Bobbi Brown (make-up artist and entrepreneur)

1h 44m

Bobbi Brown (Still Bobbi: A Master Class in Leading an Authentic Life) is a make-up artist, entrepreneur, and author. Bobbi joins the Armchair Expert to discuss why the motto "the less I do, the more I’m me” is her secret to happiness, realizing she wasn’t stupid but that things that are boring don’t interest her, and her tips to a happy 37-year marriage. Bobbi and Dax talk about learning how to design make-up looks by working for film and theater departments in college, making her first lipstick after accidentally meeting a chemist, and that make-up is really about relationships. Bobbi explains why she doesn’t believe in correcting but in enhancing, why it didn’t make sense for her to change what the brand was built on as it grew, and that to her natural beauty is not a trend.

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Transcript

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Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert Experts on Expert.

I'm Dan Shepard, and I'm joined by Monica Mouse.

Hi.

Hi.

We have such a fun woman on today.

We really do.

A legend.

A legend that I was lucky enough to be seated next to at something, and I really was charmed by her.

Bobby Brown.

A lot of Bobby Browns.

I think that was my first question to her.

How do you deal with

the legendary R ⁇ B singer, Bobby Brown?

Right.

Well, you didn't ask him.

His daughter, Bobby Brown.

Millie Bobby Brown.

There's a lot of Bobby Browns in the mix.

Millie Bobby Brown is Bobby Brown's daughter.

No, Bobby Brown is Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown's daughter.

There's four Bobby Browns in this story.

Oh.

Bobby Brown, who is married to Whitney Houston.

Yes.

Their daughter, Bobby Brown.

They have a son, Bobby Brown, as well.

Son, Bobby Brown.

Okay.

And then Millie Bobby Brown.

Separate.

And then Bobby Brown.

So that's five.

I see.

And I guess I asked her if when she shows up for a reservation, they're wondering, like, well, which will it be?

Okay, Bobby is a world-renowned makeup artist, best-selling author, entrepreneur, and founder of Jones Road Beauty.

And she is here to talk about her new memoir.

Did I do it right?

Yeah.

Okay, memoir

called Still Bobby.

And gang, I just love her.

Big time Laura Laveau vibes for me.

Yeah, and she's just an epic businesswoman.

We get to hear a lot about that.

It's really a cool episode.

Yeah.

And she's got a for real no shit take on things.

Yeah.

Please enjoy Bobby Brown.

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He's an option star.

You guys, I just got it yesterday.

One

of the things it's the real thing.

Is that a lingua franca sweater you're wearing?

It is.

I'm so excited for this because Teenage Beauty was an iconic book for me.

So now it's

you read Teenage Beauty?

Yes, it was gifted to me when I was maybe in eighth grade from my aunt who loved makeup.

And yeah, it was iconic.

It was like the pre-makeup video

in book form.

I've written two teenage books.

Yeah, so this is such a beautiful book.

So wait, what was the proprietary take for teenagers?

Was there also

some messaging about embrace what you are?

100%.

You know, it's so normal to feel less than, especially as a teenager.

I felt it.

There's no question why I'm doing what I do for a living.

And instead of going overboard, I've realized that the less I do, the more I'm me.

And that's the secret of what makes me happy.

You know, what's interesting is we can conceptually acknowledge that we're attracted to novelty in every space.

Like if you see a unique car, that's interesting.

If you see a unique bit of architecture, but we think that uniqueness in our faces is not going to be appealing, but in fact, it is.

I was trying to tell Monica, like, you're the only one that looks like monica it's so exciting yeah uniqueness but i always find similarities in people i'm like you look like i always think i know someone but i haven't seen that person in like 30 years yeah but that's what they used to look like yeah i have a pattern recognition obsession too like if it was a voice that's reminding me of i cannot stop thinking about it until i figure it out are you a visual learner like i am explain visual learning and maybe all of you could explain everything in pictures i understand about everything i can't read how to do something but if someone shows me i could do it or if there's pictures.

Then, yes, because I've said to Monica many times, if I could watch a video on open heart surgery, I'm certain I could do it.

Did you get D's in math and science?

Not math and science, but reading and literature.

Anything that I had to do.

Well, he has dyslexia.

Yeah.

Okay.

And you probably had something, right, that we just don't know.

Definitely have ADD.

I don't have OCD, but I have OCD tendencies.

I like things lined up, but then I mess them up in two seconds.

Okay.

I love a clean drawer.

Well, let's start with where where we just met.

I'm going to say that I had a lovely time sitting next to you.

I hope it was mutual.

Are you kidding?

Two things made that night, besides the award, which is really cool.

So it was the Times 100 most influential people.

You were among the awardees, and so was Kristen.

And we were seated at your table, and you and I were seated directly next to each other.

Right.

And I just remember saying, Oh my God, those are the coolest vans with your tuxedo.

That was like the first thing I noticed.

See, this visual thing.

Oh, thank you.

To me, it's like, well, this guy's really cool.

Like, he made that choice to do that because it's what makes him comfortable.

Oh my gosh, wonderful.

Yeah,

and then you, in all the best ways, reminded me of my mother, who's a fucking gangster.

She's just a self-made.

She was a single woman who, or single woman, she was a single mother building a company and she was just indomitable.

And I immediately was like, oh yeah, yeah, this is the same spirit as my mom.

And what company?

It was in the automotive industry.

So all of the press fleet for General Motors, ding, ding, ding, you worked in the GM building forever.

Those get lent out to journalists.

We throw big car car shows and we manage those fleets and all that stuff.

Speaking of the car industry, my Papa Sam came from Russia and he ended up to be Cadillac Sam, but for years he sold Ramblers, DeSotos, Plymouths.

He made his name in Chicago with this car dealership.

My Uncle Albert had one, so I kind of grew up in the car industry.

Yeah.

What did dad do?

My dad, who was 21 when I was born, personal injury lawyer.

Was his face on a bus stop?

It was not.

But anytime we heard a siren, my mother turned to him and said, oh, they're playing our song.

They're playing our song.

But he stopped being a lawyer and became an entrepreneur without even realizing it.

He started following his passion.

He became a journalist and a writer for We Magazine.

He traveled the world.

And then when he needed money, he went back to being a lawyer.

He retired at 70 from being a lawyer.

And he started being a children's book author.

He has now written 10 children's books.

Wow, how cool.

And mom.

A homemaker.

A homemaker.

Okay.

And where did they meet?

They met in college at Drake University in Iowa, and they're both from Chicago.

And my mom made it a semester.

But had met him in that semester.

That's all she needed.

Right.

It kind of worked.

Yeah.

And they were both coincidentally like chubby kids.

And they lost weight and they became incredibly good looking.

So you'll see the theme in my life about being a chubby kid or gorgeous.

I could never be gorgeous.

Yeah.

How many Jewish folks were in the community you grew up up in?

It's easier to count the ones that were not Jewish.

Okay.

That's good because I was going to ask if there was any kind of trying to assimilate to this waspy thing and if that was the kernel of why I'm not pretty.

No, but first of all, I was obsessed with the waspy thing, being a Jewish kid.

I would see my friends.

They had this great green stuff going on in their houses.

It was very Ralph Lauren.

Yeah, right.

But not Ralph Lauren, the real Ralph Lauren.

The Kennedy kind of aesthetic.

Yeah.

I mean, I'm still obsessed with the royal family.

So is Monica.

I like the great obsession.

I'm mad.

I don't like monarchies.

I just love the pretense around everything, the tea and the whole thing.

You like the traditions and the pageantry.

And I like the traditions of being Jewish.

I'm not a religious Jew.

And now that my kids are married to people from other religions and other cultures, I have a little bit of everything.

And so I'm really happy.

I like the Jewish traditions a lot as well.

My brother converted and I've participated in a ton.

And of course, half my friends here in LA are Jewish and I've gotten to go to all of them.

And they're great.

I've thought if I was forced at gunpoint to join a religion, that would be the one.

And I was thinking Quaker.

Quakers are not great.

I don't know so much about Quakers, but I know they like oatmeal, they like simple things.

They're about kindness.

They're about kindness.

Yeah.

We just had someone on who grew up Quaker.

But the same Quaker.

And the Indian.

Yeah, Hinduism has a lot of that in Buddhism to it.

You had a brother or you had more than one.

There were three of us.

By the time my dad was 25, he had three kids.

He was a lawyer.

I had a younger brother and a younger sister.

And my brother was the middle kid and the most gorgeous, brilliant kid that just had the absolute worst life.

Oh, no.

It was very sad.

What happened?

Why?

He never listened.

I think he was too smart for his own good.

And back then, parents didn't know what to do with kids that were troubled.

Yeah.

You know, they didn't know what to do with me with my learning disorders.

They just stopped punishing me.

My mom said, you'll probably never be a secretary.

She was right.

Yeah.

He skipped a couple.

You know, so she let me drop out of typing.

So my brother, he was always troubled.

He always got in trouble.

He didn't pay attention.

You couldn't read his writing, but he would do testing and off the charts.

And then when he was 16, he took my parents' car and hit a tree.

And they told my parents he is going to die.

They should call a priest.

My mother nursed him back to health.

And he just had a lot of issues.

It was really hard to watch.

I did everything I could to help him.

And turned out when he finally got diagnosed, he had personality disorder, which

borderline personality, which is the worst thing because you can't take a pill for it.

Yeah.

Right.

And so he struggled.

And then what do you do if you're struggling?

You take drugs.

Yeah.

An upper, a downer, a sideways, whatever.

And he ended up after decades being homeless.

He ended up passing away of a drug overdose.

Oh, I'm so sorry.

We had a borderline personality disorder expert on, and I have to say, I entered the interview.

i've dealt with that condition and friends i don't like it and i think i was really judgmental but i will say we had this person on i was like oh fuck yeah that's right no one wants to be born this way the foundational problem is i really don't believe you love me and i'm gonna kind of manifest or prove that and what a hard hard way to go through life and i've since met people since we had that episode on that are like oh my god i love that episode i'm bdp i've been working on it for four years i'm like that's right man all these people are just born with this right the sad thing is for my dad who's still alive, he's 90 and a half years old, is that every time Michael would do something stupid, he was just angry and pissed and they'd scream at each other.

I'm like, dad, it's like as if he has cancer.

He has something he can't help.

He could have done this.

I told him to do this.

And, you know, my dad said, here I've got this daughter that gets times 100 and I've got this homeless kid.

Like, what the hell?

I'm sure he feels guilty about that because at some point you can't protect your kids.

And then

you feel bad.

You feel bad.

You do.

But when he passed away, we had a memorial for him and it was so healing because all of his friends came from when he was younger.

And all we did is talk about the good, Michael, and all the great things.

So we got to walk away and say, okay, let's just not think about all the bad things because trust me, it was bad.

In your success, because you're escalating and escalating, and that's happening simultaneously.

Are you feeling a lot of it?

Well, I'm so lucky I have my husband because he's a rock and he would deal with.

things and his secretary would deal with things.

There was always a phone call or an emergency.

It started out as simple as as the electricity is going off.

And then it was way, way worse.

I'd be on someone's yacht having this amazing dinner and the phone would ring, or I'd be in Paris at a great restaurant, and it'd be my brother who needs something, something, and we'd have to stop what we're doing.

The juxtaposition was bizarre.

Yes.

Yeah.

And I mean, it made me feel terrible for him, but I could look at myself in the mirror and say, Bobby, you did.

everything in your power.

That's great.

You didn't feel that kind of survivor's guilt.

No.

Like, why didn't he also get my

normalness?

No.

And it's weird.

How could people growing up in the same house?

One is, I mean, I hate to say I'm normal, but I'm kind of normal.

I'm reasoning.

I'm functioning.

You're within the spectrum.

I'm totally in the spectrum, and he was not.

And then I have a baby sister whose whole life is about helping others.

You have three boys.

I have two little girls.

