EP. 5 — The Crappiest Place On Earth

Seth [00:00:15] Hi. Welcome to storytime with Seth Rogen. This week’s episode, The Crappiest Place on Earth.

Paul Scheer [00:00:26] When I was growing up, there were no such thing as like nut allergies. Kids just ate whatever they wanted. It was fine. I would come home from school. I would chug milk out of the container and then follow that up with like a two liter bottle of Pepsi.

Seth [00:00:39] You’re hearing the voice of my good friend Paul Scheer.

Paul Scheer [00:00:43] I remember I was mixing milk and Pepsi because I saw it on Laverne and Shirley one time.

Seth [00:00:48] Wait, what?

Paul Scheer [00:00:49] I was a kid of TV, so whatever I saw on TV, I was like, I need to do that. And I remember, like on Laverne and Shirley, I think Lenny or Squiggy put Pepsi in milk and they mixed it up, and I’m sure it was telling the audience, this is disgusting.

Seth [00:01:01] The joke was that they’re idiots. Yes.

Paul Scheer [00:01:03] Right. And my thing was like, Oh, I have to do that, too.

Seth [00:01:07] And you’re also someone like me, I think, who really loves food.

Paul Scheer [00:01:11] Oh, yeah, oh, I love it.

Seth [00:01:12] You would just be drinking your coke and milk, and you’d be happy as a clam. Yeah. Paul Scheer is a writer, director, comedian, producer, podcaster, actor who I’ve known for probably around 14 years. I first saw Paul in Human Giant. I personally worked with him on the film The Disaster Artist, in the show The League. Paul, honestly, is one of the truly nicest, kindest and most wonderful people I’ve ever met, and that is saying a lot for someone who works in professional comedy. Performing with Paul is like witnessing comedic altruism. Few people are more giving and supportive while simultaneously stealing the scene than Paul Scheer is. And perhaps one of the most generous gifts that Paul gives to his fellow performers and the audience is his willingness to dive into the deep, dark well that is his own upbringing for laughter. He shares details about his formative years that feel so private, you almost can’t believe he’s saying it. And the content matter is so harrowing at times that even if you wrap your head around the fact that he is in fact saying the shit onstage, the notion that he has enough perspective on it to understand exactly what’s just so fucking funny about it is nothing short of a marvel. So I wondered, how did Paul Scheer get to be this way? What happened to him as a young man that armed him with the ability to plunge so deeply into the depths of his childhood and produce something that is so joyous? The story you’re about to hear made me understand where this came from, and it made me understand Paul Scheer himself a lot more, both inside and out. Young Paul’s parents were divorced, and like a lot of divorced fathers, Paul’s dad, Bill, wanted to make whatever time he spent with Paul as fun as humanly possible.

Paul Scheer [00:03:11] Yeah, because my parents were divorced and my dad, um, my dad was like the fun time guy in the sense of the weekends are spent with my dad. He is a lot of fun. He’s adventurous. My dad was and still is like my buddy.

Seth [00:03:25] They had a tradition where every year Bill would take Paul to Disney World.

Bill Scheer [00:03:29] I took him down there the first time when he was six. We fell in love with it and we’ve probably been there seven or eight times together.

Seth [00:03:37] And this year when Paul was nine, was no different.

Bill Scheer [00:03:41] And we had planned like this four day getaway to go to Disney.

Paul Scheer [00:03:44] And I was so excited to go to Walt Disney World.

Seth [00:03:54] But the week before the trip, something happened.

Paul Scheer [00:03:58] I got very, very sick. And you know there’s certain sicknesses that you can kind of look at and be like, Oh, right, that was a bad one. Like, you know, there’s like normal ones and there’s like, Oh, I got really sick here. That was super painful. Like, my stomach was really hurting and I was puking and I don’t really puke, and it was just not a pretty picture.

Seth [00:04:18] And like many sick kids who have something cool and fun that they are looking forward to, you got a real needle to thread.

Paul Scheer [00:04:25] The trip is on Saturday and I got sick on like a Monday or Tuesday. And my mind was must get better because I can’t- I can’t afford this to go away.

