Guys: Episode 141 - Knife Guys with Paul F Tompkins

Welcome to guys, a podcast about guys.

Slice, slice, slice, slice, slice.

I'm a knife guy.

Actually was a knife guy for about a year.

And my guest, oh my god, it's fucking the beginning of the show.

My co-host is here, Chris James.

Hi, Chris.

Hey, everyone.

So, hey, sorry about my

co-host there making a you know a rare flub off the start.

So that's very rare for him.

And I'm guessing he's pretty embarrassed as well because we have a pretty cool guest on.

Well, I was also crying before we recorded about not being able to make a Wheel of Dane cook.

So I'm already like, a mess our guest this week for knife guys paul f tompkins hi paul hello knives

that's hey chris was like what are we gonna do with paul and there's two different calculus calculuses that we make with them do we want it to be something

calculations

Do we want to make it something that they are into, or do we want to make it something that seems like the total opposite of them?

So we chose total opposite with you because sometimes you do something with people that you're like, oh, this guy really likes this and we're just making fun of him.

That happens to us.

And it does.

The feedback we get on those is pretty much like, oh, this was sort of uncomfortable because it seemed like a lot of

the mocking was directed at the guest, even though it wasn't, you know?

Now, is this always found out in the moment?

No, no, no, it's found out for everybody.

I mean, even found out by Chris in the moment.

A lot of the time, he doesn't tell me what the episode is before we started.

He'll throw me for a loop.

He'll change it at the last second or whatever.

So, yeah, it's very, I think it's like it actually helps.

I don't want to be

fucking mind games.

What is this?

Well, this one he knew.

Paul, this one he knew about because he wanted some, he wanted power of Vito or whatever.

Well, I can see his screen name is Slice Man Chris.

So, of course, he knew about this.

He's big.

He's big.

Unless, did you just record a pizza-based guys?

That was a very long time ago.

And we found out I was one of those too.

Okay.

Who isn't?

Come on.

Yeah, that one.

A lot of us are pizza guys for sure.

So, yeah, this is knife guys.

Chris, have you ever collected knives?

I've never collected knives, that's for sure.

I've used knives in like,

but I think probably we use them differently.

And I don't know for sure, but I'm guessing we did because I would use them like camping and stuff like that.

Mostly, camping, mostly.

I don't camp.

Paul, have you ever been into knives at all?

Do you know what?

I have not, but I could see myself becoming a knife guy because

there are some knives out there.

They're absolutely gorgeous.

There's some good-looking knives out there in the world.

And I have had friends who are knife guys,

and it's undeniable that it's like, I, there's a certain aspect of it of like

craftsmanship that when you look at something that is made to look nicer than it really needs to look, you know what I mean?

Just for pure aesthetics, you, I cannot help but be entranced by that.

Yeah.

I bought a bunch of switchblades a couple years ago.

A bunch of switchblades.

Yeah, a bunch of switchblades.

All different kinds, though.

The ones that come out on top, click like that, comes out of the top.

I got to flip out.

You were not allowed to have those.

Those are illegal where I live.

Well, I won't bring them with me when I go to Canada.

No, I know, but aren't they illegal?

I was asking if they're illegal.

Where you were like, were you buying?

They were legal, so you're allowed to have them.

We have a little thing here called the Second Amendment.

You're allowed to have Switchblades all you want here.

People don't give Switchblade dudes enough credit for being Second Amendment enthusiasts and defenders.

Yeah.

It is funny when you go look up, if you just go, because there are a lot of knife rights groups, which is a funny thing to be in 2025 when there are like real rights to be worried about.

And these guys are like, I think we're going to get brass knuckles legalized next year.

Oh, they're pushing.

I was going to ask.

That's what I was going to ask.

What are they pushing for?

Because knives are very much legal, right?

I guess pushing for switchblades and stuff like that.

But do they want to be like...

They want to be able to carry...

Because you can.

You can just carry a knife around on your belt.

Sometimes.

They want to legalize rumble weapons.

Any weapons you would have in a rumble.

So it's like, I should be allowed to have a bike chain on me anytime I want.

Well, it's funny reading guys in Texas say, like,

I think it's going to finally happen.

I think we're going to be allowed to have brass knuckles with a blade on them.

And it's like, with a blade on them.

What do you need that for?

Like, that's a weird weapon to have.

Well, in Texas, it seems like a weird weapon to have as well, right?

Like, it's like clearly meant for combat, but you're in a zone where a lot of people have a better weapon than that.

Well,

when I was googling knife fights yesterday all right like on i went to reddit and i typed in knife fight on search and i'll say this about the knife guys they're like the karate guys and they say like hey if you're faced with a knife fight run but there are other guys who are like what if i can't run

Because they just want to fight a guy with a knife.

I believe that like they want to beat a guy with a knife.

What if I can't run because I want to do this?

That's what I think.

I'm telling you.

And

they're all like, don't fight him.

Some guys, I read a guy yesterday saying, like, you know, it's a lot harder to stab a man than you think it is.

It takes a lot more force.

And I'm like, what are you doing, dude?

Like, what's going on that you know these answers and stuff?

Oh, trust me, you don't want to learn the hard way like me.

I mean, I thought he meant emotionally at first, like, it's harder than you take to stab a man, like the feelings, but he meant physically it's hard to get the knife into the man.

Well, yeah, you got to.

The only emotion is want to stab.

Yeah.

That's the easy part.

Yeah.

And it's like, so

I thought, yeah, let me go to, I went to Quora

because it's good to go there and find out what the guys are saying.

And this guy's name is Nick Harvard.

Now, he went to the University of Liverpool, not Harvard.

But I said, that's his last name.

It's a last name as well.

It's like my friend Nick Liverpool, who went to school somewhere near Boston.

He goes, what's the best kind of knife to use as self-defense?

Now, this answer gets crazy, of course, because it's a guy answering knife questions on Guara.

He goes, I'm not sure why this rather old question popped up in my feed, but it's worth answering.

Tools we use as weapons, either force additives or force multipliers, sometimes both.

Force multipliers.

Anytime I hear somebody use that terminology, I know this is not a guy for me for sure.

What does that mean, force multipliers?

It's like anything that multiplies your force.

I mean, Paul, I don't know.

I don't know.

Cut out the Ayasta.

Cut out that Ayasta.

No, it's like, it's a weapon.

It's a weapon.

So it's like something to make you hitting that.

Why is everything so fucking grim all the time?

Force multiplier.

Yeah.

Well, we were going to fight with hands, but

he had a stick, which is a force multiplier.

Not much.

It's only a little bit.

Yeah, they have a scale, like if you're really into fighting and combat and stuff, which I again, I don't know.

Like, there are obviously active wars going on and stuff, but it doesn't strike me as these are these are soldiers.

So, these are people who are just discussing the possibility of having like a weapons fight, which seems to me would be so rare to have.

Well, Chris, I think you have to remember we just did that security guys episode.

Oh, yeah.

And that it's such a,

it's a guy sitting around and being like,

okay, now what if I'm waiting in line at the bank and somebody puts a switchblade up to my neck?

What, what move do I do then?

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

Like

living in Wahlberg mode all the time.

Yeah, like just thinking about like, if I were there in that moment, yeah, I do, because I think, and I don't want to, I'm going to out myself a little bit that like I have been guilty of that on a smaller scale before, where there's there's like some sort of situation.

I'm like, oh, what if this guy here started trying to kill me or whatever?

Like, what would I do?

So, I think that's a stick.

You guys allowed to have sticks up there?

Yes, we're allowed to have sticks.

What are you talking about?

By the way, a lot of people have guns up here, too.

There's just not concealed care.

Like, you can't carry them out in public and stuff, but a lot of people have guns still.

They own guns.

You're allowed.

So, I'll bring a stick up when I come up there.

I would say when you're flying up here, I would say don't.

It is so funny.

It's so funny to think that if there's another country that does not have mass shootings every day of the week, they're like, they must not have guns.

They just must not have them.

What's funny is I'm kind of saying like

I'm joking around, but my father-in-law is like a big-time Trump guy.

Paul, he lives in a chicken coop.

Yeah, and he shits in a bucket.

He's a a prepper.

They bought a chicken coop and they turned it into a house and they moved into their son's backyard.

I thought you had married like Rumpel Stiltskin's daughter.

Well,

I mean, he's not in a chicken coop.

He sits in a bucket.

No,

a lot less of a fairy tale.

This one, for sure.

So, so I'm over there one day, and he's like, we're going to go down to D.C.

We're going to drive

January a few years ago.

I don't know.

This was this was a

he goes.

But this is the kind of guy where if he says, We're gonna go to DC, you're like, Oh,

how come?

What's going on?

Well, he was gonna go ride his,

he was going with uh his son-in-law to ride their motorcycle around for POWs or whatever.

You know, you know, those guys, those guys are like, Oh, I'm gonna get on my motorcycle and ride around, and the POWs will love it.

And uh,

that's what they do.

we're gonna do circles we're gonna do figure eights this is all for the pow

yeah uh uh so he's he's like doing that and he told me he was like

it's really hard to go to dc for me because i can't bring my gun and i'm like you got you you don't need it i promise wherever you go

you're not going to need your gun and because they're not going to go to a scary dc neighborhood they're going to go stand around the White House.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's the same rules for everybody there, right?

So it's like the other people aren't allowed to have a gun either, right?

Like, I mean, I know some of them do, or obviously, but it's just you could use that.

