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Sept. 21, 2018 - Get Off My Lawn - Gavin McInnes
58:19
Get Off My Lawn Podcast #83 | Fight stories are always fun

I pulled out an oldie but goodie from the fist fight archives in a futile attempt to try and thwart the pussification of today's youth. Getting stabbed and or shot is not good but what's the matter with a brief altercation outside of a bar? At the very least it makes for a good story - and good stories are what podcasts are all about.

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Fight stories are always fun.
I remember Anthony Civarelli, Civ, he's the guy who did my back tattoo.
He wanted to do a book on just fight stories.
Which is a great idea.
And I was working with him on it.
And then we brought in this photographer I did.
I said, let's make it a coffee table book.
So there'll be stories, and then you cut to pictures from, you know, mid-fight, sort of Ryan McGinley-esque photos.
You know, like street kind of stuff, not fancy photographer stuff, not like from boxing, but from street fights.
I thought it was a great idea.
I thought it would make a great book.
Forget the guy's name, the photographer's name, Brody Dale or something like that.
That's the chick from The Casualties.
Anyway, I started working on it, assuming Siv would love the idea.
And then he goes, fuck that, I'm not doing any of this MTV shit.
And I understand that mentality.
He just wanted it to be a written book like that book, Gig, which is Americans Talking About Their Jobs.
A fucking amazing book.
I love that book.
Please get that book.
It's just maybe 100 stories of a paperboy talking about his job, the CEO of a major corporation talking about his job.
They've got some bartender from Lily's on, what is that, Avenue A, saying, yes, the skinny heads would come in and fight the punk rockers in 80s from Tompkins Square Park.
Skinnyheads, she says.
It's fucking awesome, that book.
So he wanted that kind of a thing, Siv did.
Gorilla Biscuits vocalist, I'm talking about.
And then the photographer goes, if you guys move forward with this in any way, I'm going to sue your ass.
This is like a 22-year-old.
Hey, 22-year-olds, don't talk about suing people.
Here's the thing you got to know about business when you're young.
Say yes to everything.
Hey, we like your cartoon, but we want to have the rights to the characters.
Say yes.
Fine, make new characters.
You're starting out.
You got to say yes to everything.
Get your foot in the door.
Stop negotiating with the publisher or the broadcaster.
I don't want to get fucked over, man.
Get fucked over.
Okay, you just started.
Let big corporate America walk all over you on your first deal.
If you're a band and you get offered a contract, just sign it.
Say yes.
You can start a new band if you don't like it.
And here's another secret no one talks about.
Start the project, sign everything.
If you don't like it, just, they're not going to sue you.
Just stop doing it.
Now, if you try to continue with the name Prince, you're going to be screwed.
But say you sign up to a TV show and you realize, I don't want to be an actor, just leave.
They'll figure it out.
They're not going to sue you.
You'll never work as an actor again, of course.
But if you're not into that pursuit, don't worry about it.
Anyway, he had that old millennial attitude of entitlement.
And you know what's fucking funny?
He wore a big, huge, stupid hat.
This is the early aughts I'm talking about now.
And I saw him years later.
And what the hell is crawling on my back?
Something was just crawling on my back.
What in the Sam hell?
That was weird.
You know, a great thing about tree planting, having been a tree planter for five years, is I don't really care about bugs.
Like if a millipede crawled over your leg, you'd have a heart attack.
I'd just go, what the fuck?
How did a millipede get in here?
And I would pick it up and it would wrap around me and I would just sort of flick it off.
I know I sounded freaked out when something just crawled down my back.
I don't even know where it is now.
Could have been lint.
It could have been a spider.
I don't care.
It could be down the crack.
It could be in my butt crack right now laying eggs.
Laying eggs.
It could make it down into my anus and just start a whole family there.
I heard about that.
Some woman had a maxi pad with spiders and the spiders legged eggs in her vagina.
Which means she's the spider's mom.
She's a surrogate spider mom.
Spider mom, spider mom, giving birth to spider eggs out of vagina.
What the hell's the matter with you?
Have you ever showered?
You're disgusting.
Hey there.
You must weigh 400 pounds.
Now, you're a giant spider mom.
You got a bunch of eggs.
God, my friend of my middle sons has this musically.
I don't know what musically means, but it says, the day you get a puppy, it's like a vine thing, like a social mini thing little kids use.
The day you get a puppy, oh, it's cute.
The day after you get a puppy, please poo outside.
I know that doesn't sound funny to you as an adult, but for 10-year-olds, that's fucking the most hilarious thing in the world.
And it's funny because it's true.
And then my five-year-old goes, everything is penis with five-year-olds.
And he goes, the day you get a penis, oh, it's so wiggly.
The day after you get a penis, it's right in the middle of my balls.
I laugh so hard I almost crashed the car.
Holy shit, he's funny.
I'm starting a book of just his quotes, and I'm going to make it like a children's book.
It's going to be called What's Blue and What's Round?
And the answer is, A Butt Cheek, What's Wearing Blue Pants?
But every time he says something, I take voice notes.
And then this one, I took a voice.
He thought that he wanted me to have, he wanted me to record him taking the voice note.
But I let him anyway.
And I don't even remember what this is, but I remember it being hilarious.
If you get a cut, you're wasting your heartblood.
Oh, yeah, that's a different one.
If you get a cut, you're wasting your heartblood.
If you want to win at foosball, you...
If you want to win at foosball, you make him that face.
Amen.
And that's so you can only see the ball, right?
Yeah.
Amen to you, God.
He's not.
We don't go to church as often as we should, and he hates church, so that's not like a little Christian kid saying that.
He's just throwing that in as a little addendum.
But that's also funny because it's true.
If you frown like you're Satan when you're playing foosball, first of all, your brow goes down, so you block out the other guy and you can totally focus on the ball.
And secondly, it gets you into this intense mode.
Try it.
Next time you're playing foosball, frown like Satan and you'll do way better.
Anyway, yeah, so we wanted to do this fight book.
And then it just sort of fizzled away after that, I guess.
But don't steal Siv's idea.
It's a great idea.
Just go around with the tape.
Oh, yeah, that was it.
