The Little Dum Dum Club with Tommy & Karl - 569 - Hamish Blake & Tom Ballard

Episode Date: August 25, 2021

This week we're joined by HAMISH BLAKE and TOM BALLARD! We get musical right off the bat as we cover Hamish's drumming experience and Tom's piano experience and try to work out who's more skilled. Chandler's been watching anti-vax comedy specials and Tommy's practising some of his Bad Impressions for Cameo. Plus, children's thoughts on death, signing CD's at shopping centres and we get a progress update on the writing of Ballard's book! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today on The Little Dumb Dumb Club, a brand new episode with guests Hamish Blake and Tom Ballard. We have a very exciting live show coming up this weekend, if you can believe it or not. The 28th of August, 8pm Melbourne time. You can recalibrate that from wherever you are in the world because it is happening on Zoom. We did one of these. The last one of these we did was a year ago, I think almost to the day actually, but we're back. We're doing it again.

We're locked down. Most of Australia is locked down, so we are back doing one of our infamous long, stupid Zoom shows. Carl, are you excited? Absolutely excited to make money, yes. So, yeah, we're doing a big live show. It's not that much money, so get along to littledumbdumbclub.com. Wherever you are in the world, you can get a ticket to a live show.

They were heaps of fun. We did three of them last year in lockdown. Thought we'd never do one of them again. And good news, the world's still a bit fucked. So, yeah, we get to do it again. So it'll be heaps of fun, hopefully as much fun as it was last year, Tommy. Yes. Check that out, littledumbdumbclub.com.

You can find the links to all of that. We'll talk to you more about it at the end of the episode in Talking Dumb Dumb. But until then, enjoy this new episode with Hamish Blake and Tom Ballard. Hey, mates. Welcome once again into the Little Dumb Dumb Club for another week. Thank you very much for joining us. My name is Tommy Dasolo. And with me, as always, the other half of the show, Carl Chandler.

G'day, Dickhead. And joining us today, two very special guests. Please welcome back into the Little Dum Dum Club, Tom Ballard and Hamish Blake. Yay! We're back, baby. Found some time. Hamish, you moved away from Melbourne. We weren't able to have you regularly pop into our live shows anymore and all it took was cases absolutely spiraling up there for you to be locked inside and back on the show feels good i'm gonna say yeah it's good

that's good i'm an absolute black belt when it comes to lockdowns now did the full melbourne lockdown move to sydney just in time to do it all again, baby. Yeah. Well, we thank you and the listeners thank you. I'm like the special ops version of lockdowns. Like if you want a guy that knows how to lockdown, you come see me. Well, you're the face of Australian tourism. Can you tell me where I can go on holidays within five kilometres of Hawthorne? Tell you what, I can see a little window in the reflection of your wardrobe mirror there. That's lovely this time of year.

If I had to holiday in any of our backgrounds, I'm 100% choosing Tommy's. The electronic drum kit has a lot of interest from this guy. I've owned two in my life. I've actually owned three electronic drum kits. And the third one was where I was like, no, seriously, I'm going to do this. Like I'm really going to learn. I'm going to learn.

Hang on. It took you three. So did you buy two different ones and then throw them away? Sold. So the very first one I bought was like, it was probably like 12 years ago. I was living with two of my buddies, John and Haydo, living in a bit of a, we had like a kind of the house from Big, the movie. Like we had like arcade games.

Oh, yeah, yeah. We had a room with a table tennis table and all John's shit furniture. The room, the couches went to dying and had a table tennis table. So I was like, we've got this little nook next to the kitchen. It was like an old house with a lot of weird rooms, kind of a bit wizardy. And so I was like, what can we put in the nook? And I was let's get an electronic drum kit that is what we need in this house bought it on it like bought it on a whim on ebay texted the guys i was like guys don't get like get excited when you get home we have an electronic drum kit

except as you would know tommy you either need to put headphones on or plug it into an amp because the kit is just a series of pads that make a fake drum noise, and through the magic of computers, it simulates drums. John was such a child that, like, we got home that night, like, at 5 o'clock, John was in his undies just, like, Red Hot Chili Peppers style, just his undies just like like red hot chili peppers style just like just only undies like playing the kit as hard as he could turn it turned around and went mate this is awesome it's like it's it's not plugged in you're playing like you're like playing ice cream tubs you're

just you're you're you're playing the acoustic drums you're playing the acoustic electronic drums which is not a great sound i was like they're all the same noise johnny like you're playing mouse pads basically and then i we played like i bought home the amps i plugged it in and then turned it on and it makes all the different drum noises and then if that blew his mind yeah so were any of you at that point were you any of you like into the drums at all Like did he know how to play or was he just like Getting on there No no no we all just loved the vibe of it

And I was like I don't want to learn But I just want to learn how to play cool songs I'm not interested in timing I'm not interested in notes I just want to rock Timing is a big one I've had several attempts at music with that policy Like I'd love to learn piano But I'm not doing the letters I'm just not doing the notes big one i've had several attempts at music with that policy like i'd love to learn piano but i'm

not doing the letters i'm not i'm just not doing the notes i just want to learn how to play like yeah i want to learn how to play like the best the best jazz piano in the world but i'm not interested in the technical side of it yeah there's a lot of people rocking up to the blake household over the years from gumtree buying a lot of second hand musical equipment. We're like a Gumtree hub. I just have at the front of my house those masking tape X's for social distancing because we have

queues that often outside the house. People come to pick up the shit that I bought online. Your house is an exposure site. COVID ripping its way through the Australia Post network. Always just tier three just because the chances are someone's got it. Always just a steady hum tier three site. So you get rid of the first drum kit and then when's the second one

come into your life? It was exactly the same way. I was like because that was a cheap one. We bought like an $800 one or something like, which is not cheap, but there are really high-end ones. So I started, I was like, we're not learning this. And then like the same kind of bug caught me two years later. And I was like, no, this time I'm doing it.

Same thing. Just fell by the wayside. Then the third one came back when we were on radio and we, like, formed a band. And then I was like, okay, I'll be the drummer and I'll get into this. And that one I still own. But as you can tell from, I don't know how often you're playing your drum kit, like they're a pretty, they take up a fair bit of surface area in the house.

And if you're not playing it on the reg, it really begins to, like, gnaw away at you with how much space it's taking up. So I gave it to Jack, who presses the buttons for us on our podcast on the Hamish and Andy show because he's like quite into music. And he's like, man, I was like, look, I'm going to rent the kit to you for a dollar a month. Pretty good deal. Okay.

This is good. And he's like, yes, love it, man, love it, going to you for a dollar a month pretty good deal okay this is good and he's like yes love it man love it gonna play him a lot and then andy's like don't do it man he's just doing it because they're fucking annoying to store and then two two months and i made jack sign like a three year lease for 36 dollars and then and then like two months later, Jack's like, I think I want to give them back. I was like, mate, you signed a lease. Enjoy them. You've rented them.

I've spent the $36. You can't get it back. Yeah, exactly. And then I rented the, he didn't buy the stool. I sold the stool to him for $10 as well. Oh, nice. There you go. True. Well, I think I can beat that when i first moved to sydney uh to do radio i wanted to keep playing the piano i had a piano

in my uh childhood home i had piano lessons when i was growing up and i moved to sydney and i thought i deserved a treat uh for getting this big big fancy job so i bought a pianino which is like a shortened version of a real piano, right? So not an electric keyboard, because I didn't like electric keyboards and like weighted keys or whatever. I didn't get the real sensation of playing a piano. Yeah, I get it. So a full heavy pianino installed in my apartment in Sydney,

which had to go up 60 stairs. I had to get two giant Tongan men to lift it up those stairs, which I enjoyed. And never played it once. Never played it once. Wow. What's your history? What's your history on the piano?

I got the lessons in high school, and I really loved Ben Folds, a big Ben Folds fan, so I really tried to learn all his songs. What was your best song? What was your best song? Were you like okay i can see if we gave you a week of brushing back up what could you get back up to i know a song by ben folds five called philosophy which kind of looks impressive when you play it that was probably as good as i got yeah that's that's like 98 of the reason you anyone would learn piano yeah well i did it for the pussy you know the piano pussy is pretty good.

I mean, I've got two keyboards. Same thing. I had to do lockdown last year and I bought a keyboard, like a piano, like not a synth, but like a replica kind of keyboard to learn so you can play piano because I thought it would be awesome to come back home because I was away from my family for three weeks. And I was like, imagine coming back through the door and being like, guys, guess what?

Dad's a pianist because I was making Lego Masters. I was shooting the Lego show and I was like on set all day. I thought I could have it in my green room, but that didn't work. So I just had it at the service department I was living in. I love this, by the way, the thought that – back yourself, Hamish. The thought that you're away from your kid, your five-year- thought, back yourself, Hamish, like the thought that you're away from your kid, your five-year-old kid or whatever, for like three weeks,

and the thought that you're going to walk through the door and he hasn't seen you for three weeks, and your thought is he's going to say, yeah, but can you play Greensleeves? Do you know what I was trying to learn? The Snoopy theme song, like by Wynton Marsalis. Do you know that? Do, do, do, do, do.

Do you remember like the jazz piano that they put over the snoopy cartoons right and i was going all right but you know that all the time in my head because i can't again can't play piano but i was like it's just got to be like timing hands placement and pressure right like know, surely if you just watch it enough, you can remember the pattern. Yeah, playing piano is like falling off a bike. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know that the whole reason they teach you the notes and, like, how to read music is the same reason they teach you the alphabet

and how to understand words because it's easier to then read a book rather than remembering the whole book after someone tells it to you. You've been spoiled by your experience with the drums because the drums you very much can vibe it out. You can just get on the stool and kind of feel it out. But every other instrument, you're in trouble if you think you get in the way with that. Well, I'll be honest with you.

We had a bet on the radio show after I bought the electronic drum, the third kit, which was that I couldn't learn Stairway to Heaven drumming in a month. And I learnt it. I got it. And the way I learnt it was pretty much just listening hit which was that i couldn't learn stairway to heaven drumming in a month and i learned it i got it and and and the way i learned it was pretty much just listening to the song a hundred times a day yeah then getting someone that was a good drummer to go okay so you know well done you know the song but here's yeah here's how you take it from your brain to your hands and you've got to

kind of do it this way and it was like i was obviously not john bonham like i was like a really shit version but i played it with like we did a gig at the corner and like 500 people came and paid two dollars i think it was to like for one song so it was like yeah great quick cheap daytime gig do you want to come and watch one man try and try and drum um stairway to heaven so you can be done with drums. Can I just ask, so it's, what was it, $2 a month to hire the drums, $2 to get into the Corner Hotel to see you guys play? Yeah, I'm running like, you know. You don't have the same contract with radio, do you?

You up it a little bit, don't you? $0.30 a word, $0 50 cents if it's a big one. My drumming career runs off the same economics as a lemonade stall. I used to get like 10 cents a handball when I played junior football and 20 cents a kick and stuff.

It's the same economics. Choppering you out to the country leagues. I like this big bet for your corner hotel gig too of like, I bet you you can't learn the drums to a song that doesn't really have drums in it for about three quarters worth of the song. Good call, good call. Fair enough, but let's not forget. I mean, that was noted because I was like,

it's like a seven-minute song and yet like the first five minutes are just... Yeah, you're really taking a... Put your feet up there. Just having to tell it like, you know, thumbs up into the rhythm guitar. But still, yeah. But still counting along, just like two, three, four.

One, two, three, four. Next time I'll do the triangle in Bohemian Rhapsody. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That horrible solo bit in karaoke where you're just standing there in the three-minute mark going, yeah, yeah. The magpie bit to Who Let the Dogs Out. But when it kicks in, like, for those that are familiar with the song,

like, that last three minutes is heckers, and you've really got to hang on. You've got to hang on. Do you believe Bill Burr is a big drummer too do you believe he has a theory or the relationship between drumming and and comedy and like you know timing and um figuring it freaking out do you find that much relationship when you in years i mean you've done comedy and you haven't played the drums barely at all but but you feel like there's a relationship there anyway i believe it's intuitive yeah i do i believe that you know you gotta you gotta find but i i find like i mean again real drumming is obviously a real skill and you have to really learn it like all music but but i yeah i think

is does everyone feel this way about drumming that it seems like to be the easiest or it's like 10 pin bowling where you can, for a moment, be the best in the world. You can get a strike of all the sports. You can't walk onto a cricket pitch and accidentally bowl at 150 k's an hour. You really have to get good for that. But you can 10-pin bowl at an elite level for a moment. Obviously, the sport is doing it repeatedly, but for a second.

