EP 10 Sean Jordan talks Standup Comedy and Skater Music

So at Famous Portland Bar Barlow, I asked friends if they knew any comedians that would want to be on the podcast and they threw out Sean Jordan as like a "Could you imagine?" type guy. 

Well, anyway, Sean comes on to the podcast to talk about his history getting into standup comedy, moving to Portland, his dream to be a professional skateboarder, and skater music. 

Catch him playing shows in Portland, as the host of Nice to Be Nice, or cohosting All Fantasy Everything and go watch his special Girl Dad. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:33

I sure do. But his podcast is called All Fantasy Everything. You have another podcast. What is it? Something dank? Terrible name.

SPEAKER_00 0:43

No, you're it's I I started one on my own. Just it's called It's Nice to Be Nice. I change the title. Um and I There we go. It's nice to be nice. Yeah, just could I just cause I can and I talk about my nice stuff with my friends about times people have helped them in their lives. Just cause everything's tough right now.

SPEAKER_02 0:59

So that's good, man. We got a real DIY vibe uh in this podcast. I mostly started doing this stuff uh because I play in basement shows all around Portland, so it's all just people like my wedding uh with my wife was at our friend's house. He does DIY shows there all the time. So I love it. It's all just like people helping each other out, make some stuff happen. Uh that's one of the reasons that I moved here to Portland. Uh but Sean, uh I'll be honest with you. I asked you to be on the podcast because I was at uh Barlow Tavern down the street from my house with a bunch of friends of mine, and I was like, hey, uh, do you think there's any Portland comedians that would want to come on the podcast? I love comedy. I used to listen to it all the time. Uh I actually did it a little bit in college uh here and there. Um and I've like fallen out of it and I'm getting back into it now because Portland's got a great comedy scene. It does. And you were the first person they brought up, and uh, it was like, well, Sean does a lot of podcasts. I'm sure there's a chance he'll say yes to this. Uh and so I hit you up there in Barlow Tavern. You got back to me. You made me look really cool in front of my friends who love your podcast.

SPEAKER_00 2:00

Uh but I'm excited that it worked out.

SPEAKER_02 2:05

It's nice, man. So uh yeah, when did you start in uh coming to Portland? When did you move to Portland? When did you start doing comedy?

SPEAKER_00 2:13

Well, I want to touch on the basement shows first because when I was a kid, when I was young, that was that was like the first introduction to any kind of performance that I had. We're going to basement shows. Like uh there's a band there they're doing a reunion tour right now. They're called Spirit of Versailles, and they're from Sioux Falls, and they're a hardcore band. Oh, nice. And they would do uh basement shows, and we would go I don't know, 30 of us, whatever. It felt like there were 1,500 of us, but there'd be like 30 of us crowded in a basement, going absolutely bananas, and they'd be playing bass till their fingers bled and get blood on the crowd. I mean, just that that little kid, you know, energy. It was it was an absolute blast. So that was my introduction into live performance is the best, those shows.

SPEAKER_02 2:57

Weirdly, uh hardcore keeps coming up in this. Uh, I didn't go, I went to a couple hardcore shows back in like college and all that, but like hardcore and the DIY scene are intricately linked for whatever reason. The hardcore guys just will not allow a basement to go undisturbed by their incredible amounts of blood and violent noises. Yeah. Uh are you a hardcore guy yourself? No.

SPEAKER_00 3:21

Uh kind of everything now. I don't want to beat, you know, but it's skateboarding is what informed most of my musical taste. So if if you had to peg it, it would probably be rap. But now that I'm in my 40s, any just anything good, fantastic. But skateboarding is where, and we can talk about it. But to answer the the questions, I started stand-up in uh South Dakota in 2000, probably 2005, and then I worked there. There was a comedy club, so I just I MC'd a lot of these shows for felt like forever, but it was probably two, three years. Uh, because I entered a comedy contest. I won only by default because I was the best, the best of a bunch of a bunch of people, including myself, who weren't very good at the time. That's how I'll delicately say.

SPEAKER_02 4:25

Yeah. And uh I still keep that trophy, man.

SPEAKER_00 4:27

A win's a win. W's a W, Playboy. I'm right there with you. Um, so I won that and I got to start MCing at the club. They they had me MC for years because there was not a lot of comedians in Sioux Falls. They went out of business. I was bartending, and it was just kind of stale, and I wanted to move, but I was really scared to move. So some friends of mine were gonna leave town, and they said they were gonna go to the coast. And I said, anywhere you go, I'll end, I'll go with you. Just have a get a place with an extra room wherever you end up on the coast, LA, San Diego, San Francisco, wherever, I'll meet you. And they ended up, they went down to San Diego, they went all the way up to Seattle, and then back down to Portland and found a spot, and then I moved, and then that was that was kind of how I got in. And then I moved here. I met uh Ian, who Ian Carmel, who his you know, a all fantasy, everything is his his show, and he's you know my best friend in the world. He officiated my wedding, met him, and kind of that's how kind of off to the races.

SPEAKER_02 5:29

I love that uh story of Portland like moving to Portland. I know a bunch of people that had very similar things of like, I know I'm going to the West Coast, I don't know where I'm gonna end up, and then for whatever reason, uh when I first moved here, I was like, I just packed all my stuff in a car. I was living in Austin, Texas at the time, and uh drove up to the West Coast, almost took a job in San Francisco, and ended up moving to Portland. And the first two months I was here, I lived in a hallway of a friend of mine who had just moved here from New York. It's like a slanted roof hallway, so I could tuck in. Uh, and uh yeah, I think for whatever reason, this the city attracts a type of uh like transient, I guess, uh where it's like this is a place to end up if you don't really know where you want to go, but you know you wanted to go somewhere else. Uh do you find the it was easy to like make friends, get yourself acquainted with the city because of that, or uh take you a little bit?

SPEAKER_00 6:19

No, I was pretty fairly seamless as soon as I started stand up. I skateboard too, so those two things uh uh skateboarding more so honestly, but they're easy to to make friends. You go to a skate park, you kind of see somebody who matches the cut of your jib, and then you just start talking. And I didn't necessarily meet anybody that way, but I would go to the skate park and it it always feels like home, and I would meet skate park friends, and the people that I moved here with were two of my best friends in the world, still are. And so I had a little crew that we could do stuff, and then when I started stand-up, I met Ian uh I mean, almost immediately. It was one of the one of the first it really was one of the first like ten sh I trying to be accurate, it was probably one of the first like ten shows I did in town was some comedy contest, and he had just started. So, and for for anybody listening, Ian's he's just a a very good friend who I met in stand-up, but met him right away, and then we just were fast friends, and so then from then on I had a friend, and he knew a few more people than I did. So then I met another one of my best friends, Shane Torres. I met him very early on, and then we were just like kind of all together all the time, and then and then it was easy. Then you have a couple people that you can sit with when you go wherever, and then when you're not doing stand-up, you just go hang out, dah dah da. So it wasn't never it wasn't really uh a ner I wasn't nervous about meeting people in a new city. I was nervous to be in a new city because it was scary. I'd never been in a city before, like lived in a city.

SPEAKER_02 7:51

That's wild. Yeah, you said uh South Dakota, right? Sioux Falls.

SPEAKER_00 7:55

Yeah, so like how how big is that? Uh now it's probably probably 300,000. When I was a kid, it was more about a hundred thousand. So it's big enough, but there's no big city. It's like a it's like a big suburb without a city attached to it, is what it was. So that's uh a friend of mine's from Bend, and he says the same thing. Yeah, it's a suburb without a city. Yeah, and it was trust me, we got into plenty of plenty of trouble, just like you would in any other city. But then and we traveled a lot skateboarding growing up. So I I'd been in cities all over the place for years and years. I just never lived in one. So it was great. I it was very it was much needed. I love it here.

