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Jan. 30, 2018 - Get Off My Lawn - Gavin McInnes

47:47

Get Off My Lawn Podcast #20 | My gay uncle just died

He was in his late 60s but he died in the closet last week and it breaks my heart. He was a great man who had a rough life and the idea of never openly being yourself just sounds like infinite torture to me. Poor bastard. May he rest in peace.

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	My gay uncle just died.
	Pretty much everyone in this story is dead, which is why I've been waiting so long to say it, because he died in the closet.
	Which is angering to me.
	You know, God gives you a gift, the gift of life.
	Sometimes he screws up.
	It makes you gay.
	Sorry, but it is weird to be gay.
	Let's cut the crap.
	It's not evil, it's like a sexual albino.
	Like a vegetarian lion.
	You have these incisors, you have the ability to catch prey, but you're not interested.
	You think a vagina is gross.
	And I kind of get that, by the way.
	You know, it's fun to talk to gays and pitch them boobs and butts, and they go, yeah, I see it, I see it.
	But you get to the vagina and they just go, But, um, my uncle is my sister's brother.
	I'm sorry, my mother's brother.
	And, uh, he grew up in Glasgow.
	My parents are Glaswegian.
	I was born in England, but I would go to Scotland every summer and spend a lot of time with my gran, who's also deceased.
	And I would consider my gran a friend.
	Like, I called her and stuff all the time.
	You know, I wouldn't swear when I spoke to her, but towards the end, though, every phone call was exactly the same.
	Yo, Ray Gran, hi.
	You getting by, you know?
	And then she'd say, how are my babies?
	Meaning her grandchildren.
	And I'd tell her three anecdotes, one from each kid.
	And then she'd say, you know, you need to record that.
	You need to get that on.
	Write that down.
	I don't remember anything from Lorraine and Shracken.
	Every single time.
	And I'm saying that to say that she was losing it mentally long before she died.
	And then after she died, which was probably three years ago now.
	She was 96 by the way.
	After she died, my uncle just started deteriorating.
	He lived with her his whole life.
	I remember once I was talking about mama's boys at the pub.
	He goes, ah, I'm a mama's boy.
	And I went, oh shit, I forgot.
	Whoops.
	But he was never the same, because they were like a married couple.
	They lived together forever.
	And I know that sounds like he was a total loser, and there's an argument to be made for that, but he wasn't a loser.
	He wasn't like that guy from office space who sat there going, eh, eh, eh, my stapler.
	He was like a man.
	He was six foot two, breathtakingly gorgeous, stunning.
	It's- every man, by the way, just so you know, wants to have black hair, be over six feet, have a strong chin, and a black mustache.
	Like the guy in, uh, Super Troopers.
	The packy guy.
	Sorry, racial epithet.
	Uh...
	That's what we're all going for.
	Now I have, like, wispy sand hair, no chin, and I'm 5'11 with Kermit the Frog's torso.
	This didn't go great.
	God screwed up with me too, Strack, so don't worry about it.
	But, okay, let me just explain his life, because I think it's an interesting story.
	So, my family's wor- my mom's side of the family's, uh, working class.
	This is my grandmother's side, right?
	Mom's mom.
	Hard scrabble, French roots, worked her whole life.
	My grandfather on my mom's side was rich as shit.
	Minister of industry.
	But when it came time for him, he just squandered it, spent it on himself.
	Sorry to speak ill of my dead grandfather, but my mom's dad was kind of irresponsible.
	And he grew up rich, in a big mansion, and then ended the fortune.
	You know they say, Hard times make for strong men.
	Strong men make for soft times.
	Soft times make soft men.
	And then soft men make hard times, and so on.
	And it goes in a cycle.
	So, Jack Thompson was the end of the cycle.
	So he marries, back then, I guess we're now into the, what, the 30s?
	You would take, you'd go ballroom dancing on Fridays, whether you were rich or poor.
	You put on a tuxedo, a lady put on a gown, and you took her ballroom dancing, and that's how you courted, that's how you met people.
	So she meets this guy, Jack Thompson, who is breathtakingly gorgeous too, and slick back hair.
	He looked like that Skip Malone guy with the pencil-thin mustache.
	I forget his name.
	But she took her dancing and everything was great.
	And then they get married and they move in together.
	This is my mom's parents.
	And he just turns into a dick.
	And she goes, are we going dancing, Jack?
	And he goes, who would want to dance with you?
	And it got worse from there.
	They had money to buy a family car.
	They had two little kids, my mom and my uncle, the gay guy.
	And he goes and he buys a Harley Davidson for the family car.
	Right hen, I'm ready!
	And my grandmother goes, what are you doing, Jack?
	Are you daft?
	How are we going to fit the kids on this?
	It's not bloody Cambodia, you know!
	So he does what any smart person would do.
	He gets a sidecar.
	So my poor mother and my uncle would go to school in a sidecar.
	This is pre-catalytic converters, where there was soot everywhere.
	I mean, in Britain, If you want to know what it's like, just go to China or anywhere Eastern European today.
	You touch a wall, you touch anything, you're just black.
	You go, you go, you ride your bike to a destination in China, you get there, you wash your face and hands, and then you look at the towel and there's your exact hands and your face imprinted on the white towel.
	A soot.
	So she would get to school with everything that wasn't covered by goggles was just filthy.
	She'd show up at school, she looked like a coal miner.