Yeah. If there was an infinite amount of monkeys in a room, they would eventually become Buddy Rich. Is that what you're saying? They would. They would. It's definitely, like, that was the main reason. I always had an interest in drumming and, like, yeah,

listening to a lot of music, I would always be like, I reckon I've figured out the drums to this. I reckon if I was in front of a kit, I'd just know what I was doing. So I bought the kit because I essentially wanted to put it to the test. I love that. And Tom, you lived in the room next to me when I brought the drum kit home, so you can probably attest more than anyone. What was my skills actually like?

What were you hearing coming through the bedroom wall? Whenever I was hearing anything coming through the bedroom wall, it was definitely out of rhythm, that's for sure. It was just always a master at work. There we go. It really is like comedy. Do you know what I reckon, now that I'm thinking about the false lure of the drums is?

It's like we all love drumming on the desk when we hear a great rock song or whatever, and a desk and a pen on a cup is like such a forgiving medium and we hear what we want to hear. We internally hear the absolute best version of that. When you have a snare drum and a cymbal, it's very unforgiving. It's like extremely obvious that you're not doing what you're meant to be doing. That's funny. That's like saying, you know, where people say that that's why people sing in the shower

because it's such great acoustics in the shower. If you could get a fucking drum kit in the shower, you would think you're Ringo Starr. You would think you're an absolute fucking killer in there. Yeah. I mean, that is, I guess that's how that German thigh music began. But that's, yeah, that's a heck of an instrument. I reckon that's good. But the piano I learned is hard.

Like piano, you can't, you know, piano's tricky. It's really, and because your fingers too, Tom, like you would know, like you've got to get your fingers so strong to like make all the different shapes. It's just very. Tommy wouldn't know this. He literally never touched the fucking piano he had in his house. He's actually learning from you right now.

He can play bed folds though. All I could remember, the whole time I was trying to learn this jazz song because I thought it would be great to wow the family, it was like in the back of your head you've got like 10,000 hours, 10,000 hours, 10,000 hours to master something and you're like doing these annoying like, you know, you're doing like three notes in a row and I just keep looking over at the clock and it's been like eight minutes.

I'm like, oh, this is taking ages. Why aren't I the best yet? Similar to you with Ben Folds, Tom, I started playing bass when I was a teenager because I loved the band Jamiroquai and I wanted to learn those funky Jamiroquai bass rhythms. And I remember the other day one time when I was at school, it was in year eight, and I was listening to my Discman and my friend walked into class and he went,

what are you listening to? And I said, Jamiroquai. And he goes, why are you listening to the Jerry Maguire soundtrack? Which, like, not a burn that has aged well at all. Like, someone telling me they're chucking on the Jerry Maguire soundtrack now, I'd be like, yeah, man, that slaps. It's like he thought the Jerry Maguire soundtrack was embarrassing. I was listening to something far more embarrassing.

He really, he'd missed an opportunity to really take it. I guess in his head it was just like, not only are you listening to the Jerry Maguire soundtrack, but you've invented like a cool, fun slang name for Jerry Maguire. Like, Chimeragwai. You've J-loaded Jerry Maguire. Yeah, the airy just gets in the way. I just want people to know this cool soundtrack i'm

listening to i mean i was gonna say you know for you like a young a young tommy going i want to be jk yeah and for all of us as kids wanting to be the musician that we idolize like it's got to be one of the funnest pairings you could do because there's no there's no kid that was like oh you know i want to be travis scott or whatever i was like, oh, yeah, I could see that. You're a cool kid. Like you were always no shot of being the person you idolised. My brother, and I'll throw him under the bus here, my brother's is going to be the worst because at least you're idolising someone pretty cool.

My brother in the early 90s was like at their high school they could like pick an instrument to play and based off what was on heavy rotation in our house because that was like you know whatever mom and dad are listening to is what you're subjected to my brother chose saxophone because of kenny g oh wow if you put lachlan blake next to kenny g despite the age difference of one being like a 13 year old and the other being like a 40 year old thereold, there couldn't be two different, more different dudes. Yeah. And the sacks, too.

You go through a big dip. Before you get to Kenny G, before you get to sexy level, there is a lot of hunker you've got to get through. The age where you just have the impulse to just be like a famous person that you like and think that you're pulling it off and think that it's cool. It's like I'm fooling people into thinking i'm actually this guy i've somehow transferred the amount of cool that i think he has just because i've bought the same shoes that i saw him wearing in a video clip or whatever

what's the what's the oldest you can be and get away with that are there any like well i suppose i suppose what we're describing is marketing. Yeah, kind of. I guess you're kind of doing a version of that at the moment, Carl. You've been wearing a lot of Liverpool stuff lately. That's been your big lockdown purchases. That's probably the closest it comes in an adult form is like wearing sports kits, right? Yeah, like I was saying the other day, it's like I'm not even buying the uniform

that the players play in anymore. I'm buying the stuff that the assistant youth team coach wears on the sidelines and stuff. Is that a more plausible fantasy for you? Yeah, I guess so. Yeah, I can definitely see myself yelling at a lot of 16-year-olds for sure. Absolutely. I'm born to do that.

I'm dressing up like the tub of Gatorade that they pour on the coach. When Blanket grows up and maybe participates in some kind of team sports, are you going to take on the mantle of coaching? Because you would be incredible. Yeah, look, it would be really interesting. It's definitely something I'd like to step back from myself and look at. I'm keen to find out what happens to me in that mindset because I'm bringing the ball over to the park at the moment

and it's like all the playgrounds are locked off at the moment. So it's like, all right, we're just bringing a soccer ball. And my two-year-old daughter is just learning how to play soccer now. So it's, yeah, I'm already bending her mind a certain way. But she's pretty good. She's so good that I'm actually a little bit disappointed because I'm like, I might have to become this youth team coach that goes fucking nuts. Oh, you might have to become – you might have to become a pushy soccer dad.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly. You might have to get – like if you buy mini witch's hats before she's five and you're doing sprint drills. Well, I've already got the outfit for it as well. So it's almost like, well, this would be a waste now. It would be a waste if I didn't do this. It is cute as hell when little kids play soccer.

My daughter goes – or before COVID shut everything down, but there's like, yeah, Kickaroos I think is the name of the soccer squad up here. So she's just four but she did kick she's doing kickaroos as a three-year-old and some days she's feeling it i'd like so they've got coach stew who's like this english bloke who's great and he like you know and you've actually feels a bit more authentic because he got an english englishman like teaching these kids soccer and stuff he's like you know get you know they're pretty attentive and stuff and then some days but she's just like like one one i made the crucial error of like going we're going to have a um we'll get like a mini cupcake after training so like trying to get you know you like

burn it and earn it like let's like yeah and then but then once it was in her mind it's like yeah exactly i was foolish so put it in her mind and then she's like let's have it now like well no yeah yeah it's not it's not an upfront payment system and then just melt down melt down and just like the you know this is you run into this so many times i reckon with parenting where you like gone to all this effort to get out the door like getting out the door is so fucking hard you make it all the way down to the field and then to see like a three-year-old just standing behind the soccer ball and kicking it with such little force that it won't move the ball and you're just like this is i'm not sure if if this if somehow then she's playing for the world cup i'll be like well i don't know something happened because it was not there at the start.

And then they have to do headers where they have to knock a ball off a witch's hat and she wears a cap, like part of the uniform is a hat when you play soccer. And again, hitting it with such low force, hitting it with the peak of her cap and it won't move the soccer ball off a witch's hat. So it's intense. We've got an oval over the road from our house,

and so that's our little place for exercise. And today I went over there because my wife's working from home. She's on a big conference call. I get a phone call. I'll generally use that as my form of exercise. So I've got the headphones in. I'm talking. I go over there.

There's a heap of people mucking around and whatever and there's a tennis ball on the ground and i was like great love it you know you know can't help myself to kick a ball around yeah awesome yeah exactly so i'm talking to my friend and just zigzagging around kicking the ball around for i reckon three to four minutes and then i sort of feel and I'm talking, I don't really realise what's going on. And finally I feel someone grab me and I turn around and it's an old lady who wants the tennis ball back because she'd thrown it for the dog to get and I just started kicking her out instead.

So this woman with a dog's been following me around for three or four minutes. I just love that you, I hope that you, for that three or four minutes, you were just like slightly out in front of her and she was at top speed. And she couldn't quite, so she's doing like, she's doing knee mobility drills as well. Man, honestly, honestly, I was way up the other end of the overlock. I was at the other goals by then. And she's like tracked me nearly the whole over.

And found a free walking stick. Yeah. What's the dog doing during this? Is the dog just chasing you down trying to get back in the mix? That's the thing I thought. Like, you know, like grow some balls, dog. You're like, you should be the one that comes and grabs the ball. Like you've got to get your mum to come and get the ball.

Like what are you training for? What are you training for every time you play fetch? This is it. This is game day. Did you then do a shit and ask the old lady to pick it up with a plastic bag? But yeah, no, it was that weird thing where it's like, you know, you're already in your own head and your own world because you've got the headphones in and everything.

And then there's the whole social distancing stuff at the moment. But this woman was clearly like, had been talking to me or yelling at me or whatever and gone no actually fuck this i'm 80 but i'm taking my chances with this guy and just grab me like give me the ball back yeah wow but that is it out there i mean i don't know i mean just i don't know about you or not carl here but don't you reckon that is one of the most beautiful things with kids like when the the playground's closed, like so often you leave the house and you've got like what I refer to as like, you know, you've got the dad plan, which is like, guys, we're going to the park, we're taking the soccer ball, we're making goals, you know,

this is what we're doing. But you get to the park, someone finds a stick, someone else is like, oh, my God, a dirty cup. Yes, that's a treasure chest. You're like, all right, that's what we we're doing because really when it comes down to it like you're just trying to kill an hour and the their kids don't care what they're playing with they don't need a playground that's just playgrounds are kind of just a lazy tool well not lazy tool they're like an easy tool for parents to go we went to a place that you kind of enjoyed but the kids just want to

play anything and have you around. I love the idea of you walking past a playground and going, amateurs, check them out. Lazy. I'm coming back at night and I'm cutting it down. My kids have got a dirty cup and a syringe. The real activities are in the bin. The playgrounds are closed at the moment, of course,

in Melbourne at the moment of course in melbourne at the moment and so we've just got the park so at the moment my full-time job is distracting my daughter from uh the the existence of the playgrounds because it's quite hard to explain why she can't get on it you know she's she's two years old so i went the other day with my wife on the weekend what do you say and i'm like what's what do you go with that's this is what's about to come up so i was like no dictator dan doesn't want you to have fun sweetheart now come on we're heading into the protest that's why you got pepper spray and that's why we're doing it again look a horsey you'll love it you can see now it was only a couple of days

so so i did that i went over there i'm trying to distract my daughter i'm i'm there with my wife and i'm like going oh no we'll kick the ball we'll do this and she kept going no swings swings playground swings swings so i'm like okay we can't go there we can't go there it's closed and she didn't really get it and so then we she just sort of marched away up there anyway so we're like okay well we'll just have to show her. And so we get up there. Someone had actually pulled the fence off around the playground. So then I couldn't sort of go, oh, well, look, it's closed off. You can't use it.

