Brennan Lee Mulligan critiques American politics as "nakedly evil" and capitalism as a modern divine right, contrasting this with his parenting philosophy of raising emotionally intelligent children through "chaos as inoculation" via Nerf duels. The discussion covers his role in Critical Role's magical New York season, the exploitation inherent in systems like the prosperity gospel, and humorous anecdotes involving Tony Hawk and an intergalactic baby improv character. Ultimately, the episode blends sharp political commentary with intimate family insights, suggesting that navigating modern societal structures requires both intellectual rigor and emotional adaptability. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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The Sin Eater Joke00:10:45
And may I ask, I assume this is true, but I believe I'm in the company of childless men.
Is that correct?
Yes.
Jesus Christ, man.
You just daggered that.
I have two cats.
He's flexing his semen on us.
Yeah, cool.
Not the same, but cool.
It's not.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another fantastic episode of the Fear and Podcast, where we are joined by actor, writer, comedian, among many other things, Brennan Lee Mulligan.
Oh, shucks.
Thanks for having me.
Well, it's good to have you.
Thank you for joining us.
It's very early this morning.
Yeah.
And we appreciate you joining us at this hour.
It's really delightful.
It's a crazy, well, it's a crazy month.
So I'm glad that everything was able to line up.
I don't want to blow up anyone's spot, but Hassan is sitting on gold from before we were rolling.
We need to open up for this bit right now.
It's not even that good.
No, come on.
Come on.
Do you need to raise that a bit right now?
I think we should.
It was not even going to be a bit.
And that's the reason why I did this whole like spiel about how untalented I am.
And that's why I wait.
The thing is that Brennan wrote me into it.
He's like, I'm untalented and so is Austin.
No, you're untalented.
No, you're a really weird way to pay a lovely compliment to Will.
Will got left out of the cross.
He is very talented.
We can't even deny it.
So that's like, I've given up trying to undermine that.
Brennan, he's so talented.
I get on camera sometimes and I'm like, I'm a loser.
You know what I mean?
He makes me feel really bad about myself sometimes.
That's why we do it.
We do it to drive other people into the dirt.
We do it.
Push down, my friends.
I feel like that's his, I feel like, I don't think he does that on purpose, but I feel like his natural inclination is to.
It's really, he's so talented.
I've had a couple people come up to me in terms of doing like tabletop role playing.
To me, it's very, I appreciate actor and writer all the way with things.
A lot of people maybe know my work as a dungeon master on my doing and performed Dungeons and Dragons.
Yes.
And it's always wild to come up when someone's like, I watched your show.
I'm ruined.
And I'm like, that's not why.
I want you to do well.
Everyone does well.
We all do well together.
I can never do fantasy imagination again.
You know, I mean, we joke, but at the end of the day, like, I do find that being on camera and doing things with people that are so skilled, like such as yourself, make you better.
You know, and I never really understood it until, you know.
How come I've gotten worse year over year around both of you guys?
I've played Dungeons and Dragons with him before, and it was not very whimsical.
This is fascinating.
There'sn't much imagination.
Also, like, I think, was it the people that we played with were like monsters?
Yeah, yeah.
They turned out to be like not very good people.
And this was many years ago.
I feel like if we could make a campaign with like geopolitical things hidden in it, like very obvious references to current political situations, you would get super involved.
I'd lock in Ultra Instinct.
The extrajudicial killing of gnomes at the border.
Look, if you merged somehow, like, I don't know, Hearts of Iron or something with Dungeons and Dragons, and then it was like, I don't know, it was a campaign about like restoring the USSR.
Like, I would be, I would die.
You know, we did a season of the show that was a, was set in a magical version of New York City, where the second season was pretty much about Amazon trying to open a shipping center in Queens.
And that was the, that was sort of the long and short of that season.
So who was the, who was the AOC that took it, took it down?
Well, it was a bunch of magical, it was a, it was a, uh, a drug dealer living in Brooklyn who was also a dream sorcerer.
It was a 55-year-old Harlem ER nurse who also spoke for the people of the city.
Sure, my drug dealer calls himself a dream sorcerer as well.
It's good to take references from your real life.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's important to do that for sure.
But no, the joke wasn't even really a joke.
I was just going to say, Colorado's donuts.
Thank you so much for bringing us donuts.
Hey, you got it.
And the only thing that I was going to say is like, it's not like Colorado is known for donuts.
No.
No, man.
Stop.
Stop even a joke.
Yeah.
I thought it would be an interesting conversation starter to be like, why did they choose Colorado of all places if they're going to be like a donut place?
Now, unfortunately, we have walked into a really clean explanation, which is it's Colorado Boulevard, but which does kind of kill the conversation stone cold day.
Dude, I can't believe you've done this.
I'm going to kill myself because we're the night start.
We have one of the most anticipated guests of all time.
Everyone was constantly trying for it's been years, by the way.
Even before you did this, yeah, even before you did the sin eater bit, which we will look at in a second, because I think it dovetails nicely into like every the state of affairs right now, which I want to talk to you about.
Yeah.
Um, people were always like, you got to get Bernardly Mulligan on.
And I was like, I don't like, no disrespect, because I'm not like very big into Dungeons.
Imagination or more so just like very into just like how horrible everything is in the world.
And I'm just so dialed in on that stuff.
But I was, I was like unaware, but everyone was constantly like, you have to get this guy on.
I was a big fan.
And then I, yeah, and fans as well of all of our communities have been demanding to have you on.
So I'm glad that this finally worked out.
Dude, it's what I'm.
And now I'm embarrassed because that was the opener bit.
It was the opener bit.
You know what, dude?
I should have not told the truth.
I should have, we should have gotten into a really dude from Colorado.
Dude, it's crazy.
Actually, they tried to name it after all other 49 states first.
I'd like, yeah, the owner actually despises Colorado.
It was a clearance thing.
It was like there were 49 other donut spots on the block and they just had to go with Colorado.
That's very, I appreciate the kind words, man.
That's very cool to hear.
I feel like the truth is, and I feel like this is maybe something that you guys are from, have a lot of ties into like Twitch community in that space.
I think what's happened is just that knowing about people has become harder.
Like the internet has created these siloed media ecosystems where like, I can't tell you the amount of people, like it's not surprising for me to hear you say that in terms of like people request to go on the show, but I'm not tapped into that world.
Like the amount of people when we showed up.
So like last year, around this time, we were getting ready for a show at Madison Square Garden.
Yeah.
We sold out.
Yeah, that's incredible.
I wanted to know about that.
And we rolled up and dude, these like 55-year-old Teamsters that work every show at the garden who are watching lines around the black people dressed like half Phoenix wizards.
This guy who's like this super New York guy was like, so you guys know, you guys play board games?
I thought you were going to say, I thought you were going to say he was a fan.
I was going to be like, hell yeah.
Well, that's the crazy part, too.
You do the show and you watch these dudes who are unimpressed by everything come out.
And if you can get one of them to crack a smile, we got a couple of the dudes, like the security guys working to crack a smile.
And you're like, that's the win for the night.
We got that guy who has no root in this world at all.
Dude, the classic New Yorker throwing shade without even meaning it.