	They don't get along, and then my grandmother has an affair with a Jewish man in Glasgow, gets pregnant, has an abortion, they get divorced.
	I'm talking 1950 here.
	This is not done back then.
	I might be getting the dates a little bit wrong, but that's about right.
	Post-war.
	Uh, so they were kind of ostracized in their community, which is maybe a good thing.
	Maybe we should... Actually, I do know a woman who was divorced recently and she did say that you sort of have a stink on you here in the suburbs when you walk around.
	You, like, you walk into a restaurant and there's, oh, that's the one that was divorced.
	Because you represent a threat to marriage.
	Maybe she's going to seduce my husband now.
	I actually heard a story at a bar recently from the locals and they, you know, I live in an affluent neighbourhood now, maybe a little too affluent, like there's not enough kids on their bikes.
	But what was I supposed to do?
	I'll do a whole other podcast about that.
	Go live in a blue-collar town and just keep all my money in the bank?
	I don't know, I wanted to spend it on a nice house.
	But anyway.
	The country club people, they go to this party and everyone is there playing naked Wii bowling.
	You know W-I?
	I, whatever it's spelled, the video game?
	And all these, they were all like swinging.
	I'm not talking about the 70s, I'm talking about two years ago.
	And all those couples got divorced.
	Some guy down the street, some finance guy, I think he OD'd on Coke and died in his basement.
	A lot of these finance guys are still doing blow.
	An old heart can't take that.
	Anyway, sorry, crazy tangent.
	You're ostracized for being divorced, but it was really bad back then.
	So my grandmother, now she has kids.
	My mom and my uncle are like 12 and 13, and she decides, she's wasted 10 years of her life with this jerk.
	He becomes this weird curmudgeon who lives in a little island called Rothsea in Scotland, where he has all his heirlooms, all his unbelievable furniture, but he's so cheap, That he uses it for other things.
	Like he had this mahogany chest of drawers.
	I remember when I'd stay with him.
	And they'd have like a little glass sliding thing for your cuff links.
	He'd keep his meats and his cheese in there.
	Because fridges were too expensive.
	He built a hidden panel in the wall behind a painting.
	He was a painter by the way.
	Incredibly talented painter.
	But he never sold them or had an art show.
	And he kept all his paintings in plastic bags under the couch.
	But like for realist paintings of nudes and stuff really beautiful stuff.
	I wouldn't lie to you and he built a panel in the wall where He would hide his TV because in Britain you need a license to watch TV No joke you have to pay a TV licensing fee That the British Broadcasting Corporation, the BBC, then uses to make their government-friendly programming.
	It's state-controlled programming, just like in Canada, where Justin Trudeau pours money into the CBC and gets nothing but adulation, and recently Ottawa's talking about saving all the newspapers from bankruptcy, and they obviously will have to pay them back in adulation.
	Socialist countries are crap.
	But my grandmother, right?
	It's her obligation, and I don't want to speak ill of the dead, but it's a single woman's obligation to get remarried.
	Like Mary Catherine Ham, right?
	Her husband died doing a charity thing on a bicycle.
	She's a great gal, pretty, effervescent, intelligent.
	She's got a young daughter now.
	She's gotta get a man.
	Cassandra Fairbanks, good friend of mine.
	Gotta get a man.
	You need it for the kid.
	Even if I died, I would want my wife to go through a one-year period of mourning, and then... I don't enjoy thinking about this, but... Get back on the saddle.
	I want my kids to have a dad.
	But my gran didn't do that.
	She just went partying.
	And so, I heard a rumor that she said to my mom, Man, you're only good for one thing.
	Which I assume means intercourse, not dominoes.
	And she was incredibly pretty, my grandmother.
	Both my grandmother and my grandfather were melt-in-your-mouth gorgeous.
	I was gorgeous, by the way, when I was 18, believe it or not.
	So, uh, so was my mom.
	So, uh, she just goes gallivanting around the country.
	In Scotland, obviously, it's such a shithole that they just can't wait to go on vacation.
	His funeral's in a couple weeks.
	I think Muslims clog up the funeral plans because they have to be buried within 24 hours because it's their religion.
	So normal people have to wait weeks to be buried.
	So his body is just like rotting somewhere before we can cremate it.
	Or maybe we're cremating it and the ashes are just sitting in a drawer.
	Anyway.
	Yeah, in Scotland, especially in the winter, it's brutal.
	And when you walk down the street, Suckey Hall Street in Glasgow, all you see is signs for getaways.
	200 quid a week, all inclusive!
	400 pounds, two weeks, all paid in!
	And big pictures of palm trees and stuff.
	They just can't wait to leave.
	And my gran was the same way.
	She was a manager at like a Macy's, managed the whole thing, did personnel.
	And made okay money like she made that she was middle-class by by the time they got cooking but every single opportunity she got she would leave and so she'd leave my mother and my uncle alone for two weeks regularly Sometimes a month actually I can't confirm a month but Weeks and weeks she'd be gone.
	So my 12 year old mom and her 14 year old gay brother would just make mac and cheese and have people over and watch their black and white one channel TV and maybe drink beers I guess.
	Kind of a fun life, but kind of a tragic life.
	And uh, as I got older, I think my uncle, oh my God, you know what was sexy about him?
	What a waste that he didn't get some hunks in his mix.
	He had, he had slick black, black hair, the slick black back with bro cream, kind of like what I'm trying to do to my hairdo, but natural.
