Improv And Real Life

Cold Open And Guest Intros

Hey, I'm Rick Overton, and I've done a couple of movies. You can check the IMDV to find out. And I want to say it's a pleasure to be here with these fine gents on NOLA Film Scene.

Hey, welcome to NOLA Film Scene. I'm Plato. I'm TJ. You've already heard our special guest is Stephanie Hodge, comedian actress extraordinaire.

So excited. I'm so excited to do this. Thank you for having me on this. I'm really excited.

Hi, I'm Mark DiCarlo. You might know me as the voice of Hugh Neutron on Jimmy Neutron Boy Genius, or for my travel channel show, Taste of America, or long ago for my dating show called Studs. And I am, I guess thrilled isn't right the way it's a long story, but there was a court decision, and this is part of my community service to be here today. But I'm thrilled.

On NOLA film scene.

On NOLA film scene. Do you want to do it again?

If you want, we can just put that in.

I like it. I'm thrilled. No, I'm thrilled. Thrilled to be here on NOLA film scene. And this will count. Let me ask the officer report. This will count as an hour of my community service? Got it. Okay. Yay. I'm thrilled to be on NOLA Film scene.

I love it. Love it. All right. We're done?

Is that it? Are we done? That's the show. Thank you. All right. That was great, guys. I get to stay out of jail. Thanks.

Play-doh. I'm TJ. And as always, I'm Play-Doh.

So great to have you, Rick. Thanks for joining us today.

Thanks for having me on. Yeah. So I have a problem with my dongle. Now you're you are both accredited Apple Genii. Is that the plural? You are Apple Geniuses now that I've made it all the way down to the store, right? You are here to help me with that, right? That's right.

We'll help you get what you need today.

Okay. Now there's something I was told wrong with my dongle. What do I do about my dongle?

Hmm. We might have to clean that off a bit. Oh, wait a minute.

Who's going to do that? Well, I also, you know, my second job, I work at the hospital, so I can get you a shot for that. Uh then we can. Oh, okay, good.

Yeah. I don't want to transfer a virus to my dongle.

We'll check your connections. We'll make sure that all the ports are clear.

Dongleviri are the worst. I know. Don't set your expectations too high at my age. I can't ask too much of my dongle at this age, but just the same. I I want to think I walked out of here a satisfied customer. Anyway, okay. And scene.

A Facebook Exchange Sparks Friendship

Bravo. Bravo. It's it's a thrill for me to let people know. Steffi and I met on Facebook. You know, I reached out uh and I said, hey, let's be friends. And she was like, okay, weirdo.

And then I but that was hopeful. I was hoping. Hoping that I was a weirdo. And yes.

I'm glad I could deliver it.

I'm not disappointed at all. Oh, yay.

I tend to be a puppy dog in my enthusiasm about the projects that I'm doing. So I would send Stephanie, hey, here's a clip from the time I work background. Hey, here's a clip from this. You know, hey, I'm working on podcasts. Would you like to join us? And she's like, yay. I can definitely say we we sparked up a friendship almost immediately.

Um I will say, because I feel like I knew you forever, too. That's strange.

I think Brian could make friends with a fence post personally.

You say that, but that's a freaking fence post out there. That's son of a bitch.

He was mean to you. He's just trying to crawl up his ass.

Did I say that?

Did I do that? No, that's a whole nother story. It wasn't a fence post.

But anyway.

No, anyway.

It was camp. What do you want?

We've all been to camp. But it's camp been to you. But anyway, um. So uh I just tried to keep it myself on track because we're gonna go crazy and digress into the next atmosphere, whatever it is. Anything to keep me from talking to TJ. But you know. I went there. So, well, I'm gonna read you something. I was gonna hold it off a little bit. And this was an interaction. Oh, if anybody knows me, I was in a Joe Badon film called The Wheel of Heaven. And I played the character of Death. But we had a Kickstarter going, and I was reaching out to anybody to help us promote it. Not that you're just anybody, but anybody I knew. Well, you gotta reach out to anybody. Yes, ma'am. And when I say ma'am, it's I've had people get mad at me from other parts of the country. I know. I'm I'm southern.

I'm Southern, Southern thing. Yeah.