Like, you play some dumb boy games.
I saw the boss play him.
Yeah, we talked.
There's someone who's running the merch there because they were like, you know, it was like, oh, there was a line, like intermission.
There's this crazy line to get merch.
And she, this is like from one of our crew members was like, yeah, she was saying more often than not, if they don't recognize the name on the billing for that week, that's going to be their craziest night.
That they're like, more often than not, it's like, oh, it's some weird children's entertainment from Australia and another weird act from the internet over here.
And you're like, that's going to pack the house and sell out everything.
It's like, that's the world we're living in, man.
Weird, weird celebrity and niche silos.
Yeah.
But speaking of niche silos, I feel like there's a, you know, there's definitely a downside to it as well.
And I feel like people get totally locked in to these echo chambers.
I can't believe I'm using terminology from like 2016 that right-wingers would use, but like it has become that reality now where there is no, there's, there's no contention at all where everyone is just like, there's no consensus reality.
Everyone just goes along with whatever biased framework that they're operating off of.
And let's just start with the sin eater clip because it was one of your latest clips that you reposted when you were talking to Adam Ruins Everything.
Yeah.
Also friend of the show.
And apparently you have, you have a very wonderful and poetic way of describing.
Yeah.
I saw that you make that family.
He's like, oh, you want him to watch a clip about you?
Well, we're introducing him to our audience.
Oh, you're in the clip too.
This is your reaction.
Oh, that's just my reaction.
I just play the raw one from his.
Whatever.
Yeah, it's all right.
You can just like play it afterward.
I mean, play bake it into the video in the edit.
Hassan Piker, the fact that he is so, you know, the other top streamers around him politically are like all conservative.
Yeah.
He is truly like a sin eater for the world.
Just like, I'm just looking at like, this is, he has, he is like the ones who lift weights in Omalas.
He is like fucking.
I know what you're talking about.
Yeah.
No, we've cursed him to sit in that room, sit in that little room of his and watch MSNBC all day long, 10 hours a day.
He makes 150 grand every time he does it, but he cannot leave his little room.
Yeah, what does he do with the 150 grand?
He's got to be in front of the computer for eight hours again tomorrow.
The rest of the house is empty.
Grabbing kids on the way to the Manosphere alt-right pipeline and shunting them off into the, into the left.
Like, no, no, get back.
Get back.
All the coverage of him is so funny where it's just like all of these reporters are going and like, can this one jacked man in this little room change politics?
Is this the new like, no, this is just, this is just fun guy trapped in behind the camera.
I don't know how he doesn't freak the fuck out at mainstream reporters being like, this one man stand against the forces of reactionary conservatism.
And the fact that he doesn't go, help somebody else do this.
I didn't really fully understand the reference that you were making in the clip.
So I wanted to ask you about it.
It's like, you said sin eater and I got that.
It's so sick to be invited on a podcast to be like, explain that, Joe.
Dictator Power and Capitalism00:15:42
What is she meaning by that?
You never said that about me.
Here's the thing, though.
Everyone understood it and they were pogging.
They were going crazy.
But I felt like I was, you know, a little lost there.
It's really, well, it's cool to, I don't know, man.
It's like, it's a little bit fun.
And there's a nice part of it because you feel like there's this broad, hopefully increasing coalition of people that are creating content online and trying to speak to culture and talk about the big elephant in the room, which is that this level of exploitation and capitalist fucking oligarchy is not sustainable.
And it's very cool to come to that from a bunch of different angles.
So I'm coming from the deep nerd, the deep, deep nerd angle on that.
So The Ones Who Walk Away from Omalas is a short story by Ursula K. Le Guin, who wrote A Wizard of Earthsea, which is one of the seminal sort of fantasy texts.
She's an incredible, she is, as the youth would say, incredibly based.
She, I think there's a, I could be misattributing this and I'll look it up and feel very bashful if I am.
But she's, I believe, quoted as saying, like, we are resisting the might of capitalism.
Its might feels inescapable.
So too did the divine right of kings.
Like these things that felt inescapable to resist one day.
I love that comparison.
I've like you talking about making a comparison between monarchy and capitalism, I think is like very easy to help liberals come to terms with exactly what's going on.
Yeah.
Where if the divine right of kings was the lie that people believed, like that the God had ordained this king to be the ruler of the land, I think under our current examination of justifying capitalism, it's meritocracy where people go, well, Elon Musk is working a lot harder than everybody else, right?
Or is working a lot smarter than everybody else, right?
And that's why he kind of deserves it.
Yes.
And this is what I believe too.
For a long time, I was like, you know, I've known him for a little bit.
And over the time that I've known him, I've, you know, I've started to, you know, my image of America and my patriotism has just collapsed completely.
You know what I mean?
Like I used to, I used to be a hand on the heart, you know, jets flying over the stadium.
USA, USA.
And all of a sudden, now I'm just like, oh my God, my entire life I've been lied to.
And all of these capital owners are hoarding the wealth away from me.
And I've been trying to join them the whole time.
Now you realize those jets are on the way to Venezuela after the flyover.
Yeah, it's just like, well, because like in a weird way, like the Trump administration is so like, like, there's just so, it's so funny.
Nakedly, yeah, like nakedly, like on the nose about it.
And then now I look back historically and now I put it into this context.
It's like, oh my God.
There's that, there's that, the, the line from Andor that's like increasingly relevant recently, which was the, you know, Mon Mothma going like, like, they don't even bother to lie back.
Yeah, you know what I mean?
It's like, that's how I felt after that.
It's just cartoonishly evil.
It's almost like a like, if this was the early 2000s, there would have been like a few weeks of lying before, you know, like there would have been.
No, that's like, Colin Powell, like, still went to the United Nations and like brought a vial and made it seem like they had WMDs when people knew that it was bullshit.
But like, at least someone was trying.
Not to say that that was good.
I remember having my very first protest as a kid was protesting the Iraq war and having a sign being like, this is for oil.
And it's wild to 20 plus years later have JD Vance go, you understand this is for oil, right?
Like he's just, he's like, well, you understand how much oil they have.
We have to go get it.
Well, JD Vance also says that Irm actually, like, he's, he's missed the Reddit and I fucking hate him for it because like he'll both do that.
Like he'll do the thing where like he has to be, you know, pro-Trump.
So he's obviously going to go out and be like, we're, we got our, our dicks are hard.
Our military's hard dicked.
You know, we're doing it.
We're fucking going out there and we're taking it.
Yeah.
But then, but then he will turn around and be like, Irm, technically, there's a legal reason for why we're doing this, guys.
And a lot of you don't understand it.
And it's like, you can't have it both ways.
You can't be like this fucking.
You can't have a hard dick.
Yeah.
Pick his side, brother.
Like, he's always trying to go between the two because he's a fucking Yale graduate who despises the Appalachian region.
I think the one thing that is the most disheartening to me is the American government used to have to do its own propaganda.
Now there's an entire economy of people that will do that for them.
For free.
And spin it in so many ways because for free and acid factors.
And there's a massive community of people that consume that rhetoric almost as entertainment.
And that's like the crazy thing is how we've gotten there, where people almost know it's theater.