You could try logic with them and try to.

But then you trust the other people who also would want to have their guns.

It's the people that you don't trust that will have the guns for once.

And so I just remember whenever somebody says like they're gaming out some kind of a home invasion or something like that, I think about that.

And I'm just like, I can't be like him.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

He showed me his gun one time and I

was like,

I'd love to show you my gun.

And I was like, I don't really care.

I've seen a gun before.

I've shot a gun.

I've been around a gun.

Yeah, it's not an antique, like, like Paul was saying.

It's not like it doesn't have like details.

It's just a regular gun you get from the gun store.

It was, too.

It's like a nine millimeter thing.

It's like the one you see on TV in every movie.

And he goes,

I'm looking at his, I go in to see his gun in his bedroom next to his bed.

And as he's getting the safe out, I look at his headboard.

He's got a Trump sticker on it.

And I was like, well, I'm more kind of obsessed with that than I am with the gun you're about to show me because why would you put that's a weird place to put your sticker on the headboard of the bed?

Yeah.

70-year-old man, 73 years old.

Do you think he does like a kisses it and

gives it a tap?

A kiss tap at the end of the night in the morning.

That way.

Good night, Trump.

Like when Trump hugged the flag that one time.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Like, ah, yeah.

Here's a guy that asked a good question on R/slash knives.

Anyone ever have to explain why they like to collect knives?

So one of my wife's friends saw part of my huge knife collection and expressed a low-key degree of alarm to my wife.

My wife had never really questioned it.

Beyond just asking me why I needed to to buy any more.

But thanks to her friend, she suddenly had concerns over why her husband owns over a hundred different pocket and belt knives and swords, etc.

I really had no answer other than to tell her it must be just like her urge to buy so many shoes.

I just like the way.

Oh, that's like we hear that sort of argument a lot on our podcast.

I just like the way knives look and how they feel to hold.

And that's probably the case for some people, but I also do understand the other side side of that as well, that like it is obviously a very violent, it's used for violence a lot.

So it just seems like the type of people who collect knives sometimes do also tend to be scary.

I've found.

They're expensive, too.

They're so because when I started collecting, when I started collecting knives, my wife got me one.

I learned how to flip it, and it was so exciting.

So what?

Oh,

you were flipping knives.

You were into that kind of thing.

That kind of makes sense.

What made you get into knives?

So

that's four years ago.

Yeah, you know what?

I was going to say, you did it when we were used to do Shocktober.

I remember you flipping your knife around and stuff like that.

Yes.

What are you doing?

I just said I want to get into knives.

I don't even know how it happened.

Knife Guy might be the first type of guy I ever really under, because I was like, I'm going to become a knife guy.

Wow.

And then I asked for a knife for Christmas.

As like, as an adult, you decided to do that.

Like, as like, yeah, that's wild.

And you don't really know why.

You just did, like, there was nothing.

you didn't see a guy with a knife that was like you thought was cool or something i like the flip i'll say that like i remember growing up this guy used to hang out with had a butterfly knife and he knew how to do the whole move yeah

and i always wanted to learn that but those are illegal here butterfly knives who was that who had the knife mark his name was martin he also had a zippo oh cool so he was pretty

I wasn't sure if we

a lot of the people that's nice something weird about Martin yeah his dad smoked smoked non-filtered palm malls.

So at the end of the night, every night, he would go to all of the ashtrays and empty the palm mall, what was left of the cigarette into a bag, and then we would roll it up with a paper and smoke at the ball.

Yeah, classic tobacco roach joint.

I mean, we've all done it with weed before, obviously, but the tobacco roach joint

so much tobacco to so much.

It was beautiful to us because we couldn't buy cigarettes yet because we were 13.

Yeah, there's no filter, it's like you get you just get it down to the fingers, that's when you know you're done smoking.

Yeah, yeah, I know.

Did it feel like eat?

I did it.

This guy goes, I explained it to mine that it's jewelry for men.

She said, I don't complain about her buying trinkets, so she can't get on me about mine.

Keep her, but I mean, like

shoes, jewelry, these are things that you can

use

that are no threat to anyone else.

I actually like that this guy doesn't know what his wife collects and just calls it all trinkets.

Trinkets.

Yeah, just general trinkets.

Yeah.

Oh, she collects trinkets.

What kind of

whatever the statues or something?

Maybe he's married to a big bird.

Yeah, I mean, I mean, it like, it's a very good...

The shoes are very, listen, obviously, some people have a lot of shoes.

I probably have too many shoes, but they do serve a very important purpose.

although we did just a few weeks ago learn about, we did barefoot guys who are really not into shoes at all.

But, but, like, yeah, those are really important.

And then, jewelry is like a nice ornament thing.

I guess if you bring your knives out

and you put them on your like belt or whatever, then they could be this similar thing to jewelry.

But, see, that's the thing with

knife guys, I guess, is what this is the crux of it: is

how many knife guys are knife guys who, and I know a few of these guys, just like to have a knife knife in their pocket for practical purposes.

And I have never seen it for the most part, this knife, you know, whatever their knife of the day is.

But then there's knife guys who want to bring it up so that you will ask them to show you the knife.

Yeah.

And they won't let you touch it.

There's like a lot of guys that have like a switchblade or whatever are just like, well, you can look at it.

You know, or they'll be like, let me flip that out for you.

And it's like 90% of the knife fun is flipping Yeah, that's yeah, but you don't party life You don't know how to do like a proper what if like you're gonna flip it you might do something you might fuck up the knife or whatever

seems like hey, let me let me just pop the button, you know what I mean?

It's all just two.

Yeah, you would think that Paul, you'd think that, but there's a little bit more of an art to it.

And if you could just hand it over here, please.

I had, I had like, because they make like hype beast

switchblades, and that's what I I was getting into.

Like, brands make them or is it?

Not brands, but like they have like a Simpsons one, they have one that looks like cake, a Simpsons one, no, no, yeah, yeah.

A Simpsons one.

The Simpsons one, yeah, I don't know.

You're pulling up the Simpsons,

the Simpsons switchblade at your knife fight, like you're gonna get laughed out of the knife.

No, they don't care, they love them.

They went, no, they want, okay.

Here's the cake-looking switchblade by uh, there it is.

I'll show you guys the, the, the, the one I, I really wanted this, and I missed the drop, so I wasn't going to spend the amount of money on it.

You weren't going to get it on resale.

I wasn't going to go on StockX and buy it.

You say it like that.

I don't think knives should be whimsical.

I don't think they should be whimsical.

You know what?

It doesn't even look like cake either.

It's just like pink with the sprinkles or whatever on it.

Pink donut is what it's called.

Yeah, I know.

It's kind of Simpsons-y.

It does kind of look like the Simpsons donut or whatever.

I'll tell you what I wanted to buy.

Show me that green guy.

I haven't bought a knife in a long time.

Like, I haven't bought a knife in so long, but yesterday I saw a Deadpool one, and I was like, oh, maybe I'll buy the Deadpool knife.

That sort of makes more sense to me than a Simpsons knife.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, Deadpool.

Deadpool is violent.

Deadpool is very violent, right?

He's also very funny, and he doesn't just attack people.

No, no.

He's very funny.

Let's get that out of the way.

Let's

be very funny.

He's a reverent.

Brian, you're not allowed to participate in this sarcastic thing because you genuinely like the movie.

So

we hate Brian Reynolds.

We don't hate him, but

I live in Vancouver and he's like Vancouver's, you know, oh, Vancouver's.

Nancy Reynolds, of course.

Yeah, and it's like, we don't really like him that much.

We like Nardoir.

We're Nardoir's motherfuckers.

They're more into the guy.

The human serviette.

The serviette is the number one guy in Vancouver.

They're way more into the guy that started Lululemon up there than they are.

Chip Wilson.

Yeah, we're

Chip Wilson.

If you could understand how despised Chip Wilson is in his hometown of Vancouver, like he's been despised before any of it.

Like he used to throw these big parties at his mansion in Kitsilano and on the beach and have like the red hot chili peppers come and play there.

And the neighbors are like...

Come on, man.

Like, he's having cool rock concerts.

Chili peppers, though?

But there's not everyone likes the chili peppers, though.

And That's true.

And it's like, there's places right next door.

Like, it's not like he's in this remote kind of area or whatever.

He's just like, yeah, he's a real hated figure.

They invite the neighbors to the chili peppers concert.

They're going to be at it anyway.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You want the good seats or the bad seats.

That's the only thing.

Here's an interesting guy.

I've been a knife person since the mid-1990s.

I'm showing some fucking road rash from dealing with non-knife people who ask us to explain this shit and treat us like we're dangerous psychos and need a mental help.

I say to them, I love this.

I say to them, it's mankind's oldest tool.

You have more than one kitchen knife.

Why is that?

Could it be that in the kitchen, different knives perform better at different tasks?

Do you use every kitchen knife you have every day?

No, I don't.

I don't.

But you still have them all.

Tools in the garage versus tools in the handyman's work truck, same concept.

Shoes, same concept.

Concept.

Closing, for that matter, same concept.

I'll never get why this is such a perplexing thing for non-knife people.

I love that he separates the world.

Yeah.

Knife people.

I can't believe I got pwned so hard.

Yeah, he did.

I saw you kind of coming to a few realizations.

He anticipated my every argument.

He goes, I will never get why this is such a perplexing thing for non-knife people who nearly always have way too many of something them goddamn selves.

