That Story Show Crossover! Zombies From Jesus/Gas In Church/Defending Skeletons
In this special crossover episode of The Babylon Bee Podcast, Kyle and Ethan welcome the guys from That Story Show: James Kennison and John Steinklauber! This episode is filled with stories about misplacing children, skeletons, bombs, zombies from Jesus, casting out demons, and the wacky things that 4-year-olds do. In the subscriber portion, we finally get Ethan's disgusting pizza story and read some of our own subscriber submissions! Stories Discussed 4 year old antics Christians that aren't being a good witness on the road with their massive JESUS bumper stickers There are some things the GOODWILL guys will NOT take When zombies interrupt worship and romance Autobot transforming piano tuners An Innocent bomb threat In defence of skeletons Cookie Jerky The quarterly casting out of the demons What's wrong with The Smurfs? Sandy Patty Farting in church Subscriber Portion Ethan's disgusting pizza story The Babylon Bee Subscriber submissions The Ten Questions!
In a world of fake news, we bring you up-to-the-minute factual inaccuracy and a heavy dose of moral truth with your hosts, Kyle Mann and Ethan Nicole.
This is the Babylon Bee.
Fake news you can trust.
Hi, everybody.
Welcome to a very special Babylon Bee crossover episode.
Ah, yes, we've come together with one of my favorite podcasts.
You may have heard me recommend it in the past.
In fact, if you dig back into the old episodes of this podcast, I was on it for a short time.
This is that story show.
And we would like to welcome Mr. James Kennison.
Hello.
And John Steinklauber.
Good and talk.
We are here with the sons of Zebedee, and we are going to be telling stories.
Yeah, so I love the premise of that story show because the basic idea is life is hilarious.
Everybody has a funny story to tell.
We often in our interviews will ask our guest, so you got any funny stories?
We just try to, and then that never works in a like a formal interview.
They just look at you like you're an idiot.
But I know they have it.
Like everybody has a funny story to tell.
And I'm just trying to get everybody to tell their funniest stories.
That's what you guys' podcast is about.
That's right.
So tell us more.
Tell us more about your.
Well, it all started years ago with me and my brother.
We had quite an interesting upbringing with parents that didn't care very much what we did.
And so that translated into a lot of activities that shouldn't have happened.
And so we said, you know, rather than getting on the phone and telling people one at a time, let's start a show about it.
And his excitement for podcasting lasted about four episodes.
And so after that, I got a co-host.
And it quickly became less about our stories and more about the stories that people, like you said, that everyone has a funny story.
Everyone has a story that they tell when they get together with a group of friends.
And so, yeah, that's what we do is we give our audience a chance to share their story with our listeners.
So it's a lot of fun.
And John's there too.
Yeah.
James and I were friends way back in the day, like during high school and stuff.
And we went to the same youth group.
Yeah, we were in the same youth group.
My mom was the youth pastor and or the whatever you call a lady that takes care of the youth.
Crazy, I guess.
Volunteer.
Yeah.
Volunteer, right?
She wasn't paid for it.
Someone to pay for.
Yeah.
And so, you know, we got older and we grew up and stuff and went our separate ways.
And then I was online one day and I was like, I wonder what James Kennison is up to.
And so I googled him and then I found his show and I was like, oh, I'm going to be a secret listener to this thing.
And I joined his, back then, we had forums.
So I joined the forums and like three seconds later, he's like, dude, what are you up to?
And then he said, you want to be on the show sometime.
And then the rest is history.
So nice.
And I found you guys because you were talking about Ax Cop in one of your episodes.
Well, we started a podcast, if you remember, about X Cop called CHOP.
The official Axe Cop podcast.
We were so in love with the creativity that Axe Cop was.
I mean, just unbridled creativity from your brother and yourself.
And yeah, started a show.
Yeah, it's taught to listen back to those.
Yeah, we had Malachi on at least one time.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I can't remember.
We talked about those comics frame by frame.
Yeah, we did.
Full analysis.
Anybody who wants commentary.
And then we had you on for quite a few shows, actually.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So here we are.
I'm Kyle.
And this is Kyle.
Yeah.
Welcome to the show, Kyle.
What is this Babylon B stuff all about?
That's way less successful than I.
So we're going to read stories and we were thinking we have one thing you guys like to do on your show.
Is you guys do story of the week, so kind of or not story of the week, but your weekly update what's happened this week?
So oh yeah, does anybody have any funny occurrences that have happened this week?
Oh boy lately, do I ever?
Okay um, okay.
So I was just driving down the street minding my own business, like a normal St. Louis driver and uh, and that's kind of a funny thing in and itself, because nobody in St. Louis knows how to drive and everybody drives for themselves.
But uh I'm I'm I'm, I'm passing this lady in her car and she just pulls out right in front of me.
I have to slam on my brakes and the first thing I see on the back of her freaking car is Jesus, the big bumper sticker that just says Jesus in big print.
And my thoughts went like this, it's like, oh, it's okay, because Jesus told her to do that.
He was with her apparently, and and and so I, for The first time, I got ticked off at Jesus a little bit.
I was like what was he telling me that?
For you know that that's okay and and I realized that I was experiencing that bumper sticker like a Non-Christian, would you know.
So it's really in everyone's best interest.
If you don't drive like Jesus would drive, you need to get rid of your my boss is a Jewish carpenter bumper sticker.
You know, if you're, if you're gonna take it yeah, you need to get that WWJD bracelet from the 1990s off if you're gonna be uh, you know, flipping people off through the window and stuff like that.
So um so yeah, I was.
