Muse

Through our ceremonies and our rituals, we have witnessed firsthand the awesome and vibratory power of color. We experience it as alive, and we believe that this saturated energy is the basis of all creation.

this is not an occult science this is not one of those crazy systems of divination and astrology that stuff's hooey and you got to have a screw loose to go in for that sort of thing arts our beliefs are fairly commonplace and simple to understand humankind is simply materialized color operating on the 49th vibration you would make that conclusion walking down the street or going to the store tbtl love it or hate it it appears to be another irreversible step

along mankind's journey toward god only knows what hey i've learned a lesson here but i hope

you all have too about the vitality of shared experience we will all remember this moment for the rest of our lives it was dramatic it was visual it was stupid it was stupid but it was also theater. This is the real thing. This is the necessary art of our time. This needs

respect. Okay, are we done with the business part? I wanted to start the clown portion of the meeting. Well, all right. Hello, good morning, and welcome, everyone, to a Tuesday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. There ain't nothing like soup. My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host. You paint your bald spot? One bald But coming to you from the Madrona Hill studio perched high above the mighty Columbia. We've got the fog. Sort of a mixed bag of fog and clouds, but no rain yet. So that's a positive here as we've arrived at episode four thousand five hundred and ninety five in a collector series. Let the fun begin. And we've got something real special for you on this Tuesday. Well, first of all, we don't have an Andrew Walsh. He is still out of town. He'll be back tomorrow. Looking forward to that. But in his stead is, I would say, a pretty good fill in. And that would be Jeff Hiller, the star, one of the stars of Somebody, Somewhere, and also the author of the book Actress of a Certain Age, the memoir Actress of a Certain Age. And really, I think one of the sort of breakout comedic performers of the last few years. um he will be our special guest on the show today so that is kind of a cool thing uh what happened was jeff uh was in town to uh be on live wire and but that was at night and it was daytime and i thought we have a jeff hiller loose in portland and we cannot not take advantage of that so i slid into his dms i'd actually been in his dms so i guess i just stayed slid in the dms and asked if he would consider being on TBTL, and he was nice enough to say yes. And so we were able to have a chat, and it was really fun. It was very casual. It was in the restaurant there at the Heathman Hotel. By the way, shout out to the folks at the Heathman Hotel, okay, in Portland, Oregon. Not just the place where the Fifty Shades of Grey people have all kinds of wild times together. I believe that, I don't know if it's the book or the movie or both of them. I think that, I think it's set there at the Heathman. I haven't actually, I'm not allowed to watch or read any of that yet until I'm 50. Then I'm, I just realized maybe that's what they mean. You have to be 50 before you can read that book or watch the movie. But anyway, that's all at the Heathman Hotel, but I don't, I don't want to talk about that. I want to talk about how nice they were to me at the Heathman Hotel for this recording. I showed up there with like a S.G. Goodman tote bag. S.G. Goodman, by the way, is a fine, fine musician out of, I believe, Kentucky. But I had an S.G. Goodman tote bag with like a couple of microphones and all my little gear in it.

And let's just be honest, I didn't look like the height of professionality. Professionalism? I don't think professionality is a word. and I went up to the front desk at the Heathman and I said, hi, I'm a radio host and I'm doing an interview with someone here at your hotel and could I use a conference room? Because I thought it might be a little forward to ask Jeff Hiller, who I'd never met in real life before if we could have a casual recorded conversation but if it could be in his hotel room that seemed like a lot so I was trying to find a safe space where we could have this convo and they were

very nice at the front desk but they after checking around they basically said um all of the conference rooms are booked right now there's people everywhere but you maybe the restaurant can help you i was thinking that doesn't sound like a very hospitable place to have a podcast recording but i went over there to the restaurant of the heathman hotel and i asked i'll also mention this it was the guy was a server who i first approached and he's running around hustling he's got tables He's got customers to take care of, and he's sprinting around, running around, and I said, hey, I need to do a radio interview here, and that was all I had said. I need to do a radio interview here, and he said, oh, yeah, you know, actually a perfect place for that would be way in the back. We've got this little kind of back area that we're not seating anyone. It's kind of cozy. I said, oh, that would be incredible. He said, yeah, just go ahead and take that over. this also tells you I guess how common this kind of stuff is whether it's radio you probably know I meant podcast let's be honest we are men of honor lies do not become us this shows you how typical podcast recordings are in the world you could walk up to a harried server at a restaurant and say I need to do a podcast go back to the podcasting room for that so I go back there I'm nervously setting up my stuff because Emmy winner Jeff Hiller is on his way down to meet me and I and I already realized this is not going to look super professional. It's like my laptop. It's a couple of microphones. Dumb microphones don't even match. Like I have one kind of microphone. He's got another kind of microphone. And then I realized the Muzak was playing kind of loudly. And so I went back to this kind-hearted, incredible server at the Heathman Hotel who was already letting me set up shop in the restaurant. And I said, is there any chance you could turn the Muzak down just in the room that we're in, just in the area that I'm going to be in. And he said, I think I could do that. Let me see. And then I'm back there and I'm setting up my little stuff still and I'm hearing the music and I'm thinking, I don't know what I'm going to do because I can't ask Jeff Hiller if we can go in his room. I mean, I could, but it would be inappropriate that all the conference rooms are full. This music is going to make this possibly unusable. And then all of a sudden, just like magic, the Muzak went away. And we were able to do this interview at the Heathman Hotel. So shout out to the fine folks there for being very accommodating and nice. Shout out also to Jeff Hiller. If you don't know who Jeff Hiller is, where you've been, maybe you haven't been listening to much TBTL because we have been, at least I have been obsessed with the TV show Somebody Somewhere. It's an HBO show. It's not TV, folks. It's HBO. Although, as I think about it, they always told us it's not TV, it's HBO. But then they stopped being HBO for a while and tried to be Max. Does that mean we can start calling it TV? if none of us are sticking with whatever our names were supposed to be or not be. Anyway, the show Somebody Somewhere stars Bridget Everett,

