
This week, Elon Musk revs up his chainsaw to slice through bureaucracy… and our hearts. Donald Trump comes down on Ukraine and Mitch McConnell walks straight into retirement. Tom Green bets the farm on farms. Nori Reed goes hunting for great news. And Lovett and his guests share their country rants until the cows come home. Upcoming shows: crooked.com/events
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John Lovett
Love it or Leave it is brought to you by Hydro. I am so excited because I just got a hydro. It's in my house. Wow. It's in my house and I'm very excited to use it. First of all, it looks great. It's like a really cool looking thing and I'm like very, very, very excited to give a shot. This is also a preview of coming attractions, but it looks great and it's great because like I was really was like the other day I was supposed to go to a gym class canceled because the rain caused a leak in the gym. On all the treadmills.
Tom Green
Come on.
John Lovett
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Tom Green
I love rowing.
John Lovett
It's great for you. It's a full body workout. It's great for your back. It's, it's, it's less on the knees. It's a beautiful piece of equipment. I'm sticking to the plan of getting a full body workout all from the comfort of my home with hydro. Head on over to H Y-R-O-W.com and use the code Love It. To save up to $475 off your hydro pro rower. That's H Y D R O W. You get it like hydro with a w on the end dot com. Love it and save up to $475. Hydro.com love it. What's up, Los Angeles? Welcome to Love it or Leave it live from Dynasty Typewriter, the White House is celebrating Black History Month and ending diversity programs, which actually makes sense. One way to honor the civil rights movement is by making sure we still need one that went exactly as we discussed. Tonight on the show, Tom Green leaves the wilderness to answer all of your wild questions. So start thinking now about what life advice you would want to receive from Tom Green.
Tom Green
Hmm.
John Lovett
Nori Reid is here to share some gay old news. And then we put on our overalls to wrap it all up with a good old fashioned spin of the rant wheel. But first, let's get into it. What a week. Just when you thought things couldn't get any better, Elon Musk stopped by CPAC today. That's the conservative conference and simultaneous closeted gay orgy where he gestured wildly with a chainsaw on stage.
Tom Green
This is the chainsaw for bureaucracy Chainsaw.
John Lovett
Yeah, it's really giving third act of A Star Is Born vibes. Anyway, how's everybody doing? Everybody keeping up with their gratitude journals? Keeping those New Year's resolutions? Musk had a number of important messages for the attendees.
Tom Green
Yeah, we're fighting the Matrix big time here. Yeah, but that's gotta be done.
John Lovett
Sounds like somebody took the red pill and then like a hundred other pills. Here's Musk ruminating on his favorite topic.
Tom Green
I am become meme. Yeah, pretty much. I'm just. I'm living the meme. It's like there's living the dream and there's living the meme, and it's pretty much what's happening, you know?
John Lovett
Ah, yes, I am become meme from the part of the Bhagavad Gita about me specifically killing myself. For those listening at home, Musk is wearing sunglasses indoors during the day. That's the international sign for this guy. Should definitely have backdoor access to all the databases. I wore sunglasses inside once during a taping of Pod Save America in 2017 because I thought I was incredibly hungover. But it turned out I had a rapidly expanding MRSA infection that landed me in a Texas hospital for four days. Do you think that's what he has? Yeah. True fans of the show remember that. Does anyone remember that? Betsy remember that. Betsy remembers that. All in all, a perfect addition to a perfect week, as Doge and the Trump administration continued to conduct a sloppy wave of mass firings across the federal government, in some cases backtracking after realizing, whoops, we fired the guy who stops the bombs from going boom. So if you're still in line to be fired by a tweaking South African billionaire, stay in line. One of the 1,000 Veterans affairs workers whom Doge kicked to the curb. Luke Graziani, a disabled army veteran with four kids who worked at the Bronx VA Hospital after serving in the army for 20 years and deploying on four tours to Iraq and Afghanistan. Does Italian count as DEI anymore? Asked a sweaty Elon Musk, who was also trying to figure out why a nuclear warhead was beeping. And as various aircraft keep touching, which they're not supposed to do, hundreds of employees at the FAA have been fired. And while those firings didn't include air traffic controllers, they did include people responsible for maintaining critical air traffic infrastructure. So when your Spirit air flight loses a wing over the Gulf of America, just remember that in the three minutes it will take to plummet your death, about half of your fellow passengers will be Trump voters who, while having what feels like an eternity to face oblivion, will be smashed by jagged, shattering fuselage. Having learned absolutely nothing anyway, I'm heading straight to D.C. to register my concerns about all this. If the weather is favorable and the horses stay true, I shall be there in three to six months. Meanwhile, the Department of Energy fails fired more than 300 employees from the National Nuclear Security Administration, then scrambled to hire them back after members of Congress pointed out that some of them were tasked with overseeing the country's nuclear weapons. Also about to be accidentally fired, several ICBMs. On Tuesday, the USDA announced that it had mistakenly fired several employees who were working on the federal bird flu response and was trying to hire them back. Unfortunately, it was too late. The employees had already accepted high paying jobs working for the bird flu lobby Revolving door Thousands of employees across the Department of Health and Human Services were notified of their firing over the weekend in what some have called a Valentine's Day massacre. A little disrespectful to the original Valentine's Day massacre, which was the time I got food poisoning during a romantic post Korean barbecue hot air balloon ride. To be clear, it was my fault. I mixed up the tongs. Jim Jones not that Jim Jones, the FDA top food official, resigned on Tuesday in response to the firing, saying in a letter to the FDA's acting commissioner it would have been fruitless for me to continue in this role. Do you think he consciously made a food pun? Or is he just so passionate about food that he did it without thinking? I think it's the second one, probably. Anyway, don't think of it as losing confidence in food safety. Think of it as gaining fun new M and M flavors like chromium and rat. In an interview later On Tuesday, Jones told Stat News that the firing of 89 staff members responsible for food safety had effectively dismantled the division. But think of all the tiktoks you'll be able to watch on the toilet at the supermarket. Well, you think about how after you wash your hands, you have to handle the key attached to a checkout divider. I want to talk about this. You see, the reason we chose supermarket is it's the kind of place where you really only have to use the bathroom if it's an emergency because home is almost always the next stop because of the perishables. So if you're in there for a loosey doocy, a lot went wrong. America's number one late night political gay live comedy podcast, whatever. The White House defended the firings, of course, with Press Secretary Caroline Levitt, no relation, saying in a statement, there are a number of bureaucrats who are resistant to the democratic process. Not as resistant as the E. Coli in our spinach is about to be, but resistance nevertheless, continued Levitt, no relation. President Trump is only interested in the best and most qualified people who are also willing to implement his America first agenda on behalf of the American people. It's not for everyone, and that's okay. No, no, no. Pineapple pizza is not for everyone. Pizza topped with hexane and bits of conveyor belt is for no one. Look, it is easier as a society to make heroes of people than it is of systems. We lift up inventors and soldiers and leaders of all kinds. We celebrate bravery and we celebrate brilliance. It's a style of entertaining and conveying our values, instinctive in us, not just older than our complicated, interconnected, older than writing itself. Every one of us has heard of the Wright brothers. We've all heard of Amelia Earhart because we love stories of women getting what they deserve. But we but we don't learn about the committees that crafted the laws that created the FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board. Flight was never the miracle. Bats and birds and bugs can fly. Flying safely was the miracle. And that was about invention and genius and courage for sure. Plus pissing in your pants, which was a big part of it early on. But it was also about meticulous, deliberate, complex systems of inspections, redundancies, tests, training processes, fail safes and investigations that made flying so safe. We take it for granted. We haven't been constantly worried about planes falling out of the sky or food that's labeled allergy safe, sending kids into anaphylaxis because they're little weaklings and Democrats are so bad at Reaching people who need to be reached and lacking the credibility to persuade anybody. Once we do that, no one takes it seriously when we talk about how bad it could get. We tried explaining why cigarettes cause cancer, but you still thought it was cool. So now you're gonna have to smoke a whole carton of cigarettes while also eating room temperature scallops at a seafood buffet with tape marks on the window where the health inspector rating used to be. Meanwhile, Doge has been trying to access a highly restricted IRS system that contains sensitive data about every taxpayer, business and nonprofit in the United States and. All right, I'm just going to get ahead of this. That bouncy castle was a legitimate business expense, and I stand by that. I needed it for work. The top official at the Social Security Administration also resigned over the weekend after refusing to grant access to sensitive data, which includes the medical information of Americans who have applied for disability benefits. All right, I'm just going to get ahead of this. I really did have dyslexia, but I overcame it by being really, really smart. Gonna get a lot of misspelled, angry comments on that one. An engineer at the General Services Administration has resigned in protest after a Musk ally demanded access to Notify.gov, a system used to send mass texts to all Americans. Just a heads up, if Elon Musk starts texting us, I'm going off the grid. If you want to hear this show, you can find me at 7:30pm on Thursdays in the San Gabriel Mountains, where, who knows? Good luck. Just follow the laughter. The sounds of laughter. Sometimes it's lighter than you want. That's not your fault. That's their fault. Then on Thursday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth instructed the Pentagon to cut their budget by $50 billion next year, or 8%. What are they cutting? Come on. Landmines and planes that can't fly in the rain? Nope, it's anything related to climate change, DEI and other, quote, woke programs. Yeah. Senator Tommy Tuberville was enthusiastic about the plan, saying, and this is a direct quote, I wouldn't be against them taking it from a Pentagon to a trigon. Cut a couple sides off of it, Ken. I'll take things Osama bin laden said in August 2001 for 800, please. I wouldn't be against them taking it from a Pentagon to a trigon. A trigonic. Only word for it. Only word for it is try gone. And I'll say it again, if you are losing to the dumbest motherfuckers on Earth. Maybe they're not the dumbest motherfuckers on earth. Maybe they're the second dumbest. Trigon. I'm gonna try to kill myself. Fucking Trigon. Are you kidding? Republicans are reportedly alarmed by cuts to agencies even conservatives deem too essential to sacrifice, like the FAA and the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration, or noaa. It's all fun and games until you remember that you have to fly back to your home district through the atmosphere, said Senator Lisa Murkowski. We all want efficiencies. There is a way to do it. And the way these people have been treated has been awful in many cases. Awful, referring to the firing of 1,000 National Forest Service workers. Only who can prevent forest fires. Not those guys anymore, that's for sure. Now let's see what the Vice president, Jorts Dealer Vance, had to say about all this.
