I think it's a problem that I'm.

At the point in my holiday shopping journey this year where Instagram now needs to catch up with me. They're showing me ads.

I go, I already bought that from.

You, bitch, a week ago. Hurry up. Get me something else. Show me. Get creative.

Kyrie bought all that stuff and more. Hurry up.

On this episode of the commercial break, it's the ultimate f you to the people who said, yeah, it is.

And congratulations to you.

Thank you. My career is mostly based on spite. I love that you can't tell me what to do. A 10th of the budget, sir.

We have so much in common. The next episode of the commercial break starts again. Welcome back to the commercial break. I'm Brian Green. This is my dear friend and the beautiful co host of the commercial break, Chris and Joy ho.

The best of you, Chris.

The best of you out there in the podcast universe. Not sure why I'm talking particularly fast today, but I just.

In one of those moods, the auctioneer mood.

Yeah, I've been go go since the moment I woke up. It's like one thing after the other, and it's the auctioneer mode. Micro machines. Remember that micro machines guy? I tried to actually do that one time on videotape. Like, I tried to do the micro machine thing. No, you can't do it.

That's a tower.

I can talk fast, but my head gets ahead of my tongue, so I often find that I get tongue twisted. And this was part of the reason why I went to speech therapy when I was a kid, because not only did I have this weird lisp and I couldn't roll my r's and all this other shit, but I also would stumble upon my words a lot. Like, I had a little bit of. A little bit of a stumble. I'll call it stumble. A stumble. Yeah. And when I, the speech therapist was like, it's because your brain is moving so fast. Your mouth is trying to keep up.

I can see that.

Yeah. If my hands were trying to keep up, I might actually make some money in this world. You know what I'm saying? I wanted to tell you. You were just reading this story. This. Cars for kids, the worst commercials in history.

Oh, I know the jingle.

Someone's sending them to court. And thank God they're sending them to court, because they need to take that jingle off the fucking Chrissy. I see this commercial at least three times a day. See or hear it on satellite radio three fucking times a day.

Glad I avoid it for some reason.

The day that I hear that commercial on the commercial break. We're done. We're done. Change the name. It's all over. Of course, it has kids in the word, so it'll probably never show up on the commercial break. But true 1877 cards for kids. Donate your kind. I'm going to jump off the roof. I hate it so much. So they're in court because apparently there's.

Another charity, because I guess they're maybe based in New Jersey, but then there's another charity that's based in Texas that has a very similar name. And they were started.

Who got here first.

Yeah. And this has been going on, I guess, for years. They keep suing and re suing each other.

Well, hopefully.

So all those donations, cars for kids.

Somehow get rid of. Yeah. All that money they're making off selling those old cars, it's all going to attorneys fees.

Yeah.

That's the problem I have with a lot of these charities. A lot of the charities that we know and that we love, you really got to dig into them a little bit, because most of them spend a majority of their money raising additional money, and then people at the top, in some cases, get very wealthy, and they make these big media buys. And I understand the game you have to play. Like, I'm not naive. I get it. In order to get more money, you have to get your name out there. But personally, not one of my big things. I don't have any money, so I can't give anybody anything. But one of the things I'm a big fan of is St. Jude's.

Oh, yeah.

Because I know that St. Jude's, they have a hospital. They give away free care to children if they walk in the front door, if they're lucky enough to get there. Right. And so I like that about them. There's some stuff that I can see that's going on. That's actually going on. But cars for fucking kids cars. And now they take boats and houses.

The article was saying it's expensive to donate your cars and boats. You had to have them towed.

Yes.

And then processed and the whole thing. And that eats up, like, 70% of what. Yeah.

How could my old Honda with no roof possibly be worth anything that's going to do anybody any good? And exactly where is the money going? They say cars for kids, but is it actually going to the kids? I don't know. I mean, the answer is I don't know.

Yeah, a little bit. A little bit of it is.

You know what?

I think there's a list out there somewhere where you can research, stuff like that. You can see.

And I was actually looking down it, and I was surprised at how much money was not spent on anything good. Like, they're just continued fundraising parties and donor getaways and all this other stuff. It's like, wow, I donated $5, and I got nothing. I got a mug, right? Which is fine. I don't need the mug. Take the mug, save the money. Give it to the kids.

Yeah, keep the mug.

What makes me upset is that then you have these bigger donors, and they take them, like, on world class vacations so that they can get more money out of them. And I'm just like, do your research, kids. Do your homework, children. Do your research, kids, before you donate to cars for kids. And I'm not saying they're a bad organization. I don't know that to be true. What I hate about cars for kids is that mother song. That motherfucking song drives me baddie. It drives me loony to the point where I turn off the radio or the tv when I see it. I just can't deal with that song being in my head. Of course. Which it is now. Of course it is. Did you hear about the big. I know you're into this, okay. Did you hear about the big grand theft auto six coming out?

I am very much into that.

And you and Jeff, I'm sure, are waiting on baited breath for grand theft auto six.

I know that it's out there. I didn't hear. Is there some controversy? There always is.

There's no.

Well, right?

I mean, it's made up controversy, but it's made up by them so they can promote their game. They dropped the trailer a day early, and they weren't supposed to. Some company was supposed to. Not supposed to. Come on. Give me a fucking break. It's like the most transparent pr push ever. However, I will say this. Grand Theft Auto is extraordinarily popular. They have not put out a new version of Grand Theft Auto in ten years. In a decade.

Wow.

And so everyone's been kind of waiting on bated breath for this new version of Grand Theft Auto. And so they released the trailer. It's going back to Vice City, which I guess is the original version of this. There's a female protagonist in the lead role right now. I like that. I think her name is going to be Felicia, I think. Or am I right about that? Hold on 1 second, Felicia. I don't want to get the gamers mad at me. Lucia, not Felicia. Felicia Day is another gamer or someone who is known as a gamer who will be with us later on this episode. Chrissy, this episode. And I won't ask her about grand Theft Auto because I don't think that's her type of game. But Felicia Day is like a super accomplished actress, writer, producer, web series person, gamer, author, violinist. Accepted to Juilliard, mathematician. I mean, she is so fucking accomplished, Chrissy. It makes the rest of us look terrible, terrible, terrible. I'm going to say this to her. I get up in the morning and I feel like I've done a good job. Do you know what I'm saying? Right? If I get my kids out the door on time to school, yeah, I take a shower.

If I wash my legs, I feel like I've done a really good job. You know what I'm saying?

You're going extra.

I know I told this story, but now I've noticed. It happens every time when Astrid walks in the shower, in the bathroom while I'm taking a know to have that five minutes of conversation a day we can have without children yelling or screaming. That's right. I instantaneously start washing my legs. It's almost like I'm trying to prove to her that I wash my legs. I'm like, hey, look at me. I'm washing my legs. I kick it up on that stand so it looks sexy. I point my toe out my white socks today. Look at that. I'm a fashionista wearing the same save ferris t shirt I've been wearing since season number one. People are probably classic. That guy really doesn't make any money because he should get a new t shirt. It's a classic. It's a classic. Which is what people say when something's way old and they still like it. You know what I'm saying? It's classic. Look at that Pearl jam poster. It's classic. No one gives a shit. But Grand Theft Auto six has got everybody all hyped up, but it's not coming out till 2025. I played Grand Theft Auto 2025.

Why are they already hyping it now? Just to get the hype?

I don't know. They put out a trailer. It's got to be very complicated. I knew a guy who designed games. He was part of a game designing team. And I don't want to give any secrets away. I don't know. I haven't talked to the guy in years.

Secrets, you know, secrets.

I don't. About the gaming world. I certainly don't. I'm a nerd in my own way. Like in my TLC way, like I would think that Felicia will readily admit that she's a nerd. Right. And I really think she's funny. I follow her on Instagram. I know that you've been reading up on her, too.

Yes.

And so I just think she's got a great personality and she's so prolific. She puts out so much material, has put out so much material, and she's got additional projects that she's working on. It makes me feel embarrassed to be a human. I'm like, jesus, when am I going to get to know she has an idea for something? And she goes out and she executes it. She finds the money, she finds the people. She writes the stuff.

She executes.

She just moves on. Yeah, she did one of the first, which we'll ask her about. She did one of the first web series called the Guild on YouTube, which got millions and millions and millions of views. And I feel terrible as a human being because I had that idea for a vodcast or a podcast two years before I even got a microphone for the commercial break. That's how lazy am. And I, if we get one episode done a day, I feel like we did a good job. Right. I'm sure our editor, christina, doesn't feel the same way, but I pay her, so I guess she's got to deal with it. But the reality is, when you're that accomplished of a human being, it's hard not to be appreciative of what's going on, like what that person is doing. And I am very pleased to have her on the show today because I got a lot to talk to her about, the least of which, and the reason why this is such an attractive interview to me is Mystery Science Theater 3000, which on one occasion, on the one occasion where someone said something positive about the commercial break to my face, they said, you remind me of kind of like a goofy mystery science theater 3000.

