Breaking Bad Bread Without Tom Papa!

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We will be back after this commercial break.

On this episode of the commercial break.

Anyway, go and make comments on the red.

Don't be mean.

Don't be like, you know, Tony's a fucking shitter.

Don't say stuff like that.

Just be like, what about Tom Papa?

Yeah, let's just bring up Tom.

Yeah, and let's say, I'm never eating Tony's bread.

Not breaking bread with me, Tony.

If you come here with your 60 cameras and tens of thousands of dollars worth of promotional dollars for my podcast, you won't be sitting and having bread with me.

Quick cut to me and Tony.

I love your show.

What an original idea.

I'm so happy.

I'm a guy.

Tom?

Who?

Who?

He had something similar?

Yeah, Tom.

What?

I had no idea.

Had the guy on twice.

Totally forgot the name of his podcast.

The next episode of the Commercial Break starts now.

Oh, yeah, cats and kittens.

Welcome back to the Commercial Break.

I'm Brian Greene.

This is my dear friend and the co-host of this show, Chris and Joy Hoadley.

Best to you, Chrissy.

Best of you out there in the podcast universe, calling all commercial breakers, calling all my TCB fans.

We have a chore, we've got a project, we've got a cause to get behind.

I'm about to explain, listen up carefully, because here's what you're going to do on behalf of the commercial break and friends of the commercial break.

We, of course, love, know, love, adore our good friend.

And by good friend, I mean someone who agreed to show up more than once and suffer our abuse.

Tom Papa.

Tom, Tom Papa has been on the show twice.

He's invited us to shows.

He's been a gracious friend of TCB.

I think he's even run some ads for us saying what an okay show we are.

What a fine show.

It's fine.

After my podcast,

I don't care what you do.

I don't care what you do.

And this is one of the things, one of the millions of things you could do.

I'm not saying it's better than the other things.

I'm just saying it's a thing you could do.

Yes, it's Tom Papa.

And he has a very popular podcast where he interviews in-depth a celebrity each time, breaking bread with them.

And he calls his podcast Breaking Bread.

He has a whole brand around breaking bread.

He's cooking bread.

He's making bread.

He's giving bread on a restaurant table to his celebrity.

And who doesn't love bread?

Who doesn't love bread?

He's got a really good idea here.

And he puts his mouth, he puts his money where his mouth is, so to speak, and actually makes the bread himself.

Now, CNN, Time Warner, and their infinite fucking wisdom have created a show called Breaking Bread.

What?

And Breaking Bread is starring the guy, Tony

Shalhub,

who is Monk, if you remember.

Monk and the marvelous Mrs.

Mabel and Shaloum Shalob.

It doesn't matter how you say his last name.

They made a show taking basically Tom's premise and putting it out there in the world.

He's going to go visit around his friends in his New York, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And he's going to break bread with them and he's going to bring bread.

And it's all going to be about the bread.

They stole fucking Tom's idea, twisted it just a little bit, taking it outside of a studio and putting it out in the real world, gave it the same name with a different celebrity that we don't like as much because we don't know.

Yeah.

And I am pissed about this.

And I don't know how Tom feels.

I saw Reel

and I don't think he feels great about it let's put it that way but you know Tom he's not gonna go he's not gonna go nuclear scorched earth yeah we have zero chance of ever having a show with time warner so we'll go scorched earth on your behalf tom might have there might be some you know recompense down the line for this guy i would have much rather seen tom do this well yeah why didn't they approach tom and say tom use your personality your wit and your charm along with all of your celebrity connections and your bread making skills and your bread making skills make some bread take it out to the world, travel around, visit different places, sit down with somebody and break bread, even the common, the everyday folk.

This

is a reason to be upset.

And this is the reason why Hollywood has such a terrible fucking name for itself.

Hollywood and entertainment and infotainment and all this other stuff is because everybody steals everybody else's shit.

and makes millions off of it and gives zero credit to the person who actually did it.

Now, I'm not saying that, you know, sitting down with someone and having a meal or breaking bread is a particularly original idea.

It's been going on for hundreds of thousands of years.

But what I am saying is that Tom has been doing this podcast for multiple years.

I think as long as we have.

Yeah.

And so now it's a well-worn idea

that is original to Tom.

Give Tom the credit.

Give Tom the chance.

I don't know because I haven't talked to him about this, but I can almost guarantee that Tom would have loved to have a television show on the CNN where he traveled around the world drinking his bread and breaking bread with people.

So I don't have anything against Tony.

I don't know him, but therefore I don't know him.

He's not a friend of our show.

I know Tom.

I've spent at least 90 full minutes with him, and he's my best friend.

I've had girlfriends that I've known

less time.

I will tell you right now that we as the commercial break audience and lovers of Tom Papa and supporters of Breaking Bread need to go and immediately listen to his show, download, show the world that the more people love Breaking Bread, the audio podcast or the YouTube show, than love the CNN show.

And then

I think we should all start commenting on posts for the actual CNN show, Breaking Bread.

What about Papa?

What about Papa?

Where's Tom Papa?

Tony, fine.

Can't Tony have a show,

Monk This Way or something like that?

Monkeying Around.

It's still

bad.

Which is sticky and sweet, I think.

Monkey bread?

Good one, Chrissy.

Monk and me?

I don't know.

Something?

There's some play on words there.

Listen, it's also not particularly original to travel around the world tasting the foods of the culture.

No, that's been done so much.

But I enjoy all the shows.

