Toxic Masculinity and Comedy with Kevin McNamara

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
You're listening to Studio twenty two.

Speaker 2 (00:09):
Welcome to Studio twenty two podcasts. I'm Will Meldman here
with Brock O'Hearn as always the Bright Blue Eyes. We
are joined by actor, comedian, writer director Kevin McNamara, and
we are excited to dive in.

Speaker 3 (00:25):
Well, I love when people see us and we're tall
and you know, relatively good looking and you know, the
whole thing. And then we're like, yeah, never you know,
my dad really real piece of shit and they're like, oh,
your life hard for last, trying to right now? Oh
are you tall and handsome? Fuck you? Like all right, man,

(00:46):
well I'll just go fuck myself.

Speaker 1 (00:48):
I guess who needs feelings anyways?

Speaker 2 (00:50):
Yeah, that sucked up.

Speaker 1 (00:52):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (00:52):
It being a stand up comic, it's kind of like,
you know, people don't you get on stage and people
see Like when I get on stage, the very first
thing I have to do is say something self deprecating
because I have to, like I have to acknowledge the
thought in the room, which is like this fucking douchebag.

Speaker 2 (01:12):
Like what's it called, like a like a de escalation
or like a what's the word I'm looking for?

Speaker 1 (01:18):
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (01:21):
Yeah, yeah, I have to be I have to be
more charming than most other comics because it's like, oh,
tell me about your problems, pretty boy. I'm like, actually
never met my dad, grew up in the projects, Like,
oh okay.

Speaker 1 (01:38):
It really comes down to how much time do you have. Yeah,
I have to do the same thing. Obviously not a comic,
but but I've done that my whole life too, because
I got tall very quick in high school. I was
already six or five by the time I graduated. So
I've always kind of, like until the past couple of years,
but I've kind of like stood with my legs spread
apart a little bit, so I'm a little bit shorter.
I've kind of brought myself down. I didn't stand tall.

(02:00):
I would say things that are self deprecating and kind
of just make yourself everyone else around you feel more
comfortable for whatever reason that or however you can do that. Yeah,
it's just so that people will be normal around you,
be comfortable because I found that. I don't know what
it is, man, but it's going to sound such like
this is a douchebag thing to say, I think, but

(02:20):
I feel like I have just by existing at times,
it brings out people's insecurities and then they project them
onto you, and then you're like, oh, sick. So you
hate me because I got long hair, or you hate
me because you think I have a great life, or
you hate me get like whatever the thing that you
think I get more chicks in you like whatever the
thing is right, So you got to kind of just

(02:40):
be like, dude, yes I do have I'm grateful that
I'm told and I got here and all this shit. Yeah,
it's fucking awesome. I'm not going to complain about it.
But at the same time, I had some fucked up
shit happened. Yeah, you know, life happens all of us.

Speaker 3 (02:51):
I actually love it when people assume that my life
is so easy and great because uh because as a
standard of comic and most stand up comics will tell
you this, like, no matter how much you hate me,
you will never hate me as much as I hate myself.
I look in the mirror every day and I'm just like,
fuck again, I woke up. God damn it, man, Can

(03:14):
I just just get I I have sleep avenue. Can
I just eventually just not breathe or something? And people
are like, oh, your life seems so good. I'm like, yeah,
because I'm not I'm not gonna whine about it, but
also like kind of fuck me, you know, like yeah,
people always assume that, you like, especially with social media, right,
because we're all, especially in your case, in my case,

(03:39):
people that live normal lives. Like some guy in Missouri,
you know, who wakes up every day and goes to
work and welds in the cold and all kinds of shit.
He sees us doing cool shit and he's like, oh man,
those those guys have it. Those guys have no life.
It's those guys' lives are easy, but none of us

(03:59):
are really portraying what our lives really are. Like I
don't go on my Instagram and post a picture of
me by myself eating a pizza, like thinking about how
lonely I am. I go on there and I post
the good times where I'm like I'm out riding motorcycles
or I'm shooting a tared tactical. My life is awesome,

(04:22):
and then I go home alone. I just sit at
home and write for fourteen hours.

Speaker 2 (04:30):
There are definitely some kind of like you know, deep
rooted psychological principles on masculinity there for sure, and in
society as a whole, right, that everyone kind of either
projects or feels or tries to understand. Yeah, there's a
lot to it, I think, right. And I mean there's

(04:50):
some crazy statistics out there too, just with masculinity in
men in society right now, that are pretty frightening when
it comes to that stuff. But yeah, no, I totally agree.
It's it's crazy. I'm you know, I'm single, thirty three
trying to figure that part out, you know, and it's

(05:12):
not easy, especially in a place like La.

Speaker 3 (05:14):
Well. Yeah, and and I think especially with the current climate,
you know, when you have terms that get thrown around
like toxic masculinity. Sure, sure there are aspects of being
a man in society that people could deem toxic, right,
but the idea of masculinity in and of itself being

(05:38):
toxic is such a dangerous idea because you have to
have aspects of masculinity in society for things not to
break down. You have to have protectors, you have to
have rules, you have to have law and order, and
all of those things are maintained by a certain aspect
of masculinity. It when you get into men just genuinely

(06:03):
being bad because they're men, then you're you set up
a society where kind of where we're at now, where
you have men that are afraid to be men and
do man things, you know, and you you have situations
like we have now where you know, men aren't going
into the trades anymore, and you're you're finding that nobody

(06:28):
wants to work, nobody wants to work hard. Everybody wants
to be an influencer or a YouTuber or all these
other things. And the ideal of a man that goes
out and works and brings home a good living and
protects it's kind of fallen by the wayside. I think
it's really dangerous for society.

Speaker 2 (06:50):
Yeah, I mean especially too. You kind of look at
all these DEI initiatives as well, and it's like, where
is all that in those hard jobs like can instruction
or plumbing, you know, like things that are ninety five
percent male driven?

Speaker 3 (07:06):
Right?

Speaker 1 (07:06):
Right?

Speaker 2 (07:06):
There is none. Right, It's only jobs that have influence
or power or some sort of notoriety attached to them.
But yeah, it's typically men that do it and because
we can, you know, typically handle it and sack up
and get the job done.

Speaker 1 (07:23):
Yeah. And I saw something recently, some stats on on
because it was all about toxic masculinity and one of
the and of course it could all be wrong, and
I don't know if these stats are true or not
or whatever, but it said forty three percent of boys
are raised by a single mother, and then ninety percent
of teachers are female. And so they said, is it
really a toxic masculinity problem or a lack of masculine

(07:47):
influence in somebody's life? Right, because I'm there's two out
of three of us right here, right, they grew up
without a dad, right to or I don't know if
you have a stepfather or something like that.

Speaker 3 (07:54):
But I had a stepdad.

Speaker 1 (07:55):
Yeah, but it was a just added a piece of
alcoholic there, you got field of the exactly. I know,
I know it too well, man, But yeah, that's it
makes you think, right, Like, I'm so grateful for my
mom and the you know, the role was, but the
role that she took on, you know, raising five kids
by herself and doing it cleaning houses man Like I

(08:19):
can't even imagine putting food on the table for five kids,
let alone doing it with by yourself, you know. And
but for me, it gave me more empathy for her,
for women, for my sisters, seeing the way that men
treated them, seeing the way and so I think it's
a blessing in my sense, you know. But at the
same time, exactly at the point where like what did

(08:39):
I become? You know, like I wanted to be the
biggest guy in the room. I wanted to be Conne
and Hercules or whatever like on TV and film. The
stuff that I looked up to were those men that
were you know, leaders or change history. You know that
their name was remembered for all of time. Like like there's
an element of that in me, of like I wanted
to become the man that I never had in my life.

