IDS #149 - I Never Owned a Lunchbox (w/ Shadoe Stevens)

ids-149-i-never-owned-a-lunchbox-w-shadoe-stevens

Dave: [00:00:00] Ain't got no gas in. You don't 

even know what stupid 

it is. It looked like Jean Simmons had sex with a Bassett house that was iron butterfly, DJ oblivion with you. Uh, nickel black cross-eyed chicken and duck butter in that set coming up. Let's check the weather together by Elephant Disco and the new punk group, prophylactic Debris right after the break.

Hey Pop, there's something 

wrong with you. I know my only child is a dummy.

Welcome to Irritable Dad syndrome. We put the it in irritable. Give it up for your hosts. Mike and Darren, 

Darin: welcome to irritable dad syndrome. I'm Darren. I'm Mike. Welcome to our episode. This is a, a very special episode and, uh, I'll tell you why. Um, I get nervous when we have guests, but I'm especially nervous tonight because the guest we have on our show [00:01:00] tonight is a legend in the world of radio and film and television.

And his most recent project is this podcast called Mental Radio. And it's amazing. We're gonna talk to him about it tonight. Our guest is Shadow Stevens Shadow. Welcome to Irritable Dad syndrome. I am so happy. I've 

Shadoe: been a little irritable already. Yeah, are you? 

Darin: It's working. Did my, did my intro take too long?

I apologize. Oh.

Shadoe: How you doing? Oh, I have no right to complain. Yeah. Yep. Things are good. I have, uh, I'm a happily married guy with lots of things I'm interested in doing, and I have, uh, You know, the thought of of retiring or stopping doing what I'm doing is completely out of the question. Yeah. I'll retire when I take my last breath.

Okay. 

Darin: Well, good. Yeah, that's a, that's fantastic. I mean, you know, not a lot of people can say that there's, you know, I, I used to work [00:02:00] with a guy who had a countdown, uh, I think from when, when he was 62 years old. He had three years, two days, whatever, until he could retire. It was on his, it was on his phone.

I mean, it was an active timer that was going down to the, the minute that he could retire. So, 

Shadoe: but yeah, well then, then you have, uh, plenty of time to sit around, you know, wondering, you know, watching the number of people that you know die and then wondering what this pain is and let your mind run wild, looking for what's wrong and making a list, and then telling a narrative a long story that is really compelling.

And, and it's about, My best days are behind me. I sit alone in my gloom. Yeah. It's like waiting for impending doom, being afraid of this or that, or getting small, weak, and I, it's like, no, no, and, and the nice thing about being an artist is that there are lots of things I like to do. Yeah. And there are things to try, and if they don't, um, set the [00:03:00] world on fire, it doesn't matter because the action, you know, it's, it's like you can't think your way happy.

Mm-hmm. Right. Or to act your way happy, there's just no other way. Right. The act starting something gives you a little enthusiasm and a little excitement, and then you see something come to life and then you get inspired and then the inspired, you're inspired and enthusiastic and then you get. To new levels of accomplishment and you see things come to life.

Darin: Yeah. Wh where do you think you are in your career? I mean, are you as happy now as you've ever been, or? 

Shadoe: I am as creatively happy as I've ever been. Um, one of the things that happens, um, with if you have a lot of failures and don't give up, is that you learn things and you expand. Otherwise, you would just kind of chill, oh yeah, things are going well.

And so the crushing defeats or [00:04:00] so they felt at the time of things ending or falling apart. And having to change means I now know how to do a whole bunch of things. Hmm. I know how, you know, I'm, I'm pretty good at Pro Tools and Final Cut and Photoshop and a lot of new programs, uh, that are computer oriented.

I wouldn't have had those skills. I've gotten better at writing and I can do anything I can think of right here in my space. It it, I have all the tools necessary and it's up to me to try and bring things to life. And that's how a mental radio started. It's like the, you're all gonna go into Covid shutdown and everybody's freaking out and they're going like, oh God, you know, what will I do?

And I thought, what can I do that's funny and uplifting right here by myself? And then the act of doing it started bringing things to life and then started to attract other people. [00:05:00] And they went, my friend Chuck Sarino who did, who produced all of the Federated commercial or, or directed all the Federated commercials, is a world-class music composer.

I said, do you have any music that you own the rights to? And he goes, yes, I've been paid to do these movies. Never came out. You can have whatever you want. Right. Oh, that's awesome. 

Darin: Oh, that is awesome. Yeah. 

Shadoe: So now I have this cinematic landscape of really beautifully produced music and I start creating with those things in mind.

And then people started saying, you know, I do voices and go, oh my God, you're really good. Mm-hmm. And so anything I would write, then they would get better with the actor doing it. And it became really exciting and. I turned out 12 episodes in 15 weeks 

Dave: fester than a speeding bullet. More powerful than a locomotive.

Six outta 10 times he can fly. Look [00:06:00] up in the sky. It's a bird. It's a plane. It's mighty man

as mighty man who can time warp, shapeshift, gun steal and dream danger on occasion. And who disguised as Denton Phelps, mild 

Shadoe: Veted plumber from Vanco Bud and 

Dave: train fights a never ending battle for truth, justice, and the American 

Shadoe: wife. 

Darin: Well, that's well 

Mike: with the production value, cuz I was, listen, I listened to a couple of the episodes today.

I mean, that's really impressive with the, with the production value that you can hear in it. 

Shadoe: Um, well, it's cause I'm a fanatic, you know, it's, it's not easy inside my brain. 

Mike: So, so there's, there's a couple of things that, there's some baggage that I bring to the interview. One is that I'm not very good at interviewing.

I. And the second one is that Darren is terrified that I'm gonna embarrass him and ruin his life tonight. So I'm trying to keep 

Darin: myself, I think we're gonna be fine, but I did 

Mike: get excited when I listened to, um, I listened to a couple of [00:07:00] episodes of mental radio and the, the thing that really stuck out to me, I'm, I'm a huge fan of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Oh. That includes the, 

Shadoe: the books My favorite 

Mike: things of my life. Yeah. And so, uh, I immediately, I, I listened to the, uh, radio Drama of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy over and over and over through college. And I just recently, in the past couple years, got all the, the different phases. I had no idea at the time that they, they went and, and continued that show and made multiple phases of it.

But it, it stuck out to me when I was listening to your show, um, when I listened to them. As a kid, I just, they were funny, you know, you just, they're, they're goofy. You have all these different characters doing these, um, just amazingly silly things. But then listening to them again, as an adult, I realized, holy crap.

There's tons of sarcasm. There's tons of, um, society commentary on society in these books. And, and the radio showed that I never saw. So I enjoyed on a whole different [00:08:00] level. So I couldn't help but notice, you know, I'm listening to mental health. I'm giggling, um, what's the guy mental radio? Mental. Is it mental?

What do I keep saying? You call it 

Darin: mental health. Mental health, which is fine. Who said it's mental health storytelling? So there's, there's a mighty man. Yeah. And then there's Guy, good Guy Good. Cracked me 

Mike: up. So that, that had the, the goofiness just kind of cracked me up. But then as I'm listening to it, I'm getting senses of, of all kinds of different pop culture references and this, this satire, this kind of sarcasm, uh, of going into talking about, uh, the coronavirus.

I'm like, this is an example of something that I could listen to. As an idiot kid. Yeah. I have no idea what it is. Get all excited about Guy Good, but then listen to you later and say, wow, this dude's saying a lot of really cool things about what we're going through as a society now. 

Darin: Yeah. Well, I, I love it because, uh, one, it's a throwback to radio drama, which was, you know, huge, uh, back before [00:09:00] television had its day, you know, and I remember my mom would tell me when she was a little girl, um, one of her babysitters would turn the shadow on and, and then go off.

And she was afraid to leave her room because she was scared to death. But, uh, so is that where your inspiration for this came from? Because you know, good god there's a million podcasts, 1,000,001 now that we're on board. Yeah. Um, but I mean, where did you decide? I'm going to do and cuz it's an old school radio drama with modern, uh, uh, you know, the, the sound effects helps music and, uh, this, my god, the production cuz I'm a guy who does production and what you do with that show is off the chain.

