I go over half a dozen fights I had as a young man and use them to prove that violence is just. Being bullied as just as important as bullying because they teach you the inevitable truth that we live in a kill or be killed society. This helps you in business and just about every other interaction you have. You’re not a man until you’ve had the crap beaten out of you, beaten the crap out of someone, had your heart broken, and broken a heart. This ep focusses on the first two.
I think it's a very healthy pastime for men, not women.
I saw some chick on on Twitter bitching about The Rock's career and how no other, she couldn't think of any woman Who has had his trajectory.
This guy comes from a long line of wrestlers, so he's a giant.
And he's in great shape, and he keeps getting picked to be in action movies, especially because he's ethnically ambiguous.
Jungle-type movies, where he wears a tan shirt and jumps through palm trees.
Uh, yeah, her name is Hands, with an S, Zimmer, Bwah!
Probably a gamer or something, and she has this thing.
Got into an intense argument today with people trying to figure out the female equivalent to The Rock.
I got heated, uh oh, because she does not exist.
We as a society do not like women enough to have one.
We don't like women enough to have a major action hero that's female, like The Rock.
That's because women aren't meant to fight.
I forget the stats on their upper body strength, but I think men have 80% more upper body strength than women.
You know, you've done push-ups with women.
It's impressive if they can get one.
I've never seen a woman do five.
And by the way, the feminist retort to this is, oh yeah, what about this?
And they show you some bodybuilding chick, who's probably a lesbian, who does 50.
And you go, yes, my dear.
Now you're proving that women are bad at logic, because that's anecdotal evidence.
Here on Earth, we all know that punch like a girl makes sense, because when girls punch you, it doesn't hurt.
Oh yeah, what about Ronda Rousey?
Yes, that would hurt.
You found one.
Congratulations.
Anyway, this is about the boys.
Saturday's for the boys.
And it's good to fight.
And it's fun to tell fight stories.
There's something about fighting, again I'm only talking to men here, that changes you forever.
That doesn't, and it doesn't matter if you win or lose.
In fact, winning doesn't make, really feel that good.
Unless it's a really righteous one, like some guys beating up a chick in a bar.
It doesn't feel good.
Beating the crap out of someone, like standing over them and punching them in the face doesn't feel great.
And when I go through my sort of mental Rolodex of all my fights, I'll think I remember them all, and the next day I'll go, oh yeah, I forgot that one, where I won.
Because men are obsessed with the times they lost, and much worse than that, the times they didn't do anything.
And that's what I want to talk about on this ep.
Is this.
Police!
Call the police!
That's assault!
Wanting everything to be documented.
I understand if two guys have a knife, you want them to pay for that.
And there's times, too, where at that Cernovich night for freedom where they grabbed that old man, Antifa did, and they strangled him and, no, punched him so hard he hit the ground, had a heart attack, and they strangled him.
And then the guy put the cop in headlock.
I want that guy to suffer.
I want criminal charges to be made.
But ideally, we live in a world where we would just beat up that guy.
And that would be that.
You know, the mods and the rockers on Brighton Beach in the 70s and 60s, they used to just go there and just fight.
And what was the beef?
The beef was the mods liked Northern Soul and they were English nationalists, really.
And not in the modern sense where there's any sort of, you know, Nazi connotation, but just like very proud of their English rose.
And the Rockabillies, they loved Elvis, and they thought America was cool, and they liked motorbikes, whereas the mods like Vespa scooters.
That's it.
There's no other fundamental difference.
It's sort of like you see these religious conflicts, not Jews versus Christians or Muslim versus Christians, but animosity within the Christian community, and you go, what specifically do you differ on?
Oh, we think Jesus was born on a Thursday.
Okay, so it's nothing to do with the thing, it's just you want to have beef.
You know, the Belgian French hate the Belgian Dutch.
And there's no real reason behind it.
In other words, they just like fighting.
In other words, fighting is great!
Fighting solves everything.
And you can always tell when you meet a guy whether he's been punched in the face or not.
Because guys who haven't been punched in the face have a shitty attitude.
They talk down to you.
They're snarky.
Their ego's too big.
They don't have an interrogative tone where there's a possibility they're wrong.
Like, isn't it mostly marsupials that hibernate?
They go, yeah, marsupials are the ones who hibernate.
That's the way it goes.
I have no idea what a marsupial is.
Isn't that a thing that carries a baby in its pouch?
To kangaroos, hibernate.
Boy, I should have not slapped through every single class my entire life.
I should have listened to one teacher once.
Why education?
I have learned more in the past five years than I had learned at any time in school.
I did not listen at one point.
I met a guy the other night, by the way, and he was talking about his kids, and he goes, yeah, my daughter, blah, blah, blah, I have a son, my daughter's kind of intense.
And I go, what, does she wear high-heeled shoes and makeup and tell you to fuck off?
Every dad's worst nightmare, of course.
And he goes, no, no, no, opposite.
She's very Catholic, very prim and proper.
And I go, oh, OK.
And then somehow we got onto bad kids, and I was definitely a bad kid in school.
And he goes, well, I got that out at a very young age, and then I was pretty good, you know, good boy.
And they go, what do you mean, like what, high school?
And he goes, oh no, no, no, like kindergarten.
Pardon me?
You were a bad boy in kindergarten, and then you straightened out when you were what, six?
You ever heard anything crazier in your life?
If you're like a colicky baby, you don't say, yeah, it was kind of a, I was going down the wrong path when I was one week old, but, uh, I turned it around, joined AA and, uh, did, I went to juvie when I was a baby.
I didn't know I was just in a little plexiglass thing, fed Nestle breast milk.
But, uh, yeah, I turned it around.
So, I want to go over some fights I've had, because it's a fun thing.
I remember Anthony Cibarelli did a lot of my tattoos.
He's the vocalist for Gorilla Biscuits, and we wanted to do a book with him through Vice, and it was just going to be fight stories.
