Latest / Troubled Men Podcast / TMP327 CHARLIE BROWN: SLUMMING IN BEVERLY HILLS

Transcript

TMP327 CHARLIE BROWN: SLUMMING IN BEVERLY HILLS · Troubled Men Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker A: Foreign.
• 0:15
  Speaker B: Listeners, welcome back to the Troubled Men podcast. I am Renee Coleman, sitting once again in Snake and Jake's Christmas Club Lounge in the heart of the Clempire with my co host, the original troubled man for troubled times and one time future mayor of New Orleans, Mr. Manny Chevrolet. Welcome Manny.
• 0:35
  Speaker C: Hey man, what is going on?
• 0:38
  Speaker B: Not too much. Had a week off there.
• 0:40
  Speaker C: But I'm missing game four of the World Series for this.
• 0:43
  Speaker B: Oh, is that tonight?
• 0:44
  Speaker C: Yes.
• 0:44
  Speaker A: Huh.
• 0:45
  Speaker C: Okay, now just letting you know.
• 0:47
  Speaker B: Well, I appreciate the sacrifice. Now what's been going on with the World Series? The Dodgers are in it, right?
• 0:52
  Speaker C: Oh yeah, my Dodgers are in it and they're ahead two games to one and it's a no score right now in the bottom of the second, I think.
• 1:02
  Speaker B: So is that best of seven?
• 1:04
  Speaker C: Yeah, best of seven.
• 1:05
  Speaker B: Okay, so they can't clinch it tonight?
• 1:07
  Speaker C: No, no, they can't clinch it tonight.
• 1:09
  Speaker B: Now have you been watching all the games?
• 1:11
  Speaker C: Oh yeah. That's the only time baseball's exciting.
• 1:13
  Speaker B: Well, I heard they had some exciting games though, huh? Oh, particularly exciting, huh?
• 1:17
  Speaker C: Oh yeah, man. The only time it's exciting is in October. That's when you watch it because stuff happens, right?
• 1:24
  Speaker B: I haven't been able to catch any of them so far. I was traveling. I was flying back from Hawaii overnight. I was in Hawaii at a weird time of day, so.
• 1:33
  Speaker C: But why were you in Hawaii?
• 1:35
  Speaker B: I was over there playing, you know.
• 1:37
  Speaker C: The Iguana, one of those senior citizens festivals.
• 1:40
  Speaker B: People of many ages there, but those all adults for the most part. Although a few of the musicians had had some kids there with them. But yes, it was the Big Island. No, it's the Maui Jazz and Blues Festival. And we're over there with Big Chief Donald Harrison and Chris Thomas King and all kind of jazz stars and zydeco stars. Rodri Romero, Jordan Thibodeau.
• 2:04
  Speaker C: Sounds like one of the worst gigs ever.
• 2:05
  Speaker B: Oh, well, it was good for us.
• 2:07
  Speaker C: It's good because you get paid.
• 2:09
  Speaker B: It's a sold out show there in Maui at the Ritz Car.
• 2:14
  Speaker C: Now let me ask you something. Cause I just saw this story just yesterday. Now apparently Geritol is making a comeback.
• 2:22
  Speaker B: Is it?
• 2:22
  Speaker C: Yes, Gerital's making a comeback. So I figured your crowd is on Gerital probably.
• 2:27
  Speaker B: Well, you know, there's a.
• 2:29
  Speaker C: But the Geritarl's making a comeback apparently. Because back when it was huge with the seniors, your crowd, it was for.
• 2:37
  Speaker B: When you say my crowd. You're the same age.
• 2:39
  Speaker C: I know, but your audience though, they don't get up and Stand. They're in their walkers and stuff. Right. They're walking around in the wheelchairs going, walk on, walk on.
• 2:50
  Speaker B: Actually, in Hawaii they had people getting up and dancing and for whatever kind of licensing or, or whatever that they had at that venue, they had to come over and say, no, you can't dance here. You have to sit down. It's like.
• 3:02
  Speaker C: Because they don't want to get sued. Well, maybe, I don't know because there's so many seniors. It wasn't an age or crippled and stuff like that. You know, maybe they were worried about them falling in the. The pig fire pit. Those Hawaiians. Do they cook that poi?
• 3:18
  Speaker B: The poi?
• 3:19
  Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. You know, it's like a pig on per ll bars. Like Mary Lou Retton, you know. You know.
• 3:26
  Speaker D: Well, if. If Gerital is coming back, does that mean Lawrence Welk is coming back too?
• 3:30
  Speaker C: Let's hope not.
• 3:31
  Speaker B: Well, I was wondering, where are they going to advertise it? Maybe, I don't know, maybe the baseball games.
• 3:37
  Speaker C: No, they're. It's coming back because apparently women are drinking it. Not because of what it was first made for, but it's helping them get pregnant.
• 3:48
  Speaker B: Really?
• 3:48
  Speaker C: Yeah. Because there must be some cheese in this, Jarrett.
• 3:52
  Speaker B: Minerals and vitamins and minerals.
• 3:54
  Speaker C: Some hot chiz.
• 3:55
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 3:56
  Speaker C: You know, hot come flowing down that Gerital throat.
• 4:00
  Speaker B: I'm not sure that's the way it works, but.
• 4:02
  Speaker C: Well, apparently this is the story I saw. Me and my wife watched it actually, just yesterday on the news.
• 4:07
  Speaker B: Now, is your wife going to get in on the Geritle craze?
• 4:10
  Speaker C: No, no, we're done having kids. She doesn't want to get pregnant.
• 4:13
  Speaker B: Right, right. I mean, just to keep her going, keep the vitality up.
• 4:16
  Speaker C: No, we have vodka for that.
• 4:18
  Speaker B: Okay, sure.
• 4:19
  Speaker C: Okay. We don't need gerita.
• 4:20
  Speaker B: Sure, sure.
• 4:21
  Speaker C: You know, I don't know what you guys do.
• 4:23
  Speaker B: Well, you know, they have all kind of old timey drugs like that that they used to have on television. Like Doan's pills. Remember those? Those were big for your back. Back pain. Doan's pills, yeah.
• 4:34
  Speaker C: Don'ts. Yeah.
• 4:35
  Speaker D: BC powder.
• 4:36
  Speaker B: BC powder. Yeah. Well, I think those never really went out of style with certain. Certain demographic, you know, the records. Rednecks, truckers, you know.
• 4:44
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 4:45
  Speaker B: I actually used to like BC because, you know, your system, quick, you know, you put it in that. You put it in water or something or just right in your mouth and try not to inhale at the stuff. Get some. Some B.C. pneumonia that dust.
• 5:01
  Speaker C: Yeah. So it's. It's back.
• 5:02
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 5:03
  Speaker C: I'm happy, you know, for people, for women. I'm willing to get. If they want to get knocked up, I'm willing to give them my cum.
• 5:10
  Speaker B: Really? Really. You ready to. To be a surrogate father?
• 5:14
  Speaker C: Yeah. I'll freeze it.
• 5:16
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 5:16
  Speaker C: Put it in their freezer and shoot it up their anytime.
• 5:22
  Speaker B: Keeping it classy.
• 5:24
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 5:25
  Speaker B: Well, we have other news. We have Halloween right upon us.
• 5:28
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 5:29
  Speaker B: Getting excited for Halloween?
• 5:30
  Speaker C: I don't really care.
• 5:31
  Speaker B: Get your costume all picked up?
• 5:32
  Speaker D: No.
• 5:33
  Speaker B: Okay. Got your razor blades all lined up for the apples?
• 5:36
  Speaker C: I don't really, do I. I like the kids, though. They come by and I scream at them. I say, you guys are too scary for me. Get out of my porch. Get off my porch. You're too scary for me.
• 5:48
  Speaker B: Yeah, they get a kick out of that.
• 5:50
  Speaker C: Yeah. And I give them some candy and some toothpaste.
• 5:53
  Speaker D: Right.
• 5:53
  Speaker C: You know, I give them candy and toothpaste because they want the candy, but the parents want the toothpaste because after they eat the candy, they need to brush their teeth. So I give them toothpaste.
• 6:04
  Speaker B: Something for everybody.
• 6:04
  Speaker C: I got Arm and hammer, baking soda, toothpaste.
• 6:07
  Speaker B: Oh, that's popular with the kids.
• 6:08
  Speaker C: Yeah, it's popular with the kids, you know, and the parents.
• 6:11
  Speaker B: Sure.
• 6:12
  Speaker C: You know. But yeah. So anyway, what else is going on with you?
• 6:18
  Speaker B: Well, I had a bad experience. I don't know if I mentioned it to somebody else. And I said that this had just happened to them recently. I'm boarding this flight. I'm on this flight. It's like a seven hour flight from Maui to Denver. And about an hour and a half into the flight, it's a red eye. Overnight, I'm having my second cocktail. I have a pretty much a full cocktail in my hand.
• 6:38
  Speaker C: And you get the diarrhea?
• 6:39
  Speaker B: No, no, no. Let me get there. I kind of start falling asleep with the drink in my hand and wake up as I dump the whole thing into my lap and totally soaked the seat of my pants.
• 6:54
  Speaker C: So you had the next six hours.
• 6:56
  Speaker B: I had the next six hours of sitting there. Now I opened up the blanket and put it across the seat, you know, and kind of sat on it, hopefully to absorb some of it at least, but man. Miserable. Miserable way to have to take a flight. Does that ever happen to you, Manny?
• 7:10
  Speaker C: No.
• 7:11
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 7:11
  Speaker C: No, I don't think so. All right, well, I. I can control my alcohol.
• 7:16
  Speaker B: Well, it's. Yeah. Again, I was.
• 7:17
  Speaker A: It's.
• 7:18
  Speaker B: It wasn't the alcohol. It's a problem. It was the fallen asleep.
• 7:20
  Speaker D: But, you know, Denver airport is supposed to be haunted too.
• 7:25
  Speaker B: Denver's a. A freaky airport. It's got a lot of weird paintings on the wall. Some. Some post apocalyptic kind of iconography. Guys with masks on or it's. Yeah, I remember that. And then they used to talk about how it had all kind of tunnels underneath.
• 7:41
  Speaker D: And the blue Horse, too.
• 7:43
  Speaker B: The Blue horse?