Tom Green
What is the essence of masculinity? You could answer this in so many different ways, but when I think about me and my guy friends, we really like to tell jokes to one another.
John Lovett
Somebody get these guys into a podcast studio now. Lock the doors from the outside. What is the essence of masculinity? JD Tell us. What is it, this essence of masculinity? What you and your guy friends get up to? It's the essence. As all masculine men toss a. They're constantly thinking about the essence of their masculinity. Where it is released, where it is best experienced. Hey, straight guys, where do you manifest your masculinity? Best you find. Where is its essence? Fucking fag. Despite Jesus. No, go on, tell me more about masculinity. Come, guzzling freak. No, I'm just kidding. Does it come from this side or this side? The essence of masculinity. Oh, I think there's a little. There's a little essence of masculinity in your fucking chin. Unbelievable. But despite criticism from Republicans and declining approval ratings, the Trump White House is forging ahead, announcing an executive order creating the Make America Healthy Again Commission, chaired by Health and Human Services secretary and human pepper grinder RFK Jr. The order includes a promise to assess the prevalence and threat of drugs like Ozempic and selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs. If you think planes falling out of the sky is bad, wait till you see what happens when you take away SSRIs from Gen Z. Removing. Removing Lexapro prescriptions is like step one on the New York Times cooking app recipe for making perfectly al dente Luigis Speak. All right, this is what you want. You want it a little vulgar, A Little darker. I got it. We were too sweet at the beginning. All right, all right, I'll follow. Speaking of needing Health and human services, Mitch McConnell announced his retirement on Thursday, which was also his 83rd birthday. He said he plans to spend more time falling down the stairs with his family. Wow. It says here he just took a big job with the Gravity Lobby after all their fights. Revolving door. McConnell served seven terms in the Capitol and one outside while it was being built. Telling you, this guy's old. How old is he? McConnell went to the beach from the movie Old. That makes you old. And said, I remember when this beach was segregated. McConnell gave his farewell address from the Senate floor, though it had started at the podium. And we do have a clip. We do have a clip. It's a turtle falling down the. For those at home, it was a turtle falling down the stairs. Meanwhile, New York City Mayor Eric Adams defended himself this week against accusations that he offered to help Trump's anti immigration efforts in exchange for the Justice Department dropping corruption charges against him, saying of the allegation, that is what you're seeing right there, right now, a modern day Mein Kampf. What? What are you saying, friend? Who are you in this analogy? In fairness, I do the same thing. Whenever I'm reading a book, I constantly find myself seeing connections to it in the world. Like how just last week I was like, this sandwich is a modern day Unabomber's manifesto. Speaking of armies marching across Europe, Trump has decided he's had it up to here with Ukraine, here being the new border between Poland and Russia. They don't actually have a border yet. You get it. All right. It all began when Volodymyr Zelensky criticized the United States for meeting with Russia without inviting Ukraine officials to talk about ending the war. Look, we've all been there. You open your Instagram, Russia and the United States are out at drinks together, even though you asked the United States if they wanted to go out earlier. And they were like, I'm tired. Long week. And you're like, what the hell? And they're like, it came together at the last minute. And they're like, maybe if you weren't so quick to be a fucking butthurt asshole, we'd invite you more. And then it's like, now I need to stop being upset to be noticed. Better bring my A game or no more poker nights for me. What are we talking about? Trump then escalated his rhetoric, posting on Truth Social. Think of it. A modestly successful comedian, Volodymyr Zelensky talked the United States of America into spending $350 billion to go into a war that couldn't be won, that never had to start, but a war that he without the US And Trump will never be able to settle a dictator without elections? Zelensky better move fast or he's not going to have a country left. First of all, Zelenskyy isn't a modestly successful comedian. I am a modestly successful comedian. Zelenskyy was on television. Of course, it's absurd to ask, why haven't you had elections while your country is in the middle of fighting an unprovoked invasion and half the population has fled? They haven't had student council elections at Palisades High either, but that doesn't make outgoing senior Claudia Shang a tyranny. Mike Pence criticized Trump for claiming Ukraine started the conflict with Russia, which began when Russia invaded the country in February of 2022. But he then hustled back down to his milk cellar to continue hiding from pardoned insurrectionists. The vast majority of Republicans, including Republicans who once spoke out about the importance of supporting allies in the fight against Putin stayed silent or offered the barest of criticisms. All these fucking Republicans who have been reading Churchill biographies and World War II histories through every vacation of their entire lives can't see that they are in the midst moment in history and are failing completely. But I will remember until I eat a runny yolk and die. And finally, employees at a New Hampshire grocery store discovered a venomous Ecuadorian snake in a shipment of bananas. Last week. Things went from bad to worse when the snake offered a banana to one of the female employees and her single bite of it made all the other workers realize that they were naked and imbued with sin from the moment they're born, a New Hampshire Fish and Game official told reporters. We're lucky enough that one of the workers at Market Basket was familiar with reptiles and ladies. He's single, which he blames you for. Up next, he's a lean, mean pranking machine. It's Tom Green.
Tom Green
Hey, don't go anywhere. There's more of Love it or Leave it coming up.
John Lovett
Love it or Leave it is brought to you by Ship Skis. If you've ever gone on a ski or snowboarding trip, you know that traveling with your gear can be a hassle. Thankfully, Ship Skis came up with a solution to get all of your winter gear to your destination. We're not just talking about your skis and snowboards. They'll even ship your boots, jackets, snow pants, goggles all of it including your luggage. So you can focus on the adventure, not the hassle. Skip airport stress and costly airline fees. With complimentary insurance, real time tracking, dedicated support and on time delivery. Just schedule your shipment, attach your label and skip. She's handles the rest. Delivering your gear directly to your destination. Ship Skis offers wet white glove shipping for ski and snowboard gear. Travel worldwide without luggage. Ship SKIS delivers to 180 countries for hassle free gear. Free journey Ship Skis is trusted by thousands of skiers and travelers. Related 4.8 out of 5 on trust pilot and has been featured in Forbes Travel and Leisure, Free Skier and Ink. You know when also whenever you're traveling with with stuff like skis and ski boots, it's such a pain. But then it'd be so imagine just like not having to think about it all and you just have your little backpack with your books and your little toys and your treats, you know, and not all the stuff.
Tom Green
Too much stuff.
John Lovett
Right now, Ship Skis is offering our listeners 20% off your first shipment when you go to Shipskis.com and use the code Love It. Go to Shipskis.com and Use the code Love It. To get 20% off your first shipment and save yourself the hassle of this ski season. That's S H I p s K-I-S.com make sure you use the code. Love it. So they know we sent you. Please welcome to the stage. His bum will be on the chair shortly as the one and only Tom gre. Hi, thank you for being here. What's the dog's name?
Tom Green
This is Charlie. Everybody say hi to Charlie.
John Lovett
Charlie, come on over here. Tom Green.
Tom Green
How are you? Hey, John, thanks for having me on this show.
John Lovett
Thank you for being here.
Tom Green
This is Charlie. Charlie's my dog.
John Lovett
Yeah, yeah. Comes with you everywhere.
Tom Green
Yeah, I've been traveling around, touring with my dog. Things are going real good for me.
