Speaker 1: Hey everybody, and welcome to life as a gamble. My
guest today is a self described podcast slut. He is
a lawyer and comedian and welcome to life as a gamble.
Speaker 2: Charles Starr, thank you so much for having me on.
Speaker 1: So first of all, I didn't know of you at
all until I heard you on David Hill's podcast American
Gambler book Club, which I highly recommend to people who
still read books. I know there are some of us
out there that still do that, sure, But the thing
that caught my attention was you are trying to do
as a guest. You are trying to do fifty three
podcasts in fifty two weeks, and that doesn't count podcast
that you produce yourself. So is this on a bet
or how did this happen? What is it? What happened there?
Speaker 2: It is on a bet, but a bet on the
level of trading places you know like there, And it's
not a bet, it is more it is more me
being kind of a jerk for laughs. What happened was
and I'm not going to shy away from promoting my colleague,
but Josh Berman, who has two of his own podcasts,
decided around December of last year, Christmasy said, I want
to promote my own stuff and to promote my own
stuff and to you know, kind of put my marker
down on forcing me to do that. I want to
get on fifty two podcasts. I want to average a
podcast a week in twenty twenty six. And I saw
that and I just as a joke, but it's only
sort of joking on the square because I also very
much meant it, said I all I want is to
be on one more podcast than Josh and so and
so that established the challenge is now he wants to
do fifty two, and so I said, okay, I want
to do fifty and if he beats it, I still
have to beat him by one. So you know, we
are just we are now in an arms race.
Speaker 1: And did to start it as of January first.
Speaker 2: As of January first, Yeah, calendar calendar year twenty twenty six.
Speaker 1: And we are now nearing the end of July. And
where do you guys stand.
Speaker 2: At the end of July? In released podcasts, he is
winning thirty four to thirty three. But including this recording,
I have an undisclosed number in the can awaiting release
from people who who have the podcasts and have to
edit them. I am comfortable with my position. I also
have a very busy week because I have no self
control and oh, the next few days are going to
be a combination thrill ride nightmare as everything revolves around
me being back in front of my computer. Another podcast.
Speaker 1: So in addition to all of that, you have two
of your own podcasts that you do so and what
are those two?
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, I do have two, though only one of
them is currently running. The one that's currently running is
called No Homework, which I do with two of my
friends who I have met in real life but I
know through social media and shared interest in sports and
left wing politics basically. And that one is called No Homework,
and we don't really have We say it's about hardly
bad jobs and hardly working, but we don't really stick
to that theme at all. It's like in any other
podcast about three white guys and then and then we
have and then we have guests on from time to time,
and it's a lot of fun. I think it's a
lot of fun. The second one we only do during
football season, and that is City Sat Country Saint, which
I do with one of my colleagues from no homework
because he is also, like me, a New Orleans Saints fan,
and so that's a football season, so that one's coming up,
but we don't do it for the preseason games. Like
we'll do one pre season preview episode. We did a
draft episode if you know are if you know a
ref Hassan who you know has a great football newsletter
called Wide Left and a vikings podcast and another like
goofy football podcast is his vikings podcast is I'm promoting
everyone else's stuff. It's no Norse something but now I'm forgetting.
And he's got one called sixty Minute Drill, which he doesn't.
So he's like a great football writer and think talker
and stuff. So we had him do a draft analysis
of the Saints drass and so that's our only off season.
And then in the past I've had three other like
podcast experience, like things that you know I did for
a while that were kind of.
Speaker 1: Law comedy thing law comedy, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because we're all like those podcasts were all lawyers. Yeah,
those podcasts were I'm also a lawyer. We you know,
we would take the law seriously, uh society and ourselves
a lot less. So it was a very kind of
jaded that the way the world is failing us.
Speaker 1: All right, So your background is you went to law school,
you were a lawyer with a big firm, and you
gave that all up to do stand up comedy.
