6 – The Hecklers of Crow and Cackle

WEBVTT

1

This week on the show, Tog tries their

2

hand at standup comedy because they were told

3

they were good at storytelling at Clown School

4

for Dogs.

5

You're with Tog Chesterfield on 101.7 FM

6

The Greck tonight.

7

This show is taking you along as I

8

work to pick up the pieces and fix

9

up my life after I hit rock bottom.

10

So what am I doing?

11

I'm trying new things and attempting to embrace

12

life.

13

I fuck your life with Tog Chesterfield.

14

So welcome to the show right now.

15

It's 5.03 PM right now.

16

You might be on your commute or perhaps

17

you are preparing your dinner or maybe you're

18

sitting in a dark corner next to an

19

old style boom box with an AM and

20

FM radio gently rocking in an old but

21

refurbished hand-me-down recliner as you question

22

your life choices.

23

At any rate, if you're listening to this,

24

I'm your guest for the evening.

25

In your ears.

26

Tonight I'll be taking you through my latest

27

quest to figure out what would be included

28

in the next stage of my life after

29

losing my job at apocalypse.cloud. This time

30

I was on stage at the Cackle and

31

Crows open mic night.

32

So as you might remember from the last

33

show, I tried my hand at a clowning

34

class here in Grackleton, but it turned out

35

to be a clowning class for dogs.

36

It taught them to do tricks and stunts

37

and instead I took on the role of

38

the dog.

39

Well, I wasn't a dog, but I was

40

kind of a dog.

41

Anyways, I learned a bit about performing and

42

that's the important thing.

43

What was so neat was the class had

44

my back, all the humans and they cheered

45

me on and it felt pretty great.

46

And at the end of clowning class, we

47

each got a minute with the teacher for

48

some feedback.

49

So next up is Tog Chesterfield.

50

Oh, the person without a dog.

51

Uh, that's me.

52

So feedback.

53

Yeah.

54

Usually I'm just giving the people stuff about

55

their dogs, you know, how to hold a

56

treat, how to get their dog to listen

57

to them and stuff.

58

But, uh, yeah, this is for you.

59

I'm good at listening and eating.

60

Well, really funny stuff out there.

61

I really enjoyed watching you.

62

Um, kind of, you know, thank you for

63

left feet sort of situation at time, but

64

it really made us laugh a lot.

65

So I like that.

66

You know, you are really good at storytelling.

67

Did you know that?

68

Oh, I didn't.

69

I could tell that you were obviously trying

70

to tell the story of what happened with

71

the potatoes, that little potato incident you had

72

there.

73

I really wasn't trying to forget.

74

Have you ever considered comedy?

75

That too.

76

So, uh, yeah.

77

Storytelling, uh, that might be something that you

78

might want to try to do, but, uh,

79

keep it up.

80

Uh, really funny stuff out there, Todd.

81

I learned that our town has an open

82

mic night at the Cackle and Crow coffee

83

shop.

84

I saw a flyer for it down at

85

the bulk bin store.

86

I didn't even know that Grackleton had an

87

open mic at all.

88

And I'd tried some Toastmasters when I went

89

to college and I've been doing this radio

90

show with its storytelling.

91

So I thought maybe because all of these

92

things I would try doing my standup set

93

again.

94

I plan to use my old material from

95

college, but add maybe some of the clowning

96

techniques that I learned in class, but it

97

didn't go exactly as I thought that it

98

might.

99

But first let's take a quick break.

100

This is Un-Fuck Your Life on 101

101

.7 FM The Grack with Todd Chesterfield.

102

Un-Fuck Your Life with Todd Chesterfield.

103

Back to the show.

104

So I headed down to the Cackle and

105

Crow coffee shops open mic night, which in

106

case you don't know is on Monday nights

107

at 8 PM.

108

So I went a little bit early so

109

I could talk to the people doing the

110

sign up for it at the door and

111

see if I could go a little bit

112

later in the evening so I could watch

113

other people first and kind of just get

114

an idea about how things worked and what

115

people did, especially the other comedians.

116

And it was really quite good.

117

There was a ventriloquist with a sock puppet

118

that vaped while discussing the origin story of

119

sauerkraut, which was really interesting.

120

And someone played the riff from Smells Like

121

Teen Spirit and like six different musical genres.

122

Hapolka was really quite neat.

123

I liked that one.

124

125

literature, limericks to background music that she played

126

on a Sony Discman with old computer speakers

127

plugged in.

128

Well, that one was actually pretty strange.

129

And then it was my turn.

130

I started with some of my bits from

131

college and then worked in some of my

132

clowning moves, but, but no one laughed.

133

They just groaned and they rolled their eyes.

134

And one person from the back threw a

135

French fry at the stage.

136

Well, that person was Chauncey Block.

137

I knew Chauncey from Apocalypse.Cloud. So I

138

panicked and I remembered how the teacher at

139

my dog clowning class told me I was

140

quite adequate at storytelling.

141

And I started to talk about how I

142

accidentally took the dog based clowning class.

143

I just went straight into a story.

144

So I recently signed up for a clowning

145

class.

146

I thought, you know, why not?

147

Life's short and let's learn how to make

148

balloon animals and maybe emotionally distance myself behind

149

a red nose.

150

But when I got there, something felt off.

151

For starters, I was the only one without

152

a leash.

153

And the instructor, she had one of those

154

little dog treat bags, you know, the ones

155

that hook onto the belt and just kind

156

of hang there.

157

I talked with some of the people there

158

with dogs.

159

Everyone else had one.

160

And I was actually in a class where

161

they teach the dogs to do special tricks

162

and stunts, kind of like a circus show,

163

which in hindsight would have been a great

164

class if I owned a dog.

165

Now, a normal person would have left, but

166

I had already paid and I figured I'd

167

just adapt.

