Transcript of Bobbi Brown (make-up artist and entrepreneur)

Wndri Plus subscribers can listen to Armchair Expert early and ad-free right now. Join WNDRI Plus in the WNDRI app or on Apple podcast, or you can listen for free wherever you get your podcast. Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Experts on Expert. I'm Dan Sheppard, and I'm joined by Monica Mouse. Hi. Hi. We have such a fun woman on today.

We really do. A legend, a hero.

A legend that I was lucky enough to be seated next to at something, and I really was charmed by her. Bobby Brown. A lot of Bobby Browns. I think that was my first question to her. How do you deal with the legendary R&B singer Bobby Brown?

Right. Well, you didn't ask that him.

His daughter, Bobby Brown, Millie Bobby Brown. There's a lot of Bobby Browns in the mix.

Millie Bobby Brown is Bobby Brown's daughter?

No, Bobby Brown is Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown's daughter. There's four Bobby Browns in this story. Oh. Bobby Bobby Brown, who is married to Whitney Houston. Yes. Their daughter, Bobby Brown. They have a son, Bobby Brown as well. Son, Bobby Brown. Okay. And then Millie Bobby Brown.

Separate.

And then Bobby Brown. So that's five. I see. And I guess I asked her if when she shows up for a reservation, they're wondering like, well, which will it be.

Which one is it?

Okay. Bobby is a world renowned makeup artist, best selling author, entrepreneur, and founder of Jones Road Beauty. And she is here to talk about her new memoir, Did I do it right? Yeah. Okay. Memoir. Good job. Called Still Bobby. And, gang, I just love her. Big time Laura LeVoe vibes for me.

Yeah. And she's just an epic businesswoman. We get to hear a lot about that. It's really a cool episode. Yeah.

And she's got a for real no shit take on things. Yeah. Please enjoy Bobby Brown.

I'm Jon Robbins, and on my podcast, I sit down with incredible people to ask the very simple question, How do you cope? From confronting grief and mental health struggles to finding strength in failure. Every episode is a raw and honest exploration of what it means to be human. It's not always easy, but it's always real. Whether you're looking for inspiration, comfort, or just a reminder that you're not alone in life's messier moments, join me on How Do You Cope. Follow now wherever you get your podcasts or listen to episodes early and ad free on WNDYRI Plus. How Do You Cope is brought to you by Audible, who make it easy to embark on a wellness journey that fits your life with thousands of audiobooks, guided meditations, and motivational series. Hello, I'm John Robbins, comedian and host of WNDYRI's How Do You Cope podcast. I'm Also, plot twist, an alcoholic. I've written a book, Thirst: Twelve Drinks That Change My Life, published by Penguin. Thirst is a book about alcohol. It's mystery, it's terror, it's havoc, it's strange meditations. But, John, I hear you cry. Isn't Is that a rather odd book to write for a sober man who, more than anything, wants to stop thinking about alcohol?

Well, yes, but I had to go back to find out why the one thing I know will kill me still calls out across the night. It's the story of what alcohol did for me and what alcohol did to me. If that's of interest to you or someone you know, Thirst, 12 Drinks That Change My Life is available to pre order now online and from all good bookshops. He's an up You guys, I just got it yesterday.

Wonderful. So it's the real thing.

Is that a Lingua Franca sweater you're wearing? It is. I'm so excited for this because Teenage Beauty was an iconic book for me. So So now it's such a full circle. Wait, you read Teenage Beauty? Yes, it was gifted to me when I was maybe in eighth grade from my aunt who loved makeup. And yeah, it was iconic. It was like the pre-makeup video in book form.

I've written two teenage books. Yeah, so this is such a beautiful-So wait, what was the proprietary take for teenagers?

Was there also some messaging about embrace what you are?

100%. It's so normal to feel less than, especially as a teenager. I felt it. There's no question why I'm doing what I do for a living. And instead of going overboard, I've realized that the less I do, the more I'm me. And that's the secret of what makes me happy.

You know what's interesting is we can conceptually acknowledge that we're attracted to novelty in every space. If you see a unique car, that's interesting. If you see a unique bit of architecture. But we think that uniqueness in our faces is not going to be appealing, but in fact, it is. I was trying to tell Monica, You're the I'm the only one that looks like Monica. It's so exciting.

Yeah, uniqueness.

But I always find similarities in people. I'm like, You look like... I always think I know someone, but I haven't seen that person in 30 years. But that's what they used to look like.

I have a pattern recognition obsession, too. If there's a voice that's reminding me, I cannot stop thinking about it until I figure it out.

Are you a visual learner like I am?

Explain visual learning.

I just could explain everything in pictures. I understand about everything. I can't read how to do something. But if someone shows me I could do it or if there's pictures.

Then yes, because I've said to Monica many times, if I could watch a video on open heart surgery, I'm certain I could do it.

Did you get Ds in math and science?

Not math and science, but reading and literature. Anything that I had to- Well, he has dyslexia.

Yeah.

Okay.

You probably had something, right? That we just don't know.

Definitely have ADD. I don't have OCD, but I have OCD tendencies. I like things lined up, but then I mess them up in two seconds. Okay. I love a clean drawer.

Well, Let's start with where we just met. I'm going to say that I had a lovely time sitting next to you. I hope it was mutual.

Are you kidding? Two things made that night besides the award, which is really cool.

So it was the Times 100, most influential people. You were among the awardees, and so was Kristen. We were seated at your table, and You and I were seated directly next to each other.

Right. I just remember saying, Oh, my God, those are the coolest vans with your tuxedo. That was the first thing I noticed. See this visual thing? Oh, yeah. Thank you. To me, it's like, Well, this guy's really cool. He made that choice to do that because it It's what makes him comfortable.

Oh, my gosh. Wonderful. Yeah. Authentic. Then you, in all the best ways, reminded me of my mother who's a fucking gangster. She's just a self-made. She was a single mother building a company, and she was just indomitable. I immediately was like, Oh, yeah, this is the same spirit as my mom.

And what company?

It was in the automotive industry. So all of the press fleet for General Motors, ding, ding, ding, you worked in the GM building forever. Those get lent out to journalists. We throw big car shows, and we manage those fleets and all that stuff.

Oh, cool. Speaking of the car industry, my Papa Sam came from Russia, and he ended up to be Cadillac Sam. But for years, he sold Ramblers, DeSotos, Plymouth. He made his name in Chicago with this car dealership. My uncle Albert had one, so I grew up in the car industry.

Yeah. What did dad do?

My dad, who was 21 when I was born, personal injury lawyer.

Was his face on a bus stop ever?

It was not. But every time we heard a siren, my mother turned to him and said, Oh, they're playing our song. They're playing our song. But he stopped being a lawyer and became an entrepreneur without even realizing it. He started following his passion. He became a journalist and a writer for We magazine. He traveled the world. Then when he needed money, he went back to being a lawyer. He retired at 70 from being a lawyer, and he started being a children's book author. He has now written 10 children's books. Oh, wow.

How cool.

Mom- A homemaker.

A homemaker. Okay, and where did they meet?

They met in college at Drake University in Iowa, and they're both from Chicago. My mom made it a semester.

But had met him in that semester? Yes.

That's all she needed. Right.

It worked. They were both, coincidentally, chubby kids, and they lost Wade, and they became incredibly good-looking. You'll see the theme in my life about being a chubby kid or gorgeous. I could never be gorgeous.

How many Jewish folks were in the community you grew up in?

It's easier to count the ones that were not Jewish.

Okay, that's good because I was going to ask if there was any trying to assimilate to this waspy thing and if that was the kernel of why I'm not pretty.

No, but first of all, I was obsessed with the waspy thing, being a Jewish kid. I would see my friends. They had this great green stuff going on in their houses. It was very Ralph Lauren, but not Ralph Lauren, the real Ralph Lauren.

The Kennedy esthetic.

Yeah. I mean, I'm still obsessed with the royal family.

So is Monica. I like, yeah. That's a great obsession. I'm mad. You can't get it. I don't like monarchy.

I just love the pretense around everything, the tea and the whole thing.

You like the traditions and the pageantry.

I do. I like the traditions of being Jewish. I'm not a religious Jew. Now that My kids are married to people from other religions and other cultures. I have a little bit of everything. So I'm really happy.

I like the Jewish traditions a lot as well. My brother converted, and I've participated in a ton. Of course, half my friends here in LA are Jewish, and I've gotten to go to all of them, and they're great. I've thought if I was forced at gunpoint to join a religion, that would be the one.

And I was thinking Quaker. Quaker? That's not great. We just learned about them. I don't know that much about Quakers, but I know they like oatmeal, they like simple things.

They're about kindness.

They're about kindness.

We just had someone on who grew up Quaker.

But the same in the Indian culture. Yeah.

Hinduism has a lot of that and Buddhism, too.

You had a brother or you had more- There was three of us.

By the time my dad was 25, he had three kids. He was a lawyer. I had a younger brother and a younger sister. My brother was the middle kid and the most gorgeous, brilliant kid that just had the absolute worst life. Oh, no. It's very sad. What happened? Why? He never listened. I think he was too smart for his own good. Back then, parents didn't know what to do with kids that were troubled. They didn't know what to do with me, with my learning disorders. They just stopped punishing me. My mom said, You'll probably never be a secretary. She was right.

Yeah. Skipped a couple.

She Let me drop out of typing. So my brother, he was always troubled. He always got in trouble. He didn't pay attention. You couldn't read his writing, but he would do testing and off the charts. And then when he was 16, he took my parents car and hit a tree, and they told my parents he is going to die. They should call a priest. My mother nursed him back to health, and he just had a lot of issues. It was really hard to watch. I did everything I could to help him. And it turned out when he finally got diagnosed, he had personality disorder, which is borderline personality, which is the worst thing because you can't take a pill for it. Yeah. And so he struggled. And then what do you do if you're struggling, you take drugs. On an upper, a downer, a sideways, whatever. And he ended up, after decades being homeless, he ended up passing away of a drug overdose.

I'm so sorry.

We had a borderline personality disorder expert on, and I have to say, I entered the interview. I've dealt with that condition in Friends. I don't like it, and I think I was really judgmental. But I will say we had this person on. I was like, oh, fuck, yeah, that's right. No one wants to be born this way. The foundational problem is, I really don't believe you love me, and I'm going to manifest or prove that. And what a hard, hard way to go through life. And I've since meant people since we had that episode on that are like, oh, my God, I love that episode. I'm BDP. I've been working on it for four years. I'm like, that's right, man. All these people are just born with this.

Right. The sad thing is for my My dad, who's still alive, he's 90 and a half years old, is that every time Michael would do something stupid, he was just angry and pissed, and they'd scream at each other. I'm like, Dad, it's like as if he has cancer. He has something. He can't help. He could have done this. I told him to do this. My dad said, Here I've got this daughter that gets times 100, and I've got this homeless kid. I'm like, What the hell?

I'm sure he feels guilty about that. He does. At some point, you can't protect your kids.

No, you feel bad. You feel bad. You do. But when he passed away, we had a memorial for him, and it was So healing because all of his friends came from when he was younger, and all we did is talk about the good Michael and all the great things. So we got to walk away and say, Okay, let's just not think about all the bad things because trust me, it was bad.

In your success because you're escalating and escalating, and that's happening simultaneously. Are you feeling a lot of guilt?

Well, I'm so lucky I have my husband because he's a rock, and he would deal with things, and his secretary would deal with things. There was always a phone call or an emergency. Started out as simple as the electricity is going off. And then it was way, way worse. I'd be on someone's yacht having this amazing dinner and the phone would ring, or I'd be in Paris at a great restaurant, and it'd be my brother who needs something, something, and we'd have to stop what we're doing. The juxtaposition was bizarre. Yes. It made me feel terrible for him, but I could look at myself in the mirror and say, Bobby, you did everything in your power.