the fabulous cabaret performer from New York and other places, as this character named Sam who is back in Manhattan, Kansas, where she grew up, because her sister has died quite unexpectedly, and she's there to kind of, I don't know, try to deal with this grief and I guess help her family out a little bit. her parents are both getting older and are going through problems and she's got a sister that is alive that she's not very close to and she's just in that moment that people find themselves in in adulthood where your grown-up life does not look exactly the way you thought your grown-up life was going to look and I think this happens for all of us to one degree or another you know when you're a kid you think about I don't know you just have your hopes and dreams and you think everybody thinks they're going to be a professional athlete or a famous rock and roll singer or famous writer or something maybe it doesn't all revolve around fame maybe that was just my particular hang up but like people find themselves in that moment where their grown-up life does not look like the way they thought their grown-up life was going to look and sam's character is in that moment back in manhattan kansas just trying to kind of figure it out and she bumps into this guy named Joel, who's never left the town, and who was in show choir with her back when they were in high school, back when she was kind of the star of the show choir, because she's like a phenomenal singer. But she made a really big impression on him. He did not make as big of an impression on her. She's kind of, at first, like, kind of doesn't even know who he is, doesn't remember him. But they become friends, and then they become really good friends, and then they become kind of each other's people. And this is something that I think is so amazing about this show, Somebody Somewhere. And I, not to name drop, but I know that this isn't just speculation for me because I've actually talked to Bridget Everett about this at length. But she wanted to make a show that demonstrated a kind of important primary relationship in life. with someone that is not necessarily romantic. Basically, she wanted to put forward the idea that sometimes your person can be someone you're friends with. I mean, your person, it can look like a lot of different things. If this was a different kind of show that was in less capable hands, the takeaway would have been, Sam's just got to find love, and that'll fix all her problems. This is not that show. This is a show about how you can find a person that you really need in all kinds of different ways and in all kinds of different forms, and that's one of the things that is just so beautiful about it. Um, so Joel and Sam become friends. I thought I would just play this little clip. Now, listen, if you, if you know the show, somebody somewhere, you've probably, you know, you've seen this, uh, watched it, listened to it, whatever. If you haven't though, this is maybe new to you. And I figure if you have, if you are familiar with this, you won't mind hearing it again. This is just Joel. This is a sampling of their relationship. This is Joel and Sam just having a chat on somebody somewhere.

Shit. This is getting real, huh?

It really is. What's your dream wedding?

Oh, I'm so glad you asked.

I don't know. Okay, I'll go first. I think it'll be in a church, of course. And it would be this cute little church that I grew up in. And it's very tiny and sort of, like, surrounded by fields. And so it would be intimate and just close family and friends. And I would wear something really cute, you know? Just festive. But not, like, white or bridal, because you gotta keep them guessing. You gotta keep them guessing. And I would walk down the aisle to the song Gloria by Laura Brannigan. And, of course, in my childhood, I dreamed that I would fly her in to sing it. But now, I have you.

Oh, it's all. You can't touch Brannigan. You can touch Brannigan. No Barbara, no Judy, no Brannigan.

Come on.

Gloria, Gloria. Oh. I think they've got your number. Gloria, I think they've got the alias. Gloria, that you've been living under But you really don't remember Was it something that they said? All the voices in your head Calling Gloria Shake em! Gloria, Gloria I think I got to remember Gloria

So what about you? Oh i spent so much time trying to figure out where to cut that clip like where in bridget everett singing of that laura brannigan song i should duck out of the tape and i couldn't find a place because it's so joyful and i love it so much and i love them and their relationship it's just a phenomenal phenomenal show that i cannot recommend highly enough and i will stop going on and on about it because now i will go on and on for a moment about jeff hillers uh memoir which is called Actress of a Certain Age and it's basically about his early life in Texas and then his 20s 30s and 40s trying to kind of make it in the world of entertainment and really not having a lot of success now he was making his way onto certain shows he would you'd see him quickly as the flight attendant on Will and Grace or something you know he was on 30 Rock for like a scene he's done a lot of shows for like one scene which is cool except it doesn't that pays you for one day of work that's not unless you're somehow stacking up one day scenes all year long you can't really make a living doing that you don't get health care it's this kind of sort of liminal state of being in the entertainment business which is where he was for many many years and at times even sort of toyed lightly with the idea of maybe getting into like going to grad school or doing something else but then when he was in his mid 40s he got this email from bridget everett saying hey we're gonna shoot this pilot and um it's for this tv show it doesn't really pay anything the pilot but i was wondering if you would read for it and he did and he got the role of joel and um then the show got three seasons and i guess it had i it's weird i bet you this is how you feel as a tbtl listener i bet you feel like um well actually i don't know we spend a lot of time telling you that nobody listens to TVTL so maybe you're well aware of it but like there's this phenomenon that happens I think when you like something a lot that is a very niche product that you one can tend to overestimate the general awareness of it and I think that's kind of my relationship with the show Somebody Somewhere because I just think oh everyone knows about this show it's so good but I think it's actually kind of a pretty niche product and so it was kind of remarkable when jeff hiller was nominated for an emmy and by the way the good kind of emmy like the real one like a prime time i mean not the one that i got like behind me these daytime emmys which are like honestly i don't even know what i could get for scrap for those things but he gets nominated for an emmy and from this little show that not that many people are watching i guess and then

