[music] I just like to read the TV guide. Read the TV guide and don't need a TV. [music] Hello and welcome to TV Guidance Counselor. I am Ken Reed. I am your TV Guidance Counselor. As always, and today is a very special day. It's Friday and it's time for a live episode that happened last week, you're time traveling. This was really, really fun. This was part of the Bridgestown Comedy Festival in Portland, Oregon. It was my second time out there and I had a great time. I really, really enjoy that festival. They do it right, everybody. And my guess was Brendan Small, which was amazing. Brendan is a guy who I've admired for years. He kind of started at the Comedy Studio, which is where I kind of started here in Boston as well. The very first show I ever did in Boston. Actually, it was like the fourth show I ever did in Boston. The very first show I ever did at the Comedy Studio. Brendan was on the show, and I always loved his work. We talked about Captain Mustache in here a little bit specifically, which is one of my favorites. But Love Home Movies, Metalocalypse, pretty much everything I've ever seen him do. I'm a huge fan. This is a really fun one and it was so nice to meet you guys who came out to the show. It was amazing to see people on the West Coast, yet again. Always say hi to me if we do these live events. Another live event we'll be doing is in June at Northeast Comic-Con. We'll be doing a live TV guidance counselor with Julie McCullough of Growing Pains fame. So that should be very, very fun. You can go to TVguadenscounselor.com, sign up for our mailing list, and you'll get all the details of that. And now on to the show. Recorded live at the Doug Fur Lounge on Mother's Day as part of the Bridgestown Comedy Festival. Here is my episode with Mr. Brendan Small. (upbeat music) ♪ This with the theme to Gary Shanling Show ♪ - Brendan Small, everybody. Please welcome Brendan to the show. (audience applauds) - Yes sir. - Hello sir. - Thanks, I brought a lot of fluid. - There's two liquids. For the listeners, when he says fluids, it's water and coffee. He does not, I don't require my guests to have urine samples. Like, I just want to make sure you're doing this sobering stuff. - It's a little dancing stuff. - Yeah, podcasting, no, I understand. - You didn't pass the drug test, I'm sorry. - Yeah, you can't be podcast anymore. No, I just say to another in the series of voodoo donuts. - Yeah. - Somewhere there's a donut. - In pain. - There's someone there's a donut in the shape of me and someone's putting tins in the stomach because of the donut that I just ate. - Each kind of the donut? - Yeah, everything is something like that, I don't know. But it all makes sense that there's some kind of evil. - Evil voodoo donuts. - There's something evil about these donuts. - There truly is, they're very addictive. And they don't show up on a drug test though. - They don't show up, that's pretty good. Have you ever had to take a drug test for a job? - Um, geez, I think I did. I think when I worked at a movie theater, and by the way, my best job in my entire life was working at a movie theater in Boston. - Which theater were you? - It's not there anymore, but it was the copply-- - In the mall? - Yeah, in the copply mall theater, it was a multiplex, and I don't know how I did this, but somehow I just, when people would say, "Hey, you have to go do a bathroom check," and then you have to go make some popcorn, then you have to do a theater, go observe the theaters and things like that. - I'm already worried about this. - No, but I would just simply say, "I'm not going to do any of those things." (laughing) And then I would just go and watch a movie, like give me some popcorn, I'm going to go watch "The Shawshank Redemption" again. - 'Cause I would do. - And that's what I would do. And it was the best job, and I got paid just to sit around on my fat ass and watch movies. - But that theater was, so this is probably what, the late '90s that you were-- - That was like, it was from when I started music school at Berkeley College of Music, so I had a job from like, right when I started at the movie theater. So that was the '93 or so. - Yeah, that theater was like the brand new theater that they built in Boston in this shopping mall, and in a part of town that used to be known on the edges of what used to be known as the Combat Zone. - Right. - Which was what it was known on maps. And it was just like hookers and like triads fighting each other with knives in the streets. - And it had nothing to do with Paul Revere or anything like that. - Nothing, no. And it was not historical in any way, aside from the fact that some people were memorialized by the nature of their murder. (audience laughs) But that's where all the theaters used to be, and they were all now like porno theaters and stuff, so they had built this theater in the mall to be like, this will be the theater that will bring the people back. And so by the early '90s into the mid '90s, no one really went there. It was pretty empty, I remember. - Well, when I was there, it was still, it was the '90s, so there were still lots of really cool independent film. - Yes. - And lots of stuff was happening, like Quentin Tarantino was making a name for himself and all that stuff. And it was a really cool time to be watching movies. Ed Wood had just come out and like all kinds of cool shit like that, so I was excited to, seriously, to get discounted and/or free movies. - To go to film school and be paid for. - Pretty much, yeah. - Like all my friends that I met there, none of them were music school students. They were all at Emerson College, so it was really cool to get outside of the music world and just be like a film student. - Yeah, yeah. - And just talk film non-stop. - There was, have you ever seen Harold and Mon? - Oh, yeah. - The, why am I blanking on her name? She plays mod. - Rita. - Rita Ruttner. - Rita Ruttner, plays mod. Early Rita Ruttner, well, I'll come up with it later at the show this evening. - I believe it was Jessica Lang. - It was Jessica Tandy. - Jessica Tandy. - It was Yum Cronin, everybody. But she's from Boston and she's in the Maryland mod, which is one of some of the original Midnight movies, and they would show it sometimes at the theater and the mall occasionally, and she would go and just sit in the crowd. - Heckle, yeah. - Yeah, and heckle, and freak out high college students who are watching that movie. - That's right. - How you doing? - That, I mean, she must have been - She was in her 90s or something, yeah. - Oh, wow. - That's what I plan to do. I plan to make a coming of age, made a December movie, and then show up and freak out high college kids. That's really my long con game for school. (laughing) So, you were, you kinda mostly grew up in California before you went to college? - Yeah, I'm Midwest, so I'm on Illinois, Springfield, Illinois, and then Salinas, California. - Does Springfield, Illinois, that you're from, do people lay claim to the Simpsons in that Springfield? 'Cause there's always battles. - People do, and I've never cared enough to find out which spring, 'cause there's a Springfield never even taken, that's why they did it. 'Cause if you make a show, you don't even wanna localize anything. - Yeah, you wanna be generic now. - You don't have to be even confined to anything, you know? So, yeah, so it made sense. So I never cared, but it was the home for Abraham Lincoln, who, you know, and so, I don't know if you haven't been to America, if you haven't been to Springfield, Springfield, Illinois, check it out, because that's where we tend to emancipate people, I mean, that's just what we do. - If you're a slave and you wanna be free, just go to Springfield. - I mean, that's just kind of our style, that's what we do. - That's our thing. - I like to take credit for it, something I have in 1864. - Are there like cute named establishments there, like Unchained My Donut? Or like, maybe these sorts of, you know... - No, there wasn't. The only thing I know that I even showed up on the map after Lincoln and his family lived there was on the Food Network. They said like, there's a local cuisine at Springfield, Illinois, yay, yay, yay, it's called the Horseshoe, which is basically Texas toast and ham, and then French fries and gravy on top of it. And I guess everyone had, every local place is called, somebody calls it a garbage plate somewhere, but that's actually what they call it. - Appetizing. - Yeah, but it's really, it's like drunk people. - This is called a dump in the toilet. It's a local cuisine you really have to go. - It's drunk people just hungry and trying to, you know, and feeling sick to their stomachs, trying to put anything inside of their body. - Well, that emancipation's a lot of pressure, you know, so they just need that starch to get in the underground railroad. - It's, hey, I gotta say, it's good. - Well, I'm sure it is. Boston has a lot of weird local cuisine traditions, but I like the really obscure ones that there's only one or two places left, and my favorite one is called the Chow Main Sandwich. - I don't know that. - Yeah. It was very popular in the Boston area in the '50s, and it's basically Chinese people going, let's see what these dumb white people will actually eat. And so it's just like whatever shit they couldn't sell in a sandwich, and it was hugely pumped on it in the 1960s in Boston, and there's one place that still sells at the Salem Willows and Salem Mass, and people, there's like old people that go there just for that. Like, I feel, and then there may have been a murderer whose last meal was that. - Oh, yeah, I'm sure it is. - I mean, I wanna, I wanna, I now wanna try that. - Yeah, next time you're in Boston, get a Chow Main Sandwich. - I'm so upset. My favorite, I was lucky enough when I started doing home movies to hang out with Lauren Bouchard, who's gone on New Bob's Burgers and all that stuff, but Lauren lived right next to one of the greatest restaurants just outside of Harvard Square in Porter Square. It's now gone, but the restaurant tour is still around, and he's kind of plotting his next move. - It's not a high-five pizza. - It is not. It was a place called Chey Henri, and it had the absolute best Cubano sandwich. I saw the movie, the Jon Favreau movie. - Yes. - And I was like, that's fun, everything's chef. And I was like, but that is not anything. Paul O'Connell, that's his name in Boston. If you're ever there, if you find him in the phone book and ask him to make you this sandwich, the place doesn't exist, but he actually did that. - Yeah, just look him up. - Just track him. - I swear to God, okay, so a year ago, a year ago I went, you know, a year ago I got married, and I hung out with my buddy Eugene Merman, and Larry Murphy, and a couple other friends of mine who, you know, started comedy with, and I said, well, here's what I want to do. I want to go to Boston. I want to eat that sandwich. - Mostly, but then like, like fat old white guys. Like, let's eat some lots of food, and then let's go take over the... - The comedy's the comedy studio for a weekend, and to me, that was the ultimate thing. And luckily, Paul O'Connell, we tracked him down, and he made those sandwiches for us. - You conscripted him to make you a sandwich? - He was, he was, he was so into it. I was so happy, and I mean, honestly, I think about that. I've taken people, when I'm on tour with Death Clock, I've taken Mastodon the band to this place, and I've taken all kinds of friends. Mike Kenneally, who I play with, who played Frank Zappa, we've all, I was talking, like, I'll talk to the celebrities that I find under going there, and I go, you have to find the sandwich. - The restaurant's not around anymore. - It's not around. When it was around, I would tell them, and then they