Someone had already pulled it off. And so I'm sitting there trying to explain, trying to go, oh, how can I explain to her that we can't use it? And my wife just goes, the playground's dead. And she's like what what the playground went to a farm with other playgrounds and it's gonna just hang on she understands the concept of death yeah but then then she's like what's dead yeah all right okay maybe not yeah but because the playground didn't eat its green pesto pasta,

so now it's dead. Just like I told you last night. Yeah, the playground didn't finish its shuttle runs after we kicked the ball, so now it's dead. The playground doesn't think it needs to do ankle mobility, and now it's dead. The playground got AstraZeneca and got a blood clot. Just up one leg of the swing set man but that's the thing my kids are my kids are obsessed with the death

you know like or like love telling you about it like i got a seven and a four year old and it's like hey dad you know it's like like quite quite grim confronting stuff to hear as a parent like you know like my little boy will go like dad unless unless something happens to me you'll die a lot sooner than i will yeah i'm like wow yes yes uh this is like playing the numbers that's true that's really like you know not not for a very long time because not that long about 80 you're halfway there please stop playing that electronic drum kit. You don't have log left. I play with metal sticks on exposed wires. Then my daughter, like we drive past a cemetery like near our house

and then my daughter's always like, hey, Dad, when I'm a grandma, I have to go in there and get in a grave. Wow. Like old people turn themselves in yeah yeah yeah yeah have you got an open plot i think it's time yeah as soon as your child has a child too just immediately like the baby comes out and you gotta go oh my god honey i'm so happy i'm so happy for you i mean obviously devastating news for me but you you're going to be a great mum. Wow.

Okay, well, I'm off to the cemetery. Yeah, I like that idea of, like, going past and going, any vacancies this week? No. No, and just slowly, sadly walking away. I don't get to be dead. Damn, I'll try. I'll come back next week.

I wasn't going to, but. I'm like a benevolent cemetery guard being like, I think you've still got some life in you, Bethel. No, come on. We know the rules. Put me in. I've had a good time. I think you still seem vibrant.

You could still contribute. No, I wouldn't think so. Wouldn't have thought so. Because your daughter's name is Ethel, right? Is that right? Yes, yes, yes. It was my girlfriend's birthday on Friday and her sister came over with her nephew

who's nearly three and he's just started he's just getting around full sentences and one of the few full sentences he can speak now which we went for a little walk like he came around they came around for a little walk around the block with us and he's just

this kid non-stop is just going I want to go home I want to go home. I want to go home. Just like pretty much the only full sentence he's got access to and he's just giving it a red hot crack. And then it's like they do a full tantrum. They end up leaving. And then within like an hour there's the announcement

that childcare is closing down here. It's like, well, be careful what you wish for, brother. There's a whole lot of being at home going on now isn't there man how smart are kids because that is basically all of our internal monologue but as we get older we just have to shove it inside yeah yeah it's like he knew the closure was coming it's like the vultures circling around a dead body in the desert just like i want to go home i want to go home it's like this little this baby knows something that the rest of us don't yeah dude he can sense it in the air where have you been for the past 18 months like we've been home

we get it i feel we've seen it you didn't see it we should have seen it how are you explaining the pandemic to your your children hamish how are you sort of laying it out we it's been funny because like you know it started 18 months ago so when it began like my little girl was two turning three and now she's four so it's sort of like she's 50 percent of her life has been in the pandemic and a large chunk of her life that she remembers is like yeah exactly has been this scenario so in in some ways I suppose like for kids that age there's a sadness to that. But then in another way it's sort of like, well, it's not like she's got, you know, 20 years of like running around having total –

traveling interstate and doing whatever you want and partying. So – It's not like she knows. It's not like she's traveled. It's not like she knows. It's not like she's travelled. It's not like she's got a very strong love for a country in Southeast Asia that she can't wait to get back to. That's true. The government is banning her from doing that.

Yeah, exactly. She's not investigating, like, you know, how much would it cost for Elon Musk to build me a tunnel to Koh Samui. Just on a giant sled underground. She's not Googling things like that. Just a bintang seglet and a boner. Just vlogging to Koh Samui. She's not Googling things like that

when everyone else goes to bed from 10.30pm till midnight every single night. So, yeah, she's lucky. She's one of the lucky ones. Just saying to herself, I want to go home. I want to go home. So, I mean, we, like, early days, like, when it happened, we've kind of made it a, tried to make it kind of a fun thing

because we were like, you know, if you're at the supermarket with us guys, like, you can't touch anything. And, like, the reason we're wearing masks is we would always just, it wasn't a conscious thing, but, like, between my wife and I, we'd always refer to it, like, with wiggly fingers as the virus and it became like a kind of a joke that we have to kind of do this stuff because of a virus and just to keep the vibe up i guess i'm but you know i go seven year old and a four year old like their world we're super fortunate i mean i'd be the first to say we're fortunate in a lot of ways and and one of them is that the kids are at that age where it's like again it different if you're like 16 or whatever

but when you're a seven-year-old and a four-year-old like your world is the house anyway it's like your mom and your dad your toys you're like you know they're in the same bedroom it's like every day is another weird you know like something like something is, you know, you're obsessed with being an arctic fox and hiding under the bed and I'm always a slow herbivore, unfortunately, in these scenarios. And I always get given my character, which is a slow herbivore with bad eyesight, like easily hunted in the hallway. So, you know, like they kind of get that stuff's going on but but that way but they like my little boy fully understands but he's

he's been at no no point does he complain but it's shitty for i think the shittiness is having a level that they can't deal with and i'm i can't really speak to kids of another age but i'm sure it's happening the higher you get up the more it's like yeah this is not a natural way for human beings to be like zoom is useless for school stuff certainly with seven-year-olds like all they do is they just sit on there changing their backgrounds and their filters and it just teaches you how to be bored on zoom so yeah like i'm lucky at the moment like i'm not working too much like zoe's working but i can be with the kids and like honestly honestly my goal every day is just keep the vibe up try

like try create something different whatever it is i honestly i feel like that so this sydney lockdown's been whatever long it's been going on eight or nine or ten weeks or something it feels like an open mic night where you got up with eight minutes of material and you've been on stage for ten weeks. And the crowd work is really wearing thin. Anyone else here from number eight? Yeah, you. Open mic nights, typically you get in a five-minute set,

so you're getting up there with eight minutes of material you've already fucked in. I thought it'd be sweet. Even if it ran over, I got three extra minutes. But now, as we move into week eight, a lot of, so what else is funny? Speaking of that, man, this is what I did on the weekend. So as time of recording, there was a protest, there was a march,

you know, whatever those people call themselves, you know, anti-lockdown protesters. Dumb fucks. So now what I do find interesting is there is a subsection in Melbourne and probably in Sydney of like dumbass open mic comedians who are now into this sort of stuff. And so when I saw the protests happening, I was like, oh, I remember one of these guys that's right into it.

And I think he got his head on the front of the paper, getting stepped on by a horse or something like that in one of these previous protests. And instead of being really embarrassed, the sort of guy that obviously puts it up on social media and goes, check this out, check out me being kicked in the balls by a policeman and it's like yes i'm like you fucking idiot so anyway that is you gotta give full credit to those kinds of protests it doesn't matter how much they get owned by the security forces and the police presence at the

protests they're not shying away from it they're more than happy to just share that around on the socials like absolutely taking a huge l doesn't matter it used to be that turning up to a protest like with a gopro or whatever was to like catalog police brutality or whatever i mean i think that like early remember early days it was like you know we're filming you so you can't you know don't think you're getting away with anything i don't get that vibe anymore i just feel like everyone in the crowd is like content creating like they're all just getting like trying to get like killer angles and stuff this is not to like in case it's ever needed for evidence this is a hundred percent because like they're like already going i've got exactly the song i'm putting under this

yeah there's a lot more selfies than body cams isn't there yeah it just seems that way yeah so drone got to test it out somehow. Fly to the protest. What do we want? Like and subscribe. Woo! So I thought of this guy, I thought of one of these guys, I was like, I'll go down the rabbit hole of their social media updates.

And so, of course, this guy's very pro, you know, oh, this is going to be great and whatever. And I went down, I scrolled down guy's very pro, you know, oh, this is going to be great and whatever. And I went down, I scrolled down his feed. And then, you know, from a couple of weeks ago, it's just all anti-government, all anti-lockdown, all anti-virus. And then just in the middle of all of it comes this, oh, check out my new stand-up comedy special I've recorded. And I'm like, well, I'm absolutely going to have a look at this thing. And just pick that needle out of the haystack and start watching it. And this guy had just...

Now, when he said, I've recorded a new stand-up comedy special, I've seen all of those words. Technically, those words are sort of correct. But what he'd actually done was, what he'd appeared to have done was maybe broken into an abandoned house and then filmed himself in complete darkness

while he's drinking a beer on his own iPhone, lit up by the light on his own iPhone. Great, yep. And he talked into it for 35 minutes and I was like, this is... Now, when he said it was a comedy special, I'm like, great. I start watching it, it's like, all right,

he's just warming the crowd up at this point. The first five minutes has been... there's been a lot of ranting there's been a lot of threats to kill policemen um there's been a lot of anti-government sort of propaganda but this is just this is just crowd work to warm it up so i'm like i'm i set myself the target i'm like okay i'm just going to have to keep watching until comedy material comes up like i'm keen to see what alt-right anti-virus actual comedy material sounds like so then i had to just keep watching it and i got like 15 minutes in and i'm like i don't think we're going to get there and then he said something he said like a four word

joke like a one-liner and i'm like that's actually sort of funny and then he immediately goes yeah i'm like bang he's got one i can stop watching and then he immediately goes, yeah. I'm like, bang, he's got one. I can stop watching. And then he goes, oh, hang on. And he says to the camera, oh, hang on. We can't count that one. I have to give credit. I've actually stolen that from Rodney Rude.

So this guy, I watched the rest of it. This guy has done a comedy special with only one joke in it, and it's Rodney Rude. This guy has done a comedy special with only one joke in it, and it's Rodney Rood's. What's the Rodney Rood bit that's able to pass as a... Man, honestly, I can't remember. 80% of it. True.

I can't remember it. I can tell you all about, like, you know, the shape-shifting lizards that are working in the Victorian police, but I can't remember the four-word joke that Rodney Rood has been stolen from. Oh, man. That's awesome. Far out, poor Rodney. I would love to see more professional comedy specials

where it's just like midway through, yeah, Bill Burr's accidentally whipping one out and then being like to camera like, oh, no, sorry, that's Seinfeld. Fuck. It's so embarrassing. I knew that right off the tongue a little easy yeah that's that's the 12th man

sorry guys as I said it I thought it sounded familiar I thought it sounded familiar because it was something that I'd cooked up in my own brain but no it's it's the monologue from the start of the car park episode of Seinfeld

I would like to see Rodney Rood taking this guy to court, though. This thing that you've stolen my joke, you've put it in, I know it's in your new special, but to be fair, it's got four views and you've drunken four beers while you're recording it as well. I love that he's just done a light B&E and decided that that's going to be the setting. I'm just going to bust into a house here. 35 minutes too, like calling it a special when you're barely breaking the 30-minute mark is pretty awesome.

Also, I'll tell you the only – I don't remember the gag he ripped from Rodney Rood, but maybe there's more jokes. If you count these two sentences that he said within three minutes or so of those, I think Mussolini didn't go hard enough and Hitler had the right idea. So maybe you can – I don't know. Maybe they were from Rodney Root as well. I'm not sure. But he didn't attribute them to Rodney Root.

No, that's classic Hannah Gadsby, both of those, I think. That's in Douglas a lot of people know that yeah classic that's the B side you gotta watch the extended it's controversial

what is it do you think he's like a Joe Rogan-y kind of guy like all those young open micers who sign up to that

kind of world of anti-government I think something has gone terribly wrong in his life. I think that's, to be honest, the guy that I've seen, this guy, he started comedy at about the same time I did. And, look, it hasn't gone perfectly for either of us,

but he's gone down one rabbit hole. I've managed to at least stop the temptation of going completely fucking batshit crazy. So I think I should get a few points for that. You're not attending protests on your publicity tour for your comedy special. Yeah, yeah. You've still got other outlets of publicity that you can do.

And you prefer the ideology of Duterte, for example. Yeah, you're different. Yeah. And at least my crazy manifestos are well are well lit like i'm not using just the light off the iphone your background looks deranged in the zoom window at the moment but at least that's your own house like you're not squatting somewhere to do exactly yeah yeah yeah i've got the i've got the power on in my special filming yeah yeah i was thinking comedians are at high risk of being radicalized in this scenario

when the future is so uncertain and like if you were and you've talked about people leaving comedy as a result of the pandemic before right because like just thinking about how the fuck is it going to work again and how would they do that so if you were doing comedy for a long time and had to give it up at this point like you would go a little bit fucking insane because like what are you going to do retraining over to uni is extremely expensive like how do you reorient your life at this point i think about this i think about this all the time about right like you know like if this if this slid into full apocalypse right yes i i constantly look at myself and go so what do you how do you fit in champ in the apocalypse like what are you doing? And literally like,

you know, use my answer is not, not a lot. Like I don't have a lot of good skills to give the tribe, like even, even sewing, even, even like,

yeah, I'm a, I'm a fairly good character actor. If I have to be a slow moving herbivore. So like, should, should the tribe wish to eat me? I have practiced being easily,

easily huntable. But then the other day I gave my seven-year-old a haircut. I gave my little boy a haircut. I was like, that's it. You know, he's like, so I was like, shave his head. My wife's like, you know, just shave it. I was like, no, no, come on. Let's at least have a go giving him a short back and sides.