wins against like a bunch of incredible comedic actors and also for some reason i think harrison ford was nominated totally insane but um he ends up winning the emmy and he gives this really beautiful really funny speech take a listen to this okay and the emmy goes to jeff hiller by the way i absolutely love the walk-up music

first Emmy win and nomination for Jeff Hiller because this is the music from the show

which is what they do but it sounds like a cartoon elephant walking to the stage

I feel like uh I'm gonna cry because uh for the past 25 years I've been like world I want to be an actor and the world's like maybe computers and i just want to say uh you know thank you to hbo for putting a show about sweaty middle-aged people on the same network as the sexy teens of euphoria uh thank you to um the duplass brothers and carolyn strauss and hannah boz and paul thoreen who wrote a show about connecting and and love in this time when compassion is seen is a weakness and thank you to my sweet husband and my family for never laughing at me and most of all thank you Bridget Everett you changed my life and you told so many people to believe in

themselves and they do thank you so that's Jeff Hiller winning his Emmy and that's about all you need to know about this person we are about to hear from so without further ado Jeff Hiller welcome to tbtl thank you so you and i were texting uh trying to set this up we're in the way back of the restaurant at the heathman hotel in portland i know but there must be like some i mean you can hear the the hash that's being slung i know but i think kind of in a fun way don't you think this is like look out ira glass you're not the only one with an omnidirectional microphone and a dream we were trying to set this up and you said okay but first i've got to go on my jog. And I'm just wondering, like, you're a pretty tall individual. Yeah. Pretty recognizable now. Emmy winner. When you jog around Portland, you get an attention or people not a single soul

recognize. Maybe that was just because they're respectful or maybe they just didn't know who I

was. Is that the kind of thing now for you where it's still kind of fun when people know who you are or are you at the point now where like you'd much rather just be able to go about your life in

peace generally speaking no i am completely able to go about my life in peace generally speaking and um i like it when people recognize me i think it's because i you know it's not like people are coming up and being like say you talking to me you know they're like you don't have a catchphrase exactly they're just like i love the show you seem nice that kind of a thing so it feels great

The thing is about ever admitting that maybe someone's recognizing you is that you then open up the possibility that they're totally not and you are going to look so conceited. So awful. It's just that for, you know, and I'm I'll never get to the Jeff Hiller Heights, but even in my little micro celebrity, it keeps me from ever somebody could be, I don't know, crawling into my lap telling me that they like love the show. And I would still, it would kill me to admit that they were aware of me because, again, the chance of saying or thinking that they know who I am when they don't, I would die from that.

And lately, several people have asked me, are you who I think you are? And I'm like, I'm not falling for that trick. It's a loaded question. Exactly. I don't know who you think I am. What if you think I'm Chris Colfer? I don't know.

We have a rule on this show, this podcast, to the listeners that if they see us in public, they have to identify themselves. And the reason is, A, because my fragile ego needs it, and B, because I am often acting wildly inappropriate. And if I know that someone there is aware of me from my job stuff, I will act a lot better. What I don't ever want to be is observed in the world.

Without knowing you're being observed. exactly yeah that i do fear because i do feel like people don't necessarily come up and say stuff to me but but they still clock you every once in a while and that part i am like oh god what if i'm picking my nose or right my wedgie or i'm not worried about like getting drunk and going crazy i'm more worried about like yeah like i'm gonna fart who's gonna hear you're not a person

who seems like you've ever had a

thing with drinking right you write in the book it was more cookies yes exactly that's really my

issue yeah yeah well because i mean i i do drink but like i don't drink like joel on somebody

somewhere drinks he drinks a lot more than i do more teenies yeah like for him than you like i

did hard liquor last night and my watch was like what have you done your your stats are all off

your fitness watch exactly your aura ring was not liking it it's like girl calm down and it's true

i was like as i was drinking this and i was like oh my god i feel like i'm already drunk but people i did an improv show at this really fun place in portland called kickstand comedy oh yeah they're great and then they they were very kind and they bought me a drink after and

it's just a lot yeah they're big on that i helped them out with a thing this summer at a park where like 5 000 people came out to the comedy show yes and i'm not a stand comedian by training yeah i

was supposed to do that because that was when i was originally doing kick yeah stand or live wire yeah i was going to do that too but i didn't i had to fill in for you at the last minute it didn't go

well no what i realized was like stand-up comedy i know you're talking about improv last night but like i stand in front of crowds and i say my little stuff but to really be a stand-up comic who can kind of like control the room and and like it is such a skill and an art that you really develop over time that just me wandering out there going like hey it's luke from live wire wasn't it was not cutting it but the point is afterwards they all want to do shot they want to do a big shot to celebrate the end of the season but i had to drive home so i had to politely decline but they sound like a pretty rowdy bunch yeah you all they were really

nice one of them her name was mariah and i said oh like this singer and she goes yeah i was named after her and i was like whoa and then she was like 30 i was like holy shit would you put that

mtv cribs with mariah up there in the pantheon of maybe greatest tell and are you familiar with

