The Doug Stanhope Podcast - Ep. #270: Brooks Brown, the 3rd Columbine Shooter That Wasn't

Episode Date: August 8, 2018

Doug reconnects with Brooks Brown, a student at Columbine High School during the Massacre that took place on April 20th 1999 in Littleton, Colorado. Brooks is known mostly as the student who was told to go home by Eric Harris, one of the shooters, just minutes prior to the shooting.Recorded July 10th, 2018 at the World Famous Comedy Store in Hollywood, CA with Doug Stanhope (@DougStanhope), Brooks Brown, and Ggreg Chaille (@gregchaille). Produced by Brett Erickson (@iBrettmypants ) & Edited by Chaille.Don't miss out on Doug's 2018 eBay Yard Sale Aug 12 – 19th. Get on the Mailing List at [www.dougstanhope.com](www.dougstanhope.com) to get first crack at the items up for bid. This episode is sponsored byDollar Shave Club - For just five bucks, you can get the Daily Essentials Starter Set. It comes with Body Cleanser, One Wipe Charlies, their amazing butt wipes, their world famous Shave Butter, and their best razor: the six-blade Executive. Keep the blades coming for a few more bucks a month, and add in shampoo, toothpaste, or anything else you need. Check it all out at [www.DollarShaveClub.com/STANHOPE](www.DollarShaveClub.com/STANHOPE).LINKS:“No Easy Answers: The Truth Behind Death at Columbine High School” – by Brooks Brown & Rob Meritt - [https://amzn.to/2vOhaGW](https://amzn.to/2vOhaGW)STANHOPE MERCH - NEW! Chad Shank T-Shirts, “Popov Vodka Presents” VHS Tapes and the NEW KILLER TERMITES T-Shirt now available at [http://www.DougStanhope.com/store](http://www.DougStanhope.com/store)Bingo's Book - “Let Me Out: a madhouse diary” NOW AVAILABLE on AUDIBLE.com - [https://amzn.to/2mItJzn](https://amzn.to/2mItJzn)Chad Shank Voice Over info at [http://www.AudioShank.com](http://www.AudioShank.com)Support the Innocence Project - [http://www.innocenceproject.org](http://www.innocenceproject.org)Closing song “Maybe They Won't Kill You,” from Henry Phillips' cd “Why Haven't I Heard from You” available iTunes and Amazon.com ([https://amzn.to/2OhJxVo](https://amzn.to/2OhJxVo)).Support the show: http://www.Patreon.com/stanhopepodcast

you're listening to the doug stanhope podcast i'm in the new new shower and i'm thinking uh if i'm an old person sometimes i don't know if it's my age or my brain cells, where I'm thinking, sometimes when I've got my eyes closed because the shower's in my face and I'm scrubbing my scalp

and I get a little dizzy and a little bit of my equilibrium is off, I go, wow, in this new shower this half pod yeah you can't fall down and break a hip like old people do in a shower like in the old bathtub that filthy old bathtub that was there yeah you could slip and fall and die like elvis it's like it's like it's like it's like a vertical like sleep chamber on Alien. Yeah, sleepers. Woody Allen, but upright.

Anyway. You could basically slide up against it and then fall up against it, but you can't move too far and then you just kind of slide down your skin. It's like the Yotel that we've talked about in older podcasts where it's so small you can't

slip and fall in the fucking shower and die unless you smash through the glass anyway listen this is just us talking this podcast that we're about to get into is pre-recorded

but I wanted to set it up, A, because in just a few days, August 12, Sunday of the year of our Lord, 2018, is the eBay yard sale. That's the start. It's going to run from Sunday to Sunday, from the 12th to the 19th. So it starts in the morning of the 12th, Sunday. Yeah. And then it's going to end the last. They go out, they roll out, right?

Not everything all at once. Yeah. When we've done them before, like the football helmets and stuff, she would do like one piece per hour. I don't even know how many things we have. We have, obviously, we have tour suits, some of my brilliant stage outfits, my 70s Herb Tarlick anchorman.

Herb Tarlick-ish. You don't have Herb Tarlick's suit. No, no. Not from WKRP. WKRP in Cincinnati. Those, you know the, what the fuck I wear, listener. Guy sitting at work, angry. I have six suits in there.

Beating on the horn of your forklift and knowing there's no horn there, but you're beeping at fucking some asshole in front of you with an orange vest. Yeah, you know what I'm talking about. Yeah, my suits. Shit I wore on tour, and now I'm overhoarded with, and they gotta go to you. 40 regular, 32 waist, 30 pants. Yeah. 30 inch leg, 32 32 waist 40 regular jacket and uh if you don't fit those specs

you need to work out and get shorter or smoke and drink more yeah skip a couple meals yeah you're gonna shrink with age sure you're you're 5 foot11 now, but when you get to your 80s, you'll be my height. Now, these are off the rack. They haven't been altered to accommodate your scrunched over spine, right? Oh, yeah. You have to account for the horseshoe posture. I think if you get it pressed once, that'll work it out. Listen, I'm going to tell you about the eBay yard sale,

but I want you to know that the podcast that will follow this is one of my favorite that I remember doing, and it's Brooks Brown, and he was the third Columbine shooter who was not a Columbine shooter. shooter who was not a columbine shooter and uh what i remember about it other than uh i just really enjoyed it was like a real interview is uh as soon as chaley and i because we were pretty drunk during this it was recorded at the world famous comedy store later in the evening because he showed up and he's been threatening to come out here to bisbee forever and but he's got a life now but he was there in la and other than the few

times i realized we're trying to make jokes where there's no joke there and when we finally learned to shut the fuck up that's what i remember. But eBay yard sale, Sunday it starts, goes for a week. And a lot of this stuff, not a lot of this stuff, but some of it goes to charity. There's some shit. There's one piece in there that I'll probably get shit for and possibly press that I don't want. But there's some fun stuff. Let me just, I grabbed some highlights and too many. Winnipeg.

This is just a dumb thing, but you're here, Chaley. The Winnipeg whiteout towel. When we got those last-minute tickets in Winnipeg to see Winnipeg get bowed out of the playoffs in the NHL, the Winnipeg Jets, yeah, they had the Winnipeg whiteout towel, which is as silly as the Pittsburgh angry towel. Terrible towel. Terrible towel. Terrible towel. And there were only 40-some thousand draped on all the seats. But this is the one.

I put that on eBay description. I go, if you burn this towel like they blew up the Bartman ball for the Chicago Cubs to cure the curse, reverse the curse. You are the curse. Reverse the curse. Got a million tour posters going all the way back to the triple rock days in Minneapolis. Oh, wow. I got some vintage and giant posters. I got one from San Francisco, like a whole wall size, but like five.

It's a marquee type one. It'll be out in front of a theater. I got one like i have a lot of stuff that'll fuck with other comics i have todd barry's uh the reader book he sent me to write the pre-press for his that's the one i was reading when bingo was in a coma artist proof it's the only todd Todd Barry Welcome to Hattiesburg book that doesn't have my forward in it. I had to read that to write the forward. Hopefully Brendan Walsh

will bid excessively on that. Todd Barry is a cheap motherfucker. He's a great joke writer. He's a brilliant... he's a cheap dirty cheap motherfucker and he will be as angry as castle rock kenny was when we sold his painting for like hundreds of dollars on the last ebay yard sale like ah i i could pay my rent for. Yeah. Those are the most fun things to sell on the eBay yard sale. Morgan Murphy always leaves shit here.

So I have at least one, maybe two Morgan Murphys. Like she left a cup here. And I'm like, is this yours? Like I'm always walking around going, is this yours to somebody? And yeah, I didn't sell your sunglasses, Morgan Murphy, because you left those, but they look like they're hard to replace. Oh, my God. I just got a message or just tweeted by Morgan Murphy. Swear to God, it just came up.

It says, will I be told if anything I own is being sold so i can buy it back she bugged this fucking room go ahead i'll i'll just keep going through the list while you text her text her no call her and get her on speakerphone all right uh oh this is one of the best i have a a bre Walsh, Todd Barry, Neil Hamburger tour poster. It's not signed by them, but I'll sign it for them by them. Dialing. Hello? Hey, you're on the air.

Yes, you actually just texted Chaley while we're talking about selling your shit on the eBay yard sale. Yeah, what are you selling that belongs to me? I can't remember. There's two things, but the one I didn't sell is you left sunglasses behind. Oh, you can't sell those. I looked at them. I say these look like they're hard to replace. But one is your drinking cup that you would...

I go, she just leaves shit at my house. So I'm fucking stoked. I don't leave shit. Other people leave shit mostly. No. No. When you're in town, you'll wander up with... The one I remember is a plastic vintage...

Yeah, I have one. Bingo has one. This is a... vintage. Yeah, I have one. Bingo has one. This is a, you know. And you know what? One of our bidders is going to have one because you left one here and I kept telling you not to leave shit here. And there might be one other thing. All right. But then don't, you know, I don't know.

There's people that end up at my house and then they leave stuff there too. So I don't really know what to say. Do you have a set of deep blue pots and pans? I have a blue. I do. Yeah, I got a couple things. I got a blue crock pot thing that you said you were going to steal. Oh, no, no.