I still think it's a great idea.
There's a great book I talked about in the book episode called Gig, With just Americans talking about their jobs and it's just two pages, two, three pages about your job.
You could be a janitor.
You could be a homeless man who begs for change.
That's your job.
Or you could be the CEO of Solyndra.
We had, the book has all of those.
It's fascinating.
Great book.
And it really helps you decide what you want to do with your life.
But a fight book in the same way, like Please Kill Me, one of these talky books that you transcribe.
And yeah, the author of Please Kills Me is not a writer.
He's a transcriber.
Would be a great read.
So we got this guy.
And then we had some photographer.
I forget his name.
Some dork who wore a big hat.
And he came with us.
And I said, let's make it a photo book with cool photo pictures.
Photo pictures?
Fight pictures of actual fights.
Not Muhammad Ali, but you know, street fights and stuff.
And then the text.
And Civ goes, no, I don't want to do that.
This isn't MTV.
I want it just to be words.
You know, he's a very DIY dude.
And I go, okay, I guess it's just words, no pictures.
And then the photographer said, I'm going to sue you if you put out this book.
And I think he got a lawyer.
And I go, what's your case that we decided not to have pictures?
He goes, it was our idea, that book.
And if you do it, then I'm going to sue.
And I think that killed the whole project eventually.
And that was the end of that, but I still think it was a great idea because they're all pretty much the same.
And I honestly believe that one of the best things about my childhood was fistfights.
It was just a thing that was organized.
This is in the seventies and the eighties, and you would meet the next day.
That was, I have a sensitive stomach because I'm Scottish and we're only used to eating potatoes and roots.
So, you know, like Mexican food or stress, I just start farting and have diarrhea instantly.
I hated the way it was announced the next day.
So, you know, Barry Pablo wants to fight you.
He's fighting you tomorrow after school.
Can't you just punch me in the face now and get it over with?
I have to wait more than 24 hours worrying about this fight?
That's the first one that comes to mind, Barry Pablo.
I found him on Facebook recently.
He's a big athlete.
And I go, do you remember this story?
And he goes, you're lying.
Why would I lie?
I think it was even in DM too.
I don't know.
I can't remember if it was public or not.
I don't... Come Across is very cool in this story, but I can't remember why he wanted to fight me often, and I'm not tooting my own horn here, but I was a breathtakingly gorgeous when I was a young man, and so girls would like me, and then the guy who liked that girl would want to beat me up.
You know the mentality.
I read this in the news recently where some guy was caught trying to murder a girl's boyfriend because he wanted her as his girlfriend.
It hasn't worked like that for about 200,000 years.
So if we're not living in a cave, you can't beat up the guy the girl likes and hope to get him.
But that might have been Barry's beef.
I can't remember.
But he wanted to kick my ass and he had pecs and stuff when we were 10.
And so, I remember going home and I was shitting my pants going, I gotta fight Barry tomorrow.
God damn it.
That's gonna suck.
And I sort of had this epiphany after, you know, the diarrhea and the explosive farting.
I just thought, it's going down.
We're doing this.
And I'm gonna win by any means necessary.
So I lined my, I was punk at the time, so we couldn't have been ten, I must have been fourteen actually.
Thirteen.
So I had this army coat I wore, and I went to my mom's drawer, I went to the kitchen drawer, and I took out these barbecue skewers, you know, for roasting vegetables, and I lined the inside of my coat with four on either side.
What the fuck was that for?
I'm gonna Wolverine his ass?
I'm gonna dip my fingers into each of the four and just come out with these kebabs?
And then what?
Impale him?
I'm gonna murder a guy who wants to bonk me on the nose?
That doesn't seem just.
And Wolverine, his whole arm is braced by those spikes.
So he can cut down and stuff.
If it's just a ring around each finger, the second you move in a downward motion, they're going to bend up.
You know what I mean?
Like you'd have to duct tape them, maybe have a piece of wood that you nailed to the barbecue things to give them some sort of backbone.
So I'm shitting my pants, Barry's there.
Barry was taking, in the 80s, Bruce Lee was really big and Kung Fu In fact, I remember going to Scotland every year.
It was violence, violence, violence.
And then in the early 80s, all of a sudden, no one wanted to fight me because I was from America.
Canada is America to foreigners and Americans can do Kung Fu.
And so they go, can you kill people?
And I was, you know, 13, 12 at the time.
And I go, Yeah, but we're not supposed to.
Our sensei says we can only use it for self-defense.
So unless my life is in danger, I'm not even allowed to use my martial arts.
I had no idea what martial arts were.
I wasn't taking lessons.
I hadn't seen The Karate Kid.
Ooh, there's a new movie out, by the way.
It's The Karate Kid Redux.
Them as 40-year-olds.
It looks awesome.
But anyway.
No one wanted to mess with Americans for a few years during the Kung Fu years, and Barry was part of that.
So we meet.
My kneecaps are doing this jumpy thing.
I don't know if... Right before a fight, your adrenaline's pumping so much that your kneecaps bounce up and down.
Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.
Like little basketballs.
And, uh, it's a very scary moment.
It's fight or flight.
And, you know, my dad taught me a good trick with fighting.
He said, just throw yourself in there.
Like, it's very hard to fight when your whole soul is behind it, and you're trying to be conscious, and you're trying to- Conscious, and you've got all these plans, like, I'm gonna get him with the left and then the right.
I'll do this combination.
Don't do that.
Just grab you, leave your body, put your hands behind, uh, on your own back, and just shove you into the fight.
Go handle it, bitch.
And you'll figure something out.
Again, it doesn't matter if you lose.
And outside of knives and bottles on the head, most fights are super quick.
Especially in a bar.
I would never, don't ever step outside.
Do the fight in the bar, get some drama, knock over a table, have some girls scream.
It's a beautiful little seven seconds.
Worst case scenario, you break your nose.
Big deal.
They straighten it at the hospital.
