Todd Van Allen and Darcy Fiander swing by to talk to Bob about food, Jimmy JJ Walker, and Jokes, plus a few minor detours into the ephemera. Join in the fun.

Ok So Heres One

Bad AI Transcript

Here we go. Hey, everybody, and welcome to a conversation with Darcy and TVA, or better known as Tonbad Halen. I mean, Todd Van Allen from the OU812 album. That’s right. By the way, Bob, that’s not even the worst butchering of my name I’ve ever gotten. Really? Oh, no, no, no. I once got on. I said, hi, I’m Todd Van Allen. And they went, Tom Banana? Tom Banana. Sure, yeah. Let’s go with that. Let’s go with that. That’s my alter ego. Yes. I do children’s parties as Tom Banana. As well as bachelorette parties. It works either way. That’s right. The pants are different. That’s right. Exactly. The pants are less pants and one. Yeah. So, uh, guys, so you’re from the, okay, so here’s one podcast, which had a different name yes which was i can’t remember it was like uh top bunk or what was it called? Right. Uh, Darcy, why don’t you take him through the history of the lineage of the show? Yeah. Tell me about it. All right. Yeah. When did it start, Todd? I don’t remember what year. Oh, I know. A long, long time ago. Uh, 19. Yeah.
Nope. We sent it out on cassettes, I remember. Oh, were you? Okay, it was a sneaker net. It was a bonus with our zine, yeah. Yes, it was an oratory sermon that I would deliver, and we recorded on these little cassette tapes. Oh, micro cassettes? Yes, and then Darcy would mail them out, yes. Oh, very nice. No, I don’t know what the year was. It was when the internet was big. Do you remember when that year was? Hmm. I think it’s still big. Are you talking like it’s infancy big or first steps kind of big? Just prior to 2.0. Okay, so back in the probably early 2000s. No, I think it was after. I think it was, what? Was it? 2007, 8, 9, 10.
When did we stop saying WWW? That was after, I think it was like 1949. Okay. We just did two Ws. Right. And then there was an afterwards. I remember in like 1919. Yeah, there was another one. There was another number in 1939. That was a big one. We’re waiting for the third W. Right. And then there was a WWF for a long time. I thought that was for pandas, but then guys started hitting each other with chairs. And then there was a court order, and then it was a WWE. That’s right. Exactly. That’s right. And then they threw everybody into a tizzy because, you know what? It’s entertainment. I didn’t even realize that. No, they had to tell you. Yeah, I was like, what? What’s the E stand for? The E stands for, ugh, you still watch this?
I thought you were older than 14. I honestly, okay. So no, Darcy, when did it start? It started like 2007, 2008? Something like that, yeah. Darcy doesn’t even want to chime in on this anymore. He’s like… So the first iteration was called the TVA podcast. Correct. And at some point, you thought you didn’t want to have your name on it. It didn’t say anything about what the show was. After the first few episodes. Give me off of this. Take my name off of this show. Think about something else here. I want to go by Brian Lobard. I just wanted to get out of this. Around that time, you were hosting an open mic comedy night. Correct. Called Comedy Above the Pub. Correct. Oh, that’s what it was. Above the Pub. We’ll name it.
about something higher than your normal height, but not so high that you’re in the sky. So Darcy is really skipping through a few details here. Darcy was a bleeding-edge technology guy around the 2000 and times, right? I can tell because of the air conditioner that he’s utilizing still today. Yes, the big block, and if you look at the shelf, the 85 thermoses that he has up there. Oh, I see that, yeah. Right. Uh, here’s a, uh, here’s a, uh, a little game for you to play, figure out which one’s the fleshlight. So, uh, Darcy. He lifted that can up and I was going to be. Um, so Darcy came to me, I was doing a radio show at the time I was doing, I was doing a call in a segment, uh, for a radio station in Brockville near what my hometown was in Ontario. And, um, and I would, I would.
Do, uh, I would, I would do like this thursday morning spot for them. And, uh, Darcy came to me and said, uh, you need to do a podcast. And to which i said, that’s awesome. What’s a podcast. And then, then he described it to me and i went, how much work do i gotta do for this? Oh, there you go. So then he said, let’s just grab the audio from the radio spots. We’ll put that out and that’ll be a podcast. there you go. So first you have to get a keurig and then yes you can have a podcast exactly so uh so this this went on for a while and then i got a second show in Kingston, uh, where’s the drive-by spot. So we had like two things that we could, we could post out. So it was like, we doubled our content. There you go. We were, and by the way, Darcy, I’m just going to tell you, Mark maron twice a week, us twice a week before him.
Doesn’t fucking add up. That’s all I’m saying. I’m sorry, Bob. Can I switch on this? I’m sorry. Yeah, no, go right ahead. Okay, all right. I mean, come on. You got Fleshlight mentioned before that. What the hell? Right. So, well, Fleshlight, people can just Google that. I said a swear. That’s worse. They can Google that as well. That’s true. That’s true. What’s that word? Yeah, what’s that? I’ve never been to a construction site. Wait a minute. So then… Uh, it, it happened. Uh, we use Skype to do like an intro to lead into the segments. So we would hop on Skype and go, okay, so here’s me in Brockville and then here’s me in Kingston. And then our conversations got longer and longer and longer. Uh, and then to the point where we went, well, we should get some guests. Okay. Well, I’ll, I’ll see if any of my fellow comedian friends have Skype, uh,
Now, did mark maron have guests before this? I’m just, I’m trying to follow did he i don’t know. I’m trying to see that the original the originals must have right uh the very first ones, I remember him just being by himself. Yeah. What this was. He had no idea. Again, someone suggested he should have one. He had just got fired from radio. Right. And he was trying to figure out his next move Is being fired from radio a prerequisite for this kind of stuff? Well, I actually got… No, because I got fired afterwards. Oh, okay. Right? They just… You know, those segments dried up. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. So we had… So we then eventually split the show. There was a show where we had comic friends of mine. It was at episode 50, I remember. Yeah.
