IDS #306 - Why Are Hot Dogs Wet? (w/ Steve Young)

This week's episode features special guest Steve Young

>> Dave: This week's episode features special guest Steve Young. Comedy pieces and musical numbers were used with permission from the artist.

>> Steve Young: Okay, recording in progress. Oh, hey, everybody. You like recordings? Yeah,

>> Mike: there's so much for the, the ninja engineer coming in there.

>> Darin: You are making me sick. So nervous.

>> Steve Young: But you know what? It's better this way. Steve Young world. I've got a world with a lot of different.

>> Darin: A whole world of Steve Young.


This week's Irritable Dad Syndrome podcast features comedian Steve Young

>> Dave: Time now for Irritable Dad Syndrome, the podcast that's better than a state fair corn dog. Here are your hosts, Mike and Darren.

>> Darin: Hi, I'm Darren.

>> Mike: I am Mike.

>> Darin: Welcome to Irritable Dad Syndrome, Cincinnati's comedy podcast. This is episode 306. And, oh, kids, this is a good one. I hope it's a good one. It should be a good one.

>> Mike: It's all, all the, data suggests marketing analysis.

>> Darin: Yes. From all the reports that I've seen, this should be a good episode because. And not solely because, but one of the main reasons is we have a guest, and our guest is Steve Young. Now, Steve used to write for David Letterman. He's written for the Simpsons. He is a triple threat. He's an actor, a musician, the writer. Do you dance, Steve?

>> Steve Young: We'll get into that. About 25 minutes into the podcast, we'll

>> Darin: see a little bit of soft shoe. So, yes, Steve, he's a great guy. And, over the past couple years, he and I have become friends or friendly. I'd like to think that we're friends.

>> Steve Young: So, right on border between friendly and friends tonight.

>> Darin: We'll see how tonight goes. But, yeah, Steve Young is our guest. Steve, welcome to Irritable Dad Syndrome.

>> Steve Young: Thank you. Thank you, Darren and Mike, for having me. And just to clarify, I am not the hall of Fame quarterback.

>> Darin: No.

>> Steve Young: Some people are a little sad that, oh, boy, this is going to be a great episode.

>> Steve Young: Oh, who the hell is that?

>> Darin: Well, I was going to ask you all those questions about your super bowl appearance and what that was like, and

>> Steve Young: I was going to smoothly answer them in a semi realistic fashion.

>> Mike: So all of our listeners that know that I'm in the podcast, I'm relatively well known within this podcast. I'm one of a couple of people involved in this podcast, and they know that if I'm involved with it, there's no way in hell anyone involved in sports is going to be on it. Because I have literally nothing to say. I enjoy sports, but I know nothing about them. I know as much about sports as you know about long division.

>> Darin: That's true. Yeah, that's true. And I saw long division. Yeah, any type of division. So, Steve, how you doing?

>> Steve Young: I'm good. I have been asked for autographs by people who thought I was the other Steve Yacht. Did you give them, one time in particular, I remember telling a guy, I will be happy to sign the autograph. Just for clarity's sake, you should know I'm not the football Steve Young. And you could see his face kind of go, oh, yeah. But at that point he had to pretend he was still interested in getting my autograph.

>> Darin: I would like to think that he would know you're not the other Steve Young. You two don't look alike. I mean, you, wear glasses.

>> Steve Young: Yeah, I guess that is a detail which could be, changed with props and so on.

>> Darin: Now do people, who know you as the writer, comedian, author, musician Steve Young, do they approach you for autographs? Do you get mobbed when you go out in public?

>> Steve Young: I had to grow the beard after the documentary came out so that people, wouldn't approach me on the street so much. No, no. I do kind of fantasize that the other Steve Young occasionally gets a question. Like, I heard you were in this documentary about m record collecting and you're, you're like putting out music now. No, no, I don't know who that is. That's not me.

>> Darin: Yeah, that's on the list. I was going to get to that later, but let's just jump into that now.


Do you still collect or find albums from the industrial musicals

One of my favorite not only documentaries, but motion pictures of all time was Bathtubs Over Broadway. I loved it immensely. It spawned from Dave's record collection off of Letterman. And so what I want to know is it's a, two parter. Part one. A part one, yeah. do you still collect or find albums from the industrial musicals?

>> Steve Young: It's much slower going. In the past several years, all the low hanging fruit has been collected. Once in a while I get some very minor item that no one's ever heard of before. Or occasionally I knock something off my want list that's been on my want list for over 20 years because there are so many of these records that exist in the form of one known copy or two known copies. And so I don't m. Expect to clear up my want list in my lifetime. I'm, I'm fine with that.

>> Darin: What is on the want list?

>> Steve Young: Oh, let's see. There's a, ah, a Ford introduction show record with music by famous Broadway composer Cy Coleman and most of the car show records for the introduction shows. For the dealers are common because there were thousands of Ford dealers and Chevy dealers and all that. This one from the mid-60s, they must have just pressed up a few dozen copies for the like, VIP executives or something and only one has ever turned up and I don't have it. Yeah, what else is there? Oh, there's, there's a Mattel show, there's some Northwest life insurance record. Ah, who cares? There's plenty of them out there. And I'll probably find a few more and a few more will turn up. No one's ever heard of the short answer. Well, it's too late for that. Is that yes, things still do turn up a lot of times. Now it's reel to reel tapes. Composers, families who've seen the movie or have gotten in touch with me say, oh, we still have a lot of stuff in the basement from grandpa when he was doing this stuff in the 60s or whatever. I've inherited some troves of reel to reel tapes. Material that was never even on a vinyl record. So that's another.

>> Darin: Oh, that's cool. Are there any plans to do any stuff with that? I mean, I know you take your show, the industrial musical show on the road from time to time.

>> Steve Young: Yeah. I don't know that there's ever going to be, another volume of the greatest hits or any of that.

>> Steve Young: I would love to have the book reprinted someday. We went through two printings and then we stopped. It's expensive to make that book. It's a beautiful book.

>> Darin: The old, Letterman joke. The first one was blurred.

>> Steve Young: first printing had one typo in it. I found where there was a comma where there should have been a period, but we fixed that for the same.

>> Darin: Okay. Oh, okay. So you have a collector's item then if you have the first printing, then you need to get the second printing and then you have that. Yeah.

>> Steve Young: the aftermarket price on the book can be a little pricey because it is a beautiful large book that's out of print and people still see the movie and want to learn more.

