Ep. 51: "In Pursuit of an Errant Leaf"
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Hello.
Hey, John.
Hi, Merlin.
How's it going?
it feels like the first time it feels like the first time i think um america's introduction to thomas dolby they may not be aware it was foreign or four say what many people uh were aware of thomas dolby from his uh what's it called the golden age of wireless or whatever right great album pretty sure i think that's the title um
And I think he was the guy who played all the keyboards on Foreigner 4.
On Foreigner 4?
I'm going to have to check that.
I think you should, because that's quite a claim.
I would like to start collecting all of these in my own kind of personalized version of Turns Out, where I think it is actually... It's like the first time.
That's from Head Games.
What's that from?
Like you've never been before.
Hmm.
I'm very glad that you brought up Foreigner.
Yes.
Truthfully.
I would love to know.
Because I have to tell you, again, this is going to be my second turns out of the day.
I honestly am not – I have a pretty good idea what you think of Foreigner 4.
But I have to be honest with you.
I think I could see you going either way hard on it.
Right.
Can I guess?
I'll write it on a card.
I'm going to write it on a card.
Do you mind?
Okay.
Okay, go ahead.
Write it on a card, and then I'll tell you what I think.
First of all, this is going to be a real screwy day, as you know.
There's a lot of things that are different about today.
This night is different from all others.
That's true.
First of all, we've eaten the bitter herbs.
I can't get anything past you.
I'm going to say John's Foreigner for Feeling.
Mm-hmm.
Feels like the first time.
And I've written down what I think your answer will be.
John, in as much as you're comfortable saying, what is your position on the 1981 album Foreigner 4?
Urgent, urgent, urgent, urgent.
Emergency.
Foreigner 4, I have a tremendous vulnerability.
I have a soft spot in my head.
where my skull did not form completely all the way.
You've got a musical fontanelle.
That allows Foreigner 4 in, and it's lodged there.
It's lodged there like a succubus.
And I can't say a bad thing about it.
Because Foreigner 4 came out in 1981, which was right between... It came out the summer of 81...
Right between 7th and 8th grade for me.
Oh, that's... Boy, that's where a lot of stuff... Oh, my God.
We need a name for that summer because that is a turning point.
7th and 8th and 8th and 9th, both of those summers were huge turning points, especially in music for me.
Yeah.
The summer between 7th and 8th grade, I think, is the summer between... When I started 7th grade, I was still...
let's be honest, a sixth grader.
And that's because I had the misfortune, I think, now looking back, the misfortune of being born in September, and when it came time to make that decision in, whatever, 1973 or 2, whatever that was, came time to make the decision, do we put him in kindergarten when he's a four-year-old, or do we wait an extra year...
And put him in kindergarten when he was a five-year-old.
I was a big kid.
I was a precocious kid.
And my folks were like, oh, he'll be fine.
I was going to write it on a card.
That was going to be my guess that they went ahead and pushed in.
That's early, John.
That is early.
So I started kindergarten at four.
And that means that my whole life, my best friend in high school, his birthday was the first week of December.
And he was, I mean, basically a full year.
He was 10 months older than I was.
There was a kid in the junior year.
There was a kid who was a junior my senior year, and he and I had the exact same birthday.
And so I spent my whole life, you know, kind of a little bit in school fronting that I was...
uh, that I was, uh, I was ready for this.
You know, I was, I was there and now everybody else, all the other kids.
Your first day in the cell block.
Yeah, exactly.
You screwed up your courage.
Maybe you took some courses and now you're ready.
Went up to the biggest kid who already had a mustache and, you know, and just clocked him like, come on.
But you know, all the kids, it's not just, it's very noticeable when everybody else is going into puberty and you are still playing with Hot Wheels cars.
This is why your camp is going to help so many people.
That's right.
But it's also noticeable when you're in third grade.
I mean, I was always big and I always was articulate, but I did not have the emotional maturity to be there.
And I graduated from high school when I was 17 and was not ready to be set loose on the world.
Yeah.
So anyway.
You finished high school.
You left high school.
I eventually finished high school.
But I got a – We don't really – only the French have a word for being asked to leave high school with credit.
The English – there's no English word for that.
Yeah, it's called bien sûr.
Here you are.
La porte.
but all those records that came out so you know up until 1980 i i think i've said this before i was still listening to my parents music which in my dad's case was big band music and right about 1980 i became uh
And suddenly hyper aware of pop music being a thing that other kids that there was a thing that you could you could differentiate between who the cool kids were and who the cool kids weren't.
And pop music became this this suddenly this monolith that was sticking up out of a gravel field that the who had just peed on.
Yeah.
And Foreigner 4, I think, was among the first few records that I was aware of in the moment.
It wasn't like, hey, dude, you should listen to the Beatles.
It was, this record just came out.
And the other one, of course, was Back in Black.
Both apparently produced by the same man, I will note.
Again, I don't want to interrupt you, but I have just learned from looking at this one page on Wikipedia, I have learned so much about Foreigner 4 that I never knew, including that it was produced by Mr. Robert John Mutt Lang.
Mutt Lang.
That's right.
That was a big year.
1980, 81, 82, those were big years for Mutt Lang.
Back in Black's 80, right?
Back in Black was a year before Foreigner 4.
Yeah.
So right in that, and you know, in The Wall by Pink Floyd.
I think I was like late 79 or so.
Yeah, but 80 was when it hit.
I remember because I was in seventh grade in military school, and the guys in the next room had it.
high and dry by def leppard also by uh robert robert john mutt lang mutt lang production so he was producing a lot of records i can't i can't imagine what his workload must have been like in 1980 imagine if we have time at the end of this episode i think we should go back and maybe review everything he did for those three years because i have a feeling yeah you obviously you have a lot of respect for the man shania shania twain notwithstanding
Well, you know, there's so many myths about Mutt Lang, particularly that he would sit and record guitar chords one string at a time.
What?
That's the old story about Def Leppard.
He said, listen, your guitar chords sound too muddy.
So you're going to fret each note individually, and then we're going to mix it together.
At the risk of talking out of my ass, that sounds very much like the kind of thing someone who's never played an instrument or recorded in their life would say.
Yeah, it doesn't make any sense at all.
It makes absolutely no sense.
That's like saying, you know, your automobile would go faster if we just went one tire at a time.
But I do have a tremendous respect for those records.
And I can't believe this now that I'm looking into this.
High and Dry came out on July 11th, and Foreigner 4 came out one week later.
No way.
Talk about... Or no, no, I'm sorry.
One week earlier.
July 2nd.
July 2nd.
So, I mean, I was at that moment.
July 2nd, 1981...
I was almost surely playing Dig Dug at the Tasty Freeze at the corner of Lake Otis and Northern Lights in Anchorage.
Diane sitting on Johnny's lap.
And I was not sucking on a chili dog because that record came out right about that same time too.
That goddamn John Cougar record.
And that was the beginning of my consciousness, right?
I did not like the John Cougar record.
I did like the Foreigner record.
Were you watching a lot of MTV at this point?
This is the very early – actually, you know what?
This is – I think this would be a month before MTV started.
When I got a year later, John Cougar, formerly Johnny Cougar, not yet John Mellencamp, just John Cougar at this point, that hurt so good and Jack and Diane was on about every five or six minutes.
So MTV, now I see, was one month later.
404 came out July 1st or July 2nd.
MTV launched August 1st, 1981.
You know what this is, John?
This is our April 1865.
That's exactly right.
It's the month unlike any other.
And now we are beginning reconstruction.
We have become teenagers.
Filling our carpet bags.
We did not get MTV in Anchorage until later.
So it didn't, it came in 1982, I think.
Wow.
But I was absolutely, my aunt, my Aunt Martha, worked at the cable company in Anchorage.
And so I don't, and I'm not sure, at the time I felt like maybe she was watching over us.
But now that I think about it with a clear head, I realize that that's not how things work.
Your aunt at the cable company does not make your neighborhood be the first one to get cable in Anchorage.
But didn't you have to steal it from your betters?
That was the one that they beamed into like chiclet-shaped antennas that were on your roof.
But no, when cable finally came, where they actually installed a cable in your house...
We were in the first 50 families in the city to get it because our neighborhood was where they started.
So I was one of the first Alaskans to get MTV.
Wow.
I just sat there Indian style with my nose.
Oh, it was like for me it was every...
especially with mtv it was like every conceivable minute of the day and it really it reached a it really reached ahead when i wanted to watch mtv before school because already i would get up late because i was a teenager but boy that was super controversial and then i was always i remember i think about this today with my daughter and like i'm always just one more one more video i just want to see one more just let me see what the next one is because there's no way there's no tivo there's no way of knowing right now
This could be Stand and Deliver by Adam and the Ants.
You never know.
I should wait.
It could be Stand and Deliver.
It could be Watt by Captain Sensible.
It could be Video Killed the Radio Star.
It could have been any of those.
But it'll probably be Only the Lonely by the Motels.