John Lovett
That's so fun. You get to travel with your dog.
Tom Green
Yeah, yeah. She comes on stage with me at my standup shows. This is not her first time on stage. She's one of the most seasoned stand up comedy dogs in in the business today.
John Lovett
Especially after that dog from Frasier died.
Tom Green
Yeah, well, thanks for bringing the mood down.
John Lovett
No, everyone hated that dog.
Tom Green
Okay, fuck that dog.
John Lovett
So, hi, thanks for being here.
Tom Green
Great to be here. Great to be here.
John Lovett
So you're the star of a new comedy special called Tom Green. I got a mule.
Tom Green
Yeah.
John Lovett
What is a mule?
Tom Green
A mule is a half horse, half donkey. It's a hybrid animal. So you take a horse and a donkey and you make them breed two different species. Breed. It's perverted.
John Lovett
And can I ask a question? Does it matter which direction? In other words, does it matter if it's a. Because if it's a tiger and a lion, you end up with a lion and a liger and a liger and lion.
Tom Green
Generally a male donkey and a female horse.
John Lovett
Right. Because a horse would be too big and the donkey would explode.
Tom Green
It's just more that. It's just. No, it's more that a donkey is willing to procreate with another species, but a horse doesn't really want to do that. Still too weird for a horse.
John Lovett
Right, right, right. The horse is a little bit pickier.
Tom Green
Yeah.
John Lovett
That tracks with their kind of energies.
Tom Green
In cartoons, they're extremely smart.
John Lovett
Really?
Tom Green
Yeah. People say stubborn as a mule, but they're actually extremely intelligent animals. The hybrid aspect kind of creates a smarter animal.
John Lovett
What is a project where you would say, I don't want a donkey or a horse. I need a mule?
Tom Green
So I lived in Los Angeles. I'm from Canada. I lived in Los Angeles for 20 years. Four years ago, during the worldwide global pandemic.
John Lovett
Sure.
Tom Green
Remember it? I moved back to Canada and I got a farm, and there was a couple of old barns on the property, and I thought it would be kind of fun to get an animal to ride around on. And I thought a mule would seem kind of funny.
John Lovett
Yeah, it's funny. It's a funny animal because it can't reproduce.
Tom Green
And it just seemed like. But it seemed I would look funny too, you know?
John Lovett
Right.
Tom Green
But then the mule I found is a beautiful mule. She doesn't look funny at all. She's very majestic. Fanny is her name.
John Lovett
Oh, that's a nice. That was my great grandmother's name. Yeah, well, she was deaf.
Tom Green
Okay. Okay, cool. Yeah, interesting. I mean, it's.
John Lovett
She was. She met her. She met. Her husband was deaf, too, but I never met him. He died before I was born.
Tom Green
Yeah. Well, yeah, I don't think it's any really any relation to your grandmother at all.
John Lovett
Yeah, she was. Well, she was from the old country.
Tom Green
Okay. Absolutely.
John Lovett
Well, but more back to your.
Tom Green
Ride her around in the wilderness or.
John Lovett
No, she was so frail, but she taught me sign language.
Tom Green
Okay.
John Lovett
And she would let me ring the doorbell that lit up the whole apartment.
Tom Green
Oh, that's so nice. Your grandma sounds nice.
John Lovett
What's. What was your. Is Fanny's your mule? Fanny still alive?
Tom Green
Fanny. I just got her. I just got her. Yes. Oh, yeah. I just Got her like, a year and a half ago.
John Lovett
Oh, wow.
Tom Green
Mules live to be up to, like, sometimes 40 years old.
John Lovett
No.
Tom Green
Yeah, absolutely. So she'll be alive longer than you, probably.
John Lovett
Wow. Okay. I mean, I'm pretty healthy.
Tom Green
Yeah. She'll outlive.
John Lovett
Okay, she'll outlive me.
Tom Green
She'll be around another 40 years.
John Lovett
Wow.
Tom Green
You think you got another 40 years?
John Lovett
Danny will dance on my grave.
Tom Green
I definitely. It's very possible. Yeah, she'll definitely. Like, I have a donkey as well. They live to be 50 sometimes, so. And she's only three, so I'll definitely. They'll definitely outlive me, but I'll find them a good place. It's beautiful thing, man. I love it. I love being back home in Canada. We ride around in the wilderness every day, Fanny and I, and Charlie runs along with us. Don't you, Charlie? Don't we have so much fun? We have chickens, and with the price of eggs right now, it's going to be pretty good.
John Lovett
Yeah, that's. Yeah, because. Well, yeah, because I get like a.
Tom Green
Dozen eggs a day out there.
John Lovett
Holy shit. Yeah, that's a. That's a golden goose. But a chicken with eggs, real eggs.
Tom Green
Absolutely. It's a good time for that.
John Lovett
Hey, do you think that the young, you would think this version of you tracks.
Tom Green
Possible? Possible? I mean, I've always liked the outdoors and, you know, going out into fishing and nature and things like that, so it's possible. Yeah, it is. I never imagined myself having a mule.
John Lovett
Right.
Tom Green
But. But I'm enjoying it a lot. Yeah.
John Lovett
Yeah. But, you know, horse.
Tom Green
Well, I do have a horse as well. Yeah.
John Lovett
Oh, you do. So you have a horse, a donkey and a mule.
Tom Green
A horse, a donkey and a mule and a baby horse.
John Lovett
Huh?
Tom Green
And six chickens and six guinea hens. But it's. It's a good thing. I love it. And. And so we filmed this new television show there for Prime Video. Everybody tune in to check it out on Amazon Prime. It's about me trying to figure out how to ride a mule. You know, for the first six months, she would not turn left for the first six months.
John Lovett
Stubborn.
Tom Green
So we just go out for a spin. But. But because they're stubborn. Well, it's because they're very smart. So they kind of figure you out. They read your energy. And she determined that I had no idea what I was doing. And that, I think, made her not trust, you know, my decisions to, like, want to ride off this way or whatever. So she was kind of hesitant. But as we've Grown to know each other more and she's built a trust with me. Then things are going pretty good.
John Lovett
That's nice. What is the difference?
Tom Green
You don't give a fuck, do you?
John Lovett
No, I'm interested. Well, I was. I'm thinking more about. No, I do. I'm interested in this. Well, I'm interested in the qualities that make a mule different than a donkey and a donkey different than a mule different than a horse. What did you. Why not ride the donkey?
Tom Green
Well, donkey's too small.
John Lovett
Really?
Tom Green
Yeah.
John Lovett
What about a burro? What's that?
Tom Green
That is a donkey in Spanish.
John Lovett
Okay.
Tom Green
It's a Spanish word for donkey.
John Lovett
And as we all know.
Tom Green
Well, you know, when you get a donkey and a mule, you start to get into it, and I've learned a few things about it. Like a donkey. Donkey has 63 chromosomes.
John Lovett
63, wow.
Tom Green
A horse has 64 and. No, sorry. A mule has 63, a donkey has 62 and a horse has 64. So when they become the hybrid, you know, you need to have an even number of chromosomes to reproduce. Did you know that?
John Lovett
Yeah.
Tom Green
Yeah. So when they have the two species, they have this sort of odd number of chromosomes, and therefore they aren't able to reproduce.
John Lovett
That's why.
Tom Green
So that's the difference between a donkey, horse, and a mule. Chromosome count.
John Lovett
Yeah.
Tom Green
Yeah. I didn't count them myself, but I did read about it.
John Lovett
No. Yeah, you read about it. It's hard to count. They're so small. We covered adapting to life As a farmer, I wanted to ask you about how you feel now.
Tom Green
The coyotes killed my chickens.
John Lovett
What?
Tom Green
Yeah.
John Lovett
What?
Tom Green
Yeah. I'm not a good farmer.
John Lovett
Hey, hey, don't blame yourself. Don't blame the victim.
Tom Green
The coyotes killed.
John Lovett
Fucking sociopaths. This show is very anti.
Tom Green
Coyote killed. They killed all of them. But Loretta. Loretta was the lone survivor. It was Shania, Patsy, Dolly, Loretta, June and Anne. And I love them very much. Loved them, I guess.
John Lovett
But they got.
Tom Green
And they're all dead now. Loretta's dead now, too. Yeah, I'm not a good farmer. I got two extra chickens to kind of keep Loretta company. And they pecked her to death.
John Lovett
What?
Tom Green
Yeah. I didn't know they did that. But I'm not a good farmer.
John Lovett
But sorry about the coyotes.
Tom Green
I renamed them Manson and Bundy. The two nameless. The nameless chickens. And then I was so mad. Cause I loved Loretta so much, I couldn't even really stand looking at them. So I just left the coop door open. And they're dead now, too.
John Lovett
Wow. Wow. Coulda Did. And. Oh, that's the coyotes. You sort of worked with the coyotes then. It sounds more like you kind of.
