Tom Green
Appearances
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
But now you take it back to the year 875, you're out in the desert. And this place, Chaco Canyon, was a whole society where they did trading and people came from all over North America there. So it's a very peaceful thing. I do enjoy it quite a bit.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
This is her first time actually really coming to – throughout a lot of the United States too. So she's from Canada and hasn't been out to the desert before. So, but she's, I mean, she's, we're having fun, you know, we're having fun out there, but it's, you know, we just have, this is our first trip doing this, so it's been cool.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
No, no, no. Okay. It's the first time engaged since, yeah. You know, no, it was not scary because... Because that was Drew Barrymore, right?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
Yeah, absolutely, yeah. But no, it wasn't scary because Amanda's amazing. So I knew it was the right thing, this was the thing to do.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
when I say that out loud you know you're a young guy too to think that there was a lot of things that happened that you know I don't know if you want to talk about you know I'm talking a lot about energy but coincidences and synchronicity and things like this I moved back to Canada and I have a pond on my property and in the winter it freezes over and I shoveled the snow off the pond and I was playing hockey on the pond like skating playing hockey on the pond and
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
Shot a video of that and put it up on the social medias. There we go. Wow, that's beautiful. Here we are out at the pond. Wow, you got a fast guy on the draw out there. I just literally just said that and he instantly found. So we're drilling a hole in the pond here and then we can pump the water out of that back on top of the pond and give it a nice smooth flow. I see, that's my friend Ryan.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
Then we get a pump, we just stick a fire hose down in there, and we pump water out of it. We pump it up on top of the ice, and just basically flood the ice, and then it freezes, because at night, and then we get some nice smooth ice out there. How long does that process take? Just a day. This just took a day. The next morning, it was completely frozen.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
But then you get two feet of snow, and then you've got to do it all over again, which kind of puts a damper on it.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
Yeah, and then it gets – it's cold. It's below zero. So then the next morning it was pretty much ready to – Now, normally you would shovel it off first, but we just kind of were kind of a little lazy about that, I guess. And we just flooded it instead, which it ended up working out fine. But probably would have been better if we shoveled it off first.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
But that seems like that would have been a lot of work.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
But there you go. See, and then... So yeah, so we were doing this and then I was shooting these videos playing hockey. There we go. This is the next day? Yeah, it's like probably the next day.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
Well, you know, if you have a pond, I mean, those are the barns in the background. That's my house up there behind there. And so, you know, we used to do it in my backyard when I was a kid. Like we used to flood the backyard and... Yeah, Gretzky talked about that when he was on air.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
Oh, okay. But it had been knocked out previously in a hockey game of some sort.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
Yeah, yeah. I kind of like to just kind of do these sort of ambient sort of things to kind of just kind of bring you into a certain place. It's sort of like I like photography. This is just doing it with video and being there. Yeah. But after I posted that video, Amanda, my fiance, she saw it and she sent me a message on Instagram. This is how we met.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
And it was a video of a Zamboni, a do-it-yourself Zamboni, which is what a Zamboni is what you use to clean off the ice in a hockey rink, right? And so it was this homemade one. And we started, I just started talking to her because I thought it was a funny thing to send. And we
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
It turns out we went to the same elementary school and, uh, yeah, it was just sort of, uh, it was, it was, it was just went, went from there. So cool. Congratulations. Yeah. Thanks man.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
Yeah. No, they are for sure, yeah. No hesitation. They were excited for me to come home, believe it or not, because sometimes people wonder, because I used to do a lot of pranks on them. Do they still talk to you? But my parents, we were always very close, even when I was doing my show on MTV and doing pranks on them and annoying them with the video camera.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
they would sort of laugh afterwards and, and we've, you know, always had a very close relationship there. They're actually in my new show on, on prime. It's, you know, it's sort of about me moving home. Okay.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
And there's a documentary on prime and then the show called Tom green country. And, uh, sort of, sort of about me settling in at the farm and, uh, And they're hilarious. I mean they really make the show. Like there's something about their sense of humor is – they're kind of razzing me in the new show more than me pulling pranks on them. I don't do that anymore.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
They've retired from being pranked. From being a victim? Yeah, absolutely.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It feels good, actually. Yeah, it was weird. I just moved four years ago. It was kind of... Somewhat spontaneous decision. You know, when COVID happened, remember that? And everything stopped. And all of a sudden, you know, I've been touring and everybody stopped touring, right? At the beginning. Yeah, everything kind of just stopped.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
I think there was kind of a, a few layers to that for sure. And that's a cool question. It's a great question because like, One thing was we never really had a video camera. I grew up in the 80s, so we didn't have a video camera or even a film camera. We didn't even take a lot of photos. It was kind of expensive. People that had a video camera, they had a lot of money to have a video camera.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
We never had a video camera. And so when all of a sudden they became somewhat attainable, I would sort of sign one out at school and I would – I found that it was kind of a – first of all, I love comedy. So I loved David Letterman. I love watching him go out in the street and do stuff and I loved – Monty Python and SCTV and I just loved comedy.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
I was doing stand-up comedy in Ottawa when I was 16 years old and I would go down to watch Norm Macdonald when he was in his 20s. It was sort of this amazing thing and I somehow had this sort of feeling that if I could just get a video camera and go film stuff that maybe I could... you know, make a show or whatever.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
I'm trying to remember if it was just me that stopped or did everyone stop?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
But there's also a skateboarder, you know, and that was sort of skateboarding videos were, holy shit, look at this. This is amazing. How did you find that so fast? Yeah, there me at 16 years old. Yuck, yucks. How did you find that so fast? I don't even know how, you must've had that in advance. That is unbelievable. Is there some sort of weird algorithm here or something like that?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
Yeah. So about the first six months or so of that, I was kind of. I'm going to do. And then I just kind of realized I, well, I got this, I was telling you about my van. I got this van and I started going out into the desert and making videos and stuff. Here and outside of LA? Just outside LA.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
Yeah, look at that microphone too. It's like, I don't know, they didn't even use the right microphone back then. But I – no, I just – I don't know. I often kind of like think there's something about like –
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
I don't know, I think I've always been really afraid of the concept of like being dead, you know, like being gone and like there being no sort of, you know, recollection of anything that you've ever done, right?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
And I always found it interesting to just kind of document things and just record things and that'll be there, you know, in some electronic way floating around there forever and sort of feels in a little way like kind of like sort of a
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
weird kind of immortality in a way you know I think that's kind of what fascinates me about these these ruins in the desert too like these people came and built these things in the year 875 and I'm walking through it and looking at it and filming it and talking about it with you and so they're kind of in a way kind of remembered you know yeah and then there was also just kind of the blatant you know
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
When I was younger, I was a little – quite a bit different than I am now. I think I've calmed down quite a bit. Like when I was younger, I really always needed to be kind of like the center of attention, the class clown, moving around a lot. It was weird as a kid. So to me, it seemed like a really good way of just kind of documenting all of this silliness. And I loved it.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
I love filming stuff and showing it to people at school.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
And I love being out in the desert so much and just waking up in the morning with a cup of coffee and just looking at the sun coming up over the mountains and just the peacefulness of that. Yeah. It's out in the Mojave desert. That was like the first day of the trip, I think four years ago. And so then, you know, I just decided to sell my house. I'd been in my house for 18 years.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
Absolutely. Yeah, I can relate to that because I talk a little bit in my stand-up special about not having kids. And I sometimes think it's kind of a bit of a message to my future children that, you know, that I'm aware that I haven't had them yet, you know? And so I totally understand what you're saying about that. It's... Yeah, I mean, it's...