That's been done by one person and one person only in a way that will never be done again anthony fucking

the saint the patron saint of docu series is anthony bourdain travel food food travel food travel travel food travel food people humans cultures culture anything i don't care what it is music it's he did it all anthony bourdain was the best that ever lived and i'm not sure there will ever be another one like him because he was so fucking

real.

I was.

That's it.

He was real.

He was a

he was a guy who lived a million lives before he showed up on TV and when he showed up on TV he brought all zeros to that television program every single time.

There's not an episode of any of his television shows that I have watched that I don't love.

I love them all.

I love everything that Anthony Bourdain ever did on TV.

I just love it.

Even the layover show, which I wasn't my favorite of all of them.

Yes.

But that was still really good.

I don't care.

Yeah, I didn't care because it was Anthony Bourdain.

And if we're going to spend a day with somebody, let's spend a day with Anthony Bourdain.

I mean, what a fucking body of work that guy put together.

Gone too soon.

So it's not particularly original what they're doing with this Tony Habaloob.

But I will tell you this right now.

Calling it breaking bread is an affront to Tom Papa.

And then putting the bread in there as the like linchpin of the show is an affront to Tom Papa.

Everybody.

How is that not purposeful?

Of course it is.

Yeah.

I'd love to talk to Tom about this.

I know he won't do that because he's

classy.

Because he's lived a lot longer in the entertainment industry than we have, if we're even in the entertainment industry.

I think a lot of people would argue.

The fringes.

Yeah, the fringes of the entertainment.

How about the non-entertainment industry?

Non-entertainment minus.

Yes, entertainment-minded.

The non-entertainment industry.

Could be entertainment if it was entertaining.

Right.

But how could you not, as a CNN executive or a content creator or a showrunner, how could you not know about breaking bread?

Yeah, by the time this actually got to production.

Correct.

It was announced about a year ago, excuse me, about six months ago, back in May.

So it probably been in production for at least a year, right?

That's bantering around the idea, figuring out where they're going to go.

They probably have canned episodes already by May when they make the first announcement announcement or give the first look.

They know that he has this show because they fucking Googled it at the very least.

But then there's at least 12 people at CNN who are like, Wait, doesn't Tom Papa have a show called Breaking Bread?

Should we talk to him?

Tom's interesting.

He gets good.

I mean, he gets good guests and has great in-depth conversation with him.

Oh, yeah.

I love him.

I love Tom and I love his show, Breaking Bread.

I think it's really good.

You know, Carrot Top has not been my favorite person throughout history.

Yeah.

He's just not.

No.

I don't, I wasn't a fan of his comedy.

I thought it was very gimmicky and, you know, Gallagher-esque.

And Gallagher, fine.

It was funny for the first two times you saw it, and then you knew exactly where he was going to go with it.

So Carrotop was not my favorite.

But Carrotop has started popping up again all around.

Has he?

Well, I guess he's ripped as ever.

He is fucking buffed.

Why?

I don't know.

And he's got permanent eyeliner on.

I don't know why.

And he's got his hairs all, you know, in weird combinations of ponytails and barrettes and all this other stuff.

And sometimes he wears makeup.

And okay, Caratop is Caratop, right?

I don't think we expect anything normal out of Caratop.

That's his whole shtick.

That's who he is.

I don't even think it's a shtick.

I actually think it's just who Caratop is.

But along with being a very strange-looking human being, he just wasn't ever the funniest human being to me.

But apparently, Caratop has always been there.

He's been in Vegas doing his thing.

Oh, he's been around for forever.

Yeah.

He never went went away.

He just wasn't in the ethos.

Let's put it that way.

He wasn't in the lexicon of pop culture for a long time.

But all of a sudden, over the last year or so, I've started to see him pop up on podcasts that everybody knows.

Bad Friends, Breaking Bread, Joe Rogan.

Yeah, he was on Breaking Bread and Burt Cast and all these other places.

And I will tell you what, he went on Breaking Bread.

And though I'm not still not going to be turning on Carrot Top Comedy anytime soon, I thought to myself, this is a much more interesting character character than i ever knew he has run into some of the most lived tom papa got it out of him tom papa got some really interesting stories out of him he's lived a lot of life he's met a lot of people he's bumped into some of the you know most famous comedians and entertainers on vegas for as long as he has 20 years at least

30 yeah 35.

But Tom Papa had a way with him that was gentle and relaxed, and he got Carrot Top to sit there and open up.

And I really appreciated that conversation.

No other person on earth, I do believe, could make Carrot Top as interesting to me as Tom Papa did.

And so, listen,

I know that this is the way the world works.

Tough titty said the kitty, you know, I got here first kind of bullshit.

But Tom Papa, first of all, where's Tom's agent?

Isn't Tom's agent like protecting the IP and shit like that?

Yeah, I mean, who knows if they trademarked it or whatever.

I think it would be hard to trademark a breaking bread.

You can't trademark the commercial break either.

I tried.

It's too common.

Oh, yeah.

You can, I could copyright everything, but trademarking, like getting an actual trademark,

the patent office was like, yeah, that's a pretty common term that's a commercial break.

So I say all this to say that we, as the audience who love and support our Tom Papa, we should go and love and support our Tom Papa.

Rise up.

Rise up, my friend.

If there's one thing in the world right now that we should be upset about, it's CNN's breaking bread with

whatever his name is, Tony Halubi.

Yeah.

Halubi?

Halobi?

I don't know.

I don't know.

Sometimes those Jewish names get me.

Somebody somewhere is Tony Shalub.

Yeah, I thought it was Shalub, but I guess it's Shalub.

Yeah.

He was good.

I like him on the shows, but I mean, I never really watched Monk too much, but

I'm Tony Shalub.

This is a show about bread.

