Ep. 78: "Driving Lesson Costume"
Don't hit back.
Hello.
Hey, John.
Hi, Merlin.
How's it going?
Good.
I was just watching a gynecological comedy video for teen girls.
Tampons.
Tampons.
They're very important.
This is something I'm going to have to learn more about.
Don't you feel like you dodged a bullet a little bit with those things?
You mean not being a girl?
Yeah.
I think that every day.
Me too.
But now that I have a daughter, now I have to know things about things I don't know anything about.
It's so easy to fake it.
You know, if you just get... You know what I mean?
You don't need the most detailed topographical map to sound like you're a cartographer.
You know what I mean?
I couldn't draw one, you know?
The high land is high and the low lands are low.
I'll be in Scotland before you.
Okay.
But I'm telling you.
Now I'm going to call vaginas Locke Loman.
Locke Loman.
You know, my experience of women's periods is obviously you don't get to be my age without having some experience.
It's called riding dirty.
of them oh my god the first time you ever never heard that i never heard no i just literally uh coined that yeah but uh but i i remember i remember the first time a guy told me in high school a guy you know confided in me that he had had sex with a girl who was on her period and i was like what was it like and he said kind of just the same which meant nothing to me
except it's like sandpapery.
It's like, it's rough.
There's a lot of extra, there's detritus.
He didn't use that word, but that's what he meant.
There's, you know, there's flotsam.
And so I was, I was afraid of it for a long time.
And then I learned not to be afraid.
Yeah.
It's pretty scary.
I think it's the guy version of having a period.
I mean, the first time it happens, you're a little bit startled.
The guy version of having a period is having sex with a girl on her period?
You know, John, I'm not a menstrual scientist.
But, you know, I think the first time you get the...
You know, you get the katana out of the sheath, you know what I mean?
You know what?
Let's move on.
I'm just glad my lady... Huh?
I don't think the guy version... I don't think you can say that the equivalent of having a period for a guy is having sex with a girl on her period.
That would be gender normative.
I think the equivalent, what is the equivalent for a guy?
I'm sitting here right now trying to figure out what that is.
Once a month, the moon comes around like a big pizza pie.
Guys.
And you and something in you changes.
And suddenly you are not open to advice.
Suddenly you are fine.
Hot baths and yelling.
Everything is fine.
I don't know.
That happens to me all the time.
Hot baths and yelling.
You just drew two sides of my triangle.
Where's your parade?
You know, it's not an equivalent, but that's the challenge, really.
I don't know.
I mean, you know, something like a wet dream, that's kind of a whole different deal.
I never had one of those.
Never had one in my life.
You never had one either?
Nope.
See, I'm not even sure they exist.
I don't believe they exist.
Oh, you think it's like the female orgasm, like a mass hysteria?
Yeah, it's like the G-spot.
It's something that was invented by Masters and Johnson.
It's like snipe hunting.
It's like, yeah, it's like you take a girl down to watch the submarine races.
Absolutely.
But I'm saying, okay, you get a boner, you're having a dream of a sexy time, and then you just, like, come all over your bed?
It seems impossible.
I have to tell you, I am very reluctant.
You know what?
I'm an older man now and I'm not as embarrassed about as many things.
Right.
And I'm just here to tell you, maybe my timing was impeccable and my slugging percentage was high because I never have experienced that.
No.
So you're saying your timing was impeccable in the sense that you became a man and then you immediately – your slugging percentage was high.
You immediately started putting it into girls.
You never had a period where you were just lying around sleeping.
I've never had a period.
But here's the thing.
My thinking is maybe if the timeline had been just a little bit different and I had become self-educated a little bit later, maybe I would have busted a pool.
But I have never busted a pool.
Well, you know, I was aware of, obviously we were all aware of Playboy magazines a long time before we knew what anything was.
Yeah, but to me it was like a socket wrench.
I just didn't know what to do with a Playboy.
It was like, here it is.
It's, I mean, I just want to look at the cartoons.
My friends got flipping to the boobies and I just want to read the cartoons.
You know what to do with the playboy when you're eight years old, you hide it.
You read the studio.
It's a thing to hide.
It's a thing you know you shouldn't have.
And that, that is sexually exciting.
but uh i i became aware of dirty movies i've told you about visions sure this is the uh you had the crazy this is an anchorage yeah the the crazy uh the crazy the crazy cable with the dishes and the yeah the crazy cable with the dishes and i saw for my the first time a dirty movie called the great texas dynamite chase have i told you about this movie
i've forgotten the great texas dynamite chase was a movie that was the first time i ever saw boobs in motion and it was it was one of those 70s kind of soft core pornos like a cinemax yeah that tried to have a plot but also had simulated sexual encounters and
And it was about... See, I haven't seen this movie since I was 10 years old, but it was about... Just give me the high level on the plot.
It was about a guy who was kind of like a Luke Duke... Maybe it was more of a Bo Duke.
He was one of the Duke brothers type of guy...
And he was on the lam from the cops and he picked up two hitchhikers in Daisy Duke shorts and they went on a bank robbing spree or something and the cops were chasing him and they were and they used dynamite.
Dynamite was their weapon.
That's right in your wheelhouse.
I was so excited.
I'm watching, you know, I put the channel, I changed the channel into that in-between-two-channels thing where the cable dirty movies came in.
And here's this movie where this guy is driving around with these two beautiful girls and they are blowing shit up right and left, blowing up cop cars, blowing up cabins, and then they have simulated sex.
and i knew what i wanted to do as a grown-up you want to be the english guy with the suitcase full of bombs but it never happened for me exactly like that uh isn't that the way i've never seen that movie since but i remember it's burned into my head the great texas dynamite chase i don't even i don't think it's like one of the great films i but i haven't even gone on netflix to see if it's there does netflix have dirty movies
You know, in a nuanced way.
They don't have like canonically dirty movies.
You know, a lot of that stuff, it's like the old kinescopes or the Dr. Whos that they, the Dr. Whoms that they throw away.
Like there's a lot of stuff you just can't get anymore.
Right.
See, for me, there was this wonderful window, 1982 or so.
I don't know how this happened because we were not a wealthy family, but we had cable with Showtime and HBO.
I think it was like $15 a month for our cable.
What happened to you then?
And MTV, yeah.
But, um, you know, so you saw some simulated sex is what you're saying.
Well, yeah.
Um, most importantly, that is, that's what, you know, so much of the stuff we talk about, uh, stuff I talk about with everybody, it got burned on my brain.
That's where, that's where stripes, um, escape from New York.
Like, oh yeah, Benny Hill.
I mean that all got so alien, like movies I would just watch literally six times in a month.
Sure.
Cause they were, they were just on constant rotation.
Yeah.
And then, you know, there's always the, you know, the joke like Cinemax after dark or whatever, but there truly used to be something.
I think it was actually Showtime after dark.
But anyway, the point was that there would be the kinds of movies you're talking about.
And for me, there were movies.
The camera would pan down and they would be having the sex and they'd be panning down and you'd be like, I'm about to see it.
I'm about to see some.
And then it would like.
And that frustrated you.
Yeah, then it would cut to some flowers wilting in a vase.
And you're like, where's the dynamite?
You're like, who's the director?
First of all, who's our director?
You didn't know what you were going to see with that pan.
If you're going to cut, at least cut to a locomotive going into a tunnel.
It might as well have been Cthulhu.
Like, you don't know what's down there.
No, that's the problem.
I'm like, I'm going to see.
I'm going to see.
And then it's like, you know.
There's so many movies they make you watch in school, but they're all like line art cross sections.
It's like I've never seen a woman with like a cross section fallopian tube.
I couldn't locate that on a body.
you know what i mean all those ridiculous films now really well because you know alternative rock i think you have to learn stuff that's where the g-spot's down in the tube you know what i mean you're looking for a g-spot and you find a bunch of other stuff it's a good point you know you know how there's the the bit like the the cliche in like standard shitty porno movies is like oh it's a pizza delivery man or the cable guy i'm here to fix dina cable talking about cliche i thought that's i mean i think that's how half the babies are made in america still
And it's tough, turns out, because of all the people canceling cable, the birth rate is plummeting.
Pizza, not popular.
I'm here to deliver a diner gluten-free option.
But the problem, we are touching on a major problem for me in my mind, which is that, and you and I both have this problem, and you are in advance of me in being a father of a daughter.
And my whole life, you know, women have been very confusing.
They've been some people that I admire.
They've been some people that I have, you know, I have entanglements with.
Talk to some of them?
I talk to them occasionally.
I objectify them all the time.
Yes.
And now I have a daughter and none of those methods, I have no interest in objectifying her.
I've struggled to talk to her still.
Yes.
Because she's two and a half.
That'll get better.
She'll talk more.
I look into the future, her future, as a young woman and then as an adult woman.
And I'm struggling to try and figure out how I can help her do this.
And I'm scared to death.
I am too.