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
It's a weird thing because 20 years ago, nobody had – definitely 30 years ago, nobody had video cameras really like they do now. But now everybody with their phones, everything documented. It's so normal now. But I just put this documentary out on Prime, which is – it's called This is the Tom Green Documentary. It's sort of a play on my old theme song on my show.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
So I went through like thousands of hours of video. I'm going back looking at 17-year-old me running around doing stuff. And it was actually kind of a pretty –
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
somewhat terrifying experience actually because it was like this opportunity to kind of tell the story of everything that happened with my show and everything that happened with my experience here in la and i i wanted to kind of uh you know tell the story right and i've got so much video and combing through all of it was at times you know uh
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
Somewhat kind of like I would be looking at myself like I'm looking at a completely different person and I can't even believe – I'm finding things I don't even remember happening and I'm looking at things that are just so completely bonkers and silly and ridiculous. I'm like, whoa. Sometimes I couldn't look. At the TV, I'm like, oh my, what was I doing? That's how you made us feel. Yeah, exactly.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
I was doing it to myself 20 years, 30 years later. And no, I wouldn't recommend it to anybody to go make a documentary about yourself. Definitely hire somebody to do that. Never watch it. But no, it was fun because I wanted to tell the story the right way. But- But it was also kind of very surreal.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
It's like the first scene of the documentary, I'm sitting with my mother and she actually says, are you really supposed to do direct a documentary about yourself? I mean, can't you kind of whitewash that a little bit? Are you going to do that? Yeah, I'm going to do that. So But honestly, the – I wanted to be – I wanted to be – I did not want to completely like put a false story out there.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
I sold my house and went back to Canada and bought a farm near where my parents live. And just, I can't believe four years went by. But yesterday was the first day back in Los Angeles. In the van, we drove back down in the van. So I've been touring with my fiancé who you just met. I have a fiancé now. Went back to Canada. I've got a fiancé from Canada now. Yeah, good choice.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
So I think the hardest part was trying to figure out how to not be too self-deprecating. Oh, yeah. Because you think – you know, when you get to my age, you know, you look back and you think, oh my God, I wish I hadn't done that or I wish I hadn't done that or I shouldn't have said that or shouldn't have done that. And, you know, I have a lot of those things, right?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
They're constantly rattling around in my head. And you start to think like, you know, man, maybe this is a good way for me to go and just like apologize for everything that I perceived that I've done wrong in my life, right? And then you have to kind of take a step back and go, well, wait a minute, you know, like that might just be in my head, you know?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
So I spent a lot of time talking to a lot of people about you know, people that I know, people I'm close with about the story of, really, it's the story of the show and takes us through the story of kind of creating the show and then building, you know, before the show with my music and then after the show with building, you know, sort of a web TV studio, right, here in Los Angeles.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
And it's sort of a telling of that story. But then I wanted to talk, you know, a bit about some of the, Personal sort of things that I went through. I had cancer when I was on MTV and I talked about that. I made this movie, Freddy Got Fingered, which was not critically completely embraced. Yeah. So, you know, so it's like I wanted to explain myself a bit.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
But then, you know, at the same time, there's a lot of people now that like the movie, believe it or not. So I didn't want to completely, you know. And hate the critics now. Yeah, yeah. So it's sort of like it was a very tricky balancing act.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
And then on top of that, there's just so much footage and so many weird little funny clips that only I know are the ones that people like or people have or haven't seen. And I kind of wanted to make sense of that all and piece it all together. I don't think anyone else would have been able to find it all. Yeah.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
I mean, you know, it's interesting because, like, in fact, that's part of what the documentary is about. Because, like, when I got into making the show when I was growing up, all I could even imagine myself doing was I wanted to be a talk show host. You know, I wanted to do basically a show like David Letterman. Right.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
have guests on, and then I go out in the street and, you know, be a nutcase, you know, do goofy stuff, right? And I got to do that, you know, a few times over the years. And, you know, when those shows go away, you know, Initially when that happened, that was back in the day of MTV. The first show I stopped when I got sick. So it didn't actually get canceled, the Tom Green show.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
And we came back in the van. And just drove into town yesterday and it's pretty weird because it's like it feels like I – nothing's really – it kind of makes you think about time. Time is weird because I went away for four years and then you come back and I drove past my house that I lived in for almost 20 years. And now I'm staying in a hotel right down across from where the house is.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
But then when I started – I did a nightly show. It kind of – when it kind of got canceled, I was thinking, oh my gosh, this is the worst thing that could ever happen to me that I could ever imagine that I'm not going to be able to do anything. a nightly talk show. This was devastating to me.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
And as time marches on and I look at all the things that I've done instead, touring, doing standup or moving back to the farm and everything in between, I kind of realized, man, I'm kind of
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
Kind of glad that actually didn't work out because if that show had been a big hit, then I would have been going down to the same studio every night for the last 30 years and I wouldn't have gotten to do all these other things. So Freddie Got Fingered, of course, was a – idiotic movie, you know, purposefully so.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
Yeah. I wrote it with my friend, Derek, and we, I directed it.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
It was, yeah. Wow. It was, but it was, we had a budget, you know, it was 20th Century Fox. We had, you know, cause the show was doing good on MTV. So they, they let me direct it, you know, they let me do that, which was, you know, probably a mistake, but no, No, it was – we really pushed it to make it like – we were in our 20s. So the idea was let's make this the craziest movie ever made.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
It's literally we actually believed that we could do something like that. And so it gets complicated because then – How do you define failure? It came out Roger Ebert and – it wasn't Siskel. It was the other guy. He had another guy there.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
Yeah, even he didn't like it. He didn't? Even Roper didn't like it. I mean it wasn't even Siskel. It was Roper, whoever that guy was. They trashed it and you're kind of thinking at the time, man, this is devastating. Ebert and Roper are – trash in my film, you know? But, and you think, oh, you start to question, you know, every sort of choice you've made, you know?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
At the time, like, it was the end of, you know, the line if these guys trashed your movie.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
It's like my first movie and all this stuff riding on it. And then these come on, just destroyed it. And I remember just sitting there, like, watching this, just thinking, oh, my gosh, this is it. You know, this is the end. But, you know, it wasn't, you know, I just kept going, kept doing my thing. And you look back at it and go, it's kind of funny now that they didn't like it, you know?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
Yeah, it's kind of awesome that they didn't like it. It's weird because there's a weird sort of counterintuitiveness to it because we set out to make a movie that those guys would not like. And then when they don't like it, you're upset about it. Yeah.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
It's like I kind of thought that they would sort of see the irony and go, I know we're not supposed to like this, but actually this kid's pretty clever. No, no, no. They didn't say that.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
Do you remember? $14 million. Wow. They spent on that. Plus an additional 10 on promotion and advertising and stuff. Advertising. And you know what? I will say it made it all back on DVD. Remember DVD? Yeah. Remember they used to put DVDs out? So I think I've heard it made $35 million on DVD. So it actually was a profitable movie. Yeah. Made $14 million at the box. I'm here defending it now.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
It made its money back. No, but it did. So it did make its money back. But you know. Ebert and Roper aren't going to tell you that, though. They're not going to tell you that.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
No, no, exactly. It was. I mean, it was in a way, but in the sense that it bombed. But, you know, no, it was – It's funny. It's funny though because – It's cool that you did it though. There was a long period of time there where I was made to feel like it was a really bad decision. And then in the last like 10 years, it's like all I hear are people saying they love it.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
