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Welcome to the BS podcast. It is Wednesday. I think it's February 17th. What day is it?
Tate, February 17th. Tate, you're using his mic. Good job. First, I want to talk about, we announced the new content website, theringer.com, which I've been planning with a bunch of my old, great colleagues and a couple of other people for the last few months.
Actually, I guess the story goes back to last May. I stopped working for ESPN, second week of May after 14 years. That's the story for another time. That story will be told.
Since then, I signed with HBO. I started planning my own television show for them and had to figure out what that TV show was, which I think I'm pretty close to having had figured out. Who I wanted to work with on that side. I also started innovating with them on the HBO and on the on-scripted side.
That's been great. They've been awesome to deal with. I hope the show that we end up with ends up half as good as they've been to deal with. They're awesome.
They're as good as advertised. That wasn't the only thing I was doing. Over the course of the last time I was, I created my own media company, which is complicated. There's a lot of stuff I didn't know, a lot of stuff I've learned.
I've been researching it really since September 2014. I got suspended by ESPN. I realized that I could not stay there in all probability and then I had to figure out what I wanted to do next with my life. I had been talking to dozens of people.
In the business, people who invest in stuff, all kinds of things, just trying to figure out what the landscape was and trying to figure out the best way to fund a company like that, the best way to do it, how you would structure it, how you would roll things out, things like that. I started, I knew that I wanted to do a website, but I wasn't necessarily sure I was going to do it because the reality is that the HBO show is so important for right reasons. It just can't fail and it's going to take up a huge chunk of my time. I just didn't want to do a website unless I knew I had people that I trusted 100%.
In October, I ended up hiring four people that I loved working with at Grantlin. Sean Fennessy, who's going to be the editor and chief of this new website, Chris Ryan, who's his right hand man who you've heard on the channel 33 a few times, who's a really creative guy. The two of those guys were really the two of the people that I'd gravitated toward during the last couple of years at Grantlin creatively in a lot of different ways. Then Mallory Rubin, who worked at Grantlin for the last two years, she's going to be the deputy editor and Juliet Lipman, who originally was working at McSweeney's and we started doing the quarterly with her and we loved working with her and we ended up hiring her.
She's another one who's great to work with and also really good on podcast as a side project. It was those four people that in October, it just seemed like it was time to get going. I had the resources to hire four people and those were the first four. We spent the next few months trying to figure out things like name a name for the website, where this website would be located, what it would be about, and all these different things.
At the same time, I started building a podcast network that includes this podcast. I had to figure out how to do this podcast. These are things I did not know how to do. That was the month of September, basically.
How am I going to do this podcast? Where's it going to be? What kind of equipment am I going to have? All this stuff happens really fast.
All of a sudden, in the beginning of October, I'm doing four podcasts in a week. We're just getting it out into the world. Tate's working for me all of a sudden, who I just met a few weeks ago, who's only 22. We had to do that whole thing.
Where's it going to be? Is it going to be on iTunes? Is it going to be in SoundCloud? Who's going to sell it?
Had to figure out all that stuff. I had to figure out, all right, if I launch a company, how are people going to have health benefits? Are they going to have a 401k? It's just a lot of stuff.
That's why I haven't written anything really since last month. The last column I wrote was about Tim Duncan. I did the Obama thing for GQ, but that was mostly a transcript. All this stuff is a full-time job and then some.
It's overwhelming. On top of it, it was really hard. It was the first couple months after I left the ESPN, just because I'd spent five years of my life planning that old site and hiring everybody for it. It became part of my life to go to that office to see everybody.
I think we were an exceptionally close website in a lot of ways, and then all of a sudden, it just ends. That's a hard thing to deal with, too, because I would compare it to probably what it's like for somebody to get traded from a team or to have a TV show get canceled or to have a movie finish filming. It's impossible to explain how hard it is until you've been through it. It was just weird to know that all these people that I cared about were working at this office.
That was 15 minutes away from my house, and that was it, and I wasn't part of it anymore. It was a crazy, crazy, crazy few months. One of the best things I did, I hired Eric Weinberger from the NFL Network, who's fantastic to work with me as the president of this new thing that we're building. Then we hired a somebody named Jeffrey Chow to be the COO, and they've been able to handle a lot of the stuff they're great to work with.
They're creative guys trying to figure out how to build this out, because it's impossible to do everything. You need good people around you. That's the best thing I learned at Grantland, is that you're as good as the people around you, and that's it. You're the sum of everyone else's parts, which is what we've tried to recreate with everything we're doing.