Speaker 3 (08:58):
You know, well, if you think about it too, if
you like, if you really think about the situation, if
if you have that amount of broken homes right, then
you don't have a masculine energy in the house. At
some point when you're a young man and you're you're
going through puberty, you get to a point where you

(09:18):
start having this abundance of testosterone, and if you don't
have somebody in the house to direct that and show
you how to use that to be masculine, but also
how to control your your temper, how to control those
urges how to control those things, and and somebody who
has experiences with dealing with that amount of testosterone and

(09:40):
dealing with with that time in life, then you're you're
you're basically you're putting you're putting a pit bull out
into the world, and you're saying, hey, be nice to everybody.
But but we're not. We're not going to give you
any tools of how to be nice. Right, So you're
you're you're. The issue is you're you're when you have

(10:01):
these homes that don't have a mask and energy in
the house, and you're asking a mother to control and
contain that masculine energy when she has no idea what
it is like to feel that way. Her first instinct
is to go, well, masculinity is bad, right, right, and
testosterone and is bad, So control all that and just

(10:23):
push all that down. Well, you can only do that
for so long before your natural impulses start to show.
And that's where you get all of these angry kids
coming from us. Where you get all these these angry
men that have pushed it down and pushed it down,
and pushed down their emotions and pushed down their thoughts
and push down their feelings until they explode and they

(10:44):
become toxic because they don't know how any other way
to deal with it.

Speaker 2 (10:48):
Yeah, and every statistic out there supports everything you're saying, right,
And you know, it's it's kind of resorting back to
survival instincts with a chemical and balance like you said, right, Yeah,
I don't know. I don't know where we're where we're
heading with that and how we're gonna fix that or

(11:11):
address that. But I think culture has a huge part
to play in it. I think culture is like more
important than a lot of people even realize or give
it credit for culture being you know, media, films, television.
You know a lot of people raised by movies and TV, right,
Like parents just put them in front of the TV

(11:32):
and they get their favorite shows. And yeah, I don't.

Speaker 1 (11:37):
Know, man, Yeah, I mean also too, Like I've talked
about this a couple of friends about you know, when
you grew up in the nineties, eighties, nineties, you look
at these action heroes, right, and it's all about being masculine.
It's all about that, and then it's it's shifted over time, right,
But yeah, there hasn't been a time until I feel
like now it's coming to more coming more into light

(11:58):
where you can have a man who's meine who can
also talk about as shit right, and that gives guys
the rest of us permission to go talk about that,
to be vulnerable, and to to talk about ship that
we've been bottling up a whole we've been trying to
figure out, trying to I'm still figuring it out, dude,
for my past, you know, and I might continue for
the rest of my life, I don't know. But at

(12:18):
the same time, like having a space where guys can
just be guys and talk about their stuff, and yeah,
we can make fun of each other and you can
you know, joke about stuff, or we can sit down
and actually really dive into what the problem is. And
chances are, you know we're sitting here that we probably
have all been through something pretty similar that you know,
we could help each other through, you know, if we
were just open enough to have that conversation. And I

(12:39):
think it's moments like this where men are talking about
it and saying, look, dude, I can still be a
dude and tell you that I cried last week because
of X y Z or whatever or something I remember
from what you know what I mean.

Speaker 3 (12:50):
Yeah, but you're kind of a bitch though, right, yeah again,
say it again. Another that I said, I said, check
out these crystals many cool energy. Yeah man, yeah, very
la of you.

Speaker 1 (13:00):
What did you put in those things? No?

Speaker 3 (13:02):
Man? You know what's interesting is like I'm blessed because
I have an outlet and stand up so I can
get on stage and I can just kind of lay
my ship there and and I'm probably more honest on
stage than I should be. But everything I talk about,

(13:22):
like when I hate when comics will will will tell
a joke and they'll be like, that's not really how
I feel. It's like, yeah, you kind of do you
You're you're trying to address it in a comedic way,
But at the same time, it's still if you if
you came up with it and you thought of it
and it's important enough for you to go out and
do on stage, it's kind of the way you think,
and that's okay if you're honest about it. Everything that

(13:45):
I talk about on stage, I'm honest about it. There's
genuinely things that affect me that that aggravate me, that
do make me laugh, that I am that that's very
important to me. There are there are all things that
I talk about. I wouldn't get on stage and talk
about something that's not important to me. But I can
get on stage and I can I can lay all

(14:07):
those emotions out there in a way that people can
relate to it, and people can laugh about it. And
if you can find a way to laugh at yourself,
life is so much easier. Yeah, you know, I can
talk about my stepdad kicking the ship out of me,
and I can talk about it in a way that
other people that have experienced that can go, oh, fuck, man, yeah,

(14:27):
my stepdad hit me with a Tonka truck And you're like, yeah,
see it hurt right, you know, it's like.

Speaker 1 (14:31):
Mind hit me with the real truck.

Speaker 3 (14:34):
It's like, but if you can laugh about those traumas,
then you can you can deal with them. It's the
people that just don't deal with their ship that end up,
you know, shooting up schools, and you know, and and
and being these quote unquote toxic toastically masculine, you know,

(14:55):
individuals that you.

Speaker 2 (14:56):
See you mentioned the word outlet, right, and I'm thinking back,
Like I had an older brother. All my friends and
I played sports, right, Like, we would literally go to
the park every day after school, if we didn't have
like lacrosse practice or whatever and play tackle football on
the grass. And when you're a kid, you're like indestructible,
so you got you can like lay each other out.

(15:17):
But that's like masculine energy being an outlet, right, because
then we go home, we're tired, we chill whatever, and
like we got all our energy out and all that.
I think, whether it's comedy or sports or whatever, I
think those outlets are super important and like we really
need to focus on those. And another thing that kind

(15:37):
of reminded me of that was Bill Burr always talks
about like his anger stuff, right Bill, And you're like
sitting there and you're like, he probably honestly has some
anger stuff he's dealing with, but he's able, like you said,
to express it in a way where you're kind of
on the journey with him.

Speaker 3 (15:53):
Right.

Speaker 2 (15:53):
Would you say that's a good example of like someone
who maybe has some.

Speaker 3 (15:58):
Bill definitely definitely has some uh some angry issues down underneath. Yeah.
But that's the thing that makes Bill great is that
he's honest about it. You Know, he admits I have
I have I have a temper issue, and every once
in a while I spaz out and I lose it.

(16:19):
And but that's what makes that's what ingratiates you to
guys like Bill. You know, it's like when you think
of when you think about the great comics, you know,
you talk about talk about prior. Oh yeah, the guy
gets on stage and admitst of smoking crack and setting
himself on fire. You know, like, you don't talk about

(16:40):
that unless you have dealt with your ship and you
know who you are, right And in doing so, he
gives other people the ability to go, oh, well, fucking
Richard Pryor can smoke crack and still be famous and
get his ship together. I can smoke. I'm a crackhead,
but I can probably figure it out. You know. So

(17:00):
you don't really know. The great thing about comedy or
any kind of media in general is you don't really
know who you're touching and you know how. You don't
know how you're affecting them, but you're affecting them, right.
So it's it's that ability to just reach out on
a human level to other people and give them the
ability to see things differently than they see it in

(17:21):
their life that makes it worthwhile. That's why I love
filmmaking That's why I'm a filmmaker, right. I love affecting people.

Speaker 2 (17:30):
And that's kind of what I was getting at with
the importance of culture, right, Like you really do reach
people and affect people with it, and I think it's
now like more important than ever. Like you know, Rogan
the other day was saying how comedy is kind of
the last stand like the last bastion of freedom we
have right now in culture because now comedians are kind

(17:53):
of like rebels again, right with all these censorship things
going on at all the big tech companies and all that. Right,
it's like stand up comedy is a safe space to
do that in culture.

Speaker 3 (18:05):
It is. But I gotta be honest, I don't think
that's the last bastion because if you look at filmmaking,
filmmaking in the past, even independent filmmaking, you still kind
of needed the studio influence. Right nowadays, with the avenues
that you have, you don't need the studio. You don't

(18:25):
need twenty people saying Okay, well this idea will work
and you can do this, and you can do that.
If you look at if you look at the most
recent film Sound of Freedom. Yeah, if you look at that,
for instance, that was a film that they had been
pitching and pitching and pitching in every studio was like,

(18:47):
we're not touching it. So they went out and they
crowdsourced and they got the money to shoot it, and
they put it out. Even though nobody would put it out.
They found a way to get it out there and
they got their message across and then it became this huge,
you know, huge talking point and it's it's moved the needle.

(19:07):
Is it as easy as stand up? No, because you
can get on stage and say whatever the hell you want.
Doesn't mean everybody's going to see it. But if you're
willing to put the work in and find an avenue.
I think that any source of media is applicable. You
just have to be willing number one to take the
risk and number two to put the work in.

