Episode 186: "IF HIS NAME WAS WOODEN SPOON"

Date

September 26, 2014

Guests

John Early

Origin of the episode title

Nicki Minaj's "Anaconda" describes a suitor who "tossed [her] salad like his name was Romaine." Julie observes that this doesn't make sense and comes up with a better potential name.

Discussed

Hi, guys. This week's show opens with a hilarious Ben Folds song parody, and it's all downhill from there. Kidding! JOHN EARLY is here, and he's a yummy butter cookie. Join us as we discuss Toni Collette, how he came out to his Minister mom, why gay men like funny women, and why he is not sick of Beyonce.

Plus! What is on the Top 40 tracks these days and whether or not Nicki Minaj is good (Nobody knows), what it might be like to eat McDonald's Apple Slices, how Taylor Swift writes, more Tony Bennett and Gaga thoughts, and Glenn Hetrick's cats.

Hooray!

Trivia and References

• This episode opens with Julie singing a version of Ben Folds' "The Luckiest" called "The Mushiest." It is about Jimmy Jazz

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Episode Link

Tippers

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Monologue Transcript

Transcription by Amy

(Singing) Where was I before the day that I first saw your lovely face? Now I see it every day and I know that you are, you are, you are the mushiest.

Hi everybody. Happy New Year. It’s Julie Klausner back for another episode of HWYW. That was the mushiest song I wrote about Jimmy Jazz. I guess you could say it is collaboration between me and Ben Fold’s.

I am coming to you live on Rosh Hashanah. Derek Jeeter just did something according to twitter. I just ate something according to my body—my bod is full of garbage. Not garbage just Jewish salts and starches, a dry hearty meat. I hope that you have a beautiful experience this Rosh Hashanah. Listen I hope you have a sweet new year whether or not you believe that this is a new year. Whether or not this calendar makes any sense to who you are, I wish you health and happiness. I asked my family what the Rabbi’s sermon was about at their shul and they said Israel. I asked someone else in my family the same thing and they said Israel. Oh! What stance did the Rabbi take? I was joking but it didn’t matter. That was today.

I like that it was raining. Maybe because I missed the winter here in New York last year I am a little eager to start wearing a goddamn sweater all of the time. We’re not quite there yet.

All right I have talked about the weather and the Jewish holiday. Shall I bore you some more before we all go to sleep?

I did some catching up this week on new television shows which is an area of my life I wish to improve upon. I don’t watch enough new TV shows. So this week I tried watching Blackish which I liked-ish. I love Tracee Ellis Ross she could do anything and it would make me super happy. I like that she spells her first name like Tracee Chimo does. I also saw Gotham. Our friend Robin Taylor is such a star not only in that series but also in that show and in life too. Robin plays the Penguin and he is so fabulous on this show, he’s serving Dennis Hopper/Crispin Glover twitchy glorious, his teeth are glorious—I love everything he’s doing. He makes me excited to watch him. If I were a girl I would have a crush on him. But I will never know what it is like to be a girl. Ariana Grande won’t ever tell me. I keep trying to snapchat her.

I tried listening to new music too. That was another thing that I did. Spotify has popular tracks. I though let’s just spin this wheel. Let’s see where America is. I am not impressed. I was like maybe ISIS has a point. I don’t know if Nicki Minaj is good. I don’t know if I’ve wondered about this in the past on the show. I really don’t know. I’m not trying to be cute. I don’t know if she’s good. I listened to Anaconda which is not so much a female response song to Baby got Back as a cover only filthy. There was a verse where she was referring to having had a gentleman’s tongue in her ass and she said, “He tossed my salad like his name was Romaine.” Guys, guys, guys, that doesn’t make sense. Maybe if his name was wooden spoon against a wooden salad bowl certainly. What else did she say in this filthy song? Actually I liked the song, I think, yeah, I like it.

I hate that Taylor Swift song. Oh my god, that Taylor Swift song Shake it, Shake it, Shake it or something. Shake the barn or Raise the …We’ll leave the light on for you. She sounded like she was making the melody up as she was going along. I just don’t like picturing Taylor Swift writing. I picture a whole thing where she has to get her special pen and a red notebook. I just think of her being so precious. Maybe she’s in sweats but they are really flattering. When I write, I like to, well it sort of happens to be that I am at my ugliest. I think physically you need to be at your worst, or it sort of happens that way, that every time I look in the mirror when I am writing I think “Yah!” whereas every time I picture Taylor Swift I imagine she’s posing for an Instagram photo. I picture her in afternoon light curled up on a bed like she’s posing for a fucking catalogue and she’s got her Valentine’s Day themed everything and her stupid notebook. Maybe she’s making a face like she’s thinking. There’s a deformed kitten in the background. She broke its leg so that it can’t go anywhere. Enough is enough. Cut her hair. Take off her makeup send her to a chicken hawk ball and tell me she doesn’t do great. I did not like that song.