would come back by the lapels, and thank me, and kiss me on the mouth, you know. - And you could taste bits of the sandwich still? - Oh, I would, I would... Don't wash your mouth, and come back, and kiss me, please. - So you went to Berkeley School of Music for... - Yeah. - Did you go for guitar, or just like... - I went there, basically I went there, 'cause that's the only college I applied for, and they accepted me, and... - Good deal. - But I knew my stuff, I was like... I figured in high school, I was like, I'm such a terrible student, I don't know anything else, and this is where I'm gonna put all my energy, and maybe I can get, like, graded for it, or like, I don't know how I'm gonna do it, but I kind of, I was prepared, I knew my music stuff, so I went there with a... My degree was called Professional Music, and it was, it's, you have your principal instrument for me was guitar, and then composition, so I was a composition. - Okay. - And performance, guitar, dual major, kind of a thing. - Did you ever go to Little Stevies? - Oh yeah, Little Stevies. Little Stevies is an old pizza joint, just outside of like on Mass Ave. - Right, next to Berkeley. - And it's the kind of place where there's a lineup of just drunk college students just outside of that place. - It's the only place to open after midnight in Boston. - It really is, and there's like, you'll get the hottest pizza that you've ever had in your life totally uncooked. - Not sexual. - Not, just, it's like hot dripping dough, which is not, it has not solidified anything, but you're so drunk that you eat it anyway. - It's like a dollar for half a pizza. - It really is, yeah, and there's just a line of people just trying to prop themselves up their cross-eyed drunk, trying to get in there. And then I remember there is a little Stevie, who's the guy, and he's like-- - Not from Bruce Springsteen's band. - No, not him, it would be awesome if it was. - It's his place. - But, no, it was a guy that looks like kind of a Carl Malden, kind of a nose with like rosation, like broken blood vessels in his face. - He's like the emissary of Boston. - The only way I could describe it is imagine a pizza. (audience laughs) So anyway. - But like a freeze-dried pizza, like astronaut pizza. - But the other thing was, there was a cat hanging out like a calico cat hanging out back there, and everyone's just like, you don't think, I don't think-- - Should I really see that? It was like the pink elephant of the establishment. Like if someone had a drink and they saw the cat, they would look at it and throw it away. Like in an old bewitched. - Yeah, it was, yeah, you could, it's a place where you could get both food poisoning and feline aids at the same time. - Yeah, maybe Ricketts somehow. It was, I also saw people like mop the floor, and then take the mop and mop the oven. - Oh, yeah, they would do it right in front of people and they're like, I don't care, it's cheap. And little Stevie himself, I don't know if he did this on purpose, but he would, it was almost like a version of Kevin Nealon's Mr. Subliminal, like he would be like, what do you want to drink, cocksucker? And you're like, did you just call me a cocksucker, but you didn't want to call him out on it? And it was like really, really weird, it was like some kind of tick that he had. - That's interesting, I remember that, yeah. You weren't wearing that jacket, were you? - No, I had my jacket from my high school team, the Melrose cocksuckers, which is an old New England term for a Wooster. And Bob, I was in Northeastern University and actually had teachers at Emerson, you've teachers from Emerson who are active students at Emerson as teachers at Northeastern. They were like juniors at Emerson and they taught us up. - And then they were teaching you. - Yeah, that's how bad Northeastern was, but Bobby McFerrin was teaching at Emerson at the time. - At Berkeley, yeah, that was after my time. He was not, we didn't have any real-- - The don't worry be happy guy. - Yeah, he was teaching, I mean, I don't know, I mean, I think that's, it's a prestigious school, Berkeley College of Music, it really is great. I don't know if it needs to be a four year school, they just kind of said four years 'cause that's what I mean, yeah. - That's what school is. - School is, yeah, but you'd have to go and learn, like in an afternoon they could teach you John Coltrane's tonic systems, like the giant step, super hardcore heady jazz stuff. But they could explain that concept in about 25 minutes by brilliant teachers who know how to do this, but then you have to go away for six to seven years to apply all that stuff, you can't just have it in your head, you have to go and apply, it's like-- - It's like the theory of relativity, and then you need to build an A-bomb, but it takes a little time. - Well, it's not, but it's also like if you're gonna learn French, you can learn the formula to conjugate verbs, you know? You can learn all that stuff, but when they drop you off in France, you're just gonna get-- - You don't know it right away. - Yeah, you gotta practice it. - People are gonna be correcting your French. - Bobby McPheron used to, it was in a Starbucks near there all the time, and I was in there with a friend of mine, and he ordered like some kind of mocha thing, and Bobby McPheron looked at it, he was waiting for his coffee, and he goes, "That's no drink for a man." (audience laughing) And it was Bobby McPheron, like it was, I feel like my theory about him is that he just goads people into getting really angry so he can say, "Don't worry, be happy." And then no matter what he did, they're like, "It's Bobby McPheron, I have to do it." He of course did the Cosby Show theme for the last two seasons of the Cosby Show, the acapella version, that's when all TV shows were like, we've been around long enough to now have an acapella version of our theme song, and it happened to, it happened to growing pains, it happened to, yeah, it was like three or four different shows, it was like season five as acapella, everybody. And actually fifth wedding anniversary gift is acapella. - You know what it is? The TV show keeps making so much, it gets so popular with that thing, so they can't, so then the guy has to fire the band 'cause he can't afford him 'cause he costs too much, he does everything himself. - Is that what happens? - I just made that up. - Is that what you did? Is that what you did with Death Clock when it first started? - I am the only person in Death Clock, so yeah, I did that early, yeah. - When is that, when are you gonna start doing an acapella show? - Acapella, I had an idea for an episode that was acapella alica. (audience laughing) - There's gotta be some nerdy Jewish college acapella group that does that. - Don't say Jewish like it's a bad thing. - Well no, but everyone I know, let me tell you something, no. - But everyone I know who went to Brandeis are the kids who are like, listen to this crazy thing. You're never gonna believe this. We have an acapella group. We do hip hop songs, it's crazy, no one does it. Nobody except, except everyone that goes here. (audience laughing) So what was your favorite TV theme songs when you were growing up? I assume that's why you went to music. - Well that will lead us into this whole thing 'cause the thing that struck me as an amazing theme song was, I mean, the one that was like, it's so simple and it's so stupid was the It's Gary Shamling show. - Yes. - Seems to me is like, I'm such a huge fan of Gary Shamlings that I just don't wanna meet him ever. - Yeah. - That's like the ultimate. - Don't meet your heroes. - The ultimate, don't, I don't wanna hang out with you. I just wanna respect your work from afar. - I like you so much I never wanna lay eyes on you in person. - Yeah, even in nothing. But watching that show for the first time, the pilot episode. - Yeah. - So this goes into your podcast because we talked about. - So you picked up a late 80s, early 90s 'cause there was three shows that were sort of your, the shows. - The shows for me, and that was an interesting time for me being like 11 or 15 years old because that's when I discovered guitar, that's when I discovered heavy metal, that's when I discovered everything. And then I discovered, and then it just turned out there was a miniature comedy revolution happening on TV. - Yeah. - Because, you know, there were the sitcoms, there were the, they were like the Cosby shows and there were the Cheers and all that stuff. - The old guards that had been around since the early 80s when Brendan Tardikoff took over NBC was the youngest president of a network. And NBC was dead last in the ratings which people probably find hard to believe now. CBS was actually number one which people think of as the old people station now. And so they hired this really young, I think he was like 32 year old president of the company and they were like, do whatever you want. We don't care where this ship is sinking. Do whatever, pay do whatever you want. So he came up with all these shows and Greenlit all these shows like Punky Brewster which he basically hired people who worked on Barney Miller and on WKRP. And was like, I want a show called Punky Brewster. It's the name of girl I went to college with. I don't care what I tell Bob, that's it. And like, like, and he had Michael Mann come in, he wrote down MTV cops. And he's like, there's the show. And he's like, okay, and made Miami Vice. Like those were the kinds of things he was doing. And so, St. Elsewhere and all these shows. And so by the late 80s, early 90s, those shows had started to get a little long in the tooth and they needed some new blood and people didn't know what to do. They were like, Tarda cops too old now. I don't understand what will happen. And then Fox came about. - Fox came about, but pre-Fox, let's just start out with it's Gary Schambling Show. - Yes, show time. - That started on show time. - Yep. - And Gary Schambling was a well-known comic. He had guest hosted the Tonight Show so much. - And actually started as a sitcom writer. He wrote for Three's Company and he wrote for Samford and Son. - Samford and Sonja. - Yeah. - As a scab, but he'll admit that, I mean, he was during the writer strike in the 70s. That's how he kind of got in. - I've worked with so many writers that it turns out that most of them are on strike even when they are working. - If you asked them to say, clean the bathroom or get popcorn, would they be like, I'm on strike, I'm watching this movie. - They don't say they're on strike. Tell you to go fuck yourself. Like what I would do. But seeing, so I know that my introduction to Gary Schambling was, it was like called, it was his special that was in Vegas. And it was all-- - Yes, Gary Schambling's it was like, Gary Schambling's like 20th anniversary special. - No, it wasn't that one. - This is one that was just stand up and it was in Vegas and it was something about him being lonely in Vegas or something like that. - Yeah, it was a Showtime special. - Showtime special. And I was like, this guy is so funny. I'm like 11 and this guy is probably one of the funniest guys I've ever seen. And then the show happened and that intro theme song. - Yes. - So first of all, the amazing thing about that show to me stylistically was, and I didn't know about Jack Benny at the time, but he was addressing the camera in a way. - It was a meta show. - Very meta. - He had a set and you could see behind the set, like there was a camera almost like, you could see the cables in front of the set. - There was no artifice that this was not a TV show. - Right. - He would come out and be like, this is my TV show and this episode we're gonna be doing that plot where I have two dates. - Which is, it would be the coolest like after writing like almost 