Right.
John, I've got my cards runneth over.
First of all, I wish – if you can see this, I don't know if you can see it.
I had written the word yes, that you would probably have a soft spot.
Now, what I had not accounted for was exactly how much... I want to just do... Well, now, wait a minute.
Yes has a song from that very era called Leave It.
Leave It by the guy from the Buggles did that.
Yeah, Trevor Horn.
That should be one of our theme songs because Leave It is the thing that I am constantly saying to myself.
Leave it.
Leave it.
Leave it.
I discovered the orchestra stab.
Cable TV at that era also introduced me to Benny Hill, which my 8th grade mind could only barely grasp that there was such a thing as Benny Hill.
Because Benny Hill was my Mel Brooks.
He perfectly expressed the kind of tits and ass
The exact amount of tits and ass that my brain was capable of handling, which was to say that Benny Hill would run past a girl and somehow her nurse's outfit would fall off and you could see her pantyhose and then she would run after him.
She'd be wearing like a lacy bra.
She'd have a lacy bra on and then they would run after each other around him.
I feel like I got so ripped off.
I've seen so few – I've seen like two lacy bras ever in person.
In real life?
Well, I mean there was a point in the early 80s where I was right in that bra window where ladies would still – where at one point I had a chestily gifted lady and she wore a lacy bra and it was – you don't look back from that.
Boy, that's – you know what?
Here's the thing.
If they had not – if Benny Hill had not come along, we would have had to invent him.
Because you're right.
He's right in the pocket.
And also I confuse him a lot with Benny Hinn.
Benny Hinn, the TV evangelist, I confuse him with a lot.
When Benny Hinn came along, I realized I did not need to invent him.
Benny Hinn is a lot more fun to watch when he's faith healing and you're listening to Yeah, Kitty Sacks.
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In any case.
Well, you know, the thing about Lacey Brons, my problem with Lacey Brons.
That's my new pole dancer name, by the way.
Lacey Brons.
I never... That, for whatever reason, did not click with me.
And I grew up in the era of looking at girls' underwear ads in the Sears catalog.
Like, Lacey Bras should have been in my wheelhouse.
But as I grew up to be a young adult and I started seeing Lacey Bras for the first time, I did not... Lacey Bras gave me no thrill.
And to this day, when a young lady...
does the big reveal and she has on fancy underwear i'm like i think that's i got you know it's so funny because i i we i think we at this point probably should cease all discussion of zz top videos because i think we've reached the moratorium level but but that really that was imprinted on me you know like what is lazy bras
Lacey Bross, like Conrad Lorenz and the ducks.
Is that Conrad Lorenz?
Yeah, I get him printing, right?
So now I'm chasing ducks, if you like.
But you are learning to fly behind an ultralight.
I get one shot.
I get a few – not one shot.
I got many, many shots of Lacey Bross.
And let's be honest.
I went through a lot of catalogs.
Even before I understood what to do with them, I was hoarding them.
And then when I did figure out what to do with them, I realized that that was my duck.
The ZZ Top video imprinted on me that a neon pink miniskirt was a thing that I could really literally get behind.
A neon pink miniskirt is a thing.
And I know you don't use that word lightly.
That girl, I'm talking about the one that had the lacy ankle socks.
You're talking about Sharp Dressed Man?
the shorter give me all your loving oh that one the little oh she was a mix she was a mix that's exactly right like you could tell she was even more there's always there's one in each one there's the one that's more like there's one in the um there's one i think in not give me all your loving no it's in sharp dressed man there's one who you can tell is like twice as dirty as the other ones
Twice as dirty, that's exactly right.
And the other ones are pretty dirty, John.
But the long, blonde-haired one, she's never as dirty as you want her to be.
It's always the kitten-ish one that kind of has the tousled hair and the ankle socks.
Anyway, leaving that aside.
Well, here's the problem with the underwear, though, and I don't want to say anything controversial here.
But, you know, I've had this rule of thumb for a long time.
Like many of the great rules of thumb, I learned it too late.
But we've talked about this a long time ago.
You've got to be careful where you meet people because, you know, do you really want to meet somebody at a place?
Do you want to go out with somebody that you met at a place you go to all the time?
Because when you break up, you'll have to see them all the time.
Or, like, if you accidentally – Don't shit where you eat is what that –
Sure, don't shit where you never eat is the other one.
So if you accidentally went to a class and learning latch hook rugs, maybe that's something you could enjoy.
But you have to understand that's a new culture.
What I'm saying is this.
If you meet somebody who's real comfortable taking off their clothes and has fancy underwear, red flag.
Red flag.
Because I'm just saying like they're – I like the fancy underwear and I can enjoy the taking off the clothes fast.
But those two together, that could be a stress bump.
You know what I'm saying?
Well, yeah.
You're not the first one.
You're not the first one.
You can gauge how your relationship and based on how you and that person's other previous relationships have ended.
You will never be any different.
Right.
Neither will she, unfortunately.
Well, I'm so confused.
I'm still so confused.
Well, in the sense that I went into puberty with a lot of ideas about how it was going to go.
I was not somebody upon whom adulthood snuck up unawares.
I think a lot of kids in there, they're 10 years old, and then all of a sudden they start to have these feelings and they have no context for them.
And so they're just following their instinct.
But I was a person who, by the time he became an adult...
had read so much about being an adult and had thought about being an adult so much and prognosticated how being an adult would feel that when adulthood arrived, I had too many plans.
And I did not...
I did not take it – I did not have an instinctual response to puberty or an instinctual kind of transition from youth to adulthood.
I was trying to push it.
I was trying to get there faster.
I was trying to – I felt like I already knew how it was going to go and was trying to get in between myself and adulthood and make some changes before it went wrong.
Wow.
And in that way – You were kind of like in training.
Well, and I was fucking it up as I went.
A 13-year-old girl would walk up to me and say, do you want to go with me?
And I would say, go with you where?
I was not paying attention to what was happening.
I was trying to figure it out or I was trying to make sure that I didn't get duped.
I was trying to make sure that I didn't get led astray.
And so I had this mental picture that relationships were going to be hard, that you didn't want to get led down a primrose path by a fast girl, but you also didn't want to get stuck with a prude.
And the reality was all the girls were 13 years old.
The difference between a fast girl and a prude at 13 is like –
You're talking about a stack of pennies.
Because it's also abstract.
At that point, you've got these abstractions that have no basis in reality.
It's a little bit like trying to learn guitar, not just by playing air guitar on a tennis racket, but getting tablature, but then trying to do it on a tennis racket.
On a tennis racket, yeah.
It's like, well, you know, you're certainly going to pick some things up, but until you actually hold that guitar, it's not the same thing.
Now, here's the other thing that's interesting about you, John, is you stipulated for the record that you were never somebody who wanted to study up on intercourse.
And I think a lot of people made the same mistakes that you're describing here, but they did it with intercourse.
They thought that they could get a Betamax copy of Porky's and know...
And know what to do.
And you avoid that.
You said leave it.
But you focused on – you studied what?
Like Kramer versus Kramer?
You knew that you were in for a rocky road.
That was your porn?
Divorce porn was my porn when I was 13 years old.
And so, you know, like I had a good friend who – this friend that I'm talking about whose name was Kevin.
He was a year older than I was.
He was my best friend.
And he was a year more advanced than I was.
In all the emotional ways.
He and I maybe were peers in the sense that we were in the same grade.
But he was way, way out in front.
And he would call me and he'd say, I was hanging out with Rachel the other day.
And I would go, really?
Really?
And he said, yeah, and it was autumn or whatever, and he would say, I grabbed a bunch of leaves and I stuffed them down the front of her sweater.
And I was like, well, that wasn't very polite.
And he said and then I then I had to then she was like, you need to get those leaves out of there.
And then I reached down in front of her sweater and like one by one pulled the leaves out.
Whoa.
And I was like, well, that sounds like you might have touched her boob.
And he was like, yeah, exactly.
Like, like 15 times.
Cause I shoved 15 leaves down there and she was like, you have to get them out.
And I did genius.
Right.
And I was, but, but I was, and she's in a position to say, get your goddamn hand out of my shirt.
If she doesn't want it, you honor that like a gentleman.
Or if she's clearly not, yes, they conspired.
She was not leaf averse.
No, she was like, you need to get those leaves out of my sweater.
And I'm listening to this story, and I am aghast.
And I start to lecture him, like, listen, I don't know, are you sure you're ready for this?
Like, touching boobs is a serious step.
Like, are you prepared to honor that commitment?
It would be like starting to smoke.
It would be one of those things where you're like, that's not really for us.
That's... Well, but also, like, I felt like now, having touched her boob in the pursuit of an errant leaf, he had entered into a tacit contract with this girl that he needed to man up and honor this...
Honor the code.
And he was like, what are you talking about, man?
I mean, I just, I, I got, I feel, I feel some boobs.
And my feeling was, well, yeah, but are you ready to get married?