I am too.
But I – just to close the one thread.
So as pizza delivery is to actual shitty porn, I think having some kind of a charity event is to cable porn.
That's all I wanted to say.
Because for me, it was a movie.
I think – I want to say – I can't find it on IMDb.
I think it was called Hots with like inter periods.
Forgive my saying.
Like MASH.
I guess those are asterisks.
I have stood for –
It stood for ladies playing softball to save an orphanage or something.
And there's a lot of running and jiggling.
And no, here's the thing.
I think I told you the story.
But when my lady got in that way, her family threw us a lovely – when she got softballed by daddy –
title uh we we uh they threw us a wonderful uh baby shower up in rhode island and we went there it was great and my my one of my favorite family members my uh brother one of my brother-in-law's is standing outside the door he's already three sheets to the wind yeah and he's like enjoy it while you can i'm like hey john how's it going uh we walked up no he's awesome he's awesome he's like a successful lawyer and he goes enjoy it while you can
Cause believe me, it changes.
Well, she hits about 11 with the sexting and the pictures and the snaps, snaps, snaps.
And, and, and the thing is though, this guy is part of, so my wife is the youngest of seven, but like all of her older brothers and sisters.
Yeah.
And this is not about them.
This is about the Fleetwood Macification of the 1970s.
They should all be fucking dead.
These guys are now worried about like taking photos of your cooch and
Yeah, yeah.
And they were permanently drunk driving through all of the 70s.
It's true, but you have to remember about the 70s.
First of all, there was 3.2 beer.
Oh, they call it a near beer.
Second of all, the weed was a lot mellower weed.
It was real serious, some shake shit.
You know, you'd roll up a big fat doobie, you'd smoke it all day, and maybe you'd feel a little iry.
It's not like the hardcore shit.
I and I have never felt iry.
Ha, ha, ha, ha.
But you're absolutely right.
I mean, how did any of us survive the 70s?
Absolutely.
I mean, I feel like we were talking about dodging a bullet.
Like, you know, we're from the time, I don't know if they did this at your school, but it was when, like, around the time of, like, my sophomore year, drunk driving was, like, the cause celeb.
Right, man.
Where they would drag, like a... Dare.
Dare, sure.
You got the dare.
But they would like – there would be the big campaigns on campus.
Oh, sure.
They would bring a wrecked car and put it in the G. Right, right, right.
We had to like peel a kid out of this, what was left of him.
But I'm serious.
Anyway, I worry about that.
for the most selfish reason, which is I'm not sure how I will handle it.
And yet, I feel like, you know, there's not that much you can do about it.
You try to equip a kid to not be a dumb shit.
But, you know, it's ironic to me that this guy, who's now an extremely successful personal liability lawyer, is worried about my daughter's future when he was out there, like, literally drinking a case of paranoid.
Well, I mean, I'm going to equip my daughter with flamethrowers, but I think that...
I think what worries us is that... The lady flambeau.
Although we were, I mean, in the 70s and 80s, consuming massive quantities of drugs and alcohol all the time, and unsupervisedly driving muscle cars...
Which, you know, which cannot turn once they are moving in a straight line.
We're driving muscle cars 120 miles an hour with the headlights off and other wonderful things that characterize the 80s.
we were still all more or less in the dark about sex, even after the sexual revolution.
I mean, at least I feel like, like we were much less aware of like the whole panoply of sex.
Yeah.
I certainly was.
Maybe I'm just speaking from personal experience.
You're not, but the elephant in the room is herpes and then eights.
Herpes and eights.
From the time junior herpes became a thing that everybody knew about when I was in junior high.
And all you needed to know about it, I feel like I knew more about herpes than I knew about vaginas.
All I knew was there was this thing that was going to happen to you that was going to fuck you up for the rest of your life.
Oh, and now, by the way, eights.
Right, and herpes basically made like 10 really painful vaginas on your penis.
That was what herpes did.
It made little burning vaginas all over your penis.
They call it a decagyno.
And then AIDS.
And then AIDS.
And then AIDS.
And we didn't know what caused it.
Anyway, I agree with you.
It's another one of those things that, like, skipped a generation.
But the kids with the pictures of their nakedness.
Well, let's even just say nakedness.
Let's just say, like, even teenage girls taking pictures of their boobs.
Oh, like they take a selfie in a bikini.
Yeah.
I mean, this is not a thing that I am happy about as a father.
Oh, I'm going to be terrible at it.
We were downtown last week, and my daughter was wearing her Spider-Man hoodie, and I angrily corrected three different people going, hey, Spider-Girl.
I'm like, fuck you.
It's Spider-Man, asshole.
Yeah.
spider girl's awesome well especially one's better than the other but like but you know at least spider woman like but like you know she's she's spider man like let her be spider man that's fine right stop being so gender normative is what your homemade t-shirt should say can i see a question about selfies
Yes, of course.
I know a lot about them.
Okay.
There's a lot of pictures of ladies taking pictures in the bathroom.
Right.
Why do they look at the screen instead of the lens?
This is the thing.
Because you know they're taking more than one.
You learn this in the LiveJournal days.
You take six or 15, and you do the one with the least meat beard, and that's the one you put up, right?
So they're taking 10 probably, but can't you just tap to get the focus and then look at the lens like a gentleman?
Right.
No, but this is the problem because girls of that generation, if they look at themselves in the mirror, they automatically make a duck face.
And so you don't want a duck face picture no matter what.
And so looking at the little screen, seeing yourself at one remove, you're like somehow it breaks the duck face spell.
If I were the kind of person that still read Roland Barthes, I would think about this a lot.
Because the whole act of taking a photo of yourself is...
in a mirror, like as a thing.
And I mean, you could almost, like you could take 500 selfies, adjust them for size, and they would basically be exactly the same silhouette.
Do you know what I mean?
They look pretty much exactly the same, except for the cosplay or the boobs.
And they're always looking at the screen
Yeah, my feeling about selfies taken out of context is that they're meaningless out of context.
And that, in fact, the point of a selfie is never the photograph itself.
But it is it is it is that it is happening in real time and that the person who is sending you this picture, you know, is at that moment somewhere across town or across the world getting naked for you now.
Oh, it's intimate and timely.
Right.
So the picture itself is kind of a... If you go back and look at them later, it's like, oh, this is actually kind of not a very good picture.
And... Yeah, but that's kind of like turning... Now it's not happening.
It's kind of like turning in your papers late, where it's a kind of a way of saying like...
Yeah.
But you know what I mean?
Like, I think it's a form of procrastination where you could say like, well, I could have done better if I had another week, but I did it all like as an all nighter in this case.
Well, I was in a fucking bathroom.
Of course I look like that.
Yeah.
But I really think like in the moment, in the immediate moment of a sexual exchange over texting, the point is just that.
The point is that it is a form of communication, not an actual form of pornography, which is why taking those pictures out of context and sharing them on 4chan is like... Are you still looking at that?
This is terrible.
I mean, I have to maintain my relationships with my online community.
This is your Pete Townsend albatross to bear.
Because...
Well, it's not just there.
It's the Star Trek forums.
It's a lot of forums.
It takes up half my day.
I did a little bit of light consulting for an independent record label a few years ago.
Interesting.
One of the things that I said to them was...
At the time when something like this would sound slightly profound rather than just merely obvious today, which is that to understand most people on the internet, it's useful to understand instead of thinking about things in terms of like what it is you have to sell, it's useful to remember that everybody out there is grooming a new version of their personality in real time in front of people.
In order to really understand how people use the internet or at the time MySpace was really big, you get those horrible pages with the flashing things and the dancing bananas and all of that.
And every single bit of bling on that page was about a brand association of some kind.
It was about – I mean if it wasn't like Coca-Cola.
It was a way of saying I align myself with this.
And it's like how do you make yourself the kind of person or the kind of company that somebody would want to align themselves with?
And I believe that more than ever today.
It's like there's so much branding.
And a selfie is a good way to brand.
I'm just saying.
Today, I'm looking for an old suburban.
You mean like a widow?
No.
You mean one of those really, really, really giant... I'm looking for a guy with a rake who's going to stand in my front yard.
Mrs. Nelson, can I come in?
No, I've decided, you know, I've been looking at classic cars on the internet for 15 years before there even was an internet.
And I realized the other day I was driving down the road somewhere in some rental car and some guy blew past me in a, you know, in an Austin Healey.
And I said...
I'm not getting any younger.
Like I am already over the threshold where it's, where I'm no longer a young guy in a hot car.
I'm, I'm already a middle-aged guy in a hot car and I don't even have a hot car yet.
And what I don't want to be is one of these guys that, that, you know, that, that looks like, uh, looks like, uh, what's the guy who says diabetes, uh,
Wilford Brimley?
Wilford Brimley.
I don't want to look like Wilford Brimley in a hot car.
You see those guys all the time where you're driving up and you're like, wow, nice Camaro.