He wanted to do all his friends.
And the guy's busy.
He runs a tattoo shop, Lotus Tattoo.
So he just didn't have time to go around with the tape recorder recording everyone.
But being in the hardcore scene and being a tough kid from Brooklyn who, you know, knows scary dudes like DMS.
No offense, DMS.
I'm not disrespecting you in any way, shape, or form.
He could, you know, record all these awesome stories.
Like, look up Lord Isaac, E-Z-E-C, also known as Danny Diablo.
Go Google him.
Can you imagine the fucking stories that guy has?
I've hung out with him a couple of times.
He talks like, yo, what's going on?
Fucking.
I said, I should join your gang.
Like, you have guys like Boston Mike in the gang, those kind of names.
I want to be Ottawa Gavin.
Why doesn't that sound as cool as Boston Mike, Ottawa Gavin?
He goes, I don't know.
That's fucked up.
You're right, though.
Maybe we should get some funny guys in the gang.
He didn't say gang.
Funny guys in the group.
You know what?
Fuck it.
Let's do it.
Ottawa Gary, you're in, you're in.
Now, he was kidding.
I wasn't in DMS, but I kind of thought he was.
And then some shit went down, and I said, I'm out of DMS.
And I only knew them through this dude, Trevor.
And I go, tell Trevor I'm out.
I mean, Trevor, tell them I'm out.
And he tells Danny Diablo, Kevin said something about Ottawa Gary.
What?
Fucking Ottawa Gary?
That dude, your gay friend?
He thought I was serious?
And Trevor goes, yeah, I think he did.
And he's not gay.
He goes, yeah, whatever, dude.
Look, I grew up in New York City.
I don't fucking care.
I see fags everywhere, every day.
Fucking, you think I give a shit?
Yeah, but he's not.
Okay, whatever.
Whatever helps you sleep at night.
Amazing.
The funny thing about New York hardcore dudes is they're all funny.
Like you listen to sheer terror or sick of it all and you think those guys probably kill people for fun.
Like they sound like Slayer, so they're scary.
And then you hang out with them and you go, these are the funniest dudes I've ever seen in my life.
And I think it's because you're in a van with dudes for 16 hours non-stop, you know, going from town to town, especially in the Midwest, especially when you're around Indiana.
And you just can't help but riff and you can't help but getting good at riffing.
That's why Fred Armerson is so funny because he was back.
Actually, that's why Portlandy is so funny because both of them, Carrie and Fred, were in bands forever, touring and touring and touring, slowly getting funnier and funnier and funnier.
Like sick of it all, their manager was this guy who had kind of hemophilia eyes.
He had dark circles under his eyes, which is unfortunate when you're a little kid, but then when you get to be a teenager, you get so much pussy that you ask the ladies to please, may you please have a break.
As the graffiti I saw in Israel said, Tinder, my dick is broken.
I want love.
And in Israeli, in Yiddish, I guess, my dick is broken means I've had enough, so it's a double entendre.
But anyway, he had these dark circles under his eyes, and they called him asshole eyes.
And they go to their publicist manager or whatever, like their headquarters is.
I guess there was one place that handled the record label and the publicity.
So they would hang out there a lot and bring stuff by and see what's going on with the merch, etc.
There was some band that tried to sue Sick of it All because they were using the dragon tattoo as their logo.
And there's a rap band that does that too.
But you can't copyright a common tattoo, dudes.
So Sick of It All had to explain it to them.
I forget what the name of that band was.
They were a New York scary band.
Anyway, sorry.
So they go, hey, yo, we got a tape here of manager just on the road.
I was wondering if you want to check it out.
We could use it maybe in a video or like as an extra on a DVD or something.
It's pretty cool.
It's just him hanging out and talking and stuff and getting us stuff.
They go, yeah, sure, let's see it.
The videotape, the VHS tape, was a compilation of every time Lurch has appeared on Adam's family because they thought their manager, Trevor Simser, I've talked about him on a different episode, looked like Lurch from Adam's family.
So they took the time to sit there pressing record every time Lurch was on and they made a Lurch montage.
That's not what you think when you hear sick of it all.
You think of scary shit.
Nuclear explosions.
The cover of the Cro-Mags album is a nuclear explosion.
No.
Some of the funniest people you'll ever meet.
Anyway, so Sib's funny, and he had an idea for a fight book.
And he comes from a Brooklyn where to leave your block is an act of war.
It's funny that so many lefties in Brooklyn and hipsters want open borders and they're living in a place where up until 1989, even some places in the 90s, you didn't, like most Brooklynites who were born and raised there, they can't swim or ride a bike because the pool is over in another spot.
So they're not traveling there and there's no need to bike.
You don't leave the block.
You meet guys from Brooklyn that have never been to Manhattan.
Especially South Brooklyn.
Anyway, sorry.
He told me a story once where him and his friends, when they were about 13, they thought, fuck it, let's leave the block.
And they were walking down the street.
I'm probably screwing up the story, Siv, but they're walking down the street on another block, which is like going to Africa.
They're in another universe.
And these older kids catch them.
And they go, what the fuck are you doing here?
We're just checking stuff out.
No, you're not.
And I think they brought them, pulled them into a church to beat them.
This is what you do when you're an advanced fighter.
You want to like put them in a bathtub or something so you can beat them and they can't run away, and you can really focus on your pounding.
But because these kids were so much older, these kids were probably 18, and Siv and his friend were about 13, they couldn't beat up the kids because that's bad for your rep. You beat up little kids.
So, what they did was they made Siv and his friend beat each other up.
How do you do that?
Well, you give them a few punches in the head.
So, punch him in the face.
And they go, no.
And he goes, oh, yeah?
And starts pounding the 13-year-old.
And then the 13-year-old goes, well, fuck this.
And he starts beating up his friend.
And then they make the friend do it back to him.
And of course, as they're beating each other up, their friends, they get mad because it hurts so much.
Like, what the fuck?
You don't have to hit me that hard.
You could have, like, done a wrestling punch.
We could have done some WWF shit.
Fuck you.
So that's the world he's coming from.
And I thought that would be, this is an incredibly long intro to, I was thinking of this amazing fight story that happened because it's telling a much bigger picture.
