Ep. 14: "Big City Apology"
Hello.
Hi, John.
How are you?
I'm Merlin.
John Roderick, how's your day?
Merlin, man.
Oh, man, my nose.
I've got like a perfect storm of nose right now.
I'm trying to sniff.
I hear myself sniffing because of the allergies, and now on top of it, I sound kind of like a drive-time DJ, don't I?
Oh, listen to you.
Yeah, you're all Sophia Lorenz.
That's about eight minutes before the hour of seven here on Q107.
Oh, boy.
You know, I turned up my headphones, and now I'm racing over here to turn them down.
I understand completely.
It's going to go do some deep cuts.
Yeah, yeah.
Uriah Heap.
Uriah Heap.
I like this.
See, you're right.
He's one of those bands like, who's the Dutch guys?
Gold Earring.
Golden Earring.
Is that like the difference between antique and antiqued?
No, there's a much greater difference between antique and antiqued.
What about golden?
Isn't that like saying chocolaty?
It's a weasel word, they call it in Dutch.
Is that right?
A weaselverd?
Don't make fun.
You see, you're already ping pong.
We're like 30 seconds in.
Is it just me or do I sound really good?
You do sound good.
Damn.
You know what?
Here's the thing, John.
I'm going to stick some phlegm up in my nose.
I'll write that down.
I definitely want to come back to the phlegm because I got a new pen, got some new cards.
I noticed you were helping someone on Twitter by explaining that phlegmatic doesn't involve phlegm.
Well, yeah.
See, I want people to understand that, well, you know, the thing I really want people to understand.
Have you been sleeping?
Be honest.
I have.
I slept a little.
I want people to understand that Google is their friend and that if they don't understand something that they can look things up.
Oh, John.
John, that should just be my bio.
Yeah.
Like, I have to tell this to my family and everybody, like, Descartes, what?
What's the Scardis?
I'm like, I have never said anything.
I've never said anything, including copying right-to-left Hebrew words.
I've never said anything on Twitter that you couldn't Google.
Yeah, right.
Well, there's nothing you can't Google.
But, I mean, when I was born...
My parents bought a set of encyclopedias for the year that I was born, right?
1968.
It was a tumultuous year for encyclopedias.
It was a big year.
I was born during the Johnson administration, the waning days, when America was great.
You were born during the waning Johnsons?
I was born at the very tail end of the Johnson.
We're going to talk about his pants and his balls.
I'll write that down.
When I was a kid, that was one of the things that you did on a Saturday afternoon, or at least one of the things I did.
No one did it with me, but you would sit Indian-style in front of the encyclopedias and pull them out,
go on a, you know, a little chase through the books, right?
You start reading something and then you find something you don't understand and you pull another book out and figure out what the thing was that you didn't understand in the last entry.
And pretty soon you've got 10 encyclopedias all open to different pages.
Like, who didn't do that?
That was a thing in the 60s and 70s that, I mean, that was what encyclopedias were for.
Before Edgar Rice Burroughs and Transformers, I think this is – you talked to your pal Hodgman about this.
I'm telling you, every nerd started out doing exactly that.
Thin bones and asthma.
You're just going to sit there and you're going to go, oh.
Other kids were throwing baseballs or something, and there was nothing I liked better than a rainy –
sitting in front of the books.
What were you wearing?
Did you have a special outfit at that time?
I did.
I had a pair of orange denim jeans and a shirt, not coincidentally, or probably...
coincidentally, a baseball shirt that had, do you remember when they first developed the technology where they could photo, they could print a photo on a t-shirt?
That was huge.
I'm not talking about an iron-on, I'm talking about that printed photo in the fabric somehow, and it was a photo of a baseball game.
But the sleeves were also orange, so it was a matching kind of... It was a photo of a baseball game?
Oh, yeah, so some guy hitting a baseball out of the park.
It wasn't stylized?
No, it was a photograph.
That's like the sartorial version of Gutenberg.
That's huge.
What a leap forward.
Before that, everything, we were just doing fucking hieroglyphics on our clothes.
That changed everything.
People were sewing letters on... People were sewing, like...
Little fabric letters that said King Tux Hurricanes or whatever.
I was huge.
I was huge.
I don't want to derail this, but I was huge on the Iron On shirt with my name on the shoulders.
I was really... Oh, sure, because you had a killer name.
I can't imagine being an eight-year-old kid with the name Merlin.
Merle.
I was Merle back then.
Oh, no.
Oh, Merle?
Well, yeah.
This is blowing my mind.
The front would be that famous shot.
You know, that's awesome.
Like when Star Wars first came out.
To me, this is still Star Wars in my head.
To me, in my head, Star Wars is like the Millennium Falcon in the movie.
And it's those a few handful of pictures that you saw everywhere.
Right.
And remember, it had Star Wars at like a 45 degree angle.
And then there was a black and white border around it.
In the middle, there was a picture of Chewie and Han Solo with blasters.
You know what I mean?
Do you remember these?
It's the one where Han's got the blaster and he's holding Princess Leia behind him as he shoots down the... That sounds kind of hot.
That's what I'm saying.
That was probably the hottest thing I could think of.
I had that with my name Merle on the back and I believe my age being 10.
I always had my age.
Merle, 10.
Let the Wookiee win.
I'm so sorry to derail you.
So you were reading the encyclopedia in orange pants.
Do you think that Merle Haggard's real name is Merlin?
I don't.
I think that's... Is he from Bakersfield?
Is that correct?
No, Merle Haggard is from... You sure?
I don't know if any place we could Google that, but my sense is... Now, Buck Owens, is he actually from Bakersfield?
Buck Owens is pretty well associated with Bakersfield.
So is Merle Haggard.
He's like number two after... I'm sorry, not number two.
That's not right.
With Don... Help me out, Don.
Oh, my God.
John, I think my snot's moving down.
Who's the guitar player on the High Harmony and the Buckaroos?
The dude who wrote the songs died in the motorcycle crash, ruined Buck's life.
Don?
Oh, God, I'm breaking my rule.
Oh, what's his name?
But I think Merle Haggard is from Oklahoma.
Are you not familiar with the Buckaroos?
Are you not familiar with Buck Owens?
Are you just kind of like... Are you doing some kind of wait, wait, don't tell me thing where you're just acting like you know what I'm talking about?
Yes, I am.
I am familiar with Buck Owens and the Buckaroos, but the Buckaroos... I've got a tiger by the tail.
The buckaroos are just some guys in some suits behind Buck Owens.
I don't know.
I don't know.
Individual buckaroos.
That's like saying Peter Criss is just a drunk with some pearl drums.
Actually, it's a lot like that.
He's barely just a drunk with some pearl drums.
I don't know why they would put him on a stool.
They would put him on a stool with no arms or back.
It just seems like a terrible idea.
Peter Criss was just in that band for the interview sessions because he was so articulate.
You ever seen the Tom Snyder interview?
You know, here's my thing with Kiss.
Okay.
Oh, boy.
Kiss, I devoted some small amount of my attention to Kiss in 1977.
Probably 77.
76, 77.
They'd already jumped the shark by then.
This is post-Destroyer.
This is when they were already on the way down.
I was eight.
There was some part of me that had one eye on Kiss because it seemed like maybe that's the direction that being an adult was going to take.
I'm sorry, Don.
I don't want to take you off your path.
I just want to be clear.
At the age of nine, you had a meta reaction to Kiss that involved keeping an eye on them for their cultural relevance?
I had to keep an eye on them, but I had another eye on Queen.
You didn't know which way it was going to go, and I think it went...
I think I was right to follow queen.
Absolutely.
But from that time, from 77, I have not given one flying fuck about kiss.
And when kiss came back in 1990, whatever, and all my peers were like, they pulled out all their kiss army patches and they started waxing, you know, philosophical about how important kiss was.
I absolutely would not cross the street to save Kiss from a fire.
And that was probably a fire that was started by Gene Simmons spinning.
It was a fire that Kiss intentionally started to get my attention.
And if I had a cup of water, I would not walk over and throw it on the fire that was burning Kiss.
I don't want to do anything to stop you from helping people about Kiss.
I just would like to have literally two bullets on this that I think you should at least consider.
I'm not trying to change your mind.
I'm not trying to change anything.
Number one, Twin Guitar Attack.
Number two, In It For The Money.
Twin Guitar Attack?
Tell me seriously right now that... Go ahead.
No, go ahead.
Finish your thought.
I'm keeping one eye on this while I think about literally everything else.
Go ahead.
No.
Are you about to give me some kind of a problem with Ace Freely?
Is that what it's going to be?
If you took every cool riff...
In Kiss.
And every cool solo in Kiss.
I liked it a lot better when it was called Led Zeppelin II.
And compacted them down.
They would fit inside of my wallet.
All right.
And you have a big wallet with a chain.
Do you still have that?
No, no, no.
I got rid of that.
It was causing me back problems.
it was i swear to god do that with my backpack i was driving i was you know at the time i was driving what 300 000 miles a year or whatever in that van and i was sitting on this wallet that was the size of a i think you just you just did a hipster humblebrag i had to get rid of my i had to get rid of my bullshit trucker wallet because it was so fucking full of money that i couldn't drive my rockstar van well
It wasn't that it was full of money.
It's that I compulsively keep every receipt.
And also... I need that money because I keep wearing out zippers from letting ladies fillet me.
This is not a first world problem.
Here's what happened when I had a trucker wallet.
I started using it as a purse.
And one of the things that I thought I needed at a certain point...
was I needed the equivalent of $20 in every one of the world's currencies.
folded into so I would take the bill when I would go to a country I would get the equivalent of twenty dollars in their local currency which you know in Turkey was like twenty million lira and I would take the bill and I would you know I would crease it and fold it down until it was a little thing about the size of two chicklets
And then I would tuck the little bill inside one of the compartments in my chain wallet.
And after a couple of years, I probably had $600 worth of world currency.
