Latest / You Didn't Ask For This / 151 | Belligerent Honesty

Transcript

151 | Belligerent Honesty · You Didn't Ask For This

• 0:00
  Matt: Previously on You Didn't Ask for This.
• 0:02
  Matt: Speaking of Rationships.
• 0:04
  Matt: Very good, Eric.
• 0:05
  Matt: Yes, we um we wanted to do something a little special for the 150th episode.
• 0:12
  Matt: A number of years ago, the New York Times uh popularized the 36 questions to fall in love.
• 0:22
  Eric: So the i the idea being that these are 36 questions you could ask someone.
• 0:27
  Eric: Yes.
• 0:28
  Eric: To to like to like know their heart and soul.
• 0:31
  Eric: To know them.
• 0:32
  Eric: To know Capital K know them.
• 0:35
  Eric: Not biblically, but close.
• 0:38
  Eric: Biblically, eventually, but first soul knowing.
• 0:42
  Eric: And at the end of that.
• 0:43
  Eric: At the end of the questions, baby, you're in love now.
• 0:46
  Eric: You're in love.
• 0:47
  Eric: So me and Matt thought, I mean, yeah, let's fall in love again.
• 0:52
  Matt: Well, it's been 150 episodes.
• 0:53
  Matt: I think it's time we see if there's something here.
• 0:55
  Matt: You know?
• 0:56
  Matt: It's been a lot of will they won't they?
• 0:58
  Eric: Let's see if there's something to this.
• 1:00
  Eric: So the fan theory's on the wick.
• 1:02
  Eric: Given the choice of anyone in the world, whom would you want as a dinner guest?
• 1:07
  Eric: For what in your life do you feel most grateful?
• 1:11
  Eric: Do you have a secret hunch about how you will die?
• 1:16
  Matt: I think we could potentially get through the next two in the next episode.
• 1:19
  Matt: I do think so.
• 1:20
  Eric: Okay.
• 1:20
  Eric: I'd be willing to give that the old college try.
• 1:40
  Matt: It is the podcast answering life's least pressing questions, but not today so much.
• 1:45
  Matt: No.
• 1:45
  Matt: These are answering love's most pressing questions.
• 1:50
  Matt: That's right, baby.
• 1:52
  Matt: Love's most pressing questions.
• 1:54
  Matt: But my name is still Manche.
• 1:56
  Eric: My name is still Eric Poach, and hoping to fall in love today.
• 2:00
  Matt: Eric, we are continuing the 36 questions that lead to love.
• 2:04
  Matt: And we did not quite get halfway.
• 2:07
  Matt: And we do want to hopefully make this only a two-parter.
• 2:11
  Matt: We've we've already pulled one question that we thought was too hot for general consumption.
• 2:17
  Matt: Too spicy.
• 2:18
  Matt: We might have to pull some more uh along the way.
• 2:22
  Matt: But uh we've only gotten 12 down, Eric.
• 2:24
  Matt: I think we I think we owe it to the people to jump in right where we left off two weeks ago.
• 2:29
  Matt: Which brings us to Yes, baby.
• 2:32
  Matt: You up for a set two.
• 2:33
  Eric: Question 13.
• 2:35
  Eric: If a crystal ball could tell you the truth about yourself, your life, the future, or anything else, what would you like to know?
• 2:45
  Eric: Whew.
• 2:46
  Eric: Like how I said the future?
• 2:48
  Eric: I did.
• 2:48
  Eric: I I was sitting there.
• 2:50
  Matt: Like, did you think we were just gonna like not acknowledge it?
• 2:52
  Matt: Well, I thought I thought, first of all, I'd like to say I thought I was being a gentleman because I thought about being like future, but it's like, okay, man, he stepped on a you and made it an O.
• 3:03
  Matt: You don't have to be an asshole about it, is what I thought.
• 3:06
  Matt: No, no, I appreciate you.
• 3:07
  Matt: I appreciate you.
• 3:08
  Matt: I will now learn how to talk, mumble mouth.
• 3:11
  Matt: Dumb piece of shit.
• 3:16
  Matt: Crystal ball.
• 3:17
  Matt: Tell me the truth about myself, my life, the future.
• 3:21
  Matt: Not necessarily my future or anything else.
• 3:25
  Matt: What would you want to know?
• 3:26
  Matt: Hmm.
• 3:27
  Matt: First of all, I think I'm gonna take away the future.
• 3:30
  Matt: I think that's too much.
• 3:31
  Matt: That's too much?
• 3:32
  Matt: I think that's too like I don't know.
• 3:35
  Matt: I don't necessarily want to know if we end up as a reenactment of the road in five years' time, you know?
• 3:44
  Matt: You know, I don't feel like I need that stress in my life.
• 3:49
  Matt: The anything else is just sort of like, okay.
• 3:52
  Matt: Like one.
• 3:55
  Eric: One that kind of jumped to my mind, though.
• 3:57
  Eric: Oh, yeah.
• 3:58
  Eric: Is in the in that scenario.
• 4:00
  Eric: I don't want to know how humanity ends, because all things must end.
• 4:05
  Eric: But I would like a crystal ball to tell me and translate to me faithfully, assuming this is far down the line, what the last words spoken by the last human being are.
• 4:18
  Eric: Wow.
• 4:18
  Eric: That's heavy.
• 4:19
  Eric: Yeah.
• 4:21
  unknown: Yeah.
• 4:21
  Matt: That's those are the last words, actually.
• 4:23
  Matt: Oh God, that's heavy.
• 4:25
  Matt: That's heavy.
• 4:26
  Matt: Isn't there anyone who can pay?
• 4:29
  Matt: No.
• 4:30
  Matt: Um, there's only two of us left here.
• 4:32
  Eric: Help me lift this.
• 4:34
  Eric: Man, it's a good thing we survived.
• 4:36
  Eric: We can help.
• 4:36
  Eric: Man, that's heavy.
• 4:38
  Eric: Oh, so your God.
• 4:42
  Eric: Um man.
• 4:46
  Eric: Uh, yeah, I because I don't generally want, I don't, aside from my death in a car accident on August 27th of an undisclosed year, I guess.
• 4:56
  Eric: Yes.
• 4:57
  Eric: I don't want spoilers about my own life.
• 5:00
  Eric: That that I that creates too.
• 5:02
  Eric: No, I don't spoil it.
• 5:04
  Eric: The second you've made a prediction, you've cap you you've encased it in stone.
• 5:08
  Eric: Like in the street.
• 5:10
  Eric: Now it's a prophecy.
• 5:11
  Eric: Now it's a prophecy.
• 5:12
  Eric: I don't fucks with prophecy.
• 5:14
  Eric: I don't fuck with prophecy.
• 5:16
  Eric: Outside of one notable one about my death.
• 5:19
  Matt: Except for the one you've received.
• 5:20
  Matt: And if you hadn't received it, you wouldn't fuck with that either.
• 5:24
  Eric: No, if they had been like, hey, do you want to know this?
• 5:26
  Eric: I'd be like, no.
• 5:27
  Eric: But then they told me.
• 5:28
  Eric: I'm like, well, I'll process this.
• 5:30
  Matt: Yeah.
• 5:30
  Matt: So for me, I think I rule out the future.
• 5:33
  Matt: Uh, the anything else I don't know what to do with I think uh uh revealing some like great truth might be of interest.
• 5:45
  Matt: Like uh it is too obvious.
• 5:48
  Matt: It's too obvious.
• 5:49
  Matt: I don't even know that I'd go with this, but like in the vein of what really happened with the JFK assassination.
• 5:56
  Matt: Oh yeah.
• 5:58
  Matt: What really did happen?
• 5:59
  Matt: Did did Oswald actually get those shots off?
• 6:02
  Matt: Was it the Secret Service agent in the car behind it?
• 6:05
  Matt: Was it how many shooters were like just I would like it?
• 6:10
  Matt: The and I am imagining this crystal ball having to be like, okay, sit down.
• 6:15
  Matt: We got a lot to go over.
• 6:16
  Eric: Uh the crystal ball starts spawning red string and photographs.
• 6:23
  Matt: It starts you just from underneath it up, it starts printing out spreadsheets.
• 6:28
  Matt: It's like, all right, you're gonna need a break.
• 6:30
  Matt: Here's a time.
• 6:30
  Matt: And the first sheet is a required reading list.
• 6:33
  Matt: Yes.
• 6:34
  Matt: So start with this and meet me back here when you're ready.
• 6:38
  Matt: When you've when you've gotten the baseline, then I'll crack your mind open.
• 6:42
  Matt: I I mean, I feel like there's a a a funner answer out there, but one hasn't necessarily isn't necessarily like jumping to my mind.
• 6:54
  Matt: I will say this.
• 6:55
  Matt: There are a few, and I'm not gonna I'm not gonna error them on this on this public forum, but there are like a few personal details about my life in the past regarding like oh like a some sort of drama, you know?
• 7:13
  Matt: Yeah.
• 7:14
  Matt: Like I would like a w how do they actually feel about that, you know, with that?
• 7:21
  Matt: Yes, yes, yes, yes.
• 7:23
  Eric: You know, uh because there are a couple there are a couple of points in my life where I could just like I just really want to know, like I have my theories, but but they don't really like line up, like like something isn't matching up.
• 7:39
  Eric: And I just like I there's so many situations in my past usually centered around some kind of drama or or or heartbreak or what have you.
• 7:47
  Eric: Right.
• 7:47
  Matt: I just want to be able to ask like why did like what was it that made so and so break up with me?
• 7:55
  Matt: Or what was it that like you know, and you know what, Eric?
• 7:59
  Matt: This is this is just for you, listeners.
• 8:02
  Matt: I'm sorry the whole thing's getting bleeped, but it is about me and Eric falling in love here.
• 8:06
  Matt: Yeah, like just at what point you know, like at what point did that take place?
• 8:12
  Matt: Yep.
• 8:13
  Eric: Yep.
• 8:14
  Eric: How early, and you can bleep this too.
• 8:16
  Eric: How early did like that like I just like that one?
• 8:21
  Eric: I'm just logistically curious about.
• 8:24
  Matt: Yes, yes.
• 8:25
  Matt: Uh the yeah, a hundred percent.
• 8:28
  Matt: These are these are the questions I would ask the crystal ball.
• 8:31
  Eric: Yes.
• 8:32
  Matt: And listeners, I'm sorry we had to keep that from you, but you know what?
• 8:35
  Matt: Uh you this is about your co-hosts getting more intimate.
• 8:40
  Matt: Yeah, yeah.
• 8:40
  Matt: We're falling in love.
• 8:41
  Matt: And if you want this fan fiction that you keep writing to happen, make the wiki.
• 8:47
  Matt: You gotta let this grow, baby.
• 8:49
  Matt: You gotta let it simmer.
• 8:51
  Matt: Question number 14.
• 8:52
  Matt: Ohte, here we go.
• 8:56
  Matt: Question number 14.
• 8:58
  Matt: Is there something that you've dreamed of doing for a long time?
• 9:02
  Eric: And why haven't you done it?
• 9:04
  Eric: Why haven't you done it?
• 9:06
  Matt: What the hell's wrong with you?
• 9:08
  Matt: I mean, I feel like you got that last part.
• 9:10
  Matt: Yeah.
• 9:11
  Matt: So, Erica, is there something you've dreamed of doing for a long time?
• 9:15
  Matt: Why haven't you done it?
• 9:16
  Eric: Ooh, um, okay.
• 9:18
  Eric: Something I have dreamed of doing for a very long time.
• 9:22
  Eric: This ties to what might be like truly my ideal job.
• 9:28
  Eric: Um, in terms of temperament and what the job would entail.
• 9:34
  Eric: I have dreamed, and this is this this has been a relatively recent one in that this spawned during COVID.
• 9:40
  Eric: Ah, yes.
• 9:41
  Eric: I have a dream of working firewatch for a national park.
• 9:47
  Matt: Eric, I shit you not.
• 9:48
  Matt: I also have dreamed about this.
• 9:50
  Matt: My man! Like I have also been like, you know what?
• 9:54
  Matt: If my if my whole life went down the tubes, I could see myself being like, I'm heading out, heading out to California.
• 10:01
  Matt: Yep, gonna live in a fucking tower.
• 10:03
  Matt: Live in a loft, a true loft.
• 10:07
  Eric: Surrounded by trees with my thoughts, books, fucking.
• 10:14
  Matt: I had a guy on I got a fire watcher on uh TikTok for a while that I I would get his videos during during the height of fire season.
• 10:22
  Matt: I was like, I don't know, it seems like a very peaceful life, aside from the occasional forest fires, raging inferno, except for the destruction of life.
• 10:32
  Matt: Other than that, it you it seems ideal.
• 10:36
  Matt: The day-to-day seems like it'd be pretty, you know.
• 10:39
  Matt: Oh my god.
• 10:40
  Matt: Unless you have to perform the one thing you're there to do.
• 10:44
  Eric: Yeah.
• 10:44
  Eric: And for anyone who anyone curious, fire watch literally means you you live in the top of a tower, a wooden tower in the forest for months on end.
• 10:54
  Eric: In a forest fire area.
• 10:56
  Eric: In a forest fire area, and your job is just to alert the authorities when a fire is happening.
• 11:02
  Eric: Literally to watch for smoke.
• 11:03
  Eric: That's yeah, and that's that's your entire job.
• 11:06
  Matt: So you can be the first person to raise the alarm of I need somebody to check this out right now.
• 11:11
  Matt: So little tiny unattended campfire doesn't become devastating forest fire that engulfs Los Angeles.
• 11:17
  Eric: Correct.
• 11:18
  Eric: And you're out in nature, and you're you're you're in solitude, and like you, you have a little radio up there.
• 11:26
  Eric: And and and for me, the reason I haven't done this is Matt illustrated it quite beautifully.
• 11:32
  Eric: My life hasn't gone down the tubes.
• 11:34
  Eric: Like, I have so much to live for, and I have so much like here, like my my my friends, my family, my girlfriend, my like it like I can't just fuck off for three to six months.
• 11:49
  Matt: I have to reach first chapter of a novel uh downfall that causes me to go out there.
