 Joining us from beautiful Sausalito. How should I describe you? You say you're a renaissance man without the black plague. You truly, you truly are a renaissance man. There's so much that you do. You're a cartoonist. You are a screenwriter. You've written the movies. Santa Junior and Monster Makers for the Hallmark Channel. You write for Splitsider. Huffington Post. You have Suck-A-Tash, which is a comedy sound-cast. Sound-cast. Sound-cast. Easy for you to say. You're a branding expert. There's so much that you do. You are a master of... Of none. You're a master of two Dominican slaves. You're a jack of all trades and you live in Sausalito. Yeah. And you just came back from Dan St. Paul's annual Memorial Day barbecue. Yeah, exactly. I saw a lot of our old friends there. Who'd you see? I saw Larry Bubbles Brown. Hey, buddy. Yeah. I saw Bob Sarlott. Wow. I saw Steven Pearl. Steven Pearl. We just had him on the show. Yes, I know. It was a very good episode, actually. Yeah. I enjoyed that. And then some other folks that aren't actually work in comics like Tom Sawyer. We talk about Tom Sawyer all the time on this show. I'm sure you do. I'm sure you do. He actually has a really good Trump impression, by the way. He was always a good impressionist. Tom Sawyer started Cubs. Yes. And was one of the early gatekeepers of the San Francisco comedy scene. As were you. I can remember you booking the punchline before you went off and became a writer and performer. I remember you would come in from Seattle to audition talent. Yes. Do you remember this? I do. I actually started out working in San Francisco for Fox Productions. And then we needed a club manager in Seattle at the Comedy Underground. So I went back up there. But I would, yeah, I would come down occasionally to look at guys that I'd say, yeah, well, let's bring him up. He's good or she's funny. Let's bring her up. Swannies, swannies, swannies, swannies. That's right. That was the sports bar on street level. And then we were downstairs in the basement. I thought the Holy City Zoo was the most insane comedy club in the world until I played swannies. That literally the inmates were running the asylum at swannies. Is that correct? Is that a fair statement? I believe that it was. Swannies is, I think it's still around. They've moved locations. But at the time, Jim Swanson, who was the titular owner, I think he had people that actually had money behind him, was like a AAA ball player as part of the Mariners farm system. And never really made it into the majors, but decided to open up a sports bar, a spitting distance from the kingdom. And I think everyone who worked for him was like some sort of baseball reject or something. But whenever there was a game, it would be overflowing with his friends who played Major League Baseball. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, and umpires and all those other kind of hangers on. But I thought one of the best things about having a comedy club downstairs was every time we had like a heckler or somebody who was getting out of hand, I could just go upstairs and get any number of giant hulking dudes to just come down and literally one night, they actually lifted a guy up with his chair and just carried him out of the room. One of my favorite places to play in, there was a condo that was one of those spiral, spiral cases. And I was dating my then ex-wife or soon, but I was dating my soon-to-be ex-wife. I was opening for John Fox, the comedian. Oh, I got a John Fox story for you. Well, there are a million John Fox stories, but John Fox was a great comedian. We lost him. He passed away. He was built for the road. He was. Yeah, if science was going to build a comedian for the road, it would have been John Fox. There are great stories about him. One night, I'm trying to convince my soon-to-be ex-wife, who I was dating at the time, that I was not a degenerate. She came with me to Seattle. And I was sharing the condo with John Fox. And my woman was sleeping with me. And the door, they were pounding on the door all night. John, I need to see you, John. John, I love you, John. All week, and then Saturday night, Sam Kenneson is in town. Playing, I think, the Paramount or one of the big theaters. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He comes by to our show afterwards with Sika. There was a porn star named Sika, if I remember. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then Sam brought Sika up to the condo to have tea with John Fox at four in the morning. They were having high tea at four in the morning. I don't know what they were doing. And I was upstairs in my bedroom, trying to convince my soon-to-be ex-wife, this is not my lifestyle, I swear to you, I swear. Anyway, it was the most insane club on the planet. Tell me your John Fox story. Yeah, so John is headlining. This was before your particular story. He's headlining the club and he'd spent the weekend out on Lake Washington getting completely soused. And he's like wearing like a polo shirt and some cut-offs or some shorts. And he just says, look, I got to go back to the condo and grab a quick nap before the show. Okay, well, we're going to start pretty soon because that's okay. Just give me a call like 10 minutes before I got to be on because the condo was like a block away, right? So, all right. So I say, you know what, he was pretty out of it. I'm going to call 20 minutes before. So I start calling. I go, I get a busy signal. You know, back then that's what would happen when you would call a landline. There was no call waiting. I go, okay, well, at least he's awake. He's on the phone. So I go, okay, great. So another five minutes goes by. I give him a call. Still busy. This is worrying me because he's got to go on in 15 minutes. So I tell my assistant manager, I'll be right back and I run down to the comedy condo, which I was living in at the time along with the comics. So I had keys. So I go in and I find him stretched out on his bed, still completely clothed, but with the phone receiver in his outstretched hand. So off the hook, which is why it was busy. And I wake him up and go, John, John. He said, I said to call me. And I pointed to the phone in his hand. I go, and what was going to happen? And he goes, oh, and he throws the phone down and we were running down and he literally gets into the club the moment he's introduced. Wow. And of course, like we said, he's built for comedy. He didn't miss a trick. No, he had an act. He was, it was built like