Speaker 2: Is that right? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, I mean I really
I graduated in ninety eight from law school, and I
just went path of least resistance. You know. I went
to a good law school, which makes it really easy,
and I went to a good law school in New
York City, which makes it really easy to get a
pretty good job in New York without necessarily blowing the
doors off your law school grades. And so I, you know,
I fell into it. I didn't really want to do it,
but I had a lot of loans, and I stuck
it out for six years. You know. I had one
firm that I didn't like working for, one firm that
I didn't really like being a lawyer, but I like
the people for four years and then that firm kind
of collapsed when you know, the gods on Olympus couldn't
get along anymore, and it fractured into a bunch of
different pieces, and the you know, the peons below just
followed one of the partners and then the guy who
I stuck with went to another really really big firm,
and so after a year of that, I was like,
I would rather do anything of them. And you know,
I had always wanted to be a comic, so I
just quit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I used to work in the film business, and
it seemed like every time I turned around, the guy
running to get coffee was a lawyer who who had
given up law. And you know, those people very quickly
rose through the ranks and became producers and things. But
you know, one friend said to me, I really loved
law school, and then once I got out, I realized
I hated practicing law.
Speaker 2: That's very much me. Ye, that's very much me. And
I will say the film industry, I think, is a
lot of people who are either on their way too
or on their way from law school. Because the other
thing that law schools are full of is people whose
creative dreams didn't quite work out. Like it is in
like a lot of people who have a way with
words really see like the law as a kind of
different application of that skill. You know, they think about
brief writing, they think about persuasive argument, and so you
see a lot of people in law school who are
going who start in their you know, mid to late
twenties instead of just out of college, who want it
to be writers and hope to be one day again,
but also kind of want a larger apartment, and so
the law school is their path to comfort.
Speaker 1: Yeah. They have really valuable skills in the film industry too,
and any of them become agents and were uh yeah,
or producers as I said, Yeah, some of them have
aspirations to be writers. But you know that writers don't
make any money unless you know, it's kind of like uh,
as I said on my last episode, it's kind of
a lottery job.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: You either make a lot of money or you starve.
Speaker 2: So yeah, that's right. I think I think that's right.
And I and I decided that after six years of
being an attorney, when I was miserable, gaining weight, just
in really bad mood, I thought that I had fuck
you money and could just walk away. And I had
a very bad idea of us because I I was
just I burned through cash so fair. I had just
bought an apartment, you know, like I just didn't know
like how quick it goes through your fingers when you
have any kind of expenses and so I went back
to the law very quickly, really, but in a temp
like I basically worked as a temp for the next
ten years. But you know, it's better than it's not
like you know, the typing pool kind of temp. You know,
you're getting paid, You're getting paid better than that, you know.
So like by American standards, I'm not going to complain
about what I was making, but by lawyer standards, I
was a peasant.
Speaker 1: Right And New York City is a very expensive place
to live too.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean I had, like I felt like
I was sharing my brother and I bought an apartment together.
That was the apartment I owned, And so I had,
like with any kind of job, I had, like an
affordable enough lifestyle. Really I couldn't not work. But you know,
I mean back then as a temp, you know, working
the kind of overtime that they make you work, I
was still you know, making somewhere between sixty which is
not you know, living high on the hog. But I
could afford my apartment, and so it's like nothing to
complain about. And so I don't, you know, it was
it was just less than I could have made if
I wanted to be miserable. My ah life.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so what happened? What was the comedy plan? Was
it the late nights open mics?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it was. It was very much just doing
it without a net, like feeling like I was funny.
I was thirty three at that point, and I was like,
I feel like I have enough of a voice that
I can find my way through. And you know, it
worked a little. I never made any money at it,
but I know, like I said, I had a job,
Like there was a It was just a weird confluence
of things because I started doing comedy literally, like I
quit my job and in that week I met the
woman who would become my wife and remain so somehow
and uh and also did my first open mic, right
and so you know, so now I've like I have
a job, and I have this uh passion project, and
I have a girlfriend for the first time really and forever,
if you know, you want to get technical, maybe even ever.