Tom Green
Let it happen in the second case. Yeah, it was just. But not in the initial case. It was a unpredictable attack.
John Lovett
Right. They're smart, the coyotes.
Tom Green
They are, they are actually smart. Yeah, they really are. They were able to determine that I was not home. That's when they, they saw the car, they saw the truck leave and they came in when, when I wasn't there. And it was carnage, for sure. Situation. But I'm not trying to bring the mood down with all the dead animal.
John Lovett
Stuff, but, I mean, these people eat chicken.
Tom Green
Yeah. Yeah.
John Lovett
So it's like they can pretend to be sad, but I'm surprised they do. But are you vegan?
Tom Green
No, no, I'm not. But I figured here everybody was.
John Lovett
Yeah. Based on their attitude. I want to ask you about how you feel now about this incredible Ebert and Roper review of Freddie Got Fingered.
Tom Green
Oh, yeah, Ebert and Roper. Yeah.
John Lovett
Yeah. Remember this?
Tom Green
Even the, even the sort of the, the pinch hitter guy, still, he, he, he, he hated it too.
John Lovett
Yeah.
Tom Green
Roper. It was Ebert and Siskal.
John Lovett
Sisal. Then Siskal died, they brought in another.
Tom Green
Guy and he hated it too. Yeah.
John Lovett
Got fingered with Tom Green making David Spade look like Jim Carrey and Jim Carrey look like Lawrence Olivier. Vomitorium of a movie starring Green as Gourd. An obnoxious who makes it his life's work to freak out his dad Played with teeth gnashing scorn by Rip Torn.
Tom Green
That's nice. Honestly, I love. Of all the things in my 30 year career that you could have played, it was the worst review I ever got.
John Lovett
Fact. Does that bother you?
Tom Green
No, no. I'm just thinking it's kind of interesting.
John Lovett
We thought it was funny.
Tom Green
Yeah, no, it is funny for sure. If you're not me.
John Lovett
But I. But I.
Tom Green
It's fun because now, you know. Freddy Got Fingered was just inducted into the Criterion Collection. Thank you very much.
John Lovett
Was it really?
Tom Green
Yes, it was. Absolutely.
John Lovett
Well, I just think that like there was a certain.
Tom Green
I'm not making that up. I know it sounds like I probably am.
John Lovett
There was a certain, there was a certain kind of like stick up their nose to a certain like, of like the critics to a certain kind of comedy that we're all now nostalgic for. That's why we wanted to play it.
Tom Green
Yeah.
John Lovett
No, because I think that you've. I know you are.
Tom Green
I understand. It's funny.
John Lovett
I feel like you're not a guy that takes himself Too. Seriously?
Tom Green
No, no, no, no.
John Lovett
That hasn't been your vibe.
Tom Green
No, no. I didn't cry for weeks after that review.
John Lovett
Did. Did Roper make you cry? Did the Cisco understudy Roper make you cry?
Tom Green
Well, no, it was just. It was. It wasn't a fun experience, though, getting that kind of feedback because. Because, you know, you work hard on a film and, you know, a film, and I wrote that and directed it and spent several years working on, then these. These assholes come out and shit all over it, so.
John Lovett
Eunice at the orgy. That's the old saying about critics.
Tom Green
Yeah. Yeah. But it's okay. You know, the thing is. It's okay. It's. It's kind of. It's kind of was supposed to be a polarizing movie. Did anybody see it?
John Lovett
Of course. See?
Tom Green
Yeah. See, like 11 people.
John Lovett
So these are millennials.
Tom Green
They still got an audience out there now. It's funny. It's amazing. Actually, in the last 15 years or so, since, you know, came out 20 plus years ago, but the last 10 years or so, it's become something that people actually come up to me and say that they actually liked it.
John Lovett
Huh.
Tom Green
That's pretty good.
John Lovett
I watched you in a Canadian show where you have to not laugh.
Tom Green
Oh, yeah.
John Lovett
And you're a killer on that show.
Tom Green
Lol. Canada. Yeah. Lots of fun. Also on Prime Video. Check that out.
John Lovett
It's actually. So it's a show where a bunch of really funny people have to try to make each other laugh, but if you laugh, you get kicked out of the room and you're just. You're a monster on that show.
Tom Green
Thank you. Thank you. It was fun. It was fun.
John Lovett
You just can't be stopped. And you're so. You have that kind of. Where you're always funny. Always. Even right now. It's right now that's magical. What a cool thing. And now you get to live with a mule.
Tom Green
Yeah, no, it's. It's. It's amazing. You know, it was a fun show. That show kind of led to me doing these three shows on prime that I directed all three of the shows. And the last thing I directed was Freddy Got Fingered. So, you know, these new shows are going to be good.
John Lovett
But how many horse penises are in these shows? More than zero.
Tom Green
I bet all the animals are female now, so.
John Lovett
Oh, that's too bad.
Tom Green
But we can get some penis in there for you for next season.
John Lovett
Wow. Thank you. Thank you. Now I'm excited. Now I'm excited for season two.
Tom Green
Absolutely. You know, you can't Leave something somewhere to go.
John Lovett
Right. To the horse penis.
Tom Green
Yeah. We have somewhere to expand to horse cock for season two.
John Lovett
For John for season two. And you know what that sound means. You've been this famous comedian, wild eyed comedian and now you're this a farmer and all that goes along with that.
Tom Green
Yeah, yeah.
John Lovett
And so we want to see what if people have advice that they want to solicit from either version.
Tom Green
Absolutely.
John Lovett
From either version.
Tom Green
No problem. I'm happy to take questions from the audience here.
John Lovett
So we welcome questions and you could seek advice. Maybe it's from the MTV Chaos era, Pure id, Tom Green, or the older, wiser, more relaxed, kind of mule centric Tom Green you see before you today.
Tom Green
Absolutely. Yeah.
John Lovett
Raise your hand and Bill is out there. Take a couple questions. Hi, what's your name? Amari. Amari. Amari. Amari.
Tom Green
A M A R I.
John Lovett
A M A R I. Yeah. If you could pick one food from your farm to hoard for the apocalypse, what would it be?
Tom Green
One food from the farm.
John Lovett
That's a good question.
Tom Green
One food. A food from the farm to hoard. Well, I'm growing radishes and peaches and, you know, but one food from the farm. Probably the mule.
John Lovett
Yeah, probably the mule.
Tom Green
I just figured it'd be funnier to say I'd eat the mule than the radishes. Right. So no.
John Lovett
Would you ever eat the mule in real life?
Tom Green
I would never eat the mule unless it really came to it, you know.
John Lovett
So then the answer is yes.
Tom Green
Probably eat the donkey first.
John Lovett
I'm not saying would you eat the mule.
Tom Green
I ride the mule, so she's sort of a she. She does provide a good service for me. I'd probably eat the donkey first and then maybe work my way through Charlie and. No, no, we wouldn't do that. I'm just kidding. Just kidding. I'm just joking. I would never, never eat the dog. Charlie would eat me. We would do that. Charlie, eat me. No. Anyways, what a weird question you would ask Amari. Come on, Amari.
John Lovett
Come on, Amari.
Tom Green
Talking about animals and all this, which animal would you eat first? You know, I can't believe you would ask me which animal I would eat first. I mean, they're not food, they're pets. I love them. No, no, I know that's not the question you asked. I'm just joking. I'm just spinning it.
John Lovett
What a weird question, Amari.
Tom Green
I don't grow a lot of fruit, but I do have fruit trees on the property. There is something nice to answer your question, seriously, there's something I don't say it was the only reason I moved out to the country. But, you know, you can actually self rely on yourself out there and grow food. And there's lots of fruit trees and I have a garden and there's, you know, if you needed to, you could survive quite nicely out there without groceries for probably indefinitely. Water comes out of the well in the ground. And there's something kind of. I don't know, it does feel actually kind of comforting in this day and age in these unpredictable times. So.
John Lovett
Yeah, that is nice. When I started to think that a pandemic might be coming in February, I did buy a lot of canned tuna.
Tom Green
Yeah. Oh, yeah.
John Lovett
And I didn't know what. I guess I didn't. I guess I thought that things could get really bad and I would like tuna more than I used to.
Tom Green
Yeah, yeah. It's just because it was a nice choice protein.
John Lovett
Right.
Tom Green
That was in a can. That would be. Yeah, yeah, I did that too. I stocked. So that's kind of how I ended up moving back to Canada was I was here in LA and I got started getting all the canned stuff and beans and non perishable items and I'd order my groceries on Instacart and I'd spray them down with Clorox bleach on the front lawn. And then I'd stream that on Instagram so my fans and followers would be safe.
John Lovett
It's always about content.