• 7:44
  Speaker D: Yeah.
• 7:44
  Speaker B: I can't remember what the.
• 7:45
  Speaker D: I don't remember what it is. I just know it's the blue horse.
• 7:48
  Speaker B: But yeah, I was. I was only in there for maybe 45 minutes. It was a tight.
• 7:52
  Speaker C: Now, when you landed in Denver, did you go to the men's room and use the air dryer to. To dry your balls?
• 8:01
  Speaker D: Well, I.
• 8:02
  Speaker B: What I did is, is, is mostly the outside had kind of dried off, but the, the underwear was, was still damp. Now, a few months.
• 8:12
  Speaker C: Now, do you wear jockeys or boxers?
• 8:14
  Speaker B: Boxers.
• 8:14
  Speaker C: You wear boxers.
• 8:15
  Speaker B: Okay, so a few months ago.
• 8:17
  Speaker C: Now they're just one color. Are they kind of pattern boxes?
• 8:20
  Speaker B: I have a variety of. You know, you get them in the, like the six pack. They are all different. Some are plaid, some are solid colors. But I actually had a spare pair of boxer shorts in my carry on bag because I did it a few months ago, thinking, well, if my checked bags don't arrive, at least I'll have socks and underwear. So I was able to go into the bathroom and put a dry pair of boxer shorts on.
• 8:47
  Speaker C: Now did you keep the soiled pair or you threw them away?
• 8:50
  Speaker B: Well, they weren't soiled. They were just wet with a.
• 8:52
  Speaker C: Did you keep them?
• 8:53
  Speaker B: I kept the pair that had. Had been.
• 8:56
  Speaker C: Just toss them.
• 8:57
  Speaker B: Well, because they weren't. Weren't really that wet anymore. I mean, it was just kind of damp, you know, I just didn't want them against.
• 9:02
  Speaker C: But did they have Geritol cum stains on them?
• 9:04
  Speaker B: No, it was a fresh pair of boxer shorts.
• 9:07
  Speaker C: I just didn't you put the soiled underwear in your bath?
• 9:10
  Speaker B: It was again, it was a vodka soda. So it all wasn't even a Coca Cola or anything like that. It just all had evaporated. Anyway.
• 9:19
  Speaker C: Now, did your bandmates notice this and tease you?
• 9:22
  Speaker B: I mentioned it to one of them after the flight and he said yes, he had. Same thing had happened to him on the same flight.
• 9:29
  Speaker D: No, no, no, no.
• 9:30
  Speaker B: Sometime in the past. Except it was a Coca Cola.
• 9:33
  Speaker C: You guys are getting old.
• 9:34
  Speaker B: Well, you know, you're. You're flying overnight. You know, it's. It's easy to fall asleep. Anyway. What's been going on with you, Manny?
• 9:41
  Speaker C: Well, you know, they had that no Kings thing here in the city and all over the country. All over the world.
• 9:50
  Speaker D: Sure.
• 9:50
  Speaker B: You. You must have attended, huh?
• 9:52
  Speaker C: Well, I. I was trying to attend it, but, you know, my wife and the group of yammering were getting together to all, you know, be a part of it.
• 10:02
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 10:03
  Speaker C: And I said, I'll meet you there. I'll meet you there. And of course, you know, I always get, you know, my time and my locations and. And things confused because I am a troubled man.
• 10:15
  Speaker B: But I. I ended up Alzheimer's.
• 10:17
  Speaker C: I. I ended up on Bourbon street holding a sign saying no Queens.
• 10:23
  Speaker B: Okay?
• 10:25
  Speaker C: I got my ass.
• 10:26
  Speaker B: That's a different. That's a different group.
• 10:27
  Speaker C: It was. Yeah, it was totally. You know, so, you know, I just made the mistake. I got the wrong location.
• 10:33
  Speaker D: Right, right.
• 10:33
  Speaker C: So that happened while I. Well, in the past couple of weeks, you know, But I was there, you know, the no Queens thing. And so it wasn't a good thing. Yeah. But then I also.
• 10:46
  Speaker A: I.
• 10:46
  Speaker C: You know our good friend Wadzilla.
• 10:50
  Speaker B: Wadzilla, yeah.
• 10:51
  Speaker C: Who's living in Seattle, you know, waiting for a bus, you know, he. He hooked me up this year with. For the football season with this. All this. This program where I get all the games for free. I get all the. I got like 4, 000 channels. I got every movie channel. Wow. I've got. I got. I got so much. But I was thumbing through it because he said, you know, to get used to it because you gotta. You know, there's four. Over 4,000 channels, and I can watch anything. I can watch soap operas on the west coast that, you know, I can watch anything I want.
• 11:32
  Speaker B: It's amazing film from Diddy parties.
• 11:35
  Speaker C: Yeah, that stuff.
• 11:36
  Speaker B: Epstein. Epstein files.
• 11:39
  Speaker C: Epstein files. Yeah. The greatest pimp ever, right, Epstein. But I was going through the. This list of movie channels. There was about 2,000 movie channels, and I did not know this. You see these movies that are casted and stuff. And I was watching this documentary about Tom Hanks, and I did not know that, you know, before, you know, he did that movie. You got mail. The original person they wanted for that movie was Ted Kaczynski. You got mail. And Meg Ryan. Ted Kaczynski. Meg Ryan.
• 12:20
  Speaker B: Odd pairing.
• 12:21
  Speaker D: It probably would have been a bomb at the box office.
• 12:24
  Speaker C: There you go. There you go. But don't bunks. Yeah. So it's funny how there's so much crap out there. And so that was good. It was a good documentary. And they interviewed Kaczynski, you know, and he had really nothing to say, you know, except his manifesto. He said, read the manifesto. But he did. He did audition. And there's a screen test. Yeah. With him and met grind. Doing an audition together. And she was so great back then, you know, I don't know what she's like now. I haven't seen her in years, but she was really great back then, you.
• 13:02
  Speaker D: Know, I think she's. I think she's a. She looks like she's. She said she's older. She's had work done.
• 13:07
  Speaker B: Well, you know, actresses are trying to stay.
• 13:10
  Speaker A: Some.
• 13:10
  Speaker D: Some stay. Some stay. You know, just act their age and others get the. Get the. But she. Surgery.
• 13:16
  Speaker C: You know, the documentary shows that she really wanted Ted for the part. Huh. She's tired of Tom Hanks, Sleepless in Seattle and all that, you know, she wanted Ted. She fell for Ted. She understood Ted.
• 13:31
  Speaker A: Really. That.
• 13:33
  Speaker D: Yeah. Yeah.
• 13:33
  Speaker C: You ever see that movie Ted Ted? About that.
• 13:37
  Speaker D: I never watched it.
• 13:38
  Speaker C: That's hilarious. Movie. You got to see that movie. Okay.
• 13:41
  Speaker B: They made a second one hit a. Yeah.
• 13:43
  Speaker C: Ted too.
• 13:44
  Speaker D: Yeah. There so many unanswered questions from the first.
• 13:48
  Speaker C: See this whole bear, like a stuffed teddy bear. A chick. That's the most funny thing you ever want to see, man.
• 13:55
  Speaker B: That's a kids movie.
• 13:57
  Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Something for the kids. Yeah. For the grand. Have you seen those movies?
• 14:02
  Speaker B: I saw a little bit of the first one. It was cute.
• 14:04
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 14:05
  Speaker B: What I saw, I couldn't hold my.
• 14:07
  Speaker D: I'm kind of allergic to Mark Wahlberg.
• 14:09
  Speaker B: Yeah, I could see a little bit.
• 14:10
  Speaker D: Yeah. And Seth. What's his name? I really. I. I've never found him funny, but that's just me.
• 14:16
  Speaker B: Is that Seth Rogen?
• 14:17
  Speaker D: No, no, the family guy.
• 14:18
  Speaker B: Oh.
• 14:19
  Speaker D: Because he's the voice of the.
• 14:20
  Speaker C: Right, right. Yeah, he's the voice of Ted. I liked it.
• 14:24
  Speaker D: Oh, very good.
• 14:27
  Speaker B: What else?
• 14:27
  Speaker D: Well, I.
• 14:28
  Speaker B: There's a big NBA cheating scandal that just broke the other day, man. Have you. Have you been following that?
• 14:34
  Speaker C: Not really.
• 14:34
  Speaker B: Oh, okay.
• 14:35
  Speaker C: Because I always knows it's fixed anyway.
• 14:37
  Speaker B: You always talk about how it's fixed. Doesn't surprise you.
• 14:40
  Speaker C: Vegas, man, since day one, it's been Vegas, man.
• 14:45
  Speaker D: Yeah.
• 14:46
  Speaker C: You know, and these poor guys, you know, these NBA players. And there's probably. You know, it's. It's. It's. Ever since they made it all legal, you're gonna get this.
• 14:56
  Speaker B: Sure.
• 14:56
  Speaker C: You know, it's gonna be. Yeah.
• 14:58
  Speaker B: What do you. What do you expect is gonna happen?
• 14:59
  Speaker C: Yeah. So. Yeah. What. You know, it's like, whatever, man. It's all Vegas. Okay, so basically like, you know, anytime my teams lose, I'll just go. That's Vegas.
• 15:09
  Speaker B: Yeah, but the.
• 15:10
  Speaker D: But the one guy. It's a poker thing and it's the Five Families of New York. Yeah, it's a real, real mafia stuff.
• 15:17
  Speaker B: Sure.
• 15:18
  Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah.
• 15:18
  Speaker B: Well, it's, it's poker Vegas.
• 15:20
  Speaker D: That's true too. Yes.
• 15:21
  Speaker C: Right, right.
• 15:22
  Speaker B: It's also, also. Yeah, yeah, yes, obviously the. Well, anything else or should we get.
• 15:29
  Speaker C: Yeah, okay. Over the weekend, I, I saw this in Biloxi, Mississippi, of all places, some people were having a private pool party at a hotel in Biloxi, Mississippi. And some guy who looked, I saw the picture, he looked like a cross between one of those Duck Dynasty guys and a Gerital guy, I guess. I don't know. But he crashed a party claiming that he was a member of the Rolling Stones.
• 16:04
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 16:05
  Speaker C: He was a member of the Rolling Stones that. Who got fired.
• 16:10
  Speaker B: Huh.