And so it was like I had a lot going
on at that point, and so I I feel like
I made it to the second step really quickly, but
the third step is the one. And so I never
I had like enough highs in my comedy life to
like like it. You know, look back, I still do
it every once in a while. But it was a blast.
It was like a real blast to have a second
thing to do, you know when I was, uh, because
I really hated that job. I really hated that job,
which which being a temp, being a temp attorney. You know,
you're just you know, like your job is doing like
reviewing documents for discovery and litigation. So you're just like
a drone checking boxes on a computer. Relevant, not relevant,
privileged not privileged. It meets one of the you know,
thirty k specific criteria that the attorneys care about. It's
really mindless stuff, you know, at and they want you
to do it at volume, and so it's I it's
really really rough going and so that you know, being
able to go out and open mics, it's like the
only thing that comes.
Speaker 1: And what happened, I mean, eventually after ten years you
quit that.
Speaker 2: Well, what happened? What happened really is I mean I
did it pretty you know, pretty hard, but not as
hard maybe as I could have when you look back
at it. But I was doing a bunch of shows
a week, and I got a couple of festivals, and
I you know, performed around the city and made a
couple of bucks here and there, but very little. And
you know, I had a kid, you know, I had
a kid, you know, a few like four years in
and so I took a break and then I went
back to it. But once you're married with a kid
and you have a day job, how much can you
really do? Right, Like, if you are if you have
like this day job and you're really, really really trying
to do like you know, ten eleven mics week where
you're getting up constantly, constantly, constantly meeting people, going to
shows that you're not even on, Like your whole life
just is soundtracked by cats in the cradle, right, Like
when am I ever going to see that kid? When
is my wife ever going to get a break from,
you know, the less desirable aspect of motherhood, right, So,
like that just sort of slows it down naturally if
you're not close enough to lift off. And I wasn't
remotely close to, you know, achieving any kind of career
liftoff which would make it worth the sacrifice of my
entire family life, and so it just kind of fizzled
out and led to I think prolonged depression because of it,
and then you know, Twitter as a place to tell
jokes at the time time, and then podcasts became the
kind of lifeline where you sort of re establish your
creative self because I was back telling jokes again, like
all the time.
Speaker 1: That's yeah, actually that's kind of exactly. What happened to
me with podcasting was, you know, I had stopped working
in the film industry and I had written a book
that was a collection of interviews, and you make no money,
you know about it's about like being a comedian, they
pay about equally. And I realized, well, podcasting is just
interviewing people without all the work, without all the editing
of the manuscript for you know, hundreds of hours and
all of that kind of stuff. So yeah, it became
a creative outlet.
Speaker 3: And and I know it's point though, I gotta say,
I envy making a career out of gaming, like I'm
making a career out.
Speaker 2: Of you know, the green felt. I mean that's pretty nice.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well yeah, but but it is work, right.
Speaker 2: I mean, yeah, of course, yeah. Yeah. I guess at
a certain point it stops being fun and then it's like, yes.
Speaker 1: No, still fun. Really, I mean the part that's fun
is is you know, I've always said if I had
to play alone, I wouldn't play right. I've always had teammates, partners,
and and that's where the fun comes in, you know stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean I definitely prefer live poker to
to online. I couldn't. It was like real, that was
that really an't go.
Speaker 1: For Yeah, And you know, I had a foray into
sports betting for a couple of years, and that's that
felt like an accounting job. Really. It was just hours
of time, had spreadsheets keeping track of all the bets
and you know, yeah, you have all these different people
you're working with and they all have a different deal,
and yeah, it was a nice Yeah.
Speaker 2: No, I was. I was corrected onto the straight and
narrow on sports betting very young because I was a
sophomore in high school and one of my one of
the kids in my homeroom from the Bronx definitely had
either a bookie in the family or whatever. But he
brought betting slips to school. And it wasn't the slips
that got me. It was the You'll remember the year
because for some reason, I'm drawing a blank on it,
but I think it was the eighty five playoffs I
gave him three to one on the Cardinals coming back
from three to one down against the Astros and lost,
and then and double or nothing on the Cardinals coming
back from three to one down against the Blue Jays
and then lost again.