100 episodes of TV by myself. I envy so badly that expositional format because he could go and he could say, okay, this guy, I don't wanna talk to him. He owes me money, but it's okay. And I'll be right back. And he would talk to that guy, but he'd set up exposition so cleanly and he was so smart at cleanly getting out and then having the most subtle jokes and acting like he's doing nothing to make this happen was pretty fascinating. I think the whole thing's on Shout Factory. - Shout Factory released a box out of the entire series. - Shout Factory's got all the great old TV stuff. - Yeah, they're not paying us for this, but they are great. - Well, you know what? Home movies is on Shout Factory too, so yeah. - Yeah, they have a great box with a lot of cool extras and stuff and a lot of cool stuff. - A lot of cool stuff, yeah. - A lot of cool stuff, yeah. - But it's Gary Schilling's show sort of rewarded people for knowing the cliches of sitcoms. And this was sort of a first because it was, one of the first shows written by people who grew up watching sitcoms. And so they were able to use that sort of language to play with it without sort of shitting on it. It was reverential. - It's interesting, but you know what? The truth is that it was so amazingly nailed in 1940, whatever, with Burns and Allen too. - And Ernie Kovax. - Well, not as much Ernie Kovax was just a crazy weirdo, but I think which is great, I mean that stuff is amazing, but Burns and Allen and Jack Benning, which I got all the box sets of that stuff, 'cause I was studying, I was thinking about writing a show that could comment on itself. And I wanted to just, I would love, I wanted a show about, and I started actually put it up and tried a version of it, and it was really tricky to do, but I watched all the Jack Benning stuff, which was a radio show that knew that it was a radio show. And it was self-aware. There was a great old, this is the best thing you can do as a TV guy, is watch this Burns and Allen thing, 'cause George Burns comes out with us a car, and he goes, "Hello everybody, thanks for coming to the show." It's a live audience, and he says, "All right, tonight's episode, "Gracy comes home, and she's just crashed the car, "so let's go there now." So the camera floats away from George Burns to this set. It's all like a big kinoscope kind of a thing. And then Gracie comes home with her friend, she goes, "Oh my God, we crashed the car." "Oh my God, what are we gonna do?" "Well, when does George come home?" "I don't know, George comes home in two hours." "Well, can you fix the car in that amount of time?" "I don't know, we don't have any money." And the camera floats to above the refrigerator, and there's the vacation fund in a cookie jar. And then they kind of look at each other, and the camera slowly floats back to George Burns, and he goes, "Well, what do you want? "It's not Shakespeare, but now you know what the show's about." And he said like that. He said that, and that was like 1940. So people were very much aware of what TV was and all that stuff, and it was really, really great. And that was almost a holdover from the sort of old reviews, like "Hell's a pop in?" And these sorts of like off-Broadway shows that were very, very aware. But they were kind of using the new technology to do it in a slightly different way. And it's interesting that-- I know, we all think we discovered everything, every generation, but vaudeville did it, and I'm sure that like the Greeks did it before that. I'm sure that the chorus was like, "Yeah, it's not Shakespeare." This is the part, it really isn't Shakespeare, he's not alive yet. It's not alive, but yeah. Check it out, Medias. This is the part where the guy sleeps with his mother and has something like that. Medias is going to drown her kids, yeah. The popular culture sort of forgets those things for a while. They do, and you know what? That's what's great about comedy is you have, if you've got really good taste, you just cover your tracks. Yeah, yeah. It's all about alibis, everybody. Seriously, it really is, and it's great. I mean, staying with music, don't steal from now, steal from 50 years ago, steal from something. Always steal from dead people. And that's true for music and for pockets. Get yourself a good shovel and they're not using it. Yeah, they're estates are lazier, yeah. Yeah, come on, they're kids probably don't even know they died. So, Gary Schanling. So you had cable though, which is probably-- I was lucky enough, I mean, I think I'm the man I am today because I grew up on cable, which is kind of true. Yeah, for a lot of us, that is to be different people without, like if I hadn't seen Night Flight on USA Network, like half the things I like. I remember that show, yeah. That was great, it was videos. I think that's the first, there were so many different shows that are in weird pieces of animation that I saw. Absolutely. Night Flight was on USA Network, and back to where we were talking about two in the '80s was that TV was in a new sort of golden age in that there was cable and all these networks that had hours and hours and hours of time to fill, and no money. So they were just like, what's cheap and free? And it would be like foreign things, old things, and student things. So you would get like weird student films. You're also kind of describing adult swim right now. Yes, yes. And that's actually kind of like-- I mean, I mean then, by the way, I mean it's cheap. What can we put on here? But that's when you get interesting things because-- That's why I have a job. Yeah, that's why I have a job. They take risks because they go, what can we get? Maybe we'll get something good, but we don't have a lot of money to spend, let this person do whatever they want more or less. And Night Flight was like that. They'd show a documentary like another state of mind, and then they'd have four divine videos on. Yeah, that's crazy. He's like, what is this? There was interesting stuff. But growing up, as a kid, I was attracted to really-- I loved horror films. I wanted to have nightmares. That to me was exciting. I remember seeing what was at Salem's lot. Yes, which is a made-for-TV movie. It was a made-for-TV movie. One of the most terrifying things I've ever seen, by the way, the scene with-- It's one of the best vampires ever created. There's even better than "Nostferatu," the original. Yeah, it's a terrifying movie. And maybe one of the best Stephen King adaptations, and probably the best thing Toby Hooper ever did, besides "Quit Poltergeist." But-- By the way, I have to say this right now. The Poltergeist Remake really just made my heart sink. Yeah, well, you can't have it without a static TV. Like, and I don't know if people have seen-- You can't get static anymore on TV. Yeah, it's just a black screen. It's just an impossible thing. There's no analog TVs. It's all digital. There's nothing scary. And then you can't have the fried chicken scene. That terrified me in Poltergeist. Also, no Jill Beth Williams. Jill Beth Williams is so hot. She started in Boston. She used to host on WCBB Channel 5. She hosted a kids show in the '70s called "Jabber Walkie" that was about basically a human-sized ball of dryer lint that talked like Wolfman Jack and hosted a show. And he's like, ee, welcome to "Jibber Walkie!" And Jill Beth Williams was wearing hot pants and tube tops. No, I've got to get a copy of that. Yeah, all the dads. Poltergeist. Poltergeist. I know Jill Beth Williams. Yeah, she's great. She should be in more things. Smoke and Pot with Craig T. Nelson and Poltergeist. I know. Such-- by the way, the thing that makes that movie so great and that all horror films, I think they're-- I just want to get scared. I just don't want to be like, and I want it to-- and there are some movies that actually do this really well. That Poltergeist did amazing and well, has established the status quo. Yeah. Just basically go, this is a regular family. This is us. They have senses of humor. They're allowed to joke within there. They're watching "The Tonight Show." Yeah, he's reading a book on Reagan. He's getting high. He's trying to lose weight. He's getting older, you know, all that stuff. Yeah, and I think that the great thing about that movie is there's a sense of dread. And the horror isn't a physical pain horror. It's a psychological pain. And I'm a huge horror guy, too. And the thing that I've seen that I don't like in modern horrors, it's all about sort of physical pain. So like the saw movies and these torture porn movies, it's all like, wow, but that really hurt. And that's why you're scared, not like, what is going to happen? Right. Well, another thing about that movie is the score is amazing, because it's-- is it James Horner? Yes, yes. James Horner did the score. And the main theme song is "A Child's Lullaby." And you just juxtapose "A Child's Lullaby" with dread. And it's the scariest thing you've ever been in your life. And it's the same thing. But it's such great, just French horns. There's great darkness and all that stuff. Is there a horror movie that you would-- that you were like, I wish I wrote that score? That one's one of the best ones, I think. I mean, "Pultry Guys" is my main go-to movie, because it's a ghost story. So it's more inside your head. And they didn't explain anything. They didn't explain until "Pultry Guys" too. Yes, the other side. Which has some great moments. I enjoy the tequila worm. Crete Nelson drinks a bottle of Mescal, I'm sorry, Portland. I know someone would call me up. Tequila doesn't actually have the worms in it. You can go down the street to a place called Mescal Worm. And they just sell worms there. They just sell artisanal Mescal worms. But yeah, he gets drunk and he swallows the worm, and then pukes up an HR Geiger human-sized worm. And they had to have had an actor that has no arms or legs. And the brother works in makeup effects. So we'll look at movies and I go, how they do that? And he goes, well, the only way for that to work is if the guy has no arms and legs. Yeah, pre-CGI. Yeah, pre-CGI, you have to have a guy that has no-- I don't know what's the word for that. An amputee. If you ever saw a war movie from pre-1990, if there's a scene where a guy gets his arm blown off, they'd go hire a guy with no arm to be like, you're going to be a guy who gets his arm blown off. And they're like, awesome. Yeah, I don't want to declare it on my taxes. I'll lose my disability. So anyway, you kind of discovered a lot of these harm movies though on television, I imagine, like your parents weren't taking you to the theater. I was-- no, I would watch them on television. And so Poltergeist is a big one, like the exorcist and all that stuff. And I just wanted her to be terrified. And then I also got into Conan the Barbarian and all the gore and all that stuff. Awesome, because I knew it wasn't real, but it was the coolest thing ever. It never legitimately scared you. It was just kind of fun. Right, and if I had nightmares, I thought they were cool. It was like extras for the movie. It was like, guys, I just saw the best movie in my own head. I didn't even have to pay for it. It was free. You're describing a dream? Yeah, exactly, yeah. I used to call dreams when I was a kid my magic eyes. My parents were like, I was like, yeah, I'm just going to go do some magic eyes for a while. And they were like, our son needs to go to a doctor. By the way, that's how I describe books now to someone who doesn't read it. It's like someone's describing a movie. Yeah. Yeah, like they're extra things that don't get into the movie, but you can see all the special features. And there's a really extra descriptive stuff. It's like a commentary. And that's what a book is. It's like, yeah, it's really-- it's like a long description of a movie. Did