• 11:58
  Matt: And a similar thing that I think at this point, this is a dream that I had for a long time that I I haven't reflected on in a while because I I don't think it's gonna happen.
• 12:10
  Matt: I think this is a natural dream to many an Eagle Scout.
• 12:14
  Eric: But I have always wanted to uh hike the Appalachian Trail from Oh yes, oh yes, I've I've been discussing with friends earlier that I at least want to start I dream hike the Appalachian Trail, but like I really do, especially now that it's like autumn and it's not murderously hot out, I want to hike the Appalachian Trail uh parts of Maryland.
• 12:36
  Matt: Yeah, oh I have.
• 12:37
  Matt: And I I've I've never been.
• 12:38
  Matt: I've hiked many parts of the AT over my you know scouting career in Pennsylvania and otherwise.
• 12:45
  Matt: And also just quick note uh on pronunciations here.
• 12:49
  Matt: Uh Appalachian, Appalachian depends on where you're from.
• 12:54
  Matt: They equally hate it uh if you're in that area.
• 12:58
  Matt: If you're in a the uh northernish area and you say the Appalachian Mountains, you'll be okay.
• 13:05
  Matt: If you go to Appalachia, yeah, if you go to if you go out Virginia and West Virginia and you say that, they will have a very visceral reaction to you.
• 13:13
  Matt: Oh, out in the holler, that's an ass whoapon.
• 13:15
  Matt: So depending on who you ask, but Appalachia and Appalachian technically are both correct.
• 13:20
  Matt: Appalachian.
• 13:21
  Matt: These days I I tend to think of it as Appalachia and the Appalachian Mountains, but when I talk about the trail, because I grew up saying the Appalachian Trail, it's just what comes out of my mouth.
• 13:34
  Eric: Oh, yeah, you're you're in there, you're programmed.
• 13:37
  Eric: But yeah, no, that's a good, that's a like hiking the whole thing.
• 13:40
  Eric: That's a the whole thing, and I know people have done it.
• 13:42
  Eric: Uh you know people who have done it, actually.
• 13:44
  Matt: Um did Matt, that brings me to Yeah.
• 13:47
  Matt: Oh, by the way, I have other dreams, but um a lot Title of your memoir.
• 13:53
  Eric: By the way, I have other dreams.
• 13:55
  Matt: But well, a lot of them are um a lot of you know, I I I'm I I went with the Appalachian Trail situation because that's apart from any sort of uh like acting dreams that involve other circumstances and other um things like that.
• 14:14
  Matt: And as to why I haven't hiked the Appalachian Trail to do that, why haven't you done it?
• 14:18
  Matt: I mean, it's similar to the Firewatch in the sense that it's like there's there's no way to do it and be employed.
• 14:30
  Matt: Um at the same time.
• 14:33
  Eric: Correct.
• 14:34
  Matt: Uh no, no real way to accomplish that unless you do it in parts.
• 14:38
  Matt: And I don't I my dream is not to do it in parts.
• 14:41
  Matt: No, you want to do it.
• 14:41
  Matt: Do the damn thing.
• 14:44
  Matt: Do the damn thing.
• 14:45
  Matt: Eric, I'm gonna tell you this.
• 14:46
  Matt: Have you read um uh the book A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson?
• 14:51
  Matt: I have not.
• 14:52
  Matt: He is a travel author and also like kind of comedian, and um he and another friend who have no business hiking this trail because they're not hikers or anything like that, start hiking the trail, and this is the book of their misadventures.
• 15:07
  Matt: Um it's a fun read.
• 15:10
  Matt: It's a fun read.
• 15:11
  Matt: I'd recommend you do it.
• 15:12
  Matt: Um but yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 15:14
  Matt: So that that's that.
• 15:15
  Matt: Also, um writing a novel is is right up there.
• 15:19
  Matt: I have that's held back by good old fashioned executive dysfunction on my end.
• 15:24
  Matt: Oh, yeah.
• 15:25
  Matt: Time and self-doubt.
• 15:27
  Matt: But I will say I do have like I've been for for a few months now, I've been actively sort of preparing and taking notes on like an idea that might actually make it to paper this time, you know?
• 15:41
  Matt: So that's a that's another one.
• 15:44
  Matt: But uh, but you're right, Eric.
• 15:46
  Matt: Enough of my dreams.
• 15:47
  Matt: Let's move on.
• 15:48
  Matt: What's the next question?
• 15:50
  Eric: Uh next question is what is the greatest accomplishment of your life?
• 15:57
  Eric: I mean, it feels a little like a cop out.
• 16:01
  Eric: Uh I mean, you like in what world are you not gonna say my baby boy?
• 16:06
  Matt: Your baby boy.
• 16:07
  Matt: I think that that has to be it as of right now.
• 16:10
  Matt: Also, uh, just nailing down the fucking perfect ten that is my wife, am I right?
• 16:17
  Eric: Oh, I mean, you locked down Lindsay R.
• 16:20
  Eric: Barr.
• 16:20
  Eric: You married up.
• 16:22
  Eric: 100% I did.
• 16:23
  Matt: Yeah, you married up.
• 16:24
  Matt: And you know, but as you know, there was a boyfriend in the way I had to get rid of first.
• 16:29
  Eric: Oh, yeah.
• 16:30
  Eric: Crystal ball, tell me what he's slithering up to now.
• 16:35
  Eric: Well, I I know.
• 16:37
  Eric: Oh no, he knows crystal ball for that.
• 16:39
  Eric: No, I I keep tabs.
• 16:45
  Matt: Oh man.
• 16:46
  Matt: Uh no, no, no, no.
• 16:48
  Matt: He seems to just happy and with his life, he says.
• 16:53
  Matt: Yeah.
• 16:54
  Matt: But how could he be?
• 16:55
  Matt: Um, no.
• 16:58
  unknown: No.
• 16:59
  Matt: So uh so yeah, I mean, it it does feel a little like a cop-out, but I mean, uh it's top of mind.
• 17:06
  Eric: Yeah, no, no, no.
• 17:07
  Eric: That's uh that's fair.
• 17:08
  Eric: Yeah.
• 17:09
  Eric: Uh that guy's kid, too, is my greatest.
• 17:12
  Eric: No.
• 17:13
  Eric: Um, interesting.
• 17:14
  Eric: Yeah, yeah.
• 17:15
  Eric: I also choose Y'all Sad.
• 17:17
  Eric: Uh great.
• 17:18
  Eric: Like, that's the thing.
• 17:19
  Eric: It's like great.
• 17:20
  Eric: Like, it's kind of like when someone asks me, it's like, what is your favorite band of all time?
• 17:25
  Eric: And I'm just like, I have to fucking pick.
• 17:27
  Eric: Yeah, it's a tough one.
• 17:28
  Eric: I'm very I would say the I'll give you, I'll give you this.
• 17:34
  Eric: Here's one I can answer easily.
• 17:36
  Eric: Greatest physical accomplishment, like in terms of like doing something with my hands.
• 17:43
  Eric: Um I spent over the course of a year and some change in in like 20, 30 minute bits at a time, carving an English longbow out of a single piece of wood using tools that only would have been available to me in like the 1500s, 1600s.
• 18:05
  Eric: And I finished the bow, I strung it, and I test fired it on what I believe gonna get ahead of this Lindsay's correction corner now and admit that I might be wrong here.
• 18:18
  Eric: I believe it it was the 400th anniversary of the Battle of Agincore, the day I finished my bow and fired it.
• 18:28
  Eric: I that is like one of the cool the like kind of like the coolest I've ever felt in my life.
• 18:33
  Matt: And I'm imagining you get that uh that Matt Damon Odysseus tung.
• 18:39
  Matt: Uh that's it.
• 18:40
  Matt: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 18:41
  Eric: The score comes in ding dong ding.
• 18:46
  Matt: God, that was fucking badass.
• 18:48
  Eric: Oh, so badass.
• 18:49
  Eric: No, that was like like physic, like honestly, like outside of that, I mean, man, you haven't accomplished much.
• 18:58
  Eric: No, I haven't accomplished No, what I would say is is, and I say this as someone who's who's struggled with with mental health, depression, anxiety for a good chunk of my fucking life.
• 19:12
  Eric: I'm just like, there are days I just wake up like, man, fucking just so psyched that I made it.
• 19:18
  Eric: Just just so psyched that I didn't drown.
• 19:22
  Eric: Just so psyched that I didn't stop.
• 19:25
  Matt: Like I would have been drowning for you, huh?
• 19:28
  unknown: Yeah.
• 19:31
  Eric: Me dragging my cinder block to the pond.
• 19:33
  Eric: Just uh those stones in the pockets, huh?
• 19:36
  Eric: No, yeah.
• 19:38
  Eric: Like there are days where you go, like, God, fucking it.
• 19:41
  Eric: I've survived corporate hell.
• 19:43
  Eric: I've survived relationship hell.
• 19:46
  Eric: I've survived someone attempting to steal my fucking cat.
• 19:51
  Matt: Yeah.
• 19:51
  Matt: Yeah.
• 19:52
  Matt: That that uh that like I any of that getting bleeped just so I know?
• 19:57
  Eric: No, no.
• 19:58
  Eric: Okay.
• 19:58
  Eric: That's that's that is like I I I've I've oh my man.
• 20:05
  Eric: You do you have you've made it through.
• 20:07
  Eric: Made it through.
• 20:08
  Eric: And that is big fan.
• 20:13
  Eric: Yeah.
• 20:14
  Eric: Yeah, I think you should be.
• 20:15
  Eric: Yeah, that and uh shooting a bow.
• 20:18
  Matt: And the old uh and the old bow there.
• 20:20
  Matt: You know, uh overcoming my demons, looking into the time knife, and boring, not being teared asunder, uh but shooting a bow.
• 20:29
  Matt: I didn't hit anything.
• 20:32
  Eric: No, no, no, no.
• 20:32
  Eric: God, it's very difficult.
• 20:34
  Eric: No, no, I I shot and the thing, I test fired it downrange at the at the fucking Maryland Renaissance Festival in the jousting field.
• 20:42
  Eric: Yeah.
• 20:43
  Eric: And I and I I named my bow Mary because I aimed too high on the initial shot, and it went sailing way above the target and and stuck into the the the um the standing like observation deck where all of like the royals and stuff would sit during the Renaissance Ferry.
• 21:11
  Eric: No one was there, but having seen the Jowel show every day of the season for five years, I was like, oh, that's right where Mary would be standing.
• 21:21
  Eric: So I named the bow Mary.
• 21:23
  Matt: Very nice.
• 21:24
  Matt: Yeah, the um Maryland Renaissance Festival was also where I shot a bow most recently because they have like a little stand, you know, you get some arrows, you shoot some bows.
• 21:36
  Matt: It's a hoot, but like uh we went there because Lindsay, I I think had said she'd never uh shot a bow before.
• 21:43
  Matt: Uh I could be wrong about that, but it had been a while.
• 21:45
  Matt: And I had many, many a summer at a many a summer camp.
• 21:49
  Matt: Q the Eagle Scout.
• 21:51
  Matt: It it had been so it had been so long that it's only when like I went to like arrow to bow and like stretch.
• 21:59
  Matt: And pull back that I'm like, oh, it's been a solid like 15 years since I've even attempted that.
• 22:07
  Eric: Have these hands forgotten?
• 22:09
  Matt: Yeah, they did.
• 22:10
  Matt: They definitely forgot.
• 22:13
  Matt: They definitely forgot.
• 22:15
  Matt: Put one through the drencher wench.
• 22:17
  Matt: Oh, hello.
• 22:18
  Matt: What do you value most in a friendship?
• 22:22
  Matt: That's question 16.
• 22:24
  Eric: Oh, belligerent honesty.
• 22:26
  Eric: Belligerent honesty.
• 22:28
  Eric: Like, like, I will it's truly because I live in such constant terror of letting anyone down or being a disappointment.
• 22:40
  Eric: It has become like my my utmost relief when I know that someone is just speaking plain.
• 22:47
  Eric: Like, like when they're talking about, hey, this thing you're doing is annoying.
• 22:51
  Eric: I don't know why you said it like that.
• 22:53
  Eric: Speaking plain.
• 22:55
  Eric: Um no, like I like belligerent on like the healthy kind of not like giving me your every fucking opinion about it, but but like when when just I just if I'm fucking up, I tell this to so many people.
• 23:09
  Eric: Like if I'm fucking up, I want to know.
• 23:11
  Eric: I want you to tell me immediately so I can stop fucking up.
• 23:16
  Eric: That's beautiful.
• 23:17
  Eric: And my true friends, like my friends are the people I know in my life who are comfortable being that with me.
• 23:25
  Eric: I get so on edge when I'm around people.
• 23:28
  Eric: I'm like, like, you know, like when you can feel that people are sugarcoating or not like when you can tell that there's something they want to say, but they're not saying like that kills me.
• 23:42
  Eric: Because then my imagination fills in the blanks and it drives me insane.
• 23:46
  Matt: I mean, I I completely get that.
• 23:48
  Matt: I mean, because I uh I also suffer from the mind virus of anxiety that makes me go, like, but are they really cool or with me or are they pissed?
• 24:00
  Matt: Yeah, or the classes facade.
• 24:03
  Eric: Is this a facade?
• 24:04
  Eric: Am I am I getting a compliment sandwich right now?
• 24:08
  Matt: I re I was recently I saw somebody who said, Oh my gosh, like, oh, it's so good to see you.
• 24:14
  Matt: You look so good, da-da-da-da.
• 24:16
  Matt: And I was like, Oh, it's very nice.
• 24:17
  Matt: And then as I was driving away, was like, did they say that I look good because they were so shocked by how bad I look?
• 24:26
  Matt: Like that, that folks is anxiety for you.
• 24:30
  Matt: Yeah.
• 24:32
  Eric: Or the classic, like for both of us, I'm sure you've experienced this is when the the when you've just come stepped off stage, you're coming out after the show, and all your friends are there, and they're like, Oh my god, you were so amazing, you're so good, you're so gonna and and there's this little voice in the back of your head, like, yeah, but are they just saying that because they're my friends?
• 24:52
  Eric: And like, they don't like I value the friend.
• 24:54
  Eric: You gotta filter that.
• 24:55
  Eric: You gotta you gotta filter that.
