Ep. 30: "Cement Gravy Boat of Suffering"
Hello.
Hi, John.
Hi, Merlin.
How's it going?
Merlin, man.
You want to stick on the last one?
You want to stick?
I don't know.
It's up to you.
It's your call.
That's your side.
Ready?
That's your side.
Would you be mad if I did it again?
Go ahead.
When you get sick of it, you tell me.
You ready?
Yeah.
John!
Ah!
See?
I think it's working if you like it.
Woo!
You didn't grumble.
You've grumbled at a lot of them.
You didn't like Mercedes.
I really liked your performance of that one.
You know why?
It's invested.
I have owned it.
I penetrated that performance.
When you invest yourself in something, you really do go all the way.
That's when trouble starts.
It's the investment that hurts.
When you invested yourself in baking bacon.
Thank you.
That changed everybody's lives.
You know, I'm like a lady when you come to our house.
You just made my sound.
I am.
I'm like a lady.
I mean, my wife's like a lady all the time where she wants you to be comfortable.
I don't know why she cares so much about you being comfortable, but we go shopping for you.
I told you what my daughter said.
We were the day before you arrived for your last visit here.
It's been long enough.
We can talk about this.
We went to the Lucky, formerly Albertsons, and we filled a grocery cart with food in anticipation.
Now, it's not that you're always going to eat or drink everything we get, but we have learned it pays to prepare.
Sure.
You want to have a full selection of different fruity juices?
Well, you know, yes.
Fizzy waters.
Fizzy waters.
We want you to have enough flexibility that you could make at least three kinds of fruity pleasers of your choosing.
And I've shared this with you.
May I share with our audience what I said to my daughter?
Please.
Okay.
My daughter's in the cart.
We're rolling along.
She's eating her goldfish crackers.
And she says, Daddy, why are we buying so much stuff?
And I said, because we love Uncle John.
And anytime that Uncle John is not talking, he's eating.
And then she went back to eating her goldfish cracker.
She probably didn't even hear the end of it.
She didn't really care.
She's just conniving for the next thing that she wants.
It was much more confusing to me why you had covered everything in your house with saran wrap.
That's a development.
We bought a kind of, it's actually a Dow polyplastic, I think it's called.
I've got to look at the invoice.
Imagine an industrial grade saran wrap.
It's rated for people from Alaska.
Right, because you knew I had a silicone allergy.
See, I'm like a lady.
I'm like a lady.
I'm thinking about don't make John cough any more than he has to.
Well, you know, you are one of those men who has embraced the idea that being a modern man means being sensitive to other people.
You're a pussy.
I wasn't going to say pussy.
Okay.
Thank you.
I was going to say, you know, considerate.
Vagina.
Well, you know what it is?
I always so look forward.
I'm one of those guys who's practicing the older style of being a man, which is to be unaware of other people.
Which is hoping but not trying that hard.
To not have things fall on the floor.
Like hoping no one sees it, but not going nuts to make sure.
You know, if I'm eating something and a bit of it falls on the floor, I'm a very considerate person in that I put my foot on it right away.
So you don't even have to think about it.
Tonight we're going to play a game called One of Us Doesn't Get a Cutlet.
Oh.
It's going to be musical cutlets.
But no, I like that about you.
You're still having trouble closing the door when you urinate, which is not trouble.
It's just that my daughter needs to see that.
You know what?
I don't want to talk too much about your house, but you have one of those bathroom doors that if you close it 98% of the way, it appears to be closed, or it appears to be 98% closed, which is about as much as I want to close a bathroom door.
Oh, no, I accept your policy.
I'm sorry.
Yeah, I totally accept it.
Once you're standing at me.
No, you're doing something else.
You're not thinking about doors.
You're standing at the toilet, and then the door starts to, just on its own, swing open, and then you're right at the point in a urination where you're fully committed.
Yeah.
A 20-year-old man could stop and close the door, but that could be a week in bed for you.
You know, yeah.
I haven't been doing my Kegel exercises.
And then you hear the doorknob slam into the wall, and you turn around, and you're just there in front of God and everybody.
And there's a four-year-old holding an Iron Man comic book.
Your little four-year-old with an Iron Man comic and some goldfish crackers going, what am I seeing?
What is this?
Because Eleanor, when Uncle John is not eating or talking, he is urinating prodigiously.
Being...
I think our house might have once been owned by German expressionists because there's parts of it that feel a little bit cabinet of Dr. Caligari.
There are a lot of non-right angles that are very subtle.
It's like the Remington Mystery House.
What is it?
Is it Remington?
Who's the gun people?
Yeah, the Remington Mystery House.
I'm pretty sure that's what it is.
What's the Winchester Mystery House?
Oh, Winchester Mystery House, right.
I think of the cult mystery hut, I think you're thinking of.
Oh, it's the Kalashnikov condo that you're thinking of.
Yeah, yeah.
Have you ever been there, John?
I know you travel a lot across this great country, this great planet of ours.
Have you ever been to the Winchester Mystery House?
I have been to the Winchester Mystery House, and I've looked up the staircases to nowhere and gone into the rooms of many mysteries that opened the doors that lead to other doors.
I was nonplussed.
I felt like either there were not enough mysteries in the Winchester Mystery House, or we weren't being allowed into all the mysteries.
There were mysteries in the Winchester Mystery House that we had not paid the higher admission price to see.
Oh, I see.
And you didn't get to see the guns, probably.
No, it's like when you go to Versailles, you can pay the normal fee.
They call it Le Hand Mirror, but you don't get to see the big ones.
You walk around and you go, ah, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
You do a little bit of Griswold as you walk through the places.
But then you can pay the exorbitant fee, and they let you have sex in Louis XIV's bed, and you can actually take a shit behind the curtains like they used to do in the old days.
Is that right?
Yeah, you can really have the full Versailles experience.
I think there's a lot of secret places like that at Disney World.
There's a place – there's a honeymoon suite inside of Cinderella's Castle now, so you can go up there.
Yeah.
Yeah.
If you're – you know, getting married at Disney World, John.
Yeah.
I don't know if you'll ever get married, but can I just ask you, please, literally to never get married at Disney World?
There are people shagging in Cinderella's Castle.
Yeah, people are trying to enjoy a Mickey Mouse popsicle, and there's somebody up there banging.
Also trying to enjoy a Mickey Mouse popsicle.
Can I just make one very small point here?
There's probably not a lot of straight men in the world who are thinking, finally...
I get to sleep in Cinderella's castle.
I'm thinking there's a lot of trade-offs to that.
I'm thinking maybe he's banging her in the behind for the first time because she's in fucking Cinderella's castle.
Wow.
No, no.
You know what I'm saying?
Quid pro quo.
He's getting his reward.
He gets to be Prince Charming.
right and who and what better way to be prince charming than to slipper the i got nothing slipper but the um now now is there a chance that our listeners are not familiar with the mysteries of the winchester mystery house because it's kind of an interesting story don't you know we we have uh we have listeners all around the world there are listeners in germany and in hungary and sweden sweden all of all of uh scandahovia there are people listening what about romania is everybody from romania
No, I don't.
I'm not aware of anyone in Romania listening.
What about the Baltics, John?
Is anybody from the Baltics listening?
I'm sure that right now in Latvia, there is someone who has a German friend that turned them on to this podcast, and they're sitting up there in their artist's garret.
It's probably a very crackly signal with a very small speaker.
They're listening to it on a ham radio set.
Keep moving and get off of the way.
Okay, and we know in Africa that they probably don't because they're using all the available space for water.
I'm going to guess that there are people in Africa listening, but I am going to suspect that they are working for an NGO where they're in the Peace Corps.
And we're probably literally the only source of sanity in America that they have.
Yeah, right.
Every week, they go into their little inner sanctum that they made out of five-gallon gas cans.
And sandbags.
They just stacked up five-gallon gas cans in a square and put a roof on it.
And they go in there and they say, take me to America, Roderick on the line.
Take me back to America.
Yeah.
Well, in that case, I think it would be self-involved for us not to share this.
First of all, hello and welcome, bienvenue, willkommen to all of our friends overseas who are enjoying this.
Wilkommen, except for the Germans.
All of you are welcome.
How's the belief?
Excuse me?
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
What was that, Yiddish?
What was that?
No, that's the Dutch word that means please and thank you.
Can I beg you to literally not get me started on the Dutch?
Okay, so thank you.
First of all, I hope that you're very cozy but well-ventilated inside of your various drums and buckets.