I've had I've had ladies go, I'm not a ma'am yet. I'm like, true, but I'll call somebody younger than me, ma'am. You know, it's you know, blah, blah, blah. I do it.

I do it to women too. Cool. Which confuses them.

So I had reached out to Stephanie. I said, could you share this? She tried and then couldn't do it. So on a Facebook post, I said, Oh, by the way, we raised our funding. This was like a month or so after. And you said, Yay, I'm so glad. I tried to post what you sent me on Messenger, but couldn't do it. Complained to Facebook, who ignores me unless I post famous news by famous artists. Facebook is an asshole, but yay. I said, thanks for trying. You replied with, Well, honey, and I mean that in a way, I call my people who I really care about. I'm pissed off about it, but I appreciate how kind you are being. You're a good man. I responded, I understand. And I'm touched by what you said. And when the police ask, I'll point to the doll and show them where you touch me. Your response was I am fucking screaming. My husband said I went from an oh, that's so sweet face, to utter blank, to hysterical laughing in less than a second. We've been friends ever since.

Yes, we have.

Mm-hmm called Baffle the Bear Show. Baffle the Bear. And it was an augmented reality bear. It was very cool. And you were interviewing Brad Sherwood. Maybe we'll drop that exchange in here. Oh, you have it? I have it. I got a copy from YouTube. So during the pandemic, we were all nervous as hell. Who had experienced that before? Yeah. My improv group, I had just started in January of 2020, and this was March of 2020. And our teacher, we went online. And the most amazing thing is every two weeks we would do this. A couple hours of just playing would get rid of the stress. It was like popping a balloon, and it was just amazing. You had your show, you were doing your interview, and it was a call-in segment. Well, I had nothing else to do. I was like, I'm gonna call and talk to these guys.

It's a bear, a cartoon bear, talking to Bradley. Yeah, who was also at my second city cast. That's how Bradley and I met.

Brad Sherwood, you may know him from Whose Line Is It Anyway, amongst other things.

And he tours with Colin Mockrie.

Yeah.

Colin and Brad. They do a really great two-man theater improv show. Really funny.

Both very funny.

I called in and then asked what he thought about New Orleans and let myself kind of calm down and then invited y'all to join us online to teach us improv. And then the bear, because it was the end of the show, said, Okay, Brian, do some improv with Brad Sherwood from Who's Line? And since I was on the phone, you couldn't see me, but I went, omena, omena, omena, omena. It was fun. And I I held my own pretty good, which we will show you now, maybe.

Yeah, show it. Show it right now.

I think now would be a great time to have you uh fly your your improv wings. We tried to get J.R. to do a little comedy. Let's close off the show with comedy of some improvisational sort uh from you. Throw him something, Brad. What do you think?

How Jimmy Neutron Got Its Magic

Well, let's do a scene in the style of z of Dr. Seuss. But we need a topic from maybe someone in the audience or a large animated blue bear. The scourge of toenail fungus. Upon my feet there is a scourge. With what antibiotic that I must purge? This awful thing that grows among us, some type of awful nail toe fungus.

Yeah, go ahead, follow that. Upon my feet there was this smell. What it was, I could not tell. The pain it was, it did go bam. Oh my god, it's ugly toe jam.

Perfect. Very well done, right? Yes, I mean here's another beautiful thing about improv. It's like whoever you're playing with raises your game, right? And Brad's one of the best. Nowadays, when you do a cartoon, typically you record by yourself, either from your home studio, or I just did a loudhouse a couple of weeks ago, and I went into Nickelodeon hoping that there'd be people there. And it was just me talking to a monitor. When we were doing Neutron, we were all in the studio at the same time every Friday from 10 to 2, and we all had our own little areas so that we could over talk each other and it wouldn't screw up the recording. And we would record every scene as written, and then we would go back and do what we call a crazy pass, where you were not only allowed but encouraged to improvise and do weird, funny stuff to make the cast members laugh or just to inject something into the show. And to their credit, the producers and the writers ended up using a lot of the stuff that we just made up in the moment in the final cut. A lot of times you're working on a show and the writer is like, read every comma, read every period, don't add anything. We don't need your input. But I think the cast of people that we had on Jimmy Neutron were all improvisers and just comedians, that it would have been crazy not to take that input. You know, especially when you're just recording audio, let the people talk. And if it stinks, don't use it. But by far, more often than not, the stuff that people would come up with in character and throw into the read was hilarious. And they ended up putting it in the final cut of the show. And I think that's one of the reasons the show was so popular because ostensibly it was a kid's show, but there was a lot of comedy baked into it that appealed to grownups. And I would get parents coming up to me all the time saying, Oh my God, we love your show because I can watch it with my kids and my brain doesn't turn to jello. A lot of times, kids' cartoons are so lame and stupid that it drives parents crazy to watch them. You know, it's like baby shark on constant loop in your head. Like the old Batman show from the 60s. When you're a little kid, you're getting the jokes here, but when you're a grown-up, you get all the satire, and there's a whole nother level of comedy that is baked into the show that was very much on purpose and more just to entertain ourselves. But in the long run, I think it served the popularity and the longevity of the series as a whole.