And then you look inside and it's a 76-year-old guy with diabetes.
And you're like, boo.
You're going to die in that car, sir.
You know, because I grew up in that era, I keep thinking that the only guys driving around in cars with Crager rims or like...
like any kind of car with SS on the back, you're going to get up next to him and it's going to be a guy with a duck tail and a pack of cigarettes rolled up.
It's going to be Harrison Ford or possibly Matthew McConaughey.
Yeah.
Right.
And then you get, you get up next to him and it's all these, ah, these just decaying corpses.
I don't want to be that guy, but I've been looking at classic cars for so long.
Like I've lost, I've somehow lost the ability to choose.
So I decided the other day, I want a classic suburban, uh,
Those things are so big.
A big four-wheel drive Suburban.
And my taste in Suburbans is very specific.
I want a three-quarter ton Suburban.
I'm not going to bore you with this, Marlon.
No, no, no.
I want to hear.
Three-quarter ton four-wheel drive Suburban.
uh, between the years.
I mean, there's, and there's two different body styles.
I love, I like the, the late sixties, early seventies suburbans.
I'm just glad you found a hobby.
They only have three doors, but it's the three very cool doors.
And then I also liked the, the, the mid seventies suburbans.
The first ones I fell in love with 72 to 79 or whatever.
Um,
Anyway, the problem with loving these cars is that they were flogged to death by people.
You know, like, you didn't buy one of these Suburbans and polish it and keep it in your garage.
You went and joined the Forest Service, or you went and took it to Tri-It-Nam.
To Tri-It-Nam?
You went out to fucking Nowhere Land.
But you would use it for real, actual stuff.
You would use it for real, actual stuff, and then the thing would...
At the exact moment that the rust ate it from within, it also would fall apart from outside and it would just be a pile of dust.
So there are very few of these things left.
All by way of saying, today I was sitting at home and I was like, I wonder if somebody just owns the URL oldsuburban.com.
And so I typed in OldSuburban.com.
Because I am an old man, I didn't put it up to the URL bar.
I actually typed OldSuburban.com into Google.
And the first couple of sites that came up that weren't pay advertisements, I clicked on the first one.
And it took me to a site that had not been updated since 2001.
And it literally had dancing bananas.
Wow, you felt like a time capsule.
And like little animated flash.
Did it say last updated on the page?
It did.
It said like, you know, this site was constructed in June of 1999.
Last updated in March 2001.
Did it have a little counter at the bottom?
Yeah, a little counter.
And the site was so hard...
It was so hard to even be there.
It was, it was hard.
It wasn't just that it was hard to navigate or understand.
It was impossible to do either thing, but it was hard even to be there with all these little things moving and little, little, little question marks and things written in common flashing lights under construction.
Yeah.
And it was, it was like, Oh shit, that's right.
That used to be the internet everywhere you went.
I always figure that I have really – I get involved in those sites because I find them hard to look at too, not just visually, but like my mind races because I'm a story guy.
Like there's always – I'm wanting the story.
So first of all, I figure the person is dead.
And nobody – it's probably like a university account.
Like it's taking up almost no space.
There's zero bandwidth.
And, like, it's like, you know, a Tilda suburban guy, PhD.
And, you know, he's been dead from heart disease since 9-11.
Like, nobody's updating the site.
And I always think of, like, oh, my God, I'm going to find typos.
And there's going to be no way to fix them.
It's a horrible, horrible feeling.
Our next-door neighbor, when I was a kid, had a Suburban.
And this is – we had a house, you know –
This is in the 70s.
It was an old house.
But, like, this thing barely fit in the driveway.
It was so big.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It was almost like a bus.
Yeah.
My friend Kevin had a Suburban in the very early 80s, and it was school bus yellow.
And he was just a little teenage kid, uh, you know, 16 year old kid.
And we would go out in that suburban and he had, by the time he was 16 years old, he had such control over this vehicle.
We would be speeding along down the street in Anchorage and they would have, you know, they would have kind of plowed the snow into a center berm that sometimes was four feet tall of snow between the lanes of traffic and
And Kevin could, you know, at 60 miles an hour, pop the Suburban up, high center it on this snow berm, kick on the, you know, it had the emergency brake, it was a pedal on the floor.
Like where it would be, where a clutch would be.
Right.
To the left.
Kick on the emergency brake and flip this Suburban around like it was pirouetting, like a ballerina.
Hmm.
All four tires, you know, going in different directions.
And he could balance the Suburban on its front bumper.
He was incredible in this truck.
And I remember riding, you know, in the passenger seat.
And this was before any of us ever wore seatbelts either.
So we were sliding around like ball bearings.
And just thinking like, this is the greatest.
It is great to be an American.
This is the greatest time to be alive.
We are listening to the Scorpions and we are driving the Suburban and no one can stop us.
We are driving the Suburban like the Millennium Falcon.
And I think it stuck in me, and now I'm having a midlife crisis.
Now I'm in my 40s, and I want to get that suburban, exactly that suburban, and just drive around.
This is your Lolita.
It is my Lolita.
I want that big freaking truck.
this you know it's seven miles to the gallon of all the idiotic things that you could do and there are really literally so many this is a good one i mean it's it's probably pretty safe for at least for a car from the 70s i'm looking at one right here this is the gmc carryall oh i love this i love it but the problem is there's a lot of two-wheel drive ones out there and i don't want a two-wheel drive truck gosh you can get a six well you can get a v8 in this
Oh, yeah.
Oh, brother.
You can option those all the way down.
Three-speed manual, four-speed manual, power glide, and turbo hydromatic.
I just want something with a turbo hydromatic in it.
That sounds nice.
It's a nice transmission, I got to say.
God, this thing is gorgeous.
John, you should do it.
Can I just give you a suggestion?
Yeah.
Two directions.
Number two, just get a Suburban.
I mean, it can't cost that much.
You know, and if it doesn't work out, get another one.
Yeah, you're right.
You're right.
The other one, number one, I've told you about this.
My friend Chris from college had an Austin Healey Sprite.
You would look great.
You would look so large in an Austin Healey Sprite.
Yeah.
You know, I'm actually partial to the big Heleys rather than the little Heleys.
Give me a model on that.
What do you call that?
You know, like the 100.
Is that what Paul McCartney died in?
What did he die in?
Paul McCartney died.
I thought he died in a Volkswagen Beetle.
He blew his mind out in a car.
28th.
Would have been, yeah, okay.
God, these are handsome cars.
Yeah, they are.
And the big Heelys are like, they're proper, like a Sprite, I think it would be a little clown car.
But a big Heely, I'd be feeling very strong.
It was like being in a Mountain Dew can.
One time in Sarasota, we were at a light, and we're lower than like a driver's side window.
And Chris says, you see that Yamaha over there?
And I'm like, yeah, I guess that's got a bigger engine than this.
Right.
And the big Heely.
We can push start it.
We can just push start it any time.
We just pop it into gear.
They have like six cylinder motors and they're still not that big a car.
But they're so light.
They're so deadly.
Yeah.
They don't all have six cylinder.
But anyway, those cars now are priced.
I was driving down the road not very long ago and I saw a kid who had to be in high school still, 17 years old, driving an Austin Healey 3000 with his high school girlfriend sitting next to him, their hair blowing in the wind.
And you know that his father is some kind of
criminal defense attorney or worse and they live in a big house with a water ski boat uh parked out front because it's a it's a waterfront house and he's driving this austin healy to town because his dad threw him the keys and said
you know, go crazy junior prom or whatever.
And I really wanted to run this kid off the road.
It just wasn't right.
Isn't that frustrating?
Some 90210 shit that shouldn't happen in Seattle.
And typically I don't allow it, but...
Yeah.
You know, I think that's the kind of thing you should, you should, you should be on top of.
There's a, there's a, I, I, you know, as you know, John, I'm trying to grow as a person and, uh, I'm, I've set aside.
I say, I say, leave it to the schadenfreude.
Leave it, leave it.
But, uh, there's a Tumblr I follow, uh, called, I think it's called rich kids on Instagram.
Oh, somebody sent, somebody sent me a link to that back when I was, I was, I was making it my thing to tweet every once in a while.
Like,
Nobody has it easy.
Life is hard for everybody.
Stop thinking that anybody is... Right.
Everyone has their reasons.
Everybody wakes up in the morning and goes, oh boy, here we go.
And a lot of people were really pushing back on this idea.
Like, no, you're wrong.
There are people that have it easy.
Right.
And I was like, no, there aren't like, like, like Eric Clapton's son fell out of his hotel window.
Right.
Like everybody's got a tragedy and just being rich doesn't solve anything.
And people were like, no bullshit.
And I got sent a lot of links to this rich kids, Tumblr, rich kids on Instagram, Tumblr, where there are all these, you know, smug little twerps taking pictures of themselves and their dad's plane.
Yeah.