I imagine the stress of that for your mother must have been pretty overwhelming.

I think so, but upper-middle-class suburbs, my dad, a lawyer, he made a good salary.

we always had some help in the house some interesting help we had charlie who my dad got out of jail and he babysat us for years that's not in the book but we had charlie and the last day charlie worked for us if you opened our coat closet you'd see a car because he drove a car through the garage into the coat closet so my dad finally fired him after decades charlie

he hadn't been in prison for another vehicular incident had he i don't think he was in prison since my dad helped him

And what I know from the book is you're insanely close to your dad.

You call him endlessly throughout your life for advice.

The night you meet Stephen, you call him the same as my husband.

That's a very clear and special relationship.

What was the relationship with mom?

My mom was diagnosed with manic depressive, and she had her first quote-unquote nervous breakdown when I was in seventh grade.

This would have been in the 70s, right?

So they don't know anything about how to deal with it.

Right when one flew out of the cuckoo's nest came up.

So they just said she was crazy.

We would visit her in the hospital and everyone else looked like that movie she was on so many drugs they just gave her a lot of lithium and she just was making like ashtrays i don't know what she was making how scary was that it was intense but i'm someone that always sees the positive i got to get in the car with my dad just me and him and drive to the hospital and listen to music and talk and i look at that as a positive i got really close to my dad and then mom came home and things got better and then they got divorced and then she met a great guy she married him That's rare, good.

And then he died.

He had a massive heart attack.

I happen to have been home from college.

What were you telling peers when they would come over and mom wasn't there?

Were you able to admit she's away somewhere?

I don't remember.

Isn't that so weird?

I don't remember it being such a big deal.

I do remember the woman my dad hired named Elsie who let us have butter on our buns with our hamburgers and french fries.

And my mother was always a health nut.

Her weight turned into a health obsession.

So we became all healthy people because of it.

She suggested that you needed to get a nose job.

Yeah.

My mom came to me one day in bed and she said, I think you're so pretty.

And I said, thanks, mom.

And we were really close.

And she said, but I think you'd be gorgeous if you had your nose fixed.

I love fixed business.

Yeah.

All the Jewish girls had their nose fixed.

And I remember looking at her and saying, I don't.

think there's anything wrong with my nose.

And she said, yeah, but it would look so cute.

I said, My nose is fine.

And she said, When you're older, you're probably going to need your eyes done too.

Okay.

Which I haven't done.

It's on my list.

I do that often.

Like a lift.

Yeah, or like you take the excess skin out.

It's the one plastic surgery that I see people do that I think looks great, but I'm just don't want to do it.

Okay.

And how old were you when she said this?

Just started college.

Okay.

You're not in need of that at six.

I don't know.

No, you're not.

Broadcast your age.

I'm 68 years old.

And you're not in need of it.

My lines in my face, I think, look okay.

They do.

They look great.

You're a babe.

I think I told you that when I was sitting next to you.

Oh, I would remember that.

I just remember the shout-out from Snoop Dogg, which I thought I was so cool until the next day I found out that my brother-in-law's friend wrote his monologue.

That's how I got in it.

Snoop really didn't know who I was.

Well, my booker crooked.

So you were not a great student.

I wasn't.

How did you get into Emerson?

Well, I felt bad I wasn't a great student.

I really thought I was dumb.

And now I realize things that are boring don't interest me.

And things that are interesting really interest me.

As we learn more about ADHD, it sounds like you just really have.

Yeah.

And I do really well when I'm driving or when I'm moving.

It's funny.

I bought a book, an adult ADHD.

I couldn't read it.

You don't read books.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But I kind of, you know, leave it through it.

How to deal with blindness as a book.

Kind of.

Like your mom, I figured things out.

I literally print things out and I use a pen and I fix it and then I hand it to someone to type and they retype it and give it back to me and I read it again.

So how did you get into Emerson?

It was my third college and I went to University of Wisconsin first at Oshkosh, not Madison, followed a boyfriend.

I graduated high school early, not because I was smart, but because I was always getting my work done.

And so we went and then we all transferred to University of Arizona for a year.

With a boyfriend in Tucson, with a boyfriend

who I'd been with for five years.

We had this friend and the three of us all became three Musketeers.

And then in the end of the summer, the high school boyfriend fell in love with the other guy

because he just realized he was gay.

Oh, wow.

But the bad news, the other guy and me fell in love.

Oh, boy.

This is a real trying to do.

Yeah, I do.

And I stayed with the other guy for 12 years.

Wow.

Until I met my husband.

You're such a serial monogamous because you've met, what, 13 years?

37 years.

37 years, Stephen.

Congratulations.

Thank you.

I know how to have a happy marriage.

Dude, tell, please.

Everyone, get your pens out.

Yeah.

Know what pisses them off.

And don't do it.

That seems easy.

But it's really hard to do.

I'm sorry I upset you.

Yeah.

It doesn't mean I was wrong.

I am.

I'm sorry.

I upset you.

I don't want you to be upset.

Right.

And if I played a role in it.

I'm really sorry.

So you got to Emerson.

Yeah, I got to Emerson.

I literally flew up, saw the Magic Pan outdoor cafe.

You know, being from Chicago, I'm like, I want to go here.

And I got in the day before school started.

created my own major.

They didn't have a makeup major.

It was theatrical makeup.

Theatrical makeup and a minor in photography.

Did you stick with photography?

Are you kidding?

Are you?

She loves visuals.

My Instagram is like...

You're active.

Yeah, I'm active.

And if I'm not...

putting something up, I'm scrolling and it feeds my curiosity.

It's also an ADHD salve.

Yeah.

It calms me down too.

I had a business coach.

I said, you know, I come home at night, my family's watching TV and I'm sitting there with my iPad.

And my husband's always like, what are you doing?

You're not paying attention.

I'm like, I am.

She said, it calms you down.

It's like you're knitting.

Yeah.

And it does.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Your life is about visuals.

So I'm not surprised.

It's literally painting the face.

So it makes sense.

But I'm also really curious about things.

I always think there's an answer to everything.

So I'm like, I'll find it.

Well, there's something in that.

That tells me there's just a simmering maybe anxiety.

And if I know how it works, I can alleviate the anxiety.

Well, it's funny.

I texted my girlfriends, the original girlfriends that we all raised our kids together, because I'm going deep into this book thing.

And I thank them for being there for me for all the years.

And they said, how are you doing?

I said, I don't know if I should take a Xanax or an Adderall.

And my one girl said, I would take a Xanax.

I said, well, I took an Adderall.

So you graduate with this degree.

Now, when you graduated with that, did you have fantasies of working in film and television?

Absolutely.

I wanted to be a movie makeup artist.

It was glamorous.

When I was in college, I wrote a letter to my stepfather's uncle, Sheldon Keller, who was a very famous producer, saying, I want to be a makeup artist.

I want to come to LA.

Took him three months to write me back.

He sent me my letter back with all the spelling corrections and said, don't ever send a letter like this until you proofread it.

And that was it.

So I said, all right, I guess I'm not going until

tough love.

So then I moved to New York instead.

Great.

Wow, wow, wow.

Okay.

So initially, that did appeal to you.

But it's boring.

I'm going to tell you my stereotype of makeup artists.

I've been working with them very closely for 20 plus years.

First of all, I love them.

As a department, they're generally my favorite department.

My stereotype is all of them were pretty popular, pretty darn social, pretty empathetic, but not the homecoming queen.

They were like popular, but they weren't the bell of a ball.

I was in the popular group.

I always felt, and my friends say I was wrong.

I always felt that I had to work really hard to be liked.

But I think it's also my size.

I'm five foot tall.

Love it.

You are too?

We have a different thing, and it makes us successful.

Yeah.

If it doesn't make you totally neurotic and insecure, or both.

Or both, yeah.

Does it anger you when people try to help you?

No.

Okay.

No.

My wife's got that.

She's like, I'm not a baby.

You don't need to do this and that.

Working really hard with a physical trainer on being able to, no matter what, get off the floor and take my suitcase and put it on top.

I don't want to ask someone to do that.

I don't want help getting in and out of cars.

And I don't want anyone opening up a jar for me.

You know, when you get those water bottles, and I'm like, oh my God,

I won't let anyone do it.

I want to see your training session.

Just like a thousand bottles lined up cracking the seal.

Okay, so you get to New York in 1980.

Yeah, I graduated in 79, 1980.

When I was reading this chapter, I was like, oh, this is so similar to being an aspiring actor and just landing in LA and going like, how the fuck?

Right.

Wait, there's a union.

How do I get in the union?

People have agents.

How does one get an agent?

But you know what?

We only figured it out because we're ninjas.

Everyone's like, is the book about resiliency?

Not really.

It's about being a ninja.

It's about figuring out what you have to do.

Following leads.

You're almost like a detective.

And asking questions.

I'm very naive.

I love that quality about me, but I'm not afraid to ask questions.

But, you know, I literally opened up the yellow pages when I got to New York.

I just looked up models, modeling agencies, and I figured it out.

Kind of what I do now on Chat GBT.

Well, you had a stop over, though, at a Transvestite's house, which is fascinating.

No, no, no.

He came to my house.

Yes, he came to my house.

That was terrifying.

Especially back then.

I needed to make money.

So I put an ad in the Village Voice, makeup lessons, makeup artists teaching.

And some guy called and said, I'd love to come.

I'm an actor playing a role.

I said, great.

I don't remember if it was $100, $200.

And he came to my then-boyfriend's studio with this Louis Vuitton bag full of women's lingerie.

He was wearing Gucci loafers.

And I'm like, this guy's from Connecticut.

And he got in outfit after outfit because he wanted a different look for each he wanted me to teach him a different look for each yeah yeah sure well hold on we gotta go back a second so you feel like you learned when you were in college like you learned the techniques no i didn't learn anything about makeup i signed up for everything i became the makeup artist to the film department the plays and so i would have to read the scripts which were not easy for me and visualize what the characters should be and then design the makeup wow and you know it's like trial and error yeah and i figured it out.

And in retrospect, it's taught me what not to do in makeup.

Like, yeah, you're going to put something grayish on your lips, you're going to look dead.

You want to look young, you do pink on the cheeks.

So I learned a lot of things.

But we're already getting to what is true in so many industries, which is being creative is really one sliver of the pie.

Being talented is one sliver.

It's the yellow pages in the fucking Village Voice ad, and it's the going to the union going, how do I get in?

Yeah.

Sadly for artistic people, that's about 70% of it.

Oh, no, it is.

And by the way, even when you made it, even after I had a vote cover, I still had to work on it.

You have to work on everything all the time.

And when people say, it's so hard, I'm like, yeah,

what isn't hard in life?

Everything's hard.

Exactly.

What would you say were the milestones that bring you to 1990 when you decide to make your first few products?

Well, I decided to make the first products because I accidentally met a chemist who made his own lipstick.

And I said, I always wanted to make a lipstick.

He said, tell me about it.

I said, I wanted it to not smell bad.

I wanted it to be creamy and not dry, not greasy.

And I wanted it to be the color of my lips.

So really quick, that's your novel proprietary take on makeup.

Had you already discovered that was your brand and your

point of view.

When did that happen?

When I first started doing that kind of makeup, I had people saying, you're never going to work if you do that.

People want to have the white faces and the contouring and the overlining and the blue and the yellow.

This is the 80s reminder.

People have wild splashes of pink on their face and spattered paint.

I did fashion shows.

I loved all that fun, creative, but I made it look beautiful.

I didn't find it attractive.

I don't think I was that talented in that kind of makeup.

So I started doing things like, how's this for brilliant?

Finding a foundation that was the color of your skin.

It wasn't popular.

You know, you don't know, but your mother and your grandma.

No, I know.

I was like, I need to thank Bobby for this.

Bobby Brown is the first makeup brand that I had that had my color for my face.

To me, it's common sense.

The way to choose a foundation is you try it on the side of your face.

