Share & Tell & Feel Bill Walton, with Ian Karmel and Katie Nolan

Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out.

I am Pablo Torre, and today we're going to find out what this sound is.

One of the reasons the bill has such great exuberance, because when you no longer fear death, now you can live.

Right after this ad.

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It's actually why I'm reading the Bible because I don't think I ever read anything in the New Testament.

And I feel like I want to get to the crazy stuff.

I want to get to the wild shit.

Yeah, there's some like, look, as a Catholic school educated all boys product,

there are some books where it's like, do you know about the book that's too dangerous for the Bible?

And there are some like lost books.

Huh?

Lost Books of the Bible.

What?

Lost Books of the Bible.

Yeah.

So I'm going to read it and I'm not even going to get the good stuff.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You're going to have to get to like the director's cut version.

And the Snyder cut.

Hey, hey, hi.

I'm so family.

Hey, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, I should get up, but I didn't.

But I didn't.

Nice kicks.

Fresh kicks.

Fresh kicks.

Looking good.

We're just talking about the lost books of the Bible.

Don't worry.

Oh, they lost them?

Yeah, they lost them.

According to Pablo.

I mean, there's a whole list.

Are you saying I should try to find a whole list?

I'm thinking you may become an evangelical Christian by the end of your journey through.

What books are there?

The lost books of the Bible and the Forgotten Books of Eden.

Two different things.

Two different things.

Look, I'm not here to subject Eden to religious.

Are you actually going through the Bible?

Yes, I am.

Wait, no, you're not.

Where did you do it?

It's an an incredible thing that Katie's doing for fun.

She's doing it because I'm curious.

How long have you been on your

Exodus?

A couple months.

And I, um,

and I, and there's been times where I'm like really into it.

And then there's times where I'm like, I don't want to read it today.

And so I don't.

But it's, it's been a journey.

Have you entered the New Testament yet?

No, that's where I'm trying to get to because that's what the religion I'm supposedly a part of believes.

And I don't think I've ever, I feel like everything I was taught was Old Test.

Yeah.

So I feel like Old Testament is the big hitter.

I know.

It's the good stuff.

It's the there's also some wild stuff.

Like a lot whose daughters were like, we don't have babies.

And so they say and they get

a lot, you mean literally talking about

a lot.

It's a lot.

You're where for Ian to catch up.

Where are you?

I just finished Ruth.

Yeah.

Ruth.

Which a very short,

short book of the battle.

She's an old battle axe, huh?

Yeah, she sure is.

She sure is.

So I want to start and bring order to this podcast by doing something that I've done to Katie a couple of times, which is

get you drunk on a series of athlete alcohols.

Body slam you through this table.

Play some sound of some stuff that I have collected in preparation for this episode.

Field recordings.

Field recordings, because Ian,

you're an Oregonian.

Yes.

Yeah, proud of Oregonian.

Okay, and Katie Nolan.

That's Speverton's finest.

That's the top of the food chain, jewel of the Pacific Northwest.

And Katie Nolan, of course, Boston's own.

That's right.

We're framing him, but Boston can have me if they want me.

Fair enough.

And the Venn diagram of all of these things, plus me,

guy who from here sports.

is from here.

Weird to be from here.

So weird.

But does sometimes love psychedelics.

Okay.

The Venn diagram of all of us is, was, forever will be Bill Walton.

Shout out.

The late, great Bill Walton.

And I've been trying to figure out how do I pay tribute to this man that I loved.

Yeah.

I mean, Ian, you're a Blazers guy.

When he died, I was, you know, contemplating his life and career and time with the Blazers.

And I don't know if he's the greatest Blazer ever because he was there for such a short period of time.

Right.

But I do believe he's the most blazerist blazer ever.

Yes.

There's no one who more epitomizes the blazers or sports played in Oregon than Bill Walton.

And in fact, I interviewed, I had the pleasure, the great pleasure of interviewing Bill Walton on my show.

And I had the experience that so many of us had at ESPN, Katie, which is you ask one question

and suddenly you're in Narnia.

Yeah.

And so I want to play you a clip of a conversation we had just to set the table for the field recordings.

This is how my convo with the great Bill Walton went.

Well, I was curious, now that we're just getting into it, I'm curious when you got your TP.

Okay, so

my TP.

I'm a huge believer in the first Americans, the people who were here before we got here.

You know, I grew up in an area that San Diego is ringed by a lot of Native American tribes.

The big overarching family tribe here in San Diego is the Kumeis.

There's lots of different ones.

There's Barona and there's Sequan.

We all went to school together.

We played together.

We fought together.

It was just our lives.

It was fantastic.

Anyway, so,

you know, here we were.

What was the question again?

I got off track there.

It was just, when did you get it?

When did you get the TP that you're describing?

So I moved to Oregon to play for the Blazers.

And one of the first things I did when I got to Oregon, we took a tour of Oregon.

We went down to the U.S.

Geological Service office in downtown Portland.

