March 31, 2025 • 46 mins
This Is Why I Drink... is a new Barley & Me Podcast offshoot, where Ben Rice sits down with a comedian, musician, writer, or other creative type, over a glass of their favorite beverage. Today, we're talking to comedian Kalea McNeill over a cup of STASH Refreshing Peppermint tea.
Find out why Kalea drinks it, as we also discuss her time in the ROTC, acting, theme parks, lifetime bans, bad jobs, harassment, a dash of 9/11, and, oh yeah, comedy. Including the fact that she is headlining Ben's new show The Bomb Shelter on Wednesday, April 9, 2025 at 9pm at The Silver Lining in Sacramento. Tickets are available on Eventbrite.com or at the door.
Learn more about Kalea McNeill at www.kaleamcneill.com or on socials @WhateverKalea
Follow Ben Rice, Barley & Me, and This Is Why I Drink... @barleyandmepod or find shows, other podcasts, and more at www.barleyandmepod.com
Intro Music: "Functional Alcoholism" by Be Brave Bold Robot (@bebraveboldrobot)
Interstitial Music: "JamRoc" by Breez (@breeztheartist)
Logo by Ben Rice
Find out why Kalea drinks it, as we also discuss her time in the ROTC, acting, theme parks, lifetime bans, bad jobs, harassment, a dash of 9/11, and, oh yeah, comedy. Including the fact that she is headlining Ben's new show The Bomb Shelter on Wednesday, April 9, 2025 at 9pm at The Silver Lining in Sacramento. Tickets are available on Eventbrite.com or at the door.
Learn more about Kalea McNeill at www.kaleamcneill.com or on socials @WhateverKalea
Follow Ben Rice, Barley & Me, and This Is Why I Drink... @barleyandmepod or find shows, other podcasts, and more at www.barleyandmepod.com
Intro Music: "Functional Alcoholism" by Be Brave Bold Robot (@bebraveboldrobot)
Interstitial Music: "JamRoc" by Breez (@breeztheartist)
Logo by Ben Rice
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Something.
Speaker 2 (00:00):
They call it functional alcoholism. But if you know anything
about Ben, he's got vision with precision microphones and the
tinkle love derision. Here about to hear what being can be.
It's time for Barley and me. Welcome to this is
(00:28):
why I drink. I'm your host, Ben Rice. This is
a Barley Meat production.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
Where I sit with very interesting people and I have
some drinks. Could be whatever they choose. Today's guest is, oh,
I didn't know that was my life.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
Khalia McNeill.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
And Khalia, what are we drinking today?
Speaker 3 (00:49):
We are drinking a peppermint tea in my favorite glass.
This is a gangster. This is one of my favorite
purchases from Costplus World Market. That's how I knew I
was an adult.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
Yeah, yeah, nobody under twenty seven goes in there.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
Peppermint tea with honey and what I didn't tell you?
Something I do to make my tea bearable immediately. I
put in a cube of ice, okay, just to kind
of so I can actually drink it immediately.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
Okay, see, I got another stuff. We're supposed to drink
the same same thing now.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
I mean it's still very hot.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
I mean, I don't know when yours got done being
made to maybe we're at the same level anyway.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
It got literally when when you sent me the zoom link,
like that's why I was like, what's that? Ye?
Speaker 1 (01:44):
Perfect? Perfect? Okay, great, then yeah, we're the same thing.
And uh, today we're drinking a stash peppermint tea. But
you don't really actually play favorites, right.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
You know, I'm very unbiased when it comes to teas.
When we start talking about alcohol, yeah, we we have favorites.
I can't just be having vodka that says vodka on
the bottom, Like, what's the name of it? It's called vodka.
I don't want that, you know what I mean. But
with tea, I'm not a t snob. I'm trying to.
(02:15):
I feel like I could get there, but I'm not
a tea snob yet. Like I don't have all the
cool tea stuff.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
Yeah yeah, but what is it about peppermint tea that
it gets you the drinker?
Speaker 3 (02:27):
I like, it's really soothing to the to the to
the throat. I'm learning more and more that with what
I do, my throat is absolutely my instrument.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
Yep.
Speaker 3 (02:41):
And when that's the case, it's not really an excuse.
Oh I lost my voice. It's like, okay, but you
know we hired you for your voice, right, So peppermint
tea it's just very soothing to the throat because honestly,
what I used to do. I got this trick back
when I was in the theater. Is I used to
put like in the theater, like they'll you'll have like
(03:02):
regular tea, black tea, green tea, whatever, and people will
put peppermints in their tea. Okay, kind of dissolves with
the heat, and I'm like, well, I could also just
buy peppermint.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
Save a lot of money on that one.
Speaker 3 (03:18):
Yeah, And so that's that's how my peppermint tea was born.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
Yeah. And it's also great for clearing up your nasal
passages so you get a more clearer voice.
Speaker 3 (03:28):
See. Also you research.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
I did some research. I was figured I should do
it so I could be like, well, you know, there's
also positive benefits of this. It hels your gut biome
a little bit. It's just helping your whole body gut health.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
Gut health is important. Now, let me see what what
glasses that you have. You have an interesting.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
Mug, Yes, mine sets pansy all over it. Hold on
get it the Okay, there's a picture of pansy, but
it also gives you, you know, planting things for panties.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
Are you a plant dad? No, bless you.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
No. And I need this tea because I have a
really weird nasal thing going on. It's called allergies, I
think is what they call it, but it.
Speaker 3 (04:08):
Is, it is. And it's been pretty it's been pretty
warm out there yet.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
Yeah. Yeah, I don't like it. You're right, it came
in right with it.
Speaker 3 (04:15):
You guys took so cow's weather, and I don't know
how I feel about that.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
Oh, we're back to cold and dreary right now. It's okay, good,
We're like sorry about that. You can have it back,
all right, I did it. I'm sorry.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
Yeah. No. My sister and her family they're in Berkeley, well,
el Cerrito. Yeah, And I was talking to my nieces
the other day. They're like, oh, that just that it
was so hot here. I was like so hot? There
were talking about so hot there.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
I was, Yeah, it was eighty five a couple of
days ago. Gross. Yeah, no one needs that.
Speaker 3 (04:46):
But you you live in Sack, right, yeah, so I
mean Sacramento gets ridiculous.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
Yeah, don't care for it.
Speaker 3 (04:52):
Sacramento gets ridiculously hot.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
Yeah. Yeah, speaking of Sacramento, you're coming to Sacramento pretty soon.
Speaker 3 (04:58):
I am coming to Sacramento with you.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
Yeah, at the for you actually, yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:05):
Yeah, I'm looking forward to that. The bomb Shelter.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:09):
So I'm giving you, I guess new slash barely use material.
Is that the deal?
Speaker 1 (05:15):
Yeah? Whatever you want to do? Well yeah, no, I.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
Want to do what's on brand for the show?
Speaker 1 (05:20):
Tell me what's that's The idea is essentially you can
do whatever you want to do if you have some
new stuff you're working on or old stuff you wanted
to repolish. It's an idea of you're passing through to
your next weekend kind of show, and it gives you
a chance to like it's like I got this bit
that I really want to do, but like the next
show is going to pay me, like, you know, fifteen
hundred bucks, and I don't want to have it be bad,
you know, So this is a chance to like make
a little money and like tighten that stuff for like
(05:42):
a small audience like thirty to fifty in like a
little tiny piano bar.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
I like that, Oh it's a piano bar. Yeah, oh
I'm wearing a suit.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
Yeah, you're between two pianos.
Speaker 3 (05:56):
Oh that's classy. It's like Zach Gallifan.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
Yeah yeah, very classy. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
Now you just had your very first one.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
Yeah yeah, uh yeah. A lot of things went terribly wrong,
and that's okay. Uh first time. You know. You can't
you can't control everything. All the media marketing that I did,
they always sponted like this Sunday before, like, oh sorry,
I just saw this one. I said it six weeks ago. Bro,
I said it six weeks ago, so I had no
no promo push. But I've got PR for this one,
so we're good. Uh, because well, you.
Speaker 3 (06:27):
Know, I've also I do my part as well. I
have a couple of ads running and things like that.
So I think it'll be a good time.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
I think it'll be good. And then the day, the
plan was like we'd have the bartender go through the
show through the audience to get drink orders, you know,
because it's not as much up and down. And then
the bartender got six so we only had one bartender,
so that was tough. But other than that, I mean,
it was I thought like it was. It was definitely
like eighty five percent of what I wanted to be
(06:56):
besides audience level, and I'm like, this is pretty much
what I wanted to be. I just gotta like iron
out like two three Kinks and then we're all we'll
be fine.
Speaker 3 (07:06):
Now my question for you, I feel like I'm interviewing
you know. Oh you froze on me.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
No, no, no, I stopped moving. I'm like, headlights okay.
Speaker 3 (07:16):
But you can hear me though. Okay, cool. Did we
meet when I did the show at Cobbs and Them? Yeah, okay,
I thought so.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
Yeah, yeah, you were cat calling Ashley on to stage.
Speaker 3 (07:34):
Yeah. First of all, you didn't have to bring that up.
Make it sure that that was that that was where
we met. Dammit. Yeah, jesus, it's hilarious. I've never seen
Ashley turn so red in my life.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
It was so great.
Speaker 3 (07:53):
It was, Hey, you gotta you gotta shoot or shoot.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
Yep, exactly exactly. But yeah, so you've gotten into you've
been doing comedy a long time.
Speaker 3 (08:03):
Yeah, you're thirteen for me, you know what, it feels
like a long time. But then I'll meet other comics
on the journey or whatever, and you're like twenty something
years and thirty something years and you're like, damn, I'm
still kind of like a baby in this yeah teenager.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
Where you are at thirteen years it's like pretty actually incredible.
It's pretty rare to get as far as you've gotten
that quickly.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
Thank you. It's just I mean, it's it was out
of obligation, you know. I was talking to a buddy
about this the other day, and it's like it was
because it's like when I moved to LA, it's like
I moved here with a specific goal, and comedy was
never it. Like I've always wanted to act and act
like comedic acting, yeah, but stand up was never really
(08:50):
the thing. I did it once before I left Atlanta.
I went to college in Atlanta. I did it once
before I left there, then moved to LA. But it's
like just like everybody else doing everything, but the thing.
Ran into a guy who used to run this weekly show,
bi weekly show, and he told me if I sold
(09:10):
X amount of tickets, then I could do like cold
opens on his show. So I made sure that that
happened every week or every other week, and that just
kind of slowly turned into me kind of dipping into
the scene. But there's just always that moment where you're like,
I got to do this really scary thing and like
quit all of the distractions. And that was in twenty
(09:30):
eighteen when I quit my job and I was like
it has to all be stand up and acting that,
Like I can't continue to give forty fifty hours a
week to these people, then I have nothing else to
give to myself. Now I've made for some very scary
moments and some very scary times over the years, but
(09:50):
I'm glad that I did what I did. And then
I you know, I'm maybe one of the few people
that I feel like the pandemic really helped me. Everybody
was forced to sit down, I think everybody on the
same playing field, and I hit the ground and ran
with it. I was doing zoom shows, I was doing this,
I was doing that. Then when the world opened back up,
it was like it was like it was time.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
To go yeah, and did you do any like sketches
and things like that as well?