Probably, I don't know, I had a whole lot of different...
And so clearly you didn't need or choose to kind of rake through there to take out the stuff you weren't using.
You obviously didn't spend it.
It was sort of like a file drawer.
Here's the thing.
Remember that scene in the first Bourne movie where he goes into the bank in Switzerland?
And he's got his stuff in a box.
He's got the stuff in the box.
I knew that that's where this was going.
Twelve passports and stacks of money and all these different currencies.
Well, I...
I can't think of a thing that I want more than that, including happiness in life, including health.
I don't want health.
To have it in general or have it when you need it?
What you really want is to need it and then have it.
That's exactly right.
I want to need it and then have it.
It's like having really good insurance where you go, oh, yes, fucking cancer.
I'm finally going to see some ROI on this bullshit.
Yeah, but my version of really good insurance is a safe deposit box in Geneva with a Glock and seven passports in it.
That is... I can't think of a thing that that wouldn't be the cure to.
Would you remember who you are when you got it?
It doesn't matter, right?
You got a Glock.
I mean, who's going to fuck with you?
That could be the problem that I... That could be the thing that I'm... The reason that I need it.
But in any case, my version of that...
And this is the thing about where my mind is.
My version of that was that I had a $20 bill from Slovakia and a $20 bill from Cuba in my wallet in case I woke up on a plane that had landed in Havana and I was like, what am I going to do?
I don't have any.
Oh, I do, in fact.
I have 20 bucks.
And the nice part is if you were to land in Istanbul and you pull out your like housing red brick sized wallet full of international currencies, that would not seem suspicious at all.
They'll go, I see you have what appears to be approximately $20 in baht in here.
That's nothing we're worried about.
Please pass on through.
We're not even going to bother to check your ass for heroin.
Come on in.
If I was the type of person who would sit backstage and try to impress a girl by like, oh, check out all the different kinds of money I have in my wallet, that would be one thing.
But I would never tell...
At the time, I didn't have any tuppence, but I did have... You know, the Bank of Scotland has their own pounds.
They make their own pounds.
It's tied to the British pound.
They don't have a different value, but they just have different... It's just that it doesn't taste good and you're not allowed to spend it?
It says Bank of Scotland on it.
And I had an English 20-pound bill.
And a Bank of Scotland 20-pound bill.
Because I didn't want to be caught with my pants down in Scotland.
No.
You're kilt up.
You don't want to get caught with your kilt up.
Your wife's lipstick.
We missed a lot right before Kiss.
I don't want to derail you.
Please go ahead.
At the time, I never told anybody that I had this money in my wallet.
It was like my secret.
It has to be a secret.
I used to have a serious wallet problem.
I had layers.
I had a stack of wallet problems.
Well, first of all, almost every wallet I've owned up until 1999 was silly.
I owned – I mean the one that I had for a really, really long time through high school and I didn't bring it to college, but I had an unlicensed Adam and the Ants wallet, like a nylon sports wallet.
It was Velcro?
Sure.
Sure, it was Velcro.
You go to the flea market, you're going to buy a Velcro fucking wallet.
It's not licensed.
Yeah.
Exactly.
How much is it?
Yeah.
One time it went through the wash, and my mom at the time was still periodically doing my wash.
And that's when you're going to see the difference between the construction of an unlicensed Atomant wallet.
That's right.
And one from the...
i should i should have held up for the prince charming if you know what i mean i uh i said oh my wallet she's on top of the dryer and i go out there and on a on a beautiful white towel is every single thing in my wallet like two dollars the um i might have might have been a learner's permit you know but every like little card every little subway thing uh except for the really old condom she that was she hadn't she apparently hadn't noticed that
Ruh-roh.
Yeah.
Boy, you know, can you imagine being a lady and just knowing that there's a bunch of guys carrying around condoms that have been in a hot, moist wallet for probably years?
I don't know what ladies like.
These dickless wonders like me carrying around a condom.
Oh, and, you know, for a while, as you know, I had a shuriken that I carried with me, too.
Yeah.
So that's really incompatible.
You should keep your shuriken away.
You carried a shuriken in your wallet?
It was very small and not very sharp.
Wow.
Take that to the analogy and cash it.
Wow.
Wait a minute.
Hold on.
Let me get my wallet.
I have a defense.
Can I have a minute?
Can I have a minute?
Wait a minute.
Wait a minute.
Is that the logo for Adam and the Ants?
Shut up.
Wait a minute.
Merle Haggard was from Bakersfield.
Well, it was all part of the Bakersfield.
Oh, yeah.
We've got to come back to the Buckaroos.
What was his name?
Don something.
I just looked it up here.
Merle Haggard from Bakersfield.
I got slack about the show notes this week.
I'll try to be good this week.
I'll put in places where you can find these things out.
Now, I also want to point out that when I wrote the word kiss, I used the special SS letters.
That's basically the only good thing about kiss.
Oh, my God.
is the logo twin guitar attack nothing now the thing is when i got older and i and i understood a little more guitar about guitar i realized how much and i don't want to get in trouble with the kiss fans but how much he really was borrowing from jimmy page don't you think is that fair to say am i being unkind to say that
Kiss our garbage.
Okay.
The end.
That wasn't really the question, but moving on to the next card.
Although I did just yesterday watch a video produced, I'm absolutely certain, by someone in Germany.
Phantom of the Park?
Phantom of the Park.
Absolutely certain it was made by someone in Germany, which was a video comparing and contrasting the guitar-playing talents of Jimmy Page and Rainbow's Richie Blackmore.
You think that's not even close?
Well, the video was conclusive that Richie Blackmore...
is, I mean, by far, the better guitar player.
That's like meeting an autistic kid on the bus who goes, how do you host Better Beatles?
Are you going to be 40?
And you're like, um, I'm going to guess you'd be 40.
He goes, yeah, here's a tape.
You know?
Okay, thank you.
And that's exactly right.
Nobody's going to make that comparison unless they already know.
If you go side to side, Richie Blackmore is by far the better guitar player.
But who cares?
He's a far more tasteful guitar player.
I like his vibrato better.
Jimmy Page's taste can sometimes be excrable.
But, but, and also if you watch live performances of Jimmy, totally sloppy, I'm not beyond sloppy.
I mean, he's up there like, cause he's so gacked out on smack.
Is that true?
Is that right?
Did he do the heroin?
Oh yeah.
He was, he now what's chasing the dragon.
Is that where you smell something?
What do you do when you're chasing the dragon?
Well, you're looking for the dragon's treasure.
Okay, and so you've got to roll for charisma, probably.
Yeah, but no, chasing the dragon is that you are always trying to recapture the initial high that you never are able to capture again.
I think you're thinking of Willy Wonka.
No, I think you're supposed to do something with aluminum foil and sniffing something.
Willy Wonka is not a drug...
That's a not drug terminology.
It's a terrifying, terrifying film.
Okay, I'm putting a few cards aside.
No drug person would ever say, oh, man, I'm really chasing the Willy Wonka.
Yeah.
Chasing the Dragon is like... I learned that on Gilmore Girls, the cable TV show.
Never saw it.
Gold versus Golden.
I think we're obviously not going to have time today for phlegm.
Golden Slumbers?
Hmm?
Let me finish.
So the Beatles and Paul, I'm saving this one.
We don't have time for that.
Scott Miller, I still want to talk about.
Kiss, I'm throwing away.
You're done with that.
Open Sky, I want to come back to you.
I still have bad words on two cards.
President Johnson's balls, a clock and seven passports.
I would like to follow up.
President Johnson's balls were probably each one the size and hardness and weight of a medicine ball.
I could see him being very inspirational to you.
Johnson yeah he got a really bad rap yeah cuz of Vietnam yeah and when and he was a I mean he was a dick but he was like he was like the Steve Jobs of America back then you know he was you hear the stories are like documentaries on him he's such a fascinating guy cuz he was such a whip like he was so great at like scaring the shit out of everybody to get them all in line for votes and stuff like that right right but unlike Steve Jobs not a completely autistic like retard
Oh boy, make it whiter.
My apologies to the retard.
No, that's really classy.
That's very classy.
I also, because of apparently responses from people, we should talk about my rule.
What's your rule?
The rule for marriage and the rule for, be careful where you meet them.
We didn't finish that.
Don Rich.
Don Rich, by the way.
Don Rich.
We're looking for Don Rich of the Buckaroos.
Gold versus golden.
I say this is like antique versus antiqued because a lot of people don't understand that distinction.
I know you do.
But it is very much like chocolate versus chocolatey.
Gold versus golden, chocolate versus chocolate, antique versus antiqued.
Something is gold or is made to be golden?
What are you trying to say?
I don't know if this is Locke or Barkley or who this was that said this, but no.
If something's gold, it's made out of gold.
If something is golden...
There doesn't have to be a – Gold colored.
There doesn't have to be a lick of gold in it, right?
Antique is something that's older than whatever 75 years.
I think it's like copyright.
They keep changing it every few years, but it used to be 75 years.
Antique is where you make something look old, right?
Right.
Yeah.
I'm with you so far.
What you're saying is – Like Cocoa Puffs or Frankenberries.
There's not actually any Frankensteins in that.
They legally cannot say that because Boris Karloff, he passed.
I think he passed a while back.
I think that you could make that golden comparison with a great many words.
Absolutely.
You're saying it's not an actual milk way.
I'm saying that milky, like your eyes can be milky, but there's no milk in them.
That's a good point.
Milky way.
I like a Snickers.
There's no milk in the Milky Way.
Here's my thing.
I think this is an English beat thing.
I think this is a Wham thing.
Wham UK thing.
I'll bet you in Dutch they were called... Did she say Wham UK to differentiate them from the more famous American Wham?
Same deal as English beat.
They were called the Beat in England.