That's a crock pot. This is just a pot that you would boil an ear of corn in. I don't know. All right. Well, then it's at your thrift store, because that went there today. Because Bingo was trying to... I got all that shit

on sale at Target that day that I got pulled over by Border Patrol. All right. Well, yeah, there's a couple of your things. Okay. Well, just let me know what home they're going to so I can just do some research and some background.

You have to get on the eBay yard sale starting Sunday. All right. I'll go try to get some of my stuff back, I guess. Well, no, this is the one that,

that Brendan Walsh will be really pissed about. When he was moving from Austin to LA, he stayed here and he did, you know, some house watching for us. He gave me, cause he had no place to put it. This,

this is the one that if I had more walls, I would definitely put it up. It's a giant movie poster of the King of Comedy with Robert De Niro, which every comic worships. This is a huge one that he's going to go, fuck, why did I give that to him? And I didn't even know I had it until I went into that crawl space. You know what's going to make him really mad? When I buy it. Trade him for a set of pots and pans.

I have so many things just to piss other people off in this yard sale. If I wasn't me, I'd tell you things just to piss other people off in this yard sale. If I wasn't me, I'd tell you to go to my house and take more of my stuff. I'll sell the gumps. It comes with a trailer. Sell my air mattress that the gumps have probably made business on. that the Gumps have probably made business on. No, even Feng Shui, our friend from the comedy store,

that's on a future podcast. But yeah, even he didn't stay there because God knows what the Gumps do with the Chinese worker from out of town. All right, I got to get back to this list because I'm just doing the intro for this podcast with Brooks Brown. Well, that's a long intro. All right. I'll call you back after this. All right.

I got to go back into shit I'm selling. Have fun. I love you. You don't have to say it back. She already hung up. Yeah, that King of Comedy poster. If I remembered I had that, that would be taking up a full wall. Comedy Dynamics, who I have, I guess, several of my specials with.

You have a business relationship with them when i had one business relation they they came on too strong and sent me like 38 dvds like full box sets of all the comics that comedy dynamics has so i'm selling one chunk of like over 30 cds and double cds of a of comics, like a lot of good ones or some good ones. And some I'm like, I don't even want to take a chance. And some I know suck subjective. That's going to be one bulk load. And then there's a Kinison complete set and a Hicks complete set,

like 12 hours, three DVDs. Look at the descriptions. uh the the hicks one you know how i am about hicks like i don't even want to be associated that kind of thing like stop comparing me but at the same time going i like there's there's like deep track shit, unreleased footage, but those are sealed. Blah, blah, blah. Oh, here's one of my favorites. Johnny Depp fan mail.

Because when all that Johnny Depp shit went down and people like, oh, I can't get a hold of him through social media. But you have your address online. Your friends. Can you send this to him? So I have Johnny Depp fan mail and gifts that'll be in the eBay yard sale. Yeah, I'm not going to give this to him, but I will sell it for fuck's sake. A lot of this stuff goes to charity, but not all of it.

Not yours. Yours will not go to charity. Well, it will. I'll spend that on a fucking hobo that you don't care about. Oh, here's one just to piss someone off. She doesn't listen. Your wife doesn't listen to this, right? Nobody listens to this, Doug.

Okay, well, Tracy, you know how I hate her fucking coasters. She knits like an old woman. Crochet. It's not knitting. It's crochet. I got a three-pack of shitty Tracy coasters going on. They're beautiful. Oh.

They're very colorful. She does them custom. They're beautiful. Oh. They're very colorful. She does them custom. They're horrible. It's like, you know, what's the number one? You have one job. When I go out on stage, what's your one job? Well, you need something to set the drinks on. Yeah.

What do you make sure? When I set my drink down, it's not on something that's going to teeter-totter. It's not on a cushion. It's going to, yeah, yeah. Yeah, and that's what her coasters are, teeter-totter. It's not on a cushion. Yeah, yeah. And that's what our coasters are. Teeter-totters for drinks. So, yeah, I'm selling a three-pack just to piss around.

I wouldn't put a martini glass on it. Something top-heavy. But you could put it... It's a stout tumbler. A stout tumbler. A truck tire you could put on top of it and it will not spill the drink. Wait, does this come with truck tires?

Castle Rock Kenny. We always have to fuck with him. The cactus uniform that he wore back when we had the last baseball team we had here in Bisbee was the Tucson Saguaros would come down and just play one game on Sunday here in Bisbee. One home game. And a Saguaro for you, listener, on your fucking still angry beating on your fake horn on your forklift, sitting in your cubicle. A Saguaro is a type of cactus here. The type you see in Roadrunner cartoons.

type of cactus here. The type you see in Roadrunner cartoons. So we bought a cactus costume for Castle Rock Kenny, aka Cold Cut Kenny, to wear at the games that were heavily attended

by tens of people. And that's a comedy joke, but literally... It's applicable. Yeah, about 40 people would be there. And Kenny would have his cactus costume that we bought him, not knowing that the Tucson Saguaro's also had their own mascot in a cactus costume. But ours was vulgar and arrogant. And then we stopped being invited to the Tucson Suarez games, and they stopped playing here.

It's kind of a I can't get fired, I quit situation. So, yeah, his costume is going up for sale. My play school. You were there for this, Jaylee. Gay cousin Nancy. What town was that in providence she goes i'm i have something special for you she doesn't listen i can't imagine that any of the family listens to this the ones that are alive and distant. But she said, Auntie Bev kept this and wanted you to have this. It's an old play school. Put the square.

It's a mailbox. It's like the big mailbox, and it's got four shapes, and then you take the blocks and put them in there. And it's got a few blocks left. And she said, tell him I saved this for him. She's like 155 now. And I'm like, oh, this is great. I'm like, it's just more hoarder shit.

So, yeah, I'm selling that. I'm selling my... I don't have any recollection of this. I've been drinking since then when i was three that was really weird we were in rhode island and we we had to keep like keep unpacking and packing the car and i would always come up with this fucking play school mailbox that had to always i just wanted to ditch it somewhere just just off it sell it at the merch booth and you're like no we got to keep it we got to and i think you were doing it to fuck with me but finally no no because for a minute she made it

sound like it was so special that my aunt even remembers me or i remember her it was fantastic but i had to keep touching it every fucking day twice a day when i had to move merch we got uh uh if you have the uh if you're not up on the doug stanhope merchandise uh page on dougstanhope.com yeah buy fucking merch god damn it uh because if you have the chad shank t-shirt with the beret the diplomat shirt chad shank on the ebay yard sale is selling the beret that he wore for the picture of that shirt yeah so you can have that shirt if you don't already have it you can have that shirt and then own the beret hey who's that on your shirt let me show you my my my trophy case and then you have the beret on a chad shank mannequin head becker becker has that whole package of that's a deep track that's how i listed it

deep track if if you listen to the podcast religiously and you know about all me and becker's history he has a whole bunch of other shit Gretchen has an oil painting she did of me but I can't have paintings of me everywhere so that will be sold for charity for her

mariposa the art school for the kids it doesn't not go on the other side of the border I got a thank you card that you get every time you do Stern. Signed by Howard Stern and all the proceeds for that will go to North Shore Animal League.

So yeah, some of these are Tom Konopka. God, he's going to fucking hate me, but I'd rather have him hate me now before he sees it. jokes about our telemarketing days where I just don't have enough space to keep all this shit. But all the money from that will go to Tom Konopka and I'll have more space in my house. What's wrong with that? He's not going to sell it. You're not throwing it away. And if you know the story, if you read the book and you know the history of tom kanopka and then

listen to the podcast how we came together again so many decades later and now yeah you'll appreciate that more than we ever will all right there's a fucking ton of shit that's enough that would have been a good ender a lot of a lot a lot of dollar 61 cent residual checks a fucking ton of shit the fezes whoever sent the fezes yeah all right that's enough oh and mishka is going to be really pissed okay we'll close on mishka is going to be really pissed. Okay, we'll close on Mishka is going to be really angry. Which makes me happier than anything in the world. And anything you buy, when it says autographed, I will personalize it to you once you've paid for your bid. And you say, hey, have them write this to so-and-so. I won't just do my usual scrawl.

I will personalize it to you, and some of the money will go to charitable contributions, not charities. Fuck charities. I'll give it to a guy. I'll give it to someone who knew a guy, someone who needs money. I'll overtip a bartender. Yeah. You want to take a break? No, no.

We got to get into the fucking Brooks Brown. There's a great podcast coming up. Be on the mailing list at DougStanHope.com. Get on the mailing list and you'll know. Let's get into this podcast because this has already gone on too long. Don't forget, the eBay Yard Sale starts August 12th, 2018, and it ends August 19th. That's Sunday to Sunday, and they're going to roll out the products throughout the day on Sunday. And in retirement, I'll let you know that I'm already starting a notebook for coming

out soon. Three weeks of retirement. I'm like, I can't fucking retire. But that's not fact. Here's a podcast. Click. You don't have to map out a story. We're just going to talk.

You have a story. I have random stories. We're just going to talk. You have a story. I have random stories. We're trying to come up with stories. Into a big story. All right. But I have stories since then. Sort of different situations in my life. Especially, I think I've watched.