It's nothing.
I had that happen before too.
That's another fight story.
They're all coming flooding in now.
So Barry's ready to fight and he's got this awesome stance going.
You know, stance is intimidating because it shows someone has been thinking about this for a while.
All I got is my barbecue sticks.
And my army jacket and I'm thinking, oh, you know, my dad's tips and older people's tips are circling through my head.
Go for the nose.
Go for the tip of the nose.
That's all that matters.
If you get them in the nose, you can't see.
So he decides to ask for the first dance and with everyone, remember there'd be those, everyone my age remembers this, they'd form a huge circle and they'd go, one-on-one, man, one-on-one!
And if someone else jumped in, one on one!
One on one!
It was like this mantra that everyone kept repeating again and again.
It was very important in this suburban street justice, which always happened on grass.
Anyway, Barry does this, they're not called a circle kick.
They're called like a windmill kick or something.
And he does this insane circle kick.
I don't care what they're really called.
And the centrifugal force of his strong teen legs sent him up like a whirligig.
You know those firecrackers that are kid-friendly that you light and they start spinning like a frisbee and then they go up like a spaceship?
He turned into one of those and he was instantly a starfish in the air circling.
And he did like a 480 degree turn.
Because he kicked himself like he's kicked up with too much force and so he went past me and then around and around and then smashed out Knocked the wind out of himself and that was the end of that fight That was what?
28 hours of panicking and it ended up just being a starfish who can't breathe moral of the story being Yes, I will fight you.
Yes, I would like to go.
I won't step outside.
Let's do it right here, right now.
There's always a lot of talking before fights, too.
Like, bitch, pussy.
White guys always put on black... They start speaking in ebonics.
What's up, bitch?
Fucking bitch coming on my neighborhood and they start getting black gestures?
That's embarrassing.
White people need to come up with their own gestures.
You pussy.
Actually, don't even talk.
If it's going down, just headbutt the guy.
I went to jail once for headbutting a guy.
He beat up my friend's girlfriend.
She was managing a store and she fired him and he slapped her in the face.
So she called crying.
I was nearby.
I went over there.
She said he jumped in a cab and he went home.
We got in the cab.
I ran to this dude Mark Ryan, yo.
Mark Ryan was a major staple in the hardcore scene in New York.
And he spoke, he was from Jersey, but he had the most crazy New York accent.
He had a graffiti tag, and his graffiti tag was Mark Ryan.
So he'd write Mark Ryan everywhere, and I guess the cops went, this guy, no one's crazy enough to use their own name as a graffiti tag, so it couldn't be Mark Ryan.
It was.
I think he got into porn for a while.
I heard he had a big dick.
I was at a bar once, and I go, I hear you have a big dick.
And he goes, yeah, it's pretty fucking crazy.
And I go, bigger than this?
And I pulled my dick out.
And he goes, yeah.
He pulled his dick out.
It looked like a bowl of spaghetti.
Like it didn't end.
It looked like headphones that needed untangling.
I couldn't even see the bell end, as the Brits say.
It was just a big pile of cock.
Anyway, I see him and I go, Mark.
And he goes, I was running to a cab.
That was it.
And he goes, yo, what's the rush?
And I go, oh, this guy, blah, blah, blah.
I just hit this chick, little Filipina.
I'm going to go get him.
And he goes.
He goes, I'll come with you, yo.
And he gets in the cab, and he's rocking back and forth in the cab.
I don't know why I can't get this saying out of my head.
He goes, yo, this is a blessing in disguise, yo.
A blessing in disguise.
I was just so fucking hyped, and I wanted to hit something.
I was so mad.
And then you come along, and now we're going to take this punk out.
It's a blessing in disguise, yo.
So we're heading up there.
He lives in Midtown, like above Midtown.
I think he was in the Upper East Side.
His parents paid for his apartment and he wore a man bun, which is infuriating, um, on top of his head, like a big bun on the top of his head.
This is now, I'm talking about 2000.
Before man buns were big, he pioneered them.
And, uh, so I start describing him and the man bun and Mark goes, Oh, I know that nigga.
He- I sell him pot, yo.
I can't fucking- Yo, I can't- I can see his mouth now.
His accent was so thick, it altered his lips.
Yo, it made it like a weird side asshole, was his mouth.
In Scotland, they call it sham gabbit.
When your- your accent is so thick it alters your face, and they get this facial- They get this funny pursed top lip that over hooks the bottom lip and it's a sign of true patriotism like they'll go Oh, he's guy Scotch.
He's got Sham Gabbit and all So he had New York Sham Gabbit.
He's like yo, I can't fucking come with you no more cuz he could rap me out He'll know that I'm a fucking drug dealer and I will have fucked him up.
So so he jumps out the cab and And, uh, so I'm left there alone.
And then her boyfriend shows up, Shane Smith of Vice fame.
And, uh, we, uh, we take him out.
He says, we want to talk to you, meaning we want to beat you up.
And, uh, he, uh, he comes downstairs.
And he goes, let's talk outside.
I don't want you in my apartment or my building.
And then he starts talking about this bitch that he just slapped.
He literally bitch slapped her.
And how you guys know how annoying she can get.
And like we were going to sit there and go, yeah, I know.
She deserves it, man.
Fucking bitches.
It's so lippy.
Just slap them, eh?
Anyway, we just thought we'd come by and say hi.
Like, why do you think we're here?
And so I brought up this story to say, don't talk.
All that like, bitch, what are you going to do now?
Half the time the guy's just sizing you up and waiting for a time where he can bonk you, sort of get that one right on the chin, the button they call it, where you can knock the guy out.
And, uh, so I just think, no, we're not doing this.
And I just nailed him, head butted him in the nose, exploded his face, blood shooting everywhere.
But this was an amazing move he did.
So he goes flying backwards, right?
His head's about to hit the pavement.