Speaker 1: And now, how are you giving him three to one when.
Speaker 2: You're there because I was taking the winning team. I
was taking the team that was up three to one.
Speaker 1: Oh oh oh oh, I'm sorry.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I'm not dumb, but I was like, honestly,
three to one are pretty good odds for like winning
one of the next three games, in my opinion, But
I by busted both times. And it's not like I
grew up poor, but all that money wasn't mine. So
all of a sudden, I owe this kid in my
homeroom sixty bucks and I'm like, what the fuck did
that happen? And so I was out of the sports
betting game real quick. I'm like, I am not built
for this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, it sounds like you had way the best
of it.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I mean, I think, as they say, the
Sklansky dollars were in my favor, but I became I
think more converse.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's yeah. Get to get into the
gambling business. You have to get over that. Yeah, you
need to learn to deal with with risk and with fluctuations.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've made it back, and like, I like, that's
the thing. I play poker now, but I would like
sports betting. I'm like, I know, I know nothing. I know,
I know nothing compared to the people make a living
at this. I'm just someone who wants to watch the game.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so at some point you got rid of the
temp job, and what happened then?
Speaker 2: Uh? Well what happened? Well, first of all, the temp
job became a permanent job. Like one of those firms
that I worked as temp for a while hired me.
And I kept trying to I didn't really keep trying
to do stand up. I did try to get a
few writing jobs, and I came very close to like
political comedy shows like Late Night Political many shows. I
was submitting writing packets, like. I never wrote anything sitcom structured,
like I think Elizabeth like writes for that kind of show, right,
Am I wrong about that?
Speaker 1: She's writing for a drama we're talking about, okay, Michael, Yeah, yeah,
Who's last my last episode?
Speaker 2: Yeah? So I never wrote anything like that because I've
never written anything script structured. But I could write monologue jokes,
I could write sketches, you know, in this in the
vein of John Stewart and John Oliver, you know. And
so I would submit packets to those shows, and I
made it past the first round a bunch of times,
and I made it past the second round, and so
it it was like very, uh, very rough to keep
getting to keep getting close without actually closing the deal.
And uh and then I kind of just gave up
for a while and just did my job. And you know,
Twitter was really at that point, literally the only kind
of lifeline was telling Joe, building a small following and
that sort of thing, until I started doing podcast stuff.
And I was like ten years ago when I started
guesting on a friends podcast as his like courts guy.
You know, it was like a comedy news podcast. And
then he would have me on every few episodes to
talk about what was going on in the courts. And
it's like also left wing politics, and so he was
like well versed in the politics of it, but not
necessarily the nuance of court opinions. He's not keeping up
with like appellate decisions. So we would have stuff to
talk about in that regard, and that was my friend
Jeb Lund who's podcast This Week in Atrocity, and that
became my first legal podcast because my appearances on that
inspired some of me and some of my friends to
start our own thing, which at the time was called
Mike Dicta, which is a meaningless football pun and a
really stupid lead, and so we did that. We did
like twenty episodes of that, and it was like, really
for a podcast that came out of nowhere, you know,
by a bunch of nobodies, pretty popular for a little while,
but then, you know, personality clash is largely my fault,
but it fell apart.
Speaker 1: And.
Speaker 2: So then there were just a few more years in
the woods until I started doing a lab series which
was again but that was more legal culture than you know,
case by case analysis, and that just stood for all
lawyers or best there. It's in the acab sense, uh,
And so that was really fun and I joined those guys,
which were some of the same people Dick. I rejoined
them for a while. I had my own thing for
a little bit called Hostile Witness, and you know, some
of that, I like, some of that is the best
work I've ever done. Those podcasts because they were very
They were very funny while being thoughtful and serious and
you know, serious about the law, serious about the social
impact of the law, but a bunch of funny people
telling funny jokes throughout it. And you know, and then
when I on Hostile Witness, I did you know, after
the first trans rights case, when Gorsa shocked the world
by coming down on the side of transgenderism being covered
by title set Wait, I always title nine being covered
by title Well, now I'm forgetting whichever it is it's
the gender, because now I'm forgetting if it's just one
is employment and one is school, I think that's what
it is, that nine is education and seven is employed,
but gender discrimination in employment was covered transgenderism. And uh.