you used to buy the novelizations of movies? I didn't do that. No, I never had gotten into that. But I didn't see the point really, but-- I used to do it all the time because in the '80s, you were able to get a lot of the '70s paperback novelizations of horror movies. And so there were a lot of really rare horror movies that you'd read about in like "Fangoria" or "Scent of Fantastic" or something that you couldn't see because they weren't on video, but a lot of them had novelizations. And so you could get the book of the movie. And it's not the book that the movie was based on. This was a book based on the script of the movie. So the one I remember having was the Toby Hooper movie, "Fun House." I loved it, by the way. That's a good movie. Terrifying movie. See, people-- the Toby Hooper, "Pultergeist," Steven Spielberg thing. So if you guys are horror-nurge, you know what we're talking about. But Toby Hooper, I guess, "Ghost-Directed," none to use a stupid pun. "Pultergeist," and Steven Spielberg, who produced it, kind of took over. But when you see "Fun House," you see some of the-- no, you see a little bit of the cinematography. It's the lens-flairy kind of world. He does kind of set up the family well. Yeah. And that is a great-- that is a great-- That's a really scary movie. That's a good movie. Yeah. I think it holds up really nicely. You're afraid of carnies or deformed people. Don't watch it. But other than that, it's great. But the novelization of that movie was actually written by Dean Coons. OK. Yeah, under-- Really? Yeah, under a pen name, because he used to write porn novels and all these time-stone novels in the '70s. And it's better than the movie, because it gives backstory to all the characters that was in the script but didn't make it to the movie. Oh, see. Because in order for these novelizations to come out and time for the movie, they have to write them in conjunction with the movie being produced, so they would often write them on the script. Correct, right. So it was the way to see deleted scenes before you could get a movie with deleted scenes, which was always great. And the one I always cite as the most ridiculous example is they had a novelization of Bram Stoker's Dracula. Oh. I think, yeah, that's good. It wasn't the book Dracula by Bram Stoker. It was written by somebody, and it was a novelization of the film, Bram Stoker's Dracula. You must have had it forever, like maybe Shelley's Frank is the same as to have one of them. Also, a novelization of that. So we used to get a lot of those, which was the other way, because I would get the TV guide, and you'd have to go-- did you go through and see what horror movies were on and kind of stay up? Never. I was just Russian roulette. I would just flip it on. If it's on, I'm watching it. I was an indoor kid, and I was like a spider plant. I didn't need much light. Right. Every summer, I just draw the curtains and go like, I'm going to put on five to 10 pounds. The cat would nibble on YouTube, she puked. Yeah. [LAUGHTER] I don't know if that happened to everybody, maybe just you. Well, most guys, I think it's a common occurrence. Maybe it was just me. So do you have siblings or you don't need each other? Yeah, I have an older sister and a younger brother. So-- Did you watch TV with them, or was it-- Yeah, that's why my brother works in makeup effects now. So my brother works at the same house that did-- Can be. It's not Can be, but he has worked there before. So if you're a makeup effects artist in Hollywood, you're going to bounce around from house to house. But his first job, who I kind of threw a friend from Emerson, helped him get the internship for, was a guy named Gabe Bartolos, who did Basket Case-- Yep. Franken a letter. Yeah, Franken a letter, yeah. Franken Hooker. Franken Hooker's a great movie, James Lorenz. I still quote that movie daily with, what are you? Some kind of Swede? Talking Swedish. That's kind of square. There's so much good stuff in that guy. Such a great actor. I don't know his name, but-- James Lorenz's name, and he sells used cars in Long Island, though. Oh, he was great. He did so much attitude. He was so-- He didn't look like the character that he played. No. He really was like this tough-- Do you ever see the movie Street Trash? Oh, yeah. He's got a lot of-- I've got all these movies, but I have a really good horror library. Great movie. And he's got this line in this. There's a homeless guy. And he's playing a door man, James Lorenz. He goes, come on, man. Come on, you're making the tree die. Come on. He was like a real wise. I was like sure a lot of that stuff. Anyway, Frank and Hooker. And then, of course, the leprechaun movie. So this guy did all the work, all the makeup stuff, for leprechaun. Which is how Jennifer Aniston got friends. Is that how she got it? Or just from that, that was like her audition? She was in the first leprechaun. She was on it. Well, no, they went to Warwick Davis, and they were like, we want you to play Rachel on this show, Friends. And he was like, look, I'm busy, but I have this great girl that I just worked with who might be good. And they were like, well, we can rewrite the role. Yeah, yeah. So anyway, so this guy did like-- [LAUGHTER] He did-- no, I mean, it adds up. It just makes sense. So he did like all these kind of E-grade horror movies, with really great latex appliances. Very practical effects. Everything had to be really practical, it was pretty CG. And then he became the go-to guy for all the Matthew Barney "Creamaster" movies that this guy did. So my brother actually got to help make a "Creamaster" movie thing. So-- Here. Yeah, it's really cool. So I don't know if you guys have seen that. The Matthew Barney stuff, yes. I mean, you guys are nodding. Weird stuff about-- it's movies about balls, pretty much. Yeah. Although, to be fair, I think Hollywood's been making movies about balls for probably 20 years now. Did anyone see Tom Katz? I mean, come on. Don't Netflix that movie, even if you are a big, jig-bucie fan. OK, well, I'm getting off the camera. So yeah, horror stuff on TV was great, and there was a lot of great horror anthology shows that were on at this time as well. The "New Twilight Zone" was fantastic. Then you had "Monsters" and "Tales from the Dark Side" around this time, which probably were. And then a little bit of "Amazing--" There was an anthology revolution, the "Amazing Stories" with those Spielbergs. Yep, Zemeckis and George Lucas. And then they did "Tales from the Crypt" on Showtime later, I mean, on HBO later. So it's "Gary Shambling Show." Yes, back to that. The theme song-- actually, people don't know, the lyrics were, this is the theme to "Gary Show," the opening theme to "Gary Show," and then about writing the theme song. Yeah, so "Gary Called Me Up" and I asked if I would write his theme song. It's almost halfway finish, how do you like it so far? How do you like the theme to "Gary Show"? Yeah, "Rome Us to the Part" where I said it wasn't. And it was, as a kid, you're watching this, and you're like, is this OK? I don't know if this is OK. I was with my dad, and I burst out laughing for the first time, and I was like, this is actually funny. I see so many things that are just meant to be funny, and I laughed uncontrollably throughout until that song was over. And I was catching my breath out towards, and I was like, what the hell just happened? Yeah, what are we in for here? And then I just knew this is going to change my life about comedy and all that stuff. And it was so great. And I think it holds up, because I got through the whole thing, and listened to all the commentaries, and I'm such a nerd for "Gary Shambling" and that show, because everyone goes straight to the Larry Sander Show, which is an amazing masterpiece. Which does a similar thing in a lot of ways, but in a much more subtle way. It does it within the reality of it. It keeps a grounded logic where this is just-- It's insane. You never know what's going to happen to Asia. But that was a great show. The second show, after that, was when I saw the first episode of "Get a Life" on-- On Fox as well, so thank you very much. I watched it myself. So "Gary Shambling" moved from Showtime to Fox, after being established for about a season, I think, and they kind of co-produced it. Yeah, they co-produced it with Fox. And Fox had just started out. Fox is like a junior now, right? It started in '87, and the interesting thing about Fox was that it was crazy to be like, we're going to start another network. And they were like, you're insane. You can't do it. But he had a really smart thing. And what he did was he went to all the UHF stations in local cities. Each one had a like the movie UHF, but without a weirdo. And he basically bought their weekends. And so when it first started, it was called Fox Weekend Television. And it was only on Saturday and Sunday nights. And then slowly as it built, it got another night and another night. And their flagship shows, and they started-- and you may remember this as a horror fan-- the big show that they put all their money into was called "Wear Wolf." Oh, yeah. And they started Chuck Connors as an angry sea captain werewolf. And it was basically-- and they made a big deal at Rick Baker, designed the werewolf. And it was basically the incredible Hulk with a werewolf. And they were like, this is the show, man. This is going to launch us into the stratosphere. And it was a huge bomb. And the two shows that did really well were "America's Most Wanted" and "Married With Children," which was a throwaway last minute show that they put on. So after that point, Fox started getting popular. But they were like, we don't understand how to make television though. So anything you want to put on, man, it might work. So they were taking a lot of risks. Right. So it was this kind of junior network. And then for some reason, I was not-- I was watching "SNL" and I was watching "Late Night TV." And then I would always miss "David Letterman." So I wasn't aware of Chris Elliott's character, the guy. And the bleachers and all that stuff. I would later find out and watch all that stuff. Which are so funny. My intro to him was like he and his father and the show interacting. And he was such a douchebag and such a dildo. And so-- and his father just shit on him. And it was-- It was a really unusual relationship on TV. First of all, he was one of the first really unlikable main characters on "SNL". He was a sarcastic, pompous, like just-- And psychotic. Like basically, psychotic in a lot of episodes. Well, the interesting thing, the way that that show-- I mean, because I watched all the commentaries for that. But the show that-- I think the way that they sold that was that they said, there's this show on the BBC and-- Young ones. Yeah. The young ones. They tried to make a remake of the young ones. They said, let's do our version of the young ones. And they just kept-- Which is great, again, cover your tracks. You would never put these new shows together, because one of them's about a guy that lives with his parents, who has a paper out. They're one of these four crazy guys that live in a house. But it was some kind of live action, cartoonish quality of furniture. Yeah, very surreal. Young ones was a BBC show that started from the people from the Comedy Store. So like Rick Mail and all those guys. And they would have a band play. And the reason they'd just be like, here's Motorhead. And now it's much like Gary Schilling's show was a very meta show. And you were aware that it was a show. The reason they had bands play was because of the BBC. You got a higher budget if your show was a variety show. So it was a sitcom. But if they had a band, they got more money. So literally in the middle of the show, they're like, what's