Name: CHUCK KLOSTERMAN Talks Football, Violence, American Identity
Uploaded: 2026-01-29T05:01:05.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'CHUCK KLOSTERMAN Talks Football, Violence, American Identity' from The Adam Friedland Show on Comedy Buff. Published 2026-01-29. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'CHUCK KLOSTERMAN Talks Football, Violence, American Identity' from The Adam Friedland Show on Comedy Buff. Published 2026-01-29. Transcript available.

CHUCK KLOSTERMAN Talks Football, Violence, American Identity

How much do you attribute like it's like success on television to Cletus what
Cletus Cletus he's
the robot that plays electric guitar oh yeah how do you know his name because I
like sports yeah I
know but I like sports but I you see him getting defensive he wrote a book I
know I know this is
gonna be I am that's right you're that you're yeah yeah like I could have
consulted with me I
would you should have a hold I thought you were talking about the Simpsons
character for a second
I believe his name is Cletus and if his name isn't Cletus I'm gonna be really
embarrassed because
I would look that up it it's Cletus dominated once again yeah I like that yes
with that
hello and welcome back to the Adam Friedland show I'm Adam Friedland first off
I'm doing helium comedy
club February 19th to the 21st and also I will be in Los Angeles at the region
theater May 9th here's a
link in the description there is there's a there's a link different word there
is a there is a link in
the description for tickets that's fine I'd like to thank our members for
supporting us here on
youtube.com as always you guys are the ones that make the show possible you
keep the lights on and
if you'd like to join at the second or third tiers you can get your name in the
credits of this fine
program click join at the top of the page or click the link in the description
below and there's also
a link for a patreon if you prefer patreon and guys merch is available the out
of freelance show check
it out my guest this week is American author Chuck Klosterman Chuck is known as
one of the country's
premier cultural critics tackling any and all facets of pop culture through his
writing for the last 30
years his newest book football is about exactly that football the games past
present and future it's a
perceptive look into what entices us about the uniquely American sport and it's
on the shelves now so
check it out football and the big game coming up might want to read it before
then so you can understand
the big game now before we begin I'd like to introduce a new segment called my
two cents where I give my
two cents on topics of the day today in honor of our guests here's my two cents
on football like Chuck
Klosterman I'm a football fan or at least I was up until they started doing
that so-called dancing in
in the end zone if I wanted to see that garbage I say a past 10 p.m. and turn
on vh vh1 or whatever happened
to scoring a touchdown politely handing the ball over the official saying thank
you for being you go you
that's what I would say so you go you getting back to doing your job and if you
want to celebrate with
your win with a dance you we could just please keep it a classic instead of the
jerk or the soldier boy
dance how about the foxtrot the bolero the viennese waltz but hey that's just
my two cents
please welcome please enjoy Chuck Klosterman I like that our next guest is the
writer Chuck Klosterman
his new book football is out now everyone check it out everyone Chuck Klosterman
what's up dude hey I'm really excited well it's great to be here I appreciate
you having me on
I guess I was a bit nervous because you know I've seen clips from your show
yeah subject comes across
as a moron but that's not your fault really I try to be the moron well it's a
straight moron or the
straight man yeah I'm certainly not certainly not uh straight don't tell the
family Ollie
my girlfriend's cousin is doing sound this is not making the episode um I'm a
big fan I read I used
to read you from the time I was like I think late high school I know it's weird
to hear that but I
understand it yeah yeah it was like what I think the way I found out about cool
things because it was
prior to like uh Spotify or whatever I'd like go to like Barnes and Noble and
like open up spin magazine
I'd write names of uh bands and then I download them on Kazaa and uh through
that process I became
familiar with you well when I was at spin it was the early you know like 2002
to 2006 and it was
strange because the perception at the time then is like the cool part of spin
was over that everyone
believed that had happened in the 90s but I guess then when we left 10 years
moved on and people said
the same thing about our little period so I yeah no I I yeah I remember I read
yeah your books and I
thought it made me feel cool I think but but for the audience and the people
that don't know you it
effectively what you uh kind of write about is kind of it is the nonsense that
me and my friends spend hours
over like you know like you know what would have happened if drew bled so you
know didn't get hurt
you know like speculative kind of but but then the intersection with that in
culture I suppose yeah
well it just it seems completely unmeaningful now the idea of writing about
culture seems very common
it was less common in like book form when I first started publishing it was
seen as sort of this
strange gimmicky novelty thing and now it's like that it's not weird at all
yeah I I think for me it was
like David Foster Wallace and you I mean those were the two guys that were
writing about like out the
cheaper version yeah yeah yeah oh really oh for sure I thought I thought pretty
equal actually now
were you guys uh like did you know him was never met him never met him never
met him do you think he
would have been mean you think uh no I don't think he would they what they
always say about him is that
he was very kind that doesn't necessarily mean he was nice yeah but everyone
had always said that
at least outwardly he was you know over the top kind that it was rare that
someone had an encounter
with him uh-huh that was negative although now like there's like a biography
about him and