Yeah, and just the interaction, the energy you would get from people making you laugh, even if you were just laugh, laugh, laugh, original line, it brings it up so much more, so much more life. Yeah, and you can have a conversation, right?

Finding Comedy Through Shyness And Fear

I mean, someone would say something and then you bounce off of that and bounce off of that, and you get a funny little riff that wasn't written. If you're just reading lines on a paper to a monitor, as an actor, you're there's nobody to bounce off of. So you basically just kind of read what's there and you don't know what the other person says. So even if you do improvise, the chances of them using it and having it match whatever comes next from another character is pretty slim because you just don't know. It's easier to record people separately, it's easy to schedule people that way. It's more difficult to do everybody together in a group and to take the extra time to record the extra material. But if you really care about the final product, that's what you do.

How did you get into comedy? Because I love watching back then and now I can find the clips, but I always loved your comedy.

Why thank you? I actually quit doing stand-up because I had an experience that created a severe case of PTSD with me. So I'm working through that, and I will return to it. I just not ready yet. Gotcha. Bad again. I gotcha. Thank you. I started doing comedy because my friend Doreen King Nichols in Minneapolis, Minnesota. I had bought into the comedy cabaret with these two guys, and so there were three of us owning it, and it was for stand-up and for variety shows and for jugglers and music magicians and stuff like that. And we did sketch shows. And my friend Doreen said to me, You're funny. You're so funny. Why don't you go out and try it? I said, Oh no, I can't do that. I can't come on. I can't do stand-up. I'm an actress, I have to pretend to be somebody else or I'll die. And she said, I got 50 cents, 50 bucks that says you're just being a pussy. What? Did you call me? Are you are you thinking I'm chicken? What? And how much? So that very night, I grabbed a pair of really ugly shoes and a baby bonnet that was backstage, and I cut the top of the baby bonnet out, and I made that Mrs. Jacques Rousteau on her wedding night in front of my face. And I was a prop comic. And the first night I went up, I was a prop comic. And I killed. I literally killed. It was the best night. And then for the next two years I kind of sucked. I had to find my niche, and props wasn't it. Right. So it was a struggle after that.

Were you always funny before you started? Like, did I mean did you realize you were funny?

I knew that I could use I knew that I could be funny, and I used humor to deflect when I was growing up. I gotcha. You know, cause stuff. And just grew up in a tiny little town in southern Ohio with parents. My family's from the south, but my folks moved were lived in Kentucky, we're from Kentucky, and they moved to Ohio, and it's this tiny little town. And it's just so tiny when I was growing up. If you farted in bed early in the morning when the window was open, by the time you got to school at nine o'clock, your neighbor told everybody that you farted, when it was, how long it was, what it smelled like, and the timber of the fart. You couldn't do anything in that town without getting busted for it.

That bitch hit an A-flat this morning. I couldn't believe it.

Wow. Sorry. We got her to do it. That's amazing.

That happened before we started recording, and TJ and I looked at each other and went, oh, if only we were had hit record.

So we got it.

Yay!

