TV Guidance Counselor
TV Guidance Counselor Episode 32: Tim Brennan (Dropkick Murphys)
[music] Hello, welcome to TV guidance counselor. I am Ken Reed, your TV guidance counselor, and this week we have a non-comedian as a guest. This is a friend of mine who's in a band called The Drop Kick Murphy's, which you may or may not have heard of. His name is Tim Brennan, and for those of you who are unfamiliar with the minutia of my life, which is shocking, I used to be in a punk rock band prior to my days in stand-up comedy. I always refer to it as the time that I was unintentionally being funny. When I was a teenager, I used to hang out at this club in Boston, which is no longer there. It is now a very fancy hotel because it was torn down and in a hotel was built in its place called the Rat, short for Wrath scalar. It was sort of a dirty, disgusting punk rock club. I was in a punk rock band called Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo. I sang or screamed in that band when I was a teenager, and we started in a scene with bands like Drop Kick Murphy's and The Unseen and The Ducky Boys and a group named Shokey's Showdown. And so I still know a lot of those people from the mid-90s. And so Tim is currently in the Drop Kick Murphy's. He's also a huge, huge comedy fan and a great guest for the show. If you're checking out the show because you're a Drop Kick Murphy's fan or Tim Brennan fan in general, the concept of the show is that I own pretty much every issue of TV Guide. Let's say that. And someone comes over my house, they pick a random addition to TV Guide. They sit down with a pen and paper and write down everything they want to watch that week in prime time, and then the podcast is us discussing their choices. So that's what we do this week with Tim. So please sit back, relax, and enjoy this week's episode with my guest, Tim Brennan of The Drop Kick Murphy's. Mr. Tim Brennan, how are you, sir? Good. Thank you so much for making the track out here to the barbs. Thank you for having me. Can you show you a very welcome? It was a tough decision to find the TV Guide. It was. Yeah, that was the biggest thing for me. I'm a big fan of television, so I just wanted to make sure that I would do it justice. Yeah, I mean, there's no wrong choices, really. No, certainly not. But I just didn't want to be faced with, you know, like, oh, well, there's this one night where a bunch of stuff I would watch, but then, you know, these other nights. A lot of just clinkos. Yeah, so I tried to find something where it was spread out pretty good, you know. Yeah, and I think you did well. You picked the week of March 6th, 1993. What exactly drew you to this particular issue? You know, why I was thinking about this earlier today, and I was trying to sort of in my head just narrowed down when I did the most TV watching that stuck with me as a kid. I've always been a big TV watcher. You don't watch a lot of stuff now, though, probably because you're. You'd be amazed. Okay. And how much I get, I get done, you know, these days with iPads and Netflix and things like that, I back and bang out a lot of stuff. It's funny. My brother and I always, he always did well in school. I didn't do very well in school, but I'm. And that's why you're a musician. That's right. Where's your brother to now? My brother is an editor for a publishing company in New York City. Ah, truth be told, he's the one that should be getting paid to play the guitar for a living because he's much better at that. Oh, he plays too. That's okay. That's okay. I wouldn't, I wouldn't do well in his position. My mom would say this thing. She would say you can memorize things from the television, why don't you memorize your school work? Right. Well, I have the same problem. Like, I actually can't memorize things if people tell, like if I have to sit down and remember lines, I can't memorize them, but I can learn everything. I think I just have to be interested in it. Yeah. And I realized also that there's something that always stuck with me about the way people say things, like people's cadence and different accents and things like that. It's like rhythm stuff. Yeah, it's bizarre. Like, I'll watch a movie. You know, every once in a while, you'll see something as an adult for the first time. Something you saw a million times as a kid, but you see it as an adult, and it makes more sense and everything like that. But every once in a while, I'll see something like that. And somebody will say just a quick line or something like that, and it triggers it in the back of my brain somewhere. I haven't thought about it for 20 years, but the exact way that they say it and everything is just sitting in the back of my brain, and that happens all the time, and it's... But that makes sense if you have like a musical ear. I imagine that makes sense, because there's probably parts of songs and stuff like that as well. Like, oh yeah, that's the bass line on the bridge, but it's an audio thing. Yeah, and that's... Yeah, I can't read music or anything. It's always been... It's always... I've always done it by ear. It's funny I wanted to... When I was in high school, I had myself convinced I wanted to go to a music school, and my parents said absolutely not, no way. But I thought that's really what I wanted to do. And so, I went to... I acquiesced and went to a liberal arts college in Worcester, and said, okay, well, then I'm going to take music classes. Right. And so, I enrolled in these music theory and all this stuff, and within two months, I had dropped every single music class, because I just didn't get it. It took the fun out of it. You've made my love into magic. Yeah, exactly. And we would do these things like they would say they would have you read some bit of music and plink it out on the piano, and I would just make sure I didn't go first. And I would listen to a little play and just plink it out, you know? And then our first test came. And I can't take it anymore. So, I had to drop the classes. So, your mom was pretty strict about what you could watch and stuff, and was... My parents were very strict about what we could watch. Yeah. So, were they anti-TV, generally? No, because, you know, like my mom watches TV and is a fan of it, but like my dad has always been like right there with my brother and I, a movie watcher. Right. The Sunday afternoon with dad type movies? Yeah, well, just westerns and warm movies. Not even. He loves to laugh at stuff. Okay. Like, when I was a kid, I had... I saw the movie Friday 20 times before... With your dad? Before I knew what it was about. Like, I had no idea about about weed or anything like that. All I knew was that my dad thought it was the funniest thing he had ever seen. Dad's a big guys cube fan. I got apparently Chris Tucker and Ice Cube. Oh, get him. You know, it was stuff like that. Like, Big Lebowski was one that we would watch together. I saw that on a date when I was 17 and Quincy. Yeah. And the girl was not impressed. Not impressed. Yeah, we saw that in Dark City the same week. And I loved both movies. And she was just like, "No, I don't understand why you've done this." Yeah, it's tough when there's the disconnect there. Oh, yeah. Pretty much any movie that has the F word in it more than 25 times is guaranteed to get a hysterical laughter out there. You did. That loves it. Midnight run. Oh, hilarious movie. Yeah. Things like that. So, that's how I got turned on to things like that. And my mom was always horrified that I was watching these movies with my dad with all these swears and then stuff. Were they getting arguments about around? No, not really. Because my dad never censored his... My father was a basketball coach. Okay. And sort of the Bobby Knight School. So, there was a lot of yelling and screaming at halftime and stuff. And I would go into the locker room with them at halftime and watch him scream at the... Just absorb. But my dad was the assistant coach of our Y basketball. I'm awful at sports. And the main coach, we were like 10, 11, 12. This guy would swear he had a huge coke now. And he would swear like crazy. And he had a quote that if you had like just missed something, you'd always go, "Ah, you missed it by a pubic hair." And so I was like, "What are we in hindsight? What a really strange thing to be saying to you?" Yeah. Very strange. Yeah. Not appropriate. Yeah, it's funny. I mean, when I think about it now, like my dad was coaching high school kids. Certainly these days, I'll put it this way. From recently the position that my dad held high school, the... I had had a basketball coach of this high school that I went to in Connecticut. He wasn't a head coach anymore by the time I went to high school there. Probably a good thing. Right. Sure. He came back actually. He was our assistant coach my last two years playing. And that was great because I'd always wanted to be coach by my father, but also terrible because he felt that he needed to be extra hard on you. He needed to let everyone know he wasn't going to give me any treatment. The position opened up recently. And I said, "Dad, you should go. You should go get your job back." And he said, "No, my time's passed." And then I think I was driving home back to Boston from Hartford when I was visiting my parents. And I heard on the radio of some... I can't remember if it was a high school or college basketball coach, but he had just been fired for something that was much less than my father was known for back in the day. So he said, "Maybe he's right." Right. He's here to his pass. It is not for that type of guy anymore. Yeah. But I tell you what, it was... It's much more sensitive time. He was one of those guys where he was so tough on his players and stuff. And I would watch him just make these kids crumble. And he did it to me a couple times, but he had this great sense of humor and everything. And somehow at the end of the day, they all loved him and take a bullet for him. So it was almost like a hazing? Yeah. I mean, I don't know. I still... It was like a drill sergeant? Yeah. I'd still to this day say, "How could you have been such a dick to those kids?" Yeah. But they would take a bullet for you. Yeah. I don't know how it works. I don't know how it works. But, you know, when I ask them about it, they all say, "Well, he was so funny." Yeah. Well, with humor, you can get away with quite a lot. You can look at Don Rickles. Exactly. He was a great basketball coach. So you grew up in Hartford. And I always noticed that people in Connecticut, you kind of have to pick a major city to identify with because Connecticut seems to not count. Yeah. We had the Wayland. We had nothing. Yeah. Yeah. And not Bob Marley in the Wayland. Oh, no. Yeah. So I assume you identified more with Boston. Yeah. Well, most people either go Boston or New York. Right now. And it's usually... It's like having divorce parents. Yeah. It's like... It's signified by whether you were a Yankees hat or a Red Sox hat. Right, right. We weren't very baseball-centric in my house. But as I got old enough to decide that I wanted to lean towards one, I definitely lean towards Boston. I knew that Boston was where I went to get all of the good seven inches that I needed. Yes. And so, New York, I wasn't concerned with. Right. Yeah. I remember I used to... There was a record store up in Salem, Mass, where all the people that went to college in Boston in the 80s and had like college radio stations all settled down with their families and moved to the North Shore and then unloaded their record collections in the mid 90s. So I used to go up there and get all these amazing 80s punk records for like two, three bucks. Sure. I would drive into Cambridge and sell them to record stores there for like 10, 20 times when I paid for them immediately. And I'm like, all I did was drive 20 minutes north. Yeah. Yeah. It was a gold mine. That's... We didn't have access to many good record stores in our immediate area. My brother and I would have to drive, if we weren't going to Boston to go record shopping, we would have to drive at least 25 minutes in any given direction in order to get to a record store that had what we were looking for. Right, right, right. And did you do a lot of a mail order? I remember doing a ton of mail order. Yeah, I did. Some mail over. Some mail order. I always, for some reason, it always seemed like such a big task for me to order something via the mail. But I did it a couple of times. Still to this day, I have trouble mailing things. So, you know, you just can't wait or you just don't trust them. Yeah. Well, well, I mean, it might have been the the lack of like I would think to myself, you know, I want this thing now. Right. I want this Primus t-shirt right now. Right. By the time it comes in, I want it anymore. We weren't in that guitar player magazine. Yeah. Yeah. And the back of those magazines where they'd have the time of the evening pictures. T-shirt graphics, you know, scour it. King's X. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Oh, man. So, it's just you and your brother? Are the only siblings? He's older. Do he sort of introduce you to certain television shows? Would he be the one who would make the decisions or would you guys argue or have to compromise on stuff? It was. Well, you know, it's difficult to remember exactly how that would have been. We generally, if he wanted to watch something, I wanted to watch it as well. Okay. Because he wanted to be like, yeah. He turned me on to a lot. It's funny, like when I think about it, as far as like comedy is other than music, I love comedy stuff. He's definitely the first person that showed me the first few movies that I like laughed hysterically. What were they? I remember him showing me Life of Brian. Okay. And I thought that was the funniest thing I ever seen. So a classical education. Yeah. And then he showed me Holy Grail. And since he's only one year older than me? Only a year older than me. Yeah. And then I mean, it even went so far as to when I was in, you know, high school, and he went out to Blockbuster and rented Wet Hot American Summer. Nice. He had already seen it, but he rented it just for my sake. I mean, still to this day, he calls me. If he recommends something to me, I instantly watch it. People recommend things to me all the time, but if he and I don't watch them or listen to them, but if it comes from him, I always give it a shot. He's responsible for, I became obsessed with the rest of development. And he's like, he won Christmas. The gift to the family from him was the first season of rest of development. It's a pretty good gift. It was one of those things where, you know, I was like another TV show. It's a whole season. It's going to take me forever to get through this. And it was one episode in here. It was the greatest thing I'd ever seen in my life. Yeah. Absolutely. So this particular issue, I have to say, people can see this on the top one, but I'm very intrigued by the cover, which is Regis Filman, given the thumbs up. It's right. Just had a heart attack. Yep. And he was in shape now. Yep. This year, there was a lot of weird things about old men getting in shape. This was the same year as the Jack Palance, one-armed push-ups at the Oscar, and all that kind of stuff. It was the year of old men exercising in my memory. And I remember Regis Filman used to work out with like Cindy Crawford. They went to the same gym. Very, very strange. I remember that. I imagine that would be it. Well, that's probably the tail end of the era of like the workout tape that, you know, the Jane Fonda workout tape. Everybody had the workout tape. Yeah. Yeah. My sister used to buy those all the time, which was great. She was a big fan of this thing called Get In Shape Girl, which was like basically if the babysitter's club had workout tapes, so it was pretty exciting. My mother definitely had a Jane Fonda workout VHS. And I definitely worked out along to it as if it didn't matter that these are a bunch of obvious ladies. I was single digits still. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Would you do it with her, just like on your own? No, just on my own. Like old enough to know that that I don't think this was for targeted for my death. Yeah. Yeah. So you're just getting up early. Yeah. Yeah. When the Jane Fonda tape on doing a calisthenics. Oh, you know, it's funny you say that I haven't thought about this probably since it happened. But I do remember as a kid, when I would still wake, you know, your kid, you just wake up super. Yeah, like five. So woke up super early, but there was no reason to wake my parents up or anything like that. So I went into my parents bedroom, quietly turned on the television and put a towel down and mousersize. Yeah, mousersize when I'm five to be recording on a Disney Channel. Come on everybody in mousersize. I haven't thought about that, probably since the day that it happened. Yeah, mousersize was right on before Dumbo's circus every morning on the Disney Channel. And you didn't wake them up, mousersize it? Well, you know what, in retrospect, I probably did. I'm sure they were like, like this. Just don't bother, they're hilarious. Yeah, they just let me go at it. I'm surprised they haven't brought like mousersize back with just the playing of fat kids we have now. Yeah. Um, yeah, you, and you assume that they're all just watching the television in the first place. So they were. Yeah, it's have you ever seen any of the new public service announcements that are like, Hey, something fat, you know, it's really weird. Cause when we were growing up, it was all like, don't smoke crack and you don't get AIDS. And if we were, and it was tough for us to even see those because we were outside right for 24 hours. Oh, yeah, exactly. But there, if you, cause I still watch a lot of cartoons and shows and they're literally the, the PSAs are like, go outside. Right. That's it. And I'm like, wow, that's, uh, that's where world we live in now. Yeah. So let's jump right in at eight o'clock on Saturday. What was your pick? High anxiety. The Mel Brooks film. Do you like, you like this movie? I do. Are you a big Mel Brooks fan? Yeah. I have a weird thing with Mel Brooks. So I, I really respect Mel Brooks as a guy. Yeah. I think he himself is very funny. I love the producers. I love, uh, young Frankenstein, but then he's also made just some movies I can't stand. And I've tried to watch like space balls as an adult. Sure. I just can't get through it. No, it's, I mean, granted, you know, the humor is very mad magazine and it's, it's definitely aimed at like a younger demographic. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I just can't. It, uh, yeah, it definitely, there was a drop off point for sure. Um, and then, I mean, there's certain things about, about his movies that I think a lot of people can't get into. I mean, there's a great story that he, I heard him tell about what, when they were doing young Frankenstein and he and Gene Wilder were writing it and Gene said, I'll star in this movie in under one condition. He said, you can't be in it because Mel Brooks is always, you know, popping in somewhere and doing something. Which is weird because he's such a smart, not serious guy, but like a really intelligent sort of, well, yeah, he did some serious stuff as well. Oh, yeah. I mean, he produced the Elephant Man and he produced the Fly. He has produced some amazing stuff. It's interesting. Oh, he never went to the route of directing like serious movies. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah. If anything, he got more dumb as he got older. Yeah. It like, Dracula dead and loving it. Life stinks. Life stinks. Terrible. And Robin The Men in Tights is literally, I've seen some awful movies that is the only movie I walked out of the theater. Really? Because I was just, I wasn't offended. I was like, this sucks. How old were you when you were born? 1980. 80. Okay. So it's funny because that's, Men in Tights is the last Mel Brooks movie that I saw that I probably got a couple of laughs out of me. I was still at the age when that came out that I wasn't, I wasn't going to be like, this movie sucks. Right. Right. Right. I was still in for it for the the laughs or whatever. I mean, I love like airplane and like top secret and the some of that stuff. Making gun movies or making gun movies or a fun, but it was something about, I don't know, like the the Zucker Brothers stuff had like a different vibe than Mel Brooks stuff. Oh, well, certainly. Yeah. He's yeah. He's definitely got a thing that I think a lot of people it's I feel like everybody can appreciate Mel Brooks, but not everybody likes Mel Brooks. Yeah. And I could listen to him talk for, I could see him interviewed about anything forever. Yeah. He tells great stories and like all those Sid Caesar stories. Oh, yeah. I met Sid Caesar when I was two years old. Really? I don't think I've told the story on the show before, but I, I don't really even remember how I knew this, but I used to, I guess stock is the word, but find out if there were like celebrities like in the area in Boston when I was two or three, no clue how this would work. Yeah. And I found out Sid Caesar was staying in a hotel in Framingham. And I made my parents take me there and meet him because I loved your show shows. I used to watch tapes of it and in Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. I got his autograph. I still have it. Oh, yeah. And there's a picture of like a little kid me and Sid Caesar. Oh, my God. Very, very odd. I don't know why. Yeah. Very soon. I met Jim Curtin when I was five. I was very excited about that. Yeah. I don't that the more I think about that as an adult, the weirder that is. Yeah. When you think of how a baby like a two or three year old like my two year old was like, I need to meet Sid Caesar. And I'll tell you where he is and the parents will be like, okay, let's go. Very strange. Imagine if that was your kid. You'd be like, Oh, she's the coolest kid in the world right here. Let's go. Let's do that. Shut up, kid. So, Hank, are you a Hitchcock fan or were you at the time? No, certainly not at the time. I probably wasn't aware of Hitchcock. So you probably missed a lot of the. Yeah, I missed a lot of the stuff. All I knew like, you know, I knew like I said before about certain movies, I knew that my dad thought it was funny. But then there's stuff in there that that day you don't necessarily need a point of reference for. Yeah, it's just fun. Yeah, it just completely goes over. But if you get the reference, it's an extra funny. Yeah. That twist. And then like I said, like, you know, you see these movies that you saw when you're a kid, you see them as an adult and you're like, Oh, okay. Yeah. That makes sense now. Yeah. I get this now. So I probably want to go behind anxiety. I was thinking I'd go with cops. That's always my Saturday night. Sure. Yeah. I still watch it on Saturday night. Oh, yeah. And this particular episode in Denver, a rowdy party is calmed by officer Phil Hernandez and Mike Moscow, an assault suspect is found by offs, Mark Chuck and Mark Garcia, an alleged paint sniffer is nabbed. And when they say, who what was that second thing? An alleged paint sniffer? No, no, no, back. An assault suspect is found by off assault suspect is found. They just happened upon a guy that's unconscious in the street. Yeah. I would assume. Yeah. That's a bummer. Yeah. It's always the weird thing about cops to me is why did they bother to have a TV guide synopsis? Does anyone is anyone considering watching cops? Stuff. Yeah, they're like, oh, I paint sniffer. I think I'll pass tonight. Like, I've seen the paint sniffer one. That one is that one. And hindsight as an adult is kind of sad, but at the time, I remember this ticket episode being very funny because this dude has gold paint all over his face. And they're like, you've been huffing paint and he's like, no, it's all over. And that's like, that's like the basis for paint huffing jokes these days. Yes. You get a guy with paint on his face and it's hilarious. People still do that? I don't know. I've never watched anybody huff paint before, luckily. I won't say the band, but when I was in a punk rock band in the 90s, we played this place, the Elvis room, I don't remember that place. And we played with a prominent West Coast band. Sure. And the singer was well known for abusing any substance available. Okay. And I know who you're talking about. Yeah. And I've never done a drug in my life, never had a boost. So I don't even know how to buy drugs or where to get them. Right. And so he's asking me where to get stuff. And I'm like, dude, I really don't know. Yeah. And he sincerely goes, they're any like hardware store room, they get some paint or like glue. Yeah. And I was like, I don't know. And he went and bought paint and huffed it. It's the only time I've ever seen anyone do that. That's one of those things where you wonder if at any point in that guy's life, did he stop and go? All right. I asked this kid first to find me substance. He had no idea. Yeah. And then I went so far as to ask him if there was a hardware store around so that I could buy paint or glue. Maybe I should think about my life. Yeah. Like the next step would have been, can you choke me? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Can you do that thing where I breathe and hold my breath and you push me against the wall and I'll pass out for a few minutes? How far are we going to go at this? Yeah. So we're going with cops. I will mention that family matters that night, it had moved to Saturday nights. And this was the absolute worst of family matters because this episode is the Erkel bot is Erkel's robot double, a finely crafted specimen of artificial intelligence with a finely tuned affection for Laura. Once you're producing robots, just please cancel your show. Yeah, it's, yeah, they should make a shark jumping euphemism about making robot clones of yourself. Awful. So you're watching this movie all night. I am watching this movie all night. Yeah. 830. I'm going with Closure Explains It All on SNCC, big fan of SNCC on a Saturday night, would have been doing that. Then at nine o'clock, I'm going to stick with SNCC and I'm going to continue on and I'm going to watch Ren and Stimpi. Oh man, I definitely missed a page on this thing. Yeah. Ren and Stimpi's on at nine. SNCC, I was a huge fan of SNCC. Nine Nickelodeon was probably my favorite. Actually on DVD, I have this in the whole year of 1993. I have every Saturday night, SNCC. Really? Yeah, if you ever want to see it, I can okay. Wow. And at nine 30, of course, are you afraid of the dark, the most terrifying show that- Yeah, that's too bad that I missed the SNCC thing on there. I probably should have gotten a tutorial on how to read through the TV guide first, but you know, it's- Did you guys get TV guide when you were on it? No, we did not get TV guide. If we did, I didn't- I never understood how to read it. Did you get the free one in the newspaper? Yeah, it's possible. I never looked at a TV guide as a kid though. Did you have- I don't remember. Did you have a toaster oven? Yep. Never been disproven. Is there a correlation there? Every single person I know who didn't get the TV guide and used the free one from the newspaper, had a toaster oven. We never even had a regular toaster. Yeah. Oh yeah. I'll go that far to this day. Without a fan. My parents have a toaster oven. And they probably still don't get TV guide? No, they don't. Yeah. I don't understand why these two things are correlated, but I've never met a single person who this was not the case for. If you got TV guide, you had a sliced toaster. If you did the TV week from the newspaper, you had a toaster oven. That's incredible. I don't know why these two things are related. There's something, there's something there, and I don't know what it is. So you never looked through a TV guide? That's a whole other podcast. That's a whole other podcast. Yeah, these weird connections. So how would you know what to watch on TV? Would you guys just flip? You know, yeah, there was a lot of flipping involved. And you had cable? Yeah, we did. We had cable. Yeah, yeah. Come to think of it, and I think it was all flip-based, essentially. Although it sounds like your brother probably did a little research, so you were just kind of along to the right. Yeah, he might have known more more so than I did. My father definitely knew what was going to be on television. But there was a lot of stuff your mom said you weren't allowed to watch on during circumstances. Yeah, I mean, we weren't allowed to watch MTV, period. At all? No. Like, I remember the first time I saw MTV over at Dave Tabbard's house. Oh, yeah, Tabbard. Yeah, I was blown away at the fact that that existed. But yeah, for some reason, we're not allowed to watch it. We had a system, though. I'll talk about that. Yeah, yeah. We got some stuff coming up. And your mom didn't justify it, or she was like, "No, he can't watch it." No, very sexual. Yeah, I don't know what the deal was. Maybe it was... Yeah, I mean, I never really thought about why we weren't allowed to watch MTV. Yeah, because it sounds like you were watching stuff that's already inappropriate. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. But then at the same time, I remember, I didn't see a legit... You know, it's difficult to say because I would sit there and see some of Midnight Run. Right, my dad was watching it. But then I also remember being over at a friend's house and having him be like, "Do you want to watch Nightmare in Elm Street?" And saying like, "I don't think I'm allowed to." Oh, you were that kid? Yeah. Oh, wow! Yeah, that kid was always at worst today. Yeah, I mean, I would allow them to put it on. Did you leave the room? No, no. I would never... No, I would always watch it and everything. But I was always... Yeah, like, I'm back in my mind. I was like, "You don't think you're supposed to be watching this?" Wow, wow. See, my parents would let me watch anything. Like, I could watch anything they would take me to every home movie. Yeah. And I remember my dad and his brother got in a big argument once because his brother was always giving him crap about me letting me watch horror movies. Sure. And so my dad's brother was letting his kids, who were like, maybe five and six, watch Eddie Murphy raw. And my dad came in and he's like, "You got real good. This is a lot better than a fake thing about monsters that aren't real." And he was like, "You're a real fucking asshole." I mean, I'm the big. It was great. It was great. Oh, man. Yeah, my dad tells this story that the closest he and my mother ever came to getting divorced was my brother and I, well, like I said, I was a year younger. So I was super into it, but my brother, I think, understood it a little bit more. We were super, super into Star Wars. Apparently, the closest my parents ever came to getting a divorce when we were kids was when my dad let my brother watch Empire Strikes Back. Okay. The pivotal, um, your father's. Yeah, yeah, yeah. My brother's head exploded. Yeah, completely. And he was hysterical, just absolutely hysterical. And my mom was so angry at my dad, like, you knew he was gonna freak out about this. Why would you learn more? Crying and everything, like he's very upset. Beside himself, yeah. Wow. I puked in that movie. Really? Not in the actual film itself. Right. I'm not featured in the movie. But yeah, my uncle, who's only nine years older than me, my mother dropped us off at the movie theater to go see that movie, gave us $20 for snacks and whatnot. I, in 1983, I ate all $20 for the snacks, which was a lot of snacks. Before the movie even started and ran up to the screen, and they opened credits and puked all over the screen. Whoa. We had to stop the movie. Epic. Yeah, it was what made you run up to the screen. I don't know, I panicked. I panicked. I was just like, I don't know how to get out. And I guess that was like the light source. So I'm like, is it a doors? You're like, I'm off. Yeah, I was like three or four years old. I'm gonna puke. I better go to the light. Yeah. Yeah, I'd seen Poltergeist. So I was like, "Carol Ann!" Oh, that must meet and there's an open window. Yeah, I can get out of there. Oh, wow. I don't know what that was about. Yeah, that would have been, I would have gone the opposite. I would have gone to the darkest point where there wasn't anybody watching. So you could have just puked in the corner pretend it didn't happen? Yeah, I spread still hello. That's an experience puking. Yeah, you have a good instinct for fun. So Sunday night, eight o'clock, what are you going with? Eight o'clock Sunday night, I went with in living color and that is going to be flipped. When in living color goes to a commercial, my dad's gonna flip to see if cheers is in full swing. Okay, so there is a rerun of cheers on this night. So on channel 11, which is WPIX New York station, which you would have gotten in Connecticut. Sure. You guys got the best of both worlds. You would get Boston stations and New York stations and you had your own Connecticut stations. There were some transitional states that always got that. That's right. We would get some stuff from Springfield. Radio station wise, however, we just got stuck with the one WCCC there. We didn't really get input from either of the other ones. We looked out here in Boston and we still have great college radio, but that was because I don't have an older sibling. So the way that I found out about great bands and punk rock and stuff was 120 minutes on MTV, just the tape every week. Right. And then college radio. Yeah. We had WMBR and ERS and all these stations. Yeah, a lot of those. I don't know what my life would have been like. Had I not had those to sort of introduce me to all these bands. Yeah, we had the modern sort of like the mainstream rock station, WCCC. And then Trinity College had a radio station that like when I got a little bit older and was obsessed with like the Midwestern sort of math rock movement that was happening, they used to play a lot of that stuff too. So that's cool. So you're watching that. I'm avoiding a living color because it just doesn't hold up to me. I don't know if you've tried to watch it recently. It's like, it's not, it's not, this is based on what I would have watched. Yeah, I mean stuff like Handyman is rough. It's, I've re-watched one of those sketches recently. Yeah. And I'm like, literally the whole joke here is that he talks funny and is retarded. Yeah, I remember the whole, the whole thing being like, "Well, Damon Wayne's was born with a club foot, so he's allowed to do this." So it's okay, yeah. Yeah, and it's not, and it's, you can do that kind of thing and have it be funny if you're sort of making fun of the people's reaction to that. Right. And making fun of the people around it or the way people treat the guy. That was just the guy acting like a... Just the guy acting, yeah. And then laughing at it. That was like the only joke. Yeah. So this one, Takeya Crystal Kameya as Whitley and Sean Wayne's as Duane, in a parody of a different world, also Grandpa Turner, played by Jamie Foxx, tries to enter Dog Duke in a show. Not really selling me on that one. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, not selling adult Tim Brennan on that one for certain. Yeah. So I would have been torn between two movies this night. I don't just wonder what I would have gone with absolutely, but this one I'm a little intrigued by. On the USA Network, there is a world premiere movie made for USA Network called Tainted Blood, starring Raquel Welch, Joan Vanark, and Natasha Wagner. It says, "Some girls are born smart. Some girls are born beautiful. And some girls are born killers." That sounds like the type of thing I wouldn't have been able to watch. Yeah. I think that that's fair. I would not let a child watch that now. And then it gives it two stars. It says, "An author played by Raquel Welch looks for a link between twins and violence." All right. I don't want to watch that now. I'd probably watch that now. Yeah. But what I'm going with, absolutely definitively no question about it, is something wicked this way comes. I saw that on there. Yeah. Love that movie. It's a Disney adaptation of the Ray Bradbury book. Terrifying movie. I've never seen it. It's great. I mean, I'm a huge Ray Bradbury. Sure, yeah. Especially the horror stuff, the pre-sour science fiction things. And this is a very, very good movie. Jonathan Price is terrifying. And this one-- Arrow, what era was it, or when was it made? It was made in 1983. OK. But it's set in the '30s. So, and it's a Disney? Disney made it, right? Live action movie. Live action movie. So it's one of those creepy ass 80s era Disney movies. Very, yes, like "Watching the Woods." Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's very scary. We were on this-- we were just on a 40-day Euro trip, and we were watching the Dark Crystal one. That's terrifying. And we were talking about how they-- This was a kids movie. This was a kids movie. Like, yeah, that would not happen. No. Very traumatic. Very traumatic. Yeah, and something that was wicked this way comes, was marketed as a kids movie as well. Really? And it is terrifying. Yeah. But there's no real gore, and there's no boobs in it. So we're like, oh, I can't remember that bad. Yeah, sure, yeah. Really, really love it. 8.30, what are you on with? Rock. We used to watch "Rock" in my family. I like rock. Yeah. Rock was a fun show. Yeah, I remember the-- It's funny, the only episode of "Rock" that I really remember is the finale for some reason. Yeah. But, but yeah, I always remember enjoying "Rock." It was an exciting show, because it was live. At this point. Live action, that's right, yep. But it was always shot live. So anything could go wrong at any time. That's right. It was a very blue collar sitcom, which I always love. And this one, the Emerson's are divided. When they learn that Joey is dating a white woman. Nothing hits home for a middle-class white kid living in West Hartford, Connecticut, more than that man. Than a garbage man in interracial relationships. A garbage man pissed that his daughter is dating a white man. 9 o'clock, what do you go with? 9 o'clock went with married with children. Did you have any black people in your town? Oh, yeah. OK. There was a lot. Yeah. OK. Not-- I mean, not a ton, but yeah. Yeah. Absolutely, yeah. Yeah. And then, I mean, we were in West Hartford. Hartford proper, obviously, had a lot of African-American people. But it's broken up strange. Like, there's downtown Hartford-- It's not very integrated. Well, there's downtown Hartford, which is like downtown. Right. And then there's the West end of Hartford, which is like upper class, like big brick houses and stuff. Right. And then there's West Hartford, which is like somewhere between lower middle and upper middle class to some wealthier people. And then there's East Hartford, which is a little more like Hartford, the city, proper and so on. And so it's-- So is it like a real caste system in Hartford? Like, do people, like, you don't leave your neighborhood? No, not so much. But it's one of those things where, like, you can tell the difference by looking at where you are. Right, right, right. But-- and it was all very close. Like, the difference proximity-wise from the West end of Hartford to Hartford, the city itself. One street of Hartford? Yeah, not far. I mean, Hartford's not