But there's already a band called...
the beat in America so they had to be the English beat there's already a band called Wham in America so they had to be Wham UK my thought on this John Roderick I would like your opinion I think probably in Dutch they were known as gold earring or perhaps just gold jewelry and then they came here and found out that all of those iterations it's like buying a domain name they came over and they said you know what fuck you Dutch there's already a gold earring
No, because Goldeneering, first of all, well, first of all, everyone in the Netherlands speaks English better than you or I do.
So when they name their band something, they don't have like a Dutch name for it.
And then they name, if your band is called Goldeneering, you named it that initially.
It's not like the Germans.
It's not like the German.
It's not like Gilden Euringer.
But even the Germans, like the scorpions weren't named.
The scorpions didn't have a K in their name in Germany and a C in America.
It was always spelled scorpions with a C. And I'm just guessing that they spell scorpion with a K in Germany.
I think there's no definite article either.
I need to check that, but I'm pretty sure it's just scorpions.
Scorpions, right.
But no, I think Golden Earring always, from the very beginning, well, because their songs are in English, they intended to be big, big stars.
They didn't start out as, oh, let's just play Dutch songs for our Dutch friends.
They were like, we're going to the show.
There's going to be a limit on the reach that you're going to get with just singing in Holland.
Well, let's see.
You'd be big in Suriname.
Is that a Dutch place?
Formerly.
The former Dutch colony of Suriname.
Was there a Dutch Guiana?
Yes.
A Dutch, a French, and a British, right?
The three Guianas?
Dutch Guiana is Suriname.
Dutch Guiana became Suriname.
No, it was Suriname.
And then...
It became... It is called Dutch Guiana because people find that easier to say than Suriname.
Hmm.
Okay.
You know what bugs me?
I really hate it on NPR when they say Myanmar, formerly known as Burma.
Do they still do that?
Fucking A, yes.
At what point?
I'm deliberately avoiding NPR for all kinds of reasons these days, but still.
Do they say Sri Lanka, formerly known as Ceylon?
I got so many problems with public radio.
I don't even know where to begin.
At what point can you stop doing that?
I don't listen to public radio because of this and so many other things.
People murmuring in my ear.
I don't want people murmuring.
You know what I mean?
Podcasts, I'm starting to understand because the vast majority of podcasts, people are shouting or at least they're emphatic.
Internet's big.
But the public radio people just murmur the murmur.
I mean, like, oh, God, John, I have a car and I'm going to need five.
You know, for me, it's also there's so much about it that is just it's straight to the fleece problem.
It's straight to the fleece problem, you know, and this isn't like an old hourglass bit.
But, you know, one of my biggest problems with NPR is the way that they stress every second, third or fourth word.
Yeah.
I'm Ophabia Quistarkton.
Awesome name, Ophabia Quistarkton.
When I was 17, I had a friend whose name was Bob.
And Bob had... Bob's dad was a doctor.
And Bob's dad was such an asshole.
He was a giant guy.
Like, bigger than me.
And bald and just one of those imperious, like just born prick heads, you know.
And at a certain point, I think early on in high school, ninth grade, maybe Bob got caught smoking marijuana with some of his like hockey player friends.
And his dad came down on him like a ton of bricks and actually like, I think broke Bob's little spirit somehow.
Yeah.
But I got to know Bob later, and I liked him a lot.
He was a good musician and a nice kid, and he lived in one of those houses in the woods that was made out of like... It was all made of wood that was stained, shellacked, right?
So you walked inside of his house, and it was like you were in a six-story tall bookcase, you know?
Everything was gold.
Anyway, his mom... His dad was this massive prick, but his mom...
was what you would now describe if you were a tasteless juggalo.
You would describe her as a MILF.
But at the time, there was no designation for MILFs.
And she was this woman that probably was, what, like 35 maybe?
36 years old?
She seemed definitely like a grown-up lady.
But she had this beautiful blonde hair, and she was just a charming person.
And she really liked me.
And I would go over to their house and she would be sitting in the kitchen just listening to NPR and sorting through the bags of loose Lapsang Souchong that she had from different places and...
And, you know, she'd be polishing her... Browsing through her scrapbooks and looking at her trophies from track and field.
Yeah, and just kind of, you know, like polishing her copper colander.
Did she really polish a lot of stuff?
She polished stuff and then she had some... That would fuck me up five ways from Sunday.
Cookware in all different colors.
Like, she was just this picture... Did she make salads?
Yeah.
Oh, my God, she made salads in a big wooden bowl with salad tongs.
In a big, big wooden house.
And I would sit in one of their Ames chairs while Bob was in his room getting his Nikes on or whatever.
And I would sit and kind of talk to Bob's mom.
And she showed so much interest in me as a teenage boy.
And I didn't know what to do with my feelings at the time.
And I think back now, and I wish that I had...
I wish that I had gone over there during the day and asked her for help on my homework or something.
It's too late now.
She's probably 79 now.
I haven't seen her in years.
But anyway.
Do you look her up on the Facebook?
Whenever I think of... No.
Whenever I think of NPR, I always picture Bob's mom in this house tucked back in the forest...
just surrounded by teas from around the world, listening to the soothing sounds of NPR, and I try and picture her life with this asshole doctor.
I'm just like, oh, NPR.
It's not enough.
That's got to be bittersweet for you, John.
There are so many different things that I wish I had done differently, and one of them is that I wish I had taken Bob's mom away from all of that.
This is all things considered.
Boy, that sucks, John.
You know, and I'm sorry, I don't want to drift away, but man.
Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep.
Do you hit that when you're like pretty happy with the point?
If only I could hear you lighting your candles now.
I hear your cape sweeping around the room.
Where's my lap saying Souchong?
Is that real or is that ping-pong talk?
I have no idea.
That sounds like a doggy.
Yeah, it's the name of the little dogs that guard the temples in Tibet.
Is that a Shih Tzu?
It's a Lapsang Sushong.
The Shih Tzus are the... I thought there were two lions.
Two lions outside the gate.
It was it's Doubt and Clarence.
You know more than I do.
Clarence is the other one?
I can't remember.
Which one is the key master?
Oh, one's the gatekeeper.
I think you're thinking of Sigourney Weaver.
Can I just say... Sigourney Weavers?
I'm so happy to be at a point in my life when I find there's a new sex thing that I had never thought of.
Whoa!
Can I just say fucking Mrs. Robinson in a giant bookcase?
You know what?
That's practically German in its awesomeness.
I would never have thought of that before.
Yeah, and I think as a teenager, I didn't have...
I wasn't as connected to the great rhythm of life, to the resonating D chord that permeates the universe that would enable me to really be...
Dustin Hoffman in that scenario.
At the time, I only thought of myself as a kid.
And so even though I was probably already six feet tall by that point, I still thought of myself as a kid.
And so in a sense, just in a position of waiting.
I was just waiting because I was a kid.
And Mrs. Robinson...
AKA Bob's mom was also waiting.
And here we were in this D chord resonating wood house, both waiting and,
And, I mean, Bob's dad wasn't waiting.
Bob's dad was seizing the moment, being a dick with every fiber of his being.
You have to admire that on some level.
Well, you do.
I mean, I think that— Was he a GP or a surgeon?
Like, what was his deal?
He was a surgeon.
I mean, he had the whole thing.
If he had been—he was one step away from owning an Alfa Romeo—
You know what I mean?
Like it was Alaska, so you couldn't really own an Alfa Romeo unless you were... All the more reason.
Unless you were just such an asshole that you owned a car that you could only drive two months of the year.
But he was very close to that level of like, I'm a surgeon and everyone get out of my way.
Do you think she got pregnant?
Like, why was she with this guy?
Again, I don't know what women like.
You're right.
Maybe they like Kiss.
Maybe the idea of a guy carrying around a condom in his Adam and the Ants wallet is a turn-on for some girls.
I have no idea.
This is the thing, John.
I don't want to press a bruise.
I don't want to press anything.
But here's my thinking on this.
If you walked around and you were a plumber or a cable guy or a pizza delivery person, and you could very well...
On a very basic level, walk around going, I'm only a pizza guy.
I'm only the cable guy.
And that's true.
That's certainly true.
But on even the most basic level, if your cable is out or your plumbing is broken or you're really fucking hungry, you're going to be glad to see the pizza guy.
But on a much deeper level, if you really want somebody to give you the mean bone, according to every porno movie I've ever seen, it's going to be just fine that you're the pizza guy.
Right.
So I'm not I don't make this weird or bookcasey.
But well, but according to porno movies, the guy that you want, if you're a girl, is not just the pizza guy.
It's the pizza guy who's got like kind of translucent, sweaty skin.
He seems pretty confident.
And is real confident.
He's a guy who's got kind of his jaw is a little bit too big.
To me, that would be like picking up a cigarette I found in a men's room.
If somebody comes in and delivers my fucking pizza and then wants to get all up in my grill, I would be thinking really hard about that.
You know what I'm saying?
This gets back to my rule about where you meet people.
Do you imagine that you're the first one?
I think you can tell a lot about how your relationship with somebody is going to end by how they end with everybody else.
But here's the thing.
People are animals.
They really are.
And those of us who have let our higher functions get in the way of being animals all the time.
This is going to be about the Cold War.
We have not done ourselves a service.
We think about everything too much.
And all the people who are able to live more unreflectedly, who are just like, oh, I am here now, and there's someone standing in front of me who smells like sex, and my brain is shutting off, and I'm going to have sex with them now.
And maybe I'll regret it later, but also my capacity to regret is something that I don't cultivate.
So I'm going to regret it for a half an hour, and then I'm going to pretend it never happened and listen to NPR and have some tea.
You think bonobos regret?
I don't think.
Well, maybe bonobos are full of regret.
Bonobos, they have a lot of intercourse, mostly for self-soothing, I think.
They do, but look at their little faces.
They look nervous.
They look really nervous.
They do.
They're full of anxiety.
Yeah.
I had a friend who had one of those extremely tiny – you know, like as chihuahuas get smaller, they become increasingly more annoying.
It's like an inverse relationship.