And by the way, the reason I bring up all this fighting is it's retarded to just go up to someone and punch them in the face or to instigate violence is obviously ridiculous.
Just to punch someone because you don't like them.
That shows you're weak.
That shows that you can't use your words, as we say in preschool.
Just, you should be witty enough to insult people.
And then if they get violent and they hit the first punch, well, now all bets are off.
Now, what if someone's doing something like hitting a kid?
That's different.
Or shoving a woman, that's different.
That means they instigated it first.
Now, a dog shitting in a park, I would yell and yell at him and tell him to pick it up and keep yelling at him until he hit me.
But I think it's smart, especially if there's lots of cops and cameras around, and you're at a rally or something, to put your hands behind your back and go up to someone and say, hey, do you have a problem here?
And let them have the first punch.
Hope it's not a knockout.
You could probably deke it out.
And then all bets are off.
And then you're allowed to have fun, by the way.
There's nothing wrong with that.
You don't start fights, you finish them.
And if you're finishing them, it's okay to enjoy it, especially if it's justified.
It feels good.
Justified violence feels good.
I don't understand how we got to this place where we're so petrified of violence and fighting.
It used to just handle itself.
I'm not talking about mobsters shooting each other in the head.
I'm just talking about these guys have a beat.
That's the way it was in the 70s.
You meet in the playground at 3.20 after school.
You knew about it sometimes a day in advance.
You'd have explosive diarrhea in anticipation of fighting Barry Pueblo at the Earl of March High School.
And everyone would gather around and watch.
And it's perfectly healthy.
Perfectly healthy.
It's not evil.
You're not going to die.
Gun violence is evil.
Knife violence, weapons violence is scary and horrible.
But a few fisticuffs, it's a very important part of being a young man.
And it changes the way you walk down the street.
I think it helps you in business too.
Because what a lot of women don't understand is the workforce is violence.
Bidding on contracts, competitors undercutting you, it's all violence.
And in boardrooms, when there's confrontation, or even within your own company, there's competition.
That's kind of like a schoolyard brawl.
And to know that you could throw down with this guy if worse comes to worse, it sort of shatters the ceiling of confrontation and you're not scared of anything anymore.
If you're petrified of violence and you're sitting there arguing with him and he goes, what are you going to do?
And you think, uh-oh, we can't let this get to Fistikas.
Well, now you have a ceiling on your confrontation and you're going to back down if he backs up.
Not backs up, but goes up.
So when you don't care if you fight, you know, I'm not talking about strangers on the train who could be armed.
I'm talking about people you're familiar with.
Then you're a lot more fearless.
And then you get stuff done on a local level, you know?
You get the contract.
You finish it on time.
You're not undercut by the competition.
You don't get beat out if you can beat them up.
Or at least you're not scared.
And who wins a fight is irrelevant.
It's just a lot of fighting is just a roll of the dice.
It's just some guy gets too good.
If a guy connects with your head twice, you're disoriented.
I think we're done here.
And it's really hard to punch someone in the face.
In fact, at a boxing gym, a big part of your rounds is a double-ended bag, which doesn't take any power whatsoever.
Actually, the speed bag and the double-ended bag are both based on speed and accuracy, because a huge part of fighting is hitting this moving target.
You'll notice when you see two guys fight, they're always just like grazing each other, like punching each other's ears and grazing off their beard.
Any Hizzel, this is the fight story that I wanted to tell 17 minutes ago.
So we're in Montreal.
The year is 1997.
We started Vice in 94, and we're doing pretty good.
But we decide to start a record label because my co-worker, Sarouche, was really into music, probably still is.
And he has a magical ear where he'll hear a band and go, these guys are going places.
And he was always right.
It was just a gift, like being a good chef.
You just have more taste buds in your ear.
And so he started an indie label.
And I highly do not recommend starting an indie label.
Speaking of that photographer who wanted to sue us for something that he couldn't possibly sue us for, indie bands don't understand indie labels.
There's two types of ways to put out a record.
You're a major label.
The major label handles absolutely everything.
They make sure there's posters waiting at the venue when you're on tour.
They make sure the hotel is taken care of.
If you don't like the hotel, they find a new hotel.
They negotiate everything.
The merch is all handled.
We have all the sizes at all your venues.
We make sure your record is in these stores, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And for that, you get a minuscule cut.
Probably nothing.
You probably only get, in this day and age, all you're going to get is a cut of your live shows and about $0 per record.
But everything is handled and you can relax.
That's one route to take.
The other totally different route is an indie label where it's basically just a place that helps you print your CDs, vinyl.
I don't know what the kids are doing today, your MP3 machines.
And it's your job to load the van up with your merch and your DVDs and your CDs and whatever the fuck else the kids are using today.
Your thumb drives.
What do they sell at Shows, seven inches, probably.
They've probably gone back to vinyl.
And you don't really talk to the label.
And then for that, you get a massive cut of everything, like 50% or something.
And they handle, you know, about 25 to 30% of your stuff.
What I find with indie bands is they assume you're getting stinking rich off of the 5,000 CDs that you sold.
And they get all pissy when they get to a town and there's not posters up or there's not posters for sale at the merch table.
The merch table isn't stocked with stuff.
They're just really, it goes back to entitlement, right?
And then you're like, I'm making about $1,000 a year with this thing and all I'm getting is bullshit from my friends.
And I started this label for my friends.
I'm not talking about me.
I'm saying the indie record owner.
Fuck this.
This isn't fun.
Frank Kozak, I think, he was kind of a nerd back in Austin.
I think he did it so he could hang out with cool people.
Or what was that rap label, DEF CON in New York?
I think that guy was just a rich white kid who wanted to buy black friends.
It makes sense in that scenario.
If you want to buy friends, they have to hang out with you if they're on the label.
But otherwise, do not do it.
Anyway, I'm at our local bar, the BiffTech, and there was this dude, Simon Nixon.
He used to be in a band called Octopussy.
And big guy, tough guy, drunkard.
He was very...
He used to say the craziest shit.
This is a typical Simon Nixon sentence.
He'd go, yeah, a lot of people like crap on TV a lot, but I think it's a beauty.