huge anyway. No, it's not. I always describe Connecticut as a state with three wasters. Instead of having, like, one major city. Yeah. It just has three wasters. Yeah. Yeah, it's funny when you realize you grow up, you know, and you think, yeah, you see all the big buildings and stuff, and you're like, yeah, I don't know. Big city? I've heard Big Little City, and then you go to New York City for the first time, whatever, and you get lost within two feet. And two blocks? Like, the whole of Hartford could fit in this thing. Yeah, absolutely. So you watch America with Children, a show that I does not hold up. I don't feel if you try to watch that as an adult. No, I have not. Uh, don't. No. Yeah, you'll just be disappointed. Yeah, it's too big. This one, the way to man's heart may be through his stomach, but it's not the heart that's sought by Peggy, who tries a variety of enticing new outfits on the otherwise starving owl. Peggy, you should have just made him some dinner. Again, I never understood. She's a very attractive lady. Yeah. Why is the whole episode about her trying to entice out, and he's just disgusted? You know, it's funny, is they somehow, yeah, like, they made her this sort of, like, bucksome, you know, red-haired wife, who seemingly always has sex on the brain and stuff, but somehow, through owls, a view of his terrible life, she came out unattractive. Yeah, yeah, like, they could have exploited that so much. She would show up and the guys would be like, "Ah, Peggy." I always wondered if, like, the last episode of "Mare With Children," they revealed that Al has some sort of mental condition that's sort of, like, body dysmorphia for other people, so they show us how he sees her, and she just looks like Jabba the Hutt, and, like, that's the whole-- and it would make that show so much better. It's like, "Oh, the poor guy I never saw, would she actually look like?" Oh, my God. Yeah, you have sympathy for him. It's, like, reverse "Shallow Hell." Right. "Shallow Hell" doesn't come up very often on the show. Yeah, no, no. 9.30, what are you going with? 9.30, I went with Herman's head. That was something I watched for a short bit of time there. I love Herman's head. It was a good, weird, smart show. Yeah, it's another one that I saw a couple episodes as an adult, and I was like, "Oh, this is unsurprised that this is something I watched as a kid." Like, there's a lot of things I probably didn't understand when I was watching. Did you like it when you watched it, isn't it? Yeah, I did, I did, yeah. It's funny. I mean, it's got a great ensemble cast. There's a ton of Simpsons people on this show. Yeah, right, yeah. Very funny show. I definitely endorse that pick. Monday night, 8 o'clock, what are you going with? Monday night, 8 o'clock, fresh prints. Everybody always picks fresh prints. Of course. Well, they were actually- I tell you to tell you the truth, there wasn't that much else to pick at it. Yeah, Monday nights were a little slow. Yeah. So, fresh prints, did you just talk about shows at school? Like, the next day at school, you're like, can you believe what happened on Fresh Prince? You know, I don't think so. I feel like that didn't- that didn't- No, I don't think that really happened when I was a kid. I think the first show that I remember talking about the next day with people was like Seinfeld. Okay, so it was a little older. Yeah. Because I feel like a lot of kids, there was a peer pressure to watch. Not that Fresh Prince wasn't a good show, but there was a peer pressure to watch those kind of shows, because otherwise you would have nothing to talk to kids about the next day at school. Because what the hell is he going to talk about? Sure, yeah. You have no life experiences. It's true. It's true. Yeah. So, Fresh Prince tonight is Cindy, played by Locke Voorhees, or Lisa Turtle, I'm sure by the belt, right? Yeah, Lisa Turtle, yeah. The level of Carlton's life surprises him with a little bundle of joy. A son, she claims, is his classic paternity episode. Yeah. Every musician's nightmare. That's right. And Carlton's apparently. Yeah, I'm mostly shocked that Carlton's had sex with a woman. Yeah, they certainly didn't portray him as somebody who was too smooth with the list. No, no, very odd episode. I don't remember that episode. I don't think I've actually seen it. Yeah, I do, I. I would have normally watched that. But tonight, I'm watching the birthday tribute to Julia Child. I saw that on there. Yes. I thought about how I would be watching Fresh Prince and my mother would probably say, "Can you turn it to this channel? I want to see something." Did your mother used to cook the stuff she would watch on Cooking Station? Oh, you know, I don't know that she would do that, but she definitely cooked a lot when I was a kid. Back when Pat and I were young, and it was classic, like Dad went to work every day and Mom would stay home and take care of us. She cooked up a storm. And yeah, so I saw a lot of Julia Child and stuff like that. Right. Frugal gourmet and stuff. It's funny. These days, my Dad is the one who watches the cooking shows and goes, "I think I want to try that these nights." Does he cook it or does he tell me my mother's like, "Please cook this for me." No, my Dad cooks these days. He's the one that cooks these days. My Dad was always the guy who cooked in our house. My mother never cooked. If it was my mother's night for dinner, it was like getting pizza. Right, yeah. Never ever cooked. Yeah, my Dad, when I was a kid, my Dad would do the grilling when, you know, we were having hamburgers or whatever. But then if it was something that was just made indoors, my Mom always took care of it. My Dad grew up really poor, and so he would make us a lot of weird, porky food. Sure, yeah. So we would have like fried chicken hearts. Oh, yeah. Yeah, very weird. And for some reason, at one point in the '80s, lamb was very cheap. So he'd be like, "We're not having a hamburger." "We're having a hamburger." "We're having a hamburger." And I was like, "All right, fair enough. Kid's ending over a house very often." "Julia Child, Boston doesn't have enough pride about Julia Child, I think. She sort of invented the cooking show in America. Yeah. Shot it in Boston, was lived there a whole life. I would see her in Cambridge. Really? And I would hang out in Harvard Square as a teenager. I wonder where she would go to buy all of the stuff. She would go to, uh, there's a place called. I'm going to mispronounce the name, but it's called, uh, Sevenors. Can you imagine being in that place? Like, what do you need to know? Julia Child buys her shit here. She was, she was like seven feet tall. Yeah. Massive. And she used to drive this little car. And you would see her driving around Harvard Square. And it was weird. Like, at first, it was like a celebrity. And then you'd just be like, "I don't know. It's Julia Child." "It's just Julia." Yeah, Julia Child. I think you guys need to write a song about Julia Childs. Hell yeah. Yeah. So that's what I want to watch until 9 o'clock. 8.30, what are you going with? 8.30, uh, I would watch, for lack of anything better, I would watch the second half of the magic in Nick's game. This was 1993. So this would have been Shaquille O'Neill's "Hey Day" in the magic. Yes. Just before he made the movie "Blue Chips." Right. Yeah. Which, I'll still watch. That's not a bad movie. I'm not a huge basketball fan, but "Blue Chips" is not a bad movie. Something about "Nolte" in that movie, I think, is hilarious. Yeah. And, uh, it has its moments, certainly. I will sound koozies in it. Yeah. Like, I just... It's the best movie Shaquille O'Neill's ever been. Absolutely. I mean, that's not saying too much. That you can say it with 100% certainty. Yeah. Uh, so you're forsaking Blossom. Yes, I'm forsaking Blossom. Okay, so I was never a big Blossom fan. I preferred Clarissa to Blossom. Fair enough, fair enough. Clarissa was, like, Blossom without the complaining. Right, sure. Yeah. It was, like, it was, like, Blossom, like, just, like, the cartoonish board. Yeah. I thought Clarissa was a little bit more attractive too. Oh, yeah. Oh, absolutely. I don't think there's any controversy there. Yeah. Yeah. And you know what's funny though? Shores didn't get pitted against each other that often. No, they didn't. Although neither of us were teenage girls, so we don't know what went on behind closed doors. That's true. But I imagine there'd just be, like, knockdown drag-out fights on who was the... That's the Nick's magic right there. There you go. Blossom versus Clarissa. Now, was there a thing like... Now, I had friends who I know were, like, 90210 fans. Was there, like, a Melrose place, 90210 thing? No. I think everyone who watched... I think like that. Everyone who liked this board existed. Yeah, yeah. They weren't rivals in any way. Sure. They kind of fed into each other. And I think they might have characters... No, they were both on Fox. Both on Fox. And I think I'm the same Knight. Oh, okay. And I think they might have even had characters crossover on the show. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know if the rival the 90210 would have been. I don't think it really even had one. Yeah. It had no peers. Right. But yeah, Clarissa and Blossom. That's... I'd like to see that just them fight each other. Grudge match. Yeah. Remember that show? Yeah, with John Panette. Rest in peace. Rest in peace. What a great show. Just like people... It's like People's Court, except they're gonna get giant blocks and gloves and beat each other up. I have the fondest bit. I was on Sunday mornings. We would get up. My dad, for some reason, every Sunday, you have these sort of traditions when you're a kid. And you don't know where they started or why they end or whatever. Every Sunday, my dad would take my brother and I to Central Deli in West Hartford Center. I would get a ham and cheese sandwich on some sort of roll there. And I would get a Coke and a bag of chips. Bring it back to my parents' house and we would eat lunch, watch and grudge match. That's a good day. Fantastic. Yeah. That's a great day. Why are we stopped doing that? Maybe because grudge match got canceled. Grudge match got canceled. Everybody in the job was like, we can't get the sandwich. Is that even the worst? Yeah, right, yeah. We canceled grudge match. What about American gladiators? It's not the same. It's not the same. It just isn't the same. So I would have gone with Blossom. I did enjoy that show. Yeah. And at 9 o'clock, what are you going with? Jaws, the true story. I am a Jaws fanatic. Huge Jaws fanatic? Huge. Have you gone down to the vineyard to see the new locations? I've never been to the vineyard. Never. Never been to the vineyard. Got to go and see where they shot the Jaws then. Yeah, I mean, I've been to, you know, I've done a Nantucket. That's as close as I've gotten to the vineyard. Do you swim? Are you a big ocean guy? Boats. Not anymore. Because of Jaws. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's probably what started at Sherwood. But like, even these days on the guy, like, will be on a ferry going from Europe to the UK, you know, and the bus gets on a ferry and you have to get out. And I'm standing there looking in the ocean and all I can think is what is down there? Terrifying. What is down there? There's like HP Lovecraft tentacled monsters down there. When I was a kid, we had these friends who owned a 70-foot fishing boat, a Nantucket, and they had a house. So we would go there. My dad and mom would take my brother and I there for like a three-day weekend or something. Yeah. And at 4.30 in the morning, my dad and I would get on this boat and we would steam out for however long. Deep seafood. And one time they took a sharking. And oh my god. Me and my dad and my brother, and we hooked, you know, a 10-foot Mako shark. We didn't get it in the boat. But the hook, my brother set the hook in the thing and it jumped out of the water about 15 feet in the air. And apparently that's their thing. When they try to get off the hook, they jump out of the water. Yeah. Just the craziest thing I'd ever seen. How old were you? I had to have been maybe around this age. Okay. Like 10, 11, 10. And so after that, I rewatched Jaws because all I could think about was these sharks that I'd just seen. And you wanted to know how to handle them. Sure, yeah, of course. Yeah, you blow them up. Yeah, obviously. Right. High explosive everywhere you went through. You shove an oxygen tank in its mouth. Yeah. And then you shoot it. But, and so then I like literally started in my free time. Like I said, wasn't good at school, but in my free time started like studying sharks. Shark research? So do you watch Shark Week and all that stuff? I love Shark Week and all that stuff. Yeah. I guess I'm scared of them, but it's like I learned all this stuff about them and I'm like, well, I'll probably never go swimming in the ocean again. Now that I know these things. Now that I know that that thing swims in three feet of water. Right, right, I'm never going to go again. And Narragansa Rhode Island, which is where we spent the summers when I was growing up. Yeah. To