Tom Green
And then I'd read the comments and they'd say, you stupid Hollywood piece of garbage, go back to Canada, bitch. And so I did. I went back to Canada.
John Lovett
Wow. Maybe. Maybe they were just saying like kind of a fun gay way, like, bitch, go back to Canada. Well, maybe, you know, maybe they were being playful. That's how I would say it could.
Tom Green
Have been being playful.
John Lovett
Go back to Canada. This person had a question.
Tom Green
Hello there.
John Lovett
Hi. Actually, honestly followed you for the last probably 25 years. My oldest brother's big fan of the Tom Green show. My roommate's huge fan. Honestly, Freddy Got Fingered is one of the funniest movies ever.
Tom Green
Thank you so much.
John Lovett
Absolutely hilarious.
Tom Green
Thank you. Appreciate it.
John Lovett
If you were ever given the chance to do like a sequel, soft reboot, whatever. What would you want to do?
Tom Green
Freddy Got Fisted.
John Lovett
Wow. That's. You really raised the stakes in a sequel. Like how Speed 2 was on a.
Tom Green
Boat kind of, you know.
John Lovett
You know, because you can't get off.
Tom Green
Right. Exactly. Well, you can. And Freddie got fisted.
John Lovett
You can get. Right. Nice. What is the.
Tom Green
There is this time you can get off.
John Lovett
Okay, what is the movie. What is the movie where you're kind of the narrator from the dorm?
Tom Green
Road trip.
John Lovett
Road trip.
Tom Green
Yeah.
John Lovett
The way you stole that movie and it was like there's this kind of vaguely normal romp going around, and then you're out of your fucking mind.
Tom Green
Yeah, yeah.
John Lovett
None of that had. They couldn't have been written down. You were just doing things in a room with a cage.
Tom Green
I don't think I was supposed to put the mouse in my mouth.
John Lovett
Right.
Tom Green
Yeah, that was not in the script, but there was a scene where I had to feed a mouse to a snake and it just sort of. It crawled into it, into my mouth on its own, so. Because I was kind of dangling it and then it kind of crawled into my mouth. And so I just figured, oh, well, let's just go with it. You know, we're improvising.
John Lovett
Yes. And rat.
Tom Green
But that was. Todd Phillips directed that movie who went over to do the hangover and joker and all these great movies. Old school. So that was his first movie and it was exciting time.
John Lovett
So, yeah, I like that.
Tom Green
Absolutely.
John Lovett
Anybody else want to talk?
Nori Reed
I don't think this is what you're really going for, but I'm genuinely curious. How did Loretta survive the initial slaughter and then.
John Lovett
But in the second part, honestly, Good question.
Tom Green
It's interesting. She was antisocial, so the chickens would free range and they would usually all stick together. But Loretta was kind of an outlier. She would go off on her own a lot, and I think that's what saved her. I think the coyotes came in, they got all five of them, and she was over here on a fence post or something. And so just kind of next time you get invited to that party you don't want to go to, just, you know, do what Loretta did and just stay on your own. But yeah, she was generally kind of stuck to herself, and I think she was just in the right place at the right time.
John Lovett
But then she was pecked to death.
Nori Reed
By her new colleagues, or whatever you call them.
Tom Green
Absolutely. Yeah.
Nori Reed
So clearly was not standing alone at that point.
John Lovett
It's sweet to think of chickens that make eggs together as colleagues working towards the same goal. Do you think they have a zoom where they're talking about if they're hitting.
Tom Green
Their quot so was the question how did that happen or how did that occur?
John Lovett
Loretta, like, avoided the coyotes, but pecked to death by her new friends?
Tom Green
Yeah, no, absolutely.
John Lovett
It's sounds like Loretta wasn't that great of a hang.
Tom Green
Yeah. Yeah. Well, sometimes when you introduce new chickens to each other when they're older. They don't get along, so they have to be all kind of grow up together and then they're a flock. But when you bring in two new ones, they. They kill each other.
John Lovett
Yeah, My dad's had trouble making friends at his retirement community.
Tom Green
Yeah, yeah, it's. It's exactly like that.
John Lovett
Nice. Wait, the coyotes were in LA or Canada?
Tom Green
This was in Canada, yeah.
John Lovett
Oh, okay.
Tom Green
Lots of coyotes and wolves and bears on the property up there.
John Lovett
We have coyotes here?
Tom Green
Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. They're a little scrawny down here. The coyotes are healthier up in Canada.
John Lovett
Yeah, yeah.
Tom Green
Lots of chickens.
John Lovett
Yeah.
Tom Green
Lots of idiotic newbie farmers up there to come in and take advantage of.
John Lovett
So did you learn anything from it that you would. To do differently?
Tom Green
Yeah, because I do have new chickens now, and there was sort of some mistakes were made for sure. Yeah, clearly. No, like I said, they do actually observe the property. The animals observe the property and knew that I was gone.
John Lovett
Isn't that interesting? I noticed this when I started seeing. When I moved to la. I was like, wow, the coyotes are genuinely wily. Yeah, they are. They're wily coyotes.
Tom Green
Absolutely. Absolutely.
John Lovett
You know, and they're. They're smart and. And other animals run away from people.
Tom Green
Yeah.
John Lovett
You know, if you see a squirrel and a squirrel, the squirrel runs until it can't see anymore.
Tom Green
Yeah.
John Lovett
Any other animals, they run away as far as they can. Coyotes, they step back, but they're not. They don't need to run all the way away because they know. They know that you're not going to chase them.
Tom Green
No.
John Lovett
You know, they were smart sociopaths.
Tom Green
So now, like, it's true. It's true. They are extremely intelligent. So what I do is I leave the first of all, if I know I'm gonna be leaving that day, I don't let the chickens out. So if I know I'm gonna be gone for an extended period of time, I don't let the chickens out. And then when I do have to leave while the chickens are out, I might leave the radio on. Playing some talk radio and then that coyotes feel that there might be some people around and maybe I'll play your podcast actually, next time.
John Lovett
Oh, that'd be nice.
Tom Green
They'll probably come in, though, to sit around and listen.
John Lovett
It sounds like there's two people plus, like a small group. They're not really laughing. How many are there? It's hard to tell. Two, between five and 30 people. Sometimes it sounds like more. It usually Sounds like more people.
Tom Green
Yeah, no, it sounds. Sounds good. Sounds like you're killing it here tonight. This is awesome, man. Yeah, really cool. Thanks for having me.
John Lovett
I like your dog.
Tom Green
Thank you. Isn't she good? Isn't she good? So we're on tour right now, so if you want to come see Charlie and I perform, we're actually going to be up in Colorado and then traveling. We're actually traveling in a camper van and cruising out across the country and performing as we go. And on our days off, going out into the wilderness into the American Southwest and doing a lot of photography and videography for my YouTube channel. So you can go check that out. If you want to see Charlie and I sitting on a mountaintop somewhere, you can go look at hours and hours of that, which is quite exciting.
John Lovett
Everybody, you can watch Tom Green, I Got a Mule. Tom Green country. And this is the Tom Green documentary. The three things were three films. We're just talking about on Prime Video. Tom Green, everybody.
Tom Green
Thank you.
John Lovett
Tom will be back for the rant. Will we come back? Nori Reed. It's feeling queer and spreading cheer. We'll be right back.
Tom Green
Hey, don't go anywhere. There's more of Love it or Leave it coming up.
John Lovett
Love it or Leave it is brought to you by Helix. I love Helix mattresses. Helix mattresses improve my sleep. I have a Helix dawn luxe. I'm a huge fan of it. I really been doing a better job the last couple of weeks. Honestly, given all that's going on has had an impact on my sleep. But for the last few months, if not longer, like ever since, I've gotten a Helix mattress, but I've just been done a better job of going to bed early. And for a while before I had a Helix mattress, I was taking occasionally I was taking sleep pills of various kinds. I cut all that out and now I'm just getting a great night's sleep on my Helix mattress. The helix lineup offers 20 unique mattresses, including the award winning luxe and ultra premium elite collections. The Helix plus is a mattress designed for big and tall sleepers. Helix Kids, a mattress designed for growing bodies. Endorsed by child sleep experts, Helix knows there's no better way to test out a new mattress than by sleeping on it in your own home. That's why they offer a 100 night trial and a 10 to 15 year warranty to try out your new Helix Mattress Plus. Your personalized mattress is shipped straight to your door free of charge. And all you have to do is take the Helix sleep quiz. To find the perfect mattress in under two minutes. I took the quiz and as I said, I got the dawnluxe because I wanted something firm because I sleep on my side and my stomach. It's a great product. Go to helixsleep.com love it for 27% off site wide. That's helixsleep.com love it For 27% off site wide. This is their best offer, exclusive to our listeners and only available by visiting heligsleep.com loveit Please welcome to the stage your favorite trans it girl in mind, the incredible Nori Reed. Hi. Hi. I'm doing this, I'm just. Come on in. Nori Reid, everybody. Good to see you. Hi.