Somehow, in the nanosecond before his head did that last foot fall and hit the pavement, he rotated his body from having his back to the ground to having his chest to the ground and then used it as like an Olympic starting position and rocketed off!
So my compatriot chases him with flip-flops on, by the way.
One of the reasons I hate flip-flops.
Slapping on the road.
Slap, slap, slap, slap, slap.
And I just go, well, I'm not catching him.
Speedy Gonzalez, bye.
He runs and gets into a cop car, of all things, and says, those guys are going to kill me.
And so the whole story comes out.
I wasn't there for any of this.
And he goes to jail.
And it's a Friday, so he's in the tombs all weekend.
So he comes out, and he says, Gavin McInnes head-butted me.
He comes out on, like, a Monday.
And on the complaint form, he wrote that it happened on a Monday.
It happened on a Saturday, dude.
You just got out on a Monday.
So he fucked up his complaint, his charges.
So when I showed up at the police station, because they called me in, I said, Monday?
I was at work I got a million emails blah blah witnesses, and so they go all right We'll just stay in this jail cell while we check your prints to see if you're a wanted criminal all right Um... So I've been to the big house.
I've been to jail for four hours.
So I'm an ex-con.
By the way, one of the funnest times I've ever had.
I was... Well, outside of the actual closing of the jail.
The KUNG of the closing jail cell.
That does something to your, your spine.
Your chest.
It just feels brutally unnatural.
Kong, I'm a, I'm an animal in a cage.
And I can't, this place could be on fire and it's up to them whether they let me out or not.
I have no freedom at this moment.
Now that's four hours.
Imagine 40 years.
But they didn't have me down with the animals in the cages downstairs.
This is at the precinct on uh...
It's like Hell's Kitchen.
It's probably like 43rd and 10th Avenue.
Something like that.
And they have these cages.
They look like pens.
They look like they're selling human beings for meat downstairs.
But I was up with the detectives.
That 70s sitcom, Barry Manilow.
No.
Is that what it was called?
No, that was the singer.
What was that show called?
Uh, 70s sitcom... Barney Miller!
Yeah, like Barney Miller.
So I've got my hands hanging out of the cage, and I'm riffing with them, just like, exactly like in the sitcom, and the room we were in looked exactly like the Barney Miller set.
And this, it was just, it may, it's one of the reasons I told my son he has to be a cop.
By the way, he said no.
He's going to be in the MLB.
But I go, look, this street stuff sucks.
It sucks going upstairs in the projects with your gun pointed, but you write a few tests, boom, you're a detective.
80K a year, 90K a year, great pension at 40.
It's cool.
And you're not going to see a bunch of dead babies.
Not after your first few years.
So, I'm in there and at one point this 8.9 walks in.
She's got, unfortunately she has that New York accent which is not attractive on ladies.
It's like the Glaswegian accent.
And she goes, what the hell is going on in here?
Everyone's dragging their ass.
They're not filling out their T4s.
If I have to say this one more time, I'm going to absolutely fucking lose it.
All right, boys?
You come in here.
Before you do anything, you fill out your T4s.
And they're like, sorry, sorry.
We're on it.
We're on it.
Captain Lacey, or whatever her name was.
Then she leaves.
And I go, I just make a face that men make.
We usually do this in the elevator.
When a 10 walks out, we just sort of look each other with our eyebrows up and go, woo.
That was something, but just with your eyes.
So I sort of look at the detector, sort of going, whoo, something else.
And then they ignore me, right?
And they, we, by the way, we got along well, because at the beginning goes, what, what happened here?
And I go, allegedly, I beat up a guy who hit this girl.
They go, oh, so that and then there was like, yeah, I figured that's it.
All right, you're one of us.
Now you can relax.
That's probably why I got the good self.
Um, They even gave me my phone for a little bit.
White privilege, of course, is what it was.
And so she walks out and they go, hey, if that's affirmative action, I love it.
Bring it on.
Let's get some more affirmative action in here.
I want 10 of those roaming around giving me shit.
If she wants to give me, she can give me shit any day of the week.
Laughing, riffing.
There's two white guys and a black guy.
And then they're working on these cases and one of them says to the black guy, So what are you working on again?
That shooting at the club?
Yeah, it was a club in the Bronx, shooting in the parking lot.
You know, no one's talking.
No one wants to say anything.
I'm going to go back there today, see if I can get anyone.
And they just sort of laugh.
And they go, I don't envy you, bro.
If you don't have a witness in the first 10 minutes, you got nothing.
And he's sort of shrugging, trying to be optimistic.
No, I think I might have something.
No, dude, you're done.
What a cool job.
Anyway, they rung my fingerprints through Albany, which I've heard is BS, and didn't work.
I mean, I was fine.
I was off the hook.
And to this, I called my dad right after that, after I did the headbutt, before the jail.
And I could hear the pride in his voice.
That's another reason you want to get into fights, because it makes your dad proud.
Now, you don't want to get stabbed, but it's very healthy getting it.
And, you know, say you get a brutal pounding, like I got, I wore Dr. Martens in the 80s, and this is in my book.
Skinheads, Nazi skinheads, we had tons of them in Ottawa, and Montreal, and Toronto.
Funded by the government, by the way.
It was like the SPLC ADL BS, where they want to find Nazis, so they make these message boards and these rallies and these magazines and they end up, just so they can like track them, but they end up creating some where there was none.
And they started this thing called the Heritage Foundation, so they could secretly track Nazis, but they ended up promoting Nazism and getting- starting a whole Nazi skinhead movement.
They were everywhere!
There was always at least five of our shows.
And when I say Nazi, I don't mean the 2018 version, where it's someone who doesn't blow trans people.
It was guys with swastikas on their jackets and tattoos of the Klan.
Like Nazis!
Anyway, uh, uh, these Nazis beat me up really badly and took my boots.
God, there was a moment thereafter, they took my boots, some giant Indian shows up, and I obviously mean Feather, not Dot.
This is Canada, remember?