And I spent 20 minutes on that thing and I was like, I never saw so many miserable people in my life.
Yeah.
I mean, it's like these kids like check out my watch or whatever.
It's like, oh, my God.
Yeah.
I saw a photo today of a guy wearing three watches.
Yeah.
There are a few things in life more lonely than being unsympathetic.
No, I mean, I'm being honest.
That's the problem.
That's exactly what the problem is, is you would hesitate to go, well, I agree.
It's true.
It sucks to be unsympathetic.
It's called a first world problem or a white wine.
Like, you know, everybody does have their problems.
I'm not trying to side with the Rolex guy.
Wait a minute.
White wine, W-H-I-N-E?
That's not mine.
That's not mine.
White wine.
Pretty good, huh?
Boy, they really...
Um, I saw one of a guy, I think it was a selfie or maybe he had his, his, his black man take it for him, but it was him in bed with three different bottles of like, like, uh, magnums of costly, uh, brands of champagne.
Like he was taking a fake nap with them.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
He's having a great time.
That guy's he's really he's enjoying that guy that could not be solved by a couple of good ass kickings.
Yeah.
I mean, I can't help but think that that there is no one on Instagram that is really living a good life.
I tried it.
I tried it twice.
See also independent label consulting.
Boy, talk about a vision of your life.
How many desaturated pictures of birds on a telephone wire do we need?
I'm increasingly feeling like I've always felt like I lived somewhat in a ghetto of a certain kind of people, a certain kind of thinker.
being like associated with a university, wearing a guitar.
First world problem.
But, but now my life on the internet, I am really seeing the borders of it.
And realizing that, oh, I'm not sure that this is the enlightened and beautiful capital of Future Town that everybody here thinks it is.
It feels a little bit... It feels like a bunch of...
As Kurt Vonnegut said, a bunch of bacteria drowning in their own shit and not realizing that they're making champagne.
I don't know if the internet is positive, Merlin.
I'm not sure right now if it is positive.
That it is, if you'll forgive me, a net positive.
That it is a net positive.
I imagined the internet the first time I heard about it.
back in the late 80s or early 90s.
I told you about it in 2008, I think.
You told me about... You specifically told me about the actual internet in 2008, but when somebody first whispered in my ear the idea of the internet, you know, I imagine just as every...
Futurist imagined.
Like the sum total of human knowledge.
A completely free and neutral space where intelligences can mix with one another unencumbered by their physical attributes or unencumbered by their class.
It's kind of like Tron but a library.
It would be this completely blank space where it is pure white...
desert where it could all be fresh and new and intelligent.
Right.
Tron library.
Exactly.
And now it seems more like kind of a swap meet at an old drive-in.
Yeah.
that seems more like a Qbert rectory a swap swap meet in an old drive-in where there are a lot of people playing like three card Monty and and yet also there's like that that hovering
uh billboard the the flying billboard from blade runner or maybe like minority report like all the ads are yelling at you kind of yeah the the ads are yelling at you that's that's exactly do you have a sense of uh i think this is a very interesting uh thing although we try to avoid talking about the internet uh what is there something specific that you came across
Or a certain movement?
I think a little bit it's like the yelling chamber.
I feel it in your and my conversations in the sense that I have always been, I've always self-identified as a radical.
But I've also always been very impatient of the kind of institutional radicalism that characterizes the left, right?
So you want to disassociate yourself with people on the left who are saying that we...
Christopher Columbus was a genocidal maniac or whatever.
You want to say, all right, all right, all right.
We've all read it, but it doesn't make it true because somebody wrote it.
And that kind of... The hyper-righteousness of the edge...
It does a lot of work of pushing the boundary, but it also devalues the inside, the middle fringe, which is actually getting work done.
But the problem now is that on the internet, if you take a stand anywhere...
against the fringe you are posited immediately as a member of the opposite fringe you know or there's no like the nuance is getting beaten out of everywhere except in these little pockets like like you like on Matt Howey's site or whatever there are places where people are talking but they increasingly feel like
Little domes of silence where, like, a very few people walk in, they check their swords and their pistols at the door, and they say, for the time that I'm going to be here, I agree to these rules of decorum.
And I agree not to call anyone a Hitler or a baby raper, not to write in all caps.
And I'm going to agree to that here while I'm here in this protected space.
But the rest of the internet and everywhere you go, because you follow a news story, you end up on a news site.
It's talking about, you know, oh, this funny lady, she rescues bats for a living.
And you're like, I watched the video, and this lady is rescuing bats.
How cute.
And then you scroll down.
You make the mistake of scrolling down, and the first comment says, if it wasn't for Obamacare, bats wouldn't get sick.
Oh, nice bat.
Did you know your shirt from Gap was made by children?
Like, what?
And you check, and there's 1,500 comments.
Thumb, thumb, thumb, thumb, thumb.
And you just feel like...
Unless I am prepared to go into an ivory tower somewhere on the internet to talk to people, there's nowhere to be where it isn't just...
where you're not oscillating between clickbait news item, pop-up ad, people screaming at each other, ignorant people screaming ignorantly at one another.
And making people ignorant.
That's kind of the cover charge to come in.
It's like the two-asshole minimum.
To get in, you've got to be willing to...
get involved in that particular way and the subtlety subtlety is just not possible but what i found was i was walking down the street my normal in normal life and i was kind of wrestling with these questions wrestling with feeling like i was at at the age of 44 i was at a point in my own life where
where a natural kind of conservatism is starting to enter my thinking.
You know, the famous adage of like, if you're not a liberal, when you're a young man, you have no heart.
And if you're not a conservative, when you're an old man, you have no brain.
Churchill.
Thank you.
And so this natural kind of conservatism that comes into your life when you're in your mid-40s, where you just have seen enough...
And you look around and you go, yeah, all right, kid.
But really, here's how life works.
And you start to feel like you're not willing anymore to be imposed upon so much.
You start to appreciate a little bit of quiet and a little bit of comfort.
I start to shake my fist at people whose stereos are too loud.
It's a kind of quality of middle age.
That I think you need to resist.
You need to resist this inexorability of feeling like building a taller fence.
And as I'm talking to myself and I'm resisting my own natural sort of trend to personal conservatism...
I'm feeling the templates of the internet in my mind.
And I'm arguing with myself in the voice of these internet templates.
And I kind of jump back out of myself and I say, I reject this.
I reject this model.
I am not...
It is not a simple matter of either being like... You cannot accuse everyone of classism or racism or sexism who doesn't conform to the most radical interpretation of any scenario.
There is a middle that is really where we should all aspire to be.
And, uh, and, and I just, so I heard the internet ringing in my ears as I'm walking along, trying to navigate my own, my own, my own aging.
And I went, oh, there's, it's a bad influence, like legit influence.
Like it's unintentionally kind of slightly reshaped the way you frame these things or think about these things.
Well, I feel like if – because it is –
And the more you use that template over and over – and let's be honest.
People like you and me are using that template or just using that forum a lot.
It's not unusual at all.
I mean if you go off for a weekend with your buddies and start saying, you know, cocksucker, motherfucker a lot over and over and over, like you'll keep saying that for a day or two after you come home.
That's right.
Right?
I mean you go to another country.
You start picking up the language again that you didn't know you even remembered.
So, I mean if we spend –
six to 14 hours a day in that land of templates, it's not unusual at all to find ourselves doing that or thinking, oh, this is a thing I should photograph and post.
It'll be another example.
I mean, you know, a more lightweight example, but the same way that it's starting to change the way we think a little bit.
Yeah.
Then you don't see things except in terms of, oh, I wish I had my camera.
I wish I could photograph that and post it.
But more importantly, I feel like
I feel like people are not rewarded on the internet, they are not rewarded for having middle
middle opinions middle brow views or middle middle work opinions you know no one is rewarded for compromise or for trying to see both sides of the story that is a thing that we all agree you know the person that's like can't we all get along or let's let's look at both sides of this that person is shouted down immediately and it
And that's always the most interesting part.
Think about literature.
I interrupted you.
I'm sorry.
But in literature, movies, anything, the most interesting part is always that surprise of a character, somebody who learns a little bit about themselves.
And that's what a story is.
A story is something started here, it ended there, and we learn something about the character of the person by how they handled an impossible challenge.
And sometimes that means really changing your idea about something.
That's what a story is.
You can't go off-brand.
To be the person who is the character in a novel who is, for the most part, totally disagreeable, maybe even evil, but they have a redeeming quality, and that's enough.
That's often enough to make a story and to make the world go round almost.
And I feel like what the internet is doing is it is rewarding people for extremism.
In very subtle ways.
And it is depriving people of the natural reward they should be feeling when they say, hey, actually, I kind of see both sides of this.
And in the past, like, that's how civilization got built.
People would get to a certain age and they'd go, actually, I kind of see the other side a little bit now.