Hang on, you're treating your son's head like the drums. You're like, I reckon I can feel this out. I've always had fairly good natural hairdressing percussion instincts. So I was like, come on, let me have a go. And you look at YouTube videos for like young boys' haircuts and it is all a version of the same lady from like the Midwest of America who's like got a YouTube channel about kids' hairdressing. So they're like, you know, just just a lot of like you know i'm going to show you the easiest boys haircut

and they're just doing it on their own kid who's like a bit sick of being mum's like youtube prop and it's tough and you need a spray bottle and a comb and a few things i didn't have but i kind of got there in the end like i shaved the base and then it's about blending the top there's like a thing you gotta oh you know you're blending you know you go to the hairdressers and they hold it between their fingers that's a yeah there's a reason they do that i'm learning and so you're learning like cutting down and blending it in and all this and it was like it was not terrible it was okay like the standard photo i suppose is like oh dad gave the kid a haircut and looks like a piece of shit. It was fine.

It was like B plus. It wasn't amazing, but it was fine. And it was kind of blended. And it was the first moment that I went, maybe I could survive the apocalypse. Like maybe I've done one boy's haircut, but now at least I'm off a duck. Like I don't have no skills no i don't have no skills i don't

have no skills like it was a it was it was a sloppy single but i've run one run and i'm off zero so hairdresser is like one percent higher than comedian comedian in the apocalypse is zero percent hairdressers one to two percent something something and like you know if it was sort of like okay you know there's like 60 of us have managed to escape to some sort of enclave we're barricaded in and the alpha's going around going like right what can you do i probably would put my hand up and just be like kids haircuts and then he's like well we've already got someone that can do haircuts and sewing then i'd have to lie and go okay i can actually i can do haircuts and some

blacksmithing and just yeah just go fuck i really hope i don't have to lie and go, okay, I can do haircuts and some blacksmithing. Drumming. Just go, fuck, I really hope I don't have to make a horseshoe soon. Any fan of Charlie Brown at all? Anyone like the first six seconds of the Charlie Brown song? There was a tweet last year as it was all kicking off that I think about so regularly of someone being like, you know, everyone's buying sourdough kits to keep themselves busy, but we have to think about the bakers

because if everyone learns how to make their own sourdough in lockdown, bakers are going to be out of work when we're out of the lockdown. It's like no one had that same concern about hairdressers. Like, guys, if you have a mental breakdown and start shaving your head in front of the mirror, hairdressers are going to be out of work on the other side of this thing. And here's the thing. If anything, having a go at making your own sourdough

just rams home like, holy shit, I can't believe you could buy a finished one of these for $4.20. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This took all fucking day. It cost $100 in ingredients. The kitchen's destroyed. I cannot believe you can buy the finished product for $4.20. Yeah, and they sell it where I get the milk.

Fuck. I'll just get a little on there. I'm already there. I can't believe how good that is. It's like making your own pasta from scratch. I don't know if you've ever done that. It's a fun activity. It eats up a whole day.

But at the end of it, you're like, well, that was a fun day, but we'll never need to do that again. Like there's no. And there's absolutely no way. Yeah, we made, like the one time we had a go at it was like the bit, you know, I borrowed, went and borrowed a mate's pasta press kind of thing because I'm like, I know what, I'm not dumb enough to buy one, even though that like feels very like the kind of thing I would do

is to just go and buy a pasta press. It came out wet. Like there's like 10 holes or whatever the spaghetti is meant to come out. It came out wet. So we just basically after all that just got like churros just coming out. Just like pasta churros. Yeah, spaghetti sausage. This isn't working working guys and uh we had macaroni there's been a bit too much internet being used in my apartment don't worry i've gone out and i've told my wife to get off the conference call with several heads of

airlines around the world i said mom i'm doing a podcast so now yes my job well yeah i mentioned uh i mentioned before that um it was uh it was my girlfriend's birthday over the weekend and uh this this we were meant to be out of lockdown here in melbourne by then so all of a sudden you know we get extended and then i'm kind of scrambling to get gifts and stuff and deal with the postage and i had a couple of things that uh didn't quite turn up in time which is very devastating but then i i remembered what i what i should have just done i remembered this from um so my partner is from perth and we were back there over christmas um staying with her mom and uh her mom just kind of casually as we're walking around the house uh drops this little tidbit goes hey has um has she told you about how she's a massive, massive Hamish and Andy fan and went to meet them at a shopping centre

when they did a signing? Do you know them? Could you pass that on? And my girlfriend just hating it, just screaming from the corner of the room like, do not, do not tell him this. So, yeah, I just remembered that the other day room like, do not, do not tell him this. So, yeah, I just remembered that the other day that like, fuck, none of my, I ordered her a cameo that has not shown up yet from a real housewife that she's a fan of.

Fuck. Should have gotten the great man H. Blake to do a shopping centre signing style greeting. I would love nothing more. I'm so glad we released two CDs cds i think and a couple of dvds i'm just so glad for whatever else you know i may or may not get to experience but i'm lucky enough to be the entertainment industry i'm just stoked i managed to catch the tail end of cd signings like yeah yeah like dress the table in at the westfield just like 100 like we were

the last wave of like just within the last few months i reckon of that being a thing where you could roll like we released a cd we released a cd and it sold like a lot like i can't like it's not like whatever it was i don't know 70 000 copies or something of cd of a cd that was essentially just good bits from the radio show. It was just pre-podcasting. Unbelievable that that existed and that you would go and sign your name on the CD cover and give it back to people and that constituted something that was worthwhile doing for a day.

Very fun. people and then that was that like constituted something that was worthwhile doing for a day very fun yeah it's it's a lot harder to sign spotify these days yeah that's gone but yeah we i remember like and there was like big politics to be like you've got to you've got to do sanity at this westfield and like jb you're gonna fucking lose it if you don't, you know, have the trestle table near JB. Oh, really? Turf horns. One of the very first things I ever did was MC when I worked for Fox FM in Melbourne, like, as a behind-the-scenes dude. They needed someone to MC Delta Goodrum's Innocent Eyes. Was that her album or something? Like, her first album. They needed to MC an album signing.

And I went to High Point and MC'd'd like just was like you know hey guys here she's she's she's out the back she's coming out and delta came out and it was a seven hour queue they were like we started at midday and there was still people like queued outside of high point like at six o'clock at night like the shopping center shut and Delta was like, I'm staying here till the very last fan. And were you still emceeing? No, I was just like dead on the stage just with a camelback. I've like wandered off. You're up there going, hang on, hang on,

that was Rodney Rood's joke actually. That was Rodney Rood's. Yeah actually. That was Rodney Rood's. Yeah, sorry. Actually, sorry. Yeah, that was a joke Stigma Rebo used when he was emceeing. So, I mean, I remember saying, I'm going to stay to the end. And then I was like, I've got to go. Like, I can't.

I didn't stay. I read about it in the paper that she stayed. Like, the shopping centre shut it down. You had to read about it in the paper. You didn't even shopping centre shut it down. You had to read about it in the paper. You didn't even have anyone on the inside that could have passed that along direct. You had to wait for the press. I think I read about it in Confidential back when that was called The Eye in the Herald. Oh, yeah.

Wow. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Nui Tukoa with the hot scoop about Delta's seven-hour signing. Did you have an MC for your one or you guys are just out there handling it all yourselves good question no we did we had some good tables are turned Delta was MCing by then

it was always like a Black Thunder pilot kind of thing which was and then the whole time was just us going like cut the line like you know because we were like we're here for two hours going like cut the line like you know because we're like we're here for two hours like it's great but when you know it's and it's not like we're it's not like you're super popular it's just that people are fucking bored at shopping centers so right people will be like i'll line up so by the end of the queue just keep people being like um

can you sign this lunchbox can you sign my shoes and then you're like you're hating this we're bored we want to go you don't really know who we are like this the the value add for the fans finished hours ago like right right let's let's just wrap this up so you always have to like put someone in the back of the queue to like be the be you know kind of like at the supermarket on the conveyor belt you need to put your divider in oh yeah and let them kind of like finish out the queue. That's the one thing I remember from those. What about you, Ballard, in lockdown? So this is going into lockdown.

You've been working on a book for a long time and all of a sudden you're stuck with nothing to do but finish this fucking book. Are you going – what was his name? Sam Torrance in The Shining? Surely you're – All work, no play. Yeah, Sam Torrance in The Shining? Surely you're... All work, no play. Yeah, exactly.

You must be. This is perfect for you to finish this book you've been working on for about a year or something. What is this troll? How's it going? Is this good or is this bad? What situation are you in? You'd think it'd be good, but it's been very bad. I've been reading a lot of articles about how lockdown's bad for concentration.

That's what I've been doing since Christ's Day, writing my book. I've been reading all these articles explaining how it's bad for your brain. It's actually really hard to read it. But no, I've watched Game of Thrones again. That's been pretty good. Oh, man. We just started again. It's a wonderful program, and I highly recommend it.

But no, I really should get onto it and finish that book. Can I ask what the book's about? It's about every problem in society in the neoliberal term of the 1980s which fundamentally destroyed the political economic status quo and destroyed my generation's future prospects. That's not a Rodney Rue joke, is it? Tom Ballard's new book, Frogsack, coming out soon.

Funny buggers. Coming out soon. Yes, it's both a memoir of my entire life and then almost every major social political issue, trying to both explain it in an interesting way and make that funny i like the idea that you've got writer's block and it's a

memoir i'm really stuck about what happened to me at age 14 i can't think of something good you're doing that elite level procrastinating where it's like you're sitting through game of thrones but you're still convincing yourself it's like no this is kind of relevant to the book i could i could kind of thread these themes through. This is relevant. This all feeds in. Just so many breaks. You need to give yourself a break, Tom.

You need to record the Dum Dum Club. You need to give your brain a break and do Dum Dum. I mean, the constant monologue of going, I really should do that thing I need to do, and then your brain going, well, you can't work when you're not happy. that thing I need to do and then your brain going, well, you can't work when you're not happy. And like the fact that I'm in charge of me is a terrible setup because I wish someone else was in charge of me

because like I'm very lenient to me. I've got a bit of a soft spot, I'll be honest. I've got a huge soft spot for myself. There's a bit of nepotism going on here. There's a fuckload of nepotism and narcissism going on. So when I go, you know what? I think I need to buy some mountain bike pedals. I think you do too.

I think that's what's stopping you from being happy. And then once you've bought those, you'll be happy and you can do some amazing work. And it turns out it wasn't what I needed. I needed shorts. So now i've got to look for those tom can i can i be in your book can you can i be a character in your book yeah you're one of the massive societal problems

just a big photo of him in the little glossy picture insert in the middle of the book yeah I want to be can I be a footnote can I be a footnote somewhere yeah sure

you can be in there yeah nice promise nice promise for a book that hasn't been written and it's like sure man

you can fuck I don't know you can be the pop up section start with the footnotes start with the footnotes and work backwards from there. Exactly.

Work out the shit you want to have really tiny on the bottom of the page and then the bigger words will flow from there. Yeah, reverse engineer why I'm in your book. There's an idea. Right there. Speaking of Game of Thrones, this is like my Winds of Winter shit I've been working on for fucking ages. It's never going to be finished.

We literally have just come back to, like, my wife's never watched Game of Thrones, so we're on, you know, season one, episode two tonight. Like, I'm starting again. And there's kind of like a thrill in that too because you're like, oh, that's really taken away the question of what are we going to watch because it's like that is a huge amount in the torpedo tubes now for the next month or two.

