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You guys remember that time when Ty Burrell died on on the screen. Oh my god.
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Hey, what's going on everybody?
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For First We Feast, I'm Sean Evans and you're watching Hot Ones.
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It's the show with hot questions and even hotter wings.
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And today I'm joined by Emmy Award-winning actor Ty Burrell.
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You know him as Phil Dunphy in ABC's mega-hit Modern Family, now in its ninth season.
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And you can catch him on Mouthfeelings, a podcast where they talk about the things that go into your mouth and the feelings that come out of it. It's a great tagline.
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It's great to have you in the seat, Ty. Welcome to the show. Thank you. I appreciate it.
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I'm very, very, very scared.
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Do you know what you're getting yourself into?
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I feel like everything I'm saying is going to be famous last words, but I I love hot food.
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I don't really have a very subtle palate.
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Like, I don't know I'm eating something unless it's hot. Yes.
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Wouldn't it be great if I checked out right now?
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Like, mother So, you got your big break as an actor a little bit later in life, which left plenty of room for some odd, offbeat jobs.
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When you were working as a forest firefighter, did you ever get a call that made you fear for your life?
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Fire made me fear for my life.
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I was a terrible firefighter.
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I was soft as cotton candy and had no business being a forest firefighter.
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Actually, the very first call we ever got was a semi with its gas tank on fire. Whoa.
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And it was a two-man crew.
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Oregon's not a big state.
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He was pushing us closer to the fire and I was pushing us away from the fire, and we formed a sort of a teepee.
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We were having a reverse tug-of-war on the hose, and I was bigger, and I won, and we ended up going very, very far away from the fire.
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I tried to just I tried to spray it from like 50 yards away. It was more like this.
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How many of these do you do a week? You know, we go weekly. So, Okay.
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if we bank a bunch of episodes, then I'll have a chill couple weeks.
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But, if that gas tank runs low, then I have to just start stacking them.
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Like I did this yesterday.
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curious about is when you are stacking.
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Let's get to the stacking.
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It's really the cross that I bear, you know, it's the grave that I've dug for myself over here.
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This is a hero's journey.
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This is a hero's journey.
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I appreciate you saying that.
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So, the internet seems fascinated with Phil'sophy, and then you've talked in the past about how sometimes the storylines in Modern Family can mirror your experiences as a real-life father.
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So, with that in mind, what I want to do is bounce some quotes off of you from other iconic TV dads, and I'm curious if you think it's good parenting advice or bad parenting advice.
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I'm a terrible person to ask about parenting advice, but Well, let's see how it goes. do it.
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This first one is from Homer Simpson counseling Lisa.
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If you don't like your job, you don't strike, you just go in every day and do it really half-assed. That's the American way.
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Um it it is the American way.
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I guess it's I mean, it's Homer Simpson.
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It has to be good advice.
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This next one is from Uncle Phil of Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.
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To be a good friend, you have to risk losing a good friend.
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I would agree with that, but I am so afraid of conflict that I don't know that I've ever challenged any of my good friends.
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So, I don't know if I can live up to that, but I I would agree with it in theory.
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You don't necessarily have to be that person to dish out the good advice, you know. That's That's right. Exactly.
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I like to do as I say and not as I do.
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And then this last one is from Phil Dunphy.
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The most amazing things that can happen to a human being will happen to you if you just lower your expectations.
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I've loved that on many levels.
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Lowest expectation levels.
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What are your expectations today?
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My expectation today is that it's going to hurt and tomorrow is going to be a disaster.
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From the Bronx, I take it. From the BX.
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So as we alluded to in your intro, you host a food-focused podcast.
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And then your wife, Holly, I know that she's a pastry chef. Yep.
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How, if at all, has she changed your perspective on food because you've described yourself as a lawless animal when it comes to eating?
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We couldn't be any more different.
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The upside of having the palate of a goat is that everything she makes is great.
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And then I know that you own a pair of bars in Salt Lake City.
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What was the biggest hurdle you had to overcome in securing a liquor license cuz from what I understand, there's some strange rules in Utah. Yeah.
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Well, they've actually gotten better.
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Back in the day, you had to do all kinds of crazy things.
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If you go all the way back, a drink couldn't be made in a bar, so they would actually give you like the airline bottle and the mixer. And you do it yourself. it yourself.
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Then they have memberships where you had to kind of become a member to get into a club.
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So everybody who walked into a bar had to become a member. That went away.