So we had two separate feeds. We had the one, the TVA podcast, which was originally the radio clips. And it went into me talking with my friends over Skype as guests. And then the other one was the TVA radio replay. Yeah. And that was where the radio clips live. So they got shoved to the side with this new brand thing. And then we got this. So then I took over this comedy show. And like, it was about, it was this empty room above a pub in Toronto. So I called it comedy above the pub. There you go. Right. I mean, yeah. Genius. Exactly. Right. What are we going to call it? I don’t know. Well, well, what is it exactly? If we could, if we really, like four words or less, I Google, and they said descriptive. And I said, okay, I got a perfect title. Yeah, that’s it. So, uh,
So then what we did is we moved the podcast into the space. And so before the show, I would bring in my comic friends who would do the show afterwards. And so we would have the conversation beforehand. We’d break for dinner. And then we would do the show. Free dinner then? These guys get free dinner? They paid for it. Oh, God. Okay. This was podcast money back then, Bob. I don’t know. I’m just asking. No. we didn’t, we didn’t have stamps.com. We didn’t, there was no sponsor. Squarespace was a glint in some developers eye at that point. We had nothing. We had nothing that’s true so then um so then and this went on for quite a while. And then, uh, the, the bar that i was doing it at, uh, found out that they could make way more money doing bootleg poker than they ever could with my little comedy show so
It was Poker Above the Pub. Yes, it was. And we didn’t have license for that, so we got thumbed out of that one. So then we just started recording it in my house at that point. Did you change the name to Comedy at My House? Which became… It would have been good. Uh-oh. Todd’s freezing up, apparently. How? I’m on a hard line. I’m on a hard line. How is that possible? Am I back? You’re back. No, I had to tell my wife to stop streaming. Ah! What’s that have to do? What’s she watching? Zero Day? Zero? We just got done watching episode two of that. That’s pretty crazy. I watched that. Are you going to keep watching it? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s like, you know…
Does he have mental problems or not? Your guess is as good as mine. You just saw it. Thank you for not giving me spoilers, Bob. Yeah, I didn’t. I watched it. Yeah, I watched the whole thing. Right. It’s hard not to change subjects, but real quick, it’s hard to watch Robert De Niro as a, you know, upstanding citizen. Yes, correct. I don’t believe it. Yeah. Like, honestly, there isn’t one moment in that movie or that series when he’s on screen that I’m waiting for Joe Pesci to walk in with a pen. Or he gets into the bullpen with a baseball bat. I want his family dead. I want his children dead. I want his dog dead. Sorry. Well, no, that’s not the Chicago way. That’s right.
Yeah, so we got out of the house and we made one of the rooms an actual studio. So then we just had people come over and we would do the recording. Did Mark Maron do that first? He has never done that. He’s never done our show. I asked him. Well, no, he had a studio. I think he had it in his garage. Right, that’s right. It was in his she shed or whatever. Yeah, so we had a room. We had an actual room. And then… Uh, people would show up because they would, they would get booked for like, because we, it was a publicist would call us and go, Hey, you want to do this podcast? And it’s like, cool. So they would send the the guest over thinking it was above a pub. And then it’s just like some house in Toronto. They’re like, well, this can’t be right i i knew toronto had, uh, the,
you know, the city of Toronto had a drinking problem, but I’d realized it was so bad that every house is a pub. Every house is a pub. More of the point is like, you know, there were like female guests where it was like, if I don’t text you in five minutes, call the police, you know, come in everywhere. We would make coffee or tea and then they would come upstairs and we would do the conversation and then we would go about their day. And then that was it. Yeah. That’s cool. That’s fantastic. Yeah. We did that for a while. Do we have a date on that Darcy? Cause you apparently are the, uh, the person that logs the dates. Well, I’ll, I’ll tell you when, when the last episode in the house happened, uh, COVID. Yeah. COVID stopped everything. So that’s what we moved to zoom. And then I moved to Ottawa and then it occurred to me that, uh,
Hey, I left everything back in Toronto. Exactly. It’s like, well, we can still do this. We can still do this. And so, so we now just do it over, you know, the technology platform that is zoom. So I think Darcy, you’re from everybody else, right? I’m still in Toronto. Yeah. I think we kind of thought maybe the show was done. Maybe we didn’t know what we were going to do. COVID hit you. Right. Yes. Didn’t know. And then we realized, oh, everyone has switched to zoom we can do this too. We can do this too. And by the way, I’m sort of glad because uh the last guest that we had uh in the live studio, not gonna end that way. No. No. I know him. He’s a comic friend of mine. I’m just for the sake of shitting on him that’s i was gonna say what did he do nothing
he’s just he he just he just got hit for no reason. That was okay yeah he’s like you know, Mark maron has little mints. I got a granola bar and a juice box. Right. Right. Do you want some coffee? I’ll make you shit your pants. So then now you’re, now why, why did you move to Ottawa? uh many uh the the top two reasons are my wife’s work kind of took us there. Oh, okay. She’s the breadwinner. She makes all the cash. Yes. And, uh, that was way more successful. Oh my God. Yes. Yeah. Yes. She got into true crime. Why didn’t we see that Darcy? Yeah. Yeah. Doesn’t that make you sick? The true crime things. I mean, Oh my God. I don’t like it. The fact that they’re popular, yes, that actually drives me nuts. A quick story here. So we’ve been doing our show for a while, and my wife doesn’t care. And the next thing I know, I think it was probably 2019 or 2018, I see a thing on the Apple thing. It said it was a charge for a podcast. Right. And I’m like, what the hell? I’ve been doing this.