a tank. The act, he would go up on stage holding a glass of bourbon and he would sip the bourbon and extend his pinky. Every time he took a sip, he would extend his pinky. And I marveled at him. I thought his act, I always wanted that kind of act where he could just go anywhere. Yeah. He was a great comic. When did he pass away? You know, I think it was a couple of years ago now. I think he had pancreatic cancer, I believe. Yeah, it was just amazing. He went pretty quickly after he'd been diagnosed, I think. Yeah. Now, I want to talk to you about your movies for the Hallmark Channel and your teaching improv and you do Cartier. You really are a renaissance, man. It's truly remarkable how much you do. Tell me about Suck-A-Tash, your podcast. Okay, it's been going for six years. I was calling it the comedy podcast podcast. The initial thrust of the show was to play clips of other people's comedy podcasts to just promote podcasts in general. Six years ago, it was not the floodgates that it is now. And I said, you know, it'd be great if there was someone who could promote some of these things. You know, some of these are kind of obscure and some of them are comics I know, but they're not getting any kind of, you know, traction. And so that's what I started out doing. And it was, I think I'm sort of, you know, beloved by podcasters because I will play clips from their show. Right. But about a year and a half ago, I got tired of sort of calling things podcasts because, I mean, that's what they are. But the podcast name came from Apple, right, because of their iPod. And it occurred to me when they announced that they were discontinuing making iPods by that name, that why are we still calling them podcasts? You know, if they changed the name of radio to something else, would we still be listening to the radio? Uh-huh. So I decided I start calling them soundcasts, which who knows whether that will ever catch on. But it's interesting because I just interviewed a guy who has a show that's only available in Audible, you know, Audible.com and their app. They're literally not available on iTunes and they don't call the shows podcasts. They don't really have a generic name for it all. It's just called his show, which is The Genius Dialogues, a guy named Bob Garfield, pretty well-known journalist. But anyway, so that's why I've decided to call it the Comedy Soundcast Soundcast. And I also do interviews. You've been on the show before, you're a past guest. And I alternate. I have soundcasts that are suck-a-tash clips and I have soundcasts that are suck-a-tash chats just to differentiate the two. Why is it called suck-a-tash? Because it's a mishmash of people's shows and clips, you know. It's not my own format in terms of, hey, here's what my show is going to be and here's the bits I'm going to do. It's here's a mixed bag collection of different comedy shows and some of them are dramas in terms of they're like a... It's sort of like when you started doing your show, it was more like an old radio show. And it was very different from doing an interview show like you do now. Or it was four guys sitting around a basement in Cleveland, you know, shooting the crap about something. So it was this whole different collection of things. So that's where suck-a-tash came from. You listened to podcasts, specifically comedy podcasts. That's what I feature on the show. That's what I write about on splitsider.com. The reviews that I do for Huffington Post, I've begun to branch out a bit because it's amazing how expansive the world of sound casting has become. I don't know if you're aware of some of these amazing dramas that people are doing now and just amazing journalist shows that people are doing now. It's gone far beyond what it started out as 15 years ago. What are some shows that I should be listening to? There are shows that are like just sort of condensed eight-part series shows, like news shows, like, you know, people are fairly familiar with serial, you know, the show. So there's a lot, that became a template for a number of different kinds of journalists. That's from this American life, right? That's right, it's been off from that. Where they, you know, followed this murder, this cold case, basically. I mean, it was a guy who was convicted for the murder. Why is this even a case? And it's now resulted in the fact that the guy has gotten a new trial because the evidence was very flimsy. And if it wasn't for the publicity generated by that show, I don't think that ever would have happened. So its effects are being felt kind of far and wide. There's an interesting show, London or Britain has a lot of interesting comedy shows. There's one called My Dad Wrote a Porno. And it's a guy whose father wrote this pornographic novel. And he found it hilarious. And he reads a chapter per episode to two of his friends who just do nothing but snipe it. How bad the writing is. It's horrible. And there's been, like, these amazing celebrities who listen to the show. They love the show. People like Elijah Wood was a guest on the show just because he likes listening to how horrible it is. Well, it's a show about Wood. Why not have Elijah? Ah, see. See what I am horrible at? How did people find podcasts? Very good question. I think there's the few that rise to the top. I mean when something like Cereal became popular, all of a sudden everybody was writing about it. So people found out about it. I like to think things like the AV Club and Splitsider.com and things like that where we're reviewing shows. I think that starts to help bring it to the fore. Comedians that have been doing podcasts or soundcasts talk them up when they're doing their shows. And, you know, if you look at Mark Marin, he was able to basically resuscitate a career that wasn't doing that well, I think, do largely to the popularity of his show. Yeah, I was with him the summer before he launched his podcast. And he was doing his one-man show in Montreal. We were walking around Montreal. I think it was 2009 or 2010. And he was in bad shape financially. His one-man show was fantastic. But he said, you know, I'm going to do this podcast thing. And I condescendingly said, yeah, I think you'll enjoy it. I have one. And it took off. Why do you think Mark's podcast gained such traction? I think it was probably double-pronged. He was willing to kind of open a vein on the microphone and talk about his life. And I think people to some extent or another maybe would have gotten a little tired of just