Not Bad Dan Not Bad Stories

About Not Bad Dan Not Bad Stories

My little stories dandonohue.substack.com (https://dandonohue.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast)

Publisher

Dan Donohue

Category

arts · fiction

Language

en

Explicit

Yes

First episode

11 Feb 2025

Latest episode

26 Aug 2026

Latest episodes

28 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   26 Aug 2026

   The Two Types of Trouble

   Hello reader, please like, comment, and share if you enjoy this, it really helps me out! There are two kinds of trouble you can get into as a child, they are very different, but the outcomes and consequences are the same. The first type of trouble is ‘crime adjacent trouble’. These are the ‘kids meal’ equivalent of adult crimes. Sort of cute, miniature versions of murder, arson, human trafficking, ect. Found huffing magic markers behind the school? Simple possession. Stealing Pokemon Cards? Grand larceny. Farting really loud on purpose? Usage of weapons of mass destruction. Laughing at said fart? Aiding and abetting a known terrorist. These sorts of infractions are dealt with harshly. Authority figures have the framework of their severity because of their adult crime equivalents and know what will happen if the behavior persists. They dole out detentions and suspensions to the children who commit them, and either the little criminals buckle under the weight of their sentences, or take them with the steely eyed indifference of a hardened criminal. “1 week no recess? How about you make it two? I’ve got to work on my drawing of what I assume boobs look like.” The second type of trouble is ‘Please, for the love of god, stop doing that’ trouble. This is where we trek into a new frontier of punishments which do not have adult equivalents, and are at the discretion of the authority figure in charge. Type 2 trouble arises when you do something which does not technically break any rules, but regardless makes teachers uncomfortable. This was the sort of trouble I got into, which was really tough because, although I was 9 years old, I could litigate and argue at the level of a conservative podcaster. One time, I was thrown out of class when the teacher was trying to describe whether words had a positive or negative connotation. “The word ‘hurt’ has a negative connotation.” She would say, bracing herself for my inevitable interjections.” “Oh really, what if you ‘hurt’ Osama Bin Laden? Would that be bad Ms. Prock? Last I checked he destroyed the empire state building and the pentagon, a shape which I have yet to learn.” I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, no one wanted endless war in the middle east more than 3rd graders. So I would do strange, abrasive things, get in trouble, and then argue about what specific rule I was breaking. I was often met with the phrase “because I said so” to which I would respond “But why, what thought process led you to have such a negative view on me speaking in a southern accent when I answer questions? I swear I’m not doing this just because I heard one on TV for the first time yesterday, this is who I am, and nobody talks to Texas Donny like this!” In elementary school I had a far worse relationship with my teachers than my type 1 compatriots. They were problem children, sure, but they had understandable problems. Their actions followed a line of logic. If you want to do well on a test, but you don’t want to study, you cheat. It makes perfect sense. It’s the kind of critical thinking a teacher can appreciate. It’s also the sort of thing an authority figure feels good about correcting. When you are given the power to punish, you often fantasize of wielding the flaming sword of justice with noble discernment. You do not often fantasize about telling a young boy to stop chirping before answering questions. Leading into middle school, that dynamic began to shift slightly. The type 1 kids, who stayed on the path of crime adjacent activity, became less benign. Scuffles became fights with blood and broken teeth, stealing markers turned into smoking weed, and being late to class morphed into competitive knife fighting. Meanwhile, while my strange behavior was still punished, I think I had broken the spirits of my teachers, who had bigger fish to fry now that my type 1 compatriots had a thirst for blood. Nevertheless, type 1s and type 2s are always lumped together. I got sent to detention, they got sent to special ed, which I always thought was interesting. Special education was supposed to be a place where students with learning disabilities and emotional problems got sorted out, but it was populated by a bunch of kids who just discovered weed too early. I knew a kid named Kyle White in middle school, who played football and went to special ed, a combo that was shockingly common. Kyle did not have a learning disability, at least not one you could ever accurately diagnose through the haze of marajuana that was pumping through his bloodstream at all times. It is certainly plausible that he was using weed to medicate an underlying learning disability, and if that was the case, Kyle was one of the most afflicted children who has ever lived. The amount of medication he had to take surpassed an entire terminal cancer ward combined. He took medication before school, after school, during school, during class. Kyle famously made a contraption fashioned out of a paper towel roll stuffed with different scented materials. He would