Yes, but not knives.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It is like you're always going to when the thing you collect is so regularly used to, you know, kill and decapitate people and stuff and do these horrible violent crimes, then you're going to have to deal with that.

That people are going to think you might be a little bit, you know,

yes, because the question is, you have all these knives.

What are you doing with them?

Are you just putting them on a wall and admiring them?

Or are these are these a practical thing for you in your daily life?

Yeah.

And it is it is like

all you need is like two or three all you have to do is say like, oh, you know, I'll cut an apple with it or or, you know, sometimes people need a string cut or so I can't think of five reasons.

Yeah, that's those aren't great reasons, I'll be honest with you.

Apple string.

Why do you have your knife?

Stabbing someone.

Okay, you got it out of me.

The most obvious murder ever.

Your Honor, I encounter string on a daily basis.

Yeah, the apple thing is like something you've seen in movies or TV, Brian.

I feel like the guy just like slices off pieces of an apple.

But you did it because you saw it, I feel like.

I cut them look cool.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

My wife asked me at least once a week to borrow my pocket knife.

I've bought her several of her own, but she knows I always have mine.

She's also always asked if I'm bringing my knife when we go on walks.

Seems like she's embarrassed, but that's just me.

Answer always yes.

As to why so many.

Does she ask, like, hey, you bringing your knife?

Or are you bringing your knife?

Like,

how does she ask it?

I think it's the segue, you can bring your knife again.

I would love to see it.

Especially if it's like a belt because a lot of these guys carry a fixed blade belt knife.

That is such a fucking weird thing to do.

Like, I remember people that hang stuff out of their pockets.

It just blows my fucking head.

Displaying or things like that is really bizarre.

Whatever it is, like, it's bizarre.

It is just that person that you're talking about who's like, wants to have conversations about it, wants people to.

And then occasionally, too, which we encounter a lot on the podcast, it's those people who are like, everyone's fucking stared, looking at me all freaked out because of my gut, you know, like they just, they're doing it because they want to freak everyone out.

And they just, they always decide.

Same as like wearing a fuck you t-shirt or whatever.

Oh, you want me to get rid of a lady came

lady came up to me yesterday with a shirt that just said the C word on it.

I swear I didn't even notice it.

It makes me feel a thousand years old.

I was in the airport one time and this kid, like in his 20s, and he had a jacket on,

like like a sort of like one of those like

warm-up jackets, you know?

Yeah, yeah.

and on the back it just like said

fuck all over it and I was like we're at the airport yeah

the lady stopped to it felt weird because she's she was like I'm we're like in a liquor store and I was like standing in one place and she was standing in like another place and she's passing me and she's looking at my shirt What did your shirt say?

It just had a fucking cool car on it.

Oh, okay.

I thought

that made me sound like a three-year-old boy.

I realized made me sound like

Lightning McQueen.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

It was like a Trans Am.

Well, it had a Transam.

What kind of shirt is it?

Paranoid.

Oh.

Toronto brand.

Oh, nice, nice.

Yeah, you got it when we were in Toronto.

That shook you up.

Yeah.

He knows I love Canadian clothing brands.

Like Lululemon.

I do.

I'm wearing Lululemon, and so are you, and so are you.

So don't even say you don't.

This guy,

his name is Carnivore Muscle.

Sure.

And the name is Cold Steel Enjoyer.

And he goes, wife's friend is an idiot.

What would your explanation do?

What was that?

What was that?

Remind me what that was.

My wife's friend said why he got so many knives.

Oh, he's just an idiot.

What an idiot.

Yeah.

The other top favorite thing is this guy says, less expensive than collecting cars because they always won't think of a thing that's ultra expensive.

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

And be like, oh shit, it's less expensive.

That doesn't mean it's normal.

That's the most expensive one you can have, really.

That's like only like super rich, like billionaire-level guys are collecting cars like that, I feel like.

Have any billionaires.

There's got to be one who's decided, I'm really going to go insane with this.

I'm going to collect yachts.

I'm going to have tons of yachts.

I bet that's what, I bet, honestly, there are problems.

Like, really?

At this time, like, that's what it's got to be now because they've just accumulated so much wealth.

And yeah, to them, like, collecting cars, I guess it's not just billionaires, like

multi-millionaires or whatever.

So, yeah, I bet you there's yacht collectors.

We should find my own marina.

Yeah.

We should find them and give them an award, a big award, you know?

Here's a guy that has maybe closer to my politics.

He goes,

Brian, hey, let's not start to keep talking about this.

Last time we talked about something like this, Brian had to go back and take down the episode because somebody said, well, he just mentioned something about the bank.

And

then someone was like, you shouldn't say that in the current climate.

I got nervous.

So what?

You know, and don't say what I said about it.

That's not

going to, because I edit the episodes and I don't want to have to take care of it.

I was mad at the bank that day.

I I don't know what you want me to say.

I was having a hard bank time.

This guy goes, I'm a bleeding heart liberal since forever, but I've got zero patience for panty waste who asked, why do you need to carry a weapon?

It's a tool you fucking wet wipe.

Get fucked.

He doesn't feel bleeding heart to me, though.

I don't, yeah, it doesn't sound like a liberal.

I think that means he's got a black friend.

Oh, yeah, I don't even get mad at my black friends.

I'm the outlier in my group.

black friend.

Here's a guy that shouldn't have knives.

He goes, me likey.

I actually never thought about why.

Oh.

Yeah, you should think about it, dude.

Yeah.

But wait, you never thought about it either, Brian.

Me?

I did think about it.

Okay.

I'm owning cool things.

Yeah, and you're I think it's.

It was like, it went knives, and then I got a Lego set.

You know what I mean?

Oh, yeah, that was before you got it to Lego.

I didn't have a single Lego when I was into knives.

Have you made a Lego knife?

Well, probably.

I mean, he's like,

he was really into Lego.

They don't make Lego knives.

I mean, it's safe to say that he was

dangerously into Lego at a time where he was spending...

It was like consuming too much of your time?

I might have been buying too many Legos.

Like Richard Dreyfuss and Close Encounter style, where you just like

making everything.

Yeah.

So, Paul, what happens?

What happens?

Machine Hackman and the conversation just laying

everything out on the floor.

As he used to tearing up floors, I am to making

Legos.

Brian, I do.

He used to have his whole Lego town behind him, like on streams.

Yeah, when I see that, I'm kind of like, oh, wow, I did get out of hand.

Like, sometimes I'll see old videos of the stream and stuff like that, and I'll see the room I used to be in and be like, oh, you got two into Legos.

You got to cool out on the Lego.

But you like build it.

Sorry, go ahead.

Sorry, I get Lego from the perspective of the satisfaction of building it and having it be done.

But then what do you do with it?

Exactly.

He's the exact same as you, Paul.

Like he, he only liked the building of it.

So that's what he realized.

He just started giving it away or

selling them.

Yeah, yeah.

Would you take it apart to give it away?

They want it.

put together.

I gave, so what I guess

they,

so if you're selling it at a place, they want it to be together when you sell it.

I guess you're selling it at a place.

Sometimes it's hard.

He's trying to keep his stuff because he said he's going to sell all his Lego, and I was like, hey, man, you're doing okay.

Why don't you donate your Lego?

And I sort of forced him into donating.

I donated them.

So he has to, but some of them he sold still.

But then, yeah, he.

I'm telling, I just finished one last night.

I'm selling.

What did you sell?

Who buys them?

Riverboat.

There's a place called Bricks and Minifigs, and they'll just buy them.

And he knows me now.

He's just like, this guy, he'll take whatever I'll give him because I don't really care about the amount of money.

You know what I mean?

Have you ever heard the term Mark on the street?

He sort of walks in, and they just see like dollar signs above his head as he walks in because you're like, this guy's got no idea.

They think he has no idea.

You really just don't care.

I don't care.

No, no, no.

You give me 50 bucks.

I don't care.

You know, go out to dinner or something.

It's fine.

Yeah.

Here's a question.

I'm a dream customer for mini face.

Maybe whatever.

Here's a guy on R/slash Preppers.

He asks the question.

He goes, throwing knives?

Are these worthwhile for self-defense versus just a regular Bowie type knife?

I like the idea that you throw them.

I like the idea you aren't using ammo, which you're not saving money on that.

Well, you ain't throwing a knife.

No, because you go pick the knife out of the guy's skull and then you can go throw it at another guy.

You can't do that with a bullet.

You got to wipe it off on his chest.

Yeah.

It's a whole deal.

What situations do these guys think they are getting into where they're wondering about throwing knives?

Is it worth it?

The preppers we've found are...

So most of the time, they're just spending their time at home.

you know,

figuring out a way to like turn their poop into fertilizer or something like that.

Just whatever.

Like whatever they're doing, my in-laws are doing it.

Two years for Christmas, two years ago for Christmas, my in-laws gave us a big bottle of something that just said cough medicine on it.

And it was something they made.

He still has it.

He still has it.

I still have it.

Because it's such a crazy thing to get.

What did it have?

It had a little

crossbow top.

I think that was a joke from them.

That's their sense of humanity.

It's pretty funny.

So I think a lot of their time is sort of spent doing that.

Learning how to make cough syrup, whatever it is.

And then like the other,

while they're doing that, they need to occupy their mind.

And the thing they use to occupy their mind is somebody's going to come and try to take all their cough syrup.