And I was, I was just like, I was so backwards on it.
And this whole question of like, oh, the fast girl, it wasn't even that the fast, I was not worried about getting a stress bump.
I was worried that the fast girl was emotionally hurt.
I would be, too.
Her fastness was an expression of her emotional hurtness, and I was in a position to take advantage of that, and I was an honorable man.
Oh, God, never in a million years.
But I'm totally sympathizing with her in that scenario, as it sounds like you would be where you'd be going, well, that's completely inappropriate.
And the problem is also that you've got this broken paradigm of fast.
Neither of them is fast.
They don't know what the hell they're doing.
Right.
Feeling, you know, putting your hand down the front of her shirt when you're in eighth grade.
They have no idea what they're doing.
What the hell?
Yeah.
It certainly isn't an expression of being fast or emotionally damaged or on the way to working in a red light district in Jakarta.
She's just a girl and she wants you to touch her boob and you want to touch her boob.
Or she just wants to see what it's like to have somebody.
You know what I mean?
It's a little different.
It isn't like she's sitting around going, oh, I want boob touching.
She's more like, I don't know what the fuck this is and these leaves are going to provide adequate cover for me to find out how this goes.
Yeah, right.
It's exactly right.
She didn't go into it thinking maybe today is the day that my boobs touched.
I can't wait till fall.
And that is exactly the way I was approaching my teenage life.
Like maybe today is the day that I find a way to brush up against a boob where no one owes anybody anything and no one's going to end up divorced.
Yeah.
and you know and uh and and by the time i finally did touch a boob it was like come on jesus christ that was a long time in the coming and you know this girl was just like come on get get real seriously
This is what happens when you think.
Too much thinking.
Way too much thinking.
Too much thinking, and it was thinking as a way of trying to get in front of all the fear that I felt about these transitions that I think other—at least the kids I admired—
And it's not that I admired them as people, but I admired their progress.
I admired the reports that you get.
Because eighth grade is also when you start getting real reports about other kids.
Like, did you hear what Derek did?
What did Derek do?
A lot of summers.
You come back from summer and you hear a lot of intel about what went down.
got finger banged and all these terrible things where it was just like finger bang.
My second best friend at the time did some finger banging over the summer.
Was anybody hurt?
I know.
Finger bang, that sounds really violent.
Yeah, I still thought vaginas were on the front of the pelvis at that point.
You know, based on my own... Somewhere between the belly button and the knee.
Lower it down.
I thought it was more like a USB port.
Yeah, third eye.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I mean I'm sitting there and imagining that and the logistics of that and you got popcorn and then you got to eat it and I don't know.
There's just so much about that that was such a morass for me.
I was scared to look for the longest time.
I just – for the longest time, I just – I wanted to – it was a mystery.
I knew it was a mystery.
I would try to draw it from memory even though I didn't have any memories.
I would look in books.
And it was just – oh.
And then here's the thing.
So you go home that night.
You find out about the Leaf incident.
You go home.
Oh, it's not on your mind, right?
You just sit around and watch game shows.
No.
I would sit and I would think about that for three days and I would get mad if I were thinking about your – what's his name?
Derek?
No, Kevin.
Kevin.
I would sit there and think about Kevin and the Leaf Girl, and I would – talk about ruminating.
I would obsess over that probably for like a week and just get more emotional about it.
It's funny how being mad is the response because the next day at school, I would be unable to look at her.
I would be mad at her.
I would be mad at her because she allowed herself to be violated by my best friend.
And all of these are very, in one way, they're much more sophisticated feelings than I had any right to have because I didn't understand that they were above my pay grade.
Like, why those were my responses is in some ways still a mystery to me, and those responses, like, changed, they affected what I did next, and so in that way changed my life, and I still feel them as a burden now, even in my 40s.
Yeah.
And when I think about whether – when I imagine my life, that small choice – I mean, there are not very many choices that you can make that in the moment kind of feel so small.
But if my folks had said, let's hold him back a year –
And I had started kindergarten at five and turned six in that first few weeks.
I mean, I honestly cannot imagine a thing that would have made my life more profoundly different than to have been one of the oldest kids in my class rather than one of the youngest.
Yeah.
I'm glad we held our daughter back.
We'll let her do another year of the before kindergarten stuff, and I'm starting to feel she'll know when it's time to stuff the leaves, I think.
Yeah, I don't think there's any reason to ever push a kid if you can hold them back.
I can understand – this is where we get – you're going to get an email about this.
But we – I can understand if you were – well, see, here's the thing.
I also – okay.
So for what it's worth, my mom was in that position.
She got jammed in early.
She hated it.
She was already small.
She already felt like she wasn't super-duper smart.
But they dropped her into the public school because she was born in November.
I'm born in November.
You're born in December.
Eleanor was born in October.
We're all in that area.
Boy, you're really –
That's crazy that they sent you in.
That's nuts.
September.
I was born in September.
That's nuts.
So it wasn't that crazy, but it was... Jeez, I don't know.
But all I'm saying is my mom went in early and hated it.
The school people said, are you sure about this?
And I think at that time in the early 70s, the idea was...
push them you know this was that was the zeitgeist of our age my mom well the other thing i was gonna say there is that my mom hated being early and i loved being late so i was in november and i went i started when i was five and i was always on the older i wasn't larger because i'm not a big person but it made a huge difference and
You could just see the shrimpy kids that had gotten in too early, and they already had everything going against them, and it just made it a thousand times worse.
They got Conrad Lorenz by the schools and the kids, and then they were always the shrimpy kid until they left and probably became a tower sniper.
And they never got a good – probably never got a good handful of leaves unless they dragged somebody out to a culvert or something.
And I think what happened in the 70s was that we had all these new techniques to measure a child's intelligence, but no one had really formulated the idea that there was an emotional intelligence and that it matured.
at a different rate.
Oh, my God.
So true.
I think there's two big points.
First of all, you've got, in my case, starting... It's so staggering to me to think about what public school was like for me when I was 10 versus what it's like for a 10-year-old today.
Because this is back in the days when we still had funding out the butt.
There were kids who came in there and the school was their parent.
They came in and got free breakfast at 7 in the morning.
They stayed.
There were after-school programs.
There were sports.
So on the one hand...
There was the money there where you could say, well, at least I know if I put my four-year-old into kindergarten, it's going to be okay.
They're going to get a hot meal and they're not going to end up in jail.
And now today, I don't think that same guarantee is there.
I mean like we'd rather pay a little bit of dough and have her in this –
It's different for everybody.
I'm not trying to judge, but I think there's a lot more confidence.
But also, John, you and I – I don't know how this was in your house, but we're also from – if you think about that swinging pendulum, I think you and I are from the age of don't be nice to your kid or they'll become fruity.
The thing is, if you breastfeed, it's going to be inconvenient and you're going to make a fruit.
Yeah, they're going to be a little fruit.
Don't be too supportive.
I think the main argument that my parents had about my upbringing was that my mom really guarded the time that I spent sitting, staring at a spot on the wall.
Yeah.
And my dad had the reaction that you're describing, which was, what's the matter with that little fruit?
He's been sitting and staring at a spot on the wall for two hours.
He needs to get the fuck up and go out and throw a ball around.
Right.
That's not how you become a senator.
My mom would jump in front of him and she'd be like, David, shh.
Now he's doing something.
It's not clear what.
We need to respect this.
Yeah.
And he would go, God damn it.
It's not right.
There's something wrong.
He's, look at him.
And I'd be sitting there.
absolutely catatonic staring at a spot on the wall.
And in my imagination, I was commanding a flotilla of space battleships.
And my dad was like, I don't know what he's thinking about, but I don't like it.
Yeah.
If either one of them had guessed, they'd both be wrong.
Yeah.
Yeah.
My mom was thinking that I, I don't know that I was Byron and I was writing, uh, like improving the quadratic equation, something like that.
And what I was really doing was fighting an epic, epic space battle.
Or I was refighting World War II because I started doing that in 1974 and I've been refighting World War II ever since.
I have fought World War II.
I've fought every battle of World War II a thousand times in my imagination.
You could have done it better, couldn't you?
Every aspect of it I could have done better.
You think that's purely from hindsight or just that you're the superior strategist?
Or more.
It's also you've got a certain amount of emotional detachment, maybe.
You understand?
It's very hard to know how any of us would have reacted in real time.
But if I were Herman Goering, I would not have let the Battle of Britain go the way it went.
Let's just say that.
Let's just say that.
Let me ask you this.
Leaving the invasion of Russia aside.
No, that's another show.
But, okay, I don't want to think it's all about Hitler.
But if you were Hitler, would you have cracked down on the essay, A, a lot sooner, B, a lot later or never, or C, just in whatever, that 34, Night of the Long Knives?
Your opinion on dealing with Ernst Röhm in the essay, how was Hitler's timing on that?
Because I've written something down.
LAUGHTER
Now, let's just stipulate he needed the support.
He needed the support of the various industry.
