TV Guidance Counselor
TV Guidance Counselor Episode 50: Marly Halpern-Graser
Wait, you have a TV? No, I just like to read the TV guide. Read the TV guide, don't need a TV. [MUSIC PLAYING] Surprise and Merry Christmas, everybody. Thought I would give you guys a little bonus episode this week on Christmas Day. I know that a lot of podcasts either aren't putting out episodes this week, or doing reruns, and some people want content. You have nothing to do after you open your presents. After you talk to your family, you might just want to avoid your family, or you might have long car, bus rides, whatever. You need some new content. So here is a bonus episode for you. It's very difficult for me to save bonus without overemphasizing the bee. I'm sorry about that. But my episode today is with a great guy, Mr. Marley Halpin-Graser. He is a former stand-up. I don't know if you have our former stand-up. He-- I met him through stand-up here in Boston. He doesn't really do stand-up very often, if at all, anymore. And in this episode, we discuss Christmas week 1997. So it's a seasonally appropriate episode. And Marley is an awesome guy. I always love seeing him. I go out of my way to meet up with him whenever I'm out in LA. I met him here when he was going to Emerson College. He was doing stand-up comedy. He moved down to LA to write for television, which he does. He wrote all of the DC Comics shorts on the Cartoon Network. There was one for the "Little Loved" character Vibe, which made its way around the internet. Often people really enjoyed that one. So you may have seen that. Marley also wrote for the Mad Magazine Cartoon. Not Mad TV, but the Mad Magazine Cartoon. And he wrote the most recent-- I don't know if it still is the most recent, but one of the recent Scooby-Doo movies. It was "The Curse of the Blue Folk," and I believe, which was very enjoyable. Marley's a great guy, as I said. Quick, funny story. And maybe my favorite story involving Marley. The last time Rachel and I were in LA, we met up with Marley in Burbank-- beautiful downtown Burbank. For lunch, we went to this place, Chili Johns, which I highly recommend. It is maybe the oldest thing in Burbank. So it's about 50 years old, but very mid-century. Some good chili there. And actually, incidentally, the woman who was working there was very nice-- sized my wife and I up and said, oh, you guys doing the Guy Fieri tour, which was very offensive. That we would be sized up and determined to be. People doing the Guy Fieri tour, which, weirdly inadvertently, we were. I think we went to three restaurants that were on Guy Fieri's program, but it was not by design. Anyway, after we ate, we decided to go to a place right across the street from Chili Johns, but you couldn't just cross the street because Los Angeles area, California in general, as far as I know, are jaywalking laws. They're very, very strict. So we had to walk up a mile to the next crosswalk across the street and walk a mile back to go to the place we wanted to go to that was right across the street, which enraged me. I went on a ridiculous rant about how I can't believe they bothered with this jaywalking stuff. And my anti-authoritarian East Coastness came out. And I was basically like, I hope a cop with nothing better to do tries to give me a ticket because I'd be arrested, blah, blah, blah, you know, get a life, find some real crime, that kind of stuff. Forget about it. So we go to the store and then we say goodbye to Marley, we leave. As Richard and I are driving back by him, we see Marley standing there getting a ticket from a police officer. I get a text where he says, after my little speech, he went, yeah, Ken's right, this jaywalking's ridiculous. Jaywalks instantaneously gets a police officer asking if he could speak to him. So I apologize to Marley for that. I think I did say I would pay for the ticket. I just never, never did. So I think you'll enjoy this episode. You'll wanna check out some of his writing for sure. His stand-up was always very funny as well and it's kind of a shame he doesn't do it very often these days, but you can enjoy his comedy in various other forms. And again, Merry Christmas to you guys. Here's the little bonus episode. Hopefully you like it, let me know. And enjoy the day, if you don't celebrate Christmas, it's usually a day off for most people. So at least enjoy the day and enjoy the weekend. And I'll be back at the end of the episode. ♪ I am a TV savage ♪ ♪ I know it's cold ♪ ♪ This is me ♪ ♪ I am a TV savage ♪ ♪ I know it's cold ♪ ♪ This is me ♪ ♪ I am a dream ♪ Hello. I'm excited to be here. It's nice to see you. I'm out on the West Coast because apparently all my friends now live out here. I have no friends in Boston anymore. Everyone's moved out here to follow their dreams and successfully so. We just stuffed ourselves with deep dish pizza in Los Angeles. Which Los Angeles is known for? - I mean, one thing I will say about Los Angeles pizza is you're gonna have your best time if you don't try to get New York style pizza. Because Los Angeles doesn't really do New York style pizza right and so it gets a bad rap for doing pizza wrong. But Los Angeles is just fine if you look for some other kind of pizza. - If you avoid California pizza. - Yes, basically. - Yeah. I always try to avoid food places that have the name of the state that they're in. - Yeah. I don't think you're ever gonna get good food. - That's pretty accurate. - 'Cause nobody from that state is naming a thing that state. - But then California has California Adventure, the California-themed amusement park, which seems misplaced here in California. - That's a little weird, yeah. That's like a, you can go to California Adventure and pretend you're in California. - That's very strange. Yeah, I didn't even know that existed. Have you been? - No, I haven't because obviously. - You don't need to. - Yeah. - Yeah, why would you? Wow. So you picked a TV guide from the week of December 19th, 1998. And what drew you to this particular issue? - Oh, the cover is a sad and alive. It's Daryl Hammond and Molly Shannon, right? - As Bill and Monica. - Bill and Monica. And I think, I watched sad and alive a little bit in the early '90s when it was like Adam Sandler and David Spade. - Right. Whatever reason, I think maybe my mom watched it with me one week and then I wasn't allowed to watch it anymore. - Oh, wow, okay. - And so then I was cut off and I didn't watch that in alive for, again, for years. And when I started, again, probably was in '97 or '98 because I remember my earliest memories of like the Will Ferrell era were them doing the Monica stuff. - The Monica stuff, when the he was being Janet Reno. - Yeah. - The Ferrell, yeah. - And they would bring John Goodman in. - Yeah. So your mother, was she very strict about how you could watch and not watch? - She was selectively strict. - Okay. - Because I think her idea was that we wouldn't watch that much television, but then sometimes she wanted to watch television. - Right, so was her exciting rules? - Yes. By the time you get to '98, we were watching a lot of TV, but it was a slow, it was a slippery slope. There was a point when I was watching almost no TV. By '98, I was watching a lot. - Because she had just determined these are not appropriate for you? - Yeah, yeah. Well, it started in, I probably had never seen a sitcom that wasn't out for the Cosby show until '91, and when my mom started wanting to watch Roseanne. - Wow, what a shift. - Yeah, so then we started watching Roseanne, and then I was watching Cheers, and it just kind of ballooned from there. - Yeah, Roseanne is a good gateway to get to these other shows. So you're watching a lot of TV in '98. It's the first time you remember watching a lot of this stuff. - Especially, yeah, especially SNL. And so let's jump right in. So eight o'clock Saturday night, what'd you go with? - I had to be honest and pick "America's Funny Us Home" videos. - Yeah, I mean-- - 'Cause that is what I would have been watching. - I still watch it now. This is when they tried to move into Saturday nights, it's gone back to Sunday since then, but it's always funny. It's always funny. - But it's weird when you watch it now, because now essentially, the only way you can watch "America's Funny Us Home" videos is if you enter a collective delusional fugue state where we all pretend YouTube doesn't exist. - But I don't, see, here's my thing. I don't ever watch those kinds of videos on YouTube. - See, I do actually have friends. I don't, you are right, I'm on my own. I don't. I have friends where every time I go to their house, if you're in their living room for more than an hour and a half, at some point they just start playing fail compilation videos. And you're just watching video after video of just people smacking their faces. And it's always funny as some videos, except no one gets a price. - You know what I hate is when people say, well, generally, when people get things they heard or read on the internet and then they say them in real life, like when people do the like a fail. - Oh, right, so it actually says fail. - Yeah, it's really, really, really sad. And it's always someone who should never try and make a joke. It's like the guy who thinks he's funny in your office or any of that stuff, or like, yeah, no, it's bad. - Yeah, it's never. - So people just search on YouTube for like, cat video or like, man with crotch injury. - Yeah, well, 'cause there's a lot of like, either playlists online or compilation videos where someone will put together, will put half an hour of people falling off boats together, and then you can just watch that. - What's sadder, the person searching for that, or the fact that someone put that together? - Put it together. There's a lot more work, so much more work. - I would agree, 'cause they probably had to watch, even if it's, so let's say, conservatively attend to one ratio. - Yeah, exactly. - You're watching so many of them. - So in this particular "America's Funny Some" videos, a youngster finds an unusual hiding place for backyard frogs, a cosmetologist gives her unsuspecting husband a wax job, a jumble of paragliders is caught on tape, and a teenager grapples with hurdles. - Oh, so he probably just hits. - He just hits a hurdle. - Yeah, yeah, I'm glad that they feel the need to tell you what happens in the episode. - Yeah, I wonder if the ones, do we know, do they just pick the ones that are easy to summarize, or do they pick the ones