>> Darin: Yeah, I've got a copy of it at the house and you were nice enough to autograph it for me when I saw your industrial musical show in Indianapolis.

>> Steve Young: And I told you at the time. Now you understand I'm not the football player.

>> Darin: That's. That's right, yeah, yeah. And that's how he signed it.

>> Mike: And his heart sank when you told him that.

>> Darin: Not the football player.

>> Steve Young: He. Yeah, because I legitimately could have

>> Dave: done that you're listening to Irritable Dad Syndrome. I tell you this in case you forgot the name of the podcast. You're welcome.

>> Darin: Bathtubs Over Broadway, spawned from Dave Zucker Collection. And, I remember watching the episode when my bathroom was played on Dave Zerker collection, and I thought, this has to be. This can't possibly be real.


You hosted the documentary but you didn't direct it

But now, you hosted the documentary, but you didn't direct it. So how much say did you have in the final input of Bathtubs Over Broadway?

>> Steve Young: A good documentary, I've come to understand, has a serious separation of church and state. The subject of the documentary, if this person is alive, which isn't always the case, but I was alive. But it's really not a legitimate documentary if the subject gets to tell the filmmaker and the editors and the directors what they want in it and what they want left out and all that. So I had no creative say in this. I did work on some original songs, and, so I have my hands on that part of it. Of course, my collection and my friends and all that. I had to be willing to just put all that on the line and see what would happen. But, no, I know. No sense of, you know, it would be funny if you show me doing this, or. I don't want that footage in there. No, Dava wasn't the. The filmmaker. She's the director and producer and editor. I knew her already. She had worked at Letterman as an editor before she was getting into films. And I trusted her completely. She knew me. She liked me. She thought the area was so weird and interesting. I thought, I can relax. I don't seek any control over this, and I wouldn't want to because it would be way better. Whatever she'll do, because she knows how to make movies and I don't.

>> Darin: So you were happy with the final outcome, or was there anything that you would have done differently?

>> Steve Young: Well, there was always new discoveries that came after the movie was done that we kind of went, if only we'd found that film clip earlier or that record. But it didn't really matter to the arc of the story and the power of the story with all the people in it who became the heart of it. That was completely locked in. Yeah, there's, very little you could imagine. Oh, I wish that was different or better. No, it's really amazing how.

>> Darin: Well. Well, I strongly recommend anybody who's out there. Go on your Roku device, your. Your streamer. Look it up and check it out. It's so entertaining. It's absolutely so Entertaining. I watched it with Libby. She says hi by the way. And I, I tried describing the documentary tour because I drove all the way up to Columbus to see it from here. And she's like, you're driving up to Columbus to see a movie? I said, not a movie, a documentary about, nevermind.


The movie is about corporate musicals commissioned by sales forces

>> Steve Young: Anyway, but have you explained to your viewers what this is? I don't know if we have.

>> Darin: Yeah, yeah, go ahead. you, you explain what it's about.

>> Steve Young: They're completely enthralled by this abstract thing. They have no idea what we're talking about. When I was working as a writer at the Letterman show, collecting raw material for the Dave's record collection bit, I would occasionally find souvenir record albums of company conventions and sales meetings where they had commissioned a musical, a musical that the public could not go to, probably wouldn't have wanted to go to, but a musical for the sales force and distributors and managers and people like that in house. Corporate propaganda infotainment Broadway style musicals about the triumphs and tragedies of selling, kids sneakers or being a diesel engine salesman or a, Pepsi Cola bottler or selling GE appliances or whatever. And I started finding more and more of these things. They were all private pressings, not to be sold in stores, not for radio airplay. Very, very rare because they were only given out to people within the company. But some of them, to my untutored ears, seemed utterly fantastic. Off, the charts. Crazy conceptually, like comedically. I was just enthralled. This is way over the top. This shouldn't even be happening. There shouldn't be a musical about selling and servicing diesel engines. But there is. And I can't get it out of my head. The songs have gripped me and the insurance and the tractors and the. All of it was okay. Not all of it, some of it was terrible. But the, stuff that was good turned out as we go along in the movie. In my adventure, I find out some of these things were written by Broadway royalty, or at least future Broadway royalty. And the cast were full of brilliant people who were often on their way up and would someday become household names. So it was this black matter of the universe of the entertainment world that no one had ever fully seen the picture of before. There were a few other record collectors who had some of them, but I was the first person who ever started tracking down the people who wrote these things and performed in them and, and that act of doing that eventually changed my life because I met people who became absolutely central to my life, new Family members and things like that.

>> Darin: And if the only one you had come across was the bathrooms are coming, I mean, come on. My bathroom, my bathroom

>> Mike: is a private

>> Darin: kind of place that's just worth its weight.

>> Steve Young: 800 pound gorilla. I call it like that song, My bathroom. That's the gateway drug. That was not the very first one I found, but that was already kind of legendary in the weird music circles of the 90s and people were swapping cassette tapes and things like that. But I had found a few others before I got wind of that. But yeah, that one, the movie is titled Bathtubs Over Broadway in, in a reference to how central that, American standard bathroom fixture musical is to this genre. But also my saga with it of going down the rabbit hole and meeting people, people who thought, yes, we did, we knew it was good work 47 years ago, but the world doesn't care and it's forgotten. And then I show up and say, not quite. We're going to have a talk about this because it is brilliant and bizarre and evocative. It's an America that we can feel good about when the future was going to be getting better and better. And companies actually seem to care about their employees and team members and cultivated this pride in them. And so it turns into way more than just kitsch because it's these big questions about how do we think about what is art even can something be art if it was commissioned by a toilet company? Can we get past our own cynicism and knee jerk reflexes we've been trained to do for decades of saying, oh, the gatekeepers told us we, this is cool over here, but this stuff over here is junk and we must despise the junk. And I said, I don't know if it is junk though. Let's, let's think about this.

>> Darin: Yeah, I don't think it's junk at all. I think it's brilliant. And I loved everything about it. It's amazing. And I applaud you for, finding it and for putting it together, for believing in it. Because I don't know if anybody else would have thought, I think there's a documentary in this.

