Podcast Of The Week: Pete Holmes Makes It Weird

I was hesitant to listen to this podcast because despite listening to many podcasts hosted by comedians where they talk about comedians a lot, watching almost every episode of the former NBC sitcom Outsourced for some reason, and seeing what adds up to countless months of that E-trade baby, I had no idea who Pete Holmes was, except I vaguely remembered that he might have been on an episode of the Sara Schaefer and Nikki Glaser hosted podcast You Had To Be There with Paul Scheer – the name of the podcast isn’t You Had To Be There with Paul Scheer, he was just also a guest on that episode which did in fact have Pete Holmes on it, however from now on if someone doesn’t get something I’m talking about and they were there I’m just going to say, “Oh, well you had to be there with Paul Scheer.”

In case you still don’t know who Pete Holmes is – Standup comedian, writer on the former network sitcom Outsourced, and voice of the E-trade baby who is slightly less creepy than the Ally McBeal dancing baby – Pete Holmes is the host of the You Made It Weird podcast on the Nerdist Network – which with other podcasts like Making It with Riki Lindhome, The Todd Glass Show, Nerdist Writer’s Panel and of course The Nerdist, is quickly making a run at becoming my favorite podcast network.

The concept of the podcast is that he has on a guest, often a comedian friend of his, and he discusses weird facts about them. In the first episode he talks to Kumail Nanjiani about being a young married comedian and their differing thoughts on wanting to have sex with crowd members after performances – which Kumail did before he met his wife. I’m more in the Pete Holmes corner with this. I don’t think I’d have much of a desire to have sex with a random crowd member after a show and also I’d be more worried that she’d want me to be a dancing monkey for her – make her laugh the whole time. And it wouldn’t do much for my self esteem when none of the laughs I got on stage were anywhere near as big as the laugh I got from her when I pull my pants down – although the mere fact that I assume that would happen kind of implies my self esteem can’t get much lower. Luckily I don’t have to worry about that situation, because I’m not a comedian, and also women don’t want to sleep with me. Oh lucky me.

Pete Holmes is as tall as Conan O'Brien, so he has to be funny...right?

In the second, third and fourth episode – and also the first – Pete Holmes makes it weird by discussing religion with T.J. Miller, Demetri Martin and Dave Coulier respectively – it’s also brought up with Kumail Nanjiani who was born in Pakistan – all of which are various forms of Atheists – including Kumail – which makes for good conversation because I don’t think Pete Holmes has made it super clear, but he was raised with religion and he seems to have a belief in God but not a super religious one. He asks them a good question for Atheists which is if your plane is going down do you pray for God to save you?

I think it’s in our nature to do whatever we can to survive, and when a plane is going down the only thing in our minds that can save us is the concept of God – Unless you’re Dave Coulier and flying your own plane in which case when he lands safely after I rough flight he doesn’t say thank God, but rather thank you Dave for being a good pilot. Here’s the thing, I don’t think anyone who is dying in a plane going down kind of situation is saying, “Please God, I know I’ve made my mistakes but I’m a good person, please forgive me and I promise to be better, just please I beg of you let me go to Heaven.” Instead they’re saying, “Please God, I know I’ve made my mistakes but I’m a good person, please forgive me and I promise to be better, just please I beg of you don’t let me die.” The difference is that people don’t want God, and they don’t want religion in the situation. They don’t want to die, so their natural reaction is to think of anything that could possibly save them. Even super religious people who have no doubt that there is a God and Heaven don’t want to die. They don’t live their lives like they’ll have eternal happiness once they die. They don’t donate all their money and possessions to those less fortunate and live attheir bare minimum knowing they’ll be rewarded with eternal happiness. They live like most of the rest of us, like this time is supposed to be enjoyed, and special, and they want to be happy now because later isn’t a given.

Anyway, I’ve enjoyed every episode of You Made It Weird with Pete Holmes, especially the fifth episode with the very funny and beautiful – and once had a one night stand with a real cowboy – Chelsea Peretti, and the third episode with Demetri Martin which is filled with an hour and a half of interesting and funny conversation. So if you like podcasts, or comedy, or just interesting conversation that can be applied to the way you live your life then give this podcast a listen. If you’re unfamiliar with podcasts or Pete Holmes I think the Dave Coulier episode would be a good starting point.