That was a great XTC record, by the way.
Various drums and buckets?
Mm-hmm, drums and buckets.
That's Chris Wallace's production style.
Is that right?
Yeah.
Huh.
it holds five gallons of a paint or other liquid you were about to explain the remington mystery house that's right the colt the colt mystery sidearm it's that there's a house uh somewhere south of san francisco which is which is that's the way san jose is that right
It's in one of those places in California where all the freeways intersect.
You know, Leonard Bernstein said, no one is obligated to appreciate cities outside of San Francisco, not during their lifetime.
That's how we look at everything.
It's like the people in New York.
You ever seen that New Yorker cover of how New Yorkers see the rest of the United States?
Yeah, right.
Yeah.
East River and then Pacific Ocean and then China.
Something fleece.
Yeah.
So there was a famous manufacturer of firearms who, would you call him a baron?
Wasn't Winchester kind of a baron?
I would say that he was a firearms baron.
He was not a baron in the sense of being a member of the European aristocracy.
Or being unable to have children.
He was not barren.
There's an article.
Definitely an article in front of barren.
Mr. Winchester's womb was a fecundity.
It was a rocky place where my seed could find no purchase.
So anyway, Mr. Winchester had a lot of people killed with his products.
Well, now, wait a minute.
That's a weird construction.
Sorry, sorry.
He had a lot of people.
He didn't have them killed.
Property protected.
You know what?
Guns don't kill people.
No, no.
Clichés kill people.
Yeah.
So he made guns.
And he eventually died.
He had no way of knowing how those guns were going to be used.
They could be used to prop open doors.
Listen, John.
I'm going to circle back to that.
Okay, so here's the thing.
You're writing things down.
No, I'm not.
I'm fake scribbling.
I'll send it to you.
I'll send you a picture.
I'm acting like I'm writing so you'll stop talking about this.
Now, didn't he have money like Jesus?
Wasn't he rich like hell?
You know, Jesus, contrary to popular belief, Jesus was not a wealthy man.
Okay, please continue.
Don't you think, though?
You know what?
He wasn't as rich as William Randolph Hearst, but he was a rich man from having made the guns that killed the Indians.
Jesus did.
Yeah, Jesus killed the Indians as a way of paving the way for the Mormons.
I think you mean African-American.
No, the Winchester rifles were key to opening the West, which is a euphemism.
One bullet hole at a time.
Which is a euphemism for killing buffalo and Native Americans.
Yes.
And he went great guns with that.
He did go great guns with that.
And he made a big house.
He built himself a house.
I'm not going to look this up on Wikipedia.
I'm going to wing it.
But he passed away and left a very large fortune.
And forgive me if I get this wrong, but I believe the story goes that Mrs. Winchester or something-something was very interested in mediums or media, and somebody talked to her.
And the point is that she was in a position in her life...
where she was receptive to the idea that if she ever stopped completing the Winchester mansion, something bad would happen.
Oh, I think what it was, was that she felt that the, that the souls of all of the people that had been killed by her husband's rifles were,
were haunting her or were chasing her around her house.
What an awesome delusion.
Isn't that a good delusion?
It's amazing.
And she had the money to build this house with all these false stairways that went up to...
Well, that's the thing is she ran out of real stuff to build.
And then she was like, she's like the ultimate like kind of person I try to help.
She's like the ultimate procrastinator, like crazy person.
She has nothing useful to do anymore, but lots of money and time.
And so she had workers, I think, I don't know, I don't want to say around the clock, but I believe around the clock, like building whatever, including, now go ahead.
What were the kinds of things?
Building whatever in order to fool the ghosts that were walking around her house looking for her.
So the ghosts are like trying doors and going upstairs and oh, this door leads nowhere.
It shakes its ghostly fists.
First I get killed by a rifle and now I find steps to go nowhere.
And so she's living, I'm sure she was living in like most old ladies.
She was living in one room with a hot plate.
Cats.
And cats.
Goes without saying.
She was watching her stories somewhere in a room off the kitchen.
X-Files DVDs.
And this house that went for 15 blocks is full of ghosts all wandering around going like, have you... Did you go up that staircase?
It doesn't go anywhere.
Ah...
And there were doorways that would open and there would be nothing on the other side.
It was like, you know, sort of like something like from a Monty Python thing.
You open the door and you're outside.
There's nothing.
You step off and you die.
But there were deliberate subterfuge.
Were there also things with maybe like steps that go up into nothing, as you say?
Yeah.
Now, it sounds like your experience there was one in which you had a limited level of engagement.
There wasn't a lot there to catch your attention.
But if you don't mind my asking, and again, we can literally cut this out if it's a problem.
You must have in some ways been... Like all the other things that we've cut out of this podcast.
I just can't even.
Don't get me started with how many things I've cut out of this podcast.
There's like three things I've cut out of this podcast.
This is how it gets so good.
As I take out anything that's not really, really, really good.
You've taken out all three instances where you've said, nigger, nigger, nigger.
Oh, yeah.
Well, that's nine of them.
I had to take them all out.
Yeah.
Well, here's what happened.
I went to visit the Winchester Mystery House.
Yes.
In the 70s.
During the 1970s when I was a... She's long dead at this point, obviously.
She's a dead lady now.
And this is a house that you pay $3 to go visit.
But this was during the era... I don't have to tell you about the 70s.
No.
This was during the era that the Bermuda Triangle was a really big deal.
In search of.
That's right.
And it was the era when Bigfoot was a really big deal.
And Project Blue Book.
Loch Ness Monster.
Loch Ness Monster.
There were a lot of supernatural instances, supernatural events in the 70s that captured the imagination of young boys all across America.
So when I went to the Winchester Mystery House and was told that it had many, many secret passages to fool all of the ghosts of the American Indians that talked like Mel Brooks...
Oh, geez.
They, you know, I went into this place thinking that I was going to get spooked.
I was going to have some haunting happening.
But there was some girl from Stanford wearing a vest like somebody who worked at Home Depot that was guiding us around this place, pointing out all the, you know, look, this is a doorknob.
But there's no door.
It's just a doorknob and a wall.
What?
And I was like, that's going to fool a ghost?
I have my $3 back.
That's not going to fool a ghost.
Well, this is why I asked, John.
This is the thing.
You're a man who...
How shall I put this?
You're a man with a very active mind, and you can imagine worlds, right?
You were there.
You've seen the, what is it, the sea beams at the Tannhauser gates.
You've been there.
You've seen all of this, right?
That's right.
I've watched attack ships burn off the soldier of Orion.
Yeah, you've seen it all.
That's good.
That's got to be one of the greatest monologues of all time.
It's amazing.
Here's the thing.
In retrospect, in as much as you can share, and I will literally cut this out if it's a problem.
If you hypothetically were a person who was concerned about ghosts, especially in their home, is that the kind of strategy that you would have taken?
Would you have put doorknobs in a wall?
Would you have made a stairway to nowhere?
Well, here's the thing.
Although I do not have a lot of... Although I'm a science-minded person, you know that I have a weak spot.
I have an Achilles heel.
One of my many heels that are a kill-eye is that I get spooked by ghosts.
And that sometimes my pillows turn to owls.
And occasionally when I'm home alone, if I'm watching a television program about aliens grabbing people off of a desert road...
I can become convinced that the aliens are also on the roof of my house waiting for me to go to sleep.
I don't know why this is.
I don't know why I'm made this way.
It's like the zombies.
The seat is there.
Yeah, right.
Exactly.
The seat is there.
And I have spent many a sleepless night in a strange house being spooked by being haunted by by haunts.
And when I bought my house, I may have told you this, when I bought my house, I walked through and laid down in every room when the house was empty, before I signed the deed, laid my head down in every corner and just closed my eyes and was quiet.
And said, are there any spooks here?
Anyone spooking?
Did you say it aloud?
Well, sure.
And I was convinced that there were no spooks in my house.
That all I got back from the universe were good vibes.
And in fact, I learned later that an old man died in my house of oldness.
And because I had gone around the house and had checked out that there were no spooks here, I was fine with the fact that someone had died here because he clearly died peacefully and well.
There's not that many better ways to die than oldness.
Die of oldness in your own house.
You can do a lot worse.
You could die of something besides oldness outside the house.
Right?
Yes.
So you're not going to haunt a place where you died of oldness from being happy?
You might bring fresh fruit.
You are going to make sure that the lawn is green.