SONG [00:04:35] Daddy’s got a new job…

Paul Scheer [00:04:38] And I remember there’s a lot of debate about can he go? Can he not?

Child Voice [00:04:42] I’ll never meet Mickey Mouse.

Seth [00:04:44] The pressure was on Bill as well.

Bill Scheer [00:04:46] You know, I’m the divorced dad taking my child away from his mother with possible illness and bad weather.

Seth [00:04:56] Bill really wanted to show his son that even though his parents were divorced, he could have happy, meaningful memories with them.

Paul Scheer [00:05:02] I talked to my mom about this later in life, and I was like, We never did anything fun together. And she’s like, Well, she’s like, I kind of left that to your dad. I felt like your dad should have the fun stuff, and I did the parent stuff. I was like, what an odd way to like, wound yourself to be like, I won’t do the fun things with my child.

Seth [00:05:20] And just so you know, I’m going just from Paul’s perspective in this moment. He’s super, like, very excited for the trip. He loves going to Disneyland with you. It’s the highlight of his year. He’s feeling a little under the weather, and he’s trying not to let you know that too much because he’s afraid that if you know that he’s not feeling well.

Bill Scheer [00:05:39] I would- I would, yeah.And I get it. I get it. Yeah no, and I- believe me, I could see where he would do that. Because it was a very special thing. For some reason, I think his mother had some plans that weekend, so it was OK because it wasn’t a matter of he was choosing me over doing something with his mom. So it was it was really exciting for him, I know. 

Paul Scheer [00:06:02] I will say that I got very, very sick. And then it just went away.

SONG [00:06:12] Come be together at Disney….

Seth [00:06:17] As mysteriously as the illness set in, it lifted and allowed young Paul to go on this trip. He was fucking psyched.

Paul Scheer [00:06:25] I’m thrilled to go on this trip because it’s like Vegas for kids. Your snack is like a sugar covered churro and then you’re having, like a lunch. There’s dessert with your lunch, then you go- it’s a weird zone where like everything has shifted towards you. What do you want? Do you want, do you want…

Seth [00:06:51] Now, I’m just going to say here, I think Disney is like a drug for children, and that is why they like it so much. It is the most hallucinogenic, trippy drug like experience a child can have without actually giving a child drugs, which I’m told we should not be doing. But it’s like their rules of reality are fucking broken. They’re interacting with imaginary characters. They’re eating ice cream as a palate cleanser between meals of fennel cake and fried chicken. Everywhere they turn is another parade and a fireworks show. It just doesn’t feel real. In fact, what it feels like is doing fucking drugs.

Paul Scheer [00:07:45] And then the parents, they’re going crazy because they’re like, this needs to be the best vacation. We need to get in.

Seth [00:07:52] My dad was the same way with me and my sister. Whenever we took trips to Disneyland, he would drag us in by our hands, run around straight to the newest ride that opened. We’d go to the back of the park and work our way forward.

Seth’s Dad [00:08:03] You had to get there around eight so that you could be at the front of the line.

Seth [00:08:08] Ladies and gentlemen, my parents.

Seth’s Dad [00:08:10] Goal was to get to the ride as soon as possible. So as soon as they lowered the rope, we ran to-.

Seth [00:08:18] We’d run there.

Seth’s Mom [00:08:18] We had to run. We ran.

Seth’s Dad [00:08:18] We’d run, of course.

Seth’s Mom [00:08:18] We had to be first in line.

Seth’s Dad [00:08:18] And we got to go on all the rides.

Seth’s Mom [00:08:23] More than once.

Seth’s Dad [00:08:24] More than once. And we rarely did we-.

Seth’s Mom [00:08:26] And then we were exhausted.

Seth [00:08:31] There is such high pressure to have a good time at Disneyland. And there’s one simple reason why,

Bill Scheer [00:08:37] Happiest place in the world.

Paul Scheer [00:08:42] I remember my dad looking in the newspaper and would be like Delta flights to Orlando, $65. We weren’t a super wealthy family, so it wasn’t like my mom, my dad, me and another brother. It was just like the two of us.