That's great. You didn't feel that survivor's guilt? No. Why didn't he also get my-My Normalness?

No. It's weird. How could people growing up in the same house? One is, I hate to say I'm normal, but I'm normal and real. You're functioning. I'm functioning.

You're within the spectrum of normal.

I'm totally in the spectrum, and he was not. Then I have a baby sister whose whole life is about helping others.

You have three boys. I have three boys. I have two little girls. I imagine the stress of that for your mother must have been pretty overwhelming.

I think so. But upper middle class suburbs. My dad, a lawyer, he made a good salary. We always had some help in the house, some interesting help. We had Charlie, who my dad got out of jail, and he babysat us for years. That's not in the book. We had Charlie. And the last day Charlie worked for us. If you opened our coat closet, you'd see a car because he drove a car through the garage into the coat closet. So my dad finally fired him after decades.

Charlie.

Charlie.

He hadn't been in prison for another vehicular incident, had he?

No, I don't think he was in prison since my dad helped him.

And what I know from the book is you're insanely close to your dad. I am. You call him endlessly throughout your life for advice. The night you meet Steven, you call him the same as my husband. That's a very clear and special relationship. What was the relationship with mom?

My mom was diagnosed with manic depressive, and she had her first, quote, unquote, nervous breakdown when I was in seventh grade.

This would have been in the '70s, right? So they don't know anything about how to deal with it.

They don't know anything. It was right when one flew out of the cuckoo's nest came up.

So they just thought she was crazy.

We would visit her in the hospital, and everyone else looked like that movie. She was on so many drugs. They just gave her a lot of lithium, and she just was making like ashtrays. I don't know what she was making.

How scary was that?

It was intense, but I'm someone that always sees the positive. I got to get in the car with my dad, just me and him, and drive to the hospital and listen to music and talk. I look at that as a positive. I got really close to my dad. Then mom came home and things got better. Then they got divorced, and then she met a great guy. She married him. That's rare good. And then he died. He had a massive heart attack. I happened to have been home from college.

What were you telling peers when they would come over and mom wasn't there? Were you able to admit she's away somewhere?

I don't remember. Isn't that so weird? I don't remember it being such a big deal. I do remember the woman my dad hired named Elsie, who let us have butter on our buns with our hamburgers and French fries. My mother was always A health nut. Her weight turned into a health obsession. So we became all healthy people because of it.

She suggested that you needed to get a nose job?

Yeah. My mom came to me one day in bed, and she said, I think you're so pretty. And I said, Thanks, mom. And we were really close. And she said, But I think you'd be gorgeous if you had your nose fixed.

I love fixed as a term.

Yeah. All the Jewish girls had their nose fixed. And I remember looking at her and saying, I don't think there's anything wrong with my nose. And she said, Yeah, but it would look cute. I said, My nose is fine. And she said, When you're older, you're probably going to need your eyes done, too.

Okay.

Which I haven't done. It's on my list. What does she even mean? What does she even mean?

Like a lift?

Yeah, or like you take the excess skin out. It's the one plastic surgery that I see people do that I think looks great, but I just don't want to do it. Okay.

And how old are you when she said this?

Just started college.

Okay. You're not in need of that at six. I don't want to broadcast your age.

No, you look great. I'm 68 years old.

And you're not in need of it.

My lines on my face, I think, look okay. They do.

They look great. You're a babe. I think I told you that when I was sitting next to you.

I would remember that. I just remember the shout out from Snoop Dogg, which I thought I was so cool until the next day I found out that my brother-in-law's friend wrote his monolog. That's how I got in Snoop really didn't know who I was.

Well, my mocha crook. So you were not a great student.

I wasn't.

How did you get into Emerson?

Well, I felt bad I wasn't a great student. I really thought I was dumb. And now I realize things that are boring don't interest me. And things that are interesting really really interests me.

As we learn more about ADHD, it sounds like you just really have.

Yeah. And I do really well when I'm driving or when I'm moving. It's funny. I bought a book, an adult ADHD. I couldn't read it. We don't read books, but I, you know, read through it.

It's like how to deal with blindness as a book.

Kind of. Like your mom, I figured things out. I literally print things out, and I use a pen, and I fix it, and then I hand it to someone to type, and they retype it and give it back to me, and I read it again.

So how did you get into Emerson?

It was my third college, and I went to University of Wisconsin first at Oshkosh, not Madison. Followed a boyfriend. I graduated high school early, not because I was smart, but because I was always getting my work done. And so we went, and then We went, and then we all transferred to University of Arizona for a year. In Tucson? In Tucson. With a boyfriend. Okay, great. Who I'd been with for five years. We had this friend, and the three of us all became three musketeers. Then in the end of the summer, the high school boyfriend fell in love with the other guy because he just realized he was gay. Oh, wow. But the bad news, the other guy and me fell in love. Oh, boy. What a twisted triangle here. I stayed with the other guy for 12 years. Wow. Until I met my husband.

You're such a serial monogamous Because you've been, what, 30?

37 years married. 37 years with Steven. Congratulations. Thank you. I know how to have a happy marriage. Do tell, please. Everyone get your pens out. Yeah. Know it pisses them off. Don't do it.

That seems easy, but it's really hard to do.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry I upset you. Yeah. That doesn't mean I was wrong. I am. I'm sorry I upset you.

I don't want you to be upset. Right. And if I played a role in it- I'm really sorry. So you got to Emerson.

Yeah, I got to Emerson. I literally flew up I saw the Magic Pan Outdoor Cafe. Being from Chicago, I'm like, I want to go here. I got in the day before school started. I created my own major. They didn't have a makeup major.

It was theatrical makeup.

It was theatrical makeup and a minor in photography.

Did you stick with photography?

Are you kidding? Are you? She loves visuals. My Instagram is like... You're active. Yeah, I'm active. If I'm not putting something up, I'm scrolling, and it feeds my curiosity.

Is it also an ADHD sav.

Yeah. It calms me down, too. I had a business coach. I said, I come home at night, my family's watching TV, and I'm sitting there with my iPad. My husband's always like, What are you doing? You're not paying attention. I'm like, I am. She said, It calms you down. It's like you're knitting.

It does. Yeah. Your life is about visuals, so I'm not surprised. It's literally painting the face, so it makes sense.

But I'm also really curious about things. I always think there's an answer to everything. So I'm like, I'll find it.

Well, there's something in that. That tells me there's just a simmering, maybe, anxiety. If I know how it works, I can alleviate the anxiety.

Well, it's funny. I texted my girlfriends, the original girlfriends that we all raised our kids together, because I'm going deep into this book thing, and I thank them for being there for me for all the years. They said, How are you doing? I said, I don't know if I should take a Xanax or an Adderall. My one other girl said, I would take a Xanax. I said, Well, I took an Adderall.

You graduate with this degree. Now, when you graduated with that, did you have fantasies of working in film and television? Absolutely.

I wanted to be a movie makeup artist. It was glamorous. When I was in college, I wrote a letter to my stepfather's uncle, Sheldon Keller, who was a very famous producer, saying, I want to be a makeup artist. I want to come to LA. Took him three months to write me back. He sent me my letter back with all the spelling corrections and said, Don't ever send a letter like this until you proofread it. And that was it. So I said, All right, I guess I'm not going into- Oh, boy. It's tough love. So then I moved to New York instead. Great.

Wow, wow, wow. Okay, so initially that did appeal to you. But it's boring. I'm going to tell you my stereotype of makeup artists. I've been working with them very I've known them closely for 20 plus years. First of all, I love them. As a department, they're generally my favorite department. My stereotype is all of them are pretty popular, pretty darn social, pretty empathetic, but not the homecoming queen. They were popular, but they weren't the bell of the ball.

I was in the popular group. I always felt, and my friends say I was wrong. I always felt that I had to work really hard to be liked. But I think it's also my size. I'm 5 foot tall. Love it. Me too. You are, too? Mm-hmm. We have a different It's a different thing. It makes us successful if it doesn't make you totally neurotic and insecure.

Or both.

Or both, yeah.

Does it anger you when people try to help you?

No. Okay.

My wife's got that. She's like, I'm not a baby. You don't need to do this and that.

Working really hard with a physical trainer on being able to, no matter what, get off the floor and take my suitcase and put it on top. I don't want to ask someone to do that. I don't want to help getting in and out of cars. I don't want anyone opening up a jar for me. You know when you get those water bottles and I'm like, Oh, my God. I won't let anyone do it.

I want to see your training session. Just like a thousand bottles lined up, cracking the seal. Okay, so you get to New York in 1980?

Yeah, I graduated in '79, 1980.

When I was reading this chapter, I was like, oh, this is so similar to being an aspiring actor and just landing in LA and going like, How the fuck? Wait, there's a union? How do I get in the union? People have agents. How does one get an ancient?

But you know what? We only figured it out because we're ninjas. Everyone's like, Is the book about resiliency? Not really. It's about being a ninja. It's about figuring out what you have to do.

Following leads. You're almost like a detective.

And asking questions. I'm very naive. I love that quality about me, but I'm not afraid to ask questions. But I literally opened up the yellow pages when I got to New York. I just looked up models, modeling agencies, and I figured it out. Kind of what I do now on ChatGPT.

Well, you had to stop over, though, at a transvestite house, which is fascinating.

No, he came to my house. Oh, he came to your house. Yes, he came to my house. That was terrifying, especially back then. I needed to make money, so I put an ad in the Village Voice, makeup lessons, makeup artist teaching. Some guy called and said, I'd love to come. I'm an actor playing a role. I said, great. I don't remember if it was $100, $200. And he came to my then-boyfriend's studio with this Louis Vuitton bag full of women's lingerie. He was wearing Gucci loafers. And I'm like, This guy's from Connecticut.

And he got in outfit after outfit. He wanted a different look for each.

He wanted me to teach him a different look for each. Yeah, sure.

Hold on. We got to go back a second. So you feel like you learned when you were in college, like you learned the techniques?

No, I didn't learn anything about makeup. I signed up for everything. I became the makeup artist to the film Department, the plays. I would have to read the scripts, which were not easy for me, and visualize what the characters should be, and then design the makeup. Wow.

It's just trial and error.

Yeah. And I figured it out. And in retrospect, it's taught me what not to do in makeup. Like, yeah, you're going to put something grayish on your lips. You're going to look dead. You want to look young, you do pink on the cheeks. So I learned a lot of things.

But we're already getting to what is true in so many industries, which is being creative is really one sliver of the pie. Being talented is one sliver. It's the yellow pages in the fucking Village Voice ad. And it's the going to the Union going, how do I get in? Sadly for artistic people, that's about 70% of it.

Oh, No, it is. And by the way, even when you made it, even after I had a Vogue cover, I still had to work on it. You have to work on everything all the time. And when people say it's so hard, I'm like, yeah. What isn't hard in life? Everything's hard.

Exactly. What would you say were the milestones that bring you to 1990 when you decide to make your first few products?

Well, I decided to make the first products because I accidentally met a chemist who made his own lipstick. And I said, I always wanted to make a lipstick He said, Tell me about it. I said, I wanted it to not smell bad. I wanted it to be creamy and not dry, not greasy, and I wanted it to be the color of my lips.

Really quick, that's your novel proprietary take on makeup. Had you already discussed covered that was your brand and your point of view? When did that happen?

When I first started doing that makeup, I had people saying, You're never going to work if you do that. People want to have the white faces and the contouring and the overlining and the blue and the yellow.

This is the '80s, remind everyone. People have wild slashes of pink on their face and spattered paint.

