Comedian, actor, best-selling author, and podcaster Alex Falcone joins me for an upbeat conversation about comedy, pop-culture, and what it means to be a modern man in 2022. 

We get to hear about Alex’s upbringing, the discovery of stand-up, some of his biggest successes to date (Portlandia, The Late Show with Steven Colbert, stand-up tours), and we get his valuable incites on finding your funny bone and learning what is funny by trial-and-error. 

But first… 

Top stories of the week: 

-Russian batteries made from hog weeds.

-Nobel Prize awarded to Physicists for research which suggests that reality is not “real” (quantum non-locality).

-Flashback Report: 2006. MySpace mishap. Jeff Gets Expelled from High School.  

More to enjoy: 

—How a simple misunderstanding almost changed Jeff’s life forever.

—#MeToo. Where are they now?

—Why did everyone want to bang sexy monsters in the 2011?

—How Alex became a best-selling author of a teen romance novel.

- And finally, the gloves come off when Alex expresses his feelings regarding the life and works of Justin Bieber. One thing is for certain, I Belieb. 

This episode is special. I love comedy and comics. Just being around the comedy scene gets my motors running. It was an honor to hang with such a pro.

Big thank you to Alex Falcone for being a wonderful guest and a huge thank you to Melissa Nesbitt for booking him. 

Enjoy the show!

Want more Alex Falcone?

• Website AlexFalcone.ninja
• Instagram
• TikTok
• Twitter
• YouTube

News Links:

• Hogweed Batteries. Source: PV magazine. Accessed 10/14/2022. via: https://www.pv-magazine.com/2022/10/13/sodium-ion-battery-anode-made-from-toxic-hogweed/
• Nobel Prize in Physics 2022. Source: Press Release from The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Accessed: 10/14/2022 via: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2022/press-release/
• Myspace, Your Face; My Mistake. News footage from KATU 2 News. Aired in February 2006.

Music:

• Wander, Shiruki.
• Respawn, Vieveri.
• At The End of Nothing, Silver Maple.
• A Winter to Remember, Trevor Kowalski.
• Still Fly, Revel Day.

Ramble by the River Links:

• Website
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• Episode catalogue
• Business: ramblebytheriver@gmail.com

Keywords: Noxious weed control; noxious weeds; natural resources; Joe Rogan; Bowfinger; Hollywood; Heather Graham; Premium Blend; Comedy Central Presents; Last Comic Standing; #MeToo; ADHD; morning radio; Dane Cook; Greg Geraldo; Maria Bamford; Craig Robinson; The Office; Dmitri Martin; Mitch Hedberg; Steven Wright; TikTok; Twitter; Facebook; MySpace; Spotify; Pandora; Napster; Limewire; Kazaa; George Carlin; Always Sunny Podcast; Portland Oregon; Helium Comedy Club; Late Night Television; The Colbert Report; The Daily Show; The Office; What We Do in the Shadows; Hacks; To Tell The Truth; fruit; Middleditch and Schwartz; improv comedy; Twilight; Fifty Shades of Grey; To Tell the Truth; Second City Chicago; Whose Line is it anyway?

Copyright 2022 Ramble by the River LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

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It is Saturday, October 15th year of our Lord 2022. The guest on the podcast today is comedian Alex Falcone. It's a great interview. I had a really good time. He's a comedian based in Los Angeles. He was in Portland few weeks back. And so we scheduled a podcast. I went up there and met him in Portland and we had a little chat and that's what you get to hear today. So I hope you guys are ready for a few laughs few chuckles, a little talking about comedy, talking about movies, culture.

Whole bunch of stuff. Really? It was a good talk.

Before we get too deep into the introduction. I want you to stop what you're Go to the podcast player that you're listening to this on and subscribe. Subscribed to the show so that you get all the updates that you get all the new episodes. And so that the algorithm will know that people And they'll keep sending out to people. It really helps. I appreciate it. Thank you very much.

Always, uh, go ahead and like, and share these, these podcasts. I really appreciate it. We don't spend money on advertising. So everything we get is just from word of mouth. So I appreciate you Every time you post a comment or share an episode makes a huge difference. So thank you very much.

If you want to reach out on social media. You can reach Ramble by the River at Ramble, by the River on Facebook and Instagram and at Rambleriverpod on Twitter.

And for any kind of business inquiries, guest suggestions, or advertising, anything like that? Go ahead and shoot an email to admin. One at Ramble by the River dot com. You can find all this information at RamblebytheRiver.com

thank you again for being here today. It's a lovely Saturday and I know I've got a lot of competition for your attention, so I appreciate you giving me a chance. I hope you're not disappointed. How about some news and current events?

As any regular listeners to Ramble by the River will already know.

We've got a bit of a. Special interest in plants and in particular noxious weeds. So some exciting news coming out of Russia this week. Sodium ion battery anode made from toxic hogweed

russian researchers have transmuted poison is hogweed into high grade anode material for sodium ion batteries.

Hard carbons appear to be one of the most suitable candidates for anode materials for sodium ion batteries because of their electro-chemical performance and the relative ease of production. This class of materials can be obtained from a variety of precursors and the most ecologically sustainable route is the synthesis from biomass.

Researchers from Moscow state university and Skolkovo Institute of science and technology have developed a high quality anode material from an unlikely source. Her calcium SaaS now ski. I. A highly invasive plant, which is dangerous for humans and can cause skin burns, but produces a large amount of green biomass in a short amount of time.

We thought wouldn't it be fun to take something as nasty and objectionable as hogweed and make something useful out of it. Said coauthor, Zoya

Of Lama Off Moscow state university. The thing about hard carbon materials used in sodium ion battery anodes is you can make them from biomass of virtually any origin. No one has considered hogweed before, but it turned out pretty well. The hard carbon produced by the MSU Schell tech team exhibited A Columbia efficiency of 87%. Which is on par with the best reported results from hard carbon synthesize from other raw materials. In addition, it demonstrated capacity retention of 95% after 100 charge discharge cycles in sodium half cells. That's pretty good.

The new anode was demonstrated in full sodium ion cells with NASA con type

cathode material. Cool. That's just awesome. I've thought about that a You do these projects where you're removing massive amounts of plants and they just have to go somewhere to You think all of that chemical reaction taking place during that decomposition process could be harnessed as thermal energy.

You could capture that as heat you could capture. You know, you can capture it as he, you can use those waste materials for something new. I think as technology advances and as we run out of natural resources, And easy ways to extract them and utilize them. I think we'll see lots more of technologies like this popping up just ways to use things that we've just been thrown away.

There's lots of potential there.

Moving on.

And tangled states. Big stuff. From theory to technology. Elaine aspect, John Klauser and Anton Zeilinger have each conducted groundbreaking experiments using entangled quantum states where two particles behave like a single unit, even when they are separated. The results have cleared the way for new technology based on quantum information.

The ineffable effects of quantum mechanics are starting to find applications. There's now a large field of research that includes quantum computers, quantum networks, and secure quantum encrypted communications. One key factor in this development is how quantum mechanics allows two or more particles to exist in what is called an entangled state.

What happens to one of the particles , in an entangled pair, determines what happens to the other particle. Even if they're far apart, For a long time. The question was whether the correlation was because the particles in an entangled pair contained hidden variables, instructions that tell them which result they should give it in an experiment.

John classer developed John Bell's ideas, leading to a practical experiment. When he took the measurements, they supported quantum mechanics by clearly violating the bell inequality. This means that quantum mechanics can not be replaced by a theory that uses hidden variables.

Some loopholes remained after John closers , Elaine aspect, develop the setup, using it in a way that closed an important loophole. He was able to switch the measurement settings after an entangled pair had left its source. So the setting that existed when they were emitted could not affect the result.

Using refined tools and a long series of experiments. Anton Zeilinger started to use entangled quantum states. Among other things, his research group had demonstrated a phenomenon called quantum teleportation.

Which makes it possible to move a quantum state from one particle to one at a distance. It has become increasingly clear that a new kind of quantum technologies emerging. We can see that the laureates work with entangled states is of great importance. Even beyond the fundamental questions about the interpretation of quantum mechanics.

Says Anders yearbook, chairman of the Nobel committee for physics.

No. I know you've heard me say before. There's no such thing as objective reality. I said it many times. I've been saying it since I started this podcast. And up until this announcement. It was just jibberish to a lot of people, you know, just, just a theory, a thought that I like to have. But this proves

What they really showed here. Is that what they've been talking about since Einstein, which I think he called it like spooky action at a distance. Quantum entanglement. The fact that you can take two particles created together and then separate them by a thousand light years. And then if you measure the spin on one of those little bitches, if it's spinning up that other particles spinning down,

No matter what every single time. And that spin isn't established until it's observed and measured in that some shit. That is confusing. How do you know. I don't know, I'm not a physicist, but somebody is, and they figured it out. So this really proves that reality is subjective. And it's not this big constant that we all operate in. It's really more of a.

Fluid construction of our own. That we make, as we use.

Trippy. Very very trippy.

So take that as you will. But I think. The world of quantum physics is going to start bleeding over into our everyday lives. Just the same way that Newtonian physics became very much a part of the way we live our lives. Quantum physics is going to be the same way. So get ready.

I can talk about this a lot more, but. I think we'll move on.

For our final story. Travel back with me to a simpler time.

A time when the world was changing.

Twitter was brand new. Facebook had just become open to anybody over 13. But my space was on top of the world. Tom was fucking killing it.

We're talking about a time when you could get a bag of Hershey's kisses. 14 ounces for $2 and 50 cents. You could get a 15 ounce tub of, I can't believe it's not butter for $2 and 29 cents.

Crank that by Soulja boy.

Was it just pumping out of the speakers.

Top song was irreplaceable. Performed by Beyonce. To the left. To the left. Everybody knows.

There's a box to the left.

Top movies, dream girls, mission impossible. The DaVinci code, happy feet.

First year of Blu-ray.

And you're probably asking , but Jeff. Yeah. We remember all this shit from 2006, but why do we care? And here's your answer.

So, yeah. I've made reference to this many times on the podcast before. And the reason I felt like I needed to pull this footage. Uh, out of the archives today is because we mentioned it in the interview. And I didn't want to just leave you guys hanging and confused and. Figured I might as well. Show you.

It's actually really embarrassing, but it's important to remember because I don't want other people to make the same mistakes And I want to learn from my own mistakes. So. Here it is. It's probably the dumbest thing I've ever done.

And it was a long time ago.

When this was all said and done. And I was back in school, everything was back to normal. I was doing an interview with our local newspaper, and they were asking me to explain how I ended up resolving it and how I ended up back in school. And I told them that I was contacted by a representative from the NAACP.

Which if you're unaware is the national association for the advancement of colored peoples. Yeah. I told the newspaper. That the NAACP had sent a lawyer to go over my case and to look for case precedents in ways that we could. Sue the school district. And that I had told the NAACP. No, thank you, NAACP. I don't want to Sue the school district because I'm a good dude and I don't Sue school districts, especially not broke ones like mine.

It was actually the, uh, American civil liberties union, the ACL you. I had been confused and I told them that it was the national association for the advancement of colored peoples.

Which I am not.

So I thought that was really funny. They printed it. They went in the paper.

Anyway.

Past indiscretions aside. Let's get to the show. Our guest today is Alex Falcone

you're going to hear a lot about his resume in the actual show. So I'm going to skip that part for now. Suffice it to say, he's hilarious. He's very entertaining. He's got his own podcast called read it and weep. You can find it everywhere. He's. Uh, touring comedian. I saw him at helium comedy club just after I did this podcast and he was fantastic. He also was doing the St. Louis helium later that week. Obviously those shows have passed. Now. This has been a couple of weeks, but.

He's around and if you're in LA, I'm sure you can find them. So check him out online. He's great. Check out his tick doc. He's very And. Enjoy the show guys, without further ado, please enjoy this podcast. With the hilarious and charismatic. Alex Falcon.

[00:00:01] Jeff Nesbitt: if you want 'em I got 'em. I was, I was actually gonna lose 'em in a minute after I got it all dialed in, but,

So. Wow. Look at that case. Yeah, you got, you are not shortened on equipment here. No, do you have a, an audio background or is this all stuff you taught yourself for? The podcast taught myself for the podcast.