You know, what's the word I'm looking for?
The captains of industry.
Das Kapitans.
Das Kapitans.
Das Kapitans.
Industrie.
It's in Verken.
Scheisse.
Scheisse.
You know, the thing is – and I'm leading you toward what's already on my card, but I'm just saying BMW and Bayer and the Zyklon B people.
Krupp.
Krupp.
Krupp.
Fucking Krupp.
They were all way more into Hitler after he got the goons out of the streets, but he never would have gotten there without the fucking goons.
Your opinion, John Roderick?
Yeah.
Essay too early, essay too late.
You know, I feel like one of the things that we can't know, that we underestimate how difficult it was domestically for Hitler, particularly because his constituency was not just the Germans in Germany, but the Germans in all of Central Europe—
that we forget about.
You said after World War I, people were scattered all over.
There's Germans living in Czechoslovakia.
They don't think of themselves as being Slavic.
They think of themselves as being Germans.
They're displaced Germans, basically.
Oh, yeah.
I mean, for 700 years before World War I. There's Germans everywhere.
There's Germans all over Europe.
And, you know, Hitler has this constituency that he either believes is his or actually is his.
But in either way, like...
There is no... It isn't like England, where the borders of England are... It's water all around.
And there's no big community of English living in France.
You know, it's... England is a discreet little empire.
It's a castle, basically, with a big moat.
And Germany is... Germany is a fried egg...
That's splattered all over, you know, from, I mean, the Swedes are, the Swedes identify sort of as Germanic, or I mean, they certainly felt a lot more common cause with the Germans than they would like you to remember.
There are Germans everywhere.
So this problem of... I was reading this interesting thing on Metafilter the other day about the question of why the intelligence agents of Germany failed so spectacularly
Why the British had such great intelligence and why the Germans had such terrible intelligence.
And one of the interesting comments was that all the great intelligence agents, you know, it's a special kind of person that becomes a spy.
And all the great German spies were busy spying on the first, their fellow Germans, and second, like all the partisans in all the countries that they occupied.
Like, the German spies weren't spying on the British.
They were spying... Oh, I see.
...each other, and on... Germans loved that.
Well, yeah, but that fucked them up in the war, because the British knew what the Germans were doing, and the Germans were fooled multiple times in the war by...
by intelligence operatives.
The British would say, oh, we're invading over here, and then they would invade over here.
Is this too reductive?
You're saying that it isn't like – you're not saying that the Germans distrust their own people almost as much as the English, but they don't – there isn't – there's enough diversity or –
Well, this is the SA problem that you're talking about.
There were a lot of Nazis who didn't like Nazism.
There were a lot of Germans who were forced into swearing an oath of allegiance to Hitler.
You know, as you do.
But before a lot of that came to light, a lot of it was just, you know, cultural saber rattling.
It was much more about economics.
Yes, you could certainly scapegoat these people.
But in the beginning, you had a bunch of people who were tired of having their ass kicked.
And there were some people who just like to have fistfights.
Don't you think?
Don't you think the brown shirts?
They were just goons, a lot of them.
Was Ernst Rome, I mean, you know, or like his, I don't know that many SA people, but he, you know, I know he liked dudes, which is awkward.
But that's the thing.
The Nazis came to power
By bullying everybody.
And so they had a lot of people in Germany that resented them.
That couldn't afford to say so.
But when it came time, you know, when somebody in a trench coat sidled up to them in a dark alley and said, Hey, uh...
You know, things aren't looking so good for Germany.
After the war, we'll give you a special place somewhere if you just let us know where you're keeping all the 50-gallon drums of heavy water.
And there were guys who were like, you know what?
yeah, fuck these guys.
Here's the secret plans.
And it's because they were never Nazis to begin with.
And they were, you know, they had no allegiance or loyalty to the party in the sense that, and the British, for instance, you know, they were just defending their homeland.
There was no, it transcended party politics for them.
There was no, no one was, no Britain was going to
was going to betray England unless he was a real anti-Semite or a nut case.
So anyway, the thugism in the short term, the brown shirtism, there are a lot of repercussions in the short term, like you're saying, in the 30s.
But long term,
The fact that the first people that the Nazis brought under their boot were the Germans resulted in... I mean, there were all kinds of fanatical followers, but some of the aristocrats that Hitler really could have used on his team, they were playing both sides against the middle.
Isn't that ultimately one of the things that made...
the events around night along that is so successful was that he also sent a message he sent a message to i mean he had trouble all along with the military right the the actual the the general the generals were extremely suspicious at best of him and this sort of sent a message german army command in the 30s they still had huge feathers in their hats
You know what I mean?
Isn't it worth clarifying that there was not like one big clubhouse that all these guys lived in?
I mean as late as like 1932, 33, 34, there was still a huge amount of suspicion about the guy.
This is the thing about the aristocracy.
This is – I mean up until –
Up until the 1860s in Europe, 1868, all these countries were ruled by kings and had been for a thousand years.
And there were fits and starts.
Different countries became parliamentary.
You know, they deposed their, starting after the French Revolution.
We lost kings kind of gradually.
the French lost their king first, and then little by little...
The aristocracy was declining in power.
But in the early 20th century, the class still played such a huge role in how Europe thought of itself.
And the military was traditionally where the high-born people went into the officer corps.
And Hitler was some rat.
He was an orphan in a gutter snipe, you know.
So these people had no respect for him at all.
But it was also the rise of the industrialists, and a lot of those industrialists were aristocrats, and a lot of them were self-made men.
You know, all the currents, the social currents that were boiling in Central Europe throughout the end of the 19th century and into the early 20th century, they all had to do with this...
The sense that there were no more kings, but what's going to govern us?
Is it going to be an idea?
Is it going to be like an idea that two men had, Marx and Engels?
We have envisioned the whole exchange between men, and we've written it down in a couple of books.
And these are ideas that are stronger than anything that...
They're stronger than tradition and they're stronger than any firsthand experience that anybody might have had.
This idea is an overlay that we're going to start looking at our lives in light of this concept now.
And that let the mice out of the box.
And everybody had an idea.
Everybody had a new idea of how capital and labor interacted with each other.
And people were literally fighting about it in bars.
Not just in Germany, but, I mean, this was the world my dad grew up in here in Washington State, where you're getting in fistfights in bars with people in arguments over the relationship between labor and capital.
Yeah.
Now we live in a world where these ideas are not – certainly they are – they've been so hacked at with sabers from both sides that you talk about the Tea Party or the election that we're having in America right now, we're still having –
a national argument about the relationship between labor and capital but nobody has nobody has a common language anymore nobody's really talking about it like we're talking about it we're yelling at each other about this little discrete we're we're yelling at each other about specific points of light you know rather than anybody coming at it and saying here's my philosophy it's um
Because the Republican Party feels like we don't need a philosophy.
Our philosophy is laissez-faire.
Let everybody do what they want to do.
And the Democrats have been called communists for 90 years, so the Democratic Party can't stand up and say, we've got a plan.
And it's an overarching plan that addresses the relationship between labor and capital.
And here's what it requires.
It requires that some people...
Some people take it in the shorts because we want free lunches in our schools.
This is pretty rough, but it makes any theoretical group of people less effective if they either A, mostly agree on what they don't want or B, can't even agree on what they don't want.
And that's – I'm not saying you have to have some kind of philosophy or a persuasive theory, but that's one reason I think the Democrats can often seem so scattered is that it is kind of limp sometimes.
There is not – there's almost an embarrassment about having a strong philosophical underpinning that you can stand behind in a bar brawl.
There's nothing that feels muscular to most liberals in a way that they would stand up.
And again, you sound like a whiny kid some of the time because if you really believe in it in the way that those guys at that union meeting did, you're going to stand up and say it, and it's going to be muscular as hell.
It's just that I think most people – again, we become like children.
Maybe at best we become like teenagers because we identify very heavily with who we don't want to be, who we don't like, and who we want to smite for hurting us, which is not nearly the same thing as saying, no, no, here is a frame that we need to fill with a certain kind of picture.
And that's going to take a lot of courage, and it's going to – a lot of resolve and a lot of money.
Yeah.
And I just – I think sometimes, to be honest, I think conservatives are better at that.
They're better at putting on – to paraphrase a quote I heard the other day, you know, either give them a good fight or you give them a good show.
I think the conservatives tend to do better fights and better shows.
Yeah, but because the conservatives – I mean the liberals have gone down this weird path where they have appointed themselves the guardians of everyone –
who has a grievance, you know, we, we guardians of grievances, the guardians of grievance, you know, and, and, and they, we have, we've gone from the idea that there are inalienable human rights to a much more watered down idea that everyone has rights.
Everyone has the right to redress for what they perceive to be their injuries and,
And those are not the same idea of what constitute rights.
You know what I mean?
Like the right to – when the conservatives talk about your rights, they're always talking about the right to property, the right to bear arms.