Like they know they're watching a heel in the WWE or whatever, but they're still like, tell me how America's winning, baby.
It's so fucking frustrating because these people used to be the lowest part of society.
And we used to, I'm serious.
We used to see these people and be like, get in the fucking locker nerd and put them in the toilet and give them a swirly.
And now they're fucking running the biggest podcast in the nation.
We have a theory.
He is in a totally different life.
He would be Uday Hussein.
How did he get here?
We're very fortunate that he was a gay man from Portland, Oregon, who, you know, struck gold with this stuff.
But he would have been a dictator or something.
Brennan, you have to understand I would never be a dictator.
The sort of like soft, suave gravel in your voice as you said that really upset and frightened me.
I didn't like that.
If I did come into immense power.
If I did, if I did come into immense power, I would do so with grace.
And I would tell you this word.
Like a balcony is materializing in front of you, facing a gunner's roll.
Banners are rolling out.
I put my face on a few murals.
But I would totally treat me with respect.
Everybody would love me.
You are.
I believe I would.
Every time we can just tell a totally uninitiated guest for the first time ever this exact same thing and he immediately will start defending himself and it reveals that he 100% is never be a dictator, which is so funny.
People would love to give everybody healthcare.
That's what I would do.
Well, that's lovely.
I would do that.
I'd say, you know, I'd say daycare, free daycare.
But it is.
To your point.
And you have to fan me.
I mean, what's wrong with a massage or two?
You know what I mean?
If the whole deal with your regime is just that you get some massages.
I'm in, man.
If we get healthcare, cappuccino with a single shot.
Eggs benedict.
Krispy Muffin.
You know what I mean?
They make a mistake.
No, I would never kill anybody.
Unless they, you know, obviously deserve it.
Maybe people are going to raise their firstborn just to prove a point.
Right.
So they never make that mistake again.
I think we'd all, and you know, if you came into immense power, I mean, you wouldn't say no to it, would you?
Again, it's come into this, this whole thing of coming into immense power.
It just feels like needlessly.
Come into a little power.
Come into a little power.
I think, yeah.
Well, it's really funny to talk about like, I don't know, just what you were saying before about the idea of how, like, there's this new apparatus.
It's crazy to watch people see something unhinged.
And you watch, I love now in this, especially this in Trump 2, the like the gear turn moment where someone has to figure out why they like this.
Yeah.
Like watching someone who was like, I don't know, eggs are expensive.
Be like, yeah, man, I fucking hate Denmark and love Conquering Greenland.
And just the gear spin of figuring out how do I get behind this nakedly insane thing.
And you're gay.
You're gay.
You're crazy, dude.
Literally.
I deal with this on a daily basis on Twitch because it's like the most interactive medium yet.
And I don't even want to know how much more interactive we can get, honestly.
I hope this is where it stays at, but I suspect it's probably going to move beyond it where you can touch the content creator directly eventually in the next stage.
Because think about it.
There's never been a time.
There's never been a time on this planet where you could watch the television and tell Anderson Cooper he's gay and to shut the fuck up.
And then he hears you and he actually responds to you.
Right.
But that's Twitch as a medium.
And because of that, I get to see people change their minds in real time.
I get to see propaganda as it's being designed in real time being put together.
And yesterday's horrifying incident with the 37-year-old Renee Good getting shot and killed in the middle of the street in her own neighborhood by an ICE agent who should not have been there.
I saw people genuinely go from, yeah, this seems really bad.
I actually watched the footage.
Like I've always been a supporter of ICE until this very moment.
This is my last straw, I think, to then get bullied back into submission and to whip themselves into a frenzy and go, by the end of the day, oh, actually fuck around and find out like she deserved it, which is just rank cruelty.
I mean, there is nothing, there is nothing redeemable about this position.
Yeah.
Just cruelty for the sake of cruelty.
It's a, it's a nightmare, man.
And I think you do watch the, the, there's a lot of like what ends up getting leveraged against people when you see that like, no, no, no, get back in line, get back in line.
This isn't how we feel is literally people leveraging not believing the testimony of your own eyes and ears as you watch something nakedly evil happen, but the, but also it's like, well, what if you lost your community over it?
What if you didn't get to keep your identity?
What if what if changing your opinion on this meant that you lost the people that you go to these rallies with and you lost that?
And it's so obvious that there's, it's hollow, because if that's the last thing that you're resorting to is, hey, don't change your opinion to be moral, you might lose everything that you hold dear.
Yeah.
That's fucking rough.
What's so, what's the craziest thing to me?
And people talk about this all the time, but the parading of Jesus Christ in the name of all this crazy shit.
Like, yeah, like Jesus would have shot somebody in the face and been like, yeah, fuck around and find out.
Like Jesus would have done that, you know?
Jesus would have famously.
Yeah, famously would have deported immigrants and, you know, killed them and wanted no health care.
It's got to be so rough for him up in his father's paradise looking down and being like, being like, here's the thing, man.
Immigrants and poor people, I did touch on a lot.
I really covered that well.
It's one thing.
I washed lepers.
Yes.
I was so clear.
I literally said, like, treat the foreigner as yourself.
I swear to God, I covered that in the sermon.
Yeah.
Okay.
Counterpoint.
Have you ever seen Al Franken's Supply Side Jesus?
Oh, no, I haven't seen this.
Okay.
Well, you're a student of comedy.
We have to pull this up, March.
And I think you will really appreciate this.
So Al Franken made comics back in the day.
He's a comedy writer initially before he became a politician who then resigned in disgrace.
But we're not going to get into all of that stuff.
But he had a really funny bit where he called it Supply Side Jesus.
And it's a comic strip that goes into detail about how Christians in America under the prosperity gospel operate.
One of my favorite bits is when he refuses to cover the lepers because they're outside of their network of coverage.
Bring me this king of the Jews that I might meet him, this supply side Jesus.
Anyway.
Yeah, this is great, man.
This is exactly like, but that's the funny thing.
We were talking a second ago about the idea of you were mentioning like the jets flying over.
And I saw you were talking about meritocracy, which is like, it's funny because that's a cultural principle that like undergirds capitalism, the idea that like, this has to, and its roots are in Puritanism.
Its roots are in like the Calvinist idea of predetermination, which is this concept of, you know, like, oh, how are we going to make sense of the fact that some people have everything and other people have nothing?
And if you take this kind of metaphysical aspect that exists in some forms of Protestantism, which is God's already picked winners and losers.
God's actually already picked the people that are bound for heaven, people that are not.
And your station in life is an indication of how blessed you are by God.
So there are people that literally go, you're rich.
God must love you.
Yes.
Which is the most warped.
Because what it does is it causes you to have more compassion for the people who need it the least and less compassion for the people who need it the most.
And it's baked into a lot.
It's like it's dumb.
Americans especially have prosperity, gospel brains, and they've, it's completely warped their consciousness.
You just brought up the fact that it gives you the most compassion for those who need it the most or no, those who need it the least.
But the inverse of that also is if you're poor, you're morally inferior or you're evil deserved your broke.
And that's where this attitude comes from, where like, that's where this anti-collectivist attitude also comes from.
That's where our like hatred for homeless people also comes from as a collective where we're just like, oh, they like kind of deserve it.