And everyone would stroke their chins and take another puff on their pipes and
And maybe they would resolve that property difference or maybe they would resolve the question of whether the beer is too hoppy or whatever it is, the problem that primitive people had.
And now we've created this place where it's like, this is where we're going to invest our time.
This is where we are going to invest our intellectual energy in.
And the combination of anonymity and distance from one another, no physical consequences, no risk of a punch in the nose, we're creating a human environment where radicalism is rewarded, and that is going to have disastrous consequences.
I agree, and part of the problem—and I will literally beg you not to get me started on this—but that extremism and that radicalism, the problem with that is that it doesn't have a cost.
And so I've been taken to task by many, many good-hearted people for saying that, like—
Martin Luther King would never have had an impact if he, if he sat around eating fucking Cheetos and typing on Twitter or asking people to support his fucking fun run.
He got out there and he threw himself, you know, on the levers and he threw himself.
Yeah.
I mean, that's, I mean, and that, that is another kind of extremity, but I'll just, just to make the one tiny point that will be hopefully tweetable is, is that, um, the, the problem with the X extremism and radicalism is it doesn't cost anything and you still get to get your ribbon, uh,
For being the fucking, you know, Che Guevara in 140 characters, even though you haven't really done anything.
And you get to sit there and then now you get to be some kind of like a sniper character trying to like pluck out people on the other side of the DMZ who don't agree with you.
And you stay entrenched and there's nothing to be gained by either developing a more nuanced or intelligent argument.
And like the kind of problem that used to be mostly restricted –
to pro wrestling and Congress now goes everywhere because there's this permanent state of identifying and getting this personal branding.
I hate that word, but it's true.
Getting this kind of personal branding based on which kind of sniper you've decided to be and who you decided to pick off and who you high five for getting a shot off.
Well, and it doesn't cost a fucking thing.
I've found just personally, I've noticed that it devalues to the,
Those instances where somebody does really jump up and say something radical because they're immediately dismissed as a troll.
So...
just personally, I'm, I am at a turning point in my life where I am having to say to myself on a kind of daily basis, there is, there, there's every day, there's some reason why I feel like, uh, why I feel like
The easy path in middle age is to confirm stereotypes, confirm biases, feel like your experience, your hard-won experience allows you to...
not be tolerant, I guess.
And that you turn a certain point, no matter what your proclivities are, where you feel like, I don't want to be taken advantage of anymore.
I don't want to be a rube.
I don't want to be a fool.
And that inevitably causes a certain hardening
You no longer give money to panhandlers where you once did.
You no longer roll your window down to a guy running up on the street with a broken fan belt.
You know, it's a gradual process.
I haven't
I have done nothing but laugh in the face of anyone who approaches me holding a fan belt for 15 years.
But, but increasingly like, uh, this, this kind of, this battle I'm fighting against myself in, in the, just the kind of creeping transition toward comfort away from struggle and, and struggle, uh,
rewards you in ways that comfort cannot and struggle requires that you not succumb to cliche that you not succumb to stereotype and and that is increasingly difficult as john hodgman is fond of saying you cannot run as fast as you did when you were 20 nor can you think as fast
As you did when you were 20.
And so it's additional work to wake up in the morning and say, I'm going to approach every person as an individual today and I'm going to take on these scenarios I think I know the answer to already.
And, you know, increasingly I find my online life is not especially helpful.
Well, part of the problem, I, you know, I'm reluctant at this point to say the internet is a medium because it's a series of media.
Correct.
But in addition, I want to come back to that, but.
And I think if I was on Metafilter exclusively – Well, Metafilter is no bargain sometimes.
I mean there's a lot of – to quote the great drunk John Wayne during his Stanford commencement speech.
I didn't say that for clapping.
Yeah.
You ever heard that on that celebrities at their worst?
John Wayne is three sheets to the wind talking about these kids.
Is that a Stanford commencement?
Oh, I'll find it for you.
It's around the time that they occupied Columbia.
The guys in there are like, defecating in a drawer.
I'm not saying that for clapping.
The problem is that radicalism, extremism doesn't cost anything.
But empathy is expensive.
Because empathy toward anybody, empathy doesn't mean you agree with somebody.
It means you feel for them a little bit.
You want to understand that they're another human being.
That doesn't make you a pussy to say that.
That means being an adult.
Yeah, but most of the time it takes 10 extra minutes out of your day.
But that'll get me back to the medium in a minute.
But I think part of the problem is that – I mean I'll speak for myself.
You've had a pretty flawless life, so you won't appreciate this.
But like I make so many fucking mistakes every day.
I misread things.
I do dumb shit.
I get mad at the wrong person.
I do so much dumb stuff every day that it's made me on a good day a little bit more empathetic.
But how everybody has those days or decades.
But that doesn't get you any three-pointers on the internet.
That does not get you a thumb.
And to the medium part, I'm tempted to bring up a real Godwin's law here in the sense of pro wrestling.
Like name your favorite pro wrestler who took 15 minutes to really explain things in a way that we could all understand even if we didn't agree with it.
No, you liked Ric Flair or you liked Ricky the Dragon Steamboat.
I personally did not like Ric Flair.
Yeah.
No, no.
He was, he was part of a different tradition for me.
I would love to talk about wrestling, but, but to me, that's, I mean, that, that's a, that's a careless, uh, 35 year old analogy, but I think it's true.
I mean, I think you've got to pick your side.
Like, are you going to be a face or are you going to be a heel?
And then like, you know, who are you going to team up with?
Who are you going to cheer for?
And he can hit with a fucking folding chair and, you know, and wherever you go, even in the most subtle environment, you're
You know, Metafilter or whatever.
I go into Metafilter sometimes.
I don't look at it like I used to because it has gotten way too mean and snarky.
And I will go in and just look at like most favorited posts and that'll be twice a month.
I'll go and do nothing.
It's Matt.
It's just that it's too big.
You've lost that sense of personhood.
We're all in our own little car honking our horns at people because of like a millisecond, you know, misdecision on their part.
Which I'm guilty of.
Which I'm guilty of.
But I mean like do you want to get better at that or do you want to get a louder horn?
That's the problem.
I mean and as you get older, it's almost like – you mentioned that Churchill thing.
I think the Churchill quote was – I honestly did not look this up.
But it's something like any man who's not a liberal by the time he's 25 is hard-hearted.
Any man who's not a conservative by the time he's 40 is soft-headed.
Something like that.
Yeah, that's much better.
It's something – well, no.
But I mean it's – the only point being that like –
You know, there's always that thing people say that old canard about how like all journalists are liberals and journalists will come back and say, well, no, it's just that we seem like liberals because we like asking a lot of annoying questions, which is something that liberals like to do.
I think it's easy to say, oh, as you get older, you seem more and more like a conservative.
It's like, it's no, it's not that I'm becoming more conservative.
It's just that I've seen a whole lot of your radical ideas.
I've seen the ones that worked and it wasn't because they were radical that they worked.
it's because they were the right solution at the right time.
Yeah.
And, and, and the louder horn does not make you a more persuasive driver.
He said, mixing several analogies.
Anyway, I'm just saying like trying to settle this shit.
140 characters at a time is not a great place to try and settle it.
Did you read quest loves, uh, essay?
No.
On the Trayvon Martin case.
No, but I will.
I'm getting a card.
That's from the Tribe Called Quest?
No, Roots.
He's the Roots drummer, but he plays on the Jimmy Carson show.
Oh, I know what you mean.
You're talking about the Never Not Funny Fallon Pardo.
That's right.
Got it right here.
So he writes this very thoughtful personal essay in the style of someone who is...
Who is simply saying, here's how it is for me.
Like, and he is, he, it's a very, it's a very, it's just a personal and touching anecdote that you cannot argue with.
You know, it is not a political thing.
comment really at all, except that at the end he kind of ties it to this national conversation.
It's like a personal essay, as we used to say.
It's a personal essay.
And it's a personal essay that
I that I read and liked a great deal because it describes a kind of private experience that he's having as a large black guy with a gigantic afro and his his success and his fame and the fact that he is a beloved person.
And now lives in a doorman building in, you know, in having achieved everything that he set out to and more.
He still is subject to, and he's very careful to describe it, not as subjected to, but just subject to a kind of treatment where people are scared of him because of how he looks.
And he's aware of it and has been his whole life.
But it still, you know, wears him down over time in a way that everybody can relate to, you know, where he and he's just telling the story and I read it and I was like, fuck, it's if more people.
wrote with this kind of just simple candor if our if our national conversation included voices like this where they weren't where you know kind of like obama's speech to the same effect and so i anyway i posted this a link to this just like hey this is a great thing and uh i think everybody should read it
And I immediately got a bunch of, like, again, pushback in the form of, well, that's not the whole story.
And I was astonished at how primed the world is to reject even, like, the best-hearted attempts to say...
we're not here to take your guns.
You don't think that's the medium though, John?
I mean you're putting it out there in – to quote myself, the internet is not what you have to say.