Seth [00:09:02] Paul and Bill leave Long Island and get to the magical land of Orlando, Florida. And they didn’t have just any accommodations waiting for them when they got there. The place they were staying was very special.

Paul Scheer [00:09:13] My dad had gotten us this awesome hotel that I thought was very fancy where in the morning like these geese or swan come out of an elevator…

Bill Scheer [00:09:24] You know, glass elevator like in the Mel Brooks movie, you know, High Anxiety.

Seth [00:09:28] Of course.

Paul Scheer [00:09:28] They walked down like a red carpet and then they get into some sort of pool or basin, like in the middle of the hotel lobby.

Seth [00:09:35] It’s like a fountain, I think.

Paul Scheer [00:09:37] Yeah. A fountain, yes. And and then every day at five o’clock, they are, you know, rounded up. They go back down the red carpet, go in the elevator and go to wherever they live in the hotel. And that, to me, was so cool. I remember, like my dad and I were, we got to- we got to be down in the lobby at 5:00 to watch these geese go back to their rooms, you know. But that to me was like the height of fancy. I mean, I’ve been to a lot of hotels. I’ve never seen animals in an elevator.

Seth [00:10:08] So Paul’s in heaven. He’s with his dad. Geese roaming the halls of this hotel escorted by the most fancy of guard. He has a day of roller coasters and rides ahead of him. The child’s equivalent of a fuckin shroom trip. But there’s something nagging at him.

Paul Scheer [00:10:24] I’m a little bit nervous because I’m probably at 75 percent, but I’m pushing my outward appearance to 100 percent because I needed to go on this trip. I needed to be there and, you know, it was like- and we had all these like maps and systems and ways that we were going to hit these things, and you would almost plan it out like, OK, at 12:30, then we’re going to eat at the Pecos Bill Cafe. And because it was just me and him, we stayed up late. We watched movies. We did all this cool stuff. So I am pushing through.

Child Voice [00:10:48] I love some ice cream.

Mickey Mouse [00:10:50] Yoo hoo, looking for me?

Child Voice [00:10:51] Mickey Mouse! Is that you?

Commercial Announcer [00:10:51] You can taste the magic of Disney frozen treats.

Paul Scheer [00:10:57] This is the first year that Walt Disney World has released an ice cream bar in the shape of Mickey’s head.

Seth [00:11:05] OK, I remember this.

Paul Scheer [00:11:06] So it’s a it’s a vanilla ice cream bar, but it it is dipped in chocolate.

Seth [00:11:09] Dipped in chocolate. Yeah.

Paul Scheer [00:11:10] And I was eating it. My dad was videotaping me. These are the moments that you can’t forget. Me eating an ice cream cone and probably was the first time I’m eating ice cream since I get originally sick, you know, because I’m like, OK, my stomach is back. I can, you know, I can go do this again. And what better way to bring it back in than this ice cream bar.

Seth [00:11:30] Again. Paul was in heaven.

Paul Scheer [00:11:34] I remember eating this ice cream cone, and as I’m eating it, my dad, I think is narrating like, Oh no! Oh, you’re eating my ear! Help!

Seth [00:11:48] Paul and his dad having a good time.

Bill Scheer [00:11:50] We were having a ball. He had milkshakes. He was having the Dole Whip.

Paul Scheer [00:11:55] We’re creating bits.

Bill Scheer [00:11:55] We were at Epcot.

Paul Scheer [00:11:56] I’m getting more and more uncomfortable.

Bill Scheer [00:12:00] He had milkshakes. The Dole Whip.

Paul Scheer [00:12:02] Bent over a little bit. That like kind of cramping, riding out a contraction almost. And I remember saying to my dad, Can we can we go back to the hotel?

Bill Scheer [00:12:14] Milkshakes. The Dole Whip.

Seth [00:12:16] That’s right. Back to the hotel. On the trip he’d been looking forward to all year at the happiest place on earth.

Bill Scheer [00:12:24] Happiest Place in the world.

Seth [00:12:26] Something was fucked up.

Bill Scheer [00:12:31] We did. We did leave the park during the day, but we thought maybe it was just nothing much.