They did something wrong.
They must have done something wrong.
They're doing it to themselves.
Yeah.
It's really, it's really, really devastating.
I think it's moral poison in general.
And I think that's part of the reason why no, no amount of collectivism ever sticks in this country.
And that's why people are like freaking out about Zorhan Mamdani even, you know, in his saying, we must do away.
We must do away with the coldness of rugged individualism and we must embrace the warmth of collectivism.
And everyone lost their minds on that.
And like, that's the thing is there, there are a lot of traditions that do say the opposite, you know, like there but for the grace of God go I that sort of embrace that idea of like, oh, there's a like, no, I can have sympathy for someone in a worse situation than I'm in.
And I think that like it's important to in the conversations we have about politics to also like talk about culture, which is really like the thing that, you know, was, it's like a terrifying quote because it's from Steve Bannon, but that thing he said about politics being downstream from culture, that you have to deal with people's hearts.
And if people have to be honest with you, he was just, he was aping Gramsci.
Yeah.
He was.
He was just stealing.
That's all he was doing.
Yeah, but it's the Gramsci like quote is correct, which is that idea of like, you look at people's ability to like, if you have in your heart this idea of like, oh, when I look at people that are going through a hard time, it makes me feel morally sad and I'm agitated by looking at someone in crisis.
And some people go, I should address that problem in the world.
And some people are like, how can I stop feeling bad?
Politics Downstream from Culture00:06:03
Like, what's the fastest route?
How do I kill this feeling?
How do I kill this feeling of empathy that's making me in pain in this moment?
And I think that's the wrong way to go about it.
I think there's also an honesty in all of this.
I don't know if you're familiar with the Chapo Boys at All, Chapo Trap House.
Matt Christman calls this Zen fascism.
Yeah.
Where he has this incredible assessment where he went to like, he was doing mushrooms at, I think it was like CPAC or something, where he realized that the conservatives were actually, you know, recognizing or were more honest about like our place, our station in society as like a part of the labor aristocracy in the Marxian terms as in like being in the heart of empire.
We are benefiting from the imperial super profits in some ways.
We're benefiting by not being under the boot, you know, and instead being here.
So that is a tremendous benefit.
And that Republicans are constantly demanding like, why do you care?
Like, Jesus, stop.
Just be ruthless.
Be cruel.
Because like we're all benefiting from this.
You have a fucking iPhone.
You also are, you know, a recipient of all of this, this imperial bounty.
And it is a brilliant assessment.
And there is a little bit of honesty there as well, because like it does make you feel crazy where you, if you don't block out all that noise at certain points, you do go, what the fuck am I doing?
Like this phone that I have in my pocket is actually only a this one in my this phone that I have in my pocket that is incredibly important to me that I can't fucking live without would not exist if it wasn't for the unimaginably exploitative practices of mining conflict minerals and refining them overseas with this incredible system that we've designed.
So maybe we should just stop, we should just stop resisting against that altogether.
Like we should just know our station and enjoy the show.
Yeah.
It's you know, it's like you have a you have an injury in your body and there's some there's some people that are always going to go like, God, this injury take some painkillers.
And you're like, well, let's fix it or let's take the, let's like heal the wound or heal the injury.
And a lot of people just go, that's hard or I don't think that's going to happen, which is possible.
Yeah, not possible.
Like, you know, which is why you almost always find that reactionary mindset within like, this is the way it is.
Right.
And it's like, that's almost always going to lead you down a bad path.
We should crack into these donuts because I am super hungry.
I'm hungry.
Yeah, of course.
When I DM'd you, I was like, if you want some food, I can give you some.
I'm just going to respond.
You know, sometimes he doesn't host well.
No, no, no.
And, oh, shit, this looks bad.
Oh, my God.
Yeah, this is not like a gourmet, like we're experimenting with the full.
I think this is.
These are classica.
Classica.
Yeah.
Now, does this sugar one have filling in it or is it fillingless?
Thank you.
Some filling.
That's a filling boy.
That's a filling.
That's, I think, a classic Eclair.
Or maybe a filling.
That's a filling boy.
Okay, that's a filling.
Is this sugar one a filling or is that just a pure glaze?
Glaze.
That's the most basic.
That's the goaded basic.
Kind of like a simple donut.
Yeah.
Is that okay?
Can I indulge in a simple donut?
No, you know what?
I'll take it first.
I'm not going to judge.
Or conversely, if it's more fun, I'll judge heavily.
We'll do this sort of like a Meyer break.
Where you don't know you picks that up.
You being the guest, you should pick first, I think.
Wow.
All right.
Bro, he brought the donuts.
Let's just eat one of the donuts.
You're the recipient of the donuts.
Excuse you.
I'm trying to be polite.
Wow, these are two very different thought processes on these donuts.
Yeah, what do you think?
Yeah, there we go.
Perfect.
Thank you.
Oh, look at that, baby.
Wow.
Amazing.
I'm going to go right here.
That's amazing.
You know what?
That's the one I would have taken.
That is kind of handy.
Noodles.
Noodles, please.
The fucking sucker punch.
I know whatever donut I picked that was going to be.
That wasn't going to be my donut.
No, no, no, no.
Please.
You brought the donuts.
You have the donut that I wanted.
He is doing it on purpose.
No, I'm not.
I'm not.
Okay.
Okay.
No, I'm not.
No, I'm telling you.
No, Brent.
I'm actually very easygoing.
No, no.
It's not.
Do I give you some menace?
The octave drop.
The ever-so slightly.
Very easygoing.
I think you'll find me a reasonable man.
People, I think you can be easygoing and particular.
Okay.
Right?
Take it.
Elaborate.
Give me more on that.
So, like, I have my things, right?
Like, I have an order that I like and I'm very particular about it.
I'm going to take my donut.
You know, it's beautiful.
I'm not sure.
Does this have filling in it?
No.
No.
And I think this is.
Bring the fucking donut.
I think what this says about you is it's very classic.
It's a sugar donut, but it's a twist.
I'm a fun guy.
I think you're taking the things that work and you're doing something new and exciting with them.
I think that's a fork and knife.
I just like how phallic it is.
I wouldn't, I'm not going to eat right now, but if I were to choose a donut, I would choose a cruller, which I think that's a French cruller with a chocolate covering on it.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I'm not a fan of the chocolate covering, though, so I wouldn't take that one.
And instead of the microphone, you must.
These are fabbed.
These are fabbed.
There's no shot.
Is this what is this thing on the corner?
That looks like fried chicken.
No, I think that's actually an empinata.
Um, I think that's actually like a kind of classic donut because there's the cake and the yeast, and I think that's cake.
That's old school.
So, like, like Entamin's, yes, that's kind of your classic dip in coffee donut.
That's the one you want.
And then, this one is what the apple crumb or something that looks like it could be an apple pie style situation donut.
They're really good, dude.
My favorite, my favorite is has always been possibly because I grew up in Turkey and we didn't really have donuts growing up, and I only saw it in The Simpsons pink with the sprinkles.
Wow, yeah, that's my that's my classic.
I love that lard lad, yeah, like because that's that's what you think of when you think of like Randy's donuts, you think of that like have you ever gotten the lard lad donut at Universal?