take a hit from a pipe in class, then exhale it through the contraption. That way, instead of a teacher smelling pungent weed smoke and immediately sending him to the principal, a teacher would smell pungent weed smoke mixed with dryer sheets, and then send him to the principal. He would smile, laugh, say “you got me” and simply half walk half float to the principals office. There has never been a movie, tv show, or rap song that made me want to smoke weed as a teenager more than Kyle. I didn’t care that weed made food better, I was already eating enough of it at the time according to my pants size that called me “husky” and my classmates who called me “fat ass”. I didn’t care that it made sex better. That’s like if you told me now “you need to try this wild berry, It makes yacht racing so much more enjoyable!” You can’t enhance an experience you’re not having. But watching Kyle, carefree, sauntering to the principals office racked me with jealousy. I was always so nervous when I got sent to the principals, from elementary to middle school. But, much like a high paid athlete, the pressure elicited performances out of me that I never could have hoped to achieve without the heightened anxiety. You see, I was a master of getting out of trouble once I was already in it. I had a preternatural ability to tell an authority figure exactly what they wanted to hear once cornered. The trick was to give them everything they wanted, then give them more. Make them think their authority had such power that you were in literal physical anguish at the prospect of disappointing them. Sometimes I would even accent my self-admonishment by hitting my head with a flat palm over and over again until the principal would be forced to say “no no, stop that, don’t feel that bad.” That’s when I knew I had him. My pupils would dilate looking down the long stretching mile I was going to take once they had given me my precious inch. I’d leave the principal’s office, not only not being given a slap on the wrist, but with phone calls to my parents telling them ‘ease off him, he’s a good kid.’ Kyle was not as good at this little trick. He was charming, but he lacked the ability to self flagellate. He had “confidence” and “a sense of identity” and probably a myriad of other traits that were holding him back. We still found ourselves in trouble together fairly often, and we would chat quietly in detention when Officer Gammel (he used to be a police officer but he kept the title) wasn’t paying attention. “I tried blowing up a bunch of soda bottles with M80s on school property, what did you do?” Kyle would ask, like I was a cell mate on my first day in prison. “I tried blowing up my homework assignment with my mind.” I would reply sheepishly, feeling as though my crime wasn’t as cool or exciting as Kyle’s. He never made me feel judged though. There were certain “bad” kids who had a sense of inclusion far beyond their “good” counterparts. I remember Jack Bowdich, a kid who lived in a motel on route 6, was the first person to introduce himself to me in special ed. I personally think they had a mature way of looking at the world. They knew how bad their circumstances were, whether it be because of poor impulse control or their fathers gambling debts, so they were in no position to look down on others. Kyle and I chatted, and eventually the conversation got on the topic of sentencing. He was shocked at how little time I had to spend in detention when I was such a repeat offender. I told him about my little trick of prostrating myself at the feet of the disciplinarian, and Kyle listened with all the attention and focus he should have been putting into class. By the time Officer Gammel looked up from his phone to tell us to shut up, I had already imparted a truckload of strategies onto Kyle, and when we left detention I was assured Kyle would make progress in his ability to get out of trouble. When I found out he was permanently suspended two weeks later, I have to admit I was a little less confident in my council. “What happened?” I asked his cousin Eli. “The idiot got caught smoking weed, and started confessing that he also sold it. The principal booted him that day. He’s going to boarding school in Alaska now.” Up until that point I always had the idea that the truth would set you free, I had no idea that, depending on the truth, it could also get you sent to some adolescent Guantanamo Bay in Alaska. The whole ordeal made me paranoid. I contained my impulses to make weird noises or try to balance books on my eyeball, lest I slip up in the interrogation room and end up getting waterboarded while Alaskan king krabs pinch my toes. Kyle is now a successful fisherman, which is great! It turns out all that stuff teachers told him about studying and not doing drugs was a complete waste of time. Personally, I developed a sense of restraint when it comes to chastising myself. I never knew it could lead to anything other than a reduced sentence. You need to toe the line between apology and over indulgence. Do too little, and you will be seen as insolent, do too much, and you’ll find yourself smoking weed out of a big Alaskan salmon. Thank you for reading! Please like, comment, and share! Also, join the paid tier to get a bunch of extra stuff and an early draft of my book! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dandonohue.substack.com/subscribe (https://dandonohue.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2)

2. 

