Ep. 20: "We Can All Agree on Cheese"
Hello.
Hi, John.
How are you?
Hi, Merlin.
Merlin and John.
You just sent me a picture of a chili dog, and I'm at once envious and disgusted.
You should be on my end.
I sent that to you two minutes ago, and it's... It's in you?
Yeah.
It's all gone?
I think the first rule of Chili Dog is that you should not eat it in two minutes.
I think the first rule of Chili Dog is that you should eat it as fast as you can from the driver's seat of a moving Volkswagen bus.
You get a lot of fumes in a bus.
Going across the George Washington Bridge.
That's the first rule of Chili Dog.
Hmm.
I'd like to hear more about that story.
You have so much to share, John.
You have so many stories.
And I worry, I do what I can, but I still worry that there are so many threads that could become, what, I guess some kind of a tapestry.
Yeah, I know, a tapestry.
I feel like we're still in the first square of some kind of a very special quilt.
It's a tapestry that is safety pinned to the ceiling of my dorm room so that the harsh dorm room light is turned into a beautiful mosaic of colors.
Is there any patchouli?
No, God, no.
I encountered some patchouli the other day.
There might be patchouli on the pillow from a visitor, from a guest, but there's no native patchouli.
If you were sitting around listening to that Indigo Girls, I think some patchouli must have... Let's be honest.
First of all, you don't even have to be in the same room as someone with patchouli.
Oh, sure.
It goes through brick.
You like those cable shows about finding ghosts?
No, precisely.
I mean, it could have been there years ago.
Right.
But let me just say that listening to the Indigo Girls does not... Like, patchouli doesn't pour through the speakers.
You have to... Someone with patchouli on has to be in the vicinity of...
I know this for a fact, because I listened to the Indigo Girls, and I didn't get any patchouli on me.
I think it pours itself out in its own time in a very empowered way.
This is definitely one of those things.
I think in a weird way that would make neither side happy about it, it is a lot like Axe or Ralph Lauren's Polo.
Axe body spray?
Axe body spray.
Because I think you become a nerd.
Did I say that right?
Did you say inured?
Did I say inured?
How do you say it?
Oh, inured, yeah.
Well, in any case, you quit noticing how much you stink, you know?
And I've seen this with old ladies and that's perfume.
You put on the white shoulders or the whatever and you put too much on and you don't know it.
It could be Calvin Klein's obsession, but I'm telling you, once you get into a personal scent, you got to know when to stop and you probably can't.
Which is precisely why I have never worn any kind of scented product.
I wear no scented products of any kind.
Setting aside the military implications.
Well, exactly.
First of all, you don't want the Viet Cong to pick you out in the jungle.
But second of all, you don't want to be walking around with Brute 45 or whatever on and it's coming off you in giant waves like on a highway in the desert, you know?
Giant waves of stinky cologne.
But also...
I learned very early on that I was extremely sensitive to the scents that women wore.
And if a woman was wearing a perfume or in a lot of cases like a natural oil, what are those called?
An essential oil?
Mm-hmm.
Uh, it was, um, it was like I became not sexually aroused.
Hmm.
Not at all.
None of those, none of those worked on you.
Beautiful girl.
Well, not, not, none of them, but what about, what about like a, like a ribeye?
What does she smell like a ribeye?
I mean, you know, in the right way, in the right places.
Could I watch her eating a ribeye?
In that case, yes.
That would conquer almost all like sandalwood.
This just became very, very sexy.
A woman eating a steak.
I love a woman who can really dig into a steak.
But if I was nuzzling her and all of a sudden I caught a whiff of ribeye, no, I don't think that that would.
Like sauteed mushrooms.
It's funny how you can mix those things up.
It's called a paraphilia.
Scent of sautéed mushrooms will get me through many, many long nights.
I was on side one of your first record.
I agree on all of these, and I've been guilty of this.
I've been guilty of that.
Of wearing an essential oil and turning off your boyfriend?
Yeah.
Deliberately smelling like a steak.
I've done that.
I think we've all dabbled.
In the early 90s, we were all dabbling with steak smells.
Yeah, it's true.
We were dabbling.
I had a very uncomfortable conversation one time with a girl that I was extremely attracted to, and we ended up dating for a long time.
But I had to say, stop wearing that smell.
And, you know, that's a tough conversation.
Without over-identifying here, I mean, can you give me a sense?
Was it a toilet water smell?
Or was it a... Toilette water?
That's what they call it.
They call it toilet water, which seems like a weird branding decision to me.
Of all the kinds of water that you could call that.
Well, it's from the French toilette.
Yeah.
But in any case, no, she was kind of an earthy girl.
And she had chosen, she had made the mistake.
Has that ever been an actual compliment to call someone earthy?
That's like calling a woman handsome.
It depends.
There are girls who would take it as a compliment.
But she actually was an earthy girl, and she chose... Was she a golem?
I think so.
mistakenly.
She was literally made of earth?
No, she was a sporty girl.
Let's say that.
She had a big butt and eventually was a lesbian.
Is that the idea?
No big butt and no lesbian.
No, she was like a swimmer dancer sporty.
But earthy.
Let's say she did not...
Shy away from perspiration.
She was not somebody who was afraid to perspire.
And she'd made the category error, I think, of choosing for herself an earthy scent.
You know, like a dark, musky scent.
And I said, I think really because you are already such a musky, a dark musky girl, you should choose a light scent like lavender or primrose.
You know, something flowery.
It's a little bit matchy-matchy.
You know, it's like when you wear a denim jacket with the denim pants.
It's a little matchy-matchy.
Yeah, you don't want to pick up a Carhartt jacket and smell campfire on it.
The Carhartt jacket's automatically going to smell like campfire.
You want to pick up a Carhartt jacket and smell the lobby of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel.
Or for a lady's take.
Well, now you're coining a smell that I don't want to smell, lady steak.
But anyway, this is the amazing part about the story.
I'm sorry to interrupt you, John, but that's a perfect example.
You like ladies and you like steak.
But when you portmanteau those together...
That's meat you don't want to cut.
She was receptive to my constructive criticism, and she changed her scent, and then we were off to the races.
Can I just tell you, that is extremely earthy for her to take that note.
Now, would you take a note like that if somebody said to you... I would, absolutely.
If someone caringly said, like, your scent...
is a wonderful part of you, but the part that you are spraying on after the fact, I think you could modify.
I would take that criticism.
What if they texted it to you?
See?
Smells different now.
All caps?
All I know is I try to text you as little as possible.
It's like a soup Nazi thing.
I come up very, I put my money on the counter.
I try to be very even with you.
I try to think about what time of day it is, whether you've slept, whether you've eaten.
And I try, not because you're delicate, but just because I don't want to be one of those people that causes problems in text to you.
And I'm just thinking if somebody said to you, you know, John, you're very earthy, maybe a little too earthy.
They might get a flaming text back.
I'll tell you what I think it is.
I think it's an act of violence.
I'm going to go there.
I'm going to be totally buried.
I think it's very violent.
To do what?
Well, here's the thing.
To comment on someone's scent or to send them an angry text?
Let's circle back to that.
All right.
Like I am so much of the time, I'm realizing now how often I'm at Walgreens, and I think I might need to get into some kind of program.
Well, Walgreens is right across the street from your house.
It's right across the street.
Well, it's close to our house.
Thank you, John.
It's very close to our house.
That's where I bought my cape.
Oh, John, can we talk about the capes on time?
I'm going to write that down.
Do you know what a special time that was for us?
Yeah, it was for me too.
Oh my God, that was a special time because you... Okay, you know what?
I'm writing that twice on a card, cape and cape.
I understand why you go to Walgreens.
It's your neighborhood.
It's your local.
Okay, but here's the thing about Wal... Okay, first of all, I was... Okay, Walgreens.
You like pens, and they have lots of pens.
They have an okay selection.
Okay, let's get this out of the way.
We have the empirically, categorically shittiest Walgreens I've ever been in in my life.
I've been in a fuckton of Walgreens, and ours is easily the worst, and I'll tell you why.
You've also been to our Safeway, the Safeway where you park on the roof, the creepy Safeway by our house, which is, as far as I know, there is one Safeway in Walnut Creek.
Not the nice Safeway, but the old Safeway that might be creepier.
It's a little bit Haunted Mansion.
Like they turn off half the lights and stuff.
But ours... My mom said just the other day, sorry to interrupt.
No, no.
She said four times in her life, her entire life, has she been into a supermarket that smelled like rotting meat.
And all four times it was a Safeway.
Ugh.
So she says, I won't buy meat at a Safeway because if you can't keep the smell of rotting meat out of your supermarket, then you're doing something really wrong.
Have you ever bought seafood?