And you don’t care, and now you’re paying someone else? Mm-hmm. Well, no, you understand, I get early access. It’s a true crime podcast. I’m like, son of a bitch. Okay, right. Are they going to solve it while you’re listening to it? No. No, they just, you know, they just talk about somebody’s dead. Yeah. By the way. Yeah. But Selena Gomez is so nice. That’s right. I didn’t know she’d kill him. Yes. But no, I’m really not on the true crime thing. It was a whole serial thing from NPR or whatever that kind of controls a lot of that. Correct. Isn’t that a shame? I think it’s a shame. But I don’t know what to do about it. Other than you know what, maybe you change the name of your show to comedy at the end of the block in the dead end street in the dead of the night and you kill the guest at the end. Yes.
Every show. Well, that takes a lot of choreography because we’ve got to, no, the logistics are painful because we have to figure out where they’re recording. Darcy’s like, as long as it happens in Ottawa, I don’t really care. Well, no, because you would have to find our guest wherever they’re living, find a hit man that would be able to go into the place where they’re recording. And then, okay, well, thank you. And then they come up behind them and then, and then the screen goes black. And then, yeah, I don’t know. I don’t know. It’s still a work in progress. Let’s put it there. Yeah, we’ll keep workshopping. Let’s put a pin in there. We’ll call it TVA. We’ll run it up the flag and see what happens. Yeah. We could call it TVA DOA. All right. There we go. Working title. What do you think? There we go. Yes. Speaking of titles, we didn’t get to our final, our
title of the podcast. Right. Is this one here? There it is. Yeah, that guy. Right.
So we hit 23 seasons of comedy. Okay. I always ask everybody this question. What is a season? 25 episodes for us. And how did you come up with that? Well, at the time that we were starting out, we really didn’t have any templates for the way that this was supposed to be done. And we both listened to this podcast hosted by Jimmy Pardo. I was listening to Mark Maron there. Right. Well, no, because he just does. He just does numbers. And quite a few other podcasts have since come on. But Jimmy Pardo did like 25 episode seasons, and we just looked at each other and went, well, I guess this is how it’s supposed to be done. Yeah, I guess. We’re stealing everything else that show is doing. Yes, yes. He’s married to Chekhov’s daughter. Correct. Yes. Daniel Koenig. So close to what he’s doing. Mm-hmm. Okay, that’s interesting. So I’m always curious what people call a season because there’s no structure to that.
I have over 2,000 seasons. We’ve done three in this episode. How long is the season for you, Bob? About 25 minutes. There you go. Perfect. If you’re counting, just say it. If you’re counting, just, yeah. Get the calculator out and start adding and then divide. Divide by a big number. Okay. So yeah, so like, so we did like 23 seasons of that and it literally was, I got to talk to like one of, one of my, it turned out to be like one of my comedy idols because I didn’t, I honestly, I don’t know how it happened. I can’t remember how we landed him on the show, but there’s a comedian by the name of Dylan Brody. I just, I just follow them on, on, on Twitter. And I remember seeing him on like evening at the improv. Like when I was like, you know,
before I was doing standup and even during, while I was starting out, I would just record as soon as like, Oh, there’s standup on. And I would tape it. And I would tape it. And I, and he was one of the guys that I taped and I would just go through the tape. So just walk. And it’s like, Oh, I got like an hour. I’ll just watch an hour worth of standup clips from evening, the improv or the tonight show or letterman or wherever I take this thing from. And Dylan Brody was always one of those guys that I remember. And I just found him on Twitter one day and he was promoting something. And I just went, uh, you know, as you do, you know, you, you know, every time you, you, you, you type these things into the void, you just go, Hey, you want to be on my podcast? And then you just watch the cobweb, uh, go from your skeleton head to the mouse, you know, as you drop and desiccate and, and, uh, but he like replied almost immediately and said, I would love to do it. So, okay. So
we go. And so the first, so the first time he came on, uh,
Uh, it was on comedy about the pub and, uh, we, we got through all of my fanboying, uh, fairly quickly. And then we got to, got to the meet the conversation we had like a great time. And then we kind of like cut tape and it’s like, okay, fine. We’re just talking still on zoom at the end of the episode. And we started just jamming jokes, street jokes at each other. I don’t know how it started, but like, is someone said it was probably darcy darcy went, Hey, I have something. Yeah, it sounds like me. Right. Two dudes walk into a bar, and already I’m like, well, that’s anti-cinematic. And we just kept going, and it had this feel of when you’re in… One of my favorite moments when you’re doing comedy is when you’re in that lag time, when you’re waiting for the second show to start after the first show, and everyone’s in the green room, you’re just hanging out, or…
you know, the headliners on and you’re hosting, you’re with the other comics. Like, you know, they’re like when, when you have that moment kind of in the green room and you’re all amongst yourselves and someone for whatever reason, we’ll just throw out a joke or make reference to a joke. And then someone will go, okay, so here’s one. And then they, they drop out theirs and then everyone laughs and then, Oh, we do. And then it just becomes like this kind of, uh, yes. And of street jokes. Gotcha. There you go. And yeah, And I was describing the show to Darcy. I was like, I think I want to rebrand. I think I want it to be this where, you know, we have the conversation. It’s just kind of like the regular show that we always had where we’re talking with people. But the end, they’re on the hook for a joke because like, and I literally said to him, I don’t know what we’ll call it. It’s like, okay, so here’s one. It’s like, ah, there’s the name. Trademark. Okay, so here’s one. And I was like, yeah, because that’s the thing. And the first episode we did,
was with Blaine Kapach, who you may remember from… He did an awful lot of At Midnight, but prior to that, what I remember him from was he was the host of this game show on Comedy Central called Beat the Geeks. Okay, yeah. I remember that. That’s Blaine Kapach. He is a brilliant stand-up. One of the guys, again, that I had taped when I was young. and just a a joke machine. Like, when you think you have one good one, he’s got eight. Like, he’s just a fire hose of comedy. But he’s also a repository for street jokes. So he came on the first episode, and we’re like, okay, what’s your favorite street joke? And he gave us 12, I think, the first episode. Wow. He just, bam, bam. I guess, oh, here’s another, here’s another, here’s another.