It's Oh, thank you. It's, it's 

Shadoe: amazing. It's been my passion my whole life. When I was nine years old, my dad had a tape recorder and I figured out a way to tell stories on the tape recorder, dropping in music, stopping it, putting it on pause, and then picking it [00:10:00] up. And, and I'm sure they were terrible, but as a child it was magic.

Yeah. And so my uncle heard me, um, that I did this. And he sent me a gift and my uncle owned a couple of radio stations and he said, I'm sending you this. And it's a kit, a wireless broadcaster kit that will allow you to broadcast from your bedroom to the living room, like you're on the radio and all you have to do is put it together, you know, with a soldering iron and follow the direction.

So I did that and when I was 10 years old, and then after I finished it, I, I went down to the, uh, television repair shop and I said to the guy, how do I soup this up? How do I make it stronger? And then he told me what to do, and then he said, you gotta put up an antenna. So at 10, I climbed to the top of my three story house and I wedged myself along the top of the roof.

With a wire between my teeth and a hammer [00:11:00] in my pocket and hung upside down and hammered a loop into the side of the house, put a, um, uh, attached the wire to it with its insulator, then climbed to the top of a tree in the backyard and did it again. So I had a hundred foot antenna and I could broadcast from my room a mile in every direction.

Oh, that's awesome. But now I could be on the radio and play rock and roll and Little Richard and Chuck Berry and all these guys, this black music that I love. Yeah. And then it was about a year later that they discovered me on a local station and said, what are you interested in? I went, oh, well art and radio.

And radio. Radio. What? They said, yeah, I have this radio station. And they went, oh my God. And they wanted to hear all about it. So they had me come down to the station and they said, we should put you on the air. So they put me on the air as the world's youngest disc jockey. And I did this show for a couple of years, every Saturday morning, [00:12:00] and they put ads in the paper.

I still have, I have the picture of the ad. It's hilarious. Oh, I'd love to see it. So I, I went all through, um, college, five years of college with radio. Mm-hmm. The thing I liked best was being in production and I c and I've been doing these little, uh, uh, radio theater things for my whole career. When I started Koc, it started with a radio theater thing, Alice in the Underground.

It was a takeoff of Alice in Wonderland. Um, while in the seventies I did, um, I did the Adventures of Guy Good. It's a, like 18 episodes all done with two track. And I was really good at editing, you know, I could edit with both hands, you know where you did it with a razor blade and Oh yeah. And cut out quarter inch little things from, and, and I got really fast at it.

And created these epic stories. Mm-hmm. Just doing it like piece by piece by piece. And that's a takeoff of [00:13:00] radio. It's a parody of radio, the adventures of High cus, which is like high cumulative averages in mm-hmm. In ratings. Yeah. And, and the, uh, hero was high cus and the, uh, the general manager was Mark Pox.

And, uh, And the villain in it was, um, Dr. Ado Domer from out of Beltsville, Maryland, which is where all of the ratings were being done. And Domer had a vision. He had a dream. Ah-huh. He would, he was going to get the tongues of the nation's top 10 personalities, and when he had the tongues, he would be able to make the world's greatest automation system.

The tongues of the top 10 personalities. And the world will be mine. 

Dave: Like crazy. 

Shadoe: It was very surreal. It's very surreal. So you were going for, you were going for real. I did a take off of Star [00:14:00] Wars when it came out there. It was a parody of Star Wars that I still haven't Funny. 

Darin: Well, now, uh, I, I don't wanna brag, but I've also done radio In college.

You're calling? No, in college I did radio, uh, at WTS at East Tennessee State University. And when I say nobody listened to our channel, I'm serious. Nobody listened because we didn't broadcast out on the radio waves. You could pick us up on the TV in your dorm. Okay. So I did a morning show and one of our radio production classes.

Our professor said, interview anybody about anything for any length. Of time. Hmm. That's your assignment. So I interviewed my buddy Alan, and we talked about the, the Academy Awards and what movies were being nominated and, and everything. And it, it came out to be like seven, eight minutes long. Okay, great.

Our next assignment was take that interview and we had no idea, take that interview and cut it down to [00:15:00] exactly one minute, no longer, no shorter. Mm-hmm. And we had to edit it with the razor and the white tape. Oh my. Right, right, right. God. Holy. I mean, it's just like, and that's the only time I ever edited with the Razor.

And shortly after I graduated and started my career in television, uh, avid came along, non-linear editing, thank God. Mm-hmm. Because I don't know that I would've stayed in the business if I had to, you know, edit tape to tape or with Razor Like that is, isn't Yeah. It was 

Shadoe: really clumsy. And at times I would have tapes around my neck and a back and over here, and I would know which, which ones were, and they had to go in what order, but I could do it and I could tape this while I'm cutting that and grabbing over here.

It, it was one of these things completely useless. Yeah. Skill set. But I got to think in terms of editing. Mm-hmm. And so the, uh, I ended up, I mean, I did all of the ads for the Blues Brothers [00:16:00] movie and Fast Times at Ridgemont High and 40 Wow Hours. Um, And they were all done the same way. It was all done in little, like couple of two tracks and I think a four track, um, machine ultimately when we got real fancy, you know?

Yeah, 

Darin: yeah. No, I, you know, and I'm 52, uh, a little bit younger than you, but when I talked to the kids coming outta college that are just starting in the business, you know, I tell 'em, it's like you have absolutely no idea. It's like, it's like if you think editing is hard, you have no idea how much harder it was.

You have it so easy now with all these, oh, it's all these tools at your disposal. I mean, the difference 

Shadoe: between a typewriter and a computer when, when computers came along, yeah. Oh my God. Yeah. I was in right at the beginning, in the early eighties, I had my own, and it was this computer that was portable.

Mm-hmm. It must have weighed 40 pounds thing, like carrying a [00:17:00] sewing machine and had a screen about six inches. But I'll tell you what, I could make corrections without whiteout. Yes. Yeah, 

Dave: yeah, 

Shadoe: yeah. I was a happy guy. This 

Dave: portion of our show is brought to you by Diff Liquid concentrated Wallpaper stripper.

You know what? Who am I kidding? How could I actually read this script? When the Master Shadow Stevens is on the show tonight, I, I can't do this, guys. It's like being asked to do a guitar solo in front of Jimmy Hendrix singing in front of Pavarotti. My apologies to the fine folks at Diff and all the fans of Irritable Dead syndrome.

I'm gonna go clean the windows in my audio booth back to you in the 

Darin: studio. Shadow is your stage name. I know that your parents didn't name you Shadow, but as a guy who known by God, I'm 

Shadoe: sorry. I was named by God. Oh, you were named by, and it was against my will. I was in Almogordo, [00:18:00] New Mexico, Uhhuh on my way to Boston.

And I was about to go to this big time radio station. And, and this is literally true and it sounds like, like something out of a Marvel comic. I pull over to the side of the road in Alamogordo, New Mexico, and across the street it said atomic testing range. Do not enter big signs. Warning. Warning. And I get into a phone booth and I call Boston and I say, I'm on my way.

And they go, yeah, yeah. Great, great. Yeah, by the way, Um, we're not, we're gonna be able to let you use the name that you've been using. And the name I had been using was one I made up called Jefferson. K I thought it was like kind of a soulful name. Yeah. And I like it. I had been using it, it was Jeff k and Jefferson k and um, he says, we've got a JJ Jeffries and a Jess Kane.

[00:19:00] And believe it or not, we had a guy named Jefferson K that had been Boston for a few years. We're gonna change your name. Um, we're thinking of calling you Shadow Man or Shadow Lane. We're not sure. And I went, it's the worst. 

Dave: I 

Shadoe: hate that. I, yeah. Don't, don't be hasty. I will have several ideas. By the time I get to Boston now I'm driving Helter Skelter at 110 miles an hour across, you know, Alabama and Tennessee going, heading toward Boston.

I'm thinking Rodney Rhodes, uh, Randy Street. You know, I'm like, I'm writing notes on in mm-hmm. On my lap, trying to think of, and so I get to Boston. I'm pulling into Boston. Two days later it's gray and it's, you know, I just left Tucson, which was sunny and warm and friendly. And I get into Boston and it's rainy and it's gray.