I don't like reading.
And he was a good singer, and he had this band.
I think they were called the Paper Boys.
Yeah, that was it.
We put them out, and they sounded like Elvis Costello.
Radio is the sound sound.
He did the same kind of singing.
Radio is just cleaning up the nation.
I know you want to listen to the voice of reason.
And we were making kind of good money.
We had left the welfare scam, and we were all probably making, I don't know, 40 grand a year.
But that was insane back then.
And we had these things called cellular telephones that only a few people had.
And we had these Halle Hansen jackets that Hallie Hansen stitched the Vice logo on.
There's only three of them in the world.
Me, Shane, and Sarouche had them.
Totally dope, dude.
In retrospect, it was pretty embarrassing.
But we were, quote-unquote, flossing, which is lame everywhere.
I'm not saying it's lame personally.
I like you.
Floss away, boys.
Get a Ferrari.
Go nuts.
But in certain cultures, that's frowned upon.
If you had a Ferrari in the punksy in the Lower East Side, you'd be a pariah.
And in all of Canada, Canada has this real anti-capitalist mentality because it's a socialist country.
So if you were driving down St. Lawrence Street in a Ferrari, people would laugh their heads off at you.
You'd be a fucking loser.
So any kind of, you know, they're like the Scots in that sense.
You got to be an underdog.
You can never brag.
You can't be ostentatious.
That's considered American.
And we were getting ostentatious.
Which is funny because ostentatious meant $40,000 a year, a free jacket, a cell phone, and you making $1,000 a year off this band.
So I overheard later, there was this other guy, what the hell was his name?
Andy something?
He was in the tricky woos.
And they're both sitting having a beer, and they're my friends.
I've hung out with these guys for, I don't know, 200 hours.
But because we were slowly starting to split, it's sort of like when you get married, you no longer have anything in common with your best friends, and you drift apart.
When you start making money and getting serious about a career, all your lazy friends who wake up at 4 p.m., they start resenting you.
And I don't think it's jealousy per se.
You could give them your life and they'd go, fuck that.
I'm not getting up at nine.
It's just like, I don't know what it is.
It's just like, why did you abandon our culture of laziness?
You used to be one of us, part of the lazy community.
So, plus, I'm also ignoring this.
You're hearing this story from me, so I'm leaving out the possibility that I'm just a twat who gets on people's nerves.
That's probably someone else's version of the story.
So in my version, everyone else is lazy and I'm great.
I'm sure in their version, they're like, look at him, dude.
Can you blame me for wanting to punch him?
So I'm sitting at the barn.
I overheard later that Andy said to Simon, someone should just fucking punch that guy in the face.
And Simon's like, finishes his beer and he's like, I'll do it right now.
He gets up from the barn.
He walks over and he goes, Gavin.
I turn around and whack.
Now, I don't know if you've ever been slapped in the face spontaneously by a friend who all of a sudden wasn't kidding.
It is a wake-up call.
I think it's more shocking than a punch in the face because it's loud and you go deaf in one ear and you like, your brain can't process it.
You just slapped me?
A punch in the face, you go, oh, I was just punched.
What the hell?
But a slap, it's just, it's so disorienting.
I think if you want to fight someone and you don't want to, you know, really go to town, I would recommend a slap.
And plus it's totally humiliating to the person because you're saying, you're a bitch and you're not worth me punching like a man.
So I recommend it if you really want to have an impact.
So I go, I go, what the fuck?
And then it takes me 1, 1,000, 2, 1,000, probably three full seconds to figure out what the hell happened and go lunge at him.
As I lunge at him, the owner of the bar, the Biftech, he's this tiny little Portuguese man.
Portuguese dominate Montreal business, probably because they're tenacious and tough.
And as far as historical colonizers were, they were some of the most ruthless bastards in the history of history.
I mean, they would chop any Indian's head off and just eat his brains.
New props.
They made the Spaniards look like pussies.
And maybe it's in their DNA.
In Montreal, we call them pork and cheese.
So some pork and cheese, Little tiny bald man looks like Pablo Picasso.
He goes soaring over the bar like he jumped off a trampoline.
He's a little tiny Superman.
He jumps over the bar, and then with the he stops me, like jumps in front of me, and then the two bouncers grab me, throw me out of the bar.
And that's not good.
That was my local bar.
I'm not 86 at this point, though.
And Simon doesn't get in trouble.
That's the end of that.
So I go home, I believe, and I think I have to fucking get him.
I can't sleep until I get revenge for that.
So I don't know.
I guess I could have gone to his house, but I know he DJs at the bar.
And I used to DJ there too.
And DJing meant you'd make a mixtape, a cassette, and then you would go and just play various cassettes on two decks.
It had a reel-to-reel.
Melissa Oftermar of Hole also DJed there at the Biff Deck when she was 16.
She would go in there, press play on a mixtape, and then go back home and watch TV and, you know, watch the clock set her alarm to go flip the cassette.
And you made, I believe, $20, and I think you got four free beers.
And we were such losers back then that that was an awesome gig.
In fact, there was this dude, Rufus Raxlin, and I got the gig, and he thought he deserved it more.
So he wanted to fight me because I got this awesome DJ gig that he felt he deserved.
And he would show up and say, fuck you, and show up and just give me the finger, like as I was in the DJ booth.
What are you doing, Rufus?
And then once he did the weirdest thing.
He came through the back door, which we're right by the exit, and he goes, and he spits in my hair.
So I luckily had a green already, and I just turn around and I grab him by the hair and I go, and I hork right in his face.
I covered him in mucus.
He looked like he was in a gay porn.
And he goes running out of there.
And then he calls Sarush a bunch of times.
He says, I'm going to fucking kill him.
I'm not going to work at Vice anymore.
Because he did our reviews or something.
And Sarush calls me about it later.
And I go, dude, he's horked in my face.
And then he talks to anyway, telephone.
But it turns out he was doing the air thing where you go, and it's just air that hits the back of your head.
Well, don't do that when we have beef.
I'm obviously going to think it's real spit.
Like, why don't you go up to a cop with a fucking BB gun while you're at it and go, pew, pew, pew?