I did fashion shows. I loved all that fun creative, but I made it look beautiful. I didn't find it attractive. I don't think I was that talented in that makeup. So I started doing things like, how's this for brilliant? Finding a foundation that was the color of your skin. It wasn't popular. You know. You don't know, but your mother and your grandmother know.

No, I know. I was like, I need to thank Bobby for this. Bobby Brown is the makeup brand that I had that had my color for my face.

And to me, it's common sense. The way to choose a foundation is you try it on the side of your face. If it disappears, it's the right color.

But lots of brands don't even have all the options. You had such a wide range.

And a lot of brands have the options, but they're bad options because who's making these decisions? Right, exactly. Not a makeup artist.

By 1990, are you a famous makeup artist?

I am in the fashion industry. By I had a cover of Vogue, and I was written about in the magazines, Bobby Brown says, The Trend for the season. But I also was a new mom. My oldest son was born in 1990.

The publicity angle is enormous in this, right? When do you figure out that aspect? Being in that magazine is huge. How do I get that magazine?

I knew the first time I did Glamor magazine, and it said on the side, Really small hair and makeup by Bobby Brown. I was like, wow. And then I got phone calls. And then the more I got that, and the more people liked either my work, or mostly, I think they liked me.

So this is huge. You're a makeup artist, and especially if you're a woman, you're going to spend three and a half hours with sometimes on a day. Going to the Emmies, Kristin will be with someone in her face for three and a half hours.

Probably the same person she usually uses. Causes because it's about relationships.

They're great, but their personality is wonderful. Oh, 100%. Huge part of it.

It's your posse. I have my posse.

Again, this Howard Rourke notion that you'll just be brilliant and everyone will just fucking deal with whatever because you're brilliant. That is not the world works in any way.

No. You've got to figure it out. And sometimes it works, and guess what? Sometimes it doesn't work. And then you have to say, Okay, that didn't work. What can I do about it now?

Back then, was it you had clients and they brought you on for the covers, or was the magazine hiring you?

It was usually the stylist, the photographer. Okay, got it. And then when I was a fashion makeup artist, celebrities were that. No. Unless you were Elizabeth Taylor on the cover of Bizzarr, it wasn't all about the celebrity. So it was models. It was the supermodels. It was the Cindy's, Naomi's, Naomi, Linda Christie.

Who are some of the girls you were working with?

Cindy Crawford, Linda Vagelista, Christie Turlington.

She's my favorite. I watched that models doc, which I knew nothing about any of those folks. I was like, Oh, that's the one I- You never met her? No. We watched that thing, and then I was at the Sphere, and I looked over, and I was like, Oh, my God, honey, she's right there.

I was thrilled. She is the nicest. I see her in a lot of parties in the Hamptons. She hasn't done one thing to her face. I was going to say, talk about natural. She is stunning and wonderful and still happily married.

She's an anomaly.

She It really is.

Okay, so you want this lipstick through your savviness and again, your work ethic and figuring things out. You do end up getting this in Bergdorff's.

Well, he made a lipstick for me, and it was the color of my lips, and I loved it. I said, Oh, my God, I bet I could sell this. He says, I'll make it. I'll give it to you. We'll charge $15. You take $7. 50. I take $7. 50. I said, great. And I said, people are going to love this. Then I realized people have different color lips. This is not going to look good on someone with darker lips or paler lips. So my Ninja your brain is like, okay, what colors? And honestly, I was going to the park with my kid. They had nanny friends. I looked at women from all over the world, and I started studying the lips and realizing some women of color had pink lips, some had dark purple lips. Indian women have this really cool Heather blue lips. And by the way, in the industry, most of the magazines and makeup artists would say, this is how you correct if your lips are too dark. I don't believe in correcting. I believe in enhancing. I I don't draw pencils outside of my lips. Same. Well, you don't have to.

Yeah, it's true.

Shut up. You have perfect lips. It's like me talk about my height or something. Yeah, right?

But you know what? We all have gifts in life. And when you start realizing your superpower, That, I think, is the secret.

Yeah. I had to go like, Yeah, I don't have the nose I want. If my mom had said, Let's fix it, I might have said yes.

Oh, I know what I meant. Thank God you're coming to me for this.

But I heard you and Bradley Cooper talking about you guys didn't like your faces when you were young. I'm like, What the hell? You guys are so cute.

Isn't it comforting that Bradley says that? I'm like, All right, no one's immune to- But everybody, being a makeup artist, the stuff you hear- From supermodels.

Over my years, I did Mike Tyson, Matthew McCona, Barack Obama, Jill Biden, You get to hear how everyone feels about themselves. No one is like, I'm fabulous.

It was like, I nailed it. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, If You Dare.

The town of Agde in France is famous for sun, sand, sea, and sex. But lately, life on the Coast has taken a strange turn. The town's mayor, a respected pillar of the community has been arrested for corruption. His wife claims he's been bewitched by a beautiful clairvoyant. Then there's the mysterious phone calls that local people have been getting.

I am the Archangel Michael.

The whole town has been thrown into chaos. As the mayor is unable to carry out his duties, I would like to address you all.

Legal proceedings have been initiated.

Join me, Anna Richardson, and journalist Leo Chic for The Mystic and the Mayor as we investigate a story of power, corruption, and magic. Binge all episodes of The Mystic and the Mayor exclusively and ad-free right now on WNDYRI Plus. Start your free trial in Apple podcast, Spotify, the WNDYRI app.

One famous supermodel, I'll never forget, and I can't believe I'm telling you this story. She lifted up her shirt and she said, Could you just tell me, are they the same size?

Wow. Of course not. None of them are.

I said yes. I lied. I'm sorry. That's fine.

What was I going to say? Just lie and keep it moving.

I'm like, What are you been married for so long?

How many different colors do you- Ten. We launched with 10, and I started just selling to people that would want to buy them, friends and neighbors. Then one day I was having lunch with a friend of mine who happened to be the beauty editor of Glamor magazine. We're talking about how are the kids? She had just had a baby. I had a baby. She's like, What else is going on? I said, Well, I'm doing this little project. We didn't call it Side Hustles back then. She said, Tell me about it. She goes, Oh, my God, can I write about it? I'm like, Why would you want to write about it? Now I know that's called PR. We wrote about it and got bombarded with orders because it was so different.

These were like someone would send you mail, right, to request it?

There was a phone number. I think it was the chemist or my home phone. I don't even remember. My husband, Steven, who was in law school at the time, would literally mail them out to the post office. Eventually, we brought my sister-in-law in to do the books. I was still a working makeup artist because with Steven in law school, we needed to pay the mortgage.

Then you get into Burgdorff's.

We got into Burgdorff's, not because I pitched them, because I was at a party in the city, and I said to someone, I thought she was a fancy lady, thanks for inviting me. She said, Oh, I'm a big fan. I said, Oh, you know who I am? I said, Well, what do you do? She said, I'm the cosmetics buyer of Burgdorff Goodman. I said, Oh, I'm working on this lipstick. She goes, Why don't we take it? Let's give it a run.

The expectation was that you would move, hopefully, A hundred a month. Yeah. And you immediately started moving a hundred a day.

Yes, in the beginning. And then while things were growing, we joined with this other couple, business partners.

Who were they? I just read another couple.

Yeah, another couple.

Were they friends?

They were friends. They That's what you put in quotes for the listener. You put in quotes for the listener.

I guess that you know where the relationship went.

They were friends. I don't go deep in the book, but it was a great relationship. We did really well. It was really tough. But I learned so much. And my husband was so great because I'd be laying in bed at night, literally in tears. He would say, First of all, we don't talk about things at night when he's watching Seinfeld. That was our night. We'll talk about it in the morning. He said, But let them win the battle. We're going to win the war. I had no idea what he was talking about, but he just would calm down.

He's the steady Rocketsra Balter. Oh, my God.

Literally, he's the guy you want to be a dial for anything you need at any time. Did you marry your dad? Did you give us his number? I did not marry my dad. You did not marry your dad? I married someone that is as smart as my dad or even smarter.

Okay, but different temperament altogether.

Very different temperament.

You're your dad.

I'm my dad. I am. I'm my dad.

It's best not to marry yourself. It grows incredibly fast. A lot of people would think, Oh, if I have a great product and people want it, that's that. Growing is nearly impossible, right? It's tough. Because you're constantly trying to anticipate, how much can we now bet on this? Because we got to scale up.

A lot of it is guesses. A lot of it now is data. It's either data or data. I never know what it is.

If you're a scientist, it's data. And if you're a normal person, it's data.

Right, exactly. But basically, I go with my gut. My son, who is the CEO of the company, is like, No, mom, it's all data. Okay, fine. So when you put that stuff together, it works.

So you're nimble, you're flexible, you're pivoting a lot, and you're young.

The first time, what really put me on the map and put Bobby Brown Cosmetics on the map. We sold Bobby Brown Cosmetics to Estee Lauder after four and a half years.

So '95, you sell it.

So '95, we sell it.

For $75 million.

That's the answer, not really. Only because there was a 25-year buyout.

Can you tell us details of that for people who don't know?

I think it's really, really relevant.

I'm so lucky I have my husband because I don't really understand it, and he would probably correct me on 10 different things. But whatever number was decided, we'll sell the company. It was also plus whatever percentage on some sales.

They wanted you to continue to run the brand.

Right. And I stayed for 22 years.

Right. So that was my question. So you get 75, but then you also have some participation, I imagine. And then you have a salary.

Some participation Oh, yes. Meaning we would get percentage of sales at the end of the year.

I say the 75 million, not to embarrass you or tell people your business, but I think it's really relevant to think that you started this company and four and a half years later, $75 million in 1995 is really selling for 200 million now, 250. It's an enormous success.

When I left the company, it was a billion dollar brand.

Now, my question, and this is why I want the details of the contract, was a 25 year non-competent standard? That feels so long.

I don't know. I've heard different. Look, when I left Bobby Brown Cosmetics, I had four and a half years left, which on someone who's very impatient, and I was 59 years old, I was just like, Oh, my God.

No, it must have been absolutely brutal. Forever. Just forever. Like microwave minutes.

When I left, I was like, What am I going to do? Because I'm not someone that sits idly by and knits or needle points or play Kaluki or whatever other people do.

So they acquired it in '95. By 2012, Bobby Brown is responsible for 10% of all total sales for Estée Lauder. So it's enormously successful. They're clearly letting you run it without any issue, and it's thriving.

That's not exactly- That were issues? It was doing really well, and they were letting me run it without anything for a long long time. And then new CEO and everything really became very homogenous.

Well, antithetical to the original brand, they wanted a contour because that's popular right now, and you're anti-contour.

It just didn't make sense for me to change what the brand was built on. I know there were these companies like the Kardashian's. I can't compete with someone that I'm not. I'd rather just be the best version of myself. And that's the business, too. And I thought I knew the customer. I thought I knew what women really want. My customer always wanted to look like themselves, but better.

Now, is it possible you were wrong?

Possible, but I wasn't. Let's just put it this way.

I don't think so. Well, your second venture proves that. But it would be worth examining, okay, at the time, you had started that trend and that trend took off. Is it possible the trend was moving away from that, or perhaps 10% of all the market would want to look that way, but 90% would want to- Sometimes things go in cycles.

And if I was one of these people that followed all those cycles, we would have no identity, and we wouldn't be true to anything. Sometimes you have to sit back and wait for things to bounce back. Natural beauty, to me, is not a trend. It's what's supposed to be. I've always embraced lines in people's faces and freckles and different color skin and gaps in the teeth.

Well, that's interestingly, one of the many things that started happening, which is you found this incredible model with a gap in her teeth. You did a whole campaign, only to find out later they had airbrushed her teeth to fix it.