Oh,

and how countless combinations of flour and water bring us together.

I've heard enough.

I've heard enough.

It's Tom Papa's show.

Yeah.

It's Tom Papa's show.

Okay, you're going to go talk to the Everyday Joe.

I'm sure you're going to have celebrities in there, too.

Tom could talk to the Everyday Joe.

He could do that.

How many people?

Maybe we don't know.

Maybe they approached

Tom and he said, I'm not interested.

If I'm reading the reel that he put out correctly, it seems like Tom

did not know, was not approached, was not part of it, had no idea.

You got to give, you got to give, kiss the ring.

You got to kiss the

first person.

Okay, maybe you say, hey, listen, Tom,

Tony's all wrapped up in this idea.

You mind if we use the name, right?

Is it okay?

Do we have your blessing?

And Tom says, eh, you know.

Run $200,000 worth of free commercials for Breaking Bread, the podcast, and we'll call it even.

Or have Tony tony show up at my chair first right right and we'll break bread together and i can promote the podcast and then there you go right or make it a sister podcast whatever the fuck you get it god damn cnn i'm really upset with you cnn time warner Not that I've ever been happy with you, but I'm really upset with you about this one because it feels personal to me.

Anyway, go and make comments on the rails.

Don't be mean.

Don't be like, you know, Tony's a fucking shithead.

Don't say stuff like that.

Just be like, what about Tom Papa?

Yeah.

Let's just bring up Tom.

Yeah.

And they say, I'm never eating Tony's bread.

Not breaking bread with me, Tony.

If you come here with your 60 cameras and tens of thousands of dollars worth of promotional dollars for my podcast, you won't be sitting and having bread with me.

Quick cut to me and Tony.

I love your show.

What an original idea.

I'm so happy, I'm a guest.

Tom, who?

Who?

He had something similar.

What?

I had no had the guy on twice totally forgot the name of his podcast

To be fair I was doing 12 episodes that day who can remember who can remember

Oh God, I do love Tom Papa.

Yeah, he's so great.

He is a good one.

God bless Tom Papa.

I hope this all I hope this falls in your i hope somehow the tree falls in your direction.

You're getting a kick back somehow.

Yeah.

You know, CNN all of a sudden turns into, like, I know they've always had a history with travel and food shows, but now they've got that.

Well, that was Anthony Bourdain was on CNN, I think, to start.

He was on travel channel.

First, then went to CNN.

Then he went to CNN.

Yeah, and then he was on Food Network for a minute.

He had something on Food Network, but then he famously hated Food Network for a lot of different reasons.

You know, he really disliked that,

you know, what's his name with the hair?

Yeah, Giary.

What's that?

Guy Fiery.

Guy Fiery.

He hated Guy Fieri.

Those two are not friendly with each other.

He thought that was the biggest joke

in television history.

And, you know, we've said this many times.

Like, Guy Fieri, he gets a lot of hate, including from us here at the show.

I mean, we make fun of him, like his him at the Rage Against the Machine show, which just seemed counterintuitive to me, but okay.

But the truth is, there's a lot of people who says he has done a lot of good.

Yeah, that's right.

You know, then I've heard he's got certain

peculiars about certain lifestyles.

He doesn't like certain people with certain lifestyles and stuff like that.

And it's like, ah, come on, guy.

You know,

aren't you?

Bleach got to yourself.

Take it to Flavor Town, bud.

You're the one with all the flavors.

Can't people also have flavors, right?

Can't people also have flavors?

I went and passed by.

I remember it was Thanksgiving Day.

And you know, on Thanksgiving Day, the Kroger is open from like 9 to 11.

You know, the grocery stores are open for like an hour.

So everybody goes there.

So it's wild at the Kroger.

It's just like everybody there.

And I'm looking for a particular thing that Assard has sent me to go get.

And I got stuck,

lost kind of for like a good 20 minutes in the condiment aisle because.

Guy Fieri's Flavor Town sauces were there.

And I was, I knew there was a reel in there somewhere, like something funny for social media.

I just couldn't figure out what it was.

I was taking pictures and videos of the Flavor Town sauces at all different angles and like me going like this with the Flavor Town sauce or the Flavor Town sauce, throwing it up.

You ate up all your time and the croaker?

No, I broke one of them.

Oh.

Clean up on that.

Indeed, yeah.

Well, they were plastic bottles, but what happened was, is I threw it up, meant to catch it on the video, and it just went like this.

And the top just like, oh, yeah, it just popped.

And went everywhere.

It spilled out everywhere.

And it was like a god.

What flavor was it?

I think it was like spicy ranch or something.

Of course.

They're all ranch based.

You know what I'm saying?

It's like spicy ranch, lemon pepper ranch, sweet and sour ranch, jolly rancher ranch.

Jolly rancher ranch.

Cool ranch ranch.

It's all ranch based because that's all people eat these days, ranch dressing.

You know, it's a certain

flavor for a certain mouth.

I love ranch dressing, don't get me wrong.

But I know some people who are just like, ranch dressing is their ketchup, and they're like, let me get some ranch with that.

Ranch

sounds so stupid.

Ranch.

And so there's a guy at the end of the aisle.

Yeah.

Yeah, he saw it.

Filling up the bread or whatever.

Yeah, he was a stock.

Yeah.

And he was like, he looks at me and

he had been watching me for 20 minutes.

And he just goes, don't worry about it.

Yeah, I gotcha.

Don't worry about it.

Yeah.

So I left with

sweet and sour ranch on my shirt.

Plane of ranch.

On my phone, on my glasses.

I wish there had been a video of that.

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody.