You know I struggle uh, a little bit with, with faith sometimes.
You know, I think, if we're honest, we all do, and and, but I never struggled quite in that way before, where I was, just like what in the world did he tell her to do that this was okay and uh yeah, so the lady with Jesus bumper sticker.
I might ostracize some people with this one, because there's probably a lot of Christian fish people out there right now.
But you need to ask yourself, should I be advertising for the other side?
Am I so bad a driver that I should have a pentagram on the back of my car so that people will be driven toward Christianity, because those dang satanists don't know how to drive worth of crap.
So right there we go.
There's my weekly baby sticker on your car.
Is what he's saying, right?
Do I have permission to use that as a Babylon B story?
Absolutely, that's how Kyle's mind works.
So I really feel like you're phoning it in with the, just the bumper sticker that just says Jesus.
It's just like there's so many clever you know Christian uh logos and emblems and slogans and you just say Jesus.
It's like, come on, it's like he's signing the bottom of whatever you did.
You know, that's my stamp of approval.
I approve of all of his bad actions.
Right there, you know, I'm in line at McDonald's buying three cheeseburgers.
Jesus, you know, it's also unique to Christianity.
I don't know of many uh like Muslim people that slap Muhammad on the back of their car.
It's just supposed to be understood.
I've seen entire billboards with just the one word Jesus.
Yeah, I'm like, what am I supposed to do with this, even as a Christian?
You know, I don't know.
And then there's somebody sent me a picture of The back of a car that a guy had just taken and emblazoned the entire back of his car with Jesus is Lord.
Jesus, honk if you love Jesus.
Jesus is the answer.
It's everywhere all over the back of his car.
And I felt terrible.
Not only because that was the cheesiest thing I ever saw, but I'm like, I love Jesus and all, but apparently not enough.
Not as much as this guy.
Because this guy, he's committed fully to the thing there.
So I don't know.
I don't know.
I'm going to be in line behind him in Judgment Day, and he's going to get this big old jewel for his decorations on the back of his car.
And then they're going to be like, well, what did you do?
I forwarded and liked that post that you did, Jesus.
Yeah.
Share, I wrote amen on a gif on Facebook.
Yeah.
What about you, John?
You got anything from this week?
I'm still trying to think of what mine would be.
I should have planned for this.
I instigated it.
Well, I was actually going to share this on our show yesterday, James.
So I hope you don't mind me.
Rob, I'm sharing it with our friends at Babylon B. My wife, Amy, we downsized about three months ago.
So we went from a bigger house to a much smaller house.
And so we've been getting rid of a lot of stuff because we don't have anywhere to store it.
And so once Goodwill opened back up finally to drop off all of our precious stuff that we still have, we've been visiting them quite often.
And so my wife was taking some stuff and she had some carpets, you know, some room area carpets.
And she said to the guy that was taking everything, she said, do you all take rugs?
And the guy stopped and he was like, he got this really bewildered look on his face.
He's like, he's like, oh, no, no, man.
We, we don't do that here.
And she was like, she was disappointed because, you know, she didn't make the connection like James did.
She's like, well, they're like brand new practically and they've hardly been used.
And he's, he's like, oh, you said rugs.
Somehow he knew that she was a teacher.
And he was like, I was wondering what kind of teacher you were.
But so, yeah, no, rugs and drugs, apparently, Goodwill will take rugs, but they don't take drugs.
Do you guys take drugs?
They are in good shape.
It depends who you're talking to.
I'm not sure if the guy was offended, but what are you trying to imply, ma'am?
Can you come back later?
Rugs.
That's all.
It's not, you know, it's not very scary.
I can't think of things that's happened to me this week outside of just general chaos of having a two-year-old.
It's just a fog of like, for instance, I came to work today and I realized that my kids put something in my shirt.
There's a giant pink blotch.
I don't know if anybody can see it.
It's visible.
Yeah, I can see that from all the way over here.
All the way over in St. Louis.
I thought it was a badge.
So yeah, I don't know what was in there, but I didn't notice it until I had the shirt on and I was going to be going in and be on the show.
So there it is.
Fantastic.
He really likes to knock all the toilet paper off the roll and like I go into the bathroom and the whole bathroom was full of toilet paper.
Oh, and it never goes back the right way.
Yeah, I tried to sue him.
I guess that could be the story the other night.
I tried to really teach him his lesson and sit there and force him to sit there and wind it all back on the roll.
I'm just like, no, and I kept making him redo it.
And we probably spent like an hour in there because I thought that that would teach him, you know, like, oh, yeah.
Now you're going to know you don't just unwind toilet paper.
Of course.
It's going to be the first thing he talks about with his counselor when he's 21.
The next night, the next night.
Earliest memory.
I walked in and there he was standing naked in the bathroom and just it was all over the bathroom.
Like the bathroom was just a confetti wonderland of toilet paper.
Because we forget that as adults, we think of toilet as a thing that has a very singular use.
But a child sees it and they think party streamer.
Yeah.
They see it as a much more joyful thing.
I wish I could see it like that.
I lost that wonder.
I get that exciting.
I think you take it in the toilet and flush the toilet over and over and over and let it eat as much as it could with each flush.
Oh, they could put the end of it in and let it just roll.
Yeah.
It's cleaner.
He wipes, and I think he uses some of it because it's some of it's dirty that's on the floor.
It's messy.
Sorry, guys.
Sorry.
Once it touches the floor, it's dirty.
So, I mean, I would have gotten rid of all of it anyways.
Putting it back on the roller.
I'm not that much of a germaphobe.
Okay.
Butts are already dirty anyway.