Well, don't tell it now because right now we're kind of good. Just to get volume levels and testing and all that fun stuff. And used to talking. Yeah, I try. that's what we do we start the podcast i will say 10 minutes before we start the podcast really good to see you doug you too it really is it's a favorite people in the world kind of thing all right here we go and then i just went up to rogan i go hey uh we're gonna do that right now do you want to do the podcast he goes no i gotta go home. Of course.

Rogan just did two sets. Louis Anderson, who I thought would be a perfect, not balance, but the opposite of balance with Brooks. I'm a bit of a dark person. And Louis seems to be happy and juxtaposition. Yes. Yeah. I thought that would be a fun way to, but that was hours ago and drinks ago.

And then you could explain to Louie why his cart wobbled to the right. Oh, Jesus. Oh, fuck. I'm sure. I'm sure. Louie Anderson.

We're talking about Louie Anderson, not CK. Louie Anderson is here at the comedy store where we, we thought, Hey, you know, uh, opportunities.

We'll just podcast. And who shows up? Well, Brooks Brown shows up randomly. Yeah. Well, mostly because there was alcohol offered. So I did show up.

Hold on a second. Who's Brooks Brown. Well, hello. And how did you know he was here in town hennigan he contacted hennigan how did you know i was here well i i knew you were here because my birthday is in a couple days and so of course i bought tickets to see doug stanhope on stage because i can't help but see you every time you come to la uh and i knew Brian. I mean, he's here all the time, really.

He lives here. He lives here. We've had a lovely lunch. We've talked about a bunch of projects. And so I was like, oh, this is a night off. Tomorrow Doug's in LA. Hey, Brian, are you out drinking tonight? Because I'd love to buy you guys booze. Because I'm out drinking myself.

So he went, get to the comedy score. You've got 10 minutes. That was basically the text. I was like, all right, Uber it is. Let's go. When I have to say it quickly to get people's attention, I say you were the third Columbine shooter. That's a really nice thing to say, Doug. Thank you.

When I have to capture someone's attention. But there were only two shooters. No, there were only two shooters, but, and we'll get into this. You mean, yes, there were only two shooters. Not no. I don't know if I've had enough alcohol to be on this podcast

suddenly. Well, that's, I was, I was, you have that and, uh, bingo, if you could have someone bring him a bourbon on the rocks, uh, if you could have someone bring him a bourbon on the rocks. If you know the Columbine story, and I'll get into this about the new book that Shawcroft is pushing on me. I saw that. She just tweeted that.

When the Columbine shooters went into the school, they saw you, Brooks Brown, out front and and said don't go to school today they said uh i ran into eric one of the shooters and he said uh and it's a moment like it's been 20 years like it's extraordinary how it sticks with you it's been longer since than the life i led before and he went uh brooks i like you now get out of here go home where were you when that happened in the parking lot of the school so you weren't even in the campus yet. You were just in the parking lot. I was going off to smoke a cigarette. No, I was on school property. I was going off to smoke and ditch class. Like that's the reality of the situation. And I always bring up smoking because it's just life is indelibly put on you when you have a moment like that especially one that because

of a million reasons i ended up repeating on the news about 10 000 times uh you know i wrote a book about a whole bunch of stuff i haven't talked about the shit in years so it's gonna be really weird take your time yeah but it's we're drinking it's we are drinking for sure and it's been it was fascinating they get the i grew up with one of them. Backpacks of shit. Best friends of mine. Like one of them was, my mom was like super close to the parents. We were really close as kids. I knew them very well. And it was this weird moment of like, okay.

Like I'm off smoking. Like I think I was. Don't go to school today. I wasn't going to anyway. You were walking to the trees anyway yeah who gives a shit like i'm off and you know my brother was in the cafeteria friends of mine were there and i i lost friends that day aside from eric and dylan who were the shooters so it was this really fucked up situation of a ton of children dying that left this sort of pit inside of me

that i spent the next five, ten years, however you define it, doing a bunch of shit. I know, right? I can ramble for hours. You're getting ahead of yourself. You're in the parking lot. Do you want to give the backstory of the last time we saw him? We'll get to that.

I just want to make sure we get to that because I forget who this guy is. Am I the only guy not doing coke here who's doing coke you're just you're both talking to the end of the story like no i all right i i remember we had sushi with this guy but i don't remember that all right we'll get there you're out in front of the school yes Yes. Here come fucking Kleibold and fucking whatever. Kleibold and Harris. And Harris was just in his car when I ran into him.

He didn't have any shit on him. He just pulled into a parking space and I ran into him. He's like, get out of here, go home. And I wandered off. So you didn't see a gun or anything. I ended up having a smoke a few minutes later when the gunshots started. And these are moments, it's really fucked up when you have this kind of thing happen in your life. You never forget the visual picture.

So you recount it over and over to the point where you wonder whether or not it actually happened as you remember. Because it's so much dredged up in your memory. But I remember thinking it was at first construction because there's construction happening and bullets kind of sound like nail guns and then you hear explosions and then it was this fucked up moment where like shit started piecing together in my brain and uh i won't forget running from house to house banging on doors like a fucking lunatic screaming at people going do you remember do you do you let me call the cops let me call the cops do you let me call

the cops there's shit happening pre-cell phone oh yeah yeah this is no i'm realizing that right now 99 this is pre-everything really as far as what year was it no it's 99 and this was uh like i i like to go back and go 24 hour news was brand new like fox news was like considered kind of not going to be a success 24 hour news wasn't a thing up until this point columbine is the first real experience that 24 hour news had if you really go back and watch you get to see cnn and fox and all these guys that new cycle that just ad nauseum just molest the situation over and over it doesn't happen that way beforehand this was really the first time that happened and it was this weird situation of banging on doors screaming at people woman comes out of her house she has her kid with her it's her daughter and i'm yelling like i need

to use your phone like a fucking lunatic she gets in her car and drives off uh i end up seeing a friend of mine ryan uh and they're coming back from lunch because it's lunches all that shit and they were diverting traffic down the street i was on because cops had shown up like shit was bad people knew shit was bad and well i'm sorry what grade were you in i was a senior senior was it just a couple months away from being done with everything um so were they which is before i forget how many uh girls were you gonna ask to the prom that didn't make it i i was not going to the prom all right i was i was not going i was going to be working as a manager at pizza hut at the time.

So excitedly, that was my wonderful life. Here I am hanging out with Doug Stanhope in Hollywood. Far cry from a manager at fucking Pizza Hut. You've ticked another box. Yeah, I was going to be drinking alone with the random other people who were also going to be working at Pizza Hut that night. There's a solace in that. I mean, that's... You know, you reserve yourself

lots of different points in your life. You know where your point in the social hierarchy is. And that was mine. I was not really meant for prom night. But were those your kind of friends or were they more acquaintances? Well, you just said they were friends. The shooters were old friends.

And they were people who I... Didn't they kind of shit you out of their social circle at some point? Yeah, we had a falling out a year or two earlier. And it was on and off. A high school friendship. This is important for kids who are listening. And I hate to say that there's kids listening, but kids that were bullied

did you go listen to this podcast in high school you go in and out of social circles so what was the time do you remember the minutiae that was the falling out perfect perfect question uh so with eric specifically uh it was uh god i don't remember what precipitated it directly he was telling his parents on me like the normal high school bullshit like bricks is doing this and I was telling my parents he does this and I was telling his parents he does that like it was you two shouldn't hang out together it was

that kind of garbage and he got pissed at me and he cracked my windshield with the block of ice and that was like the last time we like I was furious he was he was furious it like the last time we, like I was furious. He was furious. It was the last time we really talked for a while. My parents were pissed at him.

His parents were pissed at me. It's high school bullshit, basically. If you remove all the shootings and murders of children, it's normal high school bullshit. Like that's the thing that i like it's really tough to kind of go back we all pictured it and some of us are thinkers and some are doers it's it ended up in a place where we didn't talk for a long time he put up death threats on his blog which was a thing at the time that no one did like people that have blogs in like 98 that was uh it was super crazy yeah yeah and so i found it cause someone gave me the website, uh, which was Dylan and then, uh,

Nate Dykeman, right. Other people like friends were like, dude, you should see those boards back then. Not blogs. It was a personal website. It was as close to a blog as you got in like 98 or 97. And, uh, I was like, holy fuck fuck it was specifically calling out murdering me how he was going to do it here's the bomb here's the schematics like it was absurd like it wasn't just like fuck brooks i want to kill him which is pretty common these days on social media it was

really drawn out about you in general it was particular about me but no but i'm saying now you said it's common now not about you not about me yeah in social media that's uh a common two weeks don't go by someone's on twitter doug i want you dead yeah like that kind of shit i'm sure happens like that's i i want to say normal shit which is awful in its own case but this was like here's the bombs here's how i'm gonna make them here's well was like here's the bombs here's how i'm gonna make them here's where i'll place them here's how i'll do it here's how i'll invade the home and kill the entire family so i went i went holy shit uh my brother and i gave it to my parents my cousin josh came was there and he was like holy fuck we called the cops it was this

whole it was a long drawn out thing it ended up that's its own fucking story in so many ways and that's a year or two before the shooting before you're running banging on doors final that final semester we ended up in the same classes together and i'm sitting there like again it's normal high school shit sort of brought to life with this other side that people didn't think about at the time the columbine wasn't a thing that normally happened school shootings were still weird it wasn't a thing that happened in america every week that we kind of went oh there was another 12 kids who died this week okay cool so what's playing at the movie theater it was a different world trendsetter yeah they did they changed the world back then. Do you ever look at school shootings now and go, hey, we did this way better.

