Name: Controversy Created Conversation with Graham Platner, Tyler Ballgame (Ep 376)
Uploaded: 2026-02-26T20:32:20.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Controversy Created Conversation with Graham Platner, Tyler Ballgame (Ep 376)' from Office Hours Live with Tim Heidecker on Comedy Buff. Published 2026-02-26. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Controversy Created Conversation with Graham Platner, Tyler Ballgame (Ep 376)' from Office Hours Live with Tim Heidecker on Comedy Buff. Published 2026-02-26. Transcript available.

Controversy Created Conversation with Graham Platner, Tyler Ballgame (Ep 376)

I want to kiss you so bad.
I like having fun.
I like to laugh.
I like to meet people who can make me laugh.
I like having fun.
Yes, I like to laugh.
Good morning.
I am fighting it today.
I didn't tell the crew and everybody here.
I have 105 fever.
And I can't see.
I've been dizzy.
I barely can stand up.
I think I have COVID.
I haven't tested, but I am sick.
I definitely have the flu.
Definitely very contagious.
I'm sick as a dog, but I have to do the show.
It's a contractually obliged.
Doug, I apologize for kissing you on the mouth and sucking it.
Why didn't you tell me that before you did that?
I apologize.
I wanted to taste that new mustache you've been supporting.
I wanted to feel what that felt like.
You had pepperoni pizza last night.
I keep trying to shave it, but I get the compliments, and then, see?
Like, this guy's into it.
Calm down.
Stay on schedule.
Stay on message, Doug.
Now, it's Thursday.
It is March.
No.
Nope.
Not yet.
Not yet.
He's running a high fever.
No, I do.
I'm not sick, but I've just got, I don't know.
Maybe it's allergies.
I'm just losing my voice a little bit.
I was screaming at my kids all day yesterday for no reason.
What's the matter with you?
Why did I have you?
No, I have to actually tell you, my daughter starred in the school play that we
saw last
night.
Shut the fuck.
And I, it was the greatest performance I've ever seen, ladies and gentlemen.
Thanks.
And I've seen Terms of Endearment, and I've seen all these people on Broadway.
I saw Mark Rylance on Broadway.
Look him up.
Maybe the greatest actor of all time.
This was a hundred times better than that, and I'll talk about more, talk more
about that
later in the show.
She did Death of a Salesman.
She played the lead.
No, she played, she was a lad, she was in Aladdin.
She played the genie.
Oh, we were, I was, here's, let me just quickly tell you this.
I am an actor, musician, producer.
No spoilers, I'm going tonight.
Front row seats.
I'm going to get to my guest in a minute.
Just be patient.
You can, you're not going anywhere.
At the end of this play, Matt.
No, no spoilers.
No spoilers about the play, about the play itself.
But I rise to my feet.
And I turn, and I see these lumps not getting up.
I got worms.
Glendale, Glendale audiences.
It was, yeah, well, their daughter isn't in the thing.
No, there was, there's a big cast.
There was lots of parents there.
They didn't know about the standing up.
Come on, guys.
And I was, my mom was upset.
She's like, settle down.
I'm like, get up!
Come on, stand.
What are you doing?
What are you doing?
You've just been sitting for an hour and a half.
Stand up and applaud.
Sounded like you had main character energy.
I was live streaming it.
Hi, guys.
I'm here at my daughter's play, and no one is giving me saying no pictures,
even though she
nailed it.
So I was very upset.
I don't understand what you're talking about.
Anyways, Doug Jesus Christ, Doug Lussenhop is here.
Good horny.
And Victor Berger IV is also here.
What's up, everybody?
Oh, I did not mean to do that.
All right.
What do you got in there?
Do you have those little calcium tonsil things that Trump was spitting out of
his mouth?
Yeah, it's my tonsil tornado torpedoes.
Maybe you got a touch of the COVID from Tim.
Sick.
I've never seen somebody spit out, what was it, seven of them or something?
Like, I've never seen one.
