SkyMaul | Kasper Hauser | Talks at Google

Thanks very much for coming today. This is a Authors at Google event and we're very, very pleased to welcome Casper Hauser. Casper Hauser is a comedy troupe that's based in the Bay Area, but they have played all over the country and globally as well. Edinburgh Fringe Festival. You might have seen them on Comedy Central. They've hit most of the senior citizen spots in, I think, what, Fresno. Okay. Palm Glades. And they are a storied comedy troupe who met at Stanford. John and James Richmond. I know from a while back, we had both. All three of us had landed a lucrative rogain sponsorship for a comedy tour. You guys might have caught it. It was called Laugh till it Grows Back. For obvious reasons, we lost that sponsorship, which we won't go into now. But they went on to join up with Rob and Dan at Stanford to form Casper Hauser and. And have since taken the world by storm. The most recent fruit of their labors you probably have in your hands is called SkyMall. And without further ado, I'd like to hand it over to the SkyMall Corporation and Dean Glantz.

Thank you. Thank you. I'm Dean Glantz. I'm the. Essentially, the marketing director for SkyMall Corporation. First off, I want to thank you all for coming here to meet with business opportunities and partnerships with us. But you didn't come here to hear me, a lowly marketing director. I mean, I do have a life outside of this. I'm actually a triathlete. But stop talking about yourself. Right. I know why you're here. You want to talk to the big guy. Hear from the big guy. The author of Houston we have a Problatunity. Author of Vice President of My own life, your SkyMall CEO, Jerry Ponda.

All right, thank you, guys. Thanks for coming out to the 2007 SkyMall Business Opportunity Meeting. Business opportunities. Okay, you know me. I'm Jerry Ponda. I need no introduction, but thank you. I'm the CEO of Sky Mall. Alright? Maybe you heard of us. We're the little company that put a catalog on a plane. Okay? Try to wrap your fat heads around that. Now, before we get started with the presentation, I want to say this. SkyMall may have made me a millionaire, but it didn't go to my head, all right? My door is always open to you. Not literally. What I mean is that SkyMall made me a millionaire, but I'm still the kind of millionaire who will take a taxi to a restaurant. Okay? Now let's dive right in and take a Look back at some of the unbelievable products that I introduced to the SkyMall catalog this year. Talking about success stories. Okay, Product highlights. You're going to recognize a lot of these. The first one is a great example of technology solving problems. Now, everybody loves hot dogs. Until now, there hasn't been a great way to shoot them out of a gun. That's why we came up with this. It's our hot dog shooter. Okay.

Really great product, folks. I. I own one myself. And it's just a really safe way for families to shoot at each other. We have a 97% safety rate on this, assuming that the dog has not been frozen.

Now, one thing we are at, SkyMall is a family orientated company. That's why we came up with a night light. Okay, here it is.

This is the Hitler turning into a werewolf nightlight. And it has a couple safety features as well. The eyes of the wolf will follow the baby around the and it also emits a safety growl if the baby gets too close to the nightlight.

Okay, next product. Our games store has been doing dynamite business lately, and I think you'll recognize why. This product here is our carve your own chess set kit. It's as easy as it looks, folks. You got everything from this guy here all the way down to that guy over there. Okay?

And just to tell you, most of the people who have purchased this product and never go on to carve again.

It's that satisfying. All right, now this is our next product. It's from our collectible store. You may recognize it. It's our Barbara Bush medallion. Okay, this is great. You can wear it around your neck, put it on your wrist, or just put it in a drawer. It doesn't matter.

As an aside, I want to say I'm a personal friend of the Bush family and I recently had the opportunity to see Barbara's one man Mark Twain show. Incredible. You really should see it.

Our next product is something that has helped me out. If you're anything like me, you got family with all different kinds of political and religious backgrounds and coming together for the holidays. Well, why not light a fire under the dinner table with our argument starter ornament? See this little guy here just snoozing his way through Grinchmas time.

Just lights a big nuclear fire under the Christmas table.

Now, our next product is targeted specifically at the 65 and over crowd. Here it is. It's our metal detector walking aid. Turns every outing for your grandparents into a treasure hunt.

Now, if your grandparents do find a doubloon or a gold chain that's been dropped by a careless drug dealer. There's no way for them to pick it up yet. But we are working on that.