that. But he also began to have on an amazing array of guests. You know, it started with friends and comics and people that he either knew or he admired. And it has become, for better or worse, it's become a little bit more like a commercial talk show. You know, I mean, he's got guests on that he clearly doesn't really know. But you know, a PR agent will say, hey, let's get you on Marin's podcast. And then I think the corner really got turned, not that it wasn't popular at the beginning with, but when he had Obama on his show a couple of years ago, I think you ask, how do people find podcasts? I think things like that, when an event like that happens, it really spikes interest. And people go, hey, how do I hear that thing? How do I find out about that thing? And so when you get on iTunes and you go, here's how I download it, you suddenly realize, wait a minute, there's hundreds of shows on here. This is not just one guy. This is a whole array of things, not just comedy either. There's all the, there's, you know, a figure I keep banding around. It's probably grown since I started using it. But there are 300,000 podcasts out there, which is an amazing amount of stuff to get through. And the great thing about Suck-A-Tash is you're filtering it. And if you listen to Suck-A-Tash, you can kind of pick a la carte, right? Yeah, it's a bit like a Whitman sampler of comedy podcasts. I try to keep it fresh. I will occasionally, you know, repeat playing a show because somebody had somebody good on or said something funny. Sometimes if they mentioned Suck-A-Tash, I will play a clip from their show mentioning my show. But it is a way for people to kind of get a feel for what's out there because I try to find the newer things that are out there. Like I just reviewed Andy Kindler. He's got a new... The Thought Spiral, yes. The Thought Spiral. So I reviewed that for Splitsetter this week and I'm going to clip it in my next show. And so that's brand new. And people go, you know, they know him because he's a guest on a lot of people's podcasts, including this one. And so now he's trying to do his own. Or he is doing his own. Well, I say try. He's doing his own. And so it's nice to be able to tell people about that. And I think that I know from a perspective of working with comedians, I know they appreciate having the attention without having to go out of their way to get you to do it. You know, to mention them. You were there at the beginning of the comedy boom in San Francisco. I was. I was. Does the podcasting boom remind you of the stand up boom? It really does. I mean, there's similarities. It's not obviously a beat for beat element. But it is. It's interesting because, you know, I think Ricky Gervais had one of the first podcasts that was out there. And in a way, it's almost like each wave of comedy is touched off by sort of the dying embers of the wave that preceded it. Right. I mean, we had like a whole kind of nightclub comic playboy club kind of comedian thing that was in the fifties into the sixties. I mean, George Carlin came out of there and then began to develop his own style and move away from the establishment comedian and kind of just as that was beginning to fade, whatever happened in like the early seventies. I mean, part of it's probably political with Watergate and that sort of thing. But it seemed to touch off that next wave that started in the seventies. And then that really kind of caught fire moving into the eighties. And we had this huge comedy boom that lasted into the early nineties and it began to sort of simmer down again. It became kind of diluted and a lot of the number one big comic draws were getting television shows and moving out of the clubs. And then once again, I mean, it's not as hooked into comedy today as I was back then, but it seems like there's a lot of live stand-up happening again. So it's almost like, again, the blaze is being sort of brought up and podcasting has become the same thing. There's a lot of comedians that now are having trouble getting booked on the road because they're old, and it's harder to get those slots. There's not as many clubs willing to pay the kind of money a headliner should get paid. But comics still want to work. They still are developing material, and so they found their way into podcasting. And that's just the comedy end of it. Like I said, it's this wide array of topics now. So everybody's finding a way. And I was sort of a student of radio. Back in the day, I started out doing radio in the late sevens. Why don't we start with what you haven't done? I think that might be easier. I've never made pretzels. Oh, by the way, I'm saving the best for last, folks. I'm going to tell you a job that he has that will blow your mind. Yes, so radio is... When radio started, you know, everyone had a radio station because it didn't take much. They were in their basement. Their stations maybe went a block and a half. And everybody had one. This was like in the 20s. And then the FCC sort of came into existence and began sort of turning the airwaves into real estate. So you didn't need a license at first? Not at all. Not at all. But then these legitimate, I'm using air quotes, legitimate stations started to come about. And they were saying, hey, there's a bunch of little stations in our town that are blocking out our signal. And so all of a sudden, they started pushing their muscle around. All those little stations started to kind of disappear. But to me, that's what podcasting is now. And I think we're beginning to see corporate America beginning to move into the territory. Like I said, audible.com is now a place where they operate apart from iTunes. They don't need iTunes. They're doing their own thing, whether it lasts or not remains to be seen. Is this model with Audible? That's a good question. They're spending a lot of money to get stuff out there. And I guess it'll all turn out whether commercials are going to be the thing that saved them because they're not charging a subscription to listen to the show. So it's all going to be based on sponsorship. When and where do people listen to podcasts? With radio, as I understood it, at least during the 80s and 90s, if you capture the morning, you capture your listener. So everything is drive time. Get them from 6 till 10. With podcasts, do we know where and how and when people are listening? It's a great question. I think it's an individualized medium. You know, when people talked on the radio as announcers, they would