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It's very hard to get a liquor license.
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That in and of itself is very hard.
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Somebody smarter than me found it a literal loophole, which is that if you have if there's a hole in the wall or a doorway, the place next to you gets your liquor license.
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So we leased the space next to us and cut a hole in the wall. And there you go. a liquor license.
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And then for the uninitiated, can you explain the allure of fry sauce?
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Well, fry sauce is mayonnaise and ketchup. So that's all it is.
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It sounds a lot more exotic than it is. That's right. It's really good. It is really good.
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Did you have a hand in Yeah, yeah.
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We You know, like we had the lab coats on.
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You know, it's like do we go with the miso base?
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Do we go with the chipotle base?
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Do we go with the habanero base?
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this I actually have a question about this.
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My least favorite hot sauces are vinegar heavy. Mhm.
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What are the other things that can preserve a hot sauce? It's tough. It's tough. just keeps it, right? Right.
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You know, you can do it with other options, but then sometimes you kind of like have a real short shelf life on that hot sauce.
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So, it's one of those things where you can find it or you can make it, but you kind of have to like eat it with the meal or within like a couple weeks cuz it'll go bad pretty quick. it up.
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Yeah, that's the preserve, you know.
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We're casting a wide net with today's interview, but the fans they'd revolt if I didn't focus on Modern Family for at least one wing. Sure.
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Who's your favorite celebrity guest cameo? Favorite guest star?
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One of them was very recently, which which was Chris Martin, who is just the sweetest.
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Literally like wears the in your armor. Too sweet. Too sweet.
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Yeah, what are you hiding?
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Yeah, what I thought he was going to try to steal the show from us or something.
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One of my favorites going way back was Edward Norton.
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We had done a play together.
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And the show was probably in its second season, but he came in and did a very elaborate character, and we got to improvise a lot. It was a lot of fun.
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What have you picked up working alongside Sarah, Nolan, Rico? Work ethic. Really? Yeah.
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The kids on the show The kids on the show in a lot of ways were more professional than the adults from the very beginning because they were raised in that world. They knew all the rules.
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Like the rules are just sort of ingrained in them.
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They know all the union rules.
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They always came prepared.
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You know, the adults were sort of like depending on schedule and stuff, you know, like various stages of preparation.
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Which cast member is most like their character in real life? Ed. I can see it. Yeah.
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And it's kind of an inspirational quality of no, I'm not going to that.
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That's sort of Ed's tagline. No, I won't be there.
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I'm going to stay at home. What's hot in Hawaii? The volcanoes.
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There's a volcano in this.
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I'm going to start sweating soon. Good, I can't wait. I know that's happening.
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What's the most anybody's ever sweat?
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Joey Coco Diaz I thought maybe going to we were going to lose him. He was going to dry out.
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Tom Arnold I was like, oh, like that's what's going to take down the show of sure.
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I'll see if I can see what I can do about that.
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All right, Ty, so we have a recurring segment on our show called Explain That Gram where we do a deep dive on our guest's Instagram, pull interesting pictures that need more context.
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But as we just talked about, you don't have an account, which really throws a wrench into our system.
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But we figured out a workaround.
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What we've done is pulled some of our favorite Ty Burrell sports pictures.
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So I'll show you the picture and then you can tell me the bigger story. Does that sound good? this, yes.
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All right, so this first one, throwing out the first pitch at a Mets game.
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Were you nervous for this?
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Very, very, very, very nervous.
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Probably as nervous as I've ever been for anything.
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Because I'm sort of a delusional athlete.
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Like I think I'm a better athlete than I am.
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So now it's time to step up to the plate, literally. Not not quite literally.
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Um I practiced and did not throw a strike.
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The catcher, who was a gentleman by the name of John Buck, as it was coming in and going off target, he ran out and caught it and made it seem like it was just part of his normal run out to the mound to congratulate me.
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Nice little frame situation. He framed, exactly.
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He did a very long term frame.
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And then pulled it in and then came out and shook my hand.
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What do you remember about playing on a high school basketball team that set an Oregon state record for the most consecutive losses?
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The guy who the was there the night we broke the streak was a professional weightlifter and he came in and he gave a speech and he said, you guys can never quit. I've never quit.
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And then as we were on our way out, he was like, "And I've never won a single weightlifting tournament."
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And we were running out of onto the court to try to break our record, but somehow it worked.
