I’m up at around 5:30 am pacific, shower, wait for the hotel restaurant to open at 6 and eat breakfast. I’m not at all nervous, which I’m asked sometimes. Maybe I should be, but I’m usually able to manage situations like this. Not saying I do well, just saying I can usually handle ‘public speaking’ without freaking out. It helps during calls into Office Hours. As I told Vic a couple of days later “I’m a man in my forties, who am I supposed to be nervous about?”

I got to Doug’s a little after 8:30, and the first thing I hear through the door is Tim exclaiming “Phil’s real name is ___________??!” (Sidebar: Phil Braun isn’t my real name. If I’m going to meet someone in person like this, I feel like they should at least know my real name. It serves me well so that anybody I have to work with in the real world doesn’t know that I also drink mouthwash as a character on twitter. When I lit my shoes on fire, that made it around the world and back to my own neighborhood. One neighbor who read about it said they thought it was just a guy who looked like me. I won’t say which part isn’t my real name, or if any of it is, just go with it and accept that most of my friends call me Phil irl)

Doug suggests someone go pick up a box of coffee before the show starts. I offered and Doug said I could use his car and points out the keys hanging by the door. “Which one is it?” I asked. “It’s the one that looks like the shape of a key? You unlock things with it,” Doug replied. “No, which car is yours,” I said. “Oh. It’s the gray car by the gate.”

By the time I get back, the show is already underway. Tim demands a cup of coffee (see, just like I said I would!). By now, the people who didn’t know I was going to be there are starting to realize…

Without making a longer read longer, I won’t do a blow-by-blow of every single caller and guest (stick with it, Shane, I’ll be done soon) but instead just cover some highlights.

My first favorite moment came when Vic’s dad (Vic the 3rd) and Doug’s dad (Gary) ended up on the phone at the same time by a beautiful accident. Tim steps away and everyone in the room knew to be silent and let the dads talk and sort it out amongst each other. That was fantastic. The next big moment was when Vic managed to get Robert Davi on the phone for one of the all-time phone calls on Office Hours. Getting to witness Tim wind Davi up in person was so much fun. After several minutes, Davi gets disconnected he immediately calls Vic back on his personal phone. Even after Tim has enough, Vic is forced to leave with Davi still connected & gets harangued in the back bedroom for the next several minutes. Imagine him in studio! I must say in spite of some of the fun we have with Davi, after I had a stroke he sent me an extremely heartfelt video message wishes me well so personally speaking I will always have a soft heart for him regardless of any political differences there may be.

Before I even realized it, I think two hours of the show had passed. In hindsight, I had taken the stance of “don’t try to overtake whatever Tim, Doug, & Vic are doing first”, with probably a little too much of “better thought a fool that to speak and remove all doubt”. Plus, once callers like Natasha Leggero, Bon Iver, etc., called in, or when guests starting arriving in person, etc., the last thing I wanted to do was to turn into the Chris Farley character (“…you remember when you..”). Which is exactly what I did to Natasha, chiming in at the end of her call to tell her that “Another Period” was one of my favorite shows.

Especially when guests arrived in person. This was their time, not mine. Move out of the way because people were watching/listening to hear them, not me.

We had our first break probably close to 11 am. Matt Carlin said the calls were through the roof — around 1700 people seemed to be trying to call in at once, and it was a struggle managing the overload.

Sarah Squirm!

Sarah Squirm! was the first live guest, and she stayed through the lunch hour with us. She was very sweet and funny and willing to sing along with Tim. The esteemed Dave Weigel of the Washington Post came by next (I could tell it was him from his avatar!). Mikey Kampmann was meandering in and out of the house and maybe had a shower outside? (I can’t be sure of this, I just remember seeing steam behind a walled-off enclosure and Mikey emerging out of it past the glass)

After that, it was time for me to appear in the background of every screen cap of every story that would be written and published about this historic podcast (thank you Jody Bundrick for calling in for the sole purpose of saying hi to me! ed. oh yeah & Justin Gaynor).

My wife texted me “how come you lost your headphones?”

Seeing John C. Reilly walk through the door was quite shocking, I must admit. He was never seen as a confirmed guest anywhere, so it was a pleasant surprise to me to see the Good Doctor up close. John is quite a presence. If you saw the show, John brought bowls of acai berries (with ice cream? I’m not sure) which anyone who is a long time listener of Office Hours knows John’s running gag of pushing the health benefits of the acai berry, like one of those people who has gotten trapped into a pyramid scheme and is forced to unload them to anyone he can talk to.

So within the next hour, one of my favorite actors of all time is here, two of my favorite SNL cast members are here in Fred Armisen & Kyle Mooney, Eric Notarnicola (who directs all of my favorite shows), Brent Weinbach is back, great comedians Johnny Pemberton & Brendon Walsh (Brendon’s running gag is carrying around these over-sized jeans in hopes of getting a Nutri-system sponsorship). Quite a surreal experience for me.

Other than Aristotle, who wouldn’t touch anyone, I recall Fred was maybe the most aware of what was going on health-wise out there. He asked for a new microphone sock & headphones that hadn’t been worn. Fred probably has the most improvisational ability of anyone I’ve seen on Office Hours, and I thoroughly enjoyed seeing this in person (cued up):

My mom, who loves Portlandia, watched the show and asked if I talked to Fred. I told her not really, because again, I didn’t want to bother anyone by roping them into a conversation about all the favorite things they’re in that I like. Mom said to me that “Fred kept looking at me” and was sure it was because “he wanted to talk to me”. “No, Mom,” I told her “it was because he was wondering ‘who in the hell is this guy?’”

Fred, just hoping to get a chance to talk to me

Frankly by this point my brain was fried, probably from the lack of sleep. I remember during the “band riddles” & puns portion I recall not being able to come up with anything at all. Actually here’s the the only one I had come up with had I had a microphone: Uh-uh! (Answer: Ah-ha). Notice Vic had given up his microphone at this point, telling me after he couldn’t come up with anything anymore either and could just focus on the drops.

When it was over and everyone had departed, Matt Carlin, Tim, Vic, Doug, and Aristotle began to discuss how to break the show down into ‘consumable’ listening segments. Personally, before I even had time to digest my own contribution I made a self-deprecating remark that they divide the show into “bad — which include my part, better and best with all the rest”.

Vic and I at Cindy’s, where they filmed the “Eggs” episode of Check It Out! with Dr. Brule

By Saturday, everything was pretty much on lockdown. I fortunately got to meet Vic for breakfast at Cindy’s Diner and had a great time talking with him. As I’ve said before, Vic is the “real deal”. He’s as nice as you imagine he is. He mentions that he invited Gregg Turkington to meet us, but under the circumstances Gregg understandably thought he better not.