Speaker 2 (19:26):
Totally agree, right, I completely agree. And even on YouTube, right,
you see these YouTube channels that are getting big politicians
on to come speak, like Viveig just went on Friday
Night Tights the other week, right, and Benny Johnson is
essentially like the new Fox News right, Like, there's so

(19:47):
many different ways to do it, So I agree there
it's there are more outlets and there are. But that's
like culture, the beauty of culture as a whole, right,
Like it could be in many different places.

Speaker 1 (19:59):
Yeah, I mean even on that point too, Like it's
become a thing for a presidential candidate to do podcasts, Yeah,
because of the influence and reach that it has, right,
the conversations that get to be had, and the rawness
and realness where it's not like you throw it up
on a media station and then it's edited down to
whatever they wanted to be, essentially or cutting you off.
But yeah, I think there's a lot to be said

(20:20):
with that. It's exactly what you're saying with artists, you know,
like it's our expression, our story. That's the whole point
of making films of storytelling, right, what story do you
have to tell? And do you have the courage to
go do it? And it's not easy no matter what
scale you're on, but you find a way. If you
really want someone, you find a way. And that's honestly.
I got to see your film topper Man, and that's
what I got to experience. Man, you did something really

(20:42):
special with that and it it invoked emotion to me
the whole time. I felt something the entire time I
was in it, dude, and I was like, my hat
is off to you on that, man. I want to
know more about that. How long it took you to
develop it, to write it, why you chose that story,
you know, what was it about that that you wanted

(21:02):
to tell that story?

Speaker 3 (21:04):
Thanks? I that that means a lot. But before I
get into that, I want to one last point that
I wanted to make when we were talking about, you know,
these forms of media and specifically politicians coming onto these podcasts.
What I love about podcasts and what I think is
important about podcasts is, especially long form podcasts, is when

(21:26):
you have a guest on like a politician, right, and
you do Rogan, it's three three and a half hours, right,
you can't keep your charade up for that long. Eventually
the audience is going to see who you really are.
You're gonna slip up because politicians are good at faking
for you know, three minute press conferences or five minute

(21:47):
press conferences or fifteen minute sound bites. But in three
and a half hours, you're gonna let slip who you
really are. And I think it's what's important with podcasts.
I think it's what's important with Rogan I don't always
agree with what Rogan has to say, and don't think
anybody should. But when you get somebody on, like like

(22:07):
Robert Robert Kennedy Junior, and he gets on there and
he's raw raw, I'm you know, I'm I'm mister freedom,
I'm mister mister that you get them on for three
and a half hours and you start to go, oh,
you you are to a point, but you're not everything
that you're saying that you are. So I think those
long form podcasts are important. I think it's important to

(22:29):
really get an idea of who somebody is, you know,
let all that bullshit fall away, no teleprompter. Yeah yeah.
And and and Joe isn't afraid to ask questions, you know,
the big questions. I think that's important, you know, because
you're what I what I will say about Joe and
his podcast is it's not an echo chamber. He asked
questions from both sides. You know, he doesn't just want

(22:50):
you to He's not giving you talking points. I love that.
I think that's important. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (22:55):
It gets an objective view of any topic, right, you
get to see both sides and make up your own decision.

Speaker 3 (23:02):
Yeah yeah, And don't you know, most of these interviews
that you see these guys doing on TV, they the
the their handlers have given the interview or a list
of questions that are allowed to ask.

Speaker 2 (23:13):
Yeah, look at Tucker Carlson, right, Like he was really
limited at Fox with what he could cover and then
he eventually got fired for it. And now he's doing
hour long segments like every other day on Twitter, right,
and it's like he's been.

Speaker 3 (23:27):
Unleashed twenty times. The views, oh hundreds of million. Yeah,
it's crazy, crazy, crazy is averaging like one point five
million on Fox and then he goes on Twitter, it's
like twenty million. Yeah, it's bonkers.

Speaker 2 (23:42):
Independent media though.

Speaker 3 (23:43):
Yeah, and and and independent filmmaking. Going back to Topper.
Topper was a very important story to me because for
two reasons. Number one, it's semi autobiographical. Lot of the
things in that film happened to me, So it was
important for me to tell that story for anybody that's

(24:07):
experienced that, such as yourself, somebody that's experienced abuse, experienced
you know, doubting themselves, doubting their choice and their lives,
doubting who they are, doubting if they want to continue
in life. Those types of things, So that was important
to me. And then also, like we were talking about

(24:27):
before the podcast, as an actor, I've I've been in
la in Hollywood, fighting to be an actor for fifteen years,
and I got to a point where I was just
tired of begging for my supper. I was tired of
doing these auditions and busting my ass and driving to

(24:48):
Santa Monica during rush hour and sitting in traffic for
two hours to get there. And you walk in and
there's two hundred dudes that look exactly like you for
one role that has already been given to the casting
director's cousin, you know, And You're like, the fuck am
I doing here? I'm trying so hard and nobody's gonna

(25:10):
let me in because I don't know this producer or
I'm not related to that director. So I got to
a point where I was just like, you know what,
Fuck this process. Fuck learning all these lines for a
character that I don't care about, that has no development,
that isn't interesting in a script that's dog shit so

(25:31):
I can be in the next remake of this movie
from nineteen eighty four, Like what am I doing? Fuck this?
I want to make cinema. I came to La to
make cinema, to make stories that people care about, characters
that people care about, because I remember movies growing up
that did that for me and evoked emotion like in
you when you watch the movie, because it's real. I

(25:54):
didn't write Topper, and I didn't put the team together
to make Topper based on is this gonna sell well
in China? You know? Is this gonna? Is this gonna
do well in the theaters? I wrote it because it
was a story that was important to me and a
character that had a real a real arc, and a

(26:14):
real draw. And it was real stories about people that
I felt like people could connect with. And I shot
it that way, and luckily it's done very well. Like
as far as connecting with people, you know, it's it's
kind of jump started my career in the way that
I wanted it to go. My friend who's here, you

(26:37):
guys can't see him. Uh. We we connected through through
Topper and and he saw it and fell in love
with it and and fell in love with my vision
as a filmmaker. And he's been my biggest cheerleader since
and and through that things have just you know, kind
of snowballed, so and Topper has been the vehicle for

(26:59):
that so far, So I'm pretty excited about it.

Speaker 2 (27:02):
I love hearing that story of you know, getting into
writing that way because I have a similar story in
that sense of like moving from something to trying to
just write right. So like I'm really interested in hearing,
like what was that process like to start writing? Or

(27:22):
were you a writer before? Obviously have comedy, so like
maybe that's writing that helps, but how did that kind
of work?

Speaker 3 (27:30):
No, I wasn't. I wasn't a writer. I've been a
cinophile since I was a kid. I've watched thousands of movies,
and just through watching movies, I kind of figured out
how movies were structured and coming into the industry. When
I first came into LA, I would take these background

(27:52):
jobs and I would literally never leave set, Like they
would send us off to holding, you know, and I
would never leave set. I would and just watch how
cameras were moved and how they set up shots and
listened to the you know, the lingo and the way
they talked, and I just literally never left set. And
I was getting these background jobs not because I needed

(28:14):
the money I did it was broke, but because I
wanted to see how it worked, and I learned from there.
And then I just read script after script after script
of scripts that I thought were brilliant and just kind
of analyzed how they were structured, character development, story development,
and kind of self taught myself on how to do it,

(28:36):
and just wrote and wrote and wrote until the point
where I was like, Okay, I kind of think I
know what I'm doing at this point, and then just
sent it out to people that I was blessed enough
to come in contact with and ask them opinions, you know, yeah,
and people that are like pretty big movers and shakers
in Hollywood that I was lucky enough to meet and

(28:57):
just say, hey, I know this probably sucks. Can you
read this and give me notes and tell me what
sucks about it? And uh? And luckily everybody that I
sent it to was like very honest, and that's what
I appreciate. I mean, I got a note one time
about a script that I wrote was like a short story,
and I sent it to I don't want to say

(29:17):
who is that it to very big showrunner writer, producer
guy and uh, and he sent me back and his
only note was write something else. I was like, Okay, cool, Yeah,
well that.

Speaker 2 (29:31):
Was it's constructive.