• 16:10
  Speaker C: And he had a guitar with him and his name was Raymond Lurk or something like that. So he crashed this party claiming to be a member of the Stones. He had a guitar. He said Mick, Mick Jagger had fired him. And as they called the cops on him and he kept screaming that Keith Richards owes him for gas money. And he also said got off easy. He said he would sign autographs if they wanted.
• 16:45
  Speaker B: Oh, okay. That's very generous.
• 16:46
  Speaker C: And, and he kept screaming, you can't drown rock and roll. And they just, they had him arrested and stuff. And he, and, and apparently he played the guitar for him. He says, these are my riffs. And he was playing like Satisfaction and Honky Tonk Woman to them and stuff like that. But the cops had enough of him.
• 17:07
  Speaker B: Yeah, he's insane.
• 17:09
  Speaker C: But he, he had said that Mick had fired him and all that stuff.
• 17:14
  Speaker B: Right.
• 17:15
  Speaker C: I thought that was entertaining.
• 17:16
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 17:16
  Speaker C: You know.
• 17:17
  Speaker B: Now you said this. Was that a Waffle House? No, it's a pool party.
• 17:20
  Speaker C: A pool party at. In Biloxi that some family had like rented the pool or whatever. Right, right.
• 17:28
  Speaker B: Goes down in Biloxi, man. It used to be a hot hotbed of the, the Gulf coast mafia there in Balo. Lots of, lots of goings on there. I think there's a judge got assassinated back in the 80s. It's a whole, whole big stink. Yeah. Oh, got traced back to. So I remember I would, I was going to like before they had the casinos there, they just had like putt putt golf, a few video arcades and maybe like Slippery Sam's, you know, little water park.
• 17:58
  Speaker D: Right, Right now my Krispy Kreme donuts. My, My grandparents had a, have a house. Well, they're not with us anymore, but the house is still there on Bay St. Louis.
• 18:06
  Speaker B: Oh, okay.
• 18:07
  Speaker D: So I've spent, Yeah, I spent a lot of my young summers going, going into Gulfport in Biloxi, but, but mostly on the baby.
• 18:14
  Speaker B: So, you know, they had a seedy side, too.
• 18:16
  Speaker D: Very seedy side.
• 18:17
  Speaker C: Always. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 18:20
  Speaker D: The, the, always the, the shops that have, have the shells, the fake, the shells all piled up that you could buy a, you could buy a conch shell, right?
• 18:30
  Speaker B: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So fronts like some money laundering, probably Operation. Well, how about now, Manny?
• 18:39
  Speaker A: Sure.
• 18:39
  Speaker B: Guest in here. All right, great. We have a terrific guest I've known for a while. He's a man of. Wears many hats. He's an author with his fourth novel coming out and November 15th, he's a publisher of the Dirty Magic magazine, which is ramping back up into production after a bit of a hiatus. He's a video producer. He's produced. Worked as a video producer for Tipitinas and many other things. Also does production for the current YouTube show Escape from the Secret Lab. And he's also a college professor here in town, teaches at several of the universities. We're going to get into all that and much more. But without further ado, do the great Mr. Charlie Brown.
• 19:25
  Speaker D: Thank you guys for having me. I've been, I've been looking forward to sitting down with y' all and see where this goes.
• 19:31
  Speaker C: All right.
• 19:32
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 19:32
  Speaker C: Charlie.
• 19:33
  Speaker D: Yes.
• 19:34
  Speaker C: You ever want to cut that, Lucy, for pulling the football away that, you know.
• 19:41
  Speaker B: Never heard that.
• 19:41
  Speaker D: I almost, I, I, I had plotted in my mind like a live action Charlie Brown thing where, where Charlie Brown goes and shoots Lucy and drags her to a football field and puts the finger on and then the last shot is him kicking the football. But I never shot it.
• 20:00
  Speaker C: Let's do it, man. Let's do it.
• 20:02
  Speaker D: It was a little dark. It was a little dark. I could probably, it could probably play the. Well, it couldn't play the New Orleans Film Festival because they don't maybe zeitgeist. Yeah, maybe Zeitgeist could definitely play Zeitgeist. Yeah.
• 20:14
  Speaker B: Charlie, I know you're not from New Orleans.
• 20:16
  Speaker D: No, I am from New Orleans.
• 20:17
  Speaker B: You are from.
• 20:17
  Speaker D: Yeah, yeah.
• 20:18
  Speaker C: I'm born and raised.
• 20:18
  Speaker D: Yeah. Yeah.
• 20:20
  Speaker C: Great homework, Renee.
• 20:23
  Speaker B: To surprise people.
• 20:24
  Speaker D: My one, my one. My, my mother's family goes back to 1804 on one side and 1839 on the other side. Okay, so we're deep.
• 20:34
  Speaker B: Deep oh, right on.
• 20:35
  Speaker D: We're the. We're the. My last name is Brown. My dad is from Atlanta. But I'm part of the Durbis family, the real estate people. So you can still see our signs around town.
• 20:45
  Speaker B: All right, on. What neighborhood did you grow up in?
• 20:48
  Speaker D: I grew up in. In. In Old Metairie. Right off of Old Metairie Road. So because of that, I will never drive on a main street. I will always take the side streets. I'm a true Metairie driver.
• 21:00
  Speaker B: Right.
• 21:01
  Speaker D: But I've been. I've been. I've been living up, you know, I've lived in just about every neighborhood of New Orleans except Lakeview. I've lived in Bywater. I've lived in Mid City, up Gert Town. Never got to Gertown, unfortunately.
• 21:16
  Speaker C: I love saying Gert Town.
• 21:18
  Speaker D: Yeah, it's good. It feels good.
• 21:19
  Speaker C: Yeah, it feels good to say that.
• 21:21
  Speaker D: Well, so what's out on Pigeon Town?
• 21:24
  Speaker B: Pigeon Town? Yeah. So where'd you go to high school?
• 21:28
  Speaker D: I am a Jesuit boy. Jesuit. Okay. Yeah, yeah.
• 21:31
  Speaker C: So I'm so did you knock up your high school sweetheart?
• 21:34
  Speaker D: I didn't have a high school. All right. I was too many. No, the priests weren't going after me. But it's an all boys school, so it was really difficult. I was kind of a shy kid. So I actually went to. My first school was Sam Barth. I don't know if you remember Sam Barth.
• 21:53
  Speaker B: I know the name.
• 21:54
  Speaker D: Yeah. It was out. It's out there in Metairie. It's now a cult Classique. That was an all boys school. And then for two years I went to St. Catharines and then I went to Jesuit. So most of my life I was at all boys schools. And so it took me a long time to. To get. To get some game together. So.
• 22:10
  Speaker C: A lot of masturbation.
• 22:11
  Speaker D: Oh, yeah.
• 22:14
  Speaker B: You regret not having gone to co ed schools?
• 22:18
  Speaker D: Well, you know, since I was in Metairie, I couldn't have gone to Ben Franklin, which is the one place I would have liked to have gone. So, I mean, I.
• 22:26
  Speaker B: It worked out there were a few people living in Metairie going to Ben Franklin, but you had to.
• 22:29
  Speaker D: Oh, there were.
• 22:30
  Speaker B: Well, you had to be a little bit proactive with the paperwork.
• 22:32
  Speaker D: Oh, yeah. Ye. We didn't know anybody that lived in Orleans Parish. No. My grandfather had a big hand in developing old Metairie when they first moved there in 55. My mom talks about there was a goat farm and there was all this sort of stuff. There was nothing There and then, you know, and so my grandfather developed a lot of that land.
• 22:52
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 22:53
  Speaker D: So all that stuff around Old Metairie Road is, you know, partially, you know, us developing.
• 22:59
  Speaker B: Oh, nice. Must have made a pretty penny.
• 23:01
  Speaker D: He was a very rich man. And I am not.
• 23:04
  Speaker B: Okay, well, sometimes they don't. They don't maintain the fortune over the years.
• 23:09
  Speaker D: No, no. My mom. It may come to me eventually. Okay. But my mom. My mom is still alive and kicking. Doing great. She's in her 80s. She looks like she's 70. She. She's in the. She's. She's doing really well.
• 23:20
  Speaker B: Having money doesn't hurt.
• 23:21
  Speaker D: No, no, no. Keeps her young.
• 23:22
  Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah.
• 23:23
  Speaker C: Nice.
• 23:23
  Speaker B: Nice. Well, okay. Well, that's. That's surprising because I know you.
• 23:27
  Speaker A: You.
• 23:27
  Speaker B: You went to school other places.
• 23:29
  Speaker D: Yeah.
• 23:29
  Speaker B: Well, when you were in. In, you know, shy kid. Were you already. Were you a bookish kid? Were you reading a ton?
• 23:35
  Speaker D: Very bookish. Very bookish. Read a lot of sci fi, read, you know, Lord of the Rings. And no, I didn't get into Lord of the Rings. I read the Hobbit and then I was really mad when I picked up Lord of the Rings and Bilbo was the bad guy all of a sudden, so I didn't. I didn't read Lord of the Rings until I got to college.
• 23:53
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 23:54
  Speaker D: But no, I was actually obsessed with this science fiction writer by the name of Philip Jose Farmer, who is a Los Angeles writer, and he was part of the sci fi new wave, and he wrote this really weird stuff. His most famous work is Riverworld, which was a five book series where everybody who ever lived is reincarnated on this giant river and all of their needs are taken care of. And it was a giant experiment by aliens. So it's a strange little book.
• 24:23
  Speaker B: Now, were you attracted to Mormonism because of this?
• 24:27
  Speaker D: No.
• 24:27
  Speaker B: No. Because they have a similar kind of theme going. Or. What's the other one? Scientology?
• 24:32
  Speaker D: No, I never got into Scientology. I used to when I lived in Los Angeles. I lived in Los Feliz and I saw the Scientology. I was right near the science. We. We would drive to the movies.
• 24:42
  Speaker C: Yeah, the science. Church of Scientology, right on Sunset.
• 24:45
  Speaker D: Yeah, yeah, right on Sunset.
• 24:46
  Speaker C: Me and my friend tried to blow it up in high school. We went. We drove down to Tijuana in our senior year in high school because we had this English teacher who was trying to teach us Scientology on the side. In a public school.