And we’ve had him on since. And he’s like, I don’t want to repeat myself. He goes, fucking repeat yourself. Like, we’ve had the giraffe joke five times. I mean, honestly, don’t worry about it. So, and then as soon as that episode wrapped, I was like, well, this is what the show has to be. And that’s what I want it to be. And with very few exceptions, I think we’ve only had like one, maybe two guests over the course that came completely unprepared and unprepared. Well, you kind of tell them you’re going to bring a joke. That’s part of the email. Right. And yours, by the way, your first time. No, it was gorgeous. It was. Okay. Because you remember it. I remember the joke, but that’s why I stole it. Well, yeah, that’s what a street joke is. They’re on the ground. They’re found art. That’s what they do, right? Like picking up litter.
Yes, that’s it. You take out the garbage and they go, oh, well, this I can use. I’ll take those. That’s right. Those are good. Now, if we wanted to make it more complicated, we could have limited it to the jazz riff joke instead of the kind of just wordplay dad joke. Right. That would be even harder. Oh, my God. Okay, so already I’m thinking of like half the guests that we’ve had would just go, just deer in the headlights, like Oh, hold on a second, uh Three, two, one. 2001 seasons thank you everyone thank you for making this crossover. This is so great. This is so awesome. I didn’t think we’d make it, folks. I’m sorry to interrupt. Okay, go ahead Right. Like the, the, like in the, in the hands of people, like we have had some like really really good uh like like the one, the one that blaine opened, it was episode one if people want to go find it. It’s, it’s a joke that i’m glad he said, because it turned it, he, as he was saying it went before he said it, it was my favorite street joke at the time, but i hated myself because i heard it from bert Kreischer. Who’s a comic. I don’t care for oh yeah oh yeah bert is yeah i know who you’re talking about.
I joke. There’s a joke. So Miles isn’t here tonight. He couldn’t make it. But Miles’ title is Burt Crusher before there was Burt Crusher. Right. He goes around without a shirt. He’s a horrible slob. He looks like hell. He is totally inappropriate and says weird things to people and makes them uncomfortable just by staring at them. Right. And I keep telling him, I’m like, Burt Crusher stole your whole persona. And you’ve done nothing about it. Does he call himself the Apparatus? The Apparatus! I don’t remember that word, but he calls himself all kinds of stuff. Instead of machine. I was just trying to find a euphemism for machine. Well, I think he’s trademarked that, so you probably can’t use it. But yeah, anyway, Burt Crusher. Then that’s a whole other… We could jump off on that. He’s great. He’s fine. People like him. Like what you like. I feel I should be fully dressed on stage. That’s all. He’s an LCD.
An LCD? What’s that? Lowest common denominator. Got it. Okay. Now I’m going to get myself in trouble. No, you’re not. I have a math degree, and I didn’t know what LCD was. Okay, Bob, I’m the guy who’s in grief. Oh, yeah. I would have never thought that. Yeah. Todd, you probably have to tell this joke now. Which one? Yeah, the one you were just pulling up there. Okay, so this lion is… walking through the jungles, just looking at his kingdom, really. And he’s like, what a lovely day. It’s a lovely day to be king of this jungle. I am so happy to be here. You know, I’m a little part. So he bends down by this little pond and he starts drinking the water from the little pond to quench his thirst. Meanwhile, walking by is a gorilla who looks at the line and goes, look at that asshole. Thinks he owns the place.
You know what? I’ll show him. So he runs up behind him and he fucks him in the ass very quickly and then runs. And the lion is like, what? And turns around and he just sees like the rustling of the leaves behind him. So he’s like, right. And so he just starts barreling through the forest trying to find who did this to him. And the gorilla is just like strolling through going, yeah, that was pretty cool. That was pretty fun. And he just happens to look over his shoulder and And he sees the lion barreling down on him. And he goes, oh, shit. And so he starts jumping up the trees. And he starts using the vines and trying to keep ahead of him. And the lion is just keeping pace the entire time, just like clawing his way through the forest right behind him. So the gorilla is like dodging left, dodging right. And the lion is still just like right behind, right behind him. And so he gets a little bit of a headway ahead of the lion. And he breaks through this clearing.
And he finds this campsite where these explorers had been. They left for the day. So there’s a whole bunch of tents and there’s a smoldering campfire in the middle of the clearing. And there’s a clothesline with some clothes on it. So the gorilla goes over. He grabs a shirt, pants, hat. And he goes over to one of the chairs that’s around the fire. He sits down and there’s a newspaper. He holds the newspaper up in front of his face to hide himself. So the lion breaks through the clearing. looks around and sees the gorilla, you know, in in in costume you know, behind him. And he yells over, hey, did you see a gorilla run through here? And the gorilla goes, what, you mean the one to fuck that lion in the ass the lion goes, it’s in the papers? Yeah, the jungle news travels fast i know it’s just like they are quick to print.
Yeah, they got a morning, noon, and night edition. Yes. Extra, extra. Lion sodomized by pond. That’s what all the howler monkeys are there for. Hey, boss, I got a scoop. That’s right. Yeah, the warthog is the editor, right? Exactly, yeah. We got a whole thing going on here. Has anybody ever done a newsroom as animals bit? I don’t know. Zootopia, didn’t it? Didn’t they have a newsroom, though? Didn’t they show like a news thing? No idea. No. Darcy’s like, I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. Oh, okay. Well, maybe. All right. Maybe it’s already been done. I was trying to give Michael Keaton some more work. That’s all. He’s not got enough. He needs it. He needs it. That’s a good one. Yeah. It’s in the papers already.