Someone today showed me they had an x-ray cat tattoo. It's a character in the movie. So it's like – it is a little confusing when you talk about sort of – I mean your question was how do you handle things like failure and things like that. It's like – And it's kind of – the more of those kind of things you go through, the more you kind of learn to kind of embrace it in a way.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
I can actually see the house from the hotel room. I sort of did that on purpose because I thought it would be weird. And I went to Arts Deli. I lived sort of in the Studio City area here. And I went to Arts Deli and got my same pastrami sandwich and my chicken noodle soup. And I've been going to some of the same restaurants, just been here for a day and it doesn't feel like it's been four years.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
We start back tomorrow. Kind of like a Joe Dirt 2, 3 kind of thing?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
Well, you know, the thing is that you're in good hands here because you're with a guy that's done this a lot before. Right, he's done it a lot.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
But, you know, I think that – I don't know. It just seems like the way things get released these days and the ways people embrace weirdness these days, like I'm assuming it's kind of a – A weird movie?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
It's just like old school funny. So like a funny movie, right? Like, you know, you have this incredible thing going with your show here. So you have your audience built in. So you don't really have to worry about the same things that maybe back in the day when you put out something crazy and sort of in a sea of somewhat normal movies coming out every weekend. Yeah.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
All getting funneled through this sort of mainstream cinema release system.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
It's very strange. Like we had to take the movie and focus group it. Oh, wow. And then people would sit there with pads. And it was in Phoenix. We flew down to Phoenix to focus group Freddy Guthrie.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
Yeah, yeah. For some reason they do them there in Phoenix. And like – Then someone stands up after the movie and asks them what they didn't like about the movie. Well, with Freddy Got Fingered, I mean we're sort of supposed to not like any of these scenes. You're supposed to be polarizing.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
So it didn't really kind of work with the focus group system and then you had to make changes to it and all that kind of stuff. But you probably – you guys probably – or have a lot more creative control over things.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
It feels like I actually, I'm driving here, you know, today I was sort of almost forgot that I didn't live here anymore. I kept thinking, oh, I'll go back to my house after. Oh, right. I don't live here anymore. So that's a strange thing. But on the flip side, the last four years, I've got a farm, which I've now really settled into.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
When I was doing the web show at home? Well, I mean, it was, So there wasn't really sort of podcasting yet. It wasn't really a thing really, right? So we built the studio and it would basically just stream to my website. I mean there was no Instagram yet. YouTube had just started. And people would come and watch it on the front page of TomGreen.com. And we actually had like a –
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
company in san francisco that made like the the video playback system you know so cdn content distribution network was basically so we would upload a video to that we there was we weren't uploading it to youtube and linking it or there was there was no youtube really so so it was kind of just a big sort of science experiment that i was doing with uh you know my group of friends um and
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
And I had the sort of goal of trying to sort of make it a show that would become profitable, get advertisers and maybe sell it to television, which we did a little bit of that. So I was kind of pretty driven, I guess. And it's kind of what I notice now with like
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
podcasting which is amazing is like you know the people that have these incredible businesses that they've got going these incredible you know artistic visions they have for themselves they're all kind of have that same kind of drive in them you know they get up in the morning their mind is just like how are we going to make this better today you know how are we going to make this awesome today you know so it was kind of it was kind of like that you know we were getting up and turning on the studio every night and I'd be inviting up
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
Rappers and Too Short came up and Jurassic 5 and Exhibit and then you wrap up comedians – invite comedians up and like Joe Rogan would come over and Norm MacDonald who I became good friends with would start coming over all the time. And literally like hundreds and hundreds of people would come over and it became this kind of really – fun thing to do. I wasn't doing stand-up at the time.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
I hadn't done stand-up in years. So I was really just doing that. And... You know, it was ridiculous. I mean, we were just enjoying the absurdity of it. Oh, yeah. Was it so stressful? It was because I put pressure on myself and I would actually get stressed out about it. And then we would have people that would prank call us.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
So I had this phone system on the desk and you could just call it and it would ring and I'd hit answer. So we had like – People trolling us basically. I remember getting Rick rolled for the first time. And it was like, oh, I kind of felt like – I don't know if I'd ever heard of Rick rolling before I got Rick rolled. Oh, yeah. It's cool.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
And it became kind of like a little bit of a game, like where we were – There was a switch that I built with – Bill Schnitzer was his name. He worked there and Victor, a couple of the guys that worked there. And we built the switch under the desk.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
I've got these incredible animals, which are now I'm really bonded with this mule and this donkey and
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
It was like metal and it was like we got a metal box with a switch and we had wires and we soldered them together and then the wires ran out to the computer. And then Bill was able to program the computer so that when like I flipped that switch, it would – like if everything was off, it's the middle of the night in my house. It's quiet night. Nobody there.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
And if I were to get up at 1 o'clock in the morning by myself – and put clown makeup on, which I often did, and a top hat and walk out into my living room and flick the switch. The switch would turn on the lights, would turn on the cameras, would turn on the computers. This computer would tell this computer to start recording. The phone system would turn on.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
It would send it to the front page of my website. Just one switch. I haven't done anything. All I've done is put on some clown makeup and flip the switch, right? You don't have to put on the clown makeup, but I did do that often.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
It was called The French Clown of Midnight. I'd speak in French in clown makeup. And you wonder why it didn't work out. But then the phone would start ringing, and I'd just be doing the show. I'd have a switcher on the desk so I could switch the cameras, and I would just start taking calls. And it was really the only live video on the internet. Like, really. There was no Instagram Live or anything.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
two horses and uh chickens and it's just like this it's sort of been an incredible incredible journey the last four years so yeah it's been cool was it something that you always wanted to have you feel like a farm i guess every human kind of maybe feels something like that i'm gonna get a little bit of land i'm gonna get some animals was it that or was it no it's weird because i never really imagined having a mule um you know like and riding a mule every day i
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
So it was like... You imagine, when I was a kid, I wanted to do, I like prank calling the radio station. I'd like to call into the radio station. And I would call into the radio station and I'd record it. And then I'd call into the radio station and I'd pretend I was like my friend's father. And I'd call and I'd start complaining about my son and I'd use his name and I'd play the tape back to him.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
And it was hilarious to me, you know. And so I loved that, like, Pranking a radio station and I kind of started to realize like we're the only live show on the internet right now with a phone with no call screener. All these people like me around the world could now call in and prank me.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
And so we kind of got into this little sort of war basically, which was fun because I would get angry about it. But then also I kind of didn't have to turn the phone on. Right, right, right. Um, so it was, it was, it was really fun. And, you know, I got to meet a lot of great people, you know, I mean, that's where I really got to hang out with, you know, Joe Rogan for the first time, really.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
And, uh, and Norm, who I became really close with and, and so many other people. And, you know, it was, it was, it was amazing.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
Well, at the very end, I did not know that he was sick. I didn't know he was sick. So that was – It seemed like he kept that from everybody. Yeah. And he's from my hometown. He's from Ottawa, Canada. And he started at the same comedy club that I started at Yuck Yucks in Ottawa. Howard Wagman, who's the – still owns the comedy club in Ottawa – Yuck Yucks, which is like all across Canada.