That's the huge thing.

You can learn how to make cough syrup and be the best cough syrup maker in the whole place, but if you don't know how to defend your cough syrup, then you're going to be coughing up a storm, let me tell you.

you can always make more cough syrup, but then people know you're a pushover.

You're just a source, then they just show up as soon as you're done.

They get on a schedule, they take it.

So, yeah, in doomsday situations, that's like a key thing.

You have to be able to, or on the other side, if you just want to be aggressive, you can just learn how to attack and take people's cough syrup or whatever.

I guess you could, a third option that I don't know why you would do this is become an altruistic person who provides cough syrup to people that need it in this post-apocalyptic society.

But I don't know why people who need it, how much, and the people who need it, what are they giving

exactly?

Exactly.

My son's been coughing lately.

Can you, can I get some of your cough syrup?

No, I'll throw a knife at you.

That guy throws a knife at you.

Does this answer your question?

And I think that like they're most because, like,

I used to just sit down with my in-laws and say, like, nobody's coming for your stuff, guys.

They live in a modular classroom.

They used to live in a modular classroom from an old high school.

And

they like lived in this, like, in the middle of fucking nowhere.

There was nothing around them.

And I was like, nobody's coming here.

Where did you and your spouse meet?

At school.

At school, high school.

They grew up together.

Her parents were relatively normal.

And then they moved to Florida and lived in the villages for like five years.

Oh, okay.

And it just fucking fried their brains.

It was crazy.

So this guy goes, getting stabbed isn't like in the movies where you go

and die.

I got stabbed in a fight many years ago.

I didn't even know I got stabbed.

Thought I'd want a fist fight and wonder why everyone was trying to get me to sit down all of a sudden.

This guy's pretty badass.

This guy's badass, man.

But I do, I think that is common.

Like, I told the story recently of my friend getting stabbed outside of the strip club by by the person in his own party who stabbed him by accident in the melee.

And I think that's a common thing.

Were they still friends after?

Like, was it like

they were not friends after?

Oh.

They did have a falling out after.

That's a friendship tester.

That was a forship tester.

Because they weren't close enough.

Do you know what I'm saying?

They weren't really close friends.

They were like part of the same.

They just sort of didn't really hang out.

It was a little awkward.

I think both of them were half friends.

I feel like I hang out.

I definitely have friends that if they stabbed me, we'd still be friends.

And then there's some other people that I'm like, you know what?

I don't need you in my life anymore i don't need the reminder of it even if i don't blame you for it it's just like oh there's the guy who stabbed me almost ended my life i had to go to hospital never know if it was an accident or not yeah yeah i mean i i i could see

i've never been stabbed of course

But I've done, I've gotten into, you know, I've told you stuff.

I got beat up or not, I never really got beat up by anybody that didn't get theirs later on, of course.

Of course.

Of course you can.

Yeah, he is in, and we won't talk about it too much, but yeah, he was in a violence gang where he would sort of go out.

His name was Queber, and he would go out there and he'd be like, hey, what's your problem, buddy?

And then they would come in and all his fucking big tough friends would come and beat the shit up.

No, that's not how it happened.

Basically, that's.

Because when you say, hey, what's your problem, buddy?

I was cool as hell.

Yeah, you were, yeah, whatever.

You were me.

And they were like, hey, Brian.

Yeah.

This is what they'd say.

Hey, Brian, you're funny.

First off, they did not call you Brian.

They did not call you Brian.

No one called you Brian.

Not even their parents called you Brian.

They all called you Queber.

Queeber.

A Queeber.

Queeber with a B.

No, all the names you're saying are like way better, Paul, and way more respectable.

Queeber?

Queber.

What does that mean?

Well, I think it was a combination of his last name and then, of course, a pussy fart.

It's really what.

How do I leave the meeting?

So they were caught, but like there were times where like you know me and this guy i used to hang out with got into a few fights about

i'm not going to talk about what we got into fights about but like we still were the gold standard

it was about pubic hair

is it real

no do you have it i heard you don't have it from somebody in school you don't have it

you know what people are saying out there

there's some rumor has it around the school.

Hey, don't stab the messenger, but

I heard you don't have pubic hair.

I said it to hurt his feelings.

You know what I mean?

You were the one saying it.

Devastating.

It was Aaron.

Yeah.

And me and him got into it.

Yeah.

And then I said it to hurt his feelings.

And then he threw me down on the ground and was getting ready to punch me.

But everybody's like, come on, man.

You know, let's not do that.

He's our.

Interesting.

Doesn't ant doesn't answer the question either.

Yeah.

I, I just he we fought.

Listen, he was still friends later on.

Aaron was the coolest guy in the whole school.

Paul, he was by far the coolest guy in the whole school.

If we got into it and we just started like get bullet pointing out, you'd be like, holy fucking shit.

He went to race car school.

Anyways,

I wish that was like a lie because that's the thing Chris holds against me all the time, that he went to race car school.

And I'm just like, yeah, it's stupid to go to race car.

Yeah, Brian.

Yeah, Brian, you were cooler than a guy who went to race car school.

I was by far.

This guy goes,

but yeah, he goes, I got stabbed in a fight many years ago.

I didn't even know I got stabbed, though.

I'd want a fist, thought I'd won a fist fight.

Wonder why everyone was trying to get me to sit down all of a sudden.

I didn't beat the other dude's ass, but I ended up in the hospital and he ended up in prison.

That's a story.

It's hard to be the endings all around.

It's a wonderful story.

I feel like, I mean, what would make it so that you didn't know you got stabbed?

Is it that if the blade is especially sharp?

I think it's just adrenaline maybe honestly that's probably that was my first thought that was like if you want to fight but i feel like because i feel like i would know if i got but you hear that a lot you hear that a lot from people that they don't realize they're stabbed and you see videos and stuff of people that are like fighting and you can clearly they just think they get punched like it feels maybe wet is the first you'll hear people say the first thing that they feel is like wetness where it makes them realize did you wet punch me bro yeah my brother my brother ran through mace to fight a guy i've my a guy named stefan not our friend stefan but my brother's friend Stefan, who was a big, huge gun guy, actually, a big hunter, and he ran through famously.

It was like famous around our area because the wrecking crew, who was like, they would go around and beat everyone up, like Brian's friends and him.

No.

And they would bear mace people all the time.

And Stefan would

bear mace.

They would bear mace people.

Yeah, they would pull out bear mace.

All the time they would do that.

All the time, Paul.

I'm not joking.

That's very Canadian.

It was a really wild.

This was a real wild group of people.

They went on to become like legitimate criminals, like real criminals.

But yeah, there's this one story.

The two of them bear maced Stefan, and he ran straight through the cloud of it.

And I was there.

Will you see the look on their face when he went through the cloud and he came at them?

It was just like two of the most scared individuals I've ever seen because they thought he's, well, he said, well, now he's not going to come get us because we sprayed the bear spray.

And he just killed.

He just got the crap out of it.

It's like that picture the the picture from last week the guy the vet coming through the cloud of tear gas with the american flag

my brother was very like

he didn't put up with mace at all it was just like

you it was such a useless thing to use on him he used to practice with it We had the mailman mace that they give the mailman.

Do you know what I'm talking about?

Fuck this go.

You know how the mailman gets mace?

No, that's pepper sprayed.

The little pepper spray thing, like the one that you carry, not the big canister.

My brother would just spray it and run through it.

Yeah.

So they build up a tolerance.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's, I mean, that would work.

That would work.

I think I mentioned before, too, like my old, my brother, because again, compare spray, my brother used it for camping, not for spraying in people's face.

But yeah, he sprayed it in the backyard and it came into the house and like just in through the window.

And it was like you couldn't breathe in the house from hours afterwards.

It was just...

I only got maced one time and it sucked.

So

I won't be doing that.

This guy goes, gonna be real with you, Broski.

Why?

Do you see yourself having to resort to throwing knives?

What if they're at the distance where they're gonna be out of rotation and you smack them with the flat part?

How many fights do you see yourself getting in?

Now, this is the part I cut this out for.

If I had to use a throwing weapon, I'm making a throwing spear.

There's a video on how to make it for two bucks on YouTube.

Wait a second, though.

In a fight,

where is the spear?

Where are you holding it?

It's in your back thing, so you have to pull it out like a nice one.

I don't know the logistics of having a $2 spear.

I think it's in your bunker, right?

Yeah, yeah.

Oh, so you have your weapons.

If somebody breaches your defenses.

And this is in a world where the guns aren't, or gunpowder is gone or something, they're imagining?

I think it's just they have a ton of guns, but they're like, I want other stuff too.

Ammunition is precious.

Ammunition is good.

In this new Cormac McCarthy world, you can't just be wasting bullets on intruders.

If you see a weak intruder where you're just like, oh, that's going to be an easy one-point kill kind of intruder, then you're just going to throw your $2 spear at them.

And then you can go again, as we mentioned before, same with the knife.

You can grab it out of his head and dust it off.

Unfortunately, he does wipe it off.

Unfortunately, this led to kind of an argument.

Oh, no.

A guy goes, I wouldn't get throwing throwing knives.

If I wanted to throw something, I'd get bricks.

Bricks are useful.

There's no learning curve.

They hurt no matter which way they hit you, and they're less expensive.

You'll almost certainly do more damage with a brick than with a throwing knife.

That's probably correct.

He's right.

But then the OP responds, and this, for some reason, hurt his feelings.