You are going to make sure that the birds are singing.
And when my mom bought her house 15 years ago, I did the exact same thing.
I went and laid down in all the corners and I said, any spooks here?
Anyone got a problem?
Anyone have something they'd like to say before I commit to being here?
And it was a spook-free house.
And I went to my mom and I said, I think you can safely buy this house.
And what was her response?
Well, you know, I didn't tell her that I had gone in.
Oh, you told her with your mind.
I said, no, I mean, I told her with my mouth, but I didn't tell her what I had done.
I said, I'm going to go take a look at this house and let me know.
Oh, you walked around with a tool belt and a Stanley T. Major and a stud finder and then laid down and listened for ghosts, came back and wiped some drywall off of your coveralls and said, it's okay, mom.
I went down and I checked the pipes.
I rattled the furnace.
Jiggle the toilet a little bit.
That's a technical term.
When you go rattle a furnace... Oh, is that something you do?
You rattle it?
You go down and rattle the furnace and then everything checks out.
Is there a certain way it should sound when you rattle it or should there be no rattle or a lot of rattle?
It should rattle.
You want a little bit of play in there.
You rattle the furnace and it rattles and it sounds like... I should check that.
I think we might have too tight of a furnace.
We might have a tight furnace.
We'll go rattle it.
We'll see if any spooks get out.
And you worked on that house a lot.
You spent a lot of time with it.
I don't want to derail you, but I didn't learn this until later, how much you and your mom did to that place.
It's a beautiful, beautiful house.
We gutted that house and we built it.
But I think that you can gut a house that's full of spooks and you're not going to get the spooks out of there.
Those are load-bearing spooks.
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
You don't want to move a load-bearing spook if it's the only thing that's holding the roof up.
That's right.
So in any case...
My house, my mom's house, both spook-free abodes, and we have lived here in our respective homes for many years, never been troubled by spooks.
That is not to say that sometimes my pillows don't turn to owls, but I think that is unrelated.
So far, you've been lucky in the sense that you're feeling...
In your heart or mind or whatever it is you have is that there may be something there.
Okay.
Your esophagus.
Somewhere in your esophagus you know or suspect that something's going on.
Now, you're a man who's very – I'll cut this out if I need to.
You're very vigilant, right?
You dive out of a subway and you dive into an airplane.
Yeah.
At exactly the right time.
And it seems to me you're not that spooked by the owls.
You literally grabbed an owl and went back to sleep.
So it sounds to me like so far you have not had to adopt anything like a Winchester Mystery House approach to making the ghost go away.
You've dealt with this or they've dealt with you.
You've reached something like a rapprochement with them and everything's okay.
Correct.
But over the years, I have – did I ever tell you the story about that house in Vermont?
Yeah, I was coming to that.
Yeah.
So there's that house in Vermont where the people put me in the spook room.
And they thought it was funny.
They thought it was funny.
Like, oh, we were wondering if you were going to feel the spook.
That's like putting an epileptic in the flashing room.
The strobe light room?
The strobe light room.
Yeah.
Well, you know, I have a strobe light room here, and I always steer the epileptics away.
That's a good idea.
Like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
I think you'd like this room over here much better.
I spent that night crouched with a knife between my teeth waiting for whatever spook it was that was going to come through.
I don't know where it was going to come, but I don't think if I had put a fake doorknob on the wall of the closet...
that that would have fooled that spook at all.
You already knew, even though there was something in your intuition that said, this is serious, like, I need to get a knife for this ghost, potentially.
You had the presence of mind.
You're a rational man, John.
It's something that you've talked about really way too much.
But the fact is, you're a rational man.
You know a doorknob is not going to fool a ghost.
Right, I don't think you can fool a ghost.
Oh, because they already are in there.
They're like Loki with the Avengers.
Like, he's already been there.
He knows what's going on, right?
Yeah.
I'm sorry, let me read that.
I don't get that reference.
Was that like a Dora the Explorer reference?
Okay.
It's Norse mythology.
It's something you can look up on the internet.
Oh, Norse mythology.
It's Thor's brother, and Thor's brother, who is the god of mischief and lying, wants to become the god when Odin takes over, although Thor is the one, so Loki fucks things up, and then that's why they have to start the Avengers.
It's not that complicated, John.
Is this something you learned during your church burning phase?
Oh, you're talking about when I was in that Swedish death metal band?
Yeah, the Swedish death metal cult.
You ever listen to any of that stuff?
A lot of it's terrible, but some of it's really good.
I have not.
That is one musical genre I have not really given.
I'm going to pick exactly one band.
I'm going to send you exactly one video for one band.
These guys all wear like King Diamond makeup.
Okay, so there's two.
We should come back to this.
There's the Norwegian black metal and the Swedish death metal.
you want to go with the Swedish death metal.
The Norwegian black metal is very, very silly.
They look like pro wrestlers.
And if you imagine there's one kind of like a boss pedal where they turn the treble and the... Oh, I have that pedal.
Can I make just one observation?
Yeah.
Okay, here's my observation.
And I don't want to pull up bad memories for you, but you had the ghost concern in the house in, was it Vermont?
Vermont.
Yeah.
You slept in the van one night and you're all together and were attacked in my front yard outside our home.
And out of the park came soldiers from which war?
I believe they were Civil War soldiers.
Civil War.
Confederates.
You thought at one point they were Confederates probably.
It didn't make any sense because, of course, there were no Civil War battles fought in San Francisco.
That you know of.
But that doesn't mean, you know, in Seattle there is a Civil War cemetery where all of the veterans of the Civil War were buried.
That doesn't count.
After they moved.
Well, they could be organized in the afterlife.
They could all be buried there and be like, hey, wait a minute.
I don't know.
I've been reading a Civil War book and I got to tell you, I don't think that fits in.
Is it Gone with the Wind?
Yeah.
No, no.
It's called April 1865 and it's really good.
Oh, you're reading a non-fiction Civil War book.
I usually read Harlequin romances about the period.
But they had a lot of troubles in Richmond.
They did.
They ate dogs and shit.
Yeah, well.
No literal shit.
They ate shit in Richmond.
Well, they would pick through corn.
They would pick through for corn.
They would go through horse dung to find what they could.
Delicious corn.
I'm telling you, Roderick, Richmond was a place, and you can learn about this from a song by the band called The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.
It's a very interesting story.
I'll recommend the book, April 1865.
And then on another occasion.
Some character from Levon Helm.
Yeah, I know.
God bless him.
That performance of that at the Fillmore, I put that on my internet website.
God, it's great.
From the last waltz, they did so much cocaine, those guys.
Yeah, everybody in the last waltz is high on cocaine.
You know, almost all of them died now.
That Rick Danko got real puffy, and then he died.
He was such a good-looking man.
When he was young, he was a good-looking man.
Man, those guys could sing.
We should talk about the band at some point.
They really could.
They were driving that train.
Do you like the band?
Can you ask a question like that?
I asked you about Kiss, and you didn't like them.
Well, here's the difference between Kiss and the band.
Okay, let's move on.
Kiss are terrible.
And the band are one of the most important groups of our generation.
Band are amazing.
You could make a little file card, or you could tattoo that on your thumb.
So...
potential ghost in vermont knife in the teeth you're naked in the van in front of my house and there might be some confederate soldiers on one occasion there might have been aliens rattling your door on an occasion fairly recently all of your pillows turned to owls may i note just in passing that in several of these instances you have attempted on some level to communicate with the spirits that may or may not be there and in each instance that you've shared with me so far they have been mute
Correct.
So you're talking to them, they're not talking to you.
You're pretty sure they're there, but they're not really responding in a way... They're not responding in a way that you can understand as a response.
Correct.
Correct.
Do they communicate with you at all, or are they ignoring you?
They do not ever materialize to the point...
where i can where i'm confidently communicating with them directly understand they are they they remain a um they remain a suspicion um and they become just like what coate enough they just become they're there enough that it goes from there might be something up here
until you're pretty sure that's an owl.
You were pretty sure that was an owl, right?
Oh, the owls, there's no question about it.
Is that different?
Are we talking about apples and oranges and owls?
I think so.
I think the owls are a different thing.
The owls are different from the potential, I don't know if alien is even the right word, the visitors.
The owls, you got the avian, you got the visiting.
The owls were clearly visitors, but they took a physical form where normally it's just like the hair goes up on the back of your neck.
One night, for instance, I was sleeping on the beach.
Outside of a town called Nordwijk on the Dutch coast.