Speaking about the website quickly, we didn't want to create a 2.0 version of Grantland. I think we have too much respect for what that site was and what that site meant to all of us. I don't think it's a good idea just in general to run an idea back. I think the site has to be a little different, a little more modern.
I'm happy to talk about that down the road, but it's not going to be the same site. I'm not going to say it's going to be a better site, but we want it to be just as good, and we want it to feel different than the old site was. There will be more details on that to come, but we want to find original voices. We want to find people who can spitball and collaborate with editors and writers, and we want to hire good people.
We had a no-assal world at Grantland. We didn't want to hire people that were difficult or mean-spirited, or there was a certain type of person we gravitated to. I think it's fair to say we're going to do that again. I guess late October, November, December, January, we were working out of this temp house that we rented in Beechwood Canyon.
That was basically month by month. It was pretty interesting. There was a lot of days, I wasn't there all the time. It was the four of them just kind of pointing out what the site would look like and what kind of writers we want to have and a game plan for everything.
I think the hardest thing was figuring out the name. It's really hard to name stuff where you realize is that a lot of the good names are already taken. A name that you might like, you can't trademark, it's just unbelievably complicated. You naturally hate every name until you hear it a hundred times.
I hated Grantland. I made the mistake of actually saying that before we launched. I really disliked it. It just sounded too artsy-fartsy to me.
Within a year, I ended up really liking the name because it sounded like a place you would go. I'm going to Grantland. It sounded like a destination. We ended up on the ringer for a couple of very easy reasons.
One was that it's an easy name to remember and it's an easy name to spell, which is really the two staples you want from a website. There are a couple other reasons that we liked it. Just in general, Chris Ryan always said this joke that whenever we said a website name that he was going to see Martin Scorsese as your Quentin Tarantino and he was telling that person's assistant, I'm here to see blank. That's how we would try to figure out if the website name were.
One name that I think I might have even been drunk about the URL for binge mode. The other four thought that was hysterical that I bought that URL. It's an embarrassing error. I don't know why I bought it.
I lost my mind for two minutes. Chris was like, my name is Chris Ryan. I'm here to see Mr. Tarantino.
I'm from binge mode. You just know it's a bad name. Eventually, we just all like the ringer. It made sense that somebody would be like, yeah, I'm here to see Mr.
Bell check. I'm Bill Simmons from the ringer. We just became the name. Yes, we know it was a Johnny Knoxville movie from 2005.
That was actually the biggest drawback to the name. Then we realized that probably even Johnny Knoxville has forgotten he was in that movie. I think we're good on that front. If you go to the ringer.com, you can see a splash page with our logo.
You can see our contact info. You can see a form to sign up for the ringer's newsletter. We're going to release this newsletter. I think up to three times a week starting in mid-March.
It's not going to be a website jammed in a newsletter. We don't want to flood your email box with 7,000 words of text. It's a way. We have writers that we've already hired.
We have people that are creative and we're not going to have a site for a few months. We wanted a place that people could go and read quicker takes and lists and fun stuff. If something crazy happens and then they'll be a lottery, I'm going to need a place to write. I think it'll be a fun, short-term alternative until we actually have a site.
I don't want to give too much away, but so far we've hired eight were former Grantlanders on top of the four I already had. Or we already had, I should say. Craig Gaines, Brian Curtis, Ryan O'Hannell, Riley McAtty, Dean Hiao, Joe Fuentes, Tate Fraser, who's just chimed in earlier. Then we had Enid Greenwald on the Channel 33 site.
Then we hired Amanda Diamonds for our Culture site and we have a lot more people to hire. Probably a few names from the past that you may or may not recognize. I think we have a chance to do something really cool. I think one thing that's a really fun wrinkle for all of us is the fact that my show and all the people were going to hire for that show and everybody were hiring on the website site, at least the LA people, we're all going to be in the same building and the same vicinity.
The goal is to build something of a creative hub that branches out in a bunch of different directions. You're talking linear TV, digital TV, podcast, writing, social, brand content, scripted, non-scripted, everything. I think we have a chance to pull that off. Hopefully my HBO show will be good enough to be the face of that entire enterprise.
It's a remarkable opportunity for me. HBO does not give out that many shows. It's a little daunting, but it's also awesome. I realize fully that I'm extremely fortunate to have all these chances.