It’s in the papers. You got to change it up now for the digital age, though, don’t you? I mean, we get that. You’re like, it’s on Instagram already. He’s on his iPhone Pro. It’s on TikTok already? Is it a meme? Is it footage? There’s like AI coverage now of the surprise face. Did Megan Thee Stallion retweet it? She’s too busy learning Japanese. We’re just workshopping this. Yes. There is one joke that always sticks with me. If someone says… Just look for a quick one. If they point to me and go, tell me a joke. Guy goes in for a job interview and the interviewer says to him, what would you say is your biggest weakness? And the guy thinks for a second. He goes, I think my biggest weakness is i’m too honest. And the interviewer goes, well, forgive me for saying, but i don’t think honesty is is really a weakness. And the guy goes, I don’t give a fuck what you think i think i just read that one somewhere recently. I don’t know where it was at but uh
And I really think the reason that’s front of mind is that there’s so many situations I find myself in where I go, I don’t give a fuck what you think. Not here. Bob, you’re cool. You’re cool. Oh, yeah. And hence his not being the top breadwinner in the household. Yes. Oh, no, no, no. I come home, my wife’s like, it happened again, didn’t it? Yeah. I don’t give a fuck what you… Hey, where are you going? How many more towns in Canada can we move to? There’s only so many. We’re going to end up in Yellowknife, and I’m going to be pissed. Right. Thank God it’s not fucking Whitehorse. That’s right. I’m not going to a Callowit. So… So, Darcy, you haven’t said anything. I see that you are flashing your J.J. Jimmy Walker, you know. Oh, yeah, yeah. Your J.J. Jimmy Walker fandom there on your microphone. Dynamite. It says dynamite. That, yes. Don’t rub it like that. Don’t. Will you stop?
So now where did you two, where did, like, how come you’re the ones that kind of got, I mean, Darcy sounds like Darcy was the brains here. Let’s do a podcast. Yeah. He kind of stepped out and then let you make up all these stupid names. And then he’s just been along for the ride. But how did, how did that all come about? Darcy, why did you say, Todd, let’s do a podcast instead of just saying, I’ll just do a podcast and tell only Jimmy Walker jokes. Yeah. Which are also a team of writers that are still working to this day. Yeah, he’s doing them for commercials for Medicare or something. So back in the before times, yeah, Web 2.0 and podcasting had just kind of started. There weren’t too many. I was listening to a lot of technology podcasts. I work in IT. Leo Laporte.
Leo Laporte, Todd Cochran. Do you know that? Okay, I’m familiar. Yeah, so I was listening to his tech podcast, and he was always talking about how great it was that just he could
a podcast that anyone could create their own content. And everyone was talking. Early days, everyone was just like, can you believe they let us do this? Right, yes. Well, nobody’s watching. That’s the problem. No one will hear me say this. Right, exactly. You can go outside on the porch. For me, to have a podcast was just like a technical puzzle I wanted to solve. Oh, okay. I had no content to deliver. So you’re like Todd. Yeah. I know a black mouth that won’t stop talking. Do I wear Kari?
Do we know any loudmouth idiots that won’t shut their pie holes? Do we know any? Oh, Todd, right. There’s a lion down by the watering hole. So very early days, I was just hand coding the XML feed. Oh, yeah. Right? There wasn’t anything set up yet for it. I know, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Those were the days, weren’t they? They were the wild west. Yeah. Make sure you’ve got the city code in the right place. I stole your XML feed from Leo Laporte. Okay. Yeah, because you can steal it because it’s just not protected. So, yeah. Yeah, every week, hand-coding it, running it through feedvalidator.org. Oh, that doesn’t work. That’s fun. So, you just like making things. So, what’s the… what’s the next, what’s the progression then? You may, okay, you got the podcast, you got Todd, you know, doing his bits and everything, and you got the pub thing i mean what what next steps were there for you at a certain point, I left the show. Yes, he did. That’s right. At a certain point, I was like, I was getting busy at work, and also, there wasn’t anything new to do. Like, technically, it was done. It ran itself.
Okay. Todd could run it. Todd was running it. Right. And so, yeah. So I left for about a year. WordPress. Thanks. Thanks. WordPress and power press plugin. I don’t care of it all. So I left for about a year, I think. And that’s when I realized that, yeah, I wasn’t getting anything out of it from a technical creative standpoint, but it was my, one of my only social events of my week. Yeah. Then I was just talking to people at work and my wife, and that was it. I came crawling back. He came back very callow. Just in rags. I was going to say his wife penned a note to his shirt and sent it out. Please have Darcy help you again for a little while. Will you please let Darcy talk to mid-level Canadian comedians, please? He wants something to do.
Please let that happen. And the odd celebrity from the States playing comedy bar. Could you do that? And we had to run a chef’s for quite a while. Yeah, we had chefs. And I love talking with chefs. Did they travel around or something? No, we had to run. Well, there was one, Bob Bloomer. And this was in Darcy’s off season, I think it was. Or it might not have been because the reason was I sent Bob. Bob Bloomer is a Canadian chef.
who did a whole bunch of, uh, did a whole bunch of like shows in the, in the States. Um, he was the eclectic chef, I think was, was his show. I clicked. Okay. I’m not familiar, but i don’t really follow something like that. It was like a little trailer right camper trailer yes and so he would drive around north america and, and stop in and, and do things. But when i scheduled the meeting, it was, uh,
it was, it was over outlook. And I don’t think he calibrated the time zone difference. Yeah. So he was, you know, the invite was like one 30, his time for 30, my time. And I just happened to be home and one 30, there’s a knock at the door. I went, who the fuck is that? Cause it’s Toronto. No one does that. And I, I, I, they just walk in, they just open, doors were open. You know, you could have just, you could have, hello. And that could have been, and I go, there’s Bob Bloomer standing in front of me. And, uh, and I, and he’s like, I am like, Bob, it goes, you’re three hours early. And he goes, no, I’m not. And I went, you know what? You’re absolutely right. Let’s do this right now. So Darcy was not part of it.