Yeah. Listening to this amazing radio stations. And they [00:20:00] said, and starting Monday, shadow Stevens 68 w r k Hill, I'm in hell. Oh God. And I went, I don't, I don't know how to deal with this. And I went in and I went, I have no choice. And then people would say, that's not your real name, is it? So this started my sense of humor.

It literally started it. I went, okay, well then I'm coming up with a backstory. Okay. They go, Uh, so what, what is your name is Shadow. I'm like, yeah, it's, um, it's Native American. Really? Um, do you know what tribe, I mean? Well, you know, I'm originally from North Dakota, so I suspect it could be Sue or Mandan.

I'm not sure. Possibly Cheyenne. Um, but, uh, I'm not sure. And they go Really? And go, yes. I, [00:21:00] it means he who walks with the light Uhhuh. Okay. Really? Really. And then they stopped asking questions and inside I was like, this is the greatest thing I ever heard. I can tell things with conviction and I will just believe it.

And it literally was given to me by the infinite. What? Yeah. The mighty mover. The something to create me out of me and. Everything that happened after everything I ever did in radio, my whole personality was built around, you know, humor mm-hmm. And telling funny stories and coming up with things in a funny way and being able to make fun of myself.

And I became it. And then it was,

it's what everybody called me. Yeah. People stopped calling me. My birth name is, is, uh, Ted, it's a Norwegian name, Terry [00:22:00] Ted. And, and my, uh, it's a proud Ted Family Norwegian name. And, um, and then I created Fred Raided for Federated. And it became, you know, the biggest, um, the most successful regional television campaign in US history.

Yeah. I'm doing, I did 1100 commercials, television commercials, uh, that I wrote and produced with a team of five other guys. And. I had my own equipment. We had our own post-production and every week we would turn out six to eight commercials and, uh, no commercial ever ran longer than 10 days. And they were all funny.

Yeah, some of them were really funny. I've seen a lot of 'em. Yeah. So then I would go to the bank and they'd say, um, so, um, Fred, you're Fred rated you. Yeah. Um, so are you Shadow Stevens? Well, who's Terry? And I went, this is way too complicated. I'm letting Terry go. And I, [00:23:00] uh, changed my name, uh, legally to shadow Stevens.

This is like in the seventies. Yeah. And um, and even my parents. While they were still alive, all changed Newman. Yeah. You don't seem like a, a Terry. Well, and I never did either. 

Darin: Frankly. One of my jokes that I wrote was, you know, Rob Zombie's parents were, you know, Paul and Helen Zombie. And of course when you, when you name your kid that he's destined to be a rockstar as a person with a stage name.

Can you, do you have an inside track on I'm suspicious. I think Benedict Cumberbatch. I think that's a fake name. Just like Roddy Dangerfield. You gotta, I 

Shadoe: think you're right. Okay. And, and I'm going to say that, uh, with great conviction again because I It's just too perfect. Yeah, it's too perfect. It, it's like the names that, that I make up in metal Radio, Darius full Ofit Uhhuh, and, um, you know, LA Sule, [00:24:00] owner of the bar know I love that kind of stuff.

Marilyn, Kroger. Mm-hmm. Created the names of over 500 drugs and. Plays the game, drugs or cheese on npr, Marilyn Kroger. 

Darin: Well, you know, you certainly do have a way with words on, I think it's episode 25 of middle radio where the mighty man, one of the characters, uh, he was perturbed, he was angry, he was miffed, and I've been saying miffed for, for the past week now.

It's like I tell my wife, you know what, I'm about to get miffed and I've never here before, use that word, but I use it now. It's in, it's in my vocabulary all the time. 

Shadoe: My whole, uh, my, my passion is words. Mm-hmm. And I carry notebooks with me every day, everywhere. I have one in my pocket at all times.

Mm-hmm. I have a car, I have multiple notepads around. [00:25:00] If I hear a word I like, I write it down. I don't know where it'll come into play. Yeah. Hear a word that maybe, uh, I can use as a name. I hear the word obstreperous and I go, oh, city in North Carolina, obstreperous North Carolina. That's perfect. And then, and then when it comes time to write, uh, like I did this, this piece on hope where a Dixon ta Kondo, uh, goes to the end of the world, uh, looking for hope.

And at a lofty peak at the meridian between melancholy and basket case, he finds an outpost. Yeah. The pinnacle cut the mustard deli and pickle. And in it he finds the oracle Morty Morty's in the deli. And Morty says, have a sandwich. He goes, you want the Zuckerberg half baked pastrami, the Elon Musk chop liver, the Bezos barbecue brisket.

But for you, I think the Dai Lama Club says there's a little Morty in every bite, and then it becomes like a Mel Brooks movie. [00:26:00] Like all that things where you can say those things, where all of. You know, um, rolls off the tongue. Yeah. I'm very conscious of the consonants and vowels and how they go together and, and I can't rest until I come.

And my writing partner is the same way That Jewish guy, uh, um, Joshua Weinstein love this guy. Mm-hmm. Just brilliant. And he and I will wrestle over a term. It took two hours of nonstop playing to come up with pep fortified optimism. That's, it's perfect. Yeah. It is not full of pep fortified optimism.

That's metal radio. But it's that, that attention to detail. Mm-hmm. About everything from the words to the sound effects. And I'll make up my own sound effects and I'll buy sound effects libraries and. And I will add a, a squish to a clump [00:27:00] and all of a sudden, you know, something hits the four and it's, you're like, ah, no, that's perfect.

Darin: I was gonna ask if you Foley any of those, uh, sound effects yourself, or if you've just have a ginormous library. 

Shadoe: I have a giant library, but I've been doing this, this, um, you know, because I love radio theater. I've been doing it for decades, and I always collect my sounds and put them in folders. And when I started mental radio, I collected everything that I had ever done before and put that in one file.

And, um, and then I went in and, and made it so that I could look something up really fast. Doors just door, door, door, door, door slamming, door slam door open, door closed. My, my door is squeaky, so crashing door, um, you know, all of this stuff. So now I, when I, when I come to make it. I can find things really quickly.

Mm-hmm. And then bring it in. Try it. Uh, yeah. Perfect. Or I might add to it, I might have [00:28:00] multiple tracks of, uh, doors and crashes to make it, uh, have the right kind of impact. There, there was a 

Mike: moment. Um, so I was listening to it today, uh, while I was working out. I don't know that I, I don't necessarily recommend that because I actually dropped a weight during part of it.

Um, it was the beginning of one of the episodes, and you are basically giving the listener a tour of you're opening the door and something's happening in inside, and you come back and you, you bring some spring into it and you're, you're just talking. You're giving them a tour and all of a sudden in the middle of it, you stop and say, oh, look at that.

And then you come back to the narration and I dropped the weight because I thought, this is, this is an audio drama. And you said, look at that. You're, you're calling in a sense that the, the listener has, you immediately put an image in my head. I know whoever's listening to that. You're, you're, you're putting an image in someone's head.

It's [00:29:00] different for every listener. Um, nobody knows what you were thinking of when you said, look at that. It's just a, almost like a throwaway line. But it took that experience of listening to something and on, it's almost like it went from two dimensional to three dimensionally. It became more real. Oh, absolutely.

It sounded almost like a throwaway line, but it, it brought the, it brought the realism and enough for me to lose the track weight and almost hurt my foot. But I was really, I was, I was impressed by that. So I, I'm definitely gonna listen to, to a lot more of it, but 

Shadoe: I was the, uh, the later episodes about, Chapter 15.

I mean, there's really great stuff. Uh, uh, chapter 10 is about the blues. And, and again, it's Dixon, who's one of my favorite characters who write, um, Dixon is, uh, like Raymond Chandler, kind of, you know, um, a lot of word play and things. And, and Dixon um, says he woke up and he realized that everybody's [00:30:00] got the blues.

So I went to, um, the Fortune Tiller and, and, um, what was her name? Um, oh, I can't think of her name now, but she says, you wanna face the blues? You gotta look the devil in the eye. Mm-hmm. Oh. So he gets in the car and he drives across Texas through mosquitoes and thunderstorms and bats, and he arrives in New Orleans in the dead of night and the city is alive with the, everything is moving and full of music and life.