that end up being the finalists? - So they're definitely not the finalists ones. I still need to hunt down someone who worked for TV Guide to find out how they would write these synopsis, because it's a mystery that fascinates me. - Yeah, that's very strange. - I wanna know how they did it. Now, I normally would have watched this on Sunday night. I probably would have switched, but in '98, I was 18 years old, and I'm definitely going with cops. - Not sure, sure. - You're watching cops. This is Atlanta officers find a car theft suspect, asleep, and a stolen vehicle, and sort out a dispute between two transients. Also, a man is questioned about narcotics inside his pants. - That's good. - Yeah. - So that, do you know with cops, is that everything that would have happened on that episode? - That probably was every, that one. - Yeah, I usually have three segments on cops. So you're watching me on Sunday's for the whole hour. - Yeah. - In the next episode, they say a woman's doggy slippers include an irrational fear, induced an irrational fear in a pet dog, a snake attacks an intrusive camcorder, a car crashes a family cookout, and a frightened goat plays dead. - Oh, that's just a fainting. They just got a fainting goat. - Yeah, but that's where people saw it. I mean, it's two videos on dial-up modems in 1998. - You know, I do, you asked if people really looked this up. I have myself personally looked up fainting goat videos a bunch of times whenever I, whenever I learn that someone's never heard of them, the first thing I do is make sure they see videos of how funny they look. - Do you get a thrill out of being the person that introduced them to that? - Yeah. - Yeah. - I've been surprised how often I've been able to show someone what a fainting goat is. - And do they bring it up later? Be like, "Remember, when you introduce me to the ways "of a fainting goat." - I like to think that then they become emissaries, and they show other people. - Yes, they tell two friends. - And they tell two friends. - And they tell two friends. - Do they sell smelling salts for goats? - I hope that, well, you know, because fainting goats are something I know more about than most, they're not actually fainting. - Yes, they're oxygen cuts, all right? They're basically narcoleptic? - No, no, no, nothing, no, they're not losing consciousness at all. What's happening is their joints are freezing up and they're falling over. - That's more horrific. - It's horrifying. It's, they're broken, they're horribly broken animals. They actually only fall over when they're young. If you look at footage of older fainting goats, they actually develop the ability to stay upright. And so what happens is if you scare an older fainting goat, its legs go completely stiff and it hops in place. - Oh, like an old person. - And it doesn't fall over. - Yeah. - They turn into pogo sticks and bounce for a minute. - That's more fun. - And don't fall over, but young fainting goats aren't used to it yet. And so their legs, their joints lock up and they just topple but they don't lose consciousness. - It's like a metaphor for puberty. - Yeah. - So it's very distinct. - You do know a lot about this. - So here's, this is the way it works. I say the words fainting goat. Someone goes, what's that? I show them video, they laugh. I explain how fainting goats actually work and then we're all sad. - And then they're like, I'm glad you sat next to me on this bus. - Yeah. - So I would have gone with the lounge lizards which was a common central half hour special. And this is the amazing Jonathan, who I'm a huge fan of. - I was just gonna ask you, I have seen that in my life. - And it's a great one. So nine o'clock, what are you going with? - Nine o'clock I picked Adventures of Hercules. - So you love the Hercules? - I definitely, I definitely watched it. I mean, you have to think about how starved for genre television and movies I would have been as a geek in the '90s. I was just excited that something with shitty CG gods was on TV. - And monsters, and you grew up in upstate New York. - I did. - Not a lot out there. - No. - It'd be lucky to have a goat that didn't fan. - Exactly. - So, and you didn't have cable? - No. - Did you ever have cable? - Never had cable. My parents got cable after I left the house. And even then, here's the thing. Not only did I not have cable, but where I lived, having antennas meant mostly having static. - That's terrible. - So some channels we just didn't really get. Like I never, as much as I'm a huge Star Trek fan, I never watched that much Star Trek on TV because we didn't get the channel Star Trek was on very well. - So, did your parents get cable literally the day you left? - Pretty close. - Like you broke the Boston for college in the morning by the afternoon they're watching HBO? - No, I think they actually didn't get it until I graduated college. So I wouldn't come home very often. - Very nice. - So you have a younger sibling? - I have two, you have two. - So they got to get the benefit of cable. - Well, except, and the reason I brought up the television reception is, my parents got the most basic possible cable they could get. So really what they did is they bought into being able to actually seize the channels we already got. It's really just, they don't really, they still basically just watch network. And I mean, now they have, you know, Netflix and whatever. - Right, right, right. That seems like a punishment to me. That's like being prisoners get better channels than that. So I would have been torn this night because martial law was on, which is a show I always loved. It was Sam O'Hung. - Okay. - And who's a great Hong Kong actor who's in the Seven Little Fortunes with Jackie Chan and Yoon Buu. And he basically is a cop with his partner. It was sort of a Miami Vice type show in the 90s. And this is Samo Interrell go undercover in a men's prison, oh, we're just being that, to bring down an armed smuggling ring operated by an inmate played by an actor named Patrick, Kilpatrick. - That's good. - Which I've never heard of before, but that's pretty good. Or I may have tuned in to the revival of Fantasy Island. - Oh, right, so was it a reap like they brought the show back? - Yes, they tried to do Fantasy Island. - I actually never didn't know that ever happened. - This is a beleaguered divorcee played by Cadim Hardison of Deaf by Temptation, most famously, but also a different world. Visual visits the fantasy world he invented in his childhood. A young woman played by Meghan Ward, who I love was in a bunch of full moon movies including Crash and Burn and the movie Freaked. - Oh, I know, Freaked. - Wishes she had the perfect family to introduce to her boyfriend. Sounds like a boring episode. - Yeah, that doesn't really sound like it. - Yeah, you're going to martial law. Hercules, the legendary Journey's that way. - Let's see if it's an episode I remember. - This was the conclusion of a two-par. Aiolis encounters the evil, un-reformed Zina during his journey into the past to stop Callisto from killing the pregnant aclem alchemy before she can get birth to her. This was the episode that introduced Zina for the spinoff. - Okay, I did see it. I do remember that episode 'cause I was excited for the spinoff. For the spinoff, did you watch Zina? - I did, I would also like. I probably watched more Zina than Hercules. - Did you have a thing for Lucy Lawless? - Honestly. - I think many of us did. - I don't know, I was probably more into the sidekick. Was her name really the little one one? - Yeah, I was probably more, I like, I mean I thought Lucy Lawless was great but I don't think I was at a crush on her specifically. - I had a crush on her. I absolutely did. Sunday night, the Lord's Night. - Ah yes, well I mean I had to go with Simpsons for eight. - So you went with the Simpsons, a show that you love? - Yes. - And this is the Star Trek episode. This is the one with Mark Ham, we'll get starring. - Oh, Star Wars. - Yes, that's what I mean, yeah. Mark Hamill offers a musical spoof of his Star Wars fame and a top notch episode in which Homer becomes Merriquimby's bodyguard. It all begins at Springfield's sci-fi convention where Homer rescues his honor and Hamill from an angry mob. - Yeah, so he's doing a Star Wars plane, it's to the theme of Guys and Dolls. - Yes, exactly. - And it's, let's see how much of a, so as the song was a, Luke be a Jedi, Luke be a Jedi tonight, just be a Jedi tonight, do wait for Yoda and the Ewoks. And all the other puppets, Luke be a Jedi tonight. - So you're a fan of the Simpsons? - Yes. - Did you ever check out or did you still watch? - I did check out, I checked out and I held on longer than a lot of people but I checked out a long time ago now. - Yeah, so you still haven't gone back? - No. - I would be intrigued by a thing on MTV called A Very Busta Christmas, which was not Buster Poindex there. - Okay. - It's Buster Rhimes performs Christmas songs in New York. - Now I will say that Buster Rhimes would have been my guest. Who's the one you thought it could have been? - Buster Poindexter. - I don't even know what that is. - He did. - Hot, hot, hot. It was David Johansson from the New York Dolls. - Oh, okay. - His hot, hot, hot phase. There's a lot of Christmas specials on, so it's December 20th, Christmas week, there's a Celine Dion Christmas special, there is a very special Christmas in Washington DC, there's a lot of Christmas going on. But I think it would have flipped over to the Buster just to see what the hell that was. - That's pretty good. - 830, what are you going with? - You know, I'm lying and pretending I would have switched over to Earth 2, just 'cause I wanna talk about Earth 2. - Okay. - Does anyone remember to show Earth 2? - Earth 2 was Gene Roddenberry. - I don't even know if it was, 'cause he was Andromeda, right? - I believe he did both shows. - If he did both, I think so. - I don't know if he was, 'cause Earth 2, there are Earth 2's a show where I actually never watched it on television in real life. We're playing Make Believe Now. I watched the pilot on video after it had already been canceled. - You rented it. - So my friend just had it for some reason. So I watched the pilot on video after the show had already come and went. And back then that meant there was no way to watch any more of it or ever find out what happened ever. - And I don't think it concluded anyway. - No, I can't. - 'Cause it just had the one season. So I spent years and