Speaker 3 (10:16):
So I used to do sketches just as things would
come to me. And what I mean by that is
I wasn't I'm not the and I give kudos to
them because their medium isn't easy either. I'm not the
deisi banks. You know, let me you know, this is
our shooting schedule. We have an eight hour shoot day
to day. We're gonna bust through these ten twelve sketches
(10:37):
and then we're gonna release them over it. No, Like
I'm the one like if I see some funny shit,
like yeah, like, I'll make a thing on it and
then kind of move on. I used to do a
lot of parodies, Like I would do parodies of songs
be cause I mean, I grew up a nineties skit.
I love the weird out, so I would do shit
like that. But no, I let them have that. That's
their thing. Now, if only they would let us have
(10:58):
stand up.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
Yeah. Yeah, so basically you were doing just stand up
and then also like commentary of sorts, you would you'd
pop on your kicktok commentary and stuff. Yeah quick.
Speaker 3 (11:15):
I do this thing on my page called the bust out,
and I only it doesn't happen all the time, and
I only do it on my stories because I'm like,
if this lives on my page, I could probably get
in Trump. Yeah, but it's just when I've gotten into
it with someone online or someone It's just what I
don't understand about the Internet today is there could be
(11:35):
a video about something stupid Trump has done aka just
getting up and breathing. Yeah, and the thousands of comments
that are like fuck Trump, blah blah, And then the
moment I'm like, yeah, I do sucks fuck you in
word and that's like wait, wait, I'm saying the same
(11:56):
thing everybody else said. But it's like, also, I'm a comedian,
I'm a ride, I'm intellectual, so I'm like, okay, fuck me,
I'm a dieg, I'm a man. Sure. Then I go
to their profile and I'm seeing their ugly children or
they're terrible looking parents, and I'm like, well, now the
world gets to see, so let's go ahead and put
this on my story. I do a nice little screen
record and I just read people for filth. Yeah, and
(12:19):
it's called the bust Out and people really like it.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
Yeah they do.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
And sometimes I get reported, but it is what it is.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
Yeah, it's like, well, it's only my stories. That's a
little boop. Okay, that's gone. That's fine, there'll be another one. Unfortunately,
there will always be another one.
Speaker 3 (12:31):
Yeah, absolutely, And those are stories. Oh, they stay up
for the full twenty four and it's always funny because
once I put the story up, my rule is I'm
done with you. I have nothing else to say because
I've told you to leave me alone, and you keep
going and it never fails is once the story goes up.
Now they're dming me.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
Oh excuse me, No, no, nope, you said.
Speaker 3 (12:51):
This on a public platform. Your page ain't private, so
let's go.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
Yeah. Oops, are there consequences? Oh? No, such, and they're minor.
They're such minor contacts. You know.
Speaker 3 (13:01):
There's so much weird shit going.
Speaker 1 (13:03):
On right now, Ben, But don't how to walk away.
It's a really important skill that some people don't master.
Speaker 3 (13:09):
Yeah, I'm learning that. I'm getting better at that. Yeah,
but I'm learning that because I'm also at the point
now where it's like I really can afford to be
on restriction for thirty days from this feature and that
like what really got me about a month and some
change ago, And it's all the powers that be, because
fuck them. But I said something about Milania Trump on
(13:31):
inauguration Day and they took away my ability to collaborate.
Now that that's hitting me hard. Yeah, because I was
about to go on the road. I couldn't collab with
any of the clubs for thirty days. I was like,
fuck you guys. Yeah, oh okay, you got me. I'll
shut up.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
God. Yeah there. It's almost like that anyway, doesn't matter
what who owned Instagram's Facebook? And then it's meta with everyone.
I'm not going to call it that. We're not calling
any of these things these things, right, We're not. Yeah,
it's calling it meta. Come on, no one's calling it at.
Speaker 3 (14:00):
No, it's Facebook, it's Twitter.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
Yeah what I It's like, oh, is he a great
brilliant business mind? He took the one thing that Twitter had,
a tweet. It's like, we don't call it that, we
call it a post. What makes you different? What makes
you different? What are you doing? Yeah, it's a tweet? Twitter? Yeah.
Speaker 3 (14:16):
Because and the fact that you know it's Twitter and
it's always going to be Twitter is when they introduce
it as X they always put in parentheses formally Twitter
formally known as Twitter. Yeah, like if I changed my name,
ain't nobody like you though? Like, no, Like, it's it's
it's Twitter.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
Sorry, it's the one thing we did name. Sorry.
Speaker 3 (14:34):
Yeah, my prince. We love Prince to death. We've never
called him the artist, never called.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
Him the artist.
Speaker 3 (14:39):
No, it's it's prince, yeah, exactly, stop playing.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
With us exactly. So, uh, how long would you say
that you were acting or like pursuing acting before like
stand up kind of fell on your.
Speaker 3 (14:51):
Lap whole life. I went to school for theater, so
I agree is in theater arts. And while I was
in school, I, unbeknownst to me, I was sharpening this
tool that we now use on stage every day. When
I was in school, I used to do a lot
of hosting. I would host you know, step shows, parties,
(15:11):
homecoming events, all this and that. So just you know,
being on stage, live on stage at all times, and
you know, as a stand up, that's helping with what
we do every day, you know, whether it's crowd work
or whatever. It wasn't until so my first stand up
was in twenty twelve. I had just got back from
(15:32):
the cruise ships. I used to DJ and host parties
for Royal Caribbean Cruise Line, and after the ship I
went back to Atlanta and a buddy of mine at
the time, he was really the only stand up comedian
that like I knew personally, and people would always ask me,
have you tried stand up? Have you tried stand up?
Just because I have just kind of that comedic personality.
(15:54):
So I remember my first show and it was the
blackest look, the blackest thing I could have. I got
a T shirt made for the show. This is like
an amateur open mind.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
Everybody, everybody was, everybody was coming behind your back.
Speaker 3 (16:08):
I want to see the sweatshirt, I abslutely do.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
I absolutely do want it. I have it, I.
Speaker 3 (16:12):
Haven't, I know I have it. Ye, this is the
shirt that I had made. Is it too blurry or
it's coming in?
Speaker 1 (16:26):
And that you got with the microphone underneath it?
Speaker 3 (16:29):
Yeah, hey, that was my my, my, my sweatshirt that
I made. And I wrote out the set, but again
I wasn't the stand up yet. So I'm writing out
this set BND like I'm writing the script. I'm like,
and then my dog and then I did, and I'm
you know, I'm I memorized it as I would memorize lines,
(16:51):
and it went great, and for a while that's how
I wrote. And I'm like, I can't keep right. I
don't think everybody's writing like, no, excuse me, and that
turned into I do bullet I basically I write with
bullet points. Now, yeah, that way, I'm also like if
I ever lose something, you have no idea what this.
(17:14):
It's just like, you know, like a topic topic bullet points. Yeah,
But to me, I also think that that helps me
grow as a stand up because I'm not reliant on
just what's on this paper. Now there are there is
a version of the joke where I have obviously tried
to write it out, but when it comes down to
like set list this or that.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
Yeah, I think everybody writes differently, but yeah, for me,
it's it's uh yeah, like a name that you have
for your joke and then like bullet points when it's new.
Excuse me, when it's new, I like bullet points or
don't forget the things I want to touch on. Yeah,
and like oh forgot number three, but nobody knows, right
because it's in the bullet points.
Speaker 3 (17:57):
It's not like absolutely absolutely Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
It's funny how because there's a comic up here, Robert Moto.
He used to type them all out and then laminate
him and they can have a notebook and he would
flip and he'd memorize him. But it was like word
for word. I'm like, but he's like a crowd work comic.
I'm like, you know that you're not going to be
tied to these words, right, like.
Speaker 3 (18:16):
You know, that's a lot of dedication. Is he autistic?
Speaker 1 (18:22):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (18:23):
Okay, he doesn't.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
He doesn't give it, but he you know what, No,
he's he's super he's super meticulous. That's the thing. He's
super meridiculous. That's a good point. Like he's it's gonna
be perfect or it doesn't exist.
Speaker 3 (18:37):
Yeah, I think he's there. Yeah, it's okay, I'm just
letting you know what you described. Yeah, that's autism.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
Yeah. Yeah, well if anybody would know, it's him. His
brother is actually a medical professional in the autism field.
Speaker 3 (18:51):
So well there you go.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
Yeah, speaking about sorry, not autism, Jesus, excuse me, speaking
of a Yeah, speaking of siblings in the medical field. Yeah,
that was very that was you posted a story about
your sister on TV.
Speaker 3 (19:09):
My sister, Yeah, yeah, she is excuse me. She works
at out of Kaiser and Fanole actually, but she is
the director of physicians Recruitment for Northern California. So with
that comes a lot of just community outreach and things
of that nature. So so every couple of months she'll
(19:32):
hop on the Channel seven News in the morning and
do her whole Hey, it's summertime. Make sure your kiddos
this and this, and I love to bust her ass
for it, and just like she busts my ass when
I'm like, hey, gome to my show.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
Like I love that both of you are in community
outreach essentially, because you're like, oh, yeah, I was doing
it for this cruise line. I was at the parties
as at school like You's like, we just built. That's
what we do. We're McNeil's.
Speaker 3 (20:01):
We building the McNeil's build community.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
Yeah, that's dope. Yeah, I can't. I like to do it. Uh.
I'm like that's what I do too, but I do it.
So suddenly I'm like I don't like to be the
face of anything. I'm like, I don't like are you?
I just don't like credit. I don't I don't want
compliments or attention.
Speaker 3 (20:22):
I'm like, no, nothing, Oh, I can't wait to compliment.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
Don't do it. Well, I'm gonna bomb that way. You
don't have anything to say that's nice.
Speaker 3 (20:34):
Do you do you have siblings?
Speaker 1 (20:36):
Oh? Yeah, I got six sisters.
Speaker 3 (20:38):
Mmm, where do you fall in line? Uh?
Speaker 1 (20:42):
So I have uh four older too, younger.
Speaker 3 (20:47):
Wow, okay, So, like, were your girlfriends and they have
hard times?
Speaker 1 (20:52):
Well girlfriends, No, I didn't start dangel. I was like
out of the house.
Speaker 3 (20:56):
I no, okay, that's aw we all that.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
I think two I think they've met two girlfriends.
Speaker 3 (21:02):
Ever six sisters. You don't mess around.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
I can't I get beat up.
Speaker 3 (21:10):
Yeah. Yeah, that's why you're such a nice guy. That's
the cure. Ladies. Yeah, I have a bunch of daughters,
one son.
Speaker 1 (21:18):
Yep.
Speaker 3 (21:18):
Then you'll create a good man in the world.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
Yeah. And even then we'll have struggles because we're we're
dumb and it's real.
Speaker 3 (21:25):
It's okay, Well that's that's just genetics.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
Yeah, that I mean is it's society, you know, like
we need to talk about it. Like, you know, I
was in a great early twenties guy. I was like,
I think it was like twenty and I'm like, oh,
I should stop being a piece of garbage. Maybe. So
even then, you know, with all that, it's still to
overcome a lot of stuff. Yeah, like a lot of
control things.
Speaker 3 (21:47):
I don't know, I get it, but yeah, I know.
It's just just me and my sister. But our relationship
is interesting because she is seven years older than me.
Speaker 1 (21:58):
Okay, So for a good.
Speaker 3 (22:02):
Majority of childhood, I was just like the annoying little
sister until like college, when then it was like, Okay,
the age is kind of even out a bit. But
I bothered her for a long time.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. My youngest sister and I we
were like wrtal enemies for like all through school and
then yeah, now we're best of friends. We hang out
all the time.
Speaker 3 (22:27):
Gotta be Now, is everybody in the Sacramento area still.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
No, no, no, no no. We grew up Midwest, we're all
We're all over now, I got let's see, one is
in Sacramento, tour in Sacramento. Sorry, one's in s F
North Dakota still somehow Tennessee and.