And we got a map of all the natural hot springs in the state of Oregon.

And we went around with the goal, the purpose, to take a soak in every natural hot springs in the state of Oregon.

Wow.

I was hiking up this river valley, somewhere near the Oregon coast.

And it was, you know, it's kind of rainy, misty, fog, beautiful sunshine, rainbows, calliopes, clowns, elk, eagles, beavers, fish jumping.

I mean, if it was like spectacular.

And I looked up on the hillside as I came around the bend.

And there, you know, halfway up the side of the hill, you know was this teepee.

And I said, whoa, this, you know, who's, what's this and who's in there?

I got up halfway up the hill and this guy comes stumbling out and starts yelling and screaming at me, who are you and what do you want?

And I said, oh, I was just admiring your teepee, man.

It's the coolest thing ever.

that young man his name is jeb

and he and his wife nicole they have tp.com t-i-p-i.com

one of the two coolest websites ever bob dylan's website is very cool too bill walton i am i am high listening back to that his first off his internal monologue is jr tolkin there's

there's so much backstory every clause is the silmarillion

what's wild is you guys didn't even put that Neil Young music bed under that.

That's just what comes out when he starts talking and telling a story.

It's naturally set to.

That and patchouli oil.

It just exudes from his pores.

If you get a map to go soak in every hot spring in the state of Oregon, that sound just follows you around.

That's wild.

That's a lot of hot springs.

It's so many hot springs.

It's a volcanic state.

I also love that he has a power rankings of websites, Bob Dylan's website and tp.com.

Okay, what's going on on Bob Dylan's website?

You find that out.

In the meantime, I want to tell you guys that the aforementioned Jeb, proprietor of tp.com, is a man that I called up recently.

Wow.

I'm Jeb Barton.

My interest in life has been human consciousness.

So I've taught and studied that for about 55 years.

And this was when I was lived on the coast in Oregon, looked across a highway actually,

and saw this little little yellow Volkswagen pull up.

And then I saw this huge thing begin to unfold out of this Volkswagen of all things.

I said, you know, can I help you?

Are you interested?

You know, obviously the TP, that's what I did.

I said, are you interested in this?

He said, yeah.

And that's how that friendship started.

And then we, over the years, got into much deeper conversations and very unique conversations about the nature of really the nature of mysticism and the nature of reality.

If you were to try to explain what Bill Walton's view of reality was...

And that's actually not hard because Bill and I talked about that a lot.

There is what you and I see out here, streets and people and cars and buildings and things going on, but there's also something else that is way beyond the superficial goings on of personalities and things.

And Bill knew about that.

And that is where he hung out.

He didn't hang out in the ego.

And then the exuberant personality, the aliveness, the fun, the almost court gesture part of Bill was a result of being grounded in this deeper place, the invisible realm that he knew about.

So Bill Walton bonded with this guy, Jeb.

And Jeb, when he says he practices and teaches the study of human consciousness and has been doing that for almost 55 years.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Six decades thereabouts.

The doctorate at this point, right?

Oh, he is.

I just want to tell you that the conversation I had is so long.

No way.

You don't say.

I learned so much about myself and

it made Bill Walton the character

into both more and less of one because I was like, oh, Bill was about this life.

This was the dude he was talking to.

A dude who, by the way, we'll show this on like the YouTube video version of this on Draftings Network as well.

The dude has 125 plants in his apartment.

You can imagine Jeb.

You know Jeb.

You know Jeb.

Ian.

I know Jeb.

It's the most Oregonian

conversation I've ever had.

Did acoustic guitar music start playing

in the middle?

Yes.

Yes.

When he says he lives at the coast, actually just across the highway, I also know exactly what he means.

In Oregon, it's forests right into beach, right into ocean.

There's like no membrane.

There's no like plains or anything like that in between.

It's wood.

So this is a man who lives in the woods.

by the misty ocean, which is where you would assume a wizard would live.

Yes.

Absolutely.

He's inhabiting wizard spaces.

Katie, did you know that in the Oregon coast, Pacific Northwest in general, which I vacation to for the reasons Ian is describing, for the reasons Jeb Barton maybe lives?

I'm going to sound like Bill Walton here when I say there are bald eagles and orcas and humpback whales.

And gooey ducks.

Gooey ducks all over the place.

Lots of gooey ducks.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's more of a P-Gytheon thing.

That's what we're doing.

Oh, sorry.

We don't claim that north.

It's not okay.

It's in Pacific Northwest.

But we'll work through it.

I assume that's why they go to the next one.

We were talking about Oregon pretty specifically.

Oregon.

Okay, well, so you don't claim the penis shells.

No, we don't claim the penis shells.

We do claim elk.

Okay.

And some of them have penises.

Okay.

Do they have shells?

Back in.

Some of them have shells.

The elk there just wander through the towns as though they have this knowledge that the towns are incidental and unpermanent.

And they're like, well, we're just going to keep walking through here.

Nice.