And so I did an interview with two legal scholars
where we just spent an hour talking about that case
and its impact and really how I thought Gorsuch was
leaving himself a back door to eventually change his mind
and screw all the trans people all over again, which
he then did this past year. So, you know, so
some real good I thought, some real good, thoughtful work
in addition to the you know, hours an hour of
jokes field.
Speaker 1: Did you ever you know, a popular topic for us
in the gambling world is civil asset forfeiture. Did you
ever cover that?
Speaker 2: We talked about it. We talked about it a little.
I had. I wrote about it for my friend. My
friend Luke O'Neill has a newsletter, and I wrote about
a pretty horrible civil asset forfeiture case out of the
Ninth Circuit. Oh wait, no, that was a qualified immunity
kit because it was the cop I mean, it failed.
It feels like civil forfeiture because it was literally cop
stealing evidence from the result of a raid, Like they
just stole the guy's coin collection. And the Ninth Circuit
found that that was covered by qualified immunity because apparently,
uh that they couldn't do that was not already established
in the law. But I've I mean, I've read and
talked about civil civil asset forfiture. I don't know that
I've ever actually done a podcast on it. But yeah,
you're people who drive around with a lot of cash,
I guarantee. Yeah, that seems like something that would come
up a lot.
Speaker 1: The police in many places have just literally become highway robbers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, yeah, what is the place that I
think of the most is there's a place in Texas
that has become famous for that in a real like
real Rosco peak coal Traine shit where they just sort
of pull you over and pretext to search your car
and if you've got too much cash on hand, they
just sees it and make you prove that it's not
drug money exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And we literally had a guy on our show
who was pulled over and the reason was because he
was driving the speed limit. Yeah, and that was suspicious
to nobody drives exactly the speed limit, right exactly. That
was their Uh.
Speaker 2: That's you know, you read enough cases and you see
that probable cause is itself a dog's breakfast of cop nons.
You know, like if you read cases about like profiling
drug couriers, like the excuses that law enforcement agencies give.
It's like, well, they're walking too fast, or they're walking
too slow, or they're walking too normal, or they look
too nervous, or they look too calm, like everything that
you could do. And you what you eventually figure out
is either they know you are doing it through whatever means,
but they have to figure out a pretext to stop
you as an individual, or you are just the guy
whose number came up that day, and then they retcon
of reason to have stopped you in the first place
if they hit the jackpot and you have something incriminating
or a plausibly incriminating on you. So if you're wondering
why all of my podcasts or left, that feeds into
it a lot.
Speaker 1: Have you Have you ever listened to The Moth?
Speaker 2: Sure? Sure?
Speaker 1: Okay, because you know what this reminds me of. I'm
a big fan of The Moth, and I have participated
in many, many story slams. But I remember a particular
story about a lawyer in Michigan who had a case
that went all the way to the Supreme Court, basically
defending a guy who, uh, he was somewhere in public
I forget where, at a picnic or something where there
were a lot of people around, families with children, and
something happened and the guy just lost his ship and
started yelling fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck, and the
police arrested him for some weird, some weird archaic law
about you know, using foul language. Yeah, the ladies or
something like them. Anyway, it was it was a great story.
What was the weirdest case you ever came across.
Speaker 2: Well along these lines. The one that I'm thinking of was,
I believe there are two I'm going to give you.
One is like this and one is a very bad maraice.
Because I'm talking to a non legal audience, so you
may not have heard the second one. The first one
was in North Carolina case where a guy is driving
down the road and he sees a cop giving someone
a ticket, and he and I'm not going to remember
this perfectly, but this is roughly what it was. He
gives from the passenger seat. He gives the cop the fingers.