>> Steve Young: But I mean, I don't know if I would have ever taken that step myself. But some other film people were starting to ask me after the book came out, oh, would you be interested in partnering on a, ah, documentary. This looks like a good area. And I didn't know how to think about that. I said to Deva, who had by now lived in Los Angeles, can you look at these people's websites and see what their samples, whether, you have a good feeling about them. And she said, I'm not sure about those particular people, but if there's going to be a documentary about this, I think I would like to do it. And I said, oh, well, yes. I had no idea that would even be possible. But yeah, you're in.

>> Darin: Steve, when I describe you to people, and I know there is not a level of unique, you know, you can't say something is more unique than somebody else. Right. I give you the exception. Your comedic mind. I don't know how you, you look at things and you find humor in almost every direction you look. And I just applaud you. How many Instagram. Or I'm sorry, I keep. I've been calling it Instagram.

>> Mike: Yeah, he enjoys doing that a lot.

>> Darin: I do that to get the kids to bother my kids. And now I always call it Instagram. How many Instagram pages do you have? Because you've got the, the one with the, the truck, the AI vehicles, and you got the one where you piece together the.

>> Steve Young: Yeah, and I've got one I haven't done anything on for a while, which is the Cut and Paste movies.

>> Steve Young: Which is where I cut up pages of little capsule summaries of movies from old TV guides. If I carefully cut them up and reassemble them so grammatically they make sense, but they describe movies that never existed and probably never should exist. Never should exist. I love that project. I've been doing that on and off for over 30 years. I think I was starting to do it in the late 80s actually. But it's such a hard project because you get these little tiny slips of paper and. And you have thousands of them spread out and you're trying to. Oh, this one would work with that. Oh, I got two good lines of this. And now I need to find the perfect ending. And then you get to get a headache. And I don't want to look at tiny slips of paper anymore.

>> Darin: But once you start reading them, you can't put them down. I mean, I remember when you had made your Instagram page about it. I was. I couldn't sleep one night and I scrolled through 20, 30. I don't know, they're just ridiculously entertaining and ridiculous in their own right.

>> Steve Young: So I've had a few fans who've asked me, when are you going to do more of those? And I say, yeah, I got to get back to it.


If a critical mass of people and perhaps you now count as a Critical Mass

If a critical mass of people and Perhaps you now count as a Critical Mass.

>> Darin: Yes.

>> Steve Young: I will make a solemn vow on the altar of freedom that, that I'll do some more cut and paste movies.

>> Mike: I mean, we. We count as a Mass.

>> Darin: Yeah, yeah.

>> Steve Young: It's a critical Mike, if you want to get in on this, definitely tip the balance in a critical mass.

>> Mike: So. Thank you.


Darren has said Instant Graham is instant Grammy Hardwired

I will say something. I have to address the fact that Darren, in. In Mixed Company, has said Instant Graham.

>> Darin: Yes.

>> Mike: So it may not seem like it, but there are times when we actually engineer something that we think is funny and we'll make a video or something like that, we'll throw it out there into the void and nothing happens. And then other times where things. Things just go off the rails are usually when this dude mispronounces. So we've gained notoriety.

>> Darin: Yes.

>> Mike: In the Rush fan groups because he will not stop pronouncing Alex lson's name as Alex Lifson.

>> Darin: Lifson.

>> Mike: And he. He does it. He does it because he thinks it's funny. And it is funny.

>> Darin: It's hilarious.

>> Mike: But there are some people out there, I'm just going to say their priorities are a little.

>> Darin: They don't think it's funny at all.

>> Mike: They're a little. They. They get adamant and they just, you know, how. What is wrong with you? And calling us idiots, Which, I mean, yes, we're idiots. That's our home. That's our jam. Yeah.

>> Steve Young: And, so this is a very Lettermanesque thing to do. For years, he purposely called Hal Gurney by a string of Hal Gertner, our director, Hal Grundman.

>> Mike: I gained some particular joy when he can't turn it off. And I know he really didn't mean to do that.

>> Steve Young: Instant Graham is instant Grammy Hardwired. Okay. Yeah, yeah, I sympathize with that. I probably have an example where I can't even remember the real name of something anymore. Like, decades ago, I saw a hand lettered sign at a thrift shop that said thrift shop. And then on my family and I for years and years just said, oh, we're going to go. We've got to take this stuff to the third shop. To the Thirst first, ironically. And then we forgot that it was wrong and it was just what we call the thrift shop.


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Do your kids think you're funny when you do weird things

Now back to the show.

>> Darin: Now we're irritable dad syndrome. And I, think our kids sometimes think we funny. You have kids? Do they think you're funny? Or they're like, dad's off doing weird things again?

>> Steve Young: Well, it varied in age appropriate ways. I think, I was extremely entertaining to toddlers and young children because I was happy to get down on the floor and play with stuff and make weird voices and weird faces.

>> Darin: Yeah.

>> Steve Young: And then later, when they're like adolescents, it's, oh, God, dad, can you stop being weird? I definitely got a lot of that. Like, don't say those crazy things when my friends are around. It's creepy. It's weird. And then later, the worst of that burns off and they understand that, okay, he's got something going on. And sometimes I remember some family trip to Washington, and I think we went to the spy museum, and I was riffing on, like, Russian spy voices or something, and we were, Daddy, Daddy, stop. Our faces hurt.

>> Mike: I'm laughing so much.

>> Steve Young: So you like to hear that once in a while. And then when Bathtubs Over Broadway came out, I think that was a. A powerful thing. Most children don't get to watch a movie that reveals a side of their parents that they wouldn't really know.

>> Darin: Right.

>> Steve Young: And, I think that was. Made a big impression on.

>> Darin: Yeah.

>> Steve Young: Okay. Daddy's weird record collection that's been in the background all our lives. Apparently it means something and has become an important. Well, I don't know if it's important, but it's a thing anyway. And it has affected a lot of people's lives.

>> Darin: Well, when my kids were little, I used to act like I was playing the tuba. I'd walk around the house and, Anchors Away. Thank you. Yeah, but Anchors Away was the only song I ever played, and that was funny for two years. And then it's like, dad, stop acting like you're playing the tuba.

>> Steve Young: Or at least get some more pretend sheet music and learn a new song.

>> Darin: Well, that's the thing. I don't read music, though, so you

>> Steve Young: don't need to pretend street music.

>> Mike: That's. There you go.

>> Darin: It's a pretend tuba. So you just have pretend sheep Any

>> Steve Young: song you want is available.

>> Darin: That's right. Maybe I'll do an album of, of fake, tuba music.

>> Steve Young: Yeah.

>> Mike: Hey, hey.