Now take it.

I'll take it. Of course I will. I'd be happy to be in the same sentence as mystery science Theater 3000 on any day of the week. But this was a nice compliment. However, let's break down the compliment a little bit. The commercial break reminds me a little bit of a goofy mystery science theater 3000. If you've ever seen mystery science Theater 3000, which you should, this is a truly classic show and they are making new episodes, hopefully, but it is the most ridiculous thing you've ever seen in your entire life. It is the goofiest of goofy. It can't be more goofy than it is. It literally has a talking robot that looks like a frying pan.

I mean, like, we take the goof.

We take the goof down, we take it up enough. How do you be more goofy than mystery science Theater 3000? But I think he was drawing the comparison because we also break down videos and just kind of make our own little jokes over it, which is what MST has been doing for a very long time. And that makes me super excited to have her in because I am a fanboy of MST. And she's been on it recently, I think the last, I don't know, two or three seasons or something like that. But we'll ask her all about that. But the other thing that I wanted to mention about Felicia is that not only is she like a pro level violinist, she got accepted to the fucking Juilliard school.

I saw that.

I was reading that about.

Is that not insane?

That's wild.

Is that like a one in 6 million people or something make it into.

Very hard, very difficult. And then to choose and not go that route? Nope.

I know. And then to go, she went to the University of Texas. I mean, probably for a lot of different reasons. Maybe it was close to home or whatever. So we'll get into all of that with her when she gets here. But I also wanted to mention, because I think it's important, is that you should go and listen to her new audio series, available only on audible. And it's called the Third Eye. And she wrote and produced this herself. And weird Al Yankovic is in it. So you must go check this out because anything weird Al Yankovic is in. I'm down.

He's another like, super intelligent guy.

Wasn't he part of Minsa?

I don't know that for sure, but there was some kind of biopic thing that came out and. Yeah. Very, very intelligent.

Yeah. Didn't he like a Hulu series or a Hulu movie or something like that? And who was Daniel Radcliffe? Was it Daniel Radcliffe, the guy who used to play Harry Potter?

Right. I don't know.

Yeah, I think he was the guy who played. Yeah.

Yeah.

So I probably got that completely wrong. People are screaming at me, oh, it's on Roku.

I think it was on Roku.

Good for Roku. Yeah. You know what's really making my life a lot better are these what they call OTT, the streamers, who have commercials, but then they have huge libraries of old shows that observingly, no one would give a shit about. But now I give a shit about all of them. You know what I'm saying? 9210 was that one that I was on 21. Now there's dog the bounty hunter. If you're into racist bounty hunters, you're going to watch that. They have hundreds of channels of this television shows that just run back to back to back to back to back episodes, and I'm just so delighted that it's on because it has given me one of my new favorite shows, which is called first dates. Have you seen this?

First dates?

First dates is a UK show. It has not made its way to America, and I don't know why. It's won a bunch of BAFTAs, which are, like, the British Academy Awards or British telly Awards or whatever it is. It's won a bunch of BAFTAs, and it's a very simple premise, but the humanity, the comedy that comes through on these first dates is amazing. Here's the premise. The producers set up two people that have never met each other. There is a restaurant in London, and it's only people who are on first blind dates. So the whole restaurant is full of people who are on the first blind date. Okay. I guess you can't have a second blind date, because unless you're actually blind.

There'S not many second blind dates.

I just realized the ridiculousness of what I was saying. And then they put cameras all around, and then they call the best of. Right. And they put it into an hour long episode, and it's just so fucking fascinating to watch. People of all ages, all demographic backgrounds, all geographic background. I mean, everybody under the sun, anybody amputees, people that are blind, people that are deaf, they put them with somebody who they think might be a good fit.

So the production company is like, the matchmaker.

They're the matchmaker.

Okay.

And there's no indication of how they do this. It's literally, you get to know the wait staff and the concierge. Right. Because they're kind of the character, the ongoing characters of the show. But then every single episode, there's four or five new couples that you get to know through this. And it is tear jerking at times. It is hilarious most of the time. And then the only question that's asked at the end of the date, they get together in a room that the producers have set up. They get them together, they ask how the date went, and then they said, would you go on a second date? Will there be a second date? Those are the only stakes in this particular television show, is, will you or will you not go on a second date? Would you or would you not like to go on a second date? And it's about 50 50, I think is probably the average.

Sounds about right.

But I've watched hundreds of now, and it came to me because of one of those OTT, one of those streams. Think Tubi or something like that.

Yeah, Tubi is big right now.

Yeah. And not that I don't love my Netflix and HBO and Amazon. I love it. I love all of that. But it's expensive. And so I'm okay watching a commercial here or there. If I get to watch the content on my own time, at my own pace, on demand. You know what I'm saying? The only thing I don't like about the OTT streamers is that you cannot fast forward through the commercials and you can't close out of the commercials. You know how your iPhone, like, you can be watching something now on HBO and you could flick it up and then it's still playing in a smaller screen. Right. But when you flick it up, when you're watching on the OTT, if the commercials come on, you flick it up to go check your email or something, it just stops, and then you got to rewatch all over again. So I say, shame on you for that, but otherwise, I'm inviting you into my life. I'm liking what you're doing. I am a fan. Aren't you? Do you have any of that shit?

Yeah, we've got it all. We do. We do subscribe to all of it at this point because there's some show that I wanted to watch. And so you subscribe and then you just don't. I know there's a lot of people that do the whole subscribe for a minute for a season of something and then unsubscribe. Yeah, but I don't have the time for that.

No, that's why these services that will cancel for you are, like, so very popular. I used one of those services.

Oh, you did?

Rocket money or something like that.

Yeah.

And this is not a commercial for rocket money, by the way. Just got to be clear about that. But I use one of those services, and we must have saved, I don't know, $600 a month because we just had subscription after subscription app after app that we have never could possibly use in a lifetime again. Like, we downloaded it, paid for it for that one thing that we were doing, and then they kept on charging us. I found an app that had been charging me since 2018, and I don't ever remember using the app. It's not even on my phone anymore. So I cannot, for the life of me, get them to cancel this because you actually have to contact the company. I send them email after email, email after email. So I'm going to, I don't know, what do I do? Throw away my card? Is that what I do? Throw away my card and move on to the next one? I guess every once in a while you got to have a new credit card number, you know what I'm saying? And that is the world's biggest pain in the ass. Besides, removing changing credit cards is the worst thing ever because I don't know my numbers and I got to go re input them everywhere.

Come on. There's got to be a better way to do this, doesn't there? We have to re input every time. I don't know how we went from Felicia day to re inputting your credit card, but that's okay. Blind dates. All right. Okay. Felicia Day is going to be with us. She's here in the next couple of minutes. Let's do ourselves a favor. Let's take a short break. Please listen to the commercials. I know you can close out of them, but please don't. Please listen to the commercials so the commercial break can finally start making some money. And then we'll be back with Felicia just right after these messages.

Let's cut to the chase. We love you and we want to hear your sweet, angelic voices asking us for advice. So give us a call and leave us a voicemail at six two six. Ask TCB three if you're not ready for that kind of commitment, which I understand, send us a text instead at eight five five. TCB 8383. And as always, don't forget to follow us on Instagram at the commercial break and on TikTok at TCbpodcast. And this wouldn't be a TCB promo if I didn't tell you to go to our YouTube channel, YouTube.com slash the commercial break to watch all of our amazing video edits. You can also go to tcbpodcast.com to find everything we have ever put on the website. Let's listen to some sponsors and then.

We are back on track, baby. Love you. Bye.

Hey, everybody wanted to let you know that this episode is sponsored in part by Factor. Okay, do you want to know what the single biggest challenge for me as a single person was? Shopping for prepping and cooking nutritious meals. Do you want to know what the biggest challenge for me as a human with 25 to 60 family members living in my house, shopping for prepping and cooking a nutritious meal, breakfast, lunch and dinner. It's a big stress point around here. And since I don't really know how to cook, that stress often falls on other family members. But this holiday season, we're going to try something different. Factor, America's number one ready to eat meal delivery service, can help us fuel up fast for breakfast, lunch and dinner with chef prepared, dietitian approved, ready to eat meals delivered straight to our door. Because factor's never frozen meals are ready in just two minutes. All you have to do is heat and enjoy. You can choose from over 35 weekly flavor packed, fresh and never frozen meals that support a healthy lifestyle and meet your meal preferences. And guess what? It's all delivered right to your front door.

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Hey, Felicia.

And thank you. Thank you for clapping.