	And then he developed a white line.
	The luckiest hairdo.
	Every man wants it.
	The supervillain white line that just goes back like a skunk.
	He had that.
	Just one stripe amidst the blackness.
	Like what the guy in The Sopranos tries to do, but he has to cheat.
	My uncle had it naturally in the middle.
	Just a thin, thin white stripe.
	Anyway.
	My dad told me a story about how he started hanging out with these hairdressers.
	This would be 1955, 60?
	1965?
	I don't know.
	And he came home and he was leaning on the mantelpiece.
	Now, Scottish people, you really get to know them at around 11 p.m.
	Everyone in Scotland is drunk at 11.
	That's when the pubs would close and you'd see who they are.
	And Strachan was leaning on the mantelpiece, on the hearth, and he was crying.
	And my dad goes, Or Strawn, as it's occasionally pronounced.
	And he goes, Jimmy, I don't know who I am.
	Who am I, Jimmy?
	My dad just sort of went, uh-oh.
	I'm going to hit the hay there, pal.
	I don't know what he said.
	My dad's a reasonable person.
	He probably said, you just be who you want to be, Strachan.
	Don't let anyone tell you otherwise, pal.
	And that was the only evidence they had for the next 60 years, up until now, where they found a note Amongst his drawers, in his drawer's drawer, saying, uh, Sir, I can let's just get, let's tell everybody.
	We don't have to live in hiding.
	We don't have to lie.
	We've done nothing wrong, man.
	Please, please, I love you.
	And that was the final confirmation.
	I always knew he was gay.
	I brought it up all the time, told my gran.
	You know, I was a young sort of punky teenager.
	I didn't see it as a bad thing.
	And here's the big deal.
	It wasn't a bad thing.
	Sure, you got an argument in the 50s.
	As a teenage gay in Scotland, you're gonna get beat up.
	I mean, this is a city where you get beat up for wearing green in a Rangers neighborhood or wearing blue in a Celtic neighborhood, the rival soccer teams.
	You can get beat up for smiling wrong.
	You get beat up in Glasgow for having a private school uniform on.
	Even if you got a scholarship and you're poor, you're a bloody student!
	See you, you student!
	Which is why my dad's face looks like KRS-One's, because it's been bashed in so many times, because he had to fight every day of his life, because he had a, um, private school blazer.
	Even though he was poor.
	By the way, my dad's side of the family, totally, total other long, long story of just Irish poverty, violence.
	Punch, my grandfather would punch my dad's brothers in the face like they were men.
	Punch them down cement stones.
	Horrible stuff.
	My cousins are in denial, some of them.
	My dad told me a horrific story once about his brother Alan, and they're listening to a radio play, and it's about this horrible, evil dad who beats his kids and almost kills his wife and stuff.
	It's a soap opera, right?
	That's how they listened to... That was their entertainment back then.
	And Alan says to my dad, And my dad goes, Alan, that's a fictional character.
	Dad's real.
	You had to go to fiction to find someone more violent than my grandfather.
	My son has the same name, Johnny McInnes, but he's sure as hell not named after my grandfather.
	Any hizzle, this is on the more middle class side of things, which it's a little more salacious and fun.
	My dad's side of the family is not as fun.
	I love them all, though I'm very close with my aunts and uncles over there, and my cousins I talk to all the time.
	Just talked to my cousin the other night to tell him about Strachan.
	I love them.
	But, you know, two generations ago it was violent working class stuff that wasn't pretty.
	Anyway, back to the gay stuff.
	So, uh, 50s it was bad.
	60s, okay, maybe?
	Not really, though.
	And then 1969 in Glasgow?
	Go ahead, suck a dick.
	No one fucking cares.
	What a waste.
	What a waste.
	He lived- I'm really trying hard not to disparage him because he was a good friend of mine.
	I mean, I would spend all summer- I remember when I was like 10.
	Or 11, I'd see these girls.
	I was into chicks, by the way, from when I was a baby.
	I remember inviting girls to my birthday parties.
	It would be like my dad's friend's girlfriend, Debbie.
	Debbie, would you like to come to my party?
	This is when I'm 10.
	And so she would show up at my birthday party and bring her boyfriend, Brian.
	They're both 35.
	And I remember just seething hate.
	Why the fuck did you bring Brian?
	Why did you bring him to my party?
	I want to be with you.
	I want to make love to you, my darling.
	No, I didn't know.
	I didn't know what my desires were.
	I just know that I liked her tits.
	I had no idea what I was going to do with them.
	Sort of like those girls who chase the Beatles.
	What would you do, ladies, if the Beatles just stopped running?
	Well, we'd rip at their clothes.
	Okay.
	Clothes are gone.
	Now they're nude.
	Now what do you do?
	Suck them off?
	Like, I think they would start pulling at the beetle's hair until they were scalped and they bled to death.
	Or they would, like, start licking them.
	I wish the beetles would have stopped just once.
	One of the beetles.
	Maybe the one that was gonna die anyway.
	Or didn't they have a drummer at the beginning who didn't show up?
	Let that- sacrifice that drummer and just- I want to see what these women would do.
	Would they start scrapping- scraping at their skin?
	Obviously they want souvenirs.
	That's the clothes.
	I get that part.
	But what happens when four nude beetles are lying down on the ground in fetal positions, surrounded by 200 screaming teenagers?
	You know they're urinating.