years of my life not only wondering what happened, what would have happened in the end, but just wondering like, I wonder what the second episode was like. - So you're growing up really in a science fiction. - Yeah. - How did you first get introduced to that in the middle of nowhere? - My dad. - You saw your dad's in a science fiction? So would you go to like bookstores and go in the back where the sci-fi was and he'd be like, read Ender's Game? - Yeah, yeah, pretty much. Although my dad had a weirdly weird habit of telling me about books he really liked, but making no effort to make sure I actually read them. - Weird. - So basically my dad would talk to me about science fiction and then I would go to the library on my own and just grab whatever had a cool cover. - Maybe he thought that was just a better way to let you find your own. - I really don't know. Because like his favorite books were like, I mean like you really loved Dune. He really liked, shoot what was other, but I just know he would just talk to me about it. - Right, right. - Like I read Dune way later as an adult. - But I mean that's kind of nice. I mean I imagine you weren't really in sports talking to your dad. - No, no, not really. - Most people probably do, I hear. So at least you have that together. I remember my dad used to take me to comic conventions when I was a kid and maybe four or five years ago in a moment of weakness, I tried to have a moment. And I was like, remember we used to go, you just take me to the comic conventions. Yeah, that was nerd fest. I hated going in there, it stunk. Everyone was a loser. Like he went and there's no rants about how awful it was and I was like, oh okay. - And it is funny 'cause like by today's standards, my dad's not really that much of a geek. Like he's more of a hippie than anything else. But he does have some stereotypical like geek tendencies in that like he showed me all the Star Trek movies. - Okay. - But he didn't show me Star Trek the motion picture because he thinks it's bad. - Oh, well there you go. - And you thought that I shouldn't see it. - So he's opinionated. - Yeah, we started with Wrath of Khan. - Yeah, well that's fair enough. - Which is, but it's a funny, like that's like when you hear now people being like, oh when I'm a parent, my kids will never see Phantom Menace. Like my dad did that. He never showed me Star Trek the motion picture. - That might be the only reason he had a kid. He's like, someday I want to have a kid just so I can not show him Star Trek the motion picture. So did you watch other, did you watch sci-fi shows? Did you dab like Twilight Zone, Boston Space and all that kind of stuff? - Yeah, we'd watch, we would like Twilight Zone. I would watch reruns of a Star Trek original series whenever I could and I would watch Next Generation or whatever when it was on but I didn't have great access to it. So a lot of it for Star Trek specifically was me and my dad watched all the movies. - And when did you catch up on all the stuff that you couldn't watch when you didn't have cable or reception? - Well, Star Trek I caught up with whatever three years ago when it all came on Netflix. - Okay. - And now I've watched every episode of every Star Trek show except Enterprise. - And are you glad that you were able to do that now or do you feel like you've missed out on decades of enjoying it? - Uh, I don't know. It's a weird thing, especially 'cause some of it, it's a weird thing where I'll be watching an episode of Voyager and my gut reaction is like, ah, bullshit, this is exactly like that episode of Next Generation that actually aired seven years earlier. - And then I should watch tonight. - Right, so it's totally reasonable that they didn't care because there was actually six years in between these episodes. But I'm watching them all on top of each other which is not how they were meant to be. It's this time compression has sort of given you a false sense of laziness. - Yeah, exactly. - Star Trek Universe. So you're watching that. I think I'm gonna go with, even though I wasn't a huge fan, I'm going with that '70s show. - Yeah, I mean, realistically, that is probably what I would have watched, but I don't have anything to ask. - I don't have anything to add about that. - Fair enough. Nine o'clock, what are you going with? Oh, nine o'clock, I picked, I jumped over to Nick at night and picked, it just happened to be Brady Bunch and Pewitched just to generally bring up that when I did go to someone's house that had cable, I do remember watching a lot of Nick at night. - Did you purposely find yourself hanging out with kids? You didn't like that much, but they had cable? - Uh, no, I just think, no, I guess I didn't. You think that, you know, I had a lot of friends who didn't have cable also. I had a lot of likely, like, similarly punished kids. - Afflicted, yeah. Afflicted kids, most, especially, you know, by '98, I know my two best friends also didn't really have cable. - That's terrible, that's terrible. Do you think they were your best friends because you shared that? - Yeah, maybe. - That really scares me. I don't know how I would handle that. - So when I went to my friend's house, they usually had more video games than me, that's what I would do there. - Right, okay, so you would binge on video games, but when someone did have cable, would you sort of take over? Feel like, what would it look like to watch? - Well, most of my cable that I was watching was at my grandparents' house. - Okay. - So, because we'd be, you know, we'd be there for whatever a couple of days, and so I would just watch everything I possibly could. My mom would have to force me to not watch TV the entire time I was there. - Right, instead of spent time with your grandparents. - Yeah, 'cause the entire appeal to me of going to my grandparents' house was that they had cable. - I don't think that that's wrong. I think that's really universal. And I haven't met your grandparents, but you're right. - And so, did you enjoy the Brady Bunch? - Brady Bunch, I don't remember, but which I loved. - I loved the one. - I know I loved Blue Witch. - Every now Brady Bunch, I think I didn't like them. - No, I was never a huge fan. I watched it, and it was enjoyable, but I wasn't like a rat. Like, there were people I knew that could tell you what episode it was from an opening frame, and they watched them over and over. - I would watch it, and I enjoyed sort of the campiness of it, but I truly love Bitwish. I think it's a funny show. - I love Bitwish. - It has such an amazing supporting cast. You were either a Bewitched or an I Dream of Jeannie, just like you were an Adam's family or a monsters. - I, you know, in the same way that I, to this day, will root for the Yankees or the Mets. I don't choose sides in either of those things either. I like Adam's family, monsters, Bitwitched, and I Dream of Jeannie. - I enjoy them all. - I liked all of them. - But I think Bitwitched is a better show than I Dream of Jeannie, and Adam's family is by far a better show than the monsters. - I definitely agree with you. I don't think I had an opinion as a kid. - Yeah, you're right. But as a kid, I don't think I could. - You just liked them all. - Yeah, it's like all of them. - So you missed X-Files, which was a show that I absolutely love, and I'm surprised that you didn't pick as a sci-fi fan. - It's insane that I was not watching X-Files at the time. I love it now, but for what, and if I had it, I could have watched it. It was totally available. - Do you remember what about it? - Yeah, I thought it was needlessly dark. I think it was probably the Star Trek fan. - Oh, I see. - Both both thematically and just physically. - I just did. - It was just too grim for me. - Yeah, I was like, ah, cancer tumor monsters and worm guys, I just, I don't know, I was even doing it. - So you weren't watching horror movies, you weren't watching stuff that was remotely-- - I would watch horror movies. I really cannot explain why it wasn't in X-Files at the time. - Where would you see horror movies? Would you go, there was there a video store that used to just go through it? - Yeah, I'd go to video stores and especially in '98, any friends sleep over birthday party, that's what we would have been doing. - Oh my God. - Yeah, as much horror. - It was the ones that you specifically-- - The big thing was working through the alien movies one at a time at three different people's slumber parties. - Nice, nice. - Like who would watch "Alien" at someone's party and then the next party, we made sure we watched "Aliens." - The poor kid who got "Aliens" three. - You know, actually I watched that by myself at my house. - Yeah. - That one, no one would watch me. - That's a solitary key climate movie. - I remember watching that one by myself. - I saw, I technically saw all three of those in the theater. - Really? - "Aliens" I saw when I was five. - "Aliens" three I saw on my own, but "Aliens" my mother was pregnant with me when she saw. - Oh, nice. - Which is not the state you wanna go see "Aliens." - Yeah, right. - Yeah, that is the one position you could put yourself in where you don't wanna see a thing about a parasitic being. - Yeah, right. Yeah, I saw "Aliens" the director's cut when that was in theaters in the early 2000s and it's still scary. - It's very scary. - It's totally, in the theaters it is totally still scary. - Oh yeah, well there's the theory that people always talk about that sci-fi isn't a pure genre and it always has to be mixed with something else. - Right. - So like Star Trek's like a Western. The "Aliens" movies are always the best example 'cause the first one's a haunted house movie, the second one's a war movie, the second one's a prison movie and the fourth one's French. - Yes. (laughing) - That's really how it works out. That's just how it works out. - That's exactly. - So eight o'clock on Monday night, what are you going with? - So once we get into the regular week, I was pretty much just watching, if I was watching TV that night, I would have been watching two straight hours of sitcoms. So I don't remember what suddenly, I picked suddenly Susan. I don't actually remember suddenly Susan. - So this was-- - Do you remember what that show was? - Yes, it was Brook Shield's show. - That was it, Brook Shield. - Yes, and it had Nestor, what's his name from the Tick and the Dark Knight? - Nestor Carbonale. - Nestor Carbonale. - Yup, I remember that, that's coming back. - Yeah, it was an okay