Good for you.

[00:00:28] Alex Falcone: administrator. Are you now? No kidding. Yeah, that's my wife works in government.

Um, a little different size, uh, I think. The city government of LA has, uh, that's much bigger, 50,000 employees, 60,000 employees, something like that. Something insane

[00:00:48] Alex Falcone: that sounds about right. But she was getting, she had her master's here and like, so she, she did her capstone or whatever with a, um, small town government that I can't remember where, but, um, Pacific Northwest or California?

No, around here. Yeah. We used to live here. Yeah. I was reading your bio. Yeah. And so, yeah, she got her master's here at PSU and, um, did a bunch of projects with small local governments. And it was, she worked at Metro for a while, which was like 60 employees. Yeah. And then moved to this 60,000 employee place.

It's really, I bet that was a weird jump. It, it certainly is. I mean, it, it, I think. It's like, you're doing bigger projects, but you're a much smaller part of it, each one, you know? . And so it's got different, you know, like with she's she's working in, um, uh, in homelessness right now against, and she, um, she's anti she's anti.

Yeah. Um, but she'll be like, oh, at the city council meeting, they used this number 332.9 million. That's my number. I did the spreadsheet that came to that number. So her whole project was to develop like, right. That one number took her like three weeks and had a ton of meetings, but then she hears it in the city council as a very small part of that.

But it's very exciting. So it's, it is a really interesting mix of like absolutely feeling big and feeling small at the same time.

[00:02:03] Alex Falcone: What do you, what is your background into vegetation management? Is

[00:02:09] Alex Falcone: do you, um, natural resources. So the vegetation, your management part of it is timber.

Noxious

[00:02:25] Alex Falcone: and they are well, that's what I, yeah, that's what I was wondering when you, his management sometimes means managing the sale of stuff and sometimes means protecting and controlling.

That was a very interesting background to end up in the world of comedy podcast.

And, uh, he kind of led me to Joe Rogan you know, all roads lead to Rogan at some point. Yeah. In, in podcasting. And, um, yeah. And I eventually was just like, fuck, I wanna chime in on these guys. every once in a while, I know, I know a thing or two about the things they're talking about and yeah.

So I just like. They're not gonna let me do that. I'm gonna have to start my own.

[00:03:20] Jeff Nesbitt: never returns my text. Yeah. Yeah. But, um, yeah, I listened to an episode of your podcast on the way over here. Oh, thank you. Uh,

So it's probably a little bit opaque to jump in at that point. But, so what, what is the, the structure of that structure of the game is we each like picked a movie that we wanna watch and that movie is worth points. And then you, each week we move from a movie to a movie using one actor in common, like the Kevin bacon style.

So we went, we got to bow finger because it we're going from bowing to Shrek cuz it also has Eddie Murphy in it. And we got to bowing from, uh, planes frames and automobiles. Right. So we're just going to eat one different actor time, and then you try to control it when it's your turn to get to the movie you've preselected.

Oh. So it's a very slow way of playing a game. So you want certain movies to come up? Yes. We're trying to get to the ones we picked ahead of time. Those get you points. So, uh, you're trying to control it. You're making deals behind the scenes to get someone to pick a movie. That'll get set you up for your movie.

It's been a show for years and years about movie watching and this is like art this year. We decided to make it more like a tabletop.

[00:04:53] Alex Falcone: No. And it turns out it's a really interesting movie for being about Hollywood.

And I, you know, now I'm living in Hollywood. It was like, it's a, it's mostly a movie about Hollywood destroying people in a variety of ways, but like with a silly comedy sense. So instead of being too dark, so it was a really interesting movie to watch and talk about. But yeah, I've I had not heard about it and since it came out, probably, yeah, I

I mean, we don't need to discuss your discussion of this movie from the whenever 2002. Yeah. But, uh, the stuff you said about Heather Graham's character. Yeah. I remember feeling that as a kid watching that movie, it been like this doesn't quite track me. It's weird.

I don't know. Yeah. That's hard. And I do feel bad about the way that, especially that trope in Hollywood of like sleeping away to the top is just so

[00:05:45] Alex Falcone: The demon literal, literally demons running around in Hollywood.

[00:05:51] Alex Falcone: I don't know. I'm not in enough. It seems like maybe it's getting better. Well, you're living in LA, right? I mean I'm, I'm in Hollywood technically. Uh, but I'm not doing that kind of. I'm not, I mean, this is the first time I've had a meeting in a hotel room in a while.

It's. We're not really supposed to do that anymore. For that very reason. That's like the, especially not with just one person in here. Exactly. There should be at least one lawyer here, but I

[00:06:15] Alex Falcone: you're, you're the Demonn here and um, yeah,

I'm just a poor country. Boy. That's true. That's true. Fresh off

[00:06:26] Jeff Nesbitt: Um, before we get too deep into all the, the me toos and the Hollywoods, , I want to quickly go over a little bit. Um, the show's really open.

I have ADHD. Mm-hmm like a motherfucker we bounce around. I can't help it. I kind of like podcasts to do that a little bit, but okay. We just circle back whenever we remember to circle back. Okay. And so feel free to ask me any questions, uh, interrupt me when you need to, um, be funny Uhhuh and, um, you won't hurt my feelings.

Feel free to say whatever you want. Criticize me, uh, compliment. If it comes

[00:06:59] Jeff Nesbitt: Sure, sure. I'll try not to insult you, but sometimes it's hard. So

When you're traveling to promote your show, you end up like you have to get up at five in the morning and go into the local radio station and do the morning zoo crew. And. Just pick one of the hosts and just ruthlessly make fun of that person, cuz they're high status to the audience. So if you come in hot like that, they'll be like really impressed and you sound, you know, brave and cool, not my style, but I like that's like that is old comedy advice to like be mean to the host.

That sounds

[00:07:41] Alex Falcone: It is awkward. And I, I, I remember actually listening to, cause I listened to a lot of morning radio when I was a teenager, uh, like getting ready for school.

I thought that was very like the kind of stuff that now is a little cringy to me, but like, oh, we got a fart song or whatever. Like, uh, but I do remember they would occasionally have a comedian on and the comedian would be so much funnier than the radio people. And that's part of like around when I was like, oh actually I really wanna do comedy HES.

Like that's where the real stuff is happening. The radio people are kind of funny, but this comic is so, which is now I know they had to fill four hours. He had to fill four minutes. It's not the same, but yeah, he's bringing the heat because that's, he's just gotta do the hits

[00:08:18] Alex Falcone: Yeah, so it was, uh, 1999. , specifically I was, uh, I was just thinking about this the other day, but I remember. Walking by a friend who had cable. And I didn't originally, I like walked by comedy central and they were like, it was, you know, I don't remember who it was because obviously, but it was like a comedian standing in front of a brick wall, very classic, old eighties, nineties comedy vibe.

And I saw that and I was just like, I'd never heard of it basically. And I was like, this person is just standing there talking, and people are listening as a middle child. Like could not dream of anything more amazing than just this whole room of people listening to you. Talk about whatever, not interrupting you.

Yeah. I mean, occasionally probably a little bit. Yeah, not much, but yeah, just like wrapped attention. No one else was yelling. No one else was sharing the stage. I just thought that was so interesting. And so I had this like little, like in the back of my mind, like someday I wanted to talk to people in front of brick wall and then later I like, we actually got cable and I like would record every single comedy central special, uh, and secretly watched cause they were TV 14 and I was only like 12.

I thought I was committing a federal crime, so I was very cautious, but I would like secretly watch comedy in the middle of the night and just like, yeah, this is someday sort of a thing. So it's been, who were the first few

[00:09:26] Alex Falcone: Well, 99 was like, I think that was the first year comedy central did half hours.

Um, I think Dan Cook's first comedy central half hour was, was back then and was really, really funny. The one

[00:09:57] Alex Falcone: he poured a bottle of water over his head for one bit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh, I just remember that Maria Bamford's first one, I think was that.

Um, and she's still like easily, like one of the funniest people I've ever heard of. Um, so did Greg Aldo have one

[00:10:12] Alex Falcone: he's so funny. Yeah. Oh my God. Yeah. And he, um, much later when he was doing, uh, last comic standing, he did a bit where he was like, so the other day I saw this guy, well, it was 20 years ago and I was like, I remember that special from 20 years ago.

I remember that. Yeah, it was Wild. There was, I also watched every other of the five minutes, the like premium blends. Oh, I was just gonna ask about premium blends. Yeah. So it was like Craig Robinson had a premium blend. Parlin Williams did

[00:10:37] Alex Falcone: Yeah. And I remember I've like worked with people now that I saw that year that I, like I worked with, uh, Craig Robinson was my first person I ever hosted for at the club here when I was like, just coming up.

And I was like, I, I remember your five minute bit, uh, where he is playing piano and doing the, um, the Chicago bulls theme song. But it's about him coming in the bed, coming into the bedroom with his wife. But he is like hearing that song in the back of his head. Like I remember the bit from 20 years earlier and I'm like, now I get to open for you.

It was really, really cool. That's gotta be a good moment. It's it's incredible. I learned very early on and you can't tell 'em that, cause that makes 'em feel real old. You can, you can't be like, I liked you as a kid. I grew up watching you. Yeah. That's really hurtful. So yeah. Like, oh yeah. I remember your special.

That's all you gotta say. I remember I've seen your stuff. It's great.

[00:11:23] Alex Falcone: blew a lot of people up. Yeah. He, he also did last comic standing like as a host where he was like playing piano and interviewing people in the line.

But yeah, he, he was a standup for a long time and played piano. And when I did the club with him here, he like flew in from LA like a four piece, five piece band for one joke, cuz he had the office money now. Like he was so successful that he was like for one weekend, I'm just gonna fly five of my buddies up to play horns.

And it was like 32nd joke. And then they left, but it like the whole brass band comes out, plays this joke leaves. And then they just hung on the great room for the whole weekend. And it was just, it was Wild to see somebody that successful and get to hang out with them. Yeah.

[00:12:08] Alex Falcone: I mean, yeah. Standup is like one of the most surreal things because it's constantly surreal sometimes in good ways and sometimes in bad ways and I have. For me, at least the level I'm at the thing that's so surreal is the swing between those moments. And then like, so like I was, um, uh, a couple months ago I was doing a little tour with Dimitri Martin and I was opening for him in theaters.

And I watching Dimitri Martin since his first, the daily show stuff and was like, it's so surreal. And you're in this huge theater, it's like 7,000 people and it's sold out and everybody's so appreciative. And then the next night I was performing in the basement of this coffee shop and it was the winter and it was not heated.

And I was literally wearing MIT. On stage in quotes. Cause there's four people. So like that's the same weekend, like going from this is like, I can't believe I'm lucky enough to be here. And like, I can't believe I'm bad enough that I still have to do this. Yeah. And it's just constant swings like that. And

[00:13:04] Alex Falcone: I say, no, I like basement gigs too. Like I just like doing it and I don't have enough. The look Dmitri's not doing the basement gigs. Like if you, if you can sell the theaters with your name, it's great. I take what I can get. Uh, he

And then all of a sudden he was everywhere and he was like drawing on a big notebook. Yeah. Was like, his jokes seemed so simple. He

But he's found an infinite ways way of twisting it. So like the notepad, he's just telling one liners, the guitar he's telling one liners, what he's playing guitar. Like he just takes, he has, uh, he has a segment in his new, special that I think he's recording that we are touring with, but he's recording soon where he's like playing weird music and doing this lighting effect and walking back and forth across the stage and doing essentially one liners.

And which is not to say that like, that's one style of joke. It's not that those are all the same joke, but it's like, that's one of the hardest types of joke to write, but he writes these pure joke jokes and then found a million ways to present them. So over an hour, it's not repetitive. It's not boring.