SPEAKER_02 8:38

Yeah, I think uh I don't know, I I it's one of those areas of the country that I haven't uh done much but drive through it. Um but I want to like do a little we do little tours with some of the bands that we play in around here and playing uh getting to know more of the people from Boise because of Tree Fort and whatever. It's opening up these corridors into some of the areas around there that otherwise like it's really hard to find an inn, you know. I hear you city of 300,000 people. Uh were you always like a big comedy guy? You watch a lot of comedy stuff growing up. Did you know that you wanted to get into stand-up like at a young age, or you just kind of fall into it?

SPEAKER_00 9:10

Fell into it. I I didn't uh didn't even I when I was young, I thought I was gonna be a professional skateboarder. My pipe dream when I was young because it's funny to say because now I'm a comedian, which is just as just as weird as being a professional skateboarder. It's the same amount of to like if this is your job, not to not to uh say that you can't just do you can do anything you want and have fun and have a blast, but if you're going to say it's your job, it's almost as hard as saying that skating is your job. Like if you're gonna pay the bills with this, it's really weird. So when I was a kid, it was skateboarding. I was why I started skating when I was 14, which informed all of my musical taste, which we will get into as this is a music podcast. I but um started that and then I I wasn't ever gonna make it, but I thought I was, and I was pretty good. But I tore my knee, I broke my leg seven times total. Ouch. I know, throughout the 10 year skating, tore my knee, and that was kind of the big one. I tore my ACL and MCL, and then I stopped skating as much, got more into nefarious activities, uh and then I worked at a call center, just kind of kind of just treading water. And a friend of mine heard that there was a comedy contest on the radio, and he said I should go enter. I'd never thought about it. I'd never I'd watch stand-up, but I'd never really cared about it. Yeah, it's it's a it's a fun coinc or a fun chain of events, I guess, that changed everything.

SPEAKER_02 10:40

Yeah, I mean, I I like hearing you talk about skateboarding because it's one of those things that like I always tell people, I'm like, I have not stopped thinking that skateboarding was as cool as I thought it was when I was like 11 years old. It is when somebody does a skateboard trick, I'm like, that's cool as hell. That every single time, regardless of how many times I've seen a kick flip, it's still fucking cool. It's the coolest thing. There's nothing you can do to change my mind on it.

SPEAKER_00 11:01

No, there's not it's like the injury thing. It's amazing. Yeah. The injury thing, what'd you say?

SPEAKER_02 11:05

Oh. Well, the injury thing is like I tore my uh Achilles a couple years ago playing basketball, and then coming back from that, it's like, oh dude, it fucking sucks. Would not recommend it, weirdly enough. Uh but like when you come back from that, did you, you know, when you got back on the skateboard, were you now fully aware that like you could actually hurt yourself? Did it change the way you skate, or was it just like skating kind of uh faded, would have naturally faded anyway?

SPEAKER_00 11:30

I think it's more that I like to think it's I like to I tell myself sometimes that it's because I got hurt so much, but if I'm being honest, I just don't think it was gonna go. It wouldn't have gone that way. I might have I might have made a dent, a small little dent in as far as I might have got a sponsor or two and maybe got a couple bucks somewhere here or there. Maybe if I really like if I would have moved when I was 18 to LA like we wanted to, but it would not have worked with how with how the tremendous amount of natural talent that you see when you watch a professional skateboarder live. I didn't have that, I didn't have that by any means. Yeah. But I just had a lot of I just really loved it, and I and I was and I was decent at it.

SPEAKER_02 12:13

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, uh that's the weirdest thing. Uh I was talking to somebody the other day about like uh the existence of actual talent, right? Like you tell yourself at times like it's just hard work, because you want to convince yourself that you can kind of make these things happen. You could be LeBron James, maybe if you put your your head on the back of the phone.

SPEAKER_00 12:28

I really try to realize like if I every day, if I'm out there shooting free throws till midnight, I can every day. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:34

Yeah, I feel like I work on my jump shot all the time. It's just always been bad. I'm like, I think there's just a thing. I'm I just don't have the jump shooting gene. It's it's more work for me than it seems to other people.

SPEAKER_00 12:42

It happens. I mean, I with with skateboarding, I did have I mean you you t I took to it quick because I would have quit if I didn't. I tried football, basketball, every I tried every almost any sport that I had access to, and I didn't pursue them even as a kid because I'm like, I'm not getting better, and I don't like not being at least decent at something. And oh yeah, it's the worst. So I hate being bad at stuff. I'm bad at so many things. I I am too. I don't and hobby hobbies are great, but I needed one thing because I I started doing taekwondo when I was four, and I was good at that. Nice. So I st I did that till I skated, and then when I found skateboarding, that took over, and then kind of when I started doing stand-up, as soon as I realized that stand-up was fun and I was decent at it, that kind of took over skateboarding. So those are the three things that I've done. And you could feel yourself yourself into it. Yeah, throw yourself in, feel yourself get better, things start to happen, so it's motivating and all of that kind of and skateboard uh comedy is not terrifying. Like skating is so scary now. I'll still do it, I do it for it.

SPEAKER_02 13:53

What's funny is I feel like most people would kind of feel the opposite, where it's like I can ride a skateboard around town and it'd be fine, but like actually standing in front of people and trying to tell jokes. Uh did you find you had a natural talent for it?

SPEAKER_00 14:04

I had a natural talent for getting in front of people. I was never nervous to be the center of attention or like stand there, but I knit I did not have a natural talent for like writing writing stand-up. I could be funny. I was funny for I've been funny forever, but it was hard. I had to learn how to how to, you know, perform it and make it, you know, like you get better. And I just I didn't have that when I started. I was very bad.

SPEAKER_02 14:32

How'd you uh start figuring that out? When you got to Portland, you find people to write with? Did you start getting into comedy yourself? Like what's the first, you know, what's that first year where you're like, I'm gonna do this, this is gonna be something that I really get myself into. What's going through your head in that first year? And like, how did you find shows? How do you find uh open mics, all that stuff?

SPEAKER_00 14:50

Uh you know, it's a lot like being in a band or any anything like that where it just kind of happens. You do the amount of work that you think you're supposed to be doing, and then somebody asks you to do a local show, you do that, you meet people, some of those people if in my case, a lot of those people got successful and it I saw it happen and it was so motivating, but I still didn't know how to do it. And then you just keep you keep doing the thing, and if you are getting better at it, if you really are, then things doors just kind of start to open, and you learn after a while, you learn how to maybe make those doors open yourself, but there wasn't really a clear path, it was also such tiny little things, like getting I remember the first show in Portland that I got uh paid to do was at this place called Beauty Bar. It's not there anymore, it's right next to a fire station downtown. But um let's go yeah, I was at an open mic, and somebody asked me to do a show, they said they'd pay me 20 bucks, and it blew me away. I was like, no way, and you know, and then you do that for a year, and then the comedy club opened. They asked me to start working there. Uh Doug Benson helped me out a ton. He was uh Oh yeah, I knew you know, I knew Doug from back in South Dakota, and he came through Portland and he he brought me on the road with him, so he would he would like fly me somewhere and pay me to do the shows, and you kind of start to know the local scene a little bit, and then uh the Willamette Week had this thing called the the funniest person poll, you know, so I won that. I don't know 2015 maybe and just stuff like that, and then just that you know, it gets a little higher, a little higher, a little higher, and then you're doing it.

SPEAKER_02 16:44

Yeah, that's awesome. I loved uh Doug Love's movies when I was in uh college, was probably I probably heard you uh on that podcast a couple different times, and just I'm terrible with names. It's a running theme here on this podcast.