Spell that.
Nordwijk.
Oh, like it sounds.
Yeah.
N-O-R-D.
V-I-K.
W-I-J.
Because I am going to.
Oh, okay.
Nordwijk.
Okay.
And is there a little slash through one of the O's?
No, there's two O's and I think they're slash free.
Okay, go ahead.
It's like outside of Oogstreet.
Oogstgest.
Alright, go on.
It's by Sveningen.
Oh, right.
That's right, the Sveningen sound.
That's very popular in Swedish death metal.
No, but it's not Swedish.
It's in the Netherlands.
It had been a long time since I had slept outside at this point.
I was getting my sleeping outside feet back on.
And I was on the beach and it was a beautiful spring night.
And I was like, you know what?
I'm just going to sleep on the beach.
I used to sleep outside all the time.
I had forgotten as I was saying this to myself.
I used to sleep outside all the time because I would get drunk and I would pass out under a bush.
That counts.
And I was like, you know, I used to sleep out all the time.
I'm going to start sleeping out again because, hey, one, it's free.
Don't throw out the baby with the bath.
That's right.
And two, it's beautiful.
So I lay down on the sand and I kind of dig myself a little bed in the sand.
I lay down on the sand.
And then the sun goes down and the stars come out and I'm lying on the beach and the wind picks up and I suddenly feel like there is nothing keeping me from falling into the sky forever.
Like there's nothing, absolutely nothing keeping me from just falling forever into infinity.
Except for gravity.
But gravity did not have as powerful a hold on me at that moment as it normally does.
And I lay there on the beach looking up at the infinitude of the universe, and I literally was holding on.
I was grabbing onto the sand because I was terrified.
I was in a terror that I was going to just start falling up.
And the feeling did not pass.
I spent what felt like an eternity lying there on this beach, not easily convinced that, I could not convince myself that if I let go,
And most of it was a psychological letting go.
Like if I just said, okay, fine.
If I had surrendered, I would have fallen off of that beach into space forever.
and I would still be falling.
That sounds harrowing.
It was nuts.
Do you have a sense of how long it lasted?
Well, it lasted until the sand underneath me.
This is the thing about sleeping on beaches.
Sand looks very soft when you're walking on the beach in the late afternoon.
But when you lie on the sand and try and get comfortable in the night, sand turns to cement.
It's extremely unfriendly for a back.
It is not soft.
No.
And so as time went on, this little depression, this bed I made for myself in the sand, turned into kind of a cement gravy boat of suffering.
Yeah.
where I lay kind of like a suffering.
Well, you just made my next hour a lot easier.
Kind of like a curved autopsy table.
Stop there.
You're not going to get any better.
Stop there.
Now, you prefer to the thing I make you sleep in at our house as an inflatable taco, I believe.
Yeah, that's an inflatable taco because it starts off.
I didn't realize how bad it was.
Eleanor started jumping on after you left, and it would just go...
Yeah, it starts off as a nice inflated bed that seems like, oh, this is delightful.
And then as time goes on, it becomes a plastic tortilla.
Okay, I'm sorry.
Please continue.
I interrupted you.
You're talking, of course, about the town of Nordvik where there is a beautiful beach where the popular activities include kite surfing.
Have you looked this place up now?
No, I'm doing this from memory.
I just couldn't remember which one they have.
14 campsites in the region.
Approximately, plus or minus, this is just a swag, 3,400 hotels and B&Bs.
And it's the number two Congress destination in the Netherlands.
Please continue.
I should have stayed in one of those hotels.
Cement gravy boat of suffering.
So anyway, as my... The sand is now unyielding, but you still have the sense that you could float away into the sky for infinity.
I could fall into infinity.
And what I realized in that moment was that the lights of the city, the electric light...
has formed a kind of dome over the cities where we live.
And it is a protective dome, a protective shield that shields us from full awareness of how deep and infinite space is.
Wow.
So we sit in our cities and our electric lights have blanked out the sky for us and we no longer have firsthand experience of the existential terror that is available to you at any point in time if you just try and spend one night outside on the beach or in the forest.
And that is something that human beings knew intimately throughout the whole course of human history.
And that's why they made houses.
That's why they made houses.
That's why they circled the wagons.
That's why they made friends with each other.
That's why they lit fires at night.
That's why... Did it come to you in a flash?
Well, I'm lying there holding onto the beach trying not to be... You need something to think about.
Well, yeah.
I mean, I was sitting there.
If you had come to me and said that God was a big purple dinosaur... Oh, I've clutched my share of beaches, believe me.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And I would have said, fucking whatever you say.
Because the terror that is waiting for us when we truly contemplate the scale and scope of the universe in which we live is not a terror that I am...
that i that i'm racing out to experience it every night so i i realized that that uh we have done we have done ourselves both a disservice and a tremendous service in uh in blanking out how much um how how big the the unknown is and we've done it you know kind of we're not conscious of it when you turn on the lights at night did bring you comfort
that understanding well the the idea that there might be um sort of an ontological umbrella that protects us from knowing how how terrible this could be if with the infinity no i despise it or i despised it when i understood it but it didn't comfort you at all it made you even more nervous about the sand
Because you're worried that your ass is on the line at this point, right?
Well, yeah, but I didn't want to retreat into some kind of blanket of light.
Cold comfort.
No, no, no, no.
Once you have a sense of it, then, of course, I wanted to face it.
And so I started sleeping outside at that point.
Yeah.
every night, which is much more complicated when you're in Amsterdam than when you're in Nordwijk.
It's very much more difficult to sleep outside, say, in Cologne.
Try and find a gravy boat.
Next time you're there, just go start looking for a gravy boat.
Just try and find a human-sized cement gravy boat of suffering.
Amsterdam, you can sleep in a bong.
Not a lot of people know that.
Actually, in Amsterdam, for 50 euros, you can sleep in a cement gravy boat of suffering.
It's at the Palais du Gravy Boat.
And is that... Do ladies really stand in windows?
Is that true?
Have you never been to Amsterdam?
Yeah, John.
I go there all the time.
Come on!
What were you doing with your youth?
Being self-conscious?
You were playing Mrs. Pac-Man somewhere.
There is no Mrs. Pac-Man.
Someday I'll tell you where I have traveled.
I'd be happy to share that with you.
I don't want to derail this because I think we're getting towards something very important.
I don't know how much you have allowed yourself to collapse that umbrella over time, but I think you're very close to linking several probably unrelated things together in a way that could be very gratifying to everyone.
Well, are you not thinking here about this kind of combination of a great mystery?
And aren't you glad I moved us over to philosophy?
Are you happy about that?
I'm so much happier.
And I did it before the show.
I didn't tell you I did it, but I moved us from personal journals to philosophy just because I had a feeling a man like you didn't like having a journal.
Ah, personal journal.
It just gave me the... It sounds like live journal, right?
Made me feel like I was wearing a blouse.
You guys...
Okay, I'm a little short on cards here and I have to urinate, but here's the thing.
You've got, on the one hand, if we can cut all this out, if this is, you know, anything.
Yeah, let's cut it all out.
Except the gravy boat.
You think I'm touching that fucking gravy boat, you're high.
You know, there are lots of girls in windows in Amsterdam.
Can I literally write that down?
Yeah.
I have only ever in the many, many, many, many, many nights I have spent in Amsterdam.
When were you in bands?
I don't understand.
You do so much of this traveling.
You're not like a rich, rich guy.
I'm completely baffled about how this many people have been touched by you and you still found time to be in Harvey Danger.
I feel like I'm talking to somebody like I'm Bullwinkle.
Bullwinkle?
Bullwinkle?
Well, Bo Winkle, maybe you're like Mr. Peabody to my Sherman.
Is that dirty?
No, I kind of like that.
I showed my daughter her first bullwinkle.
See, that's how I spent my youth.
Yeah, that's good.
Okay, so I've written down girls and windows, and I promise you to let you continue.
You, on the one hand, are sharing with us some very, very important, albeit personal information about the universe.
On the one hand, you are intensely aware, if I may say, that there is a, not even a force, there is something out there that does represent infinity.
At this point, according to science, we're pretty sure the universe goes on for a long way.
Long time.
The level that we cannot, and by the way, I have recently started fucking with my daughter about the idea of infinity.
Good.
Because I do very much remember sitting around thinking about infinity and getting dizzy.
And what's her response to it so far?
I'm just fucking with her very lightly right now.
Hey, Eleanor, what's the highest number?