No, I haven't.
I gotta get it for you, it's like the size of a hubcap.
New Age Woke Parents00:15:28
Oh, God, I can't have that.
There you go.
I need to, I need to worry about it.
Do you have these donuts often?
What's that?
Do you eat these often?
Is this your go-to breakfast?
I'm eating these constantly.
I'm eating them.
I'm eating them constantly.
Like a date, like a daily thing.
I'm gonna go get a donut and a coffee.
Yeah, it's very we have to talk about something you did recently.
Marsh, can you pull this up, please?
Oh, Christian.
You did what I would describe as maybe the most horrific makeup I've ever seen in my inside.
Oh, fuck.
On very important people.
Oh, yeah.
This was nasty, man.
This was great.
Very important people.
It'll come up immediately.
It's the first episode that came out.
So, in case you don't know, Very Important People is an improv interview show where the guest just does makeup and they don't know what they're going to be made up as.
Yes.
Oh, my God.
It's so horrific.
Dude, it is.
It lives with me always.
And the voice that you did here, play it.
You got to hear the voice he did for the intergalactic baby.
We don't have any audio on our side.
Oh, no.
Marsh.
Marsh.
You failed me.
You failed me once again.
For the last time.
You will fall like the memorial that you have on your hat.
This is how we treat our employees.
I'm actually a vicious, ruthless boss.
I love that.
He is great.
He's not the worst.
You gotta be.
This is a cooperative corporation.
The solar flame is a neutral star.
If you call me Archie again, the tongue that said it will be pinned to the wall.
I'm shy.
Move on to something that is going to help you see it on the screen.
God, Vic and Jack are so good, man.
You too.
Dude.
Oh, my God.
That's incredible.
That's Jacob Waisaki.
He's one of the funniest, most talented dudes on the planet.
He's unbelievably funny as this other baby.
So, look, the premise of this show is it's based on an old college humor sketch show that Josh Rubin and Pat Castles did back in the day called Hello My Name is, where basically they do insane special effects makeup on Josh Rubin with his eyes closed and they would roll him out in front of a mirror and give him like three minutes to get on set and start improvising a character.
And so we, you know, we're there for like two hours getting this baby makeup.
Here's the crazy thing.
I don't know if you guys watch any of the like BTS or like, it's called Last Looks, which is like, oh, here's like the making of the episode.
While we were being put in this horrifying baby shit in the middle of this huge sweaty head and like me and Jacob are around the same age.
Tony Hawk walks into the makeup room, the real life Tony Hawk because his son works on set as P. He's just visiting his kids.
Oh my God.
So a meeting that means more to me than I can really describe.
Oh my God.
Amount, the amount of grinding on digital rails.
It was so funny, too, because there's like a certain age of man where you're like, he's on set, he's a cool dude, and people know that he's a big deal.
But it's so funny to go from someone, like a 22-year-old bringing in, like, Mr. Hawk, right this way, come on in, to him seeing me and Jacob as these two millennial dudes giant, Mr. Hawk, I'm so sad I look like a fucked-up baby right now.
You mean so much to me?
Yeah, we have our own Tony Hawk story as well.
Oh, God.
What's this?
Back in the day, we were under the banner of a fairly exploitative, now notoriously corrupt podcast media empire.
And they sometimes would throw guests our way.
And one of those guests was Tony Hawk.
And I had a very similar experience where he means so much to me.
And I was so excited for the episode.
And within moments of us going camera up, when it was just the two of us, I was like, this guy does not want to be here.
No, no, no.
And it was a bad.
It was.
Wait, it was our notoriously worst episode, I think.
Wait, wait.
He got there.
Did you pay him to be there or something?
No, so we were all under the same episode.
So there was a lot of like, oh, we'll do this podcast if you do that podcast.
This was before I joined the podcast.
Yeah, it was kind of like I joined.
It was kind of like a hostile takeover.
You're kind of like, but you're the hockey stick where everything starts to 100%.
I mean, there is a correlation between.
Well, I mean, I. You what?
Can I please be on the podcast?
I invited myself.
You sound like that?
Yes.
Yeah.
I was very emotional about it.
I was like, why?
He was our guest and our friend before the podcast.
So like he would just kind of be like, whoa, are you guys going to invite me on this trip?
Like, what's going on?
And we would.
And then we were like, well, I guess we should, you know, bring him on board as a guest host permanently.
I have never heard, I have never heard the words, I'm gay, in that tone of voice.
As a sort of sato-vache, like explanation, like, well, I mean, I mean, I know, obviously, I know I'm in good company, not that you're not gay, but like, I was, I was, I know that you approve of gays, and um, I've heard this, I've looked it up beforehand.
I always make sure that Steve, we have a homophobic guest so I can be accommodating, right?
He's not joking.
Yeah, if we had a homophobic guest, I would indulge in a little homophobia.
I know you're not.
We're never gonna have a homophobic guest.
You never know.
He's heads it up and he'll be like, Yeah, what about these homos?
All right.
No, no, look, Brandon, it's not.
Let's get him out of here.
It's not that we would ever have a homophobic guest.
You would have a homophobic adjacent guest.
Yeah.
You know what I mean?
Somebody who tolerates homosexuals, but they're a little uncomfortable.
Right?
So I have to make sure that you, and that is not what is happening.
Exactly.
And I knew you weren't going to be uncomfortable.
But I could tell, but I could tell that you were looking at me like, okay, what is that?
Where's the diversity, the equity, and the inclusion?
And that's why I need to tell you, I needed to come out to you.
Brandon is a 20-year-old.
It's coming out as a process, and it happens concurrently throughout your whole life.
That's right.
And I knew I could sense that you didn't know, and so I had to come out.
And so I'm happy to be myself.
I'm very glad that you're in the middle of the day.
Thank you so much.
Thank you for.
I don't think anybody's experienced a live coming out on the podcast.
It's the first time.
Wow.
It happened in real time.
So you're welcome.
It's beautiful.
I love that.
You can't just own coming out every time.
You've come out already.
You do.
It was in like, what, 2023?
No, it's a beautiful moment.
You can't.
Get back in the closet.
Excuse me, homophobe.
Yeah.
By the way, when you say that, anyway, homophobia adjacent, he means me.
I'm the homophobic.
So, Brandon, basically, I invited myself on the podcast because I was like, I wanted a podcast.
Yeah.
And I was like, I wanted to make a little extra movie.
So I was like, Hey, I hear you.
Here I come and it fucking worked too.
You can invite yourself places and it can be successful.
You absolutely can.
Yeah, you have free will, right?
You have free will.
Look, yeah, I do.
You have free will.
This is his year where he, well, every other year he was still selfish, but this year he gets to also masquerade it as like a new life philosophy.
Interesting.
So we're sort of doing selfishness under the guise of exercising our free will.
Yes.
Well, that's a fascinating thing.
I mean, I don't know if you guys fuck with Robert Sapolsky at all, who's a great, he's a Stanford animal behavior and behavioral, he's a primatologist and does a lot of other stuff.
And there's some interesting thoughts.
Maybe free will.