Speaker 3 (29:32):
Yeah, that was three weeks of my life. Though I
shouldn't have invested, but I appreciated it. Yeah, it's like
he was honest and he was right. It was dog shit.
Everybody that read it was like, cool man this, Yeah,
I mean you should keep acting.

Speaker 1 (29:49):
I mean it's that same line. If you want to
make a business, right, you might have an idea, It
doesn't mean it's a good idea, right.

Speaker 3 (29:54):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (29:54):
It means the same thing in writing, and it's all that.
It's like, if you're committed to it, you're probably gonna
go do it. And then you realize, wow, I should
have stopped or should have had that should have shit
the message to the one friend that was going to
tell me the damn truth from the beginning. But sometimes
you need an extra pair of eyeballs. But yeah, man,
it's sometimes we win good shit and sometimes we wint
bad shit. It's just the way it goes.

Speaker 3 (30:14):
I have this saying that I use, and I say,
if you were going to fill up a pool on
a hot day with my good ideas or my bad ideas,
you want to go swimming in my bad ideas because
the pool is going to be very there's going to
be two inches of water in the good idea of
pool and six feet of water in the bad idea pool.

(30:36):
But the important thing is those bad ideas. Just continuing
to build on bad ideas is where the good ideas
come from. It's like comedy. Half of the stuff that
I that I write is dog shit. Because you write
something you're like, dude, this is the most brilliant thing
I've ever written. I mean, I can't wait to kill
them with this washing machine bit. And I get on

(30:59):
stage and people are like, no, thanks, all right, well
that wasn't funny at all. I guess I gotta go
back and write a dryer bit. You know, like you know,
people will tell you if your shit sucks. You just
have to be man enough to like take that and
be like, all right, well I'll try something else.

Speaker 2 (31:16):
Do you have a specific memory of like a specific
joke that was kind of like that.

Speaker 3 (31:21):
Oh dude, yeah, so brutal. I did this. So it
was my first headlining show, and I had written this
like this like ten minute bit about dog people versus
cat people, and there was like maybe thirty seconds of

(31:41):
the bit that was good, and it was like literally
the last thirty seconds of the bit and the other
nine and a half minutes was just horrible. So I'm
like doing this headlining gig and it's in front of
like twenty two people at a casino in Bakersfield or
some shit, And for ten minutes it was just it

(32:03):
was literally I could hear people drinking through straws. Like
in my head, I'm like, dude, this bit went so
much better in my head, like this is this shit
kills on paper. And I got to the last thirty
seconds and people like laughed and it was almost like
a laugh of like oh Jesus Christ finally, and I

(32:23):
was like, ah, thank you, good night. And I went
backstage and I went into my phone and I deleted
everything in my joke notes, not just that joke, everything.
I was like, so I need to start completely over
and it comedy will humble you quick? Oh yeah, so quick.

Speaker 2 (32:41):
So afraid of getting up in front of a crowd
and speaking like that, Oh my gosh, its am.

Speaker 3 (32:47):
A guy try to fight me over a bad joke once?

Speaker 2 (32:50):
Who did?

Speaker 3 (32:50):
Yeah, But it's all none of it. It's all silly.
Everything we believe is silly to someone, you know, like
everything we're talking about right now, there's gonna be people
are gonna be like, fuck yeah, man, I completely agree
identify with everything Brock says. And then there's gonna be
somebody else that's gonna be like Block Brock is a
complete and total fucking idiot.

Speaker 1 (33:10):
Tell me your real thoughts getting you know what I mean?

Speaker 3 (33:12):
Like everybody like, no matter what we say, there's gonna
be somebody that's gonna be like, that's the dumbest thing life.

Speaker 1 (33:18):
No matter what you do in life, you're never gonna
have one hundred percent people like you. People their own exactly,
They have their own stuff going on. They're all going
through something like whatever reason. Who cares?

Speaker 3 (33:29):
Man?

Speaker 1 (33:30):
You can't live your life with expecting or seeking the
validation of others. Are gonna be miserable.

Speaker 3 (33:35):
Bro, There's people that hate Jesus.

Speaker 1 (33:38):
Yeah, that's wild.

Speaker 3 (33:39):
Like the nicest dude ever, never even even met him.
Oh yeah, you were nice to like whoors and lepers?
Fuck you, dude. It's like, wait, what, dude, what are
you mad about? Bro?

Speaker 1 (33:52):
Are the people that like believe in Satan or all
that other stuff, but then they don't believe in God.

Speaker 3 (33:55):
I'm like, what do you? It's like, how does that
make any sense? Like, Hey, call your dad. This is
really just call him. Just call your dad.

Speaker 1 (34:05):
Just forgive miss. Yeah, there's a lot going on out there.

Speaker 3 (34:09):
Man, you play golf, dude, big golfer. Oh yeah, man,
big golfer.

Speaker 1 (34:12):
We'll give it away.

Speaker 3 (34:13):
He's got a golf bobblehead.

Speaker 2 (34:15):
Brock out that for me.

Speaker 3 (34:16):
Actually, yeah, what's your handicap?

Speaker 2 (34:20):
I'm like ten or twelve right around there. I can
go up to a fourteen if I don't play for
a while. But but I can also like shoot under
eighty if I'm like playing consistently.

Speaker 3 (34:30):
I didn't know what any of that meant.

Speaker 1 (34:32):
About the handicap.

Speaker 3 (34:34):
I just heard it. I heard it on a golf podcast. One.

Speaker 1 (34:36):
You don't play someone out there, we'll get that. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (34:39):
Yeah, and then there's gonna be someone else that's gonna
be like it's fucking stupid. Yeah golf.

Speaker 1 (34:44):
Yeah see before man, I started golfing this year, and
it's amazing you.

Speaker 3 (34:49):
You probably do. You just hit the ball so far, bro.

Speaker 2 (34:52):
When he can acts, when you can actually basically hits
it as far as I do when he can acts.

Speaker 3 (34:58):
Yeah, And that was that was a kind of a
humble brag right there. Huh, because you're like twice guys.

Speaker 2 (35:03):
But that's not He's a lot of golfers are like small.
It's more technique. It's all technique, right, it's all like.

Speaker 1 (35:09):
The problem is I sing it. I also swing too
hard for the clubs I have, so they like bend
and move in ways that make it almost impossible to
hit the ball correctly. So I have to slow everything.

Speaker 2 (35:18):
Down, no joke. You need stiffer shafts.

Speaker 1 (35:21):
Yeah, that's true.

Speaker 3 (35:23):
That's what the girls say about Brock too. He needs
a stiffer shafts. It's stored in.

Speaker 1 (35:27):
My life, man, that's what you said. You know, you
got to tell people you can't have it all.

Speaker 3 (35:30):
Yeah, yeah, you can't be you can't be good looking
and have a stiff shaft That's true.

Speaker 1 (35:36):
Yeah, that's life.

Speaker 3 (35:37):
Sometimes you got to bend it like Beckham, you know
what I mean? You know, how does the podcast with
three dudes always somehow revert to dick talk?

Speaker 1 (35:47):
I think we joked about that before you came over here,
and I told you. I was like, I bet Kevin's
gonna bring something up like that. I bet you and
you did about your dick you know, he did I.

Speaker 3 (35:55):
Made it about you? Yah's You can't dude, you can't
say stiff shaft and not talk about it.

Speaker 1 (36:01):
Where did it come from? It had to come from that.

Speaker 3 (36:04):
Hey, what size his head shirt? I don't know.

Speaker 1 (36:07):
Does it look small? It's double a little bit, maybe
a triple.

Speaker 3 (36:10):
Yeah. Your arms are big, dude, not that big. They've
been bigger, right. I didn't ask you to flex though.

Speaker 1 (36:17):
I wasn't just feeling how tight it was. You're right,
it's a little I'm wrapping my Niners.

Speaker 2 (36:20):
We got a big game.

Speaker 3 (36:21):
You know, I'm from Detroit, right, Oh.

Speaker 2 (36:23):
Ship, I didn't put that together. Actually, yeah, yeah, So
I like Jared Goff. Jared Goff said, buddy, So I'm like, oh,
your friends with Jared. I'm like, it's gonna be a
tough one.

Speaker 3 (36:34):
For it, because, like, are you going to the game
that hard Niners?