And he drives through the city and goes right to the cemetery and he crawls over the wall and he sits below a crypt and he chan the sacred incantation

and a seven foot tall giant in a white suit. It looks like a plantation on her. Looks at him and says, Please to meet you. Can [00:31:00] I call you a dick? He says, no, I just wanted to look you in the eye. And he says, I'll be waiting.

And it's very trippy. And, and, uh, and there's a bunch of things like that in the earlier. But about episode 15, I really figured out how to do in, in, uh, in depth writing and, uh, really crazy ideas. There is an episode called Space. The following takes place in the space of 10 seconds. And what it is, is that maybe the reason that we can't get along in the world is because our brains are stuck in a 1940s.

Newspaper bullpen with typewriters, clacking and phones ringing and everybody talking a mile and, and people named tricks and, and you know, and they're all talking at once and these are all the voices in your head. And they're getting ready for the showdown that this guy is about to have with his [00:32:00] wife.

And they're all going, okay, what's going, what's going there? What are you, calm down, calm down. They're all like coming up with solutions and things he's gonna have to say. And it's really trippy. There's a whole bunch of voices and it goes real fast, just like his girl Friday. And it has that whole sound of the 1940s.

And then, uh, then when you say, we're going live, we're going live. And, and she says, so you, you need your space. Do you, 

Dave: Todd, how much space do you 

Shadoe: need? I just wanna little Oh, oh, oh, I'm sorry. And they're saying call me being calm. Being calm. They're talking to him in his head. It's very funny. And in that, in that, um, and we did one, um, about time where we go into the future where, where everybody's got it together and they're all a lot smarter than us.

And we land in a game show. And the game show is called, [00:33:00] uh, time loop. And it's, and time loop. It sounds just like it, you know, it's time for a time loop, and it's got all the sounds and everything and the, and the conceit of it is that it's like jeopardy. But it's in the future. Mm-hmm. So the people, they are really hard questions, but they have to answer within 10 seconds while they're spinning in a tilter world type contraption.

And if they get it wrong, they'll be catapulted out of the tilter world into space. Fracturing the time space continuum and ending all life as we know it. Of course, that's what happens. Yeah. And when it ha you'll crack up. It's, it's out there, it's really audio acid 

Darin: Now you see that is an idea that no one else can say, Hey, you stole that from me.

No, nobody. I, I'm gonna be just completely honest here. Um, I thought, you know, Mike and I, we've done this podcast for, uh, we're in our third [00:34:00] year. We're up to like 150 episodes. We thought, you know what's two, two or three of 'em are actually good. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Especially the ones in the middle. I was like, one of the things that sets us apart is the, you know, we do, uh, music, we do fake commercials and we put sound effects and we intentionally curse out, uh, our, our sensor out our, our language.

Cuz I think it's funny when we hear a, a duck quack instead of the, of an F bomb or something like that. You're right. Right. And so I thought, you know, Mike and I we're, we really set ourselves apart and then I listened to your little show that you got and I'm like, son of a bitch. So 

Shadoe: you just have to be, become a fanatic and know that you can't do it at 150 shows.

Yeah.

Darin: Let's talk about the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson. Yeah. Now the, the, I heard this. Tell me if it's, uh, if it's true or not. Uh, not only were you the announcer, but I heard that you were the front half of Secretary of the Horse. Is that true? No. Okay. [00:35:00] 

Dave: No, 

Shadoe: no. In fact, I had, I had the greatest job of all time, and it didn't seem like it at first because I just had to be there all the time.

Mm-hmm. Every once in a while they'd include me in a skit or something, but I had to be there in case there were any changes. While the show was being recorded, what I did actually took five or 10 minutes. Mm-hmm. A day. Yeah. Was in, in the, in, in my dressing room with my laptop, writing stuff like this, you know, just like, keep the mind busy, work on this, gonna try that.

And I wrote screenplays and did all kinds of things uhhuh, and every once again, a while I'd get called in. One time I, the only guy I ever introduced myself to, I was in the Green room and Quentin Tarantino was there, the guest, and I went, I've never done it. Yeah, I've never done this, but I am. I am such a fan of your work.

I have to introduce myself. And he interrupted me and he goes, no, you [00:36:00] shadow Stevens. You did the movie tracks. And it was so shocked me. And I went, yeah, it's a weird little movie. He goes, no, no. It's a great movie. It's hilarious. Mm-hmm. Well, you just made my whole life.

That's great. Yeah. It was a good experience. I'm very close with Craig. Mm-hmm. Still talk, uh, almost every week I went to his, we, uh, to his, uh, Not his wedding, his, uh, birthday party in Scotland. He owns a castle in Scotland last summer, and our whole family went and it was pretty 

Darin: fabulous. I work and produce promos for antenna tv.

You're the voice of antenna tv. Mm-hmm. And one of the earlier promos I'd sent you and you had replied, sorry I didn't get back to you in time. I was at Craig Ferguson's house in Scotland. Yeah, of course. You were house, 

Shadoe: house. This house was built in 1100, Uhhuh 1100. Maybe you didn't, maybe you [00:37:00] missed that part.

500 years later mm-hmm. The new part was built and it's on 300 acres that are like a national park with a roaring stream that goes through it with salmon in it. Wow. And green everywhere because it rains all the time and lots of, you know, deer and animals coming out. To linger, you know, in the press. It, it was pretty psychedelic.

Wow. 

Darin: So the late Late show, uh, was a worldwide pants production. David Letterman's company. Did he, was your boss, did Letterman have any say or any thumbprint on that show? Or, I mean, did you ever have any, anything? Don't, it 

Shadoe: was all Craig Uhhuh and, and, and to his credit, they gave him nothing to work with.

Mm-hmm. I mean, the fact that I was there at all was something. And then ultimately he, uh, hired Josh Robert Thompson to be the, the, uh, the [00:38:00] voice of the, of his sidekick. The, uh, Jeff, Jeff Jefferson, the, uh, the gay skeleton. Yeah. And he would just, he he made all this stuff up. Yeah. And did you know most of the writing and came up with the characters and just, um, the single best interviewer maybe ever on television.

He would just, He'd look at the notes, he'd memorize them. Mm-hmm. Throw 'em away and then just talk to people and, you know, they would open up to him. Uh, he's, he's really a remarkable 

Dave: talent. 

Darin: I was gonna say cuz every time a guest would come on, he would take the cards and rip them up and just, uh, was there actually something on the card or was that just his Oh, yeah.

Like his Carol Burnett, the actual 

Shadoe: cards that they, that the, uh, the, the staff would prepare just as friends. We would sit and talk and he would gush up something. I think, oh God, I gotta write that down. I would've had to sit here for 20 minutes to come up with that. And he does it effortlessly. And that's why he had in his [00:39:00] written books and, and screenplays and.

He's, uh, pretty exceptional. Yeah. 

Dave: You are listening to irritable dad syndrome now with anti-cavity 

Darin: protection. So let's, let's go deep a little bit. A lot of people remember you from, uh, Hollywood Squares and the weekly Top 40. I thought you were amazing on weekly top 40. I, I, I remember when I was younger and I would listen.

I always thought that either you or Dick Clark or Casey or one of the guys sat there for four hours, but as I, you know, aged and got into broadcasting, how long did it take you to put together an episode of the weekly top 40? I mean, would they write all this? First of all, it's 

Shadoe: American Top 40 Weekly. Top 40 is a Rick Ds show.

I apologize. 

Darin: I You should. I'm so 

Dave: sorry. 

Shadoe: I'm so offended. I'm, I'm so sorry. Let me, lemme 

Darin: back up into this. My ne my next question was, did you write disco Duck? I'll take that off the damn. Okay. 

Shadoe: And I know him too. He's a good guy. Yeah. [00:40:00] Everything I ever did in my entire career was based on funny. Every radio station that I built was all built on radio theater and creating, uh, an environment that these radio personalities would go in and play cool music and be able to be funny.

And we would do funny promotions. And I then I go from there, I go into advertising and all the advertising I did Federated was, was funny. The Blues Brothers was funny, you know, fast Times at Ridgemont High. Funny, everything was funny until American Top 40. Now American Top 40 comes along because I had been in radio and because I was young and because I had been on television doing Hollywood squares and got a lot of attention.