That was idiotic.
But the point of that part of the story is to say, imagine being so broke that four beers and 20 bucks was an amazing gig.
Meanwhile, you got a DJ from 9 p.m. till 4 a.m.
9, 10, 11, 12, 12, 3, 4.
7 hours, 20 bucks.
What a deal.
A lot of these stand-up comedians haven't really moved on from that.
I think most stand-ups, most open micers, they dream of 20 bucks.
Even the really good guys, they get like 40, maybe 100 if they're really good.
And then if they can pack four gigs into one night after taxi cost, they make like 320 bucks.
Right on, dude.
That's almost McDonald's.
Being a comedian rocks.
Telling the same jokes at every place.
Fucking losers.
Anyway, so I know he DJs there.
So I start going back there.
And I guess I got his days rolling.
Remember, there's this really fat, ugly chick who looked like she was pushing her face up against a window to look outside, but that was just her face.
And she was a friend of mine.
I said, she goes, what are you doing here?
And I go, I'm trying to find Simon.
I'm going to fight him.
And she goes, Simon would kick the fucking shit out of you.
And this was like a buddy of mine.
Isn't that what a weird thing to say, huh?
I was pretty confused by her tone.
Simon would fuck you up.
Oh, okay.
Simmer down.
You're supposed to say something like, oh, don't be ridiculous.
Let it go.
What are you 12 boys and their little beefs?
That's a more reasonable general tone.
And she may have been right.
But maybe he fucked her or something.
Anyway, keeps going and going.
And then one night I'm walking there and I run into Shane Smith of Weiss fame.
And he goes, where are you going?
I go, I'm going to get Simon.
He goes, weren't you talking about that like a week ago?
And I go, yeah, I haven't been able to catch him.
I guess I got his nights wrong.
And he goes, so you're going to fight him because he slapped you?
Yes, I told you this 100 times.
I like that.
That's romantic.
Let's get a big dinner and we'll make it a thing.
Fat people always, you know, want to include dinner.
It's sort of like smokers where they go, we should go outside, enjoy some fresh air.
And then you go, I guess.
And then they're outside, they have their smoke, and they go, let's get inside.
It's freezing out here.
And you think, oh, you were lying.
Or worse, they weren't lying.
It was the cigarette telling them this whole spiel about the fresh air and being outside and enjoying life.
And then once they're done with the cigarette, the cigarette leaves their brain and they're back to themselves.
They're possessed.
Anyway, so we go to this awesome restaurant called L'Express, which is a fancy restaurant and it's one of the best in Montreal.
It's really hard to get a table there.
And I think it's my favorite restaurant in the world.
The waiters are cool and they're all old and they wear aprons and stuff and they riff with you and it's very French.
It's from a guy from France.
I think he's from a tiny town called Languedoc.
And his goal was to make affordable high-end cuisine.
Great mules there.
Anyway, we do that.
I like that kind of stuff, you know, like old-fashioned piratey stuff.
Like, let's have a toast to this fight.
And so we have lots of wine and dinner and blah, blah, blah.
And then I go, all right, let's get the check, please.
And it's time to go fight Simon.
And I'm sure he's there this night, Saturday night or something.
So we go there, and it's me and Shane.
And I think someone else was there, too.
Maybe it's just, no, it's just me and Shane.
So I go, hey, Simon, let's step outside.
He's there by the DJ booth playing his cassettes, and we're right by the back door.
Now it's winter in Montreal, which is the exact same as Moscow.
I think Montreal has the highest temperature range In the world.
So, no other city on earth has a wider spread from freezing cold to boiling hot.
And it is amazing.
Like in July in Montreal, you need to just wear a thong made of ice and a snow, an ice, a dry ice hat carved into the shape of a baseball hat.
And then you only have a third degree sunburn and your projectile vomiting.
And then in the winter, it takes you 45 minutes to get ready to go out.
You got to put on these industrial Gore-Tex boots and gloves and hat and ski goggles and all this crap and your insane coat that costs you 400 bucks that has 50 layers and they're used by people who work on the Highway Patrol and I mean on the highway.
In fact, you know what we talk about at the Biftech all January and February is who settled this place?
Whose idea was Montreal?
That's the conversation for January, February, some of December.
And then, of course, the rest of the year, it's language, English versus French, which people think that's gay.
No, it's pretty intense.
Like, people died.
The FLQ is a terrorist group that bombed buildings and tried to kill English people.
And Raymond Villeneuve said his only regret, and he did time for murdering English people, he said his only regret was he didn't murder more anglais, modita anglais, the damn English.
Excuse me, I'm having a yogurt break.
I started that Jordan Peterson diet of only animal products.
Cheese, milk, yogurt, meat, no vegetables whatsoever, no bread whatsoever.
It's going pretty good.
I feel kind of tighter and more intense.
I'm less kind of bloated.
And I get wasted on beer way easier.
And that was kind of a problem before.
I needed Maker's Mark to get a buzz.
So Simon goes, what the fuck?
You go, two guys, show up.
That's not a fair fight.
And I go, it is a fair fight.
It's going to be just you and me one-on-one, unless, of course, I'm losing.
And then other people are going to jump in.
That was kind of a joke.
And Shane decides, fuck it, I'll handle it.
What?
So Shane opens a door.
I guess because Simon's big and Shane's big, he thought, don't let little Pipsquea Gav handle this.
So both of them go.
And plus he was drunk and probably feeling arrogant.
So they go outside and they're sort of like, got their old dukes up.
But the ice in the alleyway behind the Biftech is just black ice.
And the second you stand on it, you're just sort of hovering.
You can't even feel that you're standing.
You're just like floating like a ghost.
So they're standing there just like hockey players, actually exactly like hockey players, just slowly gliding.
It's like, come on, what are you going to do, bitch?
You throw the first punch.
You know that sort of when men, regardless of race, get in a confrontation, they become black.
And like, yo, what's up, bitch?
What you gonna do, bitch?
Throw the first punch.
So this goes back and forth and back and forth.
And I'm like, what the fuck is going on here?
This is ridiculous.
I've been trying to get this settled for a week now.