He finds a new game and a new twist on it. And it's incredibly clever and amazing to watch. One liners

[00:14:16] Alex Falcone: It's the hardest. Yeah. Yeah. You sell it with emotion. You can't cheat at all. You have, it's like, this is just the strength of this concept. And it lives or hard. Who are some of your

Like the, just the standard greats, like will

It makes it just the, he can say a word funny and that's was really interesting. And I, I still like people talk a lot about finding your comedy voice. One of the things that I think that they don't say is that your actual voice makes a huge difference. And I think Mitch Hedberg is the perfect example of that.

Like the way he delivers stuff is just so funny that it can, because you have the, like, you have the one liner, nowhere to hide. But if your voice is really interesting and funny, you know, like, like Steven Wright has a similar thing, but a very different style of it. But like his delivery is so funny that you can.

He can say two words and it's already, it's already really good. And then if it has a joke and it goes somewhere, all the better. So,

[00:15:38] Alex Falcone: I mean, there are, you know, there are like old road dogs who like to say they knew they were doing shows with Hedberg back before he was successful.

And like, you'd watch him bomb at this bar on the road. I like that would be true. Yeah, of course. Um,

He's he was a master of like constructing his set. Yeah. You and

And it was so upsetting and she hated the movie. And so she just went in the lobby and hung out Nate gumballs for the entire rest of the movie. And she was like, this might be your war, horse. Like it's, this is not for you. You might not like this. You might go hang out. There's a great bar over there and I'm sorry.

And I get it. I didn't like war, horse. And it's, I, that requires you to be a certain level of success that you can afford to just not do well everywhere. And I feel like one of the reasons I'm still doing basement shows is I'm like, I can't, I, I take what I can get. I don't have a huge, I'm not able to be super picky about stuff.

And I feel like I have to do certain ki like level of good cuz I'm doing this. Like. Because, like I said, I'm a middle child. I like need the approval. So if I come in and I don't do well, even if for four people in a tough situation, I feel bad about myself, so, oh yeah. I, but I really admire the people who can be like, if you don't like it, I get it.

I don't even like what I'm doing, but like, you know, uh, so I, yeah, I admire that, but yeah, you long, hard road, you know? Yeah. There's

[00:17:24] Alex Falcone: personally every time, but yeah.

Yeah. And I'll be like, okay, no big deal. But, I'm really crushed, like, oh yeah, you were just talking gibberish for five minutes. So I turned that episode off and I was like, okay,

Absolutely. That's good. Podcasting tip. Yeah. I mean,

[00:17:53] (Marker) Social Media pros and cons

Cuz my sister will see it and share it. Like I'm always trying to play like keep away a little

[00:18:23] Alex Falcone: from across the world. Well, that's true, but they will not show it to my mom cuz she does not understand the app.

So that's true. That's that's the key that's safety. I don't

[00:18:31] Alex Falcone: I feel like I'm pretty good at it. I like, are you good at TikTok? I am. Yeah. Yeah. It's but also I just like it. I mean I, yeah. Are you a creator on it or

[00:18:37] Alex Falcone: Yeah, both. I love, I love watching TikTok in a way that I don't with many other social platforms.

I think it's great. What is

[00:18:45] Alex Falcone: infectious it's. I mean, obviously it's very carefully created to take over your brain and give you brain worms. But like the, the one thing I like about TikTok. I do not have a lot of like political talks that I see people do, they exist, but I've not, I've swiped away from them.

So I don't see it a lot. So like, I go to Twitter when I wanna be angry and I go to TikTok when I wanna see somebody build a house out of cups and then their cat runs through it. Like there's a certain kind of silliness and I've, I've just, it understands what I'm in the mood for the right way. Yeah. The TikTok feels like I can disconnect and chill and relax and like just smile and like, oh, the world is silly and fun in the way that like, like I love Twitter too.

I spent the day on Twitter, but Twitter makes me angry. Twitter is where people are there to start fights. And

[00:19:39] Alex Falcone: I think, I don't know if it's like, if I wanted one during the day. And wondering evening. I don't know if it would catch up on that. I think I would get too many of the one in the other time. I mean, I want cafe videos all day, but like, I don't get any political TikTok ever because I never like it. I always, and even when it's something that I agree with and a person I think is funny, I'd be like, Nope, that's not what this app is for.

So I think I, are you curious? It's smart, but I also trained it. I knew what I wanted out of that space. Yeah. I think that's key. And like, you know, you're talking about comments and stuff and I, that, that is a, a careful part of my creative process, I think is to like, I've tried really hard to keep, I want, I want feedback over here and I want this space where I'm not gonna get feedback.

It's gonna be safe for every, I want to have a place where I can see, like, so I have, I have two Instagrams. I have a real Instagram and a fake Instagram that no one knows about. And the fake Instagram is like, I don't have to follow anybody. Who's famous. I don't have to follow my friends who are talking about comedy or about politics, whatever my other Instagram is just like, it's like nice looking pictures.

It's vacations. And it's it's business, home design. It's like. Is that your like professional one? No. Yeah. So no professional one where it's like, I follow comics. I talk about comedy. I do jokes. And then I have my secret one. That's just like, I just want aesthetic things that are beautiful and nice. Just show me girls with nice asses.

It's not what I do on Instagram, but yeah, I have a lot of like, men's wear and like, I, I have like my biggest worry about Instagram with that is that like, if I like any picture that looks like a thirst trap, I'm like, then the it's gonna start showing it to me. And I'm a pervert. I'm a, but on mys and that's what you could do with the secret one.

You don't even have to

[00:21:05] Alex Falcone: linger on it, right? Yeah. If you hang out, it'll know, it will track your

[00:21:11] Alex Falcone: Somebody was tell a friend of mine was telling me that his dad was like, showed him his Facebook and was like, how come my Facebook is just pictures of big asses.

And it's like, that's what you like. Yeah. You did that. That's it's not Facebook. We don't all see the same post.

[00:21:28] Alex Falcone: what you showed me. Mine's not. Yeah. yeah. I, but I do have to like have that space where I can turn my brain off and no one can give me feedback and no one can get into it.

And I just want. Calm images and yeah. So I think, I think people, I, I have like a pretty healthy relationship with social media at the moment. It could change at any minute. Uh, but I do feel like when people complain about it, it's like, if you know what you want out of it, you can teach it to give you that.

And then it's powerful tool. Yeah. So if you, if you do it on purpose instead of on accident, I think you can be a little more careful and make it nicer for you. Yeah.

I made a fake profile Uhhuh funny for one of my teachers. Oh, hilarious. And because he didn't have one. Yeah, of course. And uh, then I pretended to be him for a bit. How long is a bit, couple days. Okay. Not a long time, but apparently it was quite inflammatory .

I was roasting students

[00:22:26] Alex Falcone: ah, that is very funny and yeah, that'll get in some trouble. It did. How

Um, when I did that, I was very insensitive and yeah. Also I'm autistic didn't know that at the time. And I said some shit that uh, not just, it was awful. You were in Highschool. I was, since I was white, I thought it was okay for me to pretending to be a Mexican guy, be racist to white people.

And I did that a bunch. Interesting. Um, I just did stuff that, yeah, yeah. Just dumb kids do. And I, I paid the, paid the price. They expelled me from Highschool.

[00:23:11] Jeff Nesbitt: Yeah. I got on national news. I have the footage

[00:23:15] Jeff Nesbitt: yeah. Wow. That's Wild. It was pretty cool. It was pretty cool. I mean, not being in

[00:23:20] Jeff Nesbitt: a lot of it wasn't cool, but yeah. Yeah. I got to meet Hillary Hutchinson. 10 o'clock news. Cool. She was hot. Yeah. Um, it was, it was overall, it was a learning experience, but I learned the most important thing I learned was just like, don't be an asshole. Yeah. If you, yeah. Making people laugh is important. It's not, as, it's not as important as not making people cry.

Um, that's a very funny bit. I like that a

[00:24:14] Alex Falcone: really? Yeah. Wow. This is a dark past.

It was a terrible over my space. It was a terrible you're right. Okay. When you said I was afraid that you were afraid of social media, I didn't realize you'd actually really ruined at least two lives, including

Mm-hmm and, um, I'm like, I should probably hit up Mike and see how he's doing and I did, and he's doing well. Good. So it, it all worked out.

[00:24:41] Jeff Nesbitt: cool about it. I think also like we used to, he, he would make jokes up to me in real life, right.

About like me being a gringo. Oh. Which I loved mm-hmm because I was. I didn't have, I don't know. I just liked it. I felt like we were close. It made me feel like we were buddies. Yeah. And, uh, but it did confuse me into making me think that that was okay to express that on the internet.

And I think, you know, I, I definitely did a lot of stuff in my early attempts at comedy that I would not be proud of anymore. Fortunately, nothing. That's got a permanent record that I know of, but, um, yeah, we, we. I wrote a humor website. We had a funny zine that we like distributed in Highschool and in an early college that was like, yeah, a lot of stuff that I would not write anymore.

Also some stuff that I probably, if I dug it back up, I like, that's a good joke. I could really work on that and turn into something. But yeah, you're like stumbling through it. The,

[00:25:43] Alex Falcone: to be funny.

Oh, like your, like you had, uh, emo poetry or something. Well

[00:25:52] Alex Falcone: did poetry before I did standup. Like I was, uh, cuz there's not a lot of comedy opportunities when you're a child, but there was like an open mic poetry night at the local coffee shop and they're doing slam poetry, doing slam poetry.

And I was like, you know, this is, and I didn't know at a time, but I was like, I was trying to do standup basically. But I was like, if you do weird line breaks in your standup, then you can get away with it at a poetry night.

You ever watch any

Yes. It's great. Tears, his pants. It's the funniest thing in the world. Does it? He like, he's like, oh, this makes people laugh. So he goes around, he starts playing volleyball. He turns, he intentionally tears his pants, everybody laughs. But not as much. And then he does it again and then people don't really laugh and he does again and people are like, stop it.

And then he just keeps doing it until he's alienated everybody. And it's not funny at all. And then he does something else and that makes people laugh and he's like, oh, okay. This new thing. And it's one of the best bits of media I've ever seen capturing what it's like to try to figure out how to be funny, where you get people laugh.

And you're like, okay, that button works. I don't know why it works. I don't know what about it works. I don't know if I, what I need to do to get it again. So you just press the same button again. Doesn't work at all now. You're like, okay, well, so something happens. It has to be the first time, what do I change?

There's a million variables. And then you try a little bit of this, like, okay. So it's not just pants, it's not tearing any clothing item, like whatever, you just kind of mess around. And so I think that's, that was obviously what you were doing. And like now, if you were to put together a hilarious social media prank, that would try to go viral, it would not be that kind.

It would be, it would include zero racial jokes at all, for example, much less racist. Yeah. Yeah. So I, yeah. I mean, I'm

mm-hmm , uh, for my wife's first marriage beautiful children. Brilliant. And, um, I always. I don't know, I came in when they were already five and seven, so, um, I didn't get to see, I didn't get to really recognize how much of that came from their biological dad. I just kind of thought of it all as you know, my wife's kids and they're now my kids.

And then I had one of my own and, and she's a little pastier mm-hmm and, uh, she's a little goofier mm-hmm and, uh, a little more forgetful mm-hmm she falls down more Uhhuh. Uh, she's more, my kid that's fun. And, um, part of that is that she it's really important to her to make people laugh. So she is just trying stuff randomly and also she's really sensitive.

So yeah, at certain times, if she, if she says something that she wasn't expecting a laugh on and the whole room laughs, she gets really embarrassed. Yeah. And you can,

That's like, I don't quite understand the thing because especially you're a kid you're making adults laugh like your brain. You have no idea how their brains work. Once you're like seven and eight and you can make the fart sound in your armpit. You're like, I know this makes the boys laugh. We get it. We all have a great time.

Cuz your brain works similar. Cuz if you made a fart sound on a different part of your body, that would make me laugh. And so we can bond and do that. But making adults laugh, it's so weird. You have no idea why things work. Yeah.

[00:29:07] Alex Falcone: don't explain it. And sometimes it is kind of making like laughing at you a little bit in a way, like it's not.