SPEAKER_00 16:57

That was the first that was the first real credit that I ever had was that I was a frequent guest on Doug Love's movies. And that that shit was crazy. I met because I met people doing that that I had looked up to my whole life. I mean, I got to do that show with Yeah. Well, there was a time I walked into a room and it was Scott Ackerman and Patton Oswald and Horatio Sands, and at the time, and then I was the fourth guest. We were in Seattle, and I was like, what am I doing here? It was cool, really cool, and that was motivating. That's awesome.

SPEAKER_02 17:27

Yeah, yeah, that's gotta be cool. Like seeing uh, you know, we've played a couple shows here and there, uh, with you know, my wife got to open for the mountain goats for uh a stretch of a tour or something like that, and just like seeing these guys that you listen to growing up, it's wild. They're just normal people. They talk to you. It's like, oh, you can actually do it. Uh dude, I always tell Go ahead. Go ahead. No, you I was just gonna say, uh, I always tell them people uh that are asking, like, how do I get involved and stuff? So just go to stuff. Like when you see real people do the thing you want to do, and then you talk to them eventually. Like, it it that's the most motivating thing is like you start seeing yourself as one step away from that as opposed to like an infinite number of steps away from that thing.

SPEAKER_00 18:06

That was that a hundred percent in every in every facet. When we saw, so Ron Fonches is the first person from Portland that I ever knew who went on who we saw on TV. We saw him do Conan and they had a viewing party at Helium. And I remember I was sitting under the TV and I was just like, dude, he's right there. And I'm thinking, like, I got that guy's phone number, and there he is on TV, and it just makes it so possible. And you think you in your head, you you all right. If I work for this, I can do it because that person did it, and we have lunch together all the time. And it's true. It and it you need you gotta have that. That's you have to have it, and and because it does have these jobs, they hire people, they they're all gonna have somebody working there. I every every show, every every like SNL set, every whatever, that they're all just they're gonna hire people, so it can be you or anyone that you know. It just I mean it sounds hokey, but it's true.

SPEAKER_02 19:05

I just that feeling alone right there, it's like because uh I I've found since I started making these reels, I get people asking, like, hey, what do I want to do? Or like how do I do things? Like, I've been playing music, I want to like play shows or whatever. And the thing that they're really talking about is just like they're living this life, you know, they're mid-20s or something like that, and they're like, I don't really feel that feeling that you're talking about. Like, you're seeing your friend on TV, and all of a sudden now there's this possibility that didn't previously exist there. And people get into these ruts where they're like 25, 26 years old, they got out of college, there's no like carrot in front of the stick anymore, and they're like, Well, where's the gonna be what's that moment that's gonna be like, oh, I'm like really training for this thing, I'm really building up for this, and then there's gonna be like a show or you know, uh get a new special or record a podcast, just something that makes them think that there's something else out there besides what they're doing right now. Uh it sounds like to me, you've always kind of had uh, I guess, alternative life plans. Uh so is this surprising to you that you've ended up in like the comedian circle uh living this kind of life where it's like I'm I'm going to the next thing, I'm going to the next thing, I'm going to the next thing.

SPEAKER_00 20:09

Yeah, it's surprising real surprising. I mean, I thought I never thought anything was going to happen. After after I graduated high school, I went to college for maybe a year, well, two years, and I knew from jump that I didn't want to go. I just went because I thought that's what you did. And I, you know, I waited a year. I mean, it was kind of then. This is 2001, so it was you did go to college, and that was the path. But I just I hated hates I didn't hate school. I did not I just did I, you know, I didn't do well. I didn't like it. I didn't like studying, I didn't like any of it. Uh not I just you feel so dumb when you say that, but I just I didn't. I just did not like it. I enjoyed it. There's a guy. Go ahead.

SPEAKER_02 20:54

Oh, there's a guy I recommend everybody read. His name's John Taylor Gotto. He was uh uh New York educator in the 70s and he won a bunch of awards for like educator of the year. He got the job just because he didn't have a job and he stole his uh roommate's teaching license. And his whole thing is just like I think the way that we teach people is weird and kind of backwards. It's like you should be engaging kids, figure out what they're into, and then lead them in a trail of breadcrumb crumbs into the stuff that they're actually passionate about. The way we do it now is like you have 45 minutes, it doesn't matter how into the subject you are, when the bell rings, you gotta go and turn your brain off and get into like math or something like that. And it just for him, he was like, This is uh not how I've learned anything, and it's how we teach, it's how we judge everybody's like education thing. I really like reading it just because it's like this validation of the same thing that you're talking about. Like, I learned so much more outside of college than I actually learned in college, but I went because it's the thing you gotta do, and I was playing sports at the time. Uh, but like I don't know, I just feel like it's a I look back at it as kind of a wasted opportunity to learn more. I just the way that education works for me, it doesn't line up that way.

SPEAKER_00 21:56

Um yeah, it's yeah, I mean, I I hear. And it's like I just didn't it I just didn't you know study and I did it's my fault I didn't develop study habits and stuff like that. I mean I I do enjoy learning and things. I I mean I I didn't I it wasn't one of those high schools horrible I loved most of it I just you know I was super bored and I wasn't interested uh and then college same thing kind of boring and I got yeah I'd like and I knew I got I knew that I wanted to do something but I didn't know what I just you know so I got a job at a call center because I also understand you have to work I didn't oh you know you work and it was kind of mind-numbing but it was easy I could do it and then I could just skate and that's really all I cared about was skating and and having a couple bucks just so I could live and then when comedy started I still in the beginning it wasn't a whole uh I should do this I could do this thing it was just I felt it was fun to do in town because nobody did it so I would just host all these shows it's kind of addicting to be in front of people and then after a while I started meeting people I met Doug you know Doug Benson there I met people that I'm still friends with to this day that that I did know who they were even though I wasn't like a huge comedy person I still knew who they were and so that was the next level of it where I'm like oh this is interesting I get to meet these people that I wouldn't normally meet and then it it when I moved to Portland the that was the goal was to figure out how to be a whatever that looked like be a comedian in a because I knew you needed to be in a city so I figured Portland would work because my friends were here and and then I transferred with that call center job so I still had a job here so it worked that's not bad it wasn't it was it was a blessing because it was hard to get a job at that point so I had a job here and I did that for a couple years quit that job because I I ended up getting about a month of road work so nice yeah it was the first time I got you know three four weeks in a row and naively if that's even a word I I was like all right I'm quitting my job I'm doing this I'm jumping in so I quit my job and I went on the road for a month and then I came back I didn't have any more work and so I came back I didn't have a I didn't have a place to live because we my roommates the two kids from Sioux Falls they we all agreed we're like all right we're done we're gonna split this house up you know one of them uh moved he went on the road to just go on a big road trip by himself the other one moved to Denver and I got back here no place to live and I'm like shit so I kind of just some friends of mine my friends Anthony and Heather had an extra room in their apartment and they let me rent it for very cheap and then I ended up living with them for probably three years and I I started working at call centers again but through that time siren call of the call center. Yeah it was just so easy and that you know the attrition rate is so high the turnover rate's so high at a call center that they'll just let you if you're like hey I need two weeks and they're like fine you're not supposed to but you can have two weeks off it's just a bunch of those kinds of stories and that still happens. I mean now that it is my job you look and you're like well now though I have a family I have a daughter if we have a mortgage I mean so it's it just all of that compounds with the amount of work you get too so you know even if I am working a lot or doing this it's just more gotta think about retirement now. So it's just the same version of that but it's now this is just a job. It's what I do. It's my job and you like any job I get to think about it like that.