And the number she always pulls out, which is not even a number, she says 130 in two.
130 and 2.
That's a number she uses all the time.
And I say, no, what about 130 and 3?
And you can see where this goes.
Right.
I get confused after 260.
So she usually wins and I let her watch TV.
On the one hand, there's this thing that you've become intensely aware of as you lay in your Dutch gravy boat.
You're aware that there's something out there.
You're aware that it sounds to me like you are not comforted by this somewhat...
I want to say fictional, but the idea that these beams of light are actually causing you to be saved from that in any way, you're also thinking a lot about these
what not even apparitions that's that's a perceptual thing about these uh things we can't see and understand that may be moving amongst us and interacting with us in our in our in our places you're thinking about these things right you're probably the most ridiculously rational man i've ever met except for the many ways that you're completely off your fucking nut you're a very rational man you're you're and you're very you want to confront these things and it just seems to me that there might be a threat here between some of these uh these things that you've you've had access to with your visions
Yeah, none of these... What's my vision?
Thank you.
None of these things... They're rational visions, John.
I'm not judging.
I'm not thinking about any of these things.
I was not lying on the beach and thinking about the infinitude.
I was caught in the cold grip of terror as I contemplated it.
Where'd it come from?
Exactly.
I mean, I think it is... Dispute that.
It came from somewhere.
Oh.
Well, I think it is prehistoric in us that... Oh, it's laying dormant.
It's a sleeper cell.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, this is part of the reason that I walked from Amsterdam to Istanbul.
I was trying to activate what I understood to be...
A thing that over the course of human history, the one commonality that all groups of people, all races and cultures, the common thread is that at some point we were somewhere as a group of people and we marched out of where we knew and marched somewhere new.
At one point, we were all confined to where we had... That's got to be... I don't know a lot about Jung, but that sounds like... Or Joseph Campbell or whatever that nonsense.
That seems like a story that is deeply ingrained in us, especially in America.
It's in us.
We marched from hither to thither.
And that marching is something that I was trying to use as an activator...
By starting in one place and just walking day after day after day in one direction, I hoped to bring this deeply dormant thing out of myself and that I would have more...
be able to connect to something that I was not able to connect to intellectually.
You're getting access to something?
I was hoping to find a pureness, a priorness by doing this type of thing.
I wasn't able to successfully shed all of the modernity by just willing it away.
I couldn't just walk around without ID and drink in bars and fully get back to what I would have been as a human being if I had not been raised in a culture.
And raised with a lot of abstractions, some of which were necessary, many of which are not.
But which abstractions, I don't mean to hijack your story, but those abstractions that we accept for ourselves becoming really indelible.
Like nobody throws $20 bills away.
Like that's a very real abstraction.
Yeah, yeah.
Our abstractions that are usually abstractions we develop to solve a problem that we have created with a prior abstraction.
Oh, MedApps, right?
Well, think about this, though.
I think what you're kind of describing is... I'm trying to think of a good example.
Think about what you went through when you were in New York and somebody pulled a gun on you.
A funny story from another thing I do.
Scott Simpson's wife.
When they were in... Scott Simpson's wife.
Easy text.
You got...
You don't want to make Scott cry and drink.
No.
I hope he sends me some pictures of her.
Isn't he a handsome man?
He's a very handsome guy.
Okay, that's a different show.
But the point is that they were in Ulaanbaatar.
Is that a place?
Yes, Ulaanbaatar.
Did I say it right?
I don't think so.
We've got a whole show about this.
I think you pronounced it a little bit Frencher than it is.
So the point is that this dude is slipping his fingers into his lady's fanny pack.
And Scott, who might as well have labia, like dives onto this guy and shoves him.
I have to imagine, you know, I don't think Scott's had a lot of like Taekwondo training.
Scott Simpson?
Scott Simpson.
You know how small his torso is?
He can barely breathe.
Scott Simpson with his short-sleeved button-down shirts.
Oh, my God.
He wears cardigans the way most men wear pride.
And he dove on this.
He was a small guy.
Okay, he was a full head smaller than Scott.
But the point is, what I'm trying to get at, I've had experiences like this.
You've had experiences like that.
Scott Simpson did not get on a train in Ulaanbaatar planning to accidentally tap into something much more primal than I wonder when we can smoke next.
Do you follow?
He got sudden access to something, you know, like the whatever, the eating the red meat thing, the protecting the castle thing.
There are these things that are in us, and I guess calling them primal seems a little bit pop psychology, but it doesn't – when you went away – and again, not to put too fine a point, you were sober when this happened in the Netherlands.
But, you know, like I say, if you used to drink eight hours a day and then you don't, that leaves you a lot of time.
So your mind must have been doing a lot of catching up.
You're a smart guy that had a lot of catching up to do, right?
Well, after I mastered origami, there were only so many things I could do with my hands.
Did you get like a library book or did you have intense... Oh, wait, let me guess.
You were in a Shinto temple in Maguro Hamachi.
I folded 1,000 cranes.
Oh, and that's why we have peace now.
That's right.
That's exactly right.
They call it the Pax Pappella.
Nothing.
I'm just – never mind.
You know what?
Continue.
I'm just saying that we sometimes get – sometimes I have a day where I get a lot done.
Sometimes I have a day when I'm sad all day.
And Scott Simpson had a day where he fucking dove on some guy, some Tuvan dude or whatever.
He became a ninja for a moment.
Yeah, and then he probably just sat and shook, at least I would, but you know what I'm saying?
So you're looking for whatever it is, if I may say.
You tell me if this is right or wrong.
You're looking for whatever that little miasma, that little thing is, that little hymen that stands between you and something you're pretty sure is there inside of you somewhere.
Right, but I wanted... And you walked.
You walked and walked.
I had plenty of instances where I had a brief or explosive access to these people in me that I didn't have... At will?
Daily contact with.
Well, you know...
No.
I mean, occasionally at will, but more often I had the Scott Simpson phenomenon where I was walking around dressed like a frat boy from 1961.
And then all of a sudden I was in full-on combat mode.
He became like the Hulk.
But I didn't want that.
What I wanted was a constant...
What I wanted was constant conscious access to that person.
Wow.
That was prior to... And I don't just mean the... You know, I wanted the... Hilariously, I later described it as a kind of animal reflex activity.
And I made the mistake of describing it that way to a friend of mine who now plays in Duff McKagan's band, who is not a person who you can say something like animal reflexes around without hearing it then from him a thousand times.
So the phrase now is taken on... Hey, you regret it?
Yeah, I regret ever saying it because he was like, oh, animal reflexes, huh?
Yeah, why don't you use your animal reflexes to go get us some more fucking nachos?
Ha ha ha ha ha!
That's important.
There certainly was a time after I had been walking for many months in one direction where I could I'd be walking through a little village and somebody would cross my path
25 feet in front of me uh you know they'd be headed perpendicular to where i was going and as i would walk through their jet stream i could i could smell them
even though they were... The way a dog can pick up flop sweat?
Well, no, a dog can... You know that.
That's the reason dogs get nervous sometimes is that they smell the difference between regular sweat and flop sweat.
They know when somebody's anxious and that freaks them out.
Yeah, yeah, sure.
I'm sure that's true.
I mean, I arrived at a place where my senses were more acute because there was not a thing...
Because they weren't being dulled like they normally were.
And I was hoping to find that throughout myself, not just that I could smell more acutely and that I could see and hear stuff better, but that...
That whatever it was existentially that was dulling me, that thing where I had lost my fear of the universe, not because I had mastered my fear of the universe, but just because I had blinded myself to the universe.
I wanted that dullness to be off me because what I assumed would replace it was acuity.
I thought sharpness would come back.
But the problem is if you get to a point where you can smell somebody from 20 feet away, you cannot live in a city very well.
You know what I mean?
Like that.
Oh, it's almost like you're back from the shit.
It's maladaptive to living.
You're like, you know, like talk about the guys.
I don't know if it's true, but the cliche is you come back from Nam and you're like, you wake up and you're reaching for the gun.
Right.
Or you're just like listening.
You're listening for wrestling.
You're walking around in a city and you are picking up way more information than you want.
Like you don't need to.
You don't need to.
be smelling all these people.
If you're sleeping out in the woods by yourself and you have the ability to smell somebody or hear something from far off, that's very... Actually, I'm guessing it can make you less effective because now you've got a bad signal to noise ratio for threats.
Exactly.
