Three dudes forget their horrible jobs for one hour a week

By Ken Miller (contact)

Wednesday, Aug. 24, 2011 | 6 p.m.

There’s a problem on the Quit Your Day Job Radio podcast—UFC fighter Roy “Big Country” Nelson, scheduled to call in, doesn’t. Co-host Danny Jackson is undeterred, coming up with a solution: He’ll call in as Nelson. And he does. Within minutes, his co-hosts, Jered Waller and Josh Smith, are asking “Roy” all the questions they had prepared. The moment is completely unscripted, completely ludicrous—and pretty damned funny.

And that, in a nutshell, is the heart of Quit Your Day Job Radio, taped weekly in the breakfast nook of Waller’s Green Valley home. “We would all just crack each other up every time we got together, so we figured, why not do a podcast?” says Jackson, a stand-up comedian who had been in two local improvisational troupes, Barely Worth It and The Lost Episodes, before starting Quit with his compatriots in January.

The source of the show’s name should be obvious: These guys all hate their current occupations and hope their podcast is successful enough to allow them to, well, you know. They’ve spent quite a chunk of change on equipment and advertising, including a spot on Kevin Smith’s Smodcast, and already have 26 episodes on their website. (Today’s taping is No. 27.)

Success has been slow—they picked up one fan, “Tankus Maximus,” from the Kevin Smith advertising, and he calls them “pickle washers”—but it’s a small price to pay for getting together once a week to forget about their troubles and have some fun at, say, Roy Nelson’s expense.