yes i am i mean i'm more familiar with like that new year's eve special or they're like i don't know her uh-huh but i do i do remember the cribs and i was into i think maybe for us straights

that was the first view into the truly let's just say um unique mind of mariah carey because you know i liked the songs that i had heard and stuff i wasn't clocking her super closely and then i see that she's like in a bathtub holding a folder full of fan mail while mtv there's filming it i was like all right she's living her life she absolutely is i mean good for her god the amount of money she must be making off of that all i went for christmas song oh i know and

every year every year i'm not tired of it yet are you neither it's so good it's so good i love it

it it really it sort of ushers in the season for me but i'm that one and the darling love one oh yeah yeah christmas that's my impression of phil specter's wall of sound did it work yeah

i i was blown away yeah you were like i was at a beatles concert it was like a wall of sound

came after you it did um some of the i mean there's so much in the book uh by the way the book is called actress of a certain age but i i loved it so much but the stuff about you growing up really christian resonated with me because i also grew up very very christian well in northern california on a religious commune for a while and then in seattle what was the religion it was evangelical so what it was was like it sounds like you went to a fairly progressive kind of lutheran situation right but every time you ended up in the wrong place like the wrong summer camp yeah or the place that you were staying the commune as you call it yeah that was a little more skewing towards speaking in tongues yes my life was all that stuff wow like i always used to joke that it wasn't because my dad was the pastor of the church and my my like sort of joke slash the real thing is it was like it wasn't that they were against taking up serpents they just didn't know where to get any serpents but you talk about like speaking in tongues in in the book that must

have blown your mind it did it did and also just like how people would say like we have to accept christ into our heart and stuff and like you know protestants don't do that so it was very much like i was a little bit afraid of it but i also was like i love to join i love to join anything i will join a cult like i would join a cult so i have to be careful yeah you're talking about being

a little left out of the what was it nexium yes i did not get asked to join the nexium cult which

whatever it's fine um but uh yeah i do feel like um i when i was there i wanted to be a part of it you know

I mean, I didn't ever like speak in tongues. I never like figured out how to do that or whatever. But I was so like, oh, this is some beautiful spiritual thing that you're doing. And I want you to have this moment and I want to support you. And but it was a little weird.

We had a thing, me and my sisters, I'm the oldest of seven kids. We would do impressions of how people would speak in tongues in the church at Gospel Outreach Christian Fellowship. because it turns out it's actually very hard to create a truly unique and non-repetitive yes exactly like made up sound yes so the so it's like you know so it'd be like shidi akodia shidi akodia shidi akodia be like tim nabukowski

that's so funny that you did impressions of people's spirits speaking in tongues

because everyone just had their go-to right and we were just kids just like listening endlessly every sunday for hours and hours so our church was was really like into some pretty again both hardcore and i would say questionable theology but like our church was hung up on this idea that in the bible it somehow says that like the speaking in tongues is a language between the person doing it and god and no one is supposed to interpret it so sometimes somebody would get up there'd be like a breakdown like after worship just kind of like a long noodling do they do that

at the lutheran church yes they do that not not speaking in tongues no yes they'll have like a kind of a it's almost like a coffee a fellowship hour or like a you know you're just like hanging

out and as you leave the church oh no no this is like the worship service we've ended the part of this worship service where the formal songs have been played and we're singing but now the music's still going and now everyone's just kind of vibing we haven't gotten to the sermon yet and it's like oh and then people just are kind of sing-songing and it's like the the band just kind of like going over musically just like a repetitive extended jam of whatever the song was and it'd be like lord we just by the way you really zeroed in on something else in the book about the overuse of the word just they always use it dear lord jesus we just come before you right now lord jesus and we just ask you lord that you would just lord you would bind on earth what is bound in heaven lord and you would just you would loose on like just is it's this weird

verbal crutch it is that evangelicals really use and jesus too like yeah like yeah a mantra yeah

yeah or different ways to address jesus uh lord and heavenly father for jesus or like there's somebody has out a thesaurus other things you could call jesus um all in all though it seems like you have a pretty good even though it sounds like you're not really practicing you don't go to church every day or anything but um it sounds like you were not particularly traumatized by the experience of being in church a lot like you kind of you took good stuff from it and you left

behind the stuff that didn't work for you yeah and and I met I met so many people who are like just the coolest people who are like pro-social justice pro-feeding the hungry pro-loving everyone you know and and nothing like the you know sort of the the mainstream view of what christians are which is really christian nationalism or whatever they're right you know or white nationalism really um and these are not that these are like crunchy funky kind warm compassionate human beings yes who uh you know believe in a higher power i mean like i don't make fun of people who believe in astrology so why am i gonna make fun of the the only the problem that is such an Aries thing to say well that's weird because I'm not I'm a

Sagittarius dang it I had a one in 12 chance actually I don't know how many how many signs there are you read my book you know I'm a December birthday oh that's true oh I sure do because we are both right now as we record this 49 years old oh and when are you may okay so you've got a couple they'll be just we're gonna go out of sync for like a few months but don't worry I'll be right back with you at big five oh how are you feeling about that by the way oh i mean

i have to tell you compared to what happened what i was feeling when i turned 40 yeah i'm really i'm

good i mean big big decade for it was a big decade for for jeff hiller really it was just a big like

last two or three years because the first the first part of the 40s were pretty uh i'd say

average to below average so you're yeah i mean that's going into 50 but having had the the last few years that you've had with everything with the tv show and the book and the emmy congratulations

thank you um yeah that's got to put some wind in your sails yeah it it does and it and it also i think when i turned 40 i was like oh well it passed and it didn't happen so it's never going to happen yeah like i have to pack it in and not live anymore because i didn't i didn't catch the train.