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E564 Tom Green
I've been to one of them, I think. Yeah, yeah. So he's awesome and he put Norm on the stage for the first time and tells a story about how Norm got off stage the very first time he did stand-up. He was in his 20s and he didn't think he did well and he was walking down the street. I'm never going to do that again. And Howard –
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E564 Tom Green
It's weird, like I find myself sometimes now talking about 2005 like it was like 50 years ago or something like that. But it really is, things have changed so much in the last 20 years with social media that it does really feel like kind of a different world. Like I remember Norm would come up and the first time he came up, I just couldn't believe I was going to hang out with him.
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E564 Tom Green
sort of in some ways kind of doing a make-believe talk show even though there were people watching it was kind of like you know experimental talk show and he was getting into that and then the show would end and we'd go you know on YouTube and go look at videos and I was like I remember it was like YouTube was so new that it was just the strangest thing I'd be sitting with Norm Macdonald after doing this for two hours and we'd be sitting there watching you know
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E564 Tom Green
Crazy clips that he would find, you know, like baby versus cobra, you know, with the cobras mouth sewed together.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
Grape lady falls. I remember watching these videos with Norm and just dying of laughter, you know, in the middle of the night and just thinking this is cool. Now it's just so normal to look at viral videos and stuff. But back then we thought we were just – have you ever seen this video? I've never seen this. Oh, man. I mean it's a little bit – can you play the audio too? Is it possible?
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E564 Tom Green
I love that that's your takeaway for this, her head size as well. It is true, though, by the way. I'd never noticed that.
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E564 Tom Green
Right. Or at least just talk in sort of the amount of words that your head should justify, your head size should justify.
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E564 Tom Green
Did you notice right away that she had a particularly small head or was that something that sort of dawned on you later?
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E564 Tom Green
So once she got under that, the hair was puffed out, probably purposefully. We probably knew that her head was small.
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E564 Tom Green
Yeah. Yeah. I sort of thought – initially I thought it would be kind of funny. And then the mule I happened to find, Fanny – is her name. And she's this beautiful mule. She's this huge animal. And that's Kia, the donkey in the background. And so it's just become this sort of amazing change. But yeah, I...
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E564 Tom Green
Yeah, I know. Was that incredible? It was cool. You got to host it. I did. I know. That's amazing. I was on tour. I wasn't able to go. I would have loved to have gone to that. That must have been wild. I went to the 40th. And I remember that was – that is just the most surreal thing. If it's anything, I imagine it was. Like just everybody is there, right?
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E564 Tom Green
And I wish I didn't. This sort of social anxiety when you're in an environment like that, where there's just all these people that you admire and respect and are around you and everybody. I kind of don't even feel like myself. It's a sort of a very stressful thing for me. Yeah. So in some ways, I was kind of- That's a good word. It's stressful. Yeah. Yeah.
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E564 Tom Green
You know, initially I hadn't really thought of necessarily getting a farm with a mule and all this stuff. But I wanted to get a place that was kind of in nature, really was. And then the farm happened to have these old barns on it. And I thought it'd be kind of cool to get a mule in those barns. So I now am very much loving life up there.
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E564 Tom Green
But you're on top of the world right now. You just interviewed the president of the United States. I mean everybody – you've got this incredible show. I mean I'm sure everybody was super excited to see you there. So you probably don't really have any reason to feel nervous, but you still do, right?
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E564 Tom Green
So like when you go to the inauguration and you've already – now you know the president of the United States because you had this interview with him.
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E564 Tom Green
Like did you kind of hang out with him at the inauguration or – No, no.
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E564 Tom Green
Yeah. So when like when he like came on your show, right, it was right before the election and he was doing a lot of podcasts and stuff. Did he did they approach you or they call you? Is it his son was a fan of your show, right? Is that what he said?
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E564 Tom Green
I get up in the morning and I saddle her up and ride off into the wilderness. It's pretty cool. Yeah. Really?
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E564 Tom Green
um you know i don't know that's just my thoughts it's kind of a endless sort of uh you know uh quagmire you can find yourself in once you start talking when you get into politics i agree in this world we're living in now because it's like you know you go on the road you do stand up all around the country and you know everybody's sort of divided in a way. Right.
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E564 Tom Green
I mean I always loved animals. I have my dog Charlie and I've always enjoyed being outdoors. But I mean it just kind of – I know every once in a while, you know, sometimes when an idea pops into your head and then you just go with it and then all of a sudden you've done it. This is like that, except it sort of occurred to me afterwards.
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E564 Tom Green
And then you start to have firmly choosing a side and all of a sudden half the audience doesn't want to have any fun anymore.
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E564 Tom Green
So it's kind of like you got to be fine. We got to make these choices now. Like, okay, well do I, do I want to give my opinion anymore about what's going on in the world? Uh, you know, and then, You have to choose one of the set of opinions that are on this side or the set of opinions that are all evenly and neatly put on this side.
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E564 Tom Green
And as soon as you state your opinion about one of these issues that just happens to be on this side, then anybody that doesn't agree with you no longer wants to fuck with you and come to your show or have a good time or have a laugh with you. So it's just such a shitty thing to have to deal with that, right? So how do you kind of like juggle that?
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E564 Tom Green
Because as a Canadian, it's like right now in Canada, people are pretty upset with Donald Trump because he's putting these tariffs on Canada, right? And saying they're going to make us a 51st state. Saying they're going to annex Canada. People aren't too happy about the idea of being taken over by the United States of America, doesn't it?
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E564 Tom Green
It's not something that people are super excited about hearing. So you kind of go – it's funny because sometimes I think like – well, I think a lot of Americans who don't think about it that much might think like – Oh, Canada is going to be the 51st state. I bet you everyone in Canada must be really excited about being the 51st state of the United States.
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E564 Tom Green
But, you know, I'm kind of saying, well, no, it'll probably be the first state in America that nobody in it wants to be America. You know, so so because, you know, we've. we've got our own country. It's not that we don't, don't, don't love America. I love America, but we, you know, we sort of have our, our, our, our entire different culture. You know, you go to Canada all the time, right?
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E564 Tom Green
They're not even, they just came off just to apologize.
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E564 Tom Green
You know, as I was doing it, I was realizing, you know, I'm going to have this mule for the rest of my life. You know, like they live to be – donkeys live to be up to 40, 50 years old. Oh, my God, really? He is only three. So it's a lifelong commitment. The donkey could live after you. Absolutely. She probably will.
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E564 Tom Green
Yeah. No, it's interesting. I think, you know, there's a thing that's going on, the hockey games in Canada now where the USA and Canada are playing.
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E564 Tom Green
Yeah, the Canadian fans were booing at them, right? Yeah. You know, sometimes I go like, well, I don't – based on the reaction on social media, I sort of feel like maybe not everybody in the US necessarily understands why that's happening. They don't know it's about the tariffs. They're not booing the national anthem. They're booing this – the fact that –
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E564 Tom Green
These tariffs are being put on, which is going to, of course, devastate – the economy on both sides will suffer from that, right? I'm sitting here talking about it like I know about it. I should probably know more about it. But it's like – I think people are just kind of like, why are you guys doing this to us? So it's kind of an interesting thing.
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E564 Tom Green
But you want to talk about issues sometimes and then you go, OK, I've just waded into this sort of hornet's nest situation. and I'm never going to hear the end of it. So it is interesting. What was it – when you're at the inauguration, after the inauguration, were you like kind of just – are you kind of – who were you hanging out with there?