Click here to go to the You Made It Weird podcast page or you can get it through itunes

Bedtime Thoughts 25 – I Can’t Sleep At Night

First of all before I even start writing and you even start reading I should inform you that this exact moment is a great example of how my life works. As you’ll come to find out shortly while reading this, unless you’re scanning it looking for talk of the band Brand New’s second album or gay masturbation material – I just found out by far the two biggest searches people have used that led to my blog are Deja Entendu and Huge Penis (how fitting, everything you find here has already been heard, hence Deja Entendu which is French for already heard, and this blog contains lots of irony, such as people looking for huge penises and being led to a blog written by someone with a small penis) – I have trouble sleeping at night. It’s hard for me to do, especially as of the past few weeks, but also for all my life. The reason this moment is a good example of how my life works is because I’m actually pretty tired and could probably fall asleep relatively soon, rather than being up for hours and hours until sunlight and then falling asleep, once God has gotten me back on my shitty schedule that I hate so much, but instead of avoiding that by getting to sleep right now I of course realized something, which you’ll come to know shortly after this long paragraph that has assuredly scared away any potential new readers because people are attracted to short bite size paragraphs made of two or three sentences, not eight or nine run on sentences that contain enough comma splices to dry an English teacher’s red pen, and once I did realize that something I had to write about it. I of course didn’t have to. I could have waited until tomorrow. But I find in my life I always wait for everything. Fuck it, I’m done waiting, and putting shit off. Of course I’m not really. It’s hard to break habits, especially the bad ones that feel so good in the moment to break, and then like shit later. So I made myself write. Granted as of yet I’ve only alluded to what I wanted to write about. But at least I’m writing, and that’s the important part, right? (Not really.) Oh, well damn.

I spent the night at David’s house last night, like I’ve been doing for the past three or four Saturdays. He’s not my gay lover. For one I don’t date Asians, and for two I’m not gay. And for three I’m kidding about not dating Asians, I’ve actually been pretty attracted to Asian women as of late. I hang out with him and usually some other friends on Saturdays and by midnight I’m usually too lazy or tired or both to head home so I just stay there until morning, plus whenever I sleep somewhere that isn’t my own bed I can never sleep that long, so I wake up early, so it helps me get back on schedule.

So I was trying to sleep on David’s floor at six in the morning – we had been up playing video games for the previous 14 hours, seriously, okay, a couple breaks, and I hate playing video games alone because it feels like a waste of time, but with friends its fun and relaxing – and I was having trouble falling asleep and of course thinking about all the wrong things, like why Annabelle barely calls or texts me anymore but whenever I ask if things are going okay between us, because, and I think rightfully so, I get nervous because twice in the past things have happened that made her stop talking to me, and not things that I do, just things in her life that she has to deal with, although with one girl in the past one of the reasons she had stopped talking to me so much was because I was always worrying, too which I explained, “Ah ha! I knew I was worrying for a good reason.” I didn’t really say that, it’s a joke.

Also I think about dying a lot. Ever since I was a little kid, about five or six, lying in the dark in my 101 Dalmatians bed, with matching sheets and blankets and pillow cases, and puppy paw print stickers all across the room, I would think about the concept of eternity and how it seemed so weird, but also about how not existing at all seemed weird, and scary.

I guess at that age I believed in God because that’s what my mother told me was right. That’s where I got the idea of eternity. I die but then I’ll live forever in Heaven, assuming I’m a good little boy and say my prayers, and eat my veggies and stay in my room whenever mom brings her “we’re just hugging” buddies over. Well we hug too mom, so why can’t we hug with no clothes on? Okay, first of all that’s all a joke. My mom wasn’t a whore…at least not after I was born…and she didn’t tell me to eat my veggies, she did, and still does, tell me to say my prayers though, and although I didn’t want to fuck my mother, at least I think not, I did get jealous of this guy she liked once around the time I was seven or something, and then my mom explained to me that me and her couldn’t be together, and at that age I knew exactly what sex was and I knew even though I liked my mom and wanted her not to give her attention to other guys I didn’t want to fuck her. The only thing I wanted to fuck at that age was the two and a half foot doll we had for some reason even though her only children at that point were boys (wow, this is turning out not to be about sleeping at all) it’s bedtime thoughts, so I let my mind wander.

Thinking about living forever was weird, and soon led me to the idea of not existing anymore. That was weirder. Some people say they wouldn’t want to live forever – I guess they probably mean just here on Earth and not in Heaven for some reason – because things would get boring, but I feel boredom is a much better alternative than nothing. I’m deathly afraid of not existing. As a little kid when I would think about it in bed at night I would cry because I didn’t want to be nothing. Now of course I cry because I’m afraid I’m going to be nothing but not in a non existing way.