In Nicki Minaj’s song there was a verse about a man named Michael. Ok. She’s painting a word picture. Give her space.

I want to thank Kristin bell for making the world safer. I saw on the blogs the other day that Kristen Bell had bravely…Kristin Bell and D-A-C-K-Z is how I believe you spell Dax. I would still fuck him. My god that guy is my type. A young Todd Oldham, not young, Todd if you are listening you are still young, without the beard as a young man without the beard with that Andrew McCarthy-like perfection. I would give you a beard of my own, do you know what I mean? I’d give you my swamp beard.

So Kristin Bell said, I don’t know I didn’t click on the link, I have Jezebel in my feed and read Kristin Bell’s anti-paparazzi campaign actually worked. The quote attached to it said, “I feel a lot safer because I am not followed at all now. It makes me feel like we all rallied and did something.” We all rallied. All of us Kristin Bell? Or just celebrities? We all rallied and did something. What did she do for those of you who are still asking yourselves? She and Dax Shepard made a stink about paparazzos. They didn’t like them taking photos of their children. I meant to pitch a joke to Joan Rivers who is now dead infuriatingly so, that I remember thinking she should follow that up with a pleas for paparazzi to leave only ugly children alone. I don’t remember what the joke was. It wasn’t that. That was the area. That was not the phrasing. I’m just going to say I’m sorry to everyone. I’m sorry to Dax Shepard. I’m sorry to Kristin Bell. I’m sorry to… we all rallied and did something.

Now let’s move on to climate change.

Oh celebrities and their privacy. Is there anything more important to Joe Lunchpail? I have no problem with Kristin Bell. I’m not making fun of her. I don’t find this cause very relatable because I’m killing myself over here for a little bit of exposure. I’d be honored to have my cat stalked by what’s his name, Don Galella? Is that his name? Smash the Camera. That was a good documentary. Paparazzi, Paparazzos are dirtbags—Ron Galella—but celebrities are extremely silly and they take themselves very seriously it turns out. Such as Lady Gaga who, oh man, I wish I was more polished or refined or my edges were smoother the way they update Apple products because I can’t laugh at her pretentiousness. Her tweets are insufferable. Monsters in Thailand, Blessed, Thrilled—it’s all refrigerator magnet poetry, Her twitter is so ugh!!!That’s what I thought of her when she first came around. Why can’t she be more like Cher? Why can’t she be funnier? She just can’t I suppose. Not all of us are funny.

Lady Gaga has an album out at this point with Tony Bennett who was tricked into recording an album with her and does not know where he is. He looks very happy. He’s not in pain at all. “This kid has such a taste for jazz. I just love to sing with her. These are classics. These songs go and they come, but jazz is jazz. This little kid over here, she knows jazz. I really like singing jazz with her so we are…where are we? We’re here at what is this? The Today Show? Yeah, now Cole Porter worte…” Lady Gaga says, “I love him. I love Tony Bennett. He’s my man.” She poses with him flirtatiously. She’ll touch him. She doesn’t need to touch Tony Bennett. “Look at us together Tony. Look at this photo of us, don’t we look great together.” “Oh yeah kid you know that’s a great photograph. You know Nathalie Wood…uh, who are you? Do you know Maria from Sesame Street? Where am I”

Where are they going to play that album? Which store? Are they going to play it at CB2? I was going to say Starbucks but I think it’s a little weird for Starbucks, “We like the idea of standards maybe if it were a Christmas album, but no; we don’t want to play Fly Me to the Moon as sung by a confused Tony Bennett.” Again, I strongly believe that he thinks she is Dinah Shore.

Speaking of corporations or chain stores I had a question about McDonald’s apple slices. Have any of you ever eaten some or one? Because they really gross me out. I’ve heard of them, obviously I’ve never eaten one because I am asking you about them but I have a feeling that they are uniquely gross, not in a typical way that apples can be gross. I think it’s weird that they are sliced already. I don’t know if they are brown. I would like to know the following things, honestly if you’ve eaten them, I don’t judge you. Please, you are doing the best you can. So this is what I anticipate McDonald’s apple slices being like, I picture them coming from a sweaty little package like if you take baby carrots and don’t refrigerate them or you take baby carrots and you do refrigerate them but the bag is smaller so for some reason they’re not all wet. I hate baby carrots. At this point in my life I hate baby carrots because they are dripping with cold water. Fuck hummus—the whole thing. Please, can’t we come up with better snacks?