Without telling me or asking me. I was pissed.

What were some of the things that started accruing?

Oh, my God. I used to interview every single person that joined the brand from the person that greets people when they walked in, every single person. And little by little, people were popping up on I'm the head of international. I'm the head of this. And I was like, Excuse me? And I remember having a connipcion fit. And the president at the time said, They didn't consult me either because there's nothing I could do about it. And so little by little, it started just taking away from what the the essence of the brand is.

And there were moments where they were coming in and you thought they were looking for your sign off or approval, and you would disagree, and they would say, It's already being released.

Why are you bothering me?

Yeah, this is just pageantry.

Again, my naivete was, I got this. I could fix this.

What about the internal confidence in that period? Because I even have waves. Over the last two years, the pushback to wokeness gave rise to this incredibly successful round of podcasters and comedians. And you're just watching this huge swell and you go like, Fuck, it's scary. It can create doubt.

Things change. I think the important thing is don't rush into anything. Just sit back and observe and let it be and say, Okay, what is right for me? What is right for it? And if you try something different and it doesn't work, go back.

But was there any moment where you were like, Man, do I? I'm fighting.

No. I'm sure if people would be interviewed, Bobby was really difficult to work with. Yes. What we're going to get to that. By the way, if a color shifted in the market, I was difficult. Go back and fix it. I cared about these stupid things. And I was told, get out of the details. No, you can't. That's the whole point. It's the whole point. And it's a very different company now.

Does it stress you out that it still has your name on it?

No. This is a terrible thing to admit, but it would probably stress me out if it was flying and doing phenomenally well without me. That's what would kill me. That's very honest. I mean, it is. It's honest. They thought They didn't need me anymore.

So in 2016, this growing situation comes to a head. It's also three years of this. It's getting worse and worse and worse. Your overall well-being is suffering. You also have two kids who've just left for college. So now I want to go back a little bit and talk about how you decided at that time running the brand in New York City, that you guys would go to New Jersey and live there and raise your family there. I think that's a pretty unique decision for someone.

We moved to Montclair, New New Jersey the day we got back from our honeymoon. Oh, you did? We did. My husband and I decided we just didn't want to raise New York City kids, and we wanted to be more normal. I would come home from these events and go in the Lincoln Tunnel. I always had a driver, and I would take my high shoes off. My hair would go in a scrunchy. I'd put my clogs on in my Fanny pack. Now, they're all stylish. Yeah, exactly. Back then, look, I'm wearing my Gucci clogs today. I felt really myself when I went home in my life in Montclair, New Jersey.

Would it be fair to say that it helped you I'm going to compartmentalize the stress of the daytime thing. It's like, I'm going into a completely different culture in the world.

A hundred %. I would get in that Lincoln tunnel and I would breathe. I would probably call my mother or my father, just get that out of the way and then call Steven and say, What are we doing for dinner? I didn't plan. What do the kids have tonight? Where are their soccer things?

That could be the danger of living in New York. It's because you leave the office. Well, let's walk together. Now we're having drinks together. And then just the work never, ever ends.

And there was no after work drinks because I had a different life, my second job. And by the way, anyone that knows me, my kids are just the most important thing in my life.

You wrote a thing in there that I can already sense coming, and I try to remind myself, which is the shit in the hallway drove you nuts, the shoes at the door drove you nuts, all the clutter drove you nuts. And now they're gone, and it's dead clean. You're like, I fucking hate this. I hate my job. I think about this so often. It's like Coach Paterno, who had this glorious career. They have a statue in front of him. Then the Sandusky things happen. They take it down. I'm like, it's never too late for this incredible life to just turn to shit. And did it feel like, I thought I had a fairytale life, and now I feel like it's turned to shit.

No, I didn't think it turned to shit. It was really a tough period when I left the brand.

You lost both your identities.

I lost it. But after two days of drinking tequila with my neighbors, seriously, I just started calling people and going out and finding things to do. And then I had a bunch of fun, cool gigs to do.

But you couldn't talk about it, right?

No, Until the announcement. I'll never forget someone called my husband and said, What are we going to tell everyone? Could we just tell everyone that Bobby's sick? And my husband said, Fuck no. Exactly. He said, Why don't we just tell them the truth? But I still wasn't at liberty until the announcement came out.

Well, this situation ultimately came to a head, and there was a moment where they offered you the same salary- Yeah, same or more. Or more to go away and show up when needed for PR or when they were wooing another company they wanted to buy.

What they said is they want you to be the head of the brand but get out of the day to day. To me, that's firing. They will say they didn't fire me, and they would still say it today. But I was fired. I mean, the day to day is why I did what I did. I loved it. Yeah, it's your brand. I loved it. It was my baby, and I thought it was my brand. So I just said no.

Now, in retrospect, do you think it could have grown into what it grew without the infrastructure of Estée Lauder? Or do you think if you had not sold, you could have grown it into that same thing without them?

Well, I think right now, Jones Road is bigger than the current Bobby Brown. I don't know that for sure, but I've been told that by some people. We You've got like 40 people running around. It's a totally different day and age. Back then, I would go into Neiman Marcus and have 40 to 100 women waiting for me. Now we launch something, we've got the Internet, and we've got thousands and thousands.

There's Sephora's now, and department stores are not really the place.

Jones Road is direct to consumer. 90% of our sales, 10%, we have stores. I've been driving all over with my husband looking for a location in LA, so I'll have to get your take later.

I think a lot of people, myself included, that would have been a very hard no. Just knowing I could collect. You're like, I'm already fucked. It's already not my brand. Minimally, I guess I should take some money.

My very good friend, Mickey Drexler, said, Take the money, start a new brand. I said, No. Because it wasn't just, Here's the money, but it's basically, they said to my husband, She's got to be there if the team needs a question, but she can't tell them if she doesn't like something.

I'm like, What the fuck? Also, they wanted you to sign a non-disparage.

They wanted to sign a non-disparage, which honestly, I'm trying not to say bad things except the truth. But get me a bottle of tequila and ask me the questions off camera.

We'll leave it some dirt.

I say this from the bottom of my heart. I am so grateful for everything that I learned from Estee Lauder. And Most of the years were amazing. The last couple of years were not. I know that's what everyone wants to talk about. But for the years, Leonard Lauter, who just passed away, he was my mentor. He was like a father to me. I can call him and say anything to him and ask him any question. He never judged me for not being a smart business graduate. He thought I was brilliant. And he would say, Bobby, this is what we got to do. How can we do this? And we would come up with a solution. Well, that is not what happened to the organization at the end.

Yeah, it sounds like from '95 to 2012, it was pretty great. It was. 17 years at a job where you love is a big win.

Yeah. And so I left in '17, I think. Was it '16 or '17? You probably know more than me. You left in '16. In '16, yeah.

Because you launched in 2020. Right. Yes. Right. Okay. So you do a lot of weird interesting things in that gap. You just keep moving is what you do, which I think is the advisable path. And you become a style editor at Yahoo.

I'm going to say Yahoo. I became the beauty editor of Yahoo, which was really Cool. But I did that when I was still at the brand. Okay. Yeah, all right. You had to get their permission. And I had to get permission. So I did that. And then when I left the brand, the first project was develop a hotel with my husband called the George in Montclair.

The George. 31 unique rooms.

Oh, wow. Cool. 31 unique rooms.

It's in an old mansion. It is. 1901, it was built or something. Wow.

You're amazing. Thank you.

I'm trying to wow you.

You have wowed me. You had me at hello. The hug you gave me, why don't you bring that with me?

Okay, good. Okay, so you dabbled in some stuff. This 25-year non-competing, you must have, I'm assuming, been pretty far down the road knowing that was expiring. How do you decide you're going to give it another go?

I left, didn't know what I was going to do. The first thing that was offered to me was by my friend that owned Lord & Taylor at the time, and he said, Why don't you do a Just Bobby shop? We got to get people in the stores. You could do anything you want. I'm like, Great. I do well with teams. I got a team together.

Well, you met a gal at the Apple Store.

Yeah, and I hired her as my assistant.

She was like an Apple genius person.

She She's an Apple genius. I knew I needed help with my digital. And by the way, she sat there for two and a half hours. You know, they're usually like, Can't help you buy. Helping me figuring out how to get my number away from the Corporation, and so I could own the same number. She wouldn't give up.

She wouldn't give up. She's like, Everyone else would have given up.

She didn't know. She never heard of me. But I offered her the job, and she took it. I said, I don't know what we're going to do. Oh, that's incredible.

That's Rob back there. I did someone's podcast. I was like, Who's this motherfucker? He is on it. I need this guy.

I just got his number. First of all, he's from my hometown. Yeah, Chicago. Yeah. And I want to build one of these in Montclair. Oh, great. He needs your permission to freelance.

Oh, he's already got it. He's already freelancing like a son of a gun. So you did the Lord and Taylor thing. It was great. And then Lord and Taylor went out of business a year later.

Then we brought it digitally online. We tried to figure stuff out. It wasn't uber-successful, but it was fun. Kept me busy. I learned a lot.

When did you start developing the line?

Jones Road. I got hired to go to India to be the first ever keynote speaker of the Indian Makeup Conference. Wow. Which was an amazing experience. Cody and Pyle were just dating. Trust me, I told every single person that my son's girlfriend is Indian.

You can trust me. Again, because you do, I think, represent makeup for all types of people. I'm not surprised at all that they asked you.

That was a great experience. And then I got asked to do a master class for a master class. That was pretty cool. I started just being curious. I was using all the I have natural makeup out there because, God forbid, I put a chemical.

You weren't using Bobby Brown at that point.

No. Emotionally, I couldn't use it. I just didn't want to touch it. Stop following the Instagram. I want no part of it. I feel you. And then I didn't find what I wanted out there in the world. I said, I wonder if I could do better. I started calling a couple local chemists, like when I started. I'd go in there and tell them what I wanted. There's so many things I'm not good at. I can't fill out the paperwork that needs to be done. I can't do all that stuff. So I hire people to do what I'm not good at. I hired this girl to help me conceptualize, and now she's my COO. But she started as a Jack of all trades in product development.

Monica was a babysitter for us at one point.

I did start out as the babysitter.

This bitch is smart. What are we going to do here?

But it works, and it's smart of us to figure it out. Yeah.

So the Balm, which is one of the most successful parts, was a mistake, which I love. Anything that starts is a big mistake.

Happy accidents. It was not what I asked for when it came, I'll never forget, I opened it up and I was like, God damn it, that's not what I wanted. But I stuck my finger in anyways, and I went like this with my fingers and I tapped it on. I looked in the mirror, I said, Oh, my God, it's a miracle. Because you know what? It's moisture. Whenever you're tired, and I have a hippie stick for you, you just take this ball and put it on, and it just makes everything look better. Because by the way, when people don't look good, it's because they're dehydrated. When you hydrate yourself, you look better.

Our friend Eric just told us recently that he's I've never put lotion on his face. Eric, how on earth- He doesn't wash it or put lotion or do anything on his face. He looks pretty good. Imagine what he looked like if he had been moisturizing for the last 10 years. I know.

We should get him something for us. This guy, what's his name again? Rob. Rob, he looks like a baby.

He's a cherub.

He's 37 years old. He's got two kids, and he doesn't have any lines or any age. Genetics. Yeah, 100 %.

No, Rob's the cuteest guy in Los Feliz. Okay, so the non-competit expires. Yes. It's COVID. There's a lot What's happening in the world at the end of '22?