Yeah. Oh they are

Yeah. Yeah. You could just tell her, like we thought this was funny because we didn't expect you to say it. It sounded UN like most four year olds wouldn't have said a thing like that. Right. So we laughed and that, and then she's like, oh, okay. Yeah. And

Yeah. It's exactly. It's a surprising, or like, you sound like this thing from a movie you've never seen or whatever. Yeah. There's a million things you're not gonna understand, but not it's

Right. Right. The other day we're driving down the road and. I wasn't even really paying attention. Her and the big kids are in the backseat and she's just saying stuff and they're like, grouching, grouching at her. Tell her to shut up. Mm-hmm the standard. And um, all of a sudden, I just hear erupting laughter in the backseat and I focus my attention back there and I hear her say, Hey, no shot glass.

[00:30:17] Jeff Nesbitt: a good one. And um, I heard her say that and I just fucking busted up laughing. Why we

[00:30:24] Jeff Nesbitt: I don't know how she got the word anal. I don't know where it came. Did she actually

[00:30:30] Jeff Nesbitt: like it, she said something kind of like it.

Oh, I mean, she said it, but mm-hmm, not knowing what anal or shot glass was. Mm-hmm she was just throwing together random syllables. Yeah. And it came out to sound like anal shot glass. Yeah. And, uh, the big kid thought that was very funny when course 13 year old and 11 year old. Yeah. And then, uh, so now anytime there's a lull in a conversation with adults or there's a quiet room.

Yeah. All of a sudden you'll just hear the silence be broken with. Ain't no shot, glad ass and it kills every time.

Yeah. And I will make it hard for you to get him to stop saying that. Cuz I will laugh every time. That's the uncle's

[00:31:15] Alex Falcone: That's where I, that's where I come from. Yeah. My, uh uh, we were with one of my wife's, uh, friends and her daughter at a restaurant and her daughter really wanted to blow bubbles in her milk and it made me laugh.

And I was like, and I could see her, my wife's friend getting angry with me, like not mad, but like I was just trying to get her to stop. And if you keep laughing, just gonna keep doing it. I was like, well, I, you can't make it stop being funny then I'll stop laughing. Yeah. But every time she does it, it Krats me up.

I, but I love watching. I love that part of it where you're like, I can see this kid figuring out humor by bouncing stuff, off stuff, but bouncing stuff off, off the world, seeing like I throwing stuff and see what sticks, I guess mm-hmm like, and I, I don't feel like that's a hundred percent different than what I do now where I.

I'll tell a joke and people will laugh at a part that I wasn't expecting. And I don't know why, but I'll do that part again and I'll change it again and I'll tweak it until I figure out how to get it to be the most, the most potent. And maybe eventually I'll figure out, oh, the reason that's funny is because of this, but I, you know, I still say half the time in my jokes.

I don't know why people liked. I wrote three parts. I don't know why people liked part a so much better than part B, but that's the one I'm gonna do now. It's just down to that part. So

[00:32:22] Alex Falcone: Uh, a little bit less now that I'm in LA. I definitely have like times where I'm only doing once a week, but when I, you know, like right now I'm on, on the road.

So I'm up every night, twice a night. Sometimes the amount of times I'm on stage is like directly the most effective, uh, at deciding how good jokes are gonna be when it's every once in a while. I'm like this gonna be the same way every time do my best. But when I'm doing the same material over a couple weeks, doing it every night, I can be like, I'm gonna sit down tomorrow, listen to the set that I did tonight.

I'm gonna tweak things and fix it and it's gonna get better. And then if you see it tomorrow, it'll be better. And then I'll tweak it again. It'll be better the next night. So I'm in a, I'm in part of my cycle where I put out a record, not too long ago. And so I'm trying to generate a lot of new stuff right now and figure out what the, the shape of my next hour is gonna be.

So I'm trying to get up a lot.

[00:33:09] Alex Falcone: just put out, well, you know, normally I would say that you should go to Pandora, but Pandora did this thing recently that you probably heard about where they pulled down. A lot of standup, almost all of the standup on Pandora got pulled down because of a legal dispute over how much money we're supposed to be paid.

So right now it's on fewer places, but I know it's, I know it's still exists on it's like the place you can buy it. It's on am. It's on Amazon. It's on iTunes, whatever. And then it's also on Pandora still. Did I say Pandora before? Yeah. Pandora's still up. Spotify pulled it down. That was what I, Spotify, Spotify screwed us over.

Pandora's still cool.

[00:33:44] Alex Falcone: So, I mean, they don't pay you much. Although I will, this is okay. This is a bit of a tangent, but I will always argue that, uh, with people who are like mad about how much money we make on Spotify, because it is not much, it's like fractions of a penny per, per joke.

You listen to, but how much do we deserve to be paid per listen to, to a joke, like when I used to buy a CD from tower records for $17, and listen to the hit, you know, song three, I would listen to a thousand times in the end, they were probably getting much less than a fraction of ascent per time. I listened to that song.

That's true. Cause you get to listen to it as much as you want. And now we are. So we're like, it, it sucks that the amount of money is not impressive. So like when I get my statement every month from them and Spotify is like, oh, you got 10,000 plays. It's a buck 50. Like that's not great. But if I get 10,000 plays on a YouTube video, it's probably worth about a buck, 52, 3 bucks.

Maybe if you're the tops like per play is just a weird way to do the math. If it is it's. If, and if, if music, like, I don't know, I don't know how into music you are. I put on music in the morning and it just runs most of the day. And if I had to pay 50 cents a song, like it was on a jukebox. Yeah. Yeah.

Everybody would make a little bit more money this week and then I'd be like, well, I can't afford music and I would stop listening to music. You

[00:34:59] Alex Falcone: did early thousand. Yeah. We'd all be back on, uh, Napster. Napster. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, Kaza. Yeah. Oh

[00:35:07] Alex Falcone: well, I will say, yeah.

Lime wire Kaza, lime wire were a huge part of my early comedy. Cuz I like got into comedy. I watched these specials and then I was like, just like you could, I could just go on. Cause I and search comedy. And I would just download everything that was available. Like that's that was my big Carlin phase was all the, he just put out so much stuff he has and I apologized to his estate for stealing most of it, um, at the time.

But um,

Mm-hmm and just endless stolen records. Yeah. That I will never listen to again. Yeah. Cause I have all

I don't think I deserve a lot more than that right now. And I don't think, I don't think, you know, the biggest band in the world deserves. I don't think Taylor swift deserves much more than she's getting from Spotify. Honestly. She probably gets a lot. She's got a lot of it's total. Yeah. Yeah. But I don't think per play, she's getting screwed.

I think she's doing fine, but I do think so, but, but there's this weird thing going on in comedy where um, so when you, when you, the amount of money you have to pay is. The Congress is involved. It's like a go it's a law. The, the legal amount of like, you have to pay this much every time you play something on the radio.

And then there's like this much as the negotiable area, but you have, this is like very strict, like for royalties, for royalties and the royalties, the way it works is if you are, there's like half the music, half the money, 50% of that royalty money goes to the label that owns the recording. 45% goes to the artist who recorded it.

And 5% goes to the writers of the song that seems small. So it does seem small, but if you write, you could write 10 songs recorded by these people. Like you could. Yeah. It's small, but it exists. Oh, it can compound though. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So the problem is for comics, 50% of our royalty goes to the label.

45% goes to us. The 5% of songwriting revenue disappears. Spotify just keeps that cuz there's. Official songwriters for jokes. So some people aren't the joke writers, the joke writers. Great question. So there are some people who put to who represent comedians, who put together this concern that was like, Hey, that 5% you're keeping that, that belongs to the writers that comedians wrote their jokes or in the cases of some comedians, other people wrote their jokes, but for most of us were our own singer songwriters.

And so they were like, all that 5% should go to comedians. And Spotify was like, Nope. And just deleted any comedian that was represented by that group. They just took 'em off. Wow. Spotify as a negotiating thing. And then they were like, and the only way right now you can get back on is if you sign, if you sign away all the rights to all of that.

No, it's good. Just little part.

[00:37:59] Alex Falcone: I, yeah. I wanted to pull it back and I pulled the wrong part. Sorry. Cool. That's why my audio disappeared for a second. Um, but yeah, they, uh, so anyway, so yeah, Spotify decided to, uh, they were like, if, if we sign away our permanent rights to that 5%.

They won't do anything, but, uh, they'll play your songs or your jokes otherwise. No, right now, so my album got pulled off of Spotify, which was very disappointing. Yeah. That sucks.

[00:38:24] Alex Falcone: mean, well, I mean, all, yeah, so I don't have the full, special on YouTube right now.

I have, most of the jokes have been pulled apart. Like all of, all of the, the album is on, uh, on TikTok and on Instagram reels. Eventually you'd have to pull it in weird orders, but it's there. Um, but Spotify was like one of the most, it's the, one of the biggest services. It's where it already listens. Um, so that makes a huge difference.

So we're gonna do we have some other plans for it, but yeah, it's it's around, but Spotify is a big, it's a big hit, uh, the biggest revenue source for comedies, for truck drivers, listening to Sirius XM. That's where our real money Sirius XM really that's the

[00:39:02] Alex Falcone: far.

Yeah. I mean, well, I don't know if that's, I mean, I don't know how much that works for him, but for us because that's radio. So if you listen to my track on Spotify, you pay. 0.0 0, 0, 0 $2 or something like that. It's very small number, but if, if a radio station plays it, they pay 50 bucks. Oh, okay. So there's an there's per spin on a radio station.

Gotcha. So it's but that could lot per that could be a million listens. We don't know how many listens it is, but per play it's 50 bucks. And so I get 45% of that. So every time SiriusXM plays a track does really well. And there's a lot of truck drivers listen to a lot of comedy. So SiriusXM is where the real money is.

Truck drivers are

[00:39:43] Alex Falcone: They got a lot of drives long time. I'm sure there's a lot of 'em listening and yeah. That's why, I mean serious things. So too, that's why Sirius bought, um, a couple of big podcasting companies. They, they bought Stitcher among other things.

So they're also trying to get into that. I've got an

What does

[00:40:16] Jeff Nesbitt: specific. Uh, in that it will be, uh, you know, truck driver related issues. We're talking gas prices. We're talking infrastructure support.

We're talking like what is going on in the industry. Yeah. And are you in the truck driving

Yeah, absolutely. You wanna speak the language, but this is just one of many best part of that podcast idea is you could have call signs instead of your host base. Oh yeah.

[00:40:50] Alex Falcone: And, and the, and the codes, when you, you say 10, four when you hang up or whatever over now.

Absolutely. Yeah. There's a lot of potential. That's, that's a S sizeable. That's a sizeable market. You could target. I don't know what they, like. I don't know if you'd connect with them,

They might, they might like to talk about, you know, what happens after you die. Yeah. I'm sure a lot of 'em do

[00:41:19] Jeff Nesbitt: Yeah. Well, I, podcasts can be very niche Uhhuh. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Actually, from what I'm told, that's how they're successful.

Cuz mine is not niche. Yeah. And the algorithm hates it.

[00:41:34] Jeff Nesbitt: not a niche person. I mean, you are got, I am, but I've got a lot of niches, right? Niche. You just pick a niche. Yeah. I don't

Yes. But you start a niche, then you got all these listeners and then you can grow and do whatever. So once you get, if you're like, oh, we're a, a podcast about, uh, oh, saw a podcast for was really huge that a friend of mine does that I didn't realize was so successful, but was like, oh, it's about law and order SVU.

You start by doing like each week we talk about law and order SVU, but then you go wherever you want in the middle. So the, the niche gets people in the door. Definitely a good strategy you swing from there.

Yep, yep, yep. Yep. Smart. Um, so I better get to some of my questions before we get too far into this thing, please. Um, so you are performing at helium, starting.

Louis at their helium for two nights. Oh, nice.

[00:42:36] Alex Falcone: here, but this is like my middle period. Uh, I was here for like 12 years, um, after college and yeah, I feels great to be back. Is this where you started comedy? Yeah.

So I'm comedy from Portland. So is helium your

[00:42:47] Alex Falcone: home? Yep. Cool. Yep. And it's the first time I've been back in a little bit, really excited about it. I, um, I assume you've gone to something in helium before you I've gone to a few shows. Yeah. Yeah. Um, it's a great place in the people who work there really great.