The annoyance goes up as the size goes down.
I didn't realize that big chihuahuas are less annoying.
Is that true?
Well, a lot of people who say that they have a medium-sized dog that could be a Scotty, it's actually – it could be a chihuahua in a wig, which is also one of my favorite Morrissey songs.
Are you –
Are you annoyed by shivering dogs, by shivering chihuahuas?
I feel sympathy.
I was driving through Manhattan one time, and I looked out the window.
I'm on Lexington and 70th or something.
And here's a guy in a perfectly tailored suit, like a suit where the legs are pegged,
So that you can't even imagine how he got his feet through the pants.
No pee stains.
No pee stains.
He doesn't have any... There's no tomato sauce on his thigh.
Look at me.
Look at me having a pee stain.
He's walking down the street.
He's six feet tall anyways, 140 pounds, soaking wet.
And he's walking this chihuahua...
And the Chihuahua is prancing like an Austrian horse, right?
Like a Lipizzaner?
Like a Lipizzaner horse.
He's just like, his little toes are barely touching the ground.
He is marching down the street, and the dog is three inches high, right?
I mean, I was on my way to have a sandwich bigger than this dog, right?
And this dog is walking down the street and people are literally, they're getting out of this dog's way.
Like the crowd on the sidewalk is parting for this little dog marching with more confidence than I've ever seen in any animal.
Like he was absolutely leading this suited man down the street.
He was not being walked.
He was doing the work.
You know, I got to tell you, I admire that.
I admired that little dog.
I wish I had half his confidence.
But you're a big guy.
But that's your problem.
Oh, gosh, I have so much I want to say.
Well, first of all, I can't tell you how many situations where I've known people with two pets and the little pet ran the house and the big pet was just a giant pussy.
My best friend, John, when I was a kid, he had a cat named Blackie and a really big dog named Blackie.
And Blackie would chase Blackie around the house.
Sure.
Careful now.
Okay, here's the thing.
No, I have sympathy for the shivering, anxious dog, but I do not like the shivering and anxious dog.
And I was telling my daughter how you can tell when a dog's pooping because it looks really guilty.
Like it looks like, I always say, honey, it looks like, and you notice when it looks like it's sitting down a little bit.
Does your daughter have a hard time telling when dogs are pooping?
She's four.
We don't really have the vocabulary for this.
But you ever know what a dog looks like when it takes a shit?
Like it just looks like – you know what I think, John?
Back to the animal thing.
I look away.
No, no, no.
Absolutely.
But don't you think – and just say yes or no at first.
But you know what?
Say whatever you think.
I think you're about to say – Can I just say – Just say yes or no.
I'm going to predict.
You're going to say here's the thing about deer at watering holes.
I'm starting to worry that here's the thing is my catchphrase.
It's been mine.
It's been mine.
I don't want that to be my catchphrase.
Here's the thing.
Here's the thing about – so I think you're about to say here's the thing about deer at watering holes.
I think a dog taking a shit, looking guilty –
is a lot like a deer at a watering hole.
They're very vulnerable.
When a dog takes a shit, it's very vulnerable because that's why it looks so scared and it's looking around.
It's thinking, somebody's going to come and kick my ass while there's poop coming out of it.
That's my thought.
The dog thinks he's more vulnerable than he is because the dog doesn't... If the dog is halfway through his shit and somebody comes and kicks him in the ass, the dog's going to... The dog...
can run with shit half out of his ass, right?
Because the dog isn't as concerned as we are.
The guy in the suit, he's going to want to stop and clean up a little bit.
The guy in the suit is going to want to clean up, and that's the problem with human beings.
Somebody would actually stand there and get killed
rather than run down the street with half a shit hanging out of their ass.
Because their capacity for embarrassment is greater than their survival instinct.
You're saying we've evolved past a point of usefulness on a lot of disability.
We've evolved past the point where we can reasonably be expected to survive because our shame...
is standing in the way of us needing to do what we need to do.
Like, I should have just, I should have been all over Bob's mom, but my complex, like, matrix of shame and anxiety kept me sitting in that Ames chair
saying yes i'd like another cup of tea with soy milk in it which i didn't even want i just wanted her to come over and and hand it to me you know whereas if i was a little bit less afraid if i wasn't afraid to run down the street with with half a shit hanging out of my ass i would have been i would have i would have been all over her bob would have come out in his nikes and said i'm ready to go oh no
This is Morning Edition from NPR, National Public Radio.
So anyway, this friend of mine, she had a shivering chihuahua.
That's not what I thought you were going to say.
You've known extremely compulsive masturbators.
Everybody likes to masturbate.
But there are people where you're like, dude, I can just tell you're masturbating constantly.
I think one of your former bandmates you've mentioned.
Yeah, that's true.
He admitted to it, but I think most compulsive masturbators also have a protective layer of dander on the front of their sweatshirt.
You know, you see them.
It's the dander, really, that they're using to insulate themselves.
He's also kind of a little guy.
Here's the thing.
He didn't have as much dander.
Did he shiver?
He didn't shiver, though.
I think he did shiver.
My friend had a shivering chihuahua that I never liked.
It was real barky and real nervous.
And anytime it felt like the least bit anxious, which is always, it would go in the other room and fuck the shit out of a little stuffed Winnie the Pooh.
Mm-hmm.
And if you've never seen an anxious chihuahua fucking the shit out of, and you understand, this is not the first time.
This dog has fucking ruined this stuffed animal.
I think it's called plush.
It's ruined.
I mean, there's so much, I don't know if it's dog calm or whatever, but there's something that's just very, and it's very disconcerting.
Because like the pooping dog, there's some stooping, and then there's some stooping.
And there's some guilt, and there's a lot of extreme, nervous, quivering anxiety as it humps this helpless little honey bear.
I have a friend here in Seattle who has a little dog, not a Chihuahua, but one of these little Scotty dogs, who also humps like a fuzzy pillow.
The dog?
The dog does.
The friend probably also humps a fuzzy pillow, but not when I'm around.
But this dog was humping a fuzzy pillow at one point, and just like luck of the draw, no pun intended, we were standing there watching him and laughing, and he kind of just like...
leaned back at exactly the right moment and actually came across the room like total air shot.
We're all standing there.
It went like 14 feet.
He had a three-pointer.
He did.
And we were incredulous.
And then he walked away like, my work is done.
Oh my god, it was one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen.
I like to see the fucking cat do that.
It was like when a killer whale slaps a seal with his tail out of the water and the seal is 30 feet in the air spinning ass over tea kettle and the killer whale is just like watching it happen.
Were you in the splash zone?
No, no, no.
I was well away.
I mean, when a dog starts humping a pillow, I start looking for the exits.
You've been around the block.
Because I have.
And especially when you're in somebody's house where they think it's charming that the dog is fucking a pillow.
Oh, John.
I'm definitely looking for the exits.
John, I don't... It's not like I'm leaving through the exits.
You know what?
It's like...
They are.
It's like the oneness dander.
It's like this is a clear fucking leading economic indicator that you need to get the hell out of that place.
Like if that person's got dander on themselves, they're obviously masturbating constantly.
And this is a house where the dog is encouraged to literally come in the living room.
And that's funny.
I feel like I turned a corner in life.
Somebody's going to have to clean that up.
Yes.
You think a dog's going to do that?
Well, now tell me this.
How many computer monitors do you have in front of you right now?
All right.
Now, what is the maximum number of computer monitors that you... When you walk into somebody's computer station area, what is the maximum number of computer monitors that you can handle before you start to feel like this person...
Oh, it's like a lunatic.
It's a lunatic.
Well, I know a lot of people that may screw up your story if I tell you.
But my opinion is that the conventional wisdom on this is that you should have two exact monitors of exactly the same size or three of the same size.
I have one very large one and then one little one.
And I have seen some nerds that have up to six.
But that is like having seven.
You got it.
You have to get a stand.
And yeah, I hope that didn't ruin the story.
So what happens with six monitors?
What happens?
Very little.
Again, it's the condom in the wallet problem.
I mean, no, I mean, you know what?
You don't care about this.
But there's data that backs up the idea that the less you have to scroll around, the more you can get done, the more you see, the more you can do.
But, you know, come on.
I mean, you ever seen the guy?
You seen the guy who's got like all the holsters on his belt?
Or like the guy.
I'm in the music business.
Are you seriously asking me that question?
The guy or the lesbian usually with all the keys, like the keychain.
What's the deal with lesbians and keychains?
Is that a thing?
Is that like a hanky code?
Well, it's a thing.
It's not a hanky code, but it's a penis envy thing.
It's a bushy thing?
Well, it's like, here's my package.
Here's my package.
It's just made of keys.
Have you ever seen my keychain?
I definitely have, but I'm trying to remember what constitutes it.
It's okay.
It's okay.
It's taken me 45 years to get down to an aluminum bottle cap opener that weighs almost nothing and two keys.
I don't even keep my car key on there.
I keep my office key and my house key, and that is it.
To me, that's power.
Like that is the ability to go into a literal safe deposit box in – not Bairn.
Where do you want to go?
Munich?
Where do you – no, no.
Where do you go to for your box?
Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry.
And so you also have like a numbered bank account there.
Don't say what number, but you probably have access to money there too.
I don't – I wouldn't be able to say the number because it's – No, I understand.
But you have a trucker's wallet with $20 that you could use anywhere in the world.
Right.
Well, not anywhere.
I mean I didn't have any like Chinese money.
No, wait.
No, I promise you you want to exchange the currency an hour later.
Go ahead.
I didn't have any.
I had some Thai bot.
I couldn't go to Tonga, for instance, unless they use U.S.
dollars in Tonga.
But anyway, go ahead.
No, that's probably it.
What was I talking about?
I don't even remember.
Oh, my key chain.
Oh, your key chain.
So I feel like, like, for example, the people who are our neighbors, like I went and checked the mail today.
I want to get the mail.