I was clapping. I don't know, I was like, are we syncing our audio?

That's exactly what we're doing. She got it. She knew it. She's in the biz. She's in the biz. I have one overarching question for you right off of the bat. How in the Saint Captain Crunch do you do all the things that you do and still have time to be a parent? Because if I take a shower in the morning, I feel extraordinarily accomplished. And you are in so many television shows. You have two podcasts. You have the third eye on audible. You have so much stuff that you're doing. How do you find the time to accomplish it all? You're making it so the rest of.

Us, look, I know. Congratulations to you, ma'am.

Thank you. Well, I mean, I will say that, first of all, I don't have dozens of children like you.

That's true. Five to ten, sometimes six to twelve, depends on what day it is.

I have to say, ever since I had a kid, I had to readjust my life. A lot of the bulk of the wow. She does. Everything was done before I had a kid. She's six years old now. And I had to really be ruthless about my schedule and what I can concentrate on. And I tried to do it still, and then I just drove myself crazy. And then I was like, girl, you got to get the machete out and just cut it out. Cut it out. I make an analogy about having a kid is like, you know when you go on Amazon and you buy, like, a chair or a couch.

Yeah.

And then you order it, and it comes and it's like eight times as.

Big as you thought it was, like, what?

I got to get rid of everything around this couch. So that's my analogy to parenthood.

I tell Chrissy all the time. I said, when we had our first child, I already felt tired, like I was doing a lot when I wasn't doing a lot at all, actually. And then there's this pool of energy that somehow I pull from with the first child and then the second child, then the third child, then the twelveth child. It's like, I don't know, somehow there's this energy to keep going, but the time does. I don't get more hours in the day. And so I just look at your resume, and I am so extraordinarily impressed at you as a human being and how much you've accomplished, and I want to get into a little bit.

Oh, yeah.

Thank you.

You're born in Huntsville, Alabama, which is not too far off the road from.

I was excited to hear y'all were in Atlanta without people going, oh.

They'Ve got a big space program over there, too.

Oh, yeah, I went to space camp. I bet you went to space camp also.

I never got to go, but my grandfather was a nuclear physicist, so he worked at Lockheed. He also worked for the government, and then my uncle actually helped design the arm on the space station.

I got a lot of scientists in my family. Yeah.

So it's in your dna. Yeah. She comes from a line of overachievers, making the rest of us look bad. You're born in Huntsville, but you were homeschooled, right, for most of your childhood?

I was. My dad was in the middle. I come from military family, so my dad's dad worked on Redstone Arsenal. He was like, I think lieutenant colonel or something like that, or full colonel. And so my dad was in the military. He enlisted in order to get his medical degree done. We moved around everywhere. We lived a lot in Mississippi and all around the south, Texas, Louisiana, everywhere. And so that's how I kind of became homeschooled, because we would move around so much. My mom was just like, well, I don't want to keep enrolling you in school. Just stay in the house.

Fair enough.

I've got this.

Did you enjoy homeschooling?

You're, like the opposite of somebody, by the way. That I feel like is the typical home school stereotype and so beautiful and have done so much.

It has been a monumental effort for me and a lot of therapy to get going. I would rather be in my house any day of the week.

Well, I was not home schooled. And I'll tell you what. I'm keeping my therapist's mortgage paid for the last six months. But you went to one year of, like, didn't you go to a private school one year, like, the second grade?

I did, yeah. It was first grade. I went to preschool and a little bit of kindergarten and half of first grade. And then my mom pulled me out because it was like she sent me to this super religious school. And this is a true story. They actually had chapel every day, which is fine. And it was a really, I guess, very reputable school in Huntsville. But then one day in chapel, I remember this woman, Miss Geraldine, held up a bunch of $20 bills and just burned them and told me that it was the devil's fuel, was money. And we were so poor that my mom was like, no, I'm never sending me back.

Yeah, not going back there.

So she burned the $20 bills in almost a protestation to one. To first graders. That money was.

This is 100% happened. And as a kid who only got her stuff from goodwill, I was like.

No, give it to me.

We need money. I mean, even as a five year old, I was like, no, that money is precious. I need it for my mom. So, yeah, she just pulled me out. She was like, this is not happening. And we just never went back. And I'm not saying that it was the most thorough education, but I turned.

Out fine ish, I would say.

So I think you're okay. Something had to have gone right for you to become. Graduate at, what, 16?

I read that you graduated college at 19 years old. You went to college at 16.

Yeah, I went to college at 16. I was 20 when I graduated. And then I got a math and a music performance degree because I was so bored at home, I would just practice my violin all day. And so now I'm getting a southern accent. You all come on down.

The water is warm.

I'm from Chicago.

You're from Chicago?

I am. But I've been here for almost 30 years, so it's not like I just fell off the turnip truck.

I think mine may be a little bit more.

Yeah, she's a little bit more southern than I am.

Yeah, yours is pretty. You're not like Madonna who just moved to England. Madonna can be quite, you know, you be you. I'm not going to judge anybody if nobody's being harmed. Just do what you need.

Fair enough.

True.

Your face or your voice. Yeah. I forget what you asked me.

You graduated 20 years old.

Yeah, because my dad was like, you can't be an actor in Hollywood until you get a quote unquote real degree. So I was like, I'll show you. And I got my math degree and my violin degree, and I was like, on a bus to Los Angeles to be an actor. No reason why I still can't figure.

It out just on a whim. And so you went to ut in Austin?

Ut Austin, yeah. And that's a big college. Just like 50,000.

Oh, yeah. That's a huge.

Definitely different.

That's got to be a culture shock. But let me tell the listeners that she went to University of Austin in Texas but got accepted to juilliard. So you are a homeschooled young lady, went to one year off of what they would call regular classroom education, and you got accepted to Juilliard and University of. I just. My mind is blown. It's complicated to understand.

I was bored. I'm telling you, man, I had hours a day. Kids, they go to school, they learn maybe an hour and a half, and then they're just kind of housed there. Okay, that's fine. It's what we need in this world. I don't know if it's. So I was just home all day and I had no friends. So what am I going to do? I'm going to play video games and I'm going to play the violin. So I think it was just a question of, like, you got time. You got to fill it up. It's the opposite of my life now. I got no time as a parent and somebody who has a try to have it a career. And then as a kid, I'm just like, do. What am I going to do today? Watch lost in space and play my violin. That's it.

Do you have any kind of regular interactions with children when you're homeschooled? I'm just so fascinated to understand how you ended up being so well rounded. Did you, like.

I'm not well rounded.

I will tell you that.

I'm just a complete artifact. I'll tell you that right now.

Well, you are an actor.

Yes, I'm an actor. I can act like, I'm socially adept. I am not. I contemplated homeschooling my kid because I do feel like there's some awesome things that I was able to get from that experience. I love learning outside of grades. I just like reading. I love learning things. I'm very good at a bunch of different extracurricular. I was a really great dancer. I did theater, I did my violin. I did karate. I did a lot of extra. Basically, my life was just extracurriculars. So I have huge gaps when it comes to geology or getting along with other people, but at the same time, I know a lot of really good stuff. So I did contemplate it, and I think if you're conscientious and you create sort of a social world for your kid, homeschooling could be really. And you have the bandwidth, homeschooling would be awesome. But my mom didn't, you know, I think she could have made more efforts in the social side, and so we didn't really have a lot of interaction with other kids outside of lessons. So that's how I socialized, kind of in the back room between ballet classes.

You got a little bit of a taste of what it was like to be out there in the real world, but for the most part, you insulated, and that little brain of yours just exploded because you were obviously super smart and accomplished even at a young age because you're going to college at 16. What is it like going to college at 16 years old? I mean, you were a total fish out of water.

Nobody would date me. Legally, they couldn't. I was foreboding.

People were like.

They were getting away from me.

Like a cross and a vampire. I didn't even think about this. You're right. It's completely illegal to date that girl who just showed up at college. Wow. Did you date anybody in college? Like, did you have any experiences?

Not many. Well, I had to wait several years.

Yeah.

And then I did date a percussionist because I thought the way he played the marimba was really hot. Percussionists are cool. They are classical music. Percussionists can play a lot of things, but drummers in general just hot, right?

Yeah, they are.

I have to agree with you. I have to agree that the drummers are hot. I was in band all of my education. Also, I played saxophone, third chair saxophone. I'm really proud of it because there was a fourth chair, so I beat somebody out. But fucking Russell. Russell always got first chair. Damn Russell. Damn it. Damn Russell.

But those drummers Russell doing.

Russell still plays the saxophone where I haven't had a saxophone in ten years. Russell's still playing the saxophone, and he's so good at it. And I wish I would have stuck with him, but I didn't. But I will tell you this is that even with a saxophone in my hand, no girl paid attention to us. They paid attention to the drummers because the drummers had longer hair and they were sexy and they were cool, and they could play the drums really good. I don't know what it is about drummers. I should tell my kids this. Get into percussion.