SPEAKER_02 25:41

Yeah that's kind of cool. I mean uh that first month off like that idea that it's like hey I I got this month I did it all golden going ahead let's go uh it seems to me getting you know this is the first time we've talked but the vibe I'm getting from you is you you kind of have this mentality of like I'm just gonna go and do whatever is presented in front of me and if it we'll figure out what happens after but I like I want to go do the thing I want to go be a skateboarder I want to go try this stand up thing and like there will be something that comes after it we'll figure that out uh there's a a phrase that I like to use from uh Deng Xiaoping who was the chair of the Communist Party of China and he talked about when they did their reform and opening up and they opened up to like the West and started trading and he called it uh we are going to cross the river by grasping for stones. So it's like you know you want to go over there. You don't really know how to get it so you're reaching through the river finding something solid to stand on pulling yourself up to the next one. You just keep going and going and going. So that that feels a lot like how you seem to have lived your life up to this point.

SPEAKER_00 26:43

Yeah I I didn't that wasn't the plan but that's exactly that's exactly how it went. I mean you I the way that I always saw it was if it doesn't work it doesn't work I can always get a job that's why it is one thing I'm happy about is that I have done that my whole life. I have I've known those jobs those jobs that people don't love I've that's almost all I've had except for the except for this obviously and uh so I know I know I can go back to that anytime I want it's it's always there and I know that I'm willing to and I know that I won't get depressed because there's enough good things in life regardless of of the job like I'm very lucky to have the job that I have but even if I didn't have this I would still have my family I'd still have my daughter I'd still have everything and that is enough to motivate me to work in any in a whatever job I have to so it's always in the back of my mind like if it all goes away then I'll find a job like everybody everybody every day all the time everybody works you gotta do it. So I've always thought that way and it does help tremendously with the amount of dead ends you hit when you're in a weird self-employed job all the no's all the things you think you deserve but you don't get you know all that stuff yeah you can kind of let it roll off your back because I can focus on the stuff that I do have and how lucky I am to to get to do this as a job. It's ridiculous that I get to do this as a job. It's so it's it's crazy.

SPEAKER_02 28:11

It's wild but you're good at it man I really like your podcast. I do love that idea of like if you're if you know that you can do this job that's always going to be their call center job and you know it's not gonna ruin your life yeah there's a liberation to that you know uh it's just like hey I know I can live that life it might not be the life that I wanted to live or whatever but like I know I can now take some more risks uh there's a thing with uh like young kids toddlers they always do this thing when they're in a new spot when they get comfortable they run away from their parents until they get scared they run back to their parent and that's like the safe zone to explore out of yeah oh yeah how old's uh your daughter she'll be five in a couple months so that's exactly that's exactly what she does.

SPEAKER_00 28:53

She'll like she'll map it out she'll run her way and if she falls down she'll run back I get it I've ran back to my mom countless times. I mean I got it my first new car I leased a car before I moved to Portland so stupid but I leased a car and then just put way too thousands of miles on it that I shouldn't have done. But she goes she's like hey I'll make the car payment your first car payment is a present I go no I got it and then I spent that money in a couple weeks and I came back I go hey can you make that payment?

SPEAKER_02 29:19

And it's been a version of that my whole life I finally I don't know when the last time I did that was but it probably wasn't that long ago yeah it's nice I don't know it's nice to stay uh in touch with your parents every once in a while and sometimes staying in touch means you know asking for a nice uh amount of money to pay for something that you thought you could afford.

SPEAKER_00 29:39

There uh you know yes that's very true and there is with what I will say is there is a sense of deep down do I know if I'm able to do something so if you look at skateboarding deep in there when I was when I was really good really motivated young deep in me I was like I could do this it could work if everything if everything works out if all if I meet the right people if I'm in the right place at the right time if I if I surround myself like that could work. I never felt that way with basketball or being an artist. You know you know somewhere in there if you have if you can do it. And this with standup I think probably when I started somewhere I probably didn't even know it but like deep deep in there I probably knew this if all the chips fall in the right place this can work because I can just feel it. And I you know I never I with like college with learning not I don't know how to say it without sounding like a moron but I just never had that feeling I thought about being a teacher. That was when I when I was in college briefly my my my goal was to be a teacher and I just I'm like I never what does that look like I can't I can't picture it. All I can picture is me I could picture myself being a professor essentially performing and then maybe when I started stand up that kind of felt it it scratched that itch of well that's a version of what I thought I might be able to do when I went to college this is still the part of that that I thought I'd be good at and none of the learning.

SPEAKER_02 31:16

So there's also uh I was thinking a lot uh going into this conversation about like um I fucking I pontificate about nonsense and walk around talking on my phone about it that day let's go baby I like using a lot of five dollar words because in school 100% C and D student over here like uh I was a C's get degrees guy and I just like to read outside of school so now uh I get to uh I get to wear this nice wool sweater that my wife bought me and pretend to be a smart guy on the internet it's very important to me uh but like I had the same idea with like teaching you know oh maybe I'll go and teach uh but the idea of like going back to school always bummed me out because I was like I was bored when I was a student I'd probably be bored as a teacher the environment's kind of boring um but it's specifically with like comedians I think about like America as this kind of culture discovering itself right uh it's new it's fresh it's civilization figuring itself out to some degree uh and I feel like comedians use the currency of common sense very well like the idea behind a good comedian joke from an American comedian is like this is a common sense thing that I'm gonna say in a way that makes you realize that it's common sense as well and there's this authority in common sense in America if you hold like you know in China they call it the mandate of heaven in America it's just yeah you're the common sense guy you know it's why they describe George W. Bush as like I'd have a beer with him. You're just saying like I think he's you know I think he has common sense that's my version of it. But do you feel like there's an element there uh with your stand-up with stand up as a as an art form or whatever where there is like a teaching element there. It's a it's a type of teaching that Americans are responsive to because it's entertaining. We love to get entertained but you are kind of trying to get at something bigger than nothing. You know you're trying to get at some sort of larger thing or you do you think you're just telling jokes to make people laugh I hear you a little bit of both.

SPEAKER_00 33:08

I mean I do feel the older I get I'm in this weird I'm uniquely qualified to speak on certain things because I have a level of confidence in front of a group of people that that most people don't. Now on the in the individual to individual that varies. A lot of times I don't I can I kind of turtle up in those situations. But if I get in front of a group of people and I have something I want to say I can really get that across and I view it all as common sense. It might not be viewed like that to everyone else like as far as whatever if you want to be lighthearted your opinions on traffic or things like that. To me common sense I never politics things like that it's always such a slippery slope with stand up I'm not a political comedian not to say that uh I mean there's absolutely a place for it.

SPEAKER_02 33:56

But yeah for me it's yeah it's absolutely absolutely your viewpoints and you make them lighthearted funny and you're always right or I'm making fun of myself those are kind of the two lanes but yeah it's absolutely important you know it's important um do you feel like like you said you didn't really have a lot of uh stand up knowledge or whatever going into stand up have you felt yourself drawn towards specific influences what are some of the guys that early on you started listening to where you're like oh I think I want to try to do something like this guy is doing what are your influences as a comedian I I talked to a lot of musicians about that and I feel like that seems pretty obvious for because you literally just steal riffs and you steal tones and you steal drum beats and stuff. It's the same thing. Is it the same in the comedy world?

