping for pizzas and having to like grate cheese into a

garbage can that's where they kept the cheeses in a rubber garbage can like a giant tub like a giant tub and i would just stand there uh you know shaving on the old mozzarella block how why they didn't buy it but i don't think i've ever heard about you working at a pizza place. I worked in a college and it was under a year because the, uh, the owner and I didn't see eye to eye on, uh, me and how hard I was working. I was coming in with a low offer.

He was coming in with a high offer. We never could meet in the middle. Right. Did you eat a lot of pizza that year every shift every shift i did a pizza and uh because you can do that back then when you're 19 years old you can eat as many pizzas as you want i if you if you guys go down to las vegas i highly recommend i was blown away how good the pizza was at the evil knievel evil pleasures yeah have you been there no it's not evil pleasures is it i think it's that they had

a t-shirt that says evil pleasures oh okay yeah i think it's called evil knievels it was delicious it's so fucking good yeah and uh they have the cutest neon sign of uh of a little guy evil knievel on a motorcycle like going over a bunch of vans and it's like like it's one of those blinking neon signs that moves so the motorcycle yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah and then they they got a nice oil painting dead center of evil knievel in there and like uh it was a pinball machine dude it's awesome i highly recommend evil knievel's pizza it's called evil pie evil pie evil pie there you go um do you guys want to move on to some overheards yeah man my name's doug dugay and i'm here to talk about my podcast in the middle of the one you're

listening to it's called valley heat and it's about my neighborhood, the Burbank Rancho Equestrian District, the center of the world when it comes to foosball, frisbee golf, and high-speed freeway roller skating. And there's been a jaguar parked outside on my curb for 10 months. I have no idea who owns it. I have a feeling it's related to the drug drop that was happening in my garbage can

a little over a year ago. And if this has been a boring commercial, imagine 45 minutes of it. Okay, Valley Heat, it's on every month on MaximumFun.org or wherever you get podcasts. Check it out, but honestly, skip it. These are the Chronicles of the Rancho Equestrian District in Burbank, California.

These are the events taking place in my house, around my house. Hello, sleepyheads. Sleeping with Celebrities is your podcast pillow pal. We talk to remarkable people about unremarkable topics, all to help you slow down your brain and drift off to sleep. For instance, we have the remarkable Neil Gaiman. I'd always had a vague interest in life, culture, food preparation. vague interest in life culture, food preparation.

Sleeping with Celebrities, hosted by me, John Moe, on MaximumFun.org or wherever you get your podcasts. Night, night. Overheard. Overheard is a segment on this here podcast where you, if you have the ability and the time and the wherewithal to hear things, record them in your head or your phone or a notebook and report them here to the podcast. And if you want to do the same, you can send it to SBY at MaximumFun.org. And we always like to start with the guest when it comes to overheards cliff yeah do you have one i do i'm always uh i'm never sure if my overheards are good or if they're horrible um or if they're interesting at all but i was in a neighborhood in east hollywood recently it's one every big city i

think has a neighborhood like this where uh you're more likely to see people limping than not so this is one of the yep this is one of the limping districts. And so there is this guy, it was just two of us, me walking towards him and him walking towards me and no other pedestrians around. He was limping. In my memory, which I know is not accurate, he has a wooden pig leg. But I don't think that's true. I think I'm just embellishing it in my memory.

You don't really see that many wooden peg legs these days. You don't. So the listeners, if it helps visualize it, he has a wooden peg leg or he doesn't. It's up to you. It's up to the listener preference. Anyways, he was limping and he's walking towards me and I'm walking towards him. There's nobody around and he's singing and not the whole song, just the famous lyric over and over as he limps smooth operator smooth operator and i can hear him as he passes me he keeps walking down the street

smooth operator i can hear it i mean smooth that's all he knows that's all he knows so that's it i'll be honest i I don't think I know any other part. Isn't there like coast to coast something from. Yeah. Yeah. And then the saxophone. That's all I know. Yeah.

Yeah. All I know goes smooth operator. And then it goes smooth operator. Yes. Nailing it, Dave. You're nailing it. Yeah. That's about all though.

It's Sade. Sade. Sade. though it's Sade Sade Sade She was What did she have another hit I think several years A few years later I can't remember which though I'll look let's just look up

Sade's top five On Spotify Number one Smooth Operator on Spotify. Number one, Smooth Operator. Number two, Like a Tattoo. Number three, Kiss of Life.