35 and um and now i realize that's dumb yeah yeah the book is so interesting to me because

it's not just it's not really the story you i don't want to give too much away but there's i think you're fine the point is like it's it's not like i sort of thought oh i bet you that somebody somewhere was the last helicopter out of saigon for you you know it's that or nothing and then you write in the book you're like it might have felt that way but also you weren't gonna quit acting you would have been it was it's too fundamental to who you are yeah and so you would have kept going for things and still you'd be doing it you know i mean it's so great to have

had something that people really connected to to win an award it's amazing but it's not it can't

that can't be the reason why you do it because that's easy to say now that's now that you have

it well yeah but but in a way it's like um i didn't need it because i kept going even without that for so long yeah um without you know people are like sometimes other people will be like but you worked a lot and i was i would work like two or three days a year and then i would teach improv and hope i'd get a commercial or something like that but it wasn't really and that fed me i did improv for free and that fed me i did stand up and i would make you know 15 a show and that fed me i mean it didn't pay it didn't feed me like it paid for my food

emotionally it fed you my artistic soul yeah and you had a podcast i did i did and that's why i

feel like i always have to say yes to anyone who asked me to be on a podcast i know this is probably

triggering for you now that you're like wait i have an emmy and now i'm in this restaurant talking

to a guy who's recording it on his laptop oh listen this is not even close to the worst podcast i've been on not even close what's the um i had to stop like sometimes people just ask me to be on their podcast like over social media and i had to stop because i've gotten so burned oh no by just like people who can't you know who are just not ready to be a host

right like their their sort of um their reach exceeds their grasp as far as as far as what they are hoping to do versus what they're able to actually do in the conversation and things like

that yeah um i and i just don't have time it's like well yeah it takes up a lot of time well

Well, and again, I don't want to keep like sort of going back to this, but it's like you have to be very, very busy these days with I mean, you're promoting the book. You're shooting a lot of stuff now. I'm sure that your agents are burning the candle at both end. Like it's got to be a huge thing to have like all the stuff come with the show and the Emmy and everything. Right.

Yes. I mean, you know, my manager, when I got nominated, which was like a huge shock, no one had predicted it. It was not, I was, when I say I was surprised, I mean, I was genuinely surprised. Like, I had to do all these interviews with awards experts who would be like, how did this happen? I mean, no one thought that would happen. And so, and he was like, like, he cried when I got nominated. And then he was like, being nominated is enough. It is enough. You have already won. Just the fact that you're in this tier, it's so huge. And then when I won, he was like, yes. And I was like, I thought being nominated was enough.

So he had a lot of faith in you, obviously. Yeah. But yeah, you must be super duper busy now. So thank you for, you know, slumming and doing this podcast. I do want to talk about your, I want to talk about your.

I'm just in Portland today. I'm not doing.

I want to talk about your podcast so that you did have, which was called Touche. Yes. But you wanted it to be called, and we can say this because this is on the internet. Okay. It was it was supposed to be called. Well, can you set up a little bit of what what it was a reference to? Because I first set it up. And then I want to ask if as a cis straight man, if it is appropriation for me to use this, because I love this term.

Well, I don't know if I'm the I'm the person that can condone whether or not you can use it. But so our show was about mid-career actors who still have to have day jobs and you're over 40 and and you still want to be an actor. but it it has really great like you have a lot of like zeal and zest when you're in your 20s and and even in your 30s you're like yes yes but somehow once you cross 40 it's like oh my god this is exhausting and my friends all have washers and dryers and dining rooms and i live in a tiny apartment and so we made a show about that and we thought thematically or themically i've learned the word thematically is not no themic is not a word thematically is okay Shoo. I was just doing a lot of retrospective feeling bad.

So there's a term that dancers use on Broadway after a day when they had a matinee and a night performance. And it's like a term that just means like I'm worn out. It's rough. I'm feeling hot.

I want to say to the listeners, if you are in the car with kids, which is about 80% of our demo, they're about to learn. They're about to learn something.

All right. Sorry, kids. I'm going to rocket you into a new world. But they call it two-show pussy.

Which is just things are not fragrant down there because of the physical exertion.

Because of all the sweating from kicking your face for two full shows.

You said also there are, you know, male dancers, you know, male performers that will also use this in the theater.

Yes, it's primarily used by gay men.

Well, that's what I was asking you to be a bridge between the women who say it, the gay men who say it, and the guys like me who have no business saying it. I wanted to get my...

I don't know. Maybe we've had enough. It's like you can call certain people certain things as long as you can tell from the tone if it's meant joyfully. Maybe just don't do it.

Yeah, you know what? I mean, this is something that we, because the usual co-host of the show is another, like, straight white male, and we've been doing the show for a long time, and we've done it through a lot of different, you know, kind of.

Right, for 17 years, you can't do it both every day.

Oh, yeah. Well, five days a week. Oh. Yeah.

Is that it?

Yeah, but just, we take the Sabbath off. Unless my ox falls into a ditch, and then I am allowed to pull it out. I don't know how into Sabbath law y'all got there at the Lutheran school, but. You know, all I know is Jesus said, it's Sabbath is for you, not you for the Sabbath. There you go. But we've, you know, we, and, and it's been a journey to just try to figure out how to talk about things. And also the kind of language that we use and the kind of, you know, the way we, and, and what we always come back to is like, if there's something that we were saying or that we used to say, and it made someone feel not great. It's like, do, how important is it to us to say this? I know. Like, what hill do I want to die on the hill of saying some term that, like, I don't mean it to bum someone out, but it is. And there's a bunch of other terms. Right. That I could use.