We are working on that. Now, hands up who owns a poodle. Okay, Put your hands down. I don't have to tell you that these are smart dogs, right? But sometimes their intelligence gives them a little bit of an attitude, right? That's why we developed a poodle shaver. Put them back in their place, okay? Before, after, before, after. Now, come to find these guys are mostly fur, right?

With only about a shawarma's worth of meat inside.

Okay, next item has been a huge seller. It is our Bananaganizer. Alright? Keep all your fruit stacked and ordered alphabetically.

From Brazilian dwarf all the way down to red Cuban. Grab the banana you want when you want it. This next product I developed from personal experience. I'm a gardener. Many of you are also gardeners. If you're a gardener, there's one animal we all hate. And that's why we came up with the Hummingbird poisoner.

All right? It's a great way to keep these little nuisances from stealing all your nectar. Now, the next product combines two things that ladies love talking about, jewelry and hamsters into our hamster ring. Right? Okay. This thing basically sells itself.

Oh, doctors hate giving bad news and patients hate getting it. And that's why we developed something to solve that problem. Talking about medical test results, fortune cookies. And we are also, we are working on a sugar free version if you want to tell people that they've got the diabetes.

Now, another organizational item from SkyMall. This is the 60 year timer, okay? Just set it and forget it. Help you get your life organized.

For example, if you wanted to go to college, you would turn the dial to four years. And if a normal sounding ding goes off and you haven't graduated yet, why then you need to get back on track.

Okay, last item we're going to look at the highlights is the llama cycle. Pretty self explanatory. Okay, now that is just a slice of the pie here, folks. What is in the SkyMall catalog? Now you're thinking. I know what you're thinking. Great products, Jerry. But what's your business model? Well, why don't you take a little walk with me? Okay? A year ago I made some forecasts. We looked at a few variables, quarter to quarter. I predicted some pretty robust growth, if I do say so myself. Now remember, this was my dream scenario, okay? Things couldn't get any better than this. Now let's look at what actually happened. Just take a look at yourselves there for a minute before we do, and we'll bring up the business reality. It was different, in fact, very different than what I had talked about. But I think there's a lot of opportunity here, and that's what I call a pain point. Okay, this is a problem. Now, the obvious question. What happened to SkyMall? I see three possible explanations. Okay? Was it an attenuated market cycle issue? Are we talking about underperforming roi? Or was it Stephanie? Now, this is not someone who is directly involved with the business per se, but she had a huge impact on the bottom line. You know, it's like you meet someone, you feel like, you know, you have this kind of connection, like you've. Or soulmates or whatever. And then you start thinking, maybe I'm. You know, maybe it's my issues. Maybe I was the one who was sort of had the wrong expectations, and maybe I need to sort of do some more. Here's what happened, folks. All right? I got sucked into an emotional whirlpool. And I tried to buy my way out, first with little gifts, then with bigger gifts. And when my personal funds ran out, that's when the company suffered. Okay, news flash. SkyMall is on Life support. And I, Jerry Ponda, am resigning now. Mea culpa. You know, I eat shit. I made some bad decisions. Okay? I acknowledge that. Okay, well, maybe the end for Jerry Ponda, but it is a new beginning for SkyMall. And I'll tell you why. We have come here today, Dean and I, with a dream, but also a real viable business proposition. I think something we can all get excited about and something very serious. We would like to buy your company. Microsoft Word. Google. Google. Google. In any case, we want to talk business with you. And I think that a SkyMall and Google partnership can create something fantastic. Okay? I want you to think about this. I want you to dream. I want you to think about possibilities. And while you do, I'm going to have Dean show you some of his little videos that he made.

Little videos? No, this is multimedia market.

Just hang tight.

Is there somebody here who has the authority to agree to our proposal?

Here we go. Can you introduce him?

This is one of our first multimedia things. Building full of computers.

This suffer from a crippling condition.

If we buy your company, this won't happen. We will have it.