And when liberals talk about rights, they're talking about this –
What was originally a concept of civil rights, which is a right to vote and a right to be protected by the police, that's now been translated into the right to, not just the right to be a brony, because I will defend to the death someone's right to be a brony.
Patrick Henry said that.
But the right to be a brony and not have anybody tease you.
Which is not a right – which I don't think you can call a right.
That is not a right.
Well, you've put this so well in the past.
In my head, what I'm hearing is there's a certain kind of liberal mentality, which is like you not only can't say – do these things.
You not only can't say certain things.
You not only shouldn't even think certain things.
But in order for me to protect the people that you might potentially offend with that, you should apologize to me.
When you say things about bronies, you should apologize to me and I'll let them know.
You know what I mean?
It's that whole thing of like – there's nothing to make anybody into a gelding minority, as we've said, better than having white people apologize and defend them.
Yeah.
You know what I mean?
It's like – but really, you become like this existential lawyer for people who never ask for counsel.
And you show up and you go out and you say – again, all I can think of, I always think of Oliver's father in that terrible Popeye movie.
You owe me an apology.
You know, he owes me an apology.
Terrible Popeye movie.
That was a great movie.
Yeah, it was a little like even for even if you watch it on DVD, the cocaine literally shoots out into your eye.
It was an unusual choice for it.
Was it Robert Altman that did that?
Robert Altman just deciding.
Do you think it was a cocaine thing?
He finally just decided, I'm going to do a musical about an unfilmable cartoon that nobody watches anymore.
Cocaine!
I think what happened... A lot of the 70s can be explained by cocaine.
Is that fair to say?
Absolutely.
All the way into the mid-80s.
The whole decline of Chevy Chase.
It's all cocaine.
That's a fucking pity.
Somehow, you know, your guy, your good friend, Bill Murray, survived it.
I don't know how.
Survived it humanly.
I got a feeling he did a lot of cocaine.
Oh, yeah.
But somehow he kept his sense of humor.
What about Steve Martin?
You think Steve Martin did cocaine?
Did you read his autobiography?
I listened to the book on tape.
And I enjoyed it very, very much.
I just heard him on fresh air in a repackaged re-edition of multiple interviews that they'd re-edited from a re-edit for the DVD re-re-re-re-release.
And Dave Davies was in there instead of Terry Gross, who was in for Dave Davies.
Yes, and I heard that interview.
And Steve Martin sounds like he should have done cocaine, but may not have done that much cocaine.
He seems like he has his head about him.
Steve Martin...
Talk about a guy who was shagging some babes.
No.
He did some shagging.
But the thing about Steve Martin, I get the sense, is that he shagged some babes, but not without thinking about it.
He didn't just shag a babe.
He shagged a babe, and then he thought about it a little bit.
And I bet he didn't tell anybody.
No, no, no, no.
He's a man of honor.
He's a very private person.
So I do feel like he probably tried some cocaine, but I think he was not.
I don't think Steve Martin ever descended into that pit of hell.
He just wanted to be a good magician.
Have you ever seen the card that he used to give to people?
No, I don't think so.
I admire this a lot.
This is true.
I've met somebody who got one of these.
You can search for Steve Martin card on the internet and you will find this.
Steve Martin is a very private man.
Are you going to send me a link to it?
Oh, yeah.
Of course.
I'm sorry.
It's a very private man and –
You know, notoriously so.
He won't even talk about – for a long time, apparently, he wouldn't even – you know, everybody knew that he liked art, but he wouldn't even talk about, like, what art he owned.
Like, he's just – he's really – he's an interesting fella.
Anyway, you know, he doesn't like to be bothered.
He's, you know, with people.
He's not with people.
He's sitting.
He's enjoying a meal, and somebody comes up and goes –
Oh my God, Steve Martin.
You're so great.
We've got to hug you.
And Steve Martin is not a man who likes... So as you can see, Steve Martin would hand you... He would say, can I give you your autograph?
And Steve Martin would hand you a pre-printed card that says, this certifies that you've had a personal encounter with me and that you found me warm, polite, intelligent, and funny.
That's all anybody wants.
That's all anybody wants.
I was at a restaurant one time with Zooey Deschanel, and we walked out of the restaurant onto the sidewalk, and there was a little group of people.
This was before she had her TV show.
There was a little group of indie rock people
a couple of girls, a couple of boys, they had skinny pants on and big chunky glasses.
And they had, they saw us go in and they waited patiently outside for an hour or two or however long we were in there eating dinner.
And we came outside and they were like, Oh my God.
Oh my God.
Oh my God.
Oh my God.
Oh my God.
Oh my God.
Oh my God.
And Zoe was very, very gracious with them.
And she signed all their things and then out came their cameras and
And so he said, hey, you guys, I really don't feel like having my picture taken right now because I just feel I'm just out having lunch with a friend.
Is that cool?
And they were all like, oh, totally, totally.
Oh, of course.
And nobody took our picture.
And off we go.
And it was an encounter where Zoe was very human with them.
And all they wanted was a card from her that said, this certifies that you have had a personal encounter with me.
And the picture was going to be that.
But then when Zoe asked them not to take a picture in a really nice way.
That became the card.
Now that's on Facebook.
Now they had a story.
They didn't need the picture anymore because now they had a story where they were like, you know what?
I met Zoe Deschanel one time and she asked me not to take her picture and it was really cool.
And it was a... Oh, so you're saying they actually really didn't mind.
They didn't take a picture and they didn't mind because now they had a story.
That strains credulity.
Well, I think it's true, and that's why... That's awesome.
If I walked up to Steve Martin and said, hey, Steve Martin, I'm a huge fan, and he said nothing, he handed me this card and winked at me and then went back to what he was doing, I would walk away with that card and I would say...
I would, you know, check it, right?
I would show that card to everybody for a year.
I think you and the Zooeyistas are different in that regard.
It's pronounced Zooey, by the way, are different from most people in that regard.
And I've been this creepy guy, and I've been on the receiving end of this creepy guy, which is it will never stop escalating.
It will start with, it could be a playful jibing, jibing rather.
It could be a, you know, hey, you're the thing.
And then it's going to be, it might be a signature, and then it's going to be a picture.
And then pretty soon, like that person wants to move in.
So as with – I have my penis on your pants.
Yeah.
Yes.
Now she's probably had some penises on her pants.
Get your penis off my pants.
Get your penis off my pants.
I know where to draw the line.
She moves fast.
She's not – nobody's getting close to her that way.
Yeah.
But isn't that a skill?
We have a mutual friend who would be embarrassed if we said this about him, but he's awfully good at that.
We have a mutual friend who's awfully good at being exactly as gracious as he wants to be and then making it very clear that we're done now.
And I – we have several other mutual friends who envy that ability.
Enviable ability.
It is because you don't – I guess especially if you have a certain kind of taciturn public image that you can get away with that more.
You know what I mean?
But it – I had a very strange lunch the other day with a friend who – we were talking –
We were talking about ourselves and how difficult it is to be happy sometimes.
This friend is a mutual friend.
This friend I had lunch with is a mutual friend of yours and mine who owns a local record label.
And he said, you know, my dad was a jerk my whole life because he believed that he was destined for bigger things.
than the things that he had in front of him.
And he was mad about it.
He was a jerk to everybody.
And I just had a conversation with him very recently where he said that he realized that he was not failing to live up to his potential his whole life.
That in fact, it was just that his potential was not as great as he thought.
Oh, God, that's a double, double ouch.
In fact, he had been living up to his potential the entire time.
Oh, shit.
And that what he should have been doing was just realizing that and being happy.
And so he was miserable because he was kicking himself his whole life, not achieving as much as he.
That is a German film.
Holy shit, that hurts.
And instead, yeah, instead, he should have been happy his whole life because he was actually working to his capacity.
The whole time.
And sitting across the table from this guy was like, I don't know which part of this hurts me more.
I don't know which side of your little lesson that you're trying to impart to me is grosser, is harder for me to swallow.
Like, either I'm actually living up to my potential right now, and I'm miserable for no reason.
Yeah.
I don't know who to feel sorriest for.
Which is fucking... That sucks.
Yeah.
Are you kidding me?
And the lesson is that I just need to be content and happy with what I am doing now and not aspire and not be on top of myself all the time trying to charge forward and be better.
That causes me great despair.
Or...
The alternative is that I do that my whole life and I'm miserable.
And then when I'm old, I look back and go, oh, that was all for naught.
And just when we're done recording, please not live, I would love to hear which one of those messages you think he was sending to you.
Because that could really say a lot about the next five years of your life.
No, I actually grabbed him by the shirt and was like, do you honestly think I'm living up to my potential?
Tell me.
And he was like, no, no, not at all.
And I was like, thank you.
What's in the box?
What's in the box?
That's goddamn right I'm not living up to my potential.
Fucking A!
Don't you start telling me that I'm living up to my potential.
What a terrible thing to say to somebody.
Oh, that is awful.
It's like you don't sweat much for a fat girl.
But which way do you go on that?