Speaker 2 (36:38):
The super Bowl? Maybe if the Niners make it so
You're not going to the game, not this game, not
this game?

Speaker 3 (36:44):
No, the super Bowl?

Speaker 1 (36:46):
Yes, he's yeah, potentially.

Speaker 3 (36:49):
No, you didn't get that, did you.

Speaker 1 (36:50):
No?

Speaker 3 (36:51):
I said are you going to the game? And he
said possibly? You said possibly the super Bowl if the
Niners get in, And I.

Speaker 2 (36:56):
Said, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, I'm okay, I'm catching I'm gay.

Speaker 3 (37:00):
Yeah, it's fine them.

Speaker 2 (37:04):
So yeah, like if Jared does it, especially for the Lions, man,
like you guys have been out of the playoff sphere
for so long. Like I won't be like angry if
the Lions, well I will for.

Speaker 3 (37:14):
A little bit. Yeah, you're gonna go a little upset.
I'm I'm believe it or not. I'm actually not a
Lions fan though, why not. I'm a Packers fan. Oh
so yeah, I'm already man. Yeah, yeah, I'm just hoping
somebody beats you guys at this point. Yeah. Now, my
my stepdad, the the growing up, the abusive one. He

(37:35):
was a diehard Lions fan, which meant he absolutely hated
the Packers, which meant I absolutely loved the Packers. Okay,
so yeah, fun. So it was like I was like,
all right, so you can beat me up, but on
game day I will have the last laugh.

Speaker 2 (37:54):
The Brett Faire of Jersey exactly Brett.

Speaker 1 (37:56):
Then, Yeah, that must have been a lot of contention
off that alone.

Speaker 3 (38:01):
Oh dude, I got punched it so many times during
football keeps.

Speaker 2 (38:04):
Oh fuck so many It's runny score.

Speaker 3 (38:08):
I'd be like yeah, and you'd be like.

Speaker 1 (38:12):
Oh, dude, I know the feeling. Man, I'm not gonna lie.

Speaker 3 (38:14):
Yeah, good times, man.

Speaker 1 (38:15):
I feel like I can genuinely laugh at that because
I've been in those shoes.

Speaker 3 (38:18):
So, yeah, you're big though. How big was your stepdad
to be beating the ship out? Not step by my
real yeah, oh, your real dad.

Speaker 1 (38:24):
Yeah, and he was a big boy, but he was
like I think he's five eleven, but he's like three
hundred and fifty pounds and always on the steroids.

Speaker 3 (38:30):
Oh okay, yeah, big dude.

Speaker 1 (38:31):
That's yeah, because you're six five sixty six yeah, six
seven six six six six. I shrank to six six
probably at this point I thought you were six to seven, right, Yeah,
but uh, when you're freaking twelve years old and you
weigh eighty pounds, yeah, yeah, it's a little different.

Speaker 3 (38:49):
Doesn't really. Stepdad's always bigger than you until he's not. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (38:53):
Yeah, but I got to have one of those moments
with uh, with with my dad. That's kind of weird
to share, but I'm gonna share it. In anyways, had
a restraining order against him and ended up having to
move in with him. While I had a restraining order
when I was seventeen and I started lifting, Like I
started really lifting when I was fifteen. And when I
was at his house, I wasn't allowed to go anywhere.
I couldn't go get food, couldn't see friends, can do anthing.

(39:14):
But I was allowed to go to the gym because
he didn't want us to be bitches. Like a little bitch. Yeah, yeah,
I felt like and I went to the gym. Bro
Within six months, I put over one hundred and something
pounds on my bench press, and I just kept getting
stronger and strong. I was just everything I had. I
was just pushing in the gym just because you, just
so I could like overpower this dude one day and man,

(39:34):
he got on my face one time. He got so
pissed to me. And I'm six or five at this
point and I was seventeen years old. He's yelling up
at me. He's huge, skinhead, tatted, just a total psychopath.
And he was so mad that he was yelling out
at me that he made me sit down and ended up.
I was just like, I'm so used to this dude.
I was so over it. It wasn't paying attention to
anything he was saying. He's just yelling, yelling, young so

(39:56):
he noticed that when I'm sitting on the ground and
he's yelling at me and start swinging on me, just
hit hitting me, hit him as much as he could,
and I finally grabbed his wrists. And I don't know
if you ever played or a dun jiu jitsu or
anything like that. Yeah, yeah, Like that's one of the
easiest things to get out of. You can break someone's
thumb or break out of it, you know, and get
He couldn't get out, and I was not letting him go. Man.

(40:18):
I remember yelling into his face like I was like,
what is this solve? I was like, what does this solve?
This doesn't fix anything. At seventeen you had seventeen were
you had more, you had but not even the death grip.

Speaker 3 (40:29):
But at seventeen you had more emotional intellect than he did.

Speaker 1 (40:33):
Right, yeah, right, And that was my moment though, where
I told him he couldn't. I was not gonna lick
I wan until he swore he wasn't gonna hit me again.
And so finally we got to the point where we
broke apart and that was that. But I didn't I
think so many guys don't get that moment where you
want to like fight your dad and be the alpha
and heal and fix that part of it until later

(40:54):
on in life. You know, Terry Crews is one of
them right where you get that later on. But I
got it at seventeen, and I earned it because I
worked my ass off. But it changed something to me. Dude,
in that moment. I didn't have to wait till I
was forty years old to be like, oh, I'm putting
this to the past. It's like I was seventeen and
I had actual control in my life for the first time,

(41:15):
and it was like eye opening. It was it was
life changing.

Speaker 3 (41:19):
I can imagine seventeen year old Brock after that. Oh dude,
you know, like he's just walking through the kitchen knowing
that he could wipe the floor with this day and
he's like, yeah, hand me the cheerios, pussy.

Speaker 1 (41:29):
Well, he pulled a gun on me about a week later,
So it wasn't that fun.

Speaker 3 (41:33):
It wasn't that great of him. He pussed out.

Speaker 1 (41:35):
Yeah, But I remember we were in high school and
they did a bench press competition for all the football
players and this one kid was on crazy steroids. They're
like if he does these for another year, he's going
to die. He's a senior at the school, like and
just acting everyone just crazy. He went up and he
bench pressed two twenty five six times, and then the

(41:55):
coach did the same thing. That's the most of anybody.
And this is a forty year old man, right, I've
been working out so much, dude. I went up and
I hit two twenty five twenty six times at seventeen,
and I had no like.

Speaker 2 (42:06):
That, straight up NFL shitt, NFL, dude.

Speaker 3 (42:09):
I still can't do to twenty five. I can't twenty
five like six times right now.

Speaker 2 (42:15):
Really, I did it three times, but I'm.

Speaker 1 (42:19):
Yeah, yeah, I think what I'm hitting right now is
like two seventy five for twenty two.

Speaker 3 (42:24):
I didn't start working out until I was twenty six. Really, yeah,
I was three hundred and five pounds, damn. And I
was like, you know, what's awesome? My New Year's resolution
for two thousand and six, And it was just before
I moved to LA. I was like, I want to
have a six pack. By March. I lost one hundred
and fifteen pounds in three months.

Speaker 1 (42:42):
That's bad as wow.

Speaker 3 (42:43):
No stretch marks, no loose skin, no nothing. I had
a six pack by March. I was I was like
good though. I was like yeah, like I'm about to
kill these bitches, right. And I moved to LA and
they were like no thanks, you're broke and I was
just stayed in the truck at least so good looking
in Detroit, you know, l A. I was like, I
was like average in broke. In Detroit, I was like

(43:06):
good looking. Like in Detroit, I was like I was
a Detroit nine, you know. And then I moved to
LA and I was like a LA six. Like this sucks.

Speaker 2 (43:15):
That sounds crazy impressive though. That what was like the
secret to that? Literally just working out?

Speaker 3 (43:20):
I uh yeah. I just got in the gym like
three and a half hours a day and I ate
every three hours and I just I ate like no carbs, ate,
straight protein and it just kind of fell off weird.
And then I got to a point where I was
I was six foot five, one hundred and eighty five pounds,
and I was like, I should probably stop losing weight.

(43:41):
It looked like I was dying.

Speaker 1 (43:43):
Well that's that's funny because that's what I weighed when
I did the two twenty five.