show, it wasn't great. I would occasionally watch it at this time if I was home. - But I know that I would have watched it because I definitely would have watched Caroline and The City and Matt about you next. - I really enjoyed Caroline and The City. - I was really into Caroline and The City. - I really liked that show and Matt about you is probably my top three favorite niggas that comes out. - That's all right, I assume I was watching suddenly Susan just because I'm sure I was just watching that night. - And kids would just do that. You would just park it on your own channel that night and watch the whole night. Like you wouldn't flip around. It was just, I'm just watching it. - Although I do remember in Saturday mornings, I was always strategically flipping around and when Disney like fully merged with ABC and it became Disney's one Saturday morning and they staggered everything. So everything was off by 15 minutes and everything else. So you couldn't jump around? - Yeah. - I was like, well, I guess I don't watch ABC shows anymore. And I just bailed on all of them. - I had the opposite effect. - Because if I couldn't jump back to whatever, you know, X-Men and then it wasn't worth it at all. - I was like, I'm going to miss recess. - Yeah, exactly. - Yeah, exactly, I never watched recess for that X-Men. - Some of these are pretty good. I was such a mental case about Saturday morning cartoons. What I used to do was we had a small black and white portable TV and we had a small color TV in the kitchen. So in the living room, I would put our regular TV on one of the networks. I made a couch cushion for it in the corner of the room with the small black and white TV in it with another network on it and then in the kitchen was the third network showing cartoons. So I would not even change the channel. I would just wander to a different television to see them and they were-- - Were the commercial breaks synced up or could you would something beyond when a commercial break? - It was on and off. So some of them were the different. And I really enjoyed the commercials as well 'cause that's where I hear about toys and to drink milk. So I would watch them. There were many times where I was simultaneously watching two shows. - Oh, that's pretty good. - That is pretty crazy. I think this night I would have gone for the whole night with a movie. On Comedy Central, two stars, she's having a baby. One of the better John Hughes movies with Kevin Bacon. - Yeah, I've never seen that one. - Oh, it's when everyone thought John Hughes was gonna start making movies about adults. So good like plane strings and automobiles. She's having a baby. People are like, "This is it, he's maturing." And then he's like, "No, show's about babies." He's about babies and he went the other direction. It's a great movie. It has a very sad scene with "This Woman's Work" by Kate Kaitlin. - Oh yeah, I do know that song. - Very, very good. So you're watching all the sitcoms that whole night and let's move on to Tuesday night. Then what are you going with at eight o'clock? - So Tuesday, they were brought from the sun. - A show I hated. - Really? - I just couldn't get into it. - You couldn't get into it. - I felt like they made Jane Curtin too silly. - That's probably true. - And I really like her. - Yeah, I was crazy in that. But that's a show. And again, with the genre starved, I loved that show. - It's aliens. - I thought it was great, but I loved it because it was aliens and I was desperately upset that we would never see what they looked like as aliens. And any time they would do like a joke, whenever time they would hint at what they would look like, but it was always a joke. I was trying to make that a cohesive continuity of figuring out what they would look like. - So you just have like an artist's pad? - Yeah, I was trying to figure it out. - Okay, let me see here. Yeah, no one, I bet you someone in the internet has done some work. - It really is. - It's what they look like. Although weirdly, that's a show that despite the fact that Joseph Gordon-Levitt is a big star now, no one really seems to have a lot of love for that show. - No, you don't hear about it. And John, let's go. - Yeah, and it was on for like eight seasons. - Yeah, it was obviously popular at the time. - Yeah, but no one has ever like, oh, Third Rock from the Sun was my favorite show, loved it. There's not like Third Rock from the Sun, reunion, cast reunions and like conventions and people, you know, message boards. - Yeah, I don't, I mean, I think ultimately that's because it wasn't good. - Yeah, yeah. - I think it's the problem. It's sort of the same reason why like obviously home improvement was popular at the time, but no one talks about it now. - No. - 'Cause it's not good. - It was probably the worst that come that I could mention. - Yeah, so that's my most family, but it was true. - But yeah, the combination of being aliens and one of the characters being a skinny, a skinny teen with long hair made it my favorite show, 'cause I was a skinny teen with long hair. - And you probably felt like an alien. - Yeah, probably. - Yeah. - As skinny teens with long hair too. - That makes sense. I probably would have gone with Buffy the Vampire Slayer that night as Buffy tries to make amends with her mom and the gang, a flock of zombies pop up in Sunnydale and when they crash her welcome home party, Buff gets a chance to prove to her loved ones that she won't let them down again. - See, Buffy is one of the shows where I never watched it at the time, but with that show, I know the reason was because I disliked Buffy fans so much. I assumed the show was bad. - I think that's fair. I was reading a lot of Fangoria at the time as I did for most of my life at a lot of genre magazines and they were all just going on and on about Buffy. You know, it was really annoying. - And I feel bad because in hindsight, it's a good show. I got no problem with Buffy. - But as a sci-fi star of Teen Marley at 805 on TBS, my stepmother's an alien. - Oh wow. - Kim Bassinger, Dan Accro, now it's a hand again. - I think I've seen that. - Tale of an extraterrestrial who marries a scientist. - That's pretty good. - Yeah. - I think I have seen that. - Yeah. I remember that movie, they were always doing news stories about body doubles. And there was this woman who was a famous body double when she was the legs in the opening shot and she was on everything. Phil Donaghue, you know what I mean? - Yeah, I remember tonight. Hard copy. Carn affair, talking about how she was-- - We were just really excited about body doubles. - Her name was like Shelly Michelle or something like that. And she made a little career out of it for a while. 830, what are you going with? - So this, again, I'm just sort of assuming because of where it is and the thing, the show working. - Yes, we're gonna remember that. - I think I remember that. - Yes, yes. - I do remember that. That was when I was still young enough that when the ads for that show were like, finally, a show about work. I was like, yes, finally. - You never knew that. - You never had that. - I really thought it was a novel premise that it was all set in an office. - It is about time. - Yeah, and this was Fred Savage's sort of adult series follow up to the wonder years. And in this one, friend of a working man, Matt, who's played by Fred Savage decides to circumvent the company edict about no secretaries at the executive Christmas party. It's a Christmas episode, which as you know, I'm a sucker for what? - I always do. - I have not seen this one. I've been not been able to track this down in my annual Christmas hunting. - I don't think I've seen that. - But it's probably pretty good. However, I will mention I did really enjoy the Clueless show. - Oh, I remember that. - And Clueless was on, when Cher starts dating a male model, she realizes that not only is the guy hot, but he's smoking and that it's up to her to help him snuff out the nasty habit. - Oh, I get it. - Very punny. - Yeah, very punny. - Don't like the punny. - You know, I don't remember working that well, so there's always a chance I was flipping over to Clueless. - To Clueless? - At the time, 'cause I do remember the Clueless show. - There was a good look at Chuck's on that show. When I was 18, I probably would have watched it. Nine o'clock, what are you going with? - Definitely Spin City, assuming Michael J. Fox was still on it. - Yes, he was. - And I was definitely watching it. - This is when Heidi Klum was playing herself on a series of episodes of Spin City. - Okay. - I've dated Mike. Spin City was with him at long. I'm mad about you in news radio, probably my three favorite and wings as well. - Sure. - I was also related to wings. - Yeah, and this is a great one, when Mike pursues, his affair with swimsuit model Heidi Klum, the air conditioning breaks down in the office, shipped by Carter and Paul, who were great characters. It was a really smart, funny, fun show. I loved that show. - Yeah, I was really into that show. - I still watch it, and I think it still holds up. It's a very good workplace sitcom. - Although that's an interesting show because it survived pretty massive retooling in the first like three episodes. - Yes. - 'Cause it got rid of the main character. - Because obviously the premise of that show was obviously pitched as let's have a couple who are on opposite sides of this media machine. - She's the journalist, and he's the director. - And he's the deputy right. - And was Carlo Tugino. - Okay. - Yes, and then she came back later, and they actually didn't pretend like she never existed, which was interesting. - Yeah, they'd be acknowledged that she was there. - They acknowledged it, yeah. - Like a lineman in Garfield strips. - Exactly, exactly. It was a great show. Now you write for television. - I do. - That's what Marley does out here. - We have all animated. - Yes, I write for all the animation and all pretty much kid stuff. So when did you sort of realize that writer's wrote television? All I know is that I was interested in making media, but to me that meant making movies. And I was making just videos in my backyard, but in my head what I was making was movies, and what I wanted to be was an independent like film director. - Like John Waters. - Yeah, and like I would see, I was really envious of M.I. Shyamalan's credit card, 'cause the card in the title is his card, and the same thing with Quentin Tarantino. It's that