That's where they got the beat.

Yeah.

It's not like, for some reason, it's way hotter than a guy pulling out an acoustic guitar at a party. That's the most disgusting thing I've ever seen, in my opinion, at a party. Like, just get away from me, sir, with your guitar. I will not be seduced here, sir.

Yeah, exactly.

Felicia, I have to tell you this story. So I'm on instagram the other day, and I've got this guy that I was friends with once. It's like one of those people that you meet, and for, like, six months, you guys go out and have a beer occasionally, but then you never talk to him again. It's on my instagram, and he is throwing a house party for Christmas, and there's probably, I don't know, let's get, say, 25 people. It all looks very lovely. It's a rather adult affair. Everyone's drinking wine, but he posts in this story. Then the last reel in the story is him sitting on the couch while everyone's gathered around playing acoustic guitar, a terrible cover of a terrible song. And whoever's doing the camera pans around to the faces, and they're all brown eyed faces, and everyone's just desperately looking for it out. They're all like, are they serving more cheese? Is there more cheese? Because I'm going to go over there and eat it. And I thought to myself, I was that idiot for a long time. I pulled out the acoustic guitar.

Wait, you got out your saxophone at a party?

No.

What are you getting?

I learned how to play guitar just as terribly as I learned how to play saxophone occasionally. Self taught. Self taught. Which means I know three songs that I play. And then I put it down and I say, that's enough for now, everybody. And they thank me. So when you graduate with this dual degree in math and music, did you take music theory, by the way?

Oh, yeah.

All of it. Got it.

I took ear training. You went through all music history? Yeah, I had to do all of it. It was wonderful. I just didn't really see that I was going to be. I did a lot of gig playing as well to pay. It was a very good job. I would play lots of church services and weddings, but that's why we'll never have a wedding because I've seen the dark employee side of a wedding. I'm like, never. It's a horror show.

Yeah.

And I was just like, I didn't know what I was going to know. I didn't think, hey, this is it. I'm going to do the same thing I was doing. I was in the symphony in Austin. I was playing all these gigs. I was making a good living. I was like, what more is there? And so I needed to jump in a wild blind pool to see what would. It was, you know, traumatic and interesting.

When you get on the bus, do you literally get on a bus and go to LA or you pick up your stuff and.

No, I've never been on a bus.

We didn't go to school.

So you never got A-I-I volunteered for a lot of film festivals while I was in Austin. If you know this about Austin, they do a lot of indie film. So I was like a volunteer for south by Southwest and Austin Film Festival and all that stuff. So when I moved to LA, I didn't take a bus. I knew a lot of people, at least. So I did have sort of a network of people I knew who helped me. And I had saved up all my money from playing the violin because I lived at home the whole time, which is so sad. But at the same time, I did have a nice nest egg to get me at least a year in.

Yeah. You're also 16 years old, 20 when you graduated. Yeah. Okay. Got you when you moved. Barely legal when you get to LA. So you get into this network of people that you already knew from the film festivals in Austin and South by Southwest. And so you go there and how do you get into the just, what's that decision? What's that first audition like?

It was a backstage west. Backstage west was like a paper that used to be printed and it had like, non union jobs in there. And I did a bunch of student films with no dialog. I did auditions where I'd go and they'd ask me to take my clothes off just for the character, so I had to go through. Yeah. And then it was like two years before I even got the legitimate agent. So it was very hard for me. And as somebody who was a 4.0 student and always worked I practiced 8 hours a day on the violin. I was like, if I just practice more, I'll get ahead. And that is not how Hollywood works.

Wow. I can imagine.

So you have 4.0, you're highly accomplished, you're playing 8 hours a day. Is this a recurring theme in your life? Like, I have to win. I have to get the 4.0. I have to get the a. I have to be the best in the violin. Is this a reoccurring theme in your life? And when exactly do you break? Because at some point.

No, it's true. I did. And when I look, wrote, I wrote an autobiography called you're never weird on the Internet, almost.

We read.

You know, it's really funny. If you like a geeky girl, it's very good. And if there's one story I told where one of the bath professors was like, felicia, if you just got to be, your life would be so much better. I was like, no. I think back on that moment, I was like, yeah, it would have made my life better because this false sort of front I needed to put up for everybody of being perfect and being the best. You're right. It's just something ready to break.

It is.

And I definitely did break myself later when I started a company and I just was making, like, 40 hours of video a month, and it was just insane. And at a certain point, you got to care for yourself and not just worry about your outsides. And I broke. And that was probably when I started becoming a functional human, or at least pretended.

I see some of my kids, they get anxious sometimes when they don't do something right or they can't get something. And I'm always just quick to remind them that you're perfectly imperfect, like, no one's going to get it right 100% of the time. And in my mind, there are huge lessons in failure. And from a guy who's failed more often than he's succeeded, I understand that.

Yeah, it's very true.

My biggest life lessons come from failure. Now, I was never a 4.0 student. That's not to say I didn't try, but I was never a 4.0 student. But do you kind of wish you had had that b in that class so that it would have, like, 100%? Yeah, it may have 100%.

I wish I had been a total slacker. Just, like, doing whatever it is in a closet, you need to be doing as a total person who isn't applying themselves 100%. Do that. And for my daughter, I think that's a wonderful thing to give as a parent a mindset of growth, personal growth, versus trying to achieve for other people. And when she wants to drop out of a lesson, I'm like, okay, great. And I know that she'll probably try me one day. Like, yeah, you tried it. If it's not for you, I'm not going to make this you. And also, if she tends to be something really good at something, I'm not going to be like, great, now you're a violinist.

Go.

Right?

Equally as bad. Yeah. I think when you teach as a person, when you put so much internal pressure on yourself to accomplish someone, what some people might call the pursuit of perfection, you're just so in the seeds of your own disappointment. Right. There's no such thing as perfect 99% of the time in this world. And so I think it's just such an important lesson to learn about failure, but one that I did not learn myself until I started the commercial break. And then I was like, it just can't be perfect. It just can't be perfect. I can't put out these many episodes and be perfect every time. I have to give myself some grace here, some grace and some space. When you got to Hollywood originally, you were a commercial actor. Like, you were doing commercial commercials.

I did a lot of commercials. If you look on YouTube, you could see me eating Cheetos and selling Starburst and all, like, 20 different products. And I was so blessed because I tended to do really well in those situations, and I paid my bills, but I was super unfulfilled, and I had such an anxiety problem that when I got really close to anything, like, legitimate and theatrical, not that commercials aren't legitimate, but, like, anything, like, tv show wise.

Sure.

Yeah. I would just choke. I would be so nervous that I could not control myself, because, again, I had this idea that I needed to be good for everybody else and not mess up. And you're totally right. You grow as a person. And being a perfectionist is more like, I need to be stuck in who I am right now, and I need to hold it with all my might. Whereas if you make know, you push yourself to places that you never would have thought you'd be. And so I wish I could have just told myself that or given myself some xanax. Either way.

Right?

That always helps.

Alicia. I think that therapist is working. I think that therapist is working. Let me ask you something about commercial work, because I've always been curious about this, but never talked to anybody that did, like, a Cheetos commercial. I talked to some people that have done the know me, for instance, promoting.

The real estate channel, some cable network.

Chrissy used to do infomercials about retirement villages, local public access.

That's crazy.

Can I see that on YouTube? So besides doing Bob Hammock's local Ford dealership type of commercials, when you do those national commercials, there's good money in that, isn't there? Like, you get paid a pretty good chunk of change to do those commercials you used to.

I will say that I don't know if you guys were familiar that we just had a big strike tv movie strike, but the same thing happened with commercials. And unfortunately, the result of the commercial strike several years ago made a lot of them go nonunion, and a lot of them are not playing on network. And of course, streaming and cable don't pay as much. So unless you got one of those Super bowl ads, you're not making a good living. Like, back in the day, I would do two commercials, and I pretty much have my bills. At least my sustenance paid, and anything else I got was kind of gravy. And that was like, you can't really do that nowadays, unfortunately, you do a lot, and then you'll get your day rate and maybe a little tiny bit of residuals, but you won't get those big paydays that people used to get, which is, frankly, sad. It's really hard to be a middle class actor now, and that's one of the examples. But it was a good living. It kept me in the business because I think I would have quit and gone back to violin if I couldn't have paid my bills at all.

For years it took me to get into a place where I could get tv work.

Do you think you would feel fulfilled as a violinist? Do you ever look back on that and go, man, I'd love to be sitting in a chair somewhere playing in front of a couple of thousand people as a violinist.