this day, you can go get in a shark cage. They'll take you out and put you in a shark cage. It's like 200 bucks. Yeah. And they'll put you in a shark cage. Why would anyone do that? I don't know. I would never do that. We went deep sea fishing once, one summer when we were, you know, got up at four, when I went out. I don't like boats. Yeah. I don't like fishing. Right. They caught, it was either a small shark. I blocked a lot of this out or like a barracuda. Sure. And they made, the guy, it was either one of my uncles or the boat captain handed me a hammer. That was like maybe eight or nine. He was like, you got to beat that thing to death. And it came out of the ship and they were all, they made me beat this thing to death with a hammer. Well, it was just like gnashing at me, trying to bite me. It was very traumatic. Yeah. A lot of them go that way. We were in Australia at one point. And one of our guys arranged this deep sea fishing trip. And I didn't go on it because there wasn't enough space for everybody. And there was a couple of guys who had never been fishing out on a boat. Convening and excused. But I love, I mean, I enjoyed doing it. I would have done it. But so they went out and the two guys, the two guys that I gave my spot to got sick, immediate. Nice. And spent the entire eight hours or whatever. So apparently the story was they all caught one fish and the whole time they're reeling it in. Everyone's cheering and all excited. The thing gets on the boat and they beat the thing within an inch of its life. And then obviously, the camera cuts to all of our guys standing there silently. Yeah, yeah. What are you doing? Yeah. Yeah. They were like, by the time they were done killing it, we didn't even want to be there anymore. Yes, like beat this with a hammer. Yeah. Why is that acceptable? Like, if they had made me do that to a pig or something, it would have been so not acceptable. But a fish, that's fine. So Tuesday night eight o'clock, what are you going with? Full house. Did it move to Tuesday nights by this time off of TGIF? Did you watch this every week? Well, Full House? Yeah, it was a big Full House fan. It's actually been a while since I've, well, actually, no, I've seen a couple episodes of Full House. It's an entertaining show, but not good. I thought Jesse and the Rippers were a great band. Probably the best band. Yeah. Well, because you can't watch MTV. So this is where you get music. Jesse and the Rippers. Yeah, I was like, you mean there's a channel that just plays Jesse and the Rippers' videos all day? All day. Dave Kullier. I thought it was funny because he was, I had a penchant for doing impressions. Okay, all right. And so, I thought it was funny. Yeah, I thought he was funny with his voices and stuff. Which would make sense when you're hearing cadence. Sure, yeah. That was another funny thing. My brother and I were always very good at impressions for some reason. Yeah. He was always good at it. Well, if you're playing music by ear, either you're kind of doing voice by ear. Yeah. I used to do them all the time around the band and everything. And then this one night, I did a spot-on impression of our tour manager who has a pretty specific voice. Okay. You know, Evan? Yeah, yeah. And it was met with uproarious laughter. I said, I'm putting this one in the pocket. Yeah, it's too much power. Our merch guy at the time walked out of the bus, found Evan and said, Tim just did a hilarious impression again. Oh, he dubbed you in. So Evan came to me and said, "I hear you like doing impressions of me." And it was kind of offended. Yeah, yeah. I said, "Fine, I'll never do it again." Did you didn't say that's a sincerest form of flatter? No, well, he wasn't willing to hear that at that point. Well, what was your best impression aside from that one? It's pretty esoteric, but it worked because I got to do it in front of the entire school at one point. I used to do an impression of our math teacher. Okay. It was this ancient guy, Mr. Lord. And he taught my father when my father went to the high school. And then he taught me and my brother. And he was, when I was in like eighth grade and was terrible at math, I used to after school, I would have to go to the high school and get tutored by this guy, Mr. Lord. And so somehow over the course of a few months, I just picked up on his very specific voice. And then when I was a senior in high school, we used to have assemblies every week, once a week. You're weakly assemblies? Yeah, I went to a private school. Okay. All right, shirt and tie and everything. Very formal. But so we would have an assembly every Tuesday or something like that. And then every once in a while, it would be sort of a longer one. And so during one of these longer ones, when I was a senior, we, me and a few other seniors had to do a skit for something. And typically-- You had to? Oh, I know what it was. I know what it was. There are these things called prefix, which are-- 10, probably 10 or so seniors who were picked the year before to their senior year. Each one of them is assigned to a freshman advisory group. So you're like a senior among these freshmen. You're their go-to elder. Sure. There's also an advisor who's a teacher, but you're the cool guy. You're the cool guy, they can ask about pubes. Exactly. So the prefix every year would do a skit at the sort of end of the year assembly, and typically they would make fun of the teachers. Right. So I got to bust out my Joel Lord and impression in front of the school. And I remember watching. It was funny. My dad knew I was going to do it. And-- Did you run it by your dad and be like, "How are you?" No, I just-- Oh, he had heard it before, and he thought it was pretty funny. But so we were about to do it, I remember, and I was standing on stage while somebody else was doing a bogus impression on one of the other teachers. Hey, amateur. I watched my dad come walking in and sit down, and I was like, "Here we go." Yeah, yeah. And he was the loudest laugh you could hear out there. But-- No one did your dad. What's that? No one did your impression of your dad. No, actually, back in the day, yes, somebody did. It involved them, smoking a cigarette, and they had a horn where every other word they would bleep it out with a horn. That's where someone-- what did your dad think of that? He thought it was hysterical. All right, so he enjoyed that. Oh, yeah, he's had a great sense of humor. Yeah. You should have brought that up to heaven. Let me tell you this story about the time my dad. And that was brutal. He loved it. He loved it. You're watching that. This episode is when Jesse and Joey cast another kid as the Yankee Doodle Boy in a school play, Michelle becomes a cranky doodle girl. This also features a cameo by Miko Hughes, who you may not know by name, but was the Evil Gage in Pet Sematary and was also in a new night-renowned street. Pet Sematary, I didn't get very far. In the book or the movie? The movie. Yeah, terrifying. Zelda popped up. That's everyone's stop point. It was the end for me. That is a good litmus test for me. Not only did I stop watching the movie, but I thought about that thing for ages. You and everybody. I thought you were going to say, not only did I stop watching the movie, but I stopped watching movies. I haven't seen one sense. No, I'll tell you what. I've never been good with horror movies. We'll do every once in a while on a European tour or something like that. We'll do a movie night. Right. A lot of times we'll watch the first Friday the 13th, but sometimes we venture off into the face. Who picks the first Friday the 13th? Why is that? I can't remember. Oh, because so on our rider, we asked for a bargain bin DVD. Okay. And we were in Germany and we walked in and we had Frytog, Der 13 or whatever. It was called, you know, and we all thought it was a scream that it had such a funny name in German. And so we decided to watch it that night, but then it became people were like, "Oh, this is a scary movie." Yeah. So we started to become a thing. So now-- Kim, we can find his role. Yeah. So now we'll venture off into other horror movies. So I can watch a horror movie with 10 other dudes heading around me. That you've seen a hundred times. But if I'm seeing by myself, I still have the ability to, when I'm laying in bed and it's just me and my dog at night, I still have the ability to cook up like scary stories that tell them the dark illustrations of something that's going to open my door. Scholastic, scary. We the kid that would shut the lights off downstairs and then bolt up the stairs. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I was the kid that would leave their friend's house to go home and sprint. Yeah. Just get something behind it. What's the best worst bargain bin DVD you guys got on a writer? That's a good question. You'd be amazed. There's a lot of stuff that you've never heard of before and a lot of times they'll-- A lot of stuff that will be funny. People have never heard of or that I've never heard of. People have never heard of. And then a lot of times they think they're being clever or something like that. But there was one called Bro. Okay. Which was Danny Trejo. Okay, I'm not familiar with it. We didn't watch it, but I gave it a glance, you know. How many times have they stuck you with boondock's hands? I imagine they were thinking they were funny. We got to do a couple of times, yeah. And we always leave that one behind. In favor of the sequel. Yes, of course, yeah. Have you seen the overnight? Yes, fantastic. Fantastic, yeah. I love to watch it going to get us to come up and say that. Yes, fantastic stuff. I'm definitely not going to fool how sadly. There's a show on called Class of '96. Yeah, I saw that. What is that? So this was a show about college kids. It's from 1993. It started in '92, so the idea behind the show was that they were going to do sort of a real time every year. Gotcha. Graduated in '96. It got to about seven episodes. Never really made it out of the gate, but it was a good show. Julian Anderson was on it. This is a pre-X files, Julian Anderson, who I had a huge crush on from this show. And actually, I think was the reason I started watching X-Files, because I called Julian Anderson from Class of '96. No one else followed suit. X-Files was another one where somebody was like, "Oh, you've never seen X-Files?" And I was like, "No, check it out." And then I saw an episode and it was scared to death. Yeah, it's terrifying. It's a very scary show. 8.30, what are you going on? 8.30. 2.8.30. I'm going to watch the last half of Rescue 911. Fantastic show. Yeah, you're forsaking hanging with Mr. Cooper. I don't think it's a bad idea. No. In this episode of Rescue 911, a girl in California who was abducted by a stranger offering money, a glass cutter in Portland, Oregon, who was trapped under sheets of glass, and a Washington youngster whose father went into insulin shock. Sure. Exciting. Yeah, exciting. Yeah. All right, move. Yeah, I used to cook up scenarios about a stranger danger type stuff. Were you terrified of that? Yeah. Did your parents fill your head with that, or did you just get it to school? I think it was a combination of school and parents, but like, maybe not so much my parents, because I remember having a lecture about it one day at school, I think, you know, when Officer Friendly comes. Right. Here's a suitcase full of drugs. Yeah. And who our Officer Friendly, whose name was Officer John Luby, ended up being my driving instructor. You want to cop as your driving instructor? Yeah, former cop. Yeah. Terrifying. Uh, and this guy was also a cop when my dad was younger, and my dad had this specific license plate that he inherited from his father when he was a kid, and this cop officer Luby used to pull him over all the time, just to fuck with him. Yeah. That's a weird New England thing people don't know about, where they'll, they pass down license plates. Yeah. That doesn't happen to the rest of the country. Yeah. People will get like, I got a low number plate, and they'll like pass it down to their kid, and it's like a huge sense of pride for people. But outside of New England, nobody does that. Yeah, when my brother got his license, my dad said that he wanted to pass it down to him, and not for my dad's not an nostalgic man, the only reason was so that he was like, so if you do something stupid, and somebody else is around, they'll see your license plate, and they can come and tell me your kid was driving. Uh, it's like a tracking thing. Oh, yeah. So we, uh, stranger danger never scared me. I didn't think I was getting a kidnapped or anything like that. But as an adult, it's totally messed me up, because I've had situations where there have been children that I feel like I could have helped. Yeah. And I butt. Yeah. I mean, they're not dying really. Weird, yeah. Yeah, I was in a store. I was in a store called Building 19, which I was talking about outside of Massachusetts. Our New England was like kind of like an indoor flea market. It was like going to a third world country in a store. Right. And I went into the man's room to use the bathroom, and there was a little Asian