I picture the sliced McDonalds apples, not as cold, as cool, a little cooler than room temperature. I picture this sweaty little package. You open them and then I picture a sad, not quite rotten apple-y smell coming out of the clammy plastic open bag. Then I picture my fingers going into the bag--my grubby finger rooting around for a slice and then latching onto some sort of slippery brownish but not brown apple slice. By the time I brought it to my mouth I probably would have been throwing up violently. If I were to munch on it I imagine—by the way I’ll eat anything. I’m not snotty about stuff but for some reason, maybe the combination of fruit and fast food, I don’t know. So I am bringing the apple slice up to my mouth and I am biting into it and I don’t picture the experience as a crisp one. I don’t picture my teeth going into the apple and feeling a crunch. Then the flavor I picture almost like if you were making fun of how apples taste. Not artificial but more like (exaggerated voice) Oh! Apples. I imagine that’s because McDonald’s probably has their own strain of apple. Strain? Is that what you say? Therefore it is a little bit Ronald McDonald-like. By then I imagine that the smell from the bag has just sickened you and you don’t want to eat anymore. If you do, is there an option for you to get a dipping container of caramel because if there is now we’re talking. While you’re at the counter why don’t you get some fucking fries? Dip the fries into the caramel. Now we have ruined the week.

This is all fantasy. Don’t quote me as saying I am going to do this. I just like to go on little adventures in my mind. I call them super-staycations Time Out New York if you’re listening.

I said I like Blackish, I stand by that. Wendi McLenden-Covey is very funny and talented. I like her and I enjoy her work. She wrote a thing about funny ladies and she gave a whole bunch of suggestions…she had a really good point stop using the same funny lady or two as examples and there are a lot more funny women out there. Anyway, I am off her radar. She just used a bunch of examples of who should be Ghostbusters, I thought uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh, ok, what is her next example…oh sure, yeah, yep, uh-huh, uh-huh, nope, ok. I’m not on Wendi McLenden-Covey’s radar, it’s a new year 5775 and that will be one of the things I’ll work on, put it on the list. I saw a couple of movies last weekend including Brian DePalma’s Sisters starring Margot Kidder and Winslow Leach from Phantom of the Paradise as French Canadians for no reason. I did enjoy it. I think. I enjoyed it. I don’t know if it was good. It was probably very bad or good. Then I also saw Elvira Mistress of the Dark for the first time because it’s our friend Jessie’s favorite movie and also because it’s Elvira Mistress of the Dark. I don’t need to tell you why I saw Elvira Mistress of the Dark. She has a poodle in it named Gonk. Gonk gets a punk rock make-over and does that trick that dogs do where they cover their eyes with their paws. It is often edited into particularly funny movies to make it seem like the dog is embarrassed, Gonk does that a few times in the movie. As per Jessie’s suggestion I would now like to formerly induct Gonk into the Critter Hall of Fame. Welcome Gonk to the Critter Hall of Fame.

I also got to see a very exciting photograph of Glen Hetrick’s cats. Glen Hetrick who is the main attraction to the Syfy network’s Face Off is a cat owner. Since I learned that he has two cats and they are, “the center of his life” I have been harassing him on twitter asking to see a photo of the cats. He said he would post it because it’s almost time for them to try on their “Halloween Costumes”… It’s almost time… The time has almost come for my cats… by the way I wonder if they are purebred. Purebred cats can be oddly docile to the extent that we’ve inbred them enough so that they are completely complacent and you can put stupid outfits on them they are very calm. They are like the cats you see at the cat show where the judges take them out of their crates and are holding them up. The cats don’t feel like killing you, that doesn’t seem like a reasonable thing to do at all. Those aren’t real cats. They are real cats but they are not cats I know. Ooh, this is an interesting idea…are these real cats? This is like an episode of Blackish but for cats—like Catish. Identity stuff.

Anyway Glen Hetrick has two cats and it runs out they are just ordinary. Pippin will tell you ordinary is as ordinary does. Fine. These are house cats. God Bless Glen Hetrick and his heart, these look like adopted short-hairs that you can, and should get at your local shelter. One is a tuxedo and one is a calico. They are not fat, but they are a little chubby. Oh boy I can’t wait to see them in their Halloween Costumes. SO he tweeted this photo and the tuxedo cat’s name is Isabella Snarfollini but he calls her Snarfles and then the Calico-he calls her a torty but it’s a calico and she’s named Agatha Kitty Hetrick—Oh Jesus, is that a pun on Agatha Christie-oyyoyoyoy—Agatha Kitty Hetrick aka Downtown Brown, that’s like Spoony or DeeDee Ramone. The other thing about this photo is that Glen Hetrick took it in I’m sure his living room area but he probably calls it his parlor. There’s a leather couch with a power chord on it but with the exception of that it all looks pretty Steampunk. There’s an old timey phone and a couple of nautical looking things on brass stand. Glen Hetrick you certainly have your own style. I adore him. I really do. I think he’s so great.

Should we start the show. We have one guest..