Speaker 3 (43:47):
You weighed one eighty five. This is this is this
whole episode is just a way for Brock to humble pro.

Speaker 1 (43:52):
I'm not even it's funny, bro but I'm only saying
this because it.

Speaker 3 (43:55):
Was one of five those bench persons through twenty five,
like twenty six times or whatever. Not even then I
beat my dad up. Life is good, dide, you.

Speaker 1 (44:03):
Read no for me though it was. I only say
it's funny because I had the opposite where I was
one hundred and thirty five pounds at six three when
I started working out, and I worked so fucking hard
every day for years to get to one eighty five. Dude,
like it. It was took everything in me. And then
finally when I was nineteen, I like really figured out
how to put on weight because pizza and you know, soda. Yeah,

(44:25):
it's pretty much what did it for me. But it's dude,
getting to that I was still a bean pole. Dude.

Speaker 3 (44:33):
Well, you know what's interesting with guys like you, and
we haven't really talked about your your upbringing, but yeah,
you know you you said that your dad gifted you
all this amazing artwork. So I'm going to go out
on lim and say he was a pretty cool guy.
But what's interesting about guys like you is that that
experience with your father gave you the work ethic that

(44:55):
you have now that has given you the ability to
be successful.

Speaker 1 (44:59):
Right.

Speaker 3 (45:00):
And you there's something that I say about trauma. You
can either use it as an excuse to be a
piece of shit and to continue that that track of
life and continue that behavior, or you can use it
as motivation, and that says a lot about you as
a person, and it's and it's also the same on
the other side of things, when you have a family

(45:21):
life where your your parents give you everything, you can
use that as motivation to to be like, Okay, I'm
going to earn this right, or you can use it
as an excuse to be like, well, I was given
everything in my life, so I deserve it, so I'm
going to be a piece of shit in a brat
and expect it. But it says a lot about like
you as a person and you as a person that

(45:41):
you you take those motivation, but those those factors as
motivation and not it's an excuse. And I think that's
the one of the biggest problems that we have in
society right now is everybody uses everything as an excuse.
You know, Oh, there's racism in the world, so I
can go out and burn down a Starbucks, you know,
Or you know, my dad beat me up when I

(46:02):
was a kid, so now I'm you know, now I'm
I'm gonna go out and take that out on everybody.
It's all about who you are when when everything is
is kind of peeled away. You know, when you when
you're alone at night, do you sit there and say, oh,
the world, the world hates me, it's the world's fault.

(46:25):
Or do you say I'm going to change my world. So,
you know, guys like you, guys like you. It's it
says a lot about you as a person that you
don't that you just go out and you fucking you
just do the work and get the job done and
don't complain about it. And that's what shit used to be.

Speaker 2 (46:42):
Yeah, I And you know, I literally was having this
conversation with my girlfriend the other night. Uh. It was
essentially just about work ethic and you know, essentially as
a man, and there's something innately inside of you where

(47:04):
if you can't protect, provide and achieve, you just don't
feel like yourself or a man right. And it's like
whatever is given to you. It almost I mean, it
matters obviously, but it's also where is that fulfillment, Where
is that happiness coming from if you're not achieving, if

(47:25):
you're not working, if you're not helping the world in
some way doing philanthropy, getting you know, helping others. But yeah,
it's strange. We were talking about it because I literally
just the other night I was talking with my girl
about it.

Speaker 3 (47:40):
Yeah, I think it's that's important for a man to
feel accomplishment, because if you don't, you don't feel like
you have anything to offer anybody. Yep. It's like with me,
I'm forty four years old, I'm still single, never been married,
no kids, and people are always like, when you're gonna
settle down, you know, when you're gonna get married, when
you can have kids. I'm like, I don't feel like

(48:01):
I have accomplished the things that I feel like I
need to accomplish to earn those types of things. And
I think that that's the biggest issue is that people
just think that that's well, that's what you do. It's like, sure,
but that's also why divorce rates are so high. Yep,
that's also why you know, fatherless households are. You know,

(48:22):
the rate of fatherless households are so high. It's because
people just go, oh, well, you know, it's not an
They don't look at it as something that you should
aspire to. They just like they're like, yeah, you can
have a kid, Sure, have a kid. You can get
married four or five times, who cares. You can always
get a divorce if you if you're not happy. If
you hold that to a higher reguard, and you hold
yourself to a higher reguard, I think that you'd have

(48:44):
a lot less you know, backtracking on people's lives and
how much it affects people.

Speaker 2 (48:51):
I think drawing, you know, getting into something for the
wrong reasons just leads to terrible shit down the way.

Speaker 1 (49:00):
Yeah, I got this quote that I've loved. I remember
the first time I saw it, and it's a if
you want to change the world, you have to first
change yourself. And I think what you're saying is going
to resonate with so many people, resonates with me. And
there's just so much going on in the world. And
so when you say, like people aren't, they're kind of not.

(49:20):
They're using excuses, right, They're not really facing themselves. Facing
their trauma, their pain, dealing with it. They're projecting all
this stuff and taking it out on the world instead
of looking at inward and saying, for me, what I
think would help heal is if people could learn to
love themselves. If you could learn to forgive yourself, forgive
others around you, love yourself, and have gratitude throughout your
entire life. Like, dude, I've been through some shit. You know,

(49:42):
We've all been through some shit. I'm grateful for everything
that happened. Do I wish it all happened? No, it sucked.
But am I grateful?

Speaker 3 (49:49):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (49:49):
Because guess what it made me who I am. It
made me think the way that I do. It made
me show up in the world the way I do,
It made me grow. It forced me to change and
switch the way that I viewed the world and the
way the interactions I have with people like I wouldn't
trade that for anything because I'm grateful for that. And
I've had some of the best conversations, i have some
of the greatest friendships in the world, Like I just

(50:10):
I'm grateful for that. And if you can take pain
and turn it into purpose or turn it into power,
like and empower yourself through that you can do anything.

Speaker 3 (50:20):
And those are big ideas, you know, those are the
people act so nonchalantly in life. You know, they take
these big ideas and they whittle them down to just
you know, what's happening at the moment. But these are there,
They're really big ideas. And myself right now I struggle
with I struggle with imposter syndrome. I struggle with believing

(50:43):
that I'm worthy or that I'm good enough. And until
I get that figured out, until I can get to
a point where I feel like I'm deserving of love
and deserving of success, bringing somebody else into that is
just setting myself and them up for failure because I

(51:03):
don't I don't love myself in the way that I
need to love myself to love somebody else. And if
I can't love myself, I can't accept love right And
that's frustrating for somebody who's not in that position. So
I'm struggling with that now. You know. I have to
do a daily affirmation now in the morning, just to
just like myself, you know. So until I get to

(51:26):
a point where I can really value myself, I don't
need to bring anybody else into that mix, and I
think a lot of people kind of really need to
think about that.

Speaker 1 (51:35):
But that's also a testament to your character, and that's
also a testament to what you've been through. And you're
not wanting to put that on somebody else, right, Like
that's but that self awareness alone is so valuable because
there are many people out there that have those same
thoughts and feelings but not understanding of why they're feeling it.
So the fact that you have that, at least you
have the ability to know that it's there and to

(51:56):
address it and you know what you need to work
on when you need to focus on. And for me,
it's always been what's the route, Where does all of
it come from? And how do we get to the
root cause the reason of it? And how do I
heal that? How do I fix outw do I change that?
How do I rewire my brain so that that doesn't
affect me anymore?

Speaker 3 (52:11):
Right?

Speaker 1 (52:11):
And it's not an easy road to go on, And
it's no matter how many times you try something, it
doesn't mean it's going to work out and be in
your favor.

Speaker 3 (52:18):
But you got it.

Speaker 1 (52:19):
You can't stop, you know, and you do deserve those
things We all deserve those things. And that's where when
we get into the mindset of I am good enough,
I am worthy just because I exist. You know, I
might have been told and treated shitty my whole life
and had it beat into me that I'm not worth shit,
you know, and I don't deserve love and whatever it else.

(52:40):
But that's not the truth. You know, it's not the truth.
Just because that was your experience early on, that doesn't
mean it's your truth.