Again, I know what my life would have been like. I would have had to teach. I would have done my weddings and church and Easter, and then I would have been in the symphony, and then maybe done some cool, like, gig work, session work, and that would have been it. If you look at my resume, you'll see a ton of stuff earlier. You're like, how do you do it? I was like, I just change my mind every time I do something.

I'm the same way.

I'm just like, I don't want to do what I did before, and I just jump into, I want to see what will happen. And that's why I did know audible project, and then I'm doing a stage play next year, and it's like, can you just settle on something, Felicia? No, I absolutely can't.

Yeah, tell us about your audible.

Yeah, tell us a little bit about the audible project.

Yeah.

So the audible project is called Third Eye. It's a fantasy comedy adventure, and it's kind of like a tv show for your ears. So it's like 7 hours of a tv show, but it's only audio. And it stars me and Neil Gaiman and Will Wheaton and Sean Aston and all these amazing people. Weird Al does a cameo for me.

No way.

Yeah, he's amazing. And it's about a failed chosen one who kind of gets her life blown up by this girl who comes in and admires her for the first time in her life because she actually failed her big battle with the big bad guy. And life has been crap for all the supernatural creatures since. So it's kind of like if Harry Potter choked, what would happen ten years later?

I love it.

And it's been very successful, by the way. And you can catch it. Just let me tell the listeners, you can catch this exclusively on Audible, by the way, and from Amazon.

Yeah, audible.com. Slash third eye. You can download it. And yeah, it was a tv show that I originally pitched that nobody wanted to buy.

Oh, really?

Loved it so much. And I love that you're talking about the perfectionist syndrome because this show is kind of about that. It's about a woman who fails who was supposed to be the chosen one, and she chokes. And how do you live with yourself as a perfectionist who let everyone down? And that's kind of like when I broke, quote unquote, after overworking, I experienced that I was like, I'm a failure. Nobody wants to be around me. And I kind of channeled that into the show and again, got some free therapy out of it.

That's amazing.

How long do that. Free therapy? Chrissy, we've had like 500 hours of free therapy right here at the commercial break. I think we win just because we put out so much content. If I'm being really honest with you, you can't get away from us. When you start a project like this, how long did it take you to write what eventually became 7 hours of audio fantasy? I know that must be extremely difficult. Must be. Take a long time.

Well, if you'll look at my resume, you'll notice that I came from short form videos. So I created one of the very first scripted web series. It was just when YouTube started, it was called the guild.

It was awesome.

Gamers.

It's awesome. Yeah.

Thank you so much. You're welcome. Thank you. And so basically, this is the opposite of that. So I had the privilege of closing my contract right before COVID started, and I had three years to basically write this thing, and it almost took that long to get through all the revisions and recording and all of that. So, yeah, it was a different process for me, but it actually gave me confidence to kind of work for myself versus other people, and that really was a lesson that I hope I'll take to the grave.

That's a great feeling.

Yeah.

When you shop this around to all the tv networks and they just all kind of were like, not interested, not interested, not interested. And at some point you're like, okay, I'm going to do this regardless.

Well, yeah, it was kind of like that, except there was a couple of years of depression between mean Hollywood is like, you're a shoe salesman and you're going to every door knocking and say, hey, do you like my shoes? And nobody wants your shoes. Generally, nobody wants your shoes. And really you should have the resilience to put those shoes away and get another pair out and go knock on the door. Do you like these shoes? And that is really the Hollywood life, unfortunately. I love these shoes so much that I just kind of put them in a closet, and I put myself in the closet and I stared at them.

For two years and cried.

It must feel good that people are enjoying it, that people like it, that it's out there, and you manifested this on your own. I mean, it must just feel super great that you took this places. People poo pooed it, but you said, hey, I'm going to go do this anyway. And it became a success. It's the ultimate fu to the people.

Who said, yeah, it is, and congratulations to you.

Thank you. My career is mostly based on spite.

I love that you can't tell me what to do.

A 10th of the budget.

Sir, we have so much in common. You were saying that being in Hollywood is like being a door to door shoe salesman. Podcasting is like being a door to door vacuum sales. Vacuum cleaner salesperson. No one wants your vacuum cleaner. One of the things that when I'm looking over your life and I'm reading about you and we're doing research about you, one of the things that hits me is that you and I are of similar age, and me being a little bit older than you, by the way, and you look much better than I do.

It's all Hollywood. It's a Hollywood.

Send me your makeup artist.

Yeah. Really?

My dad? Well, here's the irony. My dad's a plastic surgeon.

What?

He just retired, so now all the work I need done, I can't get done for free.

And I'm like, dad, wait, you're not.

Good timing.

I know. Your dad cannot even hook you up with a little bit of botox here and there.

No. Illegal. And he was in the military. He's like, no, sorry.

Very black and white. Yeah, I don't know. Let me get to your dad. We'll have a few drinks, and I'll see if he can just cut me up a little bit. Put some. I'm losing my butt. Can you put some things in there to stuff it up? The older I get, the less butt I get. One of the things that I recognize about the parody in our life, or really not the parody in our life, is that we were born no Internet. We come into adolescence and some form of Internet is coming, right? Emails and dial up and AOL and all this other stuff. You really embrace this from the get. You're like, you are one of the first web series on YouTube. You're there. You're in it, you're embracing it. And that really, I think, tells a story about how you just had the foresight to understand that this platform, called collectively the Internet, could be a great place for a creative outlet. Am I reading that right? Were you, like, from the beginning, you were like, oh, my gosh, this is a great way that I can get out there and do things.

No. Okay, great.

You must admire me more than I do myself. But no, I mean, listen, let me repeat. I was locked in a house with a computer and a violin.

Yeah.

So that was my childhood. And actually, my grandfather, being a nuclear physicist, used the early Internet because it was primarily for scientists. So he gave us a computer, and I used early, early Internet, like Compuserve and all these services that went bankrupt before the Internet started. So, yes, you're right. I was way before the times there. But when I wrote the guild, I wrote that as a television show, too, and nobody wanted to do it because they didn't understand that people could play games together online. At that time, it was like, 2006 or seven. And so when my friend who had done some sketch comedy was like, hey, we could do little videos and upload them, I was like, I'm desperate because I've been rejected so much by Hollywood. Let's just do this. And the minute I got comments on a video, and I got a hold of fans who actually enjoyed my work. I was, oh, oh, I could do this myself, and people will enjoy it. I'm not making money, but I love it. And it was the fulfillment that I needed in my life that I didn't have anywhere else. And we are living in a beautiful time when people can do that.

They can make a podcast, they can make a video, they can make anything they want, a book, and they know direct the release of it.

Yeah, I totally agree with mean. If it wasn't for the RSS feed, Chrissy and I would still be two unknown human beings knocking around somewhere. And I do think the beautiful thing about the day and age that we're in now is that no matter what you're into, no matter who you are, no matter what message you have to deliver, good, bad, or indifferent, creativity knows no bounds. And you will find the audience, or the audience will find you if you keep at it. And you know where know serve up the good. So to.

Mean, listen, there's a lot of people, people poo poo, TikTok and podcasts, but there are people talking about things that mainstream Hollywood would never be okay with. I'm looking on TikTok, and people are like animating stuffed taxidermy mice, and I'm like, I want to watch more of this. Nobody in Hollywood would say, go with it, but it's just beautiful. And talking about women's issues, like I saw, there's a huge underground thing about menopause and women who have no voice in mainstream media. They're huge on TikTok because people are like, hey, no one's talking about that. I want to go here. I want to learn about it. I want to learn about the roman history. I want to learn about the bird. Know everything you can get, serves people's interests. And people are just so much more interesting than Hollywood lets them be. And I understand you got to appeal to a mass audience, but that's not the world anymore. And that's what I love about the time we're living in.

Yeah, I mean, I think Hollywood has its place, right? It is there to serve the mass audience, mass entertainment and good. But really, what sits under that and even under that, the sub subcultures are people who are finding and becoming more themselves by connecting with other people who enjoy the similar things that they do or the creative of tastes or their opinions or whatever it is. I mean, there's something to be said, I think, also for kind of living in an echo chamber, so to speak, but that's a whole different conversation.

Well, yeah, that's exactly. There's good and bad.

There's good and bad, but it's like everything in life, right? There's good and bad, and you just have to kind of roll with the punches. But it does allow, the RSS feed, allows us to find an audience that otherwise we would have never known had.

We started, the world would be poor for.

Oh, that's very sweet. And that's the first time anybody said anything nice about the commercial break. Wrap that up. Interviews over.

Let's just come here and talk again, Felicia, and just pump each other up.

Yeah, we'll just pump each other. We'll call each other every Monday morning when I'm ready to knock my.

Atlanta.