If it disappears, it's the right color.

But lots of brands don't even have all the options.

You had such a wide range.

And a lot of brands have the options, but they're bad options because who's making these decisions?

Right, exactly.

Not a makeup artist.

By 1990, are you kind of a famous makeup artist?

I am in the fashion industry.

By 1990, I had a cover of Vogue and I was written about in the magazines.

You know, Bobby Brown says the trend for the season, but I also was a new mom.

My oldest son was born in 1990.

The publicity angle is enormous in this, right?

When do you figure out that aspect?

Being in that magazine is huge.

How do I get that magazine?

I knew the first time I did Glamour magazine and it said on the side, really small, hair and makeup by Bobby Brown.

I was like, wow.

And then I got phone calls.

And then the more I got that and the more people liked either my work or mostly I think they liked me.

So this is huge.

Your makeup artists, and especially if you're a woman, you're going to spend three and a half hours with sometimes on a day going to the Emmys.

Kristen will be with someone in her face for three and a half hours.

Probably the same person she usually uses because it's about relationships.

They're great, but their personality is wonderful.

Oh, 100%.

Huge part of it.

It's your posse.

I have my posse.

Again, this Howard Rourke notion that you'll just be brilliant and everyone will just fucking deal with whatever because you're brilliant.

That is not the world works in any way.

And you've got to figure it out.

And sometimes it works.

And guess what?

Sometimes it doesn't work.

And then you have to say, okay, that didn't work.

What can I do about it now?

Back then, was it you had clients and they brought you on for the covers or was the magazine hype?

It was usually the stylist, the photographer.

Okay, got it.

And then when I was a fashion makeup artist, celebrities were the no.

Unless you were Elizabeth Taylor on the cover of Bazaar, it wasn't all about the celebrities.

So it was really, it was the supermodels.

It was the Cindy's, Naomi, Linda.

Yeah, who are some of the gals you were working with?

Cindy Crawford, Linda Vagilista, Christy Turlington.

She's my favorite.

I watched that models dock, which I knew nothing about any of those folks.

And I was like, oh, that's the one I've never met her?

No.

We watched that thing, and then I was at the sphere and I looked over.

I was like, oh my God, honey, she's right there.

She is the nicest.

I see her in a lot of parties in the Hamptons.

She hasn't done one thing to us.

Talk about Nancy.

She is stunning and wonderful and still happily married.

She's an anomaly.

She really is.

Okay, so you want this lipstick through your savviness and again, your work ethic and figuring things out.

You do end up getting this in Bergdorfs.

Well, he made a lipstick for me and it was the color of my lips and I loved it.

And I said, oh my God, I bet I could sell this.

He says, I'll make it.

I'll give it to you.

We'll charge $15.

You take $7.50.

I take $7.50.

I said, great.

And I said, people are going to love this.

Then I realized people have different color lips.

This is not going to look good on someone with darker lips or paler lips.

So my ninja brain is like, okay, what colors?

And honestly, I was going to the park with my kid.

They had nanny friends.

I looked at women from all over the world and I kind of started studying the lips and realizing, you know, some women of color had pink lips, some had dark purple lips.

Yeah.

Indian women have this kind of really cool heather blue lips.

And by the way, in the industry, most of the magazines and makeup artists would say, this is how you correct if your lips are too dark.

Right.

I don't believe in correcting.

I believe in enhancing.

I don't draw pencils pencils outside of my lips.

Same.

Well, you don't have to.

Yeah, it's true.

Yeah, you don't have to.

It's like me talk about my height or something.

Yeah, right.

But you know what?

We all have gifts in life.

And when you start realizing your superpower, that I think is the secret.

Yeah.

I had to go like, yeah, I don't have the nose I want.

If my mom had said, let's fix it, I might have said, yes.

Oh, I know.

Thank God you're coming to me for this.

But I heard you and Bradley Cooper talking about you guys didn't like your faces when you were young.

I'm like, what the hell?

You guys are so cute.

Isn't it comforting that Bradley says that?

I'm like, all right, no one's immune to

everybody being a makeup artist, the stuff you hear from supermodels.

You know, over my years, I did Mike Tyson, Matthew McConney, Barack Obama, Jill Biden.

You get to hear how everyone feels about themselves.

And no one's like.

No one is like, I'm fabulous.

Right?

Yeah.

It's like I nailed it.

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert.

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One famous supermodel, I'll never forget, I can't believe I'm telling you this story.

She lifted up her shirt and she said, could you just tell me, are they the same size?

Of course not.

None of them are.

I said, yes.

I lied.

I'm sorry.

What was I going to say?

Yeah, just lie and keep it moving.

So how many different colors do you have?

10.

We launched with 10 and I started just selling them to people that would want to buy them, friends and neighbors.

And then one day I was having lunch with a friend of mine who happened to be the beauty editor of Glamour magazine.

You know, we're talking about how are the kids.

She had just had a baby.

I had a a baby.

And she's like, what else is going on?

I said, well, I'm doing this little project.

We didn't call it side hustles back then.

And she said, tell me about it.

And she goes, oh my God, can I write about it?

I'm like, why would you want to write about it?

Now I know that's called PR.

And we wrote about it and got bombarded with orders

because it was so different.

And these were like someone would send you mail, right, to request it.

There was a phone number.

I think it was the chemist or my home phone.

I don't even remember.

My husband, Stephen, who was in law school at the time, would literally mail them out to the post office and eventually we brought my sister-in-law in to do the books and I was still a working makeup artist because with Stephen in law school we needed to pay the mortgage then you get into burgdorfs we got into burgdorfs not because I pitched them because I was at a party in the city and I said to someone I thought she was a fancy lady thanks for inviting me and she said oh I'm a big fan I said oh you know who I am I said well what do you do she said I'm the cosmetics buyer

I said oh I'm working on this lipstick she goes why don't we take it let's give it a run Yeah, and the expectation was that you would move hopefully a hundred a month.

Yeah, and you immediately started moving a hundred a day, yes, in the beginning.

And then while things were growing, we joined with this other couple, business partners.

Who were they?

I just read another couple.

Yeah, another couple

of they were friends.

Yeah, they were friends for the lipsticks.

I don't go deep into it in the book, but it was a great relationship.

We did really well.

It was really tough.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But I learned so much.

And my husband was so great because I'd be laying in bed at night, literally in tears.

And he would say, First of all, we don't talk about things at night when he's watching Seinfeld.

That was our night.

We'll talk about it in the morning.

And he said, but let them win the battle.

We're going to win the war.

I had no idea what he was talking about.

But he just would like calm down.

He's the steady rocket travolter.

Literally, he's the guy you want on speed of dial for anything you need anytime.

Well, you didn't miss his number.

I did not marry my dad.

You did not marry your dad.

No, I married someone that is as smart as my dad or even smarter.

Okay, but different temperamental.

Very different temperament.

You're your dad.

I'm kind of my dad.

I am.

I'm kind of my dad.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's best not to marry yourself.

Yeah.

So it grows incredibly fast.

A lot of people would think, oh, if I have a great product and people want it, that's that.

Growing is nearly impossible, right?

It's tough.

Because you're constantly trying to anticipate how much can we now bet on this?

Because we got to scale up.

A lot of it is guesses.

A lot of it now is data.

It's either data or data.

I never know what it is if you're a scientist it's data and if you're a normal person it's data right exactly but basically i go with my gut my son who's is the ceo of the company is like no mom it's all data so i'm like okay fine so when you put that stuff together it kind of works so you're nimble you're flexible you're pivoting a lot and you're young the first time what really put me on the map and put bobby brown cosmetics in the map we sold bobby brown cosmetics to sd lauder after four and a half years so 95 yeah so 95 we sell it for 75 million dollars that's kind of of the answer, not really.

Only because there was a 25-year buyout.

Can you tell us details of that for people who don't know?

I think it's really, really relevant.

I'm so lucky I have my husband because I don't really understand it, and he would probably correct me on 10 different things.

But whatever number was decided, we'll sell the company, it was also plus whatever percentage on some sales.

They wanted you to continue to run the brand.

Right.

And I stayed for 22 years.

Right.

So that was my question.

So you get 75, but then you also have some participation, I imagine, and then you have a salary.

Some participation.

Oh, yes.

Meaning we would get percentage of sales at the end of the year.

I say the 75 million, not to embarrass you or tell people your business, but I think it's really relevant to think that you started this company and four and a half years later, $75 million in 1995 is really like selling it for 200 million now, 250.

It's an enormous success.

When I left the company, it was a billion-dollar brand.

Now, my question, and this is why I want the details of the contract, was a 25-year non-compete standard?

That feels so long.

I don't know.

I've heard different.

Look, when I left Bobby Brown Cosmetics, I had four and a half years left, which on someone who's very impatient, and I was 59 years old, I was just like, oh my God.

No, it must have been absolutely brutal.

Yeah.

Just forever.

Like microwave minutes.

When I left, I was like, what am I going to do?

Because I'm not someone that sits idly by and knits or needle points or play Kaluki or whatever other people do.

So they acquired it in 95.

By 2012, Bobby Bobby Brown is responsible for 10% of all total sales for Estee Lauder.

So it's enormously successful.

They're clearly letting you run it without any issue and it's thriving.

That's not exactly

it was doing really well and they were letting me run it without anything for a long time.

And that new CEO and everything really became very homogenous.

Well, antithetical to the original brand, like they wanted a contour because that's popular right now.

And you're anti-contour.

It just didn't make sense for me to change what the brand was built on.

I know there were these companies like the Kardashians.

I can't compete with someone that I'm not.

I'd rather just be the best version of myself.

And that's the business too.

And I thought I knew the customer.

I thought I knew what women really want.

My customer always wanted to look like themselves, but better.

Now, is it possible you were wrong?

Possible, but I wasn't.

Let's just put it this way.

I think so.

Well, your second venture proves that.

But it would be worth examining.

Okay, at the time you had started that trend and that trend took off.

Is it possible the trend was moving away from that?

Or perhaps 10% of all the market would want to look that way, but 90% would want to.

Sometimes things go in cycles.

And if I was one of these people that followed all those cycles, we would have no identity and we wouldn't be true to anything.

Sometimes you have to kind of sit back and wait for things to bounce back.

Like natural beauty to me is not a trend.

It's what's supposed to be.

And I've always embraced lines in people's faces and freckles and different color skin and gaps in the teeth.

Well, that's interestingly one of the many things that started happening, which is you found this incredible model with a gap in her teeth.

You did a whole campaign only to find out later they had airbrushed her teeth to fix it.

Without telling me or asking me, I was pissed.

What were some of the things that started

accruing to you?

Oh my God, when I used to interview every single person that joined the brand from the person that greets people when they walked in, every single person.

And little by little, people were popping up.

I'm the head of international.

I'm the head of this.

And I was like, excuse me.

And I remember having a conniption fit.

And the president at the time said, they didn't consult me either because there's nothing I could do about it.

And so little by little, it started just taking away from what the essence of the brand is.

And there were moments where they were coming in and you thought they were looking for your sign-off or approval.

Then you would disagree and they would say, it's already being released.

Why are you bothering me?

Yeah, Yeah, this is like kind of just pageantry.

Again, my naivete was, I got this, I could fix this.

What about the internal confidence in that period?

Because I even have waves.

Over the last two years, the pushback to wokeness gave rise to this incredibly successful round of podcasters and comedians.

And you're just watching this huge swell and you go like, fuck, it's scary.

It can create doubts.

It's change.

And I think the important thing is don't rush into anything.

Just kind of sit back and observe and let it be and say, okay, what is right for me?

What is right for it?

And if you try something different and it doesn't work, go back.

But was there any moment where you were like, man, do I like I'm fighting?

No.

You know, I'm sure if people would be interviewed, Bobby was really difficult to work with.

Yes.

But we're going to get to that.

By the way, if a color shifted in the market, I was difficult.