Not we. Well, no. I sit there and I go, you know, Eric and Dylan talked about openly, very openly, about how they wanted to set this trend. They wanted to create this and have all these people kill all these, like do this. Okay. All right. Now we're skipping a beat here. I know.

Okay. I'm just saying. So from the time they threatened you, you got back in their good graces on some level. Well, Dylan and I never really had a falling out. It was stressed because Eric was this dude in the middle who hated me, friends with Dylan, all that. But, you know, Eric and I had a class together. We ended up burying the hatchet as far as it goes. But they talked to you enough that they told you they were gonna set a trend with this no no no they they posted on the website about that they never said anything to me directly about it because i think you knew

at the time i was the kind of guy who would tell my fucking parents that he was going to murder people because tattletale i kind of yeah well i kind you know you try to murder my family it's kind of a big deal to me it's a weird thing um blow you up yeah it was well in retrospect it's it's funny in the sense that like holy shit this guy could have murdered my fucking family yeah and as a kid i look back and i'm like i didn't take it super serious uh so it we had this weird sort of i don't want to say bonding moment but like he and i kind of i i just remember turning around to him and saying like dude i was a fucking stupid kid like i thought i was so mature as a senior i did i was like didn't we all new life of my new ready for my life i'm gonna start applying to colleges i'm

ready for like the next version this is shit this is childish i don't, new ready for my life. I'm going to start applying to colleges. I'm ready for like the next version. This is shit. This is childish. I don't want this shit in my life. This is childish. Let's put this behind us. And he went, cool. And that was kind of like we didn't hang out and do shit.

Like we didn't go. Well, he was mature himself in that he knew how to. He knew how things were going to end. No, he knew how the story was going for him. So he was kind of like, that's fine. The story's going to end with me murdering a lot of people. I'm perfectly fine with making friends with you for the time being. Or something.

I have no idea. So they were really calm about this? He was cool. And Dylan was cool. They were relaxed about pretty much everything. And it was a... That's fucking... That's scary.

Oh, it's terrifying. Looking back and seeing the faces of not anger, rage. If I could see that shit, like, I'd be like, okay, cool. This comes from a place of, like, pure anger, pure rage, pure hatred. Like this shit that we see in movies. Like Thanos-level hatred that you see in Avengers. Like, epic. No, no, no.

This comes from a place of, yeah, no, I'm ready to murder a lot of people, and I'm kind of okay with that. And this is how I'm going to do it. And it's a little methodical. It's a little cold with a scary side, but, you know, sociopathic. But, I mean, we've all had friends in high school

who talk shit, you know sociopathic but i mean we've all had friends in high school who talk shit you know but it doesn't sound like they were talking shit not heavily early on no it's a high school brain that's having to process i would not know how to fucking deal with someone i would just stay away from a person i have this i have this stupid thing that I've always had that people deserve a second third fourth fifth hundred chances because the reality is we are if I don't believe someone can change what the fuck is the point of continuing anyone to live really like if you're not going to change from the person you are today what's the point of tomorrow genuinely tell me I'd love to know because to me the ability to

change and the ability to move forward is what makes us interesting as people and whatever that may be if it's something awful that happens to you which was my case or if it's something wonderful that happens to you also my like i have those moments in my life everyone does that change us in unique ways and push us down different paths if that's not the way life works and instead we're stuck who we are, what's the point of being past 18? Right, really? Well, at that age, especially, when I read stories about people

who get put in prison for 40 years or life when they were 18, the shit I did between 13 know 13 and 18 even before that i was a rotten fucking kid i was a piece of shit up until i was really up until like five years ago you're young i'm not yeah i'm young i'm not great now i'm doing my best but like that that concept doing your best is to me sacrosanct to the human experience. And it always has been since I was really young. I don't know why.

I'm by parents. You know, I don't have religion in my life. That's not my world. I don't know where it comes from. But that's my mentality. So I just was like. That's why we brought you here today. Yeah.

I mean, it's to talk about Jesus Christ and to try to talk to Doug. All right. Let's take a quick break. I shaved last night, but I'm scared of shaving. I'm scared of razor blades near my neck. You know how I get off fucking booze shakes. I know how you should feel. Hey, does Dollar Shave Club ever add booze shakes into ad copy?

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It's been a problem in the past. But they also send me an email and say, hey, your order's coming up. Do you want to add to it? And I did because I just got back from a trip and I am out of the one-wipe Charlies. So I get the individual packs for the airport. I'll dig in there and get the leftovers. You know that. What? Hold on. What? dig in there and get the leftovers. You know that. What?

Hold on. What? Just saying. That's not right. Also, while Tracy and I were gone, I took Dollar Shave Club sent us a bunch of the trial kit stuff. Hey, Dollar Shave Club, if you're listening, Chaley, we're alone together in the fun house, and he has your entire display out like it's QVC. We are not even on camera yet with this podcast.

This is not even a webcast, and he has this whole display like he's some. Well, they're little one-ounce bottles that are perfect in a dop kit or something. And they've got hair and scalp conditioner, daily face cleanse, hand cream. And what I was doing is when I would stay at the Brechels, I would take a couple of these and put them on their vanity there or give them as samples. Hey, try this. Let me know. And then when we stayed at hotels, I'd put this out. We shared a hotel with my brother and his wife. And you actually do this? Yes. at hotels i'd put this out we shared a hotel with my brother and his wife and you actually do this yes and i put and i put the little fucking sponsors don't understand well as we actually do the shit we talk about i'm sure you make little displays

for everyone because i know you're a fan this one's good sage and black pepper hair and scalp conditioner i don't like to wash my hair that's what gives it the body that it has. This was good because it doesn't feel like I'm washing and conditioning. I want to lick your head. Just saying black pepper. I want to lick your head because I haven't eaten today. Can you rub it on this baked potato? Sage is good. That's good too. Tastes

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I love all this stuff. You have a personal preference. One of my favorites is the shave butter. And you can get it in a – this is a three-ounce tube, but I get the smaller one because it goes a long way, and it fits right into my little kit. And it's every month. And if you want to put it on hold, put it on hold. You want to order more, order more. If you want to order just a couple of things, and then next month, it just goes back to your base, whatever it is.

Basically, the razors is all they get. It's fantastic. Good. Dollar Shave Club. Or booze shakes and don't cut your own throat until they come up with a solution. Click. They're always working on stuff over there.

And here's a great way to try a bunch of Dollar Shave Club's products. For just five bucks, you can get their daily essential starter set. It comes with body cleanser, one-wipe Charlies. That's for your asshole. And you can twist it the same way you do with a Q-tip in your ear. They didn't write that.

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I don't know if that's a good read. Well, you got to read the call. If they don't like it, fuck them because we love their product. I've been a member. We've been burned before by sponsors where we put our heart and soul into it. That's true. And they thought it was fucking inappropriate where we go, oh, I can't wait to write the next commercial for this sponsor. And then they dumped us because they thought it was inappropriate.

And we don't fucking deal with it. You're not talking about Dollar Shave Club. No, I'm not talking. I'm talking about other sponsors who have dumped us. You know what? We like you. It's like Mike DiStefano said in his CD. This is not that kind of comedy.

I'm a comedian. I boo you, and that's what we do. If we don't like you, fuck you. And that's what we do. If we don't like you, fuck you. If there's an issue with this ad copy, I'll have an issue with you. Keep that. I'm going to fucking listen to this. I'm going to fucking write it on my hand. If you edit anything out of that.

You know what happened last time I didn't edit something out? Charge me. No, tape that for the record greg chaley anytime that we get shit bagged by a sponsor because i thought it was funny charge me i will pay you the money that you get all the money this is a matt becker bet i will give you the money. This is a Matt Becker bet. I will give you the money for any time we get shitbagged by a sponsor for something that you said no and I said yes. Save that. All right. Let's get back to the podcast.

Well, let's get back to as you're banging on doors hearing fucking gunshots at the school yeah and you become the third suspect well it's i i i don't become a third suspect until two days later that's where it really gets uh horrific i you know i run into my a friend of mine ryan at the time in the car and i jump in his car and i go dude i don't want to fuck with you but i think the school's being shot up right now like they were laughing like no one knows if you have police deter you away from going to school like back in the day school shooting was not at the top of your list of why that was happening now Now there's a gas leak. Now there's a gas leak.

We're in lockdown. Everyone shut the door. Pull the blinds. Stupid bullshit. Back in 99, it was some stupid bullshit's happening. Who gives a shit? Who cares? Whatever.

