Episode 177: "The Smaller The Cats"

Date

July 25, 2014

Guests

Nathan Fielder

Origin of the episode title

When Julie has a problem, her solution is to throw cats at it. The more existential the problem, the more unsolvable arguably the problem is, the more cats she throws, or the smaller the cats.

Discussed

What a show! NATHAN FIELDER, star of "Nathan for You" joins us this week. What a treat! Nathan tells us about how his history of not being able to read people helps him stay in character, why it makes him laugh when people won't say what they're really thinking, and what he and CEO's have in common when it comes to not taking a hint.

Plus! Julie's been watching a ton of bad TV and has a lot to say about NAKED DATING, DEALS FROM THE DARK SIDE, and the dastardly JILL ZARIN EPISODE OF CELEBRITY WIFE SWAP! Plus: why Sherri Shepherd really left THE VIEW. And Pauley Perrette's swollen head.

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Monologue Transcript

Hey everybody. It's Julie Klausner back for another episode of HWYW.

It's coming out a little late on Friday. I am recording this on Friday morning which I don't usually like to do. I like to keep a schedule of doing it Thursday nights but I guess I'm keeping summer hours now because mommy, as I like to call myself, is a little under the weather last night. I came home from a party and I had a bad case of the hiccups, in addition to some other things. Can you imagine, can you imagine ladies and gentleman, can you imagine if I had done this monologue with the hiccups what the AV Club would have said about me?

Hold onto your bonnets ladies you wouldn't have been able to go into town and shop at the market without hearing the biz buzz of Hattie Busybodies. Was Hattie a popular name for a woman back in the day? What was Hattie short for? Hatfield? Anyway, I was a little tipsy last night. So was Hotlips frankly. He was texting me the phone numbers of Real Housewives. I don’t know where they got them. I didn't ask. I know he was at Phoenix. I think he was at a Trivia Night and the next thing you know I get Aviva Drescher's number, the contacts. It's a wonderful world today technologically; you can just send somebody Aviva Drescher's phone number.

Aviva Drescher by the way should be added into, whenever they do a revised edition of Please kill me they should include a chapter about the time that that bitch threw her leg on TV. That was hotshot man that was fucking great. I know not all of you watch the Real Housewives. The Real Housewives of New York City ended a sort of inconsistent season. The last half of it was lackluster but the central conflict came around the fact that when you do the show you have to do the trips and Aviva Drescher got out of going to Montana because she claimed she has asthma. Aviva Drescher is an amputee who is related to Fran Drescher by marriage. The other women were pissed. They didn't want to go to fuming Montana and hang out with an ax thrower who probably had a cock bigger than a fucking Freedom Tower. For some god forsaken reason they did not want to spend their time doing that. Aviva got out of it. They were pissed. Aviva brought her X-rays to the celebration of Sonya party which was populated with the Island of Lost Toys of people.

At the end Aviva Drescher said, "The only thing fake about me is this." and she took her leg and putt on the table. She clearly unhooked it 30 minutes earlier, she practiced her lines in the mirror and then she threw it at one of the other women. Countess Luann jet laughed. It was pretty fucking great guys, it was great. It raised the bar. If I were Andy Cohen I'd say, "Mazel" If I were Seth Rodetsky I'd say, "Brava." and if I were Pauley Perrette I'd say, "Oooh, my hair dye made me puffy."

I got this story a lot, people sent me this story. Pauly Perrette had an allergy to hair dye and she tweeted about it from the hospital and there we news stories about it. If I were more organized I would have rallied and figured out a way to raise money and get a really shitty wig from Ricky’s and have sent it. But I don’t want to do that because I want to keep all of the money that you give to me. Pauly Perrette, enemy of the show, world’s oldest Goth tried once to get me kicked out of a dog awards show, had an allergy to hair dye and is being outspoken about it in an activist kind of way because when you make the kind of money she does you become isolated from reality and what people think is a cause and what is just something that effected you in however a severe way. I don’t mean to make light of allergies. Although she does look dumb with those ponytails. I have to also say that she stinks and I’ll never let it go.

No matter how much charity work she does, and I am sure she’ll add the allergy awareness council to her resume of things she fights for and against on a daily basis, Pauly Perrette is human garbage and she is very very stupid and she doesn’t have a sense of humor. She can’t laugh at herself. If you need to understand it’s because she tried to get me kicked out of that award show. I do have tape of it but I can’t publish it out of deference to my employer, Vulture.com, although maybe one day it will leak but it won’t be from me. It will not be from me.

Jimmy Jazz will learn how to use final cut. Not in my lifetime. By then we will all have turned to dust.