I’m Bob Bloomer. He says it on the truck outside. You know what? I will say this. He was a little testy off the top. He was a little testy because that’s not a great intro. But by the end of it, we kind of got through the rhythm of it and he was fine. What was his joke? Oh, this was in the Comedy Love of Days. We didn’t have jokes on comedy above the pub. Never jokes. Never jokes. Not one. If you ever saw Nightline, it was basically that. Oh, it was like Nightline. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Tonight we have the early arrival of Bob Bloomer. Yes. And you’re like, Bob, I mean, you’re famous for cooking. Dinner’s coming up. I’ve got a whole bag full of groceries here if you’d like to have something. He’s like, I never made a cake out of rat poisoning. You haven’t? Oh.
Oh, Bob. That’s interesting. Chefs, I would think, now, you know this whole podcast about chefs these days, so maybe maybe you should have took a u-turn that’s a big category now. I think we would have run out of chefs, to be quite honest. I mean, you know, you can talk to guys flipping burgers okay so here’s here’s the thing though i mean like the reason the reason they kind of worked is that, you know as as a comic I sort of have that. So I’ve got the ability to steer towards jokes and gags or whatever. But the reason that chefs work, or I thought work, is that their creative process is very similar to the creative process in generating material and writing jokes. Because they will try out a dish and then give it to someone and they’ll go, that sucks. And then they go back and then they retool it and they go, that’s too salty. And then they go and they…
And then it’s a trial and error process, not unlike writing jokes and stuff like that. And plus, they’re kind of night owls because they have to go through a dinner service. And we’re ending our shows at like 10 o’clock. Industry nights are like on a Monday when everything’s kind of dark. There’s substance abuse problems. All those things. I see, yes. There’s so many things. The parallel lives. The Venn diagram is kind of like that. The only difference is there’s more asparagus on the chef’s side. Interesting, yeah. A lot of depression, all that good stuff. Self-loathing. Cutting cutters. You cut yourself a lot. Sure, yeah. Making it very glamorous. Yes. I was like… But it would be… would be interesting to uh i don’t know, maybe have some kind of competition where the chef has to throw, like iron Chef, but the other side of it’s a comedian, and they have to come up with some kind of a an act, in the same time this guy comes up with a dish, and then they both, they taste and listen at the same time, and they’re like, this meal is great, and you suck. Or vice versa right the i i you know what? That’s not a bad idea, to be quite honest. It’s not.
here’s your network you’re listening but here’s the here’s the thing like but that like the material, because it’s an ingredient, it’s kind of like like um like the the opening of beat bobby Flay, where here it is, it’s like apricots. So then the chef gets to go and make an apricot dish, and then the comic goes, what the fuck am i gonna do about apricot what what can i say about apricot right whereas you know, I think it should be like they open the cloche and it’s like, self-loathing! And Then, you know, the chef has to figure out what that means. You know, so there has to be two rounds. I think there needs to be a concept and then an ingredient. Bulimia. Yeah. So I guess, you know, the chef just makes a smoothie. Something that’s going to go easy both ways. Maybe they should randomize it, you know, and so like you get like chunky bulimia or you get…
We’re saving up the… Do you watch a lot of Food Network? No, I don’t. Go right ahead. My wife and I, we have the Food Network logo is burned into the bottom right-hand corner of our screen. Does she call you Alton Brown when she’s… Oh, absolutely not. He’s way more talented. You, sir, Todd, are the Canadian Alton Brown. He’s her hall pass. That’s good eats. Yeah, that’s good. And to be fair, he’s like number eight on mine. Oh, well, okay. Well, if it worked out, then you’ve got to hold that. That’s a weekend right there. Yeah. But no, we tend to watch a lot of that. And so it’s funny you mentioned they need to randomize it. There is a show that Guy Fieri hosts, and it is arguably, I would say…
probably the second hardest chef competition show that they have on the food network where they, it’s, it’s like a bracket. It’s like March madness, but it’s all chefs and they have a, uh, what they call the randomizer and the randomizer gives you an ingredient, a dish theme and a piece of equipment you have to use. And then like a style, the amount of time that you’re going to do. So it could be like, Chicken thighs, fancy brunch. You need to use the ice cream machine. Make it spicy, and then you get 10 minutes to do it. Something like that. Oh, well. And what you described, I have no clue. You just braise the chicken thighs and throw them in a bowl with some ice cream? Exactly. Yeah, that’s exactly it. Put a little tahini on it? I don’t know. Yeah, exactly.
Look at you with the tahini. Look at you. Yeah, I mean, just sprinkling on is all good. It’s good stuff. It’s just nice tahini drizzle. The judges are like, is this tahini? I’m getting tahini. I mean, and botulism from being cooked for 10 minutes. That’s the other thing I’m getting. They’re like, these chicken thighs are raw. Yeah. Yeah, but they got ice cream on them. They taste good. They do. It’s great. Just let it melt. You’ll be fine. Yes. You’ll all be good. Yeah. All the judges get sick every week. Whoa, we lost another judge this week. I say that one’s the second hardest because I think the hardest one, and they haven’t done it. They did it last year, and I hope they bring it back. It’s 24 and 24.