And yeah, it's been the place that made almost everything that I've done possible in some way. So

[00:43:11] Alex Falcone: Both those guys are great.

Yeah. And they, they know what they're doing. They care about the comedy, which is not true of every club, but they really care about us. And that's really nice. That's cool.

Yeah. And you went on Stephen Colten bear's show. Yeah. Can you tell me a little bit about some of those experiences? Yeah, so

And the casting director saw me at a standup show and liked me and had me come in for a couple of things that I didn't get. And then they happened to read a role that looked just like me. And so I, the first time I was on was in season two or three, I think, and I was a, uh, magazine. I had originally, I had like, I'd gone in for an audition for a role called super nerd.

And I remember like, and I'm, I'm a nerd for sure. I've been locked in a band cabinet more than once in my life, but are you a super nerd? I'm not a super nerd. I'm definitely not a super nerd. Cause I felt like when I went into that audition, I was like, I don't know if I'm quite up for this. And then I saw a guy walk into that audition who was using his iPad for the, for apple maps.

So he's holding this huge iPad and like looking around, trying to figure out what he's going. He's got steampunk goggles on his hat. He's got a really good neck beard. And he, I was like, as soon as I saw him walking, he was like, well, it's obviously him. And he got that part. And that role is really great and he's awesome at it.

And the casting director had seen him like at a hardware store, he wasn't even an actor. He was just like, so perfectly the role that they wanted. So he was Portland, he was Portland and he was super nerd. And so when I, I went in for super nerd, I was like, I'm not really super nerd. I'm more of like, I don't know, like.

Graphic design magazine, editor, nerd. And then like two days later, they're like, Hey, we wrote this magazine editor, character shoots tonight, or tomorrow. Like, we need you tonight. Can you do it? So I didn't have to have a dish for that as the second one. So I missed the part and then got a different part that fit me better.

And then after that, they just like put me on the wall of towns, folk. So they had like, one of the producers had a bunch of Polaroids just on a wall that was like, here are the city dwellers in Portlandia. And there were like a few dozen of us. And so whenever they had a sketch, it's like, oh, Fred's starting a cell phone company.

Here are three neighbors that he lives next to. And so I got to go do that. Cool. So I did a bunch of different, usually slightly nerdy, but, um, all the, all the

[00:45:31] Alex Falcone: nerdy. That's true. There was a lot of that. Uh, I definitely did a, I was in a. Another nerd sketch that was like sort of a jocks versus nerds, rumble fight.

And I was like one of the, one of his gang of nerds. And it was, that was, I mean, that was one where I got to hold like a, a four foot duct tape sword and play piano and juggle. And just, was it like a

[00:45:52] Alex Falcone: It was not quite LARPing. It was, we were supposed to be Laing esque, but yeah, there was a Laing sword, but it was sort of like, just like us against a group.

And it's funny cuz when you cast a bunch of jocks there's and I, so I have a speaking role and then there's like people who are doing just extras, who are there to look the part and you know, yell. Yeah. But not, not talk much. So there's one group of nerds that came from one casting department that did all of the like extras that were nerds.

And then there's a separate casting agency in Portland. Just for the hot people, there was a separate like, oh, you want people super hot, you call this number. And so all the jocks came from the super hot agency. There was like it. So it was like a real life split. It wasn't just like, well, we're all actors and some of us look different.

It was like the nerds get a different manager than the hot people. Oh wow. And we, yeah, that was, that was really, really fun. That was my favorite episode. I love

[00:46:45] Alex Falcone: It did, which is one of the reasons why I think a lot of people in Portland, um, mostly have bad things to say about it.

And I think it's because it did, you know, so we were talking earlier about laughing at kids. It's like, I think sometimes people still are like, I can't tell if you're laughing with me or at me. And you know, like that's definitely at, I think a lot of it's at, and I think people's eventually took that personally.

And sometimes it was, it would change. I do think the first few seasons were more about roasting Portland and then later they sort of the, the, as the show went on, Either they ran outta things to make fun of, or they just liked their characters. And so the later seasons became much more. Their char the characters from earlier and we just see their lives going further and further.

And that was actually really cool. I like that a lot from a writing perspective was like, it became more about this fake city that they made up and a bunch of stuff happening, you know, the, one of the episode

[00:47:32] Alex Falcone: all his anti. Exactly. Yeah. That wasn't about any real mayor here. That was just a fun characteristic that kept coming back to it.

[00:47:52] Alex Falcone: know surprising, even if it's not Portland.

Exactly. There's enough hipster culture in it. That's like, oh, the people from Brooklyn get this people from Seattle and San Francisco, get it. And you know, in LA there's like the Portland D neighborhood in silver lake, that's like, oh, the people in silver lake seem like the people in Portland. So it captured, uh, a subgroup that everyone recognized.

And it was really good at that. I, I mean, sketch comedy so hard that like. Obviously not every sketch is gonna be perfect. And, and every review of every sketch show is always like it's hit and miss, which is like, yeah, that's how jokes work. Like not all of them are gonna hit, but I think of a show as like part of the way I think of a sketch show is it's impact.

What, what sketches do you think of later? And Portlandia has a couple moments that they captured so perfectly that people still think about 'em later. And like, so like the, the restaurant where they showed the, from the table from the table,

[00:48:41] Alex Falcone: straight from my brain.

Yeah, exactly. Because it, because it's such, it captures a thing so perfectly, and it makes fun of it in such a funny, interesting way that it seared into my brain. Um, there's another one that was like less famous, but there was a sketch they did about trying to split a check with like 10 adults and they bring in.

The Wolf basically from pulp fiction is like the person who's good at helping adults split a check. Who's like, you got wine, you didn't get wine. You, you ate appetizers. It's $27 for you. It's $39 for you. And just was like the best ever check splitter. And that just captured a moment that irritates me so perfectly.

And it was such a funny idea to bring in the Wolf that I think about that sketch all the time. So like, it doesn't have to be every sketch is perfect to be like, man, that really caught some human moments and stuck with

[00:49:25] Alex Falcone: to. I think that's cool.

Yeah. Yeah. So, and you mentioned those two things, you mentioned like a weird subgroup and you mentioned relating, and I think the, like the, when comedies that it's best, it can be either weird or relatable. And what I, what I like a lot is when it's both, when it's like, oh God, that's the best. This is unique and universal.

Somehow at the same time it's got this universal aspect, we all recognize it. But then it goes in a direction where it's a specific character or whatever that, I don't know, that's when it like really holds on my brain.

It's a thought that I never really considered funny before. And it's a thought that I've had a thousand times in my head, but never externalized or had externalized by someone else around me. And I'm just like, this is just a mental object that has existed in my head forever. And now it's brought out into this public square for everybody to enjoy.

And it feels personal. Yeah. It feels like they wrote the joke, like it's based on your experiences. Yeah. Yeah. And it's, and it

And I don't even remember who did this, but there was a joke. I remember seeing when I was relatively young at comedy, at least when I was first starting out, there was a comic around here about a joke that was like, every toaster has a setting that will just ruin your toast. And I had never thought of that, but yet, like every toaster, you could turn it to a thing that destroys bread.

that's crazy.

[00:50:47] Alex Falcone: that? I don't, yeah, I don't need five. I never need five and I hadn't thought about it. And I like, it's not, that's not a, there's a joke after that. That's like the joke part, but that observation was like, I'd never thought about that. And it's something.

So when there's something that's been hiding in plain sight for me like that, and somebody can call attention to it. That is when comedy like feels magic

[00:51:08] Alex Falcone: gold. The other thing about Portland that's really funny is that there is like, when it went off the air a few years ago, I did an interview for a story for like the local public radio station was talking about the time in Portland, how Portland Portlanders felt about it.

And they had a bunch of clips of people saying like, well, you know, at first I liked it, but I thought it kind of wore out as welcome. I thought it got too mean or whatever else, everybody in Portland, if you ask them, Portlandia will say they liked it at the beginning, but then they didn't like it later.

Which is the most perfect hipster thing to say, to be like, oh, I liked Portland's early work. Like everybody in Portland is Portlandia hipsters. Like they you're doing the thing that they would've made fun of if they were still on the air. That's beautiful. It's so

It's uh, sneaking in its own tail. Yeah. Um, working with, uh, on Stephen Colten bear's show. Do, did you do a, a set? I did standup. Yeah. I, I think Stephen Colten Bay was probably one of the most influential comedians to me. I, I remember like everything I said that I thought was funny was said with a Stephen Colten Colten Bay.

Essence to like when I was in Highschool. Yeah. I watched, I mean, this is back when he was still on the daily show. Oh yeah. Uh, I mentioned earlier how I wrote for the school paper. Yeah. And I used to do a threat down, uh, that was from the Colten Bay report. I'm pretty sure. And I talked regularly about the dangers of bears.

Um, I was very, very obsessed with Stephen Colten Bay in his comedy.

A lot of the time he was angrier and Colbert was sillier in a way that I always liked, like he was pretending to be

[00:52:49] Alex Falcone: angry that freed him up to do silliness in a way that John Stewart was like, no, this sucks. You're doing a terrible thing. And it made it like a little bit less silly.

So like, yeah, like Colten bear would like put glasses on a ham and call it Carl Rove. And it like, I still like what a perfect bit. And it's so goofy. And so that, that part of Colten bear where he's so smart that he can be silly is something that I is definitely been a big influence. I like

Yeah. I, and a lot of the little stuff he did just like something very small, like where he would do the better Noah district. Yeah. Um, and the Washington's 19th. Yeah. The fight 19th. It's

The dealer shows like we gotta cover Bush and Iraq and like, we have to cover these big stories. And I think that's actually been true on other formats where like the, like now Colbert and Fallon, whatever they have to hit the big, big stories of the night. But one of the reasons why Conan was always really fun and why it was like a lot of comics.

I know he was their favorite host was because he could do, he would do the weirder stories. His monologue would be about dumber things. Cuz if you watch the late show, you watch the main. Stories of the day, the late, late show. That's where they get weird. That's where they get silly. Um, and I think like, uh, Seth Myers is doing that now where he like, kind of snuck up on everybody and has a lot of people's favorite now because he's doing stuff differently than other people cuz he's in the late, late spot.

So. Okay. Yeah. I think that was, that was Colten bear's advantage for a while is he was the less pressure.

[00:54:31] Alex Falcone: were kind battle.

Yeah. It's definitely different now. I. It is weird. So, so I did, when I did to stand up on Colten Bay, you know, Colten bear's numbers are like two, 3 million people watching a night. That sounds nice. I obviously happy to get my stuff in front of two to 3 million people. I don't know how many of them watch all the way through, by the time they get to my segment, how many people are still paying attention?

I don't know, half a million to a million. That's a lot of people still, there's still a lot of people, but I post a TikTok that does half a million. I'm like, well, that's good. But like, I'd like to see it in the four or 5 million range. Like I have several talks that have more views than Colten Bay does.

And I know they watched me, I know how much of my video they watched. Whereas on that show, I don't know how much. So the audience numbers are way weird now where it's obviously a million a night is great and that's great for Colbert, but it like being on Colbert has not changed my life in the, the next day.

You know, like you don't get a call from captain Hollywood and it's like, come do your own thing. It's like, yeah, I got 20 new Twitter followers. And like, I got a couple of auditions and then that was it. And it was over it's nice credit. It's helpful. It was fun. It's great tape. But if it was

Exactly.

It's a different job. Yeah. To be like, you know, like Gordon is. Everyone. I know, you know, my mom loves James Gordon and if, if I ask her like, what's his monologue, like, she'd be like, I don't know. I like that carpool karaoke or like, oh, I like Fallon. He does that thing with music, toys, music instruments, like you're trying to come up with a bit that makes great YouTube content.

Yeah. So even so I'm saying I'm doing better on social media than they are on their regular show. And they're like, yeah, we know we're also trying to get viral YouTube videos. Our YouTube videos also do better than our show does. So like, it's, it's a little bit like evened out that like Seth Meyers got a lot more attention because his YouTube videos were really good of his deep dives into more specific things.