Go back and fix it.

Yeah.

I cared about these stupid things.

And, you know, I was told, get out of the details.

No, you can't.

That's the whole point.

That's the whole point.

And, you know, it's a very different company now.

Does it stress you out that it still has your name on it?

No.

This is a terrible thing to admit, but it would probably stress me out if it was flying and doing phenomenally well without me.

Ah, that's honestly.

That's what would care.

That's very honest.

I mean, it is.

It's honest.

You know, like they thought they didn't need me anymore.

So in 2016, this growing situation comes to a head.

It's also three years of this.

It's getting worse and worse and worse.

Your overall well-being is suffering.

You have two kids who've just left for college.

So now I want to go back a little bit and talk about

how you decided at that time running the brand in New York City that you guys would go to New Jersey and live there and raise your family there.

I think that's a pretty unique decision for someone.

We moved to Montclair, New Jersey the day we got back from our honeymoon.

Oh, you did?

We did.

My husband and I decided we just didn't want to raise New York City kids and we wanted to be more normal.

I would come home from these events and go in the Lincoln tunnel.

I always had a driver and I would take my high shoes off.

My hair would go in a scrunchie.

I'd put my clogs on and my fanny pack.

Now they're all stylish.

Yeah, exactly.

But back then, look, I'm wearing my Gucci clogs today.

I felt really myself when I went home in my life in Montclair, New Jersey.

Would it be fair to say that it helped you compartmentalize the stress of the daytime thing?

It's like I'm going into a completely different culture in the world.

100%.

I would get in that Lincoln tunnel and I would breathe.

I would probably call my mother or my father, just get that out of the way and then call Stephen and say, what are we doing for dinner?

Like, I didn't plan.

What do the kids have tonight?

Where are their soccer things?

That could be the danger of living in New York because you leave the office.

Well, let's walk together.

Now we're having drinks together.

And then just the work never, ever ended.

Right.

And there was no afterwork drinks because I had a different life, like my second job.

And by the way, anyone that knows me, my kids are just.

the most important thing in my life.

You wrote a thing in there that I can already sense coming and I try to remind myself, which is the shit in the hallway drove you nuts.

The shoes at the door drove you nuts.

All the clutter drove you nuts.

And now they're gone and it's dead clean.

And you're like, I fucking hate this.

I hate my job.

I think about this so often.

It's like Coach Paterno, who had this glorious career.

They have a statue in front of Penn of him.

Then the Sandusky things happen.

They take it down.

I'm like, it's never too late for this incredible life to just turn to shit.

And did it feel like I thought I had a fairy tale life and now I feel like it's turned to shit.

No, I didn't think it would turn to shit.

It was really a tough period when I left the brand.

You lost both your identities.

I lost it, but after two days of drinking tequila with my neighbors, seriously, I just started calling people and going out and finding things to do.

And then I had a bunch of fun, cool gigs to do.

But you couldn't talk about it, right?

No, no.

Until the announcement.

I'll never forget someone called my husband and said, what are we going to tell everyone?

Could we just tell everyone that Bobby's sick?

And my husband said, fuck no.

Exactly.

He said, why don't we just tell them the truth?

But I still wasn't at liberty until the announcement came out.

Well, this situation ultimately came to a head.

And there was a moment where they offered you the same salary

or more to go away and show up when needed for kind of PR or when they were wooing another company they wanted to buy.

What they said is they want you to be the head of the brand, but get out of the day-to-day.

And to me, that's firing.

So they will say they didn't fire me and they would still say it today, but I was fired.

I mean, the day to day is why I did what I did.

I loved it.

It was my baby and I thought it was my brand.

So I just said, no.

Now,

in retrospect, do you think

it could have grown to what it grew to without the infrastructure of Estee Lauder?

Or do you think if you had not sold, you could have grown it into that same thing without them?

Well, I think right now Jones Road is bigger than the current Bobby Brown.

I don't know that for sure, but I've been told that by some people.

We've got like 40 people running around.

It's a totally different day and age.

Back then, I would go into Neiman Marcus and have 40 to 100 women waiting for me.

Now we launched something, we've got the internet and we've got thousands and thousands.

There's Sephoras now and department stores are not really the place.

Yeah.

Jones Road is direct to consumer, 90% of our sales, 10% we have stores.

I've been driving all over with my husband looking for a location in LA.

So I'll have to get your take later.

Yeah.

I think a lot of people, myself included, that would have been a very hard no.

Just knowing I could collect.

You're like, I'm already fucked.

It's already not my brand.

Minimally, I guess I should take some money.

Right.

My very good friend, Mickey Drexler, said, take the money, start a new brand.

I said, no, because it wasn't just here's the money, but it's basically, they said to my husband, she's got to be there if the team needs a question, but she can't tell them if she doesn't like something.

I'm like, what the fuck?

Also, they wanted you to sign a non-disparage.

They wanted to sign a non-disparage, which honestly, I'm trying not to say bad things, except the truth.

Right.

Yeah.

You know, but get me a bottle of tequila and ask me the questions off camera.

Well, here's some dirt.

I say this from the bottom of my heart.

I am so grateful for everything that I learned from Estee Lauder.

And most of the years were amazing.

The last couple of years were not.

And I know that's what everyone wants to talk about.

But for the years, Leonard Lauder, who just passed away, he was my mentor.

He was like a father to me.

I can call him and say anything to him and ask him any question.

He never judged me for not being a smart business graduate.

He thought I was brilliant.

And he would say, Bobby, this is what we got to do.

How can we do this?

And we would come up with a solution.

Well, that is not what happened to the organization at the end.

Yeah, it sounds like from 95 to 2012, it was pretty great.

It was.

17 years of job where you love is a big win.

Yeah.

And so I left in 17, I think.

Was it 16 or 17?

You probably know more than me.

You left in 16 16 Yeah, because you launched in 2020 right yes right okay, so you do a lot of weird interesting things in that gap You just keep moving is what you do Which I think is the advisable path and you become a style editor at you Yahoo

I became the beauty editor of Yahoo, which was really cool, but I did that when I was still at the brand Okay,

and I had to get permission.

So I did that and then when I left the brand, the first project was develop a hotel with my husband called The George in Montclair.

31 unique rooms.

Oh, wow.

31 unique rooms.

It's in an old mansion.

It is.

1901, it was built or something.

Wow.

You're amazing.

Thank you.

I'm trying to wow you.

You have wowed me.

You had me at hello.

The hug you gave me, I will bring that with me.

Okay, good.

Okay, so you dabbled in some stuff.

This 25-year non-compete, you must have, I'm assuming, been pretty far down the road knowing that was expiring.

How do you decide you're going to give it another go?

So I left, didn't know what I was going to do.

The first thing that was offered to me was by my friend that owned Lord and Taylor at the time.

And he said, why don't you do a Just Bobby shop?

We got to get people in the stores.

You could do anything you want.

And I'm like, great.

I do well with teams.

I got a team together.

Well, you met a gal at the Apple store.

Yeah, and I hired her as my assistant.

She was like an Apple genius.

She was Apple genius.

I knew I needed help with my digital.

And by the way,

she sat there for two and a half hours.

You know, they're usually like, can't help you, Bobby, helping me figuring out how to get my number away from the corporation and so I could own the same number.

She wouldn't give up.

She wouldn't give up.

Bobby's like, everyone else would have given up.

She didn't know.

She never heard of me, but I offered her the job and she took it.

I said, I don't know what we're going to do.

Oh, that's incredible.

Yeah.

That's Rob back there.

I did someone's podcast.

I was like, who's this motherfucker?

He is on it.

I need this guy.

I just got his number.

First of all, he's from my hometown.

Yeah, Chicago.

Yeah.

And I want to build one of these in Montclair.

Oh, great.

He needs your permission to freelance.

Oh, he's already got it.

He's already freelancing like a son of a gun.

So you did the lord and taylor thing it was great and then lord and taylor went out of business a year later so then we brought it digitally online we tried to figure stuff out it wasn't uber successful but it was fun kept me busy i learned a lot when'd you start developing the line jones road i got hired to go to india to be the first ever keynote speaker of the indian makeup conference wow which was amazing experience cody and pyle were just dating so trust me i told every single person that my son's girlfriend is indian

you can trust me.

Again, because you do, I think, represent makeup for all types of people.

So I'm not surprised at all that they asked you.

That was a great experience.

And then I got asked to do a masterclass from masterclass.

That was pretty cool.

And I started just kind of being curious.

I was using all the natural makeup out there because, God forbid, I put a chemical.

You weren't using Bobby Brown at that point.

No, emotionally, I couldn't use it.

I just didn't want to touch it.

Stopped following the Instagram.

I want no part of it.

And then I didn't find what I wanted out there in the world.

So I said, I wonder if I could do better.

And I started calling a couple local chemists, kind of like when I started.

And I'd go in there and tell them what I wanted.

There's so many things I'm not good at.

Like I can't fill out the paperwork that needs to be done.

I can't do all that stuff.

So I hired people to do what I'm not good at.

I hired this girl to help me conceptualize.

And now she's my COO, but she started as a jack of all trades and product development.

Monica was a babysitter for us.

I did start out as the babysitter.

This bitch is smart.

What are we going to do?

But it works.

And it's smart of us to figure it out.

Yeah.

So the balm, which is one of the most successful parts, was a mistake, which I love anything that starts as a big mistake.

Yeah, it was not what I asked for.

When it came, I'll never forget.

I opened it up and, you know, I was like, God damn it, that's not what I wanted.

But I stuck my finger in.

anyways, and I went like this with my fingers and I tapped it on.

I looked in the mirror.

I said, oh my God, it's a a miracle.

Because you know what?

It's moisture.

Whenever you're tired, and I have a hippie stick for you, you just take this balm, put it on, and it just makes everything look better.

Because by the way, when people don't look good, it's because they're dehydrated.

And when you hydrate yourself, you look better.

Our friend Eric just told us recently that he's never put lotion on his face.

Like Eric, how much?

He doesn't wash it or put lotion or do anything on his face.

He looks pretty good.

Imagine what he'd look like if he had been moisturizing for the last time.

Oh, I know.

He should get himself.

What's his name again?

Rob.

Rob.

He looks like a baby.

He's a cherub.

He's 37 years old.

He's got two kids, and he doesn't have any lines or any age.

Genetics.

Genetics.

Yeah.

100%.

No, Rob's the cutest guy in Los Felis.

Okay, so the non-compete expires.

Yes.

It's COVID.

There's a lot happening in the world at the end of the day.

The presidential election is about to happen in a week, and everyone says to me, do not launch this now.

We went to big PR agencies.

Everyone said, don't do it.

I didn't hire any of those PR agencies.

I hired my neighbor, Lynette, down the street, who now is still with me and I can't live without.

She handles all of Jones Road and all of my personal stuff.

Does Cody come in as the head of marketing initially?

So he started coming in with growth.

When he came in, our business quadrupled only because we did a call with Gary Vaynerchuk and Gary said, go on TikTok now.

Yeah, so you were forced to go on TikTok.

We weren't forced.

You were.

Oh, I was forced.

This is a really important entrepreneurial thing.

When someone says, go hire a team, go hire a person.

I just can't do that.

I just do it instantly.

Gary said, go hire a team, go hire an agency.

And Cody just picked up the phone and said, go, mom.

And we put it up.

And that's how it started.

And it blew up.

And it blew up.

So year one, you guys had 15 million in revenue.

I think 18 first year.

I was hoping to do a million.

Incredible.

And then year two was

$150.

No?

No, wait.

I don't think we did $150 in year two.

Oh, no, no.

2024, you're doing 150.

I'm sorry.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Last year we did 180 maybe.

Yeah.

And now we're just shy of 200.

Incredible.

Industry sources say because you're not allowed to sit.

Why aren't you allowed to sit?

I don't know.

It's not cool.

I don't know.

Whatever.