I know you haven't because you're a rugged earthy man.
Have you ever bought seafood at a Lucky?
A.K.A.
Albertsons.
You ever bought seafood there?
Does it come in like an almond roca can?
I'm trying to... You know, Lucky.
Lucky's, like, it used to be Albertsons.
Yeah, no, I bought a seafood there.
Yeah, I actually name-checked in a Built to Spill song, if memory serves.
Albertsons.
He thought an Albertsons stir-fry dinner can make his apartment at home.
I'm not familiar with their work, but... It didn't make his apartment at home.
Didn't make his apartment at home.
What about Twin Falls, Idaho?
Isn't that a pretty song?
It is a pretty song and not a very pretty town.
Huh.
I think that's a beautiful song.
So many people try to capture that feeling of being a kid and being confused about love and things, and it usually comes out really stupid, but that's gorgeous.
Okay, so we got to circle back to the Meadow Walgreens.
Oh, you were saying that there's a safe way...
Anyway, you know what?
Let's skip it.
It's really boring.
Let's come back to the Cape.
But I was walking through Walgreens.
I was not getting a prescription.
I think I was buying... What was I there for?
I think I had to buy some bathroom tissue, as they call it in France.
Oh, no, wait.
Let me ask you a question.
Yes, please.
Go ahead.
I just got into an argument with a friend about this.
Yeah.
Wait a minute.
Really?
Yeah.
Can you believe that?
Okay.
He's a successful man, a wealthy person.
Duff McKagan.
No, it wasn't Duff.
Shit.
I was using his restroom...
And what do you think I discovered?
He's an over-the-back guy.
No.
He is a Scott toilet tissue buyer.
We've had this conversation, haven't we?
Yes, we have.
I think we've had the Scott tissue conversation on a number of occasions.
You get mad about a lot of stuff eventually, but I don't think I've seen many things where you get mad faster.
No, I came out of that bathroom shaking that roll of toilet paper in his face.
And I said, you're a fucking millionaire.
Buy some goddamn two-ply toilet paper.
This is a crime you're committing against yourself and your family.
I don't know our audience, John, but I'm going to have to assume that there are some people out there, believe it or not, there are some people out there that may not know about the literal human holocaust that Scott Toilet Paper represents.
Could you briefly give people an idea of what the problem is with Scott Toilet Paper?
Scott toilet paper is like waxed paper.
It's like butcher paper.
They fool you into thinking.
If you are a comparison shopper, you're going through the aisles and you're looking at the different toilet papers and you say, oh, I get a thousand sheets or I get 10,000 sheets of toilet paper.
It's such a big roll and it looks so firm.
Massive roll of toilet paper, so many sheets, so many square foot.
It's like a well-made Nicaraguan cigar.
There's no soft spots.
There's no hard spots.
You hold it in your hand, and you go, this is a solid fucking chunk of toilet paper.
I'm not going to get dicked over with all that fruity stuff where you get the super big tube in the middle.
It feels, on the face of it, on the butt of it, it seems like this is going to be the perfect toilet paper.
Yeah, you could knock somebody out with that roll of toilet paper.
Super solid.
And it's half the price of the other toilet papers, so you think...
I am a great shopper.
I am a smart person.
And let's be honest, it is just toilet paper, right?
I mean, how good or bad could toilet paper be given what I'm going to do with it, right?
I mean, you're not an idiot.
It doesn't have to be printed with a colorful pattern.
It's just toilet paper.
But then you get it home and you realize that it is...
It is as thin as tissue paper.
It is as soft as notebook paper.
Like filler paper?
Like neat filler paper?
Yeah.
It's like inkjet toilet paper.
And because it is so uncomfortable and so flimsy, you end up using seven times more toilet paper than you would...
And it's so poorly constructed role-wise sheet to sheet that if you do – I'm not one of these people.
I think – I don't know if you're one of these people.
Are you a kind of guy or are you a rappy, rappy, rap guy?
Actually, I'm a fold, fold, fold guy.
Me too.
Me too.
But if you were a kind of guy, it would fall apart four times.
It's like using – it's like a public restroom in a park.
Yeah, right.
It's public restroom toilet paper in a park.
It's what it is, John.
I think my Oprah memory, my Oprah memory that got me back on that Scott and fucked me up when we were first friends, I think it's because I was an RA in college, and I think Scott is what I gave away to those poor bastards.
Public college, public college, Scott toilet paper.
Well, so anyway, my millionaire friend starts giving me some pushback on it.
Like, I've always used Scott.
There's nothing wrong with it.
And I'm like, you have no idea.
Your children are growing up in a toilet paper holocaust.
They're going to go to other kids' houses, and they might as well have literal human shit on their face.
They're going to walk in there, and they're going to have no idea.
It's like not knowing how to eat with a fork.
They're going to walk in there, and they go, what is this magical thing that you've put into this special room?
Yeah, all my friends are flying on a magic carpet of soft toilet paper, and we are riding on a birch two-by-four.
Well, even worse than them going to their friend's house when their teenage friends come to their house, and then the work gets out on the street.
That's like Drunk Dan on the couch.
Gross.
Well, I still struggle with this.
And first of all, if I may say, thank you very much for correcting that.
You work like so many of the things where you've come and stayed at my house for a long time for free.
You really helped me with that and my family.
We don't get that anymore.
But can I just say that whether it is, again, the paper products that my uncle helped to pioneer, whether it's the paper towels, whether it is the toilet paper, you've noticed, I'm sure,
over time that they've been trying to find new ways for you to use paper for things.
And I don't want this to turn into a morning zoo or a stand-up comedy thing, but I'm just saying, you got all the wipes now, right?
Everything's a wipe.
Everything's a wipe.
New ways to have cheap paper that you buy.
Maybe it's got some kind of branded Johnson & Johnson product on it.
I'm telling you, my family to this day struggles with which is the right toilet paper.
When I was in that Walgreens with the stinky patchouli lady we should come back to, I stood there and I looked at the embarrassment of riches before me.
I still had no idea.
How to buy toilet paper.
Well, I judge by all of the heuristics that I know, right?
So let me just say I've done some research on Amazon because, you know, you can subscribe to toilet paper, which I've done before.
There are several metrics.
Well, there's cheap toilet paper, which is in its own class.
But then in the mid-range toilet paper, mid to high, right?
This is in your Honda Accord of toilet paper.
You can have a soft...
You can have durable.
What?
That's a durable metric.
Durable?
Yeah, I think I call it tough.
I'll have to look it up.
Durable so that it travels well?
Oh, you mean like if you went to somebody's house that had Scott?
No.
Like a little poodle caddy?
I'm not saying that you would carry a roll around with you, although I do.
I think you know exactly what I mean.
I think if you were having a tough time and you really had to go to town, you weren't drinking enough water, I think it's going to blow up in your hand like a German grenade, like a potato masher, they called it.
A potato masher.
They did call it that.
So we still struggle with this, and now here's the problem.
Is this like the Ikea pillow-selecting matrix?
What a sham that stuff is.
Where you go in and you say, I'm a back sleeper, but I like an airy breeze that blows up some night.
Oh, you should definitely get the Glergen.
I did.
Well, no, I didn't get the Glergen.
Have you got one of those Swedish ones?
I sleep on one of those funky foam ones.
Do you do that?
No, no, no.
I buy my pillows at Ross Dress for Less.
I don't know why that's so funny to me.
I think of that as like where poor people buy panties and fake Yadros, and do you make a special trip there?
Yeah, I don't even know what a fake Yadro is, but no, they have a selection of linens and pillows that's very inexpensive.
You know, linens are expensive.
Do you try them out while you're there?
I stick a finger in and stroke it.
Sure.
Okay.
Let me put it differently.
Certainly you try it out.
And I definitely won't come back to mattresses because, boy, is that ever a racket, the mattress thing.
But the pillow thing, do you just kind of hold it in your hand like a normal adult or do you smash it against your head at all?
You're not supine at any point.
Yeah.
No, I don't lay down in the corridors of Ross and snuggle my pillow.
But I have a sense of the kind of pillow I like.
And actually, I made a mistake this last time I bought pillows that were too firm.
It seems like such a good idea.
Yeah, I'm trying to break them in now.
Every time I walk past them, I kick them and punch them a bunch of times.
This is like the Crest and Colgate thing for me, where I didn't think it used to matter, and now it matters.
And hotels, boy, I really notice.
You go in there, and you get in there, and you travel, but you go in places.
You can even go somewhere cool, like a Marriott.
I'm a Marriott man.
You go in, and there's fucking 12 pillows on the bed.
And as my wife points out, they're mostly decorative.
Right.
Right, the first 10 of them end up on the floor immediately.