Speaker 3 (52:47):
Yeah, And I think that's what's you know. I think
that's what's important about focusing on men's mouth mental health,
especially nowadays, because this is probably the only time I
think in history, societally at least, that men can express
their emotions. Because throughout life, you know, people people think

(53:10):
they they when you talk, when you start talking about society, people, oh,
the patriarchy, this and you know, toxic masculinity. That for
the all of history, men have been told put your
put your fucking head down, do the work, shut the
fuck up, you know, kill yourself or your family, hunt, build.

(53:32):
We don't want to hear, yeah, go to war. We
don't want to hear about your emotions. Go to war.
Kill people experience incredibly traumatic experiences and then come home
and shut the fuck up about it. Yeah, and now
is the first time where men can go, hey, man,
I'm not okay, you know, I'm I don't need to
always fucking just just go to work and bust my

(53:55):
ass and I die sooner than you know, men die
sooner than women because of the amount of stress that's
put on them to just be a provider and all
these things, which is why a lot of men run
away from their responsibilities of children and you know, in
marriage and those things. So I think it's important to
really talk about those things and to break down the

(54:15):
barriers of men being able to be open and vulnerable
like you have been today, like I have been today,
like you have been today. It is important, and I
think that in the long run, that's one of the
great things that have come out of kind of the
way that society has kind of broken things down now.
But it's important for while we are able to allow

(54:38):
men to do those things, that we allow men to
still be men at the same time.

Speaker 2 (54:43):
It's very well said. I'd totally agree. And you know,
if you literally, if all you're looking at is suicide rates,
it's literally like sixty percent of all suicides are men,
and specifically white men.

Speaker 3 (55:01):
But men.

Speaker 2 (55:03):
It's overwhelming and we're not addressing it. You know, no
one's addressing it.

Speaker 3 (55:08):
No, we're not addressing it, and society is feeding into it.
You know, of the the idea of straight white male
being the devil and h and and you know, those
ideals of toxic masculinity. In all of those things, I
think at some point, you're you're you're you're towing a

(55:30):
dangerous line because you're alienating a large group of people
and you're telling them that they're bad just for being,
which is the very definition of agism, racism, all of
those things. So if you if we continue down that path,

(55:50):
you're you're kind of backing people into a corner. And
that's yeah, bad things happen. So I think the thing
it's important to have conversations like this, so that so
that men who may feel just you know, who may
feel backed into a corner, who may feel disenchanted with

(56:12):
what's going on in the world, can kind of go, oh,
there's other people that feel the way that I feel.
I'm not in a bubble and I can talk about it.
I think it's important. I mean, it's very important. What
do we learned today?

Speaker 1 (56:30):
We learned that we like you. You're you know, and
that'll be good for my affirmation tomorrow.

Speaker 3 (56:38):
People like me.

Speaker 1 (56:40):
You're not alone in your own bubble.

Speaker 3 (56:42):
We learned that brock uh is too good looking to
be as intelligent and emotionally available as he is. I
need you to reel that ship in.

Speaker 1 (56:54):
I'm gonna jump off that Cliver.

Speaker 3 (56:56):
No, don't do that, but just you know, like just
you know, stare out into out into the space and flex.
You know, that's what you're meant to do. And we
learned that you you're a good golfer, and that you
hit the ball further than you should for your height
and body mass, and that's important, and that you have

(57:16):
poor choices and sports teams. We learned that about you,
and that you're very You're also very intelligent, and you're
a good looking guy. You're you're a good looking dude.

Speaker 2 (57:24):
He you know, I appreciate that, but like.

Speaker 3 (57:26):
When you it's kind of like when you I don't
know if you should be on the same side of
the table as Rock because you Harrison and all.

Speaker 2 (57:34):
I deal with it all the time.

Speaker 3 (57:35):
Yeah, that's why I sat over here. You know, you
don't want to have two specimens on one side of
the table, you know, you guys.

Speaker 2 (57:43):
I got to balance it out.

Speaker 3 (57:44):
Yeah, and we learned that I'm kind of gay, so
that's cool. Guys over there behind the computer are laughing
at that. I don't know why you guys think that's funny.

Speaker 1 (57:56):
Uh, why is that funny? Guys?

Speaker 3 (57:59):
Is funny? Yeah, Spencer? Yeah. Oh, they don't have a
they don't have a mic. Huh oh interesting, Yeah, that's right.
I like how you can just kind of make them
like push buttons and shit over there, but you don't
give them a mic, so they can voice their opinions
at all.

Speaker 2 (58:12):
Sometimes.

Speaker 1 (58:15):
But then he started voicing his opinions. So Spencer's got
a good.

Speaker 3 (58:19):
Head of hair on him. Huh. How old are you, Spencer? Yeah? Man,
I remember when I was going to be thirty next month.
That was a cool time in my life. I had
hair like that. That was cool. It was a little taller,
you know, but but good head of hair on you, Spencer.
Nobody can see Spencer. This is part of the podcast
where I get to a point where I don't know

(58:39):
what else to talk about.

Speaker 2 (58:42):
Well, I would love to talk more about the comedy
stuff too, like do you have any tours coming up
or anything like that, or what do you got going
on there?

Speaker 3 (58:50):
Yeah. So I'm in the process right now of getting
switching up management and I planning on putting a tour
together this this year. I'm kind of hyper focused on
filmmaking right now and that takes up a lot of
my time, but I do. I perform around La quite
a bit, and then I'm looking at, probably in the

(59:12):
next couple of months, putting together a tour to go
around the country and and do stand up So very cool.

Speaker 1 (59:19):
You still get nervous or do you get nervous when
you go on stage?

Speaker 3 (59:22):
No, man, I don't. It's weird. No, that's weird that
I fell into comedy. It wasn't even supposed to be
a thing A dare, yeah.

Speaker 1 (59:32):
Or like you're at a bar and there's an open
mic and someone there.

Speaker 3 (59:35):
Now, my buddy, my buddy, was hosting a show and
he invited me, and I was like, oh, go to
support me and my other buddy. My other buddy is
from New York and I'm from Detroit, so we he
and I are just naturally ballbusters. So we went to
the show and my buddy was hosting, and he's he
still does comedy. He's going to know who if he

(59:56):
listens to this, he knows who he is, but nobody
else does. But he's he's still terrible, and uh, sorry, dude,
and we he was hosting this show and I went
and so he did like like an eight minute spot
at the beginning of the show, crickets, and then and
then he would go up between each comic and then

(01:00:19):
he would like do like thirty seconds of like a
riff of something they talked about or whatever, right, and
he was just he's bad. And so every time he
come back to the table, I'd be like, dude, you're
fucking bad at this. And he's like, it's not it's
not easy. And I'm like it can't be as high
as you're making it. Look. This is bad and he

(01:00:39):
was like he's du easy. I'm like no, and he's like,
i'll give you. I'll give you three minutes go up
and do stand up. And I was like, I'm not
a comic and he's like, okay, if you get, if
you make them laugh once, i'll give you one hundred dollars.
And I was like one hundred bucks. He's like yeah,
I'm like, put the money on the table. I put
the money on the table and I went up and

(01:01:00):
I just told the two stories about the two times
I got stabbed. Laugh number one. The audience was like
laugh of their asses off. And so I get off
stage and I grabbed the one hundred bucks like that
was easy. And he's like what the fuck? And I
was like, I was like, you should get stabbed. Yeah,

(01:01:22):
it's kind of a wealth of laughs. So then, uh,
I just like kind of got the bug and I
was like, yeah, I think I want to do this.
Just kind of started going. I literally was doing like
four or five open mics a night. Oh wow, and
just kind of went around LA and figured it out
and it became a thing.

Speaker 1 (01:01:43):
That was She said, you've been in LA for fifteen fourteen,
fifteen years or now sixteen years now, So how long
ago did you start stand up? Stand up?

Speaker 3 (01:01:51):
Five years ago? Oh? No? Shit? Yeah? Yeah yeah yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:01:56):
Was there like a high like getting up there and
doing it?