And I'm not going to watch two people yell at each other any bonics as they drift around the ice rink like a couple of ghosts.
So I just go get a, I just sort of shoe Shane.
And I walk over to Simon and I just punch him in the face.
And then he punches me in the head.
And we're having a pretty good old-fashioned fight.
He's winning, of course.
He's big, much bigger than me.
And I think I get a little closer to him and I wrap my arms around him.
We're doing that sort of boxing break thing and I'm trying to punch him in the ribs.
Yeah, that's it.
He puts his arms around me, I guess to get a break.
I don't know.
I guess he's out of shape.
And so I'm trying to punch him in the ribs, and then I just feel this intense heat and then pain.
And I realize he's bitten through my ear.
We're sort of like hugging, like two lovers saying goodbye at the airport.
And he sinks his incisors into the big sort of cartilage-y part of my ear, and his teeth touch.
I can like feel his teeth touching.
He went through my ear.
And the blood just starts pouring down.
And I'm like, what the fuck?
And around this time, the police show up.
Someone must have called the cops.
Boo!
Hey, quesque la rive et cetler.
Ques que fête bantroi.
And female cop comes out and she goes, what the quesquilarive?
And I say, oh, we're having a fight.
And she goes, oh, you're English.
They can't do H and E. Like, they think every vowel word starts with an H and every H word starts with a vowel.
So you are English.
And a guy with hairy legs has airy legs.
Robbie Dylan used to do a joke.
He'd say, this is a French Canadian complimenting you.
Your hair.
He goes, hey, I like the way that your air moves around in the hair.
Anyway, she goes, oh, you're English.
What is going on?
Fucking French people in Quebec, they live in an English continent and they can't, none of them can speak English for shit.
Lots of English, most English, all English who live there can speak French.
There's like Norm McDonald types who live in Quebec and can't speak French.
Very, very fucking rare.
Because there's about seven jobs where you don't have to be bilingual.
But bilingual to a Frenchman is just like, hey, I am the speaking the English and I like to play the sport.
It's murder on your ears.
I mean, their accent is already annoying even in their mother tongue.
But when they speak English, I mean, you better have some fucking always with wings ready below your earlobes to absorb the black blood that comes shooting out.
Anyway, she goes, what's going home here?
And I go, oh, Simon slapped me in the face last week, so I've been coming here every night to try to punch him.
And eventually, you know, halfway through the fight, he bit my ear.
And she goes, okay, are you kidding?
And I said, no, I had to retain my honor.
And she goes, oh, that's very old-fashioned.
That's like, you know, I challenge you to a duo.
I said, I appreciate what you're saying, but your English is torture, and I can't sit here and hear you massacre the English language.
No, I didn't say that.
I said, so do you want to press charges?
And I said, no, fatso.
And then I just walked away.
You know, I don't want to press charges.
He doesn't want to press charges.
That's it.
Didn't turn out great.
But at least the history books say man slapped, retaliated.
That's all it has to be.
That's all you need.
Or else it's just man slapped, ran away.
You can't have that.
And speaking of having that, I go, wait a minute, this is human saliva inside my body.
I mean, this is going to get infected.
And we're right next to the hospital.
The Biftech is like 100 feet from probably the oldest hospital in all of Canada.
I mean, it's like 400 years old, this place.
Queen Victoria, I think it's called.
And it's just right there, kitty corner.
And I go, I'm just going to go maybe get this washed and stitched up or something.
And Shane brought up a great point.
He goes, you can't do that, dude.
Because the story becomes Gavin went to kick Simon's ass and ended up in the hospital.
No matter what the truth is, that's how it'll eventually play out.
And by the way, folks, every article you read in the newspaper is lies.
Every rumor you hear is lies, lies, lies.
And the evidence of that is take a time, I've said this before, take an event or take an article where they're writing about your hometown or something you know or your best friend or someone you know is going to jail and look at the reporting on your friend's case and then remember what actually happened and you'll be stunned.
It's usually the opposite of what happened.
It's not just they got a few details wrong and they spelt the city wrong.
The story is often the exact opposite of the truth.
So I think when you, every time you read anything in the newspaper, just assume the opposite is true or see it as a homework assignment and then go look it up.
Because for example, the guy didn't go to beat up a guy and ended up in the hospital.
The guy wanted to make sure he didn't have an infection in the open wound in his ear.
But Shane was right and I took his advice and I just went home and put a big band-aid on my ear and bled all over my pillow and all over my sheets and went to a doctor the next day.
That's totally different.
That dude got in a fight and then later had to deal with an infection.
That's fine.
So the story's not over yet, folks.
So I go down to, there was this free health care in Canada, right?
But for some reason, we all went to this clinic in the French gay part of town called Clinique Alternatif.
I went there for all my STDs, chlamydia gonorrhea, so many venerea warts I had blasted off my dick that I was on a first name basis with the doctor who had the liquid nitrogen.
That's how they used to treat HBV back then.
They'd blast you with liquid nitrogen.
Very, very painful.
I guess I think we all went there because we considered ourselves alternative and the clinic had the word alternative in the title.
I think that's the only reason.
How retarded is that?
And it's dumb to go to a gay clinic or a clinic in a gay part of town because there's always some poor bastard crying on the couch because he just found out he has fucking AIDS.
And there's AIDS there.
What am I thinking?
What clinic has the most AIDS in town?
Oh, I know, Clinique Alternatif.
Why don't I go there and not wash my hands?
So I go there and I'm about 2096.
I'm 26 around this time.
And go there and I explain what happened again, just like I explained to the cop.
We get in there, some doctor, and I say, yeah, I had to retain my honor and at least get something on the books.
The book's not really literally existing, but you know what I mean.
The book's in your head, basically.
And I explain the whole thing and he says exactly what the cop said.
Maybe because both these people are older, right?
And they appreciate that.
Maybe they sensed that there was a pussification of youth going on and they appreciated that someone was willing to fight not just because someone farted or spilled their beer.
They had like a premeditated brawl.
So he said, that's very chivalrous, very old-fashioned.
Exactly like the cop.
In fact, it's possible I'm conflating the two and they didn't both say the same thing.
You always should be dubious of your own memory, speaking of fake news.