• 25:01
  Speaker D: Yeah.
• 25:01
  Speaker C: So we said this guy. So we drove down to Tijuana. We got a bunch of quarter sticks of Dynamite.
• 25:07
  Speaker D: Oh, my God.
• 25:08
  Speaker C: And we easily crossed the border back then. It's like 1980, 81. And we went to the Church of Scientology and we had taped all these quarter sticks of dynamite and we had thrown them in this mailbox in front of the church and we lit the wick and we got the. Out of there. But the wick never.
• 25:30
  Speaker D: Oh, it blew out.
• 25:32
  Speaker B: Fortunately, fortunately, fortunately avoided committing a federal crime.
• 25:35
  Speaker D: Yeah, yeah, we used to.
• 25:37
  Speaker C: Never caught us. There was a camera.
• 25:39
  Speaker D: We used to drive to the movies and. And like, go by, you know, take fountain to.
• 25:43
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 25:44
  Speaker D: And we. We would see at 5 o' clock what we called the March of the Scientologists. People in the polyester vest going from, you know, this. They're slaves, basically. And you're walking from the office to the cafeteria or whatever.
• 25:57
  Speaker C: Yeah, it was very strange. We would scream at them and curse their bikes. You know, your bike's gonna flat. You're gonna get a flat on your bike.
• 26:06
  Speaker B: You're never tempted to go get audited or.
• 26:09
  Speaker D: No, no, no, no.
• 26:10
  Speaker B: Grab the E meters.
• 26:11
  Speaker D: Now. I. Besides work, besides being shy, I am not a joiner.
• 26:17
  Speaker B: Okay?
• 26:17
  Speaker D: I am not a joiner. A joiner?
• 26:19
  Speaker C: Oh, yeah, Yeah.
• 26:20
  Speaker D: I never.
• 26:21
  Speaker C: Why, you want to join anything?
• 26:22
  Speaker D: Yeah, I never joined a fraternity. I really. I didn't want to be in a fraternity. I did. I'm kind of like Groucho Marx, you know? Sure. Any club that wants me, I don't want to join.
• 26:30
  Speaker C: Sure. Right. Exactly.
• 26:32
  Speaker D: And. And so. Yeah.
• 26:34
  Speaker B: So were you writing early on?
• 26:36
  Speaker D: I wasn't, no. My. My original. My original kind of creative outlet was DJing. So at Jesuit, they had a DJ setup that broadcast. Broadcast to the cafeteria. And so. And so students, you know, students were allowed to spin records. Really?
• 26:59
  Speaker B: That's kind of surprising.
• 27:00
  Speaker D: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was. It was a cool. It was actually a really cool setup. And around this time, I had gotten. I'd really gotten into the blues. I got into the blues when I was about 15, 16.
• 27:10
  Speaker B: What year did you graduate?
• 27:12
  Speaker D: 86. Okay, so if you, you know, if you people who. You might know who were 86, Jesuit was. Jim McCormick was in that class.
• 27:21
  Speaker B: Right. Actually my brother.
• 27:24
  Speaker D: Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah. So. And. And also Lewis Dobbin, who runs the Escape from the Secret Lab with me. And then one. We were one year behind Harry Connick. So. Yeah, so I would do dj. I did DJ work. And so I, I did, you know, I would. I would play these soul and R and B records and all the teachers were. Would be. Would be jamming downstairs and all the students are like, what is this crap they're playing? And because of that, I got the nerve up to. To go and do training at WWZ because they were a little more open. This was the. Like I said, 86. And I did training with him. And this is a. This is the truth. You may not believe me, but this is the truth. The very first Thursday night that wasn't Ernie Cato was me.
• 28:15
  Speaker B: Oh, okay.
• 28:16
  Speaker D: Yeah, I did the. I did the show. And then I only did about two or three other shows for. For them because I didn't get a permanent spot spot because I was. But, yeah, I would go do you. I would go do that. And then Friday nights, you know, do all the things that a hip kid would do.
• 28:32
  Speaker B: That's when you were still in high school.
• 28:33
  Speaker D: I was still in high school, yeah. And then I would go over and I would go over Friday nights and hang out with Duke of Paducah and bb and they, like, they. They mentored me. And. Yeah, and they really got into, you know, really got into that old music. I don't know why that music spoke to me, but it did. You know, Muddy Waters in particular, particular Professor Long Hair, all the New Orleans stuff. Yeah, I'd listen to mar. Yeah, I called it Mardi Gras music back then, but. But we know it as new. Great New Orleans R B. Right. But yeah, it was just like music was the first thing that, like, that, like, drew me in.
• 29:05
  Speaker B: Okay, well, so at what point do you start writing?
• 29:10
  Speaker D: So I'm. So. I. I go to college at usc, and then I didn't.
• 29:14
  Speaker B: You went. You went to undergrad?
• 29:15
  Speaker D: I went to undergrad at USC, but it didn't happen. I got over a 3.0.
• 29:21
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 29:21
  Speaker D: USC was really easy to get into. And I thought I was.
• 29:25
  Speaker B: I. I had a real estate monies.
• 29:27
  Speaker D: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 29:29
  Speaker C: We did actually graduate high school here. And you go to USCA and SoCal.
• 29:33
  Speaker D: Yes.
• 29:34
  Speaker C: Okay.
• 29:34
  Speaker D: Yeah. I just wanted to go to LA, I think, and I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't want to go to the film school. I thought I wanted to be in production. I thought maybe journalism, but none of it, really. USC just didn't take. And so I came back here and I went to Loyola and I enrolled in the production in the communication school there. And at the same time, my old friend from Jesuit, Mark Meester, who you might know, he's a. Oh, yeah, I.
• 30:03
  Speaker B: Know Mark Meester well.
• 30:04
  Speaker D: Yeah, yeah. Mark called me up and said, okay, WTUL is losing its blues disc Jockey, do you want to take over? So I was. Yes. So I took over that. Started doing the Blue show. While doing that show, I got a call at wtul, and it was Connie Atkinson from Wavelength magazine, and she goes, do you want to write for Wavelength magazine? I've never. I don't. You know, I was one of those kids who. I have really bad. I had really bad grammar. So I was like, I can't write. I'm a terrible writer. But I had just started taking journalism classes because I had to. And so, you know, I was like, okay, I'll meet with you. And then so I started. I started writing for Wave, and I wrote for Wavelength for about a year and a half.
• 30:48
  Speaker B: Oh, okay. So that was. That was how you got your feet wet.
• 30:51
  Speaker D: Yeah, yeah.
• 30:52
  Speaker C: So when you were at USC, this is in the mid-80s or something now, were you a cripper or blood? Because USC is in one of the. Back in the 80s, that neighborhood was fucking hairy.
• 31:05
  Speaker D: The. The 32nd Street Market was one of my favorite places. And later on, when I was at Loyola, one of my professors who was a Nigerian woman, she and I bonded over our love of the 32.
• 31:16
  Speaker C: 32 Hoover Crips, man. Yeah, yeah, those guys will get you.
• 31:21
  Speaker D: Yeah, I. And I didn't have a car, so I was. I was pretty much stuck at.
• 31:25
  Speaker C: But you lived on campus.
• 31:27
  Speaker D: Yeah, I lived on campus.
• 31:28
  Speaker C: That's a good thing.
• 31:29
  Speaker D: Yeah, yeah. USC was. I enjoyed it. It just. Like I said, it just didn't take. It didn't have what I needed then. And then later on, I decided to go to grad. When I went to. Decided I needed to go to grad school, USC was there for me.
• 31:43
  Speaker C: So you went back?
• 31:44
  Speaker D: I went back and I actually got a degree that.
• 31:46
  Speaker B: But you got a degree from Loyola first.
• 31:48
  Speaker D: Yeah, I got a degree in journalism from Loyola, and then I got out of school, and while I was there, I taken some writing classes from John Biggennet and screenwriting classes from Andy Horton. So I was starting to move from journalism into fiction. So I never took a journalism job.
• 32:10
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 32:11
  Speaker D: And I just kind of fooled around, and then I. I finally found a woman who. Who wanted to date me.
• 32:18
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 32:18
  Speaker D: And be with me, and we got. Ended up getting married.
• 32:20
  Speaker B: Now, what do you think? Won or over? Was it your. Your. Your mastery of pros or Was it your DJing?
• 32:25
  Speaker C: Or your cock?
• 32:27
  Speaker D: Yeah, yeah.
• 32:28
  Speaker C: Your large cock.
• 32:29
  Speaker D: It wasn't that. I can tell you.
• 32:30
  Speaker C: It's not that.
• 32:31
  Speaker D: No, A sp. Sparkling personality.
• 32:33
  Speaker B: Okay, there you go. There you go.
• 32:35
  Speaker D: Maybe my My gift of gab, I.
• 32:37
  Speaker B: Think, you know, that was.
• 32:38
  Speaker D: That was part of it. You know, I've always been as good of a talker as I am a writer, so.
• 32:42
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 32:44
  Speaker D: And so, yeah, so we. We kind of. We're hanging out here and, you know, I went to. I went to work for Jesuit briefly, trying to write a history for them, but that.
• 32:53
  Speaker B: This is right out of college.
• 32:54
  Speaker D: Yeah, right out of college. Didn't quite. That didn't quite take. I ended up. And I was like, okay, now I'm going to be. Let me. Let me do a job that'll give me the summers off. I'll go teach. So I went to uno, got my high school teaching diploma, and. Oh, it was that bad.
• 33:11
  Speaker B: Did you go to actually teach in high school?
• 33:12
  Speaker D: Oh, it was so bad.
• 33:13
  Speaker B: Where'd you teach?
• 33:15
  Speaker D: My first school was Barbary in Kenner, which you had to pause every night.
• 33:19
  Speaker C: How many years have you gone to school? I mean, you got a lot.
• 33:22
  Speaker D: Yeah.
• 33:23
  Speaker C: It seems like you, what, five, eight, ten years of college?
• 33:26
  Speaker D: No, I've only got a master's degree. I didn't get a doctorate, so about seven years of college.
• 33:30
  Speaker C: Jesus.
• 33:32
  Speaker D: And then I taught at Barb Ray. That. I didn't like that at all. That was in Kenner. And then I taught at the old Kennedy.
• 33:39
  Speaker B: Oh, okay.
