These two things go together a lot or used to go together.

Yeah, why?

Well, I mean, I’ve been told. Why, do you know why?

[Music]

What’s up internet, I’m Dan Casey and this is Secret Obsession, the show where we interview very cool people about the things they are low-key obsessed with or secretly nerd out about.

Now joining me today we have one of my favorite actors. He started everything from Firefly to Harley Quinn to Tucker and Dale vs. Evil. He’s also the star of Sci-Fi’s Resident Alien, with new episodes airing Wednesdays at 10 p.m. Please welcome Alan Tudyk.

Hello, how you doing?

I’m great, I’m even better now. I just moved recently and I was walking my dog around the neighborhood and I saw a Jeep that is covered with Resident Alien seat covers and all sorts of other like Resident Alien stuff.

This is not a bit. This is… I’ve seen this car twice now in my neighborhood, so clearly people are obsessed with the show as well.

So it’s nice to see that. A sort of a bad review of obsessions. You live near me and I drive a Jeep.

Alan, I know what your secret obsession is, but I am excited to share with the rest of the world. What is your secret obsession?

Yardsticks.

Now for the people who may have maybe blacked out for a second, you did just say yardsticks, correct?

Oh yes, yes, yardsticks. I’m very much… and it’s not a low-grade obsession. I have a lot of joy surrounding yardsticks. I’ve been collecting them for a while.

What’s the origin of this obsession? Where did this come from? What was the first yardstick you collected?

Well, so yardsticks… so we had yardsticks growing up. A yardstick being 36 inches. 36 inches, and it’s, you know, made of wood and there’s usually an advertisement on them.

We had yardsticks growing up in Texas, and it was many things. It was like the final say of things, like “Well then measure it, get the yardstick,” and that would be the thing that solved or ended an argument.

It was something that you hit your brother with. It was… it was just something that was always used again and again and again. And you knew where it was. We kept it behind the fridge in the utility room. “Go get the yardstick.” So that was my experience of a yard.

Growing up, I don’t think I was ever spanked with a yardstick.

That is also people’s history with yardsticks, that they… they were good old whippets.

It’s, you know… yeah, that was my dad. At Catholic school, when he was a kid, his knuckles felt the wrath when he spoke up too many times in class with the ruler. You get the… you get just a regular 12-inch trap ruler.

Anyway, they’re also made of wood. I’m a big fan of wood. I like wood. If I could just put wood everywhere, my wife and I… she’s like, “No, no more wood.”

I’m always… I bought… anyway, I will just stick to yardsticks. I’ll leave the wood alone. But there’s a lot of wood obsessions around my home.

Well, if you have enough yardsticks, you can eventually turn that into de facto wood paneling. I did this wall behind me… well behind this, yes… used to be covered in yardsticks. It’s a… it’s a big wall.

They were covered in yardsticks, but I ruined it by buying a chandelier. But with the yardsticks as well.

How many would you estimate are in your collection?

I’m just going to get a sense of how much… 50 people? Five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten… nothing but money. Money.

So that’s probably a thousand… like if that’s what 20 looks like. Yeah, easily a thousand yardsticks, like of the proper yards.

So this one’s… well, I mean, I’ve got some here if you’d like to…

Yeah, I would love nothing more than to see them.

Great. Okay, so I have… let me… oh, I didn’t pull that one. Oh, my first yardstick that I got… here it is.

Okay. Okay, so the first… this is… oh god, I’m ruining everything. Hold on. It has to be here somewhere.

The first stick I got looked very similar to this stick as far as patina and with a good thickness too. It’s hardwood. The advertisement was for liquid asbestos, and that was the one that really captured me.

How old is this thing?

Liquid asbestos. This was for roofing, and then I noticed the phone number only had four numbers, and I was like, “Wow.” So I put that up on the wall because… so I just hung it up on the wall and it’s a good thing to have. It’s a line.

And then I just really got into the measurement of it, just sort of like… it’s measured, there’s numbers on it. I like numbers. I like numbers and art.

Then I was thinking about my yardstick that I grew up with and what had this yardstick seen, and probably the people who owned it are dead because of… you know… the asbestos.

Of course, once you liquefy it, that’s gonna get right to the system. My least favorite form of asbestos.

Yeah, it is, because that’s why they have to advertise. They have to get the word out.

And then I just think… what an odd thing it is as an advertising tool, and kind of ingenious at the time. Expensive, you know, I guess back then wood was cheaper.

But then I guess these guys would come to town and be like, “Hey, you got a business? You need to get yourself some yardsticks,” and you give people a yardstick so that they have your name.

This one is for… well, Iron and Steel. This is the Woodward Company from Albany, New York. Phone number 40141.

Here’s a good one now. This is one of these… so this is a good, thicker stick. It’s a little bit wider. I love these, and this has a good dark stain on it. It really shows its age.

It’s… white furniture and undertaking.

Yes, these two things go together a lot or used to go together.

Yeah, why?

Well, I mean, I… I’ve been told. Why, do you know why?

I can’t… I mean, I can imagine. I didn’t think… why?

Uh, because sometimes you want a pull-out couch, and then sometimes you just wanna tuck it back in and then push that into the open grave.

It’s the best I can come up with: you put your relatives and fold them into the couch, and then… yeah, put them up and put them out.