It's what others have to say about you.
It's like when you put something out there like that, even with the best heart, no matter who you are, it's going to be about somebody else coming back with whatever they think their thing is, even if they're a dumbass.
I mean that's not indicative though.
I wonder if it – I mean in 1975 –
When Time Magazine was the only place, the only national den, right?
The only thing that everybody read.
First of all, an essay like that would never appear in Time Magazine.
But also, we had no sense of the great hundreds of thousands of people who read Time Magazine every week and threw it against the wall and said, a bunch of Jimmy Carter liberal...
Communists.
Communists.
So we have... Was that the police officer from Confederacy of Dunces?
Communists.
Some kind of communists.
Communists.
She's a grandma.
And so now we have insight into all these dark corners.
But also, the people who are following me on Twitter presumably are not a broad cross-section of America.
They are a self-selected
group of indie twerps and comedy computer nerds and people who are presumably comedy computer nerds people who are animating bird gifs
to appear you know bonobos uh i've never i've never i know you weren't pointing i'm sorry john i know you weren't pointing that at me but i've never felt worse about three nouns than comedy computer nerd
God, that's depressing.
It's a big part of my demographic now.
But even among those people, and this is what I'm saying, I look at that guy, let's take one of the 10 people.
The person responding to Questlove.
The Questlove link.
Trayvon!
And you feel like, okay, this guy is probably, because he's following me on Twitter, he is probably not a racist.
He is probably not a racist.
a gun nut in the Idaho mountains.
He is probably a kid who feels like he has to, like you're saying, because of the medium, he has to take, he feels like he has to take this oppositional position because there is no place to be, there is no place in his world to read something and go, hmm, well,
That's interesting.
He lives in a world where in a certain extent, he has been called a racist and
so much for expressing like middle of the road views that he's beginning to feel like, well, maybe, you know, maybe I am, or maybe I, maybe there's some merit to that.
You know what I mean?
Like he is being pushed to the right by assist by, by, by living in a world where there is no room for him to be in the, you know, slightly to the right of the middle, right?
I mean, I feel that more and more reading people on the internet who are taking stances that you really don't feel like they own, but that they've been nudged there by the fact that there's no room to say, well, you know, there's two sides to every coin.
And I mean, obviously the Trayvon thing isn't what I'm talking about, but...
It doesn't cost anything.
That's part of the problem.
None of it costs anything.
And, you know, I don't know the first thing about economics.
I mean, everything I know about economics I've learned from Wikipedia.
That's not true.
You took me down to the University of San Francisco computer store because you knew that I was going to get a better deal on my computer.
I don't want to sound contradictory, John, but I think that's really more about finance.
Yeah.
No, I mean, the idea that things cost stuff, you know, it's it's I mean, that that's that's a big part of the problem is that it doesn't cost anything.
It doesn't cost anything to be a radical.
It doesn't cost anything to agree with this person there and agree with that person there.
You know, it's it doesn't it's there's nothing to it.
But there's I don't know.
I don't know.
I'm feeling the cost.
I guess this is the this is because you actually fucking care and you and you inhabit the the point of view.
That's costly.
Yeah.
Yeah, yes, it is.
It costs.
It makes bruises on my heart like an apple at the bottom of a bin.
Stop there for a second.
Marker there, I got to go pee.
Can I call you back in a minute?
Oh, yeah.
You don't want to just leave it running?
No, I don't trust this thing.
Here's the primary problem I have shopping for a suburban on the internet.
Yeah.
People who are selling old Suburbans are the number one misspellers of the word original.
They all put an extra O in original.
So it says original.
And so I want to buy this truck.
And I click on it and it says, I have a lifted... So, anyway, no punctuation in this whole ad.
I have a lifted 73 Suburban on 35s.
Built motor.
Has headers.
Full exhausty.
With an E at the end.
Full exhausty intake carb.
Has cam runs and drive great.
Oregano paint.
Has nice weld wheels and pretty good tires.
Interior is like new.
No rips or tears.
T-A-I-R-S, has Rubbermates, no carpet, has DualShox, D-U-L-E, DualShox, and has custom front driveline.
Please call for more information.
Have title in hand in my name.
I can text more picture.
I can text more picture.
And I'm reading it, and I'm just like...
No, it makes you, I mean, we're older men.
That makes us winded because we've had poetry classes.
You're reading that aloud in your head.
Yes, I am.
It doesn't scan well.
No, and part of me feels like it's from Jabberwocky.
It was original paint and had no tears.
The tires were pretty good.
Yeah.
you know and part of me thinks it's E.E.
Cummings because there's I mean it's just it might as well be but so I think about like I'm going to call this guy
And talk to him about his truck.
And I'm going to say, has full exhaust the intake carb has cam runs?
Oh, God, you're that guy.
And no, I'm not going to be that guy, but I'm just going to be like, so how's it?
How's the truck?
And whatever he says, I'm just going to hear him speak with no punctuation and not a spell tear.
Oh, it's got an exhaust day from La Française.
It's got exhaust day.
You know what, though?
I wonder if that's like fake.
Oh, you think that's like fake barn find?
Okay, let me ask you this.
How many guys who buy Harleys are in a motorcycle gang?
Right?
Yeah, zero.
You should do it.
I mean, maybe trade him for like a strunken white or something.
I'll tell you what, guy.
I'll give you $1,000 less than you're asking, but I got a nice copy, a nice lightly used copy of Strunk and White.
Omit needless words.
I have the Ann Landers Encyclopedia.
Everyone should read the Ann Landers Encyclopedia.
I'll throw in some Irma Bombecks.
I've realized how much my humor is becoming like Irma Bombeck.
That's the problem with aging and becoming conservative.
Am I right?
You start to laugh about jokes about potholders.
My new perfume is baby poop.
That's how I feel.
That's how I feel.
Scott Simpson first made that joke a while back.
He had kids before me.
But I really feel like I'm an ongoing Irma Bombeck anecdote.
Yeah, I had my first experience today where I went to my luncheon with my young dad friends.
We have a group of young dads.
What?
We get together.
What are you called?
We're called the Young Dads.
Is that the Scott McCoy band?
The average age is about 43.
The Young Dads.
The Young Dads.
And the other guys in my Young Dad parenting group, their babies are all much younger.
They are all little babies.
And so I've been, up until now, the one that's like...
Listen, it gets better, and here's the deal.
Just wait.
Don't give them a pacifier, because then they're going to be the pacifier baby.
You're so wise.
You want to just let them tough it out.
You're very wise.
But today, it was the first day where one of them has a little baby that's strapped into a carriage and can't move, and the other one has a baby that's so little that he didn't even bring it.
He left it with the mom.
And I'm the one with the two-and-a-half-year-old sitting on my lap going...
Daddy, we have to go.
Daddy, we have to go.
Daddy, we have to go.
Daddy, we have to go.
And I'm like, hey, we're having lunch with some friends.
And she's like, we have to go.
We have to go.
I'm like, we don't have to go.
She's like, no, we have to go.
And I'm realizing like, oh, now I'm the one with the kid who is behaving like a little person rather than a fat little bug in a basket.
Now she's a little person with like, and, and, and my friends are in the same situation I was in two years ago where they're looking at me like, Hmm, boy, that kid's not turning out too good.
And I'm like, Oh, my little, my little kid is, you know, now, now, you know, now, now my parenting is,
is on display.
Oh, the, the, the, the pudding is out there and the proof is just stuck in it.
Like a, like a cinnamon stick.
Yeah.
I go to the supermarket and, and she starts, you know, she starts yelling, uh, uh, you know, about daddy's PP or whatever.
Uh, and I'm like looking around like, no, no, no, it's not like that.
We're just, we're potty training.
Um,
Oh, no, we get a lot of penis talk.
But there's already the cops, the sheriff's department is already pulling up.
We were walking home from school the other day and she said her new band is going to be called, what was it?
It was Bird Penis Fart Poop.
And I was like, that's pretty good.
No, here's the thing.
I'm going to say one thing about this.
And I hope that this is going to be what I stand on going forward.
I have doled out a lot of fucking wisdom about being a father.
Mm-hmm.
And, you know, along the way, people have kind of said, you know, you know, it's complicated.
You know what?
I'm done.
I'm done.
I'm done being fucking wise.
I know it's going to be I'm pretty soon I'm going to be like my brother in law with the drinks, except not successful.
He recommended three books to me before I could go in and take a leak.
He had books for me that I should get.
Was he wearing a pink Oxford cloth shirt tucked into jeans?
Pretty close.
Tassel loafers.
He was the quarterback in high school, but not a dork.
I mean like he went to a really good school.
He's a lawyer.
He's a very, very smart guy.
But like everybody with a daughter who's older than 10 or 11, he's broken by life.
oh yeah i know that's coming my daughter oh god i'm gonna cry uh wednesday is gonna be our last daddy daughter comics day before she starts elementary school and it's like it's eating me up yeah is she gonna wear is she gonna wear her spider-man costume to which one nerd
Well, now she's into Project Runway.
