For the past three years, writer, standup comic, and former SuicideGirls’ political correspondent Dave Anthony (a.k.a. SG member FearTheReaper of Asshole Fuckface Roundup fame) has been educating his friend and fellow comic Gareth Reynolds — and an increasingly large audience — on some amazing historical characters and events your teacher somehow omitted to tell you about in class. Turns out there’s a lot of epically awesome history that didn’t make the official curriculum.
Dave and Gareth’s podcast, The Dollop, was first launched in April, 2014. The premise is simple: Each episode, Dave, a strange history junkie, regales Gareth with a spectacularly stupid yet true story from America’s past, and Gareth reacts with appropriate (and inappropriate) shock, awe, and witticisms. The Dollop formula was an instant hit, and three years on it’s been perfectly condensed into a book, The United States of Absurdity. Illustrated by James Fosdike, with a forward by Patton Oswalt, the book features 29 stories found down the back of history’s dirty, messy, and rather sticky sofa.
Some of the stuff Dave uncovers is just plain hilarious, while other inglorious passages from our past vividly illustrate how things a lot of the best minds at the time thought were top notch and the bee's knees, were in fact — with the benefit of hindsight and a little perspective — indisputably batshit crazy. (Performing lobotomies through the eye socket with an ice pick, using electroshock therapy as an anesthetic, and "curing" a president with a fever by relieving him of 7.9 pints of blood, for example.) And there’s the rub. The Dollop isn't just enlightening in terms of mood and history, it also subtly edifies us on the fact that many of today’s newsworthy episodes, with the benefit of time and distance, will similarly seem obviously and utterly insane — if we survive long enough to see them in the rear view mirror!
SuicideGirls caught up with Dave to find out more about what we’ve been missing in the 8 years since his funny-as-fuck sociopolitical musings graced our site thrice weekly.
Nicole Powers: I want to devote a large dollop of this interview to The Dollop and your book, The United States of Absurdity, so give me the Cliff Notes on the last decade of your life. How did you go from being the profanity-spewing Jon Stewart of the SuicideGirls’ blog to a podcast superstar, soon-to-be revered author, and knower of some of the stupidest things in history?
Dave Anthony: Oh, yeah, weird journey. So, when I was at SG I got married. My wife finished grad school with a PhsyD and became a therapist at UCLA, while trying to start her own private practice. We had a kid and she was working 6 days a week. I was at home taking care of the kid and basically going insane. I started seeing comedians. Very few, were doing podcasts. I had no idea what they were. The first one I listened to was Uhh Yeah Dude and I thought of Greg Berhendt because we had done something similar years before. When I first moved to LA during the Dotcom boom, I had been hired to do an internet radio show for tons of money with Greg. So, I called him up and we started a podcast called Walking The Room. We talked about our lives and how they didn't turn out as we had wanted them to, etc. It went on for a while. We did shows in Australia. It had a cult following. But, at some point, I just became tired of talking about myself and we wrapped it up.
Around the same time, I had been working on an idea for a new podcast called The Dollop. And then that took off.
NP: How did The Dollop come about? How did you meet Gareth? And what was the original premise for the podcast?
DA: Well, I have always loved history and I spent a lot of time online just reading shit. So, after talking about myself for so long on the other podcast, I wanted to do a new one that was just a story and had little to do with me. I was going to have a different comedian on every week but the guy I wanted on the most was Gareth Reynolds. He was not well known at the time and I thought he might be the funniest guy I had ever met. We met on another podcast I was a guest on and he was sort of a third host. It was called The Naughty Show. It was a Howard Stern type thing. Girls showing their buttholes and guys describing it. So, I would go on and make fun of the podcast, and Gareth and I got along pretty well. He really made me laugh, so I asked him to do the first episode of The Dollop. And, from the minute I put it up, all the fans were tweeting and sending messages saying, "You can't change this. Gareth is so funny." So I dropped the idea of having rotating comics and it's just been Gareth and myself ever since.
NP: How’s it developed and changed over the years?
DA: It kind of solidified pretty quickly. At first I didn't take as much care with the stories and would cobble stuff together from the internet, but over time I've become much better at research and knowing what I want and what kind of message I am trying to put out with each episode. I think we maybe laughed more early on at each other and I certainly used rougher language. I've toned it down a bit.
At some point, it became bigger than I ever thought it would. It wasn't one thing, it just kept building. And so I think I started to look at it more professionally, as more of a possible career. But it hasn't changed much since the first few episodes. I read a story from American history to Gareth that he's never heard and he reacts. It's a pretty simple formula.
NP: Where do you find all this hysterical history? I haven’t found this level of awesome in any of the history books I’ve read?
DA: I first really got into history when I read A People's History of The United States by Howard Zinn. I've always been into weird stories. I used to read comic books about weird stories when I was a kid and as I grew up I gravitated toward short stories that were about strange stuff. I watched Outer Limits and Twilight Zone. That's been where I've always lived and so it made sense that once the internet came along, I'd spend a lot of time just looking up weird, true stories.
NP: What do you hope this book will achieve? (This collection of nincompoops and folks who’ve made spectacularly bad life choices has definitely made me feel better about my own life!)
DA: As with the podcast, I want people to know there's another version of history we are not taught in school and I want history to be entertaining. I hope it peaks people's interest in the podcast and maybe people can apply lessons of the past to the present. Ha. Fuck.
NP: You dedicated the book to Rube Waddell, who also earned himself a chapter with his dubious achievements in life. Why is he such an inspiration to you?