Blah, blah, blah. Smog alert. Yeah. Who cares? And they're laughing. And the moment I said that, they could hear shit. They knew what was going on. And their faces dropped and it was this moment of like realization clarity and clarity is a really good and oops

and everyone was just horrified and from that moment on it became this like panic of like who do i who do i find alive which sounds really awful, and it's really weird to talk about, and it's the kind of thing that I think – Hang on. You're banging on doors, and you run into these friends, and you get in their car. Yes. I have to ask. When you say you went out to smoke, are you talking about weed? No, no, just cigarettes.

I'm a nicotine addict, and I have been for most of my life. That would explain the mindset of when you're all in a car if you were all smoking. I'm just asking. No, no, they weren't smoking in the car. So you just jump in a car with other kids that are in school. They were friends of mine. I recognized the car and I knew I could. I was like, oh, shit, these guys, they'll drive me away from here.

They'll give me a cell phone. Ryan has a cell phone in his car like i which was not common rich kids and ryan was a good dude there's a lot of fucking rich kids stories and his girlfriend at the time current wife i think they have kids together even yeah i know terrible um we're awful we breeders um but but they this was while the shots were going and then you told them that shots were being fired. I think Eric and Dylan, and they knew who Eric and Dylan were because everyone at school kind of knew different people. It wasn't 2,000 people is a lot, but 500 people in a graduating class, people knew people. And so I was like, I eric were they scared like what was the general population

of the the the schools scared of these two or were they just like yeah you're fucking burnouts you know i think i go with uh the quote from it was in time magazine after the fact and it's like again after the fact if someone says uh there were always faggots grabbing each other's private parts so of course we treated them like shit like literal quote that's in time magazine which is an amazing quote all right this this this helps out with how we met at sushi go ahead it's a really fair quote and it's accurate like i'm not going to dispute the accuracy of the quote or who said it. Or accept the faggot part, probably. Very open quote.

And I love that. When people are just who they are, when the media is interviewing them, it's amazing. And so, like, people knew who everyone was. No one was scared of them. They were losers. Who gives a shit? So they were dismissed. Yes.

Because people ask me, were you like a class clown? I go, no. I was like the dark guy that I made the weird jokes like I do now slightly dark humor I was that class clown like I am in stand up comedy today

but I was dismissed I was a pain in the ass in high school I was an Ayn Rand fanatic if you can imagine such a thing I was hyper right wing like I was hyper political like everyone has their thing you're going in in high school you're trying to define who you are at the most extreme i was trying to define how to get the fuck out of high school and i found a quick exit but you turned into suspect number three yeah well it's one of those fun things

when i when everything happened and i ended up at home. I'm sitting there with my parents and my brother who made it out alive and his friends. And we're sitting there, my dad who gave me a beer, which never fucking happened in my life. My dad's not a drinker or like encourages that I drink to the point where I think Christmas. He was very upset with me last year that I drank sake like it was it's not a drinking thing he gave me a beer like to relax okay so you get out we got out found my brother hugged figured out that the shooting was going on before I got home my mom was already at Dylan's parents house to spend time with the family to try to figure out how they could be okay because fuck like what do you do like you know the family you know the parents we've grown up since first grade so so you you know the outcome yeah i'm sorry you were with the you were with the two buddies that picked you up saying hey i think uh dylan and fucking eric are shooting up the school grab the cell phone i called the police and they said we understand we're already there i called my dad and said holy fuck this is happening and he went holy did you find

it out on the news what happened we didn't know you knew kind of but you didn't know for sure until i got home and my my family had already we had a home with a lot of tvs like we were a tv family which in the late 90s didn't mean netflix it meant having a lot of tvs and we had a home with a lot of TVs. Like we were a TV family, which in the late 90s didn't mean Netflix. It meant having a lot of TVs. And we had a lot of TVs going with every channel, like in different rooms. And we were watching the live broadcast, which was one of the most fucked up experiences in my life of the whole thing. And that's when they displayed the names and the faces of Eric and Dylan. So we knew my mom was already there.

We knew like I was like, Eric did it. Therefore, Dylan's involved. Like, this is the way it goes. Yeah. And my mom was already with the Klebolds. And it became this weird sort of downward. Who are we going to be able to see that's alive? Like, we watched the news.

Everyone in the world. Oh, so you're watching the kids jump out of the window. And I'm like, oh, there's Chris. okay chris is okay i saw a a guy i knew who we had like a rivalry and hated each other entire senior year and andy uh wonderful guy actually super super smart and clever i hated him all through fucking senior year the moment i saw him in real life we grabbed and hugged each other like it was like you're alive that's a great moment it's really fucked up and so we watched and i think the most fucked up moment was uh my my friends would come with me we kind of saw bodies that's one of the things that they don't do anymore but back in the day they zoomed in really close

with those helicopter cameras. They weren't used to how to produce a shooting. I don't know. They didn't know, like, hey, here's how you block a shooting, and you have this set up, and you have... Real time, man. Like, the actors need to be over it. Like, this whole thing, however Alex Jones pretends it may be set up,

the reality is they didn't have any clue what they were doing they were just hey we're going to take a quick break we're here with Brooks Brown a crisis actor from Columbine we'll be good and you sit there and you watch a friend of yours who knew

one of the victims just collapsed the moment you see her you see her dead and it's this moment of like oh fuck we know this person's dead and it's so you're you're seeking any recognition from any person who you can even recognize people you didn't like people you didn't give a shit about just oh it's dawn i don't don and i did not get along did not talk did not she's fucking alive that's the best thing i've ever seen and it's every time it's a little jolt of like okay things are okay and you do that for a few hours you know your friends and my brother's friends their parents started getting home because they

were at work as you do like they didn't rush home like thinking oh there's a school shooting everyone's dead like everyone just kept their going, and then they started panicking and running home. And so everyone started dispersing. And so we started going to the locations where you were supposed to congregate to see who was still alive. And you'd see other visuals I'll never forget is families in the back.

Families of people who my parents have befriended since and people I've gotten to know standing there waiting for their kids to show up. Being held back. And families of people who my parents have befriended since. And people I've gotten to know standing there waiting for their kids to show up. Being held back. No, just standing. Like a waiting area. Yeah. Like in customs where you got to wait.

Just waiting for their kids. Are they going to come in the door? They never did. Never did. Ever. Ever. That's it. And so you spend those few days like trying to find out who's alive and drinking a lot.

Granted, I was 18. Hey, dad said here's the way it goes. Well, I went to friends houses and drank a lot more. You spend two days, is it, of what the fuck is going on before? Very much. Was it that you of what the fuck is going on before? Very much. And then suddenly I ended up Tom Brokaw, who I really like. I was a I was a debate kid, so I was a news junkie. Like I would go and I would read fucking Economist and all this shit to prepare for Lincoln Douglas debates, extemporaneous debates.

And I did cross-examination debates. If you know what any of those are, people listening to this may actually know that nerd you know i was gonna say a lot of those uh families of kids that died were probably going why not brooks he was sitting around at 18 with the fucking economist he can't turn out well yeah there's there's no future for that fucking guy um and you sit there and you had for a few days you just drink and kind of find out who's alive and then at some point you know tom brokaw hits me up and i'm like holy fuck it's tom brokaw like he's no joke even today like i think there's how would he know to hit you up at this point because there's a very specific timeline here yeah this was before you

become a suspect this was like day one how were you how did you get ferreted out as the guy we uh i called the police immediately upon getting home uh there's a 911 call i think where i was like look i think it's eric harris here's what happened here's the history i have with him here's the past and they they had enough to deal with i don't think it was their fault like they were getting inundated with calls but it was dismissive and so i was like cool let me call nbc news like this is this could have been fucking okay so yeah like i got a little pissed where i'm like kids are dead friends of mine are dead what the fuck this is bullshit there is this entire other story that people don't know about where we reported this

fucking kid for wanting to kill me wanting to kill other people building bombs and amassing guns my mom followed that shit up what the fuck and tom brokaw like jumped on it i don't know how literally he got that actually i should find that out at some point one of his producers i'm sure one of his producers who knew the local news or whatever but they contacted my parents and they came out and i was like look here is and i printed out my cousin we had the printouts we're like this is the website that we reported and it was it's not a fucking joke when you read this shit this isn't normal like 4chan who fucking wish you were dead kind of bullshit this is but this is hindsight when when they're looking at it when we reported it's already happened it's already happened but when we

reported it we were like look and my mom had even followed up with the police where she was like look the day of the uh you know kip kinkle was one of the school shooters he was a big one yeah that's that's the bit it is it is literally the bit us together yes so many years ago and it's and it's one of those things like my mom after that happened saw eric coming out with the guns and ammo magazine like the day of that fucking shooting and she was like this is bullshit what the fuck what is going on what is going on with all this shit and you know so i sat down with tom brokaw i said here's what we found here's what we found. Here's what we set up. Here's what we reported to the police. This is in the police report. The police, the next, like a week later, it took like a week.