Come on.
Good point.
How about you, Kyle?
Anything crazy happened this week?
Yeah, I mean, mostly just general chaos.
Just moderately worth it.
I've got a four-year-old.
And one thing he's figured out is how to turn on a video game system by himself.
So he has done things like erase our save files and all that madness.
But the other day we were in our bedroom and he's downstairs and we hear screaming, just like, and we like run down there like, you know, somebody's dying.
Someone's limbs just fell off.
And he's playing banjo-kazooie.
And there's like a shark that starts chasing you when you get in the water.
Oh, yeah.
And you fall in the water and the shark just like, dunno, and it does the whole jaws.
Yeah, yeah.
And he's trying to swim for the show.
He's like, oh, oh, you know, it's like, he's really going to get eaten or something.
So we started filming it.
And it's pretty hilarious.
Nice.
Oh, yeah.
That was another one that happened to me.
I was reading Doug Tenaple has the book Iron West.
And I've been reading all Doug's books to my two-year-old.
Some aren't quite appropriate.
There's some I'm skipping.
But Iron West is a bit violent.
But there's one scene where a little girl is describing what happens when a man gets hung.
Oh, my.
Oh, this skip path.
It's supposed to be kind of funny because she's like, it's hanged.
She's something like when the neck snap, it's like, snarp.
And she has a funny face.
So she said, and he just started laughing so hard at that panel, and he made me repeat and repeat and repeat.
When the next snap, it's like, snarped!
Snarped.
Again, when he's talking, he's talking to his counselor when he's 21.
I don't know why I love hanging people.
It's great.
With toilet paper.
Yeah, with reinforced triple-ply toilet paper.
Our kids tell stories.
You know, my four-year-old now, he'll tell stories from video games he played as if they really happened.
That's my brother.
My brother's big on that.
So come in, like, dad, I stabbed a guy in the head.
You know, you're like, it was awesome.
His head blew up.
You can't just say that.
You can't tell when they go in and out of real life in video game.
Yeah.
They can't either.
That's the thing.
Hopefully they won't hit you in the head with a hammer or something.
Well, you guys are, you guys got some church history in your lives.
You're both.
Are you still a youth pastor, John?
No, actually, I have transitioned.
I'm transporting.
Yeah, yeah.
My church calls me a media pastor now.
A media path.
Whoa, what is that?
I know it sounds kind of ridiculous, right?
It's like, well, my congregants are actually microphones and lights.
Apparently.
So I oversee all the technology and media that comes out of the church now.
So I was a kid's pastor and I was getting too old for it.
I just can't keep up with those guys these days.
All the K-pop and the twerking and all that stuff kids.
I don't understand it, Dad.
Off my line.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, so we, no, actually, we have an awesome staff here at our church.
And when they see your giftings and unique abilities, they want to make sure that you're able to flourish.
So when you suck at children's ministry, basically.
It wasn't that bad.
My kids liked it, but I'm not real good at community organization and planning parties and stuff.
So we got a guy that's really good at that.
Yeah.
So anyway, I asked you guys to bring some of your classic, best of church-related youth group.
We also have some general stories too.
We might get to at the end for just for the fun of it.
Because I just realized I don't think I've ever told my pizza story on the show.
I know we need it.
Yes.
Considered a classic over there.
And how many episodes have you guys done?
138.
No, 48.
Sorry.
No, 300.
348.
348.
I think I doubled the number earlier when I was telling the guys.
They've done like 600 episodes, but still, that's a lot.
Yeah, it's been since 2006.
Yeah, that's pretty intense.
It doesn't count all the other random things that James has done.
So you're probably right.
James, yeah, he probably has done probably a thousand podcasts at this point, easily.
A million.
So let's dive in.
James, you want to kind of lead the way here through some of the stories you brought us?
Yeah, I'll share a story that was sent in by Miss Elizabeth.
And it kind of has to do with church.
It takes place in a church.
She says, growing up, my mom worked full-time and my dad took care of my sister and I, though I would never call him a stay-at-home dad.
We spent a lot of time at the church as my dad did a lot of volunteer work there.
So one day after doing some work at the church office, my dad told me that we were going to take a walk down the road to the bank soon.
And then he left the room.
What he didn't tell me is he was quickly heading to the restroom before we left.
My four-year-old brain decided that he must have left without me.
No worries.
No problem.
I knew my way around the church and I knew my way to the bank.
So off I went.
While the bank was down the main street of a fairly large city here in England, it was literally just down that street and around the corner.
So I didn't have to cross any roads.
I must have talked to the ladies behind the desk and explained that I was there to find my dad.
I can only imagine how they felt.
My main memory from being there is being excited at being given some stickers and some coloring to do.
Meanwhile, my dad had been tearing around the church trying to find me.
And when he tells me the story, he talks about thinking about how on earth was he going to explain to my mom that he had lost me at a church in the sanctuary.
Yeah.
She's hiding in the northex somewhere.
Eventually, he walked out of the front of the church and looked down the main street and he saw me walking down the road hand in hand with two police officers about to get in their car.
To be honest, I remember being disappointed I didn't get to ride in the police car.
That's a four-year-old for you.
As a parent myself, now I am very familiar with the utter panic of losing your preschooler.
And even though I've lived through this experience as a child, I'll still forget to tell my three-year-old that I was just quickly heading to the bathroom before we left the house.
And he quietly and confidently attempted to leave the house as if he thought I had already left.
I hope you enjoyed the story.
I'm sure there's many, I'm sure many parents can relate.
Thanks for the podcast, Elizabeth.
So there you go.
I think Ethan can relate.