Like a tattoo. Like a tattoo. Oh, you know what song I remember? From the Robert Redford, Woody Harrelson Indecent Proposal. Oh, yes. Yeah. from the uh what was the robert redford woody harrelson uh indecent proposal oh yes yeah she had this is no ordinary love yes no ordinary love i watched that uh recently indecent proposal was it decent no it was more indecent if not i wanted to write a letter to whatever movie studio

put it out this is i mean it does say it in the title that's my bad that i watched it but for more information about indecent exposure right ottawa ontario indecent exposure that's that's a movie that i only wish i watched um was indecent exposure did they make like a but there you know how they made like a they did hot shots and naked gun i think they did fatal instinct and it was a basic fatal attraction erotic like a rip it was a rip off of the zucker brothers it wasn't them it was somebody else yeah yeah i remember that i remember the trailer being great. And then the movie being very boring. Starring Armand Asante. I mean, that's good.

And Sean Young. Boy, I do remember. There's a appearance by Wayne, Wayne Knight, I want to say in the, uh, flashing scene,

the Sharon Stone famous, uh, leg. Oh, that was in hot shots. That was in, that was, was that in,

that was, no, that was in, uh, national lampoons was was that in that was no that was in uh national lampoon's loaded weapon yeah okay yes yes huh was that with emilio estes yeah fatal instinct was directed by carl reiner written by david o'malley i remember my favorite gag from loaded weapon was samuel jackson was in it and he comes home and his wife has put like a really nice spread on the kitchen table like a you know beautiful dinner and he's like what's the occasion she said um it's my mom's birthday and he's like oh did I forget to give you that message that her mama died oh yeah oh shit did I forget to give them she died um indecent exposure is of course

what uh what i was charged with when i was walking around calgary in that in that trench coat uh dave do you have an overheard um yeah so at my child children's school it's quite often there's a thing that happens now that never happened when i was a kid is that if it's your birthday you will it's not it's not required obviously but what happens a lot is that if it's your birthday you'll bring in cupcakes for the whole class yes i remember this i don't we never did that no we never did it but i remember other people doing it wait it's your birthday and you have to bring you don't have to do it but that's like somebody doesn't bring cupcakes for you that's right that's right that's your way of saying hey everyone it's my birthday

be nice to me for one day this year please anyway so yesterday it was someone's birthday and so every kid in this class came out holding a little cupcake in a box um and uh this little girl this little girl her older brother ran up to her and uh he goes up to her and he goes oh your hair is beautiful i mean seriously it's rocking is that a cupcake just casually tries to slide it yeah i was really trying to like butter up his little sister for i'm sure the first time in his life wow what a sleaze bag i know a lot of a lot of sleazy kids go to my kids school you're down in the limping district is that right yeah what you call a sleazebag i'd call

a smooth operator oh yeah i didn't even think about that anyways um i love it and did you have one of these uh one of these cupcakes uh my daughter did you didn't you didn't get in on just a real quick no i don't uh i don't take i don't steal food oh that's uh that's to be commended um and you know i i won't steal like i like food i especially like junk food yeah but like if my kids get like christmas presents that's chocolate or if they you know get uh halloween candy i'm not taking it no i can get my own what about shoplifting do you consider that stealing well hmm i guess i guess it's a gray area just a couple of cans of chef boyardee to feed your family there's no nothing wrong i mean i i do wear these giant

cargo pants it'd be a shame if I didn't Log out with Clang clang clang clang Yeah and it's You won't steal off brand No it's gotta be Boyardee Chef Bob Opie Do they make a They must make house brand

Can of noodle Yeah it's cook Chef Boyardee Do they make a, like, they must make house brand can of noodle. Yeah, it's cook, chef, boy, R, the letter R, D, E, E, E. It's line cook, girl, isn't, E, whatever the opposite of D is. You know, I watched an old commercial for Chef Boyardee and they call it uh chef boyardee like it's an italian boyardee oh yeah like moriarty yeah yeah yeah yeah i know the chef boyardee yeah yeah yeah it makes more sense he's it's italian food the finest italian but for some reason there's hyphens in it right it's like chef boy hyphen r hyphen d isn't it like spider-man the amazing chef play rd you can picture a limited edition spider-man comic co-starring

chef boy you can you can fill one where he meets chef party especially in canada and they're telling kids not to do drugs one of them them's wearing an Oilers jersey for no reason. There was a Spider-Man that they made. It was Spider-Man at the Calgary Stampede. I remember, I remember. There's also a Archie, Veronica, Betty go to the Calgary Olympics in 88. Oh, shit.