• 24:58
  Eric: I value the friend that'll tell me I was dog shit.
• 25:01
  Matt: Yes, a hundred percent.
• 25:02
  Matt: And like I've long since had sort of a like if the actor in question says, like, what'd you think?
• 25:10
  Matt: I have long since been like, uh, what are we doing here?
• 25:15
  Matt: Am I do you want Yes, do you want affirmation or do you want to Or do you want the the Yeah, do you want the the fellow, you know, theater professional to tell you what I think?
• 25:28
  Matt: And you know, not to say that means I'm gonna go, that was dog shit, but I I you know, I if you if you tell me you want my honest thoughts, I'll be like, yeah, I mean, I think your director was fucking off his rocker, man.
• 25:40
  Matt: Like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 25:42
  Matt: Like you were great, but like, what the fuck was that?
• 25:45
  Matt: You couldn't see his fucking face for half the thing.
• 25:47
  Matt: You know, like I'm like, I'll tell you.
• 25:50
  Matt: I also feel like you can have a look with another actor.
• 25:54
  Matt: Like, I have had the exchange that's not an exchange.
• 25:58
  Matt: Like after a show, you go up to somebody and you're like, hey, hey, uh, what'd you think?
• 26:04
  Matt: You were great, great.
• 26:06
  Matt: Like, you know, like it's just like great.
• 26:09
  Matt: That's me telling you it was dog shit, right?
• 26:12
  Matt: And you going, Yeah, it was dog shit.
• 26:14
  Matt: Because, like, look, we're not dumb.
• 26:17
  Matt: We know when we're in a bad show.
• 26:19
  Matt: We know when we're in a bad show.
• 26:21
  Matt: We know when we've done a bad job.
• 26:24
  Matt: Uh, yeah.
• 26:24
  Matt: So I think I think there's a code.
• 26:26
  Matt: I think there's a code amongst actors, an unspoken code.
• 26:29
  Eric: It's a code that's almost impossible to codify.
• 26:32
  Eric: And yet we tried.
• 26:34
  Eric: We it's a vibes-based economy, y'all.
• 26:36
  Eric: But Matt, what do you value in a friend?
• 26:38
  Matt: When I say this, I don't want it to sound uh I feel like it has the I we've talked about it before, but I feel like it could come off as uh as a little as a little fascist, but loyalty.
• 26:54
  Eric: Oh yeah, yeah.
• 26:55
  Eric: No, no.
• 26:55
  Eric: You are someone who deeply because you are one of the most deeply loyal human beings I have ever known.
• 27:02
  Matt: And I say that, and that's why I say this, because like if um if you if if you have won me as a friend, baby, I am loyal to a fault.
• 27:16
  Matt: And the fault, in my experience, is that loyalty doesn't always get reciprocated.
• 27:24
  Matt: And I have that fucking sucks.
• 27:27
  Matt: I have I have never really felt a betrayal as uh sharp as when I feel like I've gone to bat for you or something, and something has occurred and you didn't you didn't have my back.
• 27:45
  Eric: Yeah.
• 27:46
  Matt: And I'm not saying you, Eric, of course.
• 27:47
  Matt: No, no, yeah.
• 27:48
  Matt: I'm the royal.
• 27:49
  Matt: We all know it.
• 27:50
  Matt: The person uh you know, these people in question.
• 27:54
  Matt: Like I've uh because it's happened a couple of times.
• 27:57
  Eric: Yeah.
• 27:57
  Eric: I've witnessed it happen in real time.
• 27:59
  Matt: Yes, you have.
• 28:00
  Matt: Yes, you have.
• 28:02
  Matt: Uh and it's just sort of um, yeah, it's tough because you feel like in a way, there's like a like you've been dumped, I guess.
• 28:14
  Matt: Like, or cheated on almost.
• 28:17
  Matt: Yeah, like it's worse than being dumped because that person isn't necessarily ending the friendship, but they definitely just did.
• 28:24
  Matt: Like they didn't intend to, but they did.
• 28:27
  Eric: It's a culminating moment, like where in that flash you see exactly how much you were worth to them.
• 28:33
  Eric: Exactly.
• 28:33
  Eric: And and that is depth.
• 28:35
  Eric: Because like we like loyalty, it exists in this place of like, hey, I stand at the ready.
• 28:44
  Eric: Like, I am I am like I keep you on my mind, or like I I I am mindful of your life and your struggles, and I'm ready to step the fuck up when you need me.
• 28:54
  Eric: And yeah, that fucking hurts.
• 28:56
  Eric: Yeah.
• 28:57
  Eric: When when like yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 28:59
  Matt: That's not that's not an entry into the ledger of perceived slights.
• 29:03
  Matt: That's a you're fucking dead to me.
• 29:06
  Matt: Yeah, that that that that that book lives deep within Matt's heart.
• 29:09
  Matt: You you were you were a friend, and now I am an enemy.
• 29:14
  Matt: No, yeah, like true.
• 29:18
  Matt: Yeah, and I say, okay, so I say the I say the enemy bit um mostly for the lols, for the gags.
• 29:23
  Matt: Yes, yeah, for the he's, for the haws.
• 29:26
  Matt: But like there is definitely a I'll forget, but I won't forget, or I'll forgive, I guess, but I won't forget.
• 29:35
  Matt: But if I if I hit that with you, you can't expect the same level of like I'm not going to bat for you the way I had in the past ever again.
• 29:46
  Matt: No.
• 29:47
  unknown: Yeah.
• 29:48
  Matt: And probably we will slowly fall out of touch and da da da, you know.
• 29:53
  Matt: Yeah.
• 29:54
  Matt: It's like a breakup.
• 29:54
  Matt: Yeah, it is.
• 29:55
  Matt: It's like a breakup.
• 29:56
  Matt: It's very much like that.
• 29:58
  Eric: Yeah.
• 29:58
  Eric: I'll also say this, I'll add to my I would say the other thing I treasure very deeply in a friendship, and this is something that has developed as I've gotten older.
• 30:09
  Eric: I really value people who I can just share space with, and I don't need to entertain them.
• 30:19
  Eric: Like, like, and I'm not saying this is a requirement of every social game, but like as I've as I've gotten older, like I've realized like, oh, there were a good number of friends I I've I had in my life in the past where I kind of came to the realization, like, oh, you do like me.
• 30:35
  Eric: You want me to be here, but the primary reason you want me here is because I fill an entertainment void in your world.
• 30:44
  Eric: Like, like I it's like I felt like a dancing monkey at times.
• 30:47
  Eric: There, like I I couldn't just sit and exist in comfortable silence with them.
• 30:53
  Eric: I had to be doing something.
• 30:54
  Matt: Like, poach, tell us a joke.
• 30:56
  Matt: Poach, tell us a story.
• 30:57
  Matt: Yeah, like dance monkey, dance.
• 30:59
  Eric: You have to be on.
• 30:59
  Eric: Like you have to be on.
• 31:01
  Eric: Like I value the shit out of people I can just be off with.
• 31:06
  Matt: Yes.
• 31:07
  Matt: Agreed.
• 31:08
  Eric: Agreed.
• 31:08
  Eric: Yeah.
• 31:10
  Eric: Now, Matt, want to ask you something.
• 31:13
  Matt: Tell me what it is.
• 31:14
  Eric: What is your most treasured memory?
• 31:17
  Eric: Wow.
• 31:19
  Matt: Um I don't know if there can be just one.
• 31:23
  Matt: Is that like Yeah, that that's why you say most treasured.
• 31:26
  Eric: I'm just gonna pick a treasured memory.
• 31:28
  Eric: A deeply treasured memory.
• 31:29
  Matt: Well, I can give you I can give you a couple, right?
• 31:31
  Matt: Like I my whole experience at well, okay, maybe not the whole experience, but most of the experience of being at Philmont, um is which is a scout ranch in New Mexico for those who might not be in the know.
• 31:46
  Matt: Two weeks of backpacking in the New Mexican desert.
• 31:48
  Matt: It's it that was that was uh a tip tip to tail is chock full of memories.
• 31:54
  Matt: It was the first time I was on a plane, it was you know, the the farthest I'd ever been away from home at that point.
• 32:01
  Matt: I fell trees with lumberjacks, I climbed the second highest mountain in New Mexico with my dad.
• 32:08
  Matt: You know, the like there's just things that are in all likelihood once in a lifetime moments, but then there's moments like I remember I very, very clearly, I want to say it was fourth grade.
• 32:24
  Matt: I think it was fourth grade, my friend, and I shit you not, by the name of Eric, wanted to show me uh wanted to show me a little film in his basement called Back to the Future.
• 32:38
  Matt: Oh, there it is.
• 32:40
  Matt: And uh yeah, I I you know that that in itself is a treasured memory.
• 32:47
  Matt: Yeah.
• 32:47
  Matt: Um my dad would work uh the he was an air traffic controller, and so he would uh work night shifts a lot of the time.
• 32:55
  Matt: And one of the things that my because my I my brother was older than me, so he was he was off of college at this point, so it was really just me and my mom.
• 33:03
  Matt: And so for like those nights when my dad would have these uh night shifts, it became our thing because my dad hate or you know, hated or didn't like stuffed crust pizza.
• 33:15
  Matt: So my mom and I would order stuffed crust pizza, yeah, and that would be like our little mother-son thing that we did on these nights, and so like that's a treasured memory.
• 33:28
  Matt: Do I think any one of those is necessarily greater than the other?
• 33:35
  Matt: No, but like you know, the list the list goes on and on.
• 33:39
  Matt: The first night Lindsay and I kissed, the you know, we got married.
• 33:43
  Matt: That's up there.
• 33:44
  Matt: The day we found out we're having a kid.
• 33:47
  Matt: Yeah.
• 33:48
  Matt: Yeah, his birthday.
• 33:51
  Matt: Like, uh, you know, that is obviously a a late a late addition to the to the pantheon of treasured memories.
• 34:01
  Matt: But it's it's it's hard to pick just one.
• 34:04
  Matt: It really is hard to pick just a one.
• 34:06
  Matt: Yeah, and I uh like I cut it out, but to give the listeners the inside scoop, you read this question.
• 34:12
  Matt: I said, give me a second to think about this, because I wanted to give you a real answer, but I don't think I can give you one.
• 34:18
  Matt: Just one, I mean.
• 34:20
  Eric: That's a that no, that is that also a great fucking smorgasbord of treasured memories.
• 34:26
  Matt: Yeah, well, since I couldn't give you the thing, I was like, I'll give you the greatest hits.
• 34:30
  Matt: I'll give you some of the greatest hits.
• 34:32
  Eric: I'll tell you mine.
• 34:33
  Eric: So here's my and and and it in a similar vein, it's not just one, but I've noticed when I think back to like the memories, I really sear into those serotonin receptors in my brain.
• 34:45
  Eric: I they all follow a similar theme.
• 34:48
  Eric: I and and whether it's the Shenandoah River or camping in the mountains of Maryland or going to a beach house in the outer banks, or like being on a trip.
• 35:00
  Eric: There is and I've done this since I was a child.
• 35:06
  Eric: Yeah.
• 35:07
  Eric: But there comes a point, it's it's usually it's like it's late.
• 35:11
  Eric: It's like usually it's gonna be after midnight, but people are still up bustling around, like we're they're in the house, they're they're they're we're in the in the midst of of like all these different stories happening and jokes being told and stuff like that.
• 35:28
  Eric: And um I will I will take a moment, I will just step outside onto the porch, onto the deck, onto the woods, just away from the group for a little bit, and I will just look up at the sky and I'll admire the stars for a little bit, and I'll just kind of like be in this separate from moment.
• 35:53
  Eric: Like just like kind of separate myself from this thing going on, and I just look at the sky and I look at the trees, and then I'll hear a friend laughing from inside, and I'll turn around and I'll see like warm light spilling out into the night from like all the people I love inside that little building just existing, and I'll just kind of bask in observing that for a little while, just being next to that and and outside of it.
• 36:22
  Eric: I treasure those moments because those are the moments where like I kind of just take that breath to be like, oh, this is happiness, yeah, sick, tight, tight.
• 36:35
  Matt: That resonates with me too, because I think there are the I have I know exactly what you mean.
• 36:41
  Matt: Yeah, because I think this the similarity between us is those moments are where are uh fleeting in the sense that in those moments the anxiety drivers of the brain malfunction and are off for a brief period of time.
• 37:02
  Matt: Because you're so just like in it.
• 37:04
  Matt: I'm I'm listening to my friend laugh, like uh I was sitting around campfire, whatever.
• 37:08
  Matt: Like it's it's a moment where you can just go, this is nice.
• 37:12
  Matt: And your brain like allows you to feel it.
• 37:15
  Matt: Yes, your brain and your heart for one second are like, this is nice, isn't it?
• 37:21
  Eric: You know, yeah, and you know what it is?
• 37:22
  Eric: It's because in in that moment, my brain, there's I live my entire life around the thought, oh, I should be doing blank right now.
• 37:32
  Eric: Same.
• 37:33
  Eric: And in those mo it's it's one of those moments when you're out there and you're in it with your with your friends, your family, your loved ones, your community, and you step outside of it, you're like, oh, there is nowhere else on earth I need to be right now.
• 37:46
  Eric: There's nothing I need to be doing.
• 37:48
  Matt: There's a like a sick, love that type and the conversely, our next question, number 18.
• 37:57
  Matt: What is your most terrible memory?
• 38:03
  Eric: And I I alluded to this earlier.
• 38:05
  Eric: And I'm not gonna name names, not gonna give any of the necessary not gonna give any extrangers to this isn't about that, but the the war the the the most terrible I've ever felt in my life was the day that a rather unpleasant ex informed me that she was going to be taking my cat.
• 38:28
  Eric: She had my cat, she said she was going to be keeping my cat, she was kidnapping my cat, and I had to go rescue my cat.
• 38:37
  Eric: The days between me being told, oh no, she's mine now, and me getting her back were probably some of the most stressful, like just when I say stress like just I remember wretched days I have ever experienced because that's my fucking cat.
• 38:57
  Eric: You were yeah, you were you were not in a great place.
• 39:00
  Eric: No, and that was my that is my sole animal, that is my familiar.