So it was like the Ryan Seacrest of the moment, right? Yeah. So they, well this is a good bet. They, they auditioned 1100 people. Actors, movie stars, television stars, [00:41:00] all kinds of people wanted this job cuz Casey was going on to start a, a new, a new show. Mm-hmm. And they were freaking out because it was a big franchise that had been on the air for decades.

So they were very nervous and I had to audition five times for it. And I would do their copy and I would write my own copy and I would do it up and I would do it this and that, and fi and finally they'd give me the job. And they are really worried. And so the first show was from their script four. Our script took 18 hours to record.

Oh my God. Because I could not do, keep your feet on 

Dave: the ground and keep reaching for the start. 

Shadoe: Right. I can't do. Earnest Uhhuh, I can only do me. Mm-hmm. Right? And you have to find me in this thing. [00:42:00] So we had to rewrite every sentence of the whole script and do it until it felt right. Mm-hmm. And I finally figured it out.

And then the next one took a little less time and a little less time. They sent me to voice coaches. They were so con things like in my radio career, I signed off every show saying, um, and until we meet again, this is your friend in the void the shadow. Bye-bye out there. 

Dave: Yeah. 

Darin: Good void. What's wrong with 

Dave: that void?

Shadoe: You can't say void. That's weird. 

Dave: It's creepy. 

Darin: You're weird. It's a four letter word 

Mike: technically. 

Dave: Yeah. 

Shadoe: Infinite universe. It's devoid. And I'm your friend. In the middle of it all. It's very uplifting. Oh, no, no, no. You can't. So I, I said, okay. And so this is your best friend. The shadow I would say. So that was a compromise.

Now Casey would end his show with, keep your feet on the ground, keep reaching for the stars. 

Dave: Mm-hmm. [00:43:00] 

Shadoe: I couldn't do that. Right. So what I would do is I would come up with, remember kids, the world is your oyster and if you can't find your pearl, you can always have lunch. 

Dave: Bye-bye. 

Shadoe: Come up with funny things to say that would fit in the context of this earnest show.

Have your 

Darin: pet spayed or neutered. Goodbye everybody.

Shadoe: Boy, were inflatable by bonds. Uh, so, you know, little by little it started to take and uh, in the end we would do all four hours in less than an hour. And it was great fun cause I worked with a great team of people and once I was accepted and then they were flying me around the world to promote it, then yeah.

I would take my whole family to Tokyo or to Oslo, Norway, or to Venu where I, my family, uh, came from or, um, you know, or Italy or, I mean, we were everywhere. It, it was remarkable. We went to [00:44:00] Bali. Mm. We were met by the radio station in Bali and then they would each place in Hong Kong, they would take us to the greatest restaurants and, and show us the town.

And it was a remarkable experience. I went to South Africa. We were there for a week and went from Johannesburg to Cape Town to um, uh, we went out on a safari, almost died on the safari. 

Mike: Oh, I gotta hear the safari story. What's, uh, 

Shadoe: so, okay, so in Cape Town we were at a five star restaurant and it was a big production sponsored by the radio network.

And I ate some, uh, octopus. Oh, it felt a little gamey. Mm-hmm. I thought, well, nothing to worry about. Well, salmonella poisoning comes on slowly. And it was days later in the middle of nowhere in the jungle that it came on, and it was vomiting and diarrhea and, [00:45:00] and just sweating. And it was awful. My par, my, my family's out, you know, seeing the elephants and the tigers and stuff that I'm in throwing up.

And finally my whole body was shaking like it was like, like this, yeah. Get me outta here. And they put me on a private plane and flew to Johannesburg. We went right to a doctor and he said, you must go to the hospital right now. Go to emergency. Went to emergency. They tried to, uh, get 18, 18 times. They tried to get a needle in my arm, but I was so dehydrated.

They told my wife that if it went on much longer, I would probably die. Oh, wow. And finally they got, and, and every time I would scream as they put the n uh, the needle in, and uh, he goes, oh, I'm so, I'm so honey. We we're trying to, we're so high dehydrate, we can't find a vein. And they finally got one and I was in the hospital for five days.

And, uh, you know, everything turned out fine, but it was not a 

Dave: [00:46:00] pleasant 

Darin: experience. I, I don't think so. I, you know what? I was craving octopus. I was thinking about getting that. Yeah. Yeah. 

Shadoe: No, I don't ever eat octopus ever. No. I, I, no. Yeah, 

Dave: no. 

Darin: So, not to get too much inside baseball, but, you know, would, with, with the producers of the show, would they get a feel for your read length and then know how much script to give you and then they would, would they edit that and back time it into the song?

They 

Shadoe: would, they would time, they would time the stories and, and make sure that they, they fit and they would, you know, the, anything that went over an intro of a song, they would, you know, back time it, and then I, you know, could play with it and they could adjust it. Um, they did a, there was a period of time where they would.

Edit my pauses in storytelling. That drove me crazy. I, I did have one blow up with them mm-hmm. With the producer once I said, you make me sound like an idiot. Like, I dunno how to read and it really makes me crazy. [00:47:00] And so they had to become much more conscious of, because sometimes you need 

Dave: a little hair.

Yeah. Right. Yeah. You know? Right. You just do. Yeah. Right. 

Shadoe: And it makes a point in a story, especially if it's a dramatic story. And, um, they were just like so concerned that everybody's gonna tune out because you aren't keeping words coming all the time as fast as they can. Right, 

Dave: right. Right. 

Darin: So there you are.

We, we threw in intentional pauses there to Yeah. I 

Shadoe: appreciate that. You know, let let it sink in. Yeah. I got chills of confirmation. You probably felt that. I did too. Yeah. Kidding. 

Darin: I love that. So I wanted to talk about Dave's world, uh, and mainly, uh, I wanted to know if Harry Anderson was as nice a guy as he, I, I imagined that he was, uh, great.

But you were on that show for, what was it, four Seasons? 

Shadoe: Four years? Yeah. Yeah. [00:48:00] Loved it. Loved the whole thing. Was a great experience. I loved the whole cast. Um, JC Wendell, who does stuff on mental radio mm-hmm. Was on that show and we've stayed friends over the years. I had no idea that she was as brilliant as she is.

She does. A lot of the female characters on metal radio and everyone, she can do every accent. She can do any style. Yeah. And um, and then it was Misha Taylor, who's no longer alive and Harry's not either, but Harry would do things like just spontaneous magic. Yeah. And we would just go, you sold your soul.

It's very, it is just, no question. It's like, that's impossible. And oh my God, oh, let me show you this. And he was endlessly entertaining. Plus he was a writer. Mm-hmm. And a good writer and wrote some of the episodes and, um, and a genuinely down to earth, really nice guy. Uh, mic Shaq was charismatic and funny as could be.

Mm-hmm. One of my favorite people I [00:49:00] ever worked with. And, uh, Delaine Matthews played Harry's, uh, wife. Dave's wife. Uh, the whole cast was really special and, and, uh, Padre Meadows played my mother. Oh, some of them? Yeah. How great is that? Yeah. Doesn't get better. No. So they, and the, and the storyline was, she thought I was gay because I was, uh, you know, a 40 something year old guy that, um, wasn't married.

Mm-hmm. 

Mike: No, 

Dave: mom.

Shadoe: It's very funny. I was, uh, it's a good, I have a good story from, uh, from Hollywood Squares too. Oh, yeah. Um, you know, Joan Rivers was the center square. Mm-hmm. We did a bit that was a parody of on the beach. And so it's, it's Joan and me as lovers rolling in the sand on the beach with waves crashing. We shot it at the beach Uhhuh.

And [00:50:00] um, and then there is, I'm like leaning down and she's looking up at me and she goes, nobody can kiss me like you do. And I go, nobody. She says, no one, not any of the guys that you've ever kissed. And she goes, not a one. So how many have there been? Oh, I don't really know. Well, can you give me a rough estimate?

Well, not without an adding machine. Well, yeah, I do. And I reached under the blanket and pulled out an adding machine and she goes, oh, that's perfect. Oh. Oh yeah, there. That one was Detroit. That was a weekend. Hundred 22. 

Dave: Very funny. 

Darin: Oh, hilarious. I didn't think that anybody would be able to, They tried the Hollywood Square several times and a few months ago we had Adam Niff on the show, and he's a historian and a game show.