And for the next.

thousand years we'll do the same after you people have are gone are gone forever and that feels like what jeb was talking about yeah incidentally like the hidden reality the hidden space that he and Bill accessed.

I imagine them in a teepee together, basically doing what you just described the elk doing.

I think, right, you see it just meandering through time and everything permanent is incidental.

There's this sense, I think it's being on the West Coast where you're at the end, you know, and being especially on the coast of Oregon.

Like you can be in LA or even in San Diego where Bill is from, and oh, there's civilization here.

It's city right up into the ocean.

When you're at the Oregon coast, it really does feel like you're at the end of something in a way that's kind of fighting back against everything that's tried to take it you know what i love about the oregon coast also the beaches are wide as hell yeah they are wide meaning what you know a wide beach

like the as in like you know it's not like a little strip of sand it's like a lot of sand

deep sand yeah you can drive a jeep on it you can build a bonfire oh riding a bike yeah i rented a bike and rode it yeah

It's real.

It's real fun.

You can eat Boys and Berry saltwater taffing on the coast at OK.

Marionberry.

Marionberry?

Absolutely.

Van Berry's having a moment right now.

I had never heard of it until recently.

Now it's kind of like popping up.

It is.

Van Lewin has a Marionberry.

What's who does?

Van Lewin.

Oh, Van Lewin has a Maryberry.

They have a Marionberry cornbread.

It's the Chapel Roan of Berries.

I love Chapel Roan.

Just found out about Chapel Roanoke's.

She's a secret crowd at Governor's Ball.

I did.

It's crazy.

I'm so happy for her.

She's like this

musical artist, yeah.

Gen Z

Kate Bush musical artist.

She rules.

Who's taking the country by storm?

You know, she works with the same guy who Olivia Rodrigo works with, who used to be the lead singer of a little band called As Tall As Lions that Katie Nolan was a big fan of in college.

Now it feels like we're getting a little rural Oregon in this conversation.

I don't know.

I've never, I think I've been to Oregon once, and I think it was to go to the comedy club.

So I don't think I've been

one of, I think one of Dan's favorite comedy clubs.

I just, I just turned my microphone off i feel or my headphones what did i do i've done whatever you've done what did i do what did i do what did i did dial and i'm back

uh yeah the comedy it's a great comedy club i would not say it's indicative of no i didn't get an oregon experience there's a nice mural behind you which portrays a bridge to go to a mexican restaurant in portland that also had a strip club behind it Okay.

Were they one or were they, were you downtown?

Was it Mary's and then the Mexican food restaurant next to it and they shared a bathroom?

Yes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I've been to one of those.

They're sharing a bathroom.

I've been in the bathroom.

I've relieved myself at either of those establishments.

Mary's Club, which has since moved and no longer shares a space with that Mexican food restaurant.

But that's one of the, that was like the oldest strip club in Portland, famously.

It is history.

Yeah.

Yeah.

WW2 soldiers partied at that strip club.

Yeah.

Wow.

Speaking of old shit, how is Bob Gill's website looking?

Oh, it just looks like an artist's website.

It just says, Here's, but you can buy his album that's being re-released, or like, here's a review.

There's nothing.

I think he was probably just trying to say he really likes Bob Dylan, but I can't see how anybody would spend that much time.

Unless I'm missing something because I'm on the mobile version.

He's just like clicking around, like, oh, links, dates.

Oh, my God.

If you're looking to add something special to your next celebration, try Remy Martin 1738 Accord Royale.

This smooth, flavorful cognac is crafted from the finest grapes and aged to perfection, giving you rich notes of oak and caramel with every sip.

Whether you're celebrating a big win or simply enjoying some cocktails with family and friends, Remy Martin 1738 is the perfect spirit to elevate any occasion.

So go ahead, treat yourself to a little luxury, and try Remy Martin 1738 Accord Royale.

Learn more at remymartin.com.

Remy Martin Cognac, Vienna Champain, a 4000 alcohol by volume, reported by Remy Control, USA, Incorporated, New York, New York, 1738, Centaur design.

Please drink responsibly.

Part of the thing about Bill

is that I,

every time I saw him, he made me happy.

Yeah.

And so when he died, I want to ask you guys, like,

what was the sensation that you felt?

Because he wasn't just, wow, here's a historical figure.

And he was, by the way, maybe the greatest college basketball player of all time as well as one of the would have been greatest NBA players of all time.

Ian, as

our Oregon delegate.

Thank you.

What was your reaction?

It was sad, but not

almost more like, oh, the earth is missing out on this energy and not the energy is like missing out on experiencing the earth anymore.

I felt like if you're gonna die and you can look back, you know, on your deathbed and like that kind of life, it's almost not even sad anymore, right?

I'm sad for the people around him.

It's sad for his family, obviously, that kind of thing.

It's sad for us who aren't going to get to hear him popping on to, well, there's no Pac-12 anymore.

So what would he even pop on to?

Right.

The conference of the Conference of Champions.