• 39:04
  Eric: And Eric, I weren't and knowing it was done purely to cause me harm.
• 39:11
  Matt: No, yeah, it was it was spiteful, it was evil.
• 39:14
  Matt: It was pure spite.
• 39:16
  Matt: And I remember Eric.
• 39:18
  Matt: I want I want to say I'm gonna I'm gonna air some guilt from myself in this in this moment to you.
• 39:25
  Matt: The no, I'm serious.
• 39:27
  Matt: This is real.
• 39:28
  Matt: This is real.
• 39:28
  Matt: I believe you.
• 39:30
  Matt: When you I'm trying to also not share too many details, but when you went to go get said cat, yeah, and uh the that that incident of you you going, there were people that went with you.
• 39:44
  Matt: Yes, and I offered to be one of those people, and you said no, we're good, we're good, we're good.
• 39:51
  Matt: And I have a feeling because that was during just still very tail end, but still during COVID.
• 39:58
  Matt: Yeah.
• 39:58
  Matt: Um, I have a feeling that you didn't necessarily ask or didn't want to ask me to come because of how seriously I took the you know, COVID and not being out and around people.
• 40:11
  Matt: And I want you to know that I regret not just saying, What time do you need me there?
• 40:16
  Matt: No, totally serious.
• 40:18
  Matt: No, no, no, no.
• 40:19
  Matt: I I know I know.
• 40:20
  Matt: When you told me about it after the fact, I, you know, obviously uh I was taking in everything that happened because it's a crazy story.
• 40:29
  Matt: It is an insane story, it's an insane story, but all I could think of was I should have been there.
• 40:35
  Eric: Oh, yeah.
• 40:36
  Eric: And Matt, I like, dude, when I tell you this, and this this is what I was I was going back to in my in the the previous half of this of this little caper we're on.
• 40:48
  Eric: Oh, so it's all been a lie.
• 40:49
  Eric: No, no, no, no.
• 40:50
  Eric: No, no, no, no.
• 40:52
  Eric: Uh they mentioned like like I was like, oh, I realized the the secret of happiness.
• 40:58
  Eric: It was like community, like like that whole like community thing.
• 41:01
  Eric: Like, dude, what I needed so badly in those dark, dark, dark, dark hours was just to know that there were people who still loved me and still and still like valued me.
• 41:16
  Eric: And I, Matt, when I tell you I know bone marrow fucking deep that if I had it, that if I needed, if I had said, Matt, actually on second thought, I fucking need you here right now, you would be you the nothing on earth could keep you from no, I would have been there, man.
• 41:36
  Eric: And that and that is why you have nothing to apologize for because that knowledge, that like this this goes back to you being one of the most loyal human beings on earth.
• 41:48
  Eric: I never doubted that for a fucking second.
• 41:52
  Matt: And I'm glad to hear.
• 41:53
  Matt: But that is why you were gonna say this, but I I I I still want to say that like, yeah, I I do feel like um that anxiety part of my brain is like, oh, I bet he was worried about XYZ, about you know, so he didn't he didn't want to have to at like burden me with coming or whatever, but like I would have fucking been there.
• 42:16
  Matt: I should have been there anyway.
• 42:18
  Eric: I I I and I know you would have.
• 42:21
  Matt: I should have given you the Jeremy Renner whose car we taking.
• 42:27
  Eric: No, it it it truly, man.
• 42:29
  Eric: Like it is, I was I was I was set.
• 42:33
  Eric: We had the plan.
• 42:35
  Eric: You had a good brigade of people.
• 42:36
  Eric: I had a I had I had a phalanx of loved ones around me.
• 42:40
  Eric: You did have a vanguard with you needed it.
• 42:43
  Eric: You didn't uh but yeah, that was that was uh that was that was that fucking so just that whole thing that sucked.
• 42:54
  Eric: Yeah.
• 42:55
  Matt: How about you?
• 42:56
  Matt: Um Love you, buddy.
• 42:59
  Matt: I love you as well.
• 43:00
  Matt: Love you so much, but we haven't proved it yet.
• 43:02
  Matt: Uh we need to finish these questions.
• 43:03
  Matt: Sorry, sorry, sorry.
• 43:04
  Matt: We need to follow the this plot.
• 43:07
  Matt: Um the I feel like the actual answer I can't say.
• 43:14
  Matt: Like the in the sense that what I'll say about it is I said something to to a stranger, in fact, that I knew that I knew would hurt them if I said it.
• 43:33
  Matt: And it did.
• 43:34
  Matt: Everything like the calculation, you know, the calculated hit, direct hit, you know, everything went according to plan in the heat of the moment.
• 43:44
  Matt: I had a a barn burner of a comment.
• 43:47
  Matt: Uh huh.
• 43:48
  Matt: But it it crossed the line, you know.
• 43:51
  Matt: And I I don't know this person, I'll never see this person again.
• 43:56
  Matt: I don't even know if I'd recognize this person if I saw them.
• 43:59
  Matt: Like I I said it was a stranger, and it was a very long time ago.
• 44:03
  Matt: But uh, but yeah, there is something there.
• 44:06
  Matt: I, you know, I said something specifically to hurt somebody, I hurt them, and um, I've never I've never forgiven myself for it.
• 44:15
  Eric: It's it's one of those when you can't sleep at night and you're you're going over the the fucking highlight reel of every uh every ill deed and every mistake and every and every selfish choice you've ever made.
• 44:29
  Matt: You yeah, it was it was a cruel thing to have said that I said because I was pissed at someone I didn't know.
• 44:37
  Matt: And my temper got the best of me, and I said it, and it was bid.
• 44:43
  Matt: And it was bead.
• 44:45
  Matt: It was bid.
• 44:46
  Matt: And I yeah, I'm I'm I'm deeply ashamed of it.
• 44:49
  Matt: But uh, you know, I I'm so ashamed I'm not gonna say it publicly.
• 44:56
  Eric: Do you wanna in in a in a this this one's a little more a little more lighthearted, but in the same kind of realm.
• 45:06
  Eric: Uh fucking when I was like I wanna say like eight or nine, my mom worked at the Disney store, and she used to be, she used to get access, like there was all this like super exclusive merch that only people who worked for Disney got like commemorative like memories of the city.
• 45:28
  Matt: I think you've told me this story on this pod before, but continue, please.
• 45:32
  Eric: It's probably about the mood ring.
• 45:33
  Eric: Um so one day my mom brought home a mood ring, and it was this beautiful, I can still see it in mind, sterling silver mood ring that had like the Mickey Mouse ears on it, and it was in this velvet.
• 45:46
  Eric: I was like, as a little kid, I was obsessed with trinkets and stuff.
• 45:50
  Eric: And I was like, oh my god, mom, mom, can I please but can I can I see can I play with it?
• 45:57
  Eric: Can I like put and my mom who who like would would would move heaven and earth for me, who like who when you think of the line from a Christmas story, my mother had not had a hot meal to herself.
• 46:10
  Eric: Yes in 15, like that kind of like self-sacrificing mom.
• 46:15
  Eric: She was like, Eric, no, honey, really, I really don't.
• 46:19
  Eric: And I wore her down and I wore her and I just kept thinking.
• 46:23
  Eric: It's like, please, I'll be so good.
• 46:24
  Eric: I'll be so I'll be so careful with it.
• 46:26
  Eric: Oh my god.
• 46:27
  Eric: I was like, I even started crying.
• 46:29
  Eric: I like my little body was just overwhelmed.
• 46:32
  Eric: It was like, I what?
• 46:33
  Matt: I just couldn't.
• 46:34
  Matt: I got it.
• 46:36
  Eric: And eventually she's like, okay, okay, no, no, you can okay, just be so careful with it.
• 46:41
  Eric: And and I was so happy.
• 46:43
  Eric: I was so, you know, over the moon.
• 46:45
  Eric: She left for work within like 20 minutes.
• 46:50
  Eric: I like sat down on the floor, wasn't looking where I was sitting, crushed the ring.
• 46:56
  Eric: Just smashed it flat.
• 46:58
  Eric: I think about the fallout like the fallout.
• 47:02
  Eric: My mom truly, I was fully prepared.
• 47:07
  Eric: Like, because when you're an eight or nine-year-old, you you catastrophize.
• 47:11
  Eric: I like as eight or nine-year-old, I was like, I was like, mom's not gonna love me anymore.
• 47:15
  Eric: Mom not gonna fucking love me anymore.
• 47:17
  Eric: She's gonna be so mad.
• 47:18
  Eric: And like, and and and just all all wrapped in the you had one job to take care of this thing.
• 47:25
  Eric: You wanted it so badly, and then you immediately forgot about it and crushed it.
• 47:30
  Eric: And and and she was so chill about it.
• 47:35
  Matt: Like she was so and you want to know why, I think.
• 47:37
  Matt: Why?
• 47:38
  Matt: Because the moment she gave it to you, she said, okay, I'm destroying the ring.
• 47:43
  Matt: She let me just throw it into Mount Doom.
• 47:46
  Eric: If you love something, you let it go.
• 47:49
  Eric: Like he's gonna destroy it, and that's that's fine.
• 47:53
  Eric: I was in because I still think I uh a few years ago, I actually it might have been because we talked about it on the podcast.
• 48:00
  Eric: I reached out to my mom.
• 48:02
  Eric: I called my mom, and I was like, Ma, I just gotta let you know.
• 48:06
  Eric: I still think about this.
• 48:07
  Eric: And she was like, What are you talking about?
• 48:09
  Eric: No, no, she remembered, she just could not stop laughing.
• 48:13
  Eric: She was like, Honey, no, she was like, It was a fucking fucking don't worry.
• 48:18
  Eric: She was, she was, she was laughing, she was like, You're still thinking about this.
• 48:25
  Matt: Yep, mom, I got anxiety.
• 48:27
  Matt: Yeah, ma.
• 48:28
  Matt: Prison of my own making.
• 48:31
  Matt: I would I want to say though that you're calling out Ralphie's mom's line of my mom had not had hot meal to herself in 15 years.
• 48:40
  Matt: That line since having a kid has come to my mind so at the forefront often.
• 48:46
  Matt: Because there is like there's so many cliches about having a baby and a newborn around, and one of them being like the cold coffee, the amount of coffees that I've remade.
• 48:58
  Matt: Oh, yeah, because it's like, oh yeah, I made this an hour ago, and it just has been sitting here on a counter, or you know, and similarly, like we we're just to the point now where he is cool to sit in uh the little baby bouncer we have for him at the dinner table, and we can eat at the dinner table.
• 49:20
  Matt: But for the first two months, if we wanted to eat while he was awake, we needed to, we ate downstairs, like on like the TV tray style, and it was eating in shifts.
• 49:36
  Matt: It was, you know, Lindsay would eat for a while while I'm holding the baby, and it's like, okay, I'm like half done here.
• 49:41
  Matt: Like you guys switch, switch off, hot bunking the kid.
• 49:45
  Matt: That's basically what it was.
• 49:47
  Matt: Yeah.
• 49:47
  Matt: And then we were like, you know what?
• 49:49
  Matt: It's just gonna work better if we eat dinner at like nine o'clock after he goes to bed.
• 49:54
  Matt: Now you got something to look forward to.
• 49:55
  Matt: And so now it's um, you know, finally it uh that level of normalcy is sort of like one truly, one night.
• 50:04
  Eric: Can I just come over and cook for y'all?
• 50:06
  Eric: Like I'll come over, I'll come over, I'll start cooking it like I like truly.
• 50:10
  Eric: Like I mean it.
• 50:11
  Eric: Uh I mean it when I say like like God, let me take care of you.
• 50:14
  Eric: Like, I just okay, cool.
• 50:16
  Eric: Cool, cool, cool, cool, cool.
• 50:17
  Eric: Absolutely.
• 50:18
  Eric: Well, this brings us to if you knew that in one year you by the way, that was the halfway mark.
• 50:24
  Matt: I just I should mention Oh, yeah.
• 50:26
  Matt: We're yeah, yeah.
• 50:27
  Matt: That's I think this might be a three-parter, buddy.
• 50:29
  Matt: Uh uh, it might be.
• 50:30
  Matt: Let's keep going.
• 50:31
  Matt: Yep.
• 50:32
  Matt: I because I don't want to rush things.
• 50:33
  Matt: Don't want to rush.
• 50:34
  Matt: And I don't want to put it all in.
• 50:39
  Eric: We reserve the right.
• 50:40
  Eric: If you knew that in one year you would die suddenly.
• 50:44
  Eric: So 365 days from now, you know you're just gonna drop dead.
• 50:48
  Eric: Would you change anything about the way you are living?
• 50:51
  Eric: Why?
• 50:52
  Eric: This is an especially fascinating question for you.
• 50:58
  Matt: Yeah, because like there's you've got stakes.
• 51:01
  Matt: I've got stakes.
• 51:02
  Matt: I can't just be like, oh, well, I'm quitting that job and hitting the Appalachian Trail.
• 51:06
  Matt: You know, like I can't I can't just do that still.
• 51:10
  Matt: Um the the implication then is that doing other activities that might otherwise scare me, like uh not that I have a burning desire to do this, but like skydiving, for example.
• 51:24
  Matt: If the implications one year from now I will die suddenly, that the implication is I won't die for any other reason.
• 51:32
  Matt: No, oh yeah, like if I'm fated to die, then I'm also fated to do whatever I'm about to do.
• 51:39
  Matt: That's what I'm saying, man.
• 51:40
  Matt: So I I should be able to skydive, no problem.
• 51:43
  Matt: Like the no problem.
• 51:46
  Matt: No problem.
• 51:47
  Matt: Yeah, I think uh I would do uh there'd probably be some of that.
• 51:54
  Matt: But like I don't think, yeah, there would be no like uh immediately I don't know, a lot of things get called into question um because so much of like the my like grindset of being an actor, of constantly auditioning, of looking for auditions, of playing the long game.
• 52:18
  Matt: And looking and you know, looking for ways to the ultimate goal of like 100% of my quote unquote living is made that way.
• 52:28
  Matt: It is hard because that's realistically not gonna happen in a year.
• 52:35
  Matt: Like all those dreams are not gonna die in a year, they're gonna die now.