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E564 Tom Green
But yeah, so it's – so but it's – I think maybe I was looking for something that would kind of ground me and give me that home base that I needed. This is the first time I've ever lived somewhere where I know I'm going to be there for the rest of my life. Wow. I'm planting trees. Yeah. I'm thinking, oh, in 20 years, that tree is going to be – these trees are going to be bigger and I'm kind of –
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E564 Tom Green
Yeah. They're going to become Canada's 11th province. Good. Yeah.
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E564 Tom Green
i would love it if we started trading pieces of our trading now that i'm totally for new york and california come join canada and take one of them you guys can uh you know take i'm not gonna say who you guys can take but you know because we but no i know you're talking about dude i gotta be political that's all i'll say brother no no just be in quebecois actually je parle francais i lived in quebec a lot in my life yeah so i grew up in quebec so i love quebec yeah
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E564 Tom Green
yeah you must have been up the montreal festival over the years or yeah we went there a couple times um i love quebec it's fun yeah edmonton we got some other places we're going to still calgary and ottawa and winnipeg we're going to go to this year oh yeah so when you're in ottawa maybe if you're rolling past the farm and the tour bus oh come by the farm and uh we'll go ride some mules or something how far outside of town are you guys
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E564 Tom Green
About like an hour or so. Oh, wow. Yeah, yeah. So sort of not too far, you know. I'll come pick you up in my pickup truck. We'll go hang out.
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E564 Tom Green
Yeah, definitely. You know, I'm getting married. So, you know, knock on wood, everything goes well with that. And, you know, maybe there'll be some – We'll see. We'll have to ask my fiancée.
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E564 Tom Green
Yes, yes, yeah, for sure. No, I think that's a possibility for sure.
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E564 Tom Green
I was starting to question whether or not it was going to be part of my life because, you know, I mean, I think you kind of alluded to this earlier. You know, you want to, you know – If you're going to get married, you want to get married to somebody that you love and actually think that this could last forever, right? I was starting to question whether or not that was maybe possible.
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E564 Tom Green
I wasn't sure if that was possible anymore to find somebody that I thought would last forever with. But when I met Amanda, she's outside. I hope I'm getting some brownie points here. But I realized this is the one. Wow. But until you meet that person, it does start to feel kind of like, geez, this is getting a little kind of uncertain here.
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E564 Tom Green
Yeah, I think kind of, I mean, I think being home where I'm from helped, you know, because it's like, I don't know. I mean if you're not from Los Angeles, then it's kind of a weird place. If you're from Los Angeles, it's normal. But if you're not from Los Angeles, it's kind of a weird place. So you're here probably focused on your career and your work and so many other people are.
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E564 Tom Green
It's kind of hard to I think find a good – I'm not saying it's impossible, but it seems like it is kind of harder in this environment to find somebody that you can – I mean I don't know. Are people watching going – are we going to be taking relationship advice from me? I don't know. I don't know if that's – No.
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E564 Tom Green
Yeah. They're going to put a tariff on every – you know, Canada is the largest trading partner of the United States. Nice. And so much of the goods that come into the United States from Canada –
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E564 Tom Green
are you are being brought in by american businesses to you know like wood you bring wood and lumber in to build houses right so when you put a 25 tariff on lumber that means flannel everybody that flannel if you're a big flannel company making flannel pajamas all of a sudden flannel pajamas are going to be 25 more expensive so it's really it's going to affect uh you know businesses on on both sides of the border obviously not just canada but also everything will go up in price
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E564 Tom Green
So – and I'm not exactly sure the reason for it to be honest with you.
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E564 Tom Green
Absolutely. I don't think there's a real border security problem between Canada and the United States though. It's – but that's –
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E564 Tom Green
Yeah. It's – the claim that there's fentanyl coming into the United States from Canada I think is a little bit exaggerated because I don't really think that that's actually the case. Something like a very small amount is coming in from Canada. Yeah.
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E564 Tom Green
Yeah, it's – I mean it's weird. I moved here when I was 28. I think it was 28 or 29 when I moved to L.A. I'm 53 now. And I mean, I loved it. I had a great time here. I wasn't leaving L.A. because I didn't, you know, like L.A. or anything. It was more I wanted to be close to my parents and they're still doing good and I wanted to be close to family and stuff.
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E564 Tom Green
I think that's what they're – I think that's what he's asking them to do. And I think we already do have – again, I'm not a representative of the Canadian government, but I do think that we already do have a lot of – There's only so much you can do to seal off a border, right? And I don't think there is that much fentanyl coming in from Canada really.
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E564 Tom Green
Yeah, I think it mostly does come in from the southern border.
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E564 Tom Green
a little bit like that but you know hopefully hopefully it'll resolve itself I do think that it's probably going to end up causing a lot of economic problems on both sides of the border and probably they may may not go for it but you know sports exciting for a while though yeah exactly that's a side effect it was a good fight right off the top of the game the other day you know it's pretty cool we like a good hockey fight so that's cool and it is nice when countries sometimes don't get along a little bit in sports right I've always I've always admired that yeah
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E564 Tom Green
Maybe more fights in the NBA would be good. Physical fights. Yeah, look at that. Oh, definitely. I believe both those players are American too. I'm not sure how quickly a researcher can tell us that. But even though the Canadian team –
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E564 Tom Green
Maybe that's not true at all, what I just said. I don't think Canada got the win in this game. But that's okay. Yeah, we lost the game, absolutely, which is really kind of... I know. But it is nice to see everybody having a good time watching a hockey fight, for sure. Yeah. Absolutely.
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E564 Tom Green
Oh, wow. That's definitely something that I could see a lot of people probably would be guilty of for sure. Hey, shoot is shoot, you know? Yeah, I could see that being. I mean, I don't want to get into too much personal detail, but I think I'd probably be locked up for a long time. Yeah.
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E564 Tom Green
Now, I'm assuming this is a parody site, but the world's so crazy right now that I'm actually asking this for real. Is this a real article? This is a real article. article right there.
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E564 Tom Green
So this is not The Onion or something like that or Mad Magazine or something?
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E564 Tom Green
Conception begins... And it rhymes nicely too. Conception begins at erection act. I mean, it's a nice rhyme to it, which is also nice.
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E564 Tom Green
But yeah, it is a unique place for sure. People come here from all over the world. Yeah. pursue their dreams and there's sort of an energy there that's exciting. But, you know, when you – as I got a little older, you know, I left when I was 50 and, you know, not married, no kids, COVID happened. I wake up. I've been in my house for 18 years. The real estate market went up.
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E564 Tom Green
Yeah, I mean I'm assuming – I don't know how much I want to talk about this in detail with you.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
A felony for men to discharge semen without the intent to fertilize. That is an amazing, amazing idea. I mean, I actually would love to see that sort of applied that law just to see what would happen. I mean, it would be interesting to see what would happen. It's genital communism in a way, I guess.
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E564 Tom Green
They're making a valid point when you put it that way. Absolutely.
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E564 Tom Green
It was a wild – Somewhat terrifying experience. You know, I had just gone through some pretty – I'd just gone through surgery like a few months ago.
