A KLC PRESS CHRISTMAS-CAST (RDHASP episode 6)

Come join the gang for a bounty of holiday cheer!

It’s the most wonderful time of the year and the entire KLC Press crew is here to celebrate in this holiday-themed episode of Ryan and Donny’s Half-Assed Substack Podcast! In this installment, the team discusses their plans for the holiday, some of their favorite gifts from over the years, and their extensive histories of heartbreak! (It’s a lot of fun, trust us.)

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Ethan S. Parker: Oh, it's the Half-Assed Substack Podcast. Hi, boys. It's the merriest time of year (not really, but it will be by the time this comes out) and people will be able to tell because behind all of our videos will be stock footage of a yule log or something and there will be snow falling.

Griffin Sheridan: That's beautiful, Ethan.

Donny Cates: I feel warm. I feel warm by the fire and in my heart.

Ryan Stegman: Oh, I should have worn my Venom sweater!

DC: We should have coordinated that, we're bad at this. This is the half-assed portion of the Substack podcast.

RS: Could you guys edit in a Venom sweater?

GS: No. It's not in the budget.

John J. Hill: Put a nasty sweater on all of us.

ESP: With all the decorations, this is the cutest that pandemic-era video chat podcasting gets. I'm sure everybody's feeling in the spirit. And since this will be out around Christmas time, where will you guys be at the time? What are your Christmas plans this year?

DC: Um, I will be hiding. We already live on a lake. But we're renting a house closer to the lake that's just like 10 minutes away. It's a beautiful little place. We did this last year, because during COVID, we couldn't travel to see our families and stuff like that. And so we just had a little stay-cation. And we cooked together and it was wonderful. And it was just me and Megan and Bats. This year, we decided, even though we can see our parents, that we're not going to, we're just gonna stay home again and avoid all the stress and all the travel and all the everything. So yeah. Hopefully, I will be at least pretending to not be on a deadline. If I can just work hard enough to get two days... *two days* out of the entire year where I can not worry about work or think about work and, you know, fill myself with holiday cheer (and eggnog), that'll be the goal. So as you're hearing this, maybe I'm already there. Probably not though.

RS: I'm gonna need some script on December 24th for Vanish.

DC: I'm sure you will. I'm sure everyone will.

RS: We go to my parents the night before Christmas, and they give my kids presents. And we drink and sit around. Then on Christmas Day, you'll never believe it: we're going to be at my house.

GS: Wow.

DC: Wow.

RS: Santa is going to come, the kids are gonna get a bunch of bullshit that they're going to not use.

DC: I don't know if Santa is gonna come for your boys because they're bad. They're bad kids.

RS: That's true. They're pretty bad. We'll definitely do the thing where we give them coal and we let them cry for a couple hours.

ESP: Just to humble them, obviously.

RS: Yeah. But that's the whole plan and I'll watch basketball most of the day.

ESP: What is the hot toy this year?

DC: Yeah, what do your kids like?

GS: Is it that Cocomelon thing still?

RS: Oliver already has a gaming PC. And so like that's all he wants is more stuff for that. It's like an infinite possibilities situation on there.

DC: Ryan, you and I did an interview with an eight year old boy named Noah who runs a channel on Instagram and on YouTube as well. And shout out to Noah and his amazing reviews. The kid’s great and loves comics more than any adult I've ever met. But he was really fascinated by, because he wanted to connect with your boys on... Roblox?

RS: Roblox.

DC: What is that?

RS: Anybody that has kids knows what it is. It's just this game where, it's super simple graphics, and there's a million games and they're all set up to suck you in and you know, make you pay for new avatars and stuff and you just run around in these places. And basically, it's easy for people to develop new games so there's all these different games on there that the kids are obsessed with. There's one called "bee swarm simulator" that they made me play with them that has zero point to it. But then you find yourself playing it and you get into it. And it's just, like, accumulating stuff. But anyway, yeah, Noah and Harrison connected on there and they've been playing Roblox together.

DC: That's so cool. That's awesome.

ESP: Roblox was big when we were little and I know you guys are gonna say "you're still little," but we were children over 10 years ago, just to clarify.