Yeah, but then there's like three or four underneath that fill, it's not even like a bag of feathers.
It's like very fine styrofoam, and it's way too soft for me.
I don't like the headphone pillow thing where you lay down and it goes all the way around your head.
But then, you know, you can always consult the pillow menu.
Have you ever called to get something from the pillow menu?
Oh, well, you know, I'm allergic to feathers.
Is that right?
Yeah.
And that's why you never wear boas at all.
Well, I do have a boa.
Okay.
You're right, I don't wear it.
But I used to have to call down at hotels to get a hypoallergenic pillow, but now all the pillows seem to... It's a rare hotel where all the pillows are feather.
Right.
They used to make them out of shrimp, peanuts, and butter, but they discovered that a lot of people were sensitive to that.
Yuck.
Well, I mean, but my feeling when I walk into a hotel and the bed is covered with pillows, decorative pillows...
I look at the pillows and I try to determine the pillow in that pile that is the least likely pillow to have been employed in a filthy sex act.
Oh, John, I know.
I try and find that pillow and it's usually, I assume it's buried under all the other pillows.
I can't even have this conversation with you, John.
I know you don't listen to the other program I do, but I've talked about this on the last three shows.
Oh, you have.
In the last three shows?
No.
holy it's led to something i apologize for anybody who's heard the other program it's it's come to be called man's assumption uh you know like occam's razor or murphy's law man's assumption is that everything in a hotel room has been in somebody's ass at some point oh my god or in that case let's be honest this is we can now you were talking guy to guy on the on this show just assume that somebody has come on everything in the room because they probably have well and our former drummer nabeel ayers mm-hmm
When we would enter a hotel room, the first thing he would do is grab the unused garbage bag liner out of the garbage can, and he would walk over and wrap it around the remote control.
Ha!
And tie it off so that you could not touch the remote control.
And he would grab the remote control with his hand inside the bag like he was picking up dog shit in a park.
And he'd tie the bag around the remote control.
And then we could happily search or whatever through the channels of television without having to touch this thing that he was absolutely certain.
had been all the way up inside a person.
It's a safe thing to do.
It's like why you wipe off the top of your pop can, right?
The truckers, right?
Exactly, because the truckers are peeing.
Can I ask you this?
Now, when you're in there and you're enjoying your toilet paper in the restroom, and let's be honest, it's probably not terribly expensive toilet paper.
They fold it into a little arrow.
Literally, don't get me started on that.
Did you know I have an entire blog about folding paper or toilet paper into a point?
I didn't.
I thought I knew all of your blogs.
I don't even know all my blogs.
It's called Quit Touching My Toilet Paper.
And so you sit down, you're ready to enjoy yourself, right?
It's daddy's deuce time.
And so the phone rings.
What?
There's a phone next... Oh, yeah, sure.
Next to the toilet.
You're going to pick up... Somebody's going to pick up a phone that's next to a toilet.
I just... I'm sorry.
I'm repeating myself because I cannot stop thinking about this.
Like...
I don't even like picking up – my daughter likes to play with the phone in the room, you know, so I unplug it.
But then you know what I do?
I grab a giant pump of hand sanitizer and like a crazy person, I cover the entire thing until it's saturated and then wipe it all off.
You know, I've known men who when they're in their cups will reveal things about what they have done with objects.
Men have done things with objects.
Oh, they certainly have.
I had a friend who admitted to putting a piece of rope in his ass because he was bored one day.
Now, a lot of people would say that piece of rope is fine for every purpose.
I'm just thinking a phone.
A phone can be a friend.
You know what I'm saying?
He admitted this to you and his defense or his... He wasn't a good friend.
Oh, I see.
Wasn't a good friend.
Did he tie little knots in it?
Because that's actually a thing.
I've seen that at the good vibrations.
And then you pull it out a little at a time.
Yeah, what's the good vibrations?
Is that a sex store?
No, it's a vibrator store.
They don't sell sex per se.
Oh, I see.
You can have a vibrator store and it doesn't fall under the rubric of sex store.
I'm sorry.
I want a little sapphire on you there.
You can make milkshakes with them.
Oh, sure.
Or you have back pain, you know, like lower back pain.
But anyway, let's let that go.
Okay, so first of all, I guess there's probably some like industry publication that says people will feel like they're very welcome and cushy if you walk in and there's 95 pillows on the bed.
Maybe that's like, but the first, I mean, like, I'm sorry, John, I feel like I've talked about this 100 times.
So I don't want to talk about it again.
But I have a whole process.
I want to do a whole show.
Not a show, a podcast.
I want to have a whole podcast about hotels where I try to help people because I have a process.
I have an entire process for what I do.
You try and help hotel people serve customers better or you try and help people who are going to hotels avoid the pitfalls and the landmines in every hotel room?
I used to be very interested in the things I could do to help people with their personal productivity because I think it's important to find the right mix of things that help you do the work that's important to you.
I remember that.
That made you famous.
Yeah, I was rich and stuff.
And so here's the thing.
Today, what I want to do in the same way that I would say –
I like these index cards for this use, for this reason, this may or may not work for you.
What I want to do is I want to share a process with people of what so far has worked for me.
Now, stuff like, you know about the bedbugs, right?
You can't do anything about the bedbugs.
You just got bedbugs.
That's just a thing now, right?
Yeah.
But I mean, I go through, this is really boring.
I'm immune to bedbugs.
Is that right?
Because of your natural earthiness?
They don't like me.
And I think what it is is that I have the antibodies for Lyme disease.
Yeah.
But I never got Lyme disease.
How'd you get that?
I was bitten by a tick in the forest.
Was it one you were familiar with?
Just random one?
It was just a strange tick.
It was a strange tick and I had to...
I was in the Netherlands, and I went to the nearest little town, and I said, there was a tick in me, and the man... And I had tried to get the tick out, which is a mistake.
Did you do the match thing?
No, I didn't know what I was doing.
You just grabbed it with your filthy fingers and started... I grabbed it with two matchsticks that I... We know the matchstick.
A freshly extinguished match is supposed to kill a tick.
Right, but I don't know if you want to kill it while its little head is still buried in you.
No, I had two matchsticks and I put a rubber band around them and tried to make a pair of tweezers out of them.
They call them Dutch tweezers.
I went into this little town and there was this kindly little Dutch doctor who said, oh, here's the thing.
You just put a little rubbing alcohol or really any kind of alcohol on it and it'll come right out.
It won't kill it.
It'll want to get out of you.
Yeah, ditto Vaseline because it can't breathe, right?
Yeah, so he did this and the tick came out.
And then later on, I went through an area which was all ticks.
There were no trees.
They looked like trees, but they were just piles of ticks.
And I had ticks all over me, and I got all these ticks off.
But many months later, when I was feeling not very good, I went to the doctor.
It turned out I was ill for another reason.
But the doctor said, you have the antibodies for Lyme disease.
You should watch.
How can you possibly tell that?
Well, there's a test.
An in-office procedure to find out if you have the antibodies for Lyme disease?
Is that something they screen for, John?
Maybe it is.
Or maybe I told him about the tick and he screened for it.
Oh, so it's like an inoculation or something.
Like if you survive that, now you're strong against deer ticks.
Yeah, and I'm strong against deer ticks and I think also bedbugs.
They come up against me and they smell my earthy scent and they say...
Move along.
Move along.
Nothing to see here.
You're like a Jedi.
I would love to have that.
I'm so scared of bed bugs.
They totally freak me out.
Or lice.
Lice.
You know about the lice?
If you lice at our kids' school, somebody gets lice, you've got to check everybody for lice, and then you've got to put all the toys, and you've got to disinfect everything, put all the toys in garbage bags, and cut off the air so the lice on your children's toys will die.
It's completely harrowing.
Oh, I had lice a bunch of times when I was a kid.
Really?
Yeah.
Because there was no gathering of kids that I didn't want to get in the center of and rub my head all over their heads.
It was a thing when I was a kid.
You got a pretty big head.
Yeah, that's true.
And I've seen photos.
You've...
Because people with big heads look good on television.
Oh, no question about it.
People like me, I have a normal-sized head in those John Darnielle eyes.
I look really dishonest when I'm on video.
Totally dishonest.
Oh, shifty.
Shifty.
I love that John Darnielle, but we got the eyes that are too close together.
We're not pals or anything, but you know what I'm saying?
You see somebody with the eyes that are too close together?
It's like the opposite of a baby.
We like babies because they got the big eyes.
Big eyes, right.
They're far apart, like E.T.
That's why you like a baby.
That's why you don't throw in a river.
I've always felt, because I'm a big blonde person, I've always been somewhat confused by the fact that I have kind of, I have slanty eyes.