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E564 Tom Green
Yeah, yeah. And I'd had this lymph node dissection and I was kind of like – It had affected my sort of energy levels a lot. So it was kind of – there was a lot going on in my life when I actually got the call to do that show and to do Saturday Night Live. And it was really cool though. The thing that was cool about it was Lorne Michaels, who's Canadian, and I was just so kind of sort of –
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E564 Tom Green
Kind of sort of overwhelmed that I was asked to do it, right? Yeah. And I had a couple of friends who I grew up with who worked on my show with me. And I said, you know, can they come in and like kind of work with me and do some – help write some skits and stuff. So they gave us a little office and that stuff. We went in there. We were sort of writing skits up and everything.
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E564 Tom Green
And, you know, they actually kind of ended up giving me a lot of kind of creative freedom on the show to kind of write sketches and stuff. And, you know, in hindsight, I kind of wish they hadn't.
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E564 Tom Green
Yeah, well, because we really kind of made some really weird fucking sketches, you know. I think maybe it would have been cool if I maybe I'd just gone in and done the stuff that they had written. But like I was sort of definitely, you know. Freddie Got Fingered hadn't come out yet.
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E564 Tom Green
So like I was still kind of riding high on this hit show and we come in and we say, OK, now let's write some crazy sketches, right? And I mean the stuff we wrote was really, really weird.
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E564 Tom Green
Let's make it ours. I think so. I think so. And, you know, sometimes I think there was a misperception maybe among some of the cast that I brought my own writers in, which wasn't really the case. It was more like it was my buddies and they'd come up with me with the show.
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E564 Tom Green
You know, it was kind of like we were, you know, when we made the show in Canada, some of my friends came down with me to the States.
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E564 Tom Green
I want them to be included in the show. So we kind of went and did that. Yeah. I mean, it was an amazingly exciting experience. I mean, my parents were there on stage with me. It was one of those things where you kind of can't believe that it actually happened while it was happening. And I did a lot of sketches with Will Ferrell.
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E564 Tom Green
One of the – like here's an example of something that I – I wouldn't say I regret this but like – but I kind of regret this. So there was a sketch where I'm a wizard and I'm holding a pig, like an actual pig. And it was Molly Shannon and Will and I'm a wizard. Wow. And I didn't really have any lines in the sketch or many lines in the sketch. It was mostly Will and Molly were doing this sketch.
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E564 Tom Green
I was like, oh, maybe I should sell it now as opposed to, you know, five years ago I wouldn't have wanted to sell it. So there was a moment in time, maybe I'll sell this place, you know, that I've been living in for 20 years, waiting for the right moment to feel like it was time to go. And because, I don't know, I kind of felt like I wanted to be back where I grew up, you know.
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E564 Tom Green
But I noticed during rehearsal that if I just kind of lightly sort of tickled the pig's belly with my finger, that it would start to squeal extremely loud, right? And so I did that once during rehearsal and then somebody said, oh, you better not, you know, she'll squeal if you touch her belly. And so I said, okay, fine. And there's a rehearsal show and then there's the actual show, right?
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E564 Tom Green
And I kind of maybe regret this, but I did note that, okay, let's get through the rehearsal show. But then live, I'm going to make that pig squeal, right? Yeah.
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E564 Tom Green
So it did kind of – Sorry, I meant pig. No, but it was kind of – it kind of threw the sketch off a little bit. You just already kept squealing that? I realized that. It did kind of throw the rhythm of the comedy off a little bit, but – How many times did you squeal it? It just sort of became sort of a bit of a mess.
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E564 Tom Green
And were you getting a squeal every time he touched his belly or did you have to really – No, I just had to kind of just lightly sort of pet her there and she would just start – But it was amusing to me, but I'm not sure if anybody else enjoyed it that much.
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E564 Tom Green
Right. It was like that. Yeah. So but, you know, it was an amazing experience. I was total honor to be able to do it. Yeah. You know, I mean, I, you know, it was cool. I mean, the cast was Jimmy Fallon, Tina Fey, Will Ferrell, Chris Kattan, Molly Shannon, Anna Gasteyer, Tracy Morgan. And, you know, you know, there was...
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E564 Tom Green
It's a weird environment like Saturday Night Live, especially when you're young and you don't really know. Like, you know, we were talking earlier about like going to – you were talking about going to Chris Rock's party and like you didn't know how to act or whatever because there's all these people here and it's kind of complicated.
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E564 Tom Green
So you're getting thrust into an environment like that and then it's – Even as the host, it sort of felt like kind of a competitive environment because all the cast members are trying to write sketches and get them on the air every week. And I didn't really know how it worked really at the time. In hindsight, I now realize how it works and I might have done things differently.
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E564 Tom Green
But when we were trying to put these sketches on the air that we were writing, maybe that was kind of pushing another sketch off and we didn't really – I wasn't really thinking of it like that. So it kind of created – it's kind of a weird environment. The more I kind of – you know, sort of hear people on podcasts who've been on the show, talk about the show.
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E564 Tom Green
It seems like everybody's gone through that experience who's been on that show where it's very competitive and, and stressful for people. And, uh, that made, that makes me feel a little bit better about my experience there because, you know, it was, it was kind of, uh, uh, you know, a stressful experience, you know, cause you know, everybody's going to be watching the show it's live and, uh,
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E564 Tom Green
you know, I'm, uh, you know, you're doing all this weird stuff. That's not necessarily, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm a little bit out of my element. I didn't do sketch comedy. Yeah. That's scary. So it was, it was, it was, but it was cool.
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E564 Tom Green
I mean, you're not from here either. So, you know, there's something... There's something very sort of I guess deep that you feel when you're home. I'm sure – you're from Tennessee.
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E564 Tom Green
Another thing that was weird that happened on the show, so there was a sketch that I did. It's called a sketch, like I did with Will Ferrell, where we're both dressed as eagles. And this was one of the ones that my friends and I wrote, okay? It's sort of hard to sort of say that we wrote it, but... The sketch was Jimmy Fallon and Molly Shannon are looking at Will and I who are eagles, right?
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E564 Tom Green
We wrote this out, by the way, on paper and handed it in and then they said to do it. And then Will and I decide to fly up into the audience, okay? And I thought it would be fun to go in the audience. So we fly into the audience and And then we chew up carrots. And then I believe Will chews up a carrot. And I believe he sort of spits the carrot into my mouth.
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E564 Tom Green
And then kind of we end up sort of – because you know how baby birds will chew up the food and feed it. Mother birds will chew up the food and make it easier for the baby to eat. So this was the sketch we did. Oh, yeah. Oh, God. So somehow I kind of maybe probably would have been better if we just kind of did the sketches that their writers had written.
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E564 Tom Green
Yeah, so we're doing this sketch, this skit. And so, you know, when you host the show, you got to run to get ready for the next sketch because you got to take off your eagle costume and put on another costume, right? And so I'm running down the stairs and I'm running through the backstage area and just sitting in the darkness, you know, just backstage standing.
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E564 Tom Green
Tom Hanks is just sitting there in front of a monitor watching the show. And I'm in the eagle costume. I'd just done that. I make eye contact with Tom Hanks. So now I'm like, oh, I was already kind of nervous. Now, like, I got Tom Hanks in the dark watching. And I'm going like, how did that eagle sketch go? You know, and I'm sort of getting ready for the next sketch.
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E564 Tom Green
Not sure how the eagle sketch went. And Tom Hanks is watching. So it kind of throws you a little bit. But then there's a big after party after the show and Tom Hanks was real nice and he was hanging out talking to my parents and stuff. Oh, that's cool. It was pretty cool. No, it was an amazing thing.