RS: Wait, what? That existed that long ago?

ESP: When we were little it was huge so, it blows my mind that it's still going.

DC: Really?

ESP: Yeah.

DC: I thought it was like the hot new thing. This is how old I am, like time is sped up so fast that by the time I am aware of something and think it's the hot new thing, it's fucking, like you said, 20 years old. Yeah, I thought that was what all the kids were into.

GS: (Me or Ethan- whoever's editing this- we should put in the Roblox death sound when they realize how old they are.)

DC: I don't even know what that means.

[ROBLOX DEATH SOUND]

ESP: We'll just fill this out with Roblox graphics.

GS: Very good.

RS: Griffin, are you planning on getting COVID again for Christmas?

DC: Yeah. How's that gonna go?

GS: As fun as that sounds, I seem to have, you know, what they call antibodies now. So that means that-

DC: I mean, if you believe science.

GS: That's true. And in this time of holiday cheer and spirit and magic, you know, who knows what I'm going to bring to the family this year.

DC: Yeah, you should just pray it away. It's fine. Yeah. How was that? For people who don't know at home... Have we talked about this yet?

GS: On the livestream. I don't know if it needs to be in this episode.

DC: You don't want to talk about how you got COVID and almost died?

GS: It doesn't seem like a Christmas cheer type thing.

RS: Who was it that you made out with that gave you COVID again?

GS: I am unaware of how I got it. I was traipsing around the Southwest. Your neck of the woods gave it to me, Donny.

ESP: He was roadtripping around to concerts, but it is still up in the air where the COVID came from.

DC: Hold on, you were vaccinated though, right?

GS: I am fully vaccinated.

DC: Were you at the time?

GS: Yes, it was coming up on seven months since my second dose. But I had never heard anything about if or when or how to get a booster. So I didn't get a booster before going on more trips. It could not have come from the Southwest. It could have came from my place of work, but it'd be a real close call. Because it'd be like, pretty much right at the tail-end. Like, I would have had to go the full two weeks.

RS: Where was your work?

GS: I worked at a medical facility, Ryan. I worked in a provisioning center where I helped patients.

DC: But probably the concerts though, right?

ESP: Which, during that process, Griffin crashed at my house, so it felt great to know that just after there was COVID going around.

DC: Okay, alright, enough COVID talk boys- the Supplest of bois- what are your Christmas plans?

ESP: We're going to continue our tradition of saying that we're gonna mail each other a gift and then not doing it.

GS: Then we just send each other 50 bucks over Venmo.

ESP: We have a tradition where we just send each other the same $50 back and forth over Venmo. So it's always just an even till. But yeah, I don't know. I'm staying home. I don't want to see anybody. Griffin?

GS: I will be home with my family. They had COVID last Christmas so I did not get to see them last year, so I will be home with them. And seeing The Matrix, and it's gonna be a great time.

ESP: John brought up the idea of everybody discussing best and worst gifts they've ever received. I don't know that I've had a trainwreck gift. Have either of you boys?

RS: I don't recall. I remember having a girlfriend where everything she got me, I was just like, "does she even like me?" It was like things that just had nothing to do with me. I was just like, "is this recycled? We haven't been dating that long for you to have this much disdain for me." But I can't recall a specifically awful one. I mean, the greatest one of all time, if I may, was definitely when I got a Nintendo as a kid. That was unbelievable. It was just like, "oh my god you can do that? You can be entertained at home?"

GS: Yeah, man. That's like when I got the Wii in like 2007 or whatever it was.

ESP: I was about to say, that's one of my most fresh Christmas memories as a kid is getting the Wii and like busting out Wii Sports. You kidding me?

JJH: I think that's pretty much across the board for us. I don't know Donny yet, but for me, I'm a little older than you guys, it was when I got my Atari 2600.

GS: Nice!

ESP: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

JJH: But, of course, I got E.T. with it.

GS: Nooooo!

JJH: Supposedly the worst game ever made for the Atari but, in all honesty, there were only like four different types of games for that system. There was an adventure type game, a shooting game, a running game. They all did the same thing. It was just slightly different graphics. So I don't see how E.T. was that much worse than like Indiana Jones.