And I swear to God, it's like these fucking mooks have like a pony keg of axe.
It's body spray.
I hope so.
I mean, it is actually a shit down there.
I thought I thought that you don't still have an adversarial relationship with your upstairs name.
Oh, no, no.
They're gone.
And they're still literally the only people in the world that I hate.
Those are old neighbors.
And are you saying that their mail is still in your mailbox?
Are you talking about different neighbors now?
I can't talk too much about this because, you know, because of, you know, neighbors are listening to the podcast.
No, fuck them.
I bought all their I bought all their names.
I bought all their names as domain names.
Don't tell me I can't get dark and small.
I love that.
That is dark and small.
Would you sell them to them if they came to you and asked?
No, I think it resolves to a page just like, look at me.
I live upstairs.
That's what it says.
No, I don't know.
During my drinking years, I had no keys because I had no... You had nothing to put a key in.
I had no home.
I had no thing.
I had no thing and I had no keys and I remember feeling like that was some kind of minor triumph.
You're like a Buddha.
I felt like I was headed that direction.
I was like a drunk Buddha.
You sound almost like a beat.
You sound like one of the beats, like very confused about religion and drugs.
Yeah, well, because and that's exactly right.
I was trying to I was imagining that through being fucked up all the time.
I was actually climbing the ladder of enlightenment.
Uh, it turns out that I was not, I wasn't even, I was, I wasn't even holding the ladder of enlightenment, but, uh, but I remember when I got my first key, somebody gave me a key to their place.
They were like, all right, you know, you can, here's a key to my place.
You can use the, you come in and use the bathroom, shower, clean up or whatever.
And I was like, I got a key.
I have a key.
I have responsibilities.
And this is at a time when I didn't have an ID, uh,
So having a key was like, wow, this is my connection to... I'm now reconnecting to the larger world.
This is densely metaphorical, John.
Yeah, I had a key.
And then I got a second key, and so I needed a ring.
And the second key was a key to a Ford Aerostar minivan...
That a guy let me crash in.
It was like, look, you can't crash at my house because I'm paying rent.
My roommate's paying rent.
But I have this van out back.
You can stay in the van.
And I'll connect the van to a battery charger so the lights stay on when you open the door so you can read.
So I had a key to a person's house to use the bathroom and a key to this minivan where I was living.
And I was like, I got two keys.
I got two keys and a key ring.
Look at me.
Here I am.
Two keys.
Top of the world, Ma.
That's right.
And so fast forward five years later, I had a job.
I had my own place.
I didn't have a car, but the job, I had three keys or something.
All of a sudden, I've got like six keys on my key ring, and I'm starting to feel dragged down by this.
I got six keys.
Like, what have I become?
I'm a guy with six keys.
You've become a guy who watches Fight Club too much, probably.
Well, this was before Fight Club.
Things are owning you.
But I had a key to my apartment.
I had a key to my practice space.
I had a key to my job.
Wow, you really got it together fast.
Well, four years.
That's pretty good.
It's faster than Dukakis.
What, mom or son?
You mean the drinking?
Oh, I don't know.
Is Dukakis a drinker?
No, a lady with the rubbing alcohol.
Dukakis?
That's not funny.
Yeah.
No.
Greek.
Oh.
Yeah.
Right.
And so you went from zero to six in four years.
Yeah.
And now I've pruned it.
I keep it to four keys.
But...
I think it's a lot like the compulsive masturbators.
I mean, you should have as many keys as you need.
Let's take that as red.
But there is something a little bit overcompensating about the giant-ass keychain, especially when you're like a security guard, no offense, or whatever.
Right.
You know, it just seems like the more – oh, no, this is classist.
I can't say this.
But it seems like the more menial position, the more keys you have to have.
That's true.
You're like a jailer, and you're going to get back pain.
Look at us.
We're stooped.
Yeah, yeah.
A rich guy doesn't carry around a big ring of keys.
That was my second objection about mobile phones.
My first objection about mobile phones when they got popular was that everybody who uses them is a dick-tard.
Like, why are you talking in a restaurant?
You're talking about the big mobile phones.
No, I mean like when StarTax got popular, like say 97, 98 or whatever.
And that's where my whole phone guy persona started because I would take off my shoe and start talking into it really loud.
Because to this day, I still wonder how many people are actually talking to someone on the phone because you're just like a crazy homeless person, especially with the Bluetooth.
It's crazy.
But the second reason is like you're using this as the signifier of power.
In the same way that you got the butchy keychain, if you're talking on the phone at lunch, you're not a powerful person.
A powerful person is allowed to eat without doing work.
Most people's conception of what a powerful person looks like only goes up so high to...
to middle management.
Most people, the highest they can conceive of is the middle manager.
And so they emulate the middle manager's taste in clothes, in cars, in houses, in music and culture.
The middle manager is the aspirational unit for the vast majority.
And somebody like you
who has a concept of what truly the rich and powerful look like, the middle manager is always going to be crass.
For me, my goal is always to look like somebody who has so much money that they're still driving a 1967 Volvo.
Like that rich guy, Carl Newman.
Yeah, like Carl Newman, the rich guy, wearing his grandfather's shirt.
That's Canadian money.
That's not like being really rich.
That's Canadian rich.
Canadian money is worth more than American money now.
I remember when it was $1.66 American.
We stayed at a really super nice hotel in Vancouver one time.
Not the Sylvia Hotel, nerd, but a really nice hotel.
And it was like $50 a night.
It was ridiculous.
Those days are gone.
I think what you're talking about is old money.
Old money.
Old money.
I was roomed with a guy who was old money and he looked homeless.
But it was like homeless, like I don't even know.
I don't know.
OK, here's me.
I'm so middle management that like I would go like old L.L.
Bean.
But it probably wasn't.
It was probably like a bespoke hobo shirt.
Sure, it was a handmade hobo shirt.
Yeah.
Now, that's a classic.
That's why I want to talk to you about the buckaroos.
I got a handmade hobo shirt.
I spent a couple of months traveling in Europe with one of the guys who was the heir of the Bush beer family.
Did they feud with the Anheuser's at all?
Do you think they had like shotgun hillbilly type shit going on?
Oh, well, no, I think the Bushes took over the operation.
Colonel Sanders, the Anheuser's just kept on there for show.
I think the Anheuser's, I mean, they're in there, but the Bushes were the dynasty.
Okay, sorry, go ahead.
And this guy, he had Bush in his name, like he's a great-great-grandson or something like that.
Augustus or something.
Mm-hmm.
We were traveling together in Europe for a couple of months, and this guy, he drank two liters of Coke a day, and he looked like a guy that was playing video games for a living, like...
He did not look like somebody... That sounds like inbreeding a little bit.
He did not look like somebody who had 24 Clydesdales.
That sounds like there's not enough diversity in the Missouri bush.
No, no, no.
He was a handsome enough guy, but he just... Big banjo player.
Carried himself with this kind of like, whatever, give me another glass of Coke.
And I swear to you, he had Clydesdales take him to his junior prom.
This guy...
This guy could light cigars on $100 bills, and it was the same to him as matches.
Did he want the Clyde's Tales?
No, that was just how it went.
This is the problem with being rich.
It's like, oh, fucking of course you're going to have Clyde's Tales.
You're a bush, dickhead.
Ed McMahon.
Ed McMahon's there.
Yes.
No, because here's the thing.
And this is like royalty.
With royalty, it seems like such a cakewalk, but it's just constant bullshit if you're royalty.
And I imagine if you're a bush, that kind of bush, it just must suck.
I'm sure your dad would go, you know what?
We're doing Clydesdales.
He's like, can I just get a town car?
Fuck you.
Fuck you.
Get Sally and you on the horse.
We're having the junior prom here at the house.
Can you imagine how scarred you would be by that?
And especially if you're like Bob and you feel like you've got to constantly be showing your trophy-ness.
Yeah.
Well, this is the reason that I think the best thing in life is to be about my age, 43, and then learn that you're actually...
from an obscenely rich family, and they've been keeping it from you the whole time.
Just to test your mettle?
Yeah, just because they wanted you to grow up with some intestinal fortitude, and then they're like, okay, here's your inheritance.
I keep waiting for it.
I wake up every morning and think, is the knock on the door going to come today?
My rich uncle, is he going to come and tell me?
It strikes me that you live and not sleep in anticipation of a lot of door knocks.
Well, this is the problem.
I feel like you don't know.
Is it an alien or is it an attorney there to have you sign some papers?
There are a lot of people that could be knocking on my door.
And today, you know what's going to happen?
A guy is going to knock on my door here.
I get I get a text message two days ago from a friend and he says, hey, I have a favor to ask of you.
It's a really small thing.
It doesn't require any work on your part.
And immediately I'm like, yeah, right.
If that were true, you wouldn't be like softening me up with this pretext, like literally pretext.
That's like telling somebody I want you to be honest.
It means literally the opposite.
Yeah, I want you to be honest.
This favor is going to require nothing of you.
And I was like, all right, so what is the favor?
So he texts back, I bought my girlfriend a sailboat.
And I want to bring it to your house.
Duff McKagan.
It's not Duff McKagan, but he does work for Duff McKagan.
Hat guy.
Okay, never mind.
Never mind.
I'm going to bring this sailboat over to your house and clean it up for a couple of days in your yard so I can give it to her on Christmas.
And I'm like, this is really pushing the definition of requires nothing for me.
Like requires nothing for me other than that you're in my yard for two days cleaning a sailboat.
I mean, I don't mean this the way it sounds, but what are your neighbors going to think?
When they've got to realign... No, no, I don't mean in terms of like, oh, John Roderick sure got him a nice sailboat.
I'm thinking more like, holy shit, how is this going to fuck with their vision of you as a man with a sword and a bathrobe?
I think it just goes right in keeping with it.
They're thinking old money.
They're thinking old money.
Now he's got a sailboat in his yard, and there's a guy covered in tattoos out there in December with a hose...