Well, then at the end, I decided that I just wasn't, it wasn't that funny.

So I put a picture of it.

And I put like, he has risen.

Oh, no, it wasn't, it wasn't Thanksgiving.

It was Easter.

It was Easter.

Oh, that's funny.

That was Easter Day.

Yeah.

And I'm in there and they're three hours on, you know.

Juggling.

Videoing, yeah, juggling ranch.

Flavor town.

Juggling six different flavors of Flavor Town Ranch.

All right.

Well, go listen to Tom Papa's Breaking Bread and give him hell, kids.

Give CNN's version hell.

Let's get Tom the rightful credit he deserves.

I bet if enough of us go there and start pissing and moaning, Tom will get a million dollars.

Yes.

Or he'll never be on CNN.

He'll never be on CNN again.

One of those two things will happen.

All right.

I'm going to give you an update on the Howard Stern drama.

Oh, I saw a little tidbit.

Yeah, I know.

It's a week late as this is airing, but you heard it here last, and we'll talk about it.

We'll be back.

Hey, it's Rachel, your new voice of God here on TCB.

And just like you, I'm wondering just how much longer this podcast can continue.

Let's all rejoice that another episode has made it to your ears, and I'll rejoice that my check is in the mail.

Speaking of mail, get your free TCB sticker in the mail by going to tcbpodcast.com and visiting the Contact Us page.

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Just send a text.

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Now, I'm going to go check the mailbox for payment while you check out our sponsors, and then we'll return to this episode of the commercial break.

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All right, so it turns out that Howard Stern was punking the media all along, or at least he was not doing anything to assage any concerns.

He was fueling the fire of the people.

He thought that was one of the options.

I did believe that was probably going on, but he

returned on the 8th.

Thanks, Blue.

Keep it going.

Yep.

Keep barking.

That helps the show out.

Thank you.

Blue, and yet another episode of the commercial break.

He was stoking the PR fire that was going on.

The rumor mill.

The rumor mill.

The rumor mill was that Stern was done.

He was never going to be able to be paid the same amount of money that Sirius was going to let him go, that he was washed up, the numbers were low, and he was in a fight with Alex Cooper.

He was in a fight with Andy Cohen.

He was in a fight with everybody over at Sirius.

And I had explained that this is a well-worn path for Stern.

Once it comes around to contract negotiation time, he starts deciding he's going to leave.

He starts deciding he's unhappy.

He starts deciding they're not treating him well.

And that's just a contract negotiation opportunity.

Yeah, of course it is.

And only Stern has that kind of

pull it off.

Yeah, because he knows he's a hot commodity.

And after 50 years in the business or whatever it is, he also understands the ebb and flow, the breath, like the breathing rhythm of entertainment is that sometimes you're hot, sometimes you're not.

He's been there long enough to understand that it's cyclical.

And by poking at the people who he's negotiating with, he can let his agent do the talking, but he can threaten to walking, right?

So, okay.

So he's supposed to come back on September 2nd, on my birthday, Tuesday after Labor Day.

And on that morning, early that morning, they scratch out on the promotion where on like the promotional reel where it says, you know, find out what all the fuss is about.

Will Howard be back?

Find out September 2nd.

They scratch it out and they put September 8th.

So essentially, he doesn't show up to the studio and he sends an email to the staff.

The staff then purposefully start dropping all kind of drama into the media, probably at his request, right?

Tell him I'm unhappy.

Tell him the contract negotiations are going poorly.

Tell him I need to retire.

Tell him this.

And all of a sudden, from every different news outlet in entertainment has a different story.

And he's stoking the fire.

He's generating interest.

There are hundreds, if not thousands, of articles about why Howard didn't come back.

Well, it turns out he didn't come back back because he had the back-to-school flu like I did on the very same week.

Yeah, well, there was some kind of medical thing that was cited, right?

Yeah, he was sick, right?

He was sick.

He got a cold and he couldn't talk.

You know, just like happened to me a couple of weeks ago, you get that sinusy bullshit and your voice sounds disconcerting to say the least.

But he claims he barely could even talk, which for a day I couldn't either.

And so September 8th comes, 6 o'clock in the morning, show's supposed to start, and Howard does not appear.

Andy Cohen appears.

Oh, really?

And Andy Cohen spends the first eight minutes between 6 and 6.08, spends eight minutes explaining that Sirius and

Andy didn't want it to happen this way, but Howard decided it was best.

Howard and Sirius decided it was best just for him not to return and that Andy would be taking over the station.

And he said, you know, I always wanted to sit in this chair.

I just didn't want it to happen this way.

Howard, I hope someday we could be friends again, you know, blah, blah, blah.

Andy even had his co-host of his show in there.

So it made it, give it, give it more realistic.

And then, like, five or six entertainment outlets like the Hollywood Reporter and New York Post and a couple other places quickly started to report that Howard had left serious.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But eight minutes in, Andy's in the middle of talking, and then all of a sudden, the Howard Stern intro music plays as if like an episode of the commercial break, you know, the music starts.

The music started and Howard was back and he explained everything that had been going on, which was, I was sick.

That's why I had to take the week off.

I love it here.

I was going to retire.

I believe I'm staying.

We're working it out.

We're figuring it out.

So, there's been no like signature put on a contract yet, but it sure does sound like, from what I listened to, that for all intents and purposes, Howard is staying and he's they're going to figure out a way to get him to stay, which makes a lot of sense.

Listen, I thought one of the options could be that Howard would just go do a podcast because even with, you know, some people are saying that he went from 20 million listeners to 200,000 listeners or 100,000 listeners a day.

I find that extremely hard to believe.