boy, like maybe four or five, and they're by himself, and he was attempting to use the urinal, which was probably three times his height, and it somehow latched on to the top of the urinal, like the flushing mechanism, and was dangling by his feet. I don't know. Well, I think he was trying to flush it, and he jumped up, but then he couldn't. Oh my god. So this kid's hanging, and I see like he's starting to slip. Yeah. And I'm like, I can't just go grab this kid. Right. And the urinal, like it's on a walk in, and I go to jail. Yeah. And I had to sit there and watch this little kid just fall. He didn't know like hurt himself. But he kind of slowly just fell into a pile, like a puddle of urine. And I had to be like, I'm sorry, but like I can't help you. Are you OK? Yeah. Yeah. And I had to like stand on the other side of the bed and be like, you can do it. Oh my god. Yeah. Yeah, I was at a mall once, and I saw a kid. There was a kid and his mother, and the mother got on the escalator, and started going down and assumed that the kid was next to her. And the kid got scared at the last second, and wouldn't go on the escalator. So the mom's going down, and the kid is at the top, screaming at the top of his hands, because his mom is going away. Away, yeah. And so I'm there, and I'm like, am I allowed to pick him up and help him out? Yeah, yeah. And he's like, yeah, go ahead. And picked him up. Get on there. Yeah, it's very odd that you have to second guess that kind of stuff. So you have to think back when we were growing up, that wasn't a thing, really. But I mean, the stranger danger, like I used to cook up scenarios like I would say to my parents, well, what if, you know, this is a stupid example, because nobody knows my family, friends. But what if Mary Finley comes to pick me up, but she's wearing a mask? How do I know it's Mary Finley? Yeah, my parents would be like, that's not going to happen. Did you have code words? Did you insist like your parents have code words? Because that was a big thing. Yeah. Were they like, have to have a code word? So they know that your parents actually sent them. Yeah. In retrospect, I really didn't need to be worried about getting picked up by a stranger. No. You weren't a good looking kid. No. Yeah. Yeah, I don't think it really happened as much as people said it did. Yeah. But I mean, but it was on so many things that you would have thought it happened all the time. Well, it's like, I mean, it's funny now to talk to your friends about how, like, as far as guys like us were concerned who grew up when we did, we were going to die of AIDS. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. That you got from a stranger. AIDS was going to kill us all. Yeah. You know? A stranger would put you in his van and jacked you with his AIDS blood. Yeah. Like, you could just be standing in line at a McDonald's and someone's going to stick you with a needle or something. Yeah. But like, you guys are all going to get AIDS in time. Yeah. It was just a foregone conclusion. Yeah. And then to become an adult now, and after that whole thing's passed, and be like, well, I really didn't have a chance of getting AIDS. I wonder what the statistics are. Like, I literally, I mean, I know a lot of people. You know a lot of people. Yeah. I don't know anyone who even knows anyone who got kidnapped. Nope. And that's a lot of people. That's a low percentage. I'm sure it happened. But the number of times in news stories and made-for-TV movies and episodes of stuff-- You think it happened every single day to everyone you know. Yeah, I guess in theory with the amount of people that are around, I guess it does happen. You know, they could probably hit us with a statistic like once every 20 seconds. I mean, I'm not like a climate change tonight. I hear a saying that, "Kidnapping." It'd be funny if there was some right-wing guys like, "Kidnapping never happens." It's a completely false-- It's a conspiracy. Never. Never happened once. No child has ever been kidnapped in the state of Massachusetts. Show me. Show me these kids I kidnapped. Yep. Can't do it. You can't. You can't do it. I have-- So nine o'clock Tuesday night, what are you going on? Nine o'clock Tuesday night. I'm going over to Bugs and Daffy. Now, this is throwing full well that this is probably a reanimated Bugs and Daffy. This is not a classic Looney Tunes Rags and Daffy. Right. I'm going to watch it anyways in hopes that I get a couple of laughs out of it. So I love Looney Tunes. And I actually got a lot of my sort of comedy education through Looney Tunes. Sure. I mean, I think everyone should watch Looney Tunes for just the timing and the smartness of these things. And this was actually on the Cartoon Network. So this was the first year of the Cartoon Network. 1993 was when we started to get specialty cable channels for the first time. We got the sci-fi channel and the Cartoon Network. And it was a big deal. Because prior to that, they did not have networks, the sci-fi from sports networks, that specialized in one sort of genre or category. I didn't know that. And so Cartoon Network and sci-fi channel were only available in limited markets. And I followed-- I used to call our cable company weekly asking when we were getting sci-fi channel and Cartoon Network. Because we didn't get them until two years into their existence. And I was very, very upset. Yeah, I remember when I was just like a freshman in high school, I remember people talking about comedy central and South Park and stuff like we didn't have access to that. And then the day that it showed up was like a big day. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Comedy Central started as two different comedy networks from a Clarissa and a Blossom of Comedy. Really? There was one called HA and one called the Comedy Channel. And they actually merged because they were both doing poorly. So they merged together. So this is Classic Looney Tunes. So you may know-- Oh, OK, good. Perfect. It's Cartoon Network Classic Looney Tunes. Although I love Looney Tunes, I'm going with Roseanne. Keeping with the theme of "Mara with Children" this week, this episode of Roseanne, for their anniversary, Roseanne strikes a pose and a sexy Boudoir photo for Dan. And Dan moonlights at a big and tall clothing store to pay for his expression of love for her. But he doesn't want her to know that he's moonlighting. Right, right. So well, it's a little Christmas she is. It's a gift to the Magi. A gift to the Magi? Oh, man. I was an English major, so I get that reference. But Roseanne had some good episodes. I recently-- it's funny because it's on every day-- Yeah. --in blocks. --to five hours. So we-- Yeah. And so for a while, every day, I would go through the days Roseanne and see if I could find the one where Jessica White shows up. Yes. And finally, I did. But it took quite a while. But we watched Roseanne every once in a while when I was a kid. But it wasn't a big one in our house, for some reason. We love Roseanne. I loved it. Such a good show. It's funny. I mean, she's a great comic. Yeah, oh, absolutely. She's super funny. Yeah. And she knows what's funny and awesome. And she only really grabbed her sensibility. And it was a dark show. And it was a lot of really amazingly controversial stuff that was on that show. But not in a sensationalist way. Because to get ratings, this is what this family would deal with. You know, Jackie always kind of bummed me out for some reason. Because she was just such a failure? Oh, she just bothered you. They just bothered me. Yeah. Even her character was annoying. Yeah, I could say that. She won a ton of Emmys. Really? She won-- For that? Yeah. Her and John Norekett won. They may still have the record, but they have the most best supporting actress in a comedy Emmys, to the point where both of them asked to stop being nominated. Because they were like, look, I happen to not only stop. Please. So yeah, I'm watching that instead. And at 9.30, I'm going with kids in the hall. Me too? Love it. Love it. Love it. I still love it. It's one of my favorite shows. I've seen them live many times. I got to perform with Kevin McDonald's. Really? Amazingly crazy for me. He's so funny. Oh, yeah. I saw "Pretty Candy," opening day. I saw that in the theater as well. We love that movie. I feel like I also saw it opening day and was one of like five people in the theater. Yeah, it was me, my friend Andrew, who was in the band with me, and one other dude. You're the only people who saw "Brain Candy." It was such a funny movie. It's still a funny movie. I actually think, and this may be blasphemy. But I think that "Brain Candy" is a better sketch comedy movie than the Python movies. These days, I would agree to do. And I really, it makes me sad that that movie kind of broke up the kids in the hall since "Re90." But they could have had such a great career doing movies. Because it's a perfect sketch movie. Wasn't there a weird thing with Dave Foley? With the making of that movie? Correct, yeah. He had quit being sort of during the writing of the movie. So he's the only one who's not credited as writing any of the movie. And he was contractually obligated to be in it. But he didn't write it. So he shows up in like little parts. He's very funny in it. At the same year, he wrote a movie and started a movie called "The Wrong Guy." That is hilarious. If you haven't seen "The Wrong Guy," it's such an underrated comedy. It's very, very funny. He's great in it. I don't know why that movie doesn't have such a huge audience. But definitely-- I'm not your brother. But "The Wrong Guy" is such a good movie, especially for kids in the hall fan I highly recommend. I saw recently his stand-up special. No, his daughter directed him in a new "Mr. Heavyfoot." Oh, yes. I saw that as well. Yeah. Yeah, "Mr. Heavyfoot" is always a favorite. So Wednesday night, eight o'clock, what are you going with? "Wonder Years." Amazing show. Yeah, yes. No one doesn't like to wonder. "Wonder Years" was big for me. I remember it was-- you know, when you're a kid and you think you want the answer to a question, and then you get the answer, and you realize you don't. I remember they were talking about Kevin and Paul are outside of this girl's house, and they're talking amongst themselves. And Paul says to Kevin, "I'm a virgin." OK. And my dad and my brother were sitting on the couch, and I said, "Dad, what's a virgin?" And my brother went, "Time us." Yeah, and to the eye roll. And my dad said, "It's somebody who's never had sex." And I said, "OK, so I'm a virgin, and Pat's a virgin, and you're a virgin, and mom's a virgin." And he was like, "Oh." So he had to have a talk with me? Well, my parents never had the talk with me, but it was like a very abbreviated sort of, I found out more than I wanted to find out. You were like, "Well, we're not, 'cause that's what I had you." How did you find out? Did you have it in school? Yeah, I guess so. I guess so. Yeah, my family is not very communicative about physical. How about anything, really, in general? There's a lot of just sort of the Irish Catholic stuff. Right. Down mentality until somebody explodes, and then you can deal with it. Exactly. For a very brief period. Yeah. And then you never talk about it again. A lot like sex. Yeah, sure. Yeah. So it was like, yeah, I mean, I guess it was a combination between like school. We definitely had like a thing in school. Should we do the video? And then the video. Yeah, when I was in fifth grade, they showed us. Oh, I definitely saw a video in a girls' video. Yeah, they brought us into the auditorium and showed us a video. Okay, yeah. And so this one was from, the one we saw was from the '70s. They clearly had not purchased the new one for the school district. Right, yeah. But not outdated at all. No, totally. Yeah, the information hasn't changed. This is '76, totally different. They're doing it with their genitals. But this one opened with a bunch of kids in a locker room. Short shorts, big tube socks. And they had this very poorly constructed book called "Great Moments in Sex." It was like very, very unconvincing book. Giant book. And they're all sitting around and this kid goes, says here a guy got a bone with three feet long. And he goes, eight people sat on it. Then it broke off. This was the opening line of this movie show. Because the idea was then the coach comes in. My dad's probably done this many times. Yeah, sure. And he says, guys, guys, that's not true. That's not what happens. But all of us, the first thing we heard was the three foot long bone. Of course, eight people sat on it. So we're like, that's what happened. It has an eight person limit. And then it breaks off. And because we were all horrified and didn't hear any of the actual information out of it. Yeah, yeah. What a terrible video. Oh my god. Terrible video. Yeah, I don't remember being super misinformed about things. Like I was sleeping over at a friend's house one night. And they put on the toxic Avenger. Yes. Trauma's toxic adventure. Which I did not make it through. Yeah. And some good stuff in that movie. And as soon as the kid got his head rolled over by the car. And then the girl masturbates to it? Yep. There was a point where the kid is in the bathroom screaming in pain because he's turning into the toxic adventure. Yeah. And his mom says, oh, he must be going through puberty. Yeah. And so I was like, oh, OK. That's why we have the most painful thing in the world. [LAUGHTER] Yeah, that's not the best introduction. Oh, yeah. So for about four years, I assumed that that had that come in. I would not recommend teaching kids about puberty exclusively utilizing the toxic Avenger. You're a trauma film? Yeah. I think it can be part of the curriculum, but not the exclusive. Hard and overall thing. Yeah. Yeah. Don't just be like, here's Sergeant Kabuki, man. Yeah, enjoy. Yeah. Wow. Wednesday night at 8.30, what are you on with? Doogie House, sir. I can't get into it. NPH. Did you like it? Nope. Wasn't a fan. But you just had to watch it. There was nothing else on. Yeah. Yeah. I probably would have watched it, although I'm not totally into it. Comics Only was on Comedy Central. It's only popping up on there, but I, for some reason, didn't read the description, so I could never tell who exactly it was going to be. You never heard of, actually, Kip Adota and Mike Royce. I'm not heard of either of those guys. But Comics Only was a great show. Paul Provenza hosted this show. It wasn't a stand-up show. It was a talk show, and he would interview stand-ups. OK. Almost like WTF is now. Sure. But in half-hour-- and there were so many stand-ups I heard of for the first time in that show, and it was great to see them sort of on a couch talking about comedy, instead of just doing stand-up. And Fred Wolfe, who was a writer for SNL, wrote the movie "Dirty Work" with Norm Macdonald. He was the sort of the announcer sidekick on the show. There were very funny sketches. It was a great show. I never run into anyone who remembers it. I showed it, but Comics Only was great. 