Like cleaning this thing out.
And I swear to you, he is on his way here right now.
Like he's in traffic towing this sailboat over to my house.
So that's the knock on the door I'm looking for today.
I have a passing interest in lots of things.
One of my passing interests is in cons.
I don't know a lot about it.
Long cons, short cons, any cons.
Well, you know, sometimes you do the short con to get the long con, right?
That's the whole idea, and people don't understand.
I know you know this, John Roddick.
You've been to UW.
But the con is confidence.
Did this start – let me just guess.
Did this start with watching The Sting?
Has this been in you since you were... I discovered The Sting after watching Law & Order, I think.
What?
You didn't see The Sting in the 70s?
No, I did.
I did.
No, that was part of it.
I think that looks like a TV movie.
It's okay, but I think it looks like a TV movie.
Except that any time Paul Newman is on the screen, you're looking into the face of God.
Yeah, and I'm a big Robert Shaw fan, too.
Doyle Lonegan.
Truly amazing.
I love that guy.
He's great in The Jaws.
He's great in Dirty Dozen.
He's great, which is a better movie than you think.
He's really, really good in Force 10 from Navarone.
Oh, that's like Dirty Dozen Jr.
Now, is that the one with Mark Hamill?
No, it's the one with Harrison Ford.
Sorry, sorry.
I'm a little distracted right now because if you search for Buckaroos on Google, the first return says, welcome to Buckaroos, the leader in pipe installation support systems.
And that's a fucking holocaust right there.
Well, that's really strange because there's a bar in Seattle called Buckaroos.
Is it a key bar?
And they're the leaders in pipe installation, if you know what I'm saying.
Not conduit.
No, you know what?
There's conduit and there's pipe.
I don't want to make you paranoid, John, but I think somebody calling you and saying, could you do me a favor by letting me wash my sailboat in your yard, that feels – there's some little Ricky Jay in me that says that feels a little bit like a con.
That's like a con.
It's like some kind of Nigerian thing.
Like, if you watch my sailboat for two days, I'm going to bestow riches on you.
He says to you, look, I just need five minutes to urinate.
Could you please watch the mizzenmast?
I'm thinking tomorrow you don't have any more candles.
Boat's gone, candle's gone, and you're just sitting there waiting for the door to knock.
There is strangely a part of me that woke up this morning and thought...
What I need to do is pack one suitcase and leave the rest behind.
Pack one suitcase and burn this whole house down like a Norwegian funeral boat.
And just back to one bag.
Back to one key.
One key, one bag.
That's how I woke up today.
Yeah.
And then I started sorting through my coin collection.
That's the kind of statement that eventually will appear on a government form.
I arranged my 40 cowboy boots into a new pattern based on color and age.
And I was like, oh, Merlin's calling soon.
Unconsciously picking out which pair to wear when you walk over and
And a lawyer is there.
He tips his hat and he hands you a briefcase full of passports and international currency and a Glock.
Here's your Glock, John.
It says, Manchurian candidate, activate.
Duff McKagan is the kindest.
He's a very kind man, Duff McKagan.
He's a gentle person.
Yeah.
You don't want your pancreas to explode.
That's no good.
Careful where you meet them.
I still want to come back to REM, gold versus golden.
Careful where you meet them.
I'm going to write that down.
That's a good lyric.
That is pretty good.
You should use that in that Sugar from Sand song.
Careful when you meet them is very simple.
This is very easy.
All that means is along the lines of you and your Jewish, you have to be careful that if you meet a lady at a place that you go to a lot or you meet a lady at a place that you almost never go to and wouldn't want to go to again, either one of those can be problematic.
And I think you can understand already why both of that would be the case.
And I don't think people think about this.
I think they meet somebody at their dive bar, maybe even, God forbid, a bartender.
And then when that ends, first of all, all bartenders are crazy who are ladies.
Absolutely true.
No, no.
Seriously, that's not ping pong, right?
No, no, no.
Personal experience.
Personal experience has indicated to me that all girl bartenders are crazy.
Right.
They're nutty like a box of chocolates.
But that's like, I mean, the Venn diagram of girls that are crazy is
Yeah.
As far as that overlaps the Venn diagram of girls, I'm not sure.
Anyway, my... I'm not sure which is the bigger circle.
I should have finished my shrimp.
I think I'm having a sugar drop.
You're just sitting there in front of a plate of room temperature shrimp?
I have half a bowl of buttery shrimp that's just...
Cooling?
See, this is interesting.
I fucked up.
I accidentally bought four pounds of shrimp, and I had to use it.
It would never occur to me to eat shrimp for lunch.
I don't think of shrimp as a lunch.
John Roderick, I had to.
I had to because I fucked up.
It was on sale.
I thought I was buying two pounds.
I was buying four pounds.
It was a solid ice cube of shrimp.
Do not refreeze shrimp.
You do that once, and then you're dead.
One time I was in... You've had shrimp three ways in the last two days.
Shrimp three way.
That's one of my favorite dishes.
Turn that down.
I hear the shrimp three ways fine.
I was at the Sundance Film Festival one time.
Here we go.
And the people at the supermarket there in Park City... My friend John Wesley Harding.
I'm not sure if you've heard of him.
And obviously felt like, hey, the film festival is coming.
We need to load up on giant...
Tiger shrimp, like the biggest shrimp you ever saw.
Prawns.
Was that a prawn?
That sounds black shrimp.
Absolutely massive shrimp.
These shrimp were as big as a Stanley screwdriver.
And I'm walking through the supermarket.
I love that bar.
I'm walking through the supermarket and here like over by the deli is this pile of shrimp.
It's a mountain of shrimp that they have covered in ice sitting in the middle of the like in the it's not in a case.
It's just like there.
It's loose.
Yeah.
Loose shrimp.
And there's a guy in a white coat standing there like need any shrimp.
And I said, that's a lot of shrimp.
And he was like, we got so many shrimp here.
And they were... It sounds like a fever dream.
Was he dressed like a doctor?
It was kind of late at night and he was dressed like a doctor.
It might have been Bob.
He said, you know, we're letting this shrimp go.
Fire sale prices because we got way more shrimp than we need.
And so I bought four pounds of shrimp.
I'm only there two days.
I bought four pounds of shrimp.
And they were, I mean, there are these humongous shrimp.
I went back to the, we were staying not at a hotel, but like at a, at a timeshare cabin.
And it was the long winters and the presidents of the USA staying together in a, in like a timeshare cabin.
And I walk in the door at one o'clock in the morning with four pounds of tiger shrimp in a bag.
And I was like, gentlemen, I know what we're doing tonight.
Yeah.
And, oh, we sat and had this.
It was like a shrimp show-up.
We were covered in shrimp, head to toe.
Shrimp knocked.
That is so much shrimp.
It was a lot of shrimp.
I love shrimp.
You know what?
Part of it is I shop too fast.
I get in a hurry.
I want to get home.
I'm running late.
I'm bad with time.
I pick up four pounds of shrimp accidentally.
And the thing is I don't like wasting food.
I'm not like a pill about it, but I really don't like wasting food.
Right.
So that's why now I'm just sitting here just torpid from all of that.
So that's the one rule is be careful where you meet them because then if you meet them at the place that you don't go to a lot, well, now it's like you and the introversion problem.
Now it's going to be which one are you going to go to?
Are we going to go to shooters or flingers?
And you're going to have to have that discussion.
Each one has its ups and downs.
At least you don't have to see each other anymore.
It's been so long since I met a girl at a bar.
No, I'm saying all this phonetically.
I had this in a little spiral bound notebook.
I'm just reading this.
You're saying it phonetically.
You don't know what it means.
Even this right now.
You're just reading it.
It's just Japanese to you.
I'm literally stealing this kids in the hall joke out literally right now.
And then the other thing is, and this is the secret to happy relationship and marriage in general, try to minimize the number of things that only you are allowed to be right about.
Oh, my God.
What are you talking about?
I'm right about everything.
Right.
Yeah.
How's that going?
What do you mean minimize?
Well, I'm not married, so I feel like I'm doing something right.
That's a good point.
I'm right about everything.
Are you kidding me?
Well, I'm trying to be less right about everything.
I think this is why this is such an ideal relationship that we have, that I can be your Boswell in my way.
You know, here's the thing.
Here's the thing about Bob.
Here's the thing about Don Rich and the buck.
Here's the thing about the buckaroos.
Here's the thing about all these people.
And here's the thing.
Now, if I were a better man, I would have walked with my shrimp back into the little man's store and I would have said, listen, little man, I've made an error, right?
Why are you talking like John Hodgman now?
Listen, little man, I've made an error and I would like to return half these shrimp.
I'm sure you can see your way through to refunding half my money.
Little man, you must listen.
No, here's the problem.
Now, we've got the Mandarin problem, too.
I know how to say exactly one thing in Mandarin, and I don't even say it right.
I can say shush, shush, shush.
That's all I know how to say.
What does it mean?
It doesn't mean shut up or thank you.
I'm not sure.
I think it's thank you.
But it could mean shut up?
No.
No, Mandarin's got that kind of little, like, sibling kind of shush, shush, shush.
Oh, well, it's a tonal language, right?
So it depends on what your pitch is when you say it, too.
Like cha-cha and cha-cha could be different things.
Oh, absolutely.
And you could be saying it like, and you're the asshole, right, if you're doing the wrong thing.
It's like the 10 years I spent going into pho restaurants and saying, I'd like a bowl of pho, please.
And they would go, huh?
How are you supposed to say it?
Pho, pho, pho, pho?
That's just like the French.
They'd look at me and just stare.
How are you supposed to say it?
And then they would go, oh, pho?
And I would go, yeah, pho.
That's exactly what I said.
And they would say, oh, all right, okay, thanks, pho.
Can I just point out that that used to be a French colony and the French are constantly always correcting people's pronunciation.
Yeah.
So anyway, I go in there.