Let me ask you about when you start to get into tv, because I think this is probably where most people will know you from. What do you think is your, like you, what do you consider your big breakout role after the commercials and you're starting to get into some television roles, what do you think is the thing that I go, oh, wow, I really am accomplished now. Like, I have a good credit for.

My was I did a movie called bring it on again, and then I got a role name Buffy. And so I think it was Buffy because I had never been, like, recurring on anything. I ended up doing seven or eight episodes in the last season of that show. And that was really, I felt a belonging on a show. I felt like even though every week we'd get a new script. Right, and this is when they actually dropped off paper scripts. This is a long ago. Now it's just email and.

Exactly. Hurry.

And you literally flip to the back page to see if you got killed or not. There was no job security because it was a Sci-Fi show. But at the end of the day, I got to stick around until the end of this, and I got to see how being on a show really creates a family. And it's probably dysfunctional, whatever. But at the end of the day, I felt like I found a place where I belonged, especially in the nerd and Sci-Fi world. Because as you'll see behind me, I have board games and comics and video game things. I love. Those are my interests and my hobbies and my passions, and I made my whole career around them because that's who I am.

You are verified nerd, girl. You are verified nerd. And I love it.

I love every minute of it. Yeah, I love all that stuff, too.

It's hard to say that you love that stuff, especially as a woman. And so I was just like, I've found my niche, man. Let's just do it.

Well, my dad's a huge nerd, and so that just. I think he's an engineer. Went to Georgia tech, and we had computers and all of the. I mean, your dad's the same way, Brian. I know we talk about.

My dad had the first desktop computer ever, and what he did was he put a desktop in his office. He worked in a meat packing plant in Chicago, which a lot of people did. It's a huge meat packing town. And so he puts a computer there, and he puts a computer here at the house, and he connects them via telephone line. So one of those old modems where you would stick the phone on the modem, and it was making sounds back and forth, right? And so my dad. I know, like, weird science. And then that damn printer. That damn printer. So my dad would, like, go home at night, and he would finish his work at the computer, and then it would be at his computer the next day. So it was like an early form of the Internet, right? He was communicating, and he set this all up himself. He is nerd to the core, and he's really, like, a technology first kind of person. When he finds out about some new technology and he thinks it's interesting, he really gets himself into it. So we grew up around that culture. But I was one of those guys, like, when the Internet came along, honestly, I swear to God, I was like, Internet's a fad.

It's going to go away in a couple of weeks. It's only good for bankers and meat packing people. It's not going to stick around. I just was so off base about it. I didn't get my first email address while I was, like, 20 years old. So our lives are dissimilar in that way. When you go out into the universe, right? You're out there shopping or whatever, people recognize you. They go, oh, my gosh. Hey, it's Felicia day. What is the project that they most refer to? Is it supernatural, or is it mystery science theater 3000?

I could tell you, no, it's not MsT three k. Although I am very privileged to be on that show. It's probably supernatural or the guild, because the guild got millions and millions and millions and millions of views, right? But it was not mainstream whatsoever. So it's always, like, baristas or somebody with a gamer shirt or, like, the it guy that you'd be like, oh, nice button up. Those are the people who recognize me, or nowadays because I've been in the business so long, it's a lot of women, which is like the biggest compliment because when I first started doing fifth, there were no women at conventions or at nerd culture at the game store. And now it's like a very big almost gender parody. And I think it's wonderful because now we're just all gaming together. And I think that's something, that's an ulterior motive of mine. Just like showing up and being who I am and representing in a sort of male biased area. Just showing up is like, okay, we'll make room for you most of the time. A lot of the time there's be some aholes, but you just stand here and stand proud and people will link arms with you, men and women and be like, no, they belong here.

And that's what's beautiful about the last, like 15 years.

I think you're kind of a flag bearer for that, to be honest with you. I think a lot of people look at you and they say, oh, well, she helped bridge that gap, right? Or she helped bring that into the fold. I think that's, in my opinion, something to be proud of, right?

Yeah, I'm very proud of it.

Let me talk to you because I am an misty. Let me talk to you about mystery. I love this show. I love, love, love this show. I have loved it since the day that it came on Comedy Central. It is just an incredible, it's just a simple idea with such incredible execution. And it's so fucking funny every single time that I watch an episode. Were you a huge fan before you actually got the gig?

Well, as I mentioned, my whole career is about spite.

I'll just remind you of that.

The reason that I got this job was that I saw Joel in a green room at a convention. I was like, I'm going to take a selfie and rub it in my brother's face with Joel. Because we used to watch mst three k together as kids. It's the one thing we ever agreed on on the television. He wanted to watch monster truck racing. I wanted to watch Anastasia miniseries. So the one thing we could agree on was kung fu movies and Ms two K, and sometimes the combination thereof. And so when I saw Joel, I was in his face. We exchanged information and he ended up emailing me, hey, do you want to be in the show? And I was like, I was trembling when he said, I want you to be a forester because that's the bad guy of the show and I got to be. Yeah. Whenever I hear his voice in real life, I think, oh, I'm listening to a television show. That's how iconic Joel is for me. And, yeah, it's a great show.

Me too. I would freak out just a little kind of fan question. Do you think there's going to be a season 14? I know you're crowdfunding for it right now. Am I mistaken?

Yeah, I think the crowdfunding, they missed their mark on the crowdfunding, but Joel said he's regrouping and next year he's going to go back and try a different tactic and kind of refigure the show so that he can continue. And the wonderful thing is, it's been going on for 30 years. We did two crowdfunded years or one crowdfunded year. One year on Netflix, one year crowdfunding. And hopefully we'll be able to do another one, whether through distribution or another crowdfunding thing that's a little bit different. So, yeah, I'm really excited and I hope to be part of the misty world forever. But you can see all the episodes on either to be or thegismoplex.com is the website they built out. So go ahead and check it out because it is very funny.

If you have not seen mystery science theater 3000 and you're a commercial break fan and you're a Felicia Day fan, you will love it because I don't even want to explain it. You just have to go watch it. But just know you're in good hands with mystery science theater 3000. Give it a chance.

Very good.

Drink some wine, eat your edibles, sit down, relax. We'll watch a couple of the spit. I'm not suggesting you do drugs, but if you're going to do drugs, do them while you're watching mystery size theater 3000. Totally fine.

In California. I remember when they legalized, like, weed here, and I was like, oh, no, the neighborhood's going to go down. And I was like, it literally is not different. It's the same.

It's just you can just walk into the store and buy it. And I agree with it 1000%. Georgia will be the last state, maybe Mississippi, but Georgia will be one of the last. Yeah. They are not tech forward in Mississippi. We love our Mississippi list.

Where I was home schooled. Yeah, that was one of the reasons why my mom didn't socialize us. We went to one home school meetup and we were not religious, but the people who were in the Gulf coast of Mississippi were very religious. I remember a girl wouldn't swing with me because she said that her. And this was like when I was nine years old. She was like, oh, I can't swing. My skirt might go up and people might see my ankles.

Oh, my God.

This little girl said that. Yes, ankles.

The ankles.

Not our.

Oh, yeah.

Chrissy's showing her ankles today in the studio. And I gotta tell you, I can barely control myself. I love that narrative. Men can't control themselves. Just control yourself. You'll be. Let me do a question. I have a question from our producer, who is a big fan of yours. Okay, here is the question. Her name is Christina, and Christina has to know. Christina has to know. Are you still into fanfic? What is your relationship with Fanfic? These.

I do. I do love fanfic. I love it when people take stories because, let's be honest, it's hard to write your own story. I have been delaying my own fictional novel for years. One day it's either next year or the year after or maybe the year after that.

I don't know.

There's a year when I'll get my crap together. But I think fanfic is wonderful because it gives you a world and some characters to play with and put together and build a story. And if that gives you confidence to start your own thing or that's the end. All, be all. God bless you. You go with it. As somebody who's created worlds and stories and characters, to see other people take ownership of it, to create their own little playground, I think is fantastic. I haven't read it a lot of fanfic lately, but I've been reading lit rpg, which is like this. It's basically a video game in novel form. And I read like three of these books a week. It's literally about a person. Power know? I just. It's an addiction. I gotta write my own to deduct them all.

They're so.

So anyway, that's my latest passion, Christina.

Okay. And the second question that Christina has, which, don't blame me, it's coming from Christina. I'm just the messenger who also agrees to ask the question. So tell us your story about Hentai. You had a moment with hentai? She dug deep. Oh, wow.

Okay. So if you guys aren't familiar, hentai is pornographic japanese cartoon.

I may or may not have seen hentai.

I've seen it before. Yeah, it's crazy.

It's crazy.