written, produced, directed. And I was like, that's what I wanted that. - Not his actual credit card. - Yes, yes. - That's probably envying as well. - But that credit of written, produced, and directed, I was like all that. - What did you do everything? - Yeah, and then it was an embarrassingly slow, like 10 year process from like 12 to 22, of slowly like submitting stuff to film festivals, and never quite winning the top awards, or never quite getting the recognition that I thought I should be getting. And every single time, I'd be like, well sure, that thing that beat me was better polished, and edited, and shot better, and had better acting, but my story was better, and isn't that what should count? And I basically said that out loud to other humans for like eight years before I realized what I should be as a writer. - Right, right, well the one thing you're doing right, just do that. - Yeah, exactly. So if you get to work with sort of established characters a lot, like you've got an Escoby-Doo movie, you work with a lot of the DC characters that you grew up reading, and watching, and things, is that sort of a strange set of toys to play with? - You know, unfortunately, for whatever reason, I got really cynical about it, really fast. - Okay. - And so for me, that stuff is really fun, and what's, the thing that's most fun about it is that people instantly sort of know what you're doing, even if they've never seen it. - Right. - Like if I just wrote a random kids animated movie about going to Comic-Con, or whatever, no one would even know what I meant when I said that, but because I can say, oh, I wrote the story for a Scooby-Doo movie, where a Scooby-Doo goes to Comic-Con, everyone instantly kind of knows what that is, even though they've never seen it. - Do you feel like a weird sense of pressure that you're like, oh, I could ruin this character by accident, or that it's not yours to do too much with, or reverence for, like you obviously probably watched Scooby-Doo growing up. - I did. - Everybody did. So is it weird for someone to go like, now you make them do what they do, and it's not fan fiction. It's a real thing. - It's a real thing. - The good thing about Scooby-Doo, and I say this with a lot of respect and affection for those that have come before me, and a lot of awareness of the limitations that they had to work with. The good thing about Scooby-Doo is, I can't do worse to Scooby-Doo than some things that have already been done to him. - Scooby-Doo is very damaged property. - Right, right, right. So with Scooby-Doo, it's very much like, as long as I'm in the mid range of okay Scooby-Doo, I feel pretty good about that. - So did you ever think about how there's kids watching your versions of these things, and that's gonna be the one they know? - I do. The thing that is, what I really hope to do one day is to be able to replicate the experience I had when I met some people who I work with now who like used to write like, Smurfs or Ducktales or things that I used to love. - Things that I used to love. - Things that I used to love. And whenever I tell them like, oh, I used to really watch this, I used to love whatever this thing that used to write, their reaction is always like to apologize to me. And they're always like, oh, I'm sorry, you watched that bad thing I did. - Yeah, which I think is a bad thing to say to somebody. I always, so I was in this punk rock band when I was a teenager, and at the time, we, you know, I think we thought we were awful or whatever. And when someone would tell us they liked a show, we would just kind of be like, ugh, you idiot. - Yeah, right. - And I just, as I've gotten older, aren't those how terrible that is? 'Cause I mean, if we thought it was bad, the fact that they liked it means it's good to them. - Right, exactly. - You know, and now when, weirdly, I still get emails about this band that I live in 15 years and are run into people who recognize me from it. And, you know, I always really try to, you know, just thank them for liking it and not belittle that they liked it. And it's hard to do that though. It's really hard to do that, especially I imagine if it's something that for a lot of those guys was probably just a punch-the-clock kind of job, you know? It'd be like someone coming up to them and being like, you used to be a bartender at this bar, I went to you, you meet a really good drink one time and they'd be like, ah, it's Singapore sling garbage. Well, there was, it's too bad that I didn't pick "Just Shoot Me" for one of these because they did a "Just Shoot Me" did a great episode about that very thing with Mark Hamill. - Oh, really? - They had Mark Hamill come on for an episode as himself and David Spade was like harassing him. And then what Mark Hamill does is he shows up and starts acting like David Spade's best friend and wants to hang out with him all the time and then starts asking him questions about summer jobs he had in use of TV show. - It's like to teach him what it's like. - It's like to teach him how to do things. - You've just shoot me, it's just one me over. And like, but that's pretty great. So 9.30, the final half hour of the Tuesday night, what are you going with? - You know, I can honestly say, I probably would have watched sports this sports night 'cause I was watching that at the time. - Right, unlike anyone else. - Yeah, exactly. And I did think it was really, really cool. I was really into sports night. I don't actually think that show holds up very well, but it was just so crazy that it was on TV. It was just so different from spin, like the fact that you were watching Spin City and then you were watching sports night was just so weird. - Yeah, it was a very, very strange show. And I was turned off by 'cause of the sports aspect, but I did catch a few episodes and then like didn't want to admit that I enjoyed them, but I did like it. I think I would have gone with the Dennis Miller Show just 'cause Martin Shur it was on. He's one of my favorites, absolutely for sense. So Wednesday night, 8 o'clock, what are you going with? Wednesday night, is he actually easier? I know for a fact, most of these nights, I probably wasn't watching every night 'cause I know there's no way we were watching two hours of TV every night. - Wow. - Guys, 'cause that's the kind of family. - Yeah, yeah, and they really kept track. They definitely kept a gender. We didn't have like a tally, but we certainly weren't watching TV every night. - Wow. - But I know Wednesdays in 1998, we definitely were watching this every week 'cause it's Darmine Gregg, two guys ago, on a pizza place, Drew Carey Show, and whose line is it? - Right. - Is it anyway? We were watching that whole block. - Did you only have one TV in the house? - We did. - So I actually kind of like Darmine Gray, I was like Jen Elfman. - I was very funny. - I was really, well 'cause I have the hippie parents, so my dad loved Darmine Gregg, and it was just the funniest show. - Were your parents like the Toms of Maine deodorant kind of parents? - Yeah, yeah, really. Yeah, did you grow your own vegetables? - Not sustainably, but we had like, we weren't subsistence farm, but we had a vegetable garden. - Okay, so this episode of Darmine Gregg, Darmine's family recruits a village to help raise the baby, a group that includes a spiritual advisor, a breast milk supplier, and a black history teacher. - Yeah, that sounds familiar. - That sounds, I don't remember that episode, but you know, fair enough. - I do think by the time we get to '98, I was probably tapering off on my religious sitcom viewing, because I forgot about the baby. - Right, yeah, I forgot they had a baby as well. Not my favorite show, but yeah, as I said, I probably would have watched it at eight o'clock, there's nothing really else on at that time. 832 guys growing a pizza place, a show I always watched, 'cause it was supposed to take place in summer of a Massachusetts. - That's true, and I've been to that pizza place that claims to be the inspiration. - Which, when it's written down, does it look like penis? - Yes. - And I used to order the penis pizza, so when I lived in summer hall mass, they used to have a deal where if you got five pizzas, they're only $5 each, regardless of ton wings. So if we would get two large pizzas with like a bunch of toppings on them, it was like $20. So just my wife and I would order five pizzas, because it was cheaper than getting two pizzas, and we would have five pizzas in the fridge, and we'd just throw like three of them away. - That's, that's America. - Although, now they think about it, I haven't watched two guys growing a pizza place since I've lived in Boston. - Okay. - How much like Summerville was it? Could you tell they were in Summerville? - You can't really tell you they're in Summerville. They do make a lot of Boston references, but it's not very Summerville-y. There was a weird phenomenon in the mid 90s where there was a lot of shows set in Boston. - Yeah. - And Boston Common. You had two guys growing a pizza place. You had townies. - Bosses and glosses. - Boston Common, I think, was supposed to be-- - At Emerson. - Yeah, at my college. - At your college. - And a lot of these were made by Emerson alum, which was the big problem. (laughing) - I believe Dawson's Creek was supposed to be set in Massachusetts as well. - Yeah, that sounds right. - So a lot of these things were all set in Massachusetts, or whatever word or reason. - The only reason I even, there's only reason I know anything about Dawson's Creek is because, aside from the promos, I know two things about Dawson's Creek. I know, I don't wanna be the one holding your hand. I just don't want it to be her, or whatever, from the promos. - Yes, yeah. - And then the other thing I know is that Dawson wanted to be a film major. - Yes. - Because when people would find out, I wanted to be a film major. - Like Dawson. - Exactly. - One of my friends and I, we concocted this plan to get tickets to "Saturday Night Live" if James Vanderbeek ever hosted. (laughing) And then, during his monologue, Jesse L. Derbeeker really loud, until we got kicked out. This is these were the things we came up with when we were 17. - Did he ever hosted? - Oh, he did, he did, but it was like 2001. And also, it's actually really hard to get tickets for that if he found out. But, you know, that would have been our claim to fame. I could be famous right now. - Yeah, it would have been really great. - Nine o'clock, what are you