Nori Reed
Hi. I don't know what questions you have, but I just want to talk about farm animals.
John Lovett
Do you?
Nori Reed
Yeah, and I'm just like.
John Lovett
Yeah, but you're from Kentucky. I am rural. Yeah.
Nori Reed
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Rural, yeah.
John Lovett
So you, you've dealt with hogs and pigs and goats and turkeys and mules.
Nori Reed
And that's just the people. No, I rode horses growing up.
John Lovett
You did?
Nori Reed
I did, yes.
John Lovett
Oh, wow.
Nori Reed
Yeah. So no, I'd eat the horse.
John Lovett
I'm just kidding. You also have a new stand up show here at Dynasty next month called Nori and Tien Fix the World.
Nori Reed
Yes.
John Lovett
All right, well, what's the plan?
Nori Reed
We wrote that title a few months ago and we could not at all anticipate how bad things would get. We originally were supposed to do it, but then the fires happened.
John Lovett
Right, right.
Nori Reed
So then it got pushed back and. Should we change the title is my question.
John Lovett
I think it's more appropriate, more trenchant and appropriate than ever.
Nori Reed
Okay. Okay.
John Lovett
The planes aren't safe anymore. And we didn't think about that one. We didn't say in October and then the planes won't be safe. That wasn't one of the things we thought about at all. Never fucking came up. Yeah, the planes are gonna bump.
Nori Reed
But the. I will say the way that the Toronto, the Delta plane landed was kinda queer.
John Lovett
No, for sure.
Nori Reed
It was kinda, you know, a kind of queered landing.
John Lovett
Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Right. It definitely. That plane served.
Nori Reed
It served.
John Lovett
It ate.
Nori Reed
Yeah, it really ate.
John Lovett
That plane ate. That plane ate. I also, like, look, I refuse to click on a single link about it because it's like I found out what I need to know from the single picture and the fact that nobody died. Those are the two facts. The image and then nobody died. Any other detail I don't really care to dive into. So I just am stuck with What I'm imagining in my mind was just like, obviously it's the scariest fucking 30 seconds of your whole goddamn life because you're upside down and. And you're just not ready for that.
Nori Reed
No.
John Lovett
And then. But. But what I always. What I keep thinking about is there's the moment where you're upside down and it's like, it's seatbelt time, baby. Yeah, here we go.
Nori Reed
I mean, all I could think about is sometimes, you know, when they. You know, whenever they're like, put your seatbelt on, we're about to land. Sometimes I'm just like, you know, like, I. Sometimes I pretend to, but then I don't. I would have. I would have fucking died. Because I don't. I don't listen to the. To the flight attendants whenever.
John Lovett
What I'm obsessed with. What I'm obsessed with is the way in which even in an emergency, like the brokenness of our society, like, intercedes and that, like, I just know that the plane would be upside down. Everybody is doing the. You're just hearing click, click. Sorry for that. You know, just like, click, bloomp. And just people just. They're upside down and then they're just sort of. No one's practiced this, right? Just landing, however, getting fucked up.
Nori Reed
Yeah.
John Lovett
And then you look and you're like, somebody's. There's gonna be. Everyone's looking around to see is somebody else grabbing their laptop, you know? Cause I'm about to be stuck at Toronto for hours of interviews and where is my stuff and all the rest? I want my fucking laptop and my charger. Where are those? They're in my bag. You're not supposed to take your bag. And as we now, there's. If the rule is nobody takes their bag, I'm happy to leave my bag. But the second one person grabs their bag in the emergency, then there's two categories, winners and suckers. And I want my fucking bag. So I'm looking around, and if anybody so much as touches their bag as we're walking on the ceiling of this plane to get out, I am gonna fucking lose it. I am gonna lose it.
Nori Reed
And you know, there's gonna be one guy with his guitar just kinda like, it's so big. And he's just like, no, it's my dad's guitar. And it's like, shut up.
John Lovett
Nora, you recently posted to your Stories lamenting that just because you're a trans person, you have to be functionally an activist instead of what you want to be. A comedian that tells jokes.
Nori Reed
Yeah.
John Lovett
I agree with that. Which is why we wanted to give us all a break with a twist on old classic we're calling gay, as in happy news. We here, we here at Nice, we here at Love it or leave it are inundated with horrible stories. Every day I walk by. So especially on like Wednesdays and Thursdays, I'll walk by Hallie and Sarah's desk and they're working on. They're writing the show and it looks as though they've seen the video in the ring. And they have a certain number of time to get down what they've seen. They have ghostly white expressions. They're easily startled because they're reading the news. You know, for you and for me.
Nori Reed
Say thank you.
John Lovett
So we wanted to do a segment dedicated to the fun, weird, silly, interesting, lighthearted news stories that we used to be able to cover before the devil himself and his robot children invaded the Oval Office. Nori, you and I are going to trade off punchlines while everyone in the audience kicks back for a second, enjoys, and in between we say, but up. But up. Yay news. Okay, you know, all right, do you want to kick us off?
Nori Reed
Okay. A hungry baby seal was rescued from a street in Connecticut and sent to the aquarium in Mystic, Connecticut.
John Lovett
Nice.
Nori Reed
Yeah. Well, they could tell the seal was hungry by how desperately he was trying to reheat Mu Dang's nachos.
John Lovett
But up. Bad, up. Bad up news. In other news, a Delta flight flipped completely upside down and burst into flames as it landed in Toronto. Luckily, all 80 people aboard survived. We have a clip just so you are.
Nori Reed
There's people outside walking around the aircraft there.
Tom Green
Yeah, we've got it. The aircraft starts upside down and burning.
Nori Reed
Why was that funny?
John Lovett
I don't know. It's because it's such a. It's so matter of factly describing really like upside down is just that everything's gone wrong and then you're throwing on the. And burning and burning. The pilot and his son were ultimately able to be switched back into their real bodies by that old lady in the cave, while having learned that being an adult is harder than it looks, but so is being a kid. Bada ba ba ba ba ba. Yay news. I'll be honest, Nori. We did struggle to find enough good news for the whole segment, but those people survived. So that's nice and we did our best, which is the only thing that matters.
Nori Reed
Okay, here's one. Cynthia Erivo will star as Jesus in the musical Jesus Christ Superstar at the Hollywood bowl in Los Angeles. Okay. So buy your tickets now, but remember, the first 10 rows are in the splashed zone. Wait, what?
John Lovett
Is there a splash zone in Jesus Christ Superstar? I don't know what it's about.
Nori Reed
I don't understand. And. But is it because she's so talented?
John Lovett
Well, so, okay, you want to. Let's get into it. Here is what. So, originally there was going to be a joke that was something like, so watch as Cynthia turns water into wine and the seats of lesbian viewers into water. Something about them all getting horny for Cynthia Erivo. But I couldn't crack it, as you can tell. And so then I thought, oh, wouldn't it be funny if Jesus Christ Superstar was like a Gallagher show where you got ponchos in the first 10 rows unrelated to anything sexual, Just something that goes on in the musical. Because I don't know anything about Jesus Christ Superstar and Andrew Lloyd Webber, let's face it, is kind of silly. It's kind of silly, these musicals by him. So then I thought, oh, that's funny. And that was it. That was the full extent of it. Okay, this one's not good either. A week after Trump named himself the Kennedy Center Chair, the center canceled its planned Pride concert from the Gay Men's Chorus of Washington, dc. It's replaced by Elon Musk's garageband, debuting their new album Music to Play on youn Way Home from Family Court with hits like that Bitch and you can pull off that hat. Yay news.
Nori Reed
Oh, okay. In other Cynthia Erivo news, this week, the Wicked star was announced as this year's Tony's host. In June. The Tonys are this gay couple who were supposed to stay with me, but Cynthia's got a pullout couch and lives closer to Universal Studios. Anyways. Meanwhile, this year's CMT Awards will once again host the spread of COVID.
John Lovett
Okay, this one's bad too. The Trump administration erased the T and Q from LGBTQ on the website commemorating the Stonewall National Monument, which now only celebrates LGB history. Not sure why they're called the Feds, because they certainly aren't eating. I went to the Stonewall website just to check it out, and it was like there was clearly just stuff that had been pulled down off the website. But then there was said, like, here, click here for a 15 part video series on the history of Stonewall. I was like, how'd they manage to scrub that? You click on it and because technically it's part of the National Parks, it's just a squirrel saying that you've come to the wrong place.
Nori Reed
But that squirrel trans.