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I guess we were like, "We don't want to be that guy."
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I like the work around on Instagram. That's good.
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Yeah, I'm starting to really I'm feeling that one. Mhm. Mhm. Yep.
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So, you've said that you went to graduate school as a tactical means of avoiding auditioning. That's true.
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And then while it's not ditch digging, acting can be tough because you have to kind of become comfortable with rejection being a part of everyday life.
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Do you remember your first TV audition?
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And if so, was it the humiliating experience that you always expected it or feared it would be? Yep.
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It's funny you use that analogy because I always say it's not digging ditch, too, because I actually did dig ditch for a few weeks when I was in junior high.
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And it was the worst job of my life.
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But the humiliation can be incredible.
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One of my very first auditions, I had 2 weeks to work on this.
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I was using a British accent.
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I'm not particularly talented with accents, but I worked really hard on this accent.
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And as I was sitting down in front of a just a big bank of people, intimidating people, and the casting director, he whispers in my ear, "Oh, yeah, we're not using the accent."
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So, I gave an audition trying to switch out of a British accent into an American accent on the fly.
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It sounded like I was having a stroke in front of all of these people.
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It was like, "That's where you land, mister ma'am madam."
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I take it you didn't get the callback. not.
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I did not even get real like eye contact on my way out.
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Saskatchewan Dawson's is almost a crisis. Right. It flirts with crisis. It flirts with crisis. I would agree. Yeah. It's good, though.
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So, now that you fell in love with Salt Lake City almost 20 years ago, it's a place that you and Holly and your kids call home. Wow.
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But, as a byproduct of Ashland, Oregon, I know that the Beaver State still holds a special place in your heart.
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So, what I want to do is give you a number of categories and you can tell me which state reigns supreme, Utah or Oregon? Does that sound good? National Parks. Utah.
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Northern Utah is amazing, too, but for very different reasons.
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Southern Utah is all the stuff you sort of see, the 127 Hours world, but it's really just an incredible place to spend time.
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It's really easy to get to.
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It's unlike anything on Earth.
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It's sort of like what I imagine Mars is like.
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Sundance Film Festival or the Oregon Shakespeare Festival? That's really tough.
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I'm going to say the Oregon Shakespeare Festival because it's even more of an anomaly, like a crazier thing that a Shakespeare Festival ended up such a huge, successful one.
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And I say this with the fact that I tried to get work there forever and they never hired me.
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So, this is how good This is how They were smart enough to never hire me.
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So, that I think puts them at the top of the list.
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Do you have a take on this whole self-service gas law in Oregon because it seems to be tearing the state apart at the seams?
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I think it's us trying to hold on to something that we feel makes us interesting.
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This is like a an idiosyncrasy.
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It's like somebody, you know, keeping their flip phone.
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Clyde Drexler or Karl Malone? Drexler. Of course.
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I mean, that's not even close.
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Malone is the largest man in the history of of human life to fall down at somebody blowing on him.
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Like, he was such a flopper.
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He was ahead of his time, maybe. Way ahead of his time.
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But, I mean, the guy could not have been more stout to be flying into chairs and constantly sprawling out on the floor.
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We We had a real dislike for Karl Malone in Oregon.
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Now, this was on your previous season, correct?
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we can't move because it's the face melter.
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The people The fans would go nuts if we took it out.
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I'd like to take it out as somebody who's eaten it about 100 times.
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I took a big bite of that. I'm afraid to inhale.
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You guys remember that time when Tybrell died on on screen? Oh my god. Yeah. Oh, boy. This is where gets real.
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Over the years, you've made more than your fair share of red carpet best dressed lists, and I'm curious from the outside looking in, how do you unpackage the relationship between the celebrity and the celebrity stylist?
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In other words, how much influence do you have over your Golden Globes fit, and more importantly, how much do you care about it?
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You know, if I'm being 100% honest, I'm sort of a dandy fob.
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Like, I actually really I dig it.
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I don't want to be that guy, actually. Like, I'm from Oregon.
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I want to be like a man's man, but I just I'm not.
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You want to be the flannel Paul Bunyan guy.
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Even when I am actually camping, I'm like, "Ah, this is too put together.
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I shouldn't have I thought way too much about this."
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I need to learn sign language.
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Let's carry this one home.
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Let's finish this one out.
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All right, so this next one is Mad Dog 357 with number nine plutonium.