You know what?
I'm done being wise and I'm done being sweet.
I'm done.
I'm done.
I have nothing to share.
I have nothing to share except, you know, you're just going to fuck up a lot.
That's all I got to say.
Be okay with that.
Yeah, I'm already fine with it.
And, you know, fortunately, the child has a mother.
But the thing is, John, that must grind your gears.
I mean, your whole thing is predicated on the degree to which you can help people.
It must drive you crazy to not be able to help her more.
It must seem like just slightly out of reach.
Well, this is the problem with other people, with fully grown adults.
And people on the internet.
And people on the internet.
I try to apply a certain amount of helpful pressure.
I realized the other day, Merlin, and this is a terrible thing, I am prejudiced against delicate people.
You just realized that?
Well, yeah, I didn't realize that it was a full-blown prejudice.
Like, I felt like delicate people.
That's like Bull Connor going, I realize sometimes I'm a little intolerant of negros.
Delicate people, I guess I had not identified them as a subspecies.
Are you kidding?
You're kidding.
No, I'm not.
I think I felt like... It's one of the strongest parts of your personality is your complete lack of sympathy for delicate people.
But I felt like some delicate people were hearty people that just needed some help.
And some delicate people were legitimately delicate and needed to be protected from the sun.
And that that was... Well, you mean like if a lady had chemo, like you'd give her a pass.
Sure.
Or there are bird people.
Like hollow bones.
Yeah, who have small bones.
And I think what it was, my mom speculates that sometime in human past, people were selectively choosing very delicate women to be their kind of court ladies.
And then, unfortunately, some little boys were born with similar traits.
Oh, you get like the Spanish aristocracy, right?
Yeah.
Exactly.
Yeah.
You get the thin blood and the inbreeding.
Thin blood.
But now I'm realizing like delicate delicateness because and I wonder whether it isn't that I am that I am so sturdy that there's some kind of inner class issue dating back to like Britannia.
Where I was bred to pull a plow.
And I'm mad at people where you can see their little bird skulls and you see the blue veins through their translucent skin.
I'm still mad at them because I feel like I'm still pulling a plow somewhat.
But...
But anyway, the pressure that I apply to the world in the hopes that I can make the part of the world that connects with me a little sturdier to its own benefit—
I'm realizing that I cannot apply such pressure on my daughter past a certain point because she most definitely is who she is.
And any amount of any amount of pressure on her beyond just the just the normal pressure of you will call me, sir, in this house.
But beyond that, beyond that, like trying to get her to be any kind of sergeant, I work for a living.
You will call me hair professor doctor.
But beyond that, like, trying to shape her, like, hey, honey, I want you to consider the crew team.
Or even, you know, like, she's already showing a preference for certain kinds of books over certain other books.
It's just like, okay.
For gnawing?
No, you know, like potty books, like this book, this potty book features a pig.
Oh, like this board book over that board book.
Yeah, this potty book features a duck.
She prefers the potty book that features a duck rather than the one featuring a pig.
And of course, there is one that has both ducks and pigs.
That's bestseller.
But you know what I'm saying?
My instinct, which has always been to get right inside of people's heads and tinker, now with this little person who has come to me through some magic witchcraft...
I realize I cannot tinker over much with her because I see how much of her – I think my suspicion with other people is that most of their weakness is a product of some pussy upbringing or some bullshit that they learned in college.
Well, and some bullshit they've been applauded for.
Some bullshit that they've been applauded for.
That's right.
They never had somebody take their pig book away and hit them with it.
But with this little person who has arrived and I see that every, really every personality trait that she has is something that none of us can claim responsibility for.
And I just am like, oh, my God, get out of her way.
Like, I must get out of her way.
And that is what's terrifying.
Remember what I said a minute ago about how I'm not going to try to be wise?
I'm going to say this one thing, this second one thing, which is that I used to think that my daughter brought out the best in me.
And I'm pretty sure this is not her fault.
This is my fault.
I'm pretty sure she brings out very near the worst in me.
No.
I mean like I'm still – here's the thing.
I mean like – OK.
So think about when you're a teenager and maybe not you but you were certainly surrounded by guys who were like, I do everything for her and I love her.
Like why doesn't she love me?
You're like shut the fuck up.
You're making this all about you.
You could give a shit about that woman.
If you really cared, if you loved in the true sense of the word, you would leave her alone.
Right?
That's what love is.
You know what?
If you love that girl and it's obvious she doesn't like you, if it's love in the true sense of the word, in the sense of like you care more about their welfare than yours, go away.
You're saying set them free and if they come back to you?
Hire one of the Marcellus brothers.
Okay, so here's why I say that.
If life gives you lemons.
That's right.
I used to think that like, oh, this is in gentilified me and made me very wise.
And now I sit there and go, oh my God.
And like day after day after motherfucking day, I have these constant realizations.
Get ready for this because that's really a fun ride.
I'm getting a three by five card out.
Get a five by seven.
This is a wide point.
But I used to have to think, oh, the worst fight I'm going to have with myself is being a helicopter father, which I still am.
And, you know, in the sense that, like, tonight we were watching the Project Runway season two finale and I wanted to sit still so I could see if Chloe wins.
No spoilers.
But she was really tired and spinning around and coming very close to hitting her head on a corner of something, which is one of my personal, like, I have a real paranoia about that.
Sure, it happened to me.
Oh my gosh.
I had a gash in my head when I was a kid.
Yeah, exactly.
Whatever, you know, whatever it is you want to, in the same way that like, if you make it through the depression, you don't want your kids to be hungry, like save money.
Right.
That kind of thing.
I don't want to, in fact, I got a gash in my head and the Jewish geld poured out.
So it actually saved me.
You're the Gelden Goosen.
Gelden Goosen.
Nah, careful.
Careful.
I want to also talk about Paths of Glory.
I got a note here.
Anyway.
I used to think it brought out the best in me.
I thought, oh, you know, I'm learning so much about myself and I'm becoming so wise.
And you know what I realized?
I realized, holy shit.
I like, I want to be like a big brother that she admires.
I want her to like me.
I want her to think I'm cool.
I want, well, no, I'm being honest.
I'm being honest.
Like, you know, and I can't speak for you, but like, wouldn't it be nice if you could go in there while she's got her duck and or pig book, you could say something very wise and you would see a moment where in her eyes she saw how right you were.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Right.
And instead, maybe, maybe you will have that.
I don't know.
More and more often though, I realize like how completely full of shit I am.
I am so full of shit.
I mean, I know I'm full of shit.
It's kind of my, my, my deal, but, but, but like with, with, with this brand, no, I wasn't going to say it, but that's, that's the thing.
And that's what, that is the, that's the little, um,
what my own little cocoon to shed is like going like what, you know, and I've said this really like high and fucking high and mighty thing from the beginning that I've always believed.
I still believe, but now I feel more and more, I have to put my money where my mouth is, which is get out of her way and let her become the person that she's going to be.
Yeah.
Which I still – that's like an article of faith to me that is harder and harder to do as like I have fun times with her.
We have things in common.
I mean I'm – I'd like to think that I'm very supportive of whatever she wants to do.
We'll play what she wants to play as long as it's about comics.
But now she's really into drawing, which I'm like so into.
And I find myself saying – but here's how dumb I am.
I find myself saying, hey, Ellie, that was awesome.
Like you just drew the laundry in the washing machine.
That was really cool.
And then I'm like, shut the fuck up.
Like don't tell her like that looks good.
Like do you want her to like live for your praise?
Right.
Because why?
Because I want to be praised.
And then by extension, how horrible is this?
I want her to like me because I praised her.
Like how stupid is that?
Yeah.
I'm just being honest.
I'm just being honest.
And I used to think that was very wise, very supportive parent.
I'm very wise.
And, and it's like, you know, the, the, the hardest part of this is like the hard part was not just being sleepy.
That actually, that was the hardest part.
It was very hard to be sleepy all the time, but I'm finding, I'm finding it even more difficult to have to shed the parts of my personality I thought were helpful to get the fuck out of the way and to stop being a two, three, seven, 12, 14, 19 year old person with this person.
I don't know.
I, that's just, and that's why I'm done being wise.
That's as wise as I can get at this point is like, I have no fucking idea what's going on.
I hope she learns to make good decisions.
And if she doesn't like, that's just going to have to be okay.
Yeah.
I feel like I have already rehearsed her first driving lesson so many times.
Oh, that her first driving lesson when she's like, I want to learn to drive.
I'm going to, first of all, you know, I'm going to, I'm going to go strap into my driving lesson costume.
Yeah.
I will have bought and restored a car just for this moment.
Am I getting ahead of myself to think that you've already kind of thought out the components of that costume?
Oh, yeah, absolutely.
I mean, you know, the costume will have a brass spyglass.
