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Chapter 1: What are the highlights of Felipe Esparza's background?
on this episode of The Commercial Break.
I almost tripped out on that corner because they had jazz bar, jazz bar, tofu restaurant, Atlanta Punchline, and some Mexican restaurant with a Sharpie, and then the daycare.
And right across the street, they had the strip club, Flashers. Iconic. Flashers. The next episode of The Commercial Break starts now.
Hey there, cats and kittens, and best to you. Welcome to the episode before the episode that officially starts season number six of the commercial break. Here's a history lesson. On March 10th, 1876, Alexander Graham Bell made the very first phone call to his assistant, Tom Watson. And do you want to know what the first thing ever said was?
Speak louder, you dipshit. I can't hear you.
And then Watson and Bell went on to figure out how to charge us all a bunch of money to send electrical signals across wires. And when I was born, if you wanted to call a place like England, you'd pick up your physical phone sticking to your kitchen wall, dial zero, and have an actual person help you connect to the phone number across the pond.
Then AT&T would charge you $26.56 a minute to say three words, wait six minutes, and hear three words back. And if you were lucky, you'd be able to understand each other. But if it was raining or the sun flares were out or whatever the fuck, it's likely you'd hear some weird echo, fuzzy noises, or just generally have a shitty connection. Telephone technology has come a long way.
Now I can call Timbuk2, and it'll sound like that person sitting right next to me. Why am I giving you this lesson, you ask? Well, here's a TCB history lesson. Early on in the show, I made a decision, for better or for worse, to air everything that came out of the microphones. You see, some podcasters like to cut out the ums and the ahs and the breaths.
And they even go so far as to fact check and make sure the things that they are saying are actually true. Not here on the commercial break. When I speak, I'm just as dumb as I sound. So when you hear an episode of the commercial break, there's almost zero editing of the actual content. This is a very long precursor to today's episode with the incredibly talented comedian Felipe Esparza.
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Chapter 2: How does Felipe Esparza view holiday traditions?
We'll have Felipe back and we'll get it right the second time. Go to felipesworld.com to check out all things Felipe Esparza. He's a former winner of The Last Comic Standing. He's had roles on The Eric Andre Show, Superstore, and as a popular podcast, What's Up Fool? And as you'll learn in the show, he's got a new podcast, All About History.
And it would be a shame if I didn't mention that Felipe is on an immense world tour right now. All right, let's do this. We'll take a short break. And when we get back, Christina and I sit down with the incomparable, very lovable Felipe Esparza. And we talk about slaughterhouses. That's right. This episode is not for the squeamish. I'll be back with that interview after this.
Please, we need it. While you're doing that, you can also follow us on Instagram at The Commercial Break and on TikTok at TCB Podcast. And as always, check out our website, TCB Podcast dot com for all of our audio and video content. Speaking of video, we are also posting full video episodes at YouTube dot com slash The Commercial Break. So go watch them, please.
Anyway, now let's hear from our sponsors and get back to the good stuff.
And Felipe is here with us now. Hey, Felipe, how are you? What's up, fool? How you doing? Yeah, listen, I don't have any complaints. Of course, I could complain, but no one's going to listen. So I have 13 to 20 children. You have children. You have a lot of children, don't you? You have four children?
I have three. Three of mine and one with my wife, but I'm not the real father. How old are the children? They're not children. They're adults now. I had them when I was in high school. Oh, God bless you. You're out of the... I've been out since they've been born. What you call... People say that empty nester. I was an empty nester when I was 18.
They're out of my life.
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Chapter 3: What experiences shaped Felipe's views on food and slaughterhouses?
Oh, man, I wish I could claim the same. I'm in the middle of it right now. So are the holidays big for you, Felipe? Does everybody get together?
I think we're big when I was growing up. When I was growing up as a kid, we always spent holidays with our cousins and our aunts and our grandma. Most of my father's family, they live in Los Angeles, like all of them. I think all his brothers and sisters migrated to Los Angeles at one time in the late 70s, early 70s. And so all the family we knew was my father's family.
So we would go over there and they would kill a pig, man, or kill a goat, literally kill it right in front of us. And they didn't care about the city code or nothing. No, fuck that. It's weird, man. We would go to a place where they would slaughter animals in Rosemead, California, which is only like 35 minutes. And people just have ranches with livestock.
And we would just go over there and buy goats. I didn't even know because they were going to baptize my brother when he was three. And we didn't know we were a slaughter farm. I'm still affected by it because that's probably why I'm vegan now. No, we were playing with these three goats. I thought it was a petting zoo because we were kids. And we're just like petting them.
And next, you know, these two guys grab our playful goats and they slit their throats right in front of us. And they run around, spraying blood on their necks, crying, of course. And we hate them the next day. Yes.
So, Felipe, you learned this lesson early. My father was in the commodities trading business, so he would buy 100,000 head of cattle, send them somewhere to be slaughtered, package them, sell them, right? That's what he did. Wow, cool job. Yeah, really cool job killing a bush. At least he's not there when it happened, though. No, but listen. At least there's that.
He was there sometimes when it happened. We spent three months in Mexico when I was 15 years old. He brought us down to see what he did for a living, and he was there doing business. He took us to a slaughterhouse. In Monterey, I think it was. And we saw the cattle alive, and then we saw them chopped up.
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Chapter 4: What insights does Felipe have about being vegan?
Like, the whole situation, we saw it from beginning to end, and it changed my perception about food altogether because it can't not. When you actually see that happen, it's a whole different animal, pun intended. I know. Yeah. It's a weird thing. Yeah.