SPEAKER_00 34:44

Yeah yeah it's the same all my influence because I never it's the only the two things that I've ever cared about like the like skateboarding and standup they're the two things but I I approach them so much differently because skateboarding skateboarding is more like music I for me anyways where I I talk to musicians and the way that I feel about skating is more how a musician feels about music where it just grabbed a hold of me with everything. That's all I cared about. It completely consumed me from 14 until I mean still I I don't do it nearly as much just because physically I don't want to I don't want to get up and jump 300 times sometimes and and I'm just I'm not a I'm not able to but it's also it's just I love it so much. I could talk about skateboarding all day I could watch skateboarding all day if I meet a professional skateboarder I can barely look them in the eye I mumble I I give them like wet noodle handshakes I mean I'm I'm like a puddle of nerves so that's that was skateboarding with me with stand up so all that to say that I had direct influences with skateboarding. I consumed every ounce of it I could get all the videos that's how all of my musical taste when I was a kid was informed. With stand up it wasn't even kind of like that. It didn't I didn't ever like seek it out or watch it or watch specials or anything. I do now but when I started I just was so fascinated with the fact that I could even kind of do it and then I would see people come through I just blew my mind that I could even get a joke out. They were terrible I have them on film. They were they were so it was so bad. I can't even watch it anymore but but I would see people come through the comedy club every week and that would be my new influence because everybody they were all better than me by a long shot. So everyone I saw I thought oh my god they make it look so easy so simple and so one week an influence would be Tommy Jonagan or like another week it'd be David Huntsberg or another week it would be Doug Benson another week it'd be Brendan Walsh another week it was Tammy Pascatelli. It was just all these people that I saw and so every week I would you just if you knew it or not you would take a little bit of influence from what you just saw them do their cadence what they were talking about whatever it was and you you do that for years and then all of a sudden you start to realize that you now you've had this comp you've developed this persona mixed in from from me anyways from hundreds of people some way more than others but a little everybody sneaks in there a little bit and then after a while you realize that you can you can tuck that all away and now you found your own voice a little bit and then you can work on that and that's I mean that was 20 years ago and I've just now feel like I have the confidence to where I get up and I'm like this is me this is what I'm like where I'm not using all that stuff. Oh man it's interesting because it takes for took me forever and who knows maybe in 10 years I'll look back and I'll think like what the fuck were you talking about? You had no idea what you were doing when you were 44 which is a crazy thing to say. So it's an interesting it's an interesting job like that where you never again I'm speaking for myself I'm trying not to speak in in generalization but yeah for me I just figured out how to have the confidence and stand there like I I watch myself do stand up now for the first time and it doesn't make me want to barf because I finally feel like I'm presenting what I want. So you know but it's always changing that's awesome.

SPEAKER_02 38:24

Yeah I just listening to that uh story it's like uh I think there's this advantage you have to not kind of having the idols in your head like you do with the skateboarders right like I can't go and meet Tom Brady I grew up as a patr yeah I grew up as a Patriots fan and it's like he's not a real person. He's an idea and if I met him in person it would be it'd be weird it'd be kind of weird for me. But like if you grow up um I I know a lot of people in Portland that are really really talented musicians and they they kind of have this struggle with like well uh I just love it so much that I don't want to do it as a job because I feel like if I do it as a job I'm gonna have to change how I approach it how I relate to it and for them I think a lot of it is like they keep it in that kind of idolized state here. It's like them and then there's gods that they they interact with when they play music or whatever. You kind of have I don't necessarily advantage but I'm gonna use the word advantage whatever your advantage is that like you were just in the process wholly to just figure out how to keep doing it. You know you're already starting off from a position where you feel like you can kind of do it and now you're watching the people that are around you and also like a big thing why I tell people to go to shows local shows all the time if you're watching people doing it right now and not people doing it 20 30 years ago you are seeing what people are into right now. You're seeing what audiences are responding to right now and you're kind of passively taking in that information that it's like oh this is what the audience wants to hear. Absolutely I think that's way more important than listening to like you know if you're a musician the 10 best albums of all time or something like that.

SPEAKER_00 39:58

No go listen to the bands that have a crowd right now you know yes and well and absolutely because that also when I started stand up the the the amount of it that you could consume was much more limited than it is now so if you want to if you're like I want to do I want to go to an open mic I want to be a comedian I want to do that next week and you st you research stand up comedy you will find thousands and thousands of comedians when I if I okay if I said I want to go be a comedian what should I how could I consume it? I could go watch Comedy Central you I mean the internet was brand new so I could probably find some stuff but I would have to go rent if I wanted to I'd have to go rent HBO specials. And it's like you know Chris Rock and Jerry Seinfeld which I'm not saying they're not of course they're great comedians but it's so yeah I don't know if trite's the right word but it's just where you're like who are you influenced? You're like I don't know Chris Rock and Jerry Seinfeld and you're like well come on so but that was that was what I had so that's why it was maybe I didn't consume or care to do it because there was so much legwork. With skateboarding I I could I knew all the videos I could find all the videos like there weren't you know there weren't comedy there was just wasn't as much to get so you know that that's why I just didn't really it was easier to watch all the people that came through town every week than it was to go try to dig in the crates and find old specials and old because it you know back then too like CDs if you wanted to listen to what you know Lenny Bruce or some sh you know and I never cared to I know no no shade I just never I never cared to right or wrong it just didn't matter. A big part of comedy is that like it it does age quicker you know uh it ages almost immediately I mean if you comedy's not meant to hold up that's the whole thing that's what everybody talks about. That's why you watch all these old com movies or whatever and they're so problematic because it's of the time it's not you're like I mean even if you go watch Blazing Saddles you're like holy cow it's just yeah it's not meant to hold up it's for right now. So and it's so it's so topical I mean all monologue jokes from forever ago they're like who are you I don't even know who you're talking about.

SPEAKER_02 42:17

So you know it's not meant to age well yeah and that's kind of the fun of it though it's like if it uh if it had more of a permanence there'd be less room for new comedians you know uh in an older forest a lot of room for new comedians right now I'll tell you that yeah like if you're gonna try to play folk music you you still have to play folk guitar against Bob Dylan if you're a musician right like blowing in the wind still blowing in the wind no one really I mean it it's topical but it's not that topical uh so I don't know I kind of like that I think about that a lot with like DIY music scenes in Portland like part of the natural ecosystem in the Portland DIY music scene is that like people get to my age and they just go I can't do this anymore. I'm tired. I can't be going to somebody's basement to watch a hardcore short my ears don't work the way that they do uh or I can't keep putting a show on in my basement like it's just tiring it's it's you know harming my own physical house uh but because they drop out it now opens up this new area but it does put this emphasis on like oh somebody new has to come like you were just saying there's plenty of room for new comedians do you feel like there are a lot out there or do you feel like it's it's waning a little bit I feel like it's who am I to say but it seems like it's the most popular it's ever been I mean there right now you have I mean I could probably name thirty off top that are that are stadium comedians.

SPEAKER_00 43:44

And it used to be you know Steve Martin or Robin Wood. I mean there was so it's crazy right now. I mean it's also extremely saturated again who am I to say that one of the one of the good things what I will say what the internet what Instagram and everything has done for For all of the pitfalls that it might have for there no longer being gatekeepers, or you know, the barrier to entry is so low that now anyone, if you anyone can do it, which is fine. There is also an avenue for anyone to find exactly what they want. So if I want to find a skateboard comedian, there are there's a few of them, which is crazy. That are they are skateboard comedians. I'm not one of them. I wouldn't, I'm a comedian who skateboards, but there are like people who split the uprights. And that's why you can find it if you want to. And so with that, it uh it does afford someone like me who now I can do this as a job because people found that podcast. They found all fantasy, everything, and they they enjoy it. Yeah, and so because of that, now maybe they enjoy each of us individually, and they will now buy tickets to come to a show or buy a special or give a follow on Instagram. And so that's how I can do this. So I guess I I don't know if I answered the question, but yes, there's plenty of there, there are plenty of people doing stand-up because it's crazy popular right now. Maybe that'll burst a little bit, but I'm a pretty optimistic person. I don't think I think it's I think it's going pretty strong. And uh it's fine. Like it, it's it's easy to sit back and maybe I do it too. I sit whatever, I'll have a drink with a bud and be like, can you believe how many how many people are doing this? They think they're good at it. And then I have to remind myself that 20 years ago I was wretched. And who's good at something immediately? That's goes back to LeBron, where it's like, I'm not, I wasn't good at this. It all I had was the ability to get in front of people, which 99 out of a hundred are terrified to do, and I wasn't terrified. That was it. I wasn't any good at stand-up, I just was good at not being afraid to be in front of people.