Seth [00:12:41] Leaving the park in the middle of the day is a huge deal. It meant something was severely wrong. As a kid, you’d never want to miss out on one millisecond of Disney fun. And for the parents, so much planning and money has gone into creating this unforgettable experience for your children, the last thing you’d want to do is sit in the hotel while the fun meter winds down. Apparently, one time I actually got food poisoning at Disney, and this was my parents’ reaction to the question, Did we leave the park?

Child Voice [00:13:08] You don’t leave the park like in the middle of the day. You don’t leave. Because we would just buy a one day ticket.

Seth’s Dad [00:13:15] Right. We didn’t have a lot of money in those days, so.

Seth’s Mom [00:13:18] We had enough for one day and we just went one day.

Seth [00:13:21] We didn’t leave.

Seth’s Dad [00:13:22] No, of course not.

Seth’s Mom [00:13:23] No. We stayed.

Seth’s Dad [00:13:24] When you wanted to relax, you went to A Small World.

Paul Scheer [00:13:30] And so my dad was like, Let’s order something into the room. 

Seth [00:13:37] Nothing a little room service can’t fix.

Paul Scheer [00:13:44] Pasta with red sauce, red meat sauce. Like to ease my stomach.

Seth [00:13:50] Pasta with meat sauce.

Paul Scheer [00:13:52] And now I I’m not feeling good. I’m not feeling good. I’m not feeling good.

Seth [00:14:00] From here on out, the story gets pretty fucking gross. So if you are currently eating pasta with meat sauce, I recommend you finish it up or just put it away before you continue listening.

Paul Scheer [00:14:18] And then it’s like someone has like twisted a knob, opened up the fire hose, like the hydrant is open…

Mary Poppins [00:14:26]  Practically perfect in every way, way,

Paul Scheer [00:14:31] And it’s like, blegh. It’s like (vomiting sound). Just like shrapnel all across our walls. It’s a steady, strong stream. It’s coming out jet like. Like, brah! I remember the sound of it hitting the pillow.

Bill Scheer [00:14:51] He started really getting sick.

Paul Scheer [00:14:55] The bottom half drops out. Just shitting the bed.

Seth [00:15:02] It’s a terrible experience. So terrible, there’s a whole expression about how terrible it must be. Someone once shat in their bed and had such an absolutely traumatic experience, they coined a phrase to warn others that there is nothing more fucked up in the world than shitting the bed. It’s so fucked up, it should be an analogy for just the most fucked up thing that one can do. There’s nothing worse than shitting the bed. Unless it’s at a fancy hotel where ducks have their own escorts.

Paul Scheer [00:15:34] My dad’s like, go, go, get in the shower. I raced to the shower and now I am cleaning myself off, but I feel good.

Seth [00:15:43] You got it out. You got it out of your system. Yeah.

Paul Scheer [00:15:45] We’re done. I remember the relief of that. I come back into the room. It smells, right? It definitely smells. And neither bed have sheets on it. I remember him like taking the sheets off and wrapping it almost like a ball, like a bundle sack that you would see, like an old, an old school-.

Seth [00:16:03] A bindle. It’s a bindle, yeah.

Paul Scheer [00:16:03] A bindle, yes. So he bindles up the sheets and kind of puts it in the corner of the room and my dad’s like, OK, I’m going to call down and get some more sheets. But yet the two bindles are still in the room. I don’t think my dad has figured out what to do with the bindles. My dad calls down for sheets. They come and I remember my dad getting the door, and I feel like I peeked at the woman like looking in. And I’m sure that when that door opened, the smell hit her as well. I just remember seeing her face. And so the sheets go back on the bed. I’m feeling good.

Bill Scheer [00:16:51] It got worse. It was not good.

Mary Poppins [00:16:58] Practically perfect…

Paul Scheer [00:17:05] Now, more exorcist style, sitting upright, fully center on the bed. It’s also on me. More marinara, all the pasta, all that like when you look at it and you taste it and there’s acid in it, it’s it is awful. One of the worst feelings. Like ugh.

Mickey Mouse [00:17:21] Oh no!