Didn't you have a story on your show last week?
You're a listener.
You listen.
Yeah, we talked about it.
I'm going to do a little homework.
We talked about losing our kids.
Kyle losing his kid at Disneyland.
Yeah, I had a guy with my sister at Disney World once.
It wasn't my fault, though.
Well, so actually, a listener emailed in and went up me on that one.
He not only left his kid in the car seat and went into the store, he left the kid in the car seat on top of the car.
Oh, no.
You're less likely to die.
Unless he drives off.
Well, yeah, that'd be pretty bad.
Some reason, a scene from Raising Arizona is coming to mind.
That's more direct sunlight on Tom the Ceiling.
Yeah, but more inside the cars when you suffocate because it's true.
I was going to mention when you, I forgot to tell my story when you told that story.
I don't know if you guys have ever done this, but forgetting to buckle in the kids.
Oh, yeah.
Several times we've turned around and are, you know, at the time, one or two-year-old is standing there looking out the back of the window and waving.
Oh, man, you get cussed out in Georgia for doing that kind of stuff.
Very regular.
Never mind.
Those parents don't love their children.
They don't strap them in.
Well, what are we talking about?
Yeah, we got another one.
Oh, oh, yeah.
Well, this one comes from my personal experience.
I used to be a full-time children's pastor at a church in Florida.
And I was working in a room that butted up right against the young adult meeting room.
And my room was blank and bare.
Their room was full of coffee shop type stuff.
They just had this beautiful room.
And they also had a keyboard and a full band set up there for their services.
And in this room happened to be two young people.
So 19, 21, somewhere in there.
And they're sitting right next to each other on the piano.
And they're singing praise and worship music together.
I call it sparking.
They're sparking in there.
They're feeling each other out just to see, is this going to be love?
Okay, so this is a couple, like a boy and a girl.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And they're sparking.
They're using praise and worship as an excuse to sit very close together.
As an aphrodisiac.
Yeah.
They're using Jesus to find love.
Which is what it was created for, obviously.
So for our benefit, not his.
But anyway, so it's time to go.
And I have to get rid of them.
But I'm very tempted because the door is closed and I just kind of am irritated with them for being in there for three hours.
So what I did is I kind of bumped into the door and I may have made a zombie sound.
All of a sudden, the piano goes silent.
The singing stops.
And I bump at the wall the door again and just kind of move the handle a little bit.
And when I finally do, I'm like, okay, okay, I've let him hang on too long.
I open the door and the first thing I see is the guy is still sitting behind the piano, scared to death.
And I open the door a little more and the lady has a chair up over her head.
She's waiting for the freaking zombie right there.
And she almost hits me.
And I'm like, no, it's just me.
And she's like, oh, she's not even thinking.
It's funny.
She's so irritated.
I think it was also she had bloodlust in her eyes.
She was ready to kill somebody legally.
This was Florida after all.
But I really got to thinking about that later on.
And I realized that I was probably a messenger of Jesus for this woman because, you know, they're sparking, right?
They're trying to figure out if they match or not.
But I think that night she realized that this was not the kind of man that she wanted in her life.
A man that couldn't get up and protect her and guard her.
And so I really think in her prayers last night, she was thanking Jesus for the zombie, what I call the zombie from Jesus.
She was in much prayer.
I actually wrote a song about it called Zombie from Jesus.
And it's all about this guy sitting back there, minding his own business, not really stepping up to the game and her having to be the brave one.
So anyway, it always trips me.
I'll never get that image out of my head of her with that chair up over her head.
I don't know how much those chairs weigh, but it's just those stackable church chairs.
They're heavy.
No, no, nothing.
Oh, man.
She had the full on.
Yeah.
Man.
And this dude was just sitting behind.
I'll play him a song if it's really a zombie.
Man, the keys.
That's where she got her start as a WWF.
Yeah.
So, yeah.
Those two never made it.
They never hit it off.
So thanks to me.
You ended it.
There you go.
Oh, man.
No.
Why don't, John, why don't you read us one?
Let's do Secretary Stunner down the way there.
All right.
Here we go.
This comes to us from Fred.
He says, I was at the church one day when a piano tuner arrived.
I was in a different part of the building, so I didn't see him.
That's a true man.
A piano tuner is a human.
Right.
That sounds like a device.
I guess you kind of have to clarify that, don't you?
I used to have a roommate that's a piano tuner.
It's like, who is he?
A transformer.
He's a human.
Yeah, he transformed into it.
A human piano tuner.
Yeah.
Autobots, tune out.
He tuned Ray Charles' piano and he said he could swear Ray Charles could see.
Well, really?
Yeah.
Little tip it for you.
That's very interesting.
I'm about to one-up this story, but that's crazy, right?
Well, I don't think Fred will mind.
Because I mean, you know.
Fred, Fred, right.
The church secretary led him, the piano tuner, into the piano in the auditorium.
And then she came out and found me and asked me how the thing he was wearing helped him tune the piano.
I went to see what she was talking about and then went back to her office laughing so hard that I had tears coming out of my eyes.
The man was wearing a halo.
And if you don't know what a halo is, it's that metal neck and head brace that somebody with severe neck trauma will have put on.
The piano tuning tuning.
You bang it into the piano and it's he like hold it up.
It psychically connects you to the piano.
Makes him one with it.
I just don't understand how that helps him.
That's just, I don't know.
It makes some kind of sense.
Like if you'd never seen a piano tuner before and you saw him wearing it, you connected and it kind of reverberates through your neck.
It's the official, you know, headgear of a piano tuner.
Yeah.