Yeah.

All Cal's track team with magisterial performances on the steeplechase up there.

But like

echoing of

Mencken's approach to philosophy, but portrayed through a pole vault.

I don't know, man.

It wasn't really sad as much as it was.

It was also so nice the way social media came together.

Katie, it was like one of the few things that happened on social media recently where I'm like,

This is heartwarm.

This is what it's for.

Very rare when you log on and your algorithm is serving you up a lot of heartwarming, kind, loving, thoughtful,

introspective, retrospectives on a guy's life.

I felt sad in the sense that like we, we miss that energy.

I feel like he represented for me, and I never met him,

but represented for me, like the whimsy that sports should be like embracing more and that we don't.

And I know it's because he came from a place of like, I also am very good at this sport.

So you really can't discredit anything I'm saying.

Right.

And I appreciate, I so appreciated what he brought.

And I hate when, whenever I, I use social media so stupidly that whenever somebody I really like respect or admire or care about dies, I'm like, how do I even say anything here that makes any sense and isn't just like,

I liked him too.

Like, I never know what to, so I just retweeted what other people said.

That's where I've, that's where I've netted out on my RIPs for people is like finding people who knew the person and amplify their voice.

That's me letting you know that like, damn, I'm bummed about this.

What you just said, I think actually is for me, one of my big takeaways also which is he was somebody who took sports so seriously that he compared random athletes to like uh you know

leonardo like the the ancients the greats when i watch boris diao i think of it was 201 years ago today

yeah both beethoven's symphony number three and e-flat

which shuffle shuffled which escorted in the age of romanticism and music

And when I look at Bois Diow, I think of Beethoven and the age of

the Romantics.

And at the same time, he was so the opposite when it came to his whimsy.

Like, taking something so seriously and also not at all at the same time is something that only a Hall of Famer can pull off with credibility, to Katie's point.

And it's also like why

I want to figure out like the right way to remember him because he was all of these things.

He loved the pack fill-in-the-blank number so unironically while also being so absurd about it.

All of which made me want to ask Jeb Barton

how he and Bill in their voyage through mysticism talked about death.

Jeb, I'm just curious how you think Bill may have viewed death, how you and he may have talked about it.

Yeah, we did discuss that because it is an integral part of the mystical understanding about how to live.

One of the reasons that Bill has such great exuberance, because when you no longer fear death, now you can live.

Now you can live uninhibited.

Because Bill knows and I know that really no one dies.

You only, if I maybe kind of flip it here, you simply change email addresses.

No one dies.

Your essence cannot be annihilated.

Yes, your biology will stop.

It will stop functioning.

But it's like a car.

We are the driver of the car.

The car is our neurobiology.

And we'll drive this car around for a while.

And then when we're finished with it, we'll go somewhere else and get another car.

Bill knew that.

And so that's, I'm sure, that he was,

you know, looking forward to, well, this is going to be a next really great adventure, you know.

So I definitely still feel very much like he's sitting across the table from me.

I can feel Bill's essence,

the bill of Bill, the essence of Bill Walton.

There is the real you.

I can talk to Pablo, whom I'm speaking with now, but there's there's also a Pablo of Pablo.

The Pablo of Pablo is the one that keeps going on, and that is untouchable and is beyond time space.

So, in a way, he's not gone anywhere.

The Bill of Bill.

I love Jeb.

Yeah, Jeb.

I hope you guys all know that.

I also found myself feeling relieved when he was talking about the Bill of Bill.

And then, when he brought up the Pablo of Pablo, I felt scared.

Yeah.

I was like, oh, Pablo's going to continue.

The Pablo of Pablo will stay here.

The Pablo of Pablo is still going to be podcasting.

That's the rub.

My essence is podcasting.

Content, content, content.

But in the sort of like hippy-dippy mysticism, there is like a fundamental thing that I felt resonate with me, which is that when you either get super high and or zoom out in your brain on what is the what's happening here.

It's the idea that all of us, if we believe in anything, it's the idea that there is something truly essential and essence about us that is not about our

meat sack we inhabit.

Right.

It's weird to have talked about websites with Bill Walton and email addresses with his buddy when it comes to mysticism.

You just changed to tp.org at some point.

You never died.

Bill Walton's just on Gmail now.

You know,

but you know that, dude.

You know, Bill Walton wasn't on Gmail.

He must have had the early

AOL account.

Yeah, AOL.

Earthlink.

Ask Gmail.

Earthlink.

The red-headed stranger Earthlink.

A third-party email address.

Well, more like the missinglink.com.

But there is something to these Oregonians where I'm like,

I am not at the level of transcending consciousness that they are at, but I want to be the more I hear from them.