Speaker 3 (22:45):
Oregon, North Dakota. That's where you're from.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
Well, okay, if we're gonna do where we're from, that's
a different I'm a I'm a military brat. Were but
it was a coast guards. We were always coast, and
we were always north, So we're like the furthest south
I ever lived when I was a kid was Massachusetts. Okay,
so Maine, Massachusetts, Alaska, Washington, North Dakota, Minnesota, and like
(23:10):
two months in South Dakota.
Speaker 3 (23:12):
I have a very special place in my heart for
the Coast Guard.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (23:17):
My very first acting gig that I booked was on
this show called Animal Kingdom on TNT, and my character
was a coast Guard person. There was like something going
on on a boat, and so I learned at that time,
I didn't realize that there is an entertainment division of
the Coast Guard. So literally, literally anything that's ever filmed
(23:41):
on water, I don't care what it is, there is
a Coastguard, you know, offhand, just to make sure that
everything is okay. But in this instance, since my character
was coast guard, they had me like on the actual
like boat. Everybody else on the boat was an actual
coast Guard person except for me, and so it's like
(24:02):
I hop off the boat. I'm like, I saved the
Save the dirl and I hop back on the boat
and do all this and that. And then at the
end of shooting, the coast Guard was just gonna take
me back to you know, back to the docks or
whatever on the boat, and they were like, do you
want to drive the boat? And I was like, oh,
I was like I don't want to, Yeah, I want
to drive the boat. And so they kind of took
(24:23):
us out of the harbor a little bit and they
were like, all right, flor it and I'm like floor it.
They're like listen. They were like, if anything happens, You're
literally with the perfect people if something happens, And like,
I gotta find the picture. If I find the picture,
I'll send it to you. But there's like this picture
of me, and like the moment I just hit full throttle,
(24:43):
like my I am grinning so hard and I'm just
like in my coast guard gear and I was I
went to town on that boat. It was such a
good time.
Speaker 1 (24:52):
That's way better st I mean, I guess I drove
a boat when I was like a kid. No, because
my family's uh, water based, because yeah, you get from somewhere.
So I probably drove a boat when I was like
seven or eight, but it was like, you know, a
little dinghy and whatever. I probably drew. Yeah, my grandpa
had like a lobster boat. We'd go out and yeah, yeah,
(25:14):
I think I drove that. But my first adult driving
a boat was when I was a commercial fisherman. And uh,
don't recommend you're Gordon. I almost got on. Uh well
this is not almost got on. I got invited to
be on a boat that ended up being on Deadia's
catch really, but I said no, yeah, OK, because I
was like I would like to go home. This sucks.
(25:35):
I hate this.
Speaker 3 (25:36):
You're a commercial fisherman. Yeah, out of high school, Jesus been,
You're an onion.
Speaker 1 (25:42):
Yeah, I got stories. I got I keep forgetting that
I've done things. You know.
Speaker 3 (25:46):
No, I feel you on that though, because it's like
to our point earlier where it's like I've been doing
stand up. This is my thirteenth year. Now there are
things courses of my life that I haven't even touched, yeah,
on stage, and it's like like will I get to it?
When will I? Like you don't you don't even think
about it, Yeah, until somebody asks you something. It's like, oh, yeah,
(26:06):
I did used to live on a cruise ship. Have
you ever talked about that on stage? Well? No, why not?
I don't know? Yeah, you know what I mean, Like
I don't, I don't, I don't know. So I think
it's so much lives.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
There's so much you have to like establish because it's
not an usual lifestyle, right, Like I lived on a
cruise ship. What does that entail, right, you gotta like
tell all that and like where's the fun now? You
gotta find the funny part and still get the information out.
That's the top. Man. It's tough. Like I've been trying
to tell boating stories for forever and I'm just like,
you know, this is more of like a one man
like what yeah, but like.
Speaker 3 (26:40):
It's like a niche crowd conversation, Like it better be
a boating convention if you're gonna tell those jokes.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
Yeah, exactly. So the first time I was driving a
boat as an adult, my cabin is like, hey, I'm
gonna go take a nap. It's smooth sailing until this
point there's gonna be like all these Rocky craggy terrible
things just come get me. When we're like ten minutes away,
I'm like okay, And yeah, man, he slept through my warnings.
I was like shaking him and yelling at him. He
didn't wake up, and I'm like, well, I mean I
(27:07):
gotta get back up there, yeacause Rocky craggy bullshit's coming up.
And I like and it's dead night, and uh so
I'm just up there just screaming his name over and
over again driving this boat through these things. They're like
two feet off the bow and I'm like barely missing
(27:27):
my first day on the job. Didn't hit nothing, Khaliah
didn't hit nothing. We made it through. He woke up
an hour later like, oh everyone was there. I'm like,
we're past it. Man. Yeah, yeah, terriffy white, terrible terror
of course.
Speaker 3 (27:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (27:47):
I don't recommends to do.
Speaker 1 (27:50):
Yeah, I got ten deniers day three, Like, didn't have
I warmed down yet to pick fish out of the nets.
So and we caught like eighty we caught thirty seven
thousand pounds of the day. What thirty seven thousand pounds
of fish in a day, it's just two of us Internet,
and we'd pick them out if they get stuck, you
gotta like pick them out. I didn't. I didn't have
my form down, So I like, that's risk awful, dude,
(28:14):
it's brutal. If it don't come out, you know what
you do, You smash me in the face of the mallet, Like.
Speaker 3 (28:18):
What, yes, that sounds awful.
Speaker 1 (28:24):
Yeah, it was not interested. No, it was awful. And
that's like when you're like, hey, you want to come run, No,
I'm good, I did. I did my son did my
one summer? Man, I'm done.
Speaker 3 (28:33):
You do that for a whole summer.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
I did it for a whole summer two thousand and one.
Couldn't go home on time because a certain something happened
in two thousand and one.
Speaker 3 (28:42):
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Where were you? What? What
waters were you voting?
Speaker 1 (28:47):
I was in the Aleutian Islands in Alaska.
Speaker 3 (28:51):
Yeah, man, you know what, you stressed me.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
I do stuff. Yeah, but that was Yeah. I didn't
need fish for like seven years.
Speaker 3 (29:02):
So how long were you stuck there? Like, I'm assuming
September eleventh?
Speaker 1 (29:08):
Yeah, yeah, I think I got out the nineteenth or twentieth,
I think. So it wasn't that bad.
Speaker 3 (29:13):
Well, yeah, you know what, You're not wrong then, because
that was Yeah, that was just pretty much at the
end of the summer. That was my That was my
first year of high school.
Speaker 1 (29:25):
Oh my god.
Speaker 3 (29:26):
R and I was in Rotc, Okay. And I remember
around the time that that happened, we had just started,
like we were in school for like maybe two weeks,
and once a week we would have to dress out
in our in our Air Force uniform. And so with
(29:46):
nine to eleven happening, and then we're in Rotc. And
then there were a couple of kids in Rotc that
were Indian you know, what have you. And people don't
know the difference between India and the Middle Eastern. You know,
everybody is everybody, you know, there was a moment where
everybody was Osama bin Laden. Yeah, and so like we
then we couldn't dress out, like there was like a
(30:08):
mandate that we couldn't dress out on our dress out
days for fear that those kids were being targeted. Yeah,
crazy shit. September eleventh was wild.
Speaker 1 (30:22):
Yeah, we got to it on the podcast. It's very
fun comedy podcast where we drink tea.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
You know, it's it's comedy.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
Yeah. Well, I'm just laughing it up over here. The
terrible things that happened in the world. What a what
a what a joy at a delight? How do we
got this? Khalia? What did I do?
Speaker 3 (30:39):
Uh? Well, you were telling me that you were stuck.
Speaker 1 (30:43):
Yeah, now I got to get out of it all right. Yeah.
So other other fun work stuff. One time I got
fired by my own stepdad. That was dope.
Speaker 3 (30:53):
How did that go down?
Speaker 1 (30:55):
I was a high school janitor for a rival high school.
Khalia Living life?
Speaker 3 (31:08):
What did you do as what you do as the
janitor to get fired.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
Well, really, what it was is it's more of a layoff.
I didn't know the difference. It was more of a layoff.
They did, like, we don't need three janitors in the
summer for this high school. Also, we were definitely taking
the key for the soda machine and opening it up
and getting free sodas. But you know, that's what I felt,
like a guy with my lunch. I brought my lunch.
Speaker 3 (31:31):
That's the spoils of war.
Speaker 1 (31:33):
Yeah, but I guess that was like a problem.
Speaker 3 (31:34):
And then they're like, no, that's stealing you know the ethics. Yeah, yeah,
I don't like it. Yeah, okay.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
And also this is a fun story for that I
forget until I tell these stories. Is uh, I was
cleaning out the office one day and I was sweeping,
you know, and the secretary is like, oh, do you
have a girlfriend. I'm like no. She's like, because you've
got some moves with that brew. I'm like, this is
like a thirty year old woman talking about it. I'm like, sixteen.
Speaker 3 (32:02):
Cool, you were groomed. Bro.
Speaker 1 (32:05):
Yeah, they tried, they tried that they fired that's nuts.
That's probably for my own defense to like get him
out of here.
Speaker 3 (32:12):
Yeah, yeah, like he has to go.
Speaker 1 (32:15):
We've got the secretary. We got to get rid of
the kids. That's the problem. That's a solution, get rid
of the kids. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (32:22):
I I was fired and supposedly got a lifetime ban.
It's like when you have a lifetime ban, like how
long is it really? Yeah? From from Marine World, which
is now you would probably know what. That's Discovery Kingdom
(32:42):
the Six Flags in Vallejo. Yeah, okay, yeah, So I
worked at that six Flags from the time I was
fifteen until my senior year of high school. I started
out working in the summer program with kids, loved it,
and then I was a ride operator. You could not
tell me at that point in my life that I
(33:03):
was not going to work at a theme park for
the rest of my life. Like I thought, it was
so much fun, Like I loved it, like it was
a great job. The food was good, chicken strips and
fries every fucking day, Like it was amazing. But there
was this boy who had also and I was promoted.
(33:26):
I was a lead, so I was like importantly, oh yeah,
and there was another lead because the rides that I
worked were called so I work children and medium rides.
So medium rides are things that don't really leave the station,
so like a ride that'll spin, or even like the
Hammerhead that goes around and around the swings, rides that
(33:46):
don't go anywhere, those are called medium rides. And so
I was running the medium rides and there was another
kid who ran This is so crazy because we're sixteen.
Ye running these departments is ridiculous. He ran the Children's
Rights and we were having our morning meeting in the
little Children's Funhouse and me and him didn't really get along,
(34:09):
and I said some snarky things, and he said some
snarky things to me, hauled out, called me the in word,
and I knocked his ass out like I knocked his
I will never forget how fast I made it down
those stairs. We were having a meeting. I was kind
of upstairs chilling, and he had said something smart. I
said something smart, and he's like fing inward, and I
(34:32):
flew down those stairs to that young man and I
cold clocked him across the jaw. And then you got
it at the time too. You know, I studied Kajakimbo
from fifth grade through high school. So when he hopped
back up off the ground. I was ready. I'm like,
let's go. Kicked him in the face. It was a thing.
Speaker 1 (34:54):
I mean, he brought a little, just a little, a little,
A lot, yeah, a lot.
Speaker 3 (35:01):
There are so many things that happened in childhood that
when I look back on it now, I'm like, there's
no reason I should have gotten in trouble for that.