It's that knee jerk defense mechanism where you're like, I was doing that. So I know I'm going to just double down and make it even worse when when you could just be like, oh, God, I'm sorry.

Yeah. OK, I'll pick something else. Yeah. One show. Yeah. You know, something dignified.

You know, the one that I am really having a hard time is I always say that's so crazy and someone said, oh, they don't really like that. Yeah. I'm trying to say that's so wild. Oh, yeah. That's a good fix. But I I do have a problem continually going back to it, which I feel, you know, because I'm with you. I'm like, I don't need to say that. But it does take a little practice.

Wild sounds actually more fun. If you can retrain your brain to say, I mean, that's also, it's nice when you can slide something else in that is not bumming someone out and is fun to say. Exactly. You know, we got really hung up on something that started out. I don't, I'm, I'm not strictly a vegetarian, but I'm kind of mostly don't eat a lot of meat. I have this thing that I kind of call intrusive animal empathy. If I start thinking about like an animal being cold. yeah just like i'll just be in bed and i'll be like oh my god there's a cow somewhere that is so cold it just like could ruin my night so yeah so you know beautiful pita's whole thing thank you thank you i don't like to throw the word hero around but but like you know pita put out this list one time of things that they wanted people to start saying instead of like i don't know if you'd call them idioms or little statement like little things that we have all said for our whole life that are kind of you actually take them apart you go look oh that's kind of mean to an animal right now we started saying these things because we thought they were obviously ridiculous right but now we can't even say the old thing because we're stuck on the ridiculous ones such as that you're not supposed to say beat a dead horse you're supposed to say feed a fed horse you're not supposed to say i don't have a dog in this race in this fight i don't have a dog in this fight which also i don't know how many people were saying that but now we started to say i don't have a dog on this flight which i think somehow morphed into i don't have a dug on this flight oh and you're not wait you're not supposed to say this is the best one you're not supposed to say kill two birds with one stone oh you're supposed to say i don't mean to feed two birds with one scone which is so much more fun to say Thank you.

Yeah, but I don't think it has the same, it doesn't sound the same to me. It sounds the opposite to me.

You know, well, yeah, I guess if you think of killing two birds with one stone, it's like I'm getting two things done.

Uh-huh. Oh, I see.

Maybe, but you're right.

So I'm feeding two birds with only one scone. One scone.

But I will tell you, a word of warning, it is a real conversation stopper. Whereas you might say, hey, you know, let's just kill two birds with one stone. We'll do the thing while we're on the other thing. If you say, hey, let's just feed two birds with one scone, whoever you're talking to is like are you having an aphasia was your podcast did you get traction i mean you're such a delight i would have to imagine

that people liked the show uh it was just so niche and it was kind of i mean i know everybody everyone says that everyone has a podcast now but really even in 2017 everybody had a podcast

yeah and so there's a lot of a lot of noise out there yeah i think like the people who listen to us were actors over 40 uh-huh and that was kind of it would you ever i mean would you ever do another podcast now that you i mean spotify would probably pay you a bunch of dough um is that even a conversation that your that your management ever comes to you like okay because your celebrity

level is here now and there's some money in that yeah well apparently there's not any money in

podcasting tell me about it look where we are this is humiliating um i am i did have a company

come to me but i just i want to make it something that i that i'm interested in doing every week i don't want to do something where i'm like ugh i have to go record this dumb podcast i want it to be something that like feeds me too because it's possibly with one scone from it exactly i'm not gonna get rich from it i don't want to i don't want to spend a lot of time doing something

that i don't love well my unsolicited advice to you as an emmy award winner who had their own podcast already yeah um definitely don't let them ever try to and i don't think you would talk you into some sort of generalist it's like it's going to be about movies or it's going to be i feel like oh yeah i always call this narrow casting i'm a big fan of and also honestly i'm incapable of broadcasting it's always pretty narrow but that's so much more fun in my experience Like, I just like talking about the stuff that I want to talk about. And whenever you're meeting with executives or like people that don't host podcasts or shows, they're always just like they want it to be all things to all people. And I always just think it's so much better. I mean, that I think kind of really. Well, I was going to say.

Wait, so wait. Are you saying I should narrow cast? Yes, you should narrow cast. Right. So I should be like, I want to talk about movies that are horror movies from the 80s or something like that.

Directed by one director. i want you to get down to like the most west craven podcast thank you that's probably already

done it's gonna be more obscure than that it's gonna be more obscure i was gonna say though

that like in a way that brings me back to somebody somewhere except one of the things about the show that i have found so incredible is that like i have recommended it to a such a wide range of people my evangelical parents who loved it they binged it i was going somewhere for work they were staying at my house because i think they're trying to get squatters rights it's a whole thing they are at my house constantly my mom will hear this by the way because she also listens to the show i the other day i complained that every time my parents come over they move everything in my house by one inch it's like a psychological torture and then i was talking to them on the phone today and my mom goes well i promise we won't move everything by one inch when we come over i was like you were listening an hour and a half into the show i want her to now purposely move everything an inch she she will if she doesn't forget that i said that that's another thing she's a real you know her her memory regenerates itself every single day there's like a whole new day to her or something but but they loved somebody somewhere i was going out of town they were staying at my house and i i'm always trying to put them onto a good show and and you know so they started watching it and and again it's like i just love the character so much and I love the pace of the show. I love everything about it. But I didn't know if it would work for them. They're in their 70s. They don't watch a lot of good comedy. I mean, honestly, my mom, the main thing she watches is season four of King of Queens on VHS. And it's because my uncle Chuck gave it to her and as he gave her, he goes, I know it's not the best season, but it was on sale. So, and then I go on my trip and i'm expecting them to be like but there was a lot of gayness on that show or something i don't know if they and they were just like they had watched the entire thing in like one and a half days wow and i feel like that's i have recommended the show to a lot of people and i wasn't sure if they were going to love it or not and they love it i feel like the show even though it is a very specific voice i feel like

Maybe it's just people don't mind, like the diarrhea and the pooping and the drinking.