Speaker 3 (01:02:01):
Yeah. Man, there's something about when people laugh. It kind
of it kind of like validates you as a person.
Like for me, like if I get up on stage
and I can just make people laugh, I'm like I
feel like I'm worth something. It's like, oh, yeah, I

(01:02:21):
do have something, you know. Yeah, Because like when you
make a movie, anybody, any filmmaker will tell you, like,
you write it, and then you send it out and
you hope people like it, and then they're like, yeah,
that's cool, and then you get the money to make it,
and then you do all the pre production, then you
shoot it, and then you go into post production and

(01:02:44):
you don't get any validation for this thing that you
created for like two years. Yeah, so you're like, I
hope people like it when it comes out. Stand ups
nothing like that. I can write a joke at three
o'clock in the afternoon and be on stage at eight
clock and tell the joke and I have instant verification
whether it's funny or not right, which is fucking great.

(01:03:05):
I could do that with movies. It'd be fucking amazing.
Just like write a movie then go on stage and
just read a script and people are just like kind
of dog shit, be like all right, well that's cool.
But that's how stand up is. Like I'm literally putting
my thoughts onto a piece of paper. I go on
stage and people go yes or no. It's kind of

(01:03:25):
like It's like it's like the Colisseum for ideas. It's
either a thumbs up or a thumbs down, and I'm
either getting eaten by a lion or I'm getting a stake.
It's pretty great. It's fucking awesome.

Speaker 1 (01:03:38):
I've got a bunch of friends who are filmmakers, writers, everything,
and they'll take real life moments that I've seen happen
and put them in their films. Do you do that
with your comedy, with your life or anything like that,
or is that something you're gonna get one? Yeah? Oh yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:03:52):
My family hates me because I talk about all of
our shit on stage right, Like you know, I talk
about my brother still to this day hasn't forgiven me
because I talked about the fact that he had bitch tits.
Was he working at Starbucks and he just did too
much training and he got bitched it? Oh damn, but

(01:04:13):
uh he because he's six six, two sixty five. But
yeah he got dude, Yeah he got he got tits. Yeah,
but it was just one tit. He had one tit
like one would like one big tit and then one
normal tit. I called him Biggie Smalls for like a year,
I man this is messed up. I had a buddy

(01:04:34):
who he he did that. He messed with steroids.

Speaker 1 (01:04:36):
I don't know what he did, but he had one
and it like pointed out and it would go to
the beach and he'd always like move it around to
try and like hide it or whatever. I'm like, bro,
you can't hide it, man, Like it's not going yet. Dude,
wear a shirt. You shouldn't have done that. And now
here we are he's always got a shoulder holdstraw for
no reasons. Bro, why do you wear the shoulder holster

(01:04:58):
with no gun? Don't worry about it, dude, Oh little tape.
That's wild man messed with that stuff.

Speaker 3 (01:05:06):
Yeah. Man, he went bald at twenty six.

Speaker 1 (01:05:09):
Yeah, so you get to make fun of him.

Speaker 3 (01:05:11):
Yeah. So I just when I go home for Christmas,
I just I don't put any product in my hair.
I just let it hang down in my eyes. Yeah.
I just walk around with my normal chest. Yeah. It's
pretty great, man, it's pretty great.

Speaker 1 (01:05:23):
So he got he might have had the height in
the size, but it sounds.

Speaker 3 (01:05:26):
Like, yeah, I'm the older brother. You can't get it
within me. That's not how that works.

Speaker 1 (01:05:30):
See, I don't have that both my brothers are much
smaller than me, and I love him to death, but
I don't have that. Man, Yeah, is that weird? You
gotta look up just a little bit to my brother.

Speaker 3 (01:05:40):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:05:41):
He's a pretty eyed either, right, you're six.

Speaker 3 (01:05:42):
Yeah, yeah, Well the thing is, no matter how big
he gets, I will kick the ship out of it.
So big brother, Yeah, I don't really, I don't really
concern myself with any of that. He will beat me
at arm wrestling though. He's stupid strong. Yeah, yeah, he's
he's you know, he's a little he's got that spectrum

(01:06:06):
straight strength. You know, you got a touch of the
tism or something.

Speaker 1 (01:06:11):
You know.

Speaker 3 (01:06:12):
What's cool is being an uncle? Are you an uncle?

Speaker 2 (01:06:14):
I just became an uncle.

Speaker 3 (01:06:15):
That's cool, right, uncle, it's cool, right, dude. All the
ship my little brother put me through, like having to
babysit him. Oh dude, I get them all back. I
get it all back. Oh dude. I bought my I
bought my nephew a baby gun. Nice. Yeah, I bought
him a baby gun and then get and yeah there

(01:06:39):
you go. And I put so much candy. I give
him so much candy when I see him, and I'm
just like you got a lot of a lot of
cats and birds in your neighborhood, man, And I amp
them up.

Speaker 2 (01:06:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:06:55):
My brother's like, what are you doing?

Speaker 1 (01:06:58):
I did it. Fews were like two and four or
something like that, and I took them to Disneyland. I
had no idea what sugar does to a kid until
I took two little boys. Oh dude, it's Disneyland.

Speaker 3 (01:07:08):
Bro.

Speaker 1 (01:07:09):
It was white like it is wild. Yeah, what's the best.

Speaker 3 (01:07:14):
Yeah, man, I get them all hopped up on sugar
and then I drop them off the best when I
bought When I bought my nephew the bb gun, I
was like, I was like, hey, man, uh, you're one
of your dad's boobs is bigger than it should be,
just saying probably just needs to be drained. And then
I just handed them a baby gun. My brother calls

(01:07:37):
me one day and he's like this sort of shot
me in the tip and be like, hell, yeah, you're
waiting for you when my plan has come to fruition shit.
Oh man, yeah, man. I have my family's cool, like
my mom. My mom is the ship. Like I talked
about missing masculine energy growing up, but my mom is

(01:07:57):
masculine enough for like me and Brock put together. Like
my mom everywhere she goes two guns on her at
all times. I watched her pistol whip a guy in
a target parking lot once almost hit me with his
car and he called her a bitch. I got your bitch,
and she pissed the whiped him apart. Bro My mom
is amazing. I almost called my mom a bitch one

(01:08:19):
time and she, uh, she three hundred kicked me down
a flight of stairs for almost doing I got to
I didn't even finish it, and she was like, this spot.

Speaker 1 (01:08:35):
That's amazing last time.

Speaker 3 (01:08:37):
Yeah, dude, she's awesome. Oh man, she's she's uh, she's
the coolest person in the world.

Speaker 1 (01:08:41):
Yeah, brother, Well, we got to do something together at
some point. I'm gonna make some dude, I have a
skin for us, the one you mentioned that Terns birthday.

Speaker 3 (01:08:50):
Isn't that funny?

Speaker 1 (01:08:51):
That's pretty good.

Speaker 3 (01:08:52):
Yeah. The crowd's not gonna know what the fun we're
talking about.

Speaker 1 (01:08:54):
Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, but you want to get
on this.

Speaker 3 (01:08:57):
Well, it's really funny, dude, it's really funny.

Speaker 1 (01:09:00):
Appreciate you coming on, brother. Is there anything else what
you got in the pipeline? Or anything you want to plug.

Speaker 3 (01:09:05):
Or you know. You can follow me on Instagram at
Kevin Mack. That's k E v I N m a C.

Speaker 1 (01:09:12):
If you scroll far enough you will find him naked
in front of the motorcycle. Yeah, that's on there. Yeah yeah.
Oh man, No, that's awesome. Bro Yeah Kevin Mack. And
check well is your movie top ro out yet? No?

Speaker 3 (01:09:24):
Not yet? Yeah, so's it'll be. It'll be coming out.

Speaker 1 (01:09:29):
Great cast by the way, thanks man.

Speaker 3 (01:09:31):
Yeah, yeah, I'm really proud of my I'm really proud
of it. Man. I think the cast killed it. I
was very lucky to get the quality of actors that
I got and people seem to like it.

Speaker 1 (01:09:42):
So yeah, man, we'll keep it going onward and upward. Yes, sir,
appreciate you, brother, Thanks for having me. Guys.

Speaker 3 (01:09:48):
All right, guys, thanks for watching the Studio twenty two podcast.
Make sure that you like and subscribe, and of course
hit that notification bell because if you don't, YouTube doesn't
have us on the top side of the algorithm. Also,
make sure that you watch out for our merch because
it's coming soon. Also, Brock has a very soft shaft.
Have a good day.

Speaker 2 (01:10:12):
Thanks for tuning in. To Studio twenty two,

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Toxic Masculinity and Comedy with Kevin McNamara