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E564 Tom Green
It's the kind of thing though like it's kind of like you go, geez, it would be nice to be able to do it again someday because I think like doing it the first time is sort of so – I don't know that that would ever happen, but probably in an alternate universe, I might be able to do it again someday. But like you go, okay, I sort of understand how the system of it works now.
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E564 Tom Green
And it would be probably – I probably would not have done that. Yeah.
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E564 Tom Green
Like when you go back to Louisiana, you must feel like, oh, now I'm at home, right?
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E564 Tom Green
Yeah, yeah. And I think that generally you can – at least take those lessons and apply them to something else.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
No, it was not Michael Jackson, but that would have been amazing if it was Michael Jackson. No, it was David Gray. Oh, yeah. But, man, it would have been amazing. No, nothing against David Gray, but have you ever had Michael Jackson?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
Have you ever interacted with Michael Jackson, uh, in any way or no, no, that would have, I mean, that would have been amazing, but yeah, he was great. And, uh,
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
Another weird thing that happened on the show. One thing that was weird that happened on the show. So I was backstage getting ready for the show. I don't even know if I should tell this story. I don't even know if I should tell this story. Let's talk about something else. It's a weird story.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
Oh, okay, yeah. It was just interesting. So were you chatting with Madonna? No, no, no, no, no. She's quite interesting on TikTok these days. Oh, is she? She does some pretty sort of out there stuff on her TikTok. I've got to follow her.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
One testicle, yeah, my right testicle and some lymph nodes as well.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
No, the lymph nodes are actually behind your intestines and they have to like – they cut me up here and they had to remove those. And that was just to check to see if the cancer had spread into them. Wow. And the only way they could really check and know for 100 percent sure if it had spread was to take them out and look at them under a microscope and stuff. So –
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
so they had not spread so then that meant i did not have to have chemo and stuff but they did take my right testicle which was uh honestly like when i found out the show was on mtv at the time and you have it still yeah i did not keep it like indefinitely but that is it in a plastic bag right there how many ounces is it you know i i don't remember weighing it exactly but i know it's quite heavy for sure oh hell yeah i can give you that
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E564 Tom Green
Fuck yeah. We don't have no light testicles around here. But we filmed the whole sort of surgery for a show on MTV. That's actually the whole show there, the Cancer Special, which is on YouTube. But you'd see my documentary on Prime too where it kind of walks through that whole – That's Glenn Humplick who is my friend and co-host on the show.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
And here he is sort of after my surgery coming down and playing with my testicle. A little bit of sashimi there. Yeah, it's a little sashimi. Yeah, that's what he says. It sort of looks like chicken. And then my mom says, I don't know what kind of chicken you're eating. Yeah, so that is my cancer-infected testicle right there. But I still have the left one. It's the middle one now.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
I can still ejaculate just a little. No, it's pretty good, actually.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
Only $5,000 for me. Oh, yeah, that's true. Which is a benefit in Ohio to have testicular cancer.
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E564 Tom Green
It was offered and I refused to do it. I did not refuse, but I just sort of opted out on the prosthetic. Did you ever look at them at least? I think I did. Yeah, I think I did. This was, you know, 20 years ago. But I'd heard the doctor kind of said, you know, a lot of people get them, don't like it. They say it kind of sort of feels weird or whatever. So I just figured, no, I don't need one.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
So, you know, but I mean, I don't know how much you want to talk about my ball sack, but I mean, it doesn't really seem that much different like down there. Like, I mean. Oh, I could imagine that too. As you're talking. It kind of all just kind of sort of morphs into kind of like a. Because like the, like the, like they don't like, like they don't actually like.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
go through the scrotum to get the testicle. You know that? Like they don't actually cut the scrotum. Oh, nuh-uh. No, they go in, they cut you like up, sort of up here, like under your pubics, hair kind of thing, under your pubes. They go in there and then they kind of go in and they just sort of shuck it out like an oyster from above.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
So it's sort of not really, like the scrotum is completely intact. You know, like there's not some sort of, you know, sort of scarred scrotum or anything. Like I don't have a scarred up scrotum. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like it's totally normal scrotum. Yeah. Good.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
Like there's a, there's a little scar up here, but I'd had a, I'd had a hernia operation before when I was like, you know, younger. So they just went through the same thing. So it's like, you wouldn't need just a little scar there. Yeah.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
A lot of my friends in Canada have had hernias. A lot of your friends in Canada have had hernias, really? Yeah, I'm just wondering. I'd be curious to see if there's more in Canada. That would be certainly an interesting statistic for sure.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
I gave myself a hernia on my show, live on the public. It was on the public access version of the show years before we were on MTV. And it was kind of a strange episode, probably one of the weirder ones where we said, okay, I'm going to break the Guinness Book of World Records for the longest fingernails. Have you ever seen those?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
Exactly. So for whatever reason, this doesn't even sound like it could even possibly make sense to describe it. But the idea was, okay, it was Glenn and myself. It's a live show. It was on community cable. It's not on a big network. So it was sort of late at night. And we said, okay, what we're going to do is we're going to try to break the record for longest fingernails. I had a bunch of milk.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
It was calcium. And I set it up all very seriously. And then I start drinking milk. And then for the entire hour, I just basically drank milk and kind of stared at my fingernails for an hour and didn't do anything, right? Just kind of progressively got a little bit more kind of sort of weird.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
And then towards the end of the show, I kind of stood up and started thrashing around sort of somewhat violently. I don't know. There's no real logical reason for it. It was like a milk overdose or something. And I – I started doing this thrashing, and I hit the desk, and I flipped the desk over, and I felt something pop in my abdomen.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
And then we went off the air, and I went up to the bathroom, and my intestine was like pushing out through my abdomen. And went to the hospital and I had given myself a hernia. So that's how that happened.
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E564 Tom Green
No. The worst one ever was just two years ago. I stepped on a fire on the beach in Costa Rica.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
It had been buried under sand. And I walked up to this bonfire and the edge of the fire had been buried and my foot went into it. And yeah, I got third degree burns on both my feet.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
Yeah, no. They – yeah. It was – that was maybe the worst. And that was just three years ago. I almost lost my foot.
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E564 Tom Green
For 10 days in a Costa Rican hospital and then I was medevaced on an air ambulance back to Canada actually and spent another week and a half in the hospital there. And yeah, my foot is pretty messed up right now. But it's better. It's better. Not 100 percent but – I've had a few good injuries. Oh, there they go. They're there. Yeah.
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E564 Tom Green
You found the unedited version. Yeah. Yeah, that – wow, look at that. Yeah, it was – and look at this, the top of my foot. Wow. The bottom of the foot ain't good either.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
Yeah, those are my feet right there. That was just – that was maybe coming up three years ago now. So, yeah, that was maybe the worst injury ever. So, yeah.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
The 28th or something, when was it? Yeah, yeah. It's all on Amazon Prime. On Prime. This is the Tom Green documentary. And then the stand-up special. It's called I Got a Mule. I Got a Mule. It talks about my life on the farm and getting my mule. And, and then the show, which is, it's a four episode sort of series of me moving to the farm called Tom Green Country.