Okay. And it’s 24 chefs. I thought you were going to say something about Bauer. No, I think it’s called 24 and 24, the 24-hour challenge or whatever. They bring in, I think, 48 chefs or 50 chefs or something like that. 24 went out the window on this one. No, it’s a 24-hour competition. This sounds like a lot of burnt hands. A lot of burnt hands. A lot of… Medic! Yes. It keeps your knife sharp. And you think like, oh, okay, it’s reality TV. I’m sure there’s breaks and stuff like that. It looks like there isn’t because you’re seeing chefs in physical tears. And they’ll do like vox pops while they’re doing it. It’s like, what’s wrong with you? It’s like, if I don’t stop moving, I’m going to fall apart. I have to just keep…
I think you’re waiting for Naked and a Chef coming soon. Oh, my God. So speaking of Alton Brown, did you ever see his show Cutthroat Kitchen? No. I can barely eat cereal. That’s all I ever do is eat cereal. It’s a great episode of Good Eats. Yes. I’m amazed that the show lasted as long as it did. By the way, Did you want us to talk about Food Network shows? No, talk about whatever you want. Because there was no brief or agenda that you sent us. You just sent us a link. We’re fast approaching our 2,000 and second season here. Here we go. So here it is. It’s all about Alton Brown food shows. It was a show where he showed up with a briefcase. There were four chefs.
that we’re going to compete. Food in a briefcase doesn’t sound very safe. Money in a briefcase. Oh, it’s money in a briefcase. So there’s four chefs. It’s an elimination round, so there’s three rounds. Every round, a chef leaves. And he gives every chef $25,000. What, for hookers and blow, or what? No, no. He gives them all $25,000. And they… get to keep that money throughout the show so long as they stay the thing is there’s a series of auctions over the course that they have to bid on so you know he’ll give them a thing it’s like make me a tasty burger it’s like okay tasty burger and then it’s like okay uh for uh you can bid on the fact that uh you are the only one that can use ground beef and everyone else needs to use
yogurt and yams. They cut away. I think I want the beef and not the yams. Maybe I should put a five grain on the beef. They’re bidding on this. They have a judge who comes down in a blind tasting and says, this is the dish I hate. Then that person goes away. They’re sitting there. You start with $25,000 in your hand. What you’re going to walk home with. But then there was things like, and the reason that I go like, how is this even possible? They had one thing is like, you could make one of the chefs, one of your competitors, wear their only cutting board. And it was this hat with a cutting board on it. And so they’re trying to make like a paella. And it’s like, how the fuck are they not cutting their hands off in this? Professionals, Todd. I get, but not up here. It’s like…
I’m not doing jokes on bungee cord. Oh, but Todd, you’re a professional. Not like this, I’m not. I don’t know bungee jokes. Todd, you’ve got to tell the gorilla joke, but you’re the gorilla. You’re the gorilla. What? Oh, no, he’s okay. He gets to have sex, and then he dresses up at the end. That’s right. You’re hoping the lion doesn’t turn around. He has a day with a story he can tell later. Yeah. Yeah, hopefully. The gorilla’s doing great. The lion, he’s living in shame yeah he doesn’t he thinks it’s all over the papers. So, uh, I don’t know i have any idea how we got on the cooking shows, but, uh, so what, what is coming up? I mean, what’s next? I mean, so you’ve got, uh,
okay, so here’s one. You’ve been doing that for a while. It seems like you’re almost ready for another turn here, I think. Well, I do live shows. I do live shows. I was hoping that you did other things. I know Darcy said he is obviously somebody who’s employed in other things technology-wise. I have a show coming out if you have listeners in Ottawa. Well, besides you, I don’t know. Okay. You know what? No, Tom doesn’t. Does he live in Ottawa now? I saw the documentary. I think he’s on the outskirts of Ottawa. I think that’s where his farm is now. He’s got a ranch or something. He’s got a lion and a gorilla. He’s got a lion and a gorilla? I don’t know. Oh, no.
That’s not going to go well. Leave a clothesline of clothes. You’ll know what happens. Make sure you’ve got several copies of the Ottawa Citizen lying around. You’ll thank me. The show I run is called Write Em Up, and it’s my favorite thing that I do. We’re actually going to be celebrating nine years. No, I don’t have a mega thing for that now. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Don’t keep talking. Okay. So, so the way, the way write them up works is I host, I host a comedy show. There we go. Thank you. And, um, that was quick, Bob. I can type. That was really good. Um, the, uh, so we, uh, I host a comedy show, uh, and this started in Toronto, started in Toronto when I was living there. And then when I moved here to Ottawa, I was like, well, I got to try and sort this thing out.
And so what happens is I bring a whole bunch. I create a comedy show and I put comics on it and they come up and they perform standard issue. But while the comics are performing, I’ve got a team of writers that are in roast jokes about everything that comic does, says what they’re wearing, everything. And they write them a little index cards. So the comic goes away. I go to the writers and I collect those roast jokes and I read them to the audience. Okay. Whatever they write down, I got to read. Oh, okay. Yes. So it’s humiliating. It’s humiliating, and it provides anonymity and emotional distance for the writers. Okay. Yeah. I have a feeling there’s $25,000 in somebody’s hand who can put it in Todd Van Allen’s hand. Someone’s going to be chopping their head later. Yeah. But yeah. Just stare at the person who wrote that joke, Todd. Just stare at him while you’re saying it.