And then they finally said, oh, no, Brooks could possibly be the other shooter. Brooks is involved. He knew about it beforehand. After the shooting. After the shooting, it took a few days. They started realizing. Because you were the you were narking them out well he he knew this so he must be involved essentially i i i got really

pissed about the fact that this happened at all like it became it was nark shaming basically that's nark shaming you tried to nark them out and they shamed you for worst twitter i believe i've ever heard i think this is what your your dad was trying to bring across during sushi was that there was a history that you guys tried to show and yet they, the authorities, whatever authority If he knows this much about the drug smuggling, he must be a smuggler. To the point where they were telling the families of the kids who were killed. Keep in mind, this is still during the 24-hour

news cycle. With no internet. Social media didn't exist. There was no bleeding. There was no story. We're sitting there and they were telling Brian Rohrbach, who I disagree on pretty much everything that exists in the world. He's very, very religious right wing.

I have no idea who that is. One of the kids, his son Brian was killed. Oh. And he's a really nice guy. We disagree on a million things. But what we don't disagree on is that the police could have prevented this. But what happened is, immediately following all this shit, the police went to him and all the other victims and said, We're going to be arresting Brooks any day now.

Don't worry. They were telling him this actively saying you know brooks is involved yeah it is it's okay don't worry about it we're going to get him you're leading the witness and so they are and people have confirmed this to me different people were planning my murder because i was involved with this which is really really fun. And because it's high school. You were quote unquote involved in it. Yes. Yeah. Because I was involved. And you can't see the quotes,

but involved. And so it's one of those things that ended up dragging out over months and then years. And the police would never admit that we even reported them once. Finally, it came out, we reported them once.

And then the governor put a commission together. It took six, seven, eight fucking years. And finally it came out, reported them once and then the governor put a commission together it took six seven eight fucking years and finally it came out oh shit no there were real warning signs yeah and the governor's commission was like oh no there were 20 some times the browns actually said this kid's gonna shoot up a fucking school was it said on the news that you were yeah today's show i i you know my my life has been fucking weird and awful and one of the things that's been one of the strangest is getting a call from dan abrams who runs a law blog now he was at the today show at the time producer reporter and he's like hey just letting you know we have john stone the sheriff the sheriff of jefferson county the guy in charge of the

investigation saying that you're a smokescreen like as his words rich brown's a smokescreen he's involved don't worry we're like like saying this on the fucking news do you want to respond and i'm just sitting there like i i just was dumbfound i don't know what to do at that point what what do you do when the entire governmental apparatus is hang on i i there's there's small things i want to know when they get a hold of you are they going through your parents or you answering the phone because this is not they being who on when when someone calls you from the news that's what you're saying parents tend to answer because it's the home phone okay and they just go it's for you again that's my favorite story is he's doing his homework brooks it's for you my brother picked up the phone one day and it was

maria shriver was down the street and my brother's like maria shriver's down the street who's that is like she's a reporter blah blah and i was blah. And it was like, oh, yeah, we're not interested. And he hung up like, like it's every day, 40 times a day. You get phone calls where you just do this. You're just picking up the phone randomly. You have to have caller ID, but it probably doesn't say Maria Shriver. Well, and it's, and it's one of those things that you sit there and you debate often. At what point do you stop doing interviews?

Like, when do you stop telling people this could have been stopped? Genuinely, genuine question I'd love people to answer because we didn't have an answer for that. We kept going as long as we could, saying, look, there were a lot of red flags not small red flags not like these kids were kind of bullied and they were going to fucking shoot up the school like oh shit they said they were going to shoot up the school they gave us detailed maps of how they're going to kill me and then they were in the the effectively junior probation at the time of the like like when do you actually stop and we didn't and i didn't for a long time i talked about it for a very long very long time and it's a it's a horrifying story because you know it's a you know i i look back on all of it and you know a lot of it was me reactionary being a

effectively a teenager my growth stopped well your whole social situation because your whole community thought that you were part of it or were made to believe that you were involved yes and until we're sitting there and it's another moment of my life i wish i i could forget almost, story moment-wise, is O'Brien Rohrbaugh, who I mentioned earlier. He kind of, I don't want to say he was the leader of the victim's families, but he's a strong goddamn personality. Really got out there and really talked about how this could have been prevented and stopped. My dad kind of knew Daniel Rohrbaugh's stepfather through work.

Like, as weird as that is, my dad is in real estate. This guy is also in real estate. He's a rhino realtor. He's a hard-charging realtor, some shit like that. So my dad would hit him up and be like, hey, we want to talk. We want you to know that Brooks wasn't involved. He wouldn't answer, wouldn't answer, finally answered. And there I am standing on the street outside of Columbine, outside of the high school with the fucking parents of this dead kid and walking

through all of this shit and i walked through what i did that day like what that was like what what i ran into what i all that and he came away and he went brooks wasn't involved he knew at that moment like the sheriff was lying and it turned the tides i my i owe my dad and my parents infinitely for that and i owe brian infinitely for that but it was this super fucked up moment of like relating to a parent of a dead child what i'm going what i did the day his kid died which is a weird feeling I mean granted especially at 18 years old yeah yeah

it was super weird I have to mention that the adult looking at you wanting to know everything that pressure has got to be palpable especially if his kid and he literally asked me he asked me questions like, where were you standing? How were you standing?

Where were you? Yeah. And it was like shit I didn't remember. And then as we walked, I started to remember stuff. It was really strange. It was super surreal. How old are you now? I'm going to be 38 in a few days, Doug.

Because if you ask me at 18 what I remember, I'd remember a lot of it. But if you asked me at 51 what we were doing just two hours ago waiting for this podcast booth to open, I'd go, I think I was talking to Murphy or was it the other girl? And I don't know. And there was an Asian girl. I thought it was that Asian lady. Thank God I was young. Like, really. And going through all those moments. That was an Asian girl. I thought it was that Asian lady. Thank God I was young. Like, really. Yeah.

And going through all those moments. And then Brian and the families and the families of the victims became allies in the sense that they understood that, holy shit, the police have been lying about this the whole time. And it became this longstanding thing for years where the Browns are full of shit. They had never reported anything. and then it was like 20 so i'm talking to reports and all this shit and the reality where it's sussed out is ultimately that there was a lot of warning signs in ways that people if you look into it you would not believe the warning signs like they were hilarious flashing fucking neon signs of like, holy shit, where he tells his counselor in juvenile probation. It's called diversion in the area.

He tells his counselor, I want to kill a lot of people. He said that. They didn't take it seriously for a reason. I have my own story about this. It's in my book about where I made this map about how I was going to blow up this teacher's house. And I made a whole graph. She was on my paper route when I was 12 years old or so. And I made a... Anyways, it worked she stopped reporting me to the fucking

pedophile guidance counselor it was a different level because the shit you're talking about is 1979 having read your book even that level we're talking about you didn't talk about the level of guns you're wanting to collect and the number of people you're wanting to collect. Yeah.

And the number of people you want to kill, how you want to do it, walking in. Like, they drew out how they wanted to do it on the website we gave to the cops over a year before shit happened. So, all of this became this insanely frustrating thing. So, and this actually descends in how I got into listening to a comedian named Doug Stanhope. and how I got into listening to a comedian named Doug Stanhope. It was a few years later, I found a couple of friends who stuck with me through the whole thing, a woman who I ended up marrying. It was my first wife who was wonderful through the whole thing.

And school shootings was a thing I searched often. It was just because I was always curious because shit started happening after Columbine. Eric and Dylan won. as far as like people don't talk about 9-11 people won the terrorists won yeah people won they won eric and dylan won ground zero shit's happening all the time and we are living in a fairly perpetual state of fear which uh let me let me quickly quickly interject if if there was any honor amongst thieves as they say like there are in comedy copycat school shooters should be shamed for stealing their idea like oh no you gotta kill a different fucking way you know what jim carrey stopped doing robin williams because it sucked the first time and now it it sucks even worse with you so yeah find a different way to kill but it's but the

reality is that the shootings are done not against the kids they're not done against any particular person as much as i'd love to say because they were based in bullying and hatred of the system and all that they weren't against any particular person they were against in bullying and hatred of the system and all that. They weren't against any particular person. They were against the system. There's a reason they went into the library. They shot up the computers and the librarian's desk and all these symbolic bullshit things. There's a great book, Mark Ames, who's a fantastic fucking reporter.

This is, oh, all right. Well, I've been hammered. No, I was going to ask you this, and I'm going to forget because I've been hammered. No, I was going to ask you this, and I'm going to forget because I've been drinking heavily. There's a book Shawcroft has been pitching me, just came out, Columbine. Oh, it's a Dave Cullen book. Yeah, Dave Cullen. Have you read it?

I have. He lived it. Everyone has different opinions about what happened. Is it a good read? That's all I care about. Your story is way better than mine. It's not a bad read. He's an author that studied it.

I wrote my own book. Go back to what you were talking about. Oh, pitch your book. Hang on. Pitch your book. My book, I don't want to pitch it because I make nothing on it. Well, you know why? Because you don't pitch it.

Have you heard about Amy Bingo Bingaman's book? No. Because she won't get on fucking social media and pitch it. I have to say. I've heard a wonderful book called Burying Mother that's fantastic. It's by this author Doug Stanhope. You mean Digging Up Mother? No, it's another

Doug Stanhope. He does Burying Mother the same way that fucking asshole is selling the fake t-shirts. Marshall Stanhope. He does Burying Mother the same way that fucking asshole is selling the fake t-shirts. Marshall Stanhope. Alright. Sorry, now you were talking about an author. Mark Ames writes an amazing book on general rage shooters. And he calls them rage shooters for a reason.