• 33:40
  Speaker D: Oh, that was awful.
• 33:41
  Speaker B: On. On the Boss Street.
• 33:44
  Speaker D: Yeah, right. Yeah, right on the bayou.
• 33:45
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 33:45
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 33:46
  Speaker D: That was way too rough.
• 33:49
  Speaker B: A toxic. Toxic dumpster.
• 33:52
  Speaker D: Yes, it is.
• 33:53
  Speaker B: Turns out.
• 33:54
  Speaker D: Yeah. And then. Then I said, okay, no more public school. I got hired at Della Salle. And that didn't take.
• 34:01
  Speaker B: That was even worse.
• 34:02
  Speaker D: Yeah. Yeah. I was just. I realized if you're. If you're trapped, like a high school or something like that, you have to be there. I'm a terrible teacher. But if in college, you don't really have to be there. I'm fine because I work a little blue, you know. I work a little blue, you know, and Della Salad, they didn't want to hear that.
• 34:26
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 34:27
  Speaker D: So. But De La Salle was. Yeah. Was a very good school. I mean, like, so. So the. The woman that I married and I were not getting along. I was very depressed. I was very overweight. I even went on anti depression, antidepressants, and just. Just. It just made me feel ill. And I never. He never really made me feel good. And so I just walked away from that life. And we had a falling out, almost got divorced, stuck it up for another two years, and then it didn't work. So I said, I need to I need to do what I've always wanted to do. Move to move back to Los Angeles and try my hand at screenwriting. So in 97, I, Henry Griffin, who you know. Right. Had been. Yeah, had been. Had been out there for a year and it sold a script. So I followed in his wake and moved out to LA in 97.
• 35:16
  Speaker B: And you knew him how?
• 35:17
  Speaker D: He went to Jesuit.
• 35:18
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 35:19
  Speaker D: Yeah, he's one year behind me at Jesuit and he also went to Loyola. We worked on the Maroon together.
• 35:24
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 35:24
  Speaker D: So, yeah, Henry and I. Henry and I got real close in the. In the early late 80s, early 90s.
• 35:29
  Speaker B: Now, Henry was already out there doing screenwriting.
• 35:33
  Speaker D: Yeah. He had already sold his first script, and so I was like, oh, I could. Maybe I can sell my first script.
• 35:39
  Speaker C: He also worked on that show that ripped me off. Tree work on that.
• 35:44
  Speaker D: He did work on Tre. He never wrote for Tremay. He acted in.
• 35:47
  Speaker C: Right, right.
• 35:48
  Speaker B: Appeared.
• 35:48
  Speaker C: He ripped me off that show.
• 35:50
  Speaker B: It wasn't him, though.
• 35:51
  Speaker C: No, it wasn't him. Yeah, that writer who used to write for The Times, Lou, L.A. whatever. He wrote the episode. So where he ripped off my lung.
• 36:05
  Speaker B: I graduated from high school with Eric.
• 36:08
  Speaker C: See, I'm the troubled man for troubled times. And all of a sudden, on this episode, I'm watching it and Steve, what's his name, says, I'm a desperate man for desperate times. He totally just ripped me off.
• 36:21
  Speaker D: Yes, he did. Tremeo is one of my few television movie paychecks because I'm a member of the Valparaiso and I. I appeared in the Valparaiso show and that was like.
• 36:32
  Speaker C: A check for 80 cents.
• 36:34
  Speaker D: No, I got 300. It was a pretty good paycheck. It was a pretty good.
• 36:37
  Speaker C: People are still watching that show.
• 36:38
  Speaker B: No, no, this was. This was in the original 2011.
• 36:42
  Speaker D: This was 2011. Right.
• 36:44
  Speaker C: You still getting a check for 300?
• 36:45
  Speaker D: No, no, no, no, no, no. I got. I got one check.
• 36:48
  Speaker C: One check?
• 36:49
  Speaker D: Yeah, I didn't. I didn't get anybody crack with that check.
• 36:54
  Speaker C: You and your wife went on a crack binge.
• 36:56
  Speaker B: Who knows?
• 36:57
  Speaker C: You know?
• 36:57
  Speaker D: You know, I don't think I've ever actually seen crack. I've seen a few things, but I've never actually seen crack.
• 37:02
  Speaker C: Okay, well, what kind of crack. What kind of crack are you talking about?
• 37:08
  Speaker D: Oh, you know, ass crack. I've seen a lot of.
• 37:10
  Speaker C: Oh, yeah, baby.
• 37:12
  Speaker B: Tijuana.
• 37:14
  Speaker C: USC times, man. The Hoover Crips, baby.
• 37:19
  Speaker D: Yes.
• 37:20
  Speaker B: So you move out there to. To la. To. To pursue a master's degree. Is that.
• 37:24
  Speaker D: No, I moved to la. First just to be a screenwriter.
• 37:28
  Speaker B: Now is Nikki Cat hanging around at this point.
• 37:31
  Speaker D: So, yeah, me and Nikki Kat get to be really good friends. And so day two. So first thing I pull into. I'm gonna drop another name. I'm gonna pull into Adam Duritz's driveway, because that's where Henry was living.
• 37:44
  Speaker B: Singer from Counting Crows.
• 37:45
  Speaker D: Singer from Counting Crows. Henry. Henry comes out and says, all right, clean up. We're going to the Hollywood Bowl. So this is the first. I literally had just pulled into la, go to the Hollywood bowl, and we watched Dave Brubeck.
• 38:01
  Speaker B: Oh, cool.
• 38:02
  Speaker D: Yeah, it was great. Next night, we go to a party at the Chateau Marmont, which is a very swanky, you know, the very swanky hotel. And it's a party for John's party by John Sloss, this Hollywood lawyer who represents all of the Dazed and Confused people. So this is day two, and I am meeting almost all of the cast of Dazed and confused, except McConaughey. McConaughey wasn't there, but Nikki was among them. But Rory Cock and I had my first hit of Los Angeles weed. So by the end of that party.
• 38:41
  Speaker B: No crack.
• 38:41
  Speaker D: No crack.
• 38:42
  Speaker B: Shocking.
• 38:43
  Speaker D: Yeah, but so I'm. See, I'm literally smoking with the day.
• 38:46
  Speaker C: Why did a cast Days of Confused need a lawyer? I mean, they're all just, like amateur actors.
• 38:52
  Speaker D: No, they were. By then, they were professional.
• 38:53
  Speaker C: Posey.
• 38:54
  Speaker D: This was like. This was like three or four years after Days and Confused came out.
• 38:58
  Speaker C: So they're suing to get their pay.
• 39:00
  Speaker D: Right, right, right.
• 39:01
  Speaker C: I got you. So.
• 39:02
  Speaker D: So my head is like. So by the end of that, my head is like a balloon on a string. You know, I'm just, like, really high. But Nikki and I get to talking, and we start. You know, we start making friends, and then. And then Sloss takes me and Henry across the street to the Mondrian for dinner, which is one of the swankiest restaurants in Los Angeles. And everything is white. Everything is white. Everybody's in white. I'm high as kite in the dishwasher. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's true. I could just see floating heads everywhere. And it was like. I felt like I was in a Kubrick movie or something. But that was. Yeah, that was night two. And then. And then after that. Yeah, I was.
• 39:45
  Speaker B: I was all downhill.
• 39:46
  Speaker D: It was all downhill. But that. I had. It was all. It was ups and downs. But sure, sure, sure. But the. But it was. Yeah. I decided pretty early on that I was going to be a bum because I've been living a I've been living a pretty hardcore middle class existence. Like. No, I'm just going to write and just take the occasional. Yeah, yeah. I'm going to be a flaneur, as they would say in Paris. It was tough. Well, in the, in, in 97, you could.
• 40:14
  Speaker C: Yeah, of course you could.
• 40:15
  Speaker D: Yeah. Because my first, first apartment in Los Feliz, back when it was just a Armenian neighborhood. Yeah, it was 625amonth. So, you know, I had some savings and so I just like worked, did temp jobs and just kind of kept up and, and, you know, kept writing, you know, trying to, trying to build up a, a bank of screenplays so that I could sell one. And then.
• 40:39
  Speaker B: Well, let me stop you right there because this exciting part of the story here and it's also that time in the show.
• 40:47
  Speaker C: Oh, okay, man, he's gonna take a break. Listen, Charlie Brown, the nation knows what to do we'll be.
• 40:56
  Speaker A: Girls, girls, girls Here come the girls girls, girls Looking so good It's a doggone shame that they couldn't all be mine Looking so pretty It's a doggone pity oh, looking so fine look out, blood Let me get one a little closer to the one I love Anything better than the opposite sex they must have kept it. Here come the girls, girls, girls, girls Here come the girls.
• 41:33
  Speaker C: I can live.
• 41:34
  Speaker A: Without coffee I can live without tea and I'm living about the honeybee Not a filling state I can leave a tape but the girls are part of me and oh, water I don't need no lemonade but to live without girls I can't live without you Like a man with a hole in his ear.
• 42:04
  Speaker B: And we're back. Back with Mr. Manny Chevrolet. I am Renee Coleman, back with our guest, Mr. Charlie Brown. Now, Charlie, I know you are, are one of our devoted listeners. You're familiar with the operational model of this podcast where we are listener supported. We have The Venmo and PayPal links in the show notes of every show as well as the Facebook page. And our, our listeners will, will use those links to support the show, buy us rounds of cocktails, help us defray our costs. And we always like to announce people that have, have supported the show that week. Well, we have no announcements this week, but that's okay. We're still running.
• 42:47
  Speaker C: I blame myself.
• 42:48
  Speaker B: Sure. Well, I blame you as well. Yeah.
• 42:51
  Speaker C: Cuz nobody likes me.
• 42:52
  Speaker B: Well, I like you.
• 42:53
  Speaker C: But some people, you know.
• 42:55
  Speaker B: Yeah, some people, it's a, it's a smaller and smaller.
• 42:57
  Speaker C: I like burnt toast too.
• 42:58
  Speaker B: Like burnt toast, sure.
• 42:59
  Speaker C: Yeah. I like jock it.
• 43:01
  Speaker B: Okay, well, I guess to each of those.
• 43:04
  Speaker C: I like loose change.