>> Darin: I think I've got an idea there.

>> Steve Young: The Rush crowd will like that.

>> Darin: Yeah. Alex Lifison might produce it.

>> Mike: Yeah.

>> Darin: Yeah.

>> Steve Young: So you have to call it the Tubba.

>> Darin: The Tub.


Thanks to a new federal program, you can get back time wasted on YouTube

So you're a musician and you play. I know you play guitar and you play bass and you're pretty good. You're actually. I'm gonna just go on, on a limb and say you're really good. Were you in a band or when did you learn to play?

>> Steve Young: I don't know if it's a full on midlife crisis situation, but in the early 2000s, I decided I was going to get more serious about guitar. I had a guitar since high school and could play a few chords, but wasn't really up on any technique or anything. But I got a nicer guitar and started learning a few things. I found a teacher in Manhattan who got me started on finger picking. And it turned out, and I really didn't see this coming, but I had an affinity for it, a facility for it. After a while I realized I will never be bored again. Because, even if I'm only mediocre and slowly getting better, it's fun to be mediocre with this thing. I love this guitar. And after a while the teacher said, you're getting too good for me. I'm going to pass you off to a higher level teacher. But I still want to work with you and do some piano so you can understand music theory better. So I got a little whiff of that. But yeah, I took lessons for a number of years and have slowly continued to get better, I think. And just I'm good enough to be able to do my own songs pretty much the way I want. Dance. Wookie underpants. Hey, hey. Dance.

>> Speaker E: You're probably thinking, well, that's 10 seconds

>> Steve Young: of my life I'll never get back.

>> Speaker E: But now, thanks to a new federal government program, you can get back the

>> Steve Young: time that you waste on content like that.

>> Speaker E: Just go to timeback.gov fill out the claim form noting what content you watched and how much time you wasted. And in six to eight weeks, you'll get that amount of time credited back to your life.

>> Steve Young: It's a terrific program and I urge you to take advantage of it. Dance.


Steve Young has an irritable dad syndrome exclusive coming up on MTV

>> Darin: Speaking of your own song, for the first time ever on irritable dad syndrome. After the interview, we are going to world premiere have an exclusive Steve Young song that's never been heard By. By the masses. And I am so excited about this. You'd think, I'm like a kid at Christmas. Like, we have an exclusive Steve Young song. So after the interview, kids stay, you know, stick around, because that's when you're gonna hear why Are Hot Dogs Wet? By Steve Young, the exclusive. And this is like, we need to have that mtv. Yeah, you know, the MTV exclusive. This is an irritable Death center exclusive coming up at the end of this episode.

>> Mike: Man, that'll make it legit.

>> Darin: Oh, that'll make it all worthwhile. It's just.

>> Steve Young: Just a fun little thing. It's no Lifson, for God's sake.

>> Mike: Oh, yeah. I mean.

>> Darin: And you know what would make that song even better?

>> Mike: Yeah.

>> Darin: The tuba.

>> Steve Young: Yeah. Well, if you want to along with it,

>> Darin: Uh-huh. Yeah, I might it in post. I might mix some of my tuba playing in and just desecrate your song.

>> Steve Young: Okay, well, that's. That's disheartening.

>> Darin: If you follow Steve Young on any of his social medias, you post just fun little videos. And one of the things you and I have in common is we both own an. Ask me about the moose button. Yes, we've got the same button. You had posted that. And, here I am at the house, and I said, and I quote, I've got one.

>> Steve Young: Wow. that was a big day when we.

>> Darin: Honey, is everything okay? I said, yeah, yeah, we've got the same. And so I put this on my jacket, right? And. Because I was gonna wear it and show it to you because I figured we could talk 20, 30 minutes easy about the Moose Lodge. So I had this button on my jacket. And yesterday Libby was gonna go for a walk, and it was chilly, so she puts it on, and she's walking around, and I'm like, oh, God, please somebody ask Libby about the moose.

>> Steve Young: That would be very satisfying. Did that happen or did she.

>> Darin: It did not happen. No. No. She did run into two people while on her walk, but nobody asked her about the moose because she could either say, one, I don't know why my husband has this on his jacket, or two, just please leave me alone because now I'm uncomfortable. But.

>> Steve Young: But, yeah, I bought this off ebay, finding it sufficiently random for my purposes of my music video. But you're sure it's about the Moose Lodge?

>> Darin: It's about the Moose Lodge, yes. Yeah, my grandfather was, kind of like Howard Cunningham was with the Grand Poobah of the Leopard Lodge on Happy Days. So Grandpa Bill was in the Moose. And when you turn 21 years old, you can join the Loyal Order of Moose Lodge. Yeah. And, I did not. I mean, you know, but Bill did anyway. But we have that in common. I think it's hilarious.

>> Steve Young: Well, you've unlocked the mystery of the Moose. I'm going to try a few more out on you, see if you go, oh, yeah, I know exactly what that is.

>> Darin: Okay. Ask me about the gentle alternative. m. No, I don't have a clue what the gentle alternative is, because

>> Steve Young: I think I would be very grateful for a gentle alternative to just about anything.

>> Darin: Anything. Name it.


You worked for David Letterman for 22, 25 years

Steve Young is our guest and you've mentioned a couple times the, let's talk about. Let's talk about Letterman. You worked for Letterman, what, 22, 25 years? How long?

>> Steve Young: I guess it was 25, yes.

>> Darin: Okay. During the time you worked for Letterman, did it ever feel like just a normal job or was it a big deal? Was it somewhere in between?

>> Steve Young: I don't know if it ever felt like a normal job because every day you're starting from scratch and every day might be your best, funniest idea ever. Or it might be the day you fall flattest on your face ever. And so there was always that just rolling of the dice every day. But after years and decades, it was the day job and I could do it. And the individual days, highs and lows, were, attention getting. But in the big picture, I thought, yes, apparently I'm pretty well settled into this job. And that's when I started to do more outside projects like the record collecting that eventually became the book and then the documentary and, the Celebra gum project, which I'm sure you've heard of.

>> Darin: I love that it's on the list. Tell me about celebrity gum. This is, this is awesome.