A presidential election is about to happen in a week, and everyone says to me, Do not launch this now. We went to big PR agencies. Everyone said, Don't do it. I didn't hire any of those PR agencies. I hired my neighbor Lynette down the street, who now is still with me and I can't live without. She handles all of Jones Road and all of my personal stuff.

Does Cody come in as the head of marketing initially?

No, not then. So he started coming in with growth. When he came in, our business quadrupled only because we did a call with Gary Vaneerchuk, and Gary said, go on TikTok now.

Yeah. So you were forced to go on TikTok?

We weren't forced.

You were.

Oh, I was forced. This is a really important entrepreneurial thing. When someone says, go hire a team, go hire a person, I just can't do that. I just do it instantly. Gary said, go hire a team, go hire an agency. And Cody just picked up the phone and said, go, mom. And we put it up. And that's how it started. And it blew up. And it blew up.

So year one, you guys had 15 million in revenue.

I think 18 first year. I was hoping to do a million.

Incredible. And then year two was 150. We doubled. No?

No, wait. I don't think we did 150 in year two.

Oh, no, 2024, you're doing 150. I'm sorry. Yeah.

You caught my first big mistake. Last year, we did 180, maybe. And now we're just shy of 200. Incredible. Industry sources say, because you're not allowed to say. Why aren't you allowed to say? I don't know. It's not cool. I don't know. Whatever. It's a bad look. There's nothing cool about me.

To get acquired in five years is pretty miraculous.

Isn't this how it works for everybody?

Exactly. And then you start at the end of 2020, and here we are in 2025, and you now have something that, of course, could get acquired for an enormous amount.

How is your confidence then when you're on TikTok? It's starting. Are you like, God, I really hope I can do this again?

Well, no, I was never worried about that. I don't want to look like an idiot. I don't want someone to listen to this podcast and say, God, Bobby sounds like an asshole, because sometimes I'm myself, and sometimes people think it's the greatest thing. And mostly people that know me will be like, What did she say?

Well, you've been immersed in beauty for 45 years now. 1980, you moved to New York. I just know that when I'm here in LA, it's everyone's occupation. You can't go more than a couple of days without hearing some tip about how to look better, do something better.

Well, it's all out there on the internet. It's crazy. There's so much. Now I'm very interested in health and wellness and the hacks that you could do and all these people that are doing all these weird things like rides, and I'm just like, Bring it on. Just show me, tell me. I don't obsess about beauty things anymore. I know I'm not getting work done on my face. I do laser, by the way. I swear by lasers because it doesn't alter my face, but tightens and lifts and things like that.

College in production.

Yeah, all that stuff.

But in your 30s and 40s, when you were surrounded by that, did that inadvertently make you incredibly self-conscious? A hundred %. Do you have body dysmorphia at all?

Oh, I totally do. There's no question. My friends laugh at me all the time. I'm teeny, but I always think I have to lose weight, and I don't have to lose weight. But now I'm trying to build muscle. Yes, which is key. Which is really important.

When you were juggling these million things and that was on the plate, how consuming was that?

Oh, my God. So hard. Do you know what it's like going to the Met Gala? I know you do. But as a five-foot-tall Jewish girl from Chicago, who usually I'm behind the scene doing makeup. And once I did someone's makeup, and then I had to go get changed for the Met Ball. That was the stupidest thing I've ever done.

Do you do your own makeup for those events?

I do. I have someone in my office, my head makeup artist, who does it. She does some things better than me, like my brows. So I always end up taking my hands. I don't like to look like I have a lot of makeup on. Yeah.

Do you feel like, oh, my God, I'm the walking face of these brands? That's a little stressful.

Look, what I'm selling now is not changing the way you look, so I'm comfortable with it. The moment in my life changed me forever. I I got a party for, I think it was for teenage beauty years ago, and you needed a celebrity to show up back then. I asked my friend Lorraine Brocco if she'd come, and she said, I'll do my best to get there. I'm coming back from LA. I'll do my best. Well, the woman shows up. She got off a plane, had not a stitch of makeup on. She walks in. The cameras went crazy. She looked so gorgeous without makeup on. I like more of a natural. I don't think many makeup artists understand how to use makeup and make it look like you're not wearing it. You could put a full foundation, concealer, blush, bronzer, and look like the most glorious part of yourself.

Not see the huge line of demarcation.

Yeah, and do strong eyes and sparkle and do all that. But still, there's a glow and a naturalness.

You can tell when somebody really knows what they're doing and when they don't. If you've had your makeup done a lot, you can tell, Oh, this looks cookie cutter versus this looks like me.

But also it's my beauty esthetic. And there's a lot of celebrities and makeup artists that have a different esthetic of what it should It's just my esthetic.

But it's been working for a long time.

Now, I have many times been standing somewhere and thought, I can't believe being funny brought me here. Being funny got me kicked out of class in the principal's office nonstop. And then I'll be standing somewhere spectacular. I'm like, I can't believe this thing brought me to this place.

Do you still feel like that sometimes?

Yeah. I mean, it's insane. We've interviewed Bill Gates a lot. He happens to love us. He took us to India for a week, and we're sitting on his plane, flying in India. I'm like, I'm not in venture capital I'm not a tech person. I'm a comedian. And somehow that brought me to this airplane. And he is nuts.

You're not known as a comedian. Initially. Okay. But that's not how people know you.

Not now since this show.

Well, yeah. And you're an actor. Yes. You're an actor, and now You're... God knows what it is. God knows. But it's working whatever it is. I was just on his daughter's podcast. Oh, Phoebe. She's fantastic. I use this word normal, real. It's rare, but I appreciate all the moments.

But the White House, doing makeup to get to the White House.

Yeah. I was in the motorcade. Some guy turns to me. He says, Who are you? And I said, Well, I'm a makeup artist. And I said, Who are you? He said, I'm Leon Paneta. I'm like, Oh, okay. The Secretary of Defense. And I'm like, Who are you? He's like, Secretary of Agriculture. I'm like, Can you fix our crops? Oh, my God.

Yeah. You're like, How am I here right now?

There was a moment where we were at this table in India, and it was the Minister of Agriculture, Minister of Defense, Bill Gates, and everyone had named placers. I podcasters. Then it was just like, This feels so stupid.

And they were brainstorming on how to fix the world. And we were just sitting there totally quiet.

Did you not say anything?

No, we couldn't get to the point. We had nothing to add. We had nothing to add. Yeah. And at one point, they were going around, introducing them. I was like, Oh, my God, what's going to happen when they got to us? You got this. But we got skipped. Oh, thank God.

I was on the US Trade Commission. I had to do that, too. It was scary. I just looked up and I looked for Papa Sam. Papa, do you believe that I'm sitting here doing that. I know. That's so special. No matter what, I don't take it lightly. Being a makeup artist has gotten me some interesting... I just had something at Paul McCartney's house because we saw a movie. My husband and I walked out and we looked each other and we were like, Love this life. Doing makeup? That brought me to this place. Then guess what I did? I went home and I did the laundry and I put away the dishes and I cleaned up and I do what I normally do. Went back to your regular life. I went back to my old self.

Yeah, balancing both.

Okay, now here's the tough part. I'm watching this interview with you, and it is taking place in one of your brick and mortar stores in, presumably, New York. You're being interviewed, but you are so distracted with the fact that you're noticing on the wall, there's this photo that's been mounted to the wall, and it's enormous. You notice there's a tiny scratch in the photo on the neck. You're like, Okay, Erin, you're yelling, Erin. Erin, I want to go. We're on film, so Aaron will know what the people are talking. Talking, talking, talking. He's like, This sign should be bigger. Well, Erin. You have to be a perfectionist. I am. To build something in the way you did.

But I'm also a micro I'm not a micromanager. I'm a multitasker. So I knew that once I walked off that set, I would not remember to tell Aaron. It's now or never. It's now or never.

I get that, but you are a perfectionist. I believe you have to be. But I would imagine it's hard to work for a perfectionist because I would imagine you might feel like no matter what I do, she'll find something wrong with it.

No, but by the way, the people that work really well with me, like Aaron, who literally went to high school with my youngest son. I call her my baby creative director because I think she's finally is phenomenal. I can say, Erin, Yuck, what happened to that? She'd tell me, or Erin, she goes, Yeah, I know they wanted that, but I'm like, I don't want that. Could you please fix it? Could you make it go away? Erin, that wrinkle under my left arm pit, can you get rid of it? She's my guy. You could say anything to each other. You have each other's back.

I'm a huge perfectionist as well. I edit the show, and I think the same thing because I'm giving notes. I'm like, They definitely hate me because I'm giving these half-second notes. It's like that needs to come out because to me, it's everything, actually. It makes a huge difference.

I agree with it. I'm just saying, how does one manage the tension of having to work that way and knowing that... I'll give you an example. Bill Gates. He said, There were many years where I came in and I leveled everyone and told them how to be. And I ultimately had to step back and go, what is the net win? Do I leave that meeting and everyone feels defeated and they no longer feel passionate about working? So learning to curb, even if the end goal is, I want this thing to be great, recognizing that might not be the road to get to greatness.

Well, first of all, having the right people on the team. I've got my retail team, my creative team, my marketing team, my PR team, my PD team, the product development, which is most important. They know me. I'm like, Guys, and they're like, You're right. I'm like, Thank you guys so much for working on this. I always make sure I thank them. By the way, they also know that there's times where I am so insanely busy that I don't have a second for anything or I haven't slept. They're like, I know you only have a second. Just please. They've got to be passionate And I have to be passionate about them.

Does the perfectionism bleed into your personal life? Because I have found this to be a real problem. And I've been talking to my therapist about this a lot lately because I've had multiple complaints, some from Dax, some from other people that are like, I don't want to be picked at in life. Here is a different thing. This is my job.

The conversation is like, I want you to do exactly what you do on the show, and I want you to kill me. And then when we're having dinner on vacation, that's what I said.

He doesn't want me to... Edit me in real life. Yes. And other people have said this to me, too. It's not just him. I don't want to be the type of person that sees everything that's wrong or is critical, but it is what I do here, and it's really hard to shut it off in life.

The good thing is that we're always evolving, and the best people are the ones that want to be better versions of themselves. I've had to let go of a lot of things, and I've had to learn how to tell people I don't like I do things in a very different way than I used to. And I've evolved. I've worked really hard, especially with my son and my daughter-in-law, because I want to see the grandkids, number one. But also we all want the same thing, but sometimes how you get there is tough.

It's hard.

It is. It's really hard. And relationships are hard. Do you know how many times Steven will say to me, I don't work for you, right? Don't come and bounce orders because I'm so used to saying, Do this, do this. I need this. I need this.

I've said that to my wife.

It's hard to shut off. Okay. No, it is hard. And also I'm anxious. I want things done. And I'm always worried I'm going to forget something. I take on everything because I care about everything. I care about my house. I walk in my house and I re-merchandize things. I move books around or I make sure the bar looks good. I do. It's my thing.

I do that, too. You just have to make everything look perfect.

You'd feel so comfortable in Monica's apartment.

Yeah, it's really nice. Is it nice?

Yeah. Everything.

There's a lot of re-merchandizing.

Yeah. Anytime I feel a little bit out of control, I will re-merchandize. I just look around. I'm like, Okay, how can I reposition this?

To adjust my internal feelings. You're going to have to send me your cell phone because I find these things on Instagram that leads me to someone's organization wishlist. And all of a sudden, I'm buying organizers, individual little baggies for core. I'm like a nutcase because it does make me feel calm to open a drawer because there's chaos on the news. There's chaos everywhere.

Mostly there's chaos up here.

There is chaos up there.

The mind is not a friendly place.

But I'm never going to change. I'm not going to meditate. Look Me in the eye, I'm not going to meditate. Don't make me. I'm not going to.