But what are you guys watching like is anything have you gone back to anything apart from game of thrones or have you discovered anything great uh i'm look i i'm i'm very rare with watching shows my wife goes to bed and watches shows and i just can't be bothered getting into it but having said this i've said this on the show i'm like what are you wasting your time watching kardashians and watching real housewives whereas i'm watching an hour or two of either webcams from thailand or now amateur amateur vloggers that are walking around different beaches going oh the water's pretty blue at this one let's check out the next beach yeah pretty blue here as well oh all the hotels are closed why don't i check this hotel yeah that one's

closed as well and i'm like i can't get enough Why don't I check this hotel? Yeah, that one's closed as well. And I'm like, I can't get enough, to be honest. I just keep going back to the well. Okay, well, I'll float that with my wife, but I don't know. I may need a backup. There's a lot to binge. You're in there for a lot. If you make the call, if you put the first toe in the

water, you're there for quite a while. It's not one of these things that takes a while to build up. It's as good as it's going to get from minute one of episode one. There's no slow burn. Honestly, I was talking to a friend of the show, Milan, our friend Milan, the other day, and I've got someone hooked on it now because I've now got Milan ringing me and saying,

oh, I got three hours into that vlog you recommended to me and we're now having full adult conversations about him going, what did you think about that sandwich he was eating on that episode last week? I was like, yeah, I would have bought one of those sandwiches. If we ever go back to Thailand, we should go and get one of those sandwiches. They look pretty good.

Hamish, in answer to your question, the Melbourne International Film Festival has been on and they've pivoted their whole program to being on like on demand

online so we were watching a few films from that and then Saturday we'd rented one and we're about

halfway through it this very intense like Danish film and unbeknownst to my girlfriend I had eaten a fair amount of weed butter late in the afternoon that then started kicking in midway through this like intense thriller and i could not focus on the movie anymore so i made her turn it off and so

we could put on the ali g movie and it was yeah some big chats had to be had in this house on Sunday morning about my conduct and about my insistence on watching a movie that is, with the passage of time, very homophobic now. Lots of... She'd never seen it. And, yeah, I think she wishes that things had stayed that way because I think she had a great time watching this one. Just with anything with edibles, it's all about timing.

Absolutely. It's all about everyone on the train having the same number of tickets for the train. Otherwise, the carriages can separate. Me not only slapping my own thigh but slapping her leg, just going like, God, it's good stuff, isn't it? He calls the kid a batty boy oh yes when when you like you know talking about like you know like hit comedies

of the thousands that are that are still hanging around i mean i don't know if you guys i don't know if this is out or not but i saw an ad online the other day for like jackass's new movie like jackass like they're going again and like, like, they're old dudes now. They're, like, 50. And my internal model, I was like, oh, man, guys, fuck. Okay, like, you were heroes to us 20 years ago, but really, like, you're still doing this? Then, like, two sketches in, I was like,

this is pretty fucking funny. I will watch this. Absolutely. This is good, guys. Good to have you back. Several conversations about, I hope we're allowed out of the house soon and Jackass is in the cinema. There's been several conversations among comedians.

I just was so ready to just be like, oh, you sad. I want a sad, sad cash grab. And they look good. They still got it. They still got it. From the trailer, I'm like, I'm pretty excited about this yeah yeah yeah it's

like oh despite the fact they've got they're a bit graying at the temples they can still get kicked in the head by a horse with the best of them so much like so i actually think it's like way more impressive if you're a 50 year old like just knowing how sore i am as a 39 year old if you're a 50 year old just with the aches and pains life, like just doing normal stuff is jackass enough for me. Like picking up a kid with one arm without really bending your knees, like that's fucking impressive. Hey, before we wrap up, I just want to bring up one last thing quickly. Hamish, we talked about this last week, but I have,

speaking of Cameo before, I have a Cameo account that's called The Bad Impressionist where my angle is that I do bad impressions for people. So, you know, I don't really have to feel too dodgy about it. Yeah, yeah, exactly. You only feel pressure if you're actually nailing it. Yeah, exactly. Sometimes literally I'll get halfway through one and go, I've got to start this again because I'm doing it too well

and I don't want to be taken to the consumer watchdog. This possibly could be the best Frank Spencer anyone's ever done. I'd better start again. But, yeah, I've got a couple of them to get through. So I thought I'd – I've actually gotten a couple of good ones just in the last 24 hours. So I thought I haven't sent these off yet. I could kind of practice them and maybe get some feedback.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, love it. Great. What do you think? Is the idea here that you're going to do the impression that I have to guess who it is or who it isn't? Oh, I think we'll be here all day and we've already gone over time. I think I'll –

All right, you go. You tell me who it is and I'll just tell you if you failed adequately. Yeah. Okay. All right. All right. All right. So this one, I quite like this one.

This is Pauline Hanson giving a speech after she's just joined the Greens. Okay. Okay. Yeah. This is a request that someone had. Okay. Yeah. And did I mention that the account is called The Bad Impressionist?

Oh, right, right. So, yeah, don't. So this is the best you can possibly do? This is the best I can possibly do, yeah. This is me trying at 110% capacity, okay. Good to know. All right. All right. I don't like it.

I don't like it that the climate change is happening and it's really bad. And, yes, that's what I have to say to climate change is that I don't like it. What do you think? Pauline Hanson having destroyed the Greens, and that's her speech. That's pretty good. She's pro-climate. Like, you know, pretty good in the sense that, you know,

well, it's pretty good in whichever way you want to take it. That's the beauty of this segment. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's like it's accurate accurate but i didn't really enjoy it so yeah it's like you've done a good job either way i guess you've played you've absolutely positioned yourself marvelously here because like no matter how badly we tried to burn you but it's a win no it's still i mean i i set up last week that i was going to have a crack at these this week

before we knew that you were going to be on the show, Hamish. And I think it'll be good in this household now that there's someone that has a more embarrassing interaction with you over my girlfriend lining up at the shopping centre. This is really just, this is my gift for her. It's like you don't have to feel. This is like just roll up, roll up and watch a man step over an extraordinarily low bar.

Yeah, this is at the circus. This is a new act called The Bearded Man. I guess he does what it says on the box. This is me auditioning for that new Channel 10 show. Thank God you're here, but now can you please fuck off because you're ruining the box. This is me auditioning for that new Channel 10 show. Thank God you're here but now can you please fuck off because

you're ruining the party. And do you have any more this week? Who else have we got? Alright, I've got one more. I've got one more that I wanted to run by the panel

and then we'll wrap it up. This one I quite like. This is Dame Edna asking Carl Chandler for a spot at Spleen. Oh, okay. This is good. I like this. I like this. This is particularly inspired. I could perhaps do an impression of Carl Chandler for a spot at Spleen. Oh, okay. This is good. I like this.

I like this. This is particularly inspired. I could perhaps do an impression of Carl Chandler answering Dame Edna. Oh, yeah, okay. Let's do it. Okay, let's do an act out. All right. I think I've got it in me.

So I'm walking into Spleen. Here we go. Hello, Possum. Just wondering if I can have a ten-minute spot here next week. Hi, Dame Edna. No, sorry, we're all out. We've already got people. We've just filled the last spot.

He's got a really good bit. Apparently it's Rodney Rood's bit, but it's killer, and he's taken the last spot, unfortunately. Sorry, Dame. Come back next week. Okay, that's fine. What about headlining basement comedy this Saturday? I'm free for that.

I can do 45 minutes there. Are there any openings? No, unfortunately, we've got Tom Ballard. He's been working on his – he's launching his new book that he's written. So, yeah, that's all for unfortunately. Oh, it's a reading. Yeah. With a 19-minute footnote.

Yeah. With a 19-minute footnote. Yeah. This is – by the way, I think I've mentioned this on the podcast before, but before we run out, the last literal job, office job I had, I just started comedy and I think I've said this on the show before, but I just started comedy and we went to the Christmas party and we were in a basement of a winery and they said, oh, we're going to have a bit of comedy

and everyone turned around to look at me and I was like, wow, I'm just going to get impromptu asked up to do stand-up. And I was about, I don't know, six months or nine months in or something and they're just going to spring it on me like this. And what they did instead, they didn't introduce me to the stage. They introduced a famous sports writer to the stage.

Now, this sports writer did not work for the company that I worked for. He had asked the company if he could deliberately come along and do a comedy spot. And he was impersonating Dame Edna. And he'd come along to the work Christmas party and brought his own Dame Edna glasses. And then hopped on stage in front of a company that was mainly 20 to 30 year olds. And then did an impression of Dame Edna. Many of which people had never heard of Dame Edna.

And then did about five minutes to absolute silence, which included this line, how come they can put a man on the moon, but they can't put a man on Martina Navratilova? Of which no one had heard of Martina Navratilova at this gig either, at this gig, at this Christmas party. And then literally like three, four minutes in, the entire party turned to me and went,

can you do some comedy instead of this? Is this the kind of thing you're going off and doing on Friday and Sunday nights? Is this the kind of shit you're going to leave the corporate world for? Yeah, but then maybe I possibly got one of the biggest laughs of my entire career because then i got to follow that i got to follow i got to step over the lowest bar of all time and i got to walk on not be a 60 year old man in funny glasses and not do a homophobic joke and just do anything and they're like fucking hell you've saved the Christmas party. I know. What, I mean, doing, like, where do we sit here,

like, ethically on going, no, I'm doing an impression of a famous comedian. Like, you can't cover comedy. Yeah. You're just doing the act. You're just doing the act? Like, you guys, hey, everybody, you guys like uh you guys like seinfeld all right we're gonna good he's a great cover he's doing a lot of does a lot of seinfeld covers bring him

out come on rodney broods in there he's memorized them all yeah there was that guy for a while that would do the um that would do all the comedy festivals as an andrew dice clay impersonator do you remember him he's like every year just turning up doing a dice impression it's like that's being a being a guy that looks and sounds like someone who's like not quite still massive, you know what I mean? Like you can't even really capitalise all that well. When I first started, there was a guy that had a routine that would go like this.

It would go, oh, I remember when you were a kid and you'd get out the delirious VHS and you'd watch Eddie Murphy's comedy special and it would go a little bit like this. Hugh doing the material and he would do so much of it that you would forget the context of it and you'd just be watching Eddie Murphy's

material for a while and then he'd sort of at some stage finish and go, yeah, wasn't it funny back then when you'd do that and you'd go, oh, fuck, that's right. We're back to this guy again. We're not just... Isn't Eddie Murphy on stage a 45 year old man with a crew cut

a white guy I mean it's not a bad move it's just starting the set with like three solid covers and everyone's in the mood although it's a pretty

hard gear change to then go anyway so I was at the nursery on the weekend this is not quite as good as

the delirious stuff. But also, you're also like a 40-year-old white man getting up there going, I'll warm them up with a bit of, don't remember when Eddie Murphy said this, cue N-bomb, cue homophobic material. It's like, dude, I don't think you're pulling it off without the red leather jacket.

I don't think you've quite got this one, actually. And it being the 80s, when you're allowed to say stuff about gay men having AIDS on their lips. All right, we'd better wrap it up for another week on the Little Dumb Dumb Club. Hamish, Blake, Tom Ballard, thank you very much for joining us. Totally a pleasure, boys. Hamish, have you got things you'd like to plug?

Oh, I mean, as always, just everyone get out there and do your very best. Don't worry about what I'm doing. Just live your life. Get Tom's book. Get Tom's book. Pre-order it. Pre-order it.

Yep. Yep. I feel bad promoting anything now. I feel like I should be giving an inspirational message about life. But yeah, get my book. You can't pre-order it yet. I'll let everyone know when I finish writing it. You can at HamishBlakesEarlyBooks.com.

There we go. I'm selling futures. What else have you got? What else is coming down the pipeline? What have we got? We've got Barack. We've got Obama's follow-up. I'm selling futures on.

We've got another Max Walker book maybe coming out. Oh, really? Is this one of those cover comedians where it's a new person who's taken over Max Walker's? Right. So, yeah, another one. How to hypnotise Max Walker into being alive again. Okay.

Right. You can get a $2 non-refundable coupon on that. Gets you in front of the queue. Yeah, there's a lot of stuff there. Great, great. All right, guys. Well, thanks very much for listening and we'll see you next time. See you in a minute.

See you in a minute. And they've done it again. We're all just in Hamish Blake's world. What a machine. What a content machine. Hasn't been on a studio for quite some time. In fact, I think the only time he's done a non-live episode before was when we used to just have the one guest on.