9 o'clock Wednesday night, what are you on there? 9 o'clock Wednesday night. Another one that I wasn't super into, but would watch every once in a while, home improvement. Oof. What a terrible show. Yeah. What a terrible show. I was not a big fan of it. I remember it's probably-- maybe that was the first time where something would happen, and I was like, and I heard people laugh, and I said, that's not funny. Yeah. So that's an important lesson. Like, gorilla thing that he would do. I remember being like, that's the least funny thing I've ever seen. That's the most positive thing I've ever heard coming out of home from teaching you what isn't funny. It's not really funny, yeah. This is a terrible episode which has guest stars by Michael and Mario Andretti. Well, perfect. Yeah. I'm sure they did a great job. I'm not watching that. I am going to go with Kung Fu. The legend continues. Nice. With kickboxer Peter's sugarfoot cutting ham has the guest star in this episode. Nice. Much better than the Andretti's. Oh, yeah. So I'm going with that. 9 30, did you go with coach? No, I went kids in the hall again. Did you ever watch coach? Yeah. Yeah, a couple of times. Did your dad watch coach more importantly? Not really. You know, like every once in a while, but I don't think he was a faithful coach watching. Because it'd be interesting watching coach with a coach. Sure, yeah. Was he a football coach? He was a football coach. Yeah, I think it was a college football coach. Yeah, so. But it's entirely possible that it would have been the cut. You know, like if I watch a movie about a band or something, it's a totally fictional movie. Right. It'll be like, this is ridiculous. Like band slam. So it's entirely possible that my dad would watch coach and be like, that's not what it's like. John, this didn't happen that way. Yeah, that would be fascinating. He kind of watched like blue chips or something with your dad. And you'd just be like, who's just this bullshit? Oh, no. Who's yours is in the kind of-- That's the gospel? Yeah. OK. He's a big who's just been-- Well, but he will tear Rudy to pieces. What about Teen Wolf? How can you not like Teen Wolf? I mean-- He's not like, this is not an accurate portrayal of a werewolf on a basketball team. I don't know if that's what he does. Werewolves can't jump that high. This is not regulation where we'll throw it. No, no. I would-- you know, I never met your dad, but I kind of want to watch Teen Wolf with him. So him doing a commentary on Teen Wolf will be entertaining. It's fun to watch a lot of things with him, yeah. He's one of those guys. Like I said, he has a good sense of humor. He laughs and stuff, but he's one of those guys where if he starts laughing really hard at something, you just automatically start laughing. Because you're intimidating or it's just it's fun. No, you're psyched. You're psyched that he's so-- he thinks something so funny. OK, gosh, yeah, excellent. So that's what I would have gone with that night as well at 9.30, kids in the halls, such a good show. Thursday night, eight o'clock, where you going? Thursday night, I would go with The Simpsons. This is the classic Simpsons on Thursday night when it was up against Cosby for a while. The court moved to Sundays. Your mother had no problem with you. No, no problem with The Simpsons. Even though probably a lot of the stuff she had problems with in other shows was probably in The Simpsons. Yeah, there was-- like I said, there was no rhyme or reason to what I wasn't allowed or was allowed to see. Would she just write it off because it was a cartoon and figure, oh, this is OK for kids? Probably. Yeah, I think that happened a lot of cases. I imagine. I would have gone with Cheers. It's the final season. This one, Norm, gets his dream job as a taster for a brewery while Rebecca gets her first taste of gambling and losing when the bar gets a new slot machine. Fantastic show. I've never met anyone that doesn't like Cheers. Yeah, no, it's fantastic. But The Simpsons was great as well. And this one, Homer's brain, serves him well in negotiation with Burns over the Union Dental Plan, which is of great importance to his braces bound Lisa and Dr. Joyce Brothers makes Cameo. A woman who I never understood why she was famous but was on TV all the time. Yeah. All the time. And in the Nikugam movies. Yeah. Yeah. Just bring out Dr. Joyce Brothers. 830, what are you going with? 830, I went with Wings. I love Wings. It's such a good show. Wings is such a good show. Big fan of Wings. Takes place on Nintucket, which you have been to. Mostly probably to see where Wings took place. Yeah, of course. Hoping to find Lloyd the mechanic. Yes, Thomas Hayden Church, AKA Venom. And it's funny how you see all of those Wings people all over the place. Oh, there's great actors. That was a great ensemble cast. Yeah. Really funny show, totally underrated show. Who was actually the blonde chick there? That's Crystal Bernard. She, I feel like I didn't see her pop up much. She wasn't in a ton after. But Wings was like her third or fourth sitcom. OK, good job. And she was in a show called It's a Living for a long time. She pops up and she's in slumber party massacre too. That sounds great. She may not have seen. But would be a good bargain bin too or possibly. Yeah, that would be a great movie night watch. Absolutely. This one is Wings Joe tries sensitivity and Brian Jealousy. And there are attempts to find the key to Alex. He definitely sees through them both. This is when they added a sort of love triangle, third person to this show, which still was good. Wings was always consistently good. It was a great show. Yeah. 9 PM, what are you going with? 9 PM, I went with Cheers. Cheers, great show. They're doing two Cheers that night because it's last season. They're just going for whatever. This one, Cliff and Norm agreed to videotape a family reunion that's being held in the bar. Frazier goes on, what do he thinks is a date with his secretary? Good B story, good episode. Cheers always solid the whole way through. And then at the end of the season, that thing that they did where they were like the question and answer, the thing that they did. Yeah. Like do dance and stuff. Fourth wall breaking. Woody is wasted in the back. And they're laughing about dance and hair and stuff. Oh my god. They're having like an Irish wake for the kind of cheers. Oh my god, that was hilarious. Yeah, I love cheers. And it ended on a high level. I was the first show that ended where I didn't feel sad. Yeah, sure. I mean, it was still on five times a day. And right. And maybe that was part of it. Yeah. So 9.30, going with Seinfeld? I am going with Seinfeld. Love Seinfeld. You got to talk about it in school the next day. Yeah, exactly. So Seinfeld is a show that is funny. I loved it. But when I watch it now, I don't want to go so far as to say as it doesn't hold up. But it's the most dated '90s show I can think of. You know what's funny is I've experienced something like that as well. Some jokes would happen or something that I would be like, oh, that's just very dated or whatever. And then I thought about it. And I was like, well, this is probably the first time that that sort of thing happened. Oh, yeah. You did it so many times. And I think that's a factor, too. And when I say this, they do people like, oh, yeah. They dressed. I'm like, no one's like the tone, like the vibe of it. It seems so famous. Now that's been done a bunch of times. But like at the time, I guess, there was-- It's become the norm, yeah. No Cheers reference there. And this one, George gets desperate when the network president played by Bob Balavan, who is one of my favorites, sort of character actors. So funny, yeah. He directed a few movies. One of which was a movie called "My Boyfriend's Back" about-- Oh, yeah. Yeah. Which was when he directed that. He directed that. He directed that. It's funny. It was Disney movie, actually. Touchstone Pictures, Disney movie. Speaking of Disney Hart movies. He also directed a movie called "Parents" takes place in the '50s. And Randy Quaid plays a cannibalistic father. Definitely not seen that. Terrifying movie. But weirdly, sort of satirical and funny. But very, very dark comedy. Bob Balavan does some weird stuff. Doesn't play his game. Jerry deals for his broken watch. Elaine is a hot topic in the office of her psychiatrist boyfriend. Great show. This is a great episode when they're pitching the network shows. I love this season. Kramer's trying to convince the psychiatrist that they're dating-- Yes, yes. --or the hell they're dating at. Great episode. I will say I was intrigued also by a Fox show at this time called "Down the Shore," which was about a bunch of guys that live in a beach house. And I'm obsessed with Summer in Beach House. Oh, OK, good. Yeah, sure. Summer rental? I watched it last night. Oh, nice. One of my favorite John Candy movies. Great. What a Colorado's Vast, a great movie. Friday night, the final night of the week, 8 o'clock. Where do you go? Family matters. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. Yeah. I'm so sorry. We'll see what the episode is. Did you enjoy "Family Matters" or did you just watch it? No, I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it at that age. It's funny to think about it now. It's difficult to watch. Crazy. I mean, the show started, and I've mentioned this before, but it started as kind of a blue color to come about a family. And it was the classic "Taken Over by a Side" character. Became the whole focus of the show. And it just got awful. Just out and out awful. So this one is when an overlooked Harriet goes on a housework strike, Eddie's math teacher drops by unexpectedly and concludes that Eddie's being mistreated at home. Classic sitcom. Yeah, that's pretty classic, yeah. I do like that they didn't mention Erkel et al. Yeah, that's good. And there's no more Stefan Erkel or an Erkel robot. Yes, as in earlier in the week, did you ever-- Now, this isn't fresh in my mind, so there's going to be a lot of misinformation in here. Fair enough. But within the last year, Jalil White there was on Dancing with the Stars. Was he? He did some sort of dance where it had something to do with Steve Erkel, Stefan Erkel, cool nerd thing. Oh, dear God. After the dance, they were talking to him. Yeah. He starts crying, talking about Stefan Erkel and how it was like-- Oh, my. --self-confident, so like-- Oh, man, self-confident. Man, self-confident. That's dumb. Off the front of the club. Yeah, and again, I don't know that I have all the facts correct in there, but-- I don't care if you all have the facts correct. It was definitely something like that. I'm going to have to talk this down. Didn't mention being Sonic the Hedgehog at all in his tears. He did not. OK, yeah, that would have snapped him out of it. I would go with Time Tracks, which was a rip-off of Time Cup. This episode, Bernie Casey's in it from Revenge of the Nerds and Dr. Black and Mr. Hype. The Black's Bloitation Dr. Jekyll Ripoff. This one is Darren steps into the boxing ring to stop a pugilist from 2193 whose futuristic abilities give him an unfair advantage over opponents. A futuristic pugilist. Yes, I know future boxing, and it's unfair to everybody. He knows future boxing. There's no way we can't handle this future boxing technique. He's probably from-- Think about it. It's probably true. Dude's used to fight like this. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's definitely been some evolution. It'd be fun if he's like, future boxing from 2014. We can't do it. 830, what are you going with? 830, step by step. Yeah, didn't do major dad. Nope. You went with the [INAUDIBLE] I was a step by step fan. JT's new woman is a cool biker chick who wants to be treated. Like a lady. Meanwhile, Elle yearns for her first bra. Sure. I'm intrigued, aren't it? My first introduction to Patrick Duffy, you know-- Man from Atlantis? Yeah. Dallas. You know, when I think about step by step, I feel like it was very confusing. You think about the Brady bunch with all those kids and how they kept it, like, you know everybody was going, step by step, I can't keep track of everybody. Who's kid too? Yeah, I feel like they didn't do a good job of sort of, I don't know, setting up little things there. Brady bunch. The girls came with the woman. The boys came with the guy. Sure. Step by step, they mixed. There was one girl, two boys. And there was that older kids. Yeah, it was a confusing show. What was going on? Yeah. I would not have gone on step by step. Just not a-- the show, I don't know. I would have gone with comics only, especially because the guests that night, Yakov Smirnoff. Yakov Smirnoff. Good old Yakov. Yep. So 9 o'clock, what are you going with? 9 o'clock, I would have been watching part of the Big East Tournament with my father. So you've passed up sightings. So this is March. That's March Madness, the Big East Tournament. March Madness, yeah. So sightings is the sort of sleazier unsolved mysteries that Fox ran. OK. Just the UFO and ghost stories. Oh, see, now with this word, today, that's all I would-- I would forgo the Big East Tournament for a UFO sighting show any time. Do you believe in UFOs and ghosts about stuff? Ghosts. I don't know about ghosts. What about alien ghosts? But alien things, I'm pretty solid on my thoughts on that. Do you think they've visited Earth? Sure, sure, yeah. OK. So this episode is, friends who claim to have been abducted by aliens on numerous occasions and used for research included audio tapes of the group's hypnotic regression sessions. Interesting. Did you ever see fire in the sky? Oh, yeah. Terrifying. That sheet goes over his face so he can't-- but that stuff doesn't scare you? I know, that was scary as well. That was absolutely terrifying. Because that's kind of the ultimate stranger danger. Right, yeah, that's true. You were getting thrown in a van, something with a space van. Yeah, something about-- Something about abductions never, never freaked me out. Like, I never was that-- I was never like, oh, I could get abducted. By a stranger, but not by an answer. Right, by a stranger, certainly not by a spaceship. And space aids is the worst kind of aids. The worst kind of aids that they teach you about in the '80s. But like, it's funny, you know, I watch a lot of the UFO things and stuff like that. And it certainly doesn't help that most of the people who have said that they've been abducted are complete just numb skulls. Yeah. Yeah, like, there's this guy-- I don't know if you listen to Howard Stern at all. This guy, Riley Martin, who has his own show, and he claims that he's been abducted numerous times since he was young and everything. But he's like a drunk. Yeah, like, I'm surprised by this. Yeah, it's like it's difficult to believe somebody's saying that when they're slurring their words. Yeah, very few credible people go with the alien things. But I suppose you could say he drinks because he was abducted by the alien. It's true, it's true, it's tricky in the egg. A theory I hope is never tested. Never. So that's what I'm going with. And at 9.30, are you still watching the tournament? 9.30, I was still watching the Big East tournament. It's funny, though, at 10 p.m. And there was actually another after one of the kids in the halls on Wednesday, there was an MTV unplugged. And then at 10 p.m. on Friday, there's a UMTV raps. OK. I wasn't allowed to watch MTV, but I would attempt. At this point, my parents would have retired from wherever we were watching television. And my brother and I would be posted up with whatever the Big East or whatever on the previous channel, whatever, approved television, stored in the previous channel button. And then we would be trying to watch whoever was on MTV unplugged or UMTV raps, not because we were in to rap, but just because we needed to watch some sort of TV. So that was forbidden fruit? Yeah, absolutely. So that was tough. And you would be the lookout? Yeah, so he would sit in the couch. I'd be on the right, he'd be on the left. So I had, if I just turned over my shoulder, I could see the main entrance to where the TV room was. And so he would just be watching a UMTV raps the whole time and every 30 seconds. What was your signal, if they were coming to a code word? No, I'd usually just tap them in the leg or something like that. OK, sign only hit the thing. Good move. Did you ever hear a cod? Yo, yeah. What was the-- were they like, I know what you've been doing? It was just like, you know, it was like, I told you you're not allowed to watch this. Right, that just makes you want to watch it more. And then you go and watch it. Did you watch it? Did you ever get grounded or anything like that? I never got grounded. You know, I lived in such constant fear of just getting yelled at in general. That's enough. That, yeah, that I never really caused too much trouble. And I had a brother that was a year older than me, so I watched him-- He took the legs. Yeah, like, I watched him do a bunch of stuff and get yelled at, and I'd be like, oh, keep that in my mind. This lesson. Yeah, you have to do that a different way than he did it. Now, weirdly, given what we discussed at the beginning of the episode, there is a special feature in this TV guide where they review famous celebrities workout tapes. Oh, man. So just quickly, I'll tell you the ones they review. They review Dixie Carter's Unworkout. Unworkout. Unworkout. Cindy Crawford shaped your body, which is a tape I owned at the time. Sure, I bet Cindy's was a big one. She's in a bathing suit on the beach. Angela Lansbury's positive moves. What? Yep. Mary Lou Hennard's dance aerobics. Hey, Mary Lou Hennard still looks good. She does. I believe her regime is good. Absolutely. And Jenny Garth's body in progress. Jenny Garth. Yeah. I know too. She got pretty young, huh? She did. She got into there, and she has seen my team. Body in progress, OK, I guess I get that. Makes sense, yeah. And shares video fit, feisty, and fabulous. Does it say who got the biggest right up here? So they're all sort of-- they're pretty even keel about everybody. OK. And they interview everyone. TV guides not looking this much. So they say, Mary Lou Hennard, they say, dancing fools will love Hennard's fast-paced workout, though some critics argue that her moves are old-fashioned. Total creeps. We love watching this chick dance around in lingerie. For Jenny Garth, it says, Garth's low-impact aerobic workout is described as a safe and effective fat burner, followed up with sensible advice for young adults about healthy eating habits. Are you a dude who loves 90210? Watch this instead. Then Angela Lansbury, it says, experts agree with Lansbury that the secret to fitness for women over 50 is to keep moving. Her program gets high marks for gentle stretches and like toning to loosen up and energize. And then Dixie Carter says Carter's unworkout is praised for its soothing breathing and stretching yoga-style exercises, which may not help to reduce, but will encourage relaxation. Sounds boring. And finally, critics charge that Crawford's poor form and inaccurate instruction make her body toning video unsafe. Oh, fine. I'm safe. That's the greatest thing I've ever had. Yeah, that would make me want to check it out. Holy cow. This video's dangerous. Absolutely no homework done on how to do-- we're going to do this video. What do I got to do today? At 830, you're going to record a workout video. Yeah. Should I know anything about it? Nope. Go ahead. This was going to-- all right, if you line these women up and you go, which one of these women do you want to look like? Yeah. People aren't going to go Angela Lansbury. No. They're going to say Cindy Crawford. So they probably don't need to do the research. They're just going to sell videos. Cindy Crawford. Remember to lift in a skit jerking motion when you're back. Hoes and pose and arch. So finally, Tim, as you know, a TV guide, it's not just informative, it cheers in its ears. It has opinions. Yeah. So I will read you the cheers and cheers for this week and see if you agree or disagree. Got it. It's a split week. We got two cheers, two cheers. Cheers to Home Front's Homecoming. On March 9th, after an entire season of Now You See It, Now You Don't, ABC returns the snazzy post-World War II soap opera to its time slot. And the difference? Yeah. I mean, that sounds awful. Cheery for a post-World War II, like-- Tama. Yeah, it turned pretty dismal at the end of that. Yeah. Cheers to the biggest anti-climax on TV in memory. Maggie and Joel finally hitting the hay, literally, on CBS's Northern Exposure. I was never a Northern Exposure fan, unfortunately. Love it. I loved it. But, well, they won't they once do? Not that I didn't like it. I just never saw it. Yeah. You don't know if you liked it. I don't know if I liked it. I could be unsafe. So I could cheer the hell out of that scenario right there. But it would be-- you didn't do the proper research, and it would be unsafe to make that claim. It's true. Jerky. Jerky. Jerky, bad form. Jerky and unsafe. Cheers. And congratulations to James Duhan and Bob Berkowitz for some overdue accolades in the recognition of his years as an inspiration to a generation of engineering students. Duhan, AKA Scotty, the chief engineer in the original Star Trek, was recently presented with an honorary doctorate in engineering by the Milwaukee School of Engineering. Likewise, Berkowitz, host of CNBC's Real Personal, will receive a Distinguished Service Award from the American Board of Sexology, which apparently is the thing, for his honesty and integrity in dealing with human sexuality. So you could have watched that and it would have told you. That just goes to show that you can get a degree in or become a master of anything if enough people know who you are. Yes, if enough people like the show you're on. Yeah. Go on CNBC, talk about sex. Here's a degree. I'm hoping someday that my old college that I left to join the band would just come calling me one day and say, hey, man, as far as work is turned, you're as good as graduated, so give this to your mom and she'll get off your back. Here's your music degree you weren't allowed to get. And finally, cheers to PBS for serving up one of its hottest properties, lukewarm, undermining the anticipation surrounding prime suspect was the news that it had been censored for US audiences. Colorful epithets uttered by scrappy detective Jane Tennyson that caused nearly a raised eyebrow in England were changed to the more innocuous baloney and oh, shoot. We're not in favor of letting four-letter words fly on TV, but why produce a gritty adult crime drama and then remove the grip? Baloney. Yeah. That's a weird thing that they would make-- Because they probably jeered NYPD Blue for saying, bullshit, because it's British, it's OK. But that's weird that they would make-- oh, so it's a British show. Yes, prime suspect with Helen Mirren. OK, oh, OK, with Helen Mirren, sure. I'd watch her work out video. Yeah, absolutely. She's got to be doing something right now. Yeah, yeah. Not, I probably bet. She's very safe and-- Her form's probably great. Smooth, yeah. That's weird that they're-- I mean, OK, I suppose I understand, but you know that that's the way that it's going to be television in America. Like, I mean-- Just deal with it. What are you expecting, I guess? You're watching prime suspect. I guess they didn't have a DVD they could watch. Yeah, right? Yeah, right? Yeah. Well, thank you so much for doing the show. Oh, please. Thank you for having me. [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] If the job kept my face, maybe he'll write a new theme song for this show. I can't pay him to do that, so maybe he won't. And he gets big bucks for that sort of thing. But Tim is very funny. He's a great guy. He's also working on a podcast of his own where he'll talk to comedians about the music they listen to growing up. So I'm very eager to be on that show and also to listen to it, because I really enjoy that concept. And I think Tim will do a great job with it. So as always, please email me at Canadaicandread.com, rate the show, review the show, share it with friends, like us on Facebook. You may win some classic television memorabilia from my personal collection. And we'll see you again next week on TV Guidance Counselor. [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] [MUSIC PLAYING] Jerky and unsafe.