And I too feel like

we are indulging both the absurd and also like the very sincere like that is how jeb actually feels yeah right he thinks bill walton and he knows bill walton is at the table with him and i want when any of our loved ones pass on i want to have the conviction that jeb has about like no they're just they're just on yahoo.com the grandma of grandma is still out there yes we still want that grandma of grandma yes i honestly think i mean going back to the origin of it all i think there and this is probably true in any area where it's more natural than uh industrial or commercial right which is true at the oregon coast i think there's something about having the biggest things around you be

trees oh i love buildings yeah like trees

being able to walk through them and having that be the thing that makes you feel small rather than other people's accomplishments

rather than industry but putting yourself i mean having yourself put into perspective yes by these things that are also infusing you with life.

Yes, at the same time, returning.

I never feel better than when I'm walking through a forest.

And I know that feels corny, but like truly.

Same.

I feel like amazing.

I feel like my blood pressure go down and my pulse slow and just like feel really like at peace.

It's why Jeb Barton surrounds himself and why I, on my own.

small New York apartment level.

How many plants do you have?

I only have like 25.

That's a lot of

New York apartment.

I'm no Jeb, but I have four fake trees.

I'm afraid to kill anything.

Have you named them?

No, God, no.

No, no, no.

Too attacked.

Katie's going to name them after the books in the Bible.

All right.

Possibly.

I'm just reading it out of curiosity.

Leviticus.

Very curious.

We're all searching for answers as to what's going on.

I feel like the world's about to end.

Are you building an ark?

Yeah, I could.

You should.

I could.

On the Oregon of it, although, the thing about you said about trees, the thing that brought it home for me was when they started talking about how every day you should go outside and ground yourself by like touching, literally touching grass.

I know it's a thing we say to people now to be like, Go touch grass.

But when I realized how far I would have to go from where I live to try to find grass and not just like grass that was like kind of shipped in, like naturally occurring grass kind of bummed me out.

Yeah, yeah,

pretty hard.

Brush escrow turf?

Is that a turret?

Yeah, go to the dog run on my on the second floor of my building, which is actually just a giant piss pad and smells as such, especially in the warmer months.

Ooh, oh, God.

Okay.

Oh, it is summer.

Open the door and you're like, oh, God, there's dogs that have peed here many times.

The piss winds of New Jersey.

That's right.

Yeah.

So speaking, though, of sensing something, smelling it, perhaps, feeling it, perhaps, something in the air, I got a voicemail.

Oh, my God.

From Jeb.

Okay.

And Jeb, again, has studied human consciousness mysticism for 55 years.

And after we had talked and had this conversation, he left me a voicemail.

And as an update, we have a bit of breaking news.

Oh.

Good morning, Pablo.

It's Jeb Barton in Bend, Oregon.

Well, Bill Walton did show up.

Showed up at 5.40 in the morning this morning.

I was completely in a dead sleep.

And all of a sudden, I just woke up and I was looking in my mind at Bill's face and with that big smile on it, only there was more than a smile.

It was like a grin.

It was even bigger than a smile, and his eyes were squinted.

And it's a kind of a grin that a person has when they know they know something and something's about to be said or something.

But very, very interesting.

I've got a list of 34 of such things that have happened to me in my life

through the years.

All very anonymous like that.

Some of them, you know, much more extreme.

But I thought that was very interesting.

And it's not uncommon that that kind of thing happens.

It's not really that uncommon at all.

So I am currently on another investigative quest to get the full list from you.

34.

34 encounters.

He has as many encounters as Donald Trump has felony convictions, which is a remarkable statistic.

It is.

I feel like years ago,

society met Jeb with an exclamation point.

And now we've met Jeb with a question.

That's right.

Followed by an exclamation point.

Yes, it's an interobang.

He's an interobang of a man.

Followed by a comma and then several hieroglyphs.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

At earthlink.dev.

Or windings, yeah, at tp.org.

Now he's in Bend, Oregon.

So now he's on the other side.

Now he's in the mountains.

Oh, God.

Yeah.

We're going to get into a yellow Volkswagen bug and go visit Jeff.

I would love to

do the yellow Volkswagen bug.

My dream for all of us.

Let's do it.

All right, Ian.

So, when does it come out, actually?

Tell me today.

Today?

Yeah.

Congratulations!

Yeah.

Okay, so we're congratulating Ian because he's at this table to share and tell, and also because his book is out this week.

Author of T-Shirt Swim Club, Stories from Being Fat in a World of Thin People.

It's by you and your sister.

Yeah, Dr.

Eliza Carmel.

I have.

I have an advance uncorrected proof.

You do.

Full of, full of, full of

things that have been uncorrected.

Innuendos, threats, rumors, just all sorts of stuff that could get me in legal trouble.

Free lawyer review.

Plean was talking all sorts of shit.

All sorts of stuff.

I saw the Kennedy assassination in there.

You think it's just about being fat.

No, no, no, no, no.

That's just a jumping off point.

So what did you bring us today, Ian, in terms of how you want to share with us something from this book?

Well, the book is about growing up as a fat kid, turning into a fat adult, and then eventually trying to get healthier.

But one of the chapters in there, and the thing I wanted to talk about the most, is my experience with the character Fat Bastard

when I was a kid.