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When we start getting into scientific stuff, I just feel like this should be put into some sort of a capsule to fuel something. Elon Musk.
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This should be called Elon's Musk. That hurts my lips. Yeah. That makes my lips hurt. Mhm. Yeah.
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This is first time uh ever that my teeth have hurt. Feel like my teeth hurt. Welcome to the club.
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So, Hollywood has a reputation for being this dog eat dog place where the win, but you seem to have a more grounded disposition, more low-key lifestyle, and I'm curious in what ways has being the nice guy actually served to help your career in La La Land, and can you give me one time where it was maybe a detriment?
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I'm always trying to reiterate work really hard and you'll work if you're talented and you work really hard, but that there's a certain element of luck that gauges your career.
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It's so hard to think with pain that's going through my face.
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Um for whatever reason I've never felt that I could control my career.
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I don't consider that like a personality thing that I made happen.
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I just feel lucky that I've never felt that way.
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I think that the way it works is when you get an opportunity, if you just exceed the expectations of whoever gave you that opportunity, then you'll get another opportunity. agree. I totally agree.
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It doesn't it doesn't require all that other thought, right?
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It's just that you will get opportunities.
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And you would just have to absolutely throw yourself into them completely.
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And you can't And you don't even have control over how well that thing does. Right.
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Like this is this must be kind of a cool thing, this whole show for you, right?
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That It's a glass half full, glass half empty situation.
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Is this glass full of hot sauce? Everybody has a problem.
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They just want a problem solved.
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So, if you can solve that problem, then they'll keep giving you problems to solve. All right, Ty.
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So, you guys went in on the last one.
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So, this is the last dab.
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We call it the last dab because it's tradition around here to put a little extra on the last wing. Okay.
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You don't have to if you don't want to.
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I want to, but the bottle's already there. I want to.
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Okay, so now I can feel myself sweating. Mhm.
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Um You look great, though.
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Um This is the first time I have to go back and and watch to see if I've touched my nose, but my nose hurts.
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And I've never had my nose hurt from hot sauce without touching.
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We really find your limits here on Hot Ones. That's how it goes.
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Well, I mean, what's the extent of this?
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Do your ears eventually hurt?
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People are like, my neck is stiff. Like, my back hurts.
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And I'm always like, well, I haven't been there, but you know, it's just it's limitless. a health aid. It's not.
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It's not why we do this show. All right. All right, Ty. Cheers, my man. Cheers. That's really good. Mhm. It is really hot. Mhm.
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I'm not just saying it because it's your brand, but it also tastes you can actually taste it as well.
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That's what we tried to do. You did it, Hot Ones. All right, Ty, bro.
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Now that you've battled 10 scorching hot chicken wings on YouTube, I just have one more hoop for you to jump through. All right.
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It's been written that you blink excessively when you're stressed or excited.
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And in season 2 of our show, I had an epic staredown with Jay Pharoah.
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I lost, and it has haunted me ever since.
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Welcome to your first victory.
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So, here, now that I have the low-hanging fruit in front of me, I'm going to try to avenge it. It's no holds barred.
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On the count of three, first to blink loses. 1 2 3.
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I feel so good that I am about to give you your first win in a blinking contest. And I need it.
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So, if I win I'll never get out from under it. YES. YES. YES.
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I NEEDED THAT, BUT YOU KNOW WHAT, Ty brother, are no losers today. You cleared the board.
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You made it through against all odds, and now there's nothing left to do but roll out the red carpet for you, my friend.
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This camera, this camera, this camera, let the people know what you have going on in your life.
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Today is the day I became a man.
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We already talked about the podcast and our businesses in Salt Lake and Park City, so I would like to talk about Kids in the Spotlight, which provides funding for foster kids to make their own films and tell their own stories.
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And so, please go to kids uh ink. org. Good job, Ty. Thanks, Jeff. Thank you. I had a great time. That's awesome. That really is.
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Literally, this may be the most masculine thing I've ever done.
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I'm very impressed, for what it's worth.
20:22
Hey, what's going on, Spice Lords?
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It's Sean Evans checking in from a table by himself, and do you notice something different?
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No, it's not a new haircut.
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The jacket, you've seen it before.
20:30
We have a new bottle of the Last Dab, Carolina Reaper edition. Still got it.
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It's the Last Dab and the Carolina Reaper together at last, a special edition.
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Pick it up while supplies last. heatness. com Top your bottle. It's still a tough one.