that? Oh, the damned is here. And then they would play a song. It was great. And they had some cool musical guests, too, yeah. And the other thing they did to make the networks feel a little better was they said, this show is, if Dennis the Menace never moved out, he just kind of grew up and lived in the house. And they started making it weirder and weirder. And they wanted it more and more normal. Like, give him a girlfriend. And he would get killed at the end of every episode. Well, he got killed before opening credits sometimes. Yeah, like decapitating. They'd get run over by a car. And then they'd back up again and run over and again. And then they'd run the REM song. Yes, stand by REM was the theme song. It was such a cartoonish weird show. And it was, again, one of those shows. And you might have had this experience, too. And you start where you're like, am I going to get in trouble for watching this? Like, it seemed like it just was something was off. It was a totally different. I mean, him just, Chris Elliott, just being around was just-- I had not seen a comedian, a comic voice or a talent or an actor who was such a weird fucking guy. Yeah. So fucking funny. Didn't look like people on television. Yeah, you got to work with him later. I did. Well, you know, when we did home movies, the coolest thing was that we did promo. And I was like 24 years old. And they flew us all to L.A. to do promo. And again on a fledgling network was UPN-- UPN, a junior network, who was owned by the money of Chris Craft, which is a really luxury boating company that decided to make a network. Well, that's the logical next step. We've done everything we can do with boats. I mean, obviously these boats are working. Why aren't we making a TV show? Boats can be here very similar. To make a boat has so much more skill than making a TV show. Yeah. Because you will die if the boat doesn't work. We've canceled your boat. But we're only halfway across the ocean, too bad. Swim. But I got to-- but we had done home movies. And they were doing the show, "Dilbert." Yes. And he played the voice of the dog on "Dilbert." And I was with, at the time, Paula Pout some was still on home movies. And I saw Paula talking to Chris. And I was like, it was good. It was really, really good. I'm like, you got to introduce me. And he was really polite and really nice. And then later on, on "Metal Ocliffs," because he was doing "Eagle Hard." And I was like, oh, I just have to-- he has to come on the show. He was really, really nice. What a dream come true, too. Having this show influence you wanting to get into comedy, I imagine later, and being able to write words for his mouth. It was really cool. He was really nice. And you know your favorite actors and what they can do and what would probably sound cool out of your voice, hopefully. And he got it. And he was really cool to work with. And I think we're at an up front party together. And we just hung out and had beers on it. And he's such a weirdly down to Earth guy. He's a second generation showbiz guy. His dad is Bob Elliott, who had a radio show in a TV show called Bob and Ray, that was also kind of pretty at meta-weird show. It was so funny and-- Still very funny. It's like, if you're a comedy nerd and you haven't tracked that down yet, you will do it and you will be really happy. He did a very funny thing on TV when I was a kid before "Get a Life" that blew my mind. And this was-- I know what I'm going to say. This was-- well, that's for the FDR thing. Yeah, he did a one-man show of him playing FDR, but it's just like an intentionally terrible-- It's just a train. It's like an intentionally train wreck of a show. Because everybody was doing that at the time. And there's one scene where he's in a chair delivering some long monologue. And he forgets his line and they roll out like a dog with a stationary dog. But it's lines taped to its back. And he's like, ah, yes. Because was it-- I think Hal Holbrook had was very popular at the time for doing a show where he played Samuel Clemens. I think it was like, oh, wow, Hal Holbrook. My dad went and saw-- in Boston, actually, in Watertown right near the soup to nuts offices. He saw a one-man show of Ben Franklin starring the guy who was in the show "The White Shadow," which was in '70s show about a white basketball coach for an inner city black youth team. And my dad's like, "The White Shadow's playing Ben Franklin." We couldn't believe it. Not very far from here. It's not too strong. I'll go over there. Also, I should mention Captain Moustache is one of my favorite things of all time. Oh, thank you. Yeah, I absolutely love that. This is what he's talking about as a character that I have been. It's channeling, really. Channeling, yeah. It's basically this character that I-- it's my dream to put a TV show around this guy. But it was a Boston comic. And when I started out comedy, it was the '80s had finished. And it was like this new alternative thing. But all the old '80s comics were kind of getting back up on stage. And the local Boston guys were kind of doing their old act and forgetting their way through. That's still the same. It was really interesting. It was like a bunch of kind of retarded J.D. Salinger's kind of deciding to go back and try to write the follow-up novel. And something like their brains that turn into mashed potatoes or something. And that's kind of his character that I'll go and do. And I'll run out the clock and I'll divide the audience so hard when I do this live. Where half the audience is like, get off of-- please, get off of the stage. Why are you wasting our time? And the other half of the audience is like, I want you to be the president of the United States in America. It really is a divisive thing. But I have to like rest. It reminds me of Excalibur after Merlin does Condor's The Dragon's Breath. And I must sleep for the next six months. But it's sadly the funniest thing I can do. It's really funny. I can think and negotiate through jokes and put shows to get all the stuff of that. It's a different kind of a laugh. Yeah, I mean, Boston has the '80s did stop calendar, but not in spirit for many of these people. And all those guys I really like that I may even thinking about are really great comics and they're really funny. And I have a huge affection for them, which is why I shit on them. Yeah, and we shit on them. That's why I have a show about heavy metal, because I love it, you know? Yeah, I mean, I love my toilets, my favorite thing in my house. So when you were at UPN, the network had been around maybe a year. And they had some glorious, terrible shows. Yeah, they had Desmond Pfeiffer. Desmond Pfeiffer, that was a period-- Slavery comedy. Yeah. I don't know that I got to see it. I'd like to see how that holds up. Yeah, it probably holds up pretty well. I mean, Springfield, you would really have the knowledge of Desmond Pfeiffer. One of my favorites, Homeboys in Outer Space. Oh my god, I didn't realize you were such a TV historian. I didn't either. You have such shitty information. You said, ready at any moment. It's of no use to anyone. Yeah, I love it, though. I always hope that the CIA recruits me to be a spy, because I could hold up to torture. They'd be like, tell us everything and be like, Homeboys in Outer Space. Let me go plot by plot. Like, we can't let him go. That would be my name, rank, and serial number. And then maybe my favorite-- speaking of Jake Busy again, who's, for some reason, come up twice in this podcast, which is two more times. I know the name of this one, but I don't-- Shasta Mcnasty. Yeah. But point being, your show really stood out, because it was great. Well, that was nice, so that you say that. But it was really funny that it was what I call the cartoon boom of '99. And there were a lot of shows that came out, but they had been, like, purchased around '98, '97. But people, like, through South Park, found out that animation could be done cheaply. Right. So all of a sudden, people are like, well, Simpson's is working, and our show is really cheap and it looked really cheap. But Dr. Katz had been around. And that's what we would sit in, just like that's-- when I started doing stand-up, Jonathan Katz would come and hang out. Which is crazy. This is amazing. Yeah. Yeah. Because that was one of the futures they actually produced in the Boston area. They still made it there. And it was very interesting that they were kind of able to do this show as like a satellite and a smaller city. And, Green and Boston, it was like a little touch of, like, actual Hollywood there. And it was crazy. And I couldn't believe that a show like this, because, you know, I liked Bob Newhart. I liked Gary Shandling. I liked Albert Brooks. I liked the market. I liked people that had smart words and were very subtle about it. They weren't loud with their comedy. And I couldn't believe this show. I just thought these people must be the smartest people in town. They're so funny. And John Benjamin, and Laura Silverman, and, you know, the great Jonathan Katz. Does anybody see Jonathan Katz here the other night? Yeah. Wasn't that the best show in the world? Yeah. It was so amazing. He makes me laugh like few other people. He is one of the most brilliant comic minds that we're lucky enough to have listened to. I did a theater show at Jonathan Katz. And he's great at, like, diffusing people talking to him that he doesn't really want to talk to. But in a really nice way. And so this guy was, like, really just bugging him, like, just going on and on. And he looks at the guy's shoes and he goes, "Where'd you get those shoes?" And the kid goes, "Oh, I bought them at this place." He goes, "The theater didn't give those shoes to you?" And he goes, "No, they didn't." And he goes, "I'm never going to get a damn pair of shoes out of this place." And then the kid was so confused. He kind of just, like, backed away. It's like martial arts. Yeah, he's got this, like, Zen master martial arts skill to, like, I think if someone tried to mug him, he could just be, like, just throw one of those things at him and they'd just be, like, defeated. That is a really funny moment that is worth remembering, yeah. Yeah. That's great. It's fantastic. So you're getting to work on these things. But home movies is sort of a meta show because it's kids making sort of movie parodies in there. I know, but it's funny. At that time, I was, you know, another show that came up later on was a Mr. Show. And I was just, I remember Eugene Merman and I were roommates at the time. And we had discovered each other in the Boston Common, like, early Boston comedy scene. And we would just sit here and, like, watch Dr. Cash and watch Mr. Show with our mouths just drawn open. And we were just jealous of these people because they were so funny. And we would just shake our heads and go, "Man, we got it." And I was really, I started out doing a lot of sketch comedy. And I just wanted to do sketch stuff. And then it just turned out that UPN was looking for family style shows. And Lauren kind of knew this. Like Shasta McNast. Like Shasta McNast. They wanted a family. They wanted, like, a Simpson Z kind of family thing. I don't know if they said Simpson's, but they wanted some kind of a family thing. And I was like, I want to do a stupid family show. Those are stupid for-- those are for dildos. But I want to do, like, a sketch thing. So we started talking about this idea, a single parent kind of house. And I just kept going, like, you know, when I was that age, I was making movies with my kids, with my friends there, in the neighborhood stuff. And maybe that's the way that I can kind of do sketch stuff. And maybe the sketches can kind of reverberate a plot line or amplify a certain thing or contradict or do whatever. But it can be part