Also, me and ESP and obviously Denen Well, it's fun to take shots at them for time and time, but none of this happens. If a long time ago, people like John Skipper and John Washington take a chance on me, and I got some great opportunities to do some great stuff with them from 2009 to 2013, it was a really great place to work. In the last two years, it wasn't. That doesn't mean that I don't value a lot of the times that we had there and a lot of the stuff we did.
I wish it wasn't so petty now, and maybe that will change down the road. I do think there were some great people that I met along the way at ESP and that really helped shake the way that I'm thinking about all this stuff. This isn't like a, for me, it's like this is just the evolution of where everything was going. I have really high hopes for the ringer.
You can help us out by going to the ringer.com. You can sign up for the newsletter and get our stuff. You can start following us on Twitter. It's at ringer, and you can start following us on Facebook as well.
We look forward to the next few months and hopefully years and seeing where this goes. This is great. I love this is for me. This is the best part, the unknown.
Trying to build stuff, trying to figure out who to work with, trying to create stuff from scratch, trying to innovate, spit-boggling meetings. I've gone through this a few times now. At Jimmy's show, I went through it with 30 for 30. I went through it with Grantland.
Now I'm going through it now simultaneously with the HBO show and then all the other stuff we're doing on the ringer side. It's really, really, really fun. Really exhilarating. I just think when you have the chance to create something that leaves an impact, what's better than that?
Anyway, the ringer.com. Check it out. We're going to call Robert Smaggle in a second, but first I want to talk about meundies.com. Home of the world's most comfortable underwear.
It's two times softer than cotton. It's actually made out of a fabric called Modal. I've been wearing their underwear and their boxers. Really, all the time.
You know what's nice? You know what else is liberating, speaking of liberating? Throwing out your old underwear. Because men hold on to their underwear way too long.
I can't even tell you what my dad's underwear looks like. It's one of the scenes in seven. I threw out all my old underwear. I adopted the beundies.
Now, I did this for selfish reasons because they sent me meundies, but I love wearing them. I love these French terrier pants. Am I wearing the French terrier jogger pants right now? Yes, you are.
You have a witness. Tate would never lack. Except for any says he's not mad at can-new for choking in the Super Bowl. That's the only time Tate will lack.
He doesn't want to talk about can-new. But meundies has dozens of styles. They have limited edition, original prints. And right now, they have a pretty good deal.
You could save up to $8 per pair with a subscription. Shipping is free in the US and Canada. And if you go to meundies.com slash BS, you get 20% off your first order. Should I still mention, if you don't love your first pair of meundies, they're free.
No questions asked. Good company. I like them. Meundies.
Now, without further ado, let's call Robert Smigo. Joining us today is my friend Robert Smigo who just did the Triumph election special. Is it Triumph's election special 2016? Is that the official title?
Close enough. Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's what it is. The logo says- It's all done in a hurry. No, it's great.
And it's on Hulu. And I like Hulu. I recommend Hulu. But I really recommend this show.
I thought it was fantastic. I actually thought it was too good. I felt like it was 85 minutes. And I felt like I would have been totally happy with 40.
And you gave me so much content and so many laughs. But I have a- I know what to do with the content. I was shot 18 remotes in two and a half weeks. There's other stuff that didn't make it.
I just figured people aren't going to watch this thing from start to finish. So I put a couple of things that I thought were a little extraneous at the end. Even though the Hulu people, it was their favorite sketch, was the one where I am pretending that he's part of Chris Christie's advanced team. Right.
And just makes a thousand fat jokes prepping a diner for a Chris Christie meeting read. So I told you, I watched the first 35 minutes and then I watched the rest of it last night. And as I was watching it, my son came over who's eight. And he's like, what's this?
And it was right as the microaggression college. Oh, not a good one for your kid. Oh, no. He loved it.
He absolutely loved it. He was laughing. He didn't understand why the puppet was talking. He thought the puppet was real.
Oh, no. And so he watched the rest of it. And I haven't heard him. I don't think he understood half the jokes, but he was laughing.
But when you reinforce Chris Christie's toilet seat, he almost died. Like he rolled out the- That's the one I can show my kid. Yes. That's the one I can show my kid.
The reinforced toilet seat hit every ounce of his funny bone. But I thought- Sadly mine too. That was my favorite bit. So- So- We're stuffing the toilet with a picket and a f Yeah.
Whole big winner. So you shoot this thing. You're basically on the campaign trail with all the candidates. You could not have picked a better election to do this.