go, okay, folks. And now I know it's a lot of podcasters. They make it more personal. Like I'm just talking to you. You've got earbuds in your face and I am talking just to you. I'm not talking to a whole bunch of people. And so I think the listening habits are as varied as people themselves. I listen when I hike in the morning. That's usually when I listen to the ones I'm going to be reviewing. I've listened to my car radio in five years. I just, you know, I Bluetooth through the car speakers. So I can listen to exactly what I want to listen to when I want to listen to it. And I do listen during drive time because that's when I'm in the car. So more and more people are going to be listening to podcasts in the next 10 years. And I think it's safe to say that more and more aging baby boomers are going to finally figure out what a podcast is. I think so. My mother hasn't heard my show yet. Well, she's not a baby boomer. No, she's not. But she's on the cusp of the previous generation. And, you know, they're making cars now more Bluetooth friendly. So it's much easier to get the content from your smartphone into the speakers in the car. So I think you're right. I think it's just going to continue to increase with the ability to make listening that much easier. Yeah, I find it really interesting and satisfying because television is the brass ring. That's what everybody wants. And yet, you know, I do Greg Fitzsimmons podcast. And every time I do it, it's like I was just on The Tonight Show. For some reason, the reaction is I've got lawsuits, death threats, subpoenas. I mean, it's because audio connects with people in a way that nothing else does. I always say it's preliterate. We had reading. We had people talking into your ear. Yeah. Yeah. And in fact, I think the last time I reviewed Greg's podcast was when you were on and you were about to undergo a civil hearing of sorts. Yeah. And... It wasn't so civil. No. But I mentioned, if I, you know, is it a show I would have listened to if I didn't have earbuds to make it a very sort of private experience for me? Because you guys, you know, you guys had no restrictions on your language. You had no restrictions on the subject matter. And I was, I mean, I was literally running in the dark, in the hills of Mill Valley, laughing my ass off. And I just, I'm sure I looked quite insane if anybody had seen me. But I don't think I would have done that if this was a medium where you've got the speakers on and you got it cranked up and you got the car windows down. That's not the show for that. Because you're afraid somebody might hear it. Someone might hear it. It might be inappropriate for any number of reasons, but it's a very, it can be a very personal experience, which I think sets it apart from almost any kind of media we have had up to this time. I agree. I've been saying that podcasting is not a means. It's an end in and of itself. Interesting. Because, you know, Netflix is an end in and of itself and it changes the way you watch television. You know, this is hackneyed to say this, but you binge watch an entire series in two days now. Yeah. Yeah. Which changes your, among other things, a screenwriter. So when you write a series, the arc is completely different now. Yeah. You're writing a 12-part movie. You're a branding expert. That is true. What is a branding expert? It's somebody who really knows how to get a calf down on the ground and tie it off and then get that hot iron and just like, you know exactly where to put it in. What does branding mean? And what is it branding? I'm bearing the lead. Years ago, I couldn't do it, but you invited me up to San Francisco for a naming ceremony. You are the Elia Kazan of the 21st century because you name names. You are hired by companies to come up with names. Now, I think you created the name. Gynomotron? I was involved in the Gynomotron. Now, some of this is sort of legally sticky, right? Because I work for... So is Gynomotron. Oh, my God. You should have come to that session. I wish you had. What is Gynomotron? It's Lubricant. Let's just say that. Okay. A female Lubricant. But yeah, I work for a company now called Landor Associates in an international branding company. I'm a senior manager of naming and verbal identity. What that means is I create names and also all the words that go around names like taglines and all the other elements of messaging that come with a brand, right? What you're going to read about it in the press and that sort of thing. Okay, so what does branding mean? Branding is the identification of a product or service or company by which it is identified. So Coca-Cola is a name for a beverage and it's also the company that produces the beverage. And there's a logo. That's part of the brand? Yes, very much part of the brand. There's a logo. There's an advertising campaign. There's, as I said, there's messaging. So when people that are in the company are talking about it, they have a template for how they're going to talk about that particular brand. So everybody has the same message going. What does that mean? Well, when you give the information to an ad agency, you want the brand has a certain identity to it. It speaks with a certain voice and you want that voice to be consistent. It's sugar water that gives you diabetes and makes your kid fat and rots their teeth. Those are the things you want to come up with the euphemisms for. It's a delightful refreshing beverage. But I'm not in the advertising business. I don't have to worry about that. So branding is saying this is Coca-Cola. I would assume you associate red. They have beads of condensation. Yes. Yes. It quences your thirst. Those are parts of the element of it. It's also, you know, they have their catchphrases, you know, we're going to teach the world to sing back in those days. I don't know how Coca-Cola was going to do that. Yeah, but what does that have to do with being addicted to sugar and caffeine, which is what Coca-Cola makes its money off? It's the idea that you want this in your lifestyle. In this case of Coca-Cola, this beverage fits my lifestyle. I want to be refreshed. I want to feel lively. I like the taste of sugary water. Okay, so I'm curious about this. I think I'm immune to branding. However, late at night I'm traveling. I'm on the road. We stop at a Denny's. And I see something on the menu. And it plants the picture of the food. Plants a taste in my mouth so that when the actual food arrives, my sense memory can pull from the picture to compensate