My mind of course fucks with me all the time. That’s what people who worry do. They think of all the bad things. Oh, we think of the good things too, we think of every thing, all the possible scenarios, and then we think of all the reasons the bad ones are more likely to happen then the good ones. It’s truly a horrible problem. It makes a person deny logic. So it also makes a person very stupid. And while a lot of my worrying has turned out to be true, most of it, pretty much all of it, doesn’t happen at all, and isn’t even close to happening – what makes the dying and being nothing thoughts so scary, but also surprisingly less trouble to deal with, is that it’s not a “what if” it’s a “oh crap this is going to happen one day,” I mean there could possibly be some kind of afterlife, I strongly doubt it, but either way the chance of me existing forever is too small to even calculate, so I know it’s going to happen and that sucks, but it’s going to happen and there’s nothing I can do about it, so it’s best just not try to think about it, or better advice, because telling a person not to think about it is useless because that person is going to think about it, I’ll think about it, but after worrying for a minute I’ll remind myself that there is nothing I can do about it, and letting it get me sad doesn’t help me, it doesn’t keep it from happening, it wastes a lot of my time, but that’s about it, so think about it but don’t let it ruin me.

As I said my mind likes to fuck with me, I’ve known this forever, but just tonight I realized that one of the reasons I struggle so much with falling asleep is that I put too much pressure on myself to fall asleep. I want to get to sleep fast because I don’t want to think about all those bad thoughts. The past couple years I’ve been avoiding lying in bed at night, even when I’m very tired, because I don’t want to lay there, even for just ten minutes, thinking sad thoughts.

Elizabeth Laime with Aubrey Plaza (stolen from TotallyLaimePodcast.com)

I realized I was putting pressure on myself because instead of turning off my computer tonight when I went to lie in bed I left it on, listening to a podcast, an episode of the Totally Laime podcast, it’s quite enjoyable, and I left most of the programs on my computer going, firefox, google chrome, AIM, itunes, and for awhile, up to the point I decided to write, I had even left my light on, but I hate wasting energy, I hate it a lot, even though I do it a lot, I mean if I leave a room the lights go off, recently I leave my room in the afternoon to go to the bathroom or kitchen and the light will be on and I’ll flip it off and there will be almost no difference in lighting because it’s broad fucking daylight so there’s really no need to turn the light on and especially leave it on when you’re done with the fucking room, but tonight when I went to turn off my computer and light because I didn’t want to waste energy I said, “No, if I do that it means I’m going to bed and that’s it. I’m not doing anything but going to bed and that’s what I have to focus on. If I leave the stuff on I can still lie in bed, but I have the option of getting up and reading (no) or searching for undiscovered pornography (yes), but more importantly, I’m just lying here, I’m not going to sleep, I’m just relaxing in bed listening to a podcast, so all those things I associate with sleeping I don’t have to do.”

That’s kind of crazy, but that’s how it works with me. I thought to myself the other day that it’s weird how much I hate going to bed now, when I used to love sleeping. I never loved sleeping. I always had horrible thoughts when trying to sleep. What I remember loving are all those times I would lie in bed watching TV, being tired but never needing to sleep. When I would stay home from school (pretending to be) sick I would lie in bed watching TV, or playing video games, or listening to the radio, and at some point around three in the afternoon, when everyone was getting home from school, I would doze off, not needing to be up for school in six hours, but instead just getting rest.

I guess I’m doomed. I can’t just have no obligations my whole life. I want to wake up at a certain time so I have to be in bed by reasonable hours, which means I can’t wait until I’m about to pass out so I’ll have the least amount of time thinking bad thoughts as possible. Once things in my life are better I think I’ll be able to sleep easier. I think a lot of people have trouble sleeping. I think I’m going to have a lot of trouble sleeping tonight because I stupidly choose to write this instead of falling asleep and now I’m not really tired, and I have to pee a lot, and I’m not really proud of this writing, but I enjoyed doing it, and I’m happy about that, but not really happy because I’d like to write well one day, and that’s not even that true because I don’t know what writing well is, because I see stuff that is considered good writing, and a lot of the time it doesn’t appeal to me, I just want to write, and that’s what I’m doing, so I’ll be happy with that, and I’ll sleep well tonight, because someone told me I’m a positive person, which is the first I’ve ever heard of that because I always sound really negative when talking about myself, but its not a lack of confidence thing as I was telling myself earlier, it’s that I believe in myself so much that really anything but perfection isn’t good enough for me. Perfection doesn’t exist. That scares me. That will probably keep me up (Oh my God, go away) and it ends with rambling followed by a period.

Bedtime Thoughts #12

Of course I was happier when I believed in God. Although I’m hesitant to have considered it true belief. I don’t know if I can truly believe in something without having really looked into it. I was told that God exists so that’s what I believed, I never questioned it, but when I finally did and looked into it I found that I had never really believed. It wasn’t at that moment I became unhappy. My disbelief in God isn’t what makes me unhappy. A variety of things make me unhappy. My disbelief in God led to my full belief that after we die there is nothing, and that makes me unhappy, but that I had really feared long before I decided God did not exist.