If I were you or I were Bob or I were one of the buckaroos, I would probably walk in there
And I would say in the clearest voice that I can, even though nobody from Asia can ever understand what I'm saying, I would say, listen, I've made a grave error.
These shrimp are still good and hard.
Could I trade these in for maybe something more like two pounds of shrimp?
But now I'm sitting here and I'm literally eating my mistake.
Yeah.
Is that a crustacean?
Is that a crustacean, right?
It's a crustacean.
You have more shrimp than you can possibly eat.
And shrimp is not a type of thing that you can't like, you're not going to grind up the shrimp and put it in your spaghetti sauce.
No, I would do that with weed.
There's only so many ways.
I mean, if you bought too much hamburger...
Forget about it.
You got hamburger.
You're just going to find different ways to use hamburger.
This is not subdivided.
This is not condo shrimp.
It was one large, contiguous block of shrimp that I had to thaw and cook.
Right.
So what you really bought was three pounds of shrimp and one pound of ice.
Yeah.
What I'm basically saying is I'm a dickless weasel, and I wish I had your certainty and ability to help people, including myself.
I don't want your fever dreams, but I really admire that about you.
I've seen you argue with people about money, and it's fun.
Well, I got into a disagreement with somebody here in Seattle the other day.
Is that right?
Yeah, if you can believe it.
And I was back to the same old problem up here, which is that... And I think this is a problem nationwide now.
People have...
have grown so accustomed to never arguing with somebody that when they begin an argument when somebody comes to them with an argument this is the bad words they are so terrorized by the by the by any conflict that that in their minds they have never had conflict with people and what they're not understanding is that they are constantly in conflict with people it's just all being resolved so passively to no one's satisfaction
That, you know, that everybody's just spinning their emotional wheels.
Nobody is, nothing is being accomplished.
Everybody's just so, like, gentle with each other and like, oh, I'm sorry, did I offend you?
No, did I offend you?
Oh, well, let's agree to disagree.
Okay, well, everything's fine.
And nobody's getting what they want at all.
But they have lost the capacity to have someone come up to them and say, excuse me, hi, I ordered two pounds of shrimp and I got four and I would like to return it.
And also I would like to just ask you how you thought two pounds meant four or whatever.
You know, like you've got a problem.
It's not just that.
You know what he would say to me?
He'd say salmon on special.
He'd say salmon on special.
Two pounds of salmon?
Yeah.
But I'm not just talking about grocery store people.
I had a disagreement.
But you, but no, and I'm not, I'm not just being ping pong.
You would sit there until that was resolved.
And until you, until you, to your satisfaction, he had not only fixed, but acknowledged it, that you were, you were, you were the better person in this exchange.
The problem is up here.
And my problem is that sometimes when I get, when I get my panties.
Get your dander up.
Get your dander up.
One of the things, one of my problems is that I demand an apology.
Wow.
And I have done this many times, and it almost never is a good strategy, but I do it.
I've told you this story.
I went into the North Face store.
Oh, God, the North Face.
Is this the bag story?
Yeah.
I might need to pee.
They were like, we will give you a new bag.
You know what, John?
You should let me pee.
You start telling this story.
I will go pee and I will mute this.
Also, I'm down to about half a pound of shrimp.
You start telling the story and then I'm going to come back.
This is 1999?
Yeah, 1999.
You go run and pee and I'll tell the story.
Start with the context on the walk and everything.
Will you talk about what you look like?
We talked about how much you had relied on their products for a very long time.
No, no, I'm dead serious.
I just need to go pee.
I'll be back.
Keep talking.
All right.
So anyway, in 1999, I walked from Amsterdam to Istanbul.
And in advance of the trip, I bought a backpack from North Face.
Because growing up in Alaska, I always considered North Face to have the finest...
outdoor gear at least i thought they did back in the the early 80s so i bought this bag at north face and you know the thing about backpacks is that they always want to sell you a bigger backpack and that is the wrong way to buy a backpack you actually want to get the smallest backpack you you can because you're carrying all your shit on your bag or i mean on your back i'm sorry uh so anyway i get this backpack and i walk from amsterdam to istanbul and about three quarters of the way across the continent of europe somewhere in the
Somewhere in the mountains of Romania, the backpack fails.
The material rips.
And it fails because it's a shitty product.
It's a poorly made thing.
It isn't made to walk across Europe.
It's made to take your books to school or it's made to go on overnight trips or something.
It isn't a piece of hardy gear.
Anyway, so I have to take this backpack off and fix it with my sewing kit and
I missed the beginning, John.
How far into the walk is this?
This is toward the end.
Well, so it's three quarters of the way.
So I'm in the Romanian mountains and the backpack comes apart.
And so the whole rest of the trip through Romania and Bulgaria and into Turkey...
Every few days I have to take this backpack off and I have to fix it with my sewing kit.
And every time I have to do it, and every day that this thing is digging into my side as I walk, I'm just building up my fury.
Steam.
And my beard is really long and my eyes have become kind of crystal blue like a wolf's
Like a wolf's eyes, you know, because I'm in the sun all day and it's bleached out all the pigment in my face and hair.
He's selling John Carter of Mars.
And I come back to Seattle at the end of this trip and I save it up for a week, you know, just like I'm just cultivating my fury.
And so after a week, I walked down.
I'm sorry, John.
You weren't reflecting on the experience of having walked across a continent.
You came back and got ready for exactly how you were going to handle a broken backpack.
I was cultivating this for a long time.
I walked down and I walked into the North Face store.
And I don't know if you've been into a North Face store, but their job now, as North Face sees it, their job is to sell puffy jackets to Japanese college students.
Their connection to the outdoors is just that they have giant pictures of people scaling mountains up on the wall of their store.
But if you look around the store, it's all co-eds, it's sorority girls buying puffy jackets.
That's what they do.
I walk in and I stand in the middle of this door and I still have leaves and sticks in my hair.
And I swear to you, I could cut through three inches of steel with my eyeballs.
And this little sales girl walks over.
She's like, hi, can I help you?
And I said...
I just walked from Amsterdam to Istanbul with your shitty backpack and it broke halfway through and I was out there in the field.
I was like one of these guys on the mountain that you have up here on the wall and I trusted your gear and it let me down and I demand satisfaction.
And she said, okay, well, what can we do?
Do you want to return the bag?
And I said, no, I don't want to return it.
I don't want to return it.
You're not getting off that easy.
I demand satisfaction.
And she was like, let me call a manager.
And so the guy comes over and he's like, can I help you?
And I'm like, okay.
And I tell my story again in a rising voice.
And he's like, well, here's what we can do.
We can give you a new bag.
And I was like, oh, you'll give me a new bag.
But I demand satisfaction.
And he was like, well, what do you want?
And I was like, what I want is a refund of my money for this bag, a new bag for free, and an apology.
And he was like, well, we can't do that.
And I started to rant.
I'm standing in the store ranting.
There was a time when outdoor gear was something you could stake your life on.
You're hanging by a thread.
Hanging by a thread.
And if you can't trust North Face gear, what can you trust?
And, you know, these people were, like, really running for cover.
And I stood there shaking the leaves out of my beard.
I was there all afternoon until I got my satisfaction.
And I was threatening to write an article for the New York Times.
I was saying that I was sponsored by the National Geographic Society.
And then the Sasquatch comes in and goes, me write mean article for Northeastern paper.
Me, important man.
Me demand satisfaction.
Anyway, so I still have the rotten bag, and I still have the new bag, and I still have my satisfaction.
Because they eventually apologized to me.
And did that come as, I'm sorry, you're unhappy, or did it go like, I'm sorry, we fucked up?
Yeah, I will not take an I'm sorry you're unhappy.
That makes it twice as bad.
I will.
And I'm sure they tried that.
They call it a big city apology.
And I'm sure that I started screaming at them even more.
Although one time somebody gave me a big city apology and it actually shamed me into silence.
I was yelling at a concierge in a hotel in New York City.
in a wheelchair i was yelling at them because of something it was four o'clock in the morning i was yelling at them on the phone and and and the woman the woman was from she was like a 55 year old woman from ukraine or something and and she was she for a for a while she was kind of arguing with me pushing back in this kind of slavic way like well sir that is just our policy you know this type of thing and i was like what that's a bullshit policy
And she pushed back for like three or four minutes.
And then all of a sudden, her voice dropped a register.
And she went, I'm sorry, sir.
You have my deepest apologies.
Oh, supplicant.
And it was incredible.
And it stopped me in my tracks.
I was like, oh, my goodness.
Like this woman...
who probably has three advanced degrees from the Ukrainian astrophysics lab.
You know who you are?
You're fat Ralph Fiennes taking shots of people walking around.
That's right.
You're fat shirtless Ralph Fiennes just shooting people.
Just shooting people for being out on them.
Shooting people and laughing, laughing and shooting.
And all of a sudden I was like, I was deeply ashamed because she got so, she got so old world on me.
Like, yes, sir, you're absolutely right.
I know you have my deepest apology.
What did you say?
Did you give her a small town apology?
No, I went like,
Well, all right then.
Like your fucking Clifton Webb.
Okay, so, well, then, thank you.
I appreciate it.
And, yes, well, then I will be getting off the phone now.
I'm very reluctant to share a couple anecdotes that are related to this.
One, I based, one time, a man who had gone through our trash more times than I would like and made a mess, I basically threatened to have him deported.
Oh, wow.
No, not directly.
Not directly.
I stood there and took photos of him.
I mean, actually, like I was talking on the phone.
Which is nothing.
You're so white.
Can I go one more?
There is no other race in the world or in the history of the world that would do that.
That is just like, I hate to be racist.
You know, there's no room in this podcast for racism.
No.
That's such a San Francisco move.
Less than a week ago, here's how my conversation with somebody at a hotel desk ended.
Do you have a bank account?
Do you understand what it means to have a bank account?
I have the address of the vice president of hospitality of your owner.
Google me.
Oh, Google me.
That's a good one.