• 52:42
  Matt: Because like I'm not gonna do all those dream shows, I'm not gonna get a chance to like do old age parts that I want to do, you know.
• 52:50
  Matt: So like I think the biggest change was that might be what gets me to quit.
• 52:58
  Matt: Like that might be the like, okay, I'm gonna, I'm just gonna live as best I as full of that.
• 53:06
  Matt: Yeah, yeah.
• 53:06
  Matt: And like if there's a show to be had or done or constructed, maybe, maybe the like one one last jab.
• 53:16
  Matt: But like that's probably it.
• 53:19
  Eric: I mean, I can also think of an army of an army of people.
• 53:23
  Eric: I am one of them who if we if we knew, if you told us you're like real talk, I'm gonna dine here, we would throw our whole asses at just putting on a dream show.
• 53:35
  Eric: Yeah, and that's what I mean, like doing that.
• 53:39
  Eric: But like there's there's a call in every fucking favor I have.
• 53:44
  Matt: Sure, same, but like at the at the same time, like I know from from being on the not just the actor in a show, but member of a theater company that mounts a show, I know the the level of stress it takes to mount a show.
• 54:04
  Matt: And so, like, that's very stressful, say eight weeks of a year.
• 54:09
  Matt: Yeah.
• 54:10
  Matt: So like that's a that's a big chunk.
• 54:12
  Matt: So it's gotta be, it's gotta be the show.
• 54:15
  Matt: Oh yeah.
• 54:15
  Matt: Um, but like, uh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 54:17
  Matt: But uh that that'd probably be mine because there can't be any like, oh, I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go hike the Appalachian Trail or sail around the world or any of those things.
• 54:26
  Matt: Because like mostly it's gonna be like, I gotta spend the most amount of time this year with my my little baby boy.
• 54:33
  Matt: And my wife, I guess.
• 54:35
  Eric: And I guess.
• 54:36
  Eric: Yeah, that would and and and that brings us to Uncle Poach.
• 54:40
  Eric: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 54:40
  Eric: Um, Uncle Poach finds out he's gonna die.
• 54:43
  Eric: Man, I'm doing it.
• 54:44
  Eric: I'm I'm I'm grabbing Alyssa by the hand and I'm saying, you and me, kid, we're we're we're adventuring.
• 54:50
  Eric: We're losing it, huh?
• 54:52
  Eric: And I am I am I am I am living without fucks.
• 54:57
  Eric: I am taking out the most immediate and predatory loans I can.
• 55:02
  Eric: I am fucking like I have no one to inherit my debt.
• 55:06
  Eric: I was like, I am I'm just gonna like go, and all of it will just fund going places ever.
• 55:13
  Eric: Like, like I will I want to train hop.
• 55:15
  Eric: I want to fucking hitchhike.
• 55:17
  Eric: I wanna, I wanna fucking slum it up and down the Appalachian Trail.
• 55:22
  Eric: I want to get so goddamn messy.
• 55:25
  Eric: Uh I and and when I get back, like just a fucking year-long here I go, I'm gonna die tour.
• 55:32
  Eric: And at the conclusion of which, this is where I would ask all of my friends to throw their whole ass behind this party of the fucking century.
• 55:39
  Eric: Just I want, I want, I want the party to be such that at the stroke of midnight on the 365th day, I am just surrounded by everyone I like and love, and I just die and fall backwards into my casket, and they lower my ass into the ground.
• 55:56
  Eric: Nice.
• 55:56
  Eric: I think it'd be I it'd be a I want it, I want, I want it to be a party.
• 56:01
  Eric: Like it, it's not even about going for distance or speed.
• 56:06
  Eric: I want that party to be such that it becomes myth.
• 56:11
  Eric: I want it, I want it, I want to be the seed of a crazy story.
• 56:17
  Matt: And Eric, I'll tell you this, and I'll tell you true.
• 56:20
  Matt: In the context of this question, in the context of your death party, that is where I would wave my fee to Mosh.
• 56:31
  Eric: Yes, God! Oh my god, if I could die watching you, Mosh, I could I'd die so happy.
• 56:37
  Eric: For that favor, I'll wave the fee.
• 56:40
  Matt: Yes, take me out in the pit.
• 56:42
  Matt: But but until until the prophets bring you to evolve.
• 56:49
  Eric: I go into the pit, it's it's my that's when I that's that's when I'll go because it it's it's the symbolism of me throwing myself into the mosh pit and then all of my friends carrying me out Spider-Man style.
• 57:04
  Eric: Yeah, yes, absolutely.
• 57:07
  Eric: God, what a show.
• 57:10
  Eric: Man, uh Eric, let me ask you this.
• 57:15
  Eric: What does friendship mean to you?
• 57:16
  Eric: So and I and I do want to clear this is this is a distinct question from what do you value most in a friendship, which we answered a little bit ago.
• 57:30
  Eric: Uh what does friendship means mean to me?
• 57:33
  Eric: I and this honestly ties ties to your answer uh uh to the earlier question a little bit.
• 57:41
  Eric: It means shh my friends are the people I show up for.
• 57:47
  Eric: Like there is like that is that is like I'm like, I know that someone's my friend when I have that thought.
• 57:54
  Eric: I'm like, if you if you called me in the dead of night and you needed me, I will be there.
• 58:00
  Eric: Like like that is friendship, isn't shared.
• 58:04
  Eric: I I share lots of interests with lots of people.
• 58:07
  Eric: Yeah, I share like like you know, like those things, those things are a great like lubricant to a friendship.
• 58:15
  Eric: They are a great like inroads to becoming friends.
• 58:18
  Eric: But like when you form that sort of like bone deep connection with someone that like there there's sort of like just that intangible thing that like ignites that part of your heart that's just like I want to fucking be there for you.
• 58:32
  Eric: I choose like friendship is a choice.
• 58:34
  Eric: That's what it is for me.
• 58:36
  Eric: Friendship is uh I I choose you.
• 58:40
  Eric: That's like where my my loyalty lies.
• 58:43
  Eric: Like that that is like like you fucking you are you are welcome in my home, eat of my food, sleep in our beds, like you are chosen.
• 58:52
  Matt: Yeah, and I feel I feel similarly, obviously.
• 58:56
  Matt: Uh and I think what does it mean to me?
• 59:00
  Matt: Like I don't know if I can give you just one word, like everything.
• 59:06
  Eric: It means everything to me.
• 59:07
  Matt: Yeah, I don't think I can give you that, but uh what I can give you is this when I was in middle school, very specifically like middle school, I had like five friends, like realistically, like five actual true friends.
• 59:23
  Matt: And I had I had so little friends that there's a very famous, in my opinion, very famous story in my life where one of the like very popular kids, super popular kids in school.
• 59:37
  Matt: We were walking up and down the staircase at the same time, whatever we like bumped into each other and like stuff, my stuff fell.
• 59:44
  Matt: His stuff didn't fall.
• 59:46
  Matt: Of course it didn't.
• 59:47
  Matt: And uh so I turned to him and was like, Hey, watch it, will you?
• 59:52
  Matt: Or something, you know, something like that, some version of that.
• 59:54
  Matt: And I'm walking in walking in again at seventh grade, and he said to me, I'm sorry, how many friends do you have?
• 1:00:02
  Matt: And kept walking.
• 1:00:04
  Matt: Oh my god.
• 1:00:08
  Matt: Fast forward a little while to sophomore year of high school.
• 1:00:12
  Matt: Um, the two of us are in a play together, and we not only sort of like uh get over the fact that like we've spent years him thinking honestly, him thinking of me as a loser and me thinking of him as a fucking asshole.
• 1:00:29
  Matt: Yeah.
• 1:00:29
  Matt: And we became very close friends.
• 1:00:33
  Matt: We became very tight to the point that we did one of the speeches at our graduation.
• 1:00:41
  Matt: We were a dual speaker uh to do to do bits, basically.
• 1:00:46
  Matt: And we we had this thing, and I told this story.
• 1:00:50
  Matt: So like it came very like full circle, and but but I say all that to be like it because it was when we did this, and I said, How many friends?
• 1:01:02
  Matt: You know, I bumped into him and said, like, hey, watch it with you.
• 1:01:05
  Matt: It I had so little friends, it was the first thing that came to his mind, yeah, was the kind of cruelty that only a seventh grader can bring to bear.
• 1:01:16
  Eric: Right.
• 1:01:17
  Eric: Like, oh, you truly are a fucking loser.
• 1:01:20
  Matt: Oh man, and so like it was so easy.
• 1:01:24
  Matt: He said it and walked away.
• 1:01:25
  Matt: I've I thought about it for years, yeah.
• 1:01:28
  Matt: And so, like, I think this like loyalty uh thing with me and my friendships and everything, I think that is where it like those years are where it was really formed because it was like these these five people that that uh are my friends and that are friends with me specifically if you fuck with them, I'll fucking kill you.
• 1:01:51
  Matt: Like like the the the insane loyalty that is inside of me of like I like if we were having an argument, Eric, you and I, some sort of public argument or something.
• 1:02:04
  Matt: Yeah, doesn't matter, crashing out, crashing out, some sort of temporary thing, and I don't know, somebody somebody like bumped a shopping cart into you or something like that.
• 1:02:15
  Matt: The level of rage that I would lash out at that person with.
• 1:02:21
  Matt: Like I could have just been like, fuck you, poach.
• 1:02:24
  Matt: You know, if you can and then I would immediately be like, hey, what the fuck do you think you're doing?
• 1:02:30
  Matt: What's your damage?
• 1:02:31
  Matt: He's only eight feet tall.
• 1:02:32
  Matt: You didn't see him.
• 1:02:35
  Eric: Yeah, true, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
• 1:02:39
  Matt: So I think like that is what friendship means to me.
• 1:02:43
  Matt: God damn, yeah.
• 1:02:44
  Matt: Good shit.
• 1:02:45
  Matt: It means the people who chose me when nobody else chose me.
• 1:02:49
  Matt: Oh you know, and so hence my my love and loyalty to you, my friend.
• 1:02:57
  Eric: God damn, I tra that is like fucking I feel this is like the only aspect.
• 1:03:02
  Eric: This is like just this is what it's like flying first class on a friendship.
• 1:03:09
  Eric: Hell yeah.
• 1:03:12
  Matt: Oh, like luxurious.
• 1:03:14
  Matt: Yeah, maybe it is.
• 1:03:16
  Matt: When you got me, it is.
• 1:03:18
  Matt: Oh, I am the in-flight entertainment.
• 1:03:24
  Eric: All right.
• 1:03:25
  Eric: What roles do love and affection play in your life?
• 1:03:31
  Matt: I I mean it kind of the other kind of ties in really to the friendship question.
• 1:03:36
  Matt: I mean, I think um if you if you win those things from me, like it's that's a lifetime pass, baby.
• 1:03:45
  Matt: Like we can have our we can have our differences, we can have little arguments or whatever, but like at the end of the day, like baby, I if I told you I love you, I fucking love you.
• 1:03:56
  Matt: Yes, yes, you know, it it it will be so hard for me to take it back, you know.
• 1:04:04
  Matt: Oh yeah, to decide I don't feel that way anymore.
• 1:04:07
  Matt: Come on.
• 1:04:08
  Matt: No.
• 1:04:08
  Matt: No, who's got the time?
• 1:04:10
  Eric: Who has the time?
• 1:04:11
  Eric: That's so much energy.
• 1:04:13
  Eric: No unbuilding.
• 1:04:15
  Eric: No, yeah.
• 1:04:15
  Eric: I yeah, yeah.
• 1:04:17
  Eric: I I am very, I have always been a very affectionate person.
• 1:04:22
  Eric: Oh yes, very and you you you know, like I'm I'm very in and no bit, no, and and and no creepy vibes here.
• 1:04:32
  Eric: I'm a very touchy person.
• 1:04:34
  Eric: I was just hug my friends.
• 1:04:36
  Matt: You are a touchy, feely guy.
• 1:04:38
  Eric: I am a touchy, feely person, and and and of course, keeping in mind, you know, as long as the friend in question or or anyone is okay with that, like I am arms around the shoulder.
• 1:04:50
  Eric: I am hugging and holding.
• 1:04:52
  Eric: I will kiss my friends on the cheek.
• 1:04:54
  Eric: I will tell them how much I love and adore them.
• 1:04:56
  Eric: I'll tell them how fucking beautiful, handsome, cute, hot they are.
• 1:05:01
  Eric: Like I will, I will, I am just like indiscriminate with my lovey dovey.
• 1:05:07
  Eric: It it is like I love my people so fucking much.
• 1:05:11
  Eric: I love love.
• 1:05:12
  Eric: I love love.
• 1:05:14
  Matt: I I I feel it's like I said last episode, folks.
• 1:05:18
  Matt: You see this guy in motion, man.
• 1:05:23
  Eric: God, it's just yeah.
• 1:05:25
  Eric: I just I I I I I treasure my humans and I just wanna just want to hold them, snuggle them up, and keep them warm.
• 1:05:33
  Matt: Snuggle them up, babe.
• 1:05:34
  Matt: Yeah, snug them on.
• 1:05:35
  Matt: Yeah, I I don't I was actually thinking when you started saying that, I don't know that we've ever shaken hands in the like oh nice to meet you.
• 1:05:44
  Matt: I oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:05:45
  Matt: Nice to meet you was a hug.
• 1:05:47
  Matt: Was a hug.
• 1:05:52
  Matt: Yeah.
• 1:05:52
  Matt: Yeah.
• 1:05:53
  Matt: For sure.
• 1:05:55
  Eric: For sure.
• 1:05:55
  Eric: I I am I am a huge fan of of platonic public.
• 1:05:59
  Eric: Displays of affection.
• 1:06:02
  Matt: And on that same note, I think this blends right into actually the next question.
• 1:06:07
  Matt: Yeah.
• 1:06:07
  Matt: And I'm glad it's worded the way it is.
• 1:06:09
  Matt: Alternate sharing something you consider I guess that's the alternate between the two of us.
• 1:06:16
  Matt: Okay.
• 1:06:16
  Matt: Sharing a something you consider a positive characteristic of your partner.
• 1:06:21
  Matt: And this is important for you, Eric.
• 1:06:23
  Matt: Share a total of five items.