Nothing cool.

To get acquired in five years is pretty miraculous.

Isn't this how it works for everybody?

Exactly.

And then you start at the end of 2020 and here we are in 2025 and you now have something that, of course, could get acquired for an enormous amount.

How was your confidence then when you're on TikTok?

It's starting.

Are you like,

God, I really hope I can do this again?

Well, no, no, I was never worried about that.

You know, I'm like, I don't want to look like an idiot.

I don't want someone to listen to this podcast and say, God, Bobby sounds like an asshole.

Because sometimes I'm myself and sometimes people think it's the greatest thing.

And mostly people that know me will be like, what did she say?

Well, you've been submersed in beauty for 45 years now.

1980, you moved to New York.

I just know that when I'm here in LA, it's everyone's occupation.

Right.

You can't go more than a couple of days without hearing some tip about how to look better or do something better.

Well, it's all out there on the internet.

It's crazy.

There's so much.

Now I'm very interested in health and wellness and the hacks that you could do and all these people that are doing all these weird things like peptides.

And I'm just like.

Bring it on.

Just show me, tell me.

So I don't obsess about beauty things anymore.

I know I'm not getting work done on my face.

I do laser, by the way.

I swear by lasers because it doesn't alter my face, but tightens and lifts and things.

Collagen production.

Yeah, all that stuff.

But in your 30s and 40s, when you were surrounded by that, did that inadvertently make you incredibly self-conscious?

100%.

Do you have body dysmorphia at all?

Oh, I totally do.

There's no question.

My friends laugh at me all the time.

I'm teeny, but I always think I have to lose weight.

And I don't have to lose weight.

But now I'm trying to build muscle.

Yes.

Yes, which is key.

Which is really important.

Yeah.

When you were juggling these million things and that was on the plate, how consuming was that?

God, so hard.

Do you know what it's like going to the Met Gala?

I know you do, but as a five foot tall Jewish girl from Chicago, who usually I'm behind the scene doing makeup, and once I did someone's makeup, and then I had to go get change for the Met Ball.

That was like the stupidest thing I've ever done.

Do you do your own makeup for those events?

I do.

I have someone in my office, my head makeup artist, who does it.

She does some things better than me, like my brow.

So I always end up taking my hands and I don't like to look like I have a lot of makeup on.

Yeah.

Do you feel like, oh my God, I'm like the walking face of these brands?

That's a little stressful.

Look, what I'm selling now is not changing the way you look.

So I'm comfortable with it.

And the moment in my life changed me forever.

I had a party for, I think it was for Teenage Beauty years ago, and she needed a celebrity to show up back then.

And I asked my friend Lorraine Bracco if she'd come.

And she said, I'll do my best to get there.

I'm coming back from LA.

I'll do my best.

Well, the woman shows up.

She got off a plane, had not a stitch of makeup on.

She walks in, the cameras went crazy.

She looks so gorgeous without makeup on.

I like more of a natural.

I don't think many makeup artists understand how to use makeup and make it look like you're not wearing it.

You could put a full foundation, concealer, blush, bronzer, and look like the most glorious part of the artist.

You'd see this huge line of demarcation.

Yeah.

And do strong eyes and sparkle and do all that, but still, there's a glow and a naturalness.

You can tell when somebody really knows what they're doing and when they don't.

If you've had your makeup done a lot, you can tell.

Oh, this looks cookie cutter versus this looks like me.

But also, it's my beauty aesthetic.

And there's a lot of celebrities and makeup artists that have a different aesthetic of what it should be.

It's just my aesthetic.

But it's been working for a long time.

Now, I have many times been standing somewhere and thought, I can't believe being funny brought me here.

Being funny got me kicked out of class and in the principal's office nonstop.

And then I'll be standing somewhere spectacular.

And I'm like, I can't believe this thing brought me to this place.

Do you still feel like that sometimes?

Yeah, I mean, it's insane.

We've interviewed Bill Gates a lot.

He happens to love us.

He took us to India for a week and we're sitting on his plane flying in India.

And I'm like, I'm not in venture capital.

I'm not a tech person.

I'm a comedian.

And somehow that brought me to this airplane in India.

You're not known as a comedian.

Initially.

Okay, but that's not how people know you.

Not now since this show.

Now you've got, well, yeah, and you're an actor.

Yes, you know, an actor, and now you're, you know, God knows what it is.

God knows, but it's working, whatever it is.

I was just on his daughter's podcast.

Oh, Phoebe.

She's fantastic.

I use this word normal, real.

It's rare, but I appreciate all the moments.

But the White House.

Do you need to make up to get to the White House?

Yeah.

I was in the motorcade.

Some guy turns to me.

He says, Who are you?

And I said, Well, I'm a makeup artist.

And I said, Who are you?

He said, I'm Leon Panetta.

I'm like, Oh, okay.

The Secretary of Defense.

and i'm like who are you he's like secretary of agriculture i'm like can you fix our crops

yeah you're like how am i here right there was a moment where we were at this table in india and it was it was the minister of agriculture minister of defense bill gates and everyone had name placards

and i said podcaster so that was just like this feels so stupid and they were like brainstorming on how to like fix the world

and we're just sitting there like totally quiet.

Did you not say anything?

No, we couldn't.

We had did another one.

Yeah.

And at one point, they were like going around, introducing themselves.

I was like, oh my God, what's going to happen when they got us, but we got skipped.

Oh, my God.

I was on the U.S.

Trade Commission.

I had to do that too.

And it was like scary.

And I just looked up and I looked for Papa Sam.

Papa, do you believe that I'm sitting here doing this?

Right.

I know.

That's so special.

No matter what, I don't take it lightly.

Being a makeup artist has gotten me some interesting.

I just had something at Paul McCartney's house because we saw a movie.

My husband and and I walked out and we looked at each other.

We're like, love this life.

Doing makeup brought me to this place.

And then guess what I did?

I went home and I did the laundry and I put away the dishes and I cleaned up and I do what I normally do.

I went back to my old self.

Yeah, balancing both.

Okay, now here's the tough part.

So I'm watching this interview with you and it is taking place in one of your brick and mortar stores in presumably New York.

And you're being interviewed, but you are so distracted with the fact that you're noticing on the wall, there's this photo that's been mounted to the wall and it's enormous.

And you notice there's a tiny scratch in the photo on the neck.

You're like, uh-huh.

Okay, Aaron, Aaron, you're yelling, Aaron.

Aaron, I want to go.

We're on film, so Aaron will know what the people are doing.

Talking, talking, talking.

He's like, This sign should be bigger.

Well, Aaron.

So you have to be a perfectionist to build something in the way you did.

But I'm also a micro, not a micromanager, I'm a multitasker.

So I knew that once I walked off that set, I would not remember to tell Aaron.

It's now or never.

It's now or never.

I get that, but you are a perfectionist.

I believe you have to be but i would imagine it's hard to work for a perfectionist because i would imagine you might feel like no matter what i do she'll find something

the people that work really well with me like aaron who literally went to high school with my youngest son i call her my baby creative director because i think she's finally 27 is phenomenal and i can say aaron yuck what happened to that and she'd tell me or aaron she goes yeah i know they wanted that but i'm like i don't want that could you make it go away could you make it go away Aaron, that wrinkle under my left armpit, can you get rid of it?

She's my guy.

Like, you could say anything to each other.

You have each other's back.

I'm a huge perfectionist as well.

And I edit the show, and I think the same thing because I'm giving notes.

I'm like, they definitely hate me because I'm giving these half-second notes.

Like, that needs to come out because to me, it's everything.

Actually, it makes a huge difference.

I agree with it.

I'm just saying, how does one manage the tension of having to work that way and knowing that people?

I'll give you an example.

Bill Gates, he said, there were many years where I came in and I leveled everyone and told them how to be.

And I ultimately had to step back and go, like, what is the net win?

Do I leave that meeting and everyone feels defeated and they no longer feel passionate about working?

So learning to curb, even if the end goal is I want this thing to be great, recognizing that might not be the road to get to greatness.

Well, first of all, having the right people on the team.

You know, I've got my retail team, my creative team, my marketing team, my PR team, my PD team, the product development, which is the most important.

They know me.

And I'm like, guys, and they're like, you're right.

And I'm like, thank you guys so much for working on this.

I always make sure I thank them.

And by the way, they also know that there's times where I am so insanely busy that I don't have a second for anything or I haven't slept.

And they're like, I know you only have a second, just please.

And they've got to be passionate.

And I have to be passionate about them.

Does the perfectionism bleed into your personal life?

Because I have found this to be a real problem.

And I've been like talking to my therapist about this a lot lately because I've had multiple complaints, some from Dax, some from other people,

that are like, I don't want to be picked at in life.

Here is a different thing.

This is a very important thing.

The conversation is like, I want you to do exactly what you do on the show, and I want you to kill me.

And then when we're having dinner on vacation, that's what I doesn't want me to edit me in real life.

Yes.

And other people have said this to me too.

It's not just him.

I don't want to be the type of person that sees

everything that's wrong or is critical, but it is what I do here and it's really hard to shut it off in life.

The good thing is that we're always evolving and the best people are the ones that want to be better versions of themselves.

I've had to let go of a lot of things and I've had to learn how to tell people I don't like things in a very different way than I used to.

And I've evolved.

I've worked really hard, especially with my son and my daughter-in-law, because I want to see the grandkids.

Yeah.

But also, we all want the same thing, but sometimes how you get there is tough.

It's hard.

It is.

It's really hard.

And relationships are hard.

Do you know how many times Stephen will say to me, I don't work for you.

Right?

Don't come and bounce orders.

Because I'm so used to saying, do this, do this.

I need this.

I need this.

I've said that to my wife.

No, it is hard.

And also, I'm anxious.

I want things done.

And I'm always worried I'm going to forget something.

I take on everything because I care about everything.

Yes.

And I care about my house.

Like I walk in my house and I remerchandise things.

I move books around or I make sure the bar looks good.

Yeah, I do, it's my thing.

I do that too, you just have to make everything look perfect.

You'd feel so comfortable in Monica's apartment, yeah, it's really nice, is it right?

Yeah,

everything, and there's a lot of remerchandising, yeah.

Anytime I feel a little bit out of control, I will remerchandise.

I just look around, I'm like, okay, how can I reposition this to adjust my internal feeling?

You're gonna have to send me your cell phone because I find these things on Instagram that leads me to someone's organization wish list, and all of a sudden I'm buying organizers, individual little baggies for core.

I'm like a nutcase because it does make me feel calm to open a drawer because there's chaos on the news.

There's chaos everywhere.

Mostly there's chaos up here.

There is chaos up there.

The mind's not a friendly place.

Right, but I'm never going to change.

I'm not going to meditate.

Look me in the eye.

I'm not going to meditate.

Don't make me.

I'm not going to.

Yeah, you just have to find what works for you.

You do.

And not everything works.

Well,

Bobby, I adore you.

I had so much fun sitting next to you.

You really sparked the night up.

There were a lot of different people there.

It was very eclectic.

It was.

All right.

Well, I hope I sit next to you again someday.

I hope so, too.

And I hope it's not one of those things.

And I hope it's just at dinner one night.

Well, I love your book, Still, Bobby.

Please check it out.

I hope you'll come back and we'll get to talk to you again.

Thank you.

So fun.

It was a pleasure.

Thanks.

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert.

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Stay tuned for the fact check.

It's where the party's at.

Hello.

Hello.

Oh, we haven't talked.

That's how Bob Durst talked, remember?

We haven't talked like him in a while.

Hello.

Hi, Ann.

It's Bob.

I'm in prison.

How much is the house worth in Long Island?

Oh, wow.

A hundred million.

Even he found love again.

He was irresistible.

He had lots of lovers.

I wanted to be one of his lovers.

He passed, right?

Did he?

I think he passed in prison.

I'll never get to nurture him back to sanity.

You won't.

How are you doing?