I have been inside a lot this last week. I have been spending a lot of quality time with JJ and he hissed at someone. It was amazing. I’d never seen that before. My friend Matt Berman came over to do a podcast interview, you’ll hear it in a couple of weeks. He’s great. He wrote and interesting book about JFK junior and working a George Magazine in the 1990s. He came into the apartment and Jimmy Jazz hissed at him and I’ve never seen my cat hiss at anything, anyone. I reasoned however delusionally that he was being protective of me thinking, “Listen I have spent a lot of time with this woman. I don’t know who you are but I know that you are a male and I know that she’s fragile. So back off.”

It was very weird. It kind of made me feel good. I’ve got to get my meds to kick in. I started looking on line for another cat, which could mean a couple of things. I definitely am going through some depression related stuff which I have talked about in the last couple of weeks. I am trying to be as transparent as possible without being straight up irritating. Not irritating, just whiny or necessarily self-reflective. You’re not a journal. You’re human. You could be generous and call it the artist cycle or say you’ve got to figure out what you want to do and you can make it hard for yourself or make it easy for yourself. I’m reading some good serial killer books which help me. I’m reading the good Nurse which Emily Altman got me and it’s terrifying. Ugh! It’s about this guy who killed patients. He got jobs in a million hospitals even after he killed all of these people. He killed so many people and people were happy to hire him which is probably an issue that comes with let’s look at our workforce.

I’m not good at politics. I know that what’s going on in the Ukraine and the Middle East is a disaster. See? I look at things like CNN.com. Part of my depression cycle has to do with wanting to get more cats. I decide a week ago it would be a really good idea to get a kitten that way Jimmy Jazz wouldn’t be intimidated by an older male alpha cat or feel like I was replacing him. Maybe he’d sort of act like a big brother to a kitten, because he’s sort of skittish, and maybe he wouldn’t be intimidated. Maybe also they could play together because Jimmy Jazz loves to play. So I looked online and found a bunch of kittens and sent a bunch of emails. Someone said meet me at Frederick Douglas Blvd and 218th street. No.

I was in touch with a woman who said we have this ginger-boy who was just adopted out, ok, keep me posted. I also promised my loved ones that I wouldn’t commit to getting a kitten until my meds kick in, so in two weeks from now if I still want a kitten then I can get a kitten but until then I can’t get a kitten. My attitude, ladies and gentleman and I have said this before on the show, when I have a problem my solution is to throw cats at it. The bigger the problem, the more existential and unsolvable the problem is the more cats I throw. Or the smaller the cats are that I throw such as kittens.

I really think it would be a great idea and I’d probably feel a lot better if I had 6 or 7 kittens.

I watched a lot of TV this week in addition to reading a couple of things and ending up at the genius bar which was hellish. But everything is ok, don’t worry. Don’t worry about my iPhone everyone. Everything is ok. I watched a bunch of episodes of Naked Dating which is a real insight into exactly how many shitty tattoos the youth of today have and how much make up they think it is ok to wear on an outdoor set. So Naked Dating is a show in which two dirt bags get together with their private parts out and wear sneakers in the jungle but otherwise they are in the nude. I walked to the Apple Store yesterday which is ten minutes away and back and I had applied sunscreen to my face no fewer than three times and I had a parasol and I still got a fucking sunburn on my left cheek. Meanwhile these trash boxes, these garbage bags with shitty tattoos, this one woman had wings on her shoulder blade but they were too small to be…she must have gone in thinking she’d get big wings. But then they said the smaller ones are cheaper so she said ok.

The point is these people don’t get sunburns. The boys, at least this one guy from Australia had this big fleshy white ass. I think Naked Dating might be the number 1 employer of Australians and Israelis at this point in our country, maybe even more than in Australia and Israel. There are a lot of people from other countries who are down to get naked and be on VH1. I don’t know what VH1 is doing besides naked dating but maybe that’s enough. I don’t know. They get together. They meet each other on the beach. They make jokes about how usually I don’t see someone naked on the first date until a couple of hours in. I get it, you’re naked. Then they do an activity that involves running around or something physical so that there’s the humor of seeing someone’s dingus flapping around while water-skiing. The female trash bag is wearing more eye make-up, even Jon Water’s would think it’s a bit much, come on. It’s called good taste; try to apply it to your upper lid.

Then the Israeli guy says, “You’re beautiful. You’d don’t need all of that make up.” I hate when men say that, I’ve heard it before. I know I am being hypocritical because I just criticized her but she really did look like a trash heap. At the same time it’s none of the dude’s business to give you that back-handed compliment, “You don’t need that.” If it is part of my style…Also don’t give me notes. Don’t give me notes and pretend that I think I need it when it is just a choice and it’s how I feel comfortable. I was on neither person’s side. Ultimately this Australian guy was hooked up with someone who was clearly mentally challenged and the woman got a blond guy who was probably carrying roofies in his pockets the way some people carry Tic Tacs.