• 43:06
  Speaker B: We like loose change. Yes. So if anybody has loose change out there, please, you know, you can send it in to us. Also, we have the Patreon page. We have a handful of patrons that are supporting us week in and week out. We love you. Also, the Troubled Men T shirt link is right there. And Christmas is getting closer all the time, so I wouldn't waste any time there. Also, follow us on social media, Instagram, Facebook, and rate, review and subscribe to the podcast wherever you're listening to it. Give us five stars. Helps us a lot. Cost you nothing. You know, I had a friend, old friend, who's become a devoted listener, and he said that he's taken to using that phrase when he turns in a report at work or something, he'll say to his co workers who turned into, yeah, give me a five star rating. Helps me a lot. Costs you nothing. I was like, oh, I like that we're becoming part of the. Part of the lexicon. Lexicon. That's the word. Thank you. Thank you. You are a writer.
• 44:07
  Speaker D: Yes.
• 44:08
  Speaker B: All right, well, enough of all that, you know. Back to you, Mr. Charlie Brown. When we last left you, you were there in la, banking a lot of screenplays, hanging out with the great Nicky Cat. Now, I first became aware of Nikki Cat in the movie Boiler Room.
• 44:26
  Speaker D: Okay. So I have a lot of Boiler Room stories.
• 44:29
  Speaker B: I love that movie. I think it's a great movie, man. Especially, like a high concept, like low production cost. I would imagine you just need, like a warehouse and just keep changing the sets up.
• 44:41
  Speaker D: Right, right, right.
• 44:42
  Speaker B: Giovanni Ribisi is great in it. Nikki Cat is great as an asshole.
• 44:46
  Speaker D: Yeah, Nikki, Nikki, really? Nikki. Nikki specialized in the roles. He was very good.
• 44:53
  Speaker C: Is that the movie with Ben Affleck?
• 44:55
  Speaker D: Affleck is in it briefly, yes.
• 44:58
  Speaker C: Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. Because I think they sold that movie on him being in it.
• 45:03
  Speaker D: Oh, yeah.
• 45:04
  Speaker C: Because, you know, he was.
• 45:05
  Speaker D: He has the. He has the same amount of time that Alec Baldwin has in Glengarry G. Ross. Yeah.
• 45:12
  Speaker C: And. But he's not as good as it.
• 45:13
  Speaker D: Well, yeah, he's not as good as Alec Baldwin was.
• 45:15
  Speaker C: Now put the coffee down.
• 45:17
  Speaker D: Yeah, so. So Nikki gets that movie, and at this point, I am his screenwriter. We are working on a project that. A doomed project that was. This thing is. This thing was so over. This thing was so over the top. It was. It was an adaptation of the 1890s book Pan, which is this very dark Norwegian story about a hunter who gets in a very toxic relationship with a woman, and they end up fighting each other, and there's a dog involved and all. Anyway, so Nikki went to me and said, all right, we're gonna do this.
• 46:04
  Speaker C: You're gonna adapt.
• 46:05
  Speaker D: Yeah, we're gonna adapt this, but it's going to be black biker gangs in Oakland.
• 46:10
  Speaker B: Okay. Still a basic story.
• 46:13
  Speaker D: Still a basic story. So we. Anyway.
• 46:16
  Speaker C: Because there's dogs.
• 46:17
  Speaker D: Yeah, because there's a dog. Anyway, so we had taken trips to Oakland. We had done all this. We had done all this research, and finally, I'm writing because he kept me from writing for a little time. So he finally, like, took me off the leash, so to speak.
• 46:31
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 46:32
  Speaker D: And he moves me to New York while he's. While he's doing Boiler Room. And so I'm living here dead Brook. I mean, I've got maybe $200 in my bank account at this point in time, and I'm living at the Soho grand for three weeks while he's doing Boiler Room. So I made Vin Diesel. Vin Diesel gives me a nickname. Vin Diesel's like, we're having dinner with Vin Diesel, and he turns to me and says, oh, I'm looking for a screenwriter. What are you writing? He's like, oh, I do a lot of crime stuff. I do some mafia stuff. And he goes, who the hell are you? Are we gonna see? You know, Nikki Cat is dead in his bed with a pencil in his neck, and it's going to be Charlie Manslaughter Brown who take it. Yeah. So. So the only person who still calls me Manslaughter is Henry and Alex McMurray.
• 47:18
  Speaker B: Oh, okay.
• 47:19
  Speaker D: Yeah. Because I haven't seen Vin Diesel in years.
• 47:23
  Speaker C: Career is dead.
• 47:24
  Speaker D: Yeah. And then I met Giovanni. I met all these guys, and I finally finished that script. I finally finished that script. And I meet. On that time, I meet Jamie Kennedy and Scott Kahn, who are also in that. So they. They said, okay, we have a project. We're not writers, but we need a screenwriter. We know how to do scenes, but we don't, you know? And this is true of actors. Actors can write really good scenes, but they have a really hard time with art.
• 47:52
  Speaker B: Okay?
• 47:52
  Speaker D: So, like, the long term. So, like, the plots are hard. So we hooked up and we rewrote for Bob Simons Productions, who was Adam Sandler's first producer. He did all the early Sandler stuff. We did a. It was a snowboarding movie. And I like to say that we took it from Porky's three level about to the Porky's level. So we. We. Yeah, we rewrote it.
• 48:19
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 48:20
  Speaker D: And that was another.
• 48:22
  Speaker B: And never seen any of those movies. Have you seen those.
• 48:25
  Speaker D: The Porky movies?
• 48:26
  Speaker C: Yeah, I saw at least the first one, I think when it was 80s.
• 48:29
  Speaker D: It was raunchy, and. Yeah, that's basically what this was, the raunchy.
• 48:33
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 48:34
  Speaker D: You know, slobs versus snobs.
• 48:36
  Speaker C: I just don't remember why they called it Porky.
• 48:38
  Speaker D: That was the name of the strip club.
• 48:39
  Speaker C: Oh, that's right.
• 48:40
  Speaker D: That's right. So. So that all happens, and I'm like, I'm flying high.
• 48:46
  Speaker C: I want to go to, like, fat chicks.
• 48:49
  Speaker D: Yeah. I'm flying high. I go to south by Southwest to meet up with Nikki and Henry for, you know, to hang out. And then. So I was like, I got the script going with Nikki, and I got this thing going, and I come back after a week. My script, the Jamie Kennedy, Scott Kahn script has gone into turnaround. Means that it's dead.
• 49:12
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 49:13
  Speaker D: And Nikki can't get anything going with our script. And then I. And. And. And Bob Simons didn't pay me a dime, even though I'd worked for, you know, three weeks on this.
• 49:26
  Speaker C: What about Vin Diesel?
• 49:27
  Speaker D: Ben wasn't around either. I couldn't find Vin, so nickname back. Right. I should have. So, yeah. So I looked at my bank account, and I was like, yeah, that's 18 grand in debt. Yeah. I was like, oh. Oh, shit.
• 49:44
  Speaker B: Should go to school.
• 49:44
  Speaker D: Yeah. No, no. So I called my mom, and I was like, that. And she goes, all right, you're moving home. And I was like, okay, I'm gonna move home. And then that's when Adam stepped in. Adam Duritz. He said, no, you're not moving home. You're moving in with me. And I move into the Beverly Hills, man. So now I'm dead broke. 18 grand in debt, working at a coffee shop in Los Feliz, But I'm living in Beverly Hills.
• 50:07
  Speaker B: Oh, okay.
• 50:08
  Speaker D: And. And so, yeah, you know.
• 50:10
  Speaker B: Well, that must have been pretty wild, the traffic in and out.
• 50:13
  Speaker D: That was. It was so much fun. That was the most fun out of.
• 50:17
  Speaker C: The Viper Room a lot. Because I know Adam was always there.
• 50:20
  Speaker D: This was. Yeah, this was just after the Viper. You know, I didn't really hang out. The vibe. We didn't do the Viper Room very much. He was kind of done, man. Yeah, I know. Yeah, he. He didn't. Yeah. By that time, Adam had stopped kind of going to the Viper Room. Yeah.
• 50:36
  Speaker C: Because he was there a lot when I was working there.
• 50:38
  Speaker D: Right. He was. They Were working on their third record.
• 50:41
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 50:41
  Speaker D: And so he was kind of like, just leave.
• 50:43
  Speaker C: Yeah, you're here too much. He's. You're a good guy, but just, you know, don't hang out here that much.
• 50:48
  Speaker D: Right. So. So, yeah, that was. And so through Adam, after about, you know, trying to fight, hook stuff up, finally get. I finally get a job with a website called mediatrip.com, which is one of the first multimedia websites. And I end up doing a whole lot of different stuff. I'm a entertainment reporter. I'm a music critic. I'm a movie critic.
• 51:11
  Speaker C: And what year is this?
• 51:12
  Speaker D: This is 99.
• 51:13
  Speaker C: Okay, so now. Now Internet's.
• 51:15
  Speaker D: Yeah, now the Internet is starting at the first. This is the first big wave before. Right, right, right.
• 51:21
  Speaker C: So.
• 51:21
  Speaker D: So I'm starting to work with digital video. I'm starting to do this. I'm starting to get all this stuff. And then our CEO, it turns out our CEO is using BC money to pay for his gym and for his own suv. We lose all the money, website goes under, and I'm back to square one. So I'd written a short script, and as I never made a short film, so I made this. I shot this short film out in Palm Springs. It's called A Couple on the side. It's on.
• 51:47
  Speaker B: Oh, yeah, yeah.
• 51:49
  Speaker D: It's a. It's a movie about swingers. It's a. It's a depressing comedy. Swing.
• 51:54
  Speaker B: Sure.
• 51:56
  Speaker D: And with the great Lex Medlin, who.
• 51:58
  Speaker B: You think it's gonna end well?
• 51:59
  Speaker D: Yeah, yeah. Right, right, right. But the. The great Lex Medlin and one of my best friends, Heidi Van Horn. And so I shoot it, move back to New Orleans, cut it here. Tim Watson cuts it here. And Kristen. Kristen Stoffatu. They all. They. We put that together. It gets into the New Orleans Film Festival, along with another movie I produced down here called Graveyard Diary that had Rio Hackford and Chris Lane in it.
• 52:25
  Speaker B: Oh, yeah.