Eighteen million Americans suffer from a crippling condition. More than half of the sufferers are men. 80% go untreated male camel toe, or MCT, is an embarrassing splittage of ball matter into two lobes. To compensate, the scrotal nerve endings send life alert waves to the pituitary gland, causing the brain to issue a judgment of separate but equal. In the case of ball versus ball, the result is an embarrassing male vagina vagodis. Vagina, scrogina, ballgina, ballgonda. But it doesn't have to be that way. There is help. Ask your doctor about what treatments might be right for you. Fight back. Educate yourself and your loved ones. It's a new day for MCT sufferers. Send for your free infosatchel. Turn your toe into a hoof again. Available only at SkyMall.

This is just an example of the sensibility that we bring.

And.

If we could form a partnership with you, this is the kind of thing that we could do for you. And we know that there's something that you could do for us. We try and reach out to the common person. And we had a lot of male camel toe sufferers in our own company. And that's how we. I'm stalling right now, by the way. That's how we came up with this product. Please, please, please be the.

The crack pipe chess set. Every piece a suckable hittable pipe. Available only at SkyMall.

We should play. No, no, no, no, no. Should we?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, folks, that's our pitch. Thanks for listening. I'm Rob, this is John. We're from Casper Hauser. Thanks a lot for coming out. And we'll be happy to either answer some questions or we have some more products. We could talk about some censored material that didn't make it past the final cut. But if there are any questions, we can do those.

If you've got a question, let me know and I'll run the mic over.

Hey, guys, thanks for coming. I really enjoyed your this American Life pieces in your podcast. Can you take us behind the scenes of how that was made?

Sure. I think both SkyMall and this American Life were kind of the same genesis. It was like, why hasn't anybody parodied these before? Right? So with this American Life, we. I mean, we loved the show, and we were just sort of messing around. For those of you who don't know, we do a comedy podcast that you can find on itunes called the Casper Hauser Comedy Podcast.

Do you guys own itunes?

So one of the recent episodes, the.

Stock price just went like this.

There's two versions of this American Life, which is, I think, for us, parody is just an Excuse to sort of create a world, kind of cosmos of humor. And we sort of have these launching points. So SkyMall and this American Life were like two kind of obvious things, I think that we didn't see parody out there yet. And we wanted to give it a shot.

And we then sort of went around the room. There's four of us, tried to see who could do the voice. And we even talked about like phase shifting or I don't know if that's the right word, but octave shifting it. We played around with that to see if it would sound a little bit like him, little more like him. But Rob pretty much nailed it with the sort of fast, slow, stop start thing.

As a follow up, can you take us behind the scenes of the unicorn? Unicorn piece? That was probably my favorite thing in a while.

So just for some background, again, for people that don't know, one of the stories that fake this American Life is about a guy who creates fake paper mache animals. And he has a. He's on a mission to get a U.S. postal Service stamp series. One of the stamps changed from unicorn to unicorn because. What is it? It's not a corn, it's a horn. I think that was one of James.

Yeah, I can't remember who thought of that, but it's kind of. It kind of fits into this American Life theme of somebody on a quest. Well, somewhat hopeless kind of little quest of his own and taking it very.

Seriously and having this disaster and kind of reflecting.

We generally like behind the scenes in general. We have a office in a warehouse in the Mission District, and we have equipment there and a projector, and we project.

It's a lot like this. I mean, it's a little bigger, but.

Food'S free, gum is free. But we brainstorm probably the same way as you brainstorm. We put ideas in hats, we improv. We'll say, here's an idea that came out of the hat. You two guys go up there and work it. And then we project scripts on the wall so all four of us can edit at the same time. So we're, you know, that's how we did SkyMall. We were viewing it projected on the wall and just sort of going through it and punching it up, basically.

Other questions?

Actually, I have a question. Oh, over here.

We're not offended. We saw George Saunders speak the other day. Nobody asked a question, and that's fine. That means maybe, you know, you're getting your point across.

Since I didn't hear the podcast, I'd.

Love to hear you do this American Life voice.

Yeah. I mean, I can maybe do it. I mean, it's like more of a pacing thing than a tone, you know, so it's sort of like. And a little bit higher. But I don't think my voice actually. Actually, I'm talking like hourglass. It's sort of. What is that? What do you mean by that? You came up with a stamp that had a unihorn on it. Why would you do that? It's sort of that case.

But not only a unicorn, but a uni horn.