>> Steve Young: The website is still up. I pay a small amount to keep the domain alive. Celebritum.com Money well spent. I hope so. I don't know if the accountant agrees, but the genesis of it was I, was running the monologue at the show for many years. And every afternoon in the last hour or so before the taping started, I had to be up near the dressing room in case Dave went through the cue cards and said, oh, I think we need something else here. Do we have any other jokes about, Paris Hilton or whatever? And I would run in with my sheets of paper and pitch him more jokes. So I had to be on call for that. So I would stand out in this hallway by a certain window. And I noticed at one point on the outside window ledge, someone long ago apparently had stuck a piece of used chewing gum and it stayed there and come, hardened and blackened over time. And I thought, oh, that's an interesting, odd, semi poignant artifact. Through the seasons and years, it's inscrutably just there while life passes us by. And I thought, I'll take some pictures and different weather and light and all that. That was only going to be mildly interesting. And then one day the real idea came, which was on the street below. Every time the gum is in the foreground, down in the background, SUVs and limos are pulling up and out is getting Julia Roberts or George Clooney or all the movers and shakers who are coming to be our celebrity guests on the show. And I thought, well, that's what I need to do. Every day it's new, day, new celebrity, same gum. And it's paparazzi and flashbulbs and security people and mayhem or if it's not someone as exciting, or if it's pouring rain, it's like somebody getting out of a car and dashing to the door and there's only one person there waving or hoping for an autograph. It's a weird slice of life. Once in a while I would get a visually interesting, fun picture. I eventually I started the Celebra Gum, website. But then, thinking correctly, probably Dave Letterman has not heard about this. I will make him a photo album for his birthday, put together a few of the like, most interesting, weird, evocative shots from the first year or so I'd been going for a while and I gave him this as a birthday present and he said this is, this is remarkable. I mean it's. I don't know if he said this then or later, but it's like something I completely agreed with, which was this is trivial and stupid, yet by repetition it achieves some sort of gravitas or celebrities come and go, but it's always the gum. You can even stretch and say, well, it's a metaphor about how we chew up and spit out celebrities and discard them.

>> Darin: Oh yeah, yeah, good.

>> Steve Young: And he said we have to have an art gallery show of, of these photos. And. And I said oh, that's no, come on. And he said no, we're going to do this. And this was one of the ways in which his appreciation of weird things done for the right, wrong reasons.

>> Steve Young: And his loyalty really were remarkable. He paid out of his own pocket to have about 50 something of my photos professionally printed. And enlarged and framed and arranged for an art gallery to let us have the space for a night. And we had our Late show holiday party there one year with all these pictures on the wall with little plaques explaining who was in the picture and what date it was shot. somehow the New York Times got wind of it and, and said, oh, we might be interested in sending someone to report, on this, but probably, really only if Mr. Letterman would agree to speak to the reporter. Everyone thought, oh, there's your deal, killer, because Dave Letterman won't be interested in that. Dave said, sure, be happy to. Yeah. Suddenly it was in the New York Times. It was. It was giddy. It was a fever dream of, like, this shouldn't really be happening. and eventually, when I got tired of it after a couple of years, there was a point of diminishing returns. I asked Dave, would you help me kill it off? And we shot a video up at the window where I gave him a putty knife. And he said, I would like you. I said, I would like you to do the honors, Dave. I'm happy to. A big supporter of celebr. Gum chipped away at it, and the gum fell off.


Paul McCartney walked past on sidewalk looking for lost gum

Ah, Fell to the ground. And I went down to the sidewalk thinking, oh, I'd like to retrieve that gum. Just a little souvenir for myself. And I was down on the sidewalk, crouched down, looking. Paul McCartney walked about. Oh, no. He had been at the show that night because his son was a guest. And they held him at the door and said, sir, Paul, could you please just wait a minute? Something might fall out a window, and we don't want it to land on you. So he waited until he was given the all clear and walked past, and there's Paul McCartney. And then, oh, I found the gun.

>> Mike: So, perfect day.

>> Darin: Look what I found, Paul.

>> Steve Young: Look, never mind.

>> Speaker E: Okay?

>> Darin: They've taken hundreds of pictures of this. Do you want to touch my gum? Yeah.

>> Steve Young: And I eventually found out who put it out there. There was somebody on the staff who was reticent about it at first, but then as the phenomenon grew, they admitted that they had put it out there.

>> Darin: It was Mulligan, wasn't it?

>> Steve Young: No. No. Okay, always a good guess, but no, always guess.

>> Darin: Gerard Mulligan. He was, besides you, he's the only writer who has appeared on Irritable Dad Syndrome. He read a top 10 list for a friend of mine who is getting ready to go under a, hospital treatment. And he was kind enough to write a top 10 signs. You're at a Bad hospital.

>> Steve Young: Oh, that's good.

>> Darin: He knocked it out and I don't know, in brilliant form. It was hilarious.


When you wrote for Letterman, how was it structured

So, but now when you wrote for Letterman, how was it structured? Was there a group like, did everybody contribute to the top 10 list? Did everybody contribute to the movie monologue? Who wrote the, from New York? And then the little thing that Alan

>> Steve Young: Coulter would say, we call those from New York's and man who's. And everybody. All the writers would occasionally be asked to write a page of those. After 9 11, it was always from New York, the greatest city in the world. So that took a lot of, pressure off us. But I was good at those. I don't know if by the end I was the only one doing the, the man who's. I was writing the little teasers going into the Act 1 commercial and the Act 5 where it'd be an audience shot and Alan Coulter would say, join us tomorrow. Dave's guess. And he'd always have some weird line like, you know, if you think about it, all tattoos are temporary tattoos.

>> Darin: Well that, you know, I stole that and I do that at the beginning of every, irritable dad syndrome. So, yeah, sue me.


How many jokes would a writer contribute a day and then how many made the cut

But now, when you were writing, how many jokes would a writer contribute a day and then how many made the cut?

>> Steve Young: Oh, well, back to your other question, which I barely answered. every day in the later years, we'd all come in in the morning and have a pitch meeting about, here are some things in the news. We could do a fake commercial about this. We could have a live interrupt about that. We could have this, I don't know, just different ideas for things to put in the show. But yes, every day there would be the top 10 topic. People would pitch topics and then the head writers would get one approved from Dave and everybody would try to write some. If you were not in a heavy production schedule with extras, as we call them, you might get to write a lot of top tens. Some days might be, oh, I'm running to the edit room, I'm trying to write three top tens down and oh, that's better than nothing. There were people who specialized in the monologue. There were a couple of writers out in California who emailed in every day. Dave kind of relied on them as his favorite veteran, guys. They had worked for Johnny Carson, so he liked that connection. And I had a stable of other freelancers and we had a couple staff members who were mostly monologue. A lot of the writing staff had nothing to do with the monologue.