Yeah, and there's another one where they go to maybe Expo 86 in vancouver in fact in fact i think if you go on youtube there's a video of me giving a copy of that comic book to daniel johnston nardwar had recruited me to give daniel johnston from the devil and daniel johnston fame comic books and i give him a copy of betty and veronica at expo 86 and did he was he thrilled yeah he was he was like oh thank you he was thrilled damn to carlo i love him yeah um i just googled i went to the wikipedia for chef boyardee there are no hyphens but did you know what chef boyardee's

first name is leslie oh oh i was gonna say clarence leslie i was gonna say something that's culturally insensitive no it's uh i made it up there's no first name oh god damn it um i won't be understood in my lifetime uh did you do an overheard nope um i was uh i was walking around walking to a show last night incidentally somebody on the show had your old look had a long goatee glasses like yours and was wearing a toque and I was like what the odds that there's a young dude

your exact look I mean I'm very influential let's face it let's face it exactly I was walking to the comedy show and i passed by three teenage girls walking the opposite direction and uh one girl said i know he keeps saying this but after every breakup i watch the notebook so this is something that she continually is yeah sorry for saying it again but have you guys seen the notebook either yeah i've

seen bits of it it's romantic do you know who was originally gonna be in it chef boyardee no but it doesn't work out time-wise because it's um ryan gosling is young uh what's his face james garner oh yeah yeah and then um they but like five years prior to that they were going to do it with george clooney as young paul newman i think that's as good but george clooney would have been like 45 i love it i love uh just the casting for name not for age or making yeah yeah yeah i like uh i like anything like that just a good stunt cast also there's like a huge list of uh people they wanted to put in it and it came down to like uh rachel mcadams and britney spears as the female lead oh but then she went with crossroads instead i I think this was after crossroads. Oh shit.

Just she, she showed her acting muscle and yeah. Okay. Um, well, what would have been, what could have been, uh,

I know now we also have overheard sent into us, uh, from people all over the place. You want to send one in, send it in to SPY at maximum fun.org. This first one comes from Ingrid in Minneapolis. This is a one comes from ingrid in minneapolis this is a couple in a sauna and i say this is a co-ed sauna that we're we're picturing here so towels on or off i don't know hey look who am i to decide what how people sauna you know what i mean uh how do

you sauna how do i uh i pack as many clothes on as i possibly can because i really gotta make weight i gotta make yeah you are trying you have been trying to make weight for quite a while there's this wrestling tournament you keep telling us about and every time you see me i'm wearing a garbage bag yeah gotta make weight gotta make weight and who are you wrestling and you're always yeah who are you wrestling uh butch from the WWF team, the Bushwhackers. I'm wrestling Butch. And they say to be very careful. Just a lot of beard pulling, mostly.

Yeah. This first one is in Asana. Woman saying, do you think 9-11 was an inside job? The man said, no. The woman genuinely confused then who planned it all and the man said the terrorists that carried it out she goes oh i get it yeah i didn't know it was planned i guess i could i was either an inside job or it was just a random occurrence

a coincidence I was either an inside job or it was just a random occurrence. A coincidence. Yeah. I mean, look, we all know that diesel fuel, is it plain fuel can't liquidate beams? Diesel fuel can't liquidate beams. Jet fuel can't melt steel beams, but sauna heat can oh yeah absolutely just the heat of the kind of you know chemistry between these two and the sauna they can go if you could bottle that him shutting her down no the people who carried it out reminds me of uh you remember when we used

to do stand-up with zach galifianakis? He always had that joke. He'd be at the piano doing the jokes and he would stop. And he would just look off to the side and say, you know, I didn't like 9-11. Oh, Zach, so funny. So funny. This next one comes from Chris in San Rafael, California. I was in the kitchen making lunch on a rainy afternoon, and then I noticed the day starting to brighten.

I called my wife in that ex-room and said, Oh, hey, it's a sun shower. We immediately heard thundering footsteps as our five-year-old ran from his bedroom to the top of the stairs and shouted, Did I just hear the word sun shower? Did I just hear the word sudden shower? You said I was allowed to skip school if there was a sun shower. I picture that kid with like a preppy sweater tied in a knot around his neck with a tennis racket running into the room.

Somebody say sun shower? No, Graham. I think a lot of that was in your reading well you know I do like to perform but I imagine it might have been like a

did you just say sun shower more of like an incredulous like that can happen that can happen yeah I was making

into kind of what Cliff was saying kind of a snobs versus the slobs kind of snob sun shower anyone and this last one comes from Julia kind of snow. Sunshower anyone? And this last one comes from Julia in Nanaimo. Overheard at

Costco, passed by a young guy in his early 20s with an older woman. Young guy exclaimed excitedly, this is it! This is the Shaquille O'Neal printer! Oh, right. He does do commercials for printers. He does? Oh, i didn't know that here are the things shaquille o'neal does ads for printers yeah car insurance eyeglasses ice icy hot uh icy

hot icy hot yeah rub he's a um like uh uh quantity over quality oh disagree that that guy's uh top to bottom quality all the way his printers are excellent his shoes number one and best of all his movie uh shazam shazam oh and also blue chip uh starring nick nolte and but he had another one yeah did he have another one oh steel steel yeah yeah space jam is he in space jam no he's what he might be have a cameo in it but i don't think so no um you're thinking of sean bradley didn't he play a cop in like an adam sandler movie or something oh yeah he was in grown-ups or grown-own Ups 2. Yes. No, he's everywhere now. Yeah, he's great. Well, he was always everywhere. He's everywhere to me. We love him.