   15 Aug 2026

   Crying In My Casket

   Before we start, my new book The Aardvark Protocol is available if you are a paid subscriber. It is a humor/thriller and I think you will love it. Now, please enjoy this story: My mom was an amateur motivational speaker. They exist, they are valid, they are loud. Professional motivational speakers are people who made fortunes or accomplished achievements that were so astonishing that other people want to pay them to hear them speak. Amateur motivational speakers tend to be people who think that they are so motivational, if they speak enough, their fortunes will come to them. For as long as I could remember my mother would do speaking engagements. She would put on her pants suits, make her hair as big as possible, and lift the spirits of kids who went to vocational high schools or employees at companies who probably picked her because the magician got too handsy last retreat. My mom was a bricklayer, and went on to start her own construction supply sales business. It was deeply impressive and I am very proud of my mom, but it doesn’t really blow anyone’s hair back unless you own a yacht. People don’t want to hear about your realistic achievements, they want you to own an island that various wealthy politicians and businessmen go and party on. Sorry if my mom wasn’t successful enough for you, but I can say for certain she never sacrificed a child to Moloc. I always wanted my mom to bring me to one of these events. I was interested in them. I was a strange child. My dad was one of those AA guys who replaced the unhealthy habit of drinking with the extremely healthy habit of working out for hours a day with no recovery. Some people get sober and go “I need to do a tough mudder every hour on the hour or I will go back to drinking.” Say what you will, but his legs were always too sore to get to the bar. So he was an intense guy, and my mom, with her blow out and nail extensions and hard hat, was an intense woman. I loved my parents, and got the notion at a young age that to be successful I had to work extremely hard. This is a great mindset when you turn 16, but at 8 it results in practicing four square while other children are building connections with each other. Whatever, I’ll see them out on the foursquare courts. We’ll see how far their social connections take them when they’re beating me 11-3 instead of 11-0. So when my mom first told me I would be going to a motivational speaking event in the library of a local community college, I was ecstatic. I would get to see people like Tony Robbins who I knew because my mom would play his cassettes while she was driving to distract me. Tony sort of became my Barney. They are very similar. They are both huge, scary, and have several pending sexual assault allegations against them. I don’t think their cases will have the same verdict though, you need to be willing to bribe witnesses or kill a judge when it comes to these sorts of things, so I think Barney will be the only one found innocent. When I heard there would be six speakers including my mom I was over the moon. Five Tony Robins plus my mom!? Such a group could take over a small island nation, my mom riding on the back of one of the Tonyranasauras rex’s and directing him to smash guard posts or denationalize pineapple farming. However, when I got to the event, I was somewhat disappointed. There was no motivational music, no giant stage, and worst of all no headset microphones to allow the speakers to get out into the audience, grab a woman by the head, and tell her “do not let your Huntington’s Disease stop you from opening your Etsy shop.” It was just a podium on the floor with a microphone. The dozen or so people in the crowd were old women and a few really intense 30 year old men who looked like they got their motivation by lighting the end of a glass pipe. This was not where business owners decided to take their first step. This was where future McDonald’s employees decided to become managers. I huffed, grabbed my gameboy, and went to the back of the room to hone my skills at Super Mario. Like everything else in my life at the time I approached Super Mario with an intensity far beyond the realm of pleasurable experience. I wonder what would have come of my mind if I had dedicated the same mental effort towards reading. Maybe I wouldn’t have been in special ed, maybe I could spell the word chocklet on a whim like some fancy professor. So my mom prepared her speech as her son soldered his synapses and developed a taste for blond women who were a foot taller than him. She was speaking last, we are a family of headliners, so I had to sit and half listen to the five separate fifteen minute speeches before hers, and boy did they stink. One guy spent the whole time talking about other motivational speakers. “When