It was years ago and I was like, I'm going to spice up my relationship and I'm going to get some of this because I love nerd things. I was like, well, regular stuff doesn't do it for me. I think it's kind of not for me. So I ordered some hentai, and I really like subgenres, so I ordered some nurse hentai. I ordered some teacher hentai, and I ordered some weird monster tentacle stuff. Anyway, I pop it in, and the nurse one starts, and I'm like, hey. My partner's like, no way. Cartoon nipples are not for me. So anyway, I put them on the shelf. They weren't even played. Like, just the nurse one got half done, and we were like, okay, let's just watch british baking show or whatever.

Turns me on. Like cupcakes.

I mean, let's be honest. It's true.

I agree.

I was cleaning my house out, and I was like, getting rid of dividends. I'm like, I'm just. To get rid of this? And I kind of put them. I just threw them on top of a box, and I closed the box, and I took it to goodwill, and I didn't think the guy was going to open. He's like, well, I got to go through this. And I'm like, what? And in horror. All right, I see this 80 plus year old man open the top and see just nurse nipples. Nurse animated nurse nipples. He's like, oh. And I'm like, oh, I didn't want those anymore, but I don't think this is appropriate. He's like, no, don't worry, man.

I'll take it from here. Do you have any tentacle hentai? That's what I saw.

I'm like, right below there.

That's what I saw. When I looked, we were talking about hentai, and I was doing some research, like, deep down in the web, and I saw this tentacle hentai, and I was like, this is fucking intense. I don't even know if I could get into this. Yeah, it's way too much. It's way too much.

I was like, not one for every orifice, sir. Thank you.

No, thank you. Before we let you go, I want to make sure you talk about. Cause that's near and dear to your heart. The birds. Talk about the birds.

Yes.

I was so excited that you guys were from Atlanta. The minute I logged on, I was like, oh, they're southerners, and they're from. To talk. I want to give a plug to a charity that is my passion lately. It is called Papa Yago Rescue House, and it is in Marietta, Georgia. And if you are a local Georgia person, please, if you could support them, that would be wonderful. But also, they need volunteers, and it is a wonderful parrot rescue. They helped me out with my grandmother had to go in assisted living, and she had a macaw. And unfortunately, we have a very small family and nobody could take it. And they helped me out. You could adopt this bird if you want.

Oh, wow.

But anyway, they have adoptions, but also they have amazing education there. If you are a bird owner, they give lessons. They also consult. They also will train you if you want to adopt a bird. They have parakeets, they have cockatoos, they have parrots, macaws, all of them. And these are very intelligent, long lived creatures, and they really need a lot of care. And unfortunately, circumstances sometimes turn out that you can't. Or they find rescue birds, birds that got out, and they try to find their owner. It is a local charity with so much heart and so much passion and love for these. You know, I just want to give papayago rescue house a big shout out. In the Atlanta era. You can donate if you're from afar, or they also are always looking for volunteers. So you want to go volunteer, go do it.

So if you're here in the plug, yeah, if you're here in Georgia, check them out. And I do have to say, I do think this is an important animal cause also, because I think a lot of people get involved with birds and they think it's cool. They think it's interesting. They've got a bird, they've got whatever. They don't realize everything that's entailed. It's a lot like most domesticated animals, cats and dogs and everybody else, they take them in three weeks later. They didn't realize they had to do so much work. It was very expensive or whatever the case, and then they leave them somewhere or they don't take care of them. And the truth of the matter is, there are too many people giving them back and not enough people taking them away. And so it ends up being a sad thing for everybody involved. So get yourself educated and check out the Papiago bird rescue here in Georgia if you get a chance.

I mean, if you're thinking about it as a bird, a friend of mine was like, I really want a horse. I'm like, go volunteer at a rescue and spend some time with or birds and see if this is part of your lifestyle, if it fits, if the hard stuff is as fun as the fun stuff with an animal, because you don't want to and certainly don't buy an animal. Like, there are many rescue places. Definitely go and rescue any kind of animal.

Of course, and by the way, some of these birds lived 100 years old. You need to have a succession plan for the bird because the bird will probably outlive you. Yes, it's true.

I mean, in my case, too, and I'm a lifelong supporter of papayago, but a lot of people can't do that. At the end of the day, I want to support people who do something well and do it with their whole heart. And, yeah, this is a charity for it.

If you want a bird, go volunteer for a couple of months first before you get the bird. Then you'll know what you're getting yourself into. And then you can either just get a bird or you can just show up and volunteer and have the bird.

When you want the bird.

Absolutely. It's like grandparents, they get them, but they get to drop them back off at the end of the night. Third eye is available on audible. It's getting a lot of praise. It has been very successful. I hope that our listeners go check it out. You are a national treasure, Felicia day. And to all nerds everywhere, you are one of the best. And I really appreciate you coming on today.

Thank you so much. What a pleasure.

Thank you.

And I do hope story.

Yeah, I would love to come back. You have me come back any day. And also, you guys are hilarious and inspiring and I am fully subscribed to everything you do.

Thank you, Felicia.

We love you and we say around here, best to you, my friend.

Best to you, Felicia.

Look, I know you guys are getting really sick of me, but that is too bad. It's my job now. Go to tcbpodcast.com for all of our audio and video content and get your little booty over to YouTube.com. Thecommercial break for fully edited video episodes. Want to chat? Leave us a voicemail at six two six. Asktcb three. Too embarrassed for your voice to be on the show? We understand. Text us instead at eight five five. TCB 8383. Can't even do that. No worries. Just follow us on TikTok at TCb podcast and on Instagram at the commercial break. And if you can't even be seen doing that, just listen to these sponsors and let's get back to the show.

Wow, Felicia could not have been better if you had. I mean, I feel like it was a third member of the group. It was like a third member of the band just showing up.

That's right. We had so much in common. And she's just so lovely. She's beautiful and just beautiful inside and out. So intelligent. Has done so much.

Had we, 300 episodes ago had guests of this caliber come in the door, our whole lives might have changed. Our whole opinion on guesting might have changed. You know what I'm saying?

We're so afraid of it.

Yeah. We had the one guy that we never aired that came on, comedian, supposedly comedian. We thought he was a comedian. Let me break the fourth wall for you just a little bit. A, this is well known. You should know this. When someone goes on Jimmy Kimmel or Conan O'Brien or wherever they go, when they go on one of those shows and they're a comedian, the host, if he's good at his job, or her, if she's good at her job, they will tee up material so that that comedian can run over some familiar ground, tell some jokes, and do what they're there to do. Right? Now, I understand Felicia's not a comedian, but that's not her job title. Right. But we had this guy on one time, and it was his job title. That was his job title. As a matter of fact, that's how he pitched himself to us. Like comedian extraordinaire. I had billions of views on all the social media platforms. Turned out to be not true. But anyway, regardless, that's shame on us for not doing our homework. But we don't talk to the guests ahead of time. Usually we don't.

We might say hi to know right.

Before we do our own little research.

Yeah, we do our own little research, and we have a bunch of people that help us do that. Christina and Tina and Marianne, all the people you've heard about. But this guy comes on long before any of these people were involved in the show and long before we had anybody listening to the show. He comes on, but the day before, not really knowing what I'm doing. Like, I still don't right now. I get on the phone with the guy, and we have a long conversation, and I say, hey, listen, I've just watched some of your stuff and let me tee up a couple of these for you. And he says, yeah, that's great. Let's do it that way. Okay, great. Let's keep it natural. Let's keep it organic. But I'll make, I throw in a few questions that can lead to some of your know, famous material, I guess, if you could call that when people watch it. I swear to God, TCB universe, I swear Chrissy was in the room with me.

Yeah.

It was the most uncomfortable thing that. Most uncomfortable conversation maybe I've ever been involved in because I start asking him these questions to tee up his material. And he goes from World War II to the civil war in conversation. And it's not like he just briefly mentioned it as a joke. He was talking about it as if he was a historian for an hour.

Yeah, it wasn't funny.

There was nothing funny about it. Not a fucking thing funny about it.

We had to endure, too, for a while.

Oh, my God.

And then we got done.

We were like, bye.

That's not going to happen.

Now, the good news, I forgot to press record. So the great news was, at least we fucked up the technology, so we actually couldn't run it. But I'll tell you what, that guy called me for months and he was like, hey, man, come back on and re record that. And I was like, yeah, listen, we're not doing guests right now. I think that's what started. We're not doing guests is. I just didn't want to call that guy back, so I'm not going to have guests on. But Felicia is the exact opposite of that. So easy to talk to. All of our guests have been wonderful. But I feel like Felicia, here's my concern with Felicia. When we get together and decide we're going to do this, my concern with Felicia is she is into so much of the nerdist culture, right? That's her whole thing. And she is very popular in that culture. I am not. I'm a nerd in my own way. Like, I'm a nerd when it comes to, like, Dr. Nile Zarden on Tlc. I can tell you every episode of my 600 pound life, right? Or I could tell you about my little family or whatever.