Seth [00:17:21] Paul and Bill started to worry. Is this something more serious? What is happening? Do we need to be scared?

Bill Scheer [00:17:27] And it continued. Now I got nervous because I’m thinking it could be food poisoning, you know? And that’s what we first thought it was. That’s even what his mom, when I called her, thought he was probably had food poisoning.

Paul Scheer [00:17:45] I’m realizing my dad is kind of freaking out.

Seth [00:17:47] Paul and Bill had to act fast.

Paul Scheer [00:17:49] We decide we are leaving this hotel now. We’re ghosting this hotel. And it was this fear of like, how do we get out? And I remember like leaving under the cover of night.

Seth [00:18:14] That’s right. Terrified of facing the wrath of this hotel’s duck guards, Paul and his dad made a stealthy escape into the night.

Bill Scheer [00:18:24] And we just booked out of that hotel. 

Seth [00:18:30] They were on the run.

Paul Scheer [00:18:31] My dad says, we’re going to go home. We’re going to go home. You’re sick and we have to go home.

Bill Scheer [00:18:37] Booked the first available flight back to New York.

Seth [00:18:47] Now I get this instinct whenever I’m having a bad drug trip, which has been quite a few times in my life, I want to be near my own shit, my own belongings, my stuff. And if Disney is a drug, this was as close to a bad trip as a nine year old is going to have without, again, giving them actual drugs, which I’m told I should not do. Paul and Bill, terrified, make it to the Orlando airport. Young Paul is on the flight trying desperately not to die.

Paul Scheer [00:19:26] And my dad says to me as we get on the flight, I think you have appendicitis.

Seth [00:19:31] That’s right. Appendicitis or a burst appendix, I honestly don’t know the difference or if there even is a difference. But either way, shit was getting real.

Paul Scheer [00:19:39] My biggest fear as a child was, is my appendix going to burst?

Seth [00:19:44] Really?

Paul Scheer [00:19:44] That was really like the big- the idea that I have a ticking time bomb in me. And if it does burst, it’s going to shoot out all this poison in your body. And how do we even ca- so I’m doubled over, exhausted, tired, stomach is still reverberating. We’re in the air. So the stewardesses say to me, We have a surprise for you. Here comes as man, an older man… And he bends down. And he looks at me and goes, Hey, little boy, I hear you’re feeling ill. Maybe you see a doctor and get a pill, or you can go to the hospital real quick and he’ll get you fixed up lickety split… And the guy walks away. My dad goes, That’s Nipsey Russell. That’s Nipsey Russell. And we call on the poet laureate, Nipsey Russell to give us a little-.

Nipsey Russell [00:20:35] Young people are very different today, and there’s one sure way to know. Kids used to ask where they came from. Now they’ll tell you where you can go.

Seth [00:20:45] That’s right. Nipsey Russell, a celebrity cameo in the form of the poet laureate of comedy and the namesake of the late beloved rapper Nipsey Hussle.

Nipsey Russell [00:20:54] Some of the products on television don’t do what the commercials claim. I took a bath in Clorox, and came out looking the same. If you want to get even with your low down friends who treated you rotten to the core, give ’em a big party, serve nothing but beer and lock the bathroom door.

Seth [00:21:13] It seems that even Paul’s darkest experiences were always framed somehow by comedy, film and television. In this case, it was a chance encounter on a mile high jet with the rhyming comic who was a fixture in American entertainment for decades. 

Paul Scheer [00:21:36] We go beeline right to my doctor, my mom meets us there, and I remember, like in the waiting room, my dad’s Nipsey Russell, like, you know, gave Paul a rhyme on the plane. My mom was like, oh Nipsey Russel, yeah. And like, I’m literally just balled up.

Seth [00:21:48] To Paul in the fetal position, his parents talking about how cool it was to meet Nipsey Russell when the doctor comes in.

Paul Scheer [00:21:55] And he’s like, You don’t have appendicitis. I think you might be lactose intolerant.

Seth [00:22:04] Lactose intolerant. Boom.

Paul Scheer [00:22:11] Don’t know what that is. Never heard of such a thing.

Bill Scheer [00:22:14] It was definitely not something we knew about at any rate.