	Apparently these Beatles concerts reeked of urine.
	Because the women would be pissing themselves.
	Okay, so they pee all over them.
	Now what?
	And when do they leave?
	Do they leave after 12 hours?
	Do they fall asleep on the naked, shivering Beatles?
	God, what a waste of a great opportunity.
	I met Sean Lennon a couple times, I'll have to ask him that.
	Not sure it's a subject he's going to enjoy.
	So yeah!
	Strachan, he bought a cabin in Leadhills, which is the tallest place in Scotland, I believe.
	It's the home of the man who, I think John Smith or something, the guy who came up with the idea of putting a steam engine on its side and making it factory capable, which facilitated the Industrial Revolution.
	Hence the book by Arthur Herman, How the Scots Invented the Modern World.
	I remember being in that town and I said, I can't remember what, but I was like, aye well that's because Strachan's gay.
	And the guy took me aside and he goes, what's the matter with you?
	I go, what are you talking about?
	How's it, how are you saying Strachan's gay?
	And I go, well isn't it obvious?
	He goes, look we all know that but nobody's meant to say it.
	Why?
	Why is no one meant to say it?
	What a waste!
	Again, I don't understand.
	It's sort of like the Tranny thing.
	There's that doctor in Vancouver who says, I don't want to give kids hormone blockers just because a girl thinks she's a boy or a boy thinks he's a girl.
	We're not going to deny them puberty and make the woman permanently infertile, by the way.
	He goes, I'm paraphrasing.
	He goes, let them turn 18, go to the West Village, dance around in some red leather short shorts and suck a few dicks.
	Then we'll still see if you think you're a woman.
	And, yeah, that's how I feel about all of you.
	I'm sure it sucks if you're in a small town up until you're 14, 15, 16.
	I moved out when I was 18.
	Move out!
	You're only, like, really horny and ready to rock from 14 to 18.
	So you had four uncomfortable years.
	Sorry!
	Get on the Greyhound, go to a big city, get a boyfriend, shut up.
	I wonder sometimes, too, if he was traumatized by the divorce.
	He was always a very sensitive guy.
	He didn't want trouble.
	I remember he was really mad at my dad once for coming to Leadhills, and there was a guy there named Gordon Poole.
	Gordon Poole was from East London, and he didn't mock a bow.
	And it's sort of like, when someone is out of context, like that Cuban gangster dude who's always on Joe Rogan, who threatened me on Twitter recently for making fun of Ralphie May, Kiko Coco Ortiz or something.
	When those guys are in LA, any kind of wise guy, Hey, what's going on?
	It's a very difficult situation.
	They're gods in L.A.
	because L.A.
	people know they're boring and cultureless, and when they see a Goomba with, like, tons of rings, they go, oh, you must have people killed.
	Every Italian from Brooklyn is Tony Soprano to them, so they get all excited.
	And then the guy becomes, like, a form of a wigger.
	He becomes a mobster.
	But he's not.
	And he walks around, yeah, well, we would have to take care of that.
	I wouldn't want something untoward to happen to you and your family, if you know what I mean.
	Let's try to work everything out peacefully, if you know what I mean.
	And meanwhile, you know, here in Brooklyn, that's every single guy on the train.
	That's the guy who fixes your pipes.
	You're bored of them up here.
	You're not scared of the wise guys.
	There's like 1% of the guys who act like that are actually legit dudes.
	And they don't talk to anyone.
	They handle their own shit.
	They don't tweet you.
	But anyway.
	So the East Londoners up in small town mining towns like Lead Hills that have nothing because the mining's done.
	So it's just sort of a little sad little welfare town.
	You can see it.
	I did a video surprising my gran on her 90th birthday, I think, on YouTube and that town is in it.
	You can see the little pub where they play bagpipes.
	It's really funny how they say white people don't have culture and you sort of go, actually, we have too much culture.
	Like, you can't just be a white guy for Halloween.
	You can be an Indian, and it's one costume and sums up all 3,000 tribes.
	But, uh, for a white guy, you could be a Hasidic Jew, you could be a cowboy, you could be a golfer, you could be a Scotsman.
	You know, there's 350 different white guy costumes.
	Anyway.
	So, don't mock about Golden Pooh.
	Do you like all the accents in this particular one?
	It's a fun little accent podcast, huh?
	So I do a lot of characters in this one.
	This is even a character.
	He's gay.
	Oh, my uncle wasn't a feminine, by the way.
	Um, so, so Gormpool's in, uh, at the Oakton in Leadhills, the local pub, and he's a tough geezer.
	Don't muck about, what you doing then?
	And everyone goes, ooh, that's a tough geezer.
	He's from East London.
	He's in the mafia, no?
	Oh, he's real tough.
	And so my dad, who is tough, He goes to this pub, and he's there with my mom, and he's not impressed with Gordon Poole, and he's not playing this stupid game.
	And they go, alright, last last call then, you're done.
	And my dad goes, but there's other people here.
	And she goes, oh they're locals, they'll stay after closing.
	But you're no locals, you're meant to leave.
	And my dad goes, actually, he has got that affected English accent, I've had him on the show, right?
	Actually, I won't be leaving at this time.
	I will leave when everyone else leaves because we live in a free society where there is not one set of rules for one group and another set of rules for the other.
	I'm getting scared just doing that voice.
	That voice has been screamed at me my whole fucking life.
	Because I was always the class clown in school, and education is very important to blue-collar Glaswegians.