Some beast of an Injun shows up, and I'm sitting there bloodied, and I'm taking off my boots and handing it, handing the boots over to them.
To the mob.
And he goes, is there a problem here?
And I say, no.
Bye, Indian.
And he goes off on his merry way, and the skinheads walk away with my boots.
Now, I can't tell you how many times in my head I've played over me going, there sure is, Chief Long Claws.
And then we go back to back and just fight Nazis.
He'd probably be doing most of the work.
You know, Indians in these, in towns like Canada, a lot of them grew up with rough lives and they, you learn how to brawl on the res.
Damn it!
See, now I'm still feeling, I can't, there's so many nights I've laid awake in bed with clenched fists going, why didn't I fight harder?
But even that beating I got, with all those guys kicking me when I was on the ground, Yeah, you got sore ribs for a month, it hurts to sneeze and laugh, but basically the next day you're fine.
Fighting is not, and that's a terrible scenario, that's a mob of say five or six guys beating the crap out of me on the ground with me not putting up any kind of a fight.
In fact, the real scars of violence are when you don't fight.
That's when you hate yourself.
And that's why this war on bullying is so bad for young men.
You should be a bully.
You should be bullied.
You should experience both sides of those.
Lots of people are talking about that.
Chris Rock was saying he wants to beat up his girls so they know what it's like to be in a racist society.
That's annoying, but at least he's pro-bullying.
Adam Sandler's pro-bullying.
Tom Shalhoub wrote a book about the merits of mean dads and bullying.
It's very important for character development.
And I was bullied when I was in fifth grade and then I turned it around and I bullied back and ended up on the same bully crew that bullied me a few years before.
I remember I was sitting on a tree.
I was in a special class for retards.
It's a long story, but I had behavioral issues.
So I'm talking to this guy, Steven Snipp, who I think he was mentally slow and he always had snot coming out of his nose and he would wipe it and a line of snot would go perfectly parallel to the ground from his nose to his ear hole and then a new line of snot would fill, uh, drip down again.
And we had, it was Diabri Moody Junior High and we had a creek running through the school.
And another berry, different, not Pablo, another berry comes charging at me just because I was the victim of the week.
Rams me so hard, I'm sitting on this branch, that I go flying through the air, smash into the creek, go under water.
I'm under the ice in the creek now, just like in The Omen, where they see that little boy dying, freezing to death, and they can't get to him because he's under the ice.
Jesus, what a scary movie that was.
But this is only about four feet deep, so I plant my feet down and crash up out of the ice.
But this is Canadian winters.
I'm dying now.
And this water, this ice-cold water, is freezing around me.
So I'm crawling, like, from the polar bear club to the office on my hands and knees, trying to, you know, headed to the nurse, whatever.
I gotta get warmed up.
I'm gonna die out here.
And as I'm crawling, Grant Belford, I'll never forget to this day, he starts crawling next to me.
And he's looking at me and he goes, What's the matter, Gavin?
You gonna catch pneumonia?
Pretty mean, huh?
He purposely mispronounced pneumonia to make it sting more.
And, uh, yeah, I got into school and got warmed up.
And, uh, and then there was a scene, I can't remember this very well, but this is, so that guy I was just talking about, this would have been eighth grade, sort of in 12 and around that same, I think it was even the same year.
There was this guy that they were antagonizing some prey, just some like injured zebra in the African tundra.
And is there African tundra?
Is tundra cold in the African jungle?
And For some reason, you know, they were picking on him and I decided I would too.
This isn't a very good story.
This isn't very moral.
But I remember running at him like I was gonna hit him and he was scared.
And then, you know, being 12, you're so athletic, I jumped over his entire body.
As some sort of weird intimidation tactic.
And everyone was cheering.
Yeah, the bullies were cheering.
You're a bully now.
Cool.
And then I turned around and shoved him.
He punched me in the face.
I went down.
And then I did this swing without looking, like, eh, as I tended to my nose, like to swat him off.
And I didn't find out this till much later.
But I had done a perfect backhanded smash to his face and sent him crying to the office.
Basically, it's better to kill than to be killed.
And that was my conversion to bully.
And that was a great lesson, too.
Even if you don't win, like in the South, I remember I met these kids.
We were doing this pilot called America on Zero Dollars a Day, which is on Vimeo.
And I met these little kids at a family reunion we were shooting.
And I wanted to become their friends.
They go, I go, what's going on with your leg?
It was broken.
And he goes, Oh, I was on a golf cart and, uh, got away from me.
We're on the side of a hill.
So it started rolling and my leg was underneath and it just, I remember hearing a snap.
I thought that's not good.
You were driving a golf cart at 45 degrees.
I don't think I have the courage to do that.
You're, you're in jackass.
And I'll find out from them later that what they do every weekend, we just get on our dirt bikes.
They have like 60cc dirt bikes, 22 rifles on their backs, and they just go ripping through the forests of... This is in South Carolina.
Ripping through the forest, they see a rabbit, they stop and shoot it.
Blow its head off.
Then keep going.
I want to hang out with you.
And I go, do you guys fight?
And they go, oh yeah!
And then I go, you're not a bully.
You don't just pick on kids.
Oh, no, no, no.
I'll usually do it if they say something bad about my mama or something like that, you know.
They disparage her.
And then I said, what happens next?
Oh, well, we agree.
We'll meet you at the Baseball Diamond that day after school.
And it's abandoned, you know.
It's very private.
You go there.
And I go, and then you just, you know, you make them suffer.
And they go, when do you stop?
And he goes, I usually, you know, we'll get some blood, we'll get something going, and I'll be on top.
And I just like him to say, I'm sorry.
I just like that part, you know?
I'm sorry.
It feels good.
That's something a man needs to have under his belt.
Even boxing, hitting a heavy bag, you walk down the street after and you go, I could beat up you, I could beat up you.
That's why I'm against having my tubes tied, even though I'm never having any more kids.