In a way, like a laplander who is constantly searching across the snowy plains for his reindeer.
I have these eyes that are always half open and kind of... Does that ping pong?
Does that mean they're scrunched up or they're almondy?
No, they're not almondy.
They're scrunchy.
They're squinty.
Okay.
It might be because I'm a high plains drifter also.
That's another way to identify a high plains drifter by his kind of weather-beaten, squinty eyes.
Arch Stanton.
You know, I'll tell you something, John.
I don't know if anyone's ever told you this, but I definitely felt this way about my late father, and there are a few other people I felt.
I don't think I've ever known anybody...
who looks more different with their glasses off than you.
Clark Kent, Clark Kent and Superman, ha ha ha, right?
They look exactly the same.
You look so different.
And what's funny is, of course, you have many different pairs of glasses.
At some point, we should address the glasses issue.
You have, well, when I was at your house, the time you gave me the glasses, my sister-in-law threw away, not that I'm mad.
You had, if memory serves, two or three of the racks from a drugstore full of vintage frames.
Yeah, I have about now probably 170 pairs of glasses.
That's all?
I would have guessed more.
Well, because I keep giving them away to people whose sister-in-law keeps throwing them away.
Do you remember those glasses?
Do you remember how cool those were?
Those were gorgeous glasses, and in fact, if I recall, they became your signature look.
Not by design, but when I stopped wearing them, people said, where's your glasses?
Right.
Now, we found a pair.
We found another pair or two.
I don't want to say replace those, but they're pretty...
But you look so, I can't even describe quite what it is.
I don't know if I'd say you look Laplandese, Laplandesque?
Laplandese.
I was going to make a joke about reindeer because that's the exactly one thing I know about Lapland.
They have cute hats too, right?
They do.
And sweaters.
They're very sweatery people.
First time I saw you with the glasses off, I mean, the thing is, you could wear any of your crazy Elton John glasses, like any of those nutty glasses, those creepy Elvis ones.
I have a photo that I will put up of you and my daughter when you had the missing tooth and the long hair and the Elvis glasses.
Creepy Elvis glasses, yeah.
But you still looked like you.
Even with the tooth missing and the crazy hair, you always look like you, beard or no beard.
You always look like you.
You take your glasses off, I swear to God.
You look like your brother-in-law or something.
And what is the change?
What do I look like without my glasses on?
Your eyes.
More handsome?
I don't think you can get more handsome.
You know, I don't know what it is.
I guess the question I'm offering is, has anyone ever told you that before?
Well, it's a thing I kind of keep under wraps because in the event that I ever need to go on the lam.
Enough said.
Just take my glasses off and I blend into a crowd.
Nobody would ever notice me again.
You were into spy stuff.
Yeah.
Doesn't that used to be one of my and I know this is a rookie thing, but like I got to say, like when I was a youngster, not maybe not a kid exactly.
But that was one of the things that fascinated me the most when I would read.
I don't know.
Let's just say I'm a piker.
I've not gone anywhere near what you have done with reading up on this.
But when I would read about how to do disguises, that was the part that always blew my mind.
Because it was all life hacks.
It was stuff like put newspaper in your shoes so you'll walk a little bit different.
But it's an entire way to become this different person.
It's way more than like a fake mustache.
It's a whole way of carrying yourself differently without attracting attention.
Is that right?
It is.
It's absolutely true.
So it's not just shoe polish in the hair and a different shirt.
There's a lot more to it.
Yeah, you put a little pebble or a pin in your shoe and all of a sudden you've got like a strange gait and half the people you know wouldn't recognize you.
Now me, when I catch myself, I don't think of myself as someone who has like terrible posture, but I know I don't have good posture.
But if I catch myself doing walking the way I usually walk all the time, I'll sometimes just straighten up the tiniest bit and I can tell that I probably look different.
Now you...
you're a big guy and you seem to have, you walk tall.
I'm just saying, if you had to disguise yourself, if you slouched down just a little bit, you would look pretty different, right?
Well, and one of the things that I do is I walk my toes, my toes pronate.
Is that, is that the word?
No, my toes.
Well, I walk with my toes pointing a little bit out.
Like a ballerina.
Yeah, like a ballerina, like a giant ballerina.
And sometimes I will intentionally, if I have a long distance to walk, I will intentionally change the angle of where my toes are pointing so that I'm pointing my toes directly straight ahead.
And it changes the whole architecture of my body and my gait.
Is that right?
Yeah.
And I do that to throw off satellites.
If they're watching you from a satellite, right?
It's like the sand people walking in single file to disguise their numbers.
You move that.
So you're almost like a bear wearing shoes.
It's something where they're going to go, wait a minute.
Because clearly I can tell because this is like an inch into the earth that this is somebody heavy.
But you don't see people wearing like a size six Converse, you know, walking on their fours.
That would throw everybody off, right?
Yes.
Because everybody wears Converse, you know, that would...
See, and I can't shave my beard and change my appearance because I have a beard-shaped face.
If I shave my beard, most of the time people don't even notice the beard is gone.
Is that code for a weak chin?
What does that mean?
No, it means a chin shaped like a beard.
I have such a big chin that the beard is just like... Is that something you learned from the Dutch doctor or is that something you've always known?
Well, I remember as a teenager when my face went from teenage face to adult face, and I definitely noticed, where did all this jaw come from?
I'm much bigger faced now.
But so I seriously, it happens to me all the time.
I shave my beard and people come up, people who have seen me every day for a year come up and say, including my mom, say, did you change the part in your hair?
Are you wearing a different pair of glasses?
I totally know what you mean.
And I'm like, I shaved my freaking beard.
I've been wearing it for, I've had a beard for two years and today I don't, you don't even notice.
Whereas other people like, like weak chin people, they shave a beard and you go, Oh, I can usually, I'm pretty good.
I would not want to say anything that makes anybody in our audience self-conscious, but I'm pretty good.
You know, the term clocking, you know, it needs to be clocked.
Yes.
Okay.
Like, so like if you're somebody who's doing a whole gender thing, right?
As you do.
Yeah.
Well, you can pass.
i don't know if there's other terms you might have known this in the early 90s you can pass or you can be clocked and when you're clocked that's when somebody looks at you and goes oh that's totally a dude right and and i think there are a lot of people with things like i hope this i hope this isn't ping pong talk things like comb overs or comb forwards
Right now, this is in the days, you know, like today, at least you have the option, right?
Like how many of our good friends have shaved their head and they look awesome now?
Like that didn't used to be an option in the 1970s.
Even in the 80s, that was not an option.
I got a guy that I used to work for, a guy that was the source of a lot of my paying work.
When this guy got in a swimming pool, it was crazy.
I mean, he looked like Ali McGraw from one side, you know?
I mean...
Well, maybe not only McGraw, but maybe like Thor or something.
Because his hair, his hair went down to his shoulder.
And he did this amazing architectural Frank Gehry thing to make it fly up and you could see the hairspray like glistening on it.
But I also have friends that – remember the Caesar?
Remember when George Clooney made the Caesar kind of catch on?
Sure.
Well, and the Caesar was very popular with gay men in the early 90s, too.
It always comes back.
The Caesar always comes back.
Daniel Negrano, the professional poker player, who is by all accounts a bald man, he looks like he has a full head of hair because he's rocking the Caesar.
Well, for a long time, certainly.
I mean, there's so much we know now about bald men that we didn't know in the 70s because you could get away with a lot, you know.
I mean, look at Brian.
Did you ever see Brian Eno when he was back in Roxy music?
He rocked it.
Did you ever see what he looked like when he was in Roxy music?
Well, of course.
He rocked it in the same way that that character from Rocky Horror Picture Show rocked it.
Oh, my God, you're right.
Which is to say grotesquely, that's a terrible look, bald with long, stringy, Swiss hair.
That just says I'm a high-level cleric on Saturdays.
That's exactly what it is.
If you are going to dress...
If you are going to dress like one of the members of Jethro Tull or you are going to dress like Mick Fleetwood on the cover of Rumors, you are more than welcome.
And Mick Fleetwood's another one.
It's great to let your hair over your ears grow long and then on the top of your head, which is bald, just have a few really long single strands of hair.
But that is not... I don't want to work ping pong, but this is big in my neighborhood, John.
Have you seen, especially with the Chinese men, have you seen like the six discreet stringlets of hair across the top thing?
That are slathered down with Vaseline or something like that.
don't know it's anyway it's it's but it's you know what it's a move you know and i i respect it but here's the thing sorry i got off sorry i got off topic here like i don't think you don't seem to suffer from either of those you got a full head of hair you got the beard but you're absolutely right sometimes you'll get a like right i've seen some photos of you lately and you look great you've got like a professional man's haircut it looks like well i'm cutting my own hair still i'm just getting better at it whoa whoa whoa hang on really you cut your own hair i've cut my own hair for over 10 years
No way.
