Latest / Reverse Jackass / Ep86: Evelyn’s phone made its theatrical debut; Nick becomes the applause police.

Transcript

Ep86: Evelyn’s phone made its theatrical debut; Nick becomes the applause police. · Reverse Jackass

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's reverse jack folks.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome back to the Reverse Jackass Podcast, the podcast to bring peace between the United States and Canada.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_01: I'm so glad you're here.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_01: My name is Nick.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_01: With me, as always, is Evelyn the Canadian Blade with her air horn.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_01: Can I get an air horn, please?
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_01: That just it brings joy to my heart to hear you play your horn.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: You know.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_01: And it's an Evelyn Day.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's an Evelyn Day.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_01: So hopefully that's not the last air horn you're gonna blow today.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you know, I don't know how to respond to that.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: I wish I could have come in swinging, but I didn't.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: Uh but it is an Evelyn Day, and I have a story that I think you're gonna be able to relate to because it talks about being on stage.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: Remind me, did you do any musicals?
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: You did musicals.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, I did.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, can you?
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, I did.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: Can you tell us some of them?
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: Like, like just what musicals do you have expectations?
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_01: I did Sweeney Todd.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's my favorite one.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's amazing.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_01: That was the first musical I ever did.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_01: What a what a hell of a one to start on.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_01: I did a musical called Baby, which I think was pretty bad, but was very hooked.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Babe is the pig that can start.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: Baby is about is about three babe.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_01: The musical would be way harder to cast in a college situation.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um it had it was about three couples.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, actually, this is sort of a funny story too.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_01: It's three couples.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_01: So there's a a college-aged couple, a young couple, and an and a middle-aged couple, and the middle-aged couple gets pregnant unexpectedly, the young couple can't conceive, and the college-age couple gets conceives unexpectedly, and it's about them and their journey.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it's not very good, uh, but we did it.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_01: And then I didn't know.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: Is there any livestock in it though?
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_01: Is there livestock?
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_01: There is no, unless you consider babies livestock, but even then, there's actually no babies in the in the um in the musical.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's all leading up to the what you're telling me.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: What you're telling me is like baby and babe are equally inadequate titles.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: Equally deceiving titles for this.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_01: Well, babe was the name of the pig.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I think on some level you could argue that and and given that there's no other babe the pigs, like I feel like that was a perfectly adequate title.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_01: Baby is like the broadest thing, and there's no babies in it.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: You said you said babe of pigs, and I the babe of pigs?
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_01: It's just it's just the it's just the hottest Cuban woman you've ever met in life.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: I was just picturing like the bay of pigs, but with like an all pig cast.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_01: Like this is where I'm enacting.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's an enactment of the Bay of Pigs disaster with all pigs.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: With only pigs, yeah.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just imagining a musical about a really beautiful woman, and and Kennedy's there in the front row, and he's just like, Yeah.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_01: Except with that, except with that Massachusetts accent.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know how to do it, but like oh, yeah, yeah.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you're right.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: I'm trying to think of the word like Parker, but with the mat like Paca.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_01: Packer.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: Packer, but yeah.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, this is I can't even tell you how far off the highway we are at this point.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: Like, this is crazy.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, this musical's making me honey.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so you did you did Sweetie Todd, you did I did cabaret, cabaret.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: I did a wonderful life.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, okay.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: That's like that's a that's good.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: That's a good thing.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: Smastering, yeah, smattering, if you will.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I'm thinking back to I did I did a lot of musicals.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: We did two, two or three when I was in high school.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: We did South Pacific, which has aged beautifully, may I add.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: Has it?
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_01: I only I did a in my vocal lessons.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_01: My vocal teacher, who was an opera singer who was the nicest person ever, Kathy A.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_01: Hearn.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_01: If you're out there, I can't imagine you're listening, but I love you and you're wonderful.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: She made me do a song, and I don't remember what the name of the song was, but it was something the whole premise of it was that there's nothing like a dame.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: There ain't nothing like a dame.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing in the world.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: There are no books like a dame.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: There's also a song in there um called I'm gonna wash that man right out of my hair, which every now and then gets um What does that mean?
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you're like you're gonna get rid of him.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: You're just done with him.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna wash that man right out of my hair and send him on his way.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's one way to read it.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: That's one way to sure.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, so we did So Pacific.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: We did the King and I, which was that was that was I think maybe my first experience doing a musical.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I was never on stage, like I was always in the pit, right?