So he sits me down.
My ear is all swollen and stuff, but I don't think it was infected as of yet.
And one thing I've learned about being a drunk idiot who's always getting banged up, you really just got to wash a cut.
Here's the deal.
I'm going to become a doctor without any training.
I'm going to open a clinic.
Here's the deal.
If you have a big, huge cut, you should get stitches unless you want there to be a big mark.
And if you don't care about the big mark, like it's on your leg or your butt or something and it's not on your face, then don't bother with stitches.
In fact, I've used crazy glue and duct tape on a lot of knuckle things.
And I have a scar on my knuckle that looks as good as I stitched it up, as if I stitched it up.
And it was just crazy glue and duct tape.
You can do a lot of home surgery.
The only thing you have to know is wash it with soap and water three times a day.
Any cut you get, especially if you got it like in a quarry or something gross, just keep washing it with soap and water, not rubbing alcohol.
That destroys the cells that are trying to rebuild.
Just soap and water, soap and water, soap and water.
And stitches are really just aesthetic.
You don't really need it.
Your body will fix any hole.
But if you don't want a giant caterpillar different thing that can't grow hairs on your body, then get it stitched up.
But you're vain if you do, by the way.
So I go there and he asked me if I want stitches.
I say, don't worry about it.
And he says, I think this is fine.
I think we just got to wash it and it'll heal itself.
Maybe I did get a stitch?
I can't remember.
Anyway, so he washes it up and he's looking at it and he's talking and he's a very chatty guy, older guy, bald, probably like 65 years old.
And he kind of looked like the pork and cheese who jumped over the bar, but much taller.
You know, that typical old bald guy look.
Glasses.
And he says he's from Argentina.
And I'm sort of running the numbers.
And I was reading about Shea Guevara at the time.
And this is before I realized Shea Guevara is a fucking asshole who enjoyed murdering gays for sport and shot 3,000 people in the back of the head and loved every minute of it.
Loved assassinating people.
I love how we're so scared of someone who might be racist or homophobic or sexist.
Yet we all wear Shea Guevara t-shirts who assassinated people and loved it and hated gays and hated blacks.
He thought blacks were human garbage, inferior to whites.
But he's sexy and he's not totally white, so let's put him on a fucking shirt.
Let's not put Norman Borlaug on a shirt who saved 2 billion lives with his genetically modified corn.
He's ugly and white and bald.
No, no, no, no.
I want the sexy guy in the fucking beret.
Especially British fucking white people.
They love him so much.
British socialists, which is all British people, basically, that are middle class and up, not working class people, obviously.
Few things are more irritating than a British person who works in media, who is middle class and loves Shea Guevara.
They fetishize him so much.
It really makes you want to puke.
And they know better.
They've read the book, Shea, I believe it's called.
So anyway, he's talking to me, and I say, wait a minute, 1999, 1962.
So you would have been a young man.
You're the same age as Shea Guevara.
And if you're in Argentina, wouldn't you know him?
And he goes, yeah, I knew Shea and Fidel.
And he goes, I remember we were in med school, and we were doing our, whatever, our internships in wherever Fidel was planning to attack Cuba from.
I can't remember if it was in Argentina or somewhere else.
Now, by the way, in retrospect, I'm looking back, and it's conceivable that this guy was lying.
This is what I'm doing.
In my old age, honestly, in the past three years, I've been going back over some of my favorite stories and 9-11 and all this other stuff.
And I'm thinking, of course, the guy could have been completely full of shit.
And I've just taken the story for granted.
Maybe the whole era of fake news has made me sort of recalibrate everything I've taken for granted as a fact.
But anyway, it did sound very believable.
And the guy didn't seem like a liar.
Like, this is not a guy in a leather jacket at a bar.
This is a guy washing my earbite.
And I'm never going to see him again until I die.
So, like, what's he trying to do get in my pants?
I don't think he was lying.
But he told me that whatever country...
Because it must have been just across the water from Cuba, right?
And that's where he was doing his, what do you call that?
Your residency?
Should people, should women be doctors?
Are they really helping people?
I mean, is it really better than shaping life?
Yeah, I helped stitch up a guy's earbike today.
Yeah, you could have been making a life.
Okay, so it wouldn't be Dominican Republic.
It wouldn't be Venezuela, Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica.
Where the hell was he sailing from?
Am I discovering a hole in the plot?
It wouldn't be Argentina, right?
Where is Argentina's at the bottom?
No, that can't be it.
So I guess he was maybe doing his residency in Venezuela?
Dominican Republic, maybe?
One of those shithole countries.
And he said Fidel would knew Shea.
And Shea was also, no, Shea wasn't in medical school with them, but they knew Fidel, not Shea.
That's it.
So the doctor knew Fidel.
And I guess, I don't know if Fidel was going to med school or he was just, they're probably, you know, all living in Venezuela and they're probably rich, you know, relatively rich, richer than the locals.
So they probably all congregated.
So Fidel was a middle-class kid, you know, compared to the other Venezuelans.
And don't take Venezuela for granted.
I don't know what country it was.
Maybe even Costa Rica.
And he said the other doctors would laugh at Fidel because he said, I'm going to take over Cuba.
I'm going to invade Cuba with my socialist revolutionaries.
And they all laughed at him.
And then he said, oh yeah, come see the boat I'm going to use.
And so they do.
They're curious.
They're bored.
They're 22-year-olds, you know, about my age during the earbike.
And they go and see the boat and uproarious laughter ensues.
I've since looked it up.
It's in some sort of museum in Cuba, and it is a piece of shit tugboat.
It looks like, what's that fishing boat called?
A Gary or something?
It's just a, you can find it online, the boat that invaded Cuba.
And it is stunning when you see it.
It's called the Grandma.
And it is just a piece of junk.
It's just a little tiny crappy boat.
Anyway, they see that boat, they laugh their heads off, and he's the laughingstock, and Fidel's a loser, and they're all doctors, and they're going on to better things, and Fidel will be a nobody.