And, um, it's just, it's, it's a very interesting way. That's changed where like the host matter it's a big. But also, they're just trying to make viral content. Like everybody else,

So there's, that means there's more competition. Yep. So there's just a lot more on, in every

Yeah. But, uh, it also, I mean, the audience is also really interesting because the audience, if there was only when there was only two late night shows a lot more audience for each of those shows, so yeah. Millions

[00:57:17] Alex Falcone: I don't know about late night shows, but I, you know, yeah.

I was talking, I was listening to a podcast recently that was talking about, um, will and grace and was like, they got like 22 million people watching an episode, which is like unfathomable now. Yeah. If you get a million people, an episode on a two, three, maybe on a sitcom. That's incredible. Yeah. So

I don't watch sitcoms

[00:57:45] Jeff Nesbitt: they're hard to watch now. It it's almost like the, the live studio audience. Laughter sound has been just like. It kind of solidified as the nineties sound.

Yeah. And when I hear it, it's like, oh, this show couldn't possibly be relevant or modern. Right. Even if it was so we

They just don't have can't. Laughs. But yeah. And then even, and newer shows like, you know, we're watch like, uh, we really like, uh, what we do in the shadows. I love that show, incredible show. And that's Bay, that's a sitcom and it's classic sitcom format except for the cameras in the laugh track. But you could, you could picture that if that show was made in the nineties, it would have a laugh track and it would make sense.

And it would be other than that, pretty similar.

[00:58:36] Alex Falcone: arc. Exactly. Yeah. They're episodic. I mean, there's like little bits of arc, so. A character comes in the beginning of the season and leaves at the end.

But mostly the episodes are just about a silly thing that they do that day. So I, and I love that shows have more arc from season to season now. And I like more but that, yeah. So I still love half hour comedies. Basically. The other thing that's happened, like I'm trying to write for TV. I'm like writing packets of submitting things.

I'm working with people on stuff and it's like, basically anything that's a half an hour is a comedy. Anything that's an hour is drama, even if it's a very funny hour or a very serious half hour. So I think that's an interesting way that TV's changed where it's kind of blurred from being like just jokes to being like, well, this is jokes, but it's also gotta have the serious thing or this plot thing.

Um, so what,

[00:59:28] Alex Falcone: joke. Yeah. Yeah, totally. So those are very funny, but they're probably technically like done in the drama department.

More likely, I don't know for sure about those, but like, they're brilliant. Have you

[00:59:48] Alex Falcone: there's. I mean, there's a lot of really good half hour stuff still being done that I really like, I mean, I like a friend of mine is in hacks and I really like hacks.

I haven't seen that. I just

[01:00:05] Alex Falcone: could be well, Hannah I binder is the co-star. Okay. And she and I were on Colten together. Um, and, uh, so like, I mean, that's incredibly exciting, but also I really like that show and it's one of the few shows that I like the way they show comedy.

Mm-hmm okay. So it's about standups. It's about standup. Yeah. Um, well, it's, and it's a really interesting version of being about standup, where it's about a young standup working with an old standup and like that old, old comic getting back into the, how comedy has changed. And that's really interesting. So she's got a different style of jokes than the young comic and they're learning from each other.

It's, that's, it's really, that's like a good dynamic and the acting is, is very, very good. And the show's well written, uh, you know, our flag means death is really fun on, so I like there's some really neat, weird half hours going on. Um, so I think that like, I still, I don't. Yeah. So I still think of myself as watching a lot of modern comedies, but I'm not watching any multi cams laugh tracks cause that's unbearable.

Yeah. It,

[01:01:07] Alex Falcone: taste. I don't, I mean, it's hard to know what I mean, everything probably informed it in some way. I'll give you mine.

[01:01:28] Alex Falcone: uh, uh, family matters and full house and that kind of area full house for me.

Yeah. Although I tried to watch the new full house when Netflix rebooted, I was like, I can't believe you're doing laugh tracks again. This is so awful. Why would you do that in today's? I didn't try. Yeah. It just it's, it doesn't make any sense for my brain anymore.

[01:01:47] Alex Falcone: laugh tracks forever.

I, I think that is like officially, like around when it was like one of, I, it was something around there was like, it died forever. And once it was

[01:02:00] Alex Falcone: Real is this? Yeah. Well this, so I'm, I'm want, you know, I'm rewatching parks and rec right now.

And it's like, that's a sequel to the office, basically. Yeah. And what's funny is that the office, they were like, this is a documentary. We got a documentary crew and they'll occasionally talk about how much footage they're getting or whatever. And then in parks and rec, it's got the same. They have the confessionals, they have the camera movement, like it's a documentary, but they never talk about the documentary crew.

It's not important. It's just like the fake documentary style became just a style of sitcom that exists. You couldn't even do that

[01:02:31] Alex Falcone: But now if they talk to those, if they're like, what do you guys, what show are you making?

It'd be like, what do you stop it? We get it. Just do your

[01:02:44] Alex Falcone: and all that stuff. Yeah. In what we do in the shadows, there's this, it's also a documentary style and there's.

Occasionally a vampire will like eat the sound guy and then you won't hear any sound for the next part of the fight or something like that. It is very fun. Yeah.

[01:03:00] Alex Falcone: such a good joke.

Not just be about the comedy stuff. Mm-hmm , even though I like that stuff, I could talk about it more. Um, oh, I also wanna hear about your, did you really write a romance novel? Yeah. Best unwrap my

It's about mummies. Um, and it is, um, it's, it's basically just Twilight, but instead of a sexy VAM. It's a disgusting rotting, mummy, corpse. That's hilarious. It's I, I think so. I like it. It's a funny concept. What a great premise. It's not, I mean, it's, it's a better idea than it is an actual book, but we like, so my, my friend, my writing partner, and I had like joked about this for years.

And it was cuz like after Twilight, there were a lot of Twilight ripoffs there were a lot of like, oh it's instead of a vampire he's a Demonn or he's everybody wanted to bang a monster. Yeah. There was, everyone was banging a monster for teenage girl meets a sexy monster and we kept joking. They were gonna run out of good monsters and have to go to the be level monsters.

And like my favorite monster is mummies. They're just like hilarious, cuz they're so they're slow. They're like not powerful. They're very weak. They're RO yeah. They can't see. Cause their eyes were removed and put in a jar. Um, they're like their brains were sucked out with a straw. They're very stupid.

Like there's nothing. And they're a little bit of moisture destroys them. They're very, very pathetic in the, in the brain and Frazier mummies. Oh, he was badass the second and third one, they were doing flips. They were running through lakes. Well, that was dark magic. Yeah. Right. It's all dark magic. It's a Nubis.

Yeah, it's all. It's all Wild. But the original, if you watch the original, like Boris Karloff, the mummy. His magic power is he's gross. That's it? His whole thing. He kills some people by just existing and people go, Ugh, heart attack. That's it. Uh, at one point he carries a gun. Like he's just like he has no powers.

He's just a, it's probably really hard to

[01:04:52] Alex Falcone: I think his fingers were still out in that I can't remember, but he also in the original Boris Krats mummy side note, they, he just gets a job after he gets dug up and accidentally reanimated. He puts on a hat and a jacket and gets a job and becomes a world 10 years go by in that movie.

And they're like, he is now a world. Renowned architect still wrapped up still a mum, but wearing a jacket for 10 years, he worked a job and like got world and no one noticed he was a mommy. Cause he just had a fedora. Anyway, mummies are hilariously pathetic and stupid. And I think

[01:05:25] Alex Falcone: I mean, I think now it actually would, if you have a really ugly hat, people won't notice your face. That's that is a strong move. That's it's actually, it's a good warning about wearing bad hats is like

[01:05:37] Alex Falcone: attention well, but it makes you, it makes me think you're going to a game convention.

Yeah. It makes me think you're LARPing. So that's true. Um, but yeah, he just like gets a job. So I think mummies are so funny. So we were like, it's gotta be time for mummies. We're gonna run on Moss. It's gonna be mum time. And so eventually we joked about it long enough that we were like, Maybe we should actually write this book.

And so we sat down and wrote the book and we put it out in 20 16, 20 17. And to, to know a claim, to know fanfare who

[01:06:06] Alex Falcone: true. That was the, the one professional review we got when we originally published it.

Publishers weekly did not care for it. Uh, they called it unfortunate, but that was the only review we got. So I put that on a sticker and put it on the cover of the book. So the cover the book says, unfortunately, I think that's great. I think so too. I like that joke, um, is my favorite part, but

[01:06:25] Alex Falcone: Well, so this is what happened. So we sold over five, six years. We sold maybe 500 copies of the book. We have, we talk about the podcast. I promoted, I sold a shows. It's fine. It's been a modest hit for me. And then I made a TikTok about it. And that sticker basically was funny enough to people that people on TikTok were like, we have to buy it for.

Sticker. So we sold thousands and thousands of copies. So it like went viral early this year. So it was like a book that no one cared about. Self-published romance novel for children who cares. It's stupid. It was a funny thing to have. And then it, like all of a sudden in March shot onto the best seller charts on Amazon.

And it was like best selling romance novel on Amazon for a week because it was so stupid and people on TikTok loved it. That's awesome.

[01:07:06] Alex Falcone: You just, it is Wild. Yeah. And I, I feel like I thought, you know, maybe we're best seller all the publishing industry to come crawling over, to run to us.

Like, Hey, you figured out TikTok, no one cares. No one cares at all,

[01:07:22] Alex Falcone: and I think the clever thing about the video I made on it was accidentally clever is that I wasn't trying to sell anybody.

The book. I was just. Isn't this look at this funny thing I did. Isn't it weird that I spent the time to write this book and I, you know, like I had, I have, I made fun of the book, basically. It's not great publishers weekly said this and I, you know, my sales pitch was like, look, it's, it's got words in it.

They're all different. I mean, there's some repeats, but it's mostly different. Like just stupid shit. Yeah. And people loved that. And I think if you tell them, you should buy this, no one will watch it. But if you're on TikTok and you're like, this is dumb, don't buy it. They'll be like, I'm gonna buy it. Yeah.

And so like they, to spite me, I think, well, cause that makes it

[01:08:03] Alex Falcone: cared a lot the first few months and then I was

Okay. Well, I mean, that's why I think that's why your TikTok really took off mm-hmm because by that point you're probably like, man, no we've sold what we're gonna sell now I'm just having exactly. So I was

Yeah. That's awesome.

[01:08:24] Alex Falcone: hit. I mean, you know, it was self-published so, you know, it's not a real book book. It's a book that anybody could just go do. And so we, you know, we, we it's, it's technically called vanity press. We made a fake publishing company called completely legitimate publishing company.

That is the official publisher of our book. Um, no one wants a self-published book for good reason. Most of them are a nightmare to read. I've read a few, I've read a few. It can be tough. A lot of typos. Yeah. A lot of Ty ours. I, yeah, we, um, we had a bunch of book groups say they were gonna read it because of the TikTok.

And they asked if we had like a book group, um, questions to start conversation. So we wrote one and one of the questions is like, what's your favorite typo and why? Yeah. Cause yeah, we just edited ourselves and my sister helped and that was the best we could do. So there's gonna be typos and there's some very good ones in there.

I bet apparently the gender of the cat changes during the course of the book and then changes back. I can't remember that, but somebody noticed that recently and told me about it. That's

[01:09:20] Alex Falcone: life. Oh, not as, not in a book, like the, the chicken can just

So it snooze to me, but yeah, we had a hen, I mean, really I've talked, I've covered on the podcast a lot, but so I'm behind on the catalog. I've always heard, this could happen. You have a flock of chickens and there's no rooster in the mix. One will. So what I'm merge. Wow. Yeah, not completely. She's like half rooster, but so she's like huge make eggs.

She still lays eggs. Well, I mean, she's dead now. I had to kill her cuz she turned into a rooster. But um, she, uh, yeah, she was cocking doing. Yeah,

[01:09:57] Jeff Nesbitt: No, no, not, not really her main thing. What is the, what is, what changes then? She had a little bit of morphology change.