I can tell you about that stuff. I'm a nerd in my own way. We all are in our own way about our own things. But I'm not a gamer necessarily. I'm not necessarily into the nerd culture. I'm into Mst. But that's an exception, not the rule. And so you get a little nervous that you may not be able to talk to lingo. Yeah, you just wouldn't be able to talk to lingo. I could not have been more wrong.

Oh, we had so much other.

So much to talk about.

We didn't even get to the fact that she had just been to costa Rica. We have that, our Costa rica connection.

Just like steve o. I wrote 26 bullet points down that I could go over and I got to three of them. I wrote 36 for felicia. I think we got to four of them. So I guess we're doing better every time. We'll try and get to more actual.

Research that we've done.

Thanks for wasting your time, tina and christina. We appreciate so much fun. So go check out her audible series. 7 hours long. It's a fantasy series. It's professionally voiced and acted. Voice acted. And I know you're going to like it. I actually started listening to it this morning, but I didn't get through much of it. So I'll pick up where I left off because I want to hear the weird Al Yankovic part desperately. So. Just so wonderful. And Felicia has a website, Felicia day. You can go there, too, and find out all about the things she's doing. I think she's doing, like, a comic con cruise coming up to Cozumel. Have you ever been to Cozumel?

I have not been to Cozumel.

You've not been to Cozumel? Which parts of Mexico have you been to?

I have been to Cancun.

Yeah.

That was a trip after high school, which was total debauchery, as you can imagine. And then I've been to Playa.

Playa del Carmen. Yeah, I think that is that Carmen. Yeah. Okay. I don't know all the towns. I've been to Cozumel. I've been to Cabo, Mexico City.

I do want to go to Mexico City. I heard that. That's beautiful.

It's absolutely beautiful. And when I was there, it was back in the. It wasn't quite, Mexico wasn't quite as quote unquote dangerous as some people might think it is now. But I actually think that Mexico City is a very metropolitan city. I'll tell you the story. I'll share this story real quick as I'm trying to convince you that Mexico's safe. One of my dad's employees got kidnapped in Mexico City one time. Freaking insane. And they had, like, that whole kidnapping insurance and everything. And they got him back. They got him back.

He, like, so scared.

Disappeared from the hotel. From the front of the hotel. And he got dropped off at the front of the hotel in his underwear.

Oh, my God.

Not a thing on him except for his underwear. Disoriented, not knowing where he was going. And I guess they paid the ransom because the guy got back or, you know, that happens all around the world. It's not just Mexico, but I loved Mexico City. I spent a bit of time there. I loved it. I loved it. I loved it. I thought it was so wonderful. But I was also a teenager, and I think I just loved it because you could buy cigarettes, drink. Yeah. My dad leaves us. Listen, this is a funny story from Mexico. My dad brings us to the Nestle hotel down there. It's like one of the big, nice hotels in Mexico City, but he's there for business, and we're just traveling along with him for this long business trip that he has in Mexico, going to different places. So we're in Mexico City for a while. Kevin and I are kind of bored. It's Kevin and I, we're kind of bored. And so my dad says, listen, I got a guy. He's going to come pick you up in the lob be. He's going to take you to go do some sightseeing stuff.

You guys want to go to the pyramids? I'll take you to the pyramids, whatever you want to do. I got business meetings. I'll be back tonight. So I've given you some money. Be good and wait down in the lobby for this guy.

That was nice of your dad.

This guy shows up, and he looks like the world's most interesting man. And I don't mean he looks like the world's most interesting man. He looks like the guy who plays the world's most interesting man.

The gray hair, suave Debenard.

Yes. He brings us into his Cadillac deville, right? The big, long old cadillacs. And he's got the little. I don't even. What you call them, the dangly things, the little balls, fuzz balls that are hanging. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, he's got those things in his car, but otherwise the car is like a limousine, except for these dangly things that are running around the entire thing. And so he's letting us smoke back. Know he's joking with us. We're smoking cigarettes. We're laughing it up with this guy. Hey, man, I'll tell you what. Why don't I take you to one of Mexico City's most wonderful places? And we're like, yeah, take us there. And he's like. And I go, what is it, one of the pyramids? Don't you worry. You'll know when you get there. Okay, pull up in this Cadillac deville, this old dusty road in the middle of the fucking desert, and there's like, a shack in the middle of the desert, right? We go in there, it is an agave plant, a tequila plant, and they are making tequila there. And they have a tequila tasting table. But the table is not where, like, a bartender is sitting up there pouring you a little nip of the tequila.

It's just shots of tequila hanging out, ready for you to take a basket of limes, a plate with salt, and hundreds of shots of tequila.

Age fantasy.

Well, I'm not a big drinker, so I didn't drink as a teenager, really, but I took a shot, right? Well, Kevin gets into it. He's like, yeah, wow. He's like going shot for shot with the world's most interesting man. The guy drives a Cadillac deville. You're not going to out drink him. Kevin does this. Then the next stop is the pyramids. Like the sun pyramid and the moon pyramid, the raw and re and whatever that stuff is. So you can climb up this, but it is like at a 90 degree angle. You have to literally climb like a ladder.

I've seen them. Yeah.

And people don't make it up there. And some people fall sometimes. So Kevin and I manage to make our way up to the top of the sun God pyramid, and Kevin is fucking hammered. I think he threw up on the top of the pyramid, if I'm being honest. Adding more to the lure of the Americans don't know how to travel, right? So on the top of the pyramid, I'm wearing this belt, right? I got a belt, jeans on, whatever I'm wearing. Actually, I'm sure I'm wearing my blue doc martens with my baggy jeans. So I get up to the top of this pyramid and there's a guy standing there and he goes, hey, man, how much for the belt? And I go, what? How much for the belt?

He liked your belt.

He liked my belt. And I said, I'm not selling my belt. But he had these trinkets. He had like a clay sun God and a moon God, right? These two clay trinkets, probably worth collective thirty cents. And I go, but I really like those two trinkets that you got there on your. He's like a blanket out or whatever. And I was like, but I like those two trinkets. I give you the trinkets for the belt. And I was like, oh, really? And he was like, yeah. So the entire trip I only brought one belt. My pants are falling off. Every time we go somewhere. My pants are falling. Yes. My dad had to buy me a belt downstairs in the lobby because Brian decided he was going to give his away. Listen, I can't be the world's most interesting man because I don't know how to behave.

I love that they were selling trinkets at the top of this famous.

Exactly. Well, listen, they sell trinkets at our most famous places too. Like Walt Disney World. They do Washington, DC. Like you go to any of those monuments. There's somebody out there selling a t shirt of some kind.

That's true.

Yeah. But in 2023, you got to be careful about which t shirt you buy. You know what I'm saying? You don't want to give the wrong message or end up at the wrong protest.

Right?

That's all I got to say. Thanks so much to Felicia day for coming on the commercial break. We just had an absolute blast. We will have her back. There's no doubt about that. If she comes in April, if we can find a way to put a third chair here, maybe we do that. Maybe we just bring her here to my one story double wide trailer, my daughter's, what should be my daughter's room.

One of my daughters.

So thanks to Felicia Day, go to her website, Felicia Day, please check out her audible series, the third eye. And once you get done doing all that, go to our website, tcbpodcast.com. More information about Chrissy and I, the show. You're going to like it. Go to the website. It's a great website. We paid a lot of money for it. So please go visit it. All the audio, all the video. And you can get your new piggy fronting sticker by hitting the contact us button. Click the drop down menu. It says, I want my sticker. Give us your physical address. If you want us to sign it or something, please let us know so that we could do that for you. And when you get done doing all of that, give us a text message. Six two six. Ask TCB the number, 31626. Ask TCB the number. Three. Questions, comments, concerns, content, ideas. Ask Brian's mom. Ask TCB. Ask anybody anything. You could just go ahead and shoot it off to us. We would love to hear from you. And you can leave us a voicemail there, too. But if you leave that voicemail, just be aware that we may use your voice on the show and that makes you be mindful of what you say.

You know what I'm saying, Chrissy? Because I actually have one really good voicemail. But then she called back like five minutes later, left another voicemail and said, please don't run that voicemail because she gave some identifying information. And I'm so bummed out because I really like the voicemail. Oh, whatever. Anyway, you get the point. At the commercial break on the ever growing Instagram verdas, we had almost a million views on that reel. It's crazy. So at the commercial break on Instagram, TCB podcast on TikTok and YouTube.com, slash the commercial breaktholicade interview will be up there, so go check it out. All right, Chrissy, I guess that's all I can do for today.

I think so.

But I'll tell you that I love you.

I love you.

Best to you and best to you and best to you out there in the podcast universe. Until next time, Chrissy. And I do say, we always say, and we must say goodbye.

Hell yeah. Close.