I know, I know.
Which way do you go?
I don't know.
I don't want to be unhappy.
Think about this, though.
Boy, just examples from what we just talked about.
Do you remember the anecdote?
Steve Martin talking about his dad and how his dad, I think, was pretty much just about on his deathbed before he ever said anything really nice about his work.
He'd been on all these – he was a huge success.
I mean he was a ridiculously huge success to where he was able to walk – Steve Martin was able to walk away from his career-making career to just go do something else.
I mean what could be –
He was the first comedian to play stadiums and maybe the only comedian to really play stadium shows.
Like 40,000 people would come to watch Steve Martin wear that arrow through the head thing.
And what's weird for people like you and me, you remember when you're younger and everything feels like it takes longer.
Every school year feels like it takes forever.
His first album came out, I think, in 1975, the same year he first appeared on Saturday Night Live, which was the career maker for him.
I think his last record was like 1982, maybe.
I mean he did all of that like error through the head guy stuff and then just walked away and said that's it.
I'm done here.
Like the jerk is really much closer to Steve Martin in the stand-up than say Steve Martin in like Roxanne or something.
But it was really – he was like what Spy Magazine at the time – he was at the time what Spy Magazine would later call a celebrity refusenic, right?
Where he stopped stand-up in 19…
wait for it yeah 81 oh come on 1981 well i got a four or four i've actually accidentally written on three cards so we should come back to that but but his father okay so you got that um you know what else you got here you got uh what's his name joe jackson not not the one guy the other guy the father of the jackson five total dick classic murray wilson um blue eyes that guy has is that right jackson's father very handsome on an african america oh he's got a creepy earring look at that
And Murray Wilson, the father of Brian and the boys.
So disapproving fathers or fathers that don't give approval.
Yes, and in the case of Murray, Murray's always felt, you know, first of all, he had a glass eye and would take it out and make Brian look in the hole.
Yeah.
And so Murray had inserted himself into every aspect of their career because he was a failed musician.
He was like – he did not have – Brian, like when he was still lucid, well, pseudo-lucid, he had more talent in his pinky than his father had his entire life.
But this is the story over and over.
You hear these stories.
I guess what?
This is like Gypsy Rose Lee, whatever.
All these stories you hear about – I'm just saying, like it's –
We've got to steer around this, John, with our kids.
We're obviously – we're already pretty good and fucked up.
Yeah, but we don't want to withhold our love and approval from our children.
I watch too many movies.
I watched the first half of a movie I heard was really good last night, and I thought it was OK good.
It's this movie about this old guy in Japan who makes what's considered the best sushi in the world.
Do you know this movie, Jiro?
Jiro Dreams of Sushi, I think it's called.
I don't know the movie, but there is in Japan a cultural... There is the best woodcutter in Japan, the best barrel maker in Japan.
There's a cultural imperative to find the craftsperson in each of the traditional Japanese arts and identify him or her as the greatest ex in Japan and shower this person with money and accolades and...
Wow, really?
Yeah.
That seems really super Japanese.
It's very Japanese, but it's also like, can you imagine, I mean, I think you have to have a kind of, you have to have a somewhat of a uniform culture in order to say like, oh, barrel making is a great art of our people.
I think we can call that pretty uniform culture.
And this guy, this guy is the great barrel maker and, you know, that whole business of like,
the calligraphy.
Oh, right.
You know, there is the greatest calligrapher in Japan, and he's a national treasure.
And I think that's what they're called, national treasures.
You become like the Easter.
Except that it's in Japanese.
There's a lot of stuff that people are very concerned about in Japan that feels like a Mr. Show sketch to me.
It's because there's people who see distinctions in things that are lost on me.
Tsuki Yabashi Jiro.
Don't touch my mustache.
And so he, in one part of this, and personally, I don't know.
I...
I don't know.
They had the Philip Glass soundtrack, which is always problematic.
And this is the thing.
Perfect the art of sushi.
Yeah.
Now, when we start talking about the art of sushi, then we're into this world of like, is there an art of french fries?
Is there an art of...
is there an art of booger picking?
I see.
These are concepts that in Japan I think you could get into a fistfight in a bar over.
Like, is he the greatest booger picker in all of Japan?
Mm-hmm.
Has he gone through his apprenticeship?
Has he really put in the miles?
Has he fingered the finger?
Has he really gotten in there long enough?
Yeah.
And deep enough, let's say.
And at a certain point, and this is the mystery of Asia, this is what makes Asia so inscrutable, not to get ping pong.
Mm-hmm.
But if you do something long enough, first of all, do you become a master at it?
And second of all, is that the road to enlightenment?
If you just sit and press your finger into your taint, into that soft area between your pooper and your genital.
Yeah.
You just press on it and then release, press and release, press and release and do that for 40 years.
I see.
Will you achieve a higher consciousness?
You become a taintisan.
Could you become the... There's a word for this.
They use this word.
I think I know what you're talking about.
I think they use this actual word.
The sushi... I'll look for it later.
Boy, I want to fork this one into four episodes because there's a lot to finish here.
I'm always interested in talking about the taint and in Japan.
I know you do.
And my goodness.
But he says something to his son.
So he has two sons.
He has one son who is – so basically it's $300.
You come into this place.
It's got a bar.
To see this movie?
No.
No.
I watched it on Netflix.
I was laying in bed.
I was kind of feeling a little sick, so I was watching it in bed.
But it was good.
I don't think it's – I didn't finish it.
It's got 99% on Rotten Tomatoes, but I thought it was a little samey.
And again, Philip Glass, you know?
How many more songs can he get out of... I get it.
1-5-1-5.
I swear to God, I thought it was a joke.
I thought it was like – I really want you to do your Philip Glass impression at one of our live concerts.
Our live performance, which we should mention probably.
But he says – he's talking about his kids and he's talking about the fact that one time he slept in late on a Sunday and is literally – honestly, one of his kids said there's a stranger in the house because he would leave for work at 5 in the morning.
and come home after 10 at night, and he continues to work every day.
If he goes to a funeral – he's 80-some years old.
If he goes to a funeral, his son, who's 51 and works for him, fills in.
The place has 10 seats.
It's $300 a plate.
It takes about 15 minutes to eat this in a normal situation.
It's booked a month in advance, and it's the only Michelin three-star place of its kind in the entire world.
But he sits there in front of his son, and he talks about –
To this point, he's saying too many people say these things to their kids.
It's going to be fine.
You have to tell them – you have to push them out of the house and say you don't have a home here anymore.
You have no home here.
You've got to – basically pushing in the sense of like pushing them out of the nest.
And maybe it's just because I was feeling under the weather and I eaten four cupcakes.
But I was sitting there and just thinking like I'm warming up to this whole don't say good, good.
I'm warming up to that.
But the whole idea of like you don't have a home here anymore seems pretty fucked up to me.
Well, let me ask you this.
Did you get pushed out of the nest?
No.
Obviously.
The nest was available to you?
I will always have a home there.
My mom would keep my room in situ if she could, I think.
I didn't, still with the no girls allowed sign on the door?
Dungeon Masters only.
Ha ha ha ha!
Thank you.
I did not get pushed out of the nest either.
And I think a lot of the decisions I made in my early 20s were all attempts to push myself out of the nest.
And you can't... It's very hard.
It was very hard for me to successfully push myself out of the nest.
Because I would leave home.
I would go.
I would sleep under bridges.
I would say...
I don't need money, man.
I don't need money.
And I would get covered with lice and people would hit me and I would get, I would have a perpetually runny nose and I looked, uh, I looked like I lived in a bilge.
And then at a certain point when I would, when, you know, when there would be, when there would actually be like little families of sea monkeys living under my fingernails, uh,
I would say, this sucks.
And I would go find a payphone, and I would dial collect to Alaska, and the operator would say, we're going to accept a collect call from John...
And my mom or dad would say, yes, oh, my God.
And I would go, hi.
And they'd go, where are you?
Where have you been?
And I would say, oh, I'm in St.
Louis, Missouri.
And they would go, what is wrong with you?
Why haven't you called?
And I would say, I'm lonely.
And they would go, oh, my God.
Well.
Why don't you come home?
And I would say, okay.
My God, your mom in particular, she's such a fascinating person and she's not – I don't know.
What's the word I'm looking for?
She just always surprises me.
It's amazing what she will and won't put up with and then what she won't and will put up with.
I can't believe she suffered you for so long, so gladly and so graciously.
Yeah.
Well, and there was a part of me, I think, in the back of my head.
Ann was tough.
Ann would make you sit down and do your homework.
She was tough as hell.
Jesus.
But that, and I think that is a generational shift that was happening.
Because I think at, because when she was that age, she said, you know what?
I'm never going back to Ohio.
And she left Ohio and she never went back.
And...
When I left Alaska and said, you know what, I'm never going back to Alaska.
In fact, I did go back to Alaska.
And I went back and then I left again and said, I'm never coming back here.
And I did go back.