By the way this is very disturbing and I don’t mean to make light of it, but I guess in the last 10-15 maybe even 20 years, since Rohypnol has entered the picture it’s almost as if fraternity guys think this is a game changer. I wonder if there are certain rapist criminals or just young men considered normal in the context of their fraternity house or group of friends or whatever these guys who slip stuff in ladies drinks to make sure they seal the deal in that particular way. I wonder if there is a generation coming up of essentially necrophiliacs. Will there be men who can’t get excited unless their partner is actually unconscious, in which case congratulations America. Way to go. Let’s all take a big stretch and pretend we’re just stretching but then reach around and pat ourselves on the back because what the fuck everybody? Ugh! Naked Dating exists.

There’s a show on Syfy which I learned when I went to sleep after watching the premier of Face Off. Ve Neill is off shooting the Hunger Games so they had a British woman who looks like Nanny McPhee replacing her as a judge. Glen Hetrick wore a tie, it was great. Also Mackenzie Westmore, the host of Face Off who has more charisma than I have ever seen a human host have, definitely got a rib removed. Her waist is so small at this point and her shoulders look broader because she had at least an entire rib removed, or she’s corseting. Whatever it is she is not a normal silhouette. I went to sleep after watching Face Off as I mentioned and there’s a woman on there with bright blue hair and she insists on make her eyebrows bright blue which you don’t need to do ladies and gentlemen. If you have your hair a bold color, a manic panic if you will, mandatory for Face Off, anybody who doesn’t look like a depressing suicide girl is not allowed on the show, or if they are they lose immediately, you don’t need to do your eyebrows.

I left Face Off on and I went to bed and I couldn’t sleep in the middle of the night and I turned on the TV and it was still on Syfy and there was a show called Deals from the Dark Side. It was basically Pawn Stars nut with creeps. There was a guy who looked like a human pig. He had a black Mohawk. He looked like if Matt Pinfield were really really dirty and had a leather vest on. He’s not quite Gothy. He’s not quite a biker. He’s just a weird creep. He’s the chatty one. His partner is a guy with a ratty beard. It’s supposed to be white but there are areas around the open part which means his mouth of the beard that are yellowed to the extent where they are basically green. I want to take his beard—I don’t want to touch it—let me rephrase this, want to put on rubber gloves and I want to dip his beard in Oxyclean.

Anyway, Deals from the Dark Side has a logo that looks like it was designed in MS Word by a 13 year old in 1994 and it does not look like a real show. Now I am looking at a description on-line.

Jack the Ripper’s sword, a Titanic deck chair and a piece of the Hiddenburg are among the dark relics that eccentric collector Steve Santini (that’s dirty Matt Pinfield) comes face to face (with) in his quest to expand his extensive collection of twisted treasures many of which are on loan to the National Museum of Crime and Punishment in Washington, DC. Follow along as Santini and his sidekick Biker Rob, and researcher Stef travel far and wide to call on experts to prove that the artifacts are or aren’t what they claim to be. When Santini isn’t driving a hard bargain for the real deal relics he engages in his other passion, escapology. Santini, who has been dubbed the world’s most extreme escape artist by Ripley’s Believe it or Not works with dangerous materials such as machete blades, power drill and water chambers as he perfects his craft in this most unique of hobbies.

The episode I saw was Nazi, Nazi, Nazi, Nazis. Again, I have said this before, every person who is on a pawn shop or antiques collecting show has a secret room, maybe it is not secret and they just take the Swastika Flag down from the wall when the cameras come in, but there’s always Nazi paraphernalia in the back and they’ll say, “I’m interested in history.” No you’re not. You are but we both know who you are rooting for guys. They had a pair of German handcuffs on the show. They were so excited that they were used by the Gestapo. They said Klaus Barbie had used these, but he probably didn’t.

Meanwhile speaking of Nazi stuff I saw a little of Who do You Think You Are? Which is the family tree show that Lisa Kudrow produces where celebrities go on and realize that they were descended from people who were not celebrities and go, “Oh my god.” It’s so boring. Except for the one with Sherri Shepherd and she was shocked, shocked that she was descended from slaves. I say that because boy oh boy. I think it is such a shame that she left The View but after you get the Macarthur Genius Grant there are only a few things you can do. She had to do the lecture circuit. It was calling her. She went back to her life in academia. So this week they had on Chelsea Handler in Germany dealing with the fact that her grandfather was in the Germany Army in World War II. She asked, “Was he a Nazi?” and it turned out he wasn’t, so that was a happy ending. She hugged Chewy (?) with the force of 10,000 bears.