It's hard to, maybe free will is this little tiny bit of sauce on mostly a lot of automated internal processes having to do with the subconscious.
Yeah.
I've done exercising it.
You know, you're trying to get that muscle back.
Yeah, because I think that a lot of times we feel like we're held by something.
And I'm like, no, we're not.
No, we're not.
I'm free to do anything.
What's the freest thing I've ever done?
Well, oh, God, man, it's been recent, actually.
The freest thing that I've ever done.
Sprint into traffic.
Well, no, I'm not a bad idea, but I'm proving I can do it.
No, I think the biggest, and now this sounds silly, but you know, like, I think when I was younger, I think there's a tremendous amount of pressure to like go to a party and stay.
Yeah.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
And I've just had this thing where I don't have to stay here.
I'm going to go home.
Your greatest act of free will is leaving a party early.
I fuck with that.
I really fuck with that.
Because I'm a perennial.
I want to shut it down.
I'm always like, I'll be the last one here helping clean up and like put the put cups and plates.
But I'll tell you what, you would love my wife, Isabella Rowland, incredible comedian, a phenomenal actress and wonderful writer.
She is, she is so good at being like, I'm done.
I'm done with the party.
We had a housewarming party and she came out, I want to say 9:30 and said, I'm going to bed.
And I love that.
Shut down the bedroom.
People were in there hanging out.
And she was like, get out, get out.
It's bedtime, baby.
And that's why she's a pro.
She's the maestro.
I respect the hell out of that because I think what I started to realize is people don't care as much as I think they care.
You know what I mean?
Like if I, if I leave the part, I show up for an hour or whatever and I leave and they're not gonna be like, man, fuck that piece of shit.
He didn't even stay longer.
Yeah.
You know what I mean?
Like, nobody cares.
Okay, floating a controversial idea, moving away from the free will discussion.
A friend of mine, friend of the show, as a matter of fact, Phineas, threw a holiday party the other day.
Okay.
It was during, you know, Christmas time.
And the timeline of this holiday party was from, is on a Saturday, was from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m.
Okay.
I really liked it.
Yes.
I really liked this limited confine, the limited confines, the limited window of 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. because it's a Saturday.
So it's not like you, you know, are working, right?
Or, you know, some people might, but most people aren't.
Yeah.
So you don't have that justification.
And I kind of dig this new meta.
I think that's what we need to do in 2026.
I love it.
Earlier parties.
I love it.
And may I ask?
I assume this is true, but I believe I'm in the company of childless men.
Is that correct?
Yes.
Jesus Christ, man.
He just daggered that F.
I have two calves.
He's flexing his semen on us.
Yeah, cool.
Not the same, but cool.
It's not.
I might catch a very extraordinarily not.
You have children.
I have a daughter.
I have a daughter and I have another child on the way.
Congratulations.
Thank you very much.
We're so happy inside.
So here's the move.
He's flexing fertility.
This is Babylonian.
No, he's not.
I'm just saying the company of childlessness.
I'm just saying of the four of us, one is provably virile.
And so that's the thing.
Do I look fatherl like, not fatherless?
Do I look like I'm not a fatherless?
Father gay.
No, no, no, no.
Gay men can be father.
Gay men can be five at your age.
At 30.
You're right.
You're right.
You're so right.
At your age?
I'm sure it's got to be all dust down there.
Yeah, no.
No other way.
No, you and gay men don't have kids until later.
Oh, God.
As you were saying, we're fatherless.
You're correct.
We are fatherless men.
But your father will say this is fatherless male behavior.
The move.
I think six to ten, bang, right on the money.
So talk about a noon to 3 p.m. party.
That's the level.
That's the level that I'm at these days.
You want to go, you want to take it down even further.
I would take it even further.
I'm going to be like, the sun will be out.
This was my birthday party recently.
Sun out.
Pizza there.
Love everybody.
Hug, hug, hug.
Okay.
It's nap time.
Everybody out.
And everybody is out.
I feel like it's very Spanish.
Yes.
Yeah.
There's this.
Like scheduling a siesta time, I feel like, is very, it's nap time, guys.
How old is your daughter?
Two.
Oh.
Two years old.
Is that a tough one?
Terrible twos, right?
It's awesome.
And like, it's very cool.
Like, yes, terrible twos are there, but I think the best thing that ever happened for my like, what I would really recommend to anyone out there who are parents, and let's turn Fear Ann into a parenting podcast briefly, ever so briefly.
We went from Jason the Ween to talking about parents.
That's crazy.
That's our last guest.
Our last guest was 20, 21 years old.
So he's basically a child.
I love it.
Hey, you know what?
It's a broad coalition here on the left.
So if I can bring the normie parent vibes.
Yes, we're ready for it.
There's a great book on raising emotionally intelligent children that talks about the fact that what we call a terrible twos is every single thing that kids do that you would perceive as like, oh, that's rough behavior to deal with is always the thing they're working on.
So when you think about a two-year-old being like, oh, they're selfish and they're saying things are mine and they don't want to share toys and they do this other stuff.
The great psychologist who basically talked about saying, hey, you have X amount of years as an adult of knowing who you are, knowing what you want and knowing what you can go without or the pleasure that you can defer till later.
Interesting.
All that shit doesn't exist in a two-year-old yet.
So the project is they're building a conception of self from scratch.
So all that shit is like, I thought they were just little assholes.
But it's like, you got it before you get to sharing, they're literally like, man, I'll get to sharing.
I'm figuring out which toys I even like right now.
So you got to give me some space to be like, is this mine?
I'm not saying it's being an asshole.
I'm literally figuring out what mine is.
So it seems to me like you're one of those new age woke parents.
Instead of teaching them early on, Prazier U is on, you know, on the TV at all times.
Sharing is not caring.
It's communism.
That's how I want to raise my children.
I was taking care of all the kids in my family over Christmas and it was awesome because I set up a little kid dueling ring where we had Nerf guns and I would stand them back to back.
Oh, I saw this.
And one of them would take a dueling glove, throw it down, issue a challenge, and we'd wager money on who would be.
He's like the idea.
And it was awesome.
I'm a disadvantage.
I got it.
I don't know what kind of lessons you're teaching them, though.
It's a doggy dog world out there.
We were just listening to 04 tuna on the front deck of my parents' southern home as people went by.
And little kids wearing aviators as eye protection are just killing each other with Nerf guns.
That's what you have to do.
That's the role of the uncle.
The uncle is chaos as inoculation.
I need to bring a little bit of chaos to the function.
So you need to ruin their programming.
It's like when I bought my nephew an electric bike, like an e-bike, so he could have full freedom of mobility.
Which was my uncle was like, What are you doing?
Yeah, this is not this.
Is why I want my brothers to have kids because I've there's a big part of me that's like, Hold on, we don't get to just be every Christmas now.
I'm like, Okay, that's enough.
And you're out here riling people up and like, Let's get another snack, another treat.
I'm like, You need to have some kids that I can go ril up and be irresponsible around so we can correct them.
Riling Up for Nieces00:04:31
Okay, so I've got a question about because you're probably the first father we've ever had on the podcast.
That's not true.
A lot of all, literally, not even remotely true.
Who else is a father?
Name one.