• 52:25
  Speaker D: It was directed by my old roommate, Jonathan Taylor. So I was like, okay, from that, from all that I get to nola.com. here's the funny story, Okay? I met my wife driving home from Los Angeles. She lived in Houston. I met her. She was a contributor to our boards because she was a Counting Crows fan. I met her. We had a. You know, we met up for dinner.
• 52:49
  Speaker C: No.
• 52:50
  Speaker D: And it just. We just clicked. And so I'm in a relationship with her. She. She visits in New Orleans for the first time, and I say, all right, we're gonna walk down Bourbon street once, and then we're never Coming back again. So right after. So we do that. Right after that, I get the job@nola.com where I become the host of Burbo Cam outside of Cat's Meow, Stopping people on the street. Hey, how you doing? As I like to say, it's improv journalism. Stopping people from having fun for the. For the streaming camera. So I do.
• 53:29
  Speaker B: So Nola.com didn't have any idea what the. This was supposed to be. They just throwing stuff at the wall.
• 53:35
  Speaker D: Yeah, yeah. It was a very popular show, though a lot of people did tune in to watch it.
• 53:39
  Speaker B: Now, this is. You had already gotten your masters from.
• 53:42
  Speaker D: No, no, no. I haven't got my master's yet. I haven't got my master's. So I just start. I just start, you know, doing. You know, doing a lot of. I. Nola.com was really my film school.
• 53:53
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 53:53
  Speaker D: So that's where I really learned. So I'm shooting and editing and writing all of my own stuff.
• 53:58
  Speaker B: So it's just you and, like, one other.
• 54:00
  Speaker D: Yeah, Corey and a. And a couple of other people. And. And then Adam Shipley comes to me and says, it's the rebirth 20th anniversary. We need. We need to do something. Do you want to direct a documentary about that? And so he said, okay. I said, yes, come work for the Tipitina's foundation. We're going to start the foundation. So I go work for them and I do video. You've mentioned Donald Harrison. Donald Harrison was working as the writer, artistic director.
• 54:33
  Speaker B: Yeah, that was the guy that wound up having a gun accident.
• 54:36
  Speaker C: Right?
• 54:36
  Speaker B: What was it?
• 54:37
  Speaker D: Oh, Roland.
• 54:38
  Speaker B: Roland.
• 54:38
  Speaker D: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Bastard. Sorry to speak ill about the dead, but that man. That man. But also there was trombone Shorty at 19, and he was helping out. And so I did. I did. I filmed the guest stars that came through there. John Schofield, Gatemouth Brown, Chris Thomas King, a couple of other people that I'm forgetting right now. George Porter was in there. And then I finish, you know, shooting. Shooting the Rebirth. Yeah, shooting the. Shooting the Rebirth movie and shooting the internship program. The internship program and I were not a great fit.
• 55:14
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 55:15
  Speaker D: So I moved on after one year, and I just finished the Rebirth, and that was my first feature film. Was never a dull moment. 20 years of the Rebirth process. Yeah.
• 55:22
  Speaker B: Which was kind of landmark production in many ways.
• 55:26
  Speaker D: Yeah, I like to think so. Some other local people didn't, but I won't mention any names.
• 55:31
  Speaker C: Yeah, but your friend Davis, I remember I heard this story through Carlo Nuccio. Davis was at Bonnaroo with Rebirth. And he was fucked up. And he took a piss in one of the trombone players case, and they beat the shit out of him.
• 55:52
  Speaker B: I think I've heard that story too.
• 55:54
  Speaker D: But that didn't make it into the movie.
• 55:56
  Speaker C: Damn.
• 55:57
  Speaker D: But I did get a lot of.
• 55:58
  Speaker C: They're still around that bad?
• 56:00
  Speaker D: Yeah, yeah. I mean, Phil Frazier, the tuba player, had to retire because he had a stroke.
• 56:04
  Speaker C: Okay.
• 56:05
  Speaker D: And I think the only one from the movie left is Stafford Ag, the trombone.
• 56:09
  Speaker C: Oh, so they're. They're not the original one.
• 56:11
  Speaker D: Yeah, yeah. They've gone through a lot of guys. But I did get a great story between Phil Frazier and The drummer, Mallory. A.J. mallory. And the late Keith Keller.
• 56:26
  Speaker B: Keith Keller, one of my best friends.
• 56:29
  Speaker D: Who talked about getting into a fist fight during a Rebirth because the drums and tuba were doing great tracks, but the trumpets weren't. And so Keith made him keep doing it again and again and again, unlike a jazz guy would do. And AJ takes a swing at Phil, and as Keith describes it, he like, grabs his fist out of the air and said, aj, you can get into a fight, but don't hit Phil on the teeth. He'll never play tuba again. So AJ turns and he smashes a clock. And Keith made them sign the clock. And I. To this day, I. Now, I say I have the clock. Keith gave me the clock.
• 57:11
  Speaker C: And what time did this stop at?
• 57:13
  Speaker D: I don't know, but I kept it at 4:20.
• 57:17
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 57:17
  Speaker B: Keith, man.
• 57:18
  Speaker D: Keith was.
• 57:19
  Speaker B: Keith.
• 57:20
  Speaker D: He was a real. He was. Oh, yes. I never had a conversation with him where I wasn't physically assaulted.
• 57:26
  Speaker B: Oh, wow.
• 57:28
  Speaker D: He would grab you or smack you in the arm or something. Out of love.
• 57:32
  Speaker B: I had plenty, but out of love.
• 57:34
  Speaker A: Oh.
• 57:34
  Speaker D: I mean, it was never. No, no, it wasn't. It wasn't bad. I'm not saying it is a bad.
• 57:38
  Speaker B: Definitely wouldn't wanted to have gotten into a fist.
• 57:40
  Speaker D: No, no, no, no. But he. He was really.
• 57:43
  Speaker C: He tried to sit on me once.
• 57:45
  Speaker D: Oh, I could believe that. Yeah.
• 57:47
  Speaker C: He tried to sit on me at the Circle bar once.
• 57:50
  Speaker D: But. But he was really the Spike. Yeah.
• 57:53
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 57:54
  Speaker D: He was the impetus for the film because I heard those two stories that he had, and I said, oh, we've got a movie. And then it was at Glenn Hartman's firstborn's Bris.
• 58:04
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 58:05
  Speaker D: Yeah. It was a lot of.
• 58:07
  Speaker B: A lot of characters.
• 58:07
  Speaker D: Yeah, I got a lot of characters. So. Yeah.
• 58:10
  Speaker B: Like it?
• 58:10
  Speaker D: Yeah.
• 58:11
  Speaker B: Well, let's accelerate this.
• 58:13
  Speaker D: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So. So after that. After that, I. I get the. I get. I get it into My head that I need to make a fiction film. I make angels die slowly and that doesn't really do anything. So I have to kind of give up. And I go to grad school. I go to USC's Master's of Professional writing program.
• 58:32
  Speaker B: You've done a whole lot of stuff. You've made a bunch of different films.
• 58:36
  Speaker D: Yeah, I made two feature films, a few about 10 shorts. And then self taught. All self taught. Yeah. I didn't really. I never went to film school.
• 58:45
  Speaker C: And then like the new no film festival and the local stuff here, they don't York nothing.
• 58:52
  Speaker D: They didn't like me. Yeah.
• 58:57
  Speaker C: They didn't like our film either. They liked my shorts, but not our film.
• 59:01
  Speaker B: They just Jockey shorts.
• 59:03
  Speaker D: Yeah, they didn't. Yeah, I, I thought the, I thought a, a feature film about the Rebirth brass band would have played the New Orleans Film Festival.
• 59:11
  Speaker B: You would have thought.
• 59:11
  Speaker D: But you know what? I, I them, I, I had my screening at the Canal place and I made fifteen hundred dollars. All right, so fuck them. I do say fuck them.
• 59:21
  Speaker C: Fuck the noise. You got that money.
• 59:23
  Speaker D: Yeah, right. So then, so in grad school, in grad school, I learned how to really write long fiction. And I write my first two novels and then. And I start teaching because, you know, that's what you do now.
• 59:38
  Speaker B: Now your first novel.
• 59:39
  Speaker D: What.
• 59:39
  Speaker B: How did you get into the idea of writing a novel?
• 59:43
  Speaker D: I always wanted to write a novel. Even from when I first started writing, I was like, I always want to at least have one novel. And I want to write. I want to write my New Orleans novel. And so this novel is called Looking Back on Sodom. And it's the year before Katrina. So my mentor, Richard Raynor, who's a great novelist and screenwriter, he called it a paradise lost for New Orleans Bohemia.
• 1:00:09
  Speaker B: Okay. Now this was written pre. Katrine.
• 1:00:11
  Speaker D: No, it's written after Katrina. Yeah, this is written in, I wrote it in 2012. Yeah, it's about, it's about 2005.
• 1:00:17
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 1:00:18
  Speaker D: And so I have a story, you know, I have a bunch of stories. It's. It's all Bywater and, you know, musicians and artists and weirdos and all my, so all my stories, you know, there's a interracial romance because I tend to do that all the time, even because I'm in one. And, and you know, and that one, that one did sell to Black Rose Publishing out of Texas, but it did go out of print. So I need to. I'm going to be putting. By the time this airs, by the time this drops, I'LL probably. I'm finally going to put it back up on Amazon, so at least it'll be available. Nice looking back on Sodom.
• 1:00:57
  Speaker C: And it'll be a print on demand.
• 1:00:58
  Speaker D: Yes, it will be print on demand.
• 1:01:00
  Speaker C: Yeah. Okay.
• 1:01:01
  Speaker B: That's the way to go, man.
• 1:01:02
  Speaker D: But then I. Then I shifted from there to genre fiction. So now I'm writing mostly fantasy. And that led me to making these. Making these two anthologies called Dirty Magic and then.
• 1:01:18
  Speaker B: Tell us about that.
• 1:01:19
  Speaker D: Yeah, so. So I. Dirty Magic started as an anthology series where it was crime plus fan, crime plus magic in a certain city.
• 1:01:30
  Speaker B: Now. Magic in what sense?
• 1:01:32
  Speaker D: You know.
• 1:01:35
  Speaker B: Fantastical.