He drives, as you know, his wife drives by, and
the cop, all pissed off, gets in his car and
chases him down. And first and like, the reason they
were kept arresting it arrested him kept changing because at
a certain point he's now suing to he's like either
trying to exclude certain evidence, or he's trying to get
the case dismissed, or he's bringing a civil suit. Like
it's all very fuzzy now. But the cop first like
tries to pull them over for some kind of endangerment,
and then he try pulls him over for some kind
of public you know, obscenity and like it's all nonsense,
And it took multiple rounds of appellate litigation before the
North Carolina Court finally, like Supreme Court through it, but
the lower courts had let it stand on the complete
pretext of what the police had. The second one is
infamous in cop circle, I'm sorry. In law circle, guy
in Louisiana gets arrested. And you know the basics of Miranda, right,
if you ask for a lawyer, they have to stop
questioning you. Their exceptions in the Supreme Court keeps creating
more exceptions, but the basics are, if you ask for
a lawyer, they have to stop questioning you until you
have been provided count. And this guy is being questioned
and he goes, I need a lawyer dog and the
cops say, well, you know maybe, and then they go
back to questioning it. And in writing the opinion, and
this was like a secondary opinion, It wasn't the main opinion,
but it was important enough that this one judge put
it in writing, is that he said it was ambiguous
as to whether he was asking for a lawyer Comma
dog referring to the officer or a canine attorney. And
if you are going that far. Judge actually put that
in writing. This is an appellate judge in Louisiana put
it in writing to defend the post the actions of
the police by saying it wasn't a sufficiently clear statement
of interest in it in an attorney because it had
a linguistic ambiguity, And it's a linguistic ambiguity that only
exists if you are trying to excuse police misconda. Wow, yeah, yeah,
I mean that's literally I shot the clerk from my
cousin Vinnie, where I swhear a statement phrased as a question.
If you just change the punctuation because the question mark
comes in tone, not in grammar, then it becomes a confession. Right,
I shot the clerk. I shot the clerk right now,
it's now it's a quo. Now you change a question
mark to a period in the transcript and it's a confession.
Speaker 1: Right Yeah.
Speaker 2: But nonsense. And that's what lawyer dog is. So that
one is pretty infant.
Speaker 1: So what about what is the most realistic lawyer show
in television? And what is the most ridiculous lawyer show?
I mean, willing to go back, however far back you want.
Speaker 2: To go, I watched twenty minutes of suits and was like,
I can ever watch this? Yeah, and so I don't
know anything ridiculous. I don't know if that gets less ridiculous,
but I just know that the first thing that I
learned was that one guy was faking his law degree,
and then there was some interaction that I thought was ridiculous,
and then there was that one actor who had like
the something about Mary Choppers, and I'm like, I'm out,
and I'm thinking, I'm trying to think of they don't
really have realistic law shows because any kind of realistic
law show is too boring to put on television. You know,
it's all backroom stuff and there's nothing that approaches the complete,
you know, urge in miasma of what actual courtroom testimony
looks like. You know, you're going through paper documents. There's
no dramatic confrontations, none of it's real. I guess Absence
of Malice as a movie was an interesting It hasn't
been a long time since I've seen it. But that's
like Paul Newman and Sally Field. I thinkspoon very young
and then no, no, no, no, no. Reese Witherspoon's parents probably
hadn't met yet. This is absence of malice is like
a prime Paul Newman and prime Sally Field. This is
like a movie from like seventies where where Paul Newman
is some kind of uh It's like a combination courtroom
drama and newspaper like journalism criticism, where he is this
guy who I guess is being falsely charged in the press,
but he's also being like all of this reporting is
being done, but because he's a public figure, you know,
under the New York Times, he Sullivan standard. An absence
of malice means that a falsehood printed about a person
doesn't give grounds for a libel suit, you know, And
I remember that. It's been a while, but I remember
that being a little closer, you know, like Law and
Order is. You know, I do believe that the DA
commits constitutional violations every week. But the ones you know
that go on in that show sometimes they you know,
they make the judges bend to the will of the plot,
you know, like they don't really they don't really craft
the arguments in applausible way in either direction both times.