SPEAKER_02 45:50

Yeah. Uh yeah, I mean, uh it's wild. Uh I was thinking back uh like that conversation where you go and you listen to something, it's like, oh man, these guys, they really thought they could play this show right now. And it's like, oh, well, you know, I was in the same boat. I've played a bunch of shows that I've got to do it. That's how you do it. You lie.

SPEAKER_00 46:06

Hey, you want to hey, you got 20 minutes? Of course I do, when I didn't have five. I remember doing 40. There was an electric company, they were like, we'll give you 500 bucks, you do 45 minutes, clean, you're like, no swearing or whatever, and I go, totally. And I did not. I would love to see footage of that because there's no way I did what they wanted me to do, but I did something. Oh, yeah. And that's how you but that's who everybody lies. Everybody lies about you hear about auditions or you hear those stories about people emailing as a fake manager or whatever. Everybody lies. Oh, beautiful because they have confidence in themselves, they have faith and they want the next thing, so you do what you got to do to get it. And you know, if it works, it works. If it doesn't, you tried.

SPEAKER_02 46:47

Uh also, it's just like you wanted to do something, and the lie was the key. You turn the I remember in high school, they used to come in, teacher would come in and be like, hey, this you know, computer or something is broken. Does anybody know how to fix it? And I would raise my hand every single time because I wanted to get out of class and it was already broken. I couldn't make it worse. And if I fixed it, they thought I had some talent in something. And also, I you know, sometimes you figure it out. But like that's part of it, is like sometimes it I like the idea of of positing it as uh instead of uh lying, you're just you're confident that you can figure this thing out, and reality might show you that you were wrong about it. But at the time, like it's not a lie to say, I think I can do this. You're just leaving the I think I can out and just going straight to I can do this. Uh, did you feel that way about uh the podcast? What started all fantasy everything? Are you like a fantasy sports guy or just uh you like the idea?

SPEAKER_00 47:37

That Ian, that was completely him. He he did it without uh David and I. He started it. Oh, nice. Yeah, it was completely his idea. He had that idea. Um, and I remember him telling me about it, and I go, Yeah, that's great. I think it sounds perfect. And he it's a brilliant idea. It is. I mean, he's a one, he's a freak, he's good at everything he does. He he works harder than anyone I know. He's so talented, it's crazy. So I knew it was gonna work, and I lived with him at the time. This is what I'm saying. This is like right place, right time, know the right people because I happened to meet him when we did a comedy contest. We happened to be fast friends, and then when I moved to LA, he let me live with him, and he started I wasn't doing anything, I didn't even have a job. I was I was just trying to do stand-up. I didn't know I didn't know what the move was. I was I was long distance with my now wife. Like I moved to LA to to try to pursue something, and I had no idea what it was gonna be. I thought it was gonna be writing or whatever, who knows? But so Ian starts this show, and then he did a handful of episodes, probably did 10 or 20, and then I I was just sitting there one day in my room, and he one of the guests bailed and he asked me to come do it, and I go, sure. And I did it, it was very fun. And then David and I did one took me, Ian and David did one together, and it just felt uh, you know, magic, it didn't feel but it felt it felt very it felt very right. It felt very right, very fun. It felt like we were doing something that if we enjoyed it this much, then maybe other people will enjoy it too. And that's how I that's how that started. And then that you know, I I did we did it for four years. I was working at this place called ABC Mouse, a call center in LA. Uh let's go. So we did that the whole time, and it it got way fairly successful in in whatever your terms of success are. It did, it was doing well, and then I quit my job and then COVID hit. And then we did it through Zoom for four years, and now we do it in person again, and it's the best. So I didn't, yeah, I just I fell into it, and I I really didn't do much. I just I I showed up and I was I was I hung out with my best friend, and it worked.

SPEAKER_02 49:54

Oh, yeah. I love the idea. It's like uh it's a a hard one lucky break type of thing where it's like, yeah, you and your buddy started a podcast and it took off, but it's like you and your buddy know each other because you committed to you know stand-up comedy. You showed up at all these shows, made a relationship with this guy that turns into other relationships, and then like when the idea hits and everything kind of magically fits together, it's kind of only in hindsight can you look back and be like, oh, I can see why all these pieces were necessary to this thing, but while you were doing all the individual pieces, you never would have concluded that this is what the puzzle's actually gonna look like. And it's like those little moments, that's why you just keep doing stuff because you never really know like what you're gonna look back on and be like, oh, that was actually like it's like kind of I met my wife because uh I went to a Halloween show uh that was like they were she was playing bass in the band that was playing in the garage uh at this Halloween show. And I remember up to an hour before I went to this thing, my roommates weren't gonna go with me, and I was like, Do I really want to go alone to this thing? And said yes, and ten years later, uh, these are all her guitars down here. This is uh mostly her stuff down here in the basement. But uh I get to play around.

SPEAKER_00 51:04

You position yourself to to succeed as best you can with all of these things, with all that's why that that you know that whole dumb answer that doesn't help anybody about how do you do this, how do you how do you get into comedy, how are you doing it? And you're like, you just you have to do something because you love doing it. So like skate, I I'll go to skating again. If I never I never made it in skateboarding, but I still skate because I love it, and I'll skate forever, and I would have skated forever, no matter what. It was never the whole thing wasn't to be professional. I know that we can stretch these limits on a sport because there's millions of dollars to be made potentially. So like you can start basketball when you're a child and and have aspirations of being professional because of money, whatever, but like you're still gonna play basketball because you love it. If you love doing stand-up or if you love playing in a band and you really, really do love it, and you really work I feel like a convert, but if you really work hard and you position yourself, you have you have to you have to play the game a little bit, and if you don't constantly party and you just position yourself to succeed, I firmly believe that you do. I know it's not an absolute, but I've seen it happen so many times from people, and I I could not be more serious when I say I have no idea how this worked. I I never thought it would work. I never thought I mean there was a point in my life I never thought I'd have a car again, you know. So but I position myself and I'm just I do love doing it. I would do it, I would do it less probably, but I would I would do it uh if I wasn't getting paid. Of course I would. It's fun, and and I think things work if if you do that, and then if you're very lucky also, and if you happen to meet the right people along the way, it's gotta be a perfect storm, but it can and does work all the time in all sorts of scenarios. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 52:57

I mean, uh I started, I mean, the reason we're talking on this whole thing, uh, I started, I moved to Portland to play music, thought, oh, I'll find some career in music, and then got to a point where I'm like, well, I met my wife off of music, I have all these friends. I'm kind of fine with it not working out as a job. Sure.

SPEAKER_00 53:13

Because it did work out in every other area. It did. It did, you know.

SPEAKER_02 53:16

Yeah. I actually started making these reels uh because I a buddy of mine and I have I've been like making a fantasy football rule set based off of the principles of Mario Kart, where like the better you are, the worse, the harder the game is, the worse you are, the easier it is. Because I just I used to play the game and I thought trading was really hard. But I started making reels to advertise for that. We're like building the app out. And the first reel I made was just me walking around the neighborhood talking about like why does nobody trade in fantasy football? Got like 300,000 views, and then just randomly kind of realized, like, for whatever reason, I am good at this new format of talking for 60 seconds into a camera and articulating an idea after doing it for fantasy football when the season kind of ended. I was like, Well, I still want to keep doing this. Tried a couple different ideas, eventually stumbled on. Hey, I'm this guy that moved to Portland to be in a band, and I never made it as a musician, and I would have done it all again if I had a chance to do it and just start talking about music, and now that shit has blown up, and I I got recognized at a Blazers game yesterday for the first time, so I'm feeling really good about myself. Uh it's a trip. I don't know. I it's you know, I need something to bring me down. I need something to go, I should stub my toe or something. It's getting a little hard. Nah, man.