>> Darin: And then. Can you think of any jokes that you wrote that you thought were particularly funny that weren't used?

>> Steve Young: Oh, well, there's just a flood of jokes for things like top tens. You might have a couple hundred, all together from the staff coming in, and only 10 are going to get picked. And that's a bit of a cat and mouse game where, the head writer would show Dave a blue card. Here's what we think is the top 10 list. And he might cut three and. And then the head writer would put in three more and show it to David. And then he might cut six and. And this would go back and forth for a while, but we considered those just very disposable. You could write 20 and then. Okay, I'll write another 20. Okay, sure, I'll write another 20. I don't care. Well, we might care, but you could do a lot of that. And I don't know if I have any jokes like that that I particularly remember, but certainly also a high attrition rate on ideas for larger pieces like the extras and the act twos or act fives or whatever they were at different parts of the show's history. The more involved production. I remember, I think I had this idea at NBC and it almost got on. And then I tried it again years later at cbs, and it almost got on. It was, oh, we have a wonderful new character on the show. It's a charming fellow named Uncle Pockets. Uncle Pockets, welcome. Well, what's, what's your. What's your deal, Uncle Pockets? Well, I'm going to have. Every time I come on, I'll have wonderful, amazing things in my pockets to show out. Oh, okay, Uncle Pockets, that sounds very fun. What do you have for us tonight, Uncle Pockets? Well, today was my first day. I didn't prepare anything today, you know, mainly be going through the HR and the onboarding. I don't really have any, well, here's a, receipt from cvs. I don't know if that's anything, Uncle Pockets. All right, we've had enough. Get out,

>> Darin: uncle, Pockets. I love it. I think that would have been Uncle

>> Steve Young: Pockets finally gets some juice.

>> Darin: Yeah, that would have been a hit.


Did you ever pitch something to a guest and were you ever game

Did you ever pitch something to a guest and were you ever like, oh, my God, I can't believe he or she, was game for this, for this bit.

>> Steve Young: I usually wasn't interacting directly with the guests who wanted something funny to do. And there were only a relatively small handful of people like Bill Murray, Steve Martin, Bruce Willis, maybe A couple others who wanted some bonus chunk of comedy that we would work on. Most of those people were pretty game. I mean, when you think about, Bruce Willis doing his action hero entrance from, from Broadway or whatever it was.

>> Steve Young: While I don't remember all the details.

>> Darin: Yeah, the only time I was on the show it was, January of 96 and they were going to shoot a bit with Elle McPherson and they put her in the front row and they sat her right next to me. I've got this long mullet and my face is blood red from being out in the arctic wind burn freezing temperatures. And Dave, is up on the set and they recorded. He goes, siskel and Ebert are here. Neil diamond is here.

>> Steve Young: What?

>> Darin: What's that, Paul? What? What? Elle McPherson's here. Oh, how. Oh, hi Al. And she kisses this chocolate and throws it and then he catches it in his mouth and the camera, zooms out and to include me in the two shot and she's like, happy Valentine's Day, baby. And I said, oh. The next day everybody lost their mind. Everybody at my TV station in Johnson City, Tennessee losing their mind. Darren was on the David Letterman show last night. Still one of the coolest things that's ever happened to me, you know.

>> Steve Young: Yeah, that reminds me of a story, you may remember there was, a few pieces where fake audience members would ask Dave questions. There was who asked for it or I don't know what else. But staff members would play regular people standing up in the audience to ask Dave something and he would have a prepared funny response or bit to show or whatever.

>> Steve Young: A couple of times I got to be one of these people and we learned from bad things that happened to other people. You better have a cover story about who you are, right? Where you're from, what your career is. Be able to talk convincingly about it because he's going to enjoy picking at you to see where the seams are. And I remember Tom Ruprecht once claimed he was a bartender. And Dave said, oh, how do you make a, how do you make, a Stinger or whatever? I decided I was because my brother worked this company, Crown. They make forklifts and pallet jacks and things like that. And I guess this was the Internet age. So I went on the Crown site and learned a few things about the product line in case I was asked. And I had a whole name and where I was from and my region in New England and all that. And so Dave chatted with me amiably about forklifts and Pallet jacks and all that. Very well. It went fine. well, then that night when the show aired, everybody in this company in New England was. Did you see what was on? Who the hell is that guy on Letterman? I don't know. Do you know him?

>> Darin: No.

>> Steve Young: He says he's from the. He's from the, the Lowell region. No, nobody by that name works for the company. Finally got back to my brother, and he looked at it and said, oh, I know what that is. Yeah, that's my brother. He's pretending. So the mystery was solved. But I got some Crown forklift T shirts.

>> Darin: Nice.

>> Steve Young: Yeah. So that was fun. I did a good enough job that people in the company believed I was legit.

>> Darin: But no, you're like. Where are you from? Topeka, Kansas. Oh, what. What part of the state is that from? Oh, it's north of wherever. He would. Yeah. I didn't know he would intentionally because for the longest time I thought they were actually people. I mean. Well, they are. They're people. I thought they were actually people who lived there.

>> Steve Young: Some of the pieces, like, when you'd go in the audience to play Know your current events and know your cuts of meat, those are legitimate audience.

>> Darin: Okay, okay.

>> Steve Young: But there are these other kinds of pieces where there was a prepared bit like that that, we had to have a setup for, and those were usually fake audience people.

>> Darin: know your cuts and meat. Variety meets.


David Bell: Dave used to make bizarre phone calls on the show

David, do you keep in touch with, a lot of the people on the show?

>> Steve Young: In various degrees. It occurred to me recently that I'm friends with people, but we don't see each other necessarily that often. I think sometime last fall, I think we had, like, four or five writers together for dinner. But it does feel like it's 1957, and we're all army buddies from World War II, civilian life and gone off in different directions. A lot of people are not really working in the TV business anymore, and partly that's. Maybe some of us are aging out of it, but it also is, the TV business for writers like us has contracted so much.

>> Dave: You're listening to Irritable dad syndrome. We put the drome in syndrome.

>> Darin: That's right. So a couple years ago, Mike, I was telling you that I was in Indianapolis, and I went to. I saw Steve show the industrial musical show. Afterwards, my buddy Don and I, we went and had dinner with Steve. And Steve, you told me. And I'm hoping that you can remember this story and you'll tell it again. When Dave was doing the.