I think it's probably still in the millions.

You know, maybe it's not 20 million, but I bet it's 2 or 3 million.

If you had 2 or 3 million people downloading your podcast every time you put out an episode, you would be making hand over fist cash

every year.

No doubt about it.

I think you would probably make

$60 or $70 million a year just selling at, and he does a four-hour show.

Yeah, I know.

And at least right now, he does it three days a week.

So if he even kept up that, even that tempo, he'd probably make more like $100 million a year just on ad revenue.

That's it, right?

Just on regular ad revenue.

And he gets much more because if he reads a commercial, then there's like a $15,000 fee.

If I read a commercial, $300 fee.

If he reads a commercial, $30,000 fee.

It's huge, just for 60 seconds of talk.

So this is all to say that Howard is a master media manipulator.

He's been doing this for so long.

And people are like, oh, he just did it so we'd get the ratings when he came back.

Yeah, no fucking shit, Sherlock.

Of course, he did.

That's how it works, you dumb shit.

You talk like that's some bad thing.

He did it.

You got it, got him.

You, he's you're talking about him.

He got it.

He got you.

He got you to talk about him.

That's all he cares about.

And during a contract negotiation, that's all he cares about.

He, I can promise you, Howard Stern has made just that serious, has made about a billion and a half dollars, just being at serious.

And then he has

probably another half a billion in stock.

He's a billionaire.

Yeah.

I went by his house in Palm Beach.

I drove by it.

I stopped.

I parked on the street.

I walked by it.

I saw Beth on a bike, his wife on a bike.

I will tell you right now, that guy don't give a fuck if 20 million people are listening or 100,000 people are listening.

Might bruise his ego a little bit, but he doesn't give a fuck.

He doesn't need the money.

He does this because he loves the sport.

It's for the love of the game that Howard continues to do this.

He invented

basically what we're doing right now.

Long form radio.

Long format talk radio.

Long format comedy chat cast type radio, podcasting, vodcasting, video, all this shit.

All of us are just imitators of what he did originally.

And so we all owe him a little bit of debt of gratitude.

Whether you like his politics or not, or whether you think he got soft or not.

Listen, I got to say this.

I'm not defending Howard's

the days when Howard was bringing in strippers to ride the Sibian and having, you know, ugly tit contests and all this other stuff.

It sure does look bad now.

It didn't age well, let's put it that way.

But it was a different,

things were different back then.

Everything eventually will be cancelable.

Like Patton Doswald said, someday, you got to be careful when you start

getting high on your horse about the cancel culture

because eventually you'll say something that'll be cancelable.

Someday you might be in the future.

This is Patton's joke.

Someday in the future, you know, people might be like, oh, Patton, you've always been woke and you've always been, you know, liberal and you're always, you know, fighting for the good fight and equality and all this.

And then Patton says, yeah.

And what do you think about, you know, people who fuck fuck AI robots?

Ah, fuck AI robots.

Fuck robot fuckers.

You know, that's so stupid.

Why would you do that?

And then 10 years later, all of a sudden, we have feelings for the robots

and we should have treated them better, right?

They needed equality too.

Some things are pretty obvious, like females and people who don't, you know, people who love who they want to love and all that other stuff.

But some things, other things at the time,

it might just seem like you're just going with the flow.

I'm not defending any of that.

But can you fault somebody for maturing along the way?

Can you fault somebody?

I think it's needed.

Yeah.

Can you fault somebody for deciding?

I applaud that.

Yeah.

Agreed.

Can you fault somebody for like deciding that having a

like a pommel horse with a vibrator on it in the middle of your studio and trying to encourage all your guests to ride it nude

is maybe not something you want to do anymore because you have daughters or you know women.

I mean, he matured.

He got, he just, he decided that this

he needed to evolve.

Yeah, you have to.

Because if he was still doing that stuff today,

he would have an audience.

No doubt about it.

He would have an audience.

But maybe that's not the audience he wanted.

Maybe that's not what he wanted to talk about anymore.

Maybe he decided that what he did back then just wasn't acceptable and he's realized it.

And so he's moved on.

So you can.

You can hate on Howard for his politics.

You know, that seems to be the sport of the day.

Hate on each other for politics.

But I don't hate on him for evolving.

I just don't yeah and he's still one of the most interesting interviewers around he's really good yes you look at bill maher interviewing billy joel and then you look at howard stern interviewing billy joel i'll take howard every day of the week bill maher looked like a i don't know i didn't even watch that such a goo yeah like such a goo he's not my favorite i'd like he never has been but i've never been like a huge fan like i had to watch the show

i've tried a few times.

It's just not my thing.

I think that Bill can come off a little swarmy.

You know what I'm saying?

He feels a little bit like...

I get the arrogance.

Yeah.

I don't think he's had the love of a woman for a long time.

He's like had like a, or a man, like a long-term relationship to soften him up a little bit.

So I think he always, he's like.

He's like the bachelor at 62 years old.

You know what I'm saying?

He's like,

I don't know.

He's like a mix of Leia Coca and who's that guy who ran Leia

Leia,

that like, you know, bastard, the guy who ran GE for a long time.

You remember that guy?

Leia Acoca and

Leia Coca and Hugh Hector.

He's like a mix of those two.

But he's like a little schmarmy a little bit.

But I think Bill is whip smart.

I think he's right about a lot of stuff.

I think he calls it out like he sees it.

But I think it was maybe it was Mark Maron who said this and I agreed with it.

I thought it was a good way to put it.

And sometimes I feel like Bill is trying a little too hard

to be relevant.

Right.