Really great blue color.

Really great sweat.

Thank you.

Yes, it's a new sweater.

I feel like I would look good in that for the eye reason.

You would.

It would make your eyes pop.

I also bought it in purple today because I liked it so much putting it on.

I was like, I want another color.

Okay, sure.

I bought it in purple too.

Did we discuss the fact that

many, many people collected the Got Milk Ads?

See, I knew it.

So it was funny.

I guess it's a double-edged sword.

It's good news and bad news because I was like, wow, I found the criteria for who to hire.

Like, I could almost start my own hiring service and I just asked the applicants one question.

I guarantee you, and I'm phenomenal coworker.

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

So, in some sense, I'm like, well, maybe I'm not being discerning enough because it turns out a lot of people, but also good news, maybe there's a lot of great folks out there to work with.

Maybe you're right because

it's hard to collect them.

Like, you really have to be on the lookout.

You have to

be on the prowl.

Keep your eyes wide open.

I have such a vague memory.

These were like they'd have a celebrity in like a normal magazine and they'd be standing and they'd hold a glass of milk.

Am I thinking of the right thing?

They would have a milk mustache.

A milk stash.

And sometimes they'd be holding it, but not always.

And in different scenarios, like

there's one with Jennifer Love Hewitt.

She's in a kitchen and I think she's wearing like a flannel shirt i think and the kitchen's messy ah but she's got milk she's got milk and well does she because it's a question mark got milk oh right right right

so um

it was just really it was a really celebrity driven campaign is that what made it so collectible there she is hey i really nailed it didn't i you

did yeah and it's a

the kitchen's a fucking mess yeah it's a mess because she's made eggs and pancakes but somehow she made perfect pancakes, but she has no regard for anything else.

Like the way she mixed the

batter, it's all over the sides.

Yet she did

pour them perfectly.

Do you have an affinity for her because of Party of Five?

I did like Ground Party of Five, but I was a little older.

Got it.

And Nev was on the show.

I know.

Both are great.

I loved her, though.

I mean, she started as kind of a kid.

Yeah, she was a kid.

And then I did, and in my defense, I was 18 when I was saying this.

I did think, well, she is becoming hot.

Like, it is weird when these kids on shows become hot.

Sure.

Does that happen with the boys?

Like, Jennifer Thomas, Jonathan Taylor Thamas.

Tam O'Shanters.

Let's go with classic JTT.

JTT.

Do you know I used him in Empire at Amy's birthday?

You did?

I did.

Did you get caught?

It took forever.

I was one of the last people.

That's a good one, right, for a mislead?

Because I think most people would think I wouldn't wouldn't even know that.

Yeah, that's right.

Oh, he had one.

Of course, he had one.

I think I had one.

Which was mostly the all-youth?

No, no, there wasn't.

There's some oldies in there.

Oh, yeah.

Holdies were goodies.

Any baddies?

These are all goodies.

Oh, no, there's baddies.

Oh, there are.

Yeah, those are the hard ones to find.

Speaking of which, but I have started the Charlie Sheen Netflix doc.

How is it?

Fucking awesome.

Oh, great.

It's so good.

This is an

Easter egg.

It's so good.

I'm excited.

And do you know what I didn't know?

I mean, I knew I was young enough to have been a

like an audience goer

when he broke out with like Platoon and Wall Street.

So I remember like the meteoric rise, but it's not like you knew a ton about him back then.

There was no way to.

There wasn't social media, blah, blah, blah.

Right.

I had no idea.

He and Nick Cage were like inseparable best friends.

Oh, wow.

Did they have a falling out?

I doubt it.

The way he's chatting about.

He just clearly loves him to death still wow but that famous um letterman story that uh nick cage tells where they were on he was on a flight to san francisco and he got a hold of the intercom system and he said this is your pilot speaking i'm feeling unwell and i'm losing control of the aircraft Yeah,

he was with Charlie.

The two of them were going on that trip and Charlie had an ounce of cocaine taped to his ankle.

And when they got off the plane, the police were oh my god

how do you get the oh security was different then well you could still go through with the cocaine around your ankle as long as they didn't pet you down it wouldn't set off a detector or anything not now though yeah i flew with cocaine post 9-11.

what yeah i'm sorry

what i just told this story the other day i'm sorry but we made it

Yeah, I had brought,

you know, I had gone out the night.

I mean, I I was during idiocracy.

I had done a table read.

I knew I was gonna get sober for the movie, but I had like a week before the table read and the filming starting.

So it's like I went to the table read.

Oh my god, guess what?

What?

It's 9-11.

I know.

Ding, ding, ding.

That's crazy.

Don't say you know.

Crazy.

You didn't know.

I didn't know it was 9-11 because I journaled.

I didn't know what you were doing.

I didn't know it was such a ding-ding-ding.

Okay, great.

Okay, so it's for idiocracy.

Yeah, so I went to like down there for a table read and a fitting, and it went well.

Like I did good in the table, so I was feeling great.

Oh, oh gosh so i went out yourself i went out and on sixth street and before you know it i've got coke and um

i meet someone and you know i have a whole night and then now it's now it's morning time and it's time to go to the airport duty in your bed i didn't do any duty i was i was very clean

but i had to then go get on an airplane and i hadn't slept

so like i gotta i'm gonna i gotta bring this through security with me because i'm gonna crash like i'm gonna going to have the most miserable flight of my life.

I'm starting to come down.

I don't bore you with the addict's dilemma, but suffice to say I took it through security and I went to the bar and I started getting kind of paranoid while I was at the bar having a jack and diet because

obvious reasons.

And I'm like, I'm about to start a movie.

What if I got a rest of it?

You know, this could derail everything.

I just did so good yesterday.

No, I'm ruining you.

Oh, my God.

So my solution was I went to the bathroom.

I went to the handicap stall and there was a huge toilet paper dispenser with like the double rolls.

And I put my hand way up there, and there was like a little shelf up in there.

So I put my bag of, well, I did bunch, and then I put my bag of Coke up in this dispenser.

And then I went back to the bar and had like another jack and diet.

And after that one, I'm like, oh, I'd like a bump.

So I go back to the handicap bathroom.

And Monica, I put my hand.

I'm on like I'm down a thing and I'm fishing around inside this toilet paper dispenser and I'm like, oh, fuck, it's not here.

And then I like, look, and it's not falling anywhere.

And in my brain which has now been up for you know a day and a half two days

it's more i go oh

they someone found it like they pulled the toilet paper they found it they alerted the authorities the authorities have been waiting to see who's gonna go into the handicapped stall so i sat in this handicapped stall like 1000% convinced that there were cops in the in the bathroom waiting for me.

And I was just like, what do we do how do i what's our game plan we gotta well we don't have any honest

but they know because they know and and eventually i was like i gotta face the music and then i walked there's nobody there's nobody there who knows where that went somebody presumably got a free bag but also So wild that somebody would think to go maybe it was it was probably someone cleaning the bathroom who was replacing the toilet paper and found it I hope I mean I hope

you know sometimes you give those things a good yank or maybe they rattled it enough that it fell out.

And then maybe the other guy was a playboy and he was like, hey, look at this for

me.

Things have to be coming together for that.

Because if I yanked on a toilet paper and Coke fell down.

Yeah, you'd scream.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And you'd be like, snakes.

But in the...

In your mind at that time, because I already know I'm in trouble.

I know I'm a bad boy.

I should not be doing this.

I should be being sober for this movie.

I'm also supposed to be gaining a lot of weight and I haven't now eaten in 36 hours, but that's a side note.

But the notion that if a bag of Coke is found, that they will now initiate a sting operation to see who's coming back.

That would never, I mean, that would never happen.

Don't say never.

Never say never.

I would assume, yeah, they would fingerprint this

and they would see

all of them.

I know.

Instead of grubby little fingerprints.

Who came through the airport around what time?

I feel like they could find you.

I even think I was like, oh my God, I got to, because, you know, I'm using a key.

I don't know if you know that.

Like, I'm dipping my key in the bag and doing key bumps.

That's how I'm getting it in my body.

Well, I gotta get it out of this bag and into my nasal passage.

I can't use your finger.

Like stick my finger in, then what, put my finger on my nose?

That's weirder than putting it on your nose.

You can make a little pile and then you can.

I can't believe you just acted like what I was saying was crazy.

Well, if you ever tried to do Coke with your finger, you'd find out that

people have long nails.

Yeah, that's why weirdos have long coke nails.

But I didn't have a coke nail because I was a responsible person.

Oh, yeah, you were so responsible.

But then I was like, oh, I got to get all the Coke off my key.

Like, my key probably would

light up like a Christmas tree if they put whatever magic Coke wand in my mind they had.

Right.

So then I was like sucking on the key to get every remnant of it.

No, what?

No.

Oh, my God.

Addicts are so

a lot of weird stuff.

Like now the idea of putting a key in your mouth, doesn't that gross you out?

Absolutely.

Like, the amount of germs, that's like one of the worst things you can put in your mouth.

Yeah.

And it's just metal.

Exactly.

Yeah, it's disgusting.

But I had to get rid of the evidence.

Did you think about swallowing the key?

I think about keystirring the key.

Whoa.

Keystirring the key.

Keystirring.

Anyways, got milk ads.

A lot of people collected them.

I think a lot of the people who've collected got milk keys have never found themselves in the situation you have.

They're busy.

They're at the newsstand

buying up all the magazines so that on the flight they can look each one very carefully, page by page, see if you found it.

Were you making your mom take you to newsstands to further your collection?

It sounds like something you, a task you would put on her plate.

I don't know.

She wouldn't have done.

No.

No.

She doesn't have time for that.

You were like, we got to go camp out for this book.

You did a lot of these little projects right then i was old like i would like go with friends i was old enough okay so yeah if i was if we were at the airport or at the grocery store yes i probably would have asked yeah can we buy these six magazines please buy all of these and then i think i had some subscriptions like i had probably like teen did you earn money as a kid Like did you

okay?

Yeah.

So you had a little around time casey shit.

Yeah.

I mean, I had so many ads.

So many.

You did.

Yeah, I had so many.

They were great.

The best ones were the casts.

They would do like a full cast.

Did friends ever got Malcolm?

Well, Jen Ann, I think, had one.

Maybe her and Courtney and Lisa.

Like, there was like a few.

Yeah.

I have it.

I have it.

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When they pitched the idea originally, do you think people were like,

so we're going to coat the top of their lips white with white cream?

Yeah, I think they probably

anyone like this is gross.

This might look

there.

It is.

Oh,

yeah, that looks like they just left an orgy.

That was my fear.

Don't you dare dirty this up, you dirty boy.

Oh, my God, everyone is so young.

I know.

Yeah, Rob put up a picture of Jenny and then Lisa Kudreu.

She looks 19.

They were young.

They were young back then.

Remember, Lisa said she felt like the old lady.

Yeah, look how cute she is.

She's so young and cute.

Oh, beautiful girls.

Speaking of semen.

Oh, sure.

Yeah, yeah.

So I'm not going to out this brand.

I've been trying some new makeup foundations.

Yeah.

I'm loving all of them.

Loving all the colors

and the textures and stuff, but I'm playing with a lot of them, so I don't want people to try to figure out which one this is.

Okay.

Right, right.

Today,

I

put this in your lab.

I put makeup on.

I walked outside and I was like, it smells funny out here.

And I was like, oh, maybe it's like Bradford pear season.

You know, classically the Bradford

smells like a rotting corpse.

Oh, semen.

Slash period.

Slash death.

So I was like, God, are we there?

Like,

stinky.

And then

what a combo of words next to each other.

Like, if there was a perfume called semen, period.

Wow.

I know.

I wonder if there was ever a punk band named Semen.

Well, Guar could get on it.

It seems like something they would like.

If you are a horned pig-faced goblin.

That's right.

Yeah.

It's probably like one of the gifts God gave humans that,

you know, the person who has a period also doesn't release semen in case.