>> Steve Young: Oh, yeah. I think it was the specific may have been a turkey, but yes, back in the day, I think especially in the NBC era, during rehearsals, down on the stage, in the afternoon, if there was going to be something that involved Dave making a phone call on the show, we had to test the phone. I don't know if it was really a worry every time that it may or may not work, but we test the phone and this was an opportunity for Dave to be his most wild improvisational self. He would, I hope somewhere recordings have been saved. I heard that Hal Gurney was saving an archive of these phone calls. But he would call like the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and just pretend to be some random guy asking if he could enter the Indy 500 like the day before. Yeah, sir. No, I mean this, this is a very high level professional race. You can't just enter, Oh, okay, well, what about the rental car division? Can I enter? So he would just keep people on the line with these bizarre calls. But one time he called, I have no idea who he called, but he took the Persona of he was a turkey, farmer in some rural area and he wanted to talk to someone about the fact that he had a two headed turkey m. And he was very concerned about it and interested about it. And he said, well, I don't know, people have said maybe, you know, is your farm too near power lines? Could that have been something to do with it? Well, I thought about that. But you know what I thought of in the end? You know what I came, I came to realize it's just one of those things. So this was in a way him at, ah, his purest and finest, just flights of fancy and stringing people along. And I, remember from raw footage of a remote that I was on in New Jersey where he was in this neighborhood walking around knocking on doors and asking people, what would you like to see more of on television? And he had a whole clipboard full of specific questions and he would just talk with people and we make a funny thing out of it. But bit of raw footage that did not make it in any form into the show. I still remember it so clearly decades later. There was some older gentleman who was in a car and the guy had pulled over to talk to Dave and Dave was going on a riff about the show the Waltons. He said, you remember the Waltons? A very popular show? Oh, yeah, yeah, I guess I do. Oh, tremendous show. Fantastic. It was, it was about this family during the Depression and they're desperately poor. So the premise of the show is that every week, you know, they had to somehow find enough furniture to burn for heat. And the guy in the car is just going, oh, yeah, okay.

>> Darin: Yeah.

>> Steve Young: But I just thought, that's great. And I said to Dave, I, I don't. It, didn't make it into the show. I. No one else will ever notice this or care about. I love that. Oh, thanks, Steve.

>> Darin: Oh, yeah. Well, they used to throw the phone books in, and then they would call people at random and, talk to them. And then. Was it that old guy? He had no idea who Letterman was. Was. And after, like, five minutes. Were you on the Johnny Carson show last night? Yes, that was me.

>> Steve Young: Great moments like when he was doing the, drive thru remotes, he was at Taco Bell or McDonald's, and some lady said, are you Howard Stern? Well, now we're having fun, aren't we?


Cbs are canceling the Late show with Stephen Colbert

>> Darin: So I don't know if you've, if you've heard, but cbs, they're canceling the Late show with Stephen Colbert.

>> Steve Young: I had heard something about that. They're in their final weeks, which is weird because they're the new guys, and they're about to be, the extinct dinosaur. Very, very strange and sad.

>> Darin: I think it's sad. I. I hate seeing it go.

>> Mike: Yeah, yeah.

>> Steve Young: Throwing away an entire franchise like that. Seems. I understand. The economics of TV are not what they once were.

>> Darin: Right.

>> Steve Young: So precipitously saying, we don't need anything like this anymore.

>> Darin: Yeah.

>> Steve Young: Like a bad idea. And, well, we had, what, 33 years in that theater? It's not terrible, Right. It was not a waste of money to get the theater. But, what are they going to do with it now? I don't know. It's.

>> Darin: Well, that's. That was what I wanted to know. What are they going to do with the theater? Yeah. Maybe we could do Irritable dad syndrome.

>> Mike: Well, yeah, there you go. Yeah.

>> Darin: With the money we make off of, yeah, that's not a good idea.

>> Mike: Yeah. We're a stupid, idiotic thing that when repeated enough, we become a,

>> Steve Young: That's right.

>> Mike: We become a whole new animal.

>> Darin: Before we wrap up.


Steve, who are some of your early comedy influences

Steve, who are some of your early comedy influences? Who made you decide to be, who you are today?

>> Steve Young: Well, it's an interesting whole area. You know, Stephen Weiner, and I was talking to him last year, and he is a Letterman writer who was there very early in the show's history. We didn't overlap, but, he is a scholar of film and television and comedy history in a way that I am not and, and he said to me, I've seen occasionally this disparity, the comedy people who are steeped in the history and know backwards and forwards, the, the, the greats and all their great bits. And then there are a few people like you, who really did not grow up being a comedy nerd at all. And it's not like I never watched tv. I watched a few sitcoms. I had some books that I enjoyed. Like, there was a Woody Allen set of books, books of his, different short stories and short plays and things like that that I would read and enjoy and think, how did he do that? How did he set up, this joke and then bang, pay it off or pull the rug out from under us? And I looked at that and thought, I like that, I wish I could do that. But I was not somebody who was buying comedy albums or dreaming of a life in comedy or any of that. it seems to be the exception because most people know early on, oh, I want to be a stand up or I want to write for SNL or whatever. Eventually in college I came to understand this was a possible career path, at least theoretically. And I thought, oh, I'll try that, sure, let's see if I could get onto one of these shows. And amazingly it worked out. But I think I had watched the show far less than anyone they'd ever talked to. And other writers who tried to get on the show and didn't quite make it knew the show backwards and forwards. And I didn't really, in my first few weeks at the show, I had to ask a lot of questions about what they were talking about. Like, there'd be a meeting, oh, maybe Calvert can do this, maybe Calvert can do that. And I finally said, excuse me, who is Calvert? And in my defense, on TV he was known as Larry Bud Melman then.

>> Darin: Right.

>> Steve Young: So I think it's sort of reasonable that I wouldn't know. But hardcore fans knew exactly who Calvert was.

>> Darin: Yeah, well, I think that's probably your gift. I mean that's, that's like I said earlier in the show, you are very unique. You have, I think you have a brilliant comedy mind. I think you're hilarious. And I also think you're a very cool guy and I really appreciate you coming on the show. This has been a lot of fun.

>> Mike: Thank you.

>> Darin: Yeah, this has been great. Yeah. If people want to see more, Steve Young. How do they do that? What's your website? What's your, Instagram?