Mickey Mouse [00:22:17] Oh no! Oh, you’re eating my ear! Help!

Seth [00:22:24] Now, getting a diagnosis like this is scary for a kid, especially in the 90s, when literally no one has ever heard of this shit. So what exactly did this condition mean for young Paul?

Paul Scheer [00:22:33] And then presents the worst option of all time, which is like you can no longer drink milk or eat ice cream.

Mickey Mouse [00:22:40] Oh no! Oh no! Oh no! Oh no!

Seth [00:22:48] Before we continue with Paul’s story, a short explainer. What the fuck is lactose intolerance anyway? Well, lactose is the main carbohydrate found in dairy products, and lactose intolerance is the inability to digest that carbohydrate due to a deficiency of lactase, which is an enzyme that breaks down lactose into simple sugars, glucose and galactose, which sounds like a Marvel villain. When I heard this was Paul’s problem, my honest thought was, fucking sorry ass motherfucker. Dude’s not making enough lactase and isn’t getting his shit broken down into galactose, and he’s shitting himself as a result. But it turns out all of us humans stop producing lactase after age five or so. That’s right. Nobody is supposed to be drinking milk. It causes bloating and gas and diarrhea. We’ve been fucking conned into thinking we should be drinking that shit by big milk. Of course, back in the day when Paul were growing up in the 80s and 90s nobody knew any of this shit. Milk was near mandatory for our diets. We thought it made our bones strong. We didn’t know from glucose and galactose. In fact, to wash down our cool ranch fucking Doritos and snack packs, many of us were mixing dairy and soft drinks. Well, not many of us, but some of us were. I’m talking about Paul. Paul Scheer was. Was your first question can I have milk with Coke in it?

Paul Scheer [00:24:06] I mean, well that’s it. He’s like, he’s like, you can only have coke now. And I’m like, no!

Seth [00:24:10] So he tells you this and what is your- how does it feel?

Paul Scheer [00:24:13] It is the worst possible thing you could have. Your life is over. Like, what do you mean, I can’t eat ice cream ever again? No cheese, no dairy. No, so no cereal. The burrito with melted cheese on it. All those things. All those options that I could have are stripped from me. As a kid, that’s the only- that’s my only outlet is cheese, cheese and milk. You know, so I just remember being so upset in the car and just running like an almost like an Uncle Buck like Macaulay Culkin John Candy Q&A. Can I have this? No. Can I have that? No. Have this? No. How about that? No. How about this? No. And it was so disheartening and just being- I remember going back to the couch, back home on the couch that I was sick on before I went on vacation. Everything has been taken away from me, and I’m just I remember just being like, This is it? I don’t know how I’m ever going to live. I would have to explain it all. So I felt like I was the first kid in my grouping of friends who got who had parents who divorced, so I was always explaining that. And then on top of that, I had to explain that I also couldn’t have milk. And I go, Why? What’s going on? And then, you know, and then feeling angry when someone’s like, I think I have that too. You don’t. Only I have that. I have that.

Seth [00:25:37] Now, Paul had a problem. A serious problem. His world had been turned upside down. And where did he look for answers? The same place he always looked. Movies.

Wallace Shawn [00:25:50] First let’s drink. Me from my glass and you from yours.

Paul Scheer [00:25:53] I guess a year or two later, I had seen Princess Bride and in Princess Bride, Carey Elwes, him and Wallace Shawn are drinking these goblets and one has poison in it and the other one doesn’t.

Carey Elwes [00:26:09] You guessed wrong.

Robin Wright [00:26:10] Who are you?

Carey Elwes [00:26:11] I am no one to be trifled with. That is all you ever need know.

Robin Wright [00:26:16] Just think, all that time, it was your cup that was poisoned.

Carey Elwes [00:26:19] They were both poisoned. I spent the last few years building up an immunity to iocane powder.

Seth [00:26:25]  Building up an immunity.

Paul Scheer [00:26:30] That’s how I’m going to conquer the lactose intolerance. I’m going to slowly poison myself with it every day until I build up a tolerance. So I go to have a bite of cheese, a sip of milk because like, if I can get stronger, if I can get past this thing, I’m stealing from Laverne and Shirley early on and now I’m starting from Princess Bride to build up my lactose intolerance.

