Starting Standup in Maine with David Walton

#53 Beaver Moon

• David Walton

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Under a blazing Beaver Moon, David freewheels from lunar lore to the curious life of a notorious slang term, detours through sixth‑grade hoops chaos and a questionable sponsor, then lands on a surprisingly tender note. A bright, weird, beaver‑powered meditation on winter prep—and why we keep making art.

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SPEAKER_01:

Hey everybody. What's going on? Hi. Hello. How are you? Hello. How are you?

SPEAKER_00:

Hi. Oh my god. Hi. How are you? I haven't seen you in so long. You look great. All right. Bye.

SPEAKER_01:

Hey guys, how's it going? Gosh, should I miss you? Hey, first of all, with this new renegade Maverick style of podcasts, you just never know when it's coming out. But I did have an idea. I don't know if I'm going to commit to this yet. Don't ask me to commit to anything. We are really enjoying being non-committal to shipping podcast episodes. But I will say I've I've had a lot been going on. There's a lot of life, there's a lot of fire hose just tearing the skin off my face, but in a good way, in a good way. Sort of like a chemical peel. And um, but it it occurred to me that I don't know when, maybe half six months ago, I was getting into the different names for the full moons. And then a friend texted me that uh, in fact, November 5th was the beaver moon. So I was gonna record this last night, but then I was coaching uh these sixth grade basketball players, and uh that's that's not going well. But anyway, that's for another time. But anyway, I couldn't record on the beaver moon, but still the moon is bright. I feel like I I'm getting um sunburned, honestly, with how bright it is with the moon, the with the beaver moon, and it is a beautiful beaver moon. So, really what we're gonna do tonight on the starting stand-up podcast is um we're gonna talk all things beaver. And I've been diving deep. I spent a few weeks at the library to figure it out, and here's what I found. So, beaver, a lot of people think, oh, of course, beaver is a slang for vagina because beavers chew wood. And I'm here to tell you that that's bullshit. Obviously, beavers chew wood, and obviously that makes it even better that a vagina slang term is beaver, but it has nothing to do with why we use the word beaver. A little side note here. I just want you to know that I love words. My favorite word in eighth grade was bucket. I just like saying it. A bit of a I'm a I'm a word nerd. But in a close second, beaver, beaver. It's just say it say it. I'm gonna pause. Say it right now a few times, chew on it. That's it. A little louder, a little louder, and now scream, I love that's it. I love beaver. Yeah, there you go. I'm trying to share the joy of saying it. And that's part of the reason why this full moon, not the full buck moon, not the harvest moon, the beaver moon is the brightest, it's it's the closest it's been, it's the biggest moon of the year this year. It's so bright, it's so beautiful. Everybody loves beaver moons. And that is why this entire podcast will be dedicated to it. Now, beaver is slang for vagina primarily due to the visual resemblance between the furry beaver animal and pubic care. There's also some cultural taboos around openly discussing genitalia. So instead of saying vagina, you can say beav. It started uh 1920s, in where else? The capital of perversion. The capital per capita most perverts on earth, Great Britain. And they just hide it so beautifully. They're all proper, but you the the the glint in a perverted aristocrat in London, that little wink, they are just sick fucks over there. And I've got a lot of respect for it. A lot of respect. My sidebar, my favorite kind of human being is someone who is really pulled together and looks really pulled together. And you can never, you would never guess that they are complete degenerate. But but occasionally at like one in the morning, you'll see someone and they just can't, they have no off switch. And the top, but the tie is still tight. The jacket is still on. Just a ton of respect for someone like that. Anyway, yeah, beaver was used to refer to bearded men originally, actually. It was, you know, drawing on the similarity between beards and beaver pelts, fuzzy and brownish, right? Anyway, this visual metaphor, it eventually extended to female pubic hair in the genital area. There's one other theory though that that caught my eye. It's a little dark. But in the 1800s, whores, also known as prostitutes, sometimes wore beaver fur wigs, affectionately known as Merkins, to mimic pubic hair because they would shave their actual pubes to avoid lice, uh, and then they would put the beaver fur wigs on to reinforce the association. Obviously, in the 1800s, men enjoyed pubic hair when they were boning. Oh, how the times have changed, although I I kind of hope it's coming back. Kind of a weird, weird world I grew up in, um, where everyone was trying to look like you know, this the surface of the moon. But oh, the beaver moon. I just took another look at it. It's so bright right