I thought it was because people would die and then they just like, “What are you gonna do with all that furniture?” and then secondhand sell it.

But someone told me that coffin-making… making coffins is making furniture. The carpet’s just an extension of carpentry.

Yeah, so this is… phone number 170. Oh, there’s not that many ones. Very early days.

And I think undertaking used to not be… some… like, I think we take it for granted. You know, if I want to go to an undertaker, they’re just… throw a rock in any direction, I’m going to hit one of those creepy bastards.

But back in the day, I used to have… and I’ve since sold… this is another thing that I was kind of into for a little bit: early medical stuff.

I collected medical things. I had a trade embalmers kit, which came to me through another actor I’d worked with on a show one time.

Before there were embalmers in every town, you just carried this case around. They would call these guys, “Hey, somebody died,” and they come to these small towns that didn’t have all these undertakers.

It had all this stuff: jars, embalming fluid… stuff I definitely should not own.

It had like this four-fold thing with just silver, scalpels, clamps, tubing… anyway. So that makes sense to me. That’s a little sidetrack of other things, and I sold that because it freaked people out.

So I got rid of it. I don’t know why it freaked people out. I found it interesting.

What was the most interesting? Then we’ll get back to the yardsticks.

Just real quick: there was a trade embalmers magazine that was like the Trade Embalmers Monthly. All the embalmers, straight-faced pictures. They looked like you would think… “oh boy.”

But it was a piece of history. A little thing of history that existed at a time and then went away, just like the yardstick.

There’s another one that I like also that is… vote Republican, wink.

I find that one funny because I’m not Republican.

Because the measurements keep changing on the stick. It has different facts on this.

Okay, so this one is another stick. This one’s a thinner stick, but it is a Done Funeral Home… which number one, awesome name for your home. Things aren’t beginning. You’re Done, baby.

But it was also an invalid car service, which I love the idea of them being… you’re like in the back seat. One day you’re going to make it to the back, exactly.

You’re in row two, you don’t want to go to row three. I guess that’s a smart way to get the most bang for your buck with your hearse if you’re not using it every day.

I hope you’re not doubling up.

Yes.

Well, do you mind if we make a stop on the way? You’re not in a rush, are you? We’ll take you by the fabric store.

On our way to the grave.

Here’s a little one. This is just your little knuckle-wrapper. It’s… just… it’s an interesting layout.

Kind of your base. You got some red in there, which is always nice.

When I had it all up on a wall, it was nice to have reds coming through.

Here it’s a school. It’s made for school. And you can tell on the back. I loved them when people wrote on them, and it says “Board of Education.” B-O-R-E-D.

[Music]

Their true love, apart from really sticking it to the man.

So where do you… where do you find… where do you go when you’re saying, “Today is the yardstick hunting day”? Where do we go to find these?

Typically, it’s gotten harder and harder as the world keeps turning.

Used to… flea markets. But flea markets… it’s tough to find a good flea market that hasn’t become… “Here’s packages of socks. What the hell is that?”

It’s not a flea market. I want a junk market. I want a junkin’ junk store.

This is a typical style, and I don’t know what these holes are for. They’re numbered as if that’s important.

Look at this one. Spank with this side.

Wow, this is… creepy, man.

Is there a… is there like a white whale that you’re like, “This is… there’s a yardstick that you’re after but you’ve never been able to find,” or is that not real?

It’s more like… you’re excited to see what you do find when you come across them because each one is different.

Yeah, I’m excited to see them when I come across my guests. I don’t know. There was one I wanted, and I’d like another one like this because it’s… good.

Hey, I’m not… I’m not knocking it. It’s very good.

“You have to be 42 inches to ride this ride.” Pretty great.

That’s fantastic. It’s a good measure.

So, there was a lot of disappointment around this measure.

There’s a lot of kids coming up going, “I don’t know, I got this one off of eBay.”

So I did start having to get some off of eBay because flea markets went away.

Then you’ve got these… sometimes you can find a good antique mall.

The one that I like, that I actually found a couple at, I’d find good stuff at this antique mall.

It was in Santa Monica, and it just had great booths with a lot of turnover, good stuff coming in and out.

I went by one day, and the whole… not just the mall, was gone. The building… oh no. I had been out of town on a job, and I came back and I was like, “The hell, man? It’s just dirt.”

I just want to say thank you so much for joining us, sharing your secret obsession with us.

I now know more about yardsticks than I ever intended to, but it’s very cool to think about and sort of contextualize them in history.

I’m excited. Just talking about this, I’m excited. I’ve gotten excited again.

This is how I feel about these things. I feel… it’s so bizarre to have such a thrill around these things. They’re just fixed.

But if you came over to my house prior to them being removed from the wall—which I agreed with, and I wasn’t talked into it—it’s because of the chandelier.

It has been wonderful talking to you.

Thank you for ignoring my thrill.

I don’t know.

Uh, yeah, my pleasure, man. Anytime anybody else wants to call in and talk about yardsticks.

Yes. Maybe I need to start a group for everyone else out there. You know what Alan’s obsessed with.

Make sure you check him out: new episodes of Resident Alien on Wednesdays on Sci-Fi at 10 p.m.

And tell us, what’s your secret obsession? Share it with us in the comments below.

Is it yardsticks? Is it remembering the name of that company that starts with an M? Let us know in the comments below.

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