I don't want to be able to walk down the street going, I couldn't impregnate you, I couldn't impregnate you.
It's nice just to know it's an option.
You're not going to do it, but it's nice to know you can impregnate someone or beat them up.
And that's what business is.
When two people are bidding on a contract, it's violent.
There's conflict there.
You have to be ready to fight.
Physical fights are the same as business fights.
They're very similar.
And when it gets heated, you have to know that you could punch this guy in the nose.
Just knowing that that's a possibility in the back of your head, it just sort of greases the wheels of everything else.
And the fact that we're taking that away from our young people is doing them a huge disservice.
It's making them into arrogant dicks.
I remember we were going to see this band MDC.
They're the ones who coined the phrase, no war, no KKK, no fascist USA.
It was hardcore hyperbole in the 80s, and now it's a normal mantra at a gun march or a woman's march, for crying out loud.
But the massive skinhead scene in Ottawa meant that anyone who was had a race in their band, like SNFU was this band, who had an Asian vocalist, his name was Chai Pig, and they would show up to shows and get on stage to fight him.
And these guys are hosers from Winnipeg who love hockey, so they know how to fight and they would happily fight the skinheads on stage during their show.
How insane is that?
They would come, They would get into the mosh pit and dance with us, but punches in the face.
So it's weird having a dance partner that wants to kill you.
And at MDC, this was a unique one, they had a song at the time called Skinhead.
And my band opened for them.
My band was Anal Chinook.
We played in drag at that show, which I'm sure the Skinheads were not happy about.
But the song's at S because you're so stupid, K like the KKK, I cause you're an idiot, and N a Nazi too, H is cause we hate you, E each and every day, and A together we can create anarchy, and D destroy the state!
But they were touring with that album.
The album was called Millions of Damn Christians, and they were touring the South and areas where the skinheads were, as prominent as our tiny little bureaucratic town, Ottawa, with our government-made skinheads.
So Dave Dichter, the singer, told me that he would change the lyrics to, S, it's cause you're super, and K, you're really kind, and I, cause you're intelligent, cause they'd be in the, he'd see this sea of skinheads.
In the audience.
So they showed up, and it was the weirdest thing I've ever been a part of.
Weird sort of a Roman conflict.
All the skinheads got in a line, starting at the stage and going backwards.
And so we got in a line and matched them.
So it was like square, what do you call that?
Country dancing?
Country dancing.
Country ranch dancing?
Ballroom dancing?
God, what's the matter with my stupid brain?
I blame cell phones.
Step 2 dancing?
What's it called?
Country dancing?
Ranchi dancing?
Damn it, nothing's coming up.
Cowboy dancing?
I know how annoyed you are right now and I agree with you because I have a dad and I hear him Doing this, what's it called?
Step 2 Maloo dancing?
Dancing cowboys, dancing gifs, goddammit.
Shuffle dance?
Anyway, country-western dancing, whatever it is.
Take your partner round and round, do-si-do.
Okay, I'm sorry.
I'm ruining this podcast.
Take your partner, partner, round and round, do-si-do.
This is why Joe Rogan has, like, a guy.
Swing your partner.
I still don't know what it is.
Square dancing!
Sorry, listeners.
I apologize.
Square dancing.
So it was like square dancing.
And then we were all lined up, and I'm lined up, and I have my skinhead, and the guy next to me has his skinhead.
Actually, there was this one dude, this fat kid named Yuri, who was Israeli.
And the funny thing about these Ottawa Nazis is there's no blacks, or really any really prominent Jews, like with yarmulkes and stuff, in Ottawa to fight.
So they just fight us, the punks, because they knew we disagreed with them.
And this poor guy, Yuri, because he was Israeli, he got the shit beaten out of him regularly by them.
And, oh my god, I just remembered another story.
He ended up killing himself.
Poor bastard.
More than once, too.
He OD'd on pills and they had to cut up his entire arms and legs to drain the blood or something.
Because he had these cesarean scars going up his arms that he got tattooed into zippers.
And then I think he tried again and was successful the second time.
Poor bastard.
Tragic.
Um, so anyway, we're facing our individual skinheads and I had a guy who was about my height.
We all matched up quite nicely.
And then, uh, the song ended and I can't remember exactly what cue did.
It was just sort of like, well, the lines are complete.
Let's start.
And I just, without waiting.
And again, this goes back to the don't wait for it.
I just whacked, I just got him beautifully.
It's actually the best punch of my life.
I nailed him right in the face and he went flying backwards and I was in awe.
That was one of my first, you know, successful punches.
And then, as he's getting up, and he's sort of like stunned that someone would dare do that, someone, my, my wimpiness, some punk kid with like dyed blonde hair, uh, as he's going, oh boy, are you gonna pay for that, the lights all come on, the cops, they're, everyone get down, get, the cops have bullhorns, they turn off the power on the stage, and they start rounding everyone up, and arresting everyone, and putting us in paddy wagons, whatever, separating us all, so he never got me back.
It was a beautiful scenario.
It was like, uh... But the thing that popped into my head, by the way, there was one time when I think Yuri was being picked on, this is before he killed himself, and we were around.
It was an anarchist gathering.
No, sorry, an anarchist un-gathering.
You're not allowed to call it a gathering.
That was... See, we're very strict about our no rules as anarchists.
And, uh, some skinheads had attacked Yuri, and I would have been, like, 16 at the time.
So we start running through the streets, and we find the guys!
And there may be 14, these Nazis that were beating up Yuri.
So we get them.
And we shove them on the ground and we're kicking at them.
We're throwing them around, picking them up.
And we're a mob.
We're like 12.
So this is a great time for revenge.
So I think, let's get creative.
So I remember saying this stupidest thing.
I go, you guys haven't even read Mein Kampf.
And they go, yes we have.
I hadn't read it either.
No one's read Mein Kampf.
I think Jim Goad is the only person who's actually read the book.