So those never really have to mix.

Oh, right, right, right.

Although they could mix in the sexual experience.

Sure, ideally.

Okay.

Now, I'm walking to the car and I'm like, yeah,

and then I have this realization.

Your foundation?

Yes.

Do you smell it?

God, no.

No.

No.

You can't smell it from there?

20 feet away, your face.

You still smell it.

Yeah.

That would be a bummer for me.

If I had a smell on my face, I couldn't

get rid of.

And I like this foundation.

There's many that have sunscreens built in.

This is one of those.

Okay.

And I think it might be part of the-ish.

The sunscreen?

Yeah, part of what's adding to the smell.

Oh.

oh isn't sunscreen odorless no no i mean they put that yummy coconut flavor in like

copper tone or yeah they add that fun ones smells like vacation even regular like spf generally sunscreen has a smell you know it it doesn't smell like semen i'll say that but i think maybe the mix of of ingredients has caused a semen like smell Yeah, it's unfortunate.

Bummer that semen smells the way.

It's a bummer that bodies smell the way they do.

They just like, it's gross.

We have all these smells.

Okay, great.

I knew there was something we're supposed to be talking about, and I just remembered.

Okay.

So you and I were in a competition this week.

Yeah, we were.

We went on Hot Ones versus.

Yes, me and you did.

Yes.

And we ate five

chicken wings.

Hot ones versus is a spin-off of hot ones.

It's more of a competition show, so it was me versus you.

That's right.

And on hot ones, if people don't haven't watched that, you get interviewed by Sean Evans.

He asks you questions as you're eating hot wings, and they're getting progressively hotter.

Yes.

And the last one is generally brutal.

Yeah.

It takes people out.

Even number seven starts taking people out.

Yeah.

Well, this show is only number 10.

Every wing has the hottest of the hot.

It was

smart.

It is.

Well,

look, I was so

truly nervous to do this show.

And you notoriously went on original hot ones.

You did great on hot ones so much so that you asked for another of the last wing.

You threw a whole bunch of hots.

They put me in the ring of fire.

I don't know if that's what it's called.

If it's not, they should call it that.

But it was like kind of a champion circle of people who took the heat the best.

Yeah, you, you did great.

It's one of my identity markers.

Exactly.

And I knew this.

And so I was also like, well, fuck.

It was like you and I playing one-on-one basketball.

It's like, why is this the verse?

Exactly.

Yeah.

So I will spoil a little bit that you ate first.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Uh-huh.

And you, it was like, it was really hot for me.

Well, I started salvating quite a bit.

Yeah.

And I started to really panic.

Oh, when you saw that it was affecting me.

Yes.

Cause you apparently can eat two of the last one and you were struggling.

So then I was really starting to panic.

Anyway, it was really fun.

You guys will have to tune in.

It was super fun.

And you thought you were going to fall over a lot.

Yeah.

It was really funny.

I didn't feel steady.

No, I definitely got concerned and I didn't vocalize it because I thought, well, that'll only compound it.

But I really started thinking after you had a good amount of fire in you and you were feeling like you were going to fall over.

I was like,

is a panic attack on the table?

Right.

And it's always on the table.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Just only because of the soul cycle stuff I know.

Right.

And you weren't right about a seizure.

Not at all.

Okay.

I don't think that.

I don't think that would trigger a seizure for what right or wrong i don't i just don't think that yeah but um once you were getting wobbly and i started thinking like oh man like if she has a panic attack how do i what would you do how do i help her great question And it's probably not saying you're imagining this.

You know, it's not going to be like no one's ever died from this.

You can't die.

No one's ever been hurt.

You know,

and then I'm like, well, it's probably not going to be like, it's probably got to be more like an acknowledgement.

Yeah, you are.

I don't know.

I don't know how you get someone out of a panic attack.

I mean,

put my wallet in your mouth.

This harkens back to when I was having a panic attack during shrooms.

Oh, uh-huh.

Would you call that a panic attack?

Yeah.

Okay.

Yes.

Truest sense.

Like, I was like, I can't breathe.

Yeah.

That was a kind of a different panic attack.

Normally my panic attacks, like, I feel like I'm going to pass.

I start like kind of disassociating.

But this was I couldn't breathe, which is sort of a common panic attack.

Yeah.

And you said, I think you said, no one's ever stopped breathing from mushrooms, shrooms.

Yeah.

Which did work, or I think.

I mean, I eventually was able to breathe.

So I think there were a bunch of baby steps.

That was one of them.

Yeah.

So that, I guess, is a good tactic.

Okay.

I'll stick with it.

On me anyway.

So, but what's funny is it just so happened to fall on the same day.

I was taking

Nate, Eric, and Charlie Charlie to the Dodgers game.

Yes, that night.

And we go primarily because

my agency has great seats in what is called the Dugout Club.

Yeah.

And I am not going to act like I am into baseball tad all.

I don't know a thing about it.

I barely, you know, I like, it's a great place to go have a great chat with the boys and scream a bit.

It's so fun, but I don't know who's leading or if the team's good.

I don't know anything.

Yeah.

I go because there is an all-you-can-eat bar in the dugout club, and it is premium.

They had a pot roast model.

I love a pot roast.

I had it at Dollywood and then I just had it here.

I want more pot roasts in my life.

Okay, my mom loves to make a pot roast.

Oh, she tell her to make me one.

The next time she's visiting.

Okay.

All right.

They had a beautiful hot honey fried chicken.

So the whole game plan with the boys, and it's all talked about way before.

It's like, hey, heads up, everybody.

Don't eat today.

Yes.

And so really, I had, I had, in my mind, I hadn't eaten.

I had an oatmeal in the morning at like 7 a.m.

Okay.

So you ditched the plan already.

You ate.

I ate because we had to eat those wings, but it wasn't like, I was like, I'm not going to eat lunch.

I'm not going to, whatever.

I want to, I want, I'm going to eat 7,000 calories in about 45 minutes once we get to this thing.

And so, and also, I didn't want to betray the pat.

So we arrive and I said to everyone, like, what is it?

Charlie's like, I've only had a protein shake today.

And we're like, good job.

And then, you know, everyone's going to think.

And I'm like, I just had oatmeal.

I don't know why.

I like forgot.

Well, okay.

I know why you forgot.

You don't, you don't feel like you're eating.

No, it wasn't a meal.

Like, I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So I just, I, I forgot I had had that.

Yes.

Then we go to the thing and that's really fun and we go hard and I eat so much.

I even have a Sunday.

Oh, this was a total hack.

If anyone's ever goes to the dugout club, they had fried plantains.

Oh, but they're on the hot bar.

They're on the other side of the thing.

And then.

on the far end of the place there's a soft serve machine and like some toppings yeah so i made my soft serve and i was like oh fried plantains on there.

That's like a banana split, but fried pop those in there.

It was heaven.

We all ate so much.

We had so much fun.

I made a good joke that I thought of your brother during.

Oh, because your brother was Kookie Jets or no, Mookie Bets.

Well, that's the actual guy.

Juky Bets.

Jukie Bets.

He had or has a hat company in reference to Mookie Bets.

That's actually just Instagram.

Oh, okay.

Yeah.

Mookie Betts is on the

Dodgers, and all these guys have the best asses.

And we're directly behind home where they warm up.

Ooh, did you make fart noises?

No, but I did.

I did heckle them.

Oh, great.

It was Mookie Betts, and he was like eight feet away.

And I had, again, I had a gaggle of like 60-year-old women in front of me, which was great.

And then he's up there kind of just warming up.

And he's so close.

And I go, Mookie Betts, more like Mookie Buns.

Oh, wow.

Yeah.

Wow.

The ladies loved it.

It's a great compliment to him.

I think it put a spring on his stuff.

He had a dynamite night.

Did he?

He knocked some homies.

Okay, but maybe he was so insecure.

Maybe he has an insecurity about his big butt.

No way.

When you got those juicy, juky bets.

Juicy, juky bets.

But maybe he was like, all anyone thinks about is my butt, and no one recognizes me for the athlete that I am.

I mean, that's a sentence that makes sense.

There's no way anyone hates having a great ass.

I just, maybe because

I was denied a great ass.

Exactly.

So you might not know.

Right.

But I'm pretty sure everyone would like to know they have a great ass.

Okay, great.

So that was a blast, yelling Mookie Buns, all the stuff.

It's so fun.

Go home.

Next morning, I'm like, I want to check in with the guys.

Cause again, we all ate probably 10,000 calories.

And so I'm like,

but you felt fine?

No.

I midway through, I kept thinking, am I going to have Hanas?

Right.

But I was confused because I had literally forgot we had eaten all these insanely hot wings.

Yes.

So they were in my intestines.

Making their way through.

Yes.

And you can feel the heat the whole time.

And it felt like squirrels fighting.

And I thought, oh, that's Hannes coming.

So I was totally off base.

And I kept telling the guys,

I might have Hannes.

Yeah.

But anyways, the next morning, I check in with the guys.

I'm like, anyone have Hanus?

It took me two trips, but I got there.

And then immediately, mate's like, it was, I knew it was the pot roast.

I didn't touch that pot roast, and I feel great.

Blah, blah, blah.

And then all of a sudden, I realize, oh, and then I write, oh, yeah, I also had five hot wings at maximum temperature.

Yeah, and it was like pretty relevant detail to leave out.

I was, I was like fishing to see if everyone got Hanus from this experience.

I just thought, like, maybe it was food poisoning.

Or just, I would like to know if everyone else had Hanus, but it was the wings.

So it was definitely the wings.

Also, food poisoning is last on the list.

Like, I didn't think I had food poisoning.

Cause like

maybe a bad combination, like dairy, the plantains.

No, just the amount you ate.

The amount, maybe.

The amount is just enough to create a tornado.

Yes, yes.

They just don't mix well.

I also, I thought I was going to have Hanus, but I didn't.

You did not.

Which was surprising.

Are you sure?

Well, no, I'm sure.

Okay.

But I did have an interesting movement.

Okay, great.

This is basically that long lead up was to find out what happened for you the next morning.

Yeah, well, no, that night.

Oh, that night.

I have a fast acting system.

Fast acting to knacking.

In fact, I was a little nervous during eating.

You even said you might Tonka.

Yeah, I could tonka there or on the way home.

I don't know.

But I wasn't.

And I too kind of forgot.

Well, when I first got home, I was like, oh, I'm definitely going to poop.

Yeah.

And

then I didn't.

And I think that was, as you said, the squirrels.

Yeah, the squirrels fighting.

Yeah, they were fighting.

Like the way they run around the branches.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But they didn't want to come out.

They didn't want to come down the tree.

They were blasting.

They loved to play.

Yeah, they love playing.

So then I forgot.

I had wine with a friend.

I was out and about.

And then,

yeah, then that night I was like, oh, God, I feel

so full.

But why do I feel so full?

I barely, I didn't eat today.

Yeah.

Great.

You forgot.

I also kind of forgot, but then I was like, oh, God, yeah.

It's the wings.

It's the fiery wings.

And then I had an interesting movement.

It worked.

Did you feel heat?

Did you feel heat when it passed through?

That's a good.

I didn't feel heat, but I felt pain.

Pain, yeah, yeah, it felt painful.

It felt as if it was Hannes, but then when I looked, it wasn't, right, right, which was interesting.

I had it, I had pain, but I didn't have burning, which I guess is a blessing because I have had burning once, right?

And that's that was that Carolina Reaper chocolate.

I don't want that.

You can't do it.

No, you thought you were going to fall over on those wings.

It's funny, though, because last night, um, the girls, we went to an incredible Thai restaurant.

So good.

And one of the dishes we got was this papaya salad.

It was incredible.

It was spicy.

And one of the girls was like eating it.

And she was like, oh my God, like it was like so, so spicy for her.

And I thought, how is, how are people doing hot ones?

Like.