Speaker 1 (35:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (35:09):
I remember they pulled us both in the office, sat
us down, fired me right there in front of him,
which is also highly inappropriate.
Speaker 1 (35:16):
Right, fire him first, And it was like.
Speaker 3 (35:18):
You can't come back, blah blah blah blah. A couple
of weeks later, I come back with my friend and
her little her siblings, and they're following us around the
whole park. Now, mind you, this is probably two thousand
and four, two thousand and five. Yeah, So could I
go back to the Marine world today? I'm sure, But
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (35:38):
I feel like they because I got a lifetime when
I was a kid too. I feel like it's just
like for kids, it's like as a lifetime band, they're like, oh,
these kids are gonna take it because the kids are like,
oh my god, I can never come back here. But
I think it's really like yeah, you know when you're eighteen.
I mean, you probably won't because you're traumatized. But you know,
we're not going to make it traumatized.
Speaker 3 (35:56):
Yeah it worked.
Speaker 1 (35:58):
Yeah, yeah, So I think I think it's really just
until you're an adult. That's what I think, because I
don't think any adults are getting lifetime bands except for
like at bars, and then I think those those hold
pretty pretty well.
Speaker 3 (36:09):
I remember the last, the last job I quit when
I was working in twenty eighteen. I quit the day
that Prince died. Oh no, I think Prince died in
twenty eighteen. Hold on, let's fact check that.
Speaker 1 (36:26):
Okay, we can factorck that.
Speaker 3 (36:31):
Twenty sixteen. Oh damn, I quit working in twenty sixteen. Okay,
I gotta start telling my changing my stories. When I'm
on my stories of my life, I keep defaulting. You
know what it is. It is because when I tell
people all the time, when you quit working, that doesn't
mean you don't work anymore. That just means now you're
working a bunch of little bullshit jobs. Oh yeah, you know,
(36:53):
that's when I started ubering and lifting and pulse mating
and all this and that. When I was before, I
was like a bablished and with all this, but it
was the day Prince died. My manager pissed me off.
I went on lunch break and never came back. Yeah,
and here's my thing. If they're a good manager like this,
(37:16):
motherfucker's not even gonna call me.
Speaker 1 (37:18):
Really, Like, what if I was dead?
Speaker 3 (37:20):
What if somebody'd hurt me? I mean, if I was dead,
I wouldn't pick up the phone. But you get me.
Speaker 1 (37:24):
But I forgot you were like hurt.
Speaker 3 (37:26):
You didn't even check. You're just like, okale, you didn't.
Speaker 1 (37:29):
Come back whatever, respected that.
Speaker 3 (37:33):
Okay, you got You gotta give them that mean, no,
my body, my choice, that's wild. Yeah, I've always just
I don't believe in two weeks. They don't give you
two weeks. It wants to fire you. Why do I
give you two weeks? Because the moment you give somebody
two weeks, notice how they're playing with you. They played
Those two weeks are the most awkward two weeks ever. Yeah,
it sucks.
Speaker 1 (37:53):
Why do we need them? Nobody likes them? Let me go?
Speaker 3 (37:56):
No, no fire at will, quit at will, leave me alone. Now, Yes, agreed,
we're here man.
Speaker 1 (38:04):
Yeah, and we all quit managers. We all know, we
all all quit jobs. We quit managers. We all know.
Speaker 3 (38:10):
That's really what it is. Yeah, that's really.
Speaker 1 (38:13):
Every job that I've left. Like, this manager doesn't know
what they're doing, straight up doesn't know what they're doing.
I can't work for somebody that I don't think knows
what they're doing.
Speaker 3 (38:19):
An idiot. Yeah, can't work for an idiot.
Speaker 1 (38:21):
Can't work for an idiot. Not gonna do it, Like no,
Like I never I was never like a person in
a union and never striked for anything. But I have
shut down two companies by leaving and taking the ways
with me.
Speaker 3 (38:32):
What.
Speaker 1 (38:33):
Yeah, like they're like bigger companies, but that particular section
that ended up closing it's done for Yeah, like this
is bullshit. We should go.
Speaker 3 (38:43):
One of the best little bullshit jobs I had was
actually during the pandemic because I had come back to
Fairfield for what I thought was going to be like
a month because we didn't know what the fuck was
going on. My lease ended in March of twenty twenty,
so I was like, oh, well, we're on lockdown in anyway,
I'll just go home for like a month and then
come back to LA. I was stuck in Fairfield for
(39:03):
like six months.
Speaker 1 (39:04):
Yep.
Speaker 3 (39:05):
Yeah, So I'm like, I need to do something. So
I'm also going crazy out of my mind. In Fairfield,
I fucking was working overnights. I had My shift was
literally three am to seven am. I was working three
to seven at Amazon in Vacaville. They have an Amazon
warehouse in Vacaville that I was working at. Loved that
(39:27):
job because it was I was also at that point,
I was well into what it is that I'm trying
to do now. And there's that moment when you know,
it's like remember when you were, like, you know, twenty
to twenty five, and there was like the weird ass
old person that just worked at your job, Like why
the fuck are you here? Yeah, like go away, like
(39:48):
I very much, so, like I understood all of that.
So I'm like, I'm just gonna go here for four
hours and fucking sort these boxes. By the second week,
they had promoted they had promoted me. No, you know,
everyone that worked Sayer as a fucking idiot. Yeah, so
they promoted me, and I'm like, Okay, so I can
just stand here for four hours and train people, okay,
bet So That's what I did. And I just talked
(40:11):
to people for four hours. Sometimes I would stay for overtime,
and I mean, I loved it. I hate to say,
I don't know that you're supposed to say.
Speaker 1 (40:19):
Especially Amazon, I.
Speaker 3 (40:21):
Got paid, and you know, I had my little routine.
I would leave in the morning. I would go to
John Pajuice and be back in my mom's house by
eight am.
Speaker 1 (40:31):
Oh so you're doing overnights, okay, overnight?
Speaker 3 (40:33):
Yeah, three three am to seven am.
Speaker 1 (40:36):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (40:36):
Sometimes I would stay till about eight nine. But yeah,
that was that was me at Amazon, right, nice, Yeah,
it was. It was interesting.
Speaker 1 (40:46):
Yeah. I had to be a trader once and then
I told me how much he was getting paid to
replace me, and I'm like, I think you can figure
it out. I was like, no, I don't even make
half as much as you do, and you're replacing me
with double the cos. No, no, you can figure this.
Speaker 3 (40:58):
Out, right, you got it.
Speaker 1 (41:00):
You got it.
Speaker 3 (41:00):
Have a good one.
Speaker 1 (41:01):
I'll be watching movies on my DVD player that my
work gave me. Thank you.
Speaker 3 (41:05):
Yeah, no, absolutely. I definitely still have things from other
jobs that I just I don't know that they know
I have. Like the iPad I have is from an
old job.
Speaker 1 (41:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (41:14):
I just never gave it.
Speaker 1 (41:15):
Back and it's a loss.
Speaker 3 (41:17):
What they didn't ask me for it, so they don't ask.
Speaker 1 (41:20):
You got to give it back. But then they did
never follow up.
Speaker 3 (41:22):
It's like that's another lie that they tell you when
you're a kid. Because I was in band and they
were like, if you don't return, I was in band
and I had a brief spent on the golf team. Okay,
both of which, return your marching band uniform, return your
golf clubs, return all school equipment, or you won't get
your diploma. Well let me tell you what. I got
(41:44):
all the equipment and my diploma. Yeah, to this day,
if somebody wants to go golfing, I'm pulling out the
clubs and ib.
Speaker 1 (41:54):
High school hand me downs. Let's go.
Speaker 3 (41:58):
I don't care.
Speaker 1 (41:59):
Yeah, the club's a club, right, they still hit. They
were made better in the fifties. Anyway, We're.
Speaker 3 (42:06):
No shit. These these are these are good old fashioned
Solono County golf clubs. Baby, you don't get no better.
Speaker 1 (42:11):
Yeah, these are se aged. We're good. We're I can
take these to Ireland to do great. Right, all right,
I think we've gotten past our time. As is required
by law. Whenever I do a podcast.
Speaker 3 (42:25):
Oh no, I hope I gave you something.
Speaker 1 (42:27):
Alright, No you didn't. It was all garbage. We all
know it. Khleia, I don't know.
Speaker 3 (42:32):
Yeah, I feel no.
Speaker 1 (42:33):
How are you feeling? Having your peppermint tea, I'm.
Speaker 3 (42:38):
Gonna make another cup because the more I was talking
to you on the tightness and honestly I am. After
I talk to you, I'm going on vocal rest. So
I was supposed to do another podcast this afternoon as
a special guest, but I'm gonna have to because I
have to get up and go, and I'll have to
be very I know that that environment is gonna make
(42:58):
me lit. I it's like one of those like I
have not been able to talk and had a show
and the moment I get on stage, hey.
Speaker 1 (43:07):
Everybody doing that, oh, stage health?
Speaker 3 (43:09):
And then when I get off stage, stage health. So
I don't want to do that. I got a lot
of posting coming up this week, so I'm putting myself
on vocal rest. Also learned that from the theater take
it is this, people will want Hey, hey, vocal rest
is important. Do it. It fucking sucks because you're not talking,
(43:30):
and if you're like me, you like to talk. Give
your instrument a moment to rest, the moment you feel
it's different. Don't wait till you lose your voice. The
moment I feel my and I smoke weed. My vocal
rest includes me not being able to smoke, and you
know things like that and so yeah. So for the
(43:50):
next forty eight hours, I won't be saying a word
to anybody but rollo every now and again.
Speaker 1 (43:56):
And that's that, well that I want to thank you
so much for giving me your voice this morning.
Speaker 3 (44:00):
No, of course it is now, Ben.
Speaker 1 (44:03):
I didn't do it.
Speaker 3 (44:04):
It's you.
Speaker 1 (44:07):
It's you. No, no, no.
Speaker 3 (44:10):
I can't wait to see you. We're gonna have a
lot of fun. Thank you so much for allowing Niles
as well. I think you'll be really pleased with him.
Speaker 1 (44:17):
I think I watched like fifty six secs, like yes,
that's a yes, that's a yes. Perfect. Yeah. It's Wednesday,
April ninth, nine pm the Silver Lining fourteen fourteen sixteen Street, Sacramento.
Tickets thirty dollars, event bright dot com. Come see it.
Excellent drinks only room for like fifty of you, so
you gotta get in.
Speaker 3 (44:35):
Oh, excellent drinks.
Speaker 1 (44:36):
Excellent drinks.
Speaker 3 (44:38):
We're going out afterwards apparently too.
Speaker 1 (44:40):
Oh that's most likely.
Speaker 3 (44:42):
Yeah, okay, good ye And I do this every time
I have a show in Sacramento. Gavin, come to the show, Bro,
come to the show. I love you, Bro. I love
you Bro. Like every every lesbian has, they won. Let
me tell you, Gavin Newsom, I climb that tree.
Speaker 1 (45:07):
Today could be the day, or like a week and
a half from now, could be the day. You lead
him back, Lead him back, show the goods? All right? Uh, Khalia?
Where can people find out more about you? What they
want to follow you? On your You're doing? You're doing,
You're doing so much stuff. You got festivals coming up
all that.
Speaker 3 (45:24):
Yeah, I'm at whatever, Khalia on all platforms. My website
is Kaliah McNeil dot com. You can if you really
want to reach me, just hit Ben up and Ben
can reach me.
Speaker 1 (45:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (45:38):
Ben is my liaison.