• 1:06:26
  Matt: So I think we have to go back and well, that's an uneven number if we're going back and fall.
• 1:06:30
  Eric: There's gonna be ten total, five each.
• 1:06:32
  Eric: Like I'm I like yeah, I'm gonna say five positive characters each other.
• 1:06:37
  Matt: But the thing is, you can only say five.
• 1:06:39
  Matt: Oh fuck.
• 1:06:41
  Matt: That's that's what I'm saying.
• 1:06:43
  Matt: So yeah.
• 1:06:44
  Matt: So I'm asking you first.
• 1:06:45
  Matt: So you you start us on our round robin.
• 1:06:49
  Eric: You have legitimately one of the coolest voices I've ever heard.
• 1:06:55
  Matt: Your voice, you were made to narrate.
• 1:06:58
  Matt: Okay, hold on.
• 1:06:59
  Matt: I'm so sorry.
• 1:07:01
  Matt: I have to back us up because I forgot in reading this question that we that we are falling in love and that partner describes each other and not our actual partners.
• 1:07:13
  Eric: Uh oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:07:14
  Eric: You're my partner.
• 1:07:15
  Eric: That's why I was like only five about Alyssa.
• 1:07:18
  Eric: Oh, oh yeah, buddy.
• 1:07:20
  Eric: I get fucking that's gonna have to be an oat.
• 1:07:23
  Eric: Keep it in the pants, but Alyssa, how do I count them ways?
• 1:07:28
  Eric: Forget forget the ladies, man.
• 1:07:30
  Eric: Forget the ladies, just you and me, right.
• 1:07:32
  Eric: This is boys' night.
• 1:07:33
  Eric: Our goddesses have left the temple.
• 1:07:37
  Matt: The goddesses are on the Odyssey now.
• 1:07:39
  Matt: Penelope is out.
• 1:07:41
  Matt: All right.
• 1:07:42
  Matt: You were saying something about my god, yeah.
• 1:07:45
  Eric: Your voice, you have like one of the richest worms, like just your voice is magnetic.
• 1:07:53
  Eric: What everything you say just radiates like authoritative, and not like in in the negative way, but like like like, oh my god, this is the voice of competence and reason.
• 1:08:10
  Eric: And I want to listen.
• 1:08:12
  Eric: Like, I feel so safe when I hear you speaking words.
• 1:08:17
  Matt: Man, you're right.
• 1:08:18
  Matt: I have bullshitted my way into a lot of stuff.
• 1:08:21
  Matt: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:08:22
  Matt: Oh yeah.
• 1:08:23
  Matt: But but wow, that's very nice.
• 1:08:26
  Matt: Um and I uh I'm gonna start with this because it is like top of mind, partially because we talked about it in the last episode, but you have this this wild abandon of like positive, but like I'm I'm just gonna go for it.
• 1:08:46
  Matt: And it goes back to that time at fresh the freshman year at the freshman like orientation show.
• 1:08:50
  Matt: Jumping up on the table when you jumped up on the table, and like even the the our very like first interaction of uh at auditions, where you like lean forward in the awkward silences as the professors when we were auditioning were like, okay, uh let me let me explain how today's gonna work.
• 1:09:09
  Matt: Breath, and you lean in and go, so do we brab you now or later?
• 1:09:15
  Matt: I was just like, wow, Jesus, what a swing.
• 1:09:23
  Matt: And like, I don't know, the like the there's a confidence, but also a bravery to that.
• 1:09:30
  Matt: Because like I also I have to say, you did that audition for for Townsend's Theater Department with Lucky's monologue from Waiting for God.
• 1:09:42
  Matt: Yeah, and if you're not familiar, folks, Lucky only speaks.
• 1:09:47
  Matt: And what I quickly learned.
• 1:09:49
  Matt: Lucky only speaks once in the entirety of the play.
• 1:09:53
  Matt: It is a long and unless to fight my own instinct to not say this and not get into the dramaturgy of it.
• 1:10:05
  Matt: It is a long, rambling, nonsensical sounding collection of ideas that he's that he truly vomits out for about I don't know, three minutes probably in performance.
• 1:10:21
  Eric: Anyone not doing script analysis on Beckett, it is just incoherence.
• 1:10:28
  Eric: There's no there's no plot to it.
• 1:10:31
  Matt: Yes, and so but but of course there is.
• 1:10:34
  Matt: But anyway, uh the it is it is potentially the worst choice of an audition monologue.
• 1:10:42
  Matt: Absolutely should simply I still cringe think of it.
• 1:10:47
  Matt: I love Lucky, I love Goodot, obviously.
• 1:10:50
  Matt: If if if I was casting a show and somebody walked in to do Lucky's monologue before they even started, I might be like, Do you have anything else?
• 1:10:58
  Matt: Yes, truly, because like I I don't want to see you're lucky, I want to see unless you're auditioning for Lucky, in which case I I don't think I'd have you read the monologue, I'd have you read something, but like it's such a swing.
• 1:11:12
  Matt: And you Yeah, it's ballsy for sure.
• 1:11:16
  Matt: And like between between that and the comment that you made in the circle, like you know, you you made that comment in the circle, and I and I've shared this with you before.
• 1:11:26
  Matt: I think on the pod, I was like, wow, I'm getting in ahead of that guy.
• 1:11:30
  Matt: Uh like and then like the and then you hear the monologue, you know, talking in the hall, I'm doing lucky from Godot.
• 1:11:41
  Matt: I'm just like, the balls of this guy, the audacity, the true audacious man.
• 1:11:47
  Matt: But hey, you fucking knocked it out of the park, clearly.
• 1:11:51
  Matt: Yeah, so because like you got it, and you know, I bet I bet the professors were like, wow, the fucking stones on this kid.
• 1:11:59
  Eric: Fucking Billy Badass walking in here.
• 1:12:03
  Matt: Oh, hello.
• 1:12:04
  Matt: Um, so yeah, I mean that that that's what I mean.
• 1:12:07
  Matt: That's what I meant last time when I said wild abandoned, and that's that's what I will do with that.
• 1:12:12
  Eric: I I've I'm hard pressed to disagree with that assessment.
• 1:12:17
  Eric: I am a ballsy man, I am an audacious son of a bitch.
• 1:12:25
  Matt: Uh Matt, you are so that's one up for both of us, by the way.
• 1:12:32
  Eric: Matt, you are when I say you're one of the most disciplined artists I have ever, I have ever Oh.
• 1:12:42
  Matt: Now you have to know that uh I would protest this, but go on, go on, but I'll be quiet.
• 1:12:48
  Eric: What I mean is, and why this is such like why this sticks out in my mind so much is because Matt, when I s like you'll you'll tell people about the things you do to prep for a role or like the steps you take, or like the or or they just observe you doing these things, and I feel like people who don't uh know you uh as well as I do, or or as as well as your like closest friends do, like they might just assume like like their brain might just file it away as oh he's no, he's just such an organized person, just has his shit together so well.
• 1:13:29
  Eric: And and for me though, what it is is I can see how like this isn't some your discipline as an artist and your like the hard, hard work you do in pursuing your art isn't the result of some natural fucking gift.
• 1:13:50
  Eric: You just woke up, you're like, Oh, I'm just this way, and I do these things, and it's ever like you've put in so much fucking work to do these things, to have your systems, to like be like it, it is it is it it is breathtaking to me the amount of like just fortitude, willpower, and ambition to like do your art the way that you do it, and that is so fucking impressive to me.
• 1:14:22
  Eric: That is that is just like I'm like, I I like fucking hell, man.
• 1:14:26
  Eric: Like you you work so goddamn hard and it shows.
• 1:14:31
  Matt: Wow, that's just a the very genuinely nice thing to hear.
• 1:14:35
  Matt: Um because at the same time, man, imposter syndrome just is uh never gonna be a uh it's always a constant our bosom companion.
• 1:14:46
  Matt: Because I always feel like God, I don't I don't do I don't do enough.
• 1:14:50
  Matt: I don't do anything.
• 1:14:52
  Matt: I don't I barely prepare.
• 1:14:54
  Matt: Like I how can I call myself an actor?
• 1:14:56
  Matt: Like that these are the things that happen when I hear you know somebody else say something about their process.
• 1:15:03
  Matt: I'm like, I don't do that shit.
• 1:15:04
  Matt: Why am I not doing that?
• 1:15:05
  Matt: Oh yeah, you know, like and uh so that is that is that is very warm to hear.
• 1:15:12
  unknown: Yeah.
• 1:15:14
  Matt: Um uh and you, Eric, have brought this up a couple times as a negative, not as a negative, but as like a to a fault of yourself.
• 1:15:22
  Matt: And I'm here to tell you that it's not a fault to yourself.
• 1:15:25
  Matt: This I always want to make sure everybody's okay and everybody's having a good time.
• 1:15:32
  Matt: Like, I know what you mean when you say that is like uh something that like I guess not a fault, but like a cross to bear that you have.
• 1:15:44
  Eric: Of like that I'm just constantly worrying about.
• 1:15:48
  Matt: Okay, the worry of it is like is your cross to bear.
• 1:15:52
  Matt: But the end result is that everybody else feels that and feels that like feels that like, oh, like Eric is here to for a good time and wants to make sure that we're taken care of.
• 1:16:07
  Matt: You're a caretaker.
• 1:16:09
  Matt: It's and you know, all the jokes we've made about the mosh pit stuff, there's a reason you called you you came right out and said, I'm like a mosh pit lifeguard.
• 1:16:17
  Matt: Like I want to make sure everyone's having fun, but nobody's getting hurt.
• 1:16:21
  Matt: And like you've you've always kind of been that way, and that as long as I've known you anyway.
• 1:16:29
  Matt: And so I I'm I'm here to say that I think that is that is something that that comes to mind for me about you, and I think it would come to mind for many people who know you.
• 1:16:40
  Eric: God damn, we'll be misty-eyed by the end of this.
• 1:16:43
  Eric: I thank you.
• 1:16:45
  Eric: That is very kind of you to say, and I appreciate you for for seeing that.
• 1:16:51
  Eric: I mean, like, this is a this is a layup, and I feel like some version of this exists for both the both of our answers.
• 1:16:59
  Eric: Matt, you make me laugh in a way that I can count on one hand the number of human beings on this planet have made me laugh.
• 1:17:12
  Eric: Like you, it and that's what it is.
• 1:17:14
  Eric: It's not just that you're funny.
• 1:17:15
  Eric: Matt, you have throughout our our friendship, have had just like the fucking beeline to my funny bone.
• 1:17:26
  Eric: You know how to get like right, you know exactly how to say something or how to land it that will make me bust my fucking gut every you got me so dialed in, it's unreal.
• 1:17:42
  Matt: Well, we're then then we're doing this layup right back to each to each other because I mean there's a reason this podcast happened the way that it did.
• 1:17:50
  Matt: I I mean Lindsay and I talk about this all the time.
• 1:17:53
  Matt: I'm not even lying to you.
• 1:17:54
  Matt: Like your ability to just like come up with these I don't even want to say one-liners, but like in the moment, they just are lines that just stick for the rest of time.
• 1:18:08
  Matt: For example, I'm gonna give you two examples right off the bat.
• 1:18:12
  Matt: Yeah.
• 1:18:13
  Matt: The a long, long time ago, we and some other friends uh tossed around the idea of starting a theater company when we were young and naive and didn't know anything.
• 1:18:25
  Matt: And we had a we had Oh God, I know exactly what's happening.
• 1:18:31
  Matt: We had uh we were like, let's meet at this bar to like talk about things.
• 1:18:34
  Matt: This is an initial conversation.
• 1:18:36
  Matt: You were late, and the you came up behind me, like the door was behind me, so you were like walking up the aisle this way.
• 1:18:46
  Matt: We were already talking about something, and from from from I don't know, 20 feet away, you started this line as you came up with this long coat that was trailing behind you, like a duster.
• 1:19:00
  Matt: Wearing a duster.
• 1:19:01
  Matt: I was wearing a duster that was going behind you, and you go, Well, it's not every day that we conspire to commit murder.
• 1:19:10
  Matt: That was the first thing that you said, and then so when and fast forward all these years, all these memories that we have together, you came over to the house to meet our baby boy, and you come down the so you come down the stairs to the basement where we're like where I'm sitting with him.
• 1:19:31
  Matt: I was feeding him at the time when you walked in.
• 1:19:34
  Matt: You walked in and you kneeled before him and said, Oh, you will conquer many lands.
• 1:19:42
  Matt: Yes, you will.
• 1:19:43
  Matt: And uh the there's so many things in the podcast that like Lindsay will pop out and be like, He just thought of that.
• 1:19:55
  Matt: Like he just said that.
• 1:19:58
  Eric: Oh god.
• 1:19:59
  Eric: Matt, you're I sometimes feel like a crazy person when I'm trying to describe what you did to make because Matt, I the this is the curse.
• 1:20:13
  Eric: This is the true cross we must bear of the audio medium because Matt Shea can with a fucking look, like just a turn of his head and a peek over the glasses, and you're timing.
• 1:20:30
  Eric: Matt, you're you're like a Swiss fucking clock, my man.
• 1:20:35
  Eric: Like, like if the you can do with just such little mo movement and just like a just so of the eyes, like at me from across the room, and I will be hyperventilating laughing.
• 1:20:49
  Eric: I can you can communicate, you communicate entire fucking diatribes.
• 1:20:56
  Eric: Like, I can read your mind by the way you shoot me looks, like, or it's just the way that like when someone says something truly unfathomably stupid in the front of the two of us, and we just automatically look at each other.
• 1:21:14
  Matt: Oh, yeah.
• 1:21:15
  Matt: I we definitely are of a wavelength that I can give you like a quick sideways glance, and the whole dialogue of this fucking idiot is like is communicated.
• 1:21:28
  Matt: That's definitely true, and we've definitely done it.
• 1:21:32
  Matt: Oh, so many fucking talking.
• 1:21:34
  Matt: Not even in the context of the show, like across the Zoom or whatever.
• 1:21:37
  Matt: I'm saying, like, in in real life at college parties, we would be we'd be there and be like, mm-hmm.
• 1:21:45
  Matt: Just like, oh yeah, that's really funny.