A lot of people, I think are like our friend, Laura, who could like barely eat this papaya salad.

Yeah.

How, like on the scale compared to what we had to eat it was nothing right right yeah she would be in big big trouble she'd be dead has anyone died on it no people like get the burps and they can't answer the question and then i mean i'm now i'm doing but that's the appeal of the show is people lose their you know what was weird you didn't drink any milk i didn't i thought that was so weird yeah i just was imagining putting dairy on top of that it just felt like not the combo i wanted it really helped.

It did.

Yeah, I think it was.

And then you also brought, you brought a big jar of honey with you.

And then when we got in the truck, you had like a

humongous scoop of honey.

I brought a bottle of honey and a spoon in a Ziploc bag because I was told that honey helps.

So the last one you eat, you add all this extra hot sauce to.

So that one is

nuclear.

It is nuclear.

Like I, my lips were burning for five hours.

Yeah, I touched my penis and testicles.

And I had washed my hands before I peed.

So I thought it was off my fingers.

And I had

quite a bit of discomfort on my penis and everywhere I touched

south of my belt.

Wow.

For a while.

Yeah.

Then I went to sauna later

before the game.

Yeah.

And it reignited all the pain.

Oh, wow.

everything caught back on fire.

Interesting, and then somehow I forgot I had done that a half hour later.

I was at the game.

I was with our brains.

So, anyway, um, I'll check that out in December next year or whenever it comes out.

Yeah, it's coming out in a long time, but it was really fun.

Yeah, I liked that.

It was fun.

It was a nice switch-up.

Yeah, it was.

You want to do some facts?

Yeah, I'll see some facts.

Okay, okay, facts for Bobby Brown.

Oh, Bobby Brown.

I like him, Spunky.

Yeah, she's so cool.

Is Spunky still positive?

I hope so.

I think so.

I like it.

I think so.

Yeah.

I like if someone calls me Spunky.

Do you like to be called Spunky?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think I'm Spunky.

Is Pluck the other?

It's like the more old-fashioned English.

She's got a lot of pluck.

Yeah, that one sounds worse.

It does.

Yeah, you'd rather be known for being spunky.

Yeah.

Punky Brewster.

Spunky Brewster.

Okay, Bobby.

So Bobby is a hero.

I don't like She's a beast.

Yeah.

She brought up.

Well, the subject of data and data came up again.

Both are correct.

Both are acceptable.

Data is generally preferred in British English, while both data and data are used in American English.

I also think the

robot on Star Trek was named data.

Okay.

Okay.

For whatever that's worth.

It says data is more common in technical contexts.

Oh, really?

Which is the opposite.

That's probably what I said.

Yeah.

So what I would have thought too.

So.

Okay.

There we go.

Take your pick.

Take your pick.

This is like people, people

really hate

this word, but it's in the dictionary.

Fuck.

Oh, moist.

No, no, no.

It's like, oh, irregardless.

Oh.

People hate irregardless.

I like it.

And when I write it, they'll go, that's not a word.

And I'm like, and then I say, it's in the dictionary.

Which dictionary?

I swear, all dictionaries.

Really?

Yeah.

Is it in like a new dictionary?

Like, they added it for people like you?

I don't know, but it is, if it's in the dictionary, I can play it in Scrabble.

I can use it in my.

But isn't like

dope or whatever that like Simpsons word in the dictionary?

Is it DOH?

I think it is.

I don't know.

But irregardless.

Solid word.

It's there for good.

Okay.

Well, you have the right to use whatever word you want.

Yeah, yeah.

I will not be using irregardless.

I'm in the camp that that is a double negative.

It's not good.

It's a big trigger for people.

Yeah.

Big, big trigger.

It's not like

what's worse than that for me is.

What's worse?

There's one that's worse.

That's just blatantly misused.

Well, no, there's one that people add a syllable.

They add a letter to the way they're saying it

because it's spelled that way, but it's supposed to be pronounced.

It's like very, why?

It's not coming to me.

It'll come to me.

People get mad about the thawed.

Thawed?

Thawed and dethawed.

Oh.

Yeah.

I always say defrost, not dethaw.

I've never said dethawed.

But I can see where people would object.

It's a double negative.

Yeah.

This is like all downhill from here.

It's similar.

I'm not on the

I'm not a word police.

You know,

you're other kinds of police.

Yeah, yeah, I am.

I am.

Thank God I don't also have.

I don't know if I could even be with me.

Irregardless.

It's in there.

What were we talking about before?

Irregardless.

Data and data.

Oh, data and data.

Okay.

Seven.

So she sold Bobby.

I'm sorry.

She, yeah, sold Bobby Brown to

in 1995 for 75 million that is 159 million today okay i said 250.

yeah i was being a little optimistic yeah these people who can build multiple billion dollar companies i just so impressed on them so impressive yeah it really is um okay

there's a quiz you're gonna take okay it's a learning styles quiz okay Because we talked about visual learners.

Yeah, she said she was a visual learner.

She did.

So we're going to find out what you are.

Okay.

Okay.

Now, the choices are often, sometimes, and seldom.

Often, sometimes, seldom.

Yes.

Okay.

I follow written directions better than oral directions.

Seldom.

Okay.

I can remember more about a subject through listening than reading.

Sometimes.

I bear down extremely hard when writing.

Always.

What is that?

Often?

Often, yeah.

Really?

I like to write things down or take notes for visual review.

Yes,

often.

I require explanations of graphs, diagrams, or visual directions.

Hmm.

I don't think so.

Seldom.

Seldom.

I enjoy working with tools.

All the time.

I am skillful and enjoy developing and making graphs and charts.

Never.

I can tell if sounds match when presented with pairs of sounds.

I'd say, yeah.

Often or sometimes?

Often.

Okay.

I remember best by writing things down several times.

Often.

I can understand and follow directions on maps.

Often.

I do better at academic subjects by listening to tapes and lectures.

Often.

I play with coins or keys in pockets.

I mean, I have this as my binky.

I say often.

I can better understand a news article by reading about it than by listening to it on the radio.

False.

Rarely.

Seldom.

Seldom.

I learned to spell better by repeating the letters out loud than by writing the word on paper.

Um, never.

Okay.

I chew gum, snack, or smoke during studies.

Always.

I feel the best way to remember is to picture it in one's head.

I don't know.

Sometimes.

Okay.

I would rather listen to a good lecture or speech than read about the same material in a book.

Always.

I learned spelling by finger spelling, spelling words in the air with index finger the words.

Never.

Seldom.

I am good at working and solving jigsaw puzzles.

Sometimes.

I prefer listening to the news on the radio more than reading about it in the newspaper.

Often.

I grip objects in my hands during learning periods.

Often.

I obtain information on an interesting subject by reading related materials.

Often.

I follow oral directions better than written ones.

Often.

I feel very comfortable touching others, hugging, handshaking, etc.

Too much.

The results are your perfect.

Okay, interpreting the perceptual preference form.

Your perceptual preference can indicate through which channel to your brain information flows most easily.

Information that you receive through your preferred channels is more quickly understood and more easily remembered.

Arrange your academic life to take advantage of your best channels.

Your highest score, tactile.

Oh,

you learn besty-touchy.

You learn best by experience or hands-on activity, by being involved physically in classroom experiences.

You remember information well when you actively participate in activities, field trips, and role-playing in the classroom or working on experiments in a laboratory, handling and building models, and touching and working with materials.

Writing notes or instructions or a combination of stimuli, for example, an audio tape combined with an activity such as listening to a summary tapes you've made while you jog or making flashcards will help you understand and remember new material.

Oh, wow.

Okay.

Yeah.

Your auditory score was second.

That was a 30.

Your tactile was a 36.

Then your auditory is a 30.

Your lowest is visual at 24.

Okay, so I'm not a visual learner.

Turns out, no.

Not true.

That was cool.

Yeah.

Do you want to give me the computer and I'll do it to you?

That's all right.

Okay.

What do you think you are based on that?

I think I am a visual learner.

Okay.

Ironic because your vision is not great.

Think how brilliant you'd be if you could see.

Oh, my God.

It'd be too much for the world.

It's why when I read, I like a book.

I don't like an audio book.

Right.

It's in and out.

I can't follow that.

Can't hold on to it.

Yeah.

But that one's a little tricky because I do retain a lot of hearing podcasts, but that feels different to me for some reason.

Yeah, maybe that feels more like a classroom, a professor situation.

It's because often there's two people.

So it's a conversation.

It's engagement.

I don't get to tune out.

Right.

And I feel like I'm participating.

Yeah.

You're like making a counter argument sometimes.

Exactly.

Yeah, yeah.

It's engaging.

Yeah.

I don't think I'm very tactile.

Although.

You're not super mechanical.

No.

And you don't do pottery.

Were you good at origami or folding paper?

I've never tried it.

No, no.

That's Link.

Like, that's when Link kind of blows my mind is the things she builds.

Like, this card she made you for your birthday was so cute.

It was so cute.

Her dioramas she makes.

I'm like, oh yeah, she really really has a knack for this.

Yes.

Yeah, no.

That's probably my lowest.

Yeah.

But I do like holding things

and I do like toothpicks.

Sure.

A little tech.

I like chewing on, I like having some objects while I'm stimulation.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Oral fixation, they call it.

Let's call it that.

Let's call it that.

So I'm a turf, too.

Your results are in your purse.

Okay, that's it.

That was it on Bobby Brown.

Yeah.

You must admire her now.

So much.

Yeah.

So much.

She, I, I felt very seen.

I did.

I was like, oh, especially when she talks about being in the details and that being like, you know, in her head, she was like, yeah, no, I was fired.

They wouldn't say I was fired, but because, but they told me to get out of the day-to-day.

That is the job.

Yes.

That's how I feel.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So

I get her.

Yeah.

It also made me,

it's a good heads up for like, it's easy to be judgmental of people on their phone when you're doing a shared activity.

Yeah.

Like if you're watching a movie.

It's certainly my preference.

Someone would not be on their phones.

Yeah.

But to hear her say it, and I'm not involved in that.

And that's just how she, that's how she enjoys sitting there with a movie.

I know.

I was like, yeah, I got to be more.

Well,

I think that's just.

Having an understanding of the other person, but also they could have an understanding that like you enjoy quality time, which means not being distracted on the phone.

Yeah.

I mean, I do that, but I'm by myself.

Yeah.

If I'm with people, I try not to do that.

Same.

Even though if I'm by myself, I'll be like, put this down.

You're going to either watch this or put it down.

Right.

I try to, but then all of a sudden it's back in my hands.

I started the wrong show, but what a blessing.

Ryan's been saying that the Jason Momoa thing is great.

It's on Apple TV.

Okay.

You know, he's in like a loincloth and stuff.

Oh, you love that.

Yeah.

You can see his buns a lot, I I guess.

No, I haven't seen it.

You love that.

So I go to Apple TV and boom, there it is.

He's on the cover.

He's looking warrior-like.

I watch it.

It's called C.

Uh-huh.

Yeah.

And it's by Stephen Knight, Peaky Blinders.

Oh, cool.

And the premise is it's in the future and all humans are blind now.

Right.

And it's great.

But I'm sending Ryan voice memos going.

When am I going to see his buns?

Like, also, I guess the only hard thing to accept about this show is that they can still fight, even though they're blind, whatever.

He sends me one back.

You're not watching the same show.

I am.

So Mamoa has

two shows on Apple.

What's the other one, Rob?

Chief of War.

Chief of War.

See, he's a little older.

Chief of War just came out.

Okay.

But he's got two where he's in the jungle swinging a sword.

I mean,

at the same time.

He's just come on and tell us about them.

Oh, I'd love to have him on.

You'd love to see those buns in person.

I like following him on Instagram.

He's always having a good time and drinking a lot of beer.

Oh, is he?

Yeah, I think he has a really good appetite for brewskies, which I think is cool.

All right.

All right, love you.

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