going with? - So, that's the Drew Carey Show. - Yeah, I love the Drew Carey Show, which I was really into. And it has a really good supporting cast. Every, basically, everyone on that show is great. - It was very well written. And this one is when Jill Walsh was on the show as a recurring character. On a walk, Drew and Lewis and Oswald jump on the stage in jam with the Ramada in and the manager is so impressed that he offers him a job as the new house band. Fun show. - I think I remember that one. - I always loved it, but I probably would have admittedly flipped back and forth from that and charmed. - Ah, yes, I remember that. - I loved all the ladies on Charmed. It's a terrible show, but I'm in it for the horror stuff. You get all the ladies I like. Charmed is a pretty great movie. And at 9.10, I have to say, one of my favorite Christmas movies, and I'm not ashamed to admit this, Ernest Saved Christmas is on. - Oh yeah, I never did a lot of stuff. - Ernest is another one of my blind spots. I've never really seen a whole Ernest movie. - Ernest Saved Christmas is really good. It's easier than the best. - Better than Scared Stupid. - It's much better than Scared Stupid. People like Scared Stupid, but Saved Christmas is so much better of a movie. It's got a lot of heart. It's genuinely funny. It's good, even if you don't know anything about the Ernest character, but care about the Ernest character. It's a pretty good movie. - I mean, he is probably the best commercial turned movie franchise. - I think it's-- - Yeah, out of all the ones I can think of, which is some total of him. (laughing) - He is probably the best. - What about in there is a, there must have been a California raisin stop motion movie, right? - There was a claymation Christmas, but not a movie based on that moment. - Well, then there's the Del Computer Kid, the movie, which was huge. - They made that caveman TV show. - Yep, and then the pets.com kick guy, yeah. So Thursday night, we're talking Christmas Eve now. - Yeah, that's true. - So I don't know if that factored into your choice. - It didn't, 'cause I didn't think about what date any of this was. - Okay, fair enough. It should have, because since this is Christmas Eve, I would have had cable. I would have had grandparent's house. - Oh, it wasn't like your parents just gave you a cable on Christmas Eve? - Yeah, I know. - We had this kid when I was going to school in England with this American kid named Pete, was this chubby frat dude. And he tried to tell us he was quote, "The Ferris Bueller of his high school." (laughing) He said his parents only gave him soda on special occasions, including Christmas Eve. And I just pictured his mother bring you a tray with like little dixie cups of, like little shots of coat. - That's great. - And just being like, "Merry Christmas." - I did actually only get to have sugary cereal in the house very occasionally. And when I would, I would, when this is when I was really little, this is when I'm like four or five, if I had like tricks or a captain crunch, I would play that like I was the tricks rabbit and I'd gotten the cereal. - Right. - Because he has the one I empathized with. - Wow, that's how important. So your parents trying to make you healthy just gave you a weird complex about this stuff. - Yeah, no, just what parents do. - Yeah, that's what happened. - How would they dictate when you were able to get that stuff? - It would be like rewards for good behavior or whatever. My parents, and they didn't do this with either of my siblings, which I find a little offensive, but my parents, if there was a behavior of mine, they wanted to change. Like, wanted me to stop throwing temper tantrums or stop doing whatever. They would just set up a chart and be like, if you go a week without doing this, you'll like get a video or a cereal or something. - But wouldn't that just encourage you to be like, coming up with new bad things to do that you could then not do to get things? - I should have, but that shows how smart I was. - You should have been friends with me. And when I said, you have to have an addict. All right, dude, temper tantrums. That's the new thing. You want that new genesis? Do it for two days and then just don't do it anymore. You're getting the system. - Yeah, my parents did a lot of a chart based behavior modification. - Charts. - Would you pick them up with charts? - Which actually they laid off on until my mom wanted me to get a summer job and she actually put up a chart where I had to mark that I looked for a job every day. - She brought the chart back. - How old were you? - I mean, it was in between freshman year of college. - She like 19 years old. - She brought back the charts. - It worked. - I got a job. - Wow, if someone did that to you now, you think it would still work? - You know, unfortunately, I guess it would. I have no reason to think I'm not still susceptible to behavior modification via charts. - Well, let's hope your girlfriend's not listening to this episode because you'd be in some trouble. Next time I come over here, there's a chart all over. I have no reason to think that it wouldn't still work. - What did your parents do for work? - My dad worked in a like youth correctional facility. He was like a teen teen prison guard. - A high school? - No, no, no, no, for the kids they couldn't keep an eye. - As soon as like a reform school girl in a crack. - No, basically a prison, not a school. - Did he have an eye on her? - It's like if juvie still existed, it's that. - Did he ever have to fuck some chicks up? - They would, they would restrain, they would call it restraining them. - Okay. - Where, you know, you just sort of lie on 'em 'cause that's how else do you keep a teenager for freakin' them? - Right, so, charts. - Did he ever try charts with them? - I don't think they tried charts with them. So that's what my dad did. And then my mom, we were all homeschooled, so my mom was homeschooling us. - You were homeschooled? - Yes, just getting, just digging this deeper and deeper. - This, I feel like I knew this, but why did your mom homeschool you? Homeschooling? - I think my parents had bought into the movement of like hippie homeschoolers who believed that making kids learn things all in a prescribed order and at certain times is not the way people really learn. - No, do you say? - They thought, they basically, in a perfect world, they would've been into this thing called unschooling. What you do is you just remove all the distractions from kids, don't let them do anything unproductive and they'll just naturally do your productive things. - Which is not probably not true. - And my parents knew that because they did, so what I did was unschooling, except they made me do like math and some stuff they knew I would never do. - Do you feel like you missed out on the social aspects of school? - You know, that's what people always ask, but it's the kind of thing where like, I don't, I can't tell. - You wouldn't know. - Yeah, I just never did it. - Yeah, I mean, well, you didn't speak English when you were 19. - Yeah, exactly, yeah. So how did you meet your friends? Was it just people from your neighborhood? - It depended. We moved around a lot. When I lived in places with neighborhoods, I was always friends with the people. - And you guys were always changing your names? - Yeah, we always changed our names. - Drawing away oddly shaped garbage bags. - Yeah, we were the-- - Why'd you move around so much? - Just work. - Okay, yeah, yeah. And it was, and also my parents were, until they basically, until they bought the house that they live in now, when I was 14, my parents were still in the mode of young people who had gotten out of college or they just didn't live in places for more than a couple years. - We might get up and go any time. - Well, in the same way that, you know, I don't, like, since I've lived in the lab, lived in three places, they were just still in that mode until I was 14, basically. - So, this is going to be where your dad's seeing some of the worst of youth every day. And did he often cite that, look, what'd he take as work home? Would he tell you about it? Would he use it as cautionary tales? Like, I saw this girl who was like this, don't do that. - You know, he would talk about it, but even though we were in upstate New York, all the kids were from New York City. - Right. - So, it wasn't particularly useful as cautionary tales. - Right. - Because the cautionary tale would be like, don't be, don't be, don't be, you know, don't be the kid of an only parent and then be abused as a child and then join a gang. - Right, right. - Like, things that were just not going to happen. - Right, I see. - So, do you feel like you experienced, did you used to watch movies about high school or television shows? - Yeah. - But I was not super into them. 'Cause you didn't, I didn't-- - You couldn't identify with it? - Yeah, I didn't totally get it. - But do you think that's what school was like? - Uh... - Probably. - Okay. - I'm sure I thought a little bit. But yeah, no, I never, like, that's why I haven't seen all that many John Hughes movies and the ones I've seen as an adult. Like, my mom made me watch Breakfast Club because she was like, it's an important movie. - Right. - And I didn't like it. - So, did you, not to pry even further until like, did you have a girlfriend in high school? - Not really. - So, you weren't really interacting with girls? - I had friends who were girls. - But did you go to like a prom? - I know, I definitely didn't go, but I would have been the kid not who would have stayed home and watched videos instead of going to prom anyway, I'm pretty sure. - Yeah, I thought I would have been that kid too and then I wasn't. - Really? - Well, so my junior year, I was friends with my English teacher who was this lesbian, like Donnie DeFranco, and I just talked to her about them. I also had a nervous breakdown in high school or several, actually. And one involved, on my way to school, I decided all the sudden I needed a lot of pens. So, I stopped in a pharmacy and I bought like 700 pens and I put them all in my pockets. And then I was taking this test and, you know, a new pen, you get a starter, 'cause I didn't watch it. None of them were working and I was just, I just kept pulling pens out of my pocket and be like, "Argh!" And then I looked at just a stack of pens and I was like, "Not as these pens work!" And they were like, "Why don't you go for a walk?" But this