Mm-hmm so her, her comb grew mm-hmm her, uh, what are the dangly? That dangly thing. Yeah, that grew her tail feathers grew. She basically looked like a small rooster and then she also tried talking a lot of shit.

Okay. Mm-hmm so she just became like the cool,

Sure. Nobody's talking about it.

[01:10:47] Jeff Nesbitt: honkeys content for sure. We'll we'll come back to this another time.

Uh, okay. So we covered cold bear, all that, or Romans novel. Why do you think people are so afraid to accept Justin Bieber as a legitimate artist?

So Justin Bieber was a child's celebrity, which we all first like, and then we like to hate society, loves to turn on his child's celebrity. Um, he was also, um, an artist who was mostly appreciated by teenage girls and society. Is very shitty about teenage girls taste, whatever teenage girls like the rest of society tends to look down on.

I mean, this is part of the Twilight thing, and this is like, uh, you know, my, my podcast, we, we used to like make fun of books that were written for teenage girls. This is how I ended up in this world, caring about Twilight so much in this, this parody. But, and I regret that very much. Cause I feel like we just, a lot of it's just like looking down at teenage girls' taste and, um, which is kind of misogynistic, really super misogynist and also ages.

And also like, uh, especially, I feel like teenage girls fandoms have like built most of the infrastructure of the internet. That's cool. And massive entertainment industry. Yeah. Huge. They're amazing. Um, they built the Beattles. Yeah. And, and the beetles are still, I guess, respected, but so Justin Bieber, so he went to Justin Bieber is not the Beatles, so he pop.

Like mostly like teenage girls, then everybody should society turns on him. We shit on him. He, he gets uncool and then he gets to the part in his career where it's time to make the comeback. And he's done that recently. You know, he does a, he did a verse on Despacito, whatever. He does a bunch of stuff.

That's like, oh, this is actually kind of good. He has that song. Uh, that's like, uh, my mom doesn't like you and she likes everyone. Very funny, good song. And we're like, all right, it's time for your comeback. And then he's like, but wait, I actually still kind of suck. And then he says a bunch of stuff. That's stupid.

We see, he's like, oh, I'm just always like, I'm driving these cars and I'm wrecking cars and I've got these dumb tattoos. And he says like a bunch of dumb stuff. And then he is like, one of his most recent songs was like, I was a, I was this famous kid and you guys were so mean to me. And it's, I'm so lonely and the song is not good.

And the sentiment's really cheesy and it's like, not believable from him. He doesn't sell it. He doesn't seem to care. He had this moment with Despacito. He has this really good, this really good verse. Then he tries to do it in concert and he doesn't remember the words to his own songs. Oh, that happened.

So, yeah. So he just

[01:13:14] Alex Falcone: Well, he says a lot. He doesn't known in Spanish. So he says a lot of gibberish fake Spanish. Oh no. He just says like burrito, burrito, burrito, a bunch of times. It's like you, he had the opportunity for a full comeback. So I feel bad for how he's treated originally.

He dropped the Baton. Now I don't feel bad for how we're treating him now. So I think that's why

[01:13:33] Alex Falcone: surprised. I had thought about this so much, but I do. I do really. That was well formulated. I like pop music. And I also do think that we all, as a society need to, we owe a huge apology and a debt of gratitude to teenage girls.

I agree.

[01:13:46] Alex Falcone: at home. I mean, that's yeah, you should phrase that differently, but yeah, that's cool.

[01:13:58] Alex Falcone: well. And this is what's fun about my TWI parody.

Yeah. And now they love a parody. That's like picking up on certain things that they remember and trying to fix stuff that doesn't go, like that's kind of shitty about the

That was weird.

Uh, toilet has a lot of problems with it. Oh, I mean, like Edward is undoubtedly a pedophile 100% also, you know, he is the, the woman he's in love with is literally his food. And it's like, and he eats her well, he does eat her a little bit. That's true. But, um, the, but like also, yeah, this is this probably more ways than one.

This is his food source. We don't have to talk about that. This is food source. it's like, oh, it's beautiful. It's this love. It is like, oh, it's forbidden. Love if your. If your friend brought home a pig and was like, this is my new wife, Bella, the pig. I love her. You're like, no, that's you eat that? That's not, it's not fair, Edward.

It's not real. You can't like he was, yeah, he was well, that's how you know, it's true. Love is that he's screwing a pig. I don't like it. So I feel like there's that problem with it. Right. So I can, we can kind of address that in a funny way. And then the people like the book are like, yeah, that is weird. He really was way too old.

It is weird that these a hundred year old vampires hung out in a Highschool every day that doesn't make a lot of sense. That's gross.

[01:15:44] Alex Falcone: Their answer. Yeah. Her explanation, the book is like, they'll we fit in better if we're high schoolers.

No, just go live in the country and be homeschooled. No one will say anything.

[01:15:56] Alex Falcone: your business. And everybody will be, yeah. Society will be like, oh, there's those weirdos in the house. But instead you're in Highschool and they're like, oh, there's those weirdos in Highschool.

Like, it's not like it was better and they're just creeps, creeps. So, so it turns out that those, those women who, who now have adult taste, enjoyed the book. And, and, and so I especially feel like a, uh, familiarity with them and what they, like. I bet there

I bet those well. So

It went Wild and I've read it. And it's hard to, if you think there are a lot of typos in self-published books, read fan fiction, it is. Aggressively bad sentences, really tough read, but it was very popular, so popular that she got a book deal to turn into real book, but she couldn't just use these characters from another book.

So she just got rid of the vampire part and just changed it to a rich guy. And it's still a bad age dynamic and a power dynamic, but it's like, it's not vampires anymore, which I knew it was a fan fiction. I didn't know the vampires were gone. So the entire time I was reading 50 shades, I was like, man, he really is keeping this vampire shit secret for a long time.

I'm two thirds of the way to the book he's gonna have to, well, at some point. And then at the end, it's like, where was the vampire you're waiting for the big reveal. Couldn't wait. Yeah, it was uh, uh, anyway, so, um, because of that, one of the, my coauthor and I'd been talking about for a long time is that we should do a, an erotic fan fiction of our own.

And then try to sell that as a sexy sequel later. Um, I think no, one's done that before. I don't think anyone's ever written erotic fan fiction. Um, the problem is it turns out writing sex scenes with your, uh, other straight male writer, friend kind of difficult, little gross, little weird. We don't like it.

Is it not

[01:17:55] Alex Falcone: would come out of that. Well, the characters in the first person from a 16 year old girl. So even if we like 20 now it's weird. I don't wanna write a sex book from her point of view. No. So we're gonna find another, what we're gonna do is we're gonna, I think we're gonna do our plan now is we're gonna find a like erotica writer to write six sex scenes for us.

Mm-hmm and then we'll write the book around it. So you go, we'll let we'll outsource the sex part and then we'll just do the

[01:18:20] Alex Falcone: don't maybe lose my email address. Uh, we'll see. We'll see. Uh,

What makes you get into flow state more than anything else?

[01:18:41] Jeff Nesbitt: what about in

When do I like let time, when time is disappear, when do you feel like

[01:18:56] Alex Falcone: cold brew? Oh yeah. Yeah. Just a lot of caffeine. You definitely, when I'm like Northwest I, uh, I definitely get the most work done. I feel like the world is amazing. It's cold brew is basically drugs.

I mean, it's like 100%. Yeah. I'm like I'm jittery, but I'm focused. That's when I'm really at my best. Um, what do you do in that? I mean, I'm writing, that's what I'm doing all the time for almost everything that I write writer, writer's gonna write. I'm write. Uh, and I, so yeah, uh, Colten brew and some writing is, is great for me.

I do make a lot of social media content. So I'm also like editing videos and, and writing scripts for that. But the, yeah, the main thing I'm doing, I'm writing jokes. I'm writing scripts, I'm writing social media content. I'm writing stuff. Do you read the comments? I do. I, you're not supposed to, but I do.

This is one thing I will say about TikTok and the largely younger and largely female audience on there is it is the best comment section on the internet. TikTok is the kindest comments. Not for everybody, but like there, like I certainly like comics, women, comics on TikTok, get a lot of meaner comments from the young boy versions on there, but everywhere too.

But TikTok for me, like when I post something on YouTube, first comment is always about something terrible about the way I look. If I post something on TikTok, they are, they play the game. They have fun. They like they comment, but they add stuff. They'll ask questions. I made it, I made a TikTok. So I did, um, Quick aside.

I just, sorry. I did a, I was on to tell the truth a couple months back and I was like an actor on to tell the truth. I dunno if you remember the show it's been on since like the thirties, but there's a new version. That's same show. Oh, it's a, it's been, it's different hosts, but it's the same basic same format, same show.

It's now hosted by Anthony Anderson and he's great fun. Um, and so they have two people, they have three people who say that they have this one interesting job and two of 'em are actors and one person's the real person. So I was an actor on that show where I was pretending to be, um, the guy who wrote, uh, go the fuck to sleep that fake kids book, the dirty book.

Oh, Samuel L. Jackson. Yeah. Yeah. Samuel L. Jackson did the audio book. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and so we're pretending to be the author of this filthy children's book, which is like, honestly, a little bit close to something I've actually done, cuz I wrote a young adult novel, but um, I wasn't allowed to say at the time, but so I'm uh, for the, uh, for that job, for that.

I had this kid, supposedly that I wrote this book about, and I don't have any children in real life. So I had to make up a fake kid in as a fake backstory. So I sat down, my writing partner has two kids. So I sat down with him and we created this whole backstory for this whole character who is my daughter.

Um, and then the sequel to that book, um, is, oh shit. Now there are two of you or something like that. And so like, it's about his second kid. So I had to come with two kids, but I like, so I told, and I prepared and I had all this backstory and I thought so much about what her life is like. And they never asked me a single question about my kids.

So I was like, disappointed that I don't work. And it went to nothing. So I go on a TikTok and I tell the story and I show the clip of me on to tell the truth. And I'm like, I spent all this time creating this character and no one asks me any questions about it. And then the TikTok kids, the, the, the people in the comments were like, all right.

So what is Victoria like to do? What sports does she play? And they asked me all the questions that I wish they'd asked me on the show. And so I spent the afternoon just. Playing basically an improv game with these kids on the internet. Just like making up what Victoria's life is like, like, oh, what's her nickname.

Like I call her bells, but her mom calls her Bella, like whatever. And we like, that's my mom's name. Is it Victoria? It's a great name. It's also the name in, uh, uh, uh, Bella is also in Twilight. Um, but we, uh, uh, I think Isabella's a beautiful name and I think it's got a bunch of good nicknames and it's fun anyway.

So I like go through this whole thing and like, they were so fun. So when you reply,

[01:22:25] Alex Falcone: type it out? You could, you could do both. I was just commenting and responding, but you could do more videos. That's another thing that's so fun.

Is that, that comment and then reply video to comment is like somebody asked you an interesting question. They tell you basically here's what content we want. And then you make that content, like TikTok feels like a community and a, and an interesting world and like cool stuff is going on and it's gonna get ruined any day.

Now it's gonna be terrible, but like YouTube doesn't feel like that. If I post something on YouTube, it's just like, Just an army of angry, teenage boys are gonna say terrible shit about it, but on TikTok, people are gonna like be fun and play the game. Yeah. That

Yeah. Of knowing that your stuff's gonna be received, even if it's not favorably, just not automatically negatively.

There were a lot of comments that were not super nice and a lot of comments that were really nice. And, but I read all of them and I, the same way I took the, that review and put it on the cover of my book. If you, I have a section on my website at the bottom of the website, that's like, what are people saying about Alex Falcon?

And I just put funny negative comments in there so that all of those things you could just keep pressing, show me another. And they're all just mean comments. Um, but they're funny, mean comments. Yeah. They're people who like specifically don't get it in a specific way or they're like, mean they roast me really well.

Um, you're taking the power back. Yeah, exactly. So I'll do the, I'll do the mean comments and then I'll try to recapture them a little bit.