Uh, he's a game show historian and an author. We were talking about some of the, uh, reincarnations of that show, but you know, next [00:51:00] to the original with Peter Marshall and Paul Lynn as soon as where the one that you guys did was on the money. I mean, it was, it was really good. It was 

Shadoe: really funny. And, and 

Darin: they didn't have at the time, you know, they didn't have has been stars.

They had, you know, current, you know, they card. Yeah. They had, uh, whoopy Billy Crystal and Robin Williams all, uh, one week. And it was, it was crazy. I mean, it was just really, really something. So, yeah. 

Shadoe: And we were the first fir first show to ever go to Radio City Music Hall and sold it out in three hours.

Five, five days. Yeah. And, um, uh, we were mobbed. It was such a big show. Mm-hmm. We had no idea cuz we were doing it from a little studio in Hollywood and, you know, yeah. It's, I guess it's doing well. Yay. You know, we get to New York and it was like being the Beatles. They crowded around and screamed and cheered and showed up with banners and things.

It [00:52:00] was amazing. Yeah. It was like, and kind of scary. You had to get like the bodyguards to help you get into the limo to get away Oh, wow. From the crowd of enthusiastic people who just loved everything we did. Yeah. It was great. 

Darin: Now, when you're out and about, I mean, can you do, do you have security with you now?

Can you go, can you go to your local grocery store and get an avocado without shadow? Stevens touched that avocado. 

Shadoe: Yeah, yeah. No, not hardly. No, no. I, you know, I've been out of the public eye for a long time. Um, And I have, uh, but it's interesting because, uh, like at the doctor's office today, one of the nurses says, I know who you are.

Mm-hmm. I'm an eighties person, you know, I remember radio and Hollywood squares and all that stuff, you know. Okay. Keep, 

Darin: thank you. I was gonna say, but people probably still recognize [00:53:00] your voice, um, quite 

Shadoe: often. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That, that, well, you know, when you're on the radio week in and week out for to a billion people in 110 countries, you, you know, kind of make a, put a stamp on it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, uh, yeah. So a lot of people have, and then a lot of, you know, voiceovers and, and being part of hit shows mm-hmm. Doesn't 

Dave: suck. 

Darin: I had, uh, I had told this story on the podcast before, but New Year's Eve was coming up and the promo I was doing for Antenna TV was the, uh, uh, Benny Hill party on New Year's Eve.

Mm-hmm. And so I'm like, well, this sucks. I've gotta watch b episodes of Benny Hill to make a promo out of it. So I spent a whole week going through episode after episode after episode of Benny Hill, just loving it. It was great. Mm-hmm. And I wrote, uh, the original idea for a promo. You know, we ended up, uh, scrapping that and trying something else.

And then I thought, well, I'll just write this [00:54:00] song. I'll rewrite the lyrics to Old Lang Zion and I'll just send the shadow. And I didn't even think to ask, do you sing? And holy, you turned it around as Buddy St. Charles, the lounge singer. Oh, yeah, yeah. Hysterical. Absolutely. It's pretty hyster funny.

Hysterical. Yeah, it was great. So kudos and, and thank you for that. And you know, it just, I don't know, it's just like, you know, the work, you, you clearly enjoy it because you put mm-hmm. Extra time, extra effort into it. You put a little bit of polish and then you put a bow on it before you send it out. So, uh, professionally, I mean, thank you.

And then as a fan also, thanks. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. 

Shadoe: Well, thank you. Yeah. And thank you. And thank you both and thank you. I'm, I'm less irritable by than I was at the beginning. 

Darin: Do you have any irritable dad stories? I mean, you have kids. 

Shadoe: Um, my kids have were really fabulous. Uh, they're, but [00:55:00] I'm, I'm married to the greatest person in the history of the world, and it was, you know, at, at one period of my life, I was a pretty serious drug addict.

And I, I went in and finally got, um, got sober and, and came out and I had two unhappy marriages and, um, was vowed that I would be alone for the rest of my life. I am, you know, I just wanna be calm. So I, you know, I meditate and I, and I, uh, write and I do creative things and I'm fine being alone. And a guy that worked for me, ran my music department at my production company was standing in line at the bank and he met this international model.

It's a beautiful black woman and he says, you wanna come over and hear the music we're working on? She goes, oh, okay. So they're in the studio and I walk in and I see [00:56:00] this, oh my God, most beautiful person I've ever seen in my life. And I tried to be cool. Mm-hmm. Like catching little glances. So what do you play her?

Oh, great. Now you should, you know, you should play that piece of, and I'm catching glimpses and going over there. I was like, oh my God. So she leaves and I say, Ron, who's who, who was that? Uh, it's this model. I met her at the bank. Does she sing? You know. Yeah, I think so. Hit her pack. So he calls her and she comes back.

That night, the first thing that we ever did together, I was work I'd sold, uh, this, this insane show. You talk about Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Yeah. Um, shadow Vision is sort of like that at a thousand miles an hour. And I had sold it to H B O and the first thing we ever did together was a little jingle that would go in it.

It goes like this. Oh, you perspire? Yeah. You perspire. Uh,[00:57:00] 

and you go, oh, oh. And 

Dave: I go,

Shadoe: first thing we ever did together, we laughed so hard and it was very sexy. Okay. We've been together ever since. How many 

Darin: years? Um, 97. 97 years that you've been together. That's a long 

Dave: time. 

Shadoe: Yeah. And still crazy about each other. So we have these two beautiful daughters who look just like her. Yeah. They're Beyonce.

Beautiful. And then now I have two grandchildren who are also pretty much look just like her. And, um, and the, and n there were never any real dramas, you know, with them. Um, A few uncomfortable moments, but nothing really dramatic. Yeah, I've been really fortunate and, um, and it, I'm really grateful for all of the, and that's again, part of what mental radio is [00:58:00] about, is trying to, to give you these tools for having a happier life.

And so, if I can do that, Victor Frankl, who wrote a Man's Search for Meaning, you know, in, uh, when he was in Auschwitz, he wrote these notes and became this book. And in it he talked about, um, if you can ridicule phobias through the use of humor and irony, you can rise above them. Mm-hmm. And. That resonated with me because it's like, how do I make fun of being afraid?

How do I address, you know, traits that we all have, like yme and Ohno's, the ohno's and the ymi and the yabos and all of the things that, that, um, that we fall into that our, our brains get into a lock loop of looking for what's wrong and making a list. So I ha I wanted to come up with like, tools to make fun of that and then rise above it and talk [00:59:00] about how to be happier.

You can't think your way happy. You have to act your way. Yep. And that's the only way Exactly. You get happy. Exactly. And so what are the tools? You know, goal setting, writing, writing gives you clarity and meditation gets you behind the mind. So I'm, I'm a big meditator. I've been meditating for most of my adult life and, and especially the last 38 years since I stopped using drugs and alcohol.

And I learned deeper and deeper kinds. So you, when you go into a a transcendental state, you can stop breathing. Your body gets real quiet like it is when you are in a deep sleep except the you, the I am the witness, the soul, the spirit, whatever you want to call it, the glimpse of the divine that's within each of us watching, the actions that we go through gets to [01:00:00] experience itself.

And the deeper you go into that awareness, the deeper there is to merge into. And that is a revelation that gives us a greater sense of spiritual contact with whatever you envision the creator to be. And. Somewhere in the, in the balance between goal setting, working on things that you, that you love, like you do in your podcast.

And you get this excitement and you look forward to it and it's fun and you meet interest to people and you learn new things and you, your brain doesn't have time to go, oh yeah, this is wrong and that's wrong. And I, and I failed at this and I failed at that. And this trauma I get to relive in that trauma.

It's like, No. Get busy. Well, okay, 

Darin: so I, I wanna be exactly like you when I grow up. Well, I'm gonna say you, 

Mike: you've kind hit me twice today cuz uh, one, I dropped the weight on my foot. Mm-hmm. Uh, from the first episode and what you [01:01:00] were just talking about is in the beginning of the second episode of mental radio, the, the Victor Yeah.