It is the funnest thing that I do. I love doing it. And one of the reasons is that, and it has been pointed out to me by several people in Ottawa, that, hey, you only do like some time off the top and then your job is done. It’s like, yeah, pretty much, actually. That’s the best. That’s what Darcy did. Yeah. I put together this whole thing and then I just sit back and… Everything I learned, I learned from Darcy. So… Now does write them up, have a website. It does. Well, not a social presence. Uh, if they go at write them up show on basically every platform out there, uh, you can find us. Okay. Yes. If I can type fast again, there we go. At write them up show. That’s it. There we go. And, um, yeah, so I, I was happy. One of the things that, that like when I first moved, perfect. Oh my God, that’s even the right font. That’s gorgeous. Um,
One of the things I thought, because we moved during the pandemic, there were no shows. So my friends in Toronto, it’s like, what’s the comedy scene like? And you go, what scene? There’s nothing. There’s no scene of anything. COVID. Exactly. The grocery stores are cool. You should have been doing that in the aisles. You could have been, hey, you want me to insult your wife? Write it down. There’s the arrows and people are going to like, you know, they’re going into the aisle four and they went, what was the punchline? It was like, we didn’t hear that. So, um, one thing I noticed is that they have, um, it’s the, the, because Ottawa is a smaller city, the, uh, the community, the comedy community is smaller because of that. It’s got way more of a, um, a family basis. Like it’s, it’s really kind of anchored in family. Um,
and you’re saying there’s some kind of comedy mafia in ottawa oh no no no oh okay no no no there’s no one’s sleeping with the fishes in ottawa no that would make exciting um the uh it’s very much like like it’s it’s a very supportive community it’s it’s very um everyone knows each other so because of that they have these um They have these annual award show that they put on where they create nominees. It’s basically like the Oscars or the Emmys, but it’s for the local scenes. They’re like best comic, best show, best comedy club, best all that. But the whole show is a roast. So everyone roasts each other. So because of that, I was sitting there going, well, roast culture is already here. Right. This is going to be a no brainer.
And it was too good because the first show that I did here in Ottawa, I realized that going forward, I would have to tell the writers, okay, keep it in the room because the audience doesn’t know that the comic that you’re roasting tanked in Cornwall, you know, sleeping with a waitress in this bar. So like, they don’t, they don’t know that, you know, so you have to, elevate the joke. It was kind of the first time I had to do that, which is like, okay, pull it back a little bit. Just keep it in. I’m surprised that you didn’t combine your love of cooking with this and actually call it roast them up. Roast them up. They have until the chicken’s done. It’d be like if you have a turkey and a little button pops out. It’s done. It’s the show, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you.
And they’ll be like, Todd, you didn’t have to do anything. It’s even worse. That’s interesting. Now, Darcy, how do you fit into this ride-em-up business? I sometimes buy tickets and then fall asleep and don’t go to the show. Todd makes you buy the tickets after all you’ve done for him. I have told him he gets a free pass and he never takes me up on it. I feel like I would totally flake… if it was just a comp situation. So I buy the ticket. It’ll motivate me to go. And then it’s like, end of the week, I’m not going outside. You can barely get him in front of a microphone at 9 o’clock on a Friday. It’s cold. I’m not going outside. Anybody tell you guys that?
Oh, yeah. Oh, it’s frigid up here. I’m familiar a little bit. I’m not that far north, but it was kind of chilly here today, so I can only imagine. Where’s there again, Bob? Remind me. Where is there? Yeah, where are you? Oh, where am I? Okay. I’m in St. Louis, Missouri. That’s right. Or Missouri. Missouri. On your proclivity. Right. Home of the Blues. Home of the Blues. Yeah, Home of the Blues, which is hockey. I know that part. even though I don’t know other things. Home of the Cardinals, you know. Well, it used to be home of Anheuser-Busch, but they’ve been bought out by a conglomerate. Correct. Unibrew, I think now, or something like that. InBev or whatever they call themselves. Unibrew. I think Unibrew is, yeah, Unibrew is another one. Right. Unibrew sounds like something from Bob and Doug McKenzie. Yes. Yeah, got to go to Unibrew. Right.
I figured Unibrew would be like what some microbrewery would call one of their lagers where they’ve got Frida on the label. Yeah. Just like Unibrew. The Unibrew. And they have like a whole lines like her and like from Sesame Street. I can’t do it. Can you do a bird impersonation? Hey, Ernie, drink. Yeah, that’s that’s all I got. Well, guys, we’re into our third season here. There we go. And I appreciate you coming on. Just in this one show, three seasons, it’s hard to believe. It’s incredible. What a milestone. Yeah. Crossing time zones, crossing countries, crossing seasons. Crossing off listeners that have tuned out probably around minute eight. That’s going to be my guess. Crossing genres, comedy chefs, everything. If you’re listening, all ideas have been copyrighted by OK Here’s One and Static Radio. So if you decide to do this, Mark Maron, you son of a bitch, we’re going to get you. Pow! I just pooped myself. Am I close? Did I? You can catch these guys…
on the… Okay, so here’s one podcast. Osho? Or is it Osho? I can’t remember how you do it. Yeah, oshopod.com. Osho probably would get more views, to be honest with you. But anyway, it’s oshopod.com. Go see him. Very funny. And then also go to WriteEmUp, where you can be nasty to your partner in the show. If people… If people want, because we actually archived the video shows, because we did them live over the pandemic, because we had our fourth and fifth anniversaries? Something like that? During the pandemic? No, this was annual. We started in 2016. We started to write them up in 2016. Oh, okay. Yeah, so it would have been the fourth anniversary show in 2020. and so we did that online. We did the, the, and so i just kept doing these things online because we can go out. If you go to at write em up show on Facebook, if you go to the video section, you can actually see the previous shows that we did that we did during the pandemic so it’s kind of like this nice little time capsule of what the show’s kind of about. So when you, you, if you go, you get todd to read whatever you write. Yeah, exactly. Think about that folks
Give great pause. Get me canceled by Friday. That’s right. Yeah. Yeah, you’re going to go the way of Roseanne. So write them up and oshopod.com. See them both. We’re going to wrap it up here, guys. Hang on for just a second while this thing uploads, and I’ll see you on the other side. Everybody, next time. Thank you.