Which is why my haircut varies so much because most of my haircuts take place.
Is it why you stopped drinking?
I mean, was it just getting... You were just scared what would happen?
No, that happened before.
But at a certain point there along the way, when I realized that I could shave dry, that I didn't even need water anymore, that I could just shave with a razor dry...
Because, of course, if you use shaving cream, the Viet Cong can smell you from across the river.
So for a long time, I was shaving with hot water.
And then I realized I could just shave dry.
At that point, I was liberated.
I was free.
I was free from the whole... I mean, the entire aisle of Walgreens...
That deals with male shaving products.
Can you just be your Boswell for half a second here?
For anybody, this is important you go through this, but I also want to say for anybody who's interested in this, you went into a lot of detail about the genesis behind this and the revelations.
You went through all of this in an episode, if memory serves, it was called The Viet Cong Can Smell the Soap.
That's right.
That's right.
And you went through the history of wanting to eventually become some kind of a person in espionage.
Yes.
But the haircutting, what I realized at that point was that as I was freeing myself from these tyrannies, or to quote the great philosopher, as I freed myself from mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our minds.
Have no fear from atomic energy, because none of them can stop at the time.
Okay.
I can't even guess who it is.
As you were saying it, I kept going through.
First, I thought it was Nietzsche.
Then I thought it was Merv Griffin.
Then I thought it might be Bertrand Russell.
How long shall they kill our prophets while we stand aside and look?
Some say it's just a part of it.
Ray Moland.
We've got to fulfill the book.
Dick Cavett.
Who is it?
Who said that?
That's good.
It's your hero, Bob Marley.
huh that's pretty that's that i that was pretty good he's a very smart man how do you know all those uh bob narley lyrics because because i like bob marley i think he is good you like you like him as a dude i i enjoy the i enjoy reggae music
So, you were buoyed by the success you had doing espionage, Alec Guinness-style shaving.
I decided I was going to go the whole hog.
I was going to free myself from... Because how many times... I mean, you have a whole photo blog about this.
The number of times you go in to a hair salon to get a haircut and...
And you come out the other side, and it's like, that's not what I was going for.
And then you have all the fun of letting your hair grow out, and you look like a crazy person, and then you go in and get your hair cut again, and they didn't get it right again.
And I was like, listen, if somebody's not going to get it right, if somebody's going to give me a bad haircut, it might as well be me.
Let it be me.
And I started cutting my own hair, and I have been doing it for a long time.
Now I cut other people's hair.
I cut my mom's hair.
Wait, really?
Yeah, my mom comes to my house and says, can you give me a trim?
Your mom has a very earthy haircut.
First of all, we've just got to always stipulate your mom is awesome, and she seems she's very practical.
Yes.
I couldn't see her going like what my mom did and having it done.
I would never see her getting it set and stuff.
No.
Well, and then she started cutting it herself.
So now she cuts her own hair and then comes to me to do the tricky bits.
Touch-ups.
Yeah.
But my problem is I always... The idea to cut my hair always is strongest at 3 o'clock in the morning.
which is really bad it's a bad time to make decisions three o'clock in the morning terrible because you get these three o'clock in the morning is a great time to clean the house but it is a terrible time to cut your hair because you start cutting it and you lose yourself in the insanity of the of the of the night and pretty soon hair is flying everywhere i mean i have given myself some haircuts that seemed like a great idea
Well, it's the, what's the word I'm looking for?
It's the Hirsutman's version of drunk dialing.
I mean, I would worry, yes, secondarily, I would worry about the quality of the haircut, but even more, and I know you know this from women, I don't want to get ping pong, but the impulse to do something to your hair or for your hair or of your hair almost always reflects something much deeper.
And the 3AM voice is not a good voice to listen to about how you should do your hair.
Right.
And so usually my haircuts are in three stages.
So I do the 3 a.m.
haircut and then the following day at about 2 o'clock in the afternoon when I have identified all the problems with what I did the night before.
Then I do the 2 in the afternoon like try and get it into some kind of shape.
And then...
Over the next week, there's a kind of trickling later stage of every time I walk past a mirror, I go, oh, and I get a pair of scissors and I cut some little thing off.
And then after about a week of that,
It usually comes into line.
Right now, though, I did a good haircut several months ago such that now it's growing out well.
Oh, that's a good haircut.
Yeah, and I'm just letting it alone.
I went in last night with a pair of scissors and looked at myself in the mirror with a pair of scissors and I thought...
Put the scissors down.
It's like a fancy walks up to the mirror with the cone.
Exactly.
I was like, you're fine.
You're fine.
Don't do not fuck with it right now.
Just what brings you.
I just probably been on time for this probably.
But what is it that obviously you're already up at 3 a.m.
Well, probably.
I mean, you're you're a late sleeper.
You go to bed late, right?
Yeah, 3 a.m.
is a great time for certain things.
But there are other things that it's terrible for.
I shouldn't write emails at 3 a.m.
Is it just because you need something to do with your hands?
No, I think 3 a.m.
is the hour of dissatisfaction.
Oh, I read a whole thing about this the other day.
Harrowing.
I've never considered myself an insomniac.
There's been times when I haven't slept as much as I'd like, but I read this amazing article that I'll send to you.
It's basically about all the authors and everybody.
It's written from the perspective of saying if you are an insomniac or anybody who's ever had trouble sleeping—
If you're not like that, you have no idea what it's like.
And goes through these like the three horrific dark night of the soul stages of insomnia that it just sounds, it sounds completely harrowing.
And it starts out where you're like, oh, I can't sleep.
Then you get into like going through everything you've ever done wrong in your life.
That's a nice one.
Or like, no, no, I'm sorry.
That's step three.
Step two is everyone you've wronged.
You go through that, but then by the time right before dawn, you're just sitting there compulsively cataloging everything that you've ever, ever done wrong.
Yeah, it's lovely.
Does that happen to you?
First of all, as much as you're comfortable saying, have you had that experience in the past?
Oh, absolutely.
But I have routinely stayed up for 48 hours to really push the envelope on those feelings.
But even just last night at 3 o'clock in the morning, I did one of those things.
Which, you know, which I try to do infrequently now where I responded to someone's angry email by going through and responding after every sentence that they wrote.
So they wrote me a paragraph and then I went in and after every sentence wrote a paragraph about their sentence.
Yeah.
where I was like, here's what you're trying to do in this sentence, and here's why it's not working.
And then I would let them say another sentence, and then I would say, here's why this sentence is a total fail also.
Here are the ploys that you are employing to try and guilt me into.
You ran a Cyrano on him.
Yeah.
You think you're going to tell me I got a big nose?
Let me tell you about big noses.
Oh, no.
See, now I hate that style of argumentation, the one where you – Here's how you could have insulted me better.
Well, no, I don't mind that.
But the whole like, oh, I've got a big nose?
You've got a big nose.
Oh, no, no.
I just mean there's a wonderful scene in the – I guess it's from the play, but there's a wonderful scene in Cyrano where this guy comes up to him and wants to like – oh, he's the tough guy.
He comes and he says, your nose is rather large.
And then Cyrano composes a poem on the fly while he kicks the guy's ass with the sword.
Yeah.
about all of the ways that he could have done that in a more clever way.
This is what that reminds me of because he literally does it like line by line in a different style.
Yeah, that's exactly what I try and do.
Do you make a ballade?
You do a ballade right in the email?
Well, what it is is when people try to accomplish a goal...
especially when they write it down, but even when they say it to you, when they're speaking to you, people try and accomplish a goal by employing, by not just saying straight what they want, why they're dissatisfied with you and what they want from you.
But they try and use all these ploys like appeal to a straw man and all the sophistic fallacies.
They try and use sophism on you where they are
They're trying to lead you down a way of thinking, and they're trying to make you... My favorite one of these is a friend of mine, many, many years ago, we were sitting in a restaurant in San Francisco, actually.
There were three of us, and we were looking at a pizza menu, trying to decide what kind of pizza to get.
And the menu said, you get two free toppings...
On a large pizza.
And so I said, I think we should get pepperoni and mushroom.
And my second friend said, well, I don't like mushrooms.
And then he said, what about pepperoni and green pepper?
And the third guy said, well, I'm not really that into pepperoni.
And then the second guy said, well, let's just get a cheese pizza.
We can all agree on cheese.
And I said, well, we get two free toppings.
So why don't we get, you know, let's get green pepper and onion.
And then the third guy was like, well, no, I like a little meat.
What about sausage and onion?