Well, it helps.
It's funny.
It's like a cake, like a capo on a guitar.
Yeah.
You just tune it up with a notch there.
I was trying because you could see something coming at the end of the story.
Like she's going to have something wrong.
Like he has got like a piano key tie or something or just something dumb.
And I was trying to predict it.
I couldn't predict that it was that.
You know.
You've never seen a man with neck trauma?
Sorry.
Come on.
Yeah.
Our listeners have these great stories.
Sometimes you never know what they're going to come up with.
Never know.
This one's from James Devine.
It's called Mana Mistake.
He says, when I was stationed in the army in Japan about 30 years ago, we attended a Japanese-American church where we had a chance to meet many Japanese Christians.
And a man who did the English to Japanese translation was a Japanese native with a teenage daughter who was named Mana.
And he explained that she was named this because her parents thought of her as bread from heaven.
Well, every time I read the story in the Bible, I'm reminded of this wonderful family from Japan, but I can't stop myself from laughing when I reach the part of the story where it says, and they called it mana, which means what is it?
What is it?
I love people that just name their kids after something in the Bible just because it's there.
You're so special to me.
I'm going to name you something weird.
Yeah.
So something lost in translation there.
What is it?
For sure.
Junoseco.
Maybe they were trying to figure out the gender early and they're just like, I don't know, it's mana.
What is it?
What is it?
That'd be a good gender.
They said, add that to the genders.
Yeah.
Man, or mana?
Woman.
Mana.
Do you guys want to take one?
Yeah.
Yeah.
He has a good voice.
Kyle read Bomb Threat Boy.
It's pretty interesting.
All right.
I have a good voice.
Bomb Thread Boy.
Hey, James and John.
There they are.
Hey.
To start this off, I would like to say that I'm a freshman in high school living in Tennessee.
Although I live in Tennessee now, for most of my life, I lived in northern Louisiana.
Also, I'd like to point out that not everyone down there speaks with a thick Cajun accent.
In fact, most people in northern Louisiana sound like James.
Yay.
Hey.
Talk, James.
A very suppressed southern accent, it says.
Yeah, sorry.
I lost it on purpose in high school because the people on TV didn't talk like me.
Yeah, when you do your impression of your mom.
Oh, yeah.
That's coming if we have time.
I have a story.
You got to do a moment with your mom.
Your mom's stories.
Sorry.
Are we done talking about your mom?
All right.
Yeah, sorry.
No.
Sorry.
This is a tale of a time when I was in third grade.
At the time, I was living in a town in northern Louisiana going to a small private Christian school.
The school was so small and connected that the principal doubled as the leader for our morning chapel.
Now, to set the scene because of how small the school was, our school was actually held at a church.
We had a small playground in the back of the school, which had been built by students and parents for primarily the younger classes.
And one Wednesday morning, we came to find that it had been burned to the ground in the middle of the night.
Dang.
This, of course, made no sense to us younger students as we were just a nice private school who'd done no harm to anyone.
Needless to say, the teachers were on pretty high alert after that incident.
Now I'm sorry for the long introduction, but all of this backstory is essential to understanding how terrified I felt after this story happened.
Okay, we have our setup.
All right.
And we're going to judge if all of this was really essential.
Was it working?
Yeah, exactly.
We needed to know about the Cajun accents and all that.
We'll find out here.
We'll get some teas.
This all better tie together like a curb your enthusiasm episode or something.
We'll have to find out.
Maybe.
I'm going to give Kyle a really long one.
One day I was staying after school for a little bit and decided to sit down on a small picnic table and draw.
I sat down, pulled out some paper and a pencil and began drawing.
I tried to draw people, dragons, and trees, but I wasn't any good.
So my mind searched for something simple and easy to illustrate.
Then I thought of it.
A bomb.
It's natural progression.
Not some action movie style military bomb.
No, the kind kids know how to draw.
The large bowling ball with a wick that is so popular a design.
My mother soon called for me and said it was time to go home.
So I ran to the parking lot and got into the car, forgetting my backpack and drawing.
The next day, as I sat in Latin class with no backpack, hey, I had everything I needed in my desk, right?
Right.
There was a knock on the classroom door.
It was the headmaster who said something in a calm manner to the last teacher.
It's the headmaster.
After he stepped back outside, the teacher told me to go out into the hall because the headmaster wanted to talk to me.
Being a somewhat normal kid, I immediately became sheepish and did as I was told.
But what I was greeted with was far more than the just, you're in trouble talk and stern look I was expecting.
There in front of me was my headmaster, a fireman, a police officer, and what looked like a park ranger, but I later found out was someone completely different.
They didn't seem angry.
They seemed quite calm.
My eyes widened.
My pulse quickened.
What had I done that deserved such an audience?
What have I done?
Then the headmaster held up my small dark blue backpack.
Is this yours?
He asked me with a suppressed southern accent, I assume.
Yours.
This year's.
This year's son.
Yeah, yeah.
Yes, sir, was all my little brain could think to say as I took the backpack.
Oliver twist.
There's a nice drawing, the policeman piped up, pointing to the bomb picture hanging out of the bag.
I nodded and managed a nervous thanks.
There wasn't much more talking, and I was sent back into my class where I told my friends of the strange occurrence.
No, the story is not embellished one iota.
I later learned from my mom, who, along with my friend Jude, who was in that class, has confirmed this story, that my headmaster had found the backpack after school and had thought it was a bomb threat from the people who had burned down the playground.
Oh my goodness.
My backpack had cartoon skulls and crossbones on it.
So it did not look like it belonged to someone at a private Christian school.