[01:23:54] Alex Falcone: Totally. Totally. And I, yeah. And especially when they're teenagers, they're also like we're talking about exploring how to be funny and how to relate to people. Like I think the people, I think a lot of the kids who are mean on the internet are gonna be like, you are now talking about the helicopter story.

That's like, man, I really said some shit I shouldn't have. Yeah.

And they're actually reading it. I mean, I'm,

So like, people love to say that to famous people and it turns out they just also have are bad at knowing who's famous. Yeah.

[01:24:58] Alex Falcone: It is nice. If you have somebody who can kind of filter them and give you the good information and tell you where to go. Yeah. I, especially on, on social media stuff right now, I look at, it would be different if it was just on standup. But I do look at the comments also because a lot of the time it's like helps me know what is res, what people respond to.

And one. People do on TikTok, for example, as you post a joke, a standup bit, and somebody like they'll just say their favorite line in quotes. So they'll just be like, Uh, they'll be like write 'em cowgirl, whatever. And they'll just all say that. And then like that comment. And so you find a level of like what lines in the joke people respond to at a granular level that you don't get in a show, people laugh, or they don't laugh, but now you're seeing like, oh, they love this bit.

They love this part of this bit. And so that actually helps me with my writing to be like, oh, I should expand this part. It's really connecting with people. Oh, this part's not getting any responses. I should shrink this part down. So I use it all as like, I think of a lot of comments, even the mean ones.

It's just being like market research. So I'll take what information you wanna give me. That's a

[01:26:06] Alex Falcone: Yeah. And I'm not gonna say that's easy, but you definitely have to do it.

I mean, like, it is a lot like baseball where like, you. One out of three times, you're the greatest hitter of all time. Yeah. Uh it's and my ratio is definitely less than that. So I'm like, I gotta find the one out of 30 things that connects with people and then do that, do more of that. Yeah. Well,

And so you gotta take a lot of little offshoot trails, totally turn around and come back. And it's just the way it goes, but anybody who produces anything great has done that a

[01:26:39] Jeff Nesbitt: do that.

Well, I mean, I think for every one great person that there is out there, there's a thousand other people who are working their asses often never quite make it. And that's completely fine too. I think at the end of your life, whether you ever became the, the greatest at whatever you're doing, isn't really that important.

I think the process is a lot more important.

[01:27:05] Jeff Nesbitt: 40. Uh, but you never know. I didn't know who Louis CK was until he was like 45.

Well, so

[01:27:19] Jeff Nesbitt: Rodney Dangerfield,

So, yeah, that's true. He, there are example and certainly there are, there are people, but I'm not gonna be. A Olympic figure skater that that ship has sailed. There are a lot of things I'm never gonna be at this age, but standup is still on the table. Like mm-hmm, authors, uh, like comics. Those are people who are failures until they're 40 a lot of the time.

Oh yeah.

[01:27:50] Alex Falcone: going for a whole career and not have it rot your brain. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Definitely. People who are successful early, I watch like, oh, you have.

Sense of why stuff works or how to get it to do better. You don't know how to do the process when it's not working. Yeah. Cause you just hit everything since you were in college. Yeah. Yeah. You just say burrito a bunch

[01:28:06] Alex Falcone: times. Exactly. Yeah. They, they nailed them.

I am

[01:28:19] Jeff Nesbitt: not big

And so it's like, if I'm gonna get this much sweetness, why? Um, that's a good bit. I think the, is it okay. I'll write that down. When we go home, uh, fruit

[01:28:43] Alex Falcone: dessert, something that that's generally how I feel. I, there are some very good fruits. I, uh, I do. I mean, I do not know very well.

What summer fruits are though. That's like now,

[01:28:57] Alex Falcone: I would count watermelon for sure. I, yeah. Um, here, here's the question. Since you're, you're in the vegetable industry, outside the, the, the plant industry, um, uh, AAT, which is a, like a plum and apricot, then there's like an there's like, wait, is it PT?

And then like APRI come or something like that. There's like a there's, there's both ways where it's like, how what's the difference?

You want,

[01:29:35] Jeff Nesbitt: Every time I, I get a bunch of APRI coming in my mouth, I'm like, this does not taste nearly

[01:29:43] Jeff Nesbitt: Well, you're the one who said it. Yeah, I know. I know.

Uh, yeah, but yeah, the plum. They're not as good as a plum or an apricot to me, maybe that's what

[01:29:55] Jeff Nesbitt: yeah. I liked them before they were cool. Yeah. we are in Portland after all.

Yeah. So we have about a half hour left if you want. I mean, we, what time we should

[01:30:11] Jeff Nesbitt: have. Thank you. I appreciate that Uhhuh. Um, alright. Let's see. Can I give you one more question? Yeah. Is it a half hour question?

Well, if we're lucky, um, okay. Can you describe a time when you felt emotionally moved by a piece of art? Whether that be a movie, uh, a song, anything like that?

[01:30:44] Jeff Nesbitt: running

I know this happened to me. Oh, was it running a UR this morning crying, listening to this podcast. Happy

[01:30:52] Alex Falcone: or sad, meaningful crowd. Yeah. And sad. It was a sad ending. I mean, I, yeah, I get the meaningful cries all the time. I like them. I'm a big crier on from media, not in real life.

Um, I'm, I'm cool. Um, but uh, yeah, I've I credit a bud light commercial a few months ago. I remember very distinctly, uh, and I, cause I was mad about it. Um, but the, the bud light commercial or no, it was not bud, sorry. Corona light, commercial, Corona, commercial. Somebody found their beach and I was just so beautiful.

Um, but no, the commercial was, I, I remember this very distinct thing. So the commercial was like somebody had, was like going to a job interview trying to get a job. And he's like, his friends are hanging out at a bar and he like walks up to them. Straight faced. And then he goes, I got the job and then everybody cheers and hands him a beer or whatever, stupid commercial.

But everybody I hang out with is trying to make it in an industry that is very hard. And so this idea of friends supporting a friend who got something that they really wanted just really hit me at that moment and made me tear up was really beautiful. So I, I moved my art all the time. Um, the most, I think I've ever been moved by a piece of art in card was at an improv show, which is a ridiculous sentence.

And this is not as funny as that beer commercial story, but I was watch, I saw an improv show in Chicago. And the structure of the improv show was like a storyteller. And then they make funny scenes about the stories. And then the storyteller comes back and tells stories. And then funny scenes and the storyteller had lost his father recently.

And he was like, I'm not talking about that. And he would try to talk about something else. And then eventually he would bring up something about his dad. And he would like, kind of talk about a little, like I'm trying not talk about it. And it was very moving and then they have an intermission and then he comes back out and he is like, the whole cast sat me down during intermission and was like, clearly you're talking about this stop, pretending you're not talking about this.

And the rest of the show, he told stories about his dad. And like, if I needed to make myself cry for an audition, I would remember cuz there are, and I'm not gonna do it right now. Cause I could feel it coming. I remember one of the stories that he told about about the last time he saw his father and just to be is an improv show, which is the dumbest art form in the world.

And I like it, but it's so dumb. It's so goofy. You know, it's very human. It is very, that's true. It is very human, but it's so stupid. And so to be at this improv show, that's, what's great about that's true. But we're like, I don't know, a hundred of us in this little tiny and prof theater and just, everybody's bawling their eyes out, watching this story and the way the other, cause this is Chicago, it's the best in the world at it.

The way the other people handled his moving beautiful stories and then turned them into very funny scenes that we still respectful. Yeah. Stand. Yeah. One of the most, one of the most amazing pieces of art I've ever seen. That's cool.

That

[01:33:23] Alex Falcone: moment. Yeah, it was. I, I, I don't know if every week he's like, so my dad just died and then he like, brings like, is always trying to do that bit.

Maybe it's who knows, but it felt real. It felt like probably, yeah, I'm kidding. I don't think that's what happened. I felt like this was a once in a lifetime thing. Cuz any other show he did? He wouldn't say I'm gonna try not to talk about it. Yeah. Like we just happened to have caught just that.

And you did two years of improv, right?

[01:33:49] Jeff Nesbitt: you say on a podcast that you, that you, uh, sold an app and then you were able to just not work and do improv for two years.

We made a video game that ran on Facebook, um, that was sports themed and we sold it to a sports video game company. And it was not a huge windfall. It was like enough money to not work for a year, or I could have gotten a job with that new company and made way more money every year for the rest of my life.

And then I was like, Nope, I quit. I'm done. I hate it. I don't wanna do it again. And so, yeah, so I spent a year or two doing, just improv with that money. And then I went outta money and had to get a job again. But the, uh, Probably the dumbest thing ever done, but I like went to Chicago and study. This is when I saw that show.

So I was like studying there for a summer, like second city. Yeah. I did a little second city. I did, uh, I mostly spent my time at the annoyance, which is like, uh, McNeer wrote like one of the most famous long form improv books. It's his theater. So I hung out there, but I spent time in second city, some time at IO and then a lot of time at annoyance and just like took in that world.

I think it's helped me in comedy, but also it's like, it's not, it's not as bad as your, your story, but it is one of my like, man, what a waste of a year. I sure was dumb back then. Yeah. So I do feel a little stupid about it, but the, um, yeah, I, I, I loved improv very passionately and I, if, if there was a future in improv, I would still be doing it.

It's just, you don't think there is

[01:35:06] Alex Falcone: Is that the yeah, middle distance? Yeah. They had to go do other stuff and get famous first to be able to go back and do improv.

[01:35:14] Alex Falcone: alone. Yeah, exactly. That's what gave them most John rap. He was so funny.

Amazing. So funny. Um, There are maybe seven people in the world who do improv for a living. I mean, it's really small. Yeah. Uh, there are a lot of standups who make a living. And I like there, I remember being in an improv class and somebody was like, oh, don't lay down in a scene in our theater because our stage isn't raised very high.

And so people behind the second row won't be able to see you. And she was like, there'll be people in the second row. It's like, just, no, there's just no money in improv. Just nobody goes to see improv, even in Chicago where improv is the, it's the improv Mecca. If you look at the audience, 90% of it are students at the school there of improv.

Like they're people learning at second city going to second city shows. There's just not a lot of life in it. Whereas standup sells tickets and you can make a living. So,

It

I mean, drew Kerry already obviously had a real career, but like yeah. Of the seven people, his

[01:36:30] Alex Falcone: show. Totally. And of the seven people who do improv professionally in this world, probably four of them are from that show. You know, like, uh, I did, I, I opened for Brad Sherwood if, uh, year, couple years ago where he was doing at standup clubs, a one man improv show.

So I did like a half hour and then he came out and took suggestions and did scenes with audience members. But just by himself, it was very impressive and cool, but like, yeah, that's, that's not, you know, Colin mockery and Ryan styles do a show that they travel with Greg, Greg poops, Wayne Brady. But Greg poops is mostly a standup.

He makes most of his money on standup. Wayne Brady does some improv touring, but mostly he like hosts, TV shows

[01:37:10] Alex Falcone: very funny. Yeah.

Is Wayne Brady going to have the Ciocca bitch.

[01:37:23] Jeff Nesbitt: I followed, uh, Ryan styles around, not like on stage, but around a pharmacy. One time I saw him in there and I just kind of followed him. That's a little bit weird, man.

I was gonna talk to him and then I lost my nerve.

[01:37:45] Jeff Nesbitt: Well, he was wearing sweatpants. That's what eventually made me not wanna approach him.

He's like he doesn't, this guy is trying to just get his Midal and be on his way.

[01:37:54] Jeff Nesbitt: famous people alone. And I did, but I, I was, I was a big fan. I loved, loved whose line is it? Anyway when it was in its heyday. Yeah,

[01:38:12] Jeff Nesbitt: Anyway. He also hosted some TV show in the, in the late nineties. Probably I used to watch it in the middle of the night. I can't remember what it was, but it was, it was good. Um, I don't know, we could talk about Greg poops all day, but I'm sure you've got other things to go do. That's one of the things to do, getting ready for your I'm gonna Ramble on performances.

So thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate it. Do you have any, any final thoughts before we wrap this up?

Did you hear about that? I did. And you know what? I don't want to hear about that. I don't care. I don't wanna hear about it. All right. You heard to