Seth [00:26:48] I had an actual medical doctor, Dr. Sari, tell me what she thought of this strategy.

Dr. Sari [00:26:53] Paul is a medical intuitive. When I was growing up, I had to drink a glass of milk every single day at dinner. And if I had continued that, I probably would still be able to drink milk. And the reason is that your bacteria in your colon adjust to that, are able to help you out, make your symptoms more mild.

Seth [00:27:15] Young Paul Scheer had a plan to beat lactose intolerance. But.

Paul Scheer [00:27:30] It did not work.

Seth [00:27:31] It did not work.

Mickey Mouse [00:27:31] Oh no.

Seth [00:27:34] The Dread Pirate Roberts coping mechanisms had failed him. Then one day, young little Paul got a gift from the gods.

Paul Scheer [00:27:45] I remember the day when my parents came home with a jug of Lactaid milk.

Seth [00:27:50] Lactaid.

Commercial Announcer [00:27:56] Only lactate comes in milk and in tablets to help us digest any dairy foods. And it’s natural.

Seth [00:28:04] Literal drugs for children. What a way to tie it up, Seth. Does Lactaid work?

Paul Scheer [00:28:13] Oh, yeah, very much so. I have Lactaid hidden all around the house. I’m like, Lactaid is like my my mafia money. It’s like under it’s in backpacks. It’s in night side tables. It’s in my cars in glove compartments. It’s in June’s purse. Like, I got it all. I got it all over the place just in case I need it.

Seth [00:28:30] How did this affect Paul as he got older? What were the long term effects? Did this experience deter Paul from eating? Being an adventurous eater at that? Fuck no.

Paul Scheer [00:28:41] I enjoy food and I don’t want to, I don’t want to, like, limit myself. The same way, like I am a pescatarian, for the most part. But if you tell me, like, this is the best steak you’ll ever eat, I’m gonna eat that steak. I’m gonna eat that barbecue. I will. I will enjoy that thing.

Seth [00:28:55] Another thing that it did not deter your relationship with is Disney.

Paul Scheer [00:29:01] No, like in many respects, I know how to travel Disneyland now.

Bill Scheer [00:29:05] It didn’t stop his desire to go back. Having known that, we carried Lactaid with us at all times.

Paul Scheer [00:29:12] I mean, maybe in many ways, Disney World was the place where I could accept this information.

Seth [00:29:17] So there it is. He shits himself at Disney World and has one of the most traumatic experiences of his life there. And what does he do? He keeps going back, over and over and over again. He’s told that dairy will essentially poison him. But does that stop him from eating it and enjoying it? Absolutely not. Paul suffers. Paul feels pain. Paul experiences trauma and ultimately loss. But Paul still laughs at the story, and as he’s laughing at the story, he lets us know that it’s OK for us to laugh along with him. And maybe because of that, we can laugh at ourselves a little bit more. Thank you, Paul. So this event was so terrible, but it was surrounded by something joyous. If only there was a song that captured that idea that also came from the Disney canon itself. That would be some impressive podcasting.

Mary Poppins [00:30:24] For a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down in a most delightful way.

Seth [00:30:34] Storytime with Seth Rogen is an Earwolf production… Produced, edited and sound designed by Richard Parks III. Our executive producer is Frida Perez. Additional production by Josh Richmond, Renee Colvert, Jared O’Connell, Marcus Homme and Marina Paiz, with special thanks to Amelia Chappelow. Our artwork is by Robin Richesson. The theme music is by Andi Kristinsdottir. Additional music in this episode by Brett Morris. The duck hotel eventually closed, its employees for ever changed by the experience they had there. Here’s a former duck guard.

Duck Guard [00:31:27] They’ll go back to the farm. I myself intend to retire for a second time. It’s been a very fast tenure, but a very, very rewarding one, and I’m so glad I was able to do it.

Seth [00:31:38] And while the duck hotel is gone, Paul Scheer and his lactose intolerance, they thrive.