But Uh, we pick him up, and they're standing there shaking, shitting their pants, and I think, let's get sort of Tim Curry on their ass.
So I start walking around them in circles, and I sort of take over as, I'm gonna be the leader of this particular beating.
And, uh, I go, guess what happens now, boys?
And they go, what?
And I go, we're gonna fuck you.
And then I put my tongue on his neck and I go and run my tongue up his neck.
This is like watching too many movies when you're 16.
Past his ears like Cluckergorn's scary sicko and then I pull back and I stare at them smiling and then I look back at my gang And they are all gobsmacked with their jaws hitting the floor.
They think I really am a psychotic gay.
I had done my Tim Curry character so well that I convinced my own guys and it looked like they were gonna abandon me.
So we had to abandon the whole shit-kicking because I realized... I realized that I no longer had an army.
It was a mutiny on the bounty due to homophobia.
Alright, I'll end it with the worst ass-kissing I ever- ass-kissing?
The worst ass-kicking I ever had.
It was again in Ottawa.
I was also with Shane again, and there was this guy named Jeff, and he had a big fucking mouth.
And Ottawa, I know people see Canadians as sweet, but you should- you should check out the video, Out for a Rip, where they talk about how, yes, Canadians are polite, But, we still fight.
Here, I've got the song here actually.
Shark Tank presents, Be Rich and Friends.
It's a really great song.
out from just over ripper you fuck yeah just still for ripper just over just fuck you oh yeah fucking buddy burns a hole in my all night too fucking nice like yeah we got manners okay yeah we got manners fucking buddy still fight fight and fucking swear and fucking drink all night.
Like this one time, me and fucking Buddy are out having a dart, and fucking Buddy burns a hole in my coat, and I was like, fuck, bud, because the coat was pretty new, right?
And he's like, fuck you.
So I put his head in a snowbank and just started fucking feeding him the right left, like fucking boom, boom, boom.
There you go.
I'll translate for you.
These two gentlemen were out for a drive, and one of the gentlemen is having a cigarette, a dart.
He burns his friend's coat and is not apologetic.
So he throws his friend into a snowbank and starts punching him with his right and left fists in the chest and head.
Um, so yeah, and maybe it's hockey based, but Canada is a very violent and polite and safe place, if you can be all of those at once.
And so, Jeff had, I don't know, been in a fight somewhere.
He was a drunk.
We were all probably 18 at the time.
And, uh, he had his jaw wired shut.
Now, I had recently abandoned punk.
I was probably 21 or 22, and the look we were going for post-punk was because we were sort of coming from a crusty punk thing, which is really what these Antifa people are.
So we were, you know, you'd have like one dread and then messy hair, and then you'd have a sweater covered in holes, rubber boots.
Jeans with holes in them and then like a jacket you found in the garbage I think because we were middle-class and we wanted to appear homeless So we just had like rags hanging off as we found stuff in the garbage.
We were like Anarcho vegan just disgusting people who ate in the garbage and We're walking by these jocks who by the way, I'm now on their side in this story We're walking by these jocks and they go fucking Ottawa trash And I just sort of laughed and went, I've never heard that expression before.
And so we go to my car.
I'm a homeless dumpster diver who owns a car for some reason.
It was my mommy's car.
I was in town.
I'd lived in Montreal, but I was visiting Ottawa and I was borrowing my parents' car, being a crusty punk in a Chevrolet Oldsmobile.
And so they end up in the parking lot.
They had some tricked out super truck.
It was like a monster truck.
It was a work of art.
And that was their car.
And so they were both, we were both in this sort of outdoor parking lot thing.
And as these guys are walking by, they laugh at us.
And Jeff, with his jaw wired shut, goes, ooh, I'm so scared!
Thanks, buddy.
Now we know that he can't get beat up or this wiring is gonna He's gonna have to remove his jaw like his whole thing is remarkably fragile His jaw is in pieces and it's being held together with wires and glue and stitches So he has to get in the car.
So Shane and I go get in the car Jeff and then Shane's got a big ego And he's just like, I'll handle this.
So the guy goes up to him first and says, you want to fucking go?
You want to do this bitch?
You want to fucking do this?
And Shane looks bored, and he takes his baseball hat and puts it backwards.
And then just starts rolling up the sleeves of his jacket.
Yeah, I'm going to have to kick your ass.
And so the jock just goes, whoosh, and delivers a nuclear bomb of a bullet punch that just instantly knocks Shane out.
And so Shane's on all fours.
Then the jock picks him up.
His hat's gone.
Picks him up by the dreads.
And just starts feeding him, as Out for Rip says.
just starts punching Let's see, he's on all fours like doggie style, and this jock is holding him up by the hair and just going, poof, poof, poof, poof, punch, punch, punch.
And every time the fist pulls away, an arcing rope of blood, almost like projectile vomit, just goes splash, splash, splash.
So all this blood is just pouring out of his face.
And I decide, no, we're not having this.
So I go, that's it, that's enough!
And I run over to the guy and tackle him to get him off of my friend.
But it was like tackling a bronze statue.
I just hit a wall, oof!
And so I realize I'm not strong enough to get this guy, to tackle this guy away from my friend.
So I just put him in a fuckin' hold and it's gonna be lights out, buddy.
So I get my arm around him and I start closing my arms to knock him out, to suffocate him, right?
No problem.
He's just like, get this guy off of me.
As I'm trying to close his throat and it's not, I'm not closing his throat.
I'm not strong enough.
His neck muscles are stronger than my arms.
And then I just feel whoosh.
And it, to this day, it's not just the hardest punch I've ever gotten.
I've been knocked out in the ring a few times.
This punch was honestly, So hard that I was confused.
I was knocked unconscious.
I woke up about 10 feet from where I was.
So this, whoever punched me had a running start and they did it sort of a diagonal.
I don't like the word sucker punch.
It's a pussy term.