And so therefore he like jumps into the fray and pushes buttons when maybe that's just not, maybe that's not necessary.

He can make a point without sometimes going there.

But I like Bill.

I mean, but then again, I will say I have watched lots of episodes of Bill's show where I'm highly entertained.

It's mainly by the guests, but I'm highly entertained.

And I will say this about Bill, too.

I don't agree with him going and having dinner with Trump.

I think that was a dumb fucking thing to do.

I don't think you give any

air to that situation whatsoever.

But on his show,

he does not shy away from inviting opposing voices.

No, that's his whole show.

That's his whole shtick.

Well, it's not his whole shtick, but

a lot of times he has people on that agree with him, but he invites people that don't agree with him.

And I think that there is more of that needed.

What I don't agree with is going and kissing the ring.

I just don't think you do that.

That part I don't agree with.

You know what I'm saying?

He should have had Trump on the show.

If he would have had Trump on the show, then

like, you know, and been as confrontational as he gets with some of those.

Well, and who was it that set it up?

Kid Rock?

Yeah, it's fucking Kid Rock.

What?

I mean, come on, guys.

Can we all just shit?

Can we all just like

tell each other a secret?

Kidrock sucks.

He always does.

Okay.

All right.

Ba wida ba was cool.

It was cool when it came out.

Yeah.

Ba wida ba de bang to bang diddi diddi.

Ba ba diddi ditti.

Okay.

Cool.

Garbage.

Gobbly gook.

Got it.

Yeah.

I liked him back in the day.

Maybe not him as a person, but I liked the music back in the day.

But that quickly wore off.

And then now, look where we're at with him.

He has turned into

just a weird dude.

Like, just,

he's like an old man.

You know, he's like your neighbor that, like, you know, does weird stuff with his shirt off?

Do you know what I'm saying?

You know, like he drinks beer and smokes cigarettes and he's telling you about UFOs.

Kind of like Brian with his shirt off

and a beer and a cowboy hat.

And he tells you about that girl he one time fucked and, you know,

wants to come to the Halloween party for the kids, but you don't want to invite him because you're afraid.

You know, he's like that guy.

He's just a little weird.

He's like the outer spacey dude.

Yeah.

And he's, every time I see, and I don't see Kid Rocket showing up anywhere, except for like, you know, charity events in Iowa or something like that.

I saw him show up.

He was at like a, he went to a Nashville bar.

Well, yeah.

I think he owns a Nashville bar.

I think so, too.

But he was at some Nashville bar.

I'm not sure it was his or what it was.

But he goes out there and he starts, you know, singing his bow and bow to bang the bang diggy digging,

and no one's singing along with him.

So he throws down the microphone.

Oh, yeah, you fuck you.

I'm out of here.

I mean, come on, man.

Listen, it got a little old.

People don't want to sing it with you anymore.

It's okay.

Come up with a new song that doesn't have to do with, you know,

shooting Bud Light Can in the backyard.

What was that one song that we actually played on the show?

Oh, it was.

It was like America.

It was so bad.

America.

It was really bad.

America's so cool.

What was that song?

It was terrible.

It was awful.

Yeah.

I mean, I don't.

It was about masks and stuff.

Something like that.

Yeah.

It was in the heyday of Corona.

It was in the heyday of you're right about that.

Here's Kid Reggie.

The lyrics were terrible.

The Wichita experience.

Don't tell me how to live.

That's right.

Don't tell tell me how to live.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's a terrible thing.

Same song.

Same song.

Yeah, he's been singing the same song for a long time.

And the other songs that he has are like covers of other people's songs.

Do you know what I'm saying?

Like, the other famous thing is covers.

I don't want to shit on everything

that people who vote for a certain ideology.

Like, there's lots of stuff that I like that they like, right?

But Kid Rock is not one of them.

It's just not one of them.

I'm sorry.

It's not my thing.

And, you know,

you got to hang up the fur at some point.

Remember how angry he got at Bud Light?

Like, fuck Bud Light.

Trans cans, trans cans, shoot him up in my backyard, trans cans.

And then like six months later, he's in a Bud Light commercial.

Yeah.

Like no balls whatsoever.

Pay for play bullshit.

I mean, he never cared in the first place.

He jumped on the bandwagon and fuck that bullshit.

Fuck that bullshit.

Sorry, I sent you off on a tangent about Kid Rock, but can we please for a minute discuss the revealing, the revelation that I sent you earlier today about a brand new Broadway musical that's coming at the town.

Oh my God.

Can we

please,

can we please, while we're on the subject of washed up has-beens.

Yes, yes.

While you're listening to a show from a bunch of washed-up has-bends, let's talk about the washed-up of washed-up has-bends.

And I can't believe we're still talking about this guy.

No.

But here we are,

five years later, still

in the lexicon, still trying to make a name for himself.

Peter Billy fucking McFarland, or whatever his name is.

Is it Billy McFarland, right?

Yeah.

Billy McFarland of Firefest fame or infamy.

Infamy.

Yeah.

I cannot cannot believe.

Well, because he sold the IP, right?

He sold the IP.

Okay, so he sold the IP for like $153,000 or something.

Yeah, and then

I know I sent that to you.

Let's see.

Oh, here it is.

Fire.

Yeah, yeah.

It was in the Hollywood Reporter.

Yeah, musical and development with Tyka Watiki.

Taika Watiki.

Tyka Watiki.

Why would anybody want to watch a musical?

About Firefest?

Yes.

Why?

The final bidding price on eBay.

He sold it on eBay.

He sold his company IV

on eBay.

He wanted to be the highest auction, like the most expensive auction ever in eBay history.