So I had to email him and go, by the way, don't think of this as like a rude thing, like we doubt your abilities or anything like that, but we now have two guests in the studio. Usually we do. It was a shame Ballard couldn't make it to this episode, but yeah. Yes. Great stuff.

Great stuff. Yeah, no, what a lovely man Hamish is to give his time up to talk to us and got the vibe that he hasn't really talked to anyone today or for a few days, so he was absolutely off the leash. Well, he did say, let me quote him directly in this email he just sent me with his audio file on it. Great fun as always. I think I really needed that laugh.

So, yep. Yeah. email he just sent me of with his audio file on it great fun as always i think i really needed that laugh so yep yeah bouncing off the walls of what we assume was the corridor of his house yes certainly looked like it on zoom and also i liked how he was sort of like yeah i'm a bit of a you know i'm setting the mood in my house that's my job i'm sort of a cheerleader i'm like well you're actually doing it in this episode i think the rest of us were a bit like, oh, no, good to see the funniest man in Australia. Absolutely. Light it up.

Yeah. So, thank you very much to Hamish and to Ballard for, Ballard, certainly looking a bit more

on the opposite end of the spectrum today, looking like having a bit of a down of a day from the look of it. Well, what do you do? That's the world we're in at the moment. We're up, we're down The spectrum today looking like having a bit of a down of a day from the look of it. Well, what do you do?

That's the world we're in at the moment. We're up, we're down. And part of the joy of booking guests for these episodes is you just don't know what kind of day you're going to get someone on. There's not a great deal you can do about it. Ballard having writer's block and talker's block today. All right, how many more has he got up this late? No, making him up now no i love ballard he's great i love him because he's one of the rare the rare comedians that will actually listen back to this so i love you i will get a very stern insulting message off the back of this so love you love you timmy

billiards um yeah i was going to try and uh my girlfriend had to go out and do errands in the middle of that episode, but I was going to try and stitch her up and get her in the room in front of a little English black. Oh, yeah. Damn it. Yeah, totally, totally. Very fun. Thanks to everyone for listening and thanks to everyone who's bought a ticket to this weekend. If you're listening to this hot off the audio presses, our Zoom show, as the people in the little Dumlin Club

said at the top of the show, we have got a live Zoom show this Saturday night, which is the 28th of August, I believe, 8pm Eastern Standard Time in Australia. Plenty of international listeners have bought tickets for this as well. Plenty of people that have got better shit to do have got tickets to this in other states, in Western Australia, South Australia, Queensland. It's primarily for those of us that are locked down.

If you losers out there have got nothing better to do on your dance card on a Saturday, feel absolutely free to muck in with us and let us know what it's like out in the real world. with us and let us know what it's like out in the real world. But for you dickheads with absolutely nothing to do in New South Wales and in Victoria, Australia, please let us be your Saturday night for a very small fee. Get along to littledunlunclub.com. We're going to have heaps of fun. It'll be – yeah, man, these were fucking great last year.

So I really enjoyed them. So hopefully we have another one. I think I've mentally blocked them out, but, uh, yeah, I hear. Really? I hear good reports back from the people that watch them. And, uh, yeah, like you said, up the top, a, um, a format that we thought we had left behind, but a format that we're very fortunate to have access to, to be able to come crawling back to the medium of the Zoom live show. The first Zoom live show that will be taking place

in the new man cave in my new house. So very excited about that. People can get a glimpse of the room that I've been spending just hours out of my weekend, just fucking living in here at the moment. Feels good. Well, to be fair, recently you've been uploading our episodes,

our Zoom episodes to YouTube. So if you want to get along to youtube.com slash little dum-dum club, you can see the inside of both of our little, well, it's not your bedroom, is it? It's your little man cave. This is my bedroom. So yeah, if you're a big youtube uh frequenter go along and hit subscribe

to our little channel you'll be seeing a bunch of our episodes lately that we've been recording while we're while we're stuck in this this position we might as well create even more content so get along sign up there but um yeah go and get your tickets at littledumblubclub.com uh to our zoom show this weekend. Yeah, some great little ideas planned for it already. It's a great little excuse to use the visual medium, not just the audio medium. Yeah.

People don't realise a lot of us, we're doing a lot of visual slapstick gags right now, but it's wasted on you guys because you can't see it. Yeah. I just remember the very strange setup of doing one of these last year where it was like late afternoon, go for a run, then hit the bottle shop and get a few brews and just get ready to just be staring into the computer by myself for a couple of hours.

Like doing all this like very like active stuff in preparation of just sitting in front of the computer. It's a very strange setup. But yeah, I'll get a little cooler bag in here, get my little esky going, a few drinks during the show. That'll be kind of nice. Yeah. Can't wait to get absolutely blind drunk whilst doing it,

but also keeping my voice down so as to not wake my child. So a great combo of getting absolutely loose but quiet yeah yeah my girlfriend offered to help out with it so i'm trying to think of things that i could uh get her to do while i'm on great i'm on mic and on camera um play drums in the background well i was thinking about i don't really i think there is a way i can do it but i i could yeah i've got to work out if i can like run them in through the computer and have the sound actually come through the through the zoom show oh yeah so yeah yeah if i can find out a way to do that maybe i could man if you can do karaoke drums on

it that'd be great if you just like get get a song without the drums on it and then you just play along to it that'd be yeah yeah well i yeah it's it's all dependent on me being able to get the sound from them into the computer to then be able to be heard over zoom but i'll um yeah i'll have to dig out the old instruction manual and work out how to do it also for people who didn't watch any of them last year just a reminder that they are non-canon uh episodes so it's not really it's you know we don't put it out on a wednesday it's not like this you're not going to hear the audio for free so if you want to be part of it if you want to enjoy

this show you do have to watch it live like none of those episodes came out on the free feed last year afterwards so yeah

it's just a nice little in the moment experience it's not like a normal live show where you can be sitting in Adelaide going well I'm not

going to fucking buy a ticket to this I can just listen to it later no you can't. Stuff that happens in them has no bearing over like the rest of like the episodes that go up on the free feed. Like we were, we're both gay in the Zoom episodes that we've done in the past,

for example. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a lot of crimes we commit because we're in international waters. Yes. Basically. So, yeah, we get away with quite a lot. So if you've always wanted us to murder a man or bum each other, get on to the Zoom episode.

Yeah, so that's happening once again this Saturday, August the 28th, 8 p.m. Melbourne time, littledumbdumbclub.com. Yeah, get yourself a ticket. Get that laptop rigged up to the TV, get a pizza, get some brews, and yeah, party down with us. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Exciting stuff. That'll be great. All right, lovely.

We have got, what else? Any other little errands we've got? Has Bernie kicked a big one? No, no. Oh, yeah,? Has Bernie kicked a big one? No. Oh, yeah, yeah. Bernie kicked a big one. Yes.

Tick. Let's see. Gibbo, talking Gibbo. No time for talking Gibbo this week. Yep. Yeah, she hasn't ripped anyone off this week. So, yeah, no updates. We'll find something. Rare slow week for her.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. When you're in lockdown, yeah, it updates. Rare slow week for her. Yeah, yeah, yeah. When you're in lockdown, yeah, it's hard to – she's getting writer's block as well. She's losing inspiration. She hasn't got any ideas for new scams or new diseases that she has that she doesn't really have. So yeah, she's like the rest of us. I think lockdowns I think are a pretty good time for scams, aren't they?

Aren't there, like, heaps more that pop up that are, like, I'd imagine, you know, being texted a link that's, like, click here to get your vaccine appointment, like that kind of thing as a format. I can see there being. Right. I can see there being. I mean, if she's not scamming people, she's not trying hard enough.

There's a lot of fear out there at the moment. There's a lot going on. There's a lot of stuff that you could the moment. There's a lot going on. There's a lot of stuff that you could attach yourself onto and scam people. There is a lot. Look, this is local news. In Melbourne this week, where we live, there was a...

We're in lockdown. We can't... There's various rules to lockdown, all that sort of stuff. There was a protest by a lot of fucking dead shits, anti-lockdowners, like I talked about in the main app. Big protests. Now, they reported on it online, obviously.

There was an article about it online. And I saw someone I know quite well in the comments of it. Okay. So the article was about lockdown, about the big protest and about, you know, it was obviously, it was like a negative article. And the comment of the person that I knew said something along the lines of this. Yeah, this is no good. You shouldn't do it that way.

There should be a protest for lockdown that we can just do at home. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I don't know if that's really a protest then, is it? Yeah. If you're protesting being at home by being at home, I think that's more the opposite. I think that's just going along with it. Well, then it turns into one of those, like,

did you see that Facebook event for, like, going out onto your front porch and screaming into the air at 7pm last Friday or whatever it was? Oh, really? That's what a protest at home is. It's almost more harebrained than the actual going into the city and having a placard. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know.

We were out getting some takeaway and my girlfriend when we got home was like, oh, we missed the – I wanted to go outside and like see if people were doing it. It's like that just reeks of like you'd go out and you'd be counting down like 6.59, 59 seconds and then just – and then just like no one else in the street is doing it. It's just you being a psycho by yourself. It's just you being a psycho by yourself. Yeah, you waiting to see, well, I'm not going to scream if no one else screams, and just a bunch of people on their footsteps looking around going, was that something? Yeah. Was that something?

Should we go now or is it too late? Are we going to do this or not? Yeah, just at 7.30 like, all right, I'm feeling confident enough now to rip one of these out. I think I'd feel pretty good about getting this done. Or you screaming and then hearing nothing back. That'd be depressing. Absolutely.

You've been brave enough to do it and then everyone else, no one else in your street is on Facebook. They just call the cops on you. Or, yeah, I should go back onto that event and see how many people have clicked maybe attending. It's like the most low-rent commitment for something that only requires you to open the front door. I want to leave my options open for Friday night. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I might be having a conversation with my housemate. Yeah, I might be on the tour when 7pm rolls around. I might be taking a shit.

I don't want to lock myself into being out on the front porch. But yeah, we're going to hold Talkin' Gibbo over for another week. But let's get into the Patreon. Patreon.com slash LittleDumbDumbClub. People can get two bonus episodes every week. Lots of great ones of them coming out lately. We did a special little segment with Greg Larson. We've also done the History of Sydney Comedy,

parts one and two with Cameron James. That's now the third installment of them we've done. We've done a Melbourne one. We've done a Perth one as well. Lots of libelous stuff behind the paywall. Exactly. Lots of people signing up and getting on off the back of that. Not so much history as just bitching about people in comedy.

So very fun. Very fun. Less nostalgia of the past and more bitterness about the present. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Enough bitterness about the past as well. Yeah, yeah, true. But yeah, hey, Patreon supporters, more important than ever, obviously, because of – look, selfishly for us, you know, we're like most entertainers,

we're most comedians in that our on-stage revenue has been severely cut. So the people who are signing up to Patreon for us are very, very much appreciated. You are the lifeblood of this show monetarily, that's for sure. So appreciate all the people who have been a bunch, sign up lately. Thank you. Welcome aboard to you guys. And thank you to the Hall of Famers that have been there since the start

or the middle or, I don't know, four weeks ago. Absolutely. So appreciated. More of you, I haven't asked your opinion. This is not the official opinion of the Little Dumb Dumb Club. I've included this with you so I can't speak on behalf of the podcast. But personally, the more of you, the better, in my humble opinion. I'm still working out where I land on that.

Okay. I don't really. I was never really good at maths in high school, so I'm still trying to. So you don't know if more is better than less. Yeah, I'm just going to need a few more days to work it out. I can't do this quickly enough in my head. But there's a big whiteboard in the living room at the moment that's got a beautiful mind style,

just like numbers upon numbers, just etched all over it. As you always say, you'll do your own research, Tommy. So that's fair. I respect that. Yeah. Okay, well, let's crack in. Thank you very much to everyone who subscribes. In particular, this week I'm going to read out a small handful,

a big handful, who knows? We'll see how much time we've got. Let's crack out the UTA, the Unplanned Title Alternator. Let's get some random names of subscribers out here and immortalise them forever with our teeth and tongues and voice. First cab off the rank. Thank you very much to Patreon subscriber Kane Conway. K-A-Y-N-E.