There's a record amount.
And Cruz did it a few years ago.
Yeah.
Tonsil stones, right?
Captain Carlin is here as well.
Quick plug, the On Cinema Oscar special is set to air live in two weeks or so,
whenever
the Oscars are.
We're going counter-programming on highnetwork.tv.
And the week after that, we're hitting the road on Cinema on the road, on
Cinema Live.
And that's, most tickets are going out the window, but we have some nice seats
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in a few markets.
So get your tickets now.
All right.
Listen, without...
Stop it!
Stop it, Vic!
That's me.
We have a high-profile guest with us today.
This guy has been all over the media.
Senator Graham Plattner is here.
Are you basically the senator of Maine?
Yeah, the only one.
Yeah, yeah.
And that's a new constitutional thing, is only needs...
We just put it into law a couple years ago.
Wow.
So this is your...
Running for re-election is what I understand?
It's the first one.
First re-election.
But you've claimed the senator position.
Actually, it's very strange.
Wherever this whole thing goes, I'm never, ever going to get used to this
concept.
It's very off-putting, to say the least.
So, no, you're running for senator of the state of Maine.
Yeah.
It's a state, not a commonwealth, right?
It is.
Well, we left the commonwealth of Massachusetts in 1820.
Okay.
So you know your stuff.
We're our own state.
Is it?
So you're a very controversial guest.
So they say.
Yeah.
You've got a lot of...
And I'm not going to...
There's ain't going to be no puff piece.
There's ain't going to be no Today Show.
I'm here for the hard questions.
Okay.
First of all, why are you...
You've never held public office?
No.
Well, I've been the chair of the planning board for the last five years in my
small town of
a thousand people.
Okay.
And I've been the harbormaster for the last two years.
What's the harbormaster?
I make sure people pay their mooring fees and I make sure that they're, it's
going to sound
very technical, that their mooring equipment is in good enough shape.
So if a storm comes along, nobody's boat breaks free, floats around the bay and
breaks
everybody else's boat.
Are you checking fishing licenses and stuff like that?
No, that's a whole other department.
That's a whole other department.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But it's...
So this is a big jump.
Big jump.
And do you, is it, why?
Why would you make that huge jump so quickly in your political career?
Well, one, I don't, I'll be just, I don't really want to have a political
career.
Okay.
I've not been going through my life planning on, on having a, or running for
higher elected
office.
I, I do a lot.
I've been very involved locally, community organizing and local governance.
And there's just kind of a point where, and one of the reasons I did that is I,
after
my military, I was in the, in the military.
Oh, we're going to get to that.
And after my military service, I, I became pretty disgruntled, pretty disillusioned
with,
I would say the larger political apparatus in this country.
And I thought the best thing to do was just to go focus locally.
I moved back to my hometown.
I got very involved in local politics, local governance and community
organizing.
And there is a point when you realize that when the problems are systemic, no
matter what
you do locally, you're going to keep running up, up against the system.
Right.
And you're kind of just putting band-aids on things.
You're just trying to protect you and the people you love from the exploitation,
the oppression
of the greater system.
And I was frankly, relatively content with doing that because I never thought
that somebody from
my background with kind of, I mean, my wife and I don't have any money.
We work really hard.
We, I run an oyster farm.
Right.
And, uh, I mean, U S Senate was never something that ever crossed my mind until
somebody showed
up with my doorstep with this idea, you got drafted, got drafted.
And there's just a, not many people get the opportunity to actually do
something about the
stuff that many of us, I think, feel strongly about.
And how did they even know who you were?
Maine is tiny.
Okay.
Yeah.
Maine's small.
I, I've done a lot of community organizing and so I had like, I, I'm, and I'm
very involved
in like the aquaculture world.
Um, and so.
The what culture world?
Aquaculture.
Is that like a rave thing?
Is that a drug thing?
Yeah, it's a big drug thing.
I grow oysters, but in Maine people grow seaweed, mussels, it's a sea farming.