ESP: They're all like three blocks of color moving around each other.

JJH: Regardless, it didn't matter because it was awesome. And all the kids would all want to come over and play Atari.

DC: I don't know that I have a standout bad one. I had an ex of mine who was just notoriously fucking terrible at it. I remember one year though, I remember telling her "Look, you're always let down by my responses, you're always bummed out by how much I don't like any of the things that you get me. So this year, just don't get me anything. We'll just go out, we'll go out and we'll have a nice dinner and we'll come back and it's fine." And then Christmas came and she didn't get me anything. And I was furious. I was like "Really? I didn't mean that, you're supposed to at least try." I remember that. My first drum set when I was a kid, I remember being over the moon about, thinking it was the coolest shit in the world. I'm a world-famous drummer now, so it worked out. There was one year that I was a super, super, super broke college kid. I had just gone through a really bad breakup and I was alone. I had moved out to this city with this girl and then she had left me there and I was just bummed out, as sad as I could possibly be. I didn't have any friends in the city. And my parents surprised me by showing up at my college town and saying, "Come on, we're going to get you out of here," because they knew I was like depressed and stuff. And they took me to the airport. And they took me to San Diego Comic Con. They got one of my best friends from high school to come and be out there with me. And that was the Comic Con that I met Stan Lee at, so that was huge. I think of it as a Christmas gift, because they told me, "Hey, this is your Christmas gift." I wasn't a pro or anything. So imagine not knowing how to navigate getting a badge for San Diego Comic Con, or even like how comic cons work. Somehow my parents figured it out and like figured out how to get badges for us all and everything. So that was pretty rad. That was pretty good.

RS: If I would have called my parents and told them that I was depressed in college they would have been like, "Pft, so are we. Welcome to the family, son."

GS: That reminds me of a very similar story, Donny. Right around the holidays of my freshman year of college, we just moved out to the other side of the state, my girlfriend and I, to go to the same school. And then she dumped me in public and that night-

RS: [gleefully] Oh my god! Elaborate!

DC: Yeah, in public where?

RS: [laughs hysterically]

GS: And that night- that night, Donald Trump also got elected as president.

ESP: Oh my God, this Christmas podcast is frequently dipping into the darkness of Griffin's life.

GS: I thought to myself, "Wow, things are gonna get weird and bad, aren't they?" And then a week later, my dog died.

DC: What the fuck are you doing right now?

RS: That one isn't funny.

JJH: How are you still alive?

GS: But my parents came out and got me the after that too. They were like, "Oh, this kid’s gonna get mad depressed."

RS: I've never heard somebody describe it as getting dumped in public. I really need to hear how that went.

DC: I need to hear what that is.

GS: You want it now?

RS: This is gonna be a whole Substack post.

DC: No, right now.

ESP: Maybe we'll separate this into a mini, 'Griffin Talks About Getting Dumped.'

GS: Okay, so we'd been dating for two years and we went to the same school on the other side of the state, and everything was going pretty good. And then she was getting involved with like sorority stuff, and so I was seeing her less. I thought I was playing it very well and giving her the space and everything and like, I was totally cool with it. And over the course of like, five days-ish, I just felt it fucking disintegrate. And we were at the library, and she just hadn't said anything to me the whole day. And I was like, "Okay, we need to have a conversation, I think right now." So I brought it up, thinking that we would go somewhere. Instead, we walked out to the front of the library, which is all glass, and everyone in the library can see.

DC: Oh my god.

GS: And it's almost a literal little stage. It's like a little pit with steps as seats and everything. And yeah, it happened right there. And there were people inside, just watching.

RS: How did she say it? “I don't want to see you anymore”? “It's not you, it's me”?

GS: It was a "I don't think I want to be in a relationship right now." And I was like "Okay, so is that it? Anything more than that? It just ends, is that it?" And she was like, "Yeah, no, I just don't, I just don't want to."

DC: Let's do best breakup stories, let's do our best ones.

RS: You want to?

DC: I had a girl-

ESP: (Oh no.)