Conway. Kane. Kane. Kane Conway. Which I can't help but read as Kanye. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Kanye Conway.

Fuck, that would be a name. You can't help but read it as Kanye. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Kanye Conway. Fuck, that would be a name. You can't help but read it as Kanye. Yeah. I always get this mixed up. Do you say it Kanye or Kanye? It's Kanye. Kanye. Kanye.

Kanye. Yeah, right. He doesn't really come up much in conversation for me, I'll be honest. Not much chat around the house with the wife and the kid about this doctor release date and whether or not it's going to happen anytime soon. Not heaps. Actually, there probably should be considering how much Kardashians

my wife actually watches. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Kanye's part of the extended Kardashian universe. That's very true. Yeah. Unless Kanye gets over to Copenhagen soon and walks through the background of a vlog that I'm watching, he's not coming off my lips too often.

It could happen. What's your wife binging at the moment? What's her go-to? Well, we have just started watching off your and a few other people's recommendation. It's good when we find something to watch together, which is, what is it, The Orchid Show? What's it called? The White Lotus.

White Lotus, not Orchid. Lotus, White Lotus. Can I get anything else mispronounced or wrong? You are just pop-culturally just adrift at the moment. Yeah. Yeah. And then we watch a bit of Marty Mouse. Is that what his name is?

Yeah. I love the idea of this, like a pop culture reviewer. I don't keep up with it. A pop culture reviewer who's got really eloquent, like big thoughts about stuff. Like he's really renowned for like his takes on culture, but he's just got a shocking memory, and he absolutely refuses to look up the name of anything he's reviewing.

So he's just like he can make you think about a movie in a really beautiful, eloquent way that you didn't even really consider while you were watching it. But he's also like, fuck, it's, I don't know, the robot. Old mate. The tin. The fucking space cunt. Fuck, the tinny, the tiny, the terminal, the Terminator.

The Terminator, that's it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, he, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, he's like, I'm returning, fuckheads. It's like, yeah, you know when he says that at the end? Yeah, yeah, yeah. His editor just pleading him, like, can you just look up the names of these things? I don't know why you're having to, like, write out your thought process in the review.

You are just burning words. You have a real gift for cultural analysis. But for the love of God, like, just ask someone what the fucking movie is called. Yeah. Then at the end, yeah, it was good. Three or six stars. Fucking I don't know. Yeah.

Three of whatever they're called. The fucking plates. I don't know. Yeah. Whatever. Yeah. Connors. But you're on White Lotus.

You're on White Lotus you're on White Lotus at the moment in the in the Chandler yeah yeah halfway through that at the moment

so yeah we're watching whenever I'll only I only agree to watch something

so don't say your name's always like let's watch let's have a movie or a TV show that we're watching

together but she'll watch anything as stated before as evident by me being in the same house her standards aren't too high whereas i i'm more like no i'm only sitting down watching something if i'm actually into it whereas she'll she'll you just turn something on and she's like fine i just need to chill out de-stress whatever's whatever's on i'll watch nothing too hard actually

so she's uh we just finished watching um what's it called, Mr. Inbetween. Yep. So she's, I don't know, even that's too much work for her. But yeah, there's people getting killed. She goes, I'm never watching this show again. And then the next night, the next night's like, well, I've got to watch something. Even if it's something that I don't particularly like, I guess we're watching. That's the show you want to watch, so I we're watching it how's she going with white lotus

is she enjoying that no uh well put it put it this way i think this speaks to how very average a show that she usually watches she just watches these brain dead shows yep that she's watching white lotus and going gee this is a weird show. I'm like, well, it's actually not that weird. It's, sure, it's weirder than a bunch of fucking idiots that live in the same house with their stage mum and one of them marries Kanye West, but yeah. It's funny.

I had a few friends say the same thing. It's like, yeah, I watched F1. It's pretty weird. It's like, I'd grant that there's definitely like an ominous tone to it, like by design, the way the show is set up. It's like, oh, I watched F1. It's pretty weird. It's like I'd grant that there's definitely like an ominous tone to it, like by design, the way the show is set up. It's like, oh, what's going to happen here? But I wouldn't say it's – yeah, it's like a bunch of strangers in a resort.

It's not like Eric Andre or anything like that. But, yeah, you're right. I think that speaks to – that doesn't really say anything about the show. What that says more about is the other kinds of shows that the person is watching. Yeah. It is funny because it is a show that I'm watching because it is a like a resort in hawaii isn't it that's where it's based and uh so my wife is always like hey let's watch a show together and i'm like no no i've got better stuff to do you know if you want to watch this dog shit i'll sit out in the lounge room and do work or watch something else and um but with this thing

it's like because it's set in a Hawaiian resort, now it's like I finally agree to it. I'm sitting there watching it. And the whole time, of course, I'm just nudging her going, hey, that looks a bit like a resort in Thailand we went to. Fuck it now. Just shut up and get into it. Just watch the fucking show.

Yeah, they're doing the very Thai activity of eating breakfast near a palm tree. This is absolutely classic Koh Samui stuff. Why didn't they just film the show there at Ozo? There's a buffet. There's a pool. Yeah. Close enough for me.

I'm like, I love this show. This is awesome. But yeah, Kanye Conway, Kane Conway. Yeah, this is a strange name. It's taken us a while to get back around to it. But yeah, this is... I do like Kanye Conway. That, this is a strange name. It's taken us a while to get back around to it. But yeah, this is... I do like Kanye Conway. That's a good name.

That's a really good name. Yeah. And all he has to do is swap two letters around in his first name and he's got the name. All he has to do is just have the wrong different name and it would be the thing that we're saying. Yeah, all he has to do is change his name to Mr. Big Dick, and that's a pretty funny name as well.

All of a sudden, that's a really funny name. Yeah, Mr. Big Dick. Mr. Big Dick Conway. Yeah. Yeah. Well, thanks, Kanye. Thank you very much to Patreon subscriber Sally Morell. Morell. Morell.

Okay. Okay. What do you think of Sally? Yeah, well, I was going to say, what if you went out with a girl called Sally? I'm into it. It's a very old school name. It is pretty old school. Do you think there's many of them around these days?

Yeah, I'm trying to think of how many Sallys I've met. There's not heaps. Mustang? Yeah, I'm trying to think of how many Sally's I've met. There's not heaps. Mustang? Yeah, I've never met her. Long Tall. Long Tall Sally, never met her. Yep. Yeah, there's more Sally's in songs than there are in my life.

Yeah. Yeah, why is it such a popular song name, but you don't really meet any of them out there? I mean, my aunt calls them Sally. Yeah, there's a lot of Sallys in songs, but it's not a good enough name apparently for people to go, hey, let's name our kid after the song. I like that song.

Maybe the songs aren't good enough. That's maybe it. Yeah, I mean, it's like if you think, if you name your kid Sally, you're dooming them to a life of Mustang Sally. I mean, it was the first thing I thought of when this name got read out. I'll tell you what, Mustang Sally is going into, I think we talked about this years ago.

You said, I officially, you should delete the song Rock Around the Clock. It's no longer, like, valid. It's just a dumb song. It's a, yeah, it's a song that exists from before there were any other songs so like yeah i was at a wedding of people who were like around my age at the time so like mid-20s couple and the dj broke out a bit of rock around the clock and yes the old folks there were enjoying it but there's just no need to ever hear that song in a public setting ever again. Well, I'm putting Mustang Sally into the same basket.

I am officially absolutely fucking over that song. I never want to hear it again in my life. I don't think I've heard Mustang Sally all that much, I have to say. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy to back it. I'm happy to have it stricken from the record. You're happy to co-sign this? I certainly wouldn't defend it. I'm happy to back it. I'm happy to have it stricken from the record. You're happy to co-sign this? I certainly wouldn't defend it. I certainly wouldn't be here going like, no, we definitely should still have it.

But I don't feel like I've really reached saturation point with it yet. Even though, yes, it is very much cut from the exact same cloth as Rock Around the Clock. I mean, my main issue... Between weddings, between accidentally having it on a bit of a boring radio station, being stuck in a car, between it being trotted out as the background music on boring movies, it's like, it's that much in the world. I already don't rate it that much as a song.

Now I'm fucking so bored by the amount of times i've had to hear it well do you think it'd be a thing where like when we when we when we are officially at the end of the pandemic and things have reopened again and lockdowns are a thing of the past that people will be like all those positions that you're saying where you've heard the song and that's contributed to you being off it none of them exist at the moment so do you think like all of a sudden like the most popular song will be rock around the Clock again because it just reminds you, it's like, well, I haven't been into any weddings, I haven't been in a cab that's had Gold FM on

and also like after the traumatic last two years, I'm just so smooth brain now that all I can handle is just a song about the face of the clock. Like if there was like a huge resurgence in the popularity of those songs post-pandemic. I could see that. Man, I never listened to the radio. I put the radio on the other day and it came on straight away. I was like, fuck, it's still there.

It's still the fucking same songs there. I mean, in slight defense of it, I will say like Mustang Sally, my biggest issue with Rock Around the Clock is just that it's not about anything. It's just about the clock. It's literally just a guy singing about the clock face it's the most like nothing subject mustang sally is at least it's a thing of like a guy like singing at and about a pretty woman that he's saying which conceptually what is it i i assume so i don't know i've never listened to it but conceptually it's got a lot more going it's got a million times more to it than Rock Around the Clock,

even though musically and in terms of how interesting it is, it's very dull. I would say, so I can't stand Mustang Sally, but having said that, I think if someone had the name Sally Mustang, I think that's a cool name. If you flip it, Mustang is a cool surname, and Sally I quite like as a first name yep sally mustang's pretty good yeah what's this song about mustang sally slow your mustang down uh you've been running all over town all you want to do is ride around so is it just literally just

going like this bitch in this car fucking all day driving around. Is it a girl called Sally and this guy's done a bit of old mate, like nicknaming going, oh, Sally who drives in a Mustang. Her name's Mustang Sally. Is that what's happening? Yeah. I kind of think it is. Well, I stand by that reasoning of calling someone something. I always find that funny.

Someone walks past with one leg and you just go, oh, Johnny One Leg. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Awesome. But I don't need to hear a song about it for all eternity. This verse here. I bought you a brand new Mustang, a 1965. Now you come around signifying a woman.

You don't want to let me ride. So he's bought her the Mustang. She's taken it. She's driving around. She's not letting him in the car. So he's just doing that Mustang. She's taken it. She's driving around. She's not letting him in the car. So he's just doing that salty thing of like, yeah, well, you're a fucking bitch anyway. Just written this like diss track about her. Right. Which I mean is kind of fair.

He's saying he's got her the car. And then he's like, can I go for a ride? And she's like, nah. That's kind of, I guess that's kind of fair to be angry. Sure, but what a fucking just all-round dumb situation. I bought a car for a woman and now she just drives around and won't let me in the car. Off to the piano.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've got to fucking commit this to a soundtrack. Well, thanks, Mustang Sally. Yeah. Thanks. Yeah, again, Sally. Good name. Yeah.

Mustang Sally Murrell. Thank you very much to Patreon subscriber Blake Fullwood. Fullwood? Yeah. F-U-L-L-W-O-O-D. Yeah, Fullwood. Wow. Have I ever said, has there ever been a name on this show that I've had to say the word double three times in a row when I've spelt their name out?

F-U-L-L-W-O-O-D. That's got to be a record on this show. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what do you think this guy's ancestors did? Because last week we had the subscriber Johnny Halfmongrel. Yes. So they probably date back further than this guy Fullwood. There was no semis in the Middle Ages, I don't think, in the family.

It was absolute red rockets back in the day. Yep, yep. Yeah. Absolutely erect and ready to go. absolute red rockets back in the day. Yep, yep. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely erect and ready to go and known for it. Known for it so much that they, Mustang Sally style, had to name someone after this action. Yeah, I mean, they're, you know,

presume maybe this is like goes back before people had clothing. So, you know, I presume maybe this goes back before people had clothing. So, you know, the head of this family, the original, the bottom of the family tree of this family, they're walking around just barred up constantly. And everyone else in the tribe, they're getting erections here and there, but they're not getting a full wood. They're getting like the... This guy could have been the first ever porn star because, you know, a lot of these guys sort of try to name themselves after their erections

or penises or whatever. You've got Peter North because his penis points north. You've got a bit of... There's a lot of porn stars that that are their names lend themselves to phallic phrases and stuff like that so this guy could have been the first ever i don't know 1700s this guy could have been the this family it could have been the first ever porn star in australia came over on the first fleet right so the first ever porn star it's like they're rooting someone and then next to them there's like someone just kind of chiseling the scene onto a cave wall yeah yeah or like writing a sonnet about it just going this

has got to be captured for all eternity yeah passing around but going up the bush and reciting the the porno sonnet yeah yeah like some guy some, some 14-year-old locking himself in the bathroom and then just reading a poem while he's jerking his dick. Yeah. Yeah. That's pretty good stuff, putting your ear up to the glory hole and just having it read to you. Yep.