That's okay. I trust you. Oh God. I had people tell me that I and I they put me in theater classes in high school because I was so painfully shy. Can you believe that? Nope. Nope. I was painful. I had a small group of friends and I would just joke about everything. But then you separate me from those friends, and I was just paralyzed. Absolutely paralyzed. I have had anxiety my whole life, and having PTSD on top of it is really fun. Some things I find myself doing shit that just makes me go, oh girl, seriously. Sit down and have a drink and quit freaking out. You know, and it's silly. Like the wind blows the curtains, and I'm like, what? No, nothing silly about it, you know. I get scared. But yeah, it was just when ever since I was little, I was just always deflecting with humor or trying to get through tr stressful situations by saying, cracking some joke, you know. And then they put me in theater because I was so shy, so painfully shy that I used to get kidney infections because I wouldn't raise my hand to go to the bathroom. That's sad.

I I I feel for you. I I didn't have the shyness, but just I don't even know if I want to call that childhood trauma, but just childhood.

Childhood is traumatic.

Yeah. Yeah.

Improv, Writing, And Accidental Borrowing

So these people that say they had perfect childhood and just so happy and they're lying.

They're hiding something. They have amnesia.

They're hiding something. I had a perfect childhood. Everything was okay. I don't remember a bad thing.

Here's an example. I go to my dad one day and I say, Why does mom hate me so much? And he said, She doesn't hate you. She's just going through a really difficult period of time right now in her life. And I said, Oh my god, she's going through menopause. You know what he did? He looked at me and went, No, honey, it's your adolescence.

Improv, I think, though, is fun. At virtually no point in your life are you not doing it. There's another way to look at it.

Yes, sir.

I hadn't thought of it like that. Yeah. That way it gets you used to doing it for free. For no pay. Get used to that. And real life will dial you right in. Yeah.

We're not going to be rich by doing improv?

Son of That's rare. It's rare. And it's brief. And everyone who does improv, it's important probably to know how to go out of a script as well. There's no harm in that. Combine the two because I think even when you're doing Shakespeare and you're trying to stay as close to the letter and the word as you can, the improv part is it's your voice doing it this time. You with your timing, with your body type.

Right.

Right.

That's a good point. You're not just a digital reproduction of the last person who did it.

Right, right. And when something goes wrong on stage, a a chair falls, a sword doesn't cut, doesn't fake. You can't just ignore it. You have to react to it.

Yeah, and if you don't, the only thing worse than it happening is you didn't react when it did.

That's a good point.

And the same thing with a comedian doing a stage act, and their act is so structured that they have a part in their act where they go, sure, you laugh, but I'm the one still sitting in the cab. And that only works if they're laughing. It looks really bad with the sure you laugh. If he's just yeah, and so a lot of times there's uh that's what happens when you're so stuck in your left brain that it can trap you. And when the people say, Well, I'd rather just go into writing. But what is writing? What are you doing? You are either improvising or you're plagiarizing, and there's no third option. It's one of those two.

Wow.

Oh, you just broke my brain.

Yeah, I had never thought of it that way either. Interesting.

And it's perfect. It's all right.

Of course, we're using English, we're stealing from our past knowledge of words and phrases and stuff like that. So you know, sometimes I would describe improv as like the second hardest job in the world is being the first impressionist abstract painter because no one knows what the hell you're doing. The first hardest job in the world is being the second abstract painter because now everyone's comparing you to the first one. And it's only 10, 20 artists later they go, oh, this is about the separate brushstroke and the individual personality coming through, or whatever. It takes all these layers to see it. But it's all improv taking one abstract to another artist's hands is an improv. And we are all thieves, thieves of culture, thieves of language. It's why someone understands a single thing we're talking about as a comic. It had to have a recognized well, I took that and then put it into my mix of, well, hopefully enough improv that it's something that you'll see something familiar in a new way.

Oh, wow.

Yeah. And I was starting to tell Rick before we got on that I've been a fan of comedy since the 80s when down here in New Orleans we've got HBO and we got Comedy Central in the 90s, and I was obsessed watching stand-up. It's one thing I haven't tried yet, but I tend to be quick-witted. I can be funny, you know, not breaking my arm, patting myself on the back. But I also find myself, I'll say something, and people might laugh and I go, Oh, I heard Rick say that in the 80s, and it popped out of my head. So plagiarizing, but not meaning to plagiarize. It kind of I've absorbed and then spit it out. I've regurgitated it.

It's gonna happen.

Yeah, sometimes we say stuff and don't remember where it came from. I wouldn't spend a ton of time chasing it. You'll go crazy. Yeah. It'll break you. You'll absolutely lose your shit over this, you know. Yeah. Every guy that said a word, you know, I'm sorry, man. I don't want to say stole it, but I also say the word the in my act, and you know.