So what Dean did is he built a unihorn and took it to a warehouse outside of Washington, D.C. what he didn't realize was that all of the other unicorn creators would be there on the mall that day. You know, it's sort of. I mean, I don't even think my voice is close to that. It's just sort of that cadence or something that we would listen to it and then try to reproduce it. So it's just sort of an impressionistic something.

So. I don't know if I really have a question, but that's cool. I just wanted the mic so bad. So a bunch of us have, like, kind of a cultish devotion to the Spicy Pony Head sketch.

Oh, cool.

Which we actually heard, ironically enough, on NPR originally.

Oh, really?

Yeah. Where wasn't it? Like, what was that? Oh, I don't know.

Oh, I don't think I know.

It was totally on NPR. In fact, the MP3 was available on, like, the NPR website or something. So we were, like, listening to it.

I hope they're doing well.

Yeah, we were, like, repeating lines from it all the time and just driving each other crazy. In fact, there's actually a devotional Spicy Pony Head Micro Kitchen at Google with a pony head. No, there really is.

That's great.

I don't have a question.

That was actually the first sketch we wrote years ago. James John, John's brother and I wrote that, and it's kind of been a mainstay.

Yeah, that was it. They wrote that in three hours, and nothing has ever performed as well as it. And I don't know if we could do it right now. Do you know the lines well enough?

Yeah, let's see. Let's see how the question period goes. Yeah, we'll finish up with that if there's time.

Yeah.

Is there any other questions here?

So I hadn't heard of you guys until this author's Today. Yeah, sorry. But just a couple of questions. How does SkyMall. Do you feel about you guys doing this parody and also, do you know of any commercial airliners actually like, playing a prank on a flight and putting this in their planes?

SkyMall likes the parody. Somebody interviewed the CEO.

There's a Chronicle article a couple weeks ago. The CEO quoted it saying, we like.

It and we have a sense of humor over here at SkyMall. Which is great because, you know, at first there were questions about whether or not we should contact them before the release to get permission, and we decided not to. But put a giant banner on it that says parody. And then there's the most.

Like, this is all going out on the web. Right. Just to check.

Right, right.

Everything's cool.

Point was, we followed the law and we notified everybody. If you looked at this book and either thought, I mean, you'd have to be a real, real idiot to not know that this was a joke that had nothing to do with, with the real company. That was not.

Well, that's sort of a joke. But like, the lawyer for the publisher was like, you need to make the parody banner bigger. You know, on the COVID there's the big red one and then this red thing inside, it's like, you know, I mean, who is that person? That's just like. I couldn't tell the difference. You know, I just thought the Llama cycle was a real item. And thank God that you had that parody banner on there, because I would have lost a lot of money.

It's enough at least to let the other side's lawyers, and there is no other side in this case. They like it. We didn't. We're not in poor taste with them, I don't think. But another lawyer sees that and says, there's not really much of a. Of a case here. But as far as the prank thing goes, nobody. We've left. We've left them on airplanes before and everybody has that. That's a great idea. We have never really done anything concerted with that. I mean, what's that? Yeah, it would. Yeah. I mean, if we knew, for example, that if we did that, that we would get on like the homepage of a major search engine.

It's a no brainer. Yeah.

Just a mention as a news mention. You know, we would do that.

Other questions? Yeah.

I've seen you guys perform at Sketchfest in the city, and I was wondering, you guys did the workshop one time. Do you guys ever do that? Are you guys going to do that again or were you?

I could see us doing it again next year through Sketch Fest. That's the only time that we've Ever done it. But we had a great time. We felt like we dissected famous sketches from like Monty Python and stuff like that. Showed them, talked about how those were problem, how they were written and probably improved and how they work. Then we did a Casper Hauser sketch and talked about how it may have, you know, similar successful things employed in it. And then we had students write their own and we sort of just put them up really quickly and then just quickly started saying, well, how can you, how can you make this better using the things that we just talked about? It was great for us. We had a great time and like, there were a lot of people, it was well attended and we thought about.

Having a, you know, a sketch school, but we just can't get it together, you know, Dan, I mean, you know, there's a lot of great other places in the country, UCB and Second City and kind of places that build their program around classes and improv mainly. But we would love to have a class. Yeah, Dan, our other guy who's not here, teaches improv at Stanford and in the Florida fall or winter, is going to do a sketch comedy writing class down there.