Yeah, you just have to find what works for you.

You do. And not everything works.

Well, Bobby, I adore you. I had so much fun sitting next to you. You really sparked the night up. There's a lot of different people there.

It was very eclectic.

It was. All right. Well, I hope I sit next to you again someday soon.

I hope so, too. I hope it's not one of those things. I hope it's just at dinner one night. Well, I love your book.

Still, Bobby. Thank you. Please check it out. I hope you'll come back and we'll get to talk to you again. Thank you.

So It was a pleasure. Thanks.

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, If You Dare.

Stay tuned for the fact check.

It's where the party's at.

Hello.

Hello. That's how Bob Durce talks, remember? We haven't talked like him in a while. Hello. Hi, Anne. It's Bob. I'm in prison. How much is the house worth in Long Island? Oh, wow. A hundred million?

Even he found love again.

He was irresistible. He had lots of lovers. You loved him. I wanted to be one of his lovers.

You wanted to date him.

He passed, right? Did he die?

I think he passed.

I'm prizzy. I'll never get to nurture him back to sanity.

You won't.

How are you doing? Really great blue color. Really great. Thank you.

Yes, it's a new sweater.

I feel like I would look good in that for the eye reason.

You would? It would make your It's nice pop. I also bought it in purple today because I liked it so much putting it on. I was like, I want another color.

Okay, sure.

I bought it in purple, too.

Did we discuss the fact that many, many people collected the Got Milk ads?

See, I knew it.

It was fun. I guess it's a double-edged sword. It's good news and bad news because I was like, Wow, I found the criteria for who to hire. I could almost start my own hiring service, and I just asked the applicants one question. I guarantee you, and I'm a phenomenal coworker. So in some sense, I'm like, well, maybe I'm not being discerning enough because it turns out a lot of people... But also, good news, maybe there's a lot of great folks out there to work with.

Maybe you're right because it's hard to collect them. You really have to be on the lookout. You have to be on the proud, keep your eyes wide open.

I have such a vague memory. These were like, they'd have a celebrity in a normal magazine, and they'd be standing, they'd hold a glass of milk. Am I thinking of the right thing?

They would have a milk mustache.

A milk mustache.

Sometimes they'd be holding it, but not always. In It's different scenarios. There's one of Jennifer Love Hewitt. She's in a kitchen, and she's wearing a flannel shirt, I think. The kitchen's messy.

But she's got milk.

She's got milk. Well, does she? Because it's question mark. Got milk?

Oh, right.

It was just really great.

It was a really celebrity-driven campaign. Is that what made it so collectible?

There she is. Hey. I really nailed it, didn't I?

You fucking A, you did. Yeah, and the kitchen's a fucking mess.

Yeah, it's a mess because she's made eggs and pancakes.

But somehow she made perfect pancakes, but she has no regard for anything else. Like the way she mixed the batter, it's all over the sides. Yet she did pour them perfectly.

Do you have an affinity for her because of Party of Five?

I did like Ground Party of Five, but I was a little older. Got it. And Neve was on the show.

I know. Both are great. I loved her, though.

I mean, she started as a kid. Yeah, she was a kid on show. And then I did. And in my defense, I was 18 when I was saying this. I did think, Oh, she is becoming hot. It is weird when these kids on shows become hot. Sure. Does that happen with the boys? Jennifer Thomas, Jonathan Taylor-Thomas. Tamo Shanters.

Let's go with classic JTT.

Jtt. Do you know I used him in Empire at Amy's birthday?

You did? I did. Did you get caught?

It took forever. I was one of the last people. That's a good one, right, for a Ms. Lee? Because I think most people would think I wouldn't even know that.

Yeah, that's right. Oh, he had one? Of course he had one. I think I had him.

So it was mostly all youth? No, no. There's oldies. There's some oldies in there?

Oh, yeah. All these were goodies. Any baddies? These are all goodies. Oh, no, there's baddies. Oh, there are? Yeah, those are the hard ones to find.

Speaking of which.

What?

I have started the Charlie Sheen Netflix doc.

How is it?

It's fucking awesome.

Oh, great.

It's so good.

This is a Easter egg.

It's so good. I'm excited. And do you know what I didn't know? I mean, I knew... I was young enough to have been like an audience goer when he broke out with Platoon and Wall Street. So I remember the meteorite rise, but it's not like you knew a ton about them back then. There was no way to. There wasn't social media, blah, blah, blah. I had no idea. He and nick Cage were inseparable best friends.

Oh, wow. Did they have a falling out?

I doubt it the way he's chatting about. He clearly loves them to death still. Oh, wow. But that famous Letterman story that nick Cage tells, where he was on a flight to San Francisco, and he got a hold of the intercom system, and he said, This is your pilot speaking. I'm feeling unwell, and I'm losing control of the aircraft.

Yeah.

He was with Charlie. The two of them were going on that trip, and Charlie had an ounce of cocaine tape to his ankle. When they got off the plane, the police were there. Oh, my God.

How did he get the... Oh, security was different then.

Well, you could still go through the cocaine around your ankle as long as they didn't pat you down. It wouldn't set off a detector or anything.

Not now, though. Yeah.

I flew with cocaine post-9/11.

What? Yeah.

I'm sorry. I just told this story the other day. I'm sorry. But we I made it. Yeah, I had brought... I had gone out the night... I mean, it was during the idiocracy. I had done a table read. I knew I was going to get sober for the movie, but I had a week before the table read and the filming starting. So it's like, I went to the table read.

Oh my God, guess what?

What?

It's 9/11.

I know. Ding, ding, ding. That's crazy.

Don't say you- Crazy. You didn't know.

I didn't know it was 9/11 because I journal- But you didn't know you were doing- I didn't know it was such a ding, ding.

Okay, great. Okay, so it's for idiocracy. I see.

Yeah. So I went down there for a table read and a fitting, and it went well. I did good in the tables. I was feeling great. Oh, gosh. So you had to reward yourself. I went out on sixth Street. And before you know it, I've got Coke, and I meet Come on. I have a whole night. And then now it's morning time and it's time to go to the airport.

And you dootied in your bed.

I didn't do any dooting. I was very clean. But I had to then go get on an airplane, and I hadn't slept. So I'm like, I got to bring this through security with me because I'm going to crash. I'm going to have the most miserable flight of my life. I'm starting to come down. I don't bore you with the addict's dilemma. But suffice to say, I took it through security and I went to the bar and I started getting paranoid while I was at the bar having a Jack and Diet because obvious reasons. And I'm like, I'm about to start a movie. What if I got arrested? This could derail everything. I just did so good yesterday. Now I'm ruining. Oh, my God. So my The conclusion was I went to the bathroom, I went to the Handicap stall, and there was a huge toilet paper dispenser with the double rolls. I put my hand way up there, and there was a little shelf up in there. I did bunch, and then I put my bag of Coke up in this dispenser. And then I went back to the bar and had another Jack and Diet.

And after that one, I'm like, Oh, I'd like a bump. I go back to the handicap bathroom. And Monica, I put my hand on a down a thing and I'm fishing around inside this toilet paper dispenser. I'm Oh, fuck, it's not here. And then I look and it's not fallen anywhere. And in my brain, which has now been up for day and a half, two days.

Fingerprints.

It's more. I go, Oh, fuck. Someone found it? They pulled the toilet paper, they found it, they alerted the authorities. The authorities have been waiting to see who's going to go into the handicap stall. So I sat in this handicap stall, like 1,000 I was 100% convinced that there were cops in the bathroom waiting for me. I was just like, What do we do? What's our game plan? We got to... Well, we don't have any on us. But they know because they know. And eventually, I was like, I got to face the music. And then I walk in, there's nobody there. Who knows where that went? Somebody presumably got a free bag.

But also, so wild that somebody would think to... Maybe it was probably someone cleaning the bathroom who was replacing the toilet paper and found it. I hope.

I mean, I hope people aren't just like- Or they're like, sometimes you give those things a good yank or maybe they rattled it enough that it fell out. And then maybe the other guy was a playboy, and he was like, Hey, look at this.

I mean, a lot of things have to be coming together for that. Because if I yanked on a toilet paper and coke fell down. Yeah, you'd scream.

Yeah. Yeah. And you'd be like, Snakes. But in your mind at that time, because I already know I'm in trouble. I know I'm a bad boy. I should not be doing this. I should be being sober for this movie. I'm also I'm supposed to be gaining a lot of weight, and I haven't now eaten in 36 hours, but that's a side note. But the notion that if a bag of coke is found, that they will now initiate a sting operation to see who's coming. That's how I feel. That would never happen.

Don't say never. Never say never. I would assume, yeah, they would fingerprint this, and they would see who came- Oh, my fingerprints were all- I know.

They had a grubby little fingerprint.

Who came through the airport around what time? I feel like they could find you.

I even I didn't think I was like, Oh, my God, I got to... Because I'm using a key. I don't know if you know that. I'm dipping my key in the bag and doing key bumps. That's how I'm getting it in my body. Why? Well, I got to get it out of this bag and into my nasal passage.

Why can't you use your finger?

Like, stick my finger in then what? Put my finger on my nose?

That's weirder than putting it on a key.

You can make a little pile and then you can snort it.

I can't believe you just acted like what I was saying was crazy.

Well, if you ever tried to do coke with your finger, you'd find out that was a crazy plan.

Well, that's why people have long nails.

Yeah, that's why weirdos have long coke nails. But I didn't have a coke nail because I was a responsible person.

Oh, yeah, you were so responsible.

But then I was like, Oh, I got to get all the coke off my key. Like, my key probably would light up like a Christmas tree if they put whatever magic Coke wand in my mind they had. Right. So then I was like, sucking on the key to get every remnant off. Oh, no.

Oh, my God.

Addicts are so- We do a lot of We end up doing a lot of weird stuff. Dirty.

Now, the idea of putting a key in your mouth, doesn't that gross you out? Absolutely. The amount of germs, that's one of the worst things you can put in your mouth.

Yeah. And it's This is metal. Exactly. Yeah, it's disgusting. But I had to get rid of the evidence.

Did you think about swalling the key?

But key stirring the key. Whoa. Key stirring the key. Anyways, got milk ads. A lot of people collected them.

I think a lot of the people who've collected Got Milk keys have never found themselves in the situation you have. They're busy. They're at the newsstand buying up all the magazines so that on the flight, They can look each one very carefully, page by page, see if you found something.

Were you making your mom take you to newsstands to further your collection? It sounds like a task you would put on her plate.

I don't know. She wouldn't have done. No. No. She doesn't have time for that.

You were like, We got to go camp out for this book. You did a lot of these little projects, right?

Then I was old. I would go with friends. I was old enough. Okay. So, yeah, if we were at the airport or at the grocery store, yes, I probably would have asked.

Yeah. Can we buy these six magazines?

Can I please buy all of these? Then I think I had some subscriptions.

I had probably like teen- Did you earn money as a kid?

Yeah, I had allowance.

You had an allowance? . Okay. Yeah. You got a little around town, Keisha. Yeah.

I mean, I had so many ads.

So many? You did.

Yeah, I had so many. They were great. The best ones were the cast. They would do a full cast.

Did Friends Ever Got Milk?

Well, Jen-Ann, I think, had one. Okay. Maybe her and Courtney and Lisa. There was a few. I have it. I have it.

For more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

When they pitch the idea originally, do you think people were like, So we're going to coat the top of their lip with white cream.

Yeah, I think they probably painted it.

Was anyone like, This is gross. This might look... Sexual. There it is. Oh. Yes, I had that one. Yeah, that looks like they just left an No, don't you dare. That was my fear.

That was my fear. Don't you dare dirty this up, you dirty boy.