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: Like I was the I was I was always in the mosh pit.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: I was always in the mosh pit.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it doesn't matter if it was a if it was if it was an R Lady Peace concert, a tea party concert.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_01: I love R Lady Peace, what a bull.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: On uh a uh Rogers and Hammerstein concert.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: I was I was throwing myself onto people in this, yeah, that's what I was doing.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_01: It's like there is a castle in the crap, and then in the pit, Evelyn's just fucking taking her earrings off and just throwing people into each other, just shoulder bumping, screaming, yeah.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's so much better than anything I ever did.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_01: That's true.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_01: Gosh, I didn't see what you did, and I know that to be true.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's although I was that was a time in my life when I was wearing an incredible amount of thick black eyeliner.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: So it actually kind of adds up.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: It was just right there, it was right there, and I didn't take advantage of it.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I did a show once, I want to talk about a specific show, and I did um, I was one of the musicians in a production of guys and dolls, and I don't remember anything about the show at all.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: Like it's one of those shows that people say guys and dolls, and like I'm like, oh yeah, yeah, I get it.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: And then no part, like I can't land on any part of the show.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: To me, it is an incredibly forgettable show.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: I was the pianist, I was with a friend of mine who was playing upright bass, and a friend of mine who played a um variety of other things, right?
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: This was at a time when people were trying to do all sorts of new fun things, like have the musicians on the stage.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_01: Uh what what what adds to the visual palette of guys and dolls, like a bunch of orchestra musicians on stage?
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_01: Like, doesn't it just in keeping with the theme of Detroit?
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, maybe.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: I I think in this particular venue, I don't know where else we would have been, if I'm being honest.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's not one, it's not a place that had a pit under the stage.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: Like this was this was a where we put in people.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, we'll just put them, we'll just put them right at the the corner of the stage, and it'll be totally fine.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: So we had a bunch of performances.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: I don't remember how many.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: It was more than one and less than ten.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: Three I get.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it was probably more than one and less than ten.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: Less than three.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: Probably two.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know, I don't know.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember one performance where some number was happening, it was a full house, someone was singing, and all of a sudden a cell phone goes off.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: And this was in the time when um the ringtones were not yet cool or super customizable.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so it was a lot of that like boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boo, boop, boo, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boo.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: Like a lot of that, like, and that terrible midi sound that we had in there with like some harsh kind of like at the you know, it's just it's a it's a real cacophony happening from one small device, ruining our otherwise flawless performance of guys and dolls, our incredibly memorable performance, our statement, guys and dolls, yeah.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: Done, and I think this was like children's theater too, like teen theater.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: So I think we were the only adults in the whole thing was the pit.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: And by the pit I mean the trio of us.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: Meaning that the me the actors were children?
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: It was children acting on guys and dolls, teenagers, yeah.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_01: How about that?
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so the cell phone's going off, and everyone's kind of looking around because it's not stopping.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: It took me exactly two seconds to clock into the fact that it was my cell phone.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_01: Oh no, no, no.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: Because all of our stuff was on stage, kind of behind this like fake wall, this like half wall, you know, or because my purse was on the other side and it was totally my cell phone that was going off.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: In that moment, the only thing I knew how to do was ignore it and pretend I couldn't hear it.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, that's the only I'm glad you chose that, because that's the only play.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_01: The only play is to go, yeah, whose cell phone is that?
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: That's fucked up.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, right.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: But I I think that would have been a good, that would have been a good reaction.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: I think mine was more staring straight ahead and not physically reacting at all.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, well, that's that looks guilty.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: That's a dead giveaway.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: As to guess whose cell phone this is.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's the pianist's cell phone.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: And luckily that was the only call I got that night.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: Ever.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: Ever in my entire life.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I was glad it was in front of 86 people.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I didn't want the credit card ultimately, but it was nice to be remembered.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I wasn't going to switch my cell phone plan.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: It was nice of them to ask.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: So, Nick, I want you to tell me about a time.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: My question for you is just tell me a story about something great that happened during one of the performances you've been a part of.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_01: I I have a I have a handful of great stories, but I'll pick one because it happens to a bad person.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: Is this indirect?
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: Is this the person you hate?
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_01: No, this is a person who was just kind of a shithead.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um, perfect.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_01: I went to college with.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_01: And he had and probably still has one of the most beautiful voices you've ever heard in your life.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_01: Just a stunning, trained yodler, operatic tenor, just a gifted vocalist.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_01: And in this story, I want to be fair to him, and I want to say that like I think he's kind of an asshole, or at least he was in college, but his voice was magnificent.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_01: Is he a tenor?