John Lovett
I will say this. It is possible for a few freaks inside the Trump administration to raise trans people from a website about New York. But it's worth remembering that Trump isn't the first would be tyrant whose advisors tried to make people afraid of trans and nonbarian people. Here, look at this. Okay, that is an image from the maxims of Tahotep, who was a vizier to the pharaohs in Egypt over 4,000 years ago. It is a warning about the seductive power of femboys over 2000 years ago. Ovid's Metamorphoses had a poem about Canaeus raised as a boy who undergoes a magical gender transition at the hands of Poseidon. Ovid uses he him pronouns. And that's not the only gender transition in that poem, though it is very long. There's a story of Iphas and there's the story of Leucippus.
Nori Reed
Wait, wait, that sounds like. Look, a piss.
John Lovett
Like, look at this.
Nori Reed
I thought we were just having fun. Moving on. Speaking of ancient Egypt, British researchers tasked with describing the smell of mummies for science described it as woody, spicy and sweet, admitting we were surprised at the pleasantness of them. Of course, the real test will be how do they taste?
John Lovett
Hey, Nori, can I ask you a serious question?
Nori Reed
Yeah, of course.
John Lovett
How you doing?
Nori Reed
Fine.
John Lovett
Okay.
Nori Reed
How are you doing?
John Lovett
I'm okay. I'm worried about the trans people.
Nori Reed
Yeah, I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, It's a weird, weird time.
John Lovett
Yeah.
Nori Reed
Living in.
John Lovett
We were. I went to Florida to visit my parents and my sister and my brother in law and nephew and to go to Disney World, which is something that happens to me from time to time. Now, the reason I bring that up is because we were in Florida, a state that famously has a anti trans governor, and my partner is trans, and they're very nervous when we have to like go through the airport and like they need to go to the bathroom. And it's like, great. A bunch of people voted for Trump and now my partner has to be fucking nervous at the airport. And because trans people are basically completely invisible in the world, they are not. They are represented as an object on the news. It's about a few people acting as though they're scared of trans people in the bathroom when nothing bad is happening. But the daily experience of trans people is being afraid of things that actually do happen, which is people accusing them of being in the wrong bathroom when they're in public spaces and So I was just seeing how you're doing.
Nori Reed
Yeah, I mean, it is a really, really hard time for trans people. We're somehow always on the front lines of everything. You know, Trump's first, one of his first executive actions was targeting the trans community. It happened so quickly and I don't know the outcomes, I don't know what faith to put in institutions and systems. What I do have is faith in trans people and trans community. And we've always been here and we're never leaving and it doesn't matter. The access that we have to healthcare, institutions, things like that, it truly doesn't matter. We will survive, we will exist, and no one can ever take that away from us. So that's how I feel. Yeah.
John Lovett
Bop bop, bop, bop, bop, bop, bop bop. Yay. News Nori, thank you so much. Trans it Girls will be at the Moon Tower Comedy Festival on April 18th. Tickets are available now. So funny. So good to see you.
Nori Reed
So good to see you. Thank you.
John Lovett
When we come back, we're taking that doggone wheel for a doggone spin.
Tom Green
Hey, don't go anywhere. There's more of Love it or Leave it coming up.
John Lovett
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Tom Green
All right, all right, all right. Hello. Hello.
John Lovett
I know I've gotten a bad rap as just another annoying, albeit well chiseled, coastal elite, but I can get down in the mud just as well as the rest of them. And since both of my guests come from round them rural parts, we're gonna take a sweet old gander what the fuck at this wheel. And yap our traps about what's hounding our hineies in a segment we're calling the Ruuuuuhl. Nice, Kennedy.
Tom Green
I like that graphic.
John Lovett
That's a good one. That's a good one. That's a really good one.
Tom Green
Spent a little more, got more attention for sure.
John Lovett
For sure. Kennedy, why don't you go on there. I can't do what the fuck? And give this a sweet little spin. Yuck.
Tom Green
Okay, I see. Oh, okay.
John Lovett
It has landed on Nori. What's your rural rant?
Nori Reed
Oh, rural you with your beautiful back roads and the beautiful trees and all the beautiful animals. How dare you, you rural area. And how beautiful the sunsets are. And the skies are. Fuck you.
Tom Green
Yeah.
John Lovett
Nice. Got him.
Tom Green
That was good.
Nori Reed
Yeah, thank you.
John Lovett
That was good. You got em? Got em. Dead. They're dead. You got em. I like that. Let's spin it again. Oh, is that not Tom Green?
Tom Green
That's me. What's your rant, Tom, about living in a rural area?
John Lovett
If you'd like.
Tom Green
Not enough sushi. You know, I lived Ventura boulevard adjacent for 20 years.
John Lovett
Lot of sushi there.
Tom Green
And it's really hard to get some spicy tuna on crispy rice out there in the rural wilderness of Ontario. I miss my spicy tuna on crispy rice. Lots of mosquitoes, lots of bugs, lots of insects and pigeons.
John Lovett
I don't go for crispy rice. I think it's better before it's crisped.
Tom Green
Yeah, yeah.
John Lovett
I've never been into it. I've never been into the spicy tuna crispy rice fad craze. Never liked it.
Tom Green
Not enough toro sashimi. Would that strike a little more close to home?
John Lovett
I'm just sharing.
Tom Green
No, I mean yellowtail sashimi is there in the woods.
John Lovett
Not that I didn't understand it. I can relate to your experience by, by conveying, you know, you go to.
Tom Green
Sushi to get something raw and you get a spicy cooked rice. It's just sort of not what it's sort of.
John Lovett
But you can't, you can't get good sushi up there in Ontario.
Tom Green
Not really. No, not really. Not in my neck of the woods. We are out in the middle of nowhere. So there's not a, there's not a Katsuya out there.
John Lovett
But the bears eat, they get the salmon.
Tom Green
That's true. That's true. I could not.
John Lovett
And that's in a sense, go direct to the source.
Tom Green
Go direct to the source. Yeah, you're right. This is a good point. Yeah. But I like, you know, you were right. I need to follow the bears around. They know where the sushi's at.
John Lovett
I once, I used to be a speechwriter, used to have a very serious job and we wrote a joke for President Obama about we were trying to simplify the government and so our way of doing it was not to unleash a fucking whacked out billionaire inside the fucking machine. It was to kind of ask Congress for help. Stupid us. And so mistake. Should have just done it from fucking put on a crown and been like, do it. That's what the American people really want. And cheaper eggs, which they cannot have. But not allowed. No cheaper eggs. Tax cuts for the rich.
Tom Green
Go to my website, I've got Eggs for half price. Half price.
John Lovett
Tomgreen eggs. XXX for some reason now. So we were trying to make a. Make a joke about how complicated the government could be. And so basically the joke was that the Interior Department handles the salmon when they're in the freshwater, and the EPA handles the salmon where in the salt water. But you won't believe how complicated it gets once they're smoked. And it got about that response, and it got that from Congress. It was during a State of the Union, okay. And it really fucking biffed. I want to know another joke that biffed. I'll tell you.
Tom Green
Is that true, though? The EPA is when they're in the saltwater.
John Lovett
It was Interior when it was fresh. And it was. Might have been a different or different arm of the government, but it was one agency for the ocean and one agency when they were in the fresh water. But those agencies found out what we were saying too simplistic. So there's some way in which it was kind of too simplistic. The other funny time was we were trying to. Also we were trying to cut some government spending for what, I don't remember. But we were talking about how there was an expensive program that required a huge expense to clean up milk if it had ever. That if a milk tanker crashed on the highway, he had to treat it like a chemical spill. And the joke we had said, hey, it's a real shame that taxpayers are crying over spilled milk. And again, it did as well as that. But I tried to get a different joke in which nobody wanted. And the joke was, how big of a problem can it be if you can clean it up with Oreos? It's a better joke. But it was, I think, a little too kind of weird for the State of the Union.
Tom Green
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Why was it necessary to even talk about the milk spill in the State of the Union?
John Lovett
Politics. That's politics.
Tom Green
Things are a lot of other things that might be a little bit more important.
John Lovett
It was a little example of a bigger problem.
Tom Green
Yeah. Yeah. Is it really a chemical sort of spill?
John Lovett
No, I think it was how it was. That was the. It was a kind of expensive boondoggle of cleaning up milk. If it were to suppose it was an example of government excess that we recognized at the time. And again, we tried to handle it through compromise and working with Congress fools that we were.
Tom Green
Yeah, yeah.
John Lovett
You just give a billionaire a chainsaw. All right, let's spin it again.
Tom Green
All right.
John Lovett
It has landed on my face. And my rural rant is I spent some time living in Rural Connecticut. During the pandemic, actually, there was a moment in Los Angeles where there were fires, and so you weren't allowed to be inside, but then you also weren't allowed to be outside. And that really broke my brain. And so I said, we're going to Connecticut, where my then partner's family lived. And so we went to Connecticut for six months. And I'll tell you, the Starbucks was so far. And so. And so every morning, I would borrow the keys and drive to the Starbucks. It was like 18 minutes each way.