Just don't use the hand. That's all I have.

You use both, now you're plagiarizing.

Why Live Energy Beats Recording Alone

That's it. I put the play back in plagiarism. I would hope that when we are improvising, we're trying to surprise ourselves, you know. It's supposed to be the first time we heard it too. And you're gonna something's gonna sneak in every now and then. It's the way the brain works. Oh, this other thing works perfectly there. Bang, put it in. But it's this other thing. That means it's from the past. Yeah. And it's like you just do your best around it. We are very past-oriented people. As much as we have gadgets that look like the future, we don't think in terms of where we fit in that future like at all. We leave ourselves out of our equation. So the only thing that moves forward is improv, really. Like and seeing everything in life doesn't have to be a funny improv. That's true. This real life is uh sad improv, drama improv, ho-hum improv, security cam improv.

I think security cam improv is called being a robber, being a thief.

Yeah. And that's why we gotta start we gotta start a uh union, a performers union for them called uh Rag, Robber's actor, robbing actors guilt.

So with the setup, are y'all all in the same room and you can see each other? Or are you in separate isolated booths but you can hear each other?

Both. We would set up in Nickelodeon, we would set up kind of in a semicircle with baffles between each person. And they always put me in a clear box because I talked a lot. And they'd put Paulson in a clear box because he's a comedy genius. And everyone else had a physical baffle, like a rollable wall, basically, about that thick. So the sound wouldn't go. So I could be talking into my microphone. And if you're next to me simultaneously, you're talking in your microphone, but my mic won't pick up what you're saying. So everyone's tracks were clean, but we could see each other. So we'd be reading and doing a scene, and someone will raise their hand or point to the person, and then you would and then you'd move on. So it's like hockey or it's like jazz music. You get into a flow, and especially after you've been working with people for a long time, you know where they're gonna go and what they're gonna do, and you can set them up, and it's a great fun thing to do. It's a great feeling, and you just don't get that any other way. That's why I like to go see jazz music. It's never the same, right? It's always different every particular performance, and it's organic, it's never gonna happen again that way. And the people that are doing are feeding off each other, they're not reading music, they're listening and they're you know, they're vibing on each other. To me, that's why I go see live entertainment. You can listen to records, you can listen to tracks, but it's different when it's a live performance because it's different, it's more exciting to me to see what happens. And we really leaned into it.

Again, the energy is more alive, right?

Well, it's more like real life, right? Yeah, we're talking to each other, we could see each other, we're interrupting each other. It's more, it's more real. We could have done this with an email interview, and it'll be boring, and no one would read it.

Right.

Oh, if I wrote it, they'd read it. Unless you just scrolled the text on your show, and that would be stupid. No one would do that. Is that a challenge? Should we do that for the also? But it wouldn't count for my community service. The community service does.

It has to be video with audio.

Yeah, dude. I don't know how you got away with that crime, but we're we're not gonna go into that because you know the NDA is where signed. You rob one bank, suddenly you're a bank robber. Grow that. How do you rob a sperm bank with a bank of clothes? Anyway, let's stop.

I was wearing gloves. That's all I'll say. Wearing gloves. One of the things we've And I slipped on the way out the door, which is how they caught me. But again, I do not want, I'm not, I I'm not supposed to talk about it. Legally, I can't talk about it.

It explains why you called yourself the spermacide bandit. But anyway, yes. We love at the end of the day.

Oh my god, the smell in that place. The AC was broken that day. You don't even.

It was uh end scene. So I'm speechless. Give me speechless is is a feat, sir.

I'm just trying to find things to joke about. Yeah, yeah, no, to look at and to joke about, and sometimes you stumble on your I don't know where the jokes are here. Look what the hell I found. Oh my god. Reality's getting too weird to just reality's catching up with crazy neck and neck.

That's a fact. Yeah, the steeplechase.

TJ, if you got some, I I'm I'm formulating the question, but I'm I'm we'll leave this in. My brain is broke. He looks like I look like that guy. Maybe it was me.

I was jiggling the mouse. I I thought Brian was, I thought his screen was frozen for a second there. He was just trying to wrap his head around.