• 1:01:36
  Speaker D: Yeah, yeah, supernatural. Yeah, Supernatural magic and magician, you know, like. Like wizards and warlocks and that sort of.
• 1:01:42
  Speaker C: Okay, so going back to that LA writer who wrote about the river and stuff like that.
• 1:01:47
  Speaker D: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So we. So the first one was. Took place in Los Angeles and then the second one was New Orleans. And I got, you know, and then I. It was just too much work and I couldn't keep up and so I just kind of let it lie dormant. And then about two years ago, I said, I've always wanted to start a fantasy magazine because I love. Because I love the genre. And I started Dirty Magic magazine. And now I've this. We're in year two and we're. It's doing real well.
• 1:02:19
  Speaker C: Porn?
• 1:02:21
  Speaker D: No, no, no, no, no.
• 1:02:22
  Speaker C: Just my fantasy. What kind of fantasy you talking about?
• 1:02:27
  Speaker D: Oh, you know, Unicorn, Wizards and shit. Yeah, wizards and shit.
• 1:02:30
  Speaker C: Okay. Yeah.
• 1:02:32
  Speaker D: And then the other. The other big thing I do is at the start of COVID my friend Lewis Dobbin, who I went to Jesuit High with. He's the founder of the band Consortium of Genius. The Cog, who are mad scientists try and take over the world. And we. It's very Morgus. And we started. We started a show because there were no gigs.
• 1:02:55
  Speaker B: Right, right, right.
• 1:02:56
  Speaker D: And so we said, okay, how can we. How can we help out the New Orleans, you know, music scene during this time of no gig? So we started a live streaming show. Now most people would do what the place downtown did and they would just turn a camera on and start hit live stream and then let the band play. Lewis is built differently. Lewis is. Lewis is, you know, he was actually really good friends with Morgus, with Sid Noel.
• 1:03:23
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 1:03:24
  Speaker D: So, you know, so we had to put on a show. So it became a game show where the mad scientist captures the band and they have to play for their lives. And you get donation. We get. And we rack up either donations to the lab or donations to the band.
• 1:03:41
  Speaker B: Sort of a competition.
• 1:03:42
  Speaker D: Yeah, it's a competition. And whoever gets the most money at the end of the. At the end of the show lives.
• 1:03:51
  Speaker C: Right, right, right.
• 1:03:52
  Speaker D: And I think, unfortunately, you were one of the bands that died.
• 1:03:55
  Speaker B: I was, yeah. I went on with not. Not the Iguanas, I think never appeared, but I went on with one of the bands I played in. For whatever reason, it wasn't the. The. The kind of fan base that would respond to something like that. Now, I noticed you. You have a lot of, like, Metairie bands, a lot of heavy metal bands.
• 1:04:16
  Speaker D: Yeah, that's. That's Lewis. Yeah. Lewis is. Is very keyed into the Metairie metal scene.
• 1:04:21
  Speaker B: Right, right.
• 1:04:21
  Speaker D: And my influence is like, you know, the Tin man, the Klezmer All Stars. Happy Talk has just played recently. Malavitas.
• 1:04:30
  Speaker C: Right, right.
• 1:04:31
  Speaker B: Malavitas are. We're big fans of them.
• 1:04:33
  Speaker D: Yeah. A few other talk.
• 1:04:35
  Speaker B: Big fans.
• 1:04:35
  Speaker D: Yeah. A few. A few of the. I try. I. For every four merry metal bands, I. I get to sneak in an Orleans Parish band.
• 1:04:45
  Speaker B: So you guys took a hiatus for a while after Covid kind of subsided, but now you're. You're back in production.
• 1:04:51
  Speaker D: Yeah, we. We take about three months off at the beginning of the year. We're. We. We're. We're thinking about it. But it's every other Sunday night on Escape from the Secret Lab dot com. And it's fun. It's. You know, it's chaos. Sure, sure.
• 1:05:07
  Speaker B: It's nice to have. I played on this record in Switzerland one time, and on one of our nights off, they brought us to the town, like Equipment depot, and about 40 guys showed up with different size cowbells, like these big giant cowbells that you have a clapper in them and you swing them on the side of you and they walk in a circle. But really, to practice walking across the field, which is a tradition on a saints day that you march from your village to the village that has the patron saints church in it. Anyway, it was an excuse for these guys to get together and drink beer and hang out with just the guys. And it was cowbell price practice.
• 1:05:54
  Speaker D: Right, right.
• 1:05:55
  Speaker B: So I. There's many sort of activities that men do or people do.
• 1:06:01
  Speaker C: Yeah.
• 1:06:01
  Speaker B: That I refer to as cowbell practice. Oh, that would be one form of cowbell practice.
• 1:06:06
  Speaker D: Oh, yeah.
• 1:06:07
  Speaker B: Like, this is cowbell.
• 1:06:08
  Speaker D: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We have a. We have a really good time. And I gotta say, you know, I. I was worried that. That we would get a lot of attitude from some musicians and it never happened. Everybody who played it has been really cool. And I mean, it takes place in Lewis's garage, you know, out in Harahan. And it's also a working. It's a working sound studio and a working.
• 1:06:33
  Speaker C: Maybe because they're fucked up musicians.
• 1:06:35
  Speaker D: Maybe.
• 1:06:36
  Speaker C: Maybe high or drunk.
• 1:06:38
  Speaker D: But. Yeah, yeah, maybe. But, you know, it's. It's. It. And I directed. It's an A camera. It's an A camera shoot and I'm. I'm live switching with no script. Yeah, I have it. I have it. Yeah, we have on. On tripods.
• 1:06:56
  Speaker C: You're just popping.
• 1:06:57
  Speaker D: Yeah, Lewis, because Lewis is who he is. He built his own switcher. And it looks like a. It looks like a arcade game. It's got all. It's all arcade buttons. So me, you know, child of the 80s, I love it because I'm all about arcades. You know, I was a big. You know, the fun arcade in Battery was my. My place. Yeah, that was my place. Right, right, right. So. So this was. That's always been fun. So. Yeah, having that switcher has been like. Like a normal person would have bought a switcher. Lewis made his own. That's kind of. That's kind of who Lewis is. But yeah, we may do one more season. Not really sure, but fun. Yeah, we're having fun. And. And right now we're in hell. The places in hell. And I'm playing the landlord, the devil who comes on and tortures. Tortures my little pig.
• 1:07:50
  Speaker C: You're Mr. Roper.
• 1:07:51
  Speaker D: I am.
• 1:07:52
  Speaker B: Screen time.
• 1:07:52
  Speaker D: Yeah, I got. I finally got a little screen time.
• 1:07:55
  Speaker C: That's great.
• 1:07:56
  Speaker B: So. So everybody can look for that on the Escape From Secret Lab YouTube channel and they can find your Dirty magic magazine where dirtymagicmagazine.com okay, there you go. And you have your fourth novel, which. Which is titled what it's called.
• 1:08:13
  Speaker D: It's called Midnight Brew. It's a sequel to my vampire novel Vamp City, which takes place in Los Angeles. Midnight Brew is kind of a. Is a sequel. It's witches versus vampires with some voodoo zombies at the end. It's a. So it's going to. And on November 15, we're having the book release party at Play Parlo Brewery in the Bywater.
• 1:08:37
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 1:08:37
  Speaker C: And self published.
• 1:08:39
  Speaker D: This is self published because.
• 1:08:40
  Speaker C: Through Amazon.
• 1:08:41
  Speaker D: Yeah. Because the. The first novel was published by. By a small press and he just doesn't. Covid kind of ruined him. So I just. Because it was a sequel, I. I didn't think I could sell it anywhere. So I just Decided to just go ahead and publish it, since that's what I do. I publish things now, so.
• 1:08:59
  Speaker B: Well, we'll put the. The. The links to all that stuff in the show notes. Anybody that wants to see any of these things, I'll have the links.
• 1:09:05
  Speaker D: Yeah. Thank you so much. And. Yeah, this has been a blast.
• 1:09:08
  Speaker B: Yeah, man. Well, I hope it. I hope it wound up being everything you'd hoped it would.
• 1:09:12
  Speaker D: I think so. Yeah. Yeah. I was hoping to get interrupted more by Manny, but no, you're.
• 1:09:18
  Speaker C: You're. You're. All right.
• 1:09:20
  Speaker D: Thank you.
• 1:09:20
  Speaker C: All right.
• 1:09:22
  Speaker B: Well, thank you so much, Charlie. It's been a real pleasure. Pleasure having you on. And, Manny, as always, what do we say?
• 1:09:29
  Speaker C: Hey, listen, Charlie Brown. The struggle could. The trouble continues.
• 1:09:34
  Speaker B: Struggle, we say trouble never ends.
• 1:09:37
  Speaker C: Yes, exactly.
• 1:09:38
  Speaker B: But the struggle continues.
• 1:09:39
  Speaker C: Yeah. Good night.
• 1:09:40
  Speaker B: Good night.
• 1:09:41
  Speaker D: Good night.
• 1:09:45
  Speaker A: I smell smoke in the auditorium. Charlie Brown, Charlie Brown He's a clown that Charlie Brown he's gonna get go.
• 1:09:59
  Speaker C: Just you wait and see why is everybody always picking on me?
• 1:10:04
  Speaker A: That's him on his knees I know that's him yelling 711 down in the boys gym Charlie Brown, Charlie Brown He's a clown that Charlie Brown he's gonna get caught just you wait and see.
• 1:10:24
  Speaker C: Why'S everybody always picking on me? Who's always riding on the wall?
• 1:10:31
  Speaker A: Who's always goofing in the hall?
• 1:10:35
  Speaker C: Who's always throwing spitballs?
• 1:10:38
  Speaker D: Guess who who me yeah, you who.
• 1:10:42
  Speaker A: Walks in the classroom cool and slow who calls the English teacher daddy O Charlie Brown, Charlie Brown He's a clown that Charlie Brown he's gonna get caught.
• 1:10:59
  Speaker D: Just you wait and see why is.
• 1:11:02
  Speaker C: Everybody always picking on.
• 1:11:27
  Speaker A: Who walks in the classroom cool and slow who calls English teacher daddy O Charlie Brown, Charlie Brown He's a clown that Charlie Brown he's gonna get come Just you wait.
• 1:11:45
  Speaker C: And see why is everybody always picking on me?