	So when he saw my name on the board, which was every time there's parent-teacher interviews, the shit hit the fan.
	Oh for fuck's sakes, boy!
	So, Gordon Poole isn't having it.
	So, he takes my, uh... My dad goes for a whiz.
	And Gordon Poole follows him in.
	And as my dad's pissing, Gordon Poole says, Here, mate.
	I think your time's up.
	It's time to go.
	Understand?
	And my dad just goes, Oh, fuck off!
	Without even turning around.
	And so, he's done his piss.
	He turns around.
	Two of the locals grab my dad by each arm.
	and Gordon Poole, who's punching his palm, says, "I thought I made it very clear, "but you had to make it into a situation." And my dad just goes, and headbutts him in his nose, which is called the Glasgow Kiss.
	It's a classic move.
	I believe the Glaswegians use their heed, as it's pronounced, more than their fists, and just destroys not just the man's nose, but his entire facade.
	It all came shattering out of his nostrils in that one split second, and the two guys holding my dad let go of my dad, and the emperor had lost his myth.
	We found out he has no clothes.
	That was the end.
	And Gordon Poole was never the same.
	Because he's a phony!
	That's the problem with being a fake, right?
	You're on thin ice.
	You have the Sword of Truthocles constantly hanging over your head when people find out that you're not a mobster, or you can't fight, or you're not a tough guy from East London.
	And then the running joke, every year I went back, all the locals would say, hear me, Gordon Poole's looking for you.
	You're in trouble.
	Which was making fun of Gordon Poole, by the way, making fun of the bogeyman, the hunchback of Notre Dame.
	No, no, sorry, the headless horseman.
	They had turned him into this mythical, magical, powerful beast.
	And anyway, my uncle was real mad about that.
	That my dad had brought trouble.
	My dad just did the best thing ever in the world, Strach.
	The fuck?
	But his life was just, he would sample, um... His job was to work for the local environmental government agency, so he would drive.
	He loved driving and maps.
	Hated everywhere but Scotland.
	Hated England.
	He came to Canada to visit us once.
	Threw his passport in the fire when he got back.
	He would just go to different, you know, Scotland is vast and rural Scotland is breathtaking.
	For all the crapping I do on Glasgow, I would never disparage rural Scotland.
	Ayrshire and all these little cobblestone streets, these little tiny towns with their little pubs all over the north coast.
	Breathtaking!
	Heavenly!
	I'm definitely going to retire there.
	I'll probably visit it after the funeral.
	They just re-instill your faith.
	My cousin moved there.
	He has no money.
	He just stops talking.
	I'm gonna retire at a young age.
	I'll figure out money somehow.
	It's cheap to live.
	So beautiful by the sea there.
	I mean, everything looks like Lord of the Rings up there.
	Weird rocky crags just sort of jutting out of the river and the lakes going a hundred feet high like we're in Arizona or something.
	It's bizarre.
	The landscape changes every mile.
	So he would drive around and he would get these samples and bring them back to the lab.
	I would join him sometimes.
	Although the drives were endless.
	And he didn't talk in the day.
	He needed pints in him to talk.
	And we would do things like go on the, what was it called?
	The Waverly!
	The world's oldest ocean going paddle steamer!
	And you would get on that paddle steamer and just went to Rothseum back, I think, where my grandfather lived.
	It didn't go very far and everyone would be obliterated on that boat.
	I remember as a kid before I could drink just thinking, what's going on here?
	Why is everyone talking like that?
	It's kind of scary to see 200 drunks when you're a kid because they're, especially in Scotland, because they turn red and they're sweaty.
	And they're screaming and you can't understand them because the Scottish accent, the Glaswegian accent is tough to follow.
	But when they're drunk, Jesus Lord, you gotta really like squint.
	The only way you could understand them is if you have a coffee and an Adderall for every pint they have.
	Because by the end, you're just Noam Chomsky deciphering some lost tribe of Papua New Guinea.
	They don't use consonants.
	So, are you alright?
	Becomes, are you alright?
	And then, they add these extra things at the end, like big man, and by the way.
	Are you alright, big man?
	Are you alright?
	See yous people!
	Sees yous people, meaning you, just see you.
	See yous people!
	I can see good for yous!
	Hanging is too good for yous.
	Remember when we would go to the pub with Strack?
	And the fucking, the way Scots drink, I do not like it at all.
	You get up from the table, I do like the drinking at a table thing, that's nice.
	But I like standing at the bar too.
	You get up from the table and go, you alright?
	You alright?
	It's my round, my round.
	No, I'm fine, I have a full fucking pint.
	No, no, no, no.
	So they get up and they buy everyone around.
	Well, now I have three full pints in front of me.
	And inevitably, one guy's drinking the fastest, right?
	I mean, imagine it as a race.
	There's gonna be someone in the lead.
	He gets up, he has to buy a pint for all, say, six of us.
	So, that's every single time someone finishes a pint, they buy another pint.
	Until you, honestly I'm not exaggerating, have five full pints in front of you.
	Everyone does.
	And then at 11pm is last call for some bizarre reason.
	And they go, alright, dong ding dong, ring a big bell.
	And it's not like they give you time.
	They come around, alright, that's enough, that's enough.
	They start really nagging you.
	So now you're at a hot dog eating contest in Coney Island with beer.
	It's going, alright, alright.
	Like chugging five pints It's enough to make your stomach explode.