Yeah, full wood. Full wood. Fullwood. It's good. I like it. So, hang on. And I know it sounds like I'm setting you up for something, but I promise I'm not. The end of the name is Double D?

No. Oh. Double L, Double U, Double O, and then just a single D, which is a bit of a shame. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Could have gone with the Double the double d so it's

always welcome obviously well you know what else is going to give you a full word then a couple of double d's oh it makes there we go makes more sense than anything else in this godforsaken world there we go blake would please change your imagine blake forward then going that's great that's actually really funny that's perfect going into into the deed poll office or whatever, just change. I'd like to change my name. What would you like to change it to? Just the same name but with an extra D on the end? Yeah, you've got it written down.

They're like, oh, no, sorry, I think you've written down what your name already is. No, no, look a bit closer. I'm just adding one letter to the end of it. Yeah. And why are you doing that? It's just so I can have double Ds on the end of it. Yep. And why are you doing that? It's just so I can have double Ds on the end of my name. Oh, no. Then being like, why are you doing this?

And you're like, listen to this. And then you put the headphones on them and just play this audio. Right, right. Yeah. Yeah. And it's like, hang on. Why isn't he pronouncing Kanye West properly? No, no, no.

Skip forward. Skip forward. I've gone too far. It's after that. Yeah, yeah? No, no, no. Skip forward. Skip forward. It's after that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, thanks, Mr. Fullwood. Thanks, Fullwood. I'm just pronouncing the double Ds at the end of your name. Yeah.

Yeah. Thank you very much to Patreon subscriber Hayley Belstead. Belstead? Yeah. What a name. Never heard of it. B-E-L-S-T-A-D. S-T-E-A-D.

Sorry. B-E-L-S-T-E-A-D. Yeah. Okay. What do you think of Hayley? Hayley's good. Hayley's good. Hayley's fine. Hayley's like one of those very nice but harmless.

It makes me think of a nice but harmless girl. Really? Well, not that I'm thinking of Sally and thinking that's a harmful girl. Yeah. Yeah, just a, oh, yeah, she's fine, Hay fine hayley yeah she won't cause any trouble she's she's okay she's not gonna break any records but she's also not gonna you know shit under the table at my party so i have it in my head as like if i was writing a teen comedy and i needed like a high school comedy and i needed like a go-to name for one of the hot girls

i think hayley oh really as a name hayley would be in the mix yeah for sure no i'd have her as the the plain jane that then becomes you know becomes something takes the glasses off and lets the hair out and then all of a sudden is not even that good giving you a full maybe maybe like the the the friend of the the hottie maybe in the teen comedy. Okay. Yeah, okay. All right. That's fine. That's absolutely fine. But she's not going to get the hug.

No. Well, Hayley, let us know which one you are if you're – Yeah, what are you? If you're a hot girl or if you're a plain friend of a hot girl. Yeah. If you – Hayley, let us know if you're in the teen movie, when you go into the locker rooms, are we then going, whoa, is there going to be a shower scene?

Or are we going, oh, okay. Like we're just not even thinking that way at all. It's not even on the cards. Not on the table. Yeah. Which one are you? Which one are you in the, what would the name of the teen comedy

that Hayley Belstead would be in? Full Wood, surely. Oh, Full Wood. Full Wood. Yeah. No, I was thinking – because I was thinking, you know what, this is more of like your smutty sort of teen school sort of comedy, romantic comedy, no class.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'd love there to be a good new, like, just dumb, raunchy comedy film. It feels like they really dropped out of favour a little while ago. But I would love – I re-watched Superbad like two weeks ago. It's just a fun movie, just a film in that vein. I haven't seen a good one in a while. Do you think that the smutty teen comedies that, you know, Fun movie. Just a film in that vein. I haven't seen a good one in a while. Do you think that the smutty teen comedies that, you know,

have sort of gone out of vogue and favour because there's no, you know, when we were kids or whatever, you would probably watch one of them just in case there was boobs in it. But now it's like it's competing with the internet. You're right. You can find boobs wherever you want. Yeah, the exchange student getting changed in american pie was like the closest thing that you could get to a porno when i was yeah when i was a kid when that came out so yeah now unless you're just going absolutely full frontal but even then

it's not going to be as good as just getting on the old red tube. Yeah, maybe that's it. Yeah, absolutely. Maybe the porno industry killed the raunchy teen comedy. Yeah, yeah. Well, not porno industry, but like, you know, the free tube sites, I guess. Yeah, yeah. They've killed people paying for pornos. They've killed any chance of there being a reboot of American Pie. Yep. They've killed the legacy of Porky's reboot of american pie yep they've they've killed the

legacy of porkies yes um all of that stuff there was a um what if they rebooted porkies that would be good that would be good there was a guy in my school who would sell cd roms of like uh little porno files that he had downloaded um and like he was like one of the few kids at our school who had a cd burner so you paid him like 10 bucks and then he'd turn up the next day with just this like yeah cd that had this catalog of porno and it really ranged in quality of like he had a couple of really good like long scenes on there and then there were a couple that were just like 30 second like very grainy clearly just like previews from the days of like you know on the site you could log on and just like see a thing for free before you put your credit card in.

Just so blurry and grainy. But then there was like nearly half of it was just clips of nudity from films. So we had all these shots from like species and like the famous like basic instinct was in there and it's like you're really just boosting up the numbers with these. Like even at the age of like 14, we're going, this isn't cutting it. Like this isn't getting the job done. This doesn't count. If we could go and get, if we could access this from just walking

into Video Easy, you shouldn't be charging us for this on a CD, Ron. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This isn't the forbidden fruit. No. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. But Species. Well. I remember always thinking like I should watch the full thing of this because it was a pretty good run on that cd yeah she's like a i know

she's an alien that's a nude for like the whole thing because she's an alien she doesn't understand that she has to be wearing clothes i guess i you know what i once worked in a job where and this this is how long ago was this this This is probably, this is nearly 20 years ago. So think of the internet and how that all worked at that stage. I don't think I had the internet at home. And I think I was trying to download very small clips of porn at work. Wow. Yeah, yeah. download very small clips of porn at work and wow yeah yeah and i was and you know again it wasn't like now like you'd be lucky to download 20 a 20 second clip that would be a big effort yep and i

remember doing that a couple of times and being like oh it was such an effort to do i was like fuck this and then my boss coming in like a week later and going or you know a week or two later going yeah there's been these massive downloads you know in you know at at the job yeah and the job there was only there was only about five people that worked at this business they're like yeah we've been stung by our internet company all this extra money because we've been downloading too much stuff. And, yeah, it seemed like on this day, like two weeks ago, we downloaded all this extra stuff and it's really blown out the bill

and we're really tracking down. We're trying to track down why this happened. And I'm like, yeah, probably, oh, it's just probably one of those things. Yeah, it's just a glitch. Just, you know, what are you going to do now? do now it's done now you know what do you do i guess you just pay a big email accident yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah just one of those probably a surge probably a surge in the internet yeah and that's what's happened there so anyway and it and it went on and she's like and the boss was sort of like yeah we're gonna get to the bottom of it and she's like, and the boss was sort of like, yeah, we're going to get to the bottom of it. And I'm like freaking out just going, oh God.

And I'm like, honestly, right on the verge of going, fuck, okay, I just have to come clean. I just have to walk in and go, yeah, I don't have internet at home. And I really wanted to jerk off over the image of other people having sex on screen. Surely the most humiliating way of losing your job. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I'm like going, well, I guess the only thing you can do

is get on the front foot and go, at least that's 5% better. Me coming clean, me being a big enough, yeah, yeah, yeah. But, yeah, you're playing the odds there because, you know, maybe all you're doing by doing that is just ratting yourself out. Maybe they would have never worked it out. You've got to weigh up the odds. Well, honestly, I was sweating on it going, is this what I'm doing? I guess I should do it.

Like me being sprung for it would be 100% humiliating. At least if I get on the front foot, maybe it's 50-50. They go, well, you've said the right thing. You've come to us first. Maybe we just forget about this, whatever. And then like the next day it comes through. It's like, oh, yeah, that's the day that we downloaded all this new myob programs or whatever. So that's probably it.

I'm like, yes, yes, that's it. That's absolutely it. I can tell that's what it is. That's classic Microsoft. Absolutely. Yep. Fucking great. I was like, fucking hell.

Saved by Myob. Oh, my God. Yeah, yeah. My yucky old boner. Yeah. Finally, I could mind my own business and not have to tell them about my... You must have had the most out-of-control celebratory jerk off the back of that one. Yeah.

On the great 15-second clip that I downloaded, I treated myself to an extra long one. God, back then, it'd take you like a day to just download one little porno clip that then you really would have to you just would be you would know that thing inside and out yeah yeah you're like you're like okay i guess i'm i guess i'm changing my fetishes to whatever i've got in this 15 seconds yep mislabeled but sure someone's sucking off a horse i guess that's just gonna have have to do it. That actually happened. The amount of times that would happen to me on LimeWire where you'd be like looking up, looking up,

you'd put in whatever just kind of generic porno stuff you wanted and then it would be someone getting fucked by a horse. It's being like, oh, man, I took all day. Fuck. Yeah, I guess I have to jerk off. I've got nothing else. Well, I guess I've got no choice. Do I fantasize I'm the horse this time or do I fantasize I'm the guy this time?

Which one is it? Yeah. I've got to mix it up. It must have been confusing. This might have to last me a few months. Yeah. Well, thanks, horse cock or whatever. Thanks, Hayley.

Sorry, Hayley, but sorry for getting there. Thanks, Hayley. All right. Let's just do one more. Sure. I've held off my child being in the room for long enough. I need to go out and become a parent again. So we better just wrap this up.

Let's just do one more. All right. Thank you very much to Patreon subscribers. Oh, wow. Okay. Gee, speak of the devil um yeah we were just we were just talking about how why there hasn't been any you know teen teen comedies it turns out there's there's actually um the latest teen comedy screwball sexual comedy is actually um the subscriber the fifth subscriber this week. Thank you very much to Patreon subscriber Comedy Pie. Oh, okay.

Yeah. Right, right, right. Have you heard about this one? Yeah. Is this where the guy puts his dick in some comedy? He puts his dick in a – he thinks he's all alone on stage at Spleen, but it turns out that there's actually a full house there. Right.

Seeing him stick his dick in the Comedy Pie pie and I'm up the back lighting him. Like he actually fucks it for over six minutes. He goes for too long. He's fucking it for eight minutes and I have to say to him, man, yeah, sticky feet, sticky dick, the lot. And I'm like, man, you've got to trim that. There was two minutes in the middle there where you were fucking that dick and it wasn't that funny. You need to chop that out or make it better.

Make it better. So check out that when cinemas open again. It's highly anticipated. Oh, it's at the cinemas. They're not putting it on streaming. You've got to go into the cinema to check it out. Yeah, that's it. Well, it's the same as that new James Bond film.

They've just been holding it back and holding it back until the cinemas are open again. Yeah, it's a Christopher Nolan production. He's intended it to be seen in 4K in the cinema. Exactly. You can't be watching comedy pie on the back of a seat on a plane. It absolutely ruins it. They get the ratios all wrong.

It's an absolute waste of time. Scorsese is already saying, you can't be watching it like that. You've got to get comedy pie on the widescreen. All right. Well, thanks everyone for supporting the show on Patreon. Head to littledumbdumbclub.com. Grab yourself a ticket to our Zoom show this Saturday,

August the 28th, 8 p.m. Melbourne time. We will see you there. It's going to be a lot of fun. Thanks very much for listening, and we'll see you next time. See you, mate.