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_01: He is a tenor.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: You said asshole, and I was like a tenor.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_01: You knew I knew.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's just it's part of the it's part of the gig.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_01: So it was it was in our production of Sweeney Todd, and and he played Tobias.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, okay.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_01: And it was a great role for him because it was right in his range.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_01: In rehearsals for this show, he has this beautiful voice, but he is really struggling with the acting, really struggling to learn his lines.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: He's panicking all the time.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um, he's being a theater kid, he's being really dramatic.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, you know, the you know, I've never had a hundredth of his voice, but of course I'm jealous because we're both freshmen and he gets this incredible role.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_01: And the music part of it, he's doing great, and the acting part of it, he's fucking blowing it.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: Do you think it's because he would only respond when someone walked up to him and said, Ladies and gentlemen, can I have your attention, please?
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_01: Funny that you should bring that up because as you may recall from Sweetie Todd, that is his song in the first act, and that's his song in the second act.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_01: He sings it twice.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_01: The first time he sings it when he is shilling hair oil for Perelli.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it's miracle.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_01: It's piss.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_01: It's pissed with ink.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_01: And in the second act, he is shilling for Sweeney Todd, right?
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_01: But it's the same musical motif.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: I know.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: Beautiful, beautiful analysis can come from this.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's so great.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway, it's a wonderful, wonderful thing.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_01: So we rehearse for months, months and months and months.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_01: And by the end of it, I know all of everybody's parts just because I've been in rehearsals for long enough that I've just heard them over and over again.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_01: And I know everyone's lines.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_01: And again, I'm not I only say this because like it was enough rehearsal, it was not a truncated rehearsal process.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: It was enough rehearsal that everybody was ready or should have been ready.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_01: And every night he's so scared, every night he's like struggling.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_01: And the way the staging of the show works is that in for both of these songs, he's center stage with a crowd of uh fucking company members chorus around him, yeah.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um, watching him as spectators, including me.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_01: And so on one of the nights of the performance, you know, as you said, the first line in both of the songs is ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention, Perlise?
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_01: And the first, the first one is the Perelli thing, and the second one is the sweetie top.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_01: Like the second line is where it changes.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_01: And in the second act, he comes out, it's how the second act starts.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_01: We all gather around him, we're all in a semicircle, he's center stage, spotlight hits him, and he goes, Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention, please?
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_01: And then he says, uh, and he starts to sing the first line from the first act.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_01: Rope rope.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: And he gets totally blindsided, and he trails off and he's lost, and we're all standing in a semicircle watching him be lost, and I see his eyes go wide, and he looks around at all of the chorus members, and he's just silent for what felt like three days, and he goes, Oh shit.
• 13:08
  unknown: No, no.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_01: Well, we can't rescue him.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, he he blanked.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: And were you playing with like a live band?
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, we had a live orchestra.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, okay.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: Not on fucking stage either, you amateur.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, um, yeah, I get it.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_01: And they just vamped.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_01: And he looked for another two weeks and finally he found.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_01: Oh yeah, no, so cool.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_01: And he like finally found it.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_01: He finally found it and got back on it and we worked it out.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_01: And thank God the orchestra director was able to vamp and we figured it out.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_01: But if it happened to anybody else, I would think, oh, what a what a terrible what a terrible thing.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_01: But he was an asshole.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_01: And so to this day, I carry it with me as a delightful thing.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_01: I actually have more stories about that guy, but that is an example of something that happened in the middle of a performance.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_01: Now, I can give you one other story about a time that I sort of made a mistake on stage.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_01: I I do like to improvise.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_01: I try to do it.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I haven't acted in a million years, but I tried to do it responsibly, and I was, you know, I believe that you respect the book and you do the things.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_01: But sometimes stuff on stage happens and you have to improvise, right?
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_01: And so I was in a play called the Caucasian Chalk Circle, which actually was the play that I was in that that horrible asshole directed.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm sorry.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: What was this called?
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_01: The Caucasian Chalk Circle.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_01: It is a Brecht play from the 50s.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: Uh well, that is also a mouth, a tongue twister.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_01: It is, and the play, we had it heavily edited.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_01: The play without editing is many hours long.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_01: It is long, long, long, long, long.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_01: And we edited it down to two hours.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: Edited down to two hours?