My God, everyone is so young.

I know. Yeah, Rob put up a picture of Jan Ann and Lisa Kudrow.

She looks 19.

They were young. They were young back then.

Remember Lisa said she felt like the old lady.

Yeah, look how cute she is.

She was so young and cute.

Oh, beautiful girls. Speaking of semen.

Yeah, sure. Yeah, yeah.

I'm not going to out this brand. I've been trying some new makeup foundations. I'm loving all of them, loving all the colors and the textures and stuff, but I'm playing with a lot of them, so I don't want people to try to figure out which one this is, okay? Right. Today, I put makeup on. What was in your lab. I put makeup on. I walked outside and I was like, It smells funny out here. I was like, Oh, maybe It's like Bradford pair season. Classically, the Bradford pair smells like semen.

It smells like a rotting corpse. Oh, semen.

Slash period, slash death. I was like, God, are we there? Like, euh, stinky. Hold on.

What a combo of words next to each other. If there was a perfume called Semen Period, I mean, wow. I know. I wonder if there was ever a punk band named Semen Period.

Well, Gwar could get on it. It seems like something they would like.

If you were a horned, pig-faced goblin. That's right.

It's probably one of the gifts God gave humans, that The person who has a period also doesn't release semen in case... Those never really have to mix. Oh, right. Although they could mix in a sexual experience. Sure.

Ideally.

Okay. Now, I'm walking to the car and I'm like, Yeah. And then I have this realization.

Your foundation?

Yes. Do you smell it?

God, no.

You can't smell it from there?

20 feet away, your face.

You still smell it. Yeah.

That would be a bummer for me. If I had a smell on my face, I couldn't get rid of.

I know. I like this foundation. There's many that have sunscreens built in. This is one of those. I think it might be part of the ish.

The sunscreen?

Yeah. Part of what's adding to the smell. Oh.

Isn't sunscreen odorless?

No.

No? I mean, they put that yummy coconut flavor in like, copper tone.

Yeah. They add that. The fun ones. It's not like vacation. Even regular, like SPF, generally. Sunscreen has a smell. You know it. It doesn't smell like semen. I'll say that. But I think maybe the mix of ingredients has caused a semen-like smell.

Yeah.

It's unfortunate.

It's a bummer that semen smells the way.

It's a bummer that bodies smell the way they do. It's gross. We have all these smells.

Okay, great. I knew there was something we're supposed to be talking about, and I just remembered.

Okay.

So you and I were in a competition this week. Yeah, we were. We went on Hot Ones versus.

Yes, me and you did.

Yes. And we ate five chicken wings.

Hot Ones versus is a spinoff of Hot Ones. It's more of a competition show, so it was me versus you.

That's right. On Hot Ones, if people haven't watched that, you get interviewed by Sean Evans. He asks you questions as you're eating Hot Wings, and they're getting progressively hotter. Yes. And the last one is generally brutal. It takes people out. Even number 7 starts taking people out. Well, this show is it's only number 10. Every wing has the hottest of the hot. It was so- It's smart.

It is... Well, look, I was so really truly nervous to do this show. And you notoriously went on original Hot Ones. You did great on Hot Wins so much so that you asked for another of the last wing. You threw a whole bunch of hots.

They put me in the ring of fire. I don't know if that's what it's called. If it's not, they should call it that. But it was a champion circle of people who took the heat the best.

Yeah, you did great.

It's one of my identity markers.

Exactly. And I knew this And so I was also like, well, fuck.

It was like you and I playing one-on-one basketball. It's like, why is this the versus? Exactly.

So I will spoil a little bit that you ate first. Yeah. It was like It was really hot for you.

Well, I started salvating quite a bit.

Yeah. And I started to really panic because- When you saw that it was affecting me. Yes. That's very- Because you apparently can eat two of the last one and you are struggling. So then I was really starting to Anyway, it was really fun. You guys will have to tune in.

It was super fun. You thought you were going to fall over a lot. Yeah, it is. It was really funny.

I didn't feel steady.

No, I definitely got concerned, and I didn't vocalize it because I thought, Well, that'll only compound it. But I really started thinking after you had a good amount of fire in you and you were feeling like you were going to fall over, I was like, It's a panic attack on the table.

Right. It's always on the table.

Yeah. Just only because of the soul cycle stuff I know.

Right. And you weren't right about a seizure?

Not at all. Okay. I don't think that. I don't think that would trigger a seizure, right or wrong. I just don't think that. But once you're getting wobbly and I started thinking like, Oh, man, if she has a panic attack, how do I- What would you do? How do I help her?

Great question.

And it's probably not saying you're imagining this. It's not going to be like, no one's ever died from this. You can't die. No one's ever been hurt. And then I'm like, Well, it's probably not going to be It's probably got to be more like, I can't acknowledge. Yeah, you are. I don't know. I don't know how you get someone out of a panic attack.

I mean, this- You put my wall in your mouth. This harkens back to when I was having a panic attack during Shrooms.

Oh, would you call that a panic attack? Yeah.

Okay. Yes. We did no write- It is truest sense. I was like, I can't breathe. That was a a different panic attack. Normally, my panic attacks, I feel like I'm going to pass. I start This is associating. But this was I couldn't breathe, which is a common panic attack. I think you said no one's ever stopped breathing from-Mushrooms.

Shrooms.

Which did work, or I think. I eventually was able to breathe.

I think there were a bunch of baby steps. That was one of them.

Yeah. So that, I guess, is a good tactic. Okay.

I'll stick with it.

On me anyway.

But what's funny is it just so happened to on the same day, I was taking Nate, Eric, and Charlie to the Dodgers game. Yes, that night. And we go primarily because my agency has great seats in what is called the Dugout Club. Yeah. And I am not going to act like I am into baseball at all. I don't know a thing about it. It's a great place to go have a great chat with the boys and scream a bit. It's so fun. But I don't know who's leading or if the team's good. I don't know anything. I go because there is an All You Can Eat bar in the Dugout Club, and it is premium. They had a pot rose, Monica. I love a pot rose. I had it at Dollywood, and then I just had it here. I want more pot roast in my life.

Okay. My mom loves to make a pot roast.

Tell her to make me one. The next time she's visiting. Okay. All right. They had a beautiful hot honey fried chicken. So the whole game plan with the boys, and it's all talked about way before, it's Hey, heads up, everybody, don't eat today. Yes. And so really, in my mind, I hadn't eaten. I had an oatmeal in the morning at 7: 00 AM.

Okay, so you ditched the plan already. You ate.

I ate because we had to eat those wings. But it wasn't like, I was like, I'm not going to eat lunch. I'm not going to whatever. I'm going to eat 7,000 calories in about 45 minutes once we get to this thing. And also I didn't want to betray the path. So we arrived and I said to everyone, What is it? Charlie's like, I've only had a protein shake today. We're like, Good, Good job. And then everyone's going to the thing, and I'm like, I just had oatmeal. I don't know why. I forgot.

Well, okay. I know why you forgot. You don't feel like you're eating.

No, it wasn't a meal. I forgot I had that. Then we go to the thing, and that's really fun. And we go hard, and I eat so much. I even have a Sunday. This was a total hack. If anyone's ever goes to the Dugout Club, they had fried plantains, but they're on the hot bar. They're on the other side of the thing. And then on the far end of the place, there's a soft serve machine and some toppings. So I made my soft serve. I was like, Oh, fuck. Fried plantains on there. That's like a banana split, but fried? Pop those in there. It was heaven. We all ate so much. We had so much fun. I made a good joke that I thought of your brother during because your brother was Cookie Jeps.

No, Muckie Bets.

Well, that's the actual guy. Juki Bets. Juki Bets. He had or has a hat company in reference to Muki.

That's actually just Instagram.

Okay. Muckie Bets is on the Dodgers, and all these guys have the best asses. And we're directly behind Homeboy where they warm up.

Did you make fart noises?

No, but I did heckle him.

Oh, great.

It was Muki Bets, and he was 8 feet away. Again, I had a gaggle of 60-year-old women in front of me, which was great. Then he's up there just warming up, and he's so close, and I go, Muki Bets, more like Muki Bonds.

Oh, wow. Yeah.

The ladies loved it. It's a great compliment to him. I think it put a spring in his step. He had a Dynamite Night.

Did he?

He knocked some homies.

Okay, but maybe he was so insecure. Maybe he has an insecurity about his big butt.

No way. When you got those juicy...

Jukey bets. Jukey, juicy, jukey bets. But maybe he was like, All I even think about is my butt, and no one recognizes me for the athlete that I am.

I mean, that's sentence that makes sense. There's no way anyone hates having a great ass. Maybe because I was denied a great ass.

Exactly. So you might not know.

Right. But I'm pretty sure everyone would like to know they have a great ass. Okay, great. So that was a blast. Yelling, Mucki Bonds, all this stuff. It's so fun. Go home. Next morning, I'm like, I want to check in with the guys because, again, we all ate probably 10,000 calories. And so I'm like- But you felt fine? No. Midway through, I kept thinking, Am I going to have haunis?

Right.

But I was confused because I had literally forgot we had eaten all these insanely hot wings. So they were in my intestines.

Making their way through.

Yes. And you can feel the heat the whole time. And it felt like squirrels fighting. And I thought, oh, that's haunis coming. So I was totally off base. And I kept telling the guys, I might have Honest. But anyways, the next morning, I check in with the guys. I'm like, Anyone have Honest? It took me two trips, but I got there. And then immediately, Nate's like, I knew it was the pot roast. I didn't touch that pot roast, and I feel great, blah, blah, blah. And then all of a sudden I realized, oh. And then I write, oh, yeah, I also had five hot wings at maximum temperature. And it was pretty relevant detail to leave out. I was I was fishing to see if everyone got haunt us from this experience.

Yeah, you thought maybe it was food poisoning?

I would like to know if everyone else had haunt us, but it was the wings.

So it was definitely the wings. Also, food poisoning is last on the list.

I didn't think I had food poisoning.

Okay.

Because like, haunas- Maybe it's a bad combination, like dairy, the plantains, the pot rose.

No, just the amount you ate. The amount, maybe- Sometimes the amount is just enough to create a tornado.

Yes. They just don't mix well.

I thought I was going to have Honest, but I didn't.

You did not. Which was surprising.

Are you sure? Well, no, I'm sure. But I did have an interesting movement.

Okay, great. This is basically that long lead up was to find out what happened for you the next morning.

Yeah, well, no, that night.

Oh, that night.

I have a fast acting system.

Fast acting is an acting.

In fact, I was a little nervous during eating.

You even said you might tonka.

Yeah, I could tonka there or on the way home. I don't know. But I wasn't. I, too, forgot. But when I first got home, I was like, Oh, I'm definitely going to poop. But then I didn't. I think that was, as you said, the squirrels.

Yeah, the squirrels fighting.

Yeah, they were fighting.

The way they run around the branches. Yeah.

But they didn't want to come out. They don't want to come down the tree. They were just wanting to play.

They were blessed. Yeah, they love playing.

So then I I had wine with a friend. I was out and about. And then, yeah, then that night, I was like, Oh, God, I feel so full. But why do I feel so full? I didn't eat today. Yeah.

Great. You forgot, too.

I also forgot, but then I was like, Oh, God. Yeah, it's the wings. It's the fiery wings. And then I had an interesting movement. It wasn't hauness.

It wasn't hauness. Did you feel heat when it passed through?

That's a good... I didn't feel heat, but I felt pain. Pain, yeah. Yeah, it felt painful. It felt as if it was hauness, but then when I looked, it wasn't.

Right, right, right. Which was interesting. I had pain, but I didn't have burning, which I guess is a blessing because I have had burning once. That was that Carolina reaper chocolate.