And so even though I'm addicted to it, yeah, I
have a real love hate relationship with Law and Order,
it's like one of those shows where it's like the
it's like the Sopranos, where I don't really like the
District Attorney's office and I don't you shouldn't like Tony Soprano.
But the way they make Tony Soprano likable is his
agonists are always worse people than he is, right, Like,
it's a lot easier to root for Tony Soprano when
the alternative is Ralph sifarero right, so they kind of
like they you end up being taken down this garden
path of rooting for this obvious monster because of the
structure of the show in the career.
Speaker 1: Yeah, did you ever watch Boston Legal?
Speaker 2: A little bit but a long time ago? Like I
feel like I saw no, you know what, I never
saw Boston Legal. I was confusing it mad with Alan McBeal.
I never I know, No, I didn't watch Boston Legal
because there's any one of those totally ridiculous.
Speaker 1: But but it was a very funny show.
Speaker 2: And yeah, sure, I think there's a lot of that.
But in the same it's like my brother in law
is funeral director and he couldn't watch Six Feet Under,
and I bet It's very hard for doctors to watch
hospital shows, you know, because all you do.
Speaker 1: Is any movie that has gambling in it, you know, right, Yeah,
they just never get it right.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean like I supposed to be a news show
like sixty minutes. They just never get it.
Speaker 2: Right, right, right, I mean think about the end of
the Cincinnati Kid, right, oh yeah, going to an inside
straight flush, Like literally the logic of his gambling was
I have enough money to just keep doubling down for infinity.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you know.
Speaker 2: Them, Yeah, it's anything like It's like it's called Gellman amnesia,
which is a kind of a it works mostly as
conservative media criticism, but I give them credit for it
because I've seen it enough. But Gellman amnesia is if
you see the news media writing about anything that you
know about, you know that they have screwed it up, right,
you know it in nuance and you're like, I can't
believe that they paid someone to write this. And then
you turn the page and you read the news and
you go, oh my god, that's horrible, right, because you've
already forgotten how they're not experts in that either, and
so you've they're probably somewhat at least a little world
about that too, you know, And so that's usually used
to bash the liberal media, but I also think it's
generally of anyone kind of getting over their skis about topics.
Speaker 1: Enough about Well, this has been great. I have really
enjoyed it.
Speaker 2: Oh wait, I wanted.
Speaker 1: To ask you. You said you had some travel stories.
Speaker 2: Oh, I guess, as life is a gamble. There were
two things that I did when I was a kid,
which I think is the kind of thing you can
only do when you're in your twenties. The first was
I was like right out of college, and I was,
you know, I was. I wasn't smart enough to really
know how to backpack around Europe, but I could take
luggage to London. And so I was staying in a
hostel in London, and I decided I wanted to get
out of the city, but I wanted to travel light.
When I got out of the city, and I was
staying in a hostel that had like a three day limit,
but I was like, okay, I'm going to be here
for three days. I'm going to like go, you know
somewhere else in England. I don't even remember where I went.
I think maybe I went to Cambridge. I don't know
I was I'm too old to remember exactly what a
trip when I was nineteen was. But so I decided,
against every posted thing, to just take my luggage and
stick it in the back of their storage room which
had like everything I was traveling with, and just roll
the dice on being able to get as and it's
always full, Like the time of the year that I
was there, it's like always full. And I was like,
I am going to try I'm going to just leave
it there and hope that when I come back to
London in four days that I can stay here for
two days with my bags. And it was there, and
so I went and I just went to the airport
after those last two days, after just letting them watch
my bags, you know, for for a few days. And
the second one was after law school. I really wanted
to take a trip and I had one thing which
was kind of planned, and then the person I was
doing it with couldn't do it, and so it fell through.