Yeah. I had to jump in. Couldn't- I had about 50 votes. 35 of them were the Douger family.
Right. So he was willing- It was very funny because it happened upon him sort of host to CM1 morning. We were mentioning and then I read, you know, we were following the schedule and it says, there's a Huckabee huddle in South Carolina and it's a pancake breakfast. And I was like, well, Mike, I could be a pancake breakfast.
We got to see him get in there because it's inherently funny on account of he's bad. And then so the guy who was his campaign manager, his digital head of digital, Hogan, was his campaign. And he recognized me. I was shocked.
He recognized me. Wouldn't let me shoot. He was a fan of triumph and you want to meet the governor afterward. Nice.
And we struck a conversation and I told him we had some funny ideas for candidates who liked to pitch. And so I got to meet how could be heard. And I pitched him a few of these ideas. And he went for it.
And you know, that's one of my favorite pieces because I just can't believe some of the things he let me say to him. You know, just mocking kind of things. You know, saying stuff like you would a pie eating contest. Right, right.
You know, this isn't something you can just laugh off some nonsense like evolution. And he just went with it. He didn't have a choice. Sorry.
He didn't have a choice. But he did have a choice in terms of like what jokes he was willing to say. The piece is it was a brilliant writer Rob Fried came up with this premise. Triumph was going to prep, you know, and it was really like the heart of his jumping in because Donald Trump has made triumph behavior valid.
Self-comic is actually appropriate and what needs to be done. And it had just taken the fact that it had gotten to this point was why I, you know, really felt because like there was a Wall Street Journal article last fall calling him Trump the insult of comic dog. And it just became apparent that I had to do this. And how could be like I would give jokes to Huckabee as triumph, you know, he would answer a question and I'd say no, you've got to hurt somebody, you know, you have to say things mean me.
And so there's like one, it happens like within 20 seconds Brian Vereads him a Rick Santorum joke, which is incredibly crude. And how could be like, I want to read that. Well, okay, how about a Fiorena joke? And then he reads the, he reads a joke about a cop 61 years old, which in dog years is 61 years old.
Right. And the audience actually grown. There are jokes you just can't do anymore. But it was just funny to me what how could be was, you know, classic.
It's always that way. People get hung up on words. And you know, that's the way it's always been at SNL. I've had to deal with the standards people hung up on the specifics and not the ideas which are sometimes way more.
Well, my favorite, I mean, I love the whole show. I really, I really laughed so many times. I rarely laugh when I watch TV anymore too. I feel like this grizzled season comedy veteran that just can't, you can't get a reaction out of me.
And this one just hits my funny bone. But you had this, you had this bit where you went to the University of New Hampshire. And you met with all these college students and the whole topic was microaggression and what you can say and not say. Right.
It's like this university what they call the bias-free language guide, which describes the word like American as inappropriate because it's offensive to South America. And, you know, the word poor is inappropriate. I mean, some of this stuff I'm sure will prove right on the line, but it's pretty extreme. And the school itself has kind of a more re-language guide at this point.
But yeah, there's, you know, this is something that in the last year and I was, even though it was off the, it wasn't part of the election, I just weren't going to be to do that one. And also, public and candidates in the race that really, anything I could do to make fun of, was like throw it in my way. I actually thought it made sense in the context of the special. And yeah, it also illuminated for me, you know, whatever's happening in society with how skittish everybody is about everything at this point.
And there's no laughter in anything and everybody's so super serious and afraid to offend anyone and everyone's apologizing all the time. And yeah, it's also like it's an industry in itself, outrage, just becoming an actor. And that's been going on for years and years. But in the last, I would say 18 to 24 months, it's just gone up seven levels.
And what's funny is roasts and triumph and I think Howard Stern to some degree. And there's just a couple people who have become exempt. But if you watch this, if you watch that microaggression thing, like it's super uncomfortable in a good way. It's really funny.
And you're handing out name tags to these people. You didn't even tell what all the name tags were, but then when you were showing people later, you could see them. One guy was JV Drake. But I was actually disappointed that we didn't do a close up of that.
We would have gone a huge laugh. You could see it though. But these kids, they were so kind of, I just didn't know where it was going. I've never seen anything quite like that.
I didn't know there was one kid in the front row, a guy who looked like he was going to just start punching triumph at all times. Was that the heavier kid? Yeah, he just seemed so angry. I know, you know, it was, and the only thing that's a bummer about that piece is that I go on YouTube and be comments and people are just, some of the people are just tearing into these kids.