I almost exclusively think about the nothingness I’ll be living after this life at night. The darkness brings out dark thoughts. Suicide tends to be higher in places with less sunlight. This isn’t a coincidence. I would like an example of a true coincidence. I don’t believe in God, but does that mean I don’t believe things happen for a reason?

I think my mother finally knows I don’t believe in God. I think she knows this because every so often I make disparaging jokes involving God on Facebook, and also it says on my Facebook that I’m an atheist – but I’d much rather be referred to as a nothing – and the other day my mother came in with some supposedly encouraging words relative to ‘even if I don’t believe in God the Universe has a plan for me.’

I have no idea if there’s some force out there in the universe that looks after us, but if there is fuck it. Fuck you Universe. Get out of my way. I have my own plans. I don’t want you controlling me. People often get comforted when they fail by saying that it wasn’t what the Universe wanted, and that the Universe has bigger plans for them – although it’s more often God in place of the Universe. Well I say fuck that. Why can’t the Universe have the same plans as me? I don’t want to gang bang, or sell drugs, or work at Taco Bell to support my compulsive masturbation habits. All I want to do is write. And if the Universe has other plans for me than fuck you Universe, and stay the fuck out of my way.

I often get angry at nothing. Not nothing as in small things that don’t matter, but as in things that don’t exist, like God. When I get angry at things that are seemingly out of my control, like the internet going down at a very inopportune time – I’m sure you assume I mean mid-masturbation, but I mean more like when I’m having a very nice conversation with a girl I like – I often look towards the sky, usually pointing my middle finger upwards, and curse at God saying, “I really hope you exist because it would suck to hate nothing this much.” One could argue that me doing that would suggest that I still have a little bit of a belief in God. But really I just do it because I find it funny; I want my life to be a TV show.

I googled universe and this was my favorite picture

I have this idea for a book, or short story, called Versus God, and it’s about this guy who keeps score between himself and God about the things that happen in his life. For example if he called a girl to ask her out and against all odds she said yes that would be a point for him. But if he called the girl to ask her out and she turned him down because she was getting ready to go out on a date with his best friend that would be a point for God. I’ll probably never write this story in any form, whether it be a book, short story or some kind of movie type script, so feel free to steal the idea.

I get why people don’t want other people stealing their things like writing or ideas or pictures, but I don’t really care. If I could get a movie script made into a movie and get no money for it and no credit and have someone else reap all the benefits I’d do it. It would suck, but it’s better than not having the movie made at all. Plus any good things people say about the movie I would feel good about. Conversely, anything terrible said about it I’d feel terrible about.

People lie. People especially lie on the internet. I’ve met people who have made themselves out to be what they thought is better than they really are, and claimed to be people in pictures who they really aren’t, and this is something I don’t get at all. I get that people want to be liked, but how does receiving compliments for something that’s not true about a person make that person feel better? If anything it makes me feel worse. I have a couple pictures online where I look decent and whenever I receive compliments on them I’m like, “that’s cool, but that’s the best I’ve ever looked in my entire life.” So I suppose in the moment the picture was taken I can feel good about it, but now I’m not that person, so I don’t feel I merit the compliment.

I don’t take criticism well at all, but I also don’t take compliments well. It’s not that I’m humble, it’s that I hate receiving undeserved recognition. I think too much, it’s the problem. I once got mad at a person, not mad towards them but rather internally, because she laughed at something I said that I didn’t think was that funny. It made me angry because I had said funnier things that she didn’t respond to. Of course I completely disregarded that people have different senses of humor.

I hope you disregard this post. But it was a distraction.

If Trees Could Think

I’d like to think that trees really can think. And I think these are their five most common thoughts.

5: Why is this kid peeing on me?

4: Holy mother of God someone’s cutting me down!

3: I want to believe in Tree Jesus, but I just don’t think I have enough faith.

2: Why did I have to be a conifer tree living in Canada and not a deciduous tree outside of a New York strip club?

1: Holy crap, this kid is peeing on me again.

Apparently with uses of the words Jesus, God, Holy (twice), and faith I’ve decided trees have many thoughts on religion, not necessarily for or against it. I’d imagine they’d have to hate God. I mean if they could really think. For one they would hate God for making them a tree, and not one of the many living things that can actually have sex. The only thing worse would be a bed with a conscious. Constantly knowing that people are having sex on it, yet it will never get to know the join of having sex with a sexy female bed with two nice big pillows. Or in the case of my bed it’d be confused as to why I’m trying to procreate with my hand.

To listen to me and Chris talking more on this podcast you can click here, and only here. Everywhere else will lead to porn.