So we got to explain for those who are, I think we're just old enough where we need to do the thing.

I think so.

That's crazy.

That's crazy.

It is.

You all don't know who Fat Bastard is?

Which is both

terrible and I guess wonderful.

Probably good.

It's maybe good.

Progress.

Maybe that's what progress looks like.

But you used to be able to do call and response with these jokes.

I mean, like, get in my belly.

That's right.

These were the memes before memes, right?

These became

movie quotes.

This is Simpsons quotes.

These were like how people communicated with each other.

They have these big monocultural moments.

And when the sequel to Austin Powers came out, Austin Powers,

I think it was the spy who shacked me, was number two.

I think.

I'll double-check what that sounds right.

They introduced this character, Fat Bastard, which was Mike Myers playing a Scottish character, which is, you know, well within this.

But done up in some of the most

sweaty, but also unfortunately realistic looking fat makeup I've ever seen portrayed on like better than the whale.

I agree.

Brendan Fraser, you are a pale imitation of the prosthetic sag.

It hurt in every way.

It was amazing.

It feels like this shouldn't have been able to air

uncensored.

It shouldn't have.

They greased the wheels.

They greased a lot of things to get that bad accurate.

it felt like there was a they the only way they get one that accurate is if there's a call coming from inside the house there had to be a fat person on the inside being like no make the breast

move them out to the sides a little bit rather than forward right yeah put them over here they can be in the audience too perky too perky

no he's been fat a while and it was horrible because it was so funny and it was so funny like michael my this is michael myers at the peak of his powers yes but you're sitting there in the movie theater watching fat bastard like it's some kid's birthday.

You're laughing.

Everyone else is laughing.

And then, as you're leaving that theater, you're filled both with, oh man, that was really funny.

I love that.

And because you know how the world works at that point, you're like, oh no, I'm going to hear Get My Belly yelled at me for the next two, three, four years.

And it wasn't just that.

When I was, you know, I was born in 1984.

So when this came out, I was 13.

I was still catching like Fat Albert and Truffle Shuffle

demands.

Like, I would, like, I don't even remember Fat Albert.

But you were getting the.

And I'm like, it's probably the one thing we will preserve from Bill Cosby's legacy is people doing the Fat Albert.

That's going to be weird.

Like, people will be.

It's far enough removed.

It is.

Still holds up.

It's like, well, we can still use that to bully fat kids, right?

We're not getting rid of that.

Let's not get crazy.

People demand I do the truffle shuffle.

And I'm like, I have not seen the movie you're referencing, but I will, you know.

What is that?

Goonies.

The goonies.

But it's basically, I mean, for those who are uninitiated, it is the chubbiest kid doing it to himself.

Doing it to himself.

Right, like lifting up his shirt and then like grabbing his rolls and

just shaking them around.

And people would do that.

I'd be on the football field.

Other people would come up and like do that to me.

Like do the truffle shovel kind of thing.

Yeah.

And they would laugh about it.

And I get like the kid doing it to himself is actually pretty representative of,

you know, the whole reason I got into comedy.

Right.

So what is the evolutionary adaptation here?

How does this work?

Yeah, it's, so you think it's going to get better.

You know, I like Eric Cartman was another one.

Even like Star Wars, like Job of the Hutt, Job of the Hutt is the only there's two fat characters in all

name alone.

They could have called him Job of the Space Slug, and we would have got it, or like Craig the Hutt, and they still would have been like, You mean a fat guy?

Okay, we got it.

Oh, but he's a fat guy, and he's a slobbering, disgusting space gangster who commits like sexual assault on Princess Leia.

Yeah, and then the only other fat character in all of Star Wars is named Porkins.

Oh, that's right, he's an X-Wing pilot

who lives for three seconds, blows up, he's just fat, his name is Porkins, and then he dies.

And meanwhile, you have Darth Vader,

who is fat guy cultural appropriation.

Explain.

He's asthmatic.

He loves magic.

He's got a deep voice.

He's got James Earl Jones, a fat king.

They used his voice, but they had his body.

Not his body at all.

Never.

He should have been a big thick dude walking around.

Like, what costume?

What's the picture is not a costume.

It is not a costume, but they had this skinny British actor play him.

Right.

So they couldn't even do us that favor.

Damn.

By the way, Porkins, I'm in the Star Wars wiki.

His nickname was Piggy.

Yeah, yeah.

What?

But you're

already Porkins.

They don't even have pork in space.

It's Star Wars.

There's no pigs.

There's no pork.

Anyway,

so this was your reality growing up.

And as I got older, I was like, okay, I'm sure it's going to get better.

It's going to get better.

I started getting into stand-up comedy.

I started by making fun of myself because that's what you do.

You You walk on stage, you want to demonstrate some level of self-knowledge.

You want to say, I know what you're thinking.

And then you get to some joke.