SPEAKER_00 54:28

It's it's a trip, all that stuff, and congratulations. And it that case in point, it can it it happens, you know, and if and if there's pivots, there's pivots all over the place. I mean, I when I moved to LA, I thought I wanted to be a writer because I thought that's what you did. I thought people wrote. Podcasting wasn't we were like we were lucky enough, it's been it was 2016. I know podcasting started way before that, but like the big boom that we're currently in with podcasting, we were just before it, which we were real lucky because it'd be daunting. Yeah, you know, and I did start a new one, it's daunting to do now, but it doesn't mean, and I run into this a lot, it doesn't mean that you shouldn't do it. That's the thing. Like people say right now, and it's a good example because here we're on a podcast, they're like, Oh, it's you know, why why do it now? And you're like, Well, that's like saying, Why, why try to be an actor? Why, why start a band? There's thousands. I mean, because it does work, it can. And if it if you don't try it, if everybody thought that way, then we'd have no new art, no new entertainment. Gotta do stuff, man. You gotta do things. And creating stuff is fun, regardless of how far it goes. It's nice if it goes far and if tons of people see it, and if it's reciprocated, and and if it's you can feel it, and if you get recognized at Blazer Games and stuff, it's awesome. But even if it doesn't, it's still fun to make stuff.

SPEAKER_02 55:50

The guy introduced himself to me, and then he's like, I gotta go. I'm taking the half court shot to try to win a car. It was wild. It was a funny fun little fight. Uh he didn't make it, and it wasn't particularly close, but he seemed like he was having a really good time out there. So uh I believed when the shot was in the air, I really thought that thing was going in. I get it. But yeah, I think uh, you know, uh ultimately uh what my first job out of college was working at a psych hospital for kids and adolescents, and when it was good, it was just me like playing Mario Kart with kids uh and like hanging out, talking about their problems and stuff like that. But like my job was to make sure that the bathroom stayed locked, right? And I would tell the kids that it's like listen, I what I want to do is this like sit down with you and talk about this stuff and talk about your things. But like the job is the job. Uh for me, I'm trying to figure out like what the job is of this right now, and it's like I don't getting paid for me now would be like the nice thing. It's just I'm I'm just trying to figure out some way to make some money. But like what I really think the job is that the reason that I keep making these little podcasts here is I just want people to hear what you just said. You can go out and do things. Like, if one person starts a house show venue off of listening to a podcast of mine, it's like that's that would that's worth it. That's the payment for me right now. I'm having a good time. I don't need anything else. My life's going pretty good. I just want to have something that encourages people who are, you know, maybe 19, 20 years old, thinking, like, oh man, I'd love to get into skateboarding, I'd love to like be a stand-up comedian. It's already too late for me, though. I have to like go to college and be an accountant or something like that. Just be like, just don't let it die. Don't let that dream die yet. Go do something.

SPEAKER_00 57:25

I always wonder, I because I agree, and I always wonder why I agree so like why am I so adamant about that? Is it because I didn't go that route? Because there's a big part of me, and I I just I always wonder this. There's a big part of me that wonders like, if I did go to college and I got whatever job I wanted, how would I feel about people pursuing would I think it's unsafe for someone to do this? And I don't think I would. I think this is what drives people, and it's you just have to know that it's okay to do what you got to do to get by. Like, if you need a job, it doesn't mean you're not a musician. It doesn't mean you're not a comedian. It just means you have a job. And I feel like that's what that's what I ran into a bunch is people felt like if they had a job, they weren't really, they weren't, you know, carouac. It's like, well, yeah, you don't yeah, that's that's not how it's supposed to be. That's a romantic version of it. Nobody can actually get by on like a dollar a day. I mean, you I suppose you could, but you know what I mean. You you'd have to do what you got to do to facilitate your goal. And in that, uh, you will find whatever it is that makes you happy, even if you don't end up doing that thing you thought you were gonna do, you will evolve and something will happen, and you will find that place. And then at a certain point, maybe you're like, oh shit, now I'm an x-ray tech and I do stand-up because it's fun to do, and I'm not broke, and I just have a good time doing stand-up, and now that's my hobby. I'm not a comedian like I thought I would, but I fell into this job that I like, and and and and now I do stand-up and I have friends that do it, and I grab a beer every Friday, and and I'm happy. It works.

SPEAKER_02 59:00

And maybe you found a life that uh you didn't think was gonna be something you wanted more. I don't know. For me, a lot of it is like I know people now that do tour a lot and that go on tour all the time. Uh and now that I'm actually at the age of Mad, I'm like, I'd much rather be happily married with a little house with a backyard. The tour sounds awful. It sounds hard, man. I mean, it sounds great for you. I'm glad you're doing what you love, and I love all the things. Everyone that goes and does that, like thumbs up, go get it. But like I found this thing that works for me, and then I play my shows, you know, at the bars around town and go to the house shows and watch the kids play.

SPEAKER_00 59:34

I'm with you. I'm gone all the time. I can't, I wish I was here. I'm god, I finally I you know I'm on the road a lot right now, and it is it's one of those it's nice to be able to sit back and kind of pick and choose, but yeah, it's it's working, and but I I feel you. It's like, man, I'd never thought that I'd say I'd rather just be here, go skate, go walk, uh, go walk around, read. My perfect day is like go walk around, read in the morning, skate for a little bit, go to a movie, hang out with the family at night. It sounds amazing.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:05

That sounds awesome, dude. That sounds awesome. And it happens a lot.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:08

I don't know. I get to do that a lot.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:09

Yeah, that's possible, you know. And the same thing when you talk about like you need one lucky break or something like that. Like, anyone that's single right now, you just gotta find one person that's willing to sit on the couch with you and scroll their phone and just do absolutely nothing. And that's they're happy doing that every day of their life. It changes your whole life, man. Yeah. It's wild. This uh podcast wildly pro-marriage, I guess. Not pro-marriage, pro-finding someone to hang out with in that way. Positivity. I don't be prescriptive or whatever. Um, I don't want to keep you much longer, uh, because you know it's been an hour. Thank you so much for doing this. Uh I really had no idea whether or not you were gonna say yes to this, but you you now that I've talked to you, it seems like this is kind of your vibe. Yeah. Uh just say yes, see what it's all about, see if it turns into anything. Do you have anything to plug?

SPEAKER_00 1:00:55

Uh, you know, um, you go to my website, Sean Jordan Comedian. Those are all the shows. I'm around town all the time doing shows. I try to keep on the website or Instagram, Sean Cougar Mellon Jordan on Instagram. Uh it's uh thanks for getting it. Uh but yeah, follow me there, listen it all fantasy everything. Um and you know, as far as me just to touch on it, but music, yeah, yeah, skateboarding, all my musical taste came from skateboarding. So, you know, I would watch old skate videos, and I remember I came home with a gym.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:23

Why real quick, why do you think uh I don't want to keep you too long, but I would love to talk about music with you. I just we uh why do you think skateboarding and music are so tied? What is it about the aesthetics of skateboarding that felt like such a space for music to thrive?