He goes, Yeah, but how is a limp-wristed little queen like you going to throw a brick?

Just

ad hominem.

That's unnecessary.

And yeah, well, then good thing he comes back and says, strength wasn't the issue.

It was technique.

Fortunately, your wife's boyfriend showed me how.

Now,

I would have changed that a little bit to say your wife.

He had to make it a man.

He's still so misogynistic that he can't say, your wife showed me how.

It has to be a man that showed him how to do it.

So he says, your wife's boyfriend.

Yeah.

I'd rather it be your wife.

And then he goes, well, I got a camp knife that's also a throwing knife.

Don't know what you would throw the weak-minded.

I don't know why that would throw the weak-minded in such conniption fits, but here we have it.

I carry it in a sheath since I don't like folding knives.

Just pull it right out.

I understand you have a sheath you wear on your waist that contains a brick.

It's a big one, and it can hold your tampons as well.

Oh.

So he's,

if I can get to the, he's saying, like, oh, I can hold my throwing knife on a sheath on my person when I'm like, because he's imagining, I guess he's had to leave his stable like area to go out and hunt potentially for food or fuel or something like that.

And then, so it'll be hard to have a brick or heavy stuff like that.

It's harder to carry a brick.

I've never thrown a brick at somebody in my life.

It's very telling, though, that the guy says,

oh, people are going to

have a conniption over a throwing knife.

And it's like, you asked a question.

He answered it in a very logical way.

And then you started attacking him.

Like, he never said anything bad about you.

He just said, honestly, a brick is pretty good.

He is really?

Idiot.

Oh, do all your tampons tell you that?

I went on Amazon and I searched badass knives.

That was my search terms.

Some pretty impractical knife, much like, wait, much like this one that I found.

Amazon I've found, has the worst products in the world.

So, this one.

It has good ones too, obviously, because it has all of them, but it's like the only place you can find the absolute worst version of everything.

Very true.

This is quite possibly the dumbest knife I've seen, other than there's one a little later on.

It's a double knife.

It looks like could it be

scissors?

Could you clip hedges with it?

It looks like

scissor.

Is it branded in the Scream movie franchise?

It is, it looks like it.

It does, it does.

does oh my god does it ever on that that was my first thought

yeah especially the one on the left it looks like the the the mask exactly it's useless because when you look at it yes you're like oh can you use it like scissors no that is not what it's for those two pieces don't touch it's just a double knife

For no reason.

Yeah, and I can't think of any reason in the whole.

I sat yesterday and just thought,

what would be the use of this?

Like, and I guess some guy, here's what I think happens, right?

Some guy is like, oh, you can kill somebody so much quicker.

It takes up more surface area.

That's the only thing I can figure out because it's two puncture wounds.

I guess.

So

I would stab them around a bone.

Like, if you want to stab somebody in the shin.

Yeah, yeah.

That's good.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

This knife is $16.99.

Okay, yeah, that's when you want

to use

a good design and good feel to the finish.

This is an excellent-looking knife.

I use it as a shelf piece, but it's also extremely sharp.

I've cut myself just handling it at least twice, and I've handled a lot of knives and swords without being cut.

So

it's a knife that cuts you

more than the average knife.

This knife is cutting me all the time.

He goes, I love it.

I'm actually outside the ER right now giving this review.

Just a word of advice.

You're going to want to use the handle.

I learned the hard way.

This is just one of those handle knives.

Yeah, this is the kind you don't want to hold by the blade, okay?

There's two of them.

So a shelf piece is that is truly,

we're talking about people who have a collection that they display.

So there are some that this just stays up on the wall.

I like to look at it.

It is not in any way a knife that I use in my practical day-to-day.

So, yes, there are shelf pieces, and then there are safe queens.

Yeah, okay, that's what I was saying.

There's ones that you put away as well that you don't display.

Those are safe queens, and they're safe.

You put them in a safe, those are better, you never use them, but are they better?

Like the ones that you're

the most expensive knife, and so you don't even get to look at it, you just take them out to look at them every now and then.

Like Gollum, yeah, like you make your safe and you're like, oh, that's a knife.

I talked on it.

My dad used to have a safety deposit box with all his best baseball cards, though.

And like really crazy old, like, you know, Nolan Ryan rookie card, Mickey Mantle rookie card.

And we would just go look at them sometimes.

We'd just go there and just pull them out and look at the cards.

We knew everyone that was in there, but we would just go look at them.

Yeah.

People are very divided on safe queens because like most people are like, You buy a knife, you use the knife.

Yeah, I got to cut some stuff.

I'm so sorry.

Obviously, I know what a safe queen is, but for the audience, maybe you could explain.

It's just a knife that you don't use.

It's $600.

The knife itself is the queen.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And you must protect it by putting in the queen.

I'm just saying, Brian, of course, that's a term that I use daily.

But for the listener, in case they were like, what is a safe queen?

I just wanted you to explain it for them.

So thank you.

I was dangerously close to owning a safe queen.

Like,

I was looking at like $700 knives, and I was just like,

I don't know about that.

And, and what ended up happening, what ends up saving me

is I had this switchblade.

I played with it so much, it broke.

Like, within like a month, the spring just fucking was like, fuck this, and it stopped working because I was playing with it constantly.

It's always in my hand.

But that didn't flip that.

I would have think that would have helped you.

That would have maybe even pushed you to buy an expensive one or whatever.

No, because I was like, it'll break.

It's like, they all break.

I do have like a knife that's like this big.

I don't know where it's at.

It's really small.

It's a switchblade.

I have taken it to so many, I've taken it on so many planes.

I didn't realize I had it.

And then I got it.

They never caught it?

Nobody ever caught it.

It was in my carry-on in my like, I carry like a bag with me when I'm around town.

It was in there.

And like one, one time I got back from one of my trips and I pulled it out.

I was like, shit, that knife has been there for a long time.

Wow.

because i know i just yeah it was crazy it's so small like you could definitely definitely not kill somebody with it or yeah i don't think you could even hurt somebody with it to tell you the truth it's so it's a string cutter which is what i use most of my knives for you could you cut string with them is that's gonna ask

string cutter that was i mean we've established strings

the only thing i can think of is string and fruit so what kind of strings i just can you give me an example of a string i'm not doubting it but an example of a string you would cut?

I got one.

Okay.

Sometimes, oh, not sometimes, all the time.

I, you know, I wear my shoes, you know, and I tie them insanely tight.

Like really.

Yeah, too tight and it broke.

You almost like, you damaged your foot.

Yeah, but that was bullshit.

I did not break my.

So anyway, I tie my shoelaces to.

Listen, that was bullshit.

My feet are fine.

I'm sick of this.

I'm sick of this frewer.

I am, actually.

That referred to me.

I have both feet to this day well his daughter came on the bonus episode a few weeks ago paul and we talked a lot about that about how he you know broke his foot or he thought he broke his foot i didn't think he got distracted by a large red van and he fell stepped in a hole and then he believed to break broke his foot but anyways it just turns out his doctor's shoes are on too tight that's what we're thinking tight shoes

needed to be part of that it's a cool van it was like a really bright red van.

I'm sure it was, but

it doesn't sound good in the retelling.

He got distracted by a van and stepped in a hole.

Like, if you had just said he stepped in a hole, I'd be like, yeah, I've stepped in holes.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, no, buddy.

You've never been just distracted by a red van and stepped in a hole.

It was really bright.

It was like a mirror almost red.

This guy goes, one of my daughters wanted this knife and a couple others for Christmas.

Looks very intimidating, very sharp.

Blades have very unique design.

I hope she doesn't cut herself with this.

That's always a good second.

That's hold on one second.

Hold on one second.

We were glossing over something here.

Brian, were you about to tell us you had to cut yourself out of your shoes one time?

Yes.

Oh, yeah.

I'm sorry.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So I tied them too tight.

And then sometimes I'm lazy, I just flip them off my foot.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

Like instead of untying them, I just shoot them off my foot.

Absolutely.

And then

the lace gets so

hard.

Like the knot just gets crazy.

It's the Gordian knot of old.

And how was that problem solved?

Of course, you cut the knot in half.

Yeah, I cut it.

I had to cut myself.

I didn't have to cut myself out of the shoes, but I had to cut myself into the shoes more.

Like, because I.

Yeah, you had to cut the thing so you could fit your feet into them because it had tightened so much that your feet could come out, but they couldn't go back in.

Yes, that is exactly what happened.

It's a pretty normal thing.

And do you have those tiny guys?

Do you have those tiny little petite feet that

you're working so hard to get?

I have beautiful feet.

What's your score?

Somebody told me once I could get 40 bucks for pictures of my feet.

Nice.

When you say score, Paul, is that like, is there a scoring for feet?

Wiki feet.

Oh, WikiFeet.

Oh, wait.

Are you on it?

I'm not on it.

I have a friend who's on it.

She has a perfect score.

Wow.

Congratulations to your friend.

You're very proud.

you've never you've never showed your your feet have never been seen in like a tv show or a movie though or anything like that uh they

because i could make because is it is it user because i could submit you if you could give me the footage i'll see i would bet it's user submitted yeah i'm trying to think if i've ever had bare feet and anything

it must have happened everybody look and listeners if you can if you're you know if you can think just go watch some of paul's stuff and see if you can see his feet

You got to know his score.

I did see this night, this story about in the guy's double-bladed knife.

This person goes really handy to use in tight areas, five stars.