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_01: And the word on the street was that it was awful.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_01: Like people did not like this play.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: Do you think because it was marketed as the Caucasian chalk circle?
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_01: The Caucasian chalk circle, you perv.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_01: You just said the Caucasian Cock Circle, and you have to leave that in.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_01: You did.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_01: You were gonna listen, you said that.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_01: You're gonna listen back to this and you're gonna hear yourself, and then you're gonna leave it in because you have to know what you did, and so does this audience.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_01: Is that because it was called the Cock Circle?
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_01: It was Caucasian, it's set in the Caucasus Mountains.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's not, it doesn't have anything to do with your weird Canadian white supremacy.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: So, anyway, I play this character, and it is fortunate that I play this character because he's one of the only likable characters in the show, and he's like kind of a drunkard that gets nominated to be the judge, and he sort of ends up upturning the horrible royalty that's abusing everybody, right?
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_01: And so I had this thing towards the end of the second act where I get to deliver a verdict against an evil rich person, and I get to say, it has to be this way.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_01: If not, there'd be no law and order.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_01: And for whatever reason, the whole two weeks of the show, I am panicking that people are gonna think it's the end of the show and that they're gonna applaud.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't know why I worry about this, but I worry about this a lot that people are gonna think it's the end of the show when we still have 10 minutes left.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_01: And it never happens, except on the very last day, the very last performance is a Sunday matinee, and I get done.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_01: We have what amounts to a triumphant performance of this play that nobody likes, and I say, if I didn't, there'd be no law and order.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_01: And the audience, God help me, started applauding.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_01: No, and they clapped, and it was a fourth wall-breaking show.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_01: And I turned to the audience and said, Could you all wait?
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, you shouldn't.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_01: And they and they stopped.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_01: They stopped even to it kindly, you're like, you know, I mean, it was in character, to be fair, it was in character, but they stopped.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_01: It went, Bah! Like, just stop, and then we finished the show, yeah, and then at the end of it, the stage manager came up and said, Way to yell at the audience for clapping for you.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, Yeah, I don't know what happened to me.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_01: So that was a time where the audience did something really nice, and they yelled at them for it.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: I mean it's pretty cool.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: That's on brand.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: I still brand.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's how I roll.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_01: My friend Joe would tell you that I'm known to single people out in the middle of my performances in a rude way.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, so that's that's I don't know if I satisfied the the prompt, but that's my story.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah, I just knew that you'd have something to share because all sorts of stuff can happen.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: You know, when you're on stage, on the side of the stage, under the stage, underneath the stage.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: I have done a few pits that are under the stage, and it is like a crawl space violent under there.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: It is the craziest stuff happens in a pit band, and it is so awesome.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: Like it is just it's such a bonding experience, it's so different from the experience of the actors.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_01: You make it sound like it's the like it's the fucking gathering of the juggalos, it's an orchestra pit.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_01: You're like, it is I'll never be closer to anyone than I am to my summer camp friends.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: Well, but you're physically in like because the whole point is to take up as little space as possible with your piano, with your piano, and then you have you hire one person who plays the saxophone, clarinet, alto sax, tenor sax, flute, and slide whistle.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: Because then you don't have to hire six different people, right?
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: So you you kind of get like the creative little combo.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: A good friend of mine, someone I taught with, toured did the North American tour of Le Miz.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: Like it was really cool.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_00: He was in the pit for that.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: So the stories he has are insane, and everyone should be sworn to COC.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_01: So much cocaine, just a crazy You just don't you don't even know.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_01: You don't I tell me, is it cocaine?
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_01: Is that what you're I don't know?
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: It was there was no mention of it, but oh I mean you just never know.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_01: You just never know, you just never know.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's a crazy orchestra story.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_01: Careful, folks, multiple Pim's cups will be consumed.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_01: No one's getting in bed before 9:30.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_00: 9:30?
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: That's lameized that second act hasn't even started by then, and a nerdier thing will never be.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_01: We we have broken the land speed record of nerdiness.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, that's the yeah, like a mock three.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: To use a phrase you've used before, that is the top of the mountain right there.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: That's it.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_01: We've ascended.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: Oh man.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Nick, thanks for sharing your failures and others.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's important to be balanced.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_01: May we all live with my failures forever.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: May we, may we all, and you know, as you become friends with Nick, you will learn that to enter into that friendship is to suffer alongside him.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: And that's fine, it's a cross to bear.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: Before we go, let me ask you what is your do you have a favorite number or moment or something from Sweeney Todd, the show itself?