I read in the paper the other day, some 20 year old homeless man sucker punched a 5 year old.
As opposed to what?
That's like saying, uh, raped a baby.
As opposed to what?
Made love to a baby?
You can't sucker punch a kid.
What?
He didn't have a fair fight with a five-year-old?
Anyway, he did sucker punch me at an angle.
I went flying ten feet away, and it was so painful and so intense, I assumed I'd been hit with a two-by-four.
And then I went to feel my nose, and it was gone.
That's right.
I had no nose.
No nose to speak of.
I'm feeling around and I feel like where my sort of penciled in mustache was and then nothing above it at all but skin.
So I go, oh, I see what happened.
He hit me with a two by four so hard that my nose came off.
I've heard of this, you know, farmers bring their arms to the ER.
I better go find my nose.
So I'm searching all over for a 2x4 with a nose stuck to it.
And as I do this, I notice that I have a garden hose taped to my face that is shooting out blood.
It was like something out of a Monty Python sketch.
Just pshhhhhh.
Full faucet blood shooting.
And I assume that's the Michael Jackson hole I have in my face now.
So I put my hand on my face to stop the torrent of blood and I realized, oh my nose is there!
It just got punched up under my left eye.
The nose was broken at more than 90 degrees.
So all the nostrils and everything, the whole kit and caboodle, went up underneath the eye.
I mean, imagine a Mr. Potato Head, where some kid turned the nose sideways.
So if Mr. Potato Head felt his lips, he wouldn't feel a nose.
Because the nose is up here, under the eye.
And it's shooting out blood.
And so, I go, oh that's good news.
Now I don't have to find a nose.
It's still attached and they're all gone now and Shane's face is just, both his eyes are sealed shut and the rest is just blood.
You can't even see a nose and a mouth, just hard blood.
And, uh, I, uh, I, uh, tried plugging my nose because blood was going everywhere.
And the nose, the blood was coming so fast that to plug my nose, I would just be going, like chugging a large milkshake of blood.
So it was either drink blood or let blood spew out.
And, uh, the jocks left.
I think they were stunned at what they had done.
I think, I believe one of them yelled, Holy shit!
When they saw my Mr. Potato Head face and they ran to their truck and sped off.
And again, we don't call the cops back then.
And so everything was handled.
It was normal.
You know, we said, Ooh, we're so scared to them.
They gave us a bunch of chances to back down.
We put our hats backwards and said, we're going to kick your ass.
So it was a normal call to a duel.
So we drove to the Ottawa Hospital, and free Medicare sounds great when you're in America.
Up in the real world, in Canada and Britain, it means 12 hours of waiting in a waiting room.
And if they think you're a drunk, oh my god, it's 15, 20 hours.
You might as well go home first.
So we waited there and waited there.
It got to the point where we were doing jokes.
Like I had my, I had blood all over my eyes.
And my, one of my eyes was sealed shut.
I'm not sure how that happened.
But if I could, I could pull them down.
And you'd see the whites of my eyes.
And then blood would come down my, my eyes like tears.
I would cry blood tears.
And I was making Jeff laugh by going, like we were doing horror movie faces.
Because every time you would, all the blood was caked on and coagulated.
But every time you made a movement or moved your face, That would break the seal and all the blood that was behind the dried blood would come pouring out like evil dead 2.
So we just did like zombie faces.
Help me!
Help me!
As blood came out of our eyes and noses.
And eventually...
Eventually, I get to see a doctor and he has to stand up on like a bench by the chair I'm in to reset my nose.
Because the thing that goes in the middle, the cartilage, was at 90 degrees, so he had to pull it away from the socket, down to where a nose should be, and then back in.
And you hear the... of the cartilage moving around in your face from inside your face.
I almost projectile bombed there.
It was the most disgusting, horrible feeling I've ever felt.
It's why my nose is at four degrees to this day.
And it was a really fun experience that I'm glad I have under my belt.
We protected Jeff and his big, stupid, wired, shut mouth.
And we stood up to those guys.
I'm permanently disfigured from it, but that's a good thing.
I think violence is very healthy.
Obviously getting stabbed is a nightmare, getting shot is not good.
You have to know how to pick your battles and know when you're in like South Side of Chicago or Baltimore or Harlem or East New York where you could very likely die, but If the laws of chivalry are apparent, and it looks like it's just going to be a normal, good old-fashioned barroom brawl, that's great news.
Don't call the cops.
You don't need the authorities to document all your conflicts.
But you do need conflicts, and this goes back to grade school.
It's good that Barry Pablo tried to fight me.
It's good that I was shot in the creek.
It's good that I was bullied.
And it's good that I bullied.
All part of that is the making of a man.
And there is a real war on the making of a man.
And taking away our violence is the first step.
Outlawing fighting is first, then it's outlawing testosterone, then it's outlawing any kind of masculine behavior, boisterousness, maybe that comes before the testosterone, and the next thing you know, gender doesn't exist, and there's no such thing as being a man.
You know, all this propaganda that says it's okay to cry.
There's a real sinister subtext to all that, and it's okay not to be a man.
They want to take that away.
Well, it's fun being a man, and it's fun fighting.
I don't want them to take it away.
That went a little long.
We're up to an hour now.
Sorry about that, chaps.
You can repeat this on Friday.
I want to talk about good scams I got up to recently, like pretending to be retarded and getting a good seat on the airplane.
I'm not proud of that one, but it does work.
So next Friday we'll probably do scams.
Again, you can sign up for CRTV.com.
Check out my show, Get Off My Lawn.
We've got CRTV Tonight coming up.
I think April 27th is the first ep.
I'm not positive.
If you put in the code GAVIN, I believe you get $10 off.
But it's like, it's barely $10 a month, dude.
It's two beers a month.
You can afford it.
And this will always be free.
And that's it.
That's my three things that I do with my time now, outside of trying to be a good husband and a wonderful dad.
And yeah, I should devote some episodes to that too.