DC: I had a girl break up with me once on a date. It was fine. We weren't really serious. We were just like, casually dating in college. But then she kind of expressed at the beginning of this date that we shouldn't, we should probably just like, you know, be friends and stuff like that. Right? And so I was like, "Okay, fine. I kind of saw the writing on the wall with that one too." And then, as the night went on, she got a few drinks in her and she started feeling really bad and started being like "I'm so sorry" and everything. I liked her, but it was fine. You know, it was a drag, but I think we were both seeing other people too, though. But she's like really drunk and she's like, kind of making a scene and I'm like, "Dude, can you just- it's not that big of a deal, just stop. Let me just take you home." And she just blurts out, "It just sucks because, I really do like you, I'm just not sexually attracted to you."

ESP: Oh no!

DC: I was like, "You could have held on to that one."

GS: You could have left that part out.

DC: You could have left that whole part out. That's okay. Alright.

ESP: Fuck. Ryan, I know you've got a good one in the chamber.

RS: I don't have a great one. I mean, the the worst one was the same girl that bought the bad gifts. Listen, so this girl, she's by far the worst girl I ever dated.

DC: Oh, you've told me about this girl.

RS: She was just mean and stupid and attractive to make up for it. Which I mean, shouldn't count for much. The mean and stupid should have been enough. But for whatever reason, I was at a point in my life where I was like, "I guess this is what I'm doing." And she ended up hooking up with her next door neighbor. I lived down the street from both of them, her and her next door neighbor in college. And so my retaliation, the only thing that's really good about it, was I would walk to school in the morning, walk to class every morning, and they would get the newspaper and I would take the newspaper and throw it on the roof. And by the end of the year, they had like 100 newspapers on their roof.

ESP: That's fuckin’ amazing.

RS: Oh and they had a picnic table in their front yard. And every time we would come back from the bar late at night, we would flip their picnic table.

DC: Phenomenal. Phenomenal. Well, she had it coming. She was mean and stupid.

RS: She was the one, I told you Donny, I was on an airplane with Erin the other day, and we were taxing for a while, she was like, "man, we've been taxing for a while." I was like, "you know, I was on a plane with what's her name, mean and stupid. And we were taxiing for a long time, and she started freaking out and hitting the seat in front of her and telling me to get her off this plane." And my wife was like, "Oh my God, what did you do?" And I was like, "I stayed with her until she dumped me!"

DC: "Yeah, I have no self-esteem. I'll just take anyone who will have me yeah."

RS: Exactly.

DC: Of course.

ESP: John, did you have one?

JJH: Uh, yeah, I got to make sure to not drop any names on this one. Um-

ESP: Angelina Jolie.

JJH: Ha! Not exactly. I started seeing this lovely young lady. And you know, it progressed for a little bit. She started hanging out at my house pretty much every night. We got to the point where she had a toothbrush and change of clothes and stuff in my closet, and all that stuff. Everything was cool. Suddenly, I stopped hearing from her. And she wasn't answering my calls and didn't come over anymore. And I was like, "What the hell is going on?" I sent a few emails. Didn't hear back that way either. And then a friend of mine told me, "Did you see that your girl is hanging out with so and so."

ESP: Oh, damn.

JJH: Ends up, I got involved with a comic book groupie who was moving up the ladder.

DC: What?!

RS: Oh my god, when we're off air I gotta get this name.

JJH: She definitely did quite an upgrade from me. And subsequently upgraded from that guy too, so. It was heartbreaking, but I'm glad it happened. And it was fun.

RS: How many rungs does Griffin have to climb before he can date this girl now?

JJH: I think she fell from grace. Look, no, I I think you're okay, Griffin,

GS: Okay.

ESP: We'll find you a podcasting groupie.

DC: Yeah, those exist, right?

ESP: Well, not to flex on everybody, but I've never been dumped, so.

GS: Ethan's been in a nice, beautiful relationship for like five years now.

ESP: And to be fair, it's only on account of me being a perfect human being.

GS: That's true.

DC: Well. This has been a wonderful... holiday-themed episode...

GS: (Can we send comp'd subscriptions to all our exes?)

DC: On break ups...and dead dogs and COVID and holiday heartache. So until next time, folks: Uh, whatever.

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