And I've cured them of that whole squeamishness by once shitting my pants at a Seattle Mariners game when I was like 12. What a do God's work. I know I'm I'm I'm an ally. But anyway, I guess I'm just wondering, like, who what's your experience been with the kind of people who really lock into the show? And have you been surprised, I guess, by any of the fan bases or like just by people who come up to you? Maybe it's like somebody you're like, oh, I wouldn't have pegged you for like a somebody somewhere.

I mean, it's it's usually women between 40 and 60, usually lesbian or pansexual or something.

Huh. That come up to you. Yes. But there could be. Did I tell you, you know, I did a TV thing with Bridget. No. Yeah. Yeah. I have this other job. I work for CBS and where they're dimming the lights in here. They really are. Honestly, things are getting sexy, and I'm not against it. So, yeah, I have a TV job for CBS, and I did a profile of Bridget. So we went to Joe's Pub, and we went to Manhattan, Kansas together.

Oh, wow.

And it was wild because we were just standing out in front of some of the locations, you know, and, like, the theater where you guys, you know, screen to the final episode and stuff. Right, yeah. And what was—there were so many people—well, there was at least three groups of people that had just come through manhattan kansas because of the show yeah i'm people on road trips like you know like a um one gal with a real can i talk to a manager kind of haircut and her and her husband and they were from north carolina and bridget and i are standing and talking and these people are walking on the street and then they just stop and then we finish up our thing and they come over and they're like the woman is crying and the husband is geeking out harder than the woman and they are losing it can you imagine it would be shocking you drive to manhattan kansas on a tuesday and they're like there's sam just stands in front of this theater all day like she's just and then everywhere we went so we went in the bar where there's like a cut out of her right another lady comes in and loses her mind like people could i mean if can you imagine sam and joel walking around manhattan kansas on a random day you should do that when during the

finale it was sam and joel and trisha and fred rococo oh my god and i saw a picture my friend

went to the town there was a picture of you guys in the um the breakfast joint yeah the chef in the chef and i think my friend surreptitiously just like a picture of you guys having breakfast

in there like out of the show yeah exactly uh and that that was and we met people who like have moved there like there's a a couple who moved there to start like a basically a tender moments like the the shop that trisha runs yes but with like kind of bawdier and naughtier things that some reference the show but some are just like cool things i know it's really wild yeah but i see most good job thank you i did i did i did that kind of just naturally um but i did uh i most people i meet who are young say like my mom loves your show i find maybe i'm also

i'm also no spring chicken i guess it's weird isn't it i'm like but a young person like me watches it a young person who's about to be 50 like i'm like i've got to be i'm you know a hip cool youth like myself um yeah i mean maybe what it is is like if whatever someone's age or background is if they have like empathy maybe you know like if there's whatever that thing that runs through a person that has sort of a by the way my parents are the only evangelicals i know that are not trump people all their friends are and it's really a bummer for them yeah and their whole thing to bring it back to the christianity is they're like have you heard of jesus's whole deal right like it's love love love love love i was the number one thing this guy was about and like how it could get twisted into what it's been twisted into by certain people like it really it shocks them yeah and it's like it's put them totally on the outs with all of their friend group um which is a bummer although lucky for us because you know that could be that can be really tough in families yes when that goes on but anyway yeah so and are all your siblings are are maga they are no none of them no they're like no it's a uh my parents to their credit raised uh very progressive kids you know kids who did not feel like we had to live any certain way because of what their belief i mean that was tough for them right there was a period there's another part in the book where you're talking about um uh how you when you came out to like your sort of you know your i guess college church friends maybe it was the commune yeah and you wrote this kind of you know you wrote a beautiful like a really eloquent and beautiful thing to kind of just describe who you were and who you were not right etc etc. And I was reminded of the fact, so, like, I had a kid when I was 17. Oh, wow. I felt like it was time, you know. The listeners have heard that joke. How many times, listeners? 100,000 times? You've done the whole junior year.

Wait, so how old is your kid now?