That's a good one.
Do you follow Sween on Twitter?
Yep.
You know who Sween is?
At Sween.
You know where he's from.
He's from Canada.
They don't have money up there.
He's such a great Twitterer.
He's a very sweet person, too.
I really love his voice or whatever.
And also his wife, Damsel-esque.
Oh, she's cute as a bug's ear.
Yeah, she is.
And she has considerably fewer followers than Sweeney.
He has like a million and a half followers.
He's been featured in that Rob Corddry way where it's like you get auto-thinged, which I think was a lot of pressure.
I would never want that.
That's a lot of pressure.
But he maintains a very humorous persona online.
I like him very much.
He's genuinely good-natured.
But I remember some event a few months ago where Damsel-esque was – because it's nice to follow both members of a couple on Twitter because you can see their little relationship play out.
And she was in some situation where she was like, do you know how many followers my husband has on Twitter?
Google him!
And I just thought, oh, that's so good.
Because there are people whose job it is to care, and then there are the vast majority of people in the world who are like, you what?
Who has a what?
Here's the thing, John, and this is why you're a better man than me.
I mean, at least you walked across Europe.
When I hear I'm waiting for my small town apology and my money back and my $950 back that you held on my card, no offense.
I become a person I do not want to be.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So I'll give you another sign.
This is another sign off as long as I'm just airing all of my dirty laundry.
I had a call with AT&T that ended with, and you know what?
160,000 people are about to find out how much cock you suck.
Take that, AT&T.
And then I felt like you with the Ukrainian emigre.
Right.
You're like, oh.
That's not a problem with Google me.
What the fuck does that even mean?
Google me.
Google me.
Big city apology.
Careful where you meet them.
You know, there's a part of me that wants to be the most famous person that ever graduated from my high school.
One of the great men.
And I'm, and I'm, I think I may already be, but I'm not sure about this because I don't know if anybody.
Is this one of those like little gingerbread, like little red schoolhouse type things?
No, no, no.
It's like two kids with farm accidents and a girl who's eventually going to have an anorexia.
Like were you just the star of the show?
This is the thing about Alaska.
This is the thing.
This is the thing about Alaska.
My high school had like...
Like 2,000 kids.
It was a massive... Me too.
In-city high school, right?
I had 666 kids in my entering freshman class.
For all I know, there's a Nobel laureate from my high school.
And actually, I think there is a guy from a couple of classes ahead of me that wrote a best-selling novel.
So he may not be more famous, but he's... Stieg Larsson?
But he's certainly like... He's not Stieg Larsson, but he's certainly...
I mean, there are plenty of people from my high school who are accomplished.
I want it to be a slam dunk.
I want people to think, when they think like East High School in Anchorage, who graduated from there?
Oh, well, there's only one name you need to know.
And I'm still a long way from there.
I don't know how to get there.
Is West High School where, I'm sorry, is West High School where Randy Rhodes played?
West High School is where Randy Rhodes played.
And West High School was originally Anchorage High School.
There was only one.
And then when they built East, the second high school, then they renamed Anchorage High School West.
You're Joe Kennedy.
Not Joe Kennedy.
You're Edward Kennedy.
You're like a little guy.
God, why can't you pick a better Kennedy for me to be?
Who would you like to be?
I think they've all passed.
I think I'd like to be...
Am I thinking of Rosemary?
Is Rosemary the one?
I'd like to be Joe Jr.
Joe Jr.
who died in a catastrophic explosion on a suicide mission in a bomber over Europe.
You know how Joe Jr.
died, right?
Like Glenn Miller.
Well, no.
There was this project where they loaded up like a B-17 or a Lancaster bomber.
Full of privileged men.
No, no, no.
They loaded the thing up with explosives.
The entire thing was just a giant bomb.
And the mission was to fly it over and just, it was like a kamikaze airplane, except the pilot was supposed to bail out.
What?
He was going to hit the silk.
Who thought this was a good idea?
Well, it was World War II.
They were still figuring it out.
That is a shitty and shameful strategy.
So Joe Kennedy volunteers for this mission because he's conscious of being groomed to one day be the president of the United States and
Oh, this is the one who's like, I'm sorry, this is the one who's like the favorite son, right?
This is the oldest.
Yeah, the favorite son.
Right.
And Jack's the one, Jack's got all kinds of diseases and Hodgman's disease and shit, right?
Yeah, Jack's like, Jack's the gimp.
Is that what it's called?
Hodgman's disease?
What do you have?
No, Hodgkin's.
I think he had, I think he had Addison.
Hodgman's disease is where you grow an incongruous mustache that doesn't match your hair color.
Yeah.
But in any case, he's flying over the English Channel.
He's thinking, this is going to look great in an election.
This is amazing.
I'm going to bail out of this thing and I'm going to fly this plane into a dam or something.
I don't remember what the mission was.
But halfway over the English Channel, they're on the radio like, all right, turn on the servos or flip the...
primer switch or something and they flip the switch and there's an electrical short and the thing blows up into a billion pieces over the English Channel.
What, remotely?
They set it off remotely?
No, no, it was an accident.
They like, he flipped the wrong switch or the thing had an electrical short or something.
He was just getting it, he was just like getting it ready and they're like, oh, oops.
That's awful.
What a terrible, and do you think he knew it was coming?
No, I think he was a Kennedy.
I think he was like, ha ha, on guard.
Slim Pickens.
And yeah, that's right.
And he was, you know, he was ready to, he was ready to, he thought he was going to be back in London the next night getting toasted in the Mayfair.
That's miserable.
And instead he's vaporized.
And then Jack was like, hmm, oops, me?
Who, me?
Hmm.
And he got over his Hodgman's disease and pulled people on a leather strap, pulled them to the ground.
Did that definitely happen?
Did that really happen?
I have a model of PT-109 right here in the room with me that I've had since I was a kid.
Like unsunk?
PT-109, yeah, unsunk PT-109.
That seems a little optimistic.
Wouldn't it be more appropriate to have the one that went down?
Well, actually, this one, I played with it so hard as a kid that it actually would not float now.
It's closer to the wrecked PT-109.
You've drained it of its buoyancy.
I have taken its buoyancy.
It's now a replica.
It's a replica of the one on the bottom of the ocean.
From WHYY in Philadelphia, Terry Gross.
This is Fresh Air.
Fresh Air.
Careful where you meet him.
I like Big City Apology a lot.
I hate these fucking shrimp.
Yeah, you've got like the next couple of days.
Oh, wow.
Oh, God.
Are they getting spongy?
They got spongy.
My friend just sent me a text with a picture of its sailboat here.
Oh, you better get going.
You got to get ready.
Looks like a fixed keel fiberglass 21 footer.
They went with a fixed keel.
I'm just saying that first blush here, I'm going to say 21 feet.
You can eyeball that from a text message?
Yeah, I think you could overnight on this boat.
Women love a fixed keel in my experience.
They certainly do.
Although, again, I don't know what women want.
Here's the thing about women.
Here's the thing.
Have you decided what boots you're wearing?
You know, I think today I'm going to wear some work boots.
Not some dress boots.
I suddenly had a flash of you basically being an extremely heterosexual version of the village people.
I think today I'm going to go construction worker.
I'm going construction worker today because the other day I was walking out of my house and I saw that the moles...
You got moles.
I got moles.
And I've been fighting the moles for years.
And the moles and I kind of had a truce like, all right, I understand there are moles in the ground.
You had mole detente?
I'm not going to be one of those people who's out here obsessed with the moles.
But I'm also not going to let moles just pile dirt up.
of their own accord.
You know, like if, if, if I see mold dirt, I'm going to go jump on it.
And in that way, they are going to know that like, that I'm aware that they're there and they need to keep a low profile.
But I went out the other day that they had, you don't want up any moles.
They had piled, they had built like, they had built a chicken.
It's a mound in my front yard.
Yeah.
What does that mean?
Chichen Itza, right?
Chichen Itza, the Mayan temple in the... Your moles made a Mayan temple.
They made a Mayan temple.
They made a devil's tower.
Oh, God.
They're out there with a fork and mashed potatoes making this big thing in my front yard.
And I was like, you bastards.
That's your Sudetenland.
That's when you said this is a line that you will not cross.
You said you've got to be fucking kidding me.
You're building a temple.
You're building a mole temple.
You're supposed to keep a low profile.
This is Daytona.
We had an agreement.
I wasn't going to come out here with mole traps, but you can't just colonize my front yard.
So I have to go out there in my boots and really let them know.
I don't know what I'm going to do.
Maybe I'm going to stick a hose down and drown them out.
Here's the thing about moles.
You should dress as an Indian.
Hmm?
Hmm?
Okay.
Like Philippe.
Is that his name?
Philippe?
Philippe?
Are we talking about Caddyshack now?
No.
Sorry.
I think it out there on Breyer.
Isn't Philippe the Indian?
Wasn't that his name?
I'm not sure that Philippe is an Indian name.
That's not my point.
I think Glenn was Glenn.
Now, Glenn Hughes.
Now, was he a guitarist or was he the leather man?
Oh, we're talking about village people.
Yes, John.
Of all the headgear... Here's the thing about the village people.
Of all the headgear that I have here, an Indian headdress is one that I'm lacking.
You know, for a long time, I went through this phase where I would be dating a girl and I would... You know, there's a certain moment...
You have to wait for the moment to ask the girl you're dating to dress like Pocahontas.
You can't do that like first date.
You can't even do that.
It's not even in the first month.
But at a certain point, you kind of sneak it into conversation like, oh.
Isn't it funny how some people like to dress up as Pocahontas?
Have you ever thought about dressing up for Halloween as Pocahontas or for not Halloween?
And, you know, some girls are more game than others.
Some like Sacagawea.
But as time went on, I realized that it wasn't really about Pocahontas, the historical character.
It was not a role-playing thing.
I just like loincloths.
I didn't have to go to this whole Pocahontas thing.