Well, whatever you do, don't tell my wife how you did that because uh she's been trying to find a way to shut me up for years. Oh, yeah.

Well, I love, you know.

Okay, is that at Brian's house or Rick's?

Stunts, Body Image, And GLOW Training

It's not that's not a Nola cop. I think that might be over it in the house.

That's the big hook and ladder. You can hear the when it slows down. That's the big diesel, yeah.

This show is just fire.

It's fire, dog. Is dog still okay? Is it still okay to call a man a dog in the Western world?

I guess not. We were just censored by something. Rick, can you move to your right a little bit? Right there. Yeah, yeah, there you go. Oh, yeah, perfect. Dead center now. Well, I don't want to say dead, but not dead yet.

Not dead yet. People ask me, have you lived here all your life? I say, not yet.

Yeah. Which is important because no is the most powerful word in the business.

Yeah, no, yeah, that's a good point.

But I'm just amazed at the work that you're doing. Are you gonna do stunt work? Try stunt? Take a class. I've had to tap dance on top of a moving trailer. I've had to use weapons plenty of times. I really enjoy that, though. That's fine. I had to fall down a flight of stairs. Ouch. Oh, wow. I've had to run like hell with someone chasing me. So you need to be physically able to do this stuff.

Yeah, yeah. I'm getting back into exercise again because I was like 300 pounds. Got down to like 175, sat around the pandemic, worried if this acting thing was gonna ever gonna take off, didn't put any physical work, and I'm up to about 290 again. So we're we're back.

But here's the thing: that's as long as you can move, you're doing all right. It doesn't matter what size you are, it really does. Right. And all along, they will do this to women all the time. I'm too fat, I'm too fat, I'm too fat. I'm 66 years old. I am five foot three, damn it. And that's the deal.

Of power. Yeah, definitely. I'll take your kneecaps off.

And the West I get told more often than anything, I'm too fat. You're too heavy, you're too heavy, you're too heavy. They're not doing it as much now that I'm older. When I was younger, I was a zero and told I was too too heavy. Wow. It's crazy. So these the physical images of ourselves that we have and the way that we look and the way the good Lord made us is good. It's fine, it's perfect. You just have to be able to use it when it's time to use it. And it was interesting because they tell you beforehand, they were concerned about my ability to run. Because Lord let me tell you. You ever had one of your knees just look at you and go, fuck you.

I'm gonna run today, and your knee says, Oh, hell no.

Nope. My knee's like, I'm gonna lay down here on the sidewalk. You do the best you can without me. I went into I had a role on the Glorious Women of Wrestling, the uh Glow on Netflix, which I really enjoyed that show. I was so sad that they cooked they ended it. But the pandemic. And I had gotten a role on that show, and I had to take wrestling training. I trained with actual real life wrestlers.

With uh Chavo Guerrero wrestlers, Chavo Guerrero Jr., huh?

Yeah, no, none of these guys are still in the ring doing that. Right, right. No, I thought he was a trainer on that show. He was, yeah, he was, and he was fun, and I could pick him up by the time he was done with me. Nice. And that was two weeks, two weeks. I had two weeks to get ready for that.

That's all they gave you, was two weeks. Wow. I will that's a lot of physicality in two weeks.

Taking Creative Risks Without Self-Sabotage

Well, it's interesting because they would have taken longer had it not been for the pandemic, but it had already started and we already knew about it. So protocols were new, but we didn't weren't masking. I mean, the only protocol was do you have a fever? Right. So I caught during that process. But um, that's then everything shut down and they ended that show. But to go into wrestling training was the most fun thing I have done next to hanging with Reba. And honestly, it's amazing how you can, if you just stay in a in an in a modicum of shape, the ability to move. That's all you need to do is move. They'd have to be fast because they can fake everything. They can fake everything.

I've known a few women who could do that too.

My ribs are gonna be sore.

Yeah, good.

Let me cause you some pain, my friend.

Afterwards, you did a little recap. What you take away from the day, all the stress was gone. It came back. It came back slowly, but touching that creative part pops the bubble and releases you, releases the stillness, even when things are going crazy.

Be ready to get it wrong. And let it happen. Like trick with part of the trick with riding a horse is knowing how to fall. It's the same with judo or jujitsu. You gotta know how to roll, man, because uh you'll you'll never stay in the game if it throws you once, and that's it.