you’re feeling down, when you get really low, I know it can feel like things are never going to change. But it’s like Tony Robbins always says, “You have to believe it before you achieve it.” It was like we were transported back to a time before cassette players where town criers needed to relay messages from the guys in charge. “Hear ye hear ye, Lord Robins decrees you need to covet before you love it” The audience seemed to like him alot. They had heard all the stuff Tony said, but never from a guy with a microphone on stage, so this was all new to them. The old woman nodded their heads, making their white hair bob above their seats like the foamy caps of waves. The three speakers after this man were even worse. They read off papers, not once looking at the audience. A very thin woman, in a pencil skirt and skin that was so loose it looked like tree bark, would accentuate her points by periodically looking up from her paper, but it was never the right moments. She would say “It took me years to figure out how to lose the weight.” Then she would look at the audience, shaking her fist above her head and crying “It wasn’t diet or exercise!” and then look back at her page and mumbled, “It was my mindset.” The speaker before my mom was the only one that made me look up from my game in rapture. He was a Jamaican man with a thick accent. He had wide fiery eyes and leaned over the podium as though it were the only object in the path of him leaping into the audience and shouting in everyone’s faces. He was great! The thing that stuck out to me about the content of his speech was its completely directionless and non-motivational nature. Most motivational speeches start by the speaker explaining something awful that happened to them, and then conclude with how they overcame it. This guy had the first part down, but seemed to have no concept of the conclusion. “Back in Jamaica, my father would beat me without mercy. One time I was walking down the road, and I stepped on a rusty nail. When I limped home, my father beat me for ruining my shoe.” We all leaned forward, waiting for him to tell us that one day he stood up to his father, or how that experience taught him to look out for himself, but instead he just paused and said “...now that was awful. Why would he do that? It was an accident, I was not trying to step on the nail!” As his speech continued, I saw other audience members shift uncomfortably. This was not what they wanted, they wanted predictable narrative, they wanted conclusions to be hammered home. This man was offering a sort of avantguard abstract version of a motivational speech. You never had any idea where he was going. “Me and my wife have been together for thirty years, when people ask me ‘how do you stay together for so long’ I always say ‘I don ‘t know, I don’t want to be together anymore, but I don’ t know how to leave her.” This man completely broke the monotony of the evening. I realized what was wrong with all the other speakers. You knew where their speeches were going. If you can predict that someone wants you to work harder or turn your life around, the part of your brain that detects spontaneity shuts off. This man seemed like he could care less about what I did with my life, he had his own problems thank you very much. The only thing he said that was even remotely “motivational” was at the end of his speech, when he said, “Not a lot has worked out for me, but at the end of the day, I don’t think I will be crying in my casket. When he got off stage there was a smattering of applause. He did not stick around after to sell a book or hawk a course. He just walked out the front door, probably keeping an eye out so he didn’t step on any rusty nails or run into his wife. My mom got on stage after, talking about being the first woman to join the masons union on the east coast and how much she overcame and blah blah blah, but I couldn’t stop thinking about that strange man. Looking back on my life I think his speech feels as though it resonates more with me than any of the others from that night. Hard work will get you somewhere, but in my experience hard work is like unfurling a sail on a very small boat in the middle of the ocean, all it guarantees is forward motion. The direction is up to the wind and current. I’ve known people who work very hard and get nowhere close to where they want, and I know people who don’t put a sail out at all and end up doing pretty well for themselves. But somewhere on that vast endless ocean of experience and want, there is a man with no boat, no sail. He is on an island wondering why his dad beat him, and hoping his wife does not have his coordinates. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dandonohue.substack.com/subscribe (https://dandonohue.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2)