31. Oh, my gosh. It's insane. But I was at church youth group leading the worship thing, and nobody knew about this baby because I had come, I had only come to this youth group six months previously when my daughter was in utero. and so and i didn't want to be like the weird about to be teen dad at the new youth group right so i just didn't really bring it up but then then my daughter was born and then i knew it was going to be like it was pretty hard to hide it after that right and it just so happened we had like a church like a youth group camp out thing and i stopped you know like after you know probably awesome is our god or something and was like i need to tell you all something i became a father

three days ago wow it was a real record scratch moment again how did they react i mean like well

there was a girl that i had a crush on and who had a crush on me and all her friends looked at her like did you know janette did you know i had told her oh you had i had i was trying i was trying to i didn't want that to be how she figured it out um but nobody there said like whereas a lot of your friends it sounds like said oh yeah we had an inkling right well it's a little different to have an inkling of that would have been weird yeah like we we figured you were a fan of

unprotected sex in a dodge dakota we all kind of saw it covered were you still with the the mom

no we were we went to like the junior prom and um and it's yeah we you know we came from this school this very evangelical school where and it was a small school i think the whole high school as maybe 150 kids or something but it was one of those places where the the the sort of the um the advice around sex before marriage was don't do it and so everyone did it right and everybody got pregnant there was like probably like a 60 pregnancy rate of either like somebody in the school getting pregnant or somebody in the school getting someone who went to a different school pregnant it was just i mean i mean the fertility amongst a bunch of christian 17 year olds is i mean i don't think the christianity matters i think 17 year olds i mean we're not supposed to be here a lot after 30 i think is part of the problem like biology you know evolution yeah like we're still mostly it hasn't been that long since we died at 35 and nature was like you better start making a baby at 16 right right we're primed for it now you know so it's true and all those hormones and stuff yeah they're like yeah and then meanwhile now i'm friends with so many people who are later in life and you know want to have kids that's more the generation more what happened to the all my friends who didn't go to christian school right they all got jobs they waited and now they have to get the greatest minds of science together to try to get a baby going you know but

that's that's how it is with like weddings too like i had this huge thing of weddings in my 20s from all of my Christian college friends and then in my 30s I had all this huge wave of weddings from just my New York City friends yeah and then in my 40s I had a wave of the second weddings of the

Christians oh wow that's I I'm trying to remember how many I've been married twice divorced twice not to brag I'm trying to I mean my family I'm trying to think of how many people the second wedding i had was very small right i think a little bit because of that right because i um i definitely felt bad asking the same people to come and buy me another toaster i was like that was one was enough for all of you how about your wedding well we didn't invite anybody we just went to the courthouse yeah brooklyn or one center street in like southern manhattan yeah i used to work in that building when i worked for wnyc oh really before they had their fancy new right studios yeah over on yeah like they used to be in that building one center street well first of all i was starstruck because next to it was the courthouse where bill curtis would walk down the stairs on like that one crime show that he always did he'd get to the bottom circle sometimes dead men do tell tales but next to that was one center street and so to go to work i'd have to wait in line with all the people that were there to get married because you go through like the metal detector and stuff right and it was a very kind of hopeful way to start every

morning of work better than like family court or something yes it was just a lot of people you know

that had paperwork and maybe some flowers and i still live downtown and so i walk by and you'll

see like you know people outside in like a white dress but it's it's not like a full wedding dress

yeah you know it's kind of fun yeah it's really sweet um all right that's why i get married so much i'm i'm just a fan of the whole thing i'm i love love well uh jeff hiller i love your show somebody somewhere i love your book actors of a certain age i love that you deigned to be on yet another podcast here and that i'm gonna interview you again in like an hour and a half which is you won't even recognize me wild it sure is and you know what it's not it's not crazy i think you might be feeding a fed horse i know you're wishing that this could have we could have fed two birds with one scone and just made this the interview for tonight but everybody is so excited to see you at the theater so we'll have to do that one as well but listen thank you for being on tbtl i really appreciate it this is fun all right a big thanks to jeff hiller for taking the time to talk to us here on tbtl and you know this music could only mean one thing i still haven't gotten the proper donor music from andrew but that's okay because these are donors getting more done donors like i'm not going to read everybody's name that way that would be weird uh wonderful generous supporters like lisa davenport in cathedral city california thank you lisa for by the way i was trying to as we were setting up the audio equipment and i was making small talk with jeff i was trying to tell him what he was going to be on like what this thing is this tbtl thing and he like most people was um i think pleasantly confused about uh this happening for 17 years which it has thanks to the donations of folks like lisa and also christopher shade out there in barrington illinois thanks christopher thanks also meg curtis of melrose massachusetts and marion benner of maple valley washington william galleon checking in from kenmore wash look at maple valley kenmore washington and then of course west caldwell new jersey which is where josh laster is i'm feeling very butch with this music I guess it kind of makes sense, considering what they're going for. Thank you so much to all of our donors today for voluntarily supporting this thing. There are some fun days. There are days when we get to talk to Jeff Hiller and use equipment that we bought out of the budget from TBTL. Like, honestly, like I was using this recording device called a MixPre, using these microphones, which, granted, they didn't match, but they worked, kind of. and that's all out of the budget that we have to do this because and i could do it for my job because of our donors so thank you so much for making tbtl possible hey speaking of the tbtl supporters and just the tens in general i got a message from our friend melie uh out there in

new york saying that the tbtl card exchange is live i'll write it and we'll do it live that's right um if you're somebody who in years past has been participating in the tbtl card exchange it's uh happening again there's a link i'm guessing that the link is up at like the stens page and maybe um over on slack or other such places where these things happen but um yeah if you are part of the card exchange traditionally it's happening again if you've never taken part this is basically a thing where you get to send a card to a 10 like a holiday card or a greeting card or whatever and then you'll get one from someone else kind of like a cool pen pal program involving cards and it is so much fun and people love it so much uh so um thanks melly for setting that up again we appreciate it all right we've got one more super butch stanza of music for me to thank you for listening to today's tbtl andrew will be back tomorrow uh so join us for that in the meantime have a great Tuesday everyone take care of yourselves and please remember no mountain too tall and good luck to all power out