And the second guy says again, oh, why don't we just get cheese?
I mean, we can all agree on cheese.
And we both kind of looked at him and said, well, yeah, except for the two free toppings, free toppings.
So I so then I say, all right, sausage and onion sounds good.
And the other guy says, yeah, OK, sausage and onion.
And the third guy now a little bit upset goes, well, let's just get cheese.
We can all agree on cheese.
And we looked at him and said, we just agreed on sausage and onion.
And then it occurred to me, and I said to him, wait a minute, do you want cheese pizza?
Is that what you're saying?
You want to get cheese.
That is what you want.
And he was like, it's just that we can all agree on cheese.
But clearly you're not.
And I said, we can't all agree on cheese.
Only you are agreeing on cheese.
And it wasn't even that he wanted that.
No, what it was was that he just wanted a cheese pizza.
Okay.
But he could not say it because he had trained himself.
He'd grown up thinking... Like that trick works?
That he was the problem solver.
That he was the one who made everybody happy.
He was the one that negotiated.
And what he had learned to do is get his way by...
By negotiating this thing where he ended up where he tried to make his desire seem like the compromise position between everybody else and he and this guy had a reputation of being the nicest guy.
Oh, he's such a great guy.
But what he does is he gets his way by presenting it as the simplest.
Is that who I think it is?
No, no, no.
It's a guy you don't know.
But that phrase, we can all agree on cheese.
And you also, you despise it when I say we'll have to agree to disagree.
What do you say when I say that to you?
Exactly.
I've agreed to nothing.
I agree to nothing.
And so this I made sure that this phrase we can all agree on cheese became a byword.
It became a watchword for this tendency, which is the tendency of people to to seem like they are being accommodating while they are actually manipulating.
And it's a very, very common thing.
And I think if you look for it in life, you'll see it all the time.
And this email I got last night from this person, they were trying to manipulate me by framing the argument that we were having in a certain way.
Such that it seemed fait accompli, right?
That he had already framed the argument and now here was his elegant solution for it.
And what I was saying was you are not in the position to frame the argument.
It's not your argument to frame.
So it is not your argument to solve it.
Is this someone you're acquainted with or this wasn't like some random troll?
This is somebody you know.
Yeah, this is it's another business situation where I'm doing business with somebody and they are trying to and we have a disagreement and then they all of a sudden start using all this weird, creepy, you know, kind of like combining a little bit of like because because people are so ashamed when they get into a fight.
And so manipulative people are great at turning that shame into an agent to accomplish their own goal.
It's also a foothold to self-doubt.
Now you make the person start doubting themselves.
Exactly.
So they know you're ashamed already that you're in a fight.
And they just phrase it in such a way that you doubt your position.
Right.
And then they offer you an elegant solution.
And in 99% of the time, people are so relieved to have a solution presented, so relieved that the other person is offering, you know, what appears to be their hand in peace, that they don't notice that the argument has been reframed and that the hand in peace is actually just the other person's
The other person is just basically winning by presenting their desire as like a compromise.
I think that's a big business guy thing.
I think that's – you've talked before about the whole thing where you've got to deal with somebody in authority and – you know what I mean?
Or somebody with the power or the money or whatever.
I think that's a very common way and if you're somebody who has a very strong personality –
you know, if like in your case, you're able to say to that person, wait a minute, you know, I don't know what you really want here, but like you say, you're not in a position to frame this.
Well, if you're around a very powerful person who's used to doing that all day long and is good at it, it can be a hell of a Jedi mind trick because then now you sound uppity.
You sound, you sound like you're being unreasonable.
Oh, that's the, that's the whole game.
Because if you say what, no, the other person's like, Hey, look, I'm just trying to, I'm just trying to help you here.
I'm just trying to solve this problem.
And,
Well, you guys were really having – to bring it back to the cheese agreement, I think you were even at the best and most big-hearted way having two different conversations.
Absolutely.
One of them was a conversation about trying to agree on the best utilitarian solution for what we'd like on our pizza, and the other guy wanted to be right.
Exactly.
The other guy who wanted to win –
And what was great about this moment was that he was so invested in his method that his method was exposed.
You know, like he stuck to it just a little bit too long until it was like, wait a minute, there's only three of us here and we are agreeing except for you.
Mm-hmm.
But I think 99% of the time, and I'd known this guy for years, I still know him and I like him very much, but he'd been employing that method his whole life.
And most of the time,
he would just kind of stick to his guns and other people would be kind of talking around.
And pretty soon it would seem like the logical choice.
You know what?
Yeah.
Let's just get cheese.
And if you're like me, you just get tired of arguing.
Like, you're just like, you know what?
I don't, I don't, I don't have enough energy to continue with this.
That's where I do.
I do not suffer from that.
I know.
That's why I only put out the first hour of every show.
I do not tire of arguing.
Well, so here's the thing about the sophistry, and I have a slight pivot here, but the sophistry works great on other people who believe in that sophistry, right?
Where you can play a certain kind of game with somebody.
The people who agree to disagree, if two people both ascribe to the let's agree to disagree philosophy, then nothing will ever be accomplished because they will try and agree to disagree with each other
That's their default.
And if one person says, well, let's agree to disagree, the other person cannot counter because they already believe in agree to disagree.
When's the last argument you lost?
Well, I mean, I lose arguments all the time.
I was looking for a date and time.
Not an explanation, but how often do you, when's the last time you lost an argument in your view?
I lose them all the time because I lose the other person's... You're still not answering my question.
...the other person's, like, love.
Like, the other person goes, gets so exasperated, so exhausted.
Right.
Not because... But it's not really an argument if you don't lose sometimes.
Right.
Otherwise, it's just a treatise, right?
Oh, let's see.
The last disagreement I had where both parties knew how to talk about what they wanted.
I'm talking about like you, like the Emperor, and what am I thinking of here?
It was a big showdown, right?
It's two well-matched.
I'm going to get away from the Star Wars.
We've been watching a lot of Star Wars.
But two well-matched swordsmen come up against each other in a fair fight, and somebody's probably going to lose.
Oh, well, this happens all the time.
John Hodgman has very strong feelings about culture.
He's very durable.
And that I do not share.
He believes certain cultural things are bulletproof.
And I believe that they are riddled with bullet holes, these cultural things.
And we will argue about them back and forth.
And very often he makes a compelling case where I have to say, all right.
You don't think that's because he can last longer than you.
He's one of the rare people who can actually argue longer than you.
No, it isn't a case of arguing longer or stronger.
It is a case of not being... Here's the thing.
A lot of times when people get into arguments with me, they feel overpowered by...
Because I have, because I reply to everything they say.
Like, I keep the thread of the argument going in my mind.
I don't get distracted or sidetracked.
And you don't feel the need to settle it quickly in order to, like, have it be easier on either of you.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, right.
That's a really key thing for people who don't know you well.
What I want to do is find the truth.
And I want to get to the truth of whatever the question is that we're talking about.
And so when I come up against somebody who also is interested in finding the truth, and if you find two truths, you find that your truth and their truth differ, you can find a superior truth there.
I mean, both parties know when one truth is, when both truths may be equal, but one truth is more equal than the other.
Right.
So in those arguments, I all the time concede to the other person that their truth is the higher of the two.
The arguments that I feel like fall apart are the ones where the other person is either not seeking the truth or they get defensively.
I think you also – you said – I really almost said as much.
I think you hate it when people try to use tricks that work on most people with you.
You seem – it strikes me that you take that – that just stokes the fire of how much you want your truth to be out there because now they're just provoking you.
Not just you, but anybody who argues like that I think goes, wait a minute.
That's – don't change the subject.
Don't change the subject.
I don't like people that use tricks and I feel like most people are very afraid of the truth.
and they have no reason to be they're just afraid of it because they've never they don't have very much real truth in their lives you know they're living in a on a kind of on an island of moss that's built out of all the little lies that they have been told and keep telling themselves and so the idea of looking for the truth it just seems like they're going to fall down a hole
And so they have all these little tricks and games to redirect conversations back to places they're comfortable or to not go into that realm of ideas where they feel threatened.
And so those tricks are...
they serve one purpose only, which is to avoid getting to the truth.
And if you're arguing about a simple thing, like what kind of pizza topping to get on your stuff...
Why are you afraid of the truth?
Which is there are three of us here and we can actually come to an agreement on two pizza toppings.
Or if you do want cheese pizza, the other two people are friendly enough that they'll get half cheese.
That's the galling part of that.
I mean, I know you probably, I suspect you see this as something bigger than just being about pizza.
But in that instance, it's not fucking complicated.
If you want cheese pizza, just be an adult and say you want cheese pizza and then somebody can respond to you like an adult.