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: Because it's my favorite, and I could talk about it all day, but we're not gonna do that to people.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_01: Do I have a favorite moment?
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, it's all so good.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I gotta say that for me, this is gonna sound like a cop-out, but it's so complex.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_01: There's just for me, it's the it's the little the little phrases or the little harmonies or the little motifs.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_01: It's not that I hear one song and I go, oh my god, no song's better been written that.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_01: It's that I hear all the songs and I go, God damn, every one of these songs is layered.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_01: It's like the way people talk about uh the Beach Boys.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_01: When people talk about good vibrations, I feel like it could be about Steven Sondheim.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_01: And just the fact that anyone has the ability to write music as well as Steven Sondheim does, and can also write Ligur like Steven Sondheim, feels like like one of those Magnus Carlson level of gifts.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_01: Like, how does anybody have that many gifts in one human?
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_00: He is he is an insane.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_00: I think this is maybe the musical thing you and I will agree on most is that Steven Sondheim is like the goat.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: The guy, yeah.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: He is the guy.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: I've never heard a piece that he has written that I don't like and and not just like, but just am impressed by.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: Like you're right, his lyricism, his like his music writing, what he demands of a performer, but also it is just this fantastic musical experience.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: We did um when I was in teachers' college, the cohort every year does a show.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: We did Into the Woods, and which is another great show, and we had a lot of really good performers in the faculty that year.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: I was one of the pianists.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_00: We had two pianists, one that did more of like the synth part and maybe the fill-in kind of parts, and then I was I did the main piano part, and I actually played from the I think I've referred to this before, like an orchestral reduction.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_00: So it's not just the piano part, you're playing all the orchestra parts, and then it's just it's bigger, like it's it's just so much more, but it fills in everything so much better.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: And let me tell you, is that Sondheim was not kind to his instrumentalists.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_00: He demanded excellence and and he demanded that you pay attention, but it's so worth it because it's just such a such an immaculate musical experience.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_00: Like the pieces like that, they're just so cheeky and so fun.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_00: And they're so there's Easter eggs everywhere.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: Like you can just kind of you know dig around and then brood around in them, and the music compliments the lyricism, and the lyricism complements the music, and it's just this such a wholesome experience that it makes going to see something that's any less than that just it feels unfulfilling for me anyway.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: Case in point, baby, case in point, the babe of pigs, the musical now y ahora, babe, el puerco en la ciudad.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_01: That's the sequel.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: Cool.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_00: To baby or babe?
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_01: To babe.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, okay.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_01: No, baby's sequel would be some interminable um toddler, adolescent, yeah, toddler would be toddler.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it would be called sleep training.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_01: And that one couple that couldn't conceive and baby would be slowly getting resentful of each other, like it would just start getting angrier and angrier.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_00: I actually might be more interested in that.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: It just sounds like it has more teeth than the other than the first one.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I want to see some human emotion here.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to and you said it leads all it all leads up to the birth.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_00: Like, why isn't this called like dilation or crowning?
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we just couldn't we just couldn't stage a birth.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_01: We just were humble college production.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_01: There was an act three, there's a third act that um that you know involved a lot of afterbirth.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um a lot of screaming more than singing.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um more blood than Sweeney Todd.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_01: More blood than Sweeney Todd.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, Mrs.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_01: Lovett's C section.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, yeah.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's nasty, first of all.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's pretty nasty.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um but it's no, it's no nastier than letting your cell phone go off on stage.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_01: That's the nastiest of them all.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: That is the grossest thing we've talked about here.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um Nick.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_00: Nevlin, take us home.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I was gonna okay, fine, fine.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_01: Because I have another story about baby that I want to tell you, but I has to be off the air.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, okay, fair.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, everyone, thank you so much for listening.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for being here with us.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for pressing play.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you to those of you who have who have subscribed to this podcast.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_00: If you haven't subscribed, no thanks to you.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: But you can do something about that.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_00: You can subscribe to this, you can get your little notifications every time a new episode comes out, which is Tuesdays and Thursdays, by the way, and has been since January 1st.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: So get off your lazy butts, and I'm gonna yell at you just like Nick yelled at the audience.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_00: Like, just do better.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_01: Do better do better, do better, do better, do better.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_00: Some neighbors are besties, others quarrel bitterly.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_00: Stuck together through geography.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_00: One of us has nukes, and the other has tokes.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's American Canadian diplomacy, it's reverse.