That seems like the exact opposite of the truth.

It seems the only time I could think of this being helpful is like intimidation or whatever.

It's like someone pulls out their single-bladed knife in a knife fight or whatever, and then you're just like, pull out your double blade, and they're like, okay, maybe I'll just take a walk.

Actually, this guy does say he gives it five stars, and he goes, sharp knife, folds reasonably small, looks really badass.

Don't try to get it through TSA.

Well-made folding pocket knife.

The two blades are an interesting design.

Is this tied to some kind of comic book hero or villain?

I'm not into that at all, so I wouldn't know.

By the way, I'm not a nerd over here, okay?

I like the knives.

I bought the knife because I thought it was an intriguing piece.

Anyway, it looks really dangerous.

And in fact, it has two really sharp blades back to back.

Handle it carefully.

I don't think it would ever be.

I'm going to say that across the board with knives is that you have to assume that the blade is sharp and you should not handle the blade.

Think of it as two knives.

He goes, I don't, I honestly handle it carefully.

I don't think it would ever pass through TSA.

And that's a good thing.

Pretty nasty weapon.

Not for kids.

So that's good.

And this guy gave it five stars and he goes, locking mechanism isn't quite fit right.

Please read for better intel.

Only a weird knife guy.

What's it calling review intel?

Yeah.

He goes, What I really mean is, if you ever suddenly think, hey, I'll just loosen the screws to clean the inside for whatever reason, boredom, whatever.

Don't do it.

He just decided to take apart.

Now, that is a crazy thing to do, but Brian, you did reach.

But you took apart your coffee grinder recently.

It's in pieces right now.

Have not managed to get it going again?

I'm waiting for a part.

And that, oh, sure.

Now,

was it malfunctioning in some way?

Or you just said, I got to see what's in those guts.

I bought this goddamn thing and I was grinding my coffee.

I love this as the beginning, too.

This is the beginning to a story.

I'm in.

I bought this goddamn thing.

$150 for this thing.

I get it.

And a lot of the people, he's, by the way, just for context, a lot of people, the listeners, because he's been talking about it, they're like, oh, I've got this.

I've got this, and it's great.

It works like a charm, never had any issues.

Oh, no.

I find it to be a piece of shit.

So I got it.

And then I.

Didn't you read the intel?

I didn't.

Actually, I should have read the directions.

In the directions, it says, don't let it get backed up.

Yeah, that's the thing I forgot to mention.

Yeah.

And it got backed up.

So

let's get, I'm realizing right, everybody gets really mad at me about this specifically.

They say, Chris, don't bring up stuff from other episodes.

It's so annoying.

Stop it.

So now I can just see all the messages flooding into the Instagram that I run.

So when you're saying, like, hey, can you tell Chris this?

Guess what?

You're already telling him and it hurts a lot.

Okay.

Whatever.

He goes, whatever.

Don't just do it.

Just don't.

Once you undo this, there's no going back.

I can't seem to get the blades to lock anymore.

And yes, it's due to buyer action.

There was nothing wrong with it when I got it.

Just leave it alone and use it as is, haha.

Just figured I'd mention this among the many reviews so you're informed of this.

So don't, hey, don't take your double-bladed knife apart, okay?

Good intel.

I did buy my first one of my knives at Smoky Mountain Knife Works.

It's in Seaverville, Tennessee, which is near Gatlinburg.

And it is the biggest knife store in the country.

Wow.

And I went there when I was way into knives.

Right.

And

you had other business in the city, I'm hoping.

No.

Well, I mean, I was there on a vacation.

That's where I rode the four-wheeler and got mad at the guy.

Yeah, but

was the main reason for the trip to go to the knife store?

No, I wish.

The ATV was part of it.

It was just a vacation, general vacation.

You have general vacation.

I wasn't that into knives that you were like, let's take a trip to the biggest knife store in America.

I did.

I got a picture picture of me sitting in the Game of Thrones chair.

Of course, it's made out of knives.

It's a big sword chair.

Of course.

Of course.

If there's furniture made out of blades, you have to have it at the biggest knife store.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

He's a one-star review for it.

Gun store is terrible.

There's a gun store in there, too.

The manager, Carl, this is one of the weirdest reviews I've ever read.

Like, this is a review.

I have

seen this happen.

And I read a lot of reviews for this show.

Gun store is terrible.

The manager, Carl, cannot figure out how to hire people.

Spent a week via email trying to get the correct paperwork.

After filling out many things, I was told nothing was filled out.

I'm starting to think they're stealing my information.

I came in to manually do the paperwork, and upon arrival, I'm told we will not hire you due to being irresponsible.

Made no sense, and I believe the hiring manager should be looked into.

Big waste of time, and I hope my sensitive information isn't saved with them.

I

have never seen somebody trying to figure out what actually happened in this situation, and it's really, I don't know that I can really figure out what actually happened.

I think some phone calls happened that he's not talking about.

I think he maybe was, I think maybe they just weren't hiring or whatever, or something, and they told him and sort of made it clear to him.

And he wasn't.

I watch body cam footage.

I watch YouTube body cam footage sometimes, and I have seen a couple of these cases where people are like, no, I'm coming here

to work.

I would like the job.

And they're like, but we don't have a job for you.

And they're like, but, you know, that's not acceptable.

My daughter recently got a job, was like working to, was trying to get a job.

And

she was like kind of,

she was like, I can't remember where I was going.

I just lost my train of thought talking about my daughter.

Oh, yeah, she was like, I read some of that.

I had some bad catch because that would have been the first time ever.

Seriously, you're amazing in that.

I don't think you've ever lost your train of thought.

She goes,

I saw some bad,

I was going to get a job at this place, and they had some bad reviews.

Now, when she sent me the reviews, there were 13 reviews.

And I was like, I will say, maybe this is the shittiest place in the world to work.

I'm not saying it's not shitty.

I'm saying that only the most psycho people do a review of the job they just left.

I've never left a review after I quit a job.

And the only way I can think I would do it is if I had just one of those things where you're so blindingly angry that you're just like, ah, fucking, where can I go?

Where can I say something?

I'll show Suzanne who the fucking idiot is.

You know, like, yeah, it's definitely something like, it's like vindictive shit.

It does feel like that would be one of the main reasons to leave that kind of review.

That sounds more like a review you'd leave if you get fired rather than if you quit.

Because if you quit and you're leaving a bad review, it's like, guys, under no circumstances should you go work here.

This place is bad news.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And like I said, I don't know if it's really bad.

I do know that it only had 13 reviews.

And I think when I pointed out that, listen, this place only has 13 reviews.

This could, and they're not all bad.

So I'm positive that the bad ones are somebody with an axe to grind now i have never

seen somebody go to the actual google review of a place that they applied for a job at and got turned down and write a bad review of the place yeah like that's not even helpful information at all which most reviews aren't but i believe that that that is meant to he's hoping that that gets back to the people who have been giving him a hard time right he just wants to hire him yeah exactly

like your go-get yeah like And I mean in the movies when it's just like, you know what?

Like, I actually like the cut of this guy's gym at the end of the day.

He passed my test.

Yeah, he passed my test.

I don't want somebody who's just going to walk away after I tell them, no, you don't have this job.

Yeah, I called them and told him, you got to give this guy his job.

He really wants to work in your gun store.

He's hiring the craziest, most aggressive guy ever.

Like, you passed my test.

It's also like the idea that, okay, we may not do background checks on customers, but we do do them on people that are trying to work here.

Yeah.

Well, oh, I want to work at the gun and knife store, and I'm also very angry.

Oh, yeah, I forgot.

I forgot it's a weapon store.

Can you hire me?

I'm very mad all of the time.

This person gave it one star and goes, we came here a few years ago and had a great time.

Great service and great variety.

A great time at the cut store.

We were there all day.

Not exactly where there's just room after room of knives.

That's what it is, too.

Let's go to the let's go get some food and then we'll come back in the afternoon.

They do have a barbecue place.

They do have a barbecue place there.

And a few people said

they were like, we couldn't even swallow this meat.

It was so dry.

And I was like, use your knife and cut it into smaller pieces.

You just, it's a knife store, dude.

That's how they try to sell knives.

Yeah.

At the barbecue.

They're like,

just make the meat huge.

He goes,

forks only.

These guys drive me nuts, too.

So

this is a guy that, like, guys that do tests at the store.

He goes, my father and I came in today and we were there for four hours and did not have a single attendant attempt to help us at the counter.

I bought two knives.

That's crazy.

That's a crazy.

I think they're lying about the amount of time because these people in the story are always lying a little bit, but still, it sounds like it was a long time.

And like, that's crazy to wait for longer than five minutes without going and just finding somebody.

You deserve that.

If you're going to stand around for four hours,

you just get so I know the impulse of like, I'm so mad.

Oh, let's fucking wait and see how long it takes.

We'll just wait here and see how long it takes.

Yeah, but that, I think that, I think that even in that circumstance, there's got to be a point where you're like,

you know, the

feature-length film or whatever, like the time has played now that you're just like, okay, I think the point is like, I've won whatever point I'm trying to make, right?

Like, go ask somebody, what's wrong with you?

Like, I work retail.

Like, just go around the corner.

Maybe there's a guy there.

And a lot of people don't want to be bothered.

In fact, most people don't want to be bothered while they're shopping.

So I don't think that it's like, you know, that the employees are going up to everyone.

Would you like some?