	I would often barf Walking home because my body like half of it was in my esophagus because my stomach said we're at we're full sir and Also as you're trying to chug these endless pints, which isn't pleasant to me I The beauty of America, I don't like how they don't buy rounds, but that took some getting used to, because Canadians buy rounds.
	Americans, you buy them a beer, and they go, thanks, free beer.
	And they don't buy you a beer back.
	Especially in New York.
	If you're in New York, don't buy anyone a beer.
	They won't buy it back.
	Just buy your own drink.
	And get there first, when you meet someone, so they don't, so you don't have to, uh, so you can have already bought your drink.
	Anyway, I'm with this guy, George Ande.
	It was fun hanging out at the pub with Strachan, I gotta say, and that's what I'll miss the most, cause he would come out of his shell, and we'd make jokes, he'd be laughing his head off.
	Holy shit, I just thought of something.
	One time he came home and he'd had the crap beaten out of him, like really bad, which in Glasgow, no one just punches you in the nose.
	They beat you for a fortnight until you're just jammed in jeans.
	And he comes back looking like groceries, condiments, and broke his hands, busted up his face.
	I had to design him a special thing for his tobacco tin where it could open by pulling a lever because he couldn't use both hands.
	Um, And he had been beaten up being in a back cutting through a park and I guess he was on someone else's turf and he held on to his I'd asked him to pick me up some king cans some cans as they say on the way and he held on to those in the fetal position as they beat him so I would still get my cans and when I got my cans And believe me, I didn't want him to die for my beer.
	When I got my cans, there were so many dents in them, they were rounded like a football.
	They were oblong.
	There was no right angles anywhere on them, because they'd just been hammered around.
	But I just, I thought to me, maybe it's possible that he was caught horsing around with someone, and he was fag bashed.
	See, that's another problem with being in the closet.
	We've got to sit and wonder all the time now.
	You could have had a loving relationship with a man, Strack.
	No one would have given a shit.
	No one at the pub would have cared.
	The biggest homophobe there would be over it in a week.
	As long as you didn't dress in drag and kiss each other at the bar, I don't think anyone would care.
	The only thing they care about is the English.
	And actually, having an English wife would be much worse.
	But the fact that my parents had me in England was much worse than being gay.
	I was never considered Scottish.
	Even my own family.
	My grandmother.
	She... Hey, Gran, we're doing Rabbie Burns Night here in New York.
	How?
	You're no Scotch.
	Why would you bother?
	Well, I kind of consider myself Scottish, Gran.
	I mean, genetically.
	Aye, Gavin, you're born in England.
	Robbie Burns is none of your business.
	That's not your affair.
	Grant, I have my own tartan.
	I'm McInnes.
	Not your feeders, McInnes.
	You're English, pal.
	Like, it was honestly like being gay.
	And in fact, I didn't mention it, because it would change the conversation immediately.
	So we're in the pub one night and the pub stories were great.
	Like there was this guy, I've talked about him before, so you may want to skip ahead, but he was this drunk and, uh, he, he was always buying the rounds, always the first done.
	And they go, see you, Andy, you could drink for Scotland.
	I've always wanted to make this into a sketch, but it would be very, very big budget Monty Python budget.
	And that cracked me up alone.
	Do you understand what they're saying?
	You could drink for Scotland if there was an Olympics for drinking.
	And Scotland's not a country, by the way.
	It's a province of Great Britain, which is why at the Olympics, you don't see a Scottish team.
	You see a British team with a Union Jack.
	Scots don't know this.
	They still think they're a country.
	They're like Taiwan.
	When you send a letter from Taiwan, it says ROC on the return address.
	I know, I lived there.
	Republic of China.
	Taiwan is in China.
	You're not Taiwanese, you're Chinese.
	You're not Scottish, you're British.
	Anyway, they were suggesting that if there was a Global Drinking Olympics, they would like Andy to represent Scotland.
	And it wasn't said in a jokey way.
	Like, that would make me giggle if someone came up with that concept and we had to choose someone.
	I'd go, yeah, let's choose Andy.
	Oh, maybe a bum would be better to choose.
	No, they get drunk faster.
	It would be funny.
	But they were serious, like, proud.
	And then Andy's rebuttal was even better.
	He goes, Scrolland, disgusted by the way, I could drink for the world.
	Now we have an intergalactic drinking competition where he represents Earth, and the thing I love about that is the assumption that the other contestants from all these faraway planets, and they have to come from billions of light years away, right?
	Because we've already checked the vicinity and there's no one there.
	So we've got all these people traveling in through black holes or whatever, and some of them are going to be like 300 million pounds.
	You think they're all gonna be 120?
	It's not gonna be like the Star Wars bar, my friend.
	That's a strange coincidence with all these- dumb coincidence, I should say, with all these space shows where they look human, but with slightly different ears.
	Really?
	We have a lot more range here on Earth with our species.
	I look out the window, I see- I see another creature that lives on the same planet as me.
	He's one foot tall, hairy, has four legs, no arms at all, a snout, and a fucking tail.
	He couldn't be more different.
	Meanwhile, I go to Zarkron, and it's just me, but blue.
	No, sir.
	Some people are gonna be gas.
	Some people are gonna be the size of a planet.
	Some people are gonna be the size of a molecule.
	It's not- you can't have an intergalactic drinking competition.
	It's not possible.
	There's too many variables.