And it's their postal shooters, workplace shooters, and school shooters. They aren't shooting up a person. They aren't shooting up a thing. They're shooting up existence. And it's a fantastic, really smart read that I think actually gets closer to the reason the column might happen more than anything else. Even my own book, which I was proud of when I wrote, and I'm still proud of because it's, you know, my own words give him credit uh rob merit wonderful guy who helped me sort of figure out what the fuck i was going to write because i could literally chat for hours how long how long after did you write the book three years all right that's

probably as a comic and a writer and someone who's put out there's a certain amount of time. It took me to digging up Mother just to write the bit that I did from her death to when I wrote the bit was a matter of and it was a long process where I'd try again the next year to process it completely.

You go, oh, did I give it enough time? My buddy Chuck who's here who you met yeah we lived in these town road rage i call him road rage he's a roid boy i mean he was well he's got the giant shoulders and he's gonna he's gonna sunburn he's got these thick shoulders it goes he's not a guy to anger from his shoulder to his ears you look at him he looks like a bouncer he's got a sunburn though that looks like he's in the middle of road rage just because of the

sunburn. He's yelling. That's very fair. The area we lived in, we had you know, Rob came out for a long time. I ended up going out to Iowa where Rob lived to write it. It took a long time to write because I didn't know what I wanted to say because, you know, it took two

to three years for me to figure out what the fuck i even thought about things and three years you're 21 now you still and was the book is still ultimately not suck shit about my own book because you should buy it please because i like 65 cents every copy who doesn't't? The reality is it was. But that's your reality at the moment. It was the reality at the moment at 22 years old coming out with, here's what I think happened. Here's how I felt about it and all this. And I'm 38 years old. I have a totally different fucking mentality.

I'm a dad now. I'm married to my second wife. I have a different job. I have a different world. Everything's different. Obviously, my place in the world is different. But, you know, I look at these different books that have been written. You know, Dave Cullen's book, which you mentioned, Columbine, I don't discourage people from reading

it. It's a different perspective on all the facts. Jeff Koss, K-A-S, two A's, wonderful book as well on Columbine that's much more factual, much more reporterly. Then Ralph Larkin wrote another book on Columbine. There's been a lot of books written about it. And they all come from different perspectives. And I think the reality is, to find the truth, you kind of read all of them. But there's sides to it that a lot of people miss out. Because the Dave Cullen one that I think drives me nuts is that bullying wasn't a factor. Because the Dave Cullen one that I think drives me nuts is that bullying wasn't a factor.

And he says that very explicitly, that Eric and Dylan were the bullies. And I don't know if I were to ever believe that. I can't imagine how bullies would go out shooting people. Like, if you're a bully, you live on the high. You're at the top. You're beating the shit out of people on an everyday life. Why would you fucking want to check out? Your life is that of treating other people like shit and being above them. You don't need to shoot them up.

That's not, if you read Eric's writings and all that, that's not his world. It's similar to how people say, oh, you got picked on in high school. That's why you became a cop. No, bullies became cops because they wanted to continue that. They loved it in high school and they don't want to let that go. Yes. They weren't fucking geek acts that are going, you know, pushing up my glasses at the nose. You know, I'm a cop now.

No, they were fucking boys in high school. Wait till I start benching 250. Yeah. They enjoyed the, as I think you termed it, I love that low-level celebrity that comes with being a bully. And I think the low-level celebrity that becomes being whatever they end up doing. If you go into the aftermath of Call of Mine, you read the articles, you read the quotes in Time Magazine or Newsweek where people talk about they were faggots. Of course, we treated them like shit.

Of course. I keep looking at you guys, hoping that you think that this is such a fucking brilliant podcast the way I do. All right. I'm always afraid I'm going to look over there and you're going to be like, I should be at roast battle. All right. No.

This is everything that I hoped it would be. Not a lot of people are very honest when they do these interviews after the fact. A lot of people, oh no, we were a very loving school. We were very fantastic to everyone. That's what was often said very early on i have a couple questions that we when we i i get a couple things right yes i had

two two major things first into the sushi but uh let's let's get into that so so there i am a few years later it's i want to say it's almost been fucking decade doug it's been more than a decade it's it's been a long time no it's 20 years i would sit there and i would shoot i would i would search we've been plying you with bourbon so you would think that 20 years is uh 10 or 5 i have a very strong liver you're in a you're in a small black box, probably where you were questioned by the police. I'm sitting there, and I was Googling school shooting just generally. Oh, that's what I was going to say. When you talk about all these Columbine books, because I got into this kick on Thailand prison, and I've been reading all these books.

You have to read every fucking Columbine book that comes out. How many have you read? I've read all of them. Do you go into it going, oh, they wrote another Columbine book. I'm going to have to fact check this motherfucker. I don't consider it fact checking because like like dave colin and jeff cass who i may disagree on a number of things the reality is they aren't like shitty reporters

it's not like they went into it like with an agenda here's what we're going to do they have their opinions they use their facts and i find it interesting because the reality is my life is just my perspective i don't fucking know. I'm asking you if you get bored where you have to read about it. I haven't done it. You're talking about Columbine's been out for five years, like four years. Like it's been years. No, no.

I'm saying that when the subject of Columbine, do you go, oh, I'm going to read this, but I'm tired of reading this. go oh i'm gonna read this but i'm tired of reading this it's like a a high school history teacher has to read yet another paper on napoleon like oh i'm gonna hear your opinion on napoleon bill o'reilly's every student's fucking napoleon report because that was the subject. Do you feel like you're a... Because I didn't want to... I wanted to do this podcast with you, but I hated putting you on the spot to have to talk about it again. There is a point in your life where, and I hit it a few years ago really hard,

where your life has been defined when you meet people. Like, I met you. I met you because I went on Napster and I searched school shooting. Oh, Napster. Really. And lo and behold, there came this bit that I thought I was going to be fucking pissed at, to be frank. And I thought it was fucking hilarious. About, you know, they never show the other side where, oh, it's my real, really, it's my kid, Bobby.

Bobby, why don't you get out there and tell him how you treated the kid like shit? And I just fucking, I was crying. I was laughing so hard because it's so fucking real to me. And I sent it to my dad who, by the way, not a person I would assume normally is a fan of anything you fucking do, dog. Not at all. Probably a one... They call them voters that are one issue voters. Yeah, he was a

one-bit Stan Hope fan. He's a Trump voter. He's a Trump voter. A lot of those are coming my way and I'm trying to... That's another fucking podcast. That's a whole other thing. And he laughed. he thought it was fucking awesome we went and we saw you in uh colorado springs at loonies plug was it loonies

yeah it was loonies and i've never played anywhere else and maybe you made a call out specifically during the thing about how my dad and i were laughing only at the smart jokes i will never forget that moment it was we laughed i we both laughed at each other like we are here for specific reasons. And afterwards, we sat down with random bingo and I was like, hey, this sounds fucked up. I was a fucking kid at Columbine and I was ready for you to go. Yeah, that's great. Good for you. Goodbye. I have no desire to have this fucking discussion. Well, at the same time, you say you were ready to be pissed and you were. That was so career confirming to me where to do a bit like that. It was a moment of as someone who was bullied and just by, you know, sometimes you read the onion. There's the onion. I love The Onion. And The Onion had a great article after Columbine

that said jocks allowed safely to return to bullying. And it had a literal photo of the front entrance of our high school and the actual campus officer we were assigned, Neil. And that was fucking brilliant. Too real for a lot of people. And then there's Doug, who's too real for pretty much everybody.

My dad and I are dark people. We are. Like, there's a certain personality who likes... You've made this joke. You've made this joke. There's a certain kind of humor. A certain kind of people who like Doug Stanhope humor. But it was...

We laughed like a motherfucker your entire stand-up. That was a joke. That was a fucking serious bit. No, it's real. But it's a joke in the sense that, holy fuck, this is the reality that i i stand outside of a funeral for one of the students who was killed and the brother of one of the guys who was absolutely one of the most brutal fucking bullies that we had says i know what caused this i'm, holy shit. There's a level of real where it hits you

at a core level. There's no way to defend it. There's no way you can have a symbology or a religion or a way of beliefs that allows you to defeat whatever that person said. It's so fucking simply true. It's one of the reasons I love your act. And so I come to you in Colorado Springs. I'm like, Hey, so here's the thing. I'm this fucking guy. You recognize the name. You did. And you recognize the story.

You did. And you went, oh, like, yeah, I knew you were ready for me to beat the shit out of you or something. It was a weird moment. And I'm like that just around people. That's fair. And it was a moment. And my dad's there, who's generally looks like kind of an angry person also and we both fell in love with your act and the next day you're like you

want to get sushi and i was like yes i want to talk about all this shit because there are so few people speaking truth to power and i know you don't do your act in that intention i know it's not your intention you don't go out there going, thanks. Hello, I am Doug Stanhope, leftist revolutionary. I mean, you started your act this early this year this way. I would have said everything you just said for me. No, I'm not that guy. I just say what I say.