for the lack of taste in the actual food I'm eating. Is that what branding is? Partially, but you do enjoy that moons over my hammy. I mean, admit it. And if it's your birthday, it's free. So why wouldn't you go? So is branding literally burning an image into your brain convincing you you're getting something that's not existent? That's more advertising. Branding is giving you a identification for a particular product. When you go to Denny's, they don't want you to think, oh, this is almost like I'm at Coco's or I'm at some other 24-hour restaurant joint. No, Coco's gives me the runs. Denny's makes me vomit. I know the difference. That's right. But they want you to, you know, they want that image of what they are, whatever that is to you. They want that implanted indelibly so nobody else can sort of trod on their brand. It's why Coca-Cola. It's why, you know, Kleenex fights so hard to keep people from calling tissue Kleenex. They don't want generic facial tissue to be called Kleenex. They're trying to protect their brand. I mean, there's a litany of brands that have lost their branding power over the years that started out as a brand name and became a generic escalator. Used to be a brand name. Aspirin used to be a brand name. And over the years, they got diluted because everyone just referred to every headache remedy as aspirin. And after a while, they could no longer protect it because that's how it became generically known. So companies spend thousands, millions of dollars every year to try and protect that brand. Are you allowed to tell me some of the names that you've come up with? I am. I am. Now some of them I will say I helped to come up with because I was working for one company or another at the time and I was part of a team. Before you give me the names, two things. Yes. Haagen-Dazs is made up, right? That's not a word. Totally invented. Farvignugin. I think that's actually got its roots in actual German, quite frankly. But it doesn't, I think they brought it out to kind of mean this spirit of Volkswagen. But I think it actually has a meaning, but I don't speak German. And isn't there a Japanese car that's a made-up Japanese name? Oh, there's a lot of made-up names. Acura is a made-up name. But I'm not sure which one you're referring to. But there's some great naming stories like that. You know, like when Coca-Cola, going back to Coca-Cola, when they went to China, they wanted people to pronounce Coca-Cola. But there's no letters in the Chinese alphabet to do that. So what they do is what's called a transliteration, where they get words in Chinese that sound like Coca-Cola and put them together. So that's what they did. And it turns out that the transliteration, when you actually find out what the translation means, means bite the wax tadpole. Seriously? Seriously. That's serious. Shouldn't it be in China, don't go pee pee in this? That's actually the transliteration for Pepsi. Don't go pee pee in my Coke. You know, there's an age range of people who, the minute you say Coca-Cola to me in China, I'm immediately trying to figure out the pee pee in the Coke joke. But you have to be of a certain age to even to get that. So what are some of the names that you've come up with? The Blackberry name, the original Blackberry. You named the Blackberry? I did, I did. I was working for a company called Lexicon at the time and it was part of a massive naming program that we did for a company called Research in Motion in Waterloo, Canada. Now I have a question for you. Since the Blackberry is always hanging from the back of your pants, why wasn't it called the Dingleberry? You really, people always put it in their back pocket. You know, sometimes I miss the moment. I couldn't come up with that one. I always kick it myself. It's a name Blackberry. And how did you arrive at that? Are there such things as a Blackberry? There are, but it's funny you say that because that is exactly the main reason why that became the name. This rarely happens. In fact, it's never happened before or since, but when we were initially being briefed by the company on this product, there was no telephone part of it. It was just about the size of a pager, the original device, and it was used to retrieve your desktop emails from your computer at the office when you're out of the office. So you could kind of read what had come in. And they put this little tiny keyboard onto basically a little tiny pager. So it was the little round black plastic keys. And they're passing these prototypes around when we're being briefed on the product. And I just, I said it looks like a high-tech version of a Blackberry because that's what it looked like to me. And the guy from the company in Canada said, wow, that's really a cool idea. I said, what do you mean? He says, well, there's no such thing in nature as a Blackberry. And we said, yeah, yeah, there is. And we literally showed him a picture in a picture dictionary of a Blackberry. And he says, I have never encountered this word before. He says, we have something called a Loganberry where I'm from. It's very similar, but I've never heard that. So anyway, so okay, just casual observation. Interesting idea. We go on to develop literally hundreds and hundreds of names and do legal screening to make sure names are available. And we do consumer research to see what people like. And in the end, there was a dozen names. And the Blackberry was one of them. And the CEO at the time of Research in Motion had the exact same reaction. He'd been brought up in Waterloo, Canada. He too had never heard the term Blackberry. So to him, it was just this captivating idea that there was this high-tech kind of berry that was black and never been seen before. And apple is a fruit? Apple is a fruit. And part of the reason Blackberry was also something they liked was people were sort of getting, even back then, this was like in the late 90s, they were getting sort of overwhelmed with emails. And it was becoming this almost repulsive thing. They didn't want to have to check their emails. They wanted to make sure that this fruit sound had this sort of more natural feeling and things like that we found out in consumer research. That was very appealing to people, that they weren't dealing with technology, they were dealing with something more natural. Now Blackberry is making a comeback, right? As I understand it, well, first of all, they renamed Research in Motion years later. They called the company Blackberry. And then I think, if