Frank thing. Yeah. Yeah. I, I, and I, I had a moment where I'm like, Hey, I heard a podcast 

Darin: about that today. Oh wait, that's, this is the guy that was, this is a voice 

Mike: that was in 

Shadoe: my ears. Uh, when we go to the Outlook chamber, and that's, and that's part of the idea because the whole thing is in allegory. We go to the former Masonic Temple somewhere in Hollywood, but that's really us.

And, and we go to the Outlook Chamber, which is at the crown of the temple, which is right there up at the top with a domed ceiling. And in it we talk about, let's talk about. Faith. What is faith? Mm-hmm. And we can talk our way through it and talk about all of the different ways of looking at spirituality that have nothing to do with mythology and dogma, which is always the problem with all faith.

It's like these are the rigid rules and regulations for getting to the infinite what? Yep. Right. And no, it's not. [01:02:00] There's only, this isn't just one way. There's a whole bunch of ways. And there have been spiritual masters that have proven that by dedicating themselves Christianity or to Islam, or to Hinduism or to Buddhism and getting their Every time.

Yep. Right. So pick one. Yeah. You know, pick one. And the deeper you look into it, the more information you find and the more rewarding it'll be and the more grounded you'll feel so that your ego has something. To answer to. Yeah. That's bigger than you. Yeah. Yeah. 

Darin: So 

Mike: yeah, I, I love the, the combination of that with the humor.

It, it, it's, I I get a, like, it's almost like Neil Gaiman and Terry Chet, their, their book Good Omens. It ended up becoming a, I think a series on Amazon. I haven't seen the series yet, but it's, that's one of my favorite books, but Oh, it sounds good. Yeah. It basically, there's an angel and a demonn. Mm-hmm. And they're actually buddies.

Yeah. And they're, they're tr one, the demonn is trying to bring about the end of the world with the anti-car. It has some pretty deep themes. Yeah. But it's, 

Darin: [01:03:00] it's hilarious. Well, I mean, I don't go that deep with my, my favorite author is David Sedaris, and he can walk from the front door to the mailbox, come back, and then he has an entire chapter.

And I don't know how he does it, but he somehow finds humor in everything that he does. And I think if a lot of people, you know, had that mindset, you know, the, the expression, if you look for gold, you're gonna find gold. If you look for dirt, you're gonna find dirt. So 

Shadoe: yeah. You find what you're looking for.

Exactly. Does conspiracy theories. Yeah. You can prove anything, anything. And that's part of another thing that I did with metal radio. The whole mythology of metal radio is all based on real stuff. Yeah. And some of it tweaked. Yeah. Right. Told with, you know, with absolutely sincerity and, and conviction. By the way, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, have you ever heard the Douglas Adams version where he reads it?

Oh, 

Mike: no, I haven't. I've just heard the dramatization, the bbc, 

Shadoe: [01:04:00] it's a thousand times better than any dramatization you've ever heard. It's hilarious. Gotta check it out. I will, I'll, I'll send you, I'll send you one. Oh, okay. Thank you. Yeah, yeah. Thanks. You'll love it. It's, yeah. I, I listened to it and had to pull the car over.

Oh my God, that's so good. I have to run that back. Listen again. 

Mike: Yeah. I got, I got some 

Shadoe: senses dry and straight. Never played for laughs, never like winking or anything like a, the, all the productions, they always, they got a little wacky and cartoony and stuff. Yeah. With him it's absolute, it's all in the words and, and the delivery is, Is perfect.

Couldn't be more perfect. You, you'll 

Mike: love it, right? Yeah. I mean, any, I, I love his books. I, I, I got senses of, uh, Dirk g Lee's holistic detective agency. I was listening to mental radio. I I got a sense of that. Yeah. But, you know, to build on, on what we're talking about, I, I've always felt that, um, humor is [01:05:00] the deepest.

You, you have to think something, think through something very deeply. You have to understand it intensely to be able to find the humor in it. I, I believe you can find humor in just about anything. I agree. I'm a, I'm a George Carlin fan. Me too. And George Carlin, he, he would find humor in everything.

Everything. He almost looked at it as a challenge. Someone would say, that's not funny. Well, I'll find something funny about it. Yeah. Mm-hmm. And, um, that's one of the driving forces behind the podcast for me is we, we record this weekly. We have to find something funny in what happened in the previous week.

And, and sometimes that actually, you know, the knowledge that we're gonna be sitting together and, and talking about, yeah. 

Darin: Something to try to be funny. It gives me a purpose to find things. You, you have to look at the light 

Dave: and universe 

Shadoe: supplies it. The, the example that that is a good one is you've never thought about buying a Toyota ever.

Mm-hmm. And then you decide, well, I think I'll buy a Toyota. And then you see Toyotas [01:06:00] everywhere. Everywhere. Right. There's a red one and a green one. That some sucks. I would never have that. Oh, what? And, and pretty soon it's like the universe conspires to give you what you're paying attention to. Yeah.

Right. And it's that way with writing. It's like all these words that come to me and mm-hmm. And I write them down and I have volumes of words. And so it comes, comes time to write, you know, uh, Brock Stillwell, you know, square jaw jackhammer of a man in a plaid suit. And, and, and his, um, his hair 

Mike: is flowing always, even if there's no wind, his hair is flowing.

Shadoe: Of course, of course. There's one, one of the episodes, uh, and it comes, it starts with a man falls into a manhole in the pouring rain, and as he grabs for the wall, a tear falls from his eyes and lands on a slug who flicks it off onto a leech who twitches. And it lands in the mouth of a rat who bears its teeth and smiles.

A satisfied [01:07:00] rat smile and a beam of light from a moon strikes the sparkle on the rat's, pointed teeth and ricochets back into the sky. Burning a symbol on a cloud, a symbol that can only mean one thing. A call for help. Meanwhile, across town rock Stillwell and his penthouse overlooking the city sees infinity burned on a cloud and he calls the the team together.

And all that came with like leach twitch. Yeah. I slug. It's like, oh yeah. I love those kind of things like oly where one thing leads to another, leads to another, and the universe kind of gives you what you need. Mm-hmm. And that's just by paying attention. 

Darin: Absolutely. Is that how you would read stories to your kids?

To put them to bed? 

Shadoe: Yeah. Well, yeah. I, I read Alice in Wonderland to Amber probably 30 times. Yeah. We get to the end and she'd go, can we start again tomorrow? Yeah. [01:08:00] And I tell you all the times I read it, I still don't understand it. Yeah. It's the 

Dave: craziest book. It's messed up industry. Yeah. It's out there.

Darin: Yeah. Well, shadow before we wrap it, is it okay if I ask a couple more quick ones? 

Shadoe: It is fine. It's great 

Darin: talking. Yes. Thank you. We're having a blast, uh, having you here. Uh, our announcer is Dave Le and he's a, a fantastic announcer. When he heard you were gonna be on the show, uh, he got a little scared and I said, we're not replacing you.

You're still going to be our announcer. Uh, it's, we, we love you Dave. But Dave, I mean, he sent me a list, like 20 questions. What type of microphone and do you use noise control and blah. Mm-hmm. Behind the scenes stuff. But the one question he asked that surprised me the most was What was on your lunchbox when you went to elementary school?

Shadoe: I never had a lunchbox in my life. Never. I grew up in Jamestown, North Dakota. Mm-hmm. In count of 15,000 people. And my [01:09:00] family, I had a Norman Rockwell childhood. It was seriously, and for years, I was embarrassed to tell people about it because it was magical. Mm-hmm. My, uh, my dad and mom didn't drink or smoke or use drugs or curse or fight in front of the kids.

There are five kids. I'm the oldest. My, my, uh, parents owned clothing stores, toy stores. They owned a go-kart track. They owned the firework stands on the 4th of July. Like Oh wow. Five of 'em around town and each of the kids would run a different one. Mm-hmm. We had, um, go-karts, tandem bicycles, lake homes and speed boats where we would go water skiing.

It was absolutely magical. And all that led to this. Mm-hmm. 

Dave: What was the question? 

Darin: Uh, well, it was about the lunchbox, but you 

Dave: know, you, yeah. 

Shadoe: So I ate at home every day, so I, I came home from [01:10:00] school every day. And when I was in high school, I would eat at, uh, white drugs or at Woolworth's. Okay. At lunch there.