Oh no. Betamales and Pussies and spoiled. I mean, everything people have been thinking about these kids being protected and entitled, all that stuff. They're just tossing it all on these kids.
And in fairness, I think the kids, I met the kids before we did the bit. I hadn't. I took about 10 minutes to talk to the kids because some of them didn't even know who triumph was. Triumph wasn't been on network TV in six years.
So not everybody watches TBS regularly, who's like 19 years old. Some of them didn't know who triumph was. Some did. The whole thing was a goof on some level.
And they asked me, how should we act? I mean, they were all, you know, we picked kids who, at least most of them, were kind of supportive of all these ideas. And I said, well, if you believe in these ideas, then don't act like you believe in them. But I think some of the kids maybe try a little extra hard to maintain their principles or at least have that.
Like some kids, I think, were trying not to laugh on purpose. And I couldn't tell afterward, like, okay, as this made it way too uncomfortable. The writers thought they liked it better this way. The kids weren't playing along that much.
No, it added a little edge to it. I thought it was really effective. Yeah, I mean, not used to that. I mean, usually when I do triumph, I always ask people in advance, God, okay, for me to talk like everything else I did, I went up to people and said, it's all right.
You might talk into this dog and, you know, most of the time people do laugh along. I think this and the Michael Jackson trial, where the kids I've ever done with triumph, either people's reaction. Triumph's never gotten punched, right? There was one guy.
There was one guy I remember in 2004, we actually got some money. The only other time I've ever attempted anything remotely like this in 2004, which was another very funny election, because the country, and I started the project in the summer during the convention. And we shot a week at the Democratic convention. And there was one guy who was, you know, we were just walking through Boston.
That was a, we surprised that I might have gotten punched in Boston. No, that would have been my first traffic. Yeah. It was the Boston convention.
And we were just, I was walking, making my way through the streets leading away from the convention center and interacting with some of the people dressed up in goofy outfits. And one guy, in one direction, I come across this guy and he's making cracks about Conan and Jay Leno. This is 2004. He's just this beautiful guy making jokes.
And then I go, come back and I'm making my way back to the arena. I guess it was the fleet center at the time. And now the guy I come up to him again and I say something, it's swinging at me. He's obviously had like seven beers in the interim, in the 45 minute interim.
Swinging at you or triumph? Swinging at me. I made some crack at him and I got just a little too close to his face. I'm like, oh, fuck man.
I'm going to immediately calm down and start apologizing. Do you worry about where comedy is going? Because like one of the things I watch, or one of the things that occurred to me as I was watching triumph was part of comedy is saying something you shouldn't say. That's what makes it funny.
It's like, oh, you said that or oh, you went there and now everyone's afraid to go anywhere. So what happens to comedy? If I'm under 25 right now, how am I supposed to think? Not complicated question.
And I think, you know, I don't necessarily think it's a bad thing entirely. I think, oh, here's something that's quite interesting. So like the most famous thing triumph ever did probably besides getting in trouble with Eminem was he went to the Star Wars opening in 2002, I think. I think it was the attack of the clones and everybody who likes triumph always quotes this, you know, makes fun of the nerds.
So one scene in that where it brings out Mr. Spock, just silently walks up the line and gives everyone the finger and what motivated the moment. But it's a really funny moment in the piece toward the end. And so there's a couple of ways.
In one version, he's holding up a sign that says fags and still walking silently was really making us laugh because that's the one we used when we screened at the night before and it killed with the audience. And here I go again, the standards people had no notes about. Couldn't have cared less about the word fags back then. People didn't look at it the same way.
People weren't enlightened. They didn't think of it as a, you know, they thought a fag it was a bad word, but they didn't think that was a bad word necessarily. And you know, everybody, we go back up to the writer's room and everybody's thrilled. And somebody comes up to us and says, you know, some of the interns were kind of bummed just about the just about.
And we were just puzzled. We were like, huh? Fags and fags. It's sort of its own thing now, isn't it?
And that's how it back man. And yeah, but I don't know. This is how they felt. And we had this other take with the finger and we decided, well, let's not.
We just decided to listen to them and replace it with the finger. And, you know, here is 12 years later, do you imagine if that there's no way anyone would laugh if that sign was held up now. I was thinking about like, you know, Eddie Murphy, his delirious concert. It's like, basically, yeah.