girl kept going on and on about the prom in this English class and I was just like, "Shut the fuck up about the prom!" Which I should have been sent to the office. - Sure. - And the teacher was like, "You're not going to the prom, Ken?" And I was like, "No, I'm not going to the prom." She's like, "Don't have a date." And I'm like, "No, I just don't want to go." And she was like, "I'll get you a date for the prom." So she would like come over and write girls' names down on my tests and stuff and be like, "Huh, huh?" And then one day I was in lunch or something in this girl, very, very pretty girl, cool girl. I was like, "Oh, the English teacher said you want to talk to me?" And I was like, "No." - Oh, wow. - And then the teacher was like, "Why didn't you talk to her?" "I set you up then." - That's great. - So I ended up having to go with this girl. - Wow. - And I went to the prom and then my senior year I went, but I didn't want to go, but I had this weird thing where I was like, if I don't go and my life is awful when I'm 30, I'll, you know, at least can't blame that. That was my thing. - No, I was, by the time I was prom age, I was pretty involved in this theater group that was essentially the offshoot of a like, hippie private school. - Okay. - So it started as just that school's theater group and it broke off and was technically a standalone theater group, but all of them went to that school. And so through that theater group, all my friends at that point went to that school. - Okay. - So I went to like their graduation. - Gotcha. - That just hung out. I would go to their events. But they did, because it was a small private school, they didn't actually have a prom, but I had friends who went to the regular public high school who were part of that theater group and they were all going to prom. And I actually would actively try to sabotage them like they'd be like, "Oh, that guy's." We have to like get in and out of this play by like, whatever, 'cause we're all going to prom tonight. - You're trying to ruin it. - And I would like go slow 'cause I thought it was funny that they were all freaking out 'cause they wanted to get to prom. - You were like, "Damn, not homeschoolers." - We called them public school kids. - Public school kids, PSKs, Pizzix. So Thursday night, eight o'clock, what are you going with? - You know, by '98, maybe I wasn't that into friends anymore, but I just picked it 'cause I forgot about Christmas. - Yeah, I would've gotten my Christmas vacation the whole night which is not my favorite Christmas movies. But yeah, friends I never really got into. - I was into it. I remember all the promos for friends when they were, and I was like excited for this new show called Friends. - I did watch it when it started and then I was like, "Mm, no." And I liked Jennifer Aniston 'cause I enjoyed her on the sketch show "The Edge." - Oh, I don't even know that one. - Yeah, there's David Merkin did it. Julie Brown was the sort of big-name star. Jill Talley and Tom Kenny, who are Mr. Shirley, they met on "The Edge" in the movie. - Oh, okay, yeah. - Eight-thirty would've gone on. - I think, assuming that I was watching Friends, I would've then watched "Frasier." So in between, I would've watched this Jesse show, whatever it is, what was that? - So Jesse was Christina Applegate's show. - Oh, right, I was definitely watching the show. - Yeah, I remember that show. - I have to remember every children I did. It was a show that she, Spirit, I believe it was only one season. - Yeah. - And this is, Jesse's been taking a real slow in her relationship with Diego. - I remember Diego. - Honestly, just kissing and stuff. But things are heating up and she thinks she's ready for more stuff, very sexual. I would've gone with Brady Munch if I wasn't watching "Christification." It's a Christmas episode with her voice of Christmas where she loses her voice. Nine o'clock, you're going with "Frasier?" - Yeah, I was pretty into "Frasier." Maybe, but I definitely didn't watch it to the end, but it ended later than '98, right? - Oh, yeah, yeah, it was in the 2000s. I hated "Frasier." - I hated it, I would've been watching it. - Love "Cheers" hated "Frasier." - Really? - Yeah. - Did you hate "Frasier" on "Cheers?" - I thought he was well, it wasn't my favorite character, but I thought he was well used on "Cheers," but I thought a little went a long way and I just couldn't do something about it, I just, it was awful. - You didn't find David Hyde Pierce to be the revelation unless the rest of America did? - No, the dog I liked. - Okay, there were two of them. - There were two dogs. It looked a lot like wishbone. It might've been wishbone. 930, are you going with Veronica's cause? - I was definitely was watching Veronica's cause positive. - The second "Cheers" alongside. - Yeah, because, well, 'cause between Cheers and Star Trek and Lucas talking, I was a big Cristioli fan at that point. - Yes, did you ever see "Summer School?" - I didn't. - Oh, have you seen it now? - No. - Oh, Carl Reiner directed it. "Custioli" is the main love interest in it. - Oh, man. - It was written by Jeff Franklin, who created "Full House." - Right. - It stars Mark Harmon. - Oh, man. - Time magazine, "Sexiest Men of the Year," 1988. - It's good, did you know that? - Yeah, yeah, Mark Harmon. - Do you know "The Sexiest Men of the Year" for every year? - Maybe. - How many was who was 89? - Don't worry about it. (laughing) - I don't want to criminalize it. I'm pleading the fifth on this one. In this episode, while Olive played by Kathy Najimi, who was huge, no pun intended, for like a three-year period. - Right. - She was in "Hocus Pocus," that was on. - Yeah. - This was real. He's asked to perform a solo during the Lincoln Center Christmas show. Ronnie is given a less glamorous role. - Ah. - Yeah, I am intrigued by a thing on MTV at this time called "Invasion of the Fright Films," a look at the upcoming horror film, "The Faculty." - Oh, right. - Both the faculty. - I didn't see that until just a couple years ago. - I really enjoyed that movie. I was really into the Bruce Cavill books, my teacher as an alien. - Yes. - And I saw the faculty. He looked like it was just ripping that off. - Yes. Well, it pretty much was. - Right. - So, Friday night, the final night of the week, at eight o'clock, what are you going with? - Well, I was just gonna go with some cable stuff for fun, but since I would have probably been in my grandparents, I probably would have been watching Rugrats. - So Rugrats, fantastic show on the original Nick Tunes. Was that one of the first cartoons you remember seeing on Nickelodeon? - Well, I was watching Nickelodeon whenever I could before the Nick Tunes. So, I was used to watching. I don't know that I was particularly aware that Yogi Bear and Muppet Show weren't-- - Temperatures? - Yeah, I just knew they were on. - If there was a show, a cartoon you could write for now, that was from your youth. Well, what show was you read for? - You know, I don't even know. I really, once I got in there, the thing that I'm most excited to do is create new stuff. And so most of my ambition is actually to either create my own show or work on a newly created original show. - 'Cause it must be just a lot of pressure to write on something that already exists. - Well, and it's just weird. You start to feel the least, in my least charitable moments, it occasionally feels like you're beating a dead artist's body with a pinata stick, hoping new ideas fall out. - I've done that. (laughs) - Like, there's just something a little morbid about it, like, why do we need to do more Yogi Bear, just because someone did Yogi Bear a long time ago. - And it's weird when the character's outlet, it's creator. - Yes, which all of these guys basically have at this point. - Right, right. Now, do you ever have any desire to write non-cartoon stuff? Are you like, I really am into this, and this is, I've found my thing. - You know, I would, yeah, I would like to write. I'd like to write whatever. I would definitely like to write stuff for grownups, and there's less options to do that with cartoons, although there's a lot of adult cartoons these days. - And there's more every year it seems like. - So, I mean, honestly, my pie in the sky would be writing adult cartoons for grownups. I do gravitate towards cartoons, although I was pretty by accident. I never, I didn't think I was gonna come out here and write cartoons. - Yeah, but then once you did it, you're kind of like, this makes sense. - Yeah. - So, I would've gone with the Monsters Scary Little Christmas, speaking of the Monsters. - Like the Monsters. - That's pretty useful. - Which was pretty exciting. Eddie, who was played by Bug Hall, that's the kid's name, is dreaming of a Transylvanian Christmas, just like the ones he knew, and Herman is played by Sam McMurry, who of Tracey Elman-Shill, from. But here's the interesting part. Lily is played by Ann Magnison, who lives in Silver Lake. - Oh, yeah. - She was a performance artist, punk rocker, and playing Lily on the Monsters. - Weird. - Very, very strange. Trying to recreate an old-fashioned holiday. I do like this special. It's a two-hour monster. - Yeah, I haven't seen that one. - It's pretty good. - Was Rugrats the Hanukkah special? - Rugrats that evening was, where are we here? - The family spends Christmas in the mountains, while Chucky and Tommy set Santa traps. - Yes. - I think I saw that. - Yeah, that's not what the Jewish one. The Hanukkah one was much later. - Yeah. - 'Cause Nickelodeon did a good enough job of marketing Rugrats that I was really excited to see Rugrats. Like when I would get to my grandparents' house, I would get a TV guide, and I would try to figure out if a Rugrats was gonna air while I was there and plan my trip around it. - Yeah, I think that's fine, other than you fake an illness, or something like that. - Yeah, I don't know. I love that show, a 30 we're going with. - A 30, I have to pick Kablam. - Kablam was fantastic. - Because more so than working with specific characters, one of the most exciting things to me is on the show that I wrote for Four Seasons Mad. The art director was Mark Merrick, who designed and directed all the health segments for Kablam. He was the Kablam guy, and working with him is really cool. - And did you nerd out on him when you met him? - Yes. - Yeah, yeah, he's pretty great, he's pretty great. And he really loves Kablam and the Kablam is-- - Kablam is a great show. - He's