SPEAKER_00 1:01:38

It's you know, I don't know. It's I mean it needs music in the videos, they need music to go along with the skating, and it just goes hand in hand with the with the way because the skater a lot of time gets to pick their music, and so whatever their vibe is, they try to find a song that makes that work, and it's it when it hits, it's so good, and it makes you love that music. So, like I came home with a Jim Crocey CD one time, and my stepdad was asking why, because I'm 14, and I heard Time in a Bottle, Rodney Mullen uh skated a he skated a uh don't mess is it don't mess around with Slim, whatever the name of that song is. Um Don't Mess Around with Slim.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:16

Names are not something that are important in this uh podcast because I can't remember them.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:20

It's tough, but it was it's Don't Mess Around with Gym or Slim, and then Time in a Bottle he skated to in virtual reality, which is an old plan B video. And his skating is what I was psyched about, and those songs just reminded me of his skating, so every time I heard them, I got hyped. So I went and bought the CDs so I could get hyped all the time. Oh and that's how so many bands. I mean, all so that's how I first heard Atmosphere, which is my favorite, you know, Slug is my hero. It's like my favorite band of all time. That's how I heard them. I heard them in Escape Video in a 4-1 Caswell Berry's part. Uh, you know, the band pulp, first PJ Ladd has a song or uh Wonderful Lore Horrible Life, and Pulp's Like a Friend is in there. And so I never who knows if I ever would have listened to Pulp. But if you find out after a while, you find out you're like they're one of the most successful like indie bands there is. But there's countless examples of that where Sonic Youth, Jerry Hassoo, and Bag of Suck, you know, Sonic Youth, so many bands that I never would have got into because it just would have been Snoop and Dre and Tupac my whole life. And skateboarding opened up that window, and it's still to this day when I watch video parts, if there's a new song, I always I look it up and I find the artist. I mean, so like that's I found cigarettes after sex or uh like old Aretha Franklin songs that I've never heard. I mean, there's so many windows that skateboarding has opened up, and uh it's yeah, so that it still informs my musical taste to this day, and that's how I'm that's how I found my favorite band, Atmosphere. So it's really cool.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:52

That's well that's uh that's one of the things I'm trying to figure out with these reels and stuff, because uh I'm always fascinated by exactly what you're talking about. Like for your when you were in high school, college, younger, whatever, uh you were just looking for skate videos, and now all of a sudden you have a musical taste that's wildly different because you found these skate videos, and it's like now we have these little 60-second clips, you know, everyone's watching short form videos all the time. I watch a ton of skateboarding on short form videos, and a lot of the times it's the same thing, it's set to music, but instead of getting the entire song in a 20-minute skate video, the song has to sell me now in a 60-second clip that I'm gonna be watching in the middle of maybe 10,000 other clips that week. So it's like it's the same, kind of the same delivery, but like it's in a completely different like context. I'm wondering if it's still gonna have the same effect. If skating is still gonna uh drive people towards uh that other part of the culture, which is the music.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:51

Maybe I I'm I feel very lucky that I got to be a part of the generation before the quick content, you know. I'm not gonna say that people are so quick to say about the attention spans being lowered, but it's not their fault. It's content just quicker now. So I don't want to put blame on somebody consuming it like it's their fault. They have nothing to do with it. I it wasn't around when I was younger, so we had full-lengthscot, and we that's all we had. So if we got the new zero video, we would watch that every single day. And so those songs set in. Oh, yeah, and we couldn't fast forward from our phone or whatever. We would just put it in, we'd sit and watch the whole thing in its entirety, and we'd watch it over and over and over and over because there wasn't as much to take in. So now there is, and I I I think it hits a little less, unfortunately, just because I don't think kids are watching that same part over and over and over and over. That is to memorize like I memorize so many songs just from watching the part, and I knew the song well before I went and purchased it for whatever reason. Like I there's still I mean so many songs that I know that I've Never even seen the album. I've never even seen a copy or like looked it up on Spotify, but I know all the words and I think that's going away. I'm thrilled that I got that it was instilled in me because now I will try to watch if I hear a song that I like, it honestly motivates me to watch the part more than if I really enjoyed the skating. Uh which is that's kind of cool, you know. I'm trying to think like cults. Shane O'Neal had a had a cults song in his part. I we're talking eight years ago, but I watched the part so many times because I love the way that the music goes with it. And the skating's amazing, of course, but if there was no music, skating just always looks cool. I don't know what it is about it. It's honestly cool. Because it's the coolest, because it is the coolest. That's why it looks cool.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:44

It's the coolest. It's kind of like smoking cigarettes. They spent a billion dollars trying to make you think smoking cigarettes doesn't look cool. And then you watch Don Draper do it in Mad Men one time and you're like, oh, maybe I should develop a debilitating habit.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:56

It's unfortunate that it looks so cool. It just does.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:58

It's unfortunate, but you know, you gotta you gotta tell the truth, man.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:03

So yeah, anyway, there's my there's my music, my music hot takes.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:07

This happens to me on a lot of these podcasts. I tell people to come in with music, and then I just we talk for an hour and I'm like, oh yeah, we didn't really talk about any music, but if you listen to my reels, I kind of don't talk about music on the reels either. I mostly just talk about other stuff, and then you mention a song in the background. It's really just trying to figure out for me, being an older guy, I'm like, well, this is what the kids, the kids literally might be illiterate. This might be how they interact with all information. So what the fuck's happening here? My one positive theory on it is like because they're seeing so much content so rapidly, so early, their ability to kind of detect whether or not somebody's being authentic to them is much higher than it would have been otherwise. You know, I I find with a lot of my content, like if I'm trying to sell them something, they don't like it, they don't watch it as much. But if I just had like a really good idea or something and I pull out the phone and I get it at the moment that it's an idea, it tends to have a better reaction. It's like, oh, I think something's going on there in the same way that you know your parents click on all the ads, the pop-up ads, uh on the internet, and you should not click that X. Oh yeah, they love it.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:09

Yeah, I think there's something to be said there. I mean, if I you know, I find that with stand-up that for a while, but when I was figuring things out, I still am, obviously, but you I would try to be a version of myself that I'm not, I would be all wet, you know, sometimes I'd be all loud or I'd try to move around a bunch, and it's like I'm not like that. So why would I try to act like I'm like that? I'm this is what I'm this is my goal as stand-up. I've always wanted to be as close to this as I can. I want to be as close to what I'm like, which is fairly monotone, and and and you know, that and I do, and that's what my stand-up is right now, which feels really fun because I I know I'm not lying to the people that are in the room and I feel like they can tell. So it's a version of what you're saying.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:52

I mean I my ultimate point that I always kind of lean on with these things is like uh when you're trying when you have like a critical lens on things, like why do people do that? It kind of ruins stuff, right? When you think about it, uh your critical brain has ruined things that otherwise you might have enjoyed. But it's like I think ultimately there's this path of like when you know something is good, you it's because it's true, it's like actually true. It's been stripped of all its artifice or whatever, and that's kind of what you're trying to get to. You're trying to get to some truth, whatever that is, in your stand-up. Your stand-up has some truth in it, and it's like when it hits, you know, even if you can't explain why you know or what it is, you do have those moments where like that was it, that was what I was trying to do, and that shit can get you that shit can get you on tour for months and years. Just keep chasing that like uh that element of like, oh my, that Eureka moment when you actually craft something you wanted to do. Absolutely, that's true and good or whatever. Yep, agreed. So well, man, thank you so much for talking to me. Uh, I really enjoy all of uh the comedy. One thing that uh having listened to your podcast has done is uh my buddy uh Tim, I realized that he's just riffing your bits off of that podcast all the time. I thought he was genuinely funny, but it's it's good to know now that he's just stealing from you as much as possible. So thank you for ruining my friend Tim. That's very nice. Sorry, Tim. Yeah, it's not good. And uh yeah, thank you for your time. Uh hopefully I'll I'll come out to a stand-up thing or something like that. Maybe shake your hand and be like, hey, I'm the guy that talked to on that podcast that we're gonna do.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:24

Absolutely, you have to.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:26

Awesome, man. Uh well, thank you very much, and uh checking out one Sean Cougar Melon Camp on Instagram.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:32

Sean Couper Melon Jordan.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:34

Melon Jordan, there we go. What did I tell you? Melons, man, they're gone. They just aren't sticking anymore. Alright, thanks, man.