Grumble Goat · Mat Labotka & Veronique Hurley

Lines

April 6, 2026·20 min·1 clip

Matt Labodka says waiting in rain for a free movie line feels worse than missing the movie.

1. Grumble Goat's Lines focuses on the small things that drive Matt Labodka insane, especially waiting in queues and crowded spaces. 2. Matt Labodka hosts, Verity Hurley is his cohost and better half, and Jack Utrata Clary Dad joins as the guest writer-playwright-actor whose projects drive the second half. 3. The episode asks whether lines are ever worth it, or whether timed entry, order-ahead apps, and short queues are the only sane way through city life. 4. Matt jokes that his impatience may be written into his chart because he is an Aries sun, Cancer moon, Taurus rising, which he says requires an app to decode. 5. He recalls moving to the city in 2014 and standing outside free movie events in rain, thunder, hail, or storm with no guarantee of getting in. 6. He says that waiting in line for Shakespeare in the Park can work when he can talk to people, but only when the weather and the setup are comfortable. 7. He points to the Bryant Park holiday market and says the crowding was bad enough that timed entry sounded better than open-ended congestion. 8. He jokes about wanting to buy Yankee Candle scents for his mother immediately, including cupcake and cinnamon streusel pancake versions. 9. Verity shifts the tone with a core-work update about bug poses and bridge lifts, which she describes as her personal bridge. 10. She also admits she has not had water that day, turning the water journey into another recurring joke about procrastination. 11. Jack says he is a writer, playwright, actor, and producer, and that writing became a safe haven during the pandemic when stage work was harder to do. 12. He describes Eleven Blocks to Go as a vertical series about Samantha and Drew, two toxic, codependent best friends who build a 12-step-style self-betterment program. 13. He says the first block is to accept or recognize the challenge, and that the title refers to the 11 blocks left after that first step. 14. He frames the series as both a friendship story and a takedown of self-help culture, using structure to show how the characters try to control themselves. 15. He also discusses She Would Have Thrown You a Coming Out Party, his first full-length play, which grew from his mother's claim that his grandmother would have thrown him the biggest coming-out party. 16. Jack says the play imagines his grandmother showing up in his 30s in New York and turns that idea into a multigenerational story of reconciliation, developed with his husband Nathaniel P. Claridad, who recently made his Broadway debut on Ragtime. 17. The conversation sounds loose, fast, and interrupt-driven, with Matt, Verity, and Jack trading examples instead of following a formal interview script. 18. It plays like a comic interview built from riffs, callbacks, and repeated complaints that lines show up in theaters, airports, stores, and even heaven. 19. People who like New York comedy and theater banter will love this episode. 20. Listeners wanting a formal interview or plot-heavy story should skip it.

As heard by us

A theatrical grudge against queues turns everyday waiting into a sharply observed comic ordeal.

Waiting in line becomes the whole case file in this brisk, comic review of impatience. Matt Labodka tracks the petty suspense of free movie screenings, bad weather, uncertain entry, Shakespeare in the Park, Equity lines, and a checkout queue dragged out by technical excuses,…

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Why you'd press play

Press play when the checkout line beside you keeps moving and yours has discovered a technical issue.

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