I remember correctly, and I don't really follow them, a lot of their business to a company in China to do a lot of their software and some of their hardware licensing. And I think that's what's making a comeback is it's being sort of reborn in some different sort of forms and styles and coming from the East or something. I'm not exactly sure, but I think you're right. I think there's a comeback of sorts in the works. What other names did you come up with? I worked on the team that did Swiffer. I love Swiffer. Who doesn't love Swiffer? That's what I ask. You came up with the name Swiffer? Again, it was a naming session with a lot of people, but the interesting idea was the folks at Procter & Gamble, they insisted the word mop had to be in the name. And we said, why is that? They said, well, no one will know what this device is for unless you tell them it's a mop. And in the same sort of session, they had us watch all these videos of people using the prototype, these homemakers. And to a person, they all said, this is so much better than mopping. It's so fast. It's so quick. And we said, why do you want to call your device a mop when clearly people don't like mops or mopping? And so we took that idea of it being fast. And I said, well, let's look at Swift. But Swift actually has that T at the end that slows it down. So let's put two Fs in there instead of the T. We have Swift. And then the ER was added to make it more of an action word, like a verb, almost like a person, like a swiffer. And that's how it was born. I make it sound easy, but it takes hours of churning through words and ideas and reference materials and videos of people using the thing to start to get the feel of what's really appealing about this new technology to somebody. Did you know that they were a part of the pond clean up with Swiffer? No, not at the time. What did you think it was? Because, you know, Jeanine Garofalo when I were talking about Swiffer, nothing brings me more pleasure than listening to music and using my Swiffer. I can do that. I just, I have OCD. But did you had no idea how great that invention was? Do we know who invented the Swiffer? It was somebody in the Procter & Gamble Laboratories. It's somebody faceless, I guess. A guy named Dusty. So there's no hero. There's no Swiffer hero. There's no Hall of Fame for people. Not that I know. I've met some of the science folks at P&G over the years and nobody was sort of trotted out, here's the guy, so maybe it was a team thing. I mean, like Post-It's from 3M, which I had nothing to do with the name, by the way. But Post-It's was an invention that was invented by two people 10 years apart at 3M. This guy had invented, was working on adhesives at 3M and thought he had this like a super glue kind of adhesive and it turned out it didn't hold anything. It was horrible. It wouldn't stick together for two seconds. They were called damnits. Yeah, so he shelved his glue and 10 years later a guy was looking for something else that was going to, he wanted to make note paper that would stick as notes for literally his church choir. So it wasn't even an official product. It was just, hey, I found this really crappy glue and if I put it on this paper I can remove the paper later on and that became Post-It's. And when you work for these companies and you invent these things I know that Mike Nessmith's from the Monkees, his mother invented liquid paper. Right, yes. But for the most part we don't know who invented these things and do they get rich because they invented it or they are just... It kind of depends. We were talking about the iPod, we'll go full circle here because there was a guy and I'm going to forget his name in the moment unfortunately, but he had... You're supposed to be good with names. I know and yet I cannot remember. But he had invented one of the best MP3 players music players in the market and he took it to Steve Jobs at Apple and Steve Jobs that gave him the idea for the iPod so he basically bought this guy's invention Locke Stock & Barrel and gave him a job as a Vice President in the company. But basically took his technology and then improved on it and turned it into what we know is the iPod. And so yeah, he's really known. That is not part of the Steve Jobs legacy because we all think he's this Thomas Alva Edison but what we don't realize about Thomas Alva Edison and Steve Jobs is they were businessmen who were buying up other people's inventions. Yeah, and the GUI came from a park, what's it called? Xerox Park. Yeah, that's where they found the mouse. Yeah. But it's interesting, the movie The Fly with Jeffrey Goldblum I think is a great sort of parable about that because he was a guy who was a businessman who didn't know how the teleporter he was making worked. He just hired the right people. He just didn't like flying because he got air sick. So he hired a bunch of people to make a teleporter. One more name. How about let's see try to think of something that's impressive enough. How about Crackle? The Sony website. Sony's network and website, yeah. It's a great name. You came up with Crackle. I named Crackle. There was a small company in Sausalito called Grupper which was they were trying to be a YouTube kind of show and Grupper although the name of a really ugly fish they thought it would be people bringing their friends into watch their videos having groups of people and Sony was looking to have their own YouTube but they didn't want to go to the trouble of setting up all the technology so they found Grupper and bought it but they said we're only going to buy it if you change the name because we can't tell people that we acquired a company called Grupper and so the president of Grupper had met me through a mutual friend and hired me to help him with a new name so the name Crackle for him. And he got paid a lot of money, a lot of money. So before you go. Yes sir. This has been fascinating. This is one of the great things about the David Feldman show. You never know where the interview is going to go. I knew that we were going to get to the names. I knew we were going to get there folks. Kind of amazing. If you were to give me a name. If I was going to say to you get rid of David Feldman could you do some research and tell me what name I should use? Well you know where I'm going to go and you know it's because you've paid the brand no real measured equity since you yourself developed it but there's still a lot of mileage left in Feldo the Clown. Oh my god. Oh my god you