Because then they got the people like, yeah, I'm fucking fine.

Okay.

I don't need any.

yeah, yeah, yeah.

I love it.

No, I know all about knives and guns.

Thank you.

I bought two knives off the rack and didn't get the opportunity to buy the five others and the axe that I would have out of the cases because of lack of service.

The gun counter attendant was the only one to

interact with either of us in four hours we were there.

Coming from a 23-year-old, at the same generation that most of the workers were, these people need some serious customer service training or to be culled from the crew.

Go God.

And And I have some suggestions on how to cull.

Yeah, yeah.

I just, he keeps saying four hours.

I just can't imagine.

That is such an incredible amount.

I will say that, but it's still like a lot of time for even the size of, because you spend four hours at an amusement park.

It doesn't seem weird.

I think even four hours, like I'm just thinking at like the mall, for example, I'll go with Charlie.

I'd mention all I did with Charlie, we'll go to the mall, Metro Town Mall, and it's a huge mall and it has all kinds of different stores and stuff like that.

But I cannot fill up two hours there.

Like, you know, and that's with eating food and like going to the playground.

And here's the thing.

If you're spending four hours at a place that you voluntarily went to, you're having a good time.

So be quiet.

Yeah.

What do you think you're right about?

You had a great time.

I also love the guy who's like, and I was going to buy five knives and two axes.

So I guess you missed out on those sales.

Yes, the guy at the counter, dumb-dumb.

Yeah, yeah.

The guy at the counter will give you the axe.

Exactly.

He's got access to the intercom.

He'll find somebody to go get the knives and the axe.

Finally, this person gave it one star and goes, I wish this was a lie, but today I went in the store and my friend stepped in a pile of feces.

In the middle of the store floor, a pile.

Once again, I wish I could say this is a joke, but sadly it's not.

The store itself is amazing, though, and has a beautiful crystal section.

just a little bit poop on the floor

i mean i i've i had that happen there we're registered at knife and gun store

if you if you're coming to our wedding i went i i've i've been i have been in a store recently where there was a huge pile of shit it was a pet pet store though so i feel like that's more normal it's like but i wonder this probably was somebody's like animal or service animal or something like that probably they must have some old dog at that place i could see that happening guy like me i just go in there and poop all over the floor when I get mad at him.

If the store is that big, you probably can get away with it.

Yeah.

They wouldn't.

Listen, I waited four hours for somebody to tell me where the bathroom was, and they did not.

So I just took a crap right down.

I assume this is what you want me to do.

Here's another knife that came up when I searched badass knives.

This one is

they're famous because they have the little ring loop on them.

Oh, sure.

Because they're for combat.

And this is the Snake Eyes brand knife, which I believe, Snake Eye Tactical, I believe this is a G.I.

Joe situation here.

Like, I think that's what they're going for.

This one does seem like the kind of thing you'd like to fillet somebody, you know?

Like, I've seen it in action movies and stuff.

And it does, to me, as like a, you know, a non-knife person, this one does seem like a scary knife to me.

Not to me.

It's really short.

I'd love to see it.

No, it's too small.

I would fucking love to see somebody attack me with this knife.

Okay.

Is that something you want on a recording?

Fucking try it.

Come at me with a knife.

Brian also famously walks around his city, and everyone knows where he walks all the time.

He also said his address as well.

You never said my address.

No, that's not true.

You registered your address when you made the different address now, though.

Violence Gang LLC.

I moved.

Yeah.

So this guy goes, one star does not stay closed.

My girlfriend wanted to.

That's a problem.

This is a huge problem.

Hey, man, I'll grant you that.

That is a problem.

This guy, and this is such a weird first sentence because of the knife we looked at, right?

My girlfriend wanted a knife to keep on her for personal protection.

Seems like not the best knife for that job, unless you really don't.

Yeah, just a knife in general doesn't seem good for personal protection.

I feel like it's something that would be, as we found out earlier, it's really hard to stab someone, I feel like.

It's easier to give a girlfriend a brick.

That's right.

And that's my wife carries a brick around.

She normally keeps it in her bag.

Every time she reaches in to grab anything from her bag, the knife is open.

She stabbed herself multiple times trying to grab a wallet or keys from her bag.

She no longer carries it, so it was a complete waste.

Good thing it was only a few bucks.

You get what you pay for.

Is it sharp?

Yes.

Is it cool looking?

Yes.

Is it at all safe to carry?

Not at all.

The locking mechanism to keep it closed is non-existent.

Don't bother carrying this unless you invest in a holster or sheath for it.

I would never buy,

I would just never, like the people who are buying these $17 knives or whatever, it just feels like something like that,

like a wallet or a knife or something, it's really cheap.

That you're just like, oh, it's going to be bad.

It's going to break.

If it has any mechanism on it whatsoever, and it's so cheap.

This motherfucker, he said wallet to attack me passive aggressively is what happened there.

It was just another example I thought of that.

Yeah, that's no, it was another example of something I did that you are goofing on.

Did I buy a cheap wallet that hurt you?

It didn't hurt me.

It just broke.

It kind of hurt me.

It just broke.

It just broke.

And it's like that.

We had the discussion about it where it's like, it's okay if there's no mechanism, but as soon as there's any sort of mechanism, like something that has to work or do something,

is it like a boxing glove on a spring?

No, this is the crazy thing about it.

It had some crazy weird shit like that, like a pop-out thing where your cards would shoot up.

They shot up.

So that's why you can't be cheaping out on stuff like that because then they will break.

You can cheap out on just a wallet.

You press a button and your most important cards pop right up out of the thing.

Yeah.

But only for a short amount of time, believe me, this was like a really short amount of time this went on.

How thick of a wallet was this?

Oh, Paul.

Oh, Paul.

Don't even get into that.

They said it was the size.

It was the size of the PS3.

It was the biggest wallet in history.

I swear to you, though, you don't even understand.

The people who listen, the Chris haters, the Chris haters are going to kill me this episode.

They're going to kill me.

I'm sorry, I keep dredging up old.

No, it's not you.

It's Brian.

I did that by accident that time.

No, he did it on purpose.

He brings up, oh, don't buy a cheap wallet because I bought a $40 wallet with a button on it.

Like, that's some crazy thing a guy would do.

This guy goes, one star, don't buy if you value your fingers.

I didn't notice it when purchasing it.

You can see it in the picture.

The blade goes through the hole.

That seems like such a bad design.

That's really bad.

There's a hole you put your finger in, and the blade should not go through the hole.

No.

No.

Oh, what?

You don't like the finger guillotine on our design?

Oh.

Okay.

Guess what would happen if the blade comes back when you're using it?

Like in a stressed situation when you're reacting fast and you cannot get it fully properly open and verify it's all set then put your finger in long story short this is made for when you have time to prepare yourself and check that everything is set on the place to use it while lose use it while losing focus on the rest of the world around you unnecessary dangerous design so this guy really did buy a 16 knife as a weapon yeah of fighting yeah and he found out Wow, you gotta really, yeah, you're gonna have to really focus on this thing.

You're gonna want to be be the guy that's attacking the guy, not the guy being attacked, is kind of what he's saying.

Yeah, this isn't for a casual knife fight.

No, it's not for any sort of person who's going to be having to defend themselves.

If you buy this knife, you're going to have to be the aggressor.

If you see somebody sort of even just sort of making a wrong move or whatever, and you feel like they might reach for something, you got to go.

I would buy an attacker knife.

I mean, because you do want to be the attacker in most cases.

Of the two two things, I guess that's what I'd prefer.

I guess that's true.

I feel like I fit more into the defender category because I don't believe, and

we goof around a lot, but I don't think I could see myself attacking somebody with a knife.

And I have, I won't tell the story because it's a long story, but I have been chased with a knife before.

Somebody chasing me with a large, like a Rambo-style knife, you know, whoever.

I'm going to do it to him at our live show.

I guess was trying to kill me.

I'll never know.

I never like had the, you know, but so I have been on that end of it.

I had nothing on me.

So I had to run.

I mean, who knows?

If I had my own, maybe I square off with them and we see who's got, you know, better moves.

Chris is going to do stand-up comedy before our live show.

What I'm going to do is in the middle of a set, run out and chase him with a knife.

And I think that could be a really good thing.

That's like that

UFC trainer.

He did that.

He was like a crazy guy who

was just holistic.

Yeah.

Diego Sanchez is like a legendary UFC fighter.

And this Josh something took over his career and became his only trainer.

And he was like some holistic healer who had no background in martial arts.

And he was a cult kind of dude.

And one of his training things, there's this video of him training the fighters and the training as he's chasing them around the octagon with a knife.

This guy goes, one star is gracious.

I admit this knife kind of has a, I admit this knife has kind of a cool factor, but the fact that it won't stay closed and comes open in your pocket with consistency at consistency at totally random completely blows the kind of cool factor off the map.

So this is.

Yeah, nothing cool about, yeah, asking for the medical help or whatever.

Yeah, like you've sliced yourself again.

I mean, listen.

That's the number one thing with a folding knife, I feel like.

You've got to stay close.

You would rather it not stab.

You would rather it not come open in your pocket.

Now, if you're a thrill seeker,

perfect knife for you.

Sure.

Because you never know what's going to happen when you reach into your pocket.

Yeah, because

you can't be out rock climbing all the time.

If you want to keep that adrenaline going all the time,

can you just really have a weapon that can malfunction on you?