3. 

   12 Mar 2026

   Standup In A Haunted Room

   I did a show last night at a wonderful establishment. The booker is friendly and the crowds are stand up savvy and generous, however, I performed in its haunted room. The room is not haunted by ghosts who poke their heads out of closets or appear suddenly in a mirror, what haunts this room is much worse. I believe that years ago, in the far away land of 1998, a comedian had such a bad set in this room it ripped the space time continuum within it forever. Ever since that fateful day, the room has been a black hole of comedy, a vortex that sucks up laughter and leaves audiences, mostly composed of tourists, looking like rows of mannequins sporting the “just got in from Eastern Europe summer line”. Rows of flip flops and shirts that say “Armani” 1000 times. They stare at you, not only stone faced, but looking like they have never laughed before, like they’ve never heard a laugh, like someone came to their town with a rumor that someone had laughed 3 countries over and they beat him to death for his salacious lie. There is nothing wrong with the room itself. You walk in, there is a stage and a bar and in front of the stage there are tables and chairs. In standard comedy club fashion the room itself is lacquered with a thick black paint and everything serves to focus attention to the comedian on stage, it seems normal, and that’s what tricks you. I imagine audience members settling down expecting a good show, but when the first comedian takes the stage, a dark energy envelops the entirety of the crowd. Their faces go blank, their ability to laugh is taken away from them, and as if bound to their tables by invisible tether, their hands cease to be able to clap. This is where I performed last night, this is where I perform almost every week. I’m reading IT by Steven King at the moment, and there is a great plot device where the main characters leave their home town and their memories of the haunting they suffered there are instantly erased until they return years later to face down their monster once more. That’s exactly how I feel before I step back into this room. There is a nauseous sort of hope that sweeps over me before a show there. It’s not the hope of a traveler setting foot on new land, more like the hope a prospector feels panning the same river bed he’s panned thousands of times before, holding on to the false and insidious idea that maybe this time there will be gold at the end of his effort. Once I step into the room even that warped sense of optimism leaves me, and I settle into the darkness and silence. Last night after my bomb, I got off stage and slunk back to the green room. The green room is nice and there is a TV where they have a live camera set up and you can watch other comedians bomb as bad as you do, but last night was different. I watched my friend, Kelly Ryan, crush. It was like watching the devil get beat in a fiddle contest, it was incredible. I couldn’t hear exactly what she was saying, there was no audio feed, but I could hear the laughter bang against the door like a horde of zombies hungry for my self esteem rather than my brain. I had associated that room with bombing for so long that I had built this comfortable space in my mind where I said ‘it’s impossible to make them laugh, so it’s ok’. You could tell Kelly was killing by looking at her performance without audio. She was relaxed, smiling, and generally having a good time. There is a saying in comedy that goes something like this: “If you’re having fun on stage, the audience will have fun with you.” I think it’s a good little saying, but I prefer one of my own: “If you’re not having a good time on stage, the audience should have a good time anyway because you’re soooooo smart and special, and also someone in the audience should give you a TV show.” Anyway, Kelly finished her set to a kind of raucous applause that I didn’t know was possible in that room, and when she came into the green room I told her “wow, that sounded great.” To which she replied “You know, they just wanted me to talk about what was going on in the world. They were all kind of sitting around waiting for it to be addressed.” She said it so simply, so absolutely, like a plumber telling you “ya thats gotta be a blockage in the S-pipe, you’re gonna wanna put a spigot valve in the sprocket joint.” I mulled over what she said for a while, and it struck a few nerves for me. First off, I was thinking about current events a lot that day, and I am now as well. Military action in the middle east, multiple deaths caused in the name of the country I poorly file my taxes to every year, and a creeping sense of inevitability. My parents were born less than ten years after the conclusion of world war two. Those must have been hopeful times, living in the country which was the flaming sword of justice that vanquished evil. They then stood up bravely to the war in Vietnam, because what was going on there was not what the United States military stands for. I was born in a time where the marketing behind the United States military had been on auto pilot for a full generation before me. “Bringing democracy” and “securing freedom” were chanted like the drones of a bagpipe. They would spout talking points about imminent danger with no real conviction, using buzz words like they were entering the password to an ancient evil laptop. Now, we’re at a point where we don’t even really use those pretenses. Now we are at war because we are at war. We can come up with flimsy reasons afterwards, but those explanations are as varied and mystical as oracles looking into tea leaves. Going to war is an inevitability, because the country needs war almost as if we are offering it in homage. Our soldiers sign up to potentially be given as blood sacrifice in exchange for an article on Fox news with their face in front of a big American flag smiling brightly. The wanton disregard that this country seems to have for its soldiers does not hold a candle to the apathy it has for the lives of Iranians. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a way to turn all that into standup, but I think I should figure out a way to speak about things as they happen in real time. My issue is, I think slow, I write slow. My jokes are well thought out and pretty tight, but they take a long time to get that way. The thing that I am struggling with now is how to bridge the gap between what I am feeling and what I am doing on stage. Recently I’ve been going to open mics and letting loose on stage a little bit more. I don’t know if anything will come of it, but it does feel good. I’m a firm believer that an entertainer’s job is to entertain, and a comedian’s job is to be funny. This video that I saw of Stephen Graham recently sums it up pretty well. Go to 3:35 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcK7gBHsArU) While I certainly believe this to be true, I also think a comedian has a better chance of being funny when they are talking about something they believe to be interesting. I think my problem is. I put a lot of pressure on myself, and pressure is just that, a containing, restrictive force. Sometimes I resent certain audiences, I think they are scared or stupid or annoying, and I let that get to me. My preconceived notion of what they want clouds my judgement and makes me act inauthentically. I think I learned a lot that night from Kelly, even though she doesn’t know it. If you put distance between yourself and others, consider yourself to be different, better, more thoughtful, or worse, dumber, you offer yourself a cushion. I think what I learned is if you look down on people, you make it harder to connect, and connecting with people is probably the only thing that could make me feel better right now. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit dandonohue.substack.com/subscribe (https://dandonohue.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2)

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