And now I'm like a month from starting my job
out of law school and I haven't traveled anywhere, and
I'm like, well, and so I decided to fly jump
seat on whatever was available, and so this, you know,
this is where you are like the meat sack accompanying
some like thing that has to be shipped internationally. But
they need someone to a courier. They need someone to
act as Yeah, jump seat is when you're like an
extra staff person, like just hopping on your own airline. Yeah,
so courier flight. And so they're like, well, we have
a trip to Hong Kong for two weeks. And I
was like, okay, I'll do that, I guess, And I
flew to Hong Kong for two weeks. And I thought
that because it was only recently an English colony that
everyone would speak and most of non financial center Hong
Kong was so happy to be rid of the English
that it was like a real drag of two weeks,
because two weeks is a long time to be in
Hong Kong unless you're really wealthy and don't speak any Chinese.
So that was like, that was real mixed. The only
thing I really remember enjoying in Hong Kong, other than
the food, which you know, really cheap food, very good.
Wherever I went, it was like very cool unless they
just gave you the white person's menu. Then it was
just like ordering kind of place on flat bushet Avenue.
But but going to the racetrack was always was like
that's the universal language. It's just going and betting small
amounts of money, you know, off of a half assed
review of a racing form. And so wherever you are
in the world, that was always a blast.
Speaker 1: Well. And also the race tracks in Hong Kong there
were only two, and racing is really really popular there
and it's exciting at the racetrack there as opposed to it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh yeah, and Chatin was really cool, Like Chatin
is the one that's like outside of the city, like
in the a little north in the suburbs or something,
and like it's beautiful and you know the gallery is,
you know, the place to go and watch for free,
was packed like a subway platform, but you could get
like a seat with an like elevated and looking at
it was like three dollars. Yeah, you know, like it
was really like not you know, you're not sitting in
like the polo club or anything, but you are sitting
in like a really comfortable seat, you know, with your
own like you know, nice bedding window. Back then, it
costs like nothing to be like a little comfortable, and
so it was really I love that play. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Hong Kong I really like if I was going
to live in Asia, I think Hong Kong would be it.
And as far as the food, I've had better Thai
food in Hong Kong than I have in Thailand. So yeah,
the food there is is just tremendous.
Speaker 2: So yeah, yeah, I developed a minor kanji addiction.
Speaker 1: Uh my uh. I always ask my guests their favorite
restaurant Las Vegas that is not in a casino.
Speaker 2: I can't say that I have a ton of experience,
but the time I've only been to I've only been
to Las Vegas once, and when I was there, I
went with a friend who took me to a Tokyo
style Italian place called Nakamura Yah, which was interesting and fun,
and so that would that that is the only actual
recommendation I could give.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I have been combination of Japanese and Italian food.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, my my friend, I my friend Aaron Kessler,
who some of your listeners may know because he's gaming
industry guy. He said, I asked him to remind me
the name of the Italian Japanese fusion play, and he
chided me in response that it is not fusion, but
rather Tokyo style Italian, So I don't want to get
on his bad side or theirs or theirs right or there.
Speaker 1: Well, Charles, this is this has been great. I've enjoyed
it immensely and I just want to thank you for
coming on the show.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much, and to everyone. If you want
to check out the podcast, it's at No homework Dot website.
And if you want to help me defeat my horrible foe, Josh,
just reach out to me. Just google my n It's
super great.
Speaker 1: You know, I have to say googling your name, it's
it's not as easy to find you as you would think.
First of all, I expected, you know, every comedian has
like YouTube videos and Instagram reels, and I don't know
either of those. For you.
Speaker 2: I think I hit all of my stand up because
the only stuff that I had was over twenty years old.
And I don't need to answer for anything that I
said as a child. The Statute of Limitations has expired
on my opinions from the early two thousands and and
I get, but you know you spell it with one
R and it directs youat of my social media.
Speaker 1: So yeah, okay, you're you're no longer on Twitter, right.
Speaker 2: No, but I am a Blue Sky I am that
is my new uh that is my new retirement home.
Speaker 1: Yeah all right, okay, well thanks again and just want
to say the listeners you can, I welcome your feedback.
You can always reach me at Life is a Game,
humblepodat gmail dot com, or you can still find me
on Twitter at our WM twenty one. Have a good one,
everybody good.
Speaker 2: A free audio post production biophonic dot com