Just have a white knife in one of your pockets, mix it up.

I wonder if this was a knife that was built for another purpose, like cigar cutting, and then

like

how well butrin helps you quit smoking.

Yeah, they call it Chantix.

Yeah, I do believe that this is pro it's a $16 knife.

So it is a shelf piece.

But it's so weird to put it on your shelf.

And if you go on Amazon and you search badass knife, one of the ones is just a fucking Batman knife from like, and it's like a bat.

It's the actual bat insignia from the Christopher Nolan movies.

Right.

And knives come out of both sides of it.

So it's like a batarang, kind of?

Is that what they're going for?

Yeah, yeah, but it is, it, it, but it's actually

a weird bat knife.

I, it really is.

Like, I'll, I'll get it up here on the screen for you because I love it.

Please.

And I just was like, some of the reviews I was reading was like,

oh, this, this is real.

I thought this knife was stupid,

but uh until I met the joker

It turns out I'm carrying it everywhere with me now, but the knife is so stupid.

It's like it would be embarrassing to bring the Batman knife out of your pocket.

This

yeah, it does look really

stupid for sure.

It almost looks like I mean it just looks like a throwing.

I mean, he has those things that he throws, doesn't he?

Throwing knives.

Yeah, but

they're little bats, right?

They're like little bats.

Oh, that's what that's what that is.

That's what that is for.

Okay, I didn't.

You should get some bad of spears.

You go on your

dollar spear.

Why doesn't Batman have a spear?

I'll write the next Batman and he will have several.

He spends all this money on these gadgets.

Just have a spear, dude.

And make your own cough syrup, Batman.

If you had homemade cough syrup syrup to give to people, I think people would like you a little bit more.

And

finally, on Quora, this guy goes, what is some true advice on knife versus knife combat?

Parentheses, duel.

I love that duel.

Like, I'm in a duel, okay?

One, there's no such thing as a knife fight, at least not like you see in the movies.

Two people never square off with knives unless they're stupid kids acting out what they see in the movies.

There are certainly places in the world, like many areas in Southeast Asia.

Now, when you hear that, you know

that this guy has never been there, and he's going to tell us the best thing.

This is exclusively Soldier of Fortune magazine.

Yeah,

I think knife fights do happen.

I think I've seen some of them before.

I would argue with this person.

I think that a place is like in Brazil, I feel like

there are.

Have you been there, though?

No, I haven't seen this guy.

But I've only seen some of them, but I've seen videos.

I've seen videos of it.

I know, Chris.

I've seen six or seven videos of it before, at least in my life.

Okay.

He goes uh where you might be attacked by someone with a knife and the only tool you might have to defend yourself is a knife but it's going to be over in seconds and there won't be any posturing you keep your knife hidden and wait for the thug to attack at the last possible moment you pivot to the side see this guy said there's no such thing as a knife fight now he's like but if you're in a knife fight this is what you're gonna have to do And this is like nothing you've seen in the movies.

Yeah, no, no.

At the last possible moment, you pivot to the side and stick your blade in a soft part of your enemy.

Then you drag it to the side, making the biggest gouge you possibly can, and leap away.

This is like a movie.

Leap away.

Number two.

Summon your helicopter.

The rope ladder comes down.

Number two, everyone leaks in a knife fight.

My C-Lot teacher used to say, if you're going to play with knives, you better learn to get cut.

That's bad advice.

I mean, I guess I understand it.

You know what I mean?

But he goes, I have very well-healed scars on my hands, arms, and lower back.

The secret is when you don't stop when you get cut, you don't panic when you get cut.

You dig in and keep fighting.

Early last year, I inadvertently cut a finger to the bone.

I needed the assistance of a young man who was working for me to bandage it.

When he saw the depth of the wound, he almost puked.

I was ho-hum, been there, done that, bandaged myself and others.

I don't know who else he bandaged.

And

why has he been in so many knife fights?

It sounds like he's been in so many knife fights.

And I think that's bad advice.

I think, in some circumstances, if you get stabbed in a knife fight, you should stop and seek medical attention, like depending on where you got stabbed.

Not even in a fight, he just cut his finger to the bone.

Yeah, that's a different situation.

I think he's saying recently, but he's saying that earlier in his life, he was a knife fighter.

I think number three.

He did say he had a number of scars, and I was not sure if

he gave them to himself to

sort of

get used to being static.

That's how I read it.

Oh, I read it as him that

he had been in a lot of knife fights and he's gotten those scars from like, because where did he say they were?

He had them on his arms.

All over his hands, arms.

I think

I read it, yeah, as he's cutting himself, like not cutting himself in a cutting, like a bat, but as in like, I need to build some scar tissue here so that when I get cut, it doesn't like guys that walk around without shoes on all the time.

So, you guys think he was never in one single knife fight?

He just has

so this is an interesting.

Yeah, so he just the things he's saying he cut himself up in preparation for a knife fight that never came, or on accident.

This guy goes: Number three, never telegraph to your enemy that you have a knife.

The first time he should realize that you have a knife is when he feels it slashing into him.

Learn how to hide your knife in your hand, learn how to deploy the blade of folding knife quickly and efficiently.

A bally song is slower to open than a top-flight flipper, but when the blade clicks into space into place, the knife is positioned properly in your hand.

With a standard folding knife, you have to reposition the knife for it to be useful.

Practice deploying your knife stealthfully.

And I have to say this.

I did kind of practice like, you know, oh, if I got to hide that.

I mean, why not, right?

I never cut myself, but I had a switchblade.

And I know that sometimes when I was alone or when I was out walking around, I'd be like,

see how fast I can pull it out and get it going?

You know what I mean?

Just get it going.

And then get it going.

Four, stabbing is only half the technique.

Stab deeply into a soft part like the neck or the abdomen, then pull the blade through the body.

People have survived being stabbed more than a dozen times.

You might theoretically survive being eviscerated, but it's unlikely.

And you're sure not going to be in any condition to be aggressive.

So make sure.

When he says people have

survived being stabbed more than a dozen times, does he mean

all people throughout history?

Or

is he saying that there's a record of someone who's been stabbed more than 12 times and has come through it fine?

I believe that.

Yeah, there's a record of people being stabbed a bunch of times and surviving, definitely.

It just obviously depends on where you get stabbed.

They just stop counting after a dozen.

Yeah.

Well, and I believe it happens.

Like, listen, you watch like a prison movie

when they're stabbing people with the shiv.

They'll like do it a whole bunch of times.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think that's what he's very likely that's what he's talking about.

Or something he saw in a movie where somebody got, you know, doing a bunch of karate or whatever and moving fast.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Five, knives are great for breaking someone's grip on you.

If someone grabs your right hand, you can force them release by flipping out the blade and rolling your forearm around your enemies.

When your edge presses against his forearm, push down, and with all you've got, he'll jerk away which can't assist your cut and finally six always have a knife be able to deploy it quickly your life may depend on it so he started by saying like there's no such thing as a knife fight guys and then at the end he was like have a knife and know all the tactics that you could possibly ever need

practice practice

practice stab yourself as well because you're gonna get stabbed so you want to stab yourself a number of times so you know what it's like to get stabbed and your body's ready for it.

I would also swallow some knives.

Yeah.

I would put a knife in my shoe just to see how that feels.

I really wish I would have kept this.

We're done here.

Chris, there was a guy that was insanely mad at Reacher for the way that he knife fights.

Oh, we did a series Reacher Roundtable where we talked about Reacher.

Reacher Roundtable.

Oh, yeah, we didn't realize the name until we only wrote it down, and we only realized after it was really embarrassing for us.

Absolutely.

But yeah,

so that's really, that hits close to home for us.

We love Jack Reacher.

We love him.

The gun is so magnitude.

Oh, you know, you know, Reacher, he pulls out a knife, and it's the wrong kind of knife.

Like,

Reacher does it.

It doesn't matter.

Reacher will use whatever knife he needs to use, and he'll get the job.

He's a living monster.

He can have a butter knife.

It's fun.

Exactly.

Give away.

Thank you, Paul.

I appreciate that.

I appreciate that you respect the Jack Reacher and not, you know, whatever his name is.

His brother.

Chris, it was actually one of those.

So you can go to subreddits and search by most controversial.

Yeah.

And that was where I found the guy being like, this fucking Reacher thinks he's so tough, he didn't even know how to use his knife.

People were in there defending Reacher, I hope, in the replies, right?

Well, they were saying it's a TV show.

Okay,

they were saying, sir, it's a television show.

That was noted a number of times.

Oh, okay.

Reacher's not a real person.

Okay, so not the argument I would have used, but still.

Yeah.

All right.

That is knife, guys.

Wow.

Paul, do you have anything you want to plug?

Yeah, I just want to let people know that

I have a live variety show that I do called Variatopia.

I do it every other month here in Los Angeles, and we're going to be on the road again next month finishing out our tour.

In October, we'll be in Louisville, Kentucky, Overland Park, Kansas,

Charleston, South Carolina, and St.

Louis, Missouri.

You can go to variatopia.com for tickets.

And, oh, and a podcast I do called The Neighborhood Listen will be returning

for a ninth season on October 7th.

So we're recording that now and having a good time.

And check it out wherever you get your podcasts.

This comes out around then, too.

There you go.

Thank you so much for doing doing this, Paul.

This is an absolute pleasure.

Thanks so much for having me, guys.

We'll see you all next week with Something Weird.

Goodbye.