of the show. So you get to have that kind of fake production and kind of a thing happening, too, that I liked in, you know, Larry Sanders and all that stuff. You guys are just kind of, you know, more and more subtle way, not in an obvious, like, topic. Yeah, that was, you know, that, again, like, made sense within the logic of the show and wasn't jarring when it happened or didn't happen, you know. If there are shows that you've revisited that you loved as a kid that you don't think hold up? I don't know. I'm trying to think. When I go back, and we were talking about this backstage, but when I go back and look at stuff that I maybe missed, I was maybe a little too young, it really blows me away that they got away with stuff that I did. Oh, yeah, I'm talking about the original Bob Newhart show, which was, that guy is another comic hero, you know? Yeah, it's just the idea that he was so subtle and he could get away, he could say so much with, like, like, like words that didn't even, like, a full word. Yeah. But there would be this, just so much information that came out. The weird thing about Bob Newhart, too, is he's one of my favorite comedians of all time, and "Newhart" is actually my favorite thing that he ever did, the '80s show, "Newhart," which has a big connection to "Get a Life," because David Merkin, who is a co-producer in "Get a Life," was the showrunner for "Newhart" for the last few years, and the last season of "Newhart" is pretty much "Get a Life" season. Like, there's an episode where Bob Newhart and his old man friends form a street gang and have a rumble with another old man street gang, and there's this scene where they're looking at each other and they all have jackets on, and they're just going rumble, rumble, rumble, and it's Bob Newhart and Tom Post. It's, like, such a get a, like, there's Stephanie, who's the housekeeper on the show, her and her husband, Peter Scalary, have a baby, and the baby inherits the local TV station. So, the last season, this bait, like, an infant, is the boss of a television station. It's so bizarre at that point. I have to. It's time to go read in a few hours. I think he did read in that show. But so, I knew him from that, and he's a more sort of gentle character on that, and he's still very subtle on the Bob Newhart show, but he still kind of has, like, a '70s swagger, because you forget that Bob Newhart used to, like, guest host the "Tonight Show" and do mob shows in Vegas, so he still has, like, a big open collar and gold chains and, like, all these gold watches on, which is very, very weird when you watch that show on hindsight, but it's still very funny, and I love Suzanne Plachett on that show. I think, I mean, I think great comedy holds up. I mean, I can watch, like, my favorite old movies. I think, I mean, there are so many things. Mark's Brothers, for me, was a huge thing, and that still makes me laugh. I still think those jokes are so goddamn solid, you know. Oh, yeah. Do you ever watch the, uh, "Is You Bet Your Life" show? Oh, yeah. "Shout Factor" again, put those out on your paper. You know, all these things are available on "Shout Factory," and, uh, yeah, you may as well... Again, we are not a paid endorsement of "Shout Factory." Well, actually, Brendan probably has taken a copy of it. They will throw me a couple DVD's in there, but I, but seriously, they have a catalog of things that, like, great old be-horror. And that said, "Shoutfactory.com?" I don't get paid by them, but they're new "Horrow Line Scream Factory." Just put out a great Blu-ray of "Fun House." I actually bought that, so, yeah. I did. I actually, I purchased it as well. But "You Bet Your Life" was, was "Groucho Marx" had a game show, basically, but it was kind of a bullshit game show. Like, it didn't- It was an opportunity to take an incredibly great mind and have him be funny, and a very subtle form. Yeah, it's very, very good. It was also an interesting thing, because, you know, with, like, telepromters and with modern TV, you can really write notes, you can really, like- Yeah, instantaneously- Even, like, Howard Stern, they're, like, just- They're, like, I am in each other constantly, for joke ideas. But back in those days, it was, what, 19- It's starting in the late '40s, that shows. Was it really okay? Yeah, he went up to about 1959 and '60s. But what they- They had an overhead projector, and they- He had other riders to sit in there, just on a cellophane strip with, you know, markers for- Yeah, when he put out. And he would kind of look up every once in a while and throw a line out, or he'd come up with a line, or whatever it was. It was just interesting, you know, communications- Yeah, and a guy that- And the thing I bring up on this show a lot is that the people who are making television at that time didn't grow up watching television, because it didn't exist. And a lot of them had other lives before then, and they brought this sort of experience through the early days of television, which gave it this gravitas and interestingness, which I don't think is a word, to these shows. And a lot of the innovation came out of, like, pure ignorance, and like, we don't really have any idea of how this works, so we can do anything kind of stuff. It really- You know what? I remember the year show- The year show shows. Yes. And they've never seen any of that stuff. They did some absurdist stuff that was so amazing. I don't remember this scene, but they would do, like, sketch stuff. They would do sketch. They had to fill an hour every week. Yeah. And it was insane you had to be insane. Why? It was so much stuff. It was Carl Reiner, and then what? Yeah. Alan working on everybody. Yep. Sid Caesar. Sid Caesar. I met Sid Caesar when I was two years old. I don't know if this will make you like me or hate me. I was two years old, and I somehow found out Sid Caesar was staying on a holiday in and framing him Massachusetts. I don't know how I obtained that for you too. This was 1982. The story doesn't add up. It really doesn't. But I have evidence of this. I went to my parents and I'm like, hey, you know, I'd like to- Why don't we go meet Sid Caesar? And they drove me to this hotel, and I waited for him and got his autograph in my picture. I'll put it on tvguyscounselor.com. There's a photo. He's like, "Take care, and all my love. Sid Caesar and the date and a photo." But when I think about that, no, I'm like, what the fuck is happening? I used to do a little- I met Jane Curtin when she was doing Kate and Allie and Scott Beow when he was promoting Charles in charge at shopping malls. Yeah. That's what you've got to do, you've got to- Hey, you know, it's a good way to go and catch up. And now he works at that mall. So anyway, but there's a scene and there's like- The commuters was a recurring sketch that happened. There was a bunch of people that they would commute to and from New York and that. Anyway, there were like a couple couples. And Sid Caesar, for some reason, he gets some bad information that he was hoping not to get. Right. And there's a scene where- There's this really extreme shot where it's him in the foreground and the rest of the people reacting in the background, almost like a rack focus kind of a thing. But they were both- I think he was in focus and they were standing there. And he starts crying on cue for about maybe a minute, 12 seconds, which is a really long amount. Longer than it's comfortable. But I saw you're watching him and his face is like framed right here to this and there's all this action back here in his face, just pouring tears, just pouring tears. And it's the most absurd moment and I'm like, what the hell? And there's- And the way I was watching, I was like, the only way that they can do that is if someone is holding a plate of chopped onions right over his face and that's exactly what happened. And so he was like just streaming to- He doesn't have any like, he's not like making a sad face. He's just opening his eyes really wide. It's a purely physical reaction, yeah. It's really a scientific reaction of chopped onions right in front of his face, just under the camera. And they're doing that. And I was like, that's the funniest thing I've ever seen. The audience is howling because they're seeing something that we're not. And regardless, it's the most absurd thing I've ever seen and totally appropriate in the logic of the sketch that he is just crying as hard as he can. And only something you could do on television. It is. Because if you did that live in a theater, it would make no sense if someone comes out. Of course you would have like a penis in there. And with onions and it would make me sense, but for the audience at home, you were able to do those sorts of things and that's when you started to get this interesting innovation of people sort of learning a language. People were so weird long before there was an adult swim or any of that stuff. I'm just saying that it's been going on for a long time. So is there a show that you wish you could have been on or written like as an adult now? That is not around anymore that you're like, oh man, I would have liked to talk about it. Well, I mean, that's why I brought up these shows. I just, you know, I was lucky enough to go see some of the tapings of the new mister show that's going to be on Netflix. Scoop to scoop everybody. It is, it is just as funny as ever and it's, I mean, my own, I talked to like those guys afterwards and I said, you know, the best compliment I can give you is that I'm furious. I'm jealous. I'm so upset. This is so good. It really is a comedian compliment, but that's when I get that little paint of, oh, you son of a boy shot there. But it was so fun to watch that and those guys are, if anything, they're, they're better and they're acting is better and they've got all these extra chops and it's really great. But I think about, you know, I am such, you know, the craftsmanship of comedy to me is a really big thing. And then, you know, being able to be subtle and to throw all that stuff away is a really nice thing to be able to do too. But I really love Seinfeld too. I'm just a huge Seinfeld fan and watching that show and watching the puzzle, the puzzle that is that show, just like even, you know, cross cutting between two or three different stories to me was really exciting to watch happen. And when I was at Emerson College, because I was at Berkeley College of Music studying music, and I started studying TV, and TV writing at Emerson College in Boston. And one of the things that Mike bent, the teacher that-- It's a comedian magician, still teaching at Emerson. And he's, yeah, he was great and I was so excited to be out of this world of jazz and fusion and into this world of just like, I used to get to talk about comedy all day. And it was, to me, it was so exciting. But we, at the end of one of the classes, were supposed to have a TV spec script. And a spec script is basically a script for an existing show. Yeah. So just a showcase that you can write story. You have story chops. You can write within the voices of the characters. And then you also have some strong joke writing chops. So those three things. And then maybe you can bring a little bit of your own experience to that. And that's like what makes, in my opinion, a writer. What do you have to say that you can channel through these characters? Can you write lines that are just funny and can exist on their own? Does your story make sense on its own logic? Can you put enough of yourself into it that it's interesting but it's not the show? Exactly. And one guy that does that really well, who's worked on Metal Ocklips with me, is Brian Posain. Yes. And he was just an incredibly funny guy, just so, such a great comical mind and just a silly dude and very light and nice and a great stand-up. I