It muddies the waters when you get into these passive aggressive things.
We got half... This is the finale of this pizza thing.
We got half sausage and onion, half cheese.
Now nobody's happy.
Well, no.
I said, see what happens?
You want cheese pizza?
Say it, and we'll get you fucking cheese pizza.
But you were trying to work us.
You're trying to work us, and that is never good.
Particularly, don't try and work people who...
are going to see through it like that.
You're going to really end up being ashamed of yourself.
You ever have a friend that wants to do the fundraising thing and they're going to go be like in a run and they, and they want to back her.
It could be, it could be somebody whose kid is selling chocolate or something.
But for me particularly, I got to say, it's the people who are going to go do some run.
And let's be honest, it's frequently for something that they care a lot about.
Like my grandma died because of this thing.
Right.
So I'm going to support network.
Yeah, so now I got this Facebook page and I want people to donate and stuff like that.
And I want you to sponsor me.
And I'm not – that's not really my kind of thing.
But if I like the person and I want to support them, I say, can I just give you $20?
Can I just give you $50?
Yeah.
Do you imagine that they're happy about that?
No, no, they're not because it's really about the thing they're doing.
Yeah, right.
And I mean, on a certain way in San Francisco, it's kind of like, you know, if you were, you've probably gotten this in Seattle, where somebody, somebody, you know, comes up to you and, you know, says they want money for food and you offer food, they don't want it.
You offer to walk them over there and say, well, let's go to Carl's Jr.
and I'll buy you something.
And it's not that I'm trying to be a dick.
It's like if you said to me, can I just have some money?
I would probably be more likely to do it.
I don't even have to tell me it's for beer or crack or whatever.
I don't fucking care.
But I don't like being played.
Yeah, exactly.
Somebody comes up to me with like, excuse me, sir.
I have a job interview.
My kid's in the car and I need to get gas.
Screw off because already you're trying to work me.
I'm bad at arguing.
I don't like it.
I'm not just sandbagging.
I genuinely don't like arguing with people, but I'll tell you what gets, as you say, my dander up.
And I'm not flawless at this yet, but man, I fucking hate the obsession with hypocrisy.
Because I can't believe it's astounding to me how many smart people allow a discussion to be shut down by not just the existence of hypocrisy, not just the appearance of hypocrisy, but in fact, merely the accusation of hypocrisy can be allowed to change what the entire argument is about.
Right.
Right.
And now whether you're talking about God or whether you're talking about the truth or whether you're talking about, you know, anything, well, let's just talk about the truth.
Like the truth is the truth, whether I'm good at it or not.
Like I might suck at the truth, but me having this position, especially in this age of all the Facebooky shit, like me having this position about something, whether or not I'm good at it or do it correctly or am quote unquote hypocritical about it.
Like I can't believe how many conversations get shut down once somebody tries to find one instance of where that didn't square up in someone's life.
It's appalling once you start noticing that.
Accusing someone of hypocrisy is one of like 10 really great undergraduate arguing tricks where what happened is someone once accused that person of a hypocrisy
And they realized, oh, wow, that works great.
I'm not even listening to this person's argument.
I'm just listening for one place where I can insert this lever of inconsistency and derail their whole thing.
Or trying to find one exception to that being perfect and flawless all the time, which if you think about it, is pretty fucking crazy borderline personality disorder.
And I know, as you've said yourself, you're not a big fan of hypocrisy.
I'm not a big fan of the kind of hypocrisy where, like I've said before...
I mean, where your whole job is to harm somebody based on a thing, but then you do that thing.
Like, I think it's troubling when police and the narcotics squad take a lot of money to put people in jail by planting drugs on them.
That's the kind of hypocrisy.
And we talked about this on my video program a long time ago, right?
Yeah, right.
The kind of inert bullshit and the kind of harmful bullshit.
And I just got to say, like, I can't believe how often when you get one of those notes from somebody, whether it's a friend or otherwise, it's amazing how often...
If you take a step back and decide you're not bothered by being hypocritical, it's amazing how the entire argument changes.
It falls apart.
There's so many things people say to each other that tacitly just mean, I found a way in my mind that you're hypocritical and now we're done here.
Right.
And you've employed the ninja technique of saying, that is right, I have conflicting ideas.
What is your next move?
Or you just say, you're absolutely right, I'm hypocritical.
What else should we talk about?
Yeah.
But I'm just telling you, on the internet, on the internet in particular, I don't want to talk about the internet, but I'm just saying, there's so much where if somebody calls you a hypocrite, that's it, you're done.
They're a sniper, they've got their shot in, and you're finished.
You go, okay.
I am a hypocrite and like I'm not losing that much sleep over it.
So now what do you think of me?
Because now you might as well be fucking Hitler like to them because you're not obsessed with hypocrisy.
And you know who worries about – I'm sorry to go on a thing here, but you know who worries about hypocrisy?
People who are extremely fucking hypocritical and are scared to be discovered by somebody.
I thought you were going to say Hitler.
Well, there's a lot of things that are worse than Hitler.
Am I hypocritical to say that?
I have many Walt Whitman's inside of me.
I'm watching the Republicans now or the conservatives across America discover this new thing.
And you can see it anytime you open the newspaper now.
They have finally discovered how to combat the charge that they are racists, which is to gleefully say, quit playing the race card.
I mean,
Really good conservative demagogues have been doing this for a long time.
But it has reached the conservative mainstream now where people are coming out.
And we're going to see this in this next election.
We're going to see it all the time now.
They come out.
They say a blatantly racist thing.
And then when somebody says, well, that was really racist what you just said, they go, there you are again, liberal, playing the race card.
And then they say the racist thing again.
And it's brilliant because it's a ninja move, right?
They have flipped it.
And now, because to their audience, of course, they're like, yeah, the race card.
But even reasonable people would, these moderates or whatever, these in-between people,
They're going to – a lot of them are going to go, yeah, why don't those liberals stop playing the race card?
It's a Jedi mind trick.
It's totally Jedi.
Ron Paul's ex – and goddammit, I don't want to talk about politics.
Ron Paul's ex-campaign manager, this guy that's been with him since the late 80s, wrote a really interesting piece in response to all these allegations that Ron Paul is this and Ron Paul is that.
And it was – I don't –
I could give a fucking shit about any of this, but it was very interesting and carefully written and well-written and very, very entertaining and interesting and was written in a wonderful rhetorical style where he said, okay, look, here's my bona fides.
I work for the guy.
I'm doing them every day.
I did this.
I did that.
I did that.
I mean, he's worked on his presidential campaign.
And like his crazy campaign in the 80s, like he's worked on his stuff in Congress.
And he said, well, there's a big problem with what everybody says.
And I love this because it was not about being a liberal.
It was not about being conservative.
He's saying, well, is Ron Paul homophobic?
No, he's an old guy who like a lot of old guys are kind of uncomfortable being around gay people.
Tell you what's weird, though, he does wash his hands after shaking hands with a gay guy, so that's kind of weird.
Okay, so is he homophobic?
I don't know, but he's definitely weird.
No, no, no, he's not trying to dam him with faint praise.
Is Ron Paul anti-Semitic?
No, he's not.
He's just, he's around a lot of Jewish people all the time, and he's, but, you know.
And he doesn't like him, and he washes his hands after he touches.
No, it's not even that, but he's just, he's, what he's doing is, he's humanizing him about all these things that are these hot-button issues, but then you know what he says?
He says, I cannot believe that nobody's noticing how completely fucking out of his gourd he is about
So he basically said, you guys, you want to go make this electability straw man over here when you should be looking at like how this guy is like a pre-World War I caricature.
He's got all his money in gold and silver.
Yeah.
Can you send me that article?
Cause that sounds right.
Yeah.
And like I said, it's not even so much.
I like, you know, I like anybody who loves their job is good at it and likes talking about it.
I love talking to that person and anybody who can write something entertaining about anything.
I could give a shit about sports, but I like, I like listening to, um, not Joe Palka.
Who's Joe Palka?
No.
Who's the guy on, uh, like there's people in NPR.
We're like, I don't really care about Texas, but I like, uh, when Wade, uh, what's his head from, from Texas does a report.
Same with this.
I don't care about politics.
Somebody writes something good.
It's good.
That's right.
Good writing is good writing.
Did you ever read that after the Keith Richards autobiography came out, there was this response from Mick Jagger?
It was awesome.
So good.
I totally read that.
It was great.
It was so amazing.
I'm reading this thing and I'm like, this is a tidal wave.
He shunted so much shit onto Mick in that I heard him on Fresh Air talking about it.
And half the show was like, happy recollections.
Yeah, it was like, oh, no, no, with Keith.
And the first half hour was all like, happy recollections of crazy rock and roll.