He had a blink 182 patch on it or something.
So they knew that this must not be a Christian.
Marilyn Manson.
He had actually sent an email out to the parents of the school asking whose it was.
My mom answered him back with an embarrassed, yep, that's ours.
He had also asked my friend Jude, this story was utterly terrifying for me, but now I look back on it with laughter.
Love the podcast and hope this makes it on the show.
Sorry, the story was so long.
Sincerely, Ryan from Tennessee.
Stalkers!
Is that an inside jokes?
Inside jokes.
There's a lot of inside jokes.
You guys should do an episode that explains all the inside jokes over there.
We do them and then they go back in the timeline.
You have to explain them all the time.
Yeah, you would have to do one every 30 shows or so.
You should have like a required listening.
Like you must listen to this one before you can unlock the other episodes.
People surprise me.
They go back to the beginning and they will find the show and they'll listen to the latest episode.
They like it and then they go back all the way to the beginning.
Yeah, it's a way different show.
They just binge us all the way through.
So where's the crazy?
Where did you guys hit your stride if somebody wanted to go back and kind of start?
Episode one.
All right.
I'm not even kidding.
I remember listening to episode one.
It's just you guys are so much younger.
It's such a different show.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I just want to comment on all these authorities and policemen and stuff who thought that a Krayn drawing of a bowling ball with a candle coming out of it was a Wile Coyote bomb.
They said that's the most popular design or something.
Like you go to the bomb store and they're like, well, have you tried the bowling ball with the wick?
That's our most popular design.
Drawn by thousands of children.
All the anarchists love it.
It's the gateway bomb before you get into the more hardcore ones.
Popularized by Rocky and Bullwinkle.
As Cenon.
All right.
This is a quick one, but it's funny because I was a children's pastor.
I love talking to kids and I love how susceptible they are to wit and to evil, really, is what it comes down to.
So I'm stuck in the back of a car one day.
The parents were up front talking to the pastor.
The parents were missionaries.
And so I had a missionary kid.
And missionary kids are different than normal kids.
They're a little bit like homeschooled kids where they don't know everything about America.
America is kind of a foreign land to them.
And so anyway, I'm back there and I'm playing Plants versus Zombies.
And I'm like, hey, man, you want to try this out?
It's a pretty cool game.
And he says, oh, no, no, I'm not allowed to play it.
I'm like, why?
He says, my mom says I can't play anything with skeletons in it.
And just it came out of my mouth before I could even stop it.
I said, you know, you've got a skeleton in you.
And his eyes got so big.
Like he felt like he was full of the devil all of a sudden.
Almost like he wanted to lean over to his mom.
And he's like, oh, my gosh, cast it out of me.
So I got him.
I read some GK Chesterton.
Yeah.
He's got an essay called In Defense of the Skeleton.
GK Chesterton.
Wow.
I do think it's funny that the things that parents latch onto, like you can't play anything with.
Dana, we're going to put the GK Chesterton.
Just remind her to put the GK Chesterton there.
Yeah.
Definitely need that.
Sorry.
That's all right.
Yeah, but I do think I like the random skeletons.
That's where we draw the line.
Yeah.
Generally, skeletons are bad.
Yeah, I remember those poor your body.
I got like a skull sticker out of one of those like 25 cent sticker machines at the pizza restaurant, you know?
And my dad, I go, I go, what's, you know, I was trying to figure out what show it was from or whatever.
I didn't know why he just wanted a sticker of a skull.
I was too young to get it, like five or something.
And he's like, he's like, well, actually, it's a very, it's used as a satanic symbol.
Oh, great.
And then because my dad is like Pentecostal and stuff.
And so I remember for a long time in life wondering why they're selling satanic, like, you know, satanic propaganda at a pizza restaurant to children that do not understand.
Like, because I thought that was literally it.
Like, there was a company of Satanists and they're putting sticker machines in pizza restaurants.
For a quarter.
And there's enough people out there that are really into Satanism and they're buying the stickers.
Yeah.
If you do buy one of those, put it on the back of your car and drive like a maniac.
There you go.
Yeah.
Full circle.
It'll help.
I wasn't allowed to play with kids who had skull stickers.
Sorry.
We wouldn't have been able to bend friends.
Well, let's do a few like, give me like a couple grand finale stories here, and then we're going to go to the subscriber portion.
We're going to read some subscriber stuff and we'll read some more random stories too.
So what are it could be on church or not?
It could be whatever you think are your best here.
All right.
I'm going to have to go with a mom story.
I promised one.
Oh, yeah.
I want a mom's story.
My mom is an interesting lady, and I can do her voice absolutely perfectly.
So it always comes in handy.
She comes to visit.
At least once every two years.
So you're from.
And just to keep.
Just to clarify, you're from the South.
You're from like the.
I am.
I grew up in South Georgia, North Florida and had the accent and the whole thing.
And you lived in trailers?
It lived in a triple-wide trailer, two trailers, and then one added on.
And we just cut holes between them.
And the rain poured down.
You know, I could just go on and on.
You'll have to listen to my show for more information on all that.
But this one in particular, we're grown.
I'm married.
I got kids.
She's coming as a grandma to visit and she hands out some jerky.
I got some jerky that I made and we're trying it out.
And it's really stringy and it's dry.
But I don't want to be rude at this point.
I don't eat anything this woman makes anymore.
But at the time, at the time, I was being nice and my wife was eating a little bit.
And it was just so gross and so dry and almost stringy to the point of being like fibrous and hairy because the meat had just, you know, it would turn you into a vegan, like if you had to eat it.