And he sold for a

mind-blowing $243,000 and $243,000.

I'm serious.

$2,300.

Oh, my God.

Yes.

So it looks like it's about his life.

Oh.

But who can?

Why do we care?

I don't.

I don't.

And I don't want to watch a musical.

Yes.

And what is the IP that we are selling?

Failed music festivals?

He never even.

There's no recordings of the festival because it didn't happen.

He claims now.

He

defrauded people out of money.

Exactly.

But I still don't think has been paid back yet to the people on that island.

No.

And okay, okay, let's take a break.

But I want to talk more about this.

The musical.

Yes.

Firefest.

But also,

the thing that people paid for when they spent $245,000 on the IP, the thing that they paid for was all of the footage from the six camera people that were running around him for the year that he was trying to put together Fire Fest 2.

But

in my mind, it wasn't even a year.

It was like three months.

He announced it.

It was going to happen.

I kept getting pushed back.

It never happened.

He didn't even bother to show up to any of the meetings because legally he couldn't.

But this last weekend, as you're listening to this, he put on his very first pop-up hotel down in the, down in some island on Honduras, Utica or Ucha or something like that.

A pop-up hotel at a resort.

The resort already exists.

I mean, honestly,

I know that the pop-up, everything is very famous and people love their pop-up restaurants and all this other.

That's about the only thing it truly works with.

But I'm not even sure it works there.

It's already a restaurant, right?

You're just having a new chef make a new menu.

Why don't we just call it a pop-up menu?

It just popped up today and it's gone tomorrow.

The reality is, you can't have a pop-up hotel in a hotel that already exists.

And by all accounts, meaning social media, that Billy put out, you know, the best version of everything that happened, what happened was one party with 15 people in attendance in a shack in the side of the resort where one old white guy dressed like Kid Rock was dancing to a DJ who literally brought his sonos and plugged it in.

Oh, and then there were the two apparently bikini models that came with and took lots of footage of themselves in bikinis.

Yes.

He is such.

Is he there?

He was.

I don't know how he got down there.

I thought he was legally obligated to stay in New York because of his ankle monitor, but I don't know, man.

Maybe he got special permission.

I'm not sure.

But I'll share this with you.

Never have I seen anyone try so fucking hard.

I mean, honestly, I think Billy might be autistic.

If you ask me, I just don't think he's understanding how bad this looks because you should see his reels.

He just doesn't care.

He just doesn't care that he looks like such an idiot.

But okay, let's take a break and we'll talk more about Billy

It's party.

Let me do something Brian has never done.

Be brief.

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Rita Aura is going to attach her name to this.

Yeah, I saw that.

Okay.

All right, back to the pop-up hotel.

Here he is.

Here he is.

Listen to this.

Wait.

Come on.

I just.

Fire.

Hey, guys, Dave.

What happens when you sell your dream?

You can either disappear or, well, we're about to find out.

Oh, we're all waiting on bated breath for your exciting reel.

Well,

we're about to find out.

What happens when you sell your dream?

For $245,000, you owe $22 million in restitution.

You can't just disappear.

That's not fuck you, money.

That's not even

live for a year money.

Just sold fire.

Oh, my God.

Can I pick a selfie?

Yeah, real quick.

I'm filming.

You don't have a phone?

Oh, my God.

Literally, I just sold fire.

Oh, my God.

I didn't plant you there to say that.

Oh, my God.

Are people chasing him?

They're chasing him.

and this guy is saying, fuck him, fuck him, who cares?

He's a fucking scam artist.

Figure.

I want to own every single view on the internet.

I've been chasing one idea for my whole life.

The idea that views drive economy.

My last brand hit 32 billion views.

Was at top of Netflix and other international news, but I was still

shit.

Drive the economy.

Who are you?

Fucking Mark Duckerberg?

I mean, honestly, yeah, Drew views drive the economy.

They don't drive the economy.

There's lots of stuff that drives the economy.

Views are not one of them.

Views drive revenue in an economy called the creator economy.

You're seeing idiots.

Okay, here he is at his

at the Phoenix Hotel pop-up

here on Water Key.

Live from Utila.

Live from Utila.

He shows a shot of six people.

I know.

On a beach.

Those people don't even, those people couldn't even be there.

I mean, it's just, it's just insane.

He's just insane.

He is literally an insane human being.

And why,

Billy,

I would have thought after Fire Fest one,

there would have been, and I've said this a million times.

There would have been an opportunity to get with some real

festival

music heavyweights and say, I come on bended knee, I don't know shit.

I fucked it all up.

But fire now has a name for itself.

And if you help me,

I will humbly give you the name and take a small fee, right?

$100,000 or whatever.

I'll give you the name and let's do this the right way and get some backers behind you and get some real people involved.

But instead, he went the same exact route that he did, getting a bunch of local yokel nobudies together for Fire Fest 2,

where they didn't even know it was going to happen.

Where all three places he announced Fire Fest 2 had no idea that it was coming to their town.

No.

He is literally insane.

He doesn't understand.

He's flying on like the middle of the ocean, too, or something.

The very first

longitude, latitude that he sent when he put the big announcement that Fire Fest 2 was happening, artists signed.

It's, you know, tickets now on sale.

coming out

tomorrow.

Tomorrow in Mexico, be there.

Only 65,000 tickets available.

He put the longitude, latitude, and people found out it was like 16 miles out in the ocean away from any land.

That sounds about right for Firefest.

Billy,

and I have told this story.

I'll give you the short version because I don't think I need to repeat it yet again.

But this is, it's really weird because somebody that worked for Billy reached out to me to ask me if I would have Billy on the show.

I remember when that happened.