I never came ho I, I never had a lunchbox or, um, ate in a cafeteria in my whole high school or college. Huh. Wow. 

Darin: Amazing. And you enjoyed North Dakota? My brother lived there for a few years. When he was in the Air Force, he lived in Minot. 

Shadoe: I know Minot well, I, um, I played football in Minot and wrestled in Minot.

When I was a 

Dave: wrestler. Okay. 

Darin: Yeah. 

Shadoe: My, um, yeah, North Dakota is very cool in the summertime. Oh, that's actually very warm. But, and with a lot of mosquitoes, but quite beautiful. Yeah. Uh, winters are long and gray and, well, Chicago, like, you know, it's, they're, it's rough. Too rough for me. Yeah. They're, those, they're way tougher than me.

Darin: Well, you and I have that in common. I was on the wrestling team. I had, uh, guess how many wins I had. Go on. 

Shadoe: Um, [01:11:00] Seven 

Darin: lower one. I had one win. Really? And I remember when, uh, uh, I remember when I won my second Emmy award, I was like, I have twice as many Emmy awards as I have wrestling wins. Damn it. 

Shadoe: I think what's really a good thing, I don't have any Emmy awards.

I have a, I have, uh, some Cleo Awards. 

Darin: Yeah, I saw that. You have Cleos. Yeah. Yeah. That's nothing to sneeze at. That's okay. Yeah. Okay. Well be before we go. Thank you again for being on irritable dancing. And we Yes. Thank you. Just we, this was so much fun. I'm not irritable at all 

Shadoe: anymore. I understand. Work for magic.

Darin: Yeah. So we helped, we're helping people, Mike. We are helping, helping 

Shadoe: people. One guest of the time. I will feel all a glow and chipper the rest of the night. 

Darin: Um, if, if we could ask for your help. So eventually, Mike and I would love to have this podcast made into a movie and we want Paul Rudd and John Ham to play us.

It doesn't matter who are, we're pretty much [01:12:00] interchangeable. Sure. And then we want Brian Cranston to play Dave Le So you have your finger on the pulse of Hollywood. Can you help us make this happen? 

Shadoe: Yeah. Oh sure. I'll just make a couple of calls and go, Hey, it's Chad. So Stevens shout, remember remember we met on the set?

That time you were on the death 

Darin: artist together. 

Shadoe: Yeah. 

Darin: Do you still remember your monologue from the death artist with uh, no. Uh, Anthony Michael Hall. 

Shadoe: Oh, yeah. Uh, yeah. Uh, bucket of Blood, but, 

Darin: well now on the, uh, 

Shadoe: it was called Bucket of Blood. I don't know where they changed it. Uh, a death artist or when that was done.

But when it was first finished, it was called Bucket of Blood. Like it was in the 1950s version. Okay. And, um, uh, 

Darin: you gotta see Bucket of Blood. Your monologue at the beginning was just amazing. And then that's why I wanted to do 

Shadoe: it. Yeah. And the writing [01:13:00] cause, cause he was all full of his like an arson wills kind of character, like all full of himself.

And 

Dave: he 

Darin: was, I don't say the same thing twice. Yeah. It's like, yeah. You tell him shadow. Yeah. 

Shadoe: And that, and I had no, I was going through, um, a, a bit of a rough time at that moment in my life and I was hired to do this. And it was like Michael McDonald was the director and I kind of knew him, but I had no idea how brilliant, how funny he was.

Mm-hmm. It was later with Mad TV than I'd discovered this guy was way crazier than I thought he was during the movie. And all of these other stars were in it. That all, or people that I ended up loving in years to come. Mm-hmm. Uh, it, it was a, a really good experience and very odd, but it's worth, it's worth checking out cuz it's the weirdest movie ever made it.

It is. You think tracks. Have you ever seen Tracks? Tracks is out there. Okay. But Bucket of Blood is, [01:14:00] that's, that's, I mean, come on. Yeah. The guy is inspired by me. He wants to be an artist. So he works in the, in the club. And he's, um, it's Anthony Michael Hall, Anthony, Michael Hall. And he decides that, that what he's going to do is he's, you know, he'll take, uh, you know, like kill a cat mm-hmm.

And use the cat and cover it with plaster and it would be perfect replicas of the cat. And so he ends up, you know, killing people and, and stuffing them. And, and they would go, oh, he's genius. He's genius. Yeah. We must bury them at the gallery. Hilarious. So 

Dave: weird. 

Shadoe: Yeah. All because of me. So I apologize to you for that.

Um, I was full of myself at that time, but the, the poetry that he spoke, I wish I. I, I really had to work to memorize that. It was quite a long solo qui. Yeah. And, uh, but I loved doing [01:15:00] it cuz it was so 

Darin: crazy. Yeah. It was entertaining. Well, shadow, again, thank you so much for being here with us on Irritable dad syndrome.

Absolutely. For everybody out there listening, uh, go to mental radio.net and download every single episode of this radio drama. You'll be glad you did it. Or get the, 

Shadoe: or get the free app Apple and, and Google play. It's, uh, just look up one word mental radio. You'll find a little light bulb with people running over it.

Yeah. And, uh, all of the, uh, meditations are there in separate folders. Mm-hmm. So you could like, listen to a meditation hub sequence. Yeah. There are, um, extras that, that aren't in the stories that you can listen to. That some are 

Mike: pretty fun. Yeah. There's 10 minute versions of the, of the episodes. 

Shadoe: I saw that.

I stopped doing that all the time. Um, But I've been lately thinking that I might break out the stories because some people don't want to sit with something for a half hour. Um, they're like, want little short [01:16:00] things and Yeah. Yeah. All the stories are, you know, usually three to 10 minutes long. Yeah. Yeah.

Um, so I might go back and, uh, and reboot that, but the, uh, the downloads have been going up lately and since the beginning of the year, it's up to, uh, almost 70,000 now. Oh. And looks like it'll hit a hundred thousand within the next month or so. He's 

Darin: surpassed our podcast. That's amazing. You are kidding. No.

Would I kid you? No, 

Shadoe: I don't think you would. No. 

Darin: And if you ever want us on middle radio, just gimme a call. Yeah. 

Shadoe: I may have to add irritable bowel syndrome. What is the name? 

Darin: Irritable Dad syndrome. Yeah. Yeah. We, we've had a couple people reach out to us for, uh, medical advice and we tell 'em, read the title.

It's irritable dad syndromes. Titles are important. Exactly. But everybody out there, uh, you know, go to irritable [01:17:00] dad syndrome.com and you can listen to all our episodes every day. One of 'em is right there on irritable dad syndrome.com and you can go to Patreon if you, if you like the show, if you want to help us out, you can go to Patreon, you can throw us a buck here and there, and you can help us keep the lights on, so to speak, and Yeah.

Uh, yeah. Absolutely. And so, uh, again, we were so excited to have you on Shadow. Thank you so much. Thank you Shadow. And thank you everybody for listening. Enjoy. Love you guys. Oh man. I love you too. And we hope to see you guys next time on Irritable Dad syndrome. 

Dave: You know, I could have been as successful as Shadow Stevens if I hadn't have got all wrapped up in the Amway business back in the seventies.

Anyway, now that he's gone, it's nice to be the top dog around here again. We'll see you next time.

Shadoe: Let us trigger the mental whiplash thing of a bob, the whatnot, and do hickey that kicks off the contemplation of everything that came before when you wake up with the cloud of gloom. And the default mode is an [01:18:00] overload on the morbidity index. Do you dare turn to chronic looking for crave in your chocolate crunch?

Muy. If there's no mighty man around and the Chairman of Crave is full of it, will you have to be on the lookout for a tourniquet named guano? Will you end up being the baam that gets thrown off the top of Epicurean Tower? Or will you turn to the Cleg lights of telepathic euphoria from mental control to deliver pep fortified optimism at a brighter day.

Is having more ever going to bring anything more than wanting more? And does gratitude in helping others give us a better way to go? Maybe meditation will get us away from the mocks and awaken a higher ideal. One thing for sure, decadence is flamboyant and filled with comatose delis, dim whitham, and they all want to gripe and build, get lots.

And unless we put the whammy on 'em, we'll get tweaked by the kick of the big crowd. I'll see you in our next big chapter.