Speaker 1 (45:40):
Yep, that's it perfect, all right? And you can find
more of me for some reason at barleymepod dot com.
Or I used to say across social media. I realize
it's just Facebook and Instagram at this point at Barley
me Pod, I'm not I'm not the things are shut down.
I'm not getting new accounts. I'm YouTube, I guess. Also YouTube,
I guess. But yeah, thank you so much Khalia for
(46:02):
coming on. This was wonderful. I'll see you in a
week and a half. I hope you get all the
vocal rest you need and deserve.
Speaker 3 (46:09):
Thank you, Ben, I'll talk to you soon.
Speaker 1 (46:11):
Sounds good. Thanks a lot for those listeners. Thanks for listening.
We have a good life or whatever. I don't know
any new outro for this. It used to be get
home safe, but now we're not always freaking alcohols. I
don't know what to say. I'll figure it out.
Speaker 3 (46:23):
Bye, It's all good.
Something.
Speaker 2 (00:00):
They call it functional alcoholism. But if you know anything
about Ben, he's got vision with precision microphones and the
tinkle love derision. Here about to hear what being can be.
It's time for Barley and me. Welcome to this is
(00:28):
why I drink. I'm your host, Ben Rice. This is
a Barley Meat production.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
Where I sit with very interesting people and I have
some drinks. Could be whatever they choose. Today's guest is, oh,
I didn't know that was my life.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
Khalia McNeill.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
And Khalia, what are we drinking today?
Speaker 3 (00:49):
We are drinking a peppermint tea in my favorite glass.
This is a gangster. This is one of my favorite
purchases from Costplus World Market. That's how I knew I
was an adult.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
Yeah, yeah, nobody under twenty seven goes in there.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
Peppermint tea with honey and what I didn't tell you?
Something I do to make my tea bearable immediately. I
put in a cube of ice, okay, just to kind
of so I can actually drink it immediately.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
Okay, see, I got another stuff. We're supposed to drink
the same same thing now.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
I mean it's still very hot.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
I mean, I don't know when yours got done being
made to maybe we're at the same level anyway.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
It got literally when when you sent me the zoom link,
like that's why I was like, what's that? Ye?
Speaker 1 (01:44):
Perfect? Perfect? Okay, great, then yeah, we're the same thing.
And uh, today we're drinking a stash peppermint tea. But
you don't really actually play favorites, right.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
You know, I'm very unbiased when it comes to teas.
When we start talking about alcohol, yeah, we we have favorites.
I can't just be having vodka that says vodka on
the bottom, Like, what's the name of it? It's called vodka.
I don't want that, you know what I mean. But
with tea, I'm not a t snob. I'm trying to.
(02:15):
I feel like I could get there, but I'm not
a tea snob yet. Like I don't have all the
cool tea stuff.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
Yeah yeah, but what is it about peppermint tea that
it gets you the drinker?
Speaker 3 (02:27):
I like, it's really soothing to the to the to
the throat. I'm learning more and more that with what
I do, my throat is absolutely my instrument.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
Yep.
Speaker 3 (02:41):
And when that's the case, it's not really an excuse.
Oh I lost my voice. It's like, okay, but you
know we hired you for your voice, right, So peppermint
tea it's just very soothing to the throat because honestly,
what I used to do. I got this trick back
when I was in the theater. Is I used to
put like in the theater, like they'll you'll have like
(03:02):
regular tea, black tea, green tea, whatever, and people will
put peppermints in their tea. Okay, kind of dissolves with
the heat, and I'm like, well, I could also just
buy peppermint.
Speaker 1 (03:16):
Save a lot of money on that one.
Speaker 3 (03:18):
Yeah, And so that's that's how my peppermint tea was born.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
Yeah. And it's also great for clearing up your nasal
passages so you get a more clearer voice.
Speaker 3 (03:28):
See. Also you research.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
I did some research. I was figured I should do
it so I could be like, well, you know, there's
also positive benefits of this. It hels your gut biome
a little bit. It's just helping your whole body gut health.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
Gut health is important. Now, let me see what what
glasses that you have. You have an interesting.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
Mug, Yes, mine sets pansy all over it. Hold on
get it the Okay, there's a picture of pansy, but
it also gives you, you know, planting things for panties.
Speaker 3 (03:56):
Are you a plant dad? No, bless you.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
No. And I need this tea because I have a
really weird nasal thing going on. It's called allergies, I
think is what they call it, but it.
Speaker 3 (04:08):
Is, it is. And it's been pretty it's been pretty
warm out there yet.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
Yeah. Yeah, I don't like it. You're right, it came
in right with it.
Speaker 3 (04:15):
You guys took so cow's weather, and I don't know
how I feel about that.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
Oh, we're back to cold and dreary right now. It's okay, good,
We're like sorry about that. You can have it back,
all right, I did it. I'm sorry.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
Yeah. No. My sister and her family they're in Berkeley, well,
el Cerrito. Yeah, And I was talking to my nieces
the other day. They're like, oh, that just that it
was so hot here. I was like so hot? There
were talking about so hot there.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
I was, Yeah, it was eighty five a couple of
days ago. Gross. Yeah, no one needs that.
Speaker 3 (04:46):
But you you live in Sack, right, yeah, so I
mean Sacramento gets ridiculous.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
Yeah, don't care for it.
Speaker 3 (04:52):
Sacramento gets ridiculously hot.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
Yeah. Yeah, speaking of Sacramento, you're coming to Sacramento pretty soon.
Speaker 3 (04:58):
I am coming to Sacramento with you.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
Yeah, at the for you actually, yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:05):
Yeah, I'm looking forward to that. The bomb Shelter.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:09):
So I'm giving you, I guess new slash barely use material.
Is that the deal?
Speaker 1 (05:15):
Yeah? Whatever you want to do? Well yeah, no, I.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
Want to do what's on brand for the show?
Speaker 1 (05:20):
Tell me what's that's The idea is essentially you can
do whatever you want to do if you have some
new stuff you're working on or old stuff you wanted
to repolish. It's an idea of you're passing through to
your next weekend kind of show, and it gives you
a chance to like it's like I got this bit
that I really want to do, but like the next
show is going to pay me, like, you know, fifteen
hundred bucks, and I don't want to have it be bad,
you know, So this is a chance to like make
a little money and like tighten that stuff for like
(05:42):
a small audience like thirty to fifty in like a
little tiny piano bar.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
I like that, Oh it's a piano bar. Yeah, oh
I'm wearing a suit.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
Yeah, you're between two pianos.
Speaker 3 (05:56):
Oh that's classy. It's like Zach Gallifan.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
Yeah yeah, very classy. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
Now you just had your very first one.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
Yeah yeah, uh yeah. A lot of things went terribly wrong,
and that's okay. Uh first time. You know. You can't
you can't control everything. All the media marketing that I did,
they always sponted like this Sunday before, like, oh sorry,
I just saw this one. I said it six weeks ago. Bro,
I said it six weeks ago, so I had no
no promo push. But I've got PR for this one,
so we're good. Uh, because well, you.
Speaker 3 (06:27):
Know, I've also I do my part as well. I
have a couple of ads running and things like that.
So I think it'll be a good time.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
I think it'll be good. And then the day, the
plan was like we'd have the bartender go through the
show through the audience to get drink orders, you know,
because it's not as much up and down. And then
the bartender got six so we only had one bartender,
so that was tough. But other than that, I mean,
it was I thought like it was. It was definitely
like eighty five percent of what I wanted to be
(06:56):
besides audience level, and I'm like, this is pretty much
what I wanted to be. I just gotta like iron
out like two three Kinks and then we're all we'll
be fine.
Speaker 3 (07:06):
Now my question for you, I feel like I'm interviewing
you know. Oh you froze on me.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
No, no, no, I stopped moving. I'm like, headlights okay.
Speaker 3 (07:16):
But you can hear me though. Okay, cool. Did we
meet when I did the show at Cobbs and Them? Yeah, okay,
I thought so.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
Yeah, yeah, you were cat calling Ashley on to stage.
Speaker 3 (07:34):
Yeah. First of all, you didn't have to bring that up.
Make it sure that that was that that was where
we met. Dammit. Yeah, jesus, it's hilarious. I've never seen
Ashley turn so red in my life.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
It was so great.
Speaker 3 (07:53):
It was, Hey, you gotta you gotta shoot or shoot.
Speaker 1 (07:55):
Yep, exactly exactly. But yeah, so you've gotten into you've
been doing comedy a long time.
Speaker 3 (08:03):
Yeah, you're thirteen for me, you know what, it feels
like a long time. But then I'll meet other comics
on the journey or whatever, and you're like twenty something
years and thirty something years and you're like, damn, I'm
still kind of like a baby in this yeah teenager.
Speaker 1 (08:22):
Where you are at thirteen years it's like pretty actually incredible.
It's pretty rare to get as far as you've gotten
that quickly.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
Thank you. It's just I mean, it's it was out
of obligation, you know. I was talking to a buddy
about this the other day, and it's like it was
because it's like when I moved to LA, it's like
I moved here with a specific goal, and comedy was
never it. Like I've always wanted to act and act
like comedic acting, yeah, but stand up was never really
(08:50):
the thing. I did it once before I left Atlanta.
I went to college in Atlanta. I did it once
before I left there, then moved to LA. But it's
like just like everybody else doing everything, but the thing.
Ran into a guy who used to run this weekly show,
bi weekly show, and he told me if I sold
(09:10):
X amount of tickets, then I could do like cold
opens on his show. So I made sure that that
happened every week or every other week, and that just
kind of slowly turned into me kind of dipping into
the scene. But there's just always that moment where you're like,
I got to do this really scary thing and like
quit all of the distractions. And that was in twenty
(09:30):
eighteen when I quit my job and I was like
it has to all be stand up and acting that,
Like I can't continue to give forty fifty hours a
week to these people, then I have nothing else to
give to myself. Now I've made for some very scary
moments and some very scary times over the years, but
(09:50):
I'm glad that I did what I did. And then
I you know, I'm maybe one of the few people
that I feel like the pandemic really helped me. Everybody
was forced to sit down, I think everybody on the
same playing field, and I hit the ground and ran
with it. I was doing zoom shows, I was doing this,
I was doing that. Then when the world opened back up,
it was like it was like it was time.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
To go yeah, and did you do any like sketches
and things like that as well?
Speaker 3 (10:16):
So I used to do sketches just as things would
come to me. And what I mean by that is
I wasn't I'm not the and I give kudos to
them because their medium isn't easy either. I'm not the
deisi banks. You know, let me you know, this is
our shooting schedule. We have an eight hour shoot day
to day. We're gonna bust through these ten twelve sketches
(10:37):
and then we're gonna release them over it. No, Like
I'm the one like if I see some funny shit,
like yeah, like, I'll make a thing on it and
then kind of move on. I used to do a
lot of parodies, Like I would do parodies of songs
be cause I mean, I grew up a nineties skit.
I love the weird out, so I would do shit
like that. But no, I let them have that. That's
their thing. Now, if only they would let us have
(10:58):
stand up.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
Yeah. Yeah, so basically you were doing just stand up
and then also like commentary of sorts, you would you'd
pop on your kicktok commentary and stuff. Yeah quick.