• 1:21:47
  Matt: And I just kind of quick side glance to you.
• 1:21:51
  Matt: Yep.
• 1:21:52
  Matt: Yep, god and we would know we uh oh fuck, god damn.
• 1:21:58
  Eric: You that that you just you get it.
• 1:22:00
  Matt: It means a lot to me.
• 1:22:01
  Matt: It means a lot to me to call out the timing.
• 1:22:03
  Eric: Oh it really does.
• 1:22:04
  Eric: It's Matt, like it is it's masterful.
• 1:22:10
  Eric: Like it, I and I and when I try, and that's what drives me nuts, is because when I try to like like fucking Matt got me so fucking hard.
• 1:22:19
  Eric: It's like I can't emulate it, I can't like recreate, like you you see the moment, you identify, like you thread the needle so satisfyingly, and it fucking makes me die laughing.
• 1:22:35
  Eric: That's very kind.
• 1:22:36
  Eric: Um what are we on?
• 1:22:38
  Eric: Four?
• 1:22:38
  Eric: So four, and and so that was there's technically both of us.
• 1:22:42
  Eric: Um I'll is funny.
• 1:22:44
  Eric: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:22:46
  Eric: Funny.
• 1:22:46
  Eric: Oh, that was the fourth one.
• 1:22:47
  Eric: Okay, yeah.
• 1:22:48
  Eric: So right now, or sorry, that was the funny was the third one.
• 1:22:51
  Eric: Oh third for both of us.
• 1:22:52
  Eric: We got two more left, buddy.
• 1:22:54
  Eric: Jesus Christ, right?
• 1:22:55
  Eric: We're never getting through this.
• 1:22:57
  Eric: I I I was like, this oh, this is a three-parter.
• 1:23:01
  Eric: Matt, I look my my into like the I'm trying to think of a more eloquent way to just like you're so fucking well read.
• 1:23:09
  Eric: Like, like, and I like without it sounding like, oh, you're so well read, like it would be a surprise to me.
• 1:23:15
  Eric: But no, like you are you are a bibliophile, my man.
• 1:23:19
  Eric: You are so funny because I was we are kindred spirits in this way, like in that we're we have book obsessions, but like or like literary obsessions.
• 1:23:28
  Eric: But uh what I value most about yours is like your and my literary obsessions, I feel go in such different directions.
• 1:23:36
  Eric: Well, they do, but there is overlap.
• 1:23:38
  Eric: That's the thing.
• 1:23:39
  Eric: And then the Venn diagram.
• 1:23:40
  Eric: And in the Venn diagram, we are just like, yes, yes, yes, yes.
• 1:23:45
  Matt: We're having a great time in that that that center circle.
• 1:23:48
  Matt: But uh that's so funny that you mentioned that because I was just trying to think about like Eric knows so much like lore, and like like he's such a talking about DD, like you're such a storyteller that um that is always something that I deeply respect about a person.
• 1:24:09
  Matt: And like in my friends and stuff, like if you can't, if you can't spin me a yarn, what are we even doing here?
• 1:24:18
  Matt: I don't know that you get into my inner circle, you know what I mean?
• 1:24:21
  Matt: Yes, no, yeah, it's and that's why I know like I I don't have to have been DM'd by you to know that you're a great DM.
• 1:24:30
  Matt: Because like your command of a dramatic structure just telling a story is like so natural and so like it just comes to you.
• 1:24:46
  Matt: You don't need David Ball and his fucking triggers and heaps to tell you how a fucking story works.
• 1:24:51
  Matt: Uh the deep cut for theater view.
• 1:24:57
  Eric: Yeah, fucking out David Ball triggers and heaps.
• 1:25:00
  Matt: I'm I'm vi for you, Eric.
• 1:25:02
  Matt: I'm violating my own policy about narrow casting.
• 1:25:06
  Matt: But the but yeah, I mean, the I I took a class in um college, world folklore.
• 1:25:17
  Eric: Uh oh, I loved world folklore so much.
• 1:25:20
  Eric: Okay, but we didn't take it together.
• 1:25:22
  Matt: No, no, we took it different times.
• 1:25:23
  Matt: And I took it, I took it with another good friend of ours, but like I I I had a bad professor for it, if I'm being honest.
• 1:25:31
  Matt: And like I I was it was one of the classes that I was so fucking stoked for, and it was such a disappointment.
• 1:25:38
  Matt: And the I I have long since thought, like, I bet if I took this class with Poach, it would be a treasured memory callback.
• 1:25:50
  Matt: Oh, there it is!
• 1:25:52
  Eric: Callback, hello.
• 1:25:53
  Eric: That is that is how Towson failed us.
• 1:25:57
  Eric: They didn't put us in world world folklore together.
• 1:25:59
  Matt: Tell you what, Eric, we got two more before we hit the third set.
• 1:26:04
  Matt: Yeah.
• 1:26:04
  Matt: And then we have decisions to make.
• 1:26:06
  Matt: Okay.
• 1:26:07
  Matt: Uh we haven't pulled any out for the oats yet.
• 1:26:10
  Matt: So uh you why don't you hit us with 23?
• 1:26:13
  Matt: Yeah.
• 1:26:13
  Matt: And oh fuck.
• 1:26:15
  Matt: Uh, and then I'll give you 24.
• 1:26:17
  Matt: Anyway, go ahead.
• 1:26:20
  Eric: How close and warm is your family?
• 1:26:23
  Eric: Do you feel your childhood was happier than most other people's?
• 1:26:28
  Matt: Um well, my answer to the second part is yes.
• 1:26:33
  Matt: Uh I think what I've learned in adulthood is that a lot of people have more trauma and drama, and those are separate things, with their parents in particular than I did.
• 1:26:53
  Matt: And like we talked about this a little bit last time.
• 1:26:56
  Matt: Like, I've always felt very close to my parents, and it was foreign to me that people wouldn't.
• 1:27:02
  Matt: Um it's not anymore.
• 1:27:05
  Matt: Like, no, but but I think in my naive youth, that was like something that happens in movies, you know.
• 1:27:13
  Matt: Like that's uh that's like something that happens to Sean on Boy Meets World.
• 1:27:17
  Matt: That's something that happens to Sean and Boy Meets World.
• 1:27:20
  Matt: Uh, but not surely not to Corey.
• 1:27:23
  Matt: You know, most of us are Coreys, right?
• 1:27:26
  Matt: Right.
• 1:27:27
  Matt: And I I don't know that it's mostly the other way, but I think uh I feel like from the people that I know in the circles I run in, yeah, I do feel like I'm closer with my uh my family than than most people are.
• 1:27:43
  Matt: Now that being said, I I like extended family has always been something that like we've always been so disparate across the nation that like we would see each other at a Christmas every couple of years, maybe.
• 1:27:59
  Matt: And then over the last, you know, 10 years or so, there's a barrage of all the cousins getting married and you know whatnot happening at different points.
• 1:28:09
  Matt: So there was kind of more frequent reunions than there had been for like the previous, I don't know, 15 years or so.
• 1:28:15
  Matt: But there are people out there who are like, you know, all you have to do is watch the bear to know that there are cousins who are like brothers and sisters.
• 1:28:25
  Matt: Yeah.
• 1:28:26
  Matt: And that's foreign to me.
• 1:28:28
  Matt: And I don't mind saying that on a podcast because I don't think any single one of my cousins would disagree that none of the Shea cousins are particularly close.
• 1:28:39
  Matt: Um, and or at least close with me.
• 1:28:44
  Matt: But like the I mean, some lived closer together than others, is all I know.
• 1:28:48
  Matt: Yeah.
• 1:28:48
  Matt: But like, um, but for the most part, uh, you know, we've been hours apart for our whole lives.
• 1:28:55
  Matt: So it was only at these reunions.
• 1:28:58
  Matt: And so like coming to college and stuff and learning that people were as close with a cousin as they would be with a best friend or a brother or something, that was that's something that was culture shock for me.
• 1:29:10
  Matt: Yeah.
• 1:29:11
  Matt: Um, and I so yeah, that's um I'd say I'd say my parents and and I are very uh very close and very warm.
• 1:29:21
  Eric: My I I'm I'm in a very similar boat.
• 1:29:25
  Eric: I um A, I'll just say like, yes, I do believe that like my try and let me make sure I'm answering the question.
• 1:29:33
  Eric: Uh yeah, my childhood was happier than most other people's.
• 1:29:36
  Eric: I would absolutely say so.
• 1:29:38
  Eric: Because like my I I was so fucking fortunate in that my family every family has their dysfunctions.
• 1:29:50
  Eric: Sure.
• 1:29:51
  Eric: Every family has the five people you meet and everybody has those days.
• 1:29:56
  Eric: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:29:57
  Eric: Everybody has those days.
• 1:29:59
  Eric: And my any like a lot of the the dysfunction or a lot arguments that happened in my house growing up was happening between my parents.
• 1:30:11
  Eric: It wasn't happening, like, it wasn't anything I did or my brother did, or something.
• 1:30:16
  Eric: So like and and at the end of every fucking argument, they it was the the oh we love each other.
• 1:30:23
  Eric: So like I I was very fortunate.
• 1:30:28
  Eric: Like my family was very my parents are both.
• 1:30:31
  Eric: I a lot of like my affectioness, I either I still kiss my dad on the cheek every time I see him, hug, kiss him on the cheek, love you, pops.
• 1:30:39
  Eric: I like like my my mom, Franny May, if she could open her arms wide enough to just hold all the the the sad and lost people of the world, she would.
• 1:30:54
  Matt: Like she sh like I uh This might be a good moment to cut into the fact that the 24th question is how do you feel about your relationship with your mother?
• 1:31:03
  Matt: So I I think you you've blended right in, is what I'm saying.
• 1:31:09
  Eric: Uh and I would say my my relationship with my mother.
• 1:31:12
  Eric: My my mother, she taught me like the one thing she drilled into me as a child, like with everything, and and she didn't do this by like repeating some like syllogism or or like old saying, like, well, you did it.
• 1:31:33
  Eric: She just did the right thing every time.
• 1:31:38
  Eric: Like, like, like, and usually the right thing was the hard thing.
• 1:31:43
  Eric: I was like, Mom, why are you getting up at one in the morning?
• 1:31:47
  Eric: He's like, Well, one of your cousins got into trouble and they need help, and I need to drive them home.
• 1:31:52
  Eric: And like, and like, I'm like, but what why aren't and like I'm a little kid?
• 1:31:56
  Eric: I'm like, well, why aren't there parents?
• 1:31:58
  Eric: She was like, I'm the only one awake, I'm the only one they could get a hold of.
• 1:32:02
  Eric: I'm going.
• 1:32:03
  Eric: And I'm like, okay.
• 1:32:04
  Eric: It was like just always things like that.
• 1:32:08
  Eric: Like, she didn't.
• 1:32:10
  Eric: Has never cared about what other people will think of her.
• 1:32:16
  Eric: She has only ever cared about what she will think of her at the end of the day.
• 1:32:22
  Eric: And that is what like that's admirable drives, drives her sense of justice and and right and wrong in the world.
• 1:32:30
  Eric: And that that's what also grew up.
• 1:32:33
  Eric: I was a fucking mama's boy.
• 1:32:34
  Eric: Like I was I was absolute mama's boy.
• 1:32:38
  Eric: My mom, like, until I I could be 60, 70 years old, I will still be her baby boy.
• 1:32:47
  Eric: Yeah.
• 1:32:47
  Eric: Like she, I I will never like she she is like the God, everyone on earth should get to meet Franny Maypoach.
• 1:32:55
  Eric: It's it's a gift.
• 1:32:56
  Eric: It is I have met Franny Maypoach, and it is a gift.
• 1:33:00
  Eric: Oh my god, and that's mom.
• 1:33:02
  Eric: Mo Mote is is a fucking angel and a half, and she's an absolute treasure, and I would fight God for her.
• 1:33:11
  Matt: You see what I mean, folks?
• 1:33:13
  Matt: He just said that.
• 1:33:15
  Matt: Uh like it just came to mind naturally.
• 1:33:17
  Matt: I should fight God for her.
• 1:33:20
  Matt: Moat is chosen.
• 1:33:22
  Matt: I would I she is, and yeah, I think uh uh yeah, I mean, I think for uh it to it a mama's boy is a good way to say it.
• 1:33:36
  Matt: Yeah, but I think you know, another good way to say it is my mom's always been my best friend and probably always will be.
• 1:33:42
  Matt: Oh my god.
• 1:33:43
  Matt: The uh to to a certain level, like there's so much of my childhood was spent after getting homework done and stuff, and like my dad being at work or whatever.
• 1:33:55
  Matt: Like, I my mom and I had booked sessions of shows that we watched on a nightly basis.
• 1:34:02
  Matt: Nice.
• 1:34:03
  Matt: Like, and so to the point that when I started getting into theater and like doing things that happened at night, I felt guilt about not being home to watch 24 with my mom.
• 1:34:18
  Matt: You know?
• 1:34:19
  Matt: So like like the another treasured memory.
• 1:34:26
  Matt: Like and we, you know, we've talked much and more about Survivor.
• 1:34:29
  Matt: The first 10 years of my experience watching Survivor was with my mom.
• 1:34:33
  Matt: Yeah, and so and we still talk about Survivor every time we're on the phone.
• 1:34:37
  Matt: Yep.
• 1:34:38
  Matt: You know, if it's been a while, my mom will come with notes.
• 1:34:40
  Matt: She literally will come with Motes notes and we'll be like, okay, I got things to just we got things to talk about.
• 1:34:48
  Eric: Oh Motes Notes has got me.
• 1:34:50
  Matt: Like weeks ago or whatever, you know.
• 1:34:52
  Matt: So yeah, the um uh how do I feel about it?
• 1:34:56
  Matt: I feel very good about it.
• 1:34:58
  Eric: Oh, yeah, I feel very good about I my I like I have I never in my life went through that phase of being embarrassed to see my mom.
• 1:35:08
  Eric: I was the kid where I or like my mom would come to pick me up from rehearsal in high school, and I'd just be like, yo, get out of here.
• 1:35:16
  Eric: Everyone come say hi to my mom.
• 1:35:18
  Eric: Respectfully.