Deals with the Dark Side is a bad show and I enjoyed it. It really is shot for seventy five cents. The lighting is basically from a school play. I’ll tell you this Steve Santini needs better lighting. There are a couple of women that make you wonder is that a wig? They all have the Face Off hair. It’s not my style but they are all beautiful girls. There are the deals—are these Hitler’s handcuffs? Probably not. Oh look at these shoes, these are torture shoes. Cruel Shoes was the name of the episode. They were shoes that had spikes in the bottom. They were lusting over them. You’re a ghoul. Then at the end it cuts to a woman who is a friend of Steve Santini and Biker Bob, she’s got that Sharon Osborne red hair and she’s got a top hat on that s in between a fascinator and a regular hat. It is a very odd size. She’s giving a ghost tour. I don’t know if it is in Pennsylvania—their accents are a little Philly a little South Jersey I haven’t quite put it together exactly. She is basically schlepping a bunch of tourists around with an odd intonation in her voice saying, “This is where you can allegedly hear the moaning.” Basically she’s giving a ghost tour to this group of slack-jawed yimmy yammies. At the end this woman comes up to her and says, “You should come to my house on your tour.” “Why?” “because my house is haunted.” “WHAT!” and there’s a shot of Steve Santini’s mouth opening. The woman says, “I need your help.” And it cuts to this woman’s house. She says, “There’s shaking, rattling, and moaning at night. I’m going to bring my friend who is a psychic and she’s going to help you.” Her friend is a gal who has a blue streak in the front of her hair but she mostly looks like Chris Farley. She looks like a Chris Farley character if his Gap girl were into industrial music, “Lay off me, I’m starving.” She looks like that. She was unpleasant. Her friend kept prompting with things like, “Is it coming from the photos?” “No, it’s not coming from the photos.” I don’t know if there was any resolution. It ended. It was great. It’s a great show.

Then I watched Celebrity Wife Swap with Jill Zarin and Jenna Von Oy which I will never be able to recover from. That was pretty real, boy. Pretty much like Aviva throwing her leg but worse. I needed a few days to decompress. Jenna Von Oy was from Blossom. Jill Zarin is on the Real Housewives of New York City. She’s bad for the Jews. The two of them switch places. Jenna Von Oy had to interact with Bobby Zarin’s face on a day to day basis. They really played up the fact that Jill Zarin likes entertaining and ignoring children, her grandchildren, her nieces and nephews. Jenna Von Oy likes to garden. Jill Zarin made Jenna Von Oy’s husband throw a dinner party and got him a babysitter and took him out to a “5-star” restaurant that was clearly in a mall. The things that Jill Zarin said in the course of this episode were pretty remarkable to the extent that Ryan ‘Hotlips’ Houlihan sent me an email with an attached file that he titled Zarin quotes. These are things that Jill Zarin said during an episode of celebrity wife swap.

Some people are meant to make a mess and some people are meant to clean up a mess. Camp Zarin Unless you got this mouth and this accent it ain’t going down. The Hampton’s is known as … Doing emails This is more of a working class community, people who work for us live somewhere and this is probably where they live. When she came into Jenna Van Oy’s house she said, “She needs fabric.”

Jill Zarin is married to a fabric magnate. My eyes can’t even focus on Bobby Zarin he’s so disgusting. I guess nobody wears heels in this house (because there was a vent on the floor) I can’t relate to that on my daughter’s level, but my baby Ginger, I’m beyond missing her

I think she only pretended to like that dog when Lisa Vanderpump’s dog Jiggy became a star on Bravo. Jill became really attached to her Chihuahua when she realized another housewife was getting a lot of attention for her dog.

Then Brad goes to work, that’s what really people have to do. OK be honest, is it that your really prefer to do it all yourself or is that you can’t afford to have help? I was the star of the Real Housewives of New York City. Children aren’t much different than dogs. I don’t know what I’m eating, I just eat it. I thought Faith Hill was coming. I thought I was getting this gazillionaire, obviously that wasn’t what exactly I arrived. She’s my child. I don’t have a child. By giving the kids toys that occupy them so that he could be with his friends. Kids are overrated.

Thank you Jill Zarin, you are a true beast. You are the beast with the least.

I also saw the Roger Ebert documentary. Schedule out 24 Hours after that movie to cry or feel feelings you’ve never experienced before. Wow! That was harrowing. Chaz Ebert deserve a medal from, I don’t know the Library of Congress for everything Chaz Ebert tolerated and took care of Roger Ebert while he was unwell. People fail to mention how much she endured and why she deserves an especially large trophy has to do with precisely how much Steely Dan she had to put up with while she was married to Roger Ebert.

I am going to introduce the Guest…