Speaker 3 (11:15):
I do this thing on my page called the bust out,
and I only it doesn't happen all the time, and
I only do it on my stories because I'm like,
if this lives on my page, I could probably get
in Trump. Yeah, but it's just when I've gotten into
it with someone online or someone It's just what I
don't understand about the Internet today is there could be
(11:35):
a video about something stupid Trump has done aka just
getting up and breathing. Yeah, and the thousands of comments
that are like fuck Trump, blah blah, And then the
moment I'm like, yeah, I do sucks fuck you in
word and that's like wait, wait, I'm saying the same
(11:56):
thing everybody else said. But it's like, also, I'm a comedian,
I'm a ride, I'm intellectual, so I'm like, okay, fuck me,
I'm a dieg, I'm a man. Sure. Then I go
to their profile and I'm seeing their ugly children or
they're terrible looking parents, and I'm like, well, now the
world gets to see, so let's go ahead and put
this on my story. I do a nice little screen
record and I just read people for filth. Yeah, and
(12:19):
it's called the bust Out and people really like it.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
Yeah they do.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
And sometimes I get reported, but it is what it is.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
Yeah, it's like, well, it's only my stories. That's a
little boop. Okay, that's gone. That's fine, there'll be another one. Unfortunately,
there will always be another one.
Speaker 3 (12:31):
Yeah, absolutely, And those are stories. Oh, they stay up
for the full twenty four and it's always funny because
once I put the story up, my rule is I'm
done with you. I have nothing else to say because
I've told you to leave me alone, and you keep
going and it never fails is once the story goes up.
Now they're dming me.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
Oh excuse me, No, no, nope, you said.
Speaker 3 (12:51):
This on a public platform. Your page ain't private, so
let's go.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
Yeah. Oops, are there consequences? Oh? No, such, and they're minor.
They're such minor contacts. You know.
Speaker 3 (13:01):
There's so much weird shit going.
Speaker 1 (13:03):
On right now, Ben, But don't how to walk away.
It's a really important skill that some people don't master.
Speaker 3 (13:09):
Yeah, I'm learning that. I'm getting better at that. Yeah,
but I'm learning that because I'm also at the point
now where it's like I really can afford to be
on restriction for thirty days from this feature and that
like what really got me about a month and some
change ago, And it's all the powers that be, because
fuck them. But I said something about Milania Trump on
(13:31):
inauguration Day and they took away my ability to collaborate.
Now that that's hitting me hard. Yeah, because I was
about to go on the road. I couldn't collab with
any of the clubs for thirty days. I was like,
fuck you guys. Yeah, oh okay, you got me. I'll
shut up.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
God. Yeah there. It's almost like that anyway, doesn't matter
what who owned Instagram's Facebook? And then it's meta with everyone.
I'm not going to call it that. We're not calling
any of these things these things, right, We're not. Yeah,
it's calling it meta. Come on, no one's calling it at.
Speaker 3 (14:00):
No, it's Facebook, it's Twitter.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
Yeah what I It's like, oh, is he a great
brilliant business mind? He took the one thing that Twitter had,
a tweet. It's like, we don't call it that, we
call it a post. What makes you different? What makes
you different? What are you doing? Yeah, it's a tweet? Twitter? Yeah.
Speaker 3 (14:16):
Because and the fact that you know it's Twitter and
it's always going to be Twitter is when they introduce
it as X they always put in parentheses formally Twitter
formally known as Twitter. Yeah, like if I changed my name,
ain't nobody like you though? Like, no, Like, it's it's
it's Twitter.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
Sorry, it's the one thing we did name. Sorry.
Speaker 3 (14:34):
Yeah, my prince. We love Prince to death. We've never
called him the artist, never called.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
Him the artist.
Speaker 3 (14:39):
No, it's it's prince, yeah, exactly, stop playing.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
With us exactly. So, uh, how long would you say
that you were acting or like pursuing acting before like
stand up kind of fell on your.
Speaker 3 (14:51):
Lap whole life. I went to school for theater, so
I agree is in theater arts. And while I was
in school, I, unbeknownst to me, I was sharpening this
tool that we now use on stage every day. When
I was in school, I used to do a lot
of hosting. I would host you know, step shows, parties,
(15:11):
homecoming events, all this and that. So just you know,
being on stage, live on stage at all times, and
you know, as a stand up, that's helping with what
we do every day, you know, whether it's crowd work
or whatever. It wasn't until so my first stand up
was in twenty twelve. I had just got back from
(15:32):
the cruise ships. I used to DJ and host parties
for Royal Caribbean Cruise Line, and after the ship I
went back to Atlanta and a buddy of mine at
the time, he was really the only stand up comedian
that like I knew personally, and people would always ask me,
have you tried stand up? Have you tried stand up?
Just because I have just kind of that comedic personality.
(15:54):
So I remember my first show and it was the
blackest look, the blackest thing I could have. I got
a T shirt made for the show. This is like
an amateur open mind.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
Everybody, everybody was, everybody was coming behind your back.
Speaker 3 (16:08):
I want to see the sweatshirt, I abslutely do.
Speaker 1 (16:09):
I absolutely do want it. I have it, I.
Speaker 3 (16:12):
Haven't, I know I have it. Ye, this is the
shirt that I had made. Is it too blurry or
it's coming in?
Speaker 1 (16:26):
And that you got with the microphone underneath it?
Speaker 3 (16:29):
Yeah, hey, that was my my, my, my sweatshirt that
I made. And I wrote out the set, but again
I wasn't the stand up yet. So I'm writing out
this set BND like I'm writing the script. I'm like,
and then my dog and then I did, and I'm
you know, I'm I memorized it as I would memorize lines,
(16:51):
and it went great, and for a while that's how
I wrote. And I'm like, I can't keep right. I
don't think everybody's writing like, no, excuse me, and that
turned into I do bullet I basically I write with
bullet points. Now, yeah, that way, I'm also like if
I ever lose something, you have no idea what this.
(17:14):
It's just like, you know, like a topic topic bullet points. Yeah,
But to me, I also think that that helps me
grow as a stand up because I'm not reliant on
just what's on this paper. Now there are there is
a version of the joke where I have obviously tried
to write it out, but when it comes down to
like set list this or that.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
Yeah, I think everybody writes differently, but yeah, for me,
it's it's uh yeah, like a name that you have
for your joke and then like bullet points when it's new.
Excuse me, when it's new, I like bullet points or
don't forget the things I want to touch on. Yeah,
and like oh forgot number three, but nobody knows, right
because it's in the bullet points.
Speaker 3 (17:57):
It's not like absolutely absolutely Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
It's funny how because there's a comic up here, Robert Moto.
He used to type them all out and then laminate
him and they can have a notebook and he would
flip and he'd memorize him. But it was like word
for word. I'm like, but he's like a crowd work comic.
I'm like, you know that you're not going to be
tied to these words, right, like.
Speaker 3 (18:16):
You know, that's a lot of dedication. Is he autistic?
Speaker 1 (18:22):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (18:23):
Okay, he doesn't.
Speaker 1 (18:25):
He doesn't give it, but he you know what, No,
he's he's super he's super meticulous. That's the thing. He's
super meridiculous. That's a good point. Like he's it's gonna
be perfect or it doesn't exist.
Speaker 3 (18:37):
Yeah, I think he's there. Yeah, it's okay, I'm just
letting you know what you described. Yeah, that's autism.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
Yeah. Yeah, well if anybody would know, it's him. His
brother is actually a medical professional in the autism field.
Speaker 3 (18:51):
So well there you go.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
Yeah, speaking about sorry, not autism, Jesus, excuse me, speaking
of a Yeah, speaking of siblings in the medical field. Yeah,
that was very that was you posted a story about
your sister on TV.
Speaker 3 (19:09):
My sister, Yeah, yeah, she is excuse me. She works
at out of Kaiser and Fanole actually, but she is
the director of physicians Recruitment for Northern California. So with
that comes a lot of just community outreach and things
of that nature. So so every couple of months she'll
(19:32):
hop on the Channel seven News in the morning and
do her whole Hey, it's summertime. Make sure your kiddos
this and this, and I love to bust her ass
for it, and just like she busts my ass when
I'm like, hey, gome to my show.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
Like I love that both of you are in community
outreach essentially, because you're like, oh, yeah, I was doing
it for this cruise line. I was at the parties
as at school like You's like, we just built. That's
what we do. We're McNeil's.
Speaker 3 (20:01):
We building the McNeil's build community.
Speaker 1 (20:05):
Yeah, that's dope. Yeah, I can't. I like to do it. Uh.
I'm like that's what I do too, but I do it.
So suddenly I'm like I don't like to be the
face of anything. I'm like, I don't like are you?
I just don't like credit. I don't I don't want
compliments or attention.
Speaker 3 (20:22):
I'm like, no, nothing, Oh, I can't wait to compliment.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
Don't do it. Well, I'm gonna bomb that way. You
don't have anything to say that's nice.
Speaker 3 (20:34):
Do you do you have siblings?
Speaker 1 (20:36):
Oh? Yeah, I got six sisters.
Speaker 3 (20:38):
Mmm, where do you fall in line? Uh?
Speaker 1 (20:42):
So I have uh four older too, younger.
Speaker 3 (20:47):
Wow, okay, So, like, were your girlfriends and they have
hard times?
Speaker 1 (20:52):
Well girlfriends, No, I didn't start dangel. I was like
out of the house.
Speaker 3 (20:56):
I no, okay, that's aw we all that.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
I think two I think they've met two girlfriends.
Speaker 3 (21:02):
Ever six sisters. You don't mess around.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
I can't I get beat up.
Speaker 3 (21:10):
Yeah. Yeah, that's why you're such a nice guy. That's
the cure. Ladies. Yeah, I have a bunch of daughters,
one son.
Speaker 1 (21:18):
Yep.
Speaker 3 (21:18):
Then you'll create a good man in the world.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
Yeah. And even then we'll have struggles because we're we're
dumb and it's real.
Speaker 3 (21:25):
It's okay, Well that's that's just genetics.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
Yeah, that I mean is it's society, you know, like
we need to talk about it. Like, you know, I
was in a great early twenties guy. I was like,
I think it was like twenty and I'm like, oh,
I should stop being a piece of garbage. Maybe. So
even then, you know, with all that, it's still to
overcome a lot of stuff. Yeah, like a lot of
control things.
Speaker 3 (21:47):
I don't know, I get it, but yeah, I know.
It's just just me and my sister. But our relationship
is interesting because she is seven years older than me.
Speaker 1 (21:58):
Okay, So for a good.
Speaker 3 (22:02):
Majority of childhood, I was just like the annoying little
sister until like college, when then it was like, Okay,
the age is kind of even out a bit. But
I bothered her for a long time.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. My youngest sister and I we
were like wrtal enemies for like all through school and
then yeah, now we're best of friends. We hang out
all the time.
Speaker 3 (22:27):
Gotta be Now, is everybody in the Sacramento area still.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
No, no, no, no no. We grew up Midwest, we're all
We're all over now, I got let's see, one is
in Sacramento, tour in Sacramento. Sorry, one's in s F
North Dakota still somehow Tennessee and.
Speaker 3 (22:45):
Oregon, North Dakota. That's where you're from.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
Well, okay, if we're gonna do where we're from, that's
a different I'm a I'm a military brat. Were but
it was a coast guards. We were always coast, and
we were always north, So we're like the furthest south
I ever lived when I was a kid was Massachusetts. Okay,
so Maine, Massachusetts, Alaska, Washington, North Dakota, Minnesota, and like
(23:10):
two months in South Dakota.