	So that- Made me pee my pants laughing.
	Everyone in Glasgow is funny, by the way.
	I'm glad that I'm going out on a positive note, because I was sounding a little macabre there, talking about my dead gay uncle.
	But everyone is funny.
	Like my grandmother, when I was a little kid, my grandma was running, and the bus, we missed the bus, but she chased it down and caught it.
	And the bus driver was at the door, and he goes, just you keep running, Hen.
	You're going to get downtown before I do.
	That's the bus driver.
	Did you understand that?
	Just keep running, Hen.
	Hen is lady.
	You're going to get downtown before I do.
	Anyway, so I was there with my wife.
	So yeah, drink for the world.
	And then I come back next year, and they were talking about that story, and we're all laughing about it, and I go, and then they go, see him, he'd have about a fruitcake in the fridge.
	And that's all he'd eat for weeks and weeks.
	Just take a wee nibble every time he was hungry.
	And I go, oh yeah, I remember him saying that.
	He never ate.
	And I go, where is he?
	What happened to him?
	Uh, passed away, you know.
	What?
	He's dead?
	Uh, yeah, just a lot of drinking, no eating.
	Wait, so you were just talking about how awesome this guy is because he never eats, and he drinks all the time, and he starved to death doing exactly that?
	Ah, yes, basically, aye.
	That's not unusual, by the way, in Glasgow.
	Men starve to death because they just get the empty calories of pints and they forget to eat.
	I remember in Cuba once, I think this is in my book, my mom was bawling her eyes out because my dad hadn't eaten in two days, and she was screaming, you're not a teenage cuddle!
	Stop with the starving yourself!
	And I thought, what a crazy thing to scream at my dad.
	But now I realize she was concerned that, like many Glaswegians, he would die of starvation.
	As Andy did.
	And this is also the Glaswegians.
	I mean, this funeral is going to be very informal.
	It'll be at a pub.
	Glaswegians don't care.
	In fact, I asked Strachan what his last wishes were when I was much younger, and he goes, just put me in a bun bag.
	And I go, Strach, if you don't write down anything else, then that will count as your last wish.
	So it won't be a joke.
	And he goes, I don't know.
	Throw me out in the trash.
	Put me in a bun bag.
	Luckily, he's getting cremated, and his ashes are being thrown with my grandmother's, which is a bit weird, isn't it?
	My uncle and my grandma's ashes are both going to be thrown, I don't know, on some hill, Loby Dober statue in Glasgow or somewhere.
	So, yeah, the pubs were the nicest times.
	I'll tell you one last story.
	This guy, Georgie.
	Speaking of the way they used to be, and this pertains to my uncle's homosexuality, there's a guy, who's that again?
	Oh, that's Bob the Baguette.
	He's just known as a racist.
	And it was like, if you were Polish, or you were known as a tap dancer, there was no sort of culture or even stigma behind it.
	It was just like, that's Bob's preference.
	I think that's a great way to be, by the way.
	Okay, you're a bigot.
	That's you.
	You do you, bigot.
	And I go, are you Bob the Bigot?
	Well, that's what they call me.
	It's not true, though.
	I've only got, I don't mind darkies.
	I've only got a problem with Pakistan Jews.
	That makes me love Scotland.
	It's just so totally unashamed.
	Like, if you have a problem, let's fight right now.
	Anyone of any age.
	From when I was six, I remember people picking fights.
	What team do you support?
	By the way, if anyone in Glasgow says that, don't say Celtics or Rangers, because you'd get killed if it's the wrong one.
	Say Partick Thistle.
	Because they're so shite, people think you're daft.
	And they don't want to go near you.
	My dad told me that at a very young age.
	Although there was a time in the 70s when Bruce Lee was big, and Canadians are considered Americans there.
	Everyone was scared of me because of my accent.
	They thought that everyone with this accent can kick your head off.
	And so there was at least two years, maybe three, where I was just invincible because everyone assumed I could do a triple backflip because Bruce Lee can.
	And I'm obviously friends with Bruce Lee because I come from the same continent as him.
	But anyway, we're out of time here, we've got to wrap it up.
	So, Georgie, I was with my wife, Emily.
	Now, my wife is Native American, but she just looks Korean.
	She looks like she's half Korean.
	Probably with good reason.
	I think the Native Americans came over the Bering Strait, you know.
	Evolutionarily, they've got similar sort of genetic traits to Asians.
	They're not hairy, they can't hold their booze, and they've got chinky eyes, as they say in Scotland.
	And so my wife is not saying a word because she doesn't understand a word.
	I can handle 78% of the conversation.
	She's at zero because the accent's so thick, you know?
	We're in Pollock Shaws, which is like South Glasgow, I believe.
	And we're at Weatherspoons, which is a chain pub.
	And Scots are so cheap they don't mind the Walmart atmosphere of these chain pubs with their fake books on the wall.
	They don't really care about quaint over there.
	If your pint's close to a pound, then we're in.
	Oh my God.
	By the way, the way they talk about beer.
	These Glaswegians, for hours, they know the brewers at the distilleries.
	Like, they talk about it the way you would describe Cespedes, or Big Sexy.
	Ah, yes.
	They got Dave Wright there, down at MacEwan's 80 now.
	Now, he's coming down from Caledonian.
	It's actually, it's back around his Guinness.
	He's at Guinness for, I think, 15 years.
	And now he's at MacEwan's Lager there, so, I mean, he's qualified, that's for sure.