Can you, as a, would you, Doug is a vegan?
Oh, this is a, this is a, I was going to ask this question, then I'm going to
get to the
hard stuff, but should Doug be, Doug should be eating oysters?
Yes or no?
100%.
100%.
Uh, one, they are very high in good minerals and protein.
Right.
And they have essentially the, uh, the consciousness of broccoli.
So if, if you can eat broccoli.
The Donald Trump autobiography title, by the way.
Um, I've heard this argument.
Yeah.
It's, it's a big, honestly, it's a big fight in the vegan community.
So I don't really like the, the texture of the taste.
Yeah.
That's fair.
That's good.
Yeah.
But you just come to, come to Maine.
Our Maine oysters are just better.
All right.
We said.
Okay.
Did you bring any in for us to try?
Of course not.
Are they supposed to taste like sea water, like ocean water?
Is that?
Yeah.
Oh yeah.
It's a briny quality.
I'm a fan of oysters.
I enjoy.
I love them.
Yeah.
The, uh, ours are very briny, but when they're also very fatty, so it gives
them a lot of kind
of sweetness.
I hate the pearls out of there.
What's that?
Are you doing pearls?
The Eastern American oyster is not really a pearl oyster.
Uh, they do every now and again, you'll get one, but they're very small.
So.
Why not?
I hate when you go to the restaurant.
Let's look that up later.
I'm just interested in the pearl.
It's because we grow them on the surface and there's not a lot of substrate
that gets
inside.
Pearls are just when an irritant gets inside and the bivalve starts to coat the
irritant
of what is the inside of the shell, which is this kind of, it's, well, it's
what looks
like pearl.
It's calcium carbonate.
You're filibustering.
I am indeed.
Well, I'm trying to avoid the hard stuff.
I'll just talk about oysters, man.
Now you, you brought up a draft.
Interesting stuff to me.
You brought up draft.
Now I just want to talk about your military stuff because that is a big problem
for a
lot of people.
Yeah.
I think, and it's a big problem for me personally.
I'll be candid with you.
Um, I was looking at you and your career and your, your history.
You were against the Iraq war.
Yes.
And then you joined the Marines.
Yes.
And then became a combat.
Yeah.
I was in the infantry.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And you did some nasty shit, I imagine.
Yeah.
I mean, I, I, I was outside of Fallujah in '05.
I fought in Ramadi in '06.
Right.
They were, they were very, very violent deployments.
Right.
Now you knew, I knew, cause I was, I'm about 10 years older than you, but you
knew that
that was an unjust war.
Yes.
Before you joined.
Yeah.
And what's that thought press and where is, is there must be some regret, some.
Oh, a lot.
Feeling of, uh, well, talk about, talk about.
Yeah.
So, I mean, I, I, for reasons I can't explain since I was about two years old,
I wanted to
be a soldier.
Sure.
And I don't know why that is.
Probably watching Cobra or a predator on TV or something like that.
I grew up playing with GI Joes, but it was also deeper.
I, into high school, I, I began, I, I've always been a big history buff and I
was really into
the civil war.
I was really into the second world war.
And, and I, and I kind of just, I don't know, took off for whatever reason.
And part of it, I honestly, I think a lot of it is that in our society, we
romanticize
militarism.
Right.
We romanticize war as this kind of thing that, especially young men.
Yeah.
have to go do to kind of go through some rite of passage.
Uh, and I think we do it because culturally we as a, we as a nation have
utilized violence
and war the whole time.
Right.
And we almost require it, uh, for, for what we have built.
Right.
And it's just become so inculcated into our culture.
So I grew up with that.
And, and I, but I also had an element of just the, frankly, I would say, uh,
childish
idealism where even though I thought the war was bad and I was against it and I
protested
it and I did everything I could to stop it.
When it came, I still had this sense that I had a duty.
Do you think there was that post nine 11 patriotism?
I mean, that was running through, through people I knew for sure.
There definitely was, but I like for me, it was more, it was twofold.
It was 