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E564 Tom Green
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, Amanda's here. It's her first time in Los Angeles. Nice. At least you get to be a host and a tour guide. That's kind of nice. Showing around my old hometown, my new old hometown.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
And I recorded all the music for the show as well. There's a country album that I put out, which is the sound for the soundtrack for the show, which is called Home to the Country, which is on Spotify. It's called what? It's called Home to the Country. Home to the Country. It's the name of the album. And that's out on music, wherever you get music now. And then I'm on tour. I'm actually on tour.
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E564 Tom Green
I'm getting back in the camper van and we're going to start do a little bit more camping and touring around with my fiance up through the desert. And then we'll be picking up the tour again March 14th in Colorado. And it'll be Colorado Springs, Aspen, upwards to, you know, up through, where are we going? Indianapolis, St. Louis. All the dates are on my website, but Chicago.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
And so touring and driving back to Canada. And then I'll be riding my mule all summer. So when are you in Ottawa?
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E564 Tom Green
It's definitely like not something that I expect to really go viral in a lot of ways because it's like very long form stuff that I just really like shooting like that.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
getting into a i'm getting into a world yeah that's what it feels like yeah that's cool that's cool i mean like to know that you've watched it because it sort of is sort of it's not like i'm a mainstream comedy sort of piece that i'm putting on my youtube channel right now it's it's you know i want to kind of just capture what it feels like being out in the desert and in these amazing places or being on the farm with with the animals and uh
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E564 Tom Green
Yeah, so that's been pretty wild. So like because when I got this van, I kind of got pretty good at it, like going to really remote places in the American Southwest particularly, like in New Mexico, Utah. Zion? You go to Zion? Yeah, I went to Zion. I did camp in Zion, but like there's this other kind of land called BLM land. It's Bureau of Land Management land that is –
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
And so I like shooting and capturing images that are sort of calming and beautiful. And it is the kind of thing that – the show is not like that. The show is – there's a lot more going on. But there is something nice about just kind of putting it on and sitting back and just kind of like – it's like an ASMR type of thing.
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E564 Tom Green
Yeah, yeah. So it's interesting. I mean I think a lot of it started just as me kind of like really trying to experiment with the cameras and just trying to figure out how to make these cameras work and capture the sort of the cinematography the way I want to capture it. And I think that maybe it may evolve into something a little bit more faster paced at some point.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
But right now it's just a lot of this sort of slice of life stuff that I put up on the YouTube channel. Yeah. And, you know, I have a podcast that I do, you know, one episode every six months or something like that. I might start doing the podcast again and putting that up to kind of give people something a little bit more familiar to watch. But right now, yeah, that's what it is.
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E564 Tom Green
And I just – I kind of – just enjoy taking people to these places. I mean, I find it interesting that, like, you know, everything's so fast-paced now. Like, you know, everything is so... People's attention spans are so short now that it's kind of interesting to sort of do something that's kind of not that. And, again, it's... It's not – the algorithm doesn't really work in its favor.
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E564 Tom Green
You have to say something shocking within the first 10 seconds and then put some words on the screen and do all these things that you can do to really capture large audiences. But if you do watch it, you sort of do kind of get sucked into a little secret universe in a way. There's even little messages sometimes I'll put like 45 minutes into a video that will –
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
you know, if you made it that far, you know, then you might say something in the comments and then I'll know that you actually watched 45 minutes. And so there is a lot of people that do get it, you know, which is fun.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
And it's kind of neat to, you know, it's impossible to capture the energy of what it's like out there in nature by doing something fast paced because so much of what's amazing about it is just the calm stillness of it also. That's what it is on the YouTube channel. It's a bit different, but.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
Yeah. It's cool. It's weird today because there's so much energy online, like so much craziness and pranks and just, you know, like, you know, just the insanity that you can see every day on your phone. Like before you get out of bed, you're just like, you know, if you pick up your phone and you get that in your head too early in your day, your whole day could be just kind of. But you started it.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
Thank you. Thank you for having me on the show, Theo. I mean, it's awesome, man. I love the show, and I just appreciate you having me on.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
Basically all of the desert and land that is owned by the US government, it's managed by the Bureau of Land Management and they'll cut roads into the desert and they'll put sort of campsite areas with fire pits and stuff. They kind of keep it somewhat organized so that people don't go driving all around the desert and trash in the desert. They have these roads and stuff. So
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
You can get – I got this app. It's called Dirt, D-U-I-R-T. It's like it's basically an app that gives you all the different locations of these sort of really obscure places that are not even in national parks or anything. D-U-I-R-T? Yeah, yeah. And so it kind of like you find stuff that is just – Unbelievable.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
Like, you know, I sort of can't stop talking about it to people that don't know about it. But like, I mean, you may know about Chaco Canyon, but I'd never heard of it before. It's in New Mexico. And in fact, if you go to my last YouTube video on my YouTube channel. That's just a video I shot a couple of days ago.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
Um, and you can scroll down to like the second video, the second video, this is Chaco Canyon. So this is like native American ruins that are, uh, essentially like built in the year 875. It's like, you know, and it's like this, it's a city, you know, it's like a city in the desert. Um, and it's just out there in the middle of Northern New Mexico. This is, this is Amanda, my fiance, Amanda. And, uh,
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
Yeah, I think so. We're just going around making these videos, but you'll see. Look at this place. So it's like everyone always talks about Machu Picchu in Peru, and they talk about all these incredible things in ancient places. But the fact that you can just drive out of Albuquerque, drive north of Albuquerque, Wow, this is there? Yeah, this is there. And it's really remote.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
It's on the Navajo Nation land. And so we just were out there camping for four nights and exploring and hiking off into this beautiful desert. Getting some good rest out there?
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
cooking on the campfire and and it's just been uh fun and i enjoy photography you know you're shooting this really really well yeah i got sort of lots of different cameras and stuff and i uh i like to kind of uh do that so it's there's something about shooting out in the desert that's just so beautiful because you have these long horizons and you know big open spaces but
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
And there's an energy there that is just something that's hard to put your finger on but it just – I always kind of sort of – I never really kind of really maybe didn't even believe in that when I was younger when people would talk about the energy and Sedona has got this energy.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
But I feel this energy out there that's just of the people that live there that built that place and other places like it. So it's kind of fun to go seek those places out. Yeah.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
But there's some great... You've met a lot of women that have said that? I mean, I just think you meet a lot of women who are, you know... Very specific thing for a lot of people to have said, but yeah.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
What you just said is like really interesting because I was talking to basically an archaeologist the other day and he said exactly what you just said. Like there's this thing called intuitive archaeology where they go – because there's still stuff out in the desert that people haven't even found yet. It's how big it is and how vast it is. So they go –
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
Out into these canyons in northern Arizona and Utah looking for signs of ancient settlements and stuff. And they're sort of taught to intuitive archaeology. If you're in a place that feels like it would be a nice place to have lived, a beautiful place, there's a good chance that feeling is correct. And then you should sort of listen to that instinct and start looking for –
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
signs of ancient civilization. But it's pretty amazing because... You do feel something out there. I don't know. I was talking about this friend the other day too. Like you ever go in like an old comedy club that's been – like Zany's in Nashville or downtown Chicago is an old club.
This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von
E564 Tom Green
You see all the old pictures from the comics from back in the 70s and 80s and it's – you know that club has been there forever and you kind of feel the energy of – you see a lot of comics that have passed away on the wall and you see – God, Sam Kinison performed here. You know, I can sort of feel that energy of the performance in the room, you know? So... That's from 40 years ago or whatever.