It was probably one of the seminal entertainment moments of my entire childhood in puberty and hilarious. I knew every single line. And, and if you watch the first 10 minutes now, it's staggering. It is the most homophobic, awful first 10 minutes you ever watched.
And in 1982 or 1983, didn't nobody care. It was like, oh, this is hilarious. Mr. T.
That's my point. It's like, I have no idea. Right. Anyone would be offensive in 15 years.
Yeah. So I feel obligated to, you know, not to write that shit off then to listen. And, you know, if people are going to complain, oh, fuck, I can't make gay jokes anymore. Well, find something else to make fun of, you know, try to make a lot of believe me.
Try and make plenty of gay jokes over the years. And, you know, I barely do anymore. And that's fine. I mean, you go back.
I don't make one of it. Yeah, you go back and you watch any roast, basically, from before 2010. And 27% of the jokes are about somebody being gay or somebody wanting to have sex with another man. And that's it.
Right. It was just a staple. It was like the number one go to joke. And Scott Thompson about this in the 90s, like, guys like Letterman, who's obviously my hero and would never do a crude joke, but he would do things like, ladies and gentlemen, Dan Rather and I want to have Mary.
Yeah. And it would get Ron and applause and laugh. And it's got about like, you know, we're kind of having it both ways. Aren't we?
We're kind of pretending we're laughing because it's, ha ha, this is deviant behavior. But the idea of David Letterman and Dan Rather, I guess you could say, well, just stuff of the old white guys. So it is funny to imagine them. There's something about, it seems like the one window for, and Stern, I think, has achieved this.
When just everybody's fair game and you just not going to spare anybody, which is, I think one of the reasons Triumph works, although I think as you just pointed out, the lines are a little different now. And they should be different, by the way. I think there are jokes that Stern won't make them to make. Yeah.
You know, and Stern goes out of his way to kind of make the point to, you know, express his tolerance of people. And, you know, his act has definitely changed on some level. And I just feel like you have to at least listen to what people, what younger people are saying. I mean, the flip side of this is there's a lot of progress.
I mean, would you rather these kids were, you know, racist? And I mean, I do feel like every generation gets less and less racist. And that's a great thing. I mean, I feel like, you know.
And way more tolerant. Yeah, way more tolerant. And I feel like, you know, it's just very easy to, you know, very glib to just write everything off as being politically correct, you know, as opposed to just calling it progress. Sorry.
I'm talking about progress. At the same time you hear my ringer play last train to Clarksville. I just, well, it's definitely better now. And I do think that it feels like we've gone through three stages, right?
Where stage one was basically, we'll say anything. Who cares if somebody gets hurt? Then the second stage was, wait, your feelings are hurt by that? Just complete surprise.
Oh, should I readjust the lines? And now we're in stage three, which is the right stage to be, which is what can I say? Where are the lines? How far can I go?
How far can I push? But really the ultimate goal is you don't want to, you don't want to hurt anybody. And you don't. But I mean, there are times when people are too sensitive.
I feel true. I mean, look at that. So I left it in on purpose in the Democratic debate. It's pretty crafting to do.
But sometimes I'll break my own rules if the joke is funny and ridiculous enough. It's triumphant, says it's sexist. And then later in the piece, there's a joke about Hillary's hair. Does she go to a picture of Stick Reader Roy?
And it's like, come on, you're just trying to be outraged now. Donald Trump's hair hasn't been made fun of. And meanwhile, a thousand jokes about other people's physical appearance. And that's special that people who aren't men.
Well, it's going to be a fascinating next five years for comedy. And I don't know where it's going. But what I like is, you're on Hulu. So you have a little more, if that's on NBC, I think it's a little different level of leeway.
And not as good for triumph. Yeah, I would think so. Although late night, I really had, I mean, it's around late night, you get a shocking amount of leeway and stuff that's on F&L now. Oh my God.
I mean, it's insane compared to when I was a writer there. Could you? What I would have been allowed to do. If you trotted out the ambiguous of Gaiduio in 2016, is there a backlash?
It's a bit different. I mean, I always thought of that as the reason I always enjoyed writing that was because I thought that sketch was primarily about everyone's obsession with each other's sexuality. And how people who think of themselves as sophisticated and progressive could be reduced to giggling teenagers when speculating on whether Tom Cruise is gay or whichever celebrity of the moment. And so that's what, to me, the whole piece was written around the shot of the bad guys looking at each other when they began to do something with the litany gay.
Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Big head. Yeah. So to me, that was entirely defensible for that reason. And then, secondarily, it was sort of about, and this joke's been made a thousand times, but it's still funny, just the thin line between aggressive male behavior, almost any fellow in Schwarzenegger movie in the 80s.
That's perfect. Tango and cash. Yeah. Tango and cash.
Oh, yeah. Yeah. That's probably the number one. But I think it would be fine because I think you're right.
I think it was you're making fun of something that wasn't what it seems like you were making fun of. Yeah. But at the same time, I still think in 2016, if you released that for the first time, there's probably a small amount. What is this?
Yeah. There could be. Yeah. I don't know.
I mean, and also again, like this next generation, they don't give a shit to this. No, definitely not. They definitely don't care. That's the flip side of the stuff people complain about.
Like, okay, but now they have these, you know, I have a nephew who goes to a school where there's a movement to have, you know, to get rid of he and she and use the term Z. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's that kind of stuff. Okay.
Yeah. So, you know, it's all about. And then that's my point. Yeah.
Yeah. It's from a good place. Comes from a good place. It's going to be all bad if we don't come up with a decent person to be the next president of the United States.
That could be all bad. I'm supposed to stay apolitical. Yeah. No, stay apolitical.
No, we should both stay apolitical. But it is, it is, it is, it's, these are scary times though. So you can get, you can get the triumph special on Hulu. I'm special.
I think that's putting it out there on the web for free right now. It's a million percent free. And if you can't find it, all these streaming sites, it's really hard to find stuff. All you have to do is just search at the top, just search for triumph.
And it's really hilarious. I really loved it. I really just talked to you on the pod and say hello and I'm checking with you. I really, I wanted more people to know about this special because I thought you did a great job.
You do. It's not really, there aren't a lot of ads for it. So I, you've done it out there. The first thing I've done, I think, as, as my own project that's gotten a really great review of everything else gets good reviews like 10 years later.
No, this is good right now. Well, here's the other one last thing and then we'll go. I was amazed that you did all of this in six weeks. Me too.
You take it. I told you I had Hulu. I told you this may stop or it could be a disaster because I've never like, I've always been a control free who like carefully polishes these trying for most. Basically, each one takes two weeks.
We write jokes and we go and we shoot it and then I'm sitting in the edit room for like four days or something. And this time we shot literally 15 or 18 within, within two and a half weeks. It was just a suicide mission on one hand. I thought, but fortunately, you know, we had a lot of good material.
I worked with some civil writers and I mean, I, I depended on them more than ever because you know, I'm literally producing the whole thing and like, you shoot something, then you're just trying to prepare for the next one as best you can within like, you know, I basically would fall asleep to the laptop every night on the rest of the week at like three hours of sleep. Did you, did you worry that because you know, you're older now, did you worry that you would have the energy slash stamina slash juice to make it through these six weeks? Because I'm in my mid 40s now and I'm already feeling it. You know, it's just you get older.
You're a little different. No, I know. No, it's like adrenaline keeps you going and like I said, I had a lot of support. Had great writers that made it easier.
But it's the adrenaline because the combination of this has to be funny and I'm. Right. I've got to beat up. Right.
Yeah. All right. So check it out. Hulu.
Just if you can't find it on the main page, just search for triumph. It's awesome. It's hilarious. I really enjoyed it and it was great talking to you.
I'll talk to you soon. All right. Thanks, man. Appreciate it.
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Johnny. What's up, Willie? How are you? America's worried about you.
Actually, and we're worried about America. Yeah, America should be worried about America. Really? Because really.
Why did you kill Judge Scalia? I thought that was terrible. He went to Texas. He's smothered him with a pillow.
That was awful. He wouldn't even be like in the top million people I have on my list. Do you? We should mention we went to college with Judge Scalia's son.
That's right. Judge Scalia came and gave a great speech at Holy Cross once. Yeah. With his way back, we're going early 90s.
And then he was at our graduation. He was, we marched out. I know. So I always felt weird tied to him even as politics unfolded.
And I disagreed with a lot of it. Yeah, I obviously agreed with him. I know it was some that well. We kind of got to know him a little bit later in the year through mutual foot.
Yeah, he became a priest eventually. He did. He was going to the cell. Yeah.
Yeah. Somebody told me that he'd play. No. Someone told me that he'd play.
No. No. But yeah, crazy times. The, when's the next debate or where I'm the next next?
The primary stuff. Next. I'm pretty sure they. I'm pretty sure they.
