Fahim Anwar | This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von #656

TL;DR

Theo Von and comedian Fahim Anwar catch up on tour stories, Fahim's new special, and riff on internet culture and society.

Key Points

• 1.Fahim Anwar has a new stand-up special out now. It's called *Intrusive Thoughts* and is available on YouTube, with a link in the description — Fahim even blanked on the title mid-promo.
• 2.Fahim runs a weekly show at the Comedy Store's Belly Room. Called *Fahim Works on Stuff*, it documents his joke-writing process live on stage, and many bits from it made it into his new hour.
• 3.The Watch Duty fire app became a cultural moment during the LA fires. Theo and Fahim joked that the app developers may have been starting the fires to drive downloads — 'you've got to create the need.'
• 4.The conversation spiraled into a long riff on gooning. Perplexity defined it as marathon masturbation where someone edges into a trance-like state for hours, often with multiple tabs and looped content.
• 5.Theo described a Mike Tyson podcast taping planned for May 5th in LA. It will be a live audience recording at the Wiltern Theater as part of Netflix Is A Joke Fest, then posted to Theo's channel.
• 6.Fahim joined Theo on a Midwest tour run hitting Iowa, Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota. He had never played venues that large — his previous biggest was 7,000 at the Dolby; some Theo shows were 18,000 seats.
• 7.The Fargo Dome was the most memorable venue. It was so large it had two internal stadiums; they played basketball behind a curtain before the show and the buses parked inside.
• 8.A fan in Clear Lake lost his hat to high winds three times while trying to get a photo with Theo. The hat blew roughly 60 feet each time, going around parked trucks, while they kept walking — Fahim called it a Looney Tunes cartoon.
• 9.They visited the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa. It's the venue where Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper played their last show before the fatal plane crash — the original phone Valens used to call his mother was still on display.
• 10.Mount Rushmore was smaller than expected but the trip packed in tourist highlights. The group also visited the Crazy Horse Memorial, which has been under private construction since 1948 and only finished the left hand by 2024.
• 11.The Crazy Horse Memorial was commissioned after a Lakota chief wrote to sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski in 1939. The letter said 'the red man has great heroes too'; Ziolkowski refused government grants and funded it by charging 75-cent admission.
• 12.A meet-and-greet story revealed Theo's curiosity style. After a fan in a wheelchair explained she was flung from a car accident, Theo asked what kind of car it was and whether it was a nice vehicle — Fahim called it quintessentially Theo.
• 13.Theo and Fahim riffed on late-stage capitalism and merch culture. From an exterminator selling merch door-to-door to EMTs setting up tiered CPR packages, they compared the current moment to a breakdown of untethered capitalism.
• 14.Fahim reflected on always preferring new material over proven crowd work. He said as a young comic he would try new jokes even at important industry showcases, and that habit has become an asset as he learned to write faster.
• 15.Fahim described his comedy instinct as involuntary. He said when an idea tickles him he goes into a 'fugue state' and riffs without realizing it — Theo compared it to pouring beer too fast, where it spills out no matter what.