168

Everyone else is teaching their dogs to roll

169

over.

170

I'm on the floor doing somersaults.

171

I'm jumping through the hoops, literally, so I

172

can entertain the other students.

173

The worst part, the dogs were better at

174

this than me.

175

A pun.

176

They were nailing their routines.

177

And meanwhile, I got stuck in a hula

178

hoop and had to be untangled like a

179

fish in a six pack ring.

180

But at the end, the instructor came up

181

to me and said, you know, I've never

182

seen someone do this class without a dog

183

before, but you got real potential.

184

Which honestly was the best compliment I've ever

185

gotten.

186

I was winning against a pack of shelter

187

mixes.

188

Chauncey Block threw another French fry at me.

189

I don't really know why trying to initiate

190

a food fight was even allowed in the

191

coffee shop, actually.

192

So it wasn't really a good night.

193

Oh, it's time for the Grackleton weather.

194

Tonight's weather for your drive at five with

195

Unlock Your Life is brought to you by

196

Gordon Gooden from the Tennis Stop.

197

The Tennis Stop won't string you along.

198

Gordon will just string your racket.

199

Tonight, Grackleton is expecting light rain.

200

That's it.

201

And that's it for the weather for your

202

drive at five from the Tennis Stop.

203

Gordon says the racketeering thing was just a

204

big under...

205

Oh, a big misunderstanding after a pun he

206

put on social media.

207

Go say hi and get strung at the

208

Tennis Stop on 5th Street at Rickle Lane.

209

Unlock Your Life with Todd Chesterfield.

210

So the set didn't go very well.

211

Chauncey actually threw the French fry because of

212

the potato incident and thought it would get

213

a good laugh at Apocalypse.cloud. But Chauncey

214

didn't set the video to unlisted and it

215

ended up going viral because of the hecklers

216

and everything.

217

I was actually pretty lucky Chauncey didn't record

218

the bit about the HOA that I had

219

in my set or I would have been

220

writing Louis Pepperoni another apology letter.

221

But I learned something from all of this,

222

listener.

223

Something that helped with my getting off of

224

rock bottom, actually.

225

I didn't ruminate about anything this time, anything

226

that happened at the Cackle and Crow about

227

how bad my set turned out or the

228

the French fry or anything.

229

How all of Grackleton and beyond was laughing

230

at me getting owned by the hecklers online.

231

I was constantly ruminating after all my failed

232

businesses.

233

But this time I was able to just

234

move on and try to solve the problem,

235

at least try to get a little bit

236

better at this thing I was doing.

237

And I wasn't trying to do that before.

238

Before, I was just thinking of the past,

239

going in circles about myself.

240

It wasn't helping the depression at all.

241

All that self-awareness, I just kept thinking

242

about what had happened and what I'd done,

243

thinking in circles.

244

And I literally couldn't even stop doing that

245

no matter how hard I tried.

246

And it was pulling me down like a

247

heavy rock with each turn back towards that

248

rock bottom, actually.

249

I mean, being self-aware is pretty good

250

for a lot of things, but just thinking

251

about how I'd failed the jerky business and

252

the instant coffee business and that sourdough business,

253

I never tried to solve anything.

254

Just I ended up thinking about how much

255

I had failed over and over the same

256

thing.

257

But this time my brain didn't let me

258

do that.

259

I called a new friend from the clowning

260

class that same night that I did the

261

set.

262

My friend was a night owl and we

263

decided to take some new classes and find

264

a writer's room to join and work on

265

something together for the open mic.

266

If I was going to reflect on myself,

267

I thought I'd do it by writing and

268

making people laugh or.

269

Hey, excuse me.

270

Hey, hi, hi.

271

I'm Chip Crust.

272

Who are you?

273

Oh, right.

274

I got the key from the key is

275

from Dalton Paper, who was is was was

276

your roommate.

277

Was my roommate.

278

No, I'm your roommate.

279

Oh, how?

280

Oh, Dalton had to go.

281

It was something about a cat and had

282

to go.

283

Oh, and now it's me here.

284

I got the key.

285

I'm your roommate now.

286

Chip Crust.

287

Oh, I said that.

288

I think you.

289

Chip Crust.

290

Yeah, you did.

291

Chip.

292

All right.

293

So that.

294

Oh, all right.

295

Okay.

296

You can stay.

297

Cool.

298

Nice.

299

So I have a thing on this paper.

300

It says work out the fridge.

301

Oh, what does it say?

302

Work out the fridge slash potato thing with

303

Tog Chesterfield.

304

Is your Tog Chesterfield?

305

Yeah, I'm Tog Chesterfield.

306

Okay, so half the fridge is mine.

307

Half the fridge is yours.

308

Just don't touch the potatoes.

309

Oh, it's actually really easy for me.

310

I don't use a fridge.

311

Okay, so I don't, I need zero percent.

312

No fridge.

313

All right, so I need zero percent.

314

That makes it really easy.

315

Then you don't need to worry about percentage.

316

Well, that's really good.

317

It's easy.

318

So I'm just going to go kick it

319

in my room.

320

Okay, just.

321

Okay.

322

Do you want the note?

323

No, you can keep the note.

324

Okay.

325

So that's it for this week's episode of

326

the show here on 101.7 FM The

327

Grack.

328

Stay tuned for talking about jam and jelly

329

for an hour in this show.

330

Rick and Susan will continue their argument about

331

how marmalade is overrated in European countries.

332

Oh, they're right about that.

333

You have been listening to Un-Fuck Your

334

Life with Tog Chesterfield, a Stereo Forest production.

335

This episode was written, directed, edited, produced, and

336

all voices were by Jen DeHaan.

337

You can find all show notes and sign

338

up to get notified about new episodes on

339

StereoForest.com.