now. I mean, it's a day late, but it still has that glistening beaver quality. All right, so that's really that's really it. It it it it it was very simple mimicking of the pubic care, is really how the beaver came about. But I think the euphemism in the 60s and 70s, that's where it became a hugely popular, you know, comedians counterculture, where it would talk about the beaver. And then so if I'm born in 78, by the time I'm coming online and loving beaver talk, I'm 11 years old, 10 years old, we're talking 88. So I'm picking up, I'm I'm downwind of that 60s and 70s beaver energy. And so my love for it, which obviously I don't know what kids have it now, my son loves it. I mean, we watched Naked Gun, and he really likes that joke as well, which is one of those small things in parenting that just makes your warms the cockles of your heart when your son laughs at the same shit you laughed at when you were when he was your age. When you were his age, rather. So anyway, um, there's that. Now, what does this euphemism for female genitalia have to do with the actual beaver moon? The answer might surprise you. But first, a few words from our sponsor. This episode of Starting Stand Up is brought to you by Green Beaver. All natural Canadian skincare and oral care products. Special note shipping with Canada Post has resumed. If you would like any green beaver products, they are currently offering a 15% discount on their fall favorites, which are warm, spicy, and comforting. Check out the scents and flavors that are made for sweater weather. Go to greenbeaver.com. Free shipping on orders over$50 and no code because pretty sure what I'm saying is illegal. So what does the beaver slang for Vegan have to do with the beaver moon? The answer is absolutely nothing. Of course, the beaver moon has nothing to do with female genitalia. The beaver moon was named aptly because this is the season in which beavers build their dams, prepare for winter, gather their sticks, slap that tail all over that shit, and pack that mud down. For the humans, we can think of beaver moon as that sort of prepping for winter, you know, gathering your resources, hunkering down, planning to survive the cold, wind, and snow. Stare at that beaver moon. Stare stare directly into the beaver moon. Stare so deeply into the beaver. Bury, bury your focus, bury your concentration, bury your eyesight. Laser in on the beaver moon and let it guide you. Let it wash, let the beaver moon wash over your face and body, bathe in the beaver moon, and let it talk to you. Let the beaver let the beaver moon talk to you. Let it let the beaver moon whisper. What do you need to do to keep your family, your children, your job, all your things, your life? What do you need to do to survive the winter? Do you need to renew your license at the DMV? Do you need to cancel a couple cable packages? To keep the budget tight? Do you need to get new hockey skates? These are the things that are gonna help you survive, and you're getting it from the wisdom of the beaver moon. Okay, folks, we've had our fun. It's time for me to hit the rack. But uh on a more I like to always end on a sort of down, somber, sincere note, so that everybody can kind of feel like a weight on them for the rest of the day, you know, just sort of like like you're wearing a rucksack, like a 50-pound rucksack of melancholy. No, not really. I just I want to be very sincere here. When I announced that the I was basically ending the podcast as we know it, a number of you reached out to either get extremely angry at me, uh, to tell me that I was being selfish and a fool. Some of you also admitted that that there was some emotion, uh, maybe even a tear. If you did get a little bit of the feels from that 50-second episode, that actually gave me quite a bit of fuel to keep going. I think if I really think about why I am on Earth or what and what drew me to acting and what drew me to performing, uh, it was this feeling that there was a way in which to make people feel emotions that they wouldn't necessarily feel in life, like a safe way to feel some sort of sadness. You know, just like the typical thing when you're when you're in it watching an incredible movie or an amazing play, and you're just you're just getting torn to shreds by the story. And to be a part of that, to to actually affect uh another human being's emotional state in kind of a uh a cool way that they they remember. I love that. And uh I'm not sure how this podcast is actually doing it. Um but I'll keep searching for ways in which to to actually do that. I mean, of course, laughter is one of them. It's an emotion, you know. But uh I like the other ones too, and I'm trying to figure out ways to like just to just to keep doing it. I don't know if this is it, but I'm gonna keep searching, and this won't be the last you hear from me. Uh that's for sure. Anyway, I just wanted to thank you truly. Uh the loyal listeners, you know who you are. I really, really appreciate it. And uh uh this one was for you, and any future ones are for you. So thank you. Thank you for listening. Uh I hope you think of me every single November as you bathe in Beaver.