Speaker 3 (23:12):
I have a very special place in my heart for
the Coast Guard.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (23:17):
My very first acting gig that I booked was on
this show called Animal Kingdom on TNT, and my character
was a coast Guard person. There was like something going
on on a boat, and so I learned at that time,
I didn't realize that there is an entertainment division of
the Coast Guard. So literally, literally anything that's ever filmed
(23:41):
on water, I don't care what it is, there is
a Coastguard, you know, offhand, just to make sure that
everything is okay. But in this instance, since my character
was coast guard, they had me like on the actual
like boat. Everybody else on the boat was an actual
coast Guard person except for me, and so it's like
(24:02):
I hop off the boat. I'm like, I saved the
Save the dirl and I hop back on the boat
and do all this and that. And then at the
end of shooting, the coast Guard was just gonna take
me back to you know, back to the docks or
whatever on the boat, and they were like, do you
want to drive the boat? And I was like, oh,
I was like I don't want to, Yeah, I want
to drive the boat. And so they kind of took
(24:23):
us out of the harbor a little bit and they
were like, all right, flor it and I'm like floor it.
They're like listen. They were like, if anything happens, You're
literally with the perfect people if something happens, And like,
I gotta find the picture. If I find the picture,
I'll send it to you. But there's like this picture
of me, and like the moment I just hit full throttle,
(24:43):
like my I am grinning so hard and I'm just
like in my coast guard gear and I was I
went to town on that boat. It was such a
good time.
Speaker 1 (24:52):
That's way better st I mean, I guess I drove
a boat when I was like a kid. No, because
my family's uh, water based, because yeah, you get from somewhere.
So I probably drove a boat when I was like
seven or eight, but it was like, you know, a
little dinghy and whatever. I probably drew. Yeah, my grandpa
had like a lobster boat. We'd go out and yeah, yeah,
(25:14):
I think I drove that. But my first adult driving
a boat was when I was a commercial fisherman. And uh,
don't recommend you're Gordon. I almost got on. Uh well
this is not almost got on. I got invited to
be on a boat that ended up being on Deadia's
catch really, but I said no, yeah, OK, because I
was like I would like to go home. This sucks.
(25:35):
I hate this.
Speaker 3 (25:36):
You're a commercial fisherman. Yeah, out of high school, Jesus been,
You're an onion.
Speaker 1 (25:42):
Yeah, I got stories. I got I keep forgetting that
I've done things. You know.
Speaker 3 (25:46):
No, I feel you on that though, because it's like
to our point earlier where it's like I've been doing
stand up. This is my thirteenth year. Now there are
things courses of my life that I haven't even touched, yeah,
on stage, and it's like like will I get to it?
When will I? Like you don't you don't even think
about it, Yeah, until somebody asks you something. It's like, oh, yeah,
(26:06):
I did used to live on a cruise ship. Have
you ever talked about that on stage? Well? No, why not?
I don't know? Yeah, you know what I mean, Like
I don't, I don't, I don't know. So I think
it's so much lives.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
There's so much you have to like establish because it's
not an usual lifestyle, right, Like I lived on a
cruise ship. What does that entail, right, you gotta like
tell all that and like where's the fun now? You
gotta find the funny part and still get the information out.
That's the top. Man. It's tough. Like I've been trying
to tell boating stories for forever and I'm just like,
you know, this is more of like a one man
like what yeah, but like.
Speaker 3 (26:40):
It's like a niche crowd conversation, Like it better be
a boating convention if you're gonna tell those jokes.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
Yeah, exactly. So the first time I was driving a
boat as an adult, my cabin is like, hey, I'm
gonna go take a nap. It's smooth sailing until this
point there's gonna be like all these Rocky craggy terrible
things just come get me. When we're like ten minutes away,
I'm like okay, And yeah, man, he slept through my warnings.
I was like shaking him and yelling at him. He
didn't wake up, and I'm like, well, I mean I
(27:07):
gotta get back up there, yeacause Rocky craggy bullshit's coming up.
And I like and it's dead night, and uh so
I'm just up there just screaming his name over and
over again driving this boat through these things. They're like
two feet off the bow and I'm like barely missing
(27:27):
my first day on the job. Didn't hit nothing, Khaliah
didn't hit nothing. We made it through. He woke up
an hour later like, oh everyone was there. I'm like,
we're past it. Man. Yeah, yeah, terriffy white, terrible terror
of course.
Speaker 3 (27:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (27:47):
I don't recommends to do.
Speaker 1 (27:50):
Yeah, I got ten deniers day three, Like, didn't have
I warmed down yet to pick fish out of the nets.
So and we caught like eighty we caught thirty seven
thousand pounds of the day. What thirty seven thousand pounds
of fish in a day, it's just two of us Internet,
and we'd pick them out if they get stuck, you
gotta like pick them out. I didn't. I didn't have
my form down, So I like, that's risk awful, dude,
(28:14):
it's brutal. If it don't come out, you know what
you do, You smash me in the face of the mallet, Like.
Speaker 3 (28:18):
What, yes, that sounds awful.
Speaker 1 (28:24):
Yeah, it was not interested. No, it was awful. And
that's like when you're like, hey, you want to come run, No,
I'm good, I did. I did my son did my
one summer? Man, I'm done.
Speaker 3 (28:33):
You do that for a whole summer.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
I did it for a whole summer two thousand and one.
Couldn't go home on time because a certain something happened
in two thousand and one.
Speaker 3 (28:42):
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Where were you? What? What
waters were you voting?
Speaker 1 (28:47):
I was in the Aleutian Islands in Alaska.
Speaker 3 (28:51):
Yeah, man, you know what, you stressed me.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
I do stuff. Yeah, but that was Yeah. I didn't
need fish for like seven years.
Speaker 3 (29:02):
So how long were you stuck there? Like, I'm assuming
September eleventh?
Speaker 1 (29:08):
Yeah, yeah, I think I got out the nineteenth or twentieth,
I think. So it wasn't that bad.
Speaker 3 (29:13):
Well, yeah, you know what, You're not wrong then, because
that was Yeah, that was just pretty much at the
end of the summer. That was my That was my
first year of high school.
Speaker 1 (29:25):
Oh my god.
Speaker 3 (29:26):
R and I was in Rotc, Okay. And I remember
around the time that that happened, we had just started,
like we were in school for like maybe two weeks,
and once a week we would have to dress out
in our in our Air Force uniform. And so with
(29:46):
nine to eleven happening, and then we're in Rotc. And
then there were a couple of kids in Rotc that
were Indian you know, what have you. And people don't
know the difference between India and the Middle Eastern. You know,
everybody is everybody, you know, there was a moment where
everybody was Osama bin Laden. Yeah, and so like we
then we couldn't dress out, like there was like a
(30:08):
mandate that we couldn't dress out on our dress out
days for fear that those kids were being targeted. Yeah,
crazy shit. September eleventh was wild.
Speaker 1 (30:22):
Yeah, we got to it on the podcast. It's very
fun comedy podcast where we drink tea.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
You know, it's it's comedy.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
Yeah. Well, I'm just laughing it up over here. The
terrible things that happened in the world. What a what
a what a joy at a delight? How do we
got this? Khalia? What did I do?
Speaker 3 (30:39):
Uh? Well, you were telling me that you were stuck.
Speaker 1 (30:43):
Yeah, now I got to get out of it all right. Yeah.
So other other fun work stuff. One time I got
fired by my own stepdad. That was dope.
Speaker 3 (30:53):
How did that go down?
Speaker 1 (30:55):
I was a high school janitor for a rival high school.
Khalia Living life?
Speaker 3 (31:08):
What did you do as what you do as the
janitor to get fired.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
Well, really, what it was is it's more of a layoff.
I didn't know the difference. It was more of a layoff.
They did, like, we don't need three janitors in the
summer for this high school. Also, we were definitely taking
the key for the soda machine and opening it up
and getting free sodas. But you know, that's what I felt,
like a guy with my lunch. I brought my lunch.
Speaker 3 (31:31):
That's the spoils of war.
Speaker 1 (31:33):
Yeah, but I guess that was like a problem.
Speaker 3 (31:34):
And then they're like, no, that's stealing you know the ethics. Yeah, yeah,
I don't like it. Yeah, okay.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
And also this is a fun story for that I
forget until I tell these stories. Is uh, I was
cleaning out the office one day and I was sweeping,
you know, and the secretary is like, oh, do you
have a girlfriend. I'm like no. She's like, because you've
got some moves with that brew. I'm like, this is
like a thirty year old woman talking about it. I'm like, sixteen.
Speaker 3 (32:02):
Cool, you were groomed. Bro.
Speaker 1 (32:05):
Yeah, they tried, they tried that they fired that's nuts.
That's probably for my own defense to like get him
out of here.
Speaker 3 (32:12):
Yeah, yeah, like he has to go.
Speaker 1 (32:15):
We've got the secretary. We got to get rid of
the kids. That's the problem. That's a solution, get rid
of the kids. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (32:22):
I I was fired and supposedly got a lifetime ban.
It's like when you have a lifetime ban, like how
long is it really? Yeah? From from Marine World, which
is now you would probably know what. That's Discovery Kingdom
(32:42):
the Six Flags in Vallejo. Yeah, okay, yeah, So I
worked at that six Flags from the time I was
fifteen until my senior year of high school. I started
out working in the summer program with kids, loved it,
and then I was a ride operator. You could not
tell me at that point in my life that I
(33:03):
was not going to work at a theme park for
the rest of my life. Like I thought, it was
so much fun, Like I loved it, like it was
a great job. The food was good, chicken strips and
fries every fucking day, Like it was amazing. But there
was this boy who had also and I was promoted.
(33:26):
I was a lead, so I was like importantly, oh yeah,
and there was another lead because the rides that I
worked were called so I work children and medium rides.
So medium rides are things that don't really leave the station,
so like a ride that'll spin, or even like the
Hammerhead that goes around and around the swings, rides that
(33:46):
don't go anywhere, those are called medium rides. And so
I was running the medium rides and there was another
kid who ran This is so crazy because we're sixteen.
Ye running these departments is ridiculous. He ran the Children's
Rights and we were having our morning meeting in the
little Children's Funhouse and me and him didn't really get along,
(34:09):
and I said some snarky things, and he said some
snarky things to me, hauled out, called me the in word,
and I knocked his ass out like I knocked his
I will never forget how fast I made it down
those stairs. We were having a meeting. I was kind
of upstairs chilling, and he had said something smart. I
said something smart, and he's like fing inward, and I
(34:32):
flew down those stairs to that young man and I
cold clocked him across the jaw. And then you got
it at the time too. You know, I studied Kajakimbo
from fifth grade through high school. So when he hopped
back up off the ground. I was ready. I'm like,
let's go. Kicked him in the face. It was a thing.
Speaker 1 (34:54):
I mean, he brought a little, just a little, a little,
A lot, yeah, a lot.
Speaker 3 (35:01):
There are so many things that happened in childhood that
when I look back on it now, I'm like, there's
no reason I should have gotten in trouble for that.
Speaker 1 (35:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (35:09):
I remember they pulled us both in the office, sat
us down, fired me right there in front of him,
which is also highly inappropriate.
Speaker 1 (35:16):
Right, fire him first, And it was like.
Speaker 3 (35:18):
You can't come back, blah blah blah blah. A couple
of weeks later, I come back with my friend and
her little her siblings, and they're following us around the
whole park. Now, mind you, this is probably two thousand
and four, two thousand and five. Yeah, So could I
go back to the Marine world today? I'm sure, But
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (35:38):
I feel like they because I got a lifetime when
I was a kid too. I feel like it's just
like for kids, it's like as a lifetime band, they're like, oh,
these kids are gonna take it because the kids are like,
oh my god, I can never come back here. But
I think it's really like yeah, you know when you're eighteen.
I mean, you probably won't because you're traumatized. But you know,
we're not going to make it traumatized.
Speaker 3 (35:56):
Yeah it worked.