DA: He's the greatest baseball player ever and I think the ultimate example of what we don't talk about in history that we should. He pitched the same time as Cy Young — for whom the best pitcher award is now named after — but no one knows Rube. Because he was a lunatic. He was as good as Cy Young. But he would run off the mound if a fire truck went by and enjoyed drinking quite a bit. He was not the kind of person we celebrate because he was so different. In my opinion, that's the kind of person we should be celebrating. The oddballs are what make life fun.
NP: I want to thank you, because I had no idea what a charlatan Henry Heimlich was. He basically made up a bunch of medical bullshit for the glory and to get laid. I feel you're dangerously close to performing a public service with that chapter. Is there anything else you’ve stumbled upon in your research that you feel the public needs to know?
DA: That guy was a remarkable piece of shit. I think with some of our more modern episodes of the podcast, like the ones on the Iraq War, Enron, and Ferguson, there's a lot there people don't know and should. And I strongly believe people have lost or not been taught the realities of what workers went through and what they fought for to get us where we are today. Also, George Washington died because they bled him to death and he had other people's teeth in his mouth. Shit was fucked up back then.
NP: It’s very helpful to know how many bananas you need to eat before you die of radiation poisoning. I know you say I’d need to eat 10 million before I approach the hot-zone, but I’m still putting strawberries on my cereal from now on. Has this book put you off anything?
DA: It hasn't. Maybe bloodletting. Stuff like that doesn't effect me too much.
NP: You say high-speed and prolific lobotomist Dr. Walter Freeman performed his last lobotomy in 1967 and his favorite surgical tool of choice was an ice pick. It’s frightening to think we did such horrific things to people — en masse — up until so recently and that there are likely some people that Freeman operated on (there were 3,500 of the poor sods) that are still walking around (albeit zombie-like) today. What do you think the American medical system owes these people and their families?
DA: It's kind of crazy when you go back and look at what was done medically. But for each guy like Freeman, who was waaay too into lobotomizing people, there are advances made. So many people had to be sacrificed though. It's really staggering to look at the suffering we heaped upon people who just wanted to be better — or in a lot of cases, who just wanted to be left alone. You can draw a line from Freeman to the medicines we take today for so many mental disorders. Hard to say if we would have made those advances as fast without guys like him, who were doing horrible things to people.
NP: From one of your podcasts I learned that for an inconceivably large part of history the greatest male minds in the world considered that learning was bad for my lady bits. Is there any other good, bad advice or wisdom I should know as a woman?
DA: Oh sure. If you used the post office you might start fucking dudes. Bicycles made your lady parts come out. So did sports. The first woman who tried to run in the Boston Marathon was almost tackled by a guy, and that was all because they thought running was bad for women. Again, lady parts. In the fucking ’60s. I strongly recommend women go back to wearing foot-long hat pins that they used to use to stab men. Though the hat pins were used to keep on their hats, which were huge because they had actual dead birds in them. We killed millions of birds to put on hats. Also, congrats on being allowed to be awake when you give birth. That's exciting.
NP: Are there any life lessons you’d like to incorporate into your own from this special group of people you’ve studied? Are there any particular good, bad life lessons you’ve taken to heart?
DA: It's a little disheartening at times to see what we've done and what we are still doing. I'm far more of a staunch supporter of worker's rights than I've ever been. I don't know if it's a life lesson, but we have to fight for the little guy. The people who can't, or the people who have to fight so much just to get somewhere, are the people we need to put our energy into helping. The rich can blow me.
NP: If folks are reading this and haven’t sampled The Dollop, where should they start? What episode would you suggest?
DA: Oh, that's a tough one. We've done over 260. Everyone loves “The Rube,” “10 Cent Beer Night,” “Egg Nog Riot,” “Mike Malloy,” “The Jackson Cheese,” and “Oofty Goofty.”
NP: You seem to be particularly huge in Australia — do the Aussies just like having a laugh at mad Yanks?
DA: I think so. I also think they have a hard time figuring out why we are insane. Go to Australia and talk about why we don't have universal healthcare or why we have so many guns and they look at you like you're a lunatic. So, the podcast gives them an insight into how we got the way we are. Now, I should also say, they are crazy too. We are the two step children of the English Empire, which was no walk in the park. So, they have a bit of a fascination with us and the podcast helps clue them into how we got to the place we are today.
NP: Sadly, Trump didn’t make it into the book? Given it’s title, The United States of Absurdity, he’s the book’s fucking poster boy. He’s crazier than 99.9% of the entries — and you’ve got some seriously certifiable people in there! Why did you feel he wasn’t worthy of a chapter?
DA: I've gone back and forth about a Trump one. We try not to be too political. I do have a message but it comes through in story and so many people are being hit over the head with politics today, it seems best to say what I want to say without being blunt. But he'd be a hell of an episode. I'm still deciding whether or not to do one on him.
NP: I miss Asshole Fuckface Roundup so much — especially in these trying political times. If you were writing a column this week, who would be your top pick and why?
DA: Man, I've gotten even more disgusted with politics since then. This week would be… That piece of shit Congressman from Utah who had to get surgery on his foot because he had some old pins in it that needed to be taken out, so he rode in on a leg scooter to Congress to cast a vote to take away Obamacare. He's a psychopath. How are we not eating him?
NP: What’s next for you, Gareth, and The Dollop?
DA: We are talking about a TV show based on the podcast. We've been working on it for a while and gone through a couple of different companies. But hopefully we can find a good match soon. And we're on tour just a bit still. Philly and DC in July.
NP: Is there anything that you wished I would have asked? If so, what — and what’s the answer?
DA: I just have an answer. Squirrels.
The United States of Absurdity will be available where all good books are sold on May 09, 2017. You can find The Dollop on iTunes, Podbean, Podbay, Soundcloud, and Libsyn . If you like what you hear, please support Dave and Gareth's hilarious history project on Patreon.