So she suddenly goes, by the way, Cookie died.
And I have to tell you, Cookie is this little dog of hers that she had for years.
It was a Yorkshire Terrier.
And it was 900 years old.
It had no teeth.
Its tongue hung out of its mouth because apparently the only thing holding in a dog's tongue is its teeth.
And it lived under her bed like gollom.
And it would come out and bark at you.
And we're here eating this jerky.
And I'm like, wouldn't it be like my mom to take that dead dog and put it in the dehydrator and make us eat it?
Didn't take long.
For all the hate that we had for this animal.
The story that I heard of your mom, I could believe it.
So that's right now.
Yeah.
So, so, you know, immediately, you know, my wife is tearing up.
I didn't get it at all.
But she goes, James, we're eating cookie jerky.
Cookie jerky.
Oh, my God.
Pterodactyl.
So, yeah, it's like she took its nasty, mummified body and put it on a bacon slicer and just sliced off chunks of it, you know, because the dog was so dead, it was dried out before it breathed its last breath.
It was already out of it.
It was already cookie.
Yeah.
It was already dehydrated.
And so, yeah, cookie jerk.
Cookie died.
And, you know, just the timing of it and everything.
It was just, it was just really wrong.
Do I do?
I think I really ate a dead dog.
Probably.
I think you ate.
She never confirmed nor denied.
We never asked her.
I was too afraid.
It's one of those questions you don't want an answer to because I've already committed.
I've already eaten the dead dog.
Yeah, it would be worse to know at that point.
Yes.
You should just quickly rattle off a few of the religious things that your mother would teach you as a child.
Oh, man.
Well, first of all, she was very religious and Pentecostal, charismatic, actually, part of the word of faith movement, where if you had enough faith and a good confession, you could get anything you wanted.
Just like Christian science.
So anyway, Dianetics.
About every three months, she would sit us down with a big list of demons and cast devils out of us.
That was always a lot of fun.
And she would have us looking her in the eye and she would say, you got to look at me.
That devil's going to make you want to look away.
So you got to look at my eyes.
She's like, you spirit of rebellion right now.
I command you in the name of Jesus to come out of my side.
And she didn't sound like a southern pastor.
Sorry, she was more like, devil, now you come out of him right now.
And so, what I learned to do real quick was to yawn a lot.
That was how the demons came out.
Yeah, so you have to spit sometimes too.
I never spat, but I did.
I did yawn a lot.
And man, the bigger the yawn, the bigger the demon.
If you can yawn and then have your head do a full 360 rotation, that helps.
But she seriously would do this all the way up into my teen years.
And so I was always clean.
The problem I worry about is she never filled the space with anything.
You know how it works in the Bible.
You cast a demon out, it goes out for a while, and then it gathers up seven more and comes back finding the house swept clean.
So I was just a hostage.
She never cast him in any pigs or anything and had to go jump in the ocean.
I was thinking maybe she sent him into Cookie.
Oh, yeah?
I could probably not live so long.
Cookie, Dad, so all the demons are coming back.
So all the stereotypes, like you know, you got that stereotype of the like really religious mom, like that, like in Carrie or I don't know, the water boy or whatever.
That actually exists.
That is my mom.
That woman, especially in misery for some reason, really reminds me of my mom.
Yeah.
How are your legs doing these days, James?
They're hobbled, but it's okay.
My confession is clear.
No, we weren't allowed to watch Scooby-Doo because there were monsters in it.
I wasn't either.
We weren't allowed to watch the Smurfs because they were all homosexuals.
And I think gargamels are something.
I never heard of that.
They were homosexuals.
And they were blue, which symbolized death because that's the color you would turn when you died, apparently, which I don't believe that's the case.
You turn like sapphire blue or electric blue.
I wanted to watch T-Man and the Masters of the Universe, but there's only one Master of the Universe, James.
I've heard that one before.
Well, Skeletor's got a skull for a face.
That's Satanic.
I never got to get that far.
I never met Skeletor.
He's the bad guy.
He Man and the Masters of the Click got turned off.
The skeleton can't watch the cancel now because of the word masters.
The last one I have is one of my favorites.
We were watching Titanic on VHS.
Oh.
And it gets to the part of draw me like one of your French girls.
And the camera pans up her body.
And it's about to get to the good parts.
Good parts.
Which I don't want to watch with my mom in the room anyway.
Yeah.
But it's about to get to the good parts.
And all of a sudden, Sandy Patty comes on the screen.
My mother record and recorded whatever was on.
And TBN was always on in her house.
And so the goodie parts are about to come up, you know, and inside you're struggling, should I watch?
Should I close my eyes?
And all of a sudden, that can create psychological issues.
Like every time you see Sandy Patty now.
Yeah.
I'm oddly attracted to her.
Issues with your marriage.
Oh, man.
We don't have to have any more children if that helps.
We had a VHS tape of Beethoven's Second, and there was a party where there was a sequel, Beethoven.
So not a symphony.
And then the girl goes to a party and they drink.
And we watch it.
And every time we would get to that part, it would switch to Gilligan's Island.
My parents had recorded over drinking.
Wow.
Man.
And now look at you.
And now look at you like a madman.
Every time he takes a gilligan, though.
Hey, Skipper.
This is straight whiskey.
Same here.
So, yeah, I'm pretty amazed that I'm a Christian at all anymore.
Yeah, I always try to remember that because my parents, you know, it was a mess with whatever they tried to teach me about religion.
So I just try to remember that with my kids.
Like, I was, there's no reason I should still be a Christian based on what they did.
Exactly.