Thanks. No, it's not. It's not the way you work. So we had sushi and my dad. And some strip mall and fuck. Who's not a comedy guy and not a stand-up guy and not a Doug Stanhope guy, but fucking loved you. And we sat and we just talked about everything that happened. And I'm not funny at sushi.

No, I don't try to be. I was really. You weren't performing. I got to tell you, it was a little bit. feels so good where where when when i like some bit that people think you're just trying to be dark and fucking i'm gonna be a rebel and say no i that meant something to me that i reached someone like you where that was a bit that was real and it meant a lot that you reached me because uh like uh i would put very few people in this campus of like people who reached me during this time because it went for years where I was a dark, self-hating, angry person who felt very alone. Genuinely.

Awful depression. I ended up having to get therapy with and going through a divorce. Awful, awful. That's not all school shooting. A lot of people do go through therapy and dump a fucking bag. This is very much led on from that of the trauma and the sadness and the awfulness that still follows me a lifetime later. More of a lifetime than I had before the shooting still follows me to this day.

I go to have conversations with people. I did a piece, a wonderful piece that won Tribeca Film Festival. That's not a small thing to win Tribeca. That's New York, right? It's an amazing thing in New York to win Tribeca storytelling. And we had some extraordinary people go through it who said it was the most powerful VR experience they've ever been through in their lives. That, not what I'm Googled for. That's not how it works.

That's not how life works. And no matter what I fucking do, this is the thing. This is my life. This trauma, this awful shit is the life I'm going to lead. And it's the story I have no choice but to tell every day. Okay. I know. story i have no choice but okay every day okay uh i know it went i'm no i've been waffling on going this way but for that reason what advice would you have for david hogg i'd keep fighting it's a

different time when i was going through it and i was trying, there wasn't social media. There wasn't people behind it. There was nobody fighting for it. It just didn't exist. The truth of the matter is that guns caused this. Whatever your stance on guns, guns are a factor. Mental health is a factor. All of these things, there's factors. We can rank them.

However you want to rank them let's start solving them keep fighting for them keep pushing because david hogg whoever whoever comes next but david hogg is a kid that was your age who's now like because he's been thrown into the spotlight well he no he's well he's pushed himself into it, too. He's launched himself chest first into, oh, I look like fucking River Phoenix and I knew it. And when he's your age, our age, and he's fucking long-haired and looking like a fucking hippie fucking John Lennon. They're going to go, oh, no, they Googled me, and they just go, oh, I thought I knew what I was talking about. The reality is that your life in 18 years, and I can say this,

is going to be defined by your most Google-able moments. As fucked up as the internet is, that's the way the internet works. It's not how i want it to work it's not anyone wants to work we want our proudest moments to be on display that's not how it goes the reality is you're going to be in a place where you want to do things that are grand and the piece we had at trebecca i i won't say as an influence by the shit i went through at columbine i had uh b your manager, Hennigan, who went through it. Who? Hennigan.

I know. It's a nobody. I remember him from a few hours ago. Oh, your old manager. We put you at a corner in Syria during a bombing and we kill everyone around you and then you have to save a little girl's life. And wonderful developer

we worked with wonderful vr experience so this is virtual reality where this is you literally walk around a broken city block through fire through rubble through smoke through precipice through death in order to save a little girl and pull her out of the rubble yourself it's an amazing experience uh robert de niro went through it as an example. I think you made a comment about him recently in one of your albums. He loved it. We did very well with it. This, I won't say that my concept of going through tragedy and what it's taught me about how to see other people hasn't influenced me, but that's all people

Google. When I apply for a new job or i apply for a new contract or i talk to someone new they google me and it's like brooks brown columbine survivor reddit that's my reddit ama is the number one thing a hundred percent of the fucking time people see and i won't lie it felt good at the time to be important it's it's not i'm to lie. It feels good to be important and talked about by people. But let me ask you this. How often does that happen where now you are important to them? Where they, oh, that's the guy. I can't wait to talk to him because he's the guy.

Hey. It becomes about someone else's message versus your own. Joe fucking Smith doesn't get, oh, he fucking smith doesn't get oh he's the guy you get he's the guy so there is and it's one of the reasons i've stopped using social media in the last few years it's one of the reasons i've stopped talking about shit and just putting the work i do out because the work is the thing that's the only thing people talk about the pieces like hero pieces like the park we opened up i was in three months in dubai i opened up a fucking largest world's largest vr arcade it's pretty incredible no one

gives a shit like like it's just not the way google works people search for brooks brown now well why don't we put the killer termites on that what do you want to be known for? I don't care anymore. I don't know how that scam works. Like how to fucking. Yeah, we could. We just every killer term. I've grown beyond it. But the reality is, you know, where you can fucking do a thing. Hang on.

I'm sorry. I'm figuring out like the biggest VR park. If everyone Googles Brooks Brown and this, will it become the top thing or do you have to go? They won't even touch it. They won't even touch it. What do you do with VR? Are you a coder or are you working with developers?

I'm a weird executive type who kind of makes shit come together. Whatever you want to call it. Project manager. Sure. Don't dismiss me. Don't bully me with your words sir i'm dismissing myself it's the reality is most of my life now has become kind of uh put behind this barrier all right well we're problem solvers and so i want to end this podcast because I really need a cigarette and so do you with

a god damn it I had a funny idea right there what did you just say I don't know fuck this is the problem with like I'm seven fucking scotches in and I know your your liver is far more powerful than mine but there's a level for me I'm sorry Doug

I know yeah he was dismissing what he does saying that it doesn't matter because it's always going to be brought up on column. The advice to David hog is where I was. This is where I was ending. And this is the reality. If I was sitting across from him, David hog,

I would look at him and I go, look, you do what you believe is right. You'll be paying for it the rest of your life. That's it. Be ready for that. Every moment of your life, you're going to be paying for it the rest of your life that's it be ready for that every moment of your life you're going to be paying for whatever you believe is right as a teenager as a 20 something as an idealist whatever you may be you're going to be paying for that you're just going to be

that kid you're that guy that's what you get for jumping in front of the spotlight yeah well not that you did i did i know'm not going to fucking shy away from that. The reality is I wrote a book. I worked on Bullying for Columbine with Michael Moore, for God's sake. Oh, that's going to be a fucking... I did shit. That's going to sting. I did shit.

And I did it proudly, and I still kind of am not ashamed of it. My life has become more than that, but it's not. It is whatever the world sees it as. We are only as powerful as the world sees us. Thanks to Google. Wonderful social media as it is. Well, you're more than that to us. Well, thank you, Doug.

Hey. This guy's fucking Gold Get him out of here Let's go have a cigarette Brooks Brown We're going to close out with a Henry Phillips Song if you don't know it

It was written I will know it actually You're a god damn I love my Stanhope podcast I love my Stan Hope podcast. I love my Stan Hope. I love my world around that. There's an entire and grown personality. How's your dad, by the way?

My dad's doing great. And he would say hello. If he doesn't have to tell him, we said hello to him at some point during this podcast. When it comes out, say, oh, hey, they talk about you, dad. They remember you from sushi and he's gonna listen to the whole fucking thing not knowing he's the last thing we talk about

and then he'll smile and he'll smile like a motherfucker we love you dad thank you Brooks Brown Greg Chaley and everyone that we booted out wrap it up with Henry Phillips. Thank you to the Comedy Store. He's the kid in the back of the class

Who always keeps to himself And the other kids call him Quasimodo Cause he got some hunch upon his back And his hair's all filled with shit And he only wears a trench coat upon his back and his hair's all filled with shit and he only wears a trench coat and instead of taking notes he draws pictures

of Satan please don't laugh at him don't even crack a joke don't blow spit wads in his face or piss in his coke. Someday he might come to school with a snub nose 38.

And if you're nice to him then just maybe he won't kill you. If you see the fat kid walking through the halls and he's got plaid shorts, don't say, Hey, look, everybody looks like someone stole my couch. And just because the weird guy throws a baseball just like a little girl doesn't mean he doesn't know how to make a ball. and know how to make a bomb.

All the film freaks and the drama geeks and the people with braces and the pizza faces and the four eyes, let's not treat them with scorn. Because someday they'll find the combination to their grandfather's fucking gun collection and they'll form a militia and make you wish you had never been born. And when you're a coward under your desk someday, you can flash them a little smile and say

remember me, I was that dude who said hello to you once in a while. And maybe then he'll pause and say, well you know I guess that's true. And instead he'll bump off the guy right next to you. So next time you want to pick on a nerd, please choose a jock instead.

Because I'd rather go home with my underwear all up my ass than with a stomach pumped full of lead. And especially be extra kind to those kids in the science club. all up my ass and with a stomach pumped full of lead and especially be extra kind to those kids in the science club cause they're the ones who know about nitroglycerin

and if we're nice to them then maybe we'll just get along thank you guys very much just get along. Thank you guys very much. Enjoy the rest of your night. Thank you. No, you have to read the call to action.

Let's give a deal. I thought you were reading the call to action. That's why I just went off script. You didn't have to do anything except say, what are you doing? And you didn't even do that right.