-Our next guest is the cohost of the podcast
"In the Minivan" with Max and Mike,
available on Spotify.
Making his late-night debut,
please welcome the very funny Michael Rowland.
[ Cheers and applause ]
♪♪
-Thank you.
Thank you, thank you. Appreciate it, everybody.
I was talking to my buddy the other day,
and I asked him how he spends his free time.
He told me every day he likes to go to the park and people-watch.
Why is that okay? People-watch.
Just 'cause we flip the words around it's not creepy anymore?
[ Laughter ] You know?
Because it'd be much different if her was like,
"Yeah, every day I go to the park...and watch people."
[ Laughter ]
But we just flip the words,
and now it's like this cultured pastime.
He's like, "Yeah, go to the park and people-watch.
Sometimes I people-follow."
[ Laughter ]
[ Applause ]
"And, you know, if I really like 'em, I'll people-touch."
Uh...
A cultured guy.
I'm from the South originally.
We all know the South can be a little bit backwards,
behind the times.
For instance, did you know that they just legalized doing yoga
in schools in Alabama?
I'm sorry. Did you know it was illegal
to do yoga in schools in Alabama?
It was illegal for 30 years.
And they just legalized it last year.
But, if you're doing it,
you can't use any of the classic yoga terminology,
none of the Sanskrit words,
because they consider it Eastern religion.
So you can do the poses, but you can't say the words.
Which is insane. I don't even know how you do that.
I feel like yoga in Alabama is just like, "Alright.
We're gonna do a Dukes of Hazzard
into a Jimmy Buffett."
[ Laughter ]
"And we're gonna finish up bringing hands to heart center.
Altogether now. Roll Tide. Unh."
[ Laughter ]
[ Applause ]
I'm from Atlanta myself, but I always wanted to live
here in New York ever since I was a kid.
'Cause when I was a kid, I would spend the summers
in Savannah, Georgia, with my grandma.
And we would just watch episodes
of "Sex and the City" back to back to back.
Yeah, and I would fantasize about moving to New York
and being a little slut.
[ Laughter ]
That's right.
Yeah.
And my grandma was like, "Oh, you can do it, baby.
Yeah. You get up there. You're Grandma's Carrie."
That's how my grandma is.
My grandma's, like, this fun, vivacious Southern woman.
She says wild stuff.
I remember once I was talking to my grandma.
And I was like, "Grandma, what was it like
being a young lady growing up in Georgia?"
And my grandma's response, word for word, she goes,
"Michael, when I was 18, all the boys came back
from World War II, and we had a good time."
[ Cheers and applause ]
Yeah. Yeah.
It was a very specific answer to a very broad question.
Do you notice how broad?
It's interesting 'cause she's a very fun lady.
She gave birth to my mom.
My mom's much more "type A" and neurotic.
And I worried her a lot when I was kid
'cause I have severe nut allergies.
And when I was growing up, she was so worried I was
going to eat something with nuts in it, she went over the top.
It was embarrassing.
I remember she made this big poster that was like,
"Warning! Michael Rowland is allergic to nuts!"
And she took that poster and she hung it on the wall
in my middle-school nurse's office.
So kids would come back from the nurse's office and be like,
"Yo, I saw your poster."
Kids always said the same thing.
They'd be like, "Mike, you allergic to nuts.
You allergic to deez nuts?"
Every time.
And I wasn't like a clever kid,
so I'd just be like, "Yeah, uh, I'm allergic to doze."
[ Laughter ]
I was also very undersized when I was kid.
Like, when I started high school, I was 4'11."
It's true. I was 14 years old. I was 4'11."
And my mom -- You know how she is.
She was like, "We've got to go to a doctor right now!"
So I remember she took me to see
this specialist called an endocrinologist.
And this endocrinologist examined
my little 4'11" skeleton.
And he came to me and he was like, "Yes.
You have the bones of a person two years younger than you."
And I remember. I was just like, "Yo, um, are they my bones?
Like...
who has my bones right now?"
He never explained it to me.
So I just like to imagine that I was an experiment
in the same lab that made Wolverine
and changed his skeleton out.
'Cause you know Wolverine, the X-Men,
they changed out his skeleton in that lab.
That's the skeleton-changing lab.
And that lab is full of scientists.
And those scientists are going to experiment,
and they're not all going to be winners, you know?
So I like to imagine one scientist like,
"Yes, this is Wolverine.
We gave him unbreakable bones of adamantium.
And this is Mike.
We gave him the bones of a slightly younger boy."
[ Laughter ]
Yes.
[ Applause ]
Thank you.
My body did eventually grow,
and I moved here to New York City where I live now.
But I went back to Georgia recently to visit my grandma.
That was great.
She just got a new flat-screen TV at the house, which is nice.
She lost the remote, though. Which --
Have you ever tried to turn on a new flat-screen TV
without the remote?
You will never feel dumber in your whole life.
All you want to do is watch TV,
but you're just stuck there like...
[ Laughter ]
[ Applause ]
[ Laughter ]
I mean, it's so hard, you might as well go to the park
and watch people. You know what I mean?
Alright. Thank you. Thank you.
♪♪
-Oh, my gosh. That was a perfect set.
That was unbelievable.
That's how you do it right there. Michael Rowland.
[ Cheers and applause ] That was a perfect set.
"In the Minivan" with Max and Mike
is available on Spotify. We'll be right back, everybody.