One of my first stand-up jokes was me going on stage and saying that it's ridiculous that my name is Ian Carmel because I'm a six foot three, 350 pound Jewish man and my name sounds like a whimsical British candy store.

My name should be Shlomo Pudding Tits.

And my catchphrase should be, better put some butter on it.

You know, like, and to me, that was like turning it on its ear a little bit, being like acknowledging the role that fat people play in stand-up comedy.

But that's not why they were laughing.

They were laughing because a fat guy was up there.

Maybe some of them were.

So you start to get involved in your own self-immolation, which continued to this point where I played,

I got an audition for the show I'm dying up here, which was a show about stand-up comedy in the 1970s.

On Showtime?

On Showtime.

And the audition was for a character called Tubbs the Obese Comedian.

Jesus.

I mean, that's a hell of an IMDb credit.

It's like Job of the Hut, but worse, right?

Tubbs, you could call him Tubbs, and we get it.

Or you could call him, again, Craig the Obese Comedian.

We get it.

And I went in thinking, like, okay, this is a funny, smart show.

They're going to be doing some kind of send-up of the idea of.

Exactly.

And then he's going to come off stage and be like, you know, like a smart person who understands what he's doing up there.

They wrote, like, in the script was some bit about like, I'm so fat that when I get off a bus, it catches on fire,

which I don't really understand the joke.

Trying to diagram that.

Is it because it goes

had to work so hard?

I don't know.

I don't know.

I'm not sure.

They didn't let me punch it up.

Right.

And I get up there thinking, and you don't know, like, they send you your scene.

So you don't know what else is happening.

I go up there and do it.

And

when I do the audition, I'm like,

I'm going to make them choke on Tubbs the Obese Comedian.

So, you know, I weighed 420 pounds at this point.

So I went full, like I gave myself a pronounced double chin and like wobbled my jowls after every joke.

Just like, all right, here, this is what you want.

And then I got the role.

Oh, God.

And that should have been like a warning sign, I guess.

And I go up and do it.

And then I film it.

You leave thinking, well, hopefully the other characters are going to be like, hey, he's so much better than that or something.

But no, it was just this fat guy, Pastiche.

He was annoying, dumb.

They talked about how he was like one of the worst comedians.

And then you watch that and you realize once again, like, oh, I'm someone's fat bastard.

Right.

Fewer people saw I'm dying up here, but I'm still the guy who went up there.

Significantly fewer people saw I'm dying up here.

Say what?

I just said significantly fewer.

Significantly fewer.

Way fewer people.

Showtime was a tough one.

You had to pay extra just specifically for show.

It was the first one to go for me.

You had to like that show about pirates.

You had to be really into the black.

Did I really like Dexter or what's the one with the dysfunctional family?

Oh,

such a shameless.

Shameless.

Shameless.

Those were the big, I feel like those were their big vehicles.

You went a two-episode arc on them, oh, yeah, baby.

I went back for seconds.

He left that bus and it blew up behind him

for some reason.

I went back in the seconds because you're just, I don't know, man.

You're like, you get beat down to where you're like, this is what I am in this town.

This is who I am in Hollywood.

I've since really not continued acting.

I was going to say, the title of the show was also, in a sense, a description for how you were feeling about all of it.

Right.

Like I was dying.

Yeah.

It feels like to me the

like.

Reaction to like representation is important.

It's like it's not just about seeing other fat people in media.

It's like seeing other, you need to see other fat people in media whose entire identity and like existence and reason for being is as the fat guy.

Right.

It's like there wasn't ever in our childhood.

That's what reading your book, which I did,

did to.

Was it in between chapters of the Bible?

Yeah, I took a little break and read and read from my savior.

But like we didn't have any representations of a character who was something else and happened to be fat.

It was always it led with like, isn't this person fat?

And

I know Dennis Nedry in Jurassic Park was a very multifaceted character.

That's true.

That's true.

He had a lot going on.

He was conniving.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

He was an evil fat guy.

Boy, that, uh, but that barbasaw can was satisfying, huh?

Didn't you want one of those?

Yes.

Yeah, it still had the shaving cream in it.

I almost called it whipped cream.

Whipped cream.

It does look tasty, though.

It's like a low thinking it.

We are all thinking it.

But Decatur, your point, like, the other part of this is we're living in the era of Ozempic, of course, in the era of like us sort of like trying to figure out, okay, what are we blaming people who struggle with their weight for?

And are we at a point where, and again, as a comedian, as someone who wants to make jokes, I also get like, if something is funny, we want to laugh at it.

And so there is this.

We're at an interesting inflection point where we're welcoming complexity while also wondering if welcoming complexity is making us lose something about what

comedy actually is about.

I mean, it has to come from pain.

That's one of the

comedy doesn't have to.

It can come from absurdity or any number of things, but it tends to come from pain, or at least some of the origin story of comedy often ends up being pain.

And

as the world, hopefully, gets more comfortable for fat people, then maybe there'll be less pain around that.