still one of the sort of high points of his career. - It's still one of the Nickelodeon shows that sort of remains a cult hit and didn't really-- - A lot of people don't-- - Yeah. - A lot of people don't know it. - It was so very strange. - Yeah. - I was surprised that it even got on. - It's really, really great. - Yeah. - And, you know, in Mad's best moments, we were trying to do a little bit like Kablam. I mean, 'cause you can't really base a show on a magazine, really. So, the closest thing to what we were doing was more like Kablam. - Marley, what about dog fancy? - Dog fancy. Which one's that? - The magazine. - The magazine. - You could base a show on dog fancy the magazine. - Yes. - You could. - But you'd have to switch it. You'd want it to be a show about fancy dogs. - Well, you're implying that dog fancy isn't a show. Isn't it, magazine about fancy dogs? So nine o'clock, what are you going with? - Nine o'clock, what are they, what are they even right now? Oh, we're in Friday. Oh, oh, Sabrina. - Sabrina, T.J., yeah, yeah. - T.J., yeah, yeah. - By '98, I was over born against world, which is why I didn't pick it, but I would have still been watching Sabrina the teenager. - And this is a great episode of Sabrina. It's not a holiday episode, but it does have a very special guest on our-- - Oh, yeah, who we got? - Don Deloise. - Nice. - So this is Val's eager to try out for cheerleading, but Sabrina can't stand the squad's pom-pom-pom-pom-pest participants. How does difficulty say? - Yeah, someone had fun with that. - So she uses a magic coin from a cousin, Don Deloise, to change Val's mind. - So here's, since we were talking before, who writes these? - Yeah. - Do you know, because one of my jobs, actually, on Mad, was I wrote the log lines for each episode. - That wasn't the guy that got sent out. Well, here's the thing. Some websites used what I wrote. Some websites had someone there right there on. Do you know what, was TV Guy just getting information from the networks for a TV guy to have writers? - That's what I don't know. - Because they don't credit anyone as writers. - Right. - So I assume they did, but I don't know, and I need to find this out. Though these synopses might be coming from the show. It's possible because on Mad, that was, it was my job to write what happened on each show, and some places would use exactly what I wrote, and some places wouldn't. And also, and I'll say this 'cause the show's over, so I can't get in trouble now. I realized that there was 100% no oversight. - So you've written what I wrote. - I get right, and so I started, I never lied, and I never tried to sneak in anything offensive, but I definitely started fucking around to see if anyone would notice. - Nice, nice. - Like, we did a parody once called the Conan, the Kardashian, where Conan marries into the Kardashian. - Obviously. - And so for the logline for that parody, I wrote Conan marries into a wealthy family, and takes his wife's name because he's progressive like that. - Nice, nice. - And that was in "Guides" out there. - It was in the TV guide. - It was probably in TV guides. - I have some TV guides from the last couple of years. Maybe we'll take a look, and we'll see. - Yeah, if you find it, we'll confirm. That's pretty great. You've pushed me one step further to understanding some of this stuff. - So some of this might have been someone in the show, at the network or the show, might have been writing this. - Fair enough. This is fascinating bits of trivia that I feel like out on the inside, a little bit inside of information. So 9.30, the final half hour of the week, what are you going with? - You know, for to wrap up our conversation about my odd life, let's pretend that I would have been watching Red Green on PBS, 'cause that's certainly a thing that I did, that I don't very often meet other Americans that have done. - I would occasionally see Red Green, so for people that don't know, Red Green is basically about Canadian Hicks. - Yeah. - And it was on PBS stations. I don't know if it really aired on a lot of PBS stations outside of like the Northeast or the Canadian board. - Yeah, probably didn't. - But I would always catch the last five minutes of it, 'cause it would be on before Red Dwarf, on New Hampshire, public television. And I just couldn't get into it. - It's a weird show. - It really is. - It really is. - And I never watched it enough to remember that I'd watched it before. So like, and I actually, I've seen the Red Green Christmas specials. - Yeah, probably seen that. - Has that what was airing? - No, this is The Lodge adopts a local stretch of highway, and Red builds a barbecue grill out of bathtubs. - There you go. - Yeah. - That sounds like a thing. - It sounds like a thing. - I would switch to the first half hour of Above the Law, 'cause the first three Steven Segal movies, if they're on TV. - Yeah, I watch 'em. I am absolutely gonna watch 'em. - So Marley, as you know, TV Guide, it's not just informative. - It's, oh no. - It has opinions. - They also tell us not only what we can watch, but what we should watch. - Exactly, it cheers and it cheers. So I'd like to read you the cheers and cheers from this week to December 19th, 1998, and see if you agree or disagree. - It was this, are they reviewing stuff that's going to air to tell us whether we should watch it, or are they reviewing something from last week? - It could be anything. - Okay. - So you will cheer or cheer in anything. So for example, let's start with a cheer. - Okay. - Cheers to a casting coup. Frankly, we were flummoxed when we found that Tony Danza had been cast as a lawyer in four episodes of The Practice. After all, this is a show of which the caliber of acting for both the ensemble and guest stars has been set quite high, and Danza is known almost exclusively for comedies, but as Tommy Silva, a lawyer who's congenial, easygoing man, are masked in indomitable cagey competitiveness, Danza was strikingly assured and convincing. Guess we underestimated, disguise. - Oh, they wrote disguise. - Disguise. - They should give themselves a cheer. - Yeah. - I mean, I'd have to disagree with that cheer. 'Cause I hate Tony Danza so much. - And how good could he have really been? - Not good. - They're just saying he was better than they thought he'd be, 'cause they thought he'd be a shumbling mess. - Right, which, that seems like a cop up. - Yeah, we can hold The Practice to higher standards, I assume. - Fair enough. - I've never watched The Practice. - Jears to selling out this one song, and my PD blues send off to Bobby Simone, who was remarkably moving, but was anyone other than us dismayed at the annoying and distracting number of ads, ABC stuffed into this 90 minute special? The commercial breaks were so long, honest to God, we occasionally forgot what show we were watching. Cheer with an a cheer. - Oh. - Cheer with an a cheer. - For the advent of Rick Schroeder, he came on the series a week later, with some big stylish shoes to fill, and so far, Schroeder has been more than fitting the build. And his character, Danny Sorenson, shows an inclination to do some actual investigating, a rarity on a show in which the suspects, all too often, seem to drop into the detectives' laps. I enjoy the cheer within a cheer. - That's a good, I am very rare. - I'm surprised they're allowed to nest them like that. - Yeah, again, I assume these probably no one was checking out what's like your synopsis. Do this, does this have a credit, or is this nebulously, this is TV Guide's fear? - Nothing is credited. - Movie reviews, nothing in TV Guide is credited. - That's crazy, 'cause you'd think, you'd think you'd want to be able to follow the tastes of specific reviewers, but they just want you to think of it as, this is TV Guide, I believe. - Exactly, exactly. - Do they still publish TV Guide? - They do. - Do they do the physical form? - They do, it's much more like an entertainment weekly now. It's a full-size magazine, it doesn't have as many listings, it's much, much thinner. It does cheer and cheer. - Okay, good, thank God. - Then we have a cheers to real generosity of spirit. We take our inspiration where we can get it, and recently we got it on Dateline, in a Rob Stafford story about a devout Ohio woman who prompted by a persistent inner voice, which is a mental illness, volunteer to donate a kidney to an alien church member who was a relative stranger to her. - I lost track of what we were talking about. - She was a God-freaking, it gave someone a kidney. - Oh, okay, that's nice, so you got to have to cheer that, yeah. And finally, cheers to a Trojan lion. It'd be funny if that was it. - Yeah, right. - Cheers to a Trojan lion. Every time we think that Disney has exhausted its arsenal of tricks for using ABC shows to shamelessly promote the parent company's products, services or resorts, we have proved wrong. In a recent episode of Sports Night, the show that you enjoyed, Dana suddenly goes gaga over a Broadway show claiming that this theater experience changed my life. One of the reasons we had a little crush on Dana is that she seemed so battle-tested and savvy. So it bothered us that a woman of her experience would be astonished by the very concept of a musical while they actually sing and dance on stage. But for God, implausibly, let's get the graft. The Broadway musical that was so life-altering, you guessed it, The Lion King. - Although in Aaron Sorkin's defense, I bet a lot of people who had never gone to a musical did go to see The Lion King. - Yeah, I mean, that was huge. - Yeah. - So, you know, maybe it was just serendipity. - Yeah. - Well, Marley, thank you so much for doing this show. - Thank you so much for having me here in my apartment. - You're welcome. (upbeat music) ♪ If I see the same job, baby ♪ - And there you go, Jay Walking homeschooled, Marley. Pretty fascinating episode. He's a really interesting guy. I really enjoyed talking to him. I enjoyed listening to this episode, despite my voice. So I think you probably did too, at least if you made it this far into the episode. We'll have a brand new episode Wednesday, as usual. And I'll see you then on TV guidance counselor. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - I have myself personally looked up fainting goat videos a bunch of times whenever I, whenever I learn that someone's never heard of them, because fainting goats are something I know more about than most people. They're not actually fainting.