love his, he makes me laugh so hard. But the thing I love about him is what I like about comedy, which is that he can take a moment of his own childhood and put it into the Toki character or something. And I was like, "That works." And it really, really works because it's fun. That's why home movies was, everything was funneled through, what does this have to do with any of our lives? Right. And if we had some of that, then we can make it work. So do you think, as your first academic art was music composition, do you think that that is why you look at the structure and the sorts of-- I think they're locking stuff so much. Yeah, and I think, I mean, the thing about guitar playing as a teenager, you realize if you put hours into it, then you hear results, you can hear, you can record yourself, you can hear improvement. And I think the same thing happens with stand-up, the same thing happens with comedy writing. You can see your mistakes, as long as you're evaluating yourself honestly, you can improve. So I mean, so many comics start out going, "I don't know what I'm doing on stage, I can't get a laugh. This is terrible." And then ten years later, maybe they'll quit. There are stories of, like I remember, DJ Hazard, and that's funny, that's true that people do quit. But DJ Hazard would tell stories about this annoying, red-headed guy who'd fall around and just bomb and just bother him with questions, and that red-headed, annoying guy was-- Carrotop. Carrotop. It was Louis C. K. And he would just bomb and not do well and be confused and perplexed and then slowly just keep growing confidence. You learn more by failing than succeeding right away. It's so much more important to a human being to fail, because I don't want to hang out with people that are only succeeding. Yeah. Those guys are assholes. Yeah. But that's how you get better. There are people that know who just were good at something right away and then they never got better. They only got worse because they didn't really have to get better at it. Or you get good and you plateau and you don't try to do something that puts you on the spot where you can really fail. So when you were watching these shows as a kid, were you already sort of dissecting the structure? Was that later that you were about to lose? That would be later that I would just say. I just thought that this was funny and I can't believe there's something that I really felt like, finally there are shows that are speaking to me. So Gary Shannon can get a life. At that age, again, at that same age, I'm also kind of figuring out who Metallica and Anthrax and all these bands are. So I'm figuring that out and I'm figuring out guitar. And I'm developing an identity. You know, it's such a crucial age that like, you know, 11 to like 15, it's really you carving out your personality for the rest of your life. And it's so important to have something that influences you. Someone was asking me about like writing advice. Like what do you do? Like, how do you keep excited about writing? And the answer was, and I think this is true because this is how I treat it, is that it's my job to be inspired constantly. Right. Which is tough. Which is my job to go and... No. Well, you know what? It's my job to go see a movie. It's my job to watch an old movie. It's my job to read a book that I like. It's go back to Woody Allen, like without feathers or something like that. Right. That's how you do that. But it's your job constantly to be inspired either musically, like listen to some, again, go and listen to some like Mozart and then write some death metal, you know, like then... Right. You're taking it in Congress. But that seems like pretty obvious advice in a lot of ways. But people don't follow that. Like in comedy, you know, though people go, I have to go do comedy 150 hours a week for nobody. And I'm like, you know what would make that better is if you went to the mall and saw something funny that you could talk about next time you do comedy, it's probably better than being like, "I hate my life." You do have to do a little bit of experience. Yeah. You need some sort of life. Yeah. Go get your heart broken. Yeah. Go experience some terrible things. Yeah. But the other thing I was going to say is that, so you're realizing, do you watch a lot of head bangers ball, by the way? I watched, during that time, this is another thing that happened is that we had cable then we moved when like a lot of MTV with stuff was happening. Right. So we lived in a place with no cable. Ooh, having it taken away is... Well, the thing is that I was lucky enough to have parents who had pretty good taste in film. Okay. And so like, that's how I knew who the Marx Brothers were and that's, they said, you've got to watch this movie. This is, we think this is funny and it was Lost in America. Oh, nice. That's Albert Brooks. Maybe my favorite Albert Brooks movie. It is so goddamn good. He's so amazingly funny. He is definitely one of my huge heroes. Yeah. The Gary Marshall scene in that movie is one of the... Oh, it's got to be like an 18-page scene of like, it's one of the best scenes. Because here is a guy. If you know the movie at all Lost in America, a guy loses all his wife gambles all his money away while he's sleeping. He wakes up and tries to basically talk the pit boss into giving him his money back. So... That's a PR stunt. Even before he's got any idea, he's in his bathrobe. So he's just dwarfed emotionally, he's lost everything and he is just not even like... He's not even dressed as a man. His dress is a woman in a pink bathrobe, but I think it's white. But basically he's going to have an 18-to-20-page scene where he's going to just try to use his mouth to talk a guy into giving him $100,000 back or whatever it was that he lost. And there's no fucking way it's going to happen. And Gary Marshall is the best acting I've ever seen in my life. Gary Marshall is just reading and listening and he's just so... He's nothing is going to work. It's my favorite scene in any movie. It really is. The great thing is Gary Marshall, who I love as an actor and dislike almost every television show he produced or made because they're so different from him. So Gary Marshall is sort of the Svengali behind Happy Days in Morgan Mindy and Laverne and Shirley and of course Blansky's Beauties and probably the most famous being Joni loves Chachi. And yes, yes, the animated series of Fonzie with the Talking Time Traveling Dog, voiced by Frank Welker, but his acting is always very, very subtle and different from his shows. And the great thing about that scene is that right away, you're like, "You know, he's not going to talk this guy." He's not going to work. But Gary Marshall plays it in a way that you're like, "Maybe he's going to win him over because he's not just like, 'Get out of here.'" He's like, "Okay." And he listens and he goes, "Why would I do that?" Like it's just very, you know, he's also, the casino is taking this guy's entire life away from him. So he does him the courtesy of hearing him out. He's like, "I understand." So there's like, it's really good motivation and Albert Brooks has got nothing and he's pitching out his ideas because they used to work in advertising and then nothing's going to work. And the other thing I heard in the making of that scene was that they just did take after take after take after take and Gary Marshall was actually getting pretty in the way. He was like, "I want to eat and I want to get out of here. We don't need to be here this long. I think we got it." That's the secret of Gary Marshall. Make him bored and annoyed and you get great performance. Yeah, he was actually irritated and he did not want to be there and that's... Yeah. Did you see the old SNL, Albert Brooks shorts that you did? Yeah. I haven't seen them all but I've got them. I've got them. I've seen a few of them. Amazing. Yeah. That was my favorite stuff in the first couple seasons of SNL. Yeah. When it first started, it didn't really have a format and they were kind of throwing anything in the wall and there was a lot of short films and you got stuff like Mr. Bill which was submitted by a viewer, a guy made an eight millimeter movie at home and mailed it to Saturday Night Live and they're like, "Yeah, put that on." I got to say, speaking of SNL, you know, I was too young to watch parts of it. I started kind of watching the, they would run them in the morning with like the Eddie Murphy kind of there but I really started watching when it was, when it had Christopher Gasson, Martin Short, 1985, the Pre-Lord and Michael's year. Right and Billy Crystal and those, the films that they would make, the men's synchronize swimming and that's where I was like, "These are character driven sketches that also have nice twists to them but I can watch these guys improvising characters forever." Oh, Martin Short is one of the most. Oh, Martin Short is a cleavably good in that stuff. It's my company. Of course I know that one. Oh, and I know that. It's him, right? It's him, right? It's not me, it's him. I mean, Martin Short is one of my favorite, like one of the most underrated comedic sketch actors of all time and it's such a weird guy. Like he's done such bizarre grotesque characters. He just showed up on the- The Tina Fey show, right? The Unbreakable Kimmy Show is this character and there's so much Karen Craftman should put it into this guy's fucked up face. Isn't he no bino or something? He's like, he has like platinum dyed hair but he's got like filler injections in his face and he's supposed to be like a cosmetic surgeon. And he just looks like this weird baby face with like dyed eyebrows and he's like pinkish and it's just, it is like one of the demons of the apocalypse. Well, the best, so good. The best illustration, and we'll wrap it up in a moment here, but the best illustration of Martin Short, like an SC-TV which is maybe my favorite sketch show of all time. Yeah, it's amazing. Because SNL is that on SNL you had Billy Crystal black up in play Sammy Davis Jr. and also think he was the shit. You find me a person whose favorite comedian is Billy Crystal and I will give you $1,000. But I have to say that as an actor, I like him sometimes. In defense of Billy Crystal, I mean, that was, he was great on that era of SNL. It worked on the thing but it was- I haven't watched that in a long time so maybe I, but it's a very, it's a very by the numbers kind of, you know, he's being Sammy Davis Jr. It's a portrayal of Sammy Davis Jr. It works. He believe it's Sammy Davis Jr. What Martin Short did was create a character called Jackie Rogers Jr. who was Sammy Davis Jr. if he was an albino and also like a disco guy. And so it became this extra, it was like he combined the Winter Brothers with Sammy Davis Jr. Yeah. To make an extra weird layer. And when you compare- It's gonna be a guitar, it's like weird, like pirate shirt. But speaking exactly like Sammy Davis Jr. and when you- I don't mean it was cross-eyed. Yeah, completely cross-eyed. And he would be like, yeah man, like you talk like him and make no sense but it was, it was the prime example when you hold those, you take the same ingredients and what you get out is totally different between those two guys. He is such a warped individual. Completely twisted. No, but he had so creative, so creative. Absolutely. And I would love to, and he's a guy that never really managed to do like a sitcom or a normalist show despite being on a ton of things. Well he did do something that I think people may have forgotten about but his character was so great as the Jimmie Glick character was so amazing. Which was like L.E.G. before that was a thing here. It really was and that guy, what's amazing is the fucking stuff that he would put his guest through and he couldn't, you would never get him to break. He could not break character ever which is just a solid wall of character. And everyone else around him is just like, did you ever see Martin Shorko's Hollywood as Showtime special? I remember the one, is that the one with, there was one that I watched a hundred thousand times? With Derbingel. No. He's got a dog named Derbingel. No, there was one where he did a live show. Yes. And with Tender Fella. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What one was that? That's Martin Shorko's Hollywood but no, I forget what it's like to live, Martin Shor live. Okay. Yeah. He does like a Jerry Lewis mashup kind of a thing with Tender Mercies with Robert Duvall and he's just such a stupid asshole. It is so great and he's just like, he zeroed in on like one of Jerry Lewis's later traits which is that he would have a lot of engine in his mouth all the time and I'd just be clicking around his teeth and sucking on it and speaking through it and it was just this little tiny thing that was just such a great tiny character thing and it was just so like I don't even, like I was like, that is not the Jerry Lewis that I know but it wasn't the clown. It was just some weird like bastardization just upside down fucked up world of Jerry Lewis and I just love it that he zeroed in on something like me and he must have done it somewhere on like his like telephones. He did it on TV for a, oh Jerry Lewis, yeah, yeah, yeah, he definitely did and he also used to do the sort of thug Jerry Lewis which no one ever used to do because we would do the lady but he would do the Jerry Lewis and be like, I told you to come in at this time which is like exactly what he would do. The perturbed, angry, on a downward slope of his whatever, serotonin obviously were, yeah. So he did a sort of a sketch on the only time I've ever seen him break in a sketch. Oh really? It's him and Christopher Guest and they're playing like these sort of stereotypical gay characters but they're clearly improving and Christopher Guest goes, my son asked me the other day, what's a wood burning tool? I never did answer him and it's just out of nowhere like they're eating lunch and they're talking about something completely different and you see Martin Short Break and they cut right away and I'm like he got him and it's like such a weird thing to say. Christopher Guest won't break either, yeah. I know, it's like that's like really, that is like Godzilla versus... Oh yeah, that must have gone on for six weeks. It was filming it till one of them broke and it took what's a wood burning tool, I never did answer him to get through it. That is so fucking great. I highly recommend that special. He does the Lawrence character who he did, recently Norman Donald said that he ripped off the half wits from S.E.T.V. for all the celebrity Jeopardy, which he totally did. I mean it's like note for note rip off and Martin Short did this character named Lawrence Orbach who's the one in the synchronized swimming, it's the same character. There's a scene in one of these Jeopardy things where he goes no Lawrence, you're going to school and he goes that's right Alex and he goes what college are you going to, he goes high school. And he goes what he goes I'm having some degree of difficulty getting through high school. We're going to do it Alex and so in this special he plays this guy trying to be an actor and he shows up and he's got this giant Saint Bernard named Derbingel for no reason and he shows up at an office with headshots and he's going over the different shots and he goes this is me thinking about Europe. This is me about to play a sport with a racket and it's like he's really bizarre. That is such a great character because he's so earnest and so excited about and so desperately stupid. Yeah. Which is the best. How do I get a copy of that? I can make a copy of it. Really? Yeah. I have to see that because I can't believe I missed that but I really like logged every moment of the other special. Fantastic. I'll get your copy of that. So finally is there a TV guide is informative but it has opinions. Yes. And it cheers and it jeers. It gives its judgment. If you had a cheer and a jeer for television what would they be? Oh geez I don't know if there's enough. I don't know if there's enough time. I think that's and that's such a broad thing. I'm happy too. I'm happy that old TV is available to you and then it holds up like I believe it did like again re-watching the Gary Shandling show. It's Gary Shandling. Yeah. It's timeless really. To me really was like it really is. But you can I love being able to track through the history go Burns and Allen go to like or Jack Benny and Burns and Allen similar era then go to Gary Shandling and all that stuff and just see everyone influence each other and and still have your own personality really come through. Right. Absolutely. I don't know. I think that's a great thing. I don't know if that's a cheer. I would say that's cheer worthy. That is like positive but I would say it's it's funny if I were to like grab everybody and shake them in TV right now and say don't forget about everyone. Everyone kind of like I think I think as amazing as the first office was I think that everyone got the wrong message from the pseudo documentary stuff. Well no no not even that from the Ricky Gervais's character. I think the unlikable like dickhead who thinks he's right. What they didn't get was that this guy is totally vulnerable. Yeah. That's why he's lying because he hates himself. Yeah. That's the part that I think people forget and I think that's a part of comedy that I'd like to see more of is that vulnerability inside of people that that makes them human. Well you know like well to be able to transition into a human or something like that like have it present somewhere where if someone is vulnerable and still has a heart to them in some way you can you can get a lot more mileage out of it and then not everyone's a total asshole in every character. Who's constantly rewarded. Right. Even in middle octaves I started out with the whole arc of the idea of the show ideas to have people that are like basically what if the Kardashians were a death metal band. It's like basically. We've all thought it. I don't know what knows that but I mean that's kind of like what is like I hate reality to be so much. There is there is no one there is no one character that is based on one of them but the idea was that what if it's like these reality shows of these kind of vapid people who don't know what date is or not sure how to use a doorknob or any of that stuff you know. Why are we watching them I would like to take those guys and slowly break them down and turn them into human beings throughout the whole thing and by the end of you know the the last thing I did the idea is to make them selfless and see if I can transition these people in a kind of like it's a redemption story. Well yeah well that's what the idea is like really it's just this really long thing where they're a bunch of vapid celebrity celebrities who are just completely selfish and how do you make them like self selfless yes and put their lives out on the line for somebody else. And the lord knows the actual people will not do that so you have to create fictional ones to do it. I've asked this question before but what if I don't want to accept Bruce Jenner as any gender. Just as a person yeah I just don't want him to have a gender I don't even want to know that stuff I don't it's not my business is it no I don't think that like it's really weird how celebrities go on TV and they're like yeah I'd like to tell you about the intimate details of my genitals yeah you're a swimmer from the olympics yeah that's right I thought he was really good and don't stop the music yeah yeah is that a can't stop the music or don't stop the music yeah you thought he would be he really managed to steal that movie from Steve Gutenberg which is almost impossible to do the goot don't tell her it's me with shall it shall he long feathers movie place probably the best guy that ever had Hodgkin's disease and a cocoon was on recently he was great I'm sorry I defend him he is great he was great cocoon he's great cocoon but also he's acting against Brian Denne he lifts everybody up he's like a human tied some people do that well Brendan I really enjoyed talking to you thank you so much for doing the show I had a blast I could seriously talk about old TV forever so this is like the ultimate show for me to be on excellent thank you if we could just like put some little bit more music references and then it's like yeah fantastic we'll go with the theme songs Vic Mizzie is my favorite guy that wrote theme songs Vic Mizzie what did he write Adam's family green acres that was back in the time where you had to write a theme song that had all the information of the show yes inside of it so like so even like a three hour tour and all that stuff yep but um but I thought that I actually thought about that for the Metalocalypse themes like no one knows what the lyrics really are because they're like that's a pretty monster voice but um but it really does introduce these are you ever gonna release the lyrics at some point I know they are released in one place accurately and that's the Metalocalypse uh tablets your books okay so the actual real ones and there are a bunch of just nonsense words in there that just do you sort of lament the loss of the theme song because now you don't have theme songs you have like a guitar chord and then the title of the show and then right into it people don't do it as much as they used to right I don't think they're uh I think the Kimmy Schmidt thing I thought there were some really cool music in that too um I was blown away by that show I was so ready to go like I was stupid straight to Netflix and I was just like I laughed and laughed and laughed and laughed and that what's her face in the show what's her name here will come that she's really good you can look in the Metalocalypse tablets your book and you can get her name out of it yeah no but she is she is like I uh I just can't believe how how funny and likable she is yeah that is a really great character and I think so silly that she was so silly I really have hope for the future which is unusual for me because right now these these web vehicles for television is like it was in the 80s where that's of an arms race they just need content and so as a result we're getting interesting stuff it happens every once in a while where somebody just kind of like uh kind of throws the keys of the office of some weird cross-eyed idiot we'll be back in a month don't burn the place down yeah exactly yeah well thank you so much thank you guys for coming out to the show I'm going to try to get out of my life tonight. Good night. Good job. Good job. Good job. Good job. Good job. There you go that's Brendan Small everybody really good guy really fun guy and he knows a lot he knows his stuff that's what I'll say I really enjoyed talking to him it was a lot of fun and hopefully we'll be doing more of these live events if there are comedy festivals or live events in your community that you would like me to try to come to please let me know you can email me at TV guidance counselor at gmail.com or at can at icon read.com you can go to our Facebook page or find us on Twitter at TV guidance and we have a new episode every single Wednesday and make sure you subscribe you never know when you'll get an episode like this one a live episode a special episode they come out sometimes so if you subscribe you'll never miss an episode and if you like the show please rate and review the show it's a huge huge help helps us get up the iTunes charts and we'll see you again Wednesday for an all new episode of TV guidance counselor.