It will have a scimitar.
So it's going to be like a cyberpunk modern major general kind of feel?
Yeah, that's right.
And her first driving lesson is going to last a month and a half.
We are going to leave the home...
This is all getting her ready for Tierra del Fuego, right?
Yeah, that's right.
You're just laying the groundwork.
She's going to be 15 and a half, and she's going to go, Dad, I want to learn to drive a car.
I want to go to the mall, or I want to go to Hot Topic or get a malted.
That's right.
You're like, you know what?
Pee now, because it's going to be 45 days before we stop.
I'm going to walk over to an oil painting on the wall.
I'm going to slide it over to the side.
I'm going to punch in a 15-number code into a keypad, and the floor is going to slide open, and we're going to go down into a mine shaft where the Batmobile awaits.
Like, will you whip away the cover of the car?
And there it'll be waiting.
There it is.
The driving education car.
And it's going to be like, all right, before you get into the car, there's a five-hour long checklist, and we're going to go around this car.
Check the tire pressure.
Again, check the tire pressure.
We're going to look at everything.
We are going to test the tensile strength of every single spoke in the wire wheels of this Austin Healey 100.
And she's just going to be like, I would rather never drive.
You're not ready.
That's right.
You're not ready.
Not ready.
And then you'll spray something in her face like Batman.
So she can't remember.
But here's what I really worry.
I worry that I'm going to start giving her driving lessons when she's seven.
She's going to be sitting next to me trying to look at her Dora the Explorer coloring book.
And I'll be like, see what this semi is doing right now?
See what this semi is doing?
Now this could cause an accident.
If I hadn't been looking 15 seconds ahead, we would be in a very different lane right now.
Do you understand that, young lady?
Do you understand what lane we would be in right now?
You're reading a board book that happens to be from England.
You're like, and just so you know, that's the wrong side to drive on.
That goes through your head.
You want to make sure... I've been showing her kung fu movies.
Oh, Billy.
Yeah.
You're aware that you are going to turn her into one of those people, living humans who believe they're a superhero and fight crime in downtown San Francisco.
You mean like X-23?
I think I might be turning her into some kind of a superhero assassin.
Do you know X-23 personally?
No.
No, I've never met her.
She's had a lot of problems, got mommy issues.
Here's the thing.
I did this.
Okay, here's what I did.
So every single time you've ever seen a kung fu movie with awesome fighting in it, what's the very first thing that you wanted to do as soon as that scene ended?
Jump up there and kick somebody in the face.
Fucking A right.
Yeah.
And you want to hear the words that came out of my mouth last week?
Okay, I'm going to show you a scene from a movie called Ip Man, and I'm going to show you a scene from a movie called End of the Dragon, but I'm only going to show them to you if you promise that you're not going to start hitting and kicking things.
Mm-hmm.
And guess how it worked out?
It worked out half great.
She promised that she wasn't going to kick them.
I mean, she's five and a half.
Yeah, the contract with her is not binding.
She knows.
Well, John, how many times have you had people say to you, well, here's the thing, and I'm going to demand you this?
And you would go, you know, provisionally.
Yeah.
I mean, she's smart enough to know that, like, again, she knows I'm full of shit.
Yeah.
And, like, how many, I mean, to watch the scene where Bruce Lee fights the guy with the big scar on his eye and, like, does the kick and sends him flying across the folding chairs.
Amazing.
My daughter has done nothing but kicked me for five days.
And I deserved every single one of them.
What did you think you were going to get?
What did I think I was going to get?
I could inoculate myself.
I could have her sign some kind of a waiver.
No, Daddy, I do not desire to enact this incredible scene over and over.
I'm going to show you a scene from this Wing Chun movie that involves guys on wires flying through the air with swords.
But you're not allowed to want to imitate it.
Yeah, so last night...
I've never done this before, but last night, you know, I'm putting the baby to bed and she's, you know, she doesn't want to go to bed.
She's feeling a little fussy or whatever.
And I'm like, okay, you know what?
Let's go watch some Michael Jackson videos.
And so we go and we watch, uh, we watch Billie Jean and we watch beat it.
And by the end of, of beat it, she is, she's standing on the bed, dancing a little two and a half year old, uh, Michael Jackson dance.
And I realized like, okay, uh, I can still, I can still, I can still reel this in.
This doesn't mean that she's going to, this doesn't mean that she's going to be, uh, like on, uh, living color.
I can still get this back.
He's selling your dad.
I can still get this back.
It doesn't mean she's got to be some color.
Like the girl from the... That girl with the big radio box under her tights.
On that television show.
The radio box under her... Okay, so she's dancing along.
I just want to say also, why the fuck would you show her Billie Jean?
That video has never made any sense.
Who is the guy in the trench coat?
What is that?
This is what I didn't realize.
It makes no sense.
Billie Jean not only makes no sense, but he is like deeply, profoundly cheesy.
But cheesy plus creepy equals 1982.
Yeah, cheesy plus creepy.
And yet, every second that MJ is on the screen is an unimpeachable moment.
Like he is the coolest...
And he is surrounded by the little tiger swatch that turns into a tiger cub.
You're just showing off now that you have access to a tiger cub.
That's all that is.
And the old hobo that he throws a coin in his cup and he turns into Cab Calloway in a white tuxedo.
It's all gibberish.
Your dad would have appreciated that.
Hey, Brian Kalamazoo.
He's like some white cap cow.
I don't even understand.
I don't get it.
Why was he sitting there in the first place?
And she's going to walk around now thinking every time that she steps on a large tile, it'll light up.
But the thing about that video is it makes so little sense.
I'm never going to show it to her again.
No.
But beat it.
holy cats that's massive beat it is like an it's beat it is like an entire season of 21 jump street beat it there's so much going on in that and every one of those every one of those gangsters
I believe.
I'm looking at all their faces as they're rolling up on that flatbed truck.
In the sense that they do literally want to beat it.
They look like they are there to beat it.
They've come to play ball.
None of them feel like, oh, there's a guy they cast.
Even the white guy that looks like the guy from Terminator 1
who came back in time to fight the Terminator.
What the hell was his name?
You know what I'm saying?
Who was the guy that made it with Sarah Connor that produced John Connor?
Oh!
The future guy.
In my head, I'm confusing him with one of the Warriors.
Like, one of the wimpy guys in the Warriors.
But I know who you mean.
Might be the same actor, but you know what I mean.
Like, the guy, what's his name?
The...
Terminator chaser.
Not Bill Pullman.
Bill Pullman.
So anyway, she couldn't sleep, and so you put this in front of her.
Is she groggy at this point?
Is she suggestible?
She's groggy, but she is still, because she's an infant person or a toddler person, she still lives in a world where...
I don't think there's a tremendous differentiation between dreamland and awake land.
And certainly when she is around daddy, who, who, although he cannot conjure an orb can seemingly conjure many, many things.
Daddy can conjure macaroni and cheese.
Daddy can conjure music on the stereo.
Daddy can conjure Michael Jackson on the iPad.
Daddy is amazing still, but,
And so I think that she, you know, she... Like, I showed her a Teletubbies for the first time not very long ago.
And now she's only seen one episode.
We still say, uh-oh, Tinky Winky.
But it has... But that... But uh-oh, Tinky Winky has removed itself from any connection to Teletubbies at all.
And it's just become... It's become a meme, frankly, in our family.
A catchphrase.
That means...
You're subverting the dominant paradigm.
That means you done goofed.
That's what it means.
You done goofed.
Uh-oh, Tinky Winky.
That means you're done goofed.
Our friend of the show, John Syracuse, has something that I really wish I'd gotten my hands around earlier, which is that he has – I think he has an older son in particular, but he's got a couple of kids.
He refuses to even acknowledge that the Star Wars prequels, the trilogy, exists.
And like they're there and he's like, well, you know, if they're there, like if they find the Blu-rays, they find the DVDs like that's OK.
But I'm not going to acknowledge that they exist.
Teletubbies needs to be on that kind of level.
You have to be so careful what you introduce because you never know what will stick.
I admire that.
I deeply admire it.
Oh, he's a very admirable guy.
You guys should do a podcast, you two.
Syracuse, is that some kind of Italian name?
Yeah, there's no Z in Syracuse.
Yeah, John Syracuse.
Syracuse?
Yeah, he's the smartest guy who listens to the show.
That's a kind of sausage, right?
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
So, I don't know.
You know my feeling about ethnic people.
Oh, absolutely.
You honor them.
And I feel like... And they're simple traditions.
I feel like the racism of my grandparents... You can't be racist against Italians.
Which was primarily directed at Italians and Irish.
For good reason.
I feel like as more and more music artists are reverting to the music of my great-grandparents...
Which, in the words of Carl Newman, is shouting over fiddles.
Says the guy with the Scottish background.
I feel like my new retro affectation is going to be racism against Catholics.
Fucking papists.
Fucking papists.