>> Steve Young: M Instant Gramophone is.

>> Mike: Thank you for taking it Another step into the absurdity level that beyond.

>> Steve Young: Now that's, that's always what it was called in, in the 19 teens. You get the instantaneous gramophone pants Steve. A relic of my very, early email address related to Dave Letterman's Worldwide Pants Company pants Steve. Steve Young World on YouTube. a lot of the same stuff on there. Steve. Young world dot com. I couldn't get Steve Young dot com. That other guy must have got it.

>> Darin: Bastard.

>> Steve Young: But you know what? It's better this way. Steve Young World. I've got a world with of different

>> Darin: whole world of Stevon. Well, again, thank you for being on our show and thank you for all the laughter that you've given me all these years. And thank you for your friendship. I really appreciate it. We want you guys to go to irritable dad syndrome.com and if you want to, buy, some merch, if you want to become a patron, you can do that. And after the show, don't forget the world premiere, the exclusive.


Why are hot dogs wet? Why can't they be dry

Why are hot dogs wet? Alright, guys, we hope to see you next week on Irritable Dad Syndrome.

>> Steve Young: M. Did you ever open a package

>> Speaker E: of hot dogs and that weird greasy hot dog water is dribbling out and you wonder what's up with that?

>> Speaker F: Why are hot dogs wet? Why are hot dogs wet?

>> Speaker E: Maybe someone told me, but I forget.

>> Speaker F: So why are hot dogs wet? Why

>> Steve Young: can't they be dry?

>> Speaker F: Did some hot dog guy decree from on high? Hot dogs just gotta be wet. Don't ask questions.

>> Steve Young: Why?

>> Speaker F: Well, I,

>> Steve Young: I'm still gonna try to find out.

>> Speaker F: why are hot dogs wet? Still no answer yet. Hey, I bet our friend the Internet would know. Why are hot dogs wet? Why are hot dogs wet?

>> Speaker E: I'll just type it into the search box here and we'll see what we get. Oh, it's returning a lot of results.

>> Steve Young: Look at all this.

>> Speaker F: Why are hot dogs wet?

>> Speaker E: Articles, documents, press releases.

>> Speaker F: Why are hot dogs wet?

>> Speaker E: There's a wealth of information here. Let me start getting into it, see

>> Steve Young: what I can learn.

>> Speaker F: Why are hot dogs wet?

>> Dave: Huh?

>> Speaker E: Interesting. I hadn't considered that. Oh, and here's a good point as well. Yeah, makes sense.

>> Speaker F: Why are hot dogs, wet?

>> Speaker E: I've got to hand it to the processed meat industry. They've put some careful thought into this.

>> Speaker F: Why are hot dogs wet?

>> Speaker E: And you know, come to think of it, I bet a lot of this would also apply to kielbasa.

>> Speaker F: Why are hot dogs wet?

>> Speaker E: alright, well, I feel like I've gotten a good basic Overview of the facts. I think my curiosity is satisfied for

>> Speaker F: now, though I will need to do

>> Speaker E: more research at some point. Go back and check the primary sources

>> Steve Young: that are cited and all these articles

>> Speaker E: and documents I was skimming why are hot dogs wet? Because, as we know, unfortunately, you can't automatically trust information you get from the Internet. Anything you read or watch might be a distortion, a mistake, a half truth, deliberate misinformation or disinformation put out to advance a sinister agenda. And I'm not saying that what I was just reading about hot dogs was necessarily wrong. I'm just saying you have to do your due diligence. Because bad information gets repeated and amplified, often by well meaning but gullible people.

>> Speaker F: Why are hot dogs wet?

>> Speaker E: And now we've got AI scraping the web and regurgitating quote unquote information with no capacity to judge whether or not it's valid. AI picks up lies and distortions and uncritically presents them as facts. It even adds more distortions and hallucinations. It's a mess. And it's getting worse.

>> Speaker F: Why are hot dogs wet?

>> Speaker E: You can't even trust what looks like a legitimate video because now the deep fakes are so convincing and so widespread that you have to be skeptical of anything you watch.

>> Speaker F: Why are hot dogs wet?

>> Speaker E: I'd think that hot dogs would be fairly low on the list of things that criminals and fascists would want to lie about.

>> Steve Young: But who knows?

>> Speaker E: That may just be my own naivete talking.

>> Speaker F: Why are, Hot dogs wet?

>> Speaker E: And if you think, well, then I'll only trust what I see with my own eyes and hear with my own years? Okay, but we're at a point now technologically where you have to wonder, what if everything we perceive out in the world has been manipulated through cyber trickery that's somehow transmitted directly into our brains? If we're able to form that question, I don't think we can rule out the possibility that everything we think we perceive is an illusion.

>> Speaker F: Why are hot dogs wet?

>> Speaker E: Meanwhile, not only does the social fabric weaken, as we've already seen, but individually we're in danger of losing the core of our humanity. If we're not confident we exist in a tangible, objective world with reliable sensory input and facts, we can't believe in ourselves as coherent, rational beings.

>> Speaker F: Why are hot dogs wet?

>> Speaker E: Yes, it's deeply worrisome, but humans have always been grappling with versions of these questions. For thousands of years, philosophers have pondered, can we trust any so called knowledge? Does the universe truly correspond to the information we get from our senses. How do we know that we know what we know, even on a topic

>> Speaker F: like why are, Hot dogs, wet.

>> Steve Young: So what can we do?

>> Speaker E: I don't know if there's anything ordinary people can do except just keep going with caution and skepticism, but also hope and kindness. Maybe eat a hot dog once in a while, if you like. Hot dogs keep pushing on. And I don't know if it's heroism, but I think most people, people most of the time, do want to persist, even if we don't really understand what we're up against. Because of love. Maybe also stubbornness or habit, even curiosity, which once again gets us back to

>> Speaker F: why are hot dogs,

>> Steve Young: Oh.

>> Speaker E: I was on the G chord so long that my hand cramped up and I couldn't make the D chord. Tmi, I guess. Right? Though if you're not even sure that's authentic information, how can you judge what's too much?

>> Steve Young: Okay, you know what?

>> Speaker E: I think we've had enough of this. Let's finish it up and get on with our confused lives.

>> Speaker F: Why are hot dogs, wet?

>> Dave: Irritable dad syndrome is a Mike Odle Darren Cox production.

>> Steve Young: Recording stopped.