Speaker 1 (35:58):
Yeah, yeah, So I think I think it's really just
until you're an adult. That's what I think, because I
don't think any adults are getting lifetime bands except for
like at bars, and then I think those those hold
pretty pretty well.
Speaker 3 (36:09):
I remember the last, the last job I quit when
I was working in twenty eighteen. I quit the day
that Prince died. Oh no, I think Prince died in
twenty eighteen. Hold on, let's fact check that.
Speaker 1 (36:26):
Okay, we can factorck that.
Speaker 3 (36:31):
Twenty sixteen. Oh damn, I quit working in twenty sixteen. Okay,
I gotta start telling my changing my stories. When I'm
on my stories of my life, I keep defaulting. You
know what it is. It is because when I tell
people all the time, when you quit working, that doesn't
mean you don't work anymore. That just means now you're
working a bunch of little bullshit jobs. Oh yeah, you know,
(36:53):
that's when I started ubering and lifting and pulse mating
and all this and that. When I was before, I
was like a bablished and with all this, but it
was the day Prince died. My manager pissed me off.
I went on lunch break and never came back. Yeah,
and here's my thing. If they're a good manager like this,
(37:16):
motherfucker's not even gonna call me.
Speaker 1 (37:18):
Really, Like, what if I was dead?
Speaker 3 (37:20):
What if somebody'd hurt me? I mean, if I was dead,
I wouldn't pick up the phone. But you get me.
Speaker 1 (37:24):
But I forgot you were like hurt.
Speaker 3 (37:26):
You didn't even check. You're just like, okale, you didn't.
Speaker 1 (37:29):
Come back whatever, respected that.
Speaker 3 (37:33):
Okay, you got You gotta give them that mean, no,
my body, my choice, that's wild. Yeah, I've always just
I don't believe in two weeks. They don't give you
two weeks. It wants to fire you. Why do I
give you two weeks? Because the moment you give somebody
two weeks, notice how they're playing with you. They played
Those two weeks are the most awkward two weeks ever. Yeah,
it sucks.
Speaker 1 (37:53):
Why do we need them? Nobody likes them? Let me go?
Speaker 3 (37:56):
No, no fire at will, quit at will, leave me alone. Now, Yes, agreed,
we're here man.
Speaker 1 (38:04):
Yeah, and we all quit managers. We all know, we
all all quit jobs. We quit managers. We all know.
Speaker 3 (38:10):
That's really what it is. Yeah, that's really.
Speaker 1 (38:13):
Every job that I've left. Like, this manager doesn't know
what they're doing, straight up doesn't know what they're doing.
I can't work for somebody that I don't think knows
what they're doing.
Speaker 3 (38:19):
An idiot. Yeah, can't work for an idiot.
Speaker 1 (38:21):
Can't work for an idiot. Not gonna do it, Like no,
Like I never I was never like a person in
a union and never striked for anything. But I have
shut down two companies by leaving and taking the ways
with me.
Speaker 3 (38:32):
What.
Speaker 1 (38:33):
Yeah, like they're like bigger companies, but that particular section
that ended up closing it's done for Yeah, like this
is bullshit. We should go.
Speaker 3 (38:43):
One of the best little bullshit jobs I had was
actually during the pandemic because I had come back to
Fairfield for what I thought was going to be like
a month because we didn't know what the fuck was
going on. My lease ended in March of twenty twenty,
so I was like, oh, well, we're on lockdown in anyway,
I'll just go home for like a month and then
come back to LA. I was stuck in Fairfield for
(39:03):
like six months.
Speaker 1 (39:04):
Yep.
Speaker 3 (39:05):
Yeah, So I'm like, I need to do something. So
I'm also going crazy out of my mind. In Fairfield,
I fucking was working overnights. I had My shift was
literally three am to seven am. I was working three
to seven at Amazon in Vacaville. They have an Amazon
warehouse in Vacaville that I was working at. Loved that
(39:27):
job because it was I was also at that point,
I was well into what it is that I'm trying
to do now. And there's that moment when you know,
it's like remember when you were, like, you know, twenty
to twenty five, and there was like the weird ass
old person that just worked at your job, Like why
the fuck are you here? Yeah, like go away, like
(39:48):
I very much, so, like I understood all of that.
So I'm like, I'm just gonna go here for four
hours and fucking sort these boxes. By the second week,
they had promoted they had promoted me. No, you know,
everyone that worked Sayer as a fucking idiot. Yeah, so
they promoted me, and I'm like, Okay, so I can
just stand here for four hours and train people, okay,
bet So That's what I did. And I just talked
(40:11):
to people for four hours. Sometimes I would stay for overtime,
and I mean, I loved it. I hate to say,
I don't know that you're supposed to say.
Speaker 1 (40:19):
Especially Amazon, I.
Speaker 3 (40:21):
Got paid, and you know, I had my little routine.
I would leave in the morning. I would go to
John Pajuice and be back in my mom's house by
eight am.
Speaker 1 (40:31):
Oh so you're doing overnights, okay, overnight?
Speaker 3 (40:33):
Yeah, three three am to seven am.
Speaker 1 (40:36):
Okay.
Speaker 3 (40:36):
Sometimes I would stay till about eight nine. But yeah,
that was that was me at Amazon, right, nice, Yeah,
it was. It was interesting.
Speaker 1 (40:46):
Yeah. I had to be a trader once and then
I told me how much he was getting paid to
replace me, and I'm like, I think you can figure
it out. I was like, no, I don't even make
half as much as you do, and you're replacing me
with double the cos. No, no, you can figure this.
Speaker 3 (40:58):
Out, right, you got it.
Speaker 1 (41:00):
You got it.
Speaker 3 (41:00):
Have a good one.
Speaker 1 (41:01):
I'll be watching movies on my DVD player that my
work gave me. Thank you.
Speaker 3 (41:05):
Yeah, no, absolutely. I definitely still have things from other
jobs that I just I don't know that they know
I have. Like the iPad I have is from an
old job.
Speaker 1 (41:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (41:14):
I just never gave it.
Speaker 1 (41:15):
Back and it's a loss.
Speaker 3 (41:17):
What they didn't ask me for it, so they don't ask.
Speaker 1 (41:20):
You got to give it back. But then they did
never follow up.
Speaker 3 (41:22):
It's like that's another lie that they tell you when
you're a kid. Because I was in band and they
were like, if you don't return, I was in band
and I had a brief spent on the golf team. Okay,
both of which, return your marching band uniform, return your
golf clubs, return all school equipment, or you won't get
your diploma. Well let me tell you what. I got
(41:44):
all the equipment and my diploma. Yeah, to this day,
if somebody wants to go golfing, I'm pulling out the
clubs and ib.
Speaker 1 (41:54):
High school hand me downs. Let's go.
Speaker 3 (41:58):
I don't care.
Speaker 1 (41:59):
Yeah, the club's a club, right, they still hit. They
were made better in the fifties. Anyway, We're.
Speaker 3 (42:06):
No shit. These these are these are good old fashioned
Solono County golf clubs. Baby, you don't get no better.
Speaker 1 (42:11):
Yeah, these are se aged. We're good. We're I can
take these to Ireland to do great. Right, all right,
I think we've gotten past our time. As is required
by law. Whenever I do a podcast.
Speaker 3 (42:25):
Oh no, I hope I gave you something.
Speaker 1 (42:27):
Alright, No you didn't. It was all garbage. We all
know it. Khleia, I don't know.
Speaker 3 (42:32):
Yeah, I feel no.
Speaker 1 (42:33):
How are you feeling? Having your peppermint tea, I'm.
Speaker 3 (42:38):
Gonna make another cup because the more I was talking
to you on the tightness and honestly I am. After
I talk to you, I'm going on vocal rest. So
I was supposed to do another podcast this afternoon as
a special guest, but I'm gonna have to because I
have to get up and go, and I'll have to
be very I know that that environment is gonna make
(42:58):
me lit. I it's like one of those like I
have not been able to talk and had a show
and the moment I get on stage, hey.
Speaker 1 (43:07):
Everybody doing that, oh, stage health?
Speaker 3 (43:09):
And then when I get off stage, stage health. So
I don't want to do that. I got a lot
of posting coming up this week, so I'm putting myself
on vocal rest. Also learned that from the theater take
it is this, people will want Hey, hey, vocal rest
is important. Do it. It fucking sucks because you're not talking,
(43:30):
and if you're like me, you like to talk. Give
your instrument a moment to rest, the moment you feel
it's different. Don't wait till you lose your voice. The
moment I feel my and I smoke weed. My vocal
rest includes me not being able to smoke, and you
know things like that and so yeah. So for the
(43:50):
next forty eight hours, I won't be saying a word
to anybody but rollo every now and again.
Speaker 1 (43:56):
And that's that, well that I want to thank you
so much for giving me your voice this morning.
Speaker 3 (44:00):
No, of course it is now, Ben.
Speaker 1 (44:03):
I didn't do it.
Speaker 3 (44:04):
It's you.
Speaker 1 (44:07):
It's you. No, no, no.
Speaker 3 (44:10):
I can't wait to see you. We're gonna have a
lot of fun. Thank you so much for allowing Niles
as well. I think you'll be really pleased with him.
Speaker 1 (44:17):
I think I watched like fifty six secs, like yes,
that's a yes, that's a yes. Perfect. Yeah. It's Wednesday,
April ninth, nine pm the Silver Lining fourteen fourteen sixteen Street, Sacramento.
Tickets thirty dollars, event bright dot com. Come see it.
Excellent drinks only room for like fifty of you, so
you gotta get in.
Speaker 3 (44:35):
Oh, excellent drinks.
Speaker 1 (44:36):
Excellent drinks.
Speaker 3 (44:38):
We're going out afterwards apparently too.
Speaker 1 (44:40):
Oh that's most likely.
Speaker 3 (44:42):
Yeah, okay, good ye And I do this every time
I have a show in Sacramento. Gavin, come to the show, Bro,
come to the show. I love you, Bro. I love
you Bro. Like every every lesbian has, they won. Let
me tell you, Gavin Newsom, I climb that tree.
Speaker 1 (45:07):
Today could be the day, or like a week and
a half from now, could be the day. You lead
him back, Lead him back, show the goods? All right? Uh, Khalia?
Where can people find out more about you? What they
want to follow you? On your You're doing? You're doing,
You're doing so much stuff. You got festivals coming up
all that.
Speaker 3 (45:24):
Yeah, I'm at whatever, Khalia on all platforms. My website
is Kaliah McNeil dot com. You can if you really
want to reach me, just hit Ben up and Ben
can reach me.
Speaker 1 (45:37):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (45:38):
Ben is my liaison.
Speaker 1 (45:40):
Yep, that's it perfect, all right? And you can find
more of me for some reason at barleymepod dot com.
Or I used to say across social media. I realize
it's just Facebook and Instagram at this point at Barley
me Pod, I'm not I'm not the things are shut down.
I'm not getting new accounts. I'm YouTube, I guess. Also YouTube,
I guess. But yeah, thank you so much Khalia for
(46:02):
coming on. This was wonderful. I'll see you in a
week and a half. I hope you get all the
vocal rest you need and deserve.
Speaker 3 (46:09):
Thank you, Ben, I'll talk to you soon.
Speaker 1 (46:11):
Sounds good. Thanks a lot for those listeners. Thanks for listening.
We have a good life or whatever. I don't know
any new outro for this. It used to be get
home safe, but now we're not always freaking alcohols. I
don't know what to say. I'll figure it out.
Speaker 3 (46:23):
Bye, It's all good.
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The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.