were there. You were there at the beginning of that. I was there at the beginning of it and I just realized you made my life miserable you son of a bitch. You booked me as Feldo the Clown. I remember I just remembered you gave me a hard time because I was trying to break free of Feldo the Clown and you insisted that I'm under contract I had to show up at the punchline in my Clown suit Yes because that was the brand we'd hired. And you know John Fox not the comedian John Fox but the booker John Fox he will forever remain in my heart I'll tell you why. I was going up against you you were booking the punchline and I did not show up without the Clown suit if you are not wearing the Clown suit don't bother coming and I put on a blazer and a shirt and I showed up and there was tension in the air people a lot of people showed up to see whether or not Feldo the Clown was going to wear his suit and John Fox not the comedian the producer Yes I walk into the dressing room and John Fox is standing there and he says to me that's a great Clown suit have a great show tonight and I just went I almost broke down and cried but he gave me my manhood Yes you got your life back I got my life back How is John do you ever You know what I've treated email messages with him I think he's actually I think he's now running the comedy underground in Seattle it seems like he's up I see his Facebook posts occasionally and I think he's spending a lot of time up there so it's kind of funny that he's up there doing what I used to do 35 years ago The comedy scene in San Francisco as I understand it here in New York as I understand it Yes it is the Throckmorton in Mill Valley That's a Tuesday night show you know but it is not the same scene it was when we were starting out now my question to you is this when we were starting out if we were to look at that scene would we call it a scene or were we so desperate for stage time and willing to go anywhere in other words there's probably still a scene but we're not privy to it because we can't dirty our hands playing a laundry mat anymore right isn't that basically what it is I think that's partially true but I think it was a scene in that there was a very clear hierarchy back when we were doing this because there was the Holy City Zoo and there was the other cafe and those were shows or clubs where you could go and hang out and do sets there was cobs that was a little further up the ladder and then there was the punchline that was sort of like well if you're going to get hired and you want to get hired as a headliner if you can get into the punchline if you can even get in as a middle it would be a great thing and then there was the outline clubs in the outer Bay Area let alone the one let's not even talk about the one nighters so I think it really was a scene you know I remember comics always talking about they could you know they could work pretty solidly year round just going from gig to gig sometimes playing four or five sets a night some of which they were getting paid for some of which they weren't they could go and do a week in Walnut Creek or they could do a week in Sunnyvale or they could do some time in San Jose so I think if you can legitimately say you were earning a living in San Francisco or in the Bay Area without having to leave I think that probably denotes a scene and I don't think that exists anymore I don't think so you'd be hard pressed to kind of scrape together a true living I mean just talk to our friend Larry Bubbles Brown trying to do just shows in the Bay Area I think you have to go beyond the city limits to really try and pull down some dollars enough to live off and whose fault is that I blame myself good thank you I was going to say whose fault is it I blame the audiences audiences yes yes comedy became just too accessible I think with television and everything else so it became why do I need to go to a club when I can just sit in the comfort of my home and watch the exact same comic well yeah what they're not seeing are the people that haven't been able to make it to TV yet and I think there's a richness in that level of comedy that as bad as some of it is there's some of it that's so genius those TV watching people will never see they'll never appreciate some of those people that work so hard to bring such an original vision to the stage that the television industry said this is not for us Bob Rubin's Bob Rubin's a great example right I think people who listen to podcasts know that most television stinks most television stinks that's why they're listening to podcasts and I think that's why comedy audiences also appreciate podcasts I think so too but then there's this phenomenon I kind of think it's a new phenomenon at least when I was starting out this wasn't true when I was starting out all you had to do was be funny and then suddenly you had to be famous or maybe I wanted to be famous the fame certainly helped bring people in and I think it's also what helped kind of tear down that wave of comedy we were talking about that ended in the early 90s because the people that were getting on Carson and then after that Letterman and doing a seven minute set they had a whole act so if you want to go see them at the comedy underground or you saw them at Punchline or in New York somewhere you saw a show you saw 45 minutes to an hour and a half of fairly solid comedy and then once those people started moving up the ladder into television and the people down below them got bumped up the headliner they could do a seven minute set on the Letterman show but they couldn't hold their water trying to do a 45 minute set they didn't have the stuff and so the audience felt cheated and so the club owner started papering the room giving out free passes Rick Overton called those people pass holes and they went and the club owners just wanted to make the money off the drinks they didn't care that the free audience didn't have an appreciation for what they were watching on stage at that point and so what happened was David Feldman had kids and moved to Hollywood in the early 90s thinking well stand up as an avocation now yes and then people like Pat and Oswald did what Mort Saul did I just read the Mort Saul biography oh how is it I'm not ready fantastic, I want to get the author on the show it sated my obsession with Mort because it was everything I wanted to be and they he just covers everything so I went off to Los Angeles and did stand up but I didn't work the road but there were guys like