And the second half was basically just not entirely, but was just a lot of him saying, oh, yeah, Mick's the one who's a...
you know, um, misogynist, you know, mix the one who's all, he's the one who cares about money and not, you know, right.
But like everything fucked up that's happened in the stones is apparently because of Mick Jagger.
According to that reply, the supposedly from Mick Jagger was such a brilliant piece of writing.
And at the end of it, it made me, it made me wish so desperately that Mick had actually written it.
And it made me wish that, that Mick did write it.
And then that Paul McCartney would write a similar thing.
Um,
and that and that paul simon brought it up let me address some of these points you know what i mean like okay you know what let's just quit pretending and i'm gonna talk about how hurt i am by the shit that you've said and the reality of the situation and you know and of course of course it was a hoax but but uh but that's an example of like great writing that that trumps
That trumps the lie.
It's like it's better than anything Mick could have written.
It's better than whatever his real kind of mealy mouth response was.
It's better than Keith's autobiography.
I mean, good stuff.
Yeah, very good.
And, you know, and for anybody who thinks about the stuff you think about in terms of doing business and who you can trust, like...
the stuff that happened to the Rolling Stones is mind-boggling.
The stuff that happened to them at the height of their powers in the early 70s will just curl your hair.
It's ridiculous, because it's a perfect example of the kind of shit you and I care a lot about, where they knew they were getting screwed by their label, and suddenly this dude comes along.
Was it Peter Grant?
No, who was it?
No, not Peter Grant.
It was... Shit, what's his name?
Alan Klein?
It was Alan Klein.
It comes along and goes, guys, guys, guys.
You are being treated so poorly here.
I got this one.
I got this one.
You know what?
Just sign here and I'll take care of everything.
And he basically got their entire catalog.
And then he wasn't paying their taxes for four years.
Well, it's the comb-over thing again.
Oh, does he have one?
Does he have a comb-over?
Well, no, but in 1975, the Rolling Stones did not have... They were essentially...
you know trapped in that world of of thinking that their comb over isn't noticeable in the sense that they couldn't they just didn't have the perspective that we have now which is hey bald guy shave your head you'll look great charlie charlie watts in particular well charlie watts is a great looking man but i i mean i was in a band with a guy who wore a comb over an an ear-to-ear comb over didn't you talk him out of it
Well, it wasn't just me.
It was kind of all of his friends.
And, you know, he's 25 years old, living in the city, playing in rock bands.
And he looked a hundred times better, right?
He's wearing this thing, this lacquered haircut from ear to ear.
And, and his friends, you know, everybody just one, one day just said, you know what?
The emperor has no clothes here.
We got to start telling him.
And we were just like, Hey, just cut it off.
And guys were already shaving their heads.
It was already a look.
And finally he did it.
And it was like, I think that first day it was like he was walking outside without any pants on for him.
He was so in my kitchen.
The day I met you, he looked so great.
It looks so great.
Good looking fellow.
He's a good-looking young man and a nicely shaped head.
Let's leave it at that.
Yeah.
He has a beard.
He has kind of a beardy face, don't you think?
Yeah, well, he's a swarthy guy, swarthy guy.
But in any case, back in the 70s, you know, they didn't have the awareness that we have of people being ripped off, of how to conduct business, of how to talk straight to each other.
And, you know, they're just, they're getting blood transfusions, Alan Klein stealing their money.
Mm-hmm.
I love the story of them in the south of France, particularly because Keith had this beautiful mansion right on the water in Captain Tebes or whatever.
But Charlie Watson, Bill Wyman, who did not have the songwriting royalties at the time, they also moved to the south of France for tax reasons.
But when you really find out the story, they were living like two hours up the road.
It's a horrible story.
You're talking about the Exile on Main Street era?
Exile on Main Street era.
It's a harrowing story.
There's a documentary where Mick goes back there, and the story sounds awful.
I mean, it just sounds like Keith—well, I don't want to back on Keith, but you're right.
They were working men with families, and they had to commute.
They had to commute to a heroin den.
In a place where they didn't speak the language and they weren't interested in the culture.
And all Bill Wyman wanted was his brand of biscuits.
And all Charlie Watts wanted was some Mr. Pibbs tea or whatever.
He just wanted his jazz records and to be left alone.
Yeah.
And instead he's driving on these little narrow, tiny roads to get down to Keith's waterfront mansion.
And there were so many better ways they could have done it, right?
They could have just been living in a hotel or they could have – there's a million things they could have done.
But they just didn't think – they just didn't think it through.
Poor guys.
I wouldn't want to hang with them.
This is why I – we should wrap this up.
But this is why I so love that – I make this bigger than it should be.
But that period, that paperback writer –
two or three, two or three year period for the Beatles where they were just like in the studio and stuff was working.
And I know John wasn't that happy, but like, man, it must've been amazing to be able to just, just, just come up with stuff like that.
You know, I didn't know X on Main Street.
What's your feeling on X on Main Street?
Oh, it's a great album.
It's a great album.
I'm a fan of it.
Yeah, I know.
I like it.
I think my rocks off is my favorite Rolling Stones song period, but I don't know.
Sometimes I have a little trouble getting into it.
I should listen to it more.
So it must have been near Halloween.
It must have been sometime.
I can probably do this by looking at photos.
I know I took a photo of this happening.
You were visiting here.
I don't remember why.
I think you were here by yourself without the band.
It might have been you and Sean.
I don't remember.
But as is so often the case, we ended up at the Walgreens near my home.
And with what I remember being a very minimum of decision-making or hemming and hawing, you bought a cape.
I did.
I walked in, I saw the cape, I bought the cape.
A Dracula-style costume cape.
Yeah, that's, I mean, if you're going to buy a cape, that's how you should buy it.
Don't buy one of those little fruity Batgirl ones.
Batgirl looks great in that, but I think it's very effeminate for a man to have a mini cape.
Yeah, you see a cape, you see a big enough cape, a luxurious cape, get the cape.
But then you kind of kept wearing it for a while.
Well, once I got the cape on, I realized why Dracula wears a cape.
It conceals a multitude of sins.
It makes every entrance and exit extremely dramatic.
In my case, it protected me against police interference.
And at the time, of course, I was wearing a cape and a Western shirt, which you don't think of as going together, but they go great together.
A Dracula cape and a Western shirt and a cigar.
Those are wonderful photos.
Those turned out really good.
The thing that's neat about a cape, it's one thing to be kind of wacky.
It's one thing to have a T-shirt with an obscenity on it.
It's another thing to have a big fruity Jamiroquai hat.
Those kinds of things.
Like somebody – like people are – like a certain kind of person, not a kind of person I would like, but a certain kind of person would have no compunction about coming up and just punching you in the face because they just think you're stupid.
But there's something about a tall man in a Western shirt with a cape that just – it's enough.
You got to think a little bit.
Oh, sure.
There's a little extra processing going on and you – if memory serves, you started walking in a slightly more stately way.
I did.
I stood up even more erect and walked a little bit slower.
And I don't think we were mistaking the fact that people were literally crossing to the other side of the street rather than...
Well, you think about a man wearing a cape in a Chinese part of town.
And so on the face of it, you think, oh, this guy's going to be like laughing to himself and running around and throwing poop.
But you look like someone who's trying to solve a very important problem.
Right.
You would have a look on it.
I might just be remembering this from the photos we took, which I believe you used some of them for promotional photos.
But you had a look of a very, very serious man that was somewhat at odds with a Western shirt and a cape, but that just made it work even better.
Yeah, well, I put on my thinking cape.
That's what it was.
And I still wear it.
I still put on that cape and walk around.
I thought it was just a San Francisco thing when you wore it on stage, but you wore it at least to enter the stage.
I have worn it at a rock concert, yes.
I wore it on stage, and then at the end of the night, I forget who it was.
It might have even been Duff McKagan, but some rock person who's an actual rock person said, you know, you walked out on that cape, and no one in this room, nobody in this city understood that they were seeing the most rock and roll moment of the year.
They didn't even know where to put it in their minds.
Yeah.
And they just stood their mouths agape while I played that first song in a flowing black cape.
You think of capes and you think of what?
You think of James Brown and you think of... Who's... I put a spell on you.
Oh, Screamin' Jay Hawkins.
Screamin' Jay Hawkins, right?
How many more people except for some fruitcake during the psychedelic era?
How many men?
Freddie Mercury.
Oh, that's a good one.
When was that?
When did he wear a cape?
Well, I think he, I'm sure he wore a cape.
Oh, wait, that guy from that band, there's the band where the one guy in pigtails does the singing and the other guy wears a cape and plays the keyboards.
Sparks.
Something for the Dracula with everything.