You're not separating the wheat from the chaff very well.
I remember the first time I was in the Czech Republic.
I was approaching Prague and a jet airplane flew over me.
And it had been a week since I had been in a...
Under airplane traffic.
And I was in the middle of Europe, right?
I mean, it's not like I was out in the Sudan.
I was in the middle of Europe.
But because I was traveling on foot, I became aware of those times when I just wasn't under jet traffic.
I mean, if there were jets, they were flying at 35,000 feet.
They weren't.
They weren't right overhead or they weren't, you know, on approach.
And I couldn't believe the noise that jets make.
You know, it seemed to me like it was rattling the whole... It was rattling the countryside.
It was deafening.
And...
Of course, you can't live like that.
If I felt like that right now, where I live here in my house, a scant mile and a half from an airport, I would go crazy.
Just for what's worse, Scott Simpson lives right next to an airport, too.
I know he does, and he keeps inviting me to come stay with him.
He's got two hot tubs.
Where you sit and smell the jet fuel come off of SFO?
the hot tubs well right if it's right next to an airport don't you know again this is the thing john what you're describing now you're getting to a level that i can almost understand which is you're talking about the security right there's a uh there's this thing where like uh you probably don't have things that annoy you but if you've ever and you haven't had a lot of office jobs i'm guessing but like you've ever had a lot of things that annoy me really can we can we diary that because i'd like to come back to that
Okay, let's personal journal it.
Okay.
But you're talking about office jobs.
Well, think about this.
This is a very obvious, and to use this word for the second time this week, quotidian example.
But if somebody at the next desk does something that drives you nuts, right?
Like listens to the radio just a little bit too low.
Right.
Well, Bill said that I could listen to the radio at a reasonable volume after 11.
Where's my stapler?
That's a funny movie.
But the one that would always get me is – and this is the thing is I'm not the kind of guy that sweats this.
But once I start noticing a certain way that someone chews or drinks –
And let's be honest, I, you know, I can't even tell you there's five nines level of like, I never noticed this, but once I do notice it, I can't stop noticing it.
And I can't stop thinking about it.
It should be the easiest thing in the world for me to just not even notice it anymore.
But your cubicle mates, loud chewing is, I don't know if I've said it on this show before, but my stepfather, who was the worst person who's ever lived, I think I told you this, this is how he drinks coffee.
Ready?
He's dead now.
Thank God.
But, um, this is how he drinks coffee every day for the years that we were with him.
It was like this.
Yeah.
Yuck.
That's terrible.
Okay, so I'm 12, right?
I got straight A's.
I should.
I've been a scout.
I played Little League.
I met Pete Rose twice.
I should be able.
Oh, I met Steve Garvey.
I met the 79 Dodgers, buddy.
I should be able to put that out of my mind, but I can't.
And now, in fact, I'm like Temple Grandin.
Now that is deafening to me.
I can't stop hearing it.
Right.
It sounds like he's gleeking.
I used to be great at this.
Did you just gleek?
I can't do it as well as I used to.
Are you gleeking?
I could chew fluids out of my body so much more efficiently when I was 17.
You know what?
I have never been able to gleek.
Oh, dude.
You know what I did?
I woodshedded.
I spent a lot of time practicing.
We call it snaking where I'm from.
Gleeking.
Gleeking.
Most people recognize that as the thing they accidentally did on their dentist's face when they're in the chair.
Yeah, my little girl gleeks all the time.
She doesn't even know what she's doing.
She doesn't realize what a skill it is.
I'm going to look that up on Urban Dictionary.
I had a friend that used to practice when he was a kid.
He would stand in the hallway of his grandmother's house and he would flick guitar picks at the mirror.
Oh, like Rick Nielsen?
Yeah, the mirror down at the end of the hall.
He would just sit for hours at a time just flicking guitar picks at himself.
Did you ever do anything like that?
No.
You're kidding.
What about, after I saw that episode of Happy Days, where the guy had the contest for snatching quarters off your elbow, I found out that not only did I try to do that for six weeks, but my lady did the same thing.
We didn't have quarters.
We were not rich people.
But I would take, you never do this, you stack up, you stack up, imagine, look at my arm.
I'm stacking up pennies on my 90 degree out, like straight out.
I know what you're talking about.
Remember the episode?
And you whip it and you grab the stack of pennies.
And Fonzie was really good at it.
No, I never did.
You never worked on a skill like that.
Well, I taught myself to juggle because I was always looking for the thing that would amaze village children.
You know?
This is a thing.
It's just a little taste of infinity.
How is he doing that?
How is he making the balls almost stay in the air so many at once?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
May I have shoes?
If you spend any time outside of the place where you were born, you realize that entertaining groups of children... Is this in Verdlark?
Or...
It becomes a very crucial skill because little groups of children, little packs of kids, that is the main feature of most of the world.
If you are a stranger and you walk into a small town, all the adults will pretend that they have seen...
the likes of you a million times.
Yeah, and run you on a rail.
Well, no, they kind of go back to drinking their coffee and looking at you over the tops of their newspapers.
That's not mince words.
If you show up in town with the idea of delighting children, I think adults are going to look askance.
Well, no, this is the thing.
You don't show up with the idea of delighting children.
You show up because you're just looking for refreshment and maybe a chance to sleep in the hayloft.
Okay, so you're looking for the local wenches and the taverns and stuff.
You're like, take me to the mayor of your town.
I am a visitor from far away.
But the kids in different places, they do not have that shyness.
They are not trying to be cool.
Do they gather in the town square to gawk at you because you're new?
They point and they gawk and they go, look at this.
In my case, long-haired, blonde, extremely large monster who has come from a faraway place.
And so if the kids are standing around you, initially the kids are not always friendly.
They are suspicious.
They're scared.
And if you spook them, then you lose... All the adults are watching you, of course, and you lose everyone's friendship if you spook the kids.
So you have to have something.
You have to have a magic trick.
You have to have something where you're surrounded by kids.
You can't pretend you're not.
And they are watching you very intently.
You have to be able to pull something out of your bag or perform some kind of like... And the kids... And then you win the kids over and then everybody relaxes and everybody goes back to drinking their coffee.
But you can feel the like... Right?
The town goes... Collectively exhales because this guy's obviously not a threat.
Yeah, he looks like a freak but he just juggled...
It's like three rocks he picked up off the square and now the kids are following.
Now they all jump behind.
Like you start to walk and the kids all... Yeah.
I know at this point then you can sell everybody in the town on having a marching band and you sell the musical instruments.
Exactly.
You can pipe the rats out of Ireland.
You can do whatever it is that you want to do.
Because you don't want them to play pool.
but and this is the thing this is why even though david blaine is a terrible terrible monster this was going so this was going so well i always admired his ability with those tricks to like go to foreign places and uh he would you know do magic which is the universal you don't think those are set up bits oh he's terrible and those that show is terrible and they're totally set up there's a lot of pen and teller tricks that are pretty mind-blowing until you realize they're bits
If I had just worked up three or four card dice tricks or something, I would have been better off as a human being.
Aren't you pretty dedicated to packing light?
I mean, we've talked before about the... A deck of cards.
A deck of cards.
One time.
I was going to say, do you have to carry things to juggle or do you find local things?
No, you find local things.
Like you might find things that are right there on the ground.
You pick stuff up off the ground and juggle them.
That is a winning strategy.
It localizes it, too.
It's like saying, how's everybody doing tonight, Cleveland?
That's right.
These are your stones I'm throwing into the infinite.
Your rocks.
Exactly.
You didn't even look at these rocks, did you?
You didn't even see these rocks.
They've been sitting here the whole time.
But did you know they can fly?
Yeah.
The other thing about me that holds me in good stead with people around the world is that I am not embarrassed to break into a spontaneous interpretive dance.
Is that right?
So if I'm surrounded by kids and I cannot either find three rocks or if they are not impressed by me juggling three rocks, because in some cultures, you know, everybody can juggle three rocks.
Right.
That's like eating pork.
Right.
Is it like a jiggy dance?
Is it a kind of – is it an interpretive folk dance or are you repurposing something from the West?
I will start off – Wait a minute.
It's got stages?
I'll start off slowly with a little bit of like a – It's got an arc.
The white guy shuffle where I'm like –
And everybody at this point is looking at me very suspiciously.
Like, what?
Were you making that little musical noise while you do it?
Yeah.
A little Motown.
And I'm just kind of like doing the white guy head bob, right?
And then I start to pick up the pace a little bit.