completely changes the way that everyone stalked that lady right yes and there's
and and the one
that thing that's a little disenchanting is like I mean he was he was probably
the last writer who
really did sort of influence me like like in that I would read this and I was
like I wonder if I could
do something like that and I feel like you become a writer when you stop that
but the thing that was
kind of a bummer is it sounds like the most interesting things from his non-fiction
work were the parts
that he made up yeah and that's that was it's because you know those are the
things that are
so memorable like he wrote this very famous essay about going on a cruise ship
of course and there's
one section there like where he's playing chess against some random little kid
and it's just it's an
amazing passage and he's memorizing these moves and all these things and maybe
it turns out like
that didn't happen so the thing I remember most is the thing he added but you
know that's creative
non-fiction I guess two things that that uh reminds me of one is did you see
the last uh
scorsese dylan documentary the rolling thunder that oh that that one yeah the
fake documentary
so yeah it was like half fake which like kind of made it like but there was
something about it that
was true you know what I mean like uh because it was half fake like narratively
it's like we buy
basically when I learned about bob dylan or the beetles it's like looking at a
picture of your parents
before you were born right it's not real like you weren't there right you
create a story right and
that's what I found to be the brilliant thing about that what I wondered about
that film was if someone
liked bob dylan but knew nothing about the movie so they just came into it cold
I wonder at what point
in the movie they would have been like oh yeah this couldn't have happened
because if there's one you
know he wore like white kind of pancake makeup for a while yeah like in the
movie saying like this girl
went and saw kiss and she came back and told me about you know and then you
know bob dylan has
written with gene simmons they have some relationships it's like it could it be
you know I knew going in
though that this wasn't all real so but I was thinking about myself like when
would I have figured
this out I don't think we I think people probably would have bought it because
it was presented as a
documentary it is you know and people know bob dylan's real that and and also
it could you know
like it doesn't matter at a certain point right it does it well I mean I think
dylan would say it
absolutely does it that he would probably argue that whatever myth you project
on him is the most
important thing about his identity outside of the music but yeah yeah have you
have you seen that that
film I'm still here the with Joaquin Phoenix that's kind of like I that's one
of my top five
favorite movies ever actually basically it's this uh documentary that you later
find out is it was
like kind of a project that Joaquin Phoenix and Casey Affleck were doing for a
year which is he
presented that he was going crazy and wanted to be a rapper and he was he went
on Letterman famously
that was the big thing it was almost like the promotion for that movie was as
important as the film
right and I what you find at the end there's like he goes to Costa Rica or
something or like I
forget he goes to some place where his father lives he's in a like a rainforest
and he goes in this like
lake and there's this baptismal kind of scene at the end but you realize like
this man is exhausted
like it doesn't matter if it's fake or if it's real because it happened right
like and kind of that
blurring I'm like oh that's what art is you know and like uh that's it kind of
like made a huge impression
on me shortly after I was probably reading stuff written by you yeah what's
interesting about that
though is because when it happened you know in the 21st century as opposed to
happening in the 70s
there's almost an assumption there had to have been from them that of course
people are going to realize
that this isn't real where there was a time when you could have done something
like that and the
artifact would just be what it is and people would say is this real is it not
real it's I don't know if
they were like steering into the fact that we can do this because eventually
people will know
or if there was actually if that was the last attempt to legitimately fool
people into thinking
something false is actual I mean like I would guess that there were some people
the when spinal tap
came up they might have watched the first few minutes of it especially when
they're talking to
the people in the you know the crowd shots they might be like well this I just
never heard of this
band the band Anvil had a documentary and people wondered is this real or felt
that it's amazing
documentary Anvil and is real and I will say I was a little kid I thought Spinal
Tap was real
did you I thought it was a real band what age did you see it at maybe five wow
yeah because I saw it
when I was like a junior in high school exactly yeah but uh it must have been
like 93 why were you
watching this is Spinal Tap at five my parents let me watch anything yeah they
covered my eyes for the
sex parts though well there's no there's no sex in that in any movie oh yeah
yeah but cover my eyes
like sex and let me watch violence so what was the most insane thing you saw at
the earliest age
um I would like would they let you watch nine and a half weeks or something
when you were a kid or
or like Faces of Death were you watching that at seven no I wasn't watching
like fucking yeah yeah I
wasn't watching I wasn't watching Red Asphalt the driver's head movie you
remember that
you're like last house on the left you were like oh he'll love this I was
watching mainly just like
this your neck snap I was watching a lot of Dolph Lundgren uh John Claude Van
Damme schwarzenegger
Stallone yeah I was watching all I watched all of those movies with my dad a
lot of the like secure the
perimeter yeah lock it down like a lot of that and then a guy's neck gets
snapped yeah but I think this
is kind of like a tangent but I think because they covered my eyes for the sex
and let me watch all
the killing I think killing I didn't want