Well, in addition to our rehearsals that are written in, we also accept your phone calls if you want to call us. Our phone number is 1-844-779-7631. That's 1-SpyPod 1 like these people have

hi david graham um i work at a bookstore and i eavesdrop on people all the time and the other day there were two people looking at the biography section and one of them pointed to a book on the shelf and said oh hey isn't this that lady you have beef with and the guy with her looks at the book and goes yes and then i looked at what the book was after they walked away and it was selma blair's memoir off i go selma blair the actress from legally blonde and cruel intentions this guy's got beef with her. Yeah, I wonder what it was. Did she get a part he was up for and just cursed him ever since?

She was pretty cruel in Cruel Intentions. Or wait, no, was she the young one? She was the dumb, yeah, the dumb. No. Wasn't that her? Well, the young one was Reese Witherspoon. Yeah, but she was the, oh no am i thinking of the wrong which was the one that had sarah michelle geller in it cruel intentions i feel like wasn't she like

the she was like a a kid that a teen that acted like a kid or was yeah that rings a bell yeah she's a dumb dumb uh weird both the movies i mentioned were also reese witherspoon movies it's also maybe it was reese witherspoon who has beef how much like why has she written a memoir like is that um she's uh i think she has ms or something oh okay uh has struggled the last few years shit oh i'm sorry graham calder on her memoir just bleep it out and just say that it's a book that it's a generic book this person had a beef with a book here's your final phone call second phone call hi dave graham impossible guest this is siri calling from victoria with an overheard uh something my dad said unprompted and it was just this. There used to be giant beavers.

Giant beavers. Big as a bear. And I would say no friggin' way but I looked it up and they were real. Shit. Well, off I go.

Sounds like something from Fatal Instinct. Yeah. Yeah, off I go. That's like something from Fatal Instinct. Yeah. Yeah, what the... Nice. So this is like in millions of years ago or something. Yeah, I'm guessing so. If you used to write Tinterlands Who's Who, they give you a whole information packet about the giant people.

Oh, I like the idea that they send back information to you. You send these letters and then they mail you, oh, here's a booklet about what you asked. I think that was the point. Did anybody ever do it? I wonder, maybe it was like a letter, fake letter written by a beaver.

Like this is me answering my fan mail. Yeah. Thanks for watching my hinterlands. Who's who? As always chomping away. I am giant beaver, regular size beaver. Look out for me

on the nickel. And finally... Hi, Dave and Graham and guests. Me and my wife were helping my mom clean out a room in her house that hadn't been touched for years and years, or

bookshelves or something like that. And my wife... I was out of the room. My wife picks up a box in the hands of my mom and she starts going through it. She picks up this little baggie with some dried piece of

something in it. And she goes, Huh. Which kid's umbilical cord is this? Oh, good lord. That's, uh, you're supposed to, like, put that on construction paper like the macaroni and hang it on the fridge. That's the baby's first art.

Like the macaroni. You make a tambourine out of this with a couple paper plates you're supposed to put it in a bag and uh make mike bullard throw up or make a soup with it years down the road oh lord i will throw up no it's cool it's cool it's cool everybody where do you hide your kids umbilical cords uh i don't i if we got them i don't know i still have a lot of their teeth oh yeah shit so uh if anyone's if anyone wants them

send a postcard to dave's kids teeth um well i think that brings us to the end of the podcast today oh i know we were having so much fun. Cliff, you've got a new book out. You can get it everywhere. Get it everywhere. Outrageous is what it's called. The History of Showbiz and the Culture Wars. Super fun stuff in there, man.

You just couldn't get away with that kind of stuff anymore. That's true. You just can't see anything. Giant beavers? Yeah. You can't talk about them. Yeah, exactly. What the hell?

Well, thank you for being our guest. And thank you, everybody out there, for listening. If you see a giant beaver, report it to your local park ranger. And come on back next week for another episode of stop podcasting yourself maximum fun a worker-owned network of artist-owned shows supported directly by you