Yeah.
and then everybody's like what's your body doing at that point are you moving your butt you know i'm a little bit of butt moving a little bit of side to side foot shuffle a little bit the shoulders back and forth and then just when they think like okay what's he selling here then i go into full-on
Swan Lake ballet, one foot arched back, one foot way up in the air, hands out, making a wing like a swan, and then I spin, I leap, and there's no village square in the world that isn't
that is immediately won over by this performance.
No one's expecting it.
I can say with confidence it is not anything anyone has ever seen.
Yeah, I'm guessing it's not something that a lot of people there do in the town square a lot.
It's not something that strangers come through town and do.
Your typical two German guys on BMW off-road bikes.
Like pooping and hitting each other.
dressed head to toe in leather.
These guys aren't doing that.
You're Americans working for the NSA who come through and adjust the radio frequencies on the dish.
They're not doing it.
But Dance and John, Dance and John comes to town.
And everybody that's been there before you has been fucking juggling stuff they found on the ground.
This is going to be very refreshing to them.
Yeah, because a certain amount of shamelessness, right?
Everybody carries around so much shame all the time.
Human beings across the world walking around with a common desire not to be embarrassed, not to look like an asshole.
Yeah.
And if you leave that shame behind and you are willing to say, I am going to be a complete fool for you right now.
I'm going to show you what a clown looks like.
It's the Jerry Lewis phenomenon, right?
No one hates Jerry Lewis until you get to know him.
And you do this thing and you have basically said, I am... And it's not just that I am harmless.
It is that I am...
I am fun, and I am, to a certain degree, I am shameless.
And that shamelessness is something that is very disarming.
If you are there to capture and kill and eat their children, you are not going to dance the sword like this.
Nothing puts people at ease as much as knowing that there's nothing this person won't do.
Go ahead, kids.
Enjoy the candy.
Yeah, there's a reason I'm in your town.
Because I was run out of the last town.
And the town before it.
The town where I was raised.
There's sandal marks on your ass.
Yeah.
Well, I can't explain it except to say that it's worked for me many, many times.
What about the mystery spot?
You ever been in the mystery spot?
Where's the mystery spot?
Mystery spot.
I think it's down near us.
Is that on a girl's body, you mean?
Well, we can talk about ladies in windows.
I was thinking of the place in Santa Cruz.
I think you've been there.
You go and you park on a hill and the mysterious things happen that defy gravity.
There's a spot like that in Oregon where it looks like your car is pointed uphill, but it actually rolls on its own.
I think it's the same principle problem.
It's... Disappointing.
The thing about girls in windows... I've seen a lot of girls in windows.
I've only ever fallen in love with two girls in windows.
okay i'm gonna let you go continue continue you fall in love with two girls in windows all right one time i was i was i was i was i had an injury
And I was hobbling.
I was walking.
I didn't have a cane, but I was walking very slowly on an injured leg walking through this town.
And I look up and there are the girls in the windows with the red lights.
And they're in their comical lingerie.
And I look up and I see the girls, and I'm not moving at the pace of other people on the sidewalk.
I'm limping along.
So I'm moving slowly, and I look up at the girls, and they're looking down at me.
And they give me the hooker sympathy.
You know what I mean?
Like, oh, look at the poor...
guy is that an international concept hooker sympathy yeah the hooker sympathy half of the time when you when you engage the services of a hooker you're just looking for female sympathy oh amen and so these these girls in the windows are you know they they take a break from their vamping and they're like oh and and they they they get a little bit human and they're looking at me through the glass of their windows and they're going oh look at the poor little limper
And I look up, and I'm not moving fast enough that I can do what I normally do, which is be like... Which is dance.
Hello, nice to see you.
I'm not a threat to you.
Watch my fancy jig.
Want to see me juggle?
What do we got here?
I got a Coke can.
So I don't juggle.
I don't dance.
And I'm moving too slowly to be like, hello.
Nice to see you.
And then keep going.
And so I look up and I'm like, oh, hi.
Yeah, I know.
Limping.
And I limp a little bit further.
And they're like, oh, sweetheart.
And kind of petting my hair through the window glass.
And I'm like, yeah, that's right.
I'm hurt.
I'm injured.
And they start doing the like, you should come in.
You should come in, Becca.
Oh, seductively moving the finger toward them.
Yeah, but they're not trying to be sexy at this point.
They're trying to be like... I'm sorry, John.
Are they seated?
Are they doing a very slight little 60s dance?
Are they on a pole?
It seems like they would get uncomfortable standing in a window.
Are they on a banquette?
What do they do?
It is, I think, uncomfortable to stand semi-naked in a window.
Usually, here's the setup in Amsterdam.
Each girl has a window.
It's a full-length window because that's the style of the construction of the old...
Is it like a storefront, like where you'd see a Macy's Christmas display?
No, it's like in the Netherlands.
Like a terrarium.
It's more like a terrarium.
In the Netherlands, they built very tall houses, tall, skinny houses.
Right.
And the reason for this is that back in olden times, the king...
uh decided that he was going to tax your house based on how wide it was along the street oh it's a housing hack and so they built i think like i think like comically narrow and like three stories high oh comically narrow and seven stories high oh with really really really steep little like ship stairs like when you're going up and down the stairs in a dutch house it's basically like you're going up and down like inconvenient enough that you could like hide a family if you had to
uh if you had to hide a family in the roof two families really two families yeah there would be a roof there okay um and then the so the front windows of these dutch houses are very tall because the the houses are tall and the rooms are they were built during a time when people understood that you need 15 foot ceilings in order to feel human god bless them in a house not like now where they put seven foot ceilings in a place and
Staple it together and act like that's acceptable.
Yeah, act like that's a house.
Anyway, so they have these big tall windows and generally the girls are not on the ground floor, but they are on the second floor.
So they're above the street.
They're looking down at you.
Percentium effect.
Right.
And each girl has her own window.
And they have, they've built a kind of like large closet or boudoir kind of place where there's a chair.
So they can sit in the chair if they want to sit in the chair.
There are some, you know, velvet curtains or whatever.
It's meant to look, it's meant to evoke kind of a somewhat like a, like a, like a, like a joke version of luxury.
And the girls sit there and they're wearing a teddy and maybe some thigh high stockings with the garter belt.
And they try and gauge the men who are walking past.
Their job is to gauge your interest by how you are looking at them.
And then with a very quick kind of assessment, decide what is the most seductive posture to strike.
Right.
Like if you are looking at them, you're obviously shopping.
And what type of man are you?
Are you.
But silently with only their what they decide to do with their body, their face and their movements.
They need to very quickly assess what's going to what's going to make the sale.
Right.
And they don't want to give away too much because I think there are a lot of creeps in Amsterdam who just stand on the sidewalk and look at girls in the window.
Right.
So they're not going to turn around and give you like some kind of ass play.
But she could potentially put on some very high Doc Martens, put on some big glasses, sit down, start reading a book, and look a lot more Jewish, for example.
Oh, my God.
See, this is what happened to me.
Maybe she flips off the red light and puts on the kind of light you'd have in a coffee shop.
I'm going to get to this.
I'm going to get to that.
So anyway, the first time I fell in love was I'm limping past these girls, and the girls are all beckoning.
And there's one of these girls, most of the time I'm not susceptible to this kind of fake.
I do not like red teddies, for instance.
I do not like red lingerie at all.
Let's just say that.
I don't like too much makeup.
I don't like the look of a woman who is trying to be a prostitute.
but god there is this one girl in the window there and she's not making a big show of like beckoning she's actually looking me in the eyes and say and communicating with her eyes hey come on come on in let me take care of you and i was i was frozen in my tracks and uh
I look up and I have all this primordial feeling of like, I want you to take care of me.
That is what I need right now.
I am alone in a strange place and I have an injury and I am cold, actually, now that you mention it.
And my socks are damp.
And I want to be cared for in this way that you are suggesting with your eyes.
And all the other girls who are in the windows next to you, they all disappeared.
And I just had this tunnel vision of this one girl.
And, of course, my response was that I shyly looked away and hobbled off up the street.
I think part of me thinking that she would chase after me.
Yeah.
But, of course, she was in her underwear.
She would put up a single finger as if to say, no, no, no, wait, and she would dash out.
And she'd put on a trench coat and come running after me, and then we would go.
Maybe an orange flight suit.
We would go get on a steamship, and we would go to America.
So that was the first time.
Maybe the hooker with the heart of Gilders?