I don't want that.

You can't do it. No. You thought you were going to fall over on those wings.

It's funny, though, because last night, the girls, we went to an incredible Thai restaurant. So good. One of the dishes we got was this papaya salad. It was incredible. It was spicy. One of the girls was eating it, and she was like, Oh, my God. It was so, so spicy for her. I thought, How are people doing hot ones? A lot of people, I think, are like our friend, Laura, who could barely eat this papaya salad. Yeah. How? On the scale, compared to what we had to eat, it was nothing.

Right. Yeah. She would be in big trouble.

She'd be dead. Has anyone died on it?

People get the burps and they can't answer the question. Now I'm doing. But that's the appeal of the show is people lose their shit.

You know what was weird? You didn't drink any milk.

I didn't. No.

I thought that was so weird.

Yeah. I just was imagined putting dairy on top of that. It just felt like not the combo I wanted.

It really helped.

It did. Yeah, I drink so much. You brought a big jar of honey with you. Then when we got in the truck, you had a humongous scoop of honey.

I I got a bottle of honey and a spoon in a ziploc bag because I was told that honey helps. The last one you eat, you add all this extra hot sauce to. That one is- Nuclear. It is nuclear. My lips were burning for five hours.

Yeah, I touched my penis and testicles, and I had washed my hands before I peed. I I thought it was off my fingers, and I had quite a bit of discomfort on my penis and everywhere I touched- Alley. South of my belt for a while.

Wow. Yeah.

Then I went in the sauna later before the game, and it reignited all the pain. Oh, wow. Everything caught back on fire. Interesting. Then somehow I forgot I had done that. A half hour later, I was at the game.

Well, it messed with our brains. Anyway, I- Check that out in December.

Or next year, whenever it comes out.

Yeah, it's coming out in a long time, but it was really fun.

Yeah, I like that. It was fun. It was a nice switch up.

Yeah, it was. Yeah, yeah. Want to do some facts? Yeah, let's do some facts. Okay. Okay. Facts for Bobby Brown.

Oh, Bobby Brown. I like him, Spunky.

Yeah, she's so cool.

Is Spunky still a positive?

I hope so. I think so. I like it. I think so, yeah.

I like if someone calls me Spunky. Do you like to be called Spunky? Yeah.

Yeah. I think I'm Spunky.

Is Pluck the other... It's like the more old-fashioned- Yeah, Pluck is a- She's got a lot of Pluck.

Yeah, that one sounds worse.

Yeah, you'd rather be known for being spunky.

Yeah. Punky Brewster.

Spunky Brewster.

Okay, Bobby. So, Bobby is a hero.

I don't like him. She's a beast. Yeah. She brought up...

Well, the subject of data and data came up again. Both are correct. Both are acceptable. Data is generally preferred in British English, while both data and data are used in American English.

I also think the robot on Star Trek was named data.

Okay.

For whatever that's worth.

It says data is more common in technical context. Oh, really?

Which is the opposite of what I said.

Yeah, opposite of what I would have thought, too. Okay.

There we go. Take your pick. Take your pick. This is like people really hate this word, but it's in the dictionary. Rock.

Oh, moist?

No, no, no. It's like, oh, irregardless.

People hate irregardless.

I don't like it. And when I write it, they'll go, That's not a word. And I'm like, and then I said, It's in the dictionary.

Which dictionary?

I swear it's all dictionaries.

Really? Yeah. Is it in a new dictionary? Like, they added it for people like you?

I don't know, but if it's in the dictionary, I can play it in Scrabble. I can use it in my- But is it like, dope or whatever that Simpson's word in the dictionary?

Is it D-O-H? I think it is. I don't know.

But irregardless, solid word. It's there for good.

Okay. Well, you have the right to use whatever word you want. I will not be using irregardless. I'm in the camp that that is a double negative. It's not good.

It's a big trigger for people. Big, big trigger.

It's not like what's worse than that for me is what's worse. There's one that's That's just blatantly misused. Well, no, there's one that people add a silo. They add a letter to the way they're saying it because it's spelled that way, but it's supposed to be pronounced. It's like very... Why? It's not coming to me. It'll come to me. People get mad about the thawd. Thawd?

Thawd and dethawd.

Oh. I always say defrost, not dethawd. I've never said dethawd.

But I can see where people would object. It's a double negative. Yeah.

But this is like all downhill from here. It's similar.

I'm not on the... I'm not a word police.

You're other kinds of police.

Yeah, I am. I am. Thank God, I don't also have it. I don't know if I could even be with me. Irregardless, it's in there. What were we talking about before?

Irregardless. Data and data.

Oh, data and data.

Okay. She sold Bobby... I'm sorry. She, yeah, sold Bobby Brown in 1995 for 75 million. That is 159 million today.

Okay. I said 250. I was being a little- Optimistic. Yeah. These People who can build multiple billion dollar companies.

I just so impressive. Put on them.

So impressive.

Yeah, it really is. Okay, there's a quiz you're going to take. Okay. It's a learning styles quiz.

Okay.

Because we talked about visual learners.

Yes, she said she was a visual learner. She did.

So we're going to find out what you are. Okay? Okay. Now, the choices are often, sometimes, and seldom.

Often, sometimes, seldom. Yes. Okay.

I follow written directions better than oral directions. Seldom. Okay. I can remember more about a subject through listening than reading.

Sometimes.

I bear down extremely hard when writing.

Always. What is that?

Often.

Often, yeah.

Really? I like to Write things down or take notes for visual review.

Yes, often.

I require explanations of graphs, diagrams, or visual directions.

I don't think so. Seldom. Seldom.

I enjoy working with tools.

All the time.

I am skillful and enjoy developing and making graphs and charts.

Never.

I can tell if sounds match when presented with pairs of sounds.

I'd say, yeah.

Often or sometimes. Often.

Okay.

I remember best by writing things down several times.

Often.

I can understand and follow directions on maps.

Often.

I do better at academic subjects by listening to tapes and lectures.

Often.

I play with coins or keys in pockets.

I mean, I have this. This is my binky. I'm not going to say often.

I can better understand a news article by reading about it than by listening to it on the radio. False. Rarely. Seldom. Seldom. I learned to spell better by repeating the letters out loud than by writing the word on paper.

Never.

Okay. I chew gum, snack, or smoke during studies.

Always.

I feel the best way to remember is to picture it in one's head.

I don't know.

Sometimes. Sometimes? Okay. I would rather listen to a good lecture or speech than read about the same material in a book.

Always.

I learn spelling by finger spelling, spelling words in the air with index finger, the words. Never.

Seldom.

I am good at working and solving jigsaw puzzles.

Sometimes.

I prefer listening to the news on the radio more than reading about it in the newspaper.

Often.

I grip objects in my hands during learning periods.

Often.

I obtain information on an interesting subject by reading related materials.

Often.

I follow oral directions better than written ones.

Often.

I feel very comfortable touching others, hugging, handshaking, etc.

Too much. The results are your perfect.

Okay. Interpreting the perceptual preference form. Your perceptual preference can indicate through which channel to your brain information flows most easily. Information that you receive through your preferred channels is more quickly understood and more easily remembered. Arrange your academic life to take advantage of your best channels. Your highest score, tactile.

Oh. You learn- Touchy, touchy.

You learn best by experience or hands-on activity, by being involved physically in classroom experiences. You remember information well when you actively participate in activities, field trips, and role-playing in the classroom, or working on experiments in a laboratory, handling and building models, and touching and working with materials, writing notes or instructions, or a combination of stimuli, for example, an audio tape combined with an activity such as, listen to a summary of tapes you've made while you jog, or making flashcards will help you understand and remember new material. Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah. Your auditory score was second. That was a 30. Your tactile was a 36. Then your auditory is a 30. Your lowest is visual at 24.

Okay, so I'm not a visual learner.

Turns out, no.

Not true.

That was cool.

Yeah. Do you want to give me the computer and I'll do it to you? No, it's all right. Okay. What do you think you are based on that?

I think I am a visual learner.

Okay. Ironic because your vision is not great. I- I think how brilliant you'd be if you could see. I know.

Oh, my God. It'd be too much for the world. It's why when I read, I like a book. I don't like an audiobook. It's in and out. I can't follow that.

Can't hold on to it.

Yeah. But that one's a little tricky because I do retain a lot of here in podcast, but that feels different to me for some reason.

Yeah, maybe that feels more like a classroom, a professor situation.

It's because often there's two people. So it's a conversation. It's engagement. I don't get to tune out. Right. And I feel like I'm participating. Yeah.

You're making a counter argument sometimes. Yes, exactly. Yeah. It's engaging. Yeah.

I don't think I'm very tactile, although...

You're not super mechanical. No. And you don't do pottery. Were you good at origami or fold and paper?

I never tried it.

I don't know. That's Link. That's when Link blows my mind, is the thing she builds. This card she made for your birthday was so cute.

It was so cute.

Or her diorama she makes. I'm like, oh, yeah, she really has a neck for this.

Yes. Yeah. No, that's probably my lowest. Yeah. But I do like holding things, and I do like Toothpicks.

Sure.

It's a little tech- I like chewing on... I like having some objects while I'm- Oral stimulation. Yeah, while I'm busy.

Oral fixation, they call it.

Let's call it that. That's good. So I'm a perv, too.

Let's stick with the traditional. So I'm a perf, too. And your results are You're a perv. Okay, that's it. That was it on Bobby Brown?

Yeah.

You must admire her now.

So much. Yeah. So much. I felt- Very seen. I did. I was like, oh, especially when she talks about being in the details and that being like... In her head, she was like, Yeah, no, I was fired. They wouldn't say I was fired, but they told me to get out of the day to day. That is the job. Yes. That's how I feel. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I get her.

Yeah. It also made me... It's a good heads up for... It's easy to be judgmental of people on their phone when you're doing a shared activity. If you're watching a movie, it's certainly my preference. Someone would not be on their phones. Yeah. To hear her say it, and I'm not involved in that. That's just how she... That's how she enjoys sitting there with a movie on. I know. I was like, Yeah, I got to be more.

Well, I think that's just having an understanding of the other person, but also they could have an understanding that you enjoy quality time, which means not being distracted on the phone. Yeah. I mean, I do that, but I'm by myself. If I'm with people, I try not to do that.

Same. I even know if I'm by myself, I'll be like, put this down. You're going to either watch this or put it in.

Right. I try to. But then all of a sudden, it's back in my hand.

I started the wrong show, but what a blessing. What? Ryan's been saying that the Jason Moher thing is great. It's on Apple TV. Okay. Okay. He's in a loin cloth and stuff. Oh, you love that. Yeah. He's his bonds a lot, I guess. Oh, you love that. I go to Apple TV, and boom, there it is. He's on the cover. He's looking warrior-like. I watch it. It's called C.

Yeah.

And it's by Steven Knight, Peaky Blinders. Oh, cool. And the premise is it's in the future, and all humans are blind now.

Right.

And it's great. But I'm sending Ryan voice memos going, When am I going to see his Bonds? Sure. Also, I guess the only hard thing to accept about this show is that they can still fight even though they're blind, whatever. He sends me one back. You are not watching the same show. I am. So Momoa has two shows on Apple. What's the other one, Rob? Chief of War. Chief of War. He's a little older. Chief of War just came out. Okay. But he's got two where he's in the jungle swinging a sword. I mean, at the same time.

You should come on and tell us about them.

Oh, I love I would have them on.

You'd love to see those guns in person.

I like following him on Instagram. He's always having a good time and drinking a lot of beer. Oh, is he? Yeah, I think he has a really good appetite for Brewskis, which I think is cool. Nice. All right.

All right.

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