We've had so many guests over like regular adult age that most likely have children.
I mean, capable.
No, we're doing just for children we don't know about.
We've been doing this for six years.
Oh, actually, no, Jennifer Welch, she's got a child.
She's actually got two.
Oh, lovely.
Do you know Jennifer Welch?
I've had a podcast.
She's huge.
Yeah, she's fucking loved.
Tony Hall.
We just FaceTimed.
Yeah, she's a great friend.
Anyway, love her.
We've had guests on this podcast whose children are fans of ours.
I'm getting Jennifer Welch.
Their children were here.
They introduced themselves.
Other than Jennifer Welch, we haven't had many parents, but I've never got an opportunity to ask this.
So I really want kids one day.
That's beautiful.
Yeah, no, I really do genuinely.
But one thing I don't really like kids.
And I'm wondering, will it change when I have my own?
Because I'm hoping it's kind of a gamble because I'm like, I'm really hoping it'll click because I can't afford not to like my kid if I make it.
Well, that'll be a huge catastrophe for them, most of all.
Yeah, 100%.
I mean, I'll fake it.
I'll fake it.
Cool.
You know what I mean?
Like, yeah.
Well, that's the cool thing.
I mean, the easy, the easy thing, too, in terms of like personal philosophy, the cool thing about whether you want kids or not is it's the right choice.
Right.
Right?
Because you shouldn't, if the kids should not show up in homes where the people are like, this is a huge bummer and I hate that this happened.
Right?
Like, that's a bad thing for the kids.
Yeah, I like kids.
Well, I don't like kids, but like, I do like kids.
You know, I can figure it out.
What is the thing in your heart that makes you want to be a father?
I think that, like, I just, I don't know, there's something like biologically, like, just like, it's time.
Like, I see, I see myself like starting to parent.
You know what I mean?
Like, like, I've got nephews.
I've got 10 extra.
Do you like your parents?
I've got 12 nieces and nephews.
Yeah, but I don't like 12 nieces and nephews.
Yeah, they were, they were, my siblings are busy, busy, busy.
Hell yeah.
Yeah.
And so I got 12, but I start, you know, I'm starting to give advice.
You know, you know, I've got, I've got a nephew that's like probably he's 20 years old.
Yeah.
You know, and they call him gay onk.
Yeah, they call me gunk.
And it's bullshit.
What's starting to piss me off is they're like, they're tall.
They're really tall.
They're like 6'6.
And they call me Lil Unk.
And I'm like, listen, let me tell you something about something.
This is brutal.
But anyway, I start to, I feel like I'm starting to give advice.
I want to mentor.
I want to like show some version of me, the world.
Yeah.
And that's where I'm just like, you know, I really want kids.
I think it's beautiful.
You want to have other little Udays and Kusay?
No, I think I think I'd, you know, I think I'd be a great parent.
And if I'm not, I'll subsidize it to like a nanny.
Right?
See, it's a good thing.
Do you feel when you're hanging out with your nephews and nieces, are you having a good time?
Do you like being in the company of the name of the world?
Yeah, most of the time.
Some.
I'll be honest.
You know, some, you know, it doesn't have to be.
I think that like love is better than always having a good time.
Right.
Right.
Just like writ large.
Like if you're in a place where there's tons of parts of being a parent that are very hard or very challenging.
Right.
And every once in a while, you're like, I don't love that someone I've devoted my life to keeps throwing shit in my eye.
I wish that would stop.
Like you have those moments of just being an animal and being like, this is not super comfortable.
But I think that, I don't know, it's the, it's very, it's very corny to say, but everything that is poetically true about like the ideal versions of what life is like when you have children has proven true for you.
Sure.
That the like, the, you know, I said, I said to friends that are having kids, I've often talked about it.
They'll be like, is it, you know, is it hard or what's the expectation?
And I'll go like, it is the hardest thing in the world.
And it filled, some of us have said, like, when I'm on my phone scrolling, that is incredibly easy and comfortable.
And it makes me fucking deeply miserable and sad and go, God, this is like so addictive and easy.
And I'm so lounged on this thing that's comfortable.
And I was like, when I'm with my child, it can be hard.
It can be challenging.
There's sleepless nights.
And I am filled with a sense of connection and purpose and joy that is inexhaustible.
That's what I want because I feel like eventually I'm going to run out of jobs.
Well said.
Well said.
Are you enjoying things that like, you know, I hear a lot about parenting?
Like, does Christmas now feel like a Christmas fucking rules?
Halloween Scary Rules00:08:55
Halloween.
Halloween.
Okay.
Yeah.
Because I'll be honest, I don't, I don't drink.
I'm a, I'm a teetotaler.
I don't drink.
I've never done any drugs.
I'm a totally sober DD playing lifetime.
That's amazing.
So you just say you're so teetodling.
I'm a teetotaler, man.
It's a fact.
I first learned that term in the game fable.
Ooh, shit.
That's fun.
Is it like a status that you have in the game?
Yeah, when you would drink and you like at first, when your character first drinks alcohol and you, you know, you lose.
You get drunk, you were, it would say like teetotaler.
Oh, wow.
Interesting.
The, yeah, the, the, uh, for me, there's like a uh, so Halloween.
Once I stop being able to trick or treat, basically, like the, the first Halloween that some adult looks at you and goes, a little old, a little old for this.
And you go, it's like, little, and you go, oh, and they're like, you, you, are you, are you sexually active?
You should be, you should, you should not be doing this.
You should get out of here.
And then you're like, what?
But I still love candy.
You know, like, and this is a fun event with my friends.
We're being social in the neighborhood.
And you stop and then it lost all charm for me.
I went like, well, I'm not like, also, the fuck, this is a fucked up like part of it as well.
I'm, I was a LARPer and I LARP a lot, which is where you dress up like fucking elves and wizards and you go.
Are you in the park and stuff?
Oh, dude, we were in the deep woods, upstate New York campsites.
Oh, fuck, yeah.
We were like, I was like sprinting through the dark forest with a fucking foam sword hunting bandits.
Yeah, upstate New York.
Oh my god, what part?
So I'm partially from the, so I'm from High Falls, New York.
It's a little town 90 minutes north of the city.
And I spent a lot of time in the city as well.
Okay, got it.
Jets fan?
I'm not a Jets fan.
He's in upstate New York.
So he's probably a Buffalo.
The only baseball team I really inherited from my dad was the Mets, was a Mets fan because my grandfather, Jack Mulligan, was a fan of the Dodgers back when they were still in Brooklyn.
Now I've come to the bottom.
So sorry, I cut you off.
You were in the middle of telling us.
No, no, but the LARPA thing.
So like, if you are used to getting in costume and then literally, you know, ridding evil from the face of Gelgador, the idea of getting in a costume and just going to a loud hot bar is like, it's kind of a step down.
Yeah.
So Halloween lost all charm and now as a dad, Halloween rules again.
Yeah, no, 100%.
I've started to enjoy Halloween more in my adult life too.
Your enjoyment on Halloween is very different.
Why?
Because you're having because Halloween is an opportunity for you to have foursomes.
Oh my God.
And with sexy, scantily clad, dressed, nubile twinks.
Oh my God.