And I almost fell for it.

Almost.

He was going to announce Fire Fest 2.

He was going to this.

He was going to that.

It would all be exclusively.

And then they invited me to come to Fire Fest Regional or some shit up in New York.

Fire Fest Fire.

I don't know what it was.

Some, some Firefest Tech or something

up in New York.

And I could have it, and I could get there and I could be there with all access for $5,000.

Right, if you paid.

Right.

And once I went there, then Billy would come on the show for his announcement.

So Billy was trying to scam me out of $5,000.

And now you're saying to yourself, well, it could have just been someone associated with Billy.

Could have been, except I was CC'd and emailed by Billy, or an email that I would assume would have been Billy's.

And

yeah,

the guy is just a scam artist.

He doesn't know how to do it the right way.

And, you know, I hope that everyone gets their money back.

I think

if you didn't die at Firefest 1, that should be restitution enough.

Yeah, that's payment enough.

But it's just crazy to me that this guy is still, he's like a cockroach.

He just does not fucking die.

No.

And I mean, actually, dead.

I don't want the guy.

Yeah, no, no.

But, you know, I don't dislike.

I don't like the dislike the ideas that Billy has.

Yeah, cool.

Festival on the beach, you know, all that.

But it just would have been another Burning Man

out on a beach.

That's all it would have been.

Yeah, I mean, there's plenty of beach festival things around the world.

They've been doing it in Ibiza forever.

I mean, Ibiza does it Tuesday nights.

Yeah.

Tuesday night.

Yeah, that's right.

You want to go down to a beach and listen to some music and have some fun?

Fish does it for like four nights every year.

Mayan Riviera.

There's plenty of these things.

Yeah.

Yeah.

He just totally scammed everybody.

Speaking of fish, fish is here tomorrow night.

Oh, they are?

Wednesday night.

Yeah.

Here.

Right.

I mean, like,

I don't want to say, but relatively close to where I am.

They're going to be here.

So, you know, get out your galaxy gas.

I would love to go.

I really would.

But tickets are expensive.

They always are.

You know, unless you get them in the lottery or in the, when you buy them, then they're like $300 a piece.

And I, and I understand why, you know, Phish is not playing 300 nights a year anymore.

And so they do, I think $100.

Tickets are expensive now.

We've talked about that.

They really are.

And then, you know, my brother has some.

And while I would love to go, there's also not only the cost of the ticket, but then, you know, the cost of whatever it is to do it.

So by the time you end up, it's all said and done, it's 500 bucks to go see Fish.

I could, if I really wanted to see Phish, I could pay $9.99 and watch the show online.

There you go.

There you go.

Not quite the same, not quite the same vibe when you're watching from your computer screen or your phone laying next to your six-year-old.

She's trying to go to sleep.

But, you know, kind of, kind of.

Not the same vibe.

You're babysitting one way or the other.

Same vibe.

Well, actually, you're looking through a phone screen, babysitting some chick who can't take care of herself.

It's the same thing.

Let's be honest about it.

You're drunk, babysitting some chick can't take care of herself, watching the entire show through somebody else's phone screen.

That's the concert experience these days.

Yes, it is.

But I do like a fish show.

I have been to a few, and I like it.

I took Astrid to one.

That's right.

She couldn't take the smell.

Hey, that's funny.

She was like, I don't know what that smell is, but it's just too much.

And I was like, oh, that's weed, and you're getting high.

Weed and batchouli.

Yeah, weed and batchouli.

All right.

Well, listen, everyone have a good weekend.

Next week, I'll tell you my story about the cacao ceremony.

Oh, I can't wait to see you.

Mayan cacao ceremony.

Story to be told.

Yes.

I'm still trying to figure it all out in my brain.

Yeah.

Let's go piece the night together.

Speaking of Guatemala.

Yeah, speaking of Guatemala.

Well, that was Honduras.

Oh, Honduras.

But close.

They're close together.

They are.

Yeah, I got a Guatemalan priestess.

Mayan priestess.

High being the underlying word.

And then we all did the cacao ceremony.

It was good.

It was beautiful.

It was fun.

It was all the things that I rail about during the show.

Speaking of fire,

you have to get yourself a Mayan priestess and get onto your backyard.

Yeah.

That, Billy.

Yeah, if Billy would just do that,

then I'd be game.

Billy said, Mayan fire priestess

and fish

down on some random island, I'd be there in a heartbeat.

I'd be all about it.

Yeah.

All right.

Well, I know we railed against Kid Rock and Trump.

I'm sorry.

Sorry, not sorry, actually.

Yeah.

I don't know.

I just.

It'd take a lot of really good music.

Coming toward the end of his career here to get to convince me that Kid Rock was a musician.

I think he's turned.

You think so?

Yeah.

Oh, that's sad.

I was really hoping

Kid Rock would be the next Bob Dylan of our time.

Yeah.

Ba would a ba started off.

It started off so strong with Gobbly Gook.

I hoped it was going to end with Gobbly Gook too.

But no, no, thank you.

All right, listen, do this.

Go to

go to tcbpodcast.com.

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Drop-down menu says, I want my free sticker.

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You you can also watch all the audio and the video right there on the website at the commercial break on instagram tcb podcast on tick tock or watch all of the videos at youtube.com slash the commercial break for all the episodes visually the same day they come out here on the audio channels and 212-4333 tcb if you want to chat with us we'd love to hear from you questions comments concerns content ideas okay chrissy that's all i can do for today i think so i'll tell you that i love you i love you best to you best to you and best to you out there in the podcast universe until next time chrissy and i will say we do say and we must say goodbye

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