Patton who said the hell with the clubs and then he found jazz clubs and rock and roll places and nurtured his own audience much the same way Mort Saul did with the clubs because he didn't want to play where Shacky Jackie was playing in the 50s in the 60s and he found his audience exactly and like Mark Maron did with the podcast quite frankly he could do that material that wasn't working on stage for him and just talk and people began to listen I had Jeremiah Tower a great chef on the show and he is responsible for Shea Panisse and Berkeley and stars in San Francisco and revolutionized the way we eat and he left San Francisco and I asked him do you hate San Francisco why don't you stay there I said are you aware of the phenomenon of people who lived and work in San Francisco and then leave and then get really angry at San Francisco he kind of acknowledged it but wasn't willing to go there explain the phenomenon or maybe you think it doesn't exist of people who like me were nurtured, pampered taken care of by San Francisco married, got their kids their manhood in San Francisco and then they have to leave and they really resent San Francisco that is an actual phenomenon right I've certainly heard it from people I kept gravitating back here after I left but the resentment comes I have a theory as to where the resentment comes from okay I'd be curious to hear it because I'm not as aware of it as you are to live in San Francisco ah there we go why do you get to stay in San Francisco and I'm killing myself and now I'm in Manhattan although I don't have what it takes to live in San Francisco because lifestyle comes first in San Francisco right well that's true that's why I live in Marin because I can't afford to live in San Francisco either but Marin happiness comes first then comes work right that's well kind of yes I'll accept that does that now you're a workaholic you do everything do you sometimes feel that maybe San Francisco doesn't have a desperate work ethic that you would find in New York or LA I would definitely agree with that except in the sort of Silicon Valley high-tech world that's where the work ethic is everywhere everything else it isn't it's much more of a sort of laid-back thing I never liked when I am writing I prefer writing in LA because there's a lot of people writing in LA there's an energy in LA when you go to Starbucks here in San Francisco people are just drinking coffee when you go to Starbucks in LA people are writing damn it people are happy in San Francisco they can be they certainly can be they seem well they certainly seem self-satisfied I don't know if that counts as happiness I remember being a miserable beaten dog and I moved to San Francisco and I healed just the air the people it's a very gentle place but they can only give you so much if you're looking for something right I think so I think so I mean if I was going to remain solidly a screenwriter I would have stayed in LA because you can't you can't work up here you can't you know you've got to go to meetings and you've got to you know be able to you know write with other people and you you can do it at a distance but it's very difficult unless you have a you know huge reputation or a huge fortune socked away you you got to be where the action is so you're right I think there is that idea that man I'd love to be able to do that up here but I can't you know I mentioned Rick Overton earlier I always say Rick what he loves it up here I said why don't you move up and he always goes that's not where the cameras are plugged in pal yeah I mean you do get last minute calls yeah to do things I yeah I always thought I could I had a fantasy of staying in San Francisco but yeah God I always the you know I blah blah blah I could just remember being in LA we would drive up to San Francisco the family and you get out of the car and suddenly you could breathe yeah it was shocking the the air the sea air is San Francisco is the perfect antidote to LA it is just the exact number of miles you need to be far away from LA and yeah for years I was able to afford crappy rent in both cities and I lived like this by metro lifestyle where I would work in LA and then I come back up here for a couple of weeks and I just remember driving down the 580 through Castro Valley and then into the Central Bay Area and the fog kind of comes in you roll the windows down and there's just this feeling of washing Los Angeles off of yourself and there's something bigger than fame and and fortune but now San Francisco as I understand it it's impossible to afford to live there right you know I got people that work in the branding company I work at with some young people there they're in their 20s and they're living with four or five roommates in North Beach or wherever because they simply can't afford an apartment by themselves hmm yeah it's it's gotten kind of insane and again I it's really the high tech community has has caused it you know the Googles and the apples and Facebook and all this because they're you know paying a lot of money and they've got free commuter buses to and from the city with Wi-Fi and it's sort of infested the Bay Area with this idea that you gotta you know you have to have a lot of money to be able to live in the city now and they will furnish that lifestyle for you but not the community they will not pay their fair share of taxes they park their profits overseas and instead of paying their fair share of taxes companies like Apple do not pay their fair share of taxes and so they don't have mass transit for the masses they only have buses for the Apple and Google employees right which use the the municipal bus stops to pick up their employees yeah yeah so it's a very unfair unbalanced situation yeah on that note Mark Hirshon is a brilliant man you really are and this was I have to use the word delightful it represented you it was all over the place and fascinating and we covered so many areas as do you you are Mark Hirshon a renaissance man without the black plague you are a screenwriter you are a performer the name of the show is Suck-a-tash you are a journalist your writings appear in Split Cider and the Huffington Post and you are a Namer yes absolutely and you'll come back I'd love to I'd love to are you kidding I love talking to you David the few times we get to run into each other like during the year somewhere I just love having as much time as I can to talk to you because I love conversing with you stay on the line for one second you got it