It could have been.
And we were still using Gilders at the time.
Mm-hmm.
But the other time, in the much worse time... The second window love affair?
Second window love affair.
I was walking through one of the kind of twisty, narrow streets in the red light district in Amsterdam.
And it was a crowded night.
It was late at night.
And I think I had gone out of my youth hostel to get some ice cream.
Which is harder to find in the red light district in the middle of the night than you might think.
If I was running a red light district, I would have the hookers, sure.
Oh, that'd be like in my top 20.
There would be ice cream parlors too, right?
You mean like for after?
Yeah.
Well, or just like if you're if you're a guy and you're out roaming the street with an insatiable desire that you can't you can't quench.
Maybe you're not ready yet.
You want something that's a treat, but you're not ready for the commitment.
Exactly.
You want a little treat.
You want a little treat, a little treat, a little time.
So I'm looking for ice cream.
I can't find it.
I'm going through these narrow, winding streets.
And the streets are full of men from all over the world, creeps from all over the world.
Like, you're walking through these streets.
I'm talking about 1 o'clock in the morning.
And every person that you see would be the creepiest guy in the town where he grew up, right?
I mean, they're just creeps from all over.
And they're leering.
And they've got slobber.
They're...
They're bad men.
They have stains on their pants.
Dander.
Dander.
And so on these narrow streets, the girls are not a flight up.
They're not looking down at you from their tall windows.
They are in little...
cubbies right at eye level right at street level and the streets are very narrow there so you don't you're not even really standing 10 feet back you're like looking at her right through the glass do the guys keep moving and get out of the way or do they pause in front of windows oh they pause oh so it's like it's like when you got to get the um people trying to get the samples at costco
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And it's exactly like that.
You're pushing your way through a crowd, and there are people milling around these windows, and the women are trying to, the women are very much in control, or at least they're trying to project that they're in control of the situation, and they keep the doors locked, right?
And in a lot of cases, it's not even a window.
It's just a door with a window in it.
So they're just standing in a glass doorway.
Sounds like the Kiwanis haunted house.
Yeah.
Except nobody puts your hand in a basket of spaghetti.
Not without coughing up some gilders.
Right, that's right.
For 50 gilders, you can come in and put your hand in some cold spaghetti.
I'm sorry, continue.
And you'll see, guys will walk up to these glass doors and they'll knock on the glass and the woman will kind of look them up and down and if they don't have too many stains on their pants, there's not too much slobber on them, they let them in and then they close the curtain and they kind of just do it right there.
Yeah.
Anyway, I'm walking through this alley.
I'm looking for ice cream, and I am not really looking side to side.
I'm not looking.
I'm kind of looking at the creepy guys, and I'm looking at the girls out of the corner of my eye, as you do.
Sizing them up.
But I'm not trying to.
I'm certainly not shopping for a girl, and I'm just looking for ice cream, really.
Just here.
You're just walking the lot.
There's nothing to talk about yet.
Well, you know, I'm in the red light district.
What are you going to do?
Yeah.
I'm walking through and it's just one kind of girl in a red teddy after another.
And I'm just like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
A girl in a red teddy.
And then I see this girl out of the corner of my eye and she is my platonic ideal.
I don't know what it is about her.
I accept that it is everything about her.
My platonic ideal.
And I look at her out of the corner of my eye, and I am surrounded by people, by men who are a foot shorter than I am.
And in the Netherlands, men are very tall.
But most of these men who are here creeping around in this alley are not from the Netherlands.
Do you get me?
Oh, no, they're from the Danderlands.
They are the creeps from their other places.
And I look at her out of the corner, very much out of the corner of my eye, and I'm an expert at this.
But she is looking right at me.
Oh, God.
And I go, ooh.
Despite all your training, did you turn?
Despite all my training, I blushed and ran.
And so I get to the end of this alley and I'm like, did I just run?
Did she look at me and I ran?
What kind of a man am I?
And I said, this will not stand.
I'm not going to run out of this hooker alley because this girl, this platonic ideal, who's probably not even that pretty, looked at me, caught me looking at her.
I'm going to go back and I'm going to walk through the alley with my head held high and I'm going to see her and I'm going to nod my head like a gentleman.
And so I turn back around and I walk back through the alley.
And when I get within eyesight of her little doorway, she is looking at me already.
She is looking for me.
And I see her and she gives me a look, a very knowing look.
And I can't breathe all of a sudden.
I'm choking on my own Adam's apple.
And I try and give what I think is like a gentlemanly nod, but what is really just some kind of like spastic head motion.
He twitched.
And then I literally run away.
And so now I'm walking through the red light district and I'm covered in sweat and I'm thinking she's the most beautiful girl I've ever seen in my life.
What?
And here's the problem with being a romantic is that it being a romantic is nothing.
It causes nothing but pain in one's life.
And now I have seen the most beautiful girl in the world and she is a, uh, uh, she's standing in a doorway in a red light district and
And what am I supposed to do now?
I'm not Richard Gere.
I'm not going to make her an honest woman.
She's probably from Belarus.
And so I'm thinking to myself, I should spend 50 guilders just to be next to this girl.
But also to prove to yourself that you could do it, right?
Well, that is the question.
Could I do this?
And the answer was that I didn't think I could.
And so I walk around the block and I'm still kind of looking for ice cream out of the corner of my eye.
More than ever.
I'm hoping if I just find ice cream, I can just go back to the youth hostel and try and blot this out of my mind.
But I can't get her face out of my mind.
And I'm walking around and increasingly I'm not looking for ice cream and increasingly I'm being drawn back to this alley.
And so now I'm at the entrance to the alley and I'm looking down the alley and I look at her door, which I can kind of see the light coming out of.
And I kind of tiptoe into this alley.
Again, the alley has 500 guys in it.
Tiptoe into the alley.
And as soon as I come in sight of her door, she sees me.
As though she's looking for me.
And when she sees that I'm looking for her, she gets a very knowing look on her face.
And she's been unperturbable and perfectly calm.
She's not putting on a show for all the other men in the alley.
Every time I've walked past this door, the other men are invisible to her.
And all she's looking at is me.
She looks at me and she makes a very subtle gesture that just says, hey, come here.
And it is a, hey, come here, that says to me, you are Richard Gere.
You are my Richard Gere.
Come here.
You and I both know it is inevitable.
And I lost it.
I absolutely lost it.
And I ran.
I ran.
You ran again?
I ran.
And I have never stopped thinking about this girl.
Oh, my God, John.
How long ago was this?
20 years ago.
Oh, God.
Who knows where she is now?
She's probably working in a travel agency in Belarus.
Yeah.
You're like Forrest Gump.
I'm not like Forrest Gump.
You run and you run and you run.
God, I'm not like Forrest Gump.
Life is not a box of chocolate.
How do you resolve that, John?
Life is a box of sand.
Save it.
Now, how do you resolve this, John?
You've brought up a lot of tumult.
How do you resolve that?
You're living with that literally every day now.
I don't think you can resolve it.
So what do you do with that?
I mean, that's got to be on your mind.
It is on my mind.
The lesson is don't fall in love with prostitutes.
I fell in love with a woman I saw for 30 seconds at a Little General once.
I stopped thinking about her.
It was 1986.
I stopped thinking about her.
Is that like a piggly wiggly?
No, no, no, no.
It's like an adorable 7-Eleven.
Oh, like a come and go.
Not in my case.
Up in the Midwest, like Wisconsin land, they have these little convenience stores called come and go.
That's a terrible idea.
And they spell come K-U-M.
Come and go.
Is it Yiddish?
That's an awful, awful name.
It's a terrible name.
And they sell cheese curds in these places.
It's sure going to keep me from visiting the Pump Chili.
But anyway, these places are called The General.
It's some kind of dicky.
It's too painful.
No, it's called The Little General.
They later got bought out by the Circle K's.
You know, Little General is my nickname for my...
For your little Dutchman?
For my little toy soldier.
A little general.
Anyway, so you see a girl for 30 seconds.
I can't talk about it.
It's too painful.
It's too painful.
I shared my story.
I saw her going in and I think she bought a pack of cigarettes and some paper towels and I just couldn't get it out of my mind until like two years ago.
She smoked, John.
She smoked.
She's probably smoking right now.
Wiping up some spill.
She had handcuffs hanging from a rear view mirror.
Oh my God.
My roommate in college had that.
Boy.
Well, yeah.
Hmm.
Hmm.