So he ends up taking that stupid tugboat, and he does invade Cuba, and he is successful, and he wins, and he becomes a socialist revolutionary who rescues the country from wealth and capitalism and gifts them the miserable lives of starvation and destitution and a total lack of free speech and governmental tyranny and all the wonderful things that Cuba brings and just a general climate of malaise.
I've been to Cuba many times.
It is not a happy place.
People there are fucking miserable and they want to get out badly.
There's no freedom.
And by the way, they fucking hate Shea Guevara in Cuba.
You don't see Cubans wearing Shea Guevara shirts.
They're not jazzed about old Shea.
They don't find him quite as sexy as upper middle class Brits do.
Boy, I got a little real vitriolic there, huh?
I got a little pissed off.
So then, the story's still not over.
This is all from a slap in the face, by the way, for having a cell phone, basically.
He said, Fidel kept inviting them, all those doctors, after he dominated the country.
So now we're like five years later.
He kept inviting the doctors over to Cuba for dinner.
And it included the guy Washing my ear and a few others who were in med school at the time.
And he would just have these opulent feasts with his servants running around and doing things.
And it was his way of rubbing their nose in it, which, by the way, I'm not a fan of Fidel or socialism, but I admire that.
That's kind of cool.
Get your revenge.
You know, nothing, revenge is sweet.
They say the best revenge is to live well.
That's the second best revenge.
The best revenge is to rub your enemy's nose in the shit.
That's really much more pleasant.
And that's what Fidel would do.
And they didn't mind.
I guess they happily ate crow.
That's what an adult would do, by the way.
If I was one of those guys, I would go, got to hand it to you, Fidel.
I thought you were full of shit, and you were not.
You used that stupid tugboat that come over here, you and your sexy friend Shay, and you guys took over a fucking country.
Now, you're ruining it, but then that's immoral, but that's a different topic.
As far as me laughing at you, I officially apologize, Fidel.
And he never did that, by the way, the doctor.
He just thought the whole thing was a ridiculous circus, a funny clown show.
And he was one of these sort of along for the ride type of guys that wasn't really political.
He just thought, this is a great story.
It's still not over.
And then he said, years later, Shea was visiting.
Shea Guevara was visiting his hospital, which I assume now is back in Argentina.
And he said in advance, apparently Shea was an incompetent doctor.
Was Shea Guevara a doctor at all?
A doctor.
I think he was.
He was a Marxist revolutionary physician.
We are going to liberate your leg from your body and stop the tyrannical cancer cells from metastasizing.
Viva la revolution, chop!
So Shaguevara came to his hospital where he worked as a real doctor now.
And apparently in advance, the head of the chief of staff or whatever you call him went over and said, look, this guy Shay is going to be coming here.
He's from Cuba.
It's very important for diplomatic relations.
So he's going to suggest stuff.
And it's probably going to be total and utter bullshit.
He'll look at a bunch of charts and tell you what to do.
Just smile and nod.
And don't do what he says.
And we'll be on our way.
So then Shay shows up.
And he's got his little lab coat on.
He starts looking at charts.
And this person's going to need a suppository made of diamonds.
And this person's going to need a new hat.
And all these toes got to go.
These are all gangrenous.
This has got to go.
And this girl needs a sex change.
Stat.
Get that woman a penis now.
Sort of like social justice warrior medical science today.
And I'm still, like, my ear was clean about an hour ago.
And he's got patients lined up out the wazoo outside.
And I'm just sitting on his fucking little wrinkly wax paper shooting the shit with this dude.
I wish he had beers.
Boy, I turned into a real hoser there.
Wish he had fucking beers, eh?
I'm talking to this guy.
He's fucking chilling out with Shea Guevara back in Argentina, eh?
Fucking giving him a breathalyzer for his fucking an inhaler for his asthma there.
Fuck.
And fucking he used to laugh at Fidel.
And then who's got the last laugh now, eh?
Fucking taking him out to dinner.
Fucking here's some fucking Cuban lobsters.
Have some of this sweet sugar cane, guy.
Oh shit.
I guess I was wrong about you, Fidel.
I should have called you a tyrant.
That would have been a little more prophetic, a little less pathetic.
So that was the end of the year.
I went back to my home with a wonderful story.
And when I look back on the whole thing, I think, thank God Simon slapped me in the face.
What a wonderful experience that whole thing was from top to bottom.
Even the fat, ugly chick telling me that Simon could kick my ass and that feeling like a betrayal, that was interesting.
I learned stuff there about people and backstabbers and who you can trust and who your real friends are and all that stuff.
The whole thing was a fascinating story.
And I'm really glad I met that dude who allegedly knows Fidel Castro and Shea Guevara.
That was a fascinating story, too.
So the moral of this podcast is say yes.
Go do it.
As what Mike Skinner says, I'll go out without a blink.
Out without a blink.
I'll go downtown and start shouting and shouting for a drink.
I forget the name of that particular song, but he's got a song about how when people call him for a pint, or at least back then, he would just say, yes.
I know I'm tired.
I don't feel like going out.
Go out.
Fuck.
Just do it.
I just made up that slogan.
That's my new slogan.
I think I invented it.
It's called just do it.
And I'm going to start by advocating Colin Kaepernick shit on cops.
I think that's a good beginning to my new life philosophy.
Say yes to everything and all cops are bastards.
Just kidding.
I love cops.
Please go to CRTV.com and check out my shows, Get Off My Lawn.
There's a new pattern forming where Monday to Thursday, it's the in-studio, it's the Rockefeller studio where we talk about, we Skype guests in and shit like that and laugh at funny videos.
Then the next week that only has two episodes, it's more of a sit-down session where we use a different room and we talk to someone one-on-one.
No more than two guests and no news stories.
We just sort of sit and chat like a mini Joe Rogan thing.
And then that same week, of course, we have CRTV tonight, which will be a week from today.
And I think the takeaway from all of those announcements and the podcast is that I like you more than a friend.
It's hard to imagine, but right here in our community, there are families living out of their cars, parents skipping meals so their kids will have enough to eat, and folks who can't afford electricity.
But you can help them win these battles against poverty by giving to the Salvation Army, where your donations give struggling families the support they need to stay afloat.
Want to join this fight for good?
Please visit salvationarmy.listenandgive.org to make a donation.
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