I'm sorry, did they kill the cows with that little cop router, like No Country for Old Men, that they slit their throat, or they shot them?
Yeah, they would zap them into a little lane, and in that lane, there was an automatic... like shot machine in the shot. They would give them a shot. It would stun them. And then they would hang them up by their back hooves. And then, and I'm not kidding you. I know this is like, Merry Christmas.
Everybody wasn't expecting to hear about all of this today.
I'm sorry, guys. A guy would come and they call it stip to stern and he would just take a machete and he would just slit it down the middle and then everything would fall out and on to the next and on to the next.
The people that are actually doing the slaughtering are not the people that can actually put a sentence and a paragraph together. Yeah.
You know, my dad's first job was also a slaughterhouse. Really? Yeah, but he calls it the abattoir because he's English. Well, yeah, they call it the abattoir because he wants to do the abattoir. I was like, what's that? He goes, a slaughterhouse.
Yeah, the United Healthcare CEO. You know the guy's name when we went to Rosemead, his name was Albor Torres.
Oh, wow. Maybe that's what he did.
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Chapter 5: How does Felipe's comedy reflect his life experiences?
I remember that I asked my dad, why are they saving that part? And my dad said that that's the stuff they could sell to a doctor to make medicine, I guess, insulin. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah, insulin for diabetes.
That's crazy.
Yeah. I mean, listen, you know, if you want, you know, you go to McDonald's, you have a hamburger, you go to your family, you have the Christmas ham, you do that.
There is a whole situation that went in to that A through B. And I think when you see it, there's some, there's some intelligence, like you're imparted with some kind of like universal intelligence about how the world really fucking works.
A little trauma. Yeah, a little trauma too.
I think you two need some therapy.
I got therapy, but I can't get over that slaughterhouse. I just can't.
Are you vegan now? Yeah. People don't believe me because I'm so big. They say, what do you eat? Crops? What do you eat? Deep fried lettuce? Oh, wow. Oh, yeah. Nutter butters and Oreos are vegan. So you must eat that all day.
Nutter butters are vegan?
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Chapter 6: What unique aspects of touring does Felipe share?
Only not milk. Half and half. Half, yeah.
It's disgusting.
You know that time you get all the cereals, you crush it up and you eat it like a cereal pudding?
Yeah. Now we're talking.
Felipe has video cameras. He has video cameras. I would do that, but that would get like a... he would get like those sweet potatoes or the i guess they're called sweet potatoes right yeah he'll just put a piece of aluminum foil and cut up chunks of brown sugar and put it in the oven
and take it out and eat it he'll add extra syrup and then he'll eat it like that never like that that one of my favorite things in the world during the holiday season is like the very caucasian dish of marshmallows on top of yams do you know what i'm saying i know about it i've never had it so good man can't need yams
Had that for the first time at my friend's house. And they're Mexican, but they were all born in America. So they got more of the good food, more of the American Thanksgiving. He made candied ham and he made candied yams. And man, that ham, I know we just talked about the slaughter, but that ham, I don't know how they did it, but every piece tastes like candy. It's crazy.
Yes, my dad does this too. It's caramelized. They put like syrup on, they like marinate it in syrup and water, sugar water. It's so fucking delicious. It is so good and probably just extraordinarily terrible for you, but it is so delicious. And there's something about candied yams or yams with marshmallows on it, caramelized marshmallows, that is just one of my favorite things.
And I only have it during the holiday season. It's not like I go and I make a sweet potato with marshmallows every day.
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Chapter 7: What are Felipe's thoughts on cultural differences in food?
Oh, that's delicious.
That's good stuff. Do you like tres leches? So my wife is Venezuelan, right? So, you know, Venezuelan. Been there for the first 22 years of her life. So she's really Venezuelan. And one of the things she imparted on me is tres leches. And it's one of my favorite fucking desserts in the world. It's so good. It's hard not to like tres leches. It's condensed milk and sponge cake.
I mean, what else is there in life but tres leches?
Oh, it's good.
Is that something you eat? Is that something that's in Mexican culture also?
Yeah. Yes. The condensed milk, the Tres Leches, the sweet condensed milk, they put that on everything. But I didn't really start liking it more until I went to Hawaii and they put it in a snow cones.
Oh, I've never seen that.
It was like pineapple syrup and then coconut syrup. And then they put the white cream over it. Oh, my God. That's so good.
That sounds good.
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Chapter 8: What recommendations does Felipe have for enjoying Atlanta?
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, Third Day Adventist. They grew up on all that horrible vegan food from the 80s. Yeah. It's horrible, man. They used to buy, she told me this, I think it's called Lorna. And they sell, oh my God, they sell vegan Franks in a can.
In a can?
In a can. So you open it up and there's like four or three vegan Franks in there. And then there's another package that has four vegan chicken nuggets. And then you can just break it apart with your hands and you can make, I guess you could put mayonnaise and make tuna or tuna salad or chicken salad or cut it up. Yeah.
It doesn't sound bad.
You're going to add a bunch of seasoning to it, though.
Yeah, yeah. I made a chickpea salad the other day, like the fake tuna salad for my sister. She's vegetarian. And I went in with the garlic powder and the onion powder. I was like, I'm going to make this taste good or she's going to kill me.
You know, we found out that the chickpea can, the juice that's inside the chickpea, if you whip it hard enough, it'll turn into a meringue. And you can use that as a fake meringue in a meringue pie.
I've seen people use it in cocktails as well. Like on top of a little pisco sour.
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