That's a good point.

Closing Jokes And New Orleans Flavor

So learn learn to interpret the beating. Well, you don't always get to stop it, but you can interpret it, and eventually that gives you that sort of martial art to work around it. But you have to go through it first a little bit. Be ready to have it go high and low, because the high part is so, so worth it. It's ridiculously worth it. And you'll find out soon enough whether you've got it in your blood to really do. Everyone will know, and you'll either stay with it at that point or you'll quit. You'll go on to something you belong at. But if there's anything that's worth a chance, take the chance briefly to find out. You conquered one of the biggest things there is to conquer is the fear of facing other people. A. B. Not even having anything prepared. And C, the willingness to look at if I change this, I'm like a slightly or majorly different person. Am I willing to ditch a portion of myself for this because how good it feels? Did I make that part of myself that doesn't like change too sacred and I'm cheating myself out of this beat in this moment right now? Because there's a likelihood that that's what this is. That's what you're doing, and you didn't know it. Consider it. Consider taking the chance to dive in. Don't sabotage yourself, don't fuck it up on purpose because I knew it I would suck. Really embrace it, see what happens. But if you did that, imagine what else you can fearlessly just turn and look at. It's like the man called horse, Richard Harris, where they're hanging him by his man titties on the leather straps for the tribe to initiate him into manhood, right?

Yeah, yeah.

But without that, just talking. Yeah, you'll live.

That's right.

It's a totally different type of show, but you might be able to make a few bucks on that.

Yeah, right. And we're back to the dongle.

And since we've come full circle, it's a good place to end it. Ladies and gentlemen, take care of your dongle. Rick, thanks for joining us. TJ, thank you for being here as always.

You know, you've got to make your own material, you gotta make your own content. So that's what Julian and I are are focused on doing. And it's fun. Being a bear is fun.

As long as you're not bare naked, but please, let's let's not get into that.

Well, uh, for some reason, Bavo has a sweatshirt but no pants. I never understood that. Julian thinks it's okay. And you know, you can't see his genitalia because his fur hangs down, but he assures me that it's there.

Not till the late night version, brown chicken. Well, but you're carrying on the tradition of Pooh and Donald. So naked. That's right. Nice. Mark, we've come to the end. I want to talk like you. Me or him? Yeah. Oh, you want some you want Louisiana? Got that a little? Well, and then I I can only do a little bit, but when you go out in the bayou, you know? Oh sha. Then we have a little gato, we have a little, we get boojo or chibodeau, we have a fedo dough.

So that's have you seen the rougaroot? I've dated about a rougher.

We got a swamp ape, which is stinky bigfoot. Well, because he's all sweating. He's all he's wearing his fur coat. He's out there. It's the humidity. Yeah. We can really our heat shell, heat bubble just broke for a few days. We had some rain and it's kind of creeping up. So we're no longer in the hundreds. We're in the nineties. Oh, thank God. Yeah.

Yeah.

So we've probably got about a month of the 90s. Then it'll come down late October, how it used to be. The last week in October, you could smell the cold in the a lot of people don't understand when I say that. And maybe it's just the stench of New Orleans and being cooked up. But you feel it. You know, if I had hair, it'd be one of those moves. Yeah. And hopefully not too strong. Like TJ.

Look, you've got all that little TJ.

I have things that flap in the wind. We want a motorcycle.

TJ on I have things that flap in the wind, but we really shouldn't discuss those in public.

We made her lose an earbud.

Yeah, you did.

Oh, you know, I get middle images, and I carry those images to my grave.

So just be cautious. You're welcome. Thank you.

See, I'm picturing TJ on a motorcycle with that big wind blowing. Yep. Hair flying, beard to one side, dancing in the breeze. On a calendar.

Hey.

Is it why don't they do character actor calendars? And send them to every agent you know.

Yes. I was wondering if TJ's beard would split down the middle though. Oh, it might.

I had to so I actually had to wear a ball of cloth when I rode because it would it would slap and hit my glasses, and the the beard balm would like coat my glasses with oil, and I couldn't see. And it's so uncold, dangerous to ride a motorcycle when you can't see.

That's an advertising.

It's a pretty holding her nose.

Oh my god, I just got images.