Tom Green
Yeah. Yeah.
John Lovett
And it was like, just make coffee here. How? You know, it's impossible.
Tom Green
French press.
John Lovett
Well, so they had a coffee machine, and I hated it. I didn't like what came out of there. And so I just drive to the Starbucks. Sometimes I mix it up because it was next door to a Dunkin Donuts.
Tom Green
Right, right.
John Lovett
So I sometimes go there instead. That was my rural experience.
Tom Green
You sort of living is. That was when you went rural. You kind of came back and became a Dunkin Donuts coffee person.
John Lovett
I'm still a Starbucks girl.
Tom Green
Yeah.
John Lovett
Okay. And now they make them write a little note on every cup. And I'm just like, you don't need to do that for me. I don't need that from this relationship. I'm not looking for a deeper connection. I'm just here for this drink I get every day.
Tom Green
Why don't you try a French press? You think, yeah, you'll like that.
John Lovett
You just. But you press it.
Tom Green
Yeah. And it's delicious. It's good coffee.
John Lovett
Yeah. So that was my rural experience. We also had chickens. We also had chickens. Great eggs.
Tom Green
Oh, isn't it nice?
John Lovett
People think that I didn't understand how much better the eggs from a nearby chicken were compared to the eggs that. From the chickens that are far away. The local egg, the nearby egg. My goodness, it's a much better egg.
Tom Green
You don't even have to refrigerate them.
John Lovett
No.
Tom Green
And they are fresh. Delicious.
John Lovett
They are fresh. They're really good.
Nori Reed
Would you ever get a cow for milk?
Tom Green
I would get a cow, actually. Yeah. Just because I think they're kind of cool. Yeah. I would get a cow. I could see myself getting a cow at some point.
John Lovett
Utterly fascinating. And that's our show. Thank you so much to Tom Green and to Nori Reed. We'll see you next week at dynasty. There are 619 days until the midterms. Have a great night and have a great weekend.
Tom Green
Thanks, John. That was super fun. Thank you. Thank you. Great stuff.
John Lovett
Thank you. Thank you.
Tom Green
Thank you.
John Lovett
Love it or Leave It It's Love it or Leave It Love it or Leave it is a crooked Media production. It is written and produced by me, John Lovett and Lee Eisenberg. Kendra James is our executive producer, Bill McGrath is our producer and Kennedy Hill is our associate producer. Hallie Kieffer is our head writer, Sarah Lazarus, Jocelyn Kaufman, Peter Miller, Elaine Pierre, Will Miles and Mohamed El Sheki are our writers. Evan Sutton is our editor, Kyle Seglin and Charlotte Landis provide audio support. Stephen Colon is our audio engineer and Milo Kim is our videographer. Our theme song is written and performed by Shur Schur. Thanks to our designer Sammy Cadorna Reeves for creating and running all of our visuals, which you can't see because this is a podcast. And to our digital producers David Tolus, Claudia Sheng, Mia Kelman and Matt de Groot for filming and editing videos. Each week so youo can and our production SAP is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East.
Podcast Summary: Lovett or Leave It
Episode: The Trigon of Sadness
Release Date: February 22, 2025
Host: Jon Lovett & Guest: Tom Green
In the latest episode of Lovett or Leave It, hosted by Jon Lovett from Crooked Media, former Obama speechwriter and comedian Tom Green joins the stage to delve into a mix of political satire, personal anecdotes, and lighthearted segments. The episode, titled "The Trigon of Sadness," aired on February 22, 2025, and offers a blend of sharp political commentary and comedic relief.
Elon Musk at CPAC and Government Firings
The episode kicks off with a satirical take on recent political events, notably Elon Musk's unexpected appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). Jon Lovett mocks Musk's flamboyant gestures, likening them to "the third act of A Star Is Born" (03:20). This sets the tone for the episode's critical examination of current political climates.
Jon proceeds to critique the Trump administration's mass firings across various federal agencies. He highlights the incompetence and haphazard nature of these dismissals, pointing out that "they fired the guy who stops the bombs from going boom" (02:36). Lovett sarcastically urges listeners to "stay in line" if they're awaiting their turn to be terminated by figures like Doge (04:06).
Dismantling Critical Agencies
The discussion moves to the impact of these firings on critical infrastructure. Lovett notes, "The Department of Energy fails fired more than 300 employees from the National Nuclear Security Administration," illustrating the chaos within government operations (03:54). He emphasizes the precarious state of national security and essential services due to these abrupt personnel changes.
Satirical Remarks on Government Efficiency
Lovett employs humor to underscore the absurdity of the administration's actions. Comparing the situation to a "Valentine's Day massacre," he mocks the lack of strategic planning, stating, "Once we do that, no one takes it seriously when we talk about how bad it could get" (04:06). This critique is further reinforced by his commentary on the Department of Health and Human Services' mass firings, likening them to a "Valentine's Day massacre" (05:00).
Exploring the Essence of Masculinity
A significant portion of the episode delves into the concept of masculinity. Jon poses the question: "What is the essence of masculinity?" inviting Tom Green to explore the subject (14:13). Green responds humorously, attributing masculinity to activities like telling jokes among male friends (14:29).
Comedic Banter on Gender
The conversation takes a playful turn as both hosts riff on the topic, blending humor with insightful observations. They discuss the societal expectations of masculinity, with Green jesting about it originating from one's chin (24:42) and Lovett adding witty remarks about masculine expressions (28:23).
Life as a Rural Farmer
Tom Green shares his personal journey from urban living to embracing farm life in Canada. He introduces his mule, Fanny, and discusses the challenges and rewards of farming (23:04). Green humorously recounts incidents involving coyotes attacking his chickens, leading to the demise of his prized hen, Loretta (29:45).
Animal Anecdotes and Farming Challenges
Green's tales of farm life are both heartfelt and comedic. At one point, he describes how the coyotes "killed all of them" (29:47), portraying the harsh realities of rural living. His interactions with farm animals, particularly his mule and dogs, provide a mix of humor and genuine affection for his livestock (25:34).
Farm-to-Table Perspectives
The discussion touches on the benefits of self-sufficiency and sustainable living. Green emphasizes the satisfaction of producing his own eggs and the quality difference compared to store-bought options: "They are fresh. Delicious" (71:09). This segment underscores a growing interest in self-reliant lifestyles amidst societal complexities.
Gay News and Positive Stories
Nori Reed joins Jon and Tom to introduce a segment dedicated to uplifting and quirky news stories, dubbed "gay news." They present a series of humorous takes on recent events, blending satire with positivity. For instance, they joke about a baby seal being rescued and rehomed, adding comedic scenarios like the seal trying to "reheat Mu Dang's nachos" (52:41).
Playful Takes on Current Events
Reed and Lovett offer a playful spin on serious topics, such as Cynthia Erivo starring as Jesus in a musical, adding absurd humor to lighten the mood: "Cynthia turns water into wine and the seats of lesbian viewers into water" (53:46). These segments provide a break from heavy political discourse, showcasing the hosts' versatility in handling diverse content.
Handling Personal Challenges
Throughout the episode, personal anecdotes add depth to the hosts' narratives. Jon recounts a serious situation where he wore sunglasses indoors during a podcast taping, mistaking it for handling a MRSA infection (04:06). These stories humanize the hosts, making the political satire more relatable.
Community and Activism
Nori Reed discusses the struggles of being a trans activist, highlighting the ongoing challenges faced by the trans community. She poignantly states, "We will survive, we will exist, and no one can ever take that away from us" (59:40), emphasizing resilience and community strength amidst adversity.
The episode wraps up with a blend of humor and earnestness. The hosts reiterate the importance of community support and progressive values, while also inviting listeners to engage with upcoming live shows and events. Jon summarizes the episode's themes, balancing the political critiques with personal stories and comedic interludes, leaving listeners both entertained and thoughtful.
Political Critique: The episode offers a scathing yet humorous critique of the Trump administration's handling of federal agencies, highlighting the chaos and inefficiency resulting from mass firings.
Exploration of Masculinity: Through comedic dialogue, the hosts explore societal definitions of masculinity, blending humor with insightful commentary.
Transition to Rural Life: Tom Green shares his experiences transitioning to farm life, providing both comedic and heartfelt stories about rural challenges and the joys of self-sufficiency.
Uplifting Segments: The "gay news" segment introduces lighter, humorous takes on current events, offering a balance to the heavier political discussions.
Human Resilience: Personal stories from the hosts emphasize resilience and community strength, particularly highlighting the trans community's ongoing struggles and triumphs.
This episode of Lovett or Leave It masterfully intertwines political satire, personal narratives, and comedic segments to deliver a rich and engaging listening experience. Whether dissecting governmental inefficiencies or sharing humorous farm anecdotes, Jon Lovett and his guests provide a thoughtful yet entertaining commentary on contemporary issues.