And I went back multiple times.
And part of me kept waiting for them to say, for them to slam the door on me.
For him to say, you do not have a home here anymore.
And it never happened.
And I was not able to do it myself.
I was not able to slam that door in my own face for whatever reason.
And I don't know whether it is that we were the first generation of fruits.
I don't know.
I don't know whether it was the revolutions of 1848 that set in motion a chain of events where the Kaiser was deposed, and then eventually I became a fruit.
I don't know whether it was foreign or four.
I don't know what it is that happened to us that we were not pushed out of our homes and we also never really severed those apron strings ourselves.
Yeah.
And again, this may be another example of me being too hard on myself.
And when I'm 75 and sitting with my child, I'm going to say, you know what?
I should have been a lot easier on myself because I was doing the best I could.
You never realized how low your standard should be.
You never realized how low your potential truly was.
That whole time.
What if you were actually doing better than you should be doing right now?
The whole time that I was eating meatball sandwiches in the bathtub and tweeting about it and feeling like that was a career, that actually was a career.
That was as good as I could do.
That was it.
You've become your own Harry Chapin song.
I was peaking.
And I should have known it and I should have been happy with that.
Oh, God, this is going to dog me.
The whole idea of that is so going to dog me down the line.
We don't have time probably this week, but can we diary this?
I would love for you to tell the story about your mom and her dental work at some point.
You told me that when I was in Seattle.
I'd never heard that story.
And like all things – again, I don't want you to get too personal, but I mean it's a story maybe next time we're sharing because I think you really rethink – somebody who's been through what your mom has been through has the stones to go, you know what?
I'm not going back to Ohio.
And that's just how it's going to be.
But here's the funny thing.
You think about all the Holocaust survivors who right now are – there are very few of them left.
They're dying at a rate of 50% of a day or whatever.
But you think about those people and what they endured.
And the fact that they then rejoined human life and lived in towns and went to the grocery store and watched their shows on TV.
And the gap, you want to think that what they endured made them...
into a different kind of human being, like an unprecedented kind of human, that their ability to endure, that the suffering that they had endured, the trauma that they experienced... Like they're like superhuman.
The metal for their blade has been folded many more times than other people.
They've been forged into something on another level.
Right.
That they are utterly other.
Right.
But in fact, the difference between an 85-year-old Holocaust survivor and me is actually not that—the gulf isn't that wide.
The gulf of human experience, although people like the things that my mom experienced in her childhood and the pain that she was capable of enduring—
seems inconceivable to me, who's never actually walked five miles on a broken foot or had like 15 root canals with no anesthesia.
That is inconceivable to me.
And to imagine she endured those things, she must be utterly different.
But in fact, she is...
a human being.
She has the same capacities that I do and the same, certainly a Holocaust survivor has a lot of other things going on, but this is the crazy thing about humanity that what is the same about us across cultures, across the difference between rich and poor, the differences between us are so minuscule.
we are ultimately very, very, very alike and very, very alike in capability and ultimately in experience.
And this is the thing about relative suffering, right?
I mean, somebody like you or somebody like me who has...
had X amount of suffering in our life.
And this is why I object so much to the idea of white people problems or first world problems.
That phrase drives me crazy because the relative experience of suffering is...
It actually is relative that this person who worked their entire lives in a mercury mine and this person who was born with a silver spoon in their mouth, to say that the one who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth doesn't know suffering is incredibly condescending.
And in fact, the person who worked in a mercury mine his whole life and died at 30, he danced and sang and enjoyed his food.
So the idea that suffering is on some kind of measurable scale, and the person who has suffered the most has a nobility that the person who has suffered the least has no access to, is to misjudge what it is to be human.
Hmm.
Because – I don't know.
I'm trying to decide if this makes all the sense or none of the sense.
But it is actually peculiarly a – to use that phrase you don't like.
It is kind of a white guy thing to – I don't know.
I don't know.
It's funny to me how many of the people who are out there worrying about these things are indeed white people like you and me.
We've just done a podcast about it.
Well, when I was walking across Europe, I remember sitting in this apartment in Romania.
It's always in Romania, my stories.
But this was a place where the girl had a shower, and the shower pointed at the toilet, and the light...
That she had in her apartment came in through a bare wire that went like over the shower through the door and to a light bulb hanging, you know, over her like pallet of a bed and the cement walls of her like one room apartment were sweating moisture.
And I'm sitting on the floor because she's let me come there and sleep that night.
And she's sitting on the bed and we're talking.
And we don't have a common language.
She doesn't speak English and I don't speak Romanian.
But we're talking in that way that you learn to talk with people that you don't have a language with.
And after a while, she looks at me and she says, you know, I would love...
the only way that you can do what you're doing, the only way that you can have the thoughts that you're having and walk across Europe in this way and think about the world in this way is because you're rich.
There's no other, this is a luxury and it is, you are doing a thing that only a rich person can do.
And I said, but you and I are here, and I'm using your hospitality tonight.
If it weren't for you, I would be sleeping outside on the ground.
And I'm sleeping here, and your apartment is... You have the luxuries in our relationship.
And she said, yeah, you are rich enough to deny yourself luxury.
Yeah.
And I chewed on it.
But the people who wrote the Declaration of Independence were rich enough to deny themselves the luxury of becoming tyrants.
And we can't look at them and say,
They had white people problems.
You know?
Like, the story of human beings is...
The difference between a rich person and a poor person seems so incredible to us because we are here.
We're in it.
I think if you were flying overhead in a UFO and looking down at somebody who was sleeping in a mud hole and Donald Trump, you might not see there being that big of a gulf between the two lives because we're all living in a mud hole here.
Yeah.
Donald Trump's solid gold bed is not that much different from a mud hole if you get high enough up in the sky.
We all have to poop.
Let me ask you this.
If every time Donald Trump poops...
it feels like he's pooping razor blades, which I hope is the case.
He might not drink enough water.
I really hope that's true, that every time Donald Trump poops, it feels like he's pooping razor blades.
Wow, that's tough.
And then, in contrast, you think of someone who lives in a shack that they made out of grass that they cut themselves, and they sleep on a dirt floor, but every time they poop, it feels so amazing.
every single one of their poops is amazing.
Which one of those two people would you rather be?
Can I have a third option?
No, those are your two options.
The guy who lives in a grasshop and every poop is amazing.
Oh my God.
Oh, you're getting, I don't have an answer to that, but you're getting to the basic contradiction though, which is that, you know, in order to make anything a good story, we have to pull out one thing to contrast.
If you pull out 14 things to contrast, it's not a good story anymore.
And so the stories that we tell ourselves about these things are about asking whether somebody is rich or whether they're poor, whether they're good or whether they are bad.
And the stories about – that have any more texture to it than that tend to make people lose their attention for it because it's not – it doesn't – you want to either know that Zooey Deschanel was really great to her fans or that she was a big dick.
And depending on like what your point of view is on that, you're going to tell that story in a certain way.
You're going to hear it in a certain way.
But it's just really – it's just a bunch of people –
standing around doing stuff and you know and i the mud the mud the mud hole thing is interesting to me uh this is really overly subtle but it's it's not it's um and maybe it's not so far off sticking leaves down some girl's shirt i guess but it's it's one thing to think that people are different and it's another thing to have strong opinions about what that difference means to make them different because that's when you get stupid it's pretty subtle
Well, I mean the thing is there's certainly – first of all, there's certainly more to the lives of all the people than how they feel when they poop, although that's a big one for me.
I know it is.
But also – but isn't this part of the liberal problem in some ways is to look at someone and go, oh, you are a person with dark skin and therefore I must defend you.
Well, no, I could be your boss.
Thanks, but no thanks.
Mm-hmm.
So you know that that person is different, but if your whole paradigm is that essentially that dark people need to be defended by me, then what that difference is – and I'm not trying to be out there or die here – but the thing that made that person different is apparent to you.
They're black and you're white, and so you've decided – you've taken it upon yourself that you're going to be their protector.
Consequently, using what you see as the difference to not allow them to be different in the way that they want to be different.
So what I'm trying to say is it's one thing to say, well, you know.
Girls are softer than guys.
Guys are taller than girls.
There are certain things that are biologically accurate.
There's a chromosomal difference.
And if you don't acknowledge that, you're not a learned person.
But it's when you take that scientific fact and try to make it into something that it's not that you get real stupid.
And I think that's what happens a lot.
I don't know if it's a white people thing or a German thing or an earth thing.
But I think what we do is we're constantly looking for distinctions as animals to help us stay alive and to help us thrive and make babies and get a meal.
And we're always looking for this versus that.
You know what I mean?
And so that's to me where it gets complicated.
I mean I think you're right.
I think everybody needs to come back and realize they're living in a mud hole every once in a while.
But I think it also takes – we are evolved enough that I think having a certain amount of empathy about how everybody feels different when they poo is a good thing.
You know what I mean?