Like if we didn't treat fat people differently, like, I wouldn't have a joke about

you know, sitting next to me on an airplane if that didn't suck, you know, like if the root of that wasn't that it sucked.

But I don't know.

You look at like

fat bastard,

and

other than him being absurd, you sit and wonder, like, why is this inherently funny?

Like, why is a fat person inherently funny?

And the only answer I can come up with is that, like,

I guess we've,

it reminds us of mortality in some way, or that it's, they wear their insecurities on the outside, whereas the rest of us kind of have to dig for them.

Like, I still can't really identify that.

And there was truth in that character, because one of the most devastating things about Fat Bastard,

there was a part where he said, like,

I eat because I'm sad, and I'm sad because I eat.

And I'm a 13-year-old kid watching that.

You know, I'm like, oh, man, he just like nailed something I never thought of before.

And then two seconds later, he farts.

Oh, God.

And it's so

still laughing at the memory of when I first saw that.

It's so good.

It's so good.

Yeah, but you're right.

I mean, as the world gets more accommodating to people and more afraid to make fun, I think it would be easier to make fun of fat people if the world didn't suck so much for fat people, kind of on every level.

Because you'd be like, ah, all right, the joke's okay.

I got so fat that my friends didn't even make fun of me.

And that's what you know when you've across the threshold, right?

Right.

Yeah.

Right, right.

God.

So what do we do?

How do we fix it?

The three of us even though it's not.

Let's go.

Ideas on the table.

It sounds like what you want to do is at the very least, Ian.

Yeah.

Urge Hollywood to come up with better names.

That would be a start.

Start.

Name the character before you even decide they're going to be fat.

Try that.

Try that.

Name the character before you know what their body looks like.

It's like what Katie was saying.

Let fat people play just like a school teacher or a barber or whatever.

And it's not about them being fat.

They can have other even even toxic

characteristics.

Just don't make it the basis of it being fat.

Can I ask you a question?

Yeah.

Because

I'm not up on this culture as much, but where do we stand on the word fat?

I love the word fat.

I say the word fat.

I tend to think that we will take, like, switch out words like their NASCAR tires, you know what I mean?

Or F1 tires, like I said,

more hot right now.

Where it's like, we'll put that on.

We'll let that soak up all the sin.

Then we take it off and then we switch a a new word in.

So I have been with animosity called fat, overweight, obese, tubby.

Which one do you love the most?

I mean,

I separate each chapter in the book with a different one.

I do love well upholstered is my favorite.

Well upholstered, that one rules.

I feel like a love scene.

You know who loves that term also?

The grandma of grandma.

The grandma of grandma loves well, although she has put plastic over it.

That's right.

She has put plastic over the upholster.

at the end of the show ian at the end of the show we say what we found out today yes and so what did we find out on this journey through uh human nature and actual nature I found out that gooey ducks are not from Oregon.

They are from Puget Sound.

Puget Sound.

And I should should

get my shit right before I speak on it.

It's going to be a real explicit image.

Like, of all the things we talked about, showing a gooey duck.

It's even more

profane than Fat Bastard.

It is more profane.

It is more visually jarring than a shirtless fat bastard.

You go to grocery stores in the Pacific Northwest.

They'll have gooey ducks in tanks.

And that is not what you want to see around food, even though they are technically food.

They look like a space.

Have you ever had one?

A gooey duck?

Yeah.

Do they taste good?

Are they chewy oh no

they're more like

more like uh more like uh

more like a

chewy duck

get out get out get out

iancarmel.com for two and a half what did you learn today what did i learn today god i learned a lot i learned that it's t-i-p-i and not t-e-e.

Well, don't ask the New York Times crossword because sometimes they'll even do like T-E-P-E-E.

Well, just one E in the first.

I don't know between that and variation.

Yeah.

Yeah.

How to spell TP.

And I learned that I, that I, once I started talking, actually, Pablo, I learned that you have vacation on the Oregon coast and you have just as deep an appreciation for it as I do.

The air.

Oh, I just want that air.

It's incomparable.

It really is.

It's enjoying today, Pablo.

What I learned is that

in my friendships,

inspired by Jeb Barton and by Bill Walton, I am honored to get to know people like you guys for whom the Ian of Ian and the Katie of Katie

are things that I am always trying to remember,

transcend whatever the f is happening right now in this moment on this planet.

I want to continue to cultivate friendships with people that

I will carry literally forever.

insofar as forever also encapsulates whatever is beyond space and time.

That's what I want.

And that's what I found out today.

Pablo of Pablo has to have somebody to podcast with after the flesh is gone.

That's right.

Pablo of Pablo will get lonely.

Maybe the Pablo of Pablo will pay the Katie of Katie.

The Ian of Ian has to leave right now.

Although the Ian will stay.

Wait a minute.

We have one more breaking news update.

Oh, what?

You got me.

You got me.

Oh, that was a juicy one.

This has been Pablo Torre finds out a Metalark media production.

And I'll talk to you next time.