• 1:35:21
  Eric: Respectfully, God, the the danger.
• 1:35:26
  Eric: I'll I'll just to keep this brief.
• 1:35:29
  Eric: My mom is a really beautiful lady, and my friends made sure I knew that all the time.
• 1:35:37
  Matt: Yeah.
• 1:35:38
  Matt: Um a second ago, I was deciding if it was inappropriate to say for anybody's a smoke show.
• 1:35:45
  Matt: And I have friends right now who have active crutches on my mom.
• 1:35:51
  Matt: I was actively trying to think of like, is it inappropriate that the first time your mom came to college campus and you're like, this is my mom?
• 1:36:01
  Matt: I was like, it is.
• 1:36:04
  Eric: Well, also because she comes up to my shoulder, is blonde-haired and blue-eyed.
• 1:36:09
  Eric: I'm a six, six and a half foot brown haired behemoth.
• 1:36:14
  Eric: You're like, that came out of that.
• 1:36:16
  Eric: This this monster came out of this angel.
• 1:36:20
  Eric: My mom is such a pretty lady, and she is a pretty lady.
• 1:36:23
  Eric: God damn, did all my friends know it.
• 1:36:28
  Eric: Icon.
• 1:36:29
  Eric: Icon truly remote icon to moms, to our moms, to moms, to the moms.
• 1:36:35
  Eric: Got our moms rule.
• 1:36:37
  Eric: I'm gonna I'm gonna text my mom after this, tell her how much I love her.
• 1:36:40
  Eric: Mama's boy.
• 1:36:42
  Matt: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:36:43
  Matt: Yeah, guilty.
• 1:36:44
  Matt: Yeah, and Eric, that you I think you called it in the last episode, and I I just didn't want to believe it, but I think this has to be a three-parter.
• 1:36:52
  Matt: There's a three-parter, baby.
• 1:36:54
  Matt: That I hope the audience isn't being alienated by this.
• 1:36:57
  Matt: But this has been this has been delightful.
• 1:37:00
  Eric: This is I'm I I fucking love this.
• 1:37:03
  Eric: I love this fascinating dive.
• 1:37:04
  Eric: I love that it's it's this perfect mix of me of both getting to share and remember beloved memories with you while also learning, just like getting such a deeper appreciation of you as a person.
• 1:37:17
  Eric: I love this.
• 1:37:18
  Matt: And that that was the goal.
• 1:37:19
  Matt: And also for you know, whatever the audience to get to know us better, man, or whatever.
• 1:37:24
  Matt: Yeah, know us better, man.
• 1:37:28
  Matt: To come in and know us better, man.
• 1:37:30
  Matt: Whatever.
• 1:37:30
  Matt: To point in my own grave.
• 1:37:36
  Matt: That's right.
• 1:37:37
  Matt: It's fucking October.
• 1:37:38
  Matt: I'm making a Christmas carol reference.
• 1:37:40
  Matt: Nice.
• 1:37:41
  Matt: Nice.
• 1:37:42
  Matt: You interested in the Johnny Depp Ebenezer movie?
• 1:37:46
  Matt: Oh, is that a thing?
• 1:37:47
  Matt: Oh, yes, thing.
• 1:37:49
  Matt: Uh nice.
• 1:37:50
  Matt: I don't know if it's not a Christmas carol, but I know it's called Ebenezer and it drops down.
• 1:37:55
  Matt: It's already not a good sign.
• 1:37:59
  Eric: Fucking is this gonna be well, it uh what could save it?
• 1:38:03
  Eric: Is this a prequel?
• 1:38:06
  Matt: Well, I don't know if it's a prequel.
• 1:38:08
  Matt: I think it might be a prequel in the sense that like Marley is still live, but it's not a prequel in the sense that we're gay.
• 1:38:14
  Eric: We're getting like a young hot Ebenezer the smoke show nabby knee.
• 1:38:22
  Matt: Yeah, we're not getting the Mr.
• 1:38:23
  Matt: Darcy of Ebenezer in college with the one girl who liked him or whatever.
• 1:38:30
  Eric: Oh man, it's like Shakespeare in love, but it's like you're just seeing all the pieces put into place.
• 1:38:38
  Matt: Hold on.
• 1:38:38
  Matt: Let's let if I'm gonna bring up a reference, let's let's teach the people.
• 1:38:43
  Matt: Uh Ebenezer, 2026 film.
• 1:38:46
  Matt: It is an upcoming Christmas.
• 1:38:48
  Matt: Get ready, Eric.
• 1:38:50
  Matt: You might be interested.
• 1:38:51
  Matt: Christmas gothic dark fantasy black comedy film.
• 1:38:55
  Matt: Oh directed by Ty West.
• 1:38:58
  Matt: It is based on a Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.
• 1:39:02
  Matt: It star oh, I'm interested.
• 1:39:03
  Matt: It stars holy, holy hell.
• 1:39:06
  Matt: Stars Johnny Depp as Ebenezer Scrooge, Arthur Conti as young Ebenezer, Rupert Grint as Bob Cratchit, Ian McKellen as Jacob Marley.
• 1:39:18
  Matt: Ian McKellen as Jacob Marley.
• 1:39:20
  Eric: Fuck the 30 sex steps.
• 1:39:21
  Eric: This is now a podcast about Ebenezer.
• 1:39:23
  Matt: Daisy Ridley is Fred's wife.
• 1:39:26
  Matt: Tramel Tillman is Ghost of Christmas Present.
• 1:39:29
  Matt: That's incredible.
• 1:39:30
  Eric: Uh I also the tagline.
• 1:39:32
  Eric: The name you know, the story you don't.
• 1:39:35
  Eric: Okay.
• 1:39:35
  Eric: Yes.
• 1:39:36
  Eric: Yes, this is perfect.
• 1:39:37
  Eric: Yeah, this is giving this this is giving someone's trying to cash in on wicked vibes.
• 1:39:43
  Eric: Are they trying to wicked Ebenezer Scrooge?
• 1:39:48
  Matt: Or are they gonna try to Wonka Ebenezer Scrooge?
• 1:39:51
  Matt: And there'll be a surprise Hugh Grant Umpa Loompa moment.
• 1:39:55
  Matt: Oh I haven't seen I haven't seen Wonka.
• 1:39:59
  Eric: Nor nor have I.
• 1:40:00
  Eric: No one has.
• 1:40:01
  Eric: Did you did you see that there's a reality show now?
• 1:40:05
  Eric: Oh yeah.
• 1:40:06
  Matt: Where they everyone's aware of the lifetime supply of money prize that is the Willie Wonka show.
• 1:40:16
  unknown: Yeah.
• 1:40:17
  Matt: Where they've recreated the set and the the trailer at least.
• 1:40:21
  Matt: That is a generous it is a generous read, you're right.
• 1:40:26
  Matt: But they get on the boat and they're going into the tunnel and everyone's like, whoo, this is so exciting.
• 1:40:31
  Matt: And I'm like, Did you dumb motherfuckers forget what happens on the fucking boat?
• 1:40:35
  Matt: You're about to go on a vision quest.
• 1:40:38
  Matt: You people are gonna be psychedelically tortured.
• 1:40:41
  Eric: The only thing, the only thing that's been driving me nuts about that fucking show, they're not killing children.
• 1:40:47
  Eric: They're not killing children.
• 1:40:48
  Eric: But they they've clearly like No, they're not.
• 1:40:52
  Eric: It's all adults.
• 1:40:53
  Eric: They've they've done some sort of like digital recreation, like AI thing of Gene Wilder's voice, to the extent that they even come in with a little caption at the bottom.
• 1:41:05
  Eric: But I'm pretty sure it's like someone speaking through a Gene Wilder filter.
• 1:41:12
  Matt: It is it is an AI recreation of Gene Wilder's voice that Gene Wilder's estate approved.
• 1:41:19
  Matt: I it hate it.
• 1:41:21
  Matt: It is like legally fine and morally reproductive.
• 1:41:28
  Matt: And that's what I hate the most about.
• 1:41:30
  Matt: Yeah.
• 1:41:31
  Eric: And because like there are times like when it's talking to you, they're like, what Gene Wilder did they throw into this?
• 1:41:38
  Eric: Because there's weird syntax all over the place.
• 1:41:42
  Matt: And if I'm wrong about this, then I'm fine being wrong about this.
• 1:41:45
  Matt: But the one thing I will give the Wonka show is that that I think is cool is the Oompa Loompa that you see like driving the boat or whatever.
• 1:41:55
  Matt: My understanding is that is one of the original Umpa Loompas.
• 1:41:58
  Matt: Oh, he's an OG.
• 1:42:00
  Eric: Yes, yes.
• 1:42:01
  Matt: From the movie.
• 1:42:02
  Eric: That's cool.
• 1:42:03
  Matt: That's cool.
• 1:42:04
  Matt: That's cool.
• 1:42:05
  Matt: That's anyway.
• 1:42:06
  Matt: That's enough about Umpa Loompas.
• 1:42:08
  Matt: We better wrap it up because we're coming back for part three.
• 1:42:10
  Matt: And if you're if you're alienated by love, folks, I don't know what to tell you.
• 1:42:15
  Matt: I don't know what to tell you, man.
• 1:42:16
  Matt: I don't know what to tell you.
• 1:42:17
  Matt: Three parts of love.
• 1:42:19
  Matt: Three parts of love.
• 1:42:20
  Matt: But when we come back, we eventually will be answering life's least pressing questions again.
• 1:42:26
  Matt: We'll need them from you.
• 1:42:27
  Matt: Yes.
• 1:42:28
  Matt: Give them to us at udnaskworthis at gmail.com or submit them on our brand new website, udnaskworthhis.com.
• 1:42:35
  Matt: Great merch over there.
• 1:42:36
  Matt: Join the Patreon if you care about us.
• 1:42:39
  Matt: If you give a fuck.
• 1:42:41
  Matt: If you want to be close with us and tell us how moved you are by our personal stories.
• 1:42:48
  Matt: Yeah.
• 1:42:48
  Matt: You can join the Discord for one dollar.
• 1:42:50
  Matt: You can get the bonus episodes for four dollars a month and the 24 cents, but you know what that's tax.
• 1:42:55
  Matt: And you know, we're gonna have a great time.
• 1:42:57
  Matt: We got an orgy dome.
• 1:42:59
  Eric: We got an orgy dome, tell us what you're bringing.
• 1:43:01
  Eric: You're never gonna know what that means until you come.
• 1:43:04
  Eric: Okay.
• 1:43:04
  Eric: You you can't until you come.
• 1:43:07
  Eric: You can't understand the orgy dome until you're in it and you're telling us what you're bringing.
• 1:43:12
  Eric: Yeah.
• 1:43:13
  Eric: Um, also call us at the thought line.
• 1:43:15
  Eric: That's 410-929-5329.
• 1:43:18
  Eric: And uh just really just give us your screed in a Google voice.
• 1:43:24
  Eric: Just let us, you know, just fucking go off, Kings.
• 1:43:28
  Eric: Go off, Kings, Yas Queens.
• 1:43:31
  Eric: Yes.
• 1:43:32
  Eric: Ladies and gentlemen, please give us your thoughts, your questions, your beliefs, and ideals.
• 1:43:39
  Matt: And a little bit of your money.
• 1:43:41
  Matt: And that'll about do it for this episode of You didn't ask for this.
• 1:43:44
  Matt: My name's Matt Shay.
• 1:43:46
  Matt: My name's Eric Poach.
• 1:43:48
  Matt: We will be back with part three, the final installment.
• 1:43:53
  Matt: It has to be.
• 1:44:03
  Eric: But okay, but what fucking made me want to cringe to death was when the contestants were like talking to I didn't watch it.
• 1:44:13
  Eric: Did you watch it?
• 1:44:14
  Eric: Oh, we watched like 45 minutes of it.
• 1:44:17
  Eric: It was unit was so 45 minutes is not a toe in the water, my friend.
• 1:44:22
  Eric: No, no, no.
• 1:44:23
  Eric: We were I say 45 minutes because I fell asleep minutes into the episode.
• 1:44:27
  Eric: I would have watched a lot.
• 1:44:28
  Eric: They're like talking to to Wonka like he's there.
• 1:44:33
  Eric: Like they're being talked to by what is clearly fucking Gene Wilder's Robocorpse voice, and and they're like, Oh, what's what's Wonka got in store for us?
• 1:44:47
  Eric: I'm like, this is it it's ooh, the secondhand embarrassment I feel every turn.
• 1:44:54
  Matt: There's two faults.
• 1:44:55
  Matt: One, I think Netflix didn't anticipate that they would actually somehow hit it out of the park with the Squid Game reality show.
• 1:45:05
  Matt: Because Oh, did they?
• 1:45:06
  Matt: If you haven't watched it, it is great.
• 1:45:09
  Matt: Is it does it rule?
• 1:45:10
  Eric: I haven't watched it because Alyssa doesn't want anything to do with Squid Games.
• 1:45:14
  Eric: Okay.
• 1:45:14
  Matt: So I have to like wait till I'm alone.
• 1:45:16
  Matt: Well, first of all, Squid Game, the show is great.
• 1:45:18
  Matt: You should watch it.
• 1:45:19
  Eric: Oh, yeah.
• 1:45:19
  Eric: No, I fucking love Squid Game.
• 1:45:20
  Eric: I've I've seen I've a Squid Game Season one.
• 1:45:23
  Matt: Squid Game Oh, you should see all three.
• 1:45:25
  Matt: Uh I need.
• 1:45:25
  Matt: I will say they go, they probably go in descending order, but they're all good.
• 1:45:29
  Matt: Uh the the This is the playout.
• 1:45:32
  Matt: We should yeah, oh yeah.
• 1:45:34
  Eric: Oh, by the way, bye.
• 1:45:35
  Eric: Bye bye.
• 1:45:36
  Eric: This is what we were doing before the episode.
• 1:45:39
  Matt: This is what we do.
• 1:45:40
  Matt: This is what we'll be doing after.
• 1:45:41
  Matt: But and maybe we'll fade out during this.
• 1:45:43
  Matt: But the uh at some point we'll fade out.
• 1:45:47
  Eric: The best part about it is not is this what it's like flying first class on a friendship?