It's – I don't know if we – I just – I –
I hate to beat up on liberals all the time, but at least the conservatives have ground cover in that they're monkey balls crazy a lot of the time.
The problem is that a lot of my friends who are really, really smart think they've got a lot of stuff nailed down pretty hard, and I don't think they've asked around.
A lot of the people who are being looked out for – and you don't really need to look too far to see real-world examples of this.
It wasn't too long ago when I was a kid that you would look at somebody and you would say, that person is – well, before I was born, you would say, that person is a cripple.
That person is a gimp.
That person is a fucking cripple.
They are crippled.
Then we started saying, well, no, that person is not crippled.
That person is handicapped.
You say, well, no, that person is not handicapped.
That person is disabled.
Right?
That person is – and so on and so on and so forth.
And you can make – yeah, right.
So you can take it to the point where it gets sillier and sillier in terms of the jokes.
But what it really is, it's a person.
We've all got fucked up stuff about it.
It's just that this person has a wheelchair.
Oh my gosh, they have a wheelchair.
That's so sad.
No, it's not sad.
A fucking wheelchair helps them get around and they're doing great.
It's just – there's something really inside of all of this like looking out for – and I'm always cracking wise about that new term, ableist.
You're being ableist about things.
Well, like, you know –
If you're a person who is an unsighted person, if you're an unhearing person, if you're on the spectrum of problems, man, you have every right in the world to stand up.
I have not a super good friend, but I have a pretty good friend who does constantly make me aware of what it's like to be a blind person.
And you realize how much something like an iPhone is kind of a dick to use if you're a blind person.
But I guess the thing that bugs me is like it's – you're not really – not you.
But the folks that I'm railing about are not – it's not that they're really even trying to help anybody.
They're trying to look good, and they're out there trying to say something that nobody could disagree with and helps fucking absolutely no one.
Well, I think what happened was for all of human history, the idea that we were not animals was an idea that we clung to because the evidence that we were animals was right over our shoulders, right?
All the time, you know, if you lived on a farm, you woke up every morning and put on a freshly ironed shirt that was heavily starched and a black suit.
Because if you if you let that go, if you let that slide and you started dressing like a slob and you wore sweatpants.
I mean, the difference between you and your pigs who are living right outside your window.
It was a distinction you had a real vested interest in maintaining.
Your pigs are right there.
And the similarities between you and your pigs are there for all to see.
Unless you maintain this separation.
And human civilization was built on some big ideas that came from the top down.
Like God said X and the law says this and the king says that.
And as time has gone on, certainly on the liberal and then the conservatives, I think in most cases still live that way.
But on the liberal side of the equation,
We don't allow ourselves to have big ideas that govern us anymore.
And most of the people in the world are – they see a bunch of – like somebody blows a bunch of bubbles and we're out trying to pop each bubble.
Like each bubble is its own super important point that we need to make.
This is a super important bubble.
This bubble cannot be allowed to survive.
I need to deal with this bubble, and then I need to deal with that bubble over there.
And if you start to try and talk about big ideas, governing ideas, concepts, those are – we feel like on the liberal side of the aisle, we feel like –
that a lot of those ideas are resolved.
We know what the deal is.
We are the educated side of this equation, and we know what the deal is.
And we have rejected God, and we have rejected Nietzsche, and we have rejected...
The idea of oligarchy, we have rejected the idea.
We've rejected everything except seeing how it really is.
Don't you think?
I think there's a certain sense of like, well, oh gosh, even as recently as four or five years ago, there were people whose vision was heavily occluded.
And aren't we lucky to be able to see as clearly as we see?
Now we finally see.
Why can't everybody have this gift?
And just in the course of our adult lives, we have culturally – the first thing we did was reject all the great books because they were written by the wrong people.
And they encoded privilege.
And so we rejected all of the world's wisdom.
Yeah.
And we rejected all – and we've certainly rejected the idea that there are some families that are – there are some people who are better, you know, the people that – the Kennedys or whatever.
They're not better.
They're just – they have just – they had unequal opportunity.
And so we've rejected that anyone is a natural leader.
We've rejected basically any idea that each of us is not a kingdom in and of ourselves, and that each of us is not entitled to rule our own kingdom with an iron fist, and have everyone around us respect God.
respect the autonomy of our principality.
And not just respect, but have reciprocal trade agreements with people, with our own little principality that is being governed.
We each have and acknowledge one another's monarchies, basically.
Like our one-person monarchy.
And if you say, well, interesting, but Plato covered all of this.
uh like 3 000 years ago people are like plato huh white male had enough of your double talk and you're just like bah okay so i guess basically like i'm trying i'm living this person over here is living according to the christian bible and this person over here is living according to the tenants of my little pony but the two things are equal
And the two things are, and the idea that you would suggest that the two worldviews are not commensurate is discriminatory.
And there's nothing worse than that.
And it's unsustainable.
It's unsustainable.
Well, it's certainly hard to see a way that a lot of stuff gets better as long as that's the only really culturally acceptable thing to do or to be.
Yeah, which is why.
We are starting a new reality.
We're starting a new muscular liberalism that stems from a worldview, an overarching worldview.
Does it have to be muscular?
What about people who are not muscularly abled?
There are people who will be muscular on their behalf.
Boo.
I'm sorry.
That's how it's going to go.
It's how it's got to work.
We welcome all people as long as... As long as they're not fruits.
As long as they can take a punch in the nose.
And that's not to say that you necessarily are going to get a punch in the nose.
It's not that you're going to like it.
You may get a broken nose.
It's certainly going to hurt, but you'll probably make it through.
The thing is that one might be coming your way.
And so if you're ready, if you are able to take a punch in the nose, if you think you're able to take a punch in the nose,
to have the world run a little bit better, then you're on board.
Keep a small bag packed.
You know, Thomas Dolby did not get a writing credit on anything on that record.
There's so many keyboards on that record.
So what?
Are you telling me, like, what's his name?
What's his name?
Graham?
Lou Graham.
Lou Graham.
And Mick Jones was the one.
Is he the guy in The Clash?
There are two Mick Joneses.
One in The Clash and one... See, Hitler would have taken care of that.
That's unacceptable.
Lou Graham.
All the credits on here.
It's Graham and Jones, Jones and Graham, Graham and Jones.
There's not a single person besides those two guys that have a writing credit on that album.
Well, the thing about it, Jones wrote all the tunes.
And then they found Graham.
This is the origin story of Foreigner.
They found Graham.
It's not like they grew up together.
Oh, is it like a headhunting?
Like they went out and they needed a singer.
Yeah, because Lou Graham was the guitar player in a band before Foreigner that was one of those like, you guys are going to be huge, but...
But not yet.
And he was writing tunes for other bands and stuff.
I'm looking for this.
He's American.
Well, you know what?
He was in Spooky Tooth.
Spooky Tooth!
Yeah.
And Spooky Tooth was like Sweetwater in that Cameron Crowe movie.
Yeah.
They were meant to be big, but they weren't.
And then anyway, he writes all these tunes...
And then they find Lou Graham somehow.
And then he writes some of it.
He's a Christian rock guy now.
Who?
Lou Graham?
Oh, no.
Really?
Lou Graham is a Christian rocker?
He's worked with Petra, and I don't mean Hayden.
You're as cold as ice.
I'll never forget when that record came out.
You're willing to sacrifice all love.
Album originally titled Silent Partners, Foreigner 4.
You know, Hypgnosis, Hypgnosis, who did all those great covers, all those Pink Floyd covers, all those Peter Gabriel.
Asked to design a cover based on the original title of Silent Partners.
Developed a black and white image of a young man in bed with a pair of binoculars looming overhead.
Resulting design was rejected by the band as they felt it was, quote unquote, too homosexual.
Oh.
So.
Is the rest of the band English?
1981.
It was a different time.
Yeah, they were English.
Thomas Dolby wrote the keyboard parts.
He didn't get a single goddamn credit.
Do you know what kind of dough he would have today?
What did this sell?
How many records did this sell?
You know, I think... Six million.
I know, I know.
Six X platinum.
Right, right.
Man.
Have you gotten close to a platinum yet if you put them all together, end to end?
No.
No.
In fact, 100,000 records...
is a massive achievement now for any band.
The only band, the only indie rock bands that have sold 100,000 records are... I mean, Death Cab has had a platinum record.
The Decembrists have sold more than 100,000 records.
Bon Iver has.
Those Mumford & Sons guys seem to be doing pretty well.
Jesus, they've sold fucking 3 million records.
In America, let alone in Europe.
They're massive.
But for bands that are my peers, you know, not a surf, never sold 100,000 records.
All the fans that are living up to their potential?
All of us who actually have arrived at the top of their capability and are just fucking there and just putting out records that sell 20,000 copies and that's it.
That's as good as they were ever meant to be.
That's it, buddy.
20,000 records.
You should be proud.
Not just proud.
You should wake up every morning and you should pick up your kid and kiss her on the forehead and say, your daddy has done the best that he could.
You're a real special guy, John.