	They got, previously there, the brewmaster was a bird.
	Her name was Angie.
	And you could taste it.
	What?
	And my uncle was so into beer that when Witherspoons would send their catalogues of what they're gonna have next week, they keep rotating the beers there, he'd send them to me when they were old.
	And he'd go, as you can see, had some American beers there.
	No thank you.
	But we did have a Canadian beer that was no bad there.
	It was a French beer called Maudite.
	Very heavy in alcohol.
	Quite nice, quite nice.
	Strack, I love you.
	I don't care.
	I like Budweiser.
	I don't like beer.
	I just want to get it into my body.
	Get it in your body!
	Anyway, so George sees my wife and he goes, what's going on with you?
	It seems a wee bit chinky.
	Chinky is a racial epithet that is not racist.
	They still have gollywogs in Scotland.
	Like, they're not caught up with the latest vernacular.
	And to get Chinese food, it's just like, you fancy a chinky?
	Yes, but let's just say Chinese food.
	I'm just kidding.
	I say chinky.
	So, uh, she says, oh, it's because I'm Native American.
	And he goes, what's that?
	You mean Indian?
	You're a Native?
	You're an American Indian?
	She goes, yeah.
	Yeah.
	What tribe is that?
	Everyone always asks that, even though they don't know any of the tribes.
	Like, what are you going to do?
	Oh, I have a Chippewa friend, too.
	She goes, Ho-Chunk.
	And then he holds her hand, and he puts the top of her hand to his forehead, and he holds it there.
	And then he takes it off his forehead and he puts his lips on the top of her hand.
	And I look down and I see he's crying.
	He is fucking crying because he's meeting a native.
	And then he says, he looks up, tears, not pouring down his face, I'm not going to exaggerate, but his eyes were red and his eyelashes had that gunked together thing you get when you were crying recently.
	So very wet eyes.
	A tear is on the cusp of breaking the wall and going down his cheek.
	We've got a lot of moisture there.
	We're at 90% humidity, ready for a tear to drop.
	And he says, See yous people.
	See what we did to yous.
	Unforgivable.
	And then puts his head back on her hand.
	They're so obsessed with the underdog.
	I guess it comes back to Edward's Army when they send him home to think again and bloody breathe out in the English.
	But they'll just... Like at Celtics games, I think they hold up a big Palestinian flag just because they see them as underdogs to the Israelis.
	They have no idea what the conflict is and no idea what Palestinians do to Israelis.
	But just, Annie, underdog, see yous, I like that.
	They're rooting for the Eagles in the Super Bowl, I promise you.
	So, funny guy, beautiful culture, we'll say.
	Say it, culture!
	It's not a pretty city, it's depressing and violent, but the people are hilarious and he had a strong fabric of friends who were not going to X him for being gay.
	They never mentioned faggots in air quotes, ever.
	There was no animosity there.
	Plenty of animosity for the English.
	Plenty of animosity for Winston Churchill and the opposing football team.
	You didn't hear... I mean, maybe it was going on and I didn't notice it, but I've never heard anything remotely fagbashy about Glasgow.
	They've got a lot higher priorities for their violence.
	And I just think it's a tragedy.
	It's a tragedy that my grandmother didn't remarry.
	It's a tragedy that my grandfather was such a jerk.
	It's a tragedy that my mom had to be an adult when she was 12 years old.
	But it's also a tragedy that, uh, it's also a tragedy that, that, uh... Sorry, I get a call and it throws me way off.
	It's also a tragedy that my uncle never came out of the fucking closet.
	What a waste.
	Now, being gay has some downsides.
	I heard it's murder on your ass.
	It's also probably gross to perform fellatio, but it's also fun.
	You get endless sex anytime you want.
	You could just have, he could have, like, he loved to travel.
	He was always going to different villages.
	He could have had a whole network of guys.
	Oh, I'm going to be in Rossi.
	Let's meet up with Roy.
	Incredibly handsome guy.
	Wouldn't have a problem getting a nice little black book.
	I like that big black song.
	Or no, no, was it Lars Fredricksen?
	I got a girl in every city and they all know my name.
	He could have had a guy in every city and they'd all know his name.
	Strachan Thompson.
	But, the big picture with Strack is that he, for all his faults, and for all my frustration that he didn't live life to the fullest, he never hurt a soul.
	Ever.
	He never screwed anyone over.
	He was never duplicitous.
	He never lied, outside of his own sexuality.
	He didn't have kids that he abandoned, the way his father did.
	He never subjected his own foibles onto anyone else.
	And at the end of the day, You can't criticize someone like that.
	You know, you can criticize the shitty dad for screwing up and failing to meet his basic requirements and abandoning his family.
	You can shit on the criminal, obviously.
	You can shit on the corrupt politician.
	You can shit on the liars and the deceivers who pretend to be something they're not and waste everyone's time.
	You can crap on the guys who aren't handshake deals.
	That's the real Problem with society are those dishonest people, men without character, men without honor.
	That's where my attention lays.
	Now, I'm frustrated that my my uncle didn't dig into the homotroph.
	But that's not a fault.
	That's just a missed opportunity.
	Anyway, I love you Strach.
	May you rest in peace.
	God bless Janet Thompson and Jack Thompson, his parents.
	And I'm glad my mom has made it through this rocky time with the wills and the cremations and the death, and she can learn to enjoy her life.

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