I think so. So what you take right now and where things are going and what's going to happen and who's the favorite and all this stuff? I'll do that. Okay.
Hold on. We'll do that. Well, and questionably, Trump, I mean, you know, polls come out. He's like it 39, 40% nationally.
And you know, Rubio and Cruz are kind of in the pentuck for second nationally behind him. And I think those are those numbers hold up in South Carolina where Trump is kind of running away with it. And Rubio and Cruz are right behind him. Or Jeb Bush is in Ben Carson in case it was never really ever going to play in South Carolina given his moderate positions.
It's not going to go over well in South Carolina. So he's not really even contesting there. But you know, Bush and Carson are dragging behind. And you know, when not only is Trump have appeal for some of the unknowns reason, but when you have as many people, his numbers are even more exaggerated because, you know, if it came down to him against somebody else, he arguably could lose then.
But until that happens, there's no sign of slowing him down, unfortunately. So after South Carolina does do more people drop out? Well, I would hope so. I'm going to round at this point.
I think he's in it sort of to build donor lists to self-teachers, speeches or books or something. But he doesn't really have any plausible path to victory at this point. And you know, Jeb Bush has a billion dollars to spend, but nobody is nobody at all is interested in Jeb Bush. So he doesn't quite see the handwriting on the wall yet.
We'll be interesting to see if he comes in like a distant fourth in South Carolina. What is his rationale for continuing? I mean, they have this what they call the SEC primary coming up in March, which is all these you know, so there's things like the SEC conference, obviously. So you know, but if you can't, you know, the Bush family is very popular in South Carolina, George Bush beat John McCain back there in 2000, you know, George Bush senior did well there going way back.
So if Jeb Bush can't play in South Carolina, I would hope that he would wake up and say, what am I doing this for? Like it's just not happening for me, unfortunately. Well we had Chris Christie drop out, but yeah, but he didn't have one moment. He had his Lloyd Benson Dan Quayle moment with Rubio that at least he can hang his hand out a little bit.
Yeah, he even took out himself and Rubio all in like one full swoop at the comic. I was a pilot. Great job, Chris Christie. So yeah, he really bloodied up for Rubio who got dinged up in New Hampshire and was sort of on the ascent and that definitely staggered him and, you know, now here we are.
So, you know, Rubio had a good debate last weekend and bounced back and he does very well nationally and polls and he got all these endorsements of senators and real conservatives and what have you. But I mean, Trump just Trump's him basically. So it's completely inexplicable and devastatingly depressing. What about a case such as strategy of just throwing away South Carolina going to Michigan?
It reminds me a little of Greg Popovich when Greg Popovich will throw away the Wednesday night game in Orlando because they're playing in States next night. Yeah, I don't know. Casey is appealing to a Republican that doesn't really exist anymore. Like a Rockefeller Republican Democrat light and figuring out from Ohio and Republicans need Ohio and my militant moderation will appeal to crossover voters.
That's all well and good. But you got to win a Republican primary. This Republican primary electorate is not looking for moderation in any way, shape or form. So it's just not his time.
It probably hasn't been his time. The Republican party since about 1976. So he can hope for the Midwest to come through for him, but he has no plausible path to victory either. I like it all.
And what everybody is basically battling for is to be the mainstream quote unquote mainstream establishment candidate, basically between Kasich Rubio and Bush, a little Rubio except for immigration. It's very conservative. And that's a big except for. But to be the establishment choice and then you know a lot of money and establishment powers such as it is behind that person and they become the anti-Trump.
But the Wall of Three of them are still battling for that. They're siphoning off votes that could go to that one person. Kasich, he does the thing which I think is a really good lane for him. Like Chris Christie tried to own the lane of this country's in threats.
He's in fear all the time and we have no protection and we should all be able to do that whole thing. And now Kasich is doing the, everybody else is so negative. I'm trying to stay positive, man. I'm just trying not to get any of this stink on me.
Right. They basically want to burn down Wall Street and Donald Trump that has, you know, ridiculousness. Yeah. People are like, yes, more of this.
Burn everything down. Destroy it. Like, you know, the villagers and Frank and I with pitchforks and torches. So John Kasich, like, let's all get along and do things and love everybody.
Everybody's like, burn him, burn. We really need him as a football commissioner and not as a president. He should really be levying to replace Roger Goodell. Yeah.
I just want to get along. I don't like him. I don't like him. He's, he's found his groove.
And that groove isn't going to win him the election. No, no, no. It's a groove. It's a groove.