I'm so sorry, Brennan, that you had to be subjected to that.
To reality.
To me, exposing why you like Halloween again.
I mean, who doesn't love a forsome?
I'm so trying to answer the question.
No, no, I understand.
I don't want to turn to the guy who just said, I've spent a lot of my life LARPing.
And he goes, Who doesn't like a good forson?
Who doesn't like a good horse?
I will say, LARP Camp was wild.
Really?
Well, when the nerds all find each other, what do you think happens?
Yeah, of course.
Yeah, I imagine he's like Bandcamp.
It is, yeah, Bandcamp is a good analogy.
Yeah, of course.
No, of course.
When you're like, oh, all the people that pick on us aren't here and we get to invent a new society from the ground up.
No, I enjoy Halloween because I get to go to all these.
Now I'm starting to go to parties and I'm living a lot of the, you know, I didn't really party as much, you know, when I was in college and stuff.
So I'm kind of partying more now.
Do you, so the parties are a great aspect.
Do you guys fuck with any of the, like, have you been to like the haunted hayride or anything like that?
Do you guys fuck with any of those scary attractions?
I can't, I want to do it.
I just can't handle it.
I don't like being scared.
I don't either.
I don't.
I think I used to be a depressed kid and I watched everything scary I could because I found that scary nullified depression.
Wow.
So I think I've burnt out all of my horror receptors.
You just don't get scared.
No.
That rules.
Yeah.
I feel very similar.
I, I, uh, I get very scared.
Me too.
And I don't like it.
I don't.
Do you get scared?
Not at the haunted, the haunted attractions.
I've, there's a place that, so up near I live in Rheinbeck, is like the number one haunted attraction in the United States, which is the headless horseman haunted hayride and houses, which is a lot of illiteracy.
It's really scary.
Well, it's, but that's the thing is, it's like this.
They make this whole Halloween world.
Yeah.
So I'm sort of wandering around as people are jumping out and scaring, being like, look at the architecture of this coin.
I'm more just like, this is a beautiful, it's just really cool to see.
So yeah, I really love it.
I like scary shit.
I just can't deal with it.
Like, I think a good level of horror is like Disney on a mansion.
That's perfect.
You know what I mean?
Like, that's the perfect level of horror.
Not scary.
No, I mean, I mean, there's some things in the haunted mansion that pop out.
Oh, good morning.
Like Mickey Mouse.
No, Mickey Mouse.
Yeah, no, he doesn't pop out, but it's like, your mother sucks cocks now.
That's not what, but you know, like, it's a little scary when you go down the elevator in the haunted mansion.
You know what I'm talking about?
Welcome to the haunted mansion.
That's the terrifying experience.
It's the dark going down an elevator.
My favorite thing, there was this incredible improviser and comedian in New York, Chet Siegel, who I perform as many he or she rules.
We did a whole thing where a bunch of improvisers in New York went to this haunted house and Chet, she had ice water in her veins, was scared by fucking nothing until there was this one thing where we're on the hay wagon moving along and over the hill, the eponymous, a New York, a New York state legend, the headless horseman, the headless Hessian soldier of Revolutionary War fame, crests over the hill and it's an actor riding a horse with a flaming pumpkin.
It's a real family pumpkin.
Rides down the hill.
It's insane.
It's so fucking cool.
It's insane.
But Chet fucking slams a hand into my shoulder and goes, ah, like squeezes it.
And is the only that freaked her out.
And I went, why the why the beautiful horse cresting over a moonlit hill?
She went, the horse doesn't know it's in a play.
And I said, she's like, none of these fucking like, like jigsaw fucking Jason motherfuckers are legally allowed to touch me.
The horse does not know man's law.
The horse animal.
It's a wild animal.
This thing does it was not going to be like, oh, I'm an actor.
I got to touch the people.
If this thing rides up, what are we going to fucking do?
That's brilliant.
Yeah.
No, it's terrifying.
The horse doesn't know it's in a play.
Horse doesn't absolutely know it's in a play.
I'm a play.
I'm a horse girl.
That's the that's the one thing that you like women that ride horses?
No, horse creators.
I grew up riding horses and I love horses.
You didn't know that's beautiful, man.
What kind of riding did you do?
Just like scenic, like nature stuff?
Did you know?
No, no, no.
I was a professional show jumper.
Holy shit.
What?
Yeah.
That fucking rules.
You didn't know this.
I learned something about him every day.
Do you have like a special horse that you had like a screen?
I had a horse.
Her name was Showgirl.
She passed away when I was in 10th grade.
I'm sorry.
I have a unique relationship, though, with horseback riding because it's such an isolating sport.
And I just always wanted to play basketball.
My parents were like, no, you got to do this instead.
So now I look back at that experience fondly because my parents were obviously right.
That was an awesome thing that they made me do.
Yeah, you're also too big to be on a horse anymore.
Well, I did.
I rode a horse recently, like a couple months ago.
And I wrote a horse recently at a couple, a couple months ago, and it just like it is kind of like riding a bike where it did unlock something in me where I was like, damn, I got to do this more frequently.
But you're right.
People do discriminate against those who are maybe a little bit heavier than the average person when it comes to allowing them to ride horses.
Is that something that you have to take into consideration?
It's like you should get a larger horse, or is there like because there are some Clydesdale.
When I was a kid, I rode a donkey, which I really went.
My aunt, a burro.
See, his name was Barney the Burrow.
And he was really, he was really sweet.
He was so sweet.
I always had a strong affinity for donkeys.
I love donkeys.
Donkeys are dope.
Donkeys are dope.
They're really brave.
They step on rattlesnakes' heads.
And I also love it because on a farm, they're the only, to my knowledge, they're the only animal that is not food.
It's not producing a material good like wool, and they're not pets.
They just work there.
They're the only working class.
They're the only animals.
I just moved shit around.
No, I went to an animal sanctuary just in Texas.
We have the Maya Higa.
She's got this beautiful sanctuary.
And I got to meet her donkeys and they were so nice.
And the horse and the, she has like this little area where there's a cow, there's a horse and a couple donkeys.
Behind the Paywall00:01:07
Yeah.
And they're just so fucking awesome.
They come up.
They're friends.
They don't really like me to touch.
They didn't like me to touch them.
But they were really nice.
The donkeys are the people.
Yeah.
Well, both.
Yeah.
Before we jump into another topic, we're at an hour.
He's on a tight schedule.
Yeah.
You are one of the best guests we've ever had.
You are fantastic.
One of the best guests we've ever had.
Really fucking nice.
And if you want to watch the second part, all of our guests are ass.
It's not a reflection of you.
It's more a reflection on our books.
We really suck at getting guests, honestly.
If you want to watch more of our conversation, please join us behind the paywall.
Thank you so much for joining us.
Anything you guys talk about?
Yeah, of course.
Well, I know you do, but patreon.com slash fair am for the paywall episode, by the way.
But yes.
Oh, but you can find me at Brendan Lee Mulligan on Instagram and the Dimension 20 critical role of World's Beyond Number, a bunch of awesome stuff.
Dead, everyone should check out Dead, which is now available.
My wife's movie that she wrote and self-financed and produced and funded in Starbucks.