So just got to remember that Mike because I'm trying to see it.
Yeah.
Like, like if I had a headache and I prayed, my mom would pray for me.
I wasn't allowed to take Tylenol because that would be a lack of faith.
Oh, dear.
Right.
Right.
So, yeah.
Yeah.
Demon behind every doorknob, man.
Yeah.
Oh.
All right.
We ready to.
Did you want to do subscriber?
What do you want to do?
I feel like that's.
Should I tell my pizza story in this part or should I save it subscribers only?
You've been teasing us with it the whole time.
We need to put it in the subscriber portion, get people to pay.
All right.
It's the ultimate.
Yeah.
There you go.
Or they could just go back and find it on you guys's podcast.
Or I also, I told it on Archie Mullet already.
Yeah, it's called Fresh Hot Pizza, folks.
Get it in there.
It's free.
Well, did you do a song on that one?
I don't know.
I think it was like the Whiz Waffle one.
You did a song.
Yeah, Wizwaffle was a classic, probably the best recap song ever.
I've told that story here because an update on that story.
I decided I wanted to attempt doing stand-up comedy.
And my very first night doing Open Mic, I had a whole thing about that story, the Wiz Waffle story.
But my failure was that I got about two minutes into my story and all I had done is basically confessed that I, to a room full of strangers that I peed the bed all the way up through high school.
And then my timer ran out and I never got to the funny part.
So I just walked back to my seat in shame as everybody's room of strangers just knew that I would just whiz my bed.
That guy peed his bed until he was in high school.
Anyway, everybody here knows that.
Yeah, I guess we do.
Is there a good one final story that we can like?
Let me see.
Let me see.
I see some titles here that are definitely making me interesting.
I could tell the one, my first story on the show if you want.
Yeah, go for it.
So I grew up in church also.
My mom wasn't quite the one that James's was.
Okay.
You know, I was allowed to watch Masters of the Universe and stuff like that.
But we were always in church.
I grew up like, I think I was born on Saturday and in church on Sunday, that kind of thing.
So I was like a Randy Travis song.
It might be, if it's not a Saturday.
Good lord, you're here somebody.
Yeah, there you go.
Nice.
We should put that.
We should make that form.
Maybe we can get some royalties.
But one thing I'm known about, I guess, maybe on the show is I personally, I think that farts are funny.
I think that's one of the, yeah, I'm in that, and it's kind of sad because if people ever notice me in public, hey, you're the fart boy.
So fortunately, it's a podcast and people don't see my face.
But it's always funny to me.
And I don't know why God made that sound.
If it's a warning for something that's bad to come, maybe that's why God did it.
But I was in church one time in high school, and I always sat in the back.
And I went to a Pentecostal church.
James and I went to church together.
He wasn't there for this particular incident.
So, I don't know where you were that Sunday night, James.
But yeah, wherever you're farting, that's where I'm not.
Well, I was in church and it was, I was sitting in the back with my friend Jason.
I was like, it was building up.
And I'm like, you know, we got a loud preacher.
Probably be fine if I just let one go.
And so I said, my friend, Jason, hey, man, I got to rip one.
You think I should do it?
And he wasn't even paying attention to me.
He just kind of shook his head.
You know, I think he was zoned out something half awake.
And so I was like, all right, I'm going to do it.
So I leaned over a little bit.
And mind you, this is an old wood church with wood panels.
And the pews are not necessarily wood, but there's some acoustic qualities that they still maintain.
And the pastor was going, he was preaching about something.
He was just like, and God said this and that.
And he was just going on.
And I thought, this is opportune.
So I lean over and I just, I thought, I'd just squeak it out a little bit.
It didn't.
It wasn't little, though.
It was enormous.
I mean, it just reverberated.
And as the moment, as the toot was slipping past its final exit, the pastor stopped.
And so, so what I heard was different from what the church heard.
So the pastor's going, something like that.
And then he pauses and then you hear goes through the room.
And then my mom, who's sitting in the front of the church, slowly turns her head and looks back at me and makes eye contact with me.
And I can see in her eye that she was somewhat proud, but also very embarrassed.
And I haven't done it in church since then.
But I still do go to church and I laugh every time somebody we had a one-arm pastor too.
And so when he would get going, that arm, that good arm would be up in the air, too.
And the little stump would be waving too, that little stump arm that he had.
He would raise both of them up.
You could have used what you got.
Yeah, my.
A famous story in our family is that our my uncle, who is not a Christian, kind of like a, I've always thought of him as like a biker mountain bird man.
Like he lives up in the mountains and he has all the birds and eagles and stuff.
He's a falconer.
He has long hair and he like has all these cars and he's just this crazy mountain man.
Well, I guess he was in a church.
He was older.
He was an adult, but a young adult or something.
The famous story is that it was a long moment of silence or prayer.
And then he one popped out and he immediately stands up and goes, turnip hacksaw, takes the Lord's name in vain, walks out of church, never returns, never returns.
I show up in your house and this is what you do to me.
Blame God.
That'd be like the atheist story.
God made me fart in church.
Everybody will hear it with me, too.
On that note, we're going to the subscriber portion where I figure there's probably going to be a little bit more fart stories and other stories too.
And we're just going to keep this ball rolling, read some subscriber stories.
For the rest of you, thanks for joining us.
If you enjoy that story show, these guys, you want more of it, go to thatstor.com or what?
What's the yeah, that story show.com.
Look us up in iTunes or wherever your favorite podcasts are sold.
It's free and it's fun.
And we'd love to have you.
Sweet.
Yeah.
All right.
Goodbye.
Bye.
Bye.
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