Oh, one more question, sorry. How often do you make your sketches? Like, how often do you guys get together and kind of put your ideas together?

Once a year, One sketch a year. So we have four.

That is the average. But it didn't actually happen that way. But we meet a lot. We've met like probably every week, maybe sometimes more than once a week for the last six and a half years. And so it's actually this great working relationship. We never have had anybody threaten to leave or anything like that. That's really, I think, the greatest thing about it. It's this thing, the four of us, we're not married. We're not. Well, we might be three soon. But anyway, we've been able to work together that way, meeting a lot, spending hours and hours. And basically we write sketches usually when there's a deadline. And so that's why setting live performances for yourself is one of the best things you can do if you're a sketch troupe. Lately we haven't been performing live that much, so we've been doing other projects. But in a way, the live thing just really, really puts the pressure on. And that's when you're there late at night and basically you just have faith that you're going to break through. You may have wasted three hours and it's getting to be 11 or midnight or something like that, and then you may break through and Everybody's laughing in the room. And so it varies. But I'll say this too. The writing as a foursome, which we do, is pretty time consuming and inefficient. I think Monty Python said something like, two is hard, three is next to impossible, and four is impossible. And it's pretty much true. But we stuck with it that way. And in the end, it's an interesting voice that comes out when you have really four people chipping in and four different voices. Except for me and my brother, who are genetically identical.

All right, I have a question or a point. I didn't do the best job of introductions, but because they also have two movies that they've made. One is called Fishing With Gandhi and the other is called Cow Monkey. Now, Fishing With Gandhi has no fish in it. And Cow Monkey does not have a cow or a monkey, as far as I know. But you definitely check that out. Is the only. Is the way to get is to buy those now through.

Those are available on Film Baby. Huh? Film baby. Yeah, filmbaby.com and it's all sort of a dual double CD set now that's remastered and has like outtakes and some Casper Hauser and a cartoon and some other stuff on it. And that was a great. That was a great. Those were a lot of fun to do, those two movies.

And do you have additional projects in the works? I mean, I know you guys have been talking about a Chia Pet line and a Pez line, but anything else?

Yeah, those felt true.

Hard.

We do have another book kind of being sold right now, but it's still top secret. It's not a SkyMall sequel, but we hope to do that someday. But this will be something different. And we're working on some video and.

Another super secret project.

Another what?

Super secret project. I was going to say going back to the idea of sketch teaching people Sketch the one. And it kind of ties in with the idea about deadlines. If you have interests at all, you just need to book yourself somewhere and get on stage. Give yourself a date that you are getting on stage as a sketch troupe. Because we do it with careers too. And really rewarding if you find somebody that you can write with and book it and do it. Now.

What are you guys a fan of? Who do you like? Who do you laugh at?

Comedy wise.

Misfortune.

Yeah, right. Yeah. Failed Dreams just near misses, you know, a lot of British stuff.

We like.

Chris Morris and the Brass Eye. This is a little bit more obscure stuff, but it's really great. Brass Eye is maybe the best, like, fake news show ever. Like way before Daily show, but in the same, sort of the same vein. More of like a hardball kind of show. And Steve Coogan and, you know, Fast show and League of Gentlemen and those kind of folks. Maybe our favorite British performer is a guy called Count Arthur Strong, who hasn't made it over here yet, but we met him in Edinburgh. Just a brilliant performance. So those are all. You kind of have to dig around a little bit to find those.

But Count Arthur Strong is a 70ish. He's a character actor, a really great character actor playing a 70ish alcoholic egypologist, giving a talk on Egypt. And it's just a one hour straight through thing. And he's just in character the whole time yelling at people while his show just goes to hell and he gets drunker. He keeps sort of romancing his gin and tonic. And it's incredible. All the performers in Edinburgh go to his show repeatedly. You had your list. I think Cheech and Chong are two of the best and most underrated comics in American history.

You know, Python and kind of old SNL stuff. And although, yeah, Peter Cook.

Peter Cook and Dudley Moore. Peter Cook was just hilarious. Has anybody here heard Peter Cook, he was an old British Improper. He died, but of alcoholism. But he's got some stuff, actually, Chris Morris that he was talking about from Brass Eye interviewed Peter Cook one time in character. Peter Cook also had this old alcoholic, cantankerous lecher character. And Chris Morris interviewed him and he's in character the whole time. And it's just brilliant. I mean, you just can. You can listen to it over and over again. It's incredible.

Dudley Moore and Peter Cook, I mean, Dudley Moore became the more famous of that duo, but they were an early kind of absurdist sketch duo. They had a show called Not Only But Also. There are only a few surviving Episodes. And then Frian Laurie is another great British do it out.

We have American influences too, but yeah, it's true. Peter Sellers, great American comic. French, English. No, he's not American. I know, I know.

There's a lot of fantastic sketch comedy coming out on the Internet just by random people. I don't know if you guys have ever heard of Dutch west or Jigsaw or Team Tiger. Awesome. Just some really random groups coming out. And I find a lot of it either virally or just by following the links on their page. I was wondering if you guys have some sources that you go to. Any.tv's or dot coms. What do you know about A lot of the sketch comedies, teams that are troops that are trying to make it on the Internet, just basically looking like on their own whim or. Are there any sources you guys have for finding any new groups or anybody you like?

Well, a great source is a guy named Jesse Thorne who has a radio show called the Sound of Young America. Does anybody know this show? He's been podcasting for years and has just been picked up by Public Radio International. So he's in a few big markets now, but for a long time he's been kind of a hub of indie comedy. He's down in la, but he, he's really. Anybody in comedy, especially sort of independent or cult comedy is kind of connected with Jesse and he does a great job of bringing people on this show who you might not have heard of and can really introduce you to some great things. Again, the podcast is on itunes. It's called the Sound of Young America. And he's, I would say, totally plugged into what's going on comedy wise now on the Internet. Like, I don't think we're great at kind of keeping up or, or finding stuff that isn't sent to us by Jesse or other people. Like, as far as a home base, I can't think of anything off the top of my head. I mean, it's mostly we have a.

Bunch of troops that we're friends with around the country that we keep in touch with and see their new stuff. Like the Third Floor Portland, which is just an incredible theatrical sketch troupe. I don't know how big their web presence is. They've got a lot of good videos on the web, but live they're pretty, they're just stunning. They can go for. They have these 15 minute sketches that are completely scripted and completely committed with big ensembles going and they're stunning. And they have some great actors meet from New York.

A great way, you know. Another great resource is the San Francisco Sketch Comedy Festival, which was mentioned before, but that's every January in San Francisco and it's gotten pretty big. So they'll have big names there performing or doing Q and A things. And then they also have a ton of groups from all over the country, including groups that are very new, you've never heard of, that are going to be great. And if you're interested in that, definitely check out the San Francisco Comedy Festival.

Yeah, go. You can go a bunch of times during the month. I mean, there's, you know, it runs all month and I love going, just seeing what happens. There are some times when something amazing can happen at the most unexpected time at Sketchfest, you can just be there on a Tuesday night and see some duo from somewhere and they'll just blow you away. And it's the best thing going in the city at that moment, you know, and you just gotta hang around. There's some amazing stuff there. Okay, well, hey, no, he's. We love you, by the way.

Thanks.

I love you guys. How do you feel about when performance comedy takes on sort of uninformed and not necessarily consenting audiences, as in reality, improv everywhere? Stuff like that. Like, do you guys ever do anything like that? Do you feel that that's.

I mean, we don't really do it. And it's not probably for moral reasons. It just makes us uncomfortable basically when the jokes on some unsuspecting person. I mean, obviously there's a lot of money in that.

Well, you know, like, I mean, like, like Borat would be an example of that. Right? Like, that's really interesting because, I mean, I think that's a great movie. And actually George Saunders is coming here in the fall. A fantastic writer. If you don't know him, come see him. He had a piece in the New Yorker about Borat. Amidst all the hype and fawning over Borat, he wrote a really kind of scathing shouts and murmurs thing where he was just sort of pointing out how.

You know.

Along with all these assholes that were being burned, there were a lot of good people who sort of got taken for a ride. And, you know, I mean, that was his point. And I don't know, I mean, like, I just still think it's a really hilarious movie, so it's hard to like, make the call. I don't know if you're asking about the ethics of that or just how do you feel about that?

Yeah, one of the basic rules is a punchline should never be bad news. You know, that's our, you know, that's sort of mean spirited comedy. Ours can be sometimes a little bit, maybe a little bit mean, but in general it's probably just bad karma. Do come see George Saunders. He's one of our favorite writers. He is, he is. I know I've used several support in the last five minutes.

Actually, I'm curious, who knows George Saunders? Really? Okay, yeah, I'm just curious. He's just fantastic and deserves to be better known. Really funny, kind of surreal. Short stories mainly, but check him out for sure.

Yeah, we really like his style. We have things in common with, we hope with his style. Like he does things with sentences I mean, he'll sort of purposefully mess up or mangle the language a little bit. So it's somebody who's really committed to what they're saying. It's not a hack thing. It's not like an accent or like a cowboy accent or a hick accent. It's sort of messing with the language a little bit to make it slightly absurd and otherworldly. Great, great. Hilarious Writer and brilliant. He just got a MacArthur Prize. He's a writing professor out at Cornell or Syracuse.

They called us for the MacArthur Prize, but we missed the call. And then they just.

They gave it to George. But we're suing, and it's like the home run ball, number 573. We think that we'll get some of the money from George Saunders.

Well, if there are no more questions, we could give a shot at Tony Head. I mean, we haven't rehearsed it, so we'll see how the lines go, who's who. You'll be in the chair.

In the chair.

So to speak.

I don't. Well, never apologize for your stuff. Let me get rid of my gum.

Always get rid of your gum. Tete du petit cheval. Yes, you are ready to order.

I think first, I have one question about something on the menu. What is spicy pony head?

It is a pony head, but spicy. Imagine a pony without the body.

I know what a pony is.

A spicy is make your mouth in a fire.

Oh, no, I don't want that.

How about you do not eat pony head?

No, I don't eat that. I try not to eat things that I would ride at the fair.

So you would not eat a monkey?

No, I wouldn't eat a monkey. You know what? I don't have a lot of time. What about your soup? No. What about your side salad? Is that.

We have also a demi pony head. It is one half pony head.

No, I don't want a demi pony head. I don't want any pony head. I try not to eat things that I would ride at the fair.

I understand.

Well, I'll just have a salad. Give me a side salad. Your Caesar salad. Yeah, I'll take that.

Any steak?

Yeah, give me flank steak. Side salad with a side salad.

Spicy pony head, flank steak salad, blue cheese.

Wait, wait, wait, wait. What did you just say?

Cheese?

No, before that.

Bleu.

No, you just said spicy pony head. Are all of these on the menu? Spicy pony head.

It's not all of these things on the menu. This depends on what the fisherman's bring.

Oh, okay. So It's a seafood. It's like a pony fish or a seahorse.

A pony is not a seahorse. A pony is a big, beautiful baby with a long, silky tail. Chop the head off with spices. A pony. A pony. A pony. As you see in a field, in a cave, making love to a wife. A pony.

Look, soup. There's no pony head in your vegetable soup, is there?

There is no pony in the soup.

What do you mean?

The pony head is very near to the soup, as if he is drinking a fountain.

Okay, just. What's my next line?

Like a garnish.

Oh, like a pony head. Garnish.

Salad. Do you want a salad?

Yeah, just bring me a side salad. There's no pony head in the salad, is there?

There's no pony head in the salad. He's not eating the salad.

Okay.

How could this pony eat the salad? The salad is inside the pony head. That's impossible.

Why not use a plate?

I ask A plate. If not, we use a spicy pony head.

What about a bowl?

A bowl.

A bowl.

A bowl.

A bowl.

A bowl.

Why are you doing this?

Why are you doing this?

A bowl. It's round, you know, like an upside down helmet.

A helmet, perhaps also, but we put your wine in a boot. Good night. All right, so that's a version of spicy pony.

So Rob and John are going to be signing books over here for a little while. And if you have any more questions, and you can go to either SkyMall.com, which I think redirects you to Casper Hauser, but they also have a number